January 27, 2026 • 39 mins
In this unforgettable episode of Alive Again, Charlie Collins shares the moment that changed everything: when he was electrocuted by 12,500 volts on top of a moving train in New York. Legally blind since childhood and long battling self-doubt, drugs, and despair, Charlie’s near-death experience left him burned and broken—but also opened the door to a profound transformation. Through survival, recovery, and surrender, Charlie found meaning, connection, and a calling to help others discover their own light. This is a story about ego death, resilience, and finding light after decades of darkness. And it reminds us: sometimes the near-death isn’t what nearly kills us—it’s what finally sets us free.
Story Producer: Dan Bush
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 (00:16):
Well, alright, so my name is Charlie Collins. Nineteen eighty
eight October. I was electrocuted by twelve thousand, five hundred volts,
and in two thousand and seven I died to self
and was reborn.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
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
(00:56):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep it mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener discretion, as advised.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
In nineteen like seventy seven, I was slowing down in school.
I wasn't paying attention and they were running an eye
test out in the hallway and I wasn't doing well
at the last couple of lines. And we went to
the eye doctor and there was nothing. They were I
was a psychiatrist. I was at special LED type. I
(01:30):
you know, I don't know, but my parents tried all
their things, and they just couldn't put their finger on it.
But after two years of being in and out of
doctor's offices trying to figure out what was going on,
we found ourselves in our big old Plymouth station wagon
ending up the mass irooneer in Boston, and after a
couple of days of testing, it was determined that I
(01:54):
had a very rare eye disease called juvenile macular degeneration.
By age thirteen, I was then declared legally blind by
the state of Connecticut. And I wanted to be a
jet fighter, pilot of cop race boats, motorcycles, cars, be
(02:15):
a detective, anything that was dangerous and fast. And I
remember thinking, well, they just took all my life streams away.
You know. I went to school one day and I
was walking down the hallway and I could hear everybody
(02:37):
and I could see movement. But I realized I don't
have much detail I sight anymore. And I went into
class and it was just like sitting in the front
rows where they put me because I was the vision
impaired guy and kid, I should say. And in that time,
you know, teachers start writing on a board and I
(02:58):
could kind of see some of it, and then it
was okay, open your books to this page. We're going
to read. And I remember my heart just dropping in
my chest, thinking we're going to read. I hate reading.
And you know, after class, off the gym we went,
and today was going to be a dodgeball. Oh Man,
dodgeball sucks. There was two captains picking the people on
(03:19):
their teams, and I got picked last because the kids
knew I don't want him on my team. He's not
going to help us win. I didn't see it that way.
I only saw it as who wants the loser on
their team. That's why I got picked last. And I
went home that day, and that was the day my
mom said, you got some mail. Mail. I don't get mail. Well,
(03:42):
rellion was a big envelope and I ripped it open.
Charles J. Collins, you have been declared legally blind by
the State of Connecticut. And I was thinking, well, that's
that's fantastic. I can't wait to go hang that up
in my bedroom next to my fair FOWCEP post or.
(04:05):
And that that was really the beginning of a shutdown.
The self esteem, the self pity, the depression, that poor me,
the life, just what is this meaning, why has this
been done to me? For the next ten years, that's
(04:30):
what I focused on, what wasn't working, how I wasn't
going to succeed achieve. You know, I started drinking and
doing more drugs. I didn't know. I didn't know what
to do. You know, I did try college and I
failed out three times. But I didn't fail out. I
feared out of college. I'm not seeing any purpose for me.
(04:53):
I don't know, I don't feel connected. I'm going I'm
just feeling alone. And I was focused on me and
what wasn't working in my life. I was a big,
grateful dead fan back in the day. Well I still
am today, and I hain't been going to a lot
(05:13):
of concerts and things, and you know, I was trying
to find my lane, and that music and those people
put me in a place where I felt free. I
felt no bondage of self. You know, I was connected.
I might not have known this dude ever, but anybody
I talked to I instantly had a connection with. At
(05:36):
this one concert in Madison Square Garden on the way home,
we were taking the train, and I always was the
type of guy that did crazy things. So you would say, dude,
that's sick. You know you liked me because I knew
you didn't like me for who I was. Because who
I was was a loser, a legally blind guy. It
never was going to mount to anything. I'm not good enough.
(05:58):
I'm not tall enough, strong enough. I'm just not enough.
So if I do things that wow you, or you
think I'm crazy, because you know I'm not the legally
blind loser. If you thought of me what I think
of me, oh my gosh, kill me now. So I
did crazy things. So on the Metro North train, I
(06:19):
decided to squeeze through the cars and I felt the
ladder out there, and I pulled myself outside the train
and I stood out there and I went, now, this
is exciting. I jumped back in the train, and I
went to my buddies and I say, guys, check this out.
And they watched me disappear, and then I jump back in.
I'm say, come on out, let me show you what
I'm doing. They're like, all right. I went out and
(06:43):
then I went up to the top of the ladder.
I had a tall Boy in my left hand. I
probably had a Marlboro in my right hand. You know.
I got to the top and I stood up on
the top of the car and looking at my two buddies.
They're looking up at me, and I'm thinking I'm the king.
I'm standing up on top of the train with my
arms up in the air, and they're looking at me
(07:04):
as somebody who matters. And my buddy was at the
top of the ladder and he's like, dude, be careful.
And in that moment, the car shifted. I grabbed the
electricity going into the train system and shorted out the
entire train system and all of the electricity went through me,
(07:26):
blew out my arm, blew a whole big hole on
my side, under my arms, on my sighs, on my knees,
and on my ankles. The amount of electricity it runs
a twenty something car plus huge long train system. I
took all of that through my body. I came to
(07:46):
and I was sitting under the train, screaming my arm,
my arm, my arm. I was sizzling. The next thing
I know is in an ambulance and they would pour
water on me from head to toe. The minute they finished,
I could please hurry up, and they would just open
big jugs of gallons of water and dump it right
down my body. It was the only relief. But where
(08:13):
I went in that time was I was not there.
I did not see a snapshot of my past, current,
future life when this happened to me. None of that,
No movie played quicker past memories. I remember a lot
of white light. I believe my grandfather came to me
(08:40):
in that moment of transitioning between consciousness and back into
unconscious And I definitely believe my grandfather came to me
and he said come back. And I just remember him
saying come back. And I don't know why I thought
he was there when I came to I thought he
(09:01):
was physically there. So it's the weirdest thing because I
remember asking my mother, is pot here. She's like, no, honey.
He died. He had died three years prior to that,
and we were very tight, and he was very hard
on me in a loving way because he believed in me.
(09:22):
He saw in me what I did not see, and
he tried to help me see that and bring it
out of me. I absolutely have the sense that he
was there. I believe he came to me and he said,
cut the you know what and get back here. I
(09:45):
came to again this time when I came to. I
was covered in gauze my entire body. The only thing
exposed were my eyes when I opened my eyes, and
I was hooked all sorts of things coming right out
of my chest. But I remember opening my eyes in
it was a priest standing there, and they went, oh, gosh,
is this what happens when you die? I was kind
(10:07):
of hoping, you know, it would be different. My mother
came running in the room and I The first thing
I asked it was please get rid of the priest.
I'm not dying. They thought I was, like, because I
was burnt really bad all over. Then it was The
(10:29):
journey began lowering me on a stretcher type thing with
a conveyor like a button like, and they would lower
me down to as salt and saline bath that I'd
have to drop into naked, and I'd have my one
good arm covering my private because you know, come on,
(10:49):
there's ladies somewhere. I would drop into this thing, and
it was unbelievable because I had to keep it clean
because infection would killed me instantly. Because I had open
swords all over me. My right arm was about the
size of my leg, and they were obviously they needed
(11:10):
to imputate it, and I thought, if you do that,
kill me. I'm a legally blind guy. Life is hard enough.
I'm not going out with one arm. And they had
this meeting and I somehow pushed my way over to
the wall and I grabbed a handful of all the
cables keeping me going. I ripped it out of the wall.
All these alarms went off and people came running, and
(11:34):
I said, if you can't find me a doctor that
can save my arm, I don't want. I'm gonna die
because I can't face this life with more disability than
I already have. You know, I got asked in the hospital,
how much were you drinking that night? I'm like, what
the heck does that have to do with it? Had
(11:55):
everything to do with it. You know. I had drinking problem,
a drug problem. I had a self esteem, promaded depression,
promide anxiety. I was a prisoner of my own mind,
this bondage of self, this were me, this life that
I had created that I didn't know I did. I
(12:15):
thought that I was a bad boy. So you know,
you're gonna get the life that you deserve. Because legally
blind people and people that drink and do bad things,
and you know, my life was it was scary. So
in the hospital, something shifted. It's like you could lay
in this bed, but I'm hearing screams down the hallways.
(12:39):
I'm there's a lot to really really hurt people in
the Bridgeport burning unit. I started looking and listening to
them and my body without me thinking about this sucks.
It's so hard. I hate this, the pain I'm in.
I didn't have any pain anymore. I took the attention
(13:01):
off me. It was amazing. My attention went to helping them.
It took me a while to rehab after I got
out of hospital too. You know, I wore job skins
and that's when I started using adaptive technology and things
turned in my life. I went into the motorcycle business,
and I mean me, I legally blind guy gets asked
(13:24):
to work in a motorcycle business. I'm like, well, you're nuts,
I'm blind. I can't do this. You're crazy. You don't
want me. I'll never succeed. I didn't say all that.
What's really important is the gentleman said to me, well,
I believe in you. I almost cried right there. He
(13:47):
believes in me. Jimbo. Jimbo was the owner of the company,
and Jimbo looked at me and he said, I believe
in you. You've been coming in here for three years.
You love motorcycles, You bring some energy in here. You
would be an asset to our team and I'd love
(14:09):
to have you become part of this company. Could you
come in and sell motorcycles in ATVs and water vehicles
and boats. I didn't believe in me. I did not
feel a sense of belonging, even in my family, as
they were different than me. It looked easier for them.
And I saw when Jimbo said, I believe in you,
(14:31):
you will be an asset to this company. You I
stepped into it and I tested the water. Is that possible?
Do I actually have a brain that can work? And
I started using adaptive equipment, things that helped me throughout
my day, and then that sense of belonging. I belong here.
(14:54):
These are my people. I'm now I feel a part
of and I feel at home here. I love going
to work. In a year, I was a million dollar salesman.
In three years from when I started, I was the
vice president and part owner of that company. How is
(15:15):
that possible? You know? I mean not that long ago.
I was laying in bed most nights, crying myself to sleep,
or really or calling out to the god of my misunderstanding,
please take me. I do not want to wake up again.
I cannot do this anymore. Because I was going at
(15:36):
it alone. I had no idea people and belonging connection,
what belief in each other and ourselves. I didn't know
the power of that stuff. So here's the interesting part.
(15:56):
I have not solved the problem, but I have put
a big band aid on it. I got to the top.
I'm making incredibly good money. I mean, I own a dealership.
I have every toy at my disposal. I'm still legally blind.
Don't forget. I was riding street bikes, wheeling in them.
I was ripping on dirt bikes. I was doing grass drags,
(16:17):
snowmobiling was out. I was a maniac still. I didn't
get rid of that. But I had arrived. You know
what I mean, My buddies all went to college. I'm
blowing them out of the water. I'm doing. I have
a house, I'm getting married. I mean, everything is just
rapidly come together. And then I needed more. I pulled
(16:42):
the structure down, started doing cocaine, and drinking, and it
started affecting my job and I couldn't seem to just
be happy, sober, and with everything I'm building, there was
still something missing, hurt the people, my business partner, and
(17:03):
I ended up in rehab. What do I do while
I come back? And I am a friendly serve attendant
at mobile? You know what that is? The guy that says, Hi,
I can't pump your gas, but I can check your oil.
I can check your tire pressure and clean your windshield.
I do that for six dollars an hour. And I
remember somebody pulling in and so what are you doing here?
(17:25):
Aren't you the owner of that motorcycle dealership? That was
very humiliating, and I'm like, this is unbelievable. You know,
talk about falling. You know, it was outside of me.
It was look at my success, that's what you now
should judge me by, not for the character and the
values I live from. And because of that, I couldn't
(17:48):
get enough. I had to have more, a bigger house,
more toys, because God forbid, they didn't tell me how
amazing I was doing. Because I still was missing something.
So I started a company back in nineteen ninety seven.
A year after I left the motorcycle business Vision Dynamics,
(18:11):
and this company rose quick within five years. It's doing
two million dollars a year. I'm hiring all visually impaired
and people with disabilities. I am on the news in
the newspapers. Guess what's getting fed again. Charlie has arrived again.
(18:32):
It's not a spiritual solution. It's a look at me, everybody.
Deep down, I still believe I'm not enough. So now
I'm going to prove it, prove business again. And I'm married,
I have kids. Now I am I got a bigger house,
I got more money, so things were just amazing. But
(18:55):
here it goes again. I'm trying to get validation from
my easiness. Might look at me. I'm a crazy rider,
I can jump far, I can do natsy things. Or
if that guy isn't working, you'll like me because I'm successful.
I can get a nice house and a pretty wife,
and I have all these toys. All that outside stuff
(19:18):
gets old to people and they can't keep feeding me
the appreciation that I'm not a loser. So I'm sitting
up on the bridge of my boat, a beautiful sound
at the marina. The sun is setting and I have
a thought when I'm sitting up on top of my boat.
This sucks because I want a forty five foot boat.
(19:39):
I want the next dock over where the really happy
people are. And so I walk up and down that
dock and they're like three hundred and fifty thousand and up,
and I'm like, how am I gonna get that? I
remember I had been sober about six seven years, and
I drank that night because something was missing. Eventually I
(20:01):
found myself smoking crack cocaine. I look for ways to
solve the suffering inside of me that I don't know
I'm creating. I don't know that I have a role
in it. I think it's done to me. Why do
I feel I have the disease of more? I need more?
I'm a go getter, I'm doing all this great stuff.
(20:24):
How come I feel like I'm dying? And you know,
I pulled that structure down. That's a very expensive habit.
It ripped my life apart. They had to hire attorneys
to cut me out of the company because I kept
stealing from it. I ended up living in like a
(20:45):
Super eight motel, alone in the dark, hiding in a
bathroom and shaking I can't believe I did it again.
That year, I've been in and out of seven rehabs.
(21:05):
I had barely been to work, not a good father,
not a good husband, absent, and I swore on the Bible,
on the grave of my grandparents that I was done
and I would never do it again.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
And I did.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
What is wrong with me? I'm talking to myself saying,
I don't understand. I want this more than anything. I
want to be clean and sober, and I want a
good life. But I left to my own devices, I
can't get there. Something is wrong. Please, please, something help me.
(21:48):
And then in that moment, my body stood up. I
did not. I didn't tell it to I stood up.
I opened my arms wide and I fell to the ground.
It and the crying, and I felt a release. That's
all I know. I felt await. I felt this pressure,
(22:13):
this thing wrapped around my heart and squeezing me. Release
in that moment, and I stood back up and it
was a little shift, just enough to put one foot
in front of the other. And then finally, in that moment,
I'm at the jumping off point. Either it's going to
(22:35):
be the supreme sacrifice, and I'm going to end it
all or I please help me. See, I humbled myself,
I completely gave myself. I don't know, I can't explain it.
(22:58):
I believe the in my swollen heart that I had
those experiences near death, excruciating pain, and that I didn't
die in a car accident on a train. Something was
saying and praying for me and saying, you're gonna see
(23:18):
it someday. We have a higher calling, a purpose. You
have a life of meaning, of service to others, And boy,
here it is. I mean, it blows my mind that
(23:40):
I didn't die in some of the things that accidents
and hospital visits. And you know the best part about this, Yeah,
it's gotten me where I am, but now I can
help others so much better. It's built me to be
a guy that can coach and teach and help others
find that light inside of them where they can live
(24:01):
a life of meaning and purpose. Seventy percent of blind
people low vision blind people aren't employed, eighty five percent
of them don't make it out of college, and seventy
percent don't graduate high school. Something's very broken. Blindness is
not a barrier. So I created an academy to help
(24:25):
people find that power deep with them them and you know,
overcome the biases and all the adversity that's thrown at
them in life to live the life of their dreams. Because, man,
I'll tell you, I know what it's like to live
free of the bondage of self. You know, I don't
(24:46):
have a script, don't. I don't have a script for
anything I do. I don't have it all figured out,
but I show up fully to you know, and I
ask for help always. We're all put here for a reason,
a purpose. I want to help people find that and
(25:08):
live from that and really enjoy life, the true essence
of being on this planet. I mean, it's the best
rock concert I've ever had.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Welcome back, this is a Live Again joining me for
a conversation about today's story. Are my other Alive Against
Story producers Lauren Vogelbaum, Nicholas Dakowski, and Brent Die and
I'm your host Dan Bush. A lot of times in
these shows we talk about the liminality, the crossing from
one threshold. The old self has died and the new
self is not yet born, and there's this liminal state
(26:08):
in between. And sometimes that is a five minute process,
you know, and sometimes it's a forty sometimes i'd say
eighty year process yeat. Charlie's is a story of somebody
who's like his insiting incident. Even though he was on
a train showing off and trying to make his you know,
(26:29):
to gather the approval of his friends. It didn't start
with him grabbing, you know, the twelve five hundred volts
of electricity went into the train. It started when he
first found out that he was legally blind and slowly
had this erosion of himself. He could no longer be
a jet pilot, which is all he wanted to do,
(26:50):
and it led to this massive undermining of his sense
of self and thereby him compensating for it in the
most crazy ways. But this liminal state for him lasted
for many, many years. And at first I thought, wow,
there's multiple near death stories here. There's a lot of
stuff that happens. But then as I was editing the story,
I've realized, no, it's all. There's all there's one inciting incident,
(27:13):
and it's the moment when he no longer thought that
he was normal or you know, normal enough to participate
in society as a normal person.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
It's the moment that he was or to achieve anything
that he wanted to achieve.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Right, And there's this slow expression across pivotal points in
his life that have high a lot of volume. There's
spikes on the wavelength of his life, like the electrocution,
like the time many years later when he found himself
in a bathtub, you know, doing crack. But it's this
prolonged liminal state before he finally came into his own
(27:49):
And not to mention, I love talking to him because
he's Brent told me about Charlie. I don't know how
you know Charlie, but he's he's just such a character.
He's such a delightful guy to talk to, and he's
just I met Arlely on a project we did. It
was about a group of blind people, a travel agency
that works for blind people. So they go to Sedona
(28:09):
and they have tactile experiences like doing a hike and
feeling the sandstone in the canyon, holding a baby fox,
you know, like very physical tactile experiences. And the interesting
thing about it is when you think of blindness again,
when you're not experiencing these things yourself, you have a
very basic idea of what it is. You just think
(28:32):
blindness means your hands over your eyes, you can't see anything.
But people have.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
Varying degrees of blindness. Some people are in the process
of losing their vision, and as some of them described it,
they said, I have ten percent left in this eye,
and I want to see Sedona before that vision is gone.
And Charlie was one of the people I met on
that trip. He's a fun person. Man, He's a lot
of fun.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
You know. The scene on the train is some real spectacle.
He's literally standing on top of a moving train with
a beer and a cigarette. But it's not because he's fearless.
It's because he's he because he's wanting to be seen.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Because well, I will say that he even before he
even because he's fearless, because he's deeply terrified. Even before
he began losing his eyesight, he was attracted to fighter jets.
You know, he's he's always So it's maybe this, this
part of his personality gets ramped up by his blindness.
So I don't think it comes out of over compensates
with the thing that, yeah, he's maybe a daredevil as
(29:25):
a kid. Yeah, and it's just I'm gonna maybe I'm
going to do it even more now maybe it's like
the same thing as the blind person whose vision is vanishing.
He wants to do as much of it as he
can before maybe he's gone, but he is trying to
impress his friends as he does it. Like, the thing
that stood out for me about his story is when
he said they'd play dodgeball, and I didn't want to
play dodgeball.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Everybody wants to play dodgeball, right, but he probably couldn't
see where the ball's coming from.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
And that's.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
You know, if you guys can believe this about me,
I was an awkward, non athletic.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Child in shock and disbelief.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Disbelieve so you deal with your trauma by becoming more awkward.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
So you know, I really leaned in. I was like,
what's the least athletic thing I can do? Podcasting terrific,
let's go, but no, you know, so, like I absolutely
understand the social anxiety and the kind of like weird
shame that goes with getting picked last. It's something like
dodgeball and feeling like you just don't fit in for
whatever reason You're you're just not good enough for And
(30:33):
I mean, and kids are assholes. I mean, people are assholes.
But you know, but kids haven't found good ways to
cope with it yet or haven't even had a chance
to and so and kids can be really mean, and
so like like looking back, I'm like, oh, yeah, no,
I feel that I feel wanting to act out, wanting
to be the class clown because you at least got
(30:55):
attention and hopefully it was positive. Hopefully if you figure
out how to make someone laugh.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
First, yeah, you either get tougher, you have funny.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Yeah, exactly, and they're not laughing at you, they're laughing
with you, and that's so much better.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
But yeah, Charlie is is another story where not only
did he reinvent himself, but he also found a new purpose,
which was to help others. And that's a recurring theme
in our show, is folks who have been through this
and even if they're a liminal period between thresholds of
themselves is you know, decades.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Yeah, and I think he wins on that one. I
think if we were going to give a medal for it,
that would be the medal that Charlie would get.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
That one.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Yeah, longest liminal period.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
But that he comes back and helps others and it
realizes that his purpose is to try to make sure
that you know anything he can do to help others
from overcompensating for the same not real problem. Yeah, that
you're not.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Enough, because he knows exactly how hard it is. This
one had me thinking a lot about addiction and patterns
of self destruction. Right when we have depression and anxiety
that's just running rampant. It's not untreated, because you sure
our treating it somehow, but in these ways that absolutely
(32:09):
make it worse. And the thing that really sucks is
that you have to choose. You have to choose to
do better. You have to really want it because it
is going to be hard. It is not fun to
examine those parts of yourself that are lashing out at you.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
But no, that's some incredibly the hardest work you'll ever
do it.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, like you can know that
being better is going to feel real good. I mean
hypothetically you can imagine that, but it is a bitch getting.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
There, especially when you have an addiction that's not it's
just not a medical it's not only a physical or
mental thing to get over. It is a chemical that
is controlling you.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Oh yeah, yeah, and right, it is really inspiring to
hear the story about someone who who made it out
of a lifelong spiral and is doing the work.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
I was extremely lucky growing up. I had two or
three people on one an eighth grade teacher, had great parents,
had a lot of people who looked at me and said,
I believe in you. You can do this, like or
why are you acting out like this? You know that
there's a different way to express yourself and you know
(33:22):
you're capable of it. So and that kind of thing,
like I take it for granted sometimes, you know, I
don't even think about it. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's
and it's let I think it's helped me to be
a pretty well adjusted person. You know. I have a
certain arrangement with myself about the things I'm willing to try,
the things I'm willing to attempt in my life, and
(33:42):
I just so it's kind of difficult for me to
sometimes understand how how it would feel to not have that,
to not ever have anybody say I believe in you.
In fact, I have them say the opposite again and
again and again to you know, for someone to say
you're worthless, or to say you're shit, or to say
you're not capable or you know, just to step on
anytime you have a sense of self or a sense
(34:04):
of hope in yourself or belief in yourself.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
To follow up on what Lauren was saying, that scene
of him in the hospital when he's going through all
this self hatred, all this pain because of what he
had done to himself by grabbing that electrical charge wire
and then realizing all these other people in the hospital
are experiencing intense pain as well, and he was able
(34:29):
to channel his own pain out and it brought him
relief and it gave him the ability to recover. You know.
So I thought that was really interesting that he was
able to shift his attention away from himself and put
it towards the suffering of other people, and it made
him feel better.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
You know, we've talked on the show before about how
gratitude is the antidote to despair. Well, compassion is also
an antidote. Compassion is an antidote for pain and suffering.
You know, you can I there's been many times in
my life when I'm like, Okay, I feel so sorry
(35:09):
for myself and I'm so been out of shape, and
I've had a gone through a breakup, or something you
know or have had a loss, and the one thing
that cures it and brings me back online is helping
somebody doing something for somebody else, finding some compassion. Instantly, Yeah, instantly.
(35:30):
It's like that thing with the brain. It shuts off
the part of the brain that is, you know what,
I don't wired for this one activity or this one
thought pattern, and it turns on another one that makes
you forget all about that shit. I don't get it quickly.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
I don't get the sense that when Charlie was growing
up anyone was telling him he could or couldn't do anything,
Like there wasn't a figure like a teacher or a parent,
but it was just that diagnosis. Tell himself that, yeah,
that diagnosis of blindness. And probably when he was a
kid in the nineteen sixties, nineteen seventy you're blind, You're
useless to society, you're shut away as so many disabled
(36:05):
people's mentally and physically work.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
He says, yeah, seventy percent of people who are legally
blind are unimportant. Yeah, I think he said, yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
And for his you know, for the person who owned
that bike shop to come to him and say, you
know a lot about bikes, you could really move these
you could sell. I believe in you because he told me,
Like when I met he told me he had these
successful businesses, and I was like, from running a bike shop.
But now that you're like, wow, you're selling these really
expensive vehicles, and then you're a partner in this man.
(36:38):
You must have been making a ton of money showing
you can do it, you know, by just being by
virtue of his personality, which is powerful, but but yeah,
being able to take that experience of somebody believing in him,
showing that as a blind person he can run a business,
he can sell things that he knows a lot about,
(36:59):
and then being able to take that knowledge and apply
it to other people who have gone through the situation
he's gone through and provide a path for them.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
What a great life mission, you know. Next time I'm
Alive again, we meet Taylor Maxon, who set out on
the Cumberland River with friends only to be swept straight
into one of the most dangerous rapids in the Southeast.
Speaker 5 (37:29):
And I just was like suddenly fighting for my life
and I can taste blood in my mouth, and I realized.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
That this is it.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Surviving Angel Faults was only the beginning of Taylor's journey.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
Safety is not inherently withdrawal. Nature put the exclamation point
on you don't have to be invisible. My life easily
could have ended, and I get to sort of be
the author of the next. However long I got alive again,
there it is.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent Die,
Nicholas Dakowski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. 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 l. K Ali
and Nomes Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush, Gerhartslovichka, Brent Die,
(38:27):
and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez.
I'm your host, Dan Bush. Special thanks to Charlie Collins
for sharing his story. Alive Again is a production of
I Art 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
(38:50):
gmail dot com. 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 (00:16):
Well, alright, so my name is Charlie Collins. Nineteen eighty
eight October. I was electrocuted by twelve thousand, five hundred volts,
and in two thousand and seven I died to self
and was reborn.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
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
(00:56):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep it mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener discretion, as advised.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
In nineteen like seventy seven, I was slowing down in school.
I wasn't paying attention and they were running an eye
test out in the hallway and I wasn't doing well
at the last couple of lines. And we went to
the eye doctor and there was nothing. They were I
was a psychiatrist. I was at special LED type. I
(01:30):
you know, I don't know, but my parents tried all
their things, and they just couldn't put their finger on it.
But after two years of being in and out of
doctor's offices trying to figure out what was going on,
we found ourselves in our big old Plymouth station wagon
ending up the mass irooneer in Boston, and after a
couple of days of testing, it was determined that I
(01:54):
had a very rare eye disease called juvenile macular degeneration.
By age thirteen, I was then declared legally blind by
the state of Connecticut. And I wanted to be a
jet fighter, pilot of cop race boats, motorcycles, cars, be
(02:15):
a detective, anything that was dangerous and fast. And I
remember thinking, well, they just took all my life streams away.
You know. I went to school one day and I
was walking down the hallway and I could hear everybody
(02:37):
and I could see movement. But I realized I don't
have much detail I sight anymore. And I went into
class and it was just like sitting in the front
rows where they put me because I was the vision
impaired guy and kid, I should say. And in that time,
you know, teachers start writing on a board and I
(02:58):
could kind of see some of it, and then it
was okay, open your books to this page. We're going
to read. And I remember my heart just dropping in
my chest, thinking we're going to read. I hate reading.
And you know, after class, off the gym we went,
and today was going to be a dodgeball. Oh Man,
dodgeball sucks. There was two captains picking the people on
(03:19):
their teams, and I got picked last because the kids
knew I don't want him on my team. He's not
going to help us win. I didn't see it that way.
I only saw it as who wants the loser on
their team. That's why I got picked last. And I
went home that day, and that was the day my
mom said, you got some mail. Mail. I don't get mail. Well,
(03:42):
rellion was a big envelope and I ripped it open.
Charles J. Collins, you have been declared legally blind by
the State of Connecticut. And I was thinking, well, that's
that's fantastic. I can't wait to go hang that up
in my bedroom next to my fair FOWCEP post or.
(04:05):
And that that was really the beginning of a shutdown.
The self esteem, the self pity, the depression, that poor me,
the life, just what is this meaning, why has this
been done to me? For the next ten years, that's
(04:30):
what I focused on, what wasn't working, how I wasn't
going to succeed achieve. You know, I started drinking and
doing more drugs. I didn't know. I didn't know what
to do. You know, I did try college and I
failed out three times. But I didn't fail out. I
feared out of college. I'm not seeing any purpose for me.
(04:53):
I don't know, I don't feel connected. I'm going I'm
just feeling alone. And I was focused on me and
what wasn't working in my life. I was a big,
grateful dead fan back in the day. Well I still
am today, and I hain't been going to a lot
(05:13):
of concerts and things, and you know, I was trying
to find my lane, and that music and those people
put me in a place where I felt free. I
felt no bondage of self. You know, I was connected.
I might not have known this dude ever, but anybody
I talked to I instantly had a connection with. At
(05:36):
this one concert in Madison Square Garden on the way home,
we were taking the train, and I always was the
type of guy that did crazy things. So you would say, dude,
that's sick. You know you liked me because I knew
you didn't like me for who I was. Because who
I was was a loser, a legally blind guy. It
never was going to mount to anything. I'm not good enough.
(05:58):
I'm not tall enough, strong enough. I'm just not enough.
So if I do things that wow you, or you
think I'm crazy, because you know I'm not the legally
blind loser. If you thought of me what I think
of me, oh my gosh, kill me now. So I
did crazy things. So on the Metro North train, I
(06:19):
decided to squeeze through the cars and I felt the
ladder out there, and I pulled myself outside the train
and I stood out there and I went, now, this
is exciting. I jumped back in the train, and I
went to my buddies and I say, guys, check this out.
And they watched me disappear, and then I jump back in.
I'm say, come on out, let me show you what
I'm doing. They're like, all right. I went out and
(06:43):
then I went up to the top of the ladder.
I had a tall Boy in my left hand. I
probably had a Marlboro in my right hand. You know.
I got to the top and I stood up on
the top of the car and looking at my two buddies.
They're looking up at me, and I'm thinking I'm the king.
I'm standing up on top of the train with my
arms up in the air, and they're looking at me
(07:04):
as somebody who matters. And my buddy was at the
top of the ladder and he's like, dude, be careful.
And in that moment, the car shifted. I grabbed the
electricity going into the train system and shorted out the
entire train system and all of the electricity went through me,
(07:26):
blew out my arm, blew a whole big hole on
my side, under my arms, on my sighs, on my knees,
and on my ankles. The amount of electricity it runs
a twenty something car plus huge long train system. I
took all of that through my body. I came to
(07:46):
and I was sitting under the train, screaming my arm,
my arm, my arm. I was sizzling. The next thing
I know is in an ambulance and they would pour
water on me from head to toe. The minute they finished,
I could please hurry up, and they would just open
big jugs of gallons of water and dump it right
down my body. It was the only relief. But where
(08:13):
I went in that time was I was not there.
I did not see a snapshot of my past, current,
future life when this happened to me. None of that,
No movie played quicker past memories. I remember a lot
of white light. I believe my grandfather came to me
(08:40):
in that moment of transitioning between consciousness and back into
unconscious And I definitely believe my grandfather came to me
and he said come back. And I just remember him
saying come back. And I don't know why I thought
he was there when I came to I thought he
(09:01):
was physically there. So it's the weirdest thing because I
remember asking my mother, is pot here. She's like, no, honey.
He died. He had died three years prior to that,
and we were very tight, and he was very hard
on me in a loving way because he believed in me.
(09:22):
He saw in me what I did not see, and
he tried to help me see that and bring it
out of me. I absolutely have the sense that he
was there. I believe he came to me and he said,
cut the you know what and get back here. I
(09:45):
came to again this time when I came to. I
was covered in gauze my entire body. The only thing
exposed were my eyes when I opened my eyes, and
I was hooked all sorts of things coming right out
of my chest. But I remember opening my eyes in
it was a priest standing there, and they went, oh, gosh,
is this what happens when you die? I was kind
(10:07):
of hoping, you know, it would be different. My mother
came running in the room and I The first thing
I asked it was please get rid of the priest.
I'm not dying. They thought I was, like, because I
was burnt really bad all over. Then it was The
(10:29):
journey began lowering me on a stretcher type thing with
a conveyor like a button like, and they would lower
me down to as salt and saline bath that I'd
have to drop into naked, and I'd have my one
good arm covering my private because you know, come on,
(10:49):
there's ladies somewhere. I would drop into this thing, and
it was unbelievable because I had to keep it clean
because infection would killed me instantly. Because I had open
swords all over me. My right arm was about the
size of my leg, and they were obviously they needed
(11:10):
to imputate it, and I thought, if you do that,
kill me. I'm a legally blind guy. Life is hard enough.
I'm not going out with one arm. And they had
this meeting and I somehow pushed my way over to
the wall and I grabbed a handful of all the
cables keeping me going. I ripped it out of the wall.
All these alarms went off and people came running, and
(11:34):
I said, if you can't find me a doctor that
can save my arm, I don't want. I'm gonna die
because I can't face this life with more disability than
I already have. You know, I got asked in the hospital,
how much were you drinking that night? I'm like, what
the heck does that have to do with it? Had
(11:55):
everything to do with it. You know. I had drinking problem,
a drug problem. I had a self esteem, promaded depression,
promide anxiety. I was a prisoner of my own mind,
this bondage of self, this were me, this life that
I had created that I didn't know I did. I
(12:15):
thought that I was a bad boy. So you know,
you're gonna get the life that you deserve. Because legally
blind people and people that drink and do bad things,
and you know, my life was it was scary. So
in the hospital, something shifted. It's like you could lay
in this bed, but I'm hearing screams down the hallways.
(12:39):
I'm there's a lot to really really hurt people in
the Bridgeport burning unit. I started looking and listening to
them and my body without me thinking about this sucks.
It's so hard. I hate this, the pain I'm in.
I didn't have any pain anymore. I took the attention
(13:01):
off me. It was amazing. My attention went to helping them.
It took me a while to rehab after I got
out of hospital too. You know, I wore job skins
and that's when I started using adaptive technology and things
turned in my life. I went into the motorcycle business,
and I mean me, I legally blind guy gets asked
(13:24):
to work in a motorcycle business. I'm like, well, you're nuts,
I'm blind. I can't do this. You're crazy. You don't
want me. I'll never succeed. I didn't say all that.
What's really important is the gentleman said to me, well,
I believe in you. I almost cried right there. He
(13:47):
believes in me. Jimbo. Jimbo was the owner of the company,
and Jimbo looked at me and he said, I believe
in you. You've been coming in here for three years.
You love motorcycles, You bring some energy in here. You
would be an asset to our team and I'd love
(14:09):
to have you become part of this company. Could you
come in and sell motorcycles in ATVs and water vehicles
and boats. I didn't believe in me. I did not
feel a sense of belonging, even in my family, as
they were different than me. It looked easier for them.
And I saw when Jimbo said, I believe in you,
(14:31):
you will be an asset to this company. You I
stepped into it and I tested the water. Is that possible?
Do I actually have a brain that can work? And
I started using adaptive equipment, things that helped me throughout
my day, and then that sense of belonging. I belong here.
(14:54):
These are my people. I'm now I feel a part
of and I feel at home here. I love going
to work. In a year, I was a million dollar salesman.
In three years from when I started, I was the
vice president and part owner of that company. How is
(15:15):
that possible? You know? I mean not that long ago.
I was laying in bed most nights, crying myself to sleep,
or really or calling out to the god of my misunderstanding,
please take me. I do not want to wake up again.
I cannot do this anymore. Because I was going at
(15:36):
it alone. I had no idea people and belonging connection,
what belief in each other and ourselves. I didn't know
the power of that stuff. So here's the interesting part.
(15:56):
I have not solved the problem, but I have put
a big band aid on it. I got to the top.
I'm making incredibly good money. I mean, I own a dealership.
I have every toy at my disposal. I'm still legally blind.
Don't forget. I was riding street bikes, wheeling in them.
I was ripping on dirt bikes. I was doing grass drags,
(16:17):
snowmobiling was out. I was a maniac still. I didn't
get rid of that. But I had arrived. You know
what I mean, My buddies all went to college. I'm
blowing them out of the water. I'm doing. I have
a house, I'm getting married. I mean, everything is just
rapidly come together. And then I needed more. I pulled
(16:42):
the structure down, started doing cocaine, and drinking, and it
started affecting my job and I couldn't seem to just
be happy, sober, and with everything I'm building, there was
still something missing, hurt the people, my business partner, and
(17:03):
I ended up in rehab. What do I do while
I come back? And I am a friendly serve attendant
at mobile? You know what that is? The guy that says, Hi,
I can't pump your gas, but I can check your oil.
I can check your tire pressure and clean your windshield.
I do that for six dollars an hour. And I
remember somebody pulling in and so what are you doing here?
(17:25):
Aren't you the owner of that motorcycle dealership? That was
very humiliating, and I'm like, this is unbelievable. You know,
talk about falling. You know, it was outside of me.
It was look at my success, that's what you now
should judge me by, not for the character and the
values I live from. And because of that, I couldn't
(17:48):
get enough. I had to have more, a bigger house,
more toys, because God forbid, they didn't tell me how
amazing I was doing. Because I still was missing something.
So I started a company back in nineteen ninety seven.
A year after I left the motorcycle business Vision Dynamics,
(18:11):
and this company rose quick within five years. It's doing
two million dollars a year. I'm hiring all visually impaired
and people with disabilities. I am on the news in
the newspapers. Guess what's getting fed again. Charlie has arrived again.
(18:32):
It's not a spiritual solution. It's a look at me, everybody.
Deep down, I still believe I'm not enough. So now
I'm going to prove it, prove business again. And I'm married,
I have kids. Now I am I got a bigger house,
I got more money, so things were just amazing. But
(18:55):
here it goes again. I'm trying to get validation from
my easiness. Might look at me. I'm a crazy rider,
I can jump far, I can do natsy things. Or
if that guy isn't working, you'll like me because I'm successful.
I can get a nice house and a pretty wife,
and I have all these toys. All that outside stuff
(19:18):
gets old to people and they can't keep feeding me
the appreciation that I'm not a loser. So I'm sitting
up on the bridge of my boat, a beautiful sound
at the marina. The sun is setting and I have
a thought when I'm sitting up on top of my boat.
This sucks because I want a forty five foot boat.
(19:39):
I want the next dock over where the really happy
people are. And so I walk up and down that
dock and they're like three hundred and fifty thousand and up,
and I'm like, how am I gonna get that? I
remember I had been sober about six seven years, and
I drank that night because something was missing. Eventually I
(20:01):
found myself smoking crack cocaine. I look for ways to
solve the suffering inside of me that I don't know
I'm creating. I don't know that I have a role
in it. I think it's done to me. Why do
I feel I have the disease of more? I need more?
I'm a go getter, I'm doing all this great stuff.
(20:24):
How come I feel like I'm dying? And you know,
I pulled that structure down. That's a very expensive habit.
It ripped my life apart. They had to hire attorneys
to cut me out of the company because I kept
stealing from it. I ended up living in like a
(20:45):
Super eight motel, alone in the dark, hiding in a
bathroom and shaking I can't believe I did it again.
That year, I've been in and out of seven rehabs.
(21:05):
I had barely been to work, not a good father,
not a good husband, absent, and I swore on the Bible,
on the grave of my grandparents that I was done
and I would never do it again.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
And I did.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
What is wrong with me? I'm talking to myself saying,
I don't understand. I want this more than anything. I
want to be clean and sober, and I want a
good life. But I left to my own devices, I
can't get there. Something is wrong. Please, please, something help me.
(21:48):
And then in that moment, my body stood up. I
did not. I didn't tell it to I stood up.
I opened my arms wide and I fell to the ground.
It and the crying, and I felt a release. That's
all I know. I felt await. I felt this pressure,
(22:13):
this thing wrapped around my heart and squeezing me. Release
in that moment, and I stood back up and it
was a little shift, just enough to put one foot
in front of the other. And then finally, in that moment,
I'm at the jumping off point. Either it's going to
(22:35):
be the supreme sacrifice, and I'm going to end it
all or I please help me. See, I humbled myself,
I completely gave myself. I don't know, I can't explain it.
(22:58):
I believe the in my swollen heart that I had
those experiences near death, excruciating pain, and that I didn't
die in a car accident on a train. Something was
saying and praying for me and saying, you're gonna see
(23:18):
it someday. We have a higher calling, a purpose. You
have a life of meaning, of service to others, And boy,
here it is. I mean, it blows my mind that
(23:40):
I didn't die in some of the things that accidents
and hospital visits. And you know the best part about this, Yeah,
it's gotten me where I am, but now I can
help others so much better. It's built me to be
a guy that can coach and teach and help others
find that light inside of them where they can live
(24:01):
a life of meaning and purpose. Seventy percent of blind
people low vision blind people aren't employed, eighty five percent
of them don't make it out of college, and seventy
percent don't graduate high school. Something's very broken. Blindness is
not a barrier. So I created an academy to help
(24:25):
people find that power deep with them them and you know,
overcome the biases and all the adversity that's thrown at
them in life to live the life of their dreams. Because, man,
I'll tell you, I know what it's like to live
free of the bondage of self. You know, I don't
(24:46):
have a script, don't. I don't have a script for
anything I do. I don't have it all figured out,
but I show up fully to you know, and I
ask for help always. We're all put here for a reason,
a purpose. I want to help people find that and
(25:08):
live from that and really enjoy life, the true essence
of being on this planet. I mean, it's the best
rock concert I've ever had.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Welcome back, this is a Live Again joining me for
a conversation about today's story. Are my other Alive Against
Story producers Lauren Vogelbaum, Nicholas Dakowski, and Brent Die and
I'm your host Dan Bush. A lot of times in
these shows we talk about the liminality, the crossing from
one threshold. The old self has died and the new
self is not yet born, and there's this liminal state
(26:08):
in between. And sometimes that is a five minute process,
you know, and sometimes it's a forty sometimes i'd say
eighty year process yeat. Charlie's is a story of somebody
who's like his insiting incident. Even though he was on
a train showing off and trying to make his you know,
(26:29):
to gather the approval of his friends. It didn't start
with him grabbing, you know, the twelve five hundred volts
of electricity went into the train. It started when he
first found out that he was legally blind and slowly
had this erosion of himself. He could no longer be
a jet pilot, which is all he wanted to do,
(26:50):
and it led to this massive undermining of his sense
of self and thereby him compensating for it in the
most crazy ways. But this liminal state for him lasted
for many, many years. And at first I thought, wow,
there's multiple near death stories here. There's a lot of
stuff that happens. But then as I was editing the story,
I've realized, no, it's all. There's all there's one inciting incident,
(27:13):
and it's the moment when he no longer thought that
he was normal or you know, normal enough to participate
in society as a normal person.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
It's the moment that he was or to achieve anything
that he wanted to achieve.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Right, And there's this slow expression across pivotal points in
his life that have high a lot of volume. There's
spikes on the wavelength of his life, like the electrocution,
like the time many years later when he found himself
in a bathtub, you know, doing crack. But it's this
prolonged liminal state before he finally came into his own
(27:49):
And not to mention, I love talking to him because
he's Brent told me about Charlie. I don't know how
you know Charlie, but he's he's just such a character.
He's such a delightful guy to talk to, and he's
just I met Arlely on a project we did. It
was about a group of blind people, a travel agency
that works for blind people. So they go to Sedona
(28:09):
and they have tactile experiences like doing a hike and
feeling the sandstone in the canyon, holding a baby fox,
you know, like very physical tactile experiences. And the interesting
thing about it is when you think of blindness again,
when you're not experiencing these things yourself, you have a
very basic idea of what it is. You just think
(28:32):
blindness means your hands over your eyes, you can't see anything.
But people have.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
Varying degrees of blindness. Some people are in the process
of losing their vision, and as some of them described it,
they said, I have ten percent left in this eye,
and I want to see Sedona before that vision is gone.
And Charlie was one of the people I met on
that trip. He's a fun person. Man, He's a lot
of fun.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
You know. The scene on the train is some real spectacle.
He's literally standing on top of a moving train with
a beer and a cigarette. But it's not because he's fearless.
It's because he's he because he's wanting to be seen.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Because well, I will say that he even before he
even because he's fearless, because he's deeply terrified. Even before
he began losing his eyesight, he was attracted to fighter jets.
You know, he's he's always So it's maybe this, this
part of his personality gets ramped up by his blindness.
So I don't think it comes out of over compensates
with the thing that, yeah, he's maybe a daredevil as
(29:25):
a kid. Yeah, and it's just I'm gonna maybe I'm
going to do it even more now maybe it's like
the same thing as the blind person whose vision is vanishing.
He wants to do as much of it as he
can before maybe he's gone, but he is trying to
impress his friends as he does it. Like, the thing
that stood out for me about his story is when
he said they'd play dodgeball, and I didn't want to
play dodgeball.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Everybody wants to play dodgeball, right, but he probably couldn't
see where the ball's coming from.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
And that's.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
You know, if you guys can believe this about me,
I was an awkward, non athletic.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Child in shock and disbelief.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Disbelieve so you deal with your trauma by becoming more awkward.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
So you know, I really leaned in. I was like,
what's the least athletic thing I can do? Podcasting terrific,
let's go, but no, you know, so, like I absolutely
understand the social anxiety and the kind of like weird
shame that goes with getting picked last. It's something like
dodgeball and feeling like you just don't fit in for
whatever reason You're you're just not good enough for And
(30:33):
I mean, and kids are assholes. I mean, people are assholes.
But you know, but kids haven't found good ways to
cope with it yet or haven't even had a chance
to and so and kids can be really mean, and
so like like looking back, I'm like, oh, yeah, no,
I feel that I feel wanting to act out, wanting
to be the class clown because you at least got
(30:55):
attention and hopefully it was positive. Hopefully if you figure
out how to make someone laugh.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
First, yeah, you either get tougher, you have funny.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Yeah, exactly, and they're not laughing at you, they're laughing
with you, and that's so much better.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
But yeah, Charlie is is another story where not only
did he reinvent himself, but he also found a new purpose,
which was to help others. And that's a recurring theme
in our show, is folks who have been through this
and even if they're a liminal period between thresholds of
themselves is you know, decades.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Yeah, and I think he wins on that one. I
think if we were going to give a medal for it,
that would be the medal that Charlie would get.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
That one.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Yeah, longest liminal period.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
But that he comes back and helps others and it
realizes that his purpose is to try to make sure
that you know anything he can do to help others
from overcompensating for the same not real problem. Yeah, that
you're not.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Enough, because he knows exactly how hard it is. This
one had me thinking a lot about addiction and patterns
of self destruction. Right when we have depression and anxiety
that's just running rampant. It's not untreated, because you sure
our treating it somehow, but in these ways that absolutely
(32:09):
make it worse. And the thing that really sucks is
that you have to choose. You have to choose to
do better. You have to really want it because it
is going to be hard. It is not fun to
examine those parts of yourself that are lashing out at you.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
But no, that's some incredibly the hardest work you'll ever
do it.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, like you can know that
being better is going to feel real good. I mean
hypothetically you can imagine that, but it is a bitch getting.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
There, especially when you have an addiction that's not it's
just not a medical it's not only a physical or
mental thing to get over. It is a chemical that
is controlling you.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Oh yeah, yeah, and right, it is really inspiring to
hear the story about someone who who made it out
of a lifelong spiral and is doing the work.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
I was extremely lucky growing up. I had two or
three people on one an eighth grade teacher, had great parents,
had a lot of people who looked at me and said,
I believe in you. You can do this, like or
why are you acting out like this? You know that
there's a different way to express yourself and you know
(33:22):
you're capable of it. So and that kind of thing,
like I take it for granted sometimes, you know, I
don't even think about it. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's
and it's let I think it's helped me to be
a pretty well adjusted person. You know. I have a
certain arrangement with myself about the things I'm willing to try,
the things I'm willing to attempt in my life, and
(33:42):
I just so it's kind of difficult for me to
sometimes understand how how it would feel to not have that,
to not ever have anybody say I believe in you.
In fact, I have them say the opposite again and
again and again to you know, for someone to say
you're worthless, or to say you're shit, or to say
you're not capable or you know, just to step on
anytime you have a sense of self or a sense
(34:04):
of hope in yourself or belief in yourself.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
To follow up on what Lauren was saying, that scene
of him in the hospital when he's going through all
this self hatred, all this pain because of what he
had done to himself by grabbing that electrical charge wire
and then realizing all these other people in the hospital
are experiencing intense pain as well, and he was able
(34:29):
to channel his own pain out and it brought him
relief and it gave him the ability to recover. You know.
So I thought that was really interesting that he was
able to shift his attention away from himself and put
it towards the suffering of other people, and it made
him feel better.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
You know, we've talked on the show before about how
gratitude is the antidote to despair. Well, compassion is also
an antidote. Compassion is an antidote for pain and suffering.
You know, you can I there's been many times in
my life when I'm like, Okay, I feel so sorry
(35:09):
for myself and I'm so been out of shape, and
I've had a gone through a breakup, or something you
know or have had a loss, and the one thing
that cures it and brings me back online is helping
somebody doing something for somebody else, finding some compassion. Instantly, Yeah, instantly.
(35:30):
It's like that thing with the brain. It shuts off
the part of the brain that is, you know what,
I don't wired for this one activity or this one
thought pattern, and it turns on another one that makes
you forget all about that shit. I don't get it quickly.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
I don't get the sense that when Charlie was growing
up anyone was telling him he could or couldn't do anything,
Like there wasn't a figure like a teacher or a parent,
but it was just that diagnosis. Tell himself that, yeah,
that diagnosis of blindness. And probably when he was a
kid in the nineteen sixties, nineteen seventy you're blind, You're
useless to society, you're shut away as so many disabled
(36:05):
people's mentally and physically work.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
He says, yeah, seventy percent of people who are legally
blind are unimportant. Yeah, I think he said, yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
And for his you know, for the person who owned
that bike shop to come to him and say, you
know a lot about bikes, you could really move these
you could sell. I believe in you because he told me,
Like when I met he told me he had these
successful businesses, and I was like, from running a bike shop.
But now that you're like, wow, you're selling these really
expensive vehicles, and then you're a partner in this man.
(36:38):
You must have been making a ton of money showing
you can do it, you know, by just being by
virtue of his personality, which is powerful, but but yeah,
being able to take that experience of somebody believing in him,
showing that as a blind person he can run a business,
he can sell things that he knows a lot about,
(36:59):
and then being able to take that knowledge and apply
it to other people who have gone through the situation
he's gone through and provide a path for them.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
What a great life mission, you know. Next time I'm
Alive again, we meet Taylor Maxon, who set out on
the Cumberland River with friends only to be swept straight
into one of the most dangerous rapids in the Southeast.
Speaker 5 (37:29):
And I just was like suddenly fighting for my life
and I can taste blood in my mouth, and I realized.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
That this is it.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Surviving Angel Faults was only the beginning of Taylor's journey.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
Safety is not inherently withdrawal. Nature put the exclamation point
on you don't have to be invisible. My life easily
could have ended, and I get to sort of be
the author of the next. However long I got alive again,
there it is.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent Die,
Nicholas Dakowski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. 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 l. K Ali
and Nomes Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush, Gerhartslovichka, Brent Die,
(38:27):
and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez.
I'm your host, Dan Bush. Special thanks to Charlie Collins
for sharing his story. Alive Again is a production of
I Art 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
(38:50):
gmail dot com. 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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