July 4, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Ryan Stewart struggled with addiction for a majority of his life, and it was only through the help of others that he was able to come out on the other side.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. And up next,
we're going to hear from Ryan Stewart, who's been on
our show before and told us the story of how
he became a professional dog walker in New York City. Today,
Ryan shares us the importance of simply helping other people.
Ryan struggled with addiction for a majority of his life
(00:31):
and it was only through the help of others that
he was able to come out on the other side.
Here's Ryan with his story.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I suppose I could say I used to be an alcoholic,
but supposedly that means you're an alcohol for the rest
of your life. So if you're reflective, you can look
back and you can see the markers that were always there,
Like when we got introduced to beer in the seventh grade,
who was the one kid who drank too much and
acted like a fool? It was me, right, like all
(01:05):
the other kids seemed to be able to get drunk
or whatever and not destroy anything. So the markers were
always there that alcohol wasn't good for me. But I
didn't really totally spiral out of control until like maybe
in my thirties. I drank too much, but I somehow
was what's called functional. And then I slowly start drinking more,
(01:25):
and I start drinking more, and then when I get
in trouble drinking, you know what I mean, Like let's
say I'll get in a bar fight and you know,
I'll get arrested or something like that, then I had
that to deal with, that type of shame, you know.
And then so that adds to it. I was in
a dark place, you know, I'm drinking and drugging and
not liking myself. And then I got these ideas that
(01:49):
happiness was maybe being famous or rich, and I was
in a haze like for decades, you know, like trying
to be an actor and a dancer. The reason I
wanted to be a dancer was because I watched females
when they watched guys who moved well, and they liked
(02:11):
guys who could move well. So I'm like, okay, I'll
be a dancer. So New York City is the center
of the dance world, and so that's where I'm going
to go. So I came to New York City very quickly,
and I decided to go to this Alvin Ailey School
and I got a scholarship there. I was, you know,
I was pretty good as whacked out flexible, which helps,
(02:31):
you know. Then I talked with my primary ballet teacher,
who is David Howard, and another mentor I had named
Hillary Cartwright, and they're like, well, we know Benjamin Hark
Harvey over at Juilliard. You know, he's the director of
the dance program, and so they sent me over there.
I got to meet him, and then I started doing
the interview, you know, the process to matriculate into Juilliard.
(02:54):
I was taking an adult ballet class at night, because
you know, you take the professional classes during the day,
but if you're studying and you want to be the best,
you keep on taking classes all day long. And so
at night the adults came in and one of them
was a doctor, and she noticed this bulge from my
neck and she said, I, you know, why don't you
(03:14):
come in for you know, and come and let me
check that out for you. And I laughed it off
and said, oh, you know, like I don't have any money.
You know, I don't have any money or any insurance,
and she said, don't worry about that. I went to
her hospital and she somehow waved me through everything, you
know what I mean, Like I just went in and
got a chest X ray and was out in a
(03:35):
busy hospital with no insurance and no money. And that
night I was taking class and then the pianist stayed
and played for me so I could do like practicing,
you know, big movements. And she came in with the
big yellow envelope you know that has my chest X
ray and she said, I think you better sit down.
And that's when I got my cancer diagnosis. And she said,
(03:59):
we're going into mow Wow to Memorial. I know someone
at Memorial Sloan Cattering, and she got me into the
best hospital like in the country for cancer. So I
did fourteen months of chemotherapy, you know, lost all my hair.
But it was probably the happiest time of my life.
(04:20):
It might seem odd to be diagnosed with cancer and
have it the happiest time of your life. But I
didn't have to worry about becoming something, about being successful,
you know that pressure that you know, what what am
I supposed to do with my life? Who am I
supposed to make happy? I didn't have to worry about
any of that. I just had to go to sleep
at night and get better and all. That's what everyone
(04:40):
told me. You know, the doctor's like, you know, just
get better. And that made my life really simple. All
the nurses and doctors knew me. You know, it's like cheers,
like everyone knows your name.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
There.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
It was a happy time in my life. It was
a lot different, yeah, like from having everyone care about
you to taking SSI. You know, because I was disabled
due to my treatment and I was still getting some
checks for it. And one of my friends says, how
could you take that money? Look at you. You look
(05:12):
like you can work, and he shamed me, and he
was right, you know, I could work. And so the
next interview at the office when they ask you, like,
are you feeling bad? You know, alhah blah blah blah,
how do you feel? The guy sort of encouraged me,
you know, to like keep the checks coming. You know.
He says, you're only like a few months out from
cancer treatment, you know what I mean. And I said, no,
(05:33):
like I don't want any more checks. I can work,
And he was in disbelief, like in disbelief. But my
friend had shamed me, and so I took myself off SSI.
And you know that's the contrast of like everyone caring
for you to having like your friend saying you're a
lazy bum. You can't take money, you can work. When
I left the hospital, my doctor said, you cannot because
(05:56):
you took a cardiotoxin as one of your chemotherapies. You
cannot lift really really heavyweights, and you cannot take drugs
that accelerate your heart rate. So I disliked myself so
much that I joined CrossFit that's weightlifting for crazy people,
and I became a cocaine addict. So that's how much
(06:19):
I loved myself. For a lot of people, it's something
really terrible happens, like they get a DUI and they
go to jail for the first time I know life,
and they're shocked out of it, you know, like some
one moment happens to them. For me, it wasn't like that.
It was just like, at one point I just thought
to myself that there's nothing left to me, Like I'm
(06:40):
just a tumbleweed now just blowing in the wind. There's
nothing left to me, and I knew it was time
to quit. There's a reason people don't quit, even though
they're ruining their lives and they're killing themselves. It's not
easy to quit. The first ninety days that was the
hardest thing I've ever done, going ninety days without drugs alcohol.
(07:03):
I always thought, like you see people accept awards or
whatever or talk about their career and how like they
worked so hard and you know they did a lot
on their own, blah blah blah. That wouldn't be what
I say. I would be saying, like every step of
the way someone helped me, and do anything alone. You know,
it's like the peloton, you know, the beauty of the peloton,
(07:25):
which is a group of riders. When you watch the
Tour de France, it just pulls. The people in the
front do the work because they hit the wind and
so they're working the hardest, and they go until they're tired,
and they then they drift to the side and someone
else takes their place, and they come and they drift
back to the middle of the pack or the back
of the pack, and then they rest there and everyone
takes their turn. You know, like hitting the wind, there's
(07:46):
people who will step up and help you and want
nothing back from you. And now I know the path
forward is to always help others. And I'm not doing
it to try to be nice, because I'm not really
a nice person. I'm quite a jerk sometimes. But if
(08:09):
you hold the door open for someone, or you help
someone with their with like a heavy load or something
like that. Like you know, you're walking on the street
and someone is like struggling with something, you help them
for maybe five seconds or ten seconds. You forget your
own problems and your own concerns and you help that person,
and that person forgets their own problems, and they're like
someone's helping me, and both of you are just in
(08:31):
the moment. You're not in your own head thinking about
yourself being alone. You're in the moment with another human being.
Through let's say, a lifetime of messing up and just
face planting right into the pavement and really having a
miserable life that I brought upon myself, I somehow retain
(08:53):
the ability to learn from it. Like I learned from this,
and I've had fantasies before about being rich and famous
and wearing nice clothes and having a nice car, and
you know what, it's not me. I was able, with
God's grace to remember who I truly was at the core,
and I only made it out by letting other people
(09:16):
help me, and.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
A beautiful job on the production by Madison, and a
special thanks to Ryan Stewart for bearing well bearing just
about everything he talked about his early time and struggles,
bar fights and of course arrests, and that's a struggle.
When it starts hitting arrests, you're in trouble. I was
in a dark place. I was drinking and shrugging. By
(09:42):
the way, it simultaneously had this tremendous talent. You don't
just stumble into Alvin Ailey in Juilliard. We have some
people here who've been involved in the New York theater
and know what those institutions are. And this is the
best of the best of the world. And there's this
lady who notices something wrong with this young man, and
she's doctor, and as he said, she just waved me
(10:03):
through everything. And the cancer diagnosis came, and he said
it was the happiest time of his life because he
wasn't working on anything else but being better. And then
of course he just kept going until he hit bottom,
and that's what happened. And then the pathway back serving others,
getting out of yourself, getting great people around you. We
(10:24):
love to tell stories of hope like this, redemption like this,
and God's grace as he said in the end, and
feeling gratitude for who you are and where you are
in life. Ryan Stewart's life. We love stories like this
here on our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories. And up next,
we're going to hear from Ryan Stewart, who's been on
our show before and told us the story of how
he became a professional dog walker in New York City. Today,
Ryan shares us the importance of simply helping other people.
Ryan struggled with addiction for a majority of his life
(00:31):
and it was only through the help of others that
he was able to come out on the other side.
Here's Ryan with his story.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I suppose I could say I used to be an alcoholic,
but supposedly that means you're an alcohol for the rest
of your life. So if you're reflective, you can look
back and you can see the markers that were always there,
Like when we got introduced to beer in the seventh grade,
who was the one kid who drank too much and
acted like a fool? It was me, right, like all
(01:05):
the other kids seemed to be able to get drunk
or whatever and not destroy anything. So the markers were
always there that alcohol wasn't good for me. But I
didn't really totally spiral out of control until like maybe
in my thirties. I drank too much, but I somehow
was what's called functional. And then I slowly start drinking more,
(01:25):
and I start drinking more, and then when I get
in trouble drinking, you know what I mean, Like let's
say I'll get in a bar fight and you know,
I'll get arrested or something like that, then I had
that to deal with, that type of shame, you know.
And then so that adds to it. I was in
a dark place, you know, I'm drinking and drugging and
not liking myself. And then I got these ideas that
(01:49):
happiness was maybe being famous or rich, and I was
in a haze like for decades, you know, like trying
to be an actor and a dancer. The reason I
wanted to be a dancer was because I watched females
when they watched guys who moved well, and they liked
(02:11):
guys who could move well. So I'm like, okay, I'll
be a dancer. So New York City is the center
of the dance world, and so that's where I'm going
to go. So I came to New York City very quickly,
and I decided to go to this Alvin Ailey School
and I got a scholarship there. I was, you know,
I was pretty good as whacked out flexible, which helps,
(02:31):
you know. Then I talked with my primary ballet teacher,
who is David Howard, and another mentor I had named
Hillary Cartwright, and they're like, well, we know Benjamin Hark
Harvey over at Juilliard. You know, he's the director of
the dance program, and so they sent me over there.
I got to meet him, and then I started doing
the interview, you know, the process to matriculate into Juilliard.
(02:54):
I was taking an adult ballet class at night, because
you know, you take the professional classes during the day,
but if you're studying and you want to be the best,
you keep on taking classes all day long. And so
at night the adults came in and one of them
was a doctor, and she noticed this bulge from my
neck and she said, I, you know, why don't you
(03:14):
come in for you know, and come and let me
check that out for you. And I laughed it off
and said, oh, you know, like I don't have any money.
You know, I don't have any money or any insurance,
and she said, don't worry about that. I went to
her hospital and she somehow waved me through everything, you
know what I mean, Like I just went in and
got a chest X ray and was out in a
(03:35):
busy hospital with no insurance and no money. And that
night I was taking class and then the pianist stayed
and played for me so I could do like practicing,
you know, big movements. And she came in with the
big yellow envelope you know that has my chest X
ray and she said, I think you better sit down.
And that's when I got my cancer diagnosis. And she said,
(03:59):
we're going into mow Wow to Memorial. I know someone
at Memorial Sloan Cattering, and she got me into the
best hospital like in the country for cancer. So I
did fourteen months of chemotherapy, you know, lost all my hair.
But it was probably the happiest time of my life.
(04:20):
It might seem odd to be diagnosed with cancer and
have it the happiest time of your life. But I
didn't have to worry about becoming something, about being successful,
you know that pressure that you know, what what am
I supposed to do with my life? Who am I
supposed to make happy? I didn't have to worry about
any of that. I just had to go to sleep
at night and get better and all. That's what everyone
(04:40):
told me. You know, the doctor's like, you know, just
get better. And that made my life really simple. All
the nurses and doctors knew me. You know, it's like cheers,
like everyone knows your name.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
There.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
It was a happy time in my life. It was
a lot different, yeah, like from having everyone care about
you to taking SSI. You know, because I was disabled
due to my treatment and I was still getting some
checks for it. And one of my friends says, how
could you take that money? Look at you. You look
(05:12):
like you can work, and he shamed me, and he
was right, you know, I could work. And so the
next interview at the office when they ask you, like,
are you feeling bad? You know, alhah blah blah blah,
how do you feel? The guy sort of encouraged me,
you know, to like keep the checks coming. You know.
He says, you're only like a few months out from
cancer treatment, you know what I mean. And I said, no,
(05:33):
like I don't want any more checks. I can work,
And he was in disbelief, like in disbelief. But my
friend had shamed me, and so I took myself off SSI.
And you know that's the contrast of like everyone caring
for you to having like your friend saying you're a
lazy bum. You can't take money, you can work. When
I left the hospital, my doctor said, you cannot because
(05:56):
you took a cardiotoxin as one of your chemotherapies. You
cannot lift really really heavyweights, and you cannot take drugs
that accelerate your heart rate. So I disliked myself so
much that I joined CrossFit that's weightlifting for crazy people,
and I became a cocaine addict. So that's how much
(06:19):
I loved myself. For a lot of people, it's something
really terrible happens, like they get a DUI and they
go to jail for the first time I know life,
and they're shocked out of it, you know, like some
one moment happens to them. For me, it wasn't like that.
It was just like, at one point I just thought
to myself that there's nothing left to me, Like I'm
(06:40):
just a tumbleweed now just blowing in the wind. There's
nothing left to me, and I knew it was time
to quit. There's a reason people don't quit, even though
they're ruining their lives and they're killing themselves. It's not
easy to quit. The first ninety days that was the
hardest thing I've ever done, going ninety days without drugs alcohol.
(07:03):
I always thought, like you see people accept awards or
whatever or talk about their career and how like they
worked so hard and you know they did a lot
on their own, blah blah blah. That wouldn't be what
I say. I would be saying, like every step of
the way someone helped me, and do anything alone. You know,
it's like the peloton, you know, the beauty of the peloton,
(07:25):
which is a group of riders. When you watch the
Tour de France, it just pulls. The people in the
front do the work because they hit the wind and
so they're working the hardest, and they go until they're tired,
and they then they drift to the side and someone
else takes their place, and they come and they drift
back to the middle of the pack or the back
of the pack, and then they rest there and everyone
takes their turn. You know, like hitting the wind, there's
(07:46):
people who will step up and help you and want
nothing back from you. And now I know the path
forward is to always help others. And I'm not doing
it to try to be nice, because I'm not really
a nice person. I'm quite a jerk sometimes. But if
(08:09):
you hold the door open for someone, or you help
someone with their with like a heavy load or something
like that. Like you know, you're walking on the street
and someone is like struggling with something, you help them
for maybe five seconds or ten seconds. You forget your
own problems and your own concerns and you help that person,
and that person forgets their own problems, and they're like
someone's helping me, and both of you are just in
(08:31):
the moment. You're not in your own head thinking about
yourself being alone. You're in the moment with another human being.
Through let's say, a lifetime of messing up and just
face planting right into the pavement and really having a
miserable life that I brought upon myself, I somehow retain
(08:53):
the ability to learn from it. Like I learned from this,
and I've had fantasies before about being rich and famous
and wearing nice clothes and having a nice car, and
you know what, it's not me. I was able, with
God's grace to remember who I truly was at the core,
and I only made it out by letting other people
(09:16):
help me, and.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
A beautiful job on the production by Madison, and a
special thanks to Ryan Stewart for bearing well bearing just
about everything he talked about his early time and struggles,
bar fights and of course arrests, and that's a struggle.
When it starts hitting arrests, you're in trouble. I was
in a dark place. I was drinking and shrugging. By
(09:42):
the way, it simultaneously had this tremendous talent. You don't
just stumble into Alvin Ailey in Juilliard. We have some
people here who've been involved in the New York theater
and know what those institutions are. And this is the
best of the best of the world. And there's this
lady who notices something wrong with this young man, and
she's doctor, and as he said, she just waved me
(10:03):
through everything. And the cancer diagnosis came, and he said
it was the happiest time of his life because he
wasn't working on anything else but being better. And then
of course he just kept going until he hit bottom,
and that's what happened. And then the pathway back serving others,
getting out of yourself, getting great people around you. We
(10:24):
love to tell stories of hope like this, redemption like this,
and God's grace as he said in the end, and
feeling gratitude for who you are and where you are
in life. Ryan Stewart's life. We love stories like this
here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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