August 21, 2025 • 56 mins
Mikes story is truly inspirational. Mike shares his raw and inspiring journey through addiction, near-death experiences, and the path to recovery. From early childhood substance use to brushes with death, Mike opens up about the pain, chaos, and turning points that led him to sobriety.
We dive deep into his experience with breathwork, meditation, spirituality,, and how these tools helped him transform his life. Mike’s story is proof that no matter how far gone you feel, there is always hope, healing, and a way forward.
👉 If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, this episode will show you that recovery is possible.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
So when I when I got clean, I was kind of looking to find out
if my near death experiences hadbeen strictly hallucination or
if there was more to it, right? And through certain practices
around yoga, nidra, deep meditative relaxation, and the
(00:20):
breath work as a foundational tool, accompanying that with
binaural beats and music, binaural induction music, I was.
I've had some successes in leaving my body and confirming
for myself that we are actually spiritual beings having a human
experience. Love it.
Hi there, welcome back or welcome to Recovering Out Loud
Podcast, the show where we get real about mental health and
(00:44):
addiction. I'm so glad you're here.
If you or someone you love is struggling with drugs or
alcohol, please reach out for help.
Send me a message on all social media platforms at Recovering
Out Loud Pod or by e-mail at recoveringoutloudpod@gmail.com.
You are no longer alone. So you're going to UFT coming
(01:22):
up. I am what's what kind of studies
are you doing there exactly you want to describe?
I'm very intrigued about this breath work thing because I've
used it recently and it, it was a very powerful experience,
right? And I think we can do a lot of
healing through breath work, youknow, prayer and meditation,
very similar things in my experience.
(01:43):
I was always taught prayers, talking to to God, higher power,
whatever the fuck you want to call it.
And meditation was listening, right?
So can you What, what's, what's the schooling about and why are
you so passionate about it? Man, 'cause it fires me up too,
just listening to you talk aboutit.
OK, well, I, I've, I've, I know that the breath is the only
(02:06):
autonomic system within the bodythat we can control, right?
And I decided to go to U of T basically for certification
purposes, right? Like speaking with my sponsor
who was actually an accredited Tibetan meditation instructor
(02:26):
for many years, he told me that I didn't really need to go to a
breath work school per SE, but Uof T would be a good fit for me
around the certification. So I'm attending the mindfulness
meditation foundations course, which is the prerequisite for
any expansion into that, you know, into that academic study,
(02:49):
right? So when I when I got clean, I
was kind of looking to find out if my near death experiences had
been strictly hallucination or if there was more to it, right?
And through certain practices around yoga, nidra, deep
(03:12):
meditative relaxation and the breath work as a foundational
tool, accompanying that with binaural beats and music,
binaural and Dutch music, I was I've had some successes in
leaving my body and confirming for myself that we are actually
spiritual beings having a human experience.
Love it. Yeah, couldn't agree more.
(03:33):
I, I loved hearing that sentenceterm, whatever you want to call
it, because I find that to be true today and you know it.
That to me is completely evidenced by fuck, dude, I can
make a bad situation out of anything, right?
Like I'll tell somebody a problem, just a small example.
I'll tell somebody a problem I have and they're like, dude,
that's really, it's really not that bad, you know, or yesterday
(03:55):
I'll have a really bad day. And then the same thing that
happened to me a year later. And it's, it's not that bad.
And I'm putting a complete spin.I'm projecting a movie onto it.
And based on where I am, where I'm at in life.
And it's like, yeah, like I'm having a human experience, you
know? But then there's other
situations, other times in my life where just unexplainable
(04:16):
shit will happen, right? One, I don't know me not, not
not dying, you know, from the amount of drugs that I was doing
or, or me not getting into ending up flipping a car when I
was driving, right? And Duis and killing people.
There's a reason for that, right?
I don't know. I just, I find that that's
there's a lot of spiritual experiences, God winks, if you
(04:36):
will, that happened in my life today that I'm just like, it
can't be a coincidence, you knowwhat I mean?
I do agree, yeah. I, I mean, like from a lot of my
research into these topics and my personal experience, I almost
feel today like we cannot jump the queue when it comes to our
experience here. We come into this, you know,
(04:59):
third density experience blindfolded, and we as human
beings are the only animals on the planet capable of ascending
our consciousness, right? Where some people will say
things like, oh, I want to come back as a butterfly or I want to
come back as a bird. Well, not really, you know,
'cause then you're still going to have to, to come back again
(05:20):
as a human to ascend your consciousness to, you know, to
reunite with Source, to reunite with source in the third density
is to ascend to consciousness, right?
So as we ascend to consciousnessinto fourth density and we start
to know that there is a path that we're walking to start to
know that there is a divinity, aspark of the divine within the
(05:42):
human body. The, I liken it to being a
snowflake. You know, some people will say
that here we are in a drop on the other side where the ocean
and and, and that's valid, you know, but I like to prefer to
say that here we are like a snowflake, an individual fractal
representation of the water that, you know, grants US life
and and keeps us alive in this, in this little in this little
(06:03):
reality, this dream that we callreality or this, you know, this
state that we're frozen in for ashort.
Time and exactly that's what I was going to say is is it's a
short time right and we don't know if we have tomorrow right
and that's why all these cheesy sayings that you hear when you
come in one day at a time and you know just for today and the
things that really pissed me offwhen I came in the beginning
they're like they're really helpful and really true because
(06:26):
I, you know I even got a bracelet on me that says one day
at a time 'cause I'll have to I'll go through moments in my
life where I'm like this is never gonna end right this is
never gonna end my life is hard blah, blah blah all this
bullshit that I again spinning the story and I'm just I'll just
look down and I'll remember it'slike dude, just don't drink
today right and it'll be OK that's that's a successful day
to me today because I don't knowabout you but I couldn't put 5
(06:48):
minutes together of sobriety before right well.
For me, I like I'm a what I'm with my doctor calls a legacy
patient. OK, so I was I started using
around the age of 11 regularly. I I remember crawling out of my
crib as a three-year old, 4 yearold, going around to the parent.
My parents were all sleeping, the, the people had been
(07:09):
partying or whatever. And I'd go around and I'd steal
the, the little half beers that were leftover from the night
before and I would drink them, you know, as a child, a baby,
and until the first time when I got A1 full of cigarette butts
and I drank it. And from there I learned how to
pour it into a glass, you know. So by the time I was 11/11/12
(07:33):
years old, you know, I was from a broken home and my mother was,
you know, she was suffering fromalcoholism.
She was not a spiritual person or into any type of recovery
programs. God knows she was trying, but
things were difficult, you know,and the neighborhood where I
grew up was a predominantly Jamaican neighborhood.
(07:53):
So ganja was, you know, it was just available.
It was just there. It was a it was a normal part of
everyday life and nobody looked at it in any funny way.
And we started smoking weed after a few years of that going
in and out of juvenile facilities, right, being
becoming a Crown ward for a couple of few years.
(08:15):
Upon my release at the age of 16, I, I moved to the UK for
about a year, a little bit less than a year where I picked up
booze full time, right? I came back when I got back, did
a little more time, met a few more friends, ended up doing
some, getting into some serious St. level crime, organized,
(08:36):
whatever. And that's when I found cocaine.
You know, I've been as a child, a young, young lad.
I'd been diagnosed with AHD and I'm not so sure that that
diagnosis was accurate because crystal meth gets me freaking
high, right? It gets me really high.
So it's they were pumping me full of speed from the age of
(08:57):
maybe 7-8 years old to about 11-12 years old, and then they
yanked it from me, right? That's a red line or or
whatever. Yeah, prescription, that's.
When I found cocaine and but a boom, but a Bing, you know, that
was it, right? I was after the races and then,
you know, it's, it's, it's a progressive fatal illness, you
(09:18):
know, and nature versus nurture,you know, moral deficiency
versus your sickness. It's, it's all the same thing
really by the end of the day, right?
It's, it's going to be a mixturefor each individual.
I feel you know. So you you mentioned, you know,
you had a rough upbringing, childhood alcohol was sort of
(09:40):
always around. And what like do you do you
remember that moment? I'm sure you do.
But what was the moment like where you you were brought to
your knees and you sort of said like, I'm done.
Well, which time? Yeah, same.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
Like there was a time my baby brother had just gone to a rehab
(10:05):
center up in Sundridge. It was for construction guys.
He was in the union and he came home and he was doing really
well. You know, he'd stopped using
alcohol. He was doing the marijuana
maintenance back then and, and he was still struggling.
But I had, I had given myself a overdose from shooting cocaine.
(10:26):
And he came to see me and he wasupset.
And I just, you know, I pulled up my sleeve and said, look,
bro, look what's going on here? And he's like, no, no more sends
me up to the, to the rehab facility.
So I was willing and, and it wasan, a, a program, you know, and
I remember going to the meetingsand getting clean for about 30
days, 60 days. I didn't complete the program
(10:48):
and I just, I didn't take to it.I didn't surrender, you know, I,
I, I came out of there, went on about living my life maybe a
couple years, year or so down the road, ended up back in the
joint. I remember calling them from the
Don jail like, yo, you know, canyou guys get me back in a
program? And they're like, dude, you are
a hardcore drug addict. We do not have the tools for
(11:10):
you. You need a two year program.
And I was like, yeah, two years or I got, I only got to do a
couple months here, so forget it, right.
So I, I, I, I just shut it out, right?
I wouldn't, I wouldn't go. I continued to, to do what I was
doing until down the road, you know, I was using a lot of
(11:32):
Oxycontin. That was probably the first time
I really got, got sick when I, when I got sick off of opium,
you know, I, I, I, I looked in the mirror, I said, how was I
ever addicted to cocaine? You know, I just did not.
And I just, I was like, wow, this is what addiction is.
This is addiction. Wow, I was sick and and really,
(11:54):
really dying a girlfriend of mine who at the time, she had
gone onto the methadone program and she got me to, you know, to
go. So I started taking a methadone
program from which I did eventually after three years or
so, I was able to and this is without any 12 step help, right?
(12:17):
This is just just white knuckling as they say, or, or
trying to do it on my own or, orusing that that I'm sober enough
mentality right where I'm takingthe methadone I'm getting after
a few years, I'm getting my carries.
You know, I'm smoking reefers, I'm drinking beer, but I'm still
involved with, you know, with sex trade workers and gang
(12:41):
members and drug dealing and so on and so forth.
Living a life of, you know, gunsand, and and large amounts of
dope. So what happened there?
I had about six years where I was living like that.
I had all my carries. You know, I felt like I'm sober
enough. It's OK.
(13:02):
There's no issues. I'm, I'm, I can do what I got to
do. And then my, my lady at the
time, she, she went into my safeand she stole just the tiniest
little drop of my methadone carry and she put herself into a
coma. I woke up that morning beside
her and she was blue and she wasnot breathing very well at all.
(13:26):
I, I, I bit the bullet, called the ambulance, got her, rushed
to hospital, followed her there,went into the hospital with her
where the doctor says to me, youknow, listen man, you know,
don't hang around here. You're just scaring people.
I mean, I was honestly quietly praying to myself in the corner
(13:49):
as I'm watching them cut her clothes off and RIP the wide
open in front of everybody and hitting her with the things and
such. And there's like, just go home
and prepare yourself because when you get back here in the
morning, she might not be with us.
And you know, I'll tell you something.
I I was, I was really, I was really, I was, I was in a sick,
(14:13):
sick place. And I says to the doctor, I
says, OK, doc, you know, I'll gohome and I'll prepare myself.
But if I come back here in the morning and she's not breathing,
Doc, I said, you, Sir, you'll bedead by fucking breakfast.
And he looked at me funny and tilted his head like a puppy
does and it doesn't understand you.
I says, oh, because I'll fuckingkill you.
(14:34):
I told the man, I said, I'll fucking kill you.
I'll come back here about 7:15, you know, 720 when you're having
your toasted melon in the cafeteria, I'll take out a
handgun and I'll empty it into your face and chest like nothing
happened and I'll drop in and walk away.
And he looked at the police and the firefighters that were all
over the place and kind of gave me a look like, and I said, go
ahead, pal, go ahead, go right ahead.
(14:55):
I said, you can have me arrestednow, but then in the morning
time you're going to have to deal with my, my, my friends and
they're not going to be polite like me.
So I left, I took my leave and Ididn't jump off the wagon, bro.
I, I, I, I high dived. I did a super triple backflip,
you know, face First off the wagon and head straight to a bar
(15:20):
where I ordered a bottle and then straight back to my place
at residence where, you know, I proceeded to abuse drugs.
I went back in the morning armedand she was there breathing on a
machine. She was in a coma.
(15:40):
The doctor was nowhere to be found, but she was breathing.
So he had, you know, he kept hisend of the deal, I guess.
And, and I, I stayed as long as I could.
They sent me home. I went home and I just proceeded
to dig myself deeper and deeper and deeper until finally she
(16:02):
came out of the coma about 10 days later where the police were
there when she woke up. And the only question they had
was where did you get the drugs?By the grace of God, she told
the truth. She had stolen them.
And the murder investigation that they would launched was,
you know, it ended. They, they were no longer under
the impression that I tried to kill my wife, which was nice,
(16:25):
you know, for me, but it still left me in a place where I
wanted to get back on the wagon.What I physically couldn't, I
just couldn't. I, I, I had a friend of mine,
he's passed away now. He was a, a big drug dealer in
the, in the Jamaican community in the Brampton area.
(16:46):
And he used to say to me, Mikey,man, he says, why?
I don't even know why you don't go on the wagon.
You run beside it all day long, you know, because I, I went back
to methadone. I tried to try to kick the drugs
and I just I would just use the crack cocaine until I couldn't
until I couldn't see straight right and around them times my
(17:07):
baby brother was diagnosed with fourth stage lymphoma cancer to
lung. And that's not that's not
usually too many happy endings with that story.
And I'm going to you know, I'm going to talk to you guys here
honestly, and I'm going to tell you what what I did.
I, I ended up in a in a really bad state where I was using
(17:29):
opium, opium derivatives, liquidmorphine, oxycontin, heroin,
fentanyl and crackle can literally by the fucking, you
know, quarter pound. I I had no shortage of narcotics
availability to me and every time I would try to sleep the
(17:52):
only thing I could think of was my baby brothers got the cancer
and I can't do nothing about it.Every time I fell asleep I would
have intense nightmares around this situation.
Every time I woke up the only thought in my head was my baby
brothers got the cancer and I can't do anything about it.
I went to speak to my family to go visit him in the hospital
where my mother begged me not tocome.
(18:14):
Seeing that him seeing me in that state would probably kill
him because he was like trying so hard to, to be clean and it
would, it would probably bring him down.
And then we had to keep his hopes up and so forth.
So that was not very good. No connection to family and
stuff. Yeah.
So at that time, I got really, really low, bro.
(18:36):
It was really bad. It was like it was desperation.
It was destitution. It was, well, maybe not
destitution. I mean, I was, I had a roof over
my head and, and sneakers on my feet and all that stuff.
But I was spiritually destitute,you know what I'm saying?
So I decided to, to take my own life.
I, I decided to stop sleeping first because, you know, I
(18:58):
couldn't. And I, I would use the, I would
use the, the junk every time I would run, I would use the crack
cocaine, OK. And I would use it and use it
and use it to stay awake. And every time I ran out of
crack cocaine, I would stick a big shot into my arm and it
would bring me down enough that I could wait to get more crack
(19:20):
cocaine. And I would use the more crack
cocaine until it ran out and then again another shot and so
on and so forth. Just went on for about 12 to 14
days without any sleep. By the end of it, you know, I'm
obviously in psychosis and I. You've seen all types of shit.
Yeah, I was. I was like, I had had a near
(19:40):
death experience before this where I found myself outside of
my body, inside of a nightclub where while my body was on the
ground and I'm standing, you're looking at myself.
I couldn't pull my foot out of my body.
And I realized, you know, oh, I'm not really dead.
I'm just mostly dead. So I start telling my body, Hey,
yo, just wake up, Just wake up. And the bouncer comes over and I
(20:03):
see him pick up my body from theground and I can hear this guy
in his head. He's like, I'm going to beat
this guy and throw him out the back door.
And then he picks me up. He knows it's me.
He's like, oh, I'm not this guy.He's not this asshole.
I'm not even supposed to fuckingbe here today.
You know, he's like that. And, and, and, and I'm just
whispering to my body. I'm like, yo, just wake up, just
wake up. But in.
In reality, my body, I guess my body was responding to what I
(20:24):
was doing because it starts screaming at him telling him to
wake up, you know, just wake up,just wake up.
And, and luckily the guy knew meand whether he liked me or not,
it's debatable, but he dragged me to the front and threw me
into a chair where I landed. And that's when I recame back
into my body. That was when I lost all fear of
(20:44):
deaths. I, I realized that our
consciousness does exist outsideof the body, that we're just
connected to the body, but I didn't really understand it.
I couldn't articulate it. I couldn't.
It took me a long time to wrap my head around it.
So as 12 day 12 day 14 is going by in this in this harsh time,
(21:05):
it is this this dark time in ourlives.
I believed that I was conversingwith deities.
I believed that the guides that had brought me back to the third
density were able to hear my thoughts and that I could
communicate with them. And I tried to make a deal and I
says in exchange for my, for my niece to never suffer a day in
(21:29):
her life, to never have to go through what we've been through.
I, I, I will, I will leave this,this reality now.
I will join you on the other side.
I will serve you until the, you know, until the eternity, until
there's no more eternity. And and then I, I consciously
and willingly took a shot three or four times the regular dosage
(21:50):
that I was used to. Knowing what that would do.
I then waited for my girlfriend at the time.
It's the same girl who had been in a coma.
I waited for her to come in and out of the house cuz she was on
crystal meth. And I knew that she would be in
and out of the house 5-6 times before she actually left for the
day. So 5 * 6 times, no problem.
OK, bye, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(22:11):
No, no, no, nothing. You know, Stuck that shit in my
arm and I would lay down and I was ready to go thinking I had
pulled a fast 1, you know, pulled a chick on on, on, on, on
the guides of the devil or whatever.
As the curtains began to close, I didn't feel any fear.
(22:31):
I didn't feel any remorse. I didn't feel any shame or
desire. I felt like I was going home.
I felt warm, I felt not alone until the very last thought in
my mind. I guess I blacked out and I was.
(22:53):
My consciousness was transported, I guess, to a
possible future where I was given a vision of the mess that
I was leaving behind and I did not like it.
I became the only emotion that Ihad at that time was sheer
unadulterated anger and disgust with my own greed, my own
(23:14):
selfishness, my own ignorance and, and my own lack of
fundamental respect for, for life.
And, and I lived with that for along time.
You know, I was there. I didn't see Jesus.
I didn't see Buddha. There was something there with
me. It was massive.
It was big as a building. It didn't have no face.
(23:37):
It just had a presence. It was there.
It brought me, showed me this future that I that I was
appalled by. And before I could even beg to
be sent back or asked if I wanted to go back, I open my
eyes that I'm in the hospital with the nurses running around.
He's breathing. He's breathing and all the, the
machines and the beeping and allthe rest of it.
(23:57):
And I turned it up to the girl and I said to her, what the
fuck? I'm not dead.
And she's like, no, baby, you'rehere.
You're here with me. You know, I'm like, well, how
long was like 18 hours. Yeah.
Yeah. It was wild, man.
How did you get to the hospital?There was some kids in my house
that were in and out of the house all the time and I had
(24:19):
actually Narcan fucking ten of them over the years.
And she actually did something, brought her back into the house
that day because she came in from wherever she was going,
came in, found me on the floor convulsing or blew, not
breathing. And the story goes that she
started screaming at these kids.Yo, he see, he saved each and
every one of you. Save him, save him, save him.
(24:41):
They proceeded to Narcan me. No response.
They got the needle. Narcan hit me with it, got me on
my feet. And I remember every time that I
had narcaned any one of them, I had three questions for them.
You know, do you know who I am? Do you know your name?
Do you know where you are? If they could answer those
questions, you know, I would say, look, you want to go to the
(25:03):
hospital or not. It's up to you, right?
If they could not answer those questions, then off to the
hospital they would go. So I have no memory of this.
I have none, no memory of whatsoever.
But apparently they got me on myfeet, asked me those questions
and I started yelling at them. I sing to sing something like a
lot, something like just ask them.
They're right there. They seen the whole effing
(25:25):
thing, you know, just ask them. And I'm apparently I'm pointing
over their shoulders at the bedroom wall where I had a every
prayer card and newspaper article and photograph of all
the friends that I had lost up to that point.
And I have no memory of it, but this is what they told me.
(25:46):
So they realized that I was not there, you know, lights on
nobody's home. They put me into a car.
And the young lady, she that, that was driving, she drove into
oncoming traffic to get me to the hospital, saved my life.
She did, she did. Young lady.
She's she's a good friend. I'm in recovery now.
(26:06):
So I haven't been in contact with her or the other kids.
They're still out there. They're unfortunately still out
there. As far as I know, yes.
Wow, that's incredible, man. What are it's I always look at
those stories and like for things to line up.
It's like now you have a choice,right?
It's like I can go back to that life every day.
You have a choice. I can go back to that life and
(26:26):
keep doing what I was doing or Ican choose this life of recovery
and be of service. And you know, you're doing that
with, with what you're telling me, but also the, the breath
work stuff and being becoming a teacher essentially, right.
So it's beautiful, man, It's it's amazing.
How long ago was that? Oh, that would have been about
10 years ago now. I mean, I, I, I, it's not like I
(26:47):
stopped using at that point. I mean, I got out of the
hospital and immediately needed a hit because I was sick, you
know, and I, I was using in the hospital parking lot.
I got back to my place there andat the time some friends of mine
and myself were under investigation for for some
(27:08):
stuff. I'm not going to get into that
end of it, but the police were raiding my home like clockwork
every six months. Just boom, boom, boom.
I got so bad the apartment owners wouldn't were refusing to
fix the door, you know, so I hada about a foot missing off the
top of my my door in the apartment.
And this had been going on for some time.
So once I finally was able to get back onto the methadone
(27:33):
program after that experience, Imoved my apartment to another,
to another building where I am. I ended up getting arrested on a
gun charge. It was, it was, it was just a
mess, right? So after that I left that
building because I was released on bail but not allowed to go
(27:54):
home right there. It wasn't like it wasn't
domestic, but it was the I guessthe informants lived in the
building. So they gave me bail, but they
wouldn't let me go back within whatever.
So I ended up going into hotels,you know, and and and dragon and
this is like right right around COVID time started, right?
(28:15):
So I'm inclined tooth and nail to stay on the methadone program
and, and, and get myself together, which about a year.
I was living like that, you know, and I was able to get my
head above water for a short period of time.
When the COVID got really bad, Iwas able to get a trailer like a
(28:36):
nice, like a really nice, like RV brand new trailer, yeah.
And, and move it out to out intothe West by the border of Marine
City in Michigan and a place called Walpole Island in
Ontario. It's reserve in between, like
(29:01):
just before Windsor, basically half an hour to Windsor kind of
thing. And when I got into the trailer,
I was on the program. I was doing OK, you know, I was
just, well, I thought I was doing OK, right?
I'm smoking, referring on the program.
I wasn't drinking booze. I wasn't using coke, I wasn't
using smack. I was just getting my carries
and trying to live my life, you know, times got tough again
(29:27):
after that. I lost connection to my family.
I got into arguments with my, with my mother and her and her
husband. I, I lost contact with my
brother. Things were getting, you know,
things progressively got worse, right?
Because that's what happens, youknow, if you don't stay
obstinate, I feel like you're incontrol, but you're not.
We're not, you know, because ourbrains are not wired that way
(29:48):
when we're using, right. Our reward system is all fucked
up and the only thing we can bring into our lives is more
misery and more trauma and more sorrow.
You know what I mean? So as time was going by, things
were getting progressively worse.
Police got, you know, got my location out there and I was
raided again. This time they caught me cold.
(30:09):
They got me cold. They got me with with a bag of
firearms and parts and A and a pack of fentanyl where by the
grace of God, by the grace of something outside of myself,
something better than me, something you know, higher power
(30:31):
they had. They raided my home this time
using my the informants address.So I was released on my own
recognizance from this incident.And the next day they sent an
informant asking me to if I would sell him some guns.
And I, I knew, I knew what they were doing.
I kind of laughed and said, buddy, you're a day late and a
dollar short. You know what I'm saying?
(30:52):
The police were here last night.They took them off, so fuck off,
right? So he kicks rocks.
So, and after that, it was it, it really got bad because I was
trying to hide the fact that I'dbeen arrested again and I was,
I'd lost connection to, to everybody.
I wasn't talking to my friends. I wasn't talking to the guys
that I did, you know, did crime with.
(31:12):
I wasn't talking to my brother as he wouldn't let me see his
kids. My cousin got into recovery and
he wouldn't speak with me. And my other cousin was
unfortunately still out there. He, him and I were on, you know,
sparse talking terms. I lost connection to the girl
that I was living with. The only connection I had was to
(31:33):
the to the drug and to the dog. You know, after a few weeks
after they raided my home and took the guns, the informant was
actually my neighbor. He decided he was going to pump
18 rounds of buckshot into my home while I was sleeping,
missing me but hitting my girl and and she was, she was OK and
(31:58):
she's fine. But after that, you know, she
couldn't sleep in that place anymore.
And even though, you know, I was, I was, I wasn't, I wouldn't
act as a witness. I was a hostile witness.
I told them, you know, how do I know who shot the police?
Where I come from, you don't stick your head out the window
when there's bullets flying at you.
For all I know it was you guys. The cops didn't like that too
(32:21):
much, but they did their own investigation and apparently the
neighbor was charged with the attempt murder times too, which
he eventually, I guess pled guilty to.
I don't, I don't know. I didn't follow the case, but I
couldn't live in there anymore. You know, the place was shot to
shit and then the police destroyed it while they were
(32:42):
doing their investigation, right?
Trying to find some more of my shit, I guess.
I don't know. So excuse me.
It was back-to-back to hotels, back to, you know, renting rooms
back to just progressively worseand worse and worse until I, I
guess then I just decided, you know, I, I, I, I, that's right
around the time I was ready to give it up.
(33:03):
I mean, I, I was able to stop drinking.
I was able to stop using cocaine, but I just could not
kick the fucking opium. You know, I just couldn't kick
it. I, no matter what I did, I
couldn't do it. So I ended up getting, I was
leaving that area to come into the city here to pick up a, a
package, which I was I was planning on distributing.
(33:26):
Obviously, I ended up getting popped on my way out of town
from there. Thank God, again, by the grace
of God, because how I've been getting how I got popped on my
way into town, you know, it would have been a mess.
I was I was arrested with with areplica firearm and a
(33:52):
bulletproof vest, 1/2 ounce of crystal methamphetamine in my
pocket that went straight into the suitcase and when I was
weighed in the jail I was weighed in at 130 lbs soaking
wet right? I was dying.
Wow. Yeah, but you're like 6364. 61
on 6/1 a 195 lbs today. Geez.
(34:14):
So 130 lbs soaking wet. Want a bag of change in my
pocket? That is when the, you know, I
still wasn't ready to give it up.
I I knew that the case with the raid was bogus.
They didn't find the drugs on meduring this arrest.
It was another weapons charge, concealed.
(34:35):
But it was a replica firearm. It wasn't loaded.
I hadn't pulled it on anybody. You know, the bulletproof vest
was not exactly illegal. So I'm thinking in my head.
Yeah, well, actually, to be honest, I wasn't thinking
anything. In my head.
I wasn't thinking anything except I need some fucking
opium. I was placed into a cell.
Luckily for me, it was a guy that I knew from the streets.
(34:59):
He'd been in there for a little while.
I, you know, I, I popped up the package.
So I was, I, I lasted maybe 24 or 48 hours before I was just
done. I ended up giving away that
package of dope and and being taken to the Infirmary where I
spent 10 days, you know, rockingand rolling.
Detoxing, yeah. Detoxing, hallucinating,
(35:21):
absolutely hallucinating. I, I remember sitting in my own
private hospital room cell with the hospital bed and my own
television and I and I was watching a television program
called the Nonas, but it wasn't a cooking show, bro.
It was about this, this this organized crime family out of
Cleveland that was burying bodies in a cemetery that yeah,
this show doesn't exist. I watched, I watched 7 episodes
(35:44):
of it, OK. And it's amazing.
I watched 7 episodes of a non existent program.
You literally created your show.I was, I was, I was out of my
fucking mind. I was out of my mind.
I can relate. Yeah, so, but but by the grace
of God, they they, they, they kept me there.
And I just, you know, I called my baby brother.
I says, look, I need you to movea little bit of money around for
me, for my accounts. You say whatever, buddy, you're
(36:07):
an asshole. I'm like, yeah, I know.
And then after a couple more phone calls, he says, look what
you know, do you want to live ordo you want to die?
And he offered to come and post my bail if I agreed to go to
treatment. At first, I rejected his offer.
No, no, Sir. No, thank you.
I will fucking do my time and continue to live like an
(36:30):
asshole. Appreciate it.
I love you. But no, a couple more phone
calls, you know, hey, this is your this is your nephew you
haven't met puts him on the phone with me, you know, and
talking to my stepdad, who I hadn't spoken to in a long time
and, and another friend of mine from here.
That's it's been a friend of mine, a lifelong friend of mine.
(36:50):
And, and they were able to talk a little sense into me and, and
I, and that's when, that was when, when, when I spoke to my
nephew on the phone for the first time from the Windsor
bucket with the option to, you know, to move forward.
I had had maybe 10 days away from my last use.
(37:16):
I was getting my Suboxone from the guys in the jail, not the,
not the guards, not the doctors.They refused my treat.
They refused to treat me. They, they were aware that I had
smuggled a package into the joint.
They just didn't catch me with it.
So they were not helping me out at all, you know.
So I agreed. I agreed, gratefully agreed, you
(37:37):
know, and the arrangements were made.
My baby brother travelled all the way out there to pick me up,
took me to a hotel for the night.
It was like, it was like we unskipped a beat, you know, he
was, he was there for me. He was all the way there for me.
You know, he brought me home to his home, which he gives all the
(37:59):
credit to the program. He credits the program with all
of the things in his life today and and I love him.
He's my brother. I love him, you know, so he took
me to the NA. Orkna that like that?
Month, I guess, the conference. Yeah, the conference was around
that month, maybe a week or two since I've gotten released.
And I went to Orkna and I got a real, a real taste of, of
(38:23):
Narcotics Anonymous for the first time with an open mind, an
open heart. And, and I, and I remember
saying to him, I says, you know,bro, if it's between getting
high and, and, and having you inmy life, you know, let's go,
right, let's do this. So I, you know, went to the
detox program a couple times. I was going to, I was set up to
(38:46):
go to a, a rehab facility that my buddy had suggested.
He, he's friendly with the staffthere and the detox program was
very good. It was the York Region detox
program. They were, you know, phenomenal.
Right before, like one hour before I was to leave for that
(39:06):
rehabilitation, the farm or whatever, they declined my, my
application. You know, it was all set to go.
I bought all the farm boots and all this stuff and they're like,
no, we can't take them. Not with that ankle bracelet and
Suboxone. No, no, no, no.
OK, Well, the universe has otherplans for me, right?
(39:27):
So back to my brother's house. OK, back to detox, back to
Brian's. But I was clean, right?
I was clean. After a little while, I started
to, I'd had some, you know, 60 days, 90 days from my last use.
I'm on Suboxone. My dose is leveled out.
I'm. I'm going to program with my
(39:50):
brother. He's taking me to NA.
I'm not happy about it. I'm still unhappy about it back
at that time. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to
be, you know, I'm trying to be, but I wasn't yet.
But I started to get that community.
I started to get, you know, hugs, not drugs.
And I started to try to go into my mind, like when I would go
(40:10):
and I would hear the readings, you know, I always had these,
these resentments, these. These little, quick, quick
little responses in my brain about, about this and that this
is an argument with the, with the, with the language and
literature. And, and after a while, I, I
said, you know, I, I, I'm going to just meditate through the
preamble, you know, to open up my, open up my, my system to be
(40:31):
more receptive of, of the language instead of arguing with
it. So I consciously, even till now,
I, you might catch me in a meeting and during the preamble,
you'll see me, you know, you know, and, and people may think
I'm, I'm ignoring or I'm, or I'mputting somewhere else, but I'm
not, I'm, I'm right there. I'm trying to sponge up that,
that good stuff that, that the program has to offer, you know,
and, and just to, to rewire my own ideas and let, let go of
(40:55):
those, those kind of resentmentsand stuff.
So it's, it's, it's been, it's been helpful.
It's, it's definitely not hurtful.
I the anxiety or I used to get ahigh anxiety state when I would
walk into the rooms physical, you know, physical anxiety.
But after using some other outside, you know, outside of
(41:16):
the program ideologies around consciousness, you know,
neuroplasticity and, and, and some of these other ideas and,
and implementing the yoga nidra practices and, you know, reality
Co creation practices and stuff like this, which is, which is
(41:37):
for me, it's, it's a really fundamental part of my program,
you know, cuz being on, I've been under house arrest for the
past 16 months, right? And as much as my brother would
love to take me to 90 and 90, he's got a job and, and two kids
and, and a wife and a house and a life, you know, so it's, it's
not really, it's not really, youknow, feasible.
(41:57):
So I had to find other, other avenues of recovery, which is
fine. You know, it's no problem,
right? I'm living the dream, you know.
So I like to find a combination.I like to take as many angles as
I can get and and and watch for the, you know, the
(42:20):
synchronicities and then and then mold my recovery.
Yeah, it's a good point, though,too, is like, I was always
taught that, you know, humans will fail us eventually, right?
No matter how much they care, nomatter how much they'll show up
for you. Yeah.
I can't rely on a human for everything, right?
(42:40):
And you mentioned it perfectly. Is like, you got to turn to this
power greater than yourself, right?
Whether that's God, the universe, I don't care as long
as it's not me today, right? I can have my own conception of
it. And it seems like at that time
you were sort of forced into that.
And now it's become a part of ofyour life and your practice.
I want to ask you, what do you think kept you?
(43:01):
What do you think kept you out there so long using?
Well, I guess fear, shame, desire, you know, no awareness
around anything better. Once I got clean, Once I got
(43:22):
clean, I I was watching a podcast.
It's it's a guy called well, it's it's a, it's a Co creation
podcast or, or YouTube channel. Anyway, he had a guest on and
the, the thumbnail for the, for the, for the show was it says an
(43:43):
Angel in a human body, right? And I'm like, yeah, fuck off,
right? You know, what the, what are you
talking about? And I was going to just pass it
over, right? But I really like this guy's
stuff. Like he's, he's really good with
what he does. So I says, OK, you know what,
I'm going to check it out. So I put it on and this woman
comes on and she starts telling us how she's an Angel in a human
(44:04):
body. And she got her angelic name
from the, you know, angelic realms.
And she talks to her guides likewe're talking to each other.
And I'm about ready to turn it off.
You know, I'm thinking she's a loon from the moon, right?
And she starts telling my story.She starts telling my story.
She starts telling us how she had a a near death experience as
a child. I believe it was a drowning in
(44:27):
her case. And she'd had an awakening at
that time. And she came back different and
she came back different. And it was a hardship for her
for many, many years. So she had turned to drugs and
alcohol. And the key take away for me
from her story was that we are conditioned here, especially in
(44:50):
the West, to believe that the only way we can feel those high
vibrations that alcohol and drugs bring, even though they're
fake and they only last short time and they come with a lot of
harm, the only way we can feel those those high vibrational
frequencies is through drugs andalcohol.
But that's the lie. That's the lie, right?
(45:11):
We can feel those high vibrational frequencies through
meditation, through Wellness practices, through yoga,
through, you know, through just just by raising our vibration,
our inner vibration, our emotional state and keeping it
there. You know, she, she was, she was
serious. Had she been, had it been in a
12 step meeting, I would have been, you know, begging her to
(45:32):
respond to me. You know what I mean?
I heard a story and it was my story.
It was just from a different, a different perspective.
And basically what I was doing, what I didn't know I was doing
at the time, but what I was doing was I was trying to reach
that unconditional love that we come from, that we're headed to
one day. And I was trying to have it here
(45:53):
in the third density. And the only way I knew how to
manufacture it was with drugs and alcohol.
And that's what I was seeking. I was seeking death, not in a
negative way. Death for me is not a negative
thing. As sure as we're born, one day
we're going to die. It's a natural process.
It's transition. It's not afterlife, it's just
life. But it's not third density life.
(46:15):
It's just life. It's just a transition.
We don't, we don't, we don't really die.
Our bodies die, but our consciousness exists outside of
our bodies. And, and, and I mean, until
somebody experiences it, then they're, I can't really tell
them. I can't really like, I can't
make them know. All I can do is share my
experience, right? And for me, it's, no, it's not a
(46:36):
belief. It's, it's an, it's annoying
through experiential, you know, knowledge, right?
It's experiential knowledge. It's it's annoying from, from,
from my experiences because, andI'll tell you this, because
when, when I got clean, I was backtracking and second guessing
my experiences. Was I really out of my body?
(46:57):
Was I my body dead and I was not?
Was that real? Or was I just hallucinating from
overdose? Fair question, right?
That led me to really, I mean, obsess is not the right word to
use, but I was very highly motivated to, to learn the
(47:17):
practices of these yogis and shaman and so forth, too, to be
able to exit my body sober as a judge.
And after about 8 months or ninemonths of clean time, I've had
some, you know, some limited successes.
I don't really leave my body with intention.
(47:39):
Like I'm not going to come over to your house, see what you're
watching on TV and then call youin the morning and freak you
out, Right. It's not like that.
I saw you last night. Yeah, it's not like that.
But I, but I have found myself, you know, conscious that I'm
sitting in my chair, conscious of my breaths.
But I open my eyes and I'm out in my backyard looking in the
window where I go to smoke, you know, and I see myself in the
backyard. I could see my and I go to take
(48:00):
a dragon, my smoke. And I'm like, wait a second, I'm
not smoking, I'm in my chair. And it's like, holy F man.
Wow. Right.
And, and some other, you know, some other short, short
experiences similar to that. It's, it's, it's not the same as
dreaming. It, it, it does have a dreamlike
quality. Near death experiences, out of
body experiences and lucid dreaming.
(48:23):
They're they're similar, but they're different.
In my experience, they've been very similar, but also very
different. They have different tangible
qualities to them. So with with those experiences
adding to my, adding to my, the confirmation for me that I am a
(48:44):
spiritual being having a human experience.
I continue to progress into lucid dream work where you know,
you're, you're, you're going to run asleep, but you're, you
light up your frequent prefrontal cortex and you, you
wake up within your dream. At first, I would spend a lot of
time flying around and striking things with lightning, you know,
(49:05):
like this God complex of mind. And after a few, after a few
sessions like that, I started toget boring.
Well, why am I really doing this?
You know, so today when I go into those states, I will take
the time to ask the universe, what am I doing here?
What am I supposed to be doing? You know, or I will find myself
in a, in a, in some kind of horrible knife fight situation
(49:29):
in a prison wall and I'll realize, oh, wait a minute, I'm
dreaming and I'll jump over the wall and I'll just go meditate,
you know, and, and it's brought me, it's brought me an insane
amount of peace. You know, it's, it's brought me
to a point where I'm still, I'm still early in my step work
progress where I, it's unfortunate for me that I, I
(49:56):
have so much of a stubborn sick head where I, I, I read the
words, I, I see the language, I get frustrated.
I, I, I still have these little arguments in my head.
So I'm taking my time around doing my step work, you know,
and, and, and as I'm moving forward with it, I'm finding a
lot of questions around like things that seem to be like OCD
(50:20):
related. I'm not very deep into it yet.
So I'm not judging the whole book by the first, you know, few
questions. I, I myself, I don't like, I
will obsess if I pick up. If I pick up and I got it in
front of me, I will obsessively use it until it's gone or I'm
dead. That's it.
No problem. I get it.
But I don't have those types of compulsive thoughts around
(50:44):
anything else in my life. I never really have and I don't,
I don't see myself having them on a regular basis.
So, and I think some of that is due because I, I did, when I
first got home, I did have some recurring thoughts of past
experiences, you know, traumas and, and less than preferable
(51:04):
experiences that would pop into my head, especially during
meditations. What I learned, I learned as a
skill, you know, I learned how to allow those thoughts to drift
away like clouds in the sky and return to focus of the breath,
you know, and, and to, to enter that vibrational state and, and,
and listen for the, for the space between thoughts, you
(51:26):
know, because I think that's where higher consciousness
resides. And it's like you said, that's
where we get the answers, you know?
And the direction, right, you know, I love that.
What are sort of your like essentials in recovery daily?
Like what does that look like toyou?
Well, I gotta make, make my bed.Yeah, I gotta get.
You know, a lot of people laugh at that one, but it's it's true.
(51:47):
I was taught that in treatment, too.
It's like you start off the day with doing one good thing.
Yeah. You get up, you make your bed.
I I definitely have to limit my exposure to negative content.
You know, I listen to conscious music.
I generally watch only upliftingor like science fiction type of
(52:08):
movies. I limit my exposure to negative
content. I, I, I surround myself with
people in recovery. You know, I, I, I don't accept
friend requests from people frommy old, my old Facebook account.
I changed my Facebook account, new YouTube, new Instagram, all
(52:29):
those things. When I do get the occasional
contact from people from that spectrum, if they're if they're
not in recovery and they want tosee me, they have to come see me
at a meeting. As much as I love them, it's not
about them or their behavior. It's about me and my
susceptibility to joining that. Yeah, right.
(52:52):
It's a slippery slope, right? Yeah, yeah.
I'm also in a bit of a bubble though, too, right?
Like being under house arrest with the ankle monitor.
I, I, I, I've got a lot of help,you know, I'm getting a lot of
help, right? I've, I've met somebody in
recovery and. And she helps me a lot.
She helps me. She's like my brother.
(53:12):
She's she credits everything to her program, right?
And I spent a lot of time talking to my cousin who's,
who's, you know, gone ahead fromme in this program.
They my cousin, my brother, theywork in the industry of
recovery. You know, the people that I
surround myself with are, are good.
They have good recovery people, you know, And I also try to
(53:34):
gravitate to newcomers too. If I see a newcomer, I'm, I'm
extra weight, right? Like, I will give them cigarette
and I will give them my phone number.
Whether they, you know, choose to call me or not, It's, it's,
it's up to them. But yeah, those things, those
things are, are pretty key, you know, a little, a little bit of
exercise, obviously, right. And lots of coffee.
(53:57):
Yeah, lots of coffee. Same.
Need something right. Oh, that's great, man.
If you I'll ask you 22 last things and then we'll close it
out because it was it was good. I got a lot today.
I appreciate you coming down, Mike.
Thank you. What do you hope people get out
(54:18):
of your story? Well, anything that's going to
help them. Anything that can come from the
the horror shit show dumpster fire of my previous life that
can open the mind of the still suffering addict or help to
(54:42):
steer the course of the white knuckler or to, you know, even
to engage an argument from somebody who doesn't see it my
way. You know, as long as we're
engaging conversation and we're growing, you know what I mean?
I'm, I'm here to give away what was really given to me, you
know, and, and, and just raise the vibration, bro.
(55:04):
I just want to raise people vibration.
I love it man. And what's one thing that you
would say to somebody strugglingright now, maybe a newcomer?
Well to a newcomer right now as of today's date bro I'm going to
give you guys this warning. I was talking to my doctor the
other day and as an ex cook he knows that I'm familiar with the
(55:29):
derivatives and combinations that go into today's narcotics
and he was given an alert warning that the xylazine is is
no more. Today we got to worry about
nitrozine. Nitrozine makes carfentanil look
like a fucking aspirin and it's in everything.
So even a legacy user like myself who survived it all and
(55:52):
can seem to punish myself over and over and over.
I go out there today, I leave the studio, I go hit the gas
station, I score from some guy Idon't know.
I'm a fucking dead man. So there is life after recovery.
People love you. And you know what?
If you don't believe me, come tothe program and I'll love you
until you can love yourself. I love it man.
Thanks so much Mike for coming down.
(56:14):
I appreciate you. Thanks for listening.
Please help us grow the channel and like, share and subscribe
for more content. The discussions and stories
shared on this podcast are for informational and motivational
purposes only. This content is not a substitute
for professional medical advice,addiction treatment, or therapy.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction,
(56:36):
please consult A licensed physician, addiction specialist,
or mental health professional. You are no longer.
So when I when I got clean, I was kind of looking to find out
if my near death experiences hadbeen strictly hallucination or
if there was more to it, right? And through certain practices
around yoga, nidra, deep meditative relaxation, and the
(00:20):
breath work as a foundational tool, accompanying that with
binaural beats and music, binaural induction music, I was.
I've had some successes in leaving my body and confirming
for myself that we are actually spiritual beings having a human
experience. Love it.
Hi there, welcome back or welcome to Recovering Out Loud
Podcast, the show where we get real about mental health and
(00:44):
addiction. I'm so glad you're here.
If you or someone you love is struggling with drugs or
alcohol, please reach out for help.
Send me a message on all social media platforms at Recovering
Out Loud Pod or by e-mail at recoveringoutloudpod@gmail.com.
You are no longer alone. So you're going to UFT coming
(01:22):
up. I am what's what kind of studies
are you doing there exactly you want to describe?
I'm very intrigued about this breath work thing because I've
used it recently and it, it was a very powerful experience,
right? And I think we can do a lot of
healing through breath work, youknow, prayer and meditation,
very similar things in my experience.
(01:43):
I was always taught prayers, talking to to God, higher power,
whatever the fuck you want to call it.
And meditation was listening, right?
So can you What, what's, what's the schooling about and why are
you so passionate about it? Man, 'cause it fires me up too,
just listening to you talk aboutit.
OK, well, I, I've, I've, I know that the breath is the only
(02:06):
autonomic system within the bodythat we can control, right?
And I decided to go to U of T basically for certification
purposes, right? Like speaking with my sponsor
who was actually an accredited Tibetan meditation instructor
(02:26):
for many years, he told me that I didn't really need to go to a
breath work school per SE, but Uof T would be a good fit for me
around the certification. So I'm attending the mindfulness
meditation foundations course, which is the prerequisite for
any expansion into that, you know, into that academic study,
(02:49):
right? So when I when I got clean, I
was kind of looking to find out if my near death experiences had
been strictly hallucination or if there was more to it, right?
And through certain practices around yoga, nidra, deep
(03:12):
meditative relaxation and the breath work as a foundational
tool, accompanying that with binaural beats and music,
binaural and Dutch music, I was I've had some successes in
leaving my body and confirming for myself that we are actually
spiritual beings having a human experience.
Love it. Yeah, couldn't agree more.
(03:33):
I, I loved hearing that sentenceterm, whatever you want to call
it, because I find that to be true today and you know it.
That to me is completely evidenced by fuck, dude, I can
make a bad situation out of anything, right?
Like I'll tell somebody a problem, just a small example.
I'll tell somebody a problem I have and they're like, dude,
that's really, it's really not that bad, you know, or yesterday
(03:55):
I'll have a really bad day. And then the same thing that
happened to me a year later. And it's, it's not that bad.
And I'm putting a complete spin.I'm projecting a movie onto it.
And based on where I am, where I'm at in life.
And it's like, yeah, like I'm having a human experience, you
know? But then there's other
situations, other times in my life where just unexplainable
(04:16):
shit will happen, right? One, I don't know me not, not
not dying, you know, from the amount of drugs that I was doing
or, or me not getting into ending up flipping a car when I
was driving, right? And Duis and killing people.
There's a reason for that, right?
I don't know. I just, I find that that's
there's a lot of spiritual experiences, God winks, if you
(04:36):
will, that happened in my life today that I'm just like, it
can't be a coincidence, you knowwhat I mean?
I do agree, yeah. I, I mean, like from a lot of my
research into these topics and my personal experience, I almost
feel today like we cannot jump the queue when it comes to our
experience here. We come into this, you know,
(04:59):
third density experience blindfolded, and we as human
beings are the only animals on the planet capable of ascending
our consciousness, right? Where some people will say
things like, oh, I want to come back as a butterfly or I want to
come back as a bird. Well, not really, you know,
'cause then you're still going to have to, to come back again
(05:20):
as a human to ascend your consciousness to, you know, to
reunite with Source, to reunite with source in the third density
is to ascend to consciousness, right?
So as we ascend to consciousnessinto fourth density and we start
to know that there is a path that we're walking to start to
know that there is a divinity, aspark of the divine within the
(05:42):
human body. The, I liken it to being a
snowflake. You know, some people will say
that here we are in a drop on the other side where the ocean
and and, and that's valid, you know, but I like to prefer to
say that here we are like a snowflake, an individual fractal
representation of the water that, you know, grants US life
and and keeps us alive in this, in this little in this little
(06:03):
reality, this dream that we callreality or this, you know, this
state that we're frozen in for ashort.
Time and exactly that's what I was going to say is is it's a
short time right and we don't know if we have tomorrow right
and that's why all these cheesy sayings that you hear when you
come in one day at a time and you know just for today and the
things that really pissed me offwhen I came in the beginning
they're like they're really helpful and really true because
(06:26):
I, you know I even got a bracelet on me that says one day
at a time 'cause I'll have to I'll go through moments in my
life where I'm like this is never gonna end right this is
never gonna end my life is hard blah, blah blah all this
bullshit that I again spinning the story and I'm just I'll just
look down and I'll remember it'slike dude, just don't drink
today right and it'll be OK that's that's a successful day
to me today because I don't knowabout you but I couldn't put 5
(06:48):
minutes together of sobriety before right well.
For me, I like I'm a what I'm with my doctor calls a legacy
patient. OK, so I was I started using
around the age of 11 regularly. I I remember crawling out of my
crib as a three-year old, 4 yearold, going around to the parent.
My parents were all sleeping, the, the people had been
(07:09):
partying or whatever. And I'd go around and I'd steal
the, the little half beers that were leftover from the night
before and I would drink them, you know, as a child, a baby,
and until the first time when I got A1 full of cigarette butts
and I drank it. And from there I learned how to
pour it into a glass, you know. So by the time I was 11/11/12
(07:33):
years old, you know, I was from a broken home and my mother was,
you know, she was suffering fromalcoholism.
She was not a spiritual person or into any type of recovery
programs. God knows she was trying, but
things were difficult, you know,and the neighborhood where I
grew up was a predominantly Jamaican neighborhood.
(07:53):
So ganja was, you know, it was just available.
It was just there. It was a it was a normal part of
everyday life and nobody looked at it in any funny way.
And we started smoking weed after a few years of that going
in and out of juvenile facilities, right, being
becoming a Crown ward for a couple of few years.
(08:15):
Upon my release at the age of 16, I, I moved to the UK for
about a year, a little bit less than a year where I picked up
booze full time, right? I came back when I got back, did
a little more time, met a few more friends, ended up doing
some, getting into some serious St. level crime, organized,
(08:36):
whatever. And that's when I found cocaine.
You know, I've been as a child, a young, young lad.
I'd been diagnosed with AHD and I'm not so sure that that
diagnosis was accurate because crystal meth gets me freaking
high, right? It gets me really high.
So it's they were pumping me full of speed from the age of
(08:57):
maybe 7-8 years old to about 11-12 years old, and then they
yanked it from me, right? That's a red line or or
whatever. Yeah, prescription, that's.
When I found cocaine and but a boom, but a Bing, you know, that
was it, right? I was after the races and then,
you know, it's, it's, it's a progressive fatal illness, you
(09:18):
know, and nature versus nurture,you know, moral deficiency
versus your sickness. It's, it's all the same thing
really by the end of the day, right?
It's, it's going to be a mixturefor each individual.
I feel you know. So you you mentioned, you know,
you had a rough upbringing, childhood alcohol was sort of
(09:40):
always around. And what like do you do you
remember that moment? I'm sure you do.
But what was the moment like where you you were brought to
your knees and you sort of said like, I'm done.
Well, which time? Yeah, same.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
Like there was a time my baby brother had just gone to a rehab
(10:05):
center up in Sundridge. It was for construction guys.
He was in the union and he came home and he was doing really
well. You know, he'd stopped using
alcohol. He was doing the marijuana
maintenance back then and, and he was still struggling.
But I had, I had given myself a overdose from shooting cocaine.
(10:26):
And he came to see me and he wasupset.
And I just, you know, I pulled up my sleeve and said, look,
bro, look what's going on here? And he's like, no, no more sends
me up to the, to the rehab facility.
So I was willing and, and it wasan, a, a program, you know, and
I remember going to the meetingsand getting clean for about 30
days, 60 days. I didn't complete the program
(10:48):
and I just, I didn't take to it.I didn't surrender, you know, I,
I, I came out of there, went on about living my life maybe a
couple years, year or so down the road, ended up back in the
joint. I remember calling them from the
Don jail like, yo, you know, canyou guys get me back in a
program? And they're like, dude, you are
a hardcore drug addict. We do not have the tools for
(11:10):
you. You need a two year program.
And I was like, yeah, two years or I got, I only got to do a
couple months here, so forget it, right.
So I, I, I, I just shut it out, right?
I wouldn't, I wouldn't go. I continued to, to do what I was
doing until down the road, you know, I was using a lot of
(11:32):
Oxycontin. That was probably the first time
I really got, got sick when I, when I got sick off of opium,
you know, I, I, I, I looked in the mirror, I said, how was I
ever addicted to cocaine? You know, I just did not.
And I just, I was like, wow, this is what addiction is.
This is addiction. Wow, I was sick and and really,
(11:54):
really dying a girlfriend of mine who at the time, she had
gone onto the methadone program and she got me to, you know, to
go. So I started taking a methadone
program from which I did eventually after three years or
so, I was able to and this is without any 12 step help, right?
(12:17):
This is just just white knuckling as they say, or, or
trying to do it on my own or, orusing that that I'm sober enough
mentality right where I'm takingthe methadone I'm getting after
a few years, I'm getting my carries.
You know, I'm smoking reefers, I'm drinking beer, but I'm still
involved with, you know, with sex trade workers and gang
(12:41):
members and drug dealing and so on and so forth.
Living a life of, you know, gunsand, and and large amounts of
dope. So what happened there?
I had about six years where I was living like that.
I had all my carries. You know, I felt like I'm sober
enough. It's OK.
(13:02):
There's no issues. I'm, I'm, I can do what I got to
do. And then my, my lady at the
time, she, she went into my safeand she stole just the tiniest
little drop of my methadone carry and she put herself into a
coma. I woke up that morning beside
her and she was blue and she wasnot breathing very well at all.
(13:26):
I, I, I bit the bullet, called the ambulance, got her, rushed
to hospital, followed her there,went into the hospital with her
where the doctor says to me, youknow, listen man, you know,
don't hang around here. You're just scaring people.
I mean, I was honestly quietly praying to myself in the corner
(13:49):
as I'm watching them cut her clothes off and RIP the wide
open in front of everybody and hitting her with the things and
such. And there's like, just go home
and prepare yourself because when you get back here in the
morning, she might not be with us.
And you know, I'll tell you something.
I I was, I was really, I was really, I was, I was in a sick,
(14:13):
sick place. And I says to the doctor, I
says, OK, doc, you know, I'll gohome and I'll prepare myself.
But if I come back here in the morning and she's not breathing,
Doc, I said, you, Sir, you'll bedead by fucking breakfast.
And he looked at me funny and tilted his head like a puppy
does and it doesn't understand you.
I says, oh, because I'll fuckingkill you.
(14:34):
I told the man, I said, I'll fucking kill you.
I'll come back here about 7:15, you know, 720 when you're having
your toasted melon in the cafeteria, I'll take out a
handgun and I'll empty it into your face and chest like nothing
happened and I'll drop in and walk away.
And he looked at the police and the firefighters that were all
over the place and kind of gave me a look like, and I said, go
ahead, pal, go ahead, go right ahead.
(14:55):
I said, you can have me arrestednow, but then in the morning
time you're going to have to deal with my, my, my friends and
they're not going to be polite like me.
So I left, I took my leave and Ididn't jump off the wagon, bro.
I, I, I, I high dived. I did a super triple backflip,
you know, face First off the wagon and head straight to a bar
(15:20):
where I ordered a bottle and then straight back to my place
at residence where, you know, I proceeded to abuse drugs.
I went back in the morning armedand she was there breathing on a
machine. She was in a coma.
(15:40):
The doctor was nowhere to be found, but she was breathing.
So he had, you know, he kept hisend of the deal, I guess.
And, and I, I stayed as long as I could.
They sent me home. I went home and I just proceeded
to dig myself deeper and deeper and deeper until finally she
(16:02):
came out of the coma about 10 days later where the police were
there when she woke up. And the only question they had
was where did you get the drugs?By the grace of God, she told
the truth. She had stolen them.
And the murder investigation that they would launched was,
you know, it ended. They, they were no longer under
the impression that I tried to kill my wife, which was nice,
(16:25):
you know, for me, but it still left me in a place where I
wanted to get back on the wagon.What I physically couldn't, I
just couldn't. I, I, I had a friend of mine,
he's passed away now. He was a, a big drug dealer in
the, in the Jamaican community in the Brampton area.
(16:46):
And he used to say to me, Mikey,man, he says, why?
I don't even know why you don't go on the wagon.
You run beside it all day long, you know, because I, I went back
to methadone. I tried to try to kick the drugs
and I just I would just use the crack cocaine until I couldn't
until I couldn't see straight right and around them times my
(17:07):
baby brother was diagnosed with fourth stage lymphoma cancer to
lung. And that's not that's not
usually too many happy endings with that story.
And I'm going to you know, I'm going to talk to you guys here
honestly, and I'm going to tell you what what I did.
I, I ended up in a in a really bad state where I was using
(17:29):
opium, opium derivatives, liquidmorphine, oxycontin, heroin,
fentanyl and crackle can literally by the fucking, you
know, quarter pound. I I had no shortage of narcotics
availability to me and every time I would try to sleep the
(17:52):
only thing I could think of was my baby brothers got the cancer
and I can't do nothing about it.Every time I fell asleep I would
have intense nightmares around this situation.
Every time I woke up the only thought in my head was my baby
brothers got the cancer and I can't do anything about it.
I went to speak to my family to go visit him in the hospital
where my mother begged me not tocome.
(18:14):
Seeing that him seeing me in that state would probably kill
him because he was like trying so hard to, to be clean and it
would, it would probably bring him down.
And then we had to keep his hopes up and so forth.
So that was not very good. No connection to family and
stuff. Yeah.
So at that time, I got really, really low, bro.
(18:36):
It was really bad. It was like it was desperation.
It was destitution. It was, well, maybe not
destitution. I mean, I was, I had a roof over
my head and, and sneakers on my feet and all that stuff.
But I was spiritually destitute,you know what I'm saying?
So I decided to, to take my own life.
I, I decided to stop sleeping first because, you know, I
(18:58):
couldn't. And I, I would use the, I would
use the, the junk every time I would run, I would use the crack
cocaine, OK. And I would use it and use it
and use it to stay awake. And every time I ran out of
crack cocaine, I would stick a big shot into my arm and it
would bring me down enough that I could wait to get more crack
(19:20):
cocaine. And I would use the more crack
cocaine until it ran out and then again another shot and so
on and so forth. Just went on for about 12 to 14
days without any sleep. By the end of it, you know, I'm
obviously in psychosis and I. You've seen all types of shit.
Yeah, I was. I was like, I had had a near
(19:40):
death experience before this where I found myself outside of
my body, inside of a nightclub where while my body was on the
ground and I'm standing, you're looking at myself.
I couldn't pull my foot out of my body.
And I realized, you know, oh, I'm not really dead.
I'm just mostly dead. So I start telling my body, Hey,
yo, just wake up, Just wake up. And the bouncer comes over and I
(20:03):
see him pick up my body from theground and I can hear this guy
in his head. He's like, I'm going to beat
this guy and throw him out the back door.
And then he picks me up. He knows it's me.
He's like, oh, I'm not this guy.He's not this asshole.
I'm not even supposed to fuckingbe here today.
You know, he's like that. And, and, and, and I'm just
whispering to my body. I'm like, yo, just wake up, just
wake up. But in.
In reality, my body, I guess my body was responding to what I
(20:24):
was doing because it starts screaming at him telling him to
wake up, you know, just wake up,just wake up.
And, and luckily the guy knew meand whether he liked me or not,
it's debatable, but he dragged me to the front and threw me
into a chair where I landed. And that's when I recame back
into my body. That was when I lost all fear of
(20:44):
deaths. I, I realized that our
consciousness does exist outsideof the body, that we're just
connected to the body, but I didn't really understand it.
I couldn't articulate it. I couldn't.
It took me a long time to wrap my head around it.
So as 12 day 12 day 14 is going by in this in this harsh time,
(21:05):
it is this this dark time in ourlives.
I believed that I was conversingwith deities.
I believed that the guides that had brought me back to the third
density were able to hear my thoughts and that I could
communicate with them. And I tried to make a deal and I
says in exchange for my, for my niece to never suffer a day in
(21:29):
her life, to never have to go through what we've been through.
I, I, I will, I will leave this,this reality now.
I will join you on the other side.
I will serve you until the, you know, until the eternity, until
there's no more eternity. And and then I, I consciously
and willingly took a shot three or four times the regular dosage
(21:50):
that I was used to. Knowing what that would do.
I then waited for my girlfriend at the time.
It's the same girl who had been in a coma.
I waited for her to come in and out of the house cuz she was on
crystal meth. And I knew that she would be in
and out of the house 5-6 times before she actually left for the
day. So 5 * 6 times, no problem.
OK, bye, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(22:11):
No, no, no, nothing. You know, Stuck that shit in my
arm and I would lay down and I was ready to go thinking I had
pulled a fast 1, you know, pulled a chick on on, on, on, on
the guides of the devil or whatever.
As the curtains began to close, I didn't feel any fear.
(22:31):
I didn't feel any remorse. I didn't feel any shame or
desire. I felt like I was going home.
I felt warm, I felt not alone until the very last thought in
my mind. I guess I blacked out and I was.
(22:53):
My consciousness was transported, I guess, to a
possible future where I was given a vision of the mess that
I was leaving behind and I did not like it.
I became the only emotion that Ihad at that time was sheer
unadulterated anger and disgust with my own greed, my own
(23:14):
selfishness, my own ignorance and, and my own lack of
fundamental respect for, for life.
And, and I lived with that for along time.
You know, I was there. I didn't see Jesus.
I didn't see Buddha. There was something there with
me. It was massive.
It was big as a building. It didn't have no face.
(23:37):
It just had a presence. It was there.
It brought me, showed me this future that I that I was
appalled by. And before I could even beg to
be sent back or asked if I wanted to go back, I open my
eyes that I'm in the hospital with the nurses running around.
He's breathing. He's breathing and all the, the
machines and the beeping and allthe rest of it.
(23:57):
And I turned it up to the girl and I said to her, what the
fuck? I'm not dead.
And she's like, no, baby, you'rehere.
You're here with me. You know, I'm like, well, how
long was like 18 hours. Yeah.
Yeah. It was wild, man.
How did you get to the hospital?There was some kids in my house
that were in and out of the house all the time and I had
(24:19):
actually Narcan fucking ten of them over the years.
And she actually did something, brought her back into the house
that day because she came in from wherever she was going,
came in, found me on the floor convulsing or blew, not
breathing. And the story goes that she
started screaming at these kids.Yo, he see, he saved each and
every one of you. Save him, save him, save him.
(24:41):
They proceeded to Narcan me. No response.
They got the needle. Narcan hit me with it, got me on
my feet. And I remember every time that I
had narcaned any one of them, I had three questions for them.
You know, do you know who I am? Do you know your name?
Do you know where you are? If they could answer those
questions, you know, I would say, look, you want to go to the
(25:03):
hospital or not. It's up to you, right?
If they could not answer those questions, then off to the
hospital they would go. So I have no memory of this.
I have none, no memory of whatsoever.
But apparently they got me on myfeet, asked me those questions
and I started yelling at them. I sing to sing something like a
lot, something like just ask them.
They're right there. They seen the whole effing
(25:25):
thing, you know, just ask them. And I'm apparently I'm pointing
over their shoulders at the bedroom wall where I had a every
prayer card and newspaper article and photograph of all
the friends that I had lost up to that point.
And I have no memory of it, but this is what they told me.
(25:46):
So they realized that I was not there, you know, lights on
nobody's home. They put me into a car.
And the young lady, she that, that was driving, she drove into
oncoming traffic to get me to the hospital, saved my life.
She did, she did. Young lady.
She's she's a good friend. I'm in recovery now.
(26:06):
So I haven't been in contact with her or the other kids.
They're still out there. They're unfortunately still out
there. As far as I know, yes.
Wow, that's incredible, man. What are it's I always look at
those stories and like for things to line up.
It's like now you have a choice,right?
It's like I can go back to that life every day.
You have a choice. I can go back to that life and
(26:26):
keep doing what I was doing or Ican choose this life of recovery
and be of service. And you know, you're doing that
with, with what you're telling me, but also the, the breath
work stuff and being becoming a teacher essentially, right.
So it's beautiful, man, It's it's amazing.
How long ago was that? Oh, that would have been about
10 years ago now. I mean, I, I, I, it's not like I
(26:47):
stopped using at that point. I mean, I got out of the
hospital and immediately needed a hit because I was sick, you
know, and I, I was using in the hospital parking lot.
I got back to my place there andat the time some friends of mine
and myself were under investigation for for some
(27:08):
stuff. I'm not going to get into that
end of it, but the police were raiding my home like clockwork
every six months. Just boom, boom, boom.
I got so bad the apartment owners wouldn't were refusing to
fix the door, you know, so I hada about a foot missing off the
top of my my door in the apartment.
And this had been going on for some time.
So once I finally was able to get back onto the methadone
(27:33):
program after that experience, Imoved my apartment to another,
to another building where I am. I ended up getting arrested on a
gun charge. It was, it was, it was just a
mess, right? So after that I left that
building because I was released on bail but not allowed to go
(27:54):
home right there. It wasn't like it wasn't
domestic, but it was the I guessthe informants lived in the
building. So they gave me bail, but they
wouldn't let me go back within whatever.
So I ended up going into hotels,you know, and and and dragon and
this is like right right around COVID time started, right?
(28:15):
So I'm inclined tooth and nail to stay on the methadone program
and, and, and get myself together, which about a year.
I was living like that, you know, and I was able to get my
head above water for a short period of time.
When the COVID got really bad, Iwas able to get a trailer like a
(28:36):
nice, like a really nice, like RV brand new trailer, yeah.
And, and move it out to out intothe West by the border of Marine
City in Michigan and a place called Walpole Island in
Ontario. It's reserve in between, like
(29:01):
just before Windsor, basically half an hour to Windsor kind of
thing. And when I got into the trailer,
I was on the program. I was doing OK, you know, I was
just, well, I thought I was doing OK, right?
I'm smoking, referring on the program.
I wasn't drinking booze. I wasn't using coke, I wasn't
using smack. I was just getting my carries
and trying to live my life, you know, times got tough again
(29:27):
after that. I lost connection to my family.
I got into arguments with my, with my mother and her and her
husband. I, I lost contact with my
brother. Things were getting, you know,
things progressively got worse, right?
Because that's what happens, youknow, if you don't stay
obstinate, I feel like you're incontrol, but you're not.
We're not, you know, because ourbrains are not wired that way
(29:48):
when we're using, right. Our reward system is all fucked
up and the only thing we can bring into our lives is more
misery and more trauma and more sorrow.
You know what I mean? So as time was going by, things
were getting progressively worse.
Police got, you know, got my location out there and I was
raided again. This time they caught me cold.
(30:09):
They got me cold. They got me with with a bag of
firearms and parts and A and a pack of fentanyl where by the
grace of God, by the grace of something outside of myself,
something better than me, something you know, higher power
(30:31):
they had. They raided my home this time
using my the informants address.So I was released on my own
recognizance from this incident.And the next day they sent an
informant asking me to if I would sell him some guns.
And I, I knew, I knew what they were doing.
I kind of laughed and said, buddy, you're a day late and a
dollar short. You know what I'm saying?
(30:52):
The police were here last night.They took them off, so fuck off,
right? So he kicks rocks.
So, and after that, it was it, it really got bad because I was
trying to hide the fact that I'dbeen arrested again and I was,
I'd lost connection to, to everybody.
I wasn't talking to my friends. I wasn't talking to the guys
that I did, you know, did crime with.
(31:12):
I wasn't talking to my brother as he wouldn't let me see his
kids. My cousin got into recovery and
he wouldn't speak with me. And my other cousin was
unfortunately still out there. He, him and I were on, you know,
sparse talking terms. I lost connection to the girl
that I was living with. The only connection I had was to
(31:33):
the to the drug and to the dog. You know, after a few weeks
after they raided my home and took the guns, the informant was
actually my neighbor. He decided he was going to pump
18 rounds of buckshot into my home while I was sleeping,
missing me but hitting my girl and and she was, she was OK and
(31:58):
she's fine. But after that, you know, she
couldn't sleep in that place anymore.
And even though, you know, I was, I was, I wasn't, I wouldn't
act as a witness. I was a hostile witness.
I told them, you know, how do I know who shot the police?
Where I come from, you don't stick your head out the window
when there's bullets flying at you.
For all I know it was you guys. The cops didn't like that too
(32:21):
much, but they did their own investigation and apparently the
neighbor was charged with the attempt murder times too, which
he eventually, I guess pled guilty to.
I don't, I don't know. I didn't follow the case, but I
couldn't live in there anymore. You know, the place was shot to
shit and then the police destroyed it while they were
(32:42):
doing their investigation, right?
Trying to find some more of my shit, I guess.
I don't know. So excuse me.
It was back-to-back to hotels, back to, you know, renting rooms
back to just progressively worseand worse and worse until I, I
guess then I just decided, you know, I, I, I, I, that's right
around the time I was ready to give it up.
(33:03):
I mean, I, I was able to stop drinking.
I was able to stop using cocaine, but I just could not
kick the fucking opium. You know, I just couldn't kick
it. I, no matter what I did, I
couldn't do it. So I ended up getting, I was
leaving that area to come into the city here to pick up a, a
package, which I was I was planning on distributing.
(33:26):
Obviously, I ended up getting popped on my way out of town
from there. Thank God, again, by the grace
of God, because how I've been getting how I got popped on my
way into town, you know, it would have been a mess.
I was I was arrested with with areplica firearm and a
(33:52):
bulletproof vest, 1/2 ounce of crystal methamphetamine in my
pocket that went straight into the suitcase and when I was
weighed in the jail I was weighed in at 130 lbs soaking
wet right? I was dying.
Wow. Yeah, but you're like 6364. 61
on 6/1 a 195 lbs today. Geez.
(34:14):
So 130 lbs soaking wet. Want a bag of change in my
pocket? That is when the, you know, I
still wasn't ready to give it up.
I I knew that the case with the raid was bogus.
They didn't find the drugs on meduring this arrest.
It was another weapons charge, concealed.
(34:35):
But it was a replica firearm. It wasn't loaded.
I hadn't pulled it on anybody. You know, the bulletproof vest
was not exactly illegal. So I'm thinking in my head.
Yeah, well, actually, to be honest, I wasn't thinking
anything. In my head.
I wasn't thinking anything except I need some fucking
opium. I was placed into a cell.
Luckily for me, it was a guy that I knew from the streets.
(34:59):
He'd been in there for a little while.
I, you know, I, I popped up the package.
So I was, I, I lasted maybe 24 or 48 hours before I was just
done. I ended up giving away that
package of dope and and being taken to the Infirmary where I
spent 10 days, you know, rockingand rolling.
Detoxing, yeah. Detoxing, hallucinating,
(35:21):
absolutely hallucinating. I, I remember sitting in my own
private hospital room cell with the hospital bed and my own
television and I and I was watching a television program
called the Nonas, but it wasn't a cooking show, bro.
It was about this, this this organized crime family out of
Cleveland that was burying bodies in a cemetery that yeah,
this show doesn't exist. I watched, I watched 7 episodes
(35:44):
of it, OK. And it's amazing.
I watched 7 episodes of a non existent program.
You literally created your show.I was, I was, I was out of my
fucking mind. I was out of my mind.
I can relate. Yeah, so, but but by the grace
of God, they they, they, they kept me there.
And I just, you know, I called my baby brother.
I says, look, I need you to movea little bit of money around for
me, for my accounts. You say whatever, buddy, you're
(36:07):
an asshole. I'm like, yeah, I know.
And then after a couple more phone calls, he says, look what
you know, do you want to live ordo you want to die?
And he offered to come and post my bail if I agreed to go to
treatment. At first, I rejected his offer.
No, no, Sir. No, thank you.
I will fucking do my time and continue to live like an
(36:30):
asshole. Appreciate it.
I love you. But no, a couple more phone
calls, you know, hey, this is your this is your nephew you
haven't met puts him on the phone with me, you know, and
talking to my stepdad, who I hadn't spoken to in a long time
and, and another friend of mine from here.
That's it's been a friend of mine, a lifelong friend of mine.
(36:50):
And, and they were able to talk a little sense into me and, and
I, and that's when, that was when, when, when I spoke to my
nephew on the phone for the first time from the Windsor
bucket with the option to, you know, to move forward.
I had had maybe 10 days away from my last use.
(37:16):
I was getting my Suboxone from the guys in the jail, not the,
not the guards, not the doctors.They refused my treat.
They refused to treat me. They, they were aware that I had
smuggled a package into the joint.
They just didn't catch me with it.
So they were not helping me out at all, you know.
So I agreed. I agreed, gratefully agreed, you
(37:37):
know, and the arrangements were made.
My baby brother travelled all the way out there to pick me up,
took me to a hotel for the night.
It was like, it was like we unskipped a beat, you know, he
was, he was there for me. He was all the way there for me.
You know, he brought me home to his home, which he gives all the
(37:59):
credit to the program. He credits the program with all
of the things in his life today and and I love him.
He's my brother. I love him, you know, so he took
me to the NA. Orkna that like that?
Month, I guess, the conference. Yeah, the conference was around
that month, maybe a week or two since I've gotten released.
And I went to Orkna and I got a real, a real taste of, of
(38:23):
Narcotics Anonymous for the first time with an open mind, an
open heart. And, and I, and I remember
saying to him, I says, you know,bro, if it's between getting
high and, and, and having you inmy life, you know, let's go,
right, let's do this. So I, you know, went to the
detox program a couple times. I was going to, I was set up to
(38:46):
go to a, a rehab facility that my buddy had suggested.
He, he's friendly with the staffthere and the detox program was
very good. It was the York Region detox
program. They were, you know, phenomenal.
Right before, like one hour before I was to leave for that
(39:06):
rehabilitation, the farm or whatever, they declined my, my
application. You know, it was all set to go.
I bought all the farm boots and all this stuff and they're like,
no, we can't take them. Not with that ankle bracelet and
Suboxone. No, no, no, no.
OK, Well, the universe has otherplans for me, right?
(39:27):
So back to my brother's house. OK, back to detox, back to
Brian's. But I was clean, right?
I was clean. After a little while, I started
to, I'd had some, you know, 60 days, 90 days from my last use.
I'm on Suboxone. My dose is leveled out.
I'm. I'm going to program with my
(39:50):
brother. He's taking me to NA.
I'm not happy about it. I'm still unhappy about it back
at that time. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to
be, you know, I'm trying to be, but I wasn't yet.
But I started to get that community.
I started to get, you know, hugs, not drugs.
And I started to try to go into my mind, like when I would go
(40:10):
and I would hear the readings, you know, I always had these,
these resentments, these. These little, quick, quick
little responses in my brain about, about this and that this
is an argument with the, with the, with the language and
literature. And, and after a while, I, I
said, you know, I, I, I'm going to just meditate through the
preamble, you know, to open up my, open up my, my system to be
(40:31):
more receptive of, of the language instead of arguing with
it. So I consciously, even till now,
I, you might catch me in a meeting and during the preamble,
you'll see me, you know, you know, and, and people may think
I'm, I'm ignoring or I'm, or I'mputting somewhere else, but I'm
not, I'm, I'm right there. I'm trying to sponge up that,
that good stuff that, that the program has to offer, you know,
and, and just to, to rewire my own ideas and let, let go of
(40:55):
those, those kind of resentmentsand stuff.
So it's, it's, it's been, it's been helpful.
It's, it's definitely not hurtful.
I the anxiety or I used to get ahigh anxiety state when I would
walk into the rooms physical, you know, physical anxiety.
But after using some other outside, you know, outside of
(41:16):
the program ideologies around consciousness, you know,
neuroplasticity and, and, and some of these other ideas and,
and implementing the yoga nidra practices and, you know, reality
Co creation practices and stuff like this, which is, which is
(41:37):
for me, it's, it's a really fundamental part of my program,
you know, cuz being on, I've been under house arrest for the
past 16 months, right? And as much as my brother would
love to take me to 90 and 90, he's got a job and, and two kids
and, and a wife and a house and a life, you know, so it's, it's
not really, it's not really, youknow, feasible.
(41:57):
So I had to find other, other avenues of recovery, which is
fine. You know, it's no problem,
right? I'm living the dream, you know.
So I like to find a combination.I like to take as many angles as
I can get and and and watch for the, you know, the
(42:20):
synchronicities and then and then mold my recovery.
Yeah, it's a good point, though,too, is like, I was always
taught that, you know, humans will fail us eventually, right?
No matter how much they care, nomatter how much they'll show up
for you. Yeah.
I can't rely on a human for everything, right?
(42:40):
And you mentioned it perfectly. Is like, you got to turn to this
power greater than yourself, right?
Whether that's God, the universe, I don't care as long
as it's not me today, right? I can have my own conception of
it. And it seems like at that time
you were sort of forced into that.
And now it's become a part of ofyour life and your practice.
I want to ask you, what do you think kept you?
(43:01):
What do you think kept you out there so long using?
Well, I guess fear, shame, desire, you know, no awareness
around anything better. Once I got clean, Once I got
(43:22):
clean, I I was watching a podcast.
It's it's a guy called well, it's it's a, it's a Co creation
podcast or, or YouTube channel. Anyway, he had a guest on and
the, the thumbnail for the, for the, for the show was it says an
(43:43):
Angel in a human body, right? And I'm like, yeah, fuck off,
right? You know, what the, what are you
talking about? And I was going to just pass it
over, right? But I really like this guy's
stuff. Like he's, he's really good with
what he does. So I says, OK, you know what,
I'm going to check it out. So I put it on and this woman
comes on and she starts telling us how she's an Angel in a human
(44:04):
body. And she got her angelic name
from the, you know, angelic realms.
And she talks to her guides likewe're talking to each other.
And I'm about ready to turn it off.
You know, I'm thinking she's a loon from the moon, right?
And she starts telling my story.She starts telling my story.
She starts telling us how she had a a near death experience as
a child. I believe it was a drowning in
(44:27):
her case. And she'd had an awakening at
that time. And she came back different and
she came back different. And it was a hardship for her
for many, many years. So she had turned to drugs and
alcohol. And the key take away for me
from her story was that we are conditioned here, especially in
(44:50):
the West, to believe that the only way we can feel those high
vibrations that alcohol and drugs bring, even though they're
fake and they only last short time and they come with a lot of
harm, the only way we can feel those those high vibrational
frequencies is through drugs andalcohol.
But that's the lie. That's the lie, right?
(45:11):
We can feel those high vibrational frequencies through
meditation, through Wellness practices, through yoga,
through, you know, through just just by raising our vibration,
our inner vibration, our emotional state and keeping it
there. You know, she, she was, she was
serious. Had she been, had it been in a
12 step meeting, I would have been, you know, begging her to
(45:32):
respond to me. You know what I mean?
I heard a story and it was my story.
It was just from a different, a different perspective.
And basically what I was doing, what I didn't know I was doing
at the time, but what I was doing was I was trying to reach
that unconditional love that we come from, that we're headed to
one day. And I was trying to have it here
(45:53):
in the third density. And the only way I knew how to
manufacture it was with drugs and alcohol.
And that's what I was seeking. I was seeking death, not in a
negative way. Death for me is not a negative
thing. As sure as we're born, one day
we're going to die. It's a natural process.
It's transition. It's not afterlife, it's just
life. But it's not third density life.
(46:15):
It's just life. It's just a transition.
We don't, we don't, we don't really die.
Our bodies die, but our consciousness exists outside of
our bodies. And, and, and I mean, until
somebody experiences it, then they're, I can't really tell
them. I can't really like, I can't
make them know. All I can do is share my
experience, right? And for me, it's, no, it's not a
(46:36):
belief. It's, it's an, it's annoying
through experiential, you know, knowledge, right?
It's experiential knowledge. It's it's annoying from, from,
from my experiences because, andI'll tell you this, because
when, when I got clean, I was backtracking and second guessing
my experiences. Was I really out of my body?
(46:57):
Was I my body dead and I was not?
Was that real? Or was I just hallucinating from
overdose? Fair question, right?
That led me to really, I mean, obsess is not the right word to
use, but I was very highly motivated to, to learn the
(47:17):
practices of these yogis and shaman and so forth, too, to be
able to exit my body sober as a judge.
And after about 8 months or ninemonths of clean time, I've had
some, you know, some limited successes.
I don't really leave my body with intention.
(47:39):
Like I'm not going to come over to your house, see what you're
watching on TV and then call youin the morning and freak you
out, Right. It's not like that.
I saw you last night. Yeah, it's not like that.
But I, but I have found myself, you know, conscious that I'm
sitting in my chair, conscious of my breaths.
But I open my eyes and I'm out in my backyard looking in the
window where I go to smoke, you know, and I see myself in the
backyard. I could see my and I go to take
(48:00):
a dragon, my smoke. And I'm like, wait a second, I'm
not smoking, I'm in my chair. And it's like, holy F man.
Wow. Right.
And, and some other, you know, some other short, short
experiences similar to that. It's, it's, it's not the same as
dreaming. It, it, it does have a dreamlike
quality. Near death experiences, out of
body experiences and lucid dreaming.
(48:23):
They're they're similar, but they're different.
In my experience, they've been very similar, but also very
different. They have different tangible
qualities to them. So with with those experiences
adding to my, adding to my, the confirmation for me that I am a
(48:44):
spiritual being having a human experience.
I continue to progress into lucid dream work where you know,
you're, you're, you're going to run asleep, but you're, you
light up your frequent prefrontal cortex and you, you
wake up within your dream. At first, I would spend a lot of
time flying around and striking things with lightning, you know,
(49:05):
like this God complex of mind. And after a few, after a few
sessions like that, I started toget boring.
Well, why am I really doing this?
You know, so today when I go into those states, I will take
the time to ask the universe, what am I doing here?
What am I supposed to be doing? You know, or I will find myself
in a, in a, in some kind of horrible knife fight situation
(49:29):
in a prison wall and I'll realize, oh, wait a minute, I'm
dreaming and I'll jump over the wall and I'll just go meditate,
you know, and, and it's brought me, it's brought me an insane
amount of peace. You know, it's, it's brought me
to a point where I'm still, I'm still early in my step work
progress where I, it's unfortunate for me that I, I
(49:56):
have so much of a stubborn sick head where I, I, I read the
words, I, I see the language, I get frustrated.
I, I, I still have these little arguments in my head.
So I'm taking my time around doing my step work, you know,
and, and, and as I'm moving forward with it, I'm finding a
lot of questions around like things that seem to be like OCD
(50:20):
related. I'm not very deep into it yet.
So I'm not judging the whole book by the first, you know, few
questions. I, I myself, I don't like, I
will obsess if I pick up. If I pick up and I got it in
front of me, I will obsessively use it until it's gone or I'm
dead. That's it.
No problem. I get it.
But I don't have those types of compulsive thoughts around
(50:44):
anything else in my life. I never really have and I don't,
I don't see myself having them on a regular basis.
So, and I think some of that is due because I, I did, when I
first got home, I did have some recurring thoughts of past
experiences, you know, traumas and, and less than preferable
(51:04):
experiences that would pop into my head, especially during
meditations. What I learned, I learned as a
skill, you know, I learned how to allow those thoughts to drift
away like clouds in the sky and return to focus of the breath,
you know, and, and to, to enter that vibrational state and, and,
and listen for the, for the space between thoughts, you
(51:26):
know, because I think that's where higher consciousness
resides. And it's like you said, that's
where we get the answers, you know?
And the direction, right, you know, I love that.
What are sort of your like essentials in recovery daily?
Like what does that look like toyou?
Well, I gotta make, make my bed.Yeah, I gotta get.
You know, a lot of people laugh at that one, but it's it's true.
(51:47):
I was taught that in treatment, too.
It's like you start off the day with doing one good thing.
Yeah. You get up, you make your bed.
I I definitely have to limit my exposure to negative content.
You know, I listen to conscious music.
I generally watch only upliftingor like science fiction type of
(52:08):
movies. I limit my exposure to negative
content. I, I, I surround myself with
people in recovery. You know, I, I, I don't accept
friend requests from people frommy old, my old Facebook account.
I changed my Facebook account, new YouTube, new Instagram, all
(52:29):
those things. When I do get the occasional
contact from people from that spectrum, if they're if they're
not in recovery and they want tosee me, they have to come see me
at a meeting. As much as I love them, it's not
about them or their behavior. It's about me and my
susceptibility to joining that. Yeah, right.
(52:52):
It's a slippery slope, right? Yeah, yeah.
I'm also in a bit of a bubble though, too, right?
Like being under house arrest with the ankle monitor.
I, I, I, I've got a lot of help,you know, I'm getting a lot of
help, right? I've, I've met somebody in
recovery and. And she helps me a lot.
She helps me. She's like my brother.
(53:12):
She's she credits everything to her program, right?
And I spent a lot of time talking to my cousin who's,
who's, you know, gone ahead fromme in this program.
They my cousin, my brother, theywork in the industry of
recovery. You know, the people that I
surround myself with are, are good.
They have good recovery people, you know, And I also try to
(53:34):
gravitate to newcomers too. If I see a newcomer, I'm, I'm
extra weight, right? Like, I will give them cigarette
and I will give them my phone number.
Whether they, you know, choose to call me or not, It's, it's,
it's up to them. But yeah, those things, those
things are, are pretty key, you know, a little, a little bit of
exercise, obviously, right. And lots of coffee.
(53:57):
Yeah, lots of coffee. Same.
Need something right. Oh, that's great, man.
If you I'll ask you 22 last things and then we'll close it
out because it was it was good. I got a lot today.
I appreciate you coming down, Mike.
Thank you. What do you hope people get out
(54:18):
of your story? Well, anything that's going to
help them. Anything that can come from the
the horror shit show dumpster fire of my previous life that
can open the mind of the still suffering addict or help to
(54:42):
steer the course of the white knuckler or to, you know, even
to engage an argument from somebody who doesn't see it my
way. You know, as long as we're
engaging conversation and we're growing, you know what I mean?
I'm, I'm here to give away what was really given to me, you
know, and, and, and just raise the vibration, bro.
(55:04):
I just want to raise people vibration.
I love it man. And what's one thing that you
would say to somebody strugglingright now, maybe a newcomer?
Well to a newcomer right now as of today's date bro I'm going to
give you guys this warning. I was talking to my doctor the
other day and as an ex cook he knows that I'm familiar with the
(55:29):
derivatives and combinations that go into today's narcotics
and he was given an alert warning that the xylazine is is
no more. Today we got to worry about
nitrozine. Nitrozine makes carfentanil look
like a fucking aspirin and it's in everything.
So even a legacy user like myself who survived it all and
(55:52):
can seem to punish myself over and over and over.
I go out there today, I leave the studio, I go hit the gas
station, I score from some guy Idon't know.
I'm a fucking dead man. So there is life after recovery.
People love you. And you know what?
If you don't believe me, come tothe program and I'll love you
until you can love yourself. I love it man.
Thanks so much Mike for coming down.
(56:14):
I appreciate you. Thanks for listening.
Please help us grow the channel and like, share and subscribe
for more content. The discussions and stories
shared on this podcast are for informational and motivational
purposes only. This content is not a substitute
for professional medical advice,addiction treatment, or therapy.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction,
(56:36):
please consult A licensed physician, addiction specialist,
or mental health professional. You are no longer.
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