July 5, 2025 • 58 mins
On this episode of Recovering Out Loud, Anthony sits down with Joe, a passionate voice in recovery, to talk about the messy, beautiful journey of getting sober. Joe opens up about childhood trauma, battling addiction, and the pivotal role of spirituality in his recovery. Together, they dive deep into nervous system regulation, people-pleasing, the importance of authentic support systems, and why real change comes from within—not from others. Whether you’re new to recovery or have years of sobriety, Joe’s honest story will resonate and inspire.
Topics include:
Growing up with trauma and rejection
Early recovery struggles and breakthroughs
Faith, spirituality vs. religion
Family dynamics & support (or lack thereof)
Daily routines for sobriety
Why peace and self-love matter most
Advice for those still struggling
Subscribe, share, and join us in honest recovery—out loud.
00:00:00 - Intro & Setting the Stage
00:01:01 - Why This Podcast Started: Sobriety First
00:02:05 - Chasing Followers vs. Chasing Recovery
00:03:04 - Addiction Doesn’t Discriminate: Stories from the Rooms
00:05:01 - Joe’s Childhood & Trauma
00:07:41 - The Roots of Rejection & People Pleasing
00:10:01 - Spirituality vs. Religion: Finding a Higher Power
00:13:11 - Faith in Recovery & The “Chosen Ones”
00:17:09 - Early Recovery: Breaking Old Patterns
00:20:20 - Hitting Bottom & Finding Real Change
00:24:21 - Why Spirituality is Key to Sobriety
00:30:33 - Daily Routines & Gratitude Practices
00:34:21 - Staying Honest, Staying Sober
00:36:26 - Family, Boundaries & Support Systems
00:42:46 - Carrying the Message & Living Authentically
00:46:38 - What Joe’s Most Proud Of in Sobriety
00:50:53 - The Marathon of Recovery: Staying Patient
00:53:28 - Why We Don’t Feel Better After Lashing Out
00:56:47 - Advice for Struggling Addicts & Alcoholics
00:57:21 - Outro & Final Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:27):
And I don't need people to tell me what to do because I'm bad at
listening to that, right? I mean, I, I do need it.
I need it but. Yes, but it's a suggestion and
have the patience with their journey.
Yeah, and there's, there's lots of journeys, right?
Yeah, I, I, but you learned the hard way.
I'm telling you, there's so manythings with this, like it's
driving me nuts, the podcasting,but I, I love it and I'm
(00:49):
learning everyday about how to do this and how to do that.
And you know, watching a lot of videos, taking a lot of
direction because I, this isn't like something that I've grew up
doing or, you know, but I thought first I started this
podcast, I would say this, but Istarted this podcast to stay
sober myself, right? And I, I have to remember that
that that was goal number one. Good for you, because sure, I
(01:11):
can sit here and tell you till the cows come home that I'm
doing this for everybody else. And but if I like, if that's a
bonus of this and and it is, it's another reason why I
started doing this podcast was to get the message out to
people. But I have to, if I'm not sober,
and I'm sure you can, I can't doany of that, right?
I can't carry Nomad. I don't have a message to carry.
(01:31):
And you know what I'm seeing in that, what you just said right
there, I'm seeing someone who's staying humble and not needing
other people's. Validation, yeah.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Whether one person watches, 20 people watch or 1000 people
watch, you're you're concentrating on your recovery.
That's why you're doing it. Yeah, that's amazing, bro.
I have to thank you. I have to remind myself though,
(01:52):
like constantly, because you chase those followers the likes
the fucking I can I can monetizethis now like Oh my God, you
know, like maybe I can quit my job one day, right?
And all these things start to come into your head.
And sure it's possible, but a? 1000% is possible.
It's a lot of attraction, it's alot of the universe.
If I teach a lot of this with myclients, if you could see it in
(02:13):
your mind, you could hold it in your hand.
It's just like a relapse. We won't see it in our minds.
All of a sudden we got in our hands.
So why not the dream life? Because it's not.
It's not feasible. Of course it's feasible.
That's why you see it. Yeah.
Relapse was never feasible in mymind, Yeah.
But if your higher power put something in your mind and you
could see it, practice that every day.
Don't practice it like it's in the future.
(02:33):
Practice it like it's now. You already monetized.
It just hasn't come into fruition yet.
Yeah, it's a lot of attraction. Brother, yeah, I love that.
I love that, Joe, thanks so muchfor coming down, brother.
I, I appreciate you, man. I, I, you know, I fell in love
with you already. But you know, it's funny, this
recovery thing we become, you know, it says in the literature
that we become fast friends, right?
(02:55):
We have a common problem and nowwe have a common solution,
right? And that's it.
You know, this, this alcoholism addiction thing does not
discriminate. I've met lawyers, I've met
homeless people in recovery. I've met fucking people that
live under the bridge, homeless.I've met people that are
doctors, right. And it's, you know, skin colours
all over creeds, religions. That's the beautiful thing about
(03:18):
this. It's like a, a group we would
normally not mix, you know, but we found a common solution where
it's like, you know, these are all suggestions like we were
talking about before, But my, I had a sponsor that would always
say to me, you know, these are all suggestions that I'm telling
you kind of like, you know, I suggest you taking a parachute
when you're jumping out of a helicopter, right, or an
airplane. Oh, I love that man.
(03:39):
Why don't you tell us, tell us alittle bit about your story, you
know, how you ended up into in recovery and, and what that sort
of looked like before and after for you?
Before I'm I'm just going to do a quick recap of growing up, you
know, Italian background, Italian culture.
We started our journey. Christy Pitts ended up at Janice
(04:00):
Shepherd. My dad really didn't want me on
the streets a lot. Very, very young age.
He had me in hockey. I flourished there.
Soccer flourished there. You know, home life was OK, but
you know, you come from an Italian background, you're
(04:20):
always going to like what I've noticed in my journey is there's
a lot of narcissism in one parent.
I'm not saying all of them, but what I've seen on my journey and
you know, at a young age, it wasalways good wasn't good enough.
Perfect was good enough and evenperfect at its flaws.
So at a very young age, if I wasn't perfect, I wasn't trying.
So I had to be perfect at everything, right?
(04:42):
And even when I did great, it just was never good enough.
So, you know, in along that journey, I was, I was introduced
to a neighbor where we had a quick connection at the at a
certain point, sexual abuse started at that.
And and it was just, it was, it was a very, very, very scary for
(05:06):
me. And just the way he had taken
advantage of me, this gentleman,and then going home and then
going back there. And I remember at a very young
age, I must have been 8 years old, our our fathers, the man
who was sexually abusing me, he was younger as well.
They're all watching a soccer game.
(05:27):
And he goes, come here, come here.
And he gives me this glass of wine and I sucked it, but he
goes, just drink your back. And man, oh man.
Like within like a minute or so,I was so numb that I wasn't
afraid anymore. He didn't scare me no more.
And so every time I had to go there, I'd go in my dad's
(05:47):
cantina and I'd grab a glass of wine and it was almost like I
knew, but I didn't know 'cause Iwas young, but I just knew it
made me feel good. What it was, I don't know.
I just know it made me feel good, right.
And with some work that I've been doing with people, because
it, what ended up happening was he, he just cut me off and I
felt like abandoned and stuff. And it's the weirdest thing,
(06:07):
right? And doing some work with, with
this lady that is working with me up at the center through the
nervous system regulation and stuff, which I didn't know,
right. And she says it was rejection
for you. And it followed rejection
followed me for a long period oftime, which turned into people
pleasing, turned into everybody had to like me.
And if you didn't like me, like 10 people go like me.
(06:29):
If the one person didn't like me, that's the one I had to sell
my story to, right. And, you know, my, my mom, salt
of the earth, like just, you know, just taught us about God
and about Christ and about how much he loves us and all that
stuff. But, you know, in, in, in our
culture, it's always do bad, go to hell, do bad, go to hell.
(06:52):
At a young age, I was terrified of God, man.
I love Jesus, but I hated God. And I was trying to distinguish
the both of the young age, Right.
So, yeah. And you know what?
I got into organized crime at a young age.
I had enough of my dad in and around my draft year when my
friends are getting drafted to go to the O and the NHL and
(07:14):
stuff. I quit, but I'm done.
I'm done and I just started an organized crime lifestyle and it
spiraled for many years after that.
Wow. Thanks for sharing that.
I appreciate it. Yeah, this trauma theme comes up
a lot with addicts and Alcoholics, right?
But you mentioned something thatwas interesting.
(07:34):
There is like you carried that rejection thing your whole life,
right? What?
How does that show up today and how do you work on it?
Well, you know what? I'm learning a lot through
nervous system regulation. I work with a psychotherapist
personally, myself. The rejection part of it, it's,
it's, it's ongoing. It's gotten better, it's gotten
(07:57):
better with the spiritual journey of understanding that
we're all God's children. We're all not meant to be on
each other's paths forever. Today, I, I don't set my
boundaries like before where it had to be, take me, take me,
take me, take me, put me againsta wall and then react and
protect myself, right? Because I don't want to be
(08:17):
rejected. Now it's more of, you know,
we're just not clicking and you're not understanding my
boundaries right now and you have to be put aside.
I love you, but I'm going to love you from a distance.
We don't all get along. We don't all have the same path,
right? Like my path towards my higher
power and what what he has in store for me has allowed me to
(08:37):
understand that when I'm rejected, it's themselves
rejecting themselves. It's almost that one points the
finger out when there's three pointing back.
And I've always been caught in that, right.
So rejection is still something I work on, but I've gotten so
much better. And a lot has to do with
understanding the nervous systemregulation.
(08:58):
So our fight, our flight, our freeze, our fawn, those are all
character, character defects andcharacteristics that we use to
protect ourselves at very young ages when the events happened to
I would have to say, if not all,most people in recovery.
Yeah, you mentioned fawn at the end there.
That's something I learned recently too.
(09:18):
My therapist is really good too,and she taught me the fawn, you
know, with regards to the nervous system regulation.
To me, the way I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, but
the the fawn is like you attach to to the sad thing.
So if I have, you know, drugs are in my life and they're
causing me a lot of problems andI can't stop doing cocaine, I
(09:40):
sort of attach myself to it and it becomes like my love almost,
and I love it. Is that am I understanding?
That yeah, we're people pleasing. 1 character is people
pleasing, right? Yeah, yeah.
So what kind of latching on to that person so that they'll
they'll. The person, the drug, we're
trying to please, we're trying to please to get pleased.
(10:01):
Codependent too, right? You know, if you love me, I need
you, Joe, to love me so that I can feel OK.
Yeah, you know, in my own skin. I love that.
Yeah. That was what he was described
to me and I, I really related with that.
I want to talk about spirituality, faith, God, higher
power. There's so many ways we can go
with this one, but I think people in my experience, hear
(10:23):
the word God and they run the other way, right?
Because of whatever their upbringing or this is a
religion, Like I don't want to be a part of a cult, but all
this bullshit, right? And you know, there's a huge
difference I've learned between spirituality and religion,
right? So what is?
What does faith mean to you today?
Well, I like what you said, how the difference between religion
and spirit and spirituality, right.
(10:43):
So for me, religion is a man made thing.
It's a business. Christ, like Christ, is my
higher power. And Christ said it.
You don't need to go to a templeto worship me.
You know, a lot of people go to church on Sundays and as soon as
they leave, they judge the world.
You know, there's a message at the churches as well.
(11:04):
I'm not, I'm not going to disrespect it in, in any way.
That's their belief system and, and, and great for you.
But I do use a lot of the churchand analogies to understand,
make people understand what we've been through because what
I believe is addiction is in it is in every single human being
put on this earth because higherpower, God, universe gave us
free will, right? For me, I believe that out of
(11:29):
all the addictions, the alcoholic and the drug addict,
believe this or not, I believe that the chosen ones, I believe
we were the ones sent here and at a very young age, that evil
entity, that evil entity that, you know, almost like you're
watching a cartoon and there's the the good guy and the bad
guy, right? And where do we go?
We always go with the bad guy, right?
So at the beginning of any cartoon, you do that bad thing
(11:52):
your stomach's telling you not to do, not to do.
And this guy's there saying justdo it, Just do it.
You get away with it and then every time you watch some
something like that as a young age, you notice at the end they
end up being honest about what they've done, you know, and and
and they make good on what they've done.
And then the Angel comes and says, you know, good for you.
For me, it's that simple, A spiritual journey, you know,
(12:14):
feel what's coming in you feel what's coming in you.
I am not here to to fix the world.
I'm here to fix myself so the world can relate to what I'm
doing. What I'm doing is what I've been
told by faith. Be a good person, unconditional
love. Understand that just because I
(12:34):
don't know you doesn't mean I don't love you.
One thing about recovery for me is in the rooms of recovery is I
share this a lot when I do a lotof speaking engagements.
I don't even know you and I loveyou and you're still out there
using drugs and alcohol and I know I don't know you, but I
love you because me and you are the same.
And I'm going to go back to whatI mean by the chosen ones.
(12:56):
A lot of people let's we're going to use the Catholic
religion, right? Christ saved the disciples.
The disciples were Alcoholics. One was Matthew was in layman's
terms on on our nowadays. He was a collector.
He collected money right. Then you had Mary Magdalene.
She was a hooker, prostitute. You had thieves, you had people
(13:20):
that were so broken from society, they were just shunned.
And what did Christ do? He took them and showed them the
way. Now I'm just talking Christ
because it's my higher power. But spirituality in general is
like that. I don't judge a drug addict,
whether you're on the street as,as a homeless person or you're
(13:40):
in an office as a lawyer. I, I don't judge those people
because I am those people. And that pain that we live with
is there's not many people that don't suffer with alcohol and
drug addiction that would ever understand because it's our
pain. But then I pick up on your pain
and how do I help you release that pain?
(14:02):
By working on my pain. And then we connect, right.
And in, in, in the rooms of recovery.
It's instant family. We don't all get along, but
we're instant family. Like anybody could call me in
recovery. We might not got along.
We might have skipped and, and fallen out of our journeys.
But if they call me saying I'm suffering, I'm, I'm going to be
(14:23):
there because that's a human being and that's a child of the
universe, child of God, child oflight, whatever it is that you
want to connect to. And that's one thing I think
that separates religion from spirituality.
I, I believe I, my personal experience, I'm judged the most
by people in religion when I've fallen along my journey.
(14:45):
Like, you know what? It's easy to, to, to support
someone on a journey of recovery.
That's getting to the gym, that's reading, that's doing
great podcasts like yourself. It's easy to support that
person. But the true testament of
unconditional love is when that person falls down.
And instead of saying you should, you know, you're not
(15:06):
supposed to do that. Well, thank you.
Of course, I know I'm not supposed to do that.
That's where that's where the the love comes.
How do I support someone that I can't agree with what they're
doing and not understanding thatthey have no power to stop once
they're in? Like it's easy to support
somebody that's going to recovery.
I love that you, you said a lot of good stuff there.
(15:27):
I found that to be especially true, You know, in my last
relapse with my, with my wife, right, Everybody, you know, she
was there in the worst moments, you know, and I, I put that
woman throughout, right? And it was a true testament of
her character. And also, you know, it helped
that she was able to see what I looked like in recovery and
(15:48):
working on myself and that this was just like a, a, you know,
another Rd. a bump in the road, right, Albeit at the time it
seemed like a mountain, right, Because, you know, we, we drag
people through the mud, as I always say.
I, I also really liked what you said about changing ourselves
and not changing the world. I spent a lot of time being and
(16:09):
I still do today. I can be this guy that this, I,
I've heard this before the sheriff of the universe, right?
You know. The director.
Yeah, the director, you're not doing it.
You know, that's not how you drive.
You're not doing it right. This is the way blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, right. And it's like, dude, you know,
I, I can Simply put it as as simple as this.
I heard this recently. It was like that person, if
someone pisses me off, someone does something I don't like, or
(16:32):
somebody can't stop using drugs or alcohol in my life, it's
like, you know, right now that person is simply not living in
the way I would prefer. You know, they're, they're
simply not living in the way I would prefer, right?
Whenever I have an opinion on something, you know, 'cause I
have a lot of opinions on things, you should be doing it
this way. You should be doing it that way,
right? So I have to change myself And,
(16:55):
and you said I, I need to like get other people to kind of see
what I'm doing and relate to me,right?
I, I really like that. You know, what was early
recovery like for you and how did you navigate that?
How did you get through that 'cause I know that, you know,
the first bit for anybody can bereally tough.
The early bits of recovery was me.
(17:20):
It was. It was just some time where I
knew that something was just completely wrong because it was
fun at the very beginning, man, it was fun like escaping
reality, not a care in the world, going to the clubs,
(17:41):
vacations, you know, you know, living a certain lifestyle.
Money is just no object type of thing.
And something started happening where at night, sorry, not at
night, the next morning when I wake up, I'm like, please, God,
please, like just I want to stop.
Like I want to stop. I can't do this every day.
(18:02):
And my, you know, my mom being hurt by it and I'm like, I swear
to God, you know, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done.
And then 2-3 days later, right back to the cycle and it's like
I'm here again, right? And I was angry.
I got it those times too, man. So when I would hear him, I'd be
like, just leave me alone, man. Like you didn't, you didn't save
me. Well, I'm going to save myself.
(18:23):
And so as, as time kept going, Ifound it where it was like every
time I was waking up, it was like, please, just help me.
Please. If you're out there, just help
me, please. And you know what, Like now
when, when my higher power communicates to me, 'cause he
don't talk to me, but he communicates to me like he'll
put a stop sign with flashing lights in front of it.
(18:44):
And nothing happens in God's world by mistake.
So if I'm feeling a certain way and I've seen a freaking stop
sign with flashing on it, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm listening to my
higher pinks going the other direction, right?
So in early recovery, I went to the the rooms of recovery,
'cause I just, I didn't want to use every day anymore.
(19:05):
Just get me to Friday. Yeah, just get me to Friday.
That's what my sick mind I. Want that old lifestyle back
where I was able to control I want.
The fun back, right? Yeah.
And like far from it, because once that evil entity was just
had all the power, you know, theworld, I guess understands is
that the as the devil? I, I just understand it as the
(19:25):
deep, deep rooted just pain and shame and guilt, remorse and all
that stuff that every time I wassober, he was telling me, that's
why you need this, That's why you need this.
So when I went to the first timein the rooms of recovery, that's
what I was doing. I was doing it for that.
And you know, Fast forward a couple years after 2012,
thirteen, when I first got in the rooms, I ended up in
(19:47):
treatment 2016, you know, brokenmarriage.
I tried to leave the marriage two or three times, not because
she was a bad person or I was a bad person.
I decided to stop living a life and both of us just couldn't,
you know, we, we couldn't, we weren't compatible, right?
And you know, then I just, I finally, just, you know, certain
(20:11):
things happen. I'm not going to get into her
business. But I fell hard and hard, like
probably the worst I've ever felt ever.
And then I ended up in treatment.
And for the first, I think it was 7 or 8 days, bro, I couldn't
get a word out, man. It was just tears and tears and
(20:32):
tears. And I had this one counselor, he
came up to me one day. He goes, come, come.
And I love how like when God communicated, just something
happened. So he brought me on the side and
there's this beautiful field andhe's like, listen, man, you're a
good guy. But if you're going to cry every
day for 30 days, you're going toleave here and.
Go right back to using that. Whatever that pain is, start
(20:53):
using it as a strength. It's Friday today.
By the by the time I get back here on Monday, just tell me
you've even spoke to people. Just show me you've read a
couple pages. I don't know what the I don't
know what happened, bro. All I well, I do know what
happened. He gave me the power and, and I
took it and I went with it. And man, oh man.
(21:15):
Like I was talking to people, reading, writing.
Like within three days I, I wentto the gym two or three times a
day. There was a huge shift.
Mindset shift yeah, I love that.Yeah, I I agree 100% The, you
know, my higher power, my God, Ichoose to call it God because
it's easier, you know, plain andsimple, right.
It's not this bearded guy in thesky And and that's me.
(21:38):
It's it's this force, this innerteacher.
A lot of people get scared aboutit, right.
But it's it doesn't have to be what I say it's whatever, you
know, it's just not me today, right?
It's not me. He communicates to other people.
And that was a perfect example there where, you know, the
universe, this force is coming to you and saying, Joe, you got
to change something here, right?Something's got to give.
(22:00):
Something's got to change. And it just came in the form of
a counselor at that time, right?I can.
Oh, I love that. Yeah.
I can name. I can give you a book of times
where people have showed up in my life.
And at the time, you don't see it like that, right?
You're just like, oh, this fucking guy is just, you know,
wants his job to be easier. But, you know, it's it's a
message from the universe. It's a sign.
Whatever you said, the red flashing lights, like.
Yeah, if you keep going in this direction, you're going to end
(22:22):
up right back. Where?
And and that scared the shit outof me because every time I've
relapsed, it's always gotten worse.
Without a doubt, no matter what,I've always picked up where I
left off. You know, I was doing new drugs.
I introduced new things into my into my arsenal.
I hung out with new people. You know, I got closer to the
fentanyl than I needed to be, right That, you know, closer to
(22:42):
death than I needed to be. Why do you think to you today?
You touched on it a little bit, but why is why is faith so
important? Why is spirituality so important
in recovery? Because it's the thing we feared
the most when we were in active addiction.
(23:03):
You, you said something before, and I really liked what you
said. How you know everybody's as soon
as they hear the word God, they run because the evil has so much
power over you. Our souls really know that's the
answer. And as active addiction and even
has sometimes having a hard timein recovery.
(23:23):
We run from God because he's gotmore power over us.
Call it your will, call it an evil entity, call it the devil.
Call the devil of addiction. It's common.
So wherever there's light, you know, they've done they've done
a great job to say as soon as you hear the word God.
And, and, and I empathize with people who hear the word God,
(23:44):
especially like in the Roman Catholic thing where it's gotten
such a bad name of certain little things that have
happened, which are very bad things.
But you know, the Roman CatholicChurch has done what it's done.
Again, it's a religion, man madenone of my business.
But yeah, you know what? I forgot the question.
That's OK. I, I, I, I like, you know, I, I,
(24:09):
I should have given you time to respond to what I was saying.
But don't worry. I mean, at the end of the day,
why is it like I came into recovery and every single person
had a higher power that was had clean time and had a lot of
time, right? And was happy, You know, like,
why are you so happy, right? Because they had this this
(24:30):
higher power in their life. Why is it so important that we
get spirituality, get a higher power?
Thank you very much. So because it's the trueness of
us. It's it's it's us trying to
recover the child. The child that is.
I love that. Yeah.
A child is free before it's programmed by society, Right.
I mean, like, I'm 49 years old. I'm probably one of the biggest
(24:51):
kids you'll ever meet. And because I do my best to
enjoy life, I do my best to not get caught up in the whole, like
you said it before, don't, don'ttell me what to do all the time
because I'm going to go the different direction.
Like I just met you and I could tell one thing about you.
You have a pure heart. Your soul is beautiful and real.
(25:15):
And that's where that that's where that entity doesn't want
us to be. So that's for me, that's where
spirituality, spirituality is being open, free, loving, kind,
understanding towards anyone of God's universe's creatures
because we're all here. We're all here.
(25:37):
We're all spiritual beings having a human experience and
we're all doing our very best. Now, like you were saying, I
could, I could right away tell everybody how to write their
scripts. You know, I think a lot of
people, including myself, because I still have to do that
work every day. If I'm judging someone, then I'm
lacking something in me that I haven't worked on yet.
(26:00):
And as the journey continues, I get caught up in that whole
stuff too. I was having a conversation with
someone this morning and I was liking my piece is my piece.
And if you're going to keep these people in your life, and I
don't want nothing to do with that because my piece is
important to me and my piece, noone's allowed to come and take
pieces of it anymore. But I'm putting this on someone
else. This has nothing to do with them
(26:21):
because they're close to me. My fear of losing them,
rejection is, is almost like selling a story because I want
what I want. That's not spirituality, Joe
Spirituality is saying This is why I choose to live this way.
And I hope that you come on the journey with me.
And if you don't, I'm still going to love you.
And if you need me, I'm still going to be here when you need.
(26:43):
It's simplified, right? It's not always easy, but like
the program says, the program issimple.
It's not easy. Choose your heart, right?
Like staying in active addictionis hard.
So staying in recovery, we have to choose our heart.
Going to the gym is hard. Staying home and eating Donuts
all day is hard. Choose your heart.
Staying in an unhealthy relationship is hard.
(27:04):
Staying in a healthy relationship is hard too.
It's work. They're both work.
We just get to as people that become more spiritually fit, we
start to understand that spiritual journeys are not the
rainbows, spiritual journeys arethe storms.
We just learned how to navigate ourselves through the storm
instead of sitting in it like wewould in active addiction.
(27:28):
Everything's. OK, 'cause you know what, it's
not raining on me, so give me another head, give me another
beer, give me another vodka, right?
It's like. Or it'll get.
Back how am I getting out of here?
Well, there's light, the lights over there.
So that's where the the gift of the spiritual journey is, right.
But a a man said this so beautiful one time he goes
celebrate the top of the mountain when you get there.
(27:50):
But remember one thing as soon as you turn around, you're at
the bottom of the next. Yeah, it's life, it's a journey.
It's beautiful. Everything has an end, right?
Every day has an end. You know, this too Shall pass is
another one that I think of whenI, you know, and it goes for the
good stuff too. When things are going really
well, like this is eventually going to pass, buddy, you know,
(28:11):
enjoy it. Exactly.
Be grateful that it even showed up in the 1st place.
Yeah. Yeah, I think about too.
I talked with somebody on this podcast about, you know, he had
lost, he had lost his husband and he had a lot of grief about
it. And he, he brought up something
that, you know, they, they teachin grief training.
(28:31):
And I'm sure you've maybe dealt with, with this before, cause
grief is everywhere, right? But it's like, you know, you
lost something and you're very emotional about it and you're
very, it's really affecting yourlife everyday.
You can't stop thinking about it.
This grief is sort of surrounding you at all.
Everywhere you go, you're being reminded of this person.
He, he taught me that I should be grateful that I even had that
(28:54):
relationship in the 1st place, right?
The reason I'm feeling this way and so upset and hurt and sad
about this is because I had so many good memories with this
person. Not everybody gets that, right?
And I should be grateful that I even had the experience in the
1st place, right? So it's a little bit of a mind
shift, right? Oh, grief, right.
Grief's the process grief like for me, I'm, I'm a strong
(29:17):
believer the, the 12 steps is not, it's not just for alcohol
and drug addicts. It's such a beautiful journey to
take those 12 steps because it'sall inner work.
It's all inner work. And I love what the man said
and, and you know, like growing up in a Catholic home, death was
final. It was final.
(29:38):
It was like, Oh my God, what do we do now?
What do we do now? What I'm really loving to see
and respecting so much what people are doing is this
celebration of life. Yeah, I love it so much.
It's a. Lot better than Italian
funerals. You know what I mean?
Like it's like if you don't. Suffer.
That means you didn't love them.Yeah, No, because the truth
(29:58):
like, I don't know, that's just my.
No, I, I agree. You know, I've, I've been to
both. I've been to the celebration of
life and I've been to the funeral and it's like there was
a lot of good here, you know, Let's, let's talk about the good
times and the memories that toldyou that.
Person. Yeah, I know.
You show some respect. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, man. It's it's true, though.
I mean, it's, you know, I shouldbe happy that I I had that in
(30:21):
the 1st place. Yeah.
What sort of daily hap like whatis what is a a good day in
recovery look like for you? And I don't mean external
things, but like, Joe wakes up in the morning and I've had a a
good. What are your dailies?
I love that question, brother. That's so awesome.
My daily thing is my daily routine is, and I'm not 100% at
(30:42):
this, but close enough. I wake up, say my prayers.
So I hit my knees, I say my prayers, I do a little
meditation. I write three things I'm
grateful for. Nice.
And I get right to the gym, I get right to the gym, I get it
out majority of the week. I take my dog for a nice nature
(31:05):
walk, get home, make sure whoever's at home like with my
partner now as well. We started where every morning
we give ourselves three things we're grateful for in a text
message. That's.
Great and she came up with and Ifriggin love it because I'm
like, I got to write my gratefuland now I got more things to be
(31:25):
grateful for and people need to understand that shift is a mind
shift. So I'm just going to go along.
And then so I don't really, I doa lot of fruit, fruit fasting
stuff stuff nowadays. So I don't really eat till like
the afternoon probably around like 5 or 6.
I go, I go to work. I love what I do.
(31:45):
I love what I do. It doesn't always work out the
way I want it. But you know what man, when I
see the aha moment, man, you know, I don't hold back my
tears. You know, a lot of a lot of you
know, in the certain industry, they always say, you know, you
never show your emotions. I can't say I can't.
What do you want? But like, I'm going to give the
(32:05):
guy a hug. I'm going to give the person a
hug and say how proud I am. Be proud of yourself because
this is not the easiest journey,but it's very rewarding.
Just to clarify, you're in the recovery space, you're working
with new addicts. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that's about it. I get, I get to as many meetings
as possible and I just, I connect with a lot of people in
(32:27):
recovery throughout the day, maybe 3 or 4 people throughout
the day, send my Home group a couple messages.
So whenever I can. And yeah, make sure to, to have
a small little conversation withmy kids when they're with me and
when I get to see them, it's, it's, it's nice being present
for the, for the kids and I get to see my mom and my mom, she's
(32:49):
so happy to see the journey I'm on.
And you know, old school Italian, you know, if you're
happy, I'm happy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's beautiful, man. I heard a lot of connection in
there, you know, and I didn't hear anything about your phone.
So that was good. I'm, I'm working on that.
You know, that's, that's one of those things where it's like
such an easy, quick connection, dopamine connection, right?
(33:12):
And it's tough, but you, you know, getting outside is, is
another good form of meditation for me too.
For a while I was doing a zoom meeting that was a meditation
meeting and it was great. You know, I got to get back into
that. But before I start my day, I
think that morning time is so important, right, where we're
kind of connecting with God, like you said.
I, I definitely, the one thing that hasn't changed for me is
the prayers, right? And for me, I'm not reciting any
(33:36):
specific prayers. It's, it's mainly along the
lines of like, help me do the next right thing today.
Help guide me through the day, help me get out of my own way,
help me get out of myself, help me practice humility, like just
whatever's coming up in my life.And, you know, be honest.
That's another one too, that I struggle with is like, help me
be authentic and honest, you know, because if I'm authentic
and honest today, everything's gonna be OK, right?
(33:59):
Things gonna gonna happen. Life's gonna fuck me over and
shit's gonna happen. But you know, like you said,
when you're sober and you have the tool kit that you have, you
can get through anything in life.
You know, and I've seen that. I, I've seen there's people that
have been a testament to that getting through cancer and, you
know, all sorts of terrible, terrible things, grief and loss
(34:19):
and doing it sober. So it is possible.
Absolutely it's possible. What is the, what is your
support circle look like with your loved ones and what do you
see a successful support circle looking like with the people
that you work with too? And you know, 'cause I'm sure
you see a lot of that, like really supportive families and
(34:41):
not supportive families. I mean, that's been my
experience in treatment centres.I'm going to be very honest
here, OK, please. And I'm being complete.
Like I always try to be as honest as possible without
hurting people, but honesty and truth usually ends up hurting
some people I don't see, including myself.
(35:02):
Which my family absolutely lovesme.
I know that they will go to bat for me in a second.
But I didn't know how to stop. I didn't know how to stop using
drugs and alcohol because drugs and alcohol were my solution to
my addiction, right? So I went to the 12 steps.
I took a spiritual journey. I, I, I went the self discovery
(35:23):
that I follow along the journey.Yes.
Where was most of the judgement from the support people that I
had in my life? Shame, shame, shame.
Are they doing it purposely? Absolutely not.
They don't. Their minds are programmed where
if I do this, he'll stop not understanding that I'll keep
going. So I don't find many again,
there are there are good supports out there.
(35:45):
I find that when your when your community, whether it's a
family, but the community does individual work on themselves
and stops like, you know, support the beautiful recovery
journey until they fall when they fall, let's pronounce
because we don't work on our stuff, but we don't have nothing
to work on. It's a lot of it is put on to
(36:08):
the alcoholic and the drug addict because we're the front
page of the newspaper, right. So it's very hard to find
unconditional support, like you said about your wife, like going
through hell with you. It's not easy to find humans
that that will self discover themselves instead of just
(36:29):
sitting there pointing the finger at us.
So I find a lot of people in in alcoholic and drug addiction
recovery have a hard time finding true unconditional
support when it's getting hard when they're trying to set
healthy boundaries that we're only taught from our sponsors
and people in the community. Because for so long, our
(36:50):
communities, we lived in our environments, our families,
we're so used to the almost likehow we're program, like I'm
going to fix everybody else. Everybody's trying to fix
everybody else, right? So one prayer that I, I never
stopped doing is God show the ones that are trying to support
us, the light like you showed us, because they deserve it just
(37:11):
as much as us, right? So I just try to teach people to
set healthy boundaries. I try to teach families to set
healthy boundaries. If you, if you're having a hard
time understanding that there's Al Anon, there's Naranan,
there's psychotherapist, there's, I don't know, church
gatherings there, there, there'sa solution everywhere.
(37:31):
But you know, the opposite of addiction is connection.
We crave a connection. That's why we connect to that
because we couldn't survive in the environments we're in, not
because the people are evil people.
We grew up, we're great people because of the people that that
gave us life. They have great hearts.
(37:53):
They were programming the different generation than the
one we're breaking today. Where we're we're, we're doing
our best to wear our hearts on our sleeve where so many times
it was told, don't do this, don't do this, don't do that.
So to find good, good supports in family dynamics.
And this is just my opinion. It, it's, it's not easy.
(38:14):
A lot of people leave treatment,go back home and they relapse.
They're going to the same environment.
People think people coming home from a, from a, an addiction
center are cured, yet they're going right back to the place
that, and again, it's not just the, it's just everybody.
You know, you keep 5 drug addicts around you, you're going
to be the 6th. You keep 5 spiritual round
spiritual people around, you're going to be the 6th.
(38:35):
So it's set your healthy boundaries and lead by example
because it's hard for us to, to change and, and learn the
trueness of what we really know is to be true when we're, when
we go to these addiction centersand the 12 steps, which is be
your true authentic self. It's hard when I'm trying to
survive, I'm trying to survive. So support systems, definitely
(38:58):
my own opinion on it is support systems don't do the work for
the addict or the alcoholic or the drug addict or the alcohol.
Do the work for yourself and ourjourneys are not quick fixes
like doctors give us medicationsor drugs give us instant
gratification. Our journeys are one step at a
time. Understanding I just made a
(39:19):
mistake, only my mistake and slowly going through it.
There's a process in our journey.
It doesn't happen overnight. And us as drug acts as
Alcoholics. It's not even today.
Today's already too late. I wanted it yesterday and I get
angry. If you could relate to that, I
hope I answered your. Question.
No, you did. That was beautiful and I'm, I
appreciate you being honest about it because my, you know,
(39:41):
my therapist, she's in recovery as well.
She says without a doubt every day, every time I talk to her,
not every day. I don't talk to her every day,
but that'd be expensive. She, she would pick up though,
if I called her because she's a good woman.
But she says the, the, the biggest struggle she has is
getting families to go to Al Anon.
That is the biggest she she preaches it on everybody because
(40:03):
just like you said, there's an answer for us.
And there's also an answer for them too, right?
And yeah, I it's tough because how you don't, I, I don't hold a
lot of credibility coming out oftreatment.
You know I, I don't, I don't, you know I don't.
I can't start telling people what to.
I still today, today I try. Not to tell people.
(40:23):
I try not to tell people what todo, but you know, I I I it's
hard to come from treatment or, you know, relapse or whatever
and be like, you know, you should go to Al Anon right, or
you should work on yourself mom,like that doesn't go over very
well. The fuck are you?
Damn, yeah. You know what you put me
through. I'm reminded often by my life of
what I put her through and I andit you know it's they're on
their own healing journey. So to your point, all I can do
(40:47):
is change myself, right? A spiritual awakening.
One of my favorite definitions in the literature is my, you
know, spiritual awakening is a profound alteration in my
reaction to life. And I love that.
I wake up in the morning and I'min addiction.
This guy fucked me over. This guy did this.
Don't you know, I'd be successful if this wasn't
(41:07):
happening, right? And when I get sober in
recovery, it's like I'm just, the world's not changing.
Like you said, the world is not changing.
Anthony's changing, Joe's changing.
Oh, maybe this is happening to me so that I can grow, or maybe
this is happening for me and notto me, right.
These little mind shifts, mindset shifts where I'm just
like, maybe the glass is half full instead of half empty.
(41:29):
You know, it's, it's, that's, that's all recovery is.
And that when I first started this podcast, another thing, I,
I originally wanted to call it some sort of variation of
altered perception. Hmm, right.
Because I, and, but that sounds like too much like using drugs.
But we come in, we come into recovery and we get a shift in
perception, right? It's, it's a perception, a
(41:50):
disease of perception. We get this, this shift in the
way we look at the world. And that's what I, I try to do
everyday is like, if you're listening to this and you're,
you know, you have a loved one, because I do.
I, we get a lot of, I get a lot of moms and I talk to a lot of
loved ones in recovery, right? And I did an episode with a dad
that's has two daughters in, in one in recovery and one in
(42:12):
addiction. And he did a great job.
I'm gonna have him back on here.And he's, he's great.
I got a lot of messages from that one where people were like,
man, that you, you know, you made me think of something
differently, right? And that's all I'm trying to do
here is like, huh, maybe I should try that, right.
And to your point, it's like, huh, maybe I'm gonna work on
myself a little bit instead of trying to change my loved one
because you can't fucking changethem.
(42:34):
No, can anyone change you? Right.
They I'm sure they tried. Not even God has the power of
changing me unless I go to Him. Yeah.
Yeah, but you have to do the groundwork.
Yeah, like you said, Absolutely.Yeah.
How do you carry the message of recovery today, Joe?
Treat others as you want to be treated.
(42:59):
Just treat the world as you did when you were a child and your
life will always be beautiful. Because I'll see children.
Look at a kid and say why are you fat?
An adult will look at that like what the hell are you doing?
But the child means nothing fromthat.
(43:21):
Nothing at all. A child will push somebody,
they'll push them back 3 minuteslater they'll be best friends
like nothing happened because they have such light in them.
Because the programming has not got in them yet.
Just be your true authentic selfalways.
(43:41):
If you deep down inside know you're about to react to
something that's going to hurt somebody, just don't do it.
Practicing, I'm sorry, preaching, not always
practicing. That's why I love our step 10,
you know, make that daily inventory.
Because we are not perfect beings, never will be.
We are broke. We are human beings having a
spiritual, I'm sorry, spiritual beings having a human
(44:03):
experience. Just be your true authentic
self. Be the child that that you
crave, that you crave, like be the child you wish you could be
again. Just be that man Be that.
It's so fun to. Screw being an adult, like be
responsible, do what you got to do like go to work.
I'm not saying go play all the time, but find the time to go
(44:26):
out and play. Get off of your devices.
Don't worry about the Candy Crush and the social media
that'll be there after preaching.
Not always practicing 'cause I get caught up in why didn't that
person like myself. Yeah, Yeah, right.
Just search for the child because that's, I think that's
the journey of life is searchingfor that child in US.
(44:46):
Yeah. Just be the child in you.
Yeah. I've heard that before and it's,
it's so true. It's like, you know, just take
it. Anytime I even the elevator ride
on the way down from my condo onthe way here today, I I always
notice children because yeah, they fascinate me, right?
It's like, and I was this kid just no worries in the world,
right? He's just thinking about the
next. He's present, he's fully
(45:08):
present. And if I could be a 10th of that
in my day where it's just like, you know, he wait, what's the
highest floor in the elevator? Like that's what he was worried
about, right? He was worried about like how
many floors are in the building?And it's like, yes, like, but I
don't I don't notice those things unless I notice them,
right. And I noticed it today because
I'm working on myself and I'm, you know, that's, that's the
kind of man I want to be, right?Just somebody that's always
(45:30):
improving. You mentioned the, the daily
inventory because I don't know what I'm doing wrong sometimes,
you know, But if I take, you know, an hour out of my day to
look back and reflect and say, huh, did I lie to anyone?
Did I cheat? Did I steal?
You know, did I manipulate? Did I cause harm?
Right. Oh, yeah, you know, you started
to. And like you said, progress, you
(45:51):
know, you practice progress, notperfection.
I'm never going to be perfect, but the more I practice it, it's
progress towards perfection. And it's like, you know, I'm
never going to achieve perfection.
And that's OK because we're human and no one will achieve
perfection, you know? But if I can just work on it
every day, I'm going to start tochange those behaviors because I
don't like they're not serving me.
You know, I'm pissing people offwhen I'm doing this stuff and
(46:13):
people don't want to hang out with me and I'm just, there's a
lot of negativity happening whenI'm when I'm doing those things,
right. So it's a beautiful thing that
every day has an end and we havethe ability to do better
tomorrow. You know?
What's something, Joe, that you're most proud of since
getting sober? One thing that's coming to mind
(46:40):
right now, which I've been working on, the ability, the
ability to choose my piece over anything else, whether it be my
children, whether it be my partner, whether it be my
family, whether it be friends. If you're coming to take pieces
(47:03):
of my piece, I'm going to talk to you about it, but you're not
stealing it anymore. Life for me through that hell
that I've had to live through for many, many years.
Where I'm at today. Peace is so important.
(47:25):
And to acquire peace, you must go through storms, I believe.
But there's peace in the storm as well.
It's the perception of it, right?
Is it easy? Yeah.
I'm sitting here right now. I'm on a great time with a, with
a, with a beautiful guy in recovery that I love to death.
And it's the first time I met him.
But our souls have connected somewhere along this journey for
(47:46):
sure. Peace.
To acquire peace, everybody wants to be happy.
But you, you cannot be happy allthe time.
You can only be happy because you felt sadness and vice versa.
But to acquire peace doesn't make life always a joyous and
free and happy occasion. It just it, it gives me the
opportunity to say sit back, don't overreact, choose yourself
(48:14):
separate with love and kindness.Do not ever say never say never
because things happen. People go, they come, they go,
they come. But I choose today to not lose
Joe anymore because I'm too important to myself today.
I'm the most important thing in my life today.
There's nothing more important than Joe.
Today. My children are my world, are my
(48:36):
world, my mom, my family, they're my world.
But they I, they don't have nothing.
If Joe's not number one to Joe, call it selfish, call it
selfish. It is selfish to be honest with
it is, but it's a healthy selfish because if I choose Joe
today, I can only be the healthiest version of myself.
(48:56):
And then everybody wins, right? Yeah, Yeah, I love that.
If I could just finish, I was speaking to you before about the
law of attraction, right? And, and, and I think I will
sing it to you. If you could hold it in your if
you could see it in your mind, you can hold it in your hand.
If I give up with a vibe all thetime, a vibe, A vibe that vibes
coming to me. So if I could give love, love,
(49:16):
love even when it's hard, love will love will come.
Am I doing it for that reason? No, I'm not today I don't.
I got caught up in life doing things and saying that he didn't
give me back what I why would henot do that?
Everything I didn't. No, today if I do something, I
do something because it makes mefeel good knowing that I I
(49:38):
brought some joy to someone else.
Yeah, right. So I hope that.
Yeah, no, it's it's true. And you know, you made me think
about a moment. Yeah.
So I live downtown Toronto, and this has been happening actually
a lot more lately. I'm happy you brought this up
because I hadn't thought about this in a while.
I've been reacting a lot to people and I'll give you an
example. One of my pet peeves is people
(50:01):
that honk way too much in the city, right?
Like hold their horn. You know, it's, it's there to
for a hazard, right? And I don't hopefully I don't
start ranting about this becauseit drives me nuts, right.
When you live in the city enough, you know, you can hear
it in your in your building, right?
But so I there's this guy the other day where just had a
beautiful dinner for my my wife's birthday.
(50:22):
My parents came downtown and we're walking down the street.
We got ice cream. Everything's good golden.
I'm happy. You know, I got a new job at a
treatment center. So that's like good things are
happening in my life and the, the it's just it's it's
beautiful. And I I want to mention too, is
like for a long time in in recovery, things weren't really
(50:43):
adding up for me financially, right.
And this is one thing I really want to preach to people, and
preach is the wrong word, but I really want to get out there
that sometimes you just have to wait a little longer, you know?
Like before the miracle. Yeah, exactly.
Only before the miracle happens sometimes you just got to, it's
coming, right? The, the, the gifts are coming.
And it's not like my life has changed completely, but I wanted
(51:05):
to get a job at a treatment center, right?
This is something that I really want to do.
I'm going back to school for it too, right?
So that's amazing. These things are starting to
unfold and it's because I stuck the, the difficult path.
I, I, I trudged it out and you know, sure, it's only been six
months again, only I shouldn't say only it's six months is a
good, you know, it's good enough, brother.
Especially when I couldn't get 6fucking minutes together.
(51:25):
You know I couldn't, right? So anyway, so I'm walking down
the street, things are going really well and this guy's
holding his horn. The whole street's vibrating
through the street, driving me insane.
I literally walk away from it. And this isn't me.
I don't normally do this right? And I start getting into it.
The guy, he's got his window down.
So I'm like, I'm going to tell this guy how he's doing right
(51:46):
and how he's pissing me off and I just lose my mind, right?
And we get into it and then whatever he's embarrassed, he
drives away. I'm embarrassed and I'm, you
know, people in the street are now looking at me, right?
And it's funny how it just kind of happens like that, right?
It, it comes out of nowhere, butI'm not proud of those moments,
you know what I mean? Like those are things that I
(52:06):
want to work on. That's not who I am.
And, and, you know, my life is embarrassed, my family's
embarrassed. And but this is something that
keeps coming up and, and something that I need to work
on. So, you know, talking and doing
this stuff and talking to peoplelike you, it makes me realize
that like I have an opportunity to work on these things today.
I never would have even thought that was a problem, you know,
six months ago, 10 years ago, when I first came into recovery
(52:28):
or when I was in my act of addiction.
But it's a beautiful thing and it it really is that I can put
out good into the world. And so I look at that experience
now and I try to do this on it when somebody pisses me off.
This is where I was going with this.
Sorry when somebody pisses me off.
And it happens a lot in Toronto,You know, there's a lot of
tourists and stuff like that. If I just react with a smile or
(52:50):
you mentioned putting out good energy into the world, there's a
little part of me that's like, I'm going to get that back
someday in some way or another. But also I just exact to your
point, I've never got into an altercation with someone ever in
my life, physical or or mental, you know, verbal where I felt
better after never, never even if I've been right justified,
(53:10):
you know, people are applauding me whatever then that's not
happened before. But I've never felt better after
that right, never. It's never happened where I've
made my point embarrass the person 'cause that's usually
what I wanna do is embarrass theperson.
I've never felt better, so yeah,it it's always ended up worse is
what I'm. Saying, why do you think that?
Yeah, that's a great. I love that question.
(53:33):
And and we, you know, we, we talked about this in my
treatment center last time because we had a counselor there
that would always come in and complain about Tim horton's.
And this guy was like, he would,he's, he would complain that the
and this guy was very in tune with his self.
He was a therapist and he, you know, he was, but he was honest.
He'd go to the same Tim Horns every morning and the guy
(53:53):
wouldn't cut his bagel all the way through and he was driving
him nuts. Oh my gosh, it's.
Like I know what you're talking about.
Every single day he's like, you have one fucking job, right?
Just cut the bagel all the way through.
It would drive him nuts. And he would always Vince.
He would always talk slowly. To me, it's all about me.
He's doing it to me. That's exactly what he said too,
right? And we, and he and I asked him
(54:14):
one day because I'm, I'm so interested in that too.
It's like, why does that bother us so much when we because he
embarrassed the guy or did something about it, right?
Why, why? And so to answer your question,
because I don't think it's what we were meant to do, right in
our DNA. It's it, it never feels good
because I don't think we were meant to put other people down.
(54:37):
The outcome is never what we thought it would be.
Because God's in you. I've heard people and because of
certain lifestyle I lived, I couldn't show Oh my God, that I,
that I really hurt him that much.
No, but I went home, you know, 25 years old home crying, crying
to God. Please, God, please help them.
(54:59):
I could dare, I could not show that out there.
I was so scared to show God out there.
I'd show you evil 'cause he had the power over me.
So you feel bad because it's notyou.
Yeah. It's not you.
It's not you. And it just something rang
through to me when you said thatyou attacked that guy honking,
which, Oh my God, man, one day, just like it.
(55:20):
Just just. Honked.
Yeah, just once or twice, right?If, if I, if I may, what I found
from that was your wife's birthday.
Your parents come down, right? You're early on in recovery
again. Yeah.
So you're holding on to some things.
Absolutely. And then how do I protect them
(55:41):
now? If he's bothering me, he's
bothering. I got to protect them.
You want to protect your loved ones, brother.
It's so beautiful when I could actually see it because I've
I've done the same things, the same things.
I will overreact even more when my loved ones are around because
I have to protect them. Yeah, right.
(56:04):
I haven't thought about it like that, so I might be wrong.
It's it's in there for sure. There's something and up watch.
When I leave today, I'm going toI'm going to reflect more on
that and be like, yeah, you know, there's a part of I I
think there's truth in every every bit of you know, I just we
subconsciously do things becausewe think it just pisses us off
(56:24):
period, right. But it's you're right, there's
more to I believe that too, And that's, you know, where therapy
has brought me. I want to end with this, and I
usually end with this on this podcast.
If you could say something to a struggling addict or alcoholic
right now, what would you say? You are not your pain, you are
(56:51):
your purpose. And I know if you're struggling
right now, it's hard to see that, but you're struggling so
much, I think, because you're afraid to let God out, higher
power out, let him out to keep letting him back in because
(57:12):
you're worth it. Beautiful.
Well said, Joe. Thanks so much for coming down,
brother. I had a great time and I'm happy
we're friends now. Thanks brother.
For real, next time it's a Nespresso.
Yeah, 100%. I gotta get one in here
actually. Thanks for listening.
Please help us grow the channel and like, share and subscribe
for more content. The discussions and stories
(57:34):
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,
please consult A licensed physician, addiction specialist,
or mental health professional. You are no longer alone.
And I don't need people to tell me what to do because I'm bad at
listening to that, right? I mean, I, I do need it.
I need it but. Yes, but it's a suggestion and
have the patience with their journey.
Yeah, and there's, there's lots of journeys, right?
Yeah, I, I, but you learned the hard way.
I'm telling you, there's so manythings with this, like it's
driving me nuts, the podcasting,but I, I love it and I'm
(00:49):
learning everyday about how to do this and how to do that.
And you know, watching a lot of videos, taking a lot of
direction because I, this isn't like something that I've grew up
doing or, you know, but I thought first I started this
podcast, I would say this, but Istarted this podcast to stay
sober myself, right? And I, I have to remember that
that that was goal number one. Good for you, because sure, I
(01:11):
can sit here and tell you till the cows come home that I'm
doing this for everybody else. And but if I like, if that's a
bonus of this and and it is, it's another reason why I
started doing this podcast was to get the message out to
people. But I have to, if I'm not sober,
and I'm sure you can, I can't doany of that, right?
I can't carry Nomad. I don't have a message to carry.
(01:31):
And you know what I'm seeing in that, what you just said right
there, I'm seeing someone who's staying humble and not needing
other people's. Validation, yeah.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Whether one person watches, 20 people watch or 1000 people
watch, you're you're concentrating on your recovery.
That's why you're doing it. Yeah, that's amazing, bro.
I have to thank you. I have to remind myself though,
(01:52):
like constantly, because you chase those followers the likes
the fucking I can I can monetizethis now like Oh my God, you
know, like maybe I can quit my job one day, right?
And all these things start to come into your head.
And sure it's possible, but a? 1000% is possible.
It's a lot of attraction, it's alot of the universe.
If I teach a lot of this with myclients, if you could see it in
(02:13):
your mind, you could hold it in your hand.
It's just like a relapse. We won't see it in our minds.
All of a sudden we got in our hands.
So why not the dream life? Because it's not.
It's not feasible. Of course it's feasible.
That's why you see it. Yeah.
Relapse was never feasible in mymind, Yeah.
But if your higher power put something in your mind and you
could see it, practice that every day.
Don't practice it like it's in the future.
(02:33):
Practice it like it's now. You already monetized.
It just hasn't come into fruition yet.
Yeah, it's a lot of attraction. Brother, yeah, I love that.
I love that, Joe, thanks so muchfor coming down, brother.
I, I appreciate you, man. I, I, you know, I fell in love
with you already. But you know, it's funny, this
recovery thing we become, you know, it says in the literature
that we become fast friends, right?
(02:55):
We have a common problem and nowwe have a common solution,
right? And that's it.
You know, this, this alcoholism addiction thing does not
discriminate. I've met lawyers, I've met
homeless people in recovery. I've met fucking people that
live under the bridge, homeless.I've met people that are
doctors, right. And it's, you know, skin colours
all over creeds, religions. That's the beautiful thing about
(03:18):
this. It's like a, a group we would
normally not mix, you know, but we found a common solution where
it's like, you know, these are all suggestions like we were
talking about before, But my, I had a sponsor that would always
say to me, you know, these are all suggestions that I'm telling
you kind of like, you know, I suggest you taking a parachute
when you're jumping out of a helicopter, right, or an
airplane. Oh, I love that man.
(03:39):
Why don't you tell us, tell us alittle bit about your story, you
know, how you ended up into in recovery and, and what that sort
of looked like before and after for you?
Before I'm I'm just going to do a quick recap of growing up, you
know, Italian background, Italian culture.
We started our journey. Christy Pitts ended up at Janice
(04:00):
Shepherd. My dad really didn't want me on
the streets a lot. Very, very young age.
He had me in hockey. I flourished there.
Soccer flourished there. You know, home life was OK, but
you know, you come from an Italian background, you're
(04:20):
always going to like what I've noticed in my journey is there's
a lot of narcissism in one parent.
I'm not saying all of them, but what I've seen on my journey and
you know, at a young age, it wasalways good wasn't good enough.
Perfect was good enough and evenperfect at its flaws.
So at a very young age, if I wasn't perfect, I wasn't trying.
So I had to be perfect at everything, right?
(04:42):
And even when I did great, it just was never good enough.
So, you know, in along that journey, I was, I was introduced
to a neighbor where we had a quick connection at the at a
certain point, sexual abuse started at that.
And and it was just, it was, it was a very, very, very scary for
(05:06):
me. And just the way he had taken
advantage of me, this gentleman,and then going home and then
going back there. And I remember at a very young
age, I must have been 8 years old, our our fathers, the man
who was sexually abusing me, he was younger as well.
They're all watching a soccer game.
(05:27):
And he goes, come here, come here.
And he gives me this glass of wine and I sucked it, but he
goes, just drink your back. And man, oh man.
Like within like a minute or so,I was so numb that I wasn't
afraid anymore. He didn't scare me no more.
And so every time I had to go there, I'd go in my dad's
(05:47):
cantina and I'd grab a glass of wine and it was almost like I
knew, but I didn't know 'cause Iwas young, but I just knew it
made me feel good. What it was, I don't know.
I just know it made me feel good, right.
And with some work that I've been doing with people, because
it, what ended up happening was he, he just cut me off and I
felt like abandoned and stuff. And it's the weirdest thing,
(06:07):
right? And doing some work with, with
this lady that is working with me up at the center through the
nervous system regulation and stuff, which I didn't know,
right. And she says it was rejection
for you. And it followed rejection
followed me for a long period oftime, which turned into people
pleasing, turned into everybody had to like me.
And if you didn't like me, like 10 people go like me.
(06:29):
If the one person didn't like me, that's the one I had to sell
my story to, right. And, you know, my, my mom, salt
of the earth, like just, you know, just taught us about God
and about Christ and about how much he loves us and all that
stuff. But, you know, in, in, in our
culture, it's always do bad, go to hell, do bad, go to hell.
(06:52):
At a young age, I was terrified of God, man.
I love Jesus, but I hated God. And I was trying to distinguish
the both of the young age, Right.
So, yeah. And you know what?
I got into organized crime at a young age.
I had enough of my dad in and around my draft year when my
friends are getting drafted to go to the O and the NHL and
(07:14):
stuff. I quit, but I'm done.
I'm done and I just started an organized crime lifestyle and it
spiraled for many years after that.
Wow. Thanks for sharing that.
I appreciate it. Yeah, this trauma theme comes up
a lot with addicts and Alcoholics, right?
But you mentioned something thatwas interesting.
(07:34):
There is like you carried that rejection thing your whole life,
right? What?
How does that show up today and how do you work on it?
Well, you know what? I'm learning a lot through
nervous system regulation. I work with a psychotherapist
personally, myself. The rejection part of it, it's,
it's, it's ongoing. It's gotten better, it's gotten
(07:57):
better with the spiritual journey of understanding that
we're all God's children. We're all not meant to be on
each other's paths forever. Today, I, I don't set my
boundaries like before where it had to be, take me, take me,
take me, take me, put me againsta wall and then react and
protect myself, right? Because I don't want to be
(08:17):
rejected. Now it's more of, you know,
we're just not clicking and you're not understanding my
boundaries right now and you have to be put aside.
I love you, but I'm going to love you from a distance.
We don't all get along. We don't all have the same path,
right? Like my path towards my higher
power and what what he has in store for me has allowed me to
(08:37):
understand that when I'm rejected, it's themselves
rejecting themselves. It's almost that one points the
finger out when there's three pointing back.
And I've always been caught in that, right.
So rejection is still something I work on, but I've gotten so
much better. And a lot has to do with
understanding the nervous systemregulation.
(08:58):
So our fight, our flight, our freeze, our fawn, those are all
character, character defects andcharacteristics that we use to
protect ourselves at very young ages when the events happened to
I would have to say, if not all,most people in recovery.
Yeah, you mentioned fawn at the end there.
That's something I learned recently too.
(09:18):
My therapist is really good too,and she taught me the fawn, you
know, with regards to the nervous system regulation.
To me, the way I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, but
the the fawn is like you attach to to the sad thing.
So if I have, you know, drugs are in my life and they're
causing me a lot of problems andI can't stop doing cocaine, I
(09:40):
sort of attach myself to it and it becomes like my love almost,
and I love it. Is that am I understanding?
That yeah, we're people pleasing. 1 character is people
pleasing, right? Yeah, yeah.
So what kind of latching on to that person so that they'll
they'll. The person, the drug, we're
trying to please, we're trying to please to get pleased.
(10:01):
Codependent too, right? You know, if you love me, I need
you, Joe, to love me so that I can feel OK.
Yeah, you know, in my own skin. I love that.
Yeah. That was what he was described
to me and I, I really related with that.
I want to talk about spirituality, faith, God, higher
power. There's so many ways we can go
with this one, but I think people in my experience, hear
(10:23):
the word God and they run the other way, right?
Because of whatever their upbringing or this is a
religion, Like I don't want to be a part of a cult, but all
this bullshit, right? And you know, there's a huge
difference I've learned between spirituality and religion,
right? So what is?
What does faith mean to you today?
Well, I like what you said, how the difference between religion
and spirit and spirituality, right.
(10:43):
So for me, religion is a man made thing.
It's a business. Christ, like Christ, is my
higher power. And Christ said it.
You don't need to go to a templeto worship me.
You know, a lot of people go to church on Sundays and as soon as
they leave, they judge the world.
You know, there's a message at the churches as well.
(11:04):
I'm not, I'm not going to disrespect it in, in any way.
That's their belief system and, and, and great for you.
But I do use a lot of the churchand analogies to understand,
make people understand what we've been through because what
I believe is addiction is in it is in every single human being
put on this earth because higherpower, God, universe gave us
free will, right? For me, I believe that out of
(11:29):
all the addictions, the alcoholic and the drug addict,
believe this or not, I believe that the chosen ones, I believe
we were the ones sent here and at a very young age, that evil
entity, that evil entity that, you know, almost like you're
watching a cartoon and there's the the good guy and the bad
guy, right? And where do we go?
We always go with the bad guy, right?
So at the beginning of any cartoon, you do that bad thing
(11:52):
your stomach's telling you not to do, not to do.
And this guy's there saying justdo it, Just do it.
You get away with it and then every time you watch some
something like that as a young age, you notice at the end they
end up being honest about what they've done, you know, and and
and they make good on what they've done.
And then the Angel comes and says, you know, good for you.
For me, it's that simple, A spiritual journey, you know,
(12:14):
feel what's coming in you feel what's coming in you.
I am not here to to fix the world.
I'm here to fix myself so the world can relate to what I'm
doing. What I'm doing is what I've been
told by faith. Be a good person, unconditional
love. Understand that just because I
(12:34):
don't know you doesn't mean I don't love you.
One thing about recovery for me is in the rooms of recovery is I
share this a lot when I do a lotof speaking engagements.
I don't even know you and I loveyou and you're still out there
using drugs and alcohol and I know I don't know you, but I
love you because me and you are the same.
And I'm going to go back to whatI mean by the chosen ones.
(12:56):
A lot of people let's we're going to use the Catholic
religion, right? Christ saved the disciples.
The disciples were Alcoholics. One was Matthew was in layman's
terms on on our nowadays. He was a collector.
He collected money right. Then you had Mary Magdalene.
She was a hooker, prostitute. You had thieves, you had people
(13:20):
that were so broken from society, they were just shunned.
And what did Christ do? He took them and showed them the
way. Now I'm just talking Christ
because it's my higher power. But spirituality in general is
like that. I don't judge a drug addict,
whether you're on the street as,as a homeless person or you're
(13:40):
in an office as a lawyer. I, I don't judge those people
because I am those people. And that pain that we live with
is there's not many people that don't suffer with alcohol and
drug addiction that would ever understand because it's our
pain. But then I pick up on your pain
and how do I help you release that pain?
(14:02):
By working on my pain. And then we connect, right.
And in, in, in the rooms of recovery.
It's instant family. We don't all get along, but
we're instant family. Like anybody could call me in
recovery. We might not got along.
We might have skipped and, and fallen out of our journeys.
But if they call me saying I'm suffering, I'm, I'm going to be
(14:23):
there because that's a human being and that's a child of the
universe, child of God, child oflight, whatever it is that you
want to connect to. And that's one thing I think
that separates religion from spirituality.
I, I believe I, my personal experience, I'm judged the most
by people in religion when I've fallen along my journey.
(14:45):
Like, you know what? It's easy to, to, to support
someone on a journey of recovery.
That's getting to the gym, that's reading, that's doing
great podcasts like yourself. It's easy to support that
person. But the true testament of
unconditional love is when that person falls down.
And instead of saying you should, you know, you're not
(15:06):
supposed to do that. Well, thank you.
Of course, I know I'm not supposed to do that.
That's where that's where the the love comes.
How do I support someone that I can't agree with what they're
doing and not understanding thatthey have no power to stop once
they're in? Like it's easy to support
somebody that's going to recovery.
I love that you, you said a lot of good stuff there.
(15:27):
I found that to be especially true, You know, in my last
relapse with my, with my wife, right, Everybody, you know, she
was there in the worst moments, you know, and I, I put that
woman throughout, right? And it was a true testament of
her character. And also, you know, it helped
that she was able to see what I looked like in recovery and
(15:48):
working on myself and that this was just like a, a, you know,
another Rd. a bump in the road, right, Albeit at the time it
seemed like a mountain, right, Because, you know, we, we drag
people through the mud, as I always say.
I, I also really liked what you said about changing ourselves
and not changing the world. I spent a lot of time being and
(16:09):
I still do today. I can be this guy that this, I,
I've heard this before the sheriff of the universe, right?
You know. The director.
Yeah, the director, you're not doing it.
You know, that's not how you drive.
You're not doing it right. This is the way blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, right. And it's like, dude, you know,
I, I can Simply put it as as simple as this.
I heard this recently. It was like that person, if
someone pisses me off, someone does something I don't like, or
(16:32):
somebody can't stop using drugs or alcohol in my life, it's
like, you know, right now that person is simply not living in
the way I would prefer. You know, they're, they're
simply not living in the way I would prefer, right?
Whenever I have an opinion on something, you know, 'cause I
have a lot of opinions on things, you should be doing it
this way. You should be doing it that way,
right? So I have to change myself And,
(16:55):
and you said I, I need to like get other people to kind of see
what I'm doing and relate to me,right?
I, I really like that. You know, what was early
recovery like for you and how did you navigate that?
How did you get through that 'cause I know that, you know,
the first bit for anybody can bereally tough.
The early bits of recovery was me.
(17:20):
It was. It was just some time where I
knew that something was just completely wrong because it was
fun at the very beginning, man, it was fun like escaping
reality, not a care in the world, going to the clubs,
(17:41):
vacations, you know, you know, living a certain lifestyle.
Money is just no object type of thing.
And something started happening where at night, sorry, not at
night, the next morning when I wake up, I'm like, please, God,
please, like just I want to stop.
Like I want to stop. I can't do this every day.
(18:02):
And my, you know, my mom being hurt by it and I'm like, I swear
to God, you know, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done.
And then 2-3 days later, right back to the cycle and it's like
I'm here again, right? And I was angry.
I got it those times too, man. So when I would hear him, I'd be
like, just leave me alone, man. Like you didn't, you didn't save
me. Well, I'm going to save myself.
(18:23):
And so as, as time kept going, Ifound it where it was like every
time I was waking up, it was like, please, just help me.
Please. If you're out there, just help
me, please. And you know what, Like now
when, when my higher power communicates to me, 'cause he
don't talk to me, but he communicates to me like he'll
put a stop sign with flashing lights in front of it.
(18:44):
And nothing happens in God's world by mistake.
So if I'm feeling a certain way and I've seen a freaking stop
sign with flashing on it, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm listening to my
higher pinks going the other direction, right?
So in early recovery, I went to the the rooms of recovery,
'cause I just, I didn't want to use every day anymore.
(19:05):
Just get me to Friday. Yeah, just get me to Friday.
That's what my sick mind I. Want that old lifestyle back
where I was able to control I want.
The fun back, right? Yeah.
And like far from it, because once that evil entity was just
had all the power, you know, theworld, I guess understands is
that the as the devil? I, I just understand it as the
(19:25):
deep, deep rooted just pain and shame and guilt, remorse and all
that stuff that every time I wassober, he was telling me, that's
why you need this, That's why you need this.
So when I went to the first timein the rooms of recovery, that's
what I was doing. I was doing it for that.
And you know, Fast forward a couple years after 2012,
thirteen, when I first got in the rooms, I ended up in
(19:47):
treatment 2016, you know, brokenmarriage.
I tried to leave the marriage two or three times, not because
she was a bad person or I was a bad person.
I decided to stop living a life and both of us just couldn't,
you know, we, we couldn't, we weren't compatible, right?
And you know, then I just, I finally, just, you know, certain
(20:11):
things happen. I'm not going to get into her
business. But I fell hard and hard, like
probably the worst I've ever felt ever.
And then I ended up in treatment.
And for the first, I think it was 7 or 8 days, bro, I couldn't
get a word out, man. It was just tears and tears and
(20:32):
tears. And I had this one counselor, he
came up to me one day. He goes, come, come.
And I love how like when God communicated, just something
happened. So he brought me on the side and
there's this beautiful field andhe's like, listen, man, you're a
good guy. But if you're going to cry every
day for 30 days, you're going toleave here and.
Go right back to using that. Whatever that pain is, start
(20:53):
using it as a strength. It's Friday today.
By the by the time I get back here on Monday, just tell me
you've even spoke to people. Just show me you've read a
couple pages. I don't know what the I don't
know what happened, bro. All I well, I do know what
happened. He gave me the power and, and I
took it and I went with it. And man, oh man.
(21:15):
Like I was talking to people, reading, writing.
Like within three days I, I wentto the gym two or three times a
day. There was a huge shift.
Mindset shift yeah, I love that.Yeah, I I agree 100% The, you
know, my higher power, my God, Ichoose to call it God because
it's easier, you know, plain andsimple, right.
It's not this bearded guy in thesky And and that's me.
(21:38):
It's it's this force, this innerteacher.
A lot of people get scared aboutit, right.
But it's it doesn't have to be what I say it's whatever, you
know, it's just not me today, right?
It's not me. He communicates to other people.
And that was a perfect example there where, you know, the
universe, this force is coming to you and saying, Joe, you got
to change something here, right?Something's got to give.
(22:00):
Something's got to change. And it just came in the form of
a counselor at that time, right?I can.
Oh, I love that. Yeah.
I can name. I can give you a book of times
where people have showed up in my life.
And at the time, you don't see it like that, right?
You're just like, oh, this fucking guy is just, you know,
wants his job to be easier. But, you know, it's it's a
message from the universe. It's a sign.
Whatever you said, the red flashing lights, like.
Yeah, if you keep going in this direction, you're going to end
(22:22):
up right back. Where?
And and that scared the shit outof me because every time I've
relapsed, it's always gotten worse.
Without a doubt, no matter what,I've always picked up where I
left off. You know, I was doing new drugs.
I introduced new things into my into my arsenal.
I hung out with new people. You know, I got closer to the
fentanyl than I needed to be, right That, you know, closer to
(22:42):
death than I needed to be. Why do you think to you today?
You touched on it a little bit, but why is why is faith so
important? Why is spirituality so important
in recovery? Because it's the thing we feared
the most when we were in active addiction.
(23:03):
You, you said something before, and I really liked what you
said. How you know everybody's as soon
as they hear the word God, they run because the evil has so much
power over you. Our souls really know that's the
answer. And as active addiction and even
has sometimes having a hard timein recovery.
(23:23):
We run from God because he's gotmore power over us.
Call it your will, call it an evil entity, call it the devil.
Call the devil of addiction. It's common.
So wherever there's light, you know, they've done they've done
a great job to say as soon as you hear the word God.
And, and, and I empathize with people who hear the word God,
(23:44):
especially like in the Roman Catholic thing where it's gotten
such a bad name of certain little things that have
happened, which are very bad things.
But you know, the Roman CatholicChurch has done what it's done.
Again, it's a religion, man madenone of my business.
But yeah, you know what? I forgot the question.
That's OK. I, I, I, I like, you know, I, I,
(24:09):
I should have given you time to respond to what I was saying.
But don't worry. I mean, at the end of the day,
why is it like I came into recovery and every single person
had a higher power that was had clean time and had a lot of
time, right? And was happy, You know, like,
why are you so happy, right? Because they had this this
(24:30):
higher power in their life. Why is it so important that we
get spirituality, get a higher power?
Thank you very much. So because it's the trueness of
us. It's it's it's us trying to
recover the child. The child that is.
I love that. Yeah.
A child is free before it's programmed by society, Right.
I mean, like, I'm 49 years old. I'm probably one of the biggest
(24:51):
kids you'll ever meet. And because I do my best to
enjoy life, I do my best to not get caught up in the whole, like
you said it before, don't, don'ttell me what to do all the time
because I'm going to go the different direction.
Like I just met you and I could tell one thing about you.
You have a pure heart. Your soul is beautiful and real.
(25:15):
And that's where that that's where that entity doesn't want
us to be. So that's for me, that's where
spirituality, spirituality is being open, free, loving, kind,
understanding towards anyone of God's universe's creatures
because we're all here. We're all here.
(25:37):
We're all spiritual beings having a human experience and
we're all doing our very best. Now, like you were saying, I
could, I could right away tell everybody how to write their
scripts. You know, I think a lot of
people, including myself, because I still have to do that
work every day. If I'm judging someone, then I'm
lacking something in me that I haven't worked on yet.
(26:00):
And as the journey continues, I get caught up in that whole
stuff too. I was having a conversation with
someone this morning and I was liking my piece is my piece.
And if you're going to keep these people in your life, and I
don't want nothing to do with that because my piece is
important to me and my piece, noone's allowed to come and take
pieces of it anymore. But I'm putting this on someone
else. This has nothing to do with them
(26:21):
because they're close to me. My fear of losing them,
rejection is, is almost like selling a story because I want
what I want. That's not spirituality, Joe
Spirituality is saying This is why I choose to live this way.
And I hope that you come on the journey with me.
And if you don't, I'm still going to love you.
And if you need me, I'm still going to be here when you need.
(26:43):
It's simplified, right? It's not always easy, but like
the program says, the program issimple.
It's not easy. Choose your heart, right?
Like staying in active addictionis hard.
So staying in recovery, we have to choose our heart.
Going to the gym is hard. Staying home and eating Donuts
all day is hard. Choose your heart.
Staying in an unhealthy relationship is hard.
(27:04):
Staying in a healthy relationship is hard too.
It's work. They're both work.
We just get to as people that become more spiritually fit, we
start to understand that spiritual journeys are not the
rainbows, spiritual journeys arethe storms.
We just learned how to navigate ourselves through the storm
instead of sitting in it like wewould in active addiction.
(27:28):
Everything's. OK, 'cause you know what, it's
not raining on me, so give me another head, give me another
beer, give me another vodka, right?
It's like. Or it'll get.
Back how am I getting out of here?
Well, there's light, the lights over there.
So that's where the the gift of the spiritual journey is, right.
But a a man said this so beautiful one time he goes
celebrate the top of the mountain when you get there.
(27:50):
But remember one thing as soon as you turn around, you're at
the bottom of the next. Yeah, it's life, it's a journey.
It's beautiful. Everything has an end, right?
Every day has an end. You know, this too Shall pass is
another one that I think of whenI, you know, and it goes for the
good stuff too. When things are going really
well, like this is eventually going to pass, buddy, you know,
(28:11):
enjoy it. Exactly.
Be grateful that it even showed up in the 1st place.
Yeah. Yeah, I think about too.
I talked with somebody on this podcast about, you know, he had
lost, he had lost his husband and he had a lot of grief about
it. And he, he brought up something
that, you know, they, they teachin grief training.
(28:31):
And I'm sure you've maybe dealt with, with this before, cause
grief is everywhere, right? But it's like, you know, you
lost something and you're very emotional about it and you're
very, it's really affecting yourlife everyday.
You can't stop thinking about it.
This grief is sort of surrounding you at all.
Everywhere you go, you're being reminded of this person.
He, he taught me that I should be grateful that I even had that
(28:54):
relationship in the 1st place, right?
The reason I'm feeling this way and so upset and hurt and sad
about this is because I had so many good memories with this
person. Not everybody gets that, right?
And I should be grateful that I even had the experience in the
1st place, right? So it's a little bit of a mind
shift, right? Oh, grief, right.
Grief's the process grief like for me, I'm, I'm a strong
(29:17):
believer the, the 12 steps is not, it's not just for alcohol
and drug addicts. It's such a beautiful journey to
take those 12 steps because it'sall inner work.
It's all inner work. And I love what the man said
and, and you know, like growing up in a Catholic home, death was
final. It was final.
(29:38):
It was like, Oh my God, what do we do now?
What do we do now? What I'm really loving to see
and respecting so much what people are doing is this
celebration of life. Yeah, I love it so much.
It's a. Lot better than Italian
funerals. You know what I mean?
Like it's like if you don't. Suffer.
That means you didn't love them.Yeah, No, because the truth
(29:58):
like, I don't know, that's just my.
No, I, I agree. You know, I've, I've been to
both. I've been to the celebration of
life and I've been to the funeral and it's like there was
a lot of good here, you know, Let's, let's talk about the good
times and the memories that toldyou that.
Person. Yeah, I know.
You show some respect. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, man. It's it's true, though.
I mean, it's, you know, I shouldbe happy that I I had that in
(30:21):
the 1st place. Yeah.
What sort of daily hap like whatis what is a a good day in
recovery look like for you? And I don't mean external
things, but like, Joe wakes up in the morning and I've had a a
good. What are your dailies?
I love that question, brother. That's so awesome.
My daily thing is my daily routine is, and I'm not 100% at
(30:42):
this, but close enough. I wake up, say my prayers.
So I hit my knees, I say my prayers, I do a little
meditation. I write three things I'm
grateful for. Nice.
And I get right to the gym, I get right to the gym, I get it
out majority of the week. I take my dog for a nice nature
(31:05):
walk, get home, make sure whoever's at home like with my
partner now as well. We started where every morning
we give ourselves three things we're grateful for in a text
message. That's.
Great and she came up with and Ifriggin love it because I'm
like, I got to write my gratefuland now I got more things to be
(31:25):
grateful for and people need to understand that shift is a mind
shift. So I'm just going to go along.
And then so I don't really, I doa lot of fruit, fruit fasting
stuff stuff nowadays. So I don't really eat till like
the afternoon probably around like 5 or 6.
I go, I go to work. I love what I do.
(31:45):
I love what I do. It doesn't always work out the
way I want it. But you know what man, when I
see the aha moment, man, you know, I don't hold back my
tears. You know, a lot of a lot of you
know, in the certain industry, they always say, you know, you
never show your emotions. I can't say I can't.
What do you want? But like, I'm going to give the
(32:05):
guy a hug. I'm going to give the person a
hug and say how proud I am. Be proud of yourself because
this is not the easiest journey,but it's very rewarding.
Just to clarify, you're in the recovery space, you're working
with new addicts. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that's about it. I get, I get to as many meetings
as possible and I just, I connect with a lot of people in
(32:27):
recovery throughout the day, maybe 3 or 4 people throughout
the day, send my Home group a couple messages.
So whenever I can. And yeah, make sure to, to have
a small little conversation withmy kids when they're with me and
when I get to see them, it's, it's, it's nice being present
for the, for the kids and I get to see my mom and my mom, she's
(32:49):
so happy to see the journey I'm on.
And you know, old school Italian, you know, if you're
happy, I'm happy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's beautiful, man. I heard a lot of connection in
there, you know, and I didn't hear anything about your phone.
So that was good. I'm, I'm working on that.
You know, that's, that's one of those things where it's like
such an easy, quick connection, dopamine connection, right?
(33:12):
And it's tough, but you, you know, getting outside is, is
another good form of meditation for me too.
For a while I was doing a zoom meeting that was a meditation
meeting and it was great. You know, I got to get back into
that. But before I start my day, I
think that morning time is so important, right, where we're
kind of connecting with God, like you said.
I, I definitely, the one thing that hasn't changed for me is
the prayers, right? And for me, I'm not reciting any
(33:36):
specific prayers. It's, it's mainly along the
lines of like, help me do the next right thing today.
Help guide me through the day, help me get out of my own way,
help me get out of myself, help me practice humility, like just
whatever's coming up in my life.And, you know, be honest.
That's another one too, that I struggle with is like, help me
be authentic and honest, you know, because if I'm authentic
and honest today, everything's gonna be OK, right?
(33:59):
Things gonna gonna happen. Life's gonna fuck me over and
shit's gonna happen. But you know, like you said,
when you're sober and you have the tool kit that you have, you
can get through anything in life.
You know, and I've seen that. I, I've seen there's people that
have been a testament to that getting through cancer and, you
know, all sorts of terrible, terrible things, grief and loss
(34:19):
and doing it sober. So it is possible.
Absolutely it's possible. What is the, what is your
support circle look like with your loved ones and what do you
see a successful support circle looking like with the people
that you work with too? And you know, 'cause I'm sure
you see a lot of that, like really supportive families and
(34:41):
not supportive families. I mean, that's been my
experience in treatment centres.I'm going to be very honest
here, OK, please. And I'm being complete.
Like I always try to be as honest as possible without
hurting people, but honesty and truth usually ends up hurting
some people I don't see, including myself.
(35:02):
Which my family absolutely lovesme.
I know that they will go to bat for me in a second.
But I didn't know how to stop. I didn't know how to stop using
drugs and alcohol because drugs and alcohol were my solution to
my addiction, right? So I went to the 12 steps.
I took a spiritual journey. I, I, I went the self discovery
(35:23):
that I follow along the journey.Yes.
Where was most of the judgement from the support people that I
had in my life? Shame, shame, shame.
Are they doing it purposely? Absolutely not.
They don't. Their minds are programmed where
if I do this, he'll stop not understanding that I'll keep
going. So I don't find many again,
there are there are good supports out there.
(35:45):
I find that when your when your community, whether it's a
family, but the community does individual work on themselves
and stops like, you know, support the beautiful recovery
journey until they fall when they fall, let's pronounce
because we don't work on our stuff, but we don't have nothing
to work on. It's a lot of it is put on to
(36:08):
the alcoholic and the drug addict because we're the front
page of the newspaper, right. So it's very hard to find
unconditional support, like you said about your wife, like going
through hell with you. It's not easy to find humans
that that will self discover themselves instead of just
(36:29):
sitting there pointing the finger at us.
So I find a lot of people in in alcoholic and drug addiction
recovery have a hard time finding true unconditional
support when it's getting hard when they're trying to set
healthy boundaries that we're only taught from our sponsors
and people in the community. Because for so long, our
(36:50):
communities, we lived in our environments, our families,
we're so used to the almost likehow we're program, like I'm
going to fix everybody else. Everybody's trying to fix
everybody else, right? So one prayer that I, I never
stopped doing is God show the ones that are trying to support
us, the light like you showed us, because they deserve it just
(37:11):
as much as us, right? So I just try to teach people to
set healthy boundaries. I try to teach families to set
healthy boundaries. If you, if you're having a hard
time understanding that there's Al Anon, there's Naranan,
there's psychotherapist, there's, I don't know, church
gatherings there, there, there'sa solution everywhere.
(37:31):
But you know, the opposite of addiction is connection.
We crave a connection. That's why we connect to that
because we couldn't survive in the environments we're in, not
because the people are evil people.
We grew up, we're great people because of the people that that
gave us life. They have great hearts.
(37:53):
They were programming the different generation than the
one we're breaking today. Where we're we're, we're doing
our best to wear our hearts on our sleeve where so many times
it was told, don't do this, don't do this, don't do that.
So to find good, good supports in family dynamics.
And this is just my opinion. It, it's, it's not easy.
(38:14):
A lot of people leave treatment,go back home and they relapse.
They're going to the same environment.
People think people coming home from a, from a, an addiction
center are cured, yet they're going right back to the place
that, and again, it's not just the, it's just everybody.
You know, you keep 5 drug addicts around you, you're going
to be the 6th. You keep 5 spiritual round
spiritual people around, you're going to be the 6th.
(38:35):
So it's set your healthy boundaries and lead by example
because it's hard for us to, to change and, and learn the
trueness of what we really know is to be true when we're, when
we go to these addiction centersand the 12 steps, which is be
your true authentic self. It's hard when I'm trying to
survive, I'm trying to survive. So support systems, definitely
(38:58):
my own opinion on it is support systems don't do the work for
the addict or the alcoholic or the drug addict or the alcohol.
Do the work for yourself and ourjourneys are not quick fixes
like doctors give us medicationsor drugs give us instant
gratification. Our journeys are one step at a
time. Understanding I just made a
(39:19):
mistake, only my mistake and slowly going through it.
There's a process in our journey.
It doesn't happen overnight. And us as drug acts as
Alcoholics. It's not even today.
Today's already too late. I wanted it yesterday and I get
angry. If you could relate to that, I
hope I answered your. Question.
No, you did. That was beautiful and I'm, I
appreciate you being honest about it because my, you know,
(39:41):
my therapist, she's in recovery as well.
She says without a doubt every day, every time I talk to her,
not every day. I don't talk to her every day,
but that'd be expensive. She, she would pick up though,
if I called her because she's a good woman.
But she says the, the, the biggest struggle she has is
getting families to go to Al Anon.
That is the biggest she she preaches it on everybody because
(40:03):
just like you said, there's an answer for us.
And there's also an answer for them too, right?
And yeah, I it's tough because how you don't, I, I don't hold a
lot of credibility coming out oftreatment.
You know I, I don't, I don't, you know I don't.
I can't start telling people what to.
I still today, today I try. Not to tell people.
(40:23):
I try not to tell people what todo, but you know, I I I it's
hard to come from treatment or, you know, relapse or whatever
and be like, you know, you should go to Al Anon right, or
you should work on yourself mom,like that doesn't go over very
well. The fuck are you?
Damn, yeah. You know what you put me
through. I'm reminded often by my life of
what I put her through and I andit you know it's they're on
their own healing journey. So to your point, all I can do
(40:47):
is change myself, right? A spiritual awakening.
One of my favorite definitions in the literature is my, you
know, spiritual awakening is a profound alteration in my
reaction to life. And I love that.
I wake up in the morning and I'min addiction.
This guy fucked me over. This guy did this.
Don't you know, I'd be successful if this wasn't
(41:07):
happening, right? And when I get sober in
recovery, it's like I'm just, the world's not changing.
Like you said, the world is not changing.
Anthony's changing, Joe's changing.
Oh, maybe this is happening to me so that I can grow, or maybe
this is happening for me and notto me, right.
These little mind shifts, mindset shifts where I'm just
like, maybe the glass is half full instead of half empty.
(41:29):
You know, it's, it's, that's, that's all recovery is.
And that when I first started this podcast, another thing, I,
I originally wanted to call it some sort of variation of
altered perception. Hmm, right.
Because I, and, but that sounds like too much like using drugs.
But we come in, we come into recovery and we get a shift in
perception, right? It's, it's a perception, a
(41:50):
disease of perception. We get this, this shift in the
way we look at the world. And that's what I, I try to do
everyday is like, if you're listening to this and you're,
you know, you have a loved one, because I do.
I, we get a lot of, I get a lot of moms and I talk to a lot of
loved ones in recovery, right? And I did an episode with a dad
that's has two daughters in, in one in recovery and one in
(42:12):
addiction. And he did a great job.
I'm gonna have him back on here.And he's, he's great.
I got a lot of messages from that one where people were like,
man, that you, you know, you made me think of something
differently, right? And that's all I'm trying to do
here is like, huh, maybe I should try that, right.
And to your point, it's like, huh, maybe I'm gonna work on
myself a little bit instead of trying to change my loved one
because you can't fucking changethem.
(42:34):
No, can anyone change you? Right.
They I'm sure they tried. Not even God has the power of
changing me unless I go to Him. Yeah.
Yeah, but you have to do the groundwork.
Yeah, like you said, Absolutely.Yeah.
How do you carry the message of recovery today, Joe?
Treat others as you want to be treated.
(42:59):
Just treat the world as you did when you were a child and your
life will always be beautiful. Because I'll see children.
Look at a kid and say why are you fat?
An adult will look at that like what the hell are you doing?
But the child means nothing fromthat.
(43:21):
Nothing at all. A child will push somebody,
they'll push them back 3 minuteslater they'll be best friends
like nothing happened because they have such light in them.
Because the programming has not got in them yet.
Just be your true authentic selfalways.
(43:41):
If you deep down inside know you're about to react to
something that's going to hurt somebody, just don't do it.
Practicing, I'm sorry, preaching, not always
practicing. That's why I love our step 10,
you know, make that daily inventory.
Because we are not perfect beings, never will be.
We are broke. We are human beings having a
spiritual, I'm sorry, spiritual beings having a human
(44:03):
experience. Just be your true authentic
self. Be the child that that you
crave, that you crave, like be the child you wish you could be
again. Just be that man Be that.
It's so fun to. Screw being an adult, like be
responsible, do what you got to do like go to work.
I'm not saying go play all the time, but find the time to go
(44:26):
out and play. Get off of your devices.
Don't worry about the Candy Crush and the social media
that'll be there after preaching.
Not always practicing 'cause I get caught up in why didn't that
person like myself. Yeah, Yeah, right.
Just search for the child because that's, I think that's
the journey of life is searchingfor that child in US.
(44:46):
Yeah. Just be the child in you.
Yeah. I've heard that before and it's,
it's so true. It's like, you know, just take
it. Anytime I even the elevator ride
on the way down from my condo onthe way here today, I I always
notice children because yeah, they fascinate me, right?
It's like, and I was this kid just no worries in the world,
right? He's just thinking about the
next. He's present, he's fully
(45:08):
present. And if I could be a 10th of that
in my day where it's just like, you know, he wait, what's the
highest floor in the elevator? Like that's what he was worried
about, right? He was worried about like how
many floors are in the building?And it's like, yes, like, but I
don't I don't notice those things unless I notice them,
right. And I noticed it today because
I'm working on myself and I'm, you know, that's, that's the
kind of man I want to be, right?Just somebody that's always
(45:30):
improving. You mentioned the, the daily
inventory because I don't know what I'm doing wrong sometimes,
you know, But if I take, you know, an hour out of my day to
look back and reflect and say, huh, did I lie to anyone?
Did I cheat? Did I steal?
You know, did I manipulate? Did I cause harm?
Right. Oh, yeah, you know, you started
to. And like you said, progress, you
(45:51):
know, you practice progress, notperfection.
I'm never going to be perfect, but the more I practice it, it's
progress towards perfection. And it's like, you know, I'm
never going to achieve perfection.
And that's OK because we're human and no one will achieve
perfection, you know? But if I can just work on it
every day, I'm going to start tochange those behaviors because I
don't like they're not serving me.
You know, I'm pissing people offwhen I'm doing this stuff and
(46:13):
people don't want to hang out with me and I'm just, there's a
lot of negativity happening whenI'm when I'm doing those things,
right. So it's a beautiful thing that
every day has an end and we havethe ability to do better
tomorrow. You know?
What's something, Joe, that you're most proud of since
getting sober? One thing that's coming to mind
(46:40):
right now, which I've been working on, the ability, the
ability to choose my piece over anything else, whether it be my
children, whether it be my partner, whether it be my
family, whether it be friends. If you're coming to take pieces
(47:03):
of my piece, I'm going to talk to you about it, but you're not
stealing it anymore. Life for me through that hell
that I've had to live through for many, many years.
Where I'm at today. Peace is so important.
(47:25):
And to acquire peace, you must go through storms, I believe.
But there's peace in the storm as well.
It's the perception of it, right?
Is it easy? Yeah.
I'm sitting here right now. I'm on a great time with a, with
a, with a beautiful guy in recovery that I love to death.
And it's the first time I met him.
But our souls have connected somewhere along this journey for
(47:46):
sure. Peace.
To acquire peace, everybody wants to be happy.
But you, you cannot be happy allthe time.
You can only be happy because you felt sadness and vice versa.
But to acquire peace doesn't make life always a joyous and
free and happy occasion. It just it, it gives me the
opportunity to say sit back, don't overreact, choose yourself
(48:14):
separate with love and kindness.Do not ever say never say never
because things happen. People go, they come, they go,
they come. But I choose today to not lose
Joe anymore because I'm too important to myself today.
I'm the most important thing in my life today.
There's nothing more important than Joe.
Today. My children are my world, are my
(48:36):
world, my mom, my family, they're my world.
But they I, they don't have nothing.
If Joe's not number one to Joe, call it selfish, call it
selfish. It is selfish to be honest with
it is, but it's a healthy selfish because if I choose Joe
today, I can only be the healthiest version of myself.
(48:56):
And then everybody wins, right? Yeah, Yeah, I love that.
If I could just finish, I was speaking to you before about the
law of attraction, right? And, and, and I think I will
sing it to you. If you could hold it in your if
you could see it in your mind, you can hold it in your hand.
If I give up with a vibe all thetime, a vibe, A vibe that vibes
coming to me. So if I could give love, love,
(49:16):
love even when it's hard, love will love will come.
Am I doing it for that reason? No, I'm not today I don't.
I got caught up in life doing things and saying that he didn't
give me back what I why would henot do that?
Everything I didn't. No, today if I do something, I
do something because it makes mefeel good knowing that I I
(49:38):
brought some joy to someone else.
Yeah, right. So I hope that.
Yeah, no, it's it's true. And you know, you made me think
about a moment. Yeah.
So I live downtown Toronto, and this has been happening actually
a lot more lately. I'm happy you brought this up
because I hadn't thought about this in a while.
I've been reacting a lot to people and I'll give you an
example. One of my pet peeves is people
(50:01):
that honk way too much in the city, right?
Like hold their horn. You know, it's, it's there to
for a hazard, right? And I don't hopefully I don't
start ranting about this becauseit drives me nuts, right.
When you live in the city enough, you know, you can hear
it in your in your building, right?
But so I there's this guy the other day where just had a
beautiful dinner for my my wife's birthday.
(50:22):
My parents came downtown and we're walking down the street.
We got ice cream. Everything's good golden.
I'm happy. You know, I got a new job at a
treatment center. So that's like good things are
happening in my life and the, the it's just it's it's
beautiful. And I I want to mention too, is
like for a long time in in recovery, things weren't really
(50:43):
adding up for me financially, right.
And this is one thing I really want to preach to people, and
preach is the wrong word, but I really want to get out there
that sometimes you just have to wait a little longer, you know?
Like before the miracle. Yeah, exactly.
Only before the miracle happens sometimes you just got to, it's
coming, right? The, the, the gifts are coming.
And it's not like my life has changed completely, but I wanted
(51:05):
to get a job at a treatment center, right?
This is something that I really want to do.
I'm going back to school for it too, right?
So that's amazing. These things are starting to
unfold and it's because I stuck the, the difficult path.
I, I, I trudged it out and you know, sure, it's only been six
months again, only I shouldn't say only it's six months is a
good, you know, it's good enough, brother.
Especially when I couldn't get 6fucking minutes together.
(51:25):
You know I couldn't, right? So anyway, so I'm walking down
the street, things are going really well and this guy's
holding his horn. The whole street's vibrating
through the street, driving me insane.
I literally walk away from it. And this isn't me.
I don't normally do this right? And I start getting into it.
The guy, he's got his window down.
So I'm like, I'm going to tell this guy how he's doing right
(51:46):
and how he's pissing me off and I just lose my mind, right?
And we get into it and then whatever he's embarrassed, he
drives away. I'm embarrassed and I'm, you
know, people in the street are now looking at me, right?
And it's funny how it just kind of happens like that, right?
It, it comes out of nowhere, butI'm not proud of those moments,
you know what I mean? Like those are things that I
(52:06):
want to work on. That's not who I am.
And, and, you know, my life is embarrassed, my family's
embarrassed. And but this is something that
keeps coming up and, and something that I need to work
on. So, you know, talking and doing
this stuff and talking to peoplelike you, it makes me realize
that like I have an opportunity to work on these things today.
I never would have even thought that was a problem, you know,
six months ago, 10 years ago, when I first came into recovery
(52:28):
or when I was in my act of addiction.
But it's a beautiful thing and it it really is that I can put
out good into the world. And so I look at that experience
now and I try to do this on it when somebody pisses me off.
This is where I was going with this.
Sorry when somebody pisses me off.
And it happens a lot in Toronto,You know, there's a lot of
tourists and stuff like that. If I just react with a smile or
(52:50):
you mentioned putting out good energy into the world, there's a
little part of me that's like, I'm going to get that back
someday in some way or another. But also I just exact to your
point, I've never got into an altercation with someone ever in
my life, physical or or mental, you know, verbal where I felt
better after never, never even if I've been right justified,
(53:10):
you know, people are applauding me whatever then that's not
happened before. But I've never felt better after
that right, never. It's never happened where I've
made my point embarrass the person 'cause that's usually
what I wanna do is embarrass theperson.
I've never felt better, so yeah,it it's always ended up worse is
what I'm. Saying, why do you think that?
Yeah, that's a great. I love that question.
(53:33):
And and we, you know, we, we talked about this in my
treatment center last time because we had a counselor there
that would always come in and complain about Tim horton's.
And this guy was like, he would,he's, he would complain that the
and this guy was very in tune with his self.
He was a therapist and he, you know, he was, but he was honest.
He'd go to the same Tim Horns every morning and the guy
(53:53):
wouldn't cut his bagel all the way through and he was driving
him nuts. Oh my gosh, it's.
Like I know what you're talking about.
Every single day he's like, you have one fucking job, right?
Just cut the bagel all the way through.
It would drive him nuts. And he would always Vince.
He would always talk slowly. To me, it's all about me.
He's doing it to me. That's exactly what he said too,
right? And we, and he and I asked him
(54:14):
one day because I'm, I'm so interested in that too.
It's like, why does that bother us so much when we because he
embarrassed the guy or did something about it, right?
Why, why? And so to answer your question,
because I don't think it's what we were meant to do, right in
our DNA. It's it, it never feels good
because I don't think we were meant to put other people down.
(54:37):
The outcome is never what we thought it would be.
Because God's in you. I've heard people and because of
certain lifestyle I lived, I couldn't show Oh my God, that I,
that I really hurt him that much.
No, but I went home, you know, 25 years old home crying, crying
to God. Please, God, please help them.
(54:59):
I could dare, I could not show that out there.
I was so scared to show God out there.
I'd show you evil 'cause he had the power over me.
So you feel bad because it's notyou.
Yeah. It's not you.
It's not you. And it just something rang
through to me when you said thatyou attacked that guy honking,
which, Oh my God, man, one day, just like it.
(55:20):
Just just. Honked.
Yeah, just once or twice, right?If, if I, if I may, what I found
from that was your wife's birthday.
Your parents come down, right? You're early on in recovery
again. Yeah.
So you're holding on to some things.
Absolutely. And then how do I protect them
(55:41):
now? If he's bothering me, he's
bothering. I got to protect them.
You want to protect your loved ones, brother.
It's so beautiful when I could actually see it because I've
I've done the same things, the same things.
I will overreact even more when my loved ones are around because
I have to protect them. Yeah, right.
(56:04):
I haven't thought about it like that, so I might be wrong.
It's it's in there for sure. There's something and up watch.
When I leave today, I'm going toI'm going to reflect more on
that and be like, yeah, you know, there's a part of I I
think there's truth in every every bit of you know, I just we
subconsciously do things becausewe think it just pisses us off
(56:24):
period, right. But it's you're right, there's
more to I believe that too, And that's, you know, where therapy
has brought me. I want to end with this, and I
usually end with this on this podcast.
If you could say something to a struggling addict or alcoholic
right now, what would you say? You are not your pain, you are
(56:51):
your purpose. And I know if you're struggling
right now, it's hard to see that, but you're struggling so
much, I think, because you're afraid to let God out, higher
power out, let him out to keep letting him back in because
(57:12):
you're worth it. Beautiful.
Well said, Joe. Thanks so much for coming down,
brother. I had a great time and I'm happy
we're friends now. Thanks brother.
For real, next time it's a Nespresso.
Yeah, 100%. I gotta get one in here
actually. Thanks for listening.
Please help us grow the channel and like, share and subscribe
for more content. The discussions and stories
(57:34):
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,
please consult A licensed physician, addiction specialist,
or mental health professional. You are no longer alone.
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