August 14, 2025 • 58 mins
Mary’s story will shake you — and give you hope.From losing her mother at just four years old, to growing up in an orphanage, and facing childhood trauma and abuse from her father, to falling into the grip of alcohol and cocaine… Mary knows darkness. She’s felt the hopelessness of relapse, the shame of rock bottom, and the fight it takes to claw your way back.
Now, with 26 years of sobriety, Mary is living proof that you can build a life you don’t need to escape from. In this raw, unfiltered conversation, she reveals:
- The exact moment she dropped to her knees and begged God to help her
- Childhood trauma and abuse
- The hard truth about why relapse happens — and how to prevent it
- The fine line between enabling and truly supporting a loved one
- Why service work might be the secret weapon to staying sober
- The tools she still uses every single day to keep her peace
Whether you’re in recovery, love someone who is, or just need proof that change is possible — Mary’s story will hit you straight in the heart.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hi there, welcome back or welcome to Recovering Out Loud
Podcast, the show where we get real about mental health and
addiction. I'm so glad you're here.
If you or someone you love is struggling with drugs or
alcohol, please reach out for help.
Send me a message on all social media platforms at Recovering
Out Loud Pod or by e-mail at recoveringoutloudpod@gmail.com.
(00:26):
You are no longer alone. Mary, thank you so much for
coming. I appreciate you.
(00:47):
I met you through a retreat thatwe we had together and it was a
lovely, lovely experience. I know you had a a similar
experience as well. Yeah.
How was that for you? Like being on a retreat with.
You've done a few before too. Yes, I've done many.
Yeah. How was that being, you know,
(01:07):
around a bunch of sober people for a weekend?
There was lots of activities andmeetings and stuff like that.
What was that like for you? To me, it's like heaven.
It's like being at home. It's to connect with people that
are just like me is there's no, there's no words for that there.
It's just blissful for me, yeah.Yeah, it's like there was a
(01:28):
presence in every room, you know, and I had a bunch of, I
had a, you know, I had known a few people there beforehand, but
I didn't know everybody. And I had a lot of interactions
with people here and there that were really meaningful
conversations. And not those.
Not those cocaine takeover the world conversations.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of those.
Paramount Pictures We like to create movies.
(01:49):
Yeah, Paramount. Yeah, I love it.
OK, well, I want everyone to youknow, I've heard your story a
few. No, I've heard your story once
now, and I thought it was, you know, well said, powerful.
But I think there's a message here that a lot of people need
to hear. And so let's just start with,
you know, childhood. What was what was childhood like
(02:10):
for you it? Was difficult.
It was where do I start? I I lost my mom when I was four
years old. She had cancer and there's three
of us. I'm the baby of the family and
the the three of us have this thing in our family with
addiction and alcoholism. And there was a lot of I grew up
(02:34):
with a father who did the best he could, but there was a lot of
trauma in our house. There was a lot of abuse.
There was a lot of fear tiptoeing around him not to set
him off. And strict, very strict.
And yeah, I mean, it's. And you adapt to that, right.
(02:57):
Like when I tell people my storynow and.
Oh, my God, you lost your mom atage of four.
That must have been hard. Well, what?
How can I miss something I didn't have?
You know, it's you adapt. You adapt.
And when my mom died and my father had to keep working, my
sister, my brother had to go to an orphanage Monday to Friday.
We, we come from Montreal and there was a big orphanage there.
(03:20):
And I was too young. So I had to stay with my aunt
until I became, I think 5 or 6. And then I was able to go in.
And in this orphanage, it was, you know, boys of a certain age,
you know, and then girls of a certain age.
It was like divide divisive and and we were raised with nuns in
(03:42):
there. So you could imagine.
I mean, I I was when I look back, I this sense of not
feeling like I belong started from a very early age.
And when I got into when I got into this orphanage, I was
(04:02):
hanging out with these two girlsand they were like the badasses
and they had boyfriends and I just OK, if that's what it
takes. I got myself a little boyfriend
with glasses thick and I didn't know what I was doing right.
This was just to fit in. And I remember, you know, we had
(04:25):
there was a big statue of the Virgin Mary and when we went
outside and I went behind the Virgin Mary with this boy and
you know what, when you're 6 andyou're kissing a boy or
whatever, you don't know what you're doing.
It's kind of gross. It's, you know, a bit of tongue
this that whatever. And I sold told the boy when I
count to 3, let's pull down our pants.
So to see what we look like 123 pull down the pants and the nun
(04:48):
came and caught us. Oh, my God.
And I begged her. You could kill me, beat me.
Just don't tell my father about this.
And I don't think she ever did. And I was six years old at the
time, right? So I was looking for a place
where I could fit. And that happened as I was
growing up, before I ever touched the line or a drink or
(05:14):
whatever. I never felt.
I felt different. I felt looking for to find
myself, my identity, you know, I, I, it was, it was confusing
time. Yeah, yeah.
What can you describe? What your first sort of memory?
Earliest memory? Maybe with with substances?
(05:35):
What what that was like for you?So I was 17 years old.
I had graduated high school Montreal, and I was already
living on my own. And I was working in this
restaurant in Montreal. I was the only girl that was all
waiters and I I hooked. I, I hooked.
Whoa, let me rephrase that hook up.
I know me. It's sex right now.
(05:56):
So I did. That was not the case.
Yeah, it. Used to be something different.
Right. But back then hook up didn't
mean let's plow. It's it was different.
So I, I just became friends withthis waiter and I told them,
let's go back to my house, to myapartment and drink.
And I remember I drank, we had sudden comfort and stuff and I
drank half a bottle and I was sosick the next day saying, Oh my
(06:19):
God, I'll never do this again. But even in doing that, like who
drinks half a bottle of alcohol their first time?
Like that's alarming. But I wanted to know.
I didn't want to know about the tipsy.
I want to know what it's like todrink and get drunk right there.
There's something wrong, right? There's it's not normal.
So yeah, it was pretty vile. That was my first experience.
(06:44):
This kind of all the way thinking right this this.
Black or black or white, all or nothing extreme, Yeah.
And so he had the alcohol and what like, what did you, what
did you know about substances upuntil that point?
Like growing up, was it it was around your house a lot or?
So my, my sister and brother social services were in our
(07:04):
house because of the abuse my father inflicted.
My sister and brother used to get severely beaten.
My, my sister was a bit of a RedBull.
May she rest in peace. She's gone now.
But you know, she was the type of girl that would leave the
house looking a certain way, getout of the house and then wear
the mini skirt, whatever, you know, and, and get in trouble
and that in. So social services were there a
(07:28):
lot and they kept running away. They were put in foster homes
and getting running away from there and stuff.
And so I was left alone with my father.
And I didn't know what substances were.
I mean, I had heard of drugs, but I didn't, I didn't know
because I didn't see it. And I was forbidden to see my
(07:48):
siblings because they were like the black sheep.
And they were, you know, they brought shame to the family.
Meanwhile, let's not talk about what was going on in the house,
not going to talk about that shame because everything had to
be swept under the rug. And I would see my sister in
secret every once in a while. And by the time I reconnected
(08:09):
with her, she was already dancing in the bar business.
And she was hooked on drugs, on cocaine.
And. But I would see her in secret.
And I didn't know much about thedrug then.
But when I left on my own at 17,she came back into my life.
And I lived with her, and I saw the devastation of what that did
(08:30):
to her. Yeah, So it was scary.
It was infuriating. I didn't understand these people
that look like zombies when they're on this ship that they
have no more and they're jonesing.
And I used to watch her cry, coming down, wanting to kill
herself, always listening to these sad songs, you know, it's
(08:50):
like, you know, the IT was Western.
So I lost my dog. And, you know, those sad songs
when you're you're sad and stuff.
And I always said to myself, I will never do that.
Today's lesson is never say never.
Yeah. Especially in recovery.
Yeah, for a long time, I, I didn't think, I, I never said I
(09:12):
wasn't going to relapse, but I didn't think that it was going
to happen. You know, I was on social media
yesterday and I was reading a post, I don't know, I'm thinking
of this now, but I feel moved tosay it.
I was reading this thing where they were talking about relapse.
Doesn't it's a part of recovery.It can be a part of recovery,
but it doesn't have to be, right.
And I, I fully believe that supports that 100%.
(09:33):
But these people were commentingon it and they're like, yeah,
I'm, there's they were talking about this one and done.
Like I'm a one and done. Yeah, I'm a one and done.
You know, I first time I got sober, it's like, sorry, can you
see the like, how do you know that you're done?
You know what I mean? Today, Yeah, today I can say
that, you know, I'm sober and and and and clean, but I don't
know what the future holds, right?
(09:54):
My my experience was that I didn't see it coming, you know,
my relapse and I so I have to live for today.
And we talk about that a lot. This one day at a time thing
that we go through, but it's like that's a dangerous place to
be is like. That 1000% it's you're all.
You know what makes me nervous? I hear people say this in
meetings. You got this.
Oh my God I I cringe. That's a good one, yes.
(10:15):
You got this? No, all you got is a one day,
every day. You have to make sure that
there's certain things that you do to maintain your, to
maintain, to just yeah, to keep your sobriety.
And there's, there are things that you need to do, there's
things you need to read and there's instruction.
(10:37):
You know, the more I put into myrecovery, the more I'm taking
out an insurance policy for myself.
You know, do I like doing everything I have to do in
recovery? No, no, I don't.
But I have to do that because this is my third dry day.
I did go back out. I did relapse.
I'm just grateful I didn't die in the process.
But some people die. I just found out yesterday from
(10:58):
one of my sponsees that a girl that she was with in treatment
29 years old went back out aftertreatment used and died.
It's not a joke. This is like so you know, when
people get cocky or they, I don't know if they mean to be
cocky or whatever, they go, I got this, you got nothing.
Learn to humble yourself becauseif you're sober today, it's by
(11:20):
God's grace. It's by well, I work for it.
Yes, I've done the work, but I also rely on a higher power
every day and sometimes I've hadto take this thing 5 minutes at
a time. They say you have 24 hours,
right? The maintenance of your
spiritual condition. I've had to there's been moments
(11:41):
in my recovery where I've had totake this, this thing, not one
day at a time, 5 minutes at a time, 10 minutes at a time, an
hour at a time like this is thisis not it's not.
You get sober and La di da and Ilike poof, magic dragon.
Everything is so good. It's not like that.
It's life will happen whether you drink or you don't drink,
(12:03):
but if you just learn to take direction, which for somebody
like me, that's why I had three dried aids.
I was very stubborn and defiant.I was young when I came in and I
didn't have to do the steps, 'cause I'm young, you guys are,
You're old and you're rotting. You have to do this.
You need. Not me.
Yeah, not. Me, yeah, because, you know, I
had the, the, the, the cute little body this that.
(12:25):
Nobody cared about that but me. But I was sick when I came in.
We come here 'cause we're not all there, right?
So and then after and and being desperate in recovery, I learned
to take direction, I learned to listen and I learned to follow
what these, the people before medid.
That helped me. Yeah, yeah.
One of my favorite sayings is you can't fix a broken brain
(12:47):
with a broken brain, right? Or a sick brain with a sick
brain. It's like, I've tried that.
No kidding. I've tried that many times and I
need some, I need another way, you know, it's, it's plain and
simple. Like I, I, I need not Anthony's
plan today, right? And how do I get a different
plan? Well, I listen to your point.
I take the cotton balls out of my ears and put them in my mouth
(13:08):
for a second and just listen to,to what people are saying
because they've been there, right.
So you mentioned, you know, yourfirst experience with alcohol.
Can you touch on, you know, whatthe progression was like for you
and sort of what LED you to thatmoment of like, oh God.
So it it happened like it, it happened like this.
So at 17, I started and then, you know, after 2-3 days from
(13:32):
being hungover from the whateverthat, that, that boost that I
drank, there was something I never touched that again.
I was sick. I started dabbling with
marijuana and I started dabblingwith LSD and I was having fun.
It was so much fun. And then what happened is at the
age of 20, I, I got introduced to cocaine and I was hanging out
(13:59):
with somebody that was doing it casual user.
And we were out one night and hesaid, I'm going to go get some.
And I said, why you going to go get that?
I, I don't do that stuff. And you know, again, I was
feeling like an outsider. And this, this was back in the
80s, you know, and, and in the 80s and the bar business was
very, very prevalent, this blow and everybody was on this stuff.
(14:22):
And so he said, no, no, he goes,I'll go get it, I'll do some and
you just drink. I go, if you go get it, I'm
going to do it with you. And I did it.
Oh my God, that was the love of my life for the first time, I
think. And I mean the other drugs with
the LSD and the, and the, and the, you know, the marijuana and
(14:43):
the alcohol, yeah, they were OK and stuff.
But cocaine did it for me. I felt like I had arrived.
I felt like I could talk for thefirst time.
I didn't feel different for I just felt like I could, oh, I
could run the world. It was just, and the talking, Oh
my God, the non-stop talking. It's just, you know, just
(15:05):
talking and all that stuff. And really that was my first
real good experience, cocaine. And then after that I just kept
chasing that same experience, which I never got.
I started hiding in closets. I start, Oh my God, the stuff
that I did, I, I, I would just be paranoid and, and, and I'm
(15:27):
thinking this is kind of stupid.So I'm all paranoid when I'm on
it. And when I have no more, I want
more. And you know, I would think
about was my deceased mother whowould look at look at me from
the other side and be crying just to watch your daughter go
through this. And not only me or other
daughter and my brother who was incarcerated for more than half
(15:51):
of his life, he too passed away.God bless him.
He was addicted to crack and thething like the, the, you know,
addicts are all really old with the, the, the, the shame and
guilt. And that's all I felt in my
existence. I was dancing.
I didn't have two pennies to my name, borderline homeless and
abusive relationships. There was no direction in my
(16:13):
life. I was just lost.
And I don't have a story where, you know, I used for 20 years.
My using was from 20 to 2323. I arrived in the rooms.
I was done. I was done.
I couldn't die. I tried to kill myself.
I couldn't die. And it's sad when I think of
(16:35):
that. It's really sad when I think
you're 23 and you want to end your life because 23 is supposed
to be, you know, an exciting time in, in a, in a, in an
adult's life where they go to university or college.
I was done. I, I was done dancing with the
devil and I, I felt that I was just sitting in darkness and I
(16:56):
did not understand the point of my existence.
And I remember when I hit my bottom, I was working in this
bar in Scarborough and I came home and it just stopped
working. I remember doing a line and it
didn't work anymore. And I came home and I got on my
knees. The very same thing.
I give the finger to this God. I thought if there was a God, I
(17:18):
wouldn't have had this life right?
My mother wouldn't have died. I wouldn't be raised with a
psychotic father. You know all of this stuff,
right? That was the biggest victim on 2
legs when I got into rooms with reason.
But looking at it now, nothing happens by mistake.
That was a purpose why all this had to happen.
(17:38):
But I didn't know it then. And, you know, I got on my hands
and knees and I prayed and I said, if you're there or you
kill me or get me better becauseI can't do anything like that
now. Did I pray to God while I was
doing my using and stuff? Get Me Out of this one.
I'll never do it again. Yeah, but this time it came from
here. It didn't come from here.
It came from it was the cry of desperation from my soul.
(18:02):
And that's all that I believe that God asked.
I'm on standby and I'm waiting. And when you're ready, I'll be
here. And I was ready.
And so my journey began, you know, and.
What did that look like after that?
Was it a phone call or was? It what happened is I was in a
in a relationship, very disgusting relationship with
(18:24):
somebody that got in talk contact with somebody we used to
party with and was now a big book thumper in the rooms.
And I got in touch with him and he gave he gave him the number
of an addiction counselor who gave it to me and I started to
see this addiction counselor once a week.
(18:46):
I owe my life this counselor. He was amazing.
I was scared to death of him. I don't know how many world wars
did we have 232. This guy looked like he's been
through 50, a recovered heroin addict and he, he just looked
you right in the eye and he looked rough, like he, you could
see he's been through hell. But you know, it was my
introduction into a different life and that's how my journey
(19:09):
began. So he I would go see him once a
week and he told me go to three meetings a week and I'd be like,
OK, which meetings? Once a week He goes, well, pick
one, right? 12.
There's different fellowships you could go to different ones.
I go, can I smoke a joint in between?
He goes, no, no, no, no joints. I'm thinking, wow, they're a bit
strict over here. But anyway, I had to do that.
(19:32):
And you know, I came into my journey began and I came into
recovery knowing that I was an addict.
I didn't know I was an alcoholic.
So I had to go back out to do more research with that wasn't
pretty. So what do you say to the people
now that come in because this isa common issue.
I I struggled with that too. At 23, I'm an addict to check.
(19:53):
Yep, all the evidence there. But alcoholic.
No, no. Like I'm gonna drink on my
wedding day. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna
handle the drinking. It's just the drugs, guys.
Like, let's focus on what? What's important here?
Let's not. Get carried away.
Yeah, let's not get carried away.
What do you say to people, new people that come in that are
like, because this happens a lotwith, with our especially my
generation of people coming in, but also like, I don't know, I
(20:14):
can only speak for my generation, but it's like, what
do you say to people that are I'm an addict, but not an
alcoholic like. What?
Well, I'm going to repeat what was told to me in treatment.
I was shipped off the treatment in in 1989.
And this is when COVID, this is when the government paid
everything and my counsellors inthe group that was sitting in,
(20:37):
you know, chances are if you're an addict, you're an alcohol and
I'm not. No, I'm not.
Well, yeah. And they made us do the step one
and we had to write how much money going back, how much money
we spent and this that. And I listen, I only have AI
don't even like booze. I only have a drink because
sometimes, sometimes I would do blow without drinking like that
(20:58):
was fun. Just disgusting, pitiful and
incomprehensible demoralization for sure.
And they kept going and insisting and at one point I
shut them up just to, I agreed just to shut them up because I
thought you don't know what you're talking about.
They're one of us, but you don'tknow what you're talking about.
You can't fool, you can't con a con.
(21:19):
You can't fool somebody who's exactly like you.
But I agreed just to shut them up.
But I wasn't convinced. So I came back and I joined the
12 step group, a program and a 12 step group and I had a
sponsor. I never called.
I did the library and I never read a book.
I I was doing things one foot in, one foot out because, you
(21:41):
know, I had this was firm and everything was firm and they're
old. So I'm going to.
I know you're there, God, but, you know, let me do it.
So I was, I was not surrenderingfully, you know, when it comes
to my, my, my social life and my.
Yeah, yeah. I know you want the best me, but
I'm going to do it my way. You know, you got to get out of
dancing, Mary. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I'm still going to dance. Dancing straight is another
(22:07):
trip. And I was doing the without
being high because I was having so much panic attack on stage.
And oh, it was brutal. So there was a point then in my
recovery where I stopped going to meetings for at least I think
about a year and I didn't, I waslucky enough to not go back out,
(22:29):
but I did. I, I started to feel different.
I started to feel different. And what happened is this, it's
I, you know, it's the typical story of stop going to meetings
this, that you meet somebody, they become your higher power.
Next thing you know, I'm in Venezuela and I'm drinking after
3 1/2 years of sobriety. And when I drank, you know,
(22:50):
yeah, I'm, I'm amazed. I had like, I see people, they
go back out for a day or two andthey come.
Oh my, same. I know.
Same. I was out for eight months, 8
months, and the last place I wanted to be was in a room with
sober people. It was going to screw up my
high. No, but the more I drank, the
more they got loud. See, there's a saying that goes,
(23:13):
Be careful what you pray for because you might just get it.
Well, if I'm aligning, I'm trying to align my will with
God. I can't have my cake and eat it
too. Something's got to go.
My, my ideas have got to go. I can't incorporate the old
ideas into this new life. It doesn't work like that,
right? It's a change of everything.
And during the time that I was out for eight months, there was
(23:36):
this gentleman that kept callingme.
It's so fascinating how God works.
And I'd met this person in a barwho was in the program.
And anyway, he would call me every once in a while today.
Hey, how you doing? I'm good.
Who is this? It's so so it goes.
You're drinking. Yeah.
Call me when you're done. Click.
(23:59):
You're an idiot. Why are you calling me?
Right. Like, but he was just making
sure the seed was planted. Once the seed is planted and you
go back out, For anybody who wants reservations about this,
it's going to be a nightmare in a shit show.
That's it. I'm warning you right now 'cause
you're nobody's exception to therule.
If you're a Type 3 addict alcoholic like me and you want
(24:19):
to go back out after you had some time, it's going to be
hell, pure hell, because now youknow the difference.
And anyway, after eight months, I called them.
I came back into the rooms and, you know, he became my sponsor.
They were right. They were right in treatment and
they were right in. And I, I, yeah, chances are if
(24:40):
you're an addict, you're an alcoholic.
And I can vouch for that becausealcohol is a drug.
It's a mood altering substance. So why would I think that that
would be OK? Back then I thought I it could
be, but you know, you weaken slowly right in this program.
So for me, it turned out to be the best thing I did because it
just proved that once I became apickle, I don't go back to being
(25:04):
a cucumber. I'm done, I'm done.
And now it's I'm I'm very comfortable and and at piece to
say I can't take anything that alters my mind.
I just can't. I'm allergic to this stuff
because once I ingest it, I'm like, they're not like the
normal person. Oh, I'm getting tips.
I'm going to stop. Duh.
That's the whole point. You know, I'm going to drink
till I vomit, sleep in my vomit.Good idea for me, you know,
(25:29):
like, good. It's not like a people drink
like this, don't they? No, they don't.
Right. So, yeah, it's interesting.
It's interesting how you, like you said that fix, you can't fix
the head with the head, right? Recovery is all about going from
here to going in here. That'll it's it's a language
(25:52):
that you got to go it within. It's a recovery is all about
doing the opposite of what we used to do with this.
The most. I heard a conference speaker say
once the most devastating 6 inches of history is the space
between my ears. Oh, I fell off my chair and I
laughed because it's true. So recovery for as much as I
don't know about you, but I try to dissect what we were learning
(26:16):
in the rooms and about God and what does this look like within?
Just do the work. And once you start to do the
work and you start to tap and you start to face who you are
and you start to get introduced to who you are and, and you
clean that stuff up and you giveit away, then you start feeling
(26:37):
this peace and this, your eyes start to open and you start to
pay attention and you go, my God, look at my life now.
And the miracle is I don't even think about using and drinking
anymore because my life is so good.
You know, it's, it's it's miraculous, really.
(26:59):
Yeah. And that was, I think the, the
thing and, and weed falls into this category too, right?
With a lot of people that I talked to where it's so socially
acceptable that it's not classedwith cocaine and heroin and
meth. And that's, it's a very
dangerous place to be, right? I, I heard someone, I think it
was, I, I heard someone on a podcast once say that the worst
(27:21):
thing that you could be is like kind of an alcoholic, right?
Or kind of an addict. It's so true.
It's like I'm kind of, you know,I kind of have a problem, right?
Because it's like for me, yeah, that means that there's that
back door for more experiments, for more research, like you
said. And nowadays the cocaine people
(27:41):
are doing is deadly, right? It wasn't as deadly as it was
before, you know, before now it's deadly.
To your point, we're seeing people drop all over the place.
And so for me, the mood and mindaltering substances, I tried it.
I've tried every short like Ave.yeah, but you know, with all
sorts of substances and the risknow to today, hopefully
(28:03):
tomorrow's the same, but I don'thave tomorrow.
I have today. The risk is just so high for
testing out anything else that it's it's not even worth it.
Right. No, no, it's.
Not so dangerous. I was gonna ask you, but you,
you kind of touched on it a bit.What is life like for you today?
I'd never if somebody would havetold me when I came in, this is
(28:24):
what your life is going to look like going forward.
Flash forward to 2025. This is what your life is going
to look like. Clean and sober, relatively
healthy. You know, learn to drive a car,
have a car bought my house, married to a wonderful my best
friend, actually having direction and a moral compass
(28:47):
back in my life. I'd be like, yeah, smoke another
one like it's it's, I never imagined my life to be like
this. It's not a glamorous life, but
it's a rich life filled with purpose today.
And what I taught back then, which was a, you know, this God
giving me all this crap with thethe loss of a mother and the
(29:07):
abuse and this, that I used thattoday to, I used that today to
help and work with the girls that come my way that are
broken. And when I, when I reflect on
the time when I was trying so hard to kill myself and I would
(29:27):
pray to my mother and I would pray and I'd say, you know, God,
God like, help me. And God's answer today as I see
it at not yet because I need youto do me a couple of favors.
Not because not because I'm perfect, not because because I
was given this blessing, this unmerited gift of life and a
(29:51):
second chance of recovering my case.
More than a second chance, thirdchance.
And he uses me as a vessel to carry the message that you don't
have to live like that anymore. If if you're done, there's a
different way to live. And so today I'm when I pray in
(30:13):
the morning, I pray and I'm I'm gratitude and I thank him for my
life and I pray for people and stuff and I, I don't really tell
him what you got in store for metoday, because sometimes it's
like, come on, God, you know, but whatever presents in my life
today, I do the next right thing.
I don't go looking for girl people come in my life.
(30:34):
I, I, I, I, I give my, I give ofmy recovery away.
I do service in my Home group. I, I'm busy.
I'm busy and I do service not only in my Home group, in my
home and in my work. I, I, whatever I learned in
recovery in the rooms, I appliedin my life.
(30:54):
And really that's what good orderly direction is.
So for anybody who's confused about what's this God thing,
good orderly direction, you wantto introduce the kid, get
introduced to a higher power, dowhat's suggested to you and
you'll tap into that, right. So I, it's like I won the
lottery, but it's not the lottery of the money.
(31:17):
I won the lottery of life, the half purpose and I can be
authentically myself with all mycuckooness and I have a very
dirty sense of humor and but I also have a heart and I I'm I
got my good points and I got my bad points and I embrace all
that to just be merry. You know what?
(31:40):
I was meant to be in the 1st place and I'm loved and I'm able
to love not by the whole world, but by few.
So I'm grateful for that, yeah. Yeah, I always say to people
like my favorite and most rewarding part of recovery and
being sober is being able to sponsor and pass it on to, to
another guy. Like I, you can't describe it to
(32:03):
somebody, right? Like to, to watch the
transformation of someone, you know, and to see the, the light
flash in their eyes by, by something, not that you not that
something that you made-up or came up with or just something
that you've passed on, right. Or something that my, my higher
power, my God has allowed me to share, right.
Whether it's an experience or something I heard from someone
(32:24):
else one time, you know what I mean?
And it's like that I, I always tell people like stick around
long enough so that you can get to the point where you can carry
the message to specifically sponsoring, but like one other
guy or girl because it's the greatest thing, you know.
It's a gift, yeah. So how do you, Mary, how do you
navigate through you know, when life lifes you today and and you
(32:46):
know something happens where youknow, you're like, why me when
life lifes you? How do you navigate through that
and? I don't say why me, why not me,
why not me? I've been introduced to lost
from an early age. Everybody in my family's dead.
We die young from disease. And all those experience have
(33:10):
just brought me closer to God. Really.
I had to clearly don't call the shots here.
Did I get mad at God? Listen, my faith was tested when
my sister passed that when she got sick and diagnosed with
stage 4 lung cancer, I became a little bit dark.
But thank God through sponsorship and I had a, a woman
(33:34):
in my life back then that we really did a lot of hard work
and repeated steps and stuff forissues that I needed to work on.
And I remember like the same as my mother when she died.
You know, what kind of a God takes a mother away from a four
year old and two kids? And the counselor says, well,
(33:55):
it's all about you, right, Mary?It's not about your mother's
suffering. It's about you.
Anyway, my sister got sick and Imade it about me and I got
pissed at God. You just took my brother a year
ago. Now you're taking her.
Why that is so not that I didn'tbelieve that God was still
there, but I got real with God and I always get real with God.
(34:17):
I don't go to God and go, you know, I said in our literature,
remember doing this years ago, presented somebody pray for the
people you resent God. I pray for this motherfucker
that you give him everything, this fucking bitch that you give
it. Like that's how I used to pray,
right, you fucker. That's not a name I didn't call
(34:37):
God when I came in. Somebody had to hear it.
Somebody had to hear it. But thank God for a
psychotherapy and all that. Like I did a a a number of
things to get better. And you know, a lot of these
spiritual retreats. I remember talking to a priest
going is it OK that I can speak?You know, tell people on the pro
in the program that you swear toGod you.
(34:57):
Swear to God. Yeah, I do.
You don't. What do you mean you don't?
Right, My buddy? Yeah.
I go. I I remember talking to this
priest and I go, is it OK that Iswear at him?
He goes, Mary, God's shoulders are so big.
He's fine with it. And he created me, right?
So he knows me. And why would I show up to God
(35:19):
being a hypocrite? Listen, bitch, I'm hurting and I
need you to help me, right? Whatever language you use, God
wants you to show up when you'rebroken.
He doesn't want you to show up when you're good.
Why would I even seek him out ifI'm good?
My pain that I went through my, my depression, my pain, my
(35:43):
anger, my desperation was that the that the gateway for me to
get to God because if I could keep using drugs and drinking
and not have a problem go on, there'd be no reason for me to
contact God. Why?
I almost died. I tried to die.
(36:04):
I was sitting in darkness. Well, let me reach out to the
last straw. The very same thing I gave the
finger to for being for for having such a, an unfair life.
I'm going to give this a try, right?
My call to God and my desperation came from here, not
from here, from here. So, and it's the same today and
(36:26):
now when something happens, I reach out to God, I reach out to
my sponsor. I have a network of people I've
created, I've through time and stuff.
I have people that hold me up, like minded people that hold me
up when I'm going through a a hard time.
And this too shall pass. And it does.
Yeah. So that's how it is.
(36:48):
I love it. One of my favorite acronyms is,
you know, hope stands for Hold On Pain Ends, right?
Like sometimes I just need to grip the steering wheel and and
get through today, right? Because tomorrow might not be
better or worse, but it'll be different, you know, if I get to
bed, it'll be different tomorrow.
And yeah, that's gotten me through a lot too.
(37:09):
Or it's just like, I, you know, I don't know what's going on
right now, but I trust you. I trust the outcome.
And it's not up to me, but I I trust the process.
Right. I'm not liking what you're
giving me, but I know that you, you got this.
He got it. I don't have nothing, but he got
it, yeah. I can't, it's, it's so true.
Like I can do what's in front ofme and I can leave the results
up to, to the universe, to God, whatever you want to call it,
(37:31):
right. And I think it's also important
to note, I always say this, but it's like we come in here and a
lot of people are like God, likeI grew up Catholic and I hate it
and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.
It's like, you know, it's every,it's your own conception.
You know, it's not the, the judo, judo Christian
judeo-christian God. It's not the guy with the beard
in the sky. It can be, but it's up to you,
right? It's it's just not you.
(37:51):
It's not me. It's a, it's you said group of
drugs. I love that one.
Great outdoors is another one, you know, good orderly
direction. Sorry, you said group.
Good orderly direction. But I liked group of drunks when
I came in because when I walked into a room full of Alcoholics,
I felt something there. Right on the retreat.
Yeah, on the retreat there was a, a power greater than myself.
So pray to that, you know, fuck whatever's going to get you
(38:14):
through it. If you could go back to your
younger self before you got intoaddiction, what, what do you,
what do you think you would say to that, that version of you?
So, you know, there's this thing, I wouldn't change
anything. I don't regret anything.
I would. I would.
There were some things that I that I've done that that I would
(38:41):
change and not redo again. However, all of that pitiful and
incomprehensible demoralization behavior that I did had to
happen in order for me to be instrumental to carry the
message. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it led me to where I am today, right?
You know I. I want to talk about like
(39:05):
essentials to your recovery, sort of like these tools or
daily habits or things that you do.
And I'm, I'm sure maybe it hasn't, but has it changed from
so when you first came in early recovery, what were your sort of
essentials and then what is it, you know today, has that
changed? So when I came in, I was still
full of fear. I was still, for me, it was like
(39:27):
the experience of the peeling ofan onion, right?
And I had all these fears and, you know, I had to make a
certain amount of money every day and I had to.
And I wasn't really investing inmy recovery.
And that's like I said, when I reached this start point in my
recovery where even suicide was an was a thought because it's
(39:52):
not this not a deal where you come in and you get better and
you're. Oh yeah, OK, I'm good, good to
go. No, you got to give it away if
you want to keep it. So once I became like that, that
I really invest in my recovery and stuff.
There's things that I need to doevery day.
There's things that I. So I get up in the morning, I
have my coffee, I read my literature, and I pray.
(40:14):
I pray I have a conversation with God.
I get up, I do what I have to do.
Where do you need me? What do I need to do today?
God, where do you need me? Where do you need me today?
Do I have to do this? Do I have to do that?
And like I said, for me, my life, a lot is service.
Today it's service. And service is huge because
service keeps me free. Service doesn't give me time to
(40:36):
think about my own stupidity of the Paramount Pictures.
Paramount Pictures is the, you know, the, this, this.
We should all been in the movie industry.
We would have been loaded because of this active
imagination, you know. It's always a horror movie.
When you're, when you're capableof forming A resentment for
something that hasn't happened yet, you're fucked.
(40:58):
And that's my brain, right? So, and I laugh at that because
how fuck do you have to be? But talk to another addict
alcoholic. Don't get that right.
So today I just try to do the next right thing.
I I, like I said, I'm, I work with girls.
I I have a position in my in my group, but I also nine years
ago, I enhanced my recovery by starting to go to Al Anon
(41:21):
because I had to. I hit another another bottom in
my recovery because I'm a fixer.And if you would just listen to
me, you would be OK. And I'm talking sponsees, I'm
talking people that are not evenin the rooms and stuff, you
know, people that come around you and they drain the life out
of your. I can't, I'm gonna slap them,
(41:46):
right? So, but I understand that too,
because I've been there. But because of this program,
I've been given this gift that it's, it's not like that
anymore. So, you know, I was working with
people and I wanted to fix and God forbid they realized, well,
what did, where did I go wrong? It's not about me, right?
So because I want to fix becauseI want to control in that.
(42:09):
If you would just listen to me. Yeah, listen to me and Landon,
Al Anon like me because that's where I ended up.
And Al Anon, it's a program where there was something in
that program that I didn't learnin the other fellowship.
And it teaches you a lot about boundaries.
Don't go sticking your nose in the beehive because you might
get stung. Keep a safe distance so that you
(42:33):
don't get stung emotionally, mentally, physically and
spiritually. Keep a distance.
It talks about live and let live.
It talks about minding your own business.
And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You came here and you want your
partner or whoever it is to stopdrinking.
I don't want to hear about that.They don't even really allow a a
(42:53):
very good group will not even allow for you to talk about
that. They're going to say why are you
here? Why are you here?
You're the problem. I'm the problem.
Yeah. Why are you here?
If you think that this is a program where you could stop the
person, it's not going to work, you know.
So that was a Ding, Ding, Ding. When I started to go and I
(43:18):
started to listen, it was like bells went off.
It talks about the the childhoodit like a lot like what we
talked about. But what role did you play in
your family dynamics? Because alcoholism, addiction is
a family disease. The ISM is in the behavior.
Bingo. It's in the behavior.
So for me, if I look in my family, this is generational.
(43:40):
My father's side does a lot of alcoholism.
My mother's side is a lot of addiction.
It's not the drug, it's not the alcohol, It's the behavior of
these behaviors that are toxic in the family system.
So what's, what's really it, what's really fascinating to me
is people, they think that, you know, it's all, oh, I need to
(44:02):
get my, my son help or whatever it is a spouse, this, that.
And yeah, but you need to get help too.
Why? I'm not the one with the
problem. Yes, you are.
You play a part in there, right?You play a part.
And I, I'm, I speak like this, 'cause I'm so passionate because
you can't remain asleep and, andthink that this is just about
(44:23):
him. This is about the whole, it's,
it affects everything. We are like roaring tornadoes,
destroying the lives of people we love.
Everywhere I go, I I like when Iwas in my diction, I was
destroying, right? That's what addiction does.
It's a devastating illness. And so let's talk about that.
Let's do some work on yourself and let's see where, what, what
(44:46):
part you playing there? What was your behavior like at
that time? How did you do the cope this and
that? And your eyes open and you're
like, it's like it's the same kind of program, but it's, it's
from a different angle. And I always say Al Anon is way
harder, way harder because you got unlearn patterns of
(45:06):
behavior. You got to stop controlling, you
got to be you got to do this deal with a little bit of
detachment. Attachment is the root of all
suffering. OK, give me a break here.
I'm a new, I'm a human being. So it's like I'm a spiritual
being going through this human. It's experience.
And I think the human experienceis the fucking bitch.
(45:27):
It's hard. It's hard because I have a
heart. I fall in love with all my
sponsees. We share such intimate details
and I share with them my life. And how do you do this?
With detachment? But detachment doesn't mean that
you stop caring. It just gives you that space to
(45:49):
protect yourself, to understand that they're on the journey and
you're on the journey and it's not personal and you pray for
them, right? So, yeah, it's, that's it, It's,
it's a trip recovery. It's a trip.
And more will be revealed to me.And I'm just hoping and praying
that I will end up at my grave with this dry date and 'cause I
(46:11):
don't ever want to go back. Anthony, Never.
When I think about that, I cry. You know, in two days I'll be
celebrating 26 years. And it's a, it's a miraculous.
It's just, it brings tears to myeyes because it's an unmerited
gift. It's an unmerited gift.
Why is it that some people live through this and get and get
(46:33):
better and some people die 29 years old with a little girl
dead. Why?
And God's like, because I got a plan that you don't understand.
And I keep thinking that becauseit's none of my business.
My business is to keep carrying the message to anybody else who
wants it. It's it's.
(46:55):
As well said it, it's a trip, right?
Like it's you can't explain it. You know, more will be more will
be revealed. I love that it's so true.
It's like I can't comprehend theplan and I never will.
And that's OK, right. I'm happy you brought up the
family part of it too, because it's important and there's not a
lot of information out there forfamilies that, that struggle
(47:16):
with this. They play a part.
That's a huge, that was a huge pill for my parents to swallow.
They, I think they're on the other side of that now where my
mom now, God bless her, she's carrying the message left, right
and center with and she loves it.
She loves when people come in broken because she has now a
role to play in their lives. And, and if, like you said, if
they're willing to pick up the tools, I have a tool kit for
(47:37):
you. You know, I want to ask you
this. What, what do you think the
difference is between enabling and supporting someone in active
addiction? It's a fine line, right?
Again, you got to wake up to understand the difference and
waking up means you got to become aware and accept that you
2 play a part in this. And if you're fighting and going
(48:01):
no I'm about the problem, you'regoing to stay asleep.
So enabling is me cleaning up after your mess, me cleaning up
after your debts, me cleaning uplying and making up story, and
protecting you at all costs so that you could keep killing
yourself because I'm making it comfortable for you.
There's no reason to change if there's no reason to change.
(48:22):
Supporting you means I see what you're doing to yourself and I
love you and it's killing me, but this is so painful.
I can't watch you die. I can't watch you die.
So it's either you got to do something, you got to leave
because I'll love you forever and I will continue to love you,
(48:43):
but I can't stand to watch this torture.
If you don't leave or do something with your life, then I
can't. I can't do this right.
So that's the difference. And it's the hardest thing to do
and it's the hardest thing to dobecause you don't know if
they're going to die. That's the reality.
But if you go for your own treatment to take care of
(49:08):
yourself in these other the rooms on the other side, you
know what you have to do. Because it could be your son, it
could be your wife, it could be your kid, whatever really, it's
God's child and you have no power.
Step one, I'm powerless over alcohol, drugs, my life is
(49:30):
unmanageable. I'm fixing it.
I'm enabling you. I'm cleaning up your debts,
that's to your manageability, and you become just a sick, if
not sicker than the addict Alcoholics.
So that has to change, right? So the moment you got you, you
start to take care of yourself and you stop then the disease of
(49:50):
addiction. Wait a minute.
Addicts and Alcoholics are sly fuckers.
They're very sly and they're diseased because they're very
manipulative and stuff. Not because they're bad people,
but because they're sitting in that darkness and addiction.
Alcoholism is all about darkness.
It's all about what can I do to get my next fix?
(50:13):
My next height is where can I steal?
Where can I manipulate? Where that's what it does.
But clean that person up and they shine like a diamond,
right? I read a quote from Carl Jung
and this is this quote never leaves me A whole person
complete. A whole person is someone who
(50:35):
has wrestled with the devil and now walks with God.
And if that doesn't describe us to ATI don't know what does,
right? So you clean us up and we become
we know both sides of the coin. We become real like real
warriors for God. Like if you listen to what you
(50:56):
have to do and you give away this message and you become so
passionate, like I'm passionate about there's a way out of this,
you know, So it's, that's the difference for me between
enabling and and supporting. I love that.
Yeah. Detachment.
I like that word, too. It's like, you know, healthily
(51:17):
detach. It doesn't mean I don't love you
and I'm giving up. I'll.
I'll be here when you're ready, you know?
So I'll be here when you're ready.
But until then, I can't partake because it's killing me.
You. Know I can't torture myself
watching you die like this and you know some people I know when
al Anon that live with an activealcoholic now they act and
they're happy. They still live with them.
(51:37):
They still but there's tools that they have they know that
they follow that they don't theydetach they detach, they focus
on their own recovery and they're happy people and I'm
looking at them like wow, because I don't know that I can
Live Today with an active user. I I don't think I could.
It would bother me, you know? You kind of get taken down with.
(51:59):
Them but it's all about choices and it's all about they don't
tell you do this, do that. You figure it out.
Just keep coming back, keep coming back and you'll know,
right? So there's a lot of freedom and,
and space there for choice. Whatever works for you, right?
And. There's a lot of paths up the
recovery mountain as as I alwayssay, what's something Mary, that
(52:23):
you're you're working on recently you've been working on
personally. So what am I working on?
I don't know that I'm working onanything.
I know that I could be very hardon myself.
Today is really not about drinking and getting high
(52:46):
anymore. Today for me, it's how I show up
in the world. Are my character defects in
check? I'm working on trying to respond
as as opposed to react. I'm trying to always.
I mean, everything today is about being in alignment, right?
But I know for a fact that I'm not leaving this world with
(53:09):
flying. I'm not the kumbaya, the next
kumbaya. I'm I'm a flawed human being.
And so I will die a flawed humanbeing.
But I'm always trying to improvemyself.
And when I'm really centered andI'm really doing well in my, my
peace, I'm slower to react. I'm, I'm, I'm more in tune, but
there's days like I just, God, don't put a gun in my hand.
(53:32):
I'm going to kill this fucker, you know what I mean?
But it's just, it's like that. It's like that's what recovery
is. It's about how do I show up in
the world? Am I working on my controller
issues? Am I still trying to fix?
Am I engaging in all these crazythings, these crazy behaviors
(53:52):
that no longer serve me? Did I gossip about somebody
today? Did I like At the end of the
day, if I know I've done something wrong, it's like that
always in here at the God Center.
That's where it resides in me and that's what my life is
today. What did I do good today?
What did I do bad today? And I ask God for forgiveness
(54:13):
and I continue. So it's always being about the
best version of me that I can give.
But it's not perfect, you know? Yeah.
With, with a little bit of forgiveness and grace too.
Cause yeah, I've, I've met a lotof addicts, Alcoholics, myself
included, that we're very critical of our, of ourselves,
right? We're good at picking up that 2
(54:33):
by 4 and beating the crap out ofourselves, you know, So it's a
good point. Let's end with this, Mary, if
you could say something to a struggling someone, anyone
that's struggling right now withmental health or or addiction,
what do you think you would say to them?
There is definitely a different way to live and I hope you hit
(54:55):
your bottom soon. And because desperation is the
gift that's going to be transformative in your life.
And if you're not there yet, that's OK, but get there because
without a bottom, nothing happens.
And So what I love to see, you know, I was driving here today
(55:17):
and I saw some guy and I don't know, on the road and he was on
a bike and dirty and like, I don't know if he was on some
type of drug, whatever. And I like my first words was
God help him. God help him.
My heart bleeds when I see this because I get it.
(55:38):
I get it. I never landed on the streets.
I hadn't landed on the streets yet.
I haven't gone to prostitution yet.
I would like homelessness yet, but I was heading that way and
for some reason Godseed fit to Ihit my bottom and it it was like
I didn't have to land there, thank God.
But when I see what I see today with people and, you know, going
(56:02):
to watch a show and watching somebody on the nod in an
elevator with track Marks and that I'm like inside I'm, I cry
and I think God just carry them.These are your children.
You can't get through to somebody when they're on the
nod, you know, but hopefully they show up in the rooms
because every time that we do the serenity prayer, that's what
(56:25):
we pray for for the suffering addict, you know, and if they
come in the room, then our prayers have been answered.
Sometimes God, I think God is somerciful that he just takes
their life and says, no, what this is done or I don't know
what God's plan is, but the miracle that some people come
into the rooms and they stay andthey transform their lives.
(56:45):
That's the prayers that are answered for sure, for sure.
And it's worth sticking around for just to watch that right?
Yeah. And if you you come in and you
think you've done and you still fall and you still use just keep
coming back. Get back up and come back.
Get back up and come back. Because you notice that saying
don't leave until the miracle happens.
(57:06):
Sometimes you'll hear something in the meeting or whatever that
you're going to go Ding, Ding, Ding.
The light goes off and you're like, Oh, yeah, yeah.
I love it. Thanks so much, Mary for coming
down. I love you and I appreciate you
and I had a lot of fun today. Thank.
You thank you for having me. Thanks for listening.
Please help us grow the channel and like, share and subscribe
(57:28):
for more content. The discussions and stories
shared on this podcast are for informational and motivational
purposes only. This content is not a substitute
for professional medical advice,addiction treatment, or therapy.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction,
please consult A licensed physician, addiction specialist,
or mental health professional. You are no longer alone.
Hi there, welcome back or welcome to Recovering Out Loud
Podcast, the show where we get real about mental health and
addiction. I'm so glad you're here.
If you or someone you love is struggling with drugs or
alcohol, please reach out for help.
Send me a message on all social media platforms at Recovering
Out Loud Pod or by e-mail at recoveringoutloudpod@gmail.com.
(00:26):
You are no longer alone. Mary, thank you so much for
coming. I appreciate you.
(00:47):
I met you through a retreat thatwe we had together and it was a
lovely, lovely experience. I know you had a a similar
experience as well. Yeah.
How was that for you? Like being on a retreat with.
You've done a few before too. Yes, I've done many.
Yeah. How was that being, you know,
(01:07):
around a bunch of sober people for a weekend?
There was lots of activities andmeetings and stuff like that.
What was that like for you? To me, it's like heaven.
It's like being at home. It's to connect with people that
are just like me is there's no, there's no words for that there.
It's just blissful for me, yeah.Yeah, it's like there was a
(01:28):
presence in every room, you know, and I had a bunch of, I
had a, you know, I had known a few people there beforehand, but
I didn't know everybody. And I had a lot of interactions
with people here and there that were really meaningful
conversations. And not those.
Not those cocaine takeover the world conversations.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of those.
Paramount Pictures We like to create movies.
(01:49):
Yeah, Paramount. Yeah, I love it.
OK, well, I want everyone to youknow, I've heard your story a
few. No, I've heard your story once
now, and I thought it was, you know, well said, powerful.
But I think there's a message here that a lot of people need
to hear. And so let's just start with,
you know, childhood. What was what was childhood like
(02:10):
for you it? Was difficult.
It was where do I start? I I lost my mom when I was four
years old. She had cancer and there's three
of us. I'm the baby of the family and
the the three of us have this thing in our family with
addiction and alcoholism. And there was a lot of I grew up
(02:34):
with a father who did the best he could, but there was a lot of
trauma in our house. There was a lot of abuse.
There was a lot of fear tiptoeing around him not to set
him off. And strict, very strict.
And yeah, I mean, it's. And you adapt to that, right.
(02:57):
Like when I tell people my storynow and.
Oh, my God, you lost your mom atage of four.
That must have been hard. Well, what?
How can I miss something I didn't have?
You know, it's you adapt. You adapt.
And when my mom died and my father had to keep working, my
sister, my brother had to go to an orphanage Monday to Friday.
We, we come from Montreal and there was a big orphanage there.
(03:20):
And I was too young. So I had to stay with my aunt
until I became, I think 5 or 6. And then I was able to go in.
And in this orphanage, it was, you know, boys of a certain age,
you know, and then girls of a certain age.
It was like divide divisive and and we were raised with nuns in
(03:42):
there. So you could imagine.
I mean, I I was when I look back, I this sense of not
feeling like I belong started from a very early age.
And when I got into when I got into this orphanage, I was
(04:02):
hanging out with these two girlsand they were like the badasses
and they had boyfriends and I just OK, if that's what it
takes. I got myself a little boyfriend
with glasses thick and I didn't know what I was doing right.
This was just to fit in. And I remember, you know, we had
(04:25):
there was a big statue of the Virgin Mary and when we went
outside and I went behind the Virgin Mary with this boy and
you know what, when you're 6 andyou're kissing a boy or
whatever, you don't know what you're doing.
It's kind of gross. It's, you know, a bit of tongue
this that whatever. And I sold told the boy when I
count to 3, let's pull down our pants.
So to see what we look like 123 pull down the pants and the nun
(04:48):
came and caught us. Oh, my God.
And I begged her. You could kill me, beat me.
Just don't tell my father about this.
And I don't think she ever did. And I was six years old at the
time, right? So I was looking for a place
where I could fit. And that happened as I was
growing up, before I ever touched the line or a drink or
(05:14):
whatever. I never felt.
I felt different. I felt looking for to find
myself, my identity, you know, I, I, it was, it was confusing
time. Yeah, yeah.
What can you describe? What your first sort of memory?
Earliest memory? Maybe with with substances?
(05:35):
What what that was like for you?So I was 17 years old.
I had graduated high school Montreal, and I was already
living on my own. And I was working in this
restaurant in Montreal. I was the only girl that was all
waiters and I I hooked. I, I hooked.
Whoa, let me rephrase that hook up.
I know me. It's sex right now.
(05:56):
So I did. That was not the case.
Yeah, it. Used to be something different.
Right. But back then hook up didn't
mean let's plow. It's it was different.
So I, I just became friends withthis waiter and I told them,
let's go back to my house, to myapartment and drink.
And I remember I drank, we had sudden comfort and stuff and I
drank half a bottle and I was sosick the next day saying, Oh my
(06:19):
God, I'll never do this again. But even in doing that, like who
drinks half a bottle of alcohol their first time?
Like that's alarming. But I wanted to know.
I didn't want to know about the tipsy.
I want to know what it's like todrink and get drunk right there.
There's something wrong, right? There's it's not normal.
So yeah, it was pretty vile. That was my first experience.
(06:44):
This kind of all the way thinking right this this.
Black or black or white, all or nothing extreme, Yeah.
And so he had the alcohol and what like, what did you, what
did you know about substances upuntil that point?
Like growing up, was it it was around your house a lot or?
So my, my sister and brother social services were in our
(07:04):
house because of the abuse my father inflicted.
My sister and brother used to get severely beaten.
My, my sister was a bit of a RedBull.
May she rest in peace. She's gone now.
But you know, she was the type of girl that would leave the
house looking a certain way, getout of the house and then wear
the mini skirt, whatever, you know, and, and get in trouble
and that in. So social services were there a
(07:28):
lot and they kept running away. They were put in foster homes
and getting running away from there and stuff.
And so I was left alone with my father.
And I didn't know what substances were.
I mean, I had heard of drugs, but I didn't, I didn't know
because I didn't see it. And I was forbidden to see my
(07:48):
siblings because they were like the black sheep.
And they were, you know, they brought shame to the family.
Meanwhile, let's not talk about what was going on in the house,
not going to talk about that shame because everything had to
be swept under the rug. And I would see my sister in
secret every once in a while. And by the time I reconnected
(08:09):
with her, she was already dancing in the bar business.
And she was hooked on drugs, on cocaine.
And. But I would see her in secret.
And I didn't know much about thedrug then.
But when I left on my own at 17,she came back into my life.
And I lived with her, and I saw the devastation of what that did
(08:30):
to her. Yeah, So it was scary.
It was infuriating. I didn't understand these people
that look like zombies when they're on this ship that they
have no more and they're jonesing.
And I used to watch her cry, coming down, wanting to kill
herself, always listening to these sad songs, you know, it's
(08:50):
like, you know, the IT was Western.
So I lost my dog. And, you know, those sad songs
when you're you're sad and stuff.
And I always said to myself, I will never do that.
Today's lesson is never say never.
Yeah. Especially in recovery.
Yeah, for a long time, I, I didn't think, I, I never said I
(09:12):
wasn't going to relapse, but I didn't think that it was going
to happen. You know, I was on social media
yesterday and I was reading a post, I don't know, I'm thinking
of this now, but I feel moved tosay it.
I was reading this thing where they were talking about relapse.
Doesn't it's a part of recovery.It can be a part of recovery,
but it doesn't have to be, right.
And I, I fully believe that supports that 100%.
(09:33):
But these people were commentingon it and they're like, yeah,
I'm, there's they were talking about this one and done.
Like I'm a one and done. Yeah, I'm a one and done.
You know, I first time I got sober, it's like, sorry, can you
see the like, how do you know that you're done?
You know what I mean? Today, Yeah, today I can say
that, you know, I'm sober and and and and clean, but I don't
know what the future holds, right?
(09:54):
My my experience was that I didn't see it coming, you know,
my relapse and I so I have to live for today.
And we talk about that a lot. This one day at a time thing
that we go through, but it's like that's a dangerous place to
be is like. That 1000% it's you're all.
You know what makes me nervous? I hear people say this in
meetings. You got this.
Oh my God I I cringe. That's a good one, yes.
(10:15):
You got this? No, all you got is a one day,
every day. You have to make sure that
there's certain things that you do to maintain your, to
maintain, to just yeah, to keep your sobriety.
And there's, there are things that you need to do, there's
things you need to read and there's instruction.
(10:37):
You know, the more I put into myrecovery, the more I'm taking
out an insurance policy for myself.
You know, do I like doing everything I have to do in
recovery? No, no, I don't.
But I have to do that because this is my third dry day.
I did go back out. I did relapse.
I'm just grateful I didn't die in the process.
But some people die. I just found out yesterday from
(10:58):
one of my sponsees that a girl that she was with in treatment
29 years old went back out aftertreatment used and died.
It's not a joke. This is like so you know, when
people get cocky or they, I don't know if they mean to be
cocky or whatever, they go, I got this, you got nothing.
Learn to humble yourself becauseif you're sober today, it's by
(11:20):
God's grace. It's by well, I work for it.
Yes, I've done the work, but I also rely on a higher power
every day and sometimes I've hadto take this thing 5 minutes at
a time. They say you have 24 hours,
right? The maintenance of your
spiritual condition. I've had to there's been moments
(11:41):
in my recovery where I've had totake this, this thing, not one
day at a time, 5 minutes at a time, 10 minutes at a time, an
hour at a time like this is thisis not it's not.
You get sober and La di da and Ilike poof, magic dragon.
Everything is so good. It's not like that.
It's life will happen whether you drink or you don't drink,
(12:03):
but if you just learn to take direction, which for somebody
like me, that's why I had three dried aids.
I was very stubborn and defiant.I was young when I came in and I
didn't have to do the steps, 'cause I'm young, you guys are,
You're old and you're rotting. You have to do this.
You need. Not me.
Yeah, not. Me, yeah, because, you know, I
had the, the, the, the cute little body this that.
(12:25):
Nobody cared about that but me. But I was sick when I came in.
We come here 'cause we're not all there, right?
So and then after and and being desperate in recovery, I learned
to take direction, I learned to listen and I learned to follow
what these, the people before medid.
That helped me. Yeah, yeah.
One of my favorite sayings is you can't fix a broken brain
(12:47):
with a broken brain, right? Or a sick brain with a sick
brain. It's like, I've tried that.
No kidding. I've tried that many times and I
need some, I need another way, you know, it's, it's plain and
simple. Like I, I, I need not Anthony's
plan today, right? And how do I get a different
plan? Well, I listen to your point.
I take the cotton balls out of my ears and put them in my mouth
(13:08):
for a second and just listen to,to what people are saying
because they've been there, right.
So you mentioned, you know, yourfirst experience with alcohol.
Can you touch on, you know, whatthe progression was like for you
and sort of what LED you to thatmoment of like, oh God.
So it it happened like it, it happened like this.
So at 17, I started and then, you know, after 2-3 days from
(13:32):
being hungover from the whateverthat, that, that boost that I
drank, there was something I never touched that again.
I was sick. I started dabbling with
marijuana and I started dabblingwith LSD and I was having fun.
It was so much fun. And then what happened is at the
age of 20, I, I got introduced to cocaine and I was hanging out
(13:59):
with somebody that was doing it casual user.
And we were out one night and hesaid, I'm going to go get some.
And I said, why you going to go get that?
I, I don't do that stuff. And you know, again, I was
feeling like an outsider. And this, this was back in the
80s, you know, and, and in the 80s and the bar business was
very, very prevalent, this blow and everybody was on this stuff.
(14:22):
And so he said, no, no, he goes,I'll go get it, I'll do some and
you just drink. I go, if you go get it, I'm
going to do it with you. And I did it.
Oh my God, that was the love of my life for the first time, I
think. And I mean the other drugs with
the LSD and the, and the, and the, you know, the marijuana and
(14:43):
the alcohol, yeah, they were OK and stuff.
But cocaine did it for me. I felt like I had arrived.
I felt like I could talk for thefirst time.
I didn't feel different for I just felt like I could, oh, I
could run the world. It was just, and the talking, Oh
my God, the non-stop talking. It's just, you know, just
(15:05):
talking and all that stuff. And really that was my first
real good experience, cocaine. And then after that I just kept
chasing that same experience, which I never got.
I started hiding in closets. I start, Oh my God, the stuff
that I did, I, I, I would just be paranoid and, and, and I'm
(15:27):
thinking this is kind of stupid.So I'm all paranoid when I'm on
it. And when I have no more, I want
more. And you know, I would think
about was my deceased mother whowould look at look at me from
the other side and be crying just to watch your daughter go
through this. And not only me or other
daughter and my brother who was incarcerated for more than half
(15:51):
of his life, he too passed away.God bless him.
He was addicted to crack and thething like the, the, you know,
addicts are all really old with the, the, the, the shame and
guilt. And that's all I felt in my
existence. I was dancing.
I didn't have two pennies to my name, borderline homeless and
abusive relationships. There was no direction in my
(16:13):
life. I was just lost.
And I don't have a story where, you know, I used for 20 years.
My using was from 20 to 2323. I arrived in the rooms.
I was done. I was done.
I couldn't die. I tried to kill myself.
I couldn't die. And it's sad when I think of
(16:35):
that. It's really sad when I think
you're 23 and you want to end your life because 23 is supposed
to be, you know, an exciting time in, in a, in a, in an
adult's life where they go to university or college.
I was done. I, I was done dancing with the
devil and I, I felt that I was just sitting in darkness and I
(16:56):
did not understand the point of my existence.
And I remember when I hit my bottom, I was working in this
bar in Scarborough and I came home and it just stopped
working. I remember doing a line and it
didn't work anymore. And I came home and I got on my
knees. The very same thing.
I give the finger to this God. I thought if there was a God, I
(17:18):
wouldn't have had this life right?
My mother wouldn't have died. I wouldn't be raised with a
psychotic father. You know all of this stuff,
right? That was the biggest victim on 2
legs when I got into rooms with reason.
But looking at it now, nothing happens by mistake.
That was a purpose why all this had to happen.
(17:38):
But I didn't know it then. And, you know, I got on my hands
and knees and I prayed and I said, if you're there or you
kill me or get me better becauseI can't do anything like that
now. Did I pray to God while I was
doing my using and stuff? Get Me Out of this one.
I'll never do it again. Yeah, but this time it came from
here. It didn't come from here.
It came from it was the cry of desperation from my soul.
(18:02):
And that's all that I believe that God asked.
I'm on standby and I'm waiting. And when you're ready, I'll be
here. And I was ready.
And so my journey began, you know, and.
What did that look like after that?
Was it a phone call or was? It what happened is I was in a
in a relationship, very disgusting relationship with
(18:24):
somebody that got in talk contact with somebody we used to
party with and was now a big book thumper in the rooms.
And I got in touch with him and he gave he gave him the number
of an addiction counselor who gave it to me and I started to
see this addiction counselor once a week.
(18:46):
I owe my life this counselor. He was amazing.
I was scared to death of him. I don't know how many world wars
did we have 232. This guy looked like he's been
through 50, a recovered heroin addict and he, he just looked
you right in the eye and he looked rough, like he, you could
see he's been through hell. But you know, it was my
introduction into a different life and that's how my journey
(19:09):
began. So he I would go see him once a
week and he told me go to three meetings a week and I'd be like,
OK, which meetings? Once a week He goes, well, pick
one, right? 12.
There's different fellowships you could go to different ones.
I go, can I smoke a joint in between?
He goes, no, no, no, no joints. I'm thinking, wow, they're a bit
strict over here. But anyway, I had to do that.
(19:32):
And you know, I came into my journey began and I came into
recovery knowing that I was an addict.
I didn't know I was an alcoholic.
So I had to go back out to do more research with that wasn't
pretty. So what do you say to the people
now that come in because this isa common issue.
I I struggled with that too. At 23, I'm an addict to check.
(19:53):
Yep, all the evidence there. But alcoholic.
No, no. Like I'm gonna drink on my
wedding day. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna
handle the drinking. It's just the drugs, guys.
Like, let's focus on what? What's important here?
Let's not. Get carried away.
Yeah, let's not get carried away.
What do you say to people, new people that come in that are
like, because this happens a lotwith, with our especially my
generation of people coming in, but also like, I don't know, I
(20:14):
can only speak for my generation, but it's like, what
do you say to people that are I'm an addict, but not an
alcoholic like. What?
Well, I'm going to repeat what was told to me in treatment.
I was shipped off the treatment in in 1989.
And this is when COVID, this is when the government paid
everything and my counsellors inthe group that was sitting in,
(20:37):
you know, chances are if you're an addict, you're an alcohol and
I'm not. No, I'm not.
Well, yeah. And they made us do the step one
and we had to write how much money going back, how much money
we spent and this that. And I listen, I only have AI
don't even like booze. I only have a drink because
sometimes, sometimes I would do blow without drinking like that
(20:58):
was fun. Just disgusting, pitiful and
incomprehensible demoralization for sure.
And they kept going and insisting and at one point I
shut them up just to, I agreed just to shut them up because I
thought you don't know what you're talking about.
They're one of us, but you don'tknow what you're talking about.
You can't fool, you can't con a con.
(21:19):
You can't fool somebody who's exactly like you.
But I agreed just to shut them up.
But I wasn't convinced. So I came back and I joined the
12 step group, a program and a 12 step group and I had a
sponsor. I never called.
I did the library and I never read a book.
I I was doing things one foot in, one foot out because, you
(21:41):
know, I had this was firm and everything was firm and they're
old. So I'm going to.
I know you're there, God, but, you know, let me do it.
So I was, I was not surrenderingfully, you know, when it comes
to my, my, my social life and my.
Yeah, yeah. I know you want the best me, but
I'm going to do it my way. You know, you got to get out of
dancing, Mary. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I'm still going to dance. Dancing straight is another
(22:07):
trip. And I was doing the without
being high because I was having so much panic attack on stage.
And oh, it was brutal. So there was a point then in my
recovery where I stopped going to meetings for at least I think
about a year and I didn't, I waslucky enough to not go back out,
(22:29):
but I did. I, I started to feel different.
I started to feel different. And what happened is this, it's
I, you know, it's the typical story of stop going to meetings
this, that you meet somebody, they become your higher power.
Next thing you know, I'm in Venezuela and I'm drinking after
3 1/2 years of sobriety. And when I drank, you know,
(22:50):
yeah, I'm, I'm amazed. I had like, I see people, they
go back out for a day or two andthey come.
Oh my, same. I know.
Same. I was out for eight months, 8
months, and the last place I wanted to be was in a room with
sober people. It was going to screw up my
high. No, but the more I drank, the
more they got loud. See, there's a saying that goes,
(23:13):
Be careful what you pray for because you might just get it.
Well, if I'm aligning, I'm trying to align my will with
God. I can't have my cake and eat it
too. Something's got to go.
My, my ideas have got to go. I can't incorporate the old
ideas into this new life. It doesn't work like that,
right? It's a change of everything.
And during the time that I was out for eight months, there was
(23:36):
this gentleman that kept callingme.
It's so fascinating how God works.
And I'd met this person in a barwho was in the program.
And anyway, he would call me every once in a while today.
Hey, how you doing? I'm good.
Who is this? It's so so it goes.
You're drinking. Yeah.
Call me when you're done. Click.
(23:59):
You're an idiot. Why are you calling me?
Right. Like, but he was just making
sure the seed was planted. Once the seed is planted and you
go back out, For anybody who wants reservations about this,
it's going to be a nightmare in a shit show.
That's it. I'm warning you right now 'cause
you're nobody's exception to therule.
If you're a Type 3 addict alcoholic like me and you want
(24:19):
to go back out after you had some time, it's going to be
hell, pure hell, because now youknow the difference.
And anyway, after eight months, I called them.
I came back into the rooms and, you know, he became my sponsor.
They were right. They were right in treatment and
they were right in. And I, I, yeah, chances are if
(24:40):
you're an addict, you're an alcoholic.
And I can vouch for that becausealcohol is a drug.
It's a mood altering substance. So why would I think that that
would be OK? Back then I thought I it could
be, but you know, you weaken slowly right in this program.
So for me, it turned out to be the best thing I did because it
just proved that once I became apickle, I don't go back to being
(25:04):
a cucumber. I'm done, I'm done.
And now it's I'm I'm very comfortable and and at piece to
say I can't take anything that alters my mind.
I just can't. I'm allergic to this stuff
because once I ingest it, I'm like, they're not like the
normal person. Oh, I'm getting tips.
I'm going to stop. Duh.
That's the whole point. You know, I'm going to drink
till I vomit, sleep in my vomit.Good idea for me, you know,
(25:29):
like, good. It's not like a people drink
like this, don't they? No, they don't.
Right. So, yeah, it's interesting.
It's interesting how you, like you said that fix, you can't fix
the head with the head, right? Recovery is all about going from
here to going in here. That'll it's it's a language
(25:52):
that you got to go it within. It's a recovery is all about
doing the opposite of what we used to do with this.
The most. I heard a conference speaker say
once the most devastating 6 inches of history is the space
between my ears. Oh, I fell off my chair and I
laughed because it's true. So recovery for as much as I
don't know about you, but I try to dissect what we were learning
(26:16):
in the rooms and about God and what does this look like within?
Just do the work. And once you start to do the
work and you start to tap and you start to face who you are
and you start to get introduced to who you are and, and you
clean that stuff up and you giveit away, then you start feeling
(26:37):
this peace and this, your eyes start to open and you start to
pay attention and you go, my God, look at my life now.
And the miracle is I don't even think about using and drinking
anymore because my life is so good.
You know, it's, it's it's miraculous, really.
(26:59):
Yeah. And that was, I think the, the
thing and, and weed falls into this category too, right?
With a lot of people that I talked to where it's so socially
acceptable that it's not classedwith cocaine and heroin and
meth. And that's, it's a very
dangerous place to be, right? I, I heard someone, I think it
was, I, I heard someone on a podcast once say that the worst
(27:21):
thing that you could be is like kind of an alcoholic, right?
Or kind of an addict. It's so true.
It's like I'm kind of, you know,I kind of have a problem, right?
Because it's like for me, yeah, that means that there's that
back door for more experiments, for more research, like you
said. And nowadays the cocaine people
(27:41):
are doing is deadly, right? It wasn't as deadly as it was
before, you know, before now it's deadly.
To your point, we're seeing people drop all over the place.
And so for me, the mood and mindaltering substances, I tried it.
I've tried every short like Ave.yeah, but you know, with all
sorts of substances and the risknow to today, hopefully
(28:03):
tomorrow's the same, but I don'thave tomorrow.
I have today. The risk is just so high for
testing out anything else that it's it's not even worth it.
Right. No, no, it's.
Not so dangerous. I was gonna ask you, but you,
you kind of touched on it a bit.What is life like for you today?
I'd never if somebody would havetold me when I came in, this is
(28:24):
what your life is going to look like going forward.
Flash forward to 2025. This is what your life is going
to look like. Clean and sober, relatively
healthy. You know, learn to drive a car,
have a car bought my house, married to a wonderful my best
friend, actually having direction and a moral compass
(28:47):
back in my life. I'd be like, yeah, smoke another
one like it's it's, I never imagined my life to be like
this. It's not a glamorous life, but
it's a rich life filled with purpose today.
And what I taught back then, which was a, you know, this God
giving me all this crap with thethe loss of a mother and the
(29:07):
abuse and this, that I used thattoday to, I used that today to
help and work with the girls that come my way that are
broken. And when I, when I reflect on
the time when I was trying so hard to kill myself and I would
(29:27):
pray to my mother and I would pray and I'd say, you know, God,
God like, help me. And God's answer today as I see
it at not yet because I need youto do me a couple of favors.
Not because not because I'm perfect, not because because I
was given this blessing, this unmerited gift of life and a
(29:51):
second chance of recovering my case.
More than a second chance, thirdchance.
And he uses me as a vessel to carry the message that you don't
have to live like that anymore. If if you're done, there's a
different way to live. And so today I'm when I pray in
(30:13):
the morning, I pray and I'm I'm gratitude and I thank him for my
life and I pray for people and stuff and I, I don't really tell
him what you got in store for metoday, because sometimes it's
like, come on, God, you know, but whatever presents in my life
today, I do the next right thing.
I don't go looking for girl people come in my life.
(30:34):
I, I, I, I, I give my, I give ofmy recovery away.
I do service in my Home group. I, I'm busy.
I'm busy and I do service not only in my Home group, in my
home and in my work. I, I, whatever I learned in
recovery in the rooms, I appliedin my life.
(30:54):
And really that's what good orderly direction is.
So for anybody who's confused about what's this God thing,
good orderly direction, you wantto introduce the kid, get
introduced to a higher power, dowhat's suggested to you and
you'll tap into that, right. So I, it's like I won the
lottery, but it's not the lottery of the money.
(31:17):
I won the lottery of life, the half purpose and I can be
authentically myself with all mycuckooness and I have a very
dirty sense of humor and but I also have a heart and I I'm I
got my good points and I got my bad points and I embrace all
that to just be merry. You know what?
(31:40):
I was meant to be in the 1st place and I'm loved and I'm able
to love not by the whole world, but by few.
So I'm grateful for that, yeah. Yeah, I always say to people
like my favorite and most rewarding part of recovery and
being sober is being able to sponsor and pass it on to, to
another guy. Like I, you can't describe it to
(32:03):
somebody, right? Like to, to watch the
transformation of someone, you know, and to see the, the light
flash in their eyes by, by something, not that you not that
something that you made-up or came up with or just something
that you've passed on, right. Or something that my, my higher
power, my God has allowed me to share, right.
Whether it's an experience or something I heard from someone
(32:24):
else one time, you know what I mean?
And it's like that I, I always tell people like stick around
long enough so that you can get to the point where you can carry
the message to specifically sponsoring, but like one other
guy or girl because it's the greatest thing, you know.
It's a gift, yeah. So how do you, Mary, how do you
navigate through you know, when life lifes you today and and you
(32:46):
know something happens where youknow, you're like, why me when
life lifes you? How do you navigate through that
and? I don't say why me, why not me,
why not me? I've been introduced to lost
from an early age. Everybody in my family's dead.
We die young from disease. And all those experience have
(33:10):
just brought me closer to God. Really.
I had to clearly don't call the shots here.
Did I get mad at God? Listen, my faith was tested when
my sister passed that when she got sick and diagnosed with
stage 4 lung cancer, I became a little bit dark.
But thank God through sponsorship and I had a, a woman
(33:34):
in my life back then that we really did a lot of hard work
and repeated steps and stuff forissues that I needed to work on.
And I remember like the same as my mother when she died.
You know, what kind of a God takes a mother away from a four
year old and two kids? And the counselor says, well,
(33:55):
it's all about you, right, Mary?It's not about your mother's
suffering. It's about you.
Anyway, my sister got sick and Imade it about me and I got
pissed at God. You just took my brother a year
ago. Now you're taking her.
Why that is so not that I didn'tbelieve that God was still
there, but I got real with God and I always get real with God.
(34:17):
I don't go to God and go, you know, I said in our literature,
remember doing this years ago, presented somebody pray for the
people you resent God. I pray for this motherfucker
that you give him everything, this fucking bitch that you give
it. Like that's how I used to pray,
right, you fucker. That's not a name I didn't call
(34:37):
God when I came in. Somebody had to hear it.
Somebody had to hear it. But thank God for a
psychotherapy and all that. Like I did a a a number of
things to get better. And you know, a lot of these
spiritual retreats. I remember talking to a priest
going is it OK that I can speak?You know, tell people on the pro
in the program that you swear toGod you.
(34:57):
Swear to God. Yeah, I do.
You don't. What do you mean you don't?
Right, My buddy? Yeah.
I go. I I remember talking to this
priest and I go, is it OK that Iswear at him?
He goes, Mary, God's shoulders are so big.
He's fine with it. And he created me, right?
So he knows me. And why would I show up to God
(35:19):
being a hypocrite? Listen, bitch, I'm hurting and I
need you to help me, right? Whatever language you use, God
wants you to show up when you'rebroken.
He doesn't want you to show up when you're good.
Why would I even seek him out ifI'm good?
My pain that I went through my, my depression, my pain, my
(35:43):
anger, my desperation was that the that the gateway for me to
get to God because if I could keep using drugs and drinking
and not have a problem go on, there'd be no reason for me to
contact God. Why?
I almost died. I tried to die.
(36:04):
I was sitting in darkness. Well, let me reach out to the
last straw. The very same thing I gave the
finger to for being for for having such a, an unfair life.
I'm going to give this a try, right?
My call to God and my desperation came from here, not
from here, from here. So, and it's the same today and
(36:26):
now when something happens, I reach out to God, I reach out to
my sponsor. I have a network of people I've
created, I've through time and stuff.
I have people that hold me up, like minded people that hold me
up when I'm going through a a hard time.
And this too shall pass. And it does.
Yeah. So that's how it is.
(36:48):
I love it. One of my favorite acronyms is,
you know, hope stands for Hold On Pain Ends, right?
Like sometimes I just need to grip the steering wheel and and
get through today, right? Because tomorrow might not be
better or worse, but it'll be different, you know, if I get to
bed, it'll be different tomorrow.
And yeah, that's gotten me through a lot too.
(37:09):
Or it's just like, I, you know, I don't know what's going on
right now, but I trust you. I trust the outcome.
And it's not up to me, but I I trust the process.
Right. I'm not liking what you're
giving me, but I know that you, you got this.
He got it. I don't have nothing, but he got
it, yeah. I can't, it's, it's so true.
Like I can do what's in front ofme and I can leave the results
up to, to the universe, to God, whatever you want to call it,
(37:31):
right. And I think it's also important
to note, I always say this, but it's like we come in here and a
lot of people are like God, likeI grew up Catholic and I hate it
and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.
It's like, you know, it's every,it's your own conception.
You know, it's not the, the judo, judo Christian
judeo-christian God. It's not the guy with the beard
in the sky. It can be, but it's up to you,
right? It's it's just not you.
(37:51):
It's not me. It's a, it's you said group of
drugs. I love that one.
Great outdoors is another one, you know, good orderly
direction. Sorry, you said group.
Good orderly direction. But I liked group of drunks when
I came in because when I walked into a room full of Alcoholics,
I felt something there. Right on the retreat.
Yeah, on the retreat there was a, a power greater than myself.
So pray to that, you know, fuck whatever's going to get you
(38:14):
through it. If you could go back to your
younger self before you got intoaddiction, what, what do you,
what do you think you would say to that, that version of you?
So, you know, there's this thing, I wouldn't change
anything. I don't regret anything.
I would. I would.
There were some things that I that I've done that that I would
(38:41):
change and not redo again. However, all of that pitiful and
incomprehensible demoralization behavior that I did had to
happen in order for me to be instrumental to carry the
message. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it led me to where I am today, right?
You know I. I want to talk about like
(39:05):
essentials to your recovery, sort of like these tools or
daily habits or things that you do.
And I'm, I'm sure maybe it hasn't, but has it changed from
so when you first came in early recovery, what were your sort of
essentials and then what is it, you know today, has that
changed? So when I came in, I was still
full of fear. I was still, for me, it was like
(39:27):
the experience of the peeling ofan onion, right?
And I had all these fears and, you know, I had to make a
certain amount of money every day and I had to.
And I wasn't really investing inmy recovery.
And that's like I said, when I reached this start point in my
recovery where even suicide was an was a thought because it's
(39:52):
not this not a deal where you come in and you get better and
you're. Oh yeah, OK, I'm good, good to
go. No, you got to give it away if
you want to keep it. So once I became like that, that
I really invest in my recovery and stuff.
There's things that I need to doevery day.
There's things that I. So I get up in the morning, I
have my coffee, I read my literature, and I pray.
(40:14):
I pray I have a conversation with God.
I get up, I do what I have to do.
Where do you need me? What do I need to do today?
God, where do you need me? Where do you need me today?
Do I have to do this? Do I have to do that?
And like I said, for me, my life, a lot is service.
Today it's service. And service is huge because
service keeps me free. Service doesn't give me time to
(40:36):
think about my own stupidity of the Paramount Pictures.
Paramount Pictures is the, you know, the, this, this.
We should all been in the movie industry.
We would have been loaded because of this active
imagination, you know. It's always a horror movie.
When you're, when you're capableof forming A resentment for
something that hasn't happened yet, you're fucked.
(40:58):
And that's my brain, right? So, and I laugh at that because
how fuck do you have to be? But talk to another addict
alcoholic. Don't get that right.
So today I just try to do the next right thing.
I I, like I said, I'm, I work with girls.
I I have a position in my in my group, but I also nine years
ago, I enhanced my recovery by starting to go to Al Anon
(41:21):
because I had to. I hit another another bottom in
my recovery because I'm a fixer.And if you would just listen to
me, you would be OK. And I'm talking sponsees, I'm
talking people that are not evenin the rooms and stuff, you
know, people that come around you and they drain the life out
of your. I can't, I'm gonna slap them,
(41:46):
right? So, but I understand that too,
because I've been there. But because of this program,
I've been given this gift that it's, it's not like that
anymore. So, you know, I was working with
people and I wanted to fix and God forbid they realized, well,
what did, where did I go wrong? It's not about me, right?
So because I want to fix becauseI want to control in that.
(42:09):
If you would just listen to me. Yeah, listen to me and Landon,
Al Anon like me because that's where I ended up.
And Al Anon, it's a program where there was something in
that program that I didn't learnin the other fellowship.
And it teaches you a lot about boundaries.
Don't go sticking your nose in the beehive because you might
get stung. Keep a safe distance so that you
(42:33):
don't get stung emotionally, mentally, physically and
spiritually. Keep a distance.
It talks about live and let live.
It talks about minding your own business.
And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You came here and you want your
partner or whoever it is to stopdrinking.
I don't want to hear about that.They don't even really allow a a
(42:53):
very good group will not even allow for you to talk about
that. They're going to say why are you
here? Why are you here?
You're the problem. I'm the problem.
Yeah. Why are you here?
If you think that this is a program where you could stop the
person, it's not going to work, you know.
So that was a Ding, Ding, Ding. When I started to go and I
(43:18):
started to listen, it was like bells went off.
It talks about the the childhoodit like a lot like what we
talked about. But what role did you play in
your family dynamics? Because alcoholism, addiction is
a family disease. The ISM is in the behavior.
Bingo. It's in the behavior.
So for me, if I look in my family, this is generational.
(43:40):
My father's side does a lot of alcoholism.
My mother's side is a lot of addiction.
It's not the drug, it's not the alcohol, It's the behavior of
these behaviors that are toxic in the family system.
So what's, what's really it, what's really fascinating to me
is people, they think that, you know, it's all, oh, I need to
(44:02):
get my, my son help or whatever it is a spouse, this, that.
And yeah, but you need to get help too.
Why? I'm not the one with the
problem. Yes, you are.
You play a part in there, right?You play a part.
And I, I'm, I speak like this, 'cause I'm so passionate because
you can't remain asleep and, andthink that this is just about
(44:23):
him. This is about the whole, it's,
it affects everything. We are like roaring tornadoes,
destroying the lives of people we love.
Everywhere I go, I I like when Iwas in my diction, I was
destroying, right? That's what addiction does.
It's a devastating illness. And so let's talk about that.
Let's do some work on yourself and let's see where, what, what
(44:46):
part you playing there? What was your behavior like at
that time? How did you do the cope this and
that? And your eyes open and you're
like, it's like it's the same kind of program, but it's, it's
from a different angle. And I always say Al Anon is way
harder, way harder because you got unlearn patterns of
(45:06):
behavior. You got to stop controlling, you
got to be you got to do this deal with a little bit of
detachment. Attachment is the root of all
suffering. OK, give me a break here.
I'm a new, I'm a human being. So it's like I'm a spiritual
being going through this human. It's experience.
And I think the human experienceis the fucking bitch.
(45:27):
It's hard. It's hard because I have a
heart. I fall in love with all my
sponsees. We share such intimate details
and I share with them my life. And how do you do this?
With detachment? But detachment doesn't mean that
you stop caring. It just gives you that space to
(45:49):
protect yourself, to understand that they're on the journey and
you're on the journey and it's not personal and you pray for
them, right? So, yeah, it's, that's it, It's,
it's a trip recovery. It's a trip.
And more will be revealed to me.And I'm just hoping and praying
that I will end up at my grave with this dry date and 'cause I
(46:11):
don't ever want to go back. Anthony, Never.
When I think about that, I cry. You know, in two days I'll be
celebrating 26 years. And it's a, it's a miraculous.
It's just, it brings tears to myeyes because it's an unmerited
gift. It's an unmerited gift.
Why is it that some people live through this and get and get
(46:33):
better and some people die 29 years old with a little girl
dead. Why?
And God's like, because I got a plan that you don't understand.
And I keep thinking that becauseit's none of my business.
My business is to keep carrying the message to anybody else who
wants it. It's it's.
(46:55):
As well said it, it's a trip, right?
Like it's you can't explain it. You know, more will be more will
be revealed. I love that it's so true.
It's like I can't comprehend theplan and I never will.
And that's OK, right. I'm happy you brought up the
family part of it too, because it's important and there's not a
lot of information out there forfamilies that, that struggle
(47:16):
with this. They play a part.
That's a huge, that was a huge pill for my parents to swallow.
They, I think they're on the other side of that now where my
mom now, God bless her, she's carrying the message left, right
and center with and she loves it.
She loves when people come in broken because she has now a
role to play in their lives. And, and if, like you said, if
they're willing to pick up the tools, I have a tool kit for
(47:37):
you. You know, I want to ask you
this. What, what do you think the
difference is between enabling and supporting someone in active
addiction? It's a fine line, right?
Again, you got to wake up to understand the difference and
waking up means you got to become aware and accept that you
2 play a part in this. And if you're fighting and going
(48:01):
no I'm about the problem, you'regoing to stay asleep.
So enabling is me cleaning up after your mess, me cleaning up
after your debts, me cleaning uplying and making up story, and
protecting you at all costs so that you could keep killing
yourself because I'm making it comfortable for you.
There's no reason to change if there's no reason to change.
(48:22):
Supporting you means I see what you're doing to yourself and I
love you and it's killing me, but this is so painful.
I can't watch you die. I can't watch you die.
So it's either you got to do something, you got to leave
because I'll love you forever and I will continue to love you,
(48:43):
but I can't stand to watch this torture.
If you don't leave or do something with your life, then I
can't. I can't do this right.
So that's the difference. And it's the hardest thing to do
and it's the hardest thing to dobecause you don't know if
they're going to die. That's the reality.
But if you go for your own treatment to take care of
(49:08):
yourself in these other the rooms on the other side, you
know what you have to do. Because it could be your son, it
could be your wife, it could be your kid, whatever really, it's
God's child and you have no power.
Step one, I'm powerless over alcohol, drugs, my life is
(49:30):
unmanageable. I'm fixing it.
I'm enabling you. I'm cleaning up your debts,
that's to your manageability, and you become just a sick, if
not sicker than the addict Alcoholics.
So that has to change, right? So the moment you got you, you
start to take care of yourself and you stop then the disease of
(49:50):
addiction. Wait a minute.
Addicts and Alcoholics are sly fuckers.
They're very sly and they're diseased because they're very
manipulative and stuff. Not because they're bad people,
but because they're sitting in that darkness and addiction.
Alcoholism is all about darkness.
It's all about what can I do to get my next fix?
(50:13):
My next height is where can I steal?
Where can I manipulate? Where that's what it does.
But clean that person up and they shine like a diamond,
right? I read a quote from Carl Jung
and this is this quote never leaves me A whole person
complete. A whole person is someone who
(50:35):
has wrestled with the devil and now walks with God.
And if that doesn't describe us to ATI don't know what does,
right? So you clean us up and we become
we know both sides of the coin. We become real like real
warriors for God. Like if you listen to what you
(50:56):
have to do and you give away this message and you become so
passionate, like I'm passionate about there's a way out of this,
you know, So it's, that's the difference for me between
enabling and and supporting. I love that.
Yeah. Detachment.
I like that word, too. It's like, you know, healthily
(51:17):
detach. It doesn't mean I don't love you
and I'm giving up. I'll.
I'll be here when you're ready, you know?
So I'll be here when you're ready.
But until then, I can't partake because it's killing me.
You. Know I can't torture myself
watching you die like this and you know some people I know when
al Anon that live with an activealcoholic now they act and
they're happy. They still live with them.
(51:37):
They still but there's tools that they have they know that
they follow that they don't theydetach they detach, they focus
on their own recovery and they're happy people and I'm
looking at them like wow, because I don't know that I can
Live Today with an active user. I I don't think I could.
It would bother me, you know? You kind of get taken down with.
(51:59):
Them but it's all about choices and it's all about they don't
tell you do this, do that. You figure it out.
Just keep coming back, keep coming back and you'll know,
right? So there's a lot of freedom and,
and space there for choice. Whatever works for you, right?
And. There's a lot of paths up the
recovery mountain as as I alwayssay, what's something Mary, that
(52:23):
you're you're working on recently you've been working on
personally. So what am I working on?
I don't know that I'm working onanything.
I know that I could be very hardon myself.
Today is really not about drinking and getting high
(52:46):
anymore. Today for me, it's how I show up
in the world. Are my character defects in
check? I'm working on trying to respond
as as opposed to react. I'm trying to always.
I mean, everything today is about being in alignment, right?
But I know for a fact that I'm not leaving this world with
(53:09):
flying. I'm not the kumbaya, the next
kumbaya. I'm I'm a flawed human being.
And so I will die a flawed humanbeing.
But I'm always trying to improvemyself.
And when I'm really centered andI'm really doing well in my, my
peace, I'm slower to react. I'm, I'm, I'm more in tune, but
there's days like I just, God, don't put a gun in my hand.
(53:32):
I'm going to kill this fucker, you know what I mean?
But it's just, it's like that. It's like that's what recovery
is. It's about how do I show up in
the world? Am I working on my controller
issues? Am I still trying to fix?
Am I engaging in all these crazythings, these crazy behaviors
(53:52):
that no longer serve me? Did I gossip about somebody
today? Did I like At the end of the
day, if I know I've done something wrong, it's like that
always in here at the God Center.
That's where it resides in me and that's what my life is
today. What did I do good today?
What did I do bad today? And I ask God for forgiveness
(54:13):
and I continue. So it's always being about the
best version of me that I can give.
But it's not perfect, you know? Yeah.
With, with a little bit of forgiveness and grace too.
Cause yeah, I've, I've met a lotof addicts, Alcoholics, myself
included, that we're very critical of our, of ourselves,
right? We're good at picking up that 2
(54:33):
by 4 and beating the crap out ofourselves, you know, So it's a
good point. Let's end with this, Mary, if
you could say something to a struggling someone, anyone
that's struggling right now withmental health or or addiction,
what do you think you would say to them?
There is definitely a different way to live and I hope you hit
(54:55):
your bottom soon. And because desperation is the
gift that's going to be transformative in your life.
And if you're not there yet, that's OK, but get there because
without a bottom, nothing happens.
And So what I love to see, you know, I was driving here today
(55:17):
and I saw some guy and I don't know, on the road and he was on
a bike and dirty and like, I don't know if he was on some
type of drug, whatever. And I like my first words was
God help him. God help him.
My heart bleeds when I see this because I get it.
(55:38):
I get it. I never landed on the streets.
I hadn't landed on the streets yet.
I haven't gone to prostitution yet.
I would like homelessness yet, but I was heading that way and
for some reason Godseed fit to Ihit my bottom and it it was like
I didn't have to land there, thank God.
But when I see what I see today with people and, you know, going
(56:02):
to watch a show and watching somebody on the nod in an
elevator with track Marks and that I'm like inside I'm, I cry
and I think God just carry them.These are your children.
You can't get through to somebody when they're on the
nod, you know, but hopefully they show up in the rooms
because every time that we do the serenity prayer, that's what
(56:25):
we pray for for the suffering addict, you know, and if they
come in the room, then our prayers have been answered.
Sometimes God, I think God is somerciful that he just takes
their life and says, no, what this is done or I don't know
what God's plan is, but the miracle that some people come
into the rooms and they stay andthey transform their lives.
(56:45):
That's the prayers that are answered for sure, for sure.
And it's worth sticking around for just to watch that right?
Yeah. And if you you come in and you
think you've done and you still fall and you still use just keep
coming back. Get back up and come back.
Get back up and come back. Because you notice that saying
don't leave until the miracle happens.
(57:06):
Sometimes you'll hear something in the meeting or whatever that
you're going to go Ding, Ding, Ding.
The light goes off and you're like, Oh, yeah, yeah.
I love it. Thanks so much, Mary for coming
down. I love you and I appreciate you
and I had a lot of fun today. Thank.
You thank you for having me. Thanks for listening.
Please help us grow the channel and like, share and subscribe
(57:28):
for more content. The discussions and stories
shared on this podcast are for informational and motivational
purposes only. This content is not a substitute
for professional medical advice,addiction treatment, or therapy.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction,
please consult A licensed physician, addiction specialist,
or mental health professional. You are no longer alone.
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