Tara S. - I Had to Die in Order to Live - Podcast Recovery

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome back to Podcast Recovery, everyone.
We're your hosts. David O.
And Eric B. And today, we're joined by our
very special guest, Tara. How are you doing today?
Hey, I'm I'm doing well, thanks.How?
How are you? I'm doing well.
How about you, Eric? I'm doing.
I'm, I'm all right. I'm all right.
You wait, what did you play thismorning table?
I played platform tennis, platform tennis, platform
tennis, I don't know, at the suburban club in Baltimore

(00:25):
County. That is the bougiest thing I've
ever. Heard is that not table?
It's not like table tennis. No, it's not.
Ping pong, what platform tennis is is it's a mix between.
I keep talking. I'm taking off.
My tennis squash, like tennis and squash probably would be
like the best way to so you can hit off the wall.
The like court is actually half the size of a tennis court, but

(00:48):
you have 12 foot chicken wire fencing all around you so you
can hit the ball off the wall. Yeah, yeah.
And. Chicken wire.
Yeah, chicken wire. It's specifically chicken wire.
And then the court itself, you're raised off the ground
about four feet at some clubs, actually at like BCC, Baltimore
Country Club, you're raised off the like you're probably at 40
or 50 feet off the ground on oneside of the court.

(01:10):
On the other side, you're like 20 feet off the ground, but
you're actually playing on thesesteel planks that are like the
court is mixed in, like the paint.
You actually take metal shillings and mix it in with the
paint so that when you play in like today it was snowing so you
don't slip. You have like gripping on the
court and stuff. Yeah, it's great.

(01:31):
It's absolutely. Tennis, Yeah.
That is amazing. I I I played tennis all my life,
but I've never. Heard of me too.
I really, I grew up playing it and then I got injured and I
taught it for like 10 years and wow, yeah, I'm just getting back
into it. And like, now that I have a
daughter, I'm like, do I want tosubject her to the tennis?
Don't do that. Junior.
Don't do that style. No, I'm not.

(01:53):
I'm going to let her do like free play and stuff, you know,
Yes. OK, enough with you, Eric.
Yeah, snooze button. You're done.
Where are you from? I am from not far South from
here. So like, right, College Park,
MD, Yeah, Cool. And when technically it's
Beltsville. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
When were you first introduced to recovery?

(02:14):
My first introduction to recovery was being thrown by my
dad into a rehab. You know, not act, not
literally. I thought you were.
Yeah, I thought you were like, thrown across the room.
Oh no. No, yeah, my dad got me into my
first rehab a few months after Ireally started using habitually,

(02:37):
OK. And how much clean time do you
have? Now I have.
Let's see, it'll be. 14 years. Yeah, that's crazy.
You know, once you hit like 11 years, yeah, For me, I just
stopped remembering what here we're like.
Right around. Yeah, right.
Like yeah, right around 10/10 was super cool.
Yeah 10. I can't even describe the

(02:58):
feeling how awesome 10 was. It was very cool.
And then, yeah, the last couple I've just been like.
Single digits, I like knew for sure.
Like snap, if you asked me, I knew nine years, eight years,
whatever it was. But once I got past 10, I've
stopped. Like now it's a let me do the
math 'cause. Also, we're, we're getting old
and our brains suck. All right.

(03:19):
Well, with all that out of the way, I'm going to turn it over
to you. Share your story with us.
Take it away. OK, So yeah, let's see.
After my first rehab, I had someother stints and rehab.
I was not ready at that time. How old were you?
Let's see, at that time I was 19.
How did you get started? What?
Oh yeah, let's rewind, let's rewind, let's rewind a little

(03:41):
bit. I was a Really.
Be kind rewind. OK, I, I was a high achieving
type A, you know, still I am. Let's not act like I'm, I
haven't recovered from that, butmy whole life I was very, you
know, oriented toward like relying on my self esteem was

(04:03):
reliant upon what I could do forother people achievement.
Exactly. And and so there came a time,
you know, there came, like, points in my life.
My parents divorced when I was 11.
Puberty was really rough. There was.
Yeah. Like a lot of typical things,
nothing out of the ordinary, like what is ordinary today.

(04:26):
Yeah. Yeah, especially Yeah, 2025.
Yeah, yeah. Nothing.
There wasn't anything crazy, butI but I came to learn, right?
But of course, it felt like I was the only one, you know,
growing up going through those things.
And so having that kind of disposition.
How old? Are you?

(04:47):
I'm 35. OK, so.
Yeah, I'm 37, Eric's 36. Seven now.
Oh oh. Fuck.
Yeah, having that sort of disposition, I would, I think I
got to a point where the pressure I was putting on
myself, the unrealistic expectations, you know, that
were just ever present in my mind were I was done.

(05:07):
And then, and then I picked up drugs, you know, and it was.
What came first? Let's see, I started smoking
weed with my cousins up in Pennsylvania and you know, I.
Did you get high the first time?That's a good question.
I think I did, even though I wastold I wouldn't.

(05:28):
Yeah, but I think I did. Go.
To he didn't get out. It's an inhaling thing.
Yeah. And you smoked cigarettes.
I smoked cigarettes before I youhad you.
Knew. How to inhale?
I didn't smoke cigarettes before, I need weed but I still
think I got high and the reason why I think so is 'cause I had
literally like 5 people coachingmy inhales on the.

(05:48):
No, this is how you get hot, OK.Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No. Now hold it.
Hold it, hold it. Make sure you hold it.
Yep. Does that actually do Do do we
know? Does that make a difference?
No, I. We always usually hold these
hits in as until what? Right.
You know, until and then you blow it out coughing like the
driest cough. Yeah.
Ever. Like no coughing gets you higher

(06:09):
dude. It's like, is that true?
We need somebody. We need.
Something Oh yeah, people did actually say the coughing the.
Coughing got you higher. And I had, I had friends who
told me that coughing you wouldn't get high like if you
coughed you wouldn't get high like it was some superstitious
thing. Eric, Google it.
We need some answers. We're gonna continue.
I mean, that's like that, that sounds more like, you know, that

(06:30):
red lighter there that that's not a good lighter.
That was such bullshit. I never.
You went to different counties, it was different.
Because it was. Like, yeah, white lighter, white
lighter over here. Yeah, because and like the
excuse I always heard is like, Kurt Cobain had a white lighter
when he died. And I was like, what the fuck
does that? I never even heard that one
that's. That's where, like, the
superstition was around me. I was.

(06:51):
Glad people. Who cares?
Yeah, we make up some things. We really do, I'm sure.
I can't think of any off the topof my head, but I'm sure I had
had developed some superstition.So you're smoking weed with?
Doing that. Cousins.
And, you know, got back to school after that summer doing
it once and like the all I couldthink about, all I could think

(07:11):
about. But it really wasn't even about
the drug. Like, I wasn't even attracted to
how it made me feel that much. It was attractive to feel
different. It was attractive to, to lay to
to be OK with just lying down onthe ground doing nothing and
staring at the wall and to not care, you know?

(07:31):
I was so attracted to the feeling of apathy, you know?
Shutting our brains off for a little.
While and so I couldn't think about anything else and it took
a couple months before I managedto figure out like how to get
weed, you know, as a 10th graderand find my people who wanted to

(07:53):
do it too and wanted to do it often right so I found.
This people type, so I assume they came pretty readily.
Yeah, yeah, it was. The school I went to was a
science and technology magnet, though.
So I was in school with like a lot of high achievers, a lot of
oh, I would never, you know, Andwhen they said never, they meant

(08:15):
never. And they held that never.
And that was not the case with me.
Good for them. Yeah, good for you nerds.
See, right, there was a lot of, there were a lot of people I
just had to, you know, I was, I was in it with the, the fellow
perfectionist, the goody 2 shoesgroup and, and I felt
comfortable being in that group.But just like I said, came a day

(08:37):
where I felt like an imposter because I didn't want to be
there anymore and I was so burntout.
But anyway, I, you know, from there, like I did a lot of that.
And then oddly enough, when I was in 11th grade, I was in a
physics class, AP physics class.And there's a comment, probably

(09:00):
a combination of the reasons why, but the first quarter I,
why I cared that I got ADI, got AD and that I was like, no, I
actually care more about learning this and about my
friends and their opinions of melearning this, if we're being

(09:21):
honest, you know, and what it looks like, the optics, you
know, of this. I could not have that.
So I quit and that was, you know, deleterious to my future
thinking. Thank you.
Because I'm thinking, Oh, I havewillpower, you know, and I'm, I

(09:41):
haven't even spoken about this, but prior to drugs I was like
really eating disordered, like severe anorexia.
And that started when I was 13, really shortly after I pretty
much hit puberty and was like, Nope, not doing this.
So. What was really like, and like,

(10:02):
I'm not saying it like it's goneaway, but from Oh, no, no, like
mid 90s to like mid early 2000s.It was like, like on all the
talk shows, like on 60 minutes or what is your kid?
Like what? What eating disorder is your kid
displaying? Yeah.

(10:22):
And it like, I don't know. We were just like, right at
that, like crux of just a whole bunch of things.
And you know, true disorders wasone of them.
It's true. And also it's such a secretive
thing. Yeah.
That really finding that, you know, there were any, there was
anyone else around me that was dealing with it at the age of 13
and 14, yeah. Was not a thing.
Like I had one friend who you know had gone through and we

(10:47):
were both sort of sent to eat lunch with the the school
counselor every day to make surewe weren't hiding our meals and
stuff. I had little notes from my mom.
Was your group called something like your little like like your
little eating disorder group like where you guys did you guys
have like a name or something? No.
That's so funny. That's a good question.

(11:09):
We should have had one like it was.
It was two of us that were that had dealt with eating disorders.
The rest of them were cutters. I don't know what we call
ourselves. Yeah.
Yeah. I tried that on for size one
time, like I tried to. I couldn't do it.
I used my fingernails. Oh, that's not good.
You need a good you. Need a good blade?
Shut up, Eric. Yeah I couldn't do all that so I

(11:32):
used my fingernails and like youknow it was totally a cry for
attention It was totally it wasn't even a cry for attention.
It was AI belong, right? Just checking got to have the
stamp of approval, you know, cuzlike my collarbones sticking
through my skin wasn't enough gaunt face and such.
So anywho, getting back to it, Ibetween that, which looks like a

(11:54):
lot of willpower, it looks on the surface, the optics.
It's like that is the most disciplined person you know, And
I was hearing that all the time.God, how are you so disciplined?
So I have filled my head with lies.
You know, that I, which I'm not blaming at all 'cause I mean
really I still, I still acceptedthe first step in recovery in 12

(12:15):
step recovery very quickly. I knew I was an addict that ate
'cause I get the way I got addicted to people.
I was going around at 8 years old telling people I had an
addictive personality. So I really was never mystified.
Yeah, about about my level of powerlessness.
I just, it was a convenient excuse, you know, to think, no,

(12:35):
I got this. I can start and stop whenever I
want. The other thing was my mom was
in the aftermath of my parents divorce, my mom was really
grappling with like her the 25 year relationship she had her
high school sweetheart, you know, leaving and, and then
having to raise these two children alone and really being

(12:58):
a very emotional being, you know, and having to keep it
together, keep it functional. So the, the way she coped with
that was alcohol and she also had really severe depression
issues, you know, so that whole side of the family really dealt
with a lot of depression and OCD.
But I. Who doesn't?

(13:19):
I know I. Look at this wall.
There's no ACOCD. Yeah, that's amazing.
Yeah. Yeah.
So looking back, I, I really feel for her.
But she, you know, kind of gave me an example of what I didn't
want. So I never drank.
Yeah, really. Yeah, so I also, that was
another little illusory sort of like magical thinking.

(13:40):
Oh, like I avoided alcohol. I can pick that up and stop that
whenever I want, you know to. So anyway, should I jump?
11th grade, where we at? Yeah, move.
Jump out of high school. Yeah, jump forward.
Pretty much. Pretty much ended high school.
Tarantino this thing. OK, pretty much.
I'm good at that 'cause I jump all around pretty much ended

(14:03):
high school, you know, with a really high GPA.
And I think in senior year I hadlike a 4.3.
I took a ton of APS. I was really fueled by that
achievement, and yet what did I do with it?
OK, I decided I wanted to go to Los Angeles to become an

(14:24):
actress. So you don't really need AGPA
for that. No, no, I do think.
Jason Bateman never even graduated high school.
True, and and there's plenty of others too.
I mean, but yeah, I, I guess I truth be told, I don't think I
would have gone out. I don't think I would have been
able to do that. I wouldn't have been able to go

(14:45):
out and actually make that jump to move across country and like
pursue this dream had it not been for a school has accepted
me. I've been invited.
I'm very much like that. Like in general still today.
I find that to be true. If you don't invite me even like
say I'm in a like at a party. You're not a party crasher.

(15:05):
No. And like I will, I will if I'm
with someone, if I'm with someone else and we're doing it
together. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, like I can be a thought leader, but my body will not be
the the the 1st to enter that room.
I have a lot of fear, you know, I'm very filled with fear.
But anyway, so I I get out thereand I got accepted to LMU and

(15:30):
LMU, Loyola Marymount University.
They're famous for an A gentleman who unfortunately
passed away of a heart defect happening.
Like it was AI think it was an aortic aneurysm or mitral valve
prolapse or something that happened while he was playing on
their basketball team, like backin the early 90s.

(15:52):
That's like the thing that people know about that school.
So I got there and it was celebrities, children
everywhere, and it was Willie Nelson's son and a man not going
to name names because he was a nice person.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. People could figure it out,
though. Willie Nelson's son.

(16:12):
And it was, it was an actress onthe O CS Sister.
And it was like a variety of people.
People were going, you know, every weekend, like rock
climbing with the Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson and like, going

(16:32):
to Disneyland every weekend because they could.
They had money. I could not afford to live this
way. Like, this was some fast living.
This was like some. It's LA.
Yeah. And I got out there and never
felt more alone, you know, like,Oh yeah, that little girl who

(16:53):
you know. Yeah, people think like LA.
It's like, oh, it's a place of dreams.
It's like, no, that's where the that's where dreams go to die.
No it. Absolutely is I know, and that
that's the the crazy thing is what I've long joked, not really
joked is my Bible is scar tissueby Anthony Kiedis.
I read that when I was 14 and unfortunately instead of looking

(17:14):
at as instead of being able to pick up on how recovery oriented
that book really is, I instead looked at it as a manual for
like, you need to do this to feel grateful for your life.
So there was. This how to turn like sickness
into success. Not even like yes, but not even
success in, you know, in a a. Tangible.

(17:36):
Sense. Yeah, not in a career sense or
anything like that. I looked at it as I had this
weird intuition that I needed tonearly die from a very young age
in order to feel grateful that Iwas lacking gratitude.
Like I didn't care. Yeah.
I hear what you're saying. And like nothing was good
enough. I had that sense so young.

(17:56):
Wow, I'm thinking about some shit.
Yeah, I remember being 8 and staring up at the sky and saying
to my neighbor, my best friend at the time, that like, I don't
think my life will mean anythingif I'm not famous.
Like I need literally the entireworld to validate my existence.
And that, you know, we sort of like had these really real
conversations at 891011 years old, staring at the sky where

(18:18):
we're saying, yeah, I don't think that's right.
Oh, well, it's just how we are, you know?
So I found that book and that's what it, you know, it really
reaffirmed to me that I need to I needed to nearly die or else I
was not going to value my life. And and so, yeah, going out
there, it was where dreams go todie, or it is.

(18:40):
And I think that was an important step because I went
out there, never felt more alone, was not at all incubated
by like anything I'd known. And then the insecurity of I
don't, I'm not just not the skinniest person where I was
before, yeah, now I'm also, you know.
Not the richest. Either and no one cares if I'm

(19:02):
the smartest. Like that's not what we're doing
here. Yep, I'm not the richest, I'm
not the skinniest, I don't have the most money.
Well, I just said that I don't have like the most reputation.
I don't have connections whatsoever.
I cannot get up on the stage andentertain.
I don't have the most charisma in the room.
Like, wow. You know, it was like every
possible insecurity one could feel with the motivations that I

(19:24):
had. And yeah, it was like the first
few weeks I was literally just rollerblading every day to Santa
Monica Pier and interviewing homeless people.
Like, I literally felt, yeah, they were, you know, the
homeless people on Santa Monica Pier.
They're. Talking to some real people,
man. It was talking to some real
people and I was in my head. I thought I was doing a
journalism, you know, adventure.I was like writing their stories

(19:46):
down, not like I was ever, I'm not a real, I shouldn't say it
that way, but I, I felt like a journalist, like I felt like I
was giving their life meaning, you know?
But I think what it was was theywere the least intimidating
people, you know, around me. And I felt like I could maybe
make friends here better than I could make friends 2 miles up
the road. So at the time I was also back

(20:11):
into like and for all of senior year I was severely eating
disordered again. I was very underweight and was
not eating much at all, was exercising every day, like a
lot. And yeah, it was a few weeks,

(20:32):
maybe a few months. No, it was less than a month
when my roommate came home with some cocaine and I was like, oh,
no, no, no thanks, no thanks 'cause I knew.
I knew that was going to be the end.
I'm so sorry. I meant to turn that on silent.
I knew that would be the end. And so she offers it to me five
more times and I Are you sure? Are you sure?

(20:52):
Are you sure? And I finally was like, wow, I
don't even have a chance to turnit on silent.
Like they just keep calling so I'm just gonna turn my phone
off. But yeah, I got offered that and
I finally took it. And then we things sort of, you

(21:12):
know, never ended like until they really ended.
Yeah. I was habitual from there.
It was, it was a really, it was a rough year.
Yeah. And it was learning about, you
know, withdrawal isn't really a thing with cocaine, but it is
when you've been up for days. It can.
You it does. There's a with, I mean there,

(21:35):
there's a few days that don't feel great.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, and your nose has to recover if you're.
Doing that way, there's a body recovery more than like a
psychological 1. Yeah.
And I mean, and then there wouldbe, you know, there would be
those days where if anybody has ever been in that position,
then, you know, like waking, being awake at 6:00 in the

(21:57):
morning, 7:00 in the morning, 8910, and seeing people like
you're going, you're outside smoking, chain smoking because
you're on cocaine. Yeah.
And people are getting up and going to.
Yeah, being. Productive, yeah.
And it is the most like dehumanizing.
I think it's the birds. Yo the the birds, birds, those

(22:17):
birds. So many people have said that.
It's the birds. Like, OK, that is an excellent
idea. Can we talk about that for a
second? Like the Birds, Like the the
Alfred Hitchcock film, we need to make that movie, but for
crackhead. Like the crackhead experience
and call it the Birds. Oh my God.
That's, you know what I mean. Truly genius.
Thank you. Yes, that is it was a

(22:38):
collaborative that wasn't, you know, that was a collaborative
idea. We should.
Get an EP credit. On it, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We need to make that movie because it would be, it would be
like a funny, a comedic short, but we could make it horror.
Shut the fuck up. Oh my God I know it would be so
good and they would be like maybe maybe even throw in like
some LSD and then the person is hallucinating that they are

(23:00):
being attacked. Yes.
Speaking of those, I've never done hallucinogens.
Really. That's how much of A control
freak I am. OK, Yeah.
Interesting. I was offered a few times.
Not a lot. I feel like maybe if I had been
offered it, you know, enough times, I might have finally said
OK, Yeah, but the that's the other reason why alcohol turned

(23:22):
me off. Like anything that was, I'm not
obliterated to the point of like, don't care, apathy numb
like heroin eventually became for me, or I'm not fully 100% in
control of everything I do like stimulants will do.
Oh yeah, I wasn't into. I just wasn't, you know, I was

(23:45):
definitely not. The term gets thrown around of
like a garbage disposal addict or garbage can addict.
Yeah, like I I was the piggiest.I was.
What? Will this do OK?
Fuck it. I like cocktails.
Yeah, cocktails were great. You just would just put it in
you, whatever. I did one time have some.

(24:05):
It was, it was something out of a movie, a scene out of a movie
where I had one addict on one arm loading up, you know, one
rig, yeah, with cocaine, and theother arm was being loaded with
heroin. And.
Then we pushed it the same turtle.
Yeah. And it was like this experiment
orchestrated by 5 different people involved.

(24:26):
Yeah. It was like, wow, that was the
most productive. Quota How?
Has that not been in a movie? I know, right?
A lot of. People to use with 2/5.
Oh, yeah. That's another thing.
I really wasn't a loner like I was a very social heroin addict.
That's a social odd junkie. Yeah, really odd junkie.
So moving into that, I get kicked out of this school.

(24:50):
I don't, I don't think we reallyhave time for me to go into that
story, but essentially my roommate and I turned on each
other. It's really ugly.
It was really paranoid. It was a lot of, you know,
dealing with campus police and being interrogated.
Like, of course, like going, youknow, if I had ever seen Law and
Order prior to then, I would've been like maybe had any idea as

(25:11):
to what was coming next. This was so brand new to me.
I was the most naive person and yeah, got myself locked and not
locked up, but kicked out. So anyway, I get back to
Maryland and I'm really demoralized, you know, and
shamed and I wrote. That being said, I still felt

(25:33):
like a a real big injustice sensitivity.
So I it's not that I didn't thenalso get more cocaine when I got
here and spend like 30 pages writing an essay to the school.
What was better, East Coast cocaine or West Coast cocaine?
East Coast. So it changed.
I would say West Coast was originally better than what I

(25:56):
was finding. And then I eventually found like
a couple years later and I was with some people that were
getting like. The really good.
Yeah, and I also learned how to purify it, so.
Me. Too.
Yeah. Thank you.
Yes, I thought I was the only one.
No. Yeah, so.
Wait, did you ever do crack? Oh hell yeah.

(26:17):
OK, I didn't. Oh yeah, for two years.
See, I didn't, I, I, I was such a Snooty motherfucker.
I was like, no, I'm, I'm smokingit.
Is good. I mean, it's like.
I was like, I'm not smoking crack.
I never felt there's no baking soda in.
Right, right, right, right. There's never a moment you feel
dirtier than when you're resin out of crack.
By it dude and I can do that andtrue and I there's no.
Pie better than a resda It's. So true.

(26:39):
See people smoke crack and I waslike, that doesn't look.
Attractive. A resident crack is like a
specialty dude. That's like special niche.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The resin crack.
Oh my God. And they, they called it, they
called it Dookie crack. And it was so gross.
But it was so good. Yeah, it was.
A weird way. One of my favorite band names is

(27:00):
actually Leftover Crack. Great band name.
Great band name doesn't exist. There is no leftover.
Crack. No, there never is.
There never is. It's.
Such a ridiculous band name, butit's a good band name.
It's a great. Band name It is a great band
name. OK, so you're.
You're here I get back here. I, I use coke a little bit more,
you know, and then, and then eventually not long after I got

(27:21):
back, I was like living my car, by the way, this whole summer
because I didn't want to be under my parents authority.
And they were like, very concerned.
And I was like, you know. Like I'm fine.
I'm I'm on a path like I am. I had this plan, like this five
year plan that I developed, you know, acting as though like

(27:43):
plausible but untrue reasons formy behavior.
Yes, quote, UN quote is like I, you know, I know exactly what
I'm doing. I'm gonna nearly die so that I
can live and that's that's. Wire Yeah, I'm gonna nearly die
so I can live. Oh my God, what a title.
That's a great. Title.

(28:03):
I'm glad. We have whatever somebody says
we'd like. It just randomly has to be
organic. And like some, some of the
titles have been amazing. Like one person, their title was
I let my degree dissolve under my tongue.
I was like, oh, that's a great. Title.
Damn, that's awesome. Yeah.
There's there's great titles. Anything that is like a mic drop
type of one liner or a metaphor,like, yeah, better if you

(28:25):
combine the two, like that one. Yeah.
Oh man, that's great. Yeah, my sponsors for years ago
was he got a got a drug use merit badge.
Oh yeah, Yep. Fucking great.
Anyway, it's. True, that's like like an
opposite day. So you had to die?
I see you could. Live, Right.
So like, I was living in my car and eventually I came up with
this idea that, you know, cocaine got me kicked out of

(28:48):
school, so I gotta use heroin. Time.
Yeah. There's Write a Blues album.
I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the other thing was my best friend from when we were seven
and eight had started using heroin.
And if she was in her senior year, that whole year and back
home in Maryland and like, I'm sure she felt really abandoned

(29:09):
and there was a lot there. So anyway, I, I of course, while
I was using coke and my life's going just fine.
Wait, wait. I'm like feeding things to her
mom, like I'm really concerned about such and such.
And you know, I just got pictures of the track marks on
her arms in English class. And so anyway, I get her put in

(29:30):
rehab and that was the other motivation was like, you can't
beat them, join them. And like this looks, this looks
like fun and I want my best friend back.
So again, very pro social as an addict, it was always about
making friends and keeping friends.
And yeah, so that's what I was doing.

(29:52):
I was then I was using heroin and there's a lot that went into
that. I was, of course, again, like
living in my car for quite a while, but it wasn't very long.
It was maybe two or three monthsthat my dad found out and and
like I said, threw me in rehab in my first one didn't really
stick. I did an IOP, I was put on MAT,

(30:14):
which at that time was a really wacky thing, like they did not
know what they were doing. I had only been using heroin for
a couple of months, didn't really even have a real habit.
I'm not even sure I would have with like gone through much
withdraw and they had me on 34 milligrams of Suboxone a day.
Jesus 34. Why?

(30:35):
Yeah. So I mean, there's studies.
Supposed to only be 24 because like yeah, beyond 24 I don't
think it works really. Well, yeah.
And in fact, when I was doing mypsych, my bachelor's in psych, I
did a study or not a study, but I did some research and there
was a study that shows that I don't remember what the half

(30:56):
life time was. So I'm not sure if this was
speaking daily, but at least, you know, probably for 12 hours
that I don't think they were talking about less than 12
hours. That 8 milligrams is the ceiling
as far as like once you're doingmore than 8 milligrams within.
Now don't quote me on that. Yeah, but which is exactly what

(31:18):
we're doing by now. So what can back check me?
Yeah, who's listening? But yeah, so that was really
wild. And yet because of my like, not
having any kind of a tolerance, I was zonked.
Like, I don't even remember being there.
I do in little flashes, but mostly I was higher than higher
in that rehab than I'd ever beenoutside.

(31:41):
So then I was in IOP and well itturns out like so I'm I'm a
weirdo and I might end up sayingmore about that but like what
I'm actually talking about. But I met someone and I.
In rehab. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(32:02):
That's so original. Yeah, I know.
We're sitting in IOP and like mypheromones were apparently just,
I don't do that. Like I don't really.
That's what I was getting at. I'm like, I'm on the ASEC
spectrum, a spectrum. So I have a really low affinity
for like attraction to people and yeah, but Suboxone really

(32:24):
heightened like, I don't know, is like apparently without
opiates, maybe I'm that's how I am.
And then with opiates, it maybe makes me act a little bit more
quote UN quote, normal. Like, I literally made that guy
my boyfriend. And I'd never in my life done
such a thing, let alone had the confidence to do such a thing.

(32:47):
But yeah, so we started dating and it wasn't very long before
he picked me up one day and was like, I really wanna get high.
And so we got high. And then he went to the Air
Force and. OK, yeah, I mean the Air Force.
Yeah, because that was the only,that was the only thing that he,
he felt like he was a lost cause, you know, and that the

(33:08):
only way he was going to be right for society was to get
institutionalized, to get, you know, militarized and.
And that's the story for millions of people I know, men,
not every generation I know he'strading on my life in the
military. Exactly.
And no surprise, you know, he was writing me letters every day

(33:28):
during basic training and telling me about this drug
addict he met and this drug addict he met.
Yeah. Yeah.
And there's a code language, of course, that he, he wrote, you
know, I'm sure there is, but so that eventually, you know,
didn't work out and he dumped mevia text message, by the way.

(33:49):
Dick. Yeah, don't do that.
People just, it's really brutal.I've been that Dick, so I feel.
Yeah, I'm shots fired. OK, I my apologies.
No. No no no total I I 100% should
be called out for that. I also, back when I was, I don't
know, 13 or 14, broke up with a girl on AIM, Yeah, on AOL.

(34:11):
Instant messenger. Like, yeah.
And I left it and she had her, like, her like, BRB screen up
like, and I was just like, I just, like, typed it up so
cowardly. I was like, yeah, by the time
you read this, we're not gonna be boyfriend or girlfriend
anymore. Oh my God.
So she came back from from her like.
Say it again, G2G. Yeah, so her.

(34:32):
GTG She came back and she was like, Oh my God, yeah, no, she
I'm just inundated with a. Dilling, dilling, dilling,
dilling. Oh my God, do you know?
See, this is the kind of weirdo I am.
You just said GTG and do you know like I would sit on aim and
torment over whether or not are you supposed to say GTG or?
G2G Yeah, it was the last. 1. Is.
Changeable. I think they were fine.

(34:53):
They totally were, but I had no concept of that.
It was always like very black and white, right or wrong, you
know, anyway. But was anyone else in the chat
rooms all the time? I was always in those chat rooms
acting like I was 25, you know, just like getting along with a
bunch of people who were in their 20s, like I was some bait
or like, things could have gone so.

(35:13):
I was so naive too. Things could have gone so wrong.
You. Were impostoring as a catfish.
I know, I know. I was doing the opposite.
It was wild. Yeah.
So anyway, back to what I was talking about.
Like, that ended. He broke it off in a text
message. I was threatening to drive down
to Florida, you know, right. Like there was no leaving DC at

(35:36):
that point. I was totally I at that point.
I'd spent the last months, you know.
I'm all zooted on suboxone. I had yours.
No quitting me, right? And yeah, and he was.
Oh, man. So I was, I was panhandling
every day like I was back on heroin.
I was lying about it to him, lying about it to all kinds of
people. But I still have my group, you

(35:57):
know, other people that we wouldPanhandle every day we would get
together, still very pro social.I was working for the FDA.
Yeah, as a food like prep handler person for scientific
studies, dietitian studies. That's dope.
Yeah, it was a good pay. But yeah, then the day that I

(36:18):
was like the maybe the 15th day that I was not only late with
some crazy half past excuse about it, my like my tire, but
there were days that I was that was quite real.
Yeah. And then nodding out all over
the place. You know, I was, I was let go.
But yeah. So anywho, I eventually he broke

(36:42):
up with me. And by that time I was already
in DC and I was like resident inthe crack houses and I had my go
to places and I was, I had, you know, basically interviewed or
like been sort of given to a pimp or like a fake one.
Like any. I had a few and not a single one

(37:04):
of them actually knew what they were doing.
They were all like aspiring pimps, which is a fascinating
concept. Of inspiring yeah, like they.
Never great band that's a aspiring pimps.
And that's and that's a good. Sketch.
That's a shitty band name. But it's awesome.
True. We're the aspiring pimps.

(37:24):
Thanks for coming out. Yeah.
In this day and age, I feel likepeople would jump all over that
and it would be sad, but back inthe 90s that probably would have
flown. In the 90s it would have been a
great band. Yeah, people would have it on
their bumper. Bumper stickers.
They were going to see the aspiring pimps.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who's?
Opening the shitty Beatles. Yeah, the shitty Beatles.

(37:44):
Yeah, so there was that. And then the next 2 1/2 years
was like a lot of that just jumping crack houses.
And what are they? They're the term shooting
gallery that I'm not sure anyonereally uses anymore.
This is basically just a a trap house where there is no crack
and it's a majority of just likepeople nodded out on heroin the

(38:05):
1st. Time I heard that in a meeting
because it wasn't like my experience, like I didn't have
experience like I thought of like, you know, like a carnival
like. Shooting.
Yeah, yeah. A shooting, and I'm pretty sure
that's what it's referenced. Yeah, I'm like what I was.
Like that doesn't. And then I was like, oh,
shooting heroin gal, oh, oh, that seems terrible.
I know, right? And it's like crack house.

(38:26):
There is no reference there. Like we're not being
metaphorical. It's just no house.
There's a house. And there are crack.
Yeah, there are crackheads in there.
Yeah, and they in that house. Yep.
And then shooting gallery, it's like, oh, we're trying to be
slick here. Yeah.
And. Going down to the shooting
gallery. And then there were like, the
the term abandoned minimum abanda minium.
Oh, yeah. Whatever.

(38:46):
Yeah. A lot of terms like that.
So I was always being singled out as like, you know, IAI stuck
out like sore thumb because how I appear, I have blonde hair At
the time. I think I even dyed it black to
try and stick out less, but I you know.

(39:07):
Still super white girl, yeah? Super white girl and I would
show up and I'm 20, you know at the time and I'd.
Show up, you're a fucking narc is what you are.
Exactly. And if it wasn't that, then they
were tickled and amused by the quirk of mine, which is that I
speak very, you know, like astutely or whatever.

(39:27):
I pronunciate everything and I was always being picked on for
that. Of course, which?
Yes, you are not of the street. Yeah, and I OK, so that's what
I'm really glad you said that because essentially, let's just
jump to not the next time. No, it was the next time I went
to rehab. My dad kidnapped me.

(39:48):
He had been like pounding the pavement.
I found out because I overdosed for the first time.
He'd been pounding the pavement trying to find me for months.
Like, he would get off of work down the street in Chevy Chase
and go searching around Northwest, asking people if
they'd seen me and stuff like that.
That was really hard to hear, especially, like, amidst an

(40:09):
overdose, when you're in the ambulance and you've just been
carried out, you're sopping wet because you were thrown into a
bath of ice by, like, the people, the one person in the
crack house who was not knotted out.
Yeah. And.
And you're in the ambulance and the guy that is treating you,
you know, for this overdose. And I'm not sure they never told

(40:31):
me if I was narcanned, but I must have been.
He tells me, you know, hey, I know your dad.
Wow. You know, wow.
Like there were so many instances in which, you know,
you, you sort of like whether it's during withdrawal or post
overdose or, you know, post abuse, when you can wake up or

(40:56):
just come to you and be so demoralized.
Oh, yeah. And just be like having that
sobering moment of clarity that and what you do with it is where
you go from there. But that was a really brutal 1.
You know, like I had been able to out of sight, out of mind.
Like my parents are just living their lives.
I'm doing them a favor by disappearing the way that I do

(41:18):
because that's my thing. Like I don't, I'm pro social as
an addict in that way, but if you're not using or you're
gonna, you know, try to impede me, I'm definitely the classic
like dip out. There's no like I had friends
that would literally return hometo their parents home where they
lived and like just get ragged on, you know, like what are you

(41:39):
doing with your life? And that so and they would put
up with it. No, not with me.
That's why like those friends ofmine are on methadone and are
still, you know, either using oron methadone all these years
later. I'm glad that like I was the
kind of addict to just go balls to the wall, absolutely have no
sense of like street sense, no common sense, like no St. smarts

(42:06):
and and to be super naive. And I absolutely nearly
accomplished what I had set out to do, which was to nearly die.
So that happened and it was not long after that moment when my
dad ended up setting up sting operation.
Oh my God, that's awesome. Yeah.

(42:27):
So this this girl, I'm going to use her first name, Amanda.
I don't know if she's still alive.
I regularly check on some of these people and a lot of them
are dead. But this girl, Amanda and this
guy named Mark, they had sort oftrained me.
They were, you know, both white suburban middle class, you know,

(42:48):
raised in the same way as me. And they were, you know, a
little they had street, they hadSt. smarts, they had common
sense and they could survive outhere And I they sort of trained
me into, you know, selling my body and like being a little
more savvy with people and stufflike that.

(43:08):
But I guess it came a time when I, they realized like I'm not
cut out for it. And they, I worked with my dad
to, I was convinced that there was a job we were going to do,
which was a a gentleman that we were going to meet.
And it was going to be at a, at the Ritz Carlton, which I had,

(43:32):
I'd done a Ritz Carlton job before.
I thought I was not, I was not, you know, that was not a tip
off. That wasn't a red flag.
And also, I just believed everything that everyone told
me. So there was, there was not a
single inkling that I was being lied to.
Go meet the guy around the corner.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So while Amanda's smoking crack
all day long and I'm in withdrawal, she just keeps

(43:54):
telling me, like, come on, we'regonna, we're gonna make some
money tonight and then you'll get better and blah, blah, blah.
So we get in the car, we're driving up Randolph St.
NW and we get to the there's a Wendy's that where Randolph and
Georgia hit. I know exactly.
Where that is, Yeah. And that Wendy's we've suddenly

(44:15):
pull in. There was no like, foreshadowing
that we were gonna stop at Wendy's for any reason.
So do we want a frosty? No, yeah, exactly, exactly.
We turned Wendy's and then without the two of them having a
conversation, like I remember this so vividly.
Without the two of them having aconversation about it, Amanda's
just like, well, I wanted to a Frosty and Mark is driving and

(44:37):
I'm like, well how did he know that y'all didn't have this
conversation? Yeah, she wants a frosty.
OK, so we are driving. You know how that drive through
wraps around the building? Yeah.
So we're going around slowly andthen suddenly Mark stops on top
of the speed bump, one of these speed bumps and stops there on

(44:58):
top of his speed bump. And it's, and it occurs to me
like, who does this? Nobody stops dead in the middle
of the like, there's more room to go before you get to the end
of the line. I look to the right and I see my
dad. I didn't even recognize him at
first. It was kind of like twilight.
So there was that. And but he also had very visibly

(45:19):
put on some weight and, and I'm sure that had to do with the
stress of his first born being unknowingly alive or dead, you
know, So he all day, I forgot tomention this, but all day I had
overheard phone calls Amanda washaving with him, who is my dad?

(45:40):
And all this time I'm being toldit's a John at the coming from
West Virginia, which is where mydad lived to meet us at the Rotz
Carlton. But that didn't tip me off the
speed bump tip me off. The lack of conversation around
a frosty tip me off. Yeah, OK, but not that, because
that's just the furthest thing Icould have imagined that my dad
would sting operation collaborate with.

(46:02):
With these St. urchins. Yes, these St.
Urchins, another good term, you know, to get me in rehab.
So. That can be our punk band name.
We're the street. Urchins, the street urchins.
That's a great name, that. Can go for all ages, yeah.
Yeah, so he puts me in rehab, and again, and not before.
So he grabs me that day, and then the next day it was the

(46:23):
snow Mageddon 2010. Yes.
All right, Well, I was. Sleeping in a Pontiac Vibe
during that. Nice.
Yeah, not nice. No, but.
Wait, let me divert. A car.
Yes and so I'm I'm in a Pontiac Vibe in Howard County, you know,
doing drugs all by myself and you know, snowmageddon happens
and a Pontiac Vibe is, you know,not a altering vehicle.

(46:47):
So eventually I just had to pullover in a neighborhood and
Snowmageddon. Anybody who's listening was feet
of snow, feet like multiple feetof snow.
So I'm in this car buried in snow for, I don't know, a couple
days. And I like I had some pretzels
and water and and drugs. So I was like, I'm OK and I've
been living in a car. So I'm so I'm like, this is my

(47:08):
hotel room. I actually have some privacy.
I'm like OK, like. Hotel.
Room. I survive and then after a
certain amount of time a plow goes by and all the fucking snow
falls off like the driver's sideof my and light comes pouring
in. I'm like fuck.
I guess I have to get. Out.
So I get out of the car and there's a person across the
street shoveling their driveway and they're like, Oh my God.

(47:30):
Were. You in there?
And I'm like, yeah, yeah. And they're like, are you OK?
How long have you been there? I'm like, no, no, I'm, I'm fine.
I'm fine. Yeah, yeah.
I'm like just arm just using my arm to just oh, like get my car
out as fast 'cause I'm freaking out this fucking normie in the
middle of it just and I'm just like, I gotta get out of here.
He was like, do you do some foodor water?

(47:52):
Let me let me call. So I'm like, I'm fine, I'm fine.
I just drive. What time of day was that it?
Was like in the morning. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what I was. That was what I was imagining.
Like they're just like out thereshoveling their driveway.
And they just see somebody crawlout of a car and, yeah, this
dude was freaked out. He's like, Are you sure you're
OK? Like, how long have you been in
there? I was like, you know, don't
worry about me. I'm I'm totally, really cool.

(48:14):
Everything's fine. We self destructives are so
minimizing about the our own experiences.
We're just. Like I could have suffocated.
Like, I don't know how I had oxygen in that in that vehicle,
but I did. Not to mention if you had been
running the edge engine just like on it, like I would have
been liable to have done that and I didn't really die.
I did. I didn't know.
I didn't know that I was like I will die because actually that's

(48:34):
how my my uncle killed himself was so sorry with CO2 from a
car, so sorry. So I knew that I was like, I
can't. I was like, I can't run the
vehicle at all. And yeah.
It damn that's. Crazy.
So Snowmageddon. Right so I my dad picks me up we
first we go to a hospital because I'm such a no pain

(48:58):
tolerance can't stand like I onetime was withdrawing at his.
House 90 lbs soaking. Wet.
Yeah, and totally. And one time I I was withdrawing
at his house and I asked him to knock me out with a hammer
because I was like, Dad, it's the only way I'll endure this.
I'm meanwhile drinking mouthwashand I don't even do alcohol.
I hate alcohol. So anyway, this time he takes me

(49:20):
to a hospital. They give me like they give me a
benzo prescription, which he's going to hold of course, but
it's just so I can last the weekend for Monday.
Because this was a Friday or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is Xanax.
And so I get to his house and, you know, he's dosing it out to
me. And then the next day he's

(49:41):
taking a nap and I swiped it from his room and booked it
because I decided I was going toa hitchhike.
And I, I still to this day don'twatch the weather.
Like, I have no idea what's going to happen.
Had no concept that a Blizzard was coming.
You know, nothing at all. So I'm walking down the road and
like a literal cop car in West Virginia stops me and we're

(50:04):
talking like Martinsburg area stops me and asked for my
license and asked why I'm walking when there's a Blizzard
coming. And I was like, oh, I have to
get to the train station, you know, made-up some lie.
I was a lot better fibbing then.I'd gotten OK at it.
You know panhandling will do that, yeah.

(50:24):
What train station? You're in the middle of nowhere,
bitch. Yeah, granted, the Martinsburg
train station, I think I must have walked like 2 miles to get
there. And I get there and then there's
no trains running, of course, no.
So then I find a guy in a parking lot and connive him into
driving me to Shady Grove metro station in Gaithersburg all the

(50:46):
way from Martinsburg, WV in a Blizzard.
That's a Bob, yeah. Yep.
And how? Did you convince that?
You know, solicitation. But here's the thing.
Dude was not feeling it. He was not like I.
I guess he felt too bad for me. He literally just drove me
anyway and then gave me $30.00 and nothing like I didn't have
to. He did feel bad for you.

(51:06):
He really did so and I, yeah, I did.
Tell the premonition that that guy doesn't exist and like he
might have been like an Angel. Shit, if that's the case, then
there are quite a few others in in my.
You know, like in my. Every once in a while, like I've
looked back at like certain interactions I've had with
people that were just incrediblybenevolent.
Like because you look at human like you look at humans every

(51:29):
day and you're like, these people are garbage.
But then every once in a while, something incredibly benevolent
just like, comes into your life and you're like, how?
Did that happen? I was and like, I'm like.
What's that? One time I was panhandling and I
met Dave Chappelle and he wouldn't even give me a dollar
at Union Station. This is a real true story, Dave
Chappelle. Not 100.
Percent he told me I was pretty wouldn't give me AI said I know

(51:51):
who you are and he was like you're pretty no anyway, but
another guy gave me $100 bill. So there were plenty of but the
the thing about this guy that gave me the $30 drove me to
Shady Grove is he was conned like he wasn't, you know, really
helping. He was not harming.
He didn't know what he was doing.
He believed my lie, just as I was would because I'm naive as

(52:14):
hell. But but no, I do have one of
those, which it was it was at the actual end.
The there is a girl. There was a girl.
I still I'm like the that's where I find.
Yeah, let's get to that. So anyway, I'm in New York at
this point. I yeah, I've gotten out of that
rehab, failed at another one, soon and so forth.

(52:37):
I'm in New York. And it was because me and two,
two other people had some pipe dreams that we were gonna go to
the Big Apple and sling drugs and make a lot of money and I
was gonna like, be a famous escort, you know?
We'll make we'll make Requiem for a Dream a success.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they were the the main guy

(53:00):
was really, he was a very, he was abusive.
And then the other guy, it turned out, I found out later,
was actually an informant for the police.
He smoked more crack than he breathed there.
And I'm not kidding. I, I think like if you ever saw
the True Detective series, if you ever saw True Detective,

(53:23):
like the Matthew McConaughey character who was like
undercover Forever, I feel like that's how those cops are.
They're just like, I can do all drugs.
Oh, yeah. So I'm gonna do all drugs.
Yeah. And then I'm gonna arrest you.
I mean, yeah, if, I mean if you know that you have like
immunity, why would you not? Why would you not?
Yeah, yeah. So this guy and I still to this
day think back. I mean, but I remember when I

(53:43):
first found out some months later when I'm clean, I I found
out, Oh yeah, it turns out Matt was an informant by the way.
And I was like, oh, that makes sense.
It then made it made sense. The last 12 hours of my using
because I, I can't even tell you, I can't couldn't even try
to describe this. I've tried before and it is such
a wild delusional like I don't understand what was going on.

(54:09):
But the bottom line is that we're in this hotel that morning
they had lost the keys because they used heavily.
We were not savvy people. We were not capable of being
savvy. Best customer, you know what I
mean? Type of thing.
And the guy, he, he did brutallyrape me.

(54:30):
And sorry, but it's what it was.Whether the police officer or
the other. Guy, No, the other guy.
And that being said, the night before or like a couple hours
before that, so that's importantto share because I think it was
like that last dehumanizing, like total absence of spirit

(54:52):
peace for me. But a couple hours before that,
this guy, Matt, the informant hehad, he had met this girl in an
elevator in this hotel. It was a Days Inn in Manhattan.
And this girl comes to the room and they're using in the
bathroom and, and I'm being dosed with methadone pills now.

(55:13):
Meanwhile, for three months, my arm has not worked at all
because it had, I got like a nerve palsy from having my arm
slumped over a chair. Literally had read the Dave
Mustaine autobiography and then it literally happened.
It was like I read read the DaveMustaine autobiography.
Like actually went to a mall like a functioning person and
bought the book. Wait, you had Saturday night
palsy? Yes, that's what my wife let my

(55:35):
wife when like the last last night we used heroin together.
She fell asleep weird. And yeah, she had Saturday night
palsy for like months. Yes.
And it was the most annoying fucking thing.
Yeah. You just have this dead arm.
Just dead. Arm it totally trashed my it
totally trashed my business, my sole proprietorship.
OK, my off papers sole proprietorship because I ended

(55:58):
up in a position where I literally couldn't do the
functions that one might need todo and was, you know, ripping
people off and then my reputation was really.
Went way you could have put that.
Thank you. I'm not going to name drop the
website in which reviews of escorts are described, but I can
tell you that I still can go on there and it would still says

(56:20):
RIP off beside my name that we're talking 15 years ago.
I. Even know that was a thing.
And and previously I was like highly rated to talk.
About that off air. We, we were talking about this a
little bit earlier about like the legitimacy of like escorts
that compared to like, just likehow the laws need to change.

(56:41):
Compared to the aspiring. Pimps like well, it's weird that
like. That's a callback, Eric.
It's weird. It's yeah, the aspiring pimp.
It's weird that you can have sexon camera for money.
We weren't talking about this. You can't have sex off camera
for money. It's like, that's like, what,
dude? George.
Carlin, George Carlin talked about that 30 years ago.
You say selling is legal. Fucking is legal.
Why isn't selling fucking legal?Well, you know what's fucking

(57:02):
weird too is like, you can like,grow poppy seeds, but you can't.
Don't scar them. Oh, you can't, Yeah, you can't
have heroin. It's gonna be we can't have
opium, but but we grow them everywhere.
Yeah, but you can have. Poppies.
We put them on our fucking bagels.
Like just the logic here doesn'treally.
Mean yeah, no, no, and I can't stand anything that diverts from

(57:23):
the logic. So I completely agree with you.
Like I know that is a little bitof like a black and white yeah
thinking, but like, yo, you cannot have your cake and eat it
too. Like they can't be divergent OK
from the logic. So anyway, yeah.
You. You have a negative score you.
Have a negative. You.
Have a negative ruin ruined likeI was getting 12.

(57:43):
Beans are like way low. Yes, like I was, I was doing
very well, like I was turning down most business.
Stars would not recommend. Yes, and then suddenly I'm
ripped. Horrible.
No, but it was a good thing, right?
In the end, it was a good thing.And that, that's, that was why I
wanted to share that is because like quite literally needed
needed that to happen so that there was nothing to come back

(58:05):
to. You feel me Now that's, that's
part of it. But three months before as well,
I was also in the midst of redeveloping the pneumonia that
had stolen my hearing the year before that.
So jumping back a little bit. I.
Was how it happened. Yeah, so I was pneumonia, Yeah.
The previous I, I don't know if it actually was happened.
I don't know, 'cause I've never,I've asked this many times of,

(58:27):
you know, medical practitioners like, can pneumonia take your
hearing? Well, theoretically, if you know
the back there was simultaneously an ear infection,
what have you. I can tell you this.
I didn't have symptoms of an earinfection.
Like I didn't have clogging Eustachian tubes.
And I have, yeah, have had that my whole life.
So that's. What I just dealt with for the
last two months, that sucked. Yeah, it sucks.

(58:48):
I'm I have it right now. My hearing is just now coming
back, right? I'm so excited.
Yeah, that I'm glad. That's really good.
Yeah, this was. I don't, I don't actually know
if the pneumonia caused it. In fact now I've been told that
I may need to go determine if I have neurofibromatosis type 2
doesn't matter, but basically acoustic neuroma like in my head

(59:11):
and that that might have been what happened.
Either way, I'm smoking crack. And then suddenly it sounded
like my ear was inside of a conch shell and I put an earbud
in it as soon as I could find one and figured out that it was
gone. I was told in 2016, like five
years clean, that if I had gone to a hospital, they could have
steroided me up and probably saved the ear.

(59:32):
But that's only if it wasn't an acoustic neuroma.
Yeah, it was it, you know, So anyway, I'm.
I am. They call my my right ear.
It's clinically known as a dead ear.
The nerve died. So it's.
Yeah. So that happened.
And then a year later, I'm having pneumonia again.
But on I don't, you know, you all know this Like on opiates,

(59:53):
you don't have a cough. Yeah, no, you're not sick.
You're not coughing you. The only time when I was aware
of just how sick I was was thosemoments of being in withdrawal,
which sometimes were stretches of hours, and they were
completely intolerable. It was the worst withdrawal
because you're literally withdrawing.
Yeah, so you don't know if you're actually sick.
No, until those times when you're you're withdrawing so you
feel awful. Like the most awful you've ever

(01:00:15):
felt. You could have the worst virus
or bacteria in you and you wouldn't know.
It right, Yeah. And then but then when here in
withdrawal, add to that coughinghas suddenly coming and you are
like your rib cage feels like it's going to explode like the
pain, the pressure inside your rib cage.
So I was developing what's called an empyema without

(01:00:35):
knowing it. So yeah, back to New York.
This woman is in this hotel room, this guy.
And she doesn't. She literally is the flooziest,
you know, booziest. Yeah, jumping back.
So she is the flooziest, booziest, you know, haven't,
she's here to have fun type of girl.

(01:00:56):
I swear to God, what was happening in that bathroom did
not sound like fun. But then they may have just been
super kinky, you know, and I, and there is no kink shaming
around me. No, none whatsoever.
OK, there's none within me, noneon the outside.
So point is, she comes out of the bathroom and she just, her

(01:01:16):
face drops like she finally realized that I existed.
Now I'm meanwhile overdosing on methadone without knowing it
because I'd never taken methadone pills.
And it's a very slow climb. So I'm like in this bed and I
have a fever. It was like 105.
I don't know how we got a thermometer, but we did.
And then she, her face drops, like, goes ghost white.
Like suddenly she's no longer drunk nor high on crack.

(01:01:38):
She's sobered instantaneously looking at me in this bed, comes
over to me and starts asking me what's going on.
And I look like I'm dying. Yeah, she says.
I'm from Utah and I didn't know why I was even here.
Like, I came here on some whim with some girls, and now I know
why I'm here. I'm literally here to be your
guardian Angel. Like to save your life?

(01:02:01):
Yep. Said it.
Wait, the chick that was just fucking in the bathroom?
Yeah, Yep. Like being Yeah, it was crazy.
Anyway, so she is the most obnoxious for the next three
hours. She's like the, you know,
pestering doesn't even cut it asa word like just over and over

(01:02:25):
again, begging me to to let her take me to the hospital.
At one point I like kicked her. So if you hear me, I'm super
sorry. I love you.
You saved my life. I did eventually go, but not by
her hand. It it did how it was an
important part though, 'cause the next day I'm like mid

(01:02:45):
overdose. Finally, like all these, you
know, like I don't understand how methadone pills work but
apparently you can take them 24 hours beforehand and then
overdose. So I'm in an air.
Their half life is like super fucking.
Long. And that's what it is, Yeah.
And they build, you know, So then next, next day, Long story

(01:03:07):
short, 'cause it could be a longstory, but I'm in this LaGuardia
Airport panhandling because I have not eaten in days.
And I'm trying to run from thesetwo individuals who I've
determined like are the least safe people I could be around.
Because again, what happened to me by that the one guy so, and

(01:03:30):
then meanwhile, like the other guys having a total paranoid
delusion in his smoking more crack than breathing air while
being an informant. So I'm in that airport and I
fall out and I face planted a piece of pizza and that a pilot
had bought me that piece of pizza and I guess he got the EMS
there because the next thing youknow, I was on a stretcher

(01:03:51):
outside the airport and they asked me the same question,
which I've I've overdosed numerous times and had to have
people called and had to be narcanned and stuff.
One time it happened in a a gas station.
There was literally a life star alert like life star van gassing
up like I probably would have died that night, but they were

(01:04:11):
there to hit me twice with Narcan.
So anyway, this was not a new occurrence.
But this time for some odd reason, I said yes when they
asked me that question, do you want to go to the hospital?
And every other time I said fuckno, I got more drugs to do or
like I'm not ready to face life or the wreckage that I've

(01:04:31):
created. So they take me to the hospital
and it's the it's the avian flu happening in New York.
City. Yo, I get to this teaching
hospital, which is Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, and I'm on a
stretcher, can't even be admitted to a room because there

(01:04:53):
are people, like, sitting, sleeping all through the
hallways of this hospital. So the last thing they wanted to
do was for, you know, a day later for me to say, yeah,
actually, there's a reason you need to keep me.
They just wanted to treat the, you know, I totally get it.
But when they come to when I come to like out of this
overdose, finally, it was like 24 hours later and they're like,

(01:05:15):
all right, so we're getting you ready to be released.
And I'm like, I got nowhere to go.
But to be honest, it doesn't matter.
I wasn't even trying to stay on.Like, I have nowhere else to go.
I just knew from those times, thank God that that I was, you
know, withdraw off opiates long enough to know that there was
something severely wrong with mylung.

(01:05:38):
So anyway, they do some imaging.I tell them, you know, you can't
release me. There's something wrong with my
lung. And they do imaging and they
find a grapefruit sized mass in my pleural cavity, my right
pleural cavity. So.
Where, Where? What?
Where's that? Oh, the pleural cavity.
It's like so between the rib cage and your lung.

(01:06:01):
That's your pleura. Fuck.
That dude that doesn't feel good.
Yeah, like there's a a conditioncalled pleurisy I think is like
it's not in inflammation of the.And there's.
Pleurosis. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a lot of pleura, pleura related, you know, conditions.
But this was an empyema, which is another name for an Abscess.
But technically it's an Abscess that forms within an already

(01:06:25):
existing cavity of the body, as opposed to creating and.
Creating yeah, pressure on yes in a muscle or what?
Fat tissue or whatever, yeah, of.
Course when they told me it was a grapefruit sized mass, they
didn't know yet what it was. So I'm sitting there for a few
hours thinking I might have cancer.
Anyway, Yeah, it turned out to be MRSA.
Oh. Jesus.
Yeah. And they were like, you had to

(01:06:46):
have had this for like, well over a year.
Yeah. To get to that big, yeah.
So, you know, I was 21, I wasn'tin terrible health.
I've never been like, tremendously immunocompromised.
But that's what drugs will do, kids.
Anyway, 2021, my birthday is 2 days away.

(01:07:06):
And I had been telling all them crackheads, oh, I forgot to tell
y'all, Amanda and Mark, What they did was they wrote me
letters that on this intervention and they sent me
with my dad with these letters, you know, begging me to get off
the streets because I'm going todie.
And they weren't wrong. But again, that's what my goal
was, Yeah. Yeah, nobody was going to tell

(01:07:27):
you otherwise. No, and I'm not going to sit
here and lie like I am in this hospital going, well, I finally
reached my goal. It's time to exert willpower and
stop using and get on my recovery journey.
Like it wasn't like that. It literally quite, you know,
quite literally was the serendipity that I hope it
sounds like. What it felt like was that

(01:07:48):
although no one should be able to predict their own near death,
let alone numerous near deaths along the way and actually
succeed. Like, sure, I shouldn't say no
one should, but no one really can do that unless psychic
ability is real. I certainly don't have it.
Yeah, I just got lucky and and yeah, my life got saved.

(01:08:15):
So they had to do surgery. I spent 40 days in that
hospital. I had to have quarter of my lung
removed, I had to have my ribs cranked open, a whole lot of
things. And later on when I was in my
9th step, I got to go back up tothat hospital and thank the the
nurses that took care of me and the surgeon that did my surgery.

(01:08:37):
How long after your surgery was that 9th step amends?
That was, let's see, this was 2000, so I was in there June
23rd of 2011. I think I went up to New York in
2017, maybe 20/20/17. OK.
So like six years later? Yeah, yeah.
OK. And were.

(01:08:58):
Some of the nurses still there. There was one that was on charge
at the time. And so she recognized me.
She remembered me that was crazylike that must.
I mean, damn, you'd think in NewYork City they'd get all kinds
of, you know, Brandos. I don't know how she remembered
me, but get this, I leave a letter for the surgeon because
he's not there that day. Where is he in DC?

(01:09:21):
Like, oh, we traded places. It's trading places.
He writes me a text message two days later and he said I was
emailed the letter that you left.
I just wanted to let you know, like I, I do remember you and I
was really praying that you would be OK.
It like brings tear a tear to myeye.

(01:09:42):
You know, I'm not trying to quote him too much, but he he
said I'm, I'm, I, I only wish I had been there to meet you in
person to see you again. I, I hope you're doing well.
And that was like the most touch.
I mean, you know, again, like there are sometimes not only
that girl that just Brando that was in, you know, came from Utah
seemingly there to save my life.But there were a lot of good

(01:10:07):
people, you know, good Samaritans along the way that
and then there were, and then there were other people who were
will who wanted to take advantage, you know, but that's
fine. That's what it needed to happen.
So ultimately I got, I got, you know, the Casey Anthony trial
was happening. So.
Yeah, there was a point where I tried to push the crack pipe

(01:10:28):
that I had in my pants pocket when I got in the hospital.
Like, come on, man. You literally just had lung
surgery. You're sneaking out to smoke
cigarettes, and now you're in the bathroom trying to smoke
crack. I.
Just with 3/4 of a lung. Yeah, I needed to, you know, F
around, fuck around and find out.
Like, so I start trying to push the stem.
And then this thing hit me. I was like, this would be

(01:10:49):
betraying that my life was just spared.
So The thing is, I never really cared about my life.
That's the point. And then suddenly I'm starting
to witness myself do things likesay, yes, I do want to go to
hospital, not by my hand, you know, like, I don't know where
it came from. And then and then the next day
when they say, like, we're aboutto release you, you can't my

(01:11:11):
lung. There's something wrong.
Yeah. I'm gonna die.
Yeah, and then I'm in this bathroom alone.
Like literally like in a corner.Might as well been in fetal
position, just a broken and scared little girl.
And I'm recovering from lung surgery with a PICC line in my
neck. Oh.
God, yeah. Yeah, and 'cause they couldn't

(01:11:32):
find a vein, it took, they took 32 people.
Which is a line from your it's is it your thigh or your neck?
Neck. Yeah, from your neck to your
heart. Yep, yeah, 'cause they it took
them, I can't. Remember there's one there where
they go and throw it from the thigh.
All the way up to your heart, The femoral artery?
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, and they.
Oh, no, I guess it couldn't because it can't be through an

(01:11:53):
artery. Wow.
Well, yeah. Well, I know what you're
talking. About, but yeah, there's another
one. So you had essentially, like a
giant needle in your neck. Yeah.
Yeah. Fun.
That's fun. It's a tube.
They do. It's a they, they take the
needle out. It's like a, it's a tube.
Yeah. They end up, they take the
needle out to replace it with. It's like a catheter.
That's not fun. Not fun.

(01:12:13):
It's not so, but that being saidit did take.
I counted it took 29 people to find a vein and that's they had
to hang me upside down. What?
They had to use an ultrasound machine to actually get the pic
line place? Yep.
So anyway, that's, that's that y'all I, I got clean that day.
I gave the oh, I forgot to say I've, I gave the crack pipe to

(01:12:34):
the nurse. I got up and I said I don't
wanna, I don't wanna keep going this way.
A central line central line goesthrough your.
Neck leg. Oh, the leg.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's how I got clean.
And I'm sorry, that was a lot more than probably it was 30

(01:12:55):
minutes. But no, no, no.
That was great. It was fantastic.
We got some questions for you. Eric, would you like to go
first? No, go ahead, David.
OK. I got to the hearing lost, so
I'll grab that. OK.
Let's go to imposter syndrome. So you talked about it with, you

(01:13:18):
know, in school and then you exhibited that through the
streets as well. Like, you're very much like an
imposter on the streets. Did you ever have that feeling
in recovery? Because I know some people do.
Like, they're like, oh, should Ibe here?
Like, do I deserve to be here and qualify?

(01:13:38):
But did that ever extend into recovery at all?
Yeah, that's a really good question.
I felt it. So the one thing I've always
been confident about and never questioned at all, thank God.
Right. It's nice to have one thing.
Yeah, was my intelligence. And I hope that isn't pompous or
doesn't come off as such, but you got to have something.

(01:13:59):
And everyone does have something, whether they
recognize it or not. I'll find it for you if you like
because I'm very good at. Oh, we can identify.
All the best in people. Oh yeah, yeah.
And I'm like totally happy to praise it for you, but it's
harder to do that for me. I can say though, like I just,
it's not a praise thing. I'm not praising myself.

(01:14:20):
It just is. I always knew that I was smart.
So having that any, any arena inwhich I've entered as a
recovering person or like an adult really, I, if it had to do
with that, like if it was you'rehere because you qualify,
because of intelligence, I'm good.
But if it had to do with almost anything else, then, yeah, I

(01:14:43):
felt like maybe not full on imposter syndrome, but just felt
it really was though, you know, it's always imposter syndrome.
Somebody's going to find out I don't belong here.
Yeah. And so in fact, this just sort
of happened yesterday. I was.
So I've been, I worked for a recovery organization, not going

(01:15:04):
to name names, a nonprofit for 13 years.
And I got hired nine months clean and is an accounting clerk
and became HR manager and then was promoted to deputy director
of finance and HR. And I've done that for five
years now all along. So I didn't get into this, but
like I found out a few years agothat I'm on the autism spectrum.

(01:15:27):
It's kind of a fad thing. So I get scared to even say
that, but like people have conflated it to be like an
excuse or something. I'm like, no, I like now like
pretty much immediately learned that.
Don't talk about it, but. Yeah.
It just is. Like it's finding out more about
yourself. Yeah, it's all it is.

(01:15:47):
It's a neurotype. It's it helps me uncover like,
oh, This is why. And it it makes you understand
the puzzle pieces from the past and you're like, OK, that's why
I did that. Yes.
And it helps you to be able to say, hey, when you're normally a
really self critical person, youknow, it's it's actually, you
don't need to feel bad about that.
Yeah, that's just who you are. And for you to try to change it

(01:16:10):
is actually sad. Like I, I, I needed to go
through a phase of like crying for myself, not in a self
pitying way, but in a healing way.
Like you, poor inner child. You needed, you needed someone
to say it's OK for you to be this way.
And there was no one there to dothat.
And then you, that shame just carries and carries and it

(01:16:30):
builds and builds and builds. So anywho, I got demoted this
week. I, I could either take the
demotion or a, a voluntary buyout like Severance.
And I chose to take the demotionbecause so essentially like I'm
just going to say I got in trouble for a variety of autism

(01:16:56):
problems, like me thinking I understood clearly the direction
I was given and that we were on the same page and then doing the
thing. And then it turns out they
didn't mean that it's things like like clear direction is of
the utmost importance. Like it anyway, there can be no
ambiguity. And there's other other there

(01:17:19):
was another circumstance where it's not just autism problems.
It's also codependency props hashtag.
Like I'm saying this like hashtags, autism probes,
codependency probes. I made some poor decisions
according to the, you know, in the eyes of this company, and
I've been demoted and I so that I can't manage or supervise.

(01:17:42):
I'm not managing or supervising people anymore.
And that's where the, the, it's like not imposter syndrome,
actually, it's just there was a time where I was like, they're
gonna find out that I'm not actually cut out to supervise in
that corporate world, you know, in that cutthroat feelings don't

(01:18:04):
matter sort of world. So whether for being an an
addict and like having a varietyof character defects that are
not always in check and including codependency or
whether it's my neurotype, you know, it doesn't matter.
It just is what it is. And like, of course, you know,
there's no point to bringing up those things.

(01:18:26):
So I just took, I took the demotion.
But y'all, it is totally like rock my world, you know, I don't
deal do change very well and so.Well, also like that's there's
more than just change there, right?
Like how how's your pride feel? Oh yeah, it's.
Trapped right now like. That that's a difficult place to

(01:18:51):
be walking into next week. Oh yeah?
Well. Like that, most people would say
fuck off, right, Like you, you didn't say that.
So that's, that's a big, Yep, it's a big thing.
Well, and I had to really like this week for the like more than
thank you for saying that, Eric,more than ever, you know,
probably in I this was the hardest decision I've ever made

(01:19:12):
in my recovery. And it also because, like to
your point, Eric, I don't, I have a really hard time seeing
the wrong because and that's I wasn't gonna say too much about
that. But like I, I'm really
idealistic in my thinking. I'm really logical.

(01:19:35):
And so if you diverge from that based because like it's in the
opinions of others, it's the better move, but it's not
factually I really struggle withacknowledging like that there
was wrong hood there at all. It's not for lack of
accountability, although I struggle with that.

(01:19:57):
Certainly, you know, I, I, I, I like want to find every other
opportunity to take accountability.
So I'm not coming across as thisself-righteous, you know, no
accountable jerk, when really I'm standing up for myself
because I never did before. And I'm trying, you know, to, to
do that, but that's not looked upon.
Well, So anyway, going into the decision, I had to really lean

(01:20:20):
on my network. You know, I had to call my
sponsor. I even had I had called my mom
and I I don't frequently. Like to bring her she's in
recovery too and I don't really like to bring her bad news but I
really needed all the help I could get and just the sense of
like I didn't just get ostracized from everything I've

(01:20:42):
known. But y'all I have worked there
for 13 years and I have worked 5560 hour weeks.
It has become you know. So anyway I've been told to try
and look at this as AI know thatgot off topic a lot but is this?
The focus on you type thing right now is that is that kind

(01:21:02):
of like? Appreciate that.
Thank you is. That is that what the message
was a little bit. Yeah.
Like pretty much the message that I got was that it.
Could be a blessing in. Disguise, it could be a blessing
in disguise. And that includes like, I was
powerless over like boundary setting with the organization.
And they've just set the boundary and like told me, you

(01:21:23):
know, you need to go have a lifebecause you're not going to move
up, you know, on that path any longer.
That's the hard part is accepting like the idea that the
last 13 years have been like everyone's forgotten anything
that I did. You know, that's the kind of
addict mindset. You know, we'll go there really

(01:21:44):
fast and live there. And like, you know, Eric's heard
this a million fucking times forme, but I don't give a shit.
I'm going to say it again. I'm not going to say it.
No, I'm not going to say that. No, one of my, you know,
favorite lessons that my sponsors had to like teach me in
recovery is, you know, a reason,a season and a lifetime.
And you know, every interaction we have with people, jobs,

(01:22:11):
friends, everything. You know, some sometimes just
like we were talking about people come into our lives just
for a reason, just for a very short reason.
And then the next group up that are there for a little bit
longer are there for a season and you know, it's, you know,
one year, five years, 13 years. And then there's the lifetime,
which is the smallest group. And then those are the people
who are there throughout the whole thing.

(01:22:33):
And you know, this could just bea changing of a season and we.
Don't know. Yeah, thanks.
I know. And that's like the kind of
advice I give my sponses. We can always give other.
People, but I can way better. Advice than we can give
ourselves. I know right?
And if anything, that's a good, I can also find that, gosh, I

(01:22:53):
will have more empathy. I've been reminded, I've been
humbled in a tremendous way. But I've also been reminded of
some of the like, of how it feels to be in a situation like
this where it's been for 13 years.
I really haven't had to deal with that kind of thing like
career issue. Like it's just been on upward

(01:23:14):
trajectory. Yeah, I've had a lot of, there's
been a lot of write ups and there's been a lot of like me
not understanding why, you know,the company does this or that or
divergent, you know, that I've had to keep my mouth shut and
stuff. And like, let's just call it
like a slow learning curve, you know, for that type of thing,

(01:23:35):
but not like this. And so it's given me not only
humility of a different kind, but empathy, which I, you know,
I, I, I really value adversity adverse.
One thing that has really come out in my step work over the
years has been my I placed a high value on not only that, all

(01:24:00):
the story I just told, none of that's difficult for me to talk
about and it never has been because I'm so grateful.
I'm like, that's where my gratitude.
We, you know, it's not sound cliche, but really just like I
set out to do, like the gratitude that I have for my
life comes from adverse adversity.

(01:24:21):
And if there's nothing that I learned in those 3-4 years, it
it was that. So in a situation like this, it
is hard to find that place on myown.
And I need other people to remind me of it.
And it's hard to get there fast,you know?
Oh yeah. But that's only because
expectations. And like I said, change and the

(01:24:42):
pride, the swallowing my pride, there's embarrassment there's.
I. Failed you know like what is
what's the point but anyway I'm I have to refine that I have to
get creative again I need to I Ibecame a nutritionist you know
I'm literally I have a master's in nutrition.
I have a side hustle. I started and ran a food

(01:25:03):
business for five years. Really.
Yes. So my, my recovery journey has
not been only working this job, you know, no.
It's just a chapter. It is.
All right, Eric, what you got? All right, so good, good
transition to the nutrition thing, right?
So I've I've been stalking you over here on social media.

(01:25:23):
He's so he just sits back there at his and in his lurkum.
I saw your nutrition thing, but like you were also anorexic,
right? And like, so I, I was a
restrictor and there's like going into, I mean, being, being
a nutritionalist and then also like having an eating disorder

(01:25:45):
like that. There's a fine line, right?
So I'm, I'm intermittent fastingright now.
And my therapist was even just like, how different is that than
restricting? And I'm like.
I'll validate you a little. Different well, you do get more
energy in the morning. I will give you that.
And you keep your like body likeI don't know, I like it, but but

(01:26:09):
we can rationalize, can't we? So but how?
How's like your relationship with food now?
That is the relationship with food.
Now so so grateful. Thank you both for wanting to
ask that because it's a so if there's nothing, if there's
something I'm more passionate about then then even.
It's not talked about in NA. It's not.
And it should be and it really should be.

(01:26:29):
It needs to be because the number of people that I know
that are, it's such a secretive thing, you know, and the people
that have have given me their confidence to know that they
struggle in that way is many, You know, there are so many I go
to, I go to eating disorders anonymous meetings sometimes.
And another thing is finding outthat I would say in that the one

(01:26:53):
meeting in Virginia I went to onZoom a year ago, 85% of it was
male. Yeah, there's a lot more men.
Way more men now. Yeah.
Because like, like there's a lotof like body just this, this.
More, yeah. Yeah.
So like you, you can't like I have body dysmorph.
It is. Big in the recovery community.
I don't see what my other peoplesee when they look in it exactly

(01:27:13):
so like. Yeah.
And you or, you know, focusing laser focus on that one thing.
Yes. Oh yeah, Yep.
And I used to, I used to assert that it was body dysphoria
because I I, I and I still kind of do asserting like, no, I see
exactly what is there. I just, I don't like her focused

(01:27:34):
on the thing. Yeah, like I just justifiably
don't like it. OK.
You wouldn't either. Yeah, if you had to look at it
every day. Right.
So for six years I did eating disorder slash trauma slash art
therapy. Yeah, it was very cool.
Unfortunately, because I am heavily interested, I once had
my dad scream at me to quit being so goddamn introspective.

(01:27:57):
I've always been a very introspective person.
It's kind of that comes with a territory when you're self
obsessed and always trying to figure out what's wrong with you
to solve the problem so you can be better for other people so
that they can like you, so that you can feel worthy of love and
you know, etcetera, etcetera, right?
Are you my brain? Yeah.
So anyway, I think. Jack's totally lack of lack of

(01:28:17):
surprise. I love that.
Yeah, I I did that therapy, but unfortunately she couldn't
really corral me. I usually went in there and just
diagnosed myself. Not diagnosed myself, but would
talk about why I did everything and didn't get enough feedback
or, you know, whatever. So the point is that I did that
therapy. I also found I was going in

(01:28:39):
there. This is not a I'm not
downplaying the importance. The six years I did was
critical, critically important. And it also came time to end
because I was over identifying with being bulimic, being
anorexic. I was going in there every week
and saying I am bulimic, I am bulimic, I am bulimic.
There was no departure from I can be not bulimic.

(01:29:02):
Actually I can be empowered to recover.
So back in 2018, early 2018, I swallowed a fork.
What while I was being bulimic? Wait.
Mm hmm. What?
Yeah, that's not good. That's bad.
That's bad. Yeah, it's really bad.
How? Did you get it out?

(01:29:22):
Well, yeah, it was a crazy, crazy day, y'all.
No, So I did. It went all the way down past my
gag reflux. But y'all, if I had had these
nails, this would not like I'm wearing fake nails right now and
I would have not been able to save my own life.
But thankfully I didn't have nails then and I pinched that
fork in the pinch of time at thevery pace of my gag reflect like

(01:29:48):
right past the uvula. So I had like half of my hand
down my throat and I'm in a bathroom alone.
My instinct kicked in like my survival instinct kicked in
instantly. I stood up like so gingerly, you
know, because I'm scared to rupture something and I book it
down the stairs. My grandparents, I at the time I

(01:30:10):
was living with them, they both had dementia.
My grandmother still is alive and has Alzheimer's.
Neither of them could have reacted or been of any help in
the situation. But my grandmother had known
that I struggled before she started to lose her memories.
So she came. She followed me out.
I ran outside instinctually. I just knew I needed to get out

(01:30:31):
because I couldn't get it out, so I needed to get out.
So I get out the house and I'm standing on the front porch.
There's no one around. There was some neighbor maybe,
like, you know, raking leaves, but I couldn't have spoken.
So it's not like I could have called out.
And she just was standing over me, you know, crying and
whimpering. And it was so painful to cause

(01:30:51):
her that pain. But more and more to the point,
I'm sitting there grasping this fork, you know, with dear for
dear life. And then suddenly, like, I'm
pulling, you know, so hard. And I pull it up past the bone
here. Oh, it's brutal.
Yeah. And then I I'm.
Happy I'm not over there right now.

(01:31:13):
I'm not gonna get too graphic, no.
Please please get graphic we wanna hear.
It Well, yeah, there was, there was like a, you know, cough and
a lot of blood that came. Yeah.
So I don't really know, 'cause Inever, I didn't go to the
hospital. It would have been.
I can feel that right. You never went to.
You need to go ENT like yesterday.

(01:31:33):
OK thankfully because of my ear I did which I have a screw in my
head that allows me to wear a hearing aid you.
Need an ear nearest throat doctor so badly, Tara.
Oh, I know, badly. I have one.
Oh, so it's it's sort of like wear like a cochlear implant?
Yeah, it's a cochlear. This is a cochlear product.
It's called the Baja 6 Max. Yeah.

(01:31:54):
So I wear that. I got that a year ago.
It's really awesome. That said.
Restore, you're here. Well, we'll talk about.
Well, it does bone conduction. So yeah, it's it's really cool.
It's not perfect hearing. I love bone conduction.
Yes, bone conduction here. Headphones I got to wear some of
those years ago, and that's why I knew that this was going to.

(01:32:14):
Work there. I've like completely switched to
those except for like podcasts. And that's good.
It's good because you're not damaging it.
There's no potential damage to the hearing.
Does it? Doesn't.
Go right into your ear. Yeah, your eardrum.
So anyway, so anyway, extract the fork.
I extract the fork. There's blood.
I I'm far too embarrassed to. Throat feel.
Oh, so raw. So, so raw.

(01:32:36):
Which? But here's the thing.
Did you throw up or did you actually like?
Oh yeah, I I like that's the good question.
Like that's the thing y'all, when you have when you're
bulimic, if you don't compensatefor over like eating a
tremendous amount of food that you only ever planned to.

(01:32:57):
You were a binger as well. No, I've so I've never done
binge eating without compensation.
So there was always exercise bulimia and there was always
like never one or the other was always both together.
I was always, you know, exercising two to three hours
every day and also purging. And then and for the majority of

(01:33:17):
the like I would say orthorexia nervosa has always been, that
was my SO relationship with food.
Getting back to your question, you know, was tough because of
that. That was my mainstay.
And if it wasn't that like behaviors wise, it was chewing
and spitting, which is not talked about enough.
So that's why I'm mentioning it.Yeah.
It's like, it's like this is theway I put it to people.

(01:33:40):
When you lack trust in your bodyso badly that you're not even
willing to swallow. You know, like I distrust my
body. I distrusted my body to be able
to bring it back. Up so I'm chewing gum right now.
So not gum. We're just talking about like.
Food, you're literally chewing food and then spitting it back.
It's it's classified like people, they refer to it as

(01:34:01):
mastication disorder. Yeah, but it's classified I
think like in the DSM 5 or like you know, clinically it's
classified as like EDNOS, part of the EDNOS cluster.
You're getting like the taste and then you spit it.
Out exactly. Dude.
That is, that is fucking your mind up.
So, so bad. Not to mention your insulin
signaling. Yeah, you're releasing.

(01:34:23):
And so I, I became insulin resistant through all that.
Like, by the way, Oh Jesus, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And developed like I technicallyif I ate carbs which I don't,
which you know, that's another thing I've had to remain.
Doing that with gum. I've had to, right?
I've wondered that too, but I developed really severe TMJ.
What is that? It's a job disorder in the TMJ

(01:34:43):
joint, so I was always predestined to develop that
'cause I have a genetic condition.
We're not gonna get into that all that probably.
But point is, the fork thing wasa really big turning point.
Now I wasn't ready to, I wasn't able to.
Was it a? Fork in the road.
In the. Road, bro, you did not just say
that. That's perfect.

(01:35:04):
That is how did no one ever say I've told this story?
Not a lot, but I've told it enough.
Times first. Someone should have come up with
that and you did. I'm so grateful.
Thank you. Oh, was a fork in the throat.
For the wind. I mean Rd. for.
The wind. Yes.
Oh, that was awesome. God, very good.
So. You have to be at the end here,
almost like I mean. Yeah, Yeah, I can.

(01:35:25):
Forks out of your throat are like.
Things started as so like I didn't feel like I could share
about it in NA. When I did, it was only after I
had accumulated 30 days of no behaviors.
I was still eating disorder to hell in my mind, but I would
share like and I would even pickup a 30 day key tag in NA
because I started to go go to EDA meetings, that kind of

(01:35:46):
thing. I wasn't ready to be abstinent
to be, you know like and so anyway, another thing I learned
was that I needed to stop thinking about things so black
and white when it comes to eating.
You don't get to just put the forked, you have to feed
yourself to live and that's always, I mean so many people.
If you're eating disordered, youhave had this thought.

(01:36:08):
If you have ever struggled with it, you've wondered how in the
hell and you've been in abstinence based recovery.
You've wondered how is it that the like not cure, but the
treatment for addiction where ifyou're thinking of this as a
processing addiction, then the treatment is contraindicated in
this case. So how do you manage right?

(01:36:29):
So we've had some people on herethat talk about the top line and
bottom line. Have you like?
Have you heard of? That no.
OK, so. So with eating disorders and
also like. Sex is a big.
Sex as well. Right process addictions.
Yes, process addictions for sure.
So there's a top line and a bottom line so that your top

(01:36:49):
line is all your behaviors and how your relationship goals with
sex or food or whatever, or money, those are your goals and
what you shoot for and everything below your bottom
line is all the, the behaviors that are unacceptable.
And the reality is you live in the middle, right?
And sometimes you're higher, sometimes you're lower, but it,

(01:37:11):
it gives you that level of graceto it's not abstinent based
recovery where I have to do thisperfectly.
I because you're not going to doit perfectly.
Like especially for like an an overeater or a Dieter or
whatever. Like sometimes like you're,
you're going to have a second piece of birthday cake, like
you're going to eat the doughnutlike it, it that's gonna happen.
And you can either fall to pieces and then completely, you

(01:37:33):
know, 3 sheets to the wind. Fuck, fuck all after that, or
you can just realize me like, OK, I dipped closer to my bottom
line and, you know, let's let's let's, let's bounce back.
Let's just take it for what it is and, and give my like, you
know, to take it easy on myself.Yeah, I did my.
Best exactly what it was I so inAfter that I realized two things

(01:37:53):
was that my therapist, no offense.
Shocked. No, I'm kidding.
No, it's just she, she while shewas probably right because she
gave me the scenario that what if he was dead?
I had been asserting for years that I needed I needed an
apology from my dad. And she said, well, what if he
was dead? You wouldn't be able to get it.

(01:38:14):
So can you act as though you know and like, do you, you know
what you need to do? Like people have to like, get
over, OK, That it's, I hate to say it, it's I don't know if I
even needed it. What I needed was to tell him
all these things that happened and the everything I couldn't
say. So a lot of people talk about

(01:38:35):
like kids don't have the vocabulary to express the
feelings they're going through. That's what I'm getting at.
I don't mean that I really needed his apology.
I just needed him to validate that my feelings were hurt when
he left, and I had never said those things.
It's something that people with eating disorders often deal with

(01:38:56):
alexithymia, which is an inability to express your
emotions vocally. So what I, it's basically what I
just said. But like as an adult, you know,
never growing out of that because you're putting the food
in the mouth, like it's symbolic.
You're literally like avoid or you're avoiding the food.
Like yes. And so all of that mastication,

(01:39:17):
that chewing like that, you know, ruminating, I was always
having this negative cyclical. Thoughts.
Oh, just over it for hours and hours and hours and hours.
And it was a cage. And so anyway, that fork thing
happened. And what it did was it empowered
me to say, I know that he could be dead.
He's not though. So I'm going to get what I need.

(01:39:40):
He came over and bottom line is I told him everything I needed
to tell him. And it was not graceful.
It was like begging and pleadingand screaming and crying.
And guess what I said, Tad, he didn't understand what to do.
This man was paralyzed. He was like just shook because
he doesn't deal well with confrontation.
And I told him I I just need youto hold me like I'm a little

(01:40:04):
girl again and tell me it's going to be OK.
So not everyone can get that, but y'all that is.
That was the actual turning point.
Like that was when I started to realize that it can't be too
hard on myself. I will fail, I may fail, and
when I fail, you're a human being.
I'm literally I didn't just screw everything.

(01:40:24):
So I stopped doing that and I stopped going to therapy because
I was over identifying with my eating disorder.
So all these things happened over about a four or five month
period. Now I would go back to therapy
in a heartbeat right now, like I, I'm not saying that I swore
off therapy. I just recognized that for me it
was unfortunately with my therapist at the time, it was

(01:40:45):
not actually helping me get it through the what I had set out
to do with her right. So anyway, August 30, no 29th I
go to the OR the Orlando based NA world convention.
So 2018 and that was when I finally I was like I'm ready.
I'm ready to abstinence base this thing 'cause I had finally

(01:41:10):
I don't know, I can't describe it.
It's just a spiritual in nature as like the end of my Rd. with
heroin, but I haven't used I there's not been a single
behavior I have my relationship with food has been on only a
positive trajectory pursuing nutrition and by the way, I
stayed keto the entire time I'vebeen keto and gluten free for 11

(01:41:31):
years. So when I was in 2018, like I
was that already and people ask me all the time how how I manage
that. Well, I had to like face that
fear too, just to show myself that I was not being orthorexic.
So I like I have done numerous like in the realm of 15 days

(01:41:52):
where I've eaten carbs and without any fucks given.
And guess what? Not a single moment of guilt,
not even a shred of guilt because I it's all out of been
it's all been out of self love and recovering like a sense of I
am worthy and internal validation of that.

(01:42:12):
You understand that's what enables me to and that's why I
cannot feel bad for standing up for myself in meetings with my
employer. You know, even if there, you
know, other people may disagree with my sense of all I know is I
retained my integrity through that and I that all comes from

(01:42:34):
like that's when I really feel like my recovery began.
It's not I'm not going to go change my clean date.
Yeah, but getting recovering my integrity and being able to hold
firm to I did this with pure intention, out of self love, out
of love for others, not out of fear, you know, with pure

(01:42:55):
motives. I did this or that or the third.
Like I'm not just talking about one thing to live my life in a
way that is conducive with my values.
I'm not saying I do that perfectly, but I do believe that
that that type of thing must coincide.
And that's with with my recoveryin in from any process

(01:43:15):
addiction. But that's my relationship with
food is extremely I'm not gonna I'm not gonna.
That sounds wild. Extremely healthy.
I'm just gonna tell you that. It's come a long way, I.
Mean. Oh my God.
Well, I just don't. I don't have the disorder.
The disease doesn't speak to me good anymore about that, And

(01:43:36):
that's a. Good title too though.
No, no, I know, but The Disease doesn't speak to me is also a
good title. He tries and I'll say this, he
will try, you know, like occasionally, like I got people
at work on. OK, so that all right, I'm going
to ask, I'm going to jump in andask a quick question.
So. Do you?
So I I feel there's a big thing in recovery of kind of like

(01:43:57):
anthropomorphizing your disease.Oh yeah.
Like, oh. It's doing push ups in the in
the parking lot. I am not.
People don't like. Those people, I am not one of
those people at all. Like and like, I'm not talking
anybody out there who does that.Like I'm not talking down to you
in any way, shape or form. Like no, but it's.
It's a fucking, it's a fucking out, dude.
It's an out. I think it can be people like

(01:44:19):
I've seen enough, I've seen enough people be like, man, my
disease really, it was my disease's fault.
And like I I really have to apologize for that.
And it's like, no, no, it's you,dude.
No, no, Yeah, yeah. Exactly so like because.
I couldn't, I couldn't agree more.
Yes. The the anthroporphizing to me,
it's like me playing into a cliche.
Yeah. And it's not tongue in cheek.

(01:44:40):
So it's a little bit of a tonguein cheek thing, but it's
speaking in the terms that we all understand.
Yes. It's not actually.
It's kind of like a. Break from responsibility.
Yes, I like I say God just because it it's convenient to
say, correct. Same would be I not correct but
I mean I. Just like I saying my long
winded explanation of what I really think is what?

(01:45:02):
Like I'll just say God, it's just easier.
Like, you know, the God or the universe or whatever.
I had to. I had.
The other thing I didn't mentionwas the other part of this was
that I had to re develop my sense of a higher power.
Which is great because the time I literally had finished the 1st
12 steps and was starting anew. It was the perfect time,

(01:45:23):
serendipitous as hell that I would decide, okay, now is the
time because it was in step 8 when?
All in on this because you didn't really broach this topic
so keep going. Thank you.
Yeah. Eighth step was when I was like,
I don't actually, I resent my hair power.
So I knew it was been, it was coming for years, you know, and
and I was worsening in my eatingdisorders.

(01:45:45):
And yeah, so anyway, I had to develop a new concept of a
higher power. Like it wasn't that the Russian
Orthodox God that I was raised with, if y'all don't know
Russian Orthodox or Orthodox in general is not a shaming.
Or if it is, I'm so ADHD that I never even realized that we were
shaming each other for like like.

(01:46:05):
So you were raised Russian Orthodox?
Yeah, yeah. And it's in Catholicism, which
is where Orthodox stemmed from. Yes.
Yeah, yeah. And the simplistic thing I was
told was like we Oh well, the Orthodox just didn't agree with
the Pope concept so they. Yeah, we're not exactly
Protestant. We're not totally Protestants,
but we're not really Catholics. Yeah, yeah.

(01:46:26):
Orthodoxy is very, you know, unique.
Right. And I'm grateful 'cause I didn't
come into the rooms with any kind of hang ups about that God.
OK, I had already, I had sworn him off and become an atheist in
high school. Like the first time I smoked
weed, I was like, Oh no, God, God doesn't exist.
I know a little bit of Slovakian.

(01:46:47):
OK, we'll get another. Yeah.
OK, All right, so. No Russian though.
You don't have the hang up. Yeah, so I don't have the hang
up. But in other words, the problem
was not that God, you know, at all.
It was just the unfortunate thing was that I had ascribed
blame or assigned blame to that God because I had made a pact
with him, you know, quote, UN quote that in Step 1, you know,

(01:47:11):
with reservations. I was like, you're gonna let me
be crackhead skinny or I'm relapsing.
Like I need to say crackhead skinny forever.
Oh yeah. Or I'm relapsing and I'm not
even like. The Triple C's diet is what I
called it. What is it?
The Triple C's? Cocaine, caffeine and
cigarettes. There you go.
Exactly so. Skinny Oh I know my year since
my year removed from cigarettes is has not been great to my

(01:47:34):
body. Oh.
Sucked. Oh yeah, you've just quit.
Though there's a That's a terrifying prospect to quit
nicotine. I can't even.
We'll get there. Maybe someday.
Dude, it took me 11 years man. God.
Took me 11 fucking I've been that's eleven years of recovery.
I've been I've been smoking since I was 11 years old.
I haven't had any. It was.
A 25 year relationship that you know, January 28th last year

(01:47:58):
that was my last cigarette had. One has it been a year?
It has been a year I have so. And you never vaped.
Is that right? So I vape for like when I first
didn't like it when I first got into recovery.
Yeah, everybody's doing this vape thing.
And I'm like. All right.
Yeah, I'll try. That and I was like, this sucks.
Oh man, I was like this. Good for you.
This is. Stupid.
It was, I was like a year and a half clean when I switched from

(01:48:20):
cigarettes to vaping and that was another cold Turkey switch.
But I did it just like with the eating disorder, I literally was
just and with drugs, really it was like, OK, I'm not going to
say that I'm doing, I'm not committing to this.
We're just going to take it one hour at a time.
Like they are not lying people. That thing really works.
When you literally take it one hour, you're like not being,

(01:48:41):
you're not going to break apart when you actually fail.
You're just going to keep it taking it one hour at a time,
one day at a time. And that I switched, right.
But then you find out that like vaping at that time, it was the
Wild West. You could vape everywhere.
You could vape on a plane and itwas just like yo became such a
worse addiction. Oh yeah.
I was proud of myself. I am no longer proud of myself.

(01:49:05):
So yeah, I had to change the concept of my higher power.
And this might sound kind of wild, but like I had learned
about the the idea of like a higher self, right, years prior,
the higher self concept. And some people shudder like
old, old heads, you know, traditionalists, which I am one.
I am very much a traditionalist.I believe in traditions and that

(01:49:28):
the only way that certain organizations or beliefs or
concepts constructs can exist asif there were certain founding
principles that are maintained right.
I I honor traditions is what I mean.
But. That's the Orthodox talking.
Yeah, probably. And autism, I don't.
But I don't need any like anyoneto influence my higher power.

(01:49:55):
What I knew was that that spoke to me, the higher self and like,
even if there are people who think like you're saying that
you believe in yourself as higher power, they couldn't be
more wrong. It what it is, is an
unattainable goal to be to self actualize, like to to self
actualize and idealize who you are.

(01:50:17):
And that was that was a really cool thing.
And it was working like sort of in tandem with the God that I
was raised with because I wasn'ttotally ready to depart again
from like this belief in like a man in the sky.
Because even though everything within me told me to, you know,
reject that I, I had this reallyprofound experience and that

(01:50:39):
rehab after I had to get clean off of all the freaking fentanyl
and oxy, they had me after the lung surgery.
And I had this profound experience with this priest, you
know, in there and he laid handson me and I just started
bawling. So I was like, OK, I guess I'm
back, but I wasn't ready to depart with it.
When I came up with the found the higher self concept, someone

(01:51:01):
shared it with me. It meant so much anyway that
neither of those were working. And then in this, in my recovery
with eating disorder, I realizedthat or like in months leading
up to the abstinence, 'cause I do believe that was part of the
recovery, I realized that my higher power needed to be as

(01:51:22):
basic as my body. My body literally wins every
time. If I try to starve it, there
will come it'll down regulate mythyroid, you know, to make sure
that I'm not process or external.
Now, some people's bodies don't do that and they literally can
starve to death. But I developed insulin

(01:51:44):
resistance. That's that was not as a result
of like eating sugar constantly.That was that was as a result of
my body going you continually put me in famine.
And and if anyone doesn't know this, like there's a really
popular theory that insulin resistance isn't evolutionary
adaptation that comes that only some people, I mean not

(01:52:05):
everyone, can develop it genetically it it allows us to
survive famine. I won't get into all the bio
mechanics of that, but the pointis that my body wins every time
it finds ways to outsmart me from actually getting to the end
goal of being 90 lbs. 90 lbs. Yeah, how tall are you, 5, two

(01:52:31):
not that's sustainable. Reasonable.
Yeah. Wink, wink.
It's not sustainable. Heavy on the sarcasm if anyone
didn't catch it. OK, so point is, yeah, my body
is my higher power today. Like it's not the only higher
power I have. I still believe in the higher
self concept, but I let it tell me that's where, you know, going

(01:52:51):
back to your earlier question, Eric, the the reason I believe
my my relationship with food hasbeen able to be sustained or
like a healthier relationship and has only continued continued
to progress and improve is because I don't tell my body
anymore what it needs to do or look like.
You find it. I listen, I just listen and I

(01:53:13):
look for it exactly I'm I let ittell me.
And even when sometimes I falterand get this notion that I
could, you know, change it in some way.
I didn't even tell you all this,but I in that couple months
before, right around the fork incident, I had also gotten
liposuction. What a smart lipo on my knees

(01:53:36):
because they were that thing forme.
Eric like the body dysmorphia. I was like, what?
OK. Yeah, on your knees.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah 'cause I didn't.
And the surgeon? Fuck do you get lipo on your
knees? Well, so I.
It's a joint. I don't even know.
I know. I don't even.
It's a good question. Like I don't even, I know how
this surgeon, like he was very irresponsible to take my money

(01:53:58):
for this 'cause they're supposedto be like.
He was like, sure, yeah, you know.
Screening, yeah, they're supposed to be able to screen
like for like, I was not underweight for my BMI and I
think that's how it happened. But I was like, I had like 10%
body fat. Like there's no reason why.
Yeah, well, I pull those knees. Yeah, I had.
I hadn't had a not to, you know,suck out.
Apparently nothing's off limits,right?

(01:54:20):
So I'm gonna just say I didn't have a period for three years.
Like I was not wow, that's not good.
And this got like, when's your last period?
And I'm just like, like, come on, man.
People need to screen better. Yeah, OK.
For body dysmorphia and plastic surgery pursuit.
He's like, OK, $10,000 to suck out your knees.
Exactly. Three years.

(01:54:41):
Wow. All it all, all I'm getting to
is I paid $10,000 to have basically a profound spiritual
experience. Because the next day that's not
bad. I woke up and I my.
Knees are beautiful. And yeah, no, it wasn't even.
It was, it was what I thought itwould be and it wasn't that.

(01:55:01):
What happened was I felt the most intense sense of remorse,
the most intense sense of guilt that I had.
These cells we are born with, like you have every cell, it's
just fat cells increase in size because fat triglycerides are
stored within them. But you don't just, you suck out

(01:55:22):
fat cells. They're gone forever.
Yeah. And I know people villainize fat
and all this sort of thing. I don't.
And it is an organ. If you have none of it, you'll
die. Yeah, it's a dynamic organ and
it plays a critical role in a menstruating female.
And if anyone, you know, if anyone is a menstruating female,
then hopefully you know that that it is imperative that we

(01:55:44):
have like we're keeping like 18%body fat or else you're not
procreating. Just something I always wanted
to do. So The thing is, I had this.
I just can't even tell y'all. It was the most.
It's a wild thing that liposuction caused me to finally
find my higher power. I realized that like I had just

(01:56:05):
gotten rid of a part of me that was born with me.
I was born with those cells and I gave them away.
And it was. I've never thought.
Of it viscerally, it was viscerally it broke me and I
thank God I had therapy that dayso I could go and process it and

(01:56:26):
I've I've never regretted something more.
You know, I still regret it eventhough it was what I needed to
recover from eating sort and therefore I'm so grateful.
And every day, you know, if I really think about is still
surreal. The idea that I can literally
just eat a sandwich and move on.You know what?
Like that's amazing, but I stillregret it, you know, and I think

(01:56:50):
that's important. I think it's important for me to
honor what I had to sacrifice. Yeah.
To have this gratitude, you know, the damage I had to do to
myself. Like the self.
There is, like I said about valuing adversity.
Well, there's value as well if you look for it in your, in your
own self destruction. If you feel remorse, remorse can

(01:57:11):
be that thing. It can be the pain we talk about
as required for change, you know, And that's what it was for
me. It was that and the fork, and it
was the asking my dad pain. Is a skin changer, yeah.
It. Never comes in one form, ever.
And just to be clear about the dad thing, I didn't need
anything from him. I just needed someone to hear me

(01:57:34):
share feelings I never shared before.
You know, I just want to clarifythat.
So it's standing up for myself, you know, and my own emotion.
So anyway, all those things cometogether.
Development of a new higher power.
And yeah, my relationship with my food has never been better
with food has never been better with my body.
It's never been better. Sure, there are still things
that I wish I could improve likeeveryone, but I nowadays don't

(01:57:56):
even use that term. It's not an improvement.
It's just, you know, I wish I could change.
I don't villainize food or fat. I don't very like just the body
will be what it wants to be if Ilet it.
So if I give, it needs to. Be.
What it needs to be needs. To be.
So I do anthropomorphize my body.

(01:58:16):
I hope you don't mind. As far as the actual disease
anthropomorphizing goes, that ismore of like a breaking
identity. Like I don't do it to just like
get away from the responsibilityof my action I.
I understand it, yeah. It's like, hey, I'm identifying
a piece of myself. But I don't think I I think more
intellectual people are doing that.

(01:58:38):
And like some other people are just like, no, it's a it's, it's
a different part of me. It's a demon.
Like it's actually in the parking lot.
I'm like, it's, it's not. In the parking lot.
It's doing those? No, it's in the fucking mirror
looking right back at you, buddy.
No, it's a demon named. Johnny and he's doing shops and
smoking cigarettes Outback. Yeah, exactly.
And like, no, like I'm, I'm, youknow, I am, I am my disease, but

(01:59:02):
I'm all like, just like you said, like with the higher self,
I'm also my solution, right? And and.
There are many parts to me. Yeah, yes.
And that's one part I. Contain multitudes.
Thank you, Walt Whitman. Correct.
And I and I don't want and, and sometimes, most of the time, the
disease's motivations are thingsI actually need to survive to
reject and get to reject the motivation.

(01:59:24):
So identifying it as a piece is important, and it's not.
It's not integral to who? I am a lot of the times nowadays
I'll just call it the asshole inmy brain.
Yeah, that's good because. It's just an asshole.
Totally. My brain is not my friend.
Like anybody trying to kill yourbrain is not your friend.
And if you are in there alone, taught like you need

(01:59:46):
supervision, you like, do not go.
Do not go in there without supervision, because it is.
It is not a fun place and it will it will most more times
than not, lead you to just disaster.
Exactly like this week was a great example of that.
It wasn't. Literally, there was.
Nothing true. Your brain just says oh.
My God. It just and it's just like it.

(02:00:07):
Torments. Yeah, you're not good enough.
See. Exactly.
See like twists and like? It was so many.
I told you. I told you so.
You weren't good. Enough.
And then meanwhile, it fails to pick up some of the things that,
like my brain will fail to pick up some of the obvious things
about around me that would help.Me, all these people love me all
these like everybody exactly. Yeah, all the like.
I fail to see the love, the openheart, you know, the people that

(02:00:30):
are there to support. I, I, I will even question
whether I can trust people who have shown me nothing but love.
We will. Yeah, we will ignore 90% of the
of the of the gratitude worthy things in our lives to find the
one to to find the 10% of you know, things that are not going
the way our dumb plan has made-up in our brain.

(02:00:51):
I think I'm out of. Questions.
Are you out of questions, Eric? Yeah, I think, I think it's time
to to shut it down, David. OK, Yeah.
Well, we would like to. We would love to thank our guest
Tara for being an amazing guest today.
Thank. You guys, thank you for having.
Me, absolutely. One last quick minute, talking
to anybody out there who's struggling needs to hear a
message of hope. What do you have to say directly
to them? Oh, on the spot, all right.

(02:01:15):
Message of hope is that you are worthy and you have it within
you, even if your brain tells that tells you that you don't.
You have it within you to validate yourself and validate
that you are worthy and that you, your needs deserve to be

(02:01:36):
met and you deserve them just for existing.
Please don't forget that there are people around you who will
help you validate that. And let me you know.
Just my voice anyway. Be one of them.
Yep, anybody out there, just remember you are loved.
All right everybody, thank you for joining us once again.
Go to all our social media outlets, Facebook, Instagram,

(02:01:58):
Twitter. We are on Spotify, iTunes, all
the good things. Look us up.
We are podcast recovery. Please join our Patreon.
Help us keep the mics on becausewe are self supporting.
I'm not going to do the whole spiel.
Most importantly, everybody out there.
Stay safe and stay clean.

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Tara S. - I Had to Die in Order to Live

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Tara S. - I Had to Die in Order to Live