August 28, 2024 • 35 mins
2024 E1045 Saxxon shares his powerful story of childhood trauma to his introduction to alcohol and drugs, his journey through addiction and homelessness, to his struggles to achieve a sober and productive life.
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Good morning everyone. Rusty G, alcoholic. And I'm Tim and I'm an alcoholic and this is
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Children of Chaos. Today's a special day for me. My grandson Saxon is here with us
today and he's going to share his experience, strength, and hope with us.
When you watch someone go through their life, from the time I was there the
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day he was born until this moment he has been a special human in my life. I've
seen him go through childhood where things were just chaotic. He is a
child of chaos for damn sure. So I want to have, he's going to be telling his
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story and if I don't watch it I'll get into telling it so I'm going to turn it
over to Saxon. Saxon, alcoholic, addict. You know it's a crazy story. I grew
up in a single-parent household. My mother was married to a crazy white
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supremacist when I was born. Now thank God he was not my dad. Now with him being
a white supremacist, that's how I got my name. It's got some sort of
like Aryan nation thing behind it which is pretty crazy. I don't tell that very
often. I told it at my talk the other night. Kind of a funny story. That
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marriage that they were in was a really abusive marriage, drug-fueled. I'm not
going to speak on my mom's story but I think she's probably involved in some of
that stuff as well. At the age of three, my mom dropped me off at that man's
mother's house and they were getting divorced and I was basically used as
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currency to get back at my mother's. So what he did is he went over there, he
picked me up and my mom did not see me for like an entire year. My mom was was
pretty lost in that year. I used to be kind of mad at her for it. I'm not mad at
her now. I just think that she was dealing with her own issues. Yeah, I was
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gone for an entire year and finally my mom got her senses together. I'm not
really sure how it transpired but she got me back and that man, he went to
prison. I was an angry child at that age and I think it's just because of
what I went through and all the trauma. I think at that age of three to four, you
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act out in other ways just because of what you went through. You know, a few
years passed and we found out who my biological father was and at the same
time that we found out, we found out that he had passed. My mom had a good idea
that he was my dad but we weren't sure until they did a DNA test and we
confirmed who my dad was and he passed away from a drug overdose. He had taken
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some bad ecstasy. I'm not really sure how it transpired but that's what I
was told. That was a really critical period of my life because one, my father
passed away. Two, I repeated the first grade so I was dealing with loss
but I also was dealing with that I'm not good enough from a young age, that I'm
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different and that really bad self-taught started at a really
young age and at that same age, I faced some sexual abuse so it really changed
the course of my childhood and just my path to be a man. When I mentioned
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that sexual abuse, I did not talk about it until I got sober three years ago.
Hearing other men speak about it gave me the strength to want to share about it
and get free of it. You know, I started to become free of it in meetings but the
first person I shared it with was a therapist. So those are some really
pinnacle things that happened in my childhood. Growing up in my house, I love
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my mother but she was just crazy. I don't know how else to explain it. There's a movie
called Mommy Dearest and when my mom gets mad, I would definitely say that
it kind of reminded me of the scene in the movie where the little girls on the
floor with the bleach and she's not cleaning the floor right and I forget
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the name of the actor but she starts just freaking out and throws the bleach
on her. Now my mom is not that crazy but her anger and that rage and I would
definitely say that I had anger and rage and I think that's just to learn
behavior and looking back, my mom learned that I think from probably my
grandfather here. Sorry, Grandpa, but it's just to learn behavior. Throughout my
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childhood, it was a lot of back and forth between living with my mother and living
with my grandmother just because my mother, she could not make good, she
didn't have good decision-making at all. So I would come home, I really remember
coming home one day from school and all of our stuff was packed and we had
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settled into that apartment for probably six months and I thought, gosh, here we go
again. I've got to move in with grandmother and you know I felt shame
and when my grandmother, when she was mad at my mom, which she was at the time
because we had to move back in there, she would kind of take it back out on me and
also I'm protective of my mother so anything that she says about my mother
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I'm gonna fill it to my core just because that's my mother, I'm her son, so
I take it personally. I remember repeating that that song and dance
throughout my entire childhood. It was going from one school to another, moving
back with grandmother, my mom halfway getting on her feet, moving back in with
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mom and then things would fall apart. I was around drugs and alcohol from a
really young age. I was actually telling my girlfriend the other night, she's like
do you smell that weed? I'm like no I don't, I don't smell it because I've been
around marijuana my entire life so it's just like kind of second nature to me.
It's like my second heir basically. So I had my first drink when I was 10 years
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old and it was peppermint schnapps and I remember thinking this is great, I like
this taste, I want to do this again. When I was 15 I went to St. Martin with my
aunt and uncle and we went on this thing called the booze cruise where you take
your cruise around the island and there's wine, there's rum and being the
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15 year old that I am you know I don't know yet don't mix all these different
things so I mixed everything in the world and I woke up the next day and it
was actually the day that Michael Jackson passed. I woke up, my bed was wet, I
couldn't figure out why my bed was wet. I had peed my bed and I had a massive
hangover and a normal person would think to themselves okay I don't want to do
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that again, probably next time I'll have just just a few drinks and my first
thought was wow I cannot wait to do this again and again. That feeling of being
out of control, I just loved it. I wanted to do that over and over. As I progressed
in my teens I started stealing my mom's weed and I thought yeah I like this
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stuff, this works, it makes me feel better and then everybody around me
through through school, everybody smoked marijuana. I mean it was just it was
normal, everybody did and as I started to get older in my teens I didn't want to
go to high school anymore and my grandfather he intervened he's like no
you're gonna finish high school. So I went to Tulsa Street School which is a
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wonderful school and thank God that I went there. It helped me graduate and it
put some really good things in my life and some good people around me. I'm
really happy I did that but on the other hand everybody that I went to school
with there, we all did drugs, every one of us. Regardless had I went to that
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school or not, I was an addict and alcoholic. That school had nothing to do
with those people that I went to school with had nothing to do with it. Just it
just felt normalized because everyone else had the same problem as me. I think
I went to school with nothing but addicts and alcoholics so I didn't know any
better. My my senior year of high school I had never really in the past I'd never
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touched pills or anything I stayed away from it. I started taking Xanax and I
started taking it every single day and it really caused a lot of rage in me
because I already had that built up rage. I had a lot of unhealed
trauma from a young age. Now I didn't know it at the time, not really until I
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got sober that I had all this unhealed trauma. I thought that's just how I was
hardwired. It's not. So you mix that with heavy drug use and alcohol and it's
a recipe for disaster and high inside I should have went to treatment my senior
year. Would have it fixed me? I don't know but I think it would have helped a lot.
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When I when I graduated I had no plan for life. All I wanted to do was numb out
everything and I moved in with grandma and that first year out of high school I
did nothing but just get loaded. That's all I did and take Xanax and drink lean
and codeine and cough syrup and smoke weed every single day. Eventually I
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became really suicidal and I tried to take my life. I don't think I was really
trying to but it was more of just like a cry for help.
Cobe's came and they took me to Tulsa Baver Health Center and what a scary
place. I mean this is not Laureate or Parkside. This is like the state funded
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and I had never been inside a psych ward. I wanted to get out of there
and I thought that I was gonna go back home and my grandfather he has a black
belt and Alan on. He put a stop for that real quick. He said no son you're gonna
go to treatment and I thought you know what I'll do that. I have nothing else
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going so I go over to 12 and 12 and you know it's it's a beautiful moment. I'm
there for almost a year and I'm 20 and I have no idea about recovery meetings
anything at all. You know I'm pretty green. I learned about AA. I get a
sponsor and I didn't really work steps but I stayed in with my sponsor and I
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think I just kind of taste tested AA. I don't really think I was ready. Really on
the inside I wanted to be 21. That's it. So as soon as I got a really good job I
left 12 and 12. I lived in a sober living there. I got my own place and I
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immediately quit AA. I'm like I'm not an addict. I'm not I'm not an alcoholic.
It's just purely situational. A few months later I let one of my best
friends come stay with me and he's doing heroin at the time and I didn't really
know it but I knew that he was sleeping all day and I just knew something was
wrong. I knew that he liked opioids and I knew that he did him but I didn't know
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he was doing heroin and I I had done opioids in the past like Oxy's and all
that stuff but I had never done heroin and you know one day I thought I'm gonna
try this and as soon as I did it I mean it was like love at first sight. I was
gripped and I wouldn't say that I was strung out right away. It probably took
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about a year and a half before I was like really really hooked. I had bought a
car at the time. My grandfather helped me. He helped co-sign but I was I was in the
depths of addiction and I was carrying on a job. I don't know how I did it.
Eventually a few months later I quit that job and I was making really good
money for selling that at 21. I was making a living and I had to hand that
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car over. I remember my apartment. I pawned literally everything that I had.
I had some crazy girlfriend. I don't even know what I was doing with that girl. I
was like you know what I gotta get clean and I went to treatment and you know I
go to treatment and I start feeling better. I'm like I don't want to be here.
I want to get out of here. I want to tell them how to run the place. I think
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I probably repeated that cycle for a few years and then eventually my aunt and
uncle were like hey you should you should come stay with us in Dallas. So I
drove down to Dallas and I thought this is great. I go it's a clean house. I'm in
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a good area and this is a fresh start. They had no idea of how much of an addict
that I was. They were just they were loving me the best way that they could.
You know some time went I got clean but I wasn't really clean. I was still using
pod and doing whatever but I wasn't using heroin. So in my mind I thought I'm
doing good and eventually I met this girl and she got down the same way that I did.
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She loved to do heroin. I thought wow this is great. I did that for a while in
Dallas. I moved back to Tulsa and I went to Sober Living and then after a few
months I thought this is horrible. I'm gonna go back back to Dallas and I showed
up at my aunt and uncle's doorstep. They were just like jaw-dropped. So they let
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me back in and I stayed with them and I stole from them and I did everything
that you shouldn't do. I didn't honor them. They basically were like look you
got to do something different. You got to get out of here. I had a counselor from
from my church that I went to as a child and he didn't know how troubled I was
but he knew something was wrong and he said you know what come to California
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and I thought great this will be the geographical change that I need. Now I
didn't really look at all the details to go in there. I kind of thought I was gonna
move into like a regular house and I wasn't. It was a hostel. It was just me
and like 30 people living in a house and probably one of the worst parts of LA.
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There's a movie called Training Day and Training Day was actually shot like 10
minutes away from there. I remember getting on this airplane and I took a
bunch of Xanax. I did a bunch of heroin because I thought this is my last hurrah.
I'm done and I kept falling asleep on the airplane and the lady was was getting
really mad at me and I remember writing a note on my phone and leaning over to
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show it to her. I think I said that my grandmother had died that night. I've
been up all night. I didn't know what else to say. So I get off the airplane
and I get on the Uber and I show up to this house and there's bars on the
windows and if there's bars on the windows you know you're not in a good
spot. Another thing that I noticed is that the fast-food restaurant by my
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house had a bullet had bulletproof glass around it which is not another good sign.
I make it there for about a month and I'm crazy. I am just out of my mind.
I've been starving to death for months. I think I have psychosis from all the
meth and heroin. Everything that I'm doing. So I thought you know what? How
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can I get back home? So my mom and grandfather fly me back home. They fly me
on Spirit Airlines. They fly me on that airline for a reason because it's the
worst airline that you can fly on and my flight got diverted 500 times and the
story was is I was supposed to go to the Howe Foundation. Well I didn't make it to
the Howe Foundation. I made it to jail two weeks later and in jail they called
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me JFK because just by the way that I look I kind of stick out like a
sore thumb. I was there for two weeks. I thought okay how am I gonna bust out of
here? Howe Foundation. The judge will let me out if I go there. So I get out of
jail. I go to Howe Foundation for a weekend. They shave my head and I leave.
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I go to Salvation Army for a week and then like the classic addict alcoholic
that I am you know I'm a good manipulator and I go to 12 and 12 and I
know a lady there and she goes I'll let you back in. So I go I do treatment. I go
to sober living and I beat my case and as soon as I beat my case I'm free and I
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start doing what I want to do. Years and years went on probably three or four
years where I would go back and forth between rehab sober living living in my
car maybe living with my grandmother in Dallas just repeating that cycle because
what's really going on is that deep down inside that inner voice it talks about
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it I think either in the 12 and 12 or the big book is that you really can't do
step one until you admit that innermost self you know it talks about it and I
wasn't willing to do that and I was always looking for a trap door. I thought
there's a loophole here there's something that I can do there wasn't
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there was not. Eventually I went to 12 and 12 for the very last time and I got
out I went to server living and within weeks I relapse and my mother my gosh
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yeah I drove her crazy she she let me come stay with her and she's living in a
studio apartment and I think I'm probably 25 years old at the time and as
a man it already sucks living with your parents but living with your mother in a
studio apartment I mean you just feel so low to the core I mean I couldn't even
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look somebody in the eye I felt so low and one day I thought I'm gonna get out
of here I'm gonna try this geographical change one last time I start calling
around and there's an outpatient thing in Colorado and they're like you know
what get Medicaid it'll pay for it and then also we'll get you scholarship for
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a sober living I thought this is my ticket so I loaded up my last few
hundred dollars and I drove to Colorado and I go to the server living and I
realized really quickly that I cannot pay rent here I can't afford it and also
I knew deep down inside that I really didn't want to get sober I just wanted
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to get the heat off my back that's really all it was and I met this girl
like classic alcoholic I have I met her my outpatient group and she showed
interest in me and you know I think I would have given any girl a chance at
that time I just felt so low I just wanted to be loved and also I didn't
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know anybody there I thought this is a great tour guide you know we got
together and of course I left my sober living and I moved in with her and this
is through the pandemic I lost my job I'm living with her and I start getting
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unemployment which a lot of people were doing they were getting during the
whole pandemic so I had all this money and I'm using every drug under the Sun
and mind you I found heroin and fentanyl out there without even trying and I was
on everything and there's a moment that really sticks out to me is after I had
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relapsed in Colorado I remember waking up one day and thinking to myself how did
I get here again and I'm away from everything that I know and that I love
and it really hit me like like bricks so eventually the money for the
unemployment runs out and I think what am I gonna do I have a serious heroin
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habit to the point that if I'm not getting high every eight hours I'm going
into withdraws and serious withdraws to the point where my stomach is turning I
mean it like something you see like in a movie or on intervention that type of
withdraws I I had experienced it before back home here in Oklahoma but up there
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it was really bad and I think it was really bad because of the fentanyl is
just so much stronger than the heroin the money ran out and I thought I'm gonna
have to rob somebody I don't know what I'm gonna do and people were doing
online porn during the pandemic and me and you know my ex-girlfriend at the time
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we thought well we can do that I mean this is great we made our first 50 bucks
I thought wow we made $50 doing this and we started doing it over and over and
over and it ruined my outlook at the time on on sexual stuff I would say but
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it also it saved me from robbing from robbing people or robbing stores because
I probably would have but over time her mother was like you got to go and she
kind of had a sense that I was living at her townhome with her daughter but she
didn't really know so eventually she comes and she kicks us out and the cops
come and we couldn't run our business anymore and also I'm homeless and I'm
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real homeless and I had lived in my car and I had stayed at the shelter but I
had never slept outside and and I remember that first night of sleeping
outside and I just felt so low and just I wanted to die if God had came down
that night and given me a choice to go I would have said yes I just I was so
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tired as an addict I've been going through it for years and years and I
felt like that was my my lowest point and I spent weeks and weeks on the street
and sometimes I'd get to stay in a hotel and which was kind of brutal because
every time you stay in a hotel you know tomorrow you have to leave and you get
that moment of of security and warmth and you almost can't enjoy it because you
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know that tomorrow you're gonna lose that place you know when I stayed on the
streets it seemed like everywhere that I went and stayed I start to get rest at
night and everywhere that I went there'd be a sprinkler that would start going
off and I really feel like that was my higher powers way of nudging me that I
just wasn't cut out for it and you know I would pray a lot and I would cry I
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would just pray like Lord help me get me out of this I can't do it anymore like
I'm broken as a man and my girlfriend at the time she's crazy as heck I mean she
just nuts and she doesn't know what's going on but I always had a good knower
inside of me and that that knower knew that what was going on just was was not
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right and I credit that knower to my grandfather a lot he instilled that in
me you know some some time had passed and my girlfriend's uncle goes you know
what you can come stay with us and I had told myself that if I can get to a place
where I can be under a roof and be clean I am gonna kick all this stuff so he
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calls a taxi for us and the taxi comes and we don't have money but her uncle's
gonna pay him once we reach the destination I had to beg and plead with
this taxi driver and I was really begging and pleading at the time because
I knew deep down inside that this was gonna be the start of my recovery
journey I just knew it we get there and her uncle has no idea that I'm coming so
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I just show by the door with her he's a good fellow he let us stay there and you
know this is the first time that I actually was detoxing off everything
there was a doctor in town that we went to and he gave me Suboxone and I
remember on around day six I was like I'm gonna get off this you know in my
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mind I'm gonna use the Suboxone to transition myself from the fentanyl just
because there was no way I I would have jumped out out of a window I mean you
will self harm the the detox from it is so bad you will probably self harm so I
knew that I didn't want to be stuck on methadone or Suboxone or any of those
things it's just not a part of my journey and I'm not gonna discourage
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someone that that chooses that journey that's that's yours but I wanted to be
totally clean and sober from everything I knew that my life would get better and
stay better if I took if I made that decision so I had been begging for
months to my grandfather to my mother to fly me home and they wouldn't do it my
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grandpa sends me a text one day hey do you know about hope is alive I go yeah
absolutely I go please he goes well get online apply call a lady named Christy
and I will pay your deposit and I'll fly you home and at first I was
apprehensive but I thought you know what this is my ticket and I thought if I'm
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really gonna do this I've got to go now I can't wait I have got to go because I
was miserable I mean I was to the point that I was going to kill myself one way
or another that's the point that I was at it's that jumping-off point I remember
breaking up with my girlfriend I remember still being very very sick from
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detoxing and my grandfather said you know what you can stay with us for a week and
I had to stay with them for a week because I could not pass a clean UA and I
remember feeling a really good moment of gratitude like wow you know they're
letting me stay with them and I didn't deserve to stay with them and honestly
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it probably went a little bit against their own program my grandfather works a
great Alan on an AA program but he believed in his grandson and I remember
that week I stayed with them and a friend had came to pick me up to go to
a meeting I had thought that he was sober he wasn't I remember going with
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him to his house and he draws up a shot and I thought I'm I'm sick I'm thinking
this will make me feel better but I had a I had another thought I thought if I
do this my grandfather will find out I cannot dishonor him again this is my
last shot and I'm sick and I knew it made me feel better I didn't do it I
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didn't do it and I knew deep down inside that by not doing it that this be
probably one of the best decisions I could make is not getting high I get to
my sober living a few days later I have a clean UA and and I'm terrified but I'm
hopeful because the way I looked at it was is that I had everything to gain and
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nothing to lose at that point in my life it was only up from there and I had some
clothes my grandfather took me to a goodwill to get some sort of dress clothes
I could interview for a job and the clothes looked way too big on me and the
pants were too big I got a job and I got a simple job and it was the perfect job
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it was something that we call in the in the program or like in the room say get
well job it's a job that pays you enough money to pay your bills and it's not too
many hours that you can't go to a meeting and I knew early on that I needed
to make a my program a priority that just had to be a thing for me I get a
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home group I get a sponsor and I start working steps weekly I'm sitting down
I'm going line for line and I start noticing after about three months that I
feel a lot better I want to live I want to be here and I start getting some self
love I start to love myself for the first time my entire life my life starts
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getting progressively better and better and that program that I was in hope is
alive is a very very tough program and it was very challenging and it keeps
you so busy that you can't even think about relapsing you're that busy I met
some great people in that program I made some lifelong friends that I can call on
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any time and some of these guys that I'm friends with we used to get high
together like one of them actually overdosed with them and he's sober today
and he's amazing individual some time goes by and I eventually I get a new job
I'm not going to say the name of it but it's a wonderful place and it was a
blessing I think God really opened the door for me because I was ready I
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eventually I move out of that sober living and thank God I had my roots and
some sort of 12-step program thank God I did because had I not I probably would
have not made it because I could have been so codependent upon that program I
remember getting my first apartment and I had bad credit at the time and I
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thought I can't get an apartment anywhere and luckily somebody in the
program owned those apartments and they gave me a shot and I honored them I
always paid my rent on time actually just moved out of there oh like like two
weeks ago it was a great starter apartment I remember that that first
night I was so happy to have my own place and to have furniture I paid for
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it all myself no one helped me and also that first night I was up all night
because the next day I had to speak for the first time and I think my whole talk
was just war stories my grandpa had to look at the clock and tell me to get off
the stage it was funny it was good good learning experience I got a I got a new
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place on on Riverside and I got something called air conditioning that
I haven't really had for a few years I wanted cheap rent for a while and I saved
and saved and saved and I thought all right I need to do something different
and I met a wonderful lady six months ago and we're best friends and our
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relationship is not formed on sexual stuff it's a big part of us but it's
formed on a friendship and life views and we just have fun together and I've
done everything this year I've been to every concert that I would want to go
to and dream of I became debt-free this year I mean I'm responsible now I didn't
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everything that I that I got before in the mail it would say do now or things
like insurance or paying rent or anything I never paid it I just kind of
thought well you can there's a workaround on it and I'm responsible now
so I would say this has probably been the best year of my life and I would
also say that I probably have the best self-love that I've had my entire life
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and that that voice in my head that when I was young that that negative self-talk
has gotten a lot quieter it's still there but it's quieter one thing that I
didn't talk about my talk is that going going to therapy that was another
game-changer and my last go-around of getting sober is is combining that with
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my sober living and going to meetings 12-step recovery will not heal trauma
it's not I knew that I needed to have a therapist and do EMDR and have somebody
that I can get brutally honest with and they can also help give me tools to make
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it in my journey and it's not all about drugs and alcohol it's a lot of that
stuff that you grew up with as a child and healing that inner child I have a
lot of trauma I mean I was around a lot of violence screaming rage uncertainty
and working through that has been groundbreaking some of that stuff will
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always be with me but that voice and power that it has over me becomes less
and less and more than I work on it and that I have the awareness of it it's
just been a blessing of a journey I take it one day at a time I've been through
some stuff and sobriety I've done everything right I've done everything
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wrong and I get back I get back on track it's just been a it's been a great
journey and I wouldn't change it for anything else and I'm really happy that
I've been able to be sober in the last periods of my grandfather's life you know
he can he can die and know that job well done this has been a production of
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this venue are solely that of the individual and do not reflect the views
policies or position of any specific recovery based entity or organization
Good morning everyone. Rusty G, alcoholic. And I'm Tim and I'm an alcoholic and this is
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Children of Chaos. Today's a special day for me. My grandson Saxon is here with us
today and he's going to share his experience, strength, and hope with us.
When you watch someone go through their life, from the time I was there the
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day he was born until this moment he has been a special human in my life. I've
seen him go through childhood where things were just chaotic. He is a
child of chaos for damn sure. So I want to have, he's going to be telling his
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story and if I don't watch it I'll get into telling it so I'm going to turn it
over to Saxon. Saxon, alcoholic, addict. You know it's a crazy story. I grew
up in a single-parent household. My mother was married to a crazy white
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supremacist when I was born. Now thank God he was not my dad. Now with him being
a white supremacist, that's how I got my name. It's got some sort of
like Aryan nation thing behind it which is pretty crazy. I don't tell that very
often. I told it at my talk the other night. Kind of a funny story. That
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marriage that they were in was a really abusive marriage, drug-fueled. I'm not
going to speak on my mom's story but I think she's probably involved in some of
that stuff as well. At the age of three, my mom dropped me off at that man's
mother's house and they were getting divorced and I was basically used as
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currency to get back at my mother's. So what he did is he went over there, he
picked me up and my mom did not see me for like an entire year. My mom was was
pretty lost in that year. I used to be kind of mad at her for it. I'm not mad at
her now. I just think that she was dealing with her own issues. Yeah, I was
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gone for an entire year and finally my mom got her senses together. I'm not
really sure how it transpired but she got me back and that man, he went to
prison. I was an angry child at that age and I think it's just because of
what I went through and all the trauma. I think at that age of three to four, you
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act out in other ways just because of what you went through. You know, a few
years passed and we found out who my biological father was and at the same
time that we found out, we found out that he had passed. My mom had a good idea
that he was my dad but we weren't sure until they did a DNA test and we
confirmed who my dad was and he passed away from a drug overdose. He had taken
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some bad ecstasy. I'm not really sure how it transpired but that's what I
was told. That was a really critical period of my life because one, my father
passed away. Two, I repeated the first grade so I was dealing with loss
but I also was dealing with that I'm not good enough from a young age, that I'm
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different and that really bad self-taught started at a really
young age and at that same age, I faced some sexual abuse so it really changed
the course of my childhood and just my path to be a man. When I mentioned
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that sexual abuse, I did not talk about it until I got sober three years ago.
Hearing other men speak about it gave me the strength to want to share about it
and get free of it. You know, I started to become free of it in meetings but the
first person I shared it with was a therapist. So those are some really
pinnacle things that happened in my childhood. Growing up in my house, I love
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my mother but she was just crazy. I don't know how else to explain it. There's a movie
called Mommy Dearest and when my mom gets mad, I would definitely say that
it kind of reminded me of the scene in the movie where the little girls on the
floor with the bleach and she's not cleaning the floor right and I forget
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the name of the actor but she starts just freaking out and throws the bleach
on her. Now my mom is not that crazy but her anger and that rage and I would
definitely say that I had anger and rage and I think that's just to learn
behavior and looking back, my mom learned that I think from probably my
grandfather here. Sorry, Grandpa, but it's just to learn behavior. Throughout my
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childhood, it was a lot of back and forth between living with my mother and living
with my grandmother just because my mother, she could not make good, she
didn't have good decision-making at all. So I would come home, I really remember
coming home one day from school and all of our stuff was packed and we had
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settled into that apartment for probably six months and I thought, gosh, here we go
again. I've got to move in with grandmother and you know I felt shame
and when my grandmother, when she was mad at my mom, which she was at the time
because we had to move back in there, she would kind of take it back out on me and
also I'm protective of my mother so anything that she says about my mother
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I'm gonna fill it to my core just because that's my mother, I'm her son, so
I take it personally. I remember repeating that that song and dance
throughout my entire childhood. It was going from one school to another, moving
back with grandmother, my mom halfway getting on her feet, moving back in with
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mom and then things would fall apart. I was around drugs and alcohol from a
really young age. I was actually telling my girlfriend the other night, she's like
do you smell that weed? I'm like no I don't, I don't smell it because I've been
around marijuana my entire life so it's just like kind of second nature to me.
It's like my second heir basically. So I had my first drink when I was 10 years
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old and it was peppermint schnapps and I remember thinking this is great, I like
this taste, I want to do this again. When I was 15 I went to St. Martin with my
aunt and uncle and we went on this thing called the booze cruise where you take
your cruise around the island and there's wine, there's rum and being the
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15 year old that I am you know I don't know yet don't mix all these different
things so I mixed everything in the world and I woke up the next day and it
was actually the day that Michael Jackson passed. I woke up, my bed was wet, I
couldn't figure out why my bed was wet. I had peed my bed and I had a massive
hangover and a normal person would think to themselves okay I don't want to do
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that again, probably next time I'll have just just a few drinks and my first
thought was wow I cannot wait to do this again and again. That feeling of being
out of control, I just loved it. I wanted to do that over and over. As I progressed
in my teens I started stealing my mom's weed and I thought yeah I like this
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stuff, this works, it makes me feel better and then everybody around me
through through school, everybody smoked marijuana. I mean it was just it was
normal, everybody did and as I started to get older in my teens I didn't want to
go to high school anymore and my grandfather he intervened he's like no
you're gonna finish high school. So I went to Tulsa Street School which is a
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wonderful school and thank God that I went there. It helped me graduate and it
put some really good things in my life and some good people around me. I'm
really happy I did that but on the other hand everybody that I went to school
with there, we all did drugs, every one of us. Regardless had I went to that
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school or not, I was an addict and alcoholic. That school had nothing to do
with those people that I went to school with had nothing to do with it. Just it
just felt normalized because everyone else had the same problem as me. I think
I went to school with nothing but addicts and alcoholics so I didn't know any
better. My my senior year of high school I had never really in the past I'd never
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touched pills or anything I stayed away from it. I started taking Xanax and I
started taking it every single day and it really caused a lot of rage in me
because I already had that built up rage. I had a lot of unhealed
trauma from a young age. Now I didn't know it at the time, not really until I
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got sober that I had all this unhealed trauma. I thought that's just how I was
hardwired. It's not. So you mix that with heavy drug use and alcohol and it's
a recipe for disaster and high inside I should have went to treatment my senior
year. Would have it fixed me? I don't know but I think it would have helped a lot.
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When I when I graduated I had no plan for life. All I wanted to do was numb out
everything and I moved in with grandma and that first year out of high school I
did nothing but just get loaded. That's all I did and take Xanax and drink lean
and codeine and cough syrup and smoke weed every single day. Eventually I
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became really suicidal and I tried to take my life. I don't think I was really
trying to but it was more of just like a cry for help.
Cobe's came and they took me to Tulsa Baver Health Center and what a scary
place. I mean this is not Laureate or Parkside. This is like the state funded
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and I had never been inside a psych ward. I wanted to get out of there
and I thought that I was gonna go back home and my grandfather he has a black
belt and Alan on. He put a stop for that real quick. He said no son you're gonna
go to treatment and I thought you know what I'll do that. I have nothing else
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going so I go over to 12 and 12 and you know it's it's a beautiful moment. I'm
there for almost a year and I'm 20 and I have no idea about recovery meetings
anything at all. You know I'm pretty green. I learned about AA. I get a
sponsor and I didn't really work steps but I stayed in with my sponsor and I
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think I just kind of taste tested AA. I don't really think I was ready. Really on
the inside I wanted to be 21. That's it. So as soon as I got a really good job I
left 12 and 12. I lived in a sober living there. I got my own place and I
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immediately quit AA. I'm like I'm not an addict. I'm not I'm not an alcoholic.
It's just purely situational. A few months later I let one of my best
friends come stay with me and he's doing heroin at the time and I didn't really
know it but I knew that he was sleeping all day and I just knew something was
wrong. I knew that he liked opioids and I knew that he did him but I didn't know
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he was doing heroin and I I had done opioids in the past like Oxy's and all
that stuff but I had never done heroin and you know one day I thought I'm gonna
try this and as soon as I did it I mean it was like love at first sight. I was
gripped and I wouldn't say that I was strung out right away. It probably took
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about a year and a half before I was like really really hooked. I had bought a
car at the time. My grandfather helped me. He helped co-sign but I was I was in the
depths of addiction and I was carrying on a job. I don't know how I did it.
Eventually a few months later I quit that job and I was making really good
money for selling that at 21. I was making a living and I had to hand that
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car over. I remember my apartment. I pawned literally everything that I had.
I had some crazy girlfriend. I don't even know what I was doing with that girl. I
was like you know what I gotta get clean and I went to treatment and you know I
go to treatment and I start feeling better. I'm like I don't want to be here.
I want to get out of here. I want to tell them how to run the place. I think
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I probably repeated that cycle for a few years and then eventually my aunt and
uncle were like hey you should you should come stay with us in Dallas. So I
drove down to Dallas and I thought this is great. I go it's a clean house. I'm in
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a good area and this is a fresh start. They had no idea of how much of an addict
that I was. They were just they were loving me the best way that they could.
You know some time went I got clean but I wasn't really clean. I was still using
pod and doing whatever but I wasn't using heroin. So in my mind I thought I'm
doing good and eventually I met this girl and she got down the same way that I did.
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She loved to do heroin. I thought wow this is great. I did that for a while in
Dallas. I moved back to Tulsa and I went to Sober Living and then after a few
months I thought this is horrible. I'm gonna go back back to Dallas and I showed
up at my aunt and uncle's doorstep. They were just like jaw-dropped. So they let
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me back in and I stayed with them and I stole from them and I did everything
that you shouldn't do. I didn't honor them. They basically were like look you
got to do something different. You got to get out of here. I had a counselor from
from my church that I went to as a child and he didn't know how troubled I was
but he knew something was wrong and he said you know what come to California
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and I thought great this will be the geographical change that I need. Now I
didn't really look at all the details to go in there. I kind of thought I was gonna
move into like a regular house and I wasn't. It was a hostel. It was just me
and like 30 people living in a house and probably one of the worst parts of LA.
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There's a movie called Training Day and Training Day was actually shot like 10
minutes away from there. I remember getting on this airplane and I took a
bunch of Xanax. I did a bunch of heroin because I thought this is my last hurrah.
I'm done and I kept falling asleep on the airplane and the lady was was getting
really mad at me and I remember writing a note on my phone and leaning over to
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show it to her. I think I said that my grandmother had died that night. I've
been up all night. I didn't know what else to say. So I get off the airplane
and I get on the Uber and I show up to this house and there's bars on the
windows and if there's bars on the windows you know you're not in a good
spot. Another thing that I noticed is that the fast-food restaurant by my
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house had a bullet had bulletproof glass around it which is not another good sign.
I make it there for about a month and I'm crazy. I am just out of my mind.
I've been starving to death for months. I think I have psychosis from all the
meth and heroin. Everything that I'm doing. So I thought you know what? How
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can I get back home? So my mom and grandfather fly me back home. They fly me
on Spirit Airlines. They fly me on that airline for a reason because it's the
worst airline that you can fly on and my flight got diverted 500 times and the
story was is I was supposed to go to the Howe Foundation. Well I didn't make it to
the Howe Foundation. I made it to jail two weeks later and in jail they called
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me JFK because just by the way that I look I kind of stick out like a
sore thumb. I was there for two weeks. I thought okay how am I gonna bust out of
here? Howe Foundation. The judge will let me out if I go there. So I get out of
jail. I go to Howe Foundation for a weekend. They shave my head and I leave.
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I go to Salvation Army for a week and then like the classic addict alcoholic
that I am you know I'm a good manipulator and I go to 12 and 12 and I
know a lady there and she goes I'll let you back in. So I go I do treatment. I go
to sober living and I beat my case and as soon as I beat my case I'm free and I
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start doing what I want to do. Years and years went on probably three or four
years where I would go back and forth between rehab sober living living in my
car maybe living with my grandmother in Dallas just repeating that cycle because
what's really going on is that deep down inside that inner voice it talks about
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it I think either in the 12 and 12 or the big book is that you really can't do
step one until you admit that innermost self you know it talks about it and I
wasn't willing to do that and I was always looking for a trap door. I thought
there's a loophole here there's something that I can do there wasn't
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there was not. Eventually I went to 12 and 12 for the very last time and I got
out I went to server living and within weeks I relapse and my mother my gosh
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yeah I drove her crazy she she let me come stay with her and she's living in a
studio apartment and I think I'm probably 25 years old at the time and as
a man it already sucks living with your parents but living with your mother in a
studio apartment I mean you just feel so low to the core I mean I couldn't even
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look somebody in the eye I felt so low and one day I thought I'm gonna get out
of here I'm gonna try this geographical change one last time I start calling
around and there's an outpatient thing in Colorado and they're like you know
what get Medicaid it'll pay for it and then also we'll get you scholarship for
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a sober living I thought this is my ticket so I loaded up my last few
hundred dollars and I drove to Colorado and I go to the server living and I
realized really quickly that I cannot pay rent here I can't afford it and also
I knew deep down inside that I really didn't want to get sober I just wanted
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to get the heat off my back that's really all it was and I met this girl
like classic alcoholic I have I met her my outpatient group and she showed
interest in me and you know I think I would have given any girl a chance at
that time I just felt so low I just wanted to be loved and also I didn't
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know anybody there I thought this is a great tour guide you know we got
together and of course I left my sober living and I moved in with her and this
is through the pandemic I lost my job I'm living with her and I start getting
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unemployment which a lot of people were doing they were getting during the
whole pandemic so I had all this money and I'm using every drug under the Sun
and mind you I found heroin and fentanyl out there without even trying and I was
on everything and there's a moment that really sticks out to me is after I had
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relapsed in Colorado I remember waking up one day and thinking to myself how did
I get here again and I'm away from everything that I know and that I love
and it really hit me like like bricks so eventually the money for the
unemployment runs out and I think what am I gonna do I have a serious heroin
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habit to the point that if I'm not getting high every eight hours I'm going
into withdraws and serious withdraws to the point where my stomach is turning I
mean it like something you see like in a movie or on intervention that type of
withdraws I I had experienced it before back home here in Oklahoma but up there
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it was really bad and I think it was really bad because of the fentanyl is
just so much stronger than the heroin the money ran out and I thought I'm gonna
have to rob somebody I don't know what I'm gonna do and people were doing
online porn during the pandemic and me and you know my ex-girlfriend at the time
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we thought well we can do that I mean this is great we made our first 50 bucks
I thought wow we made $50 doing this and we started doing it over and over and
over and it ruined my outlook at the time on on sexual stuff I would say but
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it also it saved me from robbing from robbing people or robbing stores because
I probably would have but over time her mother was like you got to go and she
kind of had a sense that I was living at her townhome with her daughter but she
didn't really know so eventually she comes and she kicks us out and the cops
come and we couldn't run our business anymore and also I'm homeless and I'm
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real homeless and I had lived in my car and I had stayed at the shelter but I
had never slept outside and and I remember that first night of sleeping
outside and I just felt so low and just I wanted to die if God had came down
that night and given me a choice to go I would have said yes I just I was so
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tired as an addict I've been going through it for years and years and I
felt like that was my my lowest point and I spent weeks and weeks on the street
and sometimes I'd get to stay in a hotel and which was kind of brutal because
every time you stay in a hotel you know tomorrow you have to leave and you get
that moment of of security and warmth and you almost can't enjoy it because you
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know that tomorrow you're gonna lose that place you know when I stayed on the
streets it seemed like everywhere that I went and stayed I start to get rest at
night and everywhere that I went there'd be a sprinkler that would start going
off and I really feel like that was my higher powers way of nudging me that I
just wasn't cut out for it and you know I would pray a lot and I would cry I
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would just pray like Lord help me get me out of this I can't do it anymore like
I'm broken as a man and my girlfriend at the time she's crazy as heck I mean she
just nuts and she doesn't know what's going on but I always had a good knower
inside of me and that that knower knew that what was going on just was was not
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right and I credit that knower to my grandfather a lot he instilled that in
me you know some some time had passed and my girlfriend's uncle goes you know
what you can come stay with us and I had told myself that if I can get to a place
where I can be under a roof and be clean I am gonna kick all this stuff so he
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calls a taxi for us and the taxi comes and we don't have money but her uncle's
gonna pay him once we reach the destination I had to beg and plead with
this taxi driver and I was really begging and pleading at the time because
I knew deep down inside that this was gonna be the start of my recovery
journey I just knew it we get there and her uncle has no idea that I'm coming so
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I just show by the door with her he's a good fellow he let us stay there and you
know this is the first time that I actually was detoxing off everything
there was a doctor in town that we went to and he gave me Suboxone and I
remember on around day six I was like I'm gonna get off this you know in my
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mind I'm gonna use the Suboxone to transition myself from the fentanyl just
because there was no way I I would have jumped out out of a window I mean you
will self harm the the detox from it is so bad you will probably self harm so I
knew that I didn't want to be stuck on methadone or Suboxone or any of those
things it's just not a part of my journey and I'm not gonna discourage
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someone that that chooses that journey that's that's yours but I wanted to be
totally clean and sober from everything I knew that my life would get better and
stay better if I took if I made that decision so I had been begging for
months to my grandfather to my mother to fly me home and they wouldn't do it my
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grandpa sends me a text one day hey do you know about hope is alive I go yeah
absolutely I go please he goes well get online apply call a lady named Christy
and I will pay your deposit and I'll fly you home and at first I was
apprehensive but I thought you know what this is my ticket and I thought if I'm
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really gonna do this I've got to go now I can't wait I have got to go because I
was miserable I mean I was to the point that I was going to kill myself one way
or another that's the point that I was at it's that jumping-off point I remember
breaking up with my girlfriend I remember still being very very sick from
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detoxing and my grandfather said you know what you can stay with us for a week and
I had to stay with them for a week because I could not pass a clean UA and I
remember feeling a really good moment of gratitude like wow you know they're
letting me stay with them and I didn't deserve to stay with them and honestly
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it probably went a little bit against their own program my grandfather works a
great Alan on an AA program but he believed in his grandson and I remember
that week I stayed with them and a friend had came to pick me up to go to
a meeting I had thought that he was sober he wasn't I remember going with
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him to his house and he draws up a shot and I thought I'm I'm sick I'm thinking
this will make me feel better but I had a I had another thought I thought if I
do this my grandfather will find out I cannot dishonor him again this is my
last shot and I'm sick and I knew it made me feel better I didn't do it I
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didn't do it and I knew deep down inside that by not doing it that this be
probably one of the best decisions I could make is not getting high I get to
my sober living a few days later I have a clean UA and and I'm terrified but I'm
hopeful because the way I looked at it was is that I had everything to gain and
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nothing to lose at that point in my life it was only up from there and I had some
clothes my grandfather took me to a goodwill to get some sort of dress clothes
I could interview for a job and the clothes looked way too big on me and the
pants were too big I got a job and I got a simple job and it was the perfect job
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it was something that we call in the in the program or like in the room say get
well job it's a job that pays you enough money to pay your bills and it's not too
many hours that you can't go to a meeting and I knew early on that I needed
to make a my program a priority that just had to be a thing for me I get a
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home group I get a sponsor and I start working steps weekly I'm sitting down
I'm going line for line and I start noticing after about three months that I
feel a lot better I want to live I want to be here and I start getting some self
love I start to love myself for the first time my entire life my life starts
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getting progressively better and better and that program that I was in hope is
alive is a very very tough program and it was very challenging and it keeps
you so busy that you can't even think about relapsing you're that busy I met
some great people in that program I made some lifelong friends that I can call on
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any time and some of these guys that I'm friends with we used to get high
together like one of them actually overdosed with them and he's sober today
and he's amazing individual some time goes by and I eventually I get a new job
I'm not going to say the name of it but it's a wonderful place and it was a
blessing I think God really opened the door for me because I was ready I
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eventually I move out of that sober living and thank God I had my roots and
some sort of 12-step program thank God I did because had I not I probably would
have not made it because I could have been so codependent upon that program I
remember getting my first apartment and I had bad credit at the time and I
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thought I can't get an apartment anywhere and luckily somebody in the
program owned those apartments and they gave me a shot and I honored them I
always paid my rent on time actually just moved out of there oh like like two
weeks ago it was a great starter apartment I remember that that first
night I was so happy to have my own place and to have furniture I paid for
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it all myself no one helped me and also that first night I was up all night
because the next day I had to speak for the first time and I think my whole talk
was just war stories my grandpa had to look at the clock and tell me to get off
the stage it was funny it was good good learning experience I got a I got a new
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place on on Riverside and I got something called air conditioning that
I haven't really had for a few years I wanted cheap rent for a while and I saved
and saved and saved and I thought all right I need to do something different
and I met a wonderful lady six months ago and we're best friends and our
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relationship is not formed on sexual stuff it's a big part of us but it's
formed on a friendship and life views and we just have fun together and I've
done everything this year I've been to every concert that I would want to go
to and dream of I became debt-free this year I mean I'm responsible now I didn't
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everything that I that I got before in the mail it would say do now or things
like insurance or paying rent or anything I never paid it I just kind of
thought well you can there's a workaround on it and I'm responsible now
so I would say this has probably been the best year of my life and I would
also say that I probably have the best self-love that I've had my entire life
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and that that voice in my head that when I was young that that negative self-talk
has gotten a lot quieter it's still there but it's quieter one thing that I
didn't talk about my talk is that going going to therapy that was another
game-changer and my last go-around of getting sober is is combining that with
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my sober living and going to meetings 12-step recovery will not heal trauma
it's not I knew that I needed to have a therapist and do EMDR and have somebody
that I can get brutally honest with and they can also help give me tools to make
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it in my journey and it's not all about drugs and alcohol it's a lot of that
stuff that you grew up with as a child and healing that inner child I have a
lot of trauma I mean I was around a lot of violence screaming rage uncertainty
and working through that has been groundbreaking some of that stuff will
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always be with me but that voice and power that it has over me becomes less
and less and more than I work on it and that I have the awareness of it it's
just been a blessing of a journey I take it one day at a time I've been through
some stuff and sobriety I've done everything right I've done everything
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wrong and I get back I get back on track it's just been a it's been a great
journey and I wouldn't change it for anything else and I'm really happy that
I've been able to be sober in the last periods of my grandfather's life you know
he can he can die and know that job well done this has been a production of
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and in concert with addiction and recovery in America is not affiliated
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