September 23, 2024 • 41 mins
Steven Rhodes, host of the High Lyfe Podcast, talks about how quick a sense of security can be ripped out from underneath, the effects of methamphetamines on a relationship, and the limitations of laptops over phones.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Before we start this podcast, I want to say that every project I have pretty much has
(00:04):
a village behind it, and this one is no exception.
I want to thank the patrons who stepped in on my Kickstarter to really make sure that
this got off the ground.
Denise Grady, Caden White-Wattam, Amanda Peake, Todd A. Davis, Jay Grant, and Corey Watson.
Without you guys, I wouldn't be sitting here talking with the awesome guest that I'm
(00:28):
about to talk to.
Thank you so much.
I'll go ahead and lay down the rules now, then I'll start the podcast, and then about
every six minutes or so, we're going to have an encounter, okay, using the stats that you
gave me.
And I'll have to say, you as a character are a whole lot more well-rounded.
(00:48):
I am pretty well-rounded.
Yeah.
I took a look at it.
I have negatives in mind.
It's not great.
If you go to the post-it, you automatically get a negative, right?
Welcome to It's Your Loss podcast, where raw stories of resilience and healing are told,
all while uncovering and destigmatizing the diverse symptoms of loss.
(01:17):
Welcome back to the podcast.
If you missed last month's episode, well, it's your loss.
I am host Michael LeBlanc, and with me today is the guy who ever gave me the first chance
to be on a podcast at all.
He is host of the High Life podcast, spelled with a Y, but not where you think.
It is Steven Rhodes.
Hello, Steven.
Hello.
(01:37):
Thank you.
Hey, not a problem.
Not a problem.
I'm so glad, like everybody who I've been on a podcast with so far has been guests now
that you've here.
Yeah.
I feel like I'm giving back to the podcast world.
It feels good doing that.
You know, it's nice to be a guest on somebody else's show.
(01:58):
When's the last time you were a guest?
Oh, a little over a year ago.
Okay.
Okay.
I did Above the Bar podcast.
All right.
Well, how was the vibe on that podcast?
Oh, it was great.
He makes you feel like you're just chit-chatting at a bar.
(02:18):
Oh, that's all.
He'll bring up a topic for you guys to discuss and you just go for it.
Is it a one-on-one, one-on-two?
Yeah.
One-on-one.
One-on-one.
Yeah.
I thought about doing like two hosts altogether, like interviewing one person and then I was
like...
I've thought about that before.
Yeah.
And I'm like, but the scheduling.
Dear God, the scheduling.
(02:38):
Oh, yeah.
Trust me.
I know.
It's hard enough to get grown adults to play, you know, D&D or any kind of tabletops in the
RPG, you know, trying to get them together to record a podcast for just one hour.
No, that's rough.
That's rough.
All right.
So I'm going to hit the timer starting now, but in the meantime, I'll go ahead and start
this conversation.
(03:01):
Stephen, Steve, as you wanted to be called, what have you lost?
So I lost what I liked to call my safety net in this community.
I live in a very small town, we literally have one gas station and then like a little
rinky dink gas station that's sort of in town too.
(03:23):
Sure.
I know a couple of towns like that in South Carolina.
Yeah.
I want to call Pumping Town.
Okay.
So I met someone and things did not turn out well at all.
Okay.
So that made me lose the safety feeling that I had living here.
(03:45):
That's a different type of loss than one that I talked about before.
We've had a couple of emotional and conceptual losses.
I think those can be kind of a little bit more lasting when it comes to their effects
just because you lose something physical, you know that that's gone, but you lose something
like emotional or, you know, intangible.
(04:06):
It's kind of hard to recover from that.
What was your relationship?
What was the relationship itself?
What was it like, you know, overall and then what went wrong?
Okay.
So the relationship, like I said, it was a girlfriend and when things started, it was
great.
What I didn't realize was it was a facade and her true self came out later in the form
(04:32):
of drugs.
And that is where things went wrong was she fell back into drugs, which I didn't realize
she had been heavy in and it turned her into somebody else and that turned into a very
scary situation.
Sure.
God, I can understand that.
(04:56):
My personal relationship with my parents was marred because of drugs and it just kind
of warped and shaped into something just completely different by the end.
But the drugs are rough.
Are we talking, I mean, I don't know how deep you want to go into it.
Her drug of choice was methamphetamine.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's dive in deep.
For the longest time, I didn't even know she was doing it.
(05:16):
By the time I realized it, I had to figure out a way to leave carefully and then didn't
go how I wanted.
Holy crap.
I've never had to deal with anybody doing meth other than the occasional people who
have maybe met on the street.
You know, right?
And it's so easy to notice.
Right.
But a stranger.
(05:36):
That's wild.
Live with the person.
And especially since she was a former, you know, she was already an addict when I met
her, I didn't notice a whole lot of behavior changes at first.
She was probably already well versed in hiding.
It wasn't until she was doing more and more of it.
And she was probably well versed in hiding it.
Yeah.
Wow.
Okay.
Leading up to it, I mean, was there ever like a internal doubt where you're like, okay,
(05:59):
maybe this is something that I can help her get over or did you just see what was happening?
I'd be like, I did.
I did try for a while.
I told I made a deal with her that if she would get clean, I would stay.
And so she quit for a week, week and a half.
And she's right back to it.
(06:20):
Cold turkey without any help.
I've tried, you know, finding help for her and stuff.
She didn't want help.
She refused any sort of help.
She tried turning to religion, but the people that she was joining in with were other meth
addicts.
Oh no.
And I'm like, that's not helping.
(06:41):
Now it's just a group of meth addicts trying to talk about Jesus.
That's a round the mulberry bush type situation until eventually pop goes the weasel.
I have a random number generator on the screen as well.
And it's going to give me a random number between 12 and 341.
That corresponds to a pay in the monster manual.
(07:06):
Okay.
We're going to, I'm going to do the version of that.
I do too.
Luckily for me, there's some D&D folks who are in this house and I'm borrowing their
dice and all their stuff, all my DM stuff at home.
There you go.
I didn't think that far ahead.
So what I'm going to do is we're going to choose a monster.
We're going, I'm going to give you the, their, their highest stat and their lowest stat.
(07:27):
And this is where this is going to deviate from standard D&D.
You're going to choose the stat that you want to use to go up against that monster.
We roll each of their D 20 against that stat, add the modifiers and whoever wins comes out
on top three strikes.
You're out.
I have my own D 20.
Okay.
Even better.
Even better.
All right.
(07:47):
So you can actually roll your own D 20.
I'll roll monsters.
I'll roll my D 20 and then I'll do the same for me over here.
And you're a kind of at a slight disadvantage obviously because I'm reading the monster
manual, but I'm going to be just, just know that I'm playing with the honor system here.
I'm going to try to play as fair as possible, but like I said, I do have negative.
So I may not be leaning on, say my strength or my dexterity.
(08:12):
Those are horrible.
As I was answering the questions on the quiz that gave us these stats, I was just, I was
just shaking my head.
Like I, I would die in the world of D&D.
I would be the guy selling cabbages on the side of the road.
That would be my job.
I was thoroughly shocked.
My athleticism.
Yeah.
Yeah, dude.
It looks like you could, I mean, you could definitely probably take me in a, in a fight
(08:35):
if we were just to throw these stats together, I think it all depends on the role of the
dice, right?
Right.
All right.
We got page 12, which that is the first page.
And if it's the first page, maybe it's not going to be so bad, you know, who knows?
I don't think they're going to start.
It is the, it is the monster manual, which means that, you know, it's supposed to be
(08:57):
some of the big bads.
So we'll see.
Yeah.
Uh, I think this is pronounced and the people out there who know how to pronounce this may
butcher me later, but it looks like it's arachakra, which is a medium humanoid neutral
god, our neutral good bird man thing with a giant, with a giant spear.
(09:19):
I will tell you that its highest is dexterity at 14 and its lowest is constitution at 10.
So you can use any stat that you want.
And this thing can summon air elementals while you're looking at it.
Well, I'm going to use my charisma.
(09:43):
Nice.
Okay.
All right.
And against its charisma, I'll go ahead and roll.
You guys should be able to hear my dice.
I messed with the audio and not so there we go.
All right.
You go ahead and roll.
And I'll tell you what, uh, what we got going on here.
I got a six.
You got a six with a charisma bonus.
You have a charisma bonus.
(10:04):
You do a plus one.
You have a seven against their impeccably rolled 16.
I am so sorry.
They risked you to death.
Uh, you are, you are a down one, my guy.
All right.
Um, and I am going to use what I think is my highest, which is, uh, I think I'm also
going to use charisma on this scale.
I'll try not to use this different one each time, but my charisma is the highest.
(10:27):
I, uh, that's what it says.
So I'm rolling for that.
Yeah.
I was trying, I was torn between my charisma and my intelligence, right?
Uh, and I didn't win.
It is 13 to me nine for the a rock, a rock, Gakura either way.
(10:48):
So I win that one.
Who knew that I would actually win something with the stats that I rolled because like I
said, I was in the negative in some places, but we'll see.
We'll see.
I'm, I'm going to see it this way.
My charisma is burned.
I can't use charisma next time.
Okay.
So that's going to be the rules I set upon myself.
All right.
So back to the methamphetamines.
She tries to find help and she winds up basically in the welcoming hands, well-meaning, but
(11:13):
still probably very effective methods or excuse me, methamphetamine users.
I don't know how PC I want to go with this, but did that kind of wake you up into what
kind of environment you were in?
Or did you already know that drugs were kind of a problem in the area?
Oh, I already knew drugs were a problem in the area.
That's why as soon as I found out the people she was around, I knew what was happening.
(11:37):
And I slowly started figuring out where I could go.
Okay.
If, if I, you know, for me to leave, where can I go?
So were you at, were you staying with her at her place?
Yes.
Wow.
Well, she would leave and be gone for hours, come home for one, maybe two hours and then
(12:01):
leave again.
Damn dude, that's rough.
How long was this relationship going for?
Six months.
Okay.
And how long of that did you not know that she was on meth?
The first two or three months.
Okay.
Wow.
I moved out of the bedroom and just was living in the house because I had nowhere else to
(12:24):
go.
Sure.
Well, what about now?
Did you manage to get out?
Like what's your situation right now?
So now I actively avoid her and anyone who may, you know, contact her.
I'm sure she knows that I'm, that I, you know, back at my old job is I left, I moved out
(12:47):
of town for about nine months, got a different job, changed jobs like three times just to
make sure.
And I ended up having to come back.
Just because easier where you were or no, I'm living with a friend.
Oh, okay.
That's good.
(13:07):
Yeah.
Far enough away from her that she can't find me, but she could come find me at my job if
she really wanted to.
It doesn't sound like that's happened yet.
No, no, it has not, but I do have full permission from my manager and the business owner that
if she tries to even show up on property, I can just contact police.
(13:28):
Okay.
Well, all right.
Good.
Well, it looks like that you're on a good path as far as creating as much distance and
yeah, and to keep the distance, which, you know, it didn't sound like at any point you
were thinking, man, I should go back and try to save her, which.
No, after the things that transpired the night that I, I'll say it escaped.
(13:48):
I didn't care.
I cared about my safety and my wellbeing.
And that was it.
So, self-advocacy, making sure that you are, you know, you're healthy and you're doing
good for you.
That's always the best thing.
Like the falling in love is a huge thing.
Like the brain does all types of, yeah, like wild things when it's in love from changing
(14:10):
its own body, chemistry, you know, just ignoring everybody else around them except for what
their fixation is at that time.
So from going from such a high to such a low and just two or three months later, what
do you think your, or did you experience a grieving process of that sudden loss of what
you thought you had?
So what I'd numb myself, I tried to numb myself mentally, started smoking a lot more weed,
(14:37):
which there's nothing wrong with, with weed, obviously, like that's.
Yeah, no, I don't vilify weed at all.
The only time I'm like, boo weed is when that's all people spend their money on because I've
seen people that like it's that whole thing.
They don't, they want to make things livable in the house.
I had to stay at an insanely high, high.
(15:00):
Gotcha.
And so this is while because she was right there in the middle of everything.
Right.
Because she would pick fights with me just just to get me riled up just to get me to
fight with her.
And if I stayed at that high just constantly, then she couldn't get to me.
I rolled another random number taking us to page 143 in the monster manual.
(15:26):
We are now looking at Dow DAO, the large elemental neutral evil.
And they're basically they're an earth elemental.
That's what I'm seeing here.
They're their highest is a constitution of 24.
Their lowest is a dexterity.
(15:48):
You can choose either one.
The lowest is a dexterity and intelligence of 12.
Oh, now the intelligence was 12.
Yeah.
The intelligence was 12.
So they're going to go with intelligence.
Going to go with intelligence.
All right.
Roll for your intelligence, sir.
I got a 16.
Oh, okay.
(16:08):
16 plus one.
I guess so.
I don't know the pluses.
So you.
Okay.
So you rolled a 16.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think I've been a good thing.
Let's see how they roll with a you said intelligence.
Yes.
All right.
They got a six.
Congratulations.
You took down the earth element for you.
No loss there.
All right.
(16:29):
And I let's see.
I've earned my charisma.
I'm going to go with my wisdom, which is they only have a plus one on their wisdom.
Okay.
See, they've got a 13.
Oh, I almost not wanted.
I lost.
We are now one to one.
(16:49):
That is unfortunate.
But hey, you have a you have a earth elemental under your belt.
Congratulations.
This episode is brought to you by my own book, dink spelled D. I. N. Q. D and D in the coffin
hold of the USS enterprise.
Though I've never had to deal with a loved one on meth like Steve had.
I did grow up with parents who were addicts through their decision and my desire to get
(17:10):
the hell out of dodge.
I chose to spend four years in the US Navy.
This began the most stressful and transformative years of my twenties.
Get your copy down on Amazon and paperback or on Kindle.
The links in the description below.
And if that doesn't make you want to buy my book, what does all right, Steve, you're
in the middle of this tumultuous relationship.
(17:33):
She's trying to pick fights with you every chance she gets.
And you are just sitting on cloud high every chance that you get.
Yes.
So when did you realize you had to stop doing that?
Because I imagine that you did at some point.
You're like, this is, this is, I got to get out.
This is, this is not conducive to my health.
And how are you feeling about during then?
(17:55):
So I started planning where I could go when I leave.
And I hadn't quite figured out the where, but I was talking to my sister who lives nearby
and I told her that I needed to start trying to slowly move out.
Because if I suddenly moved out, she would freak and, you know, it wouldn't be pretty.
(18:21):
I didn't even get a chance to try to slowly move out.
The same day as that conversation, she snapped something.
So she came home completely denying that she was on anything, but I could tell.
And we went to, I was trying to go to bed because I had to get up early the next day
(18:45):
and let me go to bed.
Oh, can you, can you run downstairs and do this?
Can you run over here and do this?
Can you do this?
Can you do this?
She would make sure that I couldn't even sit out and eat dinner.
So when she finally passed out on her bed, I was like, okay, I can get some sleep now.
And about an hour or two later, she popped up freaking out because her phone wasn't plugged
(19:07):
in and she was afraid it was going to die.
She had to have her phone.
Now her phone only worked on the Wi-Fi because she didn't want a real working phone because
then she could be tracked.
Okay.
A little bit of paranoia there with your drug use.
That's normal.
I helped her find her phone, but in the process of looking for her phone, the Wi-Fi came unplugged.
(19:30):
She asked me to use my phone because she had to call someone and I said, fine, here's my
phone, I'll go fix the internet.
Get the internet fixed.
I go back to her and I'm like, okay, can I have my phone back now?
No.
I thought this is another one of her games.
She's just trying to goat me into a fight.
(19:50):
So I said, I'm not playing.
I need to go back to sleep.
I need my phone tomorrow.
Can I have my phone back?
And again, she refused.
And then she started going through my phone trying to find something to pick a fight about.
Oh no.
She's getting worse.
I was smarter than to leave anything in my phone, even contact with my family about her.
(20:12):
Especially by that point.
Yes.
Since you knew what it was about, right?
So when she couldn't find anything, she decided to just go on a rampage.
She started telling me that I needed to get out of her house and I said, okay, let me
gather my stuff.
I'll leave right now.
And she's like, no, you can't take anything with you.
I want you out of my house.
I said, no, that's not how this works.
(20:33):
I take my stuff with me and I leave.
Right.
She goes, no, you can come back for it later.
I said, I've been through this rodeo before.
I would need a court order to come get my stuff back.
Right.
I'm leaving with my stuff.
Kept arguing with me.
At this point, I actually turned the camera on my laptop on because I was sitting in front
of my laptop.
(20:54):
I turned the camera on to record for my safety.
Eventually, it turned into, she was calling random people on my phone, but nobody's answering
because it's like two, three o'clock in the morning.
Eventually, it turned into, okay, if you go to my friend's house that lives a block away,
if you go to their house, I'll give you your phone.
(21:17):
If you go with me to their house, I'll give you your phone back.
Okay.
It's middle of the night.
I'm exhausted, whatever, to get this fight to end.
Do you know?
Right.
Well, I start walking.
She wanted me to get in the car with her fused.
Just did not seem like a good idea.
No, not in close quarters area with somebody like that.
(21:39):
No.
Right.
So I walked, she drove.
This is in January, beginning of February.
Very cold outside.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we get to her friend's house.
I then go, okay, we're here.
Let me have my phone.
Yeah.
I'm outside.
So then she's trying to get her friend to wake up and to the door.
(22:02):
That is about 30 to 45 minutes.
Eventually we get inside.
She tells me to sit down.
She has somebody watch me to make sure I don't go anywhere.
She goes, talks to her friend.
She comes back and goes, you need to go talk to my friend now.
Okay.
How kind of ritual is this?
It's weird.
I'm like, whatever.
So I go talk to her friend.
(22:24):
I look at her friend and I said, I'm not allowed to leave.
She won't give me my phone.
Do you agree I'm being held against my will?
And she goes, yes.
I said that I need you to call the cops.
Fun fact, there's no way to call the police from a laptop.
It seems like a missed opportunity for communication.
(22:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's no way to get ahold of anyone.
I've never thought about that.
I've never thought about that.
Yeah.
I mean, neither until that was my only option.
So anyways, her friend refused to call the police and I had to sit there and then she
came back in the room, began to kick me, say awful things about me, making fun of my weight
(23:09):
and other parts of my body that she could just ridicule.
Yeah, I'm doing.
One point she threatened to bash my head in.
She said something about cutting me open and crawling inside my rib cage.
You know, a lot of people have said this and the more you say it, the more you realize
how true the phrase is.
(23:30):
Meth is a hell of a drug.
It is.
Dear God.
All right.
So obviously she didn't climb inside your rib cage, which is good.
Which is good.
I'm glad you're healthy, alive and here talking with me today because we have another monster
to battle.
You're going to page 88.
(23:51):
This will be your choice right here.
There are actually three creatures on here.
Okay.
All of them are dragons.
Of course.
You get to choose what age they are ranging from the youngest to the middle age to the
oldest.
They're all black dragons.
Which one do you want to face off on?
So there's three of them.
Three.
(24:12):
Yep.
You got an adult, a a Wormling and a young black dragon.
I will go with the middle aged one.
The young black dragon.
Okay.
They are not as strong as the earth elemental.
I'll give you that.
Again, this one's strength is the highest at 19 plus four.
Their weakness is wisdom at 11.
So they get no modifier to that.
(24:35):
How do you take on the black dragon?
Let's go with wisdom.
Let's let's.
All right.
Let's get for the biscuit.
All right.
Roll your wisdom.
Roll your wisdom.
I'll roll.
I'll roll the young black dragon's wisdom and see what happens here.
All right, I got a 16.
That beats their 14.
Hey.
You out wisdom, a young black dragon.
(24:56):
You left him bamboozled.
You did.
We're out of you.
You know what?
Just because I think this is going to end in failure unless somehow I get a nat 20, which
you shouldn't get nat 20 on stat checks.
But you know, it's whatever.
It's my game.
I do what I want.
Exactly.
Going toe to toe with this thing on strength.
Okay.
(25:16):
Yeah.
I mean, I don't have much else to go with here.
My stats were not the best.
Here we go.
So three minus two is one.
Yeah.
At least it's not a nat one.
If they get a nat one, if they get a nat one, I win.
All right.
Here we go.
No.
That is, I am now down two to your one.
(25:38):
Not bad.
Not bad.
You're winning.
Now, now it's two.
Well, yeah, you won two, but three strikes are out.
Okay.
So if I bite it again, you win by default.
Let's talk a little bit about the emotions that all this brought up.
Obviously during that time, you're feeling frustrated, scared.
I'm guessing angry.
(25:58):
Like you're probably feeling a full spectrum of what would be like the negative part of
the emotion wheel, which I just thought about the emotion wheel through therapy.
I recommend it right after you got out and you know, you're finding, you found those
other places to stay.
You found those other jobs to do.
You know the five stages, right?
And if not, not to remind you anyway, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
(26:24):
Which one of those do you feel like you spent more time in than others?
And you know, have you reached the acceptance point yet that, you know, that's a chapter
behind you or do you feel like you're still stewing in it?
I spent a lot of time in anger.
They're rightly so.
I mean, there was nothing to borrow.
(26:44):
I had already made, you know, a bargain with her that she broke.
Right.
So there was, there was nothing to bargain for.
Yeah, I spent a long time in anger and I basically just became the most selfish person I could
for a while.
(27:04):
I mean, as you're right, I mean, a lot of people do kind of withdrawal when it comes
to coping.
Some people use humor.
Some people deflect.
Some people seek comfort from others around them, but coping looks different from everybody.
What was your worst moment during that anger withdrawn self that you.
What scared the hell out of me was I got a message from her through somebody else and
(27:32):
she described the house I was living in.
Okay.
Yeah, that's terrifying.
Yeah.
I mean, that's some gangland shit right there.
And so I was living with a buddy of mine in a double wide trailer and the message I received
was something about living with another guy in a double wide trailer.
(27:55):
And then she referred, referred to the area that I lived in as a high meth area, which
I found out later on.
She was actually confused and was thinking, confusing where I was living with somewhere
else area.
I mean, a little bit further away.
Sure.
You know, I can see what she was confused.
(28:15):
So felt better at that point that she, okay, if she's thinking I'm in this area over here,
then she's not looking where I am over here.
Right.
Take to the acceptance.
When I realized I had to come back, I talked to a few people in the area asked, you know,
if there'd been any sightings of her, has she been into the gas station I work at now?
(28:42):
And they said she's been in here maybe once or twice in the past nine months.
They said it's usually right after I would stop by because she would be looking for me.
But when I found out that she is no longer living in the house that she was in, felt better
about coming back because she wasn't in the areas that she was before.
(29:02):
What about some other things because the way I broke it down, I saw that, you know, you've
got not only the loss of security, but kind of like a loss of trust there for a while.
I don't know if you're going to be looking to jump into a relationship anytime soon after
right after this and also took quite a while.
Yeah.
And during that, you lost freedom.
You lost freedom while you were with her.
You lost freedom just being able to go wherever you could without worrying about running into
(29:27):
her.
So between that, between the trust that you might have and somebody, you know, had to
change had to change some of the stores that I would that I would go to because I knew
there was people there that had connections with her.
Which one was the worst though?
Was it security, the law, the security, the trust or the freedom?
Which one would you say really kind of stung the most?
(29:48):
Probably the trust.
I wasn't sure who to trust for a long time because most of the people that I knew knew
her and I didn't know whose side they were on.
So, you know, if I could trust them, like people would be like, Hey, like where you
been?
I can't tell you.
In fact, when I came back, people, you know, so many people were like, Oh, you know, I'm
(30:10):
glad you're back.
I'm glad you're, you know, you're back working here.
I'm glad you're back in the community and oh, where you been?
I literally just tell people I was in hiding.
Like somebody who had been through the relocation program, just be like, Yeah, don't worry about
it.
I was away.
Exactly.
We are doing the random generator page 22, going further back into the book.
(30:33):
We have Acer, which is another elemental.
It's a fire elemental, a dwarvish fire elemental, you know, as they are.
Um, it's, it has a strength of 17 with a modifier of three.
Its lowest is charisma, which I've known a couple of charismatic dwarves in my time playing
D&D, but that seems to be on track though.
(30:53):
Very strong, not a lot of charisma.
What was the charisma?
A 10 with a modifier at zero.
Okay.
All right.
So what do you want to do?
I'm going to try for my charisma again.
And I will roll for their charisma as well.
So I got an 11.
Yeah, you got 11 plus one.
That is your 12.
They got, they, they just geeked out with a 14 over your 12.
(31:15):
I do apologize.
Man.
Smited by the fire elemental and I haven't used intelligence yet.
You know, we'll try my intelligence against theirs.
I got a 14 and then I had a 15.
That was a good romp through the, the, the fields of D&D for a moment.
I hope it, I hope you felt like you were there.
(31:36):
I hope as your DM, I really brought you into the game.
So you're saying the loss of trust probably stung the most because it wasn't just trust
about somebody who you might have a relationship with.
It's also the people surrounding there.
And if you're big into the community, of course it's going to sting.
(31:57):
What would you say to somebody having gone through this now, having on what I hope to
be is a, is it as a mend after all this?
What would you say to somebody who is going through the same shit?
What's the, what's the biggest advice you would give them?
If you're dealing with a significant other that is doing drugs of any kind that is causing
(32:22):
problems in the relationship, if finding them help isn't working, if making deals with them
isn't working, if it's not working, if they, they're only going to get clean if they want
to.
Right.
If it's not working, it's okay to give up.
It's okay to, to say, can't do this anymore.
(32:45):
And I know a lot of people have children with addicts and staying with them just because
you haven't child with them is not good for the child.
No.
Uh, which is not to say that staying, breaking up and starting the separation process is
going to be easy.
It's not, it's not, but it's a lot healthier and safer for you and the child.
(33:06):
Yeah, you got to think of the returns that are definitely going to come after that.
I lost people's respect when I stayed with her instead of leaving the first time.
I got accused of even doing the drugs with her.
I could see that from the outside looking in, I guess.
Yeah.
You just took a casual glance at it.
You know, when I'm, when I'm sitting there saying, oh, I'm going to leave, I'm going
(33:27):
to leave.
And then all of a sudden I don't leave.
Oh, he must, he must be addicted to it also.
She got him hooked.
Sounds like you were kind of bargaining with yourself there and they, hey, this might get
better.
Yeah.
We've got a, got something we can change.
And dude, I'm sorry you went through that.
Um, I mean, I'm glad you're out of it now.
The escape was emotional.
(33:48):
I can't, I don't know, for some reason I can't cry in front of people.
Can't even, can't even produce a tear.
But I straight up ugly cried right in front of my sister when I got to her house.
Well, good.
You need to, you need to let that shit out.
Um, yeah.
Yeah.
It was, it was a wave that could just not be held back any longer.
(34:10):
Right.
Well, after that, I'm not surprised.
Me personally, I probably would have been crying in the middle of it.
I'm, I, I'm a guy who, I tried to stay in quiet.
So all that stuff that's inside of you, it gets a little smaller when you get the chance
to actually let it out.
And sharing it with somebody helps.
And so I'm really glad that you had the chance to share this with me.
(34:31):
I'm starting to realize that these single stories of losses that people are saying is
like, Hey, I lost my relationship.
Hey, I lost my job.
I, I lost my mom.
They always come with a, a more intricate layer of losses that are just kind of baked
into all that.
What's, what's next for you now?
Is there any of this that you're bringing forward and you've got a plan to shape your
(34:53):
future differently?
Are you just taking one day at a time?
It's life looking for you right now.
I'm currently updating someone we have my hands on, you know, in engagement this year
and possibly a wedding by the end of the year.
Her I've been on and off for 15 years.
That's a lot quicker than I thought you were actually going to say.
(35:17):
We're taking things very serious.
Let me ask this.
Does she know about the story?
Yes.
Actually, she is going to college right now for her master's degree in healthcare management.
Really?
And she had to do a, one of her classes is public speaking and she had to do one on trauma.
(35:40):
And I actually typed out the entire story of what happened to me for her.
And she read it in a, in a different room for me and immediately came in the room and
just wanted to hold me because she had never heard the full story until that, until then.
Dude, that, I bet that was cathartic as hell though.
(36:00):
Like, I, to type it out, I had to, I had to put your buds in and turn on just some angry
music just to just be able to focus on the events of that night without, without being
like I can't do this anymore.
Okay.
How'd you feel by the end of it?
(36:21):
I hesitated on sending it to her.
I did hesitate on hitting send.
I want, I want to applaud you because not many people would even have the energy to
actually go through putting the whole thing down like that so soon after the event, like
just for me writing.
Well, so the event happened a year ago this week.
(36:43):
I know.
For me, I consider that pretty soon.
So much stuff happens to me just month by month that my brain has no concept of time
anymore.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I'd say what?
How about the next time that you have a huge traumatic event that you want to, to talk
(37:03):
about live?
Well, you know, live, so to speak with air quotes.
You know, you could always come back and you could just deep dive in another story.
There we go.
Yeah.
I'll be here for that.
I'm completely down with that.
It's kind of the whole part and parcel of why I'm doing this podcast and begin with.
So just one more question because I wanted to know and circle this on my list.
(37:25):
Do you feel like the way that you're feeling about the community now, the art has it healed
at all?
Are you still worrying about who, who might be siding with who might be reporting back
to her?
I've sort of been able to figure out who is more on her side, which has helped me with
(37:48):
deciding where I can shop.
And there's, there's some people that, you know, there's, there's the first group of
people that I was like, okay, these are for sure reporting back to her.
Yeah.
And there's been people in that group that, you know, I don't, I don't know what happened,
(38:08):
but they're not reporting back to her, at least not anymore.
And then there's also people that I thought I could trust that I've found out I can't.
Dude, you really got shook up over there without.
Yeah.
I'm very careful on what I tell people when I'm at work.
Well, some more people on your side, you know what I'm saying?
(38:30):
So, so to also tag onto what life's looking for like for me now, I have plans in the fall
to go back to school.
Okay.
I'm going to study media because I still have the dream of doing a radio.
As you should.
You got a good one.
And I want to do it.
And the ways that I've been trying to go about it are not working.
(38:51):
Well, I got to change up the strategy and going back to school could really help.
Okay.
So there's a great media arts program in the area.
Well, I feel like that's a good segue as ever.
Do you want to tell people where they can find you while you try to do this?
Yes.
So you can find me at High Life Podcast on Tiktok.
(39:15):
There's underscores between each word or just Google High Life Podcast.
I do have merch now.
It does.
It's spelled H-I-G-H space L-Y-F-E.
There's that Y.
I was saying that know where it was.
I was trying to avoid a lawsuit from Miller.
You're doing good so far.
(39:35):
I think you're below their radar.
Right.
All right.
I also do have another show that should be coming out soon.
It's been a project going on for over a year.
I think we're just about ready to start releasing these episodes.
It's called What You Didn't Know.
(39:58):
Season one is What You Didn't Know about rock and roll.
We are following the history and from where rock and roll started to where it is now.
Heck yeah, dude.
Can you give me a two-word sneak peek of what season two might be about?
We've not got that far.
Okay.
(40:18):
All right.
We're going to keep a nice and silence on that one.
Gotcha.
All right.
Well, Steve, thank you so much for joining me, man.
It sounds like to me that you're still in a healing process.
I'm glad you got somebody to heal with you.
Let's keep in touch, man.
Yes.
If there's room in season two, by all means, I'm going to be hitting you up.
Okay.
All right, man.
Well, I'm your host Michael LeBlanc.
(40:39):
If you happen to miss next month's episode, still, it's your loss.
I'll talk to you guys later.
Bye-bye.
Before we start this podcast, I want to say that every project I have pretty much has
(00:04):
a village behind it, and this one is no exception.
I want to thank the patrons who stepped in on my Kickstarter to really make sure that
this got off the ground.
Denise Grady, Caden White-Wattam, Amanda Peake, Todd A. Davis, Jay Grant, and Corey Watson.
Without you guys, I wouldn't be sitting here talking with the awesome guest that I'm
(00:28):
about to talk to.
Thank you so much.
I'll go ahead and lay down the rules now, then I'll start the podcast, and then about
every six minutes or so, we're going to have an encounter, okay, using the stats that you
gave me.
And I'll have to say, you as a character are a whole lot more well-rounded.
(00:48):
I am pretty well-rounded.
Yeah.
I took a look at it.
I have negatives in mind.
It's not great.
If you go to the post-it, you automatically get a negative, right?
Welcome to It's Your Loss podcast, where raw stories of resilience and healing are told,
all while uncovering and destigmatizing the diverse symptoms of loss.
(01:17):
Welcome back to the podcast.
If you missed last month's episode, well, it's your loss.
I am host Michael LeBlanc, and with me today is the guy who ever gave me the first chance
to be on a podcast at all.
He is host of the High Life podcast, spelled with a Y, but not where you think.
It is Steven Rhodes.
Hello, Steven.
Hello.
(01:37):
Thank you.
Hey, not a problem.
Not a problem.
I'm so glad, like everybody who I've been on a podcast with so far has been guests now
that you've here.
Yeah.
I feel like I'm giving back to the podcast world.
It feels good doing that.
You know, it's nice to be a guest on somebody else's show.
(01:58):
When's the last time you were a guest?
Oh, a little over a year ago.
Okay.
Okay.
I did Above the Bar podcast.
All right.
Well, how was the vibe on that podcast?
Oh, it was great.
He makes you feel like you're just chit-chatting at a bar.
(02:18):
Oh, that's all.
He'll bring up a topic for you guys to discuss and you just go for it.
Is it a one-on-one, one-on-two?
Yeah.
One-on-one.
One-on-one.
Yeah.
I thought about doing like two hosts altogether, like interviewing one person and then I was
like...
I've thought about that before.
Yeah.
And I'm like, but the scheduling.
Dear God, the scheduling.
(02:38):
Oh, yeah.
Trust me.
I know.
It's hard enough to get grown adults to play, you know, D&D or any kind of tabletops in the
RPG, you know, trying to get them together to record a podcast for just one hour.
No, that's rough.
That's rough.
All right.
So I'm going to hit the timer starting now, but in the meantime, I'll go ahead and start
this conversation.
(03:01):
Stephen, Steve, as you wanted to be called, what have you lost?
So I lost what I liked to call my safety net in this community.
I live in a very small town, we literally have one gas station and then like a little
rinky dink gas station that's sort of in town too.
(03:23):
Sure.
I know a couple of towns like that in South Carolina.
Yeah.
I want to call Pumping Town.
Okay.
So I met someone and things did not turn out well at all.
Okay.
So that made me lose the safety feeling that I had living here.
(03:45):
That's a different type of loss than one that I talked about before.
We've had a couple of emotional and conceptual losses.
I think those can be kind of a little bit more lasting when it comes to their effects
just because you lose something physical, you know that that's gone, but you lose something
like emotional or, you know, intangible.
(04:06):
It's kind of hard to recover from that.
What was your relationship?
What was the relationship itself?
What was it like, you know, overall and then what went wrong?
Okay.
So the relationship, like I said, it was a girlfriend and when things started, it was
great.
What I didn't realize was it was a facade and her true self came out later in the form
(04:32):
of drugs.
And that is where things went wrong was she fell back into drugs, which I didn't realize
she had been heavy in and it turned her into somebody else and that turned into a very
scary situation.
Sure.
God, I can understand that.
(04:56):
My personal relationship with my parents was marred because of drugs and it just kind
of warped and shaped into something just completely different by the end.
But the drugs are rough.
Are we talking, I mean, I don't know how deep you want to go into it.
Her drug of choice was methamphetamine.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's dive in deep.
For the longest time, I didn't even know she was doing it.
(05:16):
By the time I realized it, I had to figure out a way to leave carefully and then didn't
go how I wanted.
Holy crap.
I've never had to deal with anybody doing meth other than the occasional people who
have maybe met on the street.
You know, right?
And it's so easy to notice.
Right.
But a stranger.
(05:36):
That's wild.
Live with the person.
And especially since she was a former, you know, she was already an addict when I met
her, I didn't notice a whole lot of behavior changes at first.
She was probably already well versed in hiding.
It wasn't until she was doing more and more of it.
And she was probably well versed in hiding it.
Yeah.
Wow.
Okay.
Leading up to it, I mean, was there ever like a internal doubt where you're like, okay,
(05:59):
maybe this is something that I can help her get over or did you just see what was happening?
I'd be like, I did.
I did try for a while.
I told I made a deal with her that if she would get clean, I would stay.
And so she quit for a week, week and a half.
And she's right back to it.
(06:20):
Cold turkey without any help.
I've tried, you know, finding help for her and stuff.
She didn't want help.
She refused any sort of help.
She tried turning to religion, but the people that she was joining in with were other meth
addicts.
Oh no.
And I'm like, that's not helping.
(06:41):
Now it's just a group of meth addicts trying to talk about Jesus.
That's a round the mulberry bush type situation until eventually pop goes the weasel.
I have a random number generator on the screen as well.
And it's going to give me a random number between 12 and 341.
That corresponds to a pay in the monster manual.
(07:06):
Okay.
We're going to, I'm going to do the version of that.
I do too.
Luckily for me, there's some D&D folks who are in this house and I'm borrowing their
dice and all their stuff, all my DM stuff at home.
There you go.
I didn't think that far ahead.
So what I'm going to do is we're going to choose a monster.
We're going, I'm going to give you the, their, their highest stat and their lowest stat.
(07:27):
And this is where this is going to deviate from standard D&D.
You're going to choose the stat that you want to use to go up against that monster.
We roll each of their D 20 against that stat, add the modifiers and whoever wins comes out
on top three strikes.
You're out.
I have my own D 20.
Okay.
Even better.
Even better.
All right.
(07:47):
So you can actually roll your own D 20.
I'll roll monsters.
I'll roll my D 20 and then I'll do the same for me over here.
And you're a kind of at a slight disadvantage obviously because I'm reading the monster
manual, but I'm going to be just, just know that I'm playing with the honor system here.
I'm going to try to play as fair as possible, but like I said, I do have negative.
So I may not be leaning on, say my strength or my dexterity.
(08:12):
Those are horrible.
As I was answering the questions on the quiz that gave us these stats, I was just, I was
just shaking my head.
Like I, I would die in the world of D&D.
I would be the guy selling cabbages on the side of the road.
That would be my job.
I was thoroughly shocked.
My athleticism.
Yeah.
Yeah, dude.
It looks like you could, I mean, you could definitely probably take me in a, in a fight
(08:35):
if we were just to throw these stats together, I think it all depends on the role of the
dice, right?
Right.
All right.
We got page 12, which that is the first page.
And if it's the first page, maybe it's not going to be so bad, you know, who knows?
I don't think they're going to start.
It is the, it is the monster manual, which means that, you know, it's supposed to be
(08:57):
some of the big bads.
So we'll see.
Yeah.
Uh, I think this is pronounced and the people out there who know how to pronounce this may
butcher me later, but it looks like it's arachakra, which is a medium humanoid neutral
god, our neutral good bird man thing with a giant, with a giant spear.
(09:19):
I will tell you that its highest is dexterity at 14 and its lowest is constitution at 10.
So you can use any stat that you want.
And this thing can summon air elementals while you're looking at it.
Well, I'm going to use my charisma.
(09:43):
Nice.
Okay.
All right.
And against its charisma, I'll go ahead and roll.
You guys should be able to hear my dice.
I messed with the audio and not so there we go.
All right.
You go ahead and roll.
And I'll tell you what, uh, what we got going on here.
I got a six.
You got a six with a charisma bonus.
You have a charisma bonus.
(10:04):
You do a plus one.
You have a seven against their impeccably rolled 16.
I am so sorry.
They risked you to death.
Uh, you are, you are a down one, my guy.
All right.
Um, and I am going to use what I think is my highest, which is, uh, I think I'm also
going to use charisma on this scale.
I'll try not to use this different one each time, but my charisma is the highest.
(10:27):
I, uh, that's what it says.
So I'm rolling for that.
Yeah.
I was trying, I was torn between my charisma and my intelligence, right?
Uh, and I didn't win.
It is 13 to me nine for the a rock, a rock, Gakura either way.
(10:48):
So I win that one.
Who knew that I would actually win something with the stats that I rolled because like I
said, I was in the negative in some places, but we'll see.
We'll see.
I'm, I'm going to see it this way.
My charisma is burned.
I can't use charisma next time.
Okay.
So that's going to be the rules I set upon myself.
All right.
So back to the methamphetamines.
She tries to find help and she winds up basically in the welcoming hands, well-meaning, but
(11:13):
still probably very effective methods or excuse me, methamphetamine users.
I don't know how PC I want to go with this, but did that kind of wake you up into what
kind of environment you were in?
Or did you already know that drugs were kind of a problem in the area?
Oh, I already knew drugs were a problem in the area.
That's why as soon as I found out the people she was around, I knew what was happening.
(11:37):
And I slowly started figuring out where I could go.
Okay.
If, if I, you know, for me to leave, where can I go?
So were you at, were you staying with her at her place?
Yes.
Wow.
Well, she would leave and be gone for hours, come home for one, maybe two hours and then
(12:01):
leave again.
Damn dude, that's rough.
How long was this relationship going for?
Six months.
Okay.
And how long of that did you not know that she was on meth?
The first two or three months.
Okay.
Wow.
I moved out of the bedroom and just was living in the house because I had nowhere else to
(12:24):
go.
Sure.
Well, what about now?
Did you manage to get out?
Like what's your situation right now?
So now I actively avoid her and anyone who may, you know, contact her.
I'm sure she knows that I'm, that I, you know, back at my old job is I left, I moved out
(12:47):
of town for about nine months, got a different job, changed jobs like three times just to
make sure.
And I ended up having to come back.
Just because easier where you were or no, I'm living with a friend.
Oh, okay.
That's good.
(13:07):
Yeah.
Far enough away from her that she can't find me, but she could come find me at my job if
she really wanted to.
It doesn't sound like that's happened yet.
No, no, it has not, but I do have full permission from my manager and the business owner that
if she tries to even show up on property, I can just contact police.
(13:28):
Okay.
Well, all right.
Good.
Well, it looks like that you're on a good path as far as creating as much distance and
yeah, and to keep the distance, which, you know, it didn't sound like at any point you
were thinking, man, I should go back and try to save her, which.
No, after the things that transpired the night that I, I'll say it escaped.
(13:48):
I didn't care.
I cared about my safety and my wellbeing.
And that was it.
So, self-advocacy, making sure that you are, you know, you're healthy and you're doing
good for you.
That's always the best thing.
Like the falling in love is a huge thing.
Like the brain does all types of, yeah, like wild things when it's in love from changing
(14:10):
its own body, chemistry, you know, just ignoring everybody else around them except for what
their fixation is at that time.
So from going from such a high to such a low and just two or three months later, what
do you think your, or did you experience a grieving process of that sudden loss of what
you thought you had?
So what I'd numb myself, I tried to numb myself mentally, started smoking a lot more weed,
(14:37):
which there's nothing wrong with, with weed, obviously, like that's.
Yeah, no, I don't vilify weed at all.
The only time I'm like, boo weed is when that's all people spend their money on because I've
seen people that like it's that whole thing.
They don't, they want to make things livable in the house.
I had to stay at an insanely high, high.
(15:00):
Gotcha.
And so this is while because she was right there in the middle of everything.
Right.
Because she would pick fights with me just just to get me riled up just to get me to
fight with her.
And if I stayed at that high just constantly, then she couldn't get to me.
I rolled another random number taking us to page 143 in the monster manual.
(15:26):
We are now looking at Dow DAO, the large elemental neutral evil.
And they're basically they're an earth elemental.
That's what I'm seeing here.
They're their highest is a constitution of 24.
Their lowest is a dexterity.
(15:48):
You can choose either one.
The lowest is a dexterity and intelligence of 12.
Oh, now the intelligence was 12.
Yeah.
The intelligence was 12.
So they're going to go with intelligence.
Going to go with intelligence.
All right.
Roll for your intelligence, sir.
I got a 16.
Oh, okay.
(16:08):
16 plus one.
I guess so.
I don't know the pluses.
So you.
Okay.
So you rolled a 16.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think I've been a good thing.
Let's see how they roll with a you said intelligence.
Yes.
All right.
They got a six.
Congratulations.
You took down the earth element for you.
No loss there.
All right.
(16:29):
And I let's see.
I've earned my charisma.
I'm going to go with my wisdom, which is they only have a plus one on their wisdom.
Okay.
See, they've got a 13.
Oh, I almost not wanted.
I lost.
We are now one to one.
(16:49):
That is unfortunate.
But hey, you have a you have a earth elemental under your belt.
Congratulations.
This episode is brought to you by my own book, dink spelled D. I. N. Q. D and D in the coffin
hold of the USS enterprise.
Though I've never had to deal with a loved one on meth like Steve had.
I did grow up with parents who were addicts through their decision and my desire to get
(17:10):
the hell out of dodge.
I chose to spend four years in the US Navy.
This began the most stressful and transformative years of my twenties.
Get your copy down on Amazon and paperback or on Kindle.
The links in the description below.
And if that doesn't make you want to buy my book, what does all right, Steve, you're
in the middle of this tumultuous relationship.
(17:33):
She's trying to pick fights with you every chance she gets.
And you are just sitting on cloud high every chance that you get.
Yes.
So when did you realize you had to stop doing that?
Because I imagine that you did at some point.
You're like, this is, this is, I got to get out.
This is, this is not conducive to my health.
And how are you feeling about during then?
(17:55):
So I started planning where I could go when I leave.
And I hadn't quite figured out the where, but I was talking to my sister who lives nearby
and I told her that I needed to start trying to slowly move out.
Because if I suddenly moved out, she would freak and, you know, it wouldn't be pretty.
(18:21):
I didn't even get a chance to try to slowly move out.
The same day as that conversation, she snapped something.
So she came home completely denying that she was on anything, but I could tell.
And we went to, I was trying to go to bed because I had to get up early the next day
(18:45):
and let me go to bed.
Oh, can you, can you run downstairs and do this?
Can you run over here and do this?
Can you do this?
Can you do this?
She would make sure that I couldn't even sit out and eat dinner.
So when she finally passed out on her bed, I was like, okay, I can get some sleep now.
And about an hour or two later, she popped up freaking out because her phone wasn't plugged
(19:07):
in and she was afraid it was going to die.
She had to have her phone.
Now her phone only worked on the Wi-Fi because she didn't want a real working phone because
then she could be tracked.
Okay.
A little bit of paranoia there with your drug use.
That's normal.
I helped her find her phone, but in the process of looking for her phone, the Wi-Fi came unplugged.
(19:30):
She asked me to use my phone because she had to call someone and I said, fine, here's my
phone, I'll go fix the internet.
Get the internet fixed.
I go back to her and I'm like, okay, can I have my phone back now?
No.
I thought this is another one of her games.
She's just trying to goat me into a fight.
(19:50):
So I said, I'm not playing.
I need to go back to sleep.
I need my phone tomorrow.
Can I have my phone back?
And again, she refused.
And then she started going through my phone trying to find something to pick a fight about.
Oh no.
She's getting worse.
I was smarter than to leave anything in my phone, even contact with my family about her.
(20:12):
Especially by that point.
Yes.
Since you knew what it was about, right?
So when she couldn't find anything, she decided to just go on a rampage.
She started telling me that I needed to get out of her house and I said, okay, let me
gather my stuff.
I'll leave right now.
And she's like, no, you can't take anything with you.
I want you out of my house.
I said, no, that's not how this works.
(20:33):
I take my stuff with me and I leave.
Right.
She goes, no, you can come back for it later.
I said, I've been through this rodeo before.
I would need a court order to come get my stuff back.
Right.
I'm leaving with my stuff.
Kept arguing with me.
At this point, I actually turned the camera on my laptop on because I was sitting in front
of my laptop.
(20:54):
I turned the camera on to record for my safety.
Eventually, it turned into, she was calling random people on my phone, but nobody's answering
because it's like two, three o'clock in the morning.
Eventually, it turned into, okay, if you go to my friend's house that lives a block away,
if you go to their house, I'll give you your phone.
(21:17):
If you go with me to their house, I'll give you your phone back.
Okay.
It's middle of the night.
I'm exhausted, whatever, to get this fight to end.
Do you know?
Right.
Well, I start walking.
She wanted me to get in the car with her fused.
Just did not seem like a good idea.
No, not in close quarters area with somebody like that.
(21:39):
No.
Right.
So I walked, she drove.
This is in January, beginning of February.
Very cold outside.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we get to her friend's house.
I then go, okay, we're here.
Let me have my phone.
Yeah.
I'm outside.
So then she's trying to get her friend to wake up and to the door.
(22:02):
That is about 30 to 45 minutes.
Eventually we get inside.
She tells me to sit down.
She has somebody watch me to make sure I don't go anywhere.
She goes, talks to her friend.
She comes back and goes, you need to go talk to my friend now.
Okay.
How kind of ritual is this?
It's weird.
I'm like, whatever.
So I go talk to her friend.
(22:24):
I look at her friend and I said, I'm not allowed to leave.
She won't give me my phone.
Do you agree I'm being held against my will?
And she goes, yes.
I said that I need you to call the cops.
Fun fact, there's no way to call the police from a laptop.
It seems like a missed opportunity for communication.
(22:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's no way to get ahold of anyone.
I've never thought about that.
I've never thought about that.
Yeah.
I mean, neither until that was my only option.
So anyways, her friend refused to call the police and I had to sit there and then she
came back in the room, began to kick me, say awful things about me, making fun of my weight
(23:09):
and other parts of my body that she could just ridicule.
Yeah, I'm doing.
One point she threatened to bash my head in.
She said something about cutting me open and crawling inside my rib cage.
You know, a lot of people have said this and the more you say it, the more you realize
how true the phrase is.
(23:30):
Meth is a hell of a drug.
It is.
Dear God.
All right.
So obviously she didn't climb inside your rib cage, which is good.
Which is good.
I'm glad you're healthy, alive and here talking with me today because we have another monster
to battle.
You're going to page 88.
(23:51):
This will be your choice right here.
There are actually three creatures on here.
Okay.
All of them are dragons.
Of course.
You get to choose what age they are ranging from the youngest to the middle age to the
oldest.
They're all black dragons.
Which one do you want to face off on?
So there's three of them.
Three.
(24:12):
Yep.
You got an adult, a a Wormling and a young black dragon.
I will go with the middle aged one.
The young black dragon.
Okay.
They are not as strong as the earth elemental.
I'll give you that.
Again, this one's strength is the highest at 19 plus four.
Their weakness is wisdom at 11.
So they get no modifier to that.
(24:35):
How do you take on the black dragon?
Let's go with wisdom.
Let's let's.
All right.
Let's get for the biscuit.
All right.
Roll your wisdom.
Roll your wisdom.
I'll roll.
I'll roll the young black dragon's wisdom and see what happens here.
All right, I got a 16.
That beats their 14.
Hey.
You out wisdom, a young black dragon.
(24:56):
You left him bamboozled.
You did.
We're out of you.
You know what?
Just because I think this is going to end in failure unless somehow I get a nat 20, which
you shouldn't get nat 20 on stat checks.
But you know, it's whatever.
It's my game.
I do what I want.
Exactly.
Going toe to toe with this thing on strength.
Okay.
(25:16):
Yeah.
I mean, I don't have much else to go with here.
My stats were not the best.
Here we go.
So three minus two is one.
Yeah.
At least it's not a nat one.
If they get a nat one, if they get a nat one, I win.
All right.
Here we go.
No.
That is, I am now down two to your one.
(25:38):
Not bad.
Not bad.
You're winning.
Now, now it's two.
Well, yeah, you won two, but three strikes are out.
Okay.
So if I bite it again, you win by default.
Let's talk a little bit about the emotions that all this brought up.
Obviously during that time, you're feeling frustrated, scared.
I'm guessing angry.
(25:58):
Like you're probably feeling a full spectrum of what would be like the negative part of
the emotion wheel, which I just thought about the emotion wheel through therapy.
I recommend it right after you got out and you know, you're finding, you found those
other places to stay.
You found those other jobs to do.
You know the five stages, right?
And if not, not to remind you anyway, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
(26:24):
Which one of those do you feel like you spent more time in than others?
And you know, have you reached the acceptance point yet that, you know, that's a chapter
behind you or do you feel like you're still stewing in it?
I spent a lot of time in anger.
They're rightly so.
I mean, there was nothing to borrow.
(26:44):
I had already made, you know, a bargain with her that she broke.
Right.
So there was, there was nothing to bargain for.
Yeah, I spent a long time in anger and I basically just became the most selfish person I could
for a while.
(27:04):
I mean, as you're right, I mean, a lot of people do kind of withdrawal when it comes
to coping.
Some people use humor.
Some people deflect.
Some people seek comfort from others around them, but coping looks different from everybody.
What was your worst moment during that anger withdrawn self that you.
What scared the hell out of me was I got a message from her through somebody else and
(27:32):
she described the house I was living in.
Okay.
Yeah, that's terrifying.
Yeah.
I mean, that's some gangland shit right there.
And so I was living with a buddy of mine in a double wide trailer and the message I received
was something about living with another guy in a double wide trailer.
(27:55):
And then she referred, referred to the area that I lived in as a high meth area, which
I found out later on.
She was actually confused and was thinking, confusing where I was living with somewhere
else area.
I mean, a little bit further away.
Sure.
You know, I can see what she was confused.
(28:15):
So felt better at that point that she, okay, if she's thinking I'm in this area over here,
then she's not looking where I am over here.
Right.
Take to the acceptance.
When I realized I had to come back, I talked to a few people in the area asked, you know,
if there'd been any sightings of her, has she been into the gas station I work at now?
(28:42):
And they said she's been in here maybe once or twice in the past nine months.
They said it's usually right after I would stop by because she would be looking for me.
But when I found out that she is no longer living in the house that she was in, felt better
about coming back because she wasn't in the areas that she was before.
(29:02):
What about some other things because the way I broke it down, I saw that, you know, you've
got not only the loss of security, but kind of like a loss of trust there for a while.
I don't know if you're going to be looking to jump into a relationship anytime soon after
right after this and also took quite a while.
Yeah.
And during that, you lost freedom.
You lost freedom while you were with her.
You lost freedom just being able to go wherever you could without worrying about running into
(29:27):
her.
So between that, between the trust that you might have and somebody, you know, had to
change had to change some of the stores that I would that I would go to because I knew
there was people there that had connections with her.
Which one was the worst though?
Was it security, the law, the security, the trust or the freedom?
Which one would you say really kind of stung the most?
(29:48):
Probably the trust.
I wasn't sure who to trust for a long time because most of the people that I knew knew
her and I didn't know whose side they were on.
So, you know, if I could trust them, like people would be like, Hey, like where you
been?
I can't tell you.
In fact, when I came back, people, you know, so many people were like, Oh, you know, I'm
(30:10):
glad you're back.
I'm glad you're, you know, you're back working here.
I'm glad you're back in the community and oh, where you been?
I literally just tell people I was in hiding.
Like somebody who had been through the relocation program, just be like, Yeah, don't worry about
it.
I was away.
Exactly.
We are doing the random generator page 22, going further back into the book.
(30:33):
We have Acer, which is another elemental.
It's a fire elemental, a dwarvish fire elemental, you know, as they are.
Um, it's, it has a strength of 17 with a modifier of three.
Its lowest is charisma, which I've known a couple of charismatic dwarves in my time playing
D&D, but that seems to be on track though.
(30:53):
Very strong, not a lot of charisma.
What was the charisma?
A 10 with a modifier at zero.
Okay.
All right.
So what do you want to do?
I'm going to try for my charisma again.
And I will roll for their charisma as well.
So I got an 11.
Yeah, you got 11 plus one.
That is your 12.
They got, they, they just geeked out with a 14 over your 12.
(31:15):
I do apologize.
Man.
Smited by the fire elemental and I haven't used intelligence yet.
You know, we'll try my intelligence against theirs.
I got a 14 and then I had a 15.
That was a good romp through the, the, the fields of D&D for a moment.
I hope it, I hope you felt like you were there.
(31:36):
I hope as your DM, I really brought you into the game.
So you're saying the loss of trust probably stung the most because it wasn't just trust
about somebody who you might have a relationship with.
It's also the people surrounding there.
And if you're big into the community, of course it's going to sting.
(31:57):
What would you say to somebody having gone through this now, having on what I hope to
be is a, is it as a mend after all this?
What would you say to somebody who is going through the same shit?
What's the, what's the biggest advice you would give them?
If you're dealing with a significant other that is doing drugs of any kind that is causing
(32:22):
problems in the relationship, if finding them help isn't working, if making deals with them
isn't working, if it's not working, if they, they're only going to get clean if they want
to.
Right.
If it's not working, it's okay to give up.
It's okay to, to say, can't do this anymore.
(32:45):
And I know a lot of people have children with addicts and staying with them just because
you haven't child with them is not good for the child.
No.
Uh, which is not to say that staying, breaking up and starting the separation process is
going to be easy.
It's not, it's not, but it's a lot healthier and safer for you and the child.
(33:06):
Yeah, you got to think of the returns that are definitely going to come after that.
I lost people's respect when I stayed with her instead of leaving the first time.
I got accused of even doing the drugs with her.
I could see that from the outside looking in, I guess.
Yeah.
You just took a casual glance at it.
You know, when I'm, when I'm sitting there saying, oh, I'm going to leave, I'm going
(33:27):
to leave.
And then all of a sudden I don't leave.
Oh, he must, he must be addicted to it also.
She got him hooked.
Sounds like you were kind of bargaining with yourself there and they, hey, this might get
better.
Yeah.
We've got a, got something we can change.
And dude, I'm sorry you went through that.
Um, I mean, I'm glad you're out of it now.
The escape was emotional.
(33:48):
I can't, I don't know, for some reason I can't cry in front of people.
Can't even, can't even produce a tear.
But I straight up ugly cried right in front of my sister when I got to her house.
Well, good.
You need to, you need to let that shit out.
Um, yeah.
Yeah.
It was, it was a wave that could just not be held back any longer.
(34:10):
Right.
Well, after that, I'm not surprised.
Me personally, I probably would have been crying in the middle of it.
I'm, I, I'm a guy who, I tried to stay in quiet.
So all that stuff that's inside of you, it gets a little smaller when you get the chance
to actually let it out.
And sharing it with somebody helps.
And so I'm really glad that you had the chance to share this with me.
(34:31):
I'm starting to realize that these single stories of losses that people are saying is
like, Hey, I lost my relationship.
Hey, I lost my job.
I, I lost my mom.
They always come with a, a more intricate layer of losses that are just kind of baked
into all that.
What's, what's next for you now?
Is there any of this that you're bringing forward and you've got a plan to shape your
(34:53):
future differently?
Are you just taking one day at a time?
It's life looking for you right now.
I'm currently updating someone we have my hands on, you know, in engagement this year
and possibly a wedding by the end of the year.
Her I've been on and off for 15 years.
That's a lot quicker than I thought you were actually going to say.
(35:17):
We're taking things very serious.
Let me ask this.
Does she know about the story?
Yes.
Actually, she is going to college right now for her master's degree in healthcare management.
Really?
And she had to do a, one of her classes is public speaking and she had to do one on trauma.
(35:40):
And I actually typed out the entire story of what happened to me for her.
And she read it in a, in a different room for me and immediately came in the room and
just wanted to hold me because she had never heard the full story until that, until then.
Dude, that, I bet that was cathartic as hell though.
(36:00):
Like, I, to type it out, I had to, I had to put your buds in and turn on just some angry
music just to just be able to focus on the events of that night without, without being
like I can't do this anymore.
Okay.
How'd you feel by the end of it?
(36:21):
I hesitated on sending it to her.
I did hesitate on hitting send.
I want, I want to applaud you because not many people would even have the energy to
actually go through putting the whole thing down like that so soon after the event, like
just for me writing.
Well, so the event happened a year ago this week.
(36:43):
I know.
For me, I consider that pretty soon.
So much stuff happens to me just month by month that my brain has no concept of time
anymore.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I'd say what?
How about the next time that you have a huge traumatic event that you want to, to talk
(37:03):
about live?
Well, you know, live, so to speak with air quotes.
You know, you could always come back and you could just deep dive in another story.
There we go.
Yeah.
I'll be here for that.
I'm completely down with that.
It's kind of the whole part and parcel of why I'm doing this podcast and begin with.
So just one more question because I wanted to know and circle this on my list.
(37:25):
Do you feel like the way that you're feeling about the community now, the art has it healed
at all?
Are you still worrying about who, who might be siding with who might be reporting back
to her?
I've sort of been able to figure out who is more on her side, which has helped me with
(37:48):
deciding where I can shop.
And there's, there's some people that, you know, there's, there's the first group of
people that I was like, okay, these are for sure reporting back to her.
Yeah.
And there's been people in that group that, you know, I don't, I don't know what happened,
(38:08):
but they're not reporting back to her, at least not anymore.
And then there's also people that I thought I could trust that I've found out I can't.
Dude, you really got shook up over there without.
Yeah.
I'm very careful on what I tell people when I'm at work.
Well, some more people on your side, you know what I'm saying?
(38:30):
So, so to also tag onto what life's looking for like for me now, I have plans in the fall
to go back to school.
Okay.
I'm going to study media because I still have the dream of doing a radio.
As you should.
You got a good one.
And I want to do it.
And the ways that I've been trying to go about it are not working.
(38:51):
Well, I got to change up the strategy and going back to school could really help.
Okay.
So there's a great media arts program in the area.
Well, I feel like that's a good segue as ever.
Do you want to tell people where they can find you while you try to do this?
Yes.
So you can find me at High Life Podcast on Tiktok.
(39:15):
There's underscores between each word or just Google High Life Podcast.
I do have merch now.
It does.
It's spelled H-I-G-H space L-Y-F-E.
There's that Y.
I was saying that know where it was.
I was trying to avoid a lawsuit from Miller.
You're doing good so far.
(39:35):
I think you're below their radar.
Right.
All right.
I also do have another show that should be coming out soon.
It's been a project going on for over a year.
I think we're just about ready to start releasing these episodes.
It's called What You Didn't Know.
(39:58):
Season one is What You Didn't Know about rock and roll.
We are following the history and from where rock and roll started to where it is now.
Heck yeah, dude.
Can you give me a two-word sneak peek of what season two might be about?
We've not got that far.
Okay.
(40:18):
All right.
We're going to keep a nice and silence on that one.
Gotcha.
All right.
Well, Steve, thank you so much for joining me, man.
It sounds like to me that you're still in a healing process.
I'm glad you got somebody to heal with you.
Let's keep in touch, man.
Yes.
If there's room in season two, by all means, I'm going to be hitting you up.
Okay.
All right, man.
Well, I'm your host Michael LeBlanc.
(40:39):
If you happen to miss next month's episode, still, it's your loss.
I'll talk to you guys later.
Bye-bye.
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