October 22, 2023 • 16 mins
In today's episode, I talk about the "functional addict", and how they are just as at risk of death as the "degenerate" addict.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo (00:15):
What's up everybody.
This is M this is thoughts of anaddict.
Two episodes in a week.
Whoa.
Oh, who is this guy?
It is so good to be back witheverybody and to all my
listeners out there.
God damn, I am so grateful forall of you.
(00:35):
I mean, even if I had zerolisteners on each episode, I
would probably be doing thisanyway.
Because.
This is really fun.
And I think.
It makes me feel pretty good,but hopefully to the people that
are listening, they're not justall mocking me.
Hopefully someone's gettingsomething out of any of the
(00:57):
things that are coming out of mymouth.
So thank you so, so mucheverybody for tuning in and.
If you have any inquiries or youwant to be on the show or, you
know, somebody who wants to beon the show, go ahead and email
thoughts of an addictshow@gmail.com.
I've got a pretty blank inboxright now, except for one email.
(01:19):
My dear old mother sending meone of the nicest messages I've
ever seen.
I love you, mom.
All right.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Mic (01:29):
All right.
So I wanted to start off thisapp.
By asking you the listener.
To imagine an addict.
Think of a quintessentialaddict.
Give you like five seconds here.
(01:52):
Okay.
So what image came to your mind?
My guess would be that it was.
Someone with a heroin needle intheir arm, climbing out from
behind a dumpster.
Or maybe it was some hot junkiewho's sitting on their couch all
day, eating ranch, flavoredDoritos and watching old Adam
(02:12):
Sandler movies.
But one that you might not havebeen thinking of is.
The person who is leading theirsales team.
Or the person who was gettingstraight A's in their school.
And guess what.
(02:32):
That last one, that was the kindof attic.
That I was.
This is what we call.
A functioning addict.
And that is what I wanted totalk to you about today.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo (02:47):
Imagine downtown San Francisco and.
This high-powered businessman.
And his little monkey suit andhis briefcase.
He walks over a homeless guy onthe ground who has a needle
sticking out of his arm.
If you're a third-partybystander, you look over at that
situation and you think.
(03:09):
Well, that guy.
That guy on the ground.
He's a fucking addict,obviously.
Well guess what.
That high powered businessman,there is a real chance.
That he's an addict too.
That.
There is a very deep malady inthat homeless man soul.
(03:30):
That, that high powered businessexecutive shares with them.
The functioning addict is kinda,it's kinda like a chameleon.
Where.
You can't really tell from theoutside.
That they're fucked up.
The functioning addict hasgotten really, really good.
(03:54):
At hiding.
The massive problem that theyhave inside of themselves.
And I know that this wascertainly the case for me.
Almost all.
Of my quote unquote addictedlife.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Micro (04:12):
I remember being in college and I
was getting all A's.
I was doing all the things thatI was supposed to be doing.
And from an outsider'sperspective, Mama and Papa would
ask, oh, how's school going andI'd show them, look, look, I got
a 4.0 woo.
Whew.
I'm doing well and getting thisfucking piece of paper.
(04:35):
Yay.
But, what did that look like?
On the inside.
Just doing a bunch of stimulantsand staying up until odd hours
just to pump out.
A's to learn a bunch of shitthat I wouldn't need.
In the real world.
From the outside.
I was highly functional.
(04:58):
In my soul, I was highlydysfunctional.
Even though things might've beengoing well from the outside, I
was still just using to live inliving the use.
But by getting good grades.
I could hide it.
Well, I could hide it from myfriends.
I could hide it from my family.
(05:18):
I remember I had some reallyclose friends of mine who
identified.
I had a problem.
Doc goat.
They would say, dude, em, yougot to chill the fuck out.
You're smoking way too much pot.
You got a cat it out.
And I'd say, well, I have highergrades than you guys.
So you guys don't know what thefuck you're talking about.
(05:39):
And.
This was my camouflagethroughout college.
This was my camouflage.
This is what allowed me to getaway with my addiction.
Not only to other people.
And myself.
To myself.
I was lying.
I would say, Hey, em, You'veworked so hard over this past
(06:00):
semester.
Look how well you did.
You can fucking do a little bitmore drugs on the weekends now.
You can start, you can ramp upthe drugs from three times a
week, four or five times a week,because look.
You got those good grades?
Woo.
And this isn't to say that,getting good grades wasn't
important, but I will say.
(06:23):
It's what I used as a coverup.
You really feel like, you know,what.
I can do this addiction thing.
This addiction thing, isn'treally a problem for me because
I'm doing well on this wholesocial status element.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo M (06:38):
Which actually brings me to one of my
main points of the pod today,which is, this is why being a
functional addict.
And this is what I'm going toargue for this way.
Being a functional addict in somany ways is so much more
destructive than being adysfunctional addict.
Because you have that marker.
You have that thing.
That you can keep lying toyourself about.
(07:00):
If I had fucking nothing.
If I was just living at mom anddad's house, didn't have a job.
Wasn't doing shit was justsmoking weed.
On the couch all day.
Then I probably would've said tomyself much earlier.
Alright.
Um, You're fucking up.
We gotta make a change here andwe gotta do it quick.
(07:20):
But.
When things are going well onthe outside, you've got people.
Woo.
Good.
And you got people applauding,you.
And in a lot of ways, it'sreinforcing the shit behavior.
That addicts have.
And this didn't only apply to mycollege.
So I went into the working worldand I was a sales guy.
(07:42):
And I was actually performingthe highest on my team.
And, I would grind my ass offwhen I was at work.
And my reasoning for it was.
I made a deal with myself whereokay.
If I make three sales today,Then I get to do.
(08:02):
Uh, painkiller.
After work.
And.
I feel like a lot of.
High powered business people.
Actually use drugs as a rewardsystem in namely alcohol.
Someone closes the big deal.
Oh, okay.
What's all.
Now I get to get really fuckedup tonight.
(08:25):
And maybe that's not an addict,but you can see how.
An addict would easily pickthese behaviors up.
Of okay.
I'm doing really, really well atwork.
That means I should go to goreally, really hard with the
drugs that I'm doing right now.
And that's exactly what happenedto me.
(08:46):
And luckily for me, Luckily.
So luckily for me, My usingramped up so much when I started
working.
That the camouflage started toreally chip and tear away.
There would be days where I'dcome into work.
So fucking hung over from thenight before just a God damn
(09:06):
drug cocktail of epicproportions.
It'd be a Tuesday night and Ijust be ripping fucking uppers,
downers all arounders like anabsolute fucking degenerate.
And I would basically crawl onmy hands and knees in to work.
And I would tell my old boss,I'd say, Hey dude, like, I'm not
feeling well.
(09:27):
And that would work.
That would work.
A few times that work once ortwice a month.
But when it turned into a weeklything, like my boss was no
dummy.
He'd say all right.
Um, let's attack.
Like what the fuck is reallygoing on here?
Do you have a problem that I'mlike, yep.
You got me.
And.
So I quickly turned from afunctioning to a barely
(09:51):
functioning addict.
And when I turned to barelyfunctioning, it was actually
much easier for me to get clean.
Because I no longer had theaccolades from the outside.
I didn't have people applaudingme telling me how well I was
doing.
I had people telling me, dude,you're fucked up.
I need to get some fucking help.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo (10:13):
Because when you're a totally
functioning addict.
It's pretty hard to hit a rockbottom.
In my 10th episode.
I talk all about how rock bottomis often the turning point for
addicts.
People usually remember the lasttime they use, because it had
such a profound.
Sad tragic impact on them.
(10:36):
But when things are going.
Relatively well, It's prettyhard to get to that point.
And when you're functioning,Quote unquote, well, You're not
going to be crawling out frombehind that dumpster.
You're not going to have thatmoment.
When you wake up in a Vegashospital, not knowing how the
fuck you got there.
And maybe most importantly,you're not going to have that
(10:58):
intervention moment where yourloved ones are telling you, Hey.
You're fucking up our lives too,dude.
Go get some fucking help, notjust for you, but for us,
please.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Mic (11:13):
And rest in peace to my closest
friend in the world.
The one I was alluding to.
In the first episode in hell,the reason I created this
podcast.
He was the highest functioningaddict.
That I had ever met in my entirelife.
It's only a year or two olderthan me.
He was already a VP.
(11:34):
Working multiple jobs, justfucking, absolutely crushing
life from the outside.
But God damn.
Was he at.
Tortured soul.
On the inside.
And there were times where Iwould candidly wish.
Fuck kind of hope he gets fired.
I kind of hope things start togo a little bit more south for
(11:57):
him.
Because then maybe it would be agigantic slap in the face, a
wake up call that I couldn'tjust break through to him, but.
Unfortunately.
It was just too late.
He was too high functioning.
He didn't start to go down thisdecrepit path at the end of his
life.
He was absolutely fuckingkilling it up until the day that
(12:19):
he passed away.
And so I think that's the point.
Of my episode today, which is.
You could be listening to thisright now.
And you could be highlyfunctioning.
That doesn't mean that you'renot an addict and more
importantly, pet doesn't meanthat you're fried.
From the same three.
(12:41):
Final destinations that addictsrun into.
Jails institutions and death.
Oh, my.
So my ask to you is.
If you are a highly functioningperson.
But you think you might have aproblem?
Ask yourself.
(13:02):
Why do you think.
You have this problem marriedto.
You're high.
Functioning life.
Just because things are going onwell on the outside and you're
getting accolades.
How do you feel.
About your life.
How do you really feel.
And try to Wade through thebullshit that you're telling
(13:24):
yourself.
Oh, M I make 400 K a year.
What the fuck does this?
Em guy not know?
It's not about that.
Okay.
One thing that I learned fromthis whole recovery thing.
Is.
I had, I thought that I had itall.
In my active addiction.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Micro (13:48):
I had a prestigious degree saying,
oh, he graduated with a highGPA.
I was making a lot of money.
I had side hustles.
I had a lot of status at work.
My parents thought that I wasthe greatest thing since sliced
bread, because I was doing sowell in all of these things.
(14:08):
But.
All of the attention and thething, that's the things that
society care about your incomelevel, your education level.
That wasn't enough.
It wasn't even fucking close toenough.
That was just the tip of thefucking iceberg.
For what I needed to live afulfilling.
And content life.
(14:31):
From being a functioning addict,it taught me that.
It doesn't matter how much shitthat you have.
It doesn't matter how wellyou're doing at your job.
Those are not the necessaryelements.
For living a fulfilling.
Peaceful life.
You need real things you need.
Connection.
You need honesty with otherpeople.
(14:53):
You need real relationships andguess what?
Connection, honesty, realrelationships.
These don't happen when you'rean addict.
But these all start to form.
Once you start calling.
Out of that vicious fuckinghole, that cycle.
Of active addiction.
(15:14):
And that's what I wish foreverybody out there.
Who's listening.
Whether you're.
An addict who doesn't have ahome or.
You're a functioning addict witha great job.
You're both one in the same.
And so am I in that we all sharein the struggle.
But I promise you I've seen it.
(15:35):
I've seen it so many times.
You too.
Can get through it.
Whew.
I mm.
This was thoughts of an addict.
Thank you so freaking much forlistening and I can't wait to be
talking to you again.
Have a great rest of your day.
What's up everybody.
This is M this is thoughts of anaddict.
Two episodes in a week.
Whoa.
Oh, who is this guy?
It is so good to be back witheverybody and to all my
listeners out there.
God damn, I am so grateful forall of you.
(00:35):
I mean, even if I had zerolisteners on each episode, I
would probably be doing thisanyway.
Because.
This is really fun.
And I think.
It makes me feel pretty good,but hopefully to the people that
are listening, they're not justall mocking me.
Hopefully someone's gettingsomething out of any of the
(00:57):
things that are coming out of mymouth.
So thank you so, so mucheverybody for tuning in and.
If you have any inquiries or youwant to be on the show or, you
know, somebody who wants to beon the show, go ahead and email
thoughts of an addictshow@gmail.com.
I've got a pretty blank inboxright now, except for one email.
(01:19):
My dear old mother sending meone of the nicest messages I've
ever seen.
I love you, mom.
All right.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Mic (01:29):
All right.
So I wanted to start off thisapp.
By asking you the listener.
To imagine an addict.
Think of a quintessentialaddict.
Give you like five seconds here.
(01:52):
Okay.
So what image came to your mind?
My guess would be that it was.
Someone with a heroin needle intheir arm, climbing out from
behind a dumpster.
Or maybe it was some hot junkiewho's sitting on their couch all
day, eating ranch, flavoredDoritos and watching old Adam
(02:12):
Sandler movies.
But one that you might not havebeen thinking of is.
The person who is leading theirsales team.
Or the person who was gettingstraight A's in their school.
And guess what.
(02:32):
That last one, that was the kindof attic.
That I was.
This is what we call.
A functioning addict.
And that is what I wanted totalk to you about today.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo (02:47):
Imagine downtown San Francisco and.
This high-powered businessman.
And his little monkey suit andhis briefcase.
He walks over a homeless guy onthe ground who has a needle
sticking out of his arm.
If you're a third-partybystander, you look over at that
situation and you think.
(03:09):
Well, that guy.
That guy on the ground.
He's a fucking addict,obviously.
Well guess what.
That high powered businessman,there is a real chance.
That he's an addict too.
That.
There is a very deep malady inthat homeless man soul.
(03:30):
That, that high powered businessexecutive shares with them.
The functioning addict is kinda,it's kinda like a chameleon.
Where.
You can't really tell from theoutside.
That they're fucked up.
The functioning addict hasgotten really, really good.
(03:54):
At hiding.
The massive problem that theyhave inside of themselves.
And I know that this wascertainly the case for me.
Almost all.
Of my quote unquote addictedlife.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Micro (04:12):
I remember being in college and I
was getting all A's.
I was doing all the things thatI was supposed to be doing.
And from an outsider'sperspective, Mama and Papa would
ask, oh, how's school going andI'd show them, look, look, I got
a 4.0 woo.
Whew.
I'm doing well and getting thisfucking piece of paper.
(04:35):
Yay.
But, what did that look like?
On the inside.
Just doing a bunch of stimulantsand staying up until odd hours
just to pump out.
A's to learn a bunch of shitthat I wouldn't need.
In the real world.
From the outside.
I was highly functional.
(04:58):
In my soul, I was highlydysfunctional.
Even though things might've beengoing well from the outside, I
was still just using to live inliving the use.
But by getting good grades.
I could hide it.
Well, I could hide it from myfriends.
I could hide it from my family.
(05:18):
I remember I had some reallyclose friends of mine who
identified.
I had a problem.
Doc goat.
They would say, dude, em, yougot to chill the fuck out.
You're smoking way too much pot.
You got a cat it out.
And I'd say, well, I have highergrades than you guys.
So you guys don't know what thefuck you're talking about.
(05:39):
And.
This was my camouflagethroughout college.
This was my camouflage.
This is what allowed me to getaway with my addiction.
Not only to other people.
And myself.
To myself.
I was lying.
I would say, Hey, em, You'veworked so hard over this past
(06:00):
semester.
Look how well you did.
You can fucking do a little bitmore drugs on the weekends now.
You can start, you can ramp upthe drugs from three times a
week, four or five times a week,because look.
You got those good grades?
Woo.
And this isn't to say that,getting good grades wasn't
important, but I will say.
(06:23):
It's what I used as a coverup.
You really feel like, you know,what.
I can do this addiction thing.
This addiction thing, isn'treally a problem for me because
I'm doing well on this wholesocial status element.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo M (06:38):
Which actually brings me to one of my
main points of the pod today,which is, this is why being a
functional addict.
And this is what I'm going toargue for this way.
Being a functional addict in somany ways is so much more
destructive than being adysfunctional addict.
Because you have that marker.
You have that thing.
That you can keep lying toyourself about.
(07:00):
If I had fucking nothing.
If I was just living at mom anddad's house, didn't have a job.
Wasn't doing shit was justsmoking weed.
On the couch all day.
Then I probably would've said tomyself much earlier.
Alright.
Um, You're fucking up.
We gotta make a change here andwe gotta do it quick.
(07:20):
But.
When things are going well onthe outside, you've got people.
Woo.
Good.
And you got people applauding,you.
And in a lot of ways, it'sreinforcing the shit behavior.
That addicts have.
And this didn't only apply to mycollege.
So I went into the working worldand I was a sales guy.
(07:42):
And I was actually performingthe highest on my team.
And, I would grind my ass offwhen I was at work.
And my reasoning for it was.
I made a deal with myself whereokay.
If I make three sales today,Then I get to do.
(08:02):
Uh, painkiller.
After work.
And.
I feel like a lot of.
High powered business people.
Actually use drugs as a rewardsystem in namely alcohol.
Someone closes the big deal.
Oh, okay.
What's all.
Now I get to get really fuckedup tonight.
(08:25):
And maybe that's not an addict,but you can see how.
An addict would easily pickthese behaviors up.
Of okay.
I'm doing really, really well atwork.
That means I should go to goreally, really hard with the
drugs that I'm doing right now.
And that's exactly what happenedto me.
(08:46):
And luckily for me, Luckily.
So luckily for me, My usingramped up so much when I started
working.
That the camouflage started toreally chip and tear away.
There would be days where I'dcome into work.
So fucking hung over from thenight before just a God damn
(09:06):
drug cocktail of epicproportions.
It'd be a Tuesday night and Ijust be ripping fucking uppers,
downers all arounders like anabsolute fucking degenerate.
And I would basically crawl onmy hands and knees in to work.
And I would tell my old boss,I'd say, Hey dude, like, I'm not
feeling well.
(09:27):
And that would work.
That would work.
A few times that work once ortwice a month.
But when it turned into a weeklything, like my boss was no
dummy.
He'd say all right.
Um, let's attack.
Like what the fuck is reallygoing on here?
Do you have a problem that I'mlike, yep.
You got me.
And.
So I quickly turned from afunctioning to a barely
(09:51):
functioning addict.
And when I turned to barelyfunctioning, it was actually
much easier for me to get clean.
Because I no longer had theaccolades from the outside.
I didn't have people applaudingme telling me how well I was
doing.
I had people telling me, dude,you're fucked up.
I need to get some fucking help.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo (10:13):
Because when you're a totally
functioning addict.
It's pretty hard to hit a rockbottom.
In my 10th episode.
I talk all about how rock bottomis often the turning point for
addicts.
People usually remember the lasttime they use, because it had
such a profound.
Sad tragic impact on them.
(10:36):
But when things are going.
Relatively well, It's prettyhard to get to that point.
And when you're functioning,Quote unquote, well, You're not
going to be crawling out frombehind that dumpster.
You're not going to have thatmoment.
When you wake up in a Vegashospital, not knowing how the
fuck you got there.
And maybe most importantly,you're not going to have that
(10:58):
intervention moment where yourloved ones are telling you, Hey.
You're fucking up our lives too,dude.
Go get some fucking help, notjust for you, but for us,
please.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Mic (11:13):
And rest in peace to my closest
friend in the world.
The one I was alluding to.
In the first episode in hell,the reason I created this
podcast.
He was the highest functioningaddict.
That I had ever met in my entirelife.
It's only a year or two olderthan me.
He was already a VP.
(11:34):
Working multiple jobs, justfucking, absolutely crushing
life from the outside.
But God damn.
Was he at.
Tortured soul.
On the inside.
And there were times where Iwould candidly wish.
Fuck kind of hope he gets fired.
I kind of hope things start togo a little bit more south for
(11:57):
him.
Because then maybe it would be agigantic slap in the face, a
wake up call that I couldn'tjust break through to him, but.
Unfortunately.
It was just too late.
He was too high functioning.
He didn't start to go down thisdecrepit path at the end of his
life.
He was absolutely fuckingkilling it up until the day that
(12:19):
he passed away.
And so I think that's the point.
Of my episode today, which is.
You could be listening to thisright now.
And you could be highlyfunctioning.
That doesn't mean that you'renot an addict and more
importantly, pet doesn't meanthat you're fried.
From the same three.
(12:41):
Final destinations that addictsrun into.
Jails institutions and death.
Oh, my.
So my ask to you is.
If you are a highly functioningperson.
But you think you might have aproblem?
Ask yourself.
(13:02):
Why do you think.
You have this problem marriedto.
You're high.
Functioning life.
Just because things are going onwell on the outside and you're
getting accolades.
How do you feel.
About your life.
How do you really feel.
And try to Wade through thebullshit that you're telling
(13:24):
yourself.
Oh, M I make 400 K a year.
What the fuck does this?
Em guy not know?
It's not about that.
Okay.
One thing that I learned fromthis whole recovery thing.
Is.
I had, I thought that I had itall.
In my active addiction.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Micro (13:48):
I had a prestigious degree saying,
oh, he graduated with a highGPA.
I was making a lot of money.
I had side hustles.
I had a lot of status at work.
My parents thought that I wasthe greatest thing since sliced
bread, because I was doing sowell in all of these things.
(14:08):
But.
All of the attention and thething, that's the things that
society care about your incomelevel, your education level.
That wasn't enough.
It wasn't even fucking close toenough.
That was just the tip of thefucking iceberg.
For what I needed to live afulfilling.
And content life.
(14:31):
From being a functioning addict,it taught me that.
It doesn't matter how much shitthat you have.
It doesn't matter how wellyou're doing at your job.
Those are not the necessaryelements.
For living a fulfilling.
Peaceful life.
You need real things you need.
Connection.
You need honesty with otherpeople.
(14:53):
You need real relationships andguess what?
Connection, honesty, realrelationships.
These don't happen when you'rean addict.
But these all start to form.
Once you start calling.
Out of that vicious fuckinghole, that cycle.
Of active addiction.
(15:14):
And that's what I wish foreverybody out there.
Who's listening.
Whether you're.
An addict who doesn't have ahome or.
You're a functioning addict witha great job.
You're both one in the same.
And so am I in that we all sharein the struggle.
But I promise you I've seen it.
(15:35):
I've seen it so many times.
You too.
Can get through it.
Whew.
I mm.
This was thoughts of an addict.
Thank you so freaking much forlistening and I can't wait to be
talking to you again.
Have a great rest of your day.
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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.