April 29, 2025 • 56 mins
In this powerful episode of the Be A Voice podcast, we sit down with Michael Worthy, the Director of Philly Unknown, who shares his incredible story of survival, redemption, and transformation. Michael reflects on his early years of moving from the South to Philadelphia, where he faced the harsh realities of city life. Struggling to find his place and avoid falling into the gang lifestyle, he chose a dangerous path of running guns and drugs for protection. His troubled journey led him to addiction, as he fell into the grip of crack cocaine. But Michael's story doesn't end there—after hitting rock bottom, he turned his life around and has been clean and sober for 17 years. Today, he uses his experiences to lead the Philly Unknown Project, dedicated to empowering others and creating positive change in the community. Tune in to hear Michael's candid reflections on overcoming adversity, the lessons he’s learned, and his mission to help others avoid the same pitfalls. A true testament to the power of transformation, Michael’s story is one of hope, resilience, and the power of second chances.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Welcome to be a voice. This is Brick Carpenter on
USULA Media. Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Today I am having a little casual bit of a day.
It's been a little crazy day for the day, but
a little casual day. And uh that's good because my
guest today is somebody that I'm very casual, very comfortable with,
a person that's been around for quite some time with
myself and the organization that I run named Philly Unknown,
are nonprofit and today I am sitting here with my
(00:49):
guest and the program director of Philly Unknown, Michael Worthy. Hey, Mike,
all right, Yeah, getting over a little sickness.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yes, still hanging on a little bit, you know. I mean,
so I hope it doesn't get in the way of
what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yeah, you're fine, you'll talk here, have no problem talking
once you start talking, man, sometimes it's hard to shut.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
You up pretty much. Yeah, So you're cool with that,
you know. And I'm glad that you broke out the
brand new kicks to come in here today.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Oh yeah, those are awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Are those green? You got the green on fre Eagles green?
Speaker 4 (01:19):
No Nike black.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Those are black. It's a light hitting them then they
look green.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
You'll go with that.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
So I wore these one day and my buddy Celsa
sending to me those are really nice bobos, these her Adidas.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
He's like they are not I'm like they are.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
You know what he was sayingbas I knew what he.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Was saying, The old people know what are you know
what buddahs are? You laughed? Yeah, you wore them.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
And Peace Specials.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
You wore them. You still do?
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Why not? Right? Why more? You can pay less?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Feet are comfortable, It's all that matters. And at your age,
comfort is important.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Oh tell me about that.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, So this is you know, this is gonna be
a good show. We talk a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
We talk every almost every day, but you know there's
things that when we talk, and we do talk about
stuff about our lives.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
It's usually in groups of people.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
It's usually around others because of what we do with
philium known and you know what your role is and
just who you are and what you've been doing. You know,
and I know you, and I know you as Mike,
and I know you as Michael Worthy and Michael Worthy,
the you know, the man about town who helps everybody out.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
And but you are a person of long term recovery.
How many years?
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Seventeen years?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
January seventeen years. You just hit seventeen years in recovery. Yep,
abstinent for seventeen years of cleaning.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
And sober for seventeen years and practice recovery. Get out
of here practicing recovery.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Practicing recovery. Isn't that interesting that after seventeen years you're
still practicing.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
I don't know if it's interesting. If you've actually truly
play or following the program, it's going to always be
constant and constantly changing.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
So you follow the program.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
I connect to the spiritual aspect of the program for
me because I need to step outside of what I know,
you know what I mean everything, I know everything kind
of person somebody that's directing my path and allowing me
to follow it and staying on that path.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
So that know it all feeling. You've had that your
whole life? Oh yeah, that's always been.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Well, there was no choice, you know what I mean.
We grew up with no father figure in the house.
You I mean, my mother had seven children and I
end up being the eldest male, so I ended up
taking on that mantle.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
So you took on that father, old father, and I.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Never got an opportunity to play the kid.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Now. So you aren't You aren't originally from Philadelphia. Oh no, no Union,
South Carolina, South Carolina. Oh yeah, How long ago did
you come to Philadelphia?
Speaker 4 (03:43):
I came to Philly at fourteen years old, all right,
So you spent.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Your growing years. He was formative years here, very important years.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Yeah they were, but they didn't yield anything by the positivity.
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Because from the first day that I woke up here,
I saw a guy. I was looking out of my
third floor window, and this is the day we moved here,
and I saw this guy sitting on our steps outside,
and two guys coming up the street, and two more
guys coming in the opposite way up the street. And
they walked up to the guy, and the first two
held his hands, and the other two one held his legs,
(04:20):
and the other took a brick and smashed him in
the face. So I had an awesome introduction into Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
So he came from South Carolina, small town, South Carolina.
Why why would your family move here?
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Your mother for a job, yepor for your family here already?
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Oh yeah, I did.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Actually, my uncle lived here on seventeenth and Wayne's seventeenth
and Styles just right up with at the avenue, going
to the nineteenth eighth street playground.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Start around the corner from the Thirst store that way round.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
All right, So your mom moved here for a job.
All seven kids, oh yeah, all by ourself, all by ourself,
and you as the oldest male at fourteen, yep.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
So the responsibility that I had to take on it
was quite a bit.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
I mean, I needed to learn the city and what
it was about and how to maneuver within it.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Mine I'm from down South. I don't know nothing about
this kind of stuff, you know what I mean. But
I had to learn.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
These tactics in order to protect my younger siblings.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
So you didn't have public transportation like this, Oh no, Rey,
polar transportation, nothing.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
If a bus came and picked us up, we were fortunate.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, I mean, because at this time you're talking about
us being in the early sixties, mid sixties, and the
segregation hadn't happened, you know what I mean. So they'll
come pick up the white kids, but they'll leave the
black figs to walk to school and walk back home
regardless of the weather. And my family didn't approve us
not going to school because we had an opportunity.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
So whatever the weather, we were going.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So back in the sixties, your determination on whether you
were going to score or not was that the bus
was going to pick you up.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
No, we went anyway, but we trust that the bus
was going to take us.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
But if you.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Didn't have means to get there, you wouldn't have went walked.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
You walked.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And how far we're walking you about?
Speaker 4 (06:03):
The school was about five to six miles away from
my house.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
So when you say when I was your age, we
walked to school.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
You're one of that. Oh yeah, I'm realistic about that.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
I mean, I'm the guy that walked walked to school
with the hole in the bottom of his shoes filled
with newspaper or cardboard.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Yeah, that was a reality for us seven kids.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Seven that's just my mother kids. That's not counting the
rect of people that were living in the household.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
I think it was thirteen of us all in the house, uncles, mother,
and grandmother.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
It's a family, a family. Small town, oh, extremely small.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
It's so small to the point where there was no
access to anything.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Uh, if we had food. It was food that we
grown with a little bit of money that we made.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
We want more food, but what we didn't have, we
end up trading with the neighbors, I mean for what
we needed or.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Yeah, everybody knew everybody.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So conon of Philly, Where you moved to?
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Where? What part of Philly? We moved to nineteenth and
Brown when we first moved here, Francis Felle, we were
at nineteenth and Brown, and we moved from nineteenth and
Brown just down the block to seventeenth and Swag in
front of Daryl School.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Your uncle, Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, because I used to go to school and a
T shirt just come up with doing run across street
to the school. So that was pretty cool. And we
stayed there to something in sometime in the eighties and
we moved over to Mauvernon Street. Tenth to Mauvernon just
be bus bring on the other side on the other.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Side, so I had to walk.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I had to walk to school through two gangs while
they were fighting.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
They just let me go. Years was this they let
me go? This was seventy eight, seventy nine in an
area like that, none of them bothered me. Is let
me go?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
So at the age of fourteen, you got here, you
had a culture shock shock.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Oh yeah, trying to you know, play dad to you know,
six siblings, you know, trying to maintain my mom's working
and go to school and everything, and you.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Know, here you are then thrown into a world that
you don't know. You know, how did the addiction start?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Oh that was later down the line.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Actually, I think that I can actually take a look
now back at it and see where it could have
started to jump off that I didn't recognize. See, the
thing about addiction is that even though we're using at
the moment, we can't see the progression of it where it's.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Going to take us later down the line.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And I think that when we moved here a while,
if we moved here, I was walking around.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
I didn't tell you. I walked around and got lost.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Did a that's every day for you mine.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
I walked around and got lost, and sitting on this
step and got lost from where just I walked out
of my house just to take a note, walk around
the neighborhood, and I got lost know where my house was.
This was day one.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
So I sat down on the step and I was going, oh, man,
what the hell do I live at? And my mother
comes out the door and she says, are you all right?
I said a moment step that sounds.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Like something he might do today too, though he does.
Weird it is, But you sure where you're at?
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Though?
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Do you think that was sort of an anxiety that
hits you there because you didn't know where you three thoughts?
You didn't know?
Speaker 4 (09:22):
I know, I think it was more of walking around.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
And looking at these kids that were my age or
maybe a little bit younger, smoking smoking weed, smoking cigarettes,
drinking beer, hanging on the corners, cursing and yelling and
screaming at each.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Other parents I don't know. And the parents was just
oblivious to it. I mean, it was really crazy.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I mean, you can't do that down South because one,
you're not gonna be hanging on no corners, especially not
no black people hanging on the corner. And secondly, uh,
the parents had a better grip on their children. And
when you said be home at such and such time,
that kid was home at that time. He wasn't chanced enough.
Young Even when the son started going down, you can
(10:04):
hear people going, oh man, I got to go. I
had to get home.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
So when you were the Philly at that age. Was
the segregation then yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Barely was it?
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Was it shifting?
Speaker 4 (10:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:17):
I think it had already made the shift actually, because
my brother he went to Great Valley High School there,
well those white people are those upper middle class white people.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
That's far out. Yeah, it's out in the Pailly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Why how did he get all they out there?
Speaker 4 (10:35):
He had some family from his father's side out there.
There was six of them, six cars in that house
because they all needed to go to school.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
And to work. So he went to Great Valley. Where
did you go?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I went to start a flash here on Thirteenth Street
and then moved over to William Penn. And when they
moved over to Benjamin Franklin while they were building William
Penn and when they open Pin, I was one of
the first students to go there.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
So did you graduate from high school?
Speaker 4 (11:04):
No, I dropped out. I dropped out of school in
the eighth grade.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Eighth grade, So high school started eighth grade then, so
why what made you drop out? Well?
Speaker 4 (11:12):
No, high school then started eighth grade.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
But I dropped out of eighth grade cause I stopped
going to class in that point.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
What what made you stop going too slow. School's too slow?
Speaker 4 (11:23):
You were they were?
Speaker 3 (11:24):
They were, Yeah, I come from down South, an education
system in the South there was much figher and much faster,
you know what I mean, because all the people in
my class were all white people and they going to
get their education board. So we just was tagging along
and catching on through the education while they were teaching
it to deal.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
But were you bored up here?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Hell yeah, Hell yeah, because well I came up here
and went to the fifth grade. I got skipped from
the fifth grade to the seventh grade, and I went
through the seventh grade. I skipped from the seventh grade
to the ninth grade. This is how slow the system was.
And my reading levels were so high. They just couldn't
help but pass me. But you dropped out though I did.
(12:05):
But you liked school because I was bored. But you
liked school.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
I did you like learning?
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Oh yeah? I was smart.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
You still like learning?
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Oh yeah, still smart?
Speaker 1 (12:14):
So and eighth grade you know to to to make
What did you do? What did you do?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
We went in the We went in the back door
of we went in the front door. Like most people
do when they go into school, they go into their classroom,
but instead of us going to the classroom. We and
my best friend we would go in the building out
the back down South Philly and you hang out down
to tell you market till three o'clock.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Just hang out down there, and when you.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Got close to the time to come home, we started
making it back home. We go back in the back
door and back out in.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
The front door, so you officially stopped.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
I think one of the things that played a role
in that was that each time the classes would changed,
that they'd be fighting in the hallways because we're there
was like multiple gangs in that school.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, so the game I think I was okay, So
you didn't want to go to school for those reasons, Yeah,
I can see that was it. So the gang presence
was heavy then, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Oh yeah you kidding, Yes, yes, yes, I mean I
remember them trying to get me to join, which wasn't
going to happen because my mother didn't played me you
want to nothing unless he knew about it. And so
instead of them getting me to join, we made a
deal out run for them, you know what I mean,
And that's it. So they needed weapons. I'll go pick
(13:30):
it up, bring it to them, drop it off. When
it over it, I'll pick it up, take it back,
because I was the fastest personal round that they ever seen.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
So you you learned the streets quickly.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
I had no choice, and.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
We started running.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
They had four more brothers.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
So what age was that you started running?
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Seventeen? I was seventeen.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
So did you have a job in between that? Like
when you left school and seventeen?
Speaker 4 (13:55):
I took a job around I just find it. That's
such a good job.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Around twenty years old, okay, and I was working on
the corner of Spring Garden and.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Ridge.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
There used to be up a guy that used to
have a newspaper standing there right on that diamond thing.
But he took it and changed it around and make
it a holy shop and gave it to his son,
Paul Block. I remember that fine, And I started working
with Paul, crazy white guy. Loved his attitude, loved the
fact that he didn't give a shit what color you,
(14:30):
It didn't matter him. He just like having fun, you know.
So me and my friends all end up working for him.
So that was pretty cool because the restaurant was ours. Actually,
you know, keep it open as ladies. We want to
close it whenever we wanted to, and everybody got served
and it got stroyed with kindness and courtesy.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
So you know, there was some good stuff, there was
some bad stuff, you know, And like everybody else's life,
everybody goes through their own, you know, trials, learning curse,
you know. So I want to know one of the
to start then, and.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
That started around nineteen years old. I think it started
before that.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
I think it started take I think it began when
those guys were standing on the corner drinking beer and
I wanted to be a.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Part of them.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
I'm not a good person for making friends because I'm
really really particular about who I want as a friend
because most friendicships, like most romances, you have to give
a percentage to get back. And I'm not a person
that wants to give anything because I want all mine.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Mister Vip puts that on silent. You don't how to
answer and text email of this? How are you that's
turned it off? Put it in a COVID to turn
it off?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
So it's funny you say that because you actually to
this day, at this stage, you make it very clear
about that boundaries with people too, Like if you're going
to establish a friendship of some type, you're gonna feel
that out and you're really so that started young for you.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
I'm a great joke, your character. I'm a great judge
of individuals, you know what I mean. I don't know
if this grew became more. When I went to school
for psychology, it helped me to learn how to look
into who people were and how they why they present
themselves the way they do, And so I can pretty
much have a five minute conversation with somebody and I
(16:21):
know more about them than they can tell me with
their own mouth in five minutes.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
So with all this, why did it start just because
you want to be cool?
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I wanted to Yeah at the beginning, But I remember
I talked to you about the progression of the thing
that you don't see coming. Yeah, I mean it started
off probably this beer drinking on the corner, or cans
here and there, even smoking a joint here and there.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Once in a while.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Drinker. You drink forties.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
I wouldn't anything else, just from them South.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
When you were up here, they drink forties cans later
down the line, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Drink oh everything, everything, everything.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Me and the guys who was standing on the corner
with bouts of thunderbird and oise juice.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Thunderbird wine wine.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
All right, wait, you would mix, you would mix.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
The oly juice was for the other stuff we had,
the vodka. It was crazy, man, that that point. I
was watching this whole thing play out, especially now that
you brought it up. You know, I watched this wik
from the lutle cancer beer and one joint a week
maybe who now it's Norton powder, you know what I mean?
(17:33):
Taking pills not very much.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And it was it till nineteen that you tried your
first drug or anything like that.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Yep?
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Did you lose some sense of this?
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Like patriarchs, I found, I found the freedom of being here.
So I had to come home one day one day
and tell my mother you have a choice. You're either
gonna be out there selling this stuff where you're gonna
be taking it.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
So I choose to sell it. I also wind up
being wind up being coming.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
So you were a really good runner, were you?
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah, good runner? But not a good seller?
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Oh yeah, no, not a good seller.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Not a good seller.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
I ain't like selling anything, not good at that at all.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
But illoyd to become good at it, you know, I mean,
not end up on U master in Indiana and only
black guy over there working, I mean my own shift.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
I seld out everything I had.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Do you mean a black guy working a master in Indiana?
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Uh? I moved to yeah, mash in Indiana.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Masher or master master masher who was actually I was
more right on mother whose territory was that?
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Uh for theaking god named Pete?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Okay, so it was a Puerto Rican territory, Okay.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Yeah, and I ended up being the only black guy
around there that was working.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Was that a segregation back then as well?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Oh, this wasn't very long so yeah, yeah, this wasn't
that long ago. Well it is now, but at that time,
it wasn't that long ago. It wasn't no more than
like ten years from the nineteen years, so twenty nine
that's long.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
A lot of stuff happens in those years, twenty years.
Everything that a different time, brother.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Everything that usually happens to me happens to me in
long terms, you know what I mean. I don't recall
myself spending a minimum year on anything at all, whether
it was worthwhile or not. I always dedicated myself in
my time to what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
But but that that that that cheap ass wine and
yeah and those those you know, downtown Brown Allantown swag joints,
save a smoking That wasn't your downfall.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
No, my downfall.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Crack became my downfall cocaine because the cocaine was no
longer again the progression of this thing, It was no
longer doing it anymore.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
I needed something more.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
The sniffing part.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yeah, end up with bleeding those and skinning, reilling up
inside and I kept walking and how going If my
mother wanted to know what was rolled.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
My lips, that was kind of hard to explain. Yeah,
so I's gonna take their water now, I'm off, getting right,
So then tell me, like it's interesting because you know,
like I had a progression as well, you know, and
(20:25):
I progressed, and you know, like I that's sort of saying,
but like my progression took me on a different route
and yours took you one way, and you.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Know, it becomes then a lifestyle. And at what point
did you finally like realize that like that was your life.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Abusing, Because let's.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Break it down. If you were if you were nineteen
is about thirty years old.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
If nineteen when you when you started, and you're seventeen
years in now about.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
About twenty five years old. I know that for a fact. Okay,
because I was using for third fo the years.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
That's a thirty year progression right there.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Yeah, I was using for thirty years.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
And at twenty five is that age where things supposed
to be developing began to develop?
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
So you started realizing this was not the way I.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
Life, This was not the way to live.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
I mean, I mean, as much fun as I thought
that I had, it really wasn't you. I mean, when
I started looking at the people that I began to
separate myself from, when I stopped looking at how I
was designing my life to play out, was no longer
happening that way.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
No. I actually wanted to be a CIA agent my
whole life. I always wanted to be in a CIA Why.
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Maybe I've watched too many movies on TV. But that's
what I was shooting for, you know what I mean.
And I thought the way one of the ways to
do that was learned as many things about as many
things as I could.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Smoking crack the way to learn how to be a
CIA agent.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, listen, man, you'd be surprised what
those guys end up doing.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
Just to but oh my god, justification for these the
disease actually for about thirty years. Thirty years.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Oh wait, you're calling me just you say disease. Why
did you say disease? What do you mean? Is a disease?
Speaker 4 (22:09):
That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
You mean you can choose a stop you no, no,
why would you say disease because of the disease something.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
I know exactly what it is now that I didn't
know before. I'm getting to that a little bit more later,
but let's okay.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I want to know right now. I'm asking you now.
I'll come back to.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
If it comes to disease, because when I opened it
up unfolded and looked at the whole thing, it wasn't.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
The drug that was the problem. It was why I
was using the drug that was the problem.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
I mean, this is why it comes to a disease
for me, because I have to think about the mental
health aspect of this.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
What's prompted this whole thing.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I think what prompted this whole thing was one I'm
born down south in a place, in a city, in
a country and state that don't want me there for
the wall and Secondly, I have all this hard all
these hard tasks to do just to be normal, to
live to what it's called normalcy.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
And then third I get.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Shipped off to this other place where everybody can do
whatever they want to do, and that was in conflict
with what I was taught, you know. And then the
next thing happens is that I end up connecting to
these people that I thought were friends, but only friends
because I only could have association with them while I
(23:30):
was high, you.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
Know, going that didn't make no sense to me.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Man See, I have to look back at this whole
thing and determine if it was the drugs or was
it truly a disease.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
And I believe that it was truly a disease.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And that's why, because your conversation will let it right
to that. Anyway. Yeah, it's funny because people who.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Think that it's a choice, you know, I mean, do
they think it's a choice that you're gonna dabble on
which one you like, like a like a shot or
something like that to you decide which one is he?
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Like?
Speaker 1 (23:59):
You know, you're gonna, oh, I like the Kamakazi. I'm
gonna stick with that for the rest of my life. Yeah,
you know, it's it's a series of experiments, and the
choice is.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
When somebody said, you tried the champagne. It's not like
the other ones we had. See how you like this one,
and I'll choose to do that. But when it becomes
no longer a choice is when I'll take that one,
this one, this one, in this one, because now I'm
trying to feed something.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
It wasn't trying to feed.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
So crack cooking, you know. The seventies the eighties, it
was notorious amongst most blacks's. Yeah, let's say it. That's
really was a downfall, That's what it was geared to me.
And it was sort of like a you know, we're
killing each other sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Sure, by the selling of the using, the selling and
the using and all that, it was sort of you know.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
And four, it was to eliminate the black population.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
That was the idea behind it.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Until they started getting hooked on it and their children
started getting hooked on it, and it was no longer
it was no longer doing what they expected it to do.
It had taken a different turn. Again, we're still talking
about progression, you know what I mean? Because even there
even their children had to come to some line in
(25:16):
the sand where they said, oh man, I want to
stop this, but I don't know how I can't.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Did you so back, you know, seventies eighties, you know
smoking crack? Did you frequent Kensington?
Speaker 4 (25:29):
No? No, I've never been out here in my life.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Because Kensington is an oak was the open air drug
market for crack.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
I knew that. I was young.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
So where'd you score that around?
Speaker 4 (25:38):
No way?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
So it wasn't just Kensington You could buy cracking back then.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
No, hell no, hell no, no, you can find it anywhere.
Who's wherever you buying, people would have it because everybody
had a need to have it, you know what I mean,
and supplying demand required it, you know what I mean?
So yeah, you can fight anywhere I moved from. I
(26:04):
wasn't doing it on seventeenth Street. But when I moved
down here on tenth Street, spring Arten, Tentph and Wallace Timpner,
then I began to cycle through that because now you
got people on Gerard Avenue, you got tenth and Master,
and eighth and Master, you got thirteenth in Butler. You
got all these people selling this thing, and people running
(26:24):
around going, oh this is great, you said try this.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
M h.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
I never touched that sucker.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
So you think just like you know, moving across Broad Street,
huge difference for you.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
Yeah, I mean the dynamics change wherever you're at.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
But now would the addiction have found you if you
didn't live over there? So if sooner or later?
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Okay, I mean sooner or later, because remind you, I'm
gonna remind you again that it's not the drug.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Oh okay.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
It was the disease of addiction that had me captive.
I mean those things that I didn't want to confront,
those traumise, those hidden issues, that secret thing going on
in the back of my head that I said I'll
never tell anybody about, you know what I mean. In
order to subdue that pain, So do those feelings, all
(27:15):
those emotions, I needed to take something to cover it up.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
Cough syrup would try to do it. I mean, I
try to drink so much, so much sugar that I'll
be running off the walls. But anything that could have taken.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Me outside of my thought processes that dealing with what
the core issue was.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
You know, we sit here, we laugh because we know
because we're both you know, we're both recovery and we
both know because we've both been there, We've done we
did whatever we could sometimes, you know. But it makes
me laugh because you know, we ran recovery homes at
one point and we couldn't figure out why our for
the life of hand sanitizer was constantly being empty, that
we had cases of it. And it's not funny. I'm
(27:55):
laughing because it's funny now that we look back. But
they were drinking the hand sanitizer because it whatever they
can get their hands on. That's an addiction. That's a problem.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
That's a problem.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
That's not when you say you have a choice. That's
when you know you have an issue.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
You don't have a choice in that case.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Right Still, you have to go back and understand that
it's still a mental health issue because until you resolve
whatever that is that's keeping you going back to doing that,
you're going to keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
So and you you you you went to school, you
got to you know, you got your you know psychology.
You also are a certified recovery specialist, ye, which is amazing.
I mean, you do good things with that. But you know,
there is that correlation between mental health and addiction.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
And I'll keep reminding people every time I'm get an option.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
So why wouldn't it be easier Michael, For why wouldn't
it been easier for me.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
To just go get my mental health in care of
instead of suffering through five overdoses and shooting up on
a daily and destroying my whole life.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Because the system believes that you need to be not
under the influence to be helped mentally.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
But I believe that in the course of working with
individuals like I've been doing for the last seventeen years,
I deal in their mental health first, and if their
mental health can become stabilized or subsided some then they
can hear me clearly about the addiction. But when I
try to deal with the addiction and not deal with
the mental health part, I'm going to keep using because
(29:28):
I'm in pain.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
So did you deal with your mental health part?
Speaker 4 (29:31):
My mental health part? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I'm a step person.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
In in my fourth step, I cleared myself almost completely.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
And the fourth step is a fourth step.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Is not right now?
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Oh God?
Speaker 3 (29:50):
But it's a it's a house cleaning step. Because I
fixed that, then it's a house cleaning step.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
The key here is to come into contact with all
of those people, places, and things that caused you harm,
and even the ones that you caused harm.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
It's about analyzing your assets as well.
Speaker 4 (30:12):
You know what I mean, because we have great que Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, you're afraid to say that word, but yeah, I
worked with too many clothes.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
You talk about invatory, you know what I mean. And
in that process you began to heal. But most people
think that that's the key point of it, and it's
not because.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Of the addict that I am. I'm only gonna be ready.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
To share with you what I want to share with you,
and that's all gonna be surface stuff.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
The key work is done underneath all of.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
That, when you free yourself from the top stuff and
the bottom things start bubbling up to the surface and
you don't sit there and don't know why you're crying
or why you're feeling blue or down, you know what
I mean, because you're starting to come into contact with
the core of what the initial problem was and you
don't know how to deal with it.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
So you are you are, You're a firm believer of
the twelve steps.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
Oh hell yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
For even if you don't have an addiction problem. I
believe that people should use it.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And it's not a bad thing to work. It's painful.
It's a very painful thing to do. It's not something like, oh,
I'm gonna sit down and write these letters down.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
It's life maintenance. Is what maintenance?
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Because when I have cleared all of my stuff out,
I know there's not a doubt in my mind that
there's still one piece lingering back there wondering what am
I gonna do when this don't work?
Speaker 4 (31:33):
What am I gonna do when this fails? You know
what I mean? What am I gonna say to people?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
How am I gonna respond to them when I go
around telling them all the stuff that I'm saying now
and all of a sudden I relapse and go back there?
Speaker 4 (31:43):
How can I justify that I can't? I mean?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
And they're not gonna understand the fact that anat.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
We all are doomed to h mishaps, you know what
I mean, and slip ups you know what I mean.
But that doesn't take anything away from who I am.
I told myself that I'd be afraid to go around
anybody after that because I talk too much crap I
do and there's all good stuff, and it's all the
right stuff. But I believe that my knowing that and
(32:14):
my understanding that the possibility that I could re left
and go through that place exists is the reason why
I know I'll never go back and using again. I
work in an area filled with individuals that are constantly
using all day long, day in and day out, which
and that is the blessing in the Christ for.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Me, which in itself is a really messed up thing.
Because you took yourself out of thirty years of active
addiction where you hit rock bottom many many, many times.
There isn't a rock bottom, So let's just.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Get rid of that. There is really no body doesn't exists,
The bottom doesn't exist.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
The bottom is now, The bottom is zero, you know, right,
it's it's you know, it's an infinite sort of thing.
I guess you could say maybe instead of zero, but
you know you but then you threw yourself into like
service and not just service of like you're gonna go
down to the to the mission and you're going to
work that day because you're a very religious person.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
You're very your your Christian.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Oh yes, you believe in the rapture, correct, hell, yeah,
that's a different episode.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
That's the whole another rapture. So you're one of them.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
Yes, I am too. I believe that Jesus Christ is
my Lord and saved.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
So like right now, you can just disappear right now.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
And I also believe that he rose again three days later.
Oh yes, hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
So if the raps were to happen, you would be
gone right now. Oh I don't know where would you go.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
With the rapt That's not a choice for me what
happens to me though.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
If I'm not a person, you're not.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
We're not to be getting into this yet.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
I know you tried over the months to get me
to have this conversation, but it's not one that I'm
going to have right now.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Okay, so you have stuff that part. But yeah, well,
Christian I was doing I was doing this recovery as
well well, and.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
A lot of recovery is faith based.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Let's say I would think that it is because if
you look at the pro well, it's self in general,
it's spiritual contact. It's all spiritually related. I mean, I
don't care if you choose God, Christ or whoever you
want to be your higher power. I'm not even caring
about that. I want you to get one thing done.
I want you to start working on yourself, you know
what I mean. You can identify what higher power you
(34:18):
want later on down the line if you want, But
for this moment, how about letting people that have some
time or some people who've been through this process and
doing the right things because of it, to be your
mentor or to be your guide. I mean, I sponsored
ten people and the youngest time that I have in
those ten people is six years, six years to fourteen
(34:41):
years clean and sober.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
All of my people are so you.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Just said clean and sober. How important is that in
the world of recovery today? Clean and sober? Don't forget
it's twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
I'm here, it is. It is, But I think that
it is to a point.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
So if I'm brand new and I want and I'm
I'm out there and I've been talking about.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
You know, going into treatment forever.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
And and and everything, and but what's scaring me is
it clean and sober language, So go off of that.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I've worked with a lot
of people on a daily basis, man that so much
want to get past this addiction thing, and for the
life of them. They don't understand why they can't. They
can't because in order for them to do this, there's
(35:35):
got to be something that's going to hold them over,
carry them through the withdrawal and all this stuff to
get to that place, and it's not being offered by
the system, you know what I mean, So they would
rather not even go.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
So once again it's a systematic failure.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Yep, they won't even go to treatment no more.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
I can't get anybody to go to treatment no more
because they don't been there so many times.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
But the results of the those that do go to
treatment get out and they're not totally abstinate because they
are on methadone or they're on supplicate or some boxing.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
With one one step before that, they get out, and
they get out because the system failed them already again
because they were in days and giving them thirteen days.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Some microaffects, it's like warming up your meal. It's you know,
it's gonna last for you know, ten minutes and it
goes back.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
So it's already bad enough that a person like me
would go into treatment and come out of treatment and
the prospects are already set against me.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
And I give everything to my program, everything to my program,
and it's still set against me that I would fail.
So I have to every day keep proving it wrong
that I won't fail. And that way that I can
prove it wrong that I won't fail, it comes to service.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
That's for me.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
You love service?
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Oh heck yes, man.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
I spent the first ten years cleaning my church every
Saturday just because I wanted to do it. Now because
nobody asks me to do it, because I wanted to
do it. I mean, I need to get into contact
with this giving back thing. And I tell my re
sponsors one simple phrase. Whatever it is that you're looking
to achieve, whatever you're looking for to come in the
(37:16):
blessing for him or to get back to is found
in your giving. So you need to ask yourself what
are you giving? So if you're giving nothing, why would
you be expecting anything. I always leave them with that
because I want them to understand that their service has value,
and the value isn't to someone else. The value is
(37:37):
to their self worth. The valuates to their their spiritual
and emotional growth, you know what I mean. The value
is to their continuous sobriety and recovery, And why don't
get a twisted neither, because sobriety and recovery are not
the same things. I hope nobody don't think that, because
they really are not man.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
So why is it so important then for people to
say that I have seventeen years sober or I have
seventeen years of recovery. I don't use the word sober
just because it's a stigma to people, you know, sometimes
and it holds people back because whatever.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
But why I think that Sometimes it's about the language
in the rooms of recovery and the guidelines. Their guidelines
and their bylines has specifically stated this, and it has
to be heered to according to their bylines. It has
(38:30):
to be a here to. I mean, my first year
I had given up that idea. I given up that
idea because I saw I can see what is coming
at me and I can see how to combat it
with the right circle of people around me. I mean,
it says, the broader the base, the broad the larger
the amount of people you have around you, the greater
(38:53):
the point of freedom. And I believe that truly, but
it gets lost when we're in a transition between Hi,
my name is Mike, and I'm an addict. Or Hi,
my name is Mike. I'm a person in long term recovery.
But see, how can you acknowledge being in recovery when
you first have an acknowledged that you have newsue?
Speaker 1 (39:13):
So why is it that if I go to an
AA meeting, I can't say, Hi, I'm Britt, I'm I'm
a person that suffers from substance use disorder that it
has to be high on britt, I'm an alcoholic. Yeah,
I'm britt I shaw haro. Why can't I say that in.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
A not a clue?
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Why is there a segregation there of AA, n A, C,
A essay, all those?
Speaker 3 (39:34):
Why do you think I dropped them all and went
to Christian Fellowship. I can say whatever I want to
say and nobody's going to say anything to me about it.
They're gonna wrap their arms around me and love me.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
So is their way wrong? Is Bill's way wrong? No?
Speaker 4 (39:50):
It needs to be rectified. According to the Times.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
How long ago to Bill start that organization?
Speaker 4 (39:55):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
And there's always called anonymous because he save me. I
didn't care if it was always called anonymous because there
was a stigma to it and people that were labeled
with it there was something wrong with it. Well, first
of all, it wasn't cool.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
I think that when it came out that they wanted
the confidentiality of it. They didn't want you to be
feeling guilty or something because people know that this is
what you're doing, and this is why they induced the
anonymity to it. But anonymity is only good for so long. Bro,
trust me, because you would tell on your own self.
(40:30):
So I have no anonymity. You can't asked me anything
that you want to ask me. And I'm going to
tell you. Just be careful that you're that you're aware,
be aware if you want to hear the response, because
I'm going to tell you exactly what I think, whether
you like it or not.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
So do you believe that the recovering out loud, like
you know we sort of do is the right way?
And nowadays in twenty twenty five, compared.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
To who believes up to the individual individual, I believe
we have to be up to the individual because you
can heal, you can lose a lot of things and
a lot of respect for people because they have this
information now. So I believe that it would be up
to the individual. The only time I talk around recovery
(41:14):
like this is whin them in a setting of recovery.
But when I'm outside of that thing, I pretty much
try to leave it alone because one I can't.
Speaker 4 (41:23):
This is who I am and it's what I do.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
I mean, So it's really kind of difficult for me
to find a conversation to get into where I can't
talk about recovery. Yeah, but then I have to remember
that everybody's not recovery. Now, this is my issue, not theirs,
you know what I mean. So I can't be putting
my stuff off one deal. So here go to psychology
of this scrap again.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Man, don't put your.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Shit on me. So let's all talk about recovery. Let's
talk about the rapture.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
No, we're not talking about all right, So.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Let's back to recovery then.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
So when we talk about that, and it's true, you know,
it's really weird because before people want to be anonymous,
they'll be wanted to know. People didn't want to know
because you had a disease, you were looked at like
a Leppard or something like that.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Now people don't want to shut up about it. Now
people introduce themselves like that.
Speaker 4 (42:03):
Addiction was in the closet, just like a homeboy. It
was in the closet.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Man, you understand what I'm talking about though, Man, it
was in the closet.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Nobody out loud. Nobody wanted to hear.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
It out loud, you know what I mean. But the
days addiction and recovery is changing. I really believe that
there's some things that need to be changed. The textbooks
need to be rewritten to fit the day's time. We
don't use the same drugs as people are using today.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
We don't get.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Recovery the same way that people did and when I
was doing it, you know what I mean, And hippo
need to just go ahead and be revised because it
fits nothing it it's nothing to do with.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
This at all anymore, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
So if we want some change and some action to
take care, we got to do it on the legislative level.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Oh takes power, takes some good people, numbers the numbers
to come together, a lot of unity.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
But there's also, once again, there's a division and recovery too.
And in this whole world that we live in and
that we work in, there there's a division yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
There is, but watch this too, just getting there's becoming
more awareness because it's happening to more people that didn't
think it was gonna happen to them. Senators and governors
and stay represented. All these people families are getting involved
in this, not only understanding that it's not just an
US problem, it's all of our problem.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Do you think it's just happening or it's it's always
been happening. People are just talking out about it because
it's becoming more and more freely.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Was in the closet there you go. They couldn't do
it because they're to devastate their family and the.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
People that blihood their jobs. Look.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Definitely, you don't want to say it loudly, I said
loudly because if you have an issue with me telling
you about who I am and what's going on with
me and what I need to do to make me
feel better, then I think your best better is not
to talk to me. It really is, because see, I
(44:13):
can take and turn this whole thing around and show
you where you're an addict. I can show you where
you have a problem. May not be substance use or
substance abuse. It may be too much coffee. It might
be too much exercise, it might be too much everything, you.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
Know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (44:28):
When we start doing things and then a stroup amount
we set ourselves up for.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
That It doesn't really just come in a chemical form.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
No, it's what you're trying to say, not at all,
you know, because we replace them, We replace our addictions,
and even ask for a person that you know suffers
from addiction will replace our adictions. So once we become
that sobriety person, then all of a sudden, food takes over,
or shopping, living through whatever.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Oh yeah, we know.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
He's one hundred and twenty nine pounds. I'm over two
hundred and thirteen pounds.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Also smoking a lot of crack. Oh you know that
gives you a one hundred the twenty nine pounds physique.
Once you stop doing that and you start bringing nutrients
into your body, you grow into your body.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
Brother, And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with all
of that stuff. Man.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
My job to day is to be an example. It's
the stand as a beacon of hope for the individual
who don't know or don't even believe that this can work.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
For them, you know what I mean. And the rooms
they would tell us that if you want we have
do what we do. Try it. It might not work
for you, but try something.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
So what if I were that person that approaches us,
that approaches us on the street when we're doing our
outreaches and stuff, and you know, we give you the
tail that we've been out here using so long, we
can't do it anymore, and you know we need help,
you know, or we need to get something. What would
you tell that person?
Speaker 3 (45:50):
I wouldn't tell them nothing about that, though, without trying
to do first of all, is emphasize with them first,
because in order to get a person to talk with
you fly and honestly, they need to know that you
feel where they're coming from. You know, they need to
They're not gonna talk to you. I had such a
difficult time after that five years in college of learning
(46:12):
how to implement all the stuff that I've learned as
a psychologist. I didn't know how to open the doors
of communication. So I'm standing right there next to the
Sunshine House smoking a cigarette with Lisa Kelly.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
And I'm going, well, what the hell, how am I
going to do this?
Speaker 3 (46:37):
I don't know how to approach these people because we
never covered that in college. So I was liking a cigarette.
This guy walked up to me and says, hey, man,
you got another cigarette, scratching his swords on his arm
and face peeling, and hairs semi clean and semi dirty
and semi nappy.
Speaker 4 (46:56):
Clothes, who have once shoe on and one.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Slept slipper hospitals everyone all the foot and it's thirty
five degrees outside, no coat on, his shirt is hanging
out of.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
His hospital pants.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
And I gave him a cigarette and we stood there
and he's still right there with me smoking a cigarette
and just started talking.
Speaker 4 (47:15):
We just started talking about anything.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
So is that your connecting? Is that your connector right there?
The cigarettes?
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Yep, that's why you do that.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
I had no nothing to do for people working. Bro.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Michael is like the cigarette king I am. If you
ask him for a cigarette, you're gonna get one. And
unless he doesn't have one, he won't say no it
was his last one.
Speaker 4 (47:35):
He'll give it. You always have one.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
So that's why you do that, because it connects you.
Speaker 4 (47:40):
It's a purpose.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
For my man, there was the only way that I
could find out how to open that door communication, and
it works for me.
Speaker 4 (47:46):
For the last eight years.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
What happens if you stop smoking cigarettes?
Speaker 4 (47:50):
Ever, I'm not sorry.
Speaker 3 (47:54):
I mean, the doctors might make me have to do it,
but first I'm concerned. I'm not because there's the wh
I can still use them as the catalist. Then I'll
have to smoke, but that ain't gonna happen. I mean, listen, man,
I think that for me, life is really simple. Now
do the right thing, just simply because.
Speaker 4 (48:15):
That's what it is.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
Treat people the way that I want to be treated.
Be aware of those individuals who are hurting inside and
don't know how to ask for help. Because you pay
closest attention, their spirit will cry out to you, asking
you for help that they can't even say it in
words that you know.
Speaker 4 (48:34):
I look at their contents, the.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
Continents, the outside of the spiritual part of them, and
it yells and squeams in my ear of what to
say to them and how to say that to them,
because most times you don't know, because you don't know
what their state of mind is. So I trust in
the God that I serve to guide me right to
that place. He was clear with me, I need you
to stand as a beg enough hope in the middle
(49:02):
of Hell, and I asked him where was hell? He said,
Kensington in Summerset. I've been staying at Kenslon in Sumrset
for eight years. I still stand at Kingston in Summrset.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
I know you do.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
You go out of your way to go to Kensingston
in Somerset to get to work. You take three modes
of transportation instead of just one.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
Yes, I do because I need them to see me.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
So now this makes sense to me. Before I just
thought you were a crazy old man.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
I need them to see that I'm still here and
I'm still around and I'm still available to them. They
have nothing to do with how I got to work.
It was the purpose for me going to work. Yeah,
it's really hard man to be me. I mean, I'm
not being funny saying that, but it really is because
it requires a lot that most people aren't willing to give,
(49:55):
and most people can't give because they don't have And
if you're not spiritually grounded, spirits you rooted, and something
that's good and something that's passionate and something that's positive,
you don't have it to give.
Speaker 4 (50:06):
How can you give something you don't possess.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
So with all the stuff you give all the giving
you do. You know all the time you spend me, like,
what do you do for yourself? Right?
Speaker 4 (50:14):
I knew it was coming.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
I was waiting on patiently for me, for self care
for me.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
I'm okay. I learned to be okay with being by myself.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
You.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
I mean, I have taken on so many personalities of
other people throughout the decades of my life that when
I finally cleaned myself off and got to see me
for the very first time, I didn't recognize me. When
I did recognize who that person was, and I knew
that I needed to put something else inside of me
(50:45):
that didn't require part of you or part.
Speaker 4 (50:47):
Of somebody else.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
That I decided that everything that's going to go inside
of me is going to be positive and giving.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
And that's I think a great way. I mean, it's
we didn't even get into everything you do, man, we
didn't get into what you do for Philly unknown that
you help run the workforce participants, you help run the garden,
you help run the hobby, help run the thrift store.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
You go down to the Sunshine House you help there.
You still do out each other street. You still attend
meetings and not the meetings that we talked about, but
other meetings, and you know, finding that time for yourself
is so difficult when you devote your life to service.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
I found that if I found that, if if I'm
serving properly, I have everything that I need.
Speaker 4 (51:29):
I have everything that I need.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
See when most people look at me, like you would
probably do or somebody else, they would look to say,
the physical is what they're looking at. They're looking at
what they can see with their eyes. But it's not
about that. It's about what's going on in here. For me,
It's about this clean spirit that I have. Man, It's
about this passion I have for somebody else's suffering, and
I plead that I can take it away from them
(51:51):
and give them, give them some of what I have
that they can continue on to the next steps of
their lives. And I watched this happen. I felt that
a whole bunch of times. At the beginning of.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Kens's Summerset, Well, if you're not standing at Kensing in Summerset,
people could find you a community thrifty on Westerard nineteen
West twenty nineteen West Yard.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
You're there at least two days a week Tuesdays and Wednesdays, definitely,
and other days as well.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Are you there or are they to find you in
the garden in the summertime?
Speaker 3 (52:24):
Summer, because I'm going out there, you're out there, You're
to find me. Think and know that when you run
into me, you're never going to forget me.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
Whether you like here or not.
Speaker 4 (52:34):
Whether you like it or not, there's nothing you can
do about it.
Speaker 1 (52:37):
I agree.
Speaker 4 (52:37):
I'm gonna love you till you learn to love your
own self. And I ain't scared.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
So so will you come back and have that conversation
with me about the rapture?
Speaker 4 (52:45):
Yeah, sometime we talked about raptors.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
Sometime we will.
Speaker 4 (52:48):
That would be probably a good conversation.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
It's gonna be a crazy coress.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
I'm bringing my Bible with me.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
No, you can't do that.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
I'll have a choice. There's so much you need to know. Man.
Speaker 1 (52:58):
You still read the Bible, Michael.
Speaker 4 (53:00):
Single day, five passages a day every day.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Those are your affirmations.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
No, no, no, not for affirmations. That's strictly scripted reading. I
do five scripture readings a day. I finished the whole
Bible like fourteen times already. But I still get up
every morning read my five passages as part of my
recovery journal. I still read my Just for the Day.
I don't read the textbook no more. Because the textbook
(53:26):
is in here. I can recite all that by heart.
I mean, I still have Alcoholics Anonymous book. I know
it by heart. I still have the Cocaine Anonymous Book.
I know it by heart. So it's not that I'm
distancing myself from what brought me to this place.
Speaker 4 (53:41):
Is that I'm molding.
Speaker 3 (53:44):
It over to figure out an easier, softer way to
give it to somebody else. You know, everybody respond differently
to things, so I love that it'll always be the individual.
I have to consider who the individual is first, because
what I say will depend on who they are and
how they receive it.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
That sounds like a great place for us to end,
because you can't really get much better than that.
Speaker 1 (54:07):
And sum it up. You know you do you do
great things, man, you do great things.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
One thing I will say is that you know, and
for somebody your age, because you're old, you know you are.
Speaker 4 (54:17):
Coming up June yep, sixty seven, sixty eight, you're already
sixty seven, that you lie on your application.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
I'm joking, you, fucking man. But one thing about you
is you're always willing to learn too, And.
Speaker 4 (54:33):
I'm glad that is because.
Speaker 3 (54:36):
This stands as a record of who I am and
what I'm about when I'm not here no more. So,
maybe somebody would get to see this down the line
that needed to hear it.
Speaker 1 (54:48):
Maybe someone get to see this sooner than you need
to hear it.
Speaker 4 (54:51):
Yeah, how about this.
Speaker 1 (54:52):
Don't sell yourself short there, man, I don't you know.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
And you're also out there on the on the documentary
Voice of America episode three, Damage Done the episode get
out there and watch that.
Speaker 1 (55:02):
His part was key one of the best we ever had.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
You know, talk about it, Michael. Thanks for being here,
Thanks for all you do. Thanks for you know, you
know it's bearing with me all these years because.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
Neither of you.
Speaker 2 (55:15):
It's it's a dynamic. And you know, when you got
two know it alls together. It really is painful, but
it works, but it works.
Speaker 4 (55:23):
It does.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
And everybody, if you are struggling in any way, shape
or form, reach out, reach out to Michael Michael Worthy.
Speaker 1 (55:33):
You know you can find him. Like I said, community thrift,
feeling unknown, reach out to somebody.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
There is help out there. Recovery is possible. The two
of us sitting here are living proof. We have twenty
five plus years total and more to come. So thanks
for coming out today, Thank you for having everybody, Thanks
for joining us.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
This is Brick Carpenter for being a voice on nosular media.
Have a great rest of your day.
Welcome to be a voice. This is Brick Carpenter on
USULA Media. Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Today I am having a little casual bit of a day.
It's been a little crazy day for the day, but
a little casual day. And uh that's good because my
guest today is somebody that I'm very casual, very comfortable with,
a person that's been around for quite some time with
myself and the organization that I run named Philly Unknown,
are nonprofit and today I am sitting here with my
(00:49):
guest and the program director of Philly Unknown, Michael Worthy. Hey, Mike,
all right, Yeah, getting over a little sickness.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yes, still hanging on a little bit, you know. I mean,
so I hope it doesn't get in the way of
what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yeah, you're fine, you'll talk here, have no problem talking
once you start talking, man, sometimes it's hard to shut.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
You up pretty much. Yeah, So you're cool with that,
you know. And I'm glad that you broke out the
brand new kicks to come in here today.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Oh yeah, those are awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Are those green? You got the green on fre Eagles green?
Speaker 4 (01:19):
No Nike black.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Those are black. It's a light hitting them then they
look green.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
You'll go with that.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
So I wore these one day and my buddy Celsa
sending to me those are really nice bobos, these her Adidas.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
He's like they are not I'm like they are.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
You know what he was sayingbas I knew what he.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Was saying, The old people know what are you know
what buddahs are? You laughed? Yeah, you wore them.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
And Peace Specials.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
You wore them. You still do?
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Why not? Right? Why more? You can pay less?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Feet are comfortable, It's all that matters. And at your age,
comfort is important.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Oh tell me about that.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, So this is you know, this is gonna be
a good show. We talk a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
We talk every almost every day, but you know there's
things that when we talk, and we do talk about
stuff about our lives.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
It's usually in groups of people.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
It's usually around others because of what we do with
philium known and you know what your role is and
just who you are and what you've been doing. You know,
and I know you, and I know you as Mike,
and I know you as Michael Worthy and Michael Worthy,
the you know, the man about town who helps everybody out.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
And but you are a person of long term recovery.
How many years?
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Seventeen years?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
January seventeen years. You just hit seventeen years in recovery. Yep,
abstinent for seventeen years of cleaning.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
And sober for seventeen years and practice recovery. Get out
of here practicing recovery.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Practicing recovery. Isn't that interesting that after seventeen years you're
still practicing.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
I don't know if it's interesting. If you've actually truly
play or following the program, it's going to always be
constant and constantly changing.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
So you follow the program.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
I connect to the spiritual aspect of the program for
me because I need to step outside of what I know,
you know what I mean everything, I know everything kind
of person somebody that's directing my path and allowing me
to follow it and staying on that path.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
So that know it all feeling. You've had that your
whole life? Oh yeah, that's always been.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Well, there was no choice, you know what I mean.
We grew up with no father figure in the house.
You I mean, my mother had seven children and I
end up being the eldest male, so I ended up
taking on that mantle.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
So you took on that father, old father, and I.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Never got an opportunity to play the kid.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Now. So you aren't You aren't originally from Philadelphia. Oh no, no Union,
South Carolina, South Carolina. Oh yeah, How long ago did
you come to Philadelphia?
Speaker 4 (03:43):
I came to Philly at fourteen years old, all right,
So you spent.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Your growing years. He was formative years here, very important years.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Yeah they were, but they didn't yield anything by the positivity.
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Because from the first day that I woke up here,
I saw a guy. I was looking out of my
third floor window, and this is the day we moved here,
and I saw this guy sitting on our steps outside,
and two guys coming up the street, and two more
guys coming in the opposite way up the street. And
they walked up to the guy, and the first two
held his hands, and the other two one held his legs,
(04:20):
and the other took a brick and smashed him in
the face. So I had an awesome introduction into Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
So he came from South Carolina, small town, South Carolina.
Why why would your family move here?
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Your mother for a job, yepor for your family here already?
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Oh yeah, I did.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Actually, my uncle lived here on seventeenth and Wayne's seventeenth
and Styles just right up with at the avenue, going
to the nineteenth eighth street playground.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Start around the corner from the Thirst store that way round.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
All right, So your mom moved here for a job.
All seven kids, oh yeah, all by ourself, all by ourself,
and you as the oldest male at fourteen, yep.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
So the responsibility that I had to take on it
was quite a bit.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
I mean, I needed to learn the city and what
it was about and how to maneuver within it.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Mine I'm from down South. I don't know nothing about
this kind of stuff, you know what I mean. But
I had to learn.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
These tactics in order to protect my younger siblings.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
So you didn't have public transportation like this, Oh no, Rey,
polar transportation, nothing.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
If a bus came and picked us up, we were fortunate.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, I mean, because at this time you're talking about
us being in the early sixties, mid sixties, and the
segregation hadn't happened, you know what I mean. So they'll
come pick up the white kids, but they'll leave the
black figs to walk to school and walk back home
regardless of the weather. And my family didn't approve us
not going to school because we had an opportunity.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
So whatever the weather, we were going.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So back in the sixties, your determination on whether you
were going to score or not was that the bus
was going to pick you up.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
No, we went anyway, but we trust that the bus
was going to take us.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
But if you.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Didn't have means to get there, you wouldn't have went walked.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
You walked.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And how far we're walking you about?
Speaker 4 (06:03):
The school was about five to six miles away from
my house.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
So when you say when I was your age, we
walked to school.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
You're one of that. Oh yeah, I'm realistic about that.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
I mean, I'm the guy that walked walked to school
with the hole in the bottom of his shoes filled
with newspaper or cardboard.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Yeah, that was a reality for us seven kids.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Seven that's just my mother kids. That's not counting the
rect of people that were living in the household.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
I think it was thirteen of us all in the house, uncles, mother,
and grandmother.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
It's a family, a family. Small town, oh, extremely small.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
It's so small to the point where there was no
access to anything.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Uh, if we had food. It was food that we
grown with a little bit of money that we made.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
We want more food, but what we didn't have, we
end up trading with the neighbors, I mean for what
we needed or.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Yeah, everybody knew everybody.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So conon of Philly, Where you moved to?
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Where? What part of Philly? We moved to nineteenth and
Brown when we first moved here, Francis Felle, we were
at nineteenth and Brown, and we moved from nineteenth and
Brown just down the block to seventeenth and Swag in
front of Daryl School.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Your uncle, Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, because I used to go to school and a
T shirt just come up with doing run across street
to the school. So that was pretty cool. And we
stayed there to something in sometime in the eighties and
we moved over to Mauvernon Street. Tenth to Mauvernon just
be bus bring on the other side on the other.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Side, so I had to walk.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I had to walk to school through two gangs while
they were fighting.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
They just let me go. Years was this they let
me go? This was seventy eight, seventy nine in an
area like that, none of them bothered me. Is let
me go?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
So at the age of fourteen, you got here, you
had a culture shock shock.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Oh yeah, trying to you know, play dad to you know,
six siblings, you know, trying to maintain my mom's working
and go to school and everything, and you.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Know, here you are then thrown into a world that
you don't know. You know, how did the addiction start?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Oh that was later down the line.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Actually, I think that I can actually take a look
now back at it and see where it could have
started to jump off that I didn't recognize. See, the
thing about addiction is that even though we're using at
the moment, we can't see the progression of it where it's.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Going to take us later down the line.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And I think that when we moved here a while,
if we moved here, I was walking around.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
I didn't tell you. I walked around and got lost.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Did a that's every day for you mine.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
I walked around and got lost, and sitting on this
step and got lost from where just I walked out
of my house just to take a note, walk around
the neighborhood, and I got lost know where my house was.
This was day one.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
So I sat down on the step and I was going, oh, man,
what the hell do I live at? And my mother
comes out the door and she says, are you all right?
I said a moment step that sounds.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Like something he might do today too, though he does.
Weird it is, But you sure where you're at?
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Though?
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Do you think that was sort of an anxiety that
hits you there because you didn't know where you three thoughts?
You didn't know?
Speaker 4 (09:22):
I know, I think it was more of walking around.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
And looking at these kids that were my age or
maybe a little bit younger, smoking smoking weed, smoking cigarettes,
drinking beer, hanging on the corners, cursing and yelling and
screaming at each.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Other parents I don't know. And the parents was just
oblivious to it. I mean, it was really crazy.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I mean, you can't do that down South because one,
you're not gonna be hanging on no corners, especially not
no black people hanging on the corner. And secondly, uh,
the parents had a better grip on their children. And
when you said be home at such and such time,
that kid was home at that time. He wasn't chanced enough.
Young Even when the son started going down, you can
(10:04):
hear people going, oh man, I got to go. I
had to get home.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
So when you were the Philly at that age. Was
the segregation then yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Barely was it?
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Was it shifting?
Speaker 4 (10:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:17):
I think it had already made the shift actually, because
my brother he went to Great Valley High School there,
well those white people are those upper middle class white people.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
That's far out. Yeah, it's out in the Pailly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Why how did he get all they out there?
Speaker 4 (10:35):
He had some family from his father's side out there.
There was six of them, six cars in that house
because they all needed to go to school.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
And to work. So he went to Great Valley. Where
did you go?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I went to start a flash here on Thirteenth Street
and then moved over to William Penn. And when they
moved over to Benjamin Franklin while they were building William
Penn and when they open Pin, I was one of
the first students to go there.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
So did you graduate from high school?
Speaker 4 (11:04):
No, I dropped out. I dropped out of school in
the eighth grade.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Eighth grade, So high school started eighth grade then, so
why what made you drop out? Well?
Speaker 4 (11:12):
No, high school then started eighth grade.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
But I dropped out of eighth grade cause I stopped
going to class in that point.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
What what made you stop going too slow. School's too slow?
Speaker 4 (11:23):
You were they were?
Speaker 3 (11:24):
They were, Yeah, I come from down South, an education
system in the South there was much figher and much faster,
you know what I mean, because all the people in
my class were all white people and they going to
get their education board. So we just was tagging along
and catching on through the education while they were teaching
it to deal.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
But were you bored up here?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Hell yeah, Hell yeah, because well I came up here
and went to the fifth grade. I got skipped from
the fifth grade to the seventh grade, and I went
through the seventh grade. I skipped from the seventh grade
to the ninth grade. This is how slow the system was.
And my reading levels were so high. They just couldn't
help but pass me. But you dropped out though I did.
(12:05):
But you liked school because I was bored. But you
liked school.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
I did you like learning?
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Oh yeah? I was smart.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
You still like learning?
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Oh yeah, still smart?
Speaker 1 (12:14):
So and eighth grade you know to to to make
What did you do? What did you do?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
We went in the We went in the back door
of we went in the front door. Like most people
do when they go into school, they go into their classroom,
but instead of us going to the classroom. We and
my best friend we would go in the building out
the back down South Philly and you hang out down
to tell you market till three o'clock.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Just hang out down there, and when you.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Got close to the time to come home, we started
making it back home. We go back in the back
door and back out in.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
The front door, so you officially stopped.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
I think one of the things that played a role
in that was that each time the classes would changed,
that they'd be fighting in the hallways because we're there
was like multiple gangs in that school.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, so the game I think I was okay, So
you didn't want to go to school for those reasons, Yeah,
I can see that was it. So the gang presence
was heavy then, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Oh yeah you kidding, Yes, yes, yes, I mean I
remember them trying to get me to join, which wasn't
going to happen because my mother didn't played me you
want to nothing unless he knew about it. And so
instead of them getting me to join, we made a
deal out run for them, you know what I mean,
And that's it. So they needed weapons. I'll go pick
(13:30):
it up, bring it to them, drop it off. When
it over it, I'll pick it up, take it back,
because I was the fastest personal round that they ever seen.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
So you you learned the streets quickly.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
I had no choice, and.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
We started running.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
They had four more brothers.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
So what age was that you started running?
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Seventeen? I was seventeen.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
So did you have a job in between that? Like
when you left school and seventeen?
Speaker 4 (13:55):
I took a job around I just find it. That's
such a good job.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Around twenty years old, okay, and I was working on
the corner of Spring Garden and.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Ridge.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
There used to be up a guy that used to
have a newspaper standing there right on that diamond thing.
But he took it and changed it around and make
it a holy shop and gave it to his son,
Paul Block. I remember that fine, And I started working
with Paul, crazy white guy. Loved his attitude, loved the
fact that he didn't give a shit what color you,
(14:30):
It didn't matter him. He just like having fun, you know.
So me and my friends all end up working for him.
So that was pretty cool because the restaurant was ours. Actually,
you know, keep it open as ladies. We want to
close it whenever we wanted to, and everybody got served
and it got stroyed with kindness and courtesy.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
So you know, there was some good stuff, there was
some bad stuff, you know, And like everybody else's life,
everybody goes through their own, you know, trials, learning curse,
you know. So I want to know one of the
to start then, and.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
That started around nineteen years old. I think it started
before that.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
I think it started take I think it began when
those guys were standing on the corner drinking beer and
I wanted to be a.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Part of them.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
I'm not a good person for making friends because I'm
really really particular about who I want as a friend
because most friendicships, like most romances, you have to give
a percentage to get back. And I'm not a person
that wants to give anything because I want all mine.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Mister Vip puts that on silent. You don't how to
answer and text email of this? How are you that's
turned it off? Put it in a COVID to turn
it off?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
So it's funny you say that because you actually to
this day, at this stage, you make it very clear
about that boundaries with people too, Like if you're going
to establish a friendship of some type, you're gonna feel
that out and you're really so that started young for you.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
I'm a great joke, your character. I'm a great judge
of individuals, you know what I mean. I don't know
if this grew became more. When I went to school
for psychology, it helped me to learn how to look
into who people were and how they why they present
themselves the way they do, And so I can pretty
much have a five minute conversation with somebody and I
(16:21):
know more about them than they can tell me with
their own mouth in five minutes.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
So with all this, why did it start just because
you want to be cool?
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I wanted to Yeah at the beginning, But I remember
I talked to you about the progression of the thing
that you don't see coming. Yeah, I mean it started
off probably this beer drinking on the corner, or cans
here and there, even smoking a joint here and there.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Once in a while.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Drinker. You drink forties.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
I wouldn't anything else, just from them South.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
When you were up here, they drink forties cans later
down the line, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Drink oh everything, everything, everything.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Me and the guys who was standing on the corner
with bouts of thunderbird and oise juice.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Thunderbird wine wine.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
All right, wait, you would mix, you would mix.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
The oly juice was for the other stuff we had,
the vodka. It was crazy, man, that that point. I
was watching this whole thing play out, especially now that
you brought it up. You know, I watched this wik
from the lutle cancer beer and one joint a week
maybe who now it's Norton powder, you know what I mean?
(17:33):
Taking pills not very much.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And it was it till nineteen that you tried your
first drug or anything like that.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Yep?
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Did you lose some sense of this?
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Like patriarchs, I found, I found the freedom of being here.
So I had to come home one day one day
and tell my mother you have a choice. You're either
gonna be out there selling this stuff where you're gonna
be taking it.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
So I choose to sell it. I also wind up
being wind up being coming.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
So you were a really good runner, were you?
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah, good runner? But not a good seller?
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Oh yeah, no, not a good seller.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Not a good seller.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
I ain't like selling anything, not good at that at all.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
But illoyd to become good at it, you know, I mean,
not end up on U master in Indiana and only
black guy over there working, I mean my own shift.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
I seld out everything I had.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Do you mean a black guy working a master in Indiana?
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Uh? I moved to yeah, mash in Indiana.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Masher or master master masher who was actually I was
more right on mother whose territory was that?
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Uh for theaking god named Pete?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Okay, so it was a Puerto Rican territory, Okay.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Yeah, and I ended up being the only black guy
around there that was working.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Was that a segregation back then as well?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Oh, this wasn't very long so yeah, yeah, this wasn't
that long ago. Well it is now, but at that time,
it wasn't that long ago. It wasn't no more than
like ten years from the nineteen years, so twenty nine
that's long.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
A lot of stuff happens in those years, twenty years.
Everything that a different time, brother.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Everything that usually happens to me happens to me in
long terms, you know what I mean. I don't recall
myself spending a minimum year on anything at all, whether
it was worthwhile or not. I always dedicated myself in
my time to what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
But but that that that that cheap ass wine and
yeah and those those you know, downtown Brown Allantown swag joints,
save a smoking That wasn't your downfall.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
No, my downfall.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Crack became my downfall cocaine because the cocaine was no
longer again the progression of this thing, It was no
longer doing it anymore.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
I needed something more.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
The sniffing part.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yeah, end up with bleeding those and skinning, reilling up
inside and I kept walking and how going If my
mother wanted to know what was rolled.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
My lips, that was kind of hard to explain. Yeah,
so I's gonna take their water now, I'm off, getting right,
So then tell me, like it's interesting because you know,
like I had a progression as well, you know, and
(20:25):
I progressed, and you know, like I that's sort of saying,
but like my progression took me on a different route
and yours took you one way, and you.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Know, it becomes then a lifestyle. And at what point
did you finally like realize that like that was your life.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Abusing, Because let's.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Break it down. If you were if you were nineteen
is about thirty years old.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
If nineteen when you when you started, and you're seventeen
years in now about.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
About twenty five years old. I know that for a fact. Okay,
because I was using for third fo the years.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
That's a thirty year progression right there.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Yeah, I was using for thirty years.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
And at twenty five is that age where things supposed
to be developing began to develop?
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
So you started realizing this was not the way I.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
Life, This was not the way to live.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
I mean, I mean, as much fun as I thought
that I had, it really wasn't you. I mean, when
I started looking at the people that I began to
separate myself from, when I stopped looking at how I
was designing my life to play out, was no longer
happening that way.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
No. I actually wanted to be a CIA agent my
whole life. I always wanted to be in a CIA Why.
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Maybe I've watched too many movies on TV. But that's
what I was shooting for, you know what I mean.
And I thought the way one of the ways to
do that was learned as many things about as many
things as I could.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Smoking crack the way to learn how to be a
CIA agent.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, listen, man, you'd be surprised what
those guys end up doing.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
Just to but oh my god, justification for these the
disease actually for about thirty years. Thirty years.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Oh wait, you're calling me just you say disease. Why
did you say disease? What do you mean? Is a disease?
Speaker 4 (22:09):
That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
You mean you can choose a stop you no, no,
why would you say disease because of the disease something.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
I know exactly what it is now that I didn't
know before. I'm getting to that a little bit more later,
but let's okay.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I want to know right now. I'm asking you now.
I'll come back to.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
If it comes to disease, because when I opened it
up unfolded and looked at the whole thing, it wasn't.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
The drug that was the problem. It was why I
was using the drug that was the problem.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
I mean, this is why it comes to a disease
for me, because I have to think about the mental
health aspect of this.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
What's prompted this whole thing.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I think what prompted this whole thing was one I'm
born down south in a place, in a city, in
a country and state that don't want me there for
the wall and Secondly, I have all this hard all
these hard tasks to do just to be normal, to
live to what it's called normalcy.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
And then third I get.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Shipped off to this other place where everybody can do
whatever they want to do, and that was in conflict
with what I was taught, you know. And then the
next thing happens is that I end up connecting to
these people that I thought were friends, but only friends
because I only could have association with them while I
(23:30):
was high, you.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
Know, going that didn't make no sense to me.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Man See, I have to look back at this whole
thing and determine if it was the drugs or was
it truly a disease.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
And I believe that it was truly a disease.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And that's why, because your conversation will let it right
to that. Anyway. Yeah, it's funny because people who.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Think that it's a choice, you know, I mean, do
they think it's a choice that you're gonna dabble on
which one you like, like a like a shot or
something like that to you decide which one is he?
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Like?
Speaker 1 (23:59):
You know, you're gonna, oh, I like the Kamakazi. I'm
gonna stick with that for the rest of my life. Yeah,
you know, it's it's a series of experiments, and the
choice is.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
When somebody said, you tried the champagne. It's not like
the other ones we had. See how you like this one,
and I'll choose to do that. But when it becomes
no longer a choice is when I'll take that one,
this one, this one, in this one, because now I'm
trying to feed something.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
It wasn't trying to feed.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
So crack cooking, you know. The seventies the eighties, it
was notorious amongst most blacks's. Yeah, let's say it. That's
really was a downfall, That's what it was geared to me.
And it was sort of like a you know, we're
killing each other sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Sure, by the selling of the using, the selling and
the using and all that, it was sort of you know.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
And four, it was to eliminate the black population.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
That was the idea behind it.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Until they started getting hooked on it and their children
started getting hooked on it, and it was no longer
it was no longer doing what they expected it to do.
It had taken a different turn. Again, we're still talking
about progression, you know what I mean? Because even there
even their children had to come to some line in
(25:16):
the sand where they said, oh man, I want to
stop this, but I don't know how I can't.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Did you so back, you know, seventies eighties, you know
smoking crack? Did you frequent Kensington?
Speaker 4 (25:29):
No? No, I've never been out here in my life.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Because Kensington is an oak was the open air drug
market for crack.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
I knew that. I was young.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
So where'd you score that around?
Speaker 4 (25:38):
No way?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
So it wasn't just Kensington You could buy cracking back then.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
No, hell no, hell no, no, you can find it anywhere.
Who's wherever you buying, people would have it because everybody
had a need to have it, you know what I mean,
and supplying demand required it, you know what I mean?
So yeah, you can fight anywhere I moved from. I
(26:04):
wasn't doing it on seventeenth Street. But when I moved
down here on tenth Street, spring Arten, Tentph and Wallace Timpner,
then I began to cycle through that because now you
got people on Gerard Avenue, you got tenth and Master,
and eighth and Master, you got thirteenth in Butler. You
got all these people selling this thing, and people running
(26:24):
around going, oh this is great, you said try this.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
M h.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
I never touched that sucker.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
So you think just like you know, moving across Broad Street,
huge difference for you.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
Yeah, I mean the dynamics change wherever you're at.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
But now would the addiction have found you if you
didn't live over there? So if sooner or later?
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Okay, I mean sooner or later, because remind you, I'm
gonna remind you again that it's not the drug.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Oh okay.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
It was the disease of addiction that had me captive.
I mean those things that I didn't want to confront,
those traumise, those hidden issues, that secret thing going on
in the back of my head that I said I'll
never tell anybody about, you know what I mean. In
order to subdue that pain, So do those feelings, all
(27:15):
those emotions, I needed to take something to cover it up.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
Cough syrup would try to do it. I mean, I
try to drink so much, so much sugar that I'll
be running off the walls. But anything that could have taken.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Me outside of my thought processes that dealing with what
the core issue was.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
You know, we sit here, we laugh because we know
because we're both you know, we're both recovery and we
both know because we've both been there, We've done we
did whatever we could sometimes, you know. But it makes
me laugh because you know, we ran recovery homes at
one point and we couldn't figure out why our for
the life of hand sanitizer was constantly being empty, that
we had cases of it. And it's not funny. I'm
(27:55):
laughing because it's funny now that we look back. But
they were drinking the hand sanitizer because it whatever they
can get their hands on. That's an addiction. That's a problem.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
That's a problem.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
That's not when you say you have a choice. That's
when you know you have an issue.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
You don't have a choice in that case.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Right Still, you have to go back and understand that
it's still a mental health issue because until you resolve
whatever that is that's keeping you going back to doing that,
you're going to keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
So and you you you you went to school, you
got to you know, you got your you know psychology.
You also are a certified recovery specialist, ye, which is amazing.
I mean, you do good things with that. But you know,
there is that correlation between mental health and addiction.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
And I'll keep reminding people every time I'm get an option.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
So why wouldn't it be easier Michael, For why wouldn't
it been easier for me.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
To just go get my mental health in care of
instead of suffering through five overdoses and shooting up on
a daily and destroying my whole life.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Because the system believes that you need to be not
under the influence to be helped mentally.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
But I believe that in the course of working with
individuals like I've been doing for the last seventeen years,
I deal in their mental health first, and if their
mental health can become stabilized or subsided some then they
can hear me clearly about the addiction. But when I
try to deal with the addiction and not deal with
the mental health part, I'm going to keep using because
(29:28):
I'm in pain.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
So did you deal with your mental health part?
Speaker 4 (29:31):
My mental health part? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I'm a step person.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
In in my fourth step, I cleared myself almost completely.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
And the fourth step is a fourth step.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Is not right now?
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Oh God?
Speaker 3 (29:50):
But it's a it's a house cleaning step. Because I
fixed that, then it's a house cleaning step.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
The key here is to come into contact with all
of those people, places, and things that caused you harm,
and even the ones that you caused harm.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
It's about analyzing your assets as well.
Speaker 4 (30:12):
You know what I mean, because we have great que Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, you're afraid to say that word, but yeah, I
worked with too many clothes.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
You talk about invatory, you know what I mean. And
in that process you began to heal. But most people
think that that's the key point of it, and it's
not because.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Of the addict that I am. I'm only gonna be ready.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
To share with you what I want to share with you,
and that's all gonna be surface stuff.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
The key work is done underneath all of.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
That, when you free yourself from the top stuff and
the bottom things start bubbling up to the surface and
you don't sit there and don't know why you're crying
or why you're feeling blue or down, you know what
I mean, because you're starting to come into contact with
the core of what the initial problem was and you
don't know how to deal with it.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
So you are you are, You're a firm believer of
the twelve steps.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
Oh hell yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
For even if you don't have an addiction problem. I
believe that people should use it.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And it's not a bad thing to work. It's painful.
It's a very painful thing to do. It's not something like, oh,
I'm gonna sit down and write these letters down.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
It's life maintenance. Is what maintenance?
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Because when I have cleared all of my stuff out,
I know there's not a doubt in my mind that
there's still one piece lingering back there wondering what am
I gonna do when this don't work?
Speaker 4 (31:33):
What am I gonna do when this fails? You know
what I mean? What am I gonna say to people?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
How am I gonna respond to them when I go
around telling them all the stuff that I'm saying now
and all of a sudden I relapse and go back there?
Speaker 4 (31:43):
How can I justify that I can't? I mean?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
And they're not gonna understand the fact that anat.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
We all are doomed to h mishaps, you know what
I mean, and slip ups you know what I mean.
But that doesn't take anything away from who I am.
I told myself that I'd be afraid to go around
anybody after that because I talk too much crap I
do and there's all good stuff, and it's all the
right stuff. But I believe that my knowing that and
(32:14):
my understanding that the possibility that I could re left
and go through that place exists is the reason why
I know I'll never go back and using again. I
work in an area filled with individuals that are constantly
using all day long, day in and day out, which
and that is the blessing in the Christ for.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Me, which in itself is a really messed up thing.
Because you took yourself out of thirty years of active
addiction where you hit rock bottom many many, many times.
There isn't a rock bottom, So let's just.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Get rid of that. There is really no body doesn't exists,
The bottom doesn't exist.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
The bottom is now, The bottom is zero, you know, right,
it's it's you know, it's an infinite sort of thing.
I guess you could say maybe instead of zero, but
you know you but then you threw yourself into like
service and not just service of like you're gonna go
down to the to the mission and you're going to
work that day because you're a very religious person.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
You're very your your Christian.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Oh yes, you believe in the rapture, correct, hell, yeah,
that's a different episode.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
That's the whole another rapture. So you're one of them.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
Yes, I am too. I believe that Jesus Christ is
my Lord and saved.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
So like right now, you can just disappear right now.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
And I also believe that he rose again three days later.
Oh yes, hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
So if the raps were to happen, you would be
gone right now. Oh I don't know where would you go.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
With the rapt That's not a choice for me what
happens to me though.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
If I'm not a person, you're not.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
We're not to be getting into this yet.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
I know you tried over the months to get me
to have this conversation, but it's not one that I'm
going to have right now.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Okay, so you have stuff that part. But yeah, well,
Christian I was doing I was doing this recovery as
well well, and.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
A lot of recovery is faith based.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Let's say I would think that it is because if
you look at the pro well, it's self in general,
it's spiritual contact. It's all spiritually related. I mean, I
don't care if you choose God, Christ or whoever you
want to be your higher power. I'm not even caring
about that. I want you to get one thing done.
I want you to start working on yourself, you know
what I mean. You can identify what higher power you
(34:18):
want later on down the line if you want, But
for this moment, how about letting people that have some
time or some people who've been through this process and
doing the right things because of it, to be your
mentor or to be your guide. I mean, I sponsored
ten people and the youngest time that I have in
those ten people is six years, six years to fourteen
(34:41):
years clean and sober.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
All of my people are so you.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Just said clean and sober. How important is that in
the world of recovery today? Clean and sober? Don't forget
it's twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
I'm here, it is. It is, But I think that
it is to a point.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
So if I'm brand new and I want and I'm
I'm out there and I've been talking about.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
You know, going into treatment forever.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
And and and everything, and but what's scaring me is
it clean and sober language, So go off of that.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I've worked with a lot
of people on a daily basis, man that so much
want to get past this addiction thing, and for the
life of them. They don't understand why they can't. They
can't because in order for them to do this, there's
(35:35):
got to be something that's going to hold them over,
carry them through the withdrawal and all this stuff to
get to that place, and it's not being offered by
the system, you know what I mean, So they would
rather not even go.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
So once again it's a systematic failure.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Yep, they won't even go to treatment no more.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
I can't get anybody to go to treatment no more
because they don't been there so many times.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
But the results of the those that do go to
treatment get out and they're not totally abstinate because they
are on methadone or they're on supplicate or some boxing.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
With one one step before that, they get out, and
they get out because the system failed them already again
because they were in days and giving them thirteen days.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Some microaffects, it's like warming up your meal. It's you know,
it's gonna last for you know, ten minutes and it
goes back.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
So it's already bad enough that a person like me
would go into treatment and come out of treatment and
the prospects are already set against me.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
And I give everything to my program, everything to my program,
and it's still set against me that I would fail.
So I have to every day keep proving it wrong
that I won't fail. And that way that I can
prove it wrong that I won't fail, it comes to service.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
That's for me.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
You love service?
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Oh heck yes, man.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
I spent the first ten years cleaning my church every
Saturday just because I wanted to do it. Now because
nobody asks me to do it, because I wanted to
do it. I mean, I need to get into contact
with this giving back thing. And I tell my re
sponsors one simple phrase. Whatever it is that you're looking
to achieve, whatever you're looking for to come in the
(37:16):
blessing for him or to get back to is found
in your giving. So you need to ask yourself what
are you giving? So if you're giving nothing, why would
you be expecting anything. I always leave them with that
because I want them to understand that their service has value,
and the value isn't to someone else. The value is
(37:37):
to their self worth. The valuates to their their spiritual
and emotional growth, you know what I mean. The value
is to their continuous sobriety and recovery, And why don't
get a twisted neither, because sobriety and recovery are not
the same things. I hope nobody don't think that, because
they really are not man.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
So why is it so important then for people to
say that I have seventeen years sober or I have
seventeen years of recovery. I don't use the word sober
just because it's a stigma to people, you know, sometimes
and it holds people back because whatever.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
But why I think that Sometimes it's about the language
in the rooms of recovery and the guidelines. Their guidelines
and their bylines has specifically stated this, and it has
to be heered to according to their bylines. It has
(38:30):
to be a here to. I mean, my first year
I had given up that idea. I given up that
idea because I saw I can see what is coming
at me and I can see how to combat it
with the right circle of people around me. I mean,
it says, the broader the base, the broad the larger
the amount of people you have around you, the greater
(38:53):
the point of freedom. And I believe that truly, but
it gets lost when we're in a transition between Hi,
my name is Mike, and I'm an addict. Or Hi,
my name is Mike. I'm a person in long term recovery.
But see, how can you acknowledge being in recovery when
you first have an acknowledged that you have newsue?
Speaker 1 (39:13):
So why is it that if I go to an
AA meeting, I can't say, Hi, I'm Britt, I'm I'm
a person that suffers from substance use disorder that it
has to be high on britt, I'm an alcoholic. Yeah,
I'm britt I shaw haro. Why can't I say that in.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
A not a clue?
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Why is there a segregation there of AA, n A, C,
A essay, all those?
Speaker 3 (39:34):
Why do you think I dropped them all and went
to Christian Fellowship. I can say whatever I want to
say and nobody's going to say anything to me about it.
They're gonna wrap their arms around me and love me.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
So is their way wrong? Is Bill's way wrong? No?
Speaker 4 (39:50):
It needs to be rectified. According to the Times.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
How long ago to Bill start that organization?
Speaker 4 (39:55):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
And there's always called anonymous because he save me. I
didn't care if it was always called anonymous because there
was a stigma to it and people that were labeled
with it there was something wrong with it. Well, first
of all, it wasn't cool.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
I think that when it came out that they wanted
the confidentiality of it. They didn't want you to be
feeling guilty or something because people know that this is
what you're doing, and this is why they induced the
anonymity to it. But anonymity is only good for so long. Bro,
trust me, because you would tell on your own self.
(40:30):
So I have no anonymity. You can't asked me anything
that you want to ask me. And I'm going to
tell you. Just be careful that you're that you're aware,
be aware if you want to hear the response, because
I'm going to tell you exactly what I think, whether
you like it or not.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
So do you believe that the recovering out loud, like
you know we sort of do is the right way?
And nowadays in twenty twenty five, compared.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
To who believes up to the individual individual, I believe
we have to be up to the individual because you
can heal, you can lose a lot of things and
a lot of respect for people because they have this
information now. So I believe that it would be up
to the individual. The only time I talk around recovery
(41:14):
like this is whin them in a setting of recovery.
But when I'm outside of that thing, I pretty much
try to leave it alone because one I can't.
Speaker 4 (41:23):
This is who I am and it's what I do.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
I mean, So it's really kind of difficult for me
to find a conversation to get into where I can't
talk about recovery. Yeah, but then I have to remember
that everybody's not recovery. Now, this is my issue, not theirs,
you know what I mean. So I can't be putting
my stuff off one deal. So here go to psychology
of this scrap again.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Man, don't put your.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Shit on me. So let's all talk about recovery. Let's
talk about the rapture.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
No, we're not talking about all right, So.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Let's back to recovery then.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
So when we talk about that, and it's true, you know,
it's really weird because before people want to be anonymous,
they'll be wanted to know. People didn't want to know
because you had a disease, you were looked at like
a Leppard or something like that.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Now people don't want to shut up about it. Now
people introduce themselves like that.
Speaker 4 (42:03):
Addiction was in the closet, just like a homeboy. It
was in the closet.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Man, you understand what I'm talking about though, Man, it
was in the closet.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Nobody out loud. Nobody wanted to hear.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
It out loud, you know what I mean. But the
days addiction and recovery is changing. I really believe that
there's some things that need to be changed. The textbooks
need to be rewritten to fit the day's time. We
don't use the same drugs as people are using today.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
We don't get.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Recovery the same way that people did and when I
was doing it, you know what I mean, And hippo
need to just go ahead and be revised because it
fits nothing it it's nothing to do with.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
This at all anymore, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
So if we want some change and some action to
take care, we got to do it on the legislative level.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Oh takes power, takes some good people, numbers the numbers
to come together, a lot of unity.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
But there's also, once again, there's a division and recovery too.
And in this whole world that we live in and
that we work in, there there's a division yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
There is, but watch this too, just getting there's becoming
more awareness because it's happening to more people that didn't
think it was gonna happen to them. Senators and governors
and stay represented. All these people families are getting involved
in this, not only understanding that it's not just an
US problem, it's all of our problem.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Do you think it's just happening or it's it's always
been happening. People are just talking out about it because
it's becoming more and more freely.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Was in the closet there you go. They couldn't do
it because they're to devastate their family and the.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
People that blihood their jobs. Look.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Definitely, you don't want to say it loudly, I said
loudly because if you have an issue with me telling
you about who I am and what's going on with
me and what I need to do to make me
feel better, then I think your best better is not
to talk to me. It really is, because see, I
(44:13):
can take and turn this whole thing around and show
you where you're an addict. I can show you where
you have a problem. May not be substance use or
substance abuse. It may be too much coffee. It might
be too much exercise, it might be too much everything, you.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
Know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (44:28):
When we start doing things and then a stroup amount
we set ourselves up for.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
That It doesn't really just come in a chemical form.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
No, it's what you're trying to say, not at all,
you know, because we replace them, We replace our addictions,
and even ask for a person that you know suffers
from addiction will replace our adictions. So once we become
that sobriety person, then all of a sudden, food takes over,
or shopping, living through whatever.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Oh yeah, we know.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
He's one hundred and twenty nine pounds. I'm over two
hundred and thirteen pounds.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Also smoking a lot of crack. Oh you know that
gives you a one hundred the twenty nine pounds physique.
Once you stop doing that and you start bringing nutrients
into your body, you grow into your body.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
Brother, And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with all
of that stuff. Man.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
My job to day is to be an example. It's
the stand as a beacon of hope for the individual
who don't know or don't even believe that this can work.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
For them, you know what I mean. And the rooms
they would tell us that if you want we have
do what we do. Try it. It might not work
for you, but try something.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
So what if I were that person that approaches us,
that approaches us on the street when we're doing our
outreaches and stuff, and you know, we give you the
tail that we've been out here using so long, we
can't do it anymore, and you know we need help,
you know, or we need to get something. What would
you tell that person?
Speaker 3 (45:50):
I wouldn't tell them nothing about that, though, without trying
to do first of all, is emphasize with them first,
because in order to get a person to talk with
you fly and honestly, they need to know that you
feel where they're coming from. You know, they need to
They're not gonna talk to you. I had such a
difficult time after that five years in college of learning
(46:12):
how to implement all the stuff that I've learned as
a psychologist. I didn't know how to open the doors
of communication. So I'm standing right there next to the
Sunshine House smoking a cigarette with Lisa Kelly.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
And I'm going, well, what the hell, how am I
going to do this?
Speaker 3 (46:37):
I don't know how to approach these people because we
never covered that in college. So I was liking a cigarette.
This guy walked up to me and says, hey, man,
you got another cigarette, scratching his swords on his arm
and face peeling, and hairs semi clean and semi dirty
and semi nappy.
Speaker 4 (46:56):
Clothes, who have once shoe on and one.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Slept slipper hospitals everyone all the foot and it's thirty
five degrees outside, no coat on, his shirt is hanging
out of.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
His hospital pants.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
And I gave him a cigarette and we stood there
and he's still right there with me smoking a cigarette
and just started talking.
Speaker 4 (47:15):
We just started talking about anything.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
So is that your connecting? Is that your connector right there?
The cigarettes?
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Yep, that's why you do that.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
I had no nothing to do for people working. Bro.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Michael is like the cigarette king I am. If you
ask him for a cigarette, you're gonna get one. And
unless he doesn't have one, he won't say no it
was his last one.
Speaker 4 (47:35):
He'll give it. You always have one.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
So that's why you do that, because it connects you.
Speaker 4 (47:40):
It's a purpose.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
For my man, there was the only way that I
could find out how to open that door communication, and
it works for me.
Speaker 4 (47:46):
For the last eight years.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
What happens if you stop smoking cigarettes?
Speaker 4 (47:50):
Ever, I'm not sorry.
Speaker 3 (47:54):
I mean, the doctors might make me have to do it,
but first I'm concerned. I'm not because there's the wh
I can still use them as the catalist. Then I'll
have to smoke, but that ain't gonna happen. I mean, listen, man,
I think that for me, life is really simple. Now
do the right thing, just simply because.
Speaker 4 (48:15):
That's what it is.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
Treat people the way that I want to be treated.
Be aware of those individuals who are hurting inside and
don't know how to ask for help. Because you pay
closest attention, their spirit will cry out to you, asking
you for help that they can't even say it in
words that you know.
Speaker 4 (48:34):
I look at their contents, the.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
Continents, the outside of the spiritual part of them, and
it yells and squeams in my ear of what to
say to them and how to say that to them,
because most times you don't know, because you don't know
what their state of mind is. So I trust in
the God that I serve to guide me right to
that place. He was clear with me, I need you
to stand as a beg enough hope in the middle
(49:02):
of Hell, and I asked him where was hell? He said,
Kensington in Summerset. I've been staying at Kenslon in Sumrset
for eight years. I still stand at Kingston in Summrset.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
I know you do.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
You go out of your way to go to Kensingston
in Somerset to get to work. You take three modes
of transportation instead of just one.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
Yes, I do because I need them to see me.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
So now this makes sense to me. Before I just
thought you were a crazy old man.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
I need them to see that I'm still here and
I'm still around and I'm still available to them. They
have nothing to do with how I got to work.
It was the purpose for me going to work. Yeah,
it's really hard man to be me. I mean, I'm
not being funny saying that, but it really is because
it requires a lot that most people aren't willing to give,
(49:55):
and most people can't give because they don't have And
if you're not spiritually grounded, spirits you rooted, and something
that's good and something that's passionate and something that's positive,
you don't have it to give.
Speaker 4 (50:06):
How can you give something you don't possess.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
So with all the stuff you give all the giving
you do. You know all the time you spend me, like,
what do you do for yourself? Right?
Speaker 4 (50:14):
I knew it was coming.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
I was waiting on patiently for me, for self care
for me.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
I'm okay. I learned to be okay with being by myself.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
You.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
I mean, I have taken on so many personalities of
other people throughout the decades of my life that when
I finally cleaned myself off and got to see me
for the very first time, I didn't recognize me. When
I did recognize who that person was, and I knew
that I needed to put something else inside of me
(50:45):
that didn't require part of you or part.
Speaker 4 (50:47):
Of somebody else.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
That I decided that everything that's going to go inside
of me is going to be positive and giving.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
And that's I think a great way. I mean, it's
we didn't even get into everything you do, man, we
didn't get into what you do for Philly unknown that
you help run the workforce participants, you help run the garden,
you help run the hobby, help run the thrift store.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
You go down to the Sunshine House you help there.
You still do out each other street. You still attend
meetings and not the meetings that we talked about, but
other meetings, and you know, finding that time for yourself
is so difficult when you devote your life to service.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
I found that if I found that, if if I'm
serving properly, I have everything that I need.
Speaker 4 (51:29):
I have everything that I need.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
See when most people look at me, like you would
probably do or somebody else, they would look to say,
the physical is what they're looking at. They're looking at
what they can see with their eyes. But it's not
about that. It's about what's going on in here. For me,
It's about this clean spirit that I have. Man, It's
about this passion I have for somebody else's suffering, and
I plead that I can take it away from them
(51:51):
and give them, give them some of what I have
that they can continue on to the next steps of
their lives. And I watched this happen. I felt that
a whole bunch of times. At the beginning of.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Kens's Summerset, Well, if you're not standing at Kensing in Summerset,
people could find you a community thrifty on Westerard nineteen
West twenty nineteen West Yard.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
You're there at least two days a week Tuesdays and Wednesdays, definitely,
and other days as well.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Are you there or are they to find you in
the garden in the summertime?
Speaker 3 (52:24):
Summer, because I'm going out there, you're out there, You're
to find me. Think and know that when you run
into me, you're never going to forget me.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
Whether you like here or not.
Speaker 4 (52:34):
Whether you like it or not, there's nothing you can
do about it.
Speaker 1 (52:37):
I agree.
Speaker 4 (52:37):
I'm gonna love you till you learn to love your
own self. And I ain't scared.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
So so will you come back and have that conversation
with me about the rapture?
Speaker 4 (52:45):
Yeah, sometime we talked about raptors.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
Sometime we will.
Speaker 4 (52:48):
That would be probably a good conversation.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
It's gonna be a crazy coress.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
I'm bringing my Bible with me.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
No, you can't do that.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
I'll have a choice. There's so much you need to know. Man.
Speaker 1 (52:58):
You still read the Bible, Michael.
Speaker 4 (53:00):
Single day, five passages a day every day.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Those are your affirmations.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
No, no, no, not for affirmations. That's strictly scripted reading. I
do five scripture readings a day. I finished the whole
Bible like fourteen times already. But I still get up
every morning read my five passages as part of my
recovery journal. I still read my Just for the Day.
I don't read the textbook no more. Because the textbook
(53:26):
is in here. I can recite all that by heart.
I mean, I still have Alcoholics Anonymous book. I know
it by heart. I still have the Cocaine Anonymous Book.
I know it by heart. So it's not that I'm
distancing myself from what brought me to this place.
Speaker 4 (53:41):
Is that I'm molding.
Speaker 3 (53:44):
It over to figure out an easier, softer way to
give it to somebody else. You know, everybody respond differently
to things, so I love that it'll always be the individual.
I have to consider who the individual is first, because
what I say will depend on who they are and
how they receive it.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
That sounds like a great place for us to end,
because you can't really get much better than that.
Speaker 1 (54:07):
And sum it up. You know you do you do
great things, man, you do great things.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
One thing I will say is that you know, and
for somebody your age, because you're old, you know you are.
Speaker 4 (54:17):
Coming up June yep, sixty seven, sixty eight, you're already
sixty seven, that you lie on your application.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
I'm joking, you, fucking man. But one thing about you
is you're always willing to learn too, And.
Speaker 4 (54:33):
I'm glad that is because.
Speaker 3 (54:36):
This stands as a record of who I am and
what I'm about when I'm not here no more. So,
maybe somebody would get to see this down the line
that needed to hear it.
Speaker 1 (54:48):
Maybe someone get to see this sooner than you need
to hear it.
Speaker 4 (54:51):
Yeah, how about this.
Speaker 1 (54:52):
Don't sell yourself short there, man, I don't you know.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
And you're also out there on the on the documentary
Voice of America episode three, Damage Done the episode get
out there and watch that.
Speaker 1 (55:02):
His part was key one of the best we ever had.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
You know, talk about it, Michael. Thanks for being here,
Thanks for all you do. Thanks for you know, you
know it's bearing with me all these years because.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
Neither of you.
Speaker 2 (55:15):
It's it's a dynamic. And you know, when you got
two know it alls together. It really is painful, but
it works, but it works.
Speaker 4 (55:23):
It does.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
And everybody, if you are struggling in any way, shape
or form, reach out, reach out to Michael Michael Worthy.
Speaker 1 (55:33):
You know you can find him. Like I said, community thrift,
feeling unknown, reach out to somebody.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
There is help out there. Recovery is possible. The two
of us sitting here are living proof. We have twenty
five plus years total and more to come. So thanks
for coming out today, Thank you for having everybody, Thanks
for joining us.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
This is Brick Carpenter for being a voice on nosular media.
Have a great rest of your day.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com