Tony LaCerra: Strength in Vulnerability

In this powerful episode, we sit down with Tony LaCerra, a man who is six years into active recovery and living proof that true strength comes from facing your emotions, not hiding them. Now a sponsor to two others, Tony reflects on the profound impact of his own sponsor—who has become one of his closest friends—and how that relationship helped shape his path. In honor of Men's Mental Health Awareness Month, Tony opens up about embracing spirituality, navigating the emotional struggles often stigmatized in men, and redefining what it means to be strong. From recovery to personal growth, this conversation is a raw and inspiring reminder that healing starts when we allow ourselves to feel. 🔊 Tune in and hear how Tony is not just staying sober—but thriving, evolving, and giving back.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Welcome to your voice. I'm Brick Carpenter and this is
UCLA Media. Thanks for joining us today. Today we are
continuing on with our Switching Gears team for this season's podcast,
and I am excited to be sitting here today with
somebody that shares a lot of the background of the
guests that we've had throughout the season, things that we

(01:13):
talked about, things that have been going on in our
community and in our country, dealing with substance use disorder,
dealing with mental health. And it's a really great segue
because we just started June, and June is actually the
beginning of Men's Mental Health Month. And I'm sitting here
today with a good friend of mine. I'm sitting here
with Tony List. Hey, Tony, how much? How are you?

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Pretty good man, It's good to see you.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
It's been a long time, too long, very evasive sometimes.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, you're a busy man. Yeah, you're busy man, traveling
seeing all these metal bands.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
And I've been around. I kind of mixed it up
past couple of years for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
I watch how you say you've been around. Man, it's
stick with you. Somebody will take that and run with
him before you know there will be a whole big
dramas about you, Tony.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
You know it'll follow you some things you can't stop.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
So Tony, I know you all right, I know who
you are. Tell my guests who is Tony LASERA?

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Who am I me?

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Cliff not Version, and we'll peel some layers back.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Hard working dude, my own worst enemy most of my life,
and you know I'm in recovery. June thirtieth will be
six years god willing, which I never thought was going
to be possible. Come from good family. Military baby, was
born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and you know families from

(02:33):
New York and lived in Philly and you know South Jersey.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
You were born in Albuquerque. I was, and you traveled
as a military baby. Yeah, I military brat then, were
one of those what they call the military brats.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Dad dad did four in the Army, four in the
Air Force and New Mexico tech in between, and that's
where I was born.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
That's interesting. He did Army and Air Force.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Did he enter the Air Force as an officer then?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
That? I don't know that, I don't know. We were
on McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. Eventually and
then he got out and you know, kind of kept moving.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
That's how you ended up here.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, my family's from here, right over the bridge in Palmyra.
My grandma's ninety five. She lives there. My dad went
to high school there. I me and my brother went
to high school there.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
But we just your palm Iragrad. Yeah, I didn't know that,
and I new you're in Jersey. Now, I didn't know
you're a pop iergrad. You're real close, then real close.
So it's coming out on how many years? Six years?
Six six years? Holy shit, that's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Do you ever think you can make it that long?

Speaker 2 (03:36):
No? And I never wanted to. I never I never
thought that was gonna be my journey. And you know,
my mom and my dad's own alcoholism of their family
is probably part of the reason why I was born
in Albuquerque. Right, it was time to get up and go.
And you know, even with it like glaring in my

(03:58):
face as a potential, as a possibility, you just don't
ever think it's going to be you. And like I
didn't care. It was too arrogant, it was too hard headed.
If I go back to seventeen years old and listen
to everything, Dad said, the mayor was right about everything.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
I think this is pretty common with a lot of parents.
I think when we when we when we really sit
back and we look at it. I say it all
the time, like I never wanted to admit it, but my
parents were usually always right. Yeah, I don't want to
admit it, but always right. You know, my mother, especially
being the oldest Italian daughter, she's always right and you
don't argue with her right, you know, you don't even
try to. And of course as kids, we don't want

(04:35):
to admit that our parents are right because what the
hell they know?

Speaker 2 (04:38):
No nothing, And I have that natural resistance. I'm going
to defy things and challenge things, and you know that
was that's a mentality that I still have, I still
deal with on a daily basis, but that that's also
a mentality that like I had to break and I
had to crack and humble myself to move forward.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
A little chip on your shoulder, Yeah, yeah, yeah, why not? Yeah,
I get it. I mean I think we all do.
We all have that chip on our shoulder. That's sort
of one of the reasons that we've fall into our
ways that we fall into. How many years were you
in your active addiction.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Between alcohol and OPI it's I mean, I drank when
I was fifteen, and like it's only now in hindsight
that I can see me being hungover on Wednesday in
high school? Was abnormal? Right? That was not the norm.
No one else was drinking wine at home the day
before by themselves.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
But I was gonna inject it, say, but it's funny
because we thought it was normal for somebody like ourselves,
who are a person that has been dealing with substance
use disorder and opeus disorder and everything else all these years.
We thought that was normal. Like I used to think
when I was in corporate America that after work, I
was supposed to go right to the bar. I was

(05:59):
supposed to get on that stool. I supposed to order
a shot, order a drink, and sit there until I
was shit faced drunk and ready to black out. I
thought that was normal. I thought that everybody did that.
I really did. We did, My family did.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
It was like the model for coming of age in
my family. It wasn't like it was alcoholic. We just
all partied and we did our thing. And you know,
why was I going to be any different than anything?
Any family member that I saw, you know, and I wasn't.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
So you think that it was a lot of learned
environment for you, like a nature nurture, like the nature
you're under and the nurture that you were in.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
I think it presented like an illusion of safety, okay,
and probably even more so fueled my male ego untouchability, right,
superhero type of bs that, like you know, just perpetuated
me full speed into alcoholism and drug drug addiction. Opes

(07:00):
to me, I didn't know, you don't know something like
this is happening. I blended in very well, that's my
specialty is to blend in, fly below the radar, you know.
I learned that from a very young age. If I
don't make too much noise, if I don't put my
head up too high, I'm going to get to operate
on a level that that I want to operate on
without oversight or minimal oversight.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Well, I think that that comes with the territory of
being a person with addiction. I think we are pretty
much master manipulators. And more so than that, we know
how to fly under the radar. We know we know
how to work it. We're hustlers, Yeah, we really are.
I mean, people have to understand. People always sit back
and they talk about you know, like the words they
use like, oh, what a low life, this, that and

(07:43):
the other thing. I don't think people realize that most
people that are in active addiction or suffer from some
type of you know, disorder, they're they're smart. They know
how to work it, they know how to work the system.
That's how we survive for so long.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
And it was, and it was and I didn't know
any other way. I didn't know my way was wrong
or unspiritual or all these words come to find out
later about yourself. And I didn't see anything wrong with
it at fifteen.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Huh So how many years then was that? And what year?
How old were you when you were like, this is it.
I've had enough, I'm done. Thirty six, thirty six. So
we're talking about twenty one years of your life. Twenty
one years of your life and I get it, twenty
eight years of my life. I mean that's a long time.
And we missed our formative years, the years where we

(08:33):
were supposed to be forming and being able to like
mature and having these cognitive functions that everybody else was getting.
And you know, we missed a lot of that We
missed those growing years, but we just thought that was
sort of normal. I did.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
And you don't realize you're not growing when you're doing
the same thing that most other people are doing. Right,
And you know, I wasn't using heroin in high school.
I was blending in right college or college and high
school the weekends and this party atmosphere. It was the
only place I wanted to be.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
We were escaping who we really were running from, which
was ourselves. We're running from ourselves, so we're blending with
other people by doing that. It was picking up a beer,
picking up some shots, you know, grabbing that bomb, blowing
a line, and then all of a sudden it progresses.
So you know, we talk about this as being a disease.
When we talk about addiction, people talk about it as

(09:31):
being a disease, all right, And we talk about being
a disease, it means that it's you know, classified as
that disease. Did you ever look at it like you
had a disease or you just looked at it like
you were out getting fucked up?

Speaker 2 (09:43):
That was a really hard thing for me to wrap
my head around because that was a weakness that there's
nothing wrong with me. I'm not broken, right, Like, I
don't have a disease. You guys just can't party as
much as me, and that's your problem. Right. So that
was a very hard, humbling notion for me to intake

(10:05):
it and for me to process that I had a disease.
I had disease in the mind. And again now sitting here,
this makes sense before the first drink, right, this makes
sense most of my life four or five years old.
There's isms, right, there's.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Six years is a long time for somebody who has
spent a majority of their lives in an active addiction.
Six years is a very long time then to be
out of that. And you know, I think we talk
a lot about what happened to us. I mean we
all have about our war stories. I mean, you and

(10:43):
I could peel those layers back and we talk about
war stories that would spend other people's heads. Been on
our own, we'd be like, oh, yeah, I cant relate
to that, or I get that. In the six years though,
that you've been working on your recovery and your sobriety.
You're fully sober. There's no medical assistant treatment in there,
there's no box and there's no methodone or anything like that.
You just went right in. In these six years, what

(11:05):
have you learned about yourself?

Speaker 2 (11:10):
One that I've been my own worst nightmare most of
my life. Two that there was core things about myself,
whether they were from my parents, from my family, that
I always had, but I just I couldn't unlock. I
couldn't fully harness these these good qualities about myself because

(11:32):
I could do good for a while and then everything
I had just kind of slipped through my fingers. Right women,
cars owned the house. I did this all while being
a weekend warrior and probably a lot of Wednesday and
Thursday nights. Also, you know, it all just starts to
blur together.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
There's no such thing as a weekend once you once
you've gone too full bone addiction. You know, the weekends
could be a Monday or Tuesday or whatever the case
may be. But I know what you mean, and it
becomes hard to wrap your head around. But you're functional.
You were able to provide for a time, for a
time you got, you know, and I think some people

(12:12):
don't realize that, Like I was functional. At least I
thought it was functional, you know. I think other people
realized there was something going on there that wasn't so functional.
But at least I was able to get up and
went to work. And I don't I how to do
I you know, but you know, it progressively spirals, doesn't it.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
It does. And it was the same thing with you know,
it was presentation. It was presentation, and I owned the
house and the lawn was cut and you know, all
outside accounts like I'm a good neighbor, brother son, grandson,
and none of that could have been farther from the truth.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
It was just smoke and mirrors, facade. Yeah, it was
just that aesthetic you put up in front of people.
Really good at that, aren't we We're good at like
putting masks on.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, for a long time, for a long time. And people,
I think that's what normy my dad type of person,
my brother, type of person. They don't they wouldn't have
had that endurance, right, They don't understand why that went
on for so long because it's not normal to them.
And that normal that we can make and not think

(13:16):
twice about it, and just that adaptiveness to anything and everything.
And you know, if if I'm getting high and my
go to is there, then like I'm gonna deal with anything.
I don't doing anything.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
It's funny you said normies. I don't think people really
know that term when when you know we're in active addiction,
you know, to us, you know, the normans are the
people that can actually pick up that drink and have
a drink and put it down and walk away from it,
whereas like we pick up one and before we know,
we're a twelve pack into it, and you know, we're
ripping an eight ball and we're cruising down the streets

(13:50):
looking for some bags, you know, and you know, normies
and as we call them. And I love the term
now because it refers really to a lot of people,
you know. You know, sometimes there's resentment with that too,
especially if it's in your own family, Like why am
I the one that was dealt these cards and you're
able to walk around and do what you can do?

Speaker 2 (14:09):
My family is. But I didn't spend a night over
a family's house until I was past three years in recovery.
And I get disarmed. If there's anybody and any people
that I want to have a beer with and cut
loose with, it's my brother, it's my cousin Trevor, Like
this is what we always did, so it was very

(14:31):
unnatural to be there for a very long time. And
you know, that was that is still probably one of
my biggest danger zones, because I just get comfortable and
disarmed and like, I could probably have one right six years,
seven years, who knows? I have one, And it's just

(14:53):
not a door I want to open.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
I'm really glad you said that, because I was sitting
down talking with a friend of mine, probably like twenty
eighteen or so, when I was like three years into
recovery or something, and he was in recovery for a while,
and I was talking to him when I was, you know,
my active addiction trying to get out of it. He
was actually somebody who worked at like you know, out
in Malvern and stuff like that, and you know, so
I was talking to him and he looked at me

(15:17):
and he went, you know, I can't say I'm never
we said, because I think I might crave a beer
sometime five six years down the line. And it's really
interesting how we, as you know, somebody with addiction like
try to justify that in our minds and who knows,
you know, maybe a few years from that we can

(15:37):
pick that up. We can do that and it won't harm me.
But I know that I can ever pick up that
needle again, because the minute I do, I'm screwed. I'm done.
It's you know, end of it. But we think about that,
don't we. You think about that often or just every
once in a while all the time.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
I think that's part of the delusion of having this
disease of the mind, that like I'm I'm that shot
out and that like deceptive to my my own mind.
Like I think what twenty one year is in addiction? Right, someday,
someday the scale will be perfectly even. Right in that hour,
I'll get away with shooting a speedball right without consequences.

(16:16):
That's the kind of stuff that goes through my head
on a daily basis, not like that I'm actually gonna
go to Kensington or Canada or pick up but like
it wouldn't wouldn't that be nice?

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Oh? You know? I think I think anybody would lie
be lying if they said they don't like fantasize or
romanticize what it's like when you're in it. Like I
say to myself, like, oh wow, you know, like I
just like to feel that again. But then I think
to myself. I don't want to feel what happens three
weeks after that then, right, So I sort of like
play that game in my mind and I talk a

(16:47):
lot of self talk there, you know, a lot of it,
you know, but you know, you found souls. You you
eventually went from you know. And I hate to say
because it.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Not.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Everything's hardcare core. Alcohol is hardcore. If you're an alcoholic,
that's going to kill you. That's hardcore. So I don't
want to demean that, say that it's less than somebody
who is who is shooting heroin, because that's just it.
That's just this is deadly, you know. And and there's
all these things. But like when we sit back and

(17:23):
we look at this, like, you know, we were killing
ourselves for years, and we were masking it because of
other reasons. And I know for me, and I also
know for you because we talked together at one of
the centers about this, mental health came into play. Yeah,

(17:43):
was mental health is something that you dealt with a
long time in your life? Did you know about this,
did you realize it, did you accept it?

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Or I've never I've never been diagnosed with anything as
far as a mental health disease other than alcohol, right,
the self diagnosis that that was. But you know, I think, uh,
accepting that alcohol was a disease and I had this disease,

(18:12):
it opened it kind of broadened my vision and was like, well,
what else could I have? Right? What else? And I'm
a whole nut in my head? And if it wasn't
for like guys in AA and other guys in recovery
that like I'm bouncing stuff off of them, Like Tony,
you sound like a complete moron right now, Like okay,
just checking, Like I don't, you know, trying to slip

(18:33):
one by. If I'm left to my own devices, then yeah,
I mean it's pretty uh, it's a pretty sketchy space
up there for sure.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Get stuck in your own head.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yeah yeah. And you know, I during during the course
of my addiction, right, I went to doctors. We tried
antidepressants and and you know some boxing, I tried that,
and I just I abused everything that was ever wrong.
And you know, it wasn't until you get like ninety
days clean and it's like, well, maybe it wasn't so depressed, right,

(19:05):
Maybe that was just kind of got failure to deal
with life on any level.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
You know, I don't know if it was, I wouldn't
say your failure. I think it's the fear. I think
it's fear of it because in our heads, we can't
process and have those coping skills like a lot of
other people upfront. That's why we turned to whatever it
was it almost killed us or took our lives. That's
our coping mechanism. That's all we knew. And that's how

(19:35):
we knew it because that disease, whether it was the
mental health or the addiction, told us that, right, you know,
and you know it's something that we have to work at.
So how many times did you try treatment?

Speaker 2 (19:48):
I've been to seven or eight different treatments? Uh, detox
is right. I went to look a real nice detox
in Cherry Hill that my father paid for, and you
know I wasted that opportunity.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yeah, if it was a private one that your dad
paid for, and you.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Know, yeah, he'll never let me forget about that.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Oh I bet he won't. I bet that.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
It wasn't cheap and like it wasn't it wasn't even
worth it. It wasn't even worth it.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
And but you know, did you do it for him?
Or did you for you.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
At the time, I probably did it so people got
off my back. And there was genuine moments in my
addiction where I wanted help and ask for help the
best ways I knew how, and didn't want to do
what I was doing, didn't want to be how I
was being, But like I just I mean, when that's

(20:41):
your go to, you're going there. And I kept going
and I didn't know any other way was possible.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
So alcohol is like the beginning of the downfall for you.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Alcohol was my first love, but then you know, other
things came along, and I'm a man. I think of
great efficiency, So like I can't fit a twelve pat
twelve pack in my pocket, but like I can fit
a lot of cocaine pills or heroin in there, I'd
be hungover. Uh, you know, it just was a logical transition.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
I can understand that.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
I appreciate the fact same effect.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
And we learned that because we're gonna sit there at
a bar and we're gonna spend all that money in
one night, get messed up, whatever. When all of a
sudden we start realizing that that the bills that we're
putting down at the bar, we could get cheaper stuff.
By buying the bag he's on the street. We're buying
one little pill that could mess us up for the
whole night instead of five drinks, no hangover. Yeah, we're

(21:40):
not buying for anybody else. Then we don't have to
worry about getting anything else's drink.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
You know.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
It's just Yeah, it's a vicious cycle, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
It is?

Speaker 1 (21:48):
It is it really is. So you know, at this
time of your addiction, all these years, I mean at
fifteen years of age, were you here on the East
Coast then? Were you here in the area?

Speaker 2 (21:58):
I was. I was born there, and yeah I was
on the East Coast really since like kindergarten.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
Okay, so this has been home. So you've what was
that point? I mean, you know, I hate to ask
that because there's so many aha moments that I talk about.
You know, it wasn't just one, but what was that
point where you were like, you know what, enough enough, Tony?

Speaker 2 (22:28):
I moved down to Charlotte, North Carolina because I got
out of another rehab I used the day I got
out for the next day. My dad knew at that
point I'm bouncing back between mom and Dad's basements. Nobody
can deal with me for very long. I'm chaotic to
be around. I'm gonna steal from you eventually. But I

(22:51):
ended up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and you know, things
got really bad for me down there, Things got really dark.
I was five hundred and fifty miles away from everything
and everyone that I knew was home. That was truly
on my own.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
What made you go to Charlotte? Because it was.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Kensington and Camden's fault.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
I was getting high, so you figured that if you
removed yourself from the situations that you'd be okay. But
you forgot that you were taking yourself with you. One
of those things exactly exactly that you'll find drugs no
matter where you go.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
I went looking for trouble. If I go looking for trouble,
it can drugs, a speeding ticket, a female, Like I'm
gonna find it if I go looking, it's without fail.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
It's like you have a target on your back.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Bro. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah, it's really funny that that you ended with the female,
because that's a downfall for you. That's one to hear
your downfall sometimes. Don't don't hold that against some ladies
because he's a good guy, but it really is a
downfaul for you.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Right, it has been, Yeah, it has been. And I
think you know one that was in recovery, one that
was in sobriety. I think it was largely due to
a lack of work on myself. First, you know, you
can't tell a guy that was shooting heroin for on

(24:16):
a two year run that like, you can't have a
like a romantic life when you have ninety days. I
didn't want to hear that. You know what I mean.
Opiate's killed the testosterone level in a man. And when
you put that down, you know, there's the urge is
strong and it's uh.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Rivals addiction. The sex drive comes back completely like one
hundred times and more. Then all of a sudden that
replaces an addiction. And I'll say for myself the same way.
Like the minute I was like.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Oh this is great.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
I've now got you know, thirty days under my belt.
I feel great. But all of a sudden I replaced
it with that too, because now instead of you know,
drinking and dragging and there you are second in or
gambling or whatever it may be.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
So you replace that, right, Well, I'm not in here
for getting laid like I have ninety days I put
the drugs down, so like, what right, what's the problem?

Speaker 1 (25:08):
And we you know, we talks about this stuff because
they're afraid to because it's taboo, but it's real.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Well and also, who the hell are you to tell
me what I kind of can't write? Like and you
know exactly didn't listen, didn't listen. But these are all
Pat Dooley says life. Life is understood and reverse and uh,
these were just needed lessons Pat Dooley.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Dooley was on you know that did you watch? You
should watch his Dooley was on. Duley was on you
know and and Duley has some great words at wisdom
and Dooley's duly and you know, it's cool that we
are able to uh learn from each other on that.
But you know, and I asked about that because I
think it's important for people to know that, like you know,
they talk about it, you see it in movies, like
you know, you're not supposed to have a relationship for

(25:56):
X amount of days, and you know, get yourself a
plant first, and then you know that whole thing, and
we don't.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
I have sponsores today that I give them my wisdom,
I give them my advice. I say you know, I'm
not telling I'm not gonna tell you to not gonna
get laid. I'm not gonna tell you what you can
and can't do as an adult man. But like I'm
gonna get my two cents in and then I'm just
gonna wait. And it's happened, and it's you know, I

(26:28):
told you so, but it was me too, I get it, Like,
how can I You're gonna do what you're gonna do.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
Yeah, but we've learned, we knew that, and we know
that if we say that to them, like, hey, you
know what, sometimes it's better keep it in your pants.
Then you know, you don't get all excited.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
And that's the other problem because if if you're like me,
if you tell me what I can't do, like I'm
gonna do it twice and I'm gonna do it more.
And you know, the defiance, the resistance, that's how you
got in this position in the first place.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
Probably you know, yep, you know it's those crazy moments
that lead us to these you know, spirals and downfalls.
So you have sponsors, So you've been in the program,
you've been working in the program. I know that you're
very active. You're also active with HA, heroin Anonymous. You're
active with that, which I think is a really great thing.

(27:14):
I mean, there are you know, it's always been AA
and then NA, and it's always been one of the two.
That's all they ever had, nobody, you know, And now
there's you know, CA for cocaine Anonymous, a HA, there's
sex addiction anonymous, all that, there's all this, you know,
and really being able to peel those layers back. Why
what worked for you with AHA that may not have
worked with you for another one?

Speaker 2 (27:39):
HA was fun? H I thought was It was a
lot of fun. The meetings were fun. And I mean
it's the same literature. It's the same as AA. You're
using the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book NHA. But you know,
I've been at meetings, I've spoke at meetings. I've spoke

(27:59):
at a meeting at Pennypacker Park. It was outside and
there were so many people there, and it was one
of the first times I spoke and I talked about
drug use, and some old timer got up from the
circle from the group and like left the meeting, and
it was just like, oh my god, But like also

(28:20):
fuck you, Like why couldn't I talk about because.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
You're talking about drugs, yeah and not yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
And it's interesting when you say old timer because I
think people don't realize that too. And I'm gonna say
there is a division. There is that division. Like people
always say to me, do you go to meetings? Stuff
like that. I can't go to a clubhouse. I can't
go to a clubhouse for a meeting because those are
old timers and that thinking I can't align myself with.
And sometimes that is off putting to people.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
It's not even that it was off putting the me
being raised in the military. It was very militant. If
I was taught to show respect and like I didn't
mean to cut that loose, but like I also didn't
think it would offend anybody that to that degree. But
like I it came out, I said it, talked about it,

(29:09):
and uh, yeah, I don't know. It was a little embarrassing,
and it was also there was a chip on the shoulder.
It was like, well, why couldn't well it was such
a big deal there, Like I talked.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
About did the guy come back then?

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Not that meaning I wouldn't recognize him if you walked
in here, but it was I'll never forget that because
it was just like oops, and but also you know,
why shouldn't What if that wasn't enough to turn me
off at that point, but like, what if that did
turn somebody off? That could absolutely just be so rejecting
and embarrassing that it turned somebody off.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
But our stories are our stories, Tony, They're not meant
for everybody. Well, and if somebody is put off by them,
then they're not opening themselves to our stories, because that's
I think that's the problem, and I think that's where
the division comes in. And I think that's where a
lot of times, like for myself, I'm gonna just use
myself as this. I can't speak for anybody else. I
hated the rooms. I would go in there and I

(30:06):
felt like I didn't belong. I felt like I couldn't
say what I wanted to say. I felt like, you know,
they said get your hand up, get the hand up.
And when I did and I would say something, it
was like, what are you talking about? Or what are
you saying? Are you high right now? Because this isn't
a place for you. If you're high right now? Well,
where is the safe place for me? Well you can
go to treatment? Okay, Well, I'm not ready, but I'm here.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
It's there's like a breaking down of it. And I understand, man,
I like old school values and traditions. That part of
me is old school. But you know the AA. I've
an AA home group right now. Okay, it's called Feast first.
It's in Morristown, New Jersey. It's Tuesday nights. And in
our opening, what tell's that called? In the beginning? Yeah,

(30:51):
reading it says like we're gonna curse and talk about
drugs here it's an AAM and like you know, to
each other. If you don't like it, then there's just
plenty of other meetings in Burlington came the County, New Jersey, and.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
There's some lot more conservative meetings too they can go to.
And there's some more that I hope in and there.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Is and there's value that can be extracted from them.
Sometimes I aim for meetings with an older than me crowd.
I want the wisdom. I've been around guys with thirty
plus years and it's amazing.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
So you every Tuesday night you go to a home
group and it's a it's an AA home group. Yeah,
all right, you do HA anymore at all?

Speaker 2 (31:28):
When I can, when you can just my work schedule
changed and locations, locations were convenience and you know, I
was just at the Hi picnic yesterday nice, which was fun,
and uh, you know, I get there when I can.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
It's so you though, Tuesday night is a commitment to
yourself and to your sobriety and recovery. Yeah, and you
look forward? Do you look forward to the meetings?

Speaker 2 (31:55):
You ever? Just?

Speaker 1 (31:56):
And I'm asking because I know there's times where it's like, oh,
it's gonna starts at six and it's like twenty of
I don't even want to go.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
I don't want to go to anything. I don't want
to do anything. My natural brain is like you know what, dude,
like forget this podcast, Like go home and like you know,
get a shower and like take a nap whatever. No,
I don't want to do.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
You better showered before you got here.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
I don't want to do anything. I can't write from work.
I just changed me too. I don't want to do anything.
And the fact that like what I have to now
right to stay sober, I have to then, like is
that not being forced on me? I don't like feeling
like things are forced on me. Don't say if you
give me my coin four days before my actual anniversary.

(32:37):
I will take that at disrespect because now you just
put a limitation on me that Like, what if I
was going to relapse the next four days and now
I can't because you gave me my coin.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Four days early.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
That's between that's between me and God. There was four
days like you can't just you know what I mean.
But ha aa, I don't care what the meeting is.
I don't, I don't. I can go to any of
those meetings and extract value and relate. And it's a
limitation too. It's a limitation to me that I can

(33:11):
only go to one. Why why I'll go to any
of them. I'll walk in any of those doors. And
this one dude from the last Ponytail, Mike, he said,
you don't have to You don't have to dance with everybody,
as long as you dance with somebody, And that I
liked because I didn't want, you know, interestingly, I like that. Yeah,

(33:34):
I did too. That will always stay with me.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
And now when I see him, I'll think about him
saying that because it doesn't look like something he'd say,
or it doesn't sound like something that he would say. Yeah,
so you mentioned God or did you have a relationship
with God prior to going into recovery. Did you ever
think about that? Was that way you were brought up
or did that becoming more as you went into your recovery.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
My grandmother is ninety five Roman Catholic Italian woman.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
Your dad's side, I assume. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
She was a Catholic school teacher her whole life. Okay,
Saint Charles sentiments in New Jersey and the Catholic faith
in me and my family isn't going anywhere. I just
didn't receive it well. Like so many other things, it
was this forced upon me thing. It was an obligation

(34:30):
Sunday School. You know, I'm baptized, confirmed and whatever. The
third one is? What's the third one?

Speaker 1 (34:36):
I don't know. I was baptizing in confirmation community one. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's we just had that as our confirmation. I wasn't
a Catholic, I was United Church of Christ whatever, you know.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
It was. It was like so many other things in
my life. It was like a half hearted attempt and
more done to appease and just be docile and like
all right, like we got in trouble there too, Me
and my friends.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Absolutely, Sunday School has been for trouble going, you know,
going there, getting in trouble.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
He was actually an eighth grade graduation right for Sunday
School until me and like my one friend Chris, and
like a couple other guys went through and they now
after us, it was they bumped it back to seventh
grade because we were that uh, you know.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Unruly, But that was you were the game changer.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah, I don't know. I God called the blame too.
Everybody called the blame. Well, why my parents giving me
so much shift for using to getting high like I
want to you know, girlfriends like don't mind your business,
don't worry about like how many pills I took today,
you know. But God, yeah, God turned his back on me.

(35:47):
Why not? At some point I was I was absolutely Uh.
I knew nothing of it. I knew nothing of anything.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
When we talk about things that happened, and one of
them things that happened that we talk about is, you know,
relationships and relationships are something that I suck at, you know,
being a person that with the substantute disorder, My relationships
were I sucked at having a relationship with the drugs too.
I mean because if I didn't, I would never been

(36:17):
in the position I was in, you know, And it
was something that I really had a fearful thing about it.
And I'm not really just talking about intimate relationships. I'm
talking about relationships in general. I'm talking about them with friends,
with fellowships, stuff like that. Going into recovery for me
was really scary because that means now I had to
be vulnerable in front of people I didn't know, and

(36:38):
people I would probably have had nothing in common with
or ever have thought twice about hanging out with. It
wasn't for our addiction. How are you with relationships now
far better than I was because you weren't so great
with it?

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Huh No, I mean it's easy now again to call
myself selfish looking back right to all the high school right,
like I thought every woman in my life was just
crazy because like we're fighting, we're breaking up, But like
I was a terrible boyfriend. I was more concerned about

(37:16):
getting drunk than like my girlfriend in high school having
a good time in her dance, you know. And that's again,
it just doesn't come until you're like, yeah, it might
not have been the you know, catch I thought I
was everything else it turns out, you know, we're wrong.

(37:36):
I was wrong.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Do you ever think that you had all these relationships
where you know, these volder type of relationships or just
any type of relationship with something because of the fact that,
like that loneliness that sometimes we experience, maybe that isolation
of the loneliness.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah, And I think it's it's also tied to what
I saw in childhood. What I is the norm? What
is you know, what I was raised amongst and being
in a slightly chaotic household, But like receiving love, there
also right and stability amongst some chaos, right, So like

(38:17):
that is intertwined and like that has to be separated.
And that's one thing I found out in recovery that
is like you know, mommy issues, daddy issues, whatever you
want to call them. But like it's all learned stuff.
I'm a product of my environment through and.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Through so and that was where I was asking about
that nature and nurture sort of thing, like does it
come from the home or does it come from the environment?
Does it come from both? Is this something we learn
is something we're born with? Like, I mean, I know
what I can deduce in my own head, But when
when you sit down and you think about it, because
I know you're a thinker man, and I know that
you get in your own head and you overthink things

(38:57):
and you come up with scenarios and you're your own
worst Antemey we're just gonna call that here. He said
it before, I'm gonna call it again. When you talk
about who's your worst enemy, Tony, you are absolutely I
know that. I mean, that's how much I love your brother,
because I know that you're your worst enemy. So when
we talk about this, you know, why is it after
six years being in recovery, we still go through these

(39:19):
motions in our head and we still are our own
worst enemies. What's missing?

Speaker 2 (39:29):
I don't think anything's missing. I think that's just what
These are the obstacles in my path, and like that's
these are the hurdles, and like they come at everybody,
and they come at me differently, and they come with everybody,
and I deal with them differently. Right, the same thing
that my brother can deal with just like straight face,

(39:51):
no emotion, right, Like all the county's gonna know if
I'm dealing with that situation. It's just we deal with
things differently. And you know, it's just finding a way
to deal with them. And I think seeing that you
can going in situations I'm afraid.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
How is your brother.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
He's four years younger than me, so when I was
a senior, he was a freshman.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
And it's the only simpling you have as that brother. Yeah,
you guys are tight.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
We are becoming more and more tight as my sobriety
has gone on. We didn't have the best relationship well
when I was getting high to a point, and not
because we were mad at each other, not because we
fought or like got a fight or hated each other.
It was just lack of presence on my end. And

(40:42):
these are the relationships that I have gotten back, even
though you know they look different today, they look different,
But I get to show up for my family. He has,
He has a daughter, and I try and get to
as many gymnastics competitions my niece that I can. And
I be there for my dad, my mom, and uh,

(41:02):
you know, it's not easy to show up for people.
These are things that I don't inherently have or I
certainly don't want to do them, even if I do
have right right, So this is an outward display of
like familial love, friendship, love that I always thought I had,

(41:24):
but like now it's fully unlocked around around, at least
now fully capable to unlock it when I wasn't before
or just didn't want to.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
You know which one you think I was that you
just didn't want to or you weren't capable of For both.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
I mean I wasn't capable because I wanted to get high.
I didn't want to. I don't want to go Thanksgiving
and pretend to be happy. I will sit here and
like I'm not isolating with the cat, like you're isolating.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
Gosh, you don't how many holidays I was sick at. Yeah,
I was sick for almost every my stomach bad stomach aches,
a lot of holidays.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
Yeah, yeah, you know I'm in the bathroom like twenty times.
Like no one drank that much fluid, you know. Yeah,
it's it's not it's a lot easier today. It's not
a struggle. And still even now, I'm very I'm introverted.
I have a social window, and I get very overwhelmed.
I get get over stimulated. I don't like being Like

(42:24):
if if we were in a restaurant eating and there's
like two loud music playing like that would drive me nuts.
And we're yelling to hear each other and that kind
of thing I get, you know, So like old nut Still,
I drive a truck for work. There's an outward facing
camera for for liability for accidents.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
Right.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
I asked them once every couple of months, like are
you guys listening to me on the truck? Like can
you hear me? And like Tony, no, because I'm on
there singing and like hur some people off and just
like talking to myself. It's probably it would probably be
really comical to put a microphone in there, but like
you know, you're.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
Being normal man with what it is, but you'd be
more conscious.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Of it, right, you know, I mean normalcy.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Hey listen, I walk dogs, you know, I and I
talk to the dogs all all the time I walk them.
People must think I'm a weirdo, but you know what,
that's just sort of what we become, you know, and
and we what you talked about it. You know, you're
an introvert. Most people who use drugs are introverted. I believe.
I believe they become more extroverted or more introverted based
upon the drugs that they use or how high they

(43:32):
get or how messed up or fucked up they are.
And more so than that, you know, the isolation for us,
you know, keeps us, you know, and that untrusting aspect too.
We've been burnt, We've been burnt, We've been burnt, you know, physically, emotionally, mentally,
this all takes tolls on us.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
Yeah, trust is uh, that does not come natural to me.
And I don't think I think that's been a theme
our whole life to like, that's not uh, I'm not
gonna Why would I give you the upper hand and
put you in any situation where you could potentially hurt me,
harm me or like you know, and that's where that's

(44:14):
my default is. Everybody's kept at arms lived. I'm not.
Let's not.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
It's it's easy.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
To do that.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
You keep it an arm's length and that's all they
need to know. And then you go on about your way.
I'll go about mine and right.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
Right, And that's still uh, you know, being broken down,
that's still evolving today.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
So so I'm gonna I'm gonna ask a questions and
you know, I'm gonna ask a few questions here, and
you know, going into recovery is difficult enough without any
type of like outside forces or any type of like
you know, ship added into the mix of it. You know,

(44:57):
we're trying to focus on staying clean, staying alive, trying
to get by day by day, you know, and then
we we open ourselves up to people because we aren't
used to doing that, but we do it because we
want to see what happens. So you went into your recovery.
Throughout your recovery, you did get involved into a relationship.
And if you want talk about you say, britd shut

(45:18):
the fuck up, and I will. But you got married.
I did you got married? Did how many years at
your sobriety? Was it that you got married?

Speaker 2 (45:31):
A little over two years?

Speaker 1 (45:33):
Two years, a couple of months, two years, a couple
of months, And you know that that's a long time
into the recovery, but also sometimes a short period of
time for you. And I'm gonna ask this and were
you Were you doing it because there was actual a
love thing there or were you doing it because there
was a just somebody there paying attention? And you could

(45:55):
also just say, Britt, I'm not talking about this. I'll
just ask it a different way then.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Okay, absolutely love there, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
You're not married anymore. No, no, And that is a
traumatic experience to go through a separation or divorce when
you are in love with somebody and you aren't expecting
the world or the bottom to be pulled out from
underneath you. Especially for somebody who is in recovery, who
was newly into their recovery. How did they handle that?

(46:35):
Cried a lot.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
I leaned heavy on people in the program, leaned heavy
on my family, like therapy. You know that that that
is a that is a pain. I escaped my whole
life because like all these right to the high school
girlfriend and mentioned mentioned earlier, numerous other ones who is uh,

(47:01):
I never felt that I never had the fuel any
breakup any and like they left, there was ones that left,
there was ones that I left. And you know, either
way though, I never sat in that space because I
was drinking, I was drugging, and you know, it was
forty years old, potentially going through your first heartbreak and

(47:25):
you know, barely being equipped with enough recovery and enough
of emotional maturity and awareness to even really cope with it,
really deal with it. I think I.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
Love that you said emotional maturity. That's important to know.
I mean, I think people don't realize that A lot
of relationships sometimes are based on the fact of the
lack of emotional maturity.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
And it's like such a double edged sword and recovery
because it's gonna it can burn you on either end,
either side. And you know, it's one of those things, right,
You say that, and I hear immature. I'm not immature, right,
and I kind of was kind of was not because

(48:11):
of lack of growth or lack of intelligence. Is lack
of experience, lack of experience that you're not out of
your mind on alcohol and like six other substances.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
It's lack of experience sober, it's lack of sober experience.
You know what it was like that have relationships when
you were messed up, you could walk away from you
didn't care. You're best friend, Coul look at you and say,
if you do this again, I'm not fine. I don't care.
I don't need you. We didn't need anybody. We prefer
not to have anybody. It was easier. But then all
of a sudden you find this, you know, newfound you know,

(48:44):
freedom and sobriety and recovery, and you get into a
relationship where you find these emotions that you didn't have.
There's love and all this stuff, you know, and that
could send somebody spiraling.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
So you almost did you know? I, like I said,
I was barely equipped enough to handle that kind of
I mean, is everything to just grief, rejection, despair. It
was not a fun time in my life.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
Did you blame yourself?

Speaker 2 (49:25):
No? No, I think Uh I think I did. I
think as a as a man, I'm a problem solver
and figure it out and get in I just think, uh,
staying in that space, this loop, like what went wrong?

(49:46):
What am I gonna do? How am I gonna fix it? Right?
I think that that alone, if I didn't get out
of that, If I didn't my sponsor didn't help me
shatter that cycle? Did that? I lost my mind staying
in there because.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
The sponsor had his work cut out. Formed didn't he
he did?

Speaker 2 (50:01):
He spent Do you spent days on the phone and
conversation after conversation, multiple phone calls of hours long per day. Uh,
you know, completely selfless?

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Still your sponsor, he is still the same guy. Yeah,
still through thick and thin. Now he will he's a lifer.
I think that's awesome. Yeah, he's you know, it's cruel.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
He's one of the few people in recovery that have
people transcend like fellowship to friendship, right and uh, you know,
I think we've we've did that a long time ago.
And I'm glad.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
I'm glad you said that. There's there, There is a
transcendation from fellowship to friendship. And there is a fine
line with that because you know, a friendship is when
you really give almost all yourself to somebody. The fellowship
is when you give them what you want to there
and then so to be able to take that and

(51:04):
trust somebody enough to give them all of you, then
that speaks volumes. Man. Yeah, that's a good evolution.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
No one, no one showed up for me, h, my
entire life like he did, you know, and I think
he knew I needed it and I did need it,
and uh it was it was cool. It was cool.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
So you know that that right there is you know,
first of all, relationships are a bitch, man, you know,
breakups are the worst. You know, trying to figure out
the relationship to begin with is awful. Let alone. Then
you get comfortable and all of a sudden, you know,
there's a breakup, Like he gets did that affect your
ability to trust in another relationship? Again?

Speaker 2 (51:51):
No, but a lot of time went by and I
ended up spending the time with myself, the time to
myself that I should have spent like when I ninety
days clean, right, I should have done that then, and
I got to do it afterwards, and uh, it didn't.

(52:12):
It just didn't come in the way for the form
that that I wanted it to. I thought it should.
But like it happened anyway. And you know, that's kind
of like what you touched on. I've been to concerts
by myself. I went to Puerto Rico by myself, Arizona, Miami.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
Do your research at to Arizona were by yourself. I
met friends out friends out there. I traveled, Yeah, I
traveled out there. Incubus, right, who was it, Yeah, Incubus
Incabis there.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Yeah, Yeah, it was cool. It was cool, and you know,
I I it gave me like a like a second
lust for life within recovery. And you know, because and
that's that's a huge deal. It's it's amazing that I
can even sit here and say this because a couple days,
weeks and months after the break up, like I didn't

(53:03):
there was I didn't think anything was ever gonna be
okay again. I really did not think that I was
going to experience happiness again. M hm. So to be
able to do all that and like have that and
run with it, that's well, that's pretty good.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
That's awesome to hear and this person it is in
recovery as well. Do you ever think that you could
have a relationship, an intimate relationship with somebody who's an army.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I don't see why not
Why should I put a limitation on that either? I
don't so many limitations. I was so self limiting to
myself my whole life, and now it's kind of just like,
well no, let's let's find out. But like where I
probably failed early on with with with the early recovery

(54:00):
relationship was not being able to implement healthy boundaries, uh,
not actually assessing the situation, not actually listening to my instincts,
which I can do now with a woman an me
a programmer. You know, there's a there's a valuable lesson

(54:24):
and you know, in the worst of situations, we can
extract value. It doesn't matter what the situation is. Value
can be just extracted from that situation and it's probably
not going to come immediately. It certainly didn't, and but
it came. It came, and you know, don't regret it.

(54:48):
I know what I did, I know what I didn't,
and it is what.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
I'm glad you said. You don't reret it, because I'm
gonna ask you have any regrets on anything as you did.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
No, no, man, you know I got to. I honestly
considered it a blessing because it marked the first relationship
of that nature that like I showed up for somebody,
and I got to show up for two people. And
I'll just leave that at that. You might get sued,

(55:17):
and it might happen twice because like I'm gonna send
you my bill to so like you know what I mean,
Like it's not.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
We'll be fine. I think I don't think there's gonna
be I don't think that person will be listening to
this anyway. I hope they. I hope they do. I mean,
there's nothing negative being said, and I think that's something
that's really important to know that. You know, we're not
out to get anybody. We're just we're out to just
make things better for ourselves. You know, I don't wish

(55:49):
any harm or negativity on well, some negativity, not some people.
But I don't wish any harm or anything really bad
to happen to somebody. But like you know, there there's
these fine minds once again that we're drawn, and you
know we have to either like stay on one side
or the other, because the minute we start to erase that,
it's blurred well.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
Being in recovery, that's a learning curve paralleling with life
in and of itself, because like in recovery and in AA,
I'm told I have to be to be tolerant and
patient and loving to all, and you know there's limits
to that. There's limits to that for every human being,
every every situation. And you know I'll call bullshit on that. No,

(56:33):
you don't like I am not, Never ever will anybody
refer to me as a spiritual guru of recovery. And
I'm okay with that. We have roles there and we
have we have meaning in the situations that we're in
and that's not mine, it's not mine. And I am
worlds more spiritual than I was seven years ago, So

(56:58):
it's it's relative.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
It's all relative. I like that. I mean, spirituality grows
is what happens. You know, you come into it, you
find it. It's not like all of a sudden you
go clean and I hate that word, but you go
clean and all of a suden spirituality is bestowed upon you.
You find it. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
It takes work, meditation, spirituality. Right. I still think it
is a very strange thing to sit here as a
man and talk about like my spiritual.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
Dude, you said here as a man talking about you cried.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
Yeah, well that's uh, you know, not just that you.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Sat here as the oldest Italian son and talked about this,
and I mean sometimes our values from where way we
were raised, it also dictates who we are.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
My dad has three brothers, right, and they're just like
you can't tell what these guys are thinking when they're
thinking it, and like you guys mad, I'm like, we're happy,
like what's going on? Right? So that that was my
conception as what a man is, and like that is
not me. Man. You know, if I stub my finger
like all Kensington's gonna know about it, right, And I'm

(58:10):
animated and dramatic and loud and funny and like the laugh,
and you know, those are all things that I got
more comfortable with being in recovery.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
Can comfort with yourself. People becoming comfortable with themselves in
recovery is one of the hardest things to do. The
minute you could look in the mirror and stare at
yourself for a little while and be happy and be
okay with it, I think that's when you arrive. I believe,
you know, because it took me the longest time to
look at myself in the mirror and be okay with it.
You know, Now I look at it, I'm like, oh, geez,

(58:44):
you look like shit. That's all right. You're alive, you're good,
you're sober, you're healthy. Stand you still stand in If
you could go back to like eighteen year old Tony,
you know, three years into year drinking and stuff. You know,
at eighteen we're that age of a young adult, what
would you tell eighteen year old.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
Tony, hang on here for a ride, listen to dad.
Might probably would have probably would have gone in the military, yes,
which I considered, But I was, uh, just like you said, fear.
I was too afraid. I was too afraid everybody. You know.
That was a very uh. I think that pushed me farther.

(59:21):
The alcohol being to that age, and people are getting
set up at rowing and going away to colleges and
everybody has a plan, And I'm like, I don't know,
Like what you know that was? That's a joke between
me and my dad that like long term planning means
that in the morning at breakfast time, I know what
I'm doing for lunch right, Like I never knew. I

(59:43):
don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
Are you a planner now?

Speaker 2 (59:46):
Trying to be? Trying to be, yeah, trying try and
plan things out better and have a scope.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
And you know, you know, there's a lot of people
out there suffering. I mean, we talk about mental health,
we talk about addiction, talk about you know, the trial.
You know, if we peeled a lot more layers back,
I mean, we could talk so much more about stuff.
You know, there are so many people out there that
we still talk to. You know, what is something that
you could with some words of advice that you would

(01:00:13):
get to somebody who's out there and going through this
and struggling still. It's tough, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
Just to keep persevering, you know, I think our perseverance
is one thing that, like I said before, like I
don't think my dad and my brother would have fit
well into that situation and been able to endure it
as long as I did, and like, but they're there
and I was there, and that that perseverance, I think,

(01:00:46):
is it shifted right. I'm sorry, put all that stuff
down and it kept me alive, and it kept me
hanging on, and it kept me all that other stuff.
But now it's right, the light side of it now
in recovery, and it's still it's an asset. It's an asset.
And the only reason you're still out there at all
is because of your perseverance. So just to keep at

(01:01:08):
it and you know, don't give up.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
I love that. That's so perfect too, Keep at it and
don't give up, because we're two prime examples of that.
We kept that and we didn't give up. We probably
should have checked out a long time ago. We probably
should not be sitting here having this conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Yeah, I wanted to absolutely times. The first time I
used the syringe, I loaded it up with you know, six,
and I don't know if I missed or you know,
got another plan something that other plans for me, I
don't know, but you know, just miserable.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Any overdoses.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
A couple down in Charlotte. You know, I think even
the narcan was weird down there. It was I think
it was like in a syringe.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Oh yeah, they Yeah, that's that's becoming more prevalent now
because now the doses aren't even strong enough. So that's
you are still getting the vile stuff like that. I
just picked some of that up too. I just got
some from the state.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
So you know, and you know, an hour is never
enough time to really unpack you know, our lives and
what goes on and stuff. But you know, for me
to be able to sit here and have this conversation
with you and to hear you know, bits and pieces
that led you to where you are today, I mean,
you know you're not here. I hate to see. You're
not a success or. You're a survival story. Bro your

(01:02:28):
a story of survival.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
People always like, oh, but your success story. I'm not sure.
I'm not sure I'm successful yet, but I'm surviving and
I'm thriving.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Success is relative too, I mean, how do you define that?

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
How do you measure it?

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Well? I mean you can have a million dollars and
be a complete like disaster of human being and miserable
and yeah, how do you how do you define that?
And I can define that for myself.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
As weird as I was gonna ask you, can you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
With some spirituality and like some type of peace and
being able to add value to situations to relationships today?

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
Do you feel like you're a success today?

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
You should six years man, Yeah, you're still standing after
a breakup that was you know, I mean not just
like a relationship, it was a marriage. I mean that's
in your sobriety and everything else you've gone through for that.
So there are so many people out there still suffering there.
The mental health is just going crazy and can't get

(01:03:30):
a handle on it. And with the way the system
is nowadays getting medication and getting treated, it's so difficult.
What are some words that you would get to somebody
who's out there struggling.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
I'm just gonna have to. They're gonna find something that's
going to work for them, and they keep trying. You know,
I know a lot of people with mental health health
afflictions that all kind of say the same thing, that
their medication isn't working properly, that they feel numb when
they take it, that makes them want to take it,
And you know I'm not a doctor, but like, then

(01:04:03):
try something else, and keep trying something else, and eventually
you're going to get into that like groove that like
status quo and be able to run with it. You know,
we're underdog stories like mental health, addiction both, it doesn't matter,
Like this is like the comeback. This is like the
chance that the ultimate comeback for all of us, and

(01:04:25):
like it's possible for anyone. If me and you were
sitting here, like it's possible for anyone.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
That was actually like, as you were saying that, that
was really powerful man, that you know, talking about comeback stories,
that right there in itself such a perfect way. I
don't even want to talk anymore. I don't you want
to ask any more questions for the simple fact that
you really just summed it up. Man. You know, it's
a comeback, and you know what a great place to be.

(01:04:54):
And I'm glad that we're here, and I'm glad that
you're able to do this. You know, we're gonna have
to come back and do it. We got you here
with Sherman, with Danny Gilman and with dual. You will
have a little panel and you know it'll be good.
But you know. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're
doing what you do. Thank you for sharing that with me.
For viewers out there, Tony is out there. If you
are in the New Jersey area, he is living over

(01:05:16):
in Jersey. He goes he has meetings over in Morristown
that he goes to. He has connections over there. Reach out.
If you need to get in contact with him, he
reach out to me. I'll put you in touch with him.
We're always willing to help because there's a lot of
help that's needed out there and people are afraid to
ask for it and don't because you don't want to
end up in a vicious cycle like all of us,

(01:05:37):
like the rest of us were you know so, But
thanks for showing up here to day. Showing up is
half our battle, bro, the hardest part. You just said it.
You almost didn't want.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
To show up. I don't, I won't do anything.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
No. Well that's good because after this you can go
take that shower, get some food, and go to sleep.
But I appreciate you being here. I appreciate your honesty,
I appreciate your sharing, and I definitely admire you and
you are an inspiration for or my friend. You're awesome.
Yeah so. And you know with this being mental health,
you know, Awareness month for men, and last month being

(01:06:07):
mental health Awareness month in general, and every month being
just awareness month for everything. Whatever it does, you stand for, everybody,
be a voice. This is Brick Carpenter and USULA Media.
Have a great rest of your dady,