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Why Sobriety Means Letting Go of Control : The Road to Freedom From Addiction With Tom · Recovering Out Loud

• 0:01
  Hi there, welcome back or welcome to Recovering Out Loud
• 0:04
  Podcast, the show where we get real about mental health and
• 0:08
  addiction. I'm so glad you're here.
• 0:10
  If you or someone you love is struggling with drugs or
• 0:13
  alcohol, please reach out for help.
• 0:16
  Send me a message on all social media platforms at Recovering
• 0:20
  Out Loud Pod or by e-mail at recoveringoutloudpod@gmail.com.
• 0:26
  You are no longer alone. Tom, my good friend Tom, welcome
• 0:46
  back to Recovering Out Loud, buddy.
• 0:48
  I'm so glad you came back and you know, didn't I didn't scare
• 0:51
  you away the first time, so. No, man, I just worry I'm
• 0:54
  showing a bit too much. Chest hot outside today.
• 0:55
  Chest here, yeah. You bike everywhere.
• 0:57
  Don't. You I bike everywhere.
• 0:59
  Sometimes I catch myself like on transit.
• 1:03
  Like if you want to fix that, that's.
• 1:05
  What do I do? It looks just go like this.
• 1:06
  Yeah. It looks OK.
• 1:07
  Yeah. That's pretty good, right?
• 1:08
  Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Sometimes I catch myself like on
• 1:10
  transit and I'm like, wow, It's kind of like a vacation for me.
• 1:13
  Yeah, look at these people. You do this every day.
• 1:15
  My legs aren't moving. Oh, this is kind of nice.
• 1:17
  The worst is when I decide, OK, I'm not going to ride my bike
• 1:19
  and then I hop on a Street car or something and I'm sitting
• 1:21
  there and I see all the bikes going by and I'm like, yeah,
• 1:24
  'cause he's flying right now. Exactly that drives.
• 1:27
  Me nuts. I do that a lot.
• 1:29
  Yeah, it. Was a it's a huge I try and tell
• 1:32
  people early in recovery too. They're like, what should I do?
• 1:35
  I'm like get a fucking bike, man.
• 1:37
  Because I mean, first of all, like I got back into biking in
• 1:41
  my 20s and it's exactly what it feels like when you're a kid and
• 1:47
  I became a bike messenger because of it.
• 1:49
  I just fell in love with it but also in early recovery worst
• 1:53
  looking for any reason not to go to a meeting.
• 1:56
  And for me, when it's winter transit, I'd be like, no, I'm
• 2:00
  not going, but like I will ride across town in a Blizzard to a
• 2:03
  meeting. And that's like one of the high
• 2:06
  points of my week. I've seen you do it, yeah.
• 2:08
  Yeah I live ride all year. Absolutely.
• 2:10
  I mean I live across town from Cork town and the first like 2
• 2:16
  months of I got sober in December and so all winter I was
• 2:20
  riding it. It was just like this is my
• 2:22
  penance. You deserve this.
• 2:24
  I deserve this. And honestly, like, it kind of
• 2:27
  helped. It helped motivate me, you know,
• 2:29
  because you feel like such a piece of shit when you first get
• 2:32
  sober. And those little things about
• 2:34
  trying to, you know, show yourself that like, Oh no, I'm
• 2:38
  capable of doing hard stuff once in a while, you know?
• 2:41
  So anyways, thanks for having me.
• 2:43
  Yeah, of course. And I even put on a shirt for
• 2:45
  you today. Nice.
• 2:46
  Me too. I'm soaked.
• 2:48
  I'm soaked. It's air conditioning here, but
• 2:50
  it's it's a toasty. Which wasn't always the case.
• 2:52
  We had one guy in here that was not air.
• 2:55
  The guy was fixing the air conditioning.
• 2:56
  So I'm grateful for air conditioning today.
• 2:58
  Oh God, I love it. I love air conditioning so much.
• 3:01
  I I spent my first four or five summers in Toronto without air
• 3:04
  conditioning and then when I got air conditioning, I was like
• 3:07
  subletting some loft or something for a year.
• 3:10
  That summer, I didn't leave Alzheimer.
• 3:11
  Turns out that they deliver booze and cocaine.
• 3:15
  Yeah. And cocaine, too.
• 3:17
  And I was the only thing I was eating was popsicles.
• 3:21
  And I gained 35 lbs not eating food.
• 3:24
  I wasn't eating food, I was just eating popsicles.
• 3:26
  Yeah, the sugar, yeah. Fuck, I don't when you're it,
• 3:29
  it's baffling how you're not eating anything, but somehow
• 3:32
  you're you're like, I'm like, oh man, I'm like drug chic and you
• 3:36
  look at yourself and you're like just puffed out and just looks
• 3:39
  like death. I was looking at a, a video of I
• 3:43
  I'm, I'm happy that I've taken a bunch of my videos of myself,
• 3:45
  like in addiction, because that's a good reminder of like,
• 3:49
  and yeah, to your point, it's like the first thing I noticed
• 3:51
  is like the bags under the eyes, right?
• 3:53
  And then the puffy face and just the despair in my eyes, right?
• 3:57
  Like you can just see it. I.
• 3:58
  Love it too because I've looked at some of them and remembered I
• 4:01
  thought it looked good in this photo and I've just.
• 4:05
  I'm so fat. I saw I just actually posted to
• 4:09
  my sober channel practically sober.
• 4:12
  Check it out. It was like 3 weeks before I got
• 4:14
  sober and I was on a plane and I had a broken shoulder flying
• 4:16
  back from Florida I think and I remembered taking it and
• 4:20
  thinking this I look good in this and if when you see it I'll
• 4:23
  send it to you. I look like a Teamu version of
• 4:26
  myself. I don't even.
• 4:28
  I don't look anything like me. Yeah.
• 4:31
  But to your point, it's like, yeah, I'm I'm fine, everything's
• 4:33
  fine. And then one of those drinking
• 4:35
  escapade injuries that we, you know, we seem to accumulate in
• 4:39
  in active addiction and and alcoholism broken.
• 4:42
  How'd you break your shoulder? I was staying on a boat.
• 4:47
  I was, I was shooting a band, but it was out of, you know,
• 4:50
  rich musicians. I was down in Fort Lauderdale
• 4:53
  and I showed up and was like, OK, what room am I in?
• 4:55
  They're like, oh, you're in the yacht parked Outback and I'm.
• 4:58
  Like there's a. Bar in the yacht and, and I, I
• 5:02
  just, there's lots of steps in a boat and I turned all the lights
• 5:06
  off and it just fell and dislocated my shoulder and it
• 5:09
  cracked And the first thing I thought was I didn't get travel
• 5:12
  insurance. I'm like, what do I do?
• 5:15
  What do I do? And I, it was out for a little
• 5:18
  bit and I was like, I'm going to have to go to the airport and
• 5:21
  fly back to Canada with a dislocated shoulder because
• 5:24
  otherwise it's going to cost me like 30-40 thousand dollars or
• 5:26
  something. And then I just grabbed a
• 5:28
  curtain rod and popped it back in and I'm suffering, man.
• 5:32
  Like it hurts right now. To this day, you're still paying
• 5:34
  for. It Yeah, I'm going in for some
• 5:36
  free Canadian Mris in two weeks so.
• 5:39
  It's a beautiful thing living in this country.
• 5:40
  I love Canada, I love it. You too, man.
• 5:43
  Some days I I really have to remind myself that I have it
• 5:46
  pretty good. Or when I'm talking to people,
• 5:49
  sorry, when I'm talking to people about trying to get them
• 5:51
  into treatment and they're complaining about the free rehab
• 5:54
  that we have in the waiting lists, it's like, yeah, it
• 5:57
  sucks, but I mean. I'll wait.
• 6:00
  It's free. Yeah.
• 6:01
  I mean, I booked these Mris, what?
• 6:03
  I don't know, two months ago. That's fine.
• 6:04
  They're not. I got a hernia right now.
• 6:06
  It's fine. You know, they're like, it's you
• 6:09
  can see it. It's right there.
• 6:10
  It's my little buddy. And they were like, I don't
• 6:12
  know, you want to get it fixed? I'm like, is it fine?
• 6:14
  He's like, lose some weight. That's that's OK.
• 6:17
  It's like then we can throw it on the list.
• 6:19
  It's fine. It'll be free.
• 6:20
  So because I broke in like 30 bones in my life and I haven't
• 6:25
  paid a dime for. Any of them?
• 6:27
  Most of those were drinking related no like.
• 6:29
  Just no. Almost none of them actually.
• 6:31
  Well, OK, here's the thing. I mean, I was drunk all day,
• 6:34
  every day for 20 something years.
• 6:36
  So I was drunk for a lot of them, but it wasn't because it
• 6:41
  was because I was skateboarding, because I was looking at a girl
• 6:44
  on my bike and I hit a tree. Some of them were were drinking
• 6:48
  related, getting punched in the face.
• 6:51
  That would have been me running my mouth when I was drunk, yeah.
• 6:53
  Which you probably wouldn't have done.
• 6:54
  So and I got a punchable face, so I think I said unless.
• 6:57
  I don't think so. OK.
• 6:59
  I mean, yeah, no, you probably said that, but I don't.
• 7:00
  I don't think you have a punchable face.
• 7:02
  Wow. I've seen some pretty not.
• 7:03
  In Toronto, back in Vancouver, it was apparently the number one
• 7:06
  punchable face because I was just getting hit by strangers on
• 7:08
  the street. I love it.
• 7:11
  Yeah, man, it's, you know, today was a tough one Today I was
• 7:14
  telling you outside I got fired from my other job, which I was
• 7:18
  like driving here today and I'm like, should I talk about this?
• 7:20
  Should I not talk about this lay?
• 7:23
  It on me. Yeah.
• 7:23
  And I, I don't like, I don't come on here and try to get
• 7:26
  like, although it would be great to get pity, right?
• 7:29
  Because I love people feeling sorry for me.
• 7:31
  Yeah. Oh, no, stop.
• 7:33
  Keep going. In my veins.
• 7:34
  Yeah, right. But it's like, I got to be
• 7:36
  honest. And I started this podcast to be
• 7:38
  fully honest, and I knew I was going to get fired.
• 7:41
  I, I saw it coming, you know, it turns out when you don't put in
• 7:45
  100% effort, like people notice, right?
• 7:47
  And I knew it was coming. I was spending too much time
• 7:50
  doing this stuff and it just, it hurts still, you know, it still
• 7:54
  hurts when your ego takes that hit.
• 7:55
  And we were talking about it outside.
• 7:57
  It's like, you know, I'm not doing any of the work.
• 7:59
  I'm not meeting my responsibilities, but you
• 8:02
  should, I should still be getting paid.
• 8:04
  You know, it's like, what the hell, man?
• 8:05
  No, you, you, you got yourself in this situation and now it's
• 8:09
  time to navigate yourself back out, right?
• 8:10
  So there's a lot of positives. I can spend more time on my
• 8:13
  other job, right? It's gonna be OK, you know?
• 8:16
  But it's still, it's scary, right?
• 8:17
  Especially living in Toronto. You have to pay.
• 8:19
  Yeah, it's the the uncertainty of not being a very wealthy
• 8:24
  person. I'll say.
• 8:27
  Yeah, when those things happen, I honestly like I use my OK.
• 8:32
  So the other day I'm, I'm hanging out with two old friends
• 8:35
  who went to film school together.
• 8:36
  We're in their one of their fucking penthouses over on
• 8:39
  Roncey overlooking Sororin Park. And, and my buddy Doug, he's
• 8:43
  he's in town from LA and they wouldn't let him back in the
• 8:45
  country. Yeah, he lives in, in Santa
• 8:49
  Monica. But, you know, one friend he,
• 8:52
  you know, produces all these big movies for Netflix.
• 8:55
  And then Doug has Emmys and stuff.
• 8:58
  And I'm sitting there and I'm like, this made me feel bad
• 9:01
  about myself. And I had to catch myself and,
• 9:04
  and remember that like, look, my life is my life.
• 9:07
  But also they didn't have to go through 25 years of crushing
• 9:12
  alcoholism, you know, like, and I use that as not as an excuse,
• 9:17
  but also just like a reason for me to go easy on myself.
• 9:22
  You know, like one thing I've been thinking about a lot lately
• 9:25
  is just the commonality, like the, the how common it is for,
• 9:29
  to be alcoholic. Like I just put on a video the
• 9:31
  other day, it's like, we're Alcoholics and that's fine.
• 9:34
  Like it's OK. Like it's not what we think it
• 9:38
  is. We're not special.
• 9:40
  There are, I don't know, hundreds of millions of us, like
• 9:44
  hundreds of millions of us around, around the world.
• 9:47
  And, and it's completely fine, fine to be an alcoholic.
• 9:51
  And so for me, understanding that, it means that I can give
• 9:55
  myself a break. You know, like, no one gets mad
• 9:58
  at someone who gets fucking throat cancer.
• 10:02
  And they're like, weren't you doing better in your life?
• 10:04
  It's like, well, a good box. Why do you keep keep having that
• 10:09
  cancer? It's really annoying.
• 10:10
  Exactly. Do you know what that's that
• 10:11
  cancer is doing to my productivity?
• 10:13
  You know, No, it's, it's we got to give ourselves a lot of grace
• 10:18
  to be able to say, just accept where we are, say mistakes were
• 10:23
  made and and where do we go from here?
• 10:27
  As long as we're doing the right things, then, you know, just
• 10:31
  keep moving forward. That's what I was going to say,
• 10:33
  man. It's like it, it's really hard
• 10:35
  to get mad at somebody that's trying, you know, And I can
• 10:38
  honestly say I spent, yeah, the better part of, you know,
• 10:42
  probably 8 to 10 years in active addiction, not trying, like,
• 10:46
  like really not trying, not working on myself.
• 10:49
  And yeah, it's very easy for me to, to go back and well, you
• 10:52
  know, I was in active alcoholism and addiction.
• 10:54
  So like, poor me, it's like, so were millions of other people.
• 10:57
  Exactly right. And as we speak right now, as we
• 10:59
  sit down here, I went through a tough morning.
• 11:01
  There's millions of people out there going through way worse,
• 11:04
  right? It's all subjective.
• 11:05
  And like trauma's subjective. Like at least the bomb wasn't
• 11:08
  dropped on my fucking country. I was just going this morning
• 11:11
  going through footage of kids in Uganda looking so happy in
• 11:16
  schools put on by this nonprofit that I've been doing work with,
• 11:20
  and I'm looking at them and they're just having a fucking
• 11:22
  blast. And I'm like, yeah, this is
• 11:23
  fine. What's going on with me right
• 11:25
  now? It is, it's completely OK.
• 11:28
  But yeah, those people, it is hard to, and I've seen it,
• 11:32
  definitely seen it throughout 'cause I was constantly trying
• 11:35
  to get sober, you know, I just wasn't, I didn't know how to do
• 11:38
  it. And one of the comments that
• 11:39
  I've gotten gotten a lot from people since getting sober is
• 11:41
  like, I'm so happy that you got there because I, I watched you
• 11:46
  trying for years, which. Is like the hardest thing.
• 11:49
  Exactly. And, and, and it wasn't good
• 11:52
  enough because I was trying to do it my own way, but I, the,
• 11:57
  the I aspired, I so aspired to get sober and like the idea of
• 12:02
  I, I seal and I had to cut people out of my life who they
• 12:05
  saw that. And they're like weak.
• 12:08
  I'm like, you're way worse than I am.
• 12:10
  And you're like using me as this, this example of like
• 12:14
  failure or something. You're not even trying.
• 12:16
  OK. And like, cutting them out of my
• 12:20
  life was easy, if that made sense.
• 12:23
  Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, 100%.
• 12:25
  You're, I always say this, but it's like you're just, your
• 12:27
  motives were different. Your, you know, preferences
• 12:30
  change, right? And yeah, I try to, I always say
• 12:32
  this, I try to surround myself with people who are working on
• 12:36
  themselves. Yeah, right.
• 12:37
  That's that's it. You know, I don't, I don't care
• 12:40
  about how successful you are. I don't care about no, you know
• 12:43
  how important you are, how famous you are.
• 12:45
  If if you're working on yourself, right.
• 12:47
  And you're being a good person, you know?
• 12:49
  You're trying. Fuck man, come hang out with me
• 12:51
  like you know. So I had a mom reach out to me
• 12:54
  last week, totally overwhelmed, not knowing how to help her 15
• 12:58
  year old son. She picked up What's Wrong with
• 13:00
  My teen after I had mentioned it here and messaged me a week
• 13:03
  later saying she finally felt seen.
• 13:05
  That's why I bring stuff like this up.
• 13:07
  If you're a parent in the thick of it, confused, scared, or just
• 13:10
  tired, this book is a great place to start.
• 13:13
  Check the link in the show notes below.
• 13:15
  What's funny is I thought it was kind of a liability.
• 13:17
  Like I I didn't really even tried dating for my first like 2
• 13:22
  years of sobriety and the big problem was like I'm going
• 13:25
  through like dating apps and looking at all these things and
• 13:28
  I'm like they won't like me. I don't drink anymore.
• 13:30
  Every time, and it's. Like I'm not good enough for
• 13:33
  this, whatever. And then I, I took a break and I
• 13:35
  came back and I went and I met this now great girl that I've
• 13:39
  been seeing for a little bit. But one thing I've I've heard
• 13:42
  since, I don't know, just having a bit of a perspective shift is
• 13:47
  people are attracted to you if you're working on yourself.
• 13:50
  And I thought they would be attracted to me because I was
• 13:52
  life of the party. You know, it's like, no, that
• 13:55
  was, you saw where that went, you know, and that's so a lot of
• 14:02
  the feedback that I'm getting just from people in my life and
• 14:05
  stuff because a lot of people reach out, you know, it's saying
• 14:08
  like it's so great to see that you're working on yourself.
• 14:12
  They just want authentic Tom. Right.
• 14:14
  Yeah, My family likes that. Yeah.
• 14:17
  Yeah. Because I was not really out
• 14:18
  that day. I was, well, I was.
• 14:20
  I was a version of me. It was just a monstrous version
• 14:22
  of me, you know, took up, took up a lot of space.
• 14:25
  Like a taker too, right? Like what can I get out of this
• 14:28
  situation? Yeah, purely, purely selfish.
• 14:30
  I was thinking about this in a meeting yesterday.
• 14:33
  You know, I love that when you're hearing someone talk and
• 14:36
  it just, you get this memory that you thought was completely
• 14:39
  lost. I remember being like 12 or 13,
• 14:42
  lying in my bed and thinking, am I the main character?
• 14:45
  I think I'm the main character. I think the world actually
• 14:47
  revolves around me. I think when I go to sleep,
• 14:51
  everything shuts down. And then I soon after that
• 14:54
  started drinking and it's like, oh, that kind of arrogance, like
• 14:59
  people grow out of that. You go into alcoholism where
• 15:03
  it's like that is just selfishness bottled.
• 15:06
  You know that that what did not serve me well.
• 15:10
  You know, that self importance carried on for the longest time
• 15:15
  and, and it, it made me think about like when youth have so
• 15:18
  much ego and, and you, you think you're, you're so important in
• 15:23
  the world. That's so much work.
• 15:25
  That is so much work. A lot of pressure, too.
• 15:27
  So exactly, it's so much pressure and getting sober and
• 15:31
  learning humility for the first time, almost 40 years old was
• 15:35
  like true humility. You know, humility is such a
• 15:39
  load off. It's it's acknowledging like,
• 15:42
  hey, I don't know what I'm doing here.
• 15:44
  Not just in recovery, like everything being like, I don't
• 15:46
  know how to do this. Can you tell me how?
• 15:49
  Because it for me, it got rid of this.
• 15:51
  Like I need to boost myself up so much and I'm so important.
• 15:55
  And I do have a job. Like I've been directing films
• 15:57
  and stuff, not great ones, but for a long time.
• 16:00
  And I always thought like, yeah, I have to play the part, you
• 16:05
  know, fake it till you make it, that you're the man and you know
• 16:07
  everything. And now I'm like, I want to go
• 16:09
  be a camera operator. Like I want to take lower roles
• 16:12
  now that, that four years ago, if I, someone told me that I'd
• 16:17
  be like going and working as a camera operator or somebody
• 16:19
  like, well, my life failed. And now I'm like, I want to
• 16:21
  learn from other people. I want to, I want to see how
• 16:24
  every, how everything works. I also want to have more fun
• 16:26
  too. I want to, I, I don't need to be
• 16:28
  in control of things. I, I'm going to relinquish
• 16:31
  control to somebody else and say, Hey, boss, what do I do?
• 16:34
  And like, to me that provides like a lot of freedom.
• 16:36
  And that's just one of the joys of one of the gifts of, of
• 16:39
  sobriety, you know? Is that not recovery in a
• 16:41
  nutshell? Absolutely.
• 16:43
  It's a great metaphor. You know, I don't know what I'm
• 16:45
  doing. Hey boss, higher power God, you
• 16:47
  know, even you know, mentor, sponsor, just.
• 16:49
  People in the fucking progress. People doing with more time than
• 16:52
  me. People who have what you want
• 16:54
  Exactly. That's that's basically it.
• 16:55
  I mean, that's one thing I try and tell younger people is
• 16:58
  simple is and and I've got a spawn seat now.
• 17:01
  It's like he couldn't quite get it.
• 17:02
  And then we met and and I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, but
• 17:06
  he was like you. You're cool.
• 17:08
  He's like, I fucking, I want what you have.
• 17:10
  And I was like, gotcha. I fucking gotcha, man.
• 17:13
  Because then right away he was like, tell me what to do.
• 17:16
  And I was like, let's, let's fucking get into it.
• 17:18
  And he is thriving. And you've been in that exact
• 17:21
  situation. Man, we've all been right there
• 17:24
  and when you're when you're fucking five days in you First
• 17:27
  of all, we think we're special. Nobody could understand what I'm
• 17:30
  the worst. Problems.
• 17:31
  Oh absolutely. I'm just, for me, I'm the main
• 17:34
  character and he's just a bunch of guys sitting back and they're
• 17:38
  like, have a seat. Really, buddy?
• 17:40
  Yeah. Have a coffee, have a seat.
• 17:42
  Tell us, tell us your your story.
• 17:45
  You're like, well, you guys wouldn't get it.
• 17:47
  You're like pretty sure everybody in this room gets it.
• 17:49
  Try. US, yeah.
• 17:50
  I was listening to a guy, he's a scientist down in the States in
• 17:53
  a meeting the other day and he was telling his story and he's
• 17:56
  like a nuclear physicist. And I didn't I didn't his, his
• 18:02
  his life was so different from mine.
• 18:03
  But every time he came to this like inflection point in his
• 18:09
  life and he made a certain choice, like don't the alcoholic
• 18:12
  choice, I was like, I would have made the same choice.
• 18:15
  Like, I associated so closely with his thought processes, and
• 18:19
  that made me so happy about, like, this is the commonality
• 18:23
  with everybody. You know, we all come from
• 18:26
  completely different paths, but we have the same coding, you
• 18:29
  know, like, I can you hear someone who's like, well, yeah,
• 18:33
  it was robbing banks and I ended up in jail and I got out.
• 18:35
  I had to do a heist. And I'm like, I couldn't be more
• 18:37
  different. But I get it when you hear the
• 18:41
  why behind there. Exactly the why, the motivation.
• 18:44
  The motivation. Do you have an example of
• 18:46
  something that comes to your mind when you know the alcoholic
• 18:49
  choice? I love that.
• 18:50
  I've never, you know, I haven't heard it said like that.
• 18:52
  You know, I come to a point in my life, I'm drinking, I'm
• 18:54
  drugging, I'm pissing people off, I'm stealing, I'm cheating,
• 18:57
  I'm lying. What does an alcoholic choice
• 18:59
  look like? Fuck it, that's it.
• 19:02
  I think it's those two words. Fuck it.
• 19:04
  I know this is the wrong thing to do.
• 19:06
  I know that the better thing would be to do the responsible
• 19:08
  thing. I like.
• 19:10
  I've got a huge thing I need to do tomorrow morning.
• 19:11
  I've been looking forward to it for so long.
• 19:14
  I know that I shouldn't have a drink.
• 19:17
  Fuck it, fuck it. It's going to be different this
• 19:20
  time and it's never different any time at all.
• 19:23
  And then you just ruin. I just had a birthday a few days
• 19:25
  ago, 2 days ago. And I, I was in a meeting last
• 19:29
  night and I ran into an old sponsor and I was just saying
• 19:31
  it's like a perfect day. He was like, what would it have
• 19:34
  looked like if you were drinking?
• 19:35
  And I said, well, I wouldn't have slept yet.
• 19:39
  I would still be up. And also, no, I would have drank
• 19:43
  the night before and then ruined the whole thing.
• 19:45
  I would have had to cancel all the plans that were made for me
• 19:47
  by friends who love me, you know, like, and, and the two
• 19:51
  guys I was with, they're like, yeah, me too.
• 19:53
  Like, that's the alcoholic choice, you know, ruining your
• 19:56
  birthdays, ruining other people's birthdays.
• 19:58
  And then the worst thing is we make it through by the skin of
• 20:02
  our teeth. We don't create a really bad
• 20:05
  problem, you know? And then at the end of the day,
• 20:07
  we're like, fucking did that. And we're like, now I know I can
• 20:09
  do that. So I'm going to do it again.
• 20:12
  You know, that's that's how I always looked at things was like
• 20:15
  if I made it. Through if I didn't.
• 20:17
  Die. If I didn't die and I made it to
• 20:19
  my bed at some point and and I think I got through relatively
• 20:23
  unscathed, it's like I use that to level up my debauchery.
• 20:28
  Like, let's test the limits even further next time.
• 20:31
  What? Else can I get away?
• 20:32
  With That's why I like, you know, in my last three years of
• 20:37
  drinking and using drugs, it was like the longest I stayed up was
• 20:40
  like 2 days or something. By the end, the longest I stayed
• 20:43
  up was two weeks. Like, because it was like, oh, I
• 20:46
  made it to four days. Oh, I can do five days next time
• 20:48
  I can do 8 days. And like, that's not, that's not
• 20:51
  progress. That is progress from the exact
• 20:55
  opposite direction, you know. And and to your point, I look at
• 20:58
  that and I can't help but think we come into recovery, we get
• 21:02
  sober. Why can't I do that?
• 21:05
  Inversely, you know, you got to do, son.
• 21:08
  You want to stay sober. You go into whatever recovery
• 21:11
  event meeting, whatever you want, whatever you do to get
• 21:14
  sober. You're talking to your sober
• 21:15
  community, talking to a therapist, Anthony, you need to
• 21:19
  do this, this and this. You need to try a meeting, talk
• 21:22
  to your therapist, try praying in the morning.
• 21:24
  And then I'm like, well, I don't really want to do that.
• 21:28
  And it's like, you start to do it right?
• 21:31
  And it's like, well, fuck, I did that pretty easily.
• 21:34
  And then you put together a certain amount of time and then
• 21:37
  the exact inverse can happen where it's like, what else can I
• 21:40
  do? I got a job that I've always
• 21:42
  wanted. I got a job that was, you know,
• 21:44
  never thought I would get. I got a promotion at work in
• 21:46
  sobriety. It's like, holy crap, I can do
• 21:49
  anything. I ran a marathon in sobriety.
• 21:50
  Yeah, like it's because we were, were sinking before, you know,
• 21:55
  we're going down below ground and we, we like it like we're
• 22:01
  getting closer to the grave and we're like, I'm cool.
• 22:03
  Look at me. I'm further down than the other
• 22:05
  people. Soon as you get up for for air,
• 22:08
  you're just like, and if you're ready for it, you know, then you
• 22:12
  it's like, OK, well, I've atrophied.
• 22:14
  I need to learn how to walk and stuff.
• 22:16
  But then you start picking up speed and, and luckily, if
• 22:20
  you're, if you were really fucked, you start looking
• 22:23
  around, you're like, holy shit, why didn't anyone tell me?
• 22:25
  This is actually really great up here, you know, and then you
• 22:28
  start doing it. But it, it takes daily
• 22:30
  maintenance, you know, Otherwise there's still a part of me that
• 22:34
  says like when I see someone maybe dead on the street, like
• 22:37
  passed out with a bottle of whiskey and a stairwell, a look
• 22:39
  at them. And part of my brain still goes
• 22:42
  lucky fucker, because it's in there, because I'm an alcoholic
• 22:45
  and I've accepted that that will happen to me.
• 22:50
  And when it does happen, I'm like, yeah, it's like flicks me
• 22:54
  and I'm like, I get it. I know you're still here.
• 22:57
  And that's fine. You know, it's just a matter of
• 22:59
  like, not being mad at the fact that I am an alcoholic.
• 23:03
  What's the fantasy for you? Because I, I have that thought
• 23:05
  too, where it's like that, you know, fucking guy, you know,
• 23:09
  middle of the day for me, it's middle of the day in the
• 23:11
  elevator. I see some guy like constantly,
• 23:14
  you know, and I'm automatically assume he's, you know,
• 23:16
  responsibly using cocaine and having a great time.
• 23:19
  That's my first thought. And I'm like that motherfucker,
• 23:21
  like he's getting away with it. What's your fantasy in that?
• 23:24
  Like what does that look like? The fantasy?
• 23:27
  What do you mean like? Yeah, so you see the guy on the
• 23:29
  street like drinking and and I don't know.
• 23:32
  I saw, OK, I saw a guy riding his bike holding a fucking
• 23:36
  Pilsner the other day. Just looked like a bike
• 23:38
  messenger kind of guy. And I'm behind him riding and
• 23:41
  I'm like that fucking guy. It's the middle of the day.
• 23:44
  He's riding along fucking College Street and I'm, I'm like
• 23:48
  that guy's, that guy's so happy. Living the dream.
• 23:50
  Living the dream. And then I see move, and then I
• 23:53
  come around him and I look at him.
• 23:55
  I'm like, I don't think this guy slept.
• 23:59
  This guy is, he looks miserable, but in my head, I'm like lucky
• 24:05
  miserable. Fuck yeah.
• 24:06
  You know, that's it just happens to me, you know, it did when I
• 24:11
  was out with friends on my birthday.
• 24:14
  It's like a guy, he got my friend.
• 24:18
  He got a rose and I'm like, I'm, I'm at, there's people drinking
• 24:21
  all around me, you know, and it's, I don't want the alcohol.
• 24:25
  I want the freedom to be able to drink the alcohol.
• 24:28
  That's, that's what I that's what I crave.
• 24:30
  And that's, that's my alcoholism saying maybe you can.
• 24:34
  And I have to always remind myself like, no, I can't.
• 24:37
  You know, I just like if, if I'm allergic to bees, I'm not going
• 24:41
  to eat bees. I'm not going to, I'm not going
• 24:45
  to be like, oh, I just got some fresh bees.
• 24:47
  Let's make them angry. And then it's a different brand.
• 24:49
  Stick it on my face. You know it's.
• 24:52
  A different brand of bees. Yeah, exactly.
• 24:53
  This one won't hurt me. Yeah.
• 24:55
  I know it's new bees. Yeah, yeah, there's.
• 24:58
  I keep hearing this ad for this thing.
• 25:00
  It's like a it's on all all over, you know, politics
• 25:03
  podcasts anyways, fucking what's it called?
• 25:08
  Pod save America and stuff and bulwark.
• 25:10
  It's a it's this pill that some fucking MIT I don't know,
• 25:16
  scientists figured out that gets where the enzymes that make you
• 25:21
  hungover. So you take it before you drink
• 25:23
  and apparently it's great. And I always go back to just
• 25:27
  like, well, that's why I stopped drinking.
• 25:29
  Was it, I mean, I was just hungover all the time.
• 25:32
  Maybe I could, maybe I could try this.
• 25:34
  Maybe I could. Maybe just based on a feeling
• 25:36
  and an ad, I'll throw my life away.
• 25:40
  And you know what? It wouldn't do work.
• 25:42
  It wouldn't work, man, because that's for normal people.
• 25:45
  That's for people that have two or three drinks.
• 25:47
  Or two or three hangovers a year.
• 25:49
  Exactly. They're like, well, I went out
• 25:51
  and I had three martinis and, and exactly I'd be like, what's
• 25:55
  a martini? You'd be like, I I don't have a
• 25:59
  martini. I drink a box of wine.
• 26:02
  Martini takes too long to make. That fucking hose into my mouth
• 26:07
  that like this four years ago, that backpack, there would be a
• 26:11
  box of white wine and it and by the end of the day it'd be gone.
• 26:14
  Because I was responsible. By responsible I mean have all
• 26:19
  the booze on me at all times. You're prepared of.
• 26:23
  Course I was prepared. I have never produced anything
• 26:26
  in my life as well as my alcoholism.
• 26:28
  Like there was never a time when I would run out of anything like
• 26:32
  those. I used to set 3 alarms on my
• 26:34
  phone, say on a Friday night, so I'd be with friends.
• 26:38
  The 8:45 alarm meant that the liquor store was closing in 15
• 26:42
  minutes. The 9:45 meant that the wine
• 26:44
  rack was closing and the 10:45 meant that the brewery is
• 26:46
  closing. And so I would get the alarm and
• 26:48
  I'd look around and be like, hey, we're good.
• 26:50
  And we're good to be like, yeah. Then come 1045, I'd be like
• 26:54
  everyone fine. And they'd be like, no, we're
• 26:56
  good. And I'd look around, be like,
• 26:56
  no, we're not. We are not fine.
• 27:00
  We're going to be partying all night.
• 27:01
  Give me $600. Alcohol went up.
• 27:05
  I'd throw in my Courier bag and and buy, buy 200 beers and come
• 27:09
  back. And then there'd always be extra
• 27:11
  wine stashed in my room, extra drugs, all those things.
• 27:14
  I knew where every liquor store was, where when it closed, how
• 27:19
  much to the penny was in my bank account because there wasn't
• 27:22
  much and. You need to keep track.
• 27:24
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, as long as $100 bill came
• 27:28
  out of that bank machine. Yeah, nothing else mattered.
• 27:31
  I didn't need to look at the the the balance, right?
• 27:33
  Or a drug dealer that fronted. Me yeah, that happened a lot too
• 27:36
  Oh yeah, I. Don't know if it was $2000 tabs.
• 27:38
  Yeah, I don't want to know. Tell me later.
• 27:40
  Just sweep it under the rug, right?
• 27:41
  That's what I was doing. I'll call it sweeping everything
• 27:44
  on I. I love there's this one episode
• 27:47
  of The Simpsons written by Conan O'Brien when he goes back to
• 27:51
  college and they say, oh, Mr. Simpson, I can't like you're
• 27:55
  your exams in two days and you haven't studied.
• 27:58
  What are you going to do? He says, I got a plan.
• 28:00
  I'm going to hide under a pile of coats and hope everything
• 28:03
  works. Out.
• 28:06
  That's alcoholism. That's.
• 28:07
  Alcoholism. Exactly.
• 28:09
  That's why I ignored my taxes for 12 years.
• 28:12
  Turns out they don't like that very much.
• 28:15
  And then when I did reach out to them, they're like, we figured
• 28:18
  you were dead or you'd left the country.
• 28:21
  By the way, you owe us $100,000. So that was a part of your
• 28:24
  amends process or I did that in in.
• 28:26
  I went bankrupt. Yeah.
• 28:28
  And it was lovely. It was wonderful.
• 28:32
  And it was funny because people were like, well, what about your
• 28:35
  credit? I'm like, here's what my credit
• 28:38
  is. It got ruined by Blockbuster
• 28:40
  Video because I lost Night at the Museum.
• 28:45
  So that's how long I've had bad credit.
• 28:47
  So I don't care. Now I've got a credit card.
• 28:50
  It's great. And I, when I first got the
• 28:53
  credit card, they raised my limit to like fucking $3000.
• 28:56
  So I was like, I couldn't sleep. I was like, what do I do?
• 28:58
  And I talked to my dad. He's like, that's what normal
• 29:00
  people have. That's in case bad things
• 29:03
  happen. You know, I'm like, oh, right,
• 29:05
  responsibility. I'm a responsible citizen now.
• 29:10
  So I'm still I'm still baffled by the benefits of.
• 29:13
  Not living, Yeah. It's wild, you know?
• 29:17
  Man, you mentioned responsibility there and it's, I
• 29:19
  like that one because it's like, you know, you, you talk about
• 29:22
  the fantasy of freedom, this illusion of freedom that alcohol
• 29:26
  and drugs bring for me, for me, a misnomer.
• 29:29
  Yeah, 100%. It's lack of responsibility,
• 29:32
  right? Like essentially when I, that's
• 29:33
  what I miss the most is like, I don't want to wake up and be an
• 29:37
  adult today. I don't want to deal with all
• 29:38
  that stuff out there. I just want to fucking please
• 29:41
  Anthony. Yeah, I want to be.
• 29:42
  I want to be a child. Yeah, yeah, I my whole first
• 29:47
  year and I still worry about this.
• 29:49
  It's the stupidest shit. My whole first year I told
• 29:52
  myself you're allowed to drink if you win a lottery, more than
• 29:55
  $10 million. So I'm playing the lottery every
• 29:57
  week, getting a lottery ticket. I'm like, please don't win.
• 30:02
  And like that is one thing that like might me now I've got over
• 30:08
  2 1/2 years of sobriety. This.
• 30:10
  Might make me relapse as if I got this massive windfall of
• 30:14
  money. You know, I've even planned it
• 30:16
  out like that's the hypotheticals.
• 30:19
  OK, Mom. So if I win the lottery, I'm
• 30:22
  trying to get over to you. It's like, yeah mate, let's
• 30:24
  worry about you winning the lottery.
• 30:26
  First, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it's probably
• 30:29
  going to happen because I'm the main character by hearing people
• 30:33
  who do get sober and then and then get a lot of money and make
• 30:38
  it through it. You know, that's, it's like
• 30:41
  everything our, our sobriety. For me, my, the strength of my
• 30:45
  sobriety comes from hearing other people's stories and
• 30:48
  saying, Oh, they could do it. So I guess I could probably do
• 30:51
  that too. And and if I'm worried, I'll
• 30:53
  call that guy, I'll say, hey, I heard you speak about this and
• 30:56
  you made it through this. How did you do that?
• 30:58
  And everyone's fine with saying, yeah, I just did it like this.
• 31:02
  And, and call me everyday because that's what that's what
• 31:04
  we do in recovery. You know, we keep each other
• 31:06
  sober. It's a big, a big part of I do
• 31:10
  tell new people this is like, and it was so huge to me was
• 31:17
  going into meetings and hearing people tell their story and
• 31:20
  seeing them and, and they're like, they're so put together,
• 31:23
  you know, and they're telling their story.
• 31:24
  It's like, so I'm living in a tent and I'm smoking crack and
• 31:26
  all these things. I'm like, are they lying to me?
• 31:30
  Because I, I just can't picture it and hearing their story and
• 31:34
  seeing where they are. That's where the faith came for
• 31:37
  me. I was like, holy fuck, there is
• 31:39
  nothing special about this person.
• 31:41
  They just did like they honestly, this person, I think
• 31:44
  they have an IQ of like 98 and they're doing great.
• 31:49
  And so why it's, it's not like, why can't I do that, do this?
• 31:54
  It's I can do this. You know, it's this perspective
• 31:58
  shift of why can't I, why can't I get sober?
• 32:01
  It's like, well, I can get sober.
• 32:05
  Just show me how to do. It I just don't have the tools
• 32:07
  yet. No, because I thought I did.
• 32:09
  Thought if I wrote enough lists, yeah.
• 32:13
  Plans, yeah. How am I going to do this?
• 32:14
  How am I going to do this? Listen to enough Self Help Books
• 32:17
  podcast. Yeah.
• 32:19
  Not like this one, no. Yeah, No.
• 32:22
  It's a good point, man. You know, we come in here so
• 32:25
  broken, and then there's that hope that that gets instilled.
• 32:29
  It's like, if that guy can do it, why can't I do it?
• 32:32
  Hope that girl can't do it. Yeah.
• 32:34
  Absolutely. Hope is, you know, fucking Andy
• 32:39
  Defrane got out of Shawshank, you know.
• 32:42
  Wait, that was about alcoholism, wasn't it?
• 32:45
  Stephen King. I'm embarrassed but I haven't
• 32:47
  seen it in a while. I got to.
• 32:49
  Go over, get get get busy living or get busy dying.
• 32:52
  And Stephen King, when he wrote that, he was an he's an
• 32:54
  alcoholic. Yeah, that's right.
• 32:56
  Yeah. Nice.
• 32:58
  Yeah. You haven't seen that in a long
• 33:00
  time. It's been a while, yeah.
• 33:01
  I love Stephen King though. I've read a lot of his books.
• 33:04
  I haven't read any of his books. Yeah, I'm not.
• 33:07
  You have ADHD right? Or yeah.
• 33:09
  I just popped Vyvanse before I came.
• 33:11
  I'm feeling pretty good now. Yeah, actually I'm feeling
• 33:13
  nothing now, which is. Which is.
• 33:15
  Which is a good thing. Like fucking.
• 33:17
  I didn't take one a few days ago and I was like, what's going on
• 33:20
  in my brain? Yeah, that's a funny one for me
• 33:22
  because when we've talked about this before, but, you know,
• 33:26
  outside help is really important.
• 33:28
  Sobriety, recovery, 12 step is not going to fix everything,
• 33:30
  right? You need, you need outside help.
• 33:32
  And I went down that path of, of looking to fix my ADHD.
• 33:36
  I've come to realize that I don't have it because I was
• 33:39
  getting high of Vyvanse, you know, and and I've come to
• 33:41
  realize that people that have ADHD and are taking Vyvanse and
• 33:44
  taking other medications that, you know, whatever this ADHD
• 33:48
  medications, it's the normal. It just fixes their brain and it
• 33:51
  calms them down. Yeah, You know that's.
• 33:52
  What it does to me? Yeah, I never had that
• 33:54
  experience, right. And so that was a little back
• 33:57
  door that my attic brain had planned for me.
• 33:59
  And that's essentially what led me down to my my year long
• 34:03
  relapse from hell. It came from meds.
• 34:06
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:06
  Steroids first. Oh, really?
• 34:08
  Yeah, steroids first, and then I'd open the door for
• 34:10
  medication. As long as I get a doctor to
• 34:12
  approve it, yeah, I'm good. It's allowed.
• 34:15
  It's not my slippery slope, man. Yeah.
• 34:17
  And we love going skiing. Yeah, I love skiing.
• 34:20
  Yeah. If you know what I mean.
• 34:21
  Yeah, exactly. He hit his nose.
• 34:22
  Yeah. Slalom anybody?
• 34:26
  Moguls, my whole life, it was, there was no easy skiing.
• 34:29
  It was moguls. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:32
  No, I was really freaked out because I got diagnosed with
• 34:34
  ADHD in about 6 months and it was, you know, proper way.
• 34:39
  And the doctor, the psychiatrist was like, we got through an
• 34:42
  addictions clinic and she said, you know, you do the test, gave
• 34:48
  it to my parents. And then I did it.
• 34:50
  And she was like, yeah, you have ADHD.
• 34:53
  And but then she asked me, he's like, So what do you think?
• 34:56
  Adderall? He's like, if you want me to
• 34:58
  fucking die, like that's a party drug.
• 35:01
  Like I, I, I saved Adderall specifically for when I'm in
• 35:04
  Manhattan because a buddy of mine, so much Adderall.
• 35:10
  I had the Vyvanse for a few weeks because I was worried it's
• 35:13
  an amphetamine man. And I, I'd never done
• 35:15
  amphetamines, but then I, you know, took 1 and I was like, oh,
• 35:20
  I don't feel anything. I feel so much calmer.
• 35:23
  Then I went up and up and up. Then I got too high and was like
• 35:27
  too much. So I, I came down and now if I
• 35:30
  feel like it's a bit too much, I'll open a pill and empty a bit
• 35:33
  out. And because that's how different
• 35:35
  my life is now. Like I got a little thing of
• 35:37
  white powder from emptying out pills and it's because, oh,
• 35:43
  that's been too much drugs for me.
• 35:44
  Yeah, I was going to say instead of taking ten of them, you're
• 35:46
  you're rationing, which is a foreign.
• 35:48
  Concept for us, I put it into some caps and gave it to a buddy
• 35:51
  who's got a newborn because he's he's going through it right now
• 35:55
  and he needs a little oomph, so whatever.
• 35:59
  But to your point, it's like I I did not follow the process
• 36:02
  properly. I lied on my test, you know, and
• 36:05
  I was manipulating and, and doctor surfing and doing all the
• 36:08
  things. So I mean, there is a right way
• 36:10
  to do things. The most important thing, I
• 36:12
  think is that you told someone about it, right?
• 36:14
  And that's what I failed to do is like I would tell people 10%
• 36:17
  of the the truth. And I had a one of my favorite
• 36:19
  counselors in Utah always used to say this is like, you know,
• 36:22
  if you're Rob Anthony, if you're robbing banks 10% of the time,
• 36:26
  but 90% of the time you're not robbing banks, you're still a
• 36:28
  fucking bank robber, you know, and it's like you're not a biot
• 36:31
  bank robber. Bank robbing light.
• 36:34
  Yeah, I have to be 100%. Honest today I'm felony 0.
• 36:40
  I have to be 100% honest today, right?
• 36:41
  And that's, you know, it's important.
• 36:43
  I want to jump back to the analogy of like the director
• 36:46
  because I think that that's so such a good analogy for
• 36:48
  addiction. It's like my I, So I'm the
• 36:52
  director of the, if you put it in the analogy of like the
• 36:54
  Shakespeare play, right? I'm the director, I'm the actor,
• 36:58
  I'm the guy cleaning the floor. I'm the sound guy.
• 37:01
  I'm everything. You're one man band.
• 37:03
  One man band. I can't pass off anything to
• 37:06
  anyone else because don't you know, I'm the main character?
• 37:09
  Like you said, I love that. I did that in my career.
• 37:12
  I, I've been making documentaries for a long time
• 37:15
  and I had to be a one man band. I did sound, I, I produced it, I
• 37:19
  directed it, I shot it, I edited everything because a control.
• 37:24
  I thought I was the only person who could do it properly and B
• 37:29
  bringing someone else in that the jig would be up if I brought
• 37:34
  someone else on my I did I tour with bands and, and made, you
• 37:37
  know, bike messenger documentary.
• 37:38
  Like all of these things where first of all, it was fine for me
• 37:42
  to be drinking. If you're with musicians and
• 37:45
  you're like, oh, it's beer o'clock 2:00.
• 37:47
  You know, it's like, well, they don't know I'm nine beers in.
• 37:50
  But also if if someone else came on who was not an alcoholic
• 37:55
  working with me within a day, they'd be like this guy.
• 38:01
  He's he's not allowed to do this.
• 38:02
  Don't go anymore. Don't give him any more
• 38:04
  responsibilities. And but the work, it was good,
• 38:09
  you know, like I was put putting out good shit and and I was
• 38:12
  having fun with it. That's one problem with being in
• 38:14
  the arts and getting fucked up all the time is like you use it
• 38:19
  as it's like, oh, it's not drugs.
• 38:21
  It's like I'm expanding my mind and I'm, I'm looking at things a
• 38:24
  different way. You know, it's a creative
• 38:26
  process. It is.
• 38:27
  It was my creative process. I I'd be before shooting
• 38:29
  something, I'd be like, hold on, hold on.
• 38:30
  I'm just two shots and be like, should you be doing that?
• 38:33
  It's part of my process. Get out of here.
• 38:35
  If I'm shooting on tour with a band or something, I'd have
• 38:37
  beers stashed all over the stage to be a big stage sometimes and
• 38:41
  I had to be able to dip in, take a swig and and and move on.
• 38:45
  And now I've made amends to a lot of the crew members with
• 38:50
  tour managers and stuff like that because I was a lunatic.
• 38:53
  Did a lot of them know? Like was it?
• 38:55
  Obvious or Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, 100%.
• 38:59
  But a lot of times it was kind of like, what are you going to
• 39:03
  do, fire me? You need me people.
• 39:06
  And unfortunately, the cat they did.
• 39:09
  I can relate. People come in here sometimes
• 39:11
  and even when I talk to them in recovery and sometimes they're
• 39:13
  like nobody knew and I'm looking at them like bullshit.
• 39:17
  Have you asked them? Seriously, that is one thing I
• 39:22
  asked them is like, OK, you got a bit of time.
• 39:24
  Do you know they're like every time I'm like, yeah, like when I
• 39:28
  I meet some guy, like in a meeting or something and he's
• 39:31
  like, how you doing? He's like, oh, I got two weeks.
• 39:33
  Like, I don't think you do. Like, I'm not going to say that,
• 39:36
  but oh, that is the most terrifying thing.
• 39:38
  You we're so cute to the smell when you get sober.
• 39:42
  I don't know if regular people are, but if regular people are,
• 39:45
  I wasn't fooling anybody. Nobody, I thought, because I was
• 39:49
  drinking a vodka rock star. Like just smelled like rock
• 39:51
  star. No vodka.
• 39:52
  I smelled like vodka If. Anything.
• 39:54
  It's even worse. Yeah, those.
• 39:55
  Two, I remember the day in high school when I discovered that if
• 39:58
  I wash my hands and I put vising in, nobody can know I'm high
• 40:02
  because I was high in school 24 like every class and I that was
• 40:07
  one of the most dangerous like revelations of my life.
• 40:09
  It was like, OK, because think of how much time and energy you
• 40:14
  put into. Maintaining like God, that I
• 40:20
  didn't realize that I was about eight or nine months sober and I
• 40:22
  had that realization and it was like, that is one of the reasons
• 40:26
  I've got so much extra space in my head.
• 40:28
  You get rid of these these things that are that are such a
• 40:31
  huge part of part of your daily life that take up so much of
• 40:36
  your energy hangovers, trying to just maintain that you're sober.
• 40:39
  Like all of these things, you take them out.
• 40:41
  It's like there's so much space to fill now Also like you get
• 40:45
  sober and your your time triples.
• 40:47
  Like it My days are still like if anyone's looking at this and
• 40:53
  and you're worried that your life is speeding by get sober.
• 40:56
  It slows right down in the best way possible because.
• 40:59
  You have all this. Time you have all this time like
• 41:01
  your days double or triple sometimes.
• 41:05
  I want to ask you about, I'm curious about like the creative
• 41:07
  process and how that's changed now for you.
• 41:10
  Did did you? Did you at any point find that
• 41:13
  you were you felt like you were missing that creative juices
• 41:16
  when you were trying to do it sober?
• 41:17
  Yes, one time I was shooting a some musicians on stage and it
• 41:27
  wasn't a big deal. I was shooting it was something
• 41:28
  for a non profit. It was down at Yonge and Dundas
• 41:30
  Square and like I had shot hundreds of shows, you know,
• 41:38
  hundreds over the decades and I couldn't figure out what was,
• 41:41
  what was wrong. I was like, these just don't
• 41:43
  aren't looking. And I realized I don't have
• 41:45
  those the guts. Like I was reckless in my
• 41:48
  shooting. You know, I've been shooting
• 41:49
  since I was 19 or 18 or something.
• 41:51
  And so it was like I had balls, like I would go on stage, you
• 41:56
  know, I got, I went on stage once in, I don't know where it
• 41:59
  was fucking. It's the ping pong festival in
• 42:02
  Europe. I went on stage while Rammstein
• 42:04
  was playing. That's a heavy metal.
• 42:06
  Yeah, there's. 4 metal fire coming out of their face.
• 42:08
  I got so much trouble, but like I had those kind of balls and
• 42:12
  then when I got sober at the end of the day, I was like, I, I
• 42:16
  clocked it near the end of the day and I was like, that's what
• 42:18
  it is. I was like, all right, recognize
• 42:20
  it. And then I went and I shot with
• 42:22
  a band, big show, I don't know, 5000 people or something at a
• 42:25
  casino maybe a month ago. And I shot with him so many
• 42:29
  times, first time shooting him sober.
• 42:32
  And I, I recognize that. And and when I was on stage, I'm
• 42:37
  like, you know what you're doing here?
• 42:40
  Overcome that. Fear.
• 42:42
  That fear and I went in and I was like, that's the best
• 42:45
  fucking show I've ever done because, and I was worried about
• 42:49
  this for a while. Was my reckless courage about
• 42:55
  shooting stuff, throwing myself into into things, you know, like
• 42:59
  the we, we try to conquer our our fears so much in recovery.
• 43:05
  But like, it's almost like, I don't know, it's hard to
• 43:08
  explain. Like, yeah, it's just one of
• 43:12
  those. I feel like, I feel like you're.
• 43:14
  Just overall, it's a net game. I just feel like you're more
• 43:16
  responsible, like you don't take the risks exactly because you're
• 43:19
  like, it's not worth it. The reward's not worth the risk.
• 43:22
  Where is like, there are some things in life where risks are
• 43:27
  good, you know, like reckless, like a lot of the things I've
• 43:31
  made could not be made by made by a responsible person.
• 43:36
  They just like I made a whole film about bike messengers.
• 43:39
  I was drunk on the back of a dirt bike flying through
• 43:41
  traffic, you know, like just reckless stuff.
• 43:46
  And I would have been too scared to do that sober, you know, for
• 43:49
  good reason. Yeah.
• 43:50
  I mean, some of the films where I'm, I'm putting myself into a
• 43:55
  group of people or something that it's like dangerous, like a
• 43:59
  dangerous like, and I'm going in with a camera and, and, and
• 44:02
  trying to put, put people at ease.
• 44:04
  It's like I wouldn't, I was reckless in my 20s or 30s or
• 44:09
  something. And like, there's no way I would
• 44:10
  have done that sober. No way.
• 44:12
  I'd say, hey, look at me, I'm drunk, let's go, you know, And
• 44:16
  that got me a lot of access cause film, documentary films
• 44:21
  access. Anyways, we're talking about my
• 44:22
  work. What are we doing?
• 44:23
  I wanted, I wanted to ask you just about like, 'cause I'm very
• 44:28
  fascinated by your, you going back out because you were, you
• 44:33
  had years when I met you. 7 1/2, Yeah. 7 1/2 years and then when
• 44:36
  you went back out, I remember you when you just gone, just
• 44:39
  come back and like, what was overall, 'cause you're doing
• 44:44
  great now. And like I, I see you every now
• 44:47
  every few weeks or something and I'm like, oh, he's like, you're
• 44:49
  calmer and calmer and calmer and calmer, you know, and you look
• 44:53
  so much healthier than you did before too.
• 44:55
  And what what's it's? What's my question here overall,
• 45:03
  what did that do to? You.
• 45:05
  The relapse, The relapse and now being back.
• 45:07
  Yeah. How is it different?
• 45:09
  I get emotional thinking about thanks for saying that, by the
• 45:12
  way, because some days I feel like I'm not making any
• 45:15
  progress, you know? And it's good to hear that from
• 45:18
  an outside source because I trust you and I love you.
• 45:22
  But also it's like I. Love you too.
• 45:24
  I, I forget about and I'm particularly thinking about that
• 45:27
  one Monday where I went to that meeting I.
• 45:30
  Just said day one, yeah. Yeah, Well, that one too.
• 45:32
  That was when I told you you looked good outside the meeting.
• 45:34
  Yeah. Yeah, that was that was one.
• 45:36
  And then, but I'm thinking about there was one where I was just
• 45:39
  like, I must have looked awful. And, you know, back to what we
• 45:42
  were talking about. I thought it was fine, right.
• 45:44
  I thought it looked OK. I'm just coming back, you know,
• 45:45
  And it was it was when I had been trying to come back
• 45:48
  constantly and I was constantly relapsing.
• 45:50
  And I was, you know, I was with Michael, our good friend Michael
• 45:52
  a lot working with him. And I just couldn't get it.
• 45:55
  Like I couldn't get it together. I couldn't, I could, I would get
• 45:57
  a couple days and then I would go back out and, and it was all
• 46:00
  ultimately the, the mess and the fake Adderall and stuff like
• 46:03
  that. I just, it was just like, I
• 46:05
  don't know, it was, it was still serving me.
• 46:07
  I know exactly that. Yeah, I was.
• 46:09
  I was stuck in that, that for almost a decade.
• 46:12
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 46:13
  I honestly believe today I'm not.
• 46:16
  I am. I do not regret it.
• 46:18
  You know, I feel really bad that I had to pay and go back to
• 46:20
  rehab and and take out loans and get help from my family again to
• 46:23
  go back to treatment after going for the second time.
• 46:27
  Like, I really thought I was done, you know, but I I vividly
• 46:29
  remember still kind of having cravings in in Utah.
• 46:32
  Yeah. And I must have had a
• 46:34
  reservation coming out of there, man, like that.
• 46:36
  I still would. And this was ultimately it.
• 46:39
  I still thought that I could just safely use ADHD medication,
• 46:43
  it's conditional and be OK conditional.
• 46:45
  You said this in a meeting that you spoke at a while ago and
• 46:48
  that that stuck with me. I made a video about it called
• 46:51
  Sobriety Can't Be Conditional. And it was inspired by what you
• 46:53
  said there. It cannot be fucking
• 46:55
  conditional. Like, and it's so hard because
• 47:02
  the only way we're going to do it is, is if we just say you
• 47:05
  give up, you give up the fight 'cause we're, it's, we're
• 47:08
  fighting against it. Part of us is fighting against
• 47:11
  getting sober. And, and if there are too many
• 47:14
  things on that side that are fighting against you getting
• 47:18
  sober, it's not going to work. You have to be able to
• 47:20
  deconstruct all of them and just RIP them all down.
• 47:23
  And in that little window when there aren't any, just like get
• 47:26
  me sober. And and that's, I think that's
• 47:29
  the timing thing of everything. The little willingness, the
• 47:32
  window, little window of willingness to do whatever it
• 47:34
  takes. Complete defeat.
• 47:36
  Of, of, of, like I said it, it's we are in a war.
• 47:42
  We're soldiers in a war that we are not trained for, you know,
• 47:45
  and we think we can do it ourselves.
• 47:47
  Like we didn't go to basic training, we didn't do any of
• 47:48
  these fucking things. And we're trying to fight it
• 47:50
  ourselves. Like, it's like me going up and
• 47:53
  like saying, yeah, I could pitch for the Blue Jays, why not?
• 48:00
  Why not? I think I can do it.
• 48:01
  I had a dream about it, so just give me a shot.
• 48:04
  It's like, OK, I break my arm, I get hit with a ball, I get
• 48:07
  laughed, laughed at, You know, like we're not trained for that
• 48:10
  kind of shit. And it's, it's, yeah, it's not
• 48:12
  to like, it's, it's there's an important distinction here.
• 48:14
  It's not that you can never, ever do that, right?
• 48:17
  It's like you can't just go blind into something with no
• 48:20
  training like you said right? Totally.
• 48:22
  Like I, I've been thinking a lot about skateboarding lately
• 48:25
  because I grew up skateboarding and it's like sobriety is so
• 48:27
  like recovery is so much like it, you know, when you start
• 48:31
  out. I know for me it started way
• 48:35
  back in the 90s when I started, I just was like, it was so like
• 48:40
  magical to me, but I didn't know what it was.
• 48:42
  And then I saw someone do a trick and I was like, how, how
• 48:46
  do you do that? And they showed me, you know,
• 48:48
  and I kept going and going and going, but I didn't then fucking
• 48:53
  say, all right, I know how to Ollie.
• 48:54
  I'm going to Ollie down this tense there, you know, no, I
• 48:57
  built up. I built up to things or else I
• 49:00
  was going to get really fucking hurt, you know, And and it is
• 49:04
  those two recovery in the community and everything, the
• 49:09
  anarchy of it all too like of the program that we're in and
• 49:13
  stuff is so much like skateboarding to me.
• 49:15
  It's all about people helping each other and nothing but
• 49:18
  support and like you can go anywhere.
• 49:20
  And if you just see someone else like skateboarding, you're just
• 49:22
  like, I see you, you know, and, but it takes daily work and you
• 49:29
  can't want to be sober and, and want to be a good skateboarder
• 49:33
  without working, without doing it, you know, because I know for
• 49:37
  me, and like my first sponsor said this to me, he's like, he
• 49:39
  said, you're very much like me. Like you came in and said, fix
• 49:43
  me and I wanted to be fixed. And I truly in my head believe,
• 49:47
  like I heard people saying, well, I've been coming for, you
• 49:49
  know, 1518 years. I have 11,000 days, blah, blah,
• 49:52
  blah. I was like, why?
• 49:54
  You're fixed, You know, what are you, what are you still doing
• 49:56
  here? And no, it's, it's, it's the
• 50:00
  maintenance of it all. Like it's not the maintenance.
• 50:03
  Like it's like you can't just get everything you want right
• 50:07
  away. And it's the journey.
• 50:11
  It's the journey of it. It's learning new tricks.
• 50:13
  You know, I wouldn't give up. And I'll remember to the day I
• 50:16
  die, the day I first landed a kickflip, and then the first
• 50:20
  time I landed a frontside flip and a 360 flip.
• 50:23
  And like those were Seminole moments in my life.
• 50:27
  And if if you had just told me, hey, you're a pro skateboarder
• 50:31
  now, I would have missed all of those things, all those
• 50:33
  beautiful moments. And it's the same same way that
• 50:36
  like in my recovery, the first time I realized I went to a
• 50:39
  baseball game and I realized I'm not only am I not craving beer
• 50:44
  right now, I don't have to drink anymore.
• 50:47
  It's not like don't drink. It's like I don't fucking have
• 50:50
  to do that anymore. Like those little things, they,
• 50:53
  they blow your mind, you know, you're like, I didn't think I
• 50:56
  was capable of this. For so long, the only choice was
• 50:58
  to drink. Yeah, right.
• 50:59
  And then it's like you finally have a choice to drink or not
• 51:02
  to. Drink that is like crazy.
• 51:04
  That's still crazy to me. I freedom.
• 51:05
  You have to give yourself so much credit sometimes because
• 51:09
  when people tell you they're like, you're doing so great, a
• 51:12
  huge part of us just doesn't believe, Yeah, we're just like.
• 51:17
  Why are you saying they want something I?
• 51:19
  Thought we were friends. Why are you lying to me?
• 51:22
  And that's I do that all the time, God.
• 51:24
  Fucking you know what they should put it like at the at the
• 51:28
  beginning for new people, learn how to take compliments because
• 51:32
  it's a tough one. The further you get in sobriety,
• 51:34
  get like buckle up because it's all compliments all the time.
• 51:38
  People when you run into people and they say, what happened to
• 51:41
  you, look at you right now. Like God, I've run into people
• 51:45
  at the gym or just old friends I used to party with.
• 51:46
  They're like, what the fuck happened?
• 51:48
  It's like I got sober. They're like, Oh my God, you
• 51:50
  look so great and you're just like, no, you look so great.
• 51:53
  Shut up. I got to go.
• 51:56
  Yeah. Like it can't take a compliment.
• 51:58
  Yeah. They must think I'm fat.
• 51:59
  So yeah, you know, they're just. I have to make me feel bad.
• 52:01
  I have to deflect. Yeah.
• 52:02
  Yeah, That's so true. I want to just circle back to
• 52:05
  that conditional surrender point because it wasn't my.
• 52:08
  I wish I thought of that, but I heard it somewhere else.
• 52:10
  I'm taking a quick pause to just.
• 52:12
  Yeah, go, go. I mean, yeah, you can.
• 52:14
  I'll probably put this in here to show how cool.
• 52:15
  No, yeah, don't do it. Sorry.
• 52:19
  I'm very addicted to addictive. Yeah, it's a tough one.
• 52:22
  The the nicotine buggers. I tried to quit.
• 52:26
  I was like, I'm going on the patches, doing the whole thing
• 52:29
  around New Year's and I went three months.
• 52:31
  I didn't vape, I didn't smoke. I was just doing the Garmin
• 52:35
  patches. And then I was like, all right,
• 52:37
  I'm ready. I went.
• 52:38
  I cycled through the patches. The day after I went off the
• 52:40
  patch I had the first real craving for booze.
• 52:43
  Like over a year. Oh wow, for alcohol.
• 52:45
  Yeah, wow. And it shook me so bad and I
• 52:50
  couldn't quite. And it was in a meeting.
• 52:52
  I was sitting in a meeting when it hit, when it hit me and the
• 52:55
  next day it was still there. And the day after that it was
• 52:58
  still there. And it was kind of like I, I
• 53:01
  looked at it like it was in the windstorm, like in, oh, what's
• 53:06
  that like Interstellar, the movie where it's all the dust
• 53:08
  storms and all the dust comes in.
• 53:10
  It's like a window open and all this dust came in and I had to,
• 53:13
  it took me a time to sweep it out, but I quickly, you know,
• 53:16
  told my sponsor about it and he was like, why are you quitting
• 53:18
  nicotine? I was like, no reason, like
• 53:22
  really no reason. And, and since they, when he was
• 53:25
  like, well, I was like, should I go back on the patch?
• 53:27
  He's like, well, yeah. And I realized like, Oh my God.
• 53:29
  Like my recovery is #1 above anything, friends, family,
• 53:33
  everything. I am no good unless I'm sober if
• 53:37
  the responsible thing for me to do is to start smoking again.
• 53:43
  Oh, life has been so good since then and I'll try again in six
• 53:46
  months. Exactly.
• 53:47
  Maybe it's just not your. Time.
• 53:48
  No. Why?
• 53:49
  Because I wasn't ready. I was rolling up to that fucking
• 53:52
  10 set and I I wasn't prepared to do it.
• 53:55
  And I took that leap. And honestly, when if we look at
• 54:00
  it, our recovery is like if we drink, we die.
• 54:03
  That was the closest I've been to death in a little in some
• 54:06
  time. Quitting smoking almost killed
• 54:08
  me. Yeah.
• 54:10
  That's going to be the tagline for this episode, yeah.
• 54:13
  Get the thumbnail man. It's.
• 54:15
  Actually a good idea. But to your point, it's like,
• 54:18
  yeah, you weren't ready yet. And but what I liked about that
• 54:22
  story is you did the most important thing and you told
• 54:25
  somebody about it. And I always reiterate on here
• 54:28
  to to do that because that's the biggest mistake I made, man, was
• 54:31
  again, back to that temp. I'm going to show you 90% of the
• 54:35
  truth, Tom, but not this little fucking fire back here.
• 54:39
  Yeah, I feel like drinking. I feel like drinking.
• 54:40
  I feel like drinking. I feel like drinking.
• 54:42
  I'm drunk. Yeah, because I'm not telling
• 54:43
  anyone about it. I'm not telling all myself.
• 54:46
  So, I mean, that's the answer, man.
• 54:48
  It's worth and it's it's so worth just deconstructing why,
• 54:51
  why, what is this about? Why, why, why am I afraid to
• 54:55
  tell somebody about this? And for me, a big part of it was
• 54:58
  like, I had some shaky times after I started sponsoring
• 55:00
  people because, well, I'm fucking show.
• 55:02
  I'm talking to these guys all the time.
• 55:04
  And like, I feel like I should be above this.
• 55:06
  And so I would get a craving and I'd feel shame about it.
• 55:09
  And I had to be reminded. You're an alcoholic.
• 55:11
  Like, of course you're thinking about booze.
• 55:13
  I was like a year and a half sober or something.
• 55:15
  Of course it popped up once in a while and it was just about
• 55:18
  telling my sponsor. Of course I did.
• 55:21
  I have a sponsor that I switched.
• 55:23
  Oops, switched sponsors, but I was afraid to tell I I had I it
• 55:28
  wasn't a good match my first sponsor because I didn't want to
• 55:31
  tell him things because of what then he would really dig into it
• 55:35
  in the way that I wasn't responsive to.
• 55:38
  So I switched sponsors to Jason and do we bleep that?
• 55:42
  No, no. Just don't say his last name.
• 55:44
  Yeah, I love Jason. Jason, my boy Jason, I have no
• 55:51
  problem telling him stuff. I say this is what's fucking me
• 55:53
  up because he's super supportive.
• 55:55
  He's like, yeah, man, like this, That's great, you know, and and
• 56:00
  you got to surround yourself with people who you were
• 56:02
  completely open and not. And you get addicted to to being
• 56:06
  truthful. That's the thing I got addicted
• 56:09
  to saying. I don't know.
• 56:11
  Oh, because I, I would never say that until it got sober.
• 56:15
  And like now when I realize like, I don't know anything,
• 56:19
  like, hey, what's that about? I say, I don't know, let's
• 56:22
  figure it out. Instead of me saying, well, I
• 56:25
  know. And in your head you're like, I
• 56:27
  don't know. But I hope they don't know that
• 56:28
  they don't know. And then you just try and lie
• 56:30
  your way through. Some fabricate a whole entire
• 56:32
  story or. Lie when I was early on my first
• 56:36
  sponsor, he said. OK, so you admit that you're
• 56:39
  that you didn't know that, that you're wrong about how to get
• 56:42
  sober. I was like, yeah, he's like, Now
• 56:44
  consider the option that you might be wrong about every
• 56:47
  decision you've ever made in your life.
• 56:49
  It's mind blowing. I was livid.
• 56:51
  I was so angry. How dare you.
• 56:55
  And I did what was the best thing.
• 56:58
  I sat with it. I sat with it forbid and I
• 57:00
  actually considered it. And I was like, oh, fuck.
• 57:03
  And it's not like thinking like, oh, maybe I maybe I was wrong.
• 57:06
  It's like, no, but you could have been, you could have been
• 57:08
  wrong about everything. And so if you're looking at it
• 57:10
  through that lens about like, you know, there's a really
• 57:13
  strong possibility that you've been wrong about a lot of
• 57:17
  things, it lets you off the hook.
• 57:20
  Freedom. It gives you freedom to find
• 57:22
  what the real answers are. You know, instead of like,
• 57:26
  hiding under Apollo coats. I love it.
• 57:31
  I'm gonna hide, hide under this pile of coats and hope it works
• 57:34
  itself out. I'll send you the clip.
• 57:36
  Oh, that's great. It's 1 of Conan O'Brien's
• 57:38
  biggest contributions to comic. That's amazing.
• 57:43
  Let's I feel like, I feel like I just want to complete, you know,
• 57:49
  around the, the corner on the conditional surrender thing,
• 57:52
  because a lot of people might be listening and a lot of people
• 57:53
  might not care about it, but a lot of people might be
• 57:55
  listening. You never explained it.
• 57:56
  So because that happens sometimes.
• 57:58
  My wife's like you never explained what you were going to
• 58:00
  go into and she doesn't sound like that.
• 58:01
  She sounds much more. Also I'm an ADHD riddled
• 58:05
  interrupter so. And I love you for it, yeah.
• 58:09
  I think Trump calls it the weave I'm weaving.
• 58:13
  Don't ever change, man. But yeah, it's like, you know,
• 58:16
  I'll get I'll surrender. Sure, I'll give up drinking, but
• 58:20
  on my terms, right? It's like as long as I get AB
• 58:24
  and C, I'll do what you say you. Know yeah, exactly yeah, we're
• 58:28
  brats yeah, we want what we want, you know, ego and and the
• 58:32
  hardest part I think is like, and it compartmentalization is
• 58:38
  so important to me and it's not like, OK, I don't want to
• 58:44
  consider not getting what I want or I didn't used to it was like
• 58:48
  yeah, but I had this thing in my head and I want that so it's got
• 58:51
  to be that way. And it is really liberating
• 58:55
  saying well, yeah, but what if it was just something different?
• 58:56
  Not better, not worse, just different, you know, and and
• 59:00
  that helps me say, oh, that doesn't sound so bad, you know,
• 59:05
  like, OK, you want to get sober. You can't do this.
• 59:10
  They're like, but want to do that.
• 59:12
  Like, what does your life look like if you don't do that?
• 59:15
  Like oh, oh, I guess fine. I never even thought.
• 59:19
  About never even thought about exactly, you know, it's there's
• 59:24
  certain you just got to change perspectives and like getting
• 59:29
  sober. Once you get a little bit of
• 59:31
  time, you're able to take a step back and getting sober is the
• 59:34
  hardest thing because your tunnel vision, you know, like
• 59:36
  you can't consider options. There are no where we are
• 59:40
  fucking something happens. We react like we're not we're
• 59:43
  not us right and and so we can't think of we can't deviate.
• 59:49
  We can't deviate from what we think is right.
• 59:52
  And then therefore no is right, you know, and once you get a bit
• 59:56
  of sobriety, you take that leap and you get a bit of sobriety
• 1:00:00
  then and you start opening up to like and have people surrounding
• 1:00:04
  you saying, saying, asking questions like, well, what it
• 1:00:06
  what would that look like if, if it wasn't exactly what you
• 1:00:09
  wanted and actually being receptive and saying, oh, well,
• 1:00:13
  it might look like this. And then them saying, what was
• 1:00:15
  that that bad? You should say no, it might
• 1:00:20
  actually be better. And because we can't, we're
• 1:00:23
  Alcoholics. Our alcoholic brains.
• 1:00:25
  They're going to put us One Direction.
• 1:00:26
  We have to be surrounded by other people to help basically
• 1:00:30
  workshop, workshop our lives with us, you know?
• 1:00:34
  Yeah. Just pivot right pivot
• 1:00:35
  perspective. And it's hard as men, it is hard
• 1:00:38
  as guys like our, especially of our, I think I'm like, what,
• 1:00:43
  it's 6-7 years older than you. What years?
• 1:00:46
  Graduate. Graduate high school. 2010.
• 1:00:48
  2010, Yeah. I'm nine years older than you.
• 1:00:52
  Yeah. Growing up in the 80s and 90s,
• 1:00:56
  it was, it wasn't you'd like pull yourself up by your
• 1:00:59
  bootstraps. It was figure it out.
• 1:01:01
  Yeah. Rub some dirt on it.
• 1:01:02
  Figure it out man. Stop bugging me with this.
• 1:01:05
  Figure it out yourself. That's bosses were like that,
• 1:01:08
  parents were like that. Everybody was like that, you
• 1:01:11
  know, and, and now it's like, that's why I love men's groups,
• 1:01:16
  being surrounded by, by guys who were just like, none of us know,
• 1:01:21
  none of us know what we're doing, you know, But if we all
• 1:01:24
  put our dumb ass heads together, we might be able to figure this.
• 1:01:26
  Out come sit with us and we'll try and figure it out.
• 1:01:28
  Together and we're going to make fun of each other while we're
• 1:01:31
  doing this. There's going to be a lot of
• 1:01:32
  ribbing and stuff and and don't get over overly sensitive, but
• 1:01:37
  also you can be as sensitive as you want and.
• 1:01:40
  Recommend meetings, but at the end of the day, we're going to
• 1:01:43
  come to a solution. Together.
• 1:01:46
  Yeah, let's end with this, Tom, because I always end the podcast
• 1:01:50
  with this, But if you could say something to someone struggling
• 1:01:53
  right now with alcoholism, drug use, doesn't know if they want
• 1:01:57
  to get sober, thinking about it, drinking's starting to cause
• 1:01:59
  some problems in their life. What would you say, Sir?
• 1:02:03
  That's a good question. I'd say if you know that you're
• 1:02:09
  going to need to get sober. I don't know.
• 1:02:15
  This is tough. I don't.
• 1:02:16
  I try not to be preachy. Oh, here we go.
• 1:02:19
  It's not as hard, as hard as I thought it was going to be.
• 1:02:22
  I had put it on this pedestal. This is going to be the hardest
• 1:02:24
  thing I ever fucking did in my life because I was trying to do
• 1:02:28
  it by myself and it was, it was clearly the hardest thing.
• 1:02:33
  I'd, I'd failed all the time when I went to some meetings and
• 1:02:40
  was like, I looked at it like everything else in my life.
• 1:02:43
  If I don't know how to do something, I ask somebody, hey,
• 1:02:46
  how do I do this? You know, cameras, lighting,
• 1:02:48
  skateboarding, hockey, fucking bikes, anything.
• 1:02:51
  I say, hey, that's cool, how do I do that?
• 1:02:54
  Apply that to your sobriety. If you don't know how to do
• 1:02:56
  something, ask somebody and and just buy in.
• 1:03:01
  It's scary as fuck, man. It is so scary at the beginning,
• 1:03:06
  just like throwing yourself into it, but like like anything else
• 1:03:09
  you're passionate about, when you throw yourself into it,
• 1:03:12
  you're like, this is fucking fun, man.
• 1:03:15
  Just throw yourself into sobriety.
• 1:03:16
  Like everything else, every skill set that we have that we
• 1:03:20
  throw ourselves into and we get good at, we're like fucking, I'm
• 1:03:22
  proud of this. But like sobriety, that's not a
• 1:03:25
  skill set. That's every skill set.
• 1:03:27
  You know, like there is a better version of you inside.
• 1:03:31
  Like Jason said to me, he's like, it's recovery.
• 1:03:33
  We're recovering ourselves. We're recovering the old version
• 1:03:37
  of ourselves and there's a lot of shit on there.
• 1:03:40
  And so it is a cliche, you know, reach out for help.
• 1:03:43
  Just fucking find someone who you associate with that looks
• 1:03:49
  like your can of person and who's sober and say, Hey, I'm
• 1:03:53
  fucked. This will say so was I come on
• 1:03:58
  in and then and then go and go for it.
• 1:04:00
  You know, like it's there's I was hopeless.
• 1:04:04
  I was completely hopeless. My last Bender was the first
• 1:04:07
  time in my life I'd committed. I I thought about committing
• 1:04:10
  suicide and I thought that I had peaked.
• 1:04:14
  I thought my life is over. And very quickly after that,
• 1:04:17
  like within months, I was like, holy shit, I was wrong.
• 1:04:20
  I so badly I could wish that I could go back to like that
• 1:04:24
  version of be and say it's going to be fun, man.
• 1:04:27
  Just shut the fuck up, get over yourself and and go out and
• 1:04:34
  fucking. I don't know, just switch your
• 1:04:36
  perspective. That's basically it.
• 1:04:38
  How many things did I just come? I love it.
• 1:04:39
  That's great. I don't know what I'm going to
• 1:04:41
  say, but here's 10 things that I don't say.
• 1:04:44
  Thanks so much for coming down, buddy.
• 1:04:45
  I love you, Tom. I appreciate you buddy.
• 1:04:48
  I'll come back anytime. Yeah, and we'll have.
• 1:04:51
  You thanks for listening. Please help us grow the channel
• 1:04:54
  and like, share and subscribe for more content.
• 1:04:57
  The discussions and stories shared on this podcast are for
• 1:04:59
  informational and motivational purposes only.
• 1:05:02
  This content is not a substitute for professional medical advice,
• 1:05:06
  addiction treatment, or therapy. If you or someone you know is
• 1:05:09
  struggling with addiction, please consult A licensed
• 1:05:12
  physician, addiction specialist, or mental health professional.
• 1:05:15
  You are no longer alone.