Latest / Brain Stories / Episode 11 - Michael pt. 2: Recovery: How to Become the Guy on the Giving-Back Side

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Episode 11 - Michael pt. 2: Recovery: How to Become the Guy on the Giving-Back Side · Brain Stories

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to part two, the final episode of Michael Stewart's story.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: 58 years old, Michael was staring down the barrel of change.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: He'd had a huge revelation he couldn't explain, but it left him completely free of his craving for drugs.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: He'd been sent to one of the very few programs that actually treated both mental illness and substance use.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: He'd been put on hold for days because there was no space, but he got lucky.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: A bed became available before he began to use drugs again.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: So he was going to start recovery, which meant the hardest part of his life was about to begin.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: But the strange thing about recovery is that when it's done well, it's the opposite of drama.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: It's slow and incremental.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: The temptation is just to fast forward and get right to the fix.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: But if we did that, we'd miss the very essence of it.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: We'd miss the intricate, deeply nuanced process that's largely internal, and we'd miss the tension because recovery is fragile as it can be.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: It's held together by possibly the most gossamer threads of human existence, hope.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: And all it takes to fall apart is a hard rain or a strong wind.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: So this is a story of all the soft rain and gentle winds that led a man to save his own life.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Coming up on Brain Stories.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: A show about one of the most bewildering mysteries of the human experience, mental illnesses, told by people who live with it and those who support them.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Frank Cosa.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Today's episode contains talk of drug use, suicide, and explicit language.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: So listen with care.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: Today's producer is psychiatrist Mark Reagan.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: Here's Mark.
1:59
SPEAKER_02: When people are heavily in drug addiction, like Michael had been for just about all of his adult life, they have only one problem how to get more drugs.
2:10
SPEAKER_02: When they stop using drugs, they have many, many problems.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: All of them, from childhood trauma to depression, anxiety, to hearing suicidal voices, to shame and guilt, to family loss, to mourning a wasted life, come rushing in.
2:26
SPEAKER_02: So Michael was about to face the most unbearable rush of his life.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: I needed to know why I did the things I did.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: You know, I needed to understand that.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: And I needed to understand how to create a sustainable recovery program for myself.
2:57
SPEAKER_02: But they're all knotted together like old Christmas lights thrown in a box.
3:02
SPEAKER_02: Pulling on one just creates more knots.
3:05
SPEAKER_02: The reality of recovery required Michael to do a lot of things all at once.
3:10
SPEAKER_02: The process can feel like loosening a little here and then a little there every day for years, teasing apart strands so intertwined that they have long seemed to be one.
3:22
SPEAKER_02: Until gradually the entire knotted mess comes apart, giving the space to build a new life.
3:29
SPEAKER_02: But one bad move could undo all the work and send Michael right back onto the streets in addiction.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: There was one thing going for him.
3:40
SPEAKER_02: He had been sentenced to a six-month treatment program as an alternative to prison time called River Community.
3:46
SPEAKER_02: It was one of the very few places that treated both drug addiction and mental illness.
3:51
SPEAKER_02: The facilities were basic, some might say run down.
3:54
SPEAKER_02: Quarters were cramped, dorm beds were separated by hanging curtains, bathhouses were outside.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: The one amenity was a rusting basketball hoop.
4:03
SPEAKER_02: But for Michael, this all translated into tranquility.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: It was a beautiful place.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you sometimes didn't hear a car for a couple days.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: Everything was there for you, like a little community.
4:15
SPEAKER_02: In a safe, calm environment, freed from all the stress of getting his daily drugs, he began to put in the work to rebuild his mental health.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: I started using different strategies to deal with my symptoms, like grounding exercises, meditation, doing a lot of writing, just trying to get things out, have it clear on paper so that I could go back and reflect on what I was doing at a given time.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: And these things were relieving me to a great extent.
4:45
SPEAKER_02: Which was vital because he would need enormous strength to face how dark his life had really become.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: Life is fucked.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: It was fucked before, it's fucked today, it's gonna be fucked tomorrow.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, really, what do I have to live for?
4:59
SPEAKER_01: I didn't think I was worthy of much more, you know, and and I hated myself with a passion.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember there was times when I couldn't even look in the mirror.
5:11
SPEAKER_02: At River Community, for the first time, he could explore that darkness.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: Part of what allowed Michael to start the work he had to do was that the other residents were not just addicts or just living with a mental illness, but both that offered him a kind of kinship.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: I think it took away a lot of the stigma.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: I could talk about these things that were going on with me.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, I could talk about how they compelled me to want to self-medicate.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: I was on even ground with the residents there at River Community.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: Everyone had their own story.
5:49
SPEAKER_01: That's one beautiful thing about it is that a lot of people disclosed some of their most painful moments, some of their ugliest places in life, and talked about, you know, the steps that they took to get from there to where they're at right now.
6:04
SPEAKER_02: One person's story inspired Michael even more than the others.
6:11
SPEAKER_01: Her name was Sarah.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: For her drug money to get her money to escape and to deal with her mental health issues, she sold herself.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: She went through the shame and the rejection that she got from her family.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: And once she got clean and started dealing with the therapist, she was able to start moving forward in her life.
6:33
SPEAKER_01: She was productive.
6:34
SPEAKER_02: But Sarah was not a resident.
6:37
SPEAKER_02: She was an employee.
6:38
SPEAKER_02: A lot of staff there were hired because they had also lived lives with both a mental illness and addiction.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: And hearing just from where she came from to where she was, that's where I got most of my hope.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: Was people that had lived experience that gave me the most hope.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: Decades earlier, Michael's father, the abusive angry man Michael hoped for much of his life to never resemble, had overcome his own addiction and turned his life around.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: He um ended up marrying this pretty amazing woman.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: And he started really getting into, you know, his spirituality.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: That really changed him.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: Um he was really deep into meditation, and and he really started taking care of himself and trying to repair um some of the wounds that he had dealt with in his life.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: And that always gave me hope that that I could do that, you know, one day.
7:49
SPEAKER_02: While Michael was facing all the negatives of his life, he also had to start building some positives.
7:55
SPEAKER_02: He found those beginnings in River Community's kitchen.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: They lost their cook.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: They didn't have anybody that was going to cook.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: It was going to take a while to hire somebody, and I said, hey, I can do this, I can cook, I can teach cooking, I can, I can order the food, I can put up the list and everything.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: So I got to do that.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: The implications were considerable.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: I started being able to explore, you know, the things that I was good at and realizing that that I am more capable than I thought I was.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: That was the first thing I felt like I could do anything.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
8:31
SPEAKER_01: I can do anything now.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: Most importantly, he could use his people skills.
8:38
SPEAKER_02: The same so-called manipulative skills that had served him as a car salesman, an addict, and a womanizer.
8:45
SPEAKER_02: But this time to do good.
9:05
SPEAKER_02: Michael became a leader.
9:07
SPEAKER_02: In fact, the residents chose him for the role repeatedly.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: You're only supposed to be resident president one time.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: I was six times.
9:17
SPEAKER_02: He did all of his therapy and chore assignments well and didn't get a single markdown for poor worker behavior the entire time.
9:25
SPEAKER_02: All this was new.
9:27
SPEAKER_02: Instead of always being beaten, told how bad he was, unwanted, and unconnected, for the first time, he was accepted, praised, and well liked.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: I started to realize I've got something.
9:41
SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, something's happening here.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm different than I was.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: Everybody wanted me to leave before.
9:46
SPEAKER_01: Now everybody wants me here.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: They see something in me that I think even at that time I didn't see in myself.
9:53
SPEAKER_01: Which led to another brand new experience.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: This was the first time I'd ever been in treatment that I'd ever considered staying longer.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, I'd have a calendar marking out the days.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: Usually it was just like torture being in those treatment centers.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: It felt like my freedom was taken away.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: This one kind of felt like I was learning how to use my freedom because they gave me agency to do the things that I thought I needed to do.
10:20
SPEAKER_02: The six-month period he had been sentenced to was nearly over.
10:24
SPEAKER_02: But he didn't want to leave.
10:26
SPEAKER_02: He asked for more time and he got it.
10:29
SPEAKER_02: He immediately set a new agenda.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: Working on my self-worth and my self-esteem, because there was no and there was no self-esteem.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, how do you work on self-esteem?
10:42
SPEAKER_01: You do esteemable things, you know.
10:45
SPEAKER_02: He started working that lesson with the one resident who bugged him more than anyone else.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: There was this one girl, and she was psychotic.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: She would walk in front of the groups that we'd have in the mornings, just make these annoying noises.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: I'd be outside meditating in the morning.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: I'd hear her coming down at four o'clock in the morning, dragging her feet and just taking me out of my place, right?
11:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm just like everything she did annoyed me.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: And I had to learn to deal with this.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, I told one of my counselors, she says, When do you think you will leave?
11:26
SPEAKER_01: I said, I'll leave when I when I can accept her for who she is without me being just annoyed.
11:33
SPEAKER_02: He stayed an extra six months past his sentence to work on as many challenges.
11:38
SPEAKER_02: He stayed a month beyond that just so that he could attend the ceremony for people who have completed the program at River Community.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: It was very meaningful to me to be um to to complete that program, complete it perfectly, and to let the people on the staff and the clients there know how much I appreciated them and their support.
12:01
SPEAKER_02: By now, he had hope, purpose, acceptance, and belonging.
12:07
SPEAKER_02: And he believed in himself.
12:09
SPEAKER_02: But was he strong enough to make it on the outside?
12:13
SPEAKER_02: He began this transition with a list of needs: housing, work, new hangouts, new friends, and one more thing.
12:20
SPEAKER_02: A good therapist.
12:22
SPEAKER_02: River Community referred him to a place called Pacific Clinics, where he went to see a therapist named Dan.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: After our two-hour interview, he went in and told the director of Pacific Clinics, he says, this guy doesn't need our help.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: He's he's fine.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: He could probably counsel you.
12:40
SPEAKER_02: Michael was in good shape, but not that good.
12:44
SPEAKER_02: Fortunately, River Community was still involved.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: The woman at the river community that knew my history, uh, she says, no, no, no, keep an eye on him.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: He may be presenting well right now, but but this is that's probably not gonna last.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: So you continue to work with him.
13:00
SPEAKER_02: So Michael continued working with Dan.
13:04
SPEAKER_02: There's a big difference between acting like everything is fine and actually clearing out the suffering and the shame so we really can be fine.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we did work on was the past trauma and really digging into it, really kind of re-experiencing it, acknowledging the pain, and kind of just letting it go.
13:27
SPEAKER_02: All the events from when he was a kid.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: His parents' addiction, his father's physical abuse, the silence when his mom vanished into prison, the foster home, the constant moves, the poverty, the sudden death of his surrogate dad.
13:42
SPEAKER_02: Michael worked on all of that with Dan.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: It was like I had just been walking around with this heavy, heavy load, you know, all my life.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: Once I was able to process that trauma and sit back and reflect on where I was before and where I am right now, it was just freedom.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: I had more movement, I could do more things, and I wasn't, it didn't hurt anymore.
14:14
SPEAKER_02: Michael's work with Dan included something else that was new.
14:18
SPEAKER_02: He started to build a strong spiritual foundation.
14:21
SPEAKER_02: Dan pointed him towards a wide range of books, from Deepak Chopra's The Way of the Wizard to Lou Maronoff's Plato, not Prozac.
14:29
SPEAKER_02: He encouraged him to find what resonated.
14:33
SPEAKER_02: Eventually, Michael rejected the God he had gotten from his grandparents.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: Before, my God was the guy that if you did wrong, um, then you you were going to suffer for that.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: And you could suffer eternally.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: For me, my God would not build a place for eternal suffering.
14:52
SPEAKER_02: He began to build a new spirituality, one that was positive and surprisingly close.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: When I think of God, I think of my mom, I think of a female, I think of something that can also create um, you know, um life.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: All those qualities that my mom had were God like her unconditional love, her passion to help, her ability to forgive.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: So I took all these things, wrote down all these things that I adored about my mother, and I multiplied these attributes by those stars in the sky, and that was my conception of God.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: Bigger than I could ever really explain, but everything that I needed it to be.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: All of this would prove indispensable.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: I think that without that spiritual component, I don't think that I would have been able to make it to where I am.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean, my life has changed dramatically since I've been able to rely on that force, that power.
16:28
SPEAKER_02: Throughout all of this, Michael had been working on his mental illness.
16:32
SPEAKER_02: The voices had become quieter, he learned to endure the depressions without losing hope.
16:38
SPEAKER_02: The out-of-control manias he had experienced softened into periods of ordinary happiness.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: But Michael's daily regimen of pills was considerable.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: Prozac, well, butrin, cyprexa, trazodone, cogentin to take off the side effects.
17:00
SPEAKER_02: God, a lot of medications.
17:02
SPEAKER_02: He began getting symptoms of tartive dyskinesia, a disorder that arises as a side effect of medications for mental illness.
17:10
SPEAKER_02: It shows up as involuntary movements, like disturbing facial ticks or uncontrolled grimacing or repeatedly sticking out your tongue.
17:19
SPEAKER_02: At that point, he was on eight medications.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: I decided that that was not sustainable, that I needed to try to find a way out of that.
17:29
SPEAKER_02: So I sought out his doctor.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: But every time I went to my psychiatrist and told her, you know, I think I want to start pulling off medications, she would deny me.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: Um she wouldn't even want to experiment with it.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of what they're schooled to do.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: You treat this symptom with medicate with this pill, you know, and that's that's how it was with her, you know, and it didn't seem right to me.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: I actually it it seems very wrong to me.
17:57
SPEAKER_02: Left to figuring out how to do it on his own, he decided to stop them all at once, except for one drug called Tracedon that he used to help with sleeping.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: I uh told some friends, um, hey, I'm gonna do this, keep an eye on me.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: If it goes south, let me know, pull me, intervene, help me out here.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: And um they said, okay.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: And so I did.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: And I pulled myself off of every medication that I was taken except for trazodon.
18:25
SPEAKER_02: Going cold turkey, which is how we'd always been taken off street drugs, is probably the most dangerous and least likely to succeed way of stopping psychiatric medications.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: I went through about four or five days where it was very difficult for me.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, my body's just like readjusting to things, you know.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I jumped into all those strategies.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: They I stayed in touch with friends, told them how I was feeling, told them what was going on, made sure that I was getting proper sleep.
18:55
SPEAKER_02: Michael held tightly to the strategy.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: Took about two weeks, and after that, those symptoms started to come down, those withdrawal symptoms from the medications started to subside.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: In about a month, I was totally clear.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: And and I didn't realize I didn't need those medications anymore.
19:16
SPEAKER_02: At that point, Michael sought out a psychiatrist to let her know.
19:21
SPEAKER_02: The conversation didn't start well.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: She lost her mind.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, she lost her mind, was writing scripts and going on like, no, you don't understand.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: This is what I want.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: But you know, I'm not quitting, I'm not going to relapse, I'm secure in what I'm doing.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: And that's not to say that everyone would be successful doing it.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: I had a lot of things in place, and I'd already developed a lot of tools to be able to deal with my symptoms.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: But I did it.
19:55
SPEAKER_02: My impression as a psychiatrist is that almost all people like Michael with long-standing mental illnesses don't get help from their doctors getting off their medications as they heal and recover.
20:07
SPEAKER_02: Deprescribing is rarely part of our training or mindsets.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: I think it would have been safer if she would have said, okay, let's see if we can titrate you off of it, instead of me going the route that I did.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: But I made it through.
20:26
SPEAKER_02: Michael hasn't needed to go to a psychiatric hospital for 12 years now.
20:38
SPEAKER_02: Recovery isn't just about staying out of hospitals and staying off drugs.
20:43
SPEAKER_02: There's a whole other strand that's about connecting to people, places, and purpose.
20:49
SPEAKER_02: So while Michael was working through trauma, developing his spirituality and getting off medications, he was also building a life, solving the practical problems of money, a place to live, and places to belong.
21:04
SPEAKER_02: Pacific clinics where he was going for therapy also had a wellness center, a place to hang out with other people with mental illnesses to support each other.
21:13
SPEAKER_02: It was here that Michael's kitchen experience from River Community served him well.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: And then they finally asked me if I would be willing to run groups.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: Started running the groups there.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: He was good at it, right?
21:34
SPEAKER_01: That was how he was going to earn money.
21:37
SPEAKER_02: Whatever else was going on in his life, good and bad, he kept anchoring himself with giving back to other people.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: Started going out to Skid Row and, you know, um providing water at first, and then it was like water and pizzas, and water and pizzas and clothing and resources for the people out there.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: His day job paid the bills, but the volunteer work is what really fulfilled him.
22:06
SPEAKER_02: One day when Michael was taking donations to Skid Row, one of the volunteers told him something that would completely change how he thought about work.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: She says, you know, Michael, there's you can get paid for doing this.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, what are you talking about?
22:18
SPEAKER_01: She said people get paid to provide resources and support for people experiencing homelessness.
22:25
SPEAKER_02: But to do the job right, Michael would need formal training.
22:29
SPEAKER_02: A client at Pacific Clinics told him about an organization called Project Return.
22:34
SPEAKER_02: Project Return provides a wide variety of peer support programs that are entirely run by people who have lived experience with mental illness, people like Michael.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: I ended up going to school to become a peer professional, is the title of the job.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: And when I passed that class, when I passed it with honors, right?
22:56
SPEAKER_01: And Project Return ended up hiring me as soon as I left out of there.
23:01
SPEAKER_02: In time, he saved money and then began seeking something else that he had never had in his 60 years of life.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: One day I'm looking on Craigslist and I found this complex.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: Small one-bedroom they had.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, small.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: It was small.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm just like, I'm in.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm in.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: TV's like this far from me.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it was okay.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: It was my own place.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: Only first time that I'd ever signed a rental contract of my own.
23:35
SPEAKER_02: In his 60s, Michael was proving to himself that it was never too late to recover.
23:40
SPEAKER_02: He was proud of his apartment, his work, that he was staying clean, that he had friends he could rely on, that he found a way to live with his mental illness on his own terms, and even his connection to God.
23:53
SPEAKER_02: But life would once again test him.
23:57
SPEAKER_02: His older brother, who had never grown past the intellectual ability of an 11-year-old, whom Michael had always protected, fell ill and died.
24:07
SPEAKER_02: Less than three months later, his younger brother also died.
24:11
SPEAKER_02: Like Michael, his younger brother had lived with a mental illness.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: He had also followed Michael into addiction, but he had never followed him out.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: That was the most painful part of all.
24:23
SPEAKER_01: My brother could have been alive today if he was able to get that pipe out of his mouth for a couple minutes, and he left this earth not knowing who he was, and um had no clue of his value, had no clue of what he he could offer others.
24:42
SPEAKER_02: At almost any other time in his life, this would have sent Michael racing back to his pipe.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: But he had changed.
25:08
SPEAKER_02: That was eight years ago.
25:10
SPEAKER_02: Michael didn't use drugs then, and in fact, he hasn't used drugs since the day he entered River Community.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: 12 years and counting.
25:19
SPEAKER_02: Today his mental health is excellent, even though his voices continue.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: But it's not as dominant and it's not as derogatory.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: It's just sometimes I'll hear you're gonna you're gonna fuck this up.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: You, you know, you're a loser, and da-da-da.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: But it's not just blaring, screaming.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: And I know it's not real.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: It's something going on, there's something malfunctioning.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, I get through it.
25:47
SPEAKER_02: In fact, he regards the voices with something that almost sounds like affection.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: It's like the little hum of the refrigerator you hear.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: It's just back there.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: And you know what is strange?
25:57
SPEAKER_01: I think I would be lonely if it wasn't.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: I don't know because I've always heard him, but I couldn't imagine not.
26:08
SPEAKER_02: He has regrets.
26:10
SPEAKER_02: The biggest is that he's been cut off from the only family he has left.
26:14
SPEAKER_02: His daughters and a 14-year-old grandson.
26:18
SPEAKER_02: Painful as that is, he stays ready for the possibility of a better future.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: I and I still have hope that one day that those wounds can heal.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, I know with my my grandson in four years from now.
26:32
SPEAKER_02: He'll be 18 then, old enough to make his own choice.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: God willing, if I'm still around, um, you know, I will, I will reach out to him.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: In the meantime, he spends his days reaching out to others, to people who are most in need.
26:48
SPEAKER_02: Like the man who approached him on the side of a freeway with a prison record, a mental illness, and a colostomy bag.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: I think that's the biggest thing for me.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: You know, I get to contribute.
27:00
SPEAKER_01: Before it felt like all I ever did was take.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: Today I get to give, I get to give, I get to pay it forward.
27:08
SPEAKER_02: He still drives 14 miles up the mountain to go to a group at River Community.
27:13
SPEAKER_02: He has stayed connected with the students and the teachers of Project Return.
27:17
SPEAKER_02: He has stayed connected to the homeless people he's helped, giving them his cell phone number and driving out to the streets to help them, even when they're not his clients anymore.
27:26
SPEAKER_02: He even builds connections to all the things around him: the books that helped him, the lyrics that touch him, his apartment, and everything in it, from his cat to the table to a sign group photo from a previous job on the wall.
27:39
SPEAKER_02: Everything has a memory and a story he can connect to that that keeps him whole.
27:45
SPEAKER_02: Five years ago, he made the biggest connection of all, getting married.
27:50
SPEAKER_02: All of it, good and bad, is so special to him because he knows what it means to lose everything.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: Everything that I went through over that 60 years, was it horrible?
28:02
SPEAKER_01: Was it bad?
28:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, or was it just what needed to happen for me to get to where I am right now?
28:08
SPEAKER_01: If I didn't experience that, all that, would I appreciate where I am right now the way that I do?
28:23
SPEAKER_02: I hope that by hearing Michael's story, you can see him through my eyes.
28:29
SPEAKER_02: When I drive the streets of LA past the homeless and the underpaid outreach workers, I think to myself that many of them have stories like his.
28:38
SPEAKER_02: They're working hard to bring hope and redemption to that person on the street who they used to be, who almost all of us have written off.
28:48
SPEAKER_02: Almost no one knows that better than Michael.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: There's not one thing I do that hasn't been done for me, and I remember how it felt.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: I remember being out there for days and not talking to anyone.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: Just so lonely.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: And I and it's so beautiful to be able to be the other guy on the other side.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: Coming up on the next episode of Brain Stories, in the 21st century, we have clinicians, medications, and more access to information than ever.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: So everyone with a mental illness can be helped.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: But when Pyle's brother moved back into their parents' house in his twenties, he didn't get any help.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: Fifteen years have gone by, and nothing has changed.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: Except Pyle.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: Her story comes out April 2nd.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: If you like this episode, remember it the next time you pass a person living on the streets who's doing odd things and seems high.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to find help for both mental illness and drug use.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: Very few programs exist.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: But they can do amazing work, and Michael is proof that it's never too late to recover and become part of the solution.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: You can find out more about River Community, where Michael began his recovery, by going to their website, River Community Azusa.com.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: That's River Community Azusa Az USA.com.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: You can also get information about the peer support program Michael trained in and worked for called Project Return.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: Their website is prpsn.org.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: Both of those are in Southern California.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: If you want to find a program near you, try TAC's helpline.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: You can access that at tac.org backslash helpline.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: You'll need to fill out a short form.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: But they're a trustworthy place to get excellent information.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: And in case you weren't taking notes, all of this is in our episode notes or on our website, Brainstories Productions.com.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: Thanks to the team that made this story possible.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: Our associate producer and editor was Kate Ruscosa.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: The episode producer was Dr.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: Mark Reagans.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: His book is called Journeys Beyond the Frontier: A Rebellious Guide to Psychosis and Other Extraordinary Experiences.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: You can get it on his website, markreagans.com or your local bookstore.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: Karen Gibbon is our story editor and guiding light.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: Rob Byers is our audio mixer who makes everything sound better.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: The show is executive produced by Frank Cosa and Janet Yang.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: And thank you to our advisors and all our supporters.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: This show is a copyright of Brain Stories Productions and the Samu Bay Corporation.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: The use of this episode or its content in any way or form for artificial intelligence, its development or training, is copyright infringement and expressly prohibited without prior written agreement.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: See you April 2nd.