Latest / Through the Sh#t with Jen McDowell / Bryan White | Breaking the Stigma of Addiction
Transcript
- speaker-0: I think this was a really hard moment. I remember getting a little bit of my my view of the universe. I'm like, ⁓ God made me this wife. Or I chose this, which is an even more powerful way to do it. Like I, before I came in this lifetime, chose to be an addict and I had something to learn through that. that is hard. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: To sit with because that is one of those things like you have to take full ownership of this. This didn't happen to me. This is me doing this. And that is one of the harder ponents of what the shame is out of it. You're dealing with this as like, okay, wow, I really have to own my shit to get through. speaker-1: Welcome, I'm Jen McDowell, and you're listening to Through the Shit, a podcast for anyone going through the shit and the people who love them. And every episode we'll hear a new story of loss, hope, and resilience, and how going through the shit led to something greater. So if you're in the shit now and feeling lost or alone, disconnected from your badass self, or in need of an ember of hope to keep putting one foot in front of the other, you're in the right place. So settle in, prepare to be moved and inspired, and welcome. to the shit. Welcome everybody. You're listening to Through the Shit. I'm your host Jen McDowell and joining me today is my good friend Brian White. Brian, welcome. speaker-0: Hi everybody. Well, thanks for inviting me. I'm really excited to be here today. speaker-1: Yeah, cool. Okay. So how you feeling? Nervous today? speaker-0: Actually not. ⁓ I'm excited to share a little bit about story. I think this is important. I think what you're doing is fantastic and just here to support. speaker-1: Yeah, thanks. Well, I'm super glad to have you here. ⁓ but before we kind of get into the the the nitty gritty, why don't we talk a little bit about how we met? Do you wanna tell that story? speaker-0: ⁓ well, we've met through a program that we're here to develop us as coaches. I think we both kind of came into it in like under not understanding what the business side of it was. and through just like through cohorts and just through that program, we just became good friends. We have others that ⁓ also join us as well as part of our little cohort. But that's how we met. And I just love your down to down to earth nature kind of person. You tell it as it is, and I'm like, Okay, I really appreciate that. speaker-1: Thanks. Yeah. So ⁓ I was reflecting on that this morning as I was like getting ready for our session. And and you know, I think the thing that I have come to know is that when you have gone through the shit, you tend to be able to sort of pick up on and are drawn to other people who have gone through the shit. And I don't know if there was just something in those early, you know, program classes that we had where like there was just a way about you or a way that you spoke. Or a degree of thoughtfulness that ⁓ it's like subtle. I don't know, you just sort of feel it in your bones maybe. And you're like, okay, there's there's a a good, a good person here. So ⁓ so yeah, so when I was like, hey, I think I'm gonna do this crazy thing and I need guests, and you were like, ⁓ come on, yeah, I was just so honored t to have you here as a guest and ⁓ honored to ⁓ hold the space as you tell your story today. speaker-0: I appreciate that. And we all have a lot of shit to get through. So, I mean, I think this is a perfect opportunity to even help me process this as still as I'm going through it sometimes still I already feel like I'm still going through speaker-1: Yeah, and it's kinda and things are kind of yucky right now. ⁓ and so when you are in a yucky place, it can dig up the old stuff and it is sort of like an ongoing perpetual healing process. So ⁓ okay, so let's tell everybody a little about a little bit about who you are professionally. I've got your bio over here. ⁓ so Brian White is a human centered HR leader and ICF ACC credential coach with a background spanning multiple industries, most recently in gaming. Which I thought was just totally cool. I'd love you. ⁓ even though I'm not a gamer, I was just like, ⁓ that's so interesting. A yogi with a love for nature, Brian at his Brian is passionate about helping people reconnect with clarity, purpose, and their own inner wisdom, drawing from both real world leadership experience and his exploration of metaphysics and consciousness. Outside of work, he finds joy in quiet moments outdoors, meaningful conversation. And life with his super adorable beloved French bulldog, whom I have seen before. So welcome and thank you again for being here. Thanks. Well, to kick us off, let's talk a little bit about this idea of through the shit. You know, it's a little bit different for everybody. And so as it relates to your story, don't tell me the story yet. ⁓ and you're gonna tell us what? In one word, you're gonna tell us something about climbing out of the dark hole. Like what are you gonna tell us? speaker-0: ⁓ speaker-1: One word sentence. speaker-0: It takes work. speaker-1: Okay. All right. So a dar climbing out of the dark hole takes work. ⁓ and so for you, this idea of through the shit, what does that mean to you and your story? speaker-0: It really means having to do a lot of introspection. it means having to be real with yourself, ⁓ and really understanding the truth of the matter. I think there's so many times that we all hear stories of our past or from others. And then I finally had to take a moment where I'm like, I don't think that's really the truth of what's happening here. And so when I really started to tune into myself as part of this. The truth or that little thread started to come through a little bit more for me. And that's what I started following. It's kind of my little lifeline and my little rope that I started to hold on to. That helped me. speaker-1: Wow. Okay. So it's this idea of following your own truth and abandoning the stories that maybe you've been telling yourself that you picked up from other people. Right. Okay. Wow. That's ⁓ that's a new one. But I can relate to that because I think about going through my own shit. And there was like this little sort of pull that I couldn't ignore. I couldn't explain it. I couldn't articulate it. It was just this pull. ⁓ and I think that's what got me on this trip around the country is like I can't explain it. I just need to be outside and so I'm just gonna do it. So ⁓ so thank you for that ad to our ongoing evolution of what it means to go through the ship. speaker-0: Yeah. You'll find it's not a voice. Mm. And it's really not. I mean, sometimes you hear like one or two, but you're right, it's just a feeling and it's that pull. And I mean I we'll talk about energetics a little bit later, how to but sometimes it's like where it feels that. I mean, for me it's like when I get something goes behind my neck and I get that cold feeling about it, I'm like, mm, better pay attention. speaker-1: Mm. Yeah, okay. So I think maybe what we're talking about a little bit is intuition or gut feel or something like that, but we'll get into that later. Okay. ⁓ are you ready to tell me your shit? Yeah. ⁓ speaker-0: Ooh, this is Okay. This is the tough part out of it. but I hope it's healing in my own way. So to make this really summarize about it, ⁓ as a gay man, I didn't really have a lot of exposure to that in the nineties. I mean like er eighties and nineties. So I finally moved to the Bay Area and when I was in the Bay Area I had such a desire to fit in in the gay community. And I really loved music. So my first things was let me go to the clubs. So during that period of time, it was all fun, loved music. And I people laugh at this now because I always went there and I'm like, everybody's so healthy. They're just drinking water. What I didn't realize was they were doing a lot of drugs. ⁓ and so as part of me wanting to fit in, I started to stumble into it. Now, I don't have a history of drug use even as a child or teen. I was a really, really good, good boy. But something said I'd to try it. Well, as anything with drug use associated, I mean, your quantity, the what you do starts to change. And it changed for me. So it led to a very long term addiction that started in my twenties and went well into my kind of my thirties. And so the shit of it was Wow, it changed me completely in terms of how I set saw myself, ⁓ how I felt about myself, the situations or scenarios I got myself in because I was either looking for drugs, using drugs, and then also means how I used my body as well. So I mean, I think it's a story you'll find very common in the thing. Now, to add on to this in the ship is I'm an HR professional. Can you imagine trying to the person in work who says, Don't do drugs, can't do it out of it, who's also a hidden ⁓ had a hidden addiction, so to speak, in the background. It added a such a level of shame, ⁓ that I couldn't break through. So that's sort of high level summary of me and my child. speaker-1: Yeah, and and thank you for sharing that. You know, one of the things that I think about a lot is that there is still a stigma around mental health ⁓ and talking about it and kind of being honest about what's happening with our mental health. And so if the stigma for mental health is kind of here, I think the stigma around substance use and addiction is here. and I think a lot of that goes to the fact that ⁓ it's not understood, perhaps. And when when we are faced with situations that we don't understand, ⁓ we tend to do really awful and ugly things or we can't do really awful and ugly things. So what was it like, you know, knowing that that what you just shared is gonna go out into the world at some point? speaker-0: Honestly. Yeah. ⁓ but I hope HR professionals or even business leaders start to understand that this is real. This is still happening in the workplace. You may have some of your best performers on. I mean, I'll just use Adderall or all these other things to enhance performance. I mean, it and sometimes it's common, like if you look at Wall Street, I mean, you heard the whole stories of everybody doing cocaine on Wall Street, but there are other instances where it's just normal day-to-day people. I mean, I've known situations and I've had to manage situations where somebody got an injury and all of a sudden they were on an opiate and that opiate turned into an addiction that they couldn't c control. These are good people who just happen to fall into something that they couldn't manage or didn't know how to manage. And I would love one day for the working world to finally understand, like, whoa. This is not about the person. This is about something else. And with mental health and addressing it, maybe we could fix this problem. So that's part of the reason why I wanted to share it today. Is like I want to break a stigma. speaker-1: Mm, awesome. Okay. Well, I am here for it and I am by your side to do that. So let's talk a little bit more about this. So you talked about, you know, the some of the things that you did, the way that you thought about yourself, the way you use your own body. ⁓ at what point or was there a point where you were like, ooh, I am in the shit? Was it rock bottom? I mean, I think that's a term that I hear a lot. Yeah. speaker-0: something for me, rock bottom would change over a period of time. Just when I thought I hit rock bottom, I'm like, ⁓ screw this. Let me dig a bit deeper out of it component to it. The biggest thing, and this is where I'll share about my rock bottom was finally I remember taking a moment and saying, I just couldn't do this anymore. I couldn't handle myself anymore. And so I just there was a suicide attempt in my thirties. That was probably the lowest. Now, did my addiction go beyond that for a period of time? It did. So I would say that hey, I played in a rock the rock bottom for a longer period in time than I would have loved to. It wasn't one of those rebound situations where you go right back up into it. So for me, it continued out. But what it did bring to me was I think this concept of spirituality. it really did bring in certain resources where I'm like, all right, so I need to go to Narcotics Anonymous. That was the only tool that I knew at that time. And through that, then I started to see cracks in my thinking and my behaviors that then started to bring light. I mean, I mean, I can always share it like there's a little story about a golden Buddha that monks used to hide and then all of a sudden they dropped it and it they saw some gold through it. That was my golden Buddha moment. Where I just finally saw something beautiful inside me that I was like, All right, how do I nourish this? speaker-1: Yeah, totally. I mean, I remember I must have been in law school at some point in time, but I remember someone saying a phrase ⁓ that I think it's attributed to one of the Supreme Court justices from like eons ago who talked about sunlight being the best disinfectant, right? So like bringing light into the darkness can be both painful, but it is sort of like the start of healing, I think is what I'm hearing you say. Okay. That is I guess the other thing that I have a question about, because you talked about, you know, wanting people to understand that this is real, it's in your workplace, it's there. Like, how did you manage both? Right. Because you are in HR and you are a professional and you are managing situations where you could have theoretically been on the other side of the table. And so how did you strike this balance for over a decade? It sounds like. speaker-0: There's two things that I did kind of like called like coping around this. So one of them was I really leaned into nutrition and just taking care of myself with really, really good food. It was the fastest way to get me out of like a bender or something off of it. And then I was really good about evasive. So when there's situations about it, I mean, I mean, not that again, not going into it, but I was an upper space. So it's much easier to hide an upper than it is a downer. And in that regard, out of it, people are like, ⁓ you're really interactive. You're this out of it. And so I think I tried to compress a lot of what I was doing in weekends or out of it. And it blended into my work week. And it did in some later points in time. But I think that's one of the ways I just managed it. And then the other piece to it was. Really just being conscious of when and when this was not appropriate. There is even there was just times even in my work life where I'm just like, absolutely not. I mean, there were some red lines that I said, I just couldn't do this. I mean ⁓ or or use a drug in that instance because I know it would be so harming, probably not to myself but to another individual. And that's when I was like I always put others in front before me. speaker-1: Interesting. Okay. I feel like there's more there to unpack. But I think the the immediate question that comes to mind for me is, you know, if someone is out there listening and wondering, like what does that elusive behavior look like? Like speaker-0: ⁓ working from home. ⁓ it it it means Like I think there's a lot of times like I could s look at my meeting, my calendar, shift things around, put it into the afternoon if I didn't get sleep the night before. I mean, so there's little like clues like that that you would see. I think those are kind of just I think the biggie ones. ⁓ but there's other subtle ways. You you get really, really creative when you are in an addiction to hide things. speaker-1: Yeah. And I speaker-0: Nobody knew. No very, very, very few people knew. speaker-1: Wow. And and I guess that goes to, I know for me, when I was kind of in my shit, even though I felt lonely and isolated, I wanted to isolate myself. ⁓ and so for me, this idea of creating distance between yourself and sort of the rest of the world, you know, feels like something in common that we shared. ⁓ because I just wanted to curl in on curl in on myself. I agree. speaker-0: No. I didn't want anyone to experience the shame that I was feeling on the inside. speaker-1: yeah. ⁓ you wanna talk about the shame? speaker-0: Ooh, this is this is the hardest part actually out of it. ⁓ and I say this because I don't think even today my shame has fully gone away. I think I'm much more comfortable addressing it with certain people where I feel safe. But if I was to go into like an HR conference or something out of that, I don't know if I'd want to talk about this because I just don't know. If the stigma around this is so bad that people just be like, ⁓ I'm just disregarding. And because of that, and this is a livelihood and other things associated with, my shame showed up in so many different ways. I mean, it was mainly just how I talked to myself internally. ⁓ not giving myself opportunities 'cause I didn't think I deserved him anymore. I felt I was broken. ⁓ so many other ways I could express the shame. speaker-1: ⁓ yeah. and I think as I listen to you, ⁓ one I've got goosebumps because there's so much there that I just can relate to in my own experience. the first is this idea that like it it never quite goes away. ⁓ it's always gonna be there. And I think for me with th the trauma work that I've done, like I know it's still there, but it doesn't have the same outsized impact on me that it used to. But I can be in a situation where like I'm still sort of like triggered, I guess is the word that I want to use, even though I feel like sometimes that word is overused, but and I shut down and I freeze. ⁓ and then the narrative starts, right? But I have done enough work now to know that that is a story, that is a narrative. ⁓ And it passes a whole lot faster and it has less of an impact on me than it used to. ⁓ but it's still there and it's always gonna be there. And I'm hearing kind of the same from you. speaker-0: It's like how fast you get over the hump. I mean, it's one of those things. Like even now when I was just talking about this, I felt it in my body. I mean, it was coming up. I like, I'm gonna cry. And it's one of those like, ⁓ this is still sensitive to me. It's almost like a bruise. I mean, sometimes you add a bit like when you do a really, really bad fall and it hurts and but the bruise goes away, but it's still tender. That's how I be pushing. And I think it's one of those things like it and it shows its ways again and again. speaker-1: Я speaker-0: out of it. So but I hear you're scrolling out of it. Like yeah, it's easier for me now. Much more easier. speaker-1: Totally. The other thing that you said that kind of made the hair stand up, I think, is like this idea of I'm broken. because I know I said that for a long time. I just felt crushed, like I felt so broken. and I'm curious, like if there's more to say there. I know I have a question I want to ask, but I feel like we maybe want to sit with that for a minute. speaker-0: Think this was a really hard moment. I remember getting a little bit of my my view of the universe. I'm like, ⁓ God made me this wife. Or I chose this, which is an even more powerful way to do it. Like, I, before I came in this lifetime, chose to be an addict, and I had something to learn through that. that is hard. to sit with because that is one of those things like you have to take full ownership of this. This didn't happen to me. This is me doing this. And that is one of the harder ponies of what the shame is out of it. You're dealing with this is like, okay, wow, I really have to own my shit to get through my shit. speaker-1: I think as I look back on my scenario, some things like, you know, can't control my mother's death, right? That kind of just happened. But she she made choices that contributed to her her death. ⁓ and I think that's, you know, a really good example of the choices we make can still impact others, even though it impacts us. But ⁓ but there were parts of my healing process where I had to acknowledge, like, hmm, I was not the perfect princess that I, you know, tried to be. ⁓ and because of that, you know, that that had an impact on some of my experience. So, but I think you're also touching on something else that's important around this idea of choice. One of the other guests that's been on, and I think a couple of guests have talked about like being able to change your relationship to the situation and kind of shifting your perf per perspective helps you kind of climb out of the hole. So I'm curious if there's a point, because you said earlier, like you you hit rock bottom, you made this attempt on your life, PS, super glad you're still here. ⁓ Yeah, yeah. Fuck yeah. ⁓ but then you you didn't kind of like spring back up, right? It was sort of a gradual process of climbing out of the hole. So I'm wondering if you think back, was there a point in time when you started to get that glimmer? That sense like, okay, I'm I'm working my way through it and I'm on my way back up. Yeah. speaker-0: really leaned into spirituality and this is where my love for metaphysics just understanding I'm like okay if I can't figure this like I think initially my thought was how do I fix my body? How do I fix my mind? And then how do I fix my spirit? So I just started explore the like through different ways. I mean the mind's a hard one. ⁓ Because that's the one like the drug use can definitely impact in terms of everything from like memory, cognitive abilities, yada yada. But the spirituality was the one that really started to change me. I was like hearing stories of inspiration and what other people did. And I will say the quickest way and the easiest rule to ever give yourself people trying to come out of it is feel it energetically. Does it feel a little bit better? And the question I ask myself and I still struggle with this at times is does it raise my vibration? And I mean, does it actually make me feel a little bit better? And if it does, that's the path to go down. speaker-1: Yeah, and I f I think I feel that way and I understand that better now, especially like around the podcast. Like there is just a feeling here, there's a movement here. And so it's like I'm gonna follow that. And kind of the same like when I did my travels. But you know, I think one of the things you and I have talked about, because I'm always in my head, I know you are a very analytical person as well. So, like, how do you articulate that or can you articulate it as best as you possibly can? for someone who maybe is really kind of stuck in their head and hasn't yet had that connection to their body and their spirituality in the way that you you are describing. speaker-0: Because I I would say I pretty much put a stopper on all of my emotions. I intellectualized my emotions and I lived through many parts of my life just saying, all right, I was told to be sad, or so this is what I I'm sad, I guess. And maybe I didn't really feel that way. It's when I got quiet. And I think that's when I started to listen and like, ⁓ and just putting a name to it for myself. was a good way to kind of tap into the emotional portion of it. So it's like, I feel shame. ⁓ my god, what's this shame? I mean, there's this old little tool. You're seeing kind of a wheel that talks about all the emotions out of it. Sometimes I would be like, all right, what am I feeling? And I'd have to pinpoint on that. And I'm like, ⁓ okay, that's really what the foundational piece to it is. So I could use my in intellect and my headiness at times as a tool to help tap into the emotional portion of it. And then it just took comfort being letting the emotion come out. Like I cry now all the time. I never but I mean all of a sudden it's just like, ⁓ okay, that's just a part of the human experience. And yeah, that's what I chose this life for. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, you know, ⁓ I think ⁓ I had a very sort of similar realization or process that as you just described, you know, starting with being able to name it. Because if you can name it and the more precisely you can name it, you can address it. The thing that I learned, right, is like there is a need tied to that feeling. And once I know what my need is, I can start to tend to it. So that was sort of the first thing. The second thing, as you said, was that ⁓ This is part of the human experience, right? Like I grew up like, don't cry, don't whatever, don't, you know, don't have your feelings, right? Pleasant, pleasant feelings are the only acceptable feelings. And understanding that like the full range is part of the messy human experience. And in fact, suppression of some emotions can be trauma a traumatic experience for people. I mean, that was sort of a light bulb moment too. So this idea of, It's all the things and it's like why we're here on this earth to experience the the highs and the lows and the joy and the loss and all of the things in between. speaker-0: You're gonna find, I in meantime, even in my recovery, it was more about unlearning stuff rather than learning new things. If you were born in the 70s or even kind of in the early part of the 80s, we were not a good time. The media and everything else, and all the things that we were taught weren't the healthiest. And I'm really like appreciative of this generation today. I mean, that actually call it out. And you see it in so many different ways. And I'm like, ⁓ speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, total. speaker-0: Wish I would've kinda would have loved to have that a little bit in mind. speaker-1: Although I'm curious now when we listen to this in like 30 years, like what is gonna be the learning that this generation has to undo? Right. So okay. So let me let me go back to something else that you said. So let's talk about resources. ⁓ because you had mentioned NA, you talked about getting quiet. What other types of and the feelings will as a tool, right? So what other types of resources were helpful for you as you were like climbing your way out of the hole? speaker-0: ⁓ and probably the there's one that I missed that I would say I want to articulate. You do not have to do this alone. Mm. There are times you have to do the work alone, but you do not have to be alone to do it. Yeah. And I have friends and family who have gone through shit with me. And them just knowing that they're there to sometimes to either catch myself, to let me process it, or just to be myself. And I think that was really other resources that I've done. I mean, I've kind of got back into yoga, meditation, semantics. I mean, I can go on and on about all the things that I've kind of tapped into out of it. But the one actually for me right now is just a really more intuition and kind of like what are my talents around psychic abilities, which is things like out of it. Like I just feel things and I'm like Okay, I can say that now. I used to never ever say that. totally. It's just more of like trusting myself. speaker-1: Mm. Yeah, I know that one. speaker-0: will come to me. And sometimes I didn't know what the right tool was. And I'd like all of a sudden like they talk about manifesting and just plop in your life and you're like, ⁓ well, appreciate it. Thank you, universe. And let's let's I learn something new today. But speaker-1: Totally. Okay. All right. So that's a great segue, I think, to sort of the propelling forward part, right? Because through every story, there's like this part where you sort of leapfrog forward. And, you know, how do you see this experience propelling you forward beyond sort of this new mantle that you're taking up to reduce and eliminate the stigma around addiction? ⁓ you talked about the intuition. Tell me more. speaker-0: I would say ⁓ this has shaped me as a professional. Boy do I understand things. Like there are things I have probably have gone through that much of the population has not. I can be in the shit with a lot of people. Because I know how to manage it. I know what I know how to kill I know the boundaries around it now. And when you have that type of experience in your life, it shapes you. So I actually now see it as a strength of mine. ⁓ not only just as a person. And the other thing that I think it's really done for me, it has lowered my bar of judgment. You just the day we all stop judging each other is the day this world is going to change. And every single one of us has valued. I'm getting more than philosophical here, so we can posit out of it. But it's just more of this I that that old there was an old lesson I learned probably somewhere out of it. Nobody is better than me and nobody is less than me. And that stuck with me for a very, very long. And it still does with me in how I see and approach people. And because I think people feel that from me. You saw me used to people sometimes tell me the same thing about energy. It just makes me I'm not everybody's cup of tea. I get that. So I should out of it. But boy, I still care for the people. I can be with pretty much anybody. speaker-1: Yeah. I remember ⁓ this was probably before I really started the the meat of the trauma work that I was doing on myself and I was in this dark hole. ⁓ you know, it was interesting because for a while, like I was out of the hole and then I was back in the hole and out of the hole and back in the hole. And I remember like this beautiful, beautiful friend of mine said something to me about like the most she said it so much more eloquently eloquently, but like The most effective healers have been through their own like dark night of the soul shit. And I can totally relate to you. I mean, for fuck's sake, we're doing a podcast where I invite people to come on and tell me their awful stories. Yeah. Yeah. So you can you can just sort of handle it. There's like this degree of ⁓ you know, handling whatever it is people are gonna tell you and not being so quick to react to it, but being more curious about it and like let's slow this down and talk about this. ⁓ Which I think is a tremendous gift to have, especially when you're working in HR and like you see all of this shit, right? Like you see everybody else's shit. Yeah. speaker-0: I mean, and it shows up time and time again. I mean, I think for me is like when I started bringing some the psychology component of it, it's like these are humans just trying to manage through life I mean, relationships, through their own identity of work. I mean, those things matter to the human, like deeply, deeply matter. And so when you're kind of in through the shit and through whatever my own experience out of it, I was like I realized they are so important. because they became a healing component of my work. And so I think because of that, then that's the reason why I f I just feel more connected to what I do. speaker-1: Totally. Okay. So let's wrap this up with a couple more questions. One, you touched on this idea of no one's better than you, no one's less than you. What other lessons did you learn through this experience? speaker-0: You're gonna have to feel the emotions. Yeah. One way or another. And I'll tell a little bit right now. Like I had a rough weekend. ⁓ but last night I was I was mad and I'm like, how did I get into a situation that I knew out of it? And I broke down and I cried and I sat there and I was angry at myself. I know, but I I just knew that I'm like, I just have to feel the emotion. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Otherwise, I'm just doing what I'd normally did was stuff it down and it fester and then it would break me again or it would do something else with me, or I would make an another choice that's not in my best interest. Other lesson I I would say is don't limit what you think your recovery or path is going to be. I thought my recovery was gonna be all about like NA and all these other things about it. And I started going down that path. And then somewhere along the line I'm like, ⁓ there's so much more other ways that I could approach this. And then that just gave me more tools in my toolkit to actually be a better human and be healthier and be happier with myself. speaker-1: Yeah, totally. And and I think for me, as I'm listening, it's this idea of letting go of expectations. You know, for a long time in my own work, I was trying to sort of like ooh forced force the healing to look a certain way and to force the business to go a certain way. And so, you know, I think my my s my maybe my bar is lowered is the easiest way to say it in terms of like if it meets X, Y, and Z baseline criteria, then I don't care how it looks because X the X, Y, and Z of it is what's really important to me. speaker-0: It's going back to that like what I said a little bit earlier about does it make me feel like like does that feel in that right direction for me? That is such an easy way to approach it. It's either yes or no. And I think when you're like when we get stuck with I have to do this, this, this, this, this like there's all of these things that we start to put on expectations of it, we lose sight of the path very quickly. speaker-1: Yeah. Hmm. Oof. Expectations and we lose sight of the path. Okay. ⁓ before I give you the final question, anything else that feels unsaid at this point? speaker-0: ⁓ I'm here for you. And I think I'm this is for the for those that are listening to all this. Don't know who you are. ⁓ but I feel for you. ⁓ and I think it's just important that know that you're not alone. I mean and I think that's the piece when you're in the shit or going through it, you do feel like it. There are out people out there who want to help you, who can help you and Who who know you. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. It goes back to what you said earlier. You some of you have to do alone, but you don't have be alone. ⁓ and I and I'll connect with you and we'll make sure that we have ⁓ good resources to refer to people in the show notes for anyone who might be out there listening. Okay. So last question I think, because you just already answered, like what would you tell someone who's in the shit? ⁓ what's next for you, Brian? Where do you go from here? speaker-0: don't know. Well I I ⁓ like I think I mean me's telling you out of it. I mean I have to find a role, I have to find do some things out of it. But I really want to tap into my talents and my hidden talents that I have just denied for so so long. And a lot of people may call it woo woo and stuff out of it. But I'm just like I'm super intuitive and like crazy out of it. And I just like, why not? I mean, why can't I help people? ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: With my talents and it's not that I don't love HR and I'm like super excited about it and I it's it's not like my true, true love. And I think this is a time now that I'm almost approaching fifty. It's like, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? I think that's it for me. It's just like, you know what? Let's try doing this. So I'm not jumping off a cliff and just like abandoning everything. I can't do that because I have a safety issue. Safety's a big thing for me still. But I'm willing to explore it. And I just think finally it's like, you what, try ⁓ Why not? speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. So it's this idea of using your gifts in any way that can be of service to people and going back to the letting go of expectations. Okay. Well, I have really enjoyed talking with you today. Thank you for coming on, being brave, telling your story, working to reduce that stigma around addiction. ⁓ so listeners, thanks for listening and we'll see you on the flip side, everyone. That's it for this episode of Through the Shit. Thanks for listening. If you liked this podcast, like, share, and subscribe, and maybe send it to someone who needs a boost because they're going through the shit. While you're at it, tell them how important they are to you. If you have a story of shit to share or you're in the shit now, I'd love to hear from you. Email me at through the shitpodcast at gmail.com or go to our website at through the shit.com. I'll see you on the flip side.