Latest / Billy & Lisa in the Morning: The After Show / Blind Faith...

Transcript

Blind Faith... · Billy & Lisa in the Morning: The After Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: All right, after show Army. Hello, I am here justin.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: It is Monday, June fifteenth. I have a big podcast planned.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I mean to say that first off, if you were
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: listening last week, you know what's coming. We'll get to
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: that in a moment, but I want to say I
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: hope you had a great weekend. I had a fantastic weekend.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Lots to cover there Tomorrow there is no guest on
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: the podcast. I'll break down a little further what went
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: down this weekend. But if you listening to the show today,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: then you have a little bit of a tease on
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: what happened, especially last night at Big Night Live. It
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: was quite the scene. So we'll get to that. But
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: as far as today, I talked about this last week.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: You know what's great about this after show podcast is,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: you know, it's raw, it's unfiltered, and it's really unpredictable.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: And you know, I've talked a lot.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: About my friends and people in my life, especially in
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: the recovery world, a lot on this podcast.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: I've had guests on the podcast before, but last.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Week or the week before, you know it came up
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: on the show about a good friend of mine, Robbie,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: who you know has been like a mentor to me,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: really good friend, really has helped me tremendously. And you know,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: he's blind essentially, And it came up on the show
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: kind of naturally with Billy, Lisa and I and they
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: couldn't believe it.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: They go, you have a friend that's that's blind. He's
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: in recovery and he was an active, he was an addict.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: He is an addict. And I said yeah, And then
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: wouldn't you know, the after show, Army started messaging me
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: and dming me like, you've got to get Robbie on
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: the podcast, like we got to hear this guy's story.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: And so I called him last week and and asked
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: me if he would come on, if he would make
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: time in his busy schedule, and now here he is. Robbie,
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: what's up, dude? Thank you for coming.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: Before anything, I want to say, it's an honor speaking
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: on your podcast. I know you have a past similar
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: to my own, and we'll get into that a little
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: bit more later, but you've come a long way, brother,
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: and I'm proud of you.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: I just wanted to say that right off the bat.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Well, you played a huge part in that huge part,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: mister humble. You're humble about it.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: I'm still waiting to get paid.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Bro oh man. We have so much to cover, We
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: have so much that we want to talk about. But
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: first before we get there, before we go back in time,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: how are you.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: I'm good today?
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: You good today?
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Yep?
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Okay? Everything good? Okay?
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: In your life overall in general doing pretty good.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: So, as we'll talk about more of the biggest issue
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: is not being able to see much. And that's something
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: that's something that stays. You can't shut it off, and
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: it is what it is.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: So some of the questions that I that I got,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: you know, and I know we'll get to that, get
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: to the kind of the whole history of it. But
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: some of the questions I got, Robbie is because I
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: mentioned on the podcast that you are blind, but you
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: could see when you were born.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: You had a vision problem, but you could see a
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: little bit, right.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was born with bilateral atrophy, atrophy of the
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: optic nerve. It's I was born breach and that hard
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: time getting me out. And they suspect that they might
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: have hit that part of the brain with a you know,
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: a tool or something, and possibly that could be what
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: is the cause of it. And so my mom started
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: noticing when I was about one and a half that
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: something wasn't right right, and she brought me the children
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: to a massion Air whichever hospital in Boston back then,
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: and she used to stay late. They'd try to kick
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: her out and she'd sneak back in because I had
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: to stay over, you know, I had to stay for
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: a few days. But anyway, Yeah, so I have my
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: vision now is I'm totally blind in my right eye.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: That happened about twenty five years ago, and my left
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: eye is getting worse. So things are real glory. So, yes,
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: I had more vision when I was younger than what
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: I have today. And mobility was much easier back then
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: than what it is now, as far as you know,
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: I didn't have to use a stick and all that stuff.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: Now I carry it with me just so people would
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: get out of my way and all that.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess you're right, because I remember early on
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: when we started hanging out together. You now granted a
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: lot of play that we went to, like recovery meetings,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: out to dinner. These are places that you were familiar with,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: so you could move around kind of easy. It was
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: really noticeable if you went to a new place that
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: you weren't really familiar with, then you would notice it.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: But and I know you resisted the stick for a
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: long time. Yes, you know, I know that was a
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: tough thing for you. I know, I know you came
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: in with it. You're like you had to go in
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the bathroom, like, hell, hold this thing.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been I've been carrying it for probably three
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: years now.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: So the little bit of vision that you had when
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: you were growing up, what could you see? Could you
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: see colors? Could you see?
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: How my colors are now are pretty pretty dult, dull.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: I can't see much color at all anymore. And yeah,
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: colors were more vivid back then, for sure. Uh. They
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: took me off braille in third grade because if class
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: I was in shutdown and they forced me to read
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: large print with magnifiers, binoculars, TV screen, you know, closed
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: circuit TV.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Were you in a regular school?
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was in a class
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: that was for people that had impairments, and when that
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: class shot down, they mainstreamed me. But I was upset
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: at the time because they made me stay back in
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: third They made me stay back in third grade even
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: though I passed, and to try to switch me over
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: from braille to lodgeprint. It's a shame too, because I
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: read Brail real good back then, and then I haven't
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: read Brail in years now. I remember a couple of letters,
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: that's about it. I have never had an interest in
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: going back to it. So yeah, So back then that
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: put a lot of stress on me, trying to look
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: at books with magnifiers and the binocular look at the
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: board with binocular. It was it was real bad. I
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: used to get headaches from it. So to describe exactly,
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: to answer your question what I could see back then
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: compared to now was very difficult because I never had
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty vision, so to gauge it, Like I can't
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: even believe that somebody can see, you know, a sign
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: that's on the other side of the block, Like I
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: think of that, and I'm like, man, I have no
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: idea what that's like.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: I have good vision, that's one thing. I have pretty
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: good vision.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I can see pretty well, you know, so I can't
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: even imagine, like I try to picture, you know, can
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: you see faces?
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Could you see faces.
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: A little better than now, but never detailed in a
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: strong way, Like if somebody had, say someone had a
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: mole on their neck or you know, hypothetically or something,
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: I probably wouldn't I wouldn't notice that right away. So
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: I was, and I still am, in a different world
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: than a sighted person. Absolutely. My other sense is a
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: way shopper because of it. You know, I'm a musician.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: I'll get into that more. But I have a really
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: good ear, and all my other senses are probably heightened
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: because of lack of.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: You have probably the best memory of anybody I've ever met. Now,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: do you think that has to do with the lack
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: of vision?
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: What was the question?
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Memory? No, he's a comedia absolutely, yeah, but you do
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: have a very good memory.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do. I have to utilize it a lot
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: more than the average person.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Right, So it does have to do with that.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: And another thing is and we'll go back. I won't
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: go off path, but I have offered I've been offered
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: training to use a smartphone and I haven't done it yet.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: So I should look into that because I love using
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: my memory and keeping it, you know sharp. Yeah, but
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: you know, it would be good if I learned to
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: use Internet or learn to use touch screen. Stuff is hard.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: Anything digital. I'm not trained with yet right, you know,
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: throw analog stuff at me. I can remember, you know,
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: being a musician. I remember every knob on every item,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: my own mixing boards, amplifiers, all that stuff. You know,
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: I can memorize all that. But the digital world, the
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: new did well, it's not new anymore, but recent years,
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: you know, everything switched to Obviously we're in a digital
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: world now. Well that's something different. Well I was growing up.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Well, the advancement in an AI too, you know, absolutely
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: I could that could probably be beneficial to you.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: I think, yep, you know.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: And supposedly Elon Musk is working on a chip to
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: replace the optic nerve.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Is that is that neuralink? Is that has Neuralink company.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: I don't know much about it yet, good question. I'm
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: going to research it more. I heard about it recently,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: and that would be something something incredible if it happened
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: before I died.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. Well that was what I asked you
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: when I first met you. I'm like, can they can it?
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Can you know science develop where they make you see again?
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: And you said no, No, You've told me many.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Times russel experiments and would stem cell stuff, you know,
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: researching that and trying to see what they can come
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: on with trying to formulate ideas what I should.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Say, Robert, to go back to when you were born. Now,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: could that have been a malpractice lawsuit?
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: You know, it's funny you say that because nowadays people
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: sue for anything and everything, and my mom back then didn't.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: You know, she didn't push that, but yeah, I could have. Definitely,
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: I'm sure could have at least ended up in court,
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: that's for sure.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Now your mom. I knew your mom, your
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: mom VICKI.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she passed away in twenty nineteen.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what an amazing woman, your mom.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: I remember going to your house for Thanksgiving?
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Mother, Yeah, remember that? Yeah, Well, because you used to
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: go out. You used to go out to restaurants. I
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: remember every year you would go out to a different restaurant.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, most of the time. Yeah.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: And then a lot of people do that.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, I mean for years of my life we
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: had family Thanksgiving. Then a lot of family started dying off,
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: and then my mom's health started to decline a bit,
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: so she stopped cooking as much. So a lot of
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: times I would say, hey, let's just go out to eat.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you came to the house. So Rob I'd
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: like you to tell your story. You can start when
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: you're younger. Before you do, I just want to first
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: say that, you know, Robbie and I met in two
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: thousand and the first time I ever saw Robbie was
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and five. Okay, Now, he had come
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: into a detox that I was in and I was
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: gonna leave that day because you know, I have a
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: disease that wants me to go, and you know, I
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: wanted to get high and use and I was in
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: the detos.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: They asked me to stay just for the commitment.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: And the commitment came in and it was you and
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: a couple of other guys, and I remember you told
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: your story and you talked about you know, active addiction,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: being a musician, and I remember, you know, your message
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: was so powerful because I remember thinking to myself, here,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I am like thinking, oh, you know, I have it
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: so bad and all this pity, and I just watched
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: you tell your story as someone who can't see, you know,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: and staying clean, and it really inspired me. I ended
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: up staying and that was the first time that I
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: met you, and then we reconnected later on in two
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: thousand and eight, when I finally two thousand and seven,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: and when I finally got clean, I had remembered you,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: and that's how we got together. But you first heard
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: about me before two thousand and five, before you came
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: into that detox.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: Right about you in nineteen ninety nine, and your mom
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: asked me to pray for you because you were a
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: teenager that was on the streets pretty much homeless. And
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: even though I'm very much you know what people call
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: an m path nowadays, I'm an empathetic person. I have
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: a lot of compassion and the stuff that I've been through,
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: you know, like addiction for example. You know when I
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: heard you were struggling, I remember I did pray for you.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's that's kind of what That's a big
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: part of what we do to stay clean, you know,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: is you know, we have a we find a higher
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: power and something bigger than ourselves, and you know, praying
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: and spirituality and meditation kind of all go hand in
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: hand in what we do. And you know my mother,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: you know, she she left my dad in nineteen ninety eight.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: She ended up leaving for a different relationship. She got clean,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: and she moved up into the area that Robbie was
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: in and she ended up getting with a guy that
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: you grew up with, Robbie.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Yes, right, knew him from when I was a teenager.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so now you had no idea who I was.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: I was a younger kid.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: I was holmost like you said, And then I found
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: this out later when I met you. But yeah, my
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: mom would tell you at meetings and stuff that you
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: would see you at, you know, please pray for my son,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: and you prayed for me.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: I did. You prayed me into the rooms in a sense, right, in.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: A sense that could be true. Yeah, I have a
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: very high level of faith, and I know a lot
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: of people out there struggle with that. And I can
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: understand that because it's hard to fully grasp why so
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: many things happen, why things are certain ways. And you know,
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: I was brought up, you know, around people that had faith.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: My grandmother was very faith driven. My mother had drug
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: problems when she got back from a prison in West
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: Virginia around that same time that in third grade, when
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: they switched me from Braille to regular print, my mom
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: went away to prison for a year and a half
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: for drug charges and stuff that had to do with that,
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: and because she wanted to tell on certain people. It
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: was a federal case. And so my point is when
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: she got back from that was very traumatic by the way,
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: and going to visit her on a train and having
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: to leave to come home and back. Then they didn't
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: know how to explain to kids what the heck was
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: going on. There wasn't much out in those days about
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: addiction and how do we explain this to a child.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: So when she came back, she worked at it. It
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: was actually a Christian halfway house type of a thing
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: and called Prodigal House, and a lot of guys in
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: there played guitar, and that's when she bought me my
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: first guitar. I was nine and a half. She could
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: tell I was really interested in it. And my grandfather
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: he owned a record store before I was born. But
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: get this, he was a manager of Cannoby Lake Ballroom
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: they called it in the old days. Is that he
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: was a co manager?
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Is that sale Hamps?
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: I was Salem Beyond they had They used to have,
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: you know, big plays kind of like I don't know
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: if it was as big as a Hampton casino, but
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: it was good size and it was a lot of
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: the famous jazz people and some of the rock guys
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: you know, people rock players who would come through there,
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: and so all my life growing up, I would always
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: hear stories about music, music, music, music, and it really
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: caught my attention. But let me, I kind of took
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: a left turn. So your original question.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: Was are you asking? Yeah, I don't remember. I think
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: it had to do with see mister memory.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, it'll definitely come back to me. Yeah.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: So no, we were we were just talking and I
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: was telling you.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: About I was talking about my mom and and yeah,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: and asking you to pray for me before I met you.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah. Faith. So that that's that was how
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: I got initially introduced to you know, observes people changing
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: when she worked at that house, and it got me
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: interested in the guitar, which is really cool.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's just start right there.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: So so nine years old, you got your guitar. Now,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: you were into music, listening to music before that.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and when I when she worked at that that
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: you know, that house that was based on faith and
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: you know, having a higher power to help and all that.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: It was that's what they were teaching everybody. And it
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: wasn't a twelve step thing or anything like that. It was,
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: but it was back. This is a long time ago,
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: but it was definitely built on you know, lean on
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: Christ really is what it was that particular place. And
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: uh so, yeah, I was listening to music. I heard
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: all those stories from my grandfather about what he all
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: the famous people he met. And my dad was also
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: a musician, but I didn't know him. He cheated on
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: my mom when I was a baby. They split up.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: He went to Canada and he called me right before
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: he died to connect me to some half siblings in Canada.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: And I was about twenty five years old at that point,
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: and I never got to meet up with him, and
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: he passed away unfortunately at a young age. Same thing addiction, alcoholism, diabetes.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: He had a stroke, and incidentally, my sister half sister
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: from Canada passed away in twenty eighteen from this illness
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: from addiction. I mean so yeah, yeah, so music was
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: probably in my blood given the fact that my dad
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: was a musician and my grandfather was always telling me
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: stories and it really really caught my attention all that,
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: even at a young age. I loved tearing those stories.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: And then my mother working at that place, and she knew,
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: thank you, Mom, she knew that. Yeah, she knew that.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: I think, this kid, I'm going to buy him a guitar.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: And I remember going to my first music lesson, you know,
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: nine and a half, and I was all nervous and
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: all this stuff, and never I haven't stopped playing.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Since you are a very well accomplished guitar player, I
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: will say that, and been in a lot of years. Yeah,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: so would you say you were natural at it?
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: Well? I think I don't know if it was in
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: the DNA. You know, that's so controversial, the whole thing
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: with DNA and all that, but I definitely think that
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: I took to it really fast, and I definitely think that,
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: you know, we'll get into it more later. But it
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: gave me a place to rest my head, and it
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: gave me a sense of purpose, and especially being blind,
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: it gave me a place. It gave me a like
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: I said, a sense of purpose, a place to rest
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: my head, and goal, a goal to achieve. And I
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: left school early, you know, but I did get a
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: ged later on.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: And yeah, what what grades did you drop out in?
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: You want to know? For real? Se grade?
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because they were torturing me, forcing me to read
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: and all that, and my mom worked it out where
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: she just said, Okay, I want my son to get
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: a ged when he's ready, and that's extremely an extreme
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: young age if we leave school. And I still can't
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: believe we even got away with that.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: You're not pretty intelligent though.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am learned, and I definitely you know,
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: I listen a lot, and I listened to tons of audiobooks,
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: and uh, you know, the stuff we learn in school,
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: some of it we don't even end up using in life.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: And a lot of depending on yeah, exactly what, depending
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: on what our career is and all that and what
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: we do. You know, how much of it are we
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: going to use. My buddy Brian Sobern's in nursing school
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: now and he shares with some of the stuff that
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: he's learning, and he looked, he explains, he's like, am
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: I ever going to use this as being a nurse?
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: You know, it's just a lot of extra added stuff.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I'd say ninety percent of what I was taught in school,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: especially college.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: I did not use. I learned everything in the field.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: I learned everything as an intern.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: That's how I got to where I am today, you know,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: learning through on site, not what I learned in school.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: You know, absolutely, but school still is important, I will say,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: but so you dropped out in seventh grade.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: Incidentally, I remember how nervous you were when you want
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: to do your first radio interview, and I remember you saying,
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: I don't know if I'll get it. And I remember
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: saying you, I think you are going to get it.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: You know why, dude, because you have the right personality.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: You know, you believe more than me.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I remember that like it was yesterday, exactly where
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: we were and exactly you saying that and then me
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: rebuttling with that because I had faith. I thought I
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: thought for sure you'd end up in radio.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. See, I did not have the confidence.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Because of your persona or your personality.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you remember every conversation we've ever had.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: I feel like I know I bring up stuff to you.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: Remember the freaking nineteen o three, and.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, Robert, we spent so much time together. Think
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: about that every single day, like I'd pick you up,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: we go out to eat, we go do things. And
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: think about all the hours that we spent of me
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: just talking to you. Are you talking to me? Talking
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: to each other?
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Right?
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: And it was a funny story. Justin was bringing me
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: to recovery meetings for years, helping me with a ride.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: And one day he he was getting a little burnt
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: on driving from Harol to Lawrence, and I remember him,
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: you know, the thing was ending, and he yells out, hey,
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: anyone going to Lawrence.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: I remember that.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was funny.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: And I didn't even take it personally. I got your point.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: It was just like, I'm tired, I want to go home.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Maybe someone else could give you a ride back right tonight? Anyway,
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: right right now?
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Remember that?
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Ok So where do we leave off? Nine years old?
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Well, so what I want to know is, Okay, so
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: you mentioned your mom and your mom, so obviously your
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: dad was an addict. Your mom was an addict, so
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: you grew up around addiction absolutely, you know. So when
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: did you first you picked up the guitar at nine?
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: When did you start using Let's go from there?
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: Okay, let me go before I go there, I want
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: to say my grandparents also picked up a lot of
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: the slack when my mom was struggling and they were
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: still married. But they didn't get along good. So there
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: was a lot of argument in the household. In the household,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: and I didn't realize so later on in adult life
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: that that's not how you act. You know, if you
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: have a problem with someone, you talk it out. Don't
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: tast someone's head off herbally, right, You know a lot
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: of it that stuff rubs off on you when you
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: were a little kid. But my yeah, great grandparents though
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: they loved us, and I don't mean that to sound
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: to talk bad about them, but they just did not
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: get along with each other. But anyway, Yeah, So my
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: first band was when I was thirteen and my grandfather
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: saw a thing in the paper that this guy's aunt
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: was holding for younger people that was it had a
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: weird name too, like the Merry Music Makers or something
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: like that. And so I went to this thing and
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: here I am twelve years old and there's a drummer
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: there playing and we're talking and I couldn't believe it.
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: He told me, yeah, I'm also legally blind. I was like, what, okay?
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: And he heard me play and he was blown away.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: And he played very well too at a young age.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: You know, he was a couple of years older than me,
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: but he was still very young then. And I started
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: going to his house in Jamming, and then he introduced
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: me to some people He lived in Salem, New Hampshire
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: at the time, and he introduced me to some people
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: that played and we ended up getting together and you know,
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: it formed into a band and the name of that band.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: The name of that band was Sparkle Drive and I
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: we Barkle Yeah, we named it. We named it after
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: It'll get it. You'll find out more of my story later.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: A famous band that I played with around here that
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: had really good following. One of the guys lived on
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: Sparkle Drive and self Lawrence at the time, and I
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: used to go watch them rehearse when I was like twelve. Uh,
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: And that's where the name came from. And then years
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: later I brought that bass guitarist that lived on Sparkle
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: Drive to this drummer's house that I spoke of a
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: few minutes ago, a minute ago, and they look at
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: each other and go He looks at him and he goes,
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: you look like my uncle Roland. He said that to
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: the drummer. He goes, but that's my father. And they
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: went upstairs. They went upstairs and everyone's hugging, going, Oh
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: my god, Rick, how are you doing. So the short
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: version of what I'm trying to say is that these
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: two guys were cousins. So I named the band after
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: this guy's street. Right, bring him to that house years later,
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: five years later, and they discovered their cousins.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: What are the chances?
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: And I go, whow we named the first band after
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: the street. He already knew that, and he's like, man,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: I can't believe this guy is my cousin. We're jammin
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: and stuff.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Sparkle Drive is not the best name, I must.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: Say, No, it's pretty sparkly.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, where'd you play Pride events?
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: What is hey? Listen, dude, you have people listen. No,
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: But anyway, in all seriousness, yeah, that was the name
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: of the street, and those guys were my mentors.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Well you mentioned the guy from the big band. What
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: band was it?
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: Okay? So I had that first band when I was thirteen.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: It lasted for a year or so, and that seemed
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: like it was forever. Back then. The year seemed like
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: a long time. You know, Mathematically years you get older,
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: a year is a smaller fractional ratio of time, so
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: years go by quicker. That's just how that works. So
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: after that band broke up, I didn't quit playing, but
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: I wasn't in a steady band. And then when I
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: was sixteen, the guy that lived on Spockle Drive and
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: so his band broke up and I called the I
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: I talked to one of the guys that let me.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: Let me give you backstory. First, when I was eleven,
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: I had been playing guitar for a year and a
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: half and I lived on Athwin and this guy on
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: there lived two houses down from me. He saw me
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: walking by with a Gibson guitar case and he was
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: he yelled up down from the second floor window and
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: he said, hey, buddy, what what do you got a
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: Gibson there? What kind of it? I said, Oh, it's
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: a Gibson SG guitar and he's like, bring it up.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna meet guitar player.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: So I go up to a random guy at a house.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I live right next door him, and daught to
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: him and this is how it led to the other
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: band later. So so I go up to this house
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: and he's talking to me, and another point of interest
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: is he told me my friend, just my friend Steven
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: Tyler that I used to be in a band with,
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: just got signed to Columbia Records. And I'm like, oh, okay,
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: I had no one knew who they.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Were yet, you didn't know who Steven Tyler was.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: No one did, I mean not no one. Obviously people
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: knew it, but you know they weren't. They weren't a
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: famis yet.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, uh, and he he was.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: He didn't grow up around here. He grew up you know,
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: New York and stuff. Then he had the summer camp
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: in New Hampshire and stuff with his family, which is
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: where he met Joe Perry and Tom Hamilton and those guys.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: So I'm up, I'm at this house and this guy
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: sometimes he gets choked up thinking about it, thinking about this,
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: and I and I thanked him for it. Recently. He
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: took me under his wing when I was eleven years
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: old and he's and then I would go to his
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: rehearsals and he happened to rehearse back to that name
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: on that street. He rehearsed at the bass player's house
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: on Sparkle Drive. So now moving it up to I'm
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: sixteen years old. Their band breaks up, and I joke
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: only said to him, you know, I was on the
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: phone with him and I said, you should audition me.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: I already know parts of the songs and I'm thinking
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: to myself, I'm probably too young and it's probably not
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: going to happen. Dude. He called me the next day
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: and he's like, yeah, I talked to Rick about it,
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: and we want you to come down and an audition.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: And I was floored. You know, when you're sixteen, stuff
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: like that is huge.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: Now, how old are they? Like, how much old are they?
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: Would you say he was nine or ten years old
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: than me? Oh bass player was you know, five or six?
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: I think I was. I was twelve when I met
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: the bass player at his house on Spoko Drive and
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: he was nineteen. I know that much. So yeah, six
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: years diff.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: So they had you audition for what band?
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: Seven years different? So the band that broke up was
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: Links And when I auditioned for this new band there
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: was didn't have a name yet. Okay, it became Trapper Yeah, yeah,
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: which got picked out of a hat. And you know,
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: now knowing what I know, But back back in the
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: I don't know. Back in the day, a lot of
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: vands used to end what our billy Squire had a
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: band called Piper, you know what I mean? There was
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: there was certain bands. Uh anyway, that was our name,
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: and I joined that band when I was sixteen.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Hold on, hold that thought, join that band when I
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: was sixteen? Remember that missed the memory? Okay, when I
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: first met Robbie and became friends with them, I remember
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about him, and then I knew
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: he played guitar. And someone said to me once They go, oh,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: you know, Robbie was in Trapper, And I go, what
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: the hell is Trapper? They go, no, Trapper was like
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: huge in the eighties and whenever, like they got signed
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: to a record day or whatever. So that was my
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: first Like I was like really like he was a
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: legit musician like that.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: Okay, go ahead, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: Join when you were sixteen and we rehearsed.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: We were dedicated. Man. We'd play for four hours in
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: the day, go home for dinner, and come back and
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: rehearse at night. And keep in mind, like I said earlier,
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: these guys were my mentors. So to me, I was
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: like on cloud nine. The problem is I had already
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: been using a lot of drugs as a teenager, and
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: to circle back, it just came back, mister memory, right,
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: it just came back. What you asked earlier, how old
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: was I the first time I used probably ten or
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: ten and a half. I smoked a joint with my
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: mother's boyfriend, and she found out about it and wanted
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: to bring his neck, even though you know, she had
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: her struggles. But and I remember stealing a beer out
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: of the refrigerator from my grandfather. He never said it
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: in either. I don't know if he noticed that. He
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: probably thought, oh, he drank a couple of lecture yesterday
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: or at least one. He wasn't an alcohol Ten and
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: half eleven's young. Yeah, it was young.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: It's pretty young.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: So when I joined that band, I remember saying, oh, yo,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: the partying's gonna stop. This has to stop. I'm in
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: a serious band now. And that the complete opposite happened.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: And not all those guys were straight. I eventually, and
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: I'll get into the story as we go, became the
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: worst of the What I mean by worst was the
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: most addicted in the person that had uh a problem
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: with it that you know, it was to the extent
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: of where my life got ripped to shreds for a while.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: You know. Our singer actually uh he was. He had
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: he quit after a while too, because he had serious
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: alcohol problems and drug problems. And but Anyway, I joined
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: that band and the president was singing with us at
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: that time. Had written a few songs for Aerosmith that
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: ended up on albums. One of them was Woman of
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: the World, that ended up on Erosmith's second album, Get
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: Your Wings, and the other one was You See Me Cry,
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: that ended up on the third Aerosmith album, Toys in
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: the Attic. So here here I am in this band
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: at sixteen, and I'm like, wow, this is cool. My
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: other guitarist knows Errol Smith. And but and the singer
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: knows Arrowsmith, you know, and and two of his songs
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: ended up on Aerosmith.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Is already exploded by this point.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So when I was sixteen, they were already they
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: were already uh you know, they were there were they
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: were already pretty. They were already real popular, right right
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: this But this is before the first run of popularity.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: It was before they bottomed out.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: That's what I was gonna say.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: Okay, exactly, And then they had bottomed out and then
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: they came back. Did all that stuff would run DMC
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: walked this way, all that stuff in the eighties.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: So did you did you hold that thought, Robbie? So
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: when you the rock and roll in the drug alcohol
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: kind of lifestyles.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: They kind of went together in a sense.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: Slowly. I was going to get to that. It was
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: all around me.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: And another cool story. I was seventeen playing at the
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: Paradise in Boston. I remember Steve Tyler and the bass
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: player Tommy Hamilton showed up, and I remember being like,
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: what the hell They're coming to see me play? And
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: I was always fascinated by that band at a young age,
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: and especially because my other guitarists grew up with them
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: and knew all every single one of the members and
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: you know, all that stuff. So at that time, another another, another,
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: another shot, you know what I mean, It was like
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: it was like, wow, this is so. That was the
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: first time I hung out with Steve Tyler in the
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: back dressing room and stuff. One of many times that
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: I was fortunate enough to hang out with him and
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: get to know him a bit. Back then, I'll just
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: say it. He was still using too, obviously, and then
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: we did reunite a couple of times after he got
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: clean and I was clean too much later in life.
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: Uh yeah, So all this stuff was happening. We were
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: opening up for all these I can give you some names,
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: but they're old school names that these are people that
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: were popular in the day.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Look around New England, right.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, Nationals, Rick Derringer, Edgar Winter.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Hold On, I know Rick Deringer. I know that I
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: know that name.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, he sang rock and roll.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: Hochie Cooch, Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, okay.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: Pat Travis, Molly Hatchett, The Outlaws, Dixie Dreggs was a
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: fusion instrumental band, but there was They were and still
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: are considered phenomenal players. Yeah, so we were. We were
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: playing with bands that were touring on tour, you know,
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: having the opportunity to open up for these guys, and
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: again at a young I keep saying this bit. I
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: look back at those years at that age and being
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: blind and not going to school and not planning on
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: having a regular job. That was it. That was it
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: for me. I bet before I proceed forward, do you
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: have any anything you want to ask me?
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Oh? No, no, no, this is good, this is good.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: You're uh so, I know at some point you end
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: up getting a record deal right in moving.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: To you right on the brink, okay, and a few
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: things had gotten a few things had come up that
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: you know, didn't end up working out. But the main
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: thing that really squashed the band was the addiction problem,
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: at least as far as I was concerned, you know,
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: as far as they were concerned about me. And I'll
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: get to that, and I might as well move to
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: that now. But you eventually moved to California, right, Yeah,
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: So that's it. So well, when I was twenty, Okay,
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: here's what happened. The singer had left the band. We
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: were doing gigs four piece, and some of the you know,
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: the drummer that we had, the second drummer we had
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: at that time was a really good singer, so he
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: was singing a lot and some of the other the
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: other two guys, I wasn't singing yet back then. Eventually
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: I started singing a couple of harmonies and all that,
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: but I wasn't you know, I wasn't singing lead vocal
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: at all at that point. And so then the other guitarists,
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: the dude that knew the Arrowsmith guys, he decided to
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: move to Colorado. So now we're down the three piece
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: playing three piece, which was kind of fun, you know,
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: it was good, It was still good. Then the drummer
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: decided he wanted to move to California, to Breadbank, and
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: I'm like, damn, everyone's leaving one at a time. This sucks.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: So then me and the bass player we we did
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: we did this band with you know, we had a
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: band for about six months months with this guy Joe
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: de Lally, and but then that ended up falling off
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: because the bass player decided to move to kill to California.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: So I was the last guy standing around here. You're like, oh,
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: I might as well go too, And they talked me
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: into I remember the drummer, he's you know, he's got
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: a he. He's got he especially back then, you know,
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: he had that aggressive persuasive personalities like come on, Rob,
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: just come out. What are you going to do over there?
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: And I went out to California. Uh, we did have
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: some successes, you know, we played some stuff, you know,
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: you know, played at in Hollywood. We played at FM
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: station in off Hollywood a lot, and I met Eddie
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: van Halen in there. Actually one night, not a night
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: that we were playing, I met the guitarist from Quiet
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: Riot and there he was his brother's band was playing
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: and we were on the same bill.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Now, are you an IVY drug user? At this point
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: or is it.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: I had started experiment and honestly, yeah, I would say
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: around the age of twenty. So that was nineteen eighty two.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: I'm telling my age, but I'm a young sixty four
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: I think, yeah, yeah.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: Got it. I remember.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: I remember when you were turning fifty and you were
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: all all upset about it.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: I'm still upset.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: You are a complaining I can't believe I'm turning.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: Fact, my own council event used to say, don't worry
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: about when the party's going to end. Enjoy the party
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: while it's here.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: It's right, living today, yeah, living today today.
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: So when you get to Telly worded so when you get.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: To California and you're out there, now does it get worse?
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: That was nineteen eighty four. I was twenty two and
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: I brought you know, we call addiction a disease, and
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: simply because what that means is addicts have abnormal reactions,
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: you know, and drugs will eventually keep me from functioning
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: normally if I use them long enough. And that's what happened, right.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: So disease, I mean, it's a controversial thing. It doesn't
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: necessarily mean that it's a disease like can answer or diabetes.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: But take the disease of diabetes for example, that's an
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: abnormal reaction to sugar, right, And if you don't take
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: care of yourself long enough, eventually you're pancreas will be like, Okay,
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: I had enough, and now you gotta go on insulin. Right.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: So the disease of addiction, what I mean by abnormal reaction.
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: It started when I was a kid, you know, ten
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: or eleven years old and waking up throwing up from
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: a hangover and then saying, yeah, but I want to
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: do it again tonight. That's not normal.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: No.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: You know, if I ate bad food in the restaurant,
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: I want to I want to want to go back
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: every I want to be like, hey, justin, let's go
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: back to wherever tonight and get the same dish and
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: same thing with drugs, right, you know, I used and
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: most people when they get scared, things happen, they lose,
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: get kicked out from me. It was, you know, getting
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: kicked out of the band at once. It's a few
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: times in California. You think that would be enough to
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: make the person stop, you know, ready to become homeless.
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: You think that would be enough to make the person stop,
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: or even being homeless. You know, you think that getting
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: arrested and having a case or a few cases over
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: our head would be enough to make us stop. And
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: so when I throw the word disease around, and that's
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: what I think of is abnormal reactions, because the normal sense,
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: sensible thing to do would be like, man, I better
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: get out of this.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: But it's abnormal what we have.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: You know. The famous guitarist Stevie ay Vaughan talked about it.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: He said, you know, you think I'd lost many people
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: when I first started playing when I was young, And incidentally,
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: same for me. Many people had died around me when
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: I was young, that my mom knew and stuff, and
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: you think that would be enough to make people go, damn,
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: I don't want to go down that road. So here
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: I am in the eighties living in California, and I
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: brought that with me. That's what I was leading up to.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: I brought addiction with me, however you want to say it,
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: and it had nothing that you know, and a lot
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: of people say, oh, you're living in Hollywood. I was
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: probably why no, no no. I was already in trouble
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: before I left. I just brought it to the other
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: side of the country. I brought myself there with me.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, I brought my addiction with me.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: But would you say it got worse there I'm looking
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: back on it, or was it just it was bad
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: here and it was bad?
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: I would say that it started getting docker. Addiction became
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: less fun and darker when I started experimenting with heavier
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: drugs before I left for California, Okay, And as far
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: as even iving drugs, I had to have someone help
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: me because I couldn't see well enough to do it myself.
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: There were times I had overdoses. There were times I
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: had cocaine seizures didn't stop, still didn't stop.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: Was it was it now as somebody who's blind, Okay?
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: And on the chase as they say that, like you
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: had to depend on other people to get you things
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: to move around, right, Like it must have been a
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: fucking challenge.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'm sure there's times I might have got
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: burnt or ripped off. But I was pretty good with
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: my money, though I don't ever remember giving I think
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: I gave a guy twenty at a liquor store once
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: and realized when I get home, and I thought it
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: was a five and I called him, and he tried
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: to pretend like, oh, it really was, come back and
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: I'll give you a proper change. But other than that,
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: me being me, I'm kind of like OCD.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: I wasn't an OCD about the way I lived back then, though,
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: that's for damn sure.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: But it really goes to show you too, like, you
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: know this this disease that we have, we'll do whatever
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: it takes to get what we got.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: That's what it was. When I lived in California. I
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: took so many risks. I was taking buses and you know,
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: taxis and busses and walking for miles all by myself
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: to go score drugs. And I was hitting up, you know,
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: literally probably as many doctors as Michael Jackson. I wouldn't
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: doubt it. I was going doctor create Like. You can't
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: get away with that as easily now because of the
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: computers and stuff. But back then, especially in California, man,
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: it was easy to get stuff. And I was going
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: in lying saying, oh, I get migraines because I can't
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: see and oh my back, you know all this stuff.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: And incidentally, I mean I did get hit by a
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: car once and it wasn't even my fault. The guy
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: was looking at my girlfriend on her ten speed not
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: gotten a big brawl because she was I didn't help
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: her life. You know, she was like kind of a
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: recreational drug user, smoke a little weed maybe, you know,
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: sniff a few lines here and there, whatever, right, But
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: I didn't help her life because she didn't want to
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: become like me to that extent. But I wouldn't stop,
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: and it was affecting her and it was unhealthy for her.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: So we're in a big fight. One day, go to
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: the a drug store. The guy wanted to cash my
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: prescription and I was having withdrawal drawings, and I was
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: all pissed off. And I'm walking down you know, a street,
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: Alameda in Burbank, which is you know, kind of like
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: a big Broadway type street. And I and I and
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: I did carry your stick with me out when I
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: was walking around California, just just to I had no clue.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: I had no business, I mean, being out there in
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: traffic like that, not being able to see lights. But
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: I went to any links to get my stuff. So
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: I'm crossing this off ramp. So me and the girl
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: are in a fight. She left the car her car
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: at home were in an argument. She comes out on
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: the ten speed to harassment. She's like, I was like, oh,
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: go away, take your bike and go home. I was.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: I was already in a bad mood that the pharmacy
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: wouldn't you know, catch fill my prescription. You brought us out,
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: Get out of here. And this guy's looking at her
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: because she was a hot girl, you know, nice then,
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: petite California girl in the eighties, you know what I mean.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: She was a hot girl and they were. And that's
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: another thing too. A lot of my friends would get
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: pisched at me, going, you can't even see how do
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: you keep getting hot girls?
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: I've seen the pictures.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like I'm met this. I was playing the Paradise
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: in ninety one and I met this girl and went
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: out with her for a while. She was doing modeling
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: and stuff like. This was later on, but anyway, Yeah,
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: so that day I got hit by this car and
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: it wasn't even my fault. He was looking at her.
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: So I go up to I go up to his
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: window and now I'm ripping mad. I'm like, what the
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: hell's wrong with you? And you know, like sticking my
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: head in his window, in his window practically and chewing
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: him out, and he's like he was shaken too. He
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: was like shaky. I could feel his hand, like my
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: hand accidentally touched his hand and I could feel it.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know where this is going.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I go, uh, what the hell's wrong with you? Man,
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: I'm the one that can't see he I was looking
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: at a girl on a bike and I go, that
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: was my girlfriend, and uh, that's my girlfriend. And now
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: he's shaking even more. And so then I go home
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: and I'm all, he gave me his info. I go home,
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: I'm scraped up and all this stuff and all cut up,
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: and thank god I didn't get hurt seriously, but people
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: around me like, you know, you should sue, you should sue,
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: you should, you know, and and people were pushing it.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: And I got I got like four thousand dollars out
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: of that case. And you know where most of most
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: of that money went. Oh yeah, yeah it was to
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: a drug. Some of it didn't, but a lot of
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: it did. But he told me he was diabetic and stuff.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: And because he was like real shaky, and part of
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: me kind of felt bad, and like even even still
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: to this day, like I know he did that by accident.
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: I almost wish I didn't even bother pursuing the legal
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: stuff because I wasn't I wasn't injured.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: That's what that's what we do, you know.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's a contract that's right on the line,
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: you know, because he did hit me and I am
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: blind and it was his fault. But at the same time,
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: I probably could have let it, let it ride.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: See, I thought I thought you said when I said
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: I knew where this is going, I thought you were
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: going to say you hit him up for money right there?
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: No, No, no, he was what you got. It's funny now
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: I go, that's my girlfriend. He's looking at her.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one time he hits me.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: One time your mom came with some pictures of ould school,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: pictures of you in the rock and roll days, and
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: she said, oh, this was this is Robbie's ex girlfriend.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Oh this is another one, I mean, smoking hot models.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: We were all like, we said the same thing as
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: your friends were, like, what the hell?
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the girl I met at the Paradise And this
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: is not an eagle thing for me. This is just stories.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: I was playing the Paradise in ninety one with a
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: band that I had when I moved back from cal
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: and this dude I knew from not Danover said to me, Hey,
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: this girl wants to meet you. And I thought he
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: was messing with me because he kept trying to give
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: me beers. And I'm like, dude, how many times do
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: I have to tell you I don't drink anymore? And
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: so I go, all right, go get her. Then so
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: two girls come in and I jokingly go, all right,
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: which one is it? And they go they're all over me,
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: going oh, listen to miss siego over here, and we're
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: all joking around. I go, no, no, no, I didn't
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: mean it that way. And so anyway, the girl that
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: I did like me was actually in the Miss mass
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: pageant and because she was doing some modeling at the time,
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: and yeah, Lisa, she was Lisa Mazzarella back then, and
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: I spoke to her recently. She actually lived closer to
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: my area. She moved from East Boston, but she was
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: ten years younger than me at the time. You know.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: We went out for a year and a half and
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: she got a little restless, but we still remained friends.
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: And like I said, I did reconnect with her recently.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: It's really good to stay that I can stay in
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: touch with her now and be friends with her.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: Ah.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: So anyway back to California. Yeah, things got doctor and
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: Docker and Docker and by the late eighties, I was
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: kicked out of the band for the third or fourth time.
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: And I used to I used to. They would say, Rob,
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: we got to let you go, like you're stealing from people.
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: You stole from my girlfriend again. You know, you're lying,
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: You're not showing up for rehearsal, all this stuff, and
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: it killed them to do that. And they were calling
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: my mom, going, your son's gonna die, and is.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: Your mom clean at this point? A is she still using?
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, my mom had a because she.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Was kind of off and on. She had long term recovery.
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: She was drinking a lot of that. Yeah. She always
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: had a hard time like sticking with it. Yeah, you know,
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: she always struggled with, you know, staying on the path, right,
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: But she was her. Me and her were close though.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, your mom was when I got clean, she
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: was around, she was she was going.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was around. It was clean. So anyway, connect,
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: are you gonna get to you get arrested in California?
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: Are you gonna tell that story?
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah? I know, I gotta move on. Man, there's still
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: more to go. There was. There was a few times
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: I got arrested. One time I got arrested for climbing
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: in the neighbor's window. I took the screen off to
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: take some I had a camera in my hand, and
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: the two girls came in and they they knew me,
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: and they're like, what are you doing? To get the
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: f out of here? Right? And they go, what are
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: you doing here? And here? I remember I had a
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: pair of white shorts on and the camera was like
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: in my pocket. I'm trying to stuff it in my
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: pocket that I don't even bother and I just flung
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: it on the floor and ran out. And by the time, dude,
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: almost by the time I got to the top floor
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: because I lived on the top floor, it was a
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: It was a Burbank apartment complex that the band the
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: other two band members managed, which wasn't good. I literally
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: heard a helicopter. I literally, I mean, my heart, my apartment.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: They didn't, you know, the cops don't know. I'm blind
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: and where am I gonna run? But I'm in there and.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: I hear was the helicopter for you?
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh no, yeah. It was like a swat copter. Well,
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: because you're in a people's house, and back now, that
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: would be home invasion, you know. Back then, I think
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: it was trespassing with intentive theft and uh. But they
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: came in when I was there, and I didn't hurt anybody,
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: but I was just trying to take something, you know,
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: and the good addict, the you know, the addict's mind
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: is like, oh, put a bark later, you know, I'll
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: get it. I'll pawn it, and I'll put a bark
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: later and throw it in the open the screen and
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: throw it and everything. Yeah, okay, I said that once
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: with a guy's bass guitar, and I got arrested and
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: the thing got By the time I got released, the
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: guy that I some jerk that I pawned to a
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: guy that I just met, He's like, oh, I sold it.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: And the guy that owned that guitar I wanted to
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: wring my neck. Now that would be considered a nice
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: old vintage gentryment. It was a Rickenbacker base. So anyway, Yeah,
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: I did a lot of shady stuff, and so I
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: never did long jail time, but I had seen I
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: had been on the inside of La County jail a
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: few times. For a few weeks, Sana, Nana, that was enough.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: Weren't you in the same jail as Richard Ramirez? Yeah,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: I watched The Nightstalker.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: Damn. There's this guy in Burbank that was climbing in
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: people's windows and raping women and killing husbands and stuff,
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: The night Stalker Richie Ramirez. Yeah, And I remember this
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: story was he walked around wearing an ac DC cap,
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: you know, a hat like a baseball cap, and eventually
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: he got caught. A bunch of Mexicans caught him. He
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: was going from one side of the state to the other,
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: and the cops were all confused, and eventually a gang
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: of guys, Mexican dudes beat the crap out of him
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: in l a and they called the cops and he
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: was thrown in jail. And uh yeah, I remember walking
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: by his It was a stealel door with bulletproof glass,
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: and you know, everyone was making faces at him and stuff,
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: and I'm like, wow, that guy's like on the other side,
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: this guy that I was literally afraid of because I
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: lived on the first floor with a girl in Burbank
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: with my drummer's girlfriend. I lived on the first floor
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: at that time. That he was out there.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: Oh so you were part of the panic. That was?
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: That was I was, I was right there because no
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: one knew hit houses in burbank.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: But he also had no he had no what do
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: you call it type? He was. He climbed anybody's window
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: like any age and.
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, ladies, he was. It was really bad.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: It was a syriacle killer, you know what I mean?
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was a special unit in
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: the prison though, right, because they put you on especially
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: because they can't put you in gen pop. Right.
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: They only had me in gen pop population. And the
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: first night I got there and I was naive. I
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: had never been to prison, to jail other than like
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: a local police station for a couple hours and then
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: they kick you out, right, But I'd never been in
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: a county prison in La County jail. Is it is
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: where it is, man.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: It's a rough place, it is.
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And many prisons are. And incidentally, through the years,
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: I've gone back and done a lot of work in prisons,
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: either with my church or with recovery programs, and had
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: the opportunity to speak in many prisons. One funny story
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: is I was at Northfolk Prison and I got up
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: to speak once and I joke only because I can't see. Well,
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: you know, I joke only said, am I fishing the
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: right way and the place? For two minutes, dude, they
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: wouldn't stop laughing. I took forever for everyone to calm down. Yeah. Yeah,
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: But so anyway, I was in the La County jail
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: and I the cops were messing with me. You know, oh,
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: you're blind. What do you do swing? You can't you
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: stick around and look for metal? How do you steal stuff?
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: They were, they were, they would, they would would. They
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: were messing with me hard, just busting my balls. Yeah,
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: which theoretically is not the best thing to do with
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: a handicapped person. But I knew even then. I knew. I, well,
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: this is what we get robbed, you know New York.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: Essentially you were a criminal.
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well I went into someone's else that time, right,
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: tried to steal some and I had a warrant come
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: up in two thousand and two. I was clean and
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: it was from California for those charges.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, didn't you have to go back there?
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah? So what happened was I did prison work in
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: the nineties. Nothing ever came up, so I figured because
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: I had had the letter in nineteen eighty nine. I
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: had a letter sent from the detox in nineteen eighty
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: nine to the court system, and I thought they dropped
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: it because anytime I had done work in prisons, nothing
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: ever came up. And I'm like, okay, they must. So
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: now here they are in two thousand and two, cleaning
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: out file cabinets and putting stuff on the computer hard drive,
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: and I get a letter and my buddy was reading
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: my mail for me, and he's not no longer whethers
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: he died from drugs, he relapsed one of many, one
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: of many. So he looked at my mail and he went, oh,
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: sit down, Like what are you talking about. I don't
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: want to sit down right now. He goes, you need
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: to sit down, and I was like why. He goes,
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: you are not going to like this. So I sit
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: down and he reads me in the letter, and what
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: it said was your social Security benefits are now cut
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: off until you turn yourself into the You know I'm paraphrasing.
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: That's the letter was written more professional professionally actually, obviously,
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: but it basically said, until you turn yourself into the
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: to the Burbrank Court, your your social Security terminated and
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: I couldn't believe it, so I called the court. I'm
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: kind of glad it worked out that way, though, because
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: I would have dragged my feet longer. Probably what was
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: the case it was the original charge of trespassing would
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: attempt of theft. And what happened was I came back
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: to Massachusetts in nineteen eighty nine, so I missed the
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: court case, and so then I had default of court
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: and there was also a violation of probation in there.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: And so now here I am. I come back here
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: in eighty nine. Now here I am in two thousand
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: and two, thirteen years later, whatever, And I get this
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: warrant and somebody I know said to me, Rob, I
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: know you're afraid to go back there because they wouldn't
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: let me take care of it from here. But they said,
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: look at it like, they were like, I know you're
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: a spacial guy. Look at it like you're going to
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: make amends to the state of California. And I was like, wow,
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: that's an interesting perspective.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to look at it.
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they were like, look at it like you're going
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: to make amends. And you know, I know you have
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: strong faith, God's on your side, is going to help
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: you either way. Because I'm thinking, I don't want to
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: go to prison. I'm clean. I want to have what jars,
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: but I don't want to go to prison clean either.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: Right, they do have they do have clean seals for
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: addicts clean.
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So I go there and basically they slap me
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: on the wrist. And it was a female judge, And
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: I was armed with a lot of letters. One from
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: my pastor, one from my sponsor twelve Steps sponsor. I
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: had one from my therapist. I had one from a
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: detective that I know that can't wait to quit the
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: force right now because it's so corrupt. He says he's
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: getting ready, he's getting ready to retire. Yeah, I'll leave
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: it at that. I'm not going to give any more details.
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: Oh boy, yeah, he's he's ready to retire. And he's
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: like this, this is not good. I want to get
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: out of here. I'm trying to live an upright life
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: and that they're making it higher or arder. So anyway,
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: his letter saved my ass. The district attorney looked at
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: his letter and said, you're on a his a letter
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: here from law enforcement saying that this man's been in
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: zero trouble, no trouble at all. So she said to me,
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: if you stay out of trouble for the next two years,
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: we're going to expunge your whole entire record. And so
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: obviously I felt that I was going to stay out
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: of trouble, and I did. And so now I don't
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: have any record shown at all anywhere, which is good.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: That's huge.
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's the Warren story. But yeah, that was
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: that was scary. As soon as the plane took off,
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: I'm in the plane by myself, and I'm like, damn,
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: what am I doing?
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: Like, am I even gonna come back?
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: And I stayed at the drummer's house, the one that
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: I used to be in the band with California.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: Well, see didn't so afterward, so you when you came back,
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: did you get clean here or did you get clean
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: in California?
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: I got clean here. So those guys were upset with me.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: They kicked me out of the band, and I used
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: to I was hearing them rehearse with someone downstairs from
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: my apartment, and I'd literally be up there with my
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: eyes water and going, oh this hurts, this hurts, this hurts.
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: And then they were feeling it necessary to evict me
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: because me and my girl were fighting and the cops
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: were always showing up there for different things. And they said, Rob,
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: do you know how hard it is? Because they managed
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: the apartment building in Burbank. This is we're talking nineteen
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: eighty nine. They knew, they knew that I was killing
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: myself and it was hard for them to watch. And
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: they said, well, we're gonna let you. We can't even
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: have you be a tenant anymore. And that killed them
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: to do any all of this and to let me.
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: We were bros and for them to have to do that,
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: and then asked me to leave the band again. And
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: one compliment that I took as a compliment was one
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: of the times they had kicked me out. They auditioned
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: like eighty guitar players and they said the chemistry still
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: wasn't the same. There were some great players, unbelievable players,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: but the chemistry was different, you know, And that's something
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: that was big in the old days. Bands had chemistry.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: You know, things weren't digitally created with a computer, and
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: you know drum libraries and program drums and all that.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: You know, you listen to those old bands. You could
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: tell it was Led Zeppelin, you could tell it was
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: The Doors, you could tell it was Queen. So chemistry
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: was everything back then. Yeah.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: They were in the same studio, same room, creating these songs.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you could tell, you know, by voice, by
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: guitar players styles, yep. And now AI can recreate. It
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: blows my mind what AI can do. My friend created
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: some songs and you listen to the singer and the
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: guitar player and the whole thing, and it sounds like
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: that it was together by the best producer in the world,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: and the guitar players smoking good and the singers singing real,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: soulful and great, and you're like, who's that band? And
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: my buddy tells me, no, that's AI, And it's like, wow,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: it's pretty pretty crazy. It's incredible technology, but it also
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: bothers me because it's taken the human element out of it.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the AI impact is very real.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: Right, and going to continue to absolutely, And it has
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: pros and cons just like everything else. That's all how
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: you use and what your goal is. So anyway, Yeah,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine and I decide my mother had my
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: friend Jeff Raymond come out there and got me. She
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: gave him two plane tickets and she said, I don't
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: care if you get to break his army. He has
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: to come back. He's getting evicted, he's gonna die. People
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: are calling me. So him and I are still friends
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: to this day. He's like literally a brother to me.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: I was at his house last Sunday, actually, And I
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: have so many people that have helped me in my
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: path that I could mention on this podcast, but I
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: don't have time, say ahead of my sponsor, Reggie. But anyway,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: my sponsor too. Yeah, So anyway, so he helped get
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: me back here, and at that point I went into
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: my second t talks. I tried to come back here once.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: I stayed here for three weeks in nineteen eighty seven,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: went into a detox, but I went back to California
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: and picked up again for a year and a half.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: So now here it is nineteen eighty nine. I get clean,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: I stay clean. I got very deep into twelve step programs.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: And you know, we have this whole thing and traditions
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: about personal anonymity and all that, and I'm trying to
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: be vague about it, but I feel it a little
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: more necessary to divulge a little information, so that that's
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: been a part of my life. Twelve Step fellowships have
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: been in my life since nineteen eighty seven. And I
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: ain't can clean right away, but I am now.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: Well i'd like you to talk about, you know, your relapse.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: I think, yeah, so long for I'm part of your story.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: So what happened was I got cleaned in eighty nine
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: and I started doing what you know, we sometimes called
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: the drill. You know, I got a sponsor, I started
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: working the twelve Steps. I started sponsoring other people, and
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: the first guy a sponsor died of an overdose, and
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: it freaked me out and everyone had to teach me, Rob,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: you did nothing wrong. You were ready to answer your phone.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: You didn't give him the money to get high. Know
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: that it's not your fault, because I was kind of
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: new then and I'd like, did I do something wrong?
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: And that wasn't the case. You know, It's just he
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: didn't want to follow what he didn't want to pick
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: up what we were putting down, you know what I mean.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: So now years go on. In nineteen ninety eight, a
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: girl that I was that I loved. I was with
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: him for three and a half years and she wanted
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: a kid and I don't want a kid, and we split.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: She left, and I still feel it a little bit
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: if I think about it. You know, there's still that little.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: Bit of wait, is this is this Matthew's mother?
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, this is a girl named Jamie.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, Jamie little because you do have a son.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: Uh she's married now she has yeah yeah, yeah, anyway, yeah,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: so so we we break up and I'm devastated. I'm
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: all heart broken. Then then I found out I had
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: hepatitis see, which has gone by the way. I got
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: rid of that in two thousand and eight around the
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: time I want you.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, I went through the treatment with you. I didn't
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: do the treatment, but I was there always.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, checked this and checked. I gotta take my pills.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: I got to take my pills. That was the old
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: treatment that it sucks, but I got there.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: I ended up doing the treatment, but the newer one
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: where you feel nothing.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, what do you do ninety pills for? And
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: the pills are like a thousand dollars each of you
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: don't have an or something.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah yeah, but there's no side effects.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: People go to Canada to get that stuff. Oh yeah,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: But I was. I was in a study and I
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: was in two thousand and eight. I I had to
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: do a shot once a week, yep, and the fat
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: in my stomach.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: And you felt like shit.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: And I had to take like freaking seventeen pills a
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: day because it was ridiculous. I wonder still to this
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: day what that crap did to me. There was a
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: story of and I won't mention names or the place,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: but they gave me the wrong dose one day when
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: I left and I went home and did it, and
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: it was a dose that was for the guy twice
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: my weight. So he got my dose and I got
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: his dose.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: Got another possible lawsuit. Okay, you could be rich.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And somebody said somebody said that to me, you
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: should steal. And I'm like, you know what, I didn't
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: end up at.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: R R oh Man, God, you could be living in
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: a mansion right now.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: So the girl, the woman that gave me that, the
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: worker at the hospital, called me from Italy five days
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: after I did six days after I did the shot, right,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: she called me from Europe. She was on vacation and
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: she was all shaken up, and I go, what's the matter,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: Why are you calling me? You're on vacation because it
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: made a horrible mistake. Oh my god. And she was
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: probably thinking that too, we're gonna get sued, you know,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: And I said, listen, I know it was an accident.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: And both of our names began would be our last names.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: My name is Robbie Barton. Both of our names began
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: with be our last names. And she just for whatever reason,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: had a moment of being dyslexic and gave me the
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: wrong gave me the wrong medicine.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: But you didn't feel anything from it.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: No, The day after I did the shot, I did
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: feel a little bit more tired and stuff than usual.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: And then after she called me, I'm like, oh, no, wonder.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: And I put off that treatment for years because another
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: guy I knew was on it and he's like, oh,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: you're gonna get blisters and you're gonna be sweating and
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: in chills. And I didn't really, I didn't. I wasn't
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: affected to that extent.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: No, it did affect you, though, I mean, the anti
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: furon it was did affect me. Rough. It was rough.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: I remember picking you up every day every week and
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: you didn't feel great.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, maybe you remember better than me.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: I do I do remember because I had I had
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: too so I needed to get it done. But I
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: think because I was younger than you, the doctor were
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: telling doctors were telling me to wait. They said, we're developing.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: You know, hepatitis C is the most widely advancing, you know, disease,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: like for treatment for it is advancing at a rapid rate.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: So I waited, which was a good thing to do.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: You suffered. I'm sorry exactly.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: So let me move forward because I know we don't
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: have a lot of time left.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: You know, we have all the time in the world.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: How long did you podcast us?
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: There's no limits, but go ahead.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: I'm just I want to tell you my David Allen Bouchet.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: We'll get to that, don't worry.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: And he told me, he said, tell your buddy nor
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: to make his podcast an hour and a half. People
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: don't have time to listen.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: No, they liked the long podcast.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: I know. I just wanted to tell you that. He
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: told me that the other night. I was laughing.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: My oh yeah, we'll tell that. That is one of
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: the all time classic stories. But just just to get so,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: you have a son, Matthew.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: Hey David, if you listen and don't beat me up.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: Oh god, I thought you were leading into what year
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: was your son born?
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: Okay, so the girl left in ninety eight, I'm devastated.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: This is bringing it back to four minutes ago. Yeah,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: and then I found out I had HASI and I
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: go in for this medical procedure. Backtrack, sorry, two months
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: ago after the girl that one of the kid left.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: I'm devastated. I didn't want a kid. Two months later,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: I hook up with someone way too soon and gave
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: into the temptation and we ended up having sex, and
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: I was in his cast was a should have been
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: and I take all the blame. She got pregnant and
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: we had a son. He's twenty six. Yeah, she's dead
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: now from an overdose. She died before his high school
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: graduation in twenty seventeen, which really sucked sitting there and
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: realizing I'm here and she's not. But anyway, so what
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: led to the relapse. I wanted for a liver biopsy
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: in ninety eight? Was it ninety eight?
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: No?
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: A year or two after that? Yeah, the girl left.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: I hook up with the new girl. We have a kid.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: She wouldn't stay clean. It was driving me nuts. She
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: kept relapsing or using mostly is probably a better way
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: to say it. And then I went in for this
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: medical procedure and they gave me demoole for the pain.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: But because I was on bad emotional footing, like I
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: wasn't round and emotionally I was still grieving the girl
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: that left, and then I'm in a big mess with
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: this new girl that wouldn't stay clean. And as soon
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: as I got to say this, man, and I'm not
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: saying you can't have medical procedures done successfully, because since
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: then I have, I've had, you know, I had a
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: couple of hand surgeries for trigger finger and things like that,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: and they gave me medicine and I got through it.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: But at this time, man, if you had told me
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: when I got my ten year coin, you know, because
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: we give out these coins for times of you know,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: for years of clean time and all that, if someone
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: had told me that would be using six months later,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: I would have told them they were crazy. And uh.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: I went to the procedure that got the liver biopsy
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: and they gave me that demroll and a lot of
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: it's my own faultcus and I started feeling a little
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: pain and it started even hitting me in the shoulder,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: and I probably should have waited a little longer because
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: I probably could have got through it because I had
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: other liver biopsies after that where I got through it
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: without the drugs. Right, But my fear got the best
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: of me, and I took to demol before I even
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: left that hospital. I wanted a prescription. I cannot even
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: believe to this friggin day, I cannot even express in words,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: right how fast that happened. I remember distinctly saying the
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: night before, damn, what if they give me medication? I
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: hope I don't get triggered. And people in the car,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: my mother and that guy Jeff Rayman, the one that
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: picked me up in California. It got me back, brought
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: me back from kel They were both going, you'll be okay,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: don't worry. You know you're solid.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: Not so much.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: Here's how I explained, Here's how I explained recovery. It's paradoxical.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: It's a paradox because you can have what we call
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: solid recovery. That means you're doing all the things that
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: is suggested to you. You know, you're talking to your sponsor,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: you're praying, you know, you're in the twelve steps work
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: on the squad, all the stuff that we were taught.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: You know, you're helping other people all these things. But
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: the other side of it is recovery is like an eggshell.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: It doesn't take much to crack it. And I look
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: back at that day and before I even left the hospital,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: I was asking for a prescription.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: I woke the disease up. Pardon me, it woke it up,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: woke up the monkey.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: It woke up the monkey for sure. And I remember
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: that night leaving and I think the prescription probably said
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: one every four hours, and I think I took two
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: that night. And I went to a meeting, and I
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: already felt the guilt and shame. Here's mistake number two
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: or or three or whatever. I didn't uh, I didn't
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: address it in the proper manner. I talked about it
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: a little bit, but then I tried to hide it
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: a little Also, I wasn't being honest and I and
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: the reason why is because I lied to myself. I
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: could have got by without that medication that night. I
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: would have been fine with multrune.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: And most times you are you can get by with moultrune.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: Not always.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: But incidentally, I went to the one of one of
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: the other and I'll get back to where we were.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: So whoever's listening, try to be patient because I know
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: I'm running in circles with a lot of this, but
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: I seem to remember where to go back to one
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: of the liver biopsies. I wanted one of the liver biopsies.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: I had it. There was a girl doctor filling in
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: again no names, and I said, I don't want medication.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: She said, you have to sign a paper. Then, so
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: I signed this paper saying no medication. She puts the
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: nova cane in, didn't wait long enough and then nails
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: me with the needle and I went, ah. Now I'm
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: in the recovery room after that biopsy, like literally folded
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: in half like a baby. I'm like, I'm like dying,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: going ah. And it was a weird kind of pain too,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: because it was internal. So I asked an, here's the time.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: I did need medication because it hurt so bad. And
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: so I said to the nurse, can you give me something?
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: She comes back, she goes nope. The doctor said, the
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: doctor said, you signed that paper.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: Signed the sheet.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: I kind of I'm kind of glad in the sunset,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: at least like I did get through it. That just
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: goes to show you, right. It took like two and
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: a half or three hours to wear off the pain,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: and my buddy's out in the waiting room going where
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: is he? I'm ready to wring someone's neck around here.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 3: And he finally comes back. My buddy finally comes back
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: to the room I was in, and I'm like, oh,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: going oh, He's like, what the hell did they do?
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: Who to you? So when my real doctor came back,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: I said, listen, I don't know who that lady was
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: hat filled in, but I'm gonna tell you the exact story.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: And I told him exactly what happened to me. I said,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: you wait, you put the nova cane in. You asked
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: me if it's enough? You wait, you poke around. She
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: just put that stuff with me and literally came back
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: sixty seconds later going okay, here we go boom, and
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: took a couple of snippets out of my liver. Anyway,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: back to that first biopsy and the relapse after they
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: gave me the medication, I found myself full of guilt
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: and shame, and I tried to hide it, and I
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: wish I had been more honest about it earlier and
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: put my pride aside. And I don't like to say
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: I'm humble, because if you brag about being humbled, then
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: you're not humble anymore. But many people say I'm humble.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: Believe it at that. I went for that, being in
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: that space of not all everything, not all about me,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: to falling back into shame and guilt and pride. And
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: it's embarrassing. Man, when your ten years clean and you've
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: helped so many people and all this stuff, and you
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: know God has worked through you to help these people,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: all this stuff, and then that happens. So, to make
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: a long story shot, I did get clean again. Yeah
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: in March. Here's another. I got all these cool stories.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: I could go on for everyone's stories. I got clean
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: once and then fell off again because I went back
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: to my kid's mother. And I'm not blaming her, but
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: what I'm saying is I remember getting yelled at people going,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: what are you going back? You're going back to her again?
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: What are you nuts? That put you in an emotional upheaval?
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: Less last time, I didn't listen. So this is what
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: happens when we don't listen to people that love us,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: you know. And these weren't these were. These were people
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: who did love me, They were friends and people that
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: were close to me. So and then so then I
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: finally got clean once and for all, though in two
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: thousand and two, and the way that it happened was
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: this interesting stuff. I was at my mom's house because
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: she didn't want me on the street, but I was
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: still using. Think about my mom saying that to me,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: it chokes me up. She's like, I don't want you
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: on the street. Come to my house. You know what
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: she meant by that was She's like, I don't want you.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: I don't want you running around and you like, just
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: come over here, and I mean, I have my own apartment.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: But she knew me, and she knew that I'd be
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: out gallivant and looking for more shit. So I was
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: using that night. Prior to that, a friend told me
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: to kick cold turkey because none of the beds and
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: detoxes were opening, and I'm like, what the hell are
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: you crazy? I can't kick cold turkey. And also prior
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: to that night, I had begged my higher power, please God,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: please Jesus Man, give me make me desperate to get
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: clean again. I remember literally being on my knees crying,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: going damn. I want to get clean. I want to
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: get clean, but I need to be desperate. I gotta
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: get desperate, like for a guy like me, I'm all
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: or nothing. I have to be desperate. I have to
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: want to stop. Well. I'm in my mom's house that night,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 3: and evidently that prayer work because I took a ring
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: off my finger that my son's mother gave me when
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: he was a baby, and I gave it to this
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: dude that I was using with. Now we're at my
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: mom's house and he was gonna give me some drugs
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: for it, and I don't know what happened. I had
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: a moment, in a sanity, moment of truth, and I
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: said to him, give me the ring back, and he's like,
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: he ain't doing me too. He was being a prick.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: He was like, whoa, if you don't give me the ring,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: I'm Mike, give you the shit. And I'm like, I
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: don't care. I give me the ring back and I
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: put it back on my finger right, put it on
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: my finger, And my son has that ring today. After
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: his mother died. He asked me for that ring on Christmas.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: If I had pawned that ring, my son wouldn't have
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: that ring right now. After his mom died, he one
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 3: day on Christmas and my stuff was in storage, and
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 3: my stuff was in storage, not all of it, but
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: some of my stuff was in storage because I was
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: in the process of moving. He he asked me for that.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: I go, okay, we've got to go to my storage
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: and get it. And I remember giving him the ring
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 3: he put on his finger, and I remember, is that
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: part of the reason why the night that I was
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: gonna put it, I said to the guy, give me
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: that ring back, like, did God know the future be interesting?
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: And at that point I hadn't sold all my guitars.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: It was you know, it wasn't like other times when
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: I was using. When I was in that relapse, I
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: think it's to the point, to the point of selling
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: everything yet yet yet well that's what that day. I
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: was out of money, right, And because that would have
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: came eventually, I went through my lab. At the time,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: I had five grand and I went through the last
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: five grand I had in the bank in like thirty days,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: and another guy I was using with had about the same.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: So between the.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: Two of us, we spent about ten thousand dollars on
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: drugs in thirty days. Wow, I'm alive. I should be
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: dead and God saying no, you shouldn't. But what I
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 3: mean by it should be dead is left to my
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: own resources. And I believe in divine intervention and I'm
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: just going to say it. And I know again, I
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: know people I have a hard time with that. Here
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: goes mister spiritual and all that. But I believe that
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: God answered my prayer when I asked him to make
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: me desperate enough to get clean again. And so I
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: met my mom's that last night I was using, I
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: take the ring back, I go home. I decide I
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: have some paraphernalia hair, I'm gonna take it out to
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: the dumpster, you know, some drug paraphernilla. And I did
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: just that. Then my phone rings and I checked a
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: message because I missed it when it came in. And
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: this is now Here's a guy I used to sponsor.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: He I used to be his sponsor. Right. He calls
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: me and he says, he leaves me a message, and
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: I might get choked up saying it, but he was
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: like Rob even He's like Rob's Tom. He's like, even
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: if you still use and call me like I know
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: you don't have any hope right now. And I remember
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: my waterfall, you know, niagara falls coming out of my
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: eyes just happened. And I remember thinking, Man, God, your time,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: your timing is unbelievable. I said that to God, like
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: out loud, because why did I get that call that night?
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: When I decided to stop? He picked me up the
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: next day for a meeting. And listen to this one.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: He happened to be on vacation for three weeks. For
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: three weeks, he happened to be on vacation, and he
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: brought me to one or two meetings a day for.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: Three weeks while on vacation.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well because he didn't go away. Yeah, why did
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: that timing work out that way that he could be
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 3: The night I put that ring back on my finger
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: and thought, this has to stop. I can't wait for
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: a had to open.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: Higher power, absolutely, higher power, absolutely.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: So this guy leaves me this message. I call him back.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 3: He picks me up the next day. Now here's another
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 3: one chucked us out. He shows up in my house.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: Another guy, that guy that I was using with for
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 3: a month's trade, that had also had five or six
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 3: grand I hear a knock on the door, right, I
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: answered the door. It's the guy that I was using with.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 3: He goes, hey, what's op murd I go, I'm all done.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: That's what's up. I'm not using it anymore. So now
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: I have the angel on this side and the devil
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: on the other. I don't want to call that guy
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: a devil. I don't mean it like that, but I
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: believe I was tempted to being tempted by the devil.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: I literally had one guy on one side of me
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: that wanted to get me right again, and another guy
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: on the other side of me that was like, hey,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: let's go for youre out to where to get high
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: even though we both we're an out of money right,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: thank you God. I followed the other guy out the
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: door and I told him, I said, hey, bro, like
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 3: I'm done, you should stop too. He to this day
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: is still struggling. Really he had years clean.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, he's still using.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: He's still struggling with another guy that I know. Oh man,
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: it had years clean. And I'm not going to say
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: his name to protect his anonymity.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: No need to.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: And if you have a listen, listen to this podcast.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: I know that you know I mean well, and I
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: know I want you know that I want you to
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 3: do good, buddy, if you ever hear this. So I
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: got clean again, and I've been cleaned now for twenty
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: four years, and I'm still very involved with twelve Step
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: fellow fellowships. I'm very careful when I go to get
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 3: medical procedures done that I'm on solid spiritual and emotional ground.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: Well, can I be honest with you something? So it
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: was that story of you relapsing after because you got
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: to think about it when I first met you, you know,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: to hear that you had ten years clean, that that
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: is an eternity for somebody it is clean.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 3: I thought crazy, Well, like someone you've been clean for
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: a year, say, so.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: Your story of what happened really got in my head.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: You know. So I've had medical procedures. I had two
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: knee surgeries, I had breast reduction, and I did it
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: all without pain medication because I knew and I learned
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: from you, you know, to be honest with the people
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: that are around me.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: No they weren't, yeah.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: But uh yeah no, but I did. I learned from
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: you there on what to do.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: So I wondered, because I know Brian's going to listen
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 3: to this one me so oh yeah, my friend Brian. Yeah,
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: we joke around about anyway, go on, I'm sorry.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, no, that's just I remember that story
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: and there were so many things that you taught that
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: you taught me and told me about yourself and your
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: story that helped me tremendously when I got clean, because
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: you got to think, Robbie, when I got clean, right,
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: like I didn't, I had nothing, like I had nothing.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: I'd pick you up every single day and we go
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: out and we'd spend time together.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: You know, now you want nothing to do with me.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: No, you know I love you.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: I know, even when it was serious.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: I joke. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you know what
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: you know you have kids.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: That's no, No, that was a joke.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: No, I know now, I know.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: Now I know where you are. I'm going to come
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: here every day and hunt you.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: You can come anytime, anytime.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: Here and yeah, so so anyway, yeah, that's how it works.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: I mean I met you in two thousand and eight,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: you know, h seven, seven or eight, and you were
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 3: like my mom knows you, and I'm like, damn, dude,
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: I used to pray for you, like eight eight years
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: ago or something. Yeah, no, nine years ago.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: What happened was when I when I moved up here,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: my mom and her her boyfriend at the time, had
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: uh when I started going to meetings.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: He had said, hey, do you you know you go
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: to these meetings? Do you know?
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: Do you know Robbie? And I said, oh, I know
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: who that is. He actually came into the detox and
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: he told me that. So then when I had gone
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: up to you at the meeting or whatever, and I said, hey,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: I think you know my mom and her boyfriend, that's
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: when you told me that you know, I used to
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: pray for you, and I almost fell over.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: It's like, holy shit, remember that?
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, the way I remembered is you told me
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: first that I knew you, that my mom knew you.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, but I could be wrong, no, right, but I
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: know that what happened. What happened How we connected, well,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: you do, I missed the memory.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: How we connected was I was in a sober house
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: and there was a guy in there that I was
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: friends with and you were also his sponsor I was.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: And then he relapsed and he caught a pretty bad case.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 3: Six years he went to prison.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he went to jail, and I was at
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: this place.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: I was at a meeting and you were talking about
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: how you wanted to go see him. You need somebody
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: to take you to go, and I there was something.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: Now at that time, I was so angry. I did
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: not want to be there. I just wanted to use Yeah,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: you were quiet. I was very quiet. It was very
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: rare for me to say different. Yeah, and when you
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: were sharing that, it was like that little voice inside
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: of me just said, go.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: Talk to him. Yeah.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: Out of the prison. Yeah.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: It was in Lawrence. I never forget. I went up
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: after you after the anding a break. Yeah, and I
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: sat next to you and I said, hey, I know
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: him too, and I'll take you. And that's how we
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: became friends. And we went to the prison to see him.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Remember that.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: Remember remember we uh we went to see him and
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: we're talking through him. Was it through glass?
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: Right? Yeah? Oh yeah.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: And I'm not a musclehead, but and he joking went, hey, Robbie,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: been working out. The sad story about that is he
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: got out of prison, stayed clean for a short time,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: and relapse and he's dead.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: He passed away.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 3: So here's another story. He had five years clean called
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 3: me one day and said, I want to take the
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: easy route. I said, using is not the easy route.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: You're telling yourself it's the easy route, and using is
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: a familiar route, but it's not the friggin easy route, right.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 3: He didn't want to hear it now, and I called him.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: I called him another day and he was being chased
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 3: by the police. Yeah, he goes, I don't want to
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 3: talk to you right now. Click, And I remember asking
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 3: him later, what the hell is that? He goes, Oh,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: the police would chacking.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: Was that when he got arrested or is that a
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: different time.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: I think it might have been. Yeah, I think it
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 3: was when he got arrested, and it was also he
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 3: probably when we went to the prison, is one. Or
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: he called me before he went to prison. I'm sure
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: I can't remember if I think about it. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: he called me saying he had a case because they
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 3: arrested him, then they let him out and then so anyway,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 3: he told me, he's like, the reason I didn't want
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 3: to get talked to you is because that's why I'm
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: going to court now. That was that night. Yeah, and
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 3: he went to prison for six friggin years. Man.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I stayed prison too, well.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: Worried bar Rica Middleton, middle Yeah, and then actually what's
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: crazy is that he went for six years that was
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: his pre trial before he got sentenced. Then he got
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: six years, and several years later I went on a
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: commitment to Norfolk Prison and spoke up there and he
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: was in there.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: And I can't believe now he's been dead since got
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 3: twenty fourteen.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: Or fifteen, that when he died that long ago.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because I was still living in my old condo, man,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: and I moved out of there in twenty fifteen.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So just you know, I wanted to have you
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: come on Rob to tell you a story, obviously, but
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: also to uh, you know, you've had such an impact
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: on me in my life and my recovery, you know,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: so much so that I wrote my senior paper on you.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 3: You did, Yeah, you wrote a college paper. You asked
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 3: me if you could write a paper on me.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: What did you tell the listeners about that?
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Well I had to.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: I had to come up with a senior thesis on
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: you know. I forget what the exact topic was, but
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: I was able to use. I went to the professor
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: and I said, listen, I have a really good friend
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: of mine who has this crazy story you know he's
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: he's in recovery like myself, and he's helped me tremendously
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: and he's blind. And she gave me the approval. So
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: I sat with Robbie and I got his whole life
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: story and I called the paper blind Faith, and I
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: got an.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: Yep and funny enough, another friend of mine in the
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: nineties did a paper Armory and paper Oarmny in college
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: and he called it blind Light.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: My paper was better, No, was it? Say it was?
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 3: I got to hear them both again. I think yours
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 3: was terrible and his was great.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: No, I'm sure he got it's a great story he did.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 3: He did? I think he did do well. Yeah, I
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: think he's gonna know. Yeah, it's a great thank you
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: for asking me to remember saying you go, whoa you o?
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: The second guy that goes to college that asked me,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 3: you know that asked if they could do a paper
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 3: army well.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: Story.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 3: The thing about being blind and being clean is, uh,
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: I don't want being blind stop me. Like I'm totally
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: blind in my right eye and my left eyes almost gone.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: But I will say, though, there are times I want relief.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: And what I've learned in my recovery is try to
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: get relief in healthy ways. You know, hang out with friends,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: go call somewhere on the phone, you know, uh, go
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: to the church, go go play your music. Man, which incidentally,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: I mean I do obviously want to put in a
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 3: plug for myself. And do you want me to do
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 3: that now or at the end.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: You can do it whenever you'd like.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: I'll do it now, I'll actually we'll do it at
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: the end. We'll do it at the end.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: Okay. So now you're gonna have the pressure of of
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: waiting till the end and saying it just perfectly.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: I want it, I want no just I want it
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 3: to be the last thing people here.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: That's actually that's actually why I want to cure it
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: for the end. So it kind of stays in my Yeah,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: absolutely so, rob So another thing is that you know,
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: you're you're widely known as because you know, part of
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: a big part of recovery service, right is helping others.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: That's how we keep what we have. It's it's for you.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: What's the interesting about Robbie is he's a night out
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: and I think part of that is because of your
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: rock and roll and playing music, plays show.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I never worked regular jobs because it'd be
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: blind and I used to use drugs years ago, so
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 3: I've just been in the habit. He stays up late late, yeah,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 3: days late, So I'm like the late guy hotline exactly.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: So it's perfect for people that are just getting clean
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: who can't sleep because they're kicking drugs. That you can
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: call rob that you can call Robbie, like I remember.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: One in the morn, I will probably be awake.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: I'll definitely be awake. So that's kind of one of.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 3: Like, all right, all right, I'll definitely be awake. Yeah, no,
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 3: I think I've called it of want to sleep last night?
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what time?
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: Two o'clock?
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: That's early for you, that's be honest.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 3: And my buddy Gary here is in the studio with us,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: and he he he, he knows. I don't get up early. Yeah,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: And and sometimes I struggle. I don't do it intentionally,
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 3: but I'm having a problem fixing being ten minutes late
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: and I'm trying to work, and Justin told me, he's like,
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 3: don't be late. I'm a busy guy. Yeah, And uh
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 3: So when I went to bed, I'm like, damn, I
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 3: gotta get up at eight and I'm not a morning
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 3: guy unless I have to get up like we do
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: retreats at Saint Basil, Basils and Methuin. You know there's
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 3: a thing there called Christillo. Uh, it's a course in Christianity.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: But that's that's what I do. But anyway, so when
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 3: I have to get up early six or seven o'clock
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 3: on those weekends when I help out there, you know
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 3: that's what I have to do.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, you must be miserable. But you must be so
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: miserable when you have to get up early.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 3: It's funny, you know when I do get it. When
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: I do do it, like even right now, I don't
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 3: feel that bad. Yeah, it's more than i'm And here's
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 3: another thing. Another point of interest is black people they
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 3: claim have this thing called non twenty four. Have you
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 3: ever heard of it?
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: I have not.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 3: You never heard those commercials?
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: No, what is it?
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: What it is is the brain doesn't get as much
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: light and it disturbs your sleeps cycles because light.
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: Oh that makes sense.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know it goes back to the cave man
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 3: right late, Like is.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: That like your circadian rhythm type thing?
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 3: They didn't have clocks back then. Yeah, that's exactly what
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: it is yeah, okay, rhythm. They even have a medicine fought.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 3: I think it's just melatonin or something similar.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: I haven't tried to help help you sleep.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 3: But I get insomnia. I have some sleep app near.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 3: It sucks.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so what do you do? What do you
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: do it? Like? When you're at home, are you listening
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: to music?
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 3: I think of you, big boy?
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: Uh like? Can you have YouTube and stuff?
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah? YouTube? I listen to audio books a lot. I
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 3: love true stuff, like autobiographies or biographies, musicians stuff. I
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 3: like psychological stuff. I like, you know, therapeutic stuff. I
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 3: liken you know no, no, no, obviously even obviously you know,
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 3: for stuff that has to do with my faith, my
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: Christian faith. I love. I love like true stories like
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: FBI stuff. I'll listen to like FBI files Yeah true. Yeah,
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: I like and especially you're not seeing well. I get
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 3: more out of the audio, not seeing much at all.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 3: It's not like I can watch TV like a normal person.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 3: I get more out of audio that's true rather than fictional.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because we'll be talking about something and you'll be like, oh,
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: I look it up on YouTube when I get home.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a Google Home and an Alexa and
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 3: I just ask questions.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it pulls it up and that's cool,
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: that's cool. I wanted to ask you. I wanted to
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: end with this before you plug. No orry, the David
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: alan Bouchet's exactly.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 3: I was going in my head.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we have to we have to get this in
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: because this is I can't believe I never shared this
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: on the podcast. So David alan Bouchet obviously, for many,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: many years, was on Magic one oh six seven, legendary guy,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: legendary voice, Bedtime Magic, Okay, Bedtime. But the allure of
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: David alan Bouche is no one knows what he looks like.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: So when I started working in radio, people, you know,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: they don't understand that different companies, different radio stations, are
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: different companies. They thought they'd always asked me, hey, do
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: you know what David alan Bouche looks like? Well, I
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: don't work at the same company as him.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: Now, back probably about ten years years ago, before I
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: got the job on Kiss Want to Wait? Where I
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: work now? I interviewed at Beasley, which his Magic is in.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: I interviewed at Magic for the morning show. And when
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: I went there, I sat there for the interview, and
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: after we were done, she said, the woman said, you know,
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: if you have any other questions, let me know, just
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: don't ask what David but alan Bouche looks like as
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: a joke, I said, no, I'm not going to ask whatever.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: So fast forward a few years ago Robbie. I see
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: Robbie and he says, hey, I met a radio.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 3: Guy got ten years ago.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: Now was that that long ago? And you go, yeah,
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: you won't believe this anyway. Yeah, he said, I was
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: at a funeral and a guy get you. Oh yeah,
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: did he give you a ride to it?
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah? He was the sign in law of one of
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 3: my best friends.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: Passed yes, and he goes, I go, who is it?
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: And he goes David alan Bouche And I said, let
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: me get this straight. The one person that finally meets
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: and gets a look at David alan.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: Bouche, it's fucking blind, Like, what are the chances? And
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: now you're friends with him? Right?
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know we're not. We're not super tight. But
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 3: like he comes to my church. He always always makes
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 3: it a point to come up and say hi to me.
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 3: He was there last Monday. And funny part of the
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 3: story is recently. This is a pot of tell I
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 3: don't think I told Justin yet. Is he came up
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 3: to me and he goes, hey, you know who I am?
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 3: When I go, yeah, but no one else does because
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 3: no one knows what he looks like. Yeah, so that
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 3: was pretty funny. But I always tell him I I
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 3: don't like when some people would. I hate when people
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 3: come up to me and go, hey, you know who
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 3: it is? You know who it is? Hey, guess who
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 3: are you? That's just stupid. Yeah, you know what I mean,
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 3: it's joke in the world. Next guy that does that
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 3: to me. If it's a guy, I'm gonna go, hey, Sue,
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 3: how are you doing. Oh, I'm gonna go I'm blind. No.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 3: But it's just it's sometimes certain things people do with
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 3: with blind people like they don't know better. They people
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 3: probably don't mean harm, No, they don't, but especially at
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 3: a gig, right, if people are drinking and stuff, they're like,
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: you know who it is? You know who I'm like,
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 3: oh my god. And most of the time I do,
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 3: but sometimes I'm like, I have no idea, and he'll
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 3: tell me I knew you were nudging somebody, dar and
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: I met you when you were playing at mister C's
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 3: Rock Palace, and I'm thinking, I have no idea who
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 3: this guy is. I never hung around with him, so yeah,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 3: so it's just how people ask.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: I get it. No, I get it. I got it.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: But he's cool.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 3: David, he's a great guy. I love David, and he was.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 3: The way he approached me, was it? You know? It
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 3: might have for a second got me feeling a little ware,
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 3: but I knew who it was. And then and then
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 3: I made that joke with him. I go, yeah, no
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 3: one else knows who you are because nobody knows what
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 3: he looks like.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: Now and he's retired now right, Yeah, he's retired. He
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: left the radio.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 3: He's tired.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: Good guy, bedtime match.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and Gary, let's go with us here in the room. Me.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 3: He didn't he explain to you what he looks like.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: He hasn't yet, But after this podcast, I will be
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: asking Gary what he looks like.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 3: Well, he told me he's bald. What do you think?
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 3: Five to seven?
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: Five seven?
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 3: Okay, he's what brown eyes? I think? Okayiley kind of guy.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: Any any kind of many different guys. It could be Jesus,
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: what's that It sounds like an any bald guy. Oh yeah, typical, yeah, typical.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: All right, well, rob thank you very much for coming on.
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: You talked about being a guitarist and you do have
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: a business.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So for those of you that might have tuned
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 3: in late, I'm a legally blind guitarist. I have transportation.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 3: I also played bass guitar well, and I played drums,
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 3: and I sing some and uh, I'm currently looking to
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 3: broad my horizons, looking for a new project. One of
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 3: the projects I was in just split up, and things
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 3: are really really really way way way too quiet for
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 3: me right now. I live in with thew in Massachusetts,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 3: and like I say, I do have transportation. My email
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 3: is Robbie with a Y, Robby, So it's Robbie Barton
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 3: seven seven seven at gmail dot com. And my telephone number,
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 3: which is what dial, Yeah, which is what I prefer
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 3: because it's hard for me to go on my email
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 3: without someone helping me look at it. But you have
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 3: to leave a message because I won't see a text.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 3: But anyway, my phone number. If anyone wants any sort
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 3: of help with recovery, or if anyone needs a musician,
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 3: wants to start something, or anyone needs a player, please
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 3: give me a call. My phone number is nine seven
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 3: eight six nine seven seven zero four zero. That's nine
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 3: seven eight six nine seven seven zero four zero. And again,
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 3: my email is Robbie Barton seven seven seven at gmail
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 3: dot com.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: And that's Robbie with a Why Robbie with the wife.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: Now you do lessons too, Yeah, I do teach.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I haven't been promoting it lately, but even if
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 3: someone's broke, I'll still help them out, you know, make money,
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 3: he putting on the circumstance. No, no, I mean, I
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 3: obviously I need to make money. But what I mean
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 3: is I'm not a hard ass. Like like I was
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 3: jamming with my friend John Shields. He lives in Kingston
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 3: where Gaman in New Hampshire at his house last night,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 3: and the bass player loves playing with me because I
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: show them all kinds of stuff, right, and he'll try
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 3: to sometimes give me money and stuff. I'm like, no, no, no, don't.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 3: It's a joy to share what you know in life
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 3: with others and it helps me. It helps you didn't recovery,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 3: but it also even helps music because I'll go, wow,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 3: I remember when someone showed me that when I was thirteen. Yeah,
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 3: you know, or like, holy shit, I don't you know,
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 3: I don't even think of that anymore. It's it just
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 3: comes natural. It's automatic pilot, you know, the neuroplasticity or
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 3: the brain. We learned things and it just it just
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 3: we get used to them, and a lot of stuff
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 3: just becomes automatic. But when we're first learning, when we're
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 3: either beginning or you know, a little bit past beginners
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 3: with any anything, right, you know, some of the stuff's
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 3: not on automatic pilot yet.
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: Funny story is funny story about you playing real quick, rob.
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: Remember a couple of years ago, we stayed at the
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: Sailing Waterfront Hotel. Yeah, family, and I yeah, And we're
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: down there and I look in to the restaurant and
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: Robbie's playing with this band or another guy.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: And so I'm with my son, Abel and Gemma and
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: Jen and I go, my god, it's Robbie. And Abel goes,
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: you know him. I go, that's a really good friend
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: of mine.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 3: What was your son then?
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: He was probably like seven? Okay, okay, so remember that
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: age seven. So I go, let's go upstairs and change.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: Coming out of the pool, I go, we'll come down
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: and say hi to him and watch the show. So
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: Robbie obviously doesn't. I didn't you know we're walking by,
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: so you didn't even know we were that. So we
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: come back down and uh, and you're in the middle
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: of the songs, like, let's just finish it. When he
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: takes a break, we'll go and say hi. So we
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: sit down and watch, and there's Robbie. He's singing, ride
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: in that train, Hi on cocaine. You're doing a grateful deck.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 3: I was singing how many someone else is singing it?
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so funny.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 3: That's I think you tell me maybe you know, but
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 3: that might be based off some true story right about.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm not sure the song.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 3: I think it may be not sure.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know. But once you had done, we went
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: up in the and said, hey, it was funny. Yep. Yeah.
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: So yeah, listen, if you anything, if you you got
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: Robbie's info, if you need you know, if you want
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: anything musical, lated, recovery related, anything, And you said phones
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: better than email.
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I don't want to say if anyone is
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 3: out struggling, if anyone is struggling out there with addiction problems,
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 3: I'm no better than you. And it feels like you
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 3: can't get out. It feels like you're trapped. It feels like,
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 3: how am I gonna enjoy being clean? Even though my
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 3: life could be torn to shreds, I was still going home.
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna enjoy being clean. I'm gonna be bored. There's
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 3: gonna be nothing to do. Oh it's already too late.
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 3: I already ruined my dreams, all of that stuff. Throw
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 3: it out the window. It's not true. Justin's a perfect,
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 3: perfect example of it. He always wanted to work in radio,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 3: and here he is.
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so true.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 3: That's what I want to share.
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 2: So true. Thank you, Rob, You're welcome and you welcome
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: back anytime. Thank you, Thank you everyone else. Tomorrow listen,
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: this is this is Rob. You now hold the record?
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: You know that?
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 3: Right for what?
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 2: So?
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: My wife Jen held the record at I think it
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: was one hour twenty minutes. Oh no, if you had
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: to guess how long we've been going.
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 3: It's your fault.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: No, it's no one's fault. It's a great thing.
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: How long you think, Lisa and a half? One hour
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: forty five minutes?
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, David Allen Bouchet is gonna shoot me.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you know me, he said, tell your buddy
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 3: not to go over now. People don't have time listen
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: this is I started laughing my ass off. I go.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 3: I'll make sure I relay that from one radio go
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 3: to the next.
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 2: This is a different kind of podcast.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 3: I know that they gonna like it.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: As always, the talkbacks are open.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: If you have any questions or comments for Robbie, you
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: can leave a talk back and tomorrow we'll do it again.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: All right, Bye,