Speaker 1Welcome back. Let's go. Recovering Out Loud podcast. If you're new here, welcome. If you are returning, thank you. We are, got a lot of new listeners lately, recently. And it was as a result of a reel that I posted on Instagram going decently viral and getting a few views or so. I'm going to try and stay humble here. Also, it doesn't matter. It's fucking social media. I have to keep reminding myself that views and likes, and it's easy for me to say that they don't mean anything to me because I do care. Let's be honest. I'm an addict. I'm a people pleaser. I care about what other people think of me. I want you to like me. I want you to think that I'm right. I sometimes need you to think that I'm right about addiction and about things. And I'm no expert in this field, but I have my experience and I like to be right. I think that I'm right about a lot of things, you know? So my biggest problem today is I'm right. I always say that, but I posted a reel about doing Friday cocaine versus Saturday, Sunday cocaine, sorry. And it got quite a bit of attention. A lot of people were commenting on the birds being a horrific, traumatic experience for them. And they were thanking me for bringing them back their PTSD. And I got a lot of comments of people saying, "Hey man, this isn't coke. You got bad coke. I'm a fucking pro drug user over here, and you got bad coke." That's not true. If you do enough stimulants, meth or cocaine, if you do enough cocaine, you will see this shadow people eventually. You will hear things. You will be paranoid and think that there are police officers outside your house when you know that there are not. You will think people are coming inside your hotel room to kill you, thus causing you to peek out the windows and blinds and/or, in my case, when I was in hotel rooms, peek out the peep holes on the hotel door rooms. I was a pro in peeking out that people. I would remember vividly seeing people outside trying to get in. And the most recent one I can remember is being in a hotel room, peeking out and hearing like party, like a bunch of people outside trying to get in my room. Because earlier that night, I had no idea what was going on. I had my drug dealer, you know, my only friend at the time, my drug dealer. I thought he was my friend. He was just using me for, well, he was, I don't even have to finish that sentence. You, he wasn't my friend. You, you know what I'm talking about. And he would bring random people over to my hotel rooms and just party. And I loved it because I had people to party with and people to use drugs with. And as an addict alcoholic, I just wanted to feel like I wasn't a piece of shit. Like there was other people in the world abusing drugs. I wasn't the only one. Yeah. I knew I needed to come back to recovery and I wanted to feel less alone and use with people that I thought were quote unquote worse than I was in terms of their drug use, in terms of their, this episode is going to be a little bit about my story, introducing you to me. I think that's important. You know, I don't have a crazy story like the ones you hear on the internet or on the rest of the podcast of some of these people, but I do have a story and everybody has a story. So if you are in recovery and you think I am not like any of these people, I want. I'm not as bad as him. I'm worse than him. Stop comparing yourself. Focus on the similarities, not the differences. That'll keep you around longer. That'll keep you sober longer. Trust me. We are all the same. Our external circumstances might not be the same, but I felt the same way you did that level of fear, shame, embarrassment, disgust that I just described with you peeking out the hotel rooms. I'm sure you felt that some way or another in your addiction, the hiding, manipulating, you know, getting kicked out. Uh, people. Not trusting you, the waking up every morning and promising yourself, you're going to quit. You're not going to do this again to yourself, to your family, and then doing it anyways. And then wondering how the fuck you got that here, how you did it again, when you knew deep in your heart that you weren't going to use drugs and drink again. And yet here we are. So a little bit about me, uh, at right now, I am a addictions counselor at a rehab. I work on the admission side in Toronto. I love it. You know, it's, I truly believe it's my calling, my passion. I love working with people. I love being the first phone call that a lot of people make to come into, to rehab. And, uh, yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's, it's a great experience that you won't want to miss. And you can have that experience if you get into recovery and you don't have to work at a rehab to get that experience. You can, whatever group you go to, whatever group you belong to 12 step, smart recovery, and you can be of service to the new person gets me out of my head, gets me into their shit. And I'm thinking less about me. And that's what recovery is about is how can I think less of me, less about me, not less of me. Don't make that mistake. That's a, that's a mistake. How can I think less about me and more about others, right? I love myself today. I don't think less of myself. I we're all equal. Like I said, so welcome to all the new people. I'm so glad that you're here again. I don't claim to be a recovery expert. What I do claim though, is to be an expert in my own disease, my own addiction at a counselor at a rehab. Once. Tell me you need to become an expert, a PhD, a scholar in your own disease. Learn about yourself, learn about your disease, learn about your tendencies. Why do I do things? Why do I use drugs? Why don't you use alcohol? Why do I keep coping with these crutches in my life? Why do I gamble? Whatever your thing is. Why do I turn to porn, whatever your thing is, know yourself. And then once you know yourself, you can love that true self, accept that true self and move on and help others. My journey. Let's go. Let's go back to 2012, 2012. I was about 20 years old. I was using marijuana and drinking every single one. I say that marijuana, I was smoking weed and what a counselor, a loser. I was smoking dope. Yo, I was smoking weed and using, uh, drinking pretty much every day at this point. If anybody remembers poppers, uh, these things in, in Canada and the area that I'm from in Toronto, we called them poppers. It's where you put a little bit of tobacco mixed with, you know, out of a cigarette, which is disgusting in a bong pipe with weed dabbed on top. And then you clear the whole thing in one shot. So bad for you. So bad. I still, there's still some guys that I know. I don't actually, I don't hang out with them, but they're still doing it to this day. We used to do like five to 15. Some people would do 20 in one session. It was so bad for your lungs. Oh my God. We cough. Don't miss that poppers. We're smoking those every day. I remember I went to university because I thought that was the right thing to do. I got into a program I hated. And I never went to class by 2012. Yeah. I would say by the, like up until this point, nine, when I was 19, 20, 21, I was doing the daily weed, the daily, not daily drinking. Sorry. It was more weed and it was every day. I found cocaine when I was about 20 years old and I was at a party. I remember this guy had it out and everyone was doing it and I was intrigued. I don't remember exactly what it felt like that first time, but I do remember really liking it. I remember. It, here's what cocaine did for me and meth and all stimulants. It allowed me to feel connected to the room that I was in. It allowed me to feel a part of it a lot. Like I felt like my jokes were funnier. I felt like girls liked me more. I felt like I was the center of attention, the center of the party. I felt like I was in control of my actions, my behaviors, myself. I could do whatever I wanted. It turned down the volume in my head and the anxieties of, Oh, you're a piece of shit and you don't have enough. And you know, you, you're not making enough money and you're failing at school. All these negative thought loops in my head, cocaine and meth, just quiet it down. And now my camera is going to fucking die. I don't understand. All right, we're back. If you're wondering why I'm wearing a different sweater, it's because my camera died. The batteries on these things suck. Anyways, you don't care about that. You want to hear how I fucked up my life and then came back from it. So as I was saying, I was using cocaine every day. I was living. My parents at the time and living with my parents at the time. And they kicked me out. They gave me an ultimatum and said, you can go to rehab or you can live in your car. You're not living in here. So I lived in my car for two weeks. I'm a good addict, alcoholic. Don't recommend that. Not ideal. It was winter 2015 after two weeks, finally agreed to go to rehab against my better judgment. I guess at the time ended up being the best decision of my life, but it was scary. Definitely a scary one. Went to Minnesota, which was cold in the winter and shitty. And I didn't know anyone. I was the only Canadian there, 23 years old in rehab. That was for kids and teenagers. And I was the oldest guy there. So it was at this rehab where I found out about recovery. I found out about recovery programs. I found out about, I learned about emotions and higher powers and spirituality. I learned about sobriety. Recovery really managed to get eight, seven, seven and a half years clean and sober by listening, following direction of the people at this facility and the groups that I joined. And essentially this is how I tell everybody how to get sober. Like you asked me how to get sober. It's you find somebody that has more sobriety time than you, you ask them what they did, and then you do it, especially when you don't want to do it. It's very simple. Recovery is so simple, following direction, doing things. You don't want to do, showing up instead of drinking, calling somebody every time you want to pick up a drink or a drug, you call somebody and recover. instead. It's not easy. It really is that simple. So I followed that direction. I bought my first home. I had a lot of good things happen to me in recovery that I couldn't have planned. I couldn't have materialized. I couldn't have imagined before I got sober. I bought my first home in recovery. I met my wife, the love of my life, my best friend today in recovery. I got promoted at work many times. I had the job of a lifetime and I was 23 years old managing a team of guys in a corporate setting. A lot of imposter syndrome happening at that time in my life, but amazing things can happen if you get sober and practice a recovery program. Truly amazing things. You always hear people say, I would have sold myself short if I lined up the things that would have happened to me. Material things are great, but there's a lot more intrinsic things, internal things that get repaired. Relationships are one of them. Feeling good about yourself, loving yourself, being able to be self-aware and aware of your emotions and your natures, your tendencies, your actions in the world and how they affect others. Having a recovery practice is truly a beautiful gift. I hope you get to experience it. So question that everybody always asks, how did you relapse after seven years? Well, I'll try and simplify it for you. I had secrets in my head. So I started taking, I started taking steroids. I heard from a buddy that the certain type of steroid was, I'm not sure what steroid it is, but I heard that it was a steroid that was beneficial for him. And something in my brain went off. Obviously there was an unchecked, unmet need of body dysmorphia involved there with that. And I had a backdoor, my addiction had a backdoor. So it started with steroids. I started, I got a prescription just to, so I could justify it with the doctor, started doing that. And then I'm buying all sorts of other steroids online. At this point, I'm, I continue to see these ads for Adderall and Vyvanse and mainly Adderall, but an idea pops in my mind. And again, this is what I urge everybody. When these ideas come up in your mind, make sure you tell somebody about it. Make sure you voice it. Idea comes up in my mind. Hey, maybe you had ADHD all this time and you could be doing better at work. There was no problems at work, by the way, everything was great. My life was amazing. Maybe you could be doing better, right? There's always more the disease of not enough addiction. What, what's more next, next, what, what can I do next? How can I fix me feel better? If one is great, a thousand must be amazing. So I went to a doctor, I managed to get, a ADHD script, started taking Vyvanse, loved it. Obviously it was like, I would say this to people, it was like cocaine in a pill for me. You know, if you struggle with substance abuse and you don't have ADHD, or if I just, just stay away from it, honestly, I don't have ADHD. I convinced myself that I did just so I could get high, essentially just avoid the pressure, the pain, avoid it all. If you do have ADHD and you take it, I know some people in recovery that do take ADHD medication. And they benefit from it. They feel great. They don't relapse. They don't abuse it. I wasn't one of those people. So if you're on the fence about that, just talk to people about it. Get honest. If you start keeping secrets, that's, what's going to take you down. Nothing can make me relapse externally. It's secrets. I keep in here, great ideas, plans that I'm not telling anybody. That's how I relapse every single time. So I started taking the steroids in 2022 by March of 23, the end of 23, I was engaged in March of 23. By the end of 2023, I was on the ADHD meds, started taking them for partying and staying up for multiple days at a time. I'm keeping secrets. I'm buying Adderall online now. Now I've managed to wiggle my way onto the dark web, which is a whole other podcast, a whole other story. That website is crazy. That website, that place is crazy. It's a whole, anyways, I'm shipping drugs from Montreal, mainly all over Canada, but Montreal specifically into Toronto. And now I'm getting too high. I'm getting a lot of anxiety constantly. I can't sleep at night because I'm taking, I don't know, 15 to 16 of those 30 milligram Adderall pills a day, probably more 20, 30 of them some days. And I'm completely dependent on it. I'm completely reliant on them. So I need something to come down. And I started reading on these forums at this point too. I'm also surfing lots of forums and Reddit forums and, you know, sketchy chat groups about how to do drugs safely and leave as a mess. Awful place to be. I'm doing ketamine at this point, buying it online. I'm doing a fake Xanax that I'm buying online. I'm buying Xanax from India and I start getting benzo blackouts. And if anyone's familiar with benzo blackouts, one of the worst, most dangerous state of minds to be in. I'm driving in blackouts. It's one of those drugs that makes you feel like you're not high while you're high, which is extremely dangerous. There's this false perception of sobriety, really. And that's one of the side effects of taking Xanax and benzodiazepines. So by May of 2024, I end up in my second rehab in Utah and don't go, again, don't really go willingly. Get an ultimatum from my wife, end up going. I come out of there. I do 30 days in there because I'm supposed to get married that year. End up showing up to the wedding, getting married. Don't drink on my wedding day, which is a miracle and a gift in of itself. But I'm not taking my recovery seriously at this point. I'm living in a sober house, but I'm not going to the meetings with the guys. I'm not hanging out with the guys. I'm focused on my marriage and my relationship, which to a lot of people might sound like the right thing to do at that point, right? But to us addicts, that is detrimental, deadly. If you put, if I put anything before my recovery, I am going to lose that thing. Full stop, period, end of sentence. Challenge me on that. I guarantee you, you will lose. If you are a true addict alcoholic, if you put anything before your recovery, you will lose that thing. Kids, wife, anything. Recovery has to come first. If you don't put your recovery first, you have nothing. You are nothing. You can't be of service. You can't be yourself. Anyways, I'm done with that rant. So by September of 2024, I'm kicked out of my house and I spend four months on a meth, Xanax, ketamine relapse, surfing hotels, surfing Airbnbs, just absolutely awful. Awful. Nobody's hanging out with me now. I'm going to bars by myself. I'm talking to random people. I'm taking a massive amounts of stimulants. I'm drinking every day. And I'm at this point, I have psychosis again. I'm going into psychosis again. And I'm taking videos of myself with a weapon in the shower, scared people are going to come into the room, Airbnb and attack me. I remember I was in one Airbnb and I stayed up for probably 24 hours straight hiding in the bathroom, just convinced that people were coming inside to kill me. Or steal my drugs or take my money or all of the above. Awful, awful place to be. This now leads me to the beautiful rock bottom. So I'm in my last hotel in downtown Toronto, and I have a load of drugs on me, but I start to run out of money. I'm trying to funnel funds around, move funds around. And at this point I can't afford even the, the deposit on the hotel, which is like $150. I can't even afford that at this point, because obviously, I don't need to tell you why I'm spending money on hotels and overextending myself on credit cards and can't even afford the deposit in hotels. So I'm at this point, it's like January. So around, it's actually probably around this time last year, actually. Yeah. The first, second week of January, I'm, you know, I just celebrated new year's by myself in 2024. I'm miserable. My wife won't take me home. She's not talking to me, but she's supporting me and ready when I'm ready to get help. She's there when I'm ready to get help. So just thinking about it brings back so many feelings and memories. That last phone call I remember I made to my wife and I told her I was actually done. I was finally done and ready to go to rehab again, dragging my clothes on the street of downtown Toronto. And I'm, I come home, I give her all my drugs. We throw them all out. And I spend that next four days, that weekend detoxing and getting ready to go to rehab. I go to rehab on Monday. And I remember, I'll never forget this. I walk in there and there's a guy there with 20 years sober. And he says, son, Dave, never forget him, son, welcome back to recovery. And I started crying, broke down. What a great experience coming back in, not the relapse and beforehand that was awful, but coming back into recovery has been a blessing, a gift. I mean, I, I need to be here because there's really no middle ground for me. I'm either in the streets using by myself, drinking by myself, or I am with you guys recovering and sharing my message of experience, strength, and hope, and hopefully helping one person. It was in this last rehab in January of last year, that I got the idea to do this podcast and to do the social media. And it's been amazing. Honestly, I've gotten so many messages from you guys. I appreciate it. So many people around the world in recovery, sharing their stories with me. It's beautiful. It's it truly is beautiful. And I started this initiative. I got the idea from a counselor in my rehab. He had a podcast and I got the idea from him, started it with a buddy of mine. Buddy of mine has since dropped off and gone on to do other things. And so I've carried, carried the message, carried the torch of doing this thing. I enjoy it. Like I said, I love hearing from you guys in the feedback and hearing the stories. I've heard some of the most fucked up triumphant struggles of people making it back. A guy messaged me last week and said, Hey, I'm going to jail next week because of my DUIs. I have so many DUIs and drinking and driving, but I, I'm celebrating four months sober. Like what? Insane. How does one, it's just, it blows my mind. And I know how, because it's better to stay sober than it is to drink through that. A lot of people in that situation would say, fuck it. I'm going to jail anyways. What's the point? When you get to the point of drinking and using like we do, there is no, there is no enjoyment in it. It's not fun anymore. Right? So I fully understand when people go through hard things in life and stay sober. It's not, there's nothing worth drinking over. If I have a problem and I pick up a drink to solve that problem. Now I have two problems. Then I go on a bender, get back into drugs and I have many more problems and I don't know what's going to happen. I'll be honest. I have a good idea, but I don't know exactly what's going to happen if I pick up a drink or a drug today. So that's a little snip, tick, dick, big bit. I don't even know what the fuck I'm saying. I can't talk. I'm tired today. I didn't really want to continue to do this after the camera died, but here we are. That's a little bit from me and my story. A lot more to come. I'm doing a lot more of the skits with my friend, Chloe. She's amazing. A lot more podcasts to come. I'm going to do some more with some more of my friends. I really enjoy those ones, but yeah, if you're new to recovery, stick around. And if you've been around a while, thank you for carrying the message and being here. I hope that I can help you because the most sober person is the one that got up earliest this morning. I'm sure you've heard that before. Some of you've heard that before. It doesn't matter how much time you have. It's the quality. Quality of sobriety is what matters today, not quantity. I've wavered in my life between having strong recovery and falling off the spiritual beam and having subpar recovery. The beautiful thing about this recovery journey is, the minute you fall out of those good habits, those good routines, talking to God, spirituality, whatever your routine looks like, it's so easy to jump right back on the horse. In my experience, it takes a bit longer to get off the spiritual beam completely than it does to jump back on and get back into it. And recovery, start fresh. Every day is a new day, right? Just for today. I'm going to practice my recovery program just for today. I'm not going to drink just for today. I'm not going to drink just for today. And if that's too stressful, do it for the next 15 minutes. I'm not going to drink for the next 15 minutes. I'm not going to do drugs for the next 15 minutes. Hopefully that was helpful. Like I said, my brain isn't really working right now. I kind of shut it off after I had these camera failures, but hopefully you know a little bit, know a little bit more about me now and a little bit about my story. I'm so grateful that you've tuned in today. I'm grateful that you followed and that you follow me on social media and Instagram, at recovering out loud pod. Reach out to me there. Send me a message. I answer every single one. And I can honestly say that I, even with the amount of followers now that I have and the amount of messages I get now, I still do go through it and answer them because I enjoy doing it. And I remember what it was like to be new and newly sober and to relapse after long-term recovery. And I also remember what it was like to be on top of the recovery mountain. So recovery is simple, not easy. Thanks for listening. Love you all. If nobody has told you this today, I love you.
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