Recovery Talk

Welcome to the Voices in Recovery podcast, recorded within Treaty 7, the traditional lands of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which includes Sixika, the Bukhani, and the Kainai First Nations. The Sittuna First Nation and the Stony Nakoda, which includes Ginny Geet, Bears Pa, and Good Stony First Nations. We acknowledge those with status, non-status, Inuit, and Mati that now call these lands their home. Please be aware that Voices in Recovery does discuss a variety of topics, some of which may not be suitable for those under 18. And if you'd like to support Voices in Recovery, please head over to our Patreon page where you can pledge your support and listen to all of our episodes. We hope you enjoyed today's episode as much as we did. We go by way. Okay. Cool. Did you think about any ideas? Yeah. We talked about what we said last time. So, last time we left it and said that we were going to be discussing grieving identities as we go through recovery. Grieving identities? Oh, I like it. So, we are smart. It's part of the recovery process is to grieve the identities, not only like all those ones throughout life, but it's like, you know, when I was a kid, you know this one, when you're a kid and you're in the church, you get like brainwashed, you're going to be a pastor, you're going to be this, you're going to be this. Yeah. Darcy, let's start with this conversation for sure. I like it because that's exactly what happens. Right? Yeah. Like, looking for you and I, we both, when we talk about grieving identities, both you and I maybe went into that space I did and then when we leave the church, for me, I left the church and I went back. I left the church and I went back and left the church and I went back and there was always this missing thing and it was because, and then once I grieved the identity that I thought I was supposed to have, I was like, oh, I guess who doesn't go back anymore, who doesn't chase it back and it was just like grieving that space. I was listening to one of your podcasts, I go through them and I think it was Christine and your podcast there. Oh, from way back. Yeah. And she's talking about grieving these identities that she has and in recovery, you know, when we talk about grieving identity, it's like we have to become, when they say you have to become somebody new, it's not. You just have to realize the pieces and parts of you that no longer serve you. And then if it's something that doesn't serve you, just going, it doesn't serve me anymore, doesn't always work. No, of course not. Yeah. So it's about grieving our identity in recovery. I like it. So, welcome back to another episode of voices in recovery and this is recovery talk with Steve. Oh my God. I don't want to butcher your last name. So I'm going to say Steve from Stonewall Recovery Center, because all of a sudden I was like Archimbo. Yeah, that's it. Oh, fuck, I got it. Nice. And yeah, welcome back, Matt. And we're talking about, as you heard probably in the beginning here, grieving the loss of identity and grieving identities, like how I thought about it when we first mentioned it, and you reminded me just like 10 seconds ago, that is what we were going to talk about. But like I think of the fact that when I first overed up, which was a while ago, I did not have any idea who I was. Like honestly, if I had to stop then, I would have been a prostitute who also worked in social services and also used drugs, right? So that would have been my identity really. Because at that point, I didn't realize, first of all, I wasn't willing to accept my queerness at that point. My queerness, even though I had come out and gone right back in the closet by the time I sobered up, my queerness was still something that I was looking at like a problem, right? That that was because people around me, and this isn't their fault. I'm not throwing stones at anyone. Just people around you and how they believe about what they believe about queerness, about queerness, so in my life, people never, like when I was growing up, they didn't look at me and go, you cannot be gay because what they did instead was they talked about gay people around the kids as being 100% sick. And so that was how it was done. And then gradually, of course, the individual internalizes those feelings as this is the way it is, right? So by the time I sobered up, the whole point is, by the time I sobered up, I was still, even though I knew it wasn't true in my brain, there was still a part of my DNA pushing me to try to cure the problem. Absolutely. Right? And that's the idea. It's like when you see a university going, we've identified something in the genome that is for, that might, that might, might signify queerness and I'm like, in some cases, looking for that is people saying that they're looking for a cure, right? It's like, we're going to cure it versus just going, okay, it's accepted and who cares? Well, and I think eventually we're going to get there, where it's like, because I think, did you have to, did you have to grieve the loss of a straight identity in your recovery process? 100%. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah. It was like, and it didn't happen right away, because it was, because when I sobered up, and this was just my experience, where I sobered up, it wasn't like open to queer people. Like, the meeting space that I went to, I'm not saying there weren't queer people there, I'm not at all. I'm saying that, if there were queer people there, we were hiding. In a lot of cases, most of the times, the room that I went to, the old, the original garnet block here, it was not a safe place for people to be openly anything, but whatever people thought was the common thing there, right? And because of bisexuality, it wasn't always safe, period, anywhere, because it was just like, messed up your mind or whatever it was, it was going through, and it was like, so I get that. Well, you must experience that with PAN, though. Yeah, PAN and bisexuality, oftentimes get confused. I originally identified in the bisexuality space, and for me, bisexuality is for everybody. It always was, so it didn't exclude anybody, and as nuance has come into place, I've always said, I'm by, I'm PAN, I'm just E for everybody, E for everyone, as in the video game, ratings, kind of go, but it was like, it was never, it was, it was, it was never that peace, and I didn't come out until God. I didn't acknowledge it for the very first time to somebody, and I was in my recovery by about 12 years, but I was also at that time going through, but I call my emotional relapse as, right? It was like, I wasn't using, I wasn't putting in, but I was darker and deeper in darkness than I'd ever been in my active addiction. Would that be like, and I've taken a page out of your book here, mister, would that, would that be, um, darkness are a part of the process, right, like a part of the process of recovering? And of course that means you're in the darkness, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're relapsing as my point. The reason I used to emotional relapse as my thing is because I was at certain points of my life in those, so, like, I started my healing journey over 25 years ago. I would sometimes almost say fuck it like I was in my active addiction. Gotcha. I didn't want to work anymore, and I had done enough, right? My laziness, I guess, came out, but it's not lazy. It was just, I didn't know what I didn't know. So in my healing journey, it was just like, I've done enough. Yeah. Oh, wait. Why am I still feeling depressed? Why am I still feeling this? Yeah. Oh, you can't tell me what to do because I would come and talk to you and I would listen to you. My whole time, my brain, this is the emotional relapse. I would listen to you speak, and the whole time I'm trying to discount what you're saying. Gotcha. Yeah. You could tell me that, you know, going and standing on my head and eating soda crackers would help me in my recovery. And I would say-- I'm sure someone has said that. Possibly. And I would take your out to lunch. Yeah. But it could be the cure. Yeah, yeah. And I would have discounted it. So my emotional relapse was more so in the thinking, how you, okay. How I came in, and also it was about not identifying my identities, right? So it was keeping parts of me still hidden. Yes. So you were trying to do that, too, when you first sobered up. Oh, God. I didn't do it. Yeah. I was 13 years into my recovery if we talked about queerness. And that's a whole story onto another podcast itself. Oh, goodness, no. Talking about queerness is what it's all about. Oh, nobody was like, they're coming out, the process of that. Yeah, yeah. It's a holy difference. It was like-- It's a whole story. It's like, the idea was, it's like, OK. So I had to identify all these different steves in my journey. And I had to decide whether or not-- by grieving them, I acknowledged their existence. By, I acknowledged their need in my life and that they played a part. It's like if I grieved when my father died, right? I love my father. I don't look at it. And I'm like, I had to come to reconcile a lot to things with that relationship, just like you. And I've talked to it with yours. But when I grieve that person, it doesn't mean that I'm sending them away. It's-- that I'm actually bringing them in, but they no longer, I no longer need to struggle with it. Like my religious identity. Yeah. I don't struggle with it because it doesn't, so not that it doesn't exist, it didn't exist. It no longer plays a part in my life as an identity. Yeah, precisely. And that's, that's an interesting concept because I think you're right. When you, when you acknowledge and grieve, you're starting to, because that's like grief in general is an expression of love. So when you can grieve for, for things that may be identities, person, whatever has happened and, and we've lost, it does bring it closer. And it makes it real. And, and also through the evaluation of those things, you start to realize that it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. That these things are building us, no, don't get me wrong. Obviously, all of us would like less stress, less trauma, less, all those things in our life. But that's a part of being human, unfortunately, that we are in this current situation. This is where we are. It doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to. I don't believe that. I believe there's lots of other ways to do these to live, to have society. But this is where we are. Peace, love, and consensual or useful. Yeah, that's right. And if anything, those are how we express queer joy as resistance, right? Or just joy as resistance. Yeah, joy is resistance. Recovery is resistance. Like there's so much that we were solved, but even, even that identity. Think about, let's just use alcohol for those out there that, you know, alcohol was never my, my concern. I grew up within the 12 steps literally. I was going to a meetings from the time I was three. So whenever I take a drink of alcohol, I'm like, is this the one that's going to, is this my magic one? Is this the one that's going to, so I never really had an issue, but I didn't see some of the other addictions that I was going to struggle with, even coming down the pipeline. Yeah. But if looking at alcohol, it's like when we drank or when people drank, and myself included in this, I saw myself in a certain way, an adult, this, this, life of the party. And it's like, I have to grieve that version. So I can accept this new version that is the life of the party. Yeah. Right. And it was like, I have one to the other, one to the other. And it's like, versus whereas I was holding on to some of my identities, almost like it was like, like you're not going to even let them adjust. Yeah. Didn't want them to adjust. Adjusting for me and an identity was fear. And I, I, I just, you're talking, man, and my brain's like, you know, when we're drinking or whatever, when we're practicing our, our addiction, it's, it's really hard to incorporate all the person, all of our selves, because we have this image that we want to portray, instead of allowing ourselves to be, right? And part of that allowing ourselves to be is to grieve, to loss of identities, right? Like, I'm struggling. And I'll just be honest, I struggle with the identity of rage. Because when I was young, that was part of my identity. And I'm, I'm struggling with it again, because I don't know, like, I'm at that place where it's like, I'm trying to honor it, like honor the rage, because one of the things I'm learning is that we all have a lot of reasons to be angry in this society. Like, we've been told not to be. We've been told how to ignore being angry, and that we're supposed to be happy. And anger is a beautiful, lovely emotion. Yeah, I got to tell you it really is, because it's part of grief. So when we ignore anger, rage is what comes out. 100% rage, if you, if I can just interject one thing for me, in my opinion, rage is a survival identity. 100% it is, right? It's when we ignore, so it comes out to protect us. Oh, yeah, because we've ignored our anger for so long, we've allowed our boundaries to be fractured, whatever. And people have walked all over us and told us who we can't be, who we can be. And we wonder why there's rage issues in this world. I know, right? Because then rage comes out and says, no, we're going to be whatever we are. And I exist. And I'm going to punch you in the throat. But then imagine, so you imagine that you have that, that rage, and then you push it down. Like, and I, I can see this for myself. This is why I've mentioned it, right? Like, because I don't want to talk about other people. I just want to, like, we're talking about recovery. And this is part of our recovery is becoming whole with these identities. And part of the fact is that, like, I'm trying to grieve and, and be more accepting of the rage, because I recognize there's a lot of reasons for it. And that it didn't come by accident. And that, you know, but I do, I did also, I was talking to a colleague. And I told her they asked about anger and stuff like that. And I said, well, anger is a gift. The trouble is, is that we have not been taught how to use the gift, right? I was taught. And then months before others, I was taught not to express anger. That if you're angry, like, you need to be a man, and you need to get over it. And you need, and so of course, that is what I tried to do. But the anger and the rage would come out at times when there was absolutely no fucking reason for it. Because why do you think that happens? Because it's push fucking down. And that push down, that push down of anger is systemic in multiple ways. Like I was talking with somebody the other day. And I'm like, I am allowed to be angry. And they went, absolutely, you are. But you know, when you get angry, I get afraid. So with there was, so their response was fear based because what they grew up in. Because only the only rage, anger and rage were the same thing. So their response to me and then my brain goes, see, you can't express your anger. You know, that wasn't the truth. Yeah. But we could talk about it now. There's 10, 15 years ago. I'd be like, I'm not allowed to express it. See, everybody's right. And then I would stuff it back in. Yeah. And that's the opposite of what we're trying to do. We're now what we're trying to do is we're trying to let it out in respectful, responsible ways as best we can. And when I say as best we can, I mean it because we're humans. And sometimes we're going to do things that are going to be counterintuitive to where we're trying to get. Right. So like, even though I don't ever want to scream at someone, I probably will. Like not on purpose. But if they, if I get angry and the right side, we are both very large. Yes. Men. Yes. We don't even have to scream to cause fear. People to have fear. Yeah. And that's something that you and I talk about all the time is being aware of our physical presence. 100%. Which I, and I'll be honest with you since my conversation was it a week ago. I can't remember when it was, but when I sat down with Bronwyn and we talked about dysmorphia. Like, you see, I have an inability to see myself as I am. I just I have. It has always been a part of my trouble. Like even when I was younger and I was like fit and I was in really good shape and people complimented me on my body all the time. I did not see what they saw. I saw me as I was at the 10 year old. A chubby kid. I saw myself as I was as a chubby adult. I see, you know what I mean? Like I see all these things, but I don't see me. Yeah. And it was funny because unless you're hanging around queer people and most likely, um, trans folks because trans folks, I've experienced are the folks who are most willing to talk about the dysmorphia. That's experienced. Not just gender, but like, um, body dysmorphia. Um, all kinds of things happen when we so press who we are, right? And when, and that includes our anger. Yeah. Because our anger is a part of us. It's not our whole, but it's a part of it. Like this is where I say like when people go, oh, I really, I relapsed. I'm like, okay, but what does that mean? Yeah. Like I understand this is the terminology we use. And I'm not arguing with that. But like, what does that really mean? Because I've never experienced anyone who keeps going to have stopped. Yeah. And a relapse into me indicates a stop where you. Elapse is such an old. Yeah. I'm thinking maybe it's just outdated. It's an outdated language in so many ways. Unless you're working from operating from an abstinence only thing, I guess. When I use the emotional relapse in my thing, I don't use like for me, it was for the nuance of the language today. Yeah. But when I look at it, it's like, when I started getting in my own way, I'm like, it's, it's so nuanced. Yes. That yeah, it's a word that kind of sums it up. That's why it's done while we use the word return to use. Yeah. So when we're talking about emotionals, and we're talking about that stuff, it's like, okay, so I haven't went out to the audience if you can come up with something, leave it in the comments. For sure. So instead of saying emotional relapse, what would you use? Like what would be a nuanced piece of language that you would use that keeps you connected to your recovery because it's not like you stop. No, it actually made me stronger, it made me better. That was my point, right? Was what you learned there. Like don't get me wrong. You were in the darkness. It was probably awful because I've been there. Oh, obviously. And but the truth is you didn't stop. Method date and time. Yeah, right. For those of you who don't understand what I'm talking about, you'll understand. I lived with it for like 20 years and only time that I actually had a method deep in time picked out. - Yeah. - And I-- And that to me, that's a part of recovery, right, because if, I've been, and I don't mean to say, and I'm not suggesting that everybody gets suicidal in recovery, not at all. But I know I have. I'm letting them get to what word I was using. Yeah, I know I have been more than once. And so like, I just assume, and this is probably a bad assumption, but I assume most people struggle with it at one point or another, whether they're in recovery or not. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's like, suicidal ideation is kind of like masturbation. Everybody does it. Nobody talks about it. Yeah. And I think like, probably along like a, I'm going to say a continuum, right? There's probably a continuum of it, like everything else. There's, it's very rare that it's just one way or another, right? Go ahead. Were you, were you like looking at me holding my arm? No, I was just like, it's like it's this continuum. Sometimes you're just edging and sometimes that's right. Oh fuck. Not making light of suicide in any way, but we have to have the humor in this space because you and I have both lived with that idea. Yeah, and we've, and I've survived. And you've survived it, right? So, and, and you may have too, like at one point or another. Oh, no, I just, I survived it because I survived it. Yeah, it was like, I had one time in my life and it was the thing where I had a date, a time in a space. And I made one more phone call. And that person booked an appointment for me. Yeah. And because I had this huge neurosis about missing an appointment, it was after my date and time. So, I readjusted my date and time and I did that for six months. Well, I saw this person every time I'd see them, I'd readjust to the next time. And then one day I just stopped readjusting and the date and time went away. And, and this is why we talk about it, right? Is so that we can get to the, what happened? Like, how did we, how did we move past that or through it? Yeah. And at no point in time, or we make a light of it, any humor I have about it is because I have a great deal of pain about it. Not just for myself, but for friends who have successfully taken their lives. Yeah. And, but it's an, it's part of recovery for many of us. And I think it's important to talk about because there were times where I wanted to take my life simply because I couldn't grasp actualizing my identity. But see that person who wants to take that because it couldn't grasp it is also somebody we have to grieve. Yes. I'm so grateful that they journeyed with me. But now it's gone. And then what about the reverse grief that we talk about and what I look at reverse grief is like your kid and you want to be an artist. And everything of you about his art and you give up that identity. Yeah. Only to rediscover it. And then you sit back and you look back at your life and go, oh my god, I've given up so much time. But you have to grieve the loss of that time to bring that identity back into its full extent. It's not saying like, oh, but it's like all those different things that require authentic grief. Yeah. And, and there was a book I read called Healing Through the Dark Emotions by Dr. Mary Greenspan. And she talks about it. She talks it. That's the whole point of the book is grief. And realizing what it looks like and how we show up. Right? How do we show up for it? You know, I have a very different view on death than most people I've ever met. Yeah. I believe and I have a tattoo that says like, once we are born, we never die. My father left the physical earth in 1995. I remember correctly 1995. I talked to him at least on a very least a minimum of once a month when I have a conversation. Slippery to the same as what we did. His energy, he's still here. So I don't grieve in the same way when it comes to a physical death of somebody in the same way that I grieved for my identities. Right? Oh, I think it's allowed to be, yeah, it's going to be different. It's all different for everybody. Yeah. And when we talk about grieving identities or grieving that thing in this context, you get the beautiful thing to the listeners is you get to define how to do that. And you get to experience it in your way, you know, which is, to me, that's one thing, you know, and dealing, learning to deal with the physical loss of people and things, but mostly people because I don't, I've grieved loss of like things, but most of so I've grieved what was wrapped up in those things, not the thing itself, right? When it comes to actual stuff, when it comes to people, that's kind of where the last probably 20 years where I really had to adjust my perspective on it, based on the reality of what I see when people are grieving, not just myself, but other humans, because we've talked about it before, like grief is a constant in human existence. So if you're alive, you're grieving something. And in these days, probably grieving a lot, potentially, you know, and not even about your own identity. But like I know that for me, my recovery always starts here, right? Like in where what can I do? You know, how can I look at this in a way that is realistic? Yeah. And not polianny, polianny, like, you know, polianna, polianna, polianna, thank you, polianny, polianna. That's a polie person about what, what polie? And then it's polianny. That's what I looked right at you. I know, what was the fucking name? Which, which, which polian might try to remember now? I'm not thinking of like a polycube or a polycule. That was called? Yeah, polycule. But that, that, that, that ability to let grief do what it needs to do, right? And we're all scared of it. There's times where it's overwhelming. And of course, that's scary. Yeah, overwhelming emotions are very scary. But being able to allow it to, this has been something with my dad since my dad passed away. Yeah. Was I, at first I thought, okay, it's going to come, it's going to go, but then eventually it's going to go, right? And because like, yeah, most things, that's what happens. The truth of the matter is though, I'm thinking of 100 years, not a year, right? And yeah, it has changed in three years, obviously. And it's changed a great deal. And I think that's where it's applicable to recovery. Because if you spend three years in recovery of any kind, at the end of that three years, you're going to look at things differently. 100% and that's the whole point, right? If I still looked at things through the eyes of a 12-year-old, I can still have the fun of a 12-year-old. But if I looked at things through the eyes of a 12-year-old, like you say, that three years is a big deal, it's a massive difference. Nobody wanted to hang around 12-year-old me. I was a little bit of a shit to sterber. Or whatever. And it was like, and I didn't like my teenage years anyway. So it doesn't really matter. But the side of it is, it's like, that's the grief though. That's the grief of, even when you look at losing somebody, you know, you're a son. Yeah. The grief of, that's part of the identity we're grieving, because we tack our whole being on something else. And when we talk about recovery, we talk about healing, we talk about addiction. For me, I'm grieving all those, like I was grieving the loss of my father, because I identified with them. Yeah, same. Yeah. I mean, I, for so long, I identified with a lot of how my dad felt and thought. I'm going back to listening to all your podcasts. Yeah. And you want to talk about a transformation. Right. And if you ask different people, they'll tell you different things about that transformation. Absolutely. And the beautiful thing about grief or the change is nobody gets to dictate what that looks like for you or for me. And, you know, nobody gets to do that. Nobody is, oh, you've grieved enough. Go fuck yourself. Yeah. It should be over by now. Yeah. I mean, what can't you just move on? And I love that when people talk about like, can't you just get over it? And I'm like, you've heard of a thing called Remembrance Day, right? Yeah. Yeah. We haven't gotten over that yet. We don't get over anything. We don't get over things that we're not supposed to. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. We are not supposed to get over them. We are, we're supposed to engage with them. Yes. Let them be a part of us and allow it to allow ourselves to be dead stated sometimes by it. Because that's part of the deal of loving someone. Yeah. And of loving things. Anyway, they bid back to the identity and over the process of, so I'll be 22 years sober in in August. Congratulations. Thank you. And from, from, from that, it's this 22 years. My whole point of that is the 22 years is what it's taken me to get here. I couldn't have been here five years in, you know, because I had to go through the process and do I, do I ever look back and go, shit, I wish I could to skip that. Yeah. Fuck an A, I do. Yeah, especially stuff in recovery. It's actually worse than recovery because prior to that, I could mimic, right? I could drink myself away to a bulimia and then not remember. I have no fucking idea half the time what I do. But in recovery, I have to remember fucking everything. And well, that's not really my problem anymore, but you and I have taken multiple hits to the head. That's gonna be, yeah, and those things do play a role. But even not, that's an interesting, I'm glad you brought it up because physical things that we will lose. Part of it is our abilities to do stuff. And I'm experiencing that. I've experienced it quite, quite regularity for the last few years since I broke my back. That it's just regularly happening now that you just have to make adjustments to life. And but see, that's part of, that's what recovery is. Yeah. When I think about it, if I even when I go back, even when I was stuck in dogma about stuff, the essence was still the same, right? The essence was it's to be free. And see, that's where I took all that information from the dogma that I was part of and said, okay, so if I really look at this the way people are talking about it, not the way people act, but the way people talk. I'm supposed to move on because in no place, as it say, you are supposed to stagnate in a cesspool on your own filth, right? And that's literally how I started to feel having to share my fucking story every day in the same format, every day. And it just became so monotonous and tedious and counterintuitive because it didn't allow our identities to change. Not in the way that we need it. Somebody else can go there. Yep. And they're like and get everything they need. I'm perfect. 100%. Wasn't for me. Yeah. And that's just for you. That's not how, because for me, when people say they want it to be free, and I said I want it to be free, I meant it. I meant free from all dogma. I didn't mean free just from the church. I meant free from all this stuff where people gather and start judging other people to get them to come on board. And that was just another church. And once I saw that, that I had no choice. I had to leave. But that's still, as you and I have talked about, we had to grieve that too. And I still have to. Because what I'm grieving is lots of things. I'm much as grieving the loss of a program. Because frankly, I don't even know how much I used the program the last 10 years of it. But like grieving the loss of safe fellowship. Because that was always a draw for me. Because I am anti-social. Like I am at times. I'd rather be alone. And being in groups is really hard for me. So once I saw that it was a place where we go to talk about being better, but not actual get better, right? For some of us. And that was my experience. Like I thought I was getting better. I thought for sure my heart was changing and all these things. But the reality was I couldn't get better in that environment anymore. You know, that environment was meant to get me sober. Yeah. It wasn't meant to heal me. I couldn't get better either. Yeah. Right. And we both experienced similar things. Where we experienced this shift. And because, I mean, you asked me yesterday what we were working about. Where did why freedom's path for recovery society? Why do we have to do that bug? That's too. Did you? Yeah. And so like the idea was freedom. Yeah. It was to be free. Yeah. It was something. And don't get me wrong. We created even in the beginning. We had our own little bit of dogma, right? But that was because we were coming from a dogmatic place. So even though we were making ourselves more free than that. Yeah. We still had lingering dogma coming with us. And but I guess like no matter what, we all come from a place of of where we think things are correct, right? So that's kind of dogmatic until we look outside of that, right? It's only correct if it's correct for the person. Otherwise, it's just like. Yeah. I like when we look at the Stonewall recovery program, this has been morphed three or four times. So we've only been up and running for four years basically. And every time somebody makes a suggestion to make a better, we incorporate it. Yeah. It's like, but it's like, if it doesn't work for somebody, I had a conversation with somebody today. It's like, you don't have to do it. Yeah. And you should do whatever it is you want to do. Because there's options. And all we're going to do is create a community that says you can do whatever you want to do. That's right. And if you, if it's working for you, great. If it's not, you want to do something different. You need somebody to walk with you while you try to figure out that path. Great. But that's the, that's those, that's those things of what of our identity that we were forced to give up. The fact that we are actually smart, autonomous beings. Well, and the truth is we are those things. We are like, and everyone I've met in recovery are those things. And because they've survived, they've made it. And that gives you, in my mind, it gives you a little bit of enough emotional intelligence that you can grasp what's coming next for you. Whatever that might be. Right. Like because in my way, it doesn't have to be and shouldn't be everyone's way. Because that was part of why we did for you. It's about was to get it away from dogma. And then gradually, I got us away from dogma. All the dogma. Right. And now we're developing because see, I do private people like structure. They do. And so sometimes we'll do a group or we'll do counseling and it'll be 12 step base because that's what people want. And I understand the steps enough that I can help people with it. And you see, the thing is, I would never turn someone away if they want to really work. Right. If they're, if they're looking to harm people, I might turn them away. And people might be like, well, how would that look like? That looks like someone trying to get into a group of other people and infect them. When they're trying to do something that they've agreed to do. Right. So anyway, I just think like everyone has the option to do whatever they need to do. There's lots of things that we can do for it. And we're not stuck. If we believe there's things that we need, I believe in you. If you think you need something, you might need it. Yeah. Right. But even that, like we've been talking, we're talking about grief and recovery and that grieving of those identities. I mean, and grieving the loss of it, right? Like the loss of dogma, grieving the loss and grieving the loss of letting it go without, you know what I mean? It's like, it's like I said about the artist identity. There's a whole list of them. I'm thinking about it as like, we were told that we weren't smart. Yeah. And we carried that identity that we are dumb people. We can't make decisions for ourselves. If only Stephen would apply himself a little more in school, like everything was put on us, right? And everything was a label. Everything was labeled. I mean, not once did it. And this isn't the facilitator, the teachers or anybody. I'm not blaming them. They did what they knew and what they were trained to do. System is fucked. The system was screwed. Yeah. I mean, I went from 18 schools in 13 years. Do you think I was focused on academics? Or do you think I was focused on staying alive? So Steve was the problem. Not one teacher went, you know, really, this is Steve's third grade eight school. Yeah. We wonder why Steve isn't doing well in school, but no, it was Steve's needs to apply himself more. Yeah. It's Steve just did this more. So Steve got the intention that he was stupid. So much so that I would try to reinforce it with beliefs. And then when I finally realized I had to grieve that I had kept smart Steve from showing up. Dude, I feel that man. Yeah. It's like, I felt dumb. I felt really dumb to my life. Yeah. And we were told that we were dumb. Yeah. And then when we get into addiction. Oh hell. Yeah. You hear it today. You listen, listen to the language. They can't be trusted. Look what they're doing with their life. Yeah. Huh. So everybody looks at it and goes and sees this person who's on house and goes, the language is shame based and it's their fault. So when they get in there, their body inside, when they're coming to recovery, one of the things is their body starts to scream. I am not that person, but we keep putting them in that box. Yeah. And then we go, oh, look at that. You return to use. See, I told you it was just couldn't get it. You just couldn't get it. Whatever it was, but what we didn't see was the fact is that we were taking that box. We were chasing them with it. Oh yeah. And then when we got them, we put them back in the box and slammed it shut and went and said, stay in there. It's your fault. You can't obviously make a decision. Fuck. And then we label like I've got so many people that have been labeled ODD. Yeah, oppositional. So for that, for those that don't know, oppositional defiance disorder, which means basically you tell them what to do. They're going to do the exact opposite. But there's reasons. Yeah. It's not like it's out of the blue. And when they're in there, and you know what the funny thing is, is when you give them the choice about how they're going to live their life and not choosing, I'm going to choose this or this, but saying, "Hey, how are you liking it so far away?" way. How do you like this? What do you like this? Do you think you want to be recovered? Yeah, I don't like drinking anymore. Okay, great. What does that look like for you? And start creating those choices. Guess who's no longer oppositional? Yeah. Guess who's no longer defiant? Well, and it's like shocking. Some of those labels though, and this we've talked about this before, in terms of doing like case notes and file notes or patient notes, whatever it may be in your walk of life. Please remember that some of those labels, especially if it's racialized humans, some of those labels will stick with them their whole existence, and it will lead to more internal, like, more violence within the medical system. And that violence looks like not getting the help they need because of oppositional defiance disorder being on their file. Or in my case, which is something that happens regularly for folks with BPD, it's similar. Yeah. They won't work with you because BPD is incurable. I worked in the, God damn cycle. I worked in the field of psychology, and one of the unspoken things is if somebody came in with a diagnosis of BPD, therapist would say, oh, I'm all full up and not taking any new clients. Yes. I'll have to send you over here, right? It was like, it was this thing because instead of doing and putting in some work, because it's to be honest, BPD is people who have and struggle with BPD require nuance. Oh, it's a fucking thing, Matt. But it requires nuance. It requires you to sit there and go, okay, you know, there's like, how do I need to show up for you? Well, and I'll be honest, like, it's been, it's exhausting trying to simply manage, because I've been diagnosed with BPD. Okay. And so trying to manage just the day-to-day stuff sometimes is incredibly exhausting. Like, trying not to, for example, you and I have talked about this before because I have, like my thinking, part of my, my brain, call it what you will, is to absolutely when things are good, they're incredibly good, and when they're bad, they're incredibly bad, right? Like, and there's nothing I can do about it. So when people are like, oh, well, you could just look at it differently. I'm like, yeah, I can, once I get there, once I get there, but it's not, the journey is not how you think it is. No. It's not from thought to there. Like, it's from thought to tearing myself apart, trying to convince myself that I either need to do something or not do it, right? And it's tearing myself apart. Not overthinking. So when there's folks out there right now, because I know this happens, people do this. I want to do this sometimes when people are talking about things that are hard. I want to say things like, oh, well, we all do that. This is part of our troubles. Okay. Is that I understand we all have struggles. We are humans, okay? But we don't all struggle to the same extent as others in certain ways. You know, and so when when you are a neuronormative human, it is wonderful that you are. I think it's amazing if you're neuronormative. I think it's amazing. I just imagining it's amazing. Yeah, okay. Because I can't say for sure. But think about it from that perspective that if you're able to operate in a way that's different from how I operate, say, then maybe just accept that as a gift instead of saying I should be able to operate that way too. Because at this stage of my life, folks, it may not be possible. And so the ableism that goes into some of this stuff and I have friends who we talk about these things. You like talking about it all the time? Yeah, because it's part of reality is that when folks have struggle with certain things, the consensus of most neuronormative folks is to calm it down and make sure everybody's happy, okay? But that's not how it works for us. It's not how it works for some of us. It's not how it works for me. So, greeting that, talking about grief and recovery, let's just go right into it because when I got diagnosed with bipolar and BPD, it was over the course of like six years, right? And I waited in recovery. I was one of these guys, and I literally said this to my doctor, I am not ready for that. Nope. Because I had been drinking and using morphine for a long time. I'm pretty fucked up. And so I needed to, this was my experience and I'm not telling anyone to do this because if you sober up and you need meds and you need to get stuff work right away, you do that shit. Because part of why I waited was because I was also a thickheaded asshole, like a thickheaded Irishman, knuckle drag and Irishman, who was like, I don't need medication, I don't need, I don't need. And then gradually, I realized I did. And that's my experience. That's not going to be everybody's. And that was another thing that I just experienced that in my brain, left over from being a part of the 12 steps, always saying, that's my experience, not everyone's, obviously. It's an obvious thing that is just my experience. But if I had denied myself, like literally, this was where I was at, guys, when I folks, when I finally went to my doctor and said, I need mental health, mental health, or I am going to die where my executor is. So finally, my doctor was probably concerned for a long time. But he said, okay, we're going to take care of this. We're going to deal with this. But I knew at that point, so I was convinced that I had something going on in my brain, and I was right. And so we figured it out, we did the things, and we're now doing more things. Because as Steve mentioned, getting many concussions in your life can lead to all kinds of things happening when you're all kind. So anyway, yeah, I don't know where, I got off on that because of grieving the fact that I had a mental illness. And in my life, growing up, having a mental illness was an absolute catastrophe. Absolutely. Anyone that I learned about as a kid, that had a mental illness was incredibly sick and possible to take care, going to have a shitty life, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the list goes on of all the ableist things that were put on. Put into the asylum, put into the incarceration. You're going to have to live in a fucking home, blah, blah, blah. And you know what, if I stick around long enough, I probably will have to go into a home. We got you. Yeah. And I know I've got people in my life that care enough about where I'm at, and just enough to love me where I'm at, right? Because I lived a life where I tried to pretend that I didn't have things going on, and it almost killed me many times. That's the whole point of this. That grief. We deny it. We don't deny those identities. We turn around. We don't look at them. We don't incorporate the identities that we sent away. Because when we were a kid or when we were in our addiction, we had to push maybe that soft loving identity had to be pushed away while we were in addiction. Surviving for survival. And we had to pick on that hard identity. We had to become the enforcer. We had to become that tough person. And then we have to grieve the fact that that wasn't who we wanted to be. God's so much not. You know what I mean? And that love and that care and being the enforcer was tearing us apart. And Steve, I'm glad you mentioned that because that's one of the hardest things I deal with today still is that reconciling that. I've never wanted to hurt nobody. No, but the enforcer had to be celebrated because the enforcer came along to carry us. Well, we didn't know how to carry ourselves. Yeah, and I learned through the years. This wasn't no one else is responsible for it, but I learned through the years by engagement with other humans that that was how people valued me. You know, as a project type. And 100%. And so of course that became a part of my identity was to be this person where I still wrestle with a man like I never want to hit another person. But it doesn't mean I don't think about hitting people. And because it's part of that like brain now, it's like, well, that was introduced to me as a young person as a solution. And now my old brain is like, K, fair. It was taught to us as a solution, but you also experienced many years where you were engaging in violence where you were sad. And which probably did not help your bipolar, right? By acting out of context. And what we call an congruence, right? When, and I learned all about this obviously, but I didn't apply it to myself till I got sober. What's the big deal? You don't need to be congruent. But you do. Like you're, you're a human's actions, ideas, beliefs. If they don't match, eventually it causes the human stress, right? And that's just a psychological. It's a tear. Yeah. It creates all kinds of riffs inside. And that's really what we're talking about. Is that we had all these created riffs because we were trying to be just one thing. Yeah. Instead of allowing ourselves to be all the things. Yep. And an identity needs to to grieve it. We need to grieve the loss of it and bring it home. Or we need to grieve it and let it go. And let it go. And if it goes, it goes. It goes, it goes. Like I don't need to be an enforcer. No, I don't need to be that. So that identity. Yeah. I said, thank you for showing up. I know that we caused harm in that state. But then I just probably said, I don't need you anymore. I know this. right? That Christian identity. I don't need you anymore. I am a good person and I don't require this thing to tell me that I'm a good person. I'm a good person and I always thought I had to be in this to be a good person. So I had to grieve that loss. I have these different things. Well I'm still grieving that. Absolutely. I don't think I'm a good person anymore. You're an amazing human. Well and I don't say that just because I know what you know what I mean. I don't think I'm just sort of a bad person either. So I don't want people to get out there and be thinking out. But I just don't think I'm the good person in the sense that I used to think I was a good person. We'll just call it that. Absolutely. I know what being a good person means to me is something so much different than 100%. My person that I was taught as a child is not the good person I am today. No. That person that I was taught as a child was a polite person. Not a good person. Exactly. There was a nice was polite. Look at that identity. So we're talking about it. It was also a fucking liar. We were taught to do that too. Oh yeah. We were taught to lie because lying was survival. Right. That's like okay. You wanted me to like in my recovery or in my life, the one, the word, you know how everybody has those magic words. I'd be guessing alcoholic or everybody has that magic liquor that they can never even smell because it makes them feel nauseous. Yeah. Well, there used to be a word. Yeah, I agree. My mind's beat stops. Beat stops was mine. But the thing is is you call me a liar. I would lose it for two reasons. One, being a liar and growing up in my household was the worst thing ever. Even though we were taught to lie. Yeah. And the second reason is you were right. Now that I don't lie and it's like I make conscious efforts not to lie in my life, conscious efforts. Somebody called me a liar. I'm like, okay, let's talk. I don't longer lose my nut anymore. Because you know things happen because that's no longer tied to my identity. Yeah. You're not a liar. No, if like if something, if there's a misunderstanding, that's most likely what it is. In lots of cases. Yeah. And if I lie, because I lied, I didn't lie because I was a liar, I lied for survival. Yeah. Me too. I lied so that you wouldn't reject me. I made it up in my head. The story was that if I told David this truth, David was going to go, fuck you. See you later. We're done being friends. Well, you can see. And that was just tragic for me. And I believe that because that's the reality of why we would start lying. 100%. Why would I, all of a sudden, lose a bunch of friends in four years? It's because I stopped lying about who I was. It had nothing to do with them, right? But they all took a personally. And it was all about me trying to take accountability for my own life. And of course, sometimes you're going to say things about stuff and people are going to take it personally. However, there were some experiences that I had over the last few four years of grieving this new and old, leaving and new starting. And there were times where I was just like, this is the weirdest thing. It makes sense because like all of a sudden, I feel like I'm becoming whole. But as I'm becoming whole, people that have been in my life are leaving. And so then I start to equate it and I realize, geez, this is why I didn't do it sooner. Like I knew I knew my environment well enough because we do. We figure out our environments. And we just, we internally have a clock system that says, okay, now is not the time. Like when I first came out, I was fucking 23. I went back in after a year because I was terrified because of the community around me was not safe. Now, did people outwardly say, you fucking whatever? No, but they did become standoffish. They did start talking to me differently. Yes, you know, those things they did when I was around and they didn't know I was around. And they were talking about queer people. They never realized that I was listening because they weren't talking directly to me. Not thinking that I might take that personally. Much like, which is weird because like when I talk about cops and I talked about them for years. But when I talked about them in the beginning of this journey of mine, a lot of four years ago. I didn't really, I wasn't talking about individual people. Like there was a couple of them that I thought would never take it personally. But they absolutely did. And I was like, that's fucking weird. Like why would a non-rapey cop take it personally when I call some of the men cops rapists? Like why would that upset you? And then I thought, oh, because of your friends. And it's also, it's also their identity. Yeah, and not the rapey part. No, no, the cop. This is why we say it's all cops until it's no fucking cops. All men until it's no men until cops, no cops. Yeah, we can talk about it in that way, but it's those are the identities. Yeah. In Western culture, when you go to say somebody and you say, what do you do? They tell you their identity is their job. Yeah. I'm a cop. I'm a paramedic. I'm a therapist. I'm this. Well, if they ask you who you are, but I'm a cop. I'm a cop. Like all that stuff, but that's our identities. Yeah. And when, think about when I was like when I was in my space and I would be my most resistant, you were attacking and I'm putting it in quotation marks and identity. Yeah. And you know, when somebody said, you know, it's like, that's racist. Yeah. I never wanted to consider myself to be racist. And still I started looking at I was raised in racism. I was raised in a society that built around racism, especially to the indigenous folk. Right? So when I started to decompress and deconstruct and look at what I was, guess what? I was a racist. Well, you were racist. You behaved racist. Yes. Thank you for that. And I'm not suggesting you weren't a racist. I'm just saying what? But if I was dealing with somebody in the moment who was indigenous, and 20 integral biases would have come out. They would have come out. And that person, I would have been acting in a way that was racist towards that person because of the bias of the way I was raised. Today, the unspeaking, the doing the different things. But those are the identities. Like for healing and for recovery, a lot of people need to understand their identities. One of the exercises that we do at Stonewall is I get people to write down everyone for their identities. And they get to start. And if they, you know, I'm a child. I'm a son. I'm a daughter. You know, I am this. I am this. I am this. I am this. I am this. I am this. And they go true. And then we start to say, how do they interact with each other? Like because one of the things in recovery, the problem that I find within the recovery community is they say your recovery must come first. If you put anything before your recovery, you'll lose both. That's the analogy. Well, no, my recovery, my healing Steve has to learn to fix my work Steve has to learn to fix my partner Steve has to learn to fix this fit all these different things. And how do they mesh? Not how does one lead the other? That's been my problem the whole life. Because that's the binary man. That's right. That comes first and then the next and then the next. But how do they interact? Because the truth is they're happening all at once. 100%. Yeah. So even though I'm trying to force them into a space. And then when I started to realize that, hey, you know what? They're all there simultaneously. And if I put one before the other, the others get rebellious. Yeah. So how do I? And the only way I can keep the rebellious ones down if I put one before the other is by squashing them with violence. Squashing my own identities with violence versus just going, okay, they're all here. They're all here. How are you all going to get along? Yeah. You know, there's the gardener Steve. Like I always thought I'd myself because my dad was a gardener and he grew amazing tomatoes. I can't grow tomatoes were shit. But I always wanted that identity. But I had to realize that it's not one that's there. It doesn't come out and play anymore because really I freaking don't want to do it. But that's that piece is like I didn't need it. So it doesn't need to mesh. Some of those things and that's why I say with people, one of your recovery things is if you're willing to do it. I challenge people to write down every single identity that they can figure out they have and then try it again and then just keep the list running. And when you think of something new, oh, wait, there's a new one. Yeah. And be able, if you can, if you're able to just accept it as, as is, the bet all the better. And if it takes time to process, that's all the better to you. 100%. Yeah. And when I said earlier about not being racist, I meant like not being a, you don't have to be a, have been a skinhead to then learned. That's what I was getting at. Yeah, I get it. And I appreciated the clear for you. Yeah, because I know that. But I have been racist in my life, 100%. Because I had so many biases that I didn't even know were biases. At one point, I actually thought that was, like, information. And that's the ignorance at work, right, when I was young. That's all I was doing. It was separating the two because there's a huge difference, because even though I was young and I acted in racist ways, I also told the Aryan nations in California to go fuck themselves. I was being recruited. Yes. So it was like, I didn't even know what I didn't know. I didn't know what I didn't know. And that's the point. And now I know. Yeah, we do better. That's right. And that's the whole point. And that's the reason I mentioned it too, is because I want folks to know there's a continuum of that as well. 100%. So if you're out there and you happen to be, have a complexion like mine or Steve's, it's okay to say, okay, maybe I have been racist, but I'm not a racist, right? You may have been. Maybe you still have some biases, but that still doesn't put you over here with the Aryan nations. Okay. There's a whole, we have to look at things with nuance. 100%. And I get it. This is a complicated, this is an issue that nobody really wants to talk about is, if you look like me, because we would like it to go away. And this has been my experience through the years of working with other humans, and some that look like me really don't like this conversation, and because it makes us uncomfortable. And you're right. It does. Absolutely does, but it should. It's supposed to make us uncomfortable because it hasn't been safe or fair for so many humans for so long. Growth doesn't come from being comfortable. No. And just because you might be feeling some pain about some of these things, that's not a bad thing. You don't have to live there though, right? You don't have to live in it. But that's another identity. Those biases are things that we have to, if we truly want to heal and be in recovery, you know, I listen to a lot of the people in your podcast because I go through it. I like to listen to, and I listen to a lot of recovery. One of the things that I see that I hear, not that is being picked up on, but I hear them talk about these different identities, and I hear them, and I'm like, I hear them have this longing in some cases, this disdain in others, you know, and all these different emotions that come with these different sides of them. And I'm like, wouldn't it be awesome if every one of us could just accept who we are, who we were, who we are, and allow ourselves to truly become, right? Because, you know, I have this stupid opinion of mine, and I'll leave it on this one for me, which is, I believe that we are given a glimpse. Of who we are meant to be, the moment we are born. So when we come into this world, it's like muscle memory. So we get given a glimpse inside of our body, inside of our mind of all the greatness we're about to be. And then, as our life goes on, our teachers told us to get on the straight in there, or our parents, you know, come out, all these different, and all these things start chipping away at that greatness that we were going to be. And a lot of our mental struggles come because we have that muscle memory. We just can't name it because we were nonverbal. And now, we get to figure it out. And every time your body relaxes into something, you're figuring out that that's who you were meant. So, when I stopped violence of any sort, I will defend that I stopped violence as my active go-to, my body settled because you know what? At my core, I'm kind, I'm loving, and I'm caring. And any time I break away from those, my body lets me know. So those things, and every time I figure out something new, I get to figure out of that moment that I was given the glimpse of myself. When I say greatness not as in a way of hierarchy, but just self-actualization, I was given it the moment I was born, and then I skipped the rest of my life to go back to that state. Right? I had the biggest blessing in my healing and my recovery journey, and it's to get to know me. And it will take me 10,000 years to do it all. Yeah. So, I'm never bored. Not you, me, both, I'm not bored at all. This process is, to me, it's beautiful, it's dark, it's all these things that one, because that's what we are, right? And scary, loving, we can be scary, we can be absolutely beautiful, we can be, and it really does depend on the people we're around and how it's received as to what others think about. So, to me, that's where actualizing self in terms of our whole identity, which is made up of all kinds of identities, kind of like a, what was that robot that takes like six robots together to make a big one? It's not kind of thing, it's just like, we're in power rangers, yeah, yeah, we're like, we're pieced together by all these different things and ideas and personalities, and I think it's beautiful. That's also why I remember how, like last week when Brahmin was on, and I was so excited, because I get so excited when I stick down with members of our community, 100%. I fucking love us, I do, and all the variations that we can be, because every time I'm with us, folks in our community, I just see a bunch of self-actualizing happening, and it's fucking amazing, because on top of that, it's amazing because people were trying to stop it from happening, and we're doing it anyway, and we're saying, no, fuck you, we're going to be ourselves. Oh, you're mad at us, well fuck your fascist pancakes, right, like you want to come after us? Yeah, fuck your fascist pancakes, and I'm going to end it at that. Yeah. Thank you, Michaela. Yeah, thank you, Michaela. Word. Yeah. Alright man, much love. Much love. Bye everybody. Take care everyone out there. Well thank you for listening to another episode of Voices in Recovery Podcast. We greatly appreciate your support, your listening, your sharing. Also, don't be afraid to check out the Native Calgary and podcast. You will not be disappointed. Michelle Robinson is a wealth of information on so many different subjects. It's hard to narrow it down to one, but I will absolutely say that podcast is about sharing indigenous people's stories and realities to us. And so I encourage you all to check it out, the Native Calgary and podcast by Michelle Robinson. Also, check out the Walls Down Collective here in Calgary. And if you're able to, just like us, they need donations too, and of course we do. We need support just like everyone else so that we can continue to provide free counseling. What Walls Down Collective, they're required for lots of different things. Every Friday to have a pop-up, yes, I believe it's three to four nights a week that have an on-call number you can call through your distress. So that's the Walls Down Collective, you can find out the number through them. And stop the Stack YYC. If you are able to, you can support Stop the Stack YYC through their website, through their Instagram page. They have an Instagram, Facebook, and I believe Stop the Stack has a TikTok. And Walls Down may or may not have a TikTok, but they have Facebook and they have Instagram. There's Native Calgary and podcast, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, I believe. It's about anywhere and of course you can find her podcast on Patreon. There's also one last one that I want to mention is Black Pride YYC. We work with them regularly, find it incredible what those folks are doing. And of course, they have invited everyone that listens to our podcast to come out at any time to their events. So don't be afraid, if it's a Black Pride YYC event, don't be afraid, like they're inclusive of everyone. Stay tuned for more stuff and thank you again for listening and supporting us!