This is the story of how my dad saved his life and now he's fighting every day to save what matters most, his family, his music, and his soul.

He's not doing this for fame, he's doing it to prove who he really is.

The original punk and roll outlaw fighting to stay sober, stay strong and stay standing.

This is more than a podcast.

This is a war for redemption.

This is the story of my dad.

Welcome to Louder than my Demons.

Self-care.

It's a hell of a leg day.

Gratitude.

Also, some days I'm strong enough to stand up.

You know what?

Fuck this.

I'm not feeling what I had written and had planned to say today.

I'm struggling.

I wasn't going to do any of this, but I'm struggling.

Things were getting close.

I miss my family.

I don't necessarily miss the life I was leading, but I miss the people that were in my life.

I miss my dog.

Even with this beautiful little dog here, I still miss George.

I can't pretend that I don't.

I just can't.

I, I try.

I can't.

And you know what?

That's what we have to deal with when we get sober.

And we have to feel these feelings right in here where it fucking hurts the most.

We have to lay in a bed and think about these things every night.

We have to catch a picture of somebody or a thought of something or a vision of somebody or see a name somewhere and it triggers us and it makes us sad again, no matter how strong we are, no matter how many times we sit in that chair and we meditate.

I tried to meditate tonight before this to clear my head and get calm so that I could do this silly little bit that I had planned that was going to be cute and fun and it was going to it was going to make you laugh.

And that's what I wanted to do.

I wanted to bring some brevity to the situation and I just today's not the day to do it.

I'm a week out from this trial.

I'm almost 8 months out from losing my family, the love of my life, my daughter, my dog, my own sense of who I was, my own sense of what I wanted.

It's all fucking changed now, right?

We've talked about this in the first couple episodes.

So I don't want to rehash everything and I also don't want you to think that I'm just saying this shit.

This is not written down.

This is just coming out of me.

I I've had concerns that I'm doing the wrong thing lately, that I'm making a mistake, that this isn't the person I want to be.

These are the things we have to deal with when we're struggling to change the inner workings of our mind and of our heart.

And the gut tries to rule both of those tries to tell you, my gut reaction is I should wait.

My gut reaction is I should call.

My gut reaction is why?

Why is this going on?

I didn't do this.

Why is it continuing?

All these things are going through my head every fucking day, every minute.

My friends are tired of hearing me talk about it.

My friends are tired of me whining and being a little bitch.

I don't like doing it.

I don't want to do it.

I'm trying to be tough, right?

I'm trying to get through it, and I do.

I get through it.

I'll be through this in a couple days, but maybe not.

Maybe not until after the 19th.

Until I know exactly what's happening to me, until I know where my life is headed, what's going to happen?

Am I going to wake up on the 20th in Summit County Jail, or am I going to wake up on the 20th back in there?

I don't know.

I don't know when it's fucking wearing me down, man.

It's fucking making my soul thin.

This might not be the place to do this.

I don't know.

I just decided when I was reading the lines that I had planned for tonight that I need to do it or else I don't know if I can.

I don't know.

This is what I got to do.

This is what I got to do.

I know that I can't get my life back.

I know that I don't want certain things.

I do not want to drink.

This is not about drinking.

That's why I said last week that the five s s are no longer about sobriety, that sobriety is one of the five s s.

And that's where it should remain.

It should not be any more important than the other five things that I need all five of these come together to make survival.

And you hear me say that word a lot.

And I was worried that I was saying it too much and that it was sounding phony and that you weren't going to buy it.

I was talking to some friends the other day and I don't know if any of you ever watched Howard Stern's movie or ever listened to Howard Stern or read his book.

And I know some people hate him and some people love him.

I don't give a fuck what you feel about that.

But he said one of the coolest things ever.

He said one day he had an issue and he didn't want to do a commercial for a show.

And he said he was he was doing this commercial and it was a paid sponsorship and he had to read this commercial and he had to say that he liked something that he didn't fucking like.

And halfway through the commercial, he had a meltdown similar to what I'm having right now.

And he said to him, he said, you know what?

If I'm not going to be honest with you, then there's no point in doing this.

And he said from that moment on, his bond with the people listening, and I'm not going to call people, fans with the listeners of this podcast.

It's very similar for me.

His bond with the listeners of his radio show changed immensely because they knew that he was going to be honest about everything.

Now I had that.

I had that little breakdown a couple weeks ago about the about the guilt path.

I'm not going to do this all the time, but I just can't sit here and talk to you about some silly little gratitude and how gratitude's a leg day when today I'm just not right.

I'm just not right.

But you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to do what I'm going to ask you guys to do later in the show.

And that's I'm going to sit down tonight before I go to bed and I'm going to write three things down that I'm grateful for.

And I'm going to write why I'm grateful for them.

And I'm going to meditate on those for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it takes.

I'm going to think about those things that I'm grateful for, the things that have got me through this year and the things that are going to get me through this next week.

All of this work that I've done, all of this suffering that I've put my friends through, put myself through, put my family through, comes down to this next week.

I want you to know that I'm not scared because I'm afraid I did something wrong because that's not the fucking case.

But lies have power.

Let's all remember that.

And who knows what's going to be said in there that's not true.

And who knows what that jury will believe?

Will they believe me and my evidence or will they believe the story that was told that night that was created that night right here that you're going to hear about a couple weeks?

Who knows?

I don't know.

I don't know, I don't want to get into that, but that's what's scaring me.

That's what's going on inside of my heart.

That's what's tearing me up.

I've been writing a lot of songs this week, reworking the songs that I've written.

So I'm I'm working on some stuff and it's been dragging up some things in me.

I finished up a song that I'm going to do in the songwriting section that I wrote before all of this happened that I wrote three years ago.

Started writing three years ago, but never finished.

Couldn't finish it.

About this person that I love.

There's two other ones.

I'm going to put all those together and put that.

So what it's been doing has been dragging up this stuff.

And then I see little things and I catch little things and I see a picture that makes me sad.

And I, I, I go out and I have a great time with some really good friends and have a good time.

And everybody is supportive and cares about me and likes the podcast.

And you're all fucking probably listening right now.

And I can't tell you how much that means to me.

But I'm not going to lie, I'm not good.

I'm not OK.

I'm not going to hurt myself and I'm not going to hurt anybody.

And I'm not going to go drink, right?

But I may go cry myself to sleep tonight and maybe nobody cares.

I had to say this.

I don't have a good way to wrap this up.

I don't have one of my witty lines ready to say to you.

I'm just going to say this without gratitude.

We can't survive.

Without the five s s.

I can't survive.

I'm hurting today, but I'm going to practice all of the five s s today so that I can make it through.

So what did I do today?

I got up and I prayed.

Then I got up and I came out here and I had a good healthy breakfast.

Then I went to church and I prayed again.

And then I came home and my friend Jen, who her and I have decided to do an acoustic act together, which I think is going to be fucking awesome, called Oh yeah, kind of yacht rock kind of rock.

Going to be fun.

So I spent 3 hours on music, then I worked out, then I tried to meditate was just when everything broke down, that's when I started crying.

And then I got ready to work on this and it all just went kind of crazy.

And I'm sorry if you don't believe this is real.

I hope you'll come back and listen again or listen to the rest of the show because I got a great show planned.

I'll get back on track here.

I just want you to know that it's OK to not be OK.

And what you do is you find one of those five s s or whatever you feel can pull you out of it, right?

You find those five s s, you grab it, you pull it in and you work it for a little bit.

And the next thing you know, you've taken a few steps forward and we're back to that.

Bill Murray, What about Bob?

Right, Baby steps.

You get a couple steps in under you and then you do another one of the 5S S and I'm fucking telling you, the 5S S, you can make songwriting whatever you want.

It doesn't have to be about writing songs.

If you're you do pottery, you paint, you go to the rifle range and you shoot and that's something that you have to do and you love to do.

Go do that and be creative in whatever you do.

Let those feelings come out in whatever that is.

Do those things.

Strength is many things.

We've talked about it.

It's not just lifting, it's being mentally strong.

And I may have had a little breakdown here, but I'm going to do the five s s and I'm going to work it all back so that my strength comes back to me and so that tomorrow I'm not going to feel like this.

But I think this week I might feel like this every day.

By the time you see this, it'll only be a couple days till the trial and I may be in a fucking insane asylum by then.

I don't know.

I don't know, my friends might not even be talking to me by the end of the week because I've done pissed him off so much.

I appreciate and I'm grateful for everybody that's listening and stuck through this.

I'm a man who has lost focus today, but I miss my family.

I miss the people that I love that I lost.

I do not miss drinking and drugging, not even a little bit.

Haven't even thought about having a drink one fucking time.

OK, but I think about them.

I don't even know what to do anymore.

I'm going to tell you something though.

I feel better after saying all that and getting it out.

Getting it out and telling my story to you, if it helps you feel something, if it helps you think about what you're going through and realize that if you fight through and do those five s s and practice gratitude on top of all that, you're going to be a happier person.

Imagine how I would feel right now if I didn't have those five s s and I didn't have my friends and family.

And that's what gratitude is, and that's what this show is about, being in the fucking wreckage, feeling the way that I feel right now, the way that I felt in January, February, March, when I made my one second phone call and got arrested for it, that's wreckage.

And when you can be in that wreckage and still say, Stacy, Renee, I fucking love you.

You are my best friend.

And thank you so much for listening to me even when you don't want to.

To my bandmates, to everybody else that I'm grateful for, thank you for listening to me and being there when I need you.

And I'm sorry that I've laid so much on people this year.

I'm sorry.

However, I've built a foundation and when I get through that next week and find out what's going to happen, boom, Randy Orton, boom, we're taking off and I'm going to be more obnoxious, more over the top.

It's Ric Flair thing and ask for Eric.

He knows what I'm talking about 'cause if you don't like it, you better learn to love it 'cause that's what's coming.

Listen, thank you guys for letting me do this shit every week.

This is my new therapy.

My therapist thinks it's the coolest thing ever that I'm doing this, he said.

I'm working out things in real time in front of people and sharing what I'm going through so that they know how to get through it too.

I don't know if that's true or not.

I just know that I need it now to get through this.

I can't have the person I want and never will again.

I can't see my daughter when I want.

And now when I talk to you on the phone, she's losing interest.

8 year olds don't want to be on the phone for 1/2 hour with their dad.

We can't play a game, we can't play dolls, we can't do something that we would do normally.

We just talk.

I'm losing it, I'm losing her and it's not fair.

I didn't do anything to deserve to lose my daughter.

I read something the other day that said 90% of all podcasts fail by episode 3.

You've all watched episode 3 already, now you're watching episode 4.

They say by the 10th, 12th, up to 15, you start building some momentum, the numbers start climbing up a little bit, and they're doing that.

I'm pretty happy with everything going on with this so far, but the main thing is I do this because it makes me feel better and because I know for a fact people came up to me yesterday.

My buddy Joe, who has got me out of jail, been there every day since I can't ask for a better friend, came up to me yesterday and said he watched episode 3 and that it hit him and that it hit him here.

And then he appreciated it and he thanked me for it.

And you know what?

I know that he's going through some shit.

And so if I can help him deal with that shit a little bit better, Some of the other people that came up to me yesterday and talk to me about what they thought altering it, gratitude, I'm going to go write down three things right now.

I'm not going to wait till I go to bed.

I'm going to go write down three things that I'm grateful for today and I'm going to think about those things.

And I want you to do the same thing.

That was a lot.

A 3 minute bit just turned into 20 minutes.

But I want to start a community where we can reach out to each other and talk to people when we're feeling like this, so we don't always overburden our friends like I have done with Stacy, with Joe, with Eric, even though they would never tell me that.

I know, I know, I know.

People are tired of hearing me talk about it.

Maybe you guys are, too.

I don't know.

Seems like not because everybody's coming back.

All right?

Remember, out of all this, gratitude is fucking vital.

The five s s are now the reasons we're surviving.

If you feel as scatterbrained and as unfocused and it's all over the place as I do right now, at least you're still fucking fighting like I am.

One of the new things I've been saying lately is recover loud.

Let people know that you're recovering.

Let people know you're dealing with some shit and you're going to get through it.

George Harrison said the following.

It's being here now that's important.

There's no future, only now.

Now, Harrison said.

It be here now.

There's no past.

There's no future.

Just this breath and making that count.

So welcome to the reckoning.

Thank you for putting up with me during the sermon and my little breakdown.

But I hope it shows you that no matter how hard we work and how hard we try, things can go awry.

And today that's happened.

That's how I feel today.

I'm probably going to be feeling that way off and on for months.

You don't just get over somebody that you care about that much for that long in one day.

But I'm not going to spend any more time talking about that person, OK?

We're going to talk about what I'm grateful for because that's what today's show is about, is gratitude.

The most powerful force that there is, no matter what goes on in your life, one thing they can't take away from you is being grateful.

Today I'm grateful for you listeners because I get to do this every week and I get to pull shit out of me that I wouldn't get to pull out of me.

I get to talk about the things that I talked about in the sermon, which is only supposed to be two minutes, and took away some of what I'm going to talk about during this.

But that's OK because that just poured out of me.

I couldn't help it and I wasn't going to edit it.

I'm not going to touch it.

I flubbed words.

I stuttered, I cuss too much, but I'm going to leave it because that's how I felt in that moment.

And what I'm trying to do with you guys is tell you that it's OK to feel what you fucking feel.

Still be a man and cry.

You can still be a man and be sad.

Let's not forget that.

I'm grateful for, as always, my son, infinitely my daughter, and always my friends.

I can't say enough about my friends.

I want to make sure that I say how much I'm grateful to the people at work.

Kevin, who's not there any longer, but who has been a good friend of mine through all of this, and my boss Jeff for supporting me through all this, you know, and my 2 Joes who I talked about before, the guys at work are just awesome.

I'm grateful for that.

And finally, I guess I'm writing four things down.

I am grateful for the fact that Noah is a bad ass because even as scared as I am, and he's even as concerned as I am and even as worried as I am, I know that I have a guy on my side who's loyal to me, who believes in me, who is fighting for me, and who has amazing charisma, amazing skill, amazing talent and amazing knowledge and is not afraid to piss everybody in the room off.

Noah's a badass.

I want you guys to please go to my podcast on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, whatever you listen to it on and please subscribe or follow.

When your subscribers grow, they put you out in the algorithm a little bit more, and I don't want to get it too lost into that because I'm not doing this for money in any way, shape or form.

I'm doing this so that more people can check it out.

One of the other things I'm going to do, I've decided to put my money where my mouth is.

I'm going to get certified in Ohio to be an alcohol recovery coach, take my CCAR and take the other designations I need.

Andy, my therapist, is going to help me figure out everything I need, and I'm also going to take all the classes I've got under my belt at Akron, You and Stark, which are enough to cover all my general studies.

And I'm going to go look for a counseling degree in something that will help me with this.

I want to help more people get sober, and I want them to feel how I feel.

Even when I feel wrecked, I'm feeling.

That's the difference.

Before, when I was feeling stuff, I was feeling this.

I was feeling the buzz, I wasn't feeling the pain, and that's a huge difference.

OK, so those are kind of some things that I have working for us.

I'm going to get a community started.

I'm still working the details out on that.

It'll either be on Facebook, it'll probably be on Facebook and on the website, which if you haven't gone to yet, louder than my demons.com.

You can find all the videos, all the podcasts, everything there.

There's going to be, there's some pictures and stuff like that, you know, media, whatever.

And then there's a, a resource page, which is going to be growing as we speak.

I'm adding more and more resources for people who have issues that they're trying to deal with and they're, they want to find some help.

And then I'm going to have a blog that's going to start going up after the trial every week and I'm going to do a newsletter.

So there's going to be a lot of cool stuff going on.

I'm I'm making this something that is going to stick around because something I found out 90% of all podcasts made fail before 3 episodes.

If you're watching this right now, you better be.

This is episode 4.

So as of now, we are one of the top 10% of all podcasts of all time.

Isn't that crazy?

90% of all podcasts made fail by the third episode.

So if your podcast goes past three, it's successful.

And I plan on having 12/13 of these before for season 1.

So we're rolling.

We're rolling, so I appreciate you guys sticking around.

OK, now let's talk about gratitude.

And I'm going to say something that might piss a few people off.

I didn't learn gratitude from a podcast.

I didn't find it in church.

I found it in a jail cell.

I found it in rehab, in the wreckage of a life I thought I had under control.

I didn't have it under control.

Gratitude pulled me out of that.

I didn't choose gratitude.

I had to fight for it.

And now I understand something I never did before.

Gratitude isn't happiness, It's defiance.

It's standing in the middle of your own personal hell and saying, I'm not thankful because this is good, but because it didn't break me.

Remember the hangover?

But did you die?

That's how I feel.

Gratitude is just that you pull yourself out of some shit and you say, but did you die because that's how it makes you feel?

You survived.

And remember, the five s s are no longer about sobriety.

The five s s are now about survival.

We treat gratitude like it's some kind of soft, delicate thing, like it's yoga mats and perfect journals.

My journal ain't perfect.

The real ones know that gratitude is grit.

When I was at my lowest, I wasn't grateful for the situation.

I didn't want to be there.

I was grateful for what it revealed to me.

It revealed to me that I could pull myself up out of that and use these five s s that I have found and heal myself, even if I'm not perfectly healed and I'm not going to be perfectly healed, but I'm better than I was.

It showed me who I was without all the noise and without all the boos.

It stripped away the lies I believed about myself.

And it forced me to rebuild, not as some shinier version of who I used to be, but as someone new.

New Josie someone honest, New Jersey someone dangerous in the best way.

And this isn't just some outlaw philosophy either.

I didn't make this shit up.

Gratitude has a clinical definition.

Also psychologist.

Call it the appreciation of what is valuable and meaningful to oneself.

It's a general state of thankfulness and or gratefulness.

The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley did a study, and in this study they took people who were depressed, anxious and burned out.

Man, I would have had a good candidate for them if they would, if I would have known about this last year anyhow, what they had them do.

This is amazing.

And every time I say the words, all I can do, I think of one of the coolest Lynyrd Skynyrd songs of all time.

All I can do is write about it where he says I'm not very good at making changes.

All I can do is write them in a song.

Gives me goosebumps every time.

And that is a line that somebody wrote in 1974 and we are sitting here in 2025 and somebody who never met those people is remembering that.

That's the power of songwriting.

And I am grateful for music.

Anyhow, they had them write this one letter.

They didn't get therapy.

They didn't get any meds, just wrote a letter to whoever they wanted about whatever they wanted, as long as it was about them being grateful.

And what happened?

Their brains started to rewire.

Dopamine went up, serotonin kicked in.

Cortisol, the stress hormone, it dropped gratitude, didn't erase the pain, it just gave them a way to survive it.

And the great thing about this study was they did this for four weeks, they wrote 4 letters.

At the end of that four weeks, they didn't write any more letters.

And these chemicals in your body, this dopamine, this serotonin and the cortisol going down, it stayed that way for 12/13/14, fifteen weeks, depending on who the person was.

It didn't just go away.

So imagine, and here's my I want you to think about this.

Imagine if you practiced gratitude once a day.

You're pissed off at work and you're mad at your boss, or you're mad at the person in front of you in traffic because they got their left turn signal on and they're not turning left right.

Instead of that, instead of getting mad at them and remaining mad at them, you say, you know what?

I might be mad at him right now, but I have a pretty good job and I'm pretty lucky to have this job right now.

And then maybe the person in front of you, you just say, you know what?

I'm grateful that I'm in my own car and that I'm not doing that.

Imagine if you just practice gratitude every now and then, how much that would multiply over time.

If 4 letters last 14 weeks, imagine what you what you could accomplish if you practice it once a day, every day.

It would be astronomical.

Write it in your journal.

Just do a quick thought.

Man.

I'm glad I still got this job.

My buddy Thomas, who's one of the smartest guys when it comes to shit like this and also just always has some story or some reference point or some little bit that he can relate.

He has a great example of something in almost any situation, and it's one of the things I I enjoy about being around him and the new sober Josie learning stuff and retaining stuff that I wouldn't have retained from people before.

I'm I'm I'm picking stuff up from Thomas now.

I'm going to fuck this story all up.

OK, But it's a it's a you'll get what he what what I took from it.

He said gratitude is the one thing they can't take away from you.

Because imagine this.

You're having the worst day of your life and you pick up a puppy and you're grateful that you're holding that puppy in your hands and you're playing with the puppy and you're happy.

And the puppy makes you smile and makes you laugh and you're not thinking about all the bullshit going on in your life anymore.

You're thinking about this puppy, or it could be a baby, or it could be your guitar.

All you're thinking about is that and it makes you happy.

And that's what gratitude does.

When you think about something you're happy to have in your life, you can't think about the bad stuff for a couple minutes because it takes you over.

And I know that that's not exactly how he said it, and he said it way more articulate than I am.

But you get the point that if you practice gratitude, the rest of your life is going to improve.

But gratitude doesn't erase the pain.

It didn't erase the pain for those people in that study.

What it did was gave them a way to survive it, and it gives us a way to survive whatever we're going through, whether it's a 10 or whether it's that guy in front of me with the with the left turn signal on.

And thinking about this makes me realize that this isn't fluff.

It's neuroscience, or in my words, if I'm going to describe it, gratitude is the ability to stay positive even when everything around you is screaming don't.

It's not optimism, it's rebellion.

It's refusing to be pushed into a corner and held down by the shit that's going on in your life.

It's saying, OK, I'm in the corner, that's cool.

I'm not getting rained on, so I'll deal with it.

That's what gratitude is, George Harrison once said.

And I won't do the British accent.

It's being here now that's important.

There's no past and there's no future, only the now.

And man, that's what gratitude lives.

Not in what happened, not in what might happen.

And that's where I got lost today, worrying about what happened and worrying about what might happen, missing people from what happened and being afraid of what's going to happen.

And my friend Stacy always uses the term catastrophize.

And I might have said that wrong.

Catastrophize, she says.

Don't catastrophize things.

Don't make this a bigger deal than it is.

Don't make it feel catastrophic to you when you don't know what it's going to be.

She said that to me when I was talking about things today.

And that's a great point, because I don't know what's going to happen.

You don't know what's going to happen.

Nobody knows what's going to happen.

Nobody knows where our future is going to go.

We know what our past was.

We can't change that.

We don't know what our future is going to be.

We only know what's happening now.

That's why George Harrison was a genius.

The only thing we control is right now, this breath.

Which is why when you meditate, you focus on those breaths because the only thing that's happening right now is that breath.

And this second in this quiet little victory where we just don't give up today, that's where gratitude helps us.

We're grateful for this breath we have right now.

And here's a twist that no one tells you.

Gratitude isn't just about your peace.

It's about how you show up once you've survived.

It can change you, Bono.

I know I want to, but I'm not going to do the Irish accent.

Sometimes I can do it, but I'm not going to do it today.

But Bono said it better than I ever could, he said.

I'm not sure I believe in charity, but I believe in justice.

There's another think about that moment.

Is it charity to help somebody who can't help themselves?

Or is it justice?

You see, once you stop drowning in your own pain, you start to see everyone else still gasping for air.

Gratitude clears your vision.

It opens your hands.

It makes you give a damn about people again.

You didn't go through hell to come out of this selfish.

You went through it to become dangerously kind.

My friend Stephanie, who deals with a whole bunch of stuff.

ADHD, neurodivergent touches of autism.

All this stuff she didn't know until she was in her 40s she deals with.

And once she started healing, she told me that the hardest part now is that she sees everybody else who's broken and she yearns to help them and knows that she can't and gets lost in her head because she can't.

And that can be a problem.

But if you are healing yourself and you start seeing the other people around you that might need help or might need what you're going through and what you're healing from, you might be able to do what I'm doing and talk to those people and see if you can give them some advice that might help them out a little bit.

Right?

Because gratitude clears your vision.

It opens your hands.

It makes you give a damn about people.

Again, I'm a musician.

I mean, I have an ego.

I'm selfish.

I worry about my stuff first, which is why certain people think that I'm a narcissist because they don't really understand that word.

But I care about other people, which is one of the reasons I'm doing this.

One of the reasons I'm going to go get my CCAR and become a coach.

One of the reasons that I'm going to go and get my counseling and probably change my entire career at some point in the next couple years because I want to help people.

It's only going to make me better.

So here's your challenge tonight.

In addition to going to my page and telling me your gratitude level, and I want you to do that on Spotify, YouTube, Apple.

I want you to go when you go subscribe and follow.

I want you to mark in the comments what you're feeling gratitude wise.

Then I want you to go to my page and the first post you're going to see is a post that says, what are the three things that you're grateful for today?

And then tomorrow I'm going to post what three things I hated and why I'm thankful for them.

And I want you to do the same thing.

And I know it sounds like a lot of work, but what it is, is getting us used to talking to each other and getting us used to communicate with each other and knowing that we can reach out to somebody else because there are people out there that we can each help.

And we are not here to be polite.

We're here to stay alive.

This is gratitude with a switchblade, the kind that keeps you breathing.

Gratitude won't fix everything, but it might just be the thing that keeps you from falling apart.

I'm living proof.

And you're still breathing because you're still here.

So so are you.

Bono said.

I'm not sure I believe in charity.

I believe in justice, and Bono had a right.

It's not about charity, it's about justice.

And sometimes that justice starts with you getting your shit straight.

What do you do the things you do?

What do you draw me out of my mind?

What do you do the things you do?

So we're talking about gratitude this week.

Let me tell you, something stuck with me.

It stuck with me forever.

The Beatles, the biggest band in the world, they could have gone anywhere that they wanted to.

And where did they go?

They chose to go to India, not to play a show and not to do a tour.

They went there to meditate.

They went there to practice meditation, practice gratitude.

They went there to meditate.

They were chasing peace.

George Harrison said it was the first time he felt truly calm.

And John Lennon spent the rest of his life chasing that same piece.

Now, Ringo left early.

Of course, Ringo did.

He left early, but he still said it was the first time he'd ever felt clarity.

And my favorite, Paul says meditation is like tuning a guitar.

You don't start playing until you're in tune.

So you don't start your day until your head is in tune.

Now, it's not just them.

It's not just The Beatles and some pop band, right?

James Hetfield of Metallica, a man who's roared his pain through amps bigger than most living rooms.

He likes to meditate and do breathing exercises as part of his recovery and to get ready for shows.

Dave Grohl likes to take a long walk and use silence before he goes on stage.

And Corey Taylor says stepping away to be still is always one of his favorite things to do before he goes on stage.

It keeps him from burning out.

And it's not just the rockers.

Lady Gaga meditates before performance to control her anxiety and to call her power back, she says, And Kendrick Lamar calls meditation a way to reset the spirit so the art stays pure.

Now, different bands, different genres, all the same truth, right?

Even when the outside looks perfect, the inside can still feel like a war zone.

And I totally get that.

That's why I meditate every morning.

That's why I meditate in the afternoon when I need a reset from work, give myself 5 minutes to just catch my breath.

It's why I meditate sometimes before a workout.

It's why I meditate before I'm going to do a show or before I hit record on this podcast.

I like to meditate even if it's just taking a few breaths and doing my box breathing.

Now box breathing, if you don't know, is you go, you breathe in for four, you hold it for four, exhale for four, hold it, and then you repeat that.

Repeat it three times.

It's scientifically proven to calm you down.

And what it is, it's a reset button.

And some days, that's the difference between breaking down and breaking through.

Whether you're Paul McCartney in front of 60,000 screaming Beatlemaniacs or Lady Gaga commanding a stadium, or Kendrick Lamar with a festival in the palm of his hand, or Corey Taylor with the mosh pit rising and falling at his will, you still need to find yourself.

You need to find that piece that's for yourself, and sometimes the only way to win that war inside is to whisper thank you in the middle of the battlefield.

OK, so welcome to the From My Journals section of the show.

And I went through some of the journal stuff.

I was trying to pull one up and just read it.

It's just too much for this week where I talk about a certain person, too many things that I talk about, too many of my journals are are are about that person.

And I just don't feel like doing that today.

I just don't.

So I thought about it and I decided I would pull up one of the songs that I've written this year.

I wrote this for a very specific project.

I'm not going to be singing this.

My son will be playing drums and a secret to be named later vocalist who has already agreed to do it.

Him and I are working on a couple songs and I don't want to, I don't want to say it too much about that right now, but there might be something in the works for that.

But this song is called When Do I Breathe?

I wrote this one day when I was at work and I went out to take my lunch break and take a walk.

And I started thinking about stuff.

And I used to get real nervous on my walks for different reasons earlier in the year.

And one of the things that I would do is I would, I would listen to music or I would listen to a book.

And it wasn't working that day.

And something popped into my head.

I was like, God, man, I just can't fucking breathe.

When do I get to breathe?

When do I get to feel this off my chest, right?

And so I was feeling this that day and I was like, man, I just need to be able to breathe.

And I, I had written a song years and years and years and years ago and it was it was pretty bad.

It was when I was first writing.

I think I still have the lyrics somewhere, but it was based off of the off of this the preppy murders.

I don't know if you guys remember that way back in the day, I thought I'd be cool and I'd write something about something going on in the media and everything.

And the course was kind of cool.

But the one line that stuck with me was there was AI read the book about the preppy murders.

And there was an there was a guy at the end who was asked, you know, how he felt about everything.

And he said, you know, the one thing that I that that bothers me about this whole situation is I don't know when to smile.

Like when do we get to smile again?

And I always, I wrote that song when do we smile?

And it was always in my head that that course, I always liked it.

And I started thinking about it that day, about the breathing thing.

And I just said, you know, man, when, when is this going away?

When do I get to breathe?

When can I be myself again?

When can I not miss the love of my life?

That hasn't changed.

So I just started writing some shit.

I wasn't really angry.

I just started singing some stuff and I came up with this.

It's still a work in progress.

The singer, of course, in the project will get to take it and do what he wants.

So it may not end up like this at all, but this is what I wrote.

We already wrote music.

Colton and I already wrote some music for us.

It's pretty cool.

The the lyrics go a little bit like this.

The verse, I'm just going to read you a verse, pre chorus and a chorus.

I've never done something like this before.

I don't share my songs until I play them.

So this whole songwriting stuff where like I played Witness the Redemption, that song's not even finished.

I played the chorus for you.

Same thing with Straight Edge Superstar.

We haven't recorded that.

That was just me playing just like I would play for the guys.

But I'm going to, I'm going to do that this year.

I'm going to, I'm going to play some songs in the next episode, which is about songwriting.

I'm I'm doing 3 songs that I've never played for anybody except for the guys in the band.

So the verse starts off and says I feel the weight pressing on my chest.

I feel the loss since the day you left.

I lost my way.

But I take things as they come.

I didn't run but I'm so far from my home.

And then the pre chorus says I'm breathing but it's breaking me.

I'm feeling every memory I'm faking just to make it through.

And every night I'm hearing you.

And then the chorus is when do I breathe?

When do I catch my breath?

Why can't I see?

I just can't breathe since you left.

When do I breathe?

When do I breathe?

And it's just like one of those moments that this song just it was there.

I sang it a little bit at lunchtime.

I came back to the to my desk and I jumped on and I typed it out and saved it in in docs and I've edited several times since then.

It's probably going to get edited again.

I know that the course is a little bit different from what Colton and I wrote, but I think it it works pretty good and I can picture and I could sing in it and I think it'll be cool.

It's, it's more of a heavy, modern kind of metal song.

It's going to be cool.

These are the things I'm dealing with everyday.

These are the things I'm writing about.

Not every song is like this.

There's a bunch of songs that are happy, fun, chasing girls, that kind of stuff.

I wrote a song, a couple songs about racing cars, racing motorcycles, stuff like that.

So there's other stuff besides just this.

Like I said before, the corruption is still going to be the corruption.

We're going to talk about drinking.

We're going to talk about all the stuff I used to do, because I still did it.

I still remember how to do it.

And I know people like to do it, like to hear me sing about it.

If they didn't, they wouldn't like cocaine for breakfast, feed it all the other songs like that.

So yeah, I'll, I'll pull it together.

And pretty soon I'm going to start having some demos and I'm going to start having some albums, start working on some stuff.

But I'm pretty excited about this song and hear what he can do with it.

I've already heard what Colton can do with it.

My boy can play drums, man.

That's all I got to say.

We got a couple of ones in works.

We're going to, we're going to do some cool stuff.

So that's this week's version of the journal.

I'm a little less upset than I might have been if I'd have read one of those other journal entries because I just looking at him, I was getting upset and I wanted to get this done tonight.

So I went ahead and did this.

I hope you guys like it.

I'll.

I'll make you a promise.

When we get it together, I'll have the singer and my son come on here.

We'll do it on acoustic for you.

We'll play the whole thing.

As soon as we have it laid out, we'll play the whole thing for you.

OK.

All right.

Bob Geldof, singer of The Boomtown Rats, star of Pink Floyd's The Wall as Pink himself, and the man who put on some of the biggest music festivals including Live Aid and Live 8, once said, basically, music can't change the world, but music can change people, and people can change the world.

And that's the truth.

Because music can't change the world, but people can't.

So what the fuck are you waiting for?

So listen, I know this one got messy and that's my fault, but I'm doing this in front of you in real time, so sometimes things happen.

I'm going to leave them in like I did with the guilt pack.

I'm going to leave them.

How come I go like this every time I say guilt pack?

Because it's still fucking there.

That's why it's still there.

It might be a little lighter, but it's still there and it's still putting shit in it or taking shit out one of the other, but it's still there and I still want to go rocking.

But listen, today wasn't what I planned.

I had some silly stuff planned.

I was going to introduce a character for the first time, but it just didn't feel right.

Today, because of what I'm going through, it didn't feel right.

So I got messy and went all over the place.

And gratitude doesn't take away or erase the pain that you feel or erase your problems or take away those problems.

What it does is give you something to grab onto while you're fighting through the pain.

And you saw that today in real time, starting with how fucked up I was in the intro, in the sermon, and how I pulled it together through the rest of the show.

And now I feel 100 times better.

I've talked about some things that really helped me and hopefully they're going to help you.

I wrote down my three things that I'm grateful for.

I'll tell you that in the post.

You got to go to the post to read it though.

OK, let's start communicating between us.

I think it'll be fun.

So here's the deal.

Go to that post that I'm going to put up.

List the three things that you're grateful for.

Share them with us.

It'll help me.

It might help somebody else.

You might make a new friend because they're you guys are sharing experiences right now.

It might help everybody.

OK, I think it'd be awesome.

Then tomorrow we'll we'll say Saturday.

Who knows when you're watching this, right?

It could be 2027 and you're watching this.

But tomorrow go to the other post I'm going to put up that is about 3 things I hate and what I learned from them.

I'm going to guess 2025 is one of those fucking things.

So mark out what you hate and what you learn from them and share it with us and let's build a community.

Like I said, I'm going to figure out how I want to do this with a group on Facebook, maybe something through the web page, I'm not sure, but we'll figure something out where we can all communicate to to each other.

I know from talking to people that there are other people going through the same things you are, and I am OK.

And when we do this and we make this list of three things that we learn from, it might be the only thing that keeps you from falling apart.

It has been at times for me.

Maybe today's one of those.

I don't know.

Now listen, I'm going to be online the next two weeks.

You're going to be able to find episodes next Friday on songwriting.

Really fun episode, really cool.

And talk about some of my most.

Influential songwriters of my life, probably of yours.

I'm going to talk about some songs I've written.

One song I wrote three years ago when I first started dating somebody.

2 songs I've written since everything happened.

We're going to talk about them.

I might play a little bit of them, sing you a little bit of them.

Even though we know I'm not a great singer, I can sing a little bit.

I'm getting better.

We're going to add a couple things in there about that.

I got a great story about Nicki 6.

Then I'm going to tell at the Guitar Lounge.

It's going to be cool.

You're going to love it.

Some close calls, meeting Nicki 6, some other cool things.

All right, we're going to talk about that next week.

So I want you to stick around for that.

And then the week after, no matter what happens, we're going to have a special version of this podcast.

And it's going to be a new series I'm going to do from time to time.

They will be special interviews with people, special times sitting over at the bar.

But it's not really a bar anymore, is it?

No boost.

I'm going to learn to make mocktails, and we're going to do mocktails at some point.

Not next week, though.

And it's going to be called Speakeasy Confessional.

Josie takes the stand and I'm going to share my side of the story.

What happened to me?

You can believe what you want.

You cannot believe what you want.

I understand.

I'm just going to share my side, get it out of my soul one last time.

I'm doing this ahead of time because on the 19th I could be in jail.

If I'm in jail, you're still going to get those two episodes and probably a couple more because I'll have time to do another couple episodes.

So you'll be able to get a few episodes still even if I'm in jail for a little bit.

And then when I come back out, we'll start right back up where we are.

I don't give a shit.

Listen, if today's been hell for you like it has for me, thank it.

Then tomorrow, kick it's fucking ass.

And remember, we recover loud.

We didn't come here to be quiet.

We came here to be louder than our demons.

Thanks for sticking around.

Thanks for hanging out with me today.

If you connect with this episode, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss what's coming next.

Next week we're diving into a full on songwriting episode, pulling back the curtain on how these songs come to life.

And after that, the first speak.

Easy, confessional.

Josie takes the stand.

Raw, unfiltered, and nothing held bad.

Stick around, we're just getting started.