You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psycopia Pictures and iHeart Podcasts.

So my name is Scott.

When I was twenty seven years old, I had a stroke in a bathtub shooting heroin and crack.

The thing that's really hard about addiction, and it's the part that no one else can see, right, It's the total obsession of I want to get high.

I want to get high.

I want to get high.

I mean, it's all you can think about.

Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts of human fragility and resilience from people whose lives were forever altered after having almost died.

These are first hand accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.

Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories to remind us all of our shared human condition.

Please keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering for some listener and discretion as advised.

In junior year of high school, I had a hernia and they prescribed me oxycotton for my surgery.

And when I got to take that, it was just like, oh, I'm in love with this, Like this is I feel amazing, Like everything is okay.

And I remember even my dad like saw it, like he started being like, I don't know if we should give him these pills, you know.

After the surgery, he was kind of like, hey, we just you know, we'll just take one, you know, and then let's see how you feel.

Back then, it was like on the beginning.

Of the opioid epidemic.

This is probably like two thousand and three, two thousand and four or something like that, so nobody really knew how dangerous and what the world was about to see.

Either that kind of started a love affair.

So it was always in the back of my head.

Like I remember when they were like, you gotta have your wisdom teeth taken out.

I was like, fuck, yeah, they're gonna give me pills.

Yes.

So like every every medical procedure was exciting because it was like I may get some pills.

I graduated high school, moved to Athens, Georgia, so college.

As far as like managing emotions and seeming like life was together and good, I was failing everything.

I wasn't a good student.

I would have to take so much adderall to get anything done, and then I would have to eat a bunch of xanacs to come down from the adderall so my whole life was just managing these chemicals because I couldn't manage my own emotions.

Basically, I guess it might might have looked like I was okay on the surface, but it was because chemicals were doing all the work for me.

So I moved back to the small town.

I'm going to go to Augusta State, or whatever the fuck it was at the time.

And at the tail end of the summer, one of my best friends died in a freak gas explosion and it was the first like close person to me that ever died, and I didn't know how to handle it.

And like on the day of his funeral, I linked up with a plug for opioids.

That was the first time it was ever like, oh, you can call this guy, give him money and get oxy codone.

So I immediately I just got strung out for the first time on opiates.

And I didn't know like what being dope sick was.

I didn't know any of that, so it would be like fuck, like I don't have any money.

I gotta fucking stop this.

Like I'm crying all the time, and I don't know if it's because my buddy's dead, or if it's because you know, these pills are destroying my life or what's going on.

And then I would stop and I would throw up and get real sick shit everywhere, and you know, it was just terrible until finally, I think it was like right after Christmas, I had just like blown through so much money, and my parents were like, what this going on?

I finally told them and I went to Penfield Christian Homes.

It's like a sick This Week.

Program, and they're like, yeah, God'll save you.

Here's some stuff about AA.

When you get out, you should go to a halfway house.

So I went through the little thing.

I was feeling great.

I wanted to be sober, like, oh man, I feel incredible.

And then I moved to Atlanta with a bunch of guys I met there and we all went to a halfway house.

So this is kind of getting Now.

I'm in Atlanta, it's twenty eleven, and I'm learning about AA and like, oh wow, this is this is awesome, like a bunch of dudes hanging out, we're not doing drugs, Like life is kind of manageable now.

And eventually, like I saw that newness is kind of wore off for being sober, and everybody started relapsing.

And that was the first time it was like, oh, yeah, you can do heroin and just shoot it in your arm.

It's so much more economical than pills.

So it was a financial decision to starts to start shooting heroin.

I was driving in East Atlanta with you know, in the middle of winter of like twenty thirteen, and I was just going to get coffee one morning and the police pulled me over and they were like, hey, let me see your driver's licenses and that, and I was like, oh, you don't need one for this thing, and they were like, no, you need a driver's license.

And I was like, nah, definitely, definitely not.

The guy who loaned me this told me you don't need a driver's license to drive this on the street.

So they arrest me for driving a moped without a license.

That was the first time I'd ever been arrested.

So I called my mom and she was like, here's your one get out of jail.

I'll call a bailbondsman.

So they let me out at two am with no phone, no while nothing.

I went into some restaurant downtown Atlanta, called a friend like the one number I remember.

They came and got me.

And then early the next morning I had to be back to see the judge about this thing with no phone, no wallet and you know, trying to navigate from East Atlanta back to downtown to meet with the judge at eight am.

Finally get down there and they were just confused as to like why I'd even been arrested.

It's a scooter violation, Like this is bullshit.

So they were just like, I don't know what they did with it.

I've never been able to find.

The case again.

I never got my mom, never got her money back from the bail bondsman, like it just went away.

But then I'm.

Left with, Okay, I have to go get my shit from bankhead.

I make it over there, I get my stuff, and as I'm getting all my stuff, this guy runs in to the building and he's like, hey, o sausage biscuit truck just turned over on the highway out here.

Free sausage biscuits for everybody, like just go grab a bunch of them.

And so I'm like, oh fucky, I'm starving.

So I run out and there's a truck overturned like on that like smaller highway and there's just sausage biscuits everywhere.

So I like shoved all these sausage biscuits in my jacket, and I mean it was like puffed out like crazy.

So now I'm like, all right, well, you know, things are looking up, Like I got all these sausage biscuits.

So it was like I got my sausage biscuits.

I definitely want to go get high.

Like it's been a crazy twenty four hours.

Let me, let me go get a shot.

This is gonna be my last one, you know.

Also by this time, every shot is like this is it.

This is my last one.

I'm turning my life around.

Here we go.

So I go straight from lock up, getting all my stuff back sausage biscuits to the gills.

I buy the dope and it's like pure white, which heroin.

At that time, it was like kind of brownish, and so like I'm just walking down boulevard and I'm looking at the bag and I'm like, this is fucking coke.

Like I'm gonna be sick soon, and this dude just sold me coke, Like this is bullshit.

But right as I put it in my pocket, a cop just as like we're pulls right there, and I'm able to like pull it up back out of my pocket and flick the baggie.

But you know, I had syringes and stuff in my backpack and all this stuff, so I was I was fucked, but I didn't know how fucked.

Maybe they would let me go.

I didn't know how stringent they would be.

But the cop gets out of his car and I'm like, oh shit, like I'm stuffed to the brim with sausage biscuits.

So I accidentally just stumbled and he was like, what's going on today?

And I just went sausage biscuits and he was like what.

So he immediately was like take your jacket off, and yeah, he threw all my sausage biscuits away.

He found the syringes.

Yeah, he's being a real dick about all that.

And then he's like looking around and he sees the dope bag on the ground too, and you know, he's just like, don't argue, this is yours, and they, you know, cops will be like I'm going to charge you with this, this, and this if you don't say this is yours and all that, you know, and I'm just like, I don't you know, I don't know what's going on.

I'd been on quite a bender.

I had been arrested the day before.

I was like getting arrested walking home from jail.

Basically the next morning, they take me to the judge.

The judge grants me bond, A signature bond is what they were doing, so I was able to just sign my name that I would come to court, that I would do a pre trial diversion, and they would let me go.

So I member the judge did all that, they took me back upstairs.

They lost me for a week and a half and I fell asleep so like it was like a week before.

Like I kind of like slept for a week and then woke up and was like, wait, am I still here?

What the fuck is going on here?

And then yeah, like after a week and a half of being in there, finally one of.

The guards was like, who are you?

Like, what is your name?

And she went and checked.

So after all of that, my family comes up.

I go to rehab again.

I get sober again.

I'm loving it again.

I graduate from the program, I leave, I moved back downtown.

I start getting high.

I don't know that's that was kind of when like the hopelessness was just like like this shit isn't gonna get sorted out.

I'm going to die early.

I'm going to have a good time and I'll try to manage as best I can.

So that went on for like a year, and then a body of mine who I had been in rehab with, was like, move in with me over here by crog Street, get cleaned up, we'll go to meetings, we'll do all this stuff.

It'll be it'll be good.

So of course I was still getting high and I had gotten really into I made this concoction.

So to break down and shoot crack, you need a little like citric acid.

So I would just take lemons and like just like juice, a little lemon into the spoon, put a little.

Crack with a lot of heroin.

I got really.

Into these speedballs, and it gave like, you know, a great sensation, but also like a lovely lemony scent on the back of your throat when you would shoot it.

It hurt really bad when you missed, which was starting to happen a lot because all my veins were blown out.

So I got really into shooting those speedballs and the way the bathroom in the apartment was set up was like the toilet was right next to the bathtub, and I got super into just like sitting in the bathtub for like hours, like I mean like six hours, eight hours to twelve hours to like a full day, and I would watch Agatha Christie mysteries.

I was doing that for like.

A couple of weeks, and the crack slowly started to get more than the heroin.

I was just like getting into chasing the rush of you know, a shot of crack just like blash you into this weird dimension where it's like hard to breathe and you kind of hear a freight train in your ears, and I mean it is fucking intense as so, going from like I need a shot in the morning, I need a shot at lunch, I need a shot tonight to keep from being dope sick.

It was like I need a shot every fifteen minutes, like over and over and over and over, and you'd take a shot of crack and you would throw up everywhere and be like, oh, I feel so good.

So one night my roommate was at his girlfriend's I'm doing my thing, and you know, it's tough to recall, but all I remember is waking up in a bathtub by myself, thrashing all around in the bathtub and be.

Like what the fuck?

What the fuck?

My left arm was completely inoperable, like I could not move it at all, and you know, and like started crying because it was just like what the fuck just happened?

You know, I just could not really function or like think straight, or like what's going on?

The tub is so cold, Like you know, how long have I been out?

Is it day?

Is it not?

You know, all that stuff was going through my head.

And then like eventually I just like calmed down, dried myself off, like went to bed, and then the next morning, a girl that I was dating, I say dating, but she was like hanging out to make sure like someone was kind of close if I needed to be revived at some point, you know, she convinced me that I needed to go to detox and I was kind of like done with it at that point too to some degree, so I went to Decab crisis Center to try to kick some dope.

The thing that's really hard about addiction, and it's the part that no one else can see, right, It's the total obsession of I want to get high.

I want to get high.

I want to get high.

I mean, it's all you can think about.

It is all you can think about.

There's no reasoning with it.

You can pray about it, and you can meditate.

But like in those like acute stages of addiction, I mean, it is the hardest thing that someone could could go through.

To abstain from drugs when you're obsessed with it is just it's kind of impossible.

I always had to be locked up to create space between it.

So I go to the cab crisis center.

They were only giving me like kalanidine to like deal with the withdrawal symptoms, and which was fine, but like I was taking so much of it.

I was just like hanging out in a wheelchair, like I refused to walk around.

Until one day they did like a med call, you know, like kind of like a dinner bell situation where like come and get it, and I stood up and like fell down and just busted my face.

I woke up in the arms of like this simalion man who was like trying to save me.

He's like a really sweet dude.

And then I passed out again.

Woke up and some ambulance driver who was trying to like hook me up on an IV and like he thought I was still passed out, and I just heard him go, these junkies burn up.

They're fucking veins.

You can't find any anywhere.

And I was just like, hey, dude, like god, damn it, just give it to me, like I can do it.

I can, I.

Can, you know, put this thing in so so anyway, I was just kind of in and out of consciousness.

Though I don't know what they did to me at that hospital, but when they really started checking me out, they were like, hey, have you had a stroke in the last couple of days?

And I was like, what are you?

Oh shit, that's what that was in the bathtub.

Oh my god.

And at this point too, I'm like bleeding and have a huge black eye from falling on my face during med call, and you know, just like it's just like holy shit, you know, like my life is in pieces, like my health is fucked at this point.

You know, it's just like I'm.

Not doing well at all.

They send me back, they kind of patch me off at whatever hospital that was.

I wake back up in the cab crisis center again, and I was like you know what, I'm ready to be sober.

I'm gonna leave.

And all the doctors like this is a terrible idea.

You don't need to leave what we can't hold you.

And I call an uber and have them take me to go get dope.

So anyway, I go.

Get high, straight from to cab County and then I like walked back to the apartment I had had a stroke in a couple days before, and my roommate was there and he was like, hey, you you've got to go, like you have to go.

And the girl who had been around to revive me, she showed up and I had had a long history with her.

She saved my life many times.

She was she was she was great.

She started calling my mom and they're talking about sending me to like a six month rehab in the middle of fucking nowhere.

And I remember I was like smoking a cigarette inside and I was just ashing it on my belly.

Like I was just sitting.

There arguing high.

It was just a very sad scene of like this basically man child having these bullshit reasons of why they shouldn't have to go to rehab.

Eventually, after like much arguing, I agreed to go to that rehab, and you know, I go, I go into that rehab and they like shave my fucking head.

And again I had been running wild on Edgewood and Old Fourth Ward and you know, doing all this shit.

And now I'm in South Georgia with a bunch of like redneck meth heads.

So I'm like, oh my god, this is terrible and uh and I'm and I'm detoxing, you know, which I wasn't like, it wasn't the biggest deal.

I had detoxed in jail a bunch and you know, so that was but but it was just I was so down, like it was it's just so horrible.

I hate South Georgia.

Like I won't go there to this day, Like I just don't.

It's too hot.

It was just too much for me.

So I like, so you kind of like ring the bell type situation at that rehab.

I was like, all right, guys, I'm out.

They'll like they kind of act like all they owe you is a trip to the bus stop if you want to leave.

So you know, I called my mom, which is what you know, I would always turn to when things got bad enough or even when things were just kind of bad it would just be like, Mom, Yeah, things are bad.

So she got me a hotel room for the night and then a bus ticket and I was to go back to my hometown.

I get home and my mom is seeing me for the first time since the stroke, since the black eye from falling down and being.

Held by the smollion man and all that.

So she's like Jesus Christ, because again, I you know, in high school and college, I was like, at two twenty like kind of a robust person, and now I'm just a skeleton with a black eye and a shaved head, and you know, so she kept calling me gaunt.

She was like, oh, you're so gaunt, you know.

That was what she kept going back to.

So my mom was like, all right, you're gonna do some stuff around at the house.

I was like, well, I need money to buy materials to do what you're asking me to do.

So she just gave me a check and I could go cash that at the bank and go buy the lumber that I needed to do whatever.

And that worked really good, and I bought lumber.

So like the next four days, I did the same thing, but just bought drugs with it.

You know, I think I made it like five days in my hometown.

My family is very large and they all still lived there.

And I remember I was on the phone with a guy who was like my AA sponsor in Atlanta, telling him everything that had just happened and how I was like gonna clean up my act and all the while also being like, I mean, everything is really good, but you know, I am gonna get it together.

And then as I was talking to him, two police, three aunts, and four uncles show up in the backyard.

My aunts and uncles had heard what was going on with me and my mom and they were like fuck that, Like no, So my uncles were like, we're stepping in, like this motherfucker is running wild.

We're about to like solve this problem.

And the sad part was the safest place for me at that moment was in jail, Like I had just left a rehab, Like they can't forcibly keep you there.

But the thing about jail is you can't leave.

So they were having me arrested for check fraud, putting a handcuff, you know, like having handcuffs put on you in your childhood backyard.

They again didn't really know what to do with me in the jail, for the detox portion of it, and they just put me in isolation for like ten days.

They put me in isolation as I was kicking dope and I was just like losing my mind in there.

And it was funny because I started kind of noticing like, Okay, I was like, the second I get out of here, I can get money from here.

I can go get some dope from here.

I can do that, you know, just like spiraling, spiraling, like for ten days straight on how I could get high again.

And that started going away, and it was just like, God, damn it, I want a cigarette so bad.

It started obsessing about nicotine.

And then eventually, after like two weeks of being in jail, it was just like, God, I want some goddamn skittles so bad.

Before they move me into general population, I gotta go.

See the judge.

And they got to talk about, you know, what they're gonna fucking do with me, and when the court date is and all that stuff.

And they bring me into the little courtroom inside the jail, and the judge was my old Sunday school teacher.

I can't really remember that much about the discussion that happened, but basically we settled on he had been talking to my mom and family.

There is no bail, no amount of money could get me out.

You can leave when your mom says, So they got to like use this motherfucker as their personal jail to keep me in there, like until they could figure out like what to do with me.

So anyway, so we have that discussion.

They're like, yeah, I don't know.

Whenever your family comes and gets you, I guess like you can leave.

So I go back in general population.

I have no idea of like when I'm getting out or like, They're like, I just don't know.

I'm just fucking in there, you know.

And it was miserable and I can like look out of this thin window and like see all these places that I used to go as a kid, and like, you know, it's just like you're like, what the fuck happened to my life?

And I remember being so worried about the outside world, and like all of the manipulations and schemes and lies and all this shit that I had going on out there all going to come to a head now because I'm not out there to keep.

All the bullshit up.

It's like, fuck, everybody's gonna figure everything out now.

Because I'm not out there to throw enough chaos into their lives to keep things distorted so that they'll, you know, now they'll finally see how big of a piece of shit I am.

I remember thinking that, like, if I continue on this line of thought, I'm going to go insane, and like I'm not going to come back from it, like I'm going to lose who I am forever.

If I can't surrender this bullshit, let me surrender.

I'm going to surrender to the process, like I've heard tell of people recovering from drug addiction and alcoholism, Like maybe maybe maybe this will work for me this time.

My family has had me arrested.

I've been abandoned.

No one and wants to have anything to do with me, and rightly.

So after two and a half weeks or something like that, I just get the call, you know, hey, pack your shit, you're going and my uncle, who's a preacher, my mom took me back to a different location of the six month boot camp big book AA work camp type place that was like closer to where I grew up.

It's called the Bridges of Hope.

And the one that I went to was also kind of like outside of Augusta, and I'd grown up like turkey hunting all around that property.

So it felt very like things started to come together that I hadn't manipulated, that I hadn't told a ton of eyes to get what I want.

Like a bunch of good shit started happening to me that was not of me, and it was It was fucking weird.

It was kind of weird.

And so I got to the Bridges of Hope and I already had a shaved head, so they didn't need to reshave my head, and I was like super content.

I remember like getting on the bed the mattress there.

I'm like, oh, this is fucking awesome.

And then they would get food from the food bank and there was all these cakes and I just fucking was shoving my face full of sweets and all this stuff, and you know, it was like, oh, this is amazing.

And smoked cigarettes and met a bunch of the guys that they were cool, and then like all this gratitude came over and after two days I was like fuck this place.

It was like I hate this shit.

Luckily, the judge, my Sunday school teacher was like, hey, if you leave there, you're going to prison.

So luckily after that, like you know, immediate gratitude happened.

Immediately wore off.

I was like, fuck, well, I'm not gonna go to prison.

And I sat and I stayed, and I started to do the suggestions that were laid out to me, and I read.

I read a bunch of twelve step literature, which helped a lot.

The whole rehab was set up in a way where all the residents were like there was a crew that cooked for everybody, and there was a crew that took.

Care of the garden, and a crew that took care of the road.

So, you know, I just worried about my little jobs and taking care of everybody and making sure to talk to people.

You know, you would you would hear and feel your cell phone going off all the time.

You didn't have any cell phone, So it was like there was a cell phone detox that occurred to where it's like, I don't know, you don't realize like how much that shit kind of fucked you up too, you know, the addiction to your phone.

And it just allowed me to be more present and eventually very happy with my life because in this like little place that I was at, I had a purpose.

I was helping these other guys I could make everyone laugh, and then like they like slowly like moved into leadership positions as I just continued to seek, you know, a more spiritual way of life.

I guess, is how all say it.

Since I started to like make that positive turn at the bridges of hope, there has not been a moment in the last eight and a half years.

This is this all happened eight and a half years ago.

There's not been a moment where I'm like, I'm gonna go get high right now and somebody had to talk me off the ledge that like has not happened at all.

There's been times of like, oh they're smoking weed and skiing.

That looks fun, but never has it been like, holy fuck, I have got to go get high or anything like that.

So that that's the most miraculous things that's ever happened to me, To have that lifted from me.

The process was chaotic, long winded, and you know, just kind of insane.

But once I got to that point, once I was four WSD to just like take the fucking medicine and sit there for six months and let the process take hold.

I have not had a problem with getting high since then.

So my life now is plumbing.

My uncles were plumbers, so I grew up plumbing, so I had like kind of a skill.

I wasn't any good, really, I was a good helper maybe.

And I eventually moved back to Atlanta after rehab and started working for a guy from AA who had a plumbing company, and started plumbing, and it just became clear I really enjoyed working with my hands.

It keeps my mind busy and I really enjoy it.

So I just nerded out on plumbing and just like loved it so much.

And I found two buddies who were all also sober and have similar stories, who are also working for the same company, and they were nerds about it.

And eventually we worked for a bunch of plumbing companies in Atlanta until we set up an LLC to do our side work and it's grown into like a thirty person company now where we have our own plumbing company, and so it's kind of full with that.

Yeah, it's not like I'm still a member of twelve step groups, but my life is just very full of, you know, taking care of this company.

A lot of my guys are sober.

My business partners are sober, so that support I still get it.

When I'm in a ditch digging a sewer line, I can be like, hey, dude, I've really been struggling with my anger because of this, this and this, and they're like, yeah, I've had that too.

You know.

It's just like I'm having I'm blessed to have the opportunity to like just turn around and talk to somebody who had addiction issues and doesn't anymore due to twelve staff or a more spiritual way of living.

I have that at my disposal all the time.

And again, it was one of those things that just naturally happened.

You start to you know, when it's hard to see in the moments, but when you start to look back, like the best things that have happened in my life are not of my design.

Like if you would have asked me on the day that I was arrested and was in front of my Sunday school teacher as the judge, like where do you see.

Your life in five years?

Like, you know, you could not call this shit, you know.

So that's probably the craziest thing.

So today, when I'm practicing awareness, I'm actively trying to do better as a human.

The best way I've found to do that is to try to remove myself from the situation, remove.

My ego, get out of the fucking way of.

The process, and just be of service to others or to the process itself.

And usually the best things happen by doing that.

Welcome back to Alive again.

Joining me for a conversation about today's story are my other Alive against story producers Nicholas Dakowski and Print Day, and I'm your host, Dan Bush.

I had a very I feel like I had a very personal connection to Scott's story.

I have not struggled with addiction to the level that he did, but I have personally struggled hard with alcohol dependency, with alcoholism or alcohol disused disorder, whatever they call it these days.

That's what I had, And I know what not necessarily chasing the high, but chasing the numb that allows you to not have to deal with your own head and what's wrong with it or why it's wrong.

And you know, having spoken to Scott about his story, there was just something that felt very familiar and something that I I think you know, always bears discussion, and that's that is what addiction does.

To your brain and what it does to your soul to a certain extent.

Yeah, he didn't really go into or at least I didn't hear in his story any indication of like the trauma.

Mostly you hear about the trauma or the disconnect that sets somebody off into this path of addiction of behavior, and he didn't go into much of that.

He just sort of told the story itself of like how he managed to survive barely over years and years and years of this this monkey on his back.

To a large extent, he touches very briefly on you know, the opioid epidemic.

He didn't.

He wasn't like he you know, he did what kids do.

I mean, like the.

Story about him, you know, going and buying weed when he's twelve years old at a pool hall and getting getting robbed.

But even that is just kind of a thing that kids do.

They they're like, I want to try marijuana because it was about it, and they get in a dumb situations.

But where his trouble began was not going and looking for marijuana and you know, drink in a flask of wild turkey or you know, trying shrooms in college like that his addiction.

His like his story and the hell that he went through started legally with his doctor giving him pain medication oxy codone, that at the time was being prescribed like fucking candy out of these doctor's offices because it was being pushed so hard by the pharmaceutical industry.

This guy didn't get addicted because like he went down the wrong path and like met up with the wrong people.

He got addicted because his doctor, who you should trust, who you're taught to trust, gave him some of the most addictive drugs that have ever existed in the history of the planet.

And he is perhaps one of one of the people who is aligned with addiction because I think he remember him saying, I fucking loved it.

Assume as you know, this feels great, right, Like I just I'll take all of this, yeah, you know, And that's some I think some people are just it affects them in a certain way and they're sensitive to it and more prone to addiction than others.

I don't know if that's true for him, but it sounded like that might have been the case.

That's absolutely a part of it, but yeah, I think so.

There was something very striking about the fact that he was like, yeah, I was, you know, I was.

There's a lot that's on me, but like I was also a victim of this epidemic, and you know, it was getting hooked on that stuff and then finding it everywhere, and then you know, making the switch over to heroin.

He says, you know, when I switched over to Heroin, it was an economic decision.

It was just cheaper.

Yeah, And I don't know, man, I mean, like, having been in the throes of all of that, you can want so badly to chase the next high, even while knowing that like this is eating you up and destroying your life.

There was a there was a time in my life that, like him, it was like, you know, I don't know what's going to happen in my life, but I know what's going to kill me.

And it's this thing that I'm doing.

Yeah, And I hear of these stories of people who have just hit rock bottom and and yet they're not.

You know, we have this this narrative, sort of myth, urban legend, sort of image running in our mind that these folks are different than us, that they are somehow more delinquent or more or somehow less human or something.

Because we have this image that's not a real image.

Then you meet the real people and they're just like us, and they have He was you know, Scott was not aware even though his head was shaved and he was beat up with a black eye and he had lost, you know, some massive percent of his body weight, and he was basically this you know, he just he had a stroke, shell of you and he had had a stroke, and he was with the shell of a human being.

He's still was had.

He still was going, you know, but it's okay, I'm gonna you know, he still had this sort of thought of going he's gonna get out of it, or it's like it's you know, he'll move past this, or he was he couldn't see how bad off.

He was, right, Yeah, when when you're that deep in you, I think you have a recognition that something is really wrong and that you need to stop this thing.

But the part of your brain that wants the next like fix the next hit is like is like, yeah, but it's not that bad.

And he talks about phones too at some points because people forget about the phone's and I think, and I tell my kids this too, Like I tell them, I'm like the screen time you're getting At first it's dopamine hit, dopamine hit, dopamine hit, and that that makes you feel good.

But then it gets to the point where just to feel normal you have.

To have it.

And that's just phones.

Yeah.

You know, imagine him like he's it's he's not getting high, he's just doing it so he's not sick, right, Yeah.

And I have had points in my life where, you.

Know, I haven't had anywhere near that level of disparity or gone to that point of like being arrested and having to you know, go through with draws and a shitty jail.

Cell.

I haven't experienced that myself, but I have gotten points where I've been able to look back and go, wow, I was really doing a lot of adderall and you know, excessive adderall and alcohol and xanax and all these things that are readily available and just sort of a part of continued normal existence in America, and only later looked back and went, wow, I was really deep into that shit.

Yeah, you know, I was completely functional, highly functional.

Yeah, Scott says, if I seemed normal for the outside world, it wasn't for anything I was doing that was actually normal.

It was because my emotional sort of ups and downs were regulated by the drugs I was taking.

Right around the time Philip Seymour Hoffmann died, there was a huge snowstorm in Atlanta, and my daughter and I would walk down to the local store and to reward ourselves, we would buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and we'd go back to the house and eat it.

And people thought I was joking, because I was like, I can totally get why he was so obsessed with heroin because I had that same I could not think of anything but getting more of that ice cream.

And people thought it was a joke, And I'm like, this is no I mean, and something as innocuous and controllable as ice cream can have that kind of control over you.

Like, actually, sugar's just as addictive as cigarettes, period.

I mean it literally, Like I'm not kidding.

When I quit drinking, I switched.

I mean like for months, I switched to sugar.

Like I was just I gained.

All these people lose weight from from quitting drinking, and I did.

I did lose weight initially, and it came back and was more.

It was just like okay, so yeah, now I've I've been detoxing off of like that kind of stuff too.

I do eat a lot of watermelon.

There's a whole.

Food for you that's, you know, full of fiber and yummy, yummy.

I remember as a kid, they showed us these scared straight movies, you know, and and they would talk about like the Acid Trip, and they'd be like, I was sitting in my room and my posters came alive and started walking around the room, and I was like, man, that actually sounds kind of.

Cool that but I'm not supposed to use.

But the teacher said, if you have an addicted personality, you should stay away from this stuff.

You know, this is like second grade or third grade.

And I was like, yeah, you know, I'm obsessed with Eminem's.

That's what I thought.

I'm obsessed with Eminem's.

So I steered clear of that stuff.

And listening to your story, Nick, and listening to Scott's story, I just kept thinking, thank god I didn't have that albatross hanging around my neck, because that would be a huge fucking alligator to wrestle to the ground man, And hats off to anybody who has fought that battle.

And I think Scott shows how.

Hard it is.

It is, and it's hard it is.

I will admit it's hard for me to relate to how somebody could be in that situation and not know that they're in that situation.

How somebody could have a stroke in a bathtub and not go whoa wait a minute, you know, it's but.

How somebody could lay in a bathtub for six to twelve hours out when you're.

In it, yeah, yeah, But when you're in it, you're in it.

And the one thing that at the end he you know again, this is reflected across a lot of these stories.

But the thing that I think ultimately happens to get out of the situation or to survive whatever the experience is, whether it's a slow drip death that's slowly killing you and poisoning you due to addiction or whether it's a car wreck.

The way that the way back to some sense of of of a life, the way to be alive again, I guess just go there is to He said to remove my ego, to move myself from the situation, and he talks about that and he says good things come from surrendering.

That's when the good things in my life have happened is when I surrender, when I got out of my own way, when it wasn't about me.

When I just surrendered and he says to be of service to others or to the process itself, that's.

When good things happen.

And it just reminded me of like the greatest tool that any of us have isn't so much about control.

It's about surrendering, you know, It's about surrendering to the process or or you know, to just be of service to others.

Is like the one of the compassion again, is one of the greatest tools we have for survival or for self resilience or for you know, for well.

And that's why the serenity prayer is so central to the twelve step programs.

You know, God give me, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can cannot change, the courage to change the things I can.

And the wisdom to know the different difference.

Yeah, that's I mean, that's absolutely central to it, because I think so much of addiction is this, I think maybe false sense of control over ourselves.

You know.

I mean when I was when I was drinking to blackout every night every night.

It started with me trying to regulate my emotions.

I was so stressed out by the day that I needed the alcohol to regulate that emotion, and it just disregulated me worse, and it became just like this absolute spiral.

I've heard therapists talk about how you can't like you can't begin to deal with trauma until you stop drinking, right, you know, you just it's just not possible first.

You have to get that out of the way before you can even think about about And I remember I was like, it's different.

But I used to paint house and I would come home and just the fumes from the paint like good, already to be high.

And so me and my friends we would, you know, Charlotte, North Carolina.

We would drink a shitload just to feel normal again after painting with fumes all day long.

And and we got to where we'd do that all summer, and by the end of the we were just drunks.

We were just drunk.

And then it got where we were drinking on site and we were just you know.

And then at some point, I remember I shifted and I was like, I got it.

I can't do this anymore.

I got to get the fuck out of this situation because I'm just a drunk.

I'm just painting all day, and I've got hives all over my body.

I've gained all this weight.

And so I went into another addiction.

I started jogging seven miles a day, twelve on weekends, you know, and I would get done with a full day of work and I would go run seven miles just to get my brain back after all the paint fumes.

So there's all.

These forms of addiction, phones and exercise, and you know.

Yeah, but exercise is a probably a pretty good one.

I mean, you could definitely over you can do that.

Yeah, I mean I was, but yeah, I get it with the running.

Uh you know, listen, I I didn't.

I was unable to quit drinking for years and years after this, like low point.

It still took me.

It still took me eight years, seven eight years to quit drinking after that.

It was my eggnog that I gave you that did.

That was well.

I mean at that point, I knew I was going to be taking I knew I was going to be taking at least like a dry January.

But but yeah, I think like even.

I made I may make some some family recipe eggnog.

Oh, and I made you that I made you.

And I think that was some of the last which it was, and I.

Gave didn't I give you the Oh my god, I can't remember the name of it now, but it was the cocaine like the sort of coconut ncoction with the reasons in it that ship was delicious but just too sweet.

Yeah, but yeah, no, your eggnog.

Actually, there's a there's a picture you took of me and I'm wearing a shirt that's just too small and I'm holding that thing and I'm like making some fucking face and it was that picture was definitely a motivating factor.

Definitely not anywhere close to the but it was a motivating factor in making me go like, maybe this needs to be longer than a dry January.

Honestly, by the time that I did quit drinking, the real trigger was was I had a kid, and so my drinking got cut down a tremendous amount.

So I was no longer getting drunk anymore, but I was still drinking every single night, like two or three a night, and I was just I felt toxic.

I quit drinking.

Mostly ninety percent of my drinking is I don't do anymore because I noticed that I'm just tired around my kids.

My kids are like, read to me, wrestle, let's do something.

Let's and I was like, I was going to point.

I was like, you know what, I'm just too tired.

I just feel I just want to enjoy this beer and watching TV, you know.

And I was like, what, that's not me.

I have children who want nothing more than to interact and and they're watching every move I make same reason.

I put my fucking cell phone down these days when they come around the corner.

I'm like, nope, I'm with them.

Cell phone's off at five kids are home, you know, and it's hard to do.

It's hard.

Yeah, I want to go check my phone.

I want to see if there's any more messages.

I'm working on multiple projects and it's just but it's all bullshit and nobody's there's not going to be an emergency.

It's there's not going to be any any Like I'm not going to get a call from some network.

It's like, we're going to make your TV show now.

Dan, let's you know, Yeah, we.

Need you to respond in the next twelve minutes.

Right, otherwise it's over otherwise it's over.

We're going to move on to the next guy.

We just got a list.

You missed it.

But no, I mean, I totally that's a thing though.

It's like we life is.

Life is kind of difficult and frequently really really boring.

Nobody really gets into how boring adulthood is gonna be.

It's just tedious to the extreme.

So if you already have, if you if you're already like living this in this reality that we all share, and uh, if you find something that helps like kind of smooth over the rough edges, whether that be your phone which takes away boredom in a way, or alcohol or opioids that just make you feel great, it's like who you have that who wants to experience reality unfiltered without any like gauze over it?

You know?

I mean I think that that there's a part of us that feels that way, that wants that, that needs the constant little dopamine hits constantly because that means we don't actually have to like deal with existing full time.

At it becomes normal, like it what was a decamine?

It now you have to have just to feel normal, right.

But we've taken to like you know, just not letting the girls get on their iPads, not letting them watch the TV, which we limited how much they could do anyway.

And I'm like, you guys are just gonna have to be bored for a while like we were.

And they turn that into creative energy.

They'll start a creative project, or they'll you know, one daughter's kind of into fitness, so she'll do like a little workout, and the other one I'll start creating something, you know.

So yeah, I think.

If you remove that ticket out of your boredom or that ticket out of your uncertainty, and it forces you to just kind of find a way to fill that with something positive, as Scott did with his business.

I mean, it's remarkable from one train wreck to another.

And he ends this story and he starts a plumbing business and he's doing really well with it.

Now he's got thirty employees, and I'm like, did not see that company?

Right?

We had a situation the summer where the kids were getting more and more into it was like summertime, they can watch TV, they could play Fortnite, and they got to where they were just so addicted to it and just doing it constantly.

And then it was going to be a thing.

But I had to kind of take them through this withdrawal.

So I took away all the phones and stuff.

And at first, of course, they lost their minds and they were like whining and crying and trying to just grab food and snacks.

And day two they did a fashion show, they wrote, they made a comic book, they designed and built their own lego.

Like they did all this stuff in one day, and I'm like, Jesus should just get rid of the TV's entirely right.

Well, A friend of mine in college used to say, the reason Da Vinci was able to be such an accomplished artist is because he didn't have a TV.

He's he's gonna go carve something out of marble because there was nothing else to do.

Boredom is today.

I think that they've done studies.

It's like we about like nobody, Yeah, nobody daydreams anymore.

It's I mean, it's and that's I mean, that's a it's a huge problem.

You know, back in the day, you went to the bank, you had to like stand in line, and you just had to stand there.

There was nothing you had to be with, You had to be with yourself.

Yeah, you had to be with your stupid brain.

You know, that's why I actually really enjoy long car rides now, is because you know, when I'm when I have to drive a long distance, you can't like I'll listen to music.

I might, I might listen to a podcast or something.

But sometimes I.

Know a good, good podcast you could listen to.

It's called a Live Again.

And you know what every land stories.

But the commentary isn't sufferable.

Hey, dear listener, I cut as much of this commentary out as I can when I'm editing these, just so you know, Oh, I'm helping you.

Oh yeah, you don't.

You don't want to hear the whole.

You don't want to hear what you think about it.

I do think it's important for people to put their devices down and get away from being entertained all the time, except for if they have an opportunity to lift until Live Again, right, they really should because they'll gain something from it.

But otherwise, yeah, throw these devices.

Yeah, after you're done listening to this episode.

No, after the series sign up for next year.

No, I mean I found that, you know, the best writing that I get done is not when I'm sitting in front of my computer.

It's when I'm driving.

It's when I'm just like stuck in traffic and I can't you know, I can't really like have my phone in my hand.

I'm just forced to think.

Yeah, I mean, I guess if there's anything I can if I really want to impart anything else, it's that there's help out there if you are struggling with addiction.

Uh, there's there is help out there.

There are phone numbers, there are there are meetings you can go to there if you're not into twelve step programs.

I am not into twelve step programs.

I'm just not.

But they're incredibly helpful for some people.

But there's things that are not twelve step programs, and I will give them to you Dan to add at the end of this.

But you know, take the first step and get the help you need.

Next week, on a light again, we sit down with doctor Eben Alexander, a Harvard neurosurgeon whose near death experience turned his understanding of consciousness and the brain completely upside down.

What he wants dismissed as impossible, he now believes is at the very heart of our existence.

That consciousness does not arise from the brain, but is beyond universal, shared and rooted in love.

We've taken huge steps backwards in the last few years with warfare and with violence, and with disregarding the rights of human beings.

It's time to reverse every bit of that and start acknowledging this much deeper lesson that's coming to the fore about the nature of our existence and how we're really all in this together.

And to hurt another is to hurt one's self.

It's a conversation about science, spirit and the paradigm shift that might just change everything you thought you knew about reality.

That's next week, I'm Alive Again.

Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent Die, Nicholas Dukoski, and Lauren Vogelbaum.

Music by Ben Lovett, Additional music by Alexander Rodriguez.

Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick and Trevor Young.

Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional production supporting.

Our studio engineers are Rima El Kali and Nomes Griffin.

Today's episode was edited by Mike w Anderson, mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez.

I'm your host Dan Bush.

Special thanks to Scott Jenkins for sharing his story Alive Again as a production of Ieart Radio and Psychopia Pictures.

If you have a transformative near death experience to share, we'd love to hear your story.

Please email us at a Live Again Project at gmail dot com.

That's a l i v e A g A I N p R O j e c T at gmail dot com.