No Matter How Bad Addiction Gets, There Is Still Hope | Dan's Story
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[00:00:00] All right what's up everybody I'm happy to be here today my name is Dan I'm here to tell a little bit about my story I had some hard times in my thirties on my darkest days I had turned to dumpster diving as a means to support my habit to support my family
and some people in my life were watching this happen and somebody called Child Protective Services and my son was apprehended and when the two social workers and the two police officers came to my door they came in and they were laughing and they were pointing and they were acting as though this was some sort of coffee break
and yeah the last thing that I handed my son on his way out the door was his puppy his little stuffy that he had his whole life and to remember that day I had puppy tattooed on my arm oh wow he's watching over my son when I couldn't and that said in motion wheels that brought me ultimately to where I am today
sitting here with you okay so that's a pretty wild moment in your life and it sounds like you're struggling you're having a hard time but is it like a knock on the door is it just Police [00:01:00] officers did they just come in like on a movie or something how does that happen
no it wasn't dramatic i looking back now it would've been like that would've been something but no I have friends that happened to but no they knocked on the door and it was just like any other day and when we opened that door our lives changed
wow yeah for everybody who is joining us welcome we're glad you're here this is Dan dan is from his podcast called Hard Knocks Talks and he's agreed to come in here today and be our expert witness and share with you about his journey into addiction and out of it
and he's got quite a story to tell you I think you're really going to get a lot out of it dan There's got to be a lot of backstory coming into this day that you're telling me that the social services is knocking on your door so what in the world led you to that place we can go all the way back to the beginning
like I didn't necessarily grow up around a lot of active addiction or a lot of active alcoholism it does run in my family my father was already in recovery and maintaining it in [00:02:00] productive ways when I came around but I remember like years before my first drink I remember like craving alcohol like just craving
and I maybe it wasn't alcohol that I was a craving maybe it was escape that I was craving and like I was having feelings that I didn't really know that I had until one day I got loaded and realized that I didn't feel the same and my dad would get angry with me he would be like because I was asking him questions like what does beer taste like
what does vodka taste like all of these questions and they were persistent and in knowing that now looking back like I I definitely think that I was predisposed because like I said I didn't grow up in an environment where this was like normal or what someone would consider normal
but there was like a curiosity yes there was something a wanting to experience or know yes there absolutely was and when I finally got my hands on it I got drunk with my friend at the time we were like 13 years old and in the basement of his house in the small town Saskatchewan
we got absolutely loaded I think I drank like two beer or something and I was just blacked out and I woke up the next day [00:03:00] and the bed I was laying in was wet like I wet the bed my pants were across the room I'm also soaking wet you would think that an experience like that would be like this sucks
I don't want to have this experience I don't want to tell my friends about this I am embarrassed but that wasn't the case I remember being proud as though I had achieved some level of rite of passage by this time in my life a lot of my friends had already started experimenting with alcohol
that was just the culture of the community that I grew up in it wasn't necessarily in my home but when I would go to school my friends would be talking about it drive past the bar on Friday night or you walk past there's cars lined up and seems like the cool thing to do
and you know what maybe it was maybe it was for a bit but I went to school and I was bragging and it wasn't in my mind at all that what I had done was wrong and from that point on it was all about Friday night like my whole life became about making sure that I had what I needed Friday night
so for you very quickly the I call it the obsession the obsession started right it's [00:04:00] like you had it once the obsession started before you even had it yeah yeah which is wild right so it's out the gate you're hit the ground running probably just a hundred miles an hour
Yep wow and then I moved from a small town to a what we call in Saskatchewan a big city okay at the time like 200000 people it's bigger than that now but I couldn't wait to get away from that town because it just seemed like no matter what click I wanted to
I didn't fit in with any of the kids I didn't fit in with the jocks I didn't fit in with the kids that were partying I didn't fit in and of course looking back now you realize that there were people that wanted to spend time with me but tho I didn't want to spend time with those
because I don't really understand why but when I moved to Saskatoon I did manage to find a small group of friends that we would smoke weed and we would play hacky sack and we would do what early 2000 kids or nineties kids would do
Okay so yeah so if your dad was already in recovery And you're going down this path at a hundred miles an hour
what were your parents doing how were [00:05:00] they responding to that at the time my mom and dad split when I was very young I think I was like 11 or something when maybe I was 10 when they split and my mom has been in the addictions field in our province here for
as long as I've been alive there's a treatment center here in Saskatchewan called pine Lodge and there's a picture on that wall in that treatment center of my mom sitting at her desk with a picture of me on that desk when I was like three years old wow yeah
so she's played a pretty significant part in the development of addiction services in Saskatchewan and her knowing what she did at the time she knew that you can't really force someone to step away from that unless there's some level of knowing that this is problematic and Yeah
but at the same time she and your dad must have known oh they did they knew you this how scary when you work in this every day I was just thinking to myself as an addiction counselor dude I know what's down that road and so it's so scary it must have they must have been terrified and I'm [00:06:00] sure that they were they didn't really express that to me
like I said my mom she knew what was happening but she didn't really add to the anxiety and the depression and or whatever that was that I was feeling at the time we talked a little bit about it my dad had also talked with me a little bit about it but there was never any heavy duty punishment
okay because I think at the time like they both knew that this punishment would only likely drive me in further yeah so looking back even as a grownup now you think that was the right decision I think so it's such muddy waters there's such a broad spectrum of needs that different people respond to
and looking back now yeah I don't really think that there could have been a much better path for them to take with me okay so when did the substances start causing problems for you pretty much right out the gate really okay but I didn't know that it took a number of years for me to know that in fact it was into my twenties and I was already using heavier substances that I [00:07:00] started to realize that this is a problem
I had graduated high school I went to work I became a welder and I got my journeymen certificate so I was working in northern Saskatchewan and Northern Alberta and I could go up north where substances are rampant a bunch of tradesmen working in seclusion
and but I wouldn't use I would be away from that social environment that I had pretty much put myself in for my whole adult and adolescent life as soon as I was away from that It wasn't that I had to try not to use it wasn't like okay I'm going to go up north
I'm not going to use it wasn't like a thing in my mind I would just go up north and not use I would take my guitar up there with me and I would learn to play songs and I would work out I would eat yeah no my whole life was different when I was working if I could just focus on me I had no social obligations
And obligations that I know now that I put on myself that I had to act a certain way I could just be me and I didn't even realize that I was just being me it's the strangest thing I don't really know how to it just happened huh
yeah it[00:08:00] just happened okay wow so you were using substances off and on you got trained as a welder you would go up you would take these breaks or periods where you wouldn't use anything at all and then you would go back and it would start again
what would happen yeah I would as soon as I got back into town by this time I like I said I owned a house I had a race car I had all the things that a 26 year old tradesmen could probably want really okay but as soon as I got back to the to Saskatoon town
where my friends were it was on and that wasn't even a decision really either it was like okay I'm back here it was just like breathing you know what I mean it was just like this is what you do to get through the day
it was just your normal it's almost like habit routine almost neuro pathways just take over yeah okay it is strange cuz I always think I'm from a small town in Tennessee and when I go back home it's almost like I turn into myself from then I feel like I felt then immediately just being there and it is it does feel like it just pulls you back in to that place the person you're that you [00:09:00] are when you're there yeah in fact it was around this time that I started to realize that I started to see the pattern okay
and I started like in my own behavior and in 2008 after I'd been working a few years at different mine sites there was a big layoff I was working in Fort McMurray Alberta it's a big oil town here in Canada
and in 2008 there was a massive layoff around this time I had recently met a woman Donna she is my my life partner my wife mother of my children
but that's when we met okay and our most endearing quality in each other at that time was that we could use together and she wouldn't get on my case cuz I was using too much I wouldn't get on her case cuz we would always use together all the time there was no like she's doing more than me or whatever
can I ask what you were using because people are going to be wondering cuz I'm wondering Oh yeah no of course it it was party drugs at first I had already started using meth at that time and in fact for being honest it was around that time that I introduced her to meth but that just [00:10:00] escalated the partying and when I got laid off I remember driving back from Fort McMurray in my truck and driving down the highway and this is not good cuz I'd already come to realize I could take a break when I went to work like this was my safe place was not my safe place yeah anymore okay yeah and that's when her and I we pretty much jumped off a cliff together metaphorically wow yeah okay so from there the using just escalated for a while it did yeah and I was still productive for a while when I came back to Saskatoon
there was a point in my life where I thought I was going to be a a cook I thought I was going to be a meth cook a meth wait hold on yeah was I was like yeah and then a meth cook yeah yeah not like the good kind of chef where you No I thought you meant like I was going to be a chef
Yeah I dove into that and despite my very best efforts and coming back from Fort McMurray and I was in good shape financially I was able to afford equipment and I did my best to break bad like I really did so you went into it thinking business [00:11:00] entrepreneur style
This is my life path career I'm about to be the king career here yeah this I'm going to sail off into the sunset and this is going to be amazing yeah el Chopper right here yeah that's what I thought and despite my best efforts I wasn't able to succeed and thank God looking back now then after that didn't work out I, I ended up Starting a welding company and I went legit because like I sucked at being a criminal and yeah it wasn't fruitful for me and I was successful in that for a little while like I didn't get super rich but I ran it for a year and a half
but in that time like we were using heavily and Yeah there was lots of times where I was up for days on end and then the phone would ring and I would have to go to a job site and it was a terrible way to live it tell us about a day in the life because there's a lot of people watching who really want to understand that what is that like when you're when you're stuck in the middle of him yeah and I remember it was during that time where we discovered opioids as soon as we discovered those yeah like I was home it was that was wonderful to me and I [00:12:00] remember the effects of those wearing off or not being able to find them and still having to go to work
spending $175 just to get outta bed so how much when you're in your active addiction in the Cru in the height of it how much were you spending cuz a lot of people don't understand how expensive opioids are I don't care how much money you have you don't have enough for that
you don't no you really don't at the height of it now these are Canadian dollars not American dollars so at the height of it between the two of us we were spending a thousand dollars a day oh my gosh yeah so that's probably around 750 American dollars
a but load it's a But load a but load yes I'm just sitting here thinking what do you have to do to come up with $750 a day that's just to fuel the habit not to pay the rent yeah no the party was over anything like to function just like Dan is saying to get up out the bed
yeah and that's somewhere where I'll just say we didn't come by it honestly and we'll just put it leave it okay yeah we can take that we can read between the lines okay yeah but [00:13:00] one of the things that I've noticed especially with the opioids is you get on that four hour treadmill right
And that's when everything just falls apart because you can't function without it and every four or five hours you have to have more and so you're stuck constantly getting the money for it getting it waiting for the dude to meet you in the parking lot just it's just consumes everything
and that guy doesn't give a crap about your feelings I'll tell you that right now no all of a sudden you'll be sitting there and he'll just stop answering his phone and then what do you do this is real life that you're dealing with here you need these things to be able to even go to work to get the money you need to get 'em
and then you get stuck in a cycle where all you're doing is working so hard to get the money you need to get the dope so that you can be well enough to work to get the money you need to get the dope and it's just it just never ends yeah you're just caught and the treadmill goes faster and faster the longer you're on it
so if you could just imagine you're running on this treadmill and it's just speeding up incrementally the whole time the tolerance gets more you [00:14:00] need more you've got to run faster and when you think about that it's easy to see how someone's life could fall apart yeah and at some point like the phone stopped ringing
My company shut down because I wasn't able to show up and when I did show up I didn't do very good work and I was late and this and that and all the things I got a job working for another company and that slowly just got worse and worse too I started to Tarnish their reputation
they trusted me with one of their welding trucks and I was going to job sites and I would just leave the job site in the middle of the day with the welding truck cuz I needed to hook up like I needed I was getting sick but and I want I want to zone in there just a little bit Dan because we have a lot of families that watch and at this point in an addiction story and Dan you tell me if I'm wrong it's not about getting high
no it's about surviving it's about he's not leaving work to go get high he's leaving work to get what he needs to just be okay live [00:15:00] yeah no the like I said before the party was definitely over yeah it's not fun anymore no and then you're trapped yeah I remember lots of times Before work like not even really dope sick yet or anything
first thing in the morning with looking at big lines on the coffee table and just crying because there's that that's $175 or whatever just that I if I don't take it I'm going to get so sick I can't work and so if it was you and her You both were on this treadmill and you both had to come up with the money
yep wow and at that point it's I call it using against your will like you don't even want to be doing it but you have to yeah it feels like that of course like we can all be like this is a decision like I can decide to quit my job to reach out for help to do the things go to meetings right
tough out the withdrawal feel like I'm going to die but when you're in that when you're in that space in your mind it's such in the moment like no it's it [00:16:00] feels impossible like it feels like there's just no other alternative and it does feel against your will I'm so glad you said that because it's hard for people sometimes to understand why you don't just Walk out of the room walk out of the door and do something else
but you're right you're so trapped on this treadmill that you can't even stop long enough it's not like you you're backing up from your life and having these long conversations with yourself and these like epiphany moments and making decisions about your life you are in survival mode
yeah the house is on fire around you and you're just fight or flight surviving moment to moment you can't even stop to think about it yep and then of course the thoughts if I do go to detox if I do go to treatment like that's six weeks how am I going to pay my bills
who's going to take care of the family who's going to this that the next thing run the business whatever and these are real life things and people can sit there and be like do you want to live or do you want to die I want to live but you're trapped and Even if you could figure you can't stop long enough to figure out the answer to [00:17:00] those questions you can't stop long enough to make the 55 phone calls It takes to call to find out can I go there do you have any so at that point you just can't
if you slow down the treadmill's going to throw you off the back end yeah that's a fact so one day I one day I came home from work and I sat down and Donna curled up beside me and said with all of the tenderness and love that she could that she was pregnant wow yeah and when you are heavily addicted to fentanyl that's a big realization
even if you're in a good place in your life that's like life changing oh my gosh yeah like any person would think oh my gosh can I handle this can I be a father yeah but when you can't you're you're barely keeping your own head above water we for a very short time we thought okay we'll wean off on our own and that very quickly cuz we'd tried to do that before and actually that's interesting it's an interesting talking point so many people say oh I did this for my kids I got sober for my kids
not everybody can do that and if you're watching right now and you're in that and you're a parent [00:18:00] and you can't sober up don't you're not alone you're not alone you're not a monster and you're loved we got on the methadone maintenance program is what we did and it worked
we found stability the cravings went away and Donna took care of herself she ate well she did the nesting thing she did all the things as best we could at the time I worked things leveled out and then when our son was born Born healthy by the way there was some complications at birth but nothing to do with anything other than there was a little bit too much medication administered and they actually it it turned into a very big deal
it was an emergency C-section okay yeah cuz his heartbeat dropped right okay but that's a whole story in itself the long and short of it is he is healthy he didn't need any sort of maintenance or anything and for anyone who might not understand what that means sometimes when the mother is on a maintenance program like methadone or Suboxone and sometimes the child needs to also
have a certain amount of that and wean off [00:19:00] slowly or right or whatever that looks like that was not the case with our son for whatever reason wow yeah and life went on oh we've got a baby now go home and we did the parenting thing and we got everything as sorted as we could and some renovations happened in the home and I went to work and she stayed home and cared for our son
and then so lemme pause you right there because I think there's an important point there yep getting on the methadone which for those of you don't know is an opiate replacement medicine it's also an opiate but you get it legitly at the place there's a doctor and they give it to you and it's not for everyone
I'm not saying that but what I am saying is it allowed you to get it off of the four hour treadmill yes and as soon as you were off it's interesting cuz even though you said the opioid in you but as soon as you're off and you're stabilized you guys go back to being functioning adults right yeah
so it's not that just addicts are just not functioning because they don't want to be functioning or cuz they don't care about themselves or they don't care it's literally because they can't and so as soon as you got that and you stabilized you're working [00:20:00] she's doing all the things that she needs to do it's just I just want families to understand that cuz a lot you may have a loved one who's not in that spot and you may wonder what is wrong with you why aren't you doing the things you know a young person should do yeah and that that happens a lot
it's just like your brain is so filled with solving the problem of staying well that you don't have time to 10 you don't have the capacity to tend to life in a meaningful way that is sustainable like you that I shouldn't say you I should say that was my experience I think that's I think that's the experience
yeah I think that's it yeah yeah so about six months after we had our son we just got the itch we've been doing so good opioids were our problem we could probably do cocaine okay and we did and and we got away with it the first time and it's maybe we can do it on weekends then
and weekends then Wednesdays then Mondays Tuesdays Fridays then and now we're m moved back to [00:21:00] meth how long between making the decision like using cocaine for the first time after till it was back to oh on it was on like how long of a time period are we talking
if it was two months I would be surprised okay quick so yeah there it is not I didn't mark it on the calendar but it would it escalated very quickly okay just like it had every time in the past n now we're using meth and we're like I'm starting to have dirty tox screens because we have to take drug tests to stay on the methadone at the methadone clinic
and we I kept pissing dirty and got kicked off so we successfully weaned off of the methadone program and onto meth wow yeah and that went on that that didn't just stop on its own but that this is getting to the place that we talked about a little bit earlier
I couldn't hold down a job anymore I had big sores all over my face I was letting my employer down time and time again not showing up doing bad work having a bad attitude on job sites i and [00:22:00] eventually it came to a place where they didn't have a choice
they didn't have the services to help me they didn't know how to access services that could help me and they couldn't keep me did they know what was going on with you I didn't tell them but it was glaringly obvious obvious okay yeah they definitely knew
okay and they frankly they kept me longer than they should have they were very good employers very good people I did have an opportunity to go and make amends with them and I think they landed okay but I cost that company a lot but I ran into them a few years later
actually just in this past year I ran into the two of the owners and they're like oh hey okay definitely kind people but anyways so that's when I turned to a life of scavenging dumpster diving for copper for bottles for whatever I could get my hands on I had this delusion that I was going to have a a recycling company I was going to
okay [00:23:00] yeah that was my plan I was going to assign contracts with all the big companies in town that I had exclusive rights to their dumpster okay maybe not a terrible idea absolutely if done properly but I was not doing that thing properly so let me ask you this then clearly just listening to you I can tell that you're just like an entrepreneur at heart right
like you were going to have a meth business had you did have a welding business was this sort of just another spin on that the way you're always trying to like think that or is this more in the delusional lane I've always had an entrepreneurial streak yeah
whether that was in wellness or otherwise the means in which I thought I was going to get there I think was the delusional part okay someone whose life is ruled by these illicit substances is hardly one set for success so things just can continued to spiral like the house filled up with garbage because
I was bringing things home that were shiny but not valuable oh here's a VCR from [00:24:00] 1980 I can fix this and then I just end up tearing it apart and taking a circuit board out of it or something it's the insanity of the substance I was using and yeah the house filled up with garbage
I was reclused I was in the garage all the time donna was in the home trying to take care of our son and some really bad people started to show up we evaded that for our whole using career the gang life and that stuff and at the very end some really Bad people showed up like people you owed money to not even that no not even that just it just unwell people just we had a house they could be in that house okay okay just attracting that crowd because you're running in those circles okay I'm following and things just continued to get darker and darker until that day when child protection showed up and now we're there
had you and Donna ever during this stint had you had conversations about it [00:25:00] had you tried to get out of it had you even thought about getting out of it I think I don't clearly remember to be honest okay I don't remem I'm sure that there must have been plans hatched to find a better way
but nothing was taken seriously as serious as we could I know before our son was born we did have some times where we tried to go to meetings we tried to do it ourselves we would get to day three and this is when we were on opioids anybody who would come off opioids knows that day three is like the day of reckoning
and we could never get past that but No we didn't really take any genuinely serious cracks at it and even after our son was apprehended it just the pain from that drove us further apart now that thing that we were trying to be there for was now gone
like the one thing that kept you somewhat grounded Yeah at all yeah okay so now and he was placed with his grandparents so it wasn't like he was completely detached from family but we weren't allowed to see him wow so it was [00:26:00] shortly after that that Donna left and she went to a life on the streets with Very unwell people and that's the part of the story that's not mine to tell
but it got really challenging for her to say the very least and then they kept coming back for a while I would get text messages and we would go back and forth me and these gang member Just saying horrible things to each other I would get text messages saying what lights were on in my house at any given hour of the day
they were just to let me know they were watching they're saying I get text messages say come outside so I can kill you wow and stuff like that yeah it got really bad and then it got quiet I had nothing left to steal they got sick of there was a one one instance where I was held hostage in my bathroom
I had an ax to my throat and I don't know I guess they just got sick of torturing me and they left me alone and it got real quiet and that's when my mom showed up one day she said Dan let's go for lunch and I'm like I could eat and keep in mind at this time I [00:27:00] wouldn't shower for six weeks at a time
I would be dumpster diving every single day I wouldn't even take my boots off for weeks i sleeping on a couch with no cushions in a house with no heat is that partially because time is different on that substance feels different oo to say okay everything's different reality's different it it had gone to that place where there was just literally there was nowhere left to go there was a fork in the road and my mom takes me for lunch and she sits me down and I get a I think I got a beer and I'm sitting there drinking my beer and eating my burger and she's Dan look like you you got to go back up north and you got to find some stability and you got to
get a home and you have to find you have to work with the ministry and get your son back and be a dad and do all these things and I looked at her in the face and I said mom don't I need to get clean first and the look on her face changed and she said yes and she reached in her purse and she [00:28:00] pulled out a form uhhuh the form was all filled out
Wow and she put it on the table and she pointed at the dotted line and she said sign there and I did wow and 10 days later I walked through detox doors so why did you sign there because it was my choice I came to a place where I had an opportunity to do better
and my mom knew with all of her experience working with people who cha or are challenged with substance use if she said you have to go to detox I wouldn't have I would've pushed back but she got me to tell her so that was the day I like to say that my mom Jedi mind tricked me into detox
that's right yeah that's right it was ready cuz she knew that we're an impulsive bunch and that's probably the a a big problem with the services that we have around here is that when someone who's using substances problematically and they can't stop When they say this they say I'm ready
it's I'm ready right now right now capitalizing on that impulsive nature of like right [00:29:00] now yeah this is the hour of reckoning that we do this now or I'm going to be back in the sticks and I'm so glad you said that cuz it's one of the things that we teach families is you got to be working behind the scenes to find options and you need to be sitting on ready because
just like your mom she probably didn't know exactly when you'd say I got to do it but she was going to be ready when you did because if she hadn't been ready That's right she'd have missed the window we call it like a window and you missed the window wow yeah if I could say anything to parents and I'm not an addictions professional like I'm just a guy that that's been through some stuff and I'm using that to help people
if you can't it you can love someone and not be able to be around them but be ready just be ready have that plan what's your mom's name my mom's name is Brenda brenda's a boss I like her she is boss I like her she's still a boss that's awesome I like to say like she metaphorically she sits in the corner waving a hard knocks talks flag with one hand and the other hand's up ready to cuff me if I get outta line that's good momming right there I agree I agree
okay so [00:30:00] she was this paper out of her purse like you hadn't even had a thought about this and you just signed Yep because at that moment it probably felt thank God like an opp like a door opened yep so I went to detox I did the thing worst Valentine's Day ever and then I did the 10 days and then I got out for two days
I went back to my family no desire to use no desire to drink no desire to go off on my own somewhere and do whatever why why I don't know I don't know the desire to use had been taken from me that's what I know is it cuz it wasn't fun anymore at all like it was just misery is it something else
is it I'll rem I never I'll never forget the last time that someone handed me a meth pipe like my mom had already pulled up in front of the house I saw her there she was coming to grab me to go to detox and someone handed me the pipe one last haul buddy here you go and I looked at it and it was all burnt and gross
and in that moment I was like I don't want this anymore so I could have hauled on that and gotten a big gross blast and it would've been terrible but I was just done I was just done and that's unfortunately with the [00:31:00] overdose crisis the way that it is right now unfortunately so many people are being robbed of that experience
they don't have the opportunity to reach that space but anyways I did I got through detox I went to treatment for 28 days they counselors kicked my ass around the treatment center that's what works for me okay that's what works for me yeah I'm the guy sit down shut up do the work
That's what worked for me early on and it's not it's not like I'm like oh yes this is amazing but I know myself well enough to know that there's lots of times in my life where I need to be like I need someone to be like Dan you're making a mistake right now and I need to be told that and then I got out it's a combination of being at a place of readiness and then not being there because I'm guessing there were other points somebody could have tried to do that and it wouldn't have worked
but who's to say like they they can't be around me 24 hours a day like maybe there would have been maybe there was I so I got outta treatment I thought I was the best at recovery riding the pink cloud so to speak and I got out and I just said mom what do I do
I dunno what to do what do I do and she said she says go here and here in here [00:32:00] and do the things work with the ministry get access to your son live with your brother go to meetings and I'm like can I have a ride she's no she said no you can't have a ride get a bike
so I got a bike and you know what looking back now that became my story I am the one went to meetings I went to the ministry I got myself to those places it was part of the therapeutic process part of it wow yeah I love it yeah and look I'm glad she didn't gimme a ride and even at the time even at the time I think I had enough awareness like I I was grateful thank you for not coddling me a 36 year old man I went to two meetings a day for a year I got into sober living house weekly piss tests
I did whatever the ministry wanted it wasn't a matter of arguing with the ministry it wasn't like what does Dan need it's what does the ministry need what do I need to do to make this all okay you're at a point of real like humility and willingness still yeah and resentment I was loaded
I was over the moon with resentment at the time in fact I think a lot of my early recovery was fueled on resentment and I'll say that till the bitter end [00:33:00] like I was like I'm going to get sober before she does I'm going to do this before she does oh yeah okay I'll take it but looking back now I'm not saying that's right
I'm not saying that's right but what I'm saying is that this is my story yeah and I'm telling it to the best of my ability maybe next week I'll have another realization and be like no it wasn't resentment actually it was this or it was that but at this point in my growth that's how I look back on that with as much honesty as I'm capable of having
yeah I say there's no bad reason there's zero bad reasons yeah whatever gets the door people say oh you can't get sober for any other reason than you certain your opinion yes you can you can yes you can now the challenge is staying sober staying in that wellness and continuing to grow and heal and move forward
yes now that is something that has become my own journey yes I'm doing that For me you have to stay sober for yourself yes but that comes later and that's families always think that's supposed to come and then the person goes and gets us like no the person gets sober and then that happens yeah and like I said like I'm not here to say that is the way that it's supposed to go but [00:34:00] that was my experience
I don't know if it's the way it's supposed to go I can say it's the way it usually goes cuz I've been doing this 20 years thousands of people and sometimes people don't tell it that way yeah and when they're in recovery and they tell you their story but I'm on the front lines I can tell you that's what usually
yeah got a comment here that I want to look at I just noticed it here from Richard Phillips yeah resentment is a luxury we can't afford that's the truth man like it served me for a minute like it lit that fire and kept me pushing forward but man like it is not sustainable not sustainable
that like resentment it's like resentment or relationships is the number one offender what does that mean I know what that means but some people that's a it's a recovery lingo what does that mean resentment is the number one offender so resentment is the number one offender in relapse
if anything's going to take you out if anything's going to drive you to a place where you just cannot handle to be without your substance odds are resentment is near the top of that list and and honestly I was so done with using that my option was darker than using I [00:35:00] would have ended it all before I went back using and to be quite honest I didn't have my first suicidal thought out of all the shit that I just told you guys
I didn't have my first suicidal thought in my life until I was nine months in recovery that was the first time where I where it felt like that would be easier than what I was going through okay wow yeah there's no substance to numb anything then no there's you have to experience it all
whatever's happening okay yeah so tell us the happy ending We need a happy ending Dan I've got one I've got one not an it's not an easy happy ending but it is definitely happier than the beginning so I got I so long story short I got my son back it was every other weekend for two hours
supervised access social worker in the room furiously taking notes the entire time then it went to three hours and then it went to unsupervised access at the sober living facility and then it was started three hours six hours then overnights then two days weekends and so I got sober on February 12th [00:36:00] 2017
by July 31st of 2017 I was awarded intern custody of my three-year-old son wow and him and I we took on life together I was still under the supervision at the at the sober living house we went to meetings he got into preschool I got a cart to pull behind my bike
daddy faster going over the bumps and having fun and being mad and yelling at him and he's yelling at me and just getting through the day that's another thing we're not perfect parents aren't perfect and when I had six months sober like they say get a plant and keep a plant alive
they I got a three year old little boy that was raised in some unsavory circumstances wow yeah and then spent 10 months or so with his grandparents who did their best just to make him feel comfortable so he didn't have a lot of rules there wasn't a lot of boundaries
so anyways he comes bouncing back and of course who came back with him the puppy puppy came back so I had puppy back in my life and also my son[00:37:00] but yeah I made a lot of mistakes I said some things I shouldn't have and I have behaved in ways that were less than savory and it life went on
we we graduated the it was called the coming Home program and Yeah we graduated that and I got a job and moved into an apartment and he went to school and I kept going to meetings doing my thing everybody in the room knew Grady and the little redhead and he'd get his big headphones on and watch his show while I was in the meeting
and and then Donna entered recovery and she came skidding off the streets dude I couldn't read a better movie script yeah that's the happy ending than we want right there yeah we like it oh but it's long story short it didn't go well at first it got better as time went on
there was some court action taken and we had to fight about a whole bunch of things but then a couple years down the road I was It was in Covid I was going to be a safety professional I got into class school to be a safety professional and the idea came into my head just randomly one day that I should start a podcast
and I'm like where did that come from I [00:38:00] barely know how to open a Word document so I did that and February 12th 2021 my four years sober the very first episode of Hard Knocks Talks went live on Facebook YouTube and Twitch tv and yeah three months later like it immediately became school was my side hustle I'm have income and I've got a I've got a fancy microphone and I've got a green screen so that happened and in January of 2022 I dropped outta school and I've been doing this full-time ever since and shortly after that Donna came to me and she's I like what are you doing this is amazing she's I need some fulfillment in my life I feel like I have no purpose
so she came to help me and shortly after that we reconciled after five years apart finding out and those of you who are listening some of you may have seen my video a couple of weeks back where I said addiction's really a misdirected superpower this is what I'm talking about this is it you take the addiction out and you
Let somebody use that [00:39:00] obsessive relentless stop it nothing get what I want thing and it works right it works right wanting to feel better is not a defective character that's right everybody wants to feel better exactly and addiction's just a non-productive way of doing it I got lost somewhere along the way but this is I found that the best way to overcome my substance use challenges is finding a meaningful and productive way to serve community so now this is what we do we're a family of streamers I guess you could say you using your superpower for the good that's what I like
So tell everybody where they can find you in case they want to listen to your podcaster or join your lives oh we are extremely easy to find we can Of course Facebook is our main thing we're always I'm always posting stuff on Facebook so hard knocks talks on Facebook
you can find our content on YouTube if you can't check us out live that's cool you can listen to us on your way to work on Apple Podcast or Spotify or Google Podcast or really wherever you listen to podcasts
we also have a website hard knocks talkscom can keep up to date on all upcoming [00:40:00] streams and this is what we do full-time and we love it so can I put your website link in the description for anybody who's looking
awesome thank you so much for sharing that's an incredible story thanks so much for having me today sorry that we went a little long on the dark half and didn't get to spend too much time on the light half but I think that's how the movies work right it's like all the buildup yeah
I like it awesome yeah thank you thank you we appreciate it you guys go check out Dan at Hard Knocks talks you you won't regret it and he talks to a lot of other people and shares a lot of other very inspirational stories thanks so much for listening you guys
