Speaker 1: Pushkin. It seems to me like there were just unresolved
Speaker 1: issues from my childhood that took me from a user
Speaker 1: to an abuser as far as drugs and alcohol win
Speaker 1: and you know, I feel like there was a part
Speaker 1: of me in my twenties that was saying, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: see what happens. You know, let's just see what happens
Speaker 1: when you do those things. That's Jason Izbel a musician
Speaker 1: heralded by critics as one of the leading singer songwriters
Speaker 1: of our time. Jason's won four Grammy Awards. You may
Speaker 1: have heard his hit song cover Me Up from his
Speaker 1: blockbuster album Southeastern. Over the years, Jason has been open
Speaker 1: about his struggles with alcohol, all in drugs, and what
Speaker 1: it's taken for him to become sober. His recovery has
Speaker 1: involved revisiting some core assumptions about who he was then
Speaker 1: and who he is today, and one way he gained
Speaker 1: a better understanding of himself is through his music. There
Speaker 1: was a huge shift in the reason I wrote songs
Speaker 1: around that period of time. Up until that point, I
Speaker 1: had been writing for an external audience. You know, this
Speaker 1: is my family, this is my father, this is the
Speaker 1: place where I grew up. But then I sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, unconsciously started writing songs where I was looking
Speaker 1: at myself and I was trying to make some sort
Speaker 1: of estimation of who I was and if I was
Speaker 1: doing okay. On today's show, Why Jason Isbull believes you
Speaker 1: don't have to reject your past in order to live
Speaker 1: a better future. I'm Maya Shunker and this is a
Speaker 1: slight change of plans, a show about who we are
Speaker 1: and who we become in the face of a big change.
Speaker 1: I love Jason Isbel's music not only because he writes beautiful,
Speaker 1: stirring melodies, but because of how he approaches storytelling. He
Speaker 1: captures life's challenges, like navigating addiction and recovery in their
Speaker 1: full complexity. Jason and I began our conversation by talking
Speaker 1: about his childhood and musical influences. He grew up in
Speaker 1: Alabama and was exposed to a wide range of music
Speaker 1: from an early age. We're talking gospel, blue grass, and country.
Speaker 1: His grandfather, a Pentecostal preacher, played instruments like the banjo
Speaker 1: and guitar and would often invite Jason to join him.
Speaker 1: And the thing that really got me hooked from early on.
Speaker 1: If I would play rhythm guitar for him, he would
Speaker 1: play like a lead instrument like mandolina or banjo or fiddle.
Speaker 1: And if I would make it through a couple of
Speaker 1: hours of playing rhythm guitar, he would reward me by
Speaker 1: laying the guitar in his lap and tuning it to
Speaker 1: an open tuning and playing blues music with his pocket knife.
Speaker 1: Would he would use his pocket knife as a slide,
Speaker 1: And that was my reward, and that was the thing
Speaker 1: that I really loved the most. So you continue playing
Speaker 1: the guitar well into your teenage years, and there's this
Speaker 1: one day where you're waiting tables at a local restaurant
Speaker 1: and a co worker ass if you'd like to open
Speaker 1: for him at an upcoming show at a at a
Speaker 1: coffee shop, and he says to you that you're going
Speaker 1: to need to perform thirty minutes of original music the
Speaker 1: following day, so the next day, which you don't actually have, right,
Speaker 1: But what was your response? Yeah, I told him that's
Speaker 1: no problem. I got all kinds of songs easy, you know.
Speaker 1: And then I thought I got to go home and
Speaker 1: write some songs. So that's what I did. I set
Speaker 1: up all night I remember I was drinking Gatorade and
Speaker 1: Ever Clear, and I stayed up and wrote like half
Speaker 1: an hour's worth of songs. I remember just flipping back
Speaker 1: and forth through the notebook, adding something here, go back,
Speaker 1: add something here, and take something out here, and then
Speaker 1: played it all back and looked at my watch and saw, okay,
Speaker 1: that's about thirty minutes, so that'll do. And you know,
Speaker 1: I wrote all those at once, just as quickly as
Speaker 1: I could, and that wound up being the first songs
Speaker 1: of mine that anybody heard. And it was also kind
Speaker 1: of I think when you're working on that kind of
Speaker 1: a deadline, or when you're just in this sort of
Speaker 1: like manic output period, sometimes it turns off the critic
Speaker 1: in your brain, you know, because you don't have time
Speaker 1: to judge what you're doing. You're just being creative. So
Speaker 1: there's something I think beneficial to that. Sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: you say it's so nonchalantly, Jason, a matter of fact, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I told him, Oh, yeah, that's no problem, I
Speaker 1: got it. But what what gave you the confidence in
Speaker 1: that moment to say, yeah, I'm going to be able
Speaker 1: to generate thirty minutes of original music tonight, Like did
Speaker 1: you always have this feeling that there was that there
Speaker 1: was so much you wanted to say. Yes, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you have noticed this, but I'm a white
Speaker 1: man and that is what gave me that confidence. I
Speaker 1: love that. Yeah. Sorry, I'm completely unfamiliar with what you're
Speaker 1: just It may be pixelated here, but I am a
Speaker 1: white man. The confidence is built in, you know. If
Speaker 1: I don't have the confidence, that's my own damn fault.
Speaker 1: But also, I was lucky enough to have a family
Speaker 1: who had encouraged me and my creative pursuits, and so
Speaker 1: I thought, well, what's the worst that can happen? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't write thirty minutes worth of good songs and
Speaker 1: the ten people in the coffee shop don't like what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, Fine, I can handle that. And the reason
Speaker 1: I felt that way because I knew there were people
Speaker 1: who cared about me in the world. And also I
Speaker 1: knew that any amount of embarrassment that I felt would
Speaker 1: go away soon because I would have other opportunities just
Speaker 1: because of my station in life. You know, I didn't
Speaker 1: have any money at the time. My parents didn't have
Speaker 1: any money, and their parents didn't have any money. But
Speaker 1: we had a lot of encouragement, and we had very
Speaker 1: little resistance. And I did feel sort of cushioned in
Speaker 1: a certain way, like you know. And this is not
Speaker 1: going to end terribly. Nobody's going to beat me up
Speaker 1: over this. I'm just gonna see what I can do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you obviously believe that you had creative potential, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not enough to just feel cushioned, right.
Speaker 1: You need to believe that you know fundamentally that you
Speaker 1: have what it takes to write. Yes, I'm coming at
Speaker 1: this from someone who played music for a long time,
Speaker 1: but my composition sucked and so I you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to understate how that's a very distinct skill
Speaker 1: set that one needs to call to. But it seems
Speaker 1: like it came rather naturally for you. I think so.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why exactly. I mean, at the
Speaker 1: root of it, I don't know why. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of friends that would come over
Speaker 1: and play guitar with me or anything like that. Mostly
Speaker 1: I was just sitting alone in my room with a guitar,
Speaker 1: playing and making sounds. And I think out of that,
Speaker 1: and then the fact that I really liked to read,
Speaker 1: you know, my Mom started me reading really early, and
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that. I think that combination is sort
Speaker 1: of what led me to becoming a songwriter. So I
Speaker 1: love to focus on Shortly after this this coffee gig,
Speaker 1: you end up joining the band, the Drive By Truckers,
Speaker 1: and you hit the road for a fairly intense life
Speaker 1: of touring, right, I mean, you had hundreds of shows
Speaker 1: a year. What was that transition like for you? It
Speaker 1: was a very intense touring life. I mean we were
Speaker 1: always gone, you know, and we're always in a van,
Speaker 1: and we were sleeping on people's floors, and if we
Speaker 1: got a hotel, we would get one room and all
Speaker 1: of us would sleep in the one room. But most
Speaker 1: of the time we were staying with friends for that
Speaker 1: first year or so, so there was not a lot
Speaker 1: of rest. There was a whole lot of excitement because
Speaker 1: I was twenty one years old and playing music for people,
Speaker 1: and the people in the audience were extremely happy to
Speaker 1: be there. And it was you know, the venues were small,
Speaker 1: but the emotions were big, you know. It was it
Speaker 1: was a rock and roll show, and it was very loud,
Speaker 1: and we were just the band was just at that
Speaker 1: point where things start happening, you know where you I
Speaker 1: call it, where the hell did all these people come from? Moment?
Speaker 1: You know where you've been touring and playing and touring
Speaker 1: and playing, and then all of a sudden, there are
Speaker 1: people who are in the parking lot who know they're
Speaker 1: not going to get into the show because it's sold out,
Speaker 1: but they're still staying in the parking lot just to
Speaker 1: hear it through the doors, through the windows. But as
Speaker 1: far as like the experience that I was having, you know,
Speaker 1: it was really exciting because I'd never been anywhere. I
Speaker 1: didn't notice so much how difficult it was physically, because
Speaker 1: yeah it was. I don't know if I could handle
Speaker 1: it now. I probably couldn't do it now. Yeah, at
Speaker 1: some point you start to drink excessively and you end
Speaker 1: up doing drugs. Yeah, I wanted to see what that
Speaker 1: was like, you know, just what it felt like to
Speaker 1: do those drugs or to get that drunk, or you know.
Speaker 1: I call it the sling shot effect because in the
Speaker 1: small towns, when you're raising a sheltered kid, you're kind
Speaker 1: of slowly pulling the sling shot back for eighteen years,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden you let it go
Speaker 1: and I had lived in such a mundane existence, in
Speaker 1: such a cloistered kind of place, that when I got
Speaker 1: out and saw the world, I wanted to take everything in,
Speaker 1: you know, metaphorically and literally. And also, yeah, the physical
Speaker 1: aspects of it had a lot to do with it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you ride six or eight hours
Speaker 1: in a van and then you get out and you
Speaker 1: have to be in a good mood, and you know,
Speaker 1: get up on stage and perform, and then load all
Speaker 1: your stuff back into the van and go sleep for
Speaker 1: three or four hours on somebody's floor and then get
Speaker 1: up and do it all again about three hundred times
Speaker 1: a year. So yeah, that definitely had a part to play.
Speaker 1: But I think, really, now that I've got some hindsight,
Speaker 1: it seems to me like they were just unresolved issues
Speaker 1: from my childhood that kept it from being recreational, you know,
Speaker 1: and that took me from a user to an abuser
Speaker 1: as far as drugs and alcohol went. And what do
Speaker 1: you think some of those unresolved childhood issues were. You know,
Speaker 1: my parents were very young when I was born. My
Speaker 1: mom was seventeen, my dad was nineteen, and they did
Speaker 1: a good job. They were very present in my life.
Speaker 1: And attentive, but still, you know, with parents that young,
Speaker 1: nobody knows what the hell they're doing. And there was
Speaker 1: a lot of religious guilt and a lot of my
Speaker 1: dad's family, the Pentecostal side of the family, they were
Speaker 1: it was pretty close to a cult, very much fundamentalist
Speaker 1: religious sect, to put it politely, and so they were
Speaker 1: very close to their family. They were you know, very loving,
Speaker 1: very caring people. But also for a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: growing up in this situation. You know, when I was five, six,
Speaker 1: seven years old, I was because because out of love,
Speaker 1: they thought that that was the way they could love
Speaker 1: me the best. You know, I was put in a
Speaker 1: situation where, you know, that sort of conservative Christian viewpoint
Speaker 1: was bored into my brain and I don't know if
Speaker 1: this was voluntary on their part, but made to feel
Speaker 1: like anything outside of that structure was a horrible transgression.
Speaker 1: And so I was, you know, a little kid walking
Speaker 1: around feeling all this guilt and all this shame, and
Speaker 1: God's going to get mad at me and send me
Speaker 1: to hell, and you know, the vengeful God and the
Speaker 1: angry God, and that was pretty heavy. That was a
Speaker 1: pretty heavy thing. Yeah, And I guess you felt it
Speaker 1: was so imprinted that even when you're a twenty something
Speaker 1: touring you're still feeling some of those feelings of guilt
Speaker 1: and shame. Yes, and it was one of those things
Speaker 1: that sort of cycled. I feel like there was a
Speaker 1: part of me in my twenties that was saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's see what happens. Let's see what happens if you
Speaker 1: do all these things that you weren't supposed to be
Speaker 1: doing that you were told that you would go to
Speaker 1: hell for. Let's just see what happens when you do
Speaker 1: those things. Because I'm the kind of person who if
Speaker 1: I'm afraid of something, my instinct is to do it immediately,
Speaker 1: you know, to conquer that fear. And none of those
Speaker 1: were healthy responses, so they all just kind of kept
Speaker 1: the snowball got bigger and bigger, until finally I had
Speaker 1: no control over my life. I mean, it got so
Speaker 1: bad at a certain point that your bandmates, you know,
Speaker 1: they recognize you have a problem, They try to get
Speaker 1: you to go to rehab, and you end up refusing.
Speaker 1: Tell me more about how bad it was, like, how
Speaker 1: is that expressing itself? What kind of effects were having
Speaker 1: on others? You know, I was drinking about a fifth
Speaker 1: a day, about a fifth a Jack Daniels a day,
Speaker 1: so a big old glass bottle of it. You know,
Speaker 1: what you would buy at the store that should last
Speaker 1: you for a couple of months. I was drinking one
Speaker 1: of those every day, and you know, if there were
Speaker 1: drugs around, I would do the drugs. You know, everything
Speaker 1: that I did was essentially in service of drinking more,
Speaker 1: because that was the thing that worked for me, that
Speaker 1: hooked me. And you know, most of the time I
Speaker 1: wasn't angry, especially not at first, not for the first
Speaker 1: few years of drinking that heavily. I was a funny,
Speaker 1: happy drunk. And then it just started shifting. You know,
Speaker 1: when you pile those layers of exhaustion on type of
Speaker 1: each other and takes more and more alcohol to get
Speaker 1: what you feel like, it's the same buzz that you
Speaker 1: used to get. You know, you start to get more
Speaker 1: angry and more aggressive, and you know, I wasn't like
Speaker 1: a physically aggressive person, but I can be emotionally and
Speaker 1: psychologically aggressive in a way that is very vicious and
Speaker 1: very harmful. I was just a mean bastard. I would
Speaker 1: say mean things to people and it would hurt their
Speaker 1: feelings and you know, I wasn't loyal to my first wife.
Speaker 1: I broke some promises and the bottom line, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't do that, you don't bring promises and um,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to say this is because I
Speaker 1: was an addict, because it wasn't. The truth is it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It just the addiction just gave me something else to
Speaker 1: blame for it. So, you know, addiction was a scapegoat
Speaker 1: for me because it's so easy to say I did
Speaker 1: those things because I'm drunk. People do it all the
Speaker 1: time now still in these half ass fake apologies online,
Speaker 1: you know. But there's a line in one of the
Speaker 1: old Drive By Trucker's songs that my friend Mike Cooley wrote.
Speaker 1: He says, the liquor don't make you do the thing,
Speaker 1: It just lets you. And I always loved that line.
Speaker 1: It just allows you to be the asshole that you
Speaker 1: wanted to be. So you know, you eventually leave the band.
Speaker 1: I mean, folks ask you to leave for a break,
Speaker 1: and then it becomes a lot extended break and um,
Speaker 1: and you keep drinking, right, I mean, it doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't immediately stop the problem. And I'm wondering what finally
Speaker 1: led you to acknowledge that you had a problem and
Speaker 1: that you actually wanted to make changes. You know, I
Speaker 1: fell in love with somebody who had her shit together,
Speaker 1: and I did not think that she was going to
Speaker 1: stick around unless I got my shit together. And so
Speaker 1: I got sober and I wrote letters from rehab, and
Speaker 1: I begged and I pleaded, and I gave her proof
Speaker 1: that I wasn't going to fall back into my old ways,
Speaker 1: and I started doing the work and I started going
Speaker 1: to therapy. And you know, now ten years later, I'm
Speaker 1: still sober, and I'm much more effective as a person.
Speaker 1: And this situation is complicated for me now because what
Speaker 1: I did to her at that point I would not
Speaker 1: do to someone now. You know, I put a lot
Speaker 1: of weight, a lot of pressure, and a lot of
Speaker 1: responsibility for my own redemption, for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: on to another person, and in my selfish brain, it
Speaker 1: looked like I have to do whatever it takes to
Speaker 1: win the heart of this person that I'm in love with.
Speaker 1: And now I see that that was not a fair thing,
Speaker 1: but at the time it looked like a love story
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, were you worried at the time, or
Speaker 1: maybe it didn't hit you because again you were in
Speaker 1: the throes of love, but that a dependency was forming,
Speaker 1: and so there was a fragility to your sobriety journey
Speaker 1: because the minute your wife Amanda left the scene, maybe
Speaker 1: you would go back to your old ways, Like your
Speaker 1: journey was inextricably linked to her existence, and you're wanting
Speaker 1: her love right right right. At first, I think I
Speaker 1: felt like they were linked in that way. But after
Speaker 1: just a few months there were other rewards, you know,
Speaker 1: and it became for me. You know, you might get
Speaker 1: a different answer to that question if you asked her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's part of what I did to her. That
Speaker 1: was not fair. But I would never link somebody else
Speaker 1: to the responsibility of my survival or my growth as
Speaker 1: an individual, Like I would never do that. But I
Speaker 1: don't think I even knew what codependent meant ten years ago.
Speaker 1: I don't think i'd even gotten far enough to begin
Speaker 1: to understand that I was just a mess. You know.
Speaker 1: Your song Live Oak alludes to your concerns that in
Speaker 1: giving up alcohol and drugs, it wouldn't just be the
Speaker 1: bad stuff that left you, that there might be some
Speaker 1: good stuff too that you lost in the process. Do
Speaker 1: you mind singing some of the opening of that song
Speaker 1: for us and then sharing more about about the nature
Speaker 1: of this worry? Sure, yeah, no problem. Let me get
Speaker 1: my guitar. Oh sure, and sounds okay, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: All right. Here's a man who walks beside me. He
Speaker 1: is who I used to be, and I wonder if
Speaker 1: she sees him and infuses him with me? And I
Speaker 1: wonder who she's buying for all nights I'm not around?
Speaker 1: Could it be the man get the Things day? So
Speaker 1: there's the intro of that song. I think that's probably
Speaker 1: enough to to explain what we're talking about. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so it really is kind of a murder ballad about
Speaker 1: this guy who's trying to redeem himself after being an
Speaker 1: outlaw and sometime in the deep past, and you know,
Speaker 1: he doesn't succeed, and then he he wonders if you
Speaker 1: know what version of himself was really the better version?
Speaker 1: I think for me, as time passed, I came to
Speaker 1: terms with the idea that there were good things and
Speaker 1: bad things about the person that I used to be.
Speaker 1: But at first it was really hard to do because
Speaker 1: there was a danger at every turn. I was looking
Speaker 1: for ways to keep myself from backsliding. So I didn't
Speaker 1: want to romanticize what my life had been for years
Speaker 1: after getting sober, I just looked at it with this
Speaker 1: that was bad and this is good, sort of you know,
Speaker 1: binary judgment there. Yeah. And would that make you hesitant
Speaker 1: to revisit your past in your music? Yes, that need
Speaker 1: to create psychological distance between you and your former former self. Yes,
Speaker 1: or it would reduce the work to something less complex
Speaker 1: than it should have been. Oh, because you were you
Speaker 1: were painting a very simplelistic model of past Jason exactly.
Speaker 1: Past Jason was just awful, the worst. This is what
Speaker 1: I used to be. Doesn't that suck? Isn't that terrible?
Speaker 1: Aren't we all glad? I'm not that anymore? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: see reductionist, yes, yes, and that itself is a lie,
Speaker 1: you know, is a revisionist personal history and the way
Speaker 1: that it's just not even true anymore. So, you know,
Speaker 1: and I understand all of the past. It's a concept
Speaker 1: and it's all filtered through the way we process information. However,
Speaker 1: I think part of the creative journey and the creative
Speaker 1: struggle is to try to see how close we can get,
Speaker 1: try to remove our own processing systems from the past
Speaker 1: and see it as clearly as possible. And that took
Speaker 1: a long time. It took a really long time for me.
Speaker 1: We'll hear more from Jason about his life and recovery
Speaker 1: after the break. We'll be back in a moment with
Speaker 1: a slight change of plans. What if you realized Jason
Speaker 1: has stayed intact about you through your transition from from
Speaker 1: alcoholic to someone you know who is now ten years sober.
Speaker 1: And I think part of my question is you were
Speaker 1: concerned at one point like did they really like that guy?
Speaker 1: Like the old you know, the drunk Jason, And I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: you know, as you straddled these two identities, right, these
Speaker 1: two very distinct psychological states. If you realize now that
Speaker 1: there are some fundamental parts of you that we're there then,
Speaker 1: and are there now that the people around you in
Speaker 1: your life really cherish, Yes, all of it is still there.
Speaker 1: It's all still there. That was me and this is
Speaker 1: me only now he gets to make more decisions, you know,
Speaker 1: rather than look up and think how did I wind
Speaker 1: up here? You know, and I don't always make the
Speaker 1: right decision, you know. I like to think my average
Speaker 1: is going up as time goes on. But I'm just
Speaker 1: able to make the decision because I don't have to
Speaker 1: choose to get another drink or to find whatever drug
Speaker 1: I was doing, or to be around people because they
Speaker 1: have access to that or because they think it's okay
Speaker 1: for me to behave that way. Like I just simply
Speaker 1: get to make the choices for myself, Like the choice
Speaker 1: to be loyal to my wife and to my family,
Speaker 1: I get to make that choice, you know. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: what time I go to bed, what time I get
Speaker 1: up in the morning. You know how much time I
Speaker 1: devote to my art every day. These are things that
Speaker 1: I get to decide for myself. Now, Yeah, I'd love
Speaker 1: to dig into the role songwriting has played in your sobriety,
Speaker 1: because you know, it strikes me that as a songwriter,
Speaker 1: you're kind of getting this constant pulse of where you're
Speaker 1: at emotionally right based on based on what you're expressing
Speaker 1: in your music or what you're finding yourself incapable of
Speaker 1: expressing right. You're getting signals in both directions, and I
Speaker 1: think very few of us have a profession that serves
Speaker 1: as a mirror of sorts that that's constantly reflecting our
Speaker 1: emotional states back to us. Well, there was a huge
Speaker 1: shift in the reason I wrote songs around that period
Speaker 1: of time. So when I got sober, I was very
Speaker 1: you know, raw, like like emotionally sunburned. You know, up
Speaker 1: until that point, I had been writing for an external audience.
Speaker 1: I had really been writing songs to show people what
Speaker 1: my experience was. You know, this is my family, this
Speaker 1: is my father, this is the place where I grew up.
Speaker 1: But then I sort of, you know, unconsciously started writing songs,
Speaker 1: you know, where I was looking at myself and I
Speaker 1: was trying to make some sort of estimation of who
Speaker 1: I was and if I was doing okay. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that shift happened right then. And you know, I hate
Speaker 1: the term like confessional songwriter, because I think that's very
Speaker 1: limiting and sort of derogatory. But I think I went
Speaker 1: from trying to communicate with the outside world to trying
Speaker 1: to communicate with myself and trying to reflect on myself
Speaker 1: and understand myself. Once I started doing that, that became
Speaker 1: very addictive in itself, you know, and the reward of
Speaker 1: that was such that I wanted to continue to do it,
Speaker 1: and so it turned off the part of my brain
Speaker 1: that is judging and just opened up the part of
Speaker 1: my brain that is curious, and it just flew out,
Speaker 1: you know, for a couple of albums after that, it
Speaker 1: just flew out. It kind of still does. There's another
Speaker 1: song on one of your albums called it gets Easier,
Speaker 1: and you sing, you know, it gets easier, but it
Speaker 1: never gets easy. It's easier, it never gets swallow. Keep
Speaker 1: its easy. First of all, I think that resonates with
Speaker 1: so many people, not even just those navigating addiction, but
Speaker 1: just navigating life and the challenges of life. I think
Speaker 1: that I found so much resonance in those lyrics. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think this touches upon some of the
Speaker 1: themes that we've already talked about, which is about you know,
Speaker 1: villainizing past self and maybe glorifying present self because you're
Speaker 1: trying to create as much distance as possible between those two, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's easy to tell yourself that, oh, I
Speaker 1: fixed it. You know it's fixed, it's solved, to go
Speaker 1: on that kind of cruise control and think, well, I
Speaker 1: haven't had a drink today, so I can't hurt anybody
Speaker 1: too bad, or I can't do anything too terrible, and
Speaker 1: you know that can stunt your growth as an adult
Speaker 1: by saying this one big issue, like like, it's a
Speaker 1: version of romanticizing addiction, and not necessarily in a positive way.
Speaker 1: But if you look at it as this huge, all
Speaker 1: encompassing beast that's in control of your life completely, well,
Speaker 1: then you know that means the inverse of that must
Speaker 1: also be true, you know, so you assume that, like,
Speaker 1: if addiction is this big, huge monster that has been
Speaker 1: in charge of your whole life, then once you've conquered
Speaker 1: that quote unquote, you assume that the inverse is also true.
Speaker 1: That you know, now I've solved my problem, and as
Speaker 1: we all know, it is never as simple as I
Speaker 1: have one problem. Yeah, having gone through you know, very
Speaker 1: arduous time when you were you know, so often under
Speaker 1: the influence and then and then navigating sobriety, what's the
Speaker 1: biggest thing you learned about yourself? What's the biggest thing
Speaker 1: that changed in terms of your self perception, your understanding
Speaker 1: of who you are. When I got sober, I had
Speaker 1: no idea how far I was from actually being a
Speaker 1: satisfied and contributing member of society. I thought that, you know,
Speaker 1: I've got a job, I entertain people. I'm able to
Speaker 1: get in the van and rid of these shows and plays.
Speaker 1: These should people like me. I'm funny, I have enough
Speaker 1: money to pay my bills. You know, I'm doing great.
Speaker 1: I'm doing a good job, you know. But I had
Speaker 1: no clue how many millions of miles away I was
Speaker 1: from being a satisfied and self actualized person, how much
Speaker 1: more I had to learn about myself, because I had
Speaker 1: just been putting that off for so long, and so
Speaker 1: aggressively stunting my own growth because it hurts so much
Speaker 1: to learn that I wasn't perfect. And as a flip
Speaker 1: side to that, I didn't realize how much I would
Speaker 1: really enjoy the process of learning those things. I mean
Speaker 1: going to therapy, you know, and also just searching on
Speaker 1: my own, going into every situation thinking how do I
Speaker 1: handle this as somebody who knows myself and loves myself?
Speaker 1: And you know, that process has been really challenging in
Speaker 1: the best possible way for me, and it makes me
Speaker 1: feel like at the end of every day, I attempted
Speaker 1: to make myself better. Therefore I have attempted to make
Speaker 1: the world better. It's so interesting what I'm hearing, and
Speaker 1: this is reminding me of something you said earlier in
Speaker 1: the interview. Is that the very same personality trait that
Speaker 1: leads you to fear something that immediately want to do it,
Speaker 1: like you did with alcohol. So the thing that got
Speaker 1: you to become an alcoholic, which is you feared that
Speaker 1: whole scene and then you jumped right in, is maybe
Speaker 1: the very same instinct that led you to try and
Speaker 1: reach self actualization, which is I imagine you were filled
Speaker 1: with fear, Like what will I discover if I go deep?
Speaker 1: What will I discover if I open this brain of
Speaker 1: mine and try and probe? Maybe I'll just jump right in? Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: is that kind of a similar pattern that you have
Speaker 1: that actually just conferred benefits in this case? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's the exact same thing I do. I think
Speaker 1: that's a I don't know if anybody's made that. I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody's made that point to me before, So
Speaker 1: I appreciate that, but it is it is the same
Speaker 1: exact thing. And I think some of us are the
Speaker 1: kind of people who, you know, stand at the edge
Speaker 1: of Niagara Falls and think, I wonder what would happen
Speaker 1: if I jumped in? And I don't do that. You know.
Speaker 1: So there's a few of us are the kind of
Speaker 1: people who do jump in. That's you don't want to
Speaker 1: be that kind either. And there's I don't even for
Speaker 1: what it's worth. I don't even go to the edge
Speaker 1: of the thing to look over. I'm like, yeah, behind
Speaker 1: the guardrails some you know, fifty feet away. All right,
Speaker 1: that's probably that's probably the healthiest way to handle the
Speaker 1: whole situation. Like, somebody go take a picture of that
Speaker 1: and bring it back in the show or too. I'll
Speaker 1: just I'll just google it diagraphall's image. Okay, great, done,
Speaker 1: I'll get a T shirt. I was doing. But some
Speaker 1: of us have to go right up to the edge,
Speaker 1: you know. And I am that person. I have to
Speaker 1: go right up to the edge. And um, I've always
Speaker 1: been that person and that's just how I am. And
Speaker 1: so you know, I just I like to test all
Speaker 1: those boundaries. And you know, luckily there are healthy ways
Speaker 1: for an artist to do that. I mean, that's probably
Speaker 1: why I'm an artist, you know. Yeah. I love when
Speaker 1: I love when we can reinterpret what we initially code
Speaker 1: in our lives as being liabilities and weaknesses, and then
Speaker 1: you start to think, well, what are the flip sides
Speaker 1: of it, like what are the benefits? And it seems
Speaker 1: like in your case, Jason, that it would have been
Speaker 1: so easy to say, Oh, I have this really frustrating
Speaker 1: habit where when I fear something, I jump right in
Speaker 1: and I can't wait to just rid myself of that instinct.
Speaker 1: And yet here you are, in a later stage of
Speaker 1: your life, learning that there's there's an upside and that
Speaker 1: when you channel some of those very same instincts in
Speaker 1: the right direction, you can you can have beautiful changes
Speaker 1: that emerge. Right, Yeah, yeah, no, I love that. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you can close us out with um the
Speaker 1: song cover Me Up, which is a beautiful ode to
Speaker 1: your to your wife Amanda. And yeah, I would love
Speaker 1: to say that that this is purely because it's constant
Speaker 1: with the show's theme, But the reality is that I'm
Speaker 1: not going to not take advantage of the fact that
Speaker 1: I can get serenaded by bass and isbel and so
Speaker 1: all you slight changers listening. This is also a selfish
Speaker 1: desire of mine. Would you see here one of my
Speaker 1: favorite songs sung by one of my favorite musicians. All right,
Speaker 1: I will do my best. Let me put my microphone
Speaker 1: a little closer, and I'll in the guitar here. Let
Speaker 1: me take one of my earboats out. Can you still
Speaker 1: hear me? Yeah? Okay, yeah, but it's the end of
Speaker 1: the day and my voice is warmed up and I
Speaker 1: can but I'll do it now. Indeed, hard on girl
Speaker 1: keep saying, hand on gone. You can't trust anymore. I
Speaker 1: was so sure what I needed this morning, try to
Speaker 1: shoot out sun. The day is when weird. We've such
Speaker 1: damn what I was. Man, Hey, thanks for listening. Join
Speaker 1: me next week when I talked with Norah McInerney, host
Speaker 1: to the podcast Terrible, Thanks for asking. Nora lost her
Speaker 1: husband to brain cancer in twenty fourteen, and in the
Speaker 1: months and years following his death, Norah found comfort and
Speaker 1: meaning and helping others navigate their grief. People started to
Speaker 1: see her as a grief duela of sorts. Over time,
Speaker 1: these responsibilities began to mount, and Norah felt overwhelmed, but
Speaker 1: she didn't think she had a way out. Are you
Speaker 1: allowed to quit anything? Winners number quarters, number win Although
Speaker 1: it wasn't going to win the Best Widow Award, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I felt. I think in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways like I had inadvertently built this identity that had
Speaker 1: become a cage for me. A Slight Change of Plans
Speaker 1: is created, written an executive produced by me Maya Shunker.
Speaker 1: The Slight Change Family includes our senior producer Tyler Greene,
Speaker 1: our producer and fact checker Emily Rosteck, our editors Kate
Speaker 1: Parkinson Morgan and Jen Guera, and our sound engineers Ben
Speaker 1: holliday In Andrew Veastola. Louis Gara wrote our delightful theme song,
Speaker 1: and Ginger Smith helped to range the vocals. A Slight
Speaker 1: Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so
Speaker 1: big thanks to everyone there, and of course a very
Speaker 1: special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow a Slight
Speaker 1: Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker. See
Speaker 1: you next week, Cover me up? No use? Is it good?
Speaker 1: Was it okay? Oh my god? It was beautiful? Okay?
Speaker 1: Thank you? Life is made everyone, Life is made. What
Speaker 1: thank you