Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: The Outspoken podcast Network. This episode contains frank discussion on
Speaker 1: addiction and substance use disorder. If you or someone you
Speaker 1: know is struggling with addiction, visit finetreatment dot gov. That's
Speaker 1: fine treatment dot Gov. Hey it's Jordan with a quick note.
Speaker 1: After this episode. We just have one more episode before
Speaker 1: our season officially ends, and I have something to ask you.
Speaker 1: If you haven't already, go follow me on Instagram or
Speaker 1: TikTok at your underscore gonsolvice that's JR. Underscore g O
Speaker 1: n s A l VS. For my next move, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be producing a TV series called Unshaming, where
Speaker 1: I interview people on the shame that they've overcome in
Speaker 1: their life. And I want to stay in touch with
Speaker 1: you and I want you to stay with me on
Speaker 1: my journey. As always, I couldn't do this without you,
Speaker 1: so thank you so much for the support. Now let's
Speaker 1: get into the show.
Speaker 2: I went to rehab, but I did my part and
Speaker 2: tried real hard and was using before I got out
Speaker 2: of the halfway house.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, it was that strong, you know.
Speaker 2: I say that some of us got it bad. Some
Speaker 2: of us just got it bad.
Speaker 1: You had a relapse before the recovery process was completed.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. In two thousand and seven, I was in
Speaker 2: a documentary about Crystal Meth. I was the voice of
Speaker 2: reason in that documentary, the talking head that had all
Speaker 2: the answers, and only revealed to the director of it
Speaker 2: as it was premiering in film festivals that I was
Speaker 2: high when I made the movie.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's kind.
Speaker 2: Of like I just it was the devil. I knew
Speaker 2: it's the devil. I knew. Recovery was so scary to
Speaker 2: me because it had been so long since I have
Speaker 2: had faced life on life's terms. It was so long
Speaker 2: I didn't know who I'd be without it.
Speaker 1: As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
Speaker 1: I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
Speaker 1: ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
Speaker 1: that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
Speaker 1: are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll meet Mark S. King, the author
Speaker 1: of My Fabulous Disease, a book about his recovery from
Speaker 1: Crystal Meth. We'll learn how gay men are particularly at
Speaker 1: risk for crystal meth addiction and for Mark what was
Speaker 1: driving his addiction. For My Heart podcasts, I'm Jordan and
Speaker 1: Solve This and this is what We Loved. A couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, I read an opinion piece in The
Speaker 1: New York Times called gay men are dying from a
Speaker 1: crisis We're not talking about. Before I clicked it, I
Speaker 1: felt a rush of anxiety. I'd been learning about the
Speaker 1: AIDS crisis and I understood the consequences. I thought, is
Speaker 1: HIV having a resurgence or is this another virus that
Speaker 1: is going to completely upend our lives. I took a
Speaker 1: deep breath to quiet my racing pulse and click to
Speaker 1: the article. But as I read, I realized the author
Speaker 1: wasn't talking about any kind of virus. He was talking
Speaker 1: about crystal meth addiction and how all gay men are
Speaker 1: at risk. Crystal meth is a colorless, odorless man made
Speaker 1: drug that creates an artificial feeling of euphoria by producing
Speaker 1: large amounts of dopamine in the brain at once. People
Speaker 1: who have taken it report feeling as though they have
Speaker 1: no insecurities, no inhibitions, and a bigger sex drive. And
Speaker 1: it's becoming a big problem in America, in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: there were six hundred deaths because of meth, and in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one there were more than fifty thousand. That's
Speaker 1: because increasingly crystal meth is being contaminated with fentanyl. The
Speaker 1: federal government found that crystal meth usage is four times
Speaker 1: higher in gay men than in straight men. And will
Speaker 1: learn why with my next guest, Mark S. King, who
Speaker 1: was one of those gay men. He's battled crystal meth
Speaker 1: addiction for years and as a result, has found himself
Speaker 1: at the center of violence, tragedy, and shame. There are
Speaker 1: many causes for addiction. For many of the people I've interviewed,
Speaker 1: they say it stems from an unstable childhood. But for Mark,
Speaker 1: the root of his addiction would come later in life.
Speaker 1: So Mark, tell me about where you grew up and
Speaker 1: how you grew up and what you were like as
Speaker 1: a child.
Speaker 2: Well, I am a military brat. I'm an Air Force brat.
Speaker 2: My dad was an officer in the Air Force. He
Speaker 2: was Colonel King, and we lived on Air Force Bass
Speaker 2: And I was the youngest and so my experience with
Speaker 2: Colonel King was more limited than my older siblings. He
Speaker 2: retired after many years when I was eleven or so,
Speaker 2: and so I got to experience him as dad dad,
Speaker 2: which was great, building geodesic domes in the backyard, building
Speaker 2: the largest box kite that ever flew, always a project
Speaker 2: going on. So I adored him. I have no complaints
Speaker 2: about my childhood. I was treated well. I was encouraged
Speaker 2: to be whatever it is I was going to be.
Speaker 1: Tell me the story of the first moment that you
Speaker 1: knew you were gay.
Speaker 2: For me, I was in community theater and I remember
Speaker 2: I was in a musical when I was eleven or twelve,
Speaker 2: and during one of the rehearsals, Patrick McWilliams, who was
Speaker 2: quite outrageous, came marching in during a break in the rehearsal,
Speaker 2: holding up Bette Midler's new album, her first album, The
Speaker 2: Divine Miss m saying the Queen has arrived. I thought
Speaker 2: he was referring to himself, but he was referring, in fact,
Speaker 2: to Ms Midler and went on and on about her album.
Speaker 2: And I looked at him and I said, I don't
Speaker 2: know what that is, but I want to be that.
Speaker 2: I want to have that confidence. I wanted to have
Speaker 2: that outrageousness. I was so attracted to that.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because so many of our guests say that
Speaker 1: the first time they knew they were gay was somewhat
Speaker 1: of a sexual experience. But that wasn't sexual. That seemed
Speaker 1: like it was an energy that you really connected with.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, what I did do. And it is true
Speaker 2: that out of you know, as a teenager, I did
Speaker 2: seek out sex. And it is of course a topic
Speaker 2: that is provocative and certainly up for debate within our
Speaker 2: community about whether or not I was taken advantage of,
Speaker 2: whether or not I was exploited, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But mine was not an occasion for exploitation. Mine was
Speaker 2: an occasion for someone to validate, not just me, but
Speaker 2: that this was okay, that my feelings were okay.
Speaker 1: Like you didn't view it as being taken advantage of.
Speaker 1: You viewed it and you still view it as a
Speaker 1: chance for connection.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Now It's also true though, that the only
Speaker 2: vocabulary I had to connect with them was sex. It
Speaker 2: was the only vocabulary I knew. And in the meantime,
Speaker 2: there were a couple of guys who were certainly older
Speaker 2: than me. They were full on adults, and I was
Speaker 2: a teenager. So make of that, what you will, but
Speaker 2: who had conversations with me, who had meals with me,
Speaker 2: who demonstrated that their lives were full and fulfilling and
Speaker 2: they were not deviant in any way. And I got
Speaker 2: to tell you that it was me, the horny little teenager,
Speaker 2: who was driving the sexual activity, probably and it didn't
Speaker 2: always land in the way that I intended it to.
Speaker 2: I have a very very strong memory. It was. I
Speaker 2: was in a show. It was a summer musical, I
Speaker 2: want to say. It was Man of La Mancha, almost
Speaker 2: all mail cast, very busy summer, and I was I
Speaker 2: manipulated a situation. There was a man that he had
Speaker 2: been kind of on my to do list. And I
Speaker 2: know how this sounds at the age of fifteen or
Speaker 2: whatever it was, but I was attracted to him because
Speaker 2: he was so confident, and he was well liked and
Speaker 2: talented and all of those things. And there was a
Speaker 2: pool party after one of the matinate performances. I asked
Speaker 2: him if he could give me a ride. I wasn't
Speaker 2: driving yet, And then, of course, this says, we got
Speaker 2: this car. I said, oh, I don't have a bathing
Speaker 2: suit for the pool. Can we stop at your place
Speaker 2: and get one? And I know how this sounds. I can't.
Speaker 2: I feel a little ridiculous even recounting it. But the
Speaker 2: point is is it led to a brief fashion show
Speaker 2: of his bathing suits, and then an even briefer encounter
Speaker 2: which I think I certainly instigated and that he clearly
Speaker 2: had mixed feelings about, so much so that in the
Speaker 2: car afterwards, we are driving to the pool party and
Speaker 2: he's not saying much. Well, he pulls over on the
Speaker 2: way there and he puts car in park, and here
Speaker 2: he has tears streaming down his face, tears, and I
Speaker 2: am stunned. And he said, you know, I'm twice your rage.
Speaker 1: He was thirty.
Speaker 2: Oh, I guess I guess he was thirty. I remember
Speaker 2: him saying twice your rage, so I'm assuming he was
Speaker 2: thirty ish. I said, uh huh. I was perplexed. And
Speaker 2: he said, don't you just want to be fifteen?
Speaker 1: How did that experience shape you?
Speaker 2: I mean, I have thought about that scene in the
Speaker 2: car countless times in the fifty years since I figured
Speaker 2: out soon, Oh, I am a desirable and I can
Speaker 2: use that to connect to these folks.
Speaker 1: I want to fast forward a little bit, mark several
Speaker 1: years to when you moved to LA after graduating from college,
Speaker 1: and you know, you sort of had your gay coming
Speaker 1: of age, and I wonder what that was like for you.
Speaker 2: I moved to LA when I was twenty, but yes,
Speaker 2: moving to LA and living in West Hollywood at that
Speaker 2: age and throughout the next thirteen years that I would
Speaker 2: be there was my gay coming out I suppose, you know,
Speaker 2: my coming out party on the larger age as it were,
Speaker 2: of West Hollywood, and discovering a gym membership and working out,
Speaker 2: working out my skinny, little red haired body and finding
Speaker 2: tanning products and steroids. I bought in to the entire
Speaker 2: narrative of what it meant to be an a gay.
Speaker 1: So you are young, gorgeous, muscular, and you're in the
Speaker 1: middle of West Hollywood. So yes, you know, and this
Speaker 1: is in the eighties' early eighties kind of pre aids
Speaker 1: a little bit. So what was that lifestyle like?
Speaker 2: I got to experience the last days, the last halcyon days,
Speaker 2: you know, the last days where sex was truly safe.
Speaker 2: It was five oh one jeans, tight T shirts, jim
Speaker 2: body and if you had a scarf, it was a
Speaker 2: handkerchief in your back pocket to let you know whether
Speaker 2: you were top or a bottom. Oh sure you might
Speaker 2: get an STD, but there was a shot for that.
Speaker 2: It's important to remember that this was an era late
Speaker 2: seventies early eighties in which we as a gay community
Speaker 2: had We're discovering our worth, discovering our power as a
Speaker 2: voting block, as a political constituency, as a portion of society.
Speaker 2: You know. It wasn't until the seventies that the American
Speaker 2: Psychiatric Association decided that we were not, in fact a
Speaker 2: mental disease, and so it was a really exciting time.
Speaker 2: I remember seeing gay men on the cover of Time
Speaker 2: magazine and having a feeling that something's afoot, something's changing.
Speaker 1: You're part of the last days of this golden age
Speaker 1: of being gay, and then AIDS hits and you're still
Speaker 1: kind of coming of age at that time, and I
Speaker 1: wonder what that was like for you, kind of living
Speaker 1: through the AIDS crisis too.
Speaker 2: My friend Leslie, we were in college together. We moved
Speaker 2: out to Los Angeles together. Wonderful human being, had his
Speaker 2: whole life ahead of him, working at the LA Museum.
Speaker 2: Died in my guest room. Wow, because he had no
Speaker 2: other place to go because he had been kicked out,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't unusual if you lived in West Hollywood
Speaker 2: and you had a guest room somebody died in it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And I remember being around Leslie's bed with a few
Speaker 2: of his other friends, close friends, and not knowing if
Speaker 2: he could hear us, and singing to him and talking
Speaker 2: to him and reassuring him and watching him die. And
Speaker 2: he may have been the first person that I saw
Speaker 2: die in person, you know, in real time, and having
Speaker 2: to keep checking because you're not sure if he's dead yet,
Speaker 2: but you think he's dead.
Speaker 1: Wow. And how old were you? Wow?
Speaker 2: Twenty five? Run there?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, Mark, around this time, you get your
Speaker 1: own HIV diagnosis, And I wonder if you can kind
Speaker 1: of take me to that moment and what that was
Speaker 1: like receiving that knowing the consequences of that diagnosis at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: In March of nineteen eighty five, the first HIV antibody
Speaker 2: test was made publicly available. A friend gave me the
Speaker 2: test after hours. He was a nurse in a doctor's office.
Speaker 2: Because God forbid this should be on your insurance. You
Speaker 2: could certainly be discriminated against and fired from your job
Speaker 2: and kicked out by your roommate and just disowned by
Speaker 2: your parents. And so he did it after hours and
Speaker 2: he called me a couple weeks later, that's how long
Speaker 2: it took, and he said, I'm so sorry. Your results
Speaker 2: are positive. You have HIV. I'm so sorry. I remember
Speaker 2: just being kind of numbed to it.
Speaker 1: In the mid nineties, these incredible drugs come out that
Speaker 1: sort of put an end to this despairing wave of
Speaker 1: death around HIV. And I think the picture that a
Speaker 1: lot of my generation gets is like that was when
Speaker 1: the crisis ended. But I don't think a lot of
Speaker 1: us understand what the aftermath was like, you know, to
Speaker 1: then sort of live with all of these memories and grief.
Speaker 1: What was that like for you? What was the aftermath?
Speaker 2: It was like a war ending. It was kind of
Speaker 2: like emotional whiplash. It was you start your life going,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I'm gonna live forever because I'm young
Speaker 2: and beautiful and immortal, and then you get struck with
Speaker 2: something that says, oh no, you're not. You're going to die,
Speaker 2: and you're going to die pretty soon. And so you
Speaker 2: spend years living with that, living life and your increments,
Speaker 2: waiting for the beginning of the end to begin. And
Speaker 2: then they come out and say, oh, oh, guess what, surprise,
Speaker 2: You're going to be Okay, you're going to live.
Speaker 1: And you've lost all these friends along the way.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they're all dead. And I've run up the
Speaker 2: credit card and told them to the boss to go
Speaker 2: to hell, and sold the life insurance policy, took the
Speaker 2: trip around the world, and now I'm going to live. Wow,
Speaker 2: you know. And I felt guilty that I didn't feel
Speaker 2: grateful because I had emotionally prepared myself to die at
Speaker 2: some point. Soon, at any moment, the countdown will begin.
Speaker 2: It'll all start. And yes, I felt guilty that I
Speaker 2: didn't feel grateful.
Speaker 1: How did you cope with that guilt and the grief
Speaker 1: of all of the loss drugs?
Speaker 2: It is not lost on me that the guy that
Speaker 2: ran aid service organizations, that was a role model for
Speaker 2: long term survivors gets past the finish line and is
Speaker 2: now taking successful medications and indeed now has my whole
Speaker 2: life ahead of me again. And I start shooting up
Speaker 2: Crystal meth.
Speaker 1: What the fuck? What's the story of how you were
Speaker 1: first introduced to Crystal?
Speaker 2: Myth sex? You know, I'm a gay cliche. It was
Speaker 2: introduced to me sexually by a trick.
Speaker 1: Like a one night stand.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he had this drug and I had done
Speaker 2: coke before, so I thought it was like coke. It's
Speaker 2: not like coke. But because it was introduced to me
Speaker 2: in a sexual context, Oh do this, it'll make you
Speaker 2: really horny. I adopted that. My brain heard that, it
Speaker 2: processed it, and the drug to me meant.
Speaker 1: Sex and it changed your life.
Speaker 2: It changed my life. It certainly did. In the years ahead,
Speaker 2: I would have a lot of forgiving to do about
Speaker 2: where I went, what I did, what I witnessed during
Speaker 2: the crystal meth sex.
Speaker 1: Mark had just tried crystal meth for the first time
Speaker 1: during a sexual encounter. According to experts and many gay men,
Speaker 1: this is the typical setting where crystal meth is introduced
Speaker 1: to them on hookup apps. It's commonly called Tina or
Speaker 1: party in play and coded with a diamond emoji. The
Speaker 1: risk of trying crystal meth is also much higher for
Speaker 1: gay men living with HIV. In fact, one study says
Speaker 1: that sixty five percent of HIV positive men started using
Speaker 1: math after their diagnosis. That's because the drug provides an
Speaker 1: escape from the shame of being gay and living with HIV.
Speaker 1: What was the feeling that it had given you the
Speaker 1: first time you took the drug.
Speaker 2: Well, I can certainly tell you that the first year
Speaker 2: or so, because I'll have to look at it that
Speaker 2: way in terms of like how it was, because there's
Speaker 2: kind of this transitional process to doing crystal meth. You
Speaker 2: might snort it the first time, and then before long,
Speaker 2: if you keep doing it, you'll be smoking it out
Speaker 2: of a glass pipe, and then not longer after that,
Speaker 2: if you keep doing it and you're all all loving it,
Speaker 2: then you're going to be shooting it up. And that
Speaker 2: from soup to nuts took me about a year and
Speaker 2: a half. So the feeling that I got during that
Speaker 2: first year was excitement, extreme horniness, and a feeling that
Speaker 2: I could do anything because crystal meth is kind of
Speaker 2: like the great equalizer. If all of you in the
Speaker 2: room are doing crystal myth, you're going to be less
Speaker 2: judgmental about whether or not he's overweight or he's over
Speaker 2: forty or whatever. You're all involved in the drug and
Speaker 2: it's very exciting and happy and let's fuck.
Speaker 1: Your inhibitions just sort of go away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes they do, and they are replaced with new goals,
Speaker 2: you know, to have a sex with as many minutes
Speaker 2: physically possible, and to fetishize all sorts of things that maybe,
Speaker 2: and this took me a long time to learn in recovery,
Speaker 2: were not my authentic sexuality. That was a drug driven psychosis.
Speaker 1: The reporting shows that ther sort of alters your brain
Speaker 1: and it can give you different needs and desires than
Speaker 1: you would otherwise have as your sober self. And what
Speaker 1: was that like for you?
Speaker 2: When I was actively using, and really using a lot,
Speaker 2: I didn't have time to judge what I was doing.
Speaker 2: That would have been too real. The only oversight I
Speaker 2: allowed myself during those times was Okay, it's been three
Speaker 2: days sleep sleep now.
Speaker 1: These vendors would last about three full days.
Speaker 2: Three days something like that, Yeah, until I would literally
Speaker 2: just collapse, and hopefully I would be home when that happened,
Speaker 2: because nobody's waking me up for at least twelve hours,
Speaker 2: and I would come to eat some cereal, drink water,
Speaker 2: and go back to bed until I had kind of
Speaker 2: repaired enough to be resentable again, and then usually the
Speaker 2: process would begin again. I missed events with family, with friends,
Speaker 2: I dropped out of friendships that were not absolutely required.
Speaker 2: I didn't have time for regular friends. I did not
Speaker 2: have time for anything that didn't serve the addiction. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: what was.
Speaker 3: Like an average day in the life you mean when
Speaker 3: I was using Yes, I would wake up and, depending
Speaker 3: on how I felt, turn the porn off that was
Speaker 3: playing on the TV, because there's always porn playing and
Speaker 3: get the serial, take the nap.
Speaker 2: Call up friends that have probably been trying to reach me,
Speaker 2: to make excuses or have conversations and sound super invested
Speaker 2: in so that I could buy more time before having
Speaker 2: to speak to them again, and then rest and then
Speaker 2: consider my next move. It would be who on my
Speaker 2: list of.
Speaker 1: To dos, meaning like who you wanted to have sex with?
Speaker 2: Yes? Who was I going to go get laid with?
Speaker 2: And did they? Did they like drugs as much as
Speaker 2: I did?
Speaker 1: That sort of thing, and your whole life had sort
Speaker 1: of become revolved around oh yes, addiction.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes it did, and you know I again, A
Speaker 2: lot of this is about forgiving myself for those things.
Speaker 2: A lot of this is understanding that at some point
Speaker 2: along the way, my choices were taken from me. My
Speaker 2: choices now were were driven by my addiction and where
Speaker 2: I would get more, what I would do for more?
Speaker 2: And trust me anything.
Speaker 1: Doctor David Fawcett, who is sort of one of the
Speaker 1: leading experts on Matthews and Matthews and gay men, he
Speaker 1: calls this drug an emotional painkiller. And for you, what
Speaker 1: was the emotion that you were trying to escape from.
Speaker 2: I think that for the fifteen years that I was
Speaker 2: living with HIV with no escape route, and everything was
Speaker 2: just a daily who's died, Who's died today? You get
Speaker 2: a phone call late at night, you know immediately someone's dead,
Speaker 2: but you don't know who, because you know, could be
Speaker 2: anybody living under that sort of cumulative trauma. I don't
Speaker 2: think that I realized what it was doing to me
Speaker 2: because there was just so much work to do. There
Speaker 2: was so much to get done in terms of taking
Speaker 2: care of your friends who were in crisis, plus working
Speaker 2: at an AIDS agency, which I did, you know, not
Speaker 2: long eye after I was diagnosed. There was so much
Speaker 2: to do that It's amazing, really we as human beings
Speaker 2: can take on all of that in the midst of
Speaker 2: our own trauma. I'll tell you that when it ended
Speaker 2: for me, when that high trauma period ended and the
Speaker 2: new drugs came along, I guess, you know, It's easy
Speaker 2: to draw straight line from there to the Crystal Matthews
Speaker 2: because I was self medicating, because now my body had
Speaker 2: a chance to go, oh whoa, well that was something.
Speaker 1: That was bad.
Speaker 2: And suddenly the things that I saw during that time,
Speaker 2: and the deaths that I had to experience, I didn't
Speaker 2: have time degree for them while they were happening. There
Speaker 2: were too many. Everybody was doing it. And then when
Speaker 2: it stopped, it chance to catch up with me and go,
Speaker 2: oh my god, Don died, Oh shit, Ron died. He
Speaker 2: stayed with you. He had so much dementia. He didn't
Speaker 2: know who you were, and he was your best friend.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to escape that.
Speaker 1: In your writing, Mark, you've described that you had an
Speaker 1: alter ego named Marcus, and I wonder what it was like,
Speaker 1: sort of balancing these two worlds, Mark and Marcus, and
Speaker 1: when you sort of realized that Marcus was beginning to
Speaker 1: take over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a name that I used for drug
Speaker 2: related things. My dealer knew me as Marcus. A lot
Speaker 2: of the fellow addicts knew me that way. And I
Speaker 2: remember once being in a bar and playing pool. It
Speaker 2: was with friends and it was my turn to play
Speaker 2: pool and I, you know, you play the winner of
Speaker 2: the previous game. Who is some dude I didn't know?
Speaker 2: When he comes up and shakes my hand, says Hi,
Speaker 2: I'm you know David. I said Hi, I'm Marcus, And
Speaker 2: I did it without even thinking. I remember that. I'm like,
Speaker 2: who are you?
Speaker 1: Who are you?
Speaker 2: Who am I? Today?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Marcus had a persona to him that was different than mine.
Speaker 2: You know, he had a strut that I don't really have.
Speaker 2: It was all about this kind of hyper masculine, sexual
Speaker 2: playmate sort of persona. And it's funny because I lived
Speaker 2: there in that place for so long that when I
Speaker 2: eventually went into recovery I had to practice speaking normally
Speaker 2: or what is for me my normal voice, you know,
Speaker 2: without doing this thing.
Speaker 1: Like you had forgotten what your own natural voice had
Speaker 1: sounded like.
Speaker 2: I'd forgotten what it felt like to be authentic. Wow,
Speaker 2: and to move through this world in an organic, authentic way.
Speaker 1: Do you remember one friendship that you lost, for one
Speaker 1: event that you missed that really kind of sticks out
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: I was high at my father's funeral.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and during his illness, although I had managed to
Speaker 2: go home and keep it together long enough to visit
Speaker 2: him in the last couple of months he was alive.
Speaker 2: And there's no reason why I couldn't have stayed. I
Speaker 2: had nothing better to do. I could have stayed with
Speaker 2: family for the remainder of his life. I did not.
Speaker 2: I had better things to do. I needed to get
Speaker 2: back home and left to my own devices, and so
Speaker 2: I missed the opportunity to have been with him in
Speaker 2: his final month or two. And I think at the
Speaker 2: time that I got the call that he had died
Speaker 2: and went home for the funeral, I was coming off
Speaker 2: of three day Crystal Matthews, so I probably slept on
Speaker 2: the plane. I probably slept as soon as I got
Speaker 2: to my mom's house. Oh, I'm really tired and collapsed.
Speaker 2: And so all that repair work, waking up again, drinking water,
Speaker 2: having some cereal, sleeping again was all going on while
Speaker 2: my family was trying to put together a funeral and
Speaker 2: I was barely present. And then the rest of my
Speaker 2: behavior people chalked up to grief. You know, we succeed
Speaker 2: as addicts by exploiting people's perceptions of what we might
Speaker 2: be going through. Oh he's grieving, Oh he's exhausted. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, he has HIV. And don't down for a
Speaker 2: second that I didn't exploit that one. That's what the
Speaker 2: addiction does is there is nothing about you in your
Speaker 2: stockpile of possible excuses for your behavior that you will
Speaker 2: not exploit. All of that was just ripe fruit for
Speaker 2: the picking to make excuses for my behavior when I
Speaker 2: was a drug addict. That's where it took me.
Speaker 1: When we last left, Mark had been so immersed in
Speaker 1: his drug addiction that he was emotionally absent for his
Speaker 1: own father's funeral. The reasons for addiction are complicated. The
Speaker 1: National Institute on Drug Abuse defines addiction as a chronically
Speaker 1: relapsing brain disease and says that it's environmental but also genetic.
Speaker 1: They say that drugs like meth literally alter the circuits
Speaker 1: of our brain that manage reward and stress and self control.
Speaker 1: Effects can last a long time even after someone has
Speaker 1: stopped using, making addiction much more complicated than a simple
Speaker 1: choice of do I or don't I. But recovery is possible,
Speaker 1: and for Mark it's a journey that has had ups
Speaker 1: and downs. In a lot of my interviews around addiction,
Speaker 1: sometimes people will say there's one particular consequence that made
Speaker 1: it real. Someone might say it was losing my job.
Speaker 1: Another person might say it was losing my partner. That's
Speaker 1: what sort of made me wake up and realize this
Speaker 1: is really affecting my life and destroying my life. Was
Speaker 1: there one consequence for you like that?
Speaker 2: No, it's kind of like I don't remember the last
Speaker 2: time I used, and I thought that it would be
Speaker 2: something worth remembering because it was so awful or overdosed
Speaker 2: and there were cops involved, or who knows what. Then
Speaker 2: that was the last time I used, and boy was
Speaker 2: it bad. And I stopped after that. You know. Somebody
Speaker 2: overdosed and died in front of me. Somebody pointed a
Speaker 2: gun in my face. All of those things have happened
Speaker 2: to me, and none of them stopped my addiction, none
Speaker 2: of them. That's just not how it works. But I
Speaker 2: will say that some of those things sank in slowly.
Speaker 1: What was the recovery process like for you?
Speaker 2: I went to rehab. I was kind of forced into rehab,
Speaker 2: But I did my part and tried real hard and
Speaker 2: was using before I got out of the halfway house.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, it was that strong, you know. I say
Speaker 2: that some of us got it bad. Some of us
Speaker 2: just got it bad.
Speaker 1: You had to relapse before the recovery process was coming.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I was in an impatient facility for a month,
Speaker 2: and then you go into a halfway house, which is
Speaker 2: like sober living, where you're in an apartment complex with
Speaker 2: a couple of guys keeping an eye on everybody. And
Speaker 2: they didn't keep as close an eye on me as
Speaker 2: they should have because I was sneaking out all the time.
Speaker 2: I mean there's a curfew and stuff that I did
Speaker 2: not respect and was out using. In two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: I was the voice of reason in that documentary, the
Speaker 2: talking head that had all the answers, and only revealed
Speaker 2: to the director of it as it was premiering in
Speaker 2: film festivals that I was high when I made the movie. Wow,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like I just it was the devil.
Speaker 2: I knew it's the devil. I knew it. Recovery was
Speaker 2: so scary to me because it had been so long
Speaker 2: since I have had faced life on life's terms. It
Speaker 2: was so long I didn't know who I'd be without it,
Speaker 2: and it was like jumping off a cliff, and I
Speaker 2: was scared.
Speaker 1: To jump off, Like you weren't sure what your identity
Speaker 1: was without this drug.
Speaker 2: Because I had so wholly internalized it. I remember a
Speaker 2: good therapist. I mean, I said, oh my god, what
Speaker 2: if I if I'd stop all of this and I
Speaker 2: have to rebuild my life? I mean, who will I be?
Speaker 2: And he says, Mark, you know, we are not our intentions.
Speaker 2: We are not our best intentions. We are not our plans,
Speaker 2: we are not our hopes and dreams. We are only
Speaker 2: what we do. That's it. We are what we do.
Speaker 2: So for the last many years, you lied and you
Speaker 2: did drugs, and you were an exploitative person. Well, so
Speaker 2: you were a lying, drug addicted exploitative person. Now you
Speaker 2: are trying to stay sober and you are telling the truth.
Speaker 2: So you are an honest person in recovery. That's who
Speaker 2: you are. You are only what you do.
Speaker 1: How long did it take you to believe that?
Speaker 2: M I think it made sense to me right away.
Speaker 2: It was harder to live by. I have to remind
Speaker 2: myself I'm okay. Where am I right now? Or as
Speaker 2: somebody used to say to me, where are your feet?
Speaker 2: My feet are in a studio right now. I have
Speaker 2: been eating munchies between questions. I am looking at a
Speaker 2: guy who's concerned about this. I'm going to be on
Speaker 2: a you know, glad nominated podcast.
Speaker 1: How great is that you already are?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: What was the recovery process that actually kind of brought
Speaker 1: you to this stage? Now?
Speaker 2: I'm a twelve step program for crystal methatics, so I
Speaker 2: go to what is almost exclusively meetings which are for
Speaker 2: crystal methatics by and for j men. I am not
Speaker 2: unique and I experienced the drug in the same way
Speaker 2: as many other gay men, and so it's important for
Speaker 2: us to have that.
Speaker 1: How long have you been sober?
Speaker 2: Now? Mark, I have been going to meetings for twenty years.
Speaker 2: That is not to say that I've been sober for
Speaker 2: twenty years, but I did learn a lesson a long
Speaker 2: time ago, and that is, don't tell them how much
Speaker 2: time you have. Remember you were in that meth documentary
Speaker 2: and you told him you had two years clean. Don't
Speaker 2: make that mistake again. Or maybe you'll say a number
Speaker 2: and then you'll relapse tomorrow. But I will say this,
Speaker 2: I have had a very nice period of recovery about
Speaker 2: which I'm really grateful.
Speaker 1: I notice that you identify as recovering from crystal meth
Speaker 1: as opposed to having been recovered. Tell me more about that.
Speaker 1: Why are you recovering and not recovered?
Speaker 2: I do believe that it realtered the way that my
Speaker 2: brain thinks, even now, even after a period of recovery
Speaker 2: and clean time and all of that. And that's why
Speaker 2: I say I'm still recovering, because my crazy mind, oh
Speaker 2: my goodness, it can still dream up things. And I've
Speaker 2: come to see them those thoughts as as cloud's floating by.
Speaker 2: It's like you look up there and you go, oh, Mark,
Speaker 2: you crazy shit, look at that. You're thinking that, and
Speaker 2: you know the cloud will keep going and pass out
Speaker 2: of you. And so that's how I see it. I
Speaker 2: believe that the drug has recalibrated me. I have made
Speaker 2: great progress. All relationships in my life are no longer transactional.
Speaker 2: I have drugs. What do you have? You know? You know,
Speaker 2: when you live like that long enough, then you're always
Speaker 2: looking for what's in it for me? What do you have?
Speaker 2: You know? What do you bring into the chain? You know?
Speaker 2: I no longer do that. I think I am the
Speaker 2: best partner to my husband and this particular relationship than
Speaker 2: I've ever been because I truly care about him as
Speaker 2: much as myself. You know, life is a process.
Speaker 1: You know, when you strip away the addiction and the
Speaker 1: thrill and the high and the escape that you were
Speaker 1: chasing while you were using. If you take all of
Speaker 1: that away, what do you think you were really searching for?
Speaker 2: What I really needed was not to become a drug addict, certainly, yes,
Speaker 2: and was a way to process the grief and to
Speaker 2: honor those who had died and to reaffirm that I'm
Speaker 2: going to keep going. I'm going to keep going, and
Speaker 2: I do it in their honor, but I a so
Speaker 2: do it to honor myself and everything that I'm still
Speaker 2: capable of. And I think that this period since I
Speaker 2: have addressed my addiction has been the most productive of
Speaker 2: my life and maybe the most rewarding.
Speaker 1: What did you learn about yourself on this journey of recovery.
Speaker 2: I learned that I can be honest and I won't
Speaker 2: die as a result of being honest. I can be honest,
Speaker 2: and there's something on the other side of being honest.
Speaker 2: You know, we don't fool anybody as much as we
Speaker 2: fool ourselves or try to when we're in addiction. Nobody
Speaker 2: can see what I'm doing. It isn't as bad as
Speaker 2: people think it is. It isn't as bad as I
Speaker 2: think it is. It's probably fine. All those lies we
Speaker 2: tell ourselves, and so when we are then asked in recovery,
Speaker 2: tell the truth, look at it, name it, tell the truth,
Speaker 2: it is hard. So I think what I've learned is
Speaker 2: that I can tell the truth. The world will not end.
Speaker 2: And there's something on the other side of telling the truth,
Speaker 2: and it's probably better.
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess that what you're implying is that
Speaker 1: the opposite of telling the truth is shame. And if
Speaker 1: you sort of bring about what you're ashamed of into
Speaker 1: the light, you'll be okay.
Speaker 2: Yes, that has intersected every thing in my life about
Speaker 2: which one might feel ashamed. Being gay, being HIV positive,
Speaker 2: being a drug addict, all of those things are are
Speaker 2: sources of shame and about which I have gotten nothing
Speaker 2: but rewarded by talking about it. And I will say this,
Speaker 2: so much of our culture is a lie. Is a lie.
Speaker 2: We're told that we have to be this, we have
Speaker 2: to be super muscular, we have to be tall, blonde,
Speaker 2: sexually desirable, all of those things. It's a lie. And
Speaker 2: by that I mean that will not make you happy.
Speaker 1: I am no.
Speaker 2: Longer young or muscular or have a beautiful complexion the
Speaker 2: way that I did when I was you know, twenty five.
Speaker 2: I have none of that currency that I once did.
Speaker 2: I have a different currency. You know. I have wisdom.
Speaker 2: I have an ability to be okay with my place
Speaker 2: in the world. Wow, I know what my place is
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 1: The title of our shows is called What We Loved?
Speaker 1: What does that mean in the context of your addiction
Speaker 1: in your recovery?
Speaker 2: We have a saying in the rooms of recovery to
Speaker 2: come on in and we will love you until you
Speaker 2: can love yourself. Because a lot of people walk in
Speaker 2: and they don't. They don't think there's anything left to
Speaker 2: love because of what they've done, choices they've made. And
Speaker 2: so when I think of that title, I think of
Speaker 2: come into a recovery room. You think that you've got
Speaker 2: nothing worthy, But we loved, and we will love you
Speaker 2: until you love yourself, And we're patient and will take
Speaker 2: the time that it takes for you to come around
Speaker 2: and see that you're worthy of that again.
Speaker 1: What We Loved is hosted by me Jordan and Solve.
Speaker 1: New episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write
Speaker 1: in to tell your story, email us. But we Loved
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com, or you can send me a
Speaker 1: message on Instagram or TikTok at your underscore again solves.
Speaker 1: We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts, but We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Joey pat Emily Meronoff, and Christina Loranger.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are me Maya Howard and Katrina Norvil.
Speaker 1: Original music by Steve Boone. Special thanks to Jay Bronson
Speaker 1: and Roquel Willis. If you loved this episode, leave us
Speaker 1: a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify,
Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.