Speaker 1: Memory and emotions aren't linear. So we hear something, where
Speaker 1: we see something, where we're with somebody may bring back
Speaker 1: a Russian memory. Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Baila cocrom Pecher, a writer, social worker, professor, lecturer and
Speaker 1: owner of long time established record label Anyway Records. If
Speaker 1: it doesn't spoil his credibility too much, He is also
Speaker 1: an old friend that Eric and I have known for
Speaker 1: many many years. Today, Baila and Eric discuss his new book,
Speaker 1: Love Death and Photosynthesis. Hi Baila, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: It is a real pleasure. Your book is called Love,
Speaker 1: Death and Photosynthesis and it is really really good. And
Speaker 1: we're going to get into all that in a minute,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk about how you and I know
Speaker 1: each other in a minute. But let's start like we
Speaker 1: always do, with the parable. In the Parable, there is
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He's is in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. What is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather
Speaker 1: and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life today and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. You know, we've known each other for a
Speaker 1: long time, and when you first tell me about the podcast.
Speaker 1: In the Parable, over the years it's changed for me
Speaker 1: as I listen to the show and I hear it,
Speaker 1: and I hear what you know other guests have have
Speaker 1: talked about. I think they're just connected. They're part of
Speaker 1: the same animal, right that you can't have one without
Speaker 1: the other. And as we live in these bodies, the
Speaker 1: bad wolf and quotations is just as much as part
Speaker 1: of us as the good wolf. What I think about
Speaker 1: when I hear it now, though, is discipline of being
Speaker 1: able to not fall back into the laziness that comes
Speaker 1: from feeling overwhelmed or tired of looking for a cure. Again,
Speaker 1: quotation marks that what we feel eliminates the tiredness or
Speaker 1: the mundate of life. I work in serving people as
Speaker 1: a social worker, and there's so much shame attached to
Speaker 1: the bad wolf, which clouds any sort of change because
Speaker 1: people get stuck with it. So I think for the
Speaker 1: good wolf is learning those practices and being mindful of them,
Speaker 1: and finding people who help us be involved in those practices,
Speaker 1: you know, and Buddhism, they talk about the song like
Speaker 1: how important that is. Now, if you're somebody like me
Speaker 1: who really likes time alone, it's really easy to separate
Speaker 1: myself from that so just like a wolf living among
Speaker 1: the pack. That is something that I think for myself,
Speaker 1: I tend to shy away from that, but that's what
Speaker 1: I need to be on the ball. I guess it's
Speaker 1: interesting to think. I reflect on this often that some
Speaker 1: of the times I was most thriving, and I think
Speaker 1: you probably were too, is when we were pretty ensconced
Speaker 1: in the community. That community was a recovery community for
Speaker 1: the most part, you know, and there are some things
Speaker 1: about that that make it less desirable to us than
Speaker 1: it once did. But I just I often think about that,
Speaker 1: how how transformative it was to be in a community
Speaker 1: of people who are trying to change for the better. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the calmest I ever felt in my life
Speaker 1: was pre children. I have been sober for a few years,
Speaker 1: but really being able to devote myself to a lot
Speaker 1: of meditation and community that we were involved in. And
Speaker 1: then kids came and college came, and well, those were
Speaker 1: all good things, and I learned a lot about discipline
Speaker 1: and things like that, really learned how to be sober
Speaker 1: and active like in my life, not just in that community.
Speaker 1: I took a lot of what I learned, but I
Speaker 1: was calm there were periods where nothing, it felt like,
Speaker 1: affected me. But as we were talking before, I have
Speaker 1: to be really careful we're talking about something else, of
Speaker 1: like not to romanticize that because that takes me from
Speaker 1: where I am at today. But it is true when
Speaker 1: I when I am meditating every day, when I am journaling,
Speaker 1: I have better days. That's just the way it works.
Speaker 1: I do a lot of walks in the evening now,
Speaker 1: and that is extremely helpful for me, you know, just
Speaker 1: to go with the dog and whatever like at night.
Speaker 1: That's helpful for me. But I think like back then,
Speaker 1: it was long ago, like we didn't really have smartphones.
Speaker 1: We had cell phones, but we didn't start funds. We
Speaker 1: didn't have this like little thing pulling at us to
Speaker 1: distract us, this idea that we feel we need distracted,
Speaker 1: which we really don't. And so you and I have
Speaker 1: traveled in the same circles for a long time, I
Speaker 1: mean probably all the way back into the time frame
Speaker 1: that your book talks about, which we're gonna get to
Speaker 1: in a minute, but we didn't really know each other.
Speaker 1: When we did meet was when I came back to
Speaker 1: recovery the second time I've been sober eight years. I
Speaker 1: went out, I drank again for three or four years.
Speaker 1: I came back to a A and I met you,
Speaker 1: and you became my sponsor for a while, and that
Speaker 1: was really where our friendship sort of you know started,
Speaker 1: and has been very close since. As you were talking
Speaker 1: about that, I was thinking a little bit about sort
Speaker 1: of in Buddhism, the monastic path versus the layman's path,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking a little bit about my early
Speaker 1: days in a were a little bit like that was
Speaker 1: a little bit monastic, right, Like all I did was
Speaker 1: go to twelve step meetings, take care of myself, meditating.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had all these I mean, that was
Speaker 1: my life, you know. And then career started getting to
Speaker 1: be something important, children and other relationships and and you know,
Speaker 1: and then I moved more into you know, if we
Speaker 1: were to use the Buddhist term, the lay person, you
Speaker 1: know had a life that that you know, mattered. And
Speaker 1: so it's been a process of really learning how do
Speaker 1: you live life in the world that you still remain
Speaker 1: connected to that deeper Yeah, I think that's the challenge
Speaker 1: that we all face. I think it's growth. Though again
Speaker 1: we can look back fondly on that period of our life,
Speaker 1: but the other thing that I have to be honest
Speaker 1: about when I look at that, or might feel bad.
Speaker 1: You know, my depression might be really bad one day,
Speaker 1: or you know, something in my personal life isn't working
Speaker 1: out like like I like it. Try not to get
Speaker 1: hooked onto those issues with that. So I think for
Speaker 1: me and what you have done is really transformed those
Speaker 1: early exercises that we did, those spiritual exercises that we
Speaker 1: were learning as part of that group, and the readings
Speaker 1: we did, and the hours of meditation and integrate that
Speaker 1: in our lives. I don't think I would be nearly
Speaker 1: as effective as a therapist or social worker if I
Speaker 1: didn't do all of that right, if I didn't have
Speaker 1: that process. Although it's really easy for me to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I remember when I could you meditate twice a day
Speaker 1: for twenty minutes or an hour and every Sunday, you know,
Speaker 1: we would go to the meditation center that that we
Speaker 1: went to. How I would look forward to that. It's
Speaker 1: easy to romanticize that as we do the work that
Speaker 1: we do now, because like I said, I don't think
Speaker 1: I could be involved in the misery of people's lives
Speaker 1: their existence as I do now. A friend of mine
Speaker 1: called me yesterday and said I read the book, and
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing here was basically she was like, I never
Speaker 1: realized how many burdens you carry for people. And my
Speaker 1: response was, I don't carry any I don't do that that.
Speaker 1: I'm trained enough or I'm realistic enough to not have that.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense totally? If you carried the burdens
Speaker 1: of everybody you worked with, I mean, your work is
Speaker 1: filled with deeply suffering people. Yeah, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of whom don't get better, you know, and if you
Speaker 1: carried that, it would crush you, It would crush me.
Speaker 1: So I tend to live life with acceptance and non judgment.
Speaker 1: I'm not always successful, and especially with myself. I think
Speaker 1: I judged myself harder than I've ever judged anybody in
Speaker 1: my life, which is part of the trouble probably why
Speaker 1: I do what I do. Your book is I mentioned love,
Speaker 1: Death and Photosynthesis, and it is different than the normal
Speaker 1: sort of book we have on here. It's really a
Speaker 1: I guess I would call it a memoir, but it's
Speaker 1: not a sequential memoir. How would you describe it? I
Speaker 1: don't really know. So it's a book about music, but
Speaker 1: not music, because it's a book about friendship, it's a
Speaker 1: book about substance abuse, it's a book about mental illness,
Speaker 1: and there's also a book about failures of like the system. Right.
Speaker 1: I didn't set out to write a book, So even
Speaker 1: the nonlinear arrangement of the book where it goes from
Speaker 1: one year to a different year and then it might
Speaker 1: jump from to nineteen seventy seven to two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight back to because I didn't intend to write a book.
Speaker 1: But memory and emotions aren't linear. So we hear something,
Speaker 1: where we see something, or we're with somebody may bring
Speaker 1: back a Russian memory or a Russia of emotions. So
Speaker 1: that non linear narrative to me was having the freedom
Speaker 1: because I'm not a writer by profession, A allowed me
Speaker 1: to concentrate on whatever I was writing about in that moment.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want to have a story arc where
Speaker 1: like Jenny May, she was born and she had all
Speaker 1: this potential and promise and she died from alcoholism and
Speaker 1: her mental illness. Somebody just wrote in the Wire did
Speaker 1: a review of it Byron Coley, and he really eloquently said,
Speaker 1: you know, her life was a was a slow dance
Speaker 1: towards death basically, and it's true, but I didn't want
Speaker 1: her story to be that. I wanted to infuse everything
Speaker 1: with the humor and the time that we lived in
Speaker 1: without one romanticizing it, and not to have it filled
Speaker 1: with pathos as well. And so the book is again
Speaker 1: you mentioned, it's about friendship, it's about music. Besides you,
Speaker 1: there are two main characters. There's a whole cast of characters,
Speaker 1: people in the Columbus music scene in the you know,
Speaker 1: late eighties through now. Really, so there's a cast of characters,
Speaker 1: but the two main people are two of your best friends,
Speaker 1: who are both now dead. You know, I think the
Speaker 1: way you wrote it does allow us to experience those
Speaker 1: people without it being so linear, to really experience the
Speaker 1: moments of their life, like them alive, like you really
Speaker 1: bring them to life. Thank you. Yeah, I think if
Speaker 1: you're somebody who was somewhat fortunate not to have a
Speaker 1: child early, because none of us had kids at that time,
Speaker 1: from our early twenties up until our our thirties. I
Speaker 1: certainly didn't have children until late, you know, late thirties.
Speaker 1: But living in that world, that underground rock scene or
Speaker 1: art scene that many of us who felt like misfits
Speaker 1: or unmoored as children were attracted to that. I think people,
Speaker 1: even though it's based in Columbus, most people who lived
Speaker 1: through that kind of lifestyle, No, somebody like Jenny May
Speaker 1: and Jerry Wick who struggled with not just substance abuse
Speaker 1: and men alonness like we mentioned, but also expectations for
Speaker 1: themselves and trying to reconcile that with the way they
Speaker 1: were raised and what happened to them trying to navigate that.
Speaker 1: And in the middle of that there was me with
Speaker 1: with my own substance abuse issues and my own issues
Speaker 1: with depression. I talk about a suicide attempt I had
Speaker 1: fairly young in my early twenties of eventually getting sober
Speaker 1: and finding this spiritual path that I've tried and still
Speaker 1: try struggling with incorporate in my life of I came out,
Speaker 1: and then Jerry died fairly young, and then Jenny didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, she never got out of the clutches of
Speaker 1: mental illness and substance abuse and it killed her. And
Speaker 1: I tend to think what if Jerry could have had
Speaker 1: followed the path that I had, his own path, and
Speaker 1: I think he was there. I think he was right there.
Speaker 1: He died fairly young. He was a year or two
Speaker 1: older than me, so he was around the same age
Speaker 1: as I was when I got sober, and I know
Speaker 1: that was it was something he was struggling with. But
Speaker 1: he was working and he had just bought a house,
Speaker 1: so what would have been for him. So they both died,
Speaker 1: and then he was at the four and he couldn't
Speaker 1: make that decision of where he was going to go.
Speaker 1: And then so I went this way and Jenny went
Speaker 1: this way. That raises some really interesting questions because you
Speaker 1: and Jenny may come from the same small town, you
Speaker 1: live the same chaotic early adulthood life of music and
Speaker 1: sex and drugs and rock and roll, all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and then your paths do diverge, and yours leads towards sobriety,
Speaker 1: recovery all that, and Jenny's is just I think that
Speaker 1: line of a slow dance towards death is a good one,
Speaker 1: Like she just stayed on the path of mental illness
Speaker 1: and alcoholism and never got better. And looking at that
Speaker 1: from the outside, it raises a question that I know
Speaker 1: you have no answer for. What's the difference? What caused
Speaker 1: you to be able to go on direction? Jenny to
Speaker 1: go the other. And I know you wrestle with this
Speaker 1: question because you work with people all day long who
Speaker 1: have substance abuse and mental health issues. And so is
Speaker 1: there anything you can glean about this great mystery of
Speaker 1: why some of us make it and others don't. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put on my sort of professory social work
Speaker 1: hat here so and change behavior. For people to change,
Speaker 1: they need several different types of support in their life.
Speaker 1: If they don't have those changes almost impossible. I don't
Speaker 1: want to say entirely impossible, but it's very difficult. So
Speaker 1: when we look at change that people need in their
Speaker 1: lives too, for instance, change their relationship with substances. One
Speaker 1: is they need access to healthcare. They need an income.
Speaker 1: They also need the support of a community, whether that
Speaker 1: is a partner, whether whether that is a family, whether
Speaker 1: that is friends, whether that is a faith based community,
Speaker 1: or whether a twelve step group, and they need to
Speaker 1: have access to it. So they need to have access
Speaker 1: to transportation, they need for the most part, not entirely,
Speaker 1: but they need some stability in their life. They need housed. Basically,
Speaker 1: they need at least three of those things in their
Speaker 1: life to change with Jenny, she didn't have very many
Speaker 1: of those things. She did best in her life when
Speaker 1: she was married. She was more successful in her life
Speaker 1: in managing what was going on when she was involved
Speaker 1: in like a music community, which she was. Her life
Speaker 1: really took a nose dive when she moved to Miami
Speaker 1: and she was away from that community and she got
Speaker 1: really involved. She went from alcohol to cocaine, and her
Speaker 1: mental illness got worse and worse than worse, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't long before the one support she had in her
Speaker 1: life and he died, that she became homeless. There's also
Speaker 1: the issue of trauma that people experience. The trauma she
Speaker 1: experienced growing up, the trauma that she experienced as a
Speaker 1: woman was much worse than the trauma that I had,
Speaker 1: which involves when people have trauma at an early age,
Speaker 1: their trust mechanism is broken and it takes a long
Speaker 1: time to repair that and some people it's never fully repaired.
Speaker 1: And so for her, for instance, when she first started
Speaker 1: getting help seeking help for her substances use, which she
Speaker 1: was somewhat ambivalent always about, but the focus on her
Speaker 1: when she encountered that system was not treating her mental illness.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of blaming her for being having
Speaker 1: a severe alcohol problem. I'm also really mindful of the
Speaker 1: terminology I use, so I try not to ever use
Speaker 1: the term addiction, which implies that somebody's sort of cursed
Speaker 1: and there's a stigma attached to it. So I always
Speaker 1: try to use the clinical term substance abuse and a relationship.
Speaker 1: I think it's important the language we used to define
Speaker 1: our problems is extremely important because there's so much shame.
Speaker 1: I also don't use the term denial. Most people who
Speaker 1: have substance abuse issues or any sort of compulsive behavior
Speaker 1: who are well aware of it. So I want to
Speaker 1: add that because I think that's really important for the
Speaker 1: listeners to hear that, and they may be saying, why
Speaker 1: is he using these terms? So when she was introduced
Speaker 1: to the system of help, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: blame from professionals with her. And the fact is that
Speaker 1: she had Schizzo effective disorder that was not diagnosed for many, many,
Speaker 1: many years. That a lot of her behavior was blamed,
Speaker 1: even when she was experiencing severe hallucinations and extreme paranoia
Speaker 1: even in the hospital, they would blame it on alcohol
Speaker 1: withdraw or cocaine psychosis, even some of the health care
Speaker 1: issues that she was experienced. She had a heart condition
Speaker 1: that went undiagnosed for years because doctors said, oh, she's
Speaker 1: she's a heavy drinker, and she did. I've known a
Speaker 1: lot of heavy drinkers, and she drank more than maybe
Speaker 1: anybody I ever met. That the system that was there
Speaker 1: built for her wasn't supportive. Whereas for me, when I
Speaker 1: quit drinking, I had a wife who had insurance, I
Speaker 1: didn't have to work, I had transportation, I was in
Speaker 1: a commune entity that embraced me. I didn't have all
Speaker 1: the trust issues. So, in our long, roundabout way, that's
Speaker 1: why I feel I was quote successful and she wasn't.
Speaker 1: It's really easy for people to sort of have knee
Speaker 1: jerk reactions when dealing with substance abuse and mental illness
Speaker 1: because it's in our mind, and our whole lives are
Speaker 1: based off the perspective of our mind, so we feel
Speaker 1: we have some control over it, and we project those
Speaker 1: subconsciously on those who are really suffering, saying why don't
Speaker 1: they do anything about how can they do that? How
Speaker 1: can she do that? How can he do that? How
Speaker 1: can he ignore his kids and use all the rent
Speaker 1: money shooting drugs where so much more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: I heard a term the other day. You probably are
Speaker 1: familiar with it in your professional life, but the term
Speaker 1: was recovery capital, and the idea was, you know that
Speaker 1: certain people have more recovery capital. I often talked about this,
Speaker 1: you know, when I got sober the first time I
Speaker 1: didn't go to jail. I was gripping treatment as an
Speaker 1: option once I sobered up, I had a family to
Speaker 1: go to. I had been raised in an upper middle class,
Speaker 1: so I had a high school diploma. I had a
Speaker 1: recovery capital that the people that I went through treatment
Speaker 1: with and I went through the House of Hope with,
Speaker 1: and the long term treatment simply didn't have concept of
Speaker 1: recovery capital. Is is really really important? And still we
Speaker 1: can quantify all those things, and then there's still a
Speaker 1: mystery of why some people who seem to have no
Speaker 1: recovery capital do it, and other people who seem to
Speaker 1: have all the recovery capital in the world don't do it.
Speaker 1: Don't make it, you know, And so at the same time,
Speaker 1: there's this element of choice, but how much choice an
Speaker 1: individual has. I find a fascinating idea or concept, you know,
Speaker 1: if we talk about the level of choice you had
Speaker 1: about taking a drink versus Jenny May had. Those might
Speaker 1: be very different levels of choice. So exactly what I
Speaker 1: was talking about was the recovery capital. And I like
Speaker 1: that idea that that you bring up choice because there
Speaker 1: is choice in it, but there's also one of having
Speaker 1: faith in your choices, of am I making the right choice?
Speaker 1: Do I have the internal apparatus to stick with those choices?
Speaker 1: Was I taught about those choices? We don't always know,
Speaker 1: so we don't know what somebody who we feel has
Speaker 1: all that capital. What were they taught? Were they shamed
Speaker 1: constantly by their father? Was there some abuse issues going on?
Speaker 1: And then at the end of the day, there are
Speaker 1: some people that just want that life. And what I
Speaker 1: try to really do is live a life of non judgment.
Speaker 1: Especially for those people. I think it is so important
Speaker 1: to enter that relationship with the person I'm helping and
Speaker 1: just building trust, just being there present for that person.
Speaker 1: Everything else comes after that, and sometimes that person won't
Speaker 1: change in the way that I wish they would, but
Speaker 1: also realizing maybe for that hour I'm with them, or
Speaker 1: maybe for that brief period there and treatment, their life
Speaker 1: is better that they feel better about themselves, that they
Speaker 1: have some hope in that moment, or that I make
Speaker 1: them laugh, that I bring some levity to their life.
Speaker 1: What I always find is that people who are homeless,
Speaker 1: people who have substance abuse issues, people who have relationship issues,
Speaker 1: there's a humor there, and there's always that common ground.
Speaker 1: And we know laughter brings out neuer transmitters. We feel better,
Speaker 1: releases stress. That is so so so important for me
Speaker 1: and how I live my life. You know, you and
Speaker 1: I laugh quite a bit. In fact, we were struggling
Speaker 1: about how we're going to get through this interview because
Speaker 1: we're just going to be laughing the entire way, and
Speaker 1: we took ten minutes to get it started because we
Speaker 1: were laughing, and now we're being very serious. But this
Speaker 1: nuanced idea is one I think that I think about
Speaker 1: a lot, and my thinking has changed a ton on
Speaker 1: this from the ideas I had when I came into
Speaker 1: a twelve step program to where they are now. It
Speaker 1: is that element of for me, trying to walk that
Speaker 1: line in my own life and in the lives of
Speaker 1: people that look to me for any sort of helper
Speaker 1: guidance is sort of honoring the weights that they carry,
Speaker 1: but also showing them a vision beyond that, but not
Speaker 1: judging them if they can't quite get to it. It's
Speaker 1: a very subtle thing. I saw gobor Mates speak. He
Speaker 1: I went to a training he did UM conference in
Speaker 1: Chicago some years ago, and I know he's been a
Speaker 1: guest on it, but he said something that that struck me,
Speaker 1: which was weird because I was sitting in the front.
Speaker 1: I have a d h D, so I have to, like,
Speaker 1: if I really want to be present, I have to
Speaker 1: sit in the front. And the night before I was
Speaker 1: actually sort of like stalking him. And he's small, he's Jewish.
Speaker 1: He actually looks a little bit like lou Reid. So
Speaker 1: I had this weird thing. When I was seventeen and
Speaker 1: I met lou Reed, I was like, oh ship, there's
Speaker 1: goodle on my taste. I was like kind of followed
Speaker 1: him around. He's like a rock star in my world.
Speaker 1: So it was interesting. He was talking and so I
Speaker 1: had lou Reid in my head and and he said
Speaker 1: this thing. So he's talking to uh, you know, three
Speaker 1: hundred clinicians, and said, we need to be the mirror
Speaker 1: to the people we serve, to give them hope. That's
Speaker 1: our most important job, which was crazy because like I'm
Speaker 1: freaking out in that moment because I'll be your mirror
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite Velbot Underground songs, and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about it, and I just I was like, oh, sure, um,
Speaker 1: but that's true. We have to provide the hope. And
Speaker 1: I feel once we have the knowledge, like once you
Speaker 1: have the knowledge, and in a a is like once
Speaker 1: your cucumber to a pickle, you can't go back to
Speaker 1: being a cucumber. Once we have knowledge of something, we
Speaker 1: cannot then unpretended we don't have the knowledge, which is
Speaker 1: I guess can be a curse at times because there
Speaker 1: are there are things that I would like to do
Speaker 1: that I can't necessarily do because I have the knowledge
Speaker 1: of how unhealthy if I take a drink for myself,
Speaker 1: I know what comes after that. I know that button
Speaker 1: and me for myself is broken. So being able to
Speaker 1: carry the knowledge I have in the experience I have
Speaker 1: when I'm with somebody and giving them the hope, but
Speaker 1: also honoring the life that they've lived that has brought
Speaker 1: them to me, whether they're core ordered or whatever that
Speaker 1: looks like they're they're earlier, we talked about choice when
Speaker 1: they're they're seeking help. No matter what the motivation is,
Speaker 1: they're still there because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: people can choose to take their own life. They can
Speaker 1: choose to pick up a drink, they can choose to
Speaker 1: misbehave sexually whatever, or gamble whatever that looks like for them.
Speaker 1: But in that moment, they're with us. Whether it's in
Speaker 1: a client therapyist or spiritual advisor relationship, or whether it's
Speaker 1: our partner or our child, in that moment there with us.
Speaker 1: It sounds kind of corny, but that's the sacred space
Speaker 1: and trying to build that and be present for that
Speaker 1: is imperative to be effective, not just for me as
Speaker 1: a clinician, but as a person. How do you flip
Speaker 1: from being the helper, the wise one, the guy who
Speaker 1: you know is gotta. I don't know what sort of
Speaker 1: degrees you have, but plenty of degrees, and yet being
Speaker 1: a person who at the same time needs to get
Speaker 1: help also. Has that been challenging for you or have
Speaker 1: you been pretty good at navigating that. You probably know
Speaker 1: this answer because at one one time in the twelve
Speaker 1: step programs, I was your sponsor. But you know, over
Speaker 1: the years, as some of the issues I've had. If
Speaker 1: we had a scale, I'd probably come to you more
Speaker 1: for advice over the years then you did me early on.
Speaker 1: There is that tendency for me to hide too. As
Speaker 1: my therapist tells me, lean in when you want to
Speaker 1: pull away, lean in. He also talks a lot about
Speaker 1: parenting the subconscious which my motivation is subconsciously is to
Speaker 1: want to feel accepted, is to want to feel loved. Whereas,
Speaker 1: deep down, because of the way I lived my life,
Speaker 1: in the way I was raised, there's this part of
Speaker 1: me that feels completely will always feel somewhat unloved. So
Speaker 1: learning how to parent that and learning how to parent
Speaker 1: that part of me also involves seeking help, of being confessional,
Speaker 1: of trying to live a transparent life, which is really
Speaker 1: difficult as an adult who grew up with secrets that
Speaker 1: I can say. In all my relationships, it's always been
Speaker 1: an issue of I try to live a very honest life,
Speaker 1: but sometimes we don't even know the secrets we have,
Speaker 1: and we feed those secrets in really supplemental ways or
Speaker 1: sometimes overtly ways. So one thing I do is I
Speaker 1: tell the people I'm involved with who are close to me,
Speaker 1: is I have depression. I have a d h D.
Speaker 1: I have these issues in my life. Please be aware
Speaker 1: of these and help me with those when I need
Speaker 1: to help. But I also I go to therapy, and
Speaker 1: whenever I feel myself being pulled one way, I call
Speaker 1: my therapist and say I need help with this. So again,
Speaker 1: like with expectations, like we're talking about expectations earlier with
Speaker 1: the book, I don't want to have expectations for the
Speaker 1: book because the book was supposed to be out pre COVID,
Speaker 1: and of course that set it aside of As expectations
Speaker 1: ramp up for me, the depression rises. And that's all
Speaker 1: internal of something that should be joyous and happy. There's
Speaker 1: this way and that way is that old subconscious part
Speaker 1: of me. But it's not the bad wolf. It's just
Speaker 1: they're of learning not to judge that or feeling bad
Speaker 1: about it. Right right, I think that's the thing is
Speaker 1: going well, okay. The wiser part of me does not
Speaker 1: want to have expectations about how well this book does.
Speaker 1: I know that tying myself to that sort of external
Speaker 1: measure of success is a bad idea, etcetera, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: and we we nurture and culture that and then recognizing
Speaker 1: there's another part of it. It's like, I really want
Speaker 1: this thing to do good? How's it doing? And when
Speaker 1: we see that part, not looking at it and judge
Speaker 1: it and just going, oh, yeah, of course it's there,
Speaker 1: all right, that's I'm a human and it's it's okay
Speaker 1: to have want to have Paul Rubens play me in
Speaker 1: a movie. Who would play you in the movie, Paul,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Paul Giamati. Maybe is that that's
Speaker 1: how you say that guys do? Yeah, he might be
Speaker 1: more on on point for you. Maybe he's already played
Speaker 1: me in Sideways. So let's have you read a section
Speaker 1: from the book. I mean, one of the most powerful
Speaker 1: parts of this book to me was the juxtaposition of
Speaker 1: you getting sober and having children and the love of
Speaker 1: your family alongside Jenny's deterioration. It's so stark to me
Speaker 1: those two things. And there's a paragraph in the book
Speaker 1: that I think speaks a little bit towards that that
Speaker 1: I would like to ask you to read. I once
Speaker 1: had a dream I had to beat the devil. Literally.
Speaker 1: He was completely black, like a shadow, but also shiny, metallic.
Speaker 1: He had no features, just solid mass of slick, black nothingness,
Speaker 1: a moving whole of darkness. I felt him hunting me down.
Speaker 1: I felt his presence, and in the dream the hairs
Speaker 1: on my arms stood at attention, and the pleasure of
Speaker 1: rising fear surrounded me until I was almost connected to
Speaker 1: the devil, just inches away. The realization arose that I
Speaker 1: would be consumed by the devil if I could not
Speaker 1: think of how to beat him. He slipped. They're around me, tall,
Speaker 1: thin and whispy, as if he were a cloak, the
Speaker 1: evil flecking off him as if he were an active volcano.
Speaker 1: There was only one way to conquer him. But how
Speaker 1: Knowing the devil communicates and riddles, I had to think
Speaker 1: quick let the answer come to me, And I knew
Speaker 1: it had to be obvious, because evil is never that complicated.
Speaker 1: So I thought of my young daughter and all the
Speaker 1: love I had for her. I leaned in and hugged
Speaker 1: the devil, and with that the action of love, the
Speaker 1: evil from the devil melted away. I had beaten the devil.
Speaker 1: Thinking of your daughter, sometimes it is that simple reminds
Speaker 1: me of the old Buddhist tale of Milorapa, who comes
Speaker 1: home in a cave full of demons, trying to get
Speaker 1: the demons to leave. I'm going to shorten the story,
Speaker 1: but eventually the way he gets rid of the worst
Speaker 1: demon as he put his head in the demon's mouth
Speaker 1: and just said, okay, have that here. I am you know,
Speaker 1: similar story, but I just love that anchoring to something
Speaker 1: as simple as the love of your kids. It's really
Speaker 1: easy to see the world as me versus them, or
Speaker 1: us versus them, or focusing on the one thing. This morning,
Speaker 1: I was speaking of children. I was meditating this morning,
Speaker 1: and my daughter, who's just oblivious to what's going on,
Speaker 1: sat down across from me and poured a bowl of popcorn.
Speaker 1: And first, it was early in the morning, so I
Speaker 1: was disgusted that she was eating popcorn. But she was
Speaker 1: completely enjoying the popcorn. I e eating it very obnoxiously,
Speaker 1: and I had to in that moment remind myself because
Speaker 1: I was so tempted to say, put the popcorn away,
Speaker 1: eat with your mouth, clothes, don't smack. But in that moment,
Speaker 1: I had to remind myself, she's really enjoying the popcorn.
Speaker 1: Allow her that. Even though I really wanted to turn
Speaker 1: that moment into my moment, when it's our moment, because
Speaker 1: we're all exist in the world, so learning how to
Speaker 1: take the pause and realizing that we all, we all
Speaker 1: are a fountain of love that we sometimes don't understand.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I love that. Nothing is funny to me
Speaker 1: is meditating with the goal of allowing whatever arises to
Speaker 1: arise and disappear, and then find something really annoying arising
Speaker 1: and being like that should not be happening. And if
Speaker 1: I wasn't meditating, I would never catch it when it arises.
Speaker 1: As I'm actually meditating, I find it both funny because
Speaker 1: I still am like, stop eating popcorn, you know, and
Speaker 1: I then can also pause and be like, all right,
Speaker 1: hang on, can I do this differently? I think it
Speaker 1: gets so complicated too with kids, because then it's not
Speaker 1: just well do I want that going on around me
Speaker 1: or not? Then the whole complication of what role do
Speaker 1: I have in teaching them, in guiding them. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just gets so complicated. It gets very complicated, and
Speaker 1: sometimes I feel so sensitive to everything around me. And
Speaker 1: right now, as you were talking, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: whenever I'm on a zoom meeting at work on Tuesday mornings,
Speaker 1: they come and cut the grass like every morning. So
Speaker 1: when you mentioned that I was. I was thinking, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's like when my Tuesday morning meeting, they're cutting the
Speaker 1: grass and as I'm thinking about that, there's a longlower
Speaker 1: outside where that dude's just doing his job. It's funny.
Speaker 1: I've joked before that my greatest like my my co
Speaker 1: on in life, are gas powered leaf blowers. They are
Speaker 1: so loud, they are so obnoxious. Said to Jenny the
Speaker 1: other issues like, how do you feel about edgers? I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, edgers are okay. I mean, they're loud,
Speaker 1: but you need an edger. She's like, what is it
Speaker 1: you think these guys with the leaf blowers are gonna do.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, how about a broom? And she's like,
Speaker 1: they can't use a about a rake? How about just
Speaker 1: letting the leaves be where they're at? Just let them be.
Speaker 1: It's so funny. But like you said, that guy's just
Speaker 1: mowing his grass just and to him, the center of
Speaker 1: the world is him mowing his grass, And to us,
Speaker 1: the center of the world is sitting right in this
Speaker 1: ro and everybody has that experience. And he might in
Speaker 1: the center of the world. He might be loving, that
Speaker 1: might be his away from whatever is going on in
Speaker 1: his house and his head He might have his headphones on.
Speaker 1: Of course you can't hear him because the thing is on,
Speaker 1: But you know, he might be just really enjoying himself.
Speaker 1: This is his moment, and I'm judging him because he's
Speaker 1: interfering with us. Who would be mowing their grass on
Speaker 1: a Sunday afternoon, for God's sake, Dick day of the Lord.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about music for a second. You've got a
Speaker 1: line in the book that I loved music was the
Speaker 1: bomb that allowed a mind to turn off and get
Speaker 1: lost in the wonder of being. I just think that's
Speaker 1: a great line. And you and I are both huge
Speaker 1: music fans. I mean, you know a lot of our
Speaker 1: lives have been oriented around it. You still own a
Speaker 1: record label of released tons of records, so music has
Speaker 1: been centrally important to you. Talk about the role that
Speaker 1: music plays in your life today and also just in
Speaker 1: your healing and recovery. From my earliest age, I loved music.
Speaker 1: I still remember at folk waves records growing up, and
Speaker 1: I listen to them from my earliest age. And I
Speaker 1: discovered music really third grade, when my family had moved.
Speaker 1: I think I was going on my like fourth school
Speaker 1: or something it was. It was pretty crazy, but just
Speaker 1: discovering I could like put on a record and be lost.
Speaker 1: And people who have substance abuse issues tend to actually
Speaker 1: process the environment differently. You probably know this already, but
Speaker 1: what is going on our physical environment, we process it differently.
Speaker 1: And so with music, I have such a strong emotional
Speaker 1: connection to it. It's always been the one thing I
Speaker 1: could trust more than anything, and it has always been
Speaker 1: able to reflect what I'm feeling inside or what I
Speaker 1: aspire to feel inside. So if I was going to
Speaker 1: go out drinking or whatever, you know, I could put
Speaker 1: on a Ramons record or a Rolling Stones record, where
Speaker 1: when I got home at three o'clock that night, I
Speaker 1: could put on a Town's fans Ant record, or Tim
Speaker 1: Harden record or phil Oaks record, which was usually assigned
Speaker 1: not to be disturbed by whomever I was living with.
Speaker 1: At this point, I buy music a lot. Every week,
Speaker 1: I listened to music constantly. I don't I watch very
Speaker 1: little television. I don't really enjoy movies that much, but
Speaker 1: I can always get lost in music. So I'm listening
Speaker 1: to it constantly at the gym, in my car at home,
Speaker 1: whether it's classical music or whether it's rock or I've
Speaker 1: been listening to a lot of reggae this year. That
Speaker 1: it is this opportunity to feel safe and to either,
Speaker 1: like I said, affirm my mood or change my mood.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's safer in some ways than sex.
Speaker 1: It's safer than coffee, It's safer than all of these
Speaker 1: other things. I do wish because I have people in
Speaker 1: my family who I love deeply, like I love my
Speaker 1: sister deeply and my mom, but they don't have this
Speaker 1: relationship with music that I have, and I think it's
Speaker 1: important for me to keep cultivating that. When I got sober,
Speaker 1: I really looked for artists that had the same experience
Speaker 1: as me, or that I knew they did, whether it
Speaker 1: was There's a series of Blue Reed records in the
Speaker 1: eighties that I call his Sobriety Records where he quit
Speaker 1: drinking with the Blue Mask and then legendary Hearts and
Speaker 1: New Sensations. Those are like his Sobriety trilogy. Those songs,
Speaker 1: even though I listened to him when I was younger,
Speaker 1: when I got sober, really made an impact on me.
Speaker 1: Some of the Nick Cave records, a lot of spiritual
Speaker 1: type records of Van Morrison, and then a lot of
Speaker 1: classical choral music always has moved me, and I found
Speaker 1: solace in that. It was interesting. I always listened to
Speaker 1: a lot of country music, especially when I was drinking,
Speaker 1: George Jones, Merle Haggard, so on and so forth, and
Speaker 1: for years I couldn't listen to any because it was
Speaker 1: too triggering for me. And now I can listen to
Speaker 1: those records and really really appreciate them in a different
Speaker 1: way without having to be pulled towards the bottle or
Speaker 1: pulled towards self pity, I guess, which is so common
Speaker 1: with substance use. Yeah, I think what you said there's
Speaker 1: really interesting to use it to either affirm or change
Speaker 1: my mood. It is helpful sometimes to affirm our mood,
Speaker 1: to feel what we're feeling and hear somebody else say it,
Speaker 1: and then sometimes it's really helpful to have it changed,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting. I have a similar relationship with certain
Speaker 1: types of music that used to really speak to me
Speaker 1: that don't in the same way anymore now that I
Speaker 1: live a life that's you know, I guess focused on
Speaker 1: trying to heal or become better. I lost my love
Speaker 1: of just the complete darkness with no light stuff. I
Speaker 1: kind of want, you know, not hallmark redemption, but some
Speaker 1: kind of redemption. I want, hope something. When you were talking, Eric,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about connectivity, which really is the one
Speaker 1: thread I think throughout the book, like searching to be connected,
Speaker 1: whether through substance abuse, whether through music. I think music
Speaker 1: is the core of it, even more than substance abuse
Speaker 1: or sex or friendship. Is like music is the one
Speaker 1: thing that that really binds us together. And that world
Speaker 1: that I lived and in the world I still live
Speaker 1: in of wanting this yearning to feel connected. Music offers that,
Speaker 1: and it offers it for free, and there's nothing for
Speaker 1: For me. There was nothing greater at times than being
Speaker 1: in a room full of people, and I've always been
Speaker 1: somebody that had to be up next to of the stage.
Speaker 1: What I realized later was that had to do with
Speaker 1: my own social anxiety is being up front. I'm not
Speaker 1: in a crowd of hate being in a crowd. I
Speaker 1: don't even like going to the grocery store. But when
Speaker 1: I was up front, it was like me and then
Speaker 1: the music and feeling that go through me. And it
Speaker 1: is still important. Of course, we miss that with with
Speaker 1: the way the world is right now. But being in
Speaker 1: a room full of people who are also feeling that
Speaker 1: is quite an experience that in some ways, like a
Speaker 1: crowded bar, crowded nightclub with like loud guitars, I fell
Speaker 1: at home because everybody was experiencing the same thing and
Speaker 1: it was joyous and it was wonderful, and it was unspoken.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to explain anything of what was going
Speaker 1: on because we all felt it. And even in relationships,
Speaker 1: like even in really intimate moment mens like the best
Speaker 1: most profound intimate moments for me is when I don't
Speaker 1: have to speak or explain myself. When I'm with somebody,
Speaker 1: whether it's a partner, whether it's my children, whether whatever
Speaker 1: that is, I don't have to say anything that we
Speaker 1: just get it. We just get it. We're just holding
Speaker 1: hands or making love or laughing in that moment of
Speaker 1: laughter where boom, it's it's like electricity. Yeah. I often
Speaker 1: think music for me is one of the easiest pathways
Speaker 1: into emotions, which are often something that I can be
Speaker 1: an arms distance from music and the other one is
Speaker 1: witnessing some act of genuine kindness. Those two things sort
Speaker 1: of like plug me right, sort of back into the
Speaker 1: heart um and so music has been reliable in that
Speaker 1: way for a long time. My kids love music. I
Speaker 1: really like listening to music with both of them because
Speaker 1: they both have pretty good taste. I mean something some
Speaker 1: of my son will put on the mumble rap, although
Speaker 1: he's growing out of that, seeing them get lost in
Speaker 1: it and being being able to appreciate. My daughter really
Speaker 1: likes a lot of the newer female songwriters, Phoebe Bredgers,
Speaker 1: and she really likes Taylor Swift and Lucy Dacas that
Speaker 1: listening to those and remember like driving around and playing
Speaker 1: R a M. For my mom when I was fifteen.
Speaker 1: My mom was like listening to it and talking about it.
Speaker 1: That again, like okay, what else, We're not going to
Speaker 1: talk about anything else, but we were experiencing this together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a moment I felt like never got with
Speaker 1: my parents. And my memory is so bad, but I
Speaker 1: have a clear memory of my father and I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of them, but I have one clear,
Speaker 1: very emotional moment. It was shortly after him and my
Speaker 1: mom divorced and I was in the car with him
Speaker 1: and I don't know who this song is. You know
Speaker 1: that ain't nothing going to break him us ride. You know,
Speaker 1: that one was that I want to say Billy Ocean,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it is. And my dad looked
Speaker 1: at me and he said, this is kind of my
Speaker 1: theme song. And for my dad, that was a big
Speaker 1: opening of emotion. You know, that he would need a
Speaker 1: song to encourage him, to strengthen him. That was a
Speaker 1: revelation to me that, like I did, I mean, I
Speaker 1: needed songs all the time. That is about the only
Speaker 1: glimpse I've seen of the same passion. And of course
Speaker 1: it's not a great song, but yeah, you're like, Dad,
Speaker 1: really Dad song, Well that's why we don't get along exactly.
Speaker 1: Although that song has a special place to me because
Speaker 1: of that that memory. That's funny you mentioned that because
Speaker 1: I had a stepfather. My mom married a Methodist minister
Speaker 1: and he had some pretty severe depression and some alcohol issues.
Speaker 1: He was a nice guy, but I remember one time
Speaker 1: he was driving me to the airport. I was third
Speaker 1: grade or fourth grade. He was driving me the airport.
Speaker 1: I was flying back because I was living with my dad,
Speaker 1: and uh, a doctor hook song came in and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think what spending the night together. It's a
Speaker 1: terrible song eight, but he was singing it, and uh,
Speaker 1: I remember that year I asked for that record for
Speaker 1: my birthday, which it's a terrible record, but because in
Speaker 1: that moment of this cold man, he was being real
Speaker 1: and singing along with this song. So I realized I
Speaker 1: connected with him in that moment. And still every time
Speaker 1: I hear that song, which I want to say intentionally
Speaker 1: is not very often, but but if I hear that song,
Speaker 1: I still have the record. Uh, just because it holds
Speaker 1: that space for me. Well, I think that is a
Speaker 1: great place for us to wrap up sharing memories of
Speaker 1: music and our parents. The book is wonderful listeners, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend it. It is a great book. We'll have
Speaker 1: links to it in the show notes. And Baila, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for coming on. I've been wanting to do
Speaker 1: this for a long time. Thank you, Eric and Chris.
Speaker 1: I shocked that we made it through an hour without
Speaker 1: curse words and saying something really obnoxious and cackling. We
Speaker 1: did pretty good. We did pretty good, and so I'm
Speaker 1: very proud of us. But again, uh, it means a
Speaker 1: lot that you invited me on, that you took the
Speaker 1: time in the generosity to read the book and Uh,
Speaker 1: that's like such a humbling thing when people read or
Speaker 1: listen to something you put out in the world. So
Speaker 1: thank you. I appreciate it. Indeed, it is thank you
Speaker 1: m If what you just heard was helpful to you,
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