Speaker 1: The minute that you call somebody and you explain what's
Speaker 1: going on, you hear the insanity because you can't hear
Speaker 1: it in your own head.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Benjamin Haggerty,
Speaker 2: better known by his stage name Maclamore. He's a Grammy
Speaker 2: winning American rapper, singer, and songwriter. A native of Seattle, Washington,
Speaker 2: he started his career in two thousand as an independent
Speaker 2: artist and released three works. He then rose to international
Speaker 2: success when he collaborated with producer Ryan Lewis as the
Speaker 2: duo Maclamore and Ryan Lewis. On this episode, Eric and
Speaker 2: Ben discuss his music and his journey with Sobriety.
Speaker 3: Hi, Ben slash Maclamore, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited to have you on. Your music has
Speaker 3: meant a lot to me for two specific reasons that
Speaker 3: I just wanted to share real quick. The first is
Speaker 3: that I discovered you through my boys when they were younger,
Speaker 3: and I always love it when there is music that
Speaker 3: we both really love because it's a place to connect
Speaker 3: with children. It can be hard sometimes to connect with,
Speaker 3: particularly teenage kids, so that's been a real gift to us.
Speaker 3: And then secondly, as a recovering alcoholic and addict, your
Speaker 3: music has meant a lot to me in that way also,
Speaker 3: So thank you.
Speaker 4: That's awesome. I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about the music in a minute, but let's
Speaker 3: start like we always do with the parable. In the parable,
Speaker 3: there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 3: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they
Speaker 3: think about it for a second. They look up at
Speaker 3: their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And
Speaker 3: the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 3: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 3: to you in your life and in the work.
Speaker 4: That you do. Yeah, I love that parable. It's so true.
Speaker 4: What does it mean to me? For me?
Speaker 1: There's a very clear cut polarity, a duality with the
Speaker 1: disease of addiction, so I have very stark contrast. My
Speaker 1: good wolf and bad wolf are in high definition, crystal clear.
Speaker 1: But you can't just jump from one to another. You know,
Speaker 1: like there's a slow process, and it's in the city.
Speaker 1: It's just like the disease of addiction, where you think
Speaker 1: that you're doing good and then you kind of like
Speaker 1: start to fall off and self will kind of kicks
Speaker 1: in and you're like, all of a sudden running the
Speaker 1: show a little bit more, and then the bad wolf
Speaker 1: is like right there waiting, And I think that my
Speaker 1: entire life, I've been like a pendulum between the good
Speaker 1: wolf and the bad wolf. And it's kind of a
Speaker 1: scary thing to have a really loud bad wolf. I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of people probably live with a
Speaker 1: bad wolf that doesn't go on self sabotaging, self destructive,
Speaker 1: super selfish, life threatening missions to find relief, to change
Speaker 1: the way that one person feels. And that's how my
Speaker 1: bad wolf kind of lives. Is all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I don't like who I am. I want to change it.
Speaker 1: I feel shame. I act out when that happens, and
Speaker 1: I do another action that's also shameful, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, there's these layers of shame.
Speaker 4: Bad wolf grows bigger.
Speaker 1: It's like feed me, feed me, feed me, and that fear,
Speaker 1: that self centeredness, that disease becomes louder and louder and louder,
Speaker 1: and so it swallows me and it inevitably wins. And
Speaker 1: I think that that good wolf is service. I think
Speaker 1: that it's being clean, sober for me. That good wolf
Speaker 1: is thinking about others, is, you know, before myself, getting
Speaker 1: in a routine, putting my kids before anything else, and
Speaker 1: ultimately knowing that I have a purpose here and that
Speaker 1: there's things that align me with that purpose, and there's
Speaker 1: things that take me away from it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've joked that. You know, at one point it
Speaker 3: wasn't so much I didn't even feel like I was
Speaker 3: feeding the bad wolf anymore so much as it was
Speaker 3: just eating me. You know, it just felt like it
Speaker 3: was just a monster that was devouring me. No, of
Speaker 3: course I fed it. I always feed it to get
Speaker 3: to that point. And I love that idea of sort
Speaker 3: of the slide from being in a good place and
Speaker 3: ending up in a bad place. Your song starting Over
Speaker 3: meant a lot to me because I got sober off
Speaker 3: heroin and I stayed sober eight years, and then I
Speaker 3: sort of drifted away and ended up drinking and you know,
Speaker 3: smoking pot, and my bottom wasn't the same. Everything was fine,
Speaker 3: except inside. I knew I was dying. But it was
Speaker 3: a process. I can look at it now and see
Speaker 3: it very clearly, where it just gradually happened until it
Speaker 3: was like the next logical step was to pick up
Speaker 3: a drink.
Speaker 4: I know it happens.
Speaker 5: And every kid that came up to me and said
Speaker 5: I was the music they listened to when they first
Speaker 5: got cleaned.
Speaker 6: I'm looking me a couple of days sober. I'm fighting
Speaker 6: demons back of that meeting on the east.
Speaker 5: Side, shaking sweek and hope that they don't see it,
Speaker 5: Hope that no one is looking, that no one recognizes
Speaker 5: that failure of But no that hoodie, it's posted in
Speaker 5: the back with my hands crossed, it going that they
Speaker 5: call on me.
Speaker 6: I'm passing them that they talked to me.
Speaker 4: I'm booking up that door.
Speaker 5: But before I can make it, somebody stops me and says,
Speaker 5: are you mack lamore? Maybe this isn't the place of time.
Speaker 5: I just wanted to say that. If it wasn't for
Speaker 5: the other side, I wouldn't.
Speaker 6: Have made it. I just looked down at the ground
Speaker 6: and say thank you. She tells me she.
Speaker 5: Has nine months and that she's so grateful, tears in
Speaker 5: her eyes, looking like she's gonna cry.
Speaker 4: Fuck.
Speaker 5: I barely got forty eight hours she did, like I'm
Speaker 5: some wise monk.
Speaker 6: I want to tell her I relapsed, but I can't.
Speaker 6: I just shook her head and tell her, ingrats, get.
Speaker 5: Back to my car, and I think I'm shipping yeah,
Speaker 5: because guy her other side, and if him was in
Speaker 5: my head, I'm just a flawed man. Man, I fucked
Speaker 5: up like so many others. I just never thought I would.
Speaker 5: I never thought I would then then pick up the
Speaker 5: book doing it by myself. Did it turn out that good?
Speaker 7: If I can be an example of getting sober, then
Speaker 7: I can be an example of starting over. If I
Speaker 7: can be an example of getting sober, that I can
Speaker 7: be an example of starting over and.
Speaker 4: Over and over.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm glad that you resonate with that song.
Speaker 1: And it's an interesting thing too. And you said, you know,
Speaker 1: eight years. And one of the things that I have
Speaker 1: been wrestling with in recovery is this idea of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and does it actually serve us? And it's to open
Speaker 1: in the question. I don't necessarily have an answer, but
Speaker 1: I do think that there's pros and cons because I
Speaker 1: think that people can hold on to their time, you know,
Speaker 1: like I had eight years and for one be like,
Speaker 1: oh well, I've lost this.
Speaker 4: You know, I've lost.
Speaker 1: Eight years, when in actuality you had eight years of recovery.
Speaker 1: You were getting off dope, like that's a miracle in itself.
Speaker 1: And sure you might have slid back into you know,
Speaker 1: an alcohol thinking that you can maybe do some moderate
Speaker 1: drinking or drink like a normal person and then well
Speaker 1: I need to smoke weed now because I hate myself.
Speaker 1: Let me throw some more on top of you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it was. I know the story very well, I've
Speaker 1: lived it. But this idea, I think there's so much
Speaker 1: shame built into relapsing right where it's like we've failed.
Speaker 1: You know, we had it, we had it figured out.
Speaker 1: Everyone was proud of us in our life. We had
Speaker 1: a recovery community. We were able to say, like, I
Speaker 1: have this amount of time, and then we go back
Speaker 1: out for whatever reason. And I think that a lot
Speaker 1: of people, you know, I've seen it where like you know,
Speaker 1: with double digit sobriety, where they just can't get over
Speaker 1: the fact that they had twenty two years and now
Speaker 1: they're coming in as a newcomer again. And I think
Speaker 1: that oftentimes it can kind of placate to the ego
Speaker 1: and this idea of self in this linear time when
Speaker 1: really we have today. Whenever anybody asked me like how
Speaker 1: much clean time do I have or what my birthday
Speaker 1: is or whatever I have today, that's my answer every
Speaker 1: single time. For one, I don't want to misrepresent, you know,
Speaker 1: the rooms of recovery, you know, with the anonymity piece.
Speaker 1: But because it's always my own doing, it's never the
Speaker 1: fault of any twelve step program.
Speaker 4: It's always me not working the twelve step program.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: But then of course you have the flip side of
Speaker 1: it where it's like it's really import and to celebrate
Speaker 1: these milestones. But I think that the milestone for me
Speaker 1: really comes and how am I living every day? You know,
Speaker 1: the prayer and meditation, like coming back? Have I harmed
Speaker 1: anybody today? Where am I showing up for other people?
Speaker 1: Am I of service? Am I tapped with my sponsor?
Speaker 1: And those are the things that I really find. You know,
Speaker 1: I can have two weeks and be more connected than
Speaker 1: I am with like five years.
Speaker 4: It just depends on where you're at that day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I agree one hundred percent. I get
Speaker 3: the point of long term abstinence because it's in long
Speaker 3: term abstinence that the obsession leaves. Thank God, right, because
Speaker 3: that's one of the worst parts of the whole thing.
Speaker 3: But it is this, you're either one hundred percent successful
Speaker 3: or you completely fail. And we don't measure most of
Speaker 3: life that way, right. You wouldn't get better at much
Speaker 3: of anything if that was the measuring stick. If there
Speaker 3: wasn't a way of getting better along the way. You know,
Speaker 3: I had a client I worked with for a while
Speaker 3: and she came up with a great idea and she
Speaker 3: just put a marble in a jar every day that
Speaker 3: she would sober and continuous sobriety was difficult for her,
Speaker 3: but we were able to look at that over three
Speaker 3: years and be like, that is.
Speaker 4: A huge, huge.
Speaker 3: Marble jar, right, Like there's a lot of recovery, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of sobriety. There's a lot of really positive
Speaker 3: and good action built in there that if she was
Speaker 3: measuring it only on continuous sobriety, she would think she's
Speaker 3: a failure.
Speaker 4: Yes, I love it. I love that idea. That's beautiful.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So yeah, starting over was really great and I
Speaker 3: love that line. If I can be an example of
Speaker 3: getting sober, I can be an example of starting over,
Speaker 3: And that became really powerful for me about like, hey,
Speaker 3: that's the person I can be in recovery now, the
Speaker 3: person who did have this amount of time and then
Speaker 3: lost it and found a way back. And I've never
Speaker 3: measured sobriety again in the same way, like I don't
Speaker 3: pay attention to really generally, I don't celebrate a birthday.
Speaker 3: If it wasn't Valentine's Day, I don't know if I'd
Speaker 3: know what day it was, right, like it just happened
Speaker 3: to be that day. But I've not gotten coins because
Speaker 3: I just felt like I had to abandon that for
Speaker 3: a while. Well, yeah, because otherwise it was always this.
Speaker 3: I used to be eight years sober, but now I'm
Speaker 3: three and am I a bit you know? And as
Speaker 3: you said so eloquently, the shame is the engine that
Speaker 3: drives this whole disease to a certain extent, right, we
Speaker 3: feel bad about who we are, so we use, we use,
Speaker 3: so we feel worse about who we are, and down
Speaker 3: the ride we go.
Speaker 4: That's exactly it.
Speaker 1: That makes so much sense with the eight years and
Speaker 1: then getting It's funny he said three because my head,
Speaker 1: I'm like three, and relapse has been a part of
Speaker 1: my story. So maybe if I had fourteen continuous years
Speaker 1: of being clean, I would like be like no time.
Speaker 1: Time is important, But we've lost so many people in
Speaker 1: the rooms who literally couldn't get over that one thing
Speaker 1: that they once had. And as addicts, like, we beat
Speaker 1: ourselves up enough, particularly when you get a head full
Speaker 1: of AA or NA or whatever A. It is like
Speaker 1: once you do that, the relapses are never fun. This
Speaker 1: is not some like vacation. This is like a self
Speaker 1: medicated like let me just try to, you know, maintain
Speaker 1: and not kill myself, and then eventually you feel like
Speaker 1: killing yourself. And you know, the whole thing is like
Speaker 1: you said, it's just a downward spiral of into the
Speaker 1: abyss and no one needs that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean in other side, you've got some lines
Speaker 3: in there. I think that was the song probably that
Speaker 3: put you on the map as far as recovery. And
Speaker 3: it's just this idea of looking in the mirror like
Speaker 3: I can't believe what I've become, you know, selling our
Speaker 3: dreams and our potential to escape through the buzz. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just becomes amazing how something takes over so completely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, that record took over completely. You know,
Speaker 1: there's been like a handful, maybe two hands in the
Speaker 1: twenty five years that I've been writing music where I
Speaker 1: literally feel like I'm not even controlling the pen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a conduit. I don't know it's coming from somewhere else.
Speaker 1: You know, the universe is at work and I'm literally
Speaker 1: just like a shell to just like transcribe.
Speaker 5: It's not dope to be twenty five and move back
Speaker 5: to your parents the basement. I've seen my people's dreams
Speaker 5: dit ive, seen what they can beat D nine and
Speaker 5: we's got a drug that's d Nile Groundhog daylight free peat.
Speaker 5: Each time I seen oxy Cottie take three lives, I
Speaker 5: grew up with them.
Speaker 6: We used to chief dimes, and I seen.
Speaker 5: Cocaine bring out the demons inside. See it in their
Speaker 5: line friendship. Seas no peace in the mind, stealing to
Speaker 5: take anything to fix the pieces inside, broken, hopeless, headed, nowhere,
Speaker 5: only motivation for what the dealer supplying that rush, that shrug,
Speaker 5: that dope, those pills, that crumb, that roach think and
Speaker 5: I will ever do that, not that drug.
Speaker 4: Grobbing up Nobody ever does until.
Speaker 8: You're stuck looking in the mirror like I can't believe
Speaker 8: what I become for I was gonna be someone, and
Speaker 8: grobing up everyone always does. We sell our dreams and
Speaker 8: our potential to escape through that buzz.
Speaker 6: Just keep me up, Keep me up, Hollywood, here we come.
Speaker 9: Oh girl, this bod is sinking. There's no sea lift me.
Speaker 9: And how the sky gets heavy when you are underneath said,
Speaker 9: I want to serve from you, and God.
Speaker 6: He came down then.
Speaker 9: And said.
Speaker 4: Nothing for me.
Speaker 1: And it was really the first time that I had
Speaker 1: had any sort of recovery. You know, I'd put together
Speaker 1: some months here and there, I'd be absent in I'd
Speaker 1: be like, all right, I'm going to cut this out,
Speaker 1: and I'd done that for you know, a decade. It
Speaker 1: didn't work, but it was the first time i'd gotten
Speaker 1: into the rehab and I started working with Ryan and
Speaker 1: I remember being in his basement and just putting on
Speaker 1: that red hot chili Pepper's baseline loop. We didn't even
Speaker 1: have drums yet, and just literally like just loop that up,
Speaker 1: loop that part up, and I just and probably I
Speaker 1: want to say twenty minutes. I don't think it was
Speaker 1: longer wrote that entire record. It was that turning point
Speaker 1: where I was like, you know, at this point, no
Speaker 1: one had really been honest about being in recovery or
Speaker 1: being sober. Like this was fourteen years ago or fifteen,
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 1: I had to kind of come to that moment of like, well,
Speaker 1: now I'm doing this. I've always been really honest in
Speaker 1: my music, and this is before I had much of
Speaker 1: a fan base at all. I was an underground rapper,
Speaker 1: but it was that moment of like, I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: the truth, and I get that if it's not popular,
Speaker 1: like you know, puts me in a box or like,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it is for my like you know,
Speaker 1: two thousand fans I have out there, Like it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell the truth. And what I immediately saw
Speaker 1: once that record came out was people coming to the
Speaker 1: shows just for that song. And it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: ten people, fifteen people, twenty people, but there was like
Speaker 1: groups of people in Recovery that were literally like they
Speaker 1: might have liked my other music too, but they had
Speaker 1: heard other Side and that was the reason why they
Speaker 1: came and they identified with it, and it was like
Speaker 1: that kind of glimpse into Yo, if I'm honest, like
Speaker 1: truly honest about who I am, about my shortcomings, about
Speaker 1: my character defects, if I can tell that on a
Speaker 1: record just as much as I can like you know,
Speaker 1: pop my collar, I can flex, or I can showcase
Speaker 1: this skill set or whatever. If I can really be
Speaker 1: honest and authentic, there are people out there that will
Speaker 1: resonate with it, and you know, other Side was the
Speaker 1: beginning of that for me, and still today, you know,
Speaker 1: probably the most important record that I've ever written along
Speaker 1: with you know, maybe same love, but it's up there.
Speaker 3: Every time I hear the chorus of that song, it
Speaker 3: gives me chills still today, I mean, and I've listened
Speaker 3: to it countless times. It's just haunting and beautiful, and
Speaker 3: there's so much emotion in it. I can see how
Speaker 3: it might have felt like that flowed through you, because
Speaker 3: it does feel so pure in that way, like it
Speaker 3: has that mystery to it that great art has, where
Speaker 3: you're like, well, I don't quite know where that came from.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So one of the things I've heard you talk about
Speaker 3: and I just wanted to go into a little bit.
Speaker 3: It's inherent in a lot of the music, but it's
Speaker 3: this idea of how torn apart it feels to be
Speaker 3: wanting to use and knowing you shouldn't use, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I often think that I stay sober partially
Speaker 3: because I never ever want to feel that ripped apart inside, right,
Speaker 3: you know, because you've got this one voice that's screaming use,
Speaker 3: and you've got another voice that's screaming like, for God's sake,
Speaker 3: don't your children, your family, your everything.
Speaker 4: Right. It is an.
Speaker 3: Internal civil war that feels worse than maybe anything I
Speaker 3: know of.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is. It's horrible. You know.
Speaker 1: Again, it's so insidious because it doesn't always come to
Speaker 1: me like that.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: One of those versions is when you're like, I'm in
Speaker 1: so much pain. I'm clean, I'm sober, but I'm in
Speaker 1: so much pain. I don't know how to handle this
Speaker 1: that I just want to escape. And I think that
Speaker 1: that is probably the most challenging part of this whole thing,
Speaker 1: because if you're in that much pain and you want
Speaker 1: to change the way that you feel, chances are like
Speaker 1: you've been in some self will you know, Because nowadays,
Speaker 1: when I'm tapped in spiritually, and I'm talking about when
Speaker 1: I'm working a program, when I'm doing meditation, when I'm
Speaker 1: doing yoga, when I'm of service, when i'm living, you know,
Speaker 1: with integrity, when I'm being rigorously honest, I've gone through
Speaker 1: some shit and not wanting to get high, I really have.
Speaker 4: Like some shit.
Speaker 1: It's or for me, it's when life is just kind
Speaker 1: of like maybe I'm doing half those things, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: doing a quarter of those things. Maybe I'm doing like
Speaker 1: an eighth of whatever I just mentioned that keeps me healthy.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, I'm in an environment or
Speaker 1: I'm home from tour and I'm on the couch and
Speaker 1: I don't really want to go to a meeting, and
Speaker 1: that goes to a week of not going to meeting
Speaker 1: and whatever, and all of a sudden, I'm like getting
Speaker 1: high sounds fun that would make this better. And there's
Speaker 1: no insurance, there's no safety net. I haven't been plugging
Speaker 1: into that outlet, that conduit of my higher power, So
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I'm just on self will and
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking I'm not going back to that last
Speaker 1: relapse where I was in so much pain, where I
Speaker 1: was at that rock bottom where I didn't know if
Speaker 1: my wife was gonna leave or if my career was
Speaker 1: going to be it, and I'm crying and I felt
Speaker 1: that fucking pain.
Speaker 4: I'm not even going back there. I'm not saying that take.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking about, man, it could be fun to
Speaker 1: change the way that I feel right now. And that's
Speaker 1: the dangerous spot totally. They're both really dangerous. One is
Speaker 1: because you're like hanging on in your in pain. The
Speaker 1: other one is like the disease has already been working.
Speaker 1: It has been at work. It's been wearing you down
Speaker 1: for days, weeks, months, who knows how long years, And
Speaker 1: the disease is like, yes, we have made changing that
Speaker 1: this person feels appealing in their head, and now they're
Speaker 1: spinning and now they're like, well I could just do that.
Speaker 1: That wasn't my drugged choice. It's Saturday. By Monday, I'll stop.
Speaker 1: I have to stop Monday. All the things that we
Speaker 1: tell ourselves, or at least I tell myself, yeah, when
Speaker 1: that disease is active, that.
Speaker 3: Feeling torn apart is almost always after I have started
Speaker 3: using where the obsession is now here, and now I
Speaker 3: have the clarity of like, holy shit, what have I done? Right,
Speaker 3: Because you're right, it sneaks up on you in the
Speaker 3: first case, because you're like, well, maybe it's not that
Speaker 3: bad of an idea, you know. It's kind of after that,
Speaker 3: because now all of a sudden, I have the obsession
Speaker 3: and I have the clarity of all the pain that
Speaker 3: it's causing me and the people around me. And that
Speaker 3: to me is that kind of part where I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: a craving is one thing or an occasional thought about it.
Speaker 3: I'm in pain and I want to get high. That's
Speaker 3: a different thing, but it's that.
Speaker 4: Obsession once you've already done it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and you know this is ruining in everything,
Speaker 3: and yet I want to do it more than anything
Speaker 3: in the world. I mean, there's a line and a
Speaker 3: song on the new record about you know, you're looking
Speaker 3: into your daughter's eyes and at the same moment you're
Speaker 3: obsessing about a pill that's somewhere in the house. I mean,
Speaker 3: like that does not feel good.
Speaker 1: No, it's horrible, and you're so right because then then
Speaker 1: you're in it. You know, the compulsion is there, the
Speaker 1: mental obsession is there.
Speaker 4: You know, all bets are off. You know.
Speaker 1: For me, I'm existing to get high. I can't get caught,
Speaker 1: so I have to be sneaky. I have to lie
Speaker 1: and I need more. Yeah, and I'm so depressed and
Speaker 1: I don't really want to be here and everyone kind
Speaker 1: of knows, but I'm good at hiding it. But like
Speaker 1: you know, all of a sudden, people are just kind
Speaker 1: of like, what's up with him? You know, And the
Speaker 1: worst part is just what it's doing. It's like toxic inside.
Speaker 1: There's no good anymore, there's no spirituality, and I think
Speaker 1: that the trick is at that point, not the trick,
Speaker 1: but like the hardest part in that place is how
Speaker 1: do you find the willingness to start over again? Yep,
Speaker 1: because the diseases, Like, dude, do not tell your sponsor,
Speaker 1: do not tell your wife, do not tell anybody, Like
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to let people down. You're
Speaker 1: afraid of getting kicked out of the tribe. You don't
Speaker 1: want to go back to your home group and be like, guys,
Speaker 1: I did it again, Like they've already heard the story,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it is. When really and I've gotten
Speaker 1: to this point, I'm like, I have you know, if
Speaker 1: I'm lucky, forty more years on this earth, that is
Speaker 1: not a lot of time, not a lot of time.
Speaker 1: And I do not want to hold on to some
Speaker 1: false pride about holding on to this thing that I've
Speaker 1: done and be a secret.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like the cliche we're as sick as our secrets.
Speaker 1: It's like, I need to get fucking honest with the people.
Speaker 1: I need to get honest to. That doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: that I need to go on you know, Instagram and
Speaker 1: announce what happened, but it does mean that I need
Speaker 1: to get honest with the core people in my life
Speaker 1: because those are the people that can help save my life.
Speaker 1: And that part, it's the surrender, right, that is such
Speaker 1: an important word, willingness and surrender. Am I willing to
Speaker 1: just surrender? Because what this is doing is not working.
Speaker 1: It's not working, and I fucking hate myself? How can
Speaker 1: I get out of this place?
Speaker 3: Such a painful place to be? You know, relapse has
Speaker 3: been a part of your story, what do you think
Speaker 3: you've learned? Like, let's just take the most recent time,
Speaker 3: and we don't need to go into dates and when
Speaker 3: all that, it's not even important, right, But what do
Speaker 3: you think about the most recent time if you learn
Speaker 3: something that you feel like is helpful to carry forth
Speaker 3: in your variety or do you feel like the lessons
Speaker 3: you already know them and you're not living them. I'm
Speaker 3: kind of curious, like how do you take something positive
Speaker 3: out of it?
Speaker 1: You know, it's such a slippery slope of like what
Speaker 1: I say here, because you know you never want to
Speaker 1: like have someone listening that's like on the verge and
Speaker 1: be like, well, he said that he learned something from his.
Speaker 4: Relapse, So like I felt like I needed to go
Speaker 4: learn something.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, Like, the thing that I've learned is that,
Speaker 1: like I was in a lot of pain the last relapse,
Speaker 1: and I never want to go back there. So if
Speaker 1: you have any clean time and you're thinking about using
Speaker 1: I'll just preface it with like, hold on to that shit,
Speaker 1: call your sponsor, go to a fucking meeting, and like
Speaker 1: tap in with the people that you need to tap
Speaker 1: into and share your truth and tell people, Like the
Speaker 1: minute that you feel like you're even entertaining it, call
Speaker 1: someone and snitch on that disease. That is the thing,
Speaker 1: and the disease is going to tell you don't call.
Speaker 1: Don't call anybody, hold on to it, keep that reservation tucked.
Speaker 4: But that is what I have.
Speaker 1: Learned time and time again, because the minute that you
Speaker 1: call somebody and you explain what's going on, you hear
Speaker 1: the insanity. Because you can't hear it in your own head,
Speaker 1: it's a lot easier for the disease to like manipulate
Speaker 1: because you are the disease.
Speaker 4: It's up here.
Speaker 1: I am this, so I can maneuver my way around
Speaker 1: these thoughts and this knowledge that I've acquired throughout the
Speaker 1: last fifteen years of experience in recovery and relapse. But
Speaker 1: when you feel that urge in any capacity, pick up
Speaker 1: the phone. Listen to your own voice. You're going to
Speaker 1: hear it. Your sponsor doesn't even mean to say anything,
Speaker 1: or somebody else in recovery doesn't even to respond, you'll
Speaker 1: be three minutes in and be like, Yep, this is
Speaker 1: a horrible idea. This is a horrible idea. And I
Speaker 1: can almost guarantee you you're going to feel better with
Speaker 1: a five minute conversation or less. Doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: in therapy or whatever. That's great too, but really, you
Speaker 1: tell what's going on in five minutes and wanting to
Speaker 1: get loaded is going to dissipate. Whether it's to zero
Speaker 1: or it's a twenty percent or whatever, it's going to
Speaker 1: go way down. So that is what I have learned
Speaker 1: to snitch on the disease. And then for me also
Speaker 1: it's like keeping up my practice. And this is a
Speaker 1: bit unique to me, but like I live on the
Speaker 1: road at the end of the year, I'll be out
Speaker 1: there for like you know, seven eight months out of
Speaker 1: the year, in different time zone, in different countries and
Speaker 1: all that. And one thing that I have learned is
Speaker 1: that I need to prioritize on the road. With the schedule.
Speaker 1: I can't just be like I'll do step work like
Speaker 1: sometime this week. Like, No, you're writing every day for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, and you're doing yoga every day for twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: you're meditating for twenty minutes. I'm trying to do this
Speaker 1: twenty twenty twenty every day on top of whatever recovery
Speaker 1: I'm doing. And I'm like, if I was doing twenty
Speaker 1: twenty twenty every day, meditation, yoga, and step work, I
Speaker 1: can almost guarantee you I'm not going to relapse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's no guarantees, but like the odds of
Speaker 1: me relapsing go down exponentially versus me just being like
Speaker 1: I'm on tour, you know, I'm clean.
Speaker 4: No, that doesn't work for me. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I traveled for work when I came back again
Speaker 3: a lot, and it was hard. I mean, it does
Speaker 3: take a certain extra commitment and clarity to doing that
Speaker 3: when your schedule is so kind of random, And that's
Speaker 3: true of any habit, any behavior, anything. When there's no
Speaker 3: sort of steady context, it's harder to do. It just
Speaker 3: takes more effort, you know, And that idea about telling
Speaker 3: on the disease. I mean, I think the thing that
Speaker 3: I found is like the sooner the better, right, because
Speaker 3: there comes a point you detail it in your song
Speaker 3: really well. Like I know I should call my sponsor,
Speaker 3: but I don't want to. You know, the earlier we
Speaker 3: intervene has been my lesson with any emotional thing that's
Speaker 3: going on, the sooner I see what's going on and
Speaker 3: get help and share it, the better chance I have
Speaker 3: if it gets to a certain point. It's like it
Speaker 3: just feels like a title wave completely the last thing,
Speaker 3: and I know we're tight on time here. I just
Speaker 3: wanted to talk briefly about the song Teeters, which is
Speaker 3: a song. It sounds like a love song, but it's
Speaker 3: a love song to your drug. But near the end
Speaker 3: you say what I thought was love was really just
Speaker 3: my disease. I always thought the problem was you, and
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe when I learned that the whole time,
Speaker 3: my issue is me.
Speaker 5: Bit you kill my uncle, your fucking shouble socially acceptable
Speaker 5: and no so subtle. You ruined my life and I
Speaker 5: fucking loved you, promised relief and left me with the
Speaker 5: rusty shovel and some bustard rubble pieces of my.
Speaker 6: Life that she destroyed.
Speaker 8: Was once freedom and joy was now depression being unemployed,
Speaker 8: and I knew I.
Speaker 5: Had to change it and face it and checked in
Speaker 5: the rehabbing twenty eight days later.
Speaker 4: I remembered who I really was. I remember where I'm
Speaker 4: really from.
Speaker 5: I remember the beauty of the present moment that you
Speaker 5: only get when you connect to the creator, and the
Speaker 5: breath inside the chest that fully fills your lungs. I
Speaker 5: found the people with the same allergy, and what I
Speaker 5: thought was love was really just my disease. I always
Speaker 5: thought the problem was you and couldn't believe when I
Speaker 5: learned that the whole time.
Speaker 6: My issue was me. I'll ride with you, live for you,
Speaker 6: my shot and true love I never knew.
Speaker 3: So we talk about the disease of alcoholism or addiction
Speaker 3: or all that, but you're also pointing to there's very
Speaker 3: much something inside of us that is kind of at
Speaker 3: the heart of that. What does that mean to you?
Speaker 3: You know, when you realize the problem is you, that.
Speaker 1: I'm responsible for my disease. You know, it's not my fault,
Speaker 1: it's not a moral or ethical shortcoming.
Speaker 4: It's just that now that I had.
Speaker 1: The tools I need to take my medicine, and my
Speaker 1: medicine comes in the form of recovery. And if I don't,
Speaker 1: then eventually that other wolf is fed and it's on
Speaker 1: my shoulders. In a beautiful way, I don't look at
Speaker 1: it as like, oh, man, no, I gotta do you
Speaker 1: know now I get to be in recovery today. I
Speaker 1: love that I have a program that gets me closer
Speaker 1: connected to my higher power, to my God. I love
Speaker 1: that I have a program that reminds me, like, YO,
Speaker 1: be of service, you know, help other people. That's the
Speaker 1: quickest way to get out of self. This is a
Speaker 1: self center disease. Yeah, go help somebody else. I'm feeling
Speaker 1: like I'm in my head. Things aren't working out the
Speaker 1: way that I wanted to. I'm like, am I in
Speaker 1: self will? Or am I accepting right now that I'm
Speaker 1: exactly where I'm supposed to be. I have all these
Speaker 1: tools to bring me back here to the present moment
Speaker 1: and to realize that this life is beautiful. Being in
Speaker 1: recovery is beautiful. The disease of addiction as ugly and
Speaker 1: baffling and conniving as it is, I'm so grateful that
Speaker 1: I have it because it's given me a means in
Speaker 1: which I get.
Speaker 4: To connect to something that is so much bigger than me.
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of people go through life
Speaker 1: just like getting by and everything's okay. And for me,
Speaker 1: I'm an extreme person. You know, it's big, it's grandiose,
Speaker 1: or it's like the depths of Hell. But those depths
Speaker 1: of Hell have taught me so much that when I
Speaker 1: come back to the breath, that when I can be
Speaker 1: here truly connected, where I can control the thoughts that
Speaker 1: I'm having and look at how I'm spinning narratives or
Speaker 1: becoming a victim or wanting to escape for you know,
Speaker 1: all these things.
Speaker 4: I have a means in which to.
Speaker 1: Do that through the twelve step program that I work,
Speaker 1: and what a beautiful life it is. It's introduced me
Speaker 1: to so many amazing people. You know, I'm not someone
Speaker 1: that likes to do interviews like at all. I don't
Speaker 1: really like it. I could talk to you all day.
Speaker 1: It's easy. It's like, I love this shit. My manager
Speaker 1: was like, it's about recovery, so it might be heavy.
Speaker 1: I'm like, great, great, I don't want to talk about
Speaker 1: myself and music and you know, talk about what my
Speaker 1: kids did, and small talk with some random stranger on
Speaker 1: Zoom or whatever we're on, I'm like, no, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about recovery because this shit saved my life.
Speaker 1: And what a gift it has been to be able
Speaker 1: to share with others, you know, relatively protecting my anonymity.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know I step all over the traditions
Speaker 1: and whatnot, but I care about saving people's lives, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not myself, but telling them how I save my own.
Speaker 1: That's the greatest gift is to be like man, I
Speaker 1: was in a seemingly hopeless state of denial and I
Speaker 1: wanted to die and kill myself and I couldn't.
Speaker 4: Get out of it. And this is how I did it.
Speaker 1: And everyone's recovery is different, but at the core, at
Speaker 1: the very piece, whether it's a triangle or a diamond,
Speaker 1: you know, we have these like founding, rooted places that
Speaker 1: we can always come back to and live clean, just
Speaker 1: for today, one day at a time, and I love it.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that is a beautiful place to wrap up.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I also have enjoyed this and
Speaker 3: could do it all day, but thank you for your music,
Speaker 3: thank you for being so honest in your music, in
Speaker 3: your life. I do think it helps a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Like you said, you're an example of starting over and
Speaker 3: that's really important.
Speaker 4: We need that.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it and thank you for the parable and
Speaker 1: the platform that you have.
Speaker 4: And talking about this.
Speaker 1: I think that you know, sometimes all you need is
Speaker 1: just that one little reminder can be the most simple thing.
Speaker 1: You can go to a meeting and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: why am I here, and then one person says one
Speaker 1: sentence that could completely change the course of your entire existence.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you just have to stick around for it.
Speaker 3: Yep, keep coming back. Well, if you ever want to
Speaker 3: expand upon this, I would be happy to have you anytime.
Speaker 4: I appreciate it. Brother, thank you so much for having you.
Speaker 10: Ye take care you too.
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