Inside Your Kid's Mind: Hidden Pain Behind Substance Use, with Brad McLeod

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Brad was 17, sitting in a psych ward for the second time, when a stranger told him about a program in Tennessee. He said no. He ran from a rest stop on the highway, and the police caught him a few hours later. That moment tells you everything about where he was: a kid who had never learned to stay, never learned to feel, and hadn’t yet found anything worth staying for.

What followed was more than a decade of trying to outrun himself. Percocet. Heroin. A methadone clinic he drove to every morning with no car and no money. A felony conviction at 18. A deportation to Canada with a lifetime ban from the US. Brad doesn’t tell his story like a cautionary tale. He tells it like someone who finally understands what his brain was looking for, and what it took to stop running long enough to build something worth keeping.

Today he hosts Sober Motivation, a top 0.5% podcast globally with more than five million downloads, and runs an online community for people in recovery. He started it from his basement not because he had the answers, but because he knew what it felt like to be alone in this.

This conversation is for every parent who has watched their child go through treatment and wondered if anything is actually landing. Brad says something I’ve believed for years but have rarely heard said plainly: sobriety is the starting line, not the finish line. What he built after that line, and why it held, is what this episode is really about.

If you’ve done everything right and it still isn’t working, this one is for you.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• How Brad went from two psych ward stays and a felony to host of a top recovery podcast
• Why sobriety was never his problem, and what the real work looked like
• The question he asks every person about the night before they get sober
• What getting back on ADHD medication at 38 finally showed him about himself
• What it means to build a life you have something to lose in

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Sober Motivation Podcast
• Sober Motivation Community
• Brandon Novak Memoir, Dreamseller

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
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Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

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Transcript

Brad McLeod

[00:00:00] Hey Brad. Welcome to Hope Stream. Excited to have you here. Two podcasters just chatting. Yeah, a hundred percent. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, we, ran into each other. I think we were both working or supporting Mark Rossman on his film, which I think they just wrapped up filming on keep coming back, which is really cool. As the parent of somebody who struggled that's gonna be really cool and you know, you've got a top 0.5% podcast globally. Right? Like, yeah, I think so. Yeah. I was looking at I was peeping your stats, which is amazing. You have over 5 million downloads of your podcast. It's huge. Can you even believe that? Like you just started it in 2022. 21, 22. Yeah. No, I can't believe it. I went to record my first episode, thought I had things figured out, couldn't even record the episode. Started it from my basement of my last place, just 

[00:01:00] sort of as something to try out. People are gravitated to it. I still don't have all the answers to why or how, but it's been a really cool journey, especially getting to meet so many people along the way. Yeah. Well, and you also have a community, right? That folks can be part of if they want to get some support while they're working towards sobriety. Yeah. We have an online virtual community actually, it's kind of unofficial official, but we've just launched an app too. Sober Motivation app, to invite people to the community. One of the things I just see so often is getting sober, not drinking. Sobering up, is really the starting line. But what do we do from right? What do we do from there, and doing it all alone, of course it's possible, but it's such an uphill battle, people burnout and it's really tough. So bringing people together is a huge passion of mine to let people know they're not alone. We all share similar stories. If one way didn't work, it doesn't mean that there's not something else that might work for you. We have just yeah, very candid conversations about different topics and. You know, ways in our 

[00:02:00] life, but not so much about, you know, quitting drinking or getting sober. It's more about what comes next. How do we deal with life on life's terms? Not so much that initial decision or you know maybe an intervention of some sort. Something happens there. But what does the rest of the journey look like and how do we carry this on long term? Yeah, if only it was that easy, right? That just getting the substance out of the body was the answer. Yeah, that's, that's part of the answer, but not the whole answer. So, yeah. That's really interesting. Well, I would love to just first get some background on your story. I always love hearing these stories and I know they're really inspirational for parents. So if you were to hop in a time machine and go back. And tell us your story, where would you start and what would that sound like? Yeah, hop in the time machine. Here we go. I would say things in my life, I mean, even from the beginning, my mom had twins at 16, so that was kind of always a part that stood out to me at the time when you're younger, you don't really notice that 

[00:03:00] that's a challenging thing to do. I mean, I have three kids now and I'm 38 and I'm still figuring things out. So twins had 16. My mom was finishing up when we grew up in a very Catholic background. We grew up in Canada, going to Catholic school, Catholic church. So that was obviously a big challenge for her. With that experience, so we grew up, we lived with my grandparents. They looked after us for the most part, my mom would finish up high school, go to college to be a nurse and at the time in the US they were hiring a lot of nurses. So I remember she would drive down for a weekend, go here, go there, apply for jobs, do job interviews. And then we ended up moving when I was about six years old to Waco, Texas, my brother and my mom and I, so just the three of us but we had a lot of, like we had a lot of support. We had a big family. My grandparents helped us out. So this was a big shift in life that I really only figured out. It's huge. Yeah. Really only figured this out, you know, so much later down the road. But I remember a lot of anxiety creeping into my life, and now this is all hindsight, at the 

[00:04:00] time I didn't have any idea what was kind of going on, but sort of questioning, you know, sense of belonging. Where do I fit into the world? What, my role? Even though the culture from Canada, you know, down to Waco, Texas, I mean, there's still McDonald's on every corner and Burger King and stuff, but it was a different, it was a different, type of culture environment in some aspects too. So trying to fit in being the new guy. That was difficult trying to make friends and I had A DHD early on too, which has been interesting because I've been digging back into that a little bit too on this, my sober quest, maybe more recently than, for many years. But I was always kind of on the search, right? I struggled a lot with impulse control. Kind of reflect back, like, why did you say that? Why did you do that? Like not really thinking things through, not thinking of the bigger picture, how this could play out. So that showed up. I was getting suspended from school in grade 6, 7, 8, and eight. I would do in school suspension. Which is so interesting. You look back on it like, what a weird exp experience, what a 

[00:05:00] weird experience, all of that was but to kind of sum up that, I think I was just in a, trying to figure out who I was. I never knew who I was. I never felt comfortable from the outside looking in, you probably wouldn't notice that but the behavior started this kind of spiral out of control. My mom met my stepdad and, you know, they implemented so many interventions. I remember a stretch of my life learning centers, therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, I mean, every intervention under the sun, I felt like I was always, mm-hmm. You know, seeing somebody, right, let's figure out the heck is going on. Let's do this different medication. Maybe it's Ritalin, maybe it's Adderall, maybe it's Zoloft, maybe it's Wellbutrin, maybe it's Prozac and everybody was trying to help. There's no, nobody was like, not trying to help. I think where I struggled the most was communicating what was actually going on with me. I had no idea. I just absolutely had no idea of how to articulate how things were going. I started to have suicidal thoughts. I ended up in a psych ward hospital when I was 16 

[00:06:00] and when I was 17, and the interesting part is I never even really did drugs or alcohol at this point. I never was really into it. I mean, I tried it, but I kind of coined up to it. I was just never really a cool kid. Like nobody, when I go back to it is as tough as it is to hear, people wouldn't have probably trusted me to sort of get into the, you know, other stuff. Right. So I wasn't invited to stuff. I wasn't hanging out with people. I had a few friends, but I jumped from like the skater guy trying to be, to like, try out for sports, but was always, you know, cut from the team. It was kinda like always showing up late to dinner. You know, that's what it seemed like. You only realize this though when you look back, right? Of like, wow there was a lot that went into this and I kind of say in my story too, like, I was destined to find an escape from all of this. I just hadn't found it yet. So I went to the psych ward the second time. My parents, we're like, you gotta go to treatment and at this time it was kind of coined up, 

[00:07:00] you know, behavioral treatment. You gotta kind of get these behaviors in check. Right and then my parents were just struggling so much with everything. I mean, the grades were down the drain. I didn't really do well in school ever. That destroyed my self-esteem too, right? I mean, you gotta be put in this box and I struggled with reading and writing and everything that you're tested on. For a guy like me, like I had absolutely no interest. I never read a book. I never studied for a test. Final exams, I would just mark off random answers, go play basketball with my buddies. Like, that's all that I cared about but the world on the other hand, valued, you know, education. If you get this wrong, you're doomed for eternity. Like you'll never figure it out, this is your way forward to the American dream and then I was just like, well, it's not for me. So I think more subconsciously than sort of consciously, it was just like, you're screwed either way, man. So may as well make a name for yourself and have some fun. So I went to the psych ward, UNC, chapel Hill for the 

[00:08:00] second time. My parents had these, this guy come in and it's actually interesting because I was digging through these files the other day and they had like their, what do you call 'em? Intervention letters. You know, I hope that you choose, you know this, right? This path, right? So this guy came in to an interview. Hey, it's a three month program. It's like an hour from your house, you'll be able to finish graduate high school. Do all that cool stuff and I just was like, you gotta be kidding me. There's no way. I'm going to any pro, like I didn't see a problem as wild as it is. I like, what are you talking about? I was like, a program for what? And I had already been arrested at this time too. When I was 16, I got arrested buddies and I were garage hopping. You know, someone leave their garage open, we'd help our ourself. This stuff, terrible, terrible thing to do and so that was, I was on probation for that. So there was just madness all the way around. So then my parents like had to kind of ace up their sleeve of a program that was, you didn't have to say you wanted to go to. So they hired this 

[00:09:00] security. You know, crew to come and pick me up at the hospital and brought me to this pro. I had no idea, I didn't even know this type of stuff existed right and they brought me to this program outside of Knoxville, Tennessee. On the way there, I ran away from 'em. I stopped at a rest stop and I said, I gotta use the bathroom and I ran and the cops and every couple hours on the run and I kind of draw that into, that's the only way I knew how to deal with stuff. Like it was just run, whether it was like that or whether it was just internally, I didn't know how to work through stuff or process things or never learned those skills on how to cope with things, life's ups and downs and what kind of goes on around. He said I would be a one year program. I would go to this place, peninsula Village. It's not around anymore. Shane is something else. But I go there. It was a wilderness program. They kept you locked down, you know, in this basement for about three months. I was hardheaded, so I didn't do any, I wasn't making any progress. I was still so far in the denial phase of everybody's got 

[00:10:00] this completely wrong. Like, what happened with everybody? What is going on? And then after that, you move out into the wilderness program, live in a cabin, kind of in the woods, and there's a bunch of different clans. They called them and I was part of the bat clan and ended up doing really well there. Moved up the ranks to sort of achieve a level that only a handful of people actually do got out and then sort of to keep it short and sweet, got introduced to drugs and alcohol. Um can I ask, did you like being outdoors? Like was the outdoor part of it? Better than, like, if you were to have stayed in school, was that kind of a step up or how did you feel about being in the wilderness part of it? Yeah, I mean, I loved that part of it. That was a really cool part to be in that and have a purpose. Like, even though I was in, yeah, I was in treatment and everything. You have a purpose. You have structure. Like I do really well. Like I do well in jail. I do well in treatment, I do well in hospitals, like I do well in that. Right? It's when it's, and I'm kind of left up to my own 

[00:11:00] devices, you know at that time Anyway, it's like, oh, that's where the trouble. Where the trouble comes in. So yeah, when there's no borders, right. To sort of contain what's going on. Yeah and I just hadn't developed those skills yet. I mean, in my life today, it's a lot more of freedom, you know, of things. But I have the skills now to say, okay, here's the guidelines, like here where you live in between here, right? Based on values and what I believe is important. But then I didn't, I wasn't really connecting with it, even though I was, you know, raised well. My parents were incredible. They were great. Like they did everything they could. My grandfather, before he passed away, he called me the million dollar man. Just with all the money. That it costs to, you know, try to figure this out and then when I got in, when I got into, you know, drinking and everything, I had improved my life through the treatment program and felt a lot better about myself, but I was able to sort of get the same results. 

[00:12:00] $5 pill. So I was like, wow, you know, I can do all that work or I can just take this and forget about all the insecurities and everything. I'm coming, I'm shorting in life. I was like, wow, this is not a bad little trade off and it, right. Like, how did I not find this sooner? Yeah. Where have you been at? And drinking too. Just picked up steam. I got my own apartment. When I got outta the treatment program, I was doing well. I was enrolled in college. I got my own place. I started dating this really nice girl, that I'd known, from before, just not into doing madness like I was and yeah, I got my own place. I got a car. I was like, wow. I know life is good but the problem is when life is good, you can convince yourself that shit, I don't need to go to my psychiatrist anymore. I don't need to go to therapy. I don't need to go to Celebrate Recovery. I don't need to go to the alumni meetings. I don't need to take my medication and slowly but surely, I just took everything off the board and yeah, that was the slippery slope. It didn't all happen in one day or one moment. It was 

[00:13:00] just right. I knew best. Yeah and I'm sure as you got outta the program and you get on your feet, you get your apartment in college and the girlfriend, your parents are probably like, yes, it worked. He's doing great. Like this. You know, like, we're kind of through the rough patch is that. That would be my, at least, I don't wanna put thoughts in your parents' heads, but that's what I would've been thinking. Like finally things are on track. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there probably was, I can't really recall exactly, but I'm sure that that was, I mean to say, okay, things have turned around, but I do remember when I started canceling things because I would've, probably been under my mom's insurance. Right. She would've probably noticed that why is this not happening anymore? Why is that not happening anymore? And I think they tried to stay in their own lane. Like they weren't hasling me about stuff. I just don't think anybody knew where the road was going either, you know? Wouldn't that be great? Yeah. If we just knew where 

[00:14:00] things were going and we could take a left or a right here and avoid that. But I don't think they knew, and I'm sure as heck didn't know. Yeah. So you find a great solution to halt these problems, was it drugs and alcohol or did you have a Yeah. particular substance. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the first drug I ever did was cocaine, which is like, oddly enough, well, I mean, I had a drink of a little drink of vodka from my parents' stash or whatever when I was a lot younger but I was just like, that's disgusting but that was really the first one where I kind of connected the dots of like mm-hmm this equals alleviation from that, not that clearly at the time, but I was like, okay, that the world doesn't feel so heavy anymore and when all of this, to kind of go back to the A DHD thing, when all of this spiraled out of control. It was out of control for a long time, but when it really took a nosedive as I was taking Adderall in high school and I had missed 

[00:15:00] a dose one day when I was like 16, and it felt like I was living in a whole nother world. And from that point on, I just lied about taking it and I think sort of, if there were bumpers in my life in those decisions, they were gone. It was gone. So that's super interesting. I wanna ask you a couple questions about that. So you were diagnosed A DHD, how, do you remember how old you were when you got that diagnosis? No, I mean, probably pretty young. Seven, eight. Elementary school. Yeah. Yeah and so then you were on medication because this is something that is super confusing for parents. They feel like, well, wait, I don't wanna put my kid on a drug when they're in elementary school, or fourth grade, fifth grade, or whatever it is. And the medical perspective is, it is actually

[00:16:00] to find the right medication obviously the right dose and the right formulation can actually prevent the likelihood or lower, I guess, the risk of substance use later on. So when you just said that, that you missed a dose, so you had been taking it, you miss it, what was the difference? Like, what did you feel when you didn't take it? Yeah, I mean one of the kind of side effects of it is you, it kind of made me a bit shy, so not really encouraging to meet, connect with other people, kind of maybe in my own little world a little bit more and when I just didn't take it, it just opened up the whole world. Like I could just sort of, I kind of turned into like this class clown. I was really getting a lot of acceptance and encouraging encouragement from peers. I just really seemed to open up socially and all of that, even though it came with consequence, was worth it to like try to find out like, who am I? Not really thinking of it in those terms, but 

[00:17:00] it just, it just went away and I mean the risk taking, and I think a big part of it too is the need for dopamine. You know what I mean? The dopamine's running low in the brain, so I'm looking to get to be stimulated. I mean, school's not stimulating enough. I'm not really plugging into sports anymore, so that's not doing it and I'm really looking for acceptance and to fit in and just to what can I make of all of this? Right? You got a couple years left in high school, so yeah it was a big turn, but like nobody really kind of knew, you know, it kind of came outta nowhere and it wasn't something I was telling, you know, my folks right or the assistant principal or the security guard or the police officer that I was always having to talk to. Wow. So you hid the fact that you were not taking it? Yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah, it's a conundrum for parents. I think the A DHD thing, because I would say just of all the parents that I see and work with, I would say 85% of the young people have A DHD either diagnosed or 

[00:18:00] undiagnosed. So it is such a precursor to these kinds of struggles. Could I ask about your brother? So you have a twin brother? Yeah. What is going on with him all this time? Yeah. I mean, he's doing all right. He kind of found his lane in video games. He used to play his game, Counterstrike. I'm sure it's still around, but, you know, that was definitely like his sort of thing. I remember he wanted to drop outta high school. You know, he had that idea. My parents like, we'll turn off the internet and that straightened him out pretty quick. He was good to get back on track. I mean, he wasn't perfect, but he was good to keep his head down and get back on track. He definitely didn't have the same troubles I did. I mean, my parents man, I already feel for them. I would feel for them even more and then I have a younger brother too. A younger brother came along too. Oh, wow. My mom and stepdad had him. So yeah, he was in the mix too. Wow, okay. So that's very interesting. So your brother, your twin brother is kind of watching you go through this, but he's not 

[00:19:00] following the same path necessarily? No. No, not at all. Okay. So you're on your own. In college, you have found cocaine. Yeah, what happens after that? Yeah, I mean, that was just kind of opening the door up to like trying things, you know, it wasn't a horrible experience. Definitely not like what you see in the movies where you kind of do it one day and everything's gone the next. That wasn't my story anyway. I think what that did was just kind of a permission slip. I think every time we cross a line, we say we're never gonna cross. It just kind of opens up the door for, you know what else is out there, right? We're more willing to try more. I remember like it was yesterday, we were sitting around my apartment there playing a poker game and the guy took out a bottle of pills and I said, Hey man, if you got a headache or something, this is how naive I was. Like, I had no idea about this stuff and I said, if you have a headache or something, we could just go put your chips aside. You could play another night, whatever and you don't have to hang out. And then he is so sweet. Yeah and then he's like, no, this is 

[00:20:00] Percocet or whatever. I said, oh, what? That's interesting. What's that all about? And oh, it makes you feel good and I said, oh, okay. Let me try that out and I mean, like a rocket ship took off. It checked all the boxes. It really did, it checked all the boxes and yeah, I just went on the search and I found somebody who was close to me, through Google to figure out what this stuff was 'cause I had no idea. No idea and I ended up getting a whole bunch of it, a whole bunch of this stuff from somebody, somebody that they knew I kind of kept the story vague for them. They weren't into this stuff, but we don't need details. Yeah. But for somebody that they knew, I ended up with a whole shoebox of this stuff and I took it every day, all day for 30 days. And then at the end of, well, 30 ish days, I don't know exactly what it was, but I remember like a month when I ran out, I went into withdrawal, but I had no idea that that was even possible. I didn't know, I mean I was that naive and I think of, I think a lot of us were then, right? It comes in a prescription bottle. I mean, if it says Take two, we've all doubled the dose of Tylenol, so what's the big deal to have four or six or eight? And when it 

[00:21:00] wears off, you feel a little bit, be a little bit unwell. You take one and then it's like, oh, okay. You know, no big deal. So then when I, and were you still functioning, like you're still going school? Oh, yeah. And doing all that? Yeah. I mean, I'm doing all right. I do remember one time I was driving to school. It was a two-lane road, and I don't even know all the details that I passed out at a red light with my foot on the brake. For how long? I don't know, what I do remember from it is I woke up and there was a firefighter opening my door of my car. And then later that night I used to work at a restaurant that was another big pitfall for me, restaurant, restaurant industry and I worked to there and a guy that went to the same college, he said, man, I went by your car. I was honking my horn and everything and this is a pretty busy road, like pretty busy little two lane road. Where to go to get past me, you'd have to go around and he was like, yeah, you were just sleeping or something, man. And I was like, oh man but when the firefighter opened the door, I just hit the gas. Like, I was just like, and that's all I 

[00:22:00] remember from it. So yeah, I mean, I was still doing what I had to do. Was I doing well? No, not at all. Yeah. And you're not thinking at this point like, I am a drug user. No. You're just living life. Yeah. Just, yeah. It's just, yeah, just coping. Yeah. Like everybody gets these medications, right? Everybody, right. Yeah. So interesting that you were, you really were so naive to that, that it just made sense. I mean, and we hear this all the time from our kids once we can finally get to a place to communicate with them, which is, well, it just made sense. It solved a problem. Like what's the big deal? I don't understand. So, but this was at a time when Percocet was really Percocet, not Percocet with, or Fentanyl with a little bit of Percocet in it. So the, you were getting actual Percocet? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Things have changed. Things have changed a 

[00:23:00] lot. Compared to when I was doing it, I was even talking with a friend the other day. Nobody was, I didn't hear of anybody dying from anything. Never. I mean, may maybe overdose maybe like once, but not right, not like, you know, in today's world it was a completely different time. And that was sort of when things were really picking up steam, 2008, 2009, where these things were flooded everywhere and then what happens with time is your tolerance builds. So what three pills might last you a day? Now you need 20 and you need 30 and that's where things escalated to and then a buddy of mine was like, you're wasted all your money on this stuff. And I was like, yeah, I am wasting all my money. Is there a better solution, a cheaper one? He's like, yeah, heroin. It's like, oh yeah, let's do, uh, let's do that. Let's do that. Yes. Cheaper. Okay. Better bang for your buck like. It's wild to even think back, but I didn't really even 

[00:24:00] bat an eye at it. I didn't even really think, too much on it. Maybe a second or two and yeah, that's, that's a good idea and then that's wow. Yeah, that's where we went. And I mean, to keep a long story short, everything that I ended up having or working towards or getting, I lost everything and it wasn't all overnight, but I got evicted from the apartment. The girlfriend left the car. The car got impounded by the police while committing crime. I was breaking into cars. I ended up getting a felony convicted felon at 18 years old, job market. It really slims down at that point. College opportunities really slim down your whole life really slims down. Yeah, so I had to provide a DNA sample, you know, to the state. I was living in North Carolina at this time and I had to provide DNA sample and do felony probation. Interesting part though, when I was on probation at 16 not doing substances, my probation officer, I mean, she was a real hard ass, doing her job and I don't have any 

[00:25:00] hard feelings about it, but I have used to have to do the pee in a cup, which was weird. I was 16 peeing in front of this guy and I was like, okay, this is kind of weird but I put myself there, so I own that but when I was 18 in on felony probation, I didn't have a to do sample. I told them that it was for credit card debt and they bought that story. They bought it, you know, so I, I, I, I appeared as if I had things kind of, together. So I did that for a bit, everything dissolved with time I got on methadone and I was drinking too throughout this whole thing. I mean, that was a consistent, we were partying. I drank and partied every night. The girlfriend left out of another buddy of mine move in, and he was well connected to the college party scene. So we just partied every night and how I even survived. I don't know. I think about the way I used to live. Like even if I did it for one day in today's world, like there's no way I would make it. There's no way. Yeah. You would be wrecked for a month. 

[00:26:00] Yeah. So I got on the methadone. I didn't know anything about it. It was sort of another thing. How did that happen? Was that through like a doctor or Yeah a treatment program or how did that, yeah, how did that transition happen? Yeah, so I mean, they were probably like fairly new-ish then. Suboxone wasn't really a thing or in towards the tail end of my methadone. Kind of experience. It was a thing, but it was expensive. You had to have insurance and it was super expensive, and I didn't have any of the above, so the methadone was like 15 bucks a day. So I used to drive to this to this clinic and yeah, just get the methadone every day. And it served its purpose. I mean, I'm not like. I shared on one podcast sort of my experience, and somebody had emailed me. They were upset with me about being against something, and I say, I'm not against anything. Whatever works, like I'm all for, it was essential for me to figure things out but I also hit a spot after 10 months where I was like, this is great. I mean, I'm not doing drugs anymore, but I'm also just 

[00:27:00] numbed out 24 7 and I have to drive to this clinic half an hour each way. I have no car, no money, barely have a job here and there. I have to go in to my parents' place. Work in their backyard for 15 bucks an hour. 'cause they're not given any handouts. I have to do that and I'm like, I kind of just had this moment of clarity is like, dude, you might not be doing the other stuff and your life is definitely better, but like, you got more potential than this man. You can't, like, you cannot live like this. Oh, interesting. You know, for me that was sort of the thing. So I went to the people at the clinic and I said, Hey, I gotta get off this stuff. Like I wanna do something else. I mean there was a lot of things. I couldn't really keep it going financially, I couldn't. My brother was like, Hey, you don't even put money in the car for gas. I'm waking up at 6:00 AM. They also started breathalyzing me for alcohol. 'cause when I was on the methadone, I'm drinking and they picked up on that and the breathalyzer me, and sometimes I'm blowing and blowing and 

[00:28:00] I can't get the methadone for the day, and I'm disconnected from sort of the illegal substance game. So I'm just sick. I'm just sick all the time and I was like trying to, oh, it's just crazy, right? Just trying to moderate my drinking if I start drinking at this time, and if I only have two beers and I always want more beers, so then I'm angry with myself, I want have more beers, and I'm like, oh my gosh. You know, what am I doing with my life?So I Is it ever, like, as you're just a quick question as you're in this, it just sounds like such a painful place to be 'cause you, I like, I am getting this feeling of like, I'm in this cage and I just can't get out. Does it ever run through your mind of like, I wonder if I should just get sober? Like, what would that be like? Yeah. Or is that not yet entering the picture? I mean, you would think it, it should be like, that should be the thing of like, Hey, the solution to this is probably getting sober. I think what happened with me is tracking back so 

[00:29:00] far in my life, I was just used to coming up short, I was just used to failing like that life, even as terrible as it was and as disappointing as it was, not only for myself, but for others, it was comfortable. I knew what to expect. Like I knew, I knew that it was a shitty life. It was one far below my potential. But when I woke up every day, win, lose, or draw, I knew what it was gonna look like for the most part a life where I actually. Finish college, started paying my own bills, showing up to a job and being accountable. That was all just so foreign to me. Like that was, that felt like so hard. How could I ever do that? And then, you know, obviously with the criminal record in the school, and I got put on academic probation and it was just like, and it's no one else's fault but my own. But I just felt like I had lost, you know, everywhere. Like there winning was just, 

[00:30:00] oh, the only thing I ever won on was if I found a bag that I thought I had lost. That was the only thing I was, you know, kind of looking forward to that could possibly go right. So clearly something shifted because you are where you are today, and I am super curious to know what that was, what shifted that really made a difference for you. Yeah what shifted the maybe one of the million dollar questions? Accountability came into my life in a way I didn't expect it and that's what shifted. I mean, my parents had, you know, set up the boundaries and weren't really funding any part of my life anymore, I was living on my brother's floor. I owned nothing. Literally, I had a suitcase of sort of belongings I went to. So after the methadone, I went to detox in South Florida. My grandparents drove down from Canada, I mean in incredible people brought me there. I did the cold Turkey detox off methadone. 

[00:31:00] But I mean, that carried on for six months. That was a week, and it was like, okay, they took the edge off maybe, but it still messed me up in so many ways of anxiety and everything else and the reality is you, that's good. You get off the substance, but like, I still didn't know how to live life on life's terms. I didn't know how to keep a bank account in the positive, show up for a job, consistently be a good person. And I didn't know how to do that stuff. But things really changed in January 11th, 2010. I had lived in Canada for a bit with my grandparents and I was coming back to the US for, to visit my parents. And I kind of reconnected with this girl, I was always a girl. Always a girl. Yeah, it's always a girl in the mix, good people though. I mean, that was one of the blessings I had. I was always surrounded by good people, really good people. Like I wasn't enmeshed with a bunch of people using drugs and not that there's anything wrong with that, but it wasn't my life. I was always, people saw something in me. I don't know. I didn't see it myself. So I get off this plane in Raleigh and the cops were 

[00:32:00] there and they've got the picture of me and everything, and they're like, Hey, yeah, you're under arrest and I'd been stopped in Toronto too, where I flew out and the customs agents there asked me about a gazillion questions and pulled me into a room and said it was a big misunderstanding. I knew something was up. Part of me was like, I should have just turned around and, you know, went about my merry way. So basically I got arrested on, I think it was four or five, maybe six counts of drug trafficking. I sold narcotics drugs to an undercover police officer like two years prior to this day. Wow. A buddy of mine, air quotes, for anybody listening, a friend of mine, you know, had a buddy that wanted to get his hands on whatever he could. This buddy of his was a, Kerry police officer. I would say that was sort of the starting line, to things, right? It wasn't finished, but it was starting, it was accountability that I hadn't, I had been in jail and I had done a scared straight program.I went to the central prison, met death row inmates, tried to convince 

[00:33:00] me, I mean, the amount of interventions, even when mention 'em to him here. I'm like, dude, like what in the heck were you not seeing? But that's the truth of it all right. That is the truth of it all is, yeah. Yeah. You can't see it. So yeah, I was booked into jail. I was given a $250,000 bond and I knew I wasn't getting out on this one and I ended up doing a year in jail and pleading guilty to everything. It was interesting on sentencing day, the lawyer that I had, sort of pulled all the records, I mean, all of the treatment over the years and binders, I mean, probably went on for 10 feet thick binders, right? Everything. And it, it was kind of, it was really the thing that saved me 'cause I was facing 20 years, maybe even more and yeah, it was that experience where I just decided like, I don't wanna live like this, you know, because that was my reality. I wasn't able 

[00:34:00] to keep things between the lines. I've always, always got in trouble, always found trouble, always made trouble and I hung around, you know, some people where it was like, this is always gonna be the reality. So I guess the, I just kind of zoomed out a little bit and sort of ask myself, like, do you wanna live like this? You know, taking a shower with a bunch of people and being told when you can have lunch and when you go to sleep and when you wake up and how many phone calls you can make, like, do you wanna live like this? Because the, like, that's your only option if you don't do something different and then after that, I was deported. I held the green card in the US you know, for 17, 18, 19 years and then I went into ICE custody afterwards for another four months and went, I don't know, 10 jails all over the east coast. It eventually ended up in Atlanta and then I was put on a plane and that was an interesting day too. And yeah, sent back and given a lifetime ban to the US and at the time you have these moments in life, I think right? Where it's 

[00:35:00] like when I got arrested there and I understood the magnitude of this, how serious this was, you think, oh man, my life's over but when I look back, it was the best thing to ever happen. So Interesting. We talk about the Chinese farmer old lot, that story about. You know, is this a bad thing? Yes, of course. It's a bad thing. You're going to jail. Did it turn out to be a good thing? Sounds like it was.  Yeah. It was a great thing. It was what I needed. It sucks that it had to get to that spot. Maybe in some aspects but you know what I consider myself lucky. I mean, a lot of people, there's a lot of people who, that would be an incredible alternative to how things ended up for them. Yes. Yep. That is very true. That is a really interesting, we talk about moments of clarity. We talk about the gift of desperation, right? I think the term rock bottom is something that I have a hard time with because what you just 

[00:36:00] described, yeah, somebody could say, that was my rock bottom and I don't know how you use that term, but to me that feels like a glaring moment of clarity of like, this is not how I wanna live. Yeah. How do you think about that term rock bottom? Like what does that. I mean, what does that mean to you?  Yeah, it's not one that I run around saying, I mean, I think it's subjective to what every, what people, you know, want to be. I think the reality from all the stories I've heard is people bought 'em out a lot. You have a lot of mm-hmm things that don't go well and do you need that to change? Of course not. Not at all and it might not, even in all the stories I've heard on the podcast and working with people doing this for 15 years, rarely have I heard a story where somebody hits a quote unquote rock bottom and they changed their life the next day. Rarely, it's that rock bottom moment or that moment of clarity might have come, six months before 

[00:37:00] sort of their decision of doing something again or trying again. Most people when they kind of, people when they hear rock bottom, they think DUI jail. Like most people, when they get outta jail, the first thing they do is drink, the reality is here we don't have any coping skills to deal with stuff and until we learn those or become willing to learn those different way to live a different way to see the world, I saw myself as a victim in all of this. Like, well, well how could all this happen to me? Like such bad luck? And I had to change that like, no, no dude, there's no bad luck here. Like you are choosing to live like this and this is what comes along with it. This is sort of the price to pay cost of entry. It's not bad luck. Interesting and you came to that on your own, like you didn't go to a formal, like residential treatment program after you were sent back to Canada? Did you just start doing these things and coming to these realizations on your 

[00:38:00] own? I'm curious about what that next step was. Yeah. I mean, some of it slowly, well, nothing was overnight. Yeah. I think I took the opportunity I had in jail, the downtime, you know, I mean, that is one of the upsides of it. There's downtime. I plugged into a lot of reading. I used to go to AA meetings. It's not really part of my thing, and it was really never part of my thing afterwards. I think, you know, when I went to the rehab for 12 months and all of the interventions that I thought maybe were for nothing, I think I started to see the benefits of it. Like I had learned stuff, I just wasn't implementing it in my life. Mm-hmm. So it wasn't like a lack of knowledge. And I find this with a lot of people. I think it's always let me add more. Let me read another book. Lemme listen to another podcast. Let me get more, more knowledge and I'm just like, we're in the, especially right now with ai, we're in the, you can find out anything in two seconds. So it's not that we don't know what we need to do, it's like how do we do what we know we need to do? So that was where I had to really 

[00:39:00] get to work with things, and I used to go occasionally to celebrate recovery meetings. I love the format where you do one hour before and you break up into small groups and then have a little chat after because when I got out and I moved back up here, I didn't know anybody. Like, I didn't have any friends or anything. Nothing really going for me and then I decided I wanted to work with other people. So I went to college, graduated as an addiction counselor and started working at a rehab center and I did that for like eight years as a clinical caseworker and that had its ups and downs too, but it was all right for the most part, working with teenagers.Oh boy. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Is there a book that you have read that was particularly impactful for you or meaningful that you like to recommend to people? My goodness, I don't read books. I mean, I did, or listen, I did, I mean, I did when I was, I think one of the books that, you know, I kind of got, a lot out of sort of when I was in jail was Brandon Novak's book.

[00:40:00] I can't remember the name of it and I think it's kind of come out sense for him that he was kind of doing it to make money, to keep things going, but it was just kind of showing you, showing me anyway, you know, the depths of all of this, right? How you kind of lose who you are, you know? And then that kind of really made sense to me. I mean, I used to read like Nicholas Sparks, the Notebook and, Percy Jackson books like that. I wouldn't say like a huge self-help kind of book guy. Yeah. Yeah. So you've worked with teenagers, you have been on the other side of the microphone for I think close to 300 stories of people sharing their experience and I have to imagine that there have been some themes that have come up throughout that, some trends that you see in people and I'm curious to tap into some of the things that you recognize over and over and over that might be helpful 

[00:41:00] insights for the parents who are listening to this. Yeah, I mean, there's so many. I think too, one of the things that always stands out to me, and I try to fit this in most episodes, but I don't, it doesn't always land, but I wonder with people, I say the night before, say you got sober today. I say, last night, did you have any idea, today would be your first day and I had one lady and she said, the night before I got sober, I had bought a new house I didn't wanna drink in my new house. So I went to the park that was around the corner and I drank wine out of a big gulp cup. And I used the bathroom right there in the park or whatever, you know, so no, no thought, no intention. But that's how quick this can all change because today you might not be, or somebody else might not be thinking that they're gonna start this journey, but like, that's all it, that's all it takes. It can happen that fast and I think that reflecting back too, I know it can probably feel like. From 

[00:42:00] a parent's perspective, that's, maybe they've gone to treatment and maybe things didn't work out. Whatever the interventions or whatever people have been involved with, that has a potential to come back around. Just because, maybe the end goal or the end result was like this life of continuous sobriety. That box wasn't checked right now. It doesn't mean that it didn't have some impact on the person, you know? So I think it's realizing that so that we don't get stuck thinking, wow, all for nothing. You know, this will never work out. Yes. I never thought it would work out for me. So, yeah. Yeah, those are, those are few. Yeah. I think that's really interesting and I have found that to be true. My son went through, I don't know how many treatment programs and you feel at the time. Why like that didn't work? Oh my gosh, it didn't work. We just spent all this money, or we just, you know, and then now he's nine years in recovery. 

[00:43:00] He's like, oh, I use those skills all the time, every day. You know? Yeah. I used things that I learned when I was in wilderness therapy or when I was in residential treatment, so it does. I'm just glad to have you say that, that it does go in, but it all, it doesn't always just come right back out. Sometimes it needs to marinate in there for a while and then it will come out at at a later date. So what was the span of time? I'm just curious, like when was that, that you ended up starting to really make those shifts in your life once you got back to Canada? It would've been probably two years in. Yeah, I mean for the bulk of things. I mean the rebuild of the identity, like who was I as a person, what did I want to do? Like, can I find some purpose, some passion, and a vision for life? You know, like I, yeah, like stopping drinking. Stopping drugs is literally the starting line. I mean, we all sober up here and there, so like getting sober was never my problem anyway. I mean, I would run outta money, 

[00:44:00] I'd be in jail. Like I would sober up. Yeah. How could I stay sober? And I think that's what I had to zoom out a little bit and figure out like how do I begin to build a life that is more valuable than the alternative life? You know, the way I was living, like what, build some stuff that I got to lose. You know, the problem before is every time I would try to get sober and it relapsed, like I had nothing to lose. I had no skin in the game. So it was like, okay, well cool, I mean, you disappoint yourself. But I was so used to that, that didn't stop me. But in this sort of life, it's like to just start stacking stuff that's important. That if you go back to the way you were living before, you are gonna have to give all of that up, or it will eventually go away and really leaning into relationships and finding mentors, you know, and not, for me, it wasn't all sobriety. It wasn't all sobriety. There was a point where, I was like, yeah, I mean the 

[00:45:00] sobriety's an essential piece. I need that to be part of my life, but like, if I don't like who I am, if I don't have something I'm headed towards or something I'm building, I'll lose interest. I'll get bored really fast with all of this. And then I'll look for that excitement elsewhere, even if it's harmful. Yeah. Could I ask what the A DHD, is like in your life now? Because that is, obviously, it's not something that just goes away. Yeah. And depending on how kind of, severe it is, it can be hugely impactful in an adult's life. So if you would be willing to share, what does that look like for you now? Yeah and it, yeah. Interesting. You mentioned that too. It was probably about nine months ago maybe. Yeah, probably around there. I'm bad with dates. I'm bad with timeframes. That's an A DHD thing. Ask me my kids' birth. That's an A. No, totally. Ask me my kids' birthdays. I'll be like, what? I mean, look at my phone. I think there was some things coming up in my life that, you know, eight, nine months ago that I was like, maybe this is something I have 

[00:46:00] another look at. I have another look at, for years I didn't really paid any mind. So I recently had started medication again and it's just, you don't really know how it's affecting you until you, for me anyway, everybody has different experience with this, but I didn't really know all of the areas of my life that were impacted until I started sort of this process again. One of the big parts is it is, is that I'm really hard on myself because I have all of this work I want to get done. I don't do it. I think most people just kind of close the door and move on with their life. Not me, not me. I'll stay up all night. I have to get it done and it's not really that important to get done, but to me it's everything. So things were kinda showing up, you know, my reactions and hour was carrying myself we're not the best all the time and I was like, Hey, I, well, you know, I kind of look in some more information and that's another way that it impacted me. It's not, I'm not that squirrely kid that I was, you know, when I was eight. Right. But 

[00:47:00] I'm still, you know, kind of impulsively doing stuff and I kind of impulsively bought a house. Oh yeah. That's a big impulse. Yeah. So, so those, you know, those types of things came up. So, yeah, and it just offered a lot and I was in a good place, but definitely a better place, more regulated place I think, me anyway I don't know how other people feel or how they think about it, but I think that that part of beating myself up or why didn't I get that right, why couldn't I have done that or stuff, really can wear you down. Your confidence, your self-esteem, and all of these things are important to stay on the journey and understanding too that it's not, I just see things differently and operate a little bit differently or maybe a lot differently and that's cool like that. That's okay and do you surround yourself with other people that do other things well, and you know, the book readers and the organizers and everything else. The planners, the plan and the timekeepers. Yes, exactly. I mean, the 

[00:48:00] first time we connected, how long did it take me to get back to get this figured out? That's my life. That Right. Like six months. I was a, I know, I think I'm really glad that you mentioned the fact that the sobriety is just one element of all of this because as parents, we get laser focused on sobriety has to be sobriety. There has to be right this abstinence and we somehow just latch onto that. Like if they can just get that part of it, then everything's gonna be solved. So I'm really glad that you mentioned that. Yes, that's important, but that's just one part of it and you have to really start adding in those other things that are valuable that you would have to lose if things were to go a different direction. That's a huge insight. Yeah. Yeah, you got a bit. What do they, what's the term? Recovery capital maybe in line with that, in a sense. Recovery capital. 

[00:49:00] Yeah. You have to, and you have to have a purpose or, especially somebody like me, right, with the A-D-H-D-I get bored very fast. I have to stay moving in a good direction with things and not that I'm worried in my life today, you know, that's another thing that people start out to say, oh my gosh, I'm gonna be wanting this stuff forever. Like, you don't. You don't want it forever, like your brain heals it. I think about it sometimes before I ever drank and did drugs, I never thought about drinking and doing drugs. I wouldn't say it's completely there, but it's pretty close. Right and you just build, you know, life like pe people I meet now if I meet people and I tell them this story, they just like, they're probably like, what is this guy crazy or something? What is wrong with this guy? There's no way. The really cool thing about all this is it's not unique to just me. Anybody can make a change, turn things around and become somebody completely different. Like I see a lot of people, maybe 20 years of substance use in one 

[00:50:00] year they accomplished more than they did in the last 20. And that's common, right. You know, of like forward motion and opportunities and people are like, stuff keeps happening for me and I'm like, yeah, because you're available for it, you know? So it's, yeah it's not just for me. I'm not just, a unique person who had all the answers, like, I failed forward a lot and not failing forward in the terms of drinking again or using drugs again, but in life again, like a lot of hard lessons. But it's about overcoming the adversity of it. You know, it's about like, Hey, what can I take from this? What can I learn? Like, I really messed up that time with whatever the decision was I made. But what can I learn? I was never willing to do that before in my life. I was never willing to take accountability. It was everybody else. I was the victim and because of that, I get to do whatever I want and yeah, so far from reality. Yeah. Wow. Well thank you so much for spending some time with us telling this story 

[00:51:00] and also giving us some insight into what might be going on inside the young human that we are trying to parent and try to understand and provide support for. 'cause it is not easy and I think this will be really, really helpful to start getting at what of what might be going on in the head of somebody that we love. So I really appreciate the time. Yeah, of course. Brenda, thank you so much for having me and keep up the great work you're doing out there. Thank you.