Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hey you. Yeah, you, if you or someone you know, is struggling with anything mentioned on today's program, please, please, please, please, please. Please email
[email protected]. That's a U T H E N I C K. The
[email protected]. I am available 24 seven three 65 to help in any way that I can. I have resources. I have open ears and open heart and tons of hope. I've been freely given all these things and would love to give them to you. Be good to yourselves and each other before we get started today, I would like to tell you that suicide is mentioned multiple times. In this episode, if you or someone you know is going to be triggered by that, or you're struggling with suicidal ideation or you have a plan to commit suicide, please reach out, speak with a counselor today at the national suicide prevention lifeline, their number is +1 800-273-8255. That's +1 800-273-8255.
Speaker 1 00:01:10 My mama, mama, mama, mama, mama, mama, mama, mama, mama <inaudible>.
Speaker 0 00:01:51 Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Welcome to author. <inaudible> welcome to the show. My name is Nicholas Thomas Fitzsimmons, van enabled, but most people just call me Nick. And this is my show. Authentic. Get it. It's authentic, but you take up the tick and you add Nick then Nick clever. Right? And with me as always is my dog Marla nobody's there, but I want to talk. So I'm just saying, but not that comes up when the mood lips is just a bunch of gibberish. Forgot about Drake. Oh, okay. That's enough. Marla. Why don't you go back to eating M&Ms anyway, here on authentic, where we get authentic, we talk about all things recovery. Well, what do I mean by that? All things recovery. Well, what I mean by that is if you are still living and breathing on this earth, you, yes, you are in recovery from something. As for myself, I am in recovery from alcoholism. I am an alcoholic. I'm also a drug addict. I have an eating disorder. I bipolar disorder. Really the list could go on and on and on how ever luckily for you, the show is not about me. It is about two people. First is my guest. Chris. Second is the one person whose life will most certainly be impacted by his testimony. Today. We are here to let you know that you are not alone. We are here to smash stigma and provide solutions. Hi. Hello there. Welcome back to authentic. We're here with Chris.
Speaker 2 00:03:39 It's just so nice to be here at the jail with you and the SPF
Speaker 0 00:03:43 Man. Real nice. That's so nice of you to say Chris. We're back. Chris, before we went to the break, you had this idea that we needed to visit. There was something just so important before we go on to your experience going to treatment. And it was this idea that in order to maintain normalcy, as far as your drinking habits and your drugging habits, you had to manipulate people around you to do that. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Speaker 2 00:04:19 It started with I'll I'll do anything, whatever mundane thing, as long as I can have a drink or two beforehand or after whatever I tied it to that. And then when people got used to that idea, I then made it seem like it was a reward for them to be able to drink. And so I would perpetuate that you're going to be able to relax more. You're going to have more fun if you drink. And then it just with the podcast on my wife and I were doing, she would get really anxious. So I would have her drink beforehand. Once somebody else drank around me then felt okay for me to drink. And so I just kept figuring out ways for somebody else to be drinking so that it wouldn't be weird that I was drinking and that it would be acceptable that I was drinking
Speaker 0 00:05:02 That old acceptable alcohol.
Speaker 2 00:05:05 Nobody's going to judge me if they're drunk too.
Speaker 0 00:05:08 Nobody's going to judge me if they're drunk too. Huh? I like that. I want to move on to treatment. We went to the break and we talked a little bit. And you said you went to Betty Ford center city. Hazeldon what was that experience like?
Speaker 2 00:05:23 It was good. I have the mindset that for like, there's some basic things that you need in order to come close to sobriety, even which is distraction from destruction. If that's removing you from the situation and then introducing these other things, to distract you from the fact that you were destructive, that's the first step is, is to distract you from your using. If you're sober long enough, then they can start to, people can start to introduce things that can help keep you sober.
Speaker 0 00:05:51 What sort of things were introduced to you to aid you in staying? Because you were
Speaker 2 00:05:58 Stopped obviously. Yeah. You were in 28 day inpatient treatment, so they didn't have any alcohol there. I should say before I went to treatment. So I was in the hospital for eight days. I had two shooters, hidden in my jacket as like a reward for myself for making it, I would drink those. And then I would go to treatment. Luckily, like I had a realization a couple of days before I got released and told my wife like, Hey, there's these, I know where there's alcohol. You need to go and get rid of it. There was a little bit of a lapse. So I was home for two days and I had this really weird moment where my wife went out to get lunch for everybody. And there was a liquor bottle that was still there and I opened it and just smelling the fumes, brought this like overwhelming sense of calm.
Speaker 2 00:06:43 And that was like a big realization of like, your body wants this so bad. Just smelling. It is enough for you, which is a pretty fucking wild treatment upon getting there. There was that comradery. Have you heard of trauma bonding? Yes. Okay. Treatment is such a prime example of trauma bonding. All of these emotions that are flooding because these full grown adults are seemingly pulled out of a situation because they can't handle it out in the real world. So we have to put them in these, you know, I say it's like, like a business class type of hotel room and a cubicle had a baby. That's what these rooms looked like. Like it was a bunch of half walls and like the bare minimum business, like desk in the corner with the lamp type of thing, but then going to these, um, there was a lot of war stories.
Speaker 2 00:07:36 It was like, it was difficult at first because they told me that it, it was a, how do they word it? A faith based institution, but they don't push religion, which they made it one day before they started pushing like a lot of ideologies that I was not on board with. Why did you stay then if you weren't on board with what was happening? I knew that I, I had to learn something and I didn't know exactly what that was going to be. And it was difficult at first. But then, so there was like a, a couple of turning points where we kept hearing about relapse. There was me and this other guy who was our first time in treatment. And we were getting pretty depressed because we were one of four people that it was our first time in treatment. And everybody kept talking about relapse.
Speaker 2 00:08:22 There's one guy that had been there nine times and he's just like, God damn it, man. What, what are we doing here? If you know, if this isn't gonna work, what the fuck? Um, and then I saw this documentary called, um, pleasure on woven. Oh yeah. We watched that in my treatment to the big takeaway for me was there was a physiological explanation for what was happening. And it was the first time that I realized, like, when people say like you mourn a loss to put it into perspective for people. If, if you have not had that, imagine losing your best friend, they might not even be dead, but they're just not able to be in your life anymore. And that weight that you feel from that was likened to my substance, that was a part of so many things is now stripped away from me and never to be had again.
Speaker 2 00:09:19 And so did you have an opportunity to mourn that loss? I did. But did you, did you acknowledge it? Yeah. When I first had that realization, I, I, I cried for sure. Cause I was like, Oh, I, this was before the pleasure of woven thing. Yeah. I just was like, Oh wow. That is exactly what it feels like. I'm mourning a loss. And then after I watched this pleasure unwoven thing, the way that they describe how there is a part of your body that operates a part of your brain specifically that operates to keep you alive, to help you survive. And when we were very basic human beings, thousands of years ago, your brain needed a way to associate surviving with pleasure. So some type of enjoyment in surviving. So eating food, drinking, water, it even happens now like it's a hot day or like you feel dehydrated and you drink water.
Speaker 2 00:10:10 There's like that sense of relief. That's by design. Like your body is doing that because it has, it had to figure out a way for you to enjoy being alive and surviving. And when you introduce substances, you're doubling the amount of dopamine that you normally get. And so your brain is like, Holy shit. And it's not, it doesn't happen to everybody. But I think that, I would say that the majority of people there, when you romanticize drinking and smoking or using or whatever, like you can make all kinds of excuses. Like it's the lifestyle, it's, I'm at a, I'm at a party I'm celebrating something. You know, there's all these excuses as to how you tied to pleasure, but that's actually your midbrain telling your limbic system, Hey, figure out a way for us to remember this and have it be a really positive experience so that we do it again.
Speaker 2 00:10:59 I feel like everybody experiences that to some extent, and you don't even realize that that's what's actually happening. So when I saw that and was like, Oh, so I was not in control of it ever. It was always going to be, and this happens with like controlled addicts where like, did you ever do like a tolerance break? You know what I'm talking about? So people who smoke weed, take tolerance breaks because you're smoking so much weed and you're still not getting high enough. So you take a tolerance break. The reason why you're able to do that, if you're an addict is because you go, I'll take as long off as I want, but I get to go back to using it whenever I want to too. That whole thing is just this subconscious part of your brain saying, figure it out. They figure out how to bypass this thing so that the prefrontal cortex goes, yep, we're good.
Speaker 2 00:11:53 Everything's going to be fine because we'll be able to go back to that thing. And then the extreme cases like us, like full blown addicts, it turns into, I need that or I'm going to die. I can't, I literally can't live without this. And it's not always in those exact terms, but those were the realizations that I started to have was my like sadness and my anger towards not being able to drink. I said that my drinking wouldn't be a problem if people didn't judge me for it, really, that was just my brain making up an excuse for us to be able to use later on. Maybe I'll get sober long enough to where I can figure out how to use responsibly later on. But then once I learned that whole thing, like, it's weird to think that your brain is, does not have your actual best interests at heart. And it's not that your brain is intentionally doing that. It's just that you fucked up your dopamine levels and created a pathway. Like if you use long enough, you actually create a pathway in your brain. Almost like a, like a stream for this massive dopamine kick. Cause they know it's coming and then your brain starts to be like, how do we increase it again? Cause we did it the first time. There's gotta be maybe if we use this thing, it'll increase it even more. There's there's always another, another plane of existence. So to speak.
Speaker 0 00:13:08 I, are you an alcoholic and a drug addict and your wife isn't Hmm. Why is that?
Speaker 2 00:13:15 I w I would say, well, there's two things, genetically predisposed, right? Like finding out that my mom's side of the family who was seemingly good and Mormon and all of these things, there was addiction on that side of things too. When you couple that with trauma or any type of mental illness and you couple it with those things, you're fucked. Your chances of being an actor are far greater. That being said, my wife just doesn't like not being in control. And she kept finding these instances where she couldn't believe that she did something because she had drank too much. So she was always like, I don't want to drink today or whatever the occasion was. Some people are just able to see an abbreviation for what it is, which is not necessary. Like nobody needs to be drunk. Nobody has to have a drink or any of those things. And some people are just able to recognize that, like, I can do it randomly, but I don't have to have that thing. It's not gonna help me in any way. My wife is just an extraordinary human being who was able to figure that shit out.
Speaker 0 00:14:23 There's this physiological piece to addiction that you were talking about. And one of those things is the obsession of the mind and the phenomena of craving, right? So we go to that place where at some point it goes from being a habit to a full blown addiction. Why did you cross that line and your wife? Didn't why, why is that? You said earlier it was, it was about genetic predisposition, things that nature. Do you think that it's half and half kind of nature nurture type thing?
Speaker 2 00:14:57 Well, they're, they're doing testing now that would suggest that you're just more likely. And the more that you use, the more likely you are to activate that part of your brain, that then says, okay, now this is a survival need. There's that piece of it. But the, I think the mental health side of it, because maybe one person that I met in treatment did not have any signs of like an underlying either depression or anything along those lines. They just loved getting fucked up. And it activated that part of the brain, just from the sheer volume of use that they introduced. So for me, when it comes, it goes back to, at the age of six, I introduced an addictive trait and never really like never completely knocked everything off the table. There was always some thing, right? Like you had alluded to before, like going from porn was the thing, like porn was the thing at first. And then it became a thing later. And then when I gotten that under control drinking had taken over and it's placed in, in that instance. So I think that your environment, and then genetics, I would say,
Speaker 0 00:16:07 Were you able to address all of your addictions while you were at Hazeldon?
Speaker 2 00:16:12 Yeah, it was, uh, it was strange because by the time that I, I had seen that video and, and started to do more research into like how that, that whole mid brain to limbic system to prefrontal cortex thing work, I was able to take a step back and, and addiction was no longer, like, it didn't feel like it was a, a part of me. It felt like, like, I don't know, it's, it's so hard to describe, but I had somehow kind of had like an out of body experience, I guess that's the only way I can think of explaining it in where I was able to look at this thing from the outside at this point on, but I still hadn't figured out the whole higher power thing is so fucking difficult to grasp. If, if you don't have a belief system,
Speaker 0 00:16:54 Can you go into detail just a little bit about higher power for those that are listening that don't know what you're talking about? Oh yeah, yeah. Sorry. In regards
Speaker 2 00:17:03 To a 12 step program or Mo I would say most treatment facilities, uh, instill that they're going off of some version of this 12 step program. One of those, the first step is, um, we admitted that we were powerless over our addiction to, to some extent in our lives run managed, and our lives are managed. Well, there we go. And so you have to find a higher power so that you can say, I'm no longer in control of this thing. I'm leaving it up to something else and I'm oversimplifying how that process actually works. But just in simple form, that's what they're asking to do. And for a lot of people that, that works because you already have some type of faith based system in your life, whether you're a church goer or not, there's some type of whether it's an like you respect laws, therefore, whatever, there's some type of rule system and a very, very, very simple way that allows you to say that makes sense. And therefore this higher power becomes a companion to me in my journey to sobriety. So it's not that you're, you're relinquishing responsibility. You're just using this as a tool so that you can then move forward and, and, uh, kind of have a external it's. It's like,
Speaker 0 00:18:18 Um, what's your stance on the higher power deal?
Speaker 2 00:18:21 Honestly like, to me, like it, it's not necessary. And that's only because I try to look at addiction as objectively as possible. It's completely a subjective disease in that it affects everybody differently. As far as when I dissect the anatomy of how we're built and all these things, you don't have to have a higher power. You don't have to create any like, um, uh,
Speaker 0 00:18:48 Could you humor me for just a second? What'd you say, possibly, maybe, maybe your higher power is knowledge and science.
Speaker 2 00:18:58 What I ended up coming to for what I consider my higher power is purpose, because that is a very broad thing. That just means that you have associated value to something and that's worth striving for. So purpose could be that your purpose is you would like to move up in your job. You would like to be able to own a home one day. What are the things that I need to do to be able to own a home Monday? Where does addiction fit in? These goals that I have for me, purpose is my family. And my purpose is to be present and available to my family. It's something that I'm going to get tattooed on my hand eventually, but that, that one thing meant so much. And any time I heard higher power after that didn't care at all, because it doesn't have to be a higher power. Purpose is a real thing that can be included in your daily life. Whether you know about any type of 12 step program or treatment facility, purpose is something that everybody either knows or knows about. Does that make sense?
Speaker 0 00:20:03 It makes total sense, your journey, your choice to go down this different path that not a whole lot of people do when they go through a 28 day treatment. A lot of the people that go to these treatment centers latch on to this idea of a higher power sure. Which works for them. And it's wonderful. It's saves a lot of lives. However, it doesn't work for everybody and it doesn't have to be the end all be all. You don't have to find a higher power in order to stay sober. It's just how some people do it. You decided to go down this path of finding purpose, which is beautiful. I love the way that you articulate that. I can feel it. I can feel what you're saying. Do you think you went down that path, steering away from this higher power idea that they were
Speaker 2 00:20:48 Pitching you? Do you think you went down that alternate path because of your Mormon upbringing? What do you know about Mormons? Very little. So my Mormon upbringing would, would more gravitate towards a higher power construct, right? The Mormon religion themselves. Like they have their own like kind of 12 steps. I know, I know the basics. So for me, it's no, I would say no short answer. My humanism would, would more akin to, because what purpose, like what value does my higher power have to anybody else in my life? I wanted to learn something when I got there. Right? What I learned was only applicable to me. My family has a pretty deep desire to want to learn from other people's experiences too. And so I was kind of raised in that regard too. You might have something that somebody else can, can take away from what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 00:21:43 The whole purpose thing was applicable to addict or not addict. And so for my family, that, that meant a lot for that realization. I will say that even though I figured out that purpose thing relapsed kept coming up. And the ironic thing about treatment is that something that they said, at least at the facility that I was at a lot was the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result while in the same exact session, asking people to raise their hands. If it was their second time or third time in treatment, or if somebody had relapsed before, I don't like I get that. They had the best of intentions in that they were putting the weight on them. But I feel like you're paying thousands of dollars. Some of these people are paying 40 over $40,000 to get better, to be able to live a normal life and hoping that this facility will have what they need to survive afterwards. That's also one of the things that I struggled with when I went to treatment, I've only been to one, uh, knock on wood. It'll be my one. And only I had this just resistance. I had this adjunct, I had this Clint, you can see me. No one else can see me. Chris can see me. My fists are just clenched in a vein popped in his head. Yeah, it feels good. I got some release from that. Beautiful.
Speaker 3 00:23:08 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:23:08 What I had trouble with is the hypocrisy that I heard the paradox is that I just could not just, I couldn't, no, fuck you. Like you're saying one thing and doing another, you guys are a bunch of fucking hypocrites. <inaudible> damn,
Speaker 3 00:23:25 Damn you all to hell.
Speaker 2 00:23:27 And what happened for me is I had to let go of that. I had to let go of that and start leading a life. And I latched onto this very early on this idea. I lead in Allah cart, sobriety life. I take bits and pieces. The things that I
Speaker 0 00:23:46 Like from the things that really resonate with me and I make them my own. So nothing I say is fucking original. Sure. All the best country songs I've already been written. Didn't you know, you know who said that? I think it was Hank Williams. Pretty sure it was Hank Williams. That makes sense. I'll look it up later. But this, this Allah cart sobriety for me was palatable. Now I have gone on to do a 12 step program, which works for me. It doesn't work for everybody. And the beautiful thing about people in sobriety, more often than not, they will help you the best that they know how they're not going to Ram it down your throat. Most folks in sobriety are not going to Ram it down your throat. They're going to say, this is how I got sober. This is how I stayed sober. Do you want help? I'm here to help you if you'd like, and there's no community, in my opinion, there's no community like that anywhere else in society. Yeah. What helped you when you got out of treatment?
Speaker 2 00:24:48 Can I say one more thing about chairman before we bounced to the please do the relapse thing kept coming up. Right? Right. Most of the classes didn't address how to avoid relapse. There was a lot of how to stay sober, but they didn't really want to talk about, they would, they would acknowledge that relapse happens, but they wouldn't specifically confront how to avoid
Speaker 0 00:25:07 The labs. Are you talking about specific skills that one can attain to prevent relapse that was not discussed?
Speaker 2 00:25:15 Not directly. These are the things that you need to do to stay sober. And if you don't stay sober, you're going to relapse was kind of like how it was pushed on people. And there was kind of like this, where it all came to a head. There was an older gentleman who came in. He had said it was his fifth time in treatment. We were outside having a smoke. It was his first day that specific stint, I just like had kind of had enough. I was sick of relapse being everywhere in that facility, the elephant in the room that nobody seemed to want to say, like tell people the statistics you're telling us to stay sober, but I felt like you need to say the percentage of people that relapse is really high. Y like alarmingly high.
Speaker 0 00:25:54 Why, why do you think, why do you think that is?
Speaker 2 00:25:57 I think that the type of structure is outdated when it comes to current day sobriety
Speaker 0 00:26:03 Specifically about the relapse piece. Yeah. How would you restructure that? Or what would you do instead? What sort of skills would you put into the picture?
Speaker 2 00:26:14 Sure. I will say real quick. The final piece, like as far as sobriety goes, that helped me afterwards. So this guy it's his fifth time I've had enough. And so I just blowing. It was like, why, why even do this again? What's the point he said, I have to, I have to, or I'm not going to be able to survive that simple term. That's all, anyone in a facility or who's in sobriety is trying to do is just fucking survive. That's the most basic you're just trying to stay alive. And so what, what tools do we have in order to stay alive? And so in treatment, that's when I started to go, Oh, okay. I need to start looking at this shit in the sense that these aren't classes, this is medicine. These are things that if I don't figure out how to make it work, I'm not going to be able to survive that fucking guy.
Speaker 2 00:27:02 He has a lot of things that I, I hope, I hope that I learned that since I'm an atheist. When I hear people say, I'm praying for you, it used to drive me fucking crazy. Once I figured that survival thing out, I then started to dissect these other things. And I, I learned when somebody says, I'm praying for you, or I'm going to pray for you. What they're really saying is whatever your situation is. Let's say you have cancer. I'm hoping that we have the technological advances available for you to be able to get better. I hope that those things are available to you. So it's not, I'm praying. I am hoping that out there, the things that are available will be made available to you. That's all, any of that shit is. So that made a huge fucking difference. That compassion and loving kindness, it used to feel like people are being like pushing off this duty.
Speaker 2 00:27:52 They're saying, well, you know, I know a guy who can take care of that for you. That's kind of the way that he used to look at it. But really they're just saying, I fucking hope that. So, yeah, so it was purpose survive. And then that learning of like what people are actually saying. So when it comes to what I think people need, I think that stop pretending that adults can't handle big words, midbrain, limbic system, prefrontal cortex. If you want to break it down, it's just three things. When you're in an addict, your brain skips step two and goes straight to step three so that you use to subconscious thing. It's not your fucking fault. Once you finally become an addict, you flip that switch. That's just going to keep happening. Midbrain is going to skip over. Step one is gonna skip over step two and go straight to step three.
Speaker 2 00:28:41 When people say, I didn't even want to drink, but I was already reaching for it. It's muscle memory. Like that's, there's a reason. It doesn't have to be hypothetical thing. You don't have to create analogies for it. It's a real thing. And if you accept that, you can start to apply real solutions. For those problems, you accept that your brain now is trying to trick you into using not because it's an asshole, which is kind of as an asshole, we have to implement a survival system. And you made us think that we need that to survive. So we're going to keep trying to figure out how we can do that so we can survive. So I think explaining the actual physiological thing that happens to you. Once you flip that switch, you just need distraction from the destruction. Once you're out in the real world, if you are someone who is triggered easily by certain things that are out in the world, because especially for people who are alcoholics, it's everywhere, implement things that distract you.
Speaker 2 00:29:40 From that me driving home from work, I drive by the liquor store that I would go to every single day. I make phone calls. Now I'll make a phone call just before I get over the bridge, I'll start a phone conversation so that I don't even look to my left anymore. I don't even think about that store. I mean, I'm thinking about it now, but like on a daily basis, I'm not fucking feening for that, that thing. Another crazy thing. And I know that this is the subconscious part of my brain that was doing this every single night that I was in treatment. I dreamt about drinking every single night was about using, finding something to use. It was very fucking real, like that fear in the first few seconds. When you wake up, am I fucked up right now? Did I actually get drunk?
Speaker 2 00:30:25 Like a euphoric recall that shouldn't really happens. I don't know how often you talk about that on, on here. Euphoric recall. No one has ever talked about it. Seriously. Yeah. I wait for people to bring things up because this is your story, things that are part of you, things that come up, but nobody's brought up before and recall. And I love that you did you four agree call. If you're put in a situation. The first time that I heard about it was somebody that was in there for, in treatment for heroin. Somebody had flipped down a visor and a car and a needle dropped out. And just seeing that feeling, it hit the cushion, your body remembers what that high was like. And you, you almost experienced a high and I've had that happen a couple of times, like where you experienced that, man, there's, I'll tell you off air.
Speaker 2 00:31:15 There's one thing that I used to do. I'll tell your hand, I'll say this. I had a method drink X amount, five minutes later, that calming feeling is going to come to you. I was someplace where I used to do that five minute countdown. And I heard that voice in my head say five minutes from now. And five minutes from then I felt that same calming that I used to feel when I knew that that alcohol was going to actually start to kick in. It's crazy. It's really wild that your brain can do that, that it can remember what like, and recreate that feeling for a short period of time, which is scary because then who knows if you're, if you're in a bad spot that might make you want to use. Right. Fucking then luckily for me, the times that it's happened, there's not been any substance around.
Speaker 2 00:32:04 So I think I kind of got out of the danger zone in that, or I got lucky, I'll say that in your first 116 days, sober and clean, have you had these using dreams? Yeah, for sure. I just had one last week and it was incredibly vivid before, like realizing that I had a real problem. My wife just wanted me to get it under control. Just have one. Why can't you just be satisfied with one? And then when I would do little breaks, she'd be like, okay, you think you can handle drinking again? Yeah, for sure. Totally got this. And uh, the dream that I had was my wife had said, you can have one. And then, you know, in cartoons when like those casting shadows are on the wall, when somebody is coming from the other room and like the other person feels like they have to hide, that just kept happening in this house that I was in every single room that I went into.
Speaker 2 00:32:56 I knew where the alcohol was, even though I'd never been there before. I knew where to find it with drink quick, go to the next room, drink quick, go to the next room. Until I got into this bathroom where I closed the door, locked it and felt that relief of like, Oh, they can't get me in here, opened up the shower. And where there would normally be like the soap rack was just like a little liquor cabinet, basically of all these booths, all these different boozes. And uh, I mixed a drink and drank in that shower. And, and then I woke up, like, it was so vivid. I know why that was happening. Cause I remember using bathrooms a lot too. Like they can't get me in here. I hid alcohol way before anything was perceived as even close to a problem. You know, when you're in treatment and you start to regain the ability to recall things. Now I look back and go like, Oh, I was hiding drinking for like four years, four or five years. That's crazy.
Speaker 4 00:33:51 Okay,
Speaker 2 00:33:52 Chris, how are you helping others? You talked a lot about what you've learned and you've been by the way, congratulations on 116 days sober. Thank you. That is a big deal. Hey, I am a big deal. Thank you. Yes you are. Except the compliments you're internalize that shit, Chris, I want to feel you internalize that shit seriously. Coincidence. Cause I want to feel you internally. This is that kind of show, but wow.
Speaker 4 00:34:23 Sorry.
Speaker 2 00:34:24 I do stand up. I don't know if people are used to, I'm scared to in sobriety because I always used to do it drunk and high. Oh yeah. That is actually something that people have asked me a lot since I got out was will I go back to it? Because nowhere, nowhere did I do stand up that there wasn't alcohol. Yep. Like every single my brother reminded me like the first year that I was doing it, I, I told him that I had to drink every time. I didn't even realize that that was, I didn't even remember saying that, but everywhere. And I could do stand up drunk really? Well. There was no difference. That's probably the only looming thing. It's have you thought about this? There was a group of people when the coronavirus hit, do you ever do coin outs? No. So this facility does a coin out where your last day they have like a little ceremony where you get a coin from Hazel, then you get, Oh yeah, yeah, we did that too. I okay. I didn't recognize the, the phrase terminologies that what the cool kids are calling it Hazeldon fucks. We're going to the coin out or go to a cut off.
Speaker 2 00:35:30 My lost coin was a Chucky cheese tug and it was whack. Mine was a bus token. So it's one person. When the coronavirus hit, there was this emergency meeting. They all came in and said that nobody was going to be able to come and visit us anymore. All of these other rules that they were implementing, four of us had a ver like, you know, when you're drunk, but something bad happens. And you sober. You feel like you sober up because this insane thing happened. That's what this felt like four of us went. If the world is ending, we need to be with our families. And it wasn't so that we could escape and go use I've kept in touch with those people. This pandemic was good for our sobriety. A lot of stuff was shut down. Bars were closed. Restaurants were closed. Like these places where we could go and drink, we didn't have access to.
Speaker 2 00:36:17 I got really lucky in that there was a huge distraction from using. We just wanted to make sure our families were safe and like what the next step was. I didn't have a thought of drinking for the first two or three weeks because I was just like, it's too insane. I could see how, if you're somebody who's in isolation, how this would be a horrible thing for your addiction. Because the number one thing you're not supposed to do in mental health and in addiction is isolate because I lands and you're your own worst enemy, that whole thing. But for me and these other guys who have families like we need to be present now. So four of us at the same time did these coin outs, it was the most hectic three students type of shit. Four. Yeah. Four Stooges type of shit. Exactly. People handing coins over because somebody is supposed to pin a thing on you. And like, it was just all, it was a mess, but the world was a mess. We woke up that day thinking we were going to all these classes after two hours, we were like making arrangements to get out of there. Your insurance sometimes won't cover your stay. If you leave,
Speaker 0 00:37:22 How long did you end up staying?
Speaker 2 00:37:24 Just under 28 days? I think it was 20, 24 or 25 days
Speaker 0 00:37:29 In that fourth week. Do you think that you were ready to leave treatment? Did you have that feeling? You're just like, I understand it now. I feel it too. I've internalized this thing. It's time to go because I have a life to go back to and to mend and to grow up.
Speaker 2 00:37:47 I had a plan. My plan for after leaving treatment was completely mental health related. Uh, I had set up a schedule with a therapist and a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I wanted to attack it from that front because I needed to understand more. I didn't have enough time to truly grasp the mental aspect of addiction. Lucky that I've been able to do that now. But like, I still had the plan of doing that when I left, rather than going to a sober house or doing IOP or things like that, everything was geared towards, I had the higher power thing figured out. I don't want to make it seem like I'm above my addiction. That's one thing that I kept having to tell people is like, I'm, I'm not, I'm not fooling myself. I don't think that I've beat addiction. Like, I don't think that I, trust me. It sound
Speaker 0 00:38:36 Anything like you think that.
Speaker 2 00:38:38 So I, I kept having to tell counselors, like I'm not delusional in that. I figured it out. There's a lot that I want to learn more about. I just don't think that it pertains to this 12 step scenario.
Speaker 0 00:38:51 The unfortunate thing is the relapse piece that you were talking about. They have heard people say that over and over and over again. It's like, yeah, I'll see you in a month. Right. That's probably why they're nervous. Skittish about people that are taking this different path yet. You're still sober. And you're sitting here talking to me, sharing your story and sharing with me how you are staying sober. You're relaying to me that there is a way outside of a 12 step program outside of smart recovery, outside of this, that, and the other thing, there are multiple ways to recover people there. Isn't just one way. Well, actually there is one way. It's your way. It's your way. God dammit. I love that. I want to know what you're doing to help other sober and clean people right now.
Speaker 2 00:39:44 My wife and I, I had an idea when I was in treatment, kept saying this phrase, the not so anonymous alcoholic. When I got out, I was like, I don't want to do our normal podcast anymore, which was like interviewing comedians and stuff. I want to do something that helps not, not only understand my addiction, but continues to keep it at the forefront. So if I, if I'm doing this once a week, then it's forcing me to look at my sobriety and where I'm at. That's my main thing. And I, I do research. I keep doing more research in how brain function and things like that work in the, the trauma side of things. The more that I hear from people, I would say 80% of the people that I was in with had experienced some kind of trauma getting over addiction while also having to confront an awful, awful thing that you maybe have never even looked at before trying to do those two things at the same time is so fucking hard.
Speaker 2 00:40:39 I'm trying to understand that more so that I can help people more. I don't want to just say, wow, that sucks for that scenario because there is real help that you should be looking for people who have PTSD, who have not truly confronted a traumatic experience. If you have an inkling that you may have had a traumatic experience, just do a basic Google search, look up the definition. Does it in any way, describe the way that you felt throughout the week throughout the year, do it in very slow terms because true trauma can be a fucking nightmare if you just kind of suddenly realize it. And you're all by yourself. When you do that, like not the best I'm talking to addicts. We interview people also the way that my wife and I record and I hate to make it sound like I'm plugging the show, but like no plug the show.
Speaker 2 00:41:26 It's important to me in the sense that we hear a lot of war stories. We hear a lot from the addict. There is not enough respect given to the spouses that stick around or the family members that stick around. So my wife and I record separately most of the time, there's sometimes like when we're answering questions, we record together. But the first half hour is her. And just her side of things without me. Because even when you're in the same room with somebody, you might feel like you can't say everything. And even though she's saying it into a microphone, having that solitude and being able to say whatever the fuck she wants is super important. People, I think need to understand that. We can say that we're sober. We made it however many days. And that's awesome. What about the people that we affected on the way?
Speaker 2 00:42:12 How are they coping? How have they coped? Were they able to cope? Did they get closure? Like there's all of these things that like we kind of do, but I don't think on a grand scale, people talk about that enough. You know what I mean? Absolutely. We're going to take a little break before we take this break. Give me your official plug for your show. Our podcast is called duck. Duck grade. Duke is my last name. It's a play on duck, duck, gray duck, obviously, but duck, duck, gray Duke. And then we have three shows on there. I think the most important one right now is the not so anonymous alcoholic, which is all about sobriety. Like how we stay sober, the things that affected her, because really she had to survive that. So how she's able to survive and how she's maintaining a healthy relationship with me because spouses, family members loved ones feel like they have to hold back until you're better.
Speaker 2 00:43:06 So it's a good release for her so that she doesn't feel resentment. I think as well. Where can I find duck? Duck, gray Duke, anywhere you listen to podcasts where are also on YouTube. If you search the natto anonymous alcoholic though, it'll show up. It's finally started to show up rather than having to tell people that they have to go to Dakota gradebook. If you search the nutso anonymous, alcoholic, Google, whatever, it'll pop up YouTube. Especially we record each, each episode and we have a segment called addict to addict. So kind of like what we're doing right now. Like we're doing that in separate segments as well. Fantastic, Chris, thank you so much. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about my favorite four letter word.
Speaker 5 00:43:51 Oh, so <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:45:00 Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back. This is all fat neck and we are talking to Craig about his fucked up life. Truly Chris, thank you so much for your vulnerability and your honesty and your transparency so far in this program. It's going to prove invaluable when this goes out into the world. If you decide that you will put it out there, I don't know, man, here's a shameless plug. If you or anyone, you know, is struggling with something on today's program, please reach out. Email
[email protected]. That is a U T H E N I C K. The
[email protected]. I am available 24 seven three 65. For those that still suffer. So please reach out. You are not alone. Are you a sponsor by the way? I am seven men. Seven, seven. Wow. Yeah, that doesn't stretch it too thin. Oh, it does. It does. But I'm an addict I'm in, I'm addicted to helping.
Speaker 0 00:46:18 Yeah. I was just going to say that, that people pointed that out in treatment, like how you become addicted to other things, right? Oh, absolutely. Cross addiction. Totally true. That's why I say, if you are still living and breathing on this earth, you, yes, you you're in recovery from something, man, because life is full of addictions. I say, if you're going to be addicted to something, be addicted to something that gives love and is able to receive love. Couldn't have said it better than myself. Couldn't couldn't have said it better than myself. Couldn't have said it better myself. Hey, go, thank God for editing. Can't believe it's not butter.
Speaker 0 00:47:02 All right. Let's talk about some H O P E. Hope. Let's try that again. H O P E hope let's talk about some H O P E. Hope I locked it a lot. I lock a middle. Now it comes to the time where you have to get very vulnerable. Are you ready? Absolutely. When we talk about hope, we talk about something to look forward to something to be grateful for. Living in gratitude is such a big part of being a human being. It's in that gratitude that we find purpose it's in that gratitude that we find selflessness, purity, loving kindness. And that's, that's really the aim, right? The aim is for these ideals. What I want to know is what you want to say to that police officer that told you you couldn't park there. Hmm. That's interesting. What do you want to say to him?
Speaker 0 00:48:01 I would say, is it that this makes you uncomfortable? And the easiest answer is to send me home or did you really not notice all of the contraptions that were going into my car? Interesting. Yeah. I had an expectation of what you were going to say and you didn't say it and you know what expectations are, right? Yeah. Resentments under construction. Interesting. Yeah. That's what resentments are for me. Well, I think like when you think about it, I mean, this is a fucked up environment to be the current climate of things. When it comes to police officers, but good or bad, they are subjected to the worst case scenario. Every single day, that guy may have tried to save somebody who didn't want to be saved. However many times before he came into contact with me and had just become numb to the idea that you can save anybody and just thought, you know what?
Speaker 0 00:49:00 As long as he doesn't die here than at least I won't, I won't have to know the outcome. And that's that doesn't make that person a shitty person that, that dude may have seen a lot of death in his life who knows, maybe been confronted with a lot of really awful things. And just couldn't handle another one. Who knows. You said earlier that you think that, or you believe that part of an addict, part of the development of being an addict is in some ways, due to family history, genealogy, DNA, people that are genetically predisposed to be addicts. Sure. I don't wish this on anyone. How would you help one of your children? If they went to the same place you went, that's something that, uh, is like hands down the most difficult thing to deal with. Because when I tried to hang myself, it didn't work and I just kind of ended up slumped in my bed and police showed up and my son woke up and just saw me laying there and a bunch of officers and medics over the bed. And he's only 11 years old. I met so many addicts that a traumatic event when they were young or addiction in their family, like learning about it when they were young, almost created a type of normalcy. And my dad's in a wheelchair. It's fine. It's not gonna not gonna bother me. Like, I don't know.
Speaker 2 00:50:28 There was a kid sorry to like make this drawn out. But like, there was a kid who was 18 years old who talked about his parents and how they used and how, when they saw him use, when they learned that he was using, they didn't really do anything about it. They kind of were like, yeah, of course he would. They, they grasped the environment that they created for him. Even though they loved him, they thought that this was the course that he was always going to go down. They knew this was going to happen. And so they were no help to him. You shouldn't be 18 years old and having your fourth stint of treatment from heroin. Every time I saw that kid, I thought of my son, people in way less conditions, very minuscule in the scheme of things. And they become addicts because of what they perceive to be a really bad situation.
Speaker 2 00:51:22 There are starving children in Africa. It's kind of a mute point. Like your trauma is your trauma and it's however your brain processes it. Whether whatever you're able to deal with everybody's threshold is different. Knowing that this kid was in the worst of conditions and ended up being an addict. And then people who have been in perfect conditions become addicts. My son is in the middle ground where he unfortunately is aware that something happened to dad that made him have to be taken to the hospital and be there for eight days. He knows that I'm an addict. He knows that something happened to dad's brain, where it made him think that he had to have that in order to live. And I had to explain that to him. So he knows all of these things. And I don't know for sure what that's going to mean down the line.
Speaker 2 00:52:14 I was 13 when I got drunk the first time he's 11. My realm of understanding of like what I know in my life as using is coming up really fucking quick. Anybody with kids, you know, time flies by so fucking fast, the danger zone is coming up really fucking quick. I don't know if substance will be something that inhibits him or if he's going to be like his mom and be totally fine because I don't know how he's going to deal with this trauma later on in life. But what I would do if I was to have to drive him to a treatment facility, I would just let him know that every second of every day I and his mother are there for him, no matter what, any ounce of uncomfortability, we're there to help him understand it, not help him get over it, but understand it because there's two different things you can understand and not be able to get over things.
Speaker 2 00:53:14 But I think that when you understand you at least have the tools that you need to get over it that were there for him and that we'll do whatever it takes in order to help him stay alive. No ultimatums. He's a beautiful fucking boy. And he's so goddamned strong it, did you ever watch that? Um, that, uh, Chris, uh, that fucking basketball player, that was a opiate addict from blanking on the guy's name, but he played for the Boston Celtics. He was an addict, bad, bad, bad, long standing high functioning played some of the best games in his life while high on opiates, on Oxycontin and fucking insane. He almost died so many times when sobriety finally started to stick, he started giving his son his coins. Every time he gets a coin, he gives it to his boy, fuck me. When I saw that, well, first of all, the whole unit was just in tears.
Speaker 2 00:54:15 We were all just losing our fucking minds silently. Cause you know, men still stigma, which is crazy that there's still a stigma. Even when we're in the worst conditions, we still feel like we have to hide. Anyways. I called my son after that and I was just balling and was just apologizing up and down for how much I'd let him down. The things that I need to do when I get out of there. And the reason why, the things that I'm learning in here is so important so that he can have that again, because what he had before was, was part time, dad, he didn't get full me. That's such a huge fucking tragedy for him. Not that I'm a great person, but the simply the, the figure that your, your dad is here physically, but he's not there. He's not really available to me because he keeps doing this thing.
Speaker 2 00:55:08 He's, he's hiding in his office, drinking he's, you know, using these excuses to go drink other places and unavailable in a way that he truly needs. Cause he's a sensitive kid too. Yeah. I just sobbed like a fucking baby and told him how I knew I've got to get better and I've got to learn. And there was a point, cause there was a point where I thought I was going to leave early because I had figured out that whole survival thing, Oh man, I got this shit figured out. Now I know that I can go out into the world because I know X, Y. And after that, I was like, I'm staying because I don't know what I could learn tomorrow. So I'm going to stay for the full stent because what I learned in here could help him one day.
Speaker 0 00:55:50 When I hear you talk about your approach now, as a parent, as the collaborative parenting that you do with your wife and how you would approach things. Now, I always have to express my gratitude for my parents. What they did for me was the only thing they could do. And for them that was pray, pray, and never stopped. Loving me. Those are the two things that they did for me. They didn't give me any ultimatums. They didn't sit me in a room and write letters and tell me how my drinking and drugging has affected their lives. No, because they knew if they did that, I would probably die. I'd go in the opposite fucking direction. And the gratitude that comes from that is just a hope that by hearing this show, by hearing this testimony between Chris and I, that a parent can hear this, a parent can internalize this in a parent can use this speaking from an addict's perspective.
Speaker 0 00:56:58 That is what works. That's what worked for me. And the only way my parents knew how to do that was growing up in a family full of addicts. They stopped it. They stopped the whole going down the bloodline thing, family disease. They thought they had stopped it because neither of my parents are alcoholics or addicts. And they thought that if they provided a safe, nurturing household, I had an amazing childhood. I had an amazing childhood yet. Yeah. I got drunk for the first time when I was 12 years old and it never stopped until I was 29 years old. It never stopped and they couldn't stop it. And that powerlessness that they felt they've expressed that to me. But that powerlessness that they felt because they knew exactly what was happening. And they knew the heart. It was the hardest thing they could do is what they did to watch a son. Their only son go down this path that they tried so hard to prevent me from going down. I took a beeline man. I was on the aid train all the way.
Speaker 2 00:58:11 That's the scary thing about this, right? Is the fact that you can have the best conditions and still come out an addict that made me think of like when it comes to my son, cause my parents did tell me a lot that my, uh, my uncles were all addicts and they were all alcoholics, but that didn't change anything for me. When it came to using, I used around them and they didn't seem to give a shit. They just chalked it up to like, you'll get over it one day.
Speaker 0 00:58:38 It is exactly heal, heal. It's just a, it's just a boy thing. It's just, you know, it's just that late teens, early twenties thing, he'll grow out of it.
Speaker 2 00:58:47 That's one thing that I want to make sure that I don't do to my son is say, look what it did to me. I don't want to do that. Cause that doesn't matter what I, it has to be. If it comes to that point to say, what does it mean to you? What is it adding for you? And I don't mean like, is it making you more productive or any shit like that? I mean like, what does it deep down mean to you to have this in your life? And if you feel a connection to it, then maybe we need to look at some, some other options. But if you don't feel a connection to it and the use has gotten excessive, let's try and figure something else out before it gets to a point to where you aren't you anymore. Not for us, but you won't get to experience life the way that you want to on your own terms.
Speaker 0 00:59:33 And what's paramount is keeping those lines of communication, open absolutely information that you have resources that if they choose to ask, if they choose to inquire, you can tell them you can help. But like you said, you got to want it for yourself. I'm not going to fix you. We're not going to save you. We're going to love you. We're never going to stop loving you. And we can, we're going to help you in any way we can, but we're not going to fix you.
Speaker 2 01:00:01 I feel like we're co-parents and that we're actually having this conversation with my son. Yeah. And he's like, I want to talk about why you're married to this guy, Nick and not mom anymore. I'm like, all right. I asked to talk about your addiction.
Speaker 0 01:00:16 Stop staring into my baby blue eyes. Like you do that baby. Filthy mongrel feel violated. Let's move on. Oh yeah. Let's go from laughing to super fucking serious. You attempted suicide multiple times. So many people die from accidental overdose from suicide. So many people are dying out there every day. I don't know what the statistic is. Like every however many minutes an addict dies, but it's ridiculous. Oh yeah. It's ridiculous. And I'd rather not know that number of minutes every time an addict dies. What I want to know is why you aren't one of those statistics, my
Speaker 2 01:01:05 Wife and I have a connection that is unexplainable when it came to the near attempt. Well, that one was maybe a little easier, but the second attempt, because I had written letters, I had done these things for the first one where it seemed like some people it's not so much the suicide. It's the, the notion that you would do it. And you want people to understand that you would do it. That that's why they never follow through, but it gets so fucking close that if you feel like nobody's reaching out, then you're going to go for it, which is really scary thing. But for, for a lot of people there, somebody is able to intervene. That being said, the second attempt, zero indication that I was going to commit suicide, no letters, nothing, a hundred percent goal of not letting on at all. But I had that plan so that I could make it happen.
Speaker 2 01:01:59 She got off of work. I like I had done a bunch of times. I skipped out on a family event because I was in pain. I've done that a bunch of times. For some reason, this time felt different to her. My brother lives in the same town as us. And she was like, Hey, can you go check on Chris? Just, this is just something seems a little weird. And my brother found me in that garage, came hopped through the window and turned the car off and drug me into the house. So luck, I would say is really the only reason why I'm still here. The last two attempts, I had every intention of taking care of business. And yeah, it's there's, I shouldn't be here, which is, I don't say that often, because once you've attempted suicide for certain people, especially for me, because I I've used suicide as a symptom of a deeper issue.
Speaker 2 01:03:00 Right? So like the way that you wouldn't get upset with a cancer patient, because the chemo didn't work, that's out of their control. If a person's depression or whatever their mental situation is, if suicide is the outcome, then that's, that's not, that's not truly on them. Something happened. Something was changed. We're all designed to survive. Like we're, this is fucked up. We were viruses in a sense. We just want to breed in and survive like deep down at our core. So suicide goes against our nature completely. So something is broken. And when you attempt, like we talked about before you think that you're both protecting and attacking at the same time, so you're not wired to do that right out of the gate. Nobody comes out of the womb, trying to strangle themselves with an umbilical.
Speaker 0 01:03:54 My mom tried to do that to me.
Speaker 2 01:03:55 See what she tried to do that to you. You didn't try to do it to yourself. I love you mom. So I'm alive by luck, luck. It is. And don't don't test that shit. I don't care what your belief system is. If you feel in the back of your head, that there's going to be some divine intervention, you got to know that there's a 90% chance that you are going to knock it out of the park and fucking kill yourself. If you test the waters of suicide by pill overdose, you have an even stronger chance of, and it might not even be that you end it right there. You might fuck something up. And then you slowly die for the next however many months or however many years be a fucking nightmare. If you have those passing thoughts of suicide and you feel like it's made sense to you before, figure out how to undo that it only gets easier to attempt the next time. It only makes more sense the next time, because you've
Speaker 0 01:04:58 Your brain pattern. I have this weird shit grin on my face while you're talking about pill overdoses.
Speaker 2 01:05:05 Oh, that well, cause a lot of us addicts have done it.
Speaker 0 01:05:07 No, no. Yes. The no was the reason why I had a shit grin on my face. Couldn't stop smiling of what I believe in. I believe you are not one of those statistics is because of your purpose, call it what you want to call it. I think you're still here because of your purpose. And you've only scratched the surface. You've only scraped just a little bit off the top of this limitless load that lies beneath the surface. It's doing things like this, doing things like talking to your son, doing things like your podcast, duck, duck, gray Duke.
Speaker 2 01:05:47 Nailed it. Yes.
Speaker 0 01:05:50 That's strictly my opinion. And I am grateful that you've shared your purpose.
Speaker 2 01:05:55 This here with me. Well, thank you. I appreciate the kind words I love the way that you, you, you, you seem to have an almost theatrical way of displaying the way that you care. Not that you're trying to be theatrical, but there's a lot of levity to the way that you carry your words to people. I thought that, and I told you that in the parking lot that I thought you were older when we talked on the phone, I think that was the other part of it is like, you seem to want, you don't want it to just seem like a, like a check in, like we're not just checking in on somebody. The way that you speak is in a way that you're going to remember how this sounds. Maybe it sounds the attrical maybe it sounds whatever, but this isn't a passing conversation. You want to make sure that somebody will remember this and it will hit them in a way that makes them think about what their next step is. So thank you for doing
Speaker 0 01:06:54 Right on. All right. Question. And my final question, Chris, what do you want your legacy as a human being to,
Speaker 2 01:07:05 Hmm. I want what I love to consume me, bring content. If I'm able to make an impact with what we're doing with the podcast and stand up and all that other shit. Cool. Really what I want with all of those things, everything I've ever done, movies, photography, whatever it's based on connection. It's some type of connection throughout all of those things that I've tried to do. I sincerely want people to see me and feel like they know me and that I feel familiar so that they can learn from what I've been through. I think that people learn the most from those that they're closest to, right? That it seems like most of the time that the shit that sticks with you or the people that you care about and that have meant the most to you, or that have had some weight, like teachers can play a role there they're, there there's a connection. There's some type of connection. So I want my legacy to seem like my goal was to connect and that I wanted that to be important. And for the power of sincerity to carry through
Speaker 0 01:08:16 For other people, does that make sense? It makes sense. And you certainly have contributed to that legacy here tonight. I can tell from talking to you that you live it, you live it, feel it in my bones. Now I can feel, I can literally feel it in my bones that you live this purpose. So thank you for contributing to your legacy here tonight. Thank you for being vulnerable. Thank you for being honest. Thank you for being you, Chris. Well, thank you Nicholas. Hey again, I appreciate you. I appreciate you. Should we have an appreciation more and appreciate chef? I appreciate chef. Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining us here tonight. As always here on authentic and keeping authentic, we have to pay credit where credit is due, the musical stylings, you it on today's program to open the show.
Speaker 1 01:09:16 Mama mama, mama, mama,
Speaker 0 01:09:18 By muse. Then we got into Chris <inaudible>. Chris is PX. First break you heard underneath by Paul <inaudible> and to take us off
Speaker 1 01:09:32 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 01:09:38 Bye Noah Cyrus. Remember be good to yourselves it's ever so important.
Speaker 1 01:10:06 <inaudible>.
