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Speaker 1 00:03:20 Welcome to authentic. What's hot. What's happening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. My name is Nicholas Thomas Fitzsimmons Vanden Heuvel but most people just call me Nick. And this is my show off. Then Nick, where we do it often. Okay. That jingle is really coming along. It's getting snappy. I like it. It's getting real snappy. Maybe I'll get some help from my guests today on author, Nick, we talk about all things recovery. It's the idea that if you are still living and breathing on this earth, you, yes, you are in recovery from something. Life can be very lifelike. You could be in recovery from bullying, grief, mental illness, or in our case today, substance abuse. Sit in, listen with us. As we talk about experience, strength and hope. I'd like you to welcome in to the studio. My main man choice, choice. Welcome to the show. Thanks Nick. How the heck are you doing today?
Speaker 4 00:04:30 I'm doing pretty good. I had a fine nights rest. I had peanut butter toast and two cups of coffee, crunchy or
Speaker 1 00:04:37 Creamy peanut butter.
Speaker 4 00:04:38 It was creamy.
Speaker 1 00:04:40 Natural. You were supposed to say crunchy.
Speaker 4 00:04:43 I like crunchy better.
Speaker 1 00:04:45 We're supposed to say unnatural because it's supposed to be filled with sugar and
Speaker 4 00:04:50 Preservatives. It was, I mean, it
Speaker 1 00:04:52 Was fine. That's okay though. I made it about me, but that sounds like a wonderful meal. It was good. Good. Hey, welcome to the show. As I said today, we are going to be talking about substance abuse. I know a little bit about that. Yeah, you do. Well. We're going to talk about you. Well, actually, you're going to talk about
Speaker 4 00:05:09 Yourself. I know a little bit about me.
Speaker 1 00:05:11 Excellent. Let's get right into it. Okay. Okay. I would like you to give us a little background information about choice. What makes choice tick?
Speaker 4 00:05:20 What makes choice tick is music, poetry, words. I really like words and the way words go together. I love nature. I grew up in the woods kind of most, every summer was spent in the woods. I also had a super fascination as a kid with all things. First American, all things native American grew up in Minnesota left in 1990 to go out west to seek fortune and then came back here to the twin cities about eight years ago. Were you searching
Speaker 1 00:05:53 For gold in California?
Speaker 4 00:05:55 Everyone's searching for gold in California. I didn't know I was going to California. When I left. I took the Greyhound bus out of Minneapolis to go to the grand canyon where I wanted to be one of those employees that like takes the Brady bunch down the mountain on mules. You know, I wanted to do that. And then when I got there, I realized that that is the most coveted job in the grand canyon is to be one of those mule Cowboys. So I got hired on as a dishwasher before I even washed a dish. I was walking up with my white dishwasher uniform to head to the kitchen or the LTR hotel on the south rim of the grand canyon. And this gentleman rushed up to me and said, you could cook. Right? You know how to cook? I said, heck yeah, I know how to cook.
Speaker 4 00:06:40 And he said, good, because our cook died yesterday, rock climbing and we need a cook. And I was like, I'm your man. So I went downstairs, traded my dishwasher uniform before I ever watched a dish put on a chef's uniform and was cooking breakfast and lunch in this five-star hotel. And I stayed there until I basically learned how to do every job in the hotel. During the daytime shift, during the grand canyon, I met a guy who said, I'm moving to Santa Cruz, California. You guys should come. And I was all, let's go, went to Santa Cruz. And because my name was choice Pickens. And because I worked at the hotel, I could get a job in any restaurant that I wanted, as long as I knew how to skin a salmon or shuck an oyster or the difference between julienne and diced, I was in. And so my life in the food and beverage industry was on fire in the west.
Speaker 1 00:07:34 Yeah. Excellent. And you said your name was choice Pickens. Is it still choice
Speaker 4 00:07:38 Picking? Yeah. My name is Joyce Pickens. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:07:40 Just, just checking in. I just wanted to make sure I had a red guy in the studio today. Of
Speaker 4 00:07:45 Course it is. I choice P so leads to
Speaker 1 00:07:47 B. That was a vendetta batter story. My friends, yes. That reminds me that we chose a safe word just in case our stories get a little too long because we are after all out of control on a time limit, just like we are on this earth. We have limited amount of time. We got to pack in the good stuff as best we can. So we did choose a safe word or actually you chose safe words,
Speaker 4 00:08:13 Watermelon rind, watermelon
Speaker 1 00:08:15 Rind. That is actually my favorite part of the watermelon. Yeah, it let the most nutritious. I like to pickle it. Nice. Pickled watermelon rind. Fantastic. Actually I think that's disgusting. My favorite part of the watermelon is the actual flash, the pink delicious.
Speaker 4 00:08:29 I was going to ask for a CA a jar of your water pickled watermelon rind.
Speaker 1 00:08:34 I don't, I don't do that. Speaking of that watermelon Rhine.
Speaker 4 00:08:38 So you want to know what made me tick and that's kind of my initial story of food and beverage industry was my life for many, many years as a alcoholic drug addict. It was the perfect place for me to be for a long time. But you get to drink while you work. You get to go out for a smoke break, you get access to the nightlife and all the drugs that come with that.
Speaker 1 00:09:02 Talking about the thick of it. I really want to know when did it start?
Speaker 4 00:09:07 It started probably there's pictures of me as a two or three year old drinking beer out of the case of returnable bottles as a child. I think I was already obsessed with alcohol because that was what my father did. My mother and father drank. And my relatives drank. As soon as you turned 18, 19 or 21, depending on what year it was, then you were drinking legally. It seemed like conversations of my youth were all about, I can't wait until I can go buy alcohol and don't have to have somebody else buy it for me. Definitely. I was drinking every weekend as a 13, 14 year old. How did
Speaker 1 00:09:47 That start out? Was that with a group of friends? Were you drinking
Speaker 4 00:09:50 For sure? Yeah. I remember a group of us on our soccer team, just talking about one of them had experience with a lot of drinking with his cousins. It all kind of goes cousin for a while. He was like, we should get some Schlitz malt, liquor this weekend and you guys will all know what it's all about. And I think we were about 12 or 13 and I said, I'm in that sounds great. So a bunch of us got the deal going. We were all pretty much in for every weekend to do that. And then it became a part of our social life. It became a part of me intensely. Soon after that, with my cousins, I started smoking weed, which became my true love of life for many, many years.
Speaker 1 00:10:32 Your true love of life. What did marijuana do for you? It made me feel,
Speaker 4 00:10:38 I feel so funny and so great and so smart. It made me see things. It made me see music and hear art. And it made me feel at home no matter where I was, it made me invisible when I needed to be invisible. And it made me bright and shiny when it, when I needed to be noticed it was magic. And before I mentioned that I was into all things, first American native American, I became a marijuana shaman right off the bat. It was something I could use for whatever purpose I needed it. It was there for me. Yeah. And so that's why I, it became my constant companion from the age of 16 to my late forties.
Speaker 1 00:11:22 It was constant companion that you have. You said it made you great and made you funny. It made you smart or those things that you thought you weren't. I,
Speaker 4 00:11:33 It was funny, but I was funny because I needed to laugh because I believe as a child, I was super sad inside and I didn't know what to do about it, except for not acknowledge it and to put on an act. And so I put on act to try to fit in. So I wasn't. So my secret sadness wasn't exposed to my family or to my friends. I was a comedian as a kid. I remember doing things like telling my mom I'm, uh, I'm going to go take a bath. And then I would go downstairs to my room and I packed a suitcase to bring into the bathroom. And then she looked at me and she was watching TV. And then I went downstairs and got some more stuff, got the stereo and brought it into the bathroom. And then about 20 records and then a bowling ball. And then my pillow and blankets. And finally she's like, what are you doing? And I was like, I'm going to be in here a while. But all I wanted for her was to notice that I was bringing plenty of merchandise into the bathroom. So she would just say something to me like you're crazy.
Speaker 1 00:12:40 Right. You know, to get that attention.
Speaker 4 00:12:42 Yeah. And so my life was about that attention. And strangely of worthiness of this story, I wanted attention so bad. And I got attention so bad that I was the first homecoming king of my small town that wasn't on a sport that wasn't a captain of a team. And that didn't date a senior queen. It was purely on the fact that everybody in this town knew who I was. And then I was wild man, wild. And I feel like I was that shaman that was using that weed to like hypnotize everybody into being like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to be the president of the class. I'm going to be the homecoming king. No, one's going to not know who I am.
Speaker 1 00:13:25 So in essence, it wasn't the real choice doing all these things. Right. So who was doing it? The magic choice. Exactly. The magic choice, not the true choice because the true choice was depressed. Yeah. The true choice was sad. Did you even know why you were?
Speaker 4 00:13:43 I didn't even necessarily know that I was sad or depressed. It happened later in life when I was dating someone that said choice. Do you ever have the feeling that you might be really sad inside? Just pretending to be happy when she said it, it exploded my heart and I just bawled. I was like, oh my God, my whole life, I have been sad. Like the things that happened to me as a kid, these having a, my father was basically like the town drunk. It was so embarrassing to have a dad like that, that I had to be even more embarrassing than that. So the attention would be on me and not on him, not on the fact that he was showing up everywhere. Blitzed out of his mind. The fact was is that I was high as a kite and fond. Let's fast forward a little bit F F S
Speaker 1 00:14:31 Love that you use abbreviations, just like me. You'll get some of my sparkling polished gems or as I like to call them SPGs. Fantastic. Later on in this show, actually, I just gave you one. You're welcome. Thank you. You're welcome. That was a gift as P G. That was a gift. Yeah. Don't hide that in a bushel basket. I won't, that was a Jim Gaffigan reference. I've got to pay credit where credit's due. Good job. I'm really not that funny. I'm just a guy pretending to be funny. Oh, because inside, I'm not funny. Yeah. You let's FF a little bit. Here we go. We've gotten through high school. We were the homecoming king, all these things that you wanted to accomplish and all these things you thought you accomplished because of the substances you were using to go somewhere else to be someone else, right. Let's go past high school. Let's go into what that became, what all those things from the past, that sad choice, that reborn choice through substances. What did that shape?
Speaker 4 00:15:31 It's shaped into a young man who didn't think he deserved much out of life. Didn't know his worth in on earth had a sad streak of dating women whose fathers killed themselves. These women would come right up to me and put their head on my shoulder and tell me I was the greatest. I would think she likes me. She likes me. And I would fall in love with them right away, just because someone was paying attention to me and giving me that attention by the third suicide daughter, I was like, what is going on with my life? What am I going to? What, what is going on? And before I could do anything about it, I got her pregnant. When the reality that I was going to be a father happened, I said, well, I have to be better than my dad. I have to go beyond what was done to me and make sure that doesn't happen to any more in this line of people. By this time I had quit drinking alcohol for life and only smoked weed. So you
Speaker 1 00:16:31 Had sworn off the booze,
Speaker 4 00:16:33 Swore it off because I never wanted to wake up and feel like that crappy ever again.
Speaker 1 00:16:38 And you didn't want to be like, your
Speaker 4 00:16:40 Dad didn't want to be wrong. And I wanted to be this new kind of person I grew up in the seventies and eighties, and that it wasn't easy to get weed. Like it is. Now you might drive around for two days to try to score a bag that you needed to make last. It was a lifestyle of being kind of the weed guy, where I had to then pretty much buy and sell some weed, eventually growing weed with my ex-wife and my family in tow growing crops of weed. So we would never run out and then be able to impress our friends and neighbors with jars full of weed for their homecomings,
Speaker 1 00:17:16 The weed man, welcoming people home with his magical green or right at that point. Did you ever view your marijuana use as a problem?
Speaker 4 00:17:29 I started to because I was not only a father of a beautiful young son, but then every couple years another baby would happen and I had two daughters and I was like, why is this happening to me? I'm not even trying to have kids. And then I remembered it was from sex. I was having sex. So that's, what's going to happen. What was the question? Whenever I think about sex, I kind of, I kind of a, it's an end point. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:17:56 Question was thank you for repeating it. Absolutely. I should've said watermelon rind sooner. I though watermelon raft. The question was, when did you realize, oh, yes. That it was a problem, right?
Speaker 4 00:18:09 It became a problem. When, in absence of having my magic substance, I started to feel like shit, my partner would then also feel like
Speaker 1 00:18:18 Shit. Okay. What do you mean? Feel like shit.
Speaker 4 00:18:20 You would be really sad without your magic
Speaker 1 00:18:25 Back to the real choice, right? Which you did not want to be.
Speaker 4 00:18:30 Right. I didn't know how to be that starting very, in my thirties, I decided we need to quit this stuff. We should be natural people. We were like organic farmers and you know, lived out in the Hills and, and we're like into all things natural. We had our babies at home. I just caught those little slippery girls. It never lasted. It would last three days. And the mind would say that was a good break. It's time to go visit somebody and bring home the magic.
Speaker 1 00:18:59 The long in-between would you go in between highs? What would
Speaker 4 00:19:03 On a regular day? I would go in between every thing that I did, if I was going to start the dishes, I would have some smoke. And then when I was done with the dishes, I would have some more. What about
Speaker 1 00:19:15 When you were swearing it off? You're like, Hey, I got to quit this
Speaker 4 00:19:19 Right? The longest time I ever swore it off was six weeks. And it was when Frank Zappa died and my friends and I, this was before I had children. And we said in the name of Frank Zappa, who never did drugs, only smoked cigarettes and drank coffee. Let's all quit alcohol. We all are drugs and try to be sober
Speaker 1 00:19:38 Artists. So you did that for Frank Zappa, not for you.
Speaker 4 00:19:42 Exactly. When I did that after six weeks, I felt really great. And I was like, I don't think I'm going to go back. But my friend said, come on. That was just a thing. We just did it for Frank Zappa. We're not really quitting forever. And I really entertained that to do that. But then I went back to being in the gang and it was forever before I ever did that again, toward the end of my usage, which would be, you know, now two and a half years ago, I was about to go to France and I was using marijuana, Adderall and opiates. And I wanted to clean my system out because I didn't want to like get on the plane and not have any drugs and like arrive in France and be like a total jerk because we're our bands playing shows and France, it's like a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Speaker 4 00:20:33 So I quit for about five weeks. And then right before we were getting ready to go to France, I decided it's time to start up again. I won't be so addicted so I can just smoke weed today. I'll be fine. I just won't do the other drugs. So I started smoking weed. Again, scored a bunch of pills for the trip, went to France. And within eight hours of landing, I had a giant piece of hash, the size of a Bible. And I could bust off a piece and I was good for the whole three weeks in France. At this time when I was taking pills, nobody in the world knew I was doing that. Except for me, maybe the people got an idea that I was getting them from or stealing them from or taking them from. But I was so good at it. I don't know if they even noticed my bandmates, my significant other, nobody knew what I was up to. They all thought I was just the magic weed boy.
Speaker 1 00:21:28 So once again, you were hiding something.
Speaker 4 00:21:30 I was super hiding for about maybe like four years.
Speaker 1 00:21:34 What did you get out of that? Did you get a little, a little high, a little satisfaction that you're pulling, pulling the sheets over on people? Or was it the opposite of that? Was it anxiety written? Was it, oh my gosh, I can't let anybody know how fucked up this is.
Speaker 4 00:21:50 Right? That's exactly what I thought. Nobody can know how fucked up this is. Why? Because I was a pillar of goodness in a family and a structure of friends that the secret being led out, that I was addicted to different kinds of uppers and downers would be a tarnish on my halo.
Speaker 1 00:22:13 You were a pillar of goodness. Yeah. Let's go back to that. Did you think you were a pillar of goodness or do you think that's the persona that you had to put up? Because that's what you thought everybody wanted you to be. That's what everybody thought you were. That's the impression you got from everybody that that's what you wear. So that's what you have to do.
Speaker 4 00:22:34 That's what I have to be. I'm the big brother I have to take care of everybody. Well, everybody else is partying. That's one of the great reasons of swearing off alcohol at a fairly young age is that I'm in charge. Now I get to drive. I get to be the guy that everyone goes, oh my God, we got to go to the emergency room. You can drive. Like I was that guy. I'm an Eagle scout. Like I can take care of all these things.
Speaker 1 00:22:58 It's one of those wonderful paradoxes of life, especially that exists blatantly with people that suffer from addiction, the people that abused drugs to go somewhere else to be somebody else. You wanted to be all those things to other people yet you couldn't be that for yourself.
Speaker 4 00:23:14 Exactly. Like I was letting myself down on a daily basis. I didn't want to keep using. And sometimes I would tell myself, without telling the world to say, I'm going to quit. I would say, I'm going to quit. I ran out. So I'm not going to get any more. And I would make it a few days or a week and then something would happen and I would feel the need. Or I would trick myself into thinking there's a big show coming up with the band we need to, I need to get high. I need the magic to, I need to take that one hit before I perform, or I might.
Speaker 1 00:23:47 Okay. So this is moving forward. This is progressing. This is getting worse. You're taking Adderall, you're taking opiates. So there obviously was an end to that because you're sitting in front of me right now, clean and sober.
Speaker 4 00:24:02 How much time do you have
Speaker 1 00:24:03 Two and a half years. Congratulations. Excellent. Eventually that ended. How did that end?
Speaker 4 00:24:09 It ended with some brain problems I was having where I was entering into some states of psychosis that became obvious that I was saying and doing things that were problems for me. I was changing again, like I was changing to a worrisome point for my health. Another thing happened, whereas upon leaving California and moving to Minnesota, I knew that in my heart that if I got to Minnesota, I could get some help. Not only help with my raising my children, being a single dad, but help for my health from my family and my friends and my loved ones here. Some friends of mine from California were looking and cruising the Facebook. And they saw some pictures of me after I lived here for about five years. And they pretty much were straight up messaging me and said, choice. What are you up to? Because you look really old, you just got so old, so fast, what is going on?
Speaker 4 00:25:07 And it hit me. And I was like, they know something, the secret there's smart people. And it's true. I wasn't sleeping. I was working way too much. I was staying up all night, playing music all the time. And I wasn't taking care of myself at all. I did look in the mirror and I was 10 years older in two years and something was going on with me. And then with my brain thinking things were happening that weren't happening. And I would say, that's so great that you wrote that song about me. I love it. And they were, people would say choice. I didn't write that song about you. Like, what do you mean? Like I wrote it about my daughter and I was, I was thinking, oh my God, I'm thinking things are real. That aren't real. I was always thinking that my love was going to leave me. I was paranoid. I was freaking out all the time about my security in, in life. The fact that I was a sad person, trying not to be sad, but yet I was getting sad all the time, even when I was high. So something was definitely going on that made me feel like a change needed to be made.
Speaker 1 00:26:08 And what was working for you was no longer working for
Speaker 4 00:26:12 No matter how much I increased or decreased, it was still the same freaking out sadness going on.
Speaker 1 00:26:21 There's a catalyst at the end of this use, it has to be addressed. How was it addressed? What did that look like?
Speaker 4 00:26:26 Being the smart drug addict that I thought I said, I got to quit using these pills and quit marijuana. And I'm just going to microdose acid every day. I'll just take a little microdose and that'll be my new thing. And I'll still be a rock star and I'll still be a good person and everything will be great in the process of waiting and searching for the arrival of these micro doses from California. I was sober for about three days and the idea came to me that I actually felt good. All of a sudden it was like an explosion in my brain that said, be a sober person, just be a sober person, just be a sober person. Just be a silver person. It's cheaper. It's healthier. It's better for you. It's better for your relationships. It's better for your kids is better. Just be a sober person. All of a sudden I said it out loud. I said, I think I just want to be a sober person. My wonderful partner. Who's the smartest, best friend I ever had said, I'm not going to be your counselor. You need to get some help. And I said, damn it. You're right. She said, why don't you call Chris? Because he told you before he would take, take you to meetings whenever you wanted to go.
Speaker 1 00:27:33 All right. Let's hold off with a little watermelon rind because I want to keep that good stuff for a little help later on. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent watermelon.
Speaker 4 00:27:47 What else do you want to know? Nick? What
Speaker 1 00:27:48 I want to know is how long I have to keep talking before we actually play some music, five, four
Speaker 1 00:29:10 You're sitting here with Chas and he's telling us about his struggles with chemical dependency and his eventual journey into a place of recovery, be a sober person, be a sober person, be a sober person, had
Speaker 4 00:29:25 Cheerleaders in my mind telling me to do that. Where
Speaker 1 00:29:28 They female cheerleaders. They were
Speaker 4 00:29:30 Both. Oh, somebody. Yeah. Did they
Speaker 1 00:29:33 Have the big cone?
Speaker 4 00:29:35 They had big hones. And then they had the men had some nice muscles and they would just like throw everybody around you, sober
Speaker 1 00:29:42 Person, whew. Be a sober person, watermelon rind. So you're saying to yourself, be a sober person. I want to be a sober person. I want to be a sober person. And then you said it out loud to your partner. Right? Who then said what? She said?
Speaker 4 00:29:58 I said, I can't be your counselor choice. You're going to need some help. And I said, gosh, she is so smart. And she is so right. And she even gave me the name of somebody to call who I had told her before, you know what? Chris asked me if I wanted to go to a meeting, uh, I might go someday with him. And so she knew that I said that once and that she was maybe supposed to repeat that to me. So I did, I called a friend of mine. Who's also a musician and a really awesome person. I didn't know why he was in recovery. I didn't know what his drug of choices were or anything, or if he was alcohol, marijuana, opiates, whatever. So, but I knew he was in recovery and I didn't know very many people necessarily in recovery.
Speaker 1 00:30:41 Was that an exciting time for you? Were you pretty jazzed about that? Or were you like, oh shit. I've now decided that I want to be a sober person, but now what the hell do I do? Because this is all that I've known.
Speaker 4 00:30:54 I think about all the failures, all the three day failures, all the six week failures, all the six day failures of like, is it really possible? Can people really live without substances? So I decided that, yeah, I was indeed going to call him, call them in the middle of the day he's working. He's he is busy. He picked up my call. I said, you know, I'm thinking about being a sober person. And you told me that you would take me to a meeting sometime. And I was wondering if you're wanting to take me to a meeting and he said, choice, you just made my day. This is the greatest thing that's happened to me in a long time. And um, I'll see you at four o'clock at a meeting. He gave me the address. He said, please meet me here. And it's so exciting. I can't wait to see you we'll go out for pie afterwards. Let's get together. And so we went to this meeting, it was a speaker meeting where somebody gets up and tells their experience, strength and hope right away in my brain. I was like, I could do that better than that guy. I'm like way more addicted and a way better speaker. And I just like had this whole idea that it was a popularity contest
Speaker 1 00:31:57 And you wanted to be God's gift to recovery. I
Speaker 4 00:31:59 Wanted to be the boss of this place now, too. And then we went out to pie and we talked and uh, and I basically said that and he goes, oh yeah, he was really smart. And he basically said, yeah, that's kind of one way to think, but there's so much more to this program. There's so much more that you're going to experience in your near future about becoming a sober person. And basically he took me to meetings for a couple of weeks until I was on my own. And I realized that if I was going to be a sober person, I was going to need to be around sober people. Every day, every day I needed to be around sober, sober people.
Speaker 1 00:32:34 What did that actually look like for you? You say you want to be around silver people. How do you find these people? Where do they live? Do they, where do they wear name badges? Do they take out there? I'm in recovery.
Speaker 4 00:32:45 I'm getting us, you and me some recovers t-shirts
Speaker 1 00:32:49 Yes. Maybe a secret handshake.
Speaker 4 00:32:52 Yeah. Basically by re different recovery meetings around town, which these two towns we live in and have plenty of them. There's literature that people will politely give to you and say, there is no charge. Just take it. You can give back in the future. You can take it and give it to somebody else when you're done, keep coming back. It was always what I heard. And it became almost like a cheesy mantra at the end of meeting with fellow addicts, keep coming back. So these,
Speaker 1 00:33:23 Although addicts were now becoming what to you,
Speaker 4 00:33:27 We were a new community. They were in a new, they had experiences that I was going through and about to go through. There was access to phone numbers. There was access to fellowship of going out, just sitting and talking about things.
Speaker 1 00:33:45 So all of a sudden choice, Pickens is not alone. You're not alone with your feelings anymore. You're not hiding your drug use anymore. You're not hiding from who you really are because now you have an entire community of people that can relate to you on just about every level. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:34:04 After being sober for a while, you actually feel so healthy that I felt so great. I felt so awesome that I didn't think maybe I didn't, maybe I don't even need these people because I'm already healed. I'm 35 days sober and I feel better than I've ever felt in my whole entire life. And then when I was 45 days sober, I felt like I was going to die. I felt so sad. Something was so missing in my life. And when I would call some of my fellows and talk to them, they'd say choice. You're right on schedule, man, because you know what you have to do now, you have to learn that it's okay to feel sad. Everybody feels sad during my journey of trying to get sober, I try to do it on my own in so many ways, through going to therapy, trying anti-depressants meditation, Buddhism, all these different things that culminated at the time of actually getting sober. I already knew what meditation was and I knew how to meditate. I've been praying as a shaman, my whole life to a higher power to the universe. This higher power that I call God's mom, because God's my, my higher power had to be a little bit higher than most everybody's higher power.
Speaker 1 00:35:15 So does God's mom have a name?
Speaker 4 00:35:17 God's mom. It's just God's mom GM. Yeah. The GM. Me and my buddy were in a bathtub together on LSD and I found God's mom. I was like, whoa, I'm almost a God. Oh my God. I'm at God's mom.
Speaker 1 00:35:30 So you can actually think drugs for giving you a power greater than yourself, but there's a big, but having actual sober, meaningful contact with that was missing right. And sober, meaningful contact. What does that look like for you? What did that look like at the very beginning? When you were 45 days sober and people were, people were telling you, you know what choice you're right on schedule? What do you mean? I'm right on schedule to be depressed? Like, did you have like a map? Did you have a calendar? Like, okay. In day 44 choice will go from being elated to thoroughly depressed. And I can't wait for him to come.
Speaker 4 00:36:11 Oh yeah. When I would learn to access God's mom is my higher power. I would basically say, put me where you need me. Tell me what to do. I am at your mercy. I don't need anything from you, except for, to put me where I need to be.
Speaker 1 00:36:28 How fortunate you were to have that foundation to have that base, regardless of what you were putting into your body, regardless of what mind expanding substances you were using, you had a foundation. What would you say to people who don't have any foundation or a very limited foundation? You have all these tools. You had meditation, you had prayer, you had all these things that helped you. Once you got sober, you knew what to do. You had the tools in your belt. What about the people that don't have the tools,
Speaker 4 00:36:58 Those tools find those tools. Take time, take some time. I guess you need to ask for them, you need to pray. You need to meditate. And if you don't know what that means, you have to learn what that means. There's no other way to access a higher power than to ask for it from the universe, from whatever you believe is your higher power. You need to ask for that help.
Speaker 1 00:37:23 How do I do that? Right choice. I just want to do it right.
Speaker 4 00:37:27 There is no right way. There's only your way. Everybody has their own way to do it. You just do it. You can do it in the dark, or you can do it to a candle, or you can do it looking at the sun, staring right at the sun for Dolan. Yeah. But if you don't ask for help, you'll never get it. I'm fortunate that the tools that I did access this toolbox in my life and I've carried it, it's invisible and weighs nothing. And it's with me every day. I am extremely lucky in this life. Somehow the magic worked for my advantage and I wasn't meant to become a silver person till I was 48. When it happened, I knew it was right on schedule. I wasn't too late and I wasn't, I didn't waste my life. I just was meant to wise up at 48. Now I go to college. I am lucky enough that my children and my family loved me. Everyone's proud to know that I am blatantly a sober person and I'm also ready and able to help other sober people or people that want to become sober people. I'm the guy, if need to know how to do a higher power, I can sit with you and we can pray. Or we can meditate.
Speaker 1 00:38:42 That is actually a perfect time for my shameless plug. If you are experiencing any of these thoughts or feelings and you are having a hard time with this and don't know how to get out or can't eel, like you can't get out, please reach out to me and I will pass the message along to whoever's on the show. You can contact
[email protected]. That's a U T H E. Nick, N I C K. The
[email protected]. Again, that's
[email protected]. Please reach out. It may save your life watermelon, right? Oh, right. I see so much gratitude and so much light pouring out of your eyes. I wish everyone listening could actually see what I'm seeing. I wish everybody could see what I'm seeing. It's it's magical. It's beautiful. You said I was so fortunate to have these people around, to have this help who was instrumental, who were the core group of folks that helped
Speaker 4 00:39:45 My partner is the best friend I've ever had.
Speaker 1 00:39:48 What did, what did your partner provide for you? She
Speaker 4 00:39:51 Basically put up with me as a, what I believe I was sort of a liability. I think that she had hope that I was going to, I was on a path of ups and downs. I think that she believed that I would level off. At some point
Speaker 1 00:40:08 She shares shit. Wasn't going to be your therapist, but what
Speaker 4 00:40:10 Did she do? She supported me. How she, when I said I wanted to be sober, she said, I think that's a good idea. And when I wanted to be honest with her, to let my secrets out of the box, it was not easy for her to hear that because I think sometimes it is a, the partners that we choose in life are a big reflection of us for her. Just like I had these partners early in my life of women whose dads killed themselves. She had a partner that was a secret drug addict. She had to say, well, if he is going to get sober and he was a secret drug addict, I worship the fact that she put up with that. She supported me in sobriety, just the way she did also in my life, my sister and my sister and brother-in-law are sober people. They just quit as young people, they saw our families and the way that people were acting and they were becoming parents and they just said, oh, no more drinking for us. They weren't addict material. Like I was putting substance into my body for every day, for many, many decades.
Speaker 1 00:41:19 What did getting sober do to those relationships
Speaker 4 00:41:23 Created honesty that was lacking on my part. I believe some people love you enough to put up with your bullshit. When I started becoming honest, it started pouring out of me. I would never want to go back to the dark places of dishonesty in my relationships with the people. I love the fact that I have opened the book all the way, not just the pages. I want people to see and brag about my books all the way open. Now I do a thing in this world where I will blatantly say, oh yeah, this thing happened to me today. And it was so crazy. And then I'll say, actually, it didn't happen to me. It happened to somebody else, but it just sounded better in the story. If I said it happened to me, I become honest right after I tell a lie. Sometimes when I'm lying, I'm trying to tell the truth. Sometimes it's just amazing. What comes out of my mouth. I come clean right away and I always just say, wow, what is going on with me? And I, it's just a ongoing life of an addict to not be telling the truth
Speaker 1 00:42:29 That you had to want to have help as an ongoing addict. You said that you had to want to get help. What about the people that are teetering on the edge of, do I really want home? Do I, do I actually want help? Yes. I went home. No, actually, no, I don't want that help. What, what would you want people to know that are teetering on the edge of getting help, not getting help. That
Speaker 4 00:42:52 There is a immature, not fully developed person inside of an addict that you get stuck at a certain level that you can't go beyond. And I never knew it until I got sober. And when I became a totally sober person, I started to develop out of a sad little boy. It has made my life amazing. My brain works better. I wish so bad that as a teenager, somebody would have said, you know, you can be a sober person. It might give you a really good life. You might make way better choices than if you're just going to party your ass off your whole life. The things I get done in a regular day today are tenfold. What I used to get done in a week of being a addict, it feels so much more like I am a citizen of the planet earth that gets to touch and feel everything on the planet that I come in contact with.
Speaker 4 00:43:54 I live in a way that I am here today on earth and everything I see is way different than it used to be. I look people in the eyeballs when I talk to them or just when I meet them or when I hold the door for them or they hold the door for me, I used to not do that. I used to look at a person as a body. That's doing something, but now I look at a person that's a beautiful thing of spirit, a living being, I don't know. I don't know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 00:44:25 You have no idea what you're talking about, but I have an excellent idea of what you're talking about. And I'd want you to know that I love it. When you look me in the balls, the eyes, and I love it. When you open doors for me, it's my favorite. It's always a pleasure to see this aura, this spirit about you and it's effortless. It's so effortless. And that testimonial you just provided gives hope. It gives hope to people that are teetering on the edge of getting help or not getting help. I didn't know you as a person in active addiction, just by hearing the person that you described. And the person that I see in front of me today can only be explained by a transformation brought upon by getting help. And it was help that you had to want for yourself. So we're going to take a little break and we're going to blow your minds. When we get back with some more lovely words from Mr. Choice Pickett,
Speaker 1 00:46:23 Coming back. Welcome back, sitting here with Mr. Choice pecans. We're rapping about getting high and then stop and getting high. And then thinking about getting high, but not getting high in all seriousness. The reason that choice and I are sitting here is to let people know, if you struggle with chemical dependency, if you know, someone's struggling with chemical dependency, if you know someone that knows someone that's struggling from chemical dependency, let them know, let yourself know, allow yourself to internalize that you are not alone, as despaired as you feel as alienated as you feel. That is not the reality. The reality is that there is help. There is support, but we got that. But word in there again, because you have to want it for yourself. And that's what makes it meaningful. That's what makes it yours. And no one else can take that away. Choice. Talked about you getting some help, right? Who was helping you out? What was helpful? What wasn't for you when you first got clean and sober people around you, certain experiences,
Speaker 4 00:47:35 Right? Like I played music and clubs and concerts and stuff. And it's like the only part time job, or, you know, besides the bartender, maybe, but you're at a part-time job where you're getting paid in alcohol and it's not frowned upon in the least to use drugs, to make the workplace better. With the absence of my using drugs to make the workplace better. I found it harder to be in those places. I found it. Actually, I had to take a break from playing music because I didn't know if I was going to play music anymore. I was using that magic to make music and to make music without magic was possibly not going to happen in my mind. So I took some time off and I remember even thinking, okay, well, let's get down to the basement of all basements and try to make some music.
Speaker 4 00:48:29 I just felt sick. I felt like, what am I doing here? Like, I don't even like being here. I don't even like holding this guitar. I don't like anything. I don't like it. I went home thinking maybe I'm not going to do this anymore. So it took him even more of a break. And then there was some dates on the calendar that that could not be broke. So we needed to go perform. So I needed to rehearse and I needed to get these shows done. I can't remember the first one was, but when the drums clicked, boom, boom 1, 2, 3, 4, and it was time to go. The magic came back. Even as a sober person, I was singing, playing my guitar, dancing around. People were watching and people were clapping and loved it. And that was truly lovely. The next time it happened, it happened again.
Speaker 4 00:49:16 So I realized I can access this beautiful feeling without chemicals in my body during this time. Folks, if you had any questions, like I felt my brain was rewiring to access the magic without chemicals, any sort of weirdness that I had done to myself through the use of brain altering chemicals was I could tell it was fixing itself by accessing good times without chemicals. That is a miracle that made me feel like everything was going to be okay. Even though it might take me a little while to feel comfortable hanging out in Palmer's bar all night, waiting to play at midnight. Eventually I know that it's getting easier every time and that my brain is changing. I can feel it changing.
Speaker 1 00:50:09 And not only is it getting easier for you, but if you go back even further than that, you said it is possible. Doesn't mean that you had to do it. This thing that you used to do that was fueled that you thought was made better. That was improved. That was enhanced through these drugs and through alcohol. That wasn't necessarily true. And it was possible to go back to something that was always hand in hand with your drug of choice, always hand in hand. That doesn't mean that you have to go back to playing music. It just means that you realized it's possible. For sure. That's what is so wonderful in my opinion, about getting to a place where you can say, Hey, I'm working on a life in recovery. Is that all the sudden anything is possible. Anything is possible. But I got to put in the work. What I really want to know is, okay, you've stopped using drugs and alcohol and all that. Okay, you got a little bit of help. Actually. You got a lot of better help. We all need a lot of, bit of help. What are you doing personally, to nourish, to feed, to further your own sobriety? What does that look like?
Speaker 4 00:51:23 I actually gave up the life of a chef because that was something that I realized I didn't really like if I wasn't high in general, I basically prayed and asked for signs. What should I do? God's mom, what should I, what's my next move in this life. I know I want to keep playing music. I need to make money because everyone knows you can't make much money playing music unless your choice Pickens and the money will come because dreams have started coming true for choice Pickens people actually like buy records with songs that I wrote at the electric fetus or at barely brothers records or wherever it can be. People download songs that I wrote on the internet. That's a full on dream that has started to come true for me. There's so many. I can't even, uh, I would take the three hours to talk about all the things that have started happening for me in this life or
Speaker 1 00:52:22 Problem to have. It's so
Speaker 4 00:52:23 Great because I couldn't get anything done.
Speaker 1 00:52:26 You're talking about all these new things that you're doing, and this is how you nourish it. This is how you feed it. This is how you let it grow. Give it sunlight, maybe some nitrogen, nice fertile, sober soil to work with. Okay. So that's what works for you. How do you reach out to people that are still struggling? Because at the end of the day, isn't that the most important thing to you? Totally
Speaker 4 00:52:49 Pardon in all my watermelon rioting all over the place. I wanted to get to the fact that as I was looking for answers, young men would come up to me and say, yeah, I, I really like, uh, what you have to say about being a sober choice, or I really like that. You're not afraid be openly sober. We, you guide to me, do you know what I should do to be openly sober? And I thought, wow, I was looking for answers on what to do. And these people are coming to ask me for answers on what to do. Maybe I should get into this helping profession and help people. So I signed up for classes and I'm on my way to get a bachelor's degree, to be a licensed alcohol and drug counselor, every step of the pathway, every river rock that opens in this river of life.
Speaker 4 00:53:39 For me crossing the river, it becomes very apparent that I'm on the right path. And I work in the recovery business with young men who are addicted or having serious mental problems, co-occurring disorders as we call them. And that's one thing I wanted to bring up is there was a reason why I wanted to be high my whole life. And it's because that I had depression. So many people have undiagnosed mental condition that is sadness or sadness, then happiness, then happiness, then sadness. And, and all these things that we self-medicate for it's feels so much better to not be sad. But we realized that there's an issue inside of us, of why we are sad and it actually can be worked on and can be fixed without self-medicating and without causing so many problems in our lives. There's solutions out there that have to do with self care, nutrition, and exercise and all these other ways to get our brains happy that don't have to do with smoking and drinking and feeling well,
Speaker 1 00:54:48 There are so many solutions out there once I want it for myself. How do I access these solutions? It's by asking other people it's about inquiring about literature. It's about getting honest in my humble opinion. That was the number one thing was getting honest. If you are struggling with any one of those things or all of those things, and don't know how to ask for help, or don't know who to ask for help, please, please, please, please, please reach out to me at authentic one at g-mail dot com. That is a U T H E N I C
[email protected]. If I cannot help you personally, I can put you in touch with someone that can, you are not alone.
Speaker 4 00:55:38 Get honest.
Speaker 1 00:55:39 Many people die prematurely from chemical dependency could be suicide overdose, any other multitude of ways people pass away and it couldn't be ever more present with the explosion of opioid addiction choice. Why do you think you were not one of those statistics?
Speaker 4 00:56:00 I have four children. I needed to hold it together just at a level so I could take care of them their life time, and also be there for them. And again, I didn't get into this parenting business to be like my own father. I needed to hold it together. When I would go beyond a safe level of behavior, I would probably get a little help from God's mom to be like, dude, you need to hold this together. You need to bring home the bacon. You need to love your kids in my family alone. There's suicides. There's overdoses. There's a lot of gentlemen who lived to be about 48 before they drink and smoke themselves to death. Their hearts just can't take it anymore. Their brains just fry. I had this amazing angel of a father in my life that loved me more than loved me and my sisters more than anything in this whole world, but he couldn't hold it together.
Speaker 4 00:56:57 And pretty much was a homeless drug addict. In the very end. He couldn't talk anymore. He couldn't flirt with women. He couldn't do anything because of the chemicals had fried his brain. And so all these examples in my life have basically put, stop marker on me. You don't want to be like that guy. You set out on this life to not be like that. Guy. Parents have a power over us that whether it's good or bad, we look to them for answers. I look to my dad and still talk to him on this day after he's not even on this earth. The examples that he gave for me though, traumatizing in some ways were also examples of how not to be. And maybe as he progressed in his addictions, his examples of how not to be we're all for me. Maybe I was supposed to see all that to be like, I'm never doing math because my dad did math in prison and became an addict. Or I can't be trusted to move to. I always have to have some partners in crime that are smarter than me to keep me in line. I can't be on my own. So I always try to choose people around me that are smarter than me. And that can help me
Speaker 1 00:58:14 Because you aren't one of those statistics, okay? You aren't, I'm not, you're sitting right
Speaker 4 00:58:20 Healthier than I've ever been in my life. Saxy I play tennis.
Speaker 1 00:58:26 I cannot imagine you playing tennis. And now I'm imagining it. And it's glorious tennis elbow.
Speaker 4 00:58:31 He's got the
Speaker 1 00:58:32 Elbow he's got, he's got the T man. He's got it hard because you aren't one of those statistics. What do you want your legacy as a human being to be everybody,
Speaker 4 00:58:44 Not everybody. If you have any feeling humans of the earth, if you have any feeling that you might be suffering or afflicted with this thing called addiction, you probably are. You probably are. And there's all these movies and shows on TV intervention and all this stuff that make it look like it's so terrible and so hard. If you're willing and able to listen to other people that want to help you, you can get help and you can change and you can heal your body and your mind in so many different ways that you can function and thrive on planet earth by eating good food and getting a little exercise, having wonderful relationships with other people. Everybody has their story of their addiction. Mine can have some very sad, terrible things that happen in my life, but I really focus on the love and the good ending of it all.
Speaker 4 00:59:47 It wasn't that bad and it fucking rules now being sober. If I would've known, like I said before, if I would've known as a 15 year old, that I could heal my brain and feel good every day. But when I threw up from drinking alcohol, when I was a kid, my first thought was like, Hmm, maybe I should just do mushrooms and pot. I got to have something because I don't know anybody who doesn't have something that they do. And I don't want to just smoke cigarettes. That's kind of gross. I never had an example of sober people. And so Nick, it's really great that you have this podcast to access the fact that there are sober people out there actually sober people want to help people join our gang, especially if you want. I don't want to like take a normal normy person and make them into us.
Speaker 4 01:00:36 I want to help the addict that suffers to come into our little group of fun people that enjoy all the food that we eat and enjoy the conversations and enjoy looking at people in the, I enjoy learning about life on planet earth that doesn't have to do with getting high or wasted or F up or loose and all that terminology that comes based out of just not feeling good. Why would you want to get high unless you were low to begin with? I just like being real, I think, or some somewhere in the middle right now. And I never felt like it would feel so great to just be on peanut butter and coffee
Speaker 1 01:01:20 Choice. Thank you so much for being real with me, for getting authentic here on authentic. I truly felt your presence, your sober presence. I feel your energy. I want you to know that it's been an honor and honor, to hear some of your story and to hear your experience, to hear your strength and to hear your whole
Speaker 4 01:01:44 Yeah. Well, thanks for having me. And I just remember to the first minutes when we met Nick and I, and I just knew that we were in the right place at the right time to do something, not just for you and I, but for this earth and these humans, because of
Speaker 1 01:02:02 That experience, I get the opportunity, the pleasure, the gift of sharing with you, your legacy choices, legacy of love, the cl squared. Dig it, man. C L squared. That's right. Joyce's legacy of love. Well, thank you. Once again, honestly, it has been a privilege for me to be sitting across from you looking into your eyes, hearing deep down in your bones, in your soul, what it is that makes you tick, what it is that used to make you tick and how much better it is now. Yeah. Straight from my guts. Yeah. Those are some party guts bar. That is all the time we have for today's episode on authentic. Don't ever forget. Be good to yourselves. It's important.
