From Meth, Fentanyl, and Chaos to Purpose | Scott’s Recovery Story

Scott shares his story of addiction, toxic relationships, homelessness, relapse, survival, and the moment recovery became about helping other people stay alive. 

SEIU-West –
Wellness News –
Parenting in the Storm – 

Email Scott

thelastcurbguy@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Either everybody everybody's experienced this mass psychosis or shadow people really exist.

SPEAKER_02 0:07

This is Hard Knox Talks. Scott, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Thank you, Daniel.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Yeah, let's get right into it, man. When did drugs get started in your life? Um, around 13 years old. Was that something that you grew up around? Was that something that was in your life that you couldn't wait to try, or did it come out of left field?

SPEAKER_00 0:26

My family were uh they were not big drinkers. Um I grew up in a LDS family. What's LDS? Latter-day Saints.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Oh, okay. Huh. So at 13 years old, what what happened?

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Like, how did you how did this present itself? First beer I had was a Warm Select 55. Uh, it was stolen from my buddy's garage. I drank that beer in my room, uh, and it was granted the best beer I've ever had in my life. And if you've ever had a warm select 55, it's not good. It's not a good taste.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

But what was good about it? What did it make you feel something you'd never felt before, or did it take away a feeling that you didn't know you had?

SPEAKER_00 1:08

That's a good question. It definitely um made me feel something I'd never felt before. I felt um accepted. Uh I was able to, that night, I was able to like um do the dishes without like arguing with my mom, just stuff like that. Um, I was able to like socialize at dinner. I'd imagine like after school, one beer to a 12-year-old kid would be like three or four beers to a full-grown adult on an empty stomach. So I was feeling pretty good when I drank that beer. Like, I want to feel like this the rest of my life, like every day. If it was like this coming to moment, I found pain pills around 15 years old. A friend had just given them to me. And uh so I pretty much numbed out until I was 17. Um, and then at 17, I uh uh my parents were really scared at that point, and they sent me to a youth home called Westridge Academy. At that point, I hadn't really tasted any desperation in my addiction only, only really the fun part of things, only really the coming to parting to part of things and the partying and uh uh having fun with my friends. So I was kind of it felt like I was ripped out of my friend group, ripped out of my high school, ripped out of my life. Um, I was sent to that school, and uh no one really believed the extent of my addiction at that time. They didn't really think I was taking that many pain pills. So I went through some pretty hard withdrawals at that school. The first two weeks at that school, you're on a two-inch mat on the floor. That's what you sleep on. You have no, you're not allowed to have pants or shoes. You uh you have a rope with a blanket tied around you, and you're on something called SEC, which is uh um pretty much just like lockdown. Rough place. Um, you have a rope with a blanket tied around you so you don't run from the school. You're not allowed to have shoes, and you sit in a room with no schooling, no books, no nothing, and you you sit in a room for 12 hours a day, and then you sleep on a mat on the floor with other kids, uh, just out in this living room with night watch. These people, these guys that watch you at night, make sure you don't run from the school. Slowly you're integrated into the school in a more normal way, but non-normal is not, it's really not normal. You're when you you're sat down, they shave your head, you're given a number, and uh uh you're separated into group homes. And I was in like a group home C for drug addicts. A lot of abuse there, a lot of physical abuse from staff, uh, a lot of sexual abuse from staff. Um, and uh I was 17 at the time, so I was able to defend myself a lot of the time, but um uh kids that I knew were not able to defend themselves. But I'm pretty when I'm threatened, I'm pretty mean. And so I'm very Irish about it. And uh when I'm threatened, sorry, I'm very irish about it. And uh um I got to this point where I was like, dude, I got to um I have to comply to a certain extent to make this livable, and there was some good parts. Um there's some crap that went on there, there was some good parts. I was able to graduate with a 4.0 from a school called Westridge Academy. On paper, it looks pretty good. Um, but uh up close it was not that fun. It was a bad terrible experience, really. Um, and it really just fueled, it really just fueled this feeling of disconnection that I had since I was a kid. And so when I got out of the school, I kind of erupted, really went off the rails, started using heroin and uh meth at the same time. At the time, I think I was just snorting at um my buddy John. Uh he hit me up one day when I got out of Westridge and he's like, let's smoke smoke some weed, dude. And I was like, I'm down. I went over to his house and he sprinkled brown powder on the bowl. And uh then he sniffed some and uh, you know, I asked him for some and he uh yeah, he gave it to me. And um, John later died that month from a heroin overdose. Um, and he was like the first friend I lost. When I turned 21, I was uh working at this car wash. The car wash was a sketchy car wash. It was uh it was easily a front for like something like um sketchy car wash, a lot of meth being sold out of the car wash, a lot of just crap. I got my tax return. I remember I got kicked out of my living situation. I got my tax return, I got about six to seven thousand dollars. Went to a hotel and just loaded up on every drug I could. I woke up to an ambulance, to someone narcanning me. I swung on the paramedic that narcanned me. And um he's like, dude, I just I just saved your life, man. Like um, he swung on me, and uh uh luckily he was able to calm me down. Um, no charges were pressed or anything. And this is when things were honestly light, like, like lighter in my drug addiction. I wasn't really doing that bad in in in retrospect of my story. So it's still the good part. This is still the lighter part, I think.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

When you're getting narc hand and swinging on paramedics, and we're not at the bad part yet.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Well, I was able to go to rehab. I was able to go to rehab. Uh the first rehab that I went to was Turning Point up in um Sandy. And uh it's a great rehab. I just got a lot of self-knowledge from there, which if you're an addict and you understand I think self-knowledge only gets you this much in being uh an alcoholic and trying to find some some uh uh convalescence or health in your life. You can really know so much. Uh you can know anything about yourself and then still still drink. Um, and that's just how it is. And so um I gained a lot of self-knowledge, and that was a lot of bull crap. I lived in a sober living for two or three months, uh, picked up a rack of beer, moved in with a buddy, um, leaving the sober living and started the cycle all over again. At the time, I was working as a tower climber for a buddy's dad. Um, we would subcontract, go hang these microwave dishes in um Colorado and stuff. And I was uh on a tower about 300 feet in the air, nodding out. And luckily he fired me. And I say luckily because I could have I could have really hurt myself doing that that line of work.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Were you like were you using on the tower? Like you're up 300 feet in the air and you're and you're shooting dope. Yeah, yeah. Wow. That was uh that's a new one for this show.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Yeah, dude. And uh uh I I just feel I feel really bad about it um because it's like he gave me this opportunity and I slaundered it, and he uh he's still just such a good guy. Um every time he sees me, he's he's just all love. I got a lot of love for for that guy. But moving on from that, um I uh I met another girl. We dated for about five years. Um, and uh she at the worst of it, she hit me with a car and broke my neck. The physical, like the physical abuse started happening when she was drunk. She would just wail on me. And she was so small, I would just take it. She was a model and she was addicted to coke. And uh that combination is just always really hard. Uh alcohol and cocaine. I feel like it lends in violence a lot. Um she one time she she was hitting on me. I the neighbors called the cops. I opened the door, and she saw that I had this huge scratch on my neck and a black eye. And I the cops came into the apartment, they separated me and Ashley, and they interrogated kind of both of us on what went on. The cop asked me what went on, and I was just completely honest with him. I was, I said, dude, I'm a heroin addict. I don't think I'm good for this girl, and I'm trying to leave, and this is what this was the real situation. I was trying to leave the apartment, and she was restricting me from leaving the apartment and hitting me and closing the door and grabbing me. And uh, so I told him the truth. I am trying to get out of here because I'm trying to go to rehab, and she's not letting me. I really was trying to do that at the time, and so she caught a domestic violence charge and was arrested. And uh, I was able to leave her apartment with two black eyes and uh uh just a backpack and just bleeding. And I finally left her apartment and I called my buddy Drew and I said, I need your help. And he got me out of there. I went to um I went to Ardu for about two months, the rehab um out here in Utah. It's called Ardu. And uh that was a great rehab, but it was just the cycle again. If I ended up leaving the rehab, and I felt like I couldn't live without her, and she couldn't live without me. It was so codependent and so toxic. I just I felt like I loved her so much, but I at the time I really didn't know what love was. I am a full-hearted believer that there is another realm, uh, and this is a little out there, it's a little out there, but there's another realm to meth abuse that people don't understand. Um, there's a whole nother dimension that is full. I think it is full of demons, um, demonic entities, uh, energies, and I think they can a hundred percent, especially with amphetamines, get you in this place, get a person in this place that would look like demonic possession or something like that. Either everybody's experiencing a mass psychosis. There's too many similarities. Either everybody everybody's experienced this mass psychosis or shadow people really exist. She would do things like uh convince me that I was being gang stalked. She would pay people, she would pay people to follow me to make me paranoid. Um all sorts of stuff. Um and I think she I think she was just evil. I don't really know how to put that in any other way. I think she was just evil. Um, I think she was definitely possessed. She she messed around with a lot of uh witchcraft and stuff like that, and uh her entire face would change. Like, I don't really know how to say that, but she would get into this angry place where she would be taken, it seemed like she would be taken over by something that was like possessive or like a demon. And she was just so sly about it. It's just crazy things started happening in my life. She started putting these spells on me, which sounds crazy, but she started like putting these spells on me, and like these my life started actually taking a turn of like for the worst. But gang stalking was a huge one. Gang stalking was the was the major one that I felt like I was a victim of some type of government program or something like that. Like black SUVs would start following me, I'd start seeing them everywhere. Uh, I'd start seeing the same car with the same license plate almost everywhere I'd go. It was like this orange, it was like this orange uh Subaru. I had a couple times, I had a couple times where police officers would walk up to me and they would like know me. Uh just weird situations like that. Like one time I got stopped on the highway and the police officer pulled me over and just said, like, hey, like, hey Scott, like, how are you doing? And then just like didn't even had a re have a reason to pull me over, didn't I d me or anything? He just knew my name and started making conversation with me, and then ended up leaving. And just these weird things were happening where it was just like it just couldn't, it just didn't feel like coincidence. Um uh I'd have this ended up being her, but I'd have like air tags in weird places, like like in my van, uh in hubcaps, stuff like that on my van, on my cars. I've always kind of had a suspicion that I've been like I was part of like some government program, but I've I'm I am known to be a conspiracy theorist. So she definitely knew about my paranoia with it, and she definitely played into it. And she definitely like I said, some of the air tags ended up being her that were planted on my van, and she knew that would spark off like this paranoia in my mind, and it would keep me sick, and it would keep me like hers, pretty much. I would be trying to get sober and like be going to AA and stuff like that, and she would go by buy drugs, put them in my pocket so I would find them one day, and it would be harder for me to quit. Like she was to her core evil. I have dinner with my parents this one night. They realize I have a black eye. My dad comes to me and he says, Scotty, do you need out of this relationship? Like, is this a like he didn't understand that I was trapped there, and he finally understood that I was. And uh he said, Do you need out of this relationship? And I do. And he uh so he uh he said, Okay. He helped me get a van, and one night I just dipped. I just left. I I wait waited till she was asleep, I grabbed a backpack. It she woke up and chased me with a chased me with like a knife or something down the hall. And uh uh I I finally was able to leave. And I just jetted to St. George. At the time I was using a lot. Um, it's a miracle that I made that drive. Um it's a miracle that I made that drive alive. I was using a lot at the time, and I feel a lot of remorse for ever driving like that, ever driving intoxicated. I um to think that to think that I could have ever put anybody in in any situation where it could have hurt them or something like that, it just breaks my heart. Um, but I I had to save my life, and so I got I got out of his apartment and I went down to St. George. Yeah, so going down to St. George at the time I had a uh I had a pit bull named Jada. Um I adopted her at like 13 years old from this family that um just only fed her enchiladas and uh like she was a pretty unhealthy dog. So I adopted her and decided to get her healthy. And she she uh she was a great companion. Um she was a great fire alarm, or she was a great security alarm, a great uh heating blanket at night uh in the van and a great companion. And uh uh I moved down to St. George with her and I stayed in that van for about two years. Uh the first two months of it, I had to come off fentanyl and uh I had to come off fentanyl and uh a meth because I was making this decision at the time to get sober. If I was gonna change my life with this girl, I needed to get sober. Um if I was gonna make this direction with my life go a different way in any in any way I could. And so um I was just strung out in this van for the first two weeks um with just um with these fentanyl withdrawals. Um, this was the first time that I had done that without a detox center. Um without I just decided to do it alone. The van was cool, it was fully decked out. It had this they had this uh queen size bed in the back that was folded out and it was heated. Jada, of course, the dog, she got the queen size bed because she was a princess and she was old. And I slept in a hammock that was strung from the back of the van to the front of the van on the inside. And I just slept in that hammock the whole time. It was a good experience, honestly, once the withdrawals started, it started getting really good. I started finding some convalescence, I started finding some health. Um, my buddy Knox, he moved down there with me. He lived in a Ford Ranger and he lived in the back. Um, he completely decked out the back of it. And uh we worked at this car wash down there called Freddy's, and we just decided to start our lives over because he was an addict and alcoholic too. He needed to find some health too. And he was getting out of, we had a scarily, eerily similar situation. He was getting out of a very toxic relationship as well. And um, he's just like a brother to me. We've been through the through thick and thin together. And uh he got me this job at the car wash. We worked there, and I just decided I just need to show up for myself. I'm gonna give myself a year, and if it doesn't work out, I'm gonna go back to drugs. That was my decision. I had never really given myself a chance, so I just decided, okay, a year. And then if it doesn't work out, if I'm just as miserable as when I first started this whole thing out, I'll just start using it again. It's whatever, you know. And then one day I was working at that car wash and at this Denny's down in St. George. I was cooking, and I got my checks, and something in me just said, just go down to Windover, man. It's which is uh or no, mesquite. Just go down to mesquite and gamble. And so um went down to mesquite, gambled for a while. I'd had a few beers, uh, and at that time I'd been sober for a while, been sober for four or five months, coming off uh the fentanyl and uh the drugs. And I gambled a little bit, I drank a little bit. Um, then this guy approached me and he offered me a line of meth, and I took that, and then I bought some off of him, and then I bought an ape all off of him. Long story short, I ended up stealing a motorcycle and crashing it in Santa Clara, Utah, running from the police. That's how intoxicated I got that night.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

That all happened. So you woke up in the morning and you were sober, and then at the end of the day, you were running from the cops on a stolen motorcycle.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Yes. I crashed it in Santa Clara, it broke both my arms. They cuffed me, threw me in the ambulance, and they I remember I was uh just in so much pain in those handcuffs because both my arms are broken and they're behind my back, and I was just kind of just in the back of the cop car, just trying to hold it together. When I get arrested, I'm pretty I'm very respectful with police officers. I've never been disrespectful with police officers, really. If I if I get arrested, it's kind of this energy of like, like, I understand that you got me, I understand that I was in the wrong. Let's just get this over with and let's participate with each other so this goes smoothly. That's kind of the energy that I give off when I get arrested, which I advise a lot of people to do. Um, but um, it works out. It works out a little bit better. Always consult a lawyer before you engage in any illegal activities. Yes. Well, that's the the first thing I remember I uh I crashed the motor. I was laying on the ground and I was just thinking, why didn't I die? I was just thinking, why why the hell didn't I die? Were you trying to die? No, but like um I knew where I was headed, and it's like I I couldn't believe what I had just done. I lifted a motorcycle off this random gas station and drove it through that through that gorge at 100 miles per hour on meth and slammed it, T-boned it into this car in Santa Clara, and uh broke, yeah, broke both my arms, my ankle. Um, and I get to jail and they put me in the cell in medical. And I remember I got my first meal and my celly, um, I was trying to feed myself, and my celly he said, Do you need me to feed you, dude? And I was like, I was like, Yeah, man. And that bless his heart. We're still good friends. He fed me for a while, fed me for two or three weeks while I was able to learn how to kind of get food to my face. Um I I only laugh because it's just uh it's just a crazy experience. Um, I called my dad from jail. He was not willing to bail me out. Um, my dad is a wonderful man and he's very generous and he's very understanding. At the time, he wasn't willing to bail me out, um uh just out of principle. You know what I mean? I had been so uh crazy, and he he figured if he's in jail, then at least he's safe, which I totally get. I totally understand him for that. And I I pretty much understood that at the time. But I got transported up to Salt Lake City, and when you get to Salt Lake City, they pretty much release you for anything, anything down here. If you get booked in Salt Lake, there you can kind of get away with a lot down here, and they'll just kind of release you and then just expect you to push up to your court date. So I got transported to Salt Lake City, they immediately released me, even though it was on a pretty heavy charge, a pretty heavy, heavy theft charge. I only did I only did probably two months at the time in jail. And uh maybe even less than that, uh, maybe a little less than that, a couple weeks. Um yeah, that time it was a couple weeks. I've been in purgatory a couple times, so um, it gets confusing a little bit. Um, and I've been transported up to Salt Lake from Purgatory, I think three times now. So it gets a little blurry there. My dad picked me up from jail, and I was uh very I'm very grateful for that. He he uh drove me back down to St. George. Um I was still in the van. I was still living in the van at the time. So I I my uh uh someone had recovered the van. Um I think it was my grandpa. He had saw it that it was in like a Macy's parking lot or something, and he uh he had recovered it. And uh Jada. Um Jada at the time, Jada about two months previous died. She died of old age. Oh, sorry to hear that. Yeah. Um it's okay, but it was of old age, and she died very healthy and happy, and I think she enjoyed the road a lot. Um uh I think she had a fun time. So I got the van back and uh I decided to start going to AA again. AA has been mingled in and out of my story, my whole story. Um, all since Westridge. They even they even, when I was in Westridge, held AA meetings. So I've been going since like A teen, since I was a very young, very young person. Oh, even people, because some people consider me kind of a big book thumper. I don't. Um, but I do love the big book. It does help me a lot today. I decided that my life needed a direction. I didn't necessarily know what that direction was, but I have always been electric, I have always been interested in electricity for some reason. And so I decided, okay, well, let's try to be an electrician. Um I uh I signed up for a program called Vocational Rehab. It's a wonderful program that um helps addicts and alcoholics and people with disabilities find a job. Whether whatever that job really requires, they they they um they put me through electrician school. Um I only went for the first year and I worked for a company called Bullet Electric. I was doing well for a good amount of time. I was doing well for uh about a year. Just going to AA, trying to get in the middle, trying to find God, um, trying to uh work with a sponsor at the time. That was pretty helpful. Recently, as in about a year ago, things kind of uh uh went off the rails. I got hit by this car. Um and I uh broke my leg and I had a lot of downtime. I lost most mobility in my right foot. I have now something called foot drop, where my foot just goes like this. So it's hard for me to walk without a brace, but with a brace, I'm able to walk fully. But I got back on pain pills, these oxycontin tens. When I got hit, I wasn't doing the best. Um when I got hit, I was uh just barely getting back into uh the opioid kind of scene. I remember I my buddy hit me up and he uh said, Hey, do you need some cocaine? Um I am not huge on cocaine, but I said yes. And uh I went over to his house, we did some, and then um I started buying it more frequently. I think I started slamming it for a second there. Still trying to go to AA. Yeah, still trying to um, still trying to find some health and convalescence or some sanity in it all. And uh that just got worse and worse. I kept doing more and more cocaine, and I had so much anxiety. This is what I usually do. I started taking benzodiazepines. Um me and benzos are fire and gasoline. Um if I take one, I take a lot, and uh I usually black out. And uh I bought a lot uh at one point. It only took me a week from buying those benzos to lose my job. I had a Toyota Tacoma at the time. I sold it with no recollection. I bought a bullet bike, uh 1000cc Yamaha. I was riding around on that for a while and I got it in my head somehow in all the insanity that I needed to go to California. I don't know why. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but um, I just needed to escape. I was so I was I realized that I was headed down the track of that I'm always headed down. I realized that I was on a motorcycle again, that I that um this could easily end in me crashing, running from police, breaking both my arms, especially on a thousandcc bullet bike. You don't necessarily need license plates for those, you can run away from anything on it. And uh that was my mentality at the time, just run, just run away from everything. Um and that's kind of been my mentality my whole life is to run. Uh, I feel like I've been in flight or flight mode my entire life. So I took off to California. On if anybody's ridden a naked bike like that on the freeway, it's not it's pretty intense. And I was I was going out to California with no helmet. I got pulled over, allegedly doing 140 miles per hour with no helmet on. And I kind of came to because the benzos were wearing off. Um, the cop that pulled me over said something along the lines of, like, you know, this is a helmet state, right? We're need we're gonna need to impound your bike. Um long story short, he let me off for some reason. I don't know why. I told him my story. I told him where I was going. Um, all I knew is that I needed to find anything else that wasn't my life. I needed to completely blow up whatever I was doing because it wasn't working. And I made it to a town called Bakersfield. I was laying on the bike, and I know some things about those engines, but they're pretty sensitive engines. And I'm pretty sure I was floating the valves in the bike some somewhere near the end because I was rallying it so hard. And uh I was laying on the bike at this gas station, and this guy was passing me, and I was thinking about the valves, and he said, Hey, nice bike, man. And I said, Hey, I'll sell it to you for$2,200. And he said, Okay, so he bought it from me, cash right there. I gave him the title, and then I just knew I needed to make it to somewhere that was not Bakersville, California, because that was a uh I it was a intense town, pretty intense town.

SPEAKER_02 32:09

Hey, if you're a parent in recovery, this might be for you. Rebuilding trust with a partner, a co-parent, or the people you love after the chaos of addiction can feel overwhelming, sometimes even impossible. You're not alone. Donna and I have lived it. And out of that experience, we built parenting in the storm, work created for parents who are trying to rebuild connection without shame and model healthier relationships for the next generation. It started as retreat-style workshops in communities across Saskatchewan, but very quickly demand has grown far beyond what we can offer in person. So depending on when you're hearing this, there may already be digital resources or tools available through the link in the show notes. And if there isn't any yet, I assure you they are coming soon. If any of this resonates, you're welcome to explore it at your own pace. No pressure, just support. Wellness News Choice for Healthy Living is a local resource that works to connect people to health and wellness-related products, services, and expert advice from industry professionals locally allowing us to connect and engage. Check out wellnessnews.ca or skwellnesshub.ca today to learn more. If you want to support the channel, there are a few ways. By becoming a paid member right here on YouTube and get early access to new episodes, you can buy us a coffee or you can pick up some merch. Links to all that stuff is in the show notes below. And of course, always remember to give us a like, leave us a comment. And if you're new, a sub to the channel would mean the world to us because it all helps us keep getting louder.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

I got this Uber to Newport Beach from Bakersfield. This whole time, my family didn't know where I was. This entire time. This has been this whole journey to California, it's been probably two or three weeks. I didn't have a phone because I broke it at the beginning of this endeavor, and I just didn't buy a new one. I was so um out of it and so all over the place, I just I couldn't get my head on straight enough to buy a phone and call someone. I finally made it to an Alano club, the Alano Club at Newport Beach. And uh uh they took me in in the sense that they let me go to a meeting and like gave me a meal. And then they sent me to a place called Charlie Street. Charlie Street is like an alcoholic detox, but without any taper. So they just you just go there and you just kind of grit through it, and it's kind of a government funded program. It's kind of gnarly. I went there for about two days, but my situation was getting so drastic from the benzos, and I was having so many seizures that they sent me to college hospital. College hospital took me for three days, and then I was able to finally call my dad at the end of it. I was finally able to get my head on straight enough that I could even remember a number. Um, so I called my dad, and being the man that he is, the amazing dude that he is, he was able to fly me home. And then, and then when I got home, I got hit. And so rehabbing from the leg injury and uh rehabbing when I got home, I was well, I was a hundred and uh, I think I was 128 pounds. Right now I'm sitting at like one 160 or something. Nowadays, things that keep me sober are going like going to the gym, reading something spiritually, spiritually grounded. Um sometimes it's going to a meeting, mostly it's just finding this this connection.

SPEAKER_02 35:59

Now you're in your most recent stint of of recovery, like right, right now is where we're at in your story. Yes. Yeah. Okay, so um let's talk about like what what happened that is different this time. So you got you you you were down at at Charlie Street, then you were in the hospital. Why aren't you high right now? Like what what changed in your thinking and at what moment, like when you were flying home, is that where the change happened? When you talked to your dad, when you were in the hospital, like where was the moment that you had the thought and you internalized it that you're done?

SPEAKER_00 36:37

That's a really good question. I don't think it was one moment. But the you said when you said the flight home, that really hit me. The flight home. I remember thinking just like I'm 30 years old, I need to pull myself up by my bootstraps, get this done. This is getting old. None of the usual stuff. It was just this um this total knowledge that this is a chronic progressive illness and that this is this is just the killer. I I I'm watching people drop around me like flies. I've lost so many friends to fent friends to fentanyl, it's insane. I can't keep count. And that was the realization. Like, I'm not gonna be the statistic. Like, I'm not going to be the 99% that dies from this disease. I have to do this so I can help people. And I think that was the key part. It wasn't this fox, like it wasn't this foxhole moment where I was like, 'Cause I could keep doing what I was doing, I could keep the train going of unsanity and homelessness and and drug abuse and all that crap. I could keep it going. But then I wouldn't be able to help anybody. And uh the one thing I want to do is help people. I think I met so many people in California that were just suffering. They were suffering so much. And uh I just have this, I have this, I realize what that ache in my heart is. So I didn't know what it was my whole life. Um, but I've known what it feels like to know nobody's coming. Like nobody's coming to help. Uh, you're in this alone, you're screwed, you're suffering. I know what that feeling's like. And it hurts me so much to think that anybody is going through that right now. It doesn't take away from you to help the next person in line. And it makes me sick that our society is built on not helping the next person in line. It's built on uh pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, like I said earlier, or doing it all independently, or and it's this false, it's false. I think life thrives on connection. And I think life thrives on giving your hand to the next person in line and helping them, even if it might make your situation a little bit more uncomfortable, but it's never gonna take away from you, it's only gonna ever benefit you. So I decided that I'm gonna get my associate's degree in social work and that I'm gonna get my SUDSI in addiction counseling. Um, so vocational rehab is gonna help pay for that. I start school in the summer. I start internship at the Foundation for Family Life Mentor Works. So I'll be helping guys who just got out of jail. Um, and then hopefully pretty soon I'll be working at a center called the Renaissance Ranch, which I went to that helped me out a lot. I feel like there's a lot, there's this demographic of people that can't show up to recovery because they are repeating the cycle and it's happening over and over again for them. And they feel like, what's the point? Like, what's the point of trying again? I'm one of those people. There's no reason that I should be sober. There's no reason that I should um have a good relationship with my family. There's no reason that I should be taking this direction in my life to help people with with a sudsey and an associate's degree in social work, um except for the the fact that um that I have a longing to do so. Um and I feel like that's all that matters. Like the only, they say it in AA, the only requirement for AA is is a desire to stop drinking. It says nothing in there about the requirements being sober or or anything like that. It's the desire to stop drinking, the desire to want to be better than the version of yourself the day before. And I'm that's what I'm all about is if I can be a little bit better than the day I was before, then uh things will work out. A lot of things are hard for me when I tell my story because I kind of stopped believing in time, in counting time. Um, like I've been sober for this amount of time or I've been sober for this amount of time, because um it's up and down and uh it's it's very much not like this. And I uh I'm just an advocate for uh I'm an advocate for people that are that feel like they can't show up to this.

SPEAKER_02 41:47

Uh if people want to reach out to you, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Um my email, thelastcurbguy at gmail.com. Um you can reach out to me um anytime you need. I um have limited resources right now, but I'm always here as an alcoholic or a friend um that can that can help in need. I think I have some logistic things that can help, but also just a listening ear.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

Scott, thanks so much for uh for joining me today. Um, I will put that email in the show notes if you want to reach out to Scott. Uh just have a peek down there. And uh and I suppose that's it, my friend. Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us today. Uh it was an honor to walk with you through it. And uh take good care, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

Thank you, Daniel.

SPEAKER_02 42:33

Hold up. If this hit home or made you think, help us get these stories out there, smash that like button, drop a comment, and before you go, check out another episode. The more you engage, the more the algorithm shares these voices with the people who need to hear them. Big shout out to SEIU West, our official equipment sponsor, improving the lives of working people and their families and leading the way to a more just and humane society. Find your link in the show notes. Say, this is hard not to come.