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Double AA club Podcast
EP:172 When Alcohol Becomes the Enemy: A Heart Attack Changed Everything
Jason shares his 30-year battle with alcoholism, recent heart attack, and journey to recovery for the sake of his teenage son.
• Growing up in NYC during the stop-and-frisk era created a cycle of arrests, job loss, and hopelessness
• Early exposure to alcohol through working in bars as a teenager normalized drinking culture
• Alcohol caused severe physical damage including eight throat procedures due to esophageal burns
• After years of trying to get sober for others, a heart attack following a brief relapse became a turning point
• Recovery strategies include regular support group meetings, staying busy with work, and surrounding himself with understanding people
• Alcohol's prevalence in everyday settings (movies, bowling alleys) creates constant challenges for maintaining sobriety
• Childhood trauma often underlies addiction patterns and requires addressing for lasting recovery
If you're struggling with addiction, Jason encourages you to seek detox help, build a support team, and remember that relapse doesn't equal failure. "You just got to learn from your mistake... if you're alive it's a blessing that day."
You are listening to the Double A Club and this is your host, ny Boom, and my co-host, big Daz. We'll be talking about trending topics and healthcare and basically just as a disclaimer just to let the listeners know that this is just basically on our opinions and speculations and I hope you guys enjoy the show. Let's start off and kick off with our first topic.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone, this is NYC Boom, coming from the Double A Club podcast. You can catch us on Spotify, iHeartRadio and Amazon Music. Again, we're going to continue our web series on dealing with alcoholism, and I have a special guest with me. Go ahead, introduce yourself.
Speaker 3:What's up everybody. My name is Jason. I'm originally from the Bronx, right now reside in Massachusetts.
Speaker 2:Let's go Boston. Let's go Boston.
Speaker 3:Let's go Yankees. But I just really wanted to touch on the topic of alcoholism. And, you know, just bring a little bit of experience, personal experience or whatever. I've been struggling with it for 30 years. You know what I mean. Um, just uh, recently february, just uh suffered a heart attack. That just really just set everything in perspective more. You know all the times I tried to go at least I made attempts to go to rehab, but it was never for myself, it was always for someone else. You know it was for. You know, all right, I'll do it.
Speaker 3:And when you do it for yourself, it's it's a different thing. You feel like you know you can't affect anyone in your family, you can't touch the people that you hurt or anything unless you fix yourself. You got to fix yourself first and care about yourself first before anything. You know, and until you know I really started caring, you know it didn't really matter. You know I really started caring. You know it didn't really matter.
Speaker 3:You know I was a functioning alcoholic because I was always working managing a liquor store and so it just became gradual, you know that, and working in bars and things, since I was a young, since way young, since about 18 years old, since way young, since about 18 years old. You know, I went through so much trauma living in New York. It was it turned me to so much, so young. Back, if you remember. But you remember, like the stop and frisk law and shit, oh, the one that fucking Mayor Giuliani passed, oh my gosh. So like I was a teenager, you remember, man, yo shout out to your entire family, you and your brother, yo, you guys, you guys are freaking family to the day I died, because there were days that I was homeless and you know, and y'all put a freaking, uh, a roof over my head for the night.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm forever grateful for y'all no problem, man, it was also my mom's doing too. She didn't, she didn't like to see people struggle you know it was.
Speaker 3:It was. It was difficult because before that I was young, out in the street. So when I ended up I was out with no ID. No, you get stopped with no ID. Stop at first. For whatever fucking reason, you're going to jail. So I would go to jail all the fucking time. I'll end up in Central Book in four days and, as John Doe and all these cases will fucking go in front of me and I'm still sitting in jail because I didn't have a fucking ID and there's no way to get an ID without Social Security. Without there was no way to get anything. You know, without one thing to start everything, you understand. You know you need a Social Security, you need a you know birth certificate. You don't have that, you don't have shit. And you didn't have that. You don't have and you didn't have that. So I was.
Speaker 3:I was always going, going, I would get a job. People like oh, get a job, I'll get a job, you get job, you get a job on a what a 90-day probationary period. Guess what. I'm trying to go to work. I get freaking stopped. I'm locked up. Guess what? No show, you're fired, okay, and then they look at your record.
Speaker 3:You would get caught. We'll get caught freaking as a youngster with like less than freaking 20 worth of weed and freaking end up in jail for the longest. You know what I'm saying. And it was constantly. I ended up with like 30 something freaking, almost 40 something arrests and there was just mostly no identity because I had no id and like it traumatized me to the point I was like damn, I just get a job and I'm fucking fired the next day. You know what I'm saying. Like I come out, I they don't want to hear anything, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:And then, on top of getting arrested, guess what? You got a criminal background. You know what I'm saying. So it was impossible. I was like yo, you gotta be fucking kidding me, there's no escape from this shit. And all I knew from young was, you know, just to escape everything was alcohol, because it was everywhere, it was so easy to get to. I started working. You remember Ering's Tavern? I used to work in the bar. I was like freaking 14 years old, freaking around, adults drinking and shit. I'd see them best friends, buddies, freaking, chilling on freaking St Paddy's Day and they're cracking each other over the head with a mug at the end of the night.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know it was crazy. I just saw so much at a young age when I was working in the bar, being around alcohol and I was always around it and it was my only escape. When I ended up homeless as a teenager, that's all I turned to. It was just make everything disappear. You know what I mean. And then I just became a functioning alcoholic because my body could keep going and then, when I just didn't want it, I started getting sick. That's like I was like damn yo, I don't feel like drinking. You know, I'm like I'm tired of this life already, like I don't want it, and I got really, really sick and I had to go to detox like four times in one year. You know what I mean. Like it's, it's, it's an everyday battle, everyday battle for anybody that goes through any kind of addiction. It ain't just alcohol, man man, I go to Star Program in Fall River. They're the most amazing people, you know. They help people with every type of addiction and I met brothers and sisters. We're all the same.
Speaker 3:You know, I used to be young and stupid when I was a kid and be like oh, crackhead over there, oh like, and say stupid and ignorant things like that. And now, when you see people when they struggle from addiction, it's sad. You know there's nothing funny about it. You know that's somebody's mother, that's somebody's kid, that's somebody's father. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, it's just different when it touches base. And then, you know, I turned my whole life. I said damn, I've always tried to be better and the only thing I fought everything, alberto, everything. I've been shot twice. I've fucking been to the point that I almost died in car accidents that I wasn't even driving, other people were. I got hit by a car. It took me a year to walk again. I beat everything like nothing. The only thing I can't beat is this addiction. That shit's real.
Speaker 2:A lot of people don't know that alcohol, even though it's legal, it's one of the worst things to detox from compared to other drugs, and it's killed more people than all types of other drugs.
Speaker 3:You're dead right with that, because when I came out the nurse told me she said you have no idea there's more people that overdose from alcohol than heroin. And it stuck with me. I thought heroin was the number one. People overdose all the time until they found Narcan. Now I'm Narcan certified.
Speaker 3:For all that I go to programs, for all that I go to programs. I want to help everyone that has an addiction because there's always hope. You have to want it for yourself and you have to have the right people around you. You can't be surrounded by all negative people if that's the case. But there's one thing that I do learn you can't do it by yourself. I try't do it by yourself. No, I try. I try to do that. I try to do it for so long and it doesn't work. You need a support team. You know you need people around you. So who is your support team? My family, I have uh groups that I go to star as well. I also go to iop, which is it's Intense Occupational, it's intense, intense Outpatient program. That's what it is. It's when you come out of detox. They put you in programs, they give you classes and stuff and then they have a mental health and a substance abuse class. So it's either or Do you take the?
Speaker 2:Do you see that those programs are really helping you?
Speaker 3:Let me tell you something If they, if it wasn't for them, I'd be in a worse place because I would never feel I had a place to go to, a place to try to even get help. I would have still been doing it crazy, you know, and just killing myself and not knowing that Because I've been to other places and stuff but they didn't help. You know, this place has a great the nursing staff. From the time you go in. They're amazing. The counselors that they have, most of all the nurses are there and the counselors are former addicts so they relate to the people. Amazing, you know. They know firsthand and it's not somebody just coming off straight out of college and telling you out of a book you know how you feel. How does anybody know how you feel? You know what I mean, unless you went through it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, when I was working in jail, the detoxing, the detoxing process for people who were detoxing from alcoholism. That shit must be nuts Wasn't was horrible, was horrible. I mean like seriously horrible it's. It's one of them, it is I think it is what the worst Detoxing process in the world. I mean like there's no other other drug that you can detox. It's just like that. I got mr the the body. I mean people died. I got stuck on a.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's horrible. I got stuck on and because I didn't have a ticket and and I would never go to pay my things, so they sent me to rikers and that's when I first went through my first, my first uh uh experience of detox, and it was horrible.
Speaker 2:Like I literally yeah, explain, Explain how it went for you.
Speaker 3:I would literally leave the whole fucking sheet. I'm sorry my language. I would leave the whole, my entire thing, soaking wet and be shaking at night, shivering and cold. It was horrible. Did you have hallucinations?
Speaker 2:hell freaking yeah like what did you hallucinate? Do you remember?
Speaker 3:I see colors and shit and in and out, and just just in and out of and just restlessness, yeah, just uncomfortableness.
Speaker 3:It it was, just, it was horrible and the worst thing is you get cold First, you get hot real hot, but then you get cold, and you get cold to the point your teeth are shattering and you're freezing, no matter what you do. You're cold, you know, and your body aches so much Like if your body aches Like if you were withdrawing From life. I would see people on heroin and I'm like, damn, I'm going through this For alcohol. It was crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people think that Because it's alcohol, it's like and it's legal, it's not that bad.
Speaker 3:And you know how it is when we grew up, like it started with me with 40s. You know little 40s here. Old English, you know O-E, o-e, not the same as man. That was the other one.
Speaker 1:It was.
Speaker 3:O-E-45. That was it.
Speaker 2:Crazy horse.
Speaker 3:Crazy horse With the Indian baby, yo, hell yeah, crazy horse with the 64. Remember the 34? Nah, but that's where it started. Yeah, that was my first. I first felt like it was weird. We were in Van Colling and we drank 240s each, and I drink 240 straight. I chugged them.
Speaker 3:And when I was walking home, brother. It's just, I fell in love with that feeling and I wanted to keep feeling like that because I was trying to escape other things you know what I'm saying Like like I was going through personal abuse and other things, so like that was my escape, that was the way I. Just I didn't feel anything. You know, I was numb to everything.
Speaker 2:So you can safely say that that when you had your first 40 was when you noticed it, like when you noticed it was going to become.
Speaker 3:I liked it.
Speaker 3:But then when I had like hard alcohol, I already knew it. And then I didn't find out until like years later, like recently. My mother told me she was like your father, used to really like his alcohol. He liked hard shit and mean freaking like I grew up around all his. You know how it is man, freaking weekends, freaking we out. I grew up with all port dominicans and put dominicans first before Puerto Rico. I'm Puerto Rican but I grew up with more Dominicans and it was freaking brutal on the weekends. My mojona, like we, was getting tore up like early young and you know my body just got used to that shit until freaking later on, so many years later, you start blacking out and your body just changes. After everything. It was a point that I went so many months without even remembering anything. You know I would just black things out. So without even remembering anything, you know I would just black things out. So without even remembering anything, you know I was just black things out.
Speaker 2:So what was you trying to hide from or run away from, like?
Speaker 3:every single time. Like I told you, with that whole time with the Giuliani, with the stop and frisk, I wanted to escape New York. So bad, like I was like why am I stuck here? I'm going to die here. Like I'm going to die, something's going to happen to me in jail. Like I have to escape this madness. I was like there has to be a better life for me. And this is the crazy shit.
Speaker 3:I moved to Massachusetts. I stood 20 years straight without being arrested, never even stopped by a cop, Nothing. It just felt like I went to a different planet. Once I got out of the city, once I got out of that environment, it gave me severe PTSD because when I go down there all the times I will go visit my family I'm like a fucking what was that? Like a fucking like cookie in the crack house. It's crazy Like and I'm paranoid all the time when I'm out there because cops used to just roll me up and throw me up and slam me around and shit.
Speaker 3:You know, like it was bullshit. I used to have to learn to. What I did was everyone used to wear jeans and baggy jeans and everything, everything. If you ever saw me towards, towards, before I moved up, you always saw me in khakis, button-down shirts or v-neck sweater or something. I always looked like I was going to a club and I was going to the bodega it was for. It was just so I wouldn't get profiled and the cops wouldn't with me, because every single time I came out and you know, it was the little ones From the block that made the block hotter.
Speaker 3:So every time we came outside the cops would mess with us and it was just like Are you kidding me? Like I'm on my way to work? Yeah, sure you are. You know what I mean. You got any drugs on you? No, yo, I would get arrested for a freaking Like 10 bag of weed. You know what I'm saying? A fucking, a roach clip. Like come on, who the fuck does? Four days in jail For a roach and now these little kids Are standing there smoking weed In the street, rolling blunts and stuff. I'm like you know all the Trauma people had to go through so you people could stand there and do that shit in the street Like it's nothing Fuck out of here.
Speaker 2:Giuliani didn't give a shit when he passed that stop and fist law. He didn't give a fuck about how it was going to affect people in 20 years.
Speaker 3:And it was our own cops too. They was assholes too Like Hispanic, and black cops too Like fuck out of here. They had to do their job. You know what I'm saying? No, they were giving them. There was always some quota shit. We always knew that. We were like oh yeah, they make you a quota right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know it is what it is, bro. I mean like you wish it didn't happen, but you have to be like it happened. I understand why. It's not personal. They just had to do the job. You know it is what it is. They were told, ordered Whatever way you want to say it to do it. Yup, yup, yeah so, but yeah, so let's go back To that heart attack right In February.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I actually thought it was an anxiety attack.
Speaker 2:Most people who go through the heart attacks think it's an anxiety attack and they don't know until they get in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, man, no, I was just like yo, I can't breathe. It felt like I was on a trip, like I was running around the block but I wasn't going nowhere. I was like what the hell? I like my heart was beating mad fast and I was like yo, I just feel like mad anxious, I need some air. Yo, I'm gonna go outside. And I was in one of my groups and I went outside. They were like yo, you feel all right. And I was like yo, not really. I was like I, I can't go walk to the hospital right now or whatever. They're like we're gonna call you an ambulance. They call the ambulance. When the ambulance got me, they were like yo, you're having a harder time. I'm like wow, it was two days before my birthday and before my 48th birthday and I was like dang, it's. It just woke me up and you know what made that happen?
Speaker 3:A small relapse, and any relapse can kill you. People don't get it Like. I was clean for a year and a half and I just got to the point that I didn't. I didn't think it was a problem anymore and I had a little traumatic experience in my family and stuff and I lost somebody and it just set me back real quick, but that little quick like it. All it took was two days of drinking. Two days just a little like binge drinking, and it caught up to me because my heart was so used to being better, I guess my body was used to being clean, and I put it. I guess I put it in shock because if I was gonna drink I was gonna drink hard. I'm not gonna have a couple of sips or whatever. You and I had a little way too much in two days and it almost killed me.
Speaker 2:So when? So what made you, what motivated you to seek help, like, what was it that happened to you that you were like yo, I gots to go get some help?
Speaker 3:My children, my children and my mom. You know what I mean Mostly my kids, my son, really, that I have Custody of. You know, I raised him by myself and I'm his role model. So like I can't practice, I got to practice what I preach. I can't tell him to be doing stuff if I'm out here not living by my word and I want him to be a man of his word. So you know he's doing great so far, you know. So you know he's doing great so far, you know. And everything just got more messed up with me with alcohol and him seeing it. You know he has. His other parent is an alcoholic as well. So you know, since it's only me in the picture picture, like I have to be the positive one for him. I gotta lead by example.
Speaker 2:He's 17 so was it something that happened, that that you was like yeah, I gotta do this for him? Like did he? Did he say something? Yeah, my son just looked at me and he was like I know, you're hurting dad. He was like I don't want to see.
Speaker 3:Looked at me and he was like I know you're hurting Dad. He was like I don't want to see you hurt no more. He was like I love you, I need you, I need you in my life.
Speaker 2:And that's your more curious son.
Speaker 3:Like I don't want to see he's just like. I need you and like, when him crying and looking at me and I was like I can't do this, I can't do this to you, Like if he's my world, I got to show him he's my world. I can't freaking be selfish, you know, and addiction makes you selfish. You don't think about anybody else but your soul no, because you're looking for the next one. It's a vicious cycle.
Speaker 3:It's like we grew up in in the environment like everything is, was always a celebration like freaking. Oh, it's a sweet 16, let's drink. Oh, it's somebody's birthday, let's drink. Oh, you know, for anything, especially Hispanics. Man, our culture is everywhere Like Out here, everything is bars. I'm out in Massachusetts, everywhere you go is alcohol. I want to go bowling it's alcohol. I went to the movies To go to the movies with my kids. It's alcohol everywhere. There's a bar right went to the movies to go to the movies with my kids and there's alcohol everywhere. There's a bar right, right next to the to the movie theater, like it's and it's legal. That's the crazy thing and it's me, but they worry about so much stuff, but it's just so accessible to everyone yes and that's what makes it horrible and
Speaker 2:nobody thinks about how dangerous it is how harmful it is because it's legal at all like it's.
Speaker 3:You lose so many people. You know what I mean. I lost a lot of friends. I lost one that that he choked because he was in his sleep. He choked on his own vomit. You know I had eight procedures done to my throat due to this already, because of my esophagus. I burned my whole esophagus out from alcohol. I had to have balloons put in my throat To open up my my throat so I could, so I could eat. Because I wasn't able to eat for three years I had to freaking. Everything had to be liquidated, if not I would choke on anything.
Speaker 2:Wow, for real yeah.
Speaker 3:Like if I would go to a freaking, to a barbecue or something. I'd be embarrassed. I wouldn't want to eat in somebody's house or something because I would have to literally sit there and chew until everything was. Because of one little speck. I would start choking. I would have to run and I would literally start choking. I'll turn freaking blue until I would cough whatever. I would have to freaking throw up whatever the hell I was eating. It was bad, damn, I didn't know that it's, let me tell you, acid from your stomach. When they say acid, it is acid, that's real acid, and when that comes up in the inside of your throat it's the worst pain in the world. It's like, basically, you pictured your throat was an open wound and you pour rubbing alcohol on your throat. That's what it feels like literally, and then you choke. It's bad, it's bad. It leads to gout and all that. They're not gout. What the hell is that? Oh damn, I forgot what it's called.
Speaker 2:It's a certain disease you get in your throat. That's crazy. I didn't know that.
Speaker 3:I did not know that that's from bile. And all that, all that stomach acid, oh, that's horrible. Hmm, they burned my entire lining of my esophagus, so so so what challenges do you face still? What challenges do I face?
Speaker 2:So what challenges do you face still?
Speaker 3:What challenges do I face, man, every day? Every day is a challenge and every day is a blessing. Like I look at it like every day. I got to fight this and it's a demon every day, but I got to be stronger than that. And it's a demon every day, but I gotta be stronger than that it's it's. It's just so hard when it's everywhere you go, anything I want to do, it's everywhere. So that's just the thing that makes it difficult. Then it's like times of season and stuff, like now the holidays are coming up. That's usually like it's weird. I thought that the summer would be easier and then I was straight. I was like fishing with my friend and then I said, wait, damn man, fishing goes good with beer.
Speaker 3:I was like nah, I don't need no beer, we gotta get some lemonade. We gotta do something else because, you know, I just wanted to switch it up, yeah, and that's fine. I learned different ways to move with it. But, like, then the holidays come and you know, it's like, oh, it's cold, yo, I take some shots of rum, you know, but my mind has to switch. It's all about trying to change, you know, and stay around positive people. All I'm trying to do is get to as many meetings as I can around positive people.
Speaker 2:All I'm trying to do is get to as many meetings as I can. I'm assuming that your family helps in a certain way because, like when they throw parties, they're not having alcohol there for you, right?
Speaker 3:This is the thing. This is the thing. I'm far away from my family. Yes, I'm not the only family that I have here Doesn't indulge in alcohol. They're my, they're my kids. So all my, all my stepchildren in massachusetts. On the rest of my family that lives in new york and everywhere else they're far away from me so I don't have to be around all that. But it's just like co-workers that I go, people that I go around. They go to bars, they go to play, they go bowling, they do, they go play pool, you know.
Speaker 3:So I I turned into a homebody, really, I just tried. I work a lot. So my whole thing is work, take care of my son and try to go to meetings like I got. Tomorrow. Tuesday and wednesday I go to IOP, I go to this meetings. It's around other Other addicts and we all help each other. You know we share experiences and talk to each other, try to help each other, support each other and stuff. So I do that Three times a week and then I Work the rest of the week. That's all I can do to keep my head off Of stuff and that's good. You gotta keep doing that. I saw like a dude keep my head off of stuff.
Speaker 2:And that's good. You gotta keep doing that. I'm gonna ask.
Speaker 3:Relapse is real and it's so real for so many people out there I wanna say anybody, don't ever feel like you failed. You learn from your, from your relapse. You never blame yourself or put yourself down. You kick yourself down. You get yourself up because if you're alive it's a blessing that day. You just got to learn from your mistake. What did I do wrong? Try to retract and not to do it again, and that's it. That's all I can say to anybody.
Speaker 2:That's true, I'm going to ask you a weird question what was the worst episode you ever had?
Speaker 3:Drinking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, unless you got something else. Shit man, which one pops into your mind. You're like what the fuck? What was I doing? Why? What was I thinking to go through this shit?
Speaker 3:When I got hit by a van. I worked in it. I got hit by a commercial van. The dude was going like 65 miles an hour, ran the red light, I bounced off the van and ended up in the other lane. Hmm and um, oncoming traffic was coming in. The cab came and she parked so that nobody would hit me, because if you were coming around the corner you wouldn't see me. Oh and so she put her car yet to block me off and to stay there and make sure that the ambulance came. And then there was no trauma unit back then where I lived. They had to take me to another state. They had to take me to providence.
Speaker 3:So I woke up in providence, my whole face purple, my whole, my whole left, um, left side was purple and I was screaming. All I I kept screaming was my legs, my legs. I didn't know where I was at or whatever, and it was because I was a maintenance man in a bar. I worked in a bar and I finished my route or whatever, and when you finish your thing you're allowed one drink, if you want, at the bar when you're off the clock. So I had my one drink, of course, a long island, and then, um, some veterans that I know came and they were like, hey, yo, we'll buy you some drinks, whatever, and I had maybe a little bit too much, a couple of more. And then, um, all I was thinking was I'm gonna go home and and I'm gonna go grab my, my kids, some, some sandwiches at this deli. I ordered the sandwiches, I was crossing the street and just when I got on my bike to cross the street, the car just came and zoomed to hit me and the thing that I can remember was, after everything in the hospital, they checked my alcohol level and the only thing they did they didn't blame me In the case, or whatever Was because the guy Was driving on a prior hit and run, on a suspended license.
Speaker 3:He had hit somebody before, so when he hit me he was running. You know what I mean. So, but they checked my alcohol level and they were like, oh, but you were under the influence. I said, what the fuck does that have to do with? I didn't cross the street and I wasn't in the run. He ran the red light.
Speaker 3:The only thing that saved me was that I had three witnesses and they all said that the guy just ran through and never stopped. He just never took his foot off the pedal, he just ran right through me like nothing. So it took me like a year to walk again and it was just bad. Then everything was internal no real breaking of anything but it took me like a year to walk again and it was just bad. Then everything was internal no real like breaking of anything but it took so much more to heal. Regardless, it was just bad. And how do you, how did I heal shit? I'm stuck at home. I can't work. I gotta wait for a lawsuit and I'm drinking. You know, it was right, was right and I was just like. I was just so lucky I was alive when I was in the hospital and all I kept thinking was where am I? And they were like you're in Providence. I was like Providence. All I'm thinking about is my kids. How am I going to get home? That changed me.
Speaker 2:That and just being a single parent, because I don't want to see my son suffer more and you know that your son needs a father. Huh, and you know that your son needs a father.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, well, I'm both parents, so he needs me more than anything.
Speaker 2:Yes, indeed, so February was the last time you relapsed. Yeah, and what any other strategies other than going to your meetings and stuff has helped you to prevent that relapse?
Speaker 3:You know, what's crazy is actually being around other people that suffer from the same thing isn't as bad as, like I don't know. Sometimes your family or like people that are close to you can be the people that can make you relapse even more through being judgmental and not understanding. You know they'll just tell you oh, you go back and you'll go do the same shit again and throw it in your head when it's not even in your head, or just say negative things instead, when, if you're trying to be around somebody that's supportive and and the same positive things, it's good, but it could also backfire as well, you know, because two negatives don't equal a positive, you know. Yeah, it could go either way. Like I like to try to go and meet people at my meetings and things. We go to another place, peer-to-peer Fall River. It's really good too.
Speaker 2:So what advice would you give someone who's going through the same thing? You are Example people from your meetings. What advice would you give them?
Speaker 3:Anybody that if you feel that you have no control over it and you know it, I mean we're all in denial. Any person is always in denial. You sit there and say, no, I don't have a problem whatever. But you yourself know you have a problem and you're tired of being sick and tired. Try to detox yourself and get everything out of your system and once you do that, try to find a good support team and and try to stay that way. Try to stay clean. That's the best advice I can give. It's just that. And the people that are around you too, like your family. You got to try to see if you can get forgiveness. And if they don't forgive you right away, hey, you have to push on for yourself and try to make things right for yourself before you could do anything for anyone else. Try to put yourself around positive people that are going to support you, and if not, then you have to be the strongest person yourself.
Speaker 3:It's rough, it's an everyday struggle. People don't think it is, and it's so quick it's like a light switch. You cannot think about it and you can feel a certain way Like, oh, I'm good day struggle. People don't think it is, and it's so quick. It's like a light switch. You could not think about it and you could feel a certain way like, oh, I'm good and I went over a year straight didn't think about it or nothing. And then some, I just set me off on like and just, and it's, it's quick, especially when that's all you know. It could be something tragic, it could be something that makes you angry, it could be anything you know, especially when you suffer from. That's the thing that other people Before I get off, there's two things that I wanted to touch on Go ahead.
Speaker 3:A lot of things go back from mental health. Like people don't understand. There's trauma. There's people that are addicts. Their parents had trauma, they had trauma. It's a. It goes on. There's certain ways you don't see it. We don't know what the hell our parents went through. They don't tell us everything, but there is some bit Of them that has Some of them that have had some bit of traumatic Experience in their life.
Speaker 3:That makes them hard with us A little bit too much. You know what I mean. Yeah, like I know shit. I got my ass tore up with a belt and some people will be like, oh my God, I never hit my child. What are you doing? I don't hit my kid. What that doesn't mean I didn't get my ass kicked either. You know what I mean. True, it just you know that people that Go through all this, all this trauma, they find different ways To escape them. That's what I feel More than anything. Most of alcohol addiction and things come from something traumatic that it happened in their past that they need to always look for. That. That's the someone's only escape. There's no person that ever just became an alcoholic.
Speaker 2:Someone always escaped something. Yeah, you just got to find out what that is. What they're escaping, what they're?
Speaker 3:trying to escape. Exactly my brother. Thank you for having me so much. I got to go pick up some somebody right now.
Speaker 2:No problem. Thank you very much for having much for sharing your story. You know, if you ever want to come back on and just vent, talk more, share your story, educate more people, you're more than welcome, okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, man no doubt All right. Well, this is Double A Club signing out.
Speaker 2:You can catch us on Spotify, iheartradio and man no doubt All right. Well, this is Double A Club signing out. You can catch us on Spotify, iheartradio and Amazon Music. Say goodbye to my good friend Jay.
Speaker 3:Yo peace out everybody, and everybody that's fighting and struggling, keep fighting, the struggle ain't over.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to our show. This concludes our episode. And listen up to the next episode to follow up on what continuing topics and trends we have going on, and just to continue to listen to your boy, ny Boom, and co-host Big Daz, and listen to our points of views and maybe you can add on to it if you want. But we'll catch you on the next one. All right, have a good one. Peace out, fellas.
