In today's episode, I talk about the "functional addict", and how they are just as at risk of death as the "degenerate" addict.
In today's episode, I talk about the "functional addict", and how they are just as at risk of death as the "degenerate" addict.
What's up everybody. This is M this is thoughts of an addict. Two episodes in a week. Whoa. Oh, who is this guy? It is so good to be back with everybody and to all my listeners out there. God damn, I am so grateful for all of you. I mean, even if I had zero listeners on each episode, I would probably be doing this anyway. Because. This is really fun. And I think. It makes me feel pretty good, but hopefully to the people that are listening, they're not just all mocking me. Hopefully someone's getting something out of any of the things that are coming out of my mouth. So thank you so, so much everybody for tuning in and. If you have any inquiries or you want to be on the show or, you know, somebody who wants to be on the show, go ahead and email thoughts of an addict show@gmail.com. I've got a pretty blank inbox right now, except for one email. My dear old mother sending me one of the nicest messages I've ever seen. I love you, mom. All right.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-2:All right. So I wanted to start off this app. By asking you the listener. To imagine an addict. Think of a quintessential addict. Give you like five seconds here. Okay. So what image came to your mind? My guess would be that it was. Someone with a heroin needle in their arm, climbing out from behind a dumpster. Or maybe it was some hot junkie who's sitting on their couch all day, eating ranch, flavored Doritos and watching old Adam Sandler movies. But one that you might not have been thinking of is. The person who is leading their sales team. Or the person who was getting straight A's in their school. And guess what. That last one, that was the kind of attic. That I was. This is what we call. A functioning addict. And that is what I wanted to talk to you about today.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-3:Imagine downtown San Francisco and. This high-powered businessman. And his little monkey suit and his briefcase. He walks over a homeless guy on the ground who has a needle sticking out of his arm. If you're a third-party bystander, you look over at that situation and you think. Well, that guy. That guy on the ground. He's a fucking addict, obviously. Well guess what. That high powered businessman, there is a real chance. That he's an addict too. That. There is a very deep malady in that homeless man soul. That, that high powered business executive shares with them. The functioning addict is kinda, it's kinda like a chameleon. Where. You can't really tell from the outside. That they're fucked up. The functioning addict has gotten really, really good. At hiding. The massive problem that they have inside of themselves. And I know that this was certainly the case for me. Almost all. Of my quote unquote addicted life.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-4:I remember being in college and I was getting all A's. I was doing all the things that I was supposed to be doing. And from an outsider's perspective, Mama and Papa would ask, oh, how's school going and I'd show them, look, look, I got a 4.0 woo. Whew. I'm doing well and getting this fucking piece of paper. Yay. But, what did that look like? On the inside. Just doing a bunch of stimulants and staying up until odd hours just to pump out. A's to learn a bunch of shit that I wouldn't need. In the real world. From the outside. I was highly functional. In my soul, I was highly dysfunctional. Even though things might've been going well from the outside, I was still just using to live in living the use. But by getting good grades. I could hide it. Well, I could hide it from my friends. I could hide it from my family. I remember I had some really close friends of mine who identified. I had a problem. Doc goat. They would say, dude, em, you got to chill the fuck out. You're smoking way too much pot. You got a cat it out. And I'd say, well, I have higher grades than you guys. So you guys don't know what the fuck you're talking about. And. This was my camouflage throughout college. This was my camouflage. This is what allowed me to get away with my addiction. Not only to other people. And myself. To myself. I was lying. I would say, Hey, em, You've worked so hard over this past semester. Look how well you did. You can fucking do a little bit more drugs on the weekends now. You can start, you can ramp up the drugs from three times a week, four or five times a week, because look. You got those good grades? Woo. And this isn't to say that, getting good grades wasn't important, but I will say. It's what I used as a coverup. You really feel like, you know, what. I can do this addiction thing. This addiction thing, isn't really a problem for me because I'm doing well on this whole social status element.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-5:Which actually brings me to one of my main points of the pod today, which is, this is why being a functional addict. And this is what I'm going to argue for this way. Being a functional addict in so many ways is so much more destructive than being a dysfunctional addict. Because you have that marker. You have that thing. That you can keep lying to yourself about. If I had fucking nothing. If I was just living at mom and dad's house, didn't have a job. Wasn't doing shit was just smoking weed. On the couch all day. Then I probably would've said to myself much earlier. Alright. Um, You're fucking up. We gotta make a change here and we gotta do it quick. But. When things are going well on the outside, you've got people. Woo. Good. And you got people applauding, you. And in a lot of ways, it's reinforcing the shit behavior. That addicts have. And this didn't only apply to my college. So I went into the working world and I was a sales guy. And I was actually performing the highest on my team. And, I would grind my ass off when I was at work. And my reasoning for it was. I made a deal with myself where okay. If I make three sales today, Then I get to do. Uh, painkiller. After work. And. I feel like a lot of. High powered business people. Actually use drugs as a reward system in namely alcohol. Someone closes the big deal. Oh, okay. What's all. Now I get to get really fucked up tonight. And maybe that's not an addict, but you can see how. An addict would easily pick these behaviors up. Of okay. I'm doing really, really well at work. That means I should go to go really, really hard with the drugs that I'm doing right now. And that's exactly what happened to me. And luckily for me, Luckily. So luckily for me, My using ramped up so much when I started working. That the camouflage started to really chip and tear away. There would be days where I'd come into work. So fucking hung over from the night before just a God damn drug cocktail of epic proportions. It'd be a Tuesday night and I just be ripping fucking uppers, downers all arounders like an absolute fucking degenerate. And I would basically crawl on my hands and knees in to work. And I would tell my old boss, I'd say, Hey dude, like, I'm not feeling well. And that would work. That would work. A few times that work once or twice a month. But when it turned into a weekly thing, like my boss was no dummy. He'd say all right. Um, let's attack. Like what the fuck is really going on here? Do you have a problem that I'm like, yep. You got me. And. So I quickly turned from a functioning to a barely functioning addict. And when I turned to barely functioning, it was actually much easier for me to get clean. Because I no longer had the accolades from the outside. I didn't have people applauding me telling me how well I was doing. I had people telling me, dude, you're fucked up. I need to get some fucking help.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-6:Because when you're a totally functioning addict. It's pretty hard to hit a rock bottom. In my 10th episode. I talk all about how rock bottom is often the turning point for addicts. People usually remember the last time they use, because it had such a profound. Sad tragic impact on them. But when things are going. Relatively well, It's pretty hard to get to that point. And when you're functioning, Quote unquote, well, You're not going to be crawling out from behind that dumpster. You're not going to have that moment. When you wake up in a Vegas hospital, not knowing how the fuck you got there. And maybe most importantly, you're not going to have that intervention moment where your loved ones are telling you, Hey. You're fucking up our lives too, dude. Go get some fucking help, not just for you, but for us, please.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-7:And rest in peace to my closest friend in the world. The one I was alluding to. In the first episode in hell, the reason I created this podcast. He was the highest functioning addict. That I had ever met in my entire life. It's only a year or two older than me. He was already a VP. Working multiple jobs, just fucking, absolutely crushing life from the outside. But God damn. Was he at. Tortured soul. On the inside. And there were times where I would candidly wish. Fuck kind of hope he gets fired. I kind of hope things start to go a little bit more south for him. Because then maybe it would be a gigantic slap in the face, a wake up call that I couldn't just break through to him, but. Unfortunately. It was just too late. He was too high functioning. He didn't start to go down this decrepit path at the end of his life. He was absolutely fucking killing it up until the day that he passed away. And so I think that's the point. Of my episode today, which is. You could be listening to this right now. And you could be highly functioning. That doesn't mean that you're not an addict and more importantly, pet doesn't mean that you're fried. From the same three. Final destinations that addicts run into. Jails institutions and death. Oh, my. So my ask to you is. If you are a highly functioning person. But you think you might have a problem? Ask yourself. Why do you think. You have this problem married to. You're high. Functioning life. Just because things are going on well on the outside and you're getting accolades. How do you feel. About your life. How do you really feel. And try to Wade through the bullshit that you're telling yourself. Oh, M I make 400 K a year. What the fuck does this? Em guy not know? It's not about that. Okay. One thing that I learned from this whole recovery thing. Is. I had, I thought that I had it all. In my active addiction.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-8:I had a prestigious degree saying, oh, he graduated with a high GPA. I was making a lot of money. I had side hustles. I had a lot of status at work. My parents thought that I was the greatest thing since sliced bread, because I was doing so well in all of these things. But. All of the attention and the thing, that's the things that society care about your income level, your education level. That wasn't enough. It wasn't even fucking close to enough. That was just the tip of the fucking iceberg. For what I needed to live a fulfilling. And content life. From being a functioning addict, it taught me that. It doesn't matter how much shit that you have. It doesn't matter how well you're doing at your job. Those are not the necessary elements. For living a fulfilling. Peaceful life. You need real things you need. Connection. You need honesty with other people. You need real relationships and guess what? Connection, honesty, real relationships. These don't happen when you're an addict. But these all start to form. Once you start calling. Out of that vicious fucking hole, that cycle. Of active addiction. And that's what I wish for everybody out there. Who's listening. Whether you're. An addict who doesn't have a home or. You're a functioning addict with a great job. You're both one in the same. And so am I in that we all share in the struggle. But I promise you I've seen it. I've seen it so many times. You too. Can get through it. Whew. I mm. This was thoughts of an addict. Thank you so freaking much for listening and I can't wait to be talking to you again. Have a great rest of your day.