Recovery Unfiltered
Taking recovery discussion to a different level. Bringing comedy and the lighter side of sober living along with educating non-alcoholics and alcoholics. Hear real stories unfiltered.
Recovery Unfiltered
She Never Gave Up On Him, Even When He Gave Up On Himself
How does a marriage survive the unthinkable? In this powerful, emotional episode, Mike and Kim open their hearts to share their 18-year journey through grief, addiction, and eventual healing after losing their son Michael in a tragic accident.
When devastation struck their family, Mike spiraled into addiction while Kim struggled to hold everything together. Their raw honesty about rock bottom moments—from Kim finding Mike with drugs to contemplating suicide—reveals the brutal reality of how grief can tear lives apart. Yet somehow, their bond endured when statistics said it shouldn't.
The turning point came not through fighting harder, but through surrender. "It's not your battle," Kim heard in prayer. "Just love him. Show him mercy and grace." This spiritual revelation transformed their approach to recovery and to each other. After multiple rehab attempts, Mike finally found sobriety that stuck—now approaching nine months clean after nearly two decades of struggle.
What makes this conversation so powerful is how it illuminates recovery from both perspectives: the person battling addiction and the loved one walking alongside them. Their journey demonstrates that sometimes the most loving action is letting go, that forgiveness (especially of oneself) is an ongoing process, and that healing happens when pain is brought into the light.
Whether you're personally affected by addiction, grieving a loss, or simply seeking to understand these experiences better, Mike and Kim's testimony offers both comfort and challenge. Their story isn't just about survival—it's about finding joy again when it seemed impossible. As Kim beautifully puts it, their cup is "no longer half empty or half full—it's overflowing."
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Heavenly Father, we thank you for bringing us together. Father, we ask that you lay hands on Kim and Mike as they tell their story. Father, these precious times together, father, we do these to heal other peoples and other families. Father, open their hearts, open their minds and do healing with them. Father, that these times together will better serve them going forward. Father, we ask that you sit with each one of us and bless us and keep us safe. We say these in your name.
Speaker 1:Amen, let's go to work, you sit on the toilet. Don't you Use that as your meditation?
Speaker 3:Not my wife, not your wife, nor anybody listening to this podcast has eaten a shit sandwich.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Recovery Unfiltered.
Speaker 3:I'm Larry, I'm an alcoholic. I am rob, I am also an alcoholic. We are not professionals. There are no letters after our names. We know very little. However, you will hear the word god and a four-letter word in the same sentence. You will also be offended. So if you are easily offended, just pass us by. This podcast is not for you our opinions are just that.
Speaker 1:If you don't agree with what I'm over. I'm over that thing, robbie. Hi, rob, how you?
Speaker 3:doing buddy. I am over that intro. Hey, we went from a nice prayer, beautiful prayer, heartfelt prayer. You sit on the toilet, don't you?
Speaker 1:Hey, listen, what did I say AA is the only place where you hear God and fuck in the same sentence.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Then they mean both of them, you know yeah then they mean both of them.
Speaker 4:You know they have problems welcome back, mike.
Speaker 1:Hey, you know I missed you last week, yeah, two weeks ago now. Yeah, it was her fault. No, no, no, no, don't do it, don't do it, throwing poor kim under the bus already.
Speaker 4:We haven't even introduced her yet Sorry.
Speaker 1:Give me a couple minutes here I want to correct a few things with Rob. Rob, go ahead. Well, in our two last podcasts I want to say it was last week we were talking about sponsorship, right, okay, and I asked you about you being tired, right, and how you go about that, how you go about that, and you said something in there, and I want to very much clarify with our listeners that you don't go home and spill to bonnie everything that's been talked about in the meetings no no, but it kind of came across that way, because you said when you're tired, you get home and bonnie will listen to you.
Speaker 1:Blah, blah, blah. When I heard it I was like yeah, that's not, I mean, I'll come home, okay, yeah yeah, I'll come home and talk to katie about stuff.
Speaker 3:That's not. I mean, I'll come home.
Speaker 1:Okay, I get what you mean. Yeah, yeah, I'll come home and talk to Katie about stuff that's happened in the meeting and stuff, but I don't spit names, I don't spit anything like that. Okay, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3:Well, I meant stuff I'm going to do in a fifth step or doing step work with a man, when she said well, my and my, my son's there, we're training. And she says when you come home it's the same look, the same energy, even though you're tired, you know. Usually then you come home after you've worked with another man, you know done step work or something which is something I enjoy, and we talk about it, but I know I don't. You know it's that same fire in the world.
Speaker 3:Because I'll be usually real excited talking about God. And you get all juiced up and it's just amazing how God's working in that man's life. But I still stick to my four rules, for sure.
Speaker 1:And I know I heard you say it and I knew what you meant, but I just wanted to make sure our listeners no good, yeah, I mean, like I said, I heard that and you know what you said you're tired again today in the meeting. Oh beat, okay, I'm gonna go back to this I've overdone the balance thing.
Speaker 3:Again I've done to the extreme yeah I've done it.
Speaker 1:Okay. You're checking yourself. Yeah, I'm there because, like I said, I I worry about you because you know what, when I need you, I need to make sure you're there for me. I don't give a fuck about any of those other people. I got you I want to just make sure you're there for me, and I need you fresh anytime I call. I'm working on it.
Speaker 3:Tuesdays are now done. Tuesdays are open. Why are you echoing? Because I'm way low. Why are you echoing?
Speaker 4:I don't know, larry, we just had a meeting today about being selfish and self-centered.
Speaker 1:You know why I had to leave, mike? Because they were talking about me too much. I had to get the fuck out of there. I'm like God damn it, this is too much like me. I got to go. No, my phone, my work phones got blown up, so I had to get the hell out of there. I had all kinds of stuff going on. All right back to the meeting. All right, so we talked about you. So I want to correct something Mike, about we talked last week. I had a few of our listeners that asked about Joseph.
Speaker 4:How is Joseph doing? Joseph's fine he's. I have to ask my wife how old he is. I'm terrible at birthdays. What is Joe 45?
Speaker 2:Joseph is 44.
Speaker 4:44. And he's fine. He's disabled, you know he lives, lives with us and will tell we're gone, um, but he gets around fine. He can't drive stuff like that. Um, if you looked at him it appears like maybe he had a stroke, like one side of his body doesn't work, okay, but he's, and how is he?
Speaker 3:how's he mentally?
Speaker 2:short-term memory issues yeah epilepsy, okay, um, but other than that, um, cognitively he's younger than his age, but, um, he's still pretty sharp and good sense of humor that voice is who?
Speaker 1:mike Mike, my beautiful wife.
Speaker 4:Kimberly, the brains of the outfit.
Speaker 1:There you go, you know we kind of jumped right into this and that's fine At the end of episode 42, I think was Mike, and we got to talking about Kim quite a bit and at the end of Jason's first first two stories you know jason was episode three and four and my wife kept telling me and 20 right yes, three, well, 20 was him and jenny, right, right.
Speaker 1:So after three and four, katie kept after me. She's like larry, jason's story is not done. Jason's story is not done. And I'm like is not done and I'm like what are you talking about? And I kept going back and listening. I'm like, oh man, we need to bring Jenny in right, because that's the big part of his recovery.
Speaker 1:And when I was editing, when I was finishing up Mike's story the second part of it, towards the end of it, we really started talking about Kim. Talking about Kim and I and I thought to myself, oh no, we got to bring Kim back, cause our original thought was to bring Jason back in and do that? Do you know? Finish up a little bit, but then I was like there's no way we can't finish a story like that. We got to finish it with Kim, because this is, this is the recovery part that we talked about, why we do that. The biggest thing is the recovery between you two and how you guys are doing, and that's what we want to talk about today. So I want to ask a couple questions. Kim, nine months ago, when Mike said I'm done, how'd that make you feel?
Speaker 2:That's hard. I was at work and I know he had been talking to somebody at the recovery at new hope. Yes, and um, I was going back and forth and and he called me up and said he's calling an Uber and he's going into recovery. And I said don't call an Uber, I'm on my way to pick you up. Cause I know how Michael is, I know I needed to be there with him and um, so I picked him up and drove him and hopeful I felt, hopeful good, different this time once I picked him up.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh good, you saw it I seen his attitude.
Speaker 2:I seen um, yeah, his attitude. His demeanor was totally different this time he was ready.
Speaker 1:Awesome, I've been dying to ask you that question. I have because I think when, katie, when I made the decision to go undercover, I saw the look on my wife's face change and I knew I'd made the right choice, because she saw it. I think she knew it right, choice, right. And I cause she, she saw it. I think she knew it right away. Right, she, she knew that I was done. It was a rough one. So, anyways, like I said, I've been dying to ask that question and we cleared up Joseph. So I want to go back. We're going to. We're going to go back because now we're going to talk. You know, mike's already told the story, but I want to go back and I want to tell it a little bit more. I want to go back to the time where he, you, were sitting on the couch and he walked in and he told what was her name. I'm here for her.
Speaker 3:Yeah, not you.
Speaker 2:The gal opened up the door excited to see him, and he's I'm here for you let's talk about that I wanted to crawl, um yeah and, and she just looked shocked and I was shocked and mike's just like well like you're gonna get up or what? And right then, I should have told him to take a hike, but it was meant to be so.
Speaker 4:I got up Right right, right, she said she should have ran.
Speaker 1:But how many years later did you decide you should have?
Speaker 2:ran.
Speaker 1:Shortly after that probably.
Speaker 2:No, never, never.
Speaker 1:So how long were you guys together when Joseph got in his accident?
Speaker 2:Four years together. Two years married.
Speaker 3:Okay, and Michael was a year old.
Speaker 2:Just over a year old.
Speaker 1:Okay, Okay, so you guys had a very established relationship. I think that was a little bit. I was confused. Yeah, because the way Mike kind of talked about it was like right, then then boom boom. He was just talking about the highlights.
Speaker 3:You know, Kim and I got together. Then, Joseph, you know, didn't Right.
Speaker 1:So that's one of the things, and how did you handle that? Because that was traumatic for you, even though you guys had been together for that long. Was Joseph living with you guys? He was living with you guys.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Mike had got custody of him by then.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right. So how did that? I mean how? What kind of transition was that for you? Because now you're going from caring for a one-year-old, now you're caring for a husband that's starting to drink again and and possibly having to bring home two infants, I mean, and not even for sure. So how did you handle that?
Speaker 2:God.
Speaker 1:How'd it so how?
Speaker 2:did you handle that? God Attagirl, god Prayer. We went to a small church at the time as well, and so we had a lot of prayer warriors around us and support. Okay, and did you notice Mike starting to drink again at that time? Well, I think he wasn't drinking heavily, that I knew it okay. Um, he just started drinking again. Um, there was a time after joseph got back from the hospital that he um started drinking more, not coming home home straight after work hanging around people that maybe he shouldn't be A little different.
Speaker 1:A little different, I think he was just, it was kind of like a.
Speaker 2:He uses it as a de-stressor.
Speaker 1:Right, right. Well, I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he had been through a lot.
Speaker 3:Right, but you'd been through a lot, too, and you weren't using it as a de-stressor. True, true, but you'd been through a lot, too, and you were using it as a de-stressor.
Speaker 2:True, true. Not that I didn't drink, but yeah, I was taking care of my responsibilities. And he was too, for the most part, you were drinking a little bit yourself, okay, but not like he was, not like he was.
Speaker 1:So how long after Joseph? All that Because? Did you go into a rehab, or did you? When was your first rehab?
Speaker 3:Mike, all your rehabs correct me if I'm wrong were after Michael.
Speaker 1:Oh, was it after Michael.
Speaker 3:Because after Joseph, when Joseph got home, you guys had 16 years really together taking care of Joseph Michael growing up. What was going on during that time, that 16 years Life?
Speaker 2:it was going on during that time, that 16 years Life it was, it was good it was.
Speaker 3:I mean, he wasn't off the rails, he was just dad Just working, just provider Michael worked hard.
Speaker 2:He worked really hard. He's a great provider. I was a stay-at-home mom and life was good.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, so. So when that's, I don't even know how to go into this.
Speaker 3:This topic I know Kim.
Speaker 1:I'm really trying to do this, cause you guys were recording on May 10th. And Mikey's accident was yesterday. 18 years, yeah, 18 years, and every year because Jason's.
Speaker 3:So every year this time I call, I text him or call him and we talk and he'll just how you doing, jason, love you. Then we'll just talk about you, know.
Speaker 1:So how are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well. I come into it with a heart of gratitude, oh, wow, okay. From day one. Just about, Try not to cry.
Speaker 1:You're fine.
Speaker 2:That I was blessed to be Michael's mother.
Speaker 1:Wow Okay.
Speaker 2:And I wouldn't trade those 17 years with him. I love it To have him one more minute. You know I'm, I'm, I couldn't ask for a better child.
Speaker 1:And so I'm really trying to figure out how to transition.
Speaker 3:I mean, I could sit here. I have a question, if I can.
Speaker 1:Go ahead, please. Well, it's your show too fool, Because I mean we, if I can Go ahead please.
Speaker 3:Well, because I've been. Well, it's your show too fool Everything. So, Good God, Because I mean we've covered this. You are fresh with Mike and I've been kicking him since he got into the room. He's never mentioned my name Because I was not.
Speaker 3:He was not my biggest fan when he got in there, because, I mean, because I heard Jason's story I got to live it with him. You know I first met Mike at 17, whatever this, you know at the Butler, because my wife is related to Rodney Butler so we would go over there for the Tyler stuff and you know that's where I first met him. Then to see him come back in the rooms and knowing what he has not dealt with.
Speaker 3:And Jason has. He'll be coming up on eight years sober. You know I got to be a part of that, so we've covered all this ground. But now every Thursday before I go to my because I sponsor guys, so before the big book study, after I get done doing my work with the guy, I'll step aside and I'll read this. That's amazing. That's 17 years old or 60, whenever he wrote that. What a heart you know. So that's just kind of keep that with me. Read it fool.
Speaker 1:Now that you, nobody on this, nobody on the podcast, has visual.
Speaker 3:This is a. This is a poem that Michael Mikey, your guy's son, wrote, and Mike gave us copies of this. This prayer from a teenager Lord, you're the coolest. You can do anything. You're bigger than anything. You can fix everything if you wanted to. You are glorious to us, lord, you went through all that just for us, ignorant, selfish fools. We do all things, bad things, but you're always there to help us and forgive. As those nails went through your hands and feet, you weren't thinking of how much it hurt. You were thinking about us. You're more than I can express. You died for us. Your last breaths were for us. You didn't feel sorry for yourself. You are the king of kings and lord of lords, the alpha and the Omega. You are the Big Bang. You created everything. You show the path of our life. You are the light. You will come back for us. It could be today or a million years from now. There is no tomorrow. You'll decide when the time is right. Amen, amen.
Speaker 1:You know, he was 16 when he wrote that.
Speaker 2:Somewhere around there maybe. Maybe give or take.
Speaker 3:I was not thinking of that.
Speaker 1:No, I was wrestling but I wasn't like that. No, good grief. No. So I don't want to go into the accident. A ton Right.
Speaker 3:I have a question why do you keep raising your hand? This is your damn show, too fool I want to get your attention.
Speaker 1:This is your damn show, too fool.
Speaker 3:I want to know about Mike. Okay, well, we talked about right after Joseph Mikey's a year. You guys have the 16 years before the accident. What was that Mike like Then? The Mike after the accident, and then to the Mike that you see now. And how did you? I know God's the the answer, but I want to know about him, what the changes you saw in him bring it into the light, kim, as you would tell mike, bring it into the light yeah, we've heard about you in a lot of meetings.
Speaker 1:I promise you you've created a lot of laughter, and but what do?
Speaker 3:you just want to say one, because I love the big book. Mike knows I do and I'm never going to get that other crappy one, mike. I want to share this because when he shares of you, I think of my wife, and this is part of Dr Bob. Dr Bob's a nightmare he shares. For some reason, we alcoholics seem to have the gift of picking out the world's finest women. Why they should be subjected to the tortures we inflict upon them. I can never explain. Tell me about Mike.
Speaker 2:Michael, he is.
Speaker 3:Because the 16 years was great.
Speaker 2:Yes, he is the best man I've ever met. I've never met a man that I consider better than him Hardworking, hardheaded, generous, loving he's never, given himself enough credit. He's his own worst critic.
Speaker 1:I think most of us alcoholics are he never felt worthy.
Speaker 2:I would say that was his worst thing about him Is that he never gave himself a break.
Speaker 1:That's true for a lot of alcoholics.
Speaker 3:And when the accident happened, Michael, what changed in him Besides the drinking he?
Speaker 2:broke, he completely broke.
Speaker 3:He had no coping skills. And how many years are we beyond the wreck? Is 2007, am I correct? Yes, so we're what? 19 years, 18, 18 years, yep, 18 years and now? Like you guys, is eight nine years, nine months sober coming up. Yep, that's a journey. I mean that. That's the story right there of how you I mean again, we married. The most most amazing. I don't know how my wife stuck with me right.
Speaker 1:I mean it's. It's amazing when we sit back and we look at. You know I put my wife through about as much about that amount of time. The difference was she was watching my, she was watching her husband just disintegrate, but she didn't lose a child. You were having to grieve your child.
Speaker 3:And worry about him.
Speaker 1:You were watching your husband slowly kill himself, and that had to be just extremely rough on you. Thank God, you had a God. Well, talk about that.
Speaker 2:Well, unfortunately, I gave. I did give my grief to God. I gave my son to God. I didn't give my husband to God.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:I, um, I was mad at him Very angry, scared, and I was mad at him very angry, scared and truthfully, I piled it on him.
Speaker 1:How could?
Speaker 2:you do this to me? How could you do this to us? How could you do this to our child's memory? You know, I lost my son, we lost our son. Now we're going to lose our marriage. We were told 85% of marriages don't last losing a child.
Speaker 4:That's huge. It was a bigger percent than that.
Speaker 3:And why is that do you think? And having been through that experience, Because you grieve differently. But he wasn't grieving at all.
Speaker 2:No, and I felt abandoned by him and I was was fighting for us, but I was fighting in the wrong way how so?
Speaker 3:um trying to oh, guilt him into it or beat him into it. Shake, shake it in, yeah just go.
Speaker 2:What are you thinking you're doing? Because we grew up in that lifestyle and I'm like. Here it is.
Speaker 1:Right. Look at yourself.
Speaker 2:Because our son died. We're going where we never wanted to go.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And it was devastating and I made it worse.
Speaker 1:Wow, when were you able to tell yourself that that's a big statement?
Speaker 2:When I thought, when I finally surrendered and got on my knees and crying out to God, saying I don't know what to do. He's going to die or our marriage is going to end. I just don't know what to do with the Lord. And he told me you're talking about your vision. He spoke to me and he said it's not your battle.
Speaker 1:He goes, it's my battle.
Speaker 2:He goes, Kim, just love him. Show him mercy and grace, like I've shown you, and so I said okay, and from that moment on, things just gradually got better and better and better, even when he was still drinking. Our marriage, god was repairing our marriage.
Speaker 1:Okay, did you feel that, mike? Did you feel that? Or were you so far into your alcohol? You did not see that feel that?
Speaker 4:No, I think I did, Because you know the pressure came off, Okay, and that's when I would be saying like her Remember, I've said it before like she was trying to help me wean off and just stop, and, and I agreed, you know, gave her my keys, my wallet and all this, but I had a extra set of keys in the drawer but you had stuff hidden in the helmet.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, okay, kimmy, one thing he, he, he, he lays it out there, he gives it to us.
Speaker 1:Well, you know one thing Okay, I got to stop because I got to ask this question. From that time, you gave it.
Speaker 3:No, when was that time, kim, when you surrendered?
Speaker 2:God bless it, I'm going to throw this fucking book at you.
Speaker 1:Stop brain, my brain. From the time you were on your knees giving that prayer to the time that mike called you said I'm headed in, but how long can you put a time frame on that?
Speaker 2:I wish I was more of a journaler but, um, it was probably. We started going back to church again um three years ago, on easter Okay, and almost every Sunday I mean, and we were involved in some epic groups they call them- that's what she would tell Mike.
Speaker 3:Just don't say nothing. I was thinking the same thing. Just don't breathe.
Speaker 1:I was thinking the same thing. Just don't talk to nobody here. Eat a mint. Oh, I did. I did say that a few times. Just don't talk to nobody here eat a mint.
Speaker 2:Oh, I did. I did say that a few times, but you know, my faith was growing stronger in my prayer life and I'd say a year and a half two years.
Speaker 1:Okay, I think there are two reasons why I asked that question. One, I felt that Katie had backed off. Katie had stopped trying to help me. She, she, just she turned it over. She had to. My wife was dealing with and I'm not trying to make this about me whatsoever, but this is just goes to show how strong God is in in this because my wife, uh, three, two alcoholics in her life, very close alcoholics, one being me and her dad battling cancer, all at the same time. She literally had to turn her husband over because the other two, she, she had to deal with. She didn't have to deal with me anymore. So she turned me over and I'm going to probably say I'd have to ask her, probably about a year, about a year before I finally when we get them on Right, the two wives Right.
Speaker 3:We're going to hash all that out.
Speaker 1:It's going to be an interesting question because, honestly, until you said that, how you said that, I firmly believe that Katie had to do the same thing? Yeah, because, as she was pressuring me, there was no way I was gonna the harder pressure she put on me bring it into the light, right?
Speaker 4:well, the more, the more she tried, the harder we put. Was my excuse, right, you? You made me have to go get more beer because you only left me three. Right, and it's your fault of course self is in page 62 and she didn't know about this vodka for a while that I was sneaking right. She found out, you know, because she's like a ninja she just pops up and so that was her fault too. Right catching me, but then, yeah, I can still see her face.
Speaker 1:That was like horrified look, and I'm gonna ask a couple other questions because I'm gonna try and get to something that mike brought up. But tell me about some of the horrific, some of the scariest moments that, if you can think of a couple scary moments of things that you caught mike doing or signs that you saw Mike that just literally scared you, Like is this the day?
Speaker 3:Is this the day? I'm going to bury my husband now Because I don't know, or was it just consistent?
Speaker 2:There was one time where this man, this strange man, showed up on my front porch and he was telling me that my husband was on his way to the hospital. Because he came upon him, he was riding a bike.
Speaker 3:Oh, I remember that story.
Speaker 2:And that he found my husband sitting on the tailgate of our truck and he had cut his self and he was just sitting there and and um, the man you know talked with my husband, um, and called the sheriffs and mike went into the hospital. That was one not voluntarily a couple times um mike in the hospital, pancreatitis, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I don't know if I can say the other one Okay.
Speaker 1:You don't want to say it, because we've already talked about some things.
Speaker 4:I know what it's probably about, do I? Maybe, when you caught me with the bag. Yeah, no, the rope.
Speaker 2:Close.
Speaker 1:Like I said, remember that we can cut stuff out if we need to I forgot, right? I mean, if we need to cut some stuff out and you're not comfortable with it after we speak about it.
Speaker 2:You know, I, I, I I'm open, right. Well, and remember, these are healing these are.
Speaker 1:This is for healing and not only for for you guys, but we go to a lot of listeners and may need I've used the mic when jason's not available and mike's been gracious enough.
Speaker 3:We don't, because matt and mary maybe, if you've, we go to a lot of listeners and may need to use the mic when Jason's not available and Mike's been gracious enough.
Speaker 3:We don't. We has Matt and Mary. Maybe if you've been listening to the podcast, there's another gentleman I sponsor. They lost their child last year. He went through a year not even quite a year four months of cancer, brain cancer, six to seven years old, and I've used Mike more than one time to help me help him. He'll tell Matt, you know cause, father, father, and it's been amazing.
Speaker 1:So please feel comfortable to talk about it. Cause it's cause those two.
Speaker 3:they're going to listen to this Right.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, it was, um gosh, probably four years after Michael passed. And, yeah, I walked outside. Um, it was morning time and was looking for Mike and came outside the garage and around the corner and he had a bag and a pipe and I just fell to my knees and couldn't believe what I was seeing.
Speaker 1:How did you confront him with that?
Speaker 2:Just asked why. How could you? This is the worst of the worst in my eyes.
Speaker 1:Taking you back to your childhood.
Speaker 2:Worse. You know, because you see the people today. I don't know. I think drugs are totally different today than they were when I was a child. Yes, they do more damage, I think.
Speaker 1:Laced with just all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2:So I was I just, my life was just unraveling.
Speaker 1:Do you remember that, Mike?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I can remember the look on her face.
Speaker 1:Do you remember how you felt when she caught you?
Speaker 4:Well, do you remember how you felt when she caught you? Well, it's hard to say. I felt like a dumbass at first because I was standing right out there in the open, almost like you wanted to get caught. Yeah, I mean I'm standing right out there.
Speaker 3:That's the shit we think about. Yeah, that's the first thing that comes to our mind.
Speaker 4:I don't know if that was the first thing. The first thing was just Pick a better hiding spot. That, um, how's it going to get out of this Right? Thank you.
Speaker 1:That's the insanity of the brain that we have, right, the addiction. That's the addiction in us. How am I going to spin this? Yeah, how am I going to spin this to make it not look so bad? It's my first time.
Speaker 4:I mean just all kinds of thoughts go into your head. I know that I could see the broken heart in her face.
Speaker 1:What does Jason say? The incomprehensible demoralization that he saw on her face.
Speaker 4:And Kim's yeah His wife was named Kim too, but I seen her. Yeah, I can picture that face still. That breaks my heart today. Then it did too, but probably just for a minute because I was still going to go about killing myself. But I had to smooth this out somehow and it just went. She didn't know what to do. I remember she called my brother. She was trying to get anybody involved that could maybe help, because she was at the end of her Did an intervention Didn't work.
Speaker 2:She was at the end of her intervention. I just ended up pretty much nobody helped, nobody helped and she was trying her best to get anybody that could help do anything but now what does that sound like when you're what started the podcast?
Speaker 1:this is why I love rob and me on this, because rob's over there reading my brain right now, because literally which is why the podcast talked about why I'm up. Why this podcast started is because when we see somebody in that addiction, they're even though we know there's nothing, there's nothing.
Speaker 3:Anybody on this earth can tell him.
Speaker 1:When I was ready when I was deep in my drinking there wasn't not a fucking thing. Anybody was going to say do any anything that was going to drag me out of that until I wanted to come out of it human beings move at the speed of pain right, well, let me.
Speaker 4:I'm gonna just add one little bit to this. Getting caught with the bag, my brother comes over. I'm just running around like hiding or whatever that was a different time okay, well, whatever, she tried to show him what I was doing and he's like not into drugs, doesn't drink. And I remember I was coming out of the bathroom in our laundry room and he had that bag and they were talking Bag of heroin.
Speaker 1:I'm going to assume no Meth Meth.
Speaker 4:Okay, yeah, and um, I seen him looking at it and she's like crying and she's still trying to get help. You know, trying to get somebody to help do something. I I'm walking by and I look down and see it in his hand and I snatched it and said that's mine and I walked by her and left, wow, wow, because that was more important right important right then than staying and hearing whatever I was going to hear, which was not, like you said, wasn't going to happen.
Speaker 1:Well, for me. I just want to speak. I knew I was fucked right. I knew how deep. I didn't need somebody to continually tell me how deep into addiction I was. You know mine was just alcohol. I thank God that I didn't get to that part. You know my depression was so bad that I was perfectly happy with my alcohol to a certain point. I didn't want to go around this. I wanted to go about that low and as far as I wanted to go. I didn't want to go below that. But I knew how big of a piece of shit I was. I knew it and I think Mike kind of knew at that point and didn't care.
Speaker 4:He was happy, right there.
Speaker 2:Like when people talk about hitting their bottom.
Speaker 4:I say I went to bottom and just stayed there Drug along the bottom. Yeah, I just stayed in the bottom and I think the meth came into play with um. However it came into play, it was like anti-depressant. I thought like the life was up, but it just kept me able to drink.
Speaker 2:Function right, keep drinking right, because he blamed me for this one too oh because he was no longer getting prescribed, if I get it Okay, oh, that's right.
Speaker 1:Just get ready to ask you about that. Yeah, honestly, if Viking was a part of that, it was a part of that. Oh, big time, yeah. But see here's where I maybe Okay, cause I never play with math and I but I know what. But shut up, you fucking dick, damn guys. Hey, but so you went from Vicodin to meth, isn't that going the other direction?
Speaker 4:Well, I don't know. They say Vicodin has different effects on different Right what it does. When I was going through cancer.
Speaker 3:I tried to manage my pain with different because it was ungodly. And I tried Norco's and what it did for two days. I couldn't sleep.
Speaker 4:I was just it felt to me, it felt like back and I was like why, that's how that worked for me just wired wide open really so I couldn't do that anymore I I take.
Speaker 1:This is one of the main reasons why I'm not a big fan of taking pain pills. They put me out. I take one and I'm out for four hours out. That's why when I hear people talking about taking handfuls of these vicodins, I'm like I'd be fucking dead some people well, you got to build up to that.
Speaker 4:They'll pass out, but in the end I was a 30-day thing from the doctor didn't even last a little over a week.
Speaker 2:Okay, that that's why Michael had pancreatitis as well.
Speaker 4:From the pills, from the pills Drinking and pills Right, because I would start my day with eight Vicodins to tens chew them up in my mouth and six or eight beers at three or four in the morning, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And he went to the doctor every day, just about.
Speaker 4:To get more pills. That, and sometimes asking for help.
Speaker 1:And I still got more. What do?
Speaker 4:you mean by asking for help, telling them I needed to get off these before, and then he prescribed me some worse methadone. Yeah, yeah. And then, how many are you drinking a day? Cause I went and said I'm drinking too much and I said who counts, yeah?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I gave that. I'm not an accountant motherfucker.
Speaker 3:I'm an alcoholic who counts that shit.
Speaker 4:And basically.
Speaker 1:The wives do.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Guaranteed the wives do. I could put.
Speaker 3:I played every game so every game like so. So here's I can just picture here's, mike, because this is what we are. You come in, I can't. Okay, you're having pancreatitis. No more, no more pills for you, mike, and no more drinking, you know, because you got pancreatitis. Okay, I'll keep the drink and I'll get rid of the pills. I'll start meth they and then kim. That's how we think I didn't like methadone.
Speaker 4:What did that do? This is the first time I've heard about this.
Speaker 3:Well, what did methadone do? I know what it is, but what did it do to you?
Speaker 4:it would make it like larry thought. You know you just catch your heartbeats. Go out. Who the hell wants that? Yeah, and so I dumped them, and because it would put you to sleep methadone would yeah, just well, and I didn't like the way it made me feel, even if I could stay working on it, but I never took eight or ten at a time like I would like it, and that's the other question I wanted to bring up and sorry, I think I'm going to did.
Speaker 1:Were you still working at this time? Full time?
Speaker 3:well, how long? Because you're 62 now. How long have you been retired, kim? How long has he been? He's terrible at dates and and times um, it's probably.
Speaker 2:I've been working eight years now, so it's probably been about five, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the last five years, the last when you retired, you really had to go off the rails.
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah, All day long I was doing it when I was.
Speaker 3:Is that when you were, there came a time where I was getting uh, rationed, is that when you were rationing him towards the end, you know he towards the end, you know he would get his three?
Speaker 2:beers and um, that was just trying to help him not dt yeah, because he said towards the end, before I went to rehab, he wanted to stop and that's when I let her take my wallet, my keys.
Speaker 4:she didn't try forcibly. I said take them, you know, because I in my head I wanted to quit, right, like I said, I'd be praying to God to take it away, and I was puking out a beer, reaching for another one. That was right. Not long before I went in I guess I'd been calling the rehab for, I thought, a couple weeks. When I finally got there they said try three months. Oh, wow, okay, I had been calling them gonna come in, had these assessment dates and they kept calling me and would never show and she was pissed.
Speaker 4:She said if you're not gonna go, tell these people to quit calling me, yeah good wow.
Speaker 1:So you were flirting around with that for a while. You know, I, towards the end. I can remember several mornings on the way to work because my biggest, my my drink time was I had an hour and 15 minutes drive and that's when I would do that's. That's when I woke up Right, I'd have at least a six pack and have pint before I got to work, and that's how I woke up Right. I couldn't wake up without that. I didn't think about. Three quarters of the way to work is when I'd be just crying and praying God, stop this, stop this insanity.
Speaker 3:Okay, and I want to jump on it, because he said the same thing. Right, and we had talked about this when Mike was at the Monday meeting. When we're there, kim the alcoholic, the addict, when we're in that moment of to god, we mean it when we're saying baby, I'm sorry, I'll never do it again.
Speaker 2:We mean it to the bottom of our heart.
Speaker 3:But what we didn't know was this lack of power. Page 45, page 45 lack of power. That was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously. But where and how were we to find this power?
Speaker 3:Well, that's exactly what this book is about. That's why when, men, you know, when we were telling in the monday meeting, when you're on your knees saying the third step prayer, asking god for help, and you think, well, god doesn't show up, no, he didn't show up. You know why? Because that's all you ever did. You hit your knees. You never got back on your feet and tried to help yourself, you never got into action. Lord, this is how serious I am. So of course he's not going to answer. You can't pray for a fucking hole while you're leaning on a shovel. He's going to say son, I gave you a tool and you've got too warm, start digging. But we never start digging. We just want god to do all the heavy lifting, and he will if we'll do the action. And that's what we've never done. And mike said you know we mean it, but we didn't realize we didn't have the power and we had to not just surrender, but get into action. Hey, I need help.
Speaker 1:And that's the biggest thing. Even you know, I walking somebody through right, trying to get somebody through the steps, my first time walking something is getting them to understand that, like, this guy is 41 years, 41 years old. And I've told you, like I'd say, and I've heard Rob say this, you know you're 41 years old and I've told you, like I'd say, and I've heard rob say this, you know you're 41 years old. How's it? You know how? How has it worked for you so far? Not relying on something else beside yourself, right, your best thinking got you here got you right here something else right, just god thinking, which you've already found?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean so I mean, you would not be a while too but you wouldn't be here, you guys wouldn't be together.
Speaker 3:He would not have a wife. He'd probably be dead. Had you not found, leaned on him, leaned on our father, it wouldn't be here. I mean, he's got, let's be honest. That's why dr bob wrote that we didn't have not, that everybody has that wife, I know, but we do.
Speaker 1:We do we do? Oh, for sure I wouldn't be here I know, thank you, yeah the ones that come into this program broken, without wives and without you, know that have lost everything you tend to because going on.
Speaker 2:They didn't lose it, they threw it away.
Speaker 1:They gave it away. Sorry, you're right, words matter. I hear what Rob says and then I look back and I think about these guys that have lost their wives, lost their kids, lost everything. You know that nothing stuck with them and you tend to ask yourself was it just not God's timing for them? Was God not in the way of the woman that left? I mean, you hear that kind of stuff, but then I think back. All I can say is thank God. Thank God For me and Katie's told me this straight point blank if I'd have lost my job, she would have been gone right. The only thing keeping her is A. She loved the man. She loved the man. I was prior and I was keeping a roof over her head, and if something would have happened she would have had to leave, right, and then it would have been up to me what I'd done. So I mean I weren't.
Speaker 2:With me because he wasn't working and he hadn't yet he still hasn't touched his retirement With me. He was sick and he was hurting and, yes, it was tough and sometimes I had people tell me you should leave. Sometimes I felt like leaving but I said vows.
Speaker 1:Yep, there you go, right there.
Speaker 2:And I needed to honor those vows. And that's how I felt and I, like your wife, I know the man Right. I've always known him.
Speaker 3:The potential.
Speaker 2:And he's never known it.
Speaker 1:That's not what you married. That's what Katie would always say that man that you became was not the man I married.
Speaker 2:And he had two sons and I'm not excusing him, but he's been through a lot, not that people aren't. Yes, I was through a lot, not that people aren't. You know, I, I, yes, I was through a lot too. Um but I didn't break like Michael did. Michael broke Um and he, he didn't want to.
Speaker 3:And only God could fix him.
Speaker 2:Only God.
Speaker 1:And you had to turn him over. I did Cause I.
Speaker 2:I was. I was making it worse. And what's the verse? Lean not unto your own understanding.
Speaker 3:Trust in the Lord and lean not unto your own understanding.
Speaker 1:So yeah, let's lighten things up a little bit. Let's go on to the recovery.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:You know, I mean there was. I want to. I'm going to do one more thing and I'm going to tell you, I'm going to preference, why I'm bringing this up. And one of the things that made me when Mike, when one of the things that really wanted me to get Mike's story obviously I knew the story and I wanted it for the listeners, but when I was like I'm getting Mike on, I don't care what I have to do, I want Mike's story is when he told me about and once again I can cut this when you caught him making a noose and I if we can talk about it, if you want, if don't, kim, because when he told me that there was a red barn on my way to work and I knew that and it was on a big S turn.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 1:I knew that if I kept going straight that I could pretty much take away my misery and it would look like an accident. And it would look like an accident. It would only make things worse at home. But I knew I could end my misery. Katie never caught that. She never heard that until after. She didn't realize how deep into my depression I was. Until after, thank God, I came out of it. But when you saw that, how, how, what was your reason?
Speaker 3:And was this before or after the meth? You know when, what, what was the timeframe when you saw this?
Speaker 2:And I I made a mistake. The meth came in about five years after Michael's accident.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I want to say it was after.
Speaker 4:I don't know.
Speaker 2:You know, honestly, I try to not remember that.
Speaker 1:Okay, katie would be the same line.
Speaker 4:I can tell you, I can remember the look on her face. Was it the same? Look the same.
Speaker 2:It was just shock, you know, um, and if I'm real, um, I had I thought about going head-on, okay, with vehicle, um, just like the accident right that my son was in.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:You know. And then we were in Vegas and caught him once again with meth and I took all his diazepam, tried to take my life.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, okay, Okay, diazepam tried to take my life.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, okay okay, so I struggled to here and there with um, um, just wanting to end it, just not have the pain anymore myself okay, you okay mike, yeah, I just probably have haven't forgot about that, but I tuned it out.
Speaker 3:But we are good compartmentalizers. This is uh. Thank you, kim, I do that absolutely, kim. Well, you have to. I mean, if you want to survive something like that, you have to be able to somewhat then?
Speaker 4:uh, it's just like the third time sitting here.
Speaker 4:I can remember her face so now I came in the room and she oh yeah, I can remember because I had her in the shower screaming at her, and she just had this, she was just, she was just so done. She was and I remember she looked like a little girl, like a young little girl, just with these big eyes, crying, saying she wants to die, and that was was like all bad. I can still picture her in the shower and I'm yelling at her, trying to get her up. Got the shower on, she's, got all her clothes on. And she just didn't want to get up. She just said I'm done, I want to just go then the cops.
Speaker 1:I think I had to call 9-1-1 or something because I couldn't get her get up. Okay, so I, I I'm glad I went down, that I, I really am, um, because now we're gonna jump to the, now we're gonna jump, I mean, I'm, here's the thing, and and, but it's always darkest before the.
Speaker 4:Oh my gosh right and I'm so sorry. You don't know, it's the hardest part. You don't know, it's the hardest part. And this stuff is forgiving myself. I know you forgive me, but I still.
Speaker 2:I know how?
Speaker 4:but I want to tell myself I don't know how you can forgive me, but I know how you do. How's that? Through her faith in God and her belief in the marriage vows we took and how she really knows me and I just thank God he gave me somebody that's stronger than me, right? I don't know how many people would say that my wife's way tougher than a 17-year-old Marine, thought he was, thought he could never be broken. But that stuff broke me beyond something I never dreamed from anything that happened in my whole life. But she stood stronger than I ever did or could.
Speaker 4:Without her period, I would probably not, probably definitely be dead. Absolutely I know I would, because I that would have been it, and all I did was try and push her further and further away so I could just stay in that misery that nobody could help. And I guess the more I pushed her away, I guess deep down in that darkness it was going to all be better off for her if she left. But I knew deep down that darkness would be the end of me if she left. But I just thank God for her.
Speaker 1:She's an awesome woman that's why I do this podcast, for the recovery it's to.
Speaker 1:I do this podcast for the recovery it's to, to the joy we, the joy we get right, and Michael, michael and you may have already seen it, but the joy that Rob and I get out of watching this is, it's unexplainable. The joy I get, it's not that the joy of seeing the pain, it's the joy of the joy I get. It's not that the joy of seeing the pain, it's the joy of the coming back out and that's why I want to go to here. The day you dropped him off, I can remember watching my wife and kids drive away and the pain on their faces. I don't know if it was pain or joy when they were driving away. When you dropped him off this last time and you had to drive away, can you explain that feeling?
Speaker 2:I did it six times.
Speaker 3:And I understand, but this time you knew Right, she didn't know, she was hopeful because it was different.
Speaker 2:This time was different. I was hopeful, joyful Mike's demeanor when he was joking around in there before he was angry wasted. This time he wasn't, he had drank of course, but he wasn't wasted. They did a breathalyzer on him and they said you're not even drunk.
Speaker 1:Damn it. Go, try some more. Okay, I'll be back, and usually he would.
Speaker 2:He was like go in there.
Speaker 4:And they're the ones that said take an Uber, Right? Because I was always drunk probably every time I talked to him.
Speaker 2:I remember talking to everybody after I dropped him off family and there because our niece was close with him at the time and and just telling them that, um, he's, his whole demeanor is so different this time. He's, he's ready, he's, he's he. He was cheerful, he was joking around, he was, he wasn't angry, he was so different. He wasn't angry, it was so different, it just gave me chills.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I mean that. And, mike, do you remember that feeling changed for you when you got in there? Do you remember? The reason why I ask that is because I very, very vividly remember that moment when I knew that I was going to be okay. Do you remember that?
Speaker 4:probably was all right, and probably within a couple days, because she could tell you exactly how the first day went that I was having a crazy anxiety attack. Clinton sits, I was walking their parking lot until 11 o'clock that night, back and forth, half me wanting to run out the gate just to be back home, right? Not, I wasn't thinking about drinking, I was thinking about her, her, and here I am again.
Speaker 3:That's how I felt the first day, yeah, I mean the first day was terrible.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and they were. They had meds coming and all that. So you don't det and whatever. And I was like shaking but I wasn't like you know, get the bamboos ready. But that's what she was worried about when she was leaving me three beers that I drank before she left to work and um went to the store as soon as she left to work but probably, I don't know, I settled down second or third day and started working my the program. I knew that they had, I always say, beat into you the whole time. You're in 30 days. It's a or n a, um do this, do this. So all the whole thing.
Speaker 4:You knew the routine I knew the routine, I could teach it and I started. Actually, you just couldn't live it. Yeah, that was not for me, you know, but I started the whole reason. Okay, we talked about God being like you said. He prayed to God for a hole and he gave you a shovel. And I'm praying and puking saying God, take this away.
Speaker 4:Well, I've said it in the meetings that he made me willing to take my butt to rehab. And so God was in the whole thing. He was taking it away, but he knew I wasn't going to quit. I mean, while I'm praying and grabbing another beer, he's like okay. Or like you've heard people say, I asked God to help me quit doing drugs. He put me in jail, something like that you know it's like.
Speaker 4:So God will work in mysterious ways and I believe he works in our program with you guys. God uses people. A lot of people don't get that. That's right here through you guys, 1000%. Jesus went and made disciples. Right. Why? To go out and help people. Right To go out and be the hands and feet, and that's what the rooms are full of, even if they don't know it or are fighting it. The god thing is how we're getting help right. And so I started working my program in the program right when it started, the first thing God did with me and she would help me out with the phone too Praying, praying for people. Because you know, in rehab you're surrounded by idiots, right, right.
Speaker 3:He's not lying, kim, he's not lying.
Speaker 1:Bunch of losers, people not like me. Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 4:I thought so much drama, Right, but so much, so much drama right, you want to just get. I. This ain't where I should be, you know. So I prayed for patients. I actually pray. I'd walk the parking lot praying for the people in there that I wanted to choke, or page five, 52, right there. Or that I couldn't stand listening to.
Speaker 3:I was one of those when he got to the rooms.
Speaker 4:I didn't want to choke you.
Speaker 3:What do you mean?
Speaker 4:was.
Speaker 1:I am, I am I am Thank you.
Speaker 4:No, but so my 30 days went easy. I was willing, like they say in the open-minded willing, and a lot of it started in there just being taught me how to listen. I'm still learning. Like I said, I hear great, but I don't listen. That good, ask her. But in the rooms I've had to learn that. Yeah, because the first time I ever tried aa, I think I made two meetings and said I'm out of here, this is all drama bs, and I never went back like go ahead I can sorry you can have a drink if you want.
Speaker 4:Turn your head. Drink, no um. What came to my mind?
Speaker 2:is no. What came to my mind is he was originally going to come out after a couple weeks. Okay, was the original plan. Oh, yeah, forgot. And when those couple weeks came up, he chose to stay.
Speaker 1:Ah, that was the switch. That's huge. That was the switch, yeah.
Speaker 4:There it was. I forgot because I was huge. That's why I said she's going to be great, because she makes me and she knows times, dates. She was going to Ecuador on a mission trip and I was starting to freak out. I'm in rehab, she's going to Ecuador. I'm not going to get to see her off to the airplane, so I'm wigging out. And then we just talked about it and then I chose to stay.
Speaker 1:So did you leave? You went to Ecuador. While he was in, I did not end up going.
Speaker 2:I think it was not in the plan.
Speaker 1:I think the plan was for me to leave home. That would have been a rough for him to come home to.
Speaker 2:Yes, Well, the plan was to go to Ecuador before he ever went to rehab, oh gotcha. And I think it was his plan so I wouldn't go.
Speaker 4:Damn it, Mike. She was going to be back gone while I was in there, but be back when I got out. Gotcha. But if I would have got out in two weeks and she left to Ecuador, I would have been done. Yeah, that would have been rough. It wasn't the last. I would have not stayed sober, so I chose this day.
Speaker 4:Well, I don't know Right, I doubt it, but I chose this day even before we knew that she got sick and wasn't able to go, because she didn't want to jeopardize anybody else or be in Ecuador sick, sick, no for sure. So it was a god thing always and, yeah, it was just like. It was a big turnaround, being open-minded and willing and actually doing right what they said every single time I was in there. Um, and this last, you know, they always tell you two, only two percent. I still don't get why they say this. Only two percent of you are going to make it right. That's because it's a fact. Yeah, it's fact. But when you're down and out and you're like you say, you're walking with your ass in your hand or whatever.
Speaker 4:And to hear only two percent. Hey, thanks for the hope pal, thanks, you know. And oh, by the way, 99 of people that lose a child, uh, their marriages don't last. Oh, thanks for that one too. Right, and they told me that when I was on intake up at maynard's.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, and I'm like thanks, bud, that's great to see, but when I heard that because they told me, uh, they said the same thing there was, I was I happen to be one of the oldest. I was 38 at the time when I got sober, you know, 14 years ago, and there's a young lady sitting next to me. She was the same age. We were the oldest, and this asshole who went to primary purpose at the time I didn't know that I met him like six months later at primary. He said yeah, most of you aren't. You know, I'm gonna make it. I've just had a spite, because that's how alcoholics and medics are just out of spite.
Speaker 3:watch this what I'll be that one, and by god's grace it was.
Speaker 4:It was last night I might have been at that book study.
Speaker 3:When I said they said two percent and I said I'll let it be one of the fucking two percent yeah, which is something you didn't say the previous six times or five times.
Speaker 4:No, I just was, yeah, thinking I got this for a couple weeks, right, right so kim, the last eight months, all right like this. Thank you, rob come on, tell me god you know what her face, how she doesn't need to tell you.
Speaker 3:I know she's gotta tell the audience because they can't see the light I see it oh my god, there's one right there, we'll leave.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, her face was just incredible.
Speaker 2:He has a joy. He has a joy. I don't get that.
Speaker 4:Oh my God, you do though, you don't see it, we see it I see
Speaker 1:it, I've only known you for eight months and I can see it for God's sake he has a joy that he's never had oh man before the accident before joe's accident hey, my wife says the same thing. I guarantee you I'm not the same man that I was even 20 years ago, because of those steps that I did, because of and he's working, him's like, he knows he's loved.
Speaker 2:And so he has worth.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And he's making positive choices. We used to joke because he'd be the glass half empty person. I'm the glass half full overflowing now we joked the other day it's like, no, our cup is overflowing. It's no longer, you know, half empty, half full, it's overflowing. And promises he's he's you know how empty, how full. It's overflowing Promises. He's. I'm a lucky woman. Oh, it's going to fill in the blanks, you've earned it.
Speaker 4:You've earned it. I'm a blessed woman. You've earned it. Now the question is.
Speaker 3:Is this I mean we're talking 2007,. All that to this just eight months, eight months. Is this eight months worth all of that? To have this now? I mean because you went through a lot. Now you're doing this. I mean because you went through a lot. I'm sure there's going to be more than I hope we all make at home, but is it?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Isn't that something? It is, all that pain, our marriage is so much stronger. It's always been strong, Even at its weakest moments it had to have something because you wouldn't be here.
Speaker 2:It was strong and our love was strong. I guess I would say, even though you might not see it, but now we've always been best friends, but now we're just. You know, life is life. Who knows what it's going to bring, but I know he and I, with God of course, will survive.
Speaker 3:Aren't you glad all those many years ago when he showed up at the door looking around the other gal saying I'm here to see that one.
Speaker 2:Aren't you glad you didn't climb on the couch that's so funny because um, mike and I I don't know if he told you this, but the day we met, our conversation was about family yeah well, he said that day because one of you had one.
Speaker 3:Had a license and no car one had a car no license and he was after that one and he said the day I met her he goes. I knew that was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we talked about God and we talked about family.
Speaker 1:I also said that when he picked you up from the.
Speaker 3:Nutcracker to take you out on your break, that when he called you didn't even know who that Mike was Mike.
Speaker 2:who Mike?
Speaker 3:who he said. I got that wrong, see.
Speaker 2:It was the second day, the day after I met him, that he called me, and at work, yes, and I wasn't expecting him to call me you probably had orders in your head that you were trying to get out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the fuck is Mike.
Speaker 2:I never get personal calls at work and and he's like this is Mike and I'm like Mike, who I made a great impression, didn't I?
Speaker 3:I shr shrunk.
Speaker 2:Did he tell you what he said after that?
Speaker 3:what'd he say?
Speaker 2:he said well, he goes like. After we talked last night I couldn't get you out of my mind. I thought about it.
Speaker 3:He did say that on the podcast. Yeah, he did. Okay, I thought about you all day goes.
Speaker 2:I wanted to know if you'd like to get to know me better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he said how corny is that you did. That's awesome, that ain't corny at all. I don't think so. So you know, once again, I'm sitting over here just about bawling, because this, right here, is a thousand percent. Why we do the things that we do is to watch these families come back together, and even the people without wives or without husbands, to watch their lives and those promises that we speak about all the time to watch those promises to start coming back into our lives.
Speaker 1:I wanted to bring up a couple things and, kim, you've've been amazing, you really have, we're not done. I'm getting ready to go into another thing that we brought this up and I'm going to talk to Mike just for a couple minutes. We can't start loving others until we learn to love ourselves. And I've seen, I've seen Mike from the very beginning, when he first started, coming into the rooms with a man with a squeaky voice, sitting in the back, barely able to speak to a man that loves to share in the meetings, and I've watched him learn to love himself and with that, he's learning to be able to give that love to other people and he's become lovable, as you said. Right, that was huge when you said that he's become lovable, and I feel like that's when we work these steps and we do that.
Speaker 1:The other thing is that as we go, mike and some that you've said this a couple times and we, we one of the biggest things that I had struggled with was how do I forgive myself, right? How do I forgive myself right? How do I forgive myself? And my sponsor told me Larry, you have to give yourself a living amends, you have to give yourself Every day. I have to learn to look in the mirror and tell myself I love you. Right? We have to learn to love ourselves, and as we do that, the longer we do that We'll start treating ourselves.
Speaker 3:we start yes, we start treating ourselves a great sponsor, kim, and he's a little short prick, but he is a good one.
Speaker 1:And as we get stronger in that, those memories of that stuff they don't fade. They're there, but we forgive ourselves of those things. There's still things that pop up to me every once in a while. Katie won't remind me, but she'll say some stuff that'll strike a memory in me. It's like I remember that you know and I and I, but as they, you know, as they go, and I'm three years into this, see, I didn't say only that's right, I didn't say it good, I'm proud of you I'm three years into this and I can tell you honestly I've learned to forgive myself of a lot of that stuff, because that was not the man.
Speaker 1:I am Right, that wasn't, that wasn't me Right. And as you go, mike and I said this to you in the podcast as you go along and the more you, the more you get into the steps. When you get those steps through and you learn how to put those steps in your day-to-day life especially 10, 11, and 12, as we do, those that forgiving ourself, it just comes. It just comes easier and easier and easier. Every stinking time one of those memories come up, because we can't. I love those memories. Now I do, I embrace them because I know I'm never going to go back to being that piece of shit I was.
Speaker 3:And we do not regret the past because we use that to help the next man, when he started beating himself up, which, hey again, and we shouldn't just, I know Christ forgave us. We throw everything under the blood and walk, but we should never forget that because if we do, we'll repeat it Right and I'll be damned if I'll repeat be that guy again. You know, by God's grace. But the reason I wanted him when he first came in and I knew who he was, uh, and I've been hounding him you know cause he'd come in, have them steps coming, mike, how they just just bugging the shit out of him. For a reason, because I've worked, walked Jason through them and I saw what they did in his life Cause Jason came in broken, facing nine years in prison. You know what I? So when Matt the gentleman I told you about him, him and Mary lost their son was struggling Was this Mike?
Speaker 3:About three months ago, and I said we was at a Saturday meeting, I was talking to Mike or Matt, to breakfast, a couple of minutes we're going to have like a little intervention and Mike was in the meeting and I asked him God. God told me you know who needs to go with you. So I had invited Mike that morning hey, would you please go to breakfast with us? And he was didn't even know that morning he was going to go, but those two would talk and we were just I was just eating my uh, corned beef hash listening. But what he said the next day when he came to me, that him and kim him and his wife had a the first meaningful talk about michael they've had in years, because he had opened up, helping this man walk through what he'd been through, what he didn't walk through, but you know some of the same, because they lived something that we haven't. So it was just amazing.
Speaker 4:But you guys got to have a talk for the first time in years about that because of what he needs to walk through and he is well, just on that note, like yesterday, the anniversary, she's taking flowers and everything, and jason boy is like 25 feet away, right, and so she put some flowers there. She did her flowers, and so I thought that was a hard day for me, period, but and and I should have wanted to be out there with her, but she did after work, because now I'm able to go more off, you know, I just can handle a little better and be with her and let her, but it's still hard. She came home, she just wanted to talk and I was like no, I want to talk. And she it was getting later, you know, and uh, I'm trying to eat and go to bed. You know, I was like we're trying to go to bed, I was trying to cut through, probably.
Speaker 4:Just, I don't know what it was, but it's still hard. Sometimes when I see the hurt and the pain, I know she's failing, but she's, she goes through it right, she does it right, and for me it's still. It's got easier, but it's still hard. What?
Speaker 3:did you? What did you show today? This is the first one you've gone through sober yeah, this day the anniversary day.
Speaker 4:yeah, since it happened, I've never been not wasted. She and she'll be doing her thing at the cemetery and, like I said, the worst ever was the first time. It fell on mother's day, which is like the second year or something, I can't remember but so I just pushed her away even more because it was. I knew what it would have to feel like and I didn't want no part of it. I can't imagine. But I abandoned her, left her the selfish and self-centered of the topic today and this is bring it into the light, mike that calls me a narcissist.
Speaker 3:But the one thing you said and shared and me and Bonnie were talking about this, because it's not that fathers, we don't love our children, you know, to the end and would do anything. But what used to bother Mike he would shout out if you ever shared this with you was that when he would look at you, for nine months, ten months, you carried the boy, you breastfed. You know, like, while you watch it, the things a mother must feel. If I'm hurting this bad, I can't imagine, you know. And then we can't.
Speaker 2:And you guys are fixers too. Yeah, we can't fix it.
Speaker 4:You can't fix this. Yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't fix it, so I couldn't hold on.
Speaker 3:You guys are fixers too at times. I mean I know my wife is. When I was going through cancer, there's one story I don't know if I've ever showed I might have. I'd wake up because I was off for six months getting and I'd have to sit up a certain way because they were cooking my neck and I, if I set too low I'd choke to death and I couldn't get any sleep because the pain was incredible. So she would, my wife would go through and try to set everything at the certain she'd get out of angle finder I had, you know, just to, and uh, I'd come out sometimes, wake up, cause I can only sleep like two or three hours at the most. And she, I her about it because she couldn't even say the word cancer. It's been five years now, she still can't say the words.
Speaker 3:But we were eating breakfast at the place you know writers where we were at, and I'd ask her why, were you know? Was it just, you know, overwhelming, covid's going on, your husband's going through, you might bury him? She said, no, um, I knew the pain you're in and I always thought that if you were sleeping you weren't in pain. But then I would hear noises in the back room and I'd go back there and you'd be wincing and crying, sleeping, and you know you're in pain. She was and I I just broke. I couldn't, I can't. There's nothing I can do for him. He's in pain, awake. He's in pain, sleeping issues. I was just.
Speaker 4:I couldn't fix it, you know, and I'd heard that story and I was sorry that's all right, sorry, see, yeah, I remember saying that that I couldn't fix this just like I would say nothing would ever broke me. I mean the way I was raised.
Speaker 3:You guys heard a little and you and you guys, the upbringing you both had, because he had shared a little bit about yours that we didn't have. You know that. How you survived that to be this is amazing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that we came from going through all that crap that made you grow up thinking you're never going to be like that, never going to go through this stuff, never, ever, ever, right. Then it happens, and because I literally thought nothing can break me. I mean, we were both on our own, since little kids, basically right and um, we parented ourselves, parented our, you know, she raised her brother and sister and all that um as a real young person and being so much alike and then coming together like that.
Speaker 4:most people think that's not going to happen, but it did.
Speaker 3:But I've heard a lot of fifth steps Jason Allen's and his story, and we heard Nathan on here who had a childhood that's. You know people that go through that. Usually don't they're not sober, but Mike, as far as a man that go through that usually don't they're not sober, but Mike, as far as a man goes the way he was raised, what he had overcome, joseph Michael I've never heard a man. Even though he didn't handle it the best way, obviously he still survived enough to finally where God could get a hold of him. But I've never heard anybody that's went through. I. I've heard anybody that's went through. I couldn't do it, mike, I mean I couldn't even fathom it.
Speaker 4:I couldn't even fathom it. You know one time a pastor that's gone to Ecuador. He was a youth pastor.
Speaker 3:Someone's got to go to Ecuador here, because this is the second time. Yeah, I'm gone, she's going.
Speaker 4:Next one. But he went on to plant a church there in Ecuador the youth pastor there in ecuador, the youth pastor and when he first got to know me, we were talking a little bit and he got to know me and kim a little, just a little. Just heard some and the first thing you're thinking I wonder what people are thinking he just had this big giant smile and he said he is honored, you know, to hear, for this sharing or whatever. And then said when I got down to say something, he goes and you're still, you're still here, god's got a plan, he goes, he goes. It's amazing and I was like what's wrong with this guy, you know, cause I didn't think it was, but all he was hearing is he couldn't believe I was standing there and he was hearing it and cause most people Mike don't make it that far, yeah.
Speaker 4:I guess you just don't think that way when you're in it. No, we're not thinking. When we're in it, we're not thinking at all when we're in it. You don't wish it on anybody else, no, hell no. But I still remember. What I love now is the big smile you seen a second ago that lights up the room.
Speaker 4:And I don't want to go back and one of the biggest things I say that helps me. I just look at where I was for a moment of where, what it was like and what I did to that beautiful woman, how I broke her heart and the pain in her face. I wouldn't trade it to go back to that, because the only regrets I have in this life right now is that that sounds, you know, forgiving yourself, like you said. That's where we're at the hardest part for me is that because I can't believe I did it to somebody.
Speaker 3:That's my whole life and but think about it this way, now for the night if this little living amends we're talking about, which is what it's going to be you get the opportunity every day now to put that smile to light the deal. So go, I don't miss a moment anymore I don't miss a moment hell
Speaker 1:no, that's all we have is moments I was flying out to. Uh, I had to leave last sunday to go down south kate and I got in a little spat just before I left and it was minor, it wasn't even major, it was minor and I left. I had to stop and get fuel in my truck and as I was there, I was like I gotta go back home. I did, yeah, I had to turn around, come back home, because I couldn't, I could not leave like that. Yeah, I, I did for years left like that almost every time I left the house. I left pissed off. Not, she was not fast enough, right, and I just couldn't do it. I had to come back home.
Speaker 2:We've had moments like that as well.
Speaker 1:Recently, recently. Yeah, see, this is that. Come on, come on.
Speaker 2:So for a little while after he got, I'd still have red flags.
Speaker 3:We'd call them Katie too. Oh, he would tell us about these stories Go ahead and you know.
Speaker 4:So I'm doing my normal thing, going. What are you doing?
Speaker 2:And Well, not nice. And he's, he's, he'd get defensive and but not anymore. He doesn't get defensive anymore and I don't get red flags anymore is the amazing thing. But we got in a spat and he left. But then he came back.
Speaker 1:And he's like I'm sorry, yeah, he totally owned it, right. We can't. Once we've been through these steps and we feel the relief it gives us and we know the relief that it gives For me. It's Katie. When I see that in her, you just can't, just I can't even explain it. Mike can feel it, rob can feel it.
Speaker 3:But now. But for me the Bible verse that sticks out. You know, do not let the sun go down on your anger, you know, because that might be the last sunset. And is this how you want to end it? I mean, is your pride? No, fuck, no, I'm not gonna let in like this, because, because of the joy, oh the joy so much. I'd rather feel that and I get that, and if I go own my shit, hey babe, you know, even if it wasn't mine, I'll eat it anyway.
Speaker 4:If it was all her, because I won't I'm always eating the hers, well, good, well, that's going down a whole other subject mike, yeah, jeez, let's bring it back to recovery.
Speaker 3:Wait, hold on. We are explicit, but not that explicit it's recovery unfiltered.
Speaker 4:So let's bring it back to recovery. Wait, hold on. We are explicit, but not that explicit. It's recovery unfiltered, so let's have it it is great, though, because I did get pissed, because I was what I've learned in the programs period and and I know it already, but it helps reaffirm it, hearing it over and over, cause I don't listen that good. I can hear a lot better and it comes back, sometimes subconsciously, things I've learned about myself or heard and the defensiveness was being cause.
Speaker 4:She was right. I got defensive because I got caught or whatever that's. Every time I was pissed off it was just because I didn't want to fess up or own up to something I did wrong, even just the recent one. It's been a while a red flag thing and I got pissed just that she had a red flag. Right, what are you doing? I'm not doing and I'm right, yelling well and I'm like. Then I back off and wait a minute. She has every right to have every red flag in the world for a long time if she wants.
Speaker 1:So just and there's the when I first got home from maynard very first day. Katie and I came home and I was going to primary purpose and I'll never forget it. She, she has me. She's tracking me on her phone, which is fine. Am I still on 1960?
Speaker 2:Well, I left here.
Speaker 1:I left here For some reason. When I got out of rehab, I was addicted to root beer. I have no idea which brand A&W, there's only one. Oh, my egg is better dude, so anyways, I was going into primary and I stopped at a little liquor store that never even crossed my mind, right. I stopped there to get an A&W root beer and she literally called me what are you doing? I'm like what? And it dawned on me that she's seen me at the liquor store. I'm like oh shit, babe.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, literally I stopped to get it, I stopped to get it, and it was the same day, face, I stopped to get.
Speaker 1:I stopped to get, and it was the same day, facetimer A&W, you know. And to this day I can't walk out in the garage without feeling I can't, because when the door closes, I was always going out there to get get beer, especially when she's in bed, right, if she's sleeping early in the morning. If she's in bed sleeping early in the morning, I go out in the garage. I I know that that was her, her trigger.
Speaker 3:She knew that I was going out there to get beer, even though we drank enough that night. We should have slept through the night, but that didn't hold me over, don't you know?
Speaker 1:no, so, yeah, I mean she, I know in three years into it she still gets. She still gets triggered on some stuff. I don't know about trigger, but there's still things that make remind her, yeah, of the pain that that she was going through and I try my best to be cautious of those things that I know that's going to cause her to feel that way. I mean I'll still catch stuff, I'll still catch my stuff doing and go wait a minute, I can't that's. It's not that I'm on a way or to drink. It's like I don't want katie seeing that because of that old behavior, that's what I was like it might elicit this feeling right, it might, it might cause her whatever.
Speaker 3:Think about. No, don't think about nothing.
Speaker 1:I worry about that stuff now, cause I don't want her feeling that anymore. And I don't know and I haven't really spoke to her about it, I don't know if she's felt that way in a long time, I don't know but I still know that I don't want her. That's why she doesn't want to come on the podcast. I mean, we're, I talk to her all the time because she knows she's going to have to to talk about those things. Those things are those feelings and just like it's helped. I believe this has kind of helped you a little bit. We have to talk about those things because, you know, blake was over here the other day and he was having some issues. I'm like, well, dude, you got to talk to her. He's like I'm like, dude, you have to talk, communicate. It's how these things come up it's a conversation.
Speaker 3:It's not confrontation, it's just a conversation. Go have it.
Speaker 1:That's what I tell them right and it's I'm going to tell you mike, just continually communicate as much as you can, kim I'm going into the garage I'm going into the garage freaking ninja, I'd be like, holy crap, where'd you come from?
Speaker 4:it's like she floated in there I had a.
Speaker 1:Uh, there's a cabinet up above, though I always I, because nobody can reach it except for my long ass arms and as soon as I open up my garage door I can reach up into that crap, that cabinets where I'd always kept my whiskey up in there so I can grab a quick drink of it as I was walking out. I don't know, about a year ago I opened that up, but I haven't even been in there. I opened it up. There's still a half pint of crown royal in there, right, and I saw it there and I'm like, katie, there's still an empty bottle up here. I don't know what to do with it. I'm not touching it, it's still up there. We walked down there and it's still sitting up there to this day. It's still sitting in there, katie, we still. The other day I went, went to get something out of there and I opened up and there's a. I still see it sitting there and I'm like I just shut the door and it's. I guess it's nostalgia reasons, it's still there.
Speaker 1:I. It's empty, I guarantee you. Look on a data but it's still 2022 or something, I don't know.
Speaker 3:But you know those things. But that's the benefits of the program, that's, that's the power of God to work in these steps, owning your own shit, having that spiritual awakening, which, the thing that's talking to us all when we is the spirit that's inside us now that God has put there.
Speaker 1:And it's because we did the work and we have. I have more alcohol in my house now than when I was drinking. Katie always says yeah because you're not drinking. Right.
Speaker 4:But yeah, yeah, that wouldn't happen. I don't drink wine or anything, but we had wine bottles for people bringing for Christmas. You don't even drink wine, so they're up there, but they were all empty for some reason and they were filled back up with water. Like my little moonshine, that I did. And there was vodka, there was stuff, I don't even tequila. Hey, we didn't give a shit no, I just, I did pour stuff back in and put it back up there, anything to silence those voices, anything that you did.
Speaker 3:You know, that's amazing.
Speaker 4:I didn't think about how, how that should have told me right there oh, we don't. We insane Because I don't even drink that crap, but when there was nothing there, I'm opening these wine bottles that have been up there souvenirs.
Speaker 3:Drinking their own wine. Limited the number of drinks. Never drinking alone.
Speaker 1:It's whatever it took to get us back to that feeling.
Speaker 2:It's just for me or not feeling, whatever.
Speaker 1:I would open up a bottle of my wife's wine in the middle of the night, midnight one o'clock you have to get up at six in the morning.
Speaker 3:Go replace that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know if I've ever told that story. I have. I have told it on here. Yeah, it's. Yeah it's insanity. I'd open up a bottle of her wine and I'd drink it before. I'd drink it like two or three drinks, it'd be gone those dark bottles you can't tell they're empty. No, you put it back well, and these bottles, I thought were all hidden in the back and nobody would ever notice them because they'd been there forever.
Speaker 4:But sure enough they would get noticed, right, I hated when there was a cork, I couldn't be the chief, I'd be like, oh damn.
Speaker 1:Or them old corks would break off when you're trying to be quiet.
Speaker 3:Just hammer it down in there and just go.
Speaker 4:I don't have enough time to get the cork out.
Speaker 3:You ever take a punch and a hammer, turn it sideways, tap that cork inside the bumper.
Speaker 4:Oh, I went inside like that yeah, but wasn't with a hammer.
Speaker 4:I don't know how I did it, but I got it to go. Insanity. But yeah, you know, I'm just glad you guys do what you do. And even before, when I met you guys in the meetings in the men's group and I said it I think last night, I said this is what the meeting was all about a couple hugs I got from people that remembered me saying a day or so before that yesterday was the anniversary, and I got a hug from blake because we don't and it was just me and him standing outside before the meeting. And I go what was that about? And he looked at me like gives me her look, like what are you stupid? And I go, you needed it. I looked and I go oh, I didn't think anybody remembered, you know.
Speaker 4:But then I told I said last night this is what it's about People that care, actually listen to you, and them getting to open up to you. And one of my favorite things I don't even know why I'm going to say this is old-timers really want to call and been around and say they love newcomers because they get to see how screwed up they look and that they know it doesn't work.
Speaker 4:To me it's the opposite. I see newcomers. I love it when I I see newcomers. I love it when I keep seeing them. I love it when they don't show up. For a couple days I found myself worrying about them, asking about them and what it reminds me. It's not about how screwed up I was and how it still is, because I know how it is. I know how it was. It reminds me there's still people that need help, like I do. That's all. A newcomer is to me is somebody that needs it. Doesn't remind me because I don't need. I need them for myself to play that picture back. That's what I do. I look at myself puking, I look at her face, how it was, and I don't want to go back and see those things again. I would never buy tickets to see that movie over and over. It's done. Not one should give it burnt. But I love seeing new people come in. They keep coming back and it just does my heart good. I love it, like I said, going back and it just does my heart good.
Speaker 1:I love it, like I said, going back and watching your light come on, especially when I found out who you were and knew what you had gone through going oh, this is going to be a fun one and watching you just grow and grow and grow. And, like I said, that one Monday night when I heard you say those things and I'm like he's got it and I saw the light and the skin color and just everything. And then and then to watch kim smile a minute ago, it's just just gives me chills and I just fucking love it that's why my goal?
Speaker 2:in life now is.
Speaker 4:She goes like she said today we're drunk. She goes like she used to tell you when we were drunk she goes, happy wife. She said something else too, I forget.
Speaker 3:It's just, it's awesome.
Speaker 4:I love to make her laugh and see that smile more than a grief and just terrible. And you know, it's like things have gotten so much better in eight and a half months and they can only get better and more will be revealed. Yes, sir, and it's, it's awesome. Now we have a lot of fun and, like we used to, right, and probably even more so you know, I?
Speaker 1:I want to say one thing, mike the pain's not over, no, no, okay, I want to make sure, right, I mean, and I don't know. I say that for this reason because I believe that if everybody's expecting something, they're going to know how to handle it, right, and when I see these newcomers come in and they're on this cloud and they're just all over the place, it's like come on, let me tell you a secret. Here's what's going to happen in about another three weeks, four weeks. Right, that little balloon you're on it's going to get popped. And how you prepare yourself right now, you're going to be prepared for when that balloon pops. Right, the pain is still going to. Literally, I deal with shit. Still, that it's just. I want to pull my hair out and I want to jump off a cliff. But I know there's one thing that's very important that that, that bottle, that whiskey, that alcohol, is not going to fix it. It is no way in hell going to fix anything that I'm going to go through. Yes, and.
Speaker 1:I know, god, in this program, that I that I live is going to get me through anything, no matter what the hell it is. That I do know, and that's the way I live my life.
Speaker 3:But also we're part of the no Matter what Club, absolutely no matter what club. I don't care if your ass is falling off, we don't drink. No matter what, no matter what.
Speaker 4:What I thought about, that is, yesterday was probably the toughest day and I wasn't like Jones and I would say I thought more about where I was and how I was this day, right, all the other anniversaries, no-transcript roller coaster I guess that whole yesterday was like.
Speaker 1:Better than the merry-go-round you were on. Yeah, amen.
Speaker 4:But I just kept thinking about I'm going to get through this. I'm going to get through this. It's going to be okay. Right, I prayed. Sometimes that's hard for me because my mind doesn't let me focus that long on God, and when I can it's awesome, but it was a tough day. Like you said, the pain it ain't going to go away. But how I deal with it, accept it, life on life terms, all that stuff. I hate saying all those phrases and things but now they're pounded in. But it's true.
Speaker 3:But now they make sense to't they yeah, oh yeah life's for sure.
Speaker 4:When I said yesterday in a meeting I, I think I said, um, my whole goal in life is to be in a coma, right, 24, 7 was to not think about that like as if it didn't happen, even to the point where I made it almost like he never existed. My son, that's how bad. I tried not to think about it and then I'd feel so shitty about that that you've actually pushed so hard to make it so much like it never happened, as if, like he never existed, right, and so I wasn't thinking I wouldn't feel that pain. But he did so the whole, yeah, the whole time, and touched still touching lives, still touching lives.
Speaker 4:That pain never went away, no matter how screwed up I was on Vicodins, any other drug, alcohol, in a coma. I don't even know how I functioned Really. A half a frozen burrito a day.
Speaker 3:It's about what I did.
Speaker 4:The human body is amazing and my whole goal was I didn't care about nothing but not thinking about that. But it was. I was never not thinking about it, yeah, the whole time. Because I wasn't thinking about it, I wouldn't have to keep doing it, right?
Speaker 1:I mean, it's so crazy that's the miracle round that we're on right. We drink. We drink to kill the pain, but the pain is still there. So we continue to drink. And it's just that shitty committee between our two ears. You know, once we realize that that little fucking committee that's between those two ears are causing the problem, and we get outside of that and start helping other people, that all that stuff goes away. And, as you're what you two are doing today, the amount you're, the amount of people you're helping today by telling the story and coming on here, is incredible.
Speaker 3:The guy in Lafayette, louisiana. How God. Look how God uses his story last time to catch a guy in Louisiana to reach out to Larry. We don't care to touch thousands, That'd be awesome, but if we can help one One, and.
Speaker 1:God gets to choose the one. Fayetteville, north Carolina, is where he's from. Like I said and I want to make sure and say that, because mike's doing he's doing a great job, um, and your story touched him and and now he's getting help and you know, this is why we do this right and I appreciate you, kim, coming on here and being so open. I appreciate it. I think we went some places that you, you kind weren't expecting, but, like I said, you got comfortable it is unfiltered.
Speaker 3:It is unfiltered.
Speaker 1:And, once again, I do not want to leave here without asking both you guys is there anything else that you want to talk about, anything else you want to bring up? I've had that itch for a long time. No, not that I can think of. I just want to make sure that you know that you, you guys, what's going to happen is same thing I have with jason and jenny, because they, when they left here, and same with grace, uh and brad grace and brad jason and kim jason and matt and mary when they left here.
Speaker 1:The conversation that they had on the way home on the way home, uh, and Brad Grace and Brad Jason and Kim Jason and Mary, matt and Mary when they left here the conversation that they had on the way home on the way home. They kind of didn't, they kind of filled Rob and I in that the it was some of the best conversations that they've ever had, because it I think it almost teaches you how to this, this, this forum, this little medium that we have here, creates a conversation piece that carries on outside.
Speaker 3:One thing that the Catholics get right, the only thing I shouldn't say nevermind I don't care. Yeah, confession, you know, getting it out in the open. Now we have to deal with it because here it is, now, let's, let's have that. That's what God wants. Get it out here, bring wants. Get it out here, bring it in. That's what he said. Because, because, when he, when he invitates you in the meetings, and he does, you know, bring it into the light mike, she would say, you know, he's adamant about it but she's but, there's a lot of truth to that, because let's have it.
Speaker 3:I mean it's killing us, but but here we can deal with the truth here we can have right the lies.
Speaker 1:Katie has said the same thing. Just tell me and let's deal with it. I think sometimes she would like to go. You know what? That's a little much. Just give me a minute to process that there is a lot to that.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of discernment as we go in the way we deliver and the timing of when we need to deliver. I mean, that's all a God thing as we learn and grow, but still get it out. It ain't paying rent. Kick that shit out.
Speaker 1:Yesterday she came out with a pair of shorts on. She goes these shorts look okay. And I go God damn girl, you need some sun on them legs. She was like she was like. That's a little bit more truth than I thought I was going to get Shit.
Speaker 4:These make my butt look big babe.
Speaker 1:Well, we're honest Discernment, discernment, boys. No, you know what?
Speaker 4:The only thing I thought of what we started to talk about, which is probably my hardest part, is what she said too, and you were touching on it, forgiving yourself, oh yeah, and for anybody else listening, because I hear people say that, besides me in the room, a lot of people.
Speaker 4:They are my biggest for me. I said, my, I hear people say that besides me in the room, a lot of people do For me. I said, when they talk about those guys that are always pushing the steps, you've got to do the steps, like that fucking Rob, this guy Rob. But when you hear him talk all the stuff about the steps and resentments and get all that crap out I think it's about the steps and resentments, and make that, get all that crap out. I think it's in the steps somewhere. Um, my biggest resentment before is me, right, right, and I've heard people say I, I'm ashamed or whatever. The shame and guilt. Resentment is all I mean. Most of my step work is right here, right, okay.
Speaker 1:It was for me too. It's a lifelong process.
Speaker 4:It's shady, yeah. And so when I say how I remember the pain in her face on so many times and things we spoke of before, that I wasn't even around when it happened, how I could never let that stuff go, because how could I do that? I mean she went through the just real quick, the finding out about Michael.
Speaker 3:You were in San Diego.
Speaker 4:Yeah, by herself, was called by a cop on her phone to go home. They needed to talk at home. She has no clue what the hell. And when I sit there and think of that, I'm down there. She has some cops say go home, sit down. You know those things. It's hard, sit down, you know those things. That's hard. I can't see how, forgiving myself and resenting myself for all the all this shit I put her through, because I basically was a coward, ran from it, ran from her, ran from all the feelings I did not deal with and there's no book on it, all the feelings I did not deal with and there's no book on it, period. But I was told I did everything wrong that you could imagine to do wrong and still that's my hardest thing that I'm going to have to.
Speaker 3:And how are you finding that? How's that forgiveness coming? Because you've told me, if my lord you know can forgive me, that's all it's gonna go to the cross for me.
Speaker 4:Rob that I was to take the nails for me. Rob that he did all that to forgive me. And it takes me back to um, when I would say my getting saved was reading the bible all by myself at a dining table by myself, and read in Isaiah about the beating that Jesus took.
Speaker 3:Now you know that was written 800 years before crucifixion was even invented Easily, 800 years before he existed.
Speaker 4:Foretold it to a T, beaten beyond human recognition, beyond the form of any man. You could not recognize him.
Speaker 4:It's just everything they did to him ripped his beard out, that spin on him, punched him and everything's showing and if I can't let go of it, um, then I'm slapping him in the face because that's what he did for all that shit. I did Not for me to keep doing it over and over, because then I slap him in the face. And that's a shameful thing too, because I did do that, you know, I just kept. I kept doing it, saying I'm sorry and doing it again, but he's forgiven me forever, from now until I'm done. So I have to accept it.
Speaker 1:So he welcomes you into his kingdom.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and if I can't accept that, which I can, then that's the dilemma Like how can I not forgive myself? Because I guess it's because I can't see how he can do it and how she can do it.
Speaker 3:So guess what Tomorrow? Son of a bitch, you got to put another smile on her face. You got to figure out a way to put another smile on her face. And then the next day and then the next day, oh my God, that's what you have to do. And there's your penance, my man, I.
Speaker 1:And then the next day, oh my God that's what you have to do, and there's your penance. My man, I'm going to go back to what I said. As time goes, that what you're feeling, it's going to subside, and I think that Rob went through it and probably doesn't remember it. Oh, I did Well, I mean, my point is he's 14 years coming off, 14 years. I still feel it that what you're feeling not is, but it's subsided, because I'm a little bit further away, the further you get into your sobriety, that softens, that softens.
Speaker 3:You start yeah.
Speaker 1:The more you forgive yourself every day for those things. We don't forget them. We never forget them. But we forgive ourselves. When I can look at myself in the mirror and say I love you. When I was able to do that, man, what a world of a change it was, because then I was able to do that outwardly more and more and more. Now I just want to give. I want to give everything that I have to somebody else I don't want oh dude, that's the greatest part.
Speaker 3:That is the greatest part. You watch that light turn on and God allowed us to be a part of that.
Speaker 1:But I couldn't do that until I was able to forgive myself by looking, and that happened probably about two years in Mike.
Speaker 4:It did, when I was finally able to look at myself in the mirror and go I love you. Oh, and he said you know what you're? I'm not as good looking as my sponsor, but really I love you, it's all right.
Speaker 1:I've heard that thing about looking in the mirror not.
Speaker 4:Still, it's hard. Yeah, I can't do it. I mean they had rehab, you'd have to. They'd make everybody go that mirror before you walk out the door and make a positive affirmation. I'd go whatever, walk out the door, what up you know, and I go. That's just always hit me wrong like I don't, I just picture oh it'll hit you self-love is like to me wrapping your arms around yourself, telling yourself you want to die in your own arms that's going a little far.
Speaker 4:It's kind of mushy on me to where I don't know. I have to be okay in my own skin. Yep, there you go, it'll come.
Speaker 1:I promise you the more. Let me ask you this where are you at in your steps? Four or five, six, okay, what the hell? How did four go for you five? I know?
Speaker 3:but I mean four or five. Did you feel that?
Speaker 1:What the hell, how did four go for you? Five Were you good.
Speaker 3:No, no, no I know, but I mean four or five.
Speaker 1:I mean, did you feel?
Speaker 4:that? Did you feel a lot of weight come out? I'm glad you asked that because I did and I thought it was BS.
Speaker 1:No, Well, I wasn't.
Speaker 3:He's such a hard-headed little fucker dude.
Speaker 4:I wasn't expecting it or even thinking about it, but my asshole sponsor has, I don't know. He's figured me out enough to where he knows exactly how to lead into whatever's happening. It's a God thing, yeah. And then you know, sitting in his office, which is a dually Ford pickup, and he tells me a little bit of his fourth step to try, and you know, get me okay. And then so I read what I got and I said okay, bye, and went to get out of his truck and leave and he goes no, no, no, no. But I actually had to stop a few times actually just in our talking, praying, before it happened. All that I had, I was like losing it, I was crying and then when I was talking about things, it would hit me and I'd have to stop reading and just squirt a little bit, know, and put my head back and just get composed again and finish reading it and then talking and praying again, and sometime during all that my mind went to I felt something lifted off. Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 4:It's an amazing feeling, like something off my back, off my soul, I guess that's so, that's so cleansing man, I felt, I actually felt a relief, like they say, and I mentioned that and tom guess I can say tom yeah said, said did you feel a spiritual awakening? Because he explained to me too, which I did. But he explained to me. Since we're Christians, we don't think we need that, we don't understand that. In the book about the spiritual awakening he goes, but there's another one.
Speaker 4:Yes, we do need it awakening, he goes, but there's another one. Yes, we do, we have our, you know, our christian spiritual awakening, but god has another one for us when we let go of all this stuff. And he explained that to me way before that, but I was thinking bs, no, that's right.
Speaker 3:But I'm telling you, I try to get, and I say this all the time maybe these steps wouldn't hurt my grandmother wouldn't hurt anybody and I've taken people not alcoholics through them and there's people in the because the best human beings I've ever met not and I go to church and I have a church family and I love them but the greatest human beings I've ever met, most sacrificial, the most selfless, I've met in the rooms of alcoholics because, you know, usually people go to the people they say you know, the religious people are afraid to go to hell, people of faith, people in the rooms. We've already been there and that awakened me because I didn't change my theology when I came to AA. I had the same beliefs in Christ that I do now. However, I had to change my approach to him and once I did that, this, this is how I live my life by this little 164-page book. I know the other book just well, just as well, but I live by this 164-page book because it's all God and it's all action and just amazing people, amazing people.
Speaker 4:Amazing to me is church needs AA and AA needs church. I don't disagree with that statement one ounce, because the only difference is, you hear, to me, is they always talk about this religious blah, blah, blah or how they were. You've even said I had it beat out of me when I was a kid or whatever.
Speaker 3:You have to get the Jesus beat out of you.
Speaker 4:But that's the wrong Jesus, that's the wrong church and it's run by people.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:And they're messed up humans. And I go there to be taught and I go to aa to learn and be taught too. I sit in the chair to listen and learn. I go to church to listen or not, but it's the people to me in church where it's open is. Most people are in aa because they want to be real and get this stuff off them and start living life again on life's terms. Another one of the sayings um, but true, uh it. Can you imagine if the two collided? How it would be if you were just sitting there like trying to be check a box that I'm in church, right?
Speaker 3:and this is what I do on a Sunday, or what I had found when I went to a box and I'm in church, right, and this is what I do on a sunday, or what I had found when I went to a big and anybody correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 3:I'm not wrong I'm rarely wrong anyway, there's that humbleness that we love about him when you walk into a church building, which is what it is. The church is the people, and I've seen this at the big box churches and as I came to a and and how you doing this morning, fine, everybody, everybody's. Fine, everybody's got their church face on and this is the place we should go when we're broken to receive help. But this is what I'd heard in the rooms of AA Everybody, uh, what they had gotten, they gotten talked about behind their back. Hey, we need to pray for Kim and Mike, cause Mike's back drinking. You know that kind of thing they're. They either had their church faces on or it was gossip session. When you come to AA, everybody's broken and we know it and we're open about it and we're free to receive and give help. That's what the church should have been, which is why I think God started this little avenue. I really believe that, because this is.
Speaker 4:you know, this is what it should have been. Maybe we're the ones supposed to bring it back to the church, maybe we are Mike and I hey.
Speaker 3:I've done it.
Speaker 4:I mean I have too, I brought I've Steve.
Speaker 2:Newbaum is my pastor. I love Steve yeah.
Speaker 4:Steve was one of Michael's youth pastors and he had asked me would you share your story, robert?
Speaker 3:I said you know I'm gonna make a lot of these Christians here uncomfortable but I'll do you is not in the life group. They're like well, that's, that's what it was Sunday. You come to feel, but that's where the growth happens.
Speaker 4:Be a part of be a part and get to know you don't get to know nobody sitting there, but in the other groups you do. But I was in rehab when ours was still going. It lasts for so many weeks and so she told him I go, you can tell him if you want, that's why I'm not there. And she said no, they asked and I just said I'll let Mike explain that to you when he gets out.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:And so my first day back I said I just got out of rehab and they're like full disclosure.
Speaker 3:We can do that, and can you imagine the freedom they would have? Right, I mean, there's not a well, larry, cut it off, because one of the Rob-isms is you know, none of us certainly not you either, but none of us have eaten a shit sandwich. We didn't have a hand in making and we sit there and live with those things. Not my wife, not your wife, nor anybody listening to this podcast has eaten a shit sandwich. Right, amen, and how right, and how much more freedom they would have in their lives that they would constructively get rid of that shit. It's not paying rent, it's not doing any good.
Speaker 4:Get it out you know they asked us how was our easter at our group? And I go, mine was great. It was the first sober easter I've had in like a little cool years and kind of everybody just you know meanwhile, there's a soccer mom who's taking the happy pill and just hiding it. You know right dead serious right, I had a blast playing cornhole, no drinking. We're just at the house, like we always are, and I was had a great time and he was present. Yeah, that's the word I'm looking for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's another one of those terms well, it's you know and I say this that I was I had been drinking when both my grandchildren were born my first two, those two and that when my third was born, I wasn't and I was able to be present. When she was born, I was able to be present to walk my daughter down the aisle and we got to be there.
Speaker 3:A lot of the men got to be, there to watch and we got to be there to get to enjoy that with him.
Speaker 1:You know crying with him, I don't know if I'd have had that opportunity, if I'd still been drinking, so to be able to be present, to be there. You know it's incredible and you guys are. You know, and I'll say this too, and here's what I believe, and I feel this that you two, your story together, can touch lives it's going to and I know you will and I know he will.
Speaker 1:I know that you two, when you work together, whether it's in the church, whether it's in whatever group you're going to be in Jason's story, your story, matt and Mary's story, tell the stories, man. Tell them.
Speaker 3:The highs and the lows. Tell the, tell the mistakes that you made and and how god has somebody is going to hear I don't who.
Speaker 1:Somebody overhears the story. You know, sober, out loud is what I say and you know and you, there's only one part of this story and that is mike's. That's that we've talked about here. We've not talked about the story of losing a child that has not even begun to live yet, right, just that story and how, kim, you recovered from that. While you're recovering, getting your husband to recover and bring that whole story together can save lives If it saves one soul, soul outside of this podcast. However you guys choose to do that, whether you start a small group for you know people that's lost children, or whatever you do, I encourage you to be out loud with your guys's recovery and whatever you do, you know somebody else was in here and I encouraged him. Oh, I know who it was Heather. Yeah, john's, john's wife, now wife. I encouraged her please get out and do something, because she just has a tremendous story. If we keep this stuff to ourselves, we save nobody.
Speaker 3:God put us through this, for a reason yeah, right, hold on, words matter. God didn't put us through this, no, no, no. God walked through this with us.
Speaker 1:Right, we're here with us so that we can. We we're here, right right. God brought us through this right beauty out of that. Oh my gosh, what we can do to save somebody else.
Speaker 3:But that's why I, that's why we must do this say, lord, this is, this is me, this is what I've done. What can you do with it right now? And as we go through it, yes, we feel the pain, but as we help another person with it, oh, if that pain heals well, and it doesn't.
Speaker 1:It's, it's not in vain right, and that's what we went through is not in vain and that's why the?
Speaker 3:loss, and that's how we honor what was lost, right and that's why we do this podcast too is.
Speaker 1:I mean, just it heals me. The more I talk about it, the more you know, and to bring people like you in here to get this story out and you know the social media and getting them out and just you know who knows where your story will go. I keep you, I will make sure you guys are completely aware of everybody.
Speaker 3:Recovery Unfiltered podcast at gmailcom If you want to get a hold of us.
Speaker 1:This is by far the longest podcast we've ever recorded, I can promise you. Yeah, I think Jason's went about an hour and 45. We're almost on a two hours, but I wouldn't trade a minute of it for nothing. Is this going to be one or two? No, this is going to be one. I will not break this one up. This will be one solid podcast. I felt like we didn't even start yet. Well, what are you missing, mike? I don't know. I'm not done. We can record. No, I just.
Speaker 4:I mean, it happens like, like you say, you know there's change in me. I don't know there's change, I guess I do. Well, I see it in her face, you do.
Speaker 1:That's all I know.
Speaker 4:But it seems like we just sat down.
Speaker 1:Well, and here's the other. It does. And we say this because these mics. You get nervous when, Kim, when you first sat down, but you forgot about that stupid microphone after a couple minutes. You do and you know that's what we do. And, mike, I know let me rephrase that because words do matter you, you are getting better only because you went back to see to say something to kim after your argument. You knew you had to go back.
Speaker 3:That's where you should see the change in you the second week when I pissed you off and you walked outside that you, you decided to come back and give it one more shot.
Speaker 1:You need to recognize, you need to recognize your changes, and those are the things that's going to heal you internally is when you start recognizing your changes. See yourself in those changes. That makes sense because there's a lot of that, yes.
Speaker 4:Thanks.
Speaker 3:Brock, you're an amazing man. You're an amazing man.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 2:What you had in the back, say thank you, thank you. She says thank you for doing that. I go.
Speaker 4:She said, bro, say thank you, thank you. She says thank you for doing that. I go. She said. I said thank you, oh, you're welcome. Because I had a feeling like I shouldn't be being thanked for it. Or, yeah, a lot of it is just acceptance for something that should to me.
Speaker 3:Acceptance isn't necessarily a bad thing, no, and that's not. That doesn't mean we have to accept. We have to learn to accept. That's like we showed about it. I had a hard time accepting the blessings of God, because who I was and what I've done, and when the blessings of AA would come out, hold on to them very loosely, because I knew I don't deserve these and they're going to go away and I wouldn't enjoy them as I should as I do now.
Speaker 4:To me, those things, like you said, like the way God dealt with me about you, right, seriously, he's pointing at me, by the way. Yeah, rob, and something else you said about spat with her that normally we could have.
Speaker 3:And you came back and apologized she thanked me for that too.
Speaker 4:She goes. We could have both a couple of times, different times, made that go really sideways. Oh yeah, and it didn't. And she goes, thank you. And I go for what you know, because I don't give myself that credit, because to me it's the way I was before and should have been, even though you know that's BS. All this other stuff has happened, but it's hard for me to feel good about something that you should have already been doing.
Speaker 3:That's a given, it's a given to me.
Speaker 4:But thinking about the way you two just had me think about it is big, huge. It's huge, yeah, to me it wasn't even the second thought other than sharing it with him about myself, that I had an attitude, because I thought he was telling me what to do and thought all this stuff and you know, he needs to keep his thing to himself and and I ain't going back, I ain't going back, right and by god, by God's spirit said go back.
Speaker 4:I told Bruce on the way out. I said, okay, what day is this? We're not coming on this day. And then I pissed him off before we got in the truck. I said maybe next week we'll be better. So God was already doing something. And then the second one was good and I walked back on that. I was a lot better. I told Bruce and he goes yeah, it was good and I go. You know, that's when God hit me and he loves this word. He's just as zealous about the program. I'm serious.
Speaker 4:It's going through my head, which I'm not liking. This guy not liking hearing his voice and I go. He's zealous for the program and I can get on board with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:You know it was great about the second meeting, Kim, which he's not going to tell you is when he actually participated. He spoke three times.
Speaker 4:I was in that meeting. How come you guys remember this?
Speaker 3:Because I've been around a long time, I see what matters. He shared three times in that meeting three, you know cause it's a very open.
Speaker 1:And the next.
Speaker 3:Monday he was with us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the next Monday he was with us the growth cabin because when you let God's spirit work, no, no, no, I'm talking about you're in our meeting.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'll meet the Monday meeting was driving to one meeting and I was leaving to go to us and I texted him. Giving the bird said you're going the wrong way and he goes. No, because he was going to the monday meeting support.
Speaker 4:Susan was my game attack.
Speaker 3:Then he was there but he had shared three times he didn't share before, three times in that meeting about what we just we haven't been talking about. And uh, then he actually got, you know, god brought him back and he participated in his own recovery and it was welcome because we all knew his story and everybody. When mike speaks because of what he's been through as women, as fathers, I fucking listen because I'm not. I maybe I hope I don't ever, but I might need that and I know if I do, he'll be there for me. So it's a gift, he's a gift you guys are gifts.
Speaker 4:Yes, I appreciate that I, I do.
Speaker 1:I mean you know, we say this all the time this has been a gift from god from the very beginning. I mean the way this whole studio came together, the way katie allowed me to dump a shitload of money into this equipment. I mean, just, it's been. It's been god sent, and you know, and having people like you that agree to come in and tell your stories, and the bravery it takes to do this, it's incredible. We have some good stories coming up. We have we've actually got two that I've actually been holding off on because I wanted to finish this one, because I just I was so adamant about finishing this one.
Speaker 3:I put the other two off because I think when he says finish, that means just a chapter. They're too off, because I think when he says finish, that means just a chapter, that doesn't mean we won't ask you to come back at the time and when that's a year or two years or whatever. No, I'd love for this to come back.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, because that's the good stuff, that's the good stuff and that's why, when she smiled a minute ago, I got so excited, because just seeing that and knowing where it's going and we're just repeating ourselves at this point, so thank you so much.
Speaker 2:I want to thank you as well for embracing Michael.
Speaker 4:Oh.
Speaker 1:I love him Absolutely.
Speaker 4:I'm just glad she hugged the cactus. I've heard it say you know she would do it actually when I first asked her.
Speaker 1:But she didn't put enough faith in God brother.
Speaker 4:I know, and that made it easy to. I said, no, larry's good. When I sat there first time I thought he was going to go okay, talk Right, and I'd be like, about what I go, you don't even have to do that.
Speaker 1:It just kind of goes. Yeah, Rob, we try to keep it moving.
Speaker 3:And then you notice as someone starts talking, god will bring something to your mind and ask another question and pull out and get, because I want to know whether these people listening. I don't know who they are, but I want to know. These are questions I have because when you're doing step work you're just listening. Sometimes I want to stop someone and share well, how old were you then and why did this happen? Just for whatever reason, and we dig in and get more out of it thank you guys.
Speaker 4:Thank you Mike, thank Thank you Mike. Thank you Kim.
Speaker 1:It's been Recovery Unfiltered that was a heavy one baby. That wasn't heavy, that was frickin'. I'm light as a feather on that one.
Speaker 3:You're not heavy. You're my brother. There you go. You're fucking heavy. You're heavy man.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 3:We hope you learned something today that will help you If you did not come review. If you don't like what you heard, kiss my, I can't say that, can you? Anyway, if you don't like what you heard, go ahead and tell us that too. We'll see what we can improve.
Speaker 1:We probably won't change nothing, but do it anyway. Hey, thanks, Rob. Go back next week and hopefully something will be different and something will sink in. Take care, this has been Recovery Unfiltered. Thank you.