"Why Can't They Just Stop?" The Complexity of Addiction Explained
Send us a text In this heartfelt episode, we dive deep into the intricacies of addiction and the transformative power of community. Jennifer Manzo shares her compelling journey, from her upbringing surrounded by addiction to becoming a beacon of hope through her work with the HVAC Chicks Coalition. This diverse platform fosters a network of support for HVAC technicians while uniting individuals under challenging circumstances, making recovery more accessible. Throughout the conversatio...
In this heartfelt episode, we dive deep into the intricacies of addiction and the transformative power of community. Jennifer Manzo shares her compelling journey, from her upbringing surrounded by addiction to becoming a beacon of hope through her work with the HVAC Chicks Coalition. This diverse platform fosters a network of support for HVAC technicians while uniting individuals under challenging circumstances, making recovery more accessible.
Throughout the conversation, Jennifer highlights not only her personal battles with addiction but also the collective struggles of her loved ones, illustrating the ripple effect that addiction has on families. Her insightful anecdotes reveal the power of vulnerability and the importance of creating secure spaces for individuals to confront their realities. Listeners can expect to learn how community connections lead to healing, affirming that no one has to navigate the challenges of addiction alone.
Join us as we challenge preconceived notions about addiction while emphasizing that recovery is an ongoing journey - one best tackled together. Discover the essential topics of control, the duality of addiction, and the incredible value of a supportive network in mental health and recovery. Don't miss this episode filled with raw honesty and inspiring takeaways. Subscribe now, join our community, and help spread the message of hope and resilience.
00:00:00.179 --> 00:00:02.365 Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast.
00:00:02.365 --> 00:00:06.113 I'm your host, Corey Barrier, and I am here with Jennifer.
00:00:06.113 --> 00:00:07.283 I don't know your last name.
00:00:07.283 --> 00:00:08.567 I can't pronounce your last name, actually.
00:00:09.388 --> 00:00:10.271 It's just Manzo.
00:00:13.144 --> 00:00:15.769 Okay, I was thinking it was started with a V, gloriani.
00:00:16.371 --> 00:00:19.629 Yes, yeah, not actually my last name, but it is my company name.
00:00:20.359 --> 00:00:20.801 Fair enough.
00:00:20.801 --> 00:00:22.649 So, Jennifer, how's it going?
00:00:23.400 --> 00:00:23.823 Awesome.
00:00:24.024 --> 00:00:24.565 How's it going with you?
00:00:24.565 --> 00:00:25.882 Good so, jennifer, how's it going?
00:00:25.882 --> 00:00:26.042 Awesome?
00:00:26.042 --> 00:00:26.545 How's it going with you?
00:00:26.545 --> 00:00:26.646 Good?
00:00:26.646 --> 00:00:28.693 So I'm pretty excited to jump into this conversation with you.
00:00:28.693 --> 00:00:35.750 We've interacted for quite some time now and finally just got an opportunity to get on.
00:00:35.750 --> 00:00:44.823 So I guess, before we get started, just go ahead and tell everybody a little bit about yourself and your group and some of the things that you're doing and your group and some of the things that you're doing.
00:00:44.843 --> 00:00:47.725 Sure, it's a loaded question, but I'm used to answering it, obviously.
00:00:47.725 --> 00:00:51.548 So I am a business owner from Maine.
00:00:51.548 --> 00:00:53.610 I own an HVAC company, an engineering firm.
00:00:53.610 --> 00:00:59.576 I'm also a mechanical engineer I only specialize in HVAC, though and then I own HVHX Coalition.
00:00:59.576 --> 00:01:00.560 I'm the founder.
00:01:00.581 --> 00:01:05.231 It is basically a free training coalition, but we have added so much more to it.
00:01:05.231 --> 00:01:09.391 We have a free, 24-7 tech support line that has five technicians on it.
00:01:09.391 --> 00:01:13.588 We answer 24 hours a day, and we do that for two countries, the US and Canada.
00:01:13.588 --> 00:01:18.893 And then, on top of that, we have live hangouts, a community meetup every Saturday.
00:01:18.893 --> 00:01:29.131 We have all kinds of different community tools to give all of the younger techs, or even the older techs who maybe need to get back to the fundamentals or haven't had a community while they've been in the trade.
00:01:29.579 --> 00:01:39.781 Now we have, like this big giant family of over a thousand people where, in the HVHX Coalition Facebook group, we just all love each other, hang out, teach each other, and we have a mentor program.
00:01:39.781 --> 00:01:41.625 There's nothing we don't have or don't provide.
00:01:41.625 --> 00:01:44.871 We have a free tool account where we provide free tools to starting out techs.
00:01:44.871 --> 00:01:48.778 We're going to start a tech start program using the NAVAC gauges.
00:01:48.778 --> 00:01:56.001 We're going to be giving out veto tool bags and NAVAC gauges and whole hand tool lots for any new up and coming tech.
00:01:56.001 --> 00:01:58.504 So it's just a lot going on there.
00:01:59.945 --> 00:02:01.207 Jesus, I had no idea.
00:02:06.156 --> 00:02:10.489 Yeah, that's very impressive.
00:02:10.489 --> 00:02:13.049 I had absolutely no idea that you did all that.
00:02:13.639 --> 00:02:14.806 It's definitely a community effort.
00:02:14.806 --> 00:02:17.647 It's a lot of people all coming together to add new things.
00:02:17.647 --> 00:02:22.002 We just added a blog, we're adding a book club, so I mean there's a bunch going on in there.
00:02:22.002 --> 00:02:27.293 I definitely urge anybody listening to this if you're in any trade, really join HVHX Coalition Facebook group.
00:02:27.293 --> 00:02:28.014 It's a big family.
00:02:28.014 --> 00:02:34.020 Corey and Jason's new 12-step meetings that they're doing are pretty prominent right now in our group.
00:02:34.020 --> 00:02:44.949 We have a lot of recovering addicts and alcoholics in our group that now throw themselves into their trade and their craft in order to do better in life, so we're really excited to have somewhere for them to meet as well.
00:02:44.949 --> 00:02:45.814 So and their craft in order to do better in life.
00:02:45.774 --> 00:02:47.027 So we're really excited to have somewhere for them to meet as well.
00:02:47.027 --> 00:02:47.342 So you guys are doing a great job with that.
00:02:47.342 --> 00:02:48.626 Thank you, I'm really excited about it.
00:02:48.626 --> 00:02:53.550 It was really until we had that first meeting I didn't really.
00:02:53.550 --> 00:03:03.854 I've been in recovery for a while but never have I been in a room of recovery of all of the same people.
00:03:03.854 --> 00:03:26.915 They're all in recovery, but like in the same industry, and there was something special about that because it I believe that it allowed I believe it allowed more of a freedom to speak, because everybody in the room was in this trade, which was really cool.
00:03:27.760 --> 00:03:30.750 It's just a deeper level right of connecting with other people.
00:03:30.750 --> 00:03:34.270 So we go to meetings because those people have been through what we've been through.
00:03:34.270 --> 00:03:41.128 But to have those people have been through what we've been through and work the same job we do or a job in the same trade is just so much deeper.
00:03:41.128 --> 00:03:41.931 I love that.
00:03:43.260 --> 00:03:52.201 Yeah, because when you get into especially when you're new in recovery like you're fish out of water, like you feel like you don't belong in the room for various reasons.
00:03:52.201 --> 00:04:03.364 Either one, you don't think you should be there or two, you just don't fit in A lot of the same stuff that we, a lot of us, have felt all of our lives really, and it's really the furthest thing from that.
00:04:03.364 --> 00:04:08.486 But I think this gives an opportunity to have conversations with like-minded people.
00:04:08.486 --> 00:04:09.429 It was really cool.
00:04:09.429 --> 00:04:10.211 It was really cool.
00:04:10.721 --> 00:04:12.344 Yeah, I heard it went amazing.
00:04:12.344 --> 00:04:17.826 There are so many people that are involved in this now that are just rooting you guys all on and just want to be a part of it.
00:04:17.826 --> 00:04:19.752 So I'm here for it, that's for sure.
00:04:20.860 --> 00:04:36.490 I appreciate that, so let's just segue into a little bit about how addiction has affected you or your life, or what's been your journey with that caffeine relationships, right, there are so many different.
00:04:36.511 --> 00:04:37.651 Hvac is an addiction to me.
00:04:37.651 --> 00:04:53.331 I don't let things go easy and that's because my family comes from such a trauma bond with addiction of any kind, right.
00:04:53.331 --> 00:04:54.033 So it started for me at birth.
00:04:54.033 --> 00:04:55.819 My stepdad was a lobsterman.
00:04:55.819 --> 00:05:04.355 I lived on Peaks Island here in Maine, right in the middle of Casco Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, isolated, so there's a lot of addiction that goes on there, and it was the 90s.
00:05:04.415 --> 00:05:12.365 My mom is a single mom of five and meets a man and that man happened to be addicted to just about anything he could get his hands on, very abusive.
00:05:12.365 --> 00:05:17.944 But I think in retrospect, without the addictions that abuse probably would not have happened.
00:05:17.944 --> 00:05:19.911 He was one of those people that was a Jekyll and Hyde.
00:05:19.911 --> 00:05:22.661 So looking back on that and he's my brother's father.
00:05:22.661 --> 00:05:30.067 So looking back on that and trying to find peace with it I've found a lot that the times that he was sober, those were the times where he was his actual self.
00:05:30.067 --> 00:05:32.548 And sometimes we look at that differently.
00:05:32.548 --> 00:05:33.468 We look at that opposite.
00:05:33.468 --> 00:05:37.771 We look at it as when you're under the influence of something and you're not able to control yourself.
00:05:37.771 --> 00:05:38.892 That's who you really are.
00:05:38.892 --> 00:05:43.636 But I disagree with that and then, as my mom left him, we moved away.
00:05:43.636 --> 00:05:44.976 We had the police involved.
00:05:44.976 --> 00:05:53.305 He went to prison and then we were all teenagers in a new town and my mom started to drink.
00:05:53.305 --> 00:05:54.250 She had never drank before that in our lives.
00:05:54.250 --> 00:05:54.531 She was an RN.
00:05:54.531 --> 00:06:00.848 She worked 16 hour days, raised five kids alone for the most part, and then as my sister.
00:06:00.908 --> 00:06:11.079 So I have three sisters two of them are older than me and I have a younger brother from that side of the family and my two sisters both fell into addiction very early.
00:06:11.079 --> 00:06:18.384 It started smoking cigarettes, it led into smoking pot, which is what it is completely separate, if you ask me, but it is a mind altering substance.
00:06:18.384 --> 00:06:25.387 From there it went to peer pressure, right, and it went to healing trauma, or how they saw it was healing their trauma.
00:06:25.387 --> 00:06:32.266 Really it was just making it worse, of course, but both of them by the time they were 14 and 15, were completely addicted to heroin.
00:06:32.266 --> 00:06:42.202 So back then it wasn't, I guess, as harmful a substance at the time because it didn't have the other substances that kill people like one try like it does now.
00:06:42.202 --> 00:06:50.107 So my sisters were able to live in active addiction with heroin for decades and then now they're in their forties.
00:06:50.107 --> 00:06:53.120 And well, one of my sisters is a year older than me.
00:06:53.120 --> 00:06:58.033 And then my other sister is in her forties and she my oldest sister is still in active addiction.
00:06:58.033 --> 00:07:04.213 And then my younger but older sister is 16 months clean and sober, which is absolutely amazing.
00:07:04.213 --> 00:07:10.511 She, like I said, has been addicted to various substances meth and heroin mostly since we were teenagers.
00:07:10.511 --> 00:07:13.485 So for her to be 16 months clean and sober is immense.
00:07:14.045 --> 00:07:23.101 Both of them ended up losing their children to the state, and the first one that happened to was my oldest sister and her two children, one of them already, her three children.
00:07:23.101 --> 00:07:27.012 One of them lived with my mom at the time and he is now an adult lives on his own.
00:07:27.012 --> 00:07:30.600 But my other two, niece and nephew, had nowhere to go.
00:07:30.600 --> 00:07:32.165 It was near a foster home.
00:07:32.165 --> 00:07:33.086 So I took them in.
00:07:33.086 --> 00:07:35.233 They've been here for 12 years thriving.
00:07:35.233 --> 00:07:36.182 They're both in trades.
00:07:38.286 --> 00:07:39.529 I love them to death.
00:07:39.529 --> 00:07:42.524 But that sister just still struggles with addiction.
00:07:42.524 --> 00:07:44.086 She doesn't live in the same state.
00:07:44.086 --> 00:07:51.668 So it's been easier with the kids for them to not watch it that descent, but it's been awful for me, of course.
00:07:51.668 --> 00:07:59.750 But that's my I guess that's my journey of life, but also addiction, has just touched every part of that life.
00:07:59.750 --> 00:08:08.603 So and I'm also now a board member of HVAC and Recovery nonprofit that works with recovering HVAC techs specifically, so that's pretty great.
00:08:10.007 --> 00:08:10.670 That's amazing.
00:08:10.670 --> 00:08:19.894 Yeah, so I can't imagine what that was like having to take those two children to, I think, foster care, is that what you said?
00:08:20.175 --> 00:08:24.079 Yeah, it was terrifying, of course.
00:08:24.079 --> 00:08:29.793 All right, so I actually had my oldest daughter at 16, and then I got with Val, my husband.
00:08:29.793 --> 00:08:31.245 He had a son already.
00:08:31.245 --> 00:08:43.511 We had just had our first baby together at that time and I was only 19, 20 years old at the time, and they were like here's two more, and they were 8 and 10, and they had lived through serious neglect and abuse.
00:08:43.511 --> 00:08:52.822 And bringing them in and having that whole other side of raising children that I wasn't used to was a lot, but they got through it together, by the grace of God.
00:08:57.672 --> 00:08:58.974 So I want to go back for a second.
00:08:58.974 --> 00:09:07.975 You mentioned how, I believe you said, your stepdad yeah, yeah, you're a step bad Was a different person when he was using, opposed to when he wasn't using.
00:09:07.975 --> 00:09:12.572 It's interesting because that is a lot of times that is the case.
00:09:12.572 --> 00:09:20.732 However, for me anyway, even when I wasn't drinking and I wasn't in recovery, I was smoking weed.
00:09:20.732 --> 00:09:22.844 We can get into that, like you know.
00:09:22.844 --> 00:09:28.024 It's just just a different, like weed's a different it's another side of the coin?
00:09:28.585 --> 00:09:30.929 yeah it is, but it's still for me.
00:09:30.929 --> 00:09:34.923 I can't be sober if I'm smoking weed absolutely, I agree 100.
00:09:35.365 --> 00:09:50.211 Yeah, I just wouldn't call it a harmful substance because I don't have the science that says that so it's interesting because I you don't see like you're not going to get caught robbing a store or you're not going to run over a bunch of kids and you're not good things like that.
00:09:50.211 --> 00:09:55.142 Yeah, you're right, they don't really happen with weed, but I could tell you, for me it was.
00:09:55.142 --> 00:10:06.854 I was a dry drunk, yeah, I was smoking weed, but I still had the same shit that was going on, you're losing it for the same reason, it doesn't mean much.
00:10:07.461 --> 00:10:08.543 Yeah, but I still.
00:10:08.543 --> 00:10:12.253 I lived for seven years, really, as a dry drunk.
00:10:12.253 --> 00:10:13.001 And you have the.
00:10:13.001 --> 00:10:15.971 You act the same way you do, you're just not drinking.
00:10:15.971 --> 00:10:19.505 It's the same kind of behaviors, it's the same kind of decision making.
00:10:19.505 --> 00:10:33.192 Yep, and so I, for me, I have to be, I have to be in a program of recovery If I want to live a good life, if I want to think straight, if I want to be normal, if I want to want to wake up every day.
00:10:34.053 --> 00:10:53.261 Otherwise it things go sideways can't and too many will go into and I see this a lot in the HVAC and recovery community is that they'll go into recovery, they will come out sober and at that moment they're detoxed and that's all.
00:10:53.261 --> 00:11:02.982 They are right, their soul is not recovering yet, it hasn't even started yet, and at that point they're like, okay, well, I don't need this substance physically, so I must be healed, right.
00:11:02.982 --> 00:11:08.144 And that only leads back to that same path of what you were medicating to begin with.
00:11:08.144 --> 00:11:15.071 So I love that you said that I think anybody in recovery should have a whole community wrapped around them to keep them there for sure.
00:11:16.676 --> 00:11:25.587 Yeah, there's just something special about it, but you've got to want it, you've got to want to be there, you've got to want to do the work and look, it's not easy.
00:11:25.587 --> 00:11:27.768 It's simple, but it's not easy.
00:11:27.768 --> 00:11:32.250 The road to recovery yeah, it's tough.
00:11:32.250 --> 00:11:36.581 You've got to do a lot of deep work and you've got to ask yourself a lot of questions and lots of times.
00:11:36.581 --> 00:11:39.048 For me anyway, I had to do a lot of shit I didn't really want to do.
00:11:39.591 --> 00:11:39.811 Right.
00:11:39.811 --> 00:11:51.421 And I think too and I'm basing this off mostly off my sister, because she is such an honest person and she'll be the first one to call me and say I just want to go and get completely effed up right now.
00:11:51.421 --> 00:11:57.548 So I'm not going to do it, but I wanted to tell you that's how I feel, things like that, and I think it's always.
00:11:57.548 --> 00:12:06.854 I noticed that it's always at the weirdest times, like she's going through the weirdest thing that is causing that feeling, when she just made it through an entire thunderstorm without feeling that way.
00:12:06.854 --> 00:12:10.049 So I think there's just no rhyme or reason to it, right?
00:12:10.049 --> 00:12:11.967 Is the thing that makes it so hard?
00:12:11.967 --> 00:12:14.328 You just never know when that feeling is going to hit you.
00:12:14.328 --> 00:12:16.226 You never know when is it?
00:12:16.419 --> 00:12:18.625 And this is what she asked me all the time when do I feel better?
00:12:18.625 --> 00:12:23.270 And that's such a loaded question for somebody who is 16 months sober.
00:12:23.270 --> 00:12:28.027 She has not touched any mind altering substance in 16 months, so I'm like what do you mean?
00:12:28.027 --> 00:12:29.029 Don't you feel better?
00:12:29.029 --> 00:12:33.368 And she just is so honest and she's like I don't know, I don't feel better.
00:12:33.448 --> 00:12:34.631 I go into my meetings.
00:12:34.631 --> 00:12:57.789 She goes to meetings twice a day still, and she's like I go to my meetings twice a day and I have these bake sales and try to raise money and I throw myself into recovery and the recovery community, but I don't feel better, I feel worse because I'm thinking about all the things that I did, all the waste of my time losing my children, not being able to talk to them, still working hard to be able to even get to a point where I have visitation and nothing is changing.
00:12:57.789 --> 00:13:01.750 But she doesn't realize how much it's changing every day, right?
00:13:01.750 --> 00:13:03.995 So I think that's what makes it hard.
00:13:03.995 --> 00:13:04.597 I think it's.
00:13:04.597 --> 00:13:13.068 I think it's the hardest thing you could ever do, right, is to let go of something that you genuinely love, didn't necessarily want to quit, but you had to, right.
00:13:13.068 --> 00:13:18.330 And so I think it's just like walking, it's like an abusive relationship and walking away from that other person.
00:13:18.671 --> 00:13:24.686 Right, that's exactly what it's like, yeah, so I wonder, I think I would.
00:13:24.686 --> 00:13:33.297 My question, I think, to her would be and you may know the answer to this has she gone through and she's worked the steps and does she have a sponsor?
00:13:33.297 --> 00:13:41.634 Because a lot of those things really turn around when you diligently do the, when you diligently work those steps.
00:13:42.216 --> 00:13:43.705 Yeah, so I think so.
00:13:43.705 --> 00:13:44.167 Yes, she does.
00:13:44.167 --> 00:13:46.682 She's still in a halfway house actually after prison.
00:13:46.682 --> 00:13:47.663 She got sober in prison.
00:13:48.125 --> 00:13:51.852 Her boyfriend at the time murdered two people.
00:13:51.852 --> 00:14:00.885 One of them was a 16-year-old child here in Maine and she was not a witness to the act, but she was taken to run away with him after the fact.
00:14:00.885 --> 00:14:02.370 So she was basically.
00:14:02.370 --> 00:14:04.442 They caught her and said this is your choice.
00:14:04.442 --> 00:14:09.942 You can get better and we will help you, or you can go right down with him, and she made the right choice, for sure.
00:14:09.942 --> 00:14:14.211 But then you have that whole aspect of I have to do this, I have to do this.
00:14:14.211 --> 00:14:16.562 This isn't for me, I'm not choosing to do this, I have to do this.
00:14:16.562 --> 00:14:21.466 And then, once you get past the certain hump, it's wait a minute, I am doing this for me.
00:14:21.466 --> 00:14:22.447 I do want to do this.
00:14:22.769 --> 00:14:28.835 So I think the hardest part for her, and what draws her back so hard, is the amount of time that she spent there.
00:14:28.835 --> 00:14:33.869 And so when you don't graduate high school right, she didn't even make it to high school.
00:14:33.869 --> 00:14:38.908 She dropped out in eighth grade, completely addicted to heroin, with a 25 year old boyfriend and pregnant.
00:14:38.908 --> 00:14:46.614 So when you lose every bit of what's supposed to make you who you are, and then all that time is spent with a drug making you who you are.
00:14:46.614 --> 00:14:52.547 I think that is where now she's, you know, 37 years old and she's going how do I figure out what I'm going to be now?
00:14:52.547 --> 00:14:57.049 It's just a lot of time spent and it's going to take twice as long to feel better.
00:14:57.049 --> 00:14:58.332 I think, and that's what I tell her.
00:14:58.332 --> 00:15:00.027 It's how long did you not feel good for?
00:15:08.510 --> 00:15:28.638 I also think that when we find drugs and alcohol, or relationships or food, it fills a void inside of us that works Like it works, Like it solves the problem, Like I found the damn solution.
00:15:28.638 --> 00:15:37.658 This is what I've been looking for so long and here it is, and I just want to keep doing it until it stops working.
00:15:38.201 --> 00:15:42.452 Right, and not only until it stops working, but you have to maintain that Right.
00:15:42.452 --> 00:15:45.318 So, like even me as a smoker I smoke cigarettes actively.
00:15:45.318 --> 00:15:57.647 I was stuck on a plane for 14 hours the other day, coming back from Orlando, and my entire life was over right, not because I was stuck on a plane for 14 hours, because I couldn't have a cigarette for 14 hours.
00:15:57.647 --> 00:15:58.210 And I'm going.
00:15:58.210 --> 00:16:01.256 I have to rethink all of my life choices at this moment.
00:16:01.256 --> 00:16:09.743 I can't get through this without that crutch that I use every single day, and I actively use that crutch, knowing what it is.
00:16:09.743 --> 00:16:18.544 So if I can do that as somebody who's never touched drugs or alcohol for the most part of my life, what is it like for someone who has?
00:16:18.544 --> 00:16:26.335 And I think that's where the disconnect is between the sober community and the un-sober community is the fact that none of us are free of addiction, not even a little bit.
00:16:26.335 --> 00:16:32.134 So we all have to understand it together, instead of just this community understanding it and us trying to learn about them.
00:16:32.394 --> 00:16:34.798 You know yeah, and I think it.
00:16:34.798 --> 00:16:37.543 That's a great example 14 hours on the plane.
00:16:37.543 --> 00:16:42.341 The pain got great enough at hour four or five or six, or whatever.
00:16:42.341 --> 00:16:49.792 You thought you were going to be able to smoke right, because your brain went okay, like I'm going to be able to smoke in four hours or three hours or whatever it is.
00:16:49.792 --> 00:16:56.955 And then it got another hour and then the anxiety kicked in and it's like holy shit, like this is ridiculous.
00:16:57.375 --> 00:16:59.419 Yeah, oh yeah.
00:16:59.419 --> 00:17:01.543 It brings out your anger right, your rage.
00:17:01.543 --> 00:17:07.535 It brings out every negative part of you that you would never even bring to the forefront if it weren't for that.
00:17:07.535 --> 00:17:11.856 But at the same time, when you finally get that fix, it does the exact opposite.
00:17:19.589 --> 00:17:21.415 So it's just such a hard thing to say no, I don't want to feel better, I'm all set.
00:17:21.415 --> 00:17:22.640 Yeah Well, for a lot of us it's lack of control.
00:17:22.640 --> 00:17:48.079 We like to be in control, like as a business owner, you have to be in control of certain things and it's really hard to just let go of control when you feel like you've got to be in it, you've got to do the thing, and control is I mean, people in recovery are riddled with control issues and it could be any kind of control you name it right.
00:17:48.079 --> 00:17:56.023 But that's what you were feeling on the plane, like you were out of control and somebody was forcing you to sit on that plane.
00:17:56.023 --> 00:17:57.776 And we don't like to be told what to do.
00:17:58.357 --> 00:18:02.760 Absolutely, and I am absolutely not one to be told what to do.
00:18:02.760 --> 00:18:05.096 I'm like the nicest person I know.
00:18:05.096 --> 00:18:05.939 And I'm looking at my husband.
00:18:05.939 --> 00:18:11.901 I'm like, if they don't give me my effing bags right now and let me leave here, and I'm in the middle of Washington DC and a two foot snowstorm, where am I going?
00:18:11.901 --> 00:18:12.801 You're not going anywhere.
00:18:12.801 --> 00:18:13.843 Just lose control.
00:18:13.962 --> 00:18:19.826 And then on top of you losing control and spiraling like that in your mind, you can't get it back, right.
00:18:19.826 --> 00:18:27.163 And that's where my sister is the most at risk is that when that's all she can control, all she's ever been able to control.
00:18:27.163 --> 00:18:35.821 She couldn't control her education, she couldn't control my parents, she couldn't control her own kids being taken from her, but she could control how much and when she used.
00:18:35.821 --> 00:18:38.651 So now that's the only thing that she had.
00:18:38.651 --> 00:18:41.338 Now she's like everything is controlling me, right?
00:18:41.338 --> 00:18:43.010 It feels like an elephant sitting on your chest.
00:18:43.030 --> 00:18:51.644 You can't get that control back, no matter what you do, and I think that's this is why I try to flip it for her all the time and tell her but actually you didn't have control.
00:18:52.105 --> 00:18:56.381 You were being controlled by a substance that you couldn't tell no, right?
00:18:56.742 --> 00:19:02.951 So now you're telling it no, that is the highest amount of control you'll ever have in your lifetime, because I couldn't do it if it were cigarettes.
00:19:02.951 --> 00:19:09.614 So I know what you're going through to a tiny amount and beyond that, I can't even imagine that pull.
00:19:09.614 --> 00:19:17.138 So I think she just she's one of those people that just it lasted so long that she just that was her trait, that was who she was to herself.
00:19:17.138 --> 00:19:20.955 So now she's just learning how to be somebody else and her recovery community is amazing.
00:19:20.955 --> 00:19:30.714 They're very honest, they're very open and they're on social media and they are going, they, they do mission work, they go out on the streets and they pull people off the streets and they say, just come get help.
00:19:30.714 --> 00:19:35.122 Like today's the day, and it works for some reason and she's so happy to be involved in it.
00:19:35.122 --> 00:19:44.132 She just I think that she sometimes thinks too far ahead about what if I ever don't have this community right, but that's why we have to build more and more of them, because it matters.
00:19:47.115 --> 00:20:08.622 Well, lots of times I and I talk about this a lot it's to be to stay present in the moment and not project out for tomorrow or think about what happened yesterday is for me, that that is something I have to really, I have to consciously make an effort to be present.
00:20:08.622 --> 00:20:18.460 I have to be constant in it because it's like and there's really no other, we don't have anything else than right this second.
00:20:18.460 --> 00:20:19.140 Like we don't.
00:20:19.140 --> 00:20:29.512 It doesn't matter what we think is going to happen tomorrow, because, guess what, there's a good chance that that is not going to happen tomorrow you think it's not happening tomorrow.
00:20:30.094 --> 00:20:31.676 Yeah, probably that break.
00:20:31.676 --> 00:20:51.099 That's like like we can say okay, I'm not going to think about tomorrow, but you're still not going to think about right now because you're still going to think about what happened yesterday, right, and I think that's a big trigger for a lot of people in addiction and in recovery well, yeah, and how much time and how many moments do you miss by being in tomorrow or being in yesterday?
00:20:51.401 --> 00:20:53.044 every single fucking one of them.
00:20:53.630 --> 00:20:55.935 Amen, yep, every one of them.
00:20:55.935 --> 00:20:58.663 All of your presents are gone because they're no longer the present.
00:21:00.371 --> 00:21:00.991 Yeah, that's right.
00:21:01.934 --> 00:21:02.757 And that's what I do.
00:21:02.757 --> 00:21:10.711 Tell my sister that too, when she calls and she's having a good day, she'll say, like this is what I did, this is what I'm doing later and I say, but what are you doing right now?
00:21:10.711 --> 00:21:12.855 And it's that constant reminder.
00:21:12.855 --> 00:21:14.318 She's the same way as you are.
00:21:14.318 --> 00:21:16.703 She has to constantly be in the present.
+(1400+x+1400+px)+(1400+x+1400+px)+-+1.PNG)