cover of episode 200: What if you were consumed by your only cure?

200: What if you were consumed by your only cure?

2021/8/24
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This Is Actually Happening

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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. This had been my life and my way of life for so long. And now all the reality that I had been putting off and all of the denial, it all crashed in on me. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein.

You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 200. What if you were consumed by your only cure?

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I was born and raised in the OC in Orange County, California, about 10 minutes away from Disneyland. I had a really loving upbringing. My mom has told me that if she could have put me in a bubble when I was a kid, she would have. And she got pretty close, honestly.

Her kind of view was that the world is a really scary place where bad and dangerous things happen. And the world is full of hurt and pain. I think she was really focused on protecting me from that because of the upbringing that she had. My mom was estranged from her mother. Her dad was a physician.

They were very close. And when my mom was 20, he had a psychotic break kind of out of nowhere. And he was hospitalized for a few weeks and he was put on medication. They subjugated

sent him home. He had separated from my grandmother at that time. He was living in an apartment. And a few days after he left from the hospital, his secretary showed up to work at the practice and he wasn't there. She went over to his apartment to check on him and he had killed himself from an overdose. My mom wanted to save me from going through that kind of agony.

The irony in that is that she was the cause of quite a bit of agony. There were a lot of times I felt like I was the parent. She was a teacher, elementary school teacher, and she told me that the other teachers, that they were excluding her, they were treating her poorly, and she was just sobbing uncontrollably, just sobbing.

You know, it was like really disconcerting. Like my mom is hysterical and I'm like, you know, six and I'm like, mom, you know, other teachers, they like you. Like, I'm sure they do. I'm sure trying to console her. And later I saw it as part of a pattern that my mom believed that other people were out to get her.

and your primary caregiver, like, that's the way that she looks at the world, that kind of became my worldview that, like, you know, other people hurt you. Other people pose a threat.

My dad was always like a super calm, if not a bit like passive force in my life. He and I, this sounds horrible to say, but we were like accident victims. You know, people in a car who like just rear-ended somebody and they're just kind of looking at each other like, oh my God, did that just happen? Like, did you just see that?

What the hell is going on? That was my dad. My mom's conception of the world as a very dangerous, scary place really contributed to my anxiety.

I was an only child. And from a super early age, I had a lot of separation anxiety, social anxiety. I was pretty solitary. I was an introvert. I didn't have a ton of friends. I always felt different.

My parents used to get the daily newspaper and there was a local congressman who actually represented my area. William Dannemeyer was his name and he was super famous in the 80s and 90s for his opposition to gay rights.

When my parents would get the paper, I would sift through it and I would look for articles that were about gay people or articles about that congressperson. And if I found an article having anything to do with that topic, I would pull it out of the paper, just that page, and I would toss it into the recycle bin.

And I didn't even know why I was doing it at the time. My parents were progressive. They were fairly open. But I think I just felt like I didn't want the conversation to come up. I didn't want to hear them say anything that might hurt me. Junior high was the worst. Junior high was horrible. Growing up gay, I mean, it's just awful.

Later in high school, things got better. I made a couple friends and I was asked to be a D.A.R.E. volunteer. And D.A.R.E. stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education Association.

My high school had recruited a group of kids to go to this series of workshops where they were going to tell us about all these horrible things that can happen to you when you use drugs. And I felt like super special.

So they took us in a van and we went to this office and, you know, they educated us on these different kinds of drugs and the consequences of them. And they were like just horrible things. Like if you use ecstasy, I remember they said that you're going to bleed out of all of your pores. If you use heroin, you're going to get HIV. I mean, just really awful stuff. And

And drugs are something that bad people do. The goal was for us to then go back to school and be like ambassadors for the drug program. It was crazy. It was stupid. But I was very into it. I was this anti-drug crusader.

I was very focused from like a very early age on perfection. If I am good and I do everything that's really good and really perfect, then, you know, my mom will be okay.

I'm a people pleaser. I want people to be happy with me for lack of a better word. Like I just melt if I've upset somebody, like I just fall into like a puddle if I upset or dissatisfy somebody. And it,

It also set like this really high bar that made my coming out process really, really difficult because it was like, oh, now like there's this part of me that, you know, I'm gay and it just layered so much bullshit on top of my coming out process. I mean, it just made it that much more difficult.

I did come out to my parents and my mom cried. She had the questions like, you know, am I going to have grandchildren? Are you going to get married? Like, how is this going to work?

And after a couple months, they accepted me. I mean, it wasn't really even a question. But, you know, this was like a really, really, really difficult time for me, one of the most difficult times. And there wasn't a lot of like, oh, you know, how can we help you? God, this must have been a really huge, huge secret for you to hold on to for a really long time. Like, you know, let's make sure that you're okay.

My mom occupied that space very much because it became me reassuring her. There was some anger, I think, at my mom for making it about her. But coming out for me was just like a thousand pound weight off my shoulders. Like, I don't have to...

hide this. Like constantly be like monitoring how I'm seeming, how I'm talking, how I'm moving, how I'm looking. Senior year in high school, I had a short relationship with a guy just a few months. We ended up breaking up. Toward the end of senior year, I was 18 and I started talking to someone on AOL.

His name was Josh, and he had contacted me. We had been chatting for like a couple weeks, and he seemed smart, he seemed funny, you know, and I was like, oh, but like, am I going to be attracted to him? The first image I have of him is that he sent me a photo, and this was back on dial-up. So, you know, you can imagine how slowly this photo loaded in.

I remember first I saw his hair. I was like, oh, okay, he's got really nice hair.

His forehead kind of fills in and then his eyes come in and he had green eyes that were just so beautiful. And, you know, then the rest of his face comes in and I was just totally head over heels. I couldn't even believe how perfect he was. We decided to go out on our first date and

I felt like Josh was just like totally out of my league. And I don't know that I've ever been more nervous for like a single event than I was for this. We met at a coffee shop and I remember sitting there forever and he was like an hour and a half late. Finally, he showed up and I mean, the date was horrible.

I remember at one point I had my wallet on the table and like he was so desperate to try to like draw some conversation out of me that he opens my wallet and he starts taking out pictures and he's like, who is this? Like just trying to get me to say anything about my life. And I was just like so struck by him and so really like intimidated by him, honestly.

Immediately on meeting him, we were sitting on the patio and he started smoking a cigarette. And I mean, that just like blew my mind. I mean, you know, I was the kid who had all the rehearsed dialogue about what to do when someone, you know, passes a joint around and dies.

Now I'm on this date with this guy who's like smoking. And I ended up finding out that he drank even though he was 19. He was also an only child. And I was just like totally smitten. The first date just ended with a hug. The second date, he drove me back home. We parked outside of his parents' apartment and...

And I wanted to kiss him so bad, but I couldn't. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I was so scared. Finally, he turns to me super direct, just looks me in the eye. And he's like, so you have until midnight to kiss me because I'm going inside at midnight.

Oh, shit. Okay. So we kept talking. And at 1159, I leaned over and kissed him. And it was just like fireworks. So the first year together was great. It was amazing.

I had graduated high school. I had started college. It was just a completely new era in my life. I mean, I had gone from being just this closeted, scared, nervous kid who really didn't have exposure to anything to going out and dyeing my hair blue and being with this just like amazing guy who just challenged me and made me think really differently.

A year in, we were at dinner and Josh pulls the sleeve up on his shirt and starts crying out of nowhere. I'm like, what the hell is going on? And he points to his arm and I look and there's like this little brown line on the inside of his elbow. He told me that he was using heroin.

I cannot even explain how shocked and I remember at the time having this image of like a snow globe and I felt like I was a figure in like this perfect little snow globe picture and somebody just took it and turned it over and shook it up. I just was totally, totally disoriented.

Everything I knew about drugs, I had those ideas still that, you know, this was something bad people do. And I didn't know how to reconcile that with what I knew. So I talked with my friend and her mom. And I remember her mom was like, you need to leave, like you need to leave him.

I called him with the intent of ending it. And he was just so apologetic. And he told me that the reason he was an hour and a half late to our first date at the coffee shop was because he had shot up on the way there.

because he was really nervous to meet me. And, you know, I was like, oh, you know, he's struggling with anxiety too. And he seemed so genuine and he promised it would never happen again. And I was so in love at that point that I could not bear the idea of letting him go.

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In those six years, his best friend, Josh's best friend, had a baby. We became Uncle Gabe and Uncle Josh. We had a big, big hand in raising her, raising the daughter, and things were just really good. Things were not as good for me at home.

Toward the end of my undergrad, my mom, she was getting really paranoid about people conspiring against her. She would randomly have these crying spells. And then I remember she would tell me sometimes that she felt like she was speeding. That was her word. I feel like I'm speeding.

She was cleaning, she was doing this, doing that, talking like a mile a minute, and she just seemed super energetic and very, very focused. And then at other times, she just seemed really low. I was living in my childhood bedroom, and at night, at all hours of the night, she would just explode into my room.

I would be like dead asleep and like, boom, the door to my room would open. And, you know, she would be just hysterical. Around that time, our pool man, I guess she saw him parked in front of our house. And for some reason, she became convinced that he had a gun and that he was like going to shoot somebody.

So she called 911 and reported that there was a man with a gun out in front of our house. And, you know, this poor guy got like taken down in the middle of the street, you know, guns drawn, loudspeaker, helicopter. He had no idea what the hell was going on.

It just became clear to me that my mom was like not functioning in the same reality that I was in. Some of the time she was just delusional. My dad and I eventually got her to go to a psychiatrist.

And finding out that my mom was bipolar, I mean, it was kind of a relief to know that it had a name and she was diagnosed with psychosis or psychotic features. So she did start on meds.

You know, it goes back to this idea that she had instilled in me from when I was a kid, which was the world is a dangerous place and that people are out to hurt you. And the second idea there was the only people you really can trust, the only people who really have your best interests at heart are your parents.

And so to find out, oh shit, I can't trust my mom. What do I have? At that point, I started to have panic attacks. I remember I was driving at one point on the freeway and I had a panic attack. And once it happened the first time, it was like this floodgate opened and it started happening all the time.

I would feel like I couldn't catch my breath. And that was kind of the sign for me that like it was starting. Then I would have like a wave of nausea that would come over me. And I usually did throw up. I would feel dizzy. I would start sweating. I would start shaking. I felt like I couldn't talk.

It was the most incredible feeling of being overwhelmed and scared. I mean, it literally felt like somebody had a gun to your head and you were about to die. And all of the feelings that you would get if that were happening were

The first time you have it, you probably won't know what it is. And that makes it even worse because you just feel completely out of control and you have no fucking idea what's going on. I was becoming agoraphobic. I just really felt like I can't leave the house. My mom was having a really, really bad night.

Like out in the backyard, pacing and just acting really manic and weird. And I wasn't able to sleep because I was worried that she was going to burst into my room at any point. And I remember I had been on the phone with Josh and he said,

Hey, you know, I noticed when I was over at your house that you had this cough syrup in your medicine cabinet. If you really can't get to sleep, that might help you. So I took a teaspoon or two and I went back up to my room.

Within about like 15 or 20 minutes, I remember feeling light and warm and maybe a little drowsy, but just calm. I just wasn't quite so worried about anything. I had never experienced anything like that.

It was prescription. I found out later that it was cough syrup with hydrocodone in it, which is the same ingredient in Vicodin. I went to sleep that night and it was probably like my first like really good night of sleep in a long time.

You know, when my mom had a really bad night, I would take some of the cough syrup and, you know, it just kind of helped me through those times. You know, the bottle lasted probably like three or four months. So at about 24, I graduated and I took my first job.

It was great. I loved the work. I was being given increasing responsibility. And, you know, my mom was still kind of on and off. And when she was off, you know, I had the cough syrup. And it kind of made me feel like, all right, you know, even if we have a rough night or she has a rough night, I know how to get through it. I have a fail safe that I know will work. Six months or so into my job, my dad called me.

I was at work and he was like, hey, have you talked to mom today? No, no, I haven't. Why? What's going on? He's like, oh, you know, I'm at work, but I've called a couple times and I can't get a hold of her. So I called her and no answer. I guess my dad called his brother, my uncle, to check on my mom.

Her car was there, but nobody answered. So my uncle called the police and they ended up going into the house through a window. They found my mom. She had laid down in my bed, in my room. She had overdosed on her own prescription of Ativan, you know, with the intention of dying,

I went to the hospital. I saw her in the ER and she was like just kind of waking up. And first thing she said to me was, why didn't you let me die? I was so angry. Number one, in my room. I lived in that room since I was born.

that's where you were going to die? Like was the expectation that dad and I would come home and like, I would find you dead in my bed. The second point that really made me angry, which was like, you went through that. Your dad did that to you. And for all that you've tried to insulate me and put me in a bubble, you broke that.

And I remember I could not sleep in my room for months. I was so angry. So when I was driving to the hospital, I called Josh and I said, you know, please, will you meet me at the hospital? And he did. And, you know, he was really supportive, which was great. I mean, I just remember like sitting in the waiting room and just like hugging Josh.

He pulled me aside in the ER at the hospital and he said, hey, I brought something for you. He had this little tiny container and he opened it and there was like, just like this tiny little crumb, kind of like a salmon pink color. He told me what it was. He said it was a piece of a morphine pill and that he had gotten it from his mom and

She was a nurse practitioner. She also had chronic pain. She didn't drink alcohol, but she always seemed loaded. He gave it to me and he was like, just swallow this and you're going to feel better. I don't know. I was so upset. And so I did. And within 10 minutes, it was like instant relief.

I felt focused. The anxiety of that situation and the anger kind of faded. I felt confident. I felt like I could handle this. The reality is I couldn't handle it. My dad couldn't handle it. But I felt like

It didn't matter what happened because I could say whatever I needed to say and do whatever I needed to do to get through the situation because I felt really, really good. So in the aftermath of that, she did go into like an outpatient program, but I honestly don't remember her ever apologizing. It's been 16 years since that happened and we've never talked about it.

Pretty much nothing was clear to me. The only thing that was clear is that I could not live there anymore. So within about six months of my mom's attempt, Josh and I got a small place, an apartment in West Hollywood. We were in the center of the gay universe in LA and our place became kind of like the center of the party.

You know, as bad as things were during that time with my parents, things were that good when I was living in West Hollywood. Occasionally when I was like really stressed or really overwhelmed or, you know, if my mom was really bugging me or calling me a lot, I would ask Josh for part of a pill. And, you know, it was only probably once or twice a month.

Because the morphine gave me energy and confidence, it was a really great thing to take when I would go out dancing, drinking. And so I would take it when we went out. And as my work got more stressful, I started using it at work.

A couple years into that, you know, probably taking it Friday, Saturday, Sunday, plus one or two days during the week.

If I went more than like two or three or four days without taking it, I started getting like kind of weird. My stomach would churn. I would get a really bad headache. I would start sweating a lot. I would start yawning. But if I took another part of a pill, it usually went away within like 20 minutes.

I never got the feeling that, you know, what I was doing fell into that category of things that I should be ashamed of. Then, you know, I was working for a nonprofit. The majority of the staff was gay. And it was just kind of generally accepted or generally known that most people used something. Yeah, I took a Xanax last night. People were like,

People taking Adderall or Ritalin to focus, people taking pain meds to chill out, people taking tranquilizers to sleep or sleeping pills. The pill world was a different world than the drug world in my perception.

It was medicine, and it was being given to me by my boyfriend's mother, essentially. I mean, she was giving it to him, and he was giving it to me. And she was a nurse practitioner. I wasn't stealing for it. I wasn't injecting anything. I wasn't doing any of the quote-unquote bad things that I had learned about. We had this light fixture in the kitchen.

I came home and Josh was at work and the light fixture was gone. It had literally come out of the ceiling. I remember Josh getting home a little while later and I was like, what the hell happened in the kitchen? Like there was, you know, a hole in the plaster where this light fixture was. And Josh said, Josh,

Yeah, it fell out of the ceiling. And I was like, what? And I wanted to call the landlord. I was like, really pissed and let them know. And I remember he was like, no, I don't want to make trouble. You know, you know how those landlords can be. Let's just let it go.

I didn't find out at the time, but I found out years after that. Josh had tried to hang himself from that light fixture, and the light fixture broke out of the ceiling. At the time, it was winter, and he later told me that he had worn scarves during the day so that I wouldn't see the marks around his neck.

So around the time that the light fixture fell out, he told me that he had never stopped using heroin. After that whole first ultimatum a year in, there was basically no break. And I guess he was smoking it for a while so that I wouldn't see track marks, but he had started shooting up again.

Once again, you know, eight years in, I was giving him an ultimatum and telling him that I was going to leave if he didn't stop. He said again that he was going to, and this time he actually did go to rehab.

So I was in my late 20s at this point. I was still doing really well at work. I had gotten promoted to a director position. The job, you know, the new position came with a lot more stress and my drug use went from two or three time weekly thing to a daily thing.

Xanax, Ativan, Morphine, Norco, Percocet. At that point, it started to get more difficult to just keep up with the day. I couldn't get through the day without napping. We had a big meeting with one of our main fundraisers and I nodded off in the meeting.

I got up at one point to use the restroom and he followed me out of the meeting. And he's like, you need to go back to your office. I do not want you in this meeting. And I was like, shocked. Like, wait, why? Why? And he's like, if you can't stay awake, I don't want you in this meeting. I was horrified.

So when I was about 30, Josh's mom's health started to decline and Josh started to decline again. He quit his job. At that point, I knew that he occasionally was also using cocaine and meth. But honestly, I knew that I couldn't continue if he didn't continue.

We moved out of our place and we moved in with his parents to try to help take care of his mom. Because she was a nurse practitioner, she was able to convince her doctor to really increase her morphine to the point where she was getting about 12 a day. And so, you know, 12 a day became four for her, four for Josh, four for me.

Around that time, his mom found out that I had been prescribed Xanax.

and her doctor would not give her Xanax because she was on these heavy-duty opioids. So she wanted my Xanax. And we would start to threaten each other. His mom would get upset, you know, because we were asking for pain pills all the time, and she would say, I'm not going to give you guys any more morphine. You know, I would turn around and be like, all right, well, then I'm not going to give you any more Xanax.

enabling each other and threatening each other and threatening to cut each other off. This just goes to show you how extreme the enabling was. That was really the point that my addiction just descended into madness.

At one point, Josh's mom kept her drugs in a safe, and I used a letter opener to pick the lock of the safe and busted it open, and I stole literally hundreds of pills. And around that same time, his mom ended up getting a cancer diagnosis. She had lung cancer.

And she went on chemo for a short period of time before she was placed on hospice.

I didn't think things could get any more chaotic. They got so much worse. When hospice came in, they brought bottles of liquids, sedatives, Valium, morphine, and Dilaudid. They had fentanyl patches. They had fentanyl liquid.

And I mean, by this point, I was going to work with like two fentanyl patches stuck to me, morphine in the morning. I was blitzed out of my mind on Xanax and Valium.

I know I fell asleep once when I was on the freeway and I hit the center divider and woke up and pulled back into the fast lane and was like, oh shit, guess I'm not getting enough sleep. You know, it was never like, oh shit, I'm blitzed out of my mind. And at that point we had started stealing the IV bags that were in the refrigerator. Like there would be three bags, we would take one of them.

So one night around that time, I was in Josh's bedroom. He was with a friend of his, the friend whose daughter we had helped to raise. I remember I had drank some Jalaudid, which is basically used for surgery, and I drank it out of an IV bag.

And I had also drank some Valium. And I had actually cut open a fentanyl patch. And I had eaten the gel that was inside of it. I don't know how many morphine I had taken. I mean, it just was kind of all of a blur at that point. And I guess I fell asleep on Josh's bed and

He came into the bedroom and he found me not breathing on the bed. My lips were blue. He wasn't sure like if I had a pulse. So Josh and his friend got me up and they dragged me into the shower. He said that they turned on the water cold, sprayed me in the face. I was fully clothed. I didn't wake up. His friend said,

hauled back and hit me across the face. And the first thing I remember is like this horrible, like burning pain on my cheek. And I remember opening my eyes and feeling water in my mouth and looking down. And the first thing I thought is why am I dressed in the shower?

Then realizing I wasn't really standing, I was being held, they took me back to bed. He watched me for a couple hours, and I remember that night, I took another pill. Even at that point, even after the overdose, I never remember thinking that I was an addict.

People had brought it up to me. Friends had brought it up to me like, hey, you know, I'm worried about you. I would get very insulted and very defensive. I have an anxiety issue. I think maybe that was my kind of rationalization. Like I have an anxiety issue and these are the things that I need to do to control my anxiety. And if I don't do these things, you don't know how bad I feel.

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my biggest rock bottom moments as if there weren't plenty before. But I remember giving her a kiss and the hospice nurse had gone outside to call the funeral home.

Josh and I, with his mother's dead body there, ran around the house and we picked up every bag, every bottle, every bit of drugs that we could find because we knew this was it. This was it. So that probably lasted us maybe two months. Then the day came when the stash ran out completely.

This had been my life and my way of life for so long. And now all the reality that I had been putting off and all of the denial, it all crashed in on me. I continued kind of relapsing, you know, on and off. It was getting better and

It wasn't daily using anymore. At that point, I had decided that one of my big stressors was my job. So I quit. I wanted to get a master's in social work. I made the decision to move out of Josh's house, which I probably should have done a lot earlier. I moved back in with my parents.

By that point, my mom was on new medication. It actually was working. When she was on the right medication, she was really, really stable and really kind and loving and caring. Josh and I were still together. We said we were together, but we weren't living together.

He really started to deteriorate even further at that point. He was using meth pretty regularly. His dad called me at one point and said that he had wrestled a knife out of Josh's hand and Josh had cut his wrists, tried to kill himself.

I went over to see him once and I found him hiding in his parents' closet. He had seen some people who were trying to break into the house through the windows and that they were coming to get him. He was really starting to get paranoid and just really, really bad. So at that point, we had been together for a total of 14 years, basically.

I told him I couldn't do it anymore. So we separated. I was really numb. I started dating. I know that was a hard time for Josh. Sometimes he said that he was happy for me. Sometimes he seemed really angry.

In October of 2014, he had been sending me a lot of messages like he seemed, you know, not doing well. And I had called him finally and he didn't answer and I couldn't get a hold of him. I drove over. I let myself into the house. He was on his parents' bed. He was unconscious. He had overdosed.

I was able to get him like awake a little bit. And I remember telling him, I just need you to do one thing. Like I just, when the paramedics ask you if you'll go to the hospital, I need you to say yes. I just need you to say yes. And so I called and he said yes. Immediately he went into the ICU. His hands were swollen. His eyes were yellow. His skin was yellow.

Everything was yellow. He was unconscious for, you know, a couple weeks. I would play him music, you know, on my phone. And I asked him a couple times to like blink if you hear me and stuff. And he did. About three weeks into the hospitalization, they asked me to sign a DNR, do not resuscitate. I remember not feeling like that was even real at that point.

I do remember they told me that even if he did come back, that it wasn't likely that he would have full functioning. I really wrestled with that decision. I knew one of Josh's fears was being kind of trapped in a body that didn't work. He had talked about that before, and I didn't want that for him. But I also didn't want him to die if he didn't have to.

And so after I signed the DNR, this had been going on for like about three weeks. I finally had to take a break. And so the guy that I was with, we planned like a weekend trip to San Francisco. I remember we were on the 5 freeway, like in central California, and my phone rang. It was the nurse.

She said, you know, that he had gone into cardiac arrest and they had not revived him. We had a service for Josh and at the end of the funeral, his dad came up to me. Just like out of nowhere, he said, if you didn't leave, this would not have happened.

You know, I was already feeling guilty and I was already, you know, asking myself a lot of those questions, but that really stuck the knife in. He had just lost his only son. He had just lost his wife. I understand he was angry and he was looking for, you know, somewhere to lay the blame or some way to make sense of it. But what if I hadn't left? I mean, maybe this wouldn't have happened, but

What if I had gotten clean? Would that have given him what he needed to get clean? I mean, what if I had left after the first year? What if I had left the day that he showed me the first track mark?

I was just asking myself all those questions, a lot of regret. I was coping with it the way that I had been coping with everything for the last 10 years. I couldn't get pain pills anymore, so I had transitioned to sleeping pills. I was taking Ambien and I had started sleepwalking.

At one point, I found myself in my car with the keys in the ignition. Thank God I hadn't gone anywhere. But, you know, I was having episodes where I would wake up and have conversations. I wasn't making sense. I was doing bizarre stuff. I didn't have any new coping skills. So I was using the ones that had worked for me up to that point.

I had been picking up prescriptions in my parents' name, tranquilizers from the pharmacy. I tried to fill a prescription under my dad's name at the pharmacy and the pharmacist came on the phone and she said, I'm really sorry, but your mom called and she said that we're not to fill any prescriptions for her or your dad and you can't pick them up.

Around the same time, my current boyfriend had found out that I had brought pills with me on a trip we had taken. He had found them and he gave me an ultimatum.

In that moment, what really hit me was I'm doing the same thing to this new person that Josh was doing to me and I was doing to Josh. And like, it just seems so pointless to repeat this.

The only way I can make sense of what happened to Josh and the only way that I can try to make anything good come out of this really shitty situation is if I don't die too.

And I also give my mom a lot of credit. You know, she was the cause of a lot of pain and a lot of anxiety. But the fact that she made that phone call and cut me off was probably the best thing that she's ever done for me.

Since then, I went back into a rehab program and started seeing a therapist. I ended up finishing my internship

At the hospital I was at, I finished my master's degree. I started working in a psychiatric hospital where I was working with patients who were in very, very similar situations to the ones that Josh and I were in. Now I'm working with newly released prisoners.

One of the hardest parts of this entire experience was reconciling addiction and being an addict with who I am. I, from an early age, really felt like addiction is something that happens to bad people or people who make poor choices or people who are not me.

And if it did happen to me, that meant that I was a bad person. I think the thing that messed with my mind and caused me to have to do the most growing and made me a better person and a better clinician in my work now is realizing that that's not the case. Addiction can happen to anyone.

Nobody wakes up one day and is like, gosh, I want to be horribly dependent on drugs to the point where it destroys my life, damages all my relationships, kills my significant other, and nearly kills me. Nobody says that.

And one of the biggest changes in my perspective was that the world is not the black and white place that I thought it was. Everything is gray.

And I know that can be unsettling, but you end up telling yourself things that are not true. You end up telling yourself things that justify things that are harmful. You end up telling yourself, well, you know, if I'm a good person and good people don't use drugs, then either I can't use drugs or if I use drugs, I'm a bad person.

for a lot of people being gay is one of those things. That's one of those things that falls in the bad category. It adds this whole layer of shame onto behavior that is neither good nor bad. And I think one of the most like radical things, you know, someone can do for themselves is to take the judgment out of the behavior and

For the vast majority of us, we are doing the best that we can with what we have at the time. So the guy that I started dating after I split with Josh, we have been together for seven years. It is good and healthy stuff.

I am really lucky to say that I am still really close with Josh's best friend, the one who hit me in the shower, and her daughter that Josh and I raised together just turned 18.

We get together and we reminisce about Josh. And she was another reason that it was important for me to get clean because, you know, she lost Josh as a young person. And if there's anything that I could do right, it's to be there for her and show her the other side of addiction.

you know, for all that darkness that she had to go through. Show her the recovery side of addiction. Show her the side of it that's healthy and happy and bright and

Today's episode featured Gabriel. Gabriel is now a psychiatric social worker and licensed therapist in Orange County, California. You can find out more about Gabriel on Instagram at Gabriel.emmm. That's at G-A-B-R-I-E-L dot E-M-M-M.

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