215: What if you faced the monster in the mirror?
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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. Then I found myself angry at God, angry with myself, being angry with everybody or everything around me. It's like a walking dead. And that's what I always called it, the walking dead. I was just a shell. But I couldn't stop. My soul was gone. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein.

You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 215. What if you faced the monster in the mirror?

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To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts. That's amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. Check out our recently completed six-part series, The 82% Modern Stories of Love and Family, ad-free with your Prime membership. I was actually born in Buffalo, New York.

Moved to Florida when I was around two years old. Me, my dad, my mom, my three sisters. We moved into projects. It was a lot of rodents and roaches. And we eventually moved in with my great uncle, which was my dad's uncle. Not too far from the projects.

Christmas time, you know, my dad had a nice bar with a lot of liquor behind the bar and family members used to come over. I was a child and I used to sneak drinks even at an early age, five or six. And I used to just dance, dance, dance. And, you know, all the grownups used to cheer me on. And I was always a great dancer. So I always danced and they had this, it was called Young Blacks in Action. And so I used to go there.

That was kind of my outlet, I guess. That was just something I liked to do. I liked going around there and we used to have dance contests. And so I used to win all the time. I remember this one kid around about the same age, he stole my dance moves and he started to dance like me or whatever. And so I ended up beating him up. And I just remember, you know, when I beat him up that so many people just laughed.

Like it was a good thing. Like I got so much respect for that. Like nine years old, like beating this kid up because he stole my dance moves. And I remember like people like, oh, that's Lil' Jen like, you know, don't mess with Lil' Jen like. And even my dad had heard about it. Never was told like, oh, you shouldn't be fighting or nothing like that. It was a way to get respect. You know, somebody do something to you, you hit them, you fight them.

So my dad, my dad wasn't the emotional type. He used to work every day, come home. And then on the weekends, he just went out. He was drinking a lot. Like, I remember people like, oh, your dad the weekend drunk because he would function all week. But on the weekend, he'd kind of like disappear and drink. And I used to watch little shows on TV where like the dad and the son played together. And that wasn't what we did.

As I got older, seven, eight, something happened. I remember my mom calling me in the room like, your dad moving out or whatever. And I remember crying. And it just left me, my mom, my sister. And I had an older cousin there.

And so my older cousin, she was a teenager, maybe 16, 17. She used to smoke a lot of weed. So I remember she used to babysit us as my mom went to choir rehearsal through the church. And we used to smoke weed while she was gone and laugh. And it was fun.

I sniffed some Rush at that time, too. I think I was still nine. It was around that era. My cousin had a little bottle. I didn't know. And so this was the 70s. So I remember sniffing it and just getting a head rush. And I'm just laughing and laughing. And I fall back on the bed, you know, and it turned into a weekly thing when mom went to choir rehearsal. That's what we would do. But I remember being a little confused sometimes.

My older cousin, she had a friend that used to come over. And after my mom and dad split up, I remember one time sneaking in the room when I actually saw my mom and my cousin's friends. They was like kissing or something. And I really didn't understand. It was two ladies. I'm like, this is a teenage girl, like my cousin's friends. And I just remember being shocked and like running out.

Nobody knew that I saw, but it was like a lot of confusion in my head at that time. It was just real strange to me. But then eventually it was...

It became like a normal, like all of a sudden this was a girlfriend. And I'm like, okay. And I remember friends, my friends wanted to spend a night. And sometimes I would say no, because I didn't know if the lady was spending the night with moms. And then that kind of went away. And then my mom had an older lady, like her age. And I guess they started going together, but she took care of us.

She loved me, and I think I grew to love her, but it was just some growing pains. And I was the only boy.

Early age, you know, mom always used to say, you the man of the house, you'll always be the man of the house. I always thought I had an image to hold up. And so my real fear was like, what would my friends say if they knew my mom was with a woman? Like, your mom is gay or why does this woman stand here or who is this woman? And so I was taught to lie like at an early age.

So it was always, I had to be tougher than the next guy. I had to have multiple girlfriends. I had to be like the macho man, bad dude, because I didn't want nobody to think I was soft or that I couldn't hold my own because it wasn't a man in the house. Me and my mom always been solid. We always been good. I remember mom was teaching me how to fight and we was play boxing because I used to love boxing.

We both had our guards up and I remember letting my guards down and she swung and it actually hit me and I hit the floor. And I remember just crying and she was like, baby, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You know, she held me like I didn't try to hit you. But the lesson was I didn't try to hit you, but don't ever put your guards down.

She always lifts me up. I used to be sad sometimes. And she was like, you know, I love you. Give me hugs. Let me know. I'm going to be great one day. And that was mom. Like she tried to do everything to make sure that I felt loved. In between that time when my mom and dad split up, mom moved us to Milwaukee away from my dad, completely away from Orlando.

I had never seen things like this in my life. It was like a movie. You look out the window and it's like prostitutes out there. It's pimps out there. Hustlers, they selling drugs. You'll see a fight. You'll see people hiding their stash of dope and going back for it. We knew where everybody held their stash at. Just looking out the window as a child and watching the police arrest them. A lot of violence.

We started knowing the prostitutes by name and sometimes you walk past a car and one of the prostitutes is in there like giving oral sex to a guy or whatever. And it was just like everyday life like this is what happens. After they split up, we moved back and forth to Milwaukee and Florida. So we moved quite a bit. One particular time we was living in Orlando.

teenager. I was about 14. I used to hang out with my sister's boyfriend and he got into it with this guy. They would see each other and every time they see each other, they would fight. And I remember riding with my sister's boyfriend. So I'm in the car with them. We roll past and he sees the guy and he stops and he's like, hold on, watch this. He pulled out a gun out his waist and

he laid the gun on top of the car and he was calling the guy out like what's up what you want to do now what you want to do now the guy didn't fight him but i was so scared i was in the car and i'm i'm looking at him and you know and i'm like okay it's a lot of guys over here if they come you know what do i do and right after that i started sneaking my mom's gun out the house and that's and so i started carrying it with me every day

I had it with me one day and I was with him. We went to a rec center and the guy came to the rec center, but I didn't know I was inside. I had my gun in my jacket or my mom's gun. And he told me I'd be right back. He left me in the gym. He's taking very long to come back. And I'm like, okay, what's going on? And so when I go outside the gym, it's like police everywhere. Someone's laying in the street dead.

And I see him, he has his shirt off and the police got him handcuffed. Then I hear people talking like, "Oh, he stabbed him, he stabbed him." And so he had actually stabbed and killed the guy. My first time I encountered cocaine, I was a freshman in high school. It was one of those times me and my sister were staying with my dad. Our routine, get up and getting dressed for school. There was a grain of rice on the counter.

I don't know what told me to open the rice container. And so I opened the rice container and it's a whole lot of different packages of aluminum foil. Curious, I opened it. White powder. I know it's cocaine because I know what cocaine looks like.

My dad was going to work because he used to leave early to go to work before us. And so I took one of them, took it to school. I showed one of my friends and he was like, oh, man, where you get that from? And then he told a couple of more people. And so after school, I met up with him. He took the package. He made some lines and we started sniffing lines. I remember it really burning. And I was like, oh, my God.

But I was the man. Again, I had that respect. Like, man, you see what Jen got? And, you know, all of a sudden I became popular at that moment. So the next day I brought another one. And eventually I found my dad's stash with money in it. So now not only was I bringing bags of cocaine to school, but I was also bringing cash. But my dad eventually called, but he never said nothing.

I did that until he found out and then he moved the stash. But I was already the man after that. It was a lot of drug dealing at the time in Florida. A couple of my friends showed me how to buy this $40 worth and showed me how to cut it and I could make $80. And so I started buying those every other day. But at the same time, my dad was, he was getting high. He was getting high. He was using cocaine.

Eventually it progressed to I couldn't even stay with him anymore. I remember playing football, peewee football, and he never came to a game. And then when they had the football banquet, he didn't come and my mom came. That really hurt me. So it was a lot of times that he hurt me where when we moved back to Milwaukee, I wouldn't hear from him for birthdays or Christmas.

I always felt like I was in his way at that time. I remember being at my girlfriend's house and I came home unexpectedly. He was in the midst of getting high and I remember him being real angry with me. I remember he cursed me out because I came home early. I think he had a woman in the back and he was getting high and he was like, you need to go somewhere. I was crushed.

Now, 14, like out in the streets, 2, 3 in the morning, 4 in the morning, not going home at all, carrying a pistol, 2, 3, 4 in the morning, getting drunk, selling dope, getting into fights. It was fun. We'd go in the corner store, we'd steal the beer, we'd rob the beer truck.

Now my name was out there pretty bad. And so I remember we was at a teenage club. We was fighting some other guys from the projects, from different projects. My friend got stabbed. He used to be my best friend one time, but he got stabbed. And when he got stabbed, I remember, you know, beating this guy with a stick. And so it's just things like that, you know, that I think that's how I handle my emotions.

I was skipping school, getting suspended from school. I didn't really care. I didn't care. It was more like, okay, if something happened to me, I'd die. I'd just die. And it was normal. Like, this is what everybody's doing. I was in an alternative school then. It was in Milwaukee. I had a girlfriend. She got pregnant.

Our house was like a gambling house, so they used to play cards. I was drinking every day in the house. I just pretty much came and go as I pleased. But my mom's friend, she used to try to tell me what to do. And so I was drinking one time. They told me I couldn't have company, and I got real angry. We ended up wrestling, and I threw her down, and I was on top of her and trying to choke her or whatever.

They pulled me off and, you know, my mom was like, get out of here. She was getting there, trying to get her gun to shoot me. So I left. I was kind of moving around, going. I went to my grandmother's house. Then I stayed with a friend of the family. It was just out of control. I'm 17 now. At that time, it was a friend that was back and forth from New York to Milwaukee. He had moved back to New York.

And so my friend was like, let's go visit Dave for his birthday. And so we got round trip tickets and we went to New York. We had a round trip ticket for two weeks. When we got there, it was actually a dope house that they was living in in the projects. And so we moved in there. And the very first day we got there, we walking through the projects with suitcase and some stick up kids came through and they shot this guy in the head.

We was there maybe an hour. And so we hear all these people crying and screaming. We don't really know anybody. One day, my friend, girlfriend, she lived there too. Mind you, we all like 17. She tore up our round trip tickets. She was like, I know how y'all could get the money back. It's just sell these. So we would start selling dope for the older guys. I ended up staying there. I stayed there almost a year, a little over a year.

There I saw a lot of poverty, a lot of hardship, a lot of murder. We sold drugs in the middle of the project. So in the project, you had the front back in the middle and it was always competition between the front, the middle and the back. A lot of money, a lot of money came through that project. More than I ever saw before in my life. And we were all teenagers.

We was at war with the guys in the front because they had came out with bigger bags than we did. And it was a shootout. I actually was in the apartment at the time and I can hear the shootout. I know we got beef or we into it with them. I hear a knock on the door, like a hard knock. And my friend is calling me and I let him in. I didn't know he had shot a little girl. I think she was about seven or eight, like a little girl in front of the store.

So you could hear the police, you know, running across the roof and the little girl was dead. He was only like 14. I remember walking into the project, walking into one of the buildings and all the lights are out and a guy come from behind the stairs and put the gun to my forehead. I'm like, oh, it's over. My life is over.

It was one of the guys from the back, but we knew him. And so he had a hoodie on. He came out the dark, boom, put the gun to my head. He seen the fear in my eyes. He took the hood off and started laughing. He was like, I got you then. And he walked out the building. You know, I remember a guy walking through the projects. He said he was going to this girl house, but he wasn't from the project.

When he was walking through the middle, he was getting beat. His pants got ripped off of him. He started to run and people started shooting guns and he died. The other guy that wasn't from the project, he got stabbed in the front and he died. My friends was killers, for lack of better words. These were people I ate with, I hung with, you know, and

Something that was very traumatic for me is that there was a one lady that used to call her tip to me because she had walked with a lip. One time she just started going around and like asking everybody for drugs. You know, give me a, you know, $20 worth. I'm going to give you $50 worth. We were teenagers, but we were, we were ruthless. She was going around to everybody, going around to everybody. I'm going to pay you on the first of the month when I get my check.

On the first of the month, she went on the roof and she's standing on the edge of the roof. And all these teenagers, we all down there like jump, jump, jump, drinking 40s, smoking weed. She jumped. She died right there instantly on the spot. I remember hitting my 40 like, you see that? And it was intense.

There was no sorrow. Nobody was sad. It was just like a big party. It was just, you know, thinking about it now, like that's somebody's mom, that's somebody's sister, that's somebody's, like she meant something to somebody. I found out when I was high that I was courageous. Like I wasn't worried about like getting killed. It was just life, right? And so I stayed high all the time.

High school, drinking, smoking weed, snorting cocaine. And so even the times that I feared, those was probably the times that I was sober or that I wasn't high. But when I was high, I was crazy. I wasn't scared of anything. And so when you wake up and you start getting high immediately, which was the case in New York, for breakfast, you know, I eat a sandwich and drink a 40. So I started out my day like that.

It kept me numb. And so I wasn't allowed to feel. If you show fear, people will walk all over you. So you had to be tough in every situation. No matter if you were scared, you couldn't show it. Even when somebody got killed, like even when the lady jumped off the roof, it wasn't like I started crying or nothing. I was just like, no, I'm doing what everybody else doing.

I looked at it, it was normal. Like this was the way life was, you know, you either killed or be killed, you know, you, you're the swimmer, you sink. I was in survival mode. I was in survival mode. I didn't have any family or relatives there. You know, if I didn't sell drugs, I didn't eat, you know, I didn't, I wouldn't have no place to stay.

In order to cope with that and stay in that survivor mode, I started to toot a lot of cocaine. So just being numb. But it was like generations of individuals trapped inside these projects. Like they never, like I don't think nobody there ever saw a future for themselves to like get out.

I remember being over one of the family's houses and the mom was like, well, you 18 now, you know, we looking to see if you can move across to the other building on your own now. I'm like, wow, this is just like really set up like this is a trap, like nobody leaves here. But I was totally numb. Days ran into days, starting not to know the days apart if it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, weekend.

I was cut off from everybody. I didn't know my mom's phone number. I didn't know my dad's phone number. I had a baby back in Milwaukee that I left my girlfriend. I didn't know anything. But when I say survival mode, it was survival mode.

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When we were selling drugs, like the police would be on the roof. They would send undercovers.

to buy drugs. One of the people that was using drugs, we called them hypes or whatever, they had sold to the undercover because they used to come to the back room. But when they raided the house, I remember we was walking back from the store and we had grabbed some movies and it was like, let's go watch movies or whatever. And I was like, no, I'm going to stay out here and hustle, man. I need to get this money.

They went into the house. Maybe five minutes later, we see the police surrounding the building, shooting at the police. I had a friend that was on the roof and the police car coming through the projects. He just started shooting. It was survival mode. I see my friend's hand come out the window. He's throwing big bags of dope out the window. The police is up under there catching it. I see everybody come out the house in handcuffs, except me.

And when I went back up there, I'm like, I need to get some clothes. It was a big padlock on the door. Housing authority had shut it down. So I stayed up all night selling drugs. I went to other people's house and just hung out and walked around. I probably was up for like two days, like getting high so I can figure it out.

I had just sold to a lady I didn't know. And my friend goes, where that $10 you owe me? I hand him the $10. He walks off. The police pulls up, throw me up against the car.

And they started calling me Milwaukee. They like, "Hey, Milwaukee business has been good today." They pull out, I don't know, I probably had $1,200, $1,300 in my pocket. They pull out all the money, put me in the car, took me down to Kew Gardens. And then they chained me to, it was a link of us and we all got on a bus, chained together.

And so I'm like, oh, I'm going to go to Rockers Island. I got to fight. I got to do this. I'm trying to prepare myself mentally, like what this is going to be like. We get in the cell. They start checking all the money that I have. They putting it under the light. They putting it under the light. The marked money is not there. So they got to let me go. They let me go, but they didn't give me any money back.

I had one quarter in my pocket and that's where we had telephone booths. I had one quarter in my pocket. They let me out at a precinct that I didn't know. I didn't know what part of New York I was in. I put the quarter in them and I tried to call somebody at the projects. But as soon as they answered, they said wrong number and hung up. So now I don't have no phone numbers, no money. It was a lady standing by the bus stop and she looked like a bag lady, black lady, black

Looked like she didn't have nothing. And somehow I started talking to her and I'm telling her my story. Like, I don't know how I'm going to get back to the projects. She looked at me and she said, hold on. She said, come with me. We walked right there to the bus stop. She got on the bus. She talked to the bus driver. I don't know what she said. The bus driver said, get on. And then she handed me a Susan B. Anthony dollar. She said, put this on the train when you get to the train.

When the bus got to the train station, I put the Susan B. Anthony dollar in the A train and got off the last stop and made it back to the projects. After that, I kept a Susan B. Anthony dollar in my wallet for years and years just to kind of remind me. And I also thought one day somebody going to need this and I'm going to help them.

I thought the only way that I would get out of poverty or living, you know, house to house, I'm going to either hit a lick, you know, rob somebody where I get enough money to escape or I'm going to sell enough drugs to escape. You know, every time I told myself I can get a bigger bag, then I can make it out.

And so how I ended up leaving, I got a lot of different packages from different drug dealers. I took their money. I ended up getting on the bus and I went to Buffalo, New York because I was scared they was going to come to Milwaukee and find me. Even when I got to Buffalo, my auntie, my family, she had a key of dope, cocaine, when I got there. So, you know...

I just say that to say like everywhere I went, it was like there. It was like the life wasn't escaping me. Anywhere I moved, it was always there. When I came back from New York, I had a child. We had an apartment, me and my girlfriend with our baby. I sell a little drugs here and there, work a little few temp jobs.

I had seen enough in New York and I had robbed enough people and, you know, I wanted to kind of go right. And so I got a job, got into a program with the Conservation Corps and they taught me like how to change ballots and lights. And so I did that, partied on the weekend, sold my drugs on the weekend. But I was still around a lot of death.

A lot of people started getting killed that year. There was a lot of shootouts. But I lost friends, like family members, friends. And I remember, like, don't want to live like this anymore. And so I actually went into, like, a drug rehab. Maybe two days before that, I had put a gun to this guy's head. You know, I was just real wild. Having blackouts. And I just wanted it to be over. So I went into the rehab to get clean.

But even while I was in the rehab, I had two friends got killed. The guy that I put the gun to his head, he actually had got killed. I stayed clean six months. I started going to school. I wanted to be a juvenile probation officer. And I got the student loan money, bought some dope, relapsed, and I was back off to the races. I was around 22, 23 years old.

At this time now, I have three kids and a girlfriend. You know, we live together. And so I end up getting married at 24, but I was still in the streets. So I was doing temporary jobs, but I ended up getting a permanent job at the bank. And so I'm working in the mail room. One day I'm running mail and I feel a credit card.

And so I take the credit card and I go use it, right? And it worked because this was a credit card that was being mailed out to customers. I started taking one when I was in hard times, like the kid's birthday and different things where I just needed money. I'll take a credit card. Told my friend about it one day and he was more like a supervisor. So he started taking a lot of credit cards.

We ran up thousands and thousands of dollars. But at the same time, while I was working at the bank, stealing credit cards, I was also selling drugs to the people that worked in the bank. So I was doing really well, actually. I was tooting cocaine. So I'm saying, stay up all night, go to work. Kids getting everything they want. I did that for a while. And one day I didn't have any cocaine. I didn't have any powder cocaine. And I had rock cocaine.

And I wanted to get high. I crushed the rock up and they call it primo. And I put it on my weed and that changed my life forever. The route of administration is so important. That's just the way that you use the drug.

Even though I was snorting and probably snorting more cocaine than I can even smoke. When you smoke cocaine, such as crack, the high is much faster. That's the fastest route of administration to your brain. You know, you get that rush and you want it again and again. And then you just end up chasing. Like I always say, you know, that first hit of the day was the best one because after that, everything is just a chase.

Now I'm hooked on crack, something that my dad had been hooked on that I saw millions of people hooked on. I know how to control your life. Never thought I would even try it. Next thing you know, my life is all the way different. Now I can't maintain. I couldn't hold a job. I started smoking up my own supply. I'm smoking up my packages, people noticing. And so I just noticed myself losing everything.

Eventually, I lost my job at the bank. I lost my house. I lost my car. Ended up moving in with my mom and my three kids. We moved in with my mom in the basement with my wife. All you think about is cracking, like getting high. Like, when am I going to get my next hit? And so it consumes all your time. And then what are you willing to do to get the next bag? And that part is the hurtful part.

One time I stole my daughter's field trip money. And my daughter is like my baby, like she's the baby. And my mom had put the money on the table for her to go on a field trip. I think it was like $10 or whatever. I saw the $10 there and I took it. And I went back around the corner and smoked it in like two minutes. And I remember coming back home and asking myself, how the heck can you do that? How can you do that?

I remember hiding the field trip slip and I remember the next day or that morning when my daughter woke up and everybody's looking for the field trip money and I'm swearing like I didn't do it. I didn't take it. I'm helping them look for it. I don't know what happened. That had to be one of my lowest moments ever because now I'm in soul for my baby. She just want to go on a field trip like what, you know, and that was real, real, real hurtful

So it was many times that I wanted to stop smoking crack. I used to pray. I hear people say, just pray. Pray to taste out your mouth. I tried that so many times. And then my mom or other people would say, well, you're not being sincere. I'm crying at this point, praying like, God, I don't want to do this no more, please. But

Sometimes even when I'm in the midst of praying, somebody will knock on the door and they'll have some dope and I'll get up and I'll start getting high again. And then I found myself angry at God, angry with myself, being angry with everybody or everything around me. Like really crack took my soul. It's like a walking dead. And that's what I always call it, the walking dead. I was just a shell, but I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop. My soul was gone.

My wife stuck by me. We didn't really have a relationship. You know, I'll stay gone all night. She had got a little side job. And so I used to go run credit at the liquor store where she cashed her check at. And so by the time she cashed her check, I'm already owing money. And then I may owe some drug dealers money. And so, but she never left. She stuck by me.

I used to have a little spot where you can go smoke, you know, and we called it the spot. And you sit there and, you know, you kind of share dope with each other or just sitting in this spot. I was like, I'm finna go get some money. I gotta get some money. I need one more, you know. I was like, I'm finna go hit a lick. I'll be back. It was November 2007. Little snow flurries, cold. I got a hoodie on and a jacket. Just looking for a victim.

I get to the gas station, Sherman and Burleigh. I'm standing there still looking for a victim. I see these two white guys get out the car with one white guy. He had on like a goose down coat with like fur on the hood. And I'm like, oh, so already I'm thinking like that coat right there. I could get a nice amount. You know, that's all I need.

I kind of follow him in the gas station. I see him make a purchase. So I catch him on the way out. I'm like, hey, you good, man? You good?

He told me he was looking for some drugs. I'm like, oh, I got you. I got you. He's like, OK, well, come on. And so I walk with him. I get in the car. It's another guy in the car in the driver's seat. He gets in the passenger seat. Now I'm thinking, OK, maybe they're too clean cut. I'm like, you guys are the police? Are you the police? And they're like, no, man. So they pull out some dope in a pipe and they start smoking it. They pass it to me. I hit it. And I'm like, OK, they're good.

I'm going to take him around the corner behind the spot. I had a pipe in my sleeve. I thought I would kill him. I knew I would have to kill him or they're going to kill me because it's two of them, right? And I got this pipe. And so when I'm in the backseat, I'm visualizing in my head like, okay, I can slide this pipe out of my sleeve. And if I start choking him, maybe I can take both of them.

I started inching the pipe down my sleeve. I could feel the cold pipe. I'm pulling it out slowly and something just said, don't do that. I can hear it. I'm like, something inside of me said, your life's going to change forever if you do this. What's happening in seconds seemed like time is standing still and it's telling me like, don't do it.

So I got two voices going on, like, you can do this. Just wrap the pipe around his neck. You take the driver out. Just take the driver out. Then I got the other voice like, don't do this. Like your life's going to change forever. You don't want to do this. Don't do it. Get out the car. Get out the car. And I said, stop. They said, what's wrong? I said, just stop the car. Just stop. Yeah, I was like, just let me out. Let me out. I can't do this.

I don't know why I'm saying stop. I heard both voices in my head, but I don't recognize the voice coming out my mouth to say stop. But I'm saying stop. And they're like, what's wrong? We good. We're not the police. I'm like, stop. And I opened the door and got out. And immediately when my foot touched the alley coming out the back door, tears just started streaming down my face. And I started crying, tears flowing. And I'm like, I can't do this.

And I just continued to walk down the alley crying. It didn't feel like freedom. It felt like defeat. It felt like I couldn't go no more. The streets won. The streets won. I was defeated. I couldn't go no more. I couldn't put up the front no more. I couldn't hurt nobody no more. I couldn't live up to this image no more. Like it was over. Like everything was over.

So in one sense, it could be freedom. But in another sense, it was defeat. The only way I could get clean, the only way that I could change my life is that I got to realize that there's no way possible that I can do this successfully. So long as I had that thought in my mind that I can get high successfully, I can sell drugs successfully, I can pull it off. But at this moment, I'm defeated and I can't. I lost. I lost to the street.

But at the same time, I didn't know I was actually winning.

Even when I started smoking crack, I thought I still had a different image than the crackhead image. One day I was sitting in the spot and I'm looking around. In my mind, I'm saying, look at these crackheads. And I'm going from person to person to person. And I got to myself and my head just dropped because at that moment I realized I'm one too.

But it didn't stop me from getting high. You know, I just looked sad for a second and I took a hit. And this was maybe a month before I got out the car. As I'm walking down the street, I'm walking down the alley. I'm crying. I throw the pipe in the grass and I go straight to my mama. Walking home to my mom's house. When I got there, I said, Mom, I can't do this no more. Like, I need help. I need to go get help.

And she held me and she was like, baby, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. What's ironic is that I said, mom, I'm going to need some hygiene products. Can you give me $10? And she gave me $10 and I went and got high. And I came back and I started crying again. Like I can't do this. And she actually got me a ride this time and took me to detox. And I've been clean ever since. November 9th, 2007.

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So I go into detox. I'm there two days. The counselor come out and say, who want to go to the treatment? I raise my hand because I had been to detox plenty of times. But this time I raised my hand to go to treatment. And so that means 90 days treatment. While I'm in treatment, a lot of the baggage is coming out.

A lot of resentments that I had that I didn't know I had. But as I talked about my childhood, I found myself crying in treatment, letting the resentments go against my dad. All the trauma that I had experienced started to come up. And at the same time, it's spiritual for me because I'm praying for my purpose.

Why I'm in this life? Like, why am I here? Why did you save me? Because if you really listen to my story, like, why are you saving me? Like, I'm supposed to be dead like the rest of my friends. I'm supposed to be doing 20 years. What am I here for? One of the counselors asked me to do a group, a relapse prevention group. I said, you serious? He's like, yeah, lead the group. You've been doing well. And I led the group.

About five o'clock the next day in the morning, I went outside to smoke a cigarette. It was an older gentleman out there named Ron. And he said, Ken, you really did a good group like you did just as well as one of the counselors. Maybe you should look into that. I'm like, yeah, OK. So I finished smoking my cigarette. I go back in and as I'm going upstairs to my room, it hits me like, boom, that's it.

It's been revealed. And like at that moment, it was like a aha moment. I'm like, I'm going to be a counselor. But I'm saying all this internally, like this is my purpose. This is what I'm going to do. I went to transitional living for another three months, went back to the same neighborhood. I started to go into church, got me a job at a factory. And so a position came over open at the detox that I was at as like a resident aide.

It was less money than the factory. I quit the factory job, went there. I started working there, but I wanted to be a counselor. I started going to the technical college for counseling courses at night. Ended up getting my degree in 2012 in human services, my associate's degree. And not only did I graduate, but I was on my honors list and I had won the President's Award.

My mom seen me graduate. She saw me get a standing ovation. She passed four months later. And at the same time I was going to school, I started doing an internship at a group home with at-risk youth. I was out of school maybe three months. I went back and got my bachelor's. I finished that, ended up on the honor roll, Dean's List. I ended up being on the board of directors for Battered Women's Shelter.

Something amazing happened. Like all of a sudden I was a board member and it was the first time I ever been into a country club. So we had the country club. We're having their yearly fundraising dinner. We in a grand ballroom. It's so real for me. Right. I'm like, it's three black men in the whole room. Right. And I'm one of them. The other one was a band player and the other one was working.

And I'm scared. I'm scared. Like I'm going to say something stupid or I'm going to mess this up or I don't know what fork to eat with. You know, I'm like, why am I here? It was just so real. How do I end up in this place? They got cologne in the bathroom. You know, they got it's a guy handed me like a cloth towel and something amazing happened to him.

One of the nuns came up to me and she touched me on the shoulder and she said, don't be nervous. The Holy Spirit will always give you the right words to say. And she walked off. So it was times like that that kept me motivated. After I completed my bachelor's, was out of school for maybe five months. And then I enrolled into my master's program and completed my master's in social work.

And at the same time I was going to school, like my career continued to evolve. The same company that I started at a detox where I was nine months clean, I end up running the entire program and I was promoted to like regional clinical supervisor. Now I'm supervising like four or five facilities.

The group home that I started doing my internship and my associate's degree, I ended up being the president of the board. I'm the president of the board right now for that group home.

So everything just came so real. And so now I'm thinking I could just open a business up and start providing counseling. But you got to have a master's and be fully licensed therapist. And that just drove me to say, I'm going to go into private practice one day. I'm going to open my own office. And so when I went back for my master's in social work, I'm

Now I'm a licensed clinical social worker working with people that, you know, struggle with mental health issues and substance use disorder. I always give back to the community. I'm embedded in the community. I always look at it as I did a lot to tear down the community. And so being a beacon of light is my purpose.

And so I ended up being a director of outpatient programs for the entire Milwaukee County, overseeing three mental health clinics, multimillion dollar contracts. But something just happened amazing. I am now the CEO of a substance use disorder program. I started on December 6th.

Director of Outpatient Programs for Milwaukee County, the first black man that held that position. It's been so real getting a seat at the table, but it's also a lot of pressure.

It's a lot of pressure because you always feel like you got to speak right. You always feel like you're carrying the weight of the community on your shoulders. Like you represent every black face, every black community in the world when you're in those rooms. And that's a lot of pressure. You know, systemically, and you know, as I look back at my upbringing, my childhood, it'll often lead me to ask why and why was the system designed this way?

Things that happened to me growing up, the things that I saw growing up, it wasn't by accident. It's a cluster of individuals that's packed in one place and

And we're striving to get out of this cluster and we're not provided the proper tools in order to move forward. So when we look at the school systems, we look at the welfare system, we look at the components that was designed to help us, but also hinder us at the same time. We look at the media. Historically, the whole system was designed to keep us where we're at.

And so you will hear people say, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And this is the American way. And if you just work hard and you'll be successful. And right. And some systems will use me as an example, which is ironic because I had to do more than just pull myself up by the bootstraps.

I had to change my mentality. I had to tell myself that I am worth it and I can do it. And having some hope and faith that I can get out the system, that I can do better, wasn't easy to do when you're surrounded by gloom and doom. We talk about the crabs in the barrel syndrome.

So if you have a lot of crabs in a barrel and you see one almost at the top about to get out, you see the crab at the bottom reach up and pull them back down and nobody gets out. When I used to relapse a lot or when I continued to use, it was oftentimes when people told me they was proud of me and I learned that was one of my triggers.

Because maybe psychologically, I didn't believe that it was possible for anyone to be parallel. Or before I can disappoint you, let me hurry up and mess it up. We got to stop killing each other's dream. When I meet a struggling man, I ask, who killed your dream? They say, what are you talking about? Who killed your dream? What did you run home and say you wanted to be? And somebody told you you couldn't be that.

I remember running home like, oh, I want to be a policeman. And it was like, go sit down. Go sit over there. What are you talking about? I ain't got time to talk to you. You look around the neighborhood and you don't see a policeman. And when you see a policeman, they're arresting your family members. They're arresting your friends.

All of a sudden, it's no way possible that you even believe that you could be that police officer, that doctor, that lawyer, that businessman. Your dream slowly starts to deter as people continue to tell you that you can't. And so if nothing else, I just want to tell people that you can and don't let no one kill your dream.

When I was in treatment, I found myself crying a lot. And I remember one of the guys that was in treatment, he said, man, you really taking care of yourself. And I never knew what that meant. He was like, man, I wish I can just be as honest as wrong as you like you. You really taking care of yourself. And he said it at a time when I was actually in tears.

At the time, I didn't know what it meant when he said I was taking care of myself. But now I was letting go a lot of resentments that I had held on to with my dad, with my mom, with myself, freeing myself, forgiving myself, trying to really find out who I am as a person.

I didn't know who I was. I was I had this nickname. I was KG. Right. So I thought I was KG and I had to live up to KG standards like I had to be this mean dude. Nobody ever told me it was OK if I wasn't tough. And so just realizing that, man, it's OK. I could I could be hurt. My son used to tell me like, Dad, did you kill somebody or something? Because when they wake me up the wrong way, I jump.

I'll react. And so, and then I used to wake up angry. Some of the things I didn't know was trauma until I revisit them. When I talked about the lady jumping off the roof, I revisit that pain and that trauma when I got to college and I was writing a paper and I started to write about this lady and what happened. And for the first time I had cried about it. And then for the first time I realized that she was a human being.

Different experiences like that, even now, sometimes, you know, I can get really angry, but I don't hold on to it. That's a gift that I have that's invaluable. This happened. I process it. Accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. So the serenity prayer helped me a lot. What I can't change, I can't change my childhood like it already happened.

But I got to learn how to accept it and move on. I didn't deserve it, but it happened. And that's the reality of it.

You know, I talk to myself, tell myself, man, you got this. You could do it. You built for this. You've been through tougher things than that. You survived. Could have been dead a long time ago. Psychologically, man, I have to talk to myself. And I also have other men in my life at this time, something that I didn't have when I was using. I had men in my life, but none that I could go to and talk about my true feelings or emotions.

Part of my process of change and staying clean is that I can identify my emotions. I can wear my emotions on my sleeve. Like I have no problem saying I'm hurt, I'm scared, I'm fearful, like none of that. You know, as I'm telling my story, you know, that was never part of my story to show any fear, right? You don't show emotions. And so now I know that I can really be me. I can really be me and be okay with it.

I often tell this story to guys. I was working with a guy in treatment and he said, Ken, I know why I get high. When I was growing up, we was going through poverty. My dad used to verbally abuse me. He used to beat me. And I said, wow, man. I said, have you ever talked to your dad about that? He said, no, he'd been dead for about five years.

And I said, wow, that's unfortunate. I said, he's been dead five years and he's still whooping your butt. You got to let it go to free yourself. This person is dead, gone, and he's still beating you every day. And so even for myself, like it's things that I have to let go in order to move forward. How long am I going to hold that hatred or continue to let that hinder me from growing?

And so those are some of the things that I learned in treatment. And it was painful letting it go, right? Because that's something that I held on to that helped me go into survival mode. This is the things that helped me live, like helped me get through the times in New York. Like this was the stuff that, you know, made me hard. And how do I let that go? And am I going to be okay if I let it go? The hardest thing for me to do was forgive my dad.

Because I always ask myself, why didn't he like me? So the hardest thing I let go was like my dad. And I was wondering why he passed in 2017. But we was OK. You know, once I got clean, he actually was clean and he changed his life. And, you know, and we was able to form a nice relationship before he passed. But that was one of the hardest things I had to let go.

And the other part that is like I had to forgive myself, that was hard because some of the things I had done to other people and to my kids and to my wife. And, you know, when I looked in the mirror prior to going to treatment or why in treatment, I saw a monster looking back at me. And so when I could really see myself for myself, for who I really am or the man that I am, you know, there was some freedom in that.

Me and my wife is still together. We just celebrated 27 years of marriage. She stuck by me through it all. She's an amazing woman. If a person done me like I done her, I don't know if I would have still been committed. And maybe she saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. I don't know.

It's almost to a fault that I try to make up to my kids the lost time. And so I give them more than a parent probably should at this point in their life. Always looking for forgiveness when I'm probably already forgave. I don't have no regrets as far as who I was back then. And the reason I say that is because I had to go through that. I had to make it through those times to get to where I'm at today.

And so do I have regrets? No, I don't have regrets. If I could do it over again, would I change some things? Absolutely. That was training grounds to become a great man. I get to determine for the first time in my life, I get to determine how my story ends. My story is still going. It's still being written. But I know that where I'm at today, that I'm going to leave a legacy behind.

And it's not because of my accomplishments. It's because I'm a better man.

Today's episode featured Kenneth Ginlack Sr. Kenneth has been the director of outpatient programs for Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division, an ad hoc instructor at the University of Wisconsin Continuing Education Extension Program, president of the Board of Directors for Revive Youth and Family Services, and a board member for Sal's Recovery Houses and Coaching. Kenneth is now the CEO of Serenity Inns. You can find out more about Kenneth by going to kgsctc.com.

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