322: What if you kept hitting rock bottom?
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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. I did feel like there was something wrong with me. Now, I didn't think that, you know, I was bad or evil, but I thought that I was undesirable. And so I routinely beat myself up. Harsh self-criticism and iconoclasy was my worst enemy.

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 322. What if you kept hitting rock bottom?

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He grew up in Illinois like I did and grew up very poor. He didn't know his father. My grandmother got pregnant from a guy that walked away immediately. So right off the bat, he was kind of put in a no-win situation.

My father was the victim of abuse from his stepfather from early on. And even his mother was very abusive. It was a very alcoholic type of family. So I think he had a really rough childhood.

But the thing about my dad is that he always said that I want to make sure that my children don't have to grow up like I did. He didn't become an alcoholic. He didn't become somebody who was abusive and mean. So he definitely changed his path. And when he met my mom, continued that because they were perfect for each other. And they're still married to this day.

My mom is a different kind of character than my father. My father's funny and jovial, but very strict at times. My mom is the nurturer of the family, and she was always the person I went to when I was struggling or needed a pick-me-up. I don't want to say she was a smotherer as far as when I was a kid, but she definitely made sure that I knew she loved me. My parents had my sister six years before me.

I was born and raised in a town called Galesburg, Illinois. My mom was a dental hygienist for a few years and then started working at a hotel. My dad was a mail carrier for well over 30 years.

I was able to participate in the sports I wanted to play. I was able to enjoy going out to my grandparents, you know, and they lived on a golf course. So I remember thinking that we had everything. When I was nine, I got real sick all of a sudden. And it wasn't like it led up to it. It wasn't a flu. I just all of a sudden started feeling really not good.

I had this horrible aching pain in my left leg. Couldn't figure out what it was. That night, I have vivid memories of waking up and just a pool of sweat in my bed and just thinking I need to get to the bathroom because I think I was going to throw up. And on the way to the bathroom, I fell into the doorframe of the bathroom and cracked my head open.

The next morning, my mom woke me up to find my pillow covered in blood. The pain in my left hip is getting worse and worse, and my fever isn't getting any lower, it's getting higher, and I'm just absolutely miserable. So she decides to rush me out to the hospital immediately.

They found out that what it was was a strep infection that was in my left hip that had caused a septic hip and had begun to attack. So they had to drain my hip and my pediatrician had said that if I had come in a day later, I might not have been able to pull through it. It was that severe. I was in the hospital for about a month and I just remember being miserable.

feeling like everything was normal for so long and now nothing's normal. And it was at the time traumatizing for me because I didn't know what was wrong. In the aftermath of the month of being in the hospital, I came out very confused and frustrated. And going back to school, I felt out of place. I was completely unable to focus on anything. And being fidgety and all of that,

After the hospital stay, it's almost like it came to the surface. At this time, they were prescribing Ritalin to kids, and I didn't like having to go to the nurse's office every day to go take my medicine. I was embarrassed. I'm emotional. I'm sensitive. I don't like to be different than other people and have to take medicine. All of these things are coming out now.

Then all of a sudden, I have these anxieties and these worries, and I'm getting in trouble in class and forgetting to turn homework in. And it's just, you know, it was a struggle. As I got older, sports in my life was the main thing for me.

Athletically, I wasn't anything special, but I absolutely love sports. My goal in life was to either be a professional athlete or talk about sports for a living. I couldn't think of anything better. And so my goal was to play as many sports as I could.

And I wasn't athletic at that age. I was very clumsy. I don't think I had learned how to run properly yet, you know, so I was kind of goofy. And the basketball league that I had signed up for included all of the kids that went to the rich school. And they had their own clique and they knew each other. But the main thing was is that I didn't fit in. And because of that, I'm going to get bullied.

So, yeah, I had a rough go with some of the kids, you know, that were in that group. And it was disappointing. I put so much effort and invested so much energy into being a part of a specific group of kids that when they rejected me like they did, it didn't just hurt my feelings, it crushed me. And so to me, that was the worst thing that could happen.

I floundered when it came to inadequacies and feeling such a lack of self-confidence. I did feel like there was something wrong with me. Now, I didn't think that, you know, I was bad or evil, but I thought that I was undesirable. And so I routinely beat myself up. Harsh self-criticism and I constantly was my worst enemy.

and I started to have depression, I think I was confused as to why I felt the way I did. You know, I would go to my mom on certain days when I felt just completely crushed or just so depressed that I just didn't want to go to school and tell her that I just don't feel like being a part of this world.

My mom tried her best. She definitely tried to say the things that she could think of to make me feel better, and I'm sure she did at times. But mental health wasn't in the forefront like it is today. So for me, my depression was treated by motherly love.

I didn't have any relationships with any girls until I was maybe 17. And then I started to kind of grow into my body. You know, I'm growing a few inches. My skin's clearing up. Little by little, I'm gaining some confidence. And for the first time in my life, girls are actually paying attention to me. And finally got to kiss a girl. I mean, it was like my life was coming to a sense of normalcy.

But I still struggled with that sense of nobody's going to truly want you anyway. Like this nagging feeling was always there. You know, out of high school, my grades were so bad that, you know, there was no college for me. And so I joined the Coast Guard instead. July of 2005, I entered basic training. I got out with the sense of accomplishment and being completely proud for the first time.

Leaving basic training, I had this feeling that you only get a few times in life, maybe. And it's like I have a blank slate. I'm starting my life. I have a career set out in front of me and I think I'm good at this. And it was this feeling of like everything's going to be fine. Like this is great. And I, for once in my life, I'm confident like things are going to be okay.

They announced my orders, Sewickley, Pennsylvania, which is just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And within the first year, I'd fallen in love with the town, with a group of guys, and slowly I began to fit in with these people. And these people I respected with everything. Being a single man, I was out with these group of guys that I was around drinking a lot.

So this new social life began to alleviate a lot of these symptoms that I have. I finally started to shed that self-doubt. I don't feel like I can't talk to the opposite sex. In fact, now it's easier and it's actually a lot of fun. And that part of me came about due to alcohol.

So I'd been in Pittsburgh for, you know, maybe eight or nine months. And a particular night I saw a cute brunette dancing from a few feet away. And I got the courage to go over and dance with her. And we were immediately infatuated with each other. I remember just being on this new level of happiness. I'd never felt this way.

Amy was a crucial turning point in my life. I had met somebody who got me and who wanted to be around me, and that was new to me. I was madly in love with her, and that was the first point in my life when I felt like I deserved to be loved, too. So we decided to get married. We're

Starting our lives together, Amy and I, and we get stationed at a four-year billet in New Haven, Connecticut. And I'm going to start a family now. I have this person to share my experience with and be on this journey with. And we had our first daughter in Connecticut. We also made a lot of friends in Connecticut. And I began to become comfortable in my job within the Coast Guard.

It's a whole new level of excitement. So it's late 2010. I'm 26 years old at this point. So just a normal day. We service the buoys in Long Island Sound. And what they are assembled by is iron chain, which is connected to a big concrete block. And that's what holds them down. And my job for the day was to move these sections of chain from one spot to the next.

hard work, but it's, you know, it's not rocket science. But one movement and I feel this, you know, sharp, intense pain go down my left leg. I go down to a knee and it's just something I've never felt before. And I try to get back up and it's just like, I don't know if I can stand up straight. You know, I'm having a lot of pain. So they send me to the Coast Guard doctor, which was about 40 minutes away.

I get to the clinic. They do their observation. They say I pulled a muscle from what they can see, but I need to get an MRI. So I do. They see that I have a herniated disc. I got a herniated disc. Okay. That's a normal injury. I'm sure it's no big deal. Treated it with some muscle relaxants, some physical therapy to begin and some opiates.

This is the first time other than maybe when I got my wisdom teeth pulled out that I had experienced this feeling of painkillers, you know, opiates. And I loved it. I didn't think, you know, anything about it. But months go by and I'm still having back pain. Still going to the doctor and they're telling me, well, you know, it's not getting any better. We might have to do some surgery and it's supposed to alleviate the pain.

Slowly, my brain is being rewired because I'm constantly taking pain medication and I'm being prescribed it legally to deal with moderate but not severe pain. And I'm becoming slowly but surely physiologically addicted to this thing. And it is definitely becoming something that I'm not willing to let go of.

Next thing you know, it's been a year and transfer is coming up for my next unit and I'm still on painkillers and it's become a major part of my life. One moment life was normal, the next every day is consumed by do I have enough painkillers? When am I going to be able to get more? You know, how am I going to be able to get more?

I wasn't willing to admit that I was an addict, but I had already passed that threshold of becoming somebody who is in active addiction and that it is causing my life to become unmanageable.

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The process of addiction and the compulsion and just the all-consuming process that it takes on your brain, on your body, on everything that you're doing, it's a slow burn. It doesn't happen overnight. Plenty of people have taken painkillers and stopped and not had any issues with it.

And the majority of people who have been prescribed opiates and then have had addiction issues were probably like me, where one moment they are doing what their doctor told them to do and was completely legitimate. And the next thing you know, they are going through a month's supply in a couple of days.

The best way I can describe it is that your brain has been rewired to have this drug in your system because of the way it makes you feel. And so your brain automatically says, well, we're going to signal your body to say that you have to have this or you feel like you're going to die.

And that I think a lot of people that are naive to addiction don't realize is that it's not that I'm being irrational and dramatic when I say I have to have my medicine or, you know, like I'm going to freak out. It's because my brain is now telling me that if I don't get this medicine, life is not going to be OK. It is just such a bizarre way of living. That's all that matters to me now. And so everything else that was important to you, it goes on the back burner.

your kids, your wife, your job, everything. Doesn't matter how much you love them, and you do love them, your addiction is number one. I was getting prescribed month supplies of opiates.

Started off as a smaller, you know, Percocets or whatever. And then I'd go in and I tell them, oh, you know, the pain's getting worse. Or, you know, I've got a new pain now. And in 2011, the doctors were trained to say, okay, well, I guess we better bump it up then.

At one point I was on a drug, it was called Opana and it was basically morphine. And I remember that I went through it so quickly, the panic that had set in on me and the sheer alteration of my personality. It truly is like Jekyll and Hyde. When I had my pills, I was a great worker. I was a good person to be around. I was friendly and happy.

But once those pills started to dwindle and I started to panic, I was a complete monster to be around. And I'm finding myself getting into trouble at work, fighting with my wife. And it's not about willpower or making the choice that can ruin your life. It's deeper than that.

So from Connecticut to Florida is where I got transferred from, is really when the beginning of my addiction behaviorally started to show.

I was going to be on a patrol boat. And at the beginning of my career, this was the best thing for me. I couldn't ask for anything more. I wanted this from the beginning. And now my thought process is, am I going to have enough of my painkillers with me while I go on patrol for two weeks at a time? And making sure I don't overtake my drugs so that I run out. So we get to Florida and

I was doing this balancing act with having a Coast Guard physician write me a script, but also having a civilian doctor on the side write me. So I would double dip and I have two doctors with different scripts.

It was catching up with me, it was affecting my performance at work. The chief on the boat and I were butting heads immediately because of how one moment I'm engaged and I'm on it and the next I'm confused and making mistakes. And for me this was a complete nightmare. Now it's ruining my relationship with my peers because I can't be trusted at my job.

My thought process was, well, the only thing I can do now is to say my injury has gotten worse. And that way I'll be on light duty and so I can stay on dry land. Because I just wasn't able to do this balance of painkillers and going out to sea for two weeks. So in 2013, I'm on light duty and I'm becoming more and more flaky. And so I think people are probably already starting to talk.

My wife, you know, she's starting to have questions. It breaks my heart because she didn't sign up for this. I'm becoming more desperate and I get transferred to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Another dream destination completely ruined by my addiction.

So while we were in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I ran out of medication once, and I'm going through withdrawal. I get this script from this doctor, and I alter the date on it, and in my mind, it's gonna work, so there's no danger in sending my wife, who I say I love and would never put in harm's way,

to go get it filled and she goes in there and they notice it and they call the police. Granted, they know that this prescription is for a James Powell, but they don't know who altered it and they need to know why.

They didn't charge her or me. They did say, however, that be no longer able to fill prescriptions here. And your doctor has been notified and they dropped my care. So now I no longer had a doctor to support my habit. This is my new rock bottom. And now my wife is fully aware of how desperate things have gotten.

I'm only in Hatteras for maybe a year and we were going to get transferred again to Pittsburgh. And again, for me, it was an escape because I had no way to get a hold of my drugs anymore. So this is the best case scenario. Right away, I went back to the way I was doing things before. I had the one doctor writing me one script on my wife's insurance. And then I would use my military insurance to go to another doctor.

So while I'm in Pittsburgh, they asked me if I wanted to go to a training school for heavy equipment operator stuff. It's in Petaluma, California. And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. I would love to. So it's a trip. We go out to California and...

2014, doctors are beginning to be told about the dangers of opiates and how people like me and other addicts are operating. And one way is by double dipping. So they created a system to signal you if a person is using another insurance for prescriptions.

That particular school had a system in which if there was any red flags within a patient's history, the physician had an obligation to alert that person's command. Because in our profession, we carry weapons, we operate heavy machinery, we're responsible for a lot of things that could put people in danger.

So that's exactly what they did. And next thing you know, I'm getting a call from one of the officers from the office back in Pittsburgh and said, OK, well, here's the thing. You're you're coming home. We got you a ticket home. When you get home, somebody is going to be there to pick you up right away. I'm confused. You know, like I don't understand why somebody would pick me up. Why am I leaving a day early?

And then he explained to me what happened and that they didn't want me driving myself anywhere and that they were starting an investigation into the matter. I'm very scared. I'm embarrassed. I'm also confused. But the problem came from the fact that I omitted that I was even taking pain medications and that at this particular unit, we had been to the gun range.

We had operated heavy machinery that I was in control of. And that by me being on these medications, I essentially had put others in danger. And they were going to do their best to punish me for it. In their eyes, it was a dishonorable discharge. The impact it had on my psyche was huge because...

At this point in my life, I wasn't willing to admit anything about addiction. I just thought I was a little out of control and that eventually I would figure this out. But I'm not an addict. Those people are out in the streets and I'm not like that. I got a career and I got a family. But Coast Guard is digging into my life and they are putting it out there for my peers to hear about.

about my struggles. At the time that was the worst possible thing I could think of. Little did I know it's going to get so much worse. So I sat down with my boss and his face pretty much said it all. He said the command is processing you for discharge. You will have the opportunity to appeal. You'll be appointed a JAG officer which is just a naval lawyer. I don't know how I looked but I know how I felt.

I felt all the blood from my face completely drain. I couldn't think of much worse other than maybe going to jail at this time than being kicked out. I don't know how I'm gonna move on. Like for the first time in my life since I was in junior high, I really feel like I would rather be dead. I'm in embarrassment now. My life is essentially over is how I felt. And for me, it was a devastating blow.

But my wife was 100% there for me, regardless of what she knew to be true. And she had so many questions and so many concerns. She didn't walk away. She supported me. And I'll never forget that. So they discharged me from the Coast Guard honorably, but with disciplinary actions.

And I felt deep shame because of what had happened and because of the consequences of what had happened. It really drug me to a new low. Everybody is going to hate you and you're not worth anybody's time. You're a disgrace. You have failed. You ruined the best opportunity that you've ever gotten in your life. And you might ruin the next with your wife.

Now I'm acting like a jerk around my wife, you know, because I'm so unhappy. I'm continuing my addiction and I'm continuing to be an asshole and I'm continuing to make more mistakes. I just cannot seem to figure this out.

So I'm discharged in October of 2015, and I actually quit. I got off the opiates. I cold turkeyed my way through the withdrawal, but I wanted to prove to them that I'm no longer taking opiates and that you don't need to kick me out. So there's a small flicker of hope and motivation in my life at this time. I enroll at Robert Morris University in Moontownship.

But I begin to drink a lot. I'm trying to go to classes. I get nervous every time I go to class, so I decide, I'll just have a drink before I go or a giant 40-ounce before I walk into class.

And then it turns into more and more. And then I become unreliable and start missing classes. And next thing you know, I'm failing college courses. I'm wasting this GI Bill. And if I don't figure something out, I'm going to have to pay the government back for these classes I failed. So I found out right away, I better drop these classes before it's too late. So that was a failure right out the gate.

life is moving forward. I'm getting part-time job here and there working at Home Depot. Next thing you know, one of the managers pulls me aside and he's like, hey, your supervisor said that she thought maybe you smelled like you'd been drinking. And so we just wanted to check. And my initial response, of course, is no, of course not. I wasn't drinking. And they said, okay, well, that's fine. But

Just to be sure, we called the police just to come down and they're going to just give you a breathalyzer just to verify that. And even before the police officer got there, I said, you don't need him to come in. Yes, I have been drinking. So they fired me. I thought that was the most embarrassing moment of my life, but it got so much worse. So I finally decided to actually go to rehab.

I go, but while I'm there, I don't remember who said it. I don't know how it was said, but somebody had mentioned Imodium acts like an opiate if you take enough of it. And I just, I couldn't unhear what I was hearing. And lo and behold, the first time I try it, it did. I had that same feeling again.

And I became obsessed with taking medication designed to help stop diarrhea, but also only be designed to only take two of them at a time. I was taking 100 to 150 pills in a single swallow. It's insane to say out loud, but this is what it took for me to achieve my high.

I didn't know how to buy illegal drugs. So this was my way of hitting that proverbial rock bottom. I may as well have been out on the streets because this was my desperation kicking in. I'm back to just being disgusted with myself. This feeds into that sense of the world would be way better off without me. And all it takes for a person who's struggling with suicidal ideations...

to follow through on that is for that other shoe to drop just at the right time. So my wife and I are having some issues and she says, I think maybe you should go stay with your parents for a little while. Maybe it'll be good for both of us. Maybe it'll be good for you. And so we agreed. My parents agreed. They'd love to have me out. I hadn't been out there in quite a while.

At this point in my life, I'm easily 275 pounds, like an easy 100 pounds heavier than I am now. At the time, the Walgreens, they were selling Imodium in a giant bottle, like if you were to get Tylenol, but in an extra-sized bottle of 300, 400 pills each.

I remember just dumping a bunch of them into my hands and I didn't count them. I just kind of eyeballed it. I'm like, yeah, that looks like how much I normally take. I swallowed it without even thinking. The next thing you know, I'm in a whole different headspace. A person is shaking me. I can feel them shaking me and they're talking to me, but I can't, for whatever reason, I can't open my eyes, but they're saying, hey buddy,

you know open your eyes you know stay with us and in my mind at that moment i thought that the life that i had lived before was the dream and that i was awakening from that dream into this new reality

They're continually trying to rouse me, to get me to talk, to try to ask me questions. Ask me, what did you take? Do you know what you were taking? Do you know what you swallowed? Whatever. But I couldn't remember that it was Imodium. Finally, I come to in the emergency room. They said that I was unconscious, covered in sweat, gasping for air, and that they had to give me Narcan.

And then I see the plaque on the wall that says St. Francis. And I realize that's the hospital I was at when I was a kid. I'm in Peoria, Illinois. Oh my God, I overdosed. I mean, it can't possibly be my reality. And it is.

At this point, my wife and I had taken a break. No intentions on separating permanently, but for right now, I need to be out of the house because it's just not a good thing for her or the kids. So I got a cheap apartment in another town and got a job with Amazon. And I was going to go to AA meetings or NA meetings or whatever, go to work, come home and just mind my business and show her that I was worthy of coming home again.

I get a job with Amazon. I start delivering packages, things are seemingly going well. But instead of getting better and doing the things I'm supposed to, I start continuing to take the emotive. And on top of it, to take the edge off, I might have a beer or two here and there. While I'm delivering packages for Amazon, I was delivering packages in a neighborhood that was kind of dark.

I went to turn into what I thought was a driveway. Instead it was somebody's front yard. And there was snow on the ground, it was really muddy, and I got stuck. So the homeowner comes out, I think he had some choice words for me, and called the police. Turns out the yard I drove into happened to be the sheriff of that community. Not only am I an idiot, not only am I extremely dangerous,

But now I'm extremely unlucky too because the person that came out happened to be the sheriff. So now I have almost died from an overdose. Been fired from Home Depot for drinking on the job. Now I'm about to get my first DUI. I have reached a level of complete spiraling and chaos and my life is being ripped apart at the seams.

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Definitely my rock bottom. And I was almost not even shocked. I knew that this was just part of this demise, the spiral towards the utter hopeless life that I was living. So it was almost like, well, this might as well happen.

It was definitely very difficult to call my wife to let her know where it was, what had happened. I didn't spend any time in jail. I was able to leave that evening. At this point, I don't understand what my wife could possibly believe is left to salvage from me as a husband. Not only did she love me unconditionally, she was worried that if she did end our relationship,

Not only would I spiral even faster into whatever earthly hell I was headed for, but that I might hurt myself. So I'm back home living with my wife and I begin working for myself.

this commissary in our town. It's for veterans and active duty members of the military to shop at. And I start to notice that not only is the Imodium I'm taking not seemingly helping me with my needed mood stabilizing, it's only there to keep me from getting deathly sick. I'm going through withdrawal within 12 hours of taking it.

So what's happening is that my heart is enlarging. There basically wasn't enough rest between beats and my resting heart rate was through the roof. And so since your heart's a muscle, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's not a good thing for your heart.

I'm getting dizzy a lot and I'm becoming more and more aware that every time I take this drug, I pass out for probably about five, ten minutes every time. My stomach is so screwed up from all these pills I'm taking and it's creating an ulcer type of feeling and this intense pain in my stomach and I'm passing out from the pain and I'm waking up and I'm basically a walking dead man at this point.

And my wife, at this time, from all the lies and all the deceit, is under the impression that I had not been on Imodium for a while and that I had been doing good. And she just happened to walk by me. I just happened to have something in my pocket. She asked me what it was. I tried to deny it. I tried to walk away quickly and tried to hide it.

But when she found out that I was back on this drug, her words were, I fucking hate you and I'm done.

It wasn't so much that I was shocked to hear her say that. It was just the realization that I pushed her over that edge. And without her, I felt like there was no point. I didn't belong here. This existence that I have is a complete waste of everybody's time. It didn't hurt. It just reaffirmed my own personal belief about myself, which is I hate myself too.

I think I know what I have to do to solve this problem. You know, I contemplated suicide many times throughout my life, but before I had always had hope. And I always thought that no matter how much I don't want to be around, there are people here who need me, or at least they love me enough to tell me that. But this time was just too devastating for me. All I could think of to do was to

go to Walmart, find the highest strength of sleeping pills that I could find and just take them all. So I did. And I found my way back into the house and I went upstairs and without thinking, I just swallowed the whole bottle. Like it's no different than any other large amount of pills I've taken. So this was normal, but this time the consequences were much different.

For as sure as I wanted to die before I took those pills, almost instantaneously, I was filled with utter regret and horror at what I had just done. So I tried to throw them up. I tried to gag myself and nothing was coming up and I began to panic. And all I could think of to do was to yell out for somebody to come up and help me.

Luckily, my son had no idea what was going on. He came up and I said, please go get your mom. She came. I told her what had happened and she rushed me to the emergency room. The whole way down there, I'm just despondent. I don't want to talk. I don't want to even think about what's going on. I just know that I can't even kill myself. Like this is great. Like I'm not even capable of that.

Once I got to the emergency room, they treated me and the nurses, you know, they're highly trained. So they, they deal with this type of stuff all the time. And it definitely took some time for me to realize that I, A, wasn't going to die and B, had a long road ahead of me, but I was in the best place possible, which oddly enough was the psychiatric ward at the VA. Okay.

They ran all the tests they could, and they realized that my heart was in really bad shape. And we rarely see a score like this. Fortunately for me, at the time being 37 years old and before all this in relatively good health, I was able to bounce back. I spent another two weeks in the psychiatric ward.

So while I'm up there, they introduce the treatment plan for me. And obviously one of those is what are we going to do so that you don't walk out this door and go right back out and do what you did before?

On top of getting my psychiatric meds back in place, one was the idea of getting a monthly shot. It's something new. It's a drug called Sublocade and it's for opiate abuse. And I was all for it. I thought, you know, why not? It's worth a try. And it has been a lifesaver for me.

I don't have cravings for opiates anymore. I've been getting the shot for well over a year and a half now. And it truly was the step I needed to get me over that hump. But clearly more is needed to help with addiction than just drug replacement. And, you know, that's been the major key for my sobriety.

I've been able to see how life can be so fulfilling when you're not planning how to steal six boxes of Imodium from different stores around the area to now where I'm just a regular guy who gets his kids ready for school in the morning, goes to his work, comes home, makes dinner,

and watches a show with his wife before he goes to bed. It sounds boring, but it is absolutely everything I needed and everything I wanted again. I just want a normal life. I just want to be a normal guy. I don't want to stand out of the crowd. I want to belong in a certain way to people, but I just want to be happy.

We're approaching two years now where I've been sober. I've been able to abstain from any opiate use. And for me, it's almost like it was a dream that that was the way I lived, that I was even capable of living that way. The hardest part for me is what my wife has been through.

And my kids too, but also for a majority of the time were pretty naive to what I was struggling with. And I'm thankful for that. But the torture that I put my wife through and it's changed her emotionally and it's brought on a lot of baggage between her and I. That I thought once I became sober, things would become just...

good again and we would be happy again. And it's actually only made things more complex between us because now I'm fully aware of everything that I've done. I'm fully aware of the damage and the hurt that I've caused. And so I'm not numbing myself to that anymore. And we're trying to work through it, but it's very hard to be married to an addict.

And I give my wife so much credit because I firmly believe she's the only person in this world that can deal with me. I don't hesitate for a second to say that she's my soulmate. She has got such a strength of character that it's been incredible to see what she's capable of, especially as we begin to grow and try to fix these wounds that have been created.

We're on the right path, but it's going to take some time. It's like I lived another life.

It's almost like I entered a whole different person, you know, like that was somebody I never envisioned being. And I understand that, especially with addiction and mental health, it's not necessarily our fault, but it is our responsibility to get the necessary help that we need to ensure that we don't allow those issues to interfere with our life.

I didn't deserve to become an addict. I don't deserve to have such a struggle with mental health.

But I do know now what it takes to be a sober person who can live a normal life in lieu of all of the struggles that I have. And, you know, life is beautiful. Like, I get to watch my kids grow up. I get to be a father who's involved in their lives on a daily basis. And so for me, being in their lives is beautiful.

is all I ever wanted. And it's not easy because there are days where I think about what life was like before I became an addict and why did this have to happen to me? And I start to get real down on myself. I think about what could have been if addiction had never become a part of my life. But I

I think all things happen for a reason. And I'm on a track now where I feel like I'm going to be able to use my story and my experiences to help others.

Given everything that I've been afforded in this life, you know, a beautiful wife, children, place to live and friends. I really am extremely grateful for everything that I've been given because life has been really difficult, but there's not a whole lot more in my life that I don't think I can handle because it's only blue skies moving forward as long as I stay sober.

Today's episode featured Jamie. If you'd like to reach out to him, you can email at japo081 at gmail.com. Thank you.

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.