 What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewire Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health, mental health awareness, addiction, addiction recovery, and all of that. So if you're like me, always trying to improve your mental and emotional well-being, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. All right. So I do want to get back to sharing some of my personal stories on here. I've been, for those of you who don't know, I've been clean and sober for a little over seven and a half years. I got sober on my 27th birthday, June 23rd, 2012. And yeah, hopefully bits and pieces of my story can inspire people struggling with addiction, people new in recovery, or if you have a loved one who is struggling with addiction. So yeah, I, whenever I make a video like this, I have to think long and hard before I make it about how I'm going to share this story, because I want to make it very clear, like the last thing I ever want to do is glorify or romanticize these drugs. Okay. Like that is just my worst nightmare. Any of you who have ever been to 12 step meetings, they, they call them war stories. Right. And like some people like put this emphasis on like the good feeling it gives you and all the fun and everything like that. Like there are these like glimpses of fun in there, but it can destroy your life. Right. It's kind of like, it's kind of like, you know, you know, that toxic relationship that you were in and you break up, right? You break up because it was so toxic. But then afterwards you look at it and you think about like the good times you had. Our brain has this weird way of just getting rid of all the negatives that happen in that relationship. And we're just like, well, it took me on a nice date that one time. Like now, now it was toxic, terrible relationship. All right. So anyways, this is not to romanticize. This is just to share my experience. And you'll see how my cocaine addiction was kind of this tipping point that almost killed me. So anyways, my addiction started out with alcohol. Okay. My mom's an alcoholic. I swore off alcohol. I was like, I'm never going to drink. But at the end of my senior year of high school, I went through a bad breakup in my high school sweetheart, who I thought I was going to marry and we're going all that stuff. And I just didn't want to feel anything. And I got drunk for the first time and I was hooked. All right. So for years after that, like my alcoholism just progressively got worse, lost jobs, lost a lot of money, just I was in a bad place. And then when my son, when he was born, his mom was prescribed a bunch of prescription opioids because she had a C section and I started taking those and I fell in love with prescription opioids. Fast forward, things get worse. Her and I split up because I can't get my act together. I become the single father and eventually got to a point where it was so bad that I was no longer allowed to see my son. And I hated her for that. I resented her for that, even though that was one of the best things to ever happen to me. And to give some people some hope out there who are struggling with addiction or you're in early recovery, she's one of my best friends today. We have an amazing relationship. In fact, like, look, it brings a smile to my face. In fact, this weekend, because we share custody of my son, this weekend, my son is actually staying there because it's his cousin's birthday party and everything like that. But we're going to go see that new Pixar movie onward and she has another son, my son's little brother. She has another son with her now husband who she's been with since about a year after her and I split up. But anyways, I'm taking my son to this movie and she said her other son, he's like five, wants to go and I absolutely love that kid. And yeah, I'm taking him with us. And like, I don't know, it is just such a beautiful thing that her and I went from hating each other, her hating me a little bit more so because of my addiction. And now, like, now she trusts me to take not only my son places, but like her son, you know what I mean? But anyways, anyway, it's the cocaine. So yeah, I was in a really dark place after I wasn't allowed to see my son anymore. And I live in Las Vegas. And every weekend, I was working at this shady call center with a bunch of other drug addicts. And every weekend, we would go to the casino, cash our checks, get super wasted, then go to this bar and get even more wasted. And my thing was alcohol and pills, but all the people I was hanging out with, they loved cocaine. Like, the cocaine dealer was actually the doorman at the bar that we would go to. So we'd go there when it was his shift. So my friends can get cocaine. And they were always trying to get me to do it, always trying to get me to do it. And like, even in active addiction, I knew I was an addict. Like, I knew, you know what I mean? I knew that once I find a new substance, I get hooked. And I always turned them down when they offered me cocaine, because I'm like, listen, I know I'm going to get hooked. And I'm overweight. I have heart issues because of my drug and alcohol use. I'm like, if I start using cocaine, like, it will kill me. And I don't know what it was. I can't remember exactly why it was. Maybe I was just so wasted. I finally agreed. And I was like, they offered it to me, like you keep offering, like, eventually I'm going to try it. So I finally said, yeah, I was like, okay, cool, I'll try it. So we ended up going out to my buddies. He had a minivan for some reason. We ended up going out there. And I hated weed. I hated weed too. But he's like, listen, here, smoke a little weed, then we'll take the cocaine. It gives you this nice little balance, right? Because cocaine brings you up, weed brings you down or whatever. So I smoked a little and then I snorted coke. And it gave me what I thought was the best feeling of my entire life. I remember going back into the bar and running around to all my friends who were all over the bar and just like, I was like, I feel amazing. I was like, this is the best I've ever felt. And even though I was drunk and high, there was this part of my brain where I was like, this is awful. I'm like, you love this way too much. Like, this is going to be a problem, right? Like, a part of me knew that this was going to be a problem. And spoiler alert, it never felt that good again. All right. But that's what we do is drug addicts, right? We get that first high, and we chase it. We chase it. I did everything, everything I could in the coming months to, you know, like I would go back to smoking weed and then snorting coke, never got that feeling again. But anyways, once I once I started, it became just a normal thing. Every weekend when we went out to that bar, we do that, we'd go into the bathroom, we'd, you know, do some coke together. Then I would just, I would start doing it at work with my friends. Like we'd go out drinking the night before and then it was like, oh, here, just have a little pick me up, right? And they'd give me a little bump and I'd go in the bathroom or whatever it was. I remember it was around the time that the new, the newest Diablo, what was that, 10 years ago, came out. And my buddy who got me in the Coke, he came over and all we did was snort coke and play Diablo all night, right? Like, it was weird. But anyways, that was one of the things that finally led, led me to having major health problems. I already had health problems. My heart wasn't pumping fluids the way it should be. So I kept swelling up for my, for my feet, like all the way up to my abdomen and I kept going to the emergency room lying to them about the drugs I use. They would give me diuretics to get all the fluid out. They would give me some painkillers and I would go back there every other week, right? But anyways, they finally held me at the hospital like, yo, you become a regular here. We need to check you out and see what's going on. And I had congestive heart failure. I was 26 years old. My heart was the size of my lungs. It was working at like less than 20%. They gave me a 10% chance of living. In fact, they even called my mom in California and said, yo, you should come down to Las Vegas because we don't think your son is going to live through the night, right? So like, because of my weight, because of the cocaine, I pushed my heart to the limit and I was about to die. And yeah, it's crazy how addicted I became to it. One of the reasons, and I know other people do this, I laugh because it's so stupid. One of the reasons I justified, one of the ways, because like us drug addicts, we can justify just about anything. I justified it. I'm like, oh, well, cocaine will help me lose weight. It'll help me lose weight. No, no, because I also had a major food problem. I would get high and I wouldn't even be hungry. And I would go to like the Del Taco drive-thru or Jack in the Box drive-thru and I binge eat and then I would puke my brains out. Like, I don't know. I like times like this, when I get to share my story, I'm just so grateful I don't live like that anymore, you know, like just taking whatever we can to escape the feelings that we don't want and it's only making us feel worse, but we keep doing it anyways. It is complete insanity, right? And I lived that way for almost a decade, but me and millions of other people are living proof that recovery is possible, right? Like, all it takes is this willingness to get better and this open-mindedness to do some stuff that we don't want to do. And for me, that was 12-step programs when I first got sober, because I didn't have insurance to go to rehab, all right? But anyways, I just wanted to come on here and share my story with all of you. If any of you have stories of recovery that you would like to talk about down in the comments below, let me know. All right, so in the last video where I did eight mind-blowing stats about mental health, I asked you guys a question. I was like, what's your favorite like mental health helper and things like that. So this one comes from, I think it's pronounced Kila or is it Kyla? I apologize if I don't know how to pronounce your name. Anyways, she says my favorite is my medication because it's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If I'm off my meds, I'm taking everyone down with me versus when I am a saint, when I am on them. And yeah, I try so much to not take medications just because of side effects and everything like that. But I go through different stages of when I need them, when I don't need them. For example, I might make a video on this. I've been off my Prozac for about a month and a half, but I'm on a mood stabilizer. Mikthal, I'm just trying it out. Far less side effects, it's stabilizing my mood a little bit more. But yeah, like, listen, first off, always work with a doctor if you're going to come off your meds. But second off, like be self aware of something I do. This is the best advice I can give anybody out there about medications. If you are tapering off your medications with a doctor, tell the people in your life. All right, for me, that's my beautiful girlfriend Tristan. If I'm ever getting off my meds, I tell her straight up. I say, Hey, I'm coming off my meds. I just got back from the doctors. I'm going to taper off. I said, but if I start acting crazy, you need to tell me because part of mental illness is that we don't even recognize when we're acting nuts. You know, like sometimes we'll snap out of it, but it's good to have somebody in your life who can point that out to you. You know what I mean? Because sometimes back, you know, when I wasn't telling people, I'd have to sit there freaking out on the cusp of relapse and then be like, Oh, Oh, I haven't been taking my meds because I try to analyze. I'm like, what's changed in my life? I'm like, that's it. All right. So thank you, Kila or Kyla for your response. And for the next video, I'll pick another one of your responses. But, but let me know your stories of recovery or if you know somebody who has gotten sober. It's a little bit inspirational. Let's do that. All right. Anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new makes you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge, huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on Patreon, as well as everybody who supports the channel by buying the mental health books at the rewiredsoul.com or the rewiredsoul merch like this shirt with my adorable kitty Maya. All right. Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.