 Hi everybody, my name is Steve Gagné. I'm a father, I am an artist, I'm a community member, and I am a recovering addict, and I recover loud. Let's go. I'm on a journey to discover the truth. Living life and recovery is lovely. You got the power in you. Surround yourself with positive energy. Judges hitting people with provocative penalties. Need to make a change, advocate to change the laws. To people that it's not insane. When you stand behind a cause, I'm here to speak about the pain. Recover loud to normalize the disease that's been killing all my friends. And my family, the time is now to let it all go and recover loud. The benefit is healthy people, family and friends that never have to overdose. Ever again, never have to plead out to a lesser defense. I'm proud to say that I recover loud. I never thought I could. But I'm so proud that I discovered how to live my life again. Controlling my own destiny. I needed recovery. I still needed desperately. Addiction never defined my identity. I recover loud here to tell my own story. I recover proud, save a life of like 40. I recover loud, yeah. I recover loud. I recover loud, yeah. I recover loud. I recover loud here to tell my own story. I recover proud, save a life of like 40. I recover loud, yeah. I recover loud. I recover loud, yeah. I recover loud. Hi, and welcome to another episode of Recover Loud. I'm your host, Mike Paddleford, and I recover loud. Tonight's guest is Steve Donye from Lewiston. Steve, welcome to the show. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for deciding to share your story with us. Let's be real here. I've personally had people that I've tried to work with, and I was a little too aggressive in how I pushed the program on them, the program, meaning the 12-step programs of AA and NA. And I was, you know, aggressively kind of zealotous about it, and really turned them off, pushed them away from it, and I believe it was part of the reason that led to coherence of use, you know, for them. And it was a serious one that led them to a lot of complications and trouble, and I feel a little bit of personal burden in that, and maybe that's being just me or whatever, but, you know, again, it's that responsibility that those of us who've been working in this program and been trying to apply a program of recovery into our lives on a day-to-day basis, we all have that responsibility to present that program in the best light to people, in a way that is not pushy or, you know, aggressive, but that is attractive, attraction, not promotion. It says it right in our again, you know. Well, and a lot of it comes down to personalities. Yeah, and it's not for everybody. It's not. Right. Some people are not built for that kind of group concept of thinking. They're not willing to delve down some of those pathways of self-accountability that you have to. Facing trauma is hard, man, and getting honest is real hard, and some people aren't at a point that they can do that safely, you know, without unlocking further trauma and doing more damage to their psyche and making things worse. Yeah. So for those people, there are other pathways that you can go. Like I said myself, I utilized individualized counseling because at the time that was the only acceptable method of therapy I could go to. The way I was raised, like, my folks didn't genuinely believe in that kind of work, psychiatry, therapy, counseling. Not that they didn't believe in it. I mean, they knew it was a thing. People were making money doing it, but they didn't believe in the efficacy of it. They didn't believe that it worked or that it did anything. And I was super skeptical because of that. So coming into it and trying to reconcile that this is something that everyone around me is telling me I need, but I have been told my whole life that it's a bunch of bullshit. It's like a bunch of people coming to me and saying, you need to cut the head off this chicken and do this voodoo ritual, and that's how you're going to get sober. Yeah. What are you fucking talking about? Right. You know, I'm sorry, but no. Yeah. You know, but that's, at some point, it does come down to willingness, right, and open-mindedness, and those concepts that we talk about in the halls. Yeah. You know, and I would, I'm God-desperate enough that this gift of desperation drives a lot of people the way it did be. What forced you to decide to try getting sober? This last time, for me, was not my first time attempting recovery or attempting, you know, some form of physical recovery from the physical addiction of substances. I'd been to detox a few times in my life. A couple of times voluntarily one time, because, well, it was always voluntary, but the last time was more of a damage control type of thing. I was trying to, again, as we do in our active use, I was trying to manipulate the situation to prevent further damage to me. Right. So, you know, I did what I thought it would be, it would look good if I did this. So I did, you know. Withdrawal is not something that people are built to handle. We shouldn't do it. You know, it's a terrible, terrible thing, and I would go to great lengths to avoid withdrawing again at the time. But this last time, you asked what gave me that drive this time around, and truly, truly, it was the gift of desperation. For some of us in this program, we are stubborn by nature. That's one of the traits of the addict, or the alcoholic. We're stubborn. We don't care to be told what to do, and we're going to do it our way, and you see a lot of my way, or the highway bumper stickers, and that kind of stuff with us. And, you know, I was certainly that. And I had to get to a place where I recognized that I didn't have any more control in this. I was not steering the ship, and we were heading for the rocks. You know, and it was just an inevitable crash that I could see coming. And, you know, I'm a realist at heart, man, and I know when to just accept the inevitable at some point. You know, you've got to just say it is what it is. And that's where I got to, and I saw myself very clearly for the first time. And what did you see as inevitable? I saw that where the direction I was heading was, was a brief, continued path of pain, destruction, and suffering both in my life and in the people around me who were collateral being damaged by my uncontrolled addiction. And I could see it very clearly because I could see it painted on their faces when I looked at them, but I could also see a little bit into the future at that point and kind of connect the dots. I don't know if that was Grace that did that for me or gave me the clarity to see it clearly in that moment. So were you any good at keeping it heading from people around you? Oh, damn, I was the definition of functional. You know, when it came to that, I held a very good executive level job, you know, client facing. I was out in public with people talking face to face all day every day. You know, at the time I had young children, I had a marriage, I had a house, two cars. You know, I was living that lifestyle and I had a lot of reputation to uphold. You know, some of my professional reputation relied on it, my personal relations that we had. You know, relied on it, friendships and family connections, all that stuff. And the whole time for many, many years, I convinced myself that I wasn't an addict, that it wasn't a problem. You know, if you had said it to me, I would have laughed at you because my vision of what that word looked like was not me. You know, my tie was damn expensive. You know, like I had a nice belt on. It was, you know, my mortgage payment said otherwise. Right. And I believed that with all my heart and it took a lot of convincing by the universe, you know, and taking away of things. You know, shaving down who I thought I was piece by piece. You know, when you stand in your own driveway and have to explain to your kids as they get on the school bus in front of all their friends why that tow truck's taking your van, you know, that's a humbling minute. You know, and I wasn't honest in it and I'll be honest about it now. You know, I did lie to them about what was going on. Right. Let's go to the shop, kids, you know. Yeah. And then just never came back. Just never came back, you know, and it's like that's the kind of stuff that we would do and that's just the surface level of the obfuscation that we'd have to do to keep that... Yeah, those are the obvious things that you have to answer for. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I mean, and we'd even try to avoid those if we could, you know. Yeah. There's a lot of different ways to look at the treatment of substance use disorder but there aren't a lot of ways that we can look at it as a society. There's only the truth of what it is and then all that other bullshit that we try to say it is, you know. But the truth of it is that there is always going to be a need for a substance if a trauma that's sitting isn't being addressed. Yeah. And, you know, I've heard it a few times but I've heard it clearly and succinctly said that we don't have a drug problem. We don't have a drug epidemic in this country. We have a childhood trauma epidemic in this country. Yeah. You know, because so many people are walking around with pain that they don't understand, you know, and it's just eating them alive and they don't know what to do with it and they don't understand that there are so many different pathways there and we try so hard to not be a burden on anybody. We want to be an individual, we want to be unique, and we want to do our thing. You know, so we try, we self-medicate and so many people self-medicate without realizing that's exactly what they're doing too. You know, we start out using because it makes us feel better, right? You need that chai latte at the end of the day. You know what I mean? It's the same mentality. Exactly. And, of course, addiction can be to anything. And, you know, that's something that, you know, society is starting to understand that it's not just these substances. It can be, you know, gambling. It can be home. It can be just as damaging. That zealotry in any form, that obsessive compulsive drive for anything is purely damaging. You know, there really isn't an upside to obsessing over something that deeply that you're willing to risk your life to do it. You know, I don't care if it's, you know, drawing or skydiving or anything like that. A lot of people get into their work. Yeah. I know in recovery that's kind of where I turned and it was safer for me. But I had to recognize that what I was doing was an unhealthy obsession to dive into my work. Right. It's so interesting how there's such a fine line between, like, I don't know how to say it, like self-care versus almost wallowing in your woes or whatever. You know, there's a period of like, yeah, you've got to kind of be a little insular sometimes to figure things out mentally and get where you need to be emotionally to kind of rally the troops around you, but a circle of wagons, yeah, dude. Right. There's a lot of metaphor there, but whatever gets you there, there's a period that you have to process. You know, we all do it. When you extend it beyond that, that's when it slips into those, like, depression periods or hyperactivity periods where you're like, oh, I'm throwing myself at my work or throwing myself at my recovery. I'm going to go to five meetings a day and I'm going to do it every day for a year. You know, you can go bananas with it. I can't do anything. We're that way by nature. Yeah. And then what happens just like with anything, you know, with substance, once you can't get that anymore. You suck it out. Yeah. And, you know, you find out that whatever else you're doing is not enough without that. So with our personal journeys in recovery, you know, you've said you went to a detox. And then what did that period, how long did you stay in detox? The first time I went, it was just a brief stay. It was a three-day kind of, you know, get you right, get you out kind of situation. Yeah. The next time I went was a little more extended stay. I stayed for about a month. Okay. You know, God really did embrace the idea of being abstinent from substances of any kind. Yeah. I even quit smoking while I was in there. And I maintained that for about two and a half years afterwards. And I think that, to be completely honest with myself, that was a big reason. It was a big, it was a big hurt when I did have, have a relapse or recurrence of use. Because I had been doing such a great job with my recovery at that point. I was, you know, I was going to meetings regularly. I wasn't necessarily taking the extra steps of like working with sponsors or being a sponsor. Were you doing this on your own will? I was. I was. Yeah. I was going to meetings weekly at home. I would go and I liked, I liked the camaraderie of it. I thought it was all right. But I didn't really take it all that serious, to be honest. I thought, well, you know, okay, it's cool to have people I could call here and go if I need to. I never did. I never picked up the phone. I was going to call you these crazy people, you know. Exactly. You know, it looked, again, it was all about appearances. It looked good. It was working. You know, it was working. But I wasn't addressing any of the root issues that were going on, the stuff that led me down those dark pathways that made me feel like, oh man, I need a drink. Oh man. You know, I'm feeling too down. I need something else. Let's party, whatever. Yeah. That trigger mechanism, I never looked at it. I never wanted to look at it. You know, that's some scary shit because it's behind that stuff. And I didn't want to delve down those pathways. So, you know, two and a half years into it, you know, people, places and things is what they tell us, right? You start running into people. You know, it's hard not to run into those people when you drive to their neighborhood and go slow down their street, you know. And you're looking for it. You know, you don't want it. Right, you know, and eventually, you know, I started having doors opened for me and opening some myself that I shouldn't, you know. Right. And it was a progressive thing. It was a slow kind of build up to it. I didn't jump from, you know, suddenly being, you know, the abstinent to doing heroin. Right. But what I did do is I started allowing myself indulgences. And that's how I kind of put it. It was like, you know, I worked really hard this week. I made a bonus check. It's okay if we throw a barbecue this weekend and I drink a 12-pack or perhaps a case of beer. Right. You know, with the family around and everybody's having a good time. We're on a fire. Yeah, you know, and I'll spend some money because we can do it and it's okay, you know. But meanwhile, while I'm also running out to get that second case of beer, I'm also stopping at my friend's house to, you know, get a gram of cocaine. You know, and I'm not telling anybody about that. I'm doing it in the truck on the way up. Right. And you're heading to get that second 12-pack after you've already finished the first one. Right. You know, and I'm driving. And you know, I'm doing all these and I'm allowing myself these things and I'm justifying them slowly and I'm letting them sink in. And then maybe I don't do that again for another three or four weeks or a couple weeks or whatever. But there's always another excuse to have, you know, have some people over and have a good time. And that excuse, essentially, was always, I hate being alone in my head and I can't be alone with me for any amount of time. I have to have something distracting me. Right. You know, and that's the root of it always. For me, I'm an all-in kind of addict. I jumped into my addiction with both feet. I was, you know, at times selling. I was at times buying. I was at times moving stuff. I was, you know, I was getting all involved. And I was told, when I first came into the halls, that if I'm going to succeed, I need to chase my recovery at least as hard as I chased the drug or the substance. It started, for me, sponsorship was how I got kind of involved. I started, I had worked through the 12 steps in both programs, AA and NA at times. And I started working with guys in the program. And through that work, helping other guys work through their steps, I got introduced to people who essentially did that professionally. I started working part-time as an RA and really enjoyed it. That quickly became full-time. I really enjoyed the work. It was really gratifying. And it was what I was doing already anyway. You know, that kind of outreach working one-on-one with guys in a mentorship capacity as a sponsor. You know, it wasn't so much that I was sponsoring guys at that residential home because I was not. But it was that I was able, on a day-to-day basis, to, again, make a connection with somebody who, prior to that, felt completely isolated. And I could find some kernel of their life that I could identify in mind. Because if there's one thing that as addicts we all share, or as, you know, people fighting substance use disorder all share, it's that, you know, we all have these kind of congruent, shared experiences of negativity that come ultimately from this continued lifestyle. There is literally no greater gift than watching the light come on in somebody else's eyes like that. And you recognize it because it came on in you and it just reinforces yours. It's like a hope symbiosis. You know, it just kind of feeds itself and it's beautiful. You and I just had a conversation like this the other day. Yes, we did. Because an experience happened to you and you felt like you reverted back to some of your old behavior. You know, and you so aptly reminded me that, you know, it is progress, not perfection. That's not what we're trying to attain here. We're always going to be human. You know, regardless of how recovered we may become, we still at our root are, you know, some hairless monkeys on a spin and rock, right? You know, we're going to react. We're going to have things happen and, you know, I never, I didn't in person get the things. Thank you all for being there for me, Brad. Because, you know, it's that fellowship and that community that we can reach out to in those moments. I mean, I can't speak for anybody other than myself in this situation, but it saved my life. It legitimately saved my life. Having someone at my fingertips that was willing just to listen. They didn't want anything from me. They weren't trying to sell me a bill of goods. They weren't doing anything other than just sitting quietly on the other end of the phone and listening to me. And if I asked, they would answer. If I asked a question, they would try their best to answer it. And if they didn't know the answer, they wouldn't blow some smoke up my ass. They would ask somebody else who might, and then they would share it with me from there. You know, and they would tell me that, you know what, I don't know. I'm going to find out. Let's find out together, you know. And they gave me that support that I needed as we say in the halls, they loved me and selected love myself. And at its root, that's what it is, is sharing love for one another and being open to being loved by other people. And for some of us, as cliche as that may sound, for some of us, that was a really, really difficult thing to learn how to do. And God bless every one of us that's in it, because I find myself at times looking at folks who I clearly see have so much potential or so smart, so witty, so charming. And they're just being the hell out of themselves, you know, like, and they can't see it. You know, they're trapped in that dark shadowy place that we go to sometimes. And it does take somebody physically holding their hands out saying, come on, come with, you know, let's get back in the light. In our recovery world than that, we have to recover loudly. We have to show people not just that we can recover, but that we can thrive in a life of recovery. We can become people that are living up to their full potential. And we have a drive and a desire to do so, and that, you know, we are all inherently good people with lots to offer, you know. And that, yeah, sometimes we find ourselves in new places. And we don't become new people when we get. No, we find who we are, the real people we were supposed to be. You know, we live up to who we are. And I certainly did. You know, my art has grown. My understanding of how to have a relationship with someone has grown. So it's not just that like the relationships I had got better. It's that the quality of the relationships I've discovered since are better. You know, I'm attracting a higher quality of person if you will, like not to be a judgmental guy, but you know, like the people that I'm surrounding myself today with are people who are driven and have vision and they want to make the world a better place. And they're trying to leave, you know, leave their mark behind them, not in a self-seeking way, but in a way that is lasting and can make real change, you know. I'm trying to work where lives are being changed, you know. And that's for me, there's no greater gift than seeing that for somebody. But you know, opening up in just radical love, radical acceptance, wanting better for others, you know, is enough to help anybody. It is. You know, and you know, we don't have to set the bar so high before we start to love somebody. It speaks to how quickly you can affect change when that, you know, when that platform is available. You know, because I know for a fact that the episodes of this show, the outreach work that you do, the connections that you've made, you know, I mean, I know some of the same people you do and I know how their lives have been affected by it and the good work that you've been doing here. And, you know, it's a real testament to how tenacious we can be as, you know, recoveries, you know. Like that's where we were always driven, we were driving the wrong way. We needed direction. Right. But now, you know, we can take that same drive and apply it in a positive way in our lives and we can make real, real change. Exactly. I used to be somebody who thought there was absolutely no hope for me. I was never going to amount to more than where I was which was addicted, depressed, and suffering. You know, the only eventual end I had was the end. And that was it, you know, and I didn't see any other way out and it took a collective of people to come into my life all on their own. With, you know, I certainly didn't feel like I deserved it at the time and they had no motivation other than they'd been there, they understood it, and they didn't want to see somebody else go through it. And they were willing to spend...