 something I remember like it was yesterday was when my son was still a baby he was still in one of those little motorized swings you know and he was sleeping in the little motorized swing then I had a desk right here where my computer was and then the tv was over here to the left and during this time I was still in my active addiction so as my son is sitting there sleeping just so blissfully on my desk I am crushing up painkillers and I roll up a dollar bill and I snort him off my desk and I look at the news and they're telling some crazy story about people doing crazy stuff and I'm just like man this world is a messed up place what is up everybody this is Chris from The Rewired 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 so what I like to do is pull things that you're already consuming and try to see what mental health lessons we can learn from it so if you're into that kind of stuff make sure you subscribe and read that notification bell I said read that notification bell Zach edit that ring that notification bell so if you're into that kind of stuff make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell all right so anyways this I might get a little passionate worked up might be a little rantish but a lot of you know you know who have been around here for a while when I joke around about the people who call me a drama channel and all that you know but a lot of you who are subscribed and watch like you understand what I'm doing but I do want to do two things with this video I want to give you some backstory as to why my brain works the way it does and why I think this is so important that we're doing this but this is also so I can copy and paste this video to people who don't understand what I'm doing so yeah this is a story about me like not only am I the type of guy who would snort pills in front of my infant son watching the news thinking about how the world is messed up I am also the type of drug addict and alcoholic who would get extremely high and extremely drunk and I would watch the tv show intervention and I'm just sitting there like man these are messed up people man they need help even though I was unemployed because I lost my job because I couldn't stop drinking and snorting pills right but I have this brain that likes to think about how messed up everybody else is while my stuff is just so so so good this is something that kept me sick for a very very long time I'll never forget when I first got shoved into 12-step meetings I remember sitting there and I was just in those rooms and I'm like what a bunch of losers right this guy over here lost his wife this lady over here lost their kids this guy lost his job this person lost their house this person lost all their money spent it all on drugs I'm just sitting there I'm like what why am I even here y'all are messed up peace I'm out of here and guess what happened I relapsed over a year later over a year later I was finally beaten I was beaten into a point of desperation I called my mom up I called my mom up just sobbing I'm like mom please help please help at this time she had a few years sober and she helped me get into a detox center my amazing mom drove all the way down from Fresno California to Las Vegas Nevada it's about a seven or eight hour drive just to check me into a detox here in Las Vegas I was so desperate I called I told my mom I said mom I cannot live this way anymore you think somebody with that type of desperation would be ready to change the next morning in that detox I wake up and I go into the first group and there's a group of us right and I'm just sitting there being quiet because I'm all you know socially anxious and then all of a sudden I'm like oh wait wait wait you do heroin oh my god you're discussing oh you do meth oh that's sickening oh you did what for pills oh my god and I immediately think I must be in the wrong place because what do I have in common with all of these people right so I leave that detox I stay clean for a few more months and I relapse and I almost die in the next year and a half six years ago I had a 10 chance of living because I am something that you call terminally unique all right my brain likes to tell me that I'm so much different than everybody else I'm so different than everybody else that it might kill me and this might be something that you're struggling with too now this last time I got sober I left Las Vegas and I went to California with my mom right and I started going to meetings and I was around these people I was in a different state all these people were strangers I remember sitting there and people were sharing their stories and I don't know what happened something switched in my brain where when people were talking and sharing their experience I was like oh my god how do you understand the way I feel how do you understand the way my crazy brain works how do you understand my pain and suffering how did these complete strangers understand exactly what it was like to be me something happened in my brain where I quit seeing so many differences and now all I can do is see the similarities but yeah this is something that I'm trying to teach everybody okay like even though our situations might be different we all we all can relate to the pain the misery the suffering all of those things and we need to start being more connected when we're seeing other people going through those struggles but I get it I get it part of the human condition is we don't want to look at ourselves it's a lot easier for us to sit around judging everybody else it's a lot easier for us to sit around watching youtube and think about how messed up all these crazy beauty gurus are right because what I have to look at myself what I don't want to look at the drama in my own life I just want to watch theirs so what I'm trying to do is trying to help you no matter what piece of content that you're consuming you're learning from it because the best thing we can do is take every situation and see what we can learn it might even save your life if you're somebody like me because if we're just sitting around judging everybody else and how messed up and screwed up their lives are what's it doing to improve our own lives how are we improving our own lives it's crazy because now my brain has this ability to find similarities with every person on earth and you know what that's one of the reasons I'm so much happier now because I don't feel so lost and alone I feel connected to everybody I don't care who it is I understand something that they've been through and you know what that helps me connect with people working in a mental health treatment center no matter who walked into my office it helped me connect with them because even though I didn't have an abusive father I had an alcoholic mom so I can relate to some of that pain that misery that suffering that I that I had when I was a kid I I can relate to feeling lost and alone growing up how come everybody's else's life was so much better than mine right and now I try to use that that same experience that I have to teach other people do you know do you know how many drug addicts I have come to me and say no I can't go to alcoholics anonymous I'm not an alcoholic I'm a drug addict do you know how many alcoholics come to me and say no I can't go to narcotics anonymous I'm an alcoholic I don't got a problem with drugs like let me tell you what I learned an addict is an addict is an addict is an addict I don't care if your addiction is to sex to gambling to spending money to food to love whatever it is I can relate with you so yeah the reason why I like to use youtubers or tv shows or movies is because you might have a lot more in common with them than you might even realize so yeah again we need to learn from other people's mistakes we have to learn from other people's mistakes for example me whenever somebody came back into the rooms right or back into a treatment center completely broken and defeated they were staying clean and then something happened and they relapsed my ears would perk up what did you do where did you misstep what did you do or what did you refuse to do because I need to learn from your mistake because I don't want to suffer that same fate I remember so you guys like there's a reason why I was single and celibate for almost two years when I first got clean all right I didn't want to be but you know what happened I saw everybody everybody I got clean with jump into relationships or start hooking up with people and they just started dropping like flies and relapsing some people even passed away and you know what my next friend would say oh no I'm gonna ask this girl out because I'm not I'm not done like those other people I got this right and guess what would happen the same exact thing so I started learning from all these other people's mistakes I'm like okay you do that not me so in this world where people are getting exposed left and right and screwing up like how can we learn from that how can we avoid the missteps that they're taking right so many people out there I call people out on it in an old video like so many people are seeing how many people are being taken down because of old tweets yet you're still out there tweeting out some real dumb stuff that's gonna get you fired in 10 years so many of us just sit around passively watching YouTube passively watching the news passively watching everything else in our lives and we don't take anything from it so what I'm trying to do is find stuff that you can relate to find stuff that you can connect to find stuff that is relevant to teach you how to improve your mental health all right so I hope you understand a little bit of how the brain of Chris Boutet works okay I'm trying to teach you how to find similarities in any situation that you come across so you can learn from it and improve your mental and emotional well-being all right so anyways let me know down in the comments below is it hard for you to find similarities between you and other people or are you learning to get rid of those differences and find the similarities like I've learned to do let me know down in the comments below all right but anyways that's all I got for this video if you like this video please be sure to give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure to subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos and a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on patreon you all understand what I'm trying to do over here and if you would like to help support the channel as well you can click the tap on that icon right there all right thanks so much for watching I'll see you next