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Against All Odds Podcast, The Less than 1% Chance with Maria Aponte
Maria highlights stories of people that have been the "less than 1% chance" and have come out of their situations thriving and seeing life as happening FOR them and not TO them! Inspiring and empowering stories that will show you that against all odds you can make it through anything!
Against All Odds Podcast, The Less than 1% Chance with Maria Aponte
The Power of Healing: Ryan Perry on Sobriety and Recovery
What happens when unresolved childhood trauma meets the devastating loss of a loved one? Ryan Perry knows all too well. This week on Against All Odds, we sit down with Ryan to hear his incredible journey from a nightmare of physical abuse and parental divorce to the abyss of Oxycontin addiction following his mother's death. Ryan lays bare the gritty details of losing everything—his self-respect, financial security, and even hope. With over seven years of sobriety under his belt, he now dedicates his life to helping others navigate their own recovery paths, offering invaluable insights into the profound connection between trauma and addiction.
We also dive into the emotional terrain of longing and nostalgia that accompanies the loss of a mother. Ryan and Maria reflect on the persistent yearning to relive simple, everyday conversations even years after their own parents' passing. They explore the surreal, yet comforting feeling of their own parents' continued presence and guidance, a sentiment that resonates deeply with anyone who has experienced such loss. Maria adds a personal touch, drawing parallels with her brother's recovery journey, enriching the conversation with relatable, heartfelt experiences. This episode is a powerful testament to human resilience and the lasting impact of familial bonds.
Connect with Ryan:
Instagram: @arantele5
Facebook: Ryan Perry
Website: www.theleap.co/creator/ryanperrycoach/
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Welcome back to the Against All Odds the Less Than 1% Chance podcast with your host, Maria Aponte, where we will hear stories of incredible people thriving against all odds, and my hope is that we can all see how life is always happening for us, even when we are the Less Than 1% Chance.
Speaker 2:Hey, hey, welcome back to Against All Odds, the Less Than 1% Chance podcast with your host, maria Aponte. I am so excited to have you back and I am so excited for this next episode. I was just chatting with Ryan for a little bit before and I could tell this is just going to be such a good conversation. So let me introduce you to Mr Ryan Perry.
Speaker 2:To Mr Ryan Perry 14 years ago he became hooked on Oxycontin and various other painkillers because he didn't want to deal with the trauma surrounding his childhood abuse and, most recently at that point, the death of his mother. He lost everything a person could lose Self-respect, respect for others, money, his car. He even almost lost a house that he inherited. He tried many different recovery programs until he found none of them suited his needs and finally he had to do it himself. Now here he is, 14 years later, with over seven years clean of all substance which is awesome and alcohol by choice, and now he helps clients who are just beginning their recovery journey. I just want to say congratulations. That's huge. My brother is 15 years recovered, so it's been a part of my life since I was a little kid and I'm just. I know how difficult it is. So, seriously, congratulations.
Speaker 3:It's a different world. Let me tell you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so give us a little bit of an idea of your Against All Odds story. What's your background?
Speaker 3:So I guess where it started like you were talking, childhood trauma when it started was back when my mother and father got a divorce. Back I was, I think, two years old and we ended up moving to Northern California from Southern California to live with my grandparents and it started with a very abusive grandfather, so physically abusive. He was the only father figure that I had, so he was prone to backhand me if I, you know, said things out of turn, lock me underneath the house in a crawl space. Yeah, that that wasn't fun, but that happened several times and that continued until probably age 14 or 15 when I got it through my head.
Speaker 3:I wasn't going to deal with that anymore and I just got out of there. I just I left for a while and didn't come back until he passed away.
Speaker 3:Wow, you know that was. That leaves a mark, obviously, and there's so much unresolved issues and a young man never wants to admit that. Hey, I have unresolved trauma that I want to deal with, to get better. But it shows up later in life and for me it showed up with wanting to. I wouldn't say abuse any substance, but use any substance. That really just made me forget. I wasn't looking for confidence boosts, a self-esteem boost, I just wanted to forget. It was a part of my life and story that I wished I could erase completely and, ironically enough, I'm very happy that I have that story now, because that's provoked me to do so many things to help others, to get better myself.
Speaker 3:What ended up happening was my mother had. She had a couple of different autoimmune disorders, different autoimmune disorders, so she passed away at age 56 and she yeah, she passed away very quickly, one night, but I had taken care of her medically for many years, so it was something I was used to, and when she passed away I had already been dabbling in painkillers oxycontin. I'd already been dabbling in painkillers OxyContin, oxycodone and at that point I just spiraled. It was just such an uncontrollable downtrend for the next year and, I think, towards the height of my addiction, I was taking somewhere close to three to 400 milligrams of OxyContin each day.
Speaker 3:Oh, my gosh Is to put into perspective for those who don't know, that is more than a dying cancer patient would ever take.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, my, I was in charge of caretaking for my dad prior to him passing and he was a cancer patient and we had to control all that and so, yeah, that is a lot. How old were you when she passed?
Speaker 3:When she passed? Let's see, she passed in 2011. So that was 13 years ago. I was 26, 27. Yeah, so right at the height of my getting and coming into my own being in my life, and she passed away and. I had already devoted a pretty significant chunk of my life to taking care of her.
Speaker 3:When she passed away, it was like this massive void that needed to be filled. I just I didn't know what to do. There was so much, there was so much unknown in everything and I just I kept wanting to find something to do. And it's amazing how, doing something like Oxycontin or painkillers or anything really, you don't go into it thinking I'm going to become an addict and I'm going to become just a really bad version of myself. You go into it just wanting to stop pain usually and that's that unresolved trauma that comes back. Because one of the things I have learned during my journey of helping my clients and all of the studying and research that I do is I think the number is probably 85 to 90% of people who are addicted to substances alcohol, anything of that nature have unresolved trauma and it's a part, it's a part of why they're doing it. It's a part of their life and you could dig really deep and not even think you have some type of trauma, but yeah, 85 to 90% of all addiction is rooted in trauma.
Speaker 2:He's seven years older than me and I think I was about six or seven years old when he just started to dabble into drugs and I remember like around 10 or 11, he would come home before. My parents were like enough is enough kind of thing that you need to leave. He would come home and he would fight with himself in his sleep and it was just. He was on all kinds of drugs. I think at some point it was like there was meth involved, there was fentanyl and heroin and like everything. It started to snowball obviously and he was ball obviously and he was, I want to say, maybe close to 20 years of that life and then he was. There, was like that hard stop and again he's been sober for 15 years now this year.
Speaker 3:So it is definitely not something I don't think that he was actively seeking to do I think that's a misconception that a lot of people have when they think about people with addiction issues is that they're doing this by choice. And I can tell you from personal experience nobody goes into it saying I'm going to become a drug addict, I want to lose everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to do this.
Speaker 3:It just doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, agreed, it is, and it's hard to see as a family that you can't do anything to help. That's got to be a moment that they are ready and so, yeah, and honestly, I could relate to that void of like what now, after a parent passes away that you care, take for, because I feel that so heavily. My dad passed away October of 2022.
Speaker 2:And thank you, and it was like my mom's still alive, but she worked and I had the flexibility in what I did that I went to every single appointment with him while he was going through cancer treatments and all that stuff. I was there and be there, and so I felt like my days were like everything he needed and then everything that I could put around it.
Speaker 3:Right. You build your schedule around their needs and then your life comes secondary.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I totally resonate with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I totally resonate with that and that void of like wait a minute.
Speaker 3:What is my day gonna look like now? What is my life gonna be like?
Speaker 2:now I have this available space and void, but I don't know what to do with it. Yeah, and it's still very bizarre to me. I have obviously occupied myself with different things. However, I would give anything for just that to be my life.
Speaker 3:It's funny and I never thought that I would feel this way when I was younger. But I would give almost anything that I have to give to have one more conversation with my mom, and a lot of people tell me that oh, you're nuts. Because I can feel my mom around. She is still here and I still hear. I still feel her knocking me on the back of the head when I'm doing something that I shouldn't be doing or thinking about things that I shouldn't be thinking about. I can still feel her knocking me on the back of the head when I'm doing something that I shouldn't be doing or thinking about things that I shouldn't be thinking about. I can still feel her just hit me upside the head, and we didn't have the healthiest relationship either, but at the same time it's like she was a single parent.
Speaker 3:She was mom, she was dad, she was my friend, and I think it made it harder that she didn't even pass away from the autoimmune disease that she had. She was a frequent flyer in the hospital, so they all knew her, they all knew me, and she had taken a really bad fall one night on I think it was Christmas night, and we took her to the hospital. They checked her over, looked her over, said oh, you're good to go over. Looked her over, said oh, you're good to go. And then, january 31st of right the next year, she had another fall, took her to the hospital. She never gained consciousness and they found out that it was from the previous fall, on christmas, that one of her organs had actually been punctured and she was basically going septic for the entire month.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:And like what do you do with that? You prepare yourself that somebody is going to pass away from this specific autoimmune condition. So I've been building myself up to that and then to hear that, ok, this was completely preventable. Yeah. So there were a lot of anger surrounding that too. And I'm hear that, okay, this was completely preventable. Yeah, so there was a lot of anger surrounding that too. And I'm sure that added me wanting to just forget about everything.
Speaker 2:You never know, and I never got into any substance abuse because I watched it. So he was my biggest form of don't do drugs. The biggest drug campaign that I ever got was my brother and seeing him, so I've never done smoking or anything like that, so I'm always grateful for that. However, I feel like there was ways to mask trauma in so many other ways and how it just was stuck deep in my body that when it decided to come out, it was like I had cancer. Dis-ease created a disease and whether it is addiction or something like cancer, it's like your body has so much turmoil, it's in dis-ease and so I love the way you put that.
Speaker 3:By the way, dis-ease created the disease. I love that term yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:I heard it from a mentor years ago and I'm like that makes so much sense. That opened my eyes to oh well, duh, if I haven't processed the sexual assault that happened at 16 and I haven't let that go and I haven't had the moment to process those feelings, yeah, it's going to continue to come back. And I had cancer four times in my life, and so until I decided that enough was enough, that my oxygen mask had to come first and that I had to take care of me first and that I was the biggest priority, because if I wasn't there, if I wasn't there, who was going to take care of my three kids? I was a single mom as well. It just became like all right, enough is enough. And unfortunately, at 32 was when I had that enough is enough decision. But it creates it right. It's so much dis-ease in your body that your body's like I need to alert you somehow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and there's no age limit on when that happens. I've had clients who are in their mid fifties and they're just going through it right now. I've had clients who are young 18, 19 years old and it's always been interesting to me the age range of when everything happens, which tells me, obviously, that trauma has no barrier. Pain has no barrier at all and it happens to everybody, and your negative coping mechanisms are sometimes a product of you not dealing with things or you just not having the proper skill set.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where it becomes like necessary to surround yourself with people, or with a mentor, or with somebody that's going to guide you in a way that like, all right, I see you, I feel you Like, I know where you're coming from. I'm maybe three, five, 10 steps ahead of you, and this is what we did, and this is the mindset that we start to take on, and it becomes just a guide for life how to deal with these things. So give me an idea. What is it that you do now with your clients and so forth?
Speaker 3:Okay. So with my clients, I would say that ideally, I prefer doesn't always happen. I prefer to work with people who are anywhere from one month to two months out of active addiction. I've worked with people in addiction. My preference is working with people out of addiction because and to your question, what does a personal coach do for these people? I'm their biggest advocate, a coach is, and what I do for them is I don't offer them a hundred percent solution to their problem. You can't, you cannot do that because everybody's different. What works for one person will not work for anybody else. But you offer small course corrections so you listen to their story. And that's a big, big part that I find when I talk to my clients or when I talk to people, nobody wants to listen to their story.
Speaker 3:You know, they hear okay, addict drug addiction and they want to go from there and use whatever method they want to use and they don't listen to the person.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I try to teach. I try to teach different skills, different coping mechanisms, but I want to get to the root of what's causing a lot of this. I've had sessions with clients where I think I've said two sentences in an hour and nothing. It just provokes them to talk. It provokes them to go and let everything out, like the floodgates are opening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. You validate what they need, that's all. Even my therapist when she validates the fact that being angry is not a bad thing. And anger is your biggest advocate, because your angry part of you knows your worth and that worth isn't being met, and so that's why we get angry. And it's validating their feelings and listening to them, because so many times people get shut up. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's so sad that it could be as simple as like listen to me and I just need someone to hear me and be there, and a lot of people just don't have that in their life.
Speaker 3:Even in formal therapy or counseling, there's always I don't want to say an agenda, but it tends to always follow a form.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And in coaching I feel I have so much freedom to explore something with my client to even if they say, no, I don't want to talk about that. We can say, okay, that's fine, let's go somewhere else. Yeah, what do you want to talk about that? We can say, okay, that's fine.
Speaker 2:Let's go somewhere else.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what do you want to talk about? Talk to me about who you are. What do we want to work on here?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So it's wonderful to have that freedom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. So why do you think there seems to be so much more addiction now in our society, now more than ever?
Speaker 3:That's a good question. My personal view on that is that there's so much turmoil in the world at large not just the US, but at the world at large and people are looking for a way to just get away from it. We're connected 24-7. The news services, no matter what. You open your phone and something negative pops up Social media wonderful thing. I love social media. But it contributes to things like depression, because people become addicted to those likes they come addicted to living their best life. So it's. I think that one of the biggest contributors to addiction nowadays is just looking for escape, because there's unrealistic expectations with all of this stuff. Social media is a prime example. What on social media is not that person? Most of the time, unless you're being completely transparent and honest, this person doesn't live on a million dollar yacht and doesn't have all this cash that's raining from the sky, and you get impressionable people who want to live like that and then they realize, well, okay, it's a little bit harder than I thought, so let's go find some way to escape.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I recently watched a documentary on Netflix called Dancing with the Devil and it's about a cult that this man created that is full of TikTok dancers like viral TikTok dancers and so like you see the perspective from the family and how they've cut everybody off and all of that. And they're trying to get in touch with their family member and they've been cut off and you see these people doing amazing things and living this joyful life, dancing and so forth on social media. But they're in a cult and they're told that they can't be around family until it becomes convenient for the leader, until media starts coming in and makes it convenient.
Speaker 3:I need to go watch this documentary.
Speaker 2:It's so mind blowing. But my daughter, she's 15. And she loves to dance and she can like look at somebody dance and mimic the dance routine and I'm like God, I wish I had that coordination in my brain. But I have a lot of rhythm, very little coordination. She's got it all right.
Speaker 3:I have none of the above, by the way. No coordination, no rhythm at all.
Speaker 2:So I see her watch these people and, funny enough, she follows the sister of the main character, if you will, that they focused on. She follows the sister, the one that's like trying to get her sister out of this cult. And my daughter's like, oh my gosh, yeah, I know her. And I'm like, oh my gosh, they are literally seeing this lifestyle that they're like I want to have a viral video or whatever. And it's not what you think it is. It is this like dopamine hit and I want to live the way they're living. And they can't even appreciate what is in their life and the blessings that are in their life because they are just looking at that comparison every time somebody comments and you're looking at it.
Speaker 3:What happens when? Those comments and those likes don't do it for you anymore. Yeah, you have to look for something else for your next hit of dopamine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah it's. It is scary to navigate. I held them off of phones and social media as much as I thought like I could, and so it's still like you never know right. There's no manual for parenting. And did I maybe do this too soon or allowed that too soon, like with my oldest one? I think my oldest is 20, but I think she wasn't allowed to have a phone until she was in high school.
Speaker 3:That's awesome, by the way. I fully support that 100%. I'm not a parent, but I think that's great.
Speaker 2:Well, it got younger. My son, he's 18 now, he's about to be 19. But it was like in eighth grade, and then my little one was like in seventh grade. So, little by little went a little earlier and I wish I would have stayed strong on the. By the time you're in high school you can get one. However, it's crazy how society is now that even if I was going to go pick up my daughter from school or drop something off this is for my youngest they were like text her and I'm like she doesn't have a phone, and the school would look at me crazy and I'm like, well, she doesn't have a phone.
Speaker 2:I need you to like call her down and what you guys used to do back to your phones yeah, and so it was just mind-blowing to me, and I think that's where the pressure of society or whatever comes in. Even for parents, you're like, okay, well, I guess I'll do this and I have like a ton of restrictions on her phone, but then, little by little again, it just keeps diminishing and I'll give you six hours on your phone or whatever. So it is trying to stop that dopamine hit to start so early in life. However, I agree with you. I feel like that is part of the issues with society right now is because they're looking for that next excitement.
Speaker 3:And I just want to say I like the comment you made about there's no manual to be a parent, and that applies so much to I'm thinking about it here that applies so much to my own mother, because I can find a thousand things wrong that she did. Looking back in hindsight, when I would work overnight she would be hey, do you want a bump of this to keep you awake? It's like what parents supposed to do that for their child?
Speaker 3:so that is like an unhealthy relationship right there yeah and I could look back at all of this stuff, but I don't, because she was one of the most, if not the most central, important person in my life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I've had this conversation a lot lately. I feel like there isn't a manual for parenting. You always wake up wanting to do the best that you can and that may look different every single day. My youngest is now 15. And it has been really eye opening even how much I've evolved as a parent and with that, I have had conversations with my parents. Like a few, probably like three years ago Like a few, probably like three years ago, I had a conversation with my parents about how they reacted.
Speaker 2:All you want is for their safety and for them to be healthy and happy and OK, and knowing that I'm not coming to you with this conversation in terms of any type of judgment, I just need you to know what I needed at that moment and what I didn't receive and what my 19 year old self needed from you, and I'm prepared to give it to myself. But I need to heal this and I need you to know that, like, all I needed in that moment was a hug and support and love, rather than judgment and making me feel additional shame and guilt for something that wasn't my fault, and so it became this like I'm not judging you for this, I just need to heal this part of my staying quiet of how this hurt me.
Speaker 3:It's like you were saying before you just need to be heard.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:A lot of it comes down to. You just need to be heard. You don't have to be understood per se, but the fact that you're getting it out means a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It heals a whole lot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's things that you couldn't talk about before and I would say that's probably a regret of mine that I didn't get that chance with my mother to say hey mom, it probably wasn't a good idea to share drugs with me and make that a normal behavior. Or it probably wasn't a good idea for you to take off for a week or two at a time and my grandparents scream and yell and abuse me and wanting to know where my mother is because I'm not their job.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you said something earlier that really resonated with me and I'll give you some context from it as well. I had a podcast interview a week ago with a lady that she went through a lot and when her mother passed away, that she started doing therapy and did hypnotherapy and whatever. And did hypnotherapy and whatever she says. She felt her mother on her back saying I wasn't able to protect you in this earth. However, I'm going to start to protect you from going forward from this realm, right? And so this lady had all of a sudden, like clairvoyant abilities, and so she told me, prior to us starting to record the podcast, that she saw my dad on my left side and I was like what that was the most like mind-blowing experience. And when my daughter got hit by a car, she said that my ex-boyfriend, which passed away of a massive heart attack, that he protected her. Wow, and it should have been, it was powerful.
Speaker 2:She said like a comment so I have my vision board up here in front of me and I have a picture of me and my dad right here on my left side and beforehand she's not Spanish, but she said I keep hearing the phrase, which means give me a kiss in Spanish. Well, the picture on my left hand side is me giving a kiss to my dad on his cheek. Oh, wow, and I was like this is mind blowing. Mind blowing, completely Right, and I feel very at ease. Now I would get annoyed, if you will, when people because my dad was just like one of those people that everyone just loved, he was just such a good hearted, happy person and when people would come up to me and tell me, oh, I had a dream with your dad I would be like why is he coming to you in your dreams and not in mine?
Speaker 2:And so I felt like this tug of jealousy, that it's not fair. I was so close to him. Why is it that you're getting to see him and I can't?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'm not, and I want to, and I want to.
Speaker 2:And so she was like you don't need him in your dreams, he's literally always with you. And I was like oh't need him in your dreams, he's literally always with you. And I was like oh my gosh, since my dad passed away, I see cardinals everywhere how long?
Speaker 3:how long ago was it that your dad passed away?
Speaker 2:am I asking? No, not at all. October 2022 okay so very recent, I had never paid attention to birds ever. And now I know the chirp of a cardinal. I speak to the cardinals, right. So like I'll be walking and I hear the chirp and I can't see him. And I was like are you gonna come visit me today, because I can't see you? I could hear you but I can't see you. And all of a sudden, like down the street, this like cardinal swoops in front of me and I'm like hi, good morning.
Speaker 3:That is that's. I'm having one of those mind blown moments right now, actually, because my mother's name was Robin and she always she did a lot of paintings, ceramic paintings, and she had ceramic paintings, oil paintings of Robins all over the place. And there are still some times where I'll go out or I will be somewhere, even if I'm traveling or whatnot, and I'll see Robins and they'll just come across and I have to stop and think like, hi, mom.
Speaker 2:So when you say, when you said earlier that you still feel her yeah, it's her.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I was hesitant to believe that years ago, within the past seven years of my recovery, I went through my own spiritual awakening, and I'm not religious per se. I know there's more and I know there's something. So, I call myself just a spiritualist, and so probably three years ago, maybe, is when I really started to accept the fact that all of these things that I keep hearing in my head, that would be something that my mom would say, so I attribute all of that to her.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I tell my friends I still have conversations with my mom.
Speaker 2:I'll pull on, like what do we have for me today? It just it's so crazy what that intention will do for your own healing. So the reason that I said that and the reason that this has been so long drawn out is because I feel like, when you said I wish I could have that conversation with my mom, of like maybe this wasn't a good idea. You literally can and it could still heal because you are aware that she is all around you, that she is still there. So it feels like maybe she can't talk back, but you could probably feel her sense.
Speaker 3:You're 100% correct and I've done that to a degree, and it's a work in progress. It's not something that you're just going to snap your fingers and say it and then it's going to make everything better. So it's. I always look at it as just a step by step process. And it's interesting my mom, when I was starting my recovery journey, I still felt that she was there and it was something that I couldn't explain and I always remember hearing in my head, in my dreams, in my mother's voice I know I didn't do enough, but you need to do more.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I didn't understand it for the longest time, until I started my recovery journey and I was trying different modalities. Like I tried Narcotics Anonymous, I tried Alcoholics Anonymous. Everybody starts with those, I think, and I'm not going to speak bad on any of them, because they all work for people, but the religious aspect of those just did not resonate with me.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of things about those programs that just don't resonate with me and when I was going through them for I gave him a shot a month or two each I was going, when I was going through them, I remember my mom telling me stories about how she went through Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous and they never worked for her either. Yeah, and it's. I think it hit me really hard during my recovery that my mother and I are so much more alike than I gave us credit for. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So much more for everything she had to overcome, everything I'm had to overcome, and she's been my constant companion, which through the through my recovery, and that's one of the things, like I said, where she told me I didn't do enough, but you need to do more, you need to do better, and I try to live by that as much as I can, especially when it comes to my own healing and my own recovery.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful. I love that because we do, and, like I want my kids to do better than me, so I get to leave my legacy for them. However, what I want is for you to one up me, please, one up me, please do better, and I try to be the best that I can be as a person, as a parent, as a human being and go do life and do better, like do better than what I was able to accomplish, because then that legacy was just that building block right. Absolutely, I love that. So what are the different types of recovery methods that are available to people? And then give me kind of an idea why you feel like addicts are so stigmatized in our society.
Speaker 3:So there are the narcotics anonymous, alcohol Anonymous, which are basically the same thing. They just focus on different aspects and different substances. There's Smart Recovery, which is something I found a couple of years ago which I am absolutely in love with. It's an online-based format for meetings. There's no judgment, there's no oh, if you screw up, you're going to go back to day one, which I don't believe in that at all, and I'll go into that later. There's other ones, called recovery Dharma, which I have not personally experienced, but it's like a spiritualist type of recovery method and I just I have not had a chance to experience it at all.
Speaker 3:You can find groups anywhere. There's several on Facebook, there's several on all over the place, and you can even find them on the meetup application, and it's people who are just spending time together. It's people who are just spending time together, and so there are as many methods to recovery as stars in the sky. It's different for each person and that's what I've always felt makes it so beautiful and so personal, because there is a method out there for you and no method is going to be the end all be all, what worked for me and I didn't like I said, I went through NAAA and it just didn't resonate with me. The religious aspect, the having to surrender yourself to your addiction. I don't believe in that, because when you surrender yourself and tell people I'm an addict or I'm an alcoholic, you are basically saying that's my identity. And in my coaching sessions with my clients, a big thing is I want them to reclaim their power, reclaim their identity and by saying every time hello, I'm Ryan and I'm an addict. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Your brain is going to start believing that after a while and you're always going to have that in the back of your head that, oh, I'm an addict, it's because of my addiction, it's because of that, and I just I don't believe in that at all. There's, there's so much personal power that you can take back.
Speaker 2:And there's so much power in words.
Speaker 3:Absolutely and they matter. They absolutely matter. And same thing with going back to day one if you have a mess up. There's a statement which some people agree with, some people don't. That says relapse is part of recovery. You can take that for what you will. The fact is that relapses is a big part of recovery because statistically, I believe it's 68 to 75% of people will relapse at some point and there's nothing wrong with that. It's when you look at the methods of AA or NA that state you have to go back to day one even if you had five years clean and sober. I just I don't believe in that because they erased that five years completely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you worked so hard. They erase that five years completely yeah.
Speaker 3:And you worked so hard, exactly, and that's a that smart recovery that I told you about. It's not a judgment-based system, but you can go in and say, oh, I messed up last night. I took a drink, or I had a glass of wine, or I went out and I took a bump, or I did this, and the facilitator is going to say, okay, all right, well, all right. Well, how did that work for you? Tell me what you learned from doing that. How do you feel? Yeah.
Speaker 3:What can you learn from this experience? To move forward and make yourself better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like so as a very similar and completely off the topic thing in my lovely 40s my body can't tolerate cheese anymore.
Speaker 2:And so it sucks because there's just that's one of my favorite foods. But I can either say, all right, well, I'm going to suck it up and not feel great tomorrow and have this amazing pizza, or I'm going to say, you know what I feel like I'm going to pass because I don't want to feel like that tomorrow. So it helps you realize how do I feel today if I had that mess up yesterday and do I really want to continue to feel this way. And it's giving you the agency of saying no, but I have a choice to say I'm deciding not to feel that crappy anymore.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly, and that the fact that it's a choice and you're making the choice for yourself is extremely empowering. Not having to. So my higher power says I need to do this, so I'm going to do it. Yeah, if that works for you, more power to you.
Speaker 2:Exactly yeah. In Spanish we say you more power to you. Exactly yeah, in Spanish we say para los gustos los colores, so it means for every kind of liking there's a color. So okay, you know, pick your color and it'll be to your liking like that actually, that's really.
Speaker 2:That's a great way of saying that yeah, like everyone works differently and some things work with some people. For my health journey, I needed something that I could do from home, because I had three little kids and I was single mom, so I couldn't just be like, alright, you guys stay here while I go to the gym. And so I found something that worked for me. I worked from home, I worked out from home, I started watching these nutrition programs and figured out what worked for me. Okay, it just it's whatever works for you.
Speaker 3:Exactly. It's like when you're going to the doctor looking for help with depression or bipolar disorder. The first one is never going to work and if it does, then you're in that 0.5 percentile that everybody wishes they were in. Part of the journey is putting the work in to find what works for you.
Speaker 3:Yes, and to back to your question about what the stigma is there's, I would say that in my experience the stigma revolves around when you hear the term addict, you associate that word with so many different things homeless, broke, criminal and a host of other things. So to a lot of people, the normal people out there, they hear addict and they think criminal, they think bad person. It's just like a flashing red light in their head, and I understand the perspective because they've never experienced anything like that. They probably know some people who have addiction issues and don't even know it. So I think a lot of the stigma comes from just people not wanting to understand and explore that topic at all. They don't want to educate themselves.
Speaker 3:One of the things I tell my clients is I know people with addiction issues who are some of the most resourceful people I have ever met in my life, and some of my friends who and people who know me who don't understand all of that would be like what do you mean? Are you kidding and say, yeah, when you wake up in the morning and you're going through withdrawal and you're broke, you have no money, no gas in your car and you start what is akin to an eight to 10 hour job every single day You're looking for stuff. Then you finally find somebody who will get it to you. Then you have to go find the money, then you have to work out how much gas it's going to take. It's so resourceful, it's just it has to be put towards something different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I love that because yeah, I agree, I feel like coming from my brother. I even saw that as a kid Like he figured out a way. He figured out what he needed, how to get it, who to talk to. He could literally talk to anybody. He could literally sell anything to anybody. Every company that he works for he's always number one sales or whatever. It's just crazy, but I feel like that's what happened. So I have a huge belief that life happens for you and not to you, and even if we're going through the hell, hells of hell, I feel like you could always find a blessing in it and a lesson in it, right? So what did that resourcefulness get my brother?
Speaker 2:He is literally, like, always top of whatever company he's working for he's the gm of a t-mobile store and top number one in the region every single time, number one in the company every single time. And I'm like dude, you can literally sell like ice to eskimos. Are you freaking, kidding me? But then I now that you say that I'm like duh. People always just loved him and whatever words came out of his mouth, he literally went through like 20 years of figuring out how to even if he didn't have the money, how to get drugs, like duh.
Speaker 3:It's, and you know what? What it's something that you don't realize at the time. Look, hindsight, being 2020, it's like I wonder how I'm not a good salesman because I had so much ability to find stuff to get somebody to give it to me without even paying, and then getting there, getting home it and then starting it over and then starting the process the next day. It yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, one of the big things also that I tell clients and I've done a couple of videos on Tik TOK about this is addiction is a full-time job. Yeah, it's 100% a full-time job and for me, what helped me was getting back into physical fitness weightlifting, exercise, martial arts and I've done. I've said this to a lot of people you have to find something constructive to fill that void, because that void, which was filled with substances, alcohol or gambling or eating or any type of addiction that you can name is going to come right back around, because that is your coping skill, that that's exactly what you know how to do and then so I always tell them.
Speaker 3:For me, I just started going to the gym a lot. I started doing physical fitness. I started getting back into that which I was into beforehand and after my journey through addiction. I had a lot of work to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it just I think that you just have to find constructive ways to use that same output that you have. I love that. That's, that's perfect. What's so important about your recovery story versus anyone else's?
Speaker 3:I would say that my recovery story is one of and I don't recommend this for everybody, but I did the work on my own because I didn't know that there were resources available. Personal coaching was not a thing seven years ago. It wasn't known as much as it's known today. I would say what makes my story special is the ability to recognize that there is help out there all the time. You can do things on your own, like I did, and I would say, just logic the shit out of it and how you're going to get off of it.
Speaker 3:But there are easier ways, there are more constructive ways, and a big takeaway that I tell people all the time is that there is a life out there that is your perfect life and you can get it and you can absolutely get there and there is no reason why going through addiction or substance abuse or any of that should keep you from that life. So, yeah, my biggest thing with what I think makes my story different is that it's proof you can do anything on your own. I went from three to 400 milligrams of Oxycontin a day down to nothing. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And a couple of months time, which all that all of my doctors, all of my therapists said they've never heard of anybody else doing that. So you have so much power within you to make anything happen.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I full, wholeheartedly believe in that. It is easier when you have someone that's been there, that kind of can coach you through it. But, yeah, absolutely, you have everything that it takes to do it within you, and I think that's so powerful, that is amazing. So what? I guess? What limiting beliefs or roadblocks do you feel you had to overcome in order to get to where you are now?
Speaker 3:My limiting beliefs. I had a big, big limiting belief when I started my recovery journey that I was not good enough and it's. I don't want to say it's funny, but it's interesting how a lot of these limiting beliefs they're the same for people, just worded completely differently, but the root of them is exactly the same. My big limiting belief was I wasn't good enough. I had screwed my life up so much that I was just going to go away and just forget everybody that I'd ever known and disappear completely. And it comes back around to that personal power, that taking back your personal power and being empowered to make those changes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I love that so much. And then, what daily habits do you feel like helped you reach your level of success?
Speaker 3:I love this one. So physical fitness, like I said, that's a big, that's still a big thing for me, not three or four hours a day anymore, but no one needs all of that.
Speaker 2:But yes, at the beginning maybe I just turned 40.
Speaker 3:I can't do that.
Speaker 3:I do 30, 45 minutes tops, and we're good, I do about an hour and I'm good. So keeping that physical fitness routine, that healthy outlet for energy, that anything that happens during the day, that negative energy builds up that you need to clean out, that all gets taken care of at the gym. A big one. A big one which I didn't even start until two years after I had quit everything completely. Meditation, meditation, meditation, meditation of a thing. But quieting your mind for 10, 15, 20 minutes a day you know when you wake up or in the middle of your day or before you go to bed is so powerful, just stopping the train of conscious thought and just existing and being one.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And that's so hard for people with people like myself who had addiction issues is to be in their own space with their own train of thought, or stopping that train of thought, because the natural reaction is I want to fill that. I need to worry about other things, and meditation forces you to confront a lot of these things.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And I did not really get into that until I had my spiritual awakening per se. I started following so many authors, so many speakers Abraham Hicks, joe Dispenza. I saw Abraham Hicks earlier this year in San Francisco and I was just like blown away at just seeing her live and I listened to her every morning. Now Joe Dispenza, he's another one that I love. I'm hoping against hope that he's a speaker at the summit of greatness in LA with Lewis Howes this year.
Speaker 2:I love all the people you're mentioning right now. So I listen to an app every morning called Growth Day, and it's from the creators, brendan Burchard, and he has speakers like Ed Milet and I think Lewis Howes has been in there and Mel Robbins and just all these amazing speakers that are constantly teaching us daily, monthly. They usually pick a topic and it has been so good, and he does a daily fire every morning and I wake up and I listen to that. The first thing I put my headphones in and I get ready to listening to Brendan give me some goodness in my ears, and then meditation and that is just all the good things and I learned from listening to Abraham Hicks and Joe Dispenza and reading their books.
Speaker 3:I have piles of their books and some I haven't even read yet because I keep buying more, but manifestation.
Speaker 3:I never, ever in my life before, would have believed that you could manifest things just by the power of your thoughts, and that was an incredible, incredible awakening and that helped me to keep in line with my recovery, because I imagine every day, I visualize where I want to go, the life that I want to have, and I don't want a superstar existence, I don't want any of that.
Speaker 3:I imagine my life as just content and happy, and I see myself getting there every single day, helping people with my coaching business, speaking. When I get a chance to speak, it's I feel that getting that word out there that makes me feel so content and so happy. Like how, if you can help one person with your podcast, which I am absolutely positive you're helping hundreds of people with your podcast. If I can do the same thing with coaching and help somebody and be their advocate, be their, be the accountability that they need, be a friend, be devil's advocate if they need it, I've met my purpose and that's what I realized doing this type of work is it's so fulfilling, and I'm already doing all of these fulfilling things.
Speaker 3:So all that visualization years ago is coming to pass.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that so much because I completely, wholeheartedly believe in all of that. I feel like and it's not necessarily, I don't know if content sounds like the right word that because we don't want to just stay steady, we want to always grow, and contentment just feels like you're just steady.
Speaker 3:You might be onto something there. I can see that Because like the progress equals happiness.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite people is Tony Robbins and he always like focuses on progress equals happiness.
Speaker 3:It's his voice, isn't it? That's why he's amazing.
Speaker 2:He is amazing, and so part of my vision is always I want to go to date with destiny. That's my big, huge goal. And it just makes sense because if we stay content in our life, then there isn't any progression there, it's just, it's steady, whereas when we're starting, when we grow and it's even just a little bit step forward in the right direction, it's growth. I don't know. Content didn't seem like the right word and I was like wait what?
Speaker 3:am I looking for? I get it, actually, the way that you're putting it. I get it absolutely, because one of the things I say to my clients, to myself, to my friends, is progress over perfection, and that is one of the biggest things for me is I just want to be better than who I was yesterday. I'm not in competition with anybody but myself and who I was yesterday. I'm allowed to succeed. I'm not in competition with anybody but myself and who I was yesterday. I'm allowed to succeed. I'm allowed to have setbacks. So, content.
Speaker 3:probably not the right word. You're right, it's what I had in my head at the time.
Speaker 2:I know and I was just like wait, no, I feel like that's not the right word, that I like feel and envision for when you're saying that, Because I understand what you're saying, that, because I understand what you're saying, I feel that it's like an amalgamation of several different terms and words that we need a new word for we need a new word for it, exactly, but no, you're right.
Speaker 3:Actually, now that I think about it, content isn't the right word, but that's what I had at the moment.
Speaker 2:I feel, though, what you're saying is that you're living that. That previous vision of you're progressing in life, you're helping people, you're living out your purpose, and this is what the cool thing about life is always happening for you and not to you, because you took everything that you've been through and created the blessing in disguise, right.
Speaker 3:And I love that. One of my closest friends. She's a trauma coach and she helped me get into the world of coaching. Her name's Kristen Fuller. She's amazing. She has that same saying. She's like addiction did not happen to me, it happened for me and I totally resonate with that completely.
Speaker 2:It's another Tony Robbins thing, by the way, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's amazing and it's helped me to. One of the things that I never thought I would do is I'm writing a book and I don't want to say odd, but it's not. One of the things that I never thought I would do is I'm writing a book and I don't want to say odd, but it's not one of those things that I ever pictured myself doing 10, 15, 20 years ago. If you had told me that, hey, you're going to write a book about the opioid epidemic and addiction and to be like a self-help book for people.
Speaker 3:I would have looked at my younger self and been like you're kidding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome. I'm so excited for you. That is in my vision. I always say that I'm a number one New York Times bestseller, a speaker and number one podcast, so I'm happy that you got that started.
Speaker 3:It's hard. It's hard because you, you have all these ideas and whatnot, but then you sit down to actually do it and how are you going to make this a book?
Speaker 3:I can't think of anything, and so I got around that. This is funny, but I got around that by just having Google docs app on my phone, so I would just start dictating If I feel something. If I think about something, I could be in my car and I'm like, oh God, that idea could be pure gold. And now we just start talking about it and go back and edit it later. Editing is someone else's job, not mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. No, I love that so much so I will put all of your information in the show notes, but is there anything else that you feel like you want to say that's coming to your heart before we wrap up today?
Speaker 3:I would say that to anybody listening you're not alone. You have addiction, substance abuse. It makes you feel alone and one of the things that is always said, what's the opposite of addiction? Connection and connection in this world now is so important, I think, more than it has been in the past, because we are all so isolated Even though we're so connected. We're so isolated because we could all be at the dinner table and every one of us is on the phone while eating, so that isolation just breeds. This breeds everybody to think that there's no connection. So just I would say the biggest takeaway remember you're not alone at all and asking for help does not make you any less of a person than anybody else. It makes you a stronger person for realizing that you need to make a change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that so much. You guys, ryan, this was awesome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:I had so much fun talking with you.
Speaker 2:I know this like I can literally talk to you for a long, long time.
Speaker 3:That's part two. That's part two.
Speaker 2:We gotta do part two. So you guys, like I said, I will put all his information in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you got as much out of today's conversation with Ryan as I did. And peace out, guys. Love your life. Bye.
