616: Young People Are Becoming Alcoholics (Here is PROOF)

0:00Do you have a young adult son or daughter that struggles with alcoholism or addiction and you don't know what to do? You have no clue how to handle this situation and you're at a loss for words. In this episode we have a young man in his early 20s that comes on and gives you the play by play of what should happen moving forward. Once I learn to love myself, it radiates so much like a light. I can love others truthful. I can give support where support is needed. I can give help when help is needed. Versus where I was in January, I couldn't help anybody. I couldn't even help myself. Follow what he says. Listen to what he says. Take the directions that he gives in this episode and you'll see the transformation that can happen inside your loved ones' life. Super great for what to have on Ethan. Get a note pad, get a pen, take notes and enjoy this episode. What's up Ethan? How's it going? Good man.

1:04So you're here. I mean you've done treatment twice. Twice now, yes. Why do you think the first time you went into treatment, what age? I was 20. 20 years old. Yes. Why didn't it work at 20? I think a multitude of reasons, personally for me. I think the reason I went into it to start off with was a bad reason. I mostly just wanted to play Kate my family. I kind of get them off my back per say. I had just moved to a new city. I moved from Joplin, Missouri to St. Louis and I started working in a bar as a line cook and one thing led to another. I started getting shift drinks and then I started being able to be served at this bar. And I thought it was fun. I thought I was having the greatest time in my life. And so when I was told that I had a drinking problem, I didn't really understand it. I didn't get that point. I was 20. I wasn't even of legal age.

2:10So it didn't really click with me in my mind that I could have a problem. So that was the start of it, like going into treatment, not even believing that I had a problem. And more so just doing it because my family would stop yelling at me and stop calling me all the time. So you lived on your own at that point? Yes, I had an apartment when you were working doing what were you doing for work at that time? I was a line cook. Oh, that's right. You just said that. Yeah. And so at 20 years old, I mean, having your own apartment, your line cook, paying your own bills and stuff. I mean, do you think you had a problem at 20? Hindsight being 20, 20? Oh, absolutely. Okay. I mean, I was behind on rent. The electricity was about to get shut off. I mean, I was doing cocaine a lot, which I had just started doing. And I had told myself that I wasn't going to do it, but it didn't take much to pressure me into it. Absolutely. I had a problem looking back now. I mean, I'm upset that I didn't take that opportunity when I had it.

3:11You didn't take it serious. Oh, absolutely not. I did not take one bit of it. How long were you there? So I was in residential for obviously a month, 30 days. And then I went to a sober living afterwards in St. Louis as well. And I was there for probably a year around a year. And you stayed sober the whole time? No. Oh, okay. No, around six or nine months in to sober living, I started drinking again. I'd been working a job at a grocery store for a good long period of time. And inevitably I wanted to make more money. So I got another cooking job. I started working at this restaurant. In St. Louis, there's this strip of a neighborhood called the Grove. And it's just a giant bar strip. And this restaurant was right in the center of it. And so my co-workers would go out after work and have drinks. And I went with them. I didn't think that it was going to be an issue. I thought I had this down within one night.

4:14It was over. And I started drinking again. And so that gradually progressed as I was still living in sober living. I mean, I would come home at like 3 a.m. to this place after work. So hang on. Let me pause you because some people out there right now are thinking, well, it's sober living. Right? Sober living. And you're what's going through your head is like, okay, I'm about to go to the Grove and have some drinks while I'm in sober living. Did anything, and I know this was a while ago, but did anything come across your mind that like maybe this isn't a good idea? At first it did after a while I just didn't care. But at first, yeah, I mean, I felt ashamed. I felt I had messed up completely. I will say during this period I had started really getting myself into the program, but I mean, comparative to what I was. Obviously, comparative to me now. It's a lot different. At first it was a little bit of shame. But then after that, I was just worried about not getting caught.

5:18And then after the first month of nothing from anyone there, no drug test, no breathalyzer, no nothing. I realized I probably wasn't going to get caught. And then it just became fun. And then it became not fun after a bit. But yeah, I mean, not a lot went through my head really. So you stayed in that sober living for a year and the last six months of being in that sober living, let's call it, you were drinking? Yes. And you're using. And you never got caught. Never. Not until the very last day that I got kicked out. Okay, so I want you, the listener or the watcher to understand this. Just because a place is called sober living doesn't necessarily mean that it is sober living. This is what we would call a flop house. Yes. And unfortunately, these places do exist. The people that oftentimes run these facilities, they don't care. They are just looking at it as like a cash cow. Oh, I know.

6:18And so you really have to be mindful of the environment that you're in or your loved one is in. Now, looking back on your situation at 20 years old, maybe 21 at the time, I don't know. I'm not going to put that on you. And this is just me being real like your 2021 years old. Yes, it's kind of your responsibility to know your surroundings and like, hey, this isn't a good idea. I probably shouldn't partake in this. But you're also 20 or 21 years old and you're not even sure that you have a problem. Oh, yeah. Right. And so I can get that. I can understand it. Now, if you're 35 years old and you've been through this process multiple times, okay, I'm putting more of the ownership on you, you know, but you know, at 20, 21 years old, you're just trying to figure out, you know, what's going on. But okay, so you're drinking this whole entire time.

7:18You end up leaving sober living and going into your own apartment again or what? So yes, so there was a brief period where I was staying at like hotels, staying with friends. And eventually I did get my own apartment. Thankfully, when I did the first apartment I ever had in St. Louis, this was paying cash for. So there was no eviction on my record. But by that point that I had gotten my own apartment, you know, the drinking problem had fully resurfaced. It wasn't just the like when it first started again where I was just having it every now and then only doing it every now and then. It had fully resurfaced. I was deep into my addiction yet again. And the same problems persisted. I wasn't paying rent. I was staying out really late. I was hung over at work. I was using that work. And inevitably it just all became the same scenario that I had a scene before. What were you using when you say using cocaine? Okay. Okay.

8:18Cocaine was a big one. I had done meth a few times. Thankfully, it never persisted after that. But cocaine was the heavy one that I was using. What about weed? Yeah. I want to say the biggest of the three, but it was definitely a problem that I had in the sense that I was spending copious amounts of money that I did not have on it. And if I could not access alcohol because in Missouri, specifically St. Louis, it's legal. Recreationally, weed is legal. So there were shops all over the place. And I would spend money that I didn't have. Money that needed to be going to rent on either alcohol, cocaine, or weed. So you consistently would use drugs and alcohol despite negative results? Absolutely. Which is what I would classify as a very open-ended, kind of surface-level definition of addiction.

9:18Absolutely. You know, I'm continuing to use drugs and alcohol despite negative results. Now those negative results are going to be whatever it is for you. You know, and what you deem a negative result, I may not deem a negative result. So it's kind of like an internal type thing, you know, that we have to wrestle with. And but it does boil down to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You weren't paying your rent. You probably, you know, were eating whatever you could, whenever you could. You said your electricity had almost gotten shut off a few times. And like so, when you're letting go, you're just basic living necessities in the name of drugs and alcohol. You're probably an addict. Would you agree? Oh, 100%. Yeah. So at... And so you're here, you're just you're graduating through the program now.

10:19You've been clean and sober for how long now? Over six months. That's amazing. What, take us through like the last couple of days before you end up in treatment again. Oh, I remember them very vividly. So I was working at a flower shop in St. Louis. Loved my job. I enjoyed it very much. I had left cooking because of the burnout. And also I thought that it would distance me from my addiction. But that was just changing one small thing. It didn't help. I still would get access to whatever I wanted. It did not matter. And I had decided to sign up for a trade school while working at this flower shop. It's a program in Missouri called the Works Initiative. They train you to be basic, like manufacturing and construction trades. So you can go into these jobs. I thought that would solve a lot of problems. If I make more money, I can afford rent and keep drinking.

11:20You know, as long as it was always how jobs worked with me. As long as I'm getting more money, I can keep up my habit and nothing will go wrong. I'll still be able to pay my bills because that's what I cared about. As long as I'm paying my bills, I'm functional. Well, it didn't work out that way. So I was receiving a $150 stipend for what I would have. I didn't even make it through the first week. But that's for later. So there's this brief period before I started school and then I quit my job. And it was a full week of me just laying in bed in my room doing nothing but drinking, doing nothing but sitting there feeling sorry for myself. I wasn't eating at all. I lost a lot of weight. I was sick consistently, you know, puking every morning. And something just kind of clicked in me. I was sitting on Instagram on my phone, scrolling through Instagram Reels. Nothing better to do. And I saw an ad for a treatment center.

12:21I'm like, okay, who cares? You know, I'll move past it. And then I, but I liked it on an accident. And so I'm scrolling through all these different Reels of people talking about getting sober. There are problems that they had. And you know, people being like, oh, you don't want to get sober. Here's, here's how I did it. You know, you don't want to lose your job. Here's how I did it. And finally that ad came up again. And I said, what the hell? You know, and I put my email in and I put my phone number in. In my mind, they were going to call once. I was going to say no. And I was going to be the end of it. And my life would keep going on. And I had really honestly in those last few days just allotted that this was my lot in life. You know, a lot of sad, very depressing thoughts had entered my head. And then I got a phone call at 7 o'clock that night. And it was a guy from Florida. And he was talking to me, he said, you know, here with admissions, do you want to come down for treatment? We can get you down here tomorrow.

13:21You know, all the basic stuff where do you live? What do you use? How much do you drink? And I kept saying no, I have to finish school. No, I have to finish this school. No, I have to get through my school. You know, it was February or was like late January, early February. And I would have graduated March 16th, as when the school would have gotten out. I kept saying, let me finish my school and then I'll come down there. Just a bold excuse. I didn't want to stop. And he even called me out on that. The other guy on the phone. And he said, you know, you know, we need to get you down here now before this gets worse. Who knows what will happen in a month, much less a week. And finally, he kept calling me every night. Every day, he would check up on me exactly at 7 o'clock at night. And finally one day, I was sitting out on this like hiking trail that's near my house. And I would go out there to drink. And I picked up the phone and he finally said, why do you not want to stop drinking? Why do you not want to come down here?

14:21I said, because I don't want to stop. I don't know anything else about this. I've been doing it since I was 15. You know? And he said, at least you're being honest now. And I don't know why, but that clicked something in me. And I said, okay. I went and talked to my roommate to tell them about the situation. I think I need to go get treatment. I told my stepmother. I told a lot of other people about this. And the consensus was, go somewhere closer. But I tried that already. And it didn't work. At least in my mind, that was the worst idea I could have picked. Finally called him back and I said, let's pull the trigger on this. He bought me a plane ticket. And my roommate's took me to the airport. And even in the airport, I was struggling with it. You know, I didn't, I wanted to get a drink before I left. You know, I was trying to beg money for my sister and from other people to just try to get something to drink in the airport. Because I was sober the day I went into detox. I had no nicotine, no nothing. And when I finally sat down, I just plugged in some music.

15:26I just told myself, I said, Ethan, you just got to get on this plane. That's the biggest hurdle you have going on right now. It's just getting on that plane, getting down to Florida, and whatever happens after that happens. And as soon as I got on that plane, I landed in Florida, Palm Springs at 930 that day on February 8th. And that's where my life began and knew, honestly. From that moment on, it's nothing but getting better and better. And that last week is probably the deepest pit I've ever been in in my life. I mean, I wasn't suicidal, I think. I don't think I would have had the will to do it. But I was at the point of not caring if I woke up or not. I was at the point of like, I just hope I'm in. I just hope I'm not, I don't look weird when they find me. And that was a deep pit. I shocked myself even. I think that's why I finally accepted the help too, was I was just shocked by my own thoughts.

16:27How dark they had gotten, how sad, how just low I had gotten in life. Do you think that was the scariest part of all of it? Was the emotional turmoil and mental turmoil? Yes. Oh, yes. Just in the sense of what your own mind can tell you. Yeah. What your own mind will lie to you. How your own mind will lie to you. It just shocked me. I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't believe it. The reason I asked that is because a lot of times people look at external things to determine one's success, right? So, well, they have a job. Oh, they have an apartment. Oh, they show up for work. And they may even do their job fairly well. They pay their bills.

17:27All these things. And it's like, you're not looking at the right stuff. You can look at it, but don't put all your stock into the external, you know, because a lot of times with addicts and alcoholics, it's the internal that you can't see that is what is really taking somebody down, you know. And that was even my situation. I had a job. I did it halfway decent until I didn't. But for the longest time, I showed up for work. I somewhat paid my bills. I had a car. All these things. But inside, I was an absolute wreck. I mean, I was bankrupt, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And those thoughts started creeping into my head, you know, the suicide ideations. And same thing, buying an alcohol was my thing, you know. Buying into the lie that, and I love how you said that.

18:27I bought into the lie that this is my lot in life, you know. And that for me, like that was legit. And I got sober at 26. So, you know, our stories resonate very closely. The other thing that you said that I think, I don't want to glance over is whoever the admissions person was that you were on the phone with, that would call you multiple times and tell you you should do this. You should do that. You should do this. You should do that. You should do that. We can get you down here. But when something clicked for you, it was when he asked you a question. Yes. He asked you why don't you want to stop drinking? And the reason that I bring that up, and this is towards family members and loved ones. And I talk a lot about this. Oftentimes we go into these conversations, we go into these situations, right? And we should all over somebody, you know, you should do this.

19:29You should do that. Don't you see what you're doing? Don't you see the pain that you're causing yourself and everybody else? You're terrible. And we internalize this, right? Oh, yeah. Nobody ever asks us why? Nobody has a genuine curiosity as to why we do the things that we do. Why are we acting this way? What is truly going on internally? I genuinely want to know, you know? And so he kind of represented that. Like, Ethan, why don't you want to stop drinking? Help me understand. And for you, and I don't know this, but, you know, speak into this. That for you was a moment of, okay, that lowers the, like somebody actually wants to know what's going on with me. Even though you didn't know, right? Yeah. You probably didn't know. And it's just like, I don't want to stop. But it was first time somebody asked you a question like that.

20:31It was also someone genuinely asking me how I felt. Yeah. It had always been, you know, I heard a lot from my family, you know, just stop. Go to counseling, you know, go to AA meetings, just hop into a room. And that was so terrifying for me because I hated getting lecture time. I still don't like it, you know, getting, you know, getting lecture, getting talk down to. You're talking at me. You're not talking to me. And that's what it really felt like. You know, my older roommate had kind of said, you know, and they were right at the end of the day. What they were saying was true, but it was the way that I was taking it. And I was like, you know, like saying, oh, I was crazy once like you. You know, I had a crazy 20s. It's like, no, I don't think you understand how much I am truly drinking and how much I've probably already wrecked my body. Or saying, you know, why don't you just stop? If I had known, if I could do that, I wouldn't be here. And I don't know why I can't stop either. But it's the sense of the person had actually said, and he was also in the program as well.

21:35I thought that was the first phone call. So that kind of helped a little bit, like he understands a little bit. But they've genuine question of, why don't you want to stop drinking? One, he was genuinely wanting to know. And even though he knew I didn't have an answer, he was generally someone asking how I felt. But two, it felt like he didn't need an answer to that question because he had been asked that same question himself. And he knew I didn't have an answer because he didn't have an answer. When did you start feeling like, okay, I'm in Florida. When did you start feeling like, okay, I made the right move? And this is my life now. And I can do this. I would say it went up and down. I went to detox. I went to residential and then I came to you guys, obviously. And I would say through all three of those instances, there were times where my confidence was that we could not confidence wavered in that this was the best decision to come down to Florida

22:38or to stay in Florida specifically. But I would say the first moment that it really happened was like third, fourth day in the detox. And I started talking to people and just how many people had come from all over different parts of the United States to come down here and get better. And I really thought again, I wasn't that bad. I was, but in my mind, I wasn't as bad as someone who's livers failing or something like that. And to hear all these stories of people who were going through similar problems that I was, people as young as me, people younger than me, and to see how much hope they had, how much faith they had, this would work. Like this was their last chance. That's really when I said this was a good decision to make. And also when I talked to my stepmother for the first time, obviously when you get into detox, there's like a blackout period. You can't talk to anybody for like, good three days.

23:38She had gone from not supporting the decision to, you sound a lot better. It was the first thing I heard from her on the phone, but you sounded a lot better. That almost made me completely break down in my therapist's office. I didn't think I sounded that bad on the phone. Obviously. But to hear that from my own stepmother, a person I consider my mother, you know, that cemented in my position. If I sound better now, how much better am I going to sound six months down the road? A year down the road, five years down the road. I have to stick with this. I made a good decision coming down here. I may not like every part of it. It may be really easy sometimes. It may be really hard sometimes. But I have to stick with this decision because it was a good one. Yeah. And so you've been down here almost six months now, right? Over six months. Over six months. February, you came down.

24:39So February, March, April, May, June, July. So yeah. And so, a couple more things. What in terms of obviously the listeners know I'm big on community, right? How impactful has community been for you in your recovery journey up to this point? Oh, immensely. There was a time period. As I said earlier, it wavered and faltered by faith in my decision. There was a time period where I was here where I wanted to leave. I wanted to go back home to St. Louis. I wanted to go back to my apartment, back to my job. I just got out of the hospital. So I had an infected wisdom tooth that got down to my... Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. Down to my jawbone. And my whole face is swelled up right here. So I had to go into the hospital for like five days. It's still a scar over here on my neck. And in the hospital, obviously, you guys weren't around.

25:39You guys were busy doing all the other things. You guys just come to visit. But I had more contact with people back home. And some of the people back home were not very supportive of the decision that I was making. And so there was all the... The decision of you staying here. Staying here, yes. Okay. So there's a lot of people saying, well, come down and pick you up. My brother was like, well, give you a plane ticket. And I bought into it. Now, obviously, they had no bad intentions. They wanted me to stay sober. They just didn't want me to stay in Florida. So I bought into it. And I came into group one day, one of our group therapy sessions. And I just said, I'm leaving. As soon as I go for my follow up with the oral surgeon who fixed my neck, I'm leaving. As soon as I hear from him that it's all good, I'm out here. I'm getting a plane ticket or I'm getting picked up on the weekend. And I had job opportunities waiting for... I had all this planned out, even though barely any of it was planned out, who knows what would have happened. I know I probably wouldn't be sober if I had left. And one of my peers literally just said, why don't you wait it out a week?

26:39Why don't you think about it? And then someone else, and one of the few people I had not communicated with while in the hospital was my stepmother. And one of my peers looked at me and said, she's gone through a lot. I'll just say that in the last year, you know, immense loss. And now with me being in treatment was another thing that she had to deal with. One of my big reasons was I need to be there with her. I need to take care of my stepmother. She has nobody else. And one of my peers looked at me and said, do you think she'd rather you be here and sober than up there with her and suffering? I never would have gotten that if I had been by myself. You know, in early society, for me at least, I still was lying to myself. You know, in the first two months, I was still lying to myself, telling myself everything was good. Everything's different now. I have some tools. I can work through this. I can control it a little bit better. And if I had been by myself or not communicated with my community or not been a part of my community,

27:41I wouldn't have stayed. And honestly, I thank those two people every day for keeping me down here. Just one small sentence changed my entire trajectory of that whole rest of my journey here. Now I'm staying in Florida permanently. And I think that's the best decision for me. Yeah. The cool thing about that is that it wasn't your therapist that changed your mind. It wasn't one of us. It wasn't a staff member. You know, it was, it was your peers. You know, it was the people, people that you were surrounded with. And I say it all the time. One of the most impactful things that somebody can have in early sobriety is the people that they surround themselves with. Arguably it's the most important in my opinion. It's more important than how many meetings you go to. It's more important than how many steps you've worked. It's, you know, it's putting yourself around people that are good people that, you know, now the asterisk with that is,

28:45okay, you could surround yourself with a bunch of knuckleheads and you're going to end up a knucklehead. But the people that genuinely care and want to see you do well and have done well themselves, you put yourself in the middle of that and organically most of the time it rubs off on you, you know. And that's why I hear it rock. I mean, we don't, you know, of course, we'll bring people in that, you know, we'll give just about anybody a shot, you know. But the community that we provide and the people that enter into our doors genuinely want to be here, you know, at least maybe not in the very moment, right? Most people don't enter into treatment like, oh my gosh, I'm so glad I'm here. But you put the right people around them and you start to see. I mean, we have, we have situations right now. I mean, there's a guy that's here right now that swore up and down.

29:46He's only coming for 30 days. And I know he ain't going nowhere. Actually, we have a handful of those people right now that are like, I'm only staying for 30 days. Sure, dude, whatever, come for 30 days. I was one of those people. Yeah, you know, and it's like just to keep telling yourself that, you know. But it's the community. It's the people that we surround ourselves with that often change our minds. Oh, yeah, 100%. Like you said, you surround yourself with knuckleheads, you know, turn it into a knucklehead, you know. Just the different, and I think the different views and the different walks of white life we come from, it really forms an opinion like this person might have information that I've never heard before. And you get so attached, you get really attached like, I can safely say this place is like my family. Yeah. I know a lot about the people I live with, and I enjoy being around them, and they enjoy being around me. You miss people when they leave.

30:46We just had a few people go back home and go back to their families. I miss them very dearly. Like I just lost a very close friend, you know. When realistically, we'd only know each other five months, but that's how close we get, especially with the group therapy sessions that you guys run here, which I think are amazing by the way. I didn't have that my first sober living. You know, we didn't do stuff like that. You grow very close to each other, because you see each other every day, we get to be vulnerable with each other. You know, there's people here that know more about me than some friends that I've had for years in St. Louis. You know, you guys know more about me than some things my family knows. And that's the beauty of this community. And it is, I think it starts with the big thing of just the common thing between all of us. We want help. I need help, and I can't do it alone. I need your help. And you might need my help for something that I never thought that I could give you help for.

31:49And that's the beauty. That really is the peer beauty of it. Yeah. And the opportunity that comes, I mean, it's, you know, you set yourself up for, and I'm telling you, your situation is very simple. You beat me to the punch. Like you're 24, I ended up down here at 26. You know, and I'm 42 now, you know, and trust me when I tell you, it ticks by pretty quick, you know. And you know, married three kids, you know, I get to do this and, you know, work with people like you and stuff like that. I mean, this is not work for me at all. You know, this is, I get to do what I love and enjoy and that's going to be in the cards for you. You know, and it's just like, it's hard to explain. And it really is oftentimes people rob themselves of that opportunity. You know, I got to get back home. Oh, I got to get back to St. Louis. My stepmom needs me.

32:49No, she doesn't. She'll be fine. Yeah. You know, she'll be okay. And I mean, we've seen people that they've had to forego their children for a year, you know, because they genuinely know I have to do this for myself. I'm of service to nobody. If I don't take care of myself first, and if that means I got to stay down here for six months, a year, so be it. I got to do it, you know, and there's nothing, you know, there's the saying anything you put in front of your recovery, you will lose. Oh, yeah. You know, and that's, that's, it's true. It is. And we say it kind of half tongue and cheek a lot of times, but even thinking about that, it's. Anything I put ahead of myself, I will lose. Really not even necessarily my recovery. Like listen, selfish and self-settiness, I tell people all the time when they walk into these doors, and I don't know if I told this to you or not, but, you know, this is the most selfish time of your life.

34:00It is. When you walk into these doors and you're underneath our care and you're in this community and we're here to help you and you will listen to our help. And this is the most selfish time of your life. And this is all about you, nothing more, nothing less, it's all about you. Because at some point, it's all about everybody else. Yeah. You know, it's your selfish and self-centered for a period of time so you can be self-less to others. You know, be the person that you're supposed to be and show up and do this. And that's the trajectory that you're on. So you're employed now, you're gainfully employed, work in and doing all the stuff, you know. Yeah. And to touch on what you said, like anything I put ahead of myself, I will lose. I had a great facilitator at my residential. And I've heard this plenty of times, you know, he would look at parents and say, you know, do you love your kids? You know, and we're all freshly new in there. And they're like, yeah, of course I love my kids. And he's like, no, you don't. He'd be like, because you would have quit drinking.

35:00And he said, this is the time to learn, to love yourself, to care about yourself, so that you can start caring and loving for them. Because if I can't love myself, I can't give anybody else. You know, something that's repeated I rock here a lot is you can't pour from an empty cup. I had no love for myself. I hated myself to a deep degree. If I try to love somebody else, I'm not even going to know how to do it. And all I'm going to be is either distant, awkward, or hateful. You know, and that's, then I'll lose that too. And it's just another thing that I can throw on the pile of these preconceived notions that I have in my head. Love is conditional. Everybody I love leaves me. I'm never good enough for anybody. And that doesn't help anything. Whereas if I take the time for myself, and I'm selfish about this, I can learn to love myself. And then when I go back, like speaking to my son mother, when I do finally go back and see her,

36:00I'll be a better man for it. And I'll be the person that she does need. Not the person that I thought she needed. You know, that's the beauty of it. Like once I learn to love myself, it radiates almost like a light. I can love others truthfully. I can give support where support is needed. I can give help when help is needed. Versus where I was in January, I couldn't help anybody. I couldn't even help myself. How was I ever supposed to give anyone anything that I couldn't give to myself? I mean, it doesn't get anymore. Yeah, I mean, you're 100% right. Well, dude, I think you exemplify what recovery is. You know, this is, you've done phenomenal. You've taken every suggestion. You've listened. You've participated. You know, when people come in, like use this as for listeners and some use this as a reference

37:04of this is what recovery and treatment is supposed to do for somebody. You know, and I know you're going to crush it. You know, you got, and you're not going anywhere. You're going into our sober living and stuff. And so I know we'll stay in contact. But so the last thing I want you to look at that camera right there, and I want you to talk to the family member, the loved one, that has a son, that has a daughter, that they don't know what to do, like give them some words of encouragement, some words of love, like, you know, from your perspective, what should they do? Truthfully, contact research, a lot of research. Find a good place for them to go. They're not going to want to go. I didn't want to go. I didn't believe anything anyone said to me. But once I was there, once I was given the opportunity, shown the true breath of what could happen to me and what could be accomplished, slowly came to realize that it was the best decision for me.

38:07They're not going to be happy. But they're going to be happy in the future. And the future of them is going to thank you. It's not easy. It wasn't easy for me. And you can't think that you're pushing them or being aggressive, or that there's any loss of love. There is. It's probably the best thing you can do for them. That's love. Love is getting them help. So do your research. Find a really good place. I highly recommend rock. And when they come out, and they're a better person for it, they'll thank you. Yeah. It's like an infomercial for it. That's perfect. Anywhere, whether it's here or anywhere else, you know. I love what you said there. Get them in somewhere. Cool man. Well, I appreciate you coming on. And we're going to get this out to the masses.

39:09And you take care of yourself. Thank you so much. Thanks, Ethan. All right.