I should have been dead a while ago…

This is a story about being proud of who you are

We want everything

We’re lost.

We want the quick fix, the 4 hour body, the easy money.

We want the solution, without the experience.

The result without the process.

The longer I am in this Industry the more I see this abused.

Those ideas are great,

There is nothing wrong with being healthy, efficient, getting laid, having money and so on…

The more I experience the more I realize that if you are not happy with what you have now, then it really doesn’t matter.   If you get everything you want, you’ll just be the same guy with more stuff.

Our obsession with consumption keeps us from being happy as a plain old average person.

You need to be you first.

That is the fear…being you.

Fake it till you make it, 2 years later you’re still faking it.

********

I have had a blog primarily focused on Pick Up, Seduction and other ‘guy’ stuff.

It is my goal for this year to turn this blog into something different.

I want whatever concept or theme to be told through a story from my life.

For the past 4 years of me teaching in this industry I have always said the road to being good with women is to be yourself better.  I want this blog to be more like that….but using my stories.

This industry is too saturated with dishonesty and a lack of integrity.

I don’t want to have a blog or a business that resembles this ingenuine approach.

This year I want to turn my business into something separate from the other BS out there.

As for now

I just want people to read my blog,

Enjoy it, talk about it,

Pass it on.

To put my above perspectives in context I have included this story about my life.

In order to live I had to change a lot, but stop running from myself and start being able to be proud of who I am first.

This is a story about me.

I am proud of it.

I am proud to have lived it.

If there is one thing that you can take from this I hope it is this.

No matter how bad things get, they can always get better.

I have many turning points in my life; this is one of them.

This is also one of the reasons I preach that you should be yourself.

You have gotta love yourself, before you can have other people love you back.

October of 1994

17 years old

****************

Peace

Euphoria

Nothing, that is what it feels like when it hits you.

Although this time I hadn’t just done heroin.  I had done a whole bunch of other stuff too.

I was supposed to be dead, then these bastards decided to make my heart pump blood again.

They’re bastards cause when you’re high, you don’t want to be woken up…cause whatever wakes you up is has got to be big.

SLAP!!!!

The sound of muffled voices,

someone is saying something…

Someone is yelling

Someone is yelling my name.

Motherfuckers

I am Numb

My whole body is asleep

I am floating

I am somewhere else

Detached

I was passed out, but right now

SLAP!

Nausea

Confusion

I am in that perfect place,

That perfect high

Half awake, but not in reality

1000 angels swimming inside of my veins.

SLAP!

Convulsing

Violence

These people won’t let me go

Eyes open,

Roll right back

Peace again

SLAP!

The chaos and contradiction of reality is fighting its way back

Yelling

Blurry faces

I hate you all

“Can you hear me…he’s waking up”

“Stephen, you need to listen to me”

“Can you answer me, we need to know what you took”

“Leave me the fuck alone…

just let me stay here.”

I can’t move

I can’t talk

I can’t even open my eyes

But this is what I think

When you’re that high you can’t do anything other than sit there.

I wasn’t trying to get high,

I was trying to be dead.

SLAP!

“WHAT DID YOU TAKE!  YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO ME”

Eyes open…

Just let me slip back into euphoria,

Stop with this fucking shit…

Eyes roll back

More yelling,

They keep bringing me back into this bullshit,

Fuck the world

Fuck you, fuck everybody

Just let me sleep

My eyes can’t stay open

Good

They open my eyes, flash a light in them

Then…I feel nothing again.

The yelling, the slapping fade off into the distance.

Back to numb

Back to nothing

Back to beauty

This is love

When the world dies around you

this is peace to me

Eyes open again,

This time its me…

I am dry heaving, they’re making me vomit

I am sitting up in a hospital bed

My stomach is convulsing.

I want to kill them,

I can’t breath.

I need help.

I am awake vomiting up dry air and snot

I’m vomiting out own throat.

I can’t breathe…

More dry heaving.

I am vomiting and coughing out of my mouth and nose.

My stomach is being pumped…

Please stop

I can’t move, I can’t talk

But please stop this

I want to be left alone

It stops

back into euphoria…

I close my eyes again

I go away

The angels come back alive licking my skin

Nothing came up.

It takes over again…

Peace

I was supposed to be dead by now.

The night before the plan was to take as many pills as could fit in my stomach go to sleep and not wake up.  A few days prior I had overdosed on half the amount I had taken this time.

I wake up again

They are yelling again.

I am in a different room now

“You need to urinate in this or we’re giving you a catheter”

The last thing I care about is a catheter.

My bladder is full, PainfulIy full

I can’t urinate…I can’t do anything.   I can’t keep my eyes open.

I get the catheter.

I pass out again.

I wake up, this time they have me sitting up.

They have a cup of this black liquid in front of my face.

“Drink it, swallow it all”

They pour the liquid in my mouth and it runs right down my face.

They are grabbing me again

They’re opening my mouth

I can’t breath again.

They’re shoving something down my throat.

This hurts

You panic

In a moment

You pray

You don’t believe in god but this time you mean it.  Anything to make this stop.

You swear you will never do this again

My stomach fills up.

They pull a tube out from my throat.

It is dripping with that black stuff.

I am dry heaving again.

They are yelling at me not to throw up.

I listen to them this time.

I don’t want that thing shoved down my throat again.

I relax, my body calms down.   I pass out again.

I don’t know how much time passes.

I wake up sitting on a toilet seat on top of a trashcan.

I am defecating.

The nurses are cleaning the hospital bed next to me that I was laying in.

I am so high I don’t give a fuck.  You don’t have any dignity when you’re that high.  You just want to be high.

At least they’re cleaning up after me.

I had taken

-25 Vicodins

-10 Valiums

-15 Barbiturates

-and then the last bit of heroin I had

The pills take a while to hit you.  You got about 5 mins before you start to feel anything, of course you do the rest of your dope.

I remember passing out.

I remember smiling,

It wasn’t a big deal.   The narcotics help you not care.  I was happy to go.

I remember feeling the first high, and then I remember feeling it consume my body as I laid down on the ground.

It felt good.

A few days before when I had overdosed, I took 20 pills less than I did this time.

I was sure I would be gone.

Pills are easy, nothing like cutting yourself or hanging…jumping off a building.

Pills are simple and painless.  You simply slip away.

The problem is I didn’t slip away.   I didn’t die, or at least stay dead.

By the time I had gotten to the hospital it was about 8-10 hours later.

The pills had passed through my stomach and went further down my digestive track.

When they pumped my stomach nothing came out.

Whenever you do opiates is makes it relaxes many of your muscles.  For a few hours it can be nearly impossible to take a piss.  But for days you cannot take a shit.  Heroin is cousin of Imodium, they make the same thing happen.

Because nothing was in my stomach, the pills had passed through

They gave me charcoal because of this.   First they tried to make me drink it.  I was too high to hold anything in my mouth.

The reason why they give you the charcoal is so that the drugs that did make it into your intestines can get absorbed in the charcoal rather than your body.

When you can’t drink it

They open up your mouth and shove a tube down your esophagus and pump you full of the charcoal mixed with water.

This not only hurts, but it makes you panic.   Anything that makes you panic when your high is the another sort of torture all together.

I had a sore throat for a week and shit back for about 10 days.

I was out for 6 or 7 hours before my mom found me.

That part I don’t’ remember at all.

But apparently she threw me in the shower, then realized I was dying.

Rather than call an ambulance she called my dad back from work and he picked me up.

He put me in his car and drove me to an emergency room.

I figured the pills had about 8-10 hours before they gave me the charcoal.

When you finally wake up from something like that 4 days later you hurt.

You hurt bad.

The blood in your veins no longer has angles swimming through them…it has venom

You feel completely toxic.

Imagine your worst hangover, but worse, much worse, like your veins are filled with burning rubber.  You feel this inside and out.  Every functioning part of your body is in pain.  At this point you can feel death, you can feel how close you were.  You pray to go back to it.

This lasts for a week.

You are broken.

You’re desperate, you’re easily humbled…

I did not see god or any white light…I really wish I did.

I don’t think I would remember if I did.

I was in that hospital for a week.

I had social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, and drug specialists talking to me constantly.

My parents never visited me

It seemed like there were people constantly in and out of my room talking to me.  They ran had all sorts of different questions for me.

I had no concept of anything.

I could hardly talk,

I couldn’t think…

I was in pain

I just wanted to sleep.

I didn’t want all these people talking to me.

I didn’t want anything.

I just wanted to stop hurting.

My body was in pain,

I just wanted everything to stop.

There is nothing like desperation.

There is nothing like that sort of self-destruction,

The reality of self-hatred

When you’re living in it.

When you’re at the bottom everything looks good when you look up.

Your envy comes easy

Desperation is a gift

Days went in and out…I had no concept of how long I had been in that room.

I mainly slept.

A lady that had come in had convinced me I should go to a long-term treatment center.   She had told me my parents were adamant about it.

I just wanted to be away from them.

I was convinced wasn’t a drug addict.  I just wanted to be away from my parents.

To me I was just a kid that had a bad wrap.  Shitty parents, anger, frustration, isolation…I wasn’t a drug addict.

I wasn’t living under a bridge.   I had clothes.  I was smart.

I didn’t do the hard stuff, just smack (heroin) every once and a while.  I never did anything like cocaine or speed.  I hardly ever shot up heroin; I smoked it most of the time.  My friend told me I couldn’t get addicted smoking it.

I had only drank 3 or 4 beers in my entire life.

I had smoked pot, but so what.  Who doesn’t smoke pot?

I wasn’t like the people you saw in anti-drug commercials, or in movies.

I was depressed.

Hated myself

Hated my parents

I didn’t have friends, I didn’t have girls

I just wanted to die.

I’d rather keep quiet,

Shut the world out, and hold it all inside me.

Fuck everyone else…

I would bury it.

Fuck the world, there was no place for me in it.

You all could die

I kill you all

It doesn’t matter how angry you are

When you’re broken you’re broken.

You can only hate so much when you’re in pain.  You can hate, but you cry for help, because you need it.

I kill you, but help me, please help me…

I am sorry, I will change, whatever you say, just help me.

Save me

I hurt.

After a week when I was functioning

I could walk,

I could string a few words together.

I could understand what people were saying to me without passing out.

There was still a thick fog around me, but little bit and pieces made it through to me.

That is when my life changed

A man named Mike came in my ICU room

Mike was in a suit

He didn’t look like he was from the hospital

He didn’t look like a social worker or psychologist.

He said,

“Hey you must be Steve.  My name’s Mike”

I nodded.

Mike was different, he was relaxed.

Everyone else who came in was more official, too straight laced.

He was in his 40’s he was in a suit, but there was something real about him.

He leaned against the wall and asked carefree smile on his face, “So what’d you do?”

This was the difference, he wasn’t judging, or didn’t have some bullshit emotion or sympathy to him.  In short, Mike just seemed cool.

I cut through the fog and said, “I took a bunch of pills”

‘You were trying to kill yourself, cause if you fucked up then you’re one lousy drug addict?”

I muttered back, “I was trying to kill myself”

Mike replied nonchalantly , “So what did you take?”

He leaned against the doorway, still relaxed, still carefree…it was like he was simply curious.

“25 Vicodin, 5 Valium, 15 Barbiturates and the rest or the heroin I had.” I had gone over it with all the shrinks and social workers so many times in the past week.   When I would tell them they had this look of concern on their faces.  When I told Mike it sort of made him laugh.

“Wow, you should have died.  You didn’t want to waste the H?  I like that.  Sounds like something I would do.  You should have been able to walk through fire after that.”

Mike got more comfortable,    “I never really did downers, unless I was too high off cocaine.  Otherwise I would be up for too long, so sometimes I would take a few valium so I could sleep after staying up a few days.”

“You used to do cocaine?” It still hurt to talk from the tube being shoved down my throat.

“I used to do a lot of a lot of things, but it always seemed to go back to cocaine.  When you’re an addict you find yourself doing all sorts of drugs and all sorts of things at some point.”

“I am not a drug addict, I am depressed”, I told him in my weak voice.

“You really think there is a difference?  They’re kind of the same, being a drug addict and being depressed?”

I didn’t understand and he could tell…

Mike continued,

“There was a long time before I started using hardcore that I was just depressed too.  At first I was getting high cause it felt better than being depressed.  Then I had to get high just to feel normal.  After that it gets bad.”

“I am just depressed, I was trying to kill myself.  I don’t want to talk about the drugs. I don’t know what is wrong with me.  I used to not be like this.”

My whole life I was used to fighting, arguing…who was right and who was wrong.

There is a reality that is too great when you are confronted with the truth.

It moves things within you.   You can’t hide when truth and compassion are confronting you.

Mike said, “What do you mean?”

I began to cry, the façade could not hold in my isolation and sadness any longer.

“I don’t know, I used to be a good at school, I used to be able to talk.  Make friends, I could go to class and not even study and be fine.  Now I don’t really have anything. I can’t even finish a sentence when people talk to me.   I can’t write, I can’t read… I was played sports, people liked me and now I don’t even know who my friends are.”

It was pure emotion coming out.  It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t a reaction.  It was a relief like a cut that was finally able to bleed.

Mike was still standing near the doorway leaning up against the wall.

He just stood their comfortably.  He didn’t feel sorry for me, he understood.  All of a sudden I was a vulnerable scared kid.  It didn’t matter what I had seen, what excuses I had, none of that mattered.  I just felt.

I could bring my body to the point of collapse and still hold on to the hurt I wanted no one to see, but now I was naked.  The emotions had to come out.  I felt the grace of humanity in that moment.  The relief of loss, submission.

It was the fight that kept my pain alive.

When you hurt, when you want that pain to be comforted but sometimes it just needs to come out.

Mike knew this.

The difference with someone like Mike and a counselor or shrink is that Mike knew that I had to feel this, probably because he knew that feeling too.

Mike began to speak again

“When I was 25 I was living in my mom’s basement, thinking the same stuff you’re telling me.   Something in me was broken.  Something was wrong that couldn’t be fixed. I spent night after night looking down the barrel of a gun. The more I isolated, the more I dove deeper into the addiction.   The more it made sense to pull that trigger. See for me, it wasn’t always the drugs I did, it was the way I lived my life.

That way I lived my life is the addiction, and it wants to kill me, the cocaine was just a symptom of it.   The cocaine was just the thing that made that addiction come to the surface and push me to desperation.”

It was the first time in my life that someone made sense to me.  They seemed like they were normal.  It seemed like they were functioning and he knew my pain more than I knew it.  I just felt it, it confused me.

“You used to really wanted to kill yourself” I asked.

Mike replied, “Everyday….”

“When you’re banging dope just to feel normal your life doesn’t resemble life anymore.  It is pretty easy to not care about anything.   The problem is that I always think I am different.  I always think I am alone… unique. When I hear your story I realize once again I am the same.  Just an addict. We might have different stories but we both have the same disease.   You want to call it depression, and I call it being an addict.”

“I am not a drug addict” I still wanted to fight.

Mike calmly replied

“So what is a drug addict?”

“I don’t know someone who can’t stop doing drugs” I said

“I am not saying you an addict, that is for you to decide.

But I know plenty of drug addicts that may not be what you think an addict is.

I never lived under a bridge or anything like that.

I know people that have, but that is not what makes you a drug addict.

What makes you an addict is that you need something outside of yourself to make you feel better.  It isn’t always a drug, it’s a disease that leads you to the drugs.   It is being a slave to obsession and compulsion, always looking for something other than yourself to make you feel something other than yourself.”

I started to listen, Mike was making sense to me.

“You say you’re depressed but I think there might be more to it.

Sometimes when you are so depressed, you can’t think, you can’t talk, it seems like nothing works.

You’re looking at life through a pair of dirty glasses, you need a new pair of glasses.

You’re so busy trying to tell me you’re not a drug addict while you’re laying half dead in a hospital bed that you’re not even willing to hear something that might help you.”

I remained silent.

My hate and anger has nowhere to go

Even when I am defeated I want to fight

Mike continued,

“You’re depressed, and you OD’d.  That sounds pretty drug addict to me.  In fact you’re lucky, cause if you tried to kill yourself with something other than drugs you probably wouldn’t get to know the things out there that can help you.”

“So if you were like that, how did you change?”

“If you’re like me you only change when you’re in enough pain, and I think you might be willing to try something different.”

There is a reality that you can’t talk back to…

Mike continued  “I know your dad.  He knows I am a recovering addict.   Your parents want you to go to a rehab, so you are going to go to a rehab.   They want to send you to a 2-year facility and I am not sure you need that.   I asked your dad if I could talk to you.  They will want you to got to a treatment center, but I think one that is a bit shorter and put you into a program of recovery might help you.”

I immediately started to distrust Mike and he picked up on it.

“Look I am not here for them.  I know your dad because in our work we cross paths.  He told me what happened to you and I asked him what he was going to do. Why I am really here because I used to be just like you, and someone did this for me, and I am not that way anymore.”

I replied,

“But my problem isn’t drugs, I am depressed.”

Mike asked, “Ok you’re not a drug addict, but let me ask you, what is it that you want?”

“I just want to be happy, I don’t want to be like this”

Mike continued, “What if I told you that if you what I did you could be happy, would you do it then?  What if I told you I said the same shit as you, pushing everything  away, and didn’t think anything would work, and I learned how to be happy.  Forget about being a drug addict,  if you do these things that I did you could be happy.”

I paused to think

Mike continued, “The insanity of it all is you just want to say no just to say no.  I mean look at you, you have nothing right now and you still want to hold on to it.  Half dead and you still want to fight something trying to help you. You’re going to have to go to a rehab either way.   But if you want to be happy that’s easy.   I have been there, I have sat in that same bed feeling like the same pile of shit you feel like now, and I would like to think I am a pretty happy guy.”

I knew at this point Mike was right.

The whole time I had been talking to shrinks and social workers but Mike was different.  He spoke my language.

I told Mike I would do the shorter treatment center, and give recovery a try.

He said he would talk to my dad and would try and convince him to send me to a shorter facility.

Before Mike left I asked him…

“Do you think I will have brain damage from all of this?”

“Well, I am not a doctor, but I have been clean for 16 years and I still got some problems from my drug use.  I know people who were worse off than you are now and they get by just fine.  If not you can learn to live with it…like you said you want to be happy, right now you have everything it takes to be happy.  You just have to be willing.”

During that hospital stay no one other than my brother visited me.

Mike talked to my dad and I entered that month long in patient treatment center, with a 6 month aftercare.

There I had a counselor named Duane that was the first counselor that actually helped me.   Duane changed my life.

Prior to Duane I had been to over 20 professionals in within the field of psychology that did nothing for me.   Duane was different, he was like Mike, he was also an addict, from an abused home and spoke my language.

My first week in treatment my family walked out on the family group.   I was on my own after that.   Duane and the other counselors made me know that.   Although Mike was the first drug addict that was able to open my mind, Duane I owe my life to, maybe one day I will write about him.

I ran into Mike about a month or so after I had seen him in the hospital.  I was more coherent then and able bodied.  I was so excited to talk to him and tell him how important him talking to me was.

When I told him this he just replied,

“I am glad you made it…if you stick around you will know you helped me more than I helped you.” Gave me a hug, smiled and I never saw him again.

I stayed clean for nearly 3 years.  In that time I had to deal with some of the hardest things in my life.   I am glad I was clean during it.

My first girlfriend being kidnapped and raped,

friends getting killed,

friends overdosing…

Those things fucked me up, everything fucked me up.  Those things were real, they are some of the things I value most about myself today.

When I was 20 I went back to trying it all again.  This time no hard stuff, just drinking.  All those things Mike told me about from his life that I couldn’t relate with eventually happened to me.   Just alcohol turned into everything else…no more hard stuff.  That was just a matter of time.   My life reached a whole new level of dysfunction.

It wasn’t till later that I cleaned up again.

For a few years after ODing I had a lot of trouble speaking, writing and reading.   Still 16 years later I leave words out, or mix things up within sentence structures, and have a lot of trouble writing.  If you watch my speeches you will notice I leave words out, and often times don’t fully pronounce things.

If you read what I write you know I make a lot of errors and proof reading is almost impossible for me to do.

I have also put my body through more trauma after I started using again.  I believe I did the most damage from the above incident, when I was 17 but the years of getting wasted and fucked up later on didn’t help.

Today I speak at least once a week at treatment centers doing something similar as Mike.   Speaking, answering phone and many other recovery related things are much more important than anything I do in the PUA/Seduction Industry.

I know what Mike meant when he saw me again and told me I helped him more than he helped me.

The reason why I bring this all up is to make one long point.

You need to be proud of who you are.

Within this industry and beyond it teaches you to not be yourself.

I hate this.  This is wrong.

Before I was able to get the ‘art’ down of meeting a woman, I had bigger things to deal with.   I knew that the more I hid from myself the more that would come out in things like relationship, sex and friendships.

Nobody teaches you how to be you.  Nobody teaches you how to be yourself.

Nobody teaches you to be proud of yourself.

This is my life.  I am proud of it.

In no way I am I ashamed of it.

People always tell me I shouldn’t bring this stuff up.

I bring this up to everyone I meet, especially the women I meet.

Why,  because honesty is value.

Humanity connects.  Humanity is organic.

It is not a routine or a gimmick.

We forget how simple it all is.

I want to connect with people in the way that Mike connected with me.   I don’t want to have to make something up to have people like me.

I don’t need to chase an image or an identity to define myself.   I don’t want the results of that either.

The Sexual Life means that you can be who you are and be honest.  It means that you care more about the experiences that you have with people, than a result.

You need to respect yourself and your sexuality.

Sex is not defined by a hot chick at club, or what you tell your friends, but an experience you have.

In order to have good experiences, you need to be able to be honest.

You need to have pride in who you are.

You have got to love yourself before you can love someone else.

Today my life is great.

I still have bad days, I am not impervious to reality… shit still happens.

I don’t need a quick fix, a product, an ideal to define me.

I don’t need to ‘own the club’, obsess about what other people think of me

Or define myself by an empty set of values.

I need to first just be me.

If I am not, then I am just the same guy with a bunch of extra crap

Just being who I am is a lot better than being who I might want to be.

No big deals…