On today s episode of The Megyn Kelly Show: Donald Trump refuses to attend the Republican Debates, Joe Biden is forced to go to Maui to survey the damage from the devastating wildfires that have ravaged the Hawaiian islands, and more.
00:05:14.000And and for the president to say no comment and then to not even be able to remember the name of it, then to go today after FEMA gave almost no aid.
00:05:48.020People were giving out water and supplies and food.
00:05:50.920And it really showed their true commitment that they have towards one another as a community and not reliant on some, let's face it, a president who leaned on his empathic, you know, lunch bucket Joe.
00:06:05.500And back in 1988, I was a Joe Biden supporter back in.
00:06:08.840I was two years out of college and it was like Dukakis and Biden.
00:06:12.760And I was a Democrat back then, because what's the old saying?
00:06:15.380If you're not a Democrat or liberal in your 20s, you have no heart.
00:06:18.140If you're not a conservative by your 40s, you have no brain.
00:06:21.620And back then, I thought he was, you know, the bee's knees.
00:06:24.360And since then, I'm pretty disgusted at the way he's been as both president and anything else.
00:06:33.560It's really amazing because he, you know, he does run on, you know, this president who's so, you know, kind and he understands family and he loves, you know, people.
00:06:42.440That's like why we put him in there and he'll all be this empathetic guy.
00:06:45.880And then, you know, he acted like it was somebody going up to George Clooney, asking him about some sex scandal at the Oscars.
00:06:54.060No comment. No comment. No, you're the president.
00:06:57.160You're the president of the United States.
00:06:58.260We're asking you to comment on the suffering and devastation that's happened in one of America's treasures, this inside Maui.
00:07:05.680And he couldn't be bothered to say two words like he couldn't think of anything to say off the top of his head.
00:07:11.860Like, my heart goes out to the people who are suffering.
00:07:13.980I've got the government, FEMA, looking into it.
00:07:58.280And unless it's in that teleprompter, you know, we're stuck with the real Joe Biden, who is not caring, who doesn't give a damn about what's happening from the looks of it.
00:08:08.860The president's role is largely symbolic.
00:08:11.340And these are one of the symbolic instances that we need to show care and compassion.
00:08:15.140This is I mean, no one expects him to go there and help rebuild houses or do anything like that.
00:08:20.320He's no he's no Jimmy Carter, right, with habitats for humanity.
00:08:23.240But at least at least show a care and compassion.
00:08:27.300That's what the people needed to hear, that they were it was just disgusting, the response.
00:08:32.320And, you know, his lack of compassion came out last week when some of the wounded vets from the pullout in Afghanistan were criticizing his lack of compassion.
00:08:40.380Every time he tries to put on his compassion hat, he starts self-referring to some of his own crisis.
00:08:47.160I mean, even the death of Bo Biden, he confabulates how Bo Biden has died.
00:08:51.560I've got a my closest family members right now is struggling with cancer and it's a horrible illness.
00:08:56.620But it wasn't dying in Iraq, which he's used as a way to kind of play up his compassion bona fides.
00:09:08.300And it's it's quite honestly, it's it's the most disgusting thing I've seen in terms of many issues that have bothered me about this president and the corruption that we're now seeing as well.
00:09:18.080Well, that's the thing. So I like Charles C.W. is a C.W. Cook, who I love at National Review.
00:09:23.200Always. He's a libertarian. He's a conservative. He's got a strong libertarian strain.
00:09:27.060And he says, I don't want my president to be a comforter in chief.
00:09:30.240I want him to do as little as possible. I want him to kind of disappear.
00:09:33.600And I get that. I actually share in that in many ways.
00:09:37.360But when you've got the president, United States sunning himself on the beach and releasing topless photos while one hundred and eleven people are dead, including children fleeing from the flames into the ocean with no one there to help, it might be appropriate to at least call attention to it.
00:09:54.920When handed the microphone and asked specifically to say something, it just just call attention to it, if nothing else, so that people understand their suffering, they can do a GoFundMe, they can do whatever it is, you know, send prayers.
00:10:07.720No comment is not an acceptable answer from the commander in chief under those circumstances.
00:10:14.880Right. It goes contrary to the narrative that had always historically been that the Democratic ethos was for the little guy, the working guy that they cared.
00:10:23.040And the Republicans were the big corporate, you know, the the overlords who all cared about corporate greed and money.
00:10:30.180And and, you know, over the evolution of the last 20 to 30 or 40 years of my adult life, that's those roles have been reversed.
00:10:36.880It seems that the Democratic Party right now, you know, as evidenced by the current president, just as could care less.
00:10:45.780And, you know, it was just hard talking to people that were there, still there struggling.
00:10:49.360It's, you know, say what you want about George W. Bush.
00:10:52.760But when 9-11 happened, he was there with that bullhorn.
00:11:02.640That was critical for the psychology of our nation, for the emotional well-being of our nation to just symbolically be there and show support.
00:11:09.460And we're getting the opposite of that now.
00:11:12.500Now, once again, according to the AP, Joe Biden was asked to get more specific in advance of this trip about what his messaging was going to be once he hit the ground in Maui.
00:11:22.980And he did, I think, what you just accused him of doing.
00:11:27.360He gave a statement that began, I know how profoundly loss can impact a family and a community.
00:11:33.920And I know nothing can replace the loss of life.
00:11:36.120Maybe it was generic, but knowing Biden's history, that sounds more like, trust me, I know, back to me, back to my son, Beau, who allegedly died in Iraq.
00:11:45.720And I was there to see his flag draped coffin come home.
00:11:49.100None of that's true other than the fact that he did die, Beau Biden, of brain cancer.
00:11:53.620But once again, you know, he thinks empathy is making it about him.
00:11:57.860So we're going to look at him and feel sorry for him, as opposed to the people of Maui and your friend's story.
00:12:30.200He was in recovery long term himself and was a long, long time resident of Lahaina, multi-generations.
00:12:37.220So Juby is part of probably the most famous, well-seen video of this entire tragedy, which is that these families were desperate to escape the flames.
00:12:48.500And the flames, we believe, although it's not officially yet, were caused as a result of the electric company that wasn't taking care of its lines and sparks, they believe, flew and caught grasses on fire.
00:12:57.780And before you knew it, the entire town was burning.
00:13:00.380And so residents had to flee into the ocean.
00:13:03.500And Juby's in this video, which everybody has seen.
00:13:08.120The father handed his son, his young son to Juby, a two-year-old little boy to Juby, who was holding him for two to three hours as they awaited help.
00:13:21.440I mean, were you stunned when you saw your friend and, you know, your associate in the waters?
00:13:26.780Yeah, my co-worker sent me that clip originally, and I've reached out to Juby.
00:13:31.380It was, he was trying to escape in his car, and his car got surrounded by flames.
00:13:35.000And they had to run into, I mean, it's like a horror movie.
00:13:37.520And so they had to run into the ocean.
00:13:38.840And keep in mind, as you could see in that video, this was not the calm Pacific.
00:13:43.300This was, the hurricane didn't quite hit the island directly, but these were really rough waters, turbulent.
00:13:49.380And this family of five from California that he didn't know, these were, they formed a kinship, and the child of two was wrapped around his neck for the two hours.
00:13:58.480But this is what I mean about the Hawaiian soul.
00:14:00.800Juby, you know, my memories of Juby, the many times in my family were in Hawaii, you know, Juby, you know, I had my son.
00:14:24.140And again, this concept of ohana, of like, we're going to help one another.
00:14:27.300And you're hearing now hundreds of stories of locals who are helping other locals right now.
00:14:32.620And they're not waiting for their 744 FEMA check to come in, because it's just too little, too late.
00:14:39.940And it's just disgusting when we're, again, you know, we talk about aid to Ukraine and aid to all sorts of other places.
00:14:48.380But when we have people, and you know, the one thing I could say about Hawaii, you do definitely feel, even though it's part of the United States, it's not part of the lower 48th.
00:14:56.500So Hawaii has always been a little bit off the grid.
00:14:58.820And so they don't have the resources there.
00:15:01.440You know, one of the reasons I didn't move there permanently was, you know, I was there three or four years ago during a pretty bad wildfire where I got separated from my family.
00:15:08.940They were in Lahaina, and I was on the Kihei side of Maui, and the fire tore through the island then.
00:15:15.020And you do have this trapped feeling when you're in Maui and fires break out.
00:15:19.400Unlike California, there's nowhere you can drive to.
00:16:22.440Is one of the reasons is one of the reasons that Joe Biden's one of his biggest pushes as president has been the focus on climate change, green energy.
00:16:34.440The so-called Inflation Reduction Act was all about renewables and so on.
00:16:38.800And while we still have the leftist governor of Hawaii out there trying to say that climate change caused these wildfires, the truth has been emerging thanks to The Wall Street Journal, which is climate change may have been to blame for the Hawaii wildfires.
00:16:56.360But it's because they were obsessively focused on renewables and not taking care of the power lines that were there causing a health hazard.
00:17:26.360There's always going to be incredible things that people do to save lives from the firefighters, from citizens.
00:17:34.720And there's always going to be decisions that are made that I'm sure aren't perfect in the moment.
00:17:41.660OK, so, Nick, here's what actually happened for the people who haven't been paying attention like me.
00:17:46.880I didn't I didn't know this until this this disaster unfolded, but I'm not in charge of the federal government or the Hawaii electric lines.
00:17:53.580A couple of years ago, as you point out, there were bad wildfires in Hawaii.
00:17:57.780And in twenty nineteen, it became very, very clear that they needed to do something about the risks or devastation would follow.
00:18:05.240Hawaii Electric, which manages the power lines, knew of the threat and said it would act.
00:18:09.560Four years later, it's done nothing. It has not acted in particular back in twenty nineteen.
00:18:15.660It knew that its power lines were emitting sparks.
00:18:18.900It knew it needed to take steps, including clearing the highly flammable grasses from around the electric wires.
00:18:27.180This is done regularly in other parts of the country.
00:18:29.640Make sure there's not, you know, tree leaves. Make sure there's not flammable grasses.
00:18:33.460Make sure there's not flammable trees right by the power lines just in case.
00:18:36.960And there they knew that there that sparks sparks are being emitted and they didn't.
00:18:40.920And now it comes out, thanks to the journal, that the reason they weren't doing it is because Hawaiian Electric was focused on renewable energy sources.
00:18:50.380There was a state mandated requirement that they focus on switching over to renewable energy.
00:18:58.580So Hawaiian Electric wasn't entirely the bad guy.
00:19:01.220Thanks to the Democrats policies in Hawaii and on up the federal chain, they had to be focused on renewables and they forgot about the active threat.
00:19:12.040And now we have one hundred and eleven people dead.
00:19:14.720Yeah, they didn't maintain the infrastructure of their poles.
00:19:17.100And they sent information from that night that there were multiple surges that that that have led to multiple fires throughout the island.
00:19:22.700And so they didn't maintain their power lines.
00:19:26.040You mentioned the highly flammable grasses.
00:19:27.900There's been a lot of articles written about those highly flammable grasses have also been an evolution of the change in forestry or land management in Hawaii, which used to be a very agricultural island.
00:19:39.560And since that shifted away from when the indigenous folks and the local folks used to really there were many, many crops throughout Hawaii, and those acted as a protective those crops were not as flammable.
00:19:52.340They weren't these high grasses that were almost like kerosene in a certain way.
00:19:55.600So you switch from an essentially sustainable island that had renewable crops to now a tourist island with big hotels and a lot of grasses that are not the ideal in terms of land management.
00:20:09.920And then you had a power company not maintaining their grid and their power poles.
00:20:14.940And there was a perfect storm, no pun intended, with what happened, a great loss of life.
00:20:20.920And people are not trying to use it for whatever narrative suits them, but the facts are the facts.
00:20:25.140And the people on the island know what happened.
00:20:29.340And it's one thing to be sitting as a politician in the statehouse or in the White House, passing down these policies to make yourself feel good about, oh, I'm saving the earth.
00:21:42.260And then you have folks like Jason Momoa advising people to not visit Maui now.
00:21:47.660And that's the last thing that this community needs.
00:21:49.780You know, it's adding insult to injury to now that you've been through this devastation and the lifeblood of Maui.
00:21:55.360Because there are now the other parts of Maui, the south part of the island, Wailea, Kihei, are functioning.
00:22:01.040You know, and they need, that's where most of the people get their employment and their ability to survive and to buy food.
00:22:07.380So to have, you know, celebrities saying, let the recovery process happen.
00:22:13.460Most Hawaiians are saying, please don't shut down tourism now because, you know, like COVID, right, the last thing you needed was to shut down the industry, the lifeblood of a devastated region.
00:22:25.880And so people are, the locals are saying, please, if you can, support us, help us do whatever you need to.
00:22:31.580But don't forget about us and just ignore us now and think two or three years from now, we'll all be fine.
00:22:36.740You know, it's reminding me of one of the debates we're having on the federal level on presidential politics.
00:22:42.940And that is, I mentioned Tucker in the introduction to our show, when he had a forum with the candidates out in Iowa, minus Trump.
00:22:51.160One of the things he was asking, because he's not a supporter of the war in Ukraine, was, should we really be spending all this money to help the Ukrainians when we have a sieve of a southern border?
00:23:02.440You've got fentanyl, you know, streaming in, killing tens of thousands of young people a year.
00:23:06.740And the response by people like Mike Pence and others, and I understand the response, I understand the response, was we can do both.
00:23:13.940In the Ronald Reagan, you know, vein, we can be strong in our foreign policy and still take care of ourselves domestically.
00:23:21.140OK, that sounds great. I believe we can. I believe we are capable.
00:23:26.340The question is, are we doing it? Are we actually doing it?
00:23:30.000And that I'll toss to the sound bit of a Maui resident on President Biden, who seems to be getting to exactly that.
00:23:37.000Like, it's wonderful that you can say, in theory, we'll do it.
00:23:39.360But what about right now? Why isn't it actually being done? It's SOT 6.
00:23:43.060So why aren't you taking care of what you claim to be in charge of, rather than sending out all these funds and whatever else you guys are sending to Ukraine or anywhere?
00:24:24.240Well, yeah, and I've moved back to New York, a very decidedly blue state.
00:24:28.740And I was just reading last week, you know, the average, you know, we're housing tens of thousands of migrants at a cost of $10,000 per month.
00:24:36.160And, you know, Midtown hotels in Manhattan and various other, you know, everywhere from boutique hotels in Long Island City to dorms in Buffalo, New York, at a huge cost.
00:24:46.080And we're giving $700 per Maui resident for this who just survived this.
00:24:52.900We have no resources to give to our, it's just, it's just, it just speaks to the priorities and to the politics of it.
00:24:59.680The Ukraine war, you know, well, I have my own opinions on that.
00:25:03.200You know, I don't think we're helping the people of Ukraine by enabling a war, a proxy war to essentially try to try to do regime change with Russia.
00:25:13.180And so it's to the detriment to the Ukrainians that we're maintaining a war that, you know, some people, and, you know, one of the people that I think speaks the most eloquently about it was RFK Jr.
00:25:23.800RFK Jr. speaks very eloquently about there was an opportunity for a treaty, for everybody to kind of retreat back to their corners after Putin realized that that war in Ukraine wasn't going to be over in three days.
00:25:35.660But we weren't, we didn't incentivize that.
00:25:39.480We, we, there was an agenda for us to keep that war going.
00:25:42.980And now to the cost of what, 60, $70 billion.
00:25:45.880And even Joe Biden saying a few weeks ago that we're low on munitions ourselves now.
00:25:51.040So we can't walk and chew gum necessarily at the same time because we have finite resources and our resources have been clearly aligned with certain priorities.
00:25:59.620And, and so now when you have natural disasters or other situations, we, we, I don't think we can do both necessarily because we're not, we're not able to at this point.
00:26:09.220Why doesn't he take some of those monies from the inflation reduction act that are now putting signs up all over his bridge and infrastructure projects, um, saying courtesy of Joe Biden and, and divert it to Hawaii.
00:26:22.520You know, why doesn't he, he's so intent on renewables, on getting windmills out there, solar power out to the Hawaiians when it results in disaster because the people responsible for maintaining the power lines are too focused on their solar panels, um, that people die.
00:27:24.080Um, all right, stand by because the whole thing is, is upsetting, but there's a lot to get to go over today.
00:27:29.100And I know, uh, your backstory, we never got to it last time.
00:27:32.060The audience is going to be stunned when they hear how, uh, you sort of, well, came to the job you're doing now.
00:27:39.180It's more with Nicholas straight ahead.
00:27:45.100You are a true expert when it comes to addiction.
00:27:48.200Could be to drugs, could be to alcohol, could be to tech.
00:27:51.960And you're, you know, sort of sounding the alarm on that.
00:27:54.780Can I tell you, I was thinking about it over this weekend because, um, in October, my sister, my older sister, my only sister will have been gone for a year.
00:28:05.000And, um, sorry, she was a recovering addict.
00:28:08.580She got addicted during the opioid crisis to a drug called Ultram, which she was told by her doctor was not addictive.
00:28:16.220And it was one of these opioids that, you know, it, when this was happening in the mid 1990s, a lot of people, even on Oxycontin, if you watch dope sick, um, we're told it's not addictive.
00:28:28.640And before she knew it, she was addicted and she really spent the rest of her life battling that addiction.
00:28:34.560And then just the massive fallout that follows, uh, you know, a good chunk of your life being an active addict.
00:28:42.420I mean, it's just so much sets you back.
00:28:45.800It's very hard to get back even to just stasis, nevermind to then excel and make something out of your life.
00:28:52.800I think about it when I listened to that song by Oliver Anthony, you know, where he talks about how dejected he feels about rich men north of Richmond and how the country sort of keeps a man down.
00:29:04.660And some of the pushback to it was, Oh no, you know, in this country you can do anything.
00:29:43.080Uh, and anyway, I was thinking about you over the weekend because we had a mass set for her at our church, you know, uh, for my sister and I was praying for her and I was thinking about her and I was just thinking,
00:29:52.060you know, how would her life have gone if that hadn't happened to her?
00:29:56.900How would, how would her life have gone if that hadn't come in and just taken over her life, her children's hours, our relationships, anyone who's had an active addict in the family knows what I am talking about.
00:30:09.780It's like having a nuclear bomb go off in your family.
00:30:12.840So this happened to you and you've been devoting your life ever since to trying to help those to whom it's happened and also to help people prevent it from happening to them.
00:30:23.540Let's, let's talk about your backstory, Nick, and how, I mean, how it happened to you, how you, how you found yourself addicted and how bad it got.
00:30:30.980I had a nice guy like me wind up, uh, addicted in, in what I do now.
00:30:36.760Um, well, you kind of mentioned the fact that all families are touched, you know, they say one out of 10 people are predisposed towards having an addictive personality and, and the 30% of families have been touched by addiction.
00:30:48.720So, um, it touches each and every one of us.
00:30:51.460So this is not just something that happens to a certain group.
00:30:56.300You know, that's one thing that I grew to find out.
00:30:58.300Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, and we're, we're so, we're so confused as to how to understand this problem and how to treat it so often.
00:31:10.180I think that we look at this problem of addiction and we look at it so often as a supply side problem and not a demand side problem.
00:31:16.740You know, we talk about fentanyl and coming into the border from Mexico and that's a problem having too much of it, you know, awash in our society.
00:31:23.820But what we're not looking at closely enough is why do we have the demand?
00:31:26.960Why are we so thirsty for losing ourselves in addictive substances, whether it's pharmaceuticals or whether it's alcohol or whether it's digital, it's, it's what, what is our emptiness all about?
00:31:39.040That we're seeking escape and numbing in all the wrong places.
00:31:42.260And so we don't look at that part enough, you know, because we could shut down the border and shut down all the fentanyl, but people have been getting and escaping their pain for a very long period of time.
00:31:51.300Uh, so my backstory, how I landed here, I'm the son of Creek immigrants.
00:31:55.400Um, I was actually, I'm an immigrant myself.
00:31:58.040I was three years old when we came to New York from Greece.
00:32:00.540My father had seen, uh, was 13, 14 years old when the Nazis invaded Northern Greece.
00:32:06.220And, uh, he saw witness, most of the men in his village were murdered and had to hide in the mountains and escape to Greece penniless.
00:32:14.000So my father had seen a lot of horrible things in his life as a young man growing up when he escaped to Athens and, uh, my mother had survived a devastating earthquake.
00:32:22.680Now we're speaking about devastation in Hawaii, but she had a natural disaster on her Island of Cephalonia.
00:32:27.720So my parents had lived a pretty hard life when they emigrated to the U S in the mid 1960s.
00:32:34.540So I was the child of Greek immigrants who had struggled.
00:32:38.540And in that struggle, there was a lot of dysfunction.
00:32:40.920My parents had a lot of love in their hearts, but you don't go through stuff like that and not have some emotional scars.
00:32:47.000And, um, so, you know, I grew up in New York city, good kid, middle-class, lower middle-class background, but I went to the Bronx high school of science.
00:32:57.140I played sports a lot and sort of, I, I overcame, uh, a lot of maybe let's call it that childhood dysfunction, but my parents always instilled a sense in me of get an education and, you know, have a better life.
00:33:09.720They came here to have a better life for, for me.
00:33:12.080So, um, and I did, you know, and, and I've, I've talked and written about this because when people of my parents' generation or the greatest generation, people have seen some real hard things in their lives.
00:33:24.160They, they have a pretty profound sense of meaning and purpose in their lives.
00:33:27.780And the children of those folks sometimes have a little bit more of a struggle because, you know, by the time I landed in college and I went to Cornell upstate New York, I know you're a fan of upstate New York and, um, I've gone to school there as well.
00:33:40.900Um, my wife went to Syracuse, I went to Cornell and, um, I got out of school and it was, I had the quintessential existential crisis early on.
00:33:50.200I didn't know my friends were all going to graduate school.
00:33:52.620I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.
00:33:54.380I had a profound sense of imposter syndrome because I was lower middle class.
00:33:58.500And a lot of my peers were from different backgrounds than I was.
00:34:02.900And so when the opportunity presented itself, I sort of drifted into a career and I was working a corporate job right out of school in 1986.
00:34:11.420And, um, I had the opportunity to work at a nightclub in midtown Manhattan, the Copacabana, the original Copacabana in New York.
00:34:18.520Um, and part of my background as I had been a martial artist, I had a block built in Japanese karate.
00:34:23.740That was one of the big, I did a lot of sports.
00:34:25.600I played basketball, football, track, but I did this, this karate and karate was sort of my gateway into being the doorman at the Copacabana in 1986 when I was, uh, frustrated with my corporate day job.
00:34:40.140It was a way to sort of, um, live almost a double life where I could, you know, kind of live this alternate, this alternate world that was exciting and fun.
00:34:48.520And, uh, eventually I quit the day job and kind of got deeper into the night job.
00:34:53.720And eventually that led into me opening my own restaurant and nightclubs in 1988 in, uh, lower Manhattan.
00:35:02.340And this was sort of this, this was a pretty cool time in New York.
00:35:06.660New York was very exciting at that point.
00:35:08.460There was a downtown New York scene with the art worlds were colliding with, with the music industry.
00:35:15.140And there was, uh, you know, for a middle-class kid from Astoria Queens, which is where I was from, this was a very, uh, seductive world.
00:35:24.380I was in New York magazine as the New York's youngest nightclub owner, and it was intoxicating, uh, literally and metaphorically.
00:35:31.960And eventually I, um, I fell into very bad habits.
00:35:35.940And so within a few short years, I wound up pretty horribly addicted.
00:35:40.660And I had one of these, um, awakenings where I was realizing that I was in this, you know, the New York nightlife world, you know, this is, which still exists today.
00:35:50.320The page six sort of glossy, we had a lot of celebrities would come into, you know, again, I'm 24, 25, 26.
00:35:56.580And we had Tom Cruise and Uma Thurman and John F. Kennedy Jr. were regulars at my, my, my, uh, my night spot downtown.
00:36:04.900And for a kid with humble beginnings, like I had, it was, uh, it was, as I said, intoxicating, but also confusing.
00:36:12.940And by the time I was in my early thirties, it was all spiraling out of control.
00:36:17.440Uh, Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York and he had an anti nightlife task force.
00:36:22.740And, uh, in pretty short order, I was, uh, they, um, I fought the law and the law won.
00:36:27.480They, I had my liquor licenses revoked because the reality was at that point, I was not a very good steward of these businesses
00:36:32.960because I was struggling with my own personal addictive demons.
00:36:36.580And it started with alcohol and cocaine, and eventually it did turn into heroin, which in my entire life,
00:36:44.140I never would have believed that that would have happened.
00:36:46.340Cause I was raised with power parents that taught me about character and integrity.
00:36:51.480And yet somehow I lost myself in this world and what I discovered.
00:36:55.300Um, and so my addiction got so bad after, um, my, my night clubs were shut down in 1995.
00:37:02.960At that point, I was totally rudderless.
00:37:05.160I was now left, uh, without an identity, without a career.
00:37:08.680I had some resources still left, but I was broken spiritually, emotionally, physically,
00:37:14.040and went through a really terrible two or three year period of, um, trying to go in and out of treatment programs to get better.
00:37:20.500I'm sure you can relate with your sister because, um, it's a pretty, it's pretty treacherous waters to navigate,
00:37:26.800you know, going in and out of detoxes and hospitals and trying to figure it out and trying to,
00:37:31.440and that's the terrifying part for most addicts.
00:37:34.360When you try to get better, cause initially a lot of addicts don't want to get better.
00:37:38.500They want to go, they want to go back to when they were able to moderate their usage.
00:37:41.820They want to go back to when it was manageable.
00:37:44.620And I tried to do that for a period of time until I proved to myself that I, I couldn't,
00:37:49.640I couldn't control the addiction anymore.
00:37:51.580And, and then when I really tried to stop and I couldn't, that was the terrifying period.
00:37:55.380And I became convinced at one point that I was just going to just die and implode.