Human Up Season 1 Ep 15: Ti King on Addiction and Recovery in the Family

This is a transcript of Human Up Podcast Season 1, Episode 15 with Ti King, which you can watch and listen to here:

Dave: Hello and welcome to the Human Up Podcast. I'm your host, Dave Marlon, and I'm honored to spend the next hour with Ti King. Welcome, Ti.

Ti: Hey, Dave. Thank you so much for having me.

Dave: Thanks for being here. You do a lot of things. Why don't you start by framing, I know that you're an experienced podcaster. I know you know what recovery is.

Ti: Yeah.

Dave: Tell me some more.

Ti: Well, I guess the most interesting thing, especially in your arena here, is that, so I do a lot of things in the podcasting industry. I'm on the board of Governors for the Podcast Academy. I've just had a full day of meetings, so I'm like, I've been talking about this all day long. And so if you know about the academy behind filmmaking that has the Emmys, the Academy Awards, so everybody goes up, they think the academy, so the podcast industry also has that. So we're an international nonprofit anyways. And so I noticed that there was, of all the shows that were being created and all the shows that were being submitted for ABIs, which is our version of the Academy Awards, is that there wasn't a show that was out there that was sort of exploring the realities of what is it like to go through recovery and what resources are available and how do we create a sustainable future for recovery and help people that are going back into society that are trying to make a name for themselves and trying to get back integrated, try to get their lives back, and how does that benefit the average citizen?

And so that's what I set out to do. So this has been a passion project when I started a new podcast called Long-Term, that was over almost two years ago now, so we're over 30 episodes in. But I wanted to talk directly as somebody who has never had to go through recovery, I've never had addiction to any kind of substances or anything. I wanted to learn from the other end. What's it like to talk to someone that has and to learn what their experience was like and then what helps them, what's actually working, what's not working, and then talking to experienced people like yourself. Dave, you've been on the show and it's always enlightening to learn from the experts and people that have real in the field experience, rather than just learning from television or movies, what recovery is. And so it's just been a journey of what are the possibilities that are out there? How does it benefit people and why do we need recovery? Period.

Dave: That's an awesome perspective, and I'm grateful that you have, I had an interesting thing happen to me today. I just received my peer support specialist certification, and I was so excited that instead of putting on my refrigerator, I posted it on my wall on my social media, and one of my close friends wrote to me, she said, wow, you say you're in recovery. I never met anybody who had a drug problem or an alcohol problem. And it's interesting to me that you have, and she wasn't patting me on the head, but from her frame of reference was that she'd never heard of such a thing. And to me, I was taken aback because I was like, wow, that's really odd, because when I was out there drinking, I thought everybody drank like me and used like me. So it was good to see the juxtaposition of two different worlds that all coexist. So you have a really unique vantage point of not being a person with a diagnosed substance use disorder reporting on this, what I believe is divine, magical, the most beautiful thing that's ever occurred to me, this thing we call recovery.

Ti: Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, when we kind of get stuck in our own little echo chambers, and so we only hang around the people that we know that are like us, and so we can't really understand other people until we've actually gotten into the room with them and actually we shut our mouths. We open our ears and we listen and we learn from each other, and then we say, oh, you know what? I see a little bit of myself in you as well. And so that's been part of this journey along the way is realizing that almost I would say every human being in the world has something that they need to recover from. Even if it's not substance abuse or the things that you normally see the commercials about. If you have a problem with this, call this number. We don't always have that, right?

There might be something else that we've experienced. It might be some childhood trauma or something, a loved one passed away or died or agoraphobia, whatever it is, we've all got something to recover from. And unless we start looking at what is the issue that we're facing and then what are the resources that are available and how can I start tackling this? The most beautiful part about this whole thing to me is that there is an entire community of people in recovery that will embrace anyone who else is in recovery. And so it's such a supportive community, I would say, but it's hard to even put words into it. It's not that cliche of thing, it's like a family. But no, it's a huge support group for anybody that is in recovery. These are human beings that get up every single day. They wake up and they say, you know what? Today I am going to actively seek making the world a better place by starting on myself first.

Dave: Amen. I went to a 12 step meeting on Saturday, and there was 85 guys in the room Saturday morning, and we all shared for an hour. Two of the guys cried. We were all so supportive. It was not just me, but everybody in the room felt like we were high, that the room was so filled with love and support and multiple people were sharing like a testimony that this is the most amazing place in the planet, this amount of love and truth and honesty. It was so impactful. And it was cool because there were bikers, there were union bosses, there were gang bangers. It was a very diverse crew, but it was a really authentic meeting. And to me that sort of epitomizes that beauty that you talked about of this thing called recovery, that those of us who have seen it, felt it touched it, lived it, understand what it is. But I will assure you that before I peaked under the tent and went to my first 12 step meeting, I could not comprehend such a fellowship.

Ti: Yeah, absolutely. It's such a positive environment and a community to be part of, to even in the community, whether you're recovering from whatever it is. I've had family members that have had substance use issues in the past. I've had cousins that overdosed and they died bit from it. I had a father that was an alcoholic, like an avid alcoholic to where if there was not money for anything else, there was always money for beer. You knew he was awake in the morning. Whenever you hear the of the can opening up in the morning, that's when you knew, okay, I got about 30 minutes a piece left and didn't really connect it. I knew that he was addicted. I knew that he was an alcoholic and he had to have that, and that was a source of all the abuse and everything else that was going on.

But I didn't really connect it as something that he could recover from until years and years and years later as an adult. And I think another part of this journey for myself, I think it's almost realizing things about myself or things that I'm curious about that I've never even realized were, I don't know, leads for me were that in an alternate timeline or an alternate reality, whatever you want to call it, my father had the opportunity to recover, and he did that, and then we made reparations of our family and all of that. But that never happened. He passed away earlier this year in the same household where he did a lot of the abuse and where he was, I mean, when they found his body, they also found in the bathtub there was a big cooler where he was trying to make hooch and he had become the neighborhood supply for meth and all kinds of other things just progressed from there.

So it families, you know what I mean? Whenever somebody is addicted to substances, I mean this better than anyone else. It damages not just the person that is doing the substances. It damages everybody around them in their circle, and then that leaves them with trauma. Then they have something to could recover from and then forward for. And so yeah, it's fascinating to learn how people have achieved that. Not just people who have gone through substance use recovery, but even the parents of children who have overdosed or the children of parents who were in my situation, they were alcoholics or addicted. How did they move forward? How did they overcome those suitcases of a lot of issues that were in the closet?

Dave: Right. Have you ever heard of or Googled a adult children alcoholics?

Ti: No.

Dave: Well, it's a real program, just like NA or aa. It's the A CA, and that's a homework assignment for you. And I'm going to tell you, I had an amazing experience in a CA, and forgive me if I go off here, but I did something called the 12 steps when I got to aa, and I kind of went through where I trusted God, and then I cleaned house, and then I started helping others. I went through the 12 steps, then I went back and I did again, I went through the 12 steps four times. I was sure that I was now a whole person and what we call clean house. And my old sponsor, Tony n, said, let's do, he was an English guy. He said, let's do the a CA steps. And I was like, oh, good. My dad, he was an alcoholic. So then that makes sense. So we're doing the A steps, and I mentioned, I was like, well, I grew up with a meth lab in my house, and I knew that the tattooed people, they always come on Fridays and dad had to do business. We had to leave. And then they laughed, and that was just normal life childhood in the seventies and eighties for me. And then he stops me and he puts his hand on me, and he was like, and you don't think that affected you? And I was like, no, no, it didn't. That was just his stuff. There was no effect on me. And he helped shed light that I had all this denial and all this childhood stuff that also occurred that I had just determined by saying over and over again, I just have fond memories of my youth that it was all suppressed. And I ended up, after sharing all that with 'em, it was so freeing, and I realized that I had carried so much shame on who I was. I did something interesting where I Googled manufacturing meth in homes, and it pops up in Wikipedia, and it says this was a rampant problem in the seventies and eighties throughout America where families were making meth in their homes. And I was like, that's really weird, because I was sure I was the only one. And I want to tell you, it's horrible. So I'm immediately akin to you, Ty, because it sounds like in some ways we're brothers because somehow we've got through our human childhood and adolescence with the shame and knowing there's some stuff you don't talk about in school

Ti: For sure. And then it's not when you're a kid that age that probably not everybody is living the same way that you are, but it doesn't really register how differently their lives are until you start, you go over to sleepovers, you stay at their house, and you're like, your dad doesn't do that. There's no plates being thrown against the wall. What's going on over here? You guys are just having dinner? And okay, alright, then we just get in our PJs and play video games. Cool. But no, it's something that you can definitely carry. And I've seen so many people and that I've spoken with that have never even dealt with those issues. You know what I mean? That come from that well, into their adulthood forties, 50 years old, and they're just like, oh, that was just part of life. You know what I mean? But it's almost like a fond, like you said, fond memories of a childhood. And it's just like, oh, I remember when dad used to do that. Oh, that was crazy. That was just so dad. Yeah, nevermind the emotional baggage and trauma, the pro-social skills that were probably damaged inside of you whenever you were growing up but yeah.

Dave:  Yeah, I just knew dad went away periodically on occasion and didn't need to bring a suitcase. And I do remember in school sometimes he'd be in the papers and there'd be like whispering. And then one of my closer friends would show me, here, here it says your dad going to prison. And I was like, ah. And I remember wanting to shut it out and be like, I don't want anything to do with that. I don't want to know.

Ti: So many people have, they use that and that experience, I've heard it both ways where it's nature versus nurture, where if you experienced that in your life, in your home when you were growing up, you can either become that very same person and end up passing that on to your children or you can break the cycle, which is hugely important. I think that's the intervention part, realizing this is not right and that's not what I want to be. I want to do better for my kids. That's hugely important. But then there's also the inherited, there are a lot of people that say that those traits are inherited, the traits to be likely to be an alcoholic because your father was an alcoholic. So how do you avoid that? Because alcohol is so available everywhere. I mean, if you turn a corner here where I'm at, there's a liquor store absolutely everywhere.

And it's actually encouraged as adults when you grow up, what do you do after a hard day's work? Oh, you have a glass of wine or you have a beer, let's go out to the bar and have some drinks and just go hang out with the boys. It's so normal for us, but it can be so dangerous. One moment could turn you into that same thing that you came from. So being conscious, be aware, being moderate in what you take and what you do, and being very selective in what your actions are. Because I think when you come from situations like what we're talking about here, you realize what there is at risk, what you could potentially become and how much damage that does to other people. And so that's kind of what I've found. And what's so fascinating about recovery is that it makes you conscious, so much more conscious of your daily actions and thoughts and ideas more so than any person who hasn't ever thought about going through recovery.

Dave: And it's a wonderful thing to be conscious of. There's the father of psychotherapy talks about a case where he was talking to a client who had a compulsive issue, a compulsivity issue, and the client said, when I didn't get to exercise my compulsion, I would go home and I would get to my house and I'd think to myself, thank goodness I didn't have to do that again. I could just have a nice dinner and read a book on the couch and be with a dog. Thank goodness I didn't have to do that behavior. And to me, as I heard that, I believe that everybody has had that feeling of some plans didn't happen and they have a sigh of relief. Thank goodness I didn't have to do that when last time I looked. We live in a society of free will and we're actually making a conscious decision on what we're doing. So if you were tired of going to the bar every Friday night and the pain of afterwards recognizing that you actually don't have to do that. If you're opening up your pill bottle saying, I told myself yesterday I wasn't going to be doing this again, and you have that paying of guilt and stuff, please recognize that you actually don't.

Ti: Yeah. Yeah. It's very similar when people go on diets and they're like, okay, day one, no eating cookies day two, and then it's back to day one. It's like you slipped. That's okay. You can probably recover from that. But nowadays with the amount of substances that are out there, and of course the use of fentanyl, which is being infused into a lot of different things, it may be you're one and only time. You may only get that one chance. You may not even have the opportunity to recover. So it's so important being selective in your actions and what you're doing from what I found. And so having these conversations with people with lived experience, but also people that are providing services. But also I've talked to everyone from Supreme Court Justices here in the state to, I've done ride along, so police officers and talked about with them about the issues and problems and how they solve it. And so I think a lot of people, even on the law enforcement side have figured out that we're not going to fix this with a lock 'em all up strategy. You know what I mean? We cannot arrest our way out of this problem. It's got to be something that we prevent and then we intervene if somebody is already in use because with

Dave: The behavioral healthcare intervention, not a cage, A cage actually doesn't solve anything. It's a behavioral health problem.

Ti: It can even make 'em worse. I've seen lots of people talk to people that have been in prison and they'll go, so saw people that had been arrested for a simple possession and then they are in Arkansas. The laws just changed here. So the amount of time that you have to serve on any conviction, no matter what it is, it can be from 85% to a hundred percent. They just changed that. So they think that that's going to be hanging over your head enough to where you don't commit any crimes. But somebody goes in with a simple possession and they get, let's say three years and then find them in the rec room or whatever, and they'll be writing recipes for meth in the back of their bibles because they know that's the one book that the guards can't take away from 'em. And so it's like they went in with one crime, one simple crime of whatever, which you could have probably helped because their need to have that substance probably came from something else. Maybe they needed job skills, maybe they needed housing or food or whatever, or therapy. And then they go in and then they learned, well, society gave up on me. I'm just going to become a worst criminal and sit here and learn from these guys. They've actually embraced me whilst the society has kicked me out. And so there is a lot of having a sense of belonging and how important that is and making sure it's a positive environment. It's pouring into you with needed skills.

Dave: If you have someone who's on the fringe of society, having them hang out with a big group of people with criminal thinking or the fringe is probably the last thing to do from a socialization perspective,

Ti: Not going to save you.

Dave: What's interesting as we try to quantify recovery is the integration of spirituality. What have you found of the integration of spirituality and recovery?

Ti: I asked that question a lot. I'm not a spiritual person myself, but I did. I was there for a while. I led praise and worship band for seven years, but I asked people, I was like, how important was the faith during your journey of recovery? And a lot of people, whether they say that they were full in, oh, Jesus healed me of whatever this was, or if they say I believe in a higher power because that's part of the 12 step is that you have to have a power greater than yourself. It

Dave: Can't be you.

Ti: Right? Almost everybody has said that faith was a big part of their journey because knowing that you play a small role in a big picture and that not everything rests on your shoulders, but you have a responsibility, but also that someone higher than you cares about what you do and what role you play in that picture. That's motivation. And it keeps them motivated to, somebody loves me, cares for me enough to have created me and to given me this role and knows when I mess up that I can be forgiven. But I'm going to try to do my best, absolute best every single day to fulfill my role the best I possibly can to the best of my abilities. And so faith, it's something that I don't know, it's the great motivator, you know what I mean? It's the unseen like X factor, I think, in a lot of people's recovery.

Dave: For me, it allows me a third person framework where I wake up every morning and I know what Dave wants. I want to go back to bed. I want to have a big bacon and breakfast, not go to work and go have sex or go to the beach. Dave is lazy and wants to be self-indulgent, but if I reframe it and I say higher power, what do you want? What's your will for me? How can thy will be done? Well, I think going to work and helping people and taking care of yourself, that sounds kind of what he or she or the great cosmos would want of me. So it allows a third person reference, which is helpful for a group of people that are inherently selfish. And I find substance use disorder and selfishness to be certainly aligned. And same, I've treated many, many clients who go full on Jesus and God bless 'em. And I have sponsees who are staunch atheists, but they believe in a group of drunks. They pray to a group of drunks who we call God, but for them, it's a group of old timers. And sometimes if they have questions, should I quit my job or should I leave my wife or should I buy a new Corvette? They can go ask the group of drunks and get some feedback from surly older folks with more recovery time who could give them some balanced feedback. Maybe not the guy in the beard with the clouds, but it's whatever they define it as. And I love the looseness of that. And we're certainly in the 12 steps.

There's another issue we didn't talk about, which I call purpose. And to me, if we get a client who stops using methamphetamine and like you're using your cookie example, they go, it's day one without math. That's great. It's day five without math. That's great to me. They're counting days until they find a purpose. If their purpose is every Sunday now they sing in church choir and they sing their heart out, and that's their thing, God bless them. But when they start thinking about that instead of not using meth, or for me managing a little rehab, which provides hopeful people, that drives me. And I wake up and I'm not thinking about am I drinking Jack Daniels today? I wake up thinking, oh my goodness, I got a hundred employees and a hundred patients coming in this week who are going to need help, and how are we going to make sure that we meet each one of them with respect and a smile and kindness? And that purpose ends up helping me transcend counting the days from my last cookie.

Ti: Yeah, I think a lot of people search for that. I mean, just as human beings, we have the sense of belonging. Social psychology teaches that, but what is our role? What is our role in society? And if we were beck in or a mess, and we think about the worst times of our lives when we were antisocial as possible in our anarchy days, we really weren't fulfilling a role other than be stopping the cogs in the gears if you're keeping 'em running. But when you're trying to find your place in the world of like, okay, well, you realize that working against everything might not be the best way to be pro-social, you kind of have to find out, well, how can I help the world be a little bit better place, but also just play my little tiny role, that big picture, small role type of thing I was talking about earlier.

And a lot of people will find it in whatever it is. It might be that they are the best car mechanic in the world. It might be. A lot of people find their purpose whenever they're going through recovery by becoming peer support specialists, which is huge. And they were like, this worked for me. Someone came and walks with me hand in hand all the way through this, and I can do the same thing for these other people that are trying to find recovery. And now you can actually make that a career. There are a lot of states and organizations that are actually paying that as a role. Before that didn't exist. I mean, just what, maybe 20 years ago it didn't exist.

Dave:  Correct.

Ti: You didn't talk about it. Right. Also, the stigma of being, you don't talk about it if you've ever had a drug problem or a substance use problem or you are an alcoholic, but now a lot of people are recovering out loud. And not only that, but making your career out of it and helping other people and being that piece that we've never had to help get people from this condition to a much better version of themselves.

So people find purpose in that, and they think that, well, I had to go through this in order to fulfill this role of reaching down the pit and pulling these other people up to the ground level, and then helping them find their purpose as well. So it's sort of a pay it forward sort of system. And yeah, it's incredible to find people that have done that because there's so many people, like you said, going back to people who have never gone through recovery or never had substance issues that just went through the normal American dream type of role where you finished high school, you went to college, you married your high school sweetheart, you got two kids, you got to pick a fence. You got your house, you fulfill all the roles, but you did all the things just because you were told that those are the things that you're supposed to do.

Are you happy? And a lot of people just, they aren't and they haven't found their actual role. And then 20, 30 years in of being a financial advisor or an accountant at some big firm or whatever, working in the warehouse, wherever. Yeah, every day is exactly the same as the last and exactly the same as the next. And yeah, I don't know. The people that have gone through recovery and have found that peer support specialist role or whatever it is that they find significance in for their own existence on this earth, they are so much more passionate about it than the average Joe. And it's been pretty incredible, and it's so

Dave: Beautiful. Yeah,

Ti: Absolutely.

Dave: Now, what's your purpose? I hear you were spending all day on this podcasting. Are you trying to help humans be better at telling a story?

Ti: Yeah. I've always been enraptured by storytelling from the time my parents or my grandparents gave me tapes of war, the worlds and Old, it used to be on the radio, the Shadow, just love that stuff. And then it was National Geographic, and then it was watching all the extra features on every DVDI had and trying to create content for myself. But with podcasting, it's grown 20% listenership year after year, ever since 2019. So before the even pandemic hit, and then now it's transferred so much that there's so much on the horizon right now that it's insane. So we get to talk to the heads of NBC Universal's audio division. We get to talk to the head of the audio division for Netflix, which Netflix is about to be purchasing podcasts to be shown on their platform video podcasts. And so YouTube is the number one podcast platform in the world, and it's the number one way that people find out about podcasts is through YouTube shorts and, and you can share clips on Instagram and Facebook.

So there's so many different ways, and they're so versatile. I go to classrooms all the time and talk to kids who are in school and these STEM programs, and they invite me there to teach them about podcasting. And I go in and one of the first things I ask 'em is say, okay, you invited me here. How many of you actually listen to a podcast? Maybe three or four hands in a classroom or 30? And I'll say, well, how many of you caught parts of a podcast on TikTok or YouTube shorts? Oh, every single hand. Yeah. So that's how they're consuming it. So even if they don't listen to your entire show, they are listening to those little clips and little bits that you are putting out there for your podcast. It is a medium that is so versatile and so growing that if Netflix, I mean, just look at who's investing in it, who's about to be doing big things in that space.

HBO has podcast for absolutely every one of its biggest shows that comes out anyways. So using that growing medium, that growing form, and using it for not just entertainment, but let's have these conversations that we need to have to get rid of the stigma. For one, there are things that we need to talk about. We need to have serious conversations. It doesn't have to be boring. It can be exciting. You can learn about your community and what role you play. And no matter if you are that accountant at a big firm, there is somebody down the street that has had some sort of run in with some kind of substance use issue, whether it was them, their family member or friend or family or somebody. You have a role to play in this, and most of the people like yourself, like you were talking about, the lady that was surprised by your past, most of the people that go through a really successful recovery, they become a pillar of the community. And you would never know that they ever had an issue unless they told you. And so they're around you, whether you know it or not. You may work for them. They might be your accountant.

It might be somebody that's very near dear to you. So I think healing as just a people in this country, it comes into a lot of different forms, but I think one of the lowest hanging fruits that we can do is something that's been plaguing us for a long time, and that's substance use issues. And so that's what I'm hoping to do with platform. That's my purpose, is to try to tell these stories, try to collect what works, what I know, it's not a one size fits all thing. And then let's figure out what are some things that we can put in place to make that sustainable future for recovery so that we don't have to put so many people in recovery. For one, we can prevent that, but also people that need it know that the resources are available to them, and then we can actually treat them and rehabilitate them.

Dave: Amen. That's beautiful. I love what Hollywood has been doing where it became cool to go to rehab and as Hollywood or folks from Hollywood would be like, you kind of nobody until you've been to rehab once and I have a shirt, rehab is the new black. To me, that reduction of stigma has been a wonderful thing in that the fact there's so many people in Hollywood who are out about it, and it's not shameful.

Ti: Right. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, look at Robert Donny Jr. He's one of the prime examples of somebody that can come from a drug riled past, you know what I mean? And we did some heinous things and then came back to be one of the highest paid actors in the world, and one of the most famous, he found his way out, found purpose. I mean, that's a prime example. But when we start on demonizing, as you say, I mean us talking about the issues, even if you're not the person that's going through the substance use issues yourself, maybe you're the parent that's afraid to, you're ashamed to talk about your son that was addicted to whatever suffered pill. You know what I mean? You're going through something and you're going to need to deal with that. If you don't deal with it, it's just going to compound issues even for yourself, and it's not going to be any help to him either.

And we all sort of pay for that. And so versus if you go through healing, you go through therapy, you go through some sort of resources that are available to you. Maybe it's a support route for parents of people that have overdosed or whatever, or have substance issues. I've seen a lot of that. Seeking healing is never a bad thing, right? It's kind of simple. You know what I mean? When we say it like that, it's so, so simple, but it's so hard for us as human beings, I think, to start admitting where we are wrong or where that the life just happens sometimes, and that we need to talk about these things and not be ashamed of it. You don't have to be proud of it, which would not be ashamed of it. Yeah.

Dave: Let me ask you, we talked about your podcast as it relates to recovery name. My podcast is Human Up. What does that mean to Ti?

Ti: It's a Human Up. I mean, what makes us human? That's a great question. So what does make a humanic? Ultimately we are, I dunno, some people think we're a higher form of animal. You know what I mean? We are free thinking. We have free will. We know that we are prone to vices, but we're also able to rework our neural pathways to do something different. But it just takes effort, right?

Dave: Yeah. When we're speaking healing.

Ti: That's right. That's right. So there's nothing that you get told as a child all the time. There's nothing you can do that you can imagine. And it's still true, but we forget somewhere along the way, you know what I mean? As adults, we forget that and we're like, oh, that was just imaginary. Oh, that was just us using our minds that were moldable at the time. You know what I mean? But we don't realize that we can still even do that as older adults, those neural pathways, we can open those up and change our ways, change our actions. We can theorize and test our thoughts and our ideas and what we would believe in. See if it's true. See if it's not, see what's working, what doesn't? I mean, yeah, to be human is just to belong to a bigger picture like we were talking about earlier, and to realize you're not stuck in one role, that you can actually change your story, I guess you'd say.

Dave: That's beautiful. I'm so happy we got to spend an hour together. Ty, thank you very much. Anybody listening, please check out the long-term podcast. Thank you very much, Ti King, for spending this time with me. Many things you said are going to resonate with me. We're all humans. We could all change our pathway just like we could as a kids, and there's nothing wrong with seeking healing. Thanks, Ti!

Ti: Thank you, Dave.

Dave: This is Human Up.