This is the audio from Recovery Stories Message of Hope, Part four, recorded on October seventeenth, twenty twenty four the Travels City Mission. Here's Chris Goss with this Message of Hope.
Good evening, How are you doing?
Uh?
Real, real quick question?
Who in here is a drug addict or alcoholic or in recovery or person in recovery whatever you like to fucking call it? Okay, cool, glad you're here. Thanks for coming real quick. My name is Chris, and a real quick backstory. I used to love to shoot drugs and drink. So now you know who I am. Now I'm gonna say it like i'd say in my home group. You know, you know my name is Chris, and you know who I am because I know you you know me. We got the same kind of story, just a different ship
in the same same motion. You know.
It was Oh, real.
Quick, there's gonna be some swearing, all right, and it's like you're seeing the movie over the top when Hawk turns his hat around and it turns it on.
And things are gonna get fun and serious.
Well the hat just got turned around, so here we go, all right, so check it out. Like I said, I'm forty four years old. I could claim I'm twenty three. Most people confuse me for a young guy. But the best you know what it is is it's like, so I'm the third child. I'm an entitled kid. I guess you could say live. So I was born in Detroit and my parents my dad got moved to the air base in Battle Creek. He's an air aircraft mechanic. So again, the third child. My brother's a cop in cold Water.
My sister's a mother of a child I had. I was the youngest. I had two sons, my sister has a son, my brother has two sons. And there's you know, so I was the funkal turns out I was the drunkel. But you know what it happens. So I'd only have I think a half hour. I couldn't milk it a little bit. I'm not a very good public speaker, but a guy can I fucking speak in public? So, you know, it starts off like the age of thirteen, you know, you start taking pharmaceutic, you start drinking the party to
be cool. So from the age of thirteen to probably thirty five, my middle name was xanax uh, So you know, and then you know, oh, I'll never do acid. I did that when you all never and I'll never shoot heroin. Well, I became pretty good. There's a commercial back in the eighties nobody wants to be a junkie when you grow up. I became very good and I succeeded at that one.
So then you know, in the meetings, we got jail's institutions, and death got the T shirt, been there, and I'll be damned if I didn't die a few times too. So it's just like, you know, the whole gamut of things that you go through, the things that I went through, the things that we all went through. Excuse me, you get a little parched up here, water boy? Can I get one? You know? So basically how things work out, as you know, you start off party and you want
to be the cool guy. Uh, and so I'm the youngest, and the way it works out for me is my mom could never tell me no, So you know, it's you know, it all just starts off with.
You know, the youngest.
And now I was a heavy set kid, and it turns out when you quit shooting hair and you get a little fatter again too, but you become comfortable you use humor, you start to fucking defend yourself. So I mean I could sit here for hours and tell you what not to do. I think we all could see what what what can I get after? You know that's really gonna grab you by the booble and let you know what happened to me the worst? Well, they say rock bottom is a spot where you hit your lowest point.
Well I went to rock bottom quite a few times. One particular time I had TNT and blew right through the fucking bottom and kept fucking going.
Uh So, where do I want to start?
And there was that one, and then there was that one, and then there was that one. Uh So you know when when people are using drugs and you're around somebody and you're doing drugs with them, and they've done too many drugs and.
They don't make it.
Uh, what is a normal person's first reaction, call nine one one, trying to save this person. Well I was more occupied by still getting high. So what had happened was this guy had died and I didn't do a fucking thing about it, and I ended up going to jail.
And uh, this is another part of the story, you know what I mean?
This this is the depth it took me to These drugs and alcohol had me by such a stronghold that this other person that you know, I only knew him for a few days. I rationalized it forever, but then I found out that it's you know, that's his story, and his story ended. And so why I'm standing here today is because my story continued. It's not the best thing that happened in my life, but life keeps moving on.
And you know, it's when you meet people in rehabs. You know.
First of all, I'd like to thank my friends in the back that came to visit and came to support me.
I have.
My home group. I have a guy that I knew in home, you know, in the county jail. And then there's a special woman who's in the audience who we share a home together.
So I mean, these are all and you.
You get to know these people, and these are the people that want to see me succeed. They don't care that I just caught some dope or I got some booze. They don't want to see me do that. They want to see you do better. So they're they're to support for they're sort to help. And then you know, life today for me is good. I wake up at five o'clock in the morning, I take my daughter, my son's uh twenty one and eighteen are my oldest, and then my youngest kid.
Is three, so it's to be huge gap, huge gap.
So I'm in and all in that time. You know, life, life kept life in me. And you know what I learned to do best was to get high and drink. And I mean, I gotta try and keep it.
They say, it's a message of hope.
So I don't want to relive on too much or the old fucking you know, copping dopes, going and getting high and all the things that you used to fucking do, because we've all done it.
We've all been there.
And like I said, it's just we're in different ships, some bigger, some smaller, with the same rocky, crazy ocean. And uh you know, at some point somebody threw me a life ring. And you know, this is where I met a lot of people. And you know, some people that I met in treatment I used with. So you have to kind of pick and choose who you want to be around. And uh so I met this Cory Wintfield, a guy, and he's like I'm gonna start a podcast.
The room woman is two seventeen, and so I've seen this guy actually do his thing, and he was out and he always kept trying. You know, you got it, and he's like, well, you'll do it on you know, you'll figure it out.
You'll figure it out.
And uh, let's say, nine hundred and fifty eight days ago was the last time I picked.
Up a drink or drugs. So that's like years, seven months.
I used to be that guys that I don't count days, so we'll make them fucking count. So for the past nine and fifty eight days, I've made every fucking day that I have count.
Ain't that the truth? Uh?
So you know, then, when when when I finally moved into a sober house that wasn't in Battle Creek if you if you knew about Battle Creek, you heard war stories about Battle Creek. Wonderful town if you know the right people. Terrible place if you're a guy like me. So I moved up to Boyne's City, Okay, I called it a piece of shit town for the first I couldn't tell you how long it was because I didn't. I wasn't ready then because then when I moved, moved
into a sober house. We're gonna do what everything that you called the next step, I called it the next stumble. August first, I'm closing the place. In the thirty days. You got to find somewhere to go. So, you know, just like I had a recovery coach who called me said he was gonna kill himself, I had another person offer me drugs as a sponsor in Battle Creek, and uh so, you know, I moved to Boyne City.
We move into this sober house.
And if you go back to the very beginning of the two seventeen Recovery podcast, you'll probably hear about sexual relations or you'll hear any of these other things. You know, because I was on part of that podcast. It was a very point in time in my life. But then once I got you know, left the sober house, I was Northern Michigan, sober, smoking, reefer and drinking because by god, you can buy it in a store.
I think there's one down the road. I'm not from this town, but you.
Know, it's uh, this is the craziest part about life today, you know, is all these things. And I always told myself, if I I'll just smoke weed. I'll just smoke weed.
Now, you know what. This weed wasn't good enough.
So then this to the time that I'm living Northern Michigan sober. I have my own apartment, I have my own car, things that I haven't had in quite a while. Iss to you know, Uh, I get news that my father passed away, and so I'm not allowed to smoke in here, am I Okay, I'll just wait.
So, you know.
So the only way I could actually deal with my dad's death at the time, no matter how much, no matter how much I put in that needle, no matter how much I drank, my father was still in Fort Custard National Cemetery.
So that didn't work.
And I promised myself, if I got to feel the pot, you know, I'll just smoke pot. Bullshit because I did that one thing that made me feel really really good and drown out the emotions and the things that I never wanted to feel. So I just knew that one thing that was always gonna make everything better, and it turned out it didn't do well for me. So after this relapse began, they found me on the side of
the road and my boss's van unresponsive. After I had been driving back from wherever I was because I just got my giddy up to get my ducks in a row and I couldn't wait to get home to do it because I needed and I need it now.
JG Wentworth, thank you.
So you know, all the times that I've been in trouble before, all the you know times that I was forced into treatment, all the times that I had to go do it, I never did it for myself. So I uh after, you know, so you get put on bond, well, I guess that they give you PBTs and you know, are you drug screens when you're on bond? So they don't like it when you drop dirty or blow hot and you know, so here I am, I get it.
They let me out.
It's four o'clock in the morning in Antrim County, and I'm from Battle Creek, where you can just get out of jail, go across the street and go to the liquor store and cop some dope. I'm in the middle of fucking nowhere, four o'clock in the morning, with no shoelaces, a tank top, a pair of shorts, and my sunglasses and everything else was in the van. So I called somebody that I knew, and she came and picked me up four point thirty in the morning in Antrim County.
She lived in Boyne. So this time the judge is like, you need to do.
Some things, and you know, so here I am the you know, blowing at eight o'clock in the morning, grabbing my juice.
Didn't go to work, and then I got to drink.
Until seven o'clock because I got to get it all in before I got to stop and figure out when I you know, I've not been enough time to.
Get in the next one.
So finally I bumped into somebody i'd met in rehab before. Well you know, oh, the the the world Wide Web, the Internet. You know, you come across somebody you meet that you knew, and well she was on parole because she just got out of prison.
So this is gonna be great, you know what I mean?
And uh, the funny part is, so far everything has been great because people can change, and you know, unfortunately we lost her father and it was because of alcohol. And I looked at her one day and I said, I don't want to fucking be like that. She said, well then quick drinking motherfucker. I kind of hurt a little bit, and you know it's so here's the message part, all the past, all the bullshit. She drugged me to meetings as I'm drunk, got to get my sheet signed,
and then you meet people. No buddy Rob was the first one I met, and he, you know, he's these positive people in your life. So I keep going back to these meetings because they say, keep coming back.
Battle Creek told me to get the fuck out these meetings. They tell you keep coming back, we want to see you do better.
Keep coming back. So then finally I went and bought a pill. They didn't do anything but keep me, you know, from getting deadly sick while drinking.
Because I'm not a huge matt.
I think they call him medically his sister treatment person because I can find a way to fucking abuse anything. But at this time, I took this an abuse pill so I wouldn't drink. And you know, here's where the road to recovery starts. Because everything that I had tried before it didn't work. Because you know why, it's what I wanted to do. It's how I chose to live my life. It's how it was gonna. I was gonna fix my problem. I was, well, it turns out that
I fucked ship up. So I keep going to these meetings. They keep telling me to come back meet these positive people that come here, that that supports you. You got positive people inviting you to come to produce me. I've been sober for two years and nobody's ever asked me to talk in front of people. I think it's either number one, because I'm gonna sit there and tell you how bad it was, to the point where you just might go, ah, but how bad? Sorry, rough crowd, Okay, uh,
but I mean how bad, dude? How bad did I want to get high in the past? Really fucking bad? But how bad do I want to be sober today? Even more so I get to wake up in the morning, I get to go. I'm unofficial official number two on the glass line at Wodron Window and Door Corporation, means that I'm number two in charge. I like to make things sound better because it sounds better when you're sober.
All the things that I did, all.
The pot that I smoked, all the drugs that I did, all this stuff that I did that led me to where I am today. You know, you go to you get arrested, then you know you didn't die. Oh thank god. I always said that a lot, but I never really believed in a higher power. And then tell I went into a church one day and I was like, all right, man, show me something. And all these coincidences that were happened
in my life, there weren't coincidences. There was my higher power that kept me alive to understand that I had something to do. I always to pray men, Hey, I don't know all my purposes, but fucking hurry up and tell me. I found out that it's in his time. Everything that I did up until that point. He kept me around to uh maybe talk to you guys, maybe to give a message of hope, you know what I mean, being able to come up here and kind of uh ramble on for a little bit with a fucking dry mouth,
cotton mouth. Want to smoke a cigarette? You know, that's the one advice I have, because Philip Morris likes me more than I'll keep going.
But it's just gonna go over your heads.
You know. I was sponsored by Marlboro when I was on the podcast, but they never gave me any cigarettes. You knows all the things that I did in my therapist that I used to go to. I called her doctor angel face until I got a seven hundred dollar bill. You know, she said, make sure you emphasize the fact that even smoking pot, I can't do it. I can't drink a little bit because if I drink a little bit, I drink too much. If I shoot a little bit, I'm gonna shoot too much. I can't even smoke a
little bit of reefer today. I'm alright with that. I accepted the fact that I cannot put anything into my body to change the way that I am. Anything that changes this mindset. Even a little caffeine gets me jacked up a little too much. If I have an energy drink, I get cut off halfway through because she takes the can from me. So it's like, I'm grateful to be alive because I finally found a higher power. My higher power kept me alive to tell this story. And uh,
you know, life's good today. No, no, it's not fucking perfect. Sometimes my shoelace comes undone in a public restroom.
That sucks. That sucks.
You know what you gotta do is just tie and wash your hands. So, like, you know, I'm grateful to be alive. I'm grateful to come up here and talk to you guys. Didn't win anything, but you know what, I got to enjoy a nice, complimentary meal. I was invited to here and offered a free meal and the opportunity to spread a.
Message of hope. And uh, I hope what I said.
Well, it's like, I'm sure it's sunk in because you guys wouldn't be here if you didn't want to hear what the fuck I had to say. And there's other people here too. It's not just about me. Imagine that.
You know, it's like I got good people.
In my my, my mom. Actually, you know, call, we call, we talked.
Uh.
This is the woman who once told me she's like, I love you, but I'm not gonna love you to death. I'm not gonna hold your hand into the grave. Don't worry, mom, I just gotta move back. And got kicked out of a sober house. I'll be out in a couple of days. Six months later, you know, I'm overdosed. Six months later, I'm stealing two thousand dollars. I have to just bond me out of jail. I became a very good criminal, but today I'm not just like you know, my name
is Chris, I'm a drugadtic, alcoholic. But I'm not that guy today because I have a higher power, because I choose to talk to people, and I, you know, I get that I don't I don't have to talk to people. I get to do the things I do. It's all about perceptions, all about how you see things. It's all about how you see your life. I did see myself as a worthless piece of shit.
Now I'm now. Now I'm a pretty decent.
Guy, good enough to where people will fucking come watch me and drive, you know, a few hours, an hour and a half. Charlav Waite is my new hometown, my place where I live. It's uh, it's pretty classy.
Uh.
There's there's people that come up during the summertime. They call them budgies, but they get They drive all the way up to fucking visit the place that I live. I get to drive to the you know, drive to the store and I see a glorious, majestic lake. I get to see wonderful sunsets.
You know.
I used to, uh, I used to, you know, I used to fucking not care. I'd get pissed when the sun was coming up. It's damn it.
I didn't go to sleep again.
So the message of hope that I have for you guys is, you know, there's a there's a higher power that he loves you, if you know, if you want to find him, whatever it may be.
It could be a chair in that room.
But if the chair in that room keeps you coming back, like they told me to, keep coming back, keep fucking going back, keep fucking making the better effort to be a better person than you were the day before. I don't know how much time I burned up. I didn't say burn it up. Uh you know, I'm just thinking about smoking. So I mean it's uh it scot. Always good to see old friends, new friends, friends in recovery. These cameras that are looking at me facial recognition, hope
you don't have any warrants. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you learned something, because you know I fucking did. Thanks for coming out.
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