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Welcome to Choose Your Struggle Presents: Made It, Season 1: Stay Savage. In this episode we finally reach the bottom of the U and prepare to sit there for a while.
Choose Your Struggle Presents: Made It, a documentary, serial-style podcast telling the story of a person who has made it back from the depths of trauma and created something extraordinary with their second chance.
Season 1 is titled Stay Savage and focuses on Sarah Laurel and the harm reduction and recovery housing organization Savage Sisters.
* This transcript has not been edited. Sorry, I ran out of time!
Made it made, it made it as a member of the shameless podcast network previously on made it, and there was this like small window that the two of us would be able to put our backs against each other and just fucking come out of this ugly mess of pain. And it was too late for both of us. It was devastating.
You want the truth? Fuck. Here we go again. So I knew something was wrong. If she dies,
choose your struggle presents made it season one, stay Savage.
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Welcome back to choose your struggle presents made it season one, stay Savage. When we last left off, Liz was home, but she was struggling and she couldn't be there in the way that Sarah wanted or needed. Sarah was living alone in south Philly, raising her son, Dylan. She was working, but cracks were starting to show in the foundation.
What came next was all too common for people who are already struggling. Sarah got into a bad relationship. Here's Sarah. Dillon was four when I met Angelina's dad. And, um, that was a nightmare from start to finish. And that's all I'll say about that. Sarah is reluctant to talk about the man who would eventually become the father of her second child and out of respect for that privacy, and to be quite honest, safety, we're not going to use his name here.
Other members of the family, however, we're willing to fill in some gaps. Here's what. She started dating this guy, shit, shit got chaotic pretty quickly. Um, and Sarah lost one job and then Sarah's car got repossessed. And then Xero got another job, which was like eyebrow raising, like really what happened there, because at this point, Sarah has been generating enough kind of chaos and questions and what's she doing?
And I don't know what she's doing, you know? And then she never really told me everything. In Sarah's defense as we've already well addressed, Liz wasn't in a position to provide Sarah with the support she needed. And since all of their other siblings were younger, it's understandable why Sarah felt so alone.
Here's Adam discussing that period. She moved back to Garrett hill and she got an apartment with Alex. And I asked me, and for me, that was just the coolest thing in the world. Alex, Nozomi had just got out of high school. I was still in high school. All of a sudden I had a house down the street from my mom's house where I could literally do whatever I wanted.
Yeah. And even though there were so many signs, um, to the fact that she was struggling at when they first moved in, I wasn't concerned about it. I continued drinking and smoking and, uh, with Sarah and definitely wasn't alerted to anything, even if I was alerted to anything being wrong, which I don't remember being.
Um, I definitely didn't do anything about it. Adam's response here is pretty understandable. As a reminder, he is a decade younger than his sister and I can. And the early days of my own swift decline, when I would hang out with my brothers and often use substances, they didn't look at this as, Hey, maybe Jay has a problem.
They were just excited to hang out with an older brother and do something that they found was fun. Here's Mac, as a reminder, Macca's even younger than Adam. I didn't really know what exactly what's happening. I just knew that. And my momma and I have talked about this, so I know it's okay to say it sounds really bad.
My mom is an epic person. Um, so it's nothing against her when she stopped showing me as much love, I guess it was. I knew that something was definitely wrong because my mom stopped paying attention to us at home as much and started paying a lot more attention to Sarah. There was always whispered conversations and, um, Sarah wasn't the most reliable for years after she moved out, we always hung out.
I was, I was always at her apartment. She would, you know, make those promises to come and hang out with me or pick me up and bring me to her. And slowly she stopped coming. So I knew something was wrong. Fifth grade, I think it was, I was still in elementary school because I remember she had promised to come to one of my track and field games and she said she would pick me up.
And, um, my mom said, you know, don't, don't rely on that. Have Brian drive you? And then I was like, no, she's commonly, she made a promise. And my mom kind of said, you know, if she comes great, but you know, you'll just see her there. So Brian ended up driving me. I spent the whole game looking for Sarah. She never came.
And, um, I basically was just told, like, don't expect anything from her anymore because she isn't herself. That's kinda, when I started just getting really sad all the time, I guess kind of around that age is when my, uh, depression really began. I just got a lot less attention from my mom and my sister was like my best friend.
So I was getting almost no attention from her. And when she was around her and my mom were pretty stiff toward each other. I mean, I didn't even really know what drugs, like where I knew what weed was. And we had learned about drugs and. In health, but you don't pay attention when you learn about it in health, in elementary school.
So I really just thought she was just also sad. You know, my, the scope of my ability was just, you know, I'm sad. She's probably also just really sad and just she'll be, she'll be better soon though, that. What I find so interesting about this period is that of course, with hindsight being what it is, it's easy to see these warning signs.
However, if this show was merely about how Sarah Laurel created an amazing business, we would probably hear a similar recollection. Remember Sarah was in her mid twenties. So of course, relationships start to change at that period. Your interest start to change at that period. If Sarah was, instead of drug use, interested in things like, oh, I don't know, business.
We would hear a similar story told of course, that isn't what this show is about, but Mack did hit the nail on the head. Sarah was sad. Sarah was struggling. It's so hard to explain, because I was like, kind of in and out of it at that point, I didn't know that I was even pregnant with Angelina, um, because I was single at the time and I was living, I had a house out in Brinmar quick interruption.
I wanted to understand why Sarah left south Philly, a place that she has related to me multiple times is her true home. And here's her response. After that, she goes right back into the story. She was starting to tell. So we'll just go from there. To get away from the Angelina's dad and we were broken up and then, you know, I was drinking a lot.
I was working from home a lot too, cause I had switched companies, but I'd, I got a pay raise. And also I had my little brothers with me, so like beer pong and you know, loud music. And we just had a lot of fun. Like all of my brothers were always, always there and we just kind of partying. And so one night I invited my ex over and I don't honestly remember inviting him over.
I remember waking up and kicking him out. And then I remember months later having a lot of pain in my stomach and going to the Bryn Mawr hospital. And they were like, congratulations, you're pregnant. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no please. No, but I was pretty far along. I think I was like, I was at least five months.
If you're feeling a sense of deja VU, like you've heard this before. You're not alone. Sarah. Second pregnancy was eerily similar to her mother's which of course resulted in Sarah herself, but that's not all another member of the family was also pregnant and she couldn't be more excited. Here's Liz, I'm pregnant.
I'm a couple months pregnant. Now when I, the minute that I realize I'm pregnant, I sober up and I just became obsessed. This baby growing in my belly and I was sober. So that changed everything for me. I remember walking down Sansom street being about three, four months pregnant. And Sarah, we didn't know Sarah was pregnant yet.
Sarah was walking next to me and she said, would you think that like, if I was pregnant too, would you think that I was stealing your thunder? And I remember feeling immediately like, oh my God, what a bizarre thought I absolutely. Like that would be the coolest thing in the world. If you were pregnant too, you know, I love my sister and I knew she was struggling.
And I remember just looking at her thinking like you poor baby Sarah's reaction to her pregnancy was a little bit different. She was terrified. Here's Sarah. Yeah. I wasn't living a healthy lifestyle. And when I found out I was pregnant, I went to the birth center. Both my kids were at the birth center in Bryn Mawr.
And. You know, you, you have to be like very, everything has to be like copacetic in order to have a baby there. So like I tightened myself up, you know, obviously I found out I was pregnant and I was like, oh, you know, I'm going to stop smoking cigarettes. Oh yeah. And like eating parks and drinking alcohol and smoking weed, but it was a little bit late into the pregnancy at that point.
Angelina was born naturally at the birth center and I'm perfectly healthy. Thank God. But, um, no, I, I, in the first five months of the pregnancy were not, I can't sit here and say that I was living a healthy lifestyle. Despite Sarah's concerns, both daughters came out perfectly. Sarah K Berta to Angelina who everybody calls bean and Liz, she named her daughter, Claire.
And for those few precious moments, nothing else mattered. Here's Liz, me and Sarah actually were in the hospital at the same time, having our girls. I was in Pennsylvania hospital and, and she was in Bryn Mawr hospital. And, um, and our daughters, Claire and Angelina. You know, two days after they were born.
Um, my, my best friend since I was little, uh, Patsy came over to my apartment and did like the most beautiful, uh, like double baby photo shoot ever. I mean, those pictures are treasured and you know, and Angelina and Claire they've been together ever since, really for some, the birth of a child is a catalyst for what is commonly called growing out of addiction.
That wasn't the case for Sarah or Liz? Here's Liz. I had no power. I did not have the ability to not drink. I had completely convinced myself that I had no problem with it. I could pick it up and put it down. Um, and it took about two years, uh, less than two years since I weaned her to get to a point where I was like, all right, I'll go to.
Well, much of this series is focused on Sarah and the depth of her struggle, Liz and Charlie, both three to depths that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Here's Mary talking about Liz. She had a vicious struggle. Christmas morning. She fell backwards into the snow. Whoa, Liz, God bless her. God. More after this bird.
Here's this episode's podcast recommendation brought to you by great pods. Hello everyone. This is spark Tabor, the host of the cookies for breakfast podcast. If you like sex, dating current events, or just generally important things in our social space, you are going to want to listen to that podcast is hosted by.
I don't get a lot of guests, but Jay who you guys all know very well is a guest. Uh, more than once. And occasionally I will grab people to give their expert opinions on what's happening in their life. But for the most part, it's my perspective. It's my sense of humor. And I'd love for you to give it a shot.
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Unlike Liz Sara's returned to her previous lifestyle was less, a slow burn and more, a quick dive of a high cliff within weeks of giving birth. She was back to partying and her unsafe use of substances. But as you'll hear the drugs themselves were almost secondary. They were in effect a means to an end.
Here's Sarah. I set it up for myself. I knew because I, I was, I kind of remember being pregnant and like just wanting to let loose. And this is like a horrible thing. I guess I sound like a terrible human because you know, every pregnant mom supposed to be thrilled about having the baby and worried about that.
And like, I was resentful at that point in my life because I just, there were so many different factors that were coming into play. Um, especially her father. I was terrified of having that attachment to. So, you know, she was born and I was thrilled. She was absolutely gorgeous. She still is. And, um, I adore her, but, um, I made a decision a couple of days after she was born that I wasn't going to breastfeed because I knew that I wanted to use substances.
I think looking back on things, if you would ask me in the middle of. I don't think I was capable of being honest with myself or my motives at that time. And I don't think I fully understood what was going on. I just probably knew that I was not going to be able to sustain any longer. It had been five months since I had been able to like, feel.
I just remember feeling constantly, like I was like the suffocating. She remembers that first pill almost as vividly as she remembers the birth of Angelina, it was after Angelina was born thinks she was like two weeks old. And I called a friend in south Philly and asked for a perk and he came and dropped off a 30 and I took one 30 and it fucked me.
And from that point on, it was a couple of months before I was snorting heroin and then shooting heroin. And it was just like downhill. I still remember being in the living room when I took that perk like 10 minutes later. And that was when it felt like it was just fireworks, going off everywhere. And I was like, this is what the fuck I need in my life every day.
And, um, God did I love that feeling. So from that point on for the next five years, all I did was get high. Oh, okay. Wow. A lot in there. First thing first, for those of you who don't know the different levels of Percocet, I'm going to put this in as easily understood terminology as a. I imagine you haven't had a drink in five months as Sarah hasn't used anything in five months and instead of, oh, I don't know, sipping a beer.
You went straight to guzzling an entire bottle of vodka. That was essentially what Sarah did here, going from no use all the way up to a perc 30, which is very high. Now, this is kind of important because we've heard a lot over the last couple of years. About all the different people who supposedly started using Percocet and then switched to things like heroin.
And I'm not saying that doesn't happen. In fact, it does. The thing is the storyline around. That was a bit of a false flag. Yes. There are people as the covers are our newspapers and CNN coverage likes to say who let's say our high school quarterback gets his knee blown up, starts taking Percocet and then switch it to heroin.
But there's a missing step. Often the reason that person switches is not because they decide, oh, you know what, Percosets fun. I'm going to try heroin. Sure. For some people that is the case. However, the majority of people who made that switch as some incredible deep dives into this story have. Are not out of a desire to do so.
It was because with all of the ruckus being made about the opioid epidemic, quote, unquote doctors, weren't able to prescribe these the same way they could before. And when someone who is already struggling with misuse or addiction to Percocet, all of a sudden can get their Percocet. Well, what are they going to do?
They're going to go buy something off the street, which may be Percocet, or it may be. As you'll hear Sarah say here, she didn't intentionally switch to heroin. In fact, I think this story is illuminating for a lot of people. Here's Sarah. I didn't actually know that it was heroin at the time. I thought it was Coke and we snorted it together.
The we here is Sarah's coworker, whose name is being withheld to protect our privacy. Sarah was working as a bartender at the time because we used to. Get thirties and crush them up in the dollar bills and like fold it in half and like was like a weird way to do it. It was some weird ritual anyway. Um, so I did a line and I didn't realize that it was dope.
Um, I think I thought it was Coke. And then, um, she had said, well, you know, you can't get addicted if you just snort it. And then she told me how much it was and it was a third of the price that I'd been paying for 30. So I remember, and it lasted a lot longer. I remember buying like a very small amount and it lasted me a couple of days.
A quick note here. There are obviously a lot of messages from this series, but one of them that I hope you walk away with is the need for honest and fact-based drug education. Obviously, there is no truth to the idea that you can't get addicted from snorting. That's just flat out false. And if people understood that if we had taught that to people, when they were younger, maybe Sarah's story would be different, maybe not, but at least we wouldn't have this regret.
Anyway, back to Sarah. At one point I had called out of work because I didn't feel well. And, um, she had called me and kind of said, oh, you're dope. Sick. That's all it is, you know, you just need to call town. And I was like, what? And. Dope dealer actually was a delivery dope dealer named tone. And, um, I had never had that dropped off to me or anything.
I don't even know if I had ever called him at that point. He came right away and I felt great after. And when I found out how little it held, like how, how small, like I was like, you know, the price of it. And you got like this deal. If you bought a bundle, you got 14 bags for a hundred, which is like four free bags.
And I was like, we'll take one of those. A quick explanation here. If the average bag of heroin containing 0.1 grams costs, depending on where you are in the U S between 10 and $20, you can see why Sarah would jump at the chance to buy a bundle. It's like any other commodities market. If I go to the store and they're having a sale, a two for one, for a bag of coffee, I'm probably going to buy that second bag of coffee.
Even if I only need one bag, the same can be said about. In fact, a story from my own personal experience, I was recently at the marijuana dispensary because here in Pennsylvania, I have my medical marijuana card and I went into buy one cartridge from my vape pen. They were having a sale instead of spending 50 bucks on it.
I could buy three for 90. Well, you probably can guess what I did. I bought three for 90. Anyway, all of that. While Sarah was getting deeper and deeper in the heroin use. She of course still had a baby at home. And as it was when they were little and Sarah helped raise Mac, it was now max turn here's Mac.
Angelina was such a peach. She, she really was. Like my baby, I took her everywhere with me everywhere. Other than school, she was, uh, like on my hip at all times. Um, kind of like how I was with Sarah when I was a baby. So it was funny how we kind of did a little flip flop, you know, I was like, Sarah's baby.
And then her baby became my baby Mack was a little bit older now, middle school and eventually high school. And unlike when Sarah's misuse first began, she understood more. At that point, I was old enough to understand, and I was just pissed off often. Sometimes I would tell her, you know, like I had to cancel my plans with my friends, because you said you were going to come home and you didn't like, what the hell?
And she would just be like, oh, I'm so sorry, baby girl, like, I'll make it up to you. Dah, dah, dah. But she was always high. So it was like, she didn't really care and none of those words meant anything. And I knew that. So I was angry, but what do you say to that? Really? When Sarah knew that she had really fucked up, she would bring me on drives to the city and, you know, I would feel really special, like, okay, things are changing, she knows she's, she is acknowledging it and she's going to change and she's not going to do it again.
And then it would just happen the next day again. So it was, um, I kind of stopped feeling toward it and just, did you know what I, I knew I had. To continue, like someone had to take care of being. And at that point, Sarah had become reliant on me for that. And it wasn't going to punish being for things that Sarah.
Let's take a break. If you guys want to learn more about Savage sisters, check out www.savagesisters.org. If you'd like to hear more from me and Sarah specifically, please reach out to info@savagesisters.org, and we can come speak to you, your organization, your business, or your place of worship on Narcan, trainings, harm reduction, trainings, or anything in general with Savage sisters.
If you want to donate, please go to seven sisters.org sponsorship. There, you can find a plethora of ways to give directly to our cause and help our mission. Additionally, if you want to come volunteer at an outreach, please reach out to info@savagesisters.org. So we can give you dates times and locations for our outreach events.
Thanks everybody. Stay Savage.
Hey, y'all it's Jay, the host of this show. If you're not really enjoying the series and you're just listening to make me happy, then thank you for the rest of you. I invite you to check out everything else. Choose your struggle does in the mental health and drug use advocacy space, we have a couple of other podcasts, including our incredibly popular weekly show called.
Choose your struggle on that show. I interview people with lived and learned experiences on the subjects of mental. Substance misuse and recovery and drug use and policy. But occasionally we talk about other topics as well. We also have another new show called your struggle presents Monday motivation, but it's not just podcasts.
We also host two vulnerable storytelling events, rock-bottom storytellers and a day in the life on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube. And now I'm so excited to announce that we'll be doing rock bottom storytellers live here in Philly, starting this summer. I also have a book coming out, hopefully later this year.
And I regularly traveled the country, telling my story. And speaking about these important topics. I know this is all a lot, but you can check us out at our website. Choose your struggle.com and check out all of our podcasts wherever you're getting this serious, just by searching for choose struggle. All right.
That's enough about us. Let's get back to the show.
I ended up robbing my Percocet dealer twice. Um, cause she would from your whole prescription, I would sell it and then give her the money back. She gave me the next one. Uh, I robbed her and then she's like, Hey, I really need money. Like, I'll give you another one. And I was like, all right, bet. I robbed her again.
Um, so I kind of burned that bridge. Um, so I had to start learning how to, how to get heroin or fentanyl or whatever it was at the time that came in those little blue bag. While Sarah was sinking, deeper and deeper into our own struggles with addiction. She wasn't alone. Charlie was practically swimming right next to her.
I held a job for three years getting high the whole time. Uh, and then I didn't, but I still acted like I did. I mean, anything I did, I was gonna go get fucked up and usually not on what everyone else there was getting fucked up on. Uh, now I, I drank like a fair bit, but yeah. It was going to sound horrible, but like, in my self centered ways, like, I, I didn't care if I saw anyone else.
Most of the time, if there was like an obligation for me to go, I would go. Or if like I can get something out of it, I would go. Um, but like really, it just made it easier for me to get away with what I wanted to. By nature. Charlie is a bit withdrawn. And so it wasn't that his struggles went unnoticed. It was almost like from the family's recollection, it was hard to tell when the struggles actually began, but everybody remembers the day.
Things changed for him because he reached a deeper depth than Liz or Sarah had up to that point. And he did so much quicker. Here's Mary Charlie is like a submarine, you know, The day that he, oh, deed. Oh yeah. Real quick warning here. This is not pretty. He comes marching up the steps and I was in my room working and I, I heard Aaron in the back room say, hi, Charlie, how you doing?
And he's like, great. And I remember thinking, great. That's not Charlie. Charlie's always like, oh my God. Charlie's never great. Right? I'm typing. I have molds that I make from work and I keep them in a section in the middle bedroom where Charlie was sleeping, where he was, that was his bedroom, but I have a cabinet in there.
That's all my work stuff. And I looked up at the cabin and I had to go to the bathroom. And then there was like a bunch of molds they're not supposed to be there. So let me, I took them and I went and opened the middle door and there was Charlie blue. I screamed call 9 1 1. And I remember just meeting him in the back, listening to the nine 11 people, get them in the overdose position.
And I'm like, okay. And I'm leaning over and I'm giving him rescue breaths, rubbing his chest. And the cops came. You don't forget where you were when you find out a family member, overdosed here's Mac. I was in the city when I got a call from Aiden, he was hysteria. And I was like, what is happening? And he's like, Charlie almost just died.
Like he did die. And then to bring him back to life and I was going to the hospital and I was like, what? And he was like, heroin. That day completely changed Charlie's life. But it's important to remember that the drugs were simply a means to an end. Here's Charlie explaining it better than I ever could.
Uh, I've done probably most of the drugs you've heard of and a bunch that you haven't because I used to be real, real deep into like research chemicals and stuff. What I do know is that like drugs? Weren't my first addiction. Like I've been seeking escapism my whole life. Like even back in like elementary school, I would have just ignore what the teacher is saying.
I'd be sitting there reading, like just trying to escape the world or video games or anything to not have to like focus on my uncomfortability. Pretty much everybody I interviewed said at one time or another one person's struggle was in a word minimized by another person, struggled that appeared worse for Liz.
That was often the other two, because her problem was drinking, which while looking sloppier is thought of as, not as bad as drug addiction for Charlie as you'll hear that was Sarah. Well, like I got to preface this with like, I've been on drugs for years. I'm out of my fucking mind. Um, and this is not how I feel today, but at the time it was.
Well, her problems way worse than mine. Um, she does way more dope than I do. She runs way harder and better than I do. I had such such little perspective or like ability, or want to, to think about things from any perspective, but my drug addled, what a like, mindset. It was just like, well, I'm not as bad as her.
So like, I could probably keep doing. Macro members. This time is absolutely full of surprises and not the good kind. Nobody knew what the next day would bring. It was absolute chaos all the time. Uh, Liz was on benders. She was always wasted. And Sarah was just saying, Wow. It's just everywhere. And I remember Sarah kind of scoffing when she found out about Charlie, because she was like, Hmm, see, I'm not the only one.
It was around this time that Sarah made an incredibly difficult decision. She asked clay, her ex to take full custody of Dylan. Honestly, it was a safety concern and his dad was really disgusted with me at the point, but I didn't. I don't remember what I had said to him. There were a lot of things that took place that I had been kind of covering up and lying about, but I certainly didn't tell him the truth about the reason that I didn't want Dylan there for Adam who is nearly done with high school.
There was very little empathy for us, three struggling siblings. And I was just at that point, Matt, because I remember my money going, missing my stuff going missing. And me just not understanding that. Anything. I was just angry. Um, I was annoyed. I was angry. My house was full of people. Um, I like lost my bedroom.
Ended up sleeping on the couch for awhile. Looking back, Sarah doesn't blame Mack, Adam, or any of them for how they were feeling at the time. It was fairly obvious that my life was getting out of control. And you know, what, what are your younger brothers and sisters going to do? They're just, they were probably just as scared as I was because they were used to me having my shit together.
Something had to change. And given his recent overdose, Charlie was the first target. There was like a, I don't know, it was an intervention. That was the idea behind it, on my porch, or like a couple of my brothers and her. And like, you have a problem, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'll stop. And then shortly thereafter there was a, you're going to rehab, uh, intervention.
I just went, he was like, I don't, I don't really like confrontation. I figured that it would just like stop and then. Get out and keep doing what I was doing. Maybe like, Hey, I tried over a short time period, Sarah, Liz, and Charlie would all start the in and out of rehab shuffle. That is all too common for people struggling with addiction.
Adam looks back and remembers being for some reason, more afraid by what was going on with Sarah than anyone else. This was the first exposure I had to somebody in addiction and it horrified me. I was confused and scared that. Never go back to being Sarah. Um, and I just ran from it. Um, definitely just got the hell out of my mom's house.
As soon as I possibly couldn't. You know, there was a variety of reasons that wasn't just because Sarah and Charlie were both in active addiction. It was because of a plethora of reasons being in a 17 year old kid and a house full of people, um, was not convenient. Like one time I was there, um, I was sleeping on the couch and I woke up.
My money was all gone and Sarah was gone as well. And I've asked everybody in the house, Hey, did you see my money? I couldn't believe it. And I texted her and I was like, Hey, you didn't see my money. Did you? Um, because I really didn't think it was her. I thought maybe I just lost it. I was, you know, sleeping on my mom's couch and going back and forth to and from the city and had been drinking the night before believed I probably had just lost it.
I really didn't think it was her. Um, until she showed up at my mom's house. Gave me my money back. And it was like, I relapsed again. And she went back to rehab shortly after that. And I was, I had hopes, you know, she had done it on her own. She had made that choice on her own. Um, at that point I'd started to become more aware of what was happening.
And, um, I was like, oh, she's going to get sober this time. But there was like probably 25 more times after that, because that was towards the beginning each time with just. More scary. And I would think it was less likely that she was ever going to come back. Um, and I definitely wasn't, uh, too helpful cause I was just getting angrier and angrier throughout the process.
Um, until eventually, I mean, fast forward years at this point now, like I realized after dealing with it for so long and after seeing so many people in her life die in her struggle through recovery on so many occasions. I realized it has nothing to do with me or anybody else. It's struggle with the desire to live that she's having.
And the only way that I could try to get her to be normal again, would just be to help her get the desire to live again, and to keep her alive as much as possible. Sarah remembers the first time she told her mother that she was struggling. It's a story that they both told me separately, and the recollections are a little bit.
As a reminder, the bleep you're about to hear is the name of Angelina's father, who we're not saying out of respect for Sarah's privacy and safety. I went to my mom first and said, I'm on heroin. And she tried to help me quote, unquote, wean myself off. This point, I was living at the house and this was right before I moved into my mom's.
We had attempted one time to get sober together. And my mom came to the house and she hid bags all around the house for seven days of a detox. And as soon as she left for rip the house apart and found all the bags that were hidden, use them all called her the next day and said, we're sick. And so she came and picked me up and was like, okay, this isn't what.
Um, I don't think she had any idea what she was getting herself into with me. And my mom is ruthlessly defensive of her children. And so I wrote that to death. I mean, I took complete advantage of her love for me. Mary remembers this experience just a little bit differently. So the first thing that we did and we concocted this.
Was that we would buy heroin and they would go upstairs and back room, close the door and I would hide it. And then I would daily tell them where, so that we would get them from whatever they were at until down to down to one bag. And then they would give the baby to sister and they would come here from one bag.
They would just have to white knuckle it. So they made it today. Didn't make it today seven, but they made it today five and on day five, Sarah called me and she's like, I think we're going to need more. And I said, how's that? She said, well, you know the ones under the drawer that you taped to the drawer bottom in the kitchen, we found them and we did them and they came here.
But as it turns out, caught and brought it back to the house, I said, no, one's allowed to leave. If you leave, you're not allowed to come. Left said he was just going to buy cigarettes. I'm like, you're full of shit. I've bought you everything you need. And I let him back in and he brought heroin back in. And so that didn't accomplish anything, all that pain and suffering and all the shivering and shaking and all the vomiting didn't actually work.
But that was step one. For those of you listening and thinking, I just don't understand any of this. Trust me when I say we're going to go over what it feels like to go through withdrawal and detox later in the show, because Sarah summed it up even more perfectly than I ever could and hers and my experiences were vastly different in the short run.
Let me just say this Mary's dedication to her daughter and really all three of her kids is outstanding. As you can hear, Mary was willing to do anything. If it helped her daughters and her son get better. Here's what. I think the only reason why I didn't like break like on her was because my mom always said, you have to feel empathy for her.
You have to understand. And really at a young age it was drilled in that this isn't her fault, even though it feels to you, like she's doing this because she doesn't really love you or isn't thinking about you, like, okay, It is something that just happens that she was just born with and you can't hate her for that.
But especially the one thing that my mom jelled into me often was that don't do anything that you're going to regret because she might not be here tomorrow. So I got used to thinking, you know, this might be the last time I ever see. Often. So I just made sure that if it was the last time I ever saw her, it wasn't going to be something that I would feel really bad about wanting to like standing over her casket.
We've reached the point where in some stories about these incredibly difficult topics, storytellers start to come back up for air. It's not quite the bottom, but it's close enough to give the story weight, but not deep enough that it really makes people squirm. Here's the. Here at choose your struggle. We don't do that.
We're not quite at the bottom yet. And, uh, you better strap in because when we get there, we're going to sit there for a little bit, as I like to describe it, we do. What's called the you story, not the V story. You know, the V story is the one where you talk about the downfall. You hit the bottom and you bounce right back to leave.
People inspired. We're going to leave. You inspired. In fact, if you think about the you that come back as just as strong as the. But the differences, when we get to that bottom, we're going to sit there for a while. The next couple episodes are going to be that bottom. We're just now starting to scrape it.
So like I said, strap in and be ready for that. I do want to say one thing about what max said, and that is that constant fear of death. That's something that I can talk about from my own experience. As members of my family, tell me what it was like being continuously aware that I may die at anytime.
Families of people who are struggling, whether it's from mental health or addiction, they have to get used to this feeling. And it's not one that ever gets easier. So props to Matt for that vulnerability there, because it's something we don't talk about enough. Now, finally, I want to leave you with Sarah's mindset about this time.
It was tough for her to look back at where she was at this time and who she was at this time, but more importantly, what it was like living in her head at the time. I kind of hated myself at this point. You know, I, there wasn't much good going on in my life. Um, I hated the choice that I had made, uh, with my ex and I hated that I didn't really have control over my drug use and that I had lost my professional career.
And then I was living at my mom's house. And then I wasn't being a good example. I mean, there was nothing there hadn't been, since I got into the relationship with my ex, it was a slow, steady decline into like absolute misery. And it, I didn't climb out of that until I got sober the next time. I wanted to get high and I wanted to stay on the block and I wanted to be near my drugs.
Thanks for listening. Made it. Season one, stay Savage is a choose your struggle production and a member of the shameless podcast network. I'm Jay Schiffman or narrator producer, and founder of cruiser struggle special. Thanks to Lauren Schiffman and Steve Schiffman for their help on this show, the theme song was composed by me and built on the song.
All that by Ben sound, the made it theme you hear in episode 10 was composed by lettuce and Robert. All interviews for this show were given freely and no payment was received by anyone for providing an interview for this show, all views expressed by those interviewed are their own. For more info, please see your show notes or learn more@chooseyourstruggle.com.