Choose Your Struggle

Special feed drop! Welcome to Choose Your Struggle Presents: Made It, Season 1: Stay Savage. This episode is your intro to the series. You'll meet some of the people and learn some of the terms. But story itself doesn't start until Episode 2.

Show Notes

Check out the rest of Season 1 of Choose Your Struggle Presents: Made It at https://kite.link/CYS-Stay-Savage.

Made It is a member of the Shameless Podcast Network and a Choose Your Struggle production. Learn more at https://www.shamelessnetwork.com/ and at https://www.chooseyourstruggle.com/.

Learn more about Sarah and Savage Sisters, including how to support, at https://savagesisters.org/.

For more on Made It host Jay Shifman, see https://jay.campsite.bio/ and http://www.JayShifman.com.  

A complete list of people you heard on this show (and those referenced but unheard from) and pictures to put a face with the names and voices can be found at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-CIeh6f2bhgb3cGfJFCqvXL9SJWvSUtN?usp=sharing.

Made It Season 1: Stay Savage was recorded in South Philadelphia, except for the interview with Mother Mary Nolan, which was recorded at her house in the Philly suburbs, and the audio you hear in Episode 1, which was recorded on site in North Philly's Kensington neighborhood.

This show is dedicated to: Jim, David, Lauren, Renae, and the roughly 80,000 people who lost their life to OD in this country during the period of time in which the show was being made. 

Made It was created without any sponsorship dollars. The partners you hear from were all donated their spots free of charge. But before you discount them for it know that we are so thankful for their support at a time when that was hard to find! And it means they are all orgs. and people we LOVE. So check them out! And to support us, reach out at info@jayShifman.com or through www.chooseyourstruggle.com or subscribe to our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ChooseYourStruggle.

Buy some merch (including the official Season 1: Stay Savage design!) at our store

Our partners for this show are as follows:

Drug Policy Alliance

Great Pods

YaFavTrashman

Of Substance

e3 Radio/The Qube

The People of Color Psychedelic Collective

Consequence of Habit

The Head and the Hand

The New Books Network

Ootify


The podcasts profiled on this show are brought to you by Great Pods and include:

I’m The Villain

Ghost Town

What’s On Your Mind with Jani Rad

Cookies for Breakfast

Based on a True Story

Salad with a Side of Fries

Sex, Drugs, and Jesus

Hotter Than Health

Covering All Aspects of Holistic Health with Amanda Love

Crackdown


Don't like something you heard on the show? That's fine! This is a tough subject. Reach out at info@jayshifman.com and let's chat.

The theme song for this show was created by me using the song All That by Bensound. For proof of license please see the certificate in the compendium linked above.

The Made It theme, heard in Episode 10, was composed and performed by Leduce and Rob Devious.

Special thanks to Quinn Greenhaus for her help with enhancing the sound quality of the show. To improve your podcast, check her out at https://www.quinngreenhaus.com/!
 
Looking for someone to wow your audience now that the world is reopening? My speaking calendar is open! If you're interested in bringing me to your campus, your community group, your organization or any other location to speak about Mental Health, Substance Misuse & Recovery, or Drug Use & Policy, reach out at Info@JayShifman.com. 
 
· Tank Tops are in! You can see what they look like on the website (thanks to Jay's wife for modeling the women's cut). Reach out through the website to order. If you're looking for something a little less expensive, magnets are in too! Check them out on the website or Instagram. Patreon supporters get a discount so join Patreon!
 
· But that's not all! You can now buy even more merch! Check out our store on Teepublic at https://www.teepublic.com/stores/choose-your-struggle?ref_id=24308 for shirts, mugs, stickers, phone cases, and much, much more!
 
· Support the Podcast on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ChooseYourStruggle
 
· Leave us an audio message to share feedback and have a chance to be played on the show: https://podinbox.com/CYS
 
· Review the Podcast: https://ReviewThisPodcast.com/Choose-Your-Struggle.
 
· Support the Podcast, a different way: https://podhero.com/401017-ikv.
 
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· Our Partner Road Runner (Use Code CYS for 10% off): www.roadrunnercbd.com/ref/CYS

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

What is Choose Your Struggle?

Discussing issues of Mental Health, Substance Misuse and Recovery, and Drug Use & Policy with host Jay Shifman, Speaker, Storyteller, and Advocate.

Each week Jay chats with interesting guests as they seek to destroy stigma and advocate for honest, educational conversations that motivate positive change.

You can learn more at https://jay.campsite.bio/.

Choose Your Struggle has been streamed in over thirty-five countries and is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts.

Leave a review! https://ReviewThisPodcast.com/Choose-Your-Struggle

* This transcript has not been edited. Sorry, I ran out of time!

Made it made it made it is a member of the shameless podcast network. 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. Hi, this is captain Ron from great pods a website that collects podcast critic reviews, and ratings all in one spot to help you discover your next podcast. Listen, think of it like the rotten tomatoes for podcasts. Each episode of this show will include a podcast recommendation brought to you by us.

All right, everybody. We're going to do a quick Narcan training before we go to Kensington and I'm going to go over the tables and hopefully get some volunteers set up with specific jobs. It's early on a Saturday morning, the last weekend in February. It's a kid's soccer game early, or if you're religious Sunday school.

But I'm here with roughly 30 people crammed into a living room, in a house in grays ferry, a neighborhood in south Philly. The house is run by Savage sisters, a nonprofit that oversees this and more than five other recovery houses in the area. The organization also conducts multiple outreaches a month, one every Tuesday evening, and a larger event on a select Saturday, which is why we're here today.

The voice you just heard from was Sarah Laurel, the founder of Savage sisters and its executive director. She's also the focus of this series, the main character. Sarah like roughly half this room and myself included is in recovery from substance misuse. That's what makes these outreach events so special.

A lot of us get it because we've been there too, as Sarah says, we're not going to force you to listen to a sermon for our sandwich. We're just here to help. A couple of things. First things first, has anybody here ever reversed an overdose before? Thank you for your service. Bitches. .

99% of the series was recorded in my office in South Philly.

The sound is imperfect at various points. You hear a barking dog, a plane flying overhead, that kind of thing. But some of what you're hearing here in this episode was not, it was recorded on location with a handheld mark at this house, and eventually at MacPherson square in north Philadelphia Kensington neighborhood, I felt this was important because while we deal with sensitive topics and more on that in a minute, the rest of this series has a sense of safety to it.

We're all. Okay. Now sitting in an office overflowing with autograph memorabilia and usually my sleeping dog. Time has done what it does for wound healing them over and leaving deep scars. But the real feeling of this work is what you're hearing today. It's gritty. No one is getting rich off it and it's beautiful and it's basic humanity, but in no other sense of that word, last time I Narcaned somebody, I did 11 minutes worth of rescue breathing alone.

After administering three Narcans, they did live how. They are tranquilized. So we have to be mindful of that. Realize that you, if you're comfortable doing it, if you're not comfortable screenshot holler, I will come to rescue breaths, who here is comfortable doing rescue rests on a snotty bloody mouth

back it outreach. Sarah is training us on how to reverse. Probably 75% of the room has been trained before speaking for myself, this is my ninth 10th, something like that. I've lost count, but for the new people, this is an incredibly important step. And for the rest of us, it's a great refresher. And I'll admit despite all of my trainings, both these Narcan exercises and my CPR certification in the fact that I carried Narcan with me, literally, whenever I leave the house, I've never actually reversed.

The few times I've been around someone who has needed it. Somebody with more experience, including Sarah herself have been on hand and snap to it before I could get over my shock. In fact, the closest I've ever come to a reverse overdose was my own. And that was over 12 years ago. If you can't tell already this show is going to deal with some deeply difficult topics, drug use, obviously physical abuse, suicide, rape, overdose trauma.

I debated how to handle those moments. And even tried to pick out each time a trigger warning may be of use, but after the 10th or 11th in the first few episodes alone, I'd gave it up. It disrupted the flow of the show too much. So I'll just say this. Now this show is explicit. And even more than that, this show is rough.

This show is in a word raw, to be clear. If I haven't said this clearly enough, this show will hurt. Just hearing some of these stories is a form of trauma. The A's storyline is Sarah, her trauma, her struggle, and her founding of this incredible organization, the B storyline is Sarah's brother Charlie. And his struggle with addiction.

The C storyline is Sarah's sister, Liz, and her struggle with addiction and throughout you'll hear from other people in their lives, how their struggles hurt them and how they mourn their siblings and friends, death that they were sure was coming. Yeah. And if their show is too much for you, please turn it off right now.

No one will think less of you. In fact, I, the host and producer of this show do not blame you. One bit. I've sat on panels where I've employed people to make shows about the joy of substance. Use the pleasure that 80% of those who use substances receive from their use less true crime and more. Everyone's fine.

As I like to say, and then here I am ignoring my own device. I did. So because I heard a story that needed to be told it's not just Sarah or Charlie or. It's not all of them altogether, either. It's this entire family posts, Sarah's blood family and the Savage family at large. In addition to Sarah, Charlie and Liz, you'll hear from Sarah's mom, mother, Mary.

You'll hear from Sarah's sister Mac and her brother, Adam. You'll hear from Adam's fiance, Georgie Sarah's husband, Tony. You'll hear from destiny. Who's a board member of this organization and worked for the. You'll hear from Shannon a long time volunteer for Savage and an integral member of the family.

And you'll hear from me, I'm Jay Schiffman, the founder of choose your struggle, a guy in recovery. And yeah, I'll get this out of the way. Right now, a board member of Savage sisters, that being said, all of these interviews were given from their free will. No one was paid, no one was coerced. Everyone told their version of this story.

Not because they thought that their trauma would make for good entertainment, but because they thought the story is one that isn't. This isn't the Hollywood version of this story where Sarah struggles and we all hug it out. And Randy Newman or Elton John plays us off. Yes. We end with something beautiful being created, but it's messy.

And if I'm a betting, man, I think you're going to walk away going, man. I don't know if that was worth it. There's no neat little bow at the end, but I think that's what makes us amazing. It's important to remember throughout this show that nobody has. That's kind of the point don't judge, because as you'll see, you do not know, I promise you, you do not know because we never really know.

In fact, I want to clear up one misconception right from the beginning. And that's simply what addiction actually is. Addiction is a medical term that only applies to a very small sliver of what we call substance misuse and what was called once substance abuse. We'll talk about verbiage in a second, but to put this simply substance misuse is a wide spectrum.

Everything from binging alcohol on weekends to the most extreme form of addiction we've been misled to believe is actually. To be diagnosed with addiction. You have to meet certain qualifications as laid out by the DSM five, for those who don't commonly read this dictionary of a book out of interest like I do.

And yes, I'm that fun at parties. The DSM-V is simply the fifth edition of the diagnostic manual for mental health. It literally stands for the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. And if you get 20 psychologists and psychiatrists in a room, they'll have at least 200 opinions on. But the simple fact is to be given a diagnosis from it.

There are certain criteria that you have. If you meet two to three of those criteria, you'll be diagnosed with a mild form of addiction. If you meet four to five, you'll be diagnosed with a moderate form of addiction and six or more means you have a severe addiction. The point I'm trying to make here is that we overuse the term addiction.

Much of the time. The person is probably struggling with an issue of substance misuse, but they may not qualify for the full blown addiction diagnosis. Imagine for a second, we allow people in our lives to diagnosis with cancer. The way we do it here. Pretty absurd. Right? So maybe think for a second before using that term next time, and instead use the more apt substance misuse or as is too common.

What you actually mean is someone is simply using drugs and you don't like it. I've worked with clients where they told me their loved ones struggle with addiction and their only proof was they smoked a blunt on the weekends. I want to slap their hand with a ruler and curse. The ghost of Nancy Reagan made she and her husband rotten, the awful fires of hell they created.

However, the flip side of this can be true. I'd say probably most people listening to the show have a mild to severe addiction to coffee. I know I do. And you know who you are, and if you think you don't Google the addiction criteria, weirdly the last time I was at a rehab center, I didn't see the coffee wing nor the exercise addiction ward or the special lockdown for people who work 18 hours a day.

So clearly we're okay with some forms of addiction and not others. Don't spend too long thinking about this because it will break. Let's take a break. Here's this episode's podcast recommendation brought to you by great pods. So, Isabel, what do you think I'm the villain is it's about how millennials are challenging the status quo dismantling norms dismantling our entire society.

Basically the revolution, AI, the future dating, and how to make an impact. One of the central themes that we're both really interested in. You can find our show. I'm the villain anywhere where you get podcasts, you can also find us on social media at I'm the villain pod. So Twitter, that's our Gmail and that's our Instagram.

You're not supposed to do CPR unless you know how to do CPR. Okay. Here's the thing with Narcan. This is the star of the show. Not us. We are not here to do a bunch of CPR on people that don't need CPR, Narcan rescue. Back at training. We're finishing up in a few of us have moved downstairs to start loading cars with materials.

I ended up filling my trunk with clothes and snacks, the handout, Georgie, who you're going to hear from the serious jumps in the passenger seat. Next to me in a new volunteer gets in the back. He immediately starts telling us his story of recovery and some of the words he uses are to put it nicely. A bit old school words are important.

I mentioned earlier that we're switching from drug abuse to substance misuse. Why? While. The first of which is that the term drug abuse is vile. Think of the word abuse for a second. What else do we use it for? Spousal abuse, physical abuse, violent actions, all of them, just from a linguistics perspective.

This phrase does not mean. Nothing about the act of substance misuse in itself is violent towards anyone, but the user, it just makes the person sound like a monster, which to put this very clear for you was the point of that invention to make people like me or more accurately guys like me, except for the darker pigmentation sound evil.

That's where the term comes from. But the other reason is it puts the onus on the drug itself. Like weed is, I don't know, picking up a sledge hammer and beating you on the head with it, which is absurd. Drugs are simply chemicals. They have no mind. The same substance that is used in hospitals and creates a painkilling quality that doctors rely on.

If you put it in the streets and mix it with heroin, it'll kill you right now. We're all taught to fear. Fentanyl. Next time you go to get surgery, tell them you don't want fentanyl. See how hard they roll their eyes. So we say substance misuse, because it's what you're doing. You're misusing a substance to give you a clearer example.

I'm a micro dozer. Yup. I'm outing myself as a drug user. But that means I take 0.1 gram to psilocybin every few days. And it does wonder from my mental health and it is, and I mean this from the, from the absolute truth and depth of my heart, a huge positive on my life. However, if every three days I was taking three grams enough to put me in a state that depending on my mindset and physical setting can range from chatting with my ancestors to thinking I am the lizard.

That would be substance misuse. It's very subjective in that way, which is why people are so quick to say addiction because it doesn't take a lot of intelligent thought bad man used drugs, he addict. And so on in this series, we'll hear people use all sorts of words and expressions on this issue.

Generally, I try to correct people because that's one of my things. It really matters to me. I don't like people who say addict. I mean, we wouldn't call a person with cancer or cancer, right. Their struggle doesn't become who they are. But in this series, I didn't do that. Why? Because everyone here has experienced either they themselves have struggled or it's someone that they love very deeply.

They get to make this choice because it wasn't coming from a place of disgust and anger. So you'll hear people say drug abuse. You'll hear people say addict, you'll hear people say clean instead of recovery, which is my personal pet peeve, because that word comes from the belief that drug users are dirty, which is just.

And at one point, Sarah even says junkie, which I shouldn't have to say this, but unless you've struggled yourself, don't say junkie, just, just, just don't. Words matter. They matter a lot to me, five years in recovery, myself, when someone said addict to me, I still picture a stereotype. And when I realized that it really, really upset me, that moment forced me to look at myself in the mirror and investigate the propaganda that I myself believed about drug users and drugs themselves.

Yes. I mean that even drugs themselves, I'm in recovery, but I'm not sober. Not all of us. We are people in each of us is in different place. Just like each different treatment plan should be personal to that person. When you think about it, that actually makes a lot of sense. Every person with cancer doesn't get treated the exact same way, but that's what we do with people with addiction.

There is a spectrum here. We don't hear that enough. We're often told there's only one way to be in recovery and that stone cold, Steve Austin sober, which is like taking a sledgehammer to every nail and wondering why there are so many holes. The treatment industry is finally waking up to this fact and moving forward with what we call a person centered care, like what does that person need?

And in fact, we are at a brilliant and beautiful time where there's a force of a tornado coming to the addiction treatment and drug use committee. I want to give a quick shout out to some of these thinkers that I deeply admire who are doing this work hands-on there are people like , uh, D Jaffe and Zynga Harrison and Carl Hart.

Just to name a few who are all doctors and are all working hard to shift to what we call a harm reduction approach. Yes, please. What's up man. Eat some work. Go ahead. We get to MacPherson square and Kennedy. Locals call it needle park. But historically Kensington was actually a suburb of Philadelphia, of safe space for German, other newly American immigrants in the late 18 hundreds.

When the city annex the area in the early 20th century, people of color moved in and as is always the case in this country, just investment in intentional disregard of the neighborhood and its residents soon followed. Now, if you've heard of Kensington, you've probably seen the headlines referring to it as an open-air drug.

Some people have even called it Hamsterdam after the free zone in HBO's show the wire while certain points of this representation are correct. They miss. Like the reason, so many people struggling with homelessness and addiction congregate and Kensington is the number of services the city offers in this area or that it's subway adjacent.

And in the city with few wide open spaces, Kensington's parks and alleys allow for, tends to be set up in as safe and environment as possible for that sort of thing. There are a lot of people who call this neighborhood home, both housing. And the tensions are higher. It's also where Sarah lived to the best of her ability for years, while struggling with addiction.

All of this means it's a perfect place for Savage sisters to organize harm reduction outrages. Now, what is harm reduction? Well, let me introduce you real quick to someone you're going to hear from leader in this series. Destiny camp. Well, the world of harm reduction it's um, you know, people like to use the term meeting people where they're at.

Um, it it's a lot more than just meeting people where they're at. I'm a person that I also believe I'll meet you where you're at, but I also don't want to leave you there either. Um, so it's just, we just accept people who use drugs. Who they are and for they are, we love them. And, um, we just, except they're poor personal choice to use drugs and how to do so safely and to treat them with dignity, compassion, love, and respect to sum it up.

Simply harm reduction is believing that people are going to use substances. So we might as well help them use in a safer way. This may shock you, but we do this all the time already. I can name a couple of exams. Bars coffee shops, marijuana. Dispensary's it's one of those, well, no shit things. When you think about it, let me put it this way.

If there was no harm reduction for alcohol, you wouldn't have what we call safe supply. You wouldn't be allowed to buy alcohol in a bar or a liquor store. So much like drugs. You'd have to rely on somebody with a. Maybe that six pack he's selling you is in fact a sex or a beer, or maybe it's actually grain alcohol.

You won't know until you take your first swig and if you're wrong, hopefully that floor is carpeted. This is hard for a lot of people to understand. I usually get responses like you mean you're okay with people using drugs. Yeah. Those people end up sounding like Maude Flanders. Oh, I want someone please think of the children.

No, sorry. Fuck off. I won't do that. I won't think of the children because children shouldn't drive, but we don't ban cars or forced cars salesman to explain that over and over again, children shouldn't have sex. And except for the deep south in Mike Pence's house, we've realized that teaching on a sex ed helps to keep them from doing so, or at least practicing safer sex if they do so children shouldn't drink and we haven't banned.

We put age restrictions in place and we do our best to enforce them. So yeah, miss me with that bullshit. We can't change the way that people think about drug use and addiction. If we keep spending all of our time and energy catering to these disingenuous folks who deep down, they don't even actually believe what they're saying.

We can't worry about this lowest common denominator. They're going to be against this no matter what, and like any good mindful practice, we have to realize that that's on them. Not on us so far. As the Aphra mentioned, Dr. Mata hypothesizes. There's no such thing as the addiction personality, nor is the disease.

It's a need to solve big, hairy life problems. And the trauma we all experienced to one degree or another in drugs are simply an easiest solution. It's a really interesting idea from a doctor that I deeply admire and those folks, those screaming voices of idiocy that we all see on our cable news and walking the halls of Washington, they don't care about our trauma because they're too busy causing them.

Now I'm going to finish this section by saying the Carl Hart and others are trying to move away from the term harm reduction because it implies that harm is a given, which is something we only accept for drug use. We practice harm reduction every day, wearing a seatbelt in our car, looking both ways before we cross the street, sticking our hand under a stream of water before we get in the shower.

But we don't assume harm in those actions. Thinkers like Dr. Hart wonders to move towards slogans like health and happiness. As in supporting people who use drugs in a way that promotes health and happiness in their lives, in that use instead of merely reducing harm. After listening to the show, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Honestly, I didn't just love to hear your thoughts anyways. We'll be right back. If you guys want to learn more about Savage sisters, check out www dot Savage, sisters.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.

If you want to donate, please go to seven sisters.org sponsorship page. 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 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 an underneath show called choose 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 the 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 your struggle.

All right. That's enough about us. Let's get back to the show.

You're hearing a lot from me this episode, that's not going to be in the norm. Simply put this. Isn't my story to tell this may be obvious, but I love podcasts, which makes sense because I work on a bunch of them and I started my own network. I want to give a shout out to a few shows that he influenced me on this series.

And I encourage you to go check out those series are you're wrong about reveal series, Mississippi. God damn the ballot of Billy Joe, the original oh, gee. The United States of anxiety, case file code switch, fake doctors, real friends, criminal psychoactive, and slow burn. Yeah, that's a lot. And yes, again, I love podcasts, but unlike a lot of those other shows, especially the other serial type formats, this one won't depend on me because again, this isn't my story to tell it's Sarah's it's Charlie's it's Liz, et cetera.

So when you hear from me, it'll be mostly to move the story along. Think of me like Bob Saget. All right. From the later seasons of how I met your mother, not the early seasons where he was essentially one of the stars of the show, but the later seasons where you barely heard from him at all, but knew he was there as the narrative voice telling the story that's me popping in from time to time to tie it all together and move things along.

Okay. We're coming to a close here. So I just have a few final things to ask. Number one, please, judge this show both as a whole and each story as there. Charlie's story intersect with Sarah, but neither was the cause of the other, the same can be said about Liz held the same can be said about all the stories you hear, Tony Shannon and everyone.

Each of them is their own person with their own life. As you'll hear many of the themes overlap, but many don't, it's not so simple as that. It's not that neat. We can't explain this away by a catchy slogan or a simple rationalization because all of the stories are equally beautiful in different, in their own way more on that kind of, this is a peek behind the curtain.

Podcasts like this. They mostly make their money. Like most media through ads. When the team here at choose your struggle, playing out this show, we included an expectation of ad revenue. Well, that was a giant swing and a miss. We reached out to over 25 potential sponsors in about half didn't get back to us, which is pretty standard for this industry.

In fact, maybe even a little better than standard, but what really worried us is the half the did get back to us only a couple said no, because of the cost in that. That's bad because you can't fix the reason they were saying no, if it's cost, you can bring down the prices. You can be more flexible. What isn't flexible is why they were rejecting us, which is over our content.

So in early March, I decided to say, fuck it. I gave up on the idea of having paying sponsors. Yep. You heard me, right. I didn't make diddly squat on this show. Even worse. When I tried to spend some money promoting the show, a few outlets said. Spotify and got to give a shout out to Spotify. They rejected our ad for content reasons, their reasoning, no drugs, which is absurd.

I am a giant hip hop and rap fan. Can you imagine if they prevented any song about drugs from being played on their platform? We'd have nothing but Christian rock and creed. Just thinking about that. So all the ads you're going to hear in this series, we're given away for free for. They are all people in companies that I love and respect, and I wanted them all to have your ear.

So a couple of things to take away from that, please. Number one, support the people in companies you hear promoted on this series because clearly I do number two. If you like what you're hearing and you want to support us, donate the Savage sisters. And you'll hear Adam throughout this series talking about that we're support choosers.

You can find us at patrion.com/choose your struggle or reach out to me. And we can talk about other ways for you to get involved in finally until the over 10 companies who said they didn't want to be associated with this content. You're part of the problem. Okay. Something fun. I want to do a giveaway for this show.

So if you can identify each episode that the clips you hear in the theme song, come from, you're going to get a, choose your struggle, swag pack mail. Do you, this is for a S listeners only. I'm sorry, I can't do overseas. If you can figure it out, contact me through my website, choose your struggle.com and give me your mailing address, shirt size and the answer to the question.

You'll hear the theme each episode and by the theme, I mean the one that ends with me saying, choose your struggle presents, et cetera, et cetera, beginning of every show. So listen close and let me know if you can pick out where all of those clips come from. Finally, this show has some dedications. No. Uh, Liz's fiance and father of their beautiful daughter, Claire who passed away during the making of this show.

Jim ho, man, we miss you, buddy. Um, you are a really great dude next, uh, a wonderful friend of the choose your struggle family. Uh, the entire drug use community in the addiction community. Ah, this one hurts, uh, to even say David poses, uh, David. David lost his battle in February. And, uh, while I was making this show, oh, David dammit, man, we miss you a lot

to the roughly 80,000 people who overdosed in the us alone while I was making this show that is 80,000, too many. And all we get is empty words, no extra money's in spent. In fact, Congress bitched and moaned until money originally earmarked for harm reduction was cut from the budget in 2022. No lawmakers have been forced to resign.

Despite the fact this country is averaging over a hundred thousand overdose deaths a year. Nothing has happened, nothing just. To all of you, we lost may your memory be a blessing and motivate us all to work towards change and to all the elected officials who offer only thoughts and prayers. I mean this from the absolute depths of my soul, seriously, go fuck yourself.

I made this show out of my own pocket in the end. It's going to cost me probably about 10 grand to me. But more than that, the almost 10 months of work of manpower hours, that I could have been doing something else, something that would have brought me income. I gave that all up to do this show and it was worth every second and more as a guy in recovery and a guy who's getting a second chance because of the color of his skin and the amount of money in his family's bank account in a country, in a world where 99% of people don't even get there.

First, I know how important is for me to use my second chance for me to use my privilege for. But I made that choice alone. My wife, Lauren did not.

Uh, I'm so thankful for her. She had to live with my moody artistic ass for almost a year while I made this show. So many more legs were spent with me laying on the floor, moaning about how horrible I am, about how I was wasting my time, about how I was making something worse than Waterworld Vista mixed with guns and roses, Chinese democracy.

Uh, and I was sure every day that I could, I should quit. And I think I even told her at one point that I should just go work in the coal mines. Cause it was the only place that I would have used all the while, knowing that I chose to do this instead of making money. And that is a reason why we're not taking a big trip this year, uh, all this gotta stop.

And she never once wavered in her support of me making this. She even helped with you'll hear her and get a producing credit in the, in the episode credits at the end of the show. Uh, so Lauren, I am so thankful for you. Thank you. I mean that, thank you. I love you so much. And finally, I dedicate all my work to one person, my incredibly loving and supportive grandmother nanny.

She was there when I needed it the most and everything I do today is thanks to her loving. 'cause I honestly wouldn't be here without her. So nanny, thank you. I love you now without further ado, please scroll down in your episode list and select episode two of choose your struggle presents made it season one, stay Savage to quote the great Samuel L.

Jackson and Jurassic park. Hold onto your butts. I'm Jay Schiffman. Thank you for tuning into episode. Choose your struggle. Thanks for listening. Made it. Season one, stay Savage is a chooser struggle production and a member of the shameless podcast network. I'm Jay Schiffman, their narrator producer, and founder of choose your 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.