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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Michael, welcome aboard to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. Looking forward to our conversation.
Speaker 1:Michael, we're gonna start with a short, the good, the bad, and the ugly. What is the happiest you've ever been and what is the miserablest you've ever been in your life? What are those two moments individually?
Speaker 2:When I do Conscious and Ecstatic Dance, there was one night we were all dancing together and everybody just got around me and stroked me from head to toe And it was so agonizingly beautiful.
Speaker 1:Did you have that on video by any chance? I don't. And it was completely spontaneous. That's crazy.
Speaker 2:Yes. It was
Speaker 1:Okay. Completely before you do the most miserable moment, let me ask a follow-up question. What is conscious and ecstatic I don't I don't know what that is. I don't think our audience does.
Speaker 2:Okay. So ecstatic dance is more popular internationally. It's usually with EDM, electronic dance music, a DJ plays, and there could be two fifty people in a big room and they're all doing their own thing. Somebody's doing something like yoga, Qigong. Other people are dancing, doing ballet.
Speaker 2:People are doing contact improv where they're all rolling, connecting with, and somebody will be just lying on the dance floor for a half hour. Now this dance is similar, but the music is more expanded beyond just EDM. So conscious dance, if you think of it, it's yoga and dance and Qigong all squished together in like a jelly donut, and then you come out with that.
Speaker 1:So Qigong, is that the one that was outlawed in China or am I thinking of something else?
Speaker 2:You're thinking of something else. You're thinking of Fal Gong. Tai Chi is under Qigong. Qigong could be like this. It's breathing and movement and connecting with your energy.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. So what is the saddest terrible moment in your life?
Speaker 2:In a two year period between like age 10 and 12, my parents got divorced and we were the first family in our town that there was a divorce. My father had a heart attack, died, got brought back to life. My mother had breast cancer and both breasts were removed. And I got moved from the court from my mother to my father because of some lies my brother told me, and my father never wanted to be a father. That was the worst.
Speaker 2:That chunk of two and a half years was by far the hardest part of my life.
Speaker 1:So, and keep me honest here, you write about this in your book, which is called Raised by Wolves. And I missed the end of that. It's and possibly by monsters.
Speaker 2:So it's Raised by Wolves, Possibly Monsters with the subtitle of From Mobster to Reiki Master.
Speaker 1:Okay. So, so you've to, got to tell us that story. Start at the beginning.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Okay. So for me, the start at the beginning is, and all of my family is dead. So I wouldn't be writing or sharing about these things the way I do, if they weren't dead a long time. And I'm not, I don't mean to be insensitive, but if they were alive, I wouldn't share things the way I do.
Speaker 2:So I only had one brother, had an older brother, David. From what I hear out of the egg, he was super problematic. David turned out to be both a sociopath and a strong-arm for the mob, just to kind of give where this is going and everything, all of his practice on who he became, who he became was with me. So my brother, by the time he was in sixth grade, he had already moved, had been kicked out of four schools. Think about that sixth grade, four schools in the sixties when almost anything went in The United States.
Speaker 2:So there was David and there was the divorce. There was really almost both my parents dying in the same year. Neither of them did die at that time. And like I said, I got traded through the courts and I had this really odd thing. I haven't heard too many people talk about this experience and it seems somewhat unique.
Speaker 2:I was a gifted kid. I was brilliant. I had a lot of friends. I was one of the unusual kids who was both brilliant, had good social skills and played sports. I know really freaking annoying, but that's, that's where I started life at.
Speaker 2:And I had the unique thing of, like I said, my whole family went through hell in like two years. And on the other end of it, even though I lived with my dad and my brother, my brother really became my caretaker because my father never wanted to be a parent. He was clear about that. And he was violent. He was hateful and he was aggressive and he was manipulative and he was exploitative and him and my dad both because I mean, my dad had cheated on my mom with dozens of women during the time they were married.
Speaker 2:And a lot of them were closer to my age than his age, you know? So everywhere, everywhere my messages were from my father, my brother, a couple of my uncles, my messages were you take what you want in the world and you learn how to get away with it. So the skill and the gift in life is learning how to screw people over without them knowing they got screwed over and especially girls and women. So with that, as my teen years, drugs came in my life, alcohol came in my life, all of the things that were beautiful, kind, loving, and sweet about me, I'd say about every year of my adolescent, another one dropped away. And my brother was getting so much attention from everywhere he went and he deserved it.
Speaker 2:Not meaning because he was doing something great, but he used to beat up security guards when he was like 16 and he attacked cops. He beat up his principal. He got kicked off of football teams. He got kicked off of a wrestling team for being too violent. You know, that's who he was.
Speaker 2:And little by little, I was noticing how much attention he got. Little by little, I started sliding in that direction. And then the weird thing that happened, Ari, was no matter what I did, no matter awful I was, whether it be a school principal, a guidance counselor, a judge in a courtroom, whatever I did, this is what happened. They would say, at least you're not David. Meaning the message I got in the world is do anything you want, get away with it.
Speaker 2:And people aren't even bothered because you're not David. And at the same time, everything I did, I knew people couldn't hurt me because they were afraid of David. That's a lot of power to have, you know? So those are, in short, that's zero to 21. In my twenties, I got kicked out of a bunch of colleges for various reasons.
Speaker 2:One of them super funny and wouldn't happen today, but super funny then. Was a DJ at a college radio station and the night before, well, it'll make sense what happened the night before when I tell the story, the night before I got drunk and ended up with a woman and I had the early morning show. Our school didn't have classes on Friday. So Friday, Thursday night was the party night. My radio show was on Friday morning.
Speaker 2:It was called Up and Hurting because I was always up and hurting. And I really, it's embarrassing and funny. I lived off campus, but I went to the radio station in my bathrobe. Like I didn't have any clothes on. Just got up.
Speaker 2:Walked to the radio station in my bathrobe and I'm looking at the record collection and saying, what am I playing? And then I pulled out a song by the dead Kennedy is called too drunk to fuck. And I played it 27 times and I got kicked off the air and had my FCC license revoked. And that was the end of college. That was the end of me being a radio DJ, both professionally and collegiate.
Speaker 2:I show my radio career ended in about forty minutes, one day hungover in a bad mood.
Speaker 1:So what's the FCC license? You actually have to have a license to be on the way.
Speaker 2:It's called communications commission. So back in the day, for anything that was in radio, TV, or film in The United States, you had to have a license to broadcast. So radio stations, all of the DJs had to go through written tests on laws to get it, be a DJ, you'd have to get an FCC license. So it took me six months to get the license. It only took me forty two minutes to lose have it taken away.
Speaker 2:You should you should do
Speaker 1:you have a photo from back in the day and kind of in the road?
Speaker 2:I don't
Speaker 1:Because that's that's like a wonderful, like, cover for a disc. I mean, there's no discs anymore, but for, like, a podcast or something. That would
Speaker 2:I don't know even nowhere where I'd it'll look. I do remember, and I I don't have it, but I know I could probably find it online. There is a picture of me DJing at a professional radio station before my In
Speaker 1:the robe.
Speaker 2:No, not in the robe. The actual, I was wearing clothes and everything. Like, brushed teeth, sorry. I mean, what more could you ask?
Speaker 1:But it's like it's almost like a brand. Right? Even if you're fully clothed, you should have the robe on just for shits and giggles. Like, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. So anyway, then the story progresses. My brother goes to prison for six counts of armed robbery. He comes out more violent than he came in. And I had just gotten kicked out of another college.
Speaker 2:He had connected up with some high level mobsters and I went the rest of the way over to that side. And basically the bulk of my twenties was drugs, alcohol, drug dealing, and being a full time criminal. I was a con man. And because of the way I look clean, respectful, I talk well, I'm enjoyable. People like to be around me.
Speaker 2:I was the only mobster that was like this. The rest of them were all thugs.
Speaker 3:Hey, how you doing? Joey, you know, hey, come here. Yo, yo. That was all the rest of them, you know, just like in
Speaker 2:the movies. And then there's me, you know? And so I was really valuable to them because they could send me to places to manipulate and exploit and hustle people that weren't seeing me as a criminal.
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 2:I was really valuable to them. Boy. And things got worse, things got worse, things got worse. And again, lots of awful stuff in my twenties hurt a lot of people. I was unsafe for girls and women to be around.
Speaker 2:I was unsafe for anybody to be around everywhere. Went, people had problems just because I was present. Like I can think of the one semester I spent in dorms. One of my roommates was a beautiful, wonderful black man. He was a great kid, a great kid.
Speaker 2:Everybody loves Steve. And since there was no money in my family, I didn't have a way to be at college. So while I'm at college, I'm DJing, I'm dealing drugs and I'm stealing everything that I need. I'm not exaggerating. I, that's how I paid for college.
Speaker 2:And because anytime I went anywhere with Steve, because he was black, the whole store would stop what they were doing and following us because he was black. I started getting caught like, and I told him, we can't be friends anymore. You're costing me money. There's a whole story around that as well, but that's who I was. Let's just cover it with that's who I was.
Speaker 2:Nine, September eleventh, nineteen eighty nine was the last time I was drunk and high and went to AA back in the day. There wasn't many people at AA back in the day that did anything but alcohol. They were like, Oh, well, this is for alcoholics
Speaker 3:and you're a drug addict. Go somewhere else. And I read to NA, they're like, This is for drug addicts. You're an alcoholic. Go to AA.
Speaker 3:And I was like, Fuck you all. I'm not going to either one of you. And now that I think about it, I'm going to both of you just to piss you off.
Speaker 2:In spite of myself, I somehow survived being me in early recovery, and it was messy.
Speaker 1:So so before we get to AA and AS, what did rock bottom look like where you're like, okay, I need to make a change. Was it you on your own? Was there an influence coming from outside? I I'm assuming something happened when you decided to take a different path.
Speaker 2:Sort of. And again, I'm a counselor by trades. I wasn't then. So it makes it even more ridiculous how this happened. So I had a girlfriend I had been with for three, three and a half years at this point.
Speaker 2:And she came from a family of recovering alcoholics. She wasn't an alcoholic, but, and she started going to therapy because she was really struggling with a lot of emotional issues. And back in the day, pretty much nobody went to therapy. She was the first person I ever met that went, met, that went to therapy. And she was starting to change and I wasn't getting away with everything.
Speaker 2:And I didn't like that. So my strategy being a con man was I'm going to ask her for her therapist phone number and make an appointment with her therapist so I could prove that there's nothing wrong with me. So the shift would go back to what's wrong with her. Cause she was starting to, my girlfriend was starting to figure out, I'm a pretty shitty guy. And I wanted to change that narrative.
Speaker 2:So in my mind, was going to go to this therapist and convince her there was nothing wrong with me. So I was going to her and it was my fifth or sixth session. And she comes in, you know, like right out of the movies with the yellow pad and all the notes. She says, Michael, I met with my supervisor last week because I'm not sure I know what to do with you. And I figured, oh good.
Speaker 2:She figured out there's nothing wrong with me. It worked. That's not what happened. So she said, every one of your stories first, she said, she said, Michael, have you ever thought you had a problem with chemicals? And I was like, yes, I always thought I had a chemical imbalance, you know, cause I'm so smart and I still get in trouble.
Speaker 2:And she breaks out hysterically laughing. And then she apologized. She goes, oh my gosh, that was so unprofessional. I've never laughed at a patient before. I'm really sorry.
Speaker 2:She goes, no, that's not what I meant. Do you think you have a problem with drugs and alcohol? Since I have such a challenging girlfriend and we have such a hard relationship, like I'm going into all of this. And she goes like this, she goes, come on. And she gets her yellow pad out and she reads the first sentence of every story I shared with her over the previous handful of of sessions sessions and and every every story I with, I was drunk or I was high, or I was drunk and high.
Speaker 2:I was like, my plan's not working. I'm scrambling in my head. She's talking about something. I didn't listen to a word and I'm like, okay, okay, this plan isn't going the way I thought, what do I do now? And I came back and mentally joined the conversation again.
Speaker 2:And she said, Michael, I used to be a drug and alcohol assessment counselor. I used to do evaluations, but since I've worked with you and I'm not licensed to do that right now, I'd like to give you the card of the guy that I used to do them with, and you could go get one from him. Would you be willing to do that? And I thought I can manipulate a guy. He was a woman.
Speaker 2:That's why I didn't get away with it. She sticks up for all the girls and the women. So she was looking
Speaker 1:for, I
Speaker 2:have to go to a guy because a guy I'll be able to bullshit. So I said, yes, thinking of course, anything to help, you know? And I figured, okay, I'm going to be able to bullshit him. So I go to my appointment with him and I know you're waiting for the part where the light went on and I wanted help. I know that's what you heard me and we are getting there.
Speaker 2:I swear. So this guy looks like straight out of like a movie from 1968 of the alcoholic with the walrus mustache and the bald and the long hair in the back and the plaid shirt. You know, he just looked right out of the movie, of every movie of what a white male alcoholic looked like. You know, an old guy, well,
Speaker 3:I gotta get my coffee first, you know, like right out of the movies.
Speaker 2:And it was like, oh my God, this guy's going to be a piece of cake for me. You know? He said, well, the smarty pants up in Harvard, they came up with these 20 questions and they're just easy. They're yes or no questions. And they help us figure out if you're an alcoholic or not, or if you're just abusing, or you're just a regular guy who drinks too much beer.
Speaker 2:I said, okay. So I'm again calculating my head. 20 questions. At 18, you must be an alcoholic. 16, you're borderline.
Speaker 2:14, you could still be on the edge. Broader to the truth, I'm not going to make sure there's more than 12 yeses. Okay. So there was actually one of them that was no, just for the record. I just want to have the record.
Speaker 2:Just one. Yeah. There was one that the answer was actually, I want to state that for the record. So we're all done. And I think I ended up with 12 yeses.
Speaker 2:And he looks over and he goes, well, before I add up all your numbers, I just want to tell you how this is graded out. He goes, and again, this is the people from Harvard, the smarty pants. It just helps us have a conversation. I was like, fuck, it's a conversation, you know, but anyway, sure. Go on.
Speaker 2:And he says at five or six, you're considered somebody who abuses and at eight or nine, you're an alcoholic, 10, there's nothing to talk about. We need to put you in patient.
Speaker 1:And I was like, fuck,
Speaker 2:I counted wrong. Let's do the test again. I didn't say that out loud, but that's going through my I just, I lied wrong. That was my only response. And he's talking and describing alcoholism, going through all this shit.
Speaker 2:And again, I'm recalculating my plan and he says, so here's the two options we have for you. One of the options is you can go to our outpatient program four nights a week from six to nine and go to AA or NA the other nights of the week, or we could set you up inpatient for thirty days. I go, what do you mean inpatient for thirty days? I have a job. And he said, well, then let's talk about the other thing.
Speaker 2:And we're going on and on and on back and forth. And I'm realizing if I don't say yes to the plan he's giving me, he's going to tell the therapist, the other therapist, because she's waiting on the report, who's going to tell my girlfriend and I'm screwed. So I have
Speaker 3:to say yes to this.
Speaker 2:So yes, to go into an outpatient program and going to AA and NA. Six weeks into that, there was a night where I just did a bunch of awful shit. I didn't do drugs. I didn't do alcohol. I just really spiraled.
Speaker 2:I want us to talk about something in my life besides this. So I'm just going to leave that story out, but if you want it, I'm glad to share it. My girlfriend and I were still trying to figure things out and she had broken up with me the night before and said, let's not talk for thirty days and we'll revisit it. Part of why I spiraled out. So she calls me the next day and said, I had this nightmare and I woke up in the middle of the night that you tried to ruin your whole life.
Speaker 2:And I'm so glad you answered the phone and that you're not dead. I was like, why are you calling me? Why are you calling me? I spent all night messing up everything in my life because I'm so upset. And I finally got to sleep last night at like five in the morning, four in the morning and decided I can go thirty days without talking to her and still stay sober.
Speaker 2:I can do this. And now you call and it just broke down into tears. What did you do last time? I said, well, I kind of flipped out. I was driving over a 100 on Route 280.
Speaker 2:That's local interstate. And I got pulled over by a cop and he pointed a shotgun at my head and threatened to kill me. And then he actually led me to an AA meeting when I told him what was going on. And then my roommate, he came home with a couple of girls and he left one of them behind. There's this drunk girl in our living room who didn't know anything, didn't know where she was.
Speaker 2:And she knocked on my door because he said that somebody was here and had sex with her in the middle of the night. And I don't even know her name. I don't know anything about her. I think I might know her name if she left a piece of paper somewhere. And I'm a mess and I can't believe you called me.
Speaker 2:She goes, You have twenty minutes to get here. And if you're not here, then we're never talking again. So again, I get back in my sports car, do the exact same thing, drive 110 on the highway. No cops chasing me with rifles. This time I get to her house, she's standing outside.
Speaker 2:I get out of car and she's pounding on my chest, screaming and crying in the street. And I look over her shoulder and I see this big oak tree. I said to myself, you know what? My life sucked with drugs and alcohol and it's worse now. And I've hurt her so much.
Speaker 2:She's just pounding on my chest. I can't do this anymore. And I created a plan in my head. I'm going to let go of her. I'm going to push her away from me.
Speaker 2:I'm going to jump in my car. I'm going to run her over and drive into that tree. I pushed her away from me. She looked in my eyes and somehow she knew exactly what was going to happen. She ran, she got the keys to my car, went in her house, locked the doors, double bolted and closed all the windows.
Speaker 2:And I fell asleep on her front step. In the morning, I was put in a locked mental hospital. That's where something showed up for me. But more importantly, when I left there, I had already been to jail. I had so many family members in prisons and penitentiaries, and now I was in a mental hospital.
Speaker 2:And I was so clear, Ari, I never wanted somebody to have control of my freedom again. And I dug in. I went to therapy. I did another outpatient program. I did 10 times a week of AA and NA.
Speaker 2:I did everything. So my bottom happened six weeks clean in a mental hospital.
Speaker 1:It's incredibly uncommon that people go to prisons and mental hospitals and they come out not going back to prison X amount of months, years later. I think the number is over, it's definitely over sixty, seventy, eighty percent, I can't remember the exact number. Why was your experience different?
Speaker 2:Well, what I can tell you is the therapist who was the psychologist I had in the mental hospital who became my therapist for my first five years of recovery. Years later, when I was in sober ten years, was living in another part of the country, came back and visited. I took her out to lunch because we weren't going to work together anymore. I was like, Lorraine, what happened that I walked through this and came out a good person? What happened?
Speaker 2:Like what happened? Cause I have that same question. Is the recidivism rate of people who have committed violent crimes against women is somewhere between of not doing recidivism, is somewhere between two three percent. People that go into treatment that don't have a relapse is one out of thirty three.
Speaker 1:So if anybody in our audience who doesn't know what recidivism is, it means that you've been to prison, you actually get back to prison some amount of time after.
Speaker 2:Sorry.
Speaker 1:Yes. So that's ninety. So that's basically above ninety five, ninety seven percent. Just come back if you've done a violent crime.
Speaker 2:Correct. That's crazy.
Speaker 1:Violent crime against women.
Speaker 2:Violent crime against women. Not me beating up guys in bars because basically
Speaker 1:there's no chance in hell that you're not back in prison if you committed a violent crime against women. No chance in hell.
Speaker 2:No chance in hell. Right. So what she said, she said, you were really scared, not of getting drunk and high. You were really scared of ever being in a mental hospital again. You're one of the smartest people I ever met in my life.
Speaker 2:And everything that I taught you, you understood it by the end of this session. And she said, I worked really hard with you. I don't know if you remember the first two and a half years, we met two or three times a week while you had a full time job, was going to college, and a part time job and AA. She said, you made your whole life be recovery. She says, you just gave up your old life and it took years for you to change your thought process and your behaviors, but you gave up everything from your whole life.
Speaker 2:She goes, you just got rid of all of them. She goes, sure. I'm speaking first person as if I'm her. She goes, sure. I did a great job with you, but I did a great job with a lot of people and they haven't ended up like you.
Speaker 2:She said, the other thing that I want to mention to you, Michael, is even though you sort of hated women in AA, most of your friends became women and you listened to them when they told you you were a jerk. She says, I have no explanation of why you did it, but you did.
Speaker 1:Do you have any explanation? Was there a moment where kind of five different people were telling you the same thing and you're like, shit, maybe I need to listen. Like, what is the moment where you decided not to hear, but to listen?
Speaker 2:There's two of them. I had met this young woman near where I was working at the time and she worked in a health food store and I thought they were hysterical health food stores because, Hey, how you doing kind of guy, you know? And she was really cute. She was a college student at Rutgers University and she was so different than anybody I'd had ever met before, man or woman, boy or girl. She just was this really bright light that barely combed her hair.
Speaker 2:You could see the only thing she did before she left the house in the morning was brush her teeth, you know? And she was wonderful. We had great conversations and I had brought up to Lorraine one day that I want to date somebody who was about a year and a half sober, and I'm going to try to do this as well as it happened. Okay. I'm going try to act it out as well as it happened.
Speaker 2:And she asked me, what do you like about her And all of that. And I could see Lorraine's eyes were really excited. Michael likes a real life woman. That's like intelligent, has a job and going to school. She's not an awful person, you know, like she's all lit up.
Speaker 2:Then in her enthusiasm, she says, what's your favorite quality about her? Oh my God. She has a great ass. And it was the only time in the five years I worked with Lorraine that she lost her composure. I said, oh my God, she's got such a great ass.
Speaker 2:And she goes, Michael, women are more than just body parts. And because she lost her composure, something went off in me that I did something really bad here. And I don't know what it is. And I was so embarrassed that she got upset with me that I didn't have the courage to ask her what she meant. So I asked my guy friends and they made guesses just like me, and they had no idea.
Speaker 2:So one of my best friends who was a woman, we used to get together on Saturdays and talk and drink tea and eat snacks and listen to music together most Saturdays. And I waited till Saturday and I told Victoria about this. And I said, listen, I'm really scared asking you about this because anytime I say one of these things, you go on a rant on what an idiot I am and men are, and we're horrible and all of that. But I really need to understand this before I see Lorraine on Monday. I let Victoria know, I'm really scared that you're going to yell at me for me being stupid.
Speaker 2:And she goes, you're right. I am, but go ahead. And I said, Lorraine said to me the other day, women are more than body parts and I don't understand it. And she goes, you're right. I am going to yell at you and you are an idiot.
Speaker 2:And she said, you're so smart. How do you not know this? And I said, Victoria, I just need you to help me understand it. You can yell at me afterwards, but I need help understanding this. And basically what in essence she said is we have thoughts, we have feelings, we have our own ideas, we have our own wants, we have our own desires.
Speaker 2:We want our own life. We are more than just for your needs and wants and liking my tits, liking my ass, liking my legs isn't liking me. It's liking my body. And we talked about it more and I asked more women in my life, but this was the first point that I understood that as smart as I am, there's a lot that I don't get. The second one's kind of funny.
Speaker 2:Another best friend, a woman named Carla, her and her husband, I was really close with them and was part of their children being born. Not the father, mean just part of the situation. And I was telling her about this and I was saying, you know, maybe this explains things because I'm a great guy and I'm just somewhat okay looking. Never been a really great looking guy, but I'm a really great guy. She breaks out hysterically laughing with one of her kids on her arm and the other one playing at her feet.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, no, Michael. She goes, you're a gorgeous guy. Every room you go in, every woman talks about how good looking you are and they want to be with you. And you're an absolute jerk, but we know underneath you being a jerk, there's a really great guy that eventually is going to come out. And she broke out hysterically laughing.
Speaker 2:And obviously I didn't find it funny and she wasn't being hurtful. She was basically throwing cold water on my version of herself. And I was like, what do I do with this information that I thought I was an ugly guy? It And turns out I'm a really good looking guy. I thought I was a great guy and everybody considers me a jerk.
Speaker 2:What do I do with this? So I started asking all of my friends about me. Who am I? What am I? And I took notes and I'm leaving out one really important fact here.
Speaker 2:Somehow around a year, year and a half sober, And this puts us into 1990 to give some context. And again, I grew up outside New York City. It was only twenty, twenty miles, 35 kilometers from Manhattan. Just this is important. Somehow it came to me that what they said in AA was meditation, wasn't meditation, but meditation was the answer for me, even though I didn't know actually what meditation meant.
Speaker 2:And I searched all around the Tri State area for books on meditation, even Barnes and Noble and Borders, and I couldn't find a book on meditation. I found one in some little weird new age bookstore in New Hope, Pennsylvania. And I bought both books in the cassette they had. And I went home and did what they told me. That was what opened me up to, there might be other good thoughts in the world besides mine, just from sitting in meditation every day.
Speaker 2:I had no idea if what I was doing was going to make me an ax murderer. I was just doing what they told me to do in the books. There was nobody there. There was no videos. There was nothing in the library.
Speaker 2:There was no YouTube. None of these things happened yet. So if you got told to do something and you did it, you had no idea if it was going to be a good thing or a bad thing. So meditation had me reflecting on who I was. That's the wisdom missing piece.
Speaker 2:Yes, there was the focal points that got me to listen to people, but meditation is what got me to hear them.
Speaker 1:Would you agree that meditation was really a tool or a process for you for self awareness, self reflection, and growth?
Speaker 2:It was all of those things, but it also gave me something to tether to. Like when I was really angry, I knew I was a really violent person. So I had to do something for me to not go angry. When I was turned on by a woman on a date, I didn't want to hurt her. So I would go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet there and meditate so I could tether to something.
Speaker 2:When I woke up anxious and scared or woke up with anxiety or depression or fear or sadness, I had something to tether to.
Speaker 1:So almost self regulating or self control kind of.
Speaker 2:We wouldn't have used any of those words then, but yes, that's exactly what it was. It was self regulating. Interesting.
Speaker 1:Michael, your story is incredible. It's a little scary, but it's also inspiring. I just wanted to, for a moment here, thank you for sharing it and for your for your vulnerability and honesty. We're going to have to have you back on the show because we we completely ran out of time.
Speaker 2:Right. This is part one.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This is part one for sure. But I have one question that we always ask at the end of the show. Please. If you have to go back to the worst moments of your life, whether it was five minutes ago, thirty years ago, what advice, and it's a hard question, what advice would you give yourself?
Speaker 2:It's during that period between ten and 12 when everybody in my life was a complete mess. They were all older than me. Most of them were adults. And somehow I thought if I had been smarter, got better grades in school, was a better kid, was a better kickball player to the friends in my, my neighborhood. Somehow I thought all of this was my fault.
Speaker 2:I would have gone back and said, none of this was your fault. There was nothing you could do to make your father not be a liar and a cheat. There was nothing you could do that could have made your mother understood what she was involved in, in a marriage. And there's nothing you could have done to make David any different than what he was. In fact, you were smart that you never tried to stop him because he might've killed you.
Speaker 1:Michael, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate you today and there will definitely be a party.
Speaker 2:Thank you.