Rev Left Radio - All Too Human: Tabitha's struggle with Alcohol and Depression

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Originally aired on Shoeless in South Dakota In this second edition of our All Too Human interview series, Breht and Dave welcome Tabitha into the studio to have an honest conversation about her struggles with alcohol. With these All Too Human interviews, we aim to highlight and destigmatize the mental health and addiction struggles of normal working people in hopes that we can provide insight into this type of human suffering, help others who struggle with similar things feel less alone, and deepen our understanding of the modern human condition.   Reach out to us: [e-mail] Follow us on Insta

So there is this magical place in Alda, Nebraska. It has since been torn down. But many, many moons ago, I would say there was a lot of fun stuff happening for the farmers out there, which was the main clientele. And also, too, a fun fact, there was a lot of prostitution happening in this particular environment. Believe it or not, there was a lot of pimps coming out of Minneapolis that were bringing in. girls to this particular place. I was introduced to this club because I had gotten fired from another club and our mutual friend decided to pick me up one day and take me down to work, complete with a, you know, a lovely cocktail of Yeagermeister and Red Bull.

Oh my God. Yes. So I get to this club and I'm pretty sure I was the only white girl there. So that was intimidating right out of the get-go. When I tell you, This place was just absolute craziness. They made you pay for your own music through a jukebox. So imagine walking into like a bar where there's a jukebox. You put money in, so the dancers would have to pay for their own music. The dressing room in the back was literally an unfinished concrete block type setup. And it was just a free-for-all for blunts and shenanigans and who's talking about.

I don't know if you're familiar with this term, but getting a date. So that was always a big concern. So you don't ever say you're going to go out and prostitute, you say. You don't say that. I need to go find a date for the night. Date. So there was a lot of these conversations that I was unfamiliar with and just sort of thrown into. And I was kind of like a deer in the headlights, so to speak.

So there was a particular evening when, of course, being one of the new females, customers, tend to get very interested in you very quickly. And what people don't realize is that there are a lot of regular customers that come to see you with their regular girls. They count on it because that's how they make their money. So when someone new comes into the equation, they tend to get very upset very quickly. And I remember I was out doing my sets and making my rounds, trying to make my own money. And I decided to take a break to go smoke a cigarette or whatnot. And I walked into the back room, only to find our mutual friend shoes off, high heel in one hand, and yelling at the top of her lungs at all of the women in the back room because they had planned to jump me

after my shift. Jesus. By the way, just as a side note, this mutual friend we're talking about got into a fistfight with my sister at the shared high school, and that's how both of them got kicked out and expelled. The shared universe of the shoeless crew of all of us together is just right. It's amazing, but sorry to interrupt. No, you're fine. So her standing up and yelling at a bunch of other women who are planning to jump you is very in line with what I know about her.

He's a badass. She's a badass. Yes. She would pick me up in a heartbeat. She never asked questions. She's my right or die to this day. So, yeah, I think I mentioned earlier, this place was, they were doing golden showers in the bathroom. People would just turn a blind eye.

there was a separate room that had just so close to the toilet we got a pause on that so close to the toilet so the golden shower in this situation in a dirty bathroom they'll pay the girl and the guy pees on them basically and that is no no the girl pees on the guy okay okay right and that's the culmination of the sex actor is that is that for play um no red is scribbling nose furiously right now no um that would be the culmination um i think that the The only thing that I witnessed in that particular club was like maybe a handy under the table, but there was no sex happening. It usually happened in the parking lot at other clubs that I worked at, or they would take them back to a hotel. So one thing I was stuck on is that you said this particular one is out in where, like in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. So it was in ALDA, Nebraska, and that is outside of Grand Island. It's like 10 miles outside of Grand Island. I think it's like maybe a couple hundred people. Grand Island being a pretty small town in sort of central Nebraska-ish.

Yeah. Yeah, anything, honestly, west of Omaha is pretty desolate. Yeah. It's just, well, and so the funny thing is, like, it's a hundred-person town. So this town is just this place almost like. Pretty much. It's the beating heart of the community. Like Friday night, the town population goes up like 200 percent, and then.

Come get pissed on. Yeah. In the middle of the cornfield. There was a big farmers convention every year, and there's a lot of farmers out there. So when they get done with harvest season, they don't really have anything else to do. So that's when, like, a lot of people would be coming in from out of town. So it's a good place to me. It's hilarious to situate it in the context of harvest season.

Dude, well, no, just the culmination. So the intersection of Minneapolis pimps bringing girls down. And dudes with, like, overalls in, like, like a thing of Copenhanging in the front pocket. And truckers. Truckers. Truckers. So I was going to ask, out of these three demographics of men, truckers, farmers, and frat boys,

which one do you, would you prefer a night where they held down the club? Geez. I had a regular. We'll refer to him as puppy. And he was a truck driver. And he was probably one of the sweetest guys I've ever known. He was a heavier set man. But he was clean.

And the reason I mention this is because truckers are very nice, but they do not smell good. When you go down on a trucker, not literally, but, you know, in a dance, it smells like pee, Cheetos, fried foods. It's very unnerving. And it definitely ruins the mood. Unnerving. This is the sort of guy who in any context is going to have somebody go down on them and doesn't bother to wash them? Not at all. Oh, my God.

I'm just farting into that fucking semi-truck seat for hours on end and coming out of it. Dude, poor guy, there's a horrifying. Fuck him. I know, I know, but there's a part of you that just, that accumulates just because you're just on the road and you're so alone. I wonder if lawnmower or Phil ever showed up. Oh, yeah, no. Yeah, yeah. But, okay, that's a fascinating way to open this conversation.

And I do want to get more into that because I just think it's an interesting world that most people are not privy to. And we talked about, before we started. a recording, like, why do men go to these places, especially men who become regulars? And we will get to that. But I think we should move a little bit in the direction of the main topic of today's episode, which is, you know, your struggle, your personal struggle with alcohol. So can you just kind of maybe, let's start with how did this dependency on alcohol? Well, how long have you been sober? And then how did the dependency on alcohol begin? I will have six months next week.

Congratulations. For this bout. I think I probably started drinking. I think my first time is I went to a party at some folks' house that were way older than me. And I believe I was 12. So that's kind of when it started. And what were you drinking initially? Mike's hard lemonade.

Yeah, that's how it starts. Followed by UV blue. And then, you know, it just sort of snowballs after that. I remember, I think it was with you, with the Kyle K and Kevin K. Yeah, yeah. And I remember having blue UV in the back of his little shitty SUV at the time. So, all right, we'll have to, so UV blue was the, like, the hard liquor that girls would drink. Right.

So, like, that's, we were like, sweet, dude. And pubescent boys who. I know, because they wanted to hit on girls, but also did not have the drinking capacity to actually drink real alcohol. And it was, it was a good way. for us to not drink hard, hard liquor. So it's like, oh, it's the girly drink, but I guess we'll have some because it's still liquor. But inside, we're like, oh, thank God.

Exactly. Other liquor is just, oh, it's so much. It's too much. Yeah, so. But I just remember that there are certain alcohols, I think, a lot of people that just, you see it and it takes you back. You transport during a certain time. Like, I keep saying that, that Fireball is the new Yeagermeister.

For a new generation? Well, yeah, just because Yeagermeister just appeared. It was around before, but it just appeared out of nowhere, I know, like some guerrilla marketing, campaign or something it just became so ubiquitous and then it just went away and then now you have fireball which again it's like it's not like a new type of liquor it's just like a cinnamon whiskey liqueure or something but it just appears and yeah that's like when my sister was on we talked about her like multi-year um obviously deep addiction where it was pure yeagermeister every night right right it's like brutal and then it goes away it's like cough medicine thick you know oh i know

and it's just but it's just a popular and then it goes away it's like guitar hero It gets massively popular and it goes away. But one thing that stood out there, Tabitha, was you saying you're 12 years old. Yeah. So what was the context in which a 12-year-old would be hanging out with people older than her and drinking? Well, I can get real deep real quick. I grew up in a single family or a single parent home. My mom raised me.

I was eight years younger than my other siblings. I'm the only child from my mother and father. So they spent a lot of time alone. I was also sexually abused by a couple people that were very close to me. And so I quickly developed this sort of mindset of like, what's wrong with me? Why doesn't anyone want to take care of me? Sort of deal. Sorry. Yeah.

But I was also bullied a lot because we were definitely on the lowest of the totem pole as far as socioeconomic status. And I just started hanging around with people that were, you know, probably not the best crowd to hang around with because I felt that I belong there or that they gave me the attention that I was seeking. And so that's pretty much how it started. So the single parent was your mom? So you didn't have a father figure in your life at all? So I have a relationship with my father now. At the time, though, he was an addict. His drug of choice was cocaine and then he quickly moved into methamphetamine.

So he was never really around. He would come around maybe once every six months and we would spend a weekend together, but he would be sleeping most of the time because he's coming down. So that was kind of our dynamic early on. We have a great relationship now. But yeah. And my stepfather had a period of time when I was younger where he was addicted to methamphetamine as well. And yeah, the crashes would be like he'd sleep for like two days.

And then like for like three days, He'd just be like, you'd wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and he's just, like, up there watching TV at 4 a.m. and shit. Yeah. It's a scary fucking cycle of abuse with the meth in particular. That's the same thing with my family member, I won't mention just in case. But, yeah, just the weird, like, super bipolarness of just dead asleep, like a dead body during the crash and then just wired.

And there's, like, no in between abnormality anymore. It's just, like, you're jazzed up, and then we're, where you're just like, again, a dead body. When you live in that world, I mean, people probably experience it with Adderall addiction today, but over time when you're abusing a speed drug like that, it really starts to fuck with your emotional, like you're saying bipolar of like, yeah, there's a sleeping in the wake, but there's also like the destabilization of your mood, you know,

where you can just like fly off the handle very quickly. And obviously you can get into like drug-induced psychosis and paranoia with speed. And people, I think, are aware of that one because you talk about like the crazy you know speedheads or whatever but the one of the bigger ones that people actually suffer with as far as like the the mood problems is just the depression you're talking about like that sleeping a lot too that depression that comes with being so lethargic being so just out of it and like that that physical part of being tired just just you know it destroys your mood because you can't like really do anything to like pull yourself out of it and just I don't know

when you just feel tired all the time you're depressed anyways even if you like even if you're it wasn't started out of his depression let's say you're like jet leg or something like that it just it comes with it like the body doesn't like to be that tired all the time totally yeah real quick i'll just tell a quick story and we'll get back um onto your story tabitha but uh the way i found out that my my stepdad he's fine we have a good relationship now is a small period of time he's actually working overnight and so one of his buddies was like hey you know i know it's really fucking hard to just transition to working overnights try this this will keep you up and he kind of spiraled for a little bit with it but the way i discovered it is i was like 1617 with our friend

I'm not going to say his name, but we were actually abusing Robitussin. We were robo-tripping. And so at night, we each chugged a bottle of Robitussin. I grabbed some jackets out of our closet that were old jackets, my stepdad's old army jackets, actually, because it was kind of chilly out, and we're going to go frolic in a fucking field. So we're out there. Now we're tripping heavy.

We all have, me and my friend have his army coats on, and we're like tripping heavy in a field at night. And then I'm like reaching into my pocket for some reason. and I pull out a meth pipe and just I'm high as hell my friend's high I'm like what the fuck is this we look at it and then it all starts to dawn on me it's like oh fuck

you know and then I was like oh that's why he's staying up all night and that's why he sleeps for three days at a time and that's how I discovered it like in the middle of a robo trip and then yeah we had a whole family conversation ensued but I'd like to say that during the intervention I was like all right I was like tripping balls on cough

and I found her like wait what is that first part again I'm telling my mom mom. Hey, Mom, saw this trip and balls on this drug when I found that our... Let's not got caught up in how I found it. It's just that I did find it. Yeah, but it was quite the experience. So, yeah, that sounds like an incredibly, you know, difficult childhood. I'm glad that you and your father have a good relationship now. A deeply sorry about the abuse that you suffered. Some of the theories about people, particularly, and this could be

wrong, and I'm no expert, but just getting your sort of perspective on this, especially women, but men as well, when you grow up without a father figure or an abuse of father figure, sometimes, and I've seen this with certain people in my own life, there's a period of time when you come into your sexuality as a late teen, early 20s, where you do sort of seek validation from men, where you otherwise would, perhaps if you had a more stable relationship with any sort of father figure, that ideally that father figure gives you the validation, gives you the self-confidence, you know, the security that a young woman really needs to be confident going into, you know, that period of her life, the adolescent period. But in lieu of that, sometimes

there's this overcompensation where you're just trying to find love and validation from any man out there. Does that sound true in your case? Yes, I've had a lot of terrible relationships in my life for exactly that reason. And especially people that are like, they have their own problems. And I'm thinking, I can fix these people. That's that codependency coming in. I can fix them and they'll love me for it and will be even stronger after this is over. So absolutely 100%. And people that need fix themselves sometimes react to that need by trying to fix others, right? Maybe I can't be fixed, but I can help others. That's a very interesting psychological dynamic. Yeah, because a part of it is you're still doing something. It's kind of funny. You get to,

you're doing the thing that you know you need to do for yourself, but it's easier to try to do it with others because the stakes are lower so to so to speak like in a way where if you're helping this if you're trying desperately to help another person you get to you get to kind of work on these things in yourself but you get to like almost test it with another sort of person it's outside of me so it's a little less you know horrifying if things go wrong or whatever right and it's just i don't know it's um that happens a lot and sometimes it's just a simple matter of like I get to move the attention away from myself in that respect. Yeah, like an escapism from your own problems by externalizing and trying to solve it in others,

but that's also a mechanism by which you don't have to wrestle with it in yourself at times. Yeah, I think it's like it's called something like sublimation where it's like it's something ultimately positive that you pour yourself into, but it can, you know, or seemingly positive, but again, the root problem is still not being fully addressed. Totally. So, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say it's. takes me back to when I was 19, I had an affair with a married man that was much older than me,

and it was not good. It was abusive. And eventually, the relationship ended, and for various reasons. And I went to a mental health facility because I had contemplated just fucking ending it all. Excuse me, can we cuss on here? Absolutely. We encourage it. And I remember getting there and being like, oh, my God, my problems are not as bad. as these other people like I just need to get my shit together and I need to go home and move on with my life so it's absolutely that that mentality of like I'm fine everything's fine right yeah this denialism because the yeah the the problem is so big it's so scary it's so hard to get

your hands around that it's like easier just to deny it look away from it say I'm actually fine it didn't bother me that much you know but it manifests in all these other ways even if you try to repress it so how does your drinking escalate from a 12 year old hanging out with people way too old, kind of a latchkey child a bit, like in the sense that your mom was probably working a lot, leaving you with a lot of time to yourself to get into trouble. How does your drinking escalate into a problem through your teen years? Well, honestly, I would say I didn't really have a problem as a teen. I mean, I went out and I partied, but I didn't really indulge myself too much. I think it really started around that

19-year-old Mark, when I was kind of on my own, and I was working in the service industry, and of course, as you know, if you're a waiter or you're going on the seat. Cool people in the service. Everyone's sober, right? Nobody smoked cigarettes. So I think that's how that kind of started, because it just becomes a pattern, right? You go through your shift, and then you go do something afterwards, and then you wake up at noon the next day and you do it all over again.

And there's that weird way of currency where you get like cash and tips, and it's not quite stable but you get like high fluctuations of a bunch of money and then it doesn't you know it's not like a check that comes every two weeks you just get this like it almost kind of like drives impulsiveness because you just get like three hundred dollars at the end of one night in peer cash yeah yeah and yeah that's it where if you get an exact amount on a certain given day there's a certain stability that comes with like i'm getting paid every two weeks on this day this is amount of money i have this you know delegate this money to this but when you're walking out on a very good day you know with $300 in your pocket or something,

yeah, then it can feed into an impulsivity that might already be there. Yeah. And the one thing I was going to bring up, too, is like this is a running thing that, I mean, you just see all across the board

and experiences like this is that people that grow up either like bullied or they move around a lot or they're just, you know, they feel like an outcast or outside or something. The worst thing is that the greatest way to get friends really quickly and to like be amongst people,

very quickly is through drugs and alcohol. It's like the great equalizer of just like as long as you're willing to get higher, drunk with people, they'll accept you in that. And, you know, it's not like the Friday night parties at like the, you know, the popular kids' house type of stuff, but it's like the kids that are kind of like, you know, drinking before school or something in the parking lot,

just kind of like the one thing that connects them is just the fact that they like to get drunk or hire, which doesn't require anything else. But it's accepting in that sense. That happens all the time where people will just, they'll fall into. that and that'll be the quickest way just to get it may not even have been about the drinking or the getting high but you have friends now immediately right yeah and if you're an adolescent in particular

and you're you struggle with insecurity which i think pretty much every adolescent does of course using drugs like alcohol or cocaine or anything like that can act as a salve on your hyper self-consciousness and your insecurity allowing you to sort of let loose and have fun in a little bit and so that can in and of itself be sort of a pull sort of addictive to be like liberate yourself from you're deep in securities, even if it's just for an evening, you know? And the one thing is that because it should be seen as a negative experience or a negative path to take in life. The one thing I think is sometimes for God is, like, there is fun times in getting drunk

or high with these people that are just maybe, I don't know, like, how many times when we talked about where I was hanging around people I didn't like and was just like, oh, yeah, I hate that guy. It was like, how do you know him? Oh, he's my friend. You know, it's one of those things where you just, you're kind of together. But it is truly fun time. So you have kind of these mammaries, and although some of them may be kind of superficial or hollow because it's just based on the substance, there's still fun, good time.

So it's like, why wouldn't you want to do that? Especially if you're young and especially if you're kind of aimless too, where it's just kind of a nice, you know, this is what I got. This is how I have my spend my time and how I have fun. So what else am I supposed to do? When did you realize that you had an issue with drinking at one point? Did it kick in that like, okay, this is actually now a problem I have to deal with? I don't think I really thought I had a problem. problem until

oh man probably when I moved to Lincoln to go to school and this was after I had quit dancing and I commuted for school and I did a whole bunch of things to change my life around which normally you would think

that you're making all these changes so that's like going to alleviate this other problem in your life but it was still always there and that was the realization when okay it's just not going away no matter what I do track. I'm doing all these things, but still it's creeping up. It's still there. What did, what form did that take? Like, I guess the question I'm asking is what was the

pattern of drinking? Like, was it every single night and what did you drink? Well, it depends on what period of my life I was at. I would say at my best, I would maybe have a few drinks after work um and that was it i would say the worst i was drinking 750s one a day what's that that's a fifth so that's like the standard bottle oh 750 yeah okay what the what was your i know it changes over time but it changes over time um this last time it was like sailor jerry so yeah yeah that's 90 proof too yeah he wasn't good yeah you're down in a 750 throughout the day was you're your morning drinker You'd wake up and start drinking?

Yep, as soon as I woke up. Okay. How many years were you maintaining that every single day, all day, drinking? I would say probably around 2019, that is when I got the heaviest, and then COVID hit. I was going to ask, that's one next question, yeah. Yeah, and then I just, I would get fired from a job. I would get a new job. I'd be okay for a few weeks, and then I was just still unhappy and miserable, so it would just continue.

So are you living at this point in 2019 and during COVID? Are you with a partner? Do you have somebody that you're living with at that time? I have been married since 2014. So he was along for the ride the entire way. I don't want to get too much in his business. Is he a co-addict with you or is he somebody that was not an addict? No, he's actually allergic to alcohol. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. When we first got together, we would go out sometimes and he would have a drink or two, but he gets like instant hangover. So it's like he turns bright red, his joints start to ache. He gets very sick. And so I just continued to party and he sat at home. So yeah, you're drinking then at that point would just become him not drinking at all, but you still

drinking all through the day? Yep, absolutely. And he was just sort of accepting of this state of affairs for a while? Yeah, because at the time, I was like super fun. We even had a conversation about it last night and I learned a lot of things, you know, there wasn't always bad times. Like, it's that liquid courage. And he was like, you would have these moments before you would fall off the wagon completely where you would be confident and you would have conversations and it would be a really good time. And then it would just go, me, you're, so it wasn't always bad. And at the time, you know, we're young. You're 21 years old. You're stripping. You're, you're having fun. He comes to visit at the club, which that's an interesting day.

Yeah, absolutely. That's how your relationship started? So the interesting thing about... Please don't tell guys that, because there's so many guys out there right now. I knew you had to see. I can marry her, all right? Everybody's telling me, she's just doing it for the money. I swear to God, dude, see, it happened once before.

Hopefully not in our audience. It happens a lot more than you think. Don't tell guys this. So we went to high school together. He was very obnoxious, and I hated his guts. So were we? Very obnoxious. still to this day

The show is obnoxious We kind of fooled around After we graduated We had mutual friends And then he ghosted me And then several years later I was looking good on social media And he hit me up and that was that

I see I see So you had some previous history To at least build on At least of knowing each other a little bit What was the What was the rock bottom of your drinking Was there a period of time That you can clearly see

Like this was when it got to its lowest point Um, probably February of this year until up until the North Point, when I went there, my lab is either. Yeah, yeah. But it's, it, that's a rehab for people like that. Yeah. Yeah. What form did that take? So basically, um, I had eight months of sobriety, um, in 2022.

And, um, I relapsed and I relapsed hard. And then by February. I had managed to go to detox. I had managed to call an Uber to take me to detox. I went to detox. I got out. A week later, I got my first DUI. And it was aggravated.

I got arrested in my own home because I couldn't even do a field test in my house. It was just really bad. And then they took me to another detox. And then I went home and I battled with it as far as, am I going to go to treatment? Am I just going to, you know, get over this and stop being sad? Um, and then it continued, uh, there probably about a week before I went to treatment. Um, there was a day where my family was looking for me. I had gone missing for a day. I was hiding in my own home in the basement in like a crawl space area. Um, just getting blasted. And by yourself, just down there with a bottle. Yes. Um, at that point, I just didn't care about my life. Um, and so he came home eventually. And I think at some point I tried to get up to go potty in the song.

pump pump and I fell over many of drunk pisses happen in the sun pump in random basements throughout this country I fell over and I didn't have any pants on because the pants were wet and I must have took them off and then I just laid there in my own piss and he found me like that and he didn't know if I had fell down the stairs because I was at the bottom of the stairs he called the ambulance they took me in but then I was released you know once I was sober enough to go home And then a week later, I blacked out at my desk at work at about 8.30 in the morning. This is like a desk office job? Mm-hmm.

Okay. Yes. And I was taken to the hospital, and that's when it was decided that I needed to go somewhere. That is funny to me. Sorry. It's not funny at all, dude. It is funny now. The passing out at work, like, because I've worked office jobs, too.

And just, like, just being there is like, well, looks like Davy has a case of the Monday. And it was like passed out at your desk, dude. It was a Monday. Of course it was. It was perfect sense. Yes. Yeah. And it's funny now because when I went back to work, I remember a particular colleague saying to me, they were like, how we just didn't know what was going on?

We just heard some snoring. And then nobody could wake you up. And then next thing I know, I just remember opening my eyes for a second. And I was being put on a stretcher next to my desk. I could see my boss in the background, just, like, horrified. And then I don't remember anything after that until I finally woke up at the hospital. So you said the week before that you had an aggravated DUI? No, I had the DUI in February.

And in March is when I went to the hospital. So what made that DUI aggravated? She was very angry when you did. Yes, no. I was very sad, David. Here we go. He really is the worst. Um, well, so basically what happened is I decided not to go to work. I turned off my location and I decided to drink in my car in a parking lot for most of the day, take naps here and there, move to a different parking lot. Um, that was just a pattern for me. Uh, and I was headed home. And I hit a parked car. No one was in it. And I was just so out of my mind, I don't even remember driving home from the accident. I got home.

The police were out looking for me because the people that own the vehicle had got my license plates and my description. And I just went home and hid in my bed. And then I fell asleep and only to get woken up by the police and they tried to do a sobriety test. And I just was totally out of it. They came into your house, though? Yes. My husband let them into the house. You got to tell them not do that.

We know this now. We know this now. But then they checked. They didn't even book me. They felt so bad for me. I think I blew like a 0.387 by the time I had gotten down to the police station. Damn. So they took me straight to a detox facility.

So I'm very thankful for that. But yes, that's why it's aggravated. When you detox, is the addiction to the point where your detoxes are in of themselves, hairweeding experiences? Yes. There are several times I thought I was going to die. I had to laugh the other day. when I listened to your last episode,

when David's talking about the one leg outside of the blanket. That's how it is. You're sweating, you're cold, you're puking, your bowels don't work. It's just, it's absolutely horrific. Get the shakes and any DTs or anything like that? Oh, absolutely.

You start seeing the hat man. God damn the hat man. I never saw the hat man, but I would do very strange things. So my husband has told me, and we've recorded some sessions when it's happened sessions. For instance, where I would get up in the middle of the night to go outside to go to the bathroom and it would be like a blizzard outside.

And I would be dead set like, no, the bathroom's out here, right? Another instance was when he woke up, it was like two in the morning and I was in the pitch black of the office, taking all the cords out of the computer and saying, we need to get this all ready to get moved or whatnot. And there must have been something happening at my job at the time that we were moving offices. But there would just be cases like that all the time where I'd just be talking and I would seem awake, but I was not awake. Yeah. I remember when my dad, he would sometimes go through his own personal withdrawals where he would just outside of a doctor or any help. He would try to, you know, grind it out in his room or something.

And I lived in a duplex with him. So one half of the side was me and my, you know, girlfriend at the time and our kid. And the other side of the house was him. and then he decides he wants to get sober so he tries to detox and he'd be like asking me to go out and illegally get him like anti-anxiety pills and shit because he can't get him in the normal

you know by going to a doctor and shit so I'd go out and buy drugs for him just to help him with the anxiety that came with the withdrawing but I just remember like a vivid image in my head of him in his bed like covers pulled up you know he's like sweating shaking hallucinating incoherent and I'm like here's your volume dad

like it's a it's alcohol withdrawals are no fucking joke and the thing is too is that you talk about like the thought of like dying from it and with like opia withdrawals they say like you're gonna you feel like you are dying but you actually can't unless it's something like you know you choke on vomit or something you can't the thing with alcohol is you actually can if you're go like I remember one time I had gone to the hospital just because things were getting like shaky and I thought oh this is like a seizure coming on like this is you know because that's basically how you can die is through seizures and i just felt like so like it was one of those things where in some withdrawal you're like

this is going to be really bad this sucks ass oh my god this is the worst but i'm not going to die the thing with alcohol ones you're like actually you could die you know and i did almost die really um from the ds uh so that's um and i don't mean to interrupt you but it's a good segue as far as Like, I tried to pull on Amy Winehouse, and I had the TTs real bad. I, at the time, worked at a coffee shop because that's all the capacity I had to do. And this was in March of 2022. I go to the hospital. We're waiting in the waiting room.

I'm like, well, maybe I can just go home and this will be fine. I was not fine. I looked nine months pregnant. I was the color of a highlighter. I had, they did my blood work. I was like a point for something. They didn't even know I walked into the emergency room, but basically my body had started to shut down.

I couldn't take anything in. Everything was coming back out and my insides just started failing. So when that happens, like your abdomen fills up with all this fluid and they have to extract it. And I spent about a week in the hospital and that really scared me straight. But it definitely goes to your point. Like, it's no joke. And even when you want to just stay home and sleep it off, sometimes if I would have stayed at home, I would have died.

You would have died, yeah. Yeah. And that's, I think that was as far as, like, terrible stuff can happen, but you talk about wake-up calls. Like, there's something as bad as, like, the DTs or, you know, withdrawals can feel. There's, like, a new level of fear that comes in when you actually start seeing physical changes. Like, you can feel the shakes and see yourself maybe, like, red or sweaty or something. but like, yeah, when I had woken up before it, I actually saw that the whites in my eyes

were yellow or you're like the distension you're talking about like basically looking like a pregnant Simpsons character or like the Spot on. That's really good. That when you see physical things, it's funny because you feel like it feels like you're

fucking up your body back. When it actually starts to manifest, that's when it's like oh holy shit, this is like, look my bodies. It's almost like you feel like Jeff Goldblum in the fly. You're like things. are actually changing and what you know it i don't know it just seeing it i don't know why but it seems like people are just there's hit so much harder with the tangible like being able to see your body

and when you get to those levels those are like a point of like no returns you know in a sense where it's like i've now done i'm now getting to the level of irreversible damage right right where it's not just like a really bad withdrawal or detox or something now we're leaving marks that will not go away yeah the the yellow eyes i remember yeah my dad Dad would have, yeah, completely yellow eyes where the white should be and that hard, distended stomach that didn't, that was not in proportion to the rest of your body. So he would start, especially towards later in his life, eating less and less. I think he was just surviving on alcohol. And so in some sense, the rest of his body is deteriorating, but his stomach is now hard and distended and protruding.

And, you know, so it was just like this. That's not how a human body should look. You know, it's not healthy. If you move that phone away from the speaker, it sometimes helps. Oh, I think. Okay. So, yeah, do you have another question to continue leading down this path? No, no.

I didn't know about the phone thing. Okay, one thing I do have a question since Dave is a wonderful interviewer. You're just doing this shit Ravit Faire. I'm trying to get stuff in, but. That's true. I'm just joking with you, man. Fuck you. God damn it.

The deeper mental health issues. So, you know, I guess the, The question is like a chicken or egg question. Does, and it's different for everybody, does the mental health issues aggravate and drive the escapism of drinking, or does the deleterious impact of hardcore drinking for a long time create the mental issues, right? You say you struggle with depression, I believe. Is that prior to your drinking?

Does that arise with your drinking, or how would you understand that? So every time that I can think when I fell off the wagon was because I was just in a miserable way um so at that point it's like that's the only thing that feels good right it's warm and fuzzy hi my old friend um so i definitely think the mental um stability for me just wasn't there and that led to the drinking um yeah would you say the mental health issues wholly or partly traced back to the very severe trauma that you had as a child yeah um i hate it when people or use the term trauma or I have trauma or I have PTSD because I think it gets thrown around a lot these days. And I would say I was always the type of person I was like, you know, everyone has a shitty childhood.

I'm not any different. These things happen all the time. So pull up your bootstraps, right? It wasn't until I actually went to treatment that they were like, you have some really bad PTSD. Not everybody has this childhood. No, this is normal. So I've been working on that. I would definitely think a lot of it stems from that because my whole life I've been just, you know, putting everyone else forward.

And then when it becomes like I have this feeling of I'm not enough or I'm never going to be enough or this is always just going to be crappy for me, that's when I just spiral out of control. Yeah. That resonates a lot with, we interviewed my sister about her alcohol addiction. And, you know, I have another person in my family who's an active addiction right now with alcohol. And in both instances, there's like this lack of, there's a certain traumas that happen in childhood. And then there's whatever, for whatever reason, it gets developed into this really low sense of self-worth. And, you know, drinking is that thing that sort of like, it puts a battery in your back. It makes you feel confident.

You know, you get ready of your inhibitions. You can, now I can finally be myself. And when you don't have that and you're just sort of crushed by your own sense of low self-worth, you know, it's impossible to sort of live a normal life. And with my sister's situation, I always tell her, like, yeah, you should go to rehab and you should get the help for the alcohol, but you've got to address the underlying issue of your depression, of your low sense of self-worth. Of course, those things are made worse over time by the drinking. But those are also separate things that sort of need to be addressed as a foundational thing that your drinking sits on top of. So address the drinking, but then you have to do that even more difficult sometimes work of, like, wrestling with this trauma that's underneath it, you know. Well, when we talked about this with your, you know, as far as your dad, where the longer, the more time away from it and the longer it's been ignored, the harder it gets to do, you know, to where like, you know, with your dad, it was to a point where it was like, that was never opening up because it'd been like 40 years or like, you know, some amount of time.

And so. My dad, yeah, also physically and sexually assaulted as a child. And, yeah. And abandoned by his dad. And just, yeah, the longer the time goes, you know, kind of the scarier, bigger the thing seems. And it just, you know, like the PTSD or trauma and everything like that where people don't think it affects them in that way because there's not like a straight direct line to it, you know, like you don't people don't think in their brains like I have low self-esteem or I feel like shit because this happened to me when I was younger. You just feel that way and you just assume that's the normal part of your basic programming, you know, of your mind and so because there's not like a direct trail of crumbs to the trauma that happened. You just go, no, it's, I mean, it's not.

It's whatever, because nothing's telling you it's directly connected to that. Yeah, and there's this, you know, this Freudian idea that is sort of permeates all of therapy and psychology, which is like, yeah, you know, most, if not all neuroses or issues that you have as an adult stem from childhood trauma. And while there's certainly some of that is true, it also can take its own life in adulthood. So maybe you do get down to like what happened to you at eight and you wrestle with. it with a professional therapist and you get over it and you deal with it that doesn't magically unlock you know like self-love and you know now I'm no longer addicted no you've addressed one layer of the shit but there's more layers to address and I think you make that point when you say like it's not always childhood trauma there's not always in some cases there's no

underlying trauma the addiction in and of itself for some people is the thing and you know to try to search for some other pre-existing thing before the addiction and try to heal that can sometimes be a fool's errand, right? It might lead nowhere. So every person is different in that regard. But one thing you did say, and I want to get your thoughts on this, Tabitha, Dave makes this point that when he falls in, when he relapses, when he goes into active addiction, that it's like taking his normal everyday brain out and putting in a whole new brain

with a whole new incentive structure into death drive even. Centive structure is very good way. And speaking of death drive, my dad, I think, at the end of his life, like we're talking about giving up. You know, he, he, he, there was this acceleration of like, there's no, there's no saving me. I'm not going to start therapy at 54 and now I'm taking this bitch off the cliff. And he fucking pretty much did that. But does that resonate with you, this brain being, this new brain being put in when you're in an active addiction?

Absolutely. Um, I think, um, my mind goes from 100 miles an hour to just like, calm. And I think a big part of that is the control factor. I feel like I'm in control. This is the one thing I can control in my life right now, even though I have absolutely no control once it gets started. But I definitely feel like all of a sudden, everything else just, you know, it fades away. And I can just, you know, I go back to being myself and I don't have to worry about any of that stuff. So absolutely.

Yeah, that's irony in that is like when you, when you're in the most control, like of your mental acuity and what you're able to do, when you're in your most control, you feel the most out of control. And then when you're in the least control, as in your drunken state of mind, you feel the most inconstant. controlling it's just like no dude like literally if you have a headlight out you're getting a DUI like you're in control of so little right now man but this false sense that at least you're by controlling the drinking or just being in the drinking like there's some control it's it's an interesting little paradigm well the way I always felt that it was a sense of control is that I get to dictate how my mood is that that was such a big attractive thing for me is that I get to dictate now because if I put this liquid in my body it makes me feel this way now know how

I'm feeling even if it's not as great as it used to be even if it's not even if it has this horrible downside to it and everything. Like, I'm dictating how I feel. So, like, I don't have to have life dictate how I feel. I get to do it. And emotional regulation. I mean, this is a huge thing that comes up over and over again. You know, my sort of use of marijuana is in no means comparable to your guys'

to struggle with alcohol. It's much worse. But it's so much hard. He's such a weed head you guys need. But I use it for emotional regulation. Like, as a full-grown-ass adult, I'm in a bad mood. I'm pissed off. I'm stressed.

you know I'll go and then I smoke a little bowl and I'm in like a better mood and I'm more patient and everything like that and of course it doesn't have the hardcore side effects of like more hardcore drugs but in and of itself that using of a substance to emotionally regulate is sort of the core of the problem you know right well I mean I think this is just my opinion but I think most of addiction and alcoholism and all that type of stuff can just boil down to one point where it's just it is an aversion to discomfort just just getting away from discomfort and sometimes people think it was like well no it makes me confident or makes me feel better or something like that and it's just like yes again that is the that discomfort that you have you know it's like it's not i always think of it as the idea of like caffeine i think we talked about this before where i used to think caffeine is something that you put in your body and it is like you know gives you energy or whatever but all caffeine actually does is block the receptors in your mind that that make you feel tired.

It just blocks those. And I think of that where with alcohol or drugs, it's almost not even, like at a certain point in your addiction. I mean, obviously it's adding happy feelings. But when you start getting into that real form of addiction where it's just the day in, day out and daily grind, all it's doing is just blocking discomfort at a point. It's not even adding, you know, good feelings.

It's just blocking that, you know. Like I've said, for me, at least drinking would become my happiness was a reduction of suffering. sometimes to the most basic level too like I feel good because in the way that you take like an ibuprofen in your headache goes away I'd be sick and I drink I'd not be sick that feels pretty good because there is some elevation there

but it's just elevated it is so low that you're elevating to like a mutual state yeah yeah um I do have a question about depression one thing I think that is interesting so many people struggle with depression whether inside or outside the context of addiction and it's a thing and a word that gets tossed around a lot you're talking about the sort of weaponization of therapeutic language in today's world where everybody has trauma, everybody has PTSD, you know, everybody's getting gas lit. They get a participation away, you know.

Right. Yeah, exactly. But I think there is something useful and interesting in trying to explain the feeling of depression. So in your darkest, deepest, depressive moments, physically and emotionally and internally, sort of, what does it feel like to be at the bottom of that? depressive pit. I think for me it's the question of why do I even exist? What am I adding to this world or to other people's lives? I'm certainly not adding anything to my own self-worth. It's just this feeling of there is no point in being here. Like at what point like I did not ask to be made. I did not

ask to be put on this earth. This is not my problem. The things that have happened to me are not my fault. Why am I still here? So it's just this overwhelming feeling of just like not belonging anywhere and then just wanting to hide in sort of the darkness. Then there's also the physical aspect of it. So a lot of people don't realize that, you know, they think, well, you're sleeping all the time. You just need to get up. You need to take a walk. You need to do something. Sometimes it's physically impossible to just get out of bed. It is just to even get from the bed to the couch is just have feet in itself um so there are those physical aspects to it as well um so i think just for me it's just a total just darkness um it can be anger can be sadness can be all these different things but

it's just like a blanket yeah that that resonates with me one word that comes back to me in those deep moments of depression is like hopelessness of like there i can't even imagine a future in which i'm happy like sometimes in your normal you might be in a shitty moon but like tomorrow I have this thing you know that I'm looking forward to or like next week me and my friends are getting together so yeah it kind of sucks today just got to get through it but in depression it's like you look at even things you love even hobbies and interests that you have or people you care about deeply and you feel nothing and that is like incredibly scary like it's it's very fearful to be like oh my god my brain is fucking broken and then yeah

it's like if I had to live in this state of hopelessness for any extended period of time I completely understand where suicidal ideation can come from, you know, because this is a state of torture internally. But, but what if there is something that could change that immediately? Copenhagen meant. No, I'm a kid, God. But you know what I'm saying is that that's what makes it like that's, I resonate with the idea of you relapsing after a long bout of depression. Because that's what I do, or it didn't even have to be that long, maybe an intense one. It's all that stuff you're feeling just as a person, a quote unquote, normal person who has clinical depression or severe depression.

But the special part for us co-occurring people is that there is something that you know will change it. And it gets so hard to resist that because it's like, holy shit, dude. I have at least for me. I have at least $10 in my bank account. The gas station is right over there and I can change the way I feel. And especially, I mean, even like with alcohol, you just go about your day feeling this thing, do, do, do, do, do, and just as you drive past the gas station, as you drive past the grocery store, you're just like, it's just there, like the telltale heart is beating, like, you can just change this right away, right away, right away, just change it. Just buy this thing, put the liquid in your body and it changes immediately. It's like that, that gets so, like, usually when I think of my, like, relapses, it's just, it's a, it's a failure of fatigue or exhaustion. It was just like keeping up that fight of just pushing that away and not, you know, just that constant struggle.

You're just finally just give up. You're like, I'll, you know, do it. Like I said, sometimes for my relapses, it was not about getting a feeling. It was about making a feeling go away. Now, okay, so sometimes with weed, for example, because this is my touchstone, I'm trying to emotionally regulate. Maybe I'm in a depression. I try to get out of it. It certainly worked in the past where I have been able to at least get through the fuck.

fucking day by using weed but there are times and sometimes I'll smoke and it's like oh it doesn't work now I'm just high and I'm still fucking depressed is that is there ever a corollary with alcohol where yeah 98% of the time it lifts you up you know even if it's just a little bit but sometimes it's just like I drink and the darkness grows does that ever happen or is it almost really reliably will at least give you a bump up well for me and this is where the you know you talk about the relapses or your drinking accelerates or it gets worse over time for me it would always get like within the first couple of drinks there would all there will not to advertise for it because obviously it sucks ass but there will be you know there will be a bump up but then

you're constantly chasing that and then you drink and so you're drinking more because you're trying to get what that original feeling was and you're just so then i mean that's how you get you know in your basement with your pants off trying to pee in a blizzard or perhaps shoeless somewhere in the south dakota maybe in the south dakota region that's i mean that's how you get to that because you're just chasing that like i've had it before too there's always an initial bump there's always when you continue to pursue you can then come down which like over time that the pursuing becomes of a bigger part of it in that time of being cool or that like that bump of like elevation it just lessens over time you know it's just

it's that just drive like your tolerance goes up too and like that's how people are able to blow 0.38s or point fours or something hours even after you know like they because just you the tolerance and the chase for that initial you know feeling the elevation and it's too late once you've already drank you know you're not going to tell yourself all right I felt that elevation I'm going to stop drinking for a while and then drink to get it back again you're like no we're not doing that even though it's never worked you're going to keep trying to chase it Do you have, like, family and friends that step in and that know that you struggle with this and that will try to intervene in a positive way? That's an interesting point, Brett.

Go, dig it. So, my experience has been, especially with friends and family that don't understand how addiction works or what it feels like from this perspective. They just see the damage and the chaos, right? So a lot of times, friends and family will be like, I'm here for you. Call me if you need anything. You know, let's just have a coffee, blah, blah, blah. But then when the actual real moment comes down to I'm going to treatment or I'm hiding in a basement, they don't tend to necessarily be around. They're sort of like, this is too much for me.

You just need to go get the help that you need and then call me afterwards. So that's been my experience. Now I will say on the flip side of that, now that I have a sober community, I would say that that probably isn't the case. I know that if I call David, he would step in and say, no, let's get through this. So you really have to find that sort of that community that actually understands you and understands what you're going through. Because for me, in my experience, the people outside of that just don't really understand what's going on up here.

And to be completely fair, I mean, I don't know the exact people you're talking about, but it's it's difficult it's hard to be a loved one of somebody struggling with addiction you don't exactly know how to do it some people think like doing the tough love approach you know giving ultimatums and stuff is the way that you show that you care

some people like my approach to my dad and the other many people in my family who are into alcoholism is as if it's a subcultural interest I'm going to say into it dude I doubt with alcoholism but my approach has been pure compassion and love no ultimatums I'll always love you no matter what

I genuinely am here for you no matter what. But at some points, it is overwhelming for me. Like, in the sense, I don't know how to intervene positively here. And maybe my intervention in and of itself makes things more difficult or complicated or messy in certain circumstances. So I don't, you know, there's probably lots of people listening that might not be addicted themselves, but are, you know, have family members that are addicted. And it's a constant sort of difficulty in and of itself to how do I relate, how do I help? And sometimes it feels like you really, there's nothing you can do, you know. I mean, there's this old saying

that's like the person has to want it and I have somebody in my life who doesn't seem to want it, you know, to get sober and kind of displaces and we'll find excuses. Not my sister, of course, but somebody else in my family for why they actually really don't have a problem and, you know,

and it's like at that point it's like, you can't even look the thing in the eye yourself. I can't force you to look it in the eye. I can love you and be compassionate in the meantime, but yeah, I don't know. It's a very difficult situation. Do either of you have Any thoughts on the best approach in general from loved ones? Well, I mean, you're talking about two different things, I think, when it comes to this.

Because, like, your approach, I think it's right, is compassion and love, but, you know, not enabling, but they're not throwing down ultimatums, that can work in some respects. But when you talk about relationships where the person addicted is a significant other, or the person addicted is supposed to help you raise kids, or the person addicted is, like, somebody you depend on, it's not a person where if you need to brush them aside, because it's too overwhelming you can you can't do that you know there's people that are trapped in this place where you talk about someone who doesn't even admit they have a problem and they do have a problem and you're like shit we we have to pay the bills we have to raise kids and you have

this problem and we're not even we're not even at step one yet you know like I don't think there is a right way to hand it sounds awful but it seems like there's only wrong ways I can't say what the right way to handle is because you can't it it's almost like, this is very stupid, but here we go. It's like, you've ever seen the movie Inception? Yes. Okay. So, you know, the whole thing is like where they have to plant something in his mind to

where he has to discover it himself? Like, they can't just show him something. They can't just, like, it, like, they have to formulate it to where he actually discovers it. That's kind of the way that you have to, like, people who are going to get help, they have to discover it on their own. Now, you would think that, like, well, I'll show them by, like, like, I'm going to leave them or something.

But the truth of the matter is, is that if they've been in addiction for at least a little while, there's been enough clues or hints. I don't know what change or I don't know what thing makes people see the way, see the light in a certain respect. It's completely unpredictable. Sometimes something almost innocuous compared to the other stuff they went through makes them see the light. There's a saying of being sick and tired of being sick and tired, which is just a way of saying, I don't know. They just eventually were like, fuck this.

But what it like spurned on that fuck this attitude? who knows. Anybody's guess. So it's hard for even to say how you can help somebody who needs to discover it themselves and the timetable or the way in which they will

is completely anybody's fucking guess. Yeah, like with my sister, she's completely open and honest, very clear-eyed about her struggles. She knows she needs help. And yet she still doesn't get it. I mean, there's a money factor as well. Like rehab can be a very expensive place to go,

especially extensive ones. And that's actually the main barrier. at this point because she was trying to get into a rehab in O'Neill, Nebraska, but for whatever insurance reasons, cost-wise, it's unfeasible at the moment, which really sucks. But yeah, so she's clear-eyed about it. She looks it in the face. She can talk very openly and honestly about her active addiction, but still does not take that extra step. And she literally watched my dad die. So she went down to Kentucky, sat next to him for like two weeks as he went into oblivion. And she came back and she's like, okay, I don't want to do this to my kids, right? And

she had like five days where she was sober and we're like you know go go go and then yeah day six or whatever she pops open and truly or whatever and she's like only having two and then before you know it's back up 10 12 16 a day um and she knows it she knows who she's sliding down nothing can stop it sort of thing and it's just like you're watching somebody with hyper conscious of what's happening but still can't fucking stop it absolutely brutal what um you said you have five months sober now and you had a previous stint of eight months Do you feel that either anything's different between these two periods of sobriety? Do you feel on better footing?

And if so, what's the reason? I do. I, you know, previously I, you know, I scared myself into getting sober because of being sick. And eventually, you know, I didn't really, I did the IOP thing for a while, intensive outpatient. And I just felt like, I'm good. I've got this. I don't need to do this. So I quit that. And then eventually I just, you know, started going about my daily business. And, you know, I was still putting everyone else their needs before my own. And eventually that just caught up with me. So in this go-around,

I've made myself the number one priority. I have struggled in some of my relationships because sometimes outwardly it can seem selfish. But it's absolutely what I have to do in order to stay sober um and so i just have to stick with it um there's no alternative yeah and what's what's actually more selfish is not focusing on yourself and trying to find balance and even if that means sometimes you know prioritizing yourself the real selfishness is not getting the help continuing to outwardly put others in charge or ahead of yourself but what that leads to is another relapse or a spiral where the people that love you and care about you are now putting even a more difficult situation. So if it takes a little bit of focusing on me to get to a point where I'm

not, you know, spiraling again, then yeah, that's not actually selfish. You know, in the long run, it's other oriented because, you know, the people in your life that care about you want you to be that way ultimately, sober, thriving, et cetera. I mean, but, you know, it could be very difficult to see that nuance, you know, and especially in relationships or things like that. People don't understand that. And so they're just like, well, God damn it. it was all about you before. Now it's still all about you or something like that, you know. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. That's rough. Well, let's go a little bit back into the, um, the, uh, the days of, of you being a stripper, just because I'm interested in the, in the, not in the stripping. Happy to share. In the psychology of the men. So you said before we start recording that there's a certain insecurity in men and, you know,

you've obviously, have many experiences with men outside and inside that context. What makes the people, especially the regulars of a strip club, what drives them to come in? And what do you see as that insecurity that might be present in some of them? You know, it could be, you know, for instance, truckers, they're on the road all the time. They're by themselves. They don't have anyone to talk to. I think we all crave that human connection. And so for them, it's a quick and easy way to get that human connection with someone.

And, you know, they're obviously nice to look at. So I would say there's also the married men that come in that maybe they are not happy in their marriage or something is going awry or they're just not getting the attention that they once did. Frat guys, they're just out to have a good time, but they're super nice about it most of the time. I would just say the insecurity aspect is, and it goes for everyone, right? So they're obviously not getting the attention that they crave or that they need from the other places. where they've been looking before. I see. What are some of the, given your experience in these strip clubs, what is some ugly sides

of the industry, some things like whether it's exploitation of the women or not paying enough money or is there any like shady business owners that try to screw over their workers or, you know, in what ways are women brutalized in this industry? I would say that I've always felt empowered because it goes back to, you know, what I've been through and the control factor. So I always felt empowered because ultimately the workers are in charge of themselves. They have all the say at the end of the day. As far as business owners go, yeah, there's a lot of shady ones. Obviously, like the places I work, they obviously, those things are not legal, but they turn the other way just to make a buck. There is a particular place here in

Omaha and I don't even know if it still exists, but they actually would make you pay out. They did not pay their dancers. They would have the dancers pay in just to show up and work there, even if you didn't have a good night, which is not fair. Dancers don't get paid hourly. It's completely off of tips and, you know, whatever your customers give you. So there's no actually wage coming from the place that you work. You're kind of like an independent contractor that uses the space. Oh, interesting. Yep. And that can lead to obvious exploitation in various forms? It can. So that's kind of the ugly side of it is, you know, you do get a lot of people that are being trafficked in those kind of low-key places. I will say, you know, like the places I've

been to out in Iowa, that doesn't necessarily happen out there. Or the women go out on their own and they don't have a pimp and they just do it of their own accord. I've known many women like that and they're totally comfortable with it. It's their bodies. They're making the choice. No one else is telling them they have to do that. Sure. In the trafficking situation, how does somebody, how does the, you know, we hear about people getting trafficked, how does that process play out? How does somebody just become a stripper and then all of a sudden they're getting trafficked? Well, from what I understand, from the young ladies that would come into that place I mentioned before, a lot of them are coming from broken homes. And it's like what you see in the media or in movies or whatever, someone comes in. They pay you a lot of attention. They use the dentist system where they...

Literally, shut up. They demonstrate value, and then they engage physically. They nurture dependence. It's exactly what happens. And so these girls come in, and they're finally getting that attention that they're also seeking. So it's kind of like full circle, all the things that are happening. And so then what happens is they take them on the road, and they take them the places where those business owners are turning a blind eye for them to go in and it's just a cover up.

The dancing is a cover up because ultimately the date afterwards is where the actual money is coming from. Right. And do women in the most instances know that this is the trajectory they're on or is it sort of just kind of obscure what they're getting into and then they're in it? I think a lot of times they're just kind of in it. but I think they do know what's going on and a lot of times we all say well I'm never going to let that happen to me and then it just happens right you kind of get blindsided and then you don't know how to get out of it yeah and it's much like being in an abusive relationship and I mean it is you don't know how to leave it's not safe to leave you don't have the resources to leave and so they just get stuck there have you ever had to defend that off have you ever been the object of an attempt not by a pimp, but I've been offered many times. Oh, just offered by clients. It's interesting. It's a whole world I'm not accustomed to, so I always have questions about it.

Well, I mean, that abusive, that's why I think a lot of people like an addiction to an abusive relationship where it's that one thing where to so many other people, like, it's obvious what this road you're going on is going to lead down. It's so clear, why can't you see it? It's just like there's such a difference between, you know, your objective point of you and then being in it, you know, and it's like one of those things where like even before you really embark on full-blown addiction, you're taking all those same steps that are going to lead to it.

But in your own world, in your own mind, you're, I'm not going to be the one or I'm not, this is like, or it doesn't even cross your mind. You're not even saying those things. You're just like, no, this is, I'm just going about my day. I'm just doing this type of stuff now. one thing i i wonder about like an industry like that where is there how do i put this like when it comes to you know women that do that dancing um or you know they they just do strictly that is there is there a lot of friction between their what they

do for a living in the outside world that makes them quit like is there you know because you talk about one thing like age or something like that where Is it, do you have some women that are truly just doing this on the side and don't like it, but it's just a way to make money? Or is there some that, like, I'm totally fine with this. I'm, you know, embracing this whole thing. But at the end of the day, there's like that ticking sort of clock of how long you can do it. Like, you know, those types of dynamics, do you know? I think I've experienced both.

So I've known women that absolutely love it and they're well into their 40s, early 50s. and they're still doing it, all the more power to them. And then I do know people that they eventually just get tired of the negative attention from males, especially. So the few bad apples that are out there and they eventually quit. For me, it was, I was working in a place where there was just a lot of drama happening and I was just over it at that point and I just quit. I just quit.

I just walked away because I wanted to do it. other things. So I think it's different for everyone as far as I think it also matters where you're working. Yeah. What area you're working in, you know, and also how thick your skin is. That's important as well. So like our mutual friend, for instance, she just hated the negative attention from males. Negative attention, meaning just the pure sexual intention. Just. There are the ones that come in, and they are just absolutely inappropriate. They think they can do whatever they want to whoever they want, and there are no rules. Sure you, like, an object?

Yes, absolutely. Like, you're not a human being. You're just here as a commodity for me to enjoy. Right. Yeah. Has that ever, have you ever had to, like, whatever, like, fight back or get security to get some asshole to fuck out or ever physically sort of threatened by one of these guys? I've never personally been. have known others like okay for instance i mean there are big places where the touching is allowed

but everything is on camera there is someone right outside the door um they will get kicked out immediately if they do something wrong but then there's other places that aren't like that so you kind of have to pick and choose your battles at the uh have you ever suffered from co-addictions or is alcohol your main thing no so it kind of goes back to my dad being an addict all his life i was like I'm never going to be an addict. I'm not ever going to do drugs. And I didn't. Interesting. At the peak of stripping, what's, and you don't have to answer this because it is kind of personal, but the income. Like, is the money really that great? It is great. It's lovely. But it goes back to the impulsivity. You have a good night. And then it's like,

you just blow it all out of the window. And so some people are very responsible. Some people are not. I've been both ways, but I would say lucrative-wise, that was a very good time in my life. I just was probably not at an age where I could handle that sort of independence. How much money are we talking? Jesus, Fred. I'm interested. Chill, dude. Do you want bank statements? Well, I had regulars that, you know, so it comes in different ways. Like, you could have a good night at the club or you can have regulars that just send you money on a weekly basis or they

give you a card and you spend whatever um i've been offered up to 5k to have a night with someone yeah yeah so um it just kind of i see there's no consistency it wobbles everywhere no consistency well i mean so you could totally imagine the kind of the irony of some people getting you know into trafficking where they've you know someone has now taken a hold of their life where You'd fall into that. You see this money. You know, you're so, you're now independent. And what I mean to say, the irony is that you're now empowered because you're receiving all this money.

And people on your demographic scale, you know, living a normal life aren't making near this amount of money. And so you, it goes up where you're making more money. And so you probably have this mindset of just like, yeah, I'm owning this shit. And I make more, you know, I'm paying off my mom's credit cards and I'm fucking buy, I have two cars now. I'm going to buy how like all this type of stuff and then someone takes control of your your money and then you've actually become now the role has reversed to what you thought you were doing to becoming fully independent now someone has taken over and they're taking over your your income basically you know and there's obviously threats of retaliation and violence

or something like that to where they have they have to abide quote unquote and then it takes away that that sense but I mean I can man dude I can totally imagine a lot of people people, and most young people, they see that amount of money. They get into that amount of money, and they're like, okay, yeah, I'm just, I'm riding this thing out. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I want to be respectful of your time. We're well over an hour here.

Is there anything else that you would like to say in general? And if not, is there any, and this is a sort of question we would ask all our guests, any advice you would give to anybody out there right now struggling with alcoholism or addiction in general that you might think. could be possibly helpful to somebody um i you know we can always go back and tell ourselves you know you are enough um and not to to base your your worth on what other people think of you i think that's a big thing um i think in the darkest moments i didn't see that i could get help or there's those obstacles obviously financially and all of those things um

But eventually, you just have to have a conversation with yourself as far as what do you want from anything? Do you want a future? And if so, you just have to go for it. At a certain point, you have to make that decision and you have to act on it. I find that a lot of times when people wait where they make excuses, then eventually they get back into the pattern. But for me, eventually I just had to say, this is it. I'm going. I called the Uber and I went.

So I would just say, just if you have that one moment where you're debating or you're thinking about it, definitely take advantage of it and just do it. When you struggle with senses of low sense of self-worth, that you know you're not valuable or that you don't matter or something, especially when you're sober and don't have the addiction to lean on and try to get out of that mind state, do you have any sort of idea on how you wrestle with that problem? People ask me all the time how I've stayed sober. I'm not religious. I don't do AA. I don't do the steps. I just try to find things that make me happy. So whether that's getting in nature, reading a good book, I've thrown myself into school. I've decided to change my career path. And that's really seemed to help me a lot to take my mind off of things. I'm a learner at hearts. The school's always been a thing for me to escape into. And then I said the word escape, and I'm thinking, okay, well, you're still escaping from your problems, just in more positive ways.

But it really is just keeping your mind occupied with the healthy things rather than dwelling on the negative. So any way that you can find some sort of semblance of positivity in the world, I think that's really important. Just, you know, what you put out into the universe should come back to you if it works that way. Absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, building up a future too is nice because it's not like you're just grinding day to day meaninglessly with no trajectory when you go into school or you try to find a new career path. There's like this path that's like, you know, if I keep going down here, I'm building a future for myself and that can sometimes help. You mentioned going out in nature and this is a longstanding sort of argument that I make about, you know, how do I love, what people ask, how do I love myself? And you say, how do you know yourself?

People like, oh, you should know yourself, self-knowledge. What does that mean? How do I do it? what I've found in my life that really helped me in my late teens early 20s you know come to terms with myself and love myself is like spending time with myself yeah situations that like in nature is a huge thing like going on hikes by yourself you learn a lot about yourself you spend a lot of quality time with yourself and it's not for lack of friends or anything but I used to go out to eat at restaurants by myself I would go to before I had kids and shit I can't do that anymore but you know I'd go out to movies

100% by myself and just like spending quality time with yourself and in nature you'll have opportunities perhaps to overcome some challenges if you're hiking and a storm comes in or you're camping by yourself

it sounds very silly and sort of like how does this make you love yourself but it really is about spending quality time with yourself you do get to understand yourself and you build the confidence that comes with being self-reliant

you know and that self-reliance like I'm out in the woods by myself and I'm okay I can deal with it. I'm sitting with my thoughts. I'm not escaping them. That is sort of, I think, how you sort of brick by brick build up the confidence that underlies self-love and acceptance, you know.

And it might just be one part of a broader puzzle. Of course, there's other pieces that people might have to put together. But I found that to be effective in my case. Yeah. I mean, I think it's also just accomplishing things by yourself. Like accomplishing things that you don't have to do. so like a big thing for me or for a lot of other people is like writing for some people it's just hobbies that it doesn't matter what they do even if they're not good at them but just by yourself like you could do woodworking or something and you don't have to do it at all but you've done this thing that has been completely just brought up by yourself and you made something and you didn't have to but you did it and just like the accomplishment of something that you imposed on yourself where you start like to you bring yourself some sort of discipline and completion. that brings self-esteem because you're like,

I made myself do this, and I did it. You know, I didn't have to be told to do this. I didn't have to, no one pushed me to do this, and I only appreciate this because I did it. And what's important there is the lack of seeking external validation. Yeah. You're not doing this stuff because you hope somebody's going to be like, oh, the next great artist or somebody else will see it and give you the validation.

It's the mere act of doing it itself and you being happy with what you're doing. That is all the validation need. And at that point, validation is not coming from the outside in. It's coming from the inside out. And then when you make that switch, when you can get your own validation internally, I think that's a huge sort of hallmark on the path to self-love and self-confidence and self-acceptance. Yeah. Instead, in that case, it's not writing for me. It's painting.

Painting? I'm talking awful at painting. I would love to see your painting. Oh, my God. They're going up on the instiff. I get my hands on. No, dude, come on. You're going to ruin the one thing I have?

Yeah. No, it's pretty bad. Yeah, I can only imagine. They don't start as being abstract paintings, but they end up being modern art pieces of work. Oh, my God. But, yes, Tabitha, thank you so much for coming into the shoeless shed. Boom! For being vulnerable and open and telling us your story.

It really means a lot. I think I speak for both of us and our audience when I say I'm very happy that you have these five months. Thank you. We give you the absolute... Almost six. Almost six. Best of luck going forward. Yeah, so thank you so much for coming in.

Thank you so much. Thank you. One more question about stripping. No, okay. Dave, shut the fuck up. And so on it. And then and

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