Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Jermaine's Story: Sober Up or Die

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

If you’ve ever wondered, “Why can’t I stop?” or felt trapped by shame, this one hits deep. Brad sits down with Jermaine Dante’ Burse, a Bay Area native (Vallejo, California) whose drinking didn’t start as party chaos; it was quiet, functional, in-house alcoholism that escalated over a decade into withdrawal seizures, pancreatitis, liver failure symptoms, jaundice, a coma, and life support. Today, Jermaine is 12 years sober. ------------- The Sober Motivation: Just Between Us Podcast: Click Here Jermaine on IG: https://www.instagram.com/jermainedante_art/  

Welcome back to Season 4 of the Super Motivation Podcast. Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible and powerful sobriety stories. We're here to show sorority as possible, one story at a time. Let's go. If you've ever wondered, why can't I stop or felt trapped by shame, this episode is going to hit deep. I sat down with Jermaine, a Bay Area native whose drinking didn't start as party chaos. It was quiet, functional, in-house alcoholism that escalated over a day. decade into withdrawal seizures, liver failure symptoms, jaundice, a coma, and life support.

Today, Jermaine is 12 years sober. And this is his story on the sober motivation podcast. What's going on, everyone, Brad here? Great to have you back for another episode. Excited today, I'm actually recording the holiday special of the sober motivation podcast, having a couple of guests. We're going to talk about all of the ways that can help us stay sober over the holidays. I also recorded for Just Between Us podcast, the really cool episode yesterday, and it was an emotional

episode. I shared two letters that I got from my parents when I was 17 in the psych ward basically ultimate and basically like an intervention of, I had two options of picking one rehab that was going to be shorter term like three months or the other option, which was going to be 10 months and far away from home and a completely different thing. So I walked through sort of what my experience was there and what I learned in rehab a little bit. It's a part one of a part two.

But if you want to check out that podcast, I'll drop the link down on the show notes below for the Just Between Us, Sober Motivation podcast. This is more intimate conversations, me sharing more of my story that's not out there on other platforms or other podcasts. And I would love for you to check it out. Now let's get into Jermaine's story. Welcome back to another episode of the Subur Motivation podcast. Today we've got Jermaine with us.

Jermaine, how are you? I'm doing well today. How you doing, Brad? Happy Monday. Yeah, it's Monday, man. So kicking off a new week, which is great. I love Mondays. Yeah, we're inching on, what, a week and a half away from Christmas

and not too far away from the new year as well. I know, man. It's coming up quick, dude. I feel like this year went by in a flash. What was it like for you growing up? That's a great question. and I appreciate you asking. You know, I actually had a really beautiful, I talk about it in my book, man.

It was kind of this toxic love where, you know, both my parents were married, but they were married incredibly young. They had my sister and I incredibly young. And it was a house full of love, but there was also a house full of toxicity as well. God rest my father's soul, but he had his own demons and addictions that he was dealing with. And that heavily influenced what I saw early in life in regards to, you know, his infidelity and the way that I saw how addiction can affect the family dynamic and how people treat you and interview you. And although he was a great man who went to work,

you know, held a 9 to 5 that didn't affect anything provided for us. When those doors were closed and the weekend happened, you know, they weren't the best all the time. So we end up having to go spend a lot of weekends with my grandmother and my aunties. And where did you grow up? I grew up in the Bay Area, specifically Vallejo, California. I grew up in the Bay Area. you know, this beautiful melting pot of cultural diversity. You know, we're a middle class, but my parents made the best of it. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like there's be a lot more information in the book, which I think is great. I mean, I can relate to that in a sense.

My mom was 16 when she had twins. Wow. And, you know, she didn't struggle herself with addiction, but being a single mom of twins at 16, I think back now I'm 38, I have three kids in my own and I'm still figuring it out as I go. So I couldn't even imagine, you know, personally. being that young and in trying to not only maybe grow up herself or their selves and then also you know raise kids right you really i have anyway realized how tough it is and how difficult it is in even having a little bit more life experience or a lot more than at that spot too um i love the way

you you drew it up though so you had you shared there too with your dad sort of in this struggle with sort of addiction of some sort. I mean, did you have any viewpoint of that as you were younger? I know some people come at it like this is something that they saw kind of how destructive it can be so they would stay far away from it. And then there's maybe others that maybe they wanted in one way or another try it out. Like, did you have any thoughts like that growing up? I didn't actually.

Unfortunately, what I thought was going on was normal. You know, what I thought was just like my dad being this young, this young individual. that you know had a stuff together outside but indoors was struggling and I didn't necessarily equated to any addiction at when I was younger I just kind of unfortunately thought it was just a part of our story and it wasn't until obviously later on when I formed my own addiction organically and gradually that I can reflect back on it now and see it from a different perspective yeah so that hindsight really plays a role into you know the conclusion I guess in a sense that you came to with that.

Any memories really stick out to you from growing up, you know, in the Bay Area? Yeah, I mean, it was just a melting pot of diversity. And, you know, at the time, Valleo California had Merri Island. And in Merri Island, it was just like flourishing naval base. And it was amazing, like carnivals and Marine World was, which is now, I think, six flags. But Marine World was there. And it was like our form of a zoo and amusement park. And it was great, man.

It was a wonderful, wonderful childhood outside of what was going on in the house. It was amazing. My dad was attentive. He attended every baseball game, every basketball game. It was an amazing childhood, you know, outside of what was going on internally. Yeah. Love saves. I'm just reading that on your sweatshirt there, too.

And I'm getting that impression, too. Like, in that for you growing up, there was a lot of love. How did you work through kind of what was going on? at home. I mean, was it impacting you? Were there any sort of maybe survival techniques that you find you picked up to make it through stuff that was difficult when you were younger? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I formed this really overprotective nature about me because I would always want to try to fend from my mother and protect my mother and my sister. I have a little sister who's two years younger. And so when we're dealing with certain incidents that would

happen on a Friday night or Saturday, I just formed this really overprotective nature about me that I still kind of carried today and, you know, I'm work in progress. But it definitely is something that kind of form like a callous if you're a weightlifter. Like it just happened over a period of time. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that too. What was school like for you? School was cool, man. You know, I've tried to be the most popular kid in school. And I had a core group of- Yeah, were you? Yeah, I was, man. I had a core group of young men that we always hung out together. We were actually called the Kool-A gang. We would bring, like, packing to Kool-Aid to school

and we'd eat it and share with everybody. And it wasn't probably the healthiest thing, but it still brought us together. And it was cool, man. A lot of sports. A lot of sports memories. We live next to a park, so there was a lot of, you know,

after-school playing around and really building, like, just cohesive community. Yeah, that's cool, man. When you mentioned Kool-Aid, I think of the old commercials where he comes smashing through the wall. Yeah, yeah, actually, so that's where we kind of derive from. Just all of us sitting down on a Saturday morning with a big bowl of cereal

watching that commercial and being like, we could meet a Kool-A game. It was pretty interesting. Yeah, that's cool, man. What about is you kind of worked through school there, too, like in middle school and high school. You mentioned sports, so you were plugged in playing sports and stuff too. I mean, I think some people, when I look back at my high school days, that was a big part of their identity, too, was connecting sports. and all of that stuff.

I mean, was that part of the story? Yeah, I still have. Actually, through sports, I still have a lot of the guys that I grew up with that I still talked to quite a bit. Like, those are my brothers. Those are my source, my accountability partners. Those are the guys that taught me how to love outside of my pops.

But those are the guys that really taught me how to love and how to walk, like talk through things and have uncomfortable conversations and not run from any kind of adverse. And so now starting all his friends at three, four, or five years old, we're now in our mid-40s, and we're still connected and joined at the hip to the day. Yeah, still the Kool-Aid gang is still together. Well, some of them I still, like crew, I still talk to others.

I don't already talk to. I mean, you know, people move on and evolve out of certain things. Yeah. True. When does drinking come in? I mean, is it a thing in high school or no? No, I didn't really have my first drink until, and it was actually by accident.

It was like my last day of my senior year of high school where someone just kind of offered me some OJ. I didn't realize it was Spike with Vaca. And I remember drinking a, you know, just drinking a glass of it and waking up underneath at the time my girlfriend's bedroom. And that was my first experience with like intoxication and then we went to an amusement park the next day and I couldn't ride any rides.

because I just didn't chill well. And then I didn't really drink in college. I mean, you have your own individual experiences, but I didn't find myself really engaging in it at a high level. I played basketball, so I wanted to make sure that I was fit. We had early money practices, so I don't want to show up. It wasn't until I graduated from college, came home, and started working, and then I had just had my daughter at 23,

where I thought after working, you know, my 9-to-5, I would come home and I thought I was grown. So I'd have a beer, which then led to a cocktail, which then at some point led to a half a pint, which at the height of my drinking, I was consuming about 32 ounces of vodka a night a day. Wow, so that's like your progression there, too. That wasn't necessarily all in one night, sort of at the beginning.

Interesting, too, in college, because I feel like college gets a lot of people. Yeah. It gets a lot of people because, I don't know exactly what it is. Everybody, like you mentioned there, has their own story, right? I mean, that's the beautiful thing about this, is everybody has their own unique journey and their experience.

But it seems like a lot of us feel uncomfortable or sort of maybe out of place. But I can see how you were able to hold off with having the sports because I don't know exactly what the stats are or if there is anything. But I've always heard that being plugged into like team sports can really check a lot of boxes as far as like what a human kind of needs, right, for that community, for that connection, for that accountability. So you were able to really, you know, plug into that.

And then when you come home, I was wondering, too, when you're sharing that story, just with talking with you for a bit, I feel like, and I could be wrong here too, but I feel like maybe in one way or another, that's the way kind of you saw your dad drinking. Is there any relation there, too, of like doing work and working hard and then sort of the work hard play hard thing or no i would

imagine so because i did see it right i would see him come home uh after working his nine to five and once again he was incredibly stable right it wasn't like he was losing jobs he kept the same job for 35 years but it was like come home take a shower have a drink and then really wind out for the evening and then on the weekends it was just kind of like a free-for-all right and so i I would imagine that I saw that pattern and kind of soaked it in, not even realizing that I was soaking that pattern in and realized, and then thinking to myself, that was okay, that was the norm. Because I do remember wanting to take the edge off after work,

and instead of maybe exercising, going for a walk, watching my favorite TV show, I would stop at the liquor store and grab something on the way home. Yeah, there was another guy had in the podcast, too, and he had shared that his parents were drinkers and partiers. You know, a lot of the same story. Their whole life wasn't falling apart, but he had said that they didn't like force him to drink.

They weren't like drink, drink, drink. But from watching them over the years, it kind of taught him maybe how to drink. And I think that's interesting too because people have different stories here, right? Some people that are drinking, their life is falling apart and you can see that. And then other people,

their life is not really falling apart in front of our eyes. Right. So it's really hard to kind of connect, I think, connect those dots of like drinking causing problems. But then I think knowing what we know now is that, you know, as humans in general, I think we can be pretty good at kind of keeping things together without everybody else around us picking up on it, especially when it comes to drinking too because there's that guilt element and there's that shame element involved too. So keeping things hidden what we're struggling with, we seem to become pretty good at. Yeah, and I was a master of disguise, Brad, you know, other than, other than it permeating out of my skin at times because if my choice was vodka and only really vodka, if I got my hands on something different, I would of course consume it, but I would douse myself with a lot of cologne to try to hide it coming out of my pores. And I still held a nine to five myself, right? I would go to work and I was functional and I was unfortunately driving. I would go to stores. You know what I mean? Like I would do something normal. I would, my behavior was normal as though I wasn't. you know under the influence but i was always under the influence and unless you knew me on an intimate level you had most people didn't have any idea yeah and that's interesting too and maybe we'll chat about that later too because i'm always interested in about when we do get sober and then mention it to people where people are like hey i never knew you were drinking that much but maybe we'll get to that sort of like if that was part of your story walk me through the progression here right because it

started out you got your job your daughter is born a bit that's stressful too and life and everything i mean it's beautiful like the most beautiful thing in the world but it also is uh is tough to um was for me anyway i can't speak for everybody but it was difficult sort of to navigate you know how to how am i going to show up and my world is you know changed um a lot for the better but a lot different how did this uh progress over time for you and like what time span are we talking here like weeks or years. So we're talking about a decade, right? So from 2020 or 2003 to 2013 is when the progression really began and evolved. And so it's like I said, it started out with me just wanting to have a beer after work. And then I didn't like how full my stomach will become.

So then I was like, let me just have a cocktail. And then one is not good enough. And then two is not good enough. And three is not good enough. And then it becomes a thing where I'm waking up at 5.30 morning because I'm an early riser and before I even brush my teeth I'm reaching over to the side of the bed and I'm grabbing a cocktail and that's how I would start my day and over a period of time though Brad what I saw with my body physically started to be affected right because there's a social aspect of it then there's the breakup of my at the time girlfriend so now I have this situation where I'm living two separate in two separate household trying to raise a daughter and that wasn't planned, but no one at that young age is typically going to stick around with an alcoholic.

So I had to kind of eat that and take that L. In the meantime, you know, she takes me for child support so that I can support my daughter. I wasn't making a lot of money. And I just kind of felt like there was a spiral. And even though I met someone else and that relationship started off as fire and desire, my alcoholism just progressed and progressed and progressed until it got to a point. Brad, where my body could no longer take it. But more importantly, I wanted to mentally stop after like year six.

Like I was just exhausted. And I wanted to make a change. So I decided to stop cold turkey. I didn't realize that you can die from stopping cold turkey, right? And so I had a grand mal seizure within 24 hours. And I was rushed to the emergency room. Of course, I was observed for 24 hours. back home, I thought I was going to, I was like, that's it. I'm done with drinking. And then I was

like, well, let me, let me socially drink. So then I ended up going, you know, trying to socially drink, which didn't spiral back into drinking again. That lasted for like another year, Brad. And then I was like, oh, well, let me not, like, I don't want to do cold turkey. So let me go ahead and wean myself off of it. And within 48 hours, I had my second grandma seizure. And at that point in time, I realized that I needed, like, major changes, but I still wasn't ready. And so eventually, I ended up drinking myself when my pancreas levels were, like, my pancreas are going to explode, my liver levels, I mean, I had like the beginning stages of cirrhosis. I had hepatitis C, non-viral, my skin was yellow, my eyes were yellow, everything was awful.

And so they ended up admitting me into the hospital, which is when I slipped into the coma and ultimately on life support for three weeks. And that was, that was in 2013. That was in 2013. Wow, man. It's so interesting. You hear, I have anyway, and I'm sure you have too. You hear so many different stories about, I wasn't ready.

And you hear the stuff that people go through. And if you were just somebody that didn't understand sort of how maybe some of this works, I'm not going to paint myself as the guy who has it all figured out because that's not true. But have an idea of how it somewhat works. I think from the outside, you'd be wondering, well, what the heck is it going to take for this to change? You mentioned there, too, that your girlfriend had left, you had broken up with you as well, not going to stay with an alcoholic. Like, did people around you, they picked up on sort of what was going on then? They did.

They did. It was hard not to. I mean, because what was happening is she was seeing it on an intimate level, right, because we lived together. So she was seeing the empty vodka bottles. She was seeing the erratic behavior. Now, I was never a violent human being, but there's still some, you know, erratic behavior that happens. The late night drives to the store, the late night, like food cravings, right? So I would leave at like midnight, 1230 to grab Taco Bell.

Like there were certain behaviors that she started catching on to. And then you could start to smell it on my breath in the morning. And so she would start to share it with her parents And then she would share it intimately with my sister My sister would share it with my parents And it just became this thing Where everyone knew about it But because it wasn't affected them directly

Besides her, of course No one really talked to me about it And if they tried to talk to me about it, Brad, I would immediately In the conversation Because I wasn't ready to accept That I had an addiction as well as accountability For my behavior

Yeah. Yeah, thanks for sharing that too. So you have your first seizure there and that was like 2009. I kind of guess, guesstimate there. Yeah, so about 2009, I tried to stop cold turkey, not realizing that after heavy drinking like that, you need, you know, you need to do it medically. Right. I had no idea about it. So I was like, let me just stop. And within, and then of course I had the DTs. I had DTs really bad. And so I was like, oh, they're just going to go away. And within 24 hours, all of a sudden I woke up and I was in the back of an ambulance. And it wasn't until later that it was shared with me that I had a major seizure, which is incredibly scary because if you don't have a history of epilepsy or seizures and all of a sudden you have a seizure, you don't really know why. And then you start to do research and realize that a lot of people die from grand mal seizures.

that should have been my wake-up call. Yeah. What's that experience like? I mean, do you remember having the seizure? Is there any memory of it or no? I actually remember, I do remember leading up to it. I started to feel like I was hallucinating. Like, I really started to feel as though I was seeing like leprechauns

and like these things in the corner of the room. But I once again was just like, hey, this is just a part of detoxing. I didn't really realize the disconnect between, you know, your brain neurologically when it doesn't have alcohol after consuming it for so long. And I didn't realize that your brain just shuts down at that point. I had no idea. So I look up, I'm in the back of an ambulance, I'm in an MRI machine, and I just know that my whole body was sore, like from head to toe is sore, from the intensity of my body season. wow yeah i mean and i definitely don't think you're alone in that not knowing what the what the effects are you kind of step back a little bit in the normalization of alcohol in all the cultures across the

world people would kind of debate you know where it's more you know more ingrained or not but everybody i've talked to from a lot of corners of the world it's it's in there and you it's really hard to say hey this thing you get at convenience stores you get at every restaurant You get at the grocery store, it's got this nice can, it's got flashy, it's cool, they got art on it, you know, they got different art. It looks so attractive at times. It can anyway, and this is what it can cause. So I don't think you would be at all alone in that.

And I feel that a lot of messages over the years on Instagram and email and stuff about people that I caution of that exact thing. And I honestly don't know how many people take it seriously. I really don't but I think it's good to bring it up that yeah once that is a possibility and it does happen I used to work in a detox at a hospital and I mean we saw it a lot I mean luckily they were in a controlled environment with support there so nobody died from it but if you're at home or you're driving or you fall or whatever I mean all that stuff is very dangerous so yeah it's my lifelong journey now to be this individual that educates the general public about the dangers of alcohol, right? Because it is accessible and it is culturally acceptable to as well, right? Like if you and I were sitting in a group of with a group of friends and I was like, oh yeah, you know, I don't smoke crack, everybody would be like, oh my God, congratulations, right? But the minute you say,

oh, I don't drink, everyone like clutches their pearls and looks at you as though they don't trust you anymore. And it's just, just weird dynamic that I've, I've come across over the past 12 years. Yeah. You're right. I mean, people kind of use a comparison like that or similar a lot. If you say, you know, I quit smoking. I mean, everybody's cheering for you. Like, or with, with other stuff, too, everybody's rooting for you. They're cheering for you. Because you can see that, I think society understands the benefits of some of those choices. Well, if you're not doing that, you're on the right track but I feel like people as a whole don't understand the benefits of quitting drinking or understand the consequences of not or what addiction actually looks like

and feel like and how it can show up because everybody has this Hollywood view of somebody struggling with alcohol fits into this box and they check those they look like that they walk like that they talk like that and it's so far from the truth yeah there's so many more people that are so close to all of us, I'm sure, that are struggling, and we would, I mean, probably have no idea of it. No, there's actually a story that I share where one morning, because now I'm like this fitness guru where I go to the gym at 5 o'clock in the morning, like, helping fitness is like a premium for me. And I remember going to this market down the street from my house, and it has to be 7 a.m. I'm going to go to the Gatorade. And this woman pulls up

in a beautiful Mercedes. She's got a beautiful suit on. She just looks like she is taking, like she is well done. So we're sitting and I'm in back, I'm in back of her. And she goes to order to, to like a pint of vodka or a half a pint of vodka. And I'm like, oh, snap. I was like, it's mad early, but maybe she's just going to drink it on the way home when she gets home. So I was actually curious at this point, a little nosy. So I'm watching her. And I'm going to make sure she doesn't think that I'm just like totally a weirdo. But I'm watching her, she gets into the driver's seat. She opens up her coffee cup. She pours it in there, closes it, starts to drink it, drives off. And the whole time I'm thinking, number one,

that would be me. And number two, she's going to either lead a team or she's someone CEO or she's going to a job and no one has any idea that she has this potential addiction. And that was a powerful moment for me, not just for me to see myself, right? Not just for me to look in the mirror through her, but also just to know that there are so many other people that are struggling. Yeah, for sure. And that's why I think it's definitely so important. Like, I love that journey that you're on about increasing the awareness of the impacts of alcohol and how dangerous it can be. I mean, especially for you, you kind of go into this. And I share it a lot probably on the podcast, but I don't think there's anybody that I've ever met

that says when they start drinking that they wanted to end up here or at other places, right, to where you want the relationship to be like this. I was curious I picked up a while back about, you know, maybe social drinking. Like, was that part of your story and then that kind of slid away?

Not necessarily. Like, my story is not necessarily like one of social drinking turned into my full-blown addiction. mine was just a steady dose of like these micro doses of that dopamine hit right mine was just like every night just wanted to kind of alter my reality a little bit then it began to be like every night i wanted to alter my reality to all day i wanted to alter my reality and so social social drag actually didn't really have time i was working so many jobs just to provide for myself or my my daughter that i didn't even have time to really do anything socially this was all in-house Yeah, in-house. I haven't heard of it referred to like that before, but it makes sense. Yeah, it was all. What was it?

I mean, you mentioned we talked earlier, too, about the readiness. Yeah. We talked earlier, too, about their readiness. And, like, I would love to go a little bit deeper on that if we could. Why do you feel like with the seizures happening in your life and you're definitely experiencing some consequences externally, right? Why do you feel like you weren't ready at that point to make a change? I was scared. I was scared. I was nervous. I was scared. I didn't want to face my reality. I didn't feel like I was where I needed to be in society as far as I didn't purchase a home. I didn't really have a career. I was broke as a joke. There was a lot of things. I was sleeping in my car and homeless at one point. And I just wanted to drown in instead of face it head on. So I just wasn't ready to face life the way that a normal human being would do. I wanted to continue to run. front of it because hell i felt like at the time if i ran from it eventually uh it would go away

and uh every day i woke up in the morning i realized it wasn't going away and my problems just got worse and worse and uh but once again instead of just facing it head on i would just drown myself in liquor and and brad in hindsight powerful man in hindsight brad i'm like man like what if i would have stopped like what if i would have stopped like what if i would have stopped years ago. And there was so many warnings for me, whether it was being pulled over. So I got a quick story. May I share a story? Yeah, of course. So I got a quick story about warnings and signs, right? So one morning, I get up and I hear this voice as loud as I'm speaking to you right now and it says, clean out the car. And I was like, I don't really feel like

watching it cleaning my car. And I was like, no, clean out the car. So I used to keep vodka bottles under the seat in the trunk and the back seat because I was always I always had it right and so I remember getting up in the morning washing the car cleaning everything out I head to a friend's barbecue I spent about an hour hour and a half I come back and on my way back as a cop is coming the opposite way of the street it turns around puts the lights on pulled me over right now I've already been drinking all day so I'm paranoid I didn't realize at the time Brad that I had a suspended driver's license because of back child support. So when they pull me over and they run my driver's license, they have calls to search my car. So they pull me out, put me in handcuffs,

put me in the back of the car. Now, they don't breathalize me or anything, but they still start searching my car. So they search my car. They don't find anything. They let me go. They don't even tow my car. And that should have been a warning and a wake-up sign for me. But even then, I went back home and started drinking again. So sometimes you're just not ready, even though that's knocking on your door. And I always say that your family really can't help you, your friends really can't help you. It is a personal journey. And when just your time to be ready is when you'll decide to make those choices to be better.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that story too. It's so interesting, right? because sometimes I feel like in those moments, because I've had a few of them myself, you know, the blue light prayers, like please just let me slide by this time,

is that, you know, I wonder if things went different. I wonder if I was held accountable in those moments where at the time I was like, this is the greatest thing, right? I kind of slid through the cracks yet again where I wonder if it would have went the other way. Like nobody knows, right?

You never know going back, like if one change would have changed our perspective or got us to that readiness place, which is so interesting. I had a story, man. I had a bunch of warrants out for my arrest at one point, and I didn't know I did, and I was driving my girlfriend's grandmother's car, and I got pulled over by this sheriff, and it was like a T, well, not like a T, but you could go right or go left, and I kind of got stuck in the middle, didn't know where I was going,

so I hesitated a bit, so this sheriff pulled me over, and she was like, hey, whose car is it? in your license and stuff. And, um, no, I don't even know if she asked for my license. But I had those warrants and she never even ran anything. And, you know, that's another weird thing. I say like, man, things happen at weird times because I wasn't, if I would have gotten held accountable for that stuff then, I eventually did. But the timing was so perfect.

It was weird. If it would have happened then, I don't know that I would have been necessarily ready for, what was coming downstream at me, which is really interesting how some of that stuff plays out. I wanted to go back to one of the other things you said there, too, because I really loved it, that you were scared. And you also kind of hinted there too at maybe necessarily it wasn't the alcohol, but it was what was on the other side of it.

It was life. And I mean, it has so many layers to it. You mentioned a few of them. And I wonder if that plays a big part in a lot of people. journeys is it's not really the alcohol maybe necessarily. I mean, if you are experiencing withdrawal symptoms, like that is scary, so you kind of keep it going to avoid that. But if that's not part of it, then it's scared of not really letting go of the alcohol, but we know after we're done numbing ourselves and avoiding everything and escaping through drinking, well, life is going to appear

on the other end. And are we prepared to deal with that sober? Any thoughts on that? Yeah, sure. I'll speak for myself, right? Because I started drinking in my early 20s, you know, I felt like I had experienced all this, I had all this life experience, but I really didn't. So as I became an adult and you start to really learn these life experiences that you experience them, like separation and child support and in court. And, you know, I was contempt in court.

They were going to throw me in jail and a suspended license and getting evicted and recards being repossessed, right? You start to experience all of this. what your life looks like currently, and I had no idea how to fix them. Like, I didn't have the money to get the car back. I didn't have obviously the money to, you know, prevent myself from being evicted.

I didn't have the money for food most times. And so for me, I was like, well, I'm just going to drink. And I'm just going to run away from this. And it was something that I continuously did. Now, at 45, I realized that it was a lot of childhood trauma that I didn't deal with, right? There was a lot of young adult trauma I didn't deal with. There was a lot of things that I should have dealt with in preparation for adulthood

that I kind of swept under the rug. Then I started to develop this avoidance, behave, this avoidance personality, right? Where I'm avoiding things all the time, and alcohol was just helping that. It was just an antidote to the overall bigger picture, which was this avoidance personality. man thanks for sharing that too a lot of those things relatable eviction cars being towed and not being able to pay the bill and losing the car altogether i i had that happen $15,000 car gone because i couldn't pay the towing storage fee when i decided to go and have a look at it man if we only knew then what we know now right i mean i guess that's the big thing is like hey can you and i think in my life

today that's a big part of how i try to learn right is sort of wisdom from other people or direction from other people or their experiences and kind of understanding that you know back in my days where i was getting so messed up like my best thinking ended me up there and i wasn't for some time i wasn't willing to give that up right i thought i was going to be able to think my way or manipulate my way or smooth my way forward. Or I would just wake up one day and everything would be different. Like I would be achieving my goals in life. And it is really hard though when you get in that spot. Like when you get in that spot, it can feel for me anyway, it just felt really hopeless. Like I was living on my brother's floor of his bedroom apartment, you know, and I was on felony

probation at 18 years old. And I couldn't hold down a job. And I got fired from like Little Caesars from Red Robin. You know, every every restaurant hospitality. drop I ever had, right? They would call me in and I knew what they were calling me in early for. So most of the time I would never show up. But it just kind of, it felt so sad. But the other part of it is too is it felt so normal just to kind of live a life of disappointment. And I think a lot of people questioned me like, why didn't you, you know, figure it out? I mean, this is the honest truth that maybe you can relate to. Maybe others can. Maybe not. I was that, that way life for me was so predictable. A life of maybe quote unquote success or doing what I was

supposed to be doing or contributing in a positive way was so outside of my wheelhouse. It was so uncomfortable. Right. So I kind of just fell myself in what I knew, even though it was so destructive. Yeah. And you actually bring up a really good point. And thank you for sharing. It is the norm, Right? It's the comfortability and the normal that we tend to fall into where losing a job just, oh, well, I'll just get another one, right? Because history is shown, I'll lose one because of drinking, but then I'll get hired for another one. And then it becomes just vicious cycle. And I remember getting like general manager jobs of restaurants that are paying, you know, six figures and six months getting fired because I used to keep a Sprite bottle, half vodka, half Sprite. And the owner found it. whether it's the hostess or the owner or another coworker, somebody always sniffed it out and I would just get canned and then I would apply. And because I had such an extensive resume at this point, people were hiring me. I would go in there sober for 30 minutes, just sober enough to get the job, and then I would end up losing it. And when we're in that space, it does seem normal to us,

but it's the people that we hurt in the process, right? Whether it's a girlfriend or wife or your children, and family friends, it's those people that are the ones that are suffering, looking from the outside in because there's nothing they could really do for us except to catch us when we fall. Yeah, and that's why I mentioned too a lot. It's like throwing a rock in a pond. There's always a ripple effect. I mean, being in the addiction affects other people. What I love most about that is the flip side of it too.

When we get sober, I mean, it impacts everybody around us too, which is cool. but yeah it's kind of like that you know that spot i mean this is kind of where i always get torn man i love that we're having this conversation because i always get torn with this because i never know when somebody's going to be ready i mean i wish i did i wish i knew what it was going to take for that individual to be ready to do what is going to be required for them to change their life and i wish even they knew maybe they could get to it sooner you know like if i knew it was like, okay, if this happens, I'll be ready. And I think we do a really good job at convincing ourselves and kind of drawing lines in the sand, right? If I get a DUI, of course,

I'm going to sober up. If I have kids, of course, I'm going to sober up. If I get that job or that house or that whatever, that relationship happens, of course I'm going to sober up. And, I mean, you hear the same story time and time again. It might keep us on the straight and narrow for a little bit, but, you know, that stuff usually fades. So it's like that readiness. So, I mean, bring us up to speed, man, if you feel ready for it, ready. Yeah. What was it for you? I mean, that the coma and walk us through that story a bit. Yeah, so there were warning signs, like I said, you know, where, and how graphic can I get? I mean, I'm going to be reasonable, but. Yeah, reasonable all the way. So, you know, there were warning signs physically, right, where I would

wake up in the morning with, you know, dry heaves first thing in the morning. I had, I was down to like 140 pounds. I'm naturally 510, like one, 170. I'm at 185 because I lift now, but at the time I was like 165, but I had dropped it like 140. I wasn't eating because if I ate, I felt like it would absorb the alcohol and the effects wouldn't be as great as they were. So I just wouldn't eat and have an empty stomach throughout the day. And so also my urine was like, color, it was like orange, and I had stomach cramps, and it was just all these physical things that were taking a toll, but I kept ignoring them, or I just maybe thought that they would go away over time. And so it wasn't until I woke up one morning, this had to be like February, no,

this was June of 2013. And I didn't know what pancreatitis was, right? I just knew that my stomach was hurting really badly. And so one morning I woke up with the worst stomachache that I had ever experience in my life. So I go to the, I go to the doctor. And my physician, Dr. O'Cocchi, was like, hey, let's do a couple of lab words. Maybe it's just indigestion. And I'm like, okay, cool. So I do the labs, I go home. And I immediately hit the door and have another drink. And within 10 minutes, he calls me, say, say, Jermaine, you should run to the ER, like now. And I'm like, why? Like, I'm chilling. And he's like, no, you need to go. He was like, your pancreate level, your pancreas levels are enough to explode, and your liver levels are high enough for it to fail right now.

So I'm like, and at the time, think about this. He's essentially telling me that I'm dying, right, in a nutshell. Yet my focus was like, oh, do I have to go? Right? Do I have to go right now? As though it was like impeding on my free time. But I went anyway, and immediately they put me into a room and the admitting doctor walks in and he doesn't say hi to me he doesn't say anything he says you're going to die and that was the most sobering bone chilling experience up to date that i had ever experienced to hear someone a physician right tell me that i'm going to die and i felt like this like my mortality just kind of come over me and uh he goes look at your eyes have you looked at your eyes lately he was like they are like butter

And so they admitted me into the hospital and I didn't initially get better. I got worse and ultimately led me to life support. And what was strange about that is it was I had came to and two days later, my parents walked in, not even two days later. My parents walked in when I came to and I saw the terror on my parents' faces. And when I saw the terror on my parents' faces, I knew right there not only the scare of me physically and what I had, had just gone through, but I didn't want to put my parents through that again. And it was 2 o'clock in the morning the next day. And I just wanted to feel normal again, Brad.

So all the nurses were at their stations, and I was like, I'm just going to go up and, I just want to go to the bathroom and piss like a normal human being, right? And so I get up, and as my foot hits the cold hospital floor, I fall on my face. And what I didn't realize is that somehow, some way neurologically, I had temporary paralysis on my right side of my body so I end up crawling to the bathroom and then the nurses came and picked me up and drug me and put me back in the bed and I couldn't walk for a good like almost six months so I just I was wheelchaired in I'm sorry I walked in and I was wheelchair back into my house for the next six months I had a nurse come in three days a week to check my vitals and

physical therapy and I started to try to find ways to keep myself busy because I had been in hospitality for so long that I didn't think I could go back to that world. You know, you're surrounded by alcohol and you're surrounded by this environment that I was like, if I'm going to get sober, I can't go back to that. And so I was, I was in a really depressed, lost space after getting out of the hospital for a while. Wow, man. Wow. So when does sobriety cross your mind, like as you're going through this whole process? I mean, do you, is it happen right away or is it, you know, when does that kind of come up for you that like, hey, I got to quit drinking? In the bed. When I was in the bed, laying down, looking up at the ceiling, nobody around, just me and my thoughts.

I knew that I had to stop. This was, I had no other choice, right? They put me on a liver donor list. They were checking my pancreas level. Like, I didn't have choice, right? It was like, sober up or die literally and so I'm laying in the bed and I'm just kind of thinking to myself like this can't be it for me like I'm 33 years old like I can't check out now I just so many things that I wanted to do that if it ended now right or if I was it just I knew I had to stop so when I got home that same physician calls me and he goes hey Jermaine he's like dude I really like you you have such a great future I don't want to see you die he's like would you consider going into a an inpatient program or outpatient program? And believe it or not, at that time, I was like, I don't know, man, I don't know. I got to call you back. And so I think a week later, I end up calling them back and I said, hey, I don't want to, I said, an inpatient program scares me. I've heard too many things about it. I was like, well, what about an outpatient program? And so I end up the next day going into Kaiser Permanente's outpatient program. It was five days a week. It was a nine

to five thing. There was a therapist. I had never saw the therapist before, so I had an to really talk some things out. And I became a student of it because I didn't want to become a victim of it. So I'm sitting in these circles and I'm hearing all these horrific stories about people and what they've gone through and I'm hearing, hey, I'm so-and-so

and I'm day one, or I'm so-and-so and I'm day two or I'm so-and-so on day 30. And here I am, like, I'm Jermaine and I'm day 14. And I just remember setting a goal for myself and saying, I want to be able to be able would say, hey, I'm Jermaine Burst. I'm one year sober. Like, that was a goal for me. And now I can see the year 12 years later and say that I'm Jermaine Burst, I'm 12 years over. And it's the best

decision I've ever made in my life. Wow, man. Beautiful. Huge congrats on that, man, 12 years. Even at 33, though, you know, at 33 to have gone through all of that and to be in that position with having, yeah, I mean, it sounds like a few people. there had mentioned to you, you know, you were going to die. And I mean, I think when you look back, you identified the signs too. Like, there was truth. There was a lot of truth to that. And then you, your parents come and, you know, that's, it sounds like that was an experience as well to maybe, maybe in that moment understand the impact of all of this sort of, I thought for the longest time it was my life. I can just do whatever I want. It's only affecting me. And it was

very selfish of me to live like that. But at the time, I just really couldn't see it. I think I was in just so much emotional pain. It's really just what made sense. It provided that relief from everything. And I didn't realize the impact it was having on everybody else. And I don't know if that's relatable, but that moment seems like it really, really was important to you, really stood out to you and maybe a catalyst for change too. And then you do this outpatient program and sort of, you know, jump in there, which, you know, that's good, man. I mean, because I think there's a lot of people, like, you might know more than I do. And you mentioned in that point where you didn't have a choice, I've heard stories the other way, man, where people are in a spot like that or worse, if that is a thing, maybe they got a transplant, maybe they had other stuff.

And, like, some people go back to drinking afterwards. Like, even though they're, like, it's either drinking, it's either sobriety or dying, you know, it can get some people there, which, you know, is, it's so tough, but I think it's the reality out there. What did you learn through the outpatient program? I would love to touch on that last part you just said in regards to those individuals out there that even when they do face their own version of rock bottom, because rock bottom is different for everybody, they still choose their chemical dependency. And when I think about it, it really saddens me, like enough to, like, make me cry

because, you know, these are human beings just like you and I. And it's almost like this, um, I get this like survival remorse behind it. Because my tattoo artist, I have a whole bunch of tattoos, man. And he passed away a couple years ago and he was 40 years old. And what was interesting is we're spending like six, eight hours sessions for years together. And I'm sharing my sobriety stories and I'm sharing my life and all these things. He was battling alcoholism this entire time. And I had no idea until I got the phone call

that he was in a hospital on his deathbed. And I felt so bad because I'm like, what could I have done? How come I didn't see the signs? Like, how come I couldn't share? Maybe I didn't mention something I should have mentioned. And so that's why, Brad, I'm on this lifelong journey man to help those that feel like they,

there is no choice out there, man. And that's why I'm so open and raw and transparent with my testimony. because I want people out there just like yours right I want people out there to see us flourishing and and know that there's a way out of this yeah that's so powerful man and then you know all the signs and you know everything to look for and still aren't really you know picking up on it necessarily right I mean that's how you know that's how it can be and that's sort of the shame behind it, you know, I had somebody message me today, and they were committed

to not drinking, and they were a couple months into their journey, and they sent me a message it, you know, kind of looking for advice. I mean, giving advice is not really my thing. I'm more share, hey, what I've heard or my experience in, you know, filled with shame and guilt of like drinking again. And it's like, I think that that's the thing that keeps us stuck, man. That's the thing that keeps us quiet is because we feel like inherently there's something off with us. There's something broken. Our moral compass is just not on track to where it should be. So we don't want to share with anybody else. But I think the truth is, like, there's a lot of people going through this. Like talk with people about it. If people mention it to me that they're struggling,

I'm not necessarily in shock or like awe of it. I'm like, you know, I mean, that's okay. It's okay. I mean, if you want to do something about it, there's opportunity for that. But if that's where you are right now, I mean, that's okay. I've been there. A lot of people have been there, you know, it's not, and I think that's important for people to talk to the right people. But I'm with you on that, man. I, you know, I had so many people. I used to work at a residential treatment center and I used to work with like teenagers. You know, I did that for seven years and I worked with like 15 year olds to 18, 19 year olds. And I had some guys I worked with for six months every day, dude. And in a long story short,

you know, they ended up dying. And it's, uh, it's tough, right? It's so. tough because yeah you can go through you know could I have done something different what was I always kind of go through was I too easy on him or or or this other guy was I too hard on him should have and could have and done all this stuff but you know that's the tough thing kind of a what we're dealing with here is that it can do a really good job to convince people to keep going and not get help in that you know there's so much different but I think even your your story your journey it's it's very different than mine but i think there's a lot of things that we share in common of um you know how we feel about the whole situation too you know and i i just try to tell people

like maybe identify the things you have in common with others because it's you know humans or humans at the end of the end of the day right yeah they they really are and you know statistically you know one in one and every five individuals has some form of addiction they may not be like you and i's but it's some form of it. And I just want to be an advocate for hope and help. You know what I mean? Like I see people suffering in silence. And so it's interesting because I used to,

I went from being where I was at to getting back in the hospitality. And I was hosting wine, you know, I used wine pouring and I used to host, you know, these private wine tastings. and I never had a craving for it. I never had a thought about it. Like, I was just, I was done with it.

I was completely done with it. And I do a daily self-audit, right? And I know what serves me and what doesn't serve me. And alcohol is just never served me. So I just don't see myself ever going back to it because my life is so beautiful now. But my transparency and my honesty and these wine tastings, they're interesting because these people come here to have a good time, right? They want to taste wine and they want to have a good time.

And organically, these conversations will happen. And they'd be like, hey, my mom is suffering or my dad is suffering. Or I have a cousin or an uncle or someone's suffering. What are the tools that I could give them, Jermaine? And the only thing I share with them is just continue to love on them. Continue to love on them unconditionally. Like, love them in spite of themselves. That's the only thing that we could really do for people.

And, you know, I'm sorry to hear about those, you know, individuals that passed away that you mentioned based on addiction. You know, my relationship with alcohol has never been one of happiness or joy, right? Like my grandfather, my mother's father, who I never met, he died of cirrhosis from drinking at 40. My father died almost four years ago of cancer, but it was alcohol-related cancer. I have two uncles die from heart attacks because of alcoholism. One of my best friends in tattoo artists died a few years ago, so I know the effects of it. Like, I know what can happen if you don't get a hold of it.

on a flip side i envy people to a certain degree that can socially drink you know like i i i envy those to a certain level that can have a drink or one or two and then be done with it like i just don't i just don't have that personality yeah well you and me both man just the the the your relatives there and then your friend too it's like you're rewriting you know things maybe for the future generations of your family too which i see a lot of people doing right now with a lot of different things. This may be changing course to where, to how we're going about dealing with things or

in so many areas of life, right? Which I think it's like, it's time we put an end to this continuing on to just normalizing this. Because you even mentioned earlier in the story with your dad, which I think, you know, everybody's going to have different degrees in which they do, which they drink, right? But I think that that is probably a common thing for kids to see

is when their parents come home after a long day. hey, they might only have one drink. And I'm not here to say what's right or wrong. It's really not my position in the world. But I think that as kids and young adults and whatever, we pick up on that. And then you never know what else is left unresolved under it to where the drinking can turn into something else. And I think the other thing is, the longer you keep it around,

the more likelihood for it to turn problematic or for it to turn into a substance use disorder of some sort. You know, so. Yeah. And there's so many layers to it. There's so many layers and what's beautiful and what I'm one of the, you know, proudest things I'm proud of is, you know, my son and my daughter, they don't, they didn't, they've never seen me intoxicated, right? They've never seen me drink. They've never seen me crack a beer off and they've never seen any of that. They've only seen me sober. So I have the ability to break a chain in what the, what environment I placed them in in regards to alcohol. Now, I can't control what happens outside, right? But what I can't control, you know, is what they're able to see in the home. And that even goes, that even extends as far as, like, my career past and what I've chosen.

And in 12 years, becoming a professional critically acclaimed artist and having a restaurant consulting business and now writing a book about my addiction journey and purpose. Like, these are things that I've turned an addiction into a plus that my kids can really look back at and say, damn, my dad really turned his life around, man. yeah that's cool yeah i mean when you when you look at it that way too of everything you've been able to accomplish on the sober side of things and you hear the stories a lot of people turning things around and finding new passions and really going after their goals and all the opportunities i mean when you quit drinking you get back so much time like you don't get there's still 24 hours in a day but you're showing up for them in a completely different way and you're available the awareness is increased the clarity has increased the confidence

increases because when you start out the day, hung over, feeling like you're controlled by something, it just really knocks you down. I'm curious to go back to one other thing and then we can head towards wrapping up is you had mentioned to your friend, your tattoo artist, and maybe other people are suffering or struggling in silence. I mean, what do you think that is there? I mean, because I feel like it's part of your story too. I mean, I know it's definitely part of mine, but like what do you think keeps us stuck and that's fought to where we don't share kind of what's going on with people shame shame and disappointment no i truly believe that shame and disappointment is what prevents someone even though you want to share it right like you have an opportunity to share it you

want to just cry out i need help it's the shame and disappointment and unpredictability about the reaction of the others too as well, which just goes into a lack of trust. I think those all fall for me, they all fall into that category of why someone doesn't just say, hey, man, is there anything you can do for me? Like, I don't want to be in this anymore. And then unfortunately, too, there is an accountability that has to happen to say, I am addicted to something. I am an addict. I think only then can you really start the healing process as well is accepting full accountability of who you've become, and then having a strong case of the want-to's, you know what I mean? Yeah.

What do you mean by that, a strong case of the want-toes? So my pastor growing up used to say, you know, you have to have a strong case of the want-to. Like, you have to want it bad enough. Like, you have to want sobriety bad enough to want to change. You got to want success bad enough to do to make the sacrifices in order to reach your goal. Like, you have to want to do these things bad enough. And I remember reading a book, because I became a bibliophile about five years ago. And I just remember reading a story of this guru and this young man wanting to make money.

And the guru, and I'll make this story short, the guru was like, hey, if you want to make money, come out to the beach at 5 o'clock in the morning. And the kid's like, yo, I said I want to make money. I don't want to swim. And he goes, no, come out there. So the kid comes out there in a suit. He ducks his head in the water to the point where he's struggling to breathe. It pulls the kid up.

He goes, hey man, why are you trying to kill me? Like, I said I wanted to make money. He said, if you want success or you want sobriety, as bad as you wanted to breathe in that moment, is when you accomplish it. And that's what a strong case of the want to have meant to me. Yeah, beautiful. I love that.

Yeah, you have to, things have to change. You can't just, I don't think so anyway. I mean, I know people who have, are they enjoying the process maybe that's for them to figure out but other things have to change for us other than just not drinking i mean that's obviously the first step but now especially in your story you know it's like how do you start to unpack everything that's happened before that moment and everything else that we've maybe avoided or that we haven't you know worked through or talked about or shared about and i think that part too like you mentioned there yeah that's a

scary sort of thing but yeah the shame i mean keeps it keeps people stuck and you know i always say i always ask people too like hey the first time you shared with somebody you have you know we have this idea in our head right what this is going to look like and how it's going to feel and i i asked people too i said you know was it anything like that and they said oh my gosh no it was it wasn't anything near how terrifying i thought it was going to be um so if you're out there and you're you're struggling like find somebody that you know you can trust or somebody that's on this journey themselves that understands and there's so many people out there and just like people that are struggling with drinking there's a lot of people out there that are sober that

without the conversation we might not even realize I've known people for years and you know not close but in passing or here or there and then find out that you know there's something they're on maybe they don't call it sober but they don't drink and whatever personal development journey they're on and it's like wow that's cool yeah i i'll tell you what i love anything else that you want to share uh yeah yeah so i would love the audience if they are interested to to you know pick up my book uh it's called the autopsy of my former self and it's um it's a wonderful journey uh self-reflection and and redemption and it's on all platforms barns and nobles amazon on Goodreads, you name it.

And I just will like people to support it. You know, there's something in it for everyone from someone that may be addicted or even someone that's a spouse, a girlfriend, a family member of dealing with a nephew, you know, or a son or a daughter that are addicted. There's a lot in this book. And it took me two years. It took me two years and 10 months to finally finish writing it and then ultimately getting it picked up by a publishing company.

It is dedicated to my dad because he's. He's no longer here, and I know he'd be extremely proud of me. But I really would love the world to read the book and really absorb. You know, Jay-Z said, I live through it so that you don't have to go through it. And so this book is kind of that blueprint. Oh, that's beautiful, man. Well, mentioning your dad there, what were his thoughts on your sobriety? My dad loved it.

He loved every minute of it. But I will share something interesting. In addition, Brad, is that I thought that my sobriety would convince me. invent to reach out to people, which you have to make that decision first. And I realize that through my pipes. Yeah. Wow, man. Yeah, that's, man, that's like the, we shared about it kind of earlier, like maybe the survivor's remorse, you know, in a sense, right, too, of like, you got through. And then, yeah, when you get sober, your life is just going up and up and things are going well. And it's like, man, do people around me not see this? Like, what is going

on and it's like their head can maybe be in the sand when it comes through it's like life with blinders on yeah you know but thinking like yeah if i if i do this and things are changing for me and then i can relate to that all so well i mean i'm not going to go into all of the the details but i can relate to that all so well there's people around me that i mean i didn't necessarily you know wish but i thought after you know all these years they'd say hey like maybe i could at least give it a try i don't know it's it's tough man well thank you so much dude i really appreciate it man i i really enjoyed this chat with you in the book too is out right now yep it's out right now it's called autopsy in my former cell it's on all platforms i'm incredibly proud of it you can also find my art on germane

dante underscore art and instagram i've been a critically acclaimed artist for 12 years man i've I have clients from Stefan Curry to Robert De Niro and everybody in between. I've done massive projects working with the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, Moette Hennessy, corporations like Kaiser Permanente, North Bay Health. So my art lives in homes, offices, and health and wellness spaces. And one of the coolest things that I experienced at the beginning of this year was to go from live support and literally on my deathbed at Kaiser Permanente to now have it. seven, six by

eight pieces of art in their corporate headquarters and next year I'll be working on their Southern California building so talk about a full moment of 360 yeah wow man that's beautiful dude and I'm sure we could

well I know we could chat for probably three hours man about the book and about how the art thing started but maybe we'll leave a little bit you know leave a little bit for the audience to check out the book I'm sure that some of these questions will be answered in there. I am curious, man. What have you learned most about yourself over these last 12 years? To forgive myself. I've learned how to forgive

myself because it's really easy to continue to be hard on myself, you know, whether it's relationships that have yet to be healed, whether it's thinking back in hindsight of why didn't I get started on my journey earlier, you know, why did not become the person I am today 10 years to go, really learning to forgive myself. And, you know, when I first got sober, I had this chip on my shoulder, and I was like, anybody that ever says anything to me, I'm cutting them out. And the biggest thing that I can do now is just love on people in spite of themselves. You know, so I just transfer the negativity into just beautiful positivity, man.

And I just want to be a beacon of life to everyone in and around me and anyone that would love to get to know me. Yeah, awesome, man. Love that. Such an important part of the process. is the forgiveness, not only of the past, but even of the present moment. I think you kind of started out this thing of like, I think I remember, like, I'm not perfect. And that's so relatable to me, too.

It's even forgiving myself for, you know, the way I go about things and still learning in today's world as well. Yeah. Great share. Thank you so much. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you. I appreciate you having me on. I'm beyond humble.

I really do appreciate you. Keep doing what you're doing, man. I had a chance to go through everything, of course, part of the message I sent you. I appreciate you reaching back. out to me and making this happen. Keep saving lives, man, because even though it may not be something that is shared every single day, somebody is watching and you're helping a lot of people. Thank you for being part of this community. Thanks, huh? Yeah, thank you. That means a lot. Thanks so much. It's a cool community, so I appreciate Jermaine. Well, there it is. Another

incredible episode here on the podcast. Huge shout out to Jermaine. I mean, come on, changing his life, turning it around, writing a book, doing art. Incredible stuff. so grateful that he jumped on and shared just his incredible story of where he was and how things look for him now i'll drop his instagram down to the show notes below if you want to check out his book he's rocking and rolling so thank you if you're enjoying the podcast be sure to drop a five-star review on spotify a written review on apple thank you so much and i'll see you on the next one