Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Matt Farnsworth: From Broken To Saved

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Eight Years Ago, Matt Was Facing Severe Health Issues, Financial Hardship, And Even Jail Time After A Devastating Car Accident. A Near-Death Experience During That Time Changed Everything, Giving him A Second Chance At Life That He Embraced Fully. Before this Matt was off the booze for 13 years. Many things were going on, Matt had a relapse, and his addiction skyrocketed fast. This is Matt Farnsworth's story on the Sober Motivation podcast -------------- Follow Matt on IG here: https://www.instagram.com/mattfarnsworth/ Follow Sober Motivation on IG here: https://www.instagram.com/sobermotivation/ Download the Sober Buddy App here: https://soberbuddy.app.link/motivation More information on Sober Link: www.soberlink.com/recover  

Welcome to Season 3 of the Suburmotivation podcast. Join me, Brad, each week is my guests and I share incredible, inspiring, and powerful sobriety stories. We are here to show sobriety as possible one story at a time. Let's go. Matt Farnsworth, from Broken to Save. Eight years ago, Matt was facing severe health issues, financial hardship, and even jail time after a devastating car accident.

A near-death experience during that time changed everything. giving Matt a second chance at life that he embraced fully. Before this, Matt was off the booze for 13 years. Many things were going on. Matt had a relapse and his addiction skyrocketed and fast. This is Matt's story on the sober motivation podcast. Getting sober is a lifestyle change and sometimes a little technology can help. Imagine a breathalizer that works like a habit tracker for sobriety.

Soberlink helps you replace bad habits with healthy ones. Weighing less than a pound and a little bit. as compact as a sunglass case, Soberlink devices have a built-in facial recognition, tamper detection, and advanced reporting, which is just another way of saying it'll keep you honest. On top of all that, results are sent instantly to loved ones to help you stay accountable.

Go after your goals. Visit soberlink.com slash recover to sign up and receive $50 off your device. Welcome back, everyone, to another show. Thanks for checking out the podcast. Be sure if you're enjoying it. the podcast, the stories, you drop a review on Apple or Spotify. Spotify has also got the little thing where you can leave comments. Leave some comments.

If you're coming to the podcast from Spotify, listening on there, that would be incredible. Also on another note, if you could use some community, some support, some help, some guidance, some friends on your sober journey, be sure to check us out on the Sober Buddy app. Man, the groups are getting bigger. People are connecting. They're connecting in real life. too, which is incredible and virtually. We have the 10 live support groups a week.

I do three myself. Would love to see you. Also, there is community held meetups on the weekends. And it's incredible. So come and check it out. Grab the app, your app, your app, your sober buddy. com or your favorite app store, your sober buddy. Now, let's get in to this episode with Matt.

Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got Matt with us. Matt, how are you? Hey, I'm doing great. Thank you. Good, man. I'm so happy to have you to share your story. I know a while ago on the sober motivation platform,

we shared a little bit of your stories, before a picture, a current picture. It was a lot of people, got a lot of different reactions from people. A lot of people were like, wow, you know what I mean? Transformations incredible. And some of the story you shared there, too, I'm sure we'll get into. But how we start every episode is what was it like for you growing up? Grew up all over the place.

Really moved a lot when I was a kid. I was in, I think, 13 different schools by the time I'd graduated from high school. So a lot of moving, a lot of moving. Pretty stable home. My parents are still together to this day. You know, they bickered as much as any parents did back then. Pretty traditional childhood. Not a lot of issues, man. Played sports, loved it. The moving was tough. Grew up mainly in the Midwest, Kansas, a family in Iowa, Missouri, and ended up in Seattle and then down to L.A. So I've kind of I lived everywhere. Wow.

Why did you move so much? My dad was a salesman for IBM. And so the old saying is, I've been moved. That's kind of how it works. They just move sales guys all over, you know, especially if they were successful to different locations and said, hey, go grow that practice over there in that area. So that's kind of how that went.

Gotcha. Okay. So you're having to move new places and then, meet new friends and all that type stuff in each place? Hey, you kind of just get the shit beat out of you in a new place everywhere you go. And that's kind of how it went, man. you go to a new place, it's time to fight, you throw down for a little bit, and then you're good to go. You know how men are and boys are. You know, they're tough. Yeah. And then you were good to get. Yeah. That's kind of how you made friends, like the stomping ground. Here's the new kid on the block and you show up. And then you make some good buddies. And it's very similar in each location. There's just these groups of people that come together and they're very homogenous. They're similar. And the way they interact is similar. And you just sort of learn to integrate. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. So how was high school and everything for you?

Grades-wise, you were good, and you said you played sports. What kind of sports did you play? I excelled at a lot of sports. I stopped playing baseball in high school. I played soccer and football. And then I stopped the football, but mainly just soccer and excelled quite heavily in that. I don't know how I did because I started drinking when I was 14, 15, but I managed to be able to drink and still play sports, which was incredible. And first team, all league, that kind of stuff, even though I was drinking.

But our bodies are incredible when we're young and resilient. Yeah, that's the truth. It's interesting you bring that up, though, about like the childhood, right? Your overall feeling or thoughts of growing up is it wasn't terrible, right? And I feel like there's this myth out there in the world for people who struggle with addiction. They come from the certain box of an upbringing. So it's interesting, too, because I had another conversation today with someone else about things not being extremely terrible and still getting involved with addiction in one way or another. I think there's something that happens. I think there's like a trigger that does happen. If I were to dive deep into it, let me see, when did my sort of happen to me? And I can tell you when it happened. I had a high school basketball coach who was really creepy. And he ended up sort of trying to mess with me one day after practice when I had my leg needed to be wrapped. And he started working his hand up my leg. And I kind of freaked out. I was like, this sucks. Get away from me. I didn't let it happen, thankfully. So from there. So from there, He also, and this is a town in Kansas, a smaller town, Nice town, Leewood, Kansas. He was the science teacher. He was my science teacher as well. Well, my mother called the school and said, don't ever do it again and talked to him and said, you know, knock it off.

Well, I ended up failing science and I ended up being kicked off the basketball team. And so I think my young brain couldn't really process. I hadn't done anything wrong. But the problem is, is you got these, like we're talking about, the circle of friends that you have, like when you're moving into these no occasions, I'd made all these friends. They were athletic. They were playing sports. And then we have this man who's obviously a pedophile that is praying on kids on this basketball team, these boys. And it just turned my life around. So I ended up finding new friends. And what do you think those friends did? Those friends were into drinking. They weren't playing sports. They were into getting in trouble. And so I sort of fell in with a different crowd. And I think that's really where it happened. I think I felt like I was very unhappy with that situation. I think, and I started drinking. And, you know, one of my friends had a brother who had beers down in the basement. And we went down there and we stole the beers and we started drinking those over a drain and we ended up throwing up. And hey, that was it. And I felt great. You know what it does. It alleviates all of those stresses, those anxieties that you have. And it sort of makes you just feel nothing. You just feel none of that pain, none of those anxieties anymore. It all goes away. It just melts away. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that too because it paints a little bit more of a picture. And that's a tough. spot like situations like that because you've done the right thing where you talk with mom about it.

But then you also experience like those consequences in a sense where you're off the ball team and you're failing at a science, right? And then you're out of sort of playing basketball and hanging out with different friends. I can relate to that part a lot too. I got wrapped up and I used to say all the time, you know, on our own, the group of guys I used to run with when I was younger, we were all pretty decent, well-behaved people on our own. But when we got together, We came up with some very, very bad ideas and it made poor choices to be the kindest. So I can see that too. But then you bring up another point too, right?

Once you start drinking the alcohol, the insecurities. I mean, for me, it was being uncomfortable in my own skin, the insecurities, the low self-esteem, no confidence maybe when it came to relationships or girls and this stuff. I mean, it was like, Bing, Bang, Boom, everything was solved. Yeah, it's great. It felt great. Like, what's better than alcohol for an alcoholic? It's great. What does it do to you? It makes you a liar. It makes you a cheater. It makes you make poor decisions. It causes you to get into trouble, possibly lose your freedom. There's so many things that happen and causes you to black out. You do things you don't even remember. You did. And I think that's the scariest thing. And the uncomfortable, you nailed it. Like you're uncomfortable in your own skin. And something made you uncomfortable. You probably had a predisposition to this disease, which so many people do. And there were external circumstances that caused you to.

do want to use it, just like I had that exact time. That was the time when I was forming these bonds with these, you know, young guys. And just ended up with the wrong crowd, man. And like you said, when we got together, it was really poor ideas. It was let's get drunk. Let's go buy cigarettes. We've got mopeds. Let's take them across the state line. You know, you can be 16 and buy smokes in Missouri. And we lived on the state line. So here's another great idea. We've got these, you know, IDs that for our mopeds, they look like a license. They're just going to accept it wherever we go. So we would just go and buy smokes, start smoking at 15. And it's this poor decision making all around. I feel you, but it made me feel comfortable in my skin. It really did.

I felt great. I even share too, and this isn't everybody's story, but things weren't terrible from the beginning. I mean, it might have, in a sense, saved me from like feeling really, really depressed and anxious at times, too. Gave me a purpose, community. It gave me a lot of stuff that I'd been craving before prior in my life, that I wasn't able to really get part of these social circles and be part of stuff and have friends outside of school. And I mean, it provided me that stuff. It wouldn't be telling the truth if I said it was a disaster right from the beginning. No, man. I mean, it wasn't for me either. Like, my parents were very loving. You know, they could be a pain. They bickered a lot. And I had the corporal punishment. I got whipped. My dad wasn't easy.

This is Kansas. This is the Midwest. You don't mess around. Your parents lay down the law. they're in charge and you respect that. And so that's kind of how I was brought up. Did that cause me to drink? No, I loved it. It was great. And I think I've always been an alcoholic. I think the second that I drank, it was overted.

It was like that was for me, my genetics were there. My grandfather had this. He quit drinking. His brother drank himself to death after getting caught, robbing a bank drunk. And these guys that just had these problems with alcohol, It's just an interesting life. It's been a crazy ride, and I just think that I had it. Like, I had that gene.

It was there. Just waiting for that first drink, right? So where do you go after this? You're in high school. This is what, 14 years old to get started. You're running with the boys. Where do we go from there? Yeah, 16, 18.

You know, I'm in high school. I'm in Seattle. You know, Seattle's a lot of alcohol culture there because it rains all the time. So I was drinking all the time. I got in trouble there. I totaled car there as well. Finally pulled myself out of trouble. Got decent grades.

got into college, went to college, Seattle Pacific University, got tired of that, decided to stop playing sports and ended up in the acting world, moved down to L.A., started screen testing for movies right away. I've pretty much done it all in terms of L.A. Like I had the biggest agents in Hollywood, CAA. I've screen tested for anywhere from Star Wars to Christopher Nolan movies and read with Al Pacino. You kind of name it, dude. I've been there, done all that. And it was a very dirty business. Again, moral injury when you're dealing with a business like that. So I drank. I drank in L.A. an interesting time because you can't get in trouble, dude. Like, it's really hard to get busted in L.A. Like, you really got to make a big mistake. So you can kind of

drink and party. And if you got your own pad and you got some buddies that will hang out with you because you're the guy that goes to the bar and buys the drinks, you got the nice house in the hills. And, you know, there's lots of girls around. They're going to help enable you. And so that's kind of how my life went. Man, I was in a couple little TV shows here and there. I had a nice house. I had kind of the life in Hollywood there, but it was shallow. You know, I was drinking a lot. And then my son was born. I actually quit drinking before he was born. My girlfriend at the time got pregnant, and then I'm like, I'm done. That'd be a danger to my child if I do this. You know, I just didn't trust myself. And so I just went cold turkey, just stopped drinking. And I did that

for 13 years. Wow. Did you do any program or anything? Any treatment? Any work on it? Or just, that's it? I tried. When I first started, when I first started. and my son was about to be born. I tried AA, but I kind of went as sort of like a, everybody be quiet cart. Like, I'm going to go do this just to get people to be quiet and leave me alone. Just so I can show them, yeah, I win. It's okay. Everything's good now. But my heart wasn't in it. Didn't really want to work the program, didn't have any real interest in it. I just wanted people to see that I had gone around me. And then I was making an effort. So I did that. But I just white knuckled it. I've got a lot of willpower, obviously. And I was able to, you know, stay away from it for a

long time. And I think at my post that you posted on sober motivation, which thank you for doing that, by the way, that was really cool. You know, I think that I talked about emotional sobriety and how I didn't have it those 13 years and how it was pretty miserable. But for 13 years, you didn't think, maybe you did, I don't know, but did you think of like, hey, I need to explore this a little bit deeper because what I'm hearing here, Matt, just steer me in the right direction if I'm off is that you were under the assumption that drinking was the problem. If I just cut out the drinking miraculously, this is where I was too, that my life would just improve and, like, happily ever after, things would be good. But then you realize you quit the drinking and then you just said there

it was miserable. I think you said for like the 13 years or it was tough or it was difficult. Did you ever think like, hey, man, there's got to be more to this that I need to be doing because there's a reason why I'm maybe not happy, even though I've given up the drinking. Does that make any sense? Yeah, I mean, there were things that I would do. I would read self-help books. I would do some meditation. I would work out. There were things I would do to alleviate that pressure. I just wasn't constantly miserable. I had these new children that I really enjoyed and I threw myself into that. And I think they kept me real busy, man. You know how it is. You got three under five, you said, right? So, I mean, I was busy. And, you know, 10 years, you don't even know what

happened to you. Ten years into two kids still making a movie here and there, really busy, throwing myself into the work. My relationship was pretty shallow. I wasn't in love with the woman that I was with, even though I spent all that time with her. And I'm just being real. We were just kind of pacifying each other and just kind of moving through life. And I was kind of doing that because it was the right thing to do because I had had children with her. But really the best thing probably would have been to not be together right from the beginning. And, yeah, I made it through the 13 years.

You know, stuff started to fall apart. And that was at about, I'd say, year 12 of us being together. And then social media happened. A lot of stuff started going on in the world. and it just got crazy. Our relationship got messed up and alcohol. It came back on the radar. We moved into an area in Long Beach where you're talking about people, places, and things.

There was 10 bars, literally a stone's throw away from me in this location that I decided to move into. So it was kind of a party place and I would smell the stale beer and just all this stimulation that was happening to me, sort of like about six months to a year before I started actually drinking again. And with the relationship failing and everything else and her and, encouraging alcohol in the household. It got really tough. And I eventually ended up taking that shot in a bar just while I was shooting a movie. Just walking by. I was like, screw this. I'm 38 years old, 39. I can handle it. I don't have a problem. I've gotten old enough now that I've outgrown it. At a bar, have a shot doing a movie. Yeah, making a movie. They were walking by with free shots for the crew. Waitress was walking by with it. And I just snagged one and shot it like it was nothing. 13 years hadn't had a drink. And I just like, no big deal. Yeah, that's interesting. I'm still so interested in the whole 13 years. I got to be honest, I don't know why. Did you make a conscious decision and it just like left you or would you wake up every day and you're just like, I'm not drinking today or how did you go about that without any intervention there or anything?

I'm just that kind of guy. Like I can't explain how I did that. When I set my mind to something, I do it. I can really go. I got a lot of willpower and I just willpower that. Like I would say to myself, yeah, I'm not going to do it. It's not good for me. I would wake up and know that it's not. and I would throw myself into whatever activity it was that I was doing. And I just didn't even think about it. I just went. And I let the alcohol go. I let it go.

I don't crave it. I can go buy a bar and I can see it and all that. I don't crave. I never did. I think for me it was more when bad things happened. I ran to it, you know, and to numb the pain.

Gotcha. Okay. I'm seeing it now. I'm seeing it now, Matt. Yeah. You can definitely hang on, right, for a while. Or some people maybe hang on forever. So something changed.

You had the 13 years and then things are going downhill with their relationship. You're moving into, you said you could smell the stale beer. So you must have fairly close to these 10 bars. And then you have that first drink. And then what happens, right? I mean, after that, is it downhill from there? Or is you just, you know, ease your way back into things or how does that look? Totally downhill.

The alcohol comes into the house. She wants it on a regular basis. Now we're drinking during the weeknights, weekends. It doesn't take long before. Or, you know, there's cocaine involved. We're living off Belmont Shore. I mean, it's everywhere, dude. So it happened quick.

And then she ended up having this big issue. She ended up moving out. And when she moved out, it was really on. I was a mess, too, because what had happened is she had an affair, and it was through social media. It was a really strange thing. And it just kind of wrecked me. It blindsided me.

Like, I didn't see it coming. And I think it shocked me. And I didn't realize like, oh my gosh, I've been gaslit for like, I can't even tell you how many years, like years of being with somebody that I didn't even know. And that really got me emotionally. I can't hurt. Not because I was like, I think it was my own ego. No self-esteem, huge ego. Here I am thinking that, you know, I've got this thing greased and this could never happen to me. And sure enough, I got blindsided by it. And it just took me sideways, ended up drinking all the time. I couldn't comprehend what had happened. So I had to drink in order to numb the pain because I couldn't rationalize what was going on in my life. I just got blindsided by this thing. And then continually being gaslit after that, you know, you've got two kids with this person. And then, you know, you're being led along this path, this fake path and you don't know what's real. And then you're also using alcohol during this sort of la-la land that you're living in that isn't real with all this gaslighting.

You don't know what's going on. And then you're drinking. And then you have more anxiety than you've ever. head in your life and you make these terrible decisions. And so I was just making one bad decision after another based on the pain that I was in, as you mentioned, being uncomfortable and I couldn't handle being uncomfortable. I couldn't, you know, man up at that time and just be like, look, you need to just stop this now. And that was one time I couldn't get a hold of myself. I could not get a grasp. And I can't explain why, but I couldn't alcohol had me. I would get up in the morning.

I would wait for legends on 2nd Avenue to open. It was a sports bar. I'd go in there at 11 am and I'd start drinking. I'd pass out by three. I'd pass out for three or four hours, get back up, go right back out, do it again. It was great because I didn't have to drive. I could walk. So when I moved out of there, and I don't know why I did this, again, I think I was in a position where I was so messed up emotionally and still trying to sort of get this relationship that was never going to work to work that I moved out to a residence in to try to show her maybe that I was struggling or I was going to in closer to wherever she was living. Meanwhile, I don't even think she cared. And in doing so, I'm now driving, man. Now, I've got to drive to bars. I've got to drive to places to drink.

And so what happened is, is I ended up getting in this car accident about six months after I had started drinking again, that one shot of tequila. And here I am at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, flipping a car six times into oncoming traffic on Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa, you know, breaking my neck, dying in the ambulance. And being, brought back. And so that's where I was, man. It's crazy. Wow. All of that in six months. Six months. After that one shot of tequila. One shot of tequila, six months later, flipping a car, breaking your neck, getting charged with a felony DUI, and ending up in rehab, fighting that too. And you know what's crazy? I died in the ambulance. I had to bring me back.

I was out for a little while. I was out for a minute. I had like this near-death experience, And we don't have to get into that deeply. But even though I had that experience, here's how powerful addiction is. The next morning, I was under arrest, by the way, felony DUI. They knew I was messed up. They tested my blood and I was like a .25 or something insane. The cocaine that was in the car was in the center console. I had cocaine in the car.

When the car flipped, the windows broke and the cocaine just went everywhere. So they couldn't prove that I had cocaine. So I'm very lucky there. They didn't test my blood. I can't tell you why. but it was one of those godshot things where, here you go, we're going to hand you this gift. You're not going to get charged with, you know, having cocaine either.

But you're going to get charged with this felony DUI. I skimmed the top of cars. So my car went airborne on the curb, went up in the air. I was going so fast that it skimmed the top of other vehicles, didn't seriously injure anyone. Ended up hurting myself more than I did anyone else, but I sure scared that crap out of a lot of people.

And I can't tell you how close. Just any little bit in that whole situation, any little variance of that situation, somebody dies. I mean, I was head on into these cars and somehow managed to go over the top of them. That's, to me, I don't even know how that happened. Now, also, when I broke my wingtip vertebra, they said I was like two centimeters to the left. I would have been paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of my life. So here I am in the hospital, getting all this information.

I'm in this cat scan. They're putting me in these tunnels and they're, you know, doing all these tests on me and stuff. And I'm coming down off cocaine and I'm coming down off, you know, the alcohol. and I'm literally probably about to have a seizure. It just all came crashing down. Like, what the hell have I done? And what's wrong with me? And I had moments of that.

And then I got back to my room. I was able to get bailed out. I begged my family to help me not have to go to jail in that situation, you know, with that broken neck like that and feeling that way. And the second I got bailed out and they took those handcuffs off, what do you think I did? I told them to sign me out of that hospital right then, let me out. And they were like, you really shouldn't leave.

If you leave, you could die. Dude, I grabbed all my stuff with the glass all over it, hospital gown on, holding my neck like this. I call a yellow cab. I get in a yellow cab with his broken neck. I go back to the residence end. I throw all my stuff down. I hobble over to the nearest liquor store on the corner with the hospital gown on. Buy a bottle of those.

Come back, drink it, and pass out. Wow. Yeah. So that's kind of where I was at that time. That's how bad it was. Even after a near-death experience, even after God going, well, do you want to go back or do you want to come with me? Even being given that choice and choosing to go back, I guess I was trying to end it. I really can't explain where I was at, but I believe I was trying to just finish it.

Yeah, it's like a complete flip. That's six months compared to before where you relied on that essence of willpower. And now it's like, you're giving this thing a shot and other stuff is happening. and like you mentioned before, that play's not working now. No, man. Yeah, I mean, and that's a thing too. You know, a lot of people have the assumption, and I don't know the rest of your story,

and we're going to get to that. But a lot of people think, like, after Rock Bottom, we just sober up. And some people, that is their story, and that might be how this one goes, Matt. But sometimes it's not. For me, it wasn't after Rock Bottom. I mean, I was arrested many times.

I got tons of trouble and had tons of rock bottoms. But I woke up one day, and it was just a regular old day when I was just going to go and get my fix and go about my day and then something happened up here, you know, between my ears. Something happened differently that day. And it wasn't a rock bottom in my world was closing in on me. But it wasn't going to happen that day.

It was kind of a slow process to where things were. But where the heck do we go from here? I thought for sure, Matt, I thought for sure you were going to share that that was it. I got to be honest with you. I thought you were going to be, that was it. I've heard enough of these stories and I have my own experience. to know that it takes a lot sometimes. So where do we go after this?

Oh, well, I mean, you know, when you wake up in a hotel room and it looks like a murder took place. I mean, I couldn't get up off the bed. So I had to like slide off the edge of the bed, roll. I couldn't hold my head up without holding my neck. And with the brace off, I couldn't really do anything. So I had 32 staples in my forehead and hematomas and cuts everywhere. So when I woke up, I drank, man.

I drank. So that thins your blood. There was blood everywhere. And so what happens is, is I think the next day my ex, who was vindictive about this, brought the kids and said, take care of them. And so it was really a nasty, tumultuous situation. And I was very, very unhappy about the situation that I was in. It was just rough. And I fought it.

You know, I was so worried that I'd hurt somebody badly because the police won't tell you what happened. You know, they won't say, yeah, you know, here's the injuries that happened. Here's how it went down. You've done this to this person. I thought I had killed someone. I knew I didn't kill anybody because, you know, I wasn't in prison. I would have been in jail or in county or whatever. They wouldn't have let me go and they did let me bail out.

So I knew I'd heard somebody, but I didn't know how bad anybody had been injured in the accident. I kept obsessing. Like the affair thing got me, like it got me on this obsessive, compulsive track, you know, and I couldn't get off of that. And then anything that would happen would compile. It would all compound. Like you mentioned, it was closing in. Your world was closing in, but not that day. It just weird that it happened to you that day.

For me, the world had been closing in, and that was the day. That was the day my life just totally flipped entirely. And that's how it worked. And then from there, I finally made the call to my dad. I was like, I need help, man. I'm in big trouble. And my dad flew out. And we talked about it for a bit.

And he said, you need to call a lawyer and figure out what you're going to do because you've got a felony DUI you're charged with. Contacted the lawyer, went and met with her. And she said, you need to go to a rehab, my friend. And you need to get in there and you need to start. really taking it seriously and it needs to be a probation-approved facility because there's no way you're not going to do a little bit of jail time on this. There's just no chance. And still I fought it. I don't need that. I'm okay. Like denial, bro. Totally. Yeah. I feel it, man. I mean, you almost

got me convinced up to this point, man, that things are pretty good, right? This is just up in the road. But, you know, looking back, though, and this might not be the whole thing, but when I look back at all the different people who mentioned to me subtle mentions of like get help or stuff, at the time I was just deep rooted in that denial and I was like, there's no way. When I look back, it's almost like, I thought I was fooling everybody. I thought I had everybody like convinced

that my life wasn't a complete dumpster fire and I wasn't completely addicted. And when I look back, I'm like, man, people were picking up on this stuff way before I even had any idea. You were totally despondent. You didn't know. You didn't know what was going on.

You were living in your own world and you were the king of your own world, right? And so was I. We're like, we don't see ourselves the way other people see us. And it was sad to look back at myself and go, wow, that was me. Like, I really thought that? I knew I had a problem. I knew this was it. Like, I was a hot mess. And when they took me over to Cornerstone Recovery in Santa Ana, which is like pretty hardcore, man, it's not like this really flu-fee rehab, right? You're going to this probation-approved facility. I walked in and the

guy sat down who was the intake guy and he's like, look, you know, I know you don't want to do this. And I totally get it. Like, you're looking down that tunnel right now and there's just no light. Like, you see nothing. It's just black. But he said, I promise you, there is a light at the end of that tunnel. And if you just give me 30 days, you'll start to see a little bit more of it. This is not the end of the world. You just need to give us a little bit of time. And I was like, no, thanks, man. Even after that amazing speech, I'm like, no. And he's like, well, okay, let's put it this way. You've got a monster inside. And that monster's raging right now. We really need to take it out. We need to take a look at it. and we need to figure out what it is and why you feel this way and deal with it.

Like really deal with the emotions of why you're using and why you're drinking. And then we need to cage that monster back up, put it back inside. We need to shrink it down first and then cage it back up and put it away. It's always going to be there. You're never not going to have this disease. But at least we can make it manageable and we can make you feel better. I was like, okay, I can maybe deal with that. Maybe that's a solution because up until this point, when I talked about it,

I went 13 years without drinking, so I thought I can just do it again. I'm always going to go back to it. That's the first time I thought, well, there's got to be a reason for this. I mean, there's got to be a reason why I went back to it and why I couldn't control it. I must have something wrong with me emotionally. Yeah. So that analogy worked. I like that.

No, that's beautiful. And you mentioned, too, I know in some of your content stuff I've seen, it seems like every other time I see it, you're speaking on this emotional sobriety part of the journey. And I think maybe that's what you alluded to that you were not fully engaged with during the first 13 years. but I've looked at that differently now. What does all of that mean to you? Well, I think there's a darkness that we all have, a really deep, dark place that we're really afraid to look at.

But until you look at that and you understand just what kind of savage you can be, which I can be a complete savage, just a nut. But until I understand that and I go and I look at it, I'm never going to be able to manage it. Like really, what are my deepest fears? What am I really afraid of? It can be embarrassing to really look at yourself, way and think about all of the embarrassing things that you do and really shine a spotlight on

yourself and look at yourself in a real granular way under a microscope and those really dark feelings. But when you start to do that, you understand yourself better. I was just opening up the door to those dark feelings and that dark person by, you know, feeding it alcohol. It just unleashed it, right? Because I didn't understand it. And once I sort of got in there and said, there's a lot of things I'm afraid of, I'm really insecure. And it started to open up that window to my insecurities. What I really felt about myself, and once I could start to manage that and say, I'm really, I don't really like myself very much. And I think in recover, we do that. We say, wow, I don't care about myself very much, obviously, because I do all these terrible things that, you know, harm me.

And I guess I'm just defunct in some way, and I need to fix that. So that's kind of where I go with the emotional sobrieties until you fix that part of yourself. where you really dive deep into those emotions that are primal and understand who you are, how are you ever going to be able to manage it? You're just not, it's always going to be scratching, you know, to get out. Yeah. Wow, that's deep, man. How did you begin to work on some of that stuff, those insecurities, like, in your own life?

What were the first steps after it's like, hey, this is the awareness? I see what it is. Like, is it healing those areas or where do you go next? I think it's really self-reflection and being honest with. yourself when you start to make that inventory and you're in recovery and you say, wow, I did these things. How fearless can you get? How far can you go? What can you admit? Not just to another person. I know we do that in recovery, but to yourself. Even when it comes down to like, what are your fantasies? I mean, there's weird stuff that people go through. Like, not only your fears,

but your fantasies and your dreams and what have you not realized. There's just so much going on and so much to unpack. So I started sitting down and really writing about it and trying to understand what the heck was wrong with me. I went some dark places. I went to some places that made me really feel like I wasn't a very good guy and I needed to change and I think that happened with that near-death experience too. I think that had a profound effect on me later on. At the time, it wasn't as impactful immediately as it was a year later to look back at it and say, wow, I was above my body. I was in a womb. It was a golden light. I heard a voice, but it wasn't a voice. It was just a knowing. It was transcendent. It was completely otherworldly. And that is not doing it justice. There's no anxiety,

no pain. You feel no stress. Everything of this world is removed. And it's the best feeling you've ever had in your life. It's the best high ever. And a terrible way to make an analogy on that, but that's how it feels. That kind of catapulted me into being able to say, I can look at the darkest sides of myself now and say, you know, I'm not immortal. I'm going to die. That's going to happen. That's going to happen. and the people around me are going to die potentially, hopefully not. I don't have to watch that happen. My kids, my spouse, like that kind of stuff. But if I do, what am I going to do?

Am I going to continue to keep running back to drugs and alcohol every time something bad happens? So until we deal with those emotions, how do we manage it, man? That was my problem. And every time something bad happened, I wanted to feel comfortable. I know you mentioned you were at the bars and stuff there a lot. Did you do a lot of drinking outside of the house or both? Both, you name it. I mean, I didn't stop.

Yeah, it's because you were at home. I don't know how some people afford to do it. I mean, to drink at the bars all the time. I mean, I could never afford to do that when I was younger. But, yeah, I mean, that's powerful too for the stuff you work on. And that was that experience. When did you have all of that experience? Like, was that when you're at the hospital or do you know any of that?

Or was that right when you had the accident or how'd that all play out? Yeah. The accident happened. I flipped the car six times. I didn't have a seatbelt on. I broke the windshield with my forehead. and then I managed to crawl out of the vehicle and kind of push it off of me. And the firemen said they were trying to stop me.

They were like, stop. We need to stop. Like, they were running toward me. And they said, I just fell. And my face hit the ground. And I was just covered in blood. And the ambulance is when they had to paddle me back. So I don't remember a lot of that.

But I remember as I woke from that state that I was in, it was like a movie, like a whoosh. And you just see the lights and everything break apart. and then you move back down. And it's like streaks. And then instantly you're in chaos. People are around you. They're cutting your clothes off.

They're just everywhere. It's madness. And you feel the pain. You feel all the really serene feelings. Serenity is immediately vaporized. It's just awful. You're throwing back into this world and the torment. And so I felt both.

So I felt that real serenity in my life. And it's a different world, man. It's a different thing. Wow. So how have things been? I know we talked a little bit off the air before, eight years since all of this, right? Mm-hmm. Which is incredible. We got a little smile out of you there on that, Matt. A little smile for that, eight years. I know, dude. I'm so serious, right? My life is awesome, man. It is truly awesome. I don't think I knew who I was in my younger years.

And once I got sober, like really sober and I went into rehab, I started to care less about what people thought of me in a good way. I started to care less about money. I started to care less about material possessions. I started to care less about power. I started to care less about fame. I was in a world that was all about that. And when I started to let go of all that crap and just say, what really matters is the relationships that I have around me, the people I have around me that I care about and myself, you know, taking care of myself so that I can be there for others when I need to do that and really helping others. Like how can I start to help other people? And I think that is where we flourish. And that's what I learned in recovery is helping other people. And so I feel great doing that. I started personal training people and got certified to do that. I was so into the bodybuilding post recovery. It kept me sane. It was like my go-to man because it just handled that dopamine, that rush that I needed. And it was also a bit of an addiction. I'll be honest. The cross-addiction happened. But it happens. And I'd rather have it happen with something that's not going to put me in prison or, you know, cause me to harm people. And so, you know, I just got happy, man.

I got really happy helping people. And I started having humility, which I don't think was a part of me prior to that last stint in recovery. I just don't think I really had a lot of humility. And so once I had that, things started to come to me. And I did have that spiritual awakening. And so God is a big part of my life. I've been there.

I know what's on the other side. I get it. So now every day, I'm just really grateful. I have been since that all happened. And I've been handed a wonderful life, a wonderful career that I never would have imagined I would be doing, helping people online, like Instagram making content that I enjoy. I use my filmmaking skills from back in the day to make kind of fun content and met a new woman, married a new woman, ended up with full custody of my kids, moved to a different state. Like everything you hear about in recovery that happens when you do it right, happened. Yeah. A life beyond our wildest dreams, they say.

No, that's incredible. But I like the part there where you mentioned too, right? Like things start to come our way, man, because I feel like I was just putting out this negative stuff for so long. Opportunities, I would always be like I'm getting the short end of the stick because I'm not getting opportunities. I'm not getting that job at Domino's Pizza or different things like that. And what I realize is that, well, one, I was unemployable.

I didn't show up on time. And if there was $20 left on the counter, I would 98% of the time take it. So I wasn't employable. That was one. But I wasn't putting out good stuff. And then when you start doing what's right, the next right thing, next right thing, next right thing, I noticed that too in my life. Things just started happening.

I just didn't really expect, to be honest. I didn't really expect things to start to get better maybe as they did. Yeah, but those are incredible things, right? Yeah. Well, you're making really cool content. You're doing it for a reason now and now look what happens to your life because you want to help people. I think the essence of where we start from was maybe wrong because when I start with alcohol, all of my goals and everything that I want are going to be corrupted.

And now that I don't have that, and I can reassess how I need to sort of start where my core values come from, if I can realign those, and I'm not about the money, I'm not about the drugs, I'm not about the women. I'm not about the fame. I'm not about the, you know, all that stuff. If I can get rid of the materialism and I can have a center around God, around spirituality, a higher power that is greater than myself, then I can learn to have some humility. And once I had that humility, I can then accept those things that come to me that I normally would turn down. Because I turned down a lot of stuff early on that would come to me that were doorways into opportunities. But because I was too good for it, I wouldn't do it. And then I started to take those opportunities, albeit they were demotions.

But now I had the humility to take that demotion. And where did that demotion lead me into promotions? Yeah. Is that just the Hollywood vibe, though? Like, it just sounds like everybody wants to be the top dog. Like, I'm just imagining. I've never been. I mean, I'm far from Hollywood here, Matt.

But, I mean, to get to the top, right, we see a lot of this stuff. Like, it's a bit scrappy. I think it's a bit scrappy. And maybe that stuff carried with you. Oh, it's an ugly world. I mean, I could tell you stories that would curl your toes, you know, about why I'm not in certain things and other people are. It's incredible.

It's a really long laundry list of ugly stuff. But what happened to me was I stepped out of it. I started doing personal training. And then, you know, my dad was like, hey, you know, I know you do video. Do you want to do some video for us for this company that I'm working with? You know, yada yod. I was like, yeah, sure, I'll write a corporate video. It sounds really boring. I don't want to do anything corporate. I'm too cool for that, man. But because I had had recovery, I was like, I'll do it. I'll do it. This is painful, but I'll do it. And I did it. And then I kept doing it. And then that company that he was working with said, can we just be one of your clients? And can you help us with these other things? And then I said, started to see avenues of digital media where they needed to do work. They needed to up their game and they needed to create content that was relevant and it mattered. And so I started doing that work for them. And then I ended up with the marketing agency. And then that company ended up being bought by Transamerica. Well, Transamerica ended up seeing the work I did. And then they wanted to hire me as the director of the digital experience at the corporation. So things do happen like this.

You know, you do end up totally different world than you were in before. I mean, now I work in digital marketing job at a corporation that works in the retirement sector versus Hollywood. How weird, but that's where recovery took me. And I do all this other stuff too, which is the sobriety stuff you see that I post. But the humility took me there and I couldn't be happier. You know, it's fantastic. Yeah, no, that's beautiful. Yeah, and the other stuff too on Instagram and I mostly sit on Instagram. I don't know if you have it other places too, but yeah, it's good stuff. It gets you thinking. It gets you thinking about things. Yeah, it's incredible. I really love that we connected, man, with that story. I can't even remember how it all

came about, but I maybe saw it somewhere or we connected, but I'm so glad we got to share that because it really seemed to connect with a lot of people. It also furthers the mission of the whole sober motivation thing. It's about sharing stories and hopes to give others the permission to do the same. Maybe let others off the hook in a sense that no matter how far down we've gone, there's always a way out. Like if you're alive, you can still find a way out of being addicted or whatever is going on in your life. And I think with your story there and what we heard now, I mean, you were gone for however long.

I don't know how long. But when you're in the ambulance and you're here on the podcast right now, you can truly make a comeback from anything. So I just wanted to say thank you too for letting me share that when we shared it. Oh, hey, the thank you is really for you. You're doing a great job online. I mean, I just get chills when I think about it because you're doing so much good work for people.

And I'm really grateful. that you shared that post because there was a lot of people on there that it seemed to help. And that's the real goal. And the reason why I'm so raw about the story and I just share this ugliness that I was and who I was is because, like you said, there's hope for everyone. If you are in that position where you are in the shower like I was with the water just pouring on you and you're drinking and you're passing out and you just have no hope for the future and you feel like your soul has just been sucked out of you, there's still hope. There's always hope. And I think that's what you're doing. You're really providing that for people. And I appreciate what you do, man. Thanks, dude. Thank you.

We're trying. We're trying for sure. Yeah. Look, Matt, before we sign off here, if somebody's listening to the show and before that was incredible too, inspiring for somebody, but if somebody's listening to the show and they're struggling to get or stay sober, what would you say to them? Start. Just start. Just stop drinking for a day. Just give it one day. whatever you've got to do. Go for a 30-mile walk. When you asked, how the hell do you manage that? When I first got sober, I was walking like 20 miles a day.

So I would get up with a broken neck and I would walk to whatever AA meeting I could go to. And I think that AA is a great step. If you can do it, you're going to hate it. You're going to loathe it when you first do it. You know how people are. They just can't stand it because it's basically shining a light on everything that they don't want to hear. But you're going to have to hear it. And you're going to have to be open to that.

So I would tell people this is never going to go away. it's never going to change. Nothing changes if nothing changes. You have to take a step to make a change. Otherwise, it's going to stay the same. That's across the board no matter what. I mean, you can't get away from that. You can't run from it unless you stop drinking.

You stop using for at least a short period of time. You're never going to know the difference. Yeah. Wow. That's powerful. I love that part too where he finished up. You'll never know the difference. You've got to distance yourself a little bit from what things were

to what things are going to be like. And the only way to do that, you know, I get messages all the time and I have for years and I've worked, you know, with people and everything, you know, as a counselor and everything for years, man, and everybody has the same question. You know, how do you get sober? How do you do it? Like, down to the nitty gritty, the simplest answer is you just don't drink and you just don't drug. That's it, you know?

But how are you going to stay sober is a whole different question. But all you need to do, I love that is if you got to walk 20 miles, we have to knock down the barrier and the excuses. Because if you say that to some people, Matt, my first thought is some people are they, I have to work and I have to do this and I have that and I get it. But when I look at my own life, I sacrificed everything for the next one. It didn't matter about work or this or that. I made it work no matter what, whether I had cash or I didn't have cash or whoever I had

the burn in the process, I made it work. And until we take that attitude into what we're trying to do now to better our life, I think it's just going to be a challenge. You know, I love that idea about walking. And a lot of people too and you're into the working now and the health and stuff, But a lot of people matter like, oh, I've got these sugar cravings now. I'm on day too. And I'm just like, dude, eat the cake, eat all the Starbursts, going buy 50 packs.

You know, just do anything you've got to do just to get through the next day. And you can cross the Starburst Bridge when you need to cross the Starburst Bridge. You know what I mean? So like, just got to do something, right? Don't quit smoking. If you're smoking, do it. I mean, I smoked like a chimney. I would wake up with a cigarette in my mouth when I was in recovery.

Like, let's be real. It stays now. Now, though. I know. It was then, too. we were transitioning, but I'm like, dude, I'm old school. So I would go outside and I would smoke. And it was like, I'm not going to give that up.

I'd walk, smoke, walk, smoke. I was out of my mind. Like you said, whatever you got to do, don't make excuses. Because you're not going to have that job after a while anyway. If you're so worried about your job, it's going to be gone. Your relationship's going to be gone. All of it's going to be gone. But a lot of people, you know how it is, man.

You got to have that bottom. Some people got to have the bottom. For sure. You know, you got to get to that point, you know? It is good, though. Now I'm seeing a lot more people that are like making, choices before that never heard people really come out the woodwork. And I think it might be social media in a sense to people are making better choices that before, you know, it's like that message

is getting out there. For sure, some people are going to need to completely bottom out. You know, hopefully there's going to be other people that are like, yo, I listened to Brad's show and I heard Matt's story and Matt completely bottomed out. And I'm headed that way. Maybe I can just call it quits now. You know, I think that that's another big part of why we do this show, right, is to share stories about like, hey, you know, listen to where we went. You don't have to go there. You don't necessarily have to go there. Some people, you know, you might need to see something like that, but get off the train whenever you can.

You know, because it gets worse, man. It gets worse. It gets worse and worse. You know, the longer we stick around. For me, it was progressive. And it wasn't an overnight thing where it was like overnight. This was running my life. But it did end up there.

And I think if the longer you want to dance with it, the more likely it's going to be someone else's story too. It's never going to change. and it's never going to get better. People that have an issue with alcohol, it's evident. My counselor in recovery said to me, if your car gets towed because you were drinking, you probably have an issue. And we've heard of people that have decided to stop drinking because something as simple as my car got toad. Now, isn't that wonderful? And then you have the other side, someone like myself that has this terribly, terribly awful bottom. And that happens. But why not? Why not just have it be the car got toad and say, hey, this is not good for me. We all know that alcohol causes damage to the brain. One drink a night.

One drink a night. Over a year ages your brain two and a half years. Now multiply that. Let's go for, you know, three drinks a night or, you know, 20 drinks a week. You're aging your brain like three to four years. You got gray matter all over the place. It's a mess. So I really urge people to try to step away from it. There's so many positive benefits to not using alcohol and drugs. So many. Yeah. No, so true. Well, Matt, thanks again, man. Thank you so much for sharing your story on a show today. Yeah, hey, it was a pleasure. And anytime, I want to have you come on my show too. I've got going now and had some great people on there. Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. Good stuff. Oh, yeah. Before we jump to, though, where can people check you out if they want to check out your show or your videos or any of your

stuff? Where's the best place? Oh, I've just started this podcast called Unfiltered and it's going to be on, you know, Spotify, all the local haunts like Google Podcasts and Apple. And I've got a website. Matt Farnsworth.net. And I'm just all over social. You type my name in, Matt Farnsworth, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, all that stuff. The usual places.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. And I'll drop all the links for Matt's socials and everything website in the show notes if you guys are looking for them. But yeah, thanks again. Hey, it was a pleasure. Thank you.

Well, that brings us to the end of another incredible episode. Thank you, Matt. Thank you. Listeners. Incredible, incredible listeners. All the credit goes to you. for pushing this show forward, for being interested in the content and people sharing their

stories. It is truly, truly incredible. If you want to reach out to Matt, make sure to find him on Instagram. I'll post a link to his Instagram down in the show notes, and you can send him a message there if you want to. Have a great day, everyone, and I'll see you on the next one.