FEEL FREE
FEEL FREE is a general wellness podcast centered around health, habits, and hobbies. Jon Cerone, a recovering addict, and his guests use stories of adversity and comedy in order to inspire others to chase their dreams and live their best lives.
FEEL FREE
Addiction Recovery, Self-Mastery and Creativity with Muncy and Brandon
Handing over a five-year sobriety coin to a close friend wasn't just a milestone; it was a reflection of the communal fortitude and personal accountability we've built in the trenches of recovery. This episode of FEEL FREE serves as your compass through the complex landscape of sobriety and addiction recovery. We open up about the power of NA, the role of service work in nourishing our spirits, and how the principles of recovery can be woven into the very fabric of our daily lives, offering a wellspring of growth.
Together, we uncover the delicate interplay between nurturing self-love and pursuing relentless self-improvement, while grappling with the challenges of early recovery. It's about striking a balance, where fostering relationships and building a community provide a bulwark against the threat of relapse, and every small victory is a beacon on the road to a fulfilling life.
Wrapping up, we celebrate the newfound courage that sobriety bestows, allowing us to confront trolls and criticism with a clear head and a steadfast heart. Creativity, wellness, and sobriety intermingle, revealing that our once reckless fearlessness has morphed into a constructive force that propels us forward. Join us as we share our transformative experiences and the personal growth that's possible when we commit to living our best, unadulterated lives.
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Welcome to another episode of Feel Free, the only podcast that'll tell you to chase your dreams and call you out on all your bullshit, myself included. If you want more content on health, wellness, recovery and inspiration, then look no further and hit that subscribe button. We really appreciate all the love and support from everybody. We wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for all of you. But enough of all of that, let's get into the episode. Do either of you go to meetings right now?
Speaker 2:I think we both do. I think we both do Right, yeah, I go to a weekly meeting. I guess you could say it's my home group, it is my home group, so there are people there who hold me accountable. Last week, a buddy of mine Brandon knows him, jeff got his five-year coin. I presented his five years on the day of at the meeting, but then there was another meeting where I had a coin to give him.
Speaker 2:I got lost in some creative work I was doing and I completely lost track of time and it was like 8.30. The meeting started at 8.00, and he's like bro, where are you? I'm like fuck, I just dipped right away. I got there in the last 15 minutes and I made an immediate amends and gave him his coin. And I was just so grateful to be at another meeting too, to have people in our lives that remind us and keep us grounded of the work that we do, that we forget to do for ourselves. Like you were saying, if you can help someone else, sometimes that's the name of the game, because I just self-love and I care, but I'm more than willing to put my own needs aside for something I'm doing or focused on, and I'm not as willing when it comes to someone else's well-being, someone else I care about. So if people are counting on me, then I'm counting on me, right? Yeah?
Speaker 3:it's like go to meetings. Sorry, that was a long-winded answer.
Speaker 2:No, that's good. Yeah, that's where I'm at, oh that's perfect.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there's two things that are important that you both mentioned that people can get from going to meetings right and that service work helping your community, helping other people along their paths and then community being a part of the community, being part of something. So I used to go to meetings once a week. Since I got sober I was doing that regularly. Once you'd either that meeting, but recently in the past I'd say past month, past five weeks I probably haven't been to one, because both of those buckets now service work and community are being met in other aspects. So I find that as long as I have those two pieces, then my needs and fulfillment it's being met emotionally, spiritually and mentally. So as long as I have those, I'm usually pretty good.
Speaker 3:But I am definitely not opposed to meetings. Sometimes months you'll call me and be like, hey, I got this meeting, we got this going on and I like to make that a priority. So it's definitely more on like a once in a while basis, but it's important because it offers those two things and if AA is not for you, then there's alternative communities as well with sober people. So I do highly encourage that individuals who are early in recovery find service work opportunities in a sense of community within the sober realm. So, yeah, that's really. That's really my long-winded answer.
Speaker 2:I love it, man, I think it's crucial that you are able to connect, like some of what the values are in the program of, like AA or NA. Some of the things that I learned from going to meetings, work in the steps, learning the traditions to apply them and realize they do apply in other areas of life. And I think that might be where people miss the mark is they think this is such an exclusive like club, you know, and it's really like. These things we learn are going to help us in all aspects of our life and once we can detach from, like the order of it and the, I guess, conformity of it and realize this is only there to help us.
Speaker 2:I think new addicts struggle with that a lot. I see a lot of resistance, which I understand. We don't like rules, we don't like to be told what to do I still don't, you know and so it's completely understandable. But I love to see that connection because, yeah, you only hit a meeting an hour of the day, right, if you want to go and if you're practicing the principles you know, among other principles of your own, in all areas of your life, you're going to be, you're going to be spiritually grounded, you're going to be okay, you know.
Speaker 3:Yep, I like this book, the Stepping Stones man. Once you put me back on it, it's like what's the pain Fucking six to 10 months ago? And every morning, if you follow my Instagram, I post the, the reading of the day, and there's a lot of good shit in here and stepping stones, more daily meditations for men, and a lot of it's aimed at people in recovery. But I get a lot of people that message me about this shit that aren't, because it can be applied to, like you said, every facet of life. Man. It's just like a book to be more grounded, more compassionate and to just be a better person, right? So it's good stuff.
Speaker 2:That was great man. That one's geared toward men too, but you know, of course I'm sure some of it applies, for sure all around. But I love that you're reading it because your story post is my daily reading sometimes, A lot of times, you know, and it is a little bit outside of the box, Like it's recovery literature, but it's not. It's not like your daily reflections or your big book. You know it's someone like one of us who decided to, you know, do a daily reflection and write what they interpret out of, like this kind of work. You know, Great, great reads, dude.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah. Easy to digest too. It's not like you know. I think a lot of people get oh fuck, I got to read through this whole book and I have to read chapters and do a big study. Like no dude, you can just like read a small paragraph when you start your morning off, that's it, and it could significantly impact you right in a positive way. So good shit. Thanks for that recommendation, man. It's been awesome.
Speaker 1:Of course, totally. Yeah, I think having better resources during recovery has been great for me. I like being able to talk with other addicts, I like being able to hear their stories, their thoughts and they a few of them are very excited that I'm there. Just like a few of them ask me at the end they're like, oh, you're going to be here next week and I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'll be back next week and they're pretty excited to see me and I'm pretty excited to see them.
Speaker 1:You know, it's a really positive thing and although, like, I was really hesitant to go to meetings, even like when I first started getting sober, I didn't go to my first meeting until six months into my sobriety whether that was like social anxiety or like it was more social anxiety, honestly, and I didn't really want to read the book and do all that stuff. But it's a humbling experience going there now and like having no preconceived notions about what recovery should be, as long as everybody's there to be a healthy, sober person. I should say sober first. But yeah, that's the prerequisite and although it is a little, you know addiction is pretty.
Speaker 1:It's a depressing thing, you know. It's not super easy to talk about, but everybody there has a positive light on them. Even if you're only there for your first day, you know there is that light that things can get better and I'm really happy to be a part of that now on a weekly basis. You know, it's just totally. Yeah, it's totally changed my perspective on it. So you know, keep coming back is what they say, you know.
Speaker 2:Dude, for sure. And NA is super cool too because, like you said, it is a lot of new newcomers, even at the meetings where they've been around longer, like you're at a beginner's meeting, so, of course. But there's a lot of newcomers that you know come and go and I think part of what recovery looks like for me is helping people that aren't there yet, you know, are not, don't even understand this language that we speak. You know how do I get through to those people and sometimes that is going against the grain. It's not doing things by the book. You know I love that.
Speaker 2:When Brandon got his one year, he came in and shared a unique story, his unique success story. That is like, you know, I got a mentor and I've done a lot of work. I come to meetings but I've kind of worked a program of my own. It's not like, it's not like I'm. He wasn't saying like I don't take your recommendations. It was more like I'm doing what works for me and like, look at, like, look at me, I got. You know what I mean Like I got a year. That he was. You were so happy.
Speaker 3:I love to see that, dude, because yeah, I don't know there's more than one way to the top of the mountain for sure, yeah, there is man Definitely is and that's where, john, you can add different perspective some of these meetings also being an individual who got sober in a non-traditional 12 step sort of fashion, and I believe that that's going to be um helpful for newcomers and people are new to the program to see that there are other mindsets and philosophies outside of 12 steps and inferior waves to get to a good spot in life.
Speaker 3:Right, having that perspective is important for any kind of group, right, and certainly I think very highly of the 12 steps AANA. It is by far proven the most successful program to help get people sober and clean off of drugs. You see a lot of very happy, fulfilled people that have gone through that and it's, you know, the building block, the foundation of sobriety in a lot of ways, and a lot of the principles that we probably speak about right with therapists or readings that we do, meditations and methodologies, are a lot of that stuff is in the big book and it's part of the 12 step program. So it's good to have diversity of thought, man for sure.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's one of the main reasons I had all three of us on here for the. I think this is this is the first time all three of us have been on this is true podcast together yeah, and we've all we've all gotten through recovery in our own way.
Speaker 1:I I do think Brandon Brandon started going to meetings to start out and he also got the mentor, which I didn't do meetings, but I did get the mentor. Muncie worked the steps in the program and went to meetings and stuff. So we all have a different formula that worked for us, you know, and I think it's great the way that we can all help people with our different perspectives. You know, which is, I think, what we're seeking out to do with all of the work we do, whether it's creatively, what we speak on, what we write about. We're all trying to help people get out of the dark places that all three of us have done before.
Speaker 2:What's it in the programs of you know, the 12 step programs, the, the, the honesty, the open mindedness and the willingness, those are required to you know, to change, to continue changing your life, like, even after you've got some clean time under your belt, whether you're, you know, in those programs or not, if you're not willing to look at yourself and listen to, you know, the actions of others, then I don't know. If I don't know if you stand a chance at that time, you know you might not be ready or whatever, but the open mindedness, you know you can't think that well, you could think that you know it all, but you might not. You know, and there's just, there's some key principles that really I think are, they correlate they're, they're across the board. You know, that's what I, that's what I see in every aspect of, like personal development is these common, these common themes that you just can't throw out the window. You know.
Speaker 1:For sure, and do you think that your perspective on recovery has changed now from what it was at the start?
Speaker 2:Either you can go with that one for sure.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, because when I first was getting off drugs and my life was just in shambles, recovery to me meant getting and staying abstinent from substances, with the exception of, like coffee and, at the time, cigarettes or whatever you know. And now, clearly, like those aren't even a thought in the mind. But it's how can I get the best quality out of the life that I live? Be centered, be whole, be grounded, like what can I do in my daily life that that will help me optimize and just really enjoy my time here, you know, and not like lose my mind. I think that's what recovery is to me now, like it's really, yeah, spirituality.
Speaker 2:And that's what you learn, I guess, is once you have some time away from drugs and alcohol or whatever your vice was that was really destroying you, making it hard to have quality of life. You get some time away from that and you realize that, like not all your problems have gone away and you need to continue like doing work, and you start to see, maybe what the real problems were. You know why you turn to those things and and you realize those were never the problems, they were your solution. That no longer is serving you, you know. And so that's ongoing. The ongoing challenge now is you know we don't have those solutions. So what solutions do we have that are going to, that are going to give us quality of life and allow us to live, allows to feel free, you know?
Speaker 3:he did the thing. He did the fucking thing. I love that. Oh, was that sorry? Was that it? It's all the way you can end it. That's fucking sick man. Yeah, I agree, I totally agree with that.
Speaker 3:So it's about in the beginning especially, right, I go all the way back to fucking high school when I was going to these meetings and it was like we'd celebrate time. Okay, I got this much time of abstinence from drugs and alcohol, and then that's what you think it's about. But you're like, no, this is about like living a fucking fulfilling life, right. So self development, it's really about self development. And then, once you start to develop self and start to appreciate life in the way that humans were supposed to live life, right, which is clear from poison you start to take that a step further, right, and then you start looking at self mastery. So I believe that's kind of what it leads to, right, that's the end goal is self mastery, and people that are more in line with stoicism would probably see that in a similar fashion. Right, but abstinence is the first step. That's like, if you don't have that, you can't have all this other shit. You have to give up this overwhelming impulse, right, this compulsive, this compulsive urge to seek pleasure, right, that could like once, he said, in the form of drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, fucking, nicotine. It could be love, you know.
Speaker 3:That said, that's a whole another podcast right there about navigating relationships, which is some shit you guys probably know, like I've been single for a long, long time and navigating relate, intimate relationships with women is like something they you know. They don't really teach you that, you have to learn it. And when you're individual, that isn't used to having those healthy relationships or shit, even a healthy relationship with yourself, right, this is why they recommend one year of being single while you're in the program or getting sober and clean, and that's been very eye opening for me, it's. So that's another element, right, it's you got self development and then you've got like interpersonal relationship development and building strong, loving, trusting relationships with other people. So you have to be very compassionate and you have to have a good understanding himself in order to do that. Because you need to make sure that you're good, like you're good emotionally, mentally, that you're reliable, that you're honoring your word and that you're not projecting out in a negative way to your partner, right, because that's that's you can't have a relationship that way.
Speaker 3:So it has changed. It changes a lot and it's like there's always room for improvement and growth in those areas. It's a very beautiful thing, but the starting point is getting getting clean. But, fuck, you won't stay clean very long if you don't start the self development Right. And that's what we see and that's a lot of times, like people and they stop going to fucking meetings because that's their community, that's their service work, that's their accountability piece and they're working a program on top of that. When they stop they they relapse. And you got to make sure that you're putting the work in, you're doing the self development, that you have a community and a strong backbone to keep it going. So that's, that's my another long winded answer.
Speaker 2:Dude, there's so many directions you could go from from all those gems you just drop.
Speaker 2:I feel like man because because in this, the self mastery thing, like I don't know if there's an an end point with it, or like, at what point along the way, when you're striving towards self mastery, are you content, like and like, okay, like I love myself, but I know I want to continue, I want to continue toward mastery and improving. And then, you know, with the one year thing, I think it's, there's no set time, it's, it's, it's okay, I guess it makes sense for like a minimum right, but years you could be years into your sobriety and getting into a serious relationship it's going to throw you for a loop, you know, because, like I love I, you know I love Lori, I'd kill and die for that woman. But there's always still work on yourself you need to do. And then now you do have someone else's life that you're kind of responsible for and it's not all about you anymore, but there's still work to be done. So it's like that balancing act and I don't know if anyone has the answers, but it's it's. It's definitely, you know, but it's important.
Speaker 2:And when last time we kicked it, brandon, you mentioned something that really stood out to me is that, like we don't want, we're not here to live easy lives. You know we're not here to have everything just be easy. And the things that are worthwhile we have to work for and and however simple they may be, they are never easy. That's all I got on that.
Speaker 3:But no, dude. Good, Some good stuff there, John, what you got.
Speaker 1:So I liked how you said that the end goal of self mastery or there might not be one, and I'm like you're getting into Buddhist territories or studying Buddhism and stuff with, because they'll also say that I don't think there is an end goal to that, because you're almost content with your existence, right, but it's purely natural. You're not forcing it or anything like that.
Speaker 3:Loose it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of like mixed with Taoism too. Yeah, but my perspective on recovery was totally different from my perspective on sobriety, and I was just on a podcast talking about this question too, because at the start of it it's you know, I need to abstain from drugs. That was the number one goal. No matter what, I need to be sober every single day, aside from, like you had mentioned, the coffee and the cigarettes. Right, that was kind of what you know.
Speaker 3:that's you can't get rid of all of them. You can't get rid of all of them.
Speaker 1:You'll go nuts, honestly. But what I did was I always viewed it as I need to get all of my habits under control, instead of looking at it as recovery. Because I didn't work the 12 step program, I didn't do something traditional. I did have a mentor and a therapist who was 30 years sober, who worked the program, who helped me out through that, and for me I was just looking at it like I have so many bad habits. All of my free time is consumed with this impulsive desire to drown my myself, my conscience, you know. So instead of learning how to recover right off the bat, I learned how to optimize my habits and my free time. So I knew that I needed to get rid of every addiction I had, whether it was an addiction to video games or cocaine, alcohol, refined sugar, energy drinks. So I took the first two years of my sobriety to get those habits in line, get better physical habits, running, working out and eating right and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:But that's not what recovery is. Recovery is like you said you're looking at things that used to be problems but you used them as solutions, right, and after, like my two year mark in sobriety, then I started to realize that I need to start forgiving myself for the things that I've done in my past, which is over the last almost three years of the second half of my sobriety and recovery. I've looked at it like I got to write a book on this shit, because I think forgiveness is kind of my ultimate goal in recovery to forgive myself for my past and understand that each day I'm not perfect and I just have to give it my all. Obviously, like we've said, being sober is the number one goal. It's literally the prerequisite for this self mastery, self development. But my goal is to just be forgiven, you know, and that's yeah. That's where I'm at right now.
Speaker 3:What you say to be forgiven is to forgive yourself, right, because you can't control necessarily if other people are going to forgive you Exactly you can.
Speaker 1:It's all self forgiveness. I can ask people for forgiveness that I have hurt, but it's on them if they're going to forgive me or not. If I forgive me for my mistakes, then that's the best I can do as an individual. You know Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's almost like the rejection of that, like I think most people that are reasonable will forgive you for anything you've done, depending on what it is, of course, but if they don't, then even just that effort is like can lead to forgiveness of self right. Sometimes that's the whole amends process is like sometimes you got to take that step to clear your side of the street and that might not, they might not take to it, you know, and that's okay, because then it's no longer your business, right, I think.
Speaker 3:But I definitely You're right.
Speaker 2:That's an ongoing. Yeah, that's a struggle for me too, John. That's self forgiveness is yeah, it's tough.
Speaker 1:It's tough and it's like we're not perfect.
Speaker 1:We've never I've never thought of myself as perfect. But some of the mistakes we've made in our lives, now that we're past them, we look back at them like God damn, I can't believe I did some shit like that, like was I just a soulless bastard who didn't have any emotions, you know. And now you're like now that we're sober, there's no filter on our emotions anymore, like we feel like a hundred percent right. You feel hurt, you feel happy, you feel these things to the fullest potential. And now you're looking back at your past, like, in order to forgive yourself, you have to feel that empathy of the people you might have hurt or in the moment you hurt yourself. You know, and it's tough. I'm coming up on five years and feeling tough man, you know when you're really feeling right and then processing that shit too. So that's one of the main reasons why I started going to meetings is I feel something at these meetings that I haven't felt before, and I like it because it has changed what recovery has meant to me.
Speaker 3:What day of the week do you go to that? Do you go on weekends? Do you go during the week?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Thursday at 7.30.
Speaker 3:Okay, I was going to say we could hit one while I'm out there, but I'll be out there on Thursday. Yeah, nice, so that's a quick one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't gone to any of the other ones in the area. The people I go to at that meeting though they hit all the meetings in the area. It's just kind of the one meeting that works with my schedule, cause, yeah, I mean weekends weekends are tough with like working out or hooping or working on the podcast and stuff, so I've tried to make time for this. It's a non-negotiable, as Brandon would say, so Love that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a home group man, you got your home group. It's important to have that Bull man.
Speaker 1:So, now that we have our perspectives on what recovery started out for us, what it has become, what worked for us, have you guys noticed a difference in how it has affected your creativity and your wellness? And this kind of is, you know, centered around the self-development and the self-mastery stuff. But for people who are in recovery, a lot of people who get addicted to drugs are either artistically inclined or have the ability, in my opinion, to be artistically inclined. So how has this sobriety affected your guys' creativity and wellness and ambition in general?
Speaker 3:Moncy, you wanna go first.
Speaker 2:Sure man, yeah, so I mean, recovery opened a whole new door for me of creativity, because, you know, it was something I always knew I would never stop being creative. It's just like within me, you know, I feel like it's why I'm here and I wasn't really attached to any purpose or there was no driving force apart from like this is why I exist, this is what I must do. I always had that belief, once I began at a young age, but toward the end of my use, my active addiction, I feel like I was just like clinging on to that and I didn't really know who I was. To be quite honest, I just knew I didn't wanna give up, like in life and creatively, and when I got sober and got some of my ducks in a row, if you will, I just started to write again, write lyrics. I was, you know, writing journaling too and whatnot. But once I started to write lyrics again and things were just flowing out of me, I felt like I had new perspective. I was learning, you know, from recovery. I was learning new lingo, new values, you know, and it changed me and I think that it definitely impacted my music. It gave me like a jolt to wanna, you know to speak, to use my voice again, and over the years I guess my perspective is always changing. So it's the hardest part, the part of it that I feel like artists get stale sometimes, that the staleness people talk about, and I don't subscribe to this theory that, like people think a lot of people don't like Eminem since he got sober, they think his music got like dry and there are many other artists that people say that kind of stuff about, whereas like, yeah, you know, once he kind of cleaned up his act, he lost it or whatever.
Speaker 2:And I think it's the ability to dive into the work, like you need to be able to fully let go and of control completely to be creative and to feel, to get lost in it you can't be worried about, like you know, oh, at six o'clock I have to make dinner, or at eight o'clock I gotta be at this meeting Like you need to just fully be able to be immersed in the experience. And I think that's hard once you start like really caring about your life and like other people in your life and trying to be better. So I think that it's the ability to detach that has gotten harder and I think that's why people hold on to vices. You know, for me, lately, it's the nicotine. The nicotine helps me to just, you know, kind of let go dive into the work, and I know it's not great, but I can work for really long hours, you know, and not worry about like anything you know.
Speaker 2:And to be able to do that without any external substance is obviously the goal, of course, and to create at a capacity that resonates with people, all people you know, or all of what's in someone you know, and so I think that it's really complicated, to be honest with you. I don't know, but it affects creativity 100%. It's just are you gonna allow it to affect you positively or negatively? And can you leverage the quality of life that you're getting from these changes recovery, abstinence, you know, personal development and throw them into the creative element of life? And once you can do that, man, the people that you could help through. That avenue is dude, you know.
Speaker 3:And I think that we're all doing that in a sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll shut up with that. I wanna hear what you guys have to say.
Speaker 3:But yeah, you touched up on some good stuff there. So the way I kind of view it is, it's getting uncomfortable, right? So since getting sober no longer relying on drugs and alcohol I no longer make fear-based decisions At least I work my hardest not to right, and that's a part of the self-development journey. So by not making fear-based decisions, it opens up the doors to do a whole lot of crazy or shit, because you're not afraid of how people are going to perceive you. You're no longer afraid of feeling less than or in.
Speaker 3:It applies to like doing live performances. Right, that singing in front of people, fucking playing music in front of people. That used to like really fucking stress me out, and I did do that prior to getting sober. But I drank a fucking lot, man, before those shows, like I would get fucked up and 10, 20 beers and sometimes drugs with it. And now it's like, dude, I can go do this shit without using drugs and alcohol. What else can we do here?
Speaker 3:And that creative flow works its way out into whether it's like a sales presentation or entrepreneurial efforts, right, I'm working on some stuff outside of my current day job on the weekends and there's so much opportunity to do things that I never really would have thought possible, because I'm not afraid to do them anymore. So, like you said, you could also use it as a crutch, like I did with alcohol for a while. And you know nicotine, I know that's a whole nother beast man. I occasionally dabble in nicotine, in the arcs of nicotine and shit. Just recently this week I haven't had any energy drinks, but I was on the energy drinks shit last week and I'm like holy fuck, because I was never a caffeine guy, yeah until I was.
Speaker 3:I was never into it until I started doing it. I was like, holy shit, I could do five, six hundred milligrams of caffeine today. I'm like, and I'm like, holy fuck man, this shit isn't like. I'm like, this isn't good, this isn't a good substitute. So now, today, only two cups of fucking coffee. Two cups of coffee, bro. I'm like that seems pretty.
Speaker 2:That's reasonable.
Speaker 3:I'm I a drug addict, you guys be honest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd say, all three of us are out here for a reason.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was faking it the whole time. I just wanted to be an influencer, just want to get famous. Like well, this guy makes it look really easy. So, yeah, it really wasn't Go my fucking kidding. But yeah, dude, it's easy to rely on Substances for that. But when you get good at being uncomfortable and doing uncomfortable shit and chasing that down, especially if it's conducive to your mission statement, right, you're like oh, this is a fucking, like you said, john, it's a non-negotiable. And you start doing the non-negotiables, you, you get really good at being uncomfortable, which allows for creative flow and doing unapologetic creative.
Speaker 2:That's the game changer right there too, because you think of any creative field and what you enjoy about it, right, like I love writing music and rapping, performing, you know Doing videos, whatever. But there are so many factors that you might not enjoy as much and I feel like I've been able to it detach from the the ego centric side of it and also from, just like, the desirable aspects of it, because it all has to get done like if it's truly non-negotiable, it's, it's ingrained in your, your mission. You know you have to focus on certain things that aren't really fun. You know like there's, you know, as an artist, there's distributing your music. There's posting content. There's promoting your music. There's writing the lyrics. There's posting your lyrics. There's making videos. There's. I mean, that scratches the surface. You're, you know, I know you outsource your editing for the podcast.
Speaker 3:Shout out to Kai Dude for good for toke. I'm gonna give Kai some big credit here. Dude, he takes care of like all that shit. So fucking shout out to you Kai, old house, thank you legendary.
Speaker 2:So that's what I mean, and it's cool when you have people you can count on and. But when you got to wear these different hats though, like and you're fucked up, dude, you, you don't stand a chance. You know, and even like staying in communication with the people you're, you're working with and maintaining Relationships and being able to count on people. If people can't count on you, how? And you know that you're not going to put your trust in other people to be counted on to take care of things for you. And that's required To do anything creative.
Speaker 2:And I think, as you build and you grow, there are certain things that you can kind of Let go of. You can have other people take care of for you, but along the way, a lot of that is on you. You know, as you're building your brand and in whatever field you're in, if you want the work to be done right, you know I think you have to do a lot of it at first for sure, and I wasn't able to do that when I was Living on a pipe dream of like oh, this rap is so sick I'm gonna blow up like not a chance, dude, yeah, you're dope. I know I'm dope.
Speaker 2:I'm one of the dopest, there is but that's not enough bro, that's not enough, you know, and I recognize that now and I'm grateful that I have to stack my skills and I have to learn these different aspects, okay, and work with other people like it's not fucking all about me, like how, how selfish and how ego Tistical of someone to think that they're just that special. You know, we're all fucking special, but we're all not special, you know, okay, I can't do it alone.
Speaker 3:Need a fucking team dude. You're absolutely right. That's been a reoccurring theme in my In my head this week I've just been really thinking about. I'm like, oh, look at All the stuff we can accomplish if we work together. And there's a lot to be said about that. I I believe that Western culture misses that mark a lot. It's a very individualistic, one man's journey type of shit. You see these families and these groups of people and they work together and they all have money. They protect each other's money, they protect each other's interest and they fucking do very, very well, right? There's a lot of growth in community there as well. So this sparks up possibly more conversations that the three of us should be having Outside of this podcast, with opportunities as well. I've just been thinking like fuck, we're like all on our own journeys. It's sometimes it feels like we're all on our own individual journeys and I'm not Quite sure that it should be that way.
Speaker 1:Sometimes Well, I think it needed to start out that way in order for us to heal and for us to trust ourselves. Now we trust, all three of us trust ourselves enough right now, at this point, for it to now come together.
Speaker 3:Just don't give me an energy drink, because I'll Come over with a gun and take all your shit. If you give a mouse, a cookie dude like I'm telling you it's shit's fucked.
Speaker 2:Next time you feel like you need an energy drink, just come, come jump in the ice tub. I.
Speaker 3:Talk about that man. He's been on that. I just talked to Muncie about it. Fucking guess who called me today. It told me he's like alright, son, I think you've been right about a couple things. Our HR director, dave, is doing cold. It's so funny you might be on like he started meditating and shit too. I'm like Fuck, yeah, man he's. He has some daily non-negotiables that are in kind of our space now right. So it's pretty neat to see that he's in it now.
Speaker 1:It's weird you say that because my dad has been going to the health club almost every day for the last two weeks. Working out now yeah good, good for him man, I know it's awesome.
Speaker 1:It's nice to see that energy, and in those that are older than us too, because, yeah, I mean, it's just nice to see that energy in anybody and any age, you know, uh, something, something I want to touch on that I think Brandon said with the creativity, and there was this, this fearlessness to To just dive into things, right. And then with with Muncie saying, yeah, you got to just fucking dive into it, you don't care about dinner at six or this at eight like it's this fearlessness in the moment, you know, and being able to Channel that in a healthy way. Now, then I wrote down that there's this dichotomy of fear. Brandon was saying I'm not making fear-based decisions anymore.
Speaker 1:When we were all using, we were afraid of the people we were, we were afraid of our thoughts and feelings and we tried to drown ourselves. So we were making decisions out of fear to, you know, use substances. But then also there was this fearlessness I'm like I'm gonna do fucking whatever. No one's gonna stop me, right, I'm literally a wrecking ball, right. And this, this fearlessness, ended up destroying us. Now, when Brandon talks about this higher and lower self Channeling the lower self fearlessness of the people, we were into a higher self positive, fearlessness manner is now. We're all now where we are all at right now now our fearless our fearlessness doesn't destroy us, it builds us.
Speaker 3:Yeah right. Lower self is the fearlessness being like the wanton disregard for yourself and others right. And then the higher self is Fearlessness like I'm not afraid of anything that's going to get a like in in front of my mission statement, Like I'm not afraid to make the choices that I have to make that are conducive to the higher version of my being right. You're absolutely.
Speaker 1:Because we trust the positivity we have now too, because before we had the fearlessness like I'm just gonna make any fucking decision, I want fuck the repercussions and the consequences, whatever. Now it's like we trust ourselves. We're like with this mission statement, brandon says it's like listen, I'm happy, I'm healthy, I know I'm gonna do something great and I'm gonna help people along the way and I'm not afraid of shit anymore. You know dude.
Speaker 2:I think that's really bringing me to a place of reflection that I think ties into the the forgiveness aspect of like when we were, when our shadow was running the show, what, what parts of the higher self were Present, though you know, because there was, like we're still in there and there were things that, like you know great memories, we have great experiences where clearly it wasn't all bad and we weren't, you know, just completely Low vibrational beings there was a there it was all mixed up, right.
Speaker 2:So how can we like pull out what that was and just remembering why those experiences were special, you know, and not giving so much credit to like, oh, we were high or we were, you know, it was the drugs, or you know?
Speaker 3:If I shared my fucking drugs with you, it means I love you. Exactly yeah you can tell if I was like man. That guy gave me his last line of cocaine. I.
Speaker 2:He's a real one.
Speaker 3:I.
Speaker 2:Couldn't be both.
Speaker 3:Yes, for for one community. So I wasn't getting higher, I was getting lower by giving away my last line of cocaine, so it was working towards the lower self. There's there's a lot, there's a lot to dissect on that one. But yeah, I totally see I totally see where you come from. It's not black and white.
Speaker 3:We always have when we're, even when we were in a phase of our lives where we were using that shit there was plenty I still was like I've always been a very like, compassionate person. I've always cared about people. It's a lot of. It was self sabotage and anger. I would get spiteful and angry and I would like lash out, and there was a lot of. I never thought I was an angry person until I think about like I'm like yeah, I was. I just internalized a lot of it and hatred and I fucking directed it towards myself. I wasn't violent towards other people, I was very violent and disrespectful to myself.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, same here yeah.
Speaker 3:I never know either of you guys to be like violent people either, but I'm sure you had anger or sadness that manifested in anger, and then we just self sabotaged.
Speaker 2:I think you take so much out on yourself that eventually you're not able to be as good to your fellow. You're not able to be your brother's keeper when you're just shitting on yourself all the time. And that's where that self love and being free within you is allowing you to be kind to your mates if you will, but not to say, if you're taking all the shit, that you're just going to be a horrible person. But how much better could you be, how much more of an impact could you have on others had you been. When you're taking care of yourself.
Speaker 2:It's clearly the difference is astronomical.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, because, yeah, I mean, we've all taken it. I think that's one common theme in addicts is you actually get angry at yourself and you take it out on yourself and the only thing you know how to do is punish yourself further by taking more drugs. You're like, well, I'm a piece of shit, so I'm going to act like a piece of shit. Well, I was angry, now I'm just going to be angry towards myself. I'm not going to lash out at people, I'm just going to lash out internally and create a whole bunch of demons in my head and we're all just going to fight each other for days on end, years on end. We're not going to get anywhere, and that was what addiction was to me for those eight long years just being angry internally with somewhat of a smile on my face.
Speaker 2:I think that recovery has allowed me to see past that surface level of like.
Speaker 2:You see someone do something that maybe is shitty toward you or towards someone else and you're quick to be like yo, but now I'm like what's going on with you, with that person, you know and you know it's deeper than that and you feel like you know you feel empathy toward them Like damn, like he must really be going through it right now because he's lashing out at me or this person, and I'm going to handle this as best as I can because I've been there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, once he's good with that, I feel like he gets like on the Facebook thing. I believe we're talking about Facebook a little bit. I think once he gets some shit on Facebook, once we're like the crazies on Facebook and you've done a pretty good job of like, of being like, ok, I'm not going to let this bother me, whereas I know like back, you know back in the day, for me that shit like internet trolls, dude people on.
Speaker 2:Facebook Facebook fights dog Back in like 2009, 2010,.
Speaker 3:Like high school, like holy shit that would get I'd be so fucking angry from Facebook Dude. Then you can start to just like brush it off your shoulders, bro. Life is so much better when you can do that.
Speaker 1:Dude right when someone hits you with like the big novel type paragraph in the comments section or something in Facebook you're like oh man, this is it.
Speaker 3:I got it. I should read it. I should read it. I'm going to type this out. You know it's been like hours typing shit out, like holy fuck.
Speaker 2:Tiktok's pretty bad too. It's like Gen Z Facebook, bro. Like people, everyone feels inclined to give their opinion and there's some bullies on there, bro, it's crazy, but it's like. That's not real life. You know, like, oh man, if someone I don't know if I'd be bothered in the same way as someone said that to me to my face, but people don't. So it's like. It's this weird, like fake world of like I'm going to tell you what I think, whereas, like we don't have thought bubbles above our heads as we like walk through into the restaurant, you see, like the waiter is like, oh, that's a scrub, we just walked in here.
Speaker 3:He's not going to hit me.
Speaker 2:Like that's what you thought but, I don't know, dude, it's not healthy to know to give so much stock into what everyone else thinks, Like you don't let people in your house just to tell you everything they think about your decorations and your kitchen and shit. Like, oh, that's for your people you love your friends, your family. That's sacred, bro. And we give so much of ourselves as people who we want to build a brand, we want to have a platform, we want to help people with that Right and we want to shake shit up. We want to live a life that's like, yeah, we're present, we're omnipresent, we're there, but you got to be careful, you know, got to be careful for sure I'm going to have so many fucking trolls.
Speaker 3:Now I'm telling you, I'm going to have so many Dude.
Speaker 1:I actually had a few of them on some of my YouTube shorts that I put up, yeah and like you know you're like trying to use your platform for a positive message.
Speaker 1:And you know which is generally what I'm trying to do and like, because, like one of the hold on, I'll tell you the story. One of the guys, one of the shorts, was a solo episode where I was like, just talking about habits, I'm like you got to be relentless to figure out your habits, the good ones, the bad ones, how to heal them, how to fix them, hire somebody. I was just saying, you know, you got to be relentless and I had some guy hop on in the comments and be like, yeah, dude, I'm like a certified, like therapist and all this crap, and like you can't be telling people to do that. It's not like that easy, like you're fucking missing the whole point and shit like that, and it was like a 10.
Speaker 1:It was a 10 second short and I'm like he didn't even like watch the episode before or after you know, and yeah, I'm just like sitting there. I'm trying to figure out, like how do I'm like? Well, I'm four years sober, so I think I know a little bit about getting off of bad habits you know which I was trying to be very professional about it and I typed a really great response and he did not reply to it and I'm like, well, that was a waste of my fucking time, you know.
Speaker 2:Dude? Yeah, for sure it's crazy man. People are going to judge you off a one minute clip for the rest of your life. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know you got a recent troll story, muncie. Do you have anything with the trolls recently?
Speaker 2:No, no trolls man, for me I mean they exist. Yeah, they definitely exist. It's been a lot on TikTok. So you know, ever since launching the Cypher Society, I fully manage the brand. I post all the content Like it's my baby, you know. So I have a lot of other artists that I'm posting and promoting and I see what people are saying and it's the same things that people would say about my music that I would take personally and be like fuck you man, like yeah, you think you're tough on the other side of that fucking phone. But now it's like I have no control over what people say and since it's not my own art, it's a little bit less touchy, you know I might snap back at them too, since it's like if they're saying something to me, I'm like yo, you're a hater, but I'm very detached from it now.
Speaker 2:It's really helped me to see like, wow, some people just live their life behind a screen to hate on other people doing something creative, and that will never change, you know. But I love the creators. I'm drawn toward the people that are doing shit. That, yeah, maybe not everyone's going to like it, but there's a lot of love in there and we tend to overlook that right, we tend to look right to the trolls and be like little bitch.
Speaker 3:No, it's great, I've been, I've been really I've been watching on the top up on my feet, but Cypher societies don't, man. Thank you, man. So I do have what we're going to say.
Speaker 2:I do have one, so it was recently our best post we've done on the TicTac Joey Keyes his verse from a recent cypher is like approaching nine or ten thousand plays and it's got like a couple hundred comments. And someone was like we filmed the cypher in Pontiac, right? So I put that on the video. And someone commented you're way too white to be from Pontiac. You're probably from Bloomfield Hills and pretend to be from Pontiac. And I was like yo, like we shot the cypher in Pontiac. But, like you know, these are artists from all over Michigan and Joey Keyes is Mexican, by the way, and he also happens to be from Pontiac.
Speaker 2:So, you're just wrong bro.
Speaker 1:People don't even care if they're wrong, though, and then they'll just go into it. Yeah, it's just pointless at that point and then. But you're trying to defend them. You're trying to do something sacred, like art, you know, and I think it's funny because we, we don't art or wellness or positivity, we don't like. I have a lot of people who hit me up about the podcast and the book and they say they love all that shit and it's great, you know. And then I have like one guy or two people on YouTube like fucking have a problem with one thing I did, trying to help people.
