Life After Homelessness, 2 DUIs, Too Many Jail Stays, a Baker Act Crisis, and a Prison Sentence

Matt Handy (00:00:03):
I am Matt Handy, and you're listening to My Last Relapse. So why don't you introduce yourself?

Jason Pullin (00:00:09):
Sure. My name is Jason Pullin and I am a person in long-term recovery from mental health and substance use disorders. Glad to be here.

Matt Handy (00:00:20):
Yeah. So My Last Relapse is about exactly that, right? We're going to talk about your last relapse forward, kind of a general what got you there, and then what do you do, why do you do it, friction points.

Jason Pullin (00:00:34):
Sure. So going back to my last relapse, because as I told you before, I started coming into recovery around 17 years old. I didn't know that I was an alcoholic, but I knew that unlike my friends who could drink and go home and go to school, I ended up in jail getting kicked out of mom and dad's house, all the things that early on a budding alcoholic would see. And I knew there was something different and I wanted to learn how to drink without consequences. And that's why I came into AA and quickly found out that it was all about abstinence and I didn't want any part of that. So I kind of went on. But I've had periods of two years before, one year, and it was a lot of getting involved with a recovery program. I would go to AA meetings or NA meetings and just hang out with the people. And what I found was this last relapse is I had a couple years and

Matt Handy (00:01:43):
So you had a couple years of sobriety.

Jason Pullin (00:01:45):
I had a couple of years of sobriety and that was back around, I don't know, 2011. And I said, things are going well. Things are going good for me. So I was in a relationship and this person wasn't in recovery and was like, God, I wish we could go out and just have drinks like normal people. And for me, eventually after being asked enough times, I said, maybe we can, my whole thing about relapse is I have a really good, I forget all of the times, I forget the hotel rooms being up for days. I forget prison. I forget all of the things that I've been through and think maybe I'm not an alcoholic or a drug addict. Maybe I can do this normally, just try it one more time. And so I wouldn't say it was any friction point as far as that caused the relapse. It was just I wasn't involved with people in recovery.

Matt Handy (00:02:46):
Okay. Let me ask you this, you've been in prison?

Jason Pullin (00:02:50):
Yes.

Matt Handy (00:02:50):
Right. Do you think that the prison mentality contributed to your disillusionment with what was actually going on?

Jason Pullin (00:03:01):
I don't know. I've been to prison. Yes. I didn't have a normal stay. I was a chaplain's clerk. So being that I got into that job pretty quickly after getting into prison, it was a little different for me. Time was not hard time. I could do anything but leave, those kinds of things. The only thing I couldn't do is walk out the front gate. So I would say that prison for me, horrifying experience for anyone, but what I'll say is that I didn't learn from it as much as I may have, but I never went back. I went one time to prison.

Matt Handy (00:03:41):
Hey, I did three prison terms. And that is typically not what happens, right? You normally enter that system and it's a real fight to get out. But I I'm glad that you didn't have to go through that.

Jason Pullin (00:03:53):
It is, when I was coming out, the last guard you see on the way out, right before everybody throws your Bible in the trash can, he says, I'll see you when you get back.

Matt Handy (00:04:02):
Yeah, for sure.

Jason Pullin (00:04:03):
That's what he tells you, Hey, see you when you get back. And I told him, I won't come back. Now, that's not the last time I was arrested. I did get a couple of DUIs after that.

Matt Handy (00:04:13):
Oh wow.

Jason Pullin (00:04:16):
So prison was not a deterrent for me because I was still running around doing some of the same things. Now it was for a while.

Matt Handy (00:04:22):
So you just by luck of the draw kind of, because Texas we're in Texas is really tough on DUIs normally, right?

Jason Pullin (00:04:29):
They are. They are. And my first DUI totaled the vehicle and pass out of the wheel kind of thing, hit somebody at a stoplight, but I did 30 days because they enhanced it. They didn't offer me probation. It was 30 days in jail.

Matt Handy (00:04:44):
It was a bodily injury.

Jason Pullin (00:04:46):
Yeah. Yeah. The second DUI that I got, I had a really good attorney that had them knock it down to treating as a first. So therefore I didn't have the enhancement put on it. They put it back as a first.

Matt Handy (00:04:59):
Does Texas have the strike system? They do.

Jason Pullin (00:05:02):
They do. In fact, the DUIs, anything your third DUI is automatically a felony.

Matt Handy (00:05:07):
Okay. Oh wait, tour DUIs were a misdemeanor?

Jason Pullin (00:05:10):
Yeah. Yeah. My DUIs were both misdemeanors even after they didn't enhance it. That's because I pled out both times. But they were going for the enhancement because I'd been in prison before. They wanted to enhance the DUIs to make it where I had to serve some time.

Matt Handy (00:05:26):
Okay. And where in your journey had you already had sobriety when you were getting these DUIs?

Jason Pullin (00:05:36):
Oh, yeah, a couple, in fact. So I would say that one of the longest terms that I did in recovery was I got really involved in church and became a minister and an associate minister at the church that I was at, and was very involved there every time the doors opened, similar to the recovery program when at aa, every time the doors open, but I went through a divorce and all of that victim mentality came flooding back. I blamed her and all these things. So some of the people at the church were kind of giving me dirty looks when I'd come in, they blame me. Usually it kind of happens when a couple gets divorced. A lot of people have different sides of the fence. And so I found my old church that I used to go to, which had a bar stools and a mirror behind it, and man, I fit right back in. They accepted me with loving arms and I became a severe drunk again, culminating in a DU. I didn't teach me a lesson. When I did that 30 days in jail, I got released Harris County Jail. And it was the struggle. My biggest struggle was getting to the bar fast enough, went straight to the bar and didn't learn anything.

(00:07:02):
And so I wasn't on probation because I signed for the time. I didn't have any probation. It was not very good for me. Now, the second DUI that I got, it was after bouncing in and out of AA again in 2006, 2009, 2011. The second one I got, they put me on a two year probation with a breathalyzer on the car, things like that. So I went ahead and did that, and that was back in 2010. So when I completed that probation was when it made it easier to start drinking again. I say it was because my ex had told me that she wanted to go drink and wanted to be normal people.

Matt Handy (00:07:46):
And she was in normie.

Jason Pullin (00:07:47):
She was the normie. She was an normie. And I told her, I said, you don't want to see me drink. I would tell her that. I would warn her and warn her and warn her. And finally I said, okay, if you want to do this, we'll do this. And I'd gotten separated from my recovery family. I was out in working in Beaumont, Texas doing some construction, and I didn't get plugged into recovery out there. I was working a lot of 12 hour shifts. So I did not pour in anything into my recovery program or I didn't do anything other than go to work, come back, sleep. And so finally, eventually, if I'm not doing the maintenance, the stuff that I have to do on a regular basis to maintain a recovery, then just not maintaining a vehicle, it's going to break down eventually. And that's what happened. It broke down. I would say it's a weak spot, but really the reason I stay connected is because with that connection, I believe connection is the opposite of addiction. But I didn't learn that until this time around, this time around, I did something different.

(00:08:50):
There's all the other times I tried to do it, go it alone. I would go to meetings or go to treatment, but it was always just me against the world. I'm going to do this my way. I'm going to do it on my own. Yeah, I would follow some suggestions, but it was just me. I, I got to a point where the job was more important than checking myself into rehab. But I finally, that job I lost, I lost the job, lost everything, ended up in Pensacola, Florida, walking around the beach, homeless. And so something had to get, and so I went and I didn't come in through a detox. I came in through a mental hospital. I was at a crisis level of I'm either going to go there or harm myself and so I made the decision to go there.

Matt Handy (00:09:42):
Are we talking about intentionally? That's where you were at mentally? Some bad shit's going to happen.

Jason Pullin (00:09:48):
I was in a dark spot. I was walking around the day before I entered this hospital. I probably walked 20 miles in June in Florida. Well, I had shoes on, but by the time that I got to the hospital, they had to throw my shoes away because they were bloody, they had blood all in the soles. It was bad. I collapsed when I got in there. I mean physically collapsed. They had to take me to the emergency room. And I got in there and the lady said, well, what are you going to do after this when you're in the mental hospital crisis unit? It's about two days in. They're like, Hey, what are you going to do? The case manager, where are you going to go? What are you going to do? And I said, well, man, I don't know. I said, you're just going to let me out. Yeah.

Matt Handy (00:10:29):
Well, they have a process, right? It's the 51 50 and the 52 50. And if you don't get 52 50, it's 48 hours or 72 hours.

Jason Pullin (00:10:37):
Something like, well, they called it Baker Acted. So they had 72 hours. So they had to Baker Act me in Florida. It was a 72 hour hold. But part of that is they try to determine case manager, where do you want to go after? We don't want to just let you out the door. So I said, well, I guess I can just go to the homeless shelter. And they said, well, you could do that. They got a decent program there. I was like, Hey, I don't know about the program, just meant going to the shelter. And they said, well, have you thought about Sober Living? I'd never heard of such a thing. I was like, sober living, what does that even mean? And they said, well, it's a program. There's one in Florida or in Jacksonville and Tampa. And what they do is they help you get a job and they take you to AA meetings, and then you live with other alcoholics. And I was like, man, that sounds horrible. I was like, I don't want any part of that. I said, go into meetings. At that point in my life though, you have to know I didn't even want to go in public. I was just isolated. Don't want to contact anybody. Don't want to talk to anybody.

Matt Handy (00:11:40):
Which is ironic, right? You don't want to be in public, but you're homeless.

Jason Pullin (00:11:43):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Where am I going to hide? So I told him, no, I'm molding around for a couple of days. And I was like, man. And something inside me said, dude, just give it one more try. Just give life one more try. At that point in life, I was in a dark spot. I felt like everything I touched turned to crap. I had the opposite of the might. Its touch. And I'd lost families, careers freedom. I mean, to be fair, it's pretty true.

Matt Handy (00:12:12):
Everything we touch at that point is just terribly.

Jason Pullin (00:12:17):
I'd tell people to run if they saw me run, just stay away from me. I'm not going to be good for you. So something told me, he said, give it another shot. And so I said, I went back to the case manager and asked her, Hey, do you have that phone number to those people you're telling me about? And so I called the number and I listened to the woman's story, and she was a lot younger than I was, lived in a whole different state. But she connected with me on a level that I couldn't even tell you half of what she said, but I know that we were both in tears on the phone. And so got me, she goes, can you get down to Tampa, Florida? And at that point, I was in Pensacola. It's about a seven, eight hour bus ride. So I was like, yeah, I'll see what I can do. And so the hospital I was at went and bought me a bus ticket, got me down to Tampa, Florida, and I started the sober living thing,

Matt Handy (00:13:08):
Which that was your introduction to the Florida model?

Jason Pullin (00:13:12):
Not really. It was not set up as a Florida model. They weren't tied to a treatment center. It was just sober living, sober living. That was their organization. It was just sober living. You go there, what we call a really high level two organization, not quite the structure of having peer support and life skills like a level three would, but it did have a high level of accountability. There was a structure, a program, a house manager and a leader in each home, as well as some other staff that was on board. It was an apartment model. And I can remember pulling up to that apartment complex, and I had no idea. I'd never heard of Sober Living. I'd never heard of what it was supposed to be like, but they pulled into an apartment complex and I'm like, what is this shady stuff? I mean, they're pulling up to some apartment complex, and I'd never heard of such thing. I was expecting some kind of facility. And I went in there and this old longhaired dude named Iggy, and he came in smelling like Marlboro Reds and Red Bull and had long hair, and you could tell he'd been in the sun. It was just all brown and wrinkly. And he said, Hey, welcome home. When he said that, that's what started the process. And I hadn't been told Welcome home in so many years, I wasn't welcome anywhere. It's kind of like, Hey.

Matt Handy (00:14:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The only place they wanted you didn't want to be. Right. Jails or institutions.

Jason Pullin (00:14:35):
Yeah. Yeah. So what did it, and the reason I do what I do today, and we haven't talked about that yet, but the reason I'm in the recovery housing industry today is because of that. Because I found a level playing field when I got into sober living.

Matt Handy (00:14:55):
Okay. What do you mean a level playing field?

Jason Pullin (00:14:56):
So what I mean by level playing field is I've always, in life, there's always been a power differential, and either I'm the victim being controlled or I'm the controller. So it's all these dynamics that were never balanced. But when I got into recovery housing

Matt Handy (00:15:12):
And you were always on the losing end.

Jason Pullin (00:15:14):
Oh yeah. Yeah. I was always the victim. And that had to do with my narcissism.

Matt Handy (00:15:19):
But I mean, on a realistic side too, it's like when you are that person, regardless of you being human, you're still looked down upon. You're still not, you're disenfranchised, Right? And so I think that there is an unrealistic level of victimhood for people like us. I was homeless too. I was living under a bridge when I robbed that bank. So there is an unrealistic component that we believe, but there is also a real level of people really do look down on that and they really will do anything to not see you. And we're experiencing that right now in the United States, right? California's under investigation right now for 24 billion, misappropriation billion, and it was given to address the homeless population. When the initiative started, there was 30,000 homeless people in California, $24 billion later, 162,000. So it's like, how did we waste all of this money? And they're giving that money so that nobody has to see this, and it just gets worse and worse and worse.

Jason Pullin (00:16:33):
Well, it reminds me of in Houston, when they opened the new stadium the first year and they had the Super Bowl coming to town, they literally went downtown and bust all the homeless people to a different location. And they said, everybody get on the bus, we'll give you something to eat. Just we need y'all out of here so that the city will look good. And the people come in for the Super Bowl. They've done that for the NBA All-Star game, for the MLB All-Star game. They primarily will go downtown to the hubs, and we know where they are in Houston

Matt Handy (00:17:02):
Under that bridge. What is that Bridge?

Jason Pullin (00:17:04):
Pierce elevated in downtown

Matt Handy (00:17:07):
By Minute Maid Stadium. You know what I'm talking about? Okay.

Jason Pullin (00:17:10):
Yeah. They go there and over by the Dynamo Stadium. That's just, so by the Star Hope Mission, that's where people hang out and they've got nowhere else to go. They really don't. They've got nowhere else to go. They don't have the wherewithal to apply for funding or in a lot of cases, there's several hoops you have to jump through to get housing and funding. And so

Matt Handy (00:17:35):
You know what? I kind of have had a different experience with homelessness. There's about 25, the census says there's about 2,500 homeless people downtown San Diego. That's where I was homeless for years. And I've for years, interacted with, gotten high with talked to, spent time with a majority of those homeless people. I would say if there is 2,500, I would say that there was maybe six or seven that I'd met that were actually mentally ill that really didn't know what to do. The rest of us, we would have conversations all the time where it's like, this is exactly where I want to be. I don't want to go into, I don't want responsibility. I don't want to have to pay rent. That money can go to drugs. I don't want to have to deal with those people who hate me. And we all kind of know we're not going to clean up our act, so we're going to go to this place, destroy it probably, and then get kicked out again. It's like I'd rather just stay here.

Jason Pullin (00:18:39):
And for me, how I ended up homeless last time, I was in a very toxic relationship, and I'm not going to get into the ins and outs of the details of it, but I was in this extremely toxic household where I was being told on a daily basis to GTFO and I said, finally I would go to leave. And it was like, oh, please don't leave. So it was that back and forth. Finally, it got to the point where I said, you know what? I'm gone. I chose to leave that situation knowing I had nowhere to go, but nowhere was better than that.

Matt Handy (00:19:14):
Absolutely. Yeah. Those situations are, because there's power differentials in that too. It's her place. She's telling you, get F out, because I've experienced this too. I was in a situation very similar for a little while, and it was like every time she started hallucinating, I would come home and find all my bags packed on the porch, and it's like, I have to beg my way back in or leave for a couple days, and then she would come and find me or whatever. And it's like, dude, that is a really shitty situation.

Jason Pullin (00:19:47):
It's trauma. It is. It's trauma Because you have no security. Absolutely. And we talk about that in the program. It's like, what is our fear based on it's fear of insecurity. We have that financial insecurity or especially the living situation, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That's one of the base things is having a living situation that you have at least some space stability and control over. And that's why I find that recovery housing works best when there's peer governance, peer involvement. So you're talking about a democratic system, not necessarily a completely democratic system. That's the extreme, yeah. Okay. So that's one extreme, but every level of sober living should have some form of peer governance. Okay. Why are you an expert at this? So not only am I a resident, that came through and that's where I found recovery and started my wellness journey, but I became an operator. I worked for that organization. I've worked for directly supervised recovery homes in over 10 states. And so years of experience as an operator has given me the background that I needed. And then I actually, I got certified in Texas. We got thrown, accredited, went through the whole process, became better providers because of it. I learned about things going through accreditation that I'd never even thought about. Some of the ethics, I'd never even thought about. What is trone is the Texas Recovery Oriented Housing Network, and we're called the NAR affiliate in Texas. And what NAR is is the National Organization, national Alliance and Recovery Residence.

(00:21:22):
So NAR is an accredit, a new anyone. They do it through the state affiliates, which that me state affiliates. So go ahead and we do all the accreditations across Texas. And so that's what I do for a living. I'm the executive director. They were looking for a director. When I went to get re-certified, they were a little short staffed, and I've got an email that said, Hey, we're hiring a director right now, because they didn't have a director of TRO before it became its own nonprofit back in May of 2023. And they were looking for a director. And I said, I really believe in this organization's principles. I believe in the standards. I think they make people better, and I want to serve more people in this industry than just the ones that I supervise in the homes that I operate. So I applied for it, and I became the first drone director in Texas, which is pretty, I'm honored to do this. I get to meet so many different people, so many different programs. And I learned so much in that first year because I came through one system. So I knew that system, in and out. I knew that system, I knew that model. I knew that level.

(00:22:29):
But going through and seeing some of the organizations that I get to see today, but what I find that's the common thread that runs throughout recovery housing is the social model recovery and the social model recovery is all about peer-to-peer help. So it's a secret sauce. And what that means is that I don't come to sober living as just a consumer. I come as a provider as well. So we have a word in the industry we call prosumers providers and consumers combine. I'm not there just to get help. I'm there to give help. And that's why Sober Living works. That's one aspect. The other aspect is the leadership in sober living. The authority base is lived experience. It's peers that are close peers, not distant superiors. The problem is that we don't do well with distant superiors. We don't do well with authority levels that are coming from a space that we don't understand. Whereas if we got somebody that says, Hey, I was just like you and I went down this road, why don't you let me come with you?

Matt Handy (00:23:36):
I mean, yeah, it's like a microcosm of government,

Jason Pullin (00:23:39):
Right?

Matt Handy (00:23:40):
And I mean, we all talk shit about the government constantly. Everybody, right?

Jason Pullin (00:23:43):
Sure.

Matt Handy (00:23:44):
From one of the spectrum or the other. And it's like, yeah, distant power structures make very little sense to us. I mean, there is one form of government that occurs naturally in nature. It's the family unit, Right? And that is a very intimate unit, and we are taught how to be a citizen. It's very small at first, how to be a son, then how to be a sibling, and then how to be a man or how to be a boy, and then how to be a man and how to contribute to society, and then how to be a member of society that oversees things. And that's all learned from a very young age. If the building blocks aren't there, we see what the downstream effects are of not having that structure in the home all the time. So sober living when it comes to sober living, I've experienced some really shitty sober livings. I mean, everybody getting high.

Jason Pullin (00:24:48):
They're out there

Matt Handy (00:24:49):
To extreme power differentials within the structure of the hierarchy, the houses. And I only have one certificate in this industry. I'm a certified peer and family specialist, and I also certify peers. Once a month, I teach a certification course. And one of the things that is huge in the curriculum is leveling the playing field between the people that you help and yourself. Because there should be no power differential when the word peer is involved.

Jason Pullin (00:25:26):
Correct? Correct. And that's something that we're coming in contact with people now that are training their house managers as recovery support peer specialist. And I'm like, no, that's not what we're doing here. They're too close to the situation. You have that dual relationship violation of the code of ethics to begin with, but it doesn't work if you're my coach and you're also my house manager, I'm not going to tell you that I feel like relapsing. And that's where the danger comes in, is they can't be open and honest and vulnerable. And that's what our current report support peer specialists RSPS is supposed to be. It's that sounding board that you can tell anything to. You've got confidentiality and privacy. And so

Matt Handy (00:26:09):
In that situation, it isn't because of the peer support aspect of the house manager aspect.

Jason Pullin (00:26:14):
Correct. It becomes a dual relationship. Just like I couldn't be a peer support specialist to my wife. I couldn't be a peer support specialist to one of my kids or my sister

Matt Handy (00:26:24):
Or your friends

Jason Pullin (00:26:25):
Or your friends, because it's that dual relationship and it creates this different dynamic. But again, the reason social model works is the peer-to-peer connection, the peer leadership, the peer accountability. And I used the word peer a lot because that's learning that family dynamic. I learned what taking care of my own responsibilities and helping others take care of theirs was. But there's also that community aspect. It's not just about the home or the house. One of the things that I learned to do is teach people to get plugged in and connected to the local community, whether it's the recovery community and meetings, whether it's the church community, whether it's volunteering at the food bank. Just get involved in the local community, make those connections, those healthy attachments. I've read a lot about attachment theory also. Now we attach ourselves to the wrong things, but making those healthy attachments. And we talked before coming in that removing your coping mechanism is not the solution

Matt Handy (00:27:25):
At all.

Jason Pullin (00:27:25):
It's not going to solve the problem.

Matt Handy (00:27:26):
No.

Jason Pullin (00:27:27):
But when you remove that coping mechanism, you've got to have something healthy to attach to. And for me, the reason that sober living works, and I'm speaking as an authority because I've done research and research and research, but I became the authority when I went through it. I became the authority when I was able to go through and get on this wellness journey years and years ago.

Matt Handy (00:27:50):
Do you think that's true for everybody? That they become an authority after they experience that?

Jason Pullin (00:27:55):
I think so. I think so. I think lived experience is the authority base, and whether that's good lived experience or bad lived experience or somewhere in between, you are the authority on your own experience. Nobody else can tell you what you experience. You know that. And so when we share common lived experience, then we become an authority for each other. And that's where the level playing field comes in. That's when the common ground comes in.

Matt Handy (00:28:23):
So something that I talk about often, I call it the social calibration of my moral compass. We, especially people like us who have been homeless, we're coming from the problem to the solution where 99% of the society out there, they just try to stay in the solution and never approach the problem. They don't want to go to prison. They don't want to go to jail. Or if they do mess up, it's like that kid that burns their hand once, they learn pretty quick. We don't learn quick. They say that smart people learn from their mistakes wise, people learn from other people's mistakes. Well, I was neither, right? I made the same mistakes over and over and over. And when you talk about the community aspect of it, right? It's so important, right? Because self cannot critique self. And so if it was left up to me to tell myself if I was making a good decision or not, because I've done things that normal people wouldn't do, I'm willing to do those things and I can do those things. It is very hard for me to say whether or not I'm making a good decision based on my experience. My experience is not normal, right?

Jason Pullin (00:29:36):
Well, it was normal for you.

Matt Handy (00:29:37):
It was normal for me. And that's the part of it that because it is normal to us, we should not be telling ourselves that this is a good thing or a bad thing. That's what I think. And the important thing, and I'm glad that you said this, is that it doesn't matter what the community is. You have to have a community. Do you know Dr. Shah?

Jason Pullin (00:30:02):
Dr. Shah? I don't think so.

Matt Handy (00:30:04):
So Dr. Shah, he is the only neurologist and addiction medicine specialist in the country. He's locally based in Houston. And he has this theory and this philosophy that he's implementing in testing right now where he talks about the biological component of addiction. We are always taught about the spiritual, and we're always taught about the mental. But one of the things that I was always told is, well, now you're in recovery. You should eat better and you should exercise. And that translates into sleeping better, thinking better, all this stuff. But nobody ever shows you how to do that. They just say, you should do it. And well, Dr. Shah is saying there's a biological component that's not being addressed. He has narrowed it down to something very specific, and it's a really interesting theory. We don't have time to go into that right now, but you should check it out. Actually,

Jason Pullin (00:31:00):
I'll check it out.

Matt Handy (00:31:01):
He's getting involved with Harmony Grove, so I'm sure you'll be around him. But when it comes to the community component, one of the things that I preach is if you, for whatever reason, oftentimes people who reject the 12 step pathway, they've had experiences in those rooms that make them reject it or they're just justifying. But my whole thing is, even if you reject that, I don't care what you have to do, let's figure out something that you identify with. Where do you fit in your recovery? What is going to help you, whether it's church, dharma, smart recovery, whatever it is, let's get you into something plugged, you plugged in so that you can start to thrive. And Dr. Shah says that the important thing of he's writing a book, actually, it's called Why It Works, to kind of counteract how it works. The important thing is you get the connection and you start treating your mind correctly, and you get healthy doses of oxytocin. You start bonding with people. And you said connection, Right? Connection. And that all marries into why specific models do work or have worked for certain people. So what about your recovery?

Jason Pullin (00:32:26):
Oh man, my recovery is the best thing that's ever happened to me. And honestly, I didn't imagine it would go this well. My whole goal, in fact, when they did my at the sober living, the guy said, so what are you trying to do here? What's your goal here? And I said, well, really, the only goal I have is first I need to get a job. I got to get a job. I got to have money coming in. And my second goal is that hopefully I'll get a car after that. And then the third goal was that I get my own place, and that was really all my aspirations. And maybe get a girlfriend. That's part of it. That was all my aspiration, that was as high as I wanted to go. And I can imagine what I was thinking about then was getting a job, working somewhere, getting an old beat up car and some efficiency apartment somewhere. And that would've been great for me. That was all of it. That's all I wanted in life. But as going through this process, I've found that those gifts that recovery has given me were so much greater than that.

Matt Handy (00:33:32):
Yeah. I mean, people often say, right, if I had gotten what I asked for, I would've sold myself short.

Jason Pullin (00:33:39):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would look at my life and be upset because I didn't plan on getting a relationship back with my youngest daughter. She lives with me now. Wow. By the way, she's 15, just started driving. So you talk about friction points. No, I'm just kidding. I bet you she just started driving last weekend. She got her permit. Oh, no. So I'm driving with her, but 15 years old. She hadn't lived with me in many, many years since she was a baby. And she came to live with me back in 22. And then we bought a house. It's unbelievable. It's coming up on two years that we've been in our home that we live in Conroe, my wife and I, it's our first house we've ever bought collectively.

Matt Handy (00:34:23):
She never bought one. You never bought one?

Jason Pullin (00:34:24):
Yeah. Neither one of us. Neither one of us. We we're both struggled with addiction and alcoholism my whole life. So we bought a house last weekend, we just went and got her first brand new car ever. She drives a lot. She goes to Houston for work. So she's driving round trip about a hundred miles a day. And we were looking to, her car was getting some miles on it, and we said, Hey, maybe we should get you a new car because that way it'll last at least to pay the loan off. And so we went down and got her a brand new car, and she did the test drive. I think it had seven miles on it. And she was just never experienced that. And just watching things that we can do like that. And it's not all about finances, it's about those relationships. I didn't have a relationship with my parents when I came in.

(00:35:14):
Now they invite us over for dinner, we hook up with them. So really I'm rich. It doesn't look like getting my bank account at the end of the month, but I'm rich. I sit around sometimes and I just look up and I say, wow, these are some gifts. I look out in my backyard and then it's got a big tree line behind my house and just looking out into the forest. And I just sit there having coffee. But the biggest thing is, the greatest thing I can see is that I can look in that mirror and know that I have good intentions, that I'm not screwing anybody over today and don't have any, don't intend to. I can tell the truth about everything today and have nothing to hide. And so that was a big deal. And I think getting into sober living, I accredit a lot of the stuff that I've learned to that they taught me how to be in a real family dynamic and that I didn't have to go out there and hide stuff anymore. I didn't have to be sneaky anymore. And it took a while though. I was pretty sneaky when I got in there.

Matt Handy (00:36:24):
Do you got any stories?

Jason Pullin (00:36:26):
Any stories about that,

Matt Handy (00:36:27):
About that? Especially early on, what was happening? How did the changes start to take place?

Jason Pullin (00:36:35):
So early on, I'll tell you about Iggy. Iggy. He was the old man that did my intake, and we called him Iggy. He looked dead ringer for Iggy Pop.

Matt Handy (00:36:44):
Oh, really?

Jason Pullin (00:36:44):
Yeah. Dead ringer, I'll show you a picture of him later? No, no. He's just skinny. Iggy pop's really, really skinny. He looks like older. But anyway, so he sits down with me and he says, okay, here's the deal. You're going to have to do a chapter of the big book and then write a couple paragraphs about what you got out of that big book in the first 11 chapters. So you'll do a chapter every day and write the thing. I'm like, man, that's a lot. So I'm sitting there and I go out. So I'm like, dude, I'm going to get a job. I'm not going to have time for this. So I read through and really put that work in, and I turned in the first three chapters the next day I figured they're going to make me go to work in five days.

(00:37:27):
I need to get this done. And so I didn't want to get kicked out. I was willing to do anything they told me. And so I did those first three chapters and my roommates were looking at me. He's like, dude, you're always doing that. What are you doing? And I said, well, man, I got to get this stuff turned in. I'm thinking, maybe. So it turns out it was one chapter a week that you had to do. He goes, I've never seen anybody do this as fast. He goes, I'm so impressed. I was like, what do you mean? Like I got to get it done before I go to work. And he said, well, it's like, yeah, just most people take three months to do this.

(00:38:04):
He said, I had to get it done a chapter every day. And so we had a good laugh. He had misspoken in the intake. And then about 10 days in, they came and asked me and they said, Hey, we'd like you to consider coming to work for us. 10 days in. I'm like, man, I've been here for 10 days. First of all, I didn't know if I wanted to work for any organization that would've hired me at that point. That is a good point. Because I was like, Hey, I don't know. This is kind of shady. I said, I've only been here 10 days.

Matt Handy (00:38:33):
What did you look like, did you have the homeless thing going?

Jason Pullin (00:38:38):
I, didn't, I got a haircut. So I had a haircut. And so when I came in, I did, I had two pairs of clothes that had been worn out. I had one pair of shorts and a t-shirt and my backpack got a holy shirt and some basketball shorts and some flip flops, and that was it. But when I got to the sober living, they had a clothing closet. So I was able to get some clothes. And once I started putting the clothes on, I was able to shower, get a haircut and shave. I started feeling pretty good about myself.

Matt Handy (00:39:07):
Yeah, yeah. Cleaned up pretty nice.

Jason Pullin (00:39:08):
I cleaned up pretty nice. And so that's when I started to figure, they said, I'm like, Hey, man, I've only been here 10 days. They want me to come work for the deal. And I said, well, maybe they recognize my leadership skills. They think I'm just this, maybe they recognize how intelligent I am, those kind of things. And turns out that I had something that nobody else on campus had. I had a driver's license and they wanted me to drive the van.

Matt Handy (00:39:32):
That is so funny.

Jason Pullin (00:39:33):
I was like, shot down, deflated. It's like, here, what do you mean come work? You're going to drive the van? So I started driving the van, but I was a sponge for everything and I wanted to learn. And so there was,

Matt Handy (00:39:47):
How old were you?

Jason Pullin (00:39:48):
I was 46, 47. I was 46. I turned 47 in sober living right after I got there. So I really, like I said, I just wanted to learn it all. And here's the deal, is I was going to do that job until it was time for me to grow up and go back into construction. I said, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to do it for a while. I'm going to give him some time. So I started working. I said, Hey, y'all need some help in your training department. Your training sucks. So I went in, created the training department, got 'em all on classroom to do everything virtual and all that. And then I was like, yeah, it's time for me to go back to construction. Dude. I went back to construction for very short time. I got out there and I was a safety supervisor, so it was pretty good money. And

(00:40:41):
I got out there and I was so miserable. I had no purpose. I was like, I am here just to make money. I was so happy at my last job. It's like, am I going to take that? Because it was about half of the income. And I said, yeah, I'll take that pay cut to be happy.

Matt Handy (00:40:59):
Yeah. Wow. And

(00:41:00):
I did.

Jason Pullin (00:41:00):
Let me ask you something. This is something that people deal with in early recovery all the time. They think that they're going to go, well, first of all, they think they're going to get their job back. A lot of the time that doesn't happen. But for people that do end up going back to their job, they end up miserable pretty often. And I personally, I think that it has to do with the history. They have a history of being a certain way while they were doing that job. And now it's like they go back to this job. They no longer are drinking. They no longer are doing drugs. They no longer have those same conversations. They no longer have the same connections with people. It looks very different. And then the delusion that we have while we are using our drinking builds steadily, steadily, steadily. And we don't realize that the things that we do normally, they're kind of just in the background. Now you go to work, but that's not who you are anymore. A lot of normal people identify with their job like, oh, I'm a lawyer. Oh, I'm a doctor. I'm this, or whatever. If that lawyer becomes an addict, he could be a U-S-A attorney. He's an addict first. And then you go back into these situations and now it's like, oh, now I'm a lawyer again. Or now I'm a construction guy again. It's like, I don't even like this.

(00:42:25):
And it has so much addiction has so much tied to identity

Matt Handy (00:42:29):
For sure.

Jason Pullin (00:42:30):
And I find that, and this is where I was a little different. So everyone I believed in getting everybody hooked up with the 12 step community, that's the program I was in. That was our pathway. It was 12 steps. So we got people hooked up with the 12 step program. So when we did our community meetings though, I noticed, I started getting this feeling like, when you're in our community meeting with, which means that we're meeting with all the different houses, don't introduce yourself as an alcoholic or drug addict. We want to know who you are. And so I made it a deal that when they're in our community meetings, we're just family. You don't have to say, Hey, I'm Bob. I'm an alcoholic. Just tell me, Hey, I'm Bob. I live in that house. These are my roommates.

Matt Handy (00:43:18):
What do you think that did?

Jason Pullin (00:43:19):
I think that let them see that they were more than their addiction. And I think it's all semantics talking about, well, if you always call yourself this, you're always going to have the problem. It is just about identity because we are so much more. Absolutely. And you said it, we're so much more than our job. We're so much more than our past. And I think hanging onto that. And that's why today it's not because of the buzzwords. I say I'm in recovery because that's what I identify as. That's how I identify. Yes. When I'm in an AA meeting, I'm an alcoholic because I respect their tradition.

Matt Handy (00:43:57):
For sure.

Jason Pullin (00:43:58):
I respect the culture, and that's the culture that helped save my life. That was part of it. But in general, when I introduced myself, whether I'm speaking or not, I'll say that I'm a person in recovery, but I do a lot more speaking than just with the recovery community. I deal with leaders in all types of organizations.

Matt Handy (00:44:21):
You guys are up in the state capitol right now or in that process?

Jason Pullin (00:44:27):
Well, we have dealings with our legislators, but no, we don't have any offices up there. But we do advocacy. We do a lot of advocacy and try to get legislation changed.

Matt Handy (00:44:41):
So let's talk about this really quick. As everybody knows, I'm not a 12 step guy. And one of the things that really shut me out from that was I was on Suboxone and I was told when I would go into these rooms that I wasn't sober. And I was told a lot of other stuff too, that it was really hard for me to buy into and believe because I just didn't believe it. But one of the things that really always kind of fucked with me was that I'm going to have to identify as an addict for the rest of my life. And I do understand the tradition for if you buy into that, but one of the things that it did for me was I was going into these meetings and I would come out more miserable than when I go in and I had a sponsor. You might even know him.

(00:45:37):
But yeah, it was really hard for me to accept that. A lot of it was I wasn't planning on just staying stagnant either. One of the things that I really, really did not like was the fact that if I came into this, if I bought into this, that I was going to have to stay there. And for me, I couldn't do it. And I get for a lot of people that it really works. But one of the things that I've come to know for myself is statistics. They're impartial. And when you have a statistic that says that you have to go to treatment seven times before you get clean for a year, that says to me that there's a disconnect between what's being taught and what's actually going on in these people's lives. So how do you feel about labels and how do you feel about people in general labeling us? And basically we inherit a lot of guilt and shame from the society around us. Right?

Jason Pullin (00:46:52):
So first of all, I just want to say that I'm empathize with you. I'm sorry you had to go through that. There's a lot of stigma that exists still. It's breaking down a little bit. And that's part of my fight is I came through an organization that had that same stigmatizing attitude. It's like you're not sober if you're on medically assisted treatment of any kind.

Matt Handy (00:47:15):
And it saved my life

Jason Pullin (00:47:18):
And my eyes were opened. I worked directly with Project Homes, which is a UT Health Sciences Houston study about medically assisted treatment in a recovery housing setting. So they have two locations or two organizations that are strictly mood. They only do suboxone, methadone, and all the, and I say mood, sorry, it's medications for opioid use disorder and forget I speak acronyms.

Matt Handy (00:47:46):
Yeah. I think a lot of people who will hear this might speak our language,

Jason Pullin (00:47:50):
Right? So again, my whole perspective was opened up. And when I met the people and I made connections with these house managers and found out that that was their pathway that they came into, and I'll tell a story of a specific house manager, I'm not going to mention her name. She went through the 12 steps with a sponsor. When she got to step 12, her sponsor told her, said, okay, so I think you're ready to start sponsoring people. So here's some of the things you don't ever want to sponsor somebody who's on Suboxone. And she said, but I'm on Suboxone. I have been this whole time. And her sponsor was just blown away. She goes, I've never seen anybody go through the steps and be able to have the spiritual experience and all the things that you've done. I'm going to have to get back with you, let go talk to my sponsor.

(00:48:40):
And then she came back and said, Hey, scratch what I said, you have changed my perspective. And so looking through it from a lens of watching people that have gone through that pathway. It's funny you asked that. I was asked the other day, I did a webinar last Friday, and one of the q and a questions was, as an operator, as a new operator, can you tell me a couple of mistakes that you made that you would do differently now? And I said, I can. The very first mistake that I made was choosing implementing one pathway and not respecting other pathways. That was the biggest mistake that I made because I respect that. That's not for everyone. And if you look at the statistics, I think they had somewhere like a 7% success rate, and one of the 12 step organizations, I'm not going to mention, but that's 7% one in 12 basically make it. And then I looked at the organization that I worked for, and we had those same statistics. We were discharging about half of the community every single month. And so I look at it and I said, well, how can I say that? If you do all these things, that'll work for you, but it's not working for the people who are doing the things.

(00:50:05):
I've seen people excel and celebrate recovery. I've seen people excel in Smart recovery, dharma recovery, their own recovery. But it's about making that living self-directed life with positive changes and moving toward those goals that you want. Your goals are different than my goals because we're human. And what I've learned today is that there are as many pathways as there are people in recovery. I was told that early on when I started this position, and I get the glimpse, I'm lucky I get to go around and meet all different programs. I've been in hundreds of recovery homes across the state and meeting thousands of people that are in recovery. And I've found that. I've seen faith-based homes. I've seen L-G-B-T-Q homes, I've seen all different niches around this thing. But they all spring from that social model, and they all the ones that are successful and the ones people love being at, they let the people have agency, give them the power of choice. And that's the deal. Some programs are very strict like the therapeutic communities. Hey, they've been successful too. Yeah.

Matt Handy (00:51:23):
I mean, I went to Delancey Street.

Jason Pullin (00:51:24):
Oh, okay.

Matt Handy (00:51:26):
And I had a lot of success there too. And actually my executive director, have you met Scott?

Jason Pullin (00:51:33):
Maybe.

Matt Handy (00:51:34):
Okay. He went to Stout Street, which was it spawned off of Delancey Street. Yeah. So both of us went through therapeutic communities. He's had massive success out of it. I had massive changes take place there. And yeah, it is really about the community, and I'm really happy that you see that big picture thing, right?

Jason Pullin (00:51:57):
But also you say success. And for me, success is positive change. It's not length of abstinence for me. I've seen people go out and the unfortunate thing is I saw a gentleman go out, he'd been sober for three or four years and had what some people call a slip where he ended up going out and getting drunk one night, four or five days later, he committed suicide because of the pressure that's put on him from his recovery, family and recovery community. They put so much weight on the length of abstinence. But I've seen people with long-term abstinence that I wouldn't want any part of what they live in life.

Matt Handy (00:52:40):
You know what? That's actually a part of what happened to me. I would go into these rooms and I would see the old timer in the back miserable. Just miserable. And it's like, I don't know. There was a disconnect for me there for sure. But when you talk about people who have a decent amount of time, that relapse, there is a process in the relapse where you relapse. People call it a slip, and you come back and then there's the relapse where you could just go straight. You go back into full blown abuse and use of whatever it was. For the people that can arrest that and come back to it, you don't, this is my opinion, and I know it's not popular or whatever, but I personally don't think that you lose any of that credibility from that time that you had clean if you relapsed.

(00:53:37):
So the reason why this is called My Last Relapse is because I had a few years I relapsed historically shortest relapse. But it taught me the most valuable lesson in my recovery that I think I've had to learn is that. So I was escaping all of these consequences. I robbed this bank. They suspended a bunch of time. They gave me two strikes, and they suspended a strike and said, if you mess this up, if you mess this up, you're going to get that time that's hanging over your head period. Or we're going to give you your third strike and we're going to try to strike you out. So you're going to be fighting a 25 to life case if you mess this up. So very easy for me to say I don't want the consequences of getting high anymore, but I still had a piece of me that thought that I wanted to get high. I mean, heroin feels good, drugs feel good, alcohol feels good. For some people, if it wasn't good at what it does, people would never do it. But when I relapsed, I think it might've had to do with the process that I had already taken place. But I relapsed and I realized I don't even want to do this anymore. And that's what put me on the path that I'm on today, where I'm actually, I own a treatment center now, and my whole life's goal is to help people not have to suffer the way that I had to suffer.

(00:55:01):
But if it wasn't for that last relapse, I don't know what I would be doing. I'd probably be doing construction somewhere. One of the most valuable pieces of my journey has been my last relapse. And so I say all that to say for the people that have that experience where they relapse and now they've got this, it feels really crazy. It's really hard to even describe the amount of pressure that gets put on you when you relapse, because now you've got consequences. You've got the stigma that is put back on you either from your community or it's just taught that you inherit it automatically. You start thinking these things,

Jason Pullin (00:55:45):
Inner stigma too,

Matt Handy (00:55:46):
And massive inners stigma. But the truth is, it's not the end of the world. The truth is, for me, this was my truth. At least I took something extremely valuable from it. It was super important to my journey. And if you can find that, whatever that is, there is a lesson to be learned in anything. And if you can make that benefit you, it could be massively important. Instead of the end of the story, instead of the end of the road for your recovery, let's arrest it. Let's get back on track. And one of the things that sort of turned me off from that specific pathway was when I relapsed, all doors were shut, all backs were turned. And it was like, well, now is when I really need you. I don't need you when we're all going to chilies after a meeting. I need you now. Right? So what I try to do specifically with my program is find those people and tell 'em, look, I have a place for you. It doesn't matter. The past doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how many times you've done this. It doesn't matter how many times you think you failed, right? I thought I failed. I thought that my life was just one big progress, like progressive failure.

(00:57:06):
Now, I've learned I wouldn't change a single thing. I wouldn't change a single mistake that I made. I wouldn't change a single bridge that I burned because I don't know which one of those could have altered the path to put me here. So when people ask me, well, do you regret it? I tell 'em, there were times in my life where I regretted what was happening or I wished it wasn't happening. But now, on the back end of it, I can't justifiably say that at all. I'm glad that all of those things happened to me, but I got to get on the other side of it for me to be able to have those benefits of it. Do you have kind of the same experience?

Jason Pullin (00:57:40):
Yeah. Getting on the other side for me, so I've been in leadership in business for many, many years, and this last stretch of addiction put me down the scale, put me homeless, and didn't work for well over a year at all. Didn't go hit a lick at all, going to work any job. But what I've found is that I'm able to pick up with people that I knew in the recovery community, especially from 2009. I pick up with those people, I see them around, I see them. I deal with a lot of them now in my work. And it's almost like there was never that space because I feel like,

Matt Handy (00:58:32):
What do you mean by that space?

Jason Pullin (00:58:33):
So that gap, when I relapsed. Because I relapsed for a long time. I went from 2011 or 12, I'm going to say 11. It's all a blur kind of really. But around 11 or 12, and I did not clean up until 2018. That's when I came back. So that gap in that timeframe, I was also out of state. I wasn't in Texas, I was in another state. But I think if I had been around them, I've seen how people get stigmatized and they do that. But I will say this, it's almost as if you have to earn back some respect in that community.

Matt Handy (00:59:17):
That would be, if that was explained in a way like, Hey, we still love you, but you got some work to do instead. What my experience was complete, no answered phone calls anymore. If I showed up to a meeting, I was getting the side eye. It was like, this doesn't feel good already. Relapse doesn't feel good. Coming back into the rooms feels even worse.

Jason Pullin (00:59:45):
You know what I find funny is that they determine a lot of times the credibility of what you're sharing in a meeting by the time length of sobriety you have. And I'm like, okay. So a guy goes, a year or so, has a relapse, comes back in, and he gets this treatment almost like, shut up. You don't know what you're talking about or else you wouldn't have relapsed. And it's, it's not a formula that works that way. It's not one specific formula that I messed it up. So I went out and relapsed, and now I come back and I don't know anything at all, and I have to start over. And I tell people all the time, if I'm going down the road and I take the wrong exit on the freeway, I don't go home and start the journey back over. I just get back on the freeway and look at my GPS. I don't have to go home. That's what it feels like sometimes in that community. It's like if you have some years sober, even if you go through a rough patch, you don't even have to relapse. If you go through a rough patch and you start having some character defects that start showing, they'll tell you, well, you need to just go back to basics and start over like a newcomer. It's like, you don't have my lived experience. You're not qualified. You're not a doctor. I get that this book was an outline for a program of recovery, and somehow it's morphed into this, do what I do or else you're going to get drunk.

Matt Handy (01:01:19):
A line that I quote all the time, it says they do not have a monopoly on recovery.

Jason Pullin (01:01:22):
They don't.

Matt Handy (01:01:23):
Right. They don't. Okay. So how long have you been sober now?

Jason Pullin (01:01:28):
I've been sober a little over seven years.

Matt Handy (01:01:30):
Okay. Do you have friction points in your recovery?

Jason Pullin (01:01:37):
I'm going to say the friction points. I would say no. I mean, be honest with you. My friction points are when things are going really well. Because what happens is I lower my guard when things are going really well and for me, I say friction points. I'll have a thought. It's like, man, things are going really well and I'll see a billboard or something like that. And it's a thought that goes in and right out. So

Matt Handy (01:02:04):
Wait a second. You say you have a thought. What is the thought?

Jason Pullin (01:02:07):
The thought is, man, a drink would be good right now.

Matt Handy (01:02:11):
Yeah. Hey, so everybody has those, right? And that's the reality, isn't it? Oh

Jason Pullin (01:02:16):
Yeah.

Matt Handy (01:02:17):
The thoughts will always be there.

Jason Pullin (01:02:18):
Yeah. It doesn't mean it, I don't put any weight on it. My friction points are with my behavior. I can tell when I'm getting a little grumpy. But I do a lot of, and they call it the 10th step in aa. I call it CBT, do a lot of that. Hey, I'm aware that I'm feeling differently. I need to find out why, and I need to change that because I'm affecting people around me When I'm cranky.

Matt Handy (01:02:45):
So it's the actual cognitive part of Ccbt.

Jason Pullin (01:02:47):
Yes,

Matt Handy (01:02:48):
Yes. Yeah. So awareness when it comes to your awareness, I believe we're all experts in our own lives, and I trust that my clients are also experts in their lives. And I let them tell us this is what's going on. And we open that communication up with them for a really, really good reason, I think is that we expect that they know. For you, your friction points are in your behavior. What are the behaviors that you notice?

Jason Pullin (01:03:20):
First, I would say when I kind of snap or when I become really sarcastic with your wife, with my wife, with my daughter, with those who live in the home. I'm not like that generally with other people for sure. But when I become really sarcastic or just a little short, curt, if you will, with the way I talk to people and I've given them all permission, Hey, let me know if I cross a line or if I get there, and they do. And so I figure out, okay, what's going on? Am I in pain because I do have some health issues sometimes that'll cause pain. Am I in pain? What's going on? And a lot of times it's my intake. I find that if I intake a lot of negativity, one of the things that I read, the things that I watch without any positivity mixed in, then what happens is I start to act a certain way. It doesn't even have to be about anything within, it's all the stuff I'm putting in there. We watch Criminal Minds. That's our favorite show, and we've been streaming it for a while now. And so we watch that show and then I'll listen to murder podcasts and True Crime on podcasts. And I find when I put too much of that without mixing in my Simon Sinek and John Maxwell and some of the presentation, some Darman mixed in there without mixing in some of that good stuff, then my thoughts get out of balance.

Matt Handy (01:04:57):
It's interesting you say that. I think it's a common thing where the first people that we take it out on are the people we love the most, and it always blows my mind. So I was in Washington over the last weekend with my in-laws and in the airport I'm snapping at my wife, and it's like, when I heard you say this right now, I'm like, and I apologized to her. I apologized pretty quickly, but I know she didn't accept it. She was like, whatever. But I was rude to her. And I used to call the heel of the bread the mother-in-law, because nobody wants it, but I have a good mother-in-law. But yeah, it's when you are surrounded by negativity as people in recovery or just recovering addicts and alcoholics are very sensitive to energy for some reason. And we inherit things very easily.

Jason Pullin (01:06:00):
Yeah, we're fluid with vibes.

Matt Handy (01:06:02):
Sure. So when you hit friction points, have you had massive friction points in recovery?

Jason Pullin (01:06:12):
I haven't. I've had a lot of people close to me in past, but it hasn't ever really been a friction point because I've built the tools up. So I built the tools up a long time ago. And now early on, little things in the house, when I was in that first three months, I would say. Maybe four months of recovery, working in recovery, dealing with attitudes and people that hated me just because I worked there.

Matt Handy (01:06:43):
Yeah, you were the enemy things.

Jason Pullin (01:06:45):
Yeah, I was the enemy. And actually some of the things that I do, I'm a real big Don Miguel Ruiz fan in the Four Agreements, the fifth A Yeah, the fifth agreement. I've learned how to not take things personally, and I really learned how to never assume and things like that. And so dealing with other people's anger, yeah, sometimes it'll touch a nerve, things like that. But I've learned that I ask that question all the time, who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I to get angry? It is not a personal attack. And so after reading that book and learning some of those philosophies and learning to ask myself, why are you mad? And I make it simple, I got to keep things simple or else I won't do it for sure. And so that's my question. When I get mad, I'm like, Hey, why are you mad? Why are you mad, bro? That's always ask myself. It's like, why are you mad? And typically I find that it's based either in fear or ego, and I'm like, okay, I'm mad because I feel like they should respect me more. And then I ask myself the second question, well, who are you?

Matt Handy (01:08:00):
Yeah.

Jason Pullin (01:08:00):
Why should they respect you?

Matt Handy (01:08:02):
Wow. So that's a simple answer to negate a lot of things. So what it sounds like is you found a very stable level of acceptance.

Jason Pullin (01:08:09):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very much. And to realize that people aren't personally attacking me all the time, for sure. And things that are happening, or sometimes things that just happen, they're not happening to me. They're happening around me, and I happen to be in the fallout. It's not a big deal.

Matt Handy (01:08:28):
I like to tell myself because I do think it's true, their opinion of me is not my problem. It's theirs.

Jason Pullin (01:08:35):
Right? My wife says it all the time. What people say about me is not my business. And I can remember about a year and a half in to recovery, I can remember, I can see the picture, I can see the shirt I was wearing, and it was in Jacksonville, Florida, standing on a balcony and somebody made a phone call to me and they said, somebody that I had been friendly with, and I worked with a colleague, oh, hey, you got to know this person. Said all kinds of bad stuff about you. And I told the person on the other line and say, well, when he says it to me, then we'll have a problem. Until then, I'm going to treat him just like I have and be his friend.

Matt Handy (01:09:18):
Wow.

Jason Pullin (01:09:19):
And that's when I really gripped that. I don't care what people say or think about me at all. And so it became a non-issue. And like I said, it was almost like a huge paradigm shift, an epiphany. And I can tell you exactly where I was standing on that balcony.

Matt Handy (01:09:36):
Dude, recovery gets a lot easier when you can reach that level of acceptance

Jason Pullin (01:09:40):
For sure. When you don't care what people say or think, and it's not important. And I find that to be true. I used to be a people pleaser, attention craver, and I wanted to have all these things. I have this huge ego because I was a narcissist. I'm a recovering narcissist also. But see, I didn't know that until I got sober. But I know that based on my behavior that I exhibited a lot of that behavior.

Matt Handy (01:10:09):
Yeah. Do you exhibit it in your recovery?

Jason Pullin (01:10:13):
Not anymore.

Matt Handy (01:10:13):
Okay.

Jason Pullin (01:10:14):
Not since. When I found out I didn't want to be that, and so I started taking the steps to be different

Matt Handy (01:10:24):
Course. Correct.

Jason Pullin (01:10:25):
I looked at all my relationships in the past, all the ones, and I used to say this, I've been with these many people and had all these failed relationships. I just had a bad picker. I always said that I just had a bad picker. But through recovery, what I came to realize is that they had a bad picker. For sure. For sure. It wasn't me. They had the bad picker, and I was the bad pick because of my mental illness, because of my narcissism. And I try to glorify it in my brain. I look at situations and relationships from an outside perspective now and say, wow, I was really kind of a jerk. I was an asshole.

Matt Handy (01:11:09):
I make a joke all the time. I say, I'm not always right, but I'm hardly ever wrong. And my wife says, shut up. But all right, man. Thank you very much.

Jason Pullin (01:11:21):
All right, brother.

Matt Handy (01:11:21):
Yeah.

Jason Pullin (01:11:22):
Thank you.

Matt Handy (01:11:25):
Thanks for listening to My Last Relapse. I'm Matt Handy, the founder of Harmony Grove Behavioral Health, Houston, Texas, where our mission is to provide compassionate evidence-based care for anyone facing addiction, mental health challenges, and co-occurring disorders. Find out more at harmonygrovebh.com. Follow and subscribe to My Last Relapse on YouTube, apple Podcast, Spotify, and wherever you like to stream podcasts. Got a question for us, leave a message or voicemail at mylastrelapse.com. If you're feeling overwhelmed or struggling, you don't have to face it alone. Reaching out for support is a sign of strength and help is always available. If you or anyone needs help, give us a call 24 hours a day at 8 8 8 - 6 9 1 - 8 2 9 5.