#107 – Lyon Herron
Lyon Herron’s Story
Lyon Herron is a fifth generation Angeleno whose family first came to LA in the late 1800’s. At the young age of 7, Lyon was diagnosed with Gardner Syndrome, an extremely rare disease that puts individuals at high risk for developing colorectal cancer and desmoid tumors. Lyon was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer and embarked on a healing journey that included a variety of conventional and alternative treatment methods. He has had countless surgeries, including the removal of a six pound tumor, stem cell therapy, immunotherapy, chemotherapy, and traveled near and far to see the top doctors in the world.
Somewhere along the way, Lyon discovered the power of drugs and alcohol, began feeling he was invincible, and found himself entrenched in addiction. Lyon committed to sobriety after his health took a turn for the worse. Throughout his healing journey, he has discovered how to harness the power of the mind realizing that our bodies can often endure much if our mind allows. While his battle with Gardner Syndrome is ongoing, he is surrounded by an amazing community of people who provide ongoing support. Lyon ultimately knows that his suffering will help others.
Episode Resources
- Lyon’s GoFundMe Page | gofundme.com/f/lyon-herron-medical-fund
- Ly & Co | lyandco.la
Connect with Lyon
- Lyon’s Instagram | @lyon_herron
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Episode Transcript
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Coming up on this episode of The Courage to Change.
Lyon Herron:
Anytime you cut it into my body for a surgery, I grow a desmoid tumor in the same spot.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, I’ve heard of this.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. So I have a 99% regrowth rate on desmoids and then also on top of that, I’m non-receptive to 98% of treatments in the world. So most treatments don’t work for my tumors, cancer, luckily I beat cancer as a kid and so I don’t have cancer anymore. I’m a big advocate of cancer research and just spreading awareness for it, for all cancers in general but the misconception is that I have cancer and I don’t have cancer.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change, a recovery podcast. My name is Ashley Lowe Blassingame and I am your host. I am so excited for this interview.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I interviewed Lyon Herron, who is a fifth generation Angeleno. His family first came to LA in the late 1800s. At the young age of seven Lyon was diagnosed with Gardner syndrome, an extremely rare disease that puts individuals at high risk for developing colorectal cancer and desmoid tumors. Lyon was diagnosed with stage three colon cancer and embarked on a healing journey that included a variety of conventional and alternative treatment methods. He has had countless, literally countless surgeries, including the removal of a six pound tumor, stem cell therapy, immunotherapy, chemotherapy, and traveled near and far to see the top doctors in the world.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Somewhere along the way, Lyon discovered the power of drugs and alcohol. He began feeling he was invincible and found himself entrenched in addiction. Lyon committed to sobriety after his health took a turn for the worse. Throughout his healing journey he has discovered how to harness the power of the mind, realizing that our bodies can often endure much if our mind allows. While his battle with Gardner syndrome is ongoing, he is surrounded by an amazing community of people who provide ongoing support. Lyon ultimately knows that all his suffering will help others.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We tried to make this episode, not a review of his medical record, so to speak, but there’s a lot there to know about. He’s been told several times that he had three months to live. He’s been told countless times that he was going to have to live in a state of extreme pain or certain conditions he was never going to heal from and all sorts of things. I mean, at one point he had full colorectal cancer, thousands of polyps in his colon, and he had to have his large intestine removed. So I mean, it is just been quite the journey. In this last 18 months he’s been in and out of the hospital, I think he spent more than 300 days in the hospital. It’s just such a story.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And I think many of us would question whether or not we could be as positive and inspirational as Lyon has been and the community that’s rallied around him and how this has affected his sobriety. And he talks about living with chronic pain in recovery and how to treat chronic pain in recovery and I think that’s really important. You can follow Lyon on Instagram at Lyon, L-Y-O-N underscore Herron, H-E-R-R-O-N. In his Instagram bio he has a go-fund me to help with the myriad of medical bills that he deals with. He also has a clothing company called Lyon Co, which is at L-Y-A-N-D-C-O.L-A. And they sell all sorts of incredible, really cool clothing and accessories and all the proceeds go to help Lyon battle his disease. I hope everybody tunes into Lyon’s journey and follows along and supports him from near and far. So without further ado, I give you Lyon Herron, episode 107, let’s do this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You are listening to The Courage to Change, a recovery podcast. We’re a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma, and other life-changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey.
Lyon Herron:
Perfect. Sorry, I have an itchy new tattoo that’s just killing me right now.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Let me see it. Let me see it. What’d you get?
Lyon Herron:
It’s a Chico Mareno piece, but done by Jason Stores.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s beautiful.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. Just a gap filler and then-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I was going to say was that a like-
Lyon Herron:
It was just to fill this area in and then we just have to do the elbow and then my armpit.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, the armpit man is gnarly.
Lyon Herron:
I mean I have it-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Close. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lyon Herron:
I mean, I’m not going to go into my armpit but I’ll do like to here.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right there, okay, okay.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. I love tattoos so much. I always have, since I was a kid, I told my fourth grade teacher, I was going to drop out of school and I was going to be covered in tattoos.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Your fourth grade teacher-
Lyon Herron:
I believed it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Was like great. That’s hilarious.
Lyon Herron:
I mean, obviously I had a different trajectory than everyone else, I was going through very severe medical treatments and situations in fourth grade and third grade and second grade, and so my life looked so much different than all these other kids that I and my family, we’ll get into it, but my mom’s younger brother is a hope to die junkie and thank fucking God he’s sober right now and he actually wants to be sober and it’s been such a beautiful blessing, but I’ve seen him OD six times, he’s been in a coma three times in his life, 16 days been on life support, we’ve been literally like minutes away from pulling the plug. But he’s covered in tattoos and so as a kid, I watched him get tattooed, at 15, we’re only 10 years apart him and I. And so, I just looked up to him and everyone in my family’s covered in tattoos. So I had this conception that I was going to be just a product of my environment. My dad hates tattoos.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, interesting.
Lyon Herron:
My mom and dad were never together, they were just a summer fling. And my mom was 16, my dad was like 19 or 20 and he was working at Malibu Jet Ski, he’s from Beverly Hills area and so he was working at Malibu Jet Ski. My mom’s-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
From the bu?
Lyon Herron:
From the bu, where we’re four generations in Malibu and we’re five generations in Los Angeles on the west side, five generations west side.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Five generations west side, which doesn’t mean anything to people who haven’t lived in LA, but big deal when you live in LA.
Lyon Herron:
Big deal when you’re from here and you’ve lived here because, you’re going-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Especially now when it’s so hard to get from the east to the west side, you’re like, I’m sorry, there’s an east side?
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, people are like, “What do you mean?” And no, I just don’t go there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. So before we get started, before we drop fully into it, I just want to, we have a tradition where we take bad haircut photos, which your haircut’s not that bad, everybody’s sending me not that bad haircuts.
Lyon Herron:
I tried to find bad haircuts and I couldn’t find bad haircuts.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s crazy. It’s crazy. Well, okay. So tell me, I have this picture. This picture will go up with your episode on Instagram. So when people will go check out the Instagram while we’re talking about it, but just tell me what’s up with this photo. What’s going on in this photo?
Lyon Herron:
So my mom’s eldest brother, Dale, we were hanging out at my mom’s house and my mom’s sober, my stepdad’s sober. He’s not, but he’s in the Army and a few other friends we had over there were sober as well. And my mom’s best friends is a hairstylist, that’s what she does. And so he was like, “Oh, I want a mullet.” And he’s like, “But I don’t know if I want it.” He was just kind of pussyfooting around it. And then I called him out and like, I’ve been shaving my head for, I usually have a shaved head and I’ve had a shaved head for the last three years. Every other week I’ll just shave it. And it was just easy. And before that, I’d have crazy, I’d bleach my hair all the time, I’d bleach it and shave it so it was just like Eminem style. And as a kid, I would dye my hair all different colors.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You couldn’t find any of those photos?
Lyon Herron:
My mom’s house burned in 2018 in the Woolsey fire, so a lot of our house photos burned or a lot of our, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you guys have a lot of undocumented on online or digital?
Lyon Herron:
No, all of them were four by six’s. I mean, my mom has a book of photos.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She got some out?
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, she got some out, but a lot of them, her dad who lives in Kansas just had brought books and books of family heritage photos, all this different stuff and my mom had just put it underneath the house, in our little storage zone under the house. And yeah, it was just a whole debacle. I told my mom the day before the fire, that it was going to come through. I had like a very big inclination that this one was going to be the one that was going to come through. And my mom, I mean, understandably was just being optimistic and be like, “No, it’s not going to do it.”
Lyon Herron:
For whatever reason, the way the wind was blowing, the way the direction was the way, the path that it was taking I just knew that it was going to the ocean. And so I was telling my mom, I was like, “Just start packing just in case.” And it wasn’t that I wanted to be, like, I told you, so it wasn’t, it was just get shit together just in case. And then slowly it started coming closer and it was on the other side of the freeway. And it’s like, oh, if it jumps, it’s not going to jump the freeway. It’s the 101.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Oh no, it was, the Woolsey was higher.
Lyon Herron:
This is the Woolsey. Yeah, the Woolsey was like coming from Simi Valley.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s right.
Lyon Herron:
And then it jumped the freeway and I would just like, and all of a sudden it was like this, oh shit rush, what can we get out? And then her thought was like, I’m coming back to my house. It’s not burning.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What kind of stuff did you grab?
Lyon Herron:
I wasn’t there. I had just moved.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Or did she grab?
Lyon Herron:
She grabbed her husband’s grandfather’s paintings, a few photo albums. I guess I was the only photo album that she grabbed, my little sister’s all burned, my little brother’s all burned. My medical records burned. I mean, we had so many family heirlooms and so much shit and it bulldozed through, I guess our house was the first one to go in our community, because we had a deck, we had a deck that was, or my mom had a deck that went up above the house, on the hillside and the wood caught fire. The community that they lived in was kind of like a, it was a nice mobile home park, a really nice mobile home park in the mountains. It’s right off Mulholland and Canaan.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Okay. Deeper. Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. It’s beautiful. I love it up there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is that the ranch? So there’s a ranch that’s been in your family in Malibu, right?
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. We sold that one right before the fire. My grandmother sold it, yeah. So that was the ranch that I grew up on, my mom grew up on, my grandmother grew up on, my great grandfather bought it in 1946. He bought 16 acres for next to nothing because there was no paved road going to Point Doom. So he got that for, we didn’t come from a lot of money, but my great grandfather was really smart with the money that he had. Him and his brother were developers and you could say they started, that early, early gentrification, I guess you would say, I wouldn’t even call it gentrification because it wasn’t, it was just the building-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Presence, like an early presence.
Lyon Herron:
Early presence of Venice, Santa Monica, Mar Vista, and then Malibu, my great-grandfather built the third house on Point Doom and we were the eighth house from Canaan to Trinkets. So yeah, we have really-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Deep roots.
Lyon Herron:
Deep roots in the Los Angeles area. And our family came over in the late 1800s. And my great grandmother, my great great aunt and my great great grandparents opened the first liquor store on Rose and Venice during prohibition.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The irony.
Lyon Herron:
My great grandmother, I know, right, would sit behind the counter with a 12 gauge shotgun when she was like 13, 14 years old because there was these bootleggers that would come and try to rob the liquor store.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Bad-ass B. You come from a long line.
Lyon Herron:
Of fucking-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Renegades.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. It’s seriously, if you look back at the family history, we come from a long line of outlaws, our Irish descent that came to the United States or came to America, my bloodline, we’ve gone back and done a lot of ancestry stuff and comes to find out that my eighth great grandfather’s Daniel Boone or no, my seventh great grandfather is Daniel Boone, my eighth grade grandmother is Helen Herron Taft who carried the Declaration of Independence.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow. So rad.
Lyon Herron:
It’s so cool to know that I have a lot of history in this country and we’re not, it was just there were fundamental points in parts of the building of this country, which is fucking rad. But our family from Ireland came over and we were outlaws. We were the Herron family originally was H-E-R-O-N, I’m pretty sure, and they were a very disruptive group, family.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it. I love it. Well, it’s an incredible, I mean, I’m not surprised given the stories and the resilience and you have an old soul, which is like a really cliche shitty thing, I don’t like that term.
Lyon Herron:
I agree with you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But you know what I mean?
Lyon Herron:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And so it fits into that historical piece and I love that you’re connected to that historical piece because it sort of wraps into that. I want to just touch on one thing, which because there’s a, I’ve listened to a bunch of your other podcasts with Hero and another one I listened to.
Lyon Herron:
The Gypsy Tales?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
The [crosstalk 00:15:31] one.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, so I know that you talk about your medical stuff and your stuff a lot and I have some, I want to get into some like more present day stuff, but I also want to give the audience kind of a background of what, so I’m going to do like a surface level background and you can help me navigate it. But I’m going to start with, so we know about the family history, but when you were age one to three, your mom, there would be times where your mom would leave you with your grandmother for a few days at a time because your mom was not in recovery at that point.
Lyon Herron:
Yes. Yes, she was in her addiction and she was young. I fully understand it, a young mother in addiction.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I mean, even at my age, if I were loaded, it would be the same thing.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, any parent in the midst of their addiction is it’s understandable to look at it. It’s not right, but it’s understandable.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It is. It’s part of it. And then at age four, you had your first desmoid tumor removed, which is interesting because again, for people who don’t know, and maybe we can stop here real quick, which is the desmoid tumor is a non-cancerous tumor, except that it is malignant because-
Lyon Herron:
No, it’s not malignant.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But it acts like a cancer.
Lyon Herron:
Acts like a cancer. So they call it a non-malignant malignancy. It’s a non-cancerous tumor that attacks the body like a cancer would.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Doesn’t that make it malignant?
Lyon Herron:
No, because it doesn’t metastasize, it doesn’t spread like cancer.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, okay, okay. So that’s so for lining-ish.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, exactly. So it doesn’t spread like cancer, but it attacks organs and bones like cancer would. So that’s why they call it the nonmalignant malignancies is for that reason.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Got it. And it’s like one in 300 million or something, right?
Lyon Herron:
My mutation, so I’ll just give a quick background on what causes this stuff is I was born with a genetic mutation called Gardner’s syndrome. And the medical terminology is called FAP, which is familial adenomatous polyposis. And I mutated the one gene that controls all the cell growth in my body, that’s called the APC gene and the causes of the disease are desmoid tumors. And like we said, they’re non-malignant tumors, but attack the body as if a cancer would. Colon cancer and then really those are the two prominent ones. And then other stuff of the disease are really weird stuff like decaying and rotting of teeth, extra teeth also as well.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Extra teeth, interesting. Okay.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. I’ll get into a story where I had something in my mouth, I went to go get my teeth cleaned and it was a baby tooth and they’re like, you have something blocking your full grown tooth. And I was like 16 or 17 and ended up doing a surgery. And it was like a little, like a pouch, like a sack almost. And they opened it up and there was 30 micro teeth.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God.
Lyon Herron:
In this little pouch.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You can’t make this shit up.
Lyon Herron:
No, it’s like a shark.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So your cells are renegade rebels.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, so they grow exponentially. So what makes my mutation even more rare is that anytime you cut it into my body for a surgery, I grow a desmoid tumor in the same spot.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, I’ve heard of this.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. So I have a 99% regrowth rate on desmoids. And then also on top of that, I’m non-receptive to 98% of treatments in the world. So most treatments don’t work for my tumors, cancer. Luckily I beat cancer as a kid and so I don’t have cancer anymore. I’m a big advocate of cancer research, and just spreading awareness for it, for all cancers in general. But the misconception is that I have cancer and I don’t have cancer, which I’m very grateful, but I don’t have it and I was able to beat it at a young age, but I’m just a massive advocate for all types of cancer. Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Well, so for this timeline, five you have a hernia, six you’re complaining of extreme abdominal pain, misdiagnosed. It gets worse. Your mother at seven, in 1997, she reaches a breaking point.
Lyon Herron:
’98, ’99, something around there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
‘8, ’99, go to a gastroenterologist and they find thousands of cancerous polyps.
Lyon Herron:
Thousands and thousands and thousands growing on top of each other.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God. And your diagnosis, stage three, almost four colon cancer. And that’s when you get the diagnosis of Gardner syndrome, which again, extremely rare. And you guys tried some alternative stuff and then the doctor pulls your mom aside and says, “If you do not move his colon, he’s going to die and that’s going to be on you.”
Lyon Herron:
Yep.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And then age seven, you remove your large intestine and you’re given a J pouch by the surgeon who actually invented the surgery, so you were able to get off a colostomy bag, which is doesn’t happen.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. I ended up doing a colostomy bag for six months. And again, another, just by the grace of God that this was able to happen, they able to reverse it. And I didn’t know that that was very uncommon until I was 25, 26 years old, that that doesn’t happen often.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So that was age eight.
Lyon Herron:
Eight, that was eight, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. And then a couple years later, your stomach’s hard and swollen and doctors tell you it’s scar tissue, but you had actually developed a 20 centimeter desmoid tumor, which is that the reason why no, oh, no doctor would operate because of the size or also the incision, The fact that you regrow at incision?
Lyon Herron:
Is primarily the fact that the tumor was so big it was crushing my organs. It was going to leave a massive hole in my stomach. It was just a very dangerous situation.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. And at this age, it’s 2004, so you’re what eight, nine?
Lyon Herron:
No, by this time this was like 2002, ’03, so I was like 10, 11.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Okay. So you’re fully aware of like-
Lyon Herron:
I, for the most part, know what’s going on.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And you start chemo and then also do work with healers and other alternative medicine.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. So I was seeing healers throughout that whole time. We were trying homeopathic medicine as well. Everything we could possibly do in conjunction with the chemo to try to get the tumor to shrink. And the first three months of doing chemo, as well as working with different healers and mediums, my tumor shrunk 43%.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s incredible.
Lyon Herron:
So we had this like massive, it was like this massive wave of relief of like, holy shit, it’s working, this is amazing. And for whatever reason, I don’t know why I stopped working with the healers, I just don’t remember. But it just slowly kind of, maybe I got comfy. I’ve no idea why, but yeah so we kind of stopped, I kind of stopped working with healers and just continued on doing chemo. And within the next six months, it over doubled in size. It grew back faster and stronger. It was almost like it built up an immunity. And so for the next two and a half years, three years, we stayed on the chemo. We tried clinical trials that fucked my body up really bad. We did everything we possibly could and the tumor just kept growing.
Lyon Herron:
And actually in that time period, my mom, myself and my mom’s ex-husband, we went down to Brazil and saw a healer named John of God.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I’m familiar.
Lyon Herron:
Not as much allocations against him, but this was before he had become relatively more mainstream. It was very, I don’t know how to, there was people from all around the world with all the diagnosis. And I saw some crazy down there, some really, really wild stuff. And it was pretty, pretty insane. Literally in the middle of the fucking Amazon.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s so rad.
Lyon Herron:
It was a town, there was like an internet cafe and it was all dirt roads and there was a few restaurants and places to stay, but it was pretty rugged, but it was fucking beautiful. And I was 13 so I-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What did he do?
Lyon Herron:
For me, he did, if you’re under 18, he can’t do any physical operations, but I saw a few actual surgeries performed with no anesthetics, nothing. So you’d show up in the morning and everyone would do the prayers and the meditations and yeah, so you do all this stuff. And then he comes out and he does this prayer, and there’s all these photos of all these different doctors, these deceased doctors in the background and all these different healers and whatnot. And he would do this prayer, he would close his eyes and he would take this deep breath in and he’d open his eyes and his eyes are a different fucking color.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Stop.
Lyon Herron:
He would literally take their entity. It was-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You saw it. You saw it.
Lyon Herron:
I watched this happen.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, you’re like this is not a fucking joke. I watched this happen.
Lyon Herron:
Literally his eyes are brown and-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I would flip out.
Lyon Herron:
There would be green, blue, fucking, they would change every single day it would be different eye color. And there’d be people that would come there complaining of these different pains or this, that, and the other, and certain people were selected and they would sign a waiver if they can do a procedure in front of the crowd. Literally he would just wave his hand over their eyes and they would be out cold. It was like they got put under anesthetic. It was nothing like, I can’t, it’s hard to explain it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, because it doesn’t, yeah.
Lyon Herron:
It’s so out of this world.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And then you saw him perform a procedure on someone where.
Lyon Herron:
And pulled a tumor out from the place that they were complaining of this pain. Literally pulled the fucking tumor out and then they go and sew them up. And then I was just like, what? And then his right-hand man is the guy that comes and talks and talks to you and tells you the stories and you go there and they explain everything, kind of what he’s about and all this different stuff. And he was saying when he first came there, he had this pain and some issues that like internally with his stomach and John of God did this procedure where they call it spiritual surgeries, where he sits over you and performs, almost like you do a meditation and performs a procedure without touching you, without doing anything. And the guy thought it was a fucking joke. And so they told him when they left, they’re like, “Hey, don’t do anything active for seven days, you need to heal, you have stitches inside of you.” And he’s like, “Yeah. Okay. Sure I don’t.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Cool bro.
Lyon Herron:
Okay. And so he just went about his life, working out, doing whatever you need to do, he was still dealing with pain. And all of a sudden he started dealing with like this pain arose that was just undescribable and just uncontrollable and his stomach started to bloat. And he was just like, what’s going on? So he went to the ER, they did x-rays and they’re like, “You have stitches inside of you that have been torn and you’re bleeding internally. We have to go in.” And they’re like, “How do you have stitches inside of you?” And he’s like, holy shit, he was not like, this is real. It’s just like, it’s so insane, most people just think that this is all bullshit, but I witnessed it. I did a spiritual surgery where I had to stay calm. I had to let my body heal for seven days. And my mom did it and my stepdad did it, had something as well. He had, I guess, a small mass in his stomach.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did he perform surgery on your stepdad or no, spiritual surgery?
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, spiritual surgery. Or he had something on his back, sorry. He had something on his back because he always had back issues.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And did you have results from that experience?
Lyon Herron:
It seemed like the tumor had stopped growing for like a year.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, I mean that’s a long time.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. It’s huge. Granted I was still doing chemo as well. But if you look at it, when I was doing chemo, the tumor was still growing. So, take it as you will.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
Whatever you want to, if you’re a huge believer in western medicine, then you’re going to go ahead and think that it was just the chemo that was working. And if you’re a non believer in western medicine and you believe in alternative and spiritual healing, then you’re going to look at it as that. And from my standpoint, I believe in all medicine, western, alternative, spiritual, holistic, every different thing and everything has its purpose and everything has this job. And so I don’t know which one was working the best. It was just a matter of using everything I possibly could to try to get that.
Lyon Herron:
So fast forward, I do that case study. It really messes my body up. And then let’s see here, I got really sick. Almost jaundice-y looking, my skin started turning red and kind of yellowish. I started puffing up really bad. My eyes just looked, it looked like I was almost like a gnarly alcoholic, and my liver was extremely, extremely scarred, a lot of scar tissue all over it from these treatments. And so it got to the point where they were just like, “Hey, the chemo is not working.” The doctors in Los Angeles wouldn’t perform surgery. So, myself, my mom, my dad and everyone, we had an ultimatum of like, what do we do? We started researching.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How long did they give you if you did nothing?
Lyon Herron:
I think roughly around three months. And so my mom and everyone, we started researching different surgeons, doctors around the country, around the world. And we found a surgeon in Cleveland that was an amazing gastroenterologist, as well as one of the leading surgeons to remove tumors and life-threatening ones as well.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s 2007, right?
Lyon Herron:
Yes, that’s 2007. So prior to that, I went down to this healing center, treatment center, wellness center.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. So, OHI, right?
Lyon Herron:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So do you know LW?
Lyon Herron:
Sounds really familiar.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Anyway, he was sober for a long time and lived in Malibu for a bit. And he and I went down to OHI to quit smoking and sugar and it was a very interesting experience. But when you first started talking, I heard you talk about OHI. I’m like, who? No one knows about OHI. He went to OHI. That’s amazing. I remember them giving me a bucket. They gave me, you probably did this, but they gave me a bucket and a tube. And they were like, “Okay, so you’re going to put the wheatgrass up your butt and do a wheatgrass enema.”
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, wheatgrass enemas.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And I’m like, “I’m sorry, what? You want me to do?’.
Lyon Herron:
Luckily I don’t have a colon, so.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God.
Lyon Herron:
My mom did them though.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did she? Was it great?
Lyon Herron:
I have no idea. I wasn’t about to ask her. I was 15, I’m not asking her.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, you’re like, Mom, I’m not. Yeah. How’s that in enema Mom?
Lyon Herron:
How’s the wheatgrass up your ass going, Mom?
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:32:04]
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, I’m not, “How’s that in enema Mom?”
Lyon Herron:
“How’s the wheat grass up your ass going mom?”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They’re obsessed with wheat grass in my ass. This is like…
Lyon Herron:
But wheat grass is…
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
… a wheat grass obsession.
Lyon Herron:
…super healing. And you know the reason why they had you do the wheat grass enemas?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
To suck the toxins out of my liver.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. Because you have a vascular system that connects your liver to your colon and it speeds up the detoxification of your liver.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But here’s the thing I was 20 and I went to quit smoking. So we get there and I don’t know what fucks going on. I’m like, let’s just lose some weight, quit smoking, quit sugar or whatever. And so he and I go there get, we’re really good friends. And everyone there is like sick on their death bed. They’re using this and talking about, just stuff that’s so out of our purview at that point. So it was a really funny experience because we felt really, we were just being super bougie and like bougie about being there. And it was… Oh, the rejuvelac. An incredible amount of rejuvelac. I saw that at a mother’s market the other day and just quietly laughed to myself.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But it was funny because we were kind of out of place. Because people are there for serious healing. And we were like, “We want to quit smoking and lose some weight”
Lyon Herron:
Oh, you’ll lose some weight all right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah. It was really a cool place. I’m glad that you got there. Plus at 15 it’s like so much. You know what’s cool about your story, obviously. Super fucking gnarly. And it gets gnarlier, but the amount of people, and experiences, and types of healing, like you’ve seen so many amazing things that you would have normally just been going to high school and reading your history books, you know? It’s like-
Lyon Herron:
I would have dropped out and been a drug addict. [crosstalk 00:34:09] I did drop out and become a drug addict, but-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. But like-
Lyon Herron:
I did way worse.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s interesting. It’s this double-edged sword where you just have this incredible life. But you did get…so the tumor ended up being six pounds and they removed that with a lot of your stomach muscle. And-
Lyon Herron:
All my abdominal muscle was removed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All of it?
Lyon Herron:
All of it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Lyon Herron:
My abs, I mean-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’m going to start telling people that’s what happened to me. All my abs, no abdominal muscles.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, they were cut out. I mean, there might be like, let’s see here. So like middle of my stomach to below my waistline.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. It’s like some muscle tissue?
Lyon Herron:
That was what was cut out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. But they did two reconstructive surgeries on your stomach to make it look normal. And the joke was that you had a butt stomach.
Lyon Herron:
No. Prior to the prior to removing the tumor, the tumor, the way it grew and deformed my fucking stomach because of the scar that was already there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh no.
Lyon Herron:
I really-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It looked like-
Lyon Herron:
No straight up, here, I’m going to send a photo to, Ashley, other Ashley.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Lyon Herron:
So she can show it to you because it is fucking… Like when I say I had a butt stomach.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah. You had butt stomach. Like for real, butt stomach.
Lyon Herron:
Oh, straight up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
A bad-ass booty stomach. Was it a better butt than your actual butt?
Lyon Herron:
No, it was very cellulite-y. I would say it’s more like cellulite kind of gross. Not That attractive stomach or not attractive butt, but-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It needed some step classes.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. Alrighty. I’m sending these to Ashley right now.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. And then the first thing you ask after surgery, when can you surf again?
Lyon Herron:
Which was six to eight months. They told me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh fuck.
Lyon Herron:
Well four to eight months, depending on my recovery. Granted, I just had all of my abdominal muscles cut out -and replaced-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my god, that is a full butt stomach.
Lyon Herron:
Right? Told you. I told you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, they did a good job fixing it because it doesn’t look like that now.
Lyon Herron:
No, it’s pretty good now. I mean.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. Pretty good. But for whatever reason, I’ve always been able to heal pretty fast, except for this past 18 months, my body just decided to stop wanting to heal fast. But I was back in the water surfing at six weeks.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow. I’m sure the doctors were-
Lyon Herron:
Ecstatic.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Like, “Cool, great.” Okay. So then-
Lyon Herron:
I still had my… like the wound was like just barely closed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I can’t even. I’d imagine the doctors being like “Dear Lord.”
Lyon Herron:
Luckily their in Cleveland and not in Los Angeles.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly. But you know, at the same time, I think it speaks to, well, number one, you were very young. So healing is easier. The younger you are…
Lyon Herron:
And you’re resilient.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
…and also your mindset. Like, fuck live life, man. If you waited to live life till you weren’t sick? Who knows what that would look like?
Lyon Herron:
Exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think I get it. So during all of this time, your mom is coping by taking pills, which I do not blame her at all.
Lyon Herron:
Neither do I.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And she was like the most functioning addict and alcoholic that you’d ever seen. Right?
Lyon Herron:
Pretty damn close to having her schedule dialed up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. She was pretty good at that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, because she had to show up for you. So I can see-
Lyon Herron:
And two other kids.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And two other kids. Right. And so this is an interesting thing and I have some questions about this, which is that a big part of your story is how your community has shown up for you. And I do know this about Malibu. Like it’s a very tight community and which is really… Laguna Beach is like that too. It’s a really cool community. And it seems, I don’t know, I’m not from So Cal, but I lived in L.A. I went to UCLA and lived in L.A. For a while and it seems very bougie, but I actually find Malibu, really down to earth.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Which was interesting, that was what surprised me.
Lyon Herron:
It’s yeah. I mean-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, it has its places, right? But like-
Lyon Herron:
100 %. And any place is going to have that, like we were saying earlier, like some bit of gentrification. And there’s going to be this new money that are going to come in.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lyon Herron:
Our family is old Malibu. You know, it’s ranch Malibu, it’s not wealthy Malibu. It’s not multi-million dollar home Malibu. And so with that being said, the families that are still left there, that are still around and not have known my family and watch my family grow up through multiple generations. And then people that have moved in as well say like the eighties, nineties, early two thousands. Also watched me grow up and, Malibu rallies really like…there’s something about that town that comes together when it’s truly a time of need. I mean-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally. The fires, I mean, you slept inside, I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it happen several times. And I actually first heard about your story… So I’m in orange county and I got sober in 2006, kind of in the So Cal sobriety scene. And I remember there were concerts for you and-
Lyon Herron:
[inaudible 00:40:15] And with concerts, yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. And I remember money being written. And I would hear about that just as someone’s sober in orange county.
Lyon Herron:
That’s crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So it was definitely… Yeah. I would hear, “Oh, they’re raising money for-“, I feel like the Smut Peddlers or like some punk rock bands way back.
Lyon Herron:
I wish the Smut Peddlers fucking played that would be so rad.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Maybe. I mean, I don’t know-
Lyon Herron:
Buck Neked On A Big Wheel came out first song. Oh my God, I’d be so pumped.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Dude. I can’t remember what it was, but I was like, all right, they’re really pulling together.
Lyon Herron:
We had like a big name.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was early, it was probably like 2007, six, seven, eight, nine.
Lyon Herron:
2007 was the first. So Val Serve freedom artist, Skylar Peak, which used to be Sicky Dicky productions. They would put on shows and concerts and whatnot. They created the Malibu invitational, which was an invitational only professional surf contest, at Surfrider. And it was a short board contest, which is very uncommon for the location. And across the street was the Malibu Inn. It was Friday. We’d have the opening party typically at Duke’s Malibu. And then Saturday was like the big rager. It was crazy. The first few years was wild. Like there was like two stories scaffolding’s on the beach. We had professional judges, and really top name, professional surfers coming, and huge sponsors. And it was so crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. And all the proceeds went to you, your medical stuff.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. And it was mind boggling, and I’m not going to lie. That type of shit definitely went to my head, as a kid. And I probably built… My fiance can attest this issue, if she was here. She would tell you guys that I built an ego for sure. A big ego. I was this untouchable kid. That I can look back at now and identify as this kid that literally, I felt untouchable. And then just moving forward again, the community of Malibu, we were put in touch with a doctor in Germany. Her name was Dr. Jacobes. She was Farrah Fawcett’s doctor when Farrah Fawcett was going through her cancer treatments. And I had to sit down with her at Cher’s house in Malibu for the first time. And we went over, if her treatments would be right for me, so on and so forth.
Lyon Herron:
And then in December 2007, after the big surgery, I ended up going to Germany to do stuff that the FDA wasn’t approving. Stem cell therapy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lyon Herron:
White blood cell therapy and immunotherapy. So we flew over there and instantly we did something called a blood sensitivity test that we tested all different treatments on my body, or test my blood against all different treatments. And realized that everything that I had been doing wasn’t actually working and it hadn’t worked. And that kind of explained why the tumor was continuing to grow on all these treatments. And we found crazy things that I was receptive to. Like an anti-malaria shot actually worked to stop the growth of future desmoids. And high doses of vitamin C, which that’s great for anyone. But it was also really effective in stopping the growth and killing future desmoid cells. I’m trying to think of other stuff. And then also too, they did, it’s an immunotherapy where they took out about 26 viles of blood and they sent it to Italy. And they spin your blood to get your white blood cells, and then they inject it back into you.
Lyon Herron:
Something that it’s funny. I remember like years later, when Kobe tore his achilles tendon, he went to Italy to do the same treatment that I was doing like five years prior. And I was like “Holy shit, that’s fucking crazy.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
And was actually with, I’m pretty, 99% positive, it was the same lab we were sending my blood too. So it was pretty cool.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Incredible.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. It was really cool to look at that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When I was doing some research for our interview. And when I looked you up online, I found so many different fundraising things from years and years ago.
Lyon Herron:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And 2013, lots of different things. And how much money do you think you have raised, and over the course of your life? if you were to guess over the course of your life in order to fund medical treatments/
Lyon Herron:
Upwards of half a million.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Lyon Herron:
I would say, I mean-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I would think more…
Lyon Herron:
I’m trying to think-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
…But yeah.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. I’m really good at crowdfunding, I guess in a sense. I guess my story is, I wouldn’t necessarily say relatable, but people feel attached to it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lyon Herron:
I think maybe because I’m very personable person and I try my hardest to try to connect with anyone that does donate. And talk to them, hear what they have to say, what they’re going through, or why they want to donate. In certain aspects like that. And I’ve always said this even as a kid is, I’m the luckiest man in the world. I truly am. I’ve been given way more of my life that I should have been. I live on borrowed time and, my life has been so beautiful. And like I said, I’ve had more opportunities than I should have been given in this life. And-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is that ever overwhelming, to you?
Lyon Herron:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because I would feel like-
Lyon Herron:
A lot of internal guilt.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. That’s what I was going to say. I’m just thinking from my perspective. Which I haven’t been in your situation, so I don’t know, but I would think I would struggle with being… I struggle with how much money my parents put into treatment for me, you know? And also, for me, the resources that took away from my sisters, and not that that happened for you, but like-
Lyon Herron:
But ultimately very similar take away time from my, my siblings.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. And I have guilt about that. Do you have thoughts about that?
Lyon Herron:
So much. It’s something that I deal with. I wouldn’t say on a daily basis necessarily anymore. But something that definitely weighs heavy on my mind a lot. Yeah. I find myself sitting in a lot of guilt, especially over the years. And particularly in this past year and a half. Someone created, actually, my fiance, I’m going to say someone, my fiance-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We’ll cut that out.
Lyon Herron:
Well, no, it was during a very dark time in the hospital.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
And so-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. The last 18 months for you have, seriously Lyon. I would see these updates from your mom, and I was scared to look. It was scared to look online.
Lyon Herron:
This past 18 months has been the most difficult part of my journey I’ve ever, you know, by far the most difficult part of my journey thus far. But I’m able to continue pushing forward. And so I just have a lot of gratitude for life every day. And-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How does the guilt play into that? I feel like one of the standout things about your story, is PMA. Positive mental attitude and you and your family works so hard on staying in this positive mindset, which I think is rad. But I also am like, “How?”. How the fuck do you do that? Are you ever like “No dude, I’m not in a positive place. This blows.”
Lyon Herron:
No, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How do you do that?
Lyon Herron:
It’s a matter of taking whatever emotion is present and sitting with the emotion. That’s what I’ve learned. I’ve learned that through sobriety, I’ve learned that through dealing with a lot of this throughout my life. I can’t control what emotion comes in. I can sit with it, I can accept it and then I can let it pass because I know that it’s temporary. I know that emotion is temporary. I know that I’m going to feel something different, whether it’s in an hour, whether it’s in 24 hours, whether it’s in a week. No matter what it is, it’s going to pass. Nothing in this life is permanent, life itself. Isn’t permanent, you know, we’re going to all die one day. It’s just a matter of finding the strength to just get through those dark times.
Lyon Herron:
And sometimes in the darkest times, like I have to look at, the smallest bit of light that I can find. And I guess that I’ve been very fortunate to be able to see the other side of negative times. I can find little bits of light and just grip that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hold onto it. Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
And just hold onto it and, and use that as my motivation of like, there’s something positive out of this. Whether it’s, we now know that that doesn’t work. And that’s the only thing that I can take positively from the situation. Is, okay, we’re not going to do that one again. That’s behind us. What do we have to focus on next? What’s the next option that we have. And when there came a point where I had no options, well not, no options. I had one option. And that’s the one that I’m doing right now, is it’s not eating and getting-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You’re not eating or drinking at all whatsoever for a year.
Lyon Herron:
Well, look, I’ve slacked a little bit. I’ve had some shit to drink. And for a while I was chewing and spitting out food just to get tastes and flavor and I’d accidentally swallow some shit. And it would cause a lot of pain, like a lot of pain. And so now I’m like no chewing and spitting, none of that shit. And I drink a little bit of water to take my medicine, whatever I have to take orally. And just to wet my mouth the times like throughout this interview, I’ve probably taken like four sips, little sips of water just to wet my mouth. But for the most part, yeah. I mean it’s six months to a year, so I’m hoping we’re on the shorter side. Obviously. One, I have a wedding in October, so. And I was for the most part in charge of, doing the catering. So I picked up the food.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The irony.
Lyon Herron:
Irony in is that like it’s, I picked out the food that I might not be able to eat at my wedding.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.
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Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you ever like… again, forgive me for my comparisons. Cause they’re just my mild version of all the things. But you know I’ve been in pain before like physical pain to the point where I didn’t want to live anymore. And it was like, I don’t want to do this. Like if this is the quality of life or, I’ve been in emotional pain where I felt that way. Around being a drug addict and alcoholic. I don’t want to battle my head every day. I just don’t want to do it.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And I’ve had those thoughts where I’m like, it would just be easier for everyone and myself. They’re not waiting for the other shoe to drop. They’re not waiting, if I just went out and, ended this. Has that not been a consideration? How do you fight those thoughts? We also didn’t touch upon, but we’ve sort of mentioned it, is that you have, struggled with alcoholism and you’re sober. And at a certain part of this, part of how you coped was using drugs and alcohol, and then you ended up getting sober. And so you’re also dealing with the mental health stuff. Right?
Lyon Herron:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So how do you, you know? It’s hard enough just being an alcoholic, let alone physical pain.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. I mean, I would be lying if there were times where I just didn’t want to give up. Yes, I try to embody and portray this very, very positive mental attitude, as much as I can, but I’m human, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
Like you’re going to have dark times, you’re going to be, in a dark hole with those suicidal thoughts. And wanting to give up. There’s been a lot of times this past year and a half where I’ve never been closer to death. And there was a handful of times where I felt like I was closer to death than I was to living.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
Whether that’s physical or mental or both at the same exact time. And the thought that goes through your head is like you said, I would think everyone else would be out of pain if I wasn’t going through this anymore. But then I personally start thinking how fucking selfish is that? How selfish is that of me, just wanting to all these people that have put so much fucking effort into keeping me alive for me to give up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That was going to be my other question. Do you ever feel like you owe it to people. Like you owe it to people to try and in some ways, cause even, I’ve felt like that. I can’t fucking give up I owe it to these people…
Lyon Herron:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
… To put my best foot forward and, I would imagine. But I would also see that as like people have been following your story for so long. We all tune in on Instagram with you and your mom and your family. And even you, and I don’t know each other but we know each other through friends and stuff. I would feel like in some ways that’s a burden.
Lyon Herron:
It can be at times because you feel like you don’t have an out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right.
Lyon Herron:
If you wanted to, and I’m not saying, I want to. But yeah, there’s moments where it just seems like there’s just so much weight on my shoulders and the feeling that the ultimatum of, am I ever going to have a normal life again?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
You know, am I ever going to have be able to get it back in the ocean again, which is granted, that is a luxury that I’ve been given in my life. And am I able to be the husband that my wife, not expects me be because she doesn’t expect me to be anything, and she’ll always be there for me. But that I expected myself to be.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Your standards.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. And the son and the friends. And there’s that fear. I mean shit. All of a sudden was yesterday, I was having a great day, and then out of nowhere, I just started to slowly spiral into this like kind of dark mindset of, I’m never going to be able to fucking live normal life again. And I look at people and I start getting resentful.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lyon Herron:
And yeah, that’s another thing too. Is like a lot of shit that goes through my head. Just like any other alcoholic is we’re not good enough one, that’s the first thing. No one knows how I feel. I’m all alone.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Which in your case you could justify that.
Lyon Herron:
I could totally justify it, but then I also need to tell myself to shut the fuck up…
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally.
Lyon Herron:
… and man the fuck up, because I have a life beyond my wildest dreams that I need to fight for. And I have so many people in my life that love me, that I want to be there for them. Just as much as they want to be there for me. But when you’re in those dark thoughts, none of that fucking matters.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right?
Lyon Herron:
Like none of it…
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s the problem.
Lyon Herron:
…none of it matters. And any alcoholic that’s listening to this knows that. They know that feeling.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lyon Herron:
They know that feeling of just, it’s like, utter sorrow for yourself that you can’t get rid of.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
And-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you allow yourself to have like little… This is what I tell my sponsees. I’m like, “How long of a pity party do you need?” They call me and I’m like, “How long do you need? You need to throw a pity party. I get it. How long do you need?” You know, I need 24 hours. I need five hours. I need 30 minutes. And I’m like, okay, you have that amount of time. Go fucking party it up in your little pity party. Feel sorry for yourself, cry in the mirror, watch yourself cry, whatever you need to do. And then call me back and then we’re going to get the fuck over it. And we’re going to, whatever. But like, I think it’s important. Sometimes you just have to throw yourself this little pity party and be like, “I feel so fucking sorry for myself!”.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, no I fucking love that. That goes back to what I was saying about feeling every emotion that comes in. And also too, it’s another perfect example of no emotion is permanent. Like it really isn’t.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Especially If you give it a time. I find like giving it a time, thinking about it, and giving it a time. Everyone who gives themselves 24 hours doesn’t usually need 24 hours. They don’t want to be in it for 24 hours.
Lyon Herron:
That’s miserable.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It gives you this psychological, you know, mindset of, it’s not going to be forever. And I think that’s the scary part about getting into these dark places. Right?
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. No, I totally agree with you on that. I don’t know. For me I just kind of ride it. And I woke up this morning and I felt grateful.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
You know? That literally, is it. It’s cliche to say. And another thing for me too, is I saw every night that I go to sleep, no matter what I’m feeling, what’s going on, whether my fiance and I are in an argument or anything like that. I have to, for me, have to say, I love you. And I have to give her a kiss. And someone taught me that in the early parts of my relationship with her. Both of them are in sobriety as well. And was like, “I will never go to sleep angry. Or even if I am angry, I will never not say I love you and give her a kiss.” And for me, that kind of almost resets my brain a little bit. To, whatever I’m going through, whether I’m in a dark place, I know that there’s love in my life.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lyon Herron:
And there’re positives in my life.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I like that.
Lyon Herron:
And when I wake up, if I’m still in that feeling and then those thoughts, I will deal with it in that moment. And for me, I’m very vocal about what I’m going through. So if I’m feeling very dark and down, I’m not going to hide from it and just keep it within myself. I’m going to talk about it because I want to let it out. I need to let it out because I don’t want to sit with it. I don’t want that to be this cloud over my head. That’s just going to continue getting darker and darker and darker. I need that to dissipate. So for me, I guess it is just, it’s about being conscious of what emotions come through, feeling those emotions, letting them, sit with me. Understanding what and why I’m feeling that way, letting the emotion out, talking about it, whether it’s crying, talking, screaming, punching a pillow. Anything that I need to do to get it out. Because I don’t have my outlets.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Lyon Herron:
For me, I grew up riding motorcycles and surfing like I surfed three to five days a week since I really started surfing. And that was six years old and I’m 29.
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [01:04:04]
Lyon Herron:
… and I was at six years old. And I’m 29 in a month. So, that’s, fuck, 23 years of surfing every… That’s my life. And riding motorcycles is another huge outlet. It’s my form of meditation and another big one for me. I’m very action sports orientated and snowboarding. Those three things are huge in my life and I’ve been stripped of those for the last year and a half. So, I don’t have any sort of outlet and a lot of the time I was stuck in a hospital by myself for 30 days, 40, 50.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, during COVID, right?
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. There was 60 days in the hospital… I spent 325 days in the hospital in the last 19 months. And I would say 250 of those days were through COVID that I spent by myself. Certain times I was allowed one visitor per day but there was periods of 40 days of just being in my hospital room by myself. So, you really, really, really learn to sit and feel your fucking emotions because they ain’t going anywhere and you have no one to distract you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You and your feelings are not going anywhere.
Lyon Herron:
No, they’re becoming your best fucking friend and your worst fucking nightmare.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, my God. You’re an incredible photographer. What about photography? In my head I was thinking you could’ve, and probably not because of COVID, but in my head you could take these incredible photo journalistic photos in the hospital of-
Lyon Herron:
I should’ve.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
… of what’s going down and, I don’t know, things like that. But photography is an incredible outlet as well and something you’ve been passionate about.
Lyon Herron:
It is. So, photography to me is another massive thing. I don’t know why but something about this past year and a half has felt like it sucked the joy out of shooting photos out of me. There’s been a few times that I have gone and shot photos and it made me so fucking happy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Lyon Herron:
But to compare it to what I felt prior to all of this, I would be excited all the time and I would always have cameras in my car and cameras with me and the fact that I didn’t have a camera in the hospital. Not once did I bring a camera into the hospital with me or have anyone bring it to me or drop it off. I don’t know. It bums me out that that’s what happened. And like I said, when I shoot photos it does make me happy but I don’t have as much of the drive as I did prior to dealing with this medical journey.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I have an armchair theory about that.
Lyon Herron:
Bring it on. I want to hear.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Maybe it’s because at this stage in the game you want to be doing things that are in the photos instead of behind the camera. This phase of your life you’re like, no I need to be… I don’t want to be an observer. It used to be cool to be an observer for you and now all you can think about is being in them.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, I think that as well. Also, too when the passions that I’ve had have been stripped from me, that’s all I want to do. And I’ve recently got into riding Harleys with my stepdad and I’ve been able to do that with everything that I’m going through and that’s one of my new outlets that I’ve found that is really good for my mental health and good for physical and everything like that. We went on a ride on Sunday and I brought a film camera with me. When we were on long, straight roads I was trying to shoot photos of the guys riding and stuff like that. It slowly started to reinvigorate a little bit.
Lyon Herron:
But yeah, I agree with you. I really do. It’s this unconscious feeling of I want to be the subject rather than shooting the subject. Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. Put me in, Coach.
Lyon Herron:
Exactly. It’s the narcissism in me that’s coming out and it’s also the feeling that I want to do the things that I love so much. So, I want them to be documented so I have the memory of being able to do that during these times rather than just shooting them and seeing other people doing the things that I love.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right, right. That seems to me to make complete sense.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. It’s a great perspective you had on that because it’s so true and I didn’t think of it that way. That’s really what it is is one of the things that I love were taken from me. And that’s another thing too. My fiance, she wants me to go ride and she wants me to be able to surf and I’m so lucky that I have her support in that sense because she’s like, “Look, that’s the man I fell in love with was the person that would go ride and race motocross, that would go surf all the time. That’s what makes you happy and that’s what you’ve done your whole entire life.” She goes, “I never want to be the person that takes that away from you and takes that joy that I fell in love with away.”
Lyon Herron:
I got to go ride motocross a little bit a couple weeks ago. I have a drain in my stomach and I have a PICC line in my arm and I deal with a lot of pain still.
Lyon Herron:
Another thing I want to touch on too in a second is having to take pharmaceuticals-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Pain meds.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. That’s been more of a mind fuck than a lot of other things. But yeah, going back to being able to ride motocross. It finally opened my eyes that okay, I can do some of these things with the ailment that I have currently. Until I’m fully healed I can still do some things of what I love to do at a scaled back version. I still get to have a little bit of that joy and it’s just finally starting to come back nearly two years after the facts of dealing with all the shit that I’ve dealt with in this past year and a half.
Lyon Herron:
And also too, we’ve been talking about me being in the hospital. What’s caused me to be in the hospital is from the chemotherapy that I was taking there was a side effect that, you see 150 side effects when you look at chemos-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
On everything.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, on everything but specifically chemotherapy. There’s so many different things that could possibly happen and there’s these ones that you look at you’re just like, that’s not going to happen. This one was the weakening or tearing of your stomach lining and bowel walls. And fuck, the odds of that happening are pretty rare. It’s a severe side effect. And that’s what happened and I created something called a fistula, which is a tear in my intestinal wall and it created an abcess, I went septic. We couldn’t figure out what it was.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I just wanted to throw in this. There was a story. So, you went septic once. At normal levels it’s .2 to .4. At 2, you’re septic. And you were at 37 and survived.
Lyon Herron:
That was the first one.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The first one, right.
Lyon Herron:
That was the first one.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How the fuck do you survive that?
Lyon Herron:
I have no idea. Again, that’s my higher power. That’s something greater than myself.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That was the first fistula?
Lyon Herron:
It’s the same fistula that’s-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Or this first-
Lyon Herron:
That was the first opening.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Jesus. That’s gnarly.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. So, it’s something called a procalcitonin level. It’s a bacteria level in your blood.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. I can’t even imagine literally being the doctor looking at that and going, what?
Lyon Herron:
Why are you alive right now?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my fucking God.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. That happened the first time around. Then pretty much the second time it got so bad. I was hospitalized for this for pain. I was at one hospital. I was at St. John’s and they couldn’t figure out what the cause was. They knew that I was septic and I was sick but we couldn’t figure out what it was. The first time that I went in that I had the levels were that high they couldn’t figure out either. They just put me on antibiotics. I got my strength back and then they’re like, “Okay, you’re good to go home,” after a week.
Lyon Herron:
And then the second time it happened we couldn’t figure out again and then finally we started doing research and found this specialist and this doctor who does interventional radiology. We met with him and I was in so much and it was so bad that I couldn’t walk. I was in a wheelchair. I met with him. He started doing research. And that week of leading up to it getting really bad… So, I was starting to get these rigors and fevers. Rigors are where you get ice cold and shake uncontrollably. Then we would throw blankets on me and I could not get warm. I was so fucking cold. It’s almost like having a seizure. You shake so bad and uncontrollably and it hurts.
Lyon Herron:
What we didn’t know is that I had a 14 centimeter abcess and it fully obstructed my small bowel. And I was continuing to eat because we didn’t know what was going on. I was blocking up so nothing was passing through. And not having a large intestine and colon, you go to the bathroom a lot and I wasn’t going to the bathroom.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Which, at least probably told you something.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, we knew something was really wrong. We knew something was really wrong. The amount of pain that I was in. I was in so much pain. I couldn’t sleep. I literally, I think I slept, I don’t know, maybe five hours in seven days.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Fuck, dude.
Lyon Herron:
I could not sleep. I could not fall asleep. I was in so much pain and I would just-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Which makes it so much worse.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. It was so bad. Then it built up to the point where one night at 2:00 AM my rigors started and I was like, fuck, and then my fever … Somehow I made my way to the bathroom and I was in the bathroom and my fever got so bad that I lost my eyesight. I lost vision and then I was getting flashes of vision and everything was spinning and I started hallucinating so bad. I was butt naked just pouring sweat, could not stop sweating, couldn’t move and I was just puking, projectile vomiting. And my mom woke up, my stepdad and they came in and called 911 because it was just so bad.
Lyon Herron:
After 30 minutes of just this uncontrollable, literally no vision. It was so fucked. It felt like I had fried my brain. I couldn’t get [crosstalk 01:15:42]-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, I’m sure. Because you went so hot too.
Lyon Herron:
It was like 105.4 fever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Lyon Herron:
So after, I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t get sentences out. I couldn’t… When the paramedics showed up they were fucking… These guys were such assholes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Really?
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, these guys were such dicks. They were so fucking lame. Because I’ve had so many amazing paramedics throughout my life with injuries like breaking bones and having to get the ambulance and concussions and all this sort of stuff but these guys were such dicks. My mom was like, “He has a really rare medical issue. We don’t know what’s going on. He’s been going septic.” They’re like, “You sure that’s not an overdose?” My mom was like, “No, he’s beaten cancer. He’s dealing with a life threatening ailment.” They’re like, “This looks like an overdose.” My mom was like, “That’s not a fucking overdose.” And I couldn’t talk. I literally couldn’t get words out.
Lyon Herron:
So, they’re asking me my social, they’re asking me all these different things and I couldn’t-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They didn’t just put you in the ambulance?
Lyon Herron:
No. And then finally they put me on the gurney, take me in the ambulance. I was like, “I have a port. Can you access my port?” They’re like, “We can’t access your port.” I was like, “My veins are really bad. I can’t…” My veins are shit. My veins have always been shit. IVs would fall out every other day in the hospital. I spent months in the hospital as a kid and it’s been shit since I was six years old. And they were just fucking so lame and I was so scared because I thought that I was never going to come back.
Lyon Herron:
And I remember when they were wheeling me out of my mom’s house-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank God they didn’t give you Narcan either because that would’ve blocked all opiate receptors and that would’ve been a fucking nightmare too.
Lyon Herron:
Oh my God. And I was in so much pain and I was so confused. I remember when they were rolling me out of my mom’s house, there’s a mirror by her front door and I looked at myself in the mirror and I was just like, I don’t recognize who I am. I don’t recognize and I was just so scared of what the fuck is happening. Then come to find out that that doctor that we went and met figured out what was wrong from all the scans from the previous hospital that they couldn’t figure out and saw the abcess. So, they had to put an NG tube in, pump my stomach from everything out, put me on TPN, which is what I’m doing right now which is just getting the nutrients, nutrition though your IV. Yeah, I had to have drain tubes put in.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, you did that, it drained, but the abcess kept coming back, right?
Lyon Herron:
So, we didn’t know the severity of the fistula and we thought it closed after… I was in the hospital for 30 days and we thought it closed. So, they took the drains out-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did they close it or they were letting it heal, theoretically?
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, theoretically letting it heal. So, they pulled the drains out and sent me home. And then that’s where this spiral started and it was just in, out, in, out, same things. These 104, 105 fevers, hallucinations. Go in the hospital, be in the hospital two weeks to a month, fucking come out. Then they left the drain in for seven months at home. So I had a drain in for seven months last year. Then finally I remember it was just in, out, in, out, in, out and then finally after doing CT scans and doing another test as well, a fistulogram is where they inject contrast through the drain to see if it goes into the bowel. And they’re like, “Everything seems like it’s closed up.”
Lyon Herron:
So, I think it was… Is it Memorial Day weekend? Is that the one after summer?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s Labor Day.
Lyon Herron:
All right, Labor Day weekend. I did that test on Thursday and my doctor said they left the drain in as a placeholder because he goes, “Just in case something else.” I was like, “Are you telling me that everything is closed up and everything’s good?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Okay, if you’re telling me this then I want this shit out of me.” They’re like, “Okay, you’ll come in Monday.” I was like, “I know how to pull all this stuff out of me. I’ve watched you guys do it a hundred times.” At that point I’d probably had 10 different drains put in me and I’ve had them replaced so many different times and pulled out. So, I knew how to pull everything out.
Lyon Herron:
And I called a few of my doctors and asked their approval and they’re like, “We don’t necessarily approve it.” Granted they’re like, “You are our most rebellious patient we’ve ever experienced.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They cannot give you permission without being subject to the potential of a lawsuit too. So, I could see why they were like, “Hmm.”
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, I get it but I was like, “I’m not the type of person that’s going to sue anyone.” That’s just not me. If I break my arm on your property that’s fair play. That was my fault. Fucking my dumb ass broke it. It’s no one else’s fault.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, did they give you permission?
Lyon Herron:
Kind of. So, I had a PICC line in and I had a biliary drain in. I pulled my biliary drain out and it was the hottest weekend of the year and we had a bunch of… Not a bunch because it was obviously still during COVID. But we had our tight knit group of family friends over at my mom’s house. She had a pool. I hadn’t submerged in water in eight months or nine months and then I had my mom pull my PICC line out and I went and jumped straight in the pool. It was the best feeling in the world. Yeah, I thought that was it. That was the end of it and sure shit a week later I was back in the hospital and it’s continued.
Lyon Herron:
Then the beginning of this year was the worst one yet. Well, it got really bad. We tried to sew up the fistula. We tried to put a stent in it, a big stent, and it ended up migrating down my stomach-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Oh.
Lyon Herron:
… which was so painful. Thank God we were able to get it out. If not I was-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was going… Yeah, seriously. That’s-
Lyon Herron:
But it caused some more damage in there. We tried everything we could possibly do. That’s why I said, this is my last option that I have is not eating and not drinking and doing nutrition through an IV in hopes that my body’s going to actually heal this hole in my intestine.
Lyon Herron:
But in January, right when my fiance and I moved into our new apartment, I got the rigors out of nowhere. And I had a drain in and usually the drain is a safety net, in a sense. Yeah, the rigors started getting really bad really fast. And I was like, oh fuck, this is going to be a bad one. And then my fever kicked in and the fever, it just went from 100 to 106 in 15 minutes. So fast and instantly just hallucinating-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, you’re lucky you don’t have brain damage.
Lyon Herron:
I’ve had seven 104-106 fevers in the last year and a half. So, I don’t know how my brain hasn’t just melted away. But yeah, it got to the point where I lost my vision and I was hallucinating and it was almost like an out of body experience where I thought that my soul was leaving my body. I thought that this was it. I thought that I was dying. No ifs, ands or buts, this was just it. I’m leaving this earth. Again, for whatever reason my higher power was like, it’s not your time to go and you’re here to stay to do something bigger than what I can comprehend because obviously there’s a purpose for me to be here.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
People with your condition, the very few that do exist, they don’t live past teenage hood, right?
Lyon Herron:
No. Some people don’t. Some people it stays dormant in their body and doesn’t cause stuff until later. I’ve met a few people with the same disease and a very close mutation to mine and they didn’t have their first issue with it until they were in their mid 30s, late 30s.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Interesting. Okay.
Lyon Herron:
It’s all different for everyone. Mine just happened to be really aggressive really early and that’s just my story, my journey.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What are they telling you in terms of prognosis? Obviously all prognosis are based on who knows what the fuck, right?
Lyon Herron:
[crosstalk 01:25:02].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, and given you’ve beat every single one. But what are they telling you right now?
Lyon Herron:
Just continue doing what I’m doing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is there a possibility that you’ll be able to live until 80, 90?
Lyon Herron:
Oh, 100%. Yeah. There’s a possibility I could die tomorrow and there’s a possibility that I could live for another 50 years. Just like you, just like anyone in this world. I’m not over here banking on being here for another 50 years and I’m not here banking on being here for another 24 hours. It’s just when my time is it’s my time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s a really great practice for what all of us in recovery are supposed to, the mindset we’re supposed to have, which is be in the moment and about the moment. And you have this practice, being forced to do that and that’s the spiritual place of being-
Lyon Herron:
Where you want to be.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Where you want to be, right?
Lyon Herron:
It’s what’s advertised in sobriety. Literally it’s on every billboard in the room.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. It’s the hardest thing to do and it’s what this experience, this medical experience has brought you is the ability to be forced and then the practice of I don’t know.
Lyon Herron:
[crosstalk 01:26:35].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. It’s interesting when I hear you talk. One of the things that in business, and in life everywhere, we think about is we have to manage the short term and we have to manage the long term. We have to be looking out far enough to plan that and also managing, at the same time, and balance those two things, right? Balance living in the moment while also not being like, a year will never come so I’m never going to plan for anything.
Lyon Herron:
Exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There’s some sort of balance. I’m terrible at it.
Lyon Herron:
Same.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But it sounds like you have had this practice by being forced into thinking about life and what’s most important and what’s valuable and what’s worth your time and who’s worth your time and how to manage those things in a very different way than most of us have ever experience. And young enough to be able to lead a much more present lifestyle.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think those of us in recovery are leading a much more present lifestyle than normies and then you have a level above that, like ninja status [crosstalk 01:27:46]-
Lyon Herron:
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Ninja living in the present.
Lyon Herron:
I try. That’s something that my fiance and I joke about. She’s plan ahead, future, everything and I’m like, pump the brakes. All we have is today, babe, and tomorrow’s not promised. Yes, let’s plan for our future but let’s keep it open ended because-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God. I have anxiety just talking about. I’m like her.
Lyon Herron:
She hates it. She hates it so much and it’s so funny. She’s like, “I’m so fucking thankful that I have you to keep me grounded.” And I’m like, “I’m thankful that you plan our future because I sure shit ain’t going to do it.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Actually, I want to jump to taking medication in recovery. So, you have to manage this horrendous pain and one of the things that a lot of us, we try not to take medication that’s going to wake the beast. I had an experience where I was in the hospital and I took Dilaudid. I’ll never forget this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
2007, going to the emergency room. They give me Dilaudid. I’m in so much pain [crosstalk 01:29:11]-
Lyon Herron:
How good did it feel?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Dude, okay, so here’s the thing, it felt wonderful but it woke up… I literally, I remember the space. I remember everything about it. They put it in and I felt like a dragon literally came up from my stomach, through up into my throat and opened up… It was like a physical manifestation of my addiction and it picked up it’s head and opened it’s eyes. It was the fucking weirdest experience I have ever had with regard to that.
Lyon Herron:
That’s crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’ve had to take Vicodin. I don’t give a shit about… I’ve had to take other pills and things in recovery for surgeries and whatnot. It doesn’t bother me but that shot of Dilaudid, man. It literally was like it just woke up and I was like oh, as if it opened it’s eyes through my eyes and I was terrified, terrified. But I haven’t had that experience since. Thank God.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, thank God.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, but how do you… Usually that happens when they give you more pain medication than the pain. Because when you’re in so much the pain medication doesn’t really do shit.
Lyon Herron:
It’s going to work the way it’s supposed to. Yeah. It’s funny you say the one shot of Dilaudid. It was probably a milligram or half a milligram of Dilaudid.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Whatever it was it was enough to kill the pain but also bring back the high, right?
Lyon Herron:
Spike something, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. Dilaudid’s been a big one in my hospital stays. That first month of hospital stay I was in so much pain they had me on two milligrams of Dilaudid every three hours with a one milligram breakthrough of Dilaudid every three hours. So, every hour and a half I was getting two milligram, one milligram, two milligram, one milligram.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Fuck, man. But you were in so much pain. Did you-
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, but then it got to the point where the pain started dying a little bit and it just continued and this past year and a half… Thank God. And before COVID I would have my crew of AA guys bring me meetings in my hospital room. And then I took my five year cake at Sundowners at Cedars. It’s a little meeting at Cedars. I had my NG tube in. I could barely walk. I had to be walked in. I went up on stage, took my cake and spoke.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Love it.
Lyon Herron:
I could barely speak because it hurt my throat so bad to speak. But yeah, it’s been a fucking struggle though. After that first time they never gave me that much Dilaudid again. I don’t know who okayed that because everyone that I’ve told in the hospital they’re like, “That’s not real.” I’m like, “Look at my fucking chart.” You guys gave me that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s also an overdose concern. That’s what I was thinking.
Lyon Herron:
No, totally. They gave me that-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because at a certain point-
Lyon Herron:
That’s a lot of fucking Dilaudid every single day with no taper.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wait. How long?
Lyon Herron:
28 days of two milligrams every three hours-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my fuck. Dude, what?
Lyon Herron:
… with the one milligram breakthrough with zero tapers. Send you home. Oh, I kicked so fucking hard.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God, oh my God. I’m sweating over here. I’m sweating.
Lyon Herron:
I kicked so hard the first time and it sucked so [crosstalk 01:33:04]-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God. Here’s the other thing about that is that when you kick opioids you shit yourself regularly. So, you have all these digestive reactions, which that’s not useful in your case, right?
Lyon Herron:
No.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That seems-
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, that was miserable. But since then every single time I’m in there it was… Right now it’s 20 milligram of oxycodone as my base medicine with a one milligram Dilaudid breakthrough. And it’s gone to the point where my tolerance has built up so much to it that I’ll be in… This past hospital stay something went wrong when they moved a drain and my pain… Breaking bones, being in car accidents, I’ve flipped in two cars, I’ve broken my shoulder blade, I broke that in half with my collarbone and my ribs-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’d like to give your mother a very big hug.
Lyon Herron:
[crosstalk 01:34:11]. She deserves it. She deserves the hug, not what I put her through. People don’t see us and they’re just going to hear us.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just make sure.
Lyon Herron:
They’re not going to see my facial expressions.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She deserves the hug, yes.
Lyon Herron:
But I’ve dealt with so much pain in my life and I had never felt anything remotely close to this pain. I couldn’t breathe. I remember I woke up from the procedure and I woke up and I remember the first I was like, oh I have to pee and then the pain came over. And I tried to get up and I couldn’t get up out of bed. And I had to pee so fucking bad and I got out of the wrong side of my bed so all my IV lines were wrapped around me and I was literally straight jacketed in IV lines and I was covered in heart monitors and I was in so much pain that I couldn’t breathe. I could not breathe. It was the sharpest, deepest pain where this drain was underneath my ribcage.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, my fuck.
Lyon Herron:
It felt like someone had a knife from the inside-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They kind of did.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, but the pain felt like every time I would take a breath it was like someone had multiple knives inside underneath my ribs and they’re trying to pry my ribs apart. That’s what it felt like. That’s just a part of what the pain was. And I had to pee so bad that I couldn’t breathe so I was hyperventilating and I was trying to hold the pee in. It’s so funny now when I look at it because my nurse that day was… I’d become good friends with all these nurses and so I request certain nurses because we have such a tight friendship and I was pressing the call button, standing up, tied myself up within the fucking IVs. And I’m-
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:36:04]
Lyon Herron:
… myself up within the fucking IVs, and I’m sitting there, can’t breathe, and I’m just trying to hold my pee in, and I’m just squirting piss, because I’m pissing myself. I’m literally just pissing myself. [crosstalk 01:36:15] so fucking bad. And so they shoot me up with two milligrams of Dilaudid. I’m still, at that point when I woke up… My pain tolerance is very high. I was at a 15 out of 10 in pain. For me, that’s unimaginable for an average human being. They gave me two milligrams of Dilaudid and 20 milligrams of oxycodone. It didn’t fucking touch my pain. I think I might’ve moved to a 10 out of 10 from a 15 out of 10. Still so unmanageable, such fucked up pain, stupid. I can’t even wrap my head around how much pain I was actually in. I’ve blacked it out.
Lyon Herron:
They put me on a 24 hour ketamine drip. Straight up. That was the second or third time they had to do this to me in the hospital. And this time this pain lasted for-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did they take the drain out?
Lyon Herron:
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. They pushed the drain further in and so it hit a nerve or something, and I was sitting on the-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, but they didn’t want to fix the drain?
Lyon Herron:
It was in too optimal a position to drain the fluid, so it pretty much was-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So that was intentional. It didn’t slip.
Lyon Herron:
No, it was intentional. They put it in further, the furthest that they had to put any drain in, deepest they had put any drain in, and it must’ve been pushing on my diaphragm or sitting on some… I mean, there’s a million things-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And they needed it there.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, they needed it there. And so it was just, try to deal with it for as long as you can to try to get as much fluid as we could out. So they put me on the ketamine drip and I was on the ketamine drip for… Ended up being on it for two weeks. I was getting 0.3 milligrams an hour of ketamine and still getting 20 milligrams of oxycodone every three hours and one milligram shot of Dilaudid, every three hours, as well as Oxycontin, 10 milligrams, three times a day, Gabapentin three times a day, Robaxin three times a day, and Tylenol three times a day. And I was still at an eight out of 10 in pain. The pain just would not go away. It was so bad.
Lyon Herron:
But that also attests to how much of a tolerance I’ve built up to pain meds, which is so fucked because I don’t use them to get high, obviously, I use them to combat pain, but when you’ve had to use them in the hospital for such long periods of time 20 days, 40 days, 60 day periods, and then having to taper off them. When you get home, they give you oxycodone to try to taper off them, you build up such a high tolerance to the stuff that’s supposed to really work and it’s like taking an Advil. It doesn’t make me high.
Lyon Herron:
My sponsor always told me, one every four hours is taking as prescribed, four every hour is sing. Because this medicine, everything that you’re taking, he goes, it has a job just like you have a job. Your job is to heal. It’s job is to allow your body to relax enough so you can heal faster.
Lyon Herron:
My whole thing in my head is, this is just as much needed as the drain in my stomach is, for me to not be tense and not be tight, to allow my body to actually do what it’s supposed to do to take away the pain so that I’m not adding more trauma to what’s going on.
Lyon Herron:
But the mental battle that it’s conveyed, that has been one of the most difficult things to overcome just as much as… And that falls into that dark depression type thing of when I was in the hospital was I’d feel so guilty taking these things because I don’t want to be taking any of this shit, but I’m at a point where I have to be taking it because of the amount of pain that I’m in.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But is the guilt and the difficulty around… See, what I experienced was the difficulty… I was in a lot of pain, and so I didn’t have guilt around getting a shot of Dilaudid, the difficulty was around what it did to my literally to my alcoholism
Lyon Herron:
Mentally.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because I’m a junkie, or I was a junkie, and so that woke that up.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, it was that similar feeling that you felt.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There was a needle involved. I mean. All the goods. So for you, is it in your head? Is it I’m in an abstinence-based program, this doesn’t feel abstinent just because it’s confusing, or is it about the voice starting to talk again?
Lyon Herron:
Both. Very much both, because there was times where there are certain times where my pain would be at, say, a seven or an eight. If they gave me a 10 milligram pill, I would still be in pain. If they gave me a 15 milligram pill, I would fucking nod for two hours, and the difference of that, the five milligrams, it was like [crosstalk 01:41:47].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Then there’s that enjoyment, and you’re like, is this a relapse because I like it?
Lyon Herron:
But I don’t like nodding. I don’t like that type of shit. So for me, it sucked. Because I would just start nodding and drooling.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don’t like nodding in front of people.
Lyon Herron:
Luckily it was a lot of time alone.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, exactly.
Lyon Herron:
I was pretty much using, in a sense [crosstalk 01:42:13]. But I hate it would be these battles of if I do the right thing in my mind and take the less amount, I’m still going to be in pain. If I take the more, [crosstalk 01:42:30] it’s going to kill my pain, but I’m also going to get very, very high. [crosstalk 01:42:34].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Then questing yourself. Your motives.
Lyon Herron:
There were certain times where you question your sobriety. Am I doing this to get high? Or am I doing-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, or do I-
Lyon Herron:
It’s a fucking very, very, very, very fine line of what the difference is in that sense, and the shit that plays in your head. Because [crosstalk 01:42:56]
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’d also be like, I deserve relief. That’s what my head would tell me.
Lyon Herron:
Another thing too. And then you go into the justification aspects of it. Do I deserve [crosstalk 01:43:07].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don’t even know if that’s wrong. I mean, you do deserve relief.
Lyon Herron:
But what sense of the word relief are going at?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally.
Lyon Herron:
Are you going at, let’s fucking check out relief from everything. But that’s the addict in me wanting to check out from everything in reality of what I have to go through, or is it the relief of the actual pain and then the unfortunate circumstances that it does make me high? And I don’t know the answer.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. I feel like the real issue is, it’s one thing, because I’ve been in situations where I needed pain management and you can walk that line for a little while, but the length of time that you have had to walk that line and that you will continue to have to walk that line for, let’s say, the foreseeable future-
Lyon Herron:
[crosstalk 01:44:06] right now, unfortunately. My whole thing is, I’m very, very vulnerable and honest about this shit. I want people to know that I have to take Oxycontin or oxycodone to be able to fucking move, to get out of bed, because this pain, at times, is so debilitating that I can’t fucking get out of bed. And like you said, the amount of time that I’ve had to be on it, that’s what starts to play tricks on your head is, am I still sober because I’ve been on this for so long? But then I, at the same time, I, sorry to cut you off, but at the same time, I don’t take it more than what’s prescribed to me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You stay connected to your program, and I think that’s the big piece is, you stay connected to the questioning. I think it’s when you stop questioning, when you’ve convinced yourself wholly.
Lyon Herron:
When you’re just like, fuck it [crosstalk 01:45:12] I’m taking it [crosstalk 01:45:13].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When you stop asking about your motives. You’re so connected and plugged in that I feel like the fact that you’re questioning it is just part of the recovery aspect, but it’s so important for you to talk about it because there are a lot of people living in chronic pain and sobriety.
Lyon Herron:
That have to take this shit.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It may not be the same chronic pain and it’s funny, I get a lot of calls about medical marijuana and edibles.
Lyon Herron:
Another thing, recently that I’ve, because I want to get off opiates-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, and that’s what people say to me. I want to get off opiates. I need the opiates. I need pain management. What do I do? And I’m like, look, you have to make that decision with your professionals. And it’s okay.
Lyon Herron:
Also too, it’s a program of personal recovery. This is personal to me. Not every single person in recovery is going through the extremes that I’m going through, and so I don’t expect people to be taking very strong opiates on a daily basis just to get out of bed. If you’re doing that, you’re fucking not sober if you’re not in actual, true pain. If you’re in true chronic pain and you’re trying to figure out what’s the best way to do this without falling down that rabbit hole again and you’re doing it, then 100%. But if you’re taking it to take it, then obviously you’re not sober.
Lyon Herron:
That’s another thing too, is personal recovery and finding out what works for each person personally. Recently I started talking to a company that they sent me… I hate smoking weed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Me too.
Lyon Herron:
I love everything about cannabis and the plants and what it does, and I’m such a massive advocate of it for actual health and inflammation and so many different things. The actual hemp plant is so powerful in so many different ways and I truly think that in certain aspects, if you look at the DNA of hemp and you look at the DNA of our personal DNA, literally they almost mirror each other.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow, I didn’t know that.
Lyon Herron:
It’s almost like we’re missing something that that has, and it’s missing something that we have, and it’s almost like it’s supposed to fucking go together. I’ve looked at every single thing to try to help kill cancer cells, shrink tumors, deal with pain, everything. I take a lot of the lion’s mane mushrooms, all these different mushroom supplements as well, to try to help with that.
Lyon Herron:
Recently I had this company send me these things and I talked to a sponsor, I talked to my mom, I talked to my fiance, I talked to a lot of people about it, and everyone’s going to have their own opinions on what to do and not-to-do, but at the end of the day, I don’t want to be relying on an opiate to be able to have to get out of bed every single morning and to be able to do just normal life things.
Lyon Herron:
What it is, it’s pre-rolled CBD joints and I would take a puff of it and it would make… The reason I don’t like smoking weed is that it would make me feel very paranoid, and I could do an eight ball and feel more comfortable than taking a fucking hit off anything.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Me too. I’m literally the same way. I always said that, I was like, heroin fucked me up less than having a hit of marijuana. Literally it was like a psychosis.
Lyon Herron:
Lock me in a fucking closet. Don’t talk to me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So scary.
Lyon Herron:
It’s the scariest thing in the world.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It is so scary. I’m like, no, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. At least I know, straight up, and eight ball I will do much better.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah, no, that’d be totally fine. But I tried it. One of them made me feel like that, and I was like, okay, don’t fuck with that one again. I hated that. I sat here and I looked at my fiance and I was like, she knows, she knows.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Not good. Not good.
Lyon Herron:
She was like, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” And I was like, “I don’t feel right.” She’s like, “What?” And I was like, “I think it fucked me up. I don’t like this. This is not good.” And she’s like, “You’re fine. Shut the fuck up. You’re fine.” Then the other ones have actually worked and started to help with pain management, that don’t make me feel anything.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s awesome.
Lyon Herron:
I’m like, now we’re starting to make progress here where I’m able to take less and less of the opiates and I’m able to use those. I always take CBD tinctures that have the zero THC that literally do not make you feel anything at all. You use that for inflammation, certain pain stuff, some of them do and don’t, there’s so many different marketing scams with these big CBD companies that literally they’re the most shit. Fucking for all we know it could be olive oil that we’re fucking putting in our mouths, it wouldn’t taste like it.
Lyon Herron:
But then it’s the family owned and small farms that I want to work with that actually I know that they’re growing this specifically for actual medical purposes to help with pain management. And hearing other testimonies that it’s working for cancer patients that are dealing with chemo and side effects and pains, and at this point in my life, in my sobriety, I can’t let judgment of others, or my fear of judgment of others, dictate how I’m going to get through the extreme situations that I’m in.
Lyon Herron:
That is something I’ve had to overcome significantly. Really, really overcome, because as an alcoholic my biggest fear is what you think of me. That’s my biggest fucking fear, is how you perceive who I am. Do you think-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you think I’m sober?
Lyon Herron:
Do you think I’m actually sober because I’m taking this? Not because if I work a program or if I work with others, I’m not sponsoring anyone right now, just because of how hellish of a year this has been, that I needed to focus on me, but I still am very much of service in every aspect that I can. In sobriety, outside of sobriety, I try to help others, whatever that looks like and whatever that is for each day.
Lyon Herron:
I’m coming to a place of comfort where I am learning to care less of what others think about what I’m doing to keep me going and to not drink and use and get loaded, and not trying to change from the shoulders up. And so finding, unfortunately, there’s trials and tribulations of having to learn that, even at six years sober, having to feel a little bit uncomfortable to find what’s going to work for actual pain. My real issues.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The reality is that if we put it into a pharmaceutical pill, or whatever, if we did that and then gave it to you from a prescription bottle, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because somehow that would make it different and everything.
Lyon Herron:
Okay and acceptable.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. And I think that the thing with medical marijuana is, what are you using it for? Does it work for that?
Lyon Herron:
And also too-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Dosage.
Lyon Herron:
Yeah. And also too, I’ve made it very, very, very apparent, and I do make it very apparent to every company that I talk to is, look I am in recovery. I do not want anything to make me change shoulders up. If your product will make me feel like I’m high, I don’t want to use it. And I’m massive, I’m very open and very vocal about that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s cool too, because those companies get to use you and talk about your experience as pain management without that aspect of it. They get to get feedback, and that’s great for other people in the position, because I do think so many people get stuck on opiates, and the thing about opiates, there’s some stuff this with marijuana too, but the thing about opiates is that the tolerance. It’s not that you have to live on them, it’s that they’re not going to work forever.
Lyon Herron:
No, they’re not.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So it’s actually not really even about taking them all the time, per se, it’s not a long-term solution. It was never meant to be a long-term solution. I know that there’s people who have chronic pain who go through these big detoxes so that they can get the medication to start working again. They have to basically [crosstalk 01:54:27].
Lyon Herron:
After a certain amount of time, it doesn’t work anymore. Because how many times have I detoxed out of the hospital to go back in and the pain meds not to fucking work. I’m a living example of that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You got to try.
Lyon Herron:
Being able to find a vape cartridge that doesn’t make me high, but it also relaxes my body and takes away my pain, I’d rather take something that grew out of the ground than something that was created in a lab that I’m more susceptive to be addicted to that than I am to being addicted to something else.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think the real big piece to this, Lyon, is that you are so connected to a community, you have conversations with people, you run it by people, there aren’t secrets. And I think where people get into a lot of trouble is with the secrets. Because they’re afraid or because they’re afraid of judgment, like you said, afraid of what other people are going to think about them and that’s where you get into trouble. But when you’re connected to your community, that doesn’t mean that your community, or everybody, has to say, yeah, that’s a great idea, it just means that you are talking to multiple people, you’re open to multiple opinions kind of deal, and you’re not hiding. Because that is where addiction… Addiction is like mold, it needs a dark place.
Lyon Herron:
And once it starts to grow, it’s not going to stop and you’re going to have to throw it away. And it’s just like sobriety. Once it starts to grow and it gets, like you said, once you start holding those secrets and you started doing it without talking to anybody, without being honest about what you’re doing, is when it starts to really spiral. And that’s been such a big thing for me.
Lyon Herron:
Look, I haven’t been perfect through all of this. In the hospital there was times when was I taking it too to check out, or was I taking it to actually deal with pain? There’s that fine line of, I don’t know exactly what I was taking it for. But that’s also too, I’m not afraid to be open about that. And do I need to change my sobriety date over that? I’m not entirely positive, because I don’t know that.
Lyon Herron:
Again, that’s a mental battle that I talk to people about. I bring that up and I be vulnerable and honest and want to hear what people have to say about their personal experience about it, because that’s how we keep each other sober, is sharing each other’s personal experience with certain aspects of dealing with this.
Lyon Herron:
Unfortunately for me, not many people have been through what I’ve been through to have that understanding. Not saying they don’t have the understanding, but to have that experience. But for me, I think that I’ve been able to maintain my sobriety because of the way that I, in a sense, I think in a way, that I’ve been able to stay honest through it all, and I’m not keeping shit within.
Lyon Herron:
I don’t know how to explain it. I think it’s just honesty. I really am just focused on that, and knowing that if I continue to be open about everything that I’m going through and taking in situational wise, I’m not holding any secrets or withholding anything from anyone, that it’s going to take me down. And so for me personally, I feel like my sobriety has been able to stay intact because of that honesty and integrity in that sense.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I agree with you. And I think it’s quite a feat to have come through all the things you’re coming through and be able to keep that voice at bay, because it’s hard for those of us who don’t have those things.
Lyon Herron:
It gets loud.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it gets loud. It gets loud in there. There are ways that people can support you. There are companies and different ways. Can you tell us, for people who are listening who want to support you, how can they do that?
Lyon Herron:
Right now, for the most part, I just have a GoFundMe. It’s just GoFundMe Lyon Herron medical fund. [crosstalk 01:59:08]. It’s L-Y-O-N H-E-R-R-O-N medical fund.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Got it. And then people can follow you on Instagram at Lyon, L-Y-O-N, underscore, Herron, H-E-R-R-O-N. And the GoFundMe is also-
Lyon Herron:
And the link in my bio
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The companies, isn’t there a way-
Lyon Herron:
There is.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Aren’t there some companies that donate? That people can buy clothing?
Lyon Herron:
Oh, yeah. Dumbass. My fiance and I have a clothing company. Shit.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You are forgiven.
Lyon Herron:
Yes, we have a clothing company. It is called Ly and Co. The website is lyandco.la. So L-Y A-N-D C-O dot L-A. We’ve been slacking on putting out new designs, need to do that soon. We have some stuff that should be releasing soon, but, yeah, all of that goes into just my day-to-day life and being able to pay rent.
Lyon Herron:
Obviously, I’m not able to work right now, and that’s the way that I’ve been able to support myself over the past year and a half, is through our company. That as well as hopeful brand ambassadorships that will help pay a little bit to help with just day-to-day living. Like I said, my medical fund typically goes to paying medical bills and copays and stuff like that. Just I have to go into the doctors a lot right now. Once a month I have to go in and have the drain exchange. I have to go under anesthesia once a month.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Just out of curiosity, who’s your health insurance?
Lyon Herron:
Blue Cross Blue Shield. My payment recently went down, thank God. I don’t know. My insurance helps a lot. I’ll get bills that’ll show up for, I don’t know, 15, 20,000, 25,000, and they’ll be like, insurance covered 20,000 of this and so it’s 5,000 out of pocket and here, there, the other. Sometimes it’ll be a $15,000 bill and I’ll pay 400 and I’m like, that’s insane.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, I adore you, Lyon. You are incredible, and I think that the world is a better place with you in it, sharing your story and encouraging the rest of us to be really grateful for what we have and what we can do on a daily basis. Watching your journey, I’m reminded to make my pity parties shorter and shorter, because our health is the most valuable thing that we have, and I think the first thing that we do as a drug addict, an alcoholic, is destroy it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I have a brain that wants to destroy this vessel. That’s where I go when I’m in a bad place, and so your positivity and your ability to process these things at five and six years sober… I’ve been sober for 15 years, and I wonder if I would be able to muster that kind of positivity, because I’ve definitely had some medical shit that been through and let me just tell you, I didn’t take it as well. I wasn’t as cute as what you… I had eight and a half, seven and a half pound twins, and I had a twin pregnancy that was fucking insane, absolutely insane, most painful thing I’ve ever been through, and I didn’t take it like a champ. People are like, “I can’t believe you made it through.” I was like, “What else was I supposed to do?”
Lyon Herron:
You’re like, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I didn’t take it like a champ. I had no choice. I was a prisoner. I think that pain is a real thing to overcome and you’re doing an incredible job and we’re rooting for you.
Lyon Herron:
Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity to tell my story and to chat. It’s always fun.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely. Awesome. Well, thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
This podcast is sponsored by lionrock.life. Lionrock.life is a recovery community offering free online support group meetings, useful recovery information, and entertainment. Visit www.lionrock.life to view the meeting schedule and find additional resources. Find the joy in recovery at lionrock.life.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [02:04:07]
Ashley Jo is one of the producers of The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast team. With over a decade of experience working with C-level executives and directing corporate training events, she brings extensive production experience to Lionrock. In early 2020, she made a significant career change and stepped into the realm of podcasting.
Her recovery experience includes substance abuse, codependency, grief and loss, and sexual assault and trauma. Ashley Jo enjoys supporting others in recovery by connecting with people and being a leader. She shared her story in Season 3, Episode 92 of The Courage to Change.