#39 – Mike McAllister

Mike McAllister’s Story

Mike is a California native, living in San Clemente, California with his wife and 2 beautiful daughters. He has multiple ASE and Ford master certifications, as well as technical school certificates in automotive and heavy equipment mechanics.

Mike believes that the only ‘social media’ he needs is email, however if you want to connect with him you can sometimes find him in his wife’s Instagram feed, which can be found with the handle @chasingmcallisters.

He has been sober and in recovery for over 10 years. Mike is a committed member of a 12 step recovery group – his experiences are his only, and not representative of the group as a whole.

Additional Resources

Resources Mentioned

• Alcoholics Anonymous | AA
• Connect with Mike’s wife, Emily on Instagram

Our Sponsor  

• Lionrock Recovery

Connect with Us

• Podcast Website | Podcast Instagram | Podcast Facebook
• Lionrock Facebook | Lionrock Instagram
• Questions, comments or feedback? Email us at podcast@lionrockrecovery.com

Interested in a career at Lionrock Recovery?

• Click here to view all open positions.

Subscribe to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast

• Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Google Podcasts | Spotify
• Stitcher | iHeart | TuneIn | Overcast | SoundCloud

****

Episode Transcript

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame and I am your host. Today we have my friend Mike McAllister. Mike is a California native living in San Clemente, California with his wife and two beautiful daughters. He has multiple ASC and Ford Master certifications as well as technical school certificates in automotive and heavy equipment mechanics. Mike believes that the only social media he needs is email. However, if you want to connect with him, you can sometimes find him on his wife’s Instagram feed, which can be found with the handle @ChasingMcAllisters. He’s been sober and in recovery for over 10 years. Mike is a committed member of a 12 step recovery group. His experiences are his only and not representative of the group as a whole.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I had so much fun recording this episode with Mike. He did an incredible job. Mike is Emily McAllister’s husband and she has been one of our guests. An update is that the teacher that Mike talks about wanting to make amends to, he actually did call and make amends to this woman after the episode and was inspired by our conversation to do so. He says that he feels like he has a huge weight lifted off of his shoulders. This was so exciting for me and I’m just so proud of Mike and what a wonderful thing to have happen as a result of telling your story. So anyway, I hope you all enjoy this wonderful episode. Episode 39, let’s do this.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Mike, welcome to the podcast booth. You are officially our tallest guest. 6′ 3″?

Mike McAllister:

6′ 3″, yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay, well we’re going to have to get some bigger chairs in here. Okay. So I want to start by saying that you are married to my friend Emily McAllister.

Mike McAllister:

Yes, correct.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And she was episode seven of season one. And so that’s pretty exciting. And that I actually met you on the day that you met Emily.

Mike McAllister:

Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It was an interesting-

Mike McAllister:

Definitely a wild, wild night. Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Yeah. And you’ve been sober how long?

Mike McAllister:

A little over 10 years. I got silver November 18th, 2009. So when I took 10 years it was like, yeah, you know, I took seven, eight, nine. Yeah, I’m sober, right? It’s not like my first or my second. There was a couple of years ago where it had been longer than I realized I hadn’t been arrested in 10 years where I was like kind of emotional about it. It meant more to me that I’d managed to stay out of jail for longer than 10 years than almost being sober. Like when I was staying sober, it was like it’s just kind of what we do.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Right. But the fact that you had not been incarcerated for 10 years was like this huge-

Mike McAllister:

It was a big deal to me.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

I think I might have even called someone and was like, “Dude, I haven’t been arrested in 10 years.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Hopefully they were in program, too.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, yeah. Of course.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Everyone else and be like, “Yeah. Good job. I haven’t been arrested ever.”

Mike McAllister:

Right. Yeah. Good for you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Good for you. We get like these kudos for doing what everyone else is supposed to be doing.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So you grow up in Orange County?

Mike McAllister:

No. No. So I grew up in the High Desert. I grew up in a small town. At the time it was a very small town called Hesperia.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, Hesperia.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Great tattoo shop there.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. And you know, when I was a kid it was just a little dirt town. There was Main Street and there was one stop sign on Main Street.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, wow.

Mike McAllister:

It was very undeveloped. You know, I remember like fourth grade there was like Taco Bell came to town and people were like-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Lining up?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Like the iPhone?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Like I’d never heard it, but I was like, what’s the big deal?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Nacho bell grande’s like iPhone 10.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s very-

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. So it’s a pretty rural, you know? Just a small blue collar town.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So you and I are same age. So you were 33. So then since then it’s no longer a small town. Is that-

Mike McAllister:

No. I mean during the housing boom in the early 2000s-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

It just exploded.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Mike McAllister:

You started seeing, prior to this, there was no streetlights. It grew as a city.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. What’s it like growing up in a small town? What did your parents do in that town?

Mike McAllister:

I mean, I enjoyed it. It was all I knew. I would love to go back to a small town. My dad was a painter, painted houses and then my mom as a kid, she ran a daycare out of her house while she was a full time nursing student as well.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh wow.

Mike McAllister:

So like she ran the business all day and went to school all night.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And do you have siblings?

Mike McAllister:

I do. I have a younger brother who’s two and a half years younger than me. And then I have a sister who, I have a half sister who, I think she’s about 19 and a half, 19 and a half, 20 years younger than me.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. And that’s on mom or dad’s side?

Mike McAllister:

On my mom.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Mom’s side? Okay. And does your mom live nearby? Are you close?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, so my mom is now in Orange County. Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay, cool. And so what was it like growing up? Sounds like your mom was very busy.

Mike McAllister:

Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And there were a lot of kids in the house I take it?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. 10 kids. 10, 12 kids probably every day.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How was that? How did that feel? Like, “Oh my mom’s taking care of all these other kids”?

Mike McAllister:

You know, it was crazy. So my home, I grew up in an alcoholic home. Right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Now what does that mean?

Mike McAllister:

So my dad was an alcoholic.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Mike McAllister:

My dad was an alcoholic, my grandfather was an alcoholic. I have an aunt and uncle who both died of alcoholism. So it’s a big deal in my family. My grandpa, when he died, he had 40 years sober. So my whole life my grandpa was sober. I knew what Alcoholics Anonymous was. I just always knew about [crosstalk 00:06:00]

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And did he live nearby?

Mike McAllister:

No, my grandfather lived in Laverne.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. How far is that?

Mike McAllister:

From where I grew up?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

An hour drive, 45 minutes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay, okay, okay.

Mike McAllister:

And then my dad, my entire childhood was in and out of the program.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Mike McAllister:

So me and my dad, I’m the typical, like what the book talks about, Dr Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. Right? So my dad would get sober, life would be good. Life was kind of stable, but it was a religious home. I grew up in a Christian house, so we would go to church every Sunday. There was like morals. There were morals instilled but then when he would get loaded, it was a complete opposite. You know? Extremely violent. I was disciplined like severely with the belt. I mean, when he was sober I would still get the belt but I knew when he was drinking because of the beatings I would get.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did everyone in your house get the belt?

Mike McAllister:

No. No. My brother was treated like the baby. And I don’t know if this was like on purpose or whatever but he was the baby.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Were you the only one that got the belt?

Mike McAllister:

I’d pay the price. He got hit a couple of times, but it wasn’t like-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And so two questions on that. Did you think that that was the norm? Like yeah, this is the norm. Like other people in your community, most kids got hit with the belt.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Most of my friends all got the belt.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. And then what do you think about that now?

Mike McAllister:

If it was a good thing for me or-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I mean-

Mike McAllister:

Had a negative effect? I definitely responded very well to the belt.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Mike McAllister:

Like if I knew I was going to do something I wasn’t supposed to do, I had to be willing to get the belt. You know?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. It’s interesting, just like playing in my head. They’ve done all this research that the most violent place in America is in the home and that children who have had corporal punishment, that they tend to grow up to be more violent. Maybe even not, you know, more being just more, not necessarily being enough to be a problem. But just more than other people. And so I was just curious like if, I mean you have two little girls, like would you-

Mike McAllister:

Oh no, I would never. One of the good things about like being sober and being like able to break that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That yeah. So you responded well to it, but it’s not something you think is how you would-

Mike McAllister:

No, not in my house. What I did learn from that was how effective physical violence is, you know? I remember the teachers being like, well let’s talk this out. And I’m like, “Let me just punch the kid in the mouth.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, right, right.

Mike McAllister:

You know?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. That’s true. That’s an interesting thing. I think I thought that, too.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I think I thought that too, where there was a lot of like talking and I knew that if I just acted violently, that people would respond. Whether that’s fear, whether that’s aggression back, you’d get some kind of response. Right?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Were you like, okay, violence is the way to communicate in the world?

Mike McAllister:

Absolutely.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

And when I did use it as a kid, it worked.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, right. I mean it is.

Mike McAllister:

It’s as highly effective for a young kid.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Because you’re an enormous human being.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Tell me about your size when you were little.

Mike McAllister:

I’ve always been bigger.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. So like not only was violence an effective tool, but you were physically able to intimidate.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. By like junior high I was probably six foot, 180. And by high school I was 200 pounds, 6′ 2″.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Jesus. Okay. So then how often do you think that dad got sober? Or what were the increments of time? How long did stability last for?

Mike McAllister:

So my parents were married 11 years. They got divorced when I was 11 but during that 11 years he did go like five years. He made it like five years. So there was like a period where-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Straight?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Where life was like finally like, there was still, you know, he’s an alcoholic so the behavior is a little different than the average human being, but it was still like stability, you know what I mean?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did he go to meetings?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, he was huge in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, okay.

Mike McAllister:

And so I was like the little kid at the meetings. Right? And that was how I interpreted. Now, Orange County looks a little different AA wise. Where I grew up, there was a lot of like very low bottoms, straight out of prison. Guys just completely covered in tattoos, just big burly looking guys. Right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

And so that’s what I equated like-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

For sure.

Mike McAllister:

This is what an alcoholic is.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

This is what they look like.

Mike McAllister:

And my grandpa would like detox guys in the garage giving them vodka. Like, okay, well that’s what an alcoholic is. Right? But I could recite the serenity prayer as a kid. And I was like, cool, I know what it’s all about.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Can you go back and think like what did you think about the program? Were you like this is good, this is bad, this is weird? Do you think you ever thought about it?

Mike McAllister:

You know what, I actually thought being around those guys, I mean, like I said, they were big burly guys. I thought it was really cool. You know? And I knew my dad’s behavior and my parent’s relationship was better when he was going to meetings and going to do AA.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. What was the period of time that he was sober of those five?

Mike McAllister:

So he got loaded right after my parents got divorced. So from-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So at 11?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. So what would that be? From like seven, eight years old to 11.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So when that happened, so your parents get divorced, how did you feel about that?

Mike McAllister:

I felt responsible for it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, okay.

Mike McAllister:

I remember like as they were telling us, me and my brother, I remember crying and saying, “No, I’ll behave. I’ll be different.” And I had like a lot of my own stuff going on. I was a super angry kid. I fought a lot because of, I don’t know, just the stuff boys do, I guess when you’re that age. And I was already getting in trouble. I was already stealing cigarettes from my grandma.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. You had your first drink at what, eight?

Mike McAllister:

Eight. Yeah, second grade.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So in second grade, how did that go down?

Mike McAllister:

So I knew how dad acted when he drank.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Mike McAllister:

Right? I knew how-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Was he ever happy or was he always angry? Like, did you have any like-

Mike McAllister:

No, he was happy, but there was like a light switch that snapped.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Totally.

Mike McAllister:

You know?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes, I do know.

Mike McAllister:

It was like you do something wrong and it would go-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

South.

Mike McAllister:

Extreme.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Real fast.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

And so while my mom was at nursing school, she would have like these margarita parties at night with the other students.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Studying and whatever?

Mike McAllister:

Studying. Yeah. And I saw how they behaved with alcohol. And then I saw like Cheers was on TV, Married with Children.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Mike McAllister:

That was like my other exposure to alcohol.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Mike McAllister:

And then I was always told, no you can’t have any. And I was like well this is kind of BS.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Mike McAllister:

The only drink I, for whatever reason, knew how to make was a screwdriver. I had a friend over and I poured heavy, heavy on the vodka. Right? And then just enough orange juice so it would turn orange.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Mike McAllister:

And I started drinking it and he took a couple sips of it and didn’t want any. And I’m like, “We have to drink this.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I made it, we can’t waste-

Mike McAllister:

Well yeah. Right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, yeah.

Mike McAllister:

That’s how it was later in life. I’m not throwing it away.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

But no, at that time I’m like, if we get caught like for one, I’m going to catch a huge ass whooping.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, right. Like make it worth it kind of deal?

Mike McAllister:

But during that, so I probably drank like a half pint of vodka, you know? Not enough to like, I definitely got drunk from it. It was enough for me to remember like the experience and how I felt when I drank it that my, you know, like you hear I was born with my skin was too tight. It loosened up, you know? And I just didn’t care. Like I just didn’t care about how I felt, you know?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Something that I experienced was, and a lot of people talk about is like, I didn’t know how anxious I was until I wasn’t. I didn’t know how much I needed that drink until I had it. Right? Because I had never experienced the other side of relaxation of like my skin not being too tight. So did you have that experience or did you kind of know that you were uncomfortable?

Mike McAllister:

No. What I knew was, is I felt I wasn’t angry. You know? I didn’t feel wound up like a pressure cooker as a kid, you know? And I was like, I knew, I’m like, so this is what they’d been hiding from me. I’m going to do this the rest of my life. Even after that, I couldn’t understand how people didn’t do it every day.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

It just didn’t make sense to me.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Do you remember the first time that you were angry? Can you recall the first time you were like, “I’m angry”?

Mike McAllister:

As a young child?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

Oh, all the time. Like I don’t remember even being able to identify that was the feeling.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

But yeah, I’d get in trouble and I would just like rage and then I would go in the bedroom. Here should’ve been a red flag. I would go to my bedroom and I would make myself hyperventilate. And I would hold my breath until I pass out and then I would come to and I would feel like that tingling sensation.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yep.

Mike McAllister:

And I’m like, this is amazing. You know? And like that’s how I figured out how to calm myself down.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Wow. How old were you?

Mike McAllister:

I was a kid.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Little?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Kindergarten, first grade.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. So I mean you really were born with, I mean that just ism. Just embedded.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Why did you think that your parents’ divorce was your fault?

Mike McAllister:

I was getting in a lot of trouble at school. They would ask me to do reports or they would ask me to do this and I’m like, I’m not doing it. I just don’t care. I’m not doing that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

I don’t know. I think that was just like a go-to. I didn’t know any other way to feel except I’m responsible.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, I’m responsible.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And so they split up. How do you find out the dad has relapsed?

Mike McAllister:

Shortly after my parents divorced, my dad’s mom died. And I mean he’s not the alcoholic who’s able to hide it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Mike McAllister:

You know? It’s like by day two you know he’s drinking. Just the way he talks. His attitude.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did your mom say like, “Dad’s drinking again,” or like-

Mike McAllister:

No, he wasn’t in the house.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But did anyone mention it? Because he had five years of sobriety so for that to end, did anyone bring that up or you just noticed it and that was new normal?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just knew dad’s drinking again.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Dad’s drinking again. That’s it.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How did that affect your drinking?

Mike McAllister:

So I was 11. So my first drink, I got ahold of anything that could make me feel different. Any chance I had, whether it’d be like going through my friend’s parents medicine cabinets and just finding the bottle that said, do not operate heavy equipment. I’d be like, cool. That’s the one I want. I don’t know what it is, but I want that one.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Do not mix with alcohol means mix with alcohol immediately.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. And take more than what the bottle says.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes. There’s a commercial for a drug called Lyrica, a pharmaceutical drug and every time I watch it on a TV and it’s like, “Do not mix with alcohol.” And my brain goes, this has got to be great with alcohol. We just like hone in on that, like eagle eye.

Mike McAllister:

And I’m going to crush it because I want it now. I don’t want to wait 20 minutes for it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No, no. And there’s no waiting.

Mike McAllister:

No.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Waiting is really unacceptable.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What age were you going through medicine cabinets?

Mike McAllister:

Oh, same. Probably 9, 10, 11. When I figured out like if I took too much medicine or if I drank too much NyQuil or whatever it may be, I would have an effect. And so by that time it was like an experiment.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did your parents see this? I mean, was your mom like, “Oh boy”?

Mike McAllister:

No, there was another time I got into the alcohol cabinet and I ended up passed out in the hallway and I got in trouble for it. And yet my mom poured out all the alcohol which was like bummer. Right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. But definitely not a deterrent.

Mike McAllister:

No, but like that was it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Mike McAllister:

My consequences were like yard work, you know? I was mowing the lawn. We lived on almost an acre. It was like, “Hey go weed the yard.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, right, right. So you were going through medicine and then how did that progress?

Mike McAllister:

So once my dad was out of the house, it was like full on, I’m going to do whatever I want. By that time I was almost the size of my mom, you know? And I’m like, “Well, you’re not going to stop me and no other man is coming into my house and going to try to discipline me. Like that’s not happening.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Did it?

Mike McAllister:

No, no. Any guy who came around like I was a jerk kid.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. They were like, “Yeah, no [inaudible 00:00:18:30]”

Mike McAllister:

I’m not getting involved with this lady.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

And I want to say by like 12 I actually found a big bag of weed at my dad’s house. And I knew what it was and I didn’t know how to smoke. I didn’t know anything about it, but for some reason I knew what it was.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Mike McAllister:

Right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Mike McAllister:

And I pinched a lot of it. I didn’t know how much I needed. And took a couple of friends and we rolled it up and smoked it and so there was like another vice for me. I loved smoking weed.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. And that just like increased. Now it was like this is just a full time job.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Yeah. So then by like junior high, I’d gotten in a fight on the bus, on the school bus in seventh grade. And my junior high was like four and a half, five miles away. And I got on the bus and there was two other kids. And this was like Pokemon cards. Right? And I told these kids, I said something like, you guys are lames. Something probably a little bit more extreme, but I said something.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Mike McAllister:

And at my stop it was time to get off and this other kid punched me and came at me over the side of my head. Right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The lame kid did?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, the lame kid did.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Wow.

Mike McAllister:

Seventh grade, I was like, yeah, six foot tall. I was a big kid. I pulverized this kid. And so I was kicked off the bus. I had to go to court. They tried to, and thank God this was like the time when they put cameras on buses. So I ended up getting kicked off the bus. We both had to go to court. He didn’t get kicked off the bus. And then we both got charged with mutual combat.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Mutual combat?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Mike McAllister:

And I was probably, what would I be, 13? 12, 13 at the time. So then I had to get to school every day. And so there was a Vons about a block and a half away from me and I would go there every morning, almost every, if I was out, I would go there whenever I needed to and I would steal a bottle of alcohol and I would walk the four. Then there was a Mobile where you could get a big drink and I would just fill it up and I would drink every day to school whether I would ride my bike or walking. At that time I was able to like maintain, right? I was able to get right to that like sloppy where I was still kind of like people wouldn’t know.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

And stay that way all day. And it was an everyday thing for me by that time.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And did other people know?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, my friends did, but they weren’t even like-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Were they doing the same thing?

Mike McAllister:

I mean we would like on the weekends or whatever, Friday [crosstalk 00:20:52].

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

They weren’t like daily drinkers?

Mike McAllister:

Oh no, no. You know what, when you’re that age it’s kind of like it was a joke. They thought it was funny. They were like, “Oh, he’s drinking again.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s funny. It is funny when you’re that age.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Because it seems so ridiculous.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And so how did things progress from there? Did anything happen as a result other than like mutual combat?

Mike McAllister:

No. I’d been busted by my mom a few times and it was just like my attitude by that time was yeah, you’re not going to do anything. I’m going to do it anyway. You know?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. That was very similar to how I was.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. So by the end of eighth grade year, and during this whole time, like as a kid, I had excelled in sports. Right? I would always been-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So you were still involved in-

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. And I think I got that sense of approval from sports.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, yeah. What did you play?

Mike McAllister:

Everything. I played soccer, I played football, I played baseball. The local sheriffs were like my Pop Warner football coaches. They knew who I was from a very young age, you know? And I sought that approval. And so by that time I was still partying, but I was also still kind of like participating in life. And then towards the end of my eighth grade year, so I grew up riding dirt bikes, grew up around horses and I had just sold one of my other dirt bikes. And my mom was like, “Hey, I know you’ve been going through like hard time. Somebody at my work is selling another dirt bike. They’re down in Paris, California. Let’s go take a look at it. Right? And if you like it, I’ll buy it for you.” And I was like, “Okay,” like, okay, let’s go do this.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, right?

Mike McAllister:

So this was like three or four days before the end of school. And we went down-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

In eight grade?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. And I didn’t think anything like hey, why are we going down here on a week school day, you know?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, right. You tell us something we want. We don’t see obstacles.

Mike McAllister:

No. So we get down to like this ranch in Paris and she said, she goes, “Oh yeah, it’s like a ranch,” you know. So we get down to like this ranch and she and my stepdad, my now stepdad is in the car and we pull up and they go, “All right, let’s go find it. Let’s go get it.” And so I get out and three men, like big guys approached me. And there’s one guy, his name was Pastor Jerry and he’s like, “Hi, I’m so and so. You’re going to our Mexico facility for two months for troubled youth.” And during this interaction, like basically there was a bag in the trunk, my stepdad got out, put it on the ground, my parents got in the car and they drove away. And they were like, “Yeah, you’re coming with us.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What went through your mind?

Mike McAllister:

Well, to run.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, for sure.

Mike McAllister:

It’s a big open space. You’re not going anywhere. There’s three guys who are way bigger. This is the type of place that’s run by people straight out of prison, you know? And so they put me in this van and it was like a old Econoline van, white van. It had the sliding door on the one side. The two guys got in the front and then they put me, so there’s the middle row, they put me all the way in against the other wall. The other guy sat next to me, closed the door and I remember there was a white like coil of rope on the ground. And they said, “If you try to move, you try to get out here, we’re going to tie you up.” And so I knew. I was like, this is it, right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

Dad’s out of my life. My mom just took off. Like I’m flying solo. This is-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. It is one of the scariest feelings and like I remember like two big guys coming in to get me and then there was one woman. And you know, like quickly thinking like what are my exit options? Like what are my options? Right? And then you get to a point where you’re like, there’s no way out of this. I have to wait. Like I have to let them take me before I can even figure anything out. Your situation, like I think I knew about this happening to kids. So I knew what was happening when it happened. Like I was like, Oh, I’m being taken to one of those places in Utah. I knew what was happening, but you probably didn’t know a lot of people this was happening to, right?

Mike McAllister:

No.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. So you have no idea. You’re like I don’t know where I’m going. And you’re going to Mexico?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Yeah. I’m being kidnapped right now.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

And so we went across the border, we got to this town, it’s called like Elsa Rio or [inaudible 00:25:14]. It’s down by Rosario and it’s [inaudible 00:25:15]. and then you pull off on this dirt road and it’s another like 10 miles down to the middle of nowhere. And pull up to this farm ranch looking place and it’s got three like individual houses on it. And there’s no windows, there’s no doors on any of the places. There’s no running water, no electricity, no gas, nothing. There’s no amenities. You’re basically camping under a roof, you know? And it was run by Calvary Chapel. As you’re pulling up, you see this huge sign, it says “U-turn for Christ.” Right? And they were basically like, “Hey, this is where you’re going to stay. It’s a place where they try to break you.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yep, yep, yep. That’s where I went, too.

Mike McAllister:

There’s like severely very like labor intensive work. And then they take your shoes at night, they shaved everybody’s head so you stand out.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did they like-

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:26:04]

Mike McAllister:

… take your shoes at night. They shaved everybody’s head, so you stand out.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

They didn’t shave my head. Did they make you count in the bathroom or you only had certain amount of minutes?

Mike McAllister:

No, it wasn’t like that. There was really nowhere to go, but-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, right, right. So they didn’t-

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. It occurred to, me after I left that place. I mean, obviously it took her shoes at night because they didn’t want anyone leaving. But I’m like, “Why would they take our belts?” They didn’t want anyone hanging themselves. There was no running water in the place.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How does that work, with no running water? I mean, I understand that people live like that.

Mike McAllister:

They would get a delivery of potable water that you’d have to boil. But for baths and stuff, for bathing, there was a well on the property, that you literally lowered a bucket into. There would be times where there would be dead mice floating in there. You’d have to go in there, you’d have to lower your bucket in and then put it on a fire, warm it up. And that’s how you bathe.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And then what about going to the bathroom?

Mike McAllister:

There was an outhouse.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How many kids were there, and were they all boys?

Mike McAllister:

All boys. I was the youngest there. I was 14, at the time. Majority of them were like 16, 17.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Yeah. And where are they all from So Cal?

Mike McAllister:

All over. All over. I really think this is one of those places, they put a really good webpage up and they said, “We’re going to save your kid.” And my mom bought into it. She was like, “This is what my kid needs. They’re a religious-based organization. This would be awesome for my son.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. They’re camping. They’re learning skills.

Mike McAllister:

That’s what they portrayed it as.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, right, right. And so you show up and what did the other kids tell you? Have people really only been there two months?

Mike McAllister:

No, there was kids who were there for months. “I’m not leaving here until I’m 18.” Their parents would just sending checks. And they were like, “Yeah, just keep my kid. We don’t want him back here anymore.” I mean, in all fair, these kids were doing all the same things I was doing. And then I definitely learned how to do more things while I was there. There was like, “Hey, have you ever learned how to huff this?” I’m like, “No, what does that even mean?” But it was another way of getting high.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Were they kind to you?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. As far as the kids or the people who run the place?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No, the kids. The kids.

Mike McAllister:

Oh yeah. I never got in any altercations with any of them.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Yeah, there was sort of the place that I went, which was not rustic, but they pit us against each other. You would move up and get more privileges if you outed someone for doing something. I went to a couple of different places and some, there was this, “We’re going through this together, this bond of, ‘Where the (beep) are we?'” And then at the other place, it was like they made it so they didn’t want the residents to band together. So they would reward you for outing people doing anything.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. I mean, I think I just learned to keep a low profile, you know what I mean? Just fall in line, until I could find my way out.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What were the people that worked, like the pastors … What did you do during the day? What was the way that they were trying to change your life?

Mike McAllister:

Up at 5:00 AM. You’re up. You got to read, I want to say, it was Proverbs. You got to read Book of Proverbs every day, every morning. They do just a church service type of thing every day. And then you go out on a work crew. They would serve beans and rice, garbage food, every day, that had been donated. I mean, the flies were just …

Mike McAllister:

It’s disgusting. I got used to having flies all over my food while I was eating. It was a gross place. You go out on a work crew. A lot of it was working for orphanages, building walls, the cinder-block walls, concrete stuff, a lot of woodworking stuff, construction work.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did you learn skills?

Mike McAllister:

Oh yeah. Yeah, I definitely learned how to build stuff. I mean, I’ve been taking stuff apart since I was a kid. It was hard, hard work. They work it out of you. You’re limited supply of food and water all day, and then you come back in-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Limited water?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, you’d get a bottle of water a day.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s it?

Mike McAllister:

Middle of summer. Yeah. I mean, that was-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You couldn’t get more water?

Mike McAllister:

No, no. It was whatever you got when you were out during the day. I think part of that was, “You’re not leaving. We’re not going to give you enough that you could take with you. If you want something, we are in complete control.” I was like, “You know what? I could do this for two months.” One of the guys was leaving and I wrote a note. He was in a couple towns over where I lived, it just happened to work out that way.

Mike McAllister:

I gave him a letter and I said, “Hey, mail this to this address,” right? Don’t know if he was ever going to do it or not. Just, “Hey, give it a shot.” And then a couple of weeks went by, and I had came back from a work crew. And they were like, “Hey, your Uncle Jim came by. He was down here fishing and his mom. Your mom told him where you were. He just wanted to come down and see how you’re doing.” I was thinking, “My Uncle Jim died two years ago. Drank himself to death.”

Mike McAllister:

I’m like, “Well what was he driving?” They’re like, “A white truck.” I immediately knew it was my dad. And so sure enough, Uncle Jim shows up two hours later, around dinner time. And he’s like, “What is this place? I can’t believe you’re here. This place is what it is.” And he gave me a little watch, not even with the band, just a watch, for the time. And he was like, “Hey.” And the driveway was about a quarter-mile long, to a dirt road, and that-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did they let you alone with him?

Mike McAllister:

I mean we were kind of-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

When he handed you the thing?

Mike McAllister:

I think, by him showing up, no, yeah. We were in a group setting and it was totally secretive. Every other week, every other weekend, they would have visiting, right? During this time, a couple of days prior to that, they would hide the holes in the back. They would put as much lipstick on this pig as they could. So with him showing up and actually see what was really going on, they were on their heels. I could just feel it from the energy.

Mike McAllister:

So he gave me this watch and he goes, “At 11 o’clock you see headlights,” he goes, “You start running towards that road.” So there’s the 1, 2 and 3 house. At the 2 house, there was always two guys at night. There was always two of the employee workers, whatever you want to call them, volunteers-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Prison guards.

Mike McAllister:

… prison guards, looking for runners. I just remember I was full of adrenaline. I’m like, “All I got to do is make it to that road.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Because there’s no windows, what’s the sleeping arrangement that allowed you to get out of the house? Because getting out of the-

Mike McAllister:

It’s just bunks.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s just bunks, but are there doors?

Mike McAllister:

No, there’s no doors. Oh. And you know what? What I forgot to talk about-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So it doesn’t close? It’s literally just a-

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, it’s open-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

… structure.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, just a door jamb. And what I forgot to mention was, after about a month of being there, I had got the time schedule down and I had realized, “Hey, there’s a … ” I think it was on Sundays, we would go Ensenada to a real church service, right? So they could show their face and be like, “Oh look how good we’re treating these children.”

Mike McAllister:

While this was all going on, you have like 10, 15 minutes of commotion. And I’m like, “This is my chance. I’m taking off.” And we were like 15 miles from Ensenada. And I did. There was a wash, ran up the wash, ran through the back of the hills. I was just running up the direction I knew to go to.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Was anyone behind you?

Mike McAllister:

Another guy got out with me. Yeah, no-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Another kid?

Mike McAllister:

Another kid. Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But not [crosstalk 00:33:27]?

Mike McAllister:

They didn’t know we were going, no. We made it all the way to Ensenada. And then we-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Wait, wait, stop. This is-

Mike McAllister:

This is before my dad.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. This is before your dad. Okay. So we’re going back-

Mike McAllister:

We’re backing up a little. I forgot-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

We’re backing up. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you had an escape attempt before Dad, so let’s do that.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Because of our-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So you ran to Ensenada with another kid?

Mike McAllister:

Yep. Because of our, “charitable work” to the local community and in turn, law enforcement was on their side. So we were coming up, there’s a main road going into town, and I saw the guy, Jack, the director of the place, I saw his car going back and forth looking-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The director of the Calvary of the-

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, of the Mexico facility. I saw his car and I remember dropping to the ground. We were in the bushes and I dropped into these bushes, and I’m like, “What’s that smell?” There was literally a dog, that had been rotting out, next to me. I was like, “I can’t be here.” And I got up and just started booking it. Behind him was four or five cars and a van of the [foreign language 00:08:34], local police.

Mike McAllister:

They all went lights and sirens. The other kid stopped. I started booking it and just running through little towns, little side roads. They caught me at full gunpoint. These guys, they look like military. Put me in the back of the van and they took me to jail, in Ensenada. They left there for like two and a half days. The whole time I was in the jail. This is not US jail, right? It’s a concrete room with a hole in the ground, is basically what it is.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So everybody goes to bathroom in the hole in the ground?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s all it is. It’s just a concrete seat with a hole in it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And how many people are in the-

Mike McAllister:

Well, the one I was in, it was just drunks, right? They would bring a guy in, he’d be in there for a couple of hours and they would take him out. It was just like a drunk tank.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. But you were a kid. They put you in with the adults?

Mike McAllister:

Oh yeah. Yeah, there is no juvenile hall. The whole time I was there, they were telling me to call my family for money. They were like, “Call your parents.” And I’m like, “Look,” the best I can communicate, right? Was, “Dad’s not coming and Mom left me. You guys aren’t going to get anything from me.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. “I’m no anything.”

Mike McAllister:

Two and a half days, I think I was there-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

They gave up?

Mike McAllister:

No, the director showed up, the guy, Jack. And they released me to him. He brought me back. I had known about the punishments, right? And the punishment that I got was I had to dig a 10 by 10 by 10 hole in the ground. Back down in that wash, the riverbed. I was supposed to dig a hole and-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s like a grave.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Basically you dig this hole, and it’s like rock, and then fill it back in, right? That was supposed to be my punishment. I was like, “I’m not doing that.” And they were like, “Well, we’re not going to give you any food or water until you dig that hole.” So I dug down about four feet. I dug four or five feet down, straight down. I dug out a little cove, right? I stayed in there for another two days.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Without food or water?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. They didn’t give me food or water the whole time. And this is middle of July. So by the time I came out of that hole, from my edge of my shoulders to my collarbone, on both of my shoulders and my ears, was blistered. My ears were completely scabbed up-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

From the sun?

Mike McAllister:

From the sun. I was completely sunburned. My nose was completely sunburned. They were finally like, “This kid’s going to die out here.” So they did pull me out of the hole.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Called their bluff.

Mike McAllister:

After that, I was just like, “All right, you know what? I’m halfway through. I’m just going to do this.” So then a couple of weeks later, that’s when my dad.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. Okay. He says, “Run out when you see the headlights. 11:00”?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. 11:00. So that’s what I did. I mean, I was full speed down this long dirt driveway. And a quarter mile is not that long.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I bet you couldn’t even breathe, laying down, going to bed.

Mike McAllister:

Oh no, I couldn’t. I was like, “All I got to do is get to the road. It’s no longer me against-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Tunnel vision.

Mike McAllister:

… these guys. Yeah. It’s like, “I got some backup finally.” So we get out there and we get to the road, and the guys are behind me. They’re probably 15, 20 feet. They’re on my tail.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

They’re running?

Mike McAllister:

Oh yeah, yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. You went by yourself or someone else came with you?

Mike McAllister:

No, just me.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Just you. Okay, so you run out?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, I didn’t say anything to anybody. I was running out and we get all the way to the road. And my dad gets out of the truck, and these guys are, 15, 20 feet behind me. My dad lifts his waistband, pulls the gun out and points out these two guys and says, basically, “If any of you guys want to get any closer, you guys aren’t going to live to see tomorrow.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Why didn’t he just book the truck? They’re on foot. You’re in a truck. Why not just keep going?

Mike McAllister:

So how this road is, it’s a one-lane road, right? You have a hill on one side and then a fence line on the other. You have the driveway. I mean, it’s not just, “Hey, keep going straight into the middle of nowhere.” We had to turn around. I come to find out, once we got back to the border, my dad was completely drunk, and he’d been high on meth for a few days.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Lucky you, actually.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, not only was his behavior … it was how he is when he gets loaded and then sprinkle some meth on that. It was like a little intense.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s some gangster (beep). Okay. So he pulls a gun and they stop?

Mike McAllister:

Oh yeah, dead in their tracks. And they were like, “Hey, we don’t want any trouble.” And he was like, “Well, then we’re leaving. We’re leaving.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Turn around.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. And my adrenaline was pumping at the time.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, I bet you were so excited.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. This is the coolest I’ve ever seen. Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Are you kidding?

Mike McAllister:

Not only was it an extreme situation, but it was that feeling of, “I got you. I’m in charge now.” We ended up turning around. Those guys left. I think this is when Jack came out. Jack hadn’t come out yet. We were on this janky road. And while we were turning around, the rear axle went down into this ditch and he got his truck stuck. And I’m just like, “Oh no, this is it. I’m sure they got ahold of the law enforcement.”

Mike McAllister:

One of the orphanages that we used to do work for was like two miles down the road. And I’m like, “Oh, well, hey, I think I know where to get some help,” right? So we walked all the ways from-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You had time to do this?

Mike McAllister:

The road that goes into the place is probably 15-miles long. So we were already probably three or four miles down the road. They couldn’t see. They were probably back at the ranch, trying to figure out what they were going to do. “This kid just got out of here,” right? So we walked like two miles to the orphanage, and I don’t remember the guy’s name. And I’m like, “Hey, I’m here. Jack sent me over here.” And my dad was with me, that this guy had never seen it.

Mike McAllister:

I don’t know why he didn’t ask any questions. I’m like, “Hey, Jack sent me down here. This guy got his truck stuck. You think you could help?” I knew they had a big van, right? I’m like, “Hey, you think you could help tow us out?” And he was like, “Yeah, sure, no problem.” My dad speaks fluent Spanish. Being a painter for all those years, you learned language. And so we go down and they tow us out.

Mike McAllister:

As he’s tow us out, the guy Jack, and those two guys show back up. They were talking in Spanish to each other, “Hey, don’t you help these people.” That’s when the gun came out again. And the guy was basically put in a position where, you’re pulling the truck out or all of you guys aren’t walking away. And pulled us out and then we drove all the way-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

He pulled you out at gunpoint?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. There was no option. “We’re either taking your van or you’re pulling the truck out.” I’m getting excited talking about it. We drove all the way back to the border. We found there was the first fast-food place where it was. We got back to the border and early in the morning. It was like, sun was just coming up. And we both slept. We slept until like 3:00 in the afternoon, in the truck. He probably needed a nap for sure. I was just exhausted. You get adrenalin spike like that, and those living conditions. I was done and

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, I mean it’s amazing. Adrenaline is an thing. You stopped before the border?

Mike McAllister:

No, no. No, as soon as we got across the border.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, across the border. Okay. I was like, “Are you kidding me?”

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, back when we were in San Diego.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. Okay.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. And then from there, we went to my grandpa’s house. By this time, come to find out, Mom wasn’t even home. Mom was out of town, on vacation. And my dad’s alcoholism had progressed, to where he was full tweaker, full alcoholic, gnarly lifestyle. That’s what I had to go back to. My attitude, in that-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You were how old? You were 14?

Mike McAllister:

I was 14, yeah. So that Mexico experience, not only was I … I grew up in a religious home, right? I agree with the moral structure of organized religion, right? It had a big effect on me. But my feeling towards God, when I got out of that place, was there was no God, right? And this God that was shoved down my throat there, if that’s the God that treats people like this, then I don’t want nothing to do with it. The anger was more than ever, dealing with that sense of abandonment, from being dropped down there.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What’s interesting is that you had this break and Dad was out of your life and Mom was the savior parent. And then mom does this and now Dad’s the savior parent, even as dysfunctional as he is, he’s the one that showed up.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. He was-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

In a serious way.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. I’m sure some of that was obviously vengeful towards my mom, as far as custody goes. That was the motivation.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Sure, but at the end of the day, he showed up at and held people at gunpoint, to get you out of Mexico. That had to have had an effect.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. It was a crazy experience. I lived with my dad and his girlfriend at the time. I made it a month, right? It was good and bad for me. It was cool in a way that I could do whatever I want. I could get loaded. I could do anything I wanted to do. But at the same time, I was like, “I don’t want to live this way. I don’t want to be here.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did Mom know you were back?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. The house, at the time, my mom’s house, had an alarm on it. And I needed stuff and I knew she was gone. So I broke into the house, the alarm went off, I got my stuff out and I left. But I’m pretty sure one of the neighbors told her, “Yeah, we saw your son was back.” And somehow, I don’t even remember how it happened, how I got in contact with … she was my seventh grade math and science teacher. Awesome lady. You know what I mean? She was an angel put in my life.

Mike McAllister:

I got somehow got ahold of her and she offered to take me in. She was like, “You can come live with me. You got rules, but you can come stay with me.” And for whatever reason, I just had a ton of respect for this woman and I was willing to be like, “Okay, I’ll walk the line in your house. As long as I’m at your house, I’ll walk the line.” I shared a room with her son, and then her daughter lived there as well.

Mike McAllister:

And there was a little bit of stability. I could talk to this woman, right? She knew I was angry. She knew the stuff I was up to and the people I was hanging out with, right? I never felt judged by it. She was able to give me a suggestion and be stern about it. Say things like, “What are you doing? What the hell’s wrong with you?” Not in a negative way.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But like, why are you going down this-

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What did she think of the Mexico thing?

Mike McAllister:

Oh, it’s insane. I don’t know what went on behind when I wasn’t around, like if something was ever said to my parents or whatever. She put herself in a position where she’s a female teacher, taking in a 14-year-old boy. So she stuck her neck out for me.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

She did, and she put you in with her son.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, and I shared a room with her son, who was four year’s my senior. We just hit it off. It made a huge impact in my life. That woman made a huge impact.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Are you still in touch with her?

Mike McAllister:

No, I burned that to the ground. That’s actually one of those things I struggle with still. I definitely owe that woman amends, and I don’t know why, in sobriety, I haven’t been able to pull through with that, you know what I mean?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

But it’s definitely on my mind a lot.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Do you know where she is?

Mike McAllister:

No, but I mean, in today’s age, I could probably find her. That’s one of the burdens I still carry in sobriety. And here’s what I know. All I have to do is pick up that phone, right? I know this woman would-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What’s the fear?

Mike McAllister:

I don’t know. You know what? There’s still part of me, because of how that relationship ended and some of the things I did, that I’m not deserving of that. I’m not deserving of that forgiveness.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The forgiveness would almost be a burden too?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. It’s crazy.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You’re used to being the bad guy, right?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. There’s part of me that’s still a sense of comfort. You know what I mean?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, right. That’s a role you know how to be?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And what happened in that relationship?

Mike McAllister:

I lived with her for a year, year and a half. So what was I, 16, 14-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

When you were in school?

Mike McAllister:

Oh yeah, yeah. Playing in school, playing sports. I did as much as I could get away with. I was a star football player. So all my teachers were my coaches. I would never do my homework. I would never do any reports. I could sit in class, pay attention and get a A on the test, right? Just enough so I can maintain the GPA to play ball. And they would be like, “Well, why didn’t you do the report?” I’m like, “Because I don’t want to. I’m not going to. I’m already like trying to sneak … “

Mike McAllister:

This lady had a pretty tight grasp on my getting-loaded behavior, right? So I was like, “All my extra energy is working on getting loaded.” After a year and a half of living with her, and this is probably what it was, it was probably, I just wanted to get loaded. I couldn’t do it anymore, right? So this was 10th grade. By this time, my mom had moved down to Orange County.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Your mom wasn’t trying to get you back?

Mike McAllister:

No, I was like, “I’m not going back.” Oh, you know what? I was still up in the desert. She hadn’t sold the house yet. So I moved back into my house I grew up in, and I started getting in trouble again. I started getting loaded again, all the time. I got arrested up here. I got arrested up there. I got sent to juvenile hall and got put on formal probation. That was my first experience with formal probation. So I lived at the house. I was on house arrest.

Mike McAllister:

And here’s the crazy thing. When I first got out of juvenile hall, I was a flight risk, and they didn’t put a ankle bracelet on me. But my probation officer would show up five, six times a day. I remember, multiple times, I could not wait long enough. My probation officer would show up, do the check-in, she would leave, and I would go straight to the liquor store. I would buy as much alcohol as I could, just because I needed to just get drunk.

Mike McAllister:

When my mom sold the house and moved to Orange County, they transferred my probation to Orange County. Because I was at such a high risk, for whatever reason, up there, they put me on a high probation down here. But the probation officer they gave me, was like, “Hey, they didn’t give me anything, any of the files or anything. You drink or do drugs or anything?” And I was like, “No. I did something. I got in trouble.” He’s like, “All right.”

Mike McAllister:

So they didn’t drug test me. Yeah, they never drug tested me. And I had to go to this school. It was end-of-the-line school, right? It was like 130 kids there.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

An alternative school?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. It was an alternative school, where you get escorted to the bathroom.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh no, don’t know that one.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Sheriff’s would show up and be like, “Hey, we’re looking for so-and-so today.” I was able to hold it together for just long enough to where I turned 18. And once I turned 18 down here … You know what? Let me back up a little bit. I was living down in Orange County and every weekend I was still driving up to the desert, right? My girlfriend up there, I was working for her dad on the weekends. I was making money. I’m able to support my drinking and using and.

Mike McAllister:

But there was a particular time where I would go up there and I would sleep in my truck. I would just go up there and sleep in my truck if I had nowhere to go. I was just going up there to party. I had passed out the night before, and I was in a dirt lot, sleeping in my truck, behind the Circle K. By this time, I was able to somewhat control when I ingested alcohol.

Mike McAllister:

I still remember clear as day. I woke up behind the Circle K. And it was like sun was just coming up. I was super hung over. You know that disgusting feeling. Something inside me was like, “I need to drink now.” That switch had been flipped. You know what I mean? I went from cucumber to pickle, that moment. Even though I had always been, I would say, a daily drinker, I always felt like I could stop. That morning, I knew there was no way to turn this thing off.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. I was actually talking to someone about that this morning, about how I was put in treatment, outpatient programs and treatment, before I had ever tried to stop. So they’re trying to tell me I have a problem, blah, blah, blah, but I never tried to stop. So I assumed that since I had never tried to stop, I had no reason or belief that I needed to. I assumed that I could. I remember the first time where I tried to stop, I first tried to stop using because my boyfriend challenged me.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I remember trying and failing, and going, “Oh, we’ve crossed the line. It is. It’s a feeling. It’s a switch where you realize, “I’m not in control of this thing,” I think that’s an important realization to have, in order for you to end up getting sober at some point, to have that feeling. I think it would be very hard to get sober if you didn’t really understand that you were no longer in charge.

Mike McAllister:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I tried that for a long time and just wasn’t-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. If you have any semblance that you can manage it, you’re going to try. So you went, bought alcohol at the Circle K, I take it?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, and it was just on from there. After the Mexico experience, and all the other stuff, guys I was hanging out with at the time. I had went from hanging out with the jock crowd, right? [crosstalk 00:52:01] we were good kids. We still …

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:52:04]

Mike McAllister:

… it’s a jock crowd. Of course, we were good kids. We still drink beers or whatever, but we’re doing life. Trailer park lifestyle. Just like the guys who were, who had affiliations with organizations that don’t deserve to be named, and bad guys, real bad guys. And I was just like sought lower companions. And I had a belief I had nothing to live for. I had nothing to lose, and I did not care if I woke up every day. I did not care what would happen to me. Physical altercation, there was nothing anyone could do to me physically that came close to how I felt emotionally. And when I did, like I’d get my nose broke or black eye or whatever. There was a part of me was like, “That’s what you get that’s what you deserve.” And it felt like that pain, that physical pain was almost a sense of relief.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Because it distracted from the internal pain.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, absolutely. I could feel it, I could see it, and I could push on it, and I could touch it and make the thing increase, decrease. And it was just better than how I felt inside. And I lived like that for the next few years. When I turned 18 my solution to solving my life… It had nothing to do with drugs or alcohol at that time. I would’ve looked at you dead in the eyes and said, “Nope, there’s nothing. I can stop whenever I want.” Knew I couldn’t. But my solution was to go into the military. I was like, “That’s what I need. I need the structure.” We had just gone into Iraq a couple of years prior. And I’m like, “I can go overseas where I could serve my country. My grandfather was in the military. That’s what I need.” So I went down to the recruiter, I signed all the paperwork, went down to MEPS in LA, did the ASVAB. Did really well in the test.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Which branch?

Mike McAllister:

I was going to go into the Marines. Now at this time there was a tattoo policy where I have too many tattoos, and some of the tattoos I used to have were like, you’re not really wanting to show those in public. And so the Marines was like, “Hey look, you have too many tattoos, but good news is the army will take you.” And I’m like, “Oh, so…” This abandonment comes up again.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Like I’m not good enough.

Mike McAllister:

I’m not even good enough to go to war, but the army will take me. I’m pro military 100%, but it was like-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But it isn’t what you wanted.

Mike McAllister:

… “You could go to the B team.” And part of me was still like, “Okay, you know what? I want to serve my country. Absolutely.” And they were like, “Okay…” Signed, I did everything I needed to do. And they’re like, “Well, we just going to need you to drug test.” And I’m like, “Well, I smoke a little weed here and there.” And he goes, “Yeah, well, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll test you and then we’ll test you again.” I go, yeah, “It’s been a while. I’ll probably go.” I had to do the pee test, the whole thing lit up across the board-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Of other drugs too.

Mike McAllister:

Of other drugs. And he was like, he goes, “Hey, the whole thing is lighting up.” And I was like, “Well, what’s showing up.” Because I was kind of curious, I’m like, “I don’t even do some of those drugs.” At least not that day. And I’m like, “Hey, there’s something wrong with your test. We got to do another one.” He goes, “Oh, I can go get another one.” I go, “Wait, you know what? Let’s wait a couple of days. And I go, “Okay, I’ll come back in a week.” So I was like, “This will give me enough time to clean out my system.” I wasn’t smoking that much weed at the time. It was just meth and alcohol. Meth allowed me to drink, how I wanted to drink. I could stay up as long as I wanted, and do as much weird stuff as I wanted do.

Mike McAllister:

And so I came back, and I had already had the bag in my truck. And I came back on the day I was supposed to drug test, and I had been clean for four days. And it was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. And I got up to the parking lot, and I was like, “You know what?” I go, “All I got to do is get in there and pee. So if I take a couple hits right now, there’s no way could get into my system.” Genius idea. Brilliant.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I completely follow the logic.

Mike McAllister:

And so sure enough, I went in there and I failed the drug test.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

With meth?

Mike McAllister:

Meth. Yeah. It was meth only. And I looked like a tweaker. By this time I was 170 pounds. Just completely sucked up, 28 inch waist. I was a skinny guy, and he gave me… It was like that, I’ve had that look a lot of times of like, “You’re a piece…” And that’s what this guy… Then I was like, “Hey look, you don’t understand.” They told me, “We don’t want guys like you. We don’t want guys like you in our service.” And I go, “You don’t understand just let me in, and this is going to fix my life. It’s going to change my life.” He was like, “No, don’t come back.” And that was it. That was my last hope. That was my last shot of fixing my life. I knew for some reason, I just knew, I was going to live the rest of my life this way until I die. Whether it be tomorrow or in a couple of weeks, I just didn’t care anymore after that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And how old were you when you got turned down?

Mike McAllister:

I was 18. I was 18.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

18, okay.

Mike McAllister:

And so I did, I lived that, tweaker alcoholic lifestyle, burning every relationship I’ve ever had. Letting anyone in my life know that they were number two to alcohol. For me, it always started and ended with alcohol. But I could not have a drink without getting meth. As soon as I took that drink, it was like, “Okay, I got to go get some dope.” And then what happened was I started getting arrested. I couldn’t live at my mom’s house, she had thrown me out. I was living in my truck, and I kept getting arrested. I kept getting busted for possession.

Mike McAllister:

So I had been arrested for the third time in that month. And I was standing in front of a Judge Anderson at the Orange County Court. And this guy who was like another one of those people who was placed in my life. I feel like there were certain people along this path that God has put in my life, and this guy was one of them. And it was nothing that he really did or didn’t do. He basically just was straightforward with me, and for whatever reason I respect that. And he was like, “Mr McAllister, this is the third time I’ve seen you in my courtroom uninvited this month.” And he goes, “I’m going to give you the option.” He goes, “You can go into a treatment program. A drug diversion program or you can go to prison.”

Mike McAllister:

I think he said it was three years, eight months. He goes, “Or you can go to prison for three years, four years.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s an easy choice. I’ll take the treatment.” And so I did, I went to a treatment center in Orange County. They put me on surprisingly a very low level drug diversion program. And because I went to the treatment center, I didn’t have a PO. I didn’t have to show up. I just couldn’t get in any more trouble. That’s when I was introduced to Orange County AA. And I managed to stay sober for 88 days before I started getting loaded. I would show up. I didn’t do any of the work. I didn’t get a sponsor.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The emotional work.

Mike McAllister:

I wasn’t willing to be honest with anybody. At that time I felt like if I was honest with you, you could use it against me. There’s no way I’m going to be vulnerable with another man, man or a woman. It was a lot easier to just make stories up, to get through life than it was to be honest with somebody. And during this time I met my now wife.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So that was when you were in treatment?

Mike McAllister:

I just got out of treatment. Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment. Hi, it’s Ashley, your beloved host. When I’m not hosting The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast, I’m running the recruiting department at Lionrock Recovery. We are always looking for amazing licensed mental health counselors along with various other sales and operations positions that pop up from time to time. The Lionrock culture is one of collaboration, support and flexibility. Our employees work from home offices all over the country utilizing technology to connect to one another. We are always hiring. So if you want to have the best job ever, check out our open positions and apply at www.lionrockrecovery.com/about/careers.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And so when we talk about honesty, what’s some of the stuff that… You don’t have to tell your deepest, darkest secrets, but what’s some of the stuff for people like… I feel like a lot of people don’t know that they’re not being honest. And particularly with men who grew up the way you do, where there is a lot of like, “Be a man.” There’s definitely a culture there. It was easier to make up stories than to tell the truth.

Mike McAllister:

Absolutely.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What was the truth?

Mike McAllister:

There was a lot of shame that came along with how I felt growing up. I was super ashamed of it. I wasn’t going to tell you. That my mom used to have to wake me and my brother up in the middle of the night because she didn’t know if my dad was going to kill us or himself. And we’d have to go stay at my mom’s friends houses or-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Because he was drinking.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, because he was drinking and violent.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And you were ashamed that that happened in your house?

Mike McAllister:

Oh yeah. Yeah. I wasn’t going to say anything, or there was another time. We used to go to the river all the time. We would go to the river every weekend, and there was a time we broke down. And I was a kid. I was three, four years old. And I had talked to my mom about this probably six, or seven months ago. Because I’m like, hey, I remember I had this memory of my dad slamming my mom over the hood of the car. Just slamming her into the end of the car. “Did that happen?” And she was like, yeah, she told me why. That was just stuff I was exposed to as a kid. When my dad was drinking, this stuff didn’t go on when he was sober, and I was ashamed of that. That’s not how you treat somebody.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You didn’t want to be the kid that grew up in that house.

Mike McAllister:

Absolutely. I was embarrassed.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So what did you say instead?

Mike McAllister:

I would say, “Dad was a painting contractor.” Or my mom was just a great mom.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, okay. You just wouldn’t even-

Mike McAllister:

Wouldn’t even bring up things like Mexico or-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Got it. Okay. So those were some that you just really sugarcoated it.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, and I didn’t want the sympathy. I didn’t want that-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Because that was part of the shame.

Mike McAllister:

It was shame, and it made me feel weak. When people were like, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” That made me feel like a weak person.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Because in your head a strong person, it wouldn’t have bothered.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. You just do it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Like it wouldn’t have affected you.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. You don’t get to whine and complain, you just do it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And if you’re a man, then this (beep) happens and you just like-

Mike McAllister:

That’s the cards I was dealt.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. I would imagine as a man growing up. Where you grew up as a man, having feelings about your childhood would be super lame. Childhood feelings, not a thing. So we met at a popular meeting where I actually met my husband. And your wife took me to my first meeting there. And so at that time you were sober?

Mike McAllister:

I was sober, yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And you were sober that 88 days. When did you get loaded?

Mike McAllister:

On the 89th day.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Were you seeing Emily-

Mike McAllister:

I was.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

… when you got loaded?

Mike McAllister:

Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, I didn’t know that. I missed that.

Mike McAllister:

So the first few weeks we were hanging out, I was sober. But there was no, like I said, there was no programs. I just started going to the meetings and it was like I wasn’t willing to do any of the work. Like I said, I grew up in a very, very low bottom AA. And I had that, I would see what those guys look like. And then I remember coming, I was at The Canyon Club down here, and this guy pulls up in a pink polo shirt and a bright look-at-me, yellow Ferrari. And he was in the meeting talking about he knew he had hit bottom when he had his last million in the bank. And I’m like, “These people aren’t alcoholic, there’s no way. And if this is what sobriety looks like, I want nothing to do with that.” Like I’m not wearing it. It’s just not style. And so I continued to be-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You looked for the differences not the similarities.

Mike McAllister:

Absolutely. And I was like, I can’t relate to that. Not only can I not relate to their outsides, but, “If that’s how their outsides looks? There’s no way I’m going to be honest with these people, I’ll hang out. Get some coffee. But I wasn’t going to do the work.” And I still had a huge resentment towards God at the time. They would say the Lord’s prayer. And I was like, “I’m not into that.” There’s no way I’m doing that. And what it did was it got me drunk. I was unable to be honest with people, and I ended up drunk.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And how did you make it back from there? So you were still dating Emily.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And you got drunk. What happened?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, well, I started smoking weed. I wasn’t drinking around her at the time yet, but I was.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Is this when she wanted to smoke weed?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh yeah. Emily and I were roommates at the time. And she started telling me how she wanted to move somewhere, and start to grow weed. And I started calling her farmer Joe because I was like, “So you want to go be a farmer? Like what’s the…” That’s interesting. I didn’t remember that piece of it, but yeah, I remember she started to… She had been sober for a while and she started to talk about that.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. And so, and I wanted to leave. I was still on probation at that time. I couldn’t leave the County. So I was basically in a way I was trapped in Orange County, I couldn’t leave. And just not where I wanted to be. Just completely different than where I grew up. There was a day that came along where I was, I had moved myself in. I’d taken a hostage and moved myself in. Now that I lived there, it was my house and I was going to smoke weed there. I hijacked the situation. And that lasted, a couple of weeks until eventually she lost her sobriety too. Which was like a huge weight… Still a huge weight for me. I feel responsible for that. She has her own reasons, but regardless I was definitely a part of that. I drink like I’m on a suicide mission, I don’t want to go out anywhere. I want to get as much as I can and be [inaudible 01:06:28]

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Emily always said she was like, you and Mike are like hope=to-die. And that’s how I was too. I really am not interested in like… I want to be interested in doing it like that, but there’s no part of me that can because it’s just not interest… I aspire to be, but it’s just not there. I just want to get as loaded as I can by myself.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, just go wide open the whole time.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I don’t want to have to like think about how this looks, or worry about anything that has to do with that. Like I just want to be as like… as possible.

Mike McAllister:

Shut lock the door, and maybe peek out the blinds every 15 minutes. And then take a part of vacuum or something. So my wife got in the ring with that. We got into a extremely dysfunctional, gross relationship. And I have a temper, I’m the same way. When I drink, I do things when I’m drunk that I would never do sober. And my mind tells me that it’s okay. And my wife is the same way, we were like both physical. My wife is very, what’s the word you’d use?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I got lots of words.

Mike McAllister:

She’s like a firecracker.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. She’s five three but she’s got a big person, she’s got a six foot five personality. And yeah, I would imagine she would not-

Mike McAllister:

She gets in the ring swinging.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh yeah. For sure.

Mike McAllister:

And so for-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

She and I almost got in a fist fight. And I was sober. I hadn’t been in a fist fight in so long. I was like, “Are we going to do this? Like this is happ…” But yeah, and loaded I would imagine. And I remember when she did get loaded, it’s so hard those situations like how as the friend how close do you… How much do you get in? Get close to that tornado.

Mike McAllister:

It’s painful.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Yeah. It was really painful and I think I was like, “I love you. I’m here. I’m not mad at you. But like, I don’t know how to… I don’t know where we fit in each other’s lives at this point right now. Call me if you need anything. I will always show up. But like, I don’t know.” And she did call me once. She called me once. I don’t know if you remember this, it was during finals. I hadn’t talked to her in maybe a year or something. And called me and was like… I don’t remember what was going on, but it was really bad. And she was like, “I need Mike out of the house, and I need you to come help me get him out.” And I was like, “Well, call 911.” And I had known you sober and known your anger. Where you got mad at a parking attendant, and made a comment about waiting in the back of your truck with a sledgehammer when they would come back.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And I was like, “Oh, he’s serious.” Like there’s a grudge. Like once you’re angry at someone, that’s what I picked up. Once you’re angry at someone you hold onto that. It’s not a passing like, “Oh, that’s really annoying.” That anger is constantly being sparked. And so she called me, and I came down there and you were super high on meth, and getting you out of the house. And I was legitimately afraid of you. Legitimately if he comes back, I can’t come back here.

Mike McAllister:

And I don’t remember that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You don’t remember this?

Mike McAllister:

No.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh yeah. So I came and I came down because Emily couldn’t do it. And I came down, I called Joanne like backup, whatever. And I came down. And I just remember you grabbing your shoes. And I came in and I was like, “You have to leave. Like you have to leave now, or I’m calling the cops.” And you looked at me like you were going to kill me. And you were super high. And I was like, this is so scary. I’ve hung out with a lot of scary people, but like you, when you’re loaded is so… Like your anger is palpable. And you left. And I said to Em like, “He knows where I live. I’m genuinely afraid.” And then you were back a week later, and I was like, “I love you, but like I can’t help you if you’re not willing to like…” That whole situation. But yeah, it was super scary.

Mike McAllister:

See I don’t remember that at all. Were we in the studio at the time?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Uh-huh (affirmative). The downstairs one. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Yeah. I don’t have any recollection of that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. I was super freaked out. Super, super freaked out. And it was at night too, so I was just like, “Oh, he’s so mad at me.” Understandably. Understandably like why wouldn’t you be mad at me?

Mike McAllister:

Looking back that’s how I lived my life. I don’t remember it, but I wouldn’t put it past myself.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But that’s the thing about why when we talk about you being 10 years sober. And you in particular, I think because I knew you, I had experiences with you loaded. That’s what’s so remarkable about it because people like you don’t get sober, and stay sober for 10 years. Like, I saw that. I saw that person who’s that angry. And in order for you to stay sober… I know what it takes to say it’s over 10 years. And I know what hope-to-die alcoholic, drug addict, angry. I know what that work looks like because I did that work. And one of my amends to my family was that I was not allowed to put my hands on… That I would never put my hands on them again.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That was amends I made like I’m a three year old. Like, “I will not hit my family.” I was embarrassed that that had to be an amends. I reached across a table two years ago, Marina, my sister was sitting next to me. And she went like this, completely like flinched back. And I looked at her, I was like, “Did you think I was going to hit you?” And she was like, “Sorry. It’s just, yeah. I thought like…” And we had this weird interaction, and I had to get up from the table and cry. The effect we have on people. I don’t remember. Like you don’t remember. I don’t remember, but my anger was explosive. And for you to stay sober 10 years with that kind of anger, and that kind of stuff means you did the work. Because you can’t stay… You can’t do it. You can’t put that many days together sober and not do some work. It’s too hard.

Mike McAllister:

Right. Yeah. It’s great. I definitely, I relate when guys come in and have similar stories as mine. Drink like I drink, use what I’ve used. It’s hard for me to look back and recognize that person.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, Totally. So you and Em eventually break up.

Mike McAllister:

I got with her when I was 20, and from 20 to-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And she’s eight-

Mike McAllister:

Eight years older than me. That’s our whole relationship. Our whole relationship started on lies, basically. Like I thought she was a certain age.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, that’s right. How old did she say she was?

Mike McAllister:

She was 28 at the time.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Right. She lied about it?

Mike McAllister:

No, no. She said she’s 28. I thought she was 22.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You lied about your age.

Mike McAllister:

So I told her I was 24 at the time. So I’m like, I want to spend some time with this girl. And so we hung out for a couple of weeks before I was like, “Hey, I got to tell you like I’m… I need to tell you something.” And so I told her I was 20. And she was like, had this reaction… I think she actually hit me. She had a reaction and then that lasted about 10 minutes, and it was like, “So you want to go get something to eat?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Yeah. It was like moving on.

Mike McAllister:

And so yeah, we had this extremely hostile relationship. And there was a couple of times during that three year period where we had tried to get sober. I would try to get sober, she would try to get sober. And it was just in and out, in and out. And this was like, obviously I knew I had a problem. I was willing to admit I had a drug problem. I didn’t want to stop drinking. I knew I couldn’t drink without getting high. At this time I wasn’t willing to do any other work still. I would do a little bit more each time, a little more. But then when it came down to put the work in, I wouldn’t do it. And I ended up loaded. And I would just repeat the insanity.

Mike McAllister:

I thought I could do it differently this time. “I could do it this way, I could do it this way.” And for me I needed that. I needed drugs and alcohol to kick my ass enough times to where I was finally broken to give it a shot. And that’s what happened. So we had split up and this was a permanent deal. There was some stuff that went down we where like, there was no way we were getting back together.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No coming back from it.

Mike McAllister:

There’s no coming back at… Yeah. When I was younger I’d always been in construction. And this was the time where the construction industry collapsed. There was no work. Wages had been driven down. I was actually working for Randy. And that project ended and I had been laid off. So the only job I could hold down was I was cleaning kennels at an animal hospital. And I would just show up. I was able to be loaded all the time. It was like me and her were separated, so it was poor me. And I was like, I’d come to terms with like, “Okay, I can’t drink because I’ll get high, I’ll go get math. And when I get on meth I get in trouble.” So if I could just smoke pot, just smoke weed and get my hands on these animal medication, I could go through life like that. And from June or July to November, that’s what I did. Those few months, by the end of that I was going to put a pistol in my mouth. I could not do life anymore.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Why did you want to die?

Mike McAllister:

I knew the consequences of the drugs and alcohol. Of my behavior on that. I hurt people physically, emotionally. I just destroy people’s lives whether I want to or not that’s my behavior. And I couldn’t do that anymore and I couldn’t go on with how I was living, I just wasn’t good enough anymore. I couldn’t get high enough to feel okay.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It stopped working.

Mike McAllister:

And for whatever reason I was at my mom’s house, back at mom’s house. And I was in my brother’s bathroom and I was smoking my last bowl, blowing it out the window. And I just remember, I just had this feeling of desperation and willingness to be like, “Okay, I’ll give it one more shot. I don’t care about the guy who wears the leather shoes with no socks. He’ll eventually get his life together and start wearing socks. But that can’t be a reason. I’m not going to…”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Right. “I’m going around judging all these people, but I’m smoking weed in my mom’s bathroom.”

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, they’re laughing. They’re smiling, they’re living good lives. They’re doing things. And supposedly they think like I think. I’m willing to be like, “Okay.” And a couple of years prior to that I had been in Sober Living. And the guy next to me… This is like when I started getting loaded, I was still living at Sober Living when I first met him. The guy living next to me is still sober. He’s a good friend of me, but I would be in one room smoking meth at the Sober Living house before I got kicked out. And he was getting a job and doing things. And when I saw he was still around, I was like, “Well, shit. I know him-

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:18:04]

Mike McAllister:

And when I saw that he was still around, I was like, “Well shit, maybe I know him. I can hang out with him.” And so there was a birthday party. There was a one year birthday party right at one of our friend’s houses. And I showed up there. It was day one. I had nowhere else to go. And I showed up to just be apart, just be around. It was either go get loaded or-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Or be here.

Mike McAllister:

-be here or shoot myself. And I came in. I started talking to this guy, Chris, and we started talking. And he was like, “Hey, you know what? I need to go use the bathroom.” So we went up in his apartment and we started talking, and I just broke down. And you know, Chris, tattooed from the neck down to the fingertips, just kind of like a dude who I would never show emotion in front of. And I broke down and I cried like a little baby. And I said, “Look dude, I’m going to die. I can’t live this way anymore. I need some help.” And he was there for me. and I called that guy. I called him every day. He was the first guy I could get honest with.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What was his reaction to you crying? Was he like-

Mike McAllister:

He didn’t care. He didn’t give a shit.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

He was loving and amazing.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. And he understood. I could tell he understood the pain. And he was the first guy I was able to get honest to. And one of the… This was a turning point where when I was able to be honest with another man in a similar situation, who parties the way I party, they have similar stories. So there would be this exchange where I would open up a little bit, then he would tell me something. And then I would open up, and it was healing to know that I wasn’t alone. And so I was starting to work with him, and I was going to meetings every day. And then I had met Chad when I first started coming around. And he’s another one of those guys for me who God has put in my life. We’re still working at that animal hospital, and Chad called me one day and he was like, “Hey, I started a business. With your background, will you come work for me?” And he goes… It was more money. “I need you to go drive around and take care of whatever.”

Mike McAllister:

And I was like, yeah. So what that did was it put me in my truck 10 hours a day, driving around all over Southern California, and I would just smoke two packs of Camels and I would listen to speaker CDs all day. That’s all I did. I would get out to go to the Gucci, I get a bunch of CDs and I would just listen to them all day. And that experience of driving around was so… When I’m driving around and just raging, because I was angry when I got sober, and I would listen to these people and I wasn’t able to look at them and judge them.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Right. Interesting.

Mike McAllister:

I would just hear these people and I would laugh. And I would relate and I would…

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You couldn’t see them. That’s interesting, yeah.

Mike McAllister:

I couldn’t see them. It made a huge-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Huge difference.

Mike McAllister:

And now would hear people like Patti O or Scott Redman, and this guy Larry T who’s a plumber who’s hilarious. And it was the first time I was able to laugh because I related. I related the thinking. And it was just like… And it would just keep me, it would just kind of keep me focused and I was able to go to the next meeting. And then I was able… And it’s like I started putting days together, and I just started… I was willing enough to just do a little bit more. Just do a little bit more. And it kind of grew and grew and grew. And then six months in, once I got six months of sobriety, I was like, “Okay, I’m not going to…” By that time I had never built anything.

Mike McAllister:

The good thing was I never got any credit. I never burned anything to the ground and never acquired anything. So I had nothing. I lived my life like I had nothing to lose and I didn’t. I had nothing. And so I was like, “Okay, if I’m going to stay sober, and if I’m going to build myself a life like these other people are doing, I need to find something to do.” So I went back to school, got a… I went to a technical school and got into a trade. And during this time, my now wife, I was back with them. We had gotten back together. We were doing couples counseling.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, it was so funny when you guys got back everyone and was like, “Are you kidding?”

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Well, so when I first got sober we had a dog together, right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, right, right. Right.

Mike McAllister:

I would be like… When you come off a long road of meth, you start to… your physical appearance changes pretty quick. So I had this mindset of well I can just go see the dog and she could see how good I’m doing. We would occasionally run each other at meetings. We kind of had no same friends. So it was my way of manipulating the situation to kind of see if we’d work out. So we did eventually got back together. She had gotten sober before me. And a year and a half in, my wife she got pregnant. I was in school full time, I was working full time, and she was in cosmetology school full time. So total beauty school, pregnant girl, nine months pregnant in beauty school. And it was gnarly.

Mike McAllister:

And what happened, by that time, I still was mad at God. I still did not have a God in my life that was like… I was at a point where I came to believe in a power greater than myself. But I didn’t know what that power was, if I even trusted that power. But I was like, “Okay, I acknowledge there might be something.” And so my wife got pregnant with my first daughter, and then I had this experience when my first daughter was born. So besides all the stuff going down, when you’re on the opposite end of the barrel of the baby coming up, a lot of stuff going on. And when my daughter came out and I heard her cry, I started crying.

Mike McAllister:

I saw God. It was the first time I ever felt love like that. I knew for whatever reason I was kept alive for a purpose. There’s something out there that can bring something like that into this world. And I could do business with that. I was able to start to believe in something good.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And then the sleep deprivation kicked in.

Mike McAllister:

And I haven’t slept in eight years. And it was crazy. So life just started going. And so I was, what, a year and a half, two years sober at that time. But I was able to… Now I was completely open. I had developed this concept of God I could believe in.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

And life was moving, I was getting sober, I was able to like, yeah. And that’s where I was able to be honest with them. And I had been beat up so much by drugs and alcohol, and I wasn’t willing to go back, that I became willing to tell those things to men, whether I was embarrassed or not. The feeling of embarrassment was worth not having to go back to the way I was living.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And was the embarrassment, was it as bad as you thought it was going to be when you said those things?

Mike McAllister:

No. No, it wasn’t at all.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did anyone laugh at you or shame you?

Mike McAllister:

I definitely got laughed at. Yeah, for sure. But it wasn’t in a way of… It wasn’t in a mean way. It wasn’t how I thought it was going to be. They would share something with me and I would just be blown away and laugh at them,.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, right, right.

Mike McAllister:

And that’s something I found in Alcoholics Anonymous. There’s a lot of things that I can talk about with my sober friends that I would never in a million years tell people I work with. And so life just started changing. But when I got sober I started facing the other things. Now that drugs and alcohol aren’t in my life anymore, I still have to address my behavior and my thinking. And when you’re doing… I’ll tell you what, when I was doing, still, when I’m doing those things that I suggested in outline, I feel a lot… it’s a lot easier for me to go through life and feel a normal human being.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s much easier. And I think, I mean, for me at least, I don’t really have the choice to not do those things because my behavior gets like… Step one is our lives were… we are powerless and our lives are unmanageable. And my life, if I’m not doing the work, I’m powerless and unmanageable without alcohol. To my knees, bottom, crying, staring up, begging God to take me or make it better. And I don’t need drugs and alcohol to feel that way, and drugs and alcohol just helped with that until they didn’t.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And you know, I think there’s some people who don’t have to work as hard. I’m not one of those people. My alcoholism had progressed so significantly like yours that I’m not one of those people, because I will use anything to feel better, and I’ll do it in sobriety. And so that work that we talk about is a daily practice. It’s more just the practice of being connected to the community, telling the truth, showing up, suiting up, showing up, telling the truth, and then things, I don’t know, things just change, right?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, yeah. It’s crazy. I won’t even see it in myself, and I’ll see it in other guys, and I’ll see how they look when they come in, how the steps they take, the action, the amount of willingness and action that they do. And then I see their results and I’m like, man, it’s just insane. And I’m sure that’s how people feel about us.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, for sure.

Mike McAllister:

It’s a lot easier to see it in somebody else. And that’s how I know the program works.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Right, we watch it. So with your mom, when you dealt with the Mexico stuff, what did that look like? Did you talk to your mom about it? How did you let go of that anger?

Mike McAllister:

Not until I got sober, even with the stuff with my dad. Do you know what I mean? Here’s one thing getting sober with the relationship with my parents. When I got sober, and I start… I’m a full blown alcoholic and what I started to learn what that actually meant, how that actually makes me behave, and I’m able to kind of see someone else’s perspective on things, not just how I want to make it be in my head. When my mom sent me to that place, that was probably the best she could do. You know what I mean? When somebody advertises, and I mean, she’s a mom who loves her son. She probably thought she was doing a good thing. She didn’t know that that’s how the experience was going to be.

Mike McAllister:

Or the effect it was going to have on me. So I’m able to understand that. And those times, I understand why my dad behaves the way he behaves. It makes sense to me. I know I could tell you 100% if I went out and drank today, I would… nothing else in my life means this damn thing. Even my kids, my wife, my job, not because by choice, but because that’s how it is. I would get so handcuffed by alcohol that nothing else matters.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. It’s a terrifying… I was young so I had very little to lose. I didn’t really have anything, significant others or kids or anything. And one of the things that’s so scary now when I deal with my alcoholism in whatever form it’s showing up in, is that I have so much to lose and it’s the scariest thing ever. Having a disease, a brain disease that tells you lies, and having a lot to lose and a lot of people who count on you, and having little kids that look up to you, it’s scarier than it’s ever been. Because it’s one thing when it’s just you, and your parents and whatever. And it’s another thing when you’ve built stuff, and it forces you to either grow or go as they say.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, getting sober was one thing, but staying sober has been like… It’s I get to learn about myself, you know what I mean? Things that I know I don’t know or what I think I know, like being a parent. There’s guys I reach out to and seek help. I seek advice for my marriage, and how to discipline my kids, and different behaviors, or “Hey, I need to go down to the school and talk to such and such. This is what I want to say. I know how this will probably play out. Do you have any advice? What do you think? How do you think I should handle this?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, and then do you take the advice?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah, 99% of the time. I’ve learned when I don’t take the advice or if I do things my way, it’s probably going to be painful.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. And we have, I mean, I have low tolerance for pain these days. I really do. I really, I really little pain and I’m like, I don’t need a belt. I’m just terrified of… “Okay, I’ll change, I’ll change.” So when I know that my way… Not that it’s perfect, but I definitely… I just can’t sit in the pain the way that I once did.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. I don’t feeling it. Even being sober and it’s like, well, I know I’m going to need to do. And it’s been that way in my sobriety. I’ll go through these three, six month periods where you’re going… you go up and down on this journey. And it directly relates to how much I’m putting in and what I’m doing.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. And life gets busy. You get busy, you have all these obligations, you build this. I mean, you have a great career that you’ve built, and I want to say something about that, which is that you had these experiences with law enforcement and drugs and whatever. And it was definitely something that people could see and look at on some sort of record or whatever. And that you now are heavily integrated with law enforcement and have this amazing career now where you are trusted and probably in a place you never thought you would possibly… You probably hang out with law enforcement and what a gift that is to that redemption.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s crazy. So one of the things was now I work directly with law enforcement, and getting in, starting that, and getting all the gnarly background checks, and the investigations. And they would… They show up at your house and they verify you live there and talk to your neighbors. And it was a big deal, and I was just honest with them. Part of the stuff when I got in trouble when I was younger, I did all… Thank God I didn’t violate or get any getting any more trouble. A lot of the conditions of those words is if I completed, did what I needed to do-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It would go away.

Mike McAllister:

It would be dismissed. But it’s still there. They can see it. And I was honest about all that stuff when I applied and I went through the process. And I feel there’s a lot… When I look at other guys I work with and the types of certifications and certificates and things like that that they have, I have 10 times more than a lot of the guys I work with. And I think that may have had something to do with it. I feel I had to do a lot more just to be on the same playing field because I had that dark side.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

We overcompensate.

Mike McAllister:

Totally. And it was like, yeah, to overcompensate because of my past. And then when it would come up, and I would just be honest with them. I told them. They would ask me this question and I would say, “Yep, I did that and I don’t live that way anymore.” At the time I was sober for seven, eight years and it’d been a long time since I’d been arrested. I think when I was seven or eight years sober, I had been over 10 years of being arrested, and it was basically they’re judging your moral character. They’re looking at… I don’t think I’ve had a speeding ticket in sobriety, and it’s huge. And when I was living that lifestyle, my views on law enforcement was like, why don’t they just leave me alone? Why are they hassling me? But when you look a scumbag and you’re doing scumbag things, it’s their job.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What did we call you guys? We called you guys team dirt bag. Yeah. Dirt bag. Like, cause I dated one of the friends or whatever and we called you guys team dirt bag.

Mike McAllister:

So when you’re living that way of life, of course it’s their job to do that. And being working with them now, it’s just crazy. What I’m trusted with, my relationships with them. You know there was a… Probably six, seven months ago, a car came in, they were having a communication problem with the other radios and the PVS and I had to get in the back. I had to open up the back to get to some of the wiring, and there was a sunglasses case. And no one else was around. I was the only person in a shop, and there was a sunglasses case and I had to move it.

Mike McAllister:

And I was like, “Oh, something’s in there.” And I’m like, “Well, what’s in there?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

100% heroin.

Mike McAllister:

Curious what’s in there. No, I opened it up and there was a huge bag of meth. They just took it off somebody that they were taking into record it and there was like… They were unable to make it. They had to come by the shop. And I think I made, I was like-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You made a sound?

Mike McAllister:

I made a sound and I had that, not like, “Hey, I want to get loaded.” But I immediately had to use the bathroom. You know, if you’ve ever-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Totally!

Mike McAllister:

-dabbled in…

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh yes, it’s 100% you don’t want to do that not near a bathroom.

Mike McAllister:

And I was just like… And then I put it back in the thing and I just kept going about my business, and then after that happened I was blown away. And I was like, I didn’t take any of it. I didn’t even put it to the side and go, “I just might hold it for a rainy day.” It wasn’t even anything like that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, right. Touch it just to see, smell it, the purity.

Mike McAllister:

No, nothing. And it was after that… So I was saying it was easier to see, Alcoholics Anonymous in other people. That was one of the times where I was able to see them myself, where I was just like that-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I did something different.

Mike McAllister:

I did something different and it wasn’t even like… I didn’t have to think about it. And so my relationship with law enforcement and that mending of my views towards that has been huge.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And you probably, I don’t know if some of the guys know, but I’m assuming some of the guys know your history.

Mike McAllister:

No.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

They don’t.

Mike McAllister:

No, know nobody. I keep my anonymity at work to where I’m just a straight shooter.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Interesting. Okay. Okay. But some of the guys must know because they did your background check, right?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. But they’re… I mean, the department is so big.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. They were up higher. They were more… Okay. Okay. So yeah, you keep your anonymity there.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. And if it ever comes up, if I need to do something, it’s like I said. I’m just honest about it. And now I’ve been sober long enough that I have a track record on paper. You can look and be like, “This guy doesn’t live that anymore.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Right. And that’s the… We create this evidence, evidence that we don’t… evidence that we’ve changed, evidence that we don’t live that way, evidence that things work out okay if we put in the work. I like to call it evidence, because I think a lot of the time we’re looking for… We investigate things as a case. Is it true? Will it be like… Is everything going to be okay or whatever when we hit another roadblock? And I have to look back at the evidence. The evidence says, because I want proof of everything, and the evidence says that everything’s going to… Historically when I do the work, the evidence shows that it works out okay.

Mike McAllister:

Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s like when I came to have a God I can believe in. That’s been huge. There’s been times where I’ve been… the fear of unknowing, right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Mike McAllister:

Or I get in financial insecurity, or getting into a certain job, trying to get in with law enforcement. I just trust that it’s going to be okay. I don’t know how that… I have to be okay with that, not knowing how that’s going to look, but I just have to… I trust that it’s going to be okay and know that it might not be how I want it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Right. And that is a form of okay. That might be better. We don’t know what the plan is. How has… You have a very unique situation with Emily where you guys got loaded together and then were able to get sober separately and then get back together and you’ve been able to… It’s very uncommon for people who get loaded together to be able to stay together. What in your marriage… And you’ve gone to couples counseling. What are some… How were you guys able to be different than the status quo?

Mike McAllister:

That’s a lot… I mean, I think that has a lot to do with it is, for one, working on ourselves outside of us, getting to know ourselves personally, seeking professional help for our relationship. Because there’d be times where, and this works both ways, where one of us will say something and I can’t hear it and tell somebody I just paid money to tell me.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Totally, totally.

Mike McAllister:

And I’m like, wow. That makes perfect sense. I never thought of it that way.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

They just say… Yeah. Right, right. We have this joke about, so we’ve done a lot of therapy, we’ve done a lot of counseling and our couples counselor’s cash only, takes 220 bucks. So we try… We know that if we cannot solve, communicate this problem that we’re having right now, it’s going to be $220. So we try really… How serious, how misunderstood are we at an impasse because we know… And we’re going to walk in and pay $220. They’re going to say and we’re going to, “Oh.” But it’s a constant tool and it’s important, and I think a lot of guys have beliefs about therapy that stop them from doing it.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Well, and for me I went to a lot of ADD stuff when I was a kid, and I was just not wanting anything to do with it. And it’s part of that… Even with the couples stuff, I had to find someone who I could really feel was non-biased. And that-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Right. But you were willing to do that if-

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. I’ve learned that in sobriety. It takes works to keep things together.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. It really does.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. There’s certain platforms, me and my wife couldn’t be more different, learning how to bridge that or communicate across that. And sometimes it’s a struggle. There’s some topics we choose not to talk about, just because it gets heated.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s living with the disagreement and letting it be okay. That was something I had to learn because I want to attack it till it’s dead.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. I’m right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Yeah. I need you to see how I’m right about this. And there’s some stuff where you just have to let it be. And that’s a really… Living, moving forward, living in that discomfort of disagreement and unresolved, living in a marriage where there are things that are unresolved and be happy and continue. That’s hard.

Mike McAllister:

Oh, absolutely.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Depending on what it is, that can be really… If it’s with the kids or whatever and having to navigate that, and then all of our ego stuff, and then you have to alcoholics. Do you guys have plans on whether or not you’re going to tell your girls, or how do you discuss being sober?

Mike McAllister:

You know, eventually, I’m sure it will, just buy statistical data. One of our kids has probably got a pretty good chance to be an alcoholic. But my oldest, she’s eight now and she knows we don’t drink. She doesn’t know why.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. Yeah. But does she know that you go to meetings?

Mike McAllister:

Oh yeah. Yeah. She’s asked and I just tell her we talk about God, talk about how to be a better parent, and how to be a better friend, a better husband. I don’t tell her it’s like my life depends on it. Like, you don’t understand. I need to go.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

[inaudible 01:41:25] just that conversation. “And then my dad told me…” Yeah, my kids go, are you going to your meeting?

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s what my… My youngest will say that. But being in a sober house, 95% of our friends are all in the program. So it’s kind of the norm.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just interesting. I always curious what are people’s opinions or plans on how to talk about the fact that your parents go to meetings and don’t drink? And I think the not drinking piece is probably the least of it, because it’s just they don’t do that. It’s not a big deal. But the meetings, and the and the other people, and the different things that we do seems like at some point they would have questions about that.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. That’s going to be probably one of those things like, “Hey, how did I tell your kids? Or how did you tell your kids?” Because I don’t know. The way my experience was is going to be different than how I tell my kids.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Right, right. We’re trying to do it better. So what’s big on the docket for you this year?

Mike McAllister:

This year I’m going to try to promote, and I mean, that’ll just depends on somebody who retires. I’m going to try to promote. I don’t know. Kids birthday parties and house remodeling. The exciting stuff now.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, you are an amazing success story, and I’m super grateful that you came on here and shared it with me and you told the truth. You just told the truth. And I know that it’ll help a lot of people and I think it’s really cool that what you talked about with listening to the tapes and not being able to see and judge the person, I hadn’t thought about that, but I wonder if that helps people, like podcast stuff too.

Mike McAllister:

It was huge. It was huge for me.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Just not having that distraction and hearing the message. That’s really cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Mike. I really appreciate having you here.

Mike McAllister:

Yeah. Thank you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

This podcast is sponsored by Lionrock Recovery. Lionrock provides online substance abuse counseling where clients can get help from the privacy of their own home. They’re accredited by the Joint Commission and sessions are private, affordable, and user friendly. Call their free helpline at (800) 258-6550 or visit www.lionrockrecovery.com for more information.

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:43:57]