#203 – Jay Jay French
Twisted Sister Guitarist On Being A Sober Rockstar
Jay Jay French is an American guitarist, manager and producer. French is most famous for his role as the founding member and one of the guitarists of the heavy metal band Twisted Sister. As a guitar player, manager, producer and executive producer, French has sold over 20 million albums, performed in 34 countries and performed live over 9,000 times.
His life was incredibly large and glamorous, but for years he struggled with drugs and watched as he and his friends waded through the minefield that was the music industry and drug use.
After years of watching the drastic devastation of drugs on his life and the lives of the people he cared about, he finally made a lasting change.
Today he devotes his career to writing and motivational speaking, while also overseeing licensing and intellectual property rights for the Twisted Sister brand.
Jay Jay French Recovery Journey: Explore the transformative journey of Jay Jay French, Twisted Sister’s founding member, and his battle with addiction in the music industry.
Resilience & Redemption: Discover how resilience and redemption play a pivotal role in Jay Jay French’s life story, inspiring positive change and recovery.
Twisted Sister’s Legacy: Uncover the enduring legacy of Twisted Sister and how Jay Jay French continues to shape it while advocating for recovery and motivational speaking.
Motivational Insights: Gain valuable motivational insights from Jay Jay French’s experiences, offering hope and guidance for individuals seeking their own paths to recovery and personal growth.
To find other similar episodes by topic, click here.
Connect with Jay Jay
Book | amazon.com/Twisted-Business
Podcast | Jay Jay French Connection
Email | email Jay Jay
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Episode Transcript
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Coming up on this episode of The Courage to Change: sponsored by lionrock.life.
Jay Jay French:
My girlfriend’s about to leave me. My mother’s dying. The band’s going to break up. Well, my girlfriend left me, my mom died, and the band broke up and I went into a depression. Horrible, horrible, deep, dark. If one’s never been in one and you don’t understand how bad it can be, never take it lightly if somebody tells you they’re depressed. I didn’t go to a therapist, which I should have. I didn’t take medication or do anything, which I should have. I almost killed myself because my pain was so bad. But one thing I did not do, I did not go back into my drug.
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. And today I have Jay Jay French. Jay Jay French is an American guitarist, manager, and producer. French is most famous for his role as the founding member and one of the guitarists of the heavy metal band, Twisted Sister. As a guitar player, manager, producer, and executive producer French, has sold over 20 million albums, performed in 34 countries and performed live over 9,000 times. His life was incredibly large and glamorous, but for years he struggled with addiction and watched as he and his friends waded through the minefield that was the music industry and drug use. After years of watching the drastic devastation of drugs on his life and the lives of the people he cared about, he finally made a lasting change. Today, he devotes his career to writing and motivational speaking, while also overseeing licensing and intellectual property rights for the Twisted Sister brand.
This was super fun. Jay Jay is a very dear friend of my family’s, and it is a joy to be able to talk to him about his experience. What I wanted to convey was, of course, the fascinating glamorous life of a founding member of Twisted Sister, no question. But also that there are different paths to recovery. And while Jay Jay’s path to recovery wouldn’t have been the one that worked for me, I think it’s so important to talk about all the different ways that people get to a life that they don’t want to run away from.
I do not want people to believe that there is only one way to get into recovery, and it’s incredible that he was able to create a band that did not do drugs or alcohol, did not drink or do drugs, while being a touring famous metal band. It’s incredible and such a rad story of how that happened. So I will be quiet and let you check out this amazing episode. Thank you for being here. If you’re new, please check out our 250 plus episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And please check out Jay Jay French. He does all sorts of motivational speaking, and you can check out his podcast, the Jay Jay French Connection Beyond the Music. All right, let’s do this.
You are listening to the Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. We are a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week, we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma, and other life-changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey. Awesome. Jay Jay, thank you so much for being here.
Jay Jay French:
Thank you for having me. And what I consider a very important podcast interview for me, because I’m going to probably go into some details I’ve never gone into about my past, which is perfect for the content of your… And by the way, since you’ve been on my podcast and you were on this week.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I saw.
Jay Jay French:
I’ve got a lot of great comments on that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, good.
Jay Jay French:
Well, we all have to do our public service, don’t we?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes, exactly. Tell me a little bit before we get into where things got spicy for you. What was life like before sex, drugs, and rock and roll?
Jay Jay French:
Growing up in Manhattan, upper West Side, Jewish kid who came from very non-religious parents, very typical profile of super reformed Jews. In fact, they never even told me we were Jewish. I mean, that’s how much non-information I received about my Judaism. Like nothing. I mean, if you watch Seinfeld, it speaks more to the cultural Jewishness of what my atmosphere was like, full of irony, humor, sarcasm, and just disregard of everything. And one day I said to my mom, “We’re Jews, right? How come I’m not getting a bar mitzvah?” And my mother goes, “Because you got to go to Hebrew school. Do you want to go?” I went, “Sure.” So she said, “Here’s a Hebrew school.” I went one day, I came home. She goes, “What did you think?” I said, “God, it sucks.” She goes, “I could have told you that, but you needed to find it out for yourself.”
And that was the last time that was ever discussed. That was it. So table that stuff. At about this time, my next door neighbor, who’s considerably older than me, had a train set in his bedroom. He was also into pop music. So we had a record player and I was into pop music. We liked the same kind of music. And he used to invite me over to his apartment, it was right next door, I mean the next door apartment. He invited me over to listen to his 45s and play on his train set, which took up the whole bedroom. I would go over there like the 11-year-old kid that I was, and this guy was probably 18, 19.
Never thought twice about the age difference, and we liked the same music. And one day I noticed there was a pile of magazines on the train set board, and they were of boys swimming naked in camp scenes or something, which I guess I thought it was weird, but I didn’t really ask anything about it. And then he picked up one of the magazines and he said to me at one point, “Would you mind taking your clothes off?” I went, “Yeah, I would.” And ran out of the house. Did not tell my mother. I was ashamed that somehow I did that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Jay Jay French:
And never spoke to him again. Now, while all this is going on, I’m having a hard time at school. We didn’t have the phrase ADHD back in the sixties. I don’t know when that became… I don’t even know when that became an official diagnosis for somebody who has learning disabilities. But I was extremely smart, but I wasn’t paying any attention in school. I was just getting by in school, just barely. I was passing the tests and I was graduating to junior high school, but I never really was paying attention. And then the Beatles come into our life. Well, two things happen. Kennedy gets assassinated, which is a big deal because my mother wanted me to get into politics. And my father wanted me to get into the jewelry business, but one of his friends was murdered in broad daylight, shot dead on the street in Miami, and then two months later, Kennedy was assassinated.
I said to my dad when his friend was killed, “That’s a dangerous business.” Then when Kennedy was assassinated, I said to my mother, “That’s a dangerous business.” And then The Beatles come out two months later and I go, “Well, that looks like a pretty safe bet right there.” I mean, here I am, I’m 11 years old watching the Ed Sullivan Show, like a million guys my age who say the same story. You ask guys my age who became successful and they go, “Watching the Ed Sullivan Show changed my life.” I watched the Ed Sullivan Show, saw The Beatles, and went, “Wow, that looks like that’s what I want to do.” Okay. So that was immediately, Beatlemania took over. I have to tell you, that had an invisible person shown up at that very moment and put their hand on my shoulder and said, “John, you are going to become a rock star.” And I would go, “Really? When?” And then, “You’ll get your first gold record 20 years and six months from today.” I think I would’ve said, “Well, screw that idea.” That’s another idea. But ignorance is bliss. We don’t know these things.
So I joined the Boy Scouts, do a couple years in the Boy Scouts, 1965 rolls around, and then everyone’s growing their hair, and I wanted to grow my hair long. My Boy Scout master wouldn’t let me do it. So in the summer, in September ’65, I start growing my hair. They kicked me out of the Boy Scouts and I wanted to be in a band. I wanted desperately be in a band, but I couldn’t afford a guitar. So I found a bass guitar and I figured, “Well, there’s not that many bass players. There’s a lot of guitar players around.” So I put a little band together in my neighborhood with a kid named Bing Gong, and a drummer named Paul Herman, and we called the band John, Paul, and Bingo. And we played a talent show in my junior high school, and we played two songs.
We played Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan, and I Couldn’t Get High by The Thugs, which when a 13-year-old kid sings a song called I Couldn’t Get High, gets you yanked off the stage, but I wasn’t doing drugs yet, and I didn’t even know what that meant, being high. I just heard about it. And that band broke. But then I joined a band that blew us away that night called The Bats. And The Bats, I started playing bass in The Bats, but I didn’t get the bass guitar. So what happened was, I had sold Boy Scout cookies and broke the record for my local Boy Scout chapter the year before, and the Boy Scout master called me and said would I sell cookies again for the Boy Scout troop? And I said, “You threw me out for having long hair, and now you want me to sell Boy Scout cookies?”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow.
Jay Jay French:
And my father said to me, “You know that could guitar you want, it’s $25. Tell your Boy Scout master that if he you paid you $0.10 a box commission, we’ll sell a ton of cookies and I’ll take you to 47th Street.” He was a jewelry salesman on 47th, so he knew everybody, and my Boy Scout master agreed. So we sold 242 boxes of cookies on 47th Street, and I made $24.20. So my father kicked in the $0.80, the big spender that he is, and I bought my first guitar, and I still have that guitar, by the way. I still have it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love that.
Jay Jay French:
So then I’m messing around with bands, messing around with bands, messing around with bands, but still nothing is… I’m not getting high, just stumbling my way through school, barely getting through school, come that September, still not getting high, right? The Sergeant Pepper album came out in June. Jimi Hendrix’s album came out in July. The Door’s debut album came out in July. This is a time. This is it. Rock and roll is everywhere. And my friend Danny Birch says, “You got to smoke a joint.” And I went, “I’m afraid.” He goes, “No, man, everything will be fine.” So we go to his house, his mom is out. I start smoking a joint and I didn’t get high. And he goes, “No, no, no, no. Go into a closet and just keep smoking until you get high.” So I closed this closet door in his apartment and I smoked and I got pretty wasted, and I walked out of a closet, I went, “Wow, wow. This is great. This is great. How much is this?”
They said, “Well, it’s a joint. It’s a dollar.” I said, “You paid a dollar for a joint?” “Yeah.” I said, “Wow.” I said, “Does it come by joints?” He goes, “No, you buy a nickel bag.” I said, “What’s that?” “It’s $5 and you get like 20 joints.” And I said… So my retail head just immediately perks up and goes, “Wait a minute. If I can buy a nickel bag, $5 and get 20 joints and sell them for a dollar each, then I can buy four nickel bags, right?” Which I did almost immediately, and I sold them immediately, and I’m like, “Wow, I never had money.” I went, “Wow.” So I said, “What do I do next?” He goes, “Well, you can buy an ounce of weed.” And I go, “An ounce. How many nickel bags you get to an ounce?” He goes, “Seven.” “How much is an ounce?” “$15.” I went, “$15 for an ounce?” Now, by the way, folks, I know this sounds like prehistoric numbers.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I didn’t say that. I didn’t say it.
Jay Jay French:
But you have to be sitting there going, “$15 an ounce?” Right? So I bought an ounce. I made seven nickel bags, sold them like this, got $35. I’m never going to have to ask my parents for money again. Meanwhile, I’m smoking, just constantly fucked up. But as messed up as I was getting, I would still be able to do the math. I was getting through my year in school and the dealing accelerated very quickly. I was buying ounces, then quarter pounds, then half pounds. Then I bought a kilo of weed, which is 2.2 pounds, which I paid $150 for. Okay?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Now we’re getting prehistoric.
Jay Jay French:
Okay, now, right. Now we’re getting into that, “Was McDonald’s even opened back in those days?” No, McDonald’s wasn’t even around in those days. So I remember buying a kilo weed. I remember meeting them on West End Avenue and thinking that every cop in the neighborhood knew I was doing a drug deal, just thinking everyone’s following me. Everybody’s seeing me. Took the $150 and I met my friend. He handed me the shopping bag, and then I must’ve walked three miles stopping in every vestibule of every building, thinking I’m being followed by somebody. And I finally get home with 2.2 pounds of weed, which I immediately turn into ounces, quarter pounds, and I’m rolling in money. I’m just rolling in money, and I’m not doing any schoolwork whatsoever. All of my friends, none of us cared about anything except getting high and going to shows. Now, this is the early days of hippie dump. What existed before us, pot leads to heroin.
That’s what the scary story was. If you do this, it’s going to lead to heroin. So my mother and father confront me, and they said, “You got to stop doing that.” I said, “You don’t understand. We’re not the fifties. This isn’t that. We’re flower children. This is just fun and games. This is nothing.” I said, “You think it’s going to lead to heroin? What kind of stupid fifties nonsense could that be?” Turned out to be exactly that. Meanwhile, I didn’t give a shit about school, nothing. And then 1968 rolls around and I start dealing acid without having taken LSD. I’m dealing it. One day I said, “Shit, if I’m dealing this stuff, I should take it. Find out what the hell I’m selling.” I go down to the fountain, and that’s where all the hippie junkie or all my stone friends are. We started about a year earlier, and I drop a tab of Blue Cheer, which I’m dealing.
I start feeling weird, and I went, “Maybe I should go home before this hits me.” And I start walking back to the west side to get on a bus. On my way where Strawberry Fields is across from the Dakota, I stopped and I laid down on the grass and I look at a tree, and I remember reading Timothy Leary where he said, “If you take really good acid, you’ll see the chlorophyll going through the veins of the leaves.” So I look up and the LSD is hitting, and I’m looking and I’m watching, at least I’m hallucinating the chlorophyll through the vein. “Whoa, I better get home.” I literally get home. I walk in the door, the acid hits full bore. I look in the living room, and there are my parents watching the funeral of Martin Luther King, except they had turned into two giant hogs, reading The New York Times, by the way. Pigs reading The Times, watching the Martin Luther King funeral.
And I go, “Oh, oh God, I need to go to…” I didn’t know what was happening. I need to go to a mental hospital. I need to go to Bellevue. How do I tell my parents to take me to Bellevue. I’ll be telling two pigs to take me to Bellevue. So I go into my room, I close the door, and Ashley, within a minute of closing the door, the entire room, which was covered in day glow posters and blah, blah, blah, all posters come flying off the wall and circling. And the walls are heaving and the windows are heaving. And I look down at my heart and it looks like one of those cartoon characters who falls in love with a boom, boom, boom. This is what I’m going, “Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh my God, what am I doing? What am I selling?” Most people, Ashley, at this point, would take an experience like that and go, “You’re lucky.” Right? “You’re lucky.” But not me. Not me.
Why? Because I had friends who really took a lot of acid, and they said, “Man, it’s like a macho thing. You just have to learn how to understand your hallucinations.” And I said, “What do you mean?” And they said, “Take little bits and learn how to control your hallucinations.” So that summer of ’68, I took LSD every day for three months in tiny increments to see if I could learn how to control my hallucinations. Now, that’s a very logical thing, right? It seems…
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Microdosing?
Jay Jay French:
I mean, we didn’t call it that, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Jay Jay French:
We didn’t understand what we were doing, but we were smoking 20 joints a day. Let’s be really clear about this. My diet of drugs was every morning I had five pounds of weed under my bed. I’d roll it out, roll my joints, go to school, smoke the whole way up, take a break, go to the bleachers we had in my high school, get stoned, come back, and this was my daily diet. I’m not doing any schoolwork, right? I mean, the fact that I’m passing any test is mind-blowing. Then there’s anti-war demonstrations. Then there’s the civil rights marches. Then the summer of ’68, everything is exploding. The cities are in flames, figuring no one’s really paying attention to any of my dealing is doing really well. This seems to be pretty good. And this goes on unabated for another year or so, and this is where it all gets really screwy.
We’re now three, four years into the drug culture, the hippie drug culture. Heroin comes in big, and it was so stealthy that nobody was really paying attention. It just became another one of the drugs that was around, heroin. Well, obviously by this point, I’m Mr. Acid. I’m Mr. DMT, I’m Mr. Mescaline. I’m Mr. THC. I’ve done Angel Dust, smoking 20 joints a day. I’m obviously Superman. Nothing’s going to affect me. And everybody around me starts doing heroin, starts snorting it. All of a sudden, the drug dealing starts bartering with heroin, whether you knew it or not. Like you were taking heroin in, selling it, taking this out, selling, this culture, this infused drug culture in New York City, which is surrounded by the Fillmore East, so you could go see every rock hero you ever want to see every week for $3, Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, you name it. Three bucks. I mean, it was a paradise to be 18, 19 years old. Meanwhile, I am grudgingly acknowledging that my mother may have been right, but fuck it, I don’t care. So I continue to get high.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Been right about it being-
Jay Jay French:
About the leading to heroin.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
… a gateway. Yeah.
Jay Jay French:
Whether she knew it or now, because she was trying to scare me. So I don’t know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Jay Jay French:
Meanwhile, it’s me off that it’s exactly what she is predicting. This whole scene that we were in was just deteriorating. Friends of mine are being murdered in drug deals now. Now it’s getting serious. Now the games are… It’s no longer a game. So one of my best friends, David, he starts getting into heroin really heavy, and he takes me to a jazz club, and we do heroin with Elvin Jones, the famous jazz drummer. 1971 rolls around and I’m working in a department store to make my mother happy while I’m dealing. And one of the guys who worked in the department store comes in one day and says, “I got some really good heroin. What have you got?” And I said, “I got some great acid and some great weed.” So we decide to exchange, and he hands me the heroin. He says, “Go ahead, go to the bathroom and do it.”
So I go to the bathroom, and I do the whole bag, and I come back and he goes, “Where’s the bag?” And I went, “What bag?” He goes, “The bag I gave you.” I said, “I did the whole thing.” He said, “You what?” I said, “I did the whole thing.” He goes, “You’re only supposed to do two on two.” And I said, “I did.” He goes, “Oh man. That’s not good.” And I immediately started to feel sick, and my heart started to race and realized that I was ODing on heroin. I went in the bathroom, I started turning blue, and I took my fingers and shoved them down my throat, and I made myself throw up and keep throwing up and keep throwing up and keep throwing up and keep throwing up until I was surrounded by vomit and blood. And my heart rate calmed down.
And I realized, this is no longer a game, and this has got to end. So I tell my girlfriend, she’s fully invested in the heroin world, and my best friend, Victor, at the time, fully invested in the heroin world. They’re shooting now. Victor’s shooting. I looked at the two of them and I said, “I can’t continue this world that we’re in because you guys don’t see it, but you’re going to die, and I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to go to prison.” Six months goes by. Now we’re in basically early ’72, and I’m confronted with a decision, which was stop doing drugs because without a doubt, I will be arrested for dealing, I will be murdered, or I will OD on something. So I let Victor and Gail know that I’m cutting them both off, and I accused them of having an affair because Victor accused me of having an affair with a girlfriend of his three years ago, which was true, by the way.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Allegedly.
Jay Jay French:
Yeah, it was true. And then Gail told me she was having an affair with Victor, but I think she was doing that to make me jealous. Anyway, I have a fight with Victor. I end my relationship with her. And then I said, “Okay, John. Okay, so you’re going to go straight. How are you going to do this?” And I went, “Okay.” So I opened up a black box that I had in my room with all my drugs in it, and there was Mescaline and psilocybin, STP, there was a whole bunch of pills. And I said, “I’m going to take it all. I’m going to take everything in this box, and if I wake up tomorrow, that’ll be the end.” And I took it all.
I woke up the next morning, I was alive. I took stock of myself, and I went, “That’s it.” And that was it. That was it. Except for I continued to smoke weed for a little while after that, until Twisted started, which was six months later. So I committed myself to be straight from drugs, but as I said to my mother, “I got good news and bad news. The good news is I’m not doing drugs and dealing anymore. But the bad news is I’m a transvestite.” And I’m trying to figure out which one she thought was worse. Maybe she thought, “Maybe the drug thing isn’t that bad. Can you bring that back a little bit?”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, exactly.
Jay Jay French:
But the problem with that, Ashley, was so now I’m totally straight. And I joined a band in New Jersey, which was a good thing because I could reinvent myself in Jersey. Nobody knew me. The problem with being in New York City, and the problem with addictions is the people around us, what they expect from us, that’s a lot of pressure on you. Everybody in New York knew I was a drug dealer. Everybody know you’d go to John’s house, and I knew I had to get away from it. So when I joined Twisted Sister at the end of December ’72, they didn’t know my past and I didn’t I have… They said, “Oh, but what do you do?” I said, “I smoke weed. That’s it.” I didn’t have to live up to their expectation. They had no idea. I did not know I was joining a band of alcoholics, and I had no experience with alcohol because the hippie culture I came from, there was no booze, hard to believe, maybe.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Jay Jay French:
But there never was. No one drank beer. All you saw was Boone’s Farm Wine, $2 wine at a party, never alcohol. And when I tell that to people, they find that rather interesting that alcohol was never part of the equation, but it never was. So I didn’t know anything about alcohol. I hate it to sound that naive, but the band I joined was a bunch of Jersey guys who were 21. And these guys, they’re drinkers. And I don’t drink. So we’re playing in a bar… 50 years ago this summer, and we got our first big gig at a club in the Hamptons.
So you’re 20 years old, you’re living in the Hamptons upstairs, playing the entire summer, living for free, dressed as a woman, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, I guess. And they’re all drinking. So my singer says to me, he goes, “Hey man, you got to try drinking.” And I went, “I never did.” He said, “Really?” Now you’re in a bar, Ashley. So what do you do when you play bars? Well, if you’ve got a drinking problem, maybe bars aren’t the best place to be living in, right? Or working in.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right.
Jay Jay French:
I’m not drinking, so I don’t care. So he says to the bartender, “Take some shots, give it to Jay Jay.” He started pours in Shivas and Jack Daniels. This is my life. This is my new life. Now I’m thinking, “Oh, okay.” I didn’t know. Never knew about alcohol. Let’s try it. I tasted Shivas. I went, “Oh, that’s horrible.” Southern Comfort, that’s horrible. I went down the list, I went, “You drink this stuff?” I said, “This is awful.” And that was it. That’s the sum total of my alcohol consumption.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow.
Jay Jay French:
You get that? It was awful.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think what’s crazy about all of this is that you talk to so many rock stars and their addictions and alcoholism, they just skyrocket when they’re surround… When the fame and the traveling and the nomadic, all of that, it gets worse. And for you, it coincides with when you stopped. It’s so unusual.
Jay Jay French:
It’s totally unusual. And that’s a good point you make. Here’s what makes Twisted Sister so unusual. First off, those artists that you talk about, whether it’s the Rolling Stones or the Aerosmith or all the typical stories, they went very quickly from record deal to stardom, pretty fast. So the trajectory was quick. They were in their early twenties and the world was their oyster. They came from these little towns in England, where you can whatever. And all of a sudden, you’re a celebrity, you can do whatever you want, all the girls you want, the drugs and all that stuff. Twisted spent 10 years trying to get a record deal on the Long Island Club scene. In that 10 year period of time, not only did I not drink, but we went through band members who had alcohol problems and seriously screwed up the band’s trajectory and were fired over and over again. My distaste for it went beyond the obvious.
I don’t need you to screw up my life. I’m trying to become famous and make money. Your inability to perform because you’re wasted. When I’m working six nights a week, five shows a night, unrelenting, 250 nights a year, every club date, you’re working until six o’clock in the morning. That’s a lot of work you got to do. You can’t do it when you’re high. Now, I will add another wrinkle into all of this. Shortly after the band got together, like two years into the band, here I am straight, and witnessing the alcoholism that existed in the remaining members of the band. And it was getting heavy, like really bad. They’re drinking, singer’s slurring his words. The reason why I talked to the audience was because the singer was so drunk, he couldn’t talk. Someone had to talk. So I walk up to the microphone and go, “Thank you for coming to The Satellite. Please tip your bartenders.”
That’s how it all started, because Michael was too drunk to talk. He jeopardized a couple of record deals. But here’s what happened, Ashley, two years into it, my girlfriend and I are having a rough patch, and I was in love with her, and my mother had gotten sick suddenly. She was very, very ill. And these two events happened within weeks of each other in November of ’74. And then we played a club in Adams, Massachusetts. Back in those days when you played these rooms, a lot of these rooms provided places for the band to stay. So we’re all living upstairs in a barracks type of a room. And what happened was, one night, the singer is approached by a roadie who says that the bass player put a cigarette out on him. The singer was drunk. It was Michael, and he was looking for the bass player, Kenny, to yell at him, “How dare you put your cigarette out on this guy, Greg?”
And by the way, this guy, Greg, was a meth addict, number one, which I didn’t know. And number two, Kenny didn’t put a cigarette out on him. They were walking by each other on a staircase. Kenny had a cigarette. And as Greg squeaked by, an ash fell off. But in Greg’s mind, Kenny put a cigarette on him. He tells Michael, Michael starts screaming, “Where’s Kenny?” He runs upstairs to the barracks type room, and the only person there is the drummer, Mel. Those two guys went to school together, and he goes, “Where’s Kenny?” And Mel goes, “You idiot. You drunken moron, what are you doing?” And Michael goes, “He put a cigarette out on…” And Mel goes, “Shut up. You’re just ranting like an alcoholic moron.” Well, Michael had brought a rifle with him to go hunting because this was up in the woods. Michael grabs the gun and he aims at it at Mel.
And he says, “I can kill you.” And I walk in to that scene. I’m about to witness a murder, and the end of my rock and roll life, it’s going to be right here. I’m going to be a witness. Band’s going to break up. This is going to be it. And Michael, as drunk as he was, threw the gun down, and they got into a fist fight, and we decided to break the band up, which at that point had been together two years and gotten very successful. So now let’s put this together. My girlfriend’s about to leave me. My mother’s dying. The band’s going to break up. Well, my girlfriend left me, my mom died, and the band broke up, and I went into a depression. Horrible, horrible, deep, dark. If one’s never been in one and you don’t understand how bad it can be, never take it lightly if somebody tells you they’re depressed.
I didn’t go to a therapist, which I should have. I didn’t take medication or do anything, which I should have. I almost killed myself because my pain was so bad. But one thing I did not do, I did not go back into my drug. There was a part of me, Ashley, that just said, “John, you successfully walked away after five years of heavy drug use. You’re not going to let yourself go back there again.” So I had a stopgap, and I don’t know the answer, Ashley, as to why. I don’t know what it was that gave me the strength to rather kill myself rather than go back and get high, which to this day, I’m marvel at because I don’t understand it. But let’s just say this, on the day of my mother’s funeral, I started keeping a diary because I needed to express my pain.
And I kept that diary going for 15 years. And when my depression of those events ended after nine months, it was August of ’75, so a full eight or nine months after the cataclysmic conglomeration of these events where I was going to bed every night in abdominal pain, like mental anguish, not sleeping, night eating, got down to 149 pounds and with internal pain because it was so… I woke up one morning in the summer of August and there was no pain. And I thought, “Well, that’s a mistake. The pain will come back later on today.” And it didn’t come back. So I went, “Oh, it’ll be back tomorrow.” And it didn’t come back.
And this was my self-diagnosis. My self-diagnosis was that these traumas were fairly surface, not clinically deep enough so that there were almost like a cut on the hand. And given enough time, that cut would heal. And again, I’m not a doctor, so I can’t say what it was, how I got over it, but I will say this, because of that diary, because I kept diaries for 15 years after that, anytime I remotely became close to a mental state like that, I went back to the diaries, read what I wrote, and then went to a therapist and got help, never to fall that low again because that low was horrible, scary, could have led to my end, could have led to my suicide because I was in that much absolute pain.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment. Hi, everybody. Ashley here. As many of you know, I got sober at 19 after going to many treatment centers. And years later, when my aunt passed away as a result of her addiction, my father and I, and our business partner, Ian Crab, started a telehealth company in 2010 called Lionrock Recovery. We started with a PowerPoint and a dream, hoping to help people overcome barriers to treatment like affordability, accessibility, and privacy, which we were able to create in this program that we started. Today at Lionrock Recovery, our little PowerPoint treats people all over the world. We have over 200 clinicians, and it’s an amazing program.
We have an intensive outpatient program that has so many different time tracks to fit into people’s schedules and specialties like professionals group, L-G-B-T-Q-I-A, trauma, and many, many more. We are able to help people anywhere in the world with any schedule, and all of it can be done privately. This is our dream come true. And Lionrock Recovery is available to any of you who have family members who are struggling, or if you’re struggling and you need to talk to somebody, our admissions team is there around the clock for a free phone call. Also, a live chat on the website. There’s so much there that we’ve worked so hard to bring to you. Please check it out, lionrockrecovery.com, or you can call the 800 number, (800) 258-6550. Thank you so much.
So when you and I talked about doing this episode, you had some trepidation about whether or not, while I didn’t get sober the same way that people get sober, I don’t want people to think that they can do the same. And while I do have that trepidation too, I also think it’s really… There are people out there with your story. There are people out there who, for whatever reason, they are able to cease use. And for those of us who thought we were those people, who tried to be you, we get information when we try to stop using, we get valuable experience and information about ourselves. “Oh, I’m not one of those people that’s going to be able to stop on my own. I’m not one of those people who’s going to be able to refer back to this diary or refer back to these painful things and use them as information to stop further use.” And I think I really value what your experience is because I don’t think that we gain anything by burying them because it didn’t use the formula that works for a lot of people.
And I am grateful that you’re here to talk about it because not only did you stop using and then a diary, a written dialogue and stream of consciousness is so valuable. I mean, people don’t give it enough credit. And so you used that and you used a lot of tools that we use in sobriety, just you didn’t know that’s what you were doing. And then eventually you brought those things to a therapist, and it speaks to the strength of what you did that you then went on to have this incredibly successful band, rock and roll band, where it would’ve been so easy. It’s not like you stayed in a monastery so that you wouldn’t use drugs and alcohol. I mean, you were there, it worked. It actually worked and has worked, and you’ve used and grown as a person through your entire career. And so I really… I’m glad we get to talk about it because I know there are people out there who said, “I did just stop and I do have these skills or tools that work for me.” And it’s okay if that’s your story.
Jay Jay French:
Here’s the other point too that we didn’t really get to is that I became so anti-drug and alcohol because of the ex members who were destroying my ability to become successful because we were having problems with their drinking and drugs that I said, “We’re only going to hire straight people.” Well, let me tell you something, nobody wants to do that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right.
Jay Jay French:
I mean, you’re joining it because you want to… I mean, to be fair, so we would have interviews with band members and they would go… New guys. And they’d go, “By the way, we don’t like drugs and alcohol, and we really would prefer that you don’t use them.” And they’d go, “What, what?” And I go, “No, no, really. If you say you don’t use them, that’s fine. But if you want to continue using, let us know now so we can just end this thing right now.” I remember a lot of them lied because they wanted to be in the band, but when Dee came in, can I hire Dee? I said to him, “Do you drink and do drugs?” He was really defiant, he goes, “I hate that shit.” And I went, “Oh my God, you really hate it?” He goes, “Yeah, I hate it.” I went, “I can’t believe it.” I almost said, “Well, you could be the biggest jerk in the world, but if you don’t do drugs, I’ll take you.” So Dee had the same feeling I did.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
For the same reason?
Jay Jay French:
Just never did it. Never did it. Dee’s first sip of alcohol was on his wedding night, he had champagne. He hates… Doesn’t like it now. He’ll drink wine on occasion, but he never was high. And when Mark Mendoza, the bass player joined, I said, “You don’t drink?” And he goes, “I hate that shit.” I went, “Wow. I can’t believe I found a band of guys who not just… I don’t have to worry about them.” In other words, it’s not me trying to convince them. It’s just this is who we are. Screw that. It took so many years for the band to become successful that by the time we were successful, we were now 32 years old, not 22 years old, so we’re 32 years old, who had reached a certain level of success because we worked really hard. So the formula for success was never based on sex, drugs, or rock and roll.
It was just based on hard work and a work ethic, which is what my book is about, which is what I talk about in my book. That’s not what people expect to hear from a heavy metal band. They want to know it’s sex, drugs, rock and roll, and fairy dust. You made a deal with the devil and now you’re all on coke and you’re drinking and there’s hookers, whatever. And for Twisted, it was like almost being in the Jehovah Witnesses. We were so straight, and what would happen is we would go on tour with these other bands and our tour manager would go in and tell these other bands, “By the way, I’m just letting you know, the guys just don’t get high. So I mean, don’t waste your time. Just don’t even bring it up because you’ll just get them… They’ll curse at you. And rather, we just want to keep it light. You do what you want to do, knock yourself out. Don’t invite them to parties. They’ve got no interest.”
So consequently, Ashley, we were never invited anywhere because we were antisocial because we didn’t party, which was totally fine by me. I could care less. My job was to blow other bands off the stage. That was our MO as a band. Our motto was, “Look like women, talk like men, play like motherfuckers.” That was our business model. And because we grew up in the club circuit where you had to eat your young, we had to destroy the next band. That’s all it became a competitive blood sport for us. I didn’t need to know these bands. I don’t know what they did. We toured with everybody you can imagine, Metallica, this, that and the other. I don’t know what they did.
I can tell you this, one roadie from one band offered me coke in the entire five years that we toured internationally. One roadie in one band. So when people say to me, “How do you avoid it?” Well, I just told you, nobody ever talked to me about it. Nobody ever invited us anywhere. We didn’t go anywhere where the stuff was at. But one roadie came up to me and offered me coke. And I said, “Did you ever get the message?” He said, “No.” I said, “You know, the band doesn’t do that shit.” And he goes, “Oh, I’m sorry.” I said, “Yeah, if you ever do that again, I’ll knock you through a wall.” And that was it. So when someone says, “How do you avoid it?” Well, number one, it’s not who you are, so it’s not like I avoided temptation. This is what I need you to… I need people to hear this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, that’s great. Yeah.
Jay Jay French:
It’s nothing to do… You could put 20 pounds of coke in front of me and it wouldn’t matter.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You inadvertently did all the recovery things that we talk about. You created community, you surrounded yourself with people who were doing and felt the same way you did. You just didn’t know that’s what you were doing. So you said, “I don’t do this stuff.” Instead of worrying how it was going to look or figuring out, “Well, I’m in a rock and roll band. I have to let people…” No, you are like, “This is who I am. This is what I do.” You built this community of people who were doing the same thing you’re doing and you traveled together, you led with it, you insulated, you didn’t wait for someone to offer it to you. Your tour manager was like, “Don’t even offer these guys. Don’t invite them.” So it just wasn’t part of your experience and you led with that. It’s who you are. That’s what you said.
It’s not what you do, it’s who you are. You had the diary, the journaling, eventually had the therapy, all the things, you were doing them. You had a passion in your life. You were working hard. It came together the same things, just it wasn’t the typical way that it looked. And to me, that says it all. It’s like we spend a lot of time in the recovery community worrying how it looks and how people get to where they need to go. And what I’ve learned in the 20 years that I’ve been around recovery is, it doesn’t matter how you get to where you’re going to go. It matters what works. And for many of us, the way that you did it, we tried it and it didn’t work. So we had to try it a different way. But it’s okay if you want to try that. It’s okay.
If something doesn’t work, you have to pivot. I mean, even you ended up pivoting after you quit drugs, you did a year of smoking weed, and then you pivoted from there. And so I think that you have this beautiful recovery story. It’s just that the recovery community is often biased against a story that isn’t the one that they believe people need to hear.
Jay Jay French:
You have said something to me, which is really important. You said that inadvertently or unknown to me, I was doing the things that one needs to do to make sure that one succeeds in this. And in my book, I write about the fact that Twisted wound up doing a system of exercises that we didn’t know we were doing at the time, but this is how we consistently came back over and over and over again. And it wasn’t until I had years of perspective that I could understand exactly how Twisted Sister does what Twist Sister does. But in the book, I talk about recovering from rejection because rejection is such a big part of my business. What do we say our joke is? Twisted Sister was turned down more times than a bedsheet in a whore house. And we’ve come back more times than Freddie Kruger.
That’s the line, it’s Twisted Sister. But the truth is that unbeknownst to us, our ability to come back was based on a formula that we didn’t know we were doing until years later. So what you’re saying to me is I was inadvertently also doing a formula that I didn’t realize I was doing, but I was doing the very things that you talk about. And what we would do is we would mourn the rejection like we were told that we sucked, whatever. We mourn the rejection, and then we would reflect on the rejection. Then we’d retool based upon the reflection, and then we would reapply and we’d change the songs, change the set list, change the this. And the joke is, just because someone says you suck, doesn’t mean you don’t suck. You could really suck and you just need to pay attention to the fact that they may have a point that you suck, and you should pay attention to that because they may not be wrong, even though your own narcissistic belief in yourself says no one has the right to say you suck.
You possibly could suck. So our mourning, reflection, retool, and reapply seems to be this underlying reason why the band was able to come back over and over and over. As the band’s challenges kept coming in, we kept figuring out ways to overcome those things. My story is unusual, that is true. The fact that Dee and Mark never got high, that was just luck, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, you turned down a lot of people-
Jay Jay French:
Lot of people.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
… to get to those people. And they may have heard that, they may… So yes, luck, but also, I don’t mean to say manifestation, but literally you were turning down people who didn’t fit that mold. So you made space for people who did.
Jay Jay French:
You’re a hundred percent right. In fact, one of the guys that didn’t join the band straight out just said, “You don’t got to get high. I don’t want to be in your band.” I went, “Thank you. Thank you very much.” Meanwhile, I had a drummer who said he didn’t get high, which turned out to be a lie. And eventually the last show he did when he was fired, he OD’ed on a San Francisco speedball, which was heroin and methyine, and collapsed in front of radio station DJs at a radio station party that we had just thrown at a club. And he was the backstage, and we introduced him to these two guys from a famous station, and he collapsed in an epileptic seizure. So what happens? He eventually becomes a Christian years and years later, and he actually pickets the band with a bunch of Evangelicals.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow.
Jay Jay French:
Saying that we’re the devil. And we’re like, “How is that? How are we the devil?”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s about, really, the story is about staying true to yourself. It’s that no matter what, you’re always going to find dissenters. You’re always going to find someone better and someone worse, someone richer, someone poorer, someone godlier, someone less godly, however, whatever it is. And the thing is, if you stay true to yourself, then that is how you will find your path, and that’s what you did. And your success is a testament to what you guys created. So grateful that you came on today and shared your story, and that people can read more about this in your book. Will you tell them a bit about where to find your book and where to find your podcast?
Jay Jay French:
Thank you. It’s called Twisted Business. You can get it on Amazon, like everything else you can get on Amazon, so it’s easy to get it. My podcast is the Jay Jay French Connection, that’s J-A-Y J-A-Y F-R-E-N-C-H, the Jay Jay French Connection. I also do motivational speaking for a lot of organizations. If you wish to contact me that way, you can email me at askjayjay, it’s A-S-K, ask, Jay Jay, J-A-Y J-A-Y, askjayjayts, like Twisted Sister, askjayjayts@gmail. And if you’re interested in hiring me, you’re welcome to it. And for anyone out there who, once again is in the entertainment business and is afraid that you think it ultimately leads you down that road, the answer is, I’m proof that it doesn’t have to go that way. You can actually do this, have a great career, and you don’t have to be threatened that you’re going to fall down. It’s just a matter of what you can tell yourself.
But if you have to convince yourself that no one’s going to like you because do this stuff, stop it. It’s BS. We could care less. And you know what? Here’s one thing, Ashley, that I will say, our record label did not want us to talk about us being straight because they said it was going to hurt our career. I’m in a business that actually supports this kind of dysfunction, but I’m here to tell you, you don’t have to fall for that dysfunction. It’s a myth. It’s total bullshit. You don’t need that to be successful, and we’re proof that you don’t need that to be successful. So I thank you so much for having me on. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Hello. Beautiful people. No, no.
Speaker 7:
I think that was fine. It was British. Hello, beautiful people. I’m Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I’m the finest chimney sweep in these parts, and I can sweep a chimney with the best of them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I forgot where I was and what I’m doing and who my name is and who my hair is and how I’m lifing.
Speaker 7:
All fair things. On Friday night, Cassie and I were laughing so hard that I pulled a rib. So when I was laughing at that story just right now, I was like, “Oh, oh.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We’re so old.
Speaker 7:
I mean, it’s both good and bad.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s great and terrible.
Speaker 7:
It’s embarrassing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Speaker 7:
Literally, to her, I said, “What if I was a professional athlete?”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You went from laughing and pulling a muscle to what if I was a professional athlete?
Speaker 7:
Stay with me. Stay with me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, I’m following.
Speaker 7:
Whenever that happens, they have to say why they’re on the DL, on the disabled list.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Speaker 7:
And they would have to say on the 15 day DL for rib pain caused by laughing at Instagram videos with his wife.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But you should have seen the video. The first time I threw up my back and it was a really tall bed, and I’m leaning over with my arms on the bed on my phone, and then I just stood up and it went out and I hit the bed. Yeah.
Speaker 7:
Mine, the first time I threw out my back was pulling Liriope, those little flowers out of the garden in our front yard.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Liriope, I’m unfamiliar.
Speaker 7:
Yeah, they’re small. It’s very small flower.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But deadly.
Speaker 7:
There should be no lower back happening in this exercise.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s the bend over.
Speaker 7:
And then I woke up and the next morning and I was like, “Oh no, the Liriopes got me.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Gardening can be a tough one. Now, I understand those knee mats.
Speaker 7:
Oh, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was looking at those.
Speaker 7:
Note to self, that’s also an official, I think, age marker.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The knee mats? The knee mats.
Speaker 7:
I was looking at knee mats the other day. Let me tell you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, no, no, no. I was in-
Speaker 7:
Non-slip even, non-slip.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Excuse me. I was in the gardening section of Home Depot.
Speaker 7:
Sure, sure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They had gardening accessories, and I happened to notice the value-
Speaker 7:
Sure. Of a knee apparatus.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
… of a knee apparatus for the use of and during gardening sessions.
Speaker 7:
Okay, let me just test our compatible ages here. When you think of Twisted Sister, what is the very first image that pops into your head? I will accept one of two answers. If you’re pulling down a TV memory of Twisted Sister.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The tampon commercial.
Speaker 7:
They had a tampon commercial?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. We’re not going to take it.
Speaker 7:
This was a tampon commercial?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Speaker 7:
I didn’t know this one.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That is the big song that I know. But, because I’ve known Jay Jay for 10 years and he’s married to someone who’s basically in my family, it’s hard for me to separate that I’ve been to… But I didn’t grow up, I didn’t do glam rock. So the only connotation it has for me is in this one avenue. So I don’t know. But if you say Twisted Sister, the first thing I think is this tampon commercial-
Speaker 7:
Tampon commercial.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
… with We’re Not Gonna Take It. And then I also remember thinking, smart, let’s make the money. Don’t worry about what’s being shown. And then of course, Jay Jay and the band.
Speaker 7:
Mine is Dee testifying before Congress. That’s a video that pops up a lot is like…
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Why did he testify?
Speaker 7:
It was about censorship, I think.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh.
Speaker 7:
But it’s like, it’s a video that comes up a lot where it’s like, “Dee Snyder from Twisted Sister outclasses these senators.” And then it’s like he makes a very compelling statement or whatever about censorship. Yeah. That’s all. The tampon commercial sounds better.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You can look it up. It’s a good one. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, my music listening, what I listen to is seventies, nineties. I sound like one of, “Seventies, nineties, and today nineties.” It’s seventies, nineties. And then maybe some 2000s, but not much. And then it stops, straight up. No new friends. Eighties, it didn’t really get me.
Speaker 7:
I’m surprised. It was a cocaine time. It seems like there’s a lot of cocaine anthems coming from the eighties.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, but the seventies had cocaine.
Speaker 7:
Sure. I think they’ve had it for a while.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, Clapton had some, yeah, it’s been around. Bayer had cocaine.
Speaker 7:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They put it in their drugs.
Speaker 7:
They put drugs in their drugs.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They just put drugs in their drugs. Do you know that they had… I was listening to an interview where they were putting cocaine in baby teeth gel.
Speaker 7:
Oh, boy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And I was like, “I was born at the wrong time.”
Speaker 7:
I’ve never heard somebody talk about rock and roll in that way where you’re like, okay, so you were leading with where this clean band, we’re turning away people who might have problematic. What is that? I’ve literally never heard this story.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I can’t believe it worked. I can’t believe it worked.
Speaker 7:
How do you find that? That’s like six guys, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. And they’re all in Twisted Sister. That was… No, I agree. I think that it’s actually interesting too, because when I first met him, the story, what I had heard was that he’s straight edge and that he very much is not into substances. He’s not into it. I did not know that that was a result of having had experiences with it. All I knew was he’s anti-drugs, anti-alcohol, so it was interesting to me to learn his deeper story that he had those experiences with it and no longer wanted to create it.
Because usually when I hear that from someone who’s not like, “I’m sober,” it’s a result of growing up in a household with parents who had very, very bad addictions and they are like, “I am totally against blah, blah, blah,” and that’s usually when I hear that, I think. But it was interesting to find out that he had had his own experiences, what that looked like, and then the real commitment to being in a band that didn’t do that, didn’t have that. I commend that. That’s got to be, even he said that his record label was not happy about them. He’s like, “They’re like, ‘Don’t tell anybody.'”
Speaker 7:
Keep that to yourself.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Don’t tell anybody. It’s an interesting story of people who said, we want to be in this industry that’s this way and we want to do it differently. We’re going to do it differently and we’re going to find a way to be successful.
Speaker 7:
Yeah. To me, I think that, if I had one theme going throughout, it was just even in a place where we’ve done shows about talking about sales or careers where it’s really feels like it’s part of the job, I was like, “Okay, well, you can make this work doing anything if you’re committed to it, if you find the community.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Except maybe sommelier.
Speaker 7:
That might be tough. That might be tough.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Or the alcohol test barring.
Speaker 7:
Sure. A brewery. Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Barring, that, maybe?
Speaker 7:
That’s about as much of a job requirement as I think there is.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Speaker 7:
His story was just really inspiring in a place where it feels like it’s not possible to be able to make it work somehow. Well, we hope you enjoyed the episode. We’re rooting for you this week as we always are. Ashley, anything you want to leave the people with this week?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes. I just want to say thank you to listeners. Thank you for following and subscribing. If you are a new listener, please check out our other episodes. This is season five. We have over 250 episodes including expert episodes Q & A’s, every topic you can imagine, lots and lots of helpful content, so please check it out and if you feel moved to do so, we very much appreciate any reviews that you can leave for us on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Very, very much appreciate it and we very, very much appreciate hearing from you. You can always reach us at podcast@lionrock.life. Thank you so much, and we’ll see you next time.
This podcast is sponsored by lionrock.life. Lionrock.life is a diverse and supportive recovery community offering weekly over 70 online peer support meetings, useful recovery information, and entertaining content. Whether you’re newly sober, have many years in recovery, or you’re recovering from something other than drugs and alcohol, we have space for you. Visit www.lionrock.life today and enter promo code COURAGE for one month of unlimited peer support meetings free. Find the joy in recovery at lionrock.life.
