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Apr 20
  • Written By Ashley Jo Brewer

    • #94 – Mike Govoni

    #94 - Mike Govoni

    Mike Govoni’s Story

    Being raised by a single father who was a defrocked Catholic Priest, Mike Govoni’s childhood was anything but traditional. He began using opiates and other substances at a young age to mask the feelings he had associated with childhood trauma. This led him down a path of substance use and addiction until he discovered an unorthodox approach to recovery.

    Now, having lived in recovery for over 16 years, Mike is passionate about helping people in recovery experience healing and transformation. His experience includes supporting three major hospital emergency rooms in Boston and helping patients with substance abuse and related complications. He works with individuals and groups both in-person and virtually. 

    Mike currently has a thriving private practice working as an Integrative Holistic Recovery Coach. He is able to see through the lens of trauma and believes that helping people create a feeling of safety and connection within their own body is essential to becoming well and achieving long term recovery.

    Connect with Mike Govoni

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    Episode Transcript

    Ashley:

    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 are going to be talking to Mike Govoni. Govoni, Govoni, Ga, Ga, Govoni. Mike. Mike Govini. Okay.

    Ashley:

    Anyway, so, Mike, this is just … I can’t even with this story. It’s … okay. So Mike was raised by a single father who was a defrocked Catholic priest. Look up defrocked. Mike Govoni’s childhood was anything but traditional. He began using opiates and other substances at a young age to mask the feelings he had associated with childhood trauma. This led him down a path of substance abuse and addiction until he discovered an unorthodox approach to recovery.

    Ashley:

    Now, having lived in recovery for over 16 years, Mike is passionate about helping people in recovery experience healing and transformation. His experience includes supporting three major hospital emergency rooms in Boston and helping patients with substance abuse and related complications. He works with individuals and groups, both in person and virtually. Mike currently has a thriving, private practice working as an integrative holistic recovery coach. He is able to see through the lens of trauma and believes that helping people create a feeling of safety and connection within their own body is essential to becoming well and achieving long term recovery. Woo!

    Ashley:

    So here’s the down-low on Mike. Unbelievable story. Okay. Unbelievable story. Catholic priest as his father, who … in Boston, who gets charged with sexual abuse of other boys, not Mike that he knows of. Gets defrocked, so he’s no longer a Catholic priest. Becomes a priest in a born again, church continues that. And Mike is living with his dad in this situation and his mother is taken away from him. All of these childhood traumatic events and really seeing through the lens of this kind of stuff happens everywhere. So even if … I think a lot of times in religious communities, there’s this reverence for or pedestal for people who are part of the church, who are clergy. And it’s really important to remember that we’re all human and we’re all flawed. And I think this was a perfect example of this and how Mike got through something that, I think had it been many other people, hey would not have been able to overcome the shame and trauma of what happened.

    Ashley:

    And Mike has done that beautifully. And he’s used unorthodox … and orthodox, I suppose, is kind of in the AA category. But he’s used unorthodox of getting sober and living this completely different life, healing his body. He almost lost part of his colon and he left Western medicine and healed himself. And Mike and I get into the nitty gritty of that because I get real excited.

    Ashley:

    So anyway, this is just a rad … he’s a rad guy. It’s a rad episode. And I’m really excited for you guys to hear it. I’m also going to do an episode with Mike, a bonus episode with Mike, so stay tuned, about psychedelics and recovery. So therapeutic psychedelics, I am fascinated about this stuff. So without further ado my friends, I give you Mike Govoni, episode 94. Let’s do this.

    Ashley:

    You are listening to The Courage to Change, a recovery podcast. We’re a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week, we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief, and loss, childhood trauma, and other life-changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey.

    Ashley:

    No, it’ll be … it’ll feel like home.

    Mike:

    Oh, good. I love that.

    Ashley:

    Yeah. We can talk about how we’re all handling Brady being on a different team and how I didn’t know who I was anymore when I was rooting for the Buccaneers this year. Because here I am rooting for them and I’m just lost, like a … loss as a human, not knowing what to do.

    Mike:

    I just can’t believe that he’s performing at such a level for his age and you after what he’s already accomplished and he’s still on top. It’s just pretty amazing.

    Ashley:

    It is. It’s incredible. It’s incredible. It’s just … I’m selfish and self-centered because I’m an alcoholic and that’s how I work. And so I naturally would like him to be consistent and stay with one team so I don’t get confused and I don’t feel like I’m rooting for … anyway. But my mother was rooting for the Buccaneers. So we were … she … my mother hangs the 13 colonies flag outside of her house, not the American flag, the 13 colonies flag, and the Patriots flag outside her house.

    Mike:

    Wow, she’s die hard.

    Ashley:

    Oh yeah. Yeah. So it was very serious.

    Mike:

    Is Lion’s Rock a 12 step based or they … they’re open to all paths?

    Ashley:

    No, Lion Rock is not 12 step based. It’s cognitive behavioral therapy based, our professional programs are. And they encourage people to try any support groups outside of the therapy that work for them.

    Mike:

    Sweet.

    Ashley:

    Yeah. Are you 12 step? Tell me about your … are you in recovery? Are you 12 step? What’s your deal?

    Mike:

    Yeah, I got sober in 2004. So I think I’m just a little bit over you. Maybe 16 years. And ever since I had a spiritual awakening as a result of inescapable suffering and had a shift in consciousness, I never returned to 12 step. Not because I’m better than 12 step or that sort of thing. It’s just my consciousness wasn’t at 12 step. I was ready for something deeper. And so I left 12 step about seven years ago and I’ve been on more of a Buddhist meditation path. But I think 12 step is great and it’s probably the best fellowship type of program set up. But the verbiage and a lot of it is outdated. It’s kind of an older paradigm per se, in the way that it functions I think amongst the halls.

    Mike:

    Although as a topic that’s really interesting is, Bill Wilson had a psychedelic experience on Belladonna, which psychedelics are part of the 12 step program that he wanted to actually implement. But I guess the world organization of AA wasn’t really down for that. So I think it’s kind of like the … it’s like the cabal in government. It’s like, there’s shit going on back there that we don’t really see. And yet, there’s a whole other part of AA and what’s going on that I think that people aren’t privy to. And a lot of people’s consciousness aren’t ready to hear particular things, but we are going to be catapulted and are being catapulted right now into a higher dimension of consciousness amongst the recovery community and just in general.

    Mike:

    So we’re going to be seeing psychedelic therapies and these plant medicines come back around to support people from healing from the root of addiction, which I believe is trauma. And people, some are onboard right now. Some are still fighting it. Some don’t even know what we’re talking about, but a lot of people do. So if I’m the first one to speak on your show about that then great. I honor that and … yeah.

    Ashley:

    I dig it. I love it. And I love … I’m about whatever works, right? Whatever makes you happy. I’m in the business of you getting happy and well, and that looks different for different people. And it would be like if we all had the same goal weight, right? Like we don’t. And so success is going to look different for each of us. And I’m on that. That works for me. Interestingly enough, I’ve been in 12 step, I’ve been in AA. I went to my first AA meeting when I was 15. Been sober since I was 19 and-

    Mike:

    Wow, you were f’ed up.

    Ashley:

    Oh yeah. [crosstalk 00:08:43] Oh yeah. Oh no, no, that’s accurate. Nobody’s like, “I need to stop drinking,” at 19 unless the shit has hit the fan. Like that doesn’t … like, “Please me not drink at 19.” Yeah, no. So I’ve been thinking lately as I watch … I love 12 step because it’s nostalgic for me. All the things that I find stupid and crazy about it, I ignore. I went to eight years of Catholic school. I went to Sacred Heart. I’m not Catholic.

    Mike:

    I’m sorry to hear that.

    Ashley:

    Yeah. I know. So sad.

    Mike:

    I’m just razzing you, Ashley.

    Ashley:

    I’m not sure they wanted me, let’s just put it that way. But I see the influence, let’s just put it that way. I see … I’m aware of the influence. And what I always think is interesting is I see … so we have people in 12 step who are dedicated to the letter of the text. They take the text as the word of God, if you will. And I’ve been watching over the years, how the Bible … I’m going to get crucified for saying this, but I’ve been watching over the years, how the Bible became out of date, so to speak. Because that’s what’s happened a lot in 12 step is where people follow … like instead of taking the spirit of what was written and applying it to what’s relevant today, the people who take the text verbatim and there’s no imagination with it as it applies to today, I see how they become outdated and how they seem archaic and create this archaic form of by the book, to the letter.

    Ashley:

    And it reminds me so much of the groups of people who feel that way about the Bible, which is by the letter, how … whether or not that’s true, I have no idea. I was not given that information. But I can see how in both cases, whether it’s right or wrong, whether the information is accurate or not, how it starts to sound super outdated, how the conversations, how the … when you don’t update a text through time, when you don’t add to it, when you don’t interpret based on new information and things that are happening, how it starts to sound that way.

    Ashley:

    And I’ve been around long enough to see … I mean, there’s a chapter Two Wives. It’s a perfect example of that. And it talks about … and it’s super sexist and I hated reading it when … but that was a sign of the times. But it’s still there because it’s part of that historical … it’s a historical document. And so, to me, it has a lot of the … for me, it is church. It is about going and connecting. And it is about being with those groups of people. And it’s an easy way to meet people. But I also don’t think … I also respect that it’s not for everybody.

    Mike:

    Yeah, for sure. And I too respect whatever people’s path is. And 12 step for sure had an great influence on who I am today and the fact that I’m breathing and alive and have made it this far. So yeah. [inaudible 00:11:58] many recovery is one or my mentor would say, “Paths are many, truth is one. Therapies in many, healing is one.” So we’re all going to the same place. Whether it’s cognitive behavioral therapy or smart recovery, AA, NA, let’s get into recovery and then a step further, what I’m about, is the healing beyond recovery that I think is … not I think, that I know is attainable because I live it each day and maybe we get there in this conversation. But yeah, I respect where everyone is.

    Ashley:

    Yeah. I love it. I love it. I love your philosophy. I can tell you’ve done a lot of work to get here. Let’s talk about, a little bit about where … so where you grew up. You had an interesting, unusual upbringing. Tell me a little bit about what it was like. You grew up in Massachusetts and in Boston and had a very profound experience. Will you talk a little bit about that, about how you led up to your usage?

    Mike:

    Yeah, for sure. So my story may be unique, but the pain is still the same. And I think we all not …. we all have a story. And our stories may be different. And in fact, mine is pretty unique in some areas, but the pain is the same, the pain of why you use drugs and alcohol, and the pain that got me into recovery, and the pain that actually got me to shift my consciousness. So we can get into that.

    Mike:

    But yeah, I grew up in a town called Marshfield, about 30 miles south of Boston beach town, nice area, middle-class family. And I grew up on a street called Atlas Circle. And it was a nice pleasant street, had some nice kids on it that I hung around with. But behind the doors of my home, there was a lot of things that weren’t supporting a healthy environment for a child. And in fact, I guess a huge piece of that was there wasn’t a mother. My mother wasn’t there. So I was taken from my mother at three years old. And I say I was taken because as we get into the story, my father at the time had an upper hand on her. My father was a religious figure. And back in the ’80s, you really weren’t questioning religious figures, police officers, things of that … they were like to the [inaudible 00:14:23], and doctors and so forth, and especially clergy.

    Mike:

    So my mother had an alcohol problem and she also kept the keys to Pandora’s box, the secrets about my father. And my father did everything under the sun to keep his secrets at bay and whatever he had to do to suppress my mother. And I think after doing a lot of my work, I’ve come to conclude and even had this conversation with my mum that I don’t think my mum could have supported us, my sister and I. So I’m grateful that my father did and he put a roof over our heads and and clothes on our back. But there was lack of attunement, there was lack of love, there was lack of nurturing.

    Mike:

    And I would soon find out about my dad and his dark secrets, the same way my mom did when I was in her womb and when she found out about his secrets, which was, I think the first time I experienced trauma. And I believe I was traumatized in utero and I was swimming in a sea of cortisol. And that’s what led me, or set me up epigenetically, for early onset disease. I developed autoimmune disease and nervous system issues. So that’s a little bit of the childhood and yeah, to say that it was normal and beautiful and all of that, I mean, that would be far from the truth.

    Ashley:

    So your father was a Catholic priest, but then he … he was a Catholic priest, but Catholic priests don’t get married and have children. How did … and you said that they’re revered in the community, but at the time where he would have taken custody of you guys, he must not have been part of the church because priests can’t have children. How did that … so how did he get kicked out? And then how did he remain that revered figure if people knew that piece?

    Mike:

    Yeah. So he didn’t get kicked out. He did get defrocked. That was much later when all this … when the Catholic abuse scandal wind up coming out. But yes, my father was a very well known priest at St. Joseph’s in Quincy, Massachusetts. And I think my grandparents went to his church or went to St Joseph’s and somehow they met each other and so forth. And my father found his way into my mother’s home in Scituate, Massachusetts as a Catholic priest. How? I don’t know the details. But anyways, he ended up there with full Roman Catholic color on and vest on, on a mission from God to marry my mother, which at the time was 16 years his junior. So he was like 35 or whatever and she was like 16 years old. And the God loving Portuguese woman, my mother … my grandmother is, rather, thought it was the best thing ever that this Catholic priest was coming into her home. I mean, Catholic priests back in the day were like holier than thou. I mean, that was like a huge symbol, especially coming from … I mean, I’m half Italian, half Portuguese. I mean, come on. It was like a perfect setup. Yeah.

    Mike:

    So as odd as it is, my grandmother, welcomed him and kind of courted my mother to this priest. And they got together or whatever the case may be and got married. And my dad derobed, he put the robes down, he left the Catholic church, I think. And I don’t know this 100% because I don’t know I’m inside my father’s brain fully, thank God. But I think he was hiding. I think that’s what he … he married my mother, my mother was the prettiest girl in town. And here he was with this pretty woman and getting married and they had intercourse very few times, like few times, and my sister and I were born.

    Mike:

    So the odds of me being on this planet were pretty low. So I know I got a reason here. This is my reason. And we all have a reason. We’re all perfect. And when I say that, I don’t mean like egotistically, but we’re all here for a reason. We all have a medicine, we all have a message, we’re all to support and help each other. So that’s kind of how that happened. And my sister and I were born. My sister’s two years older than me. And that’s kind of how it went.

    Ashley:

    So was your mom … your mom struggled with addiction. Did that start before or after she married your father?

    Mike:

    Yeah, I believe that started before. My dad … excuse me, my mom started exploring with alcohol. Now, my mom’s a perfect candidate for this too, because she experienced a lot of trauma even before she met my father. My grandfather, her father, died of alcoholism, which we were told that. So we’re not 100% sure. There’s a lot of questions that have arosen actually since psychedelic medicine has come into my mother’s life as well, on her healing journey. Yes, I did send my mother to the jungle to do ayahuasca. And so there was a lot of trauma that my mom experienced and she was suffering and she was nipping and sipping as a young girl and kind of set her up to develop this problem. And when I say, my mom unfortunately has the allergy of alcohol or being an alcoholic. It’s Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. It’s textbook alcoholism. So she was primed up and, and I think that’s a huge reason why that my father eventually won custody of us when I was three and my sister was five because mum just couldn’t couldn’t handle it.

    Ashley:

    Right. And maybe he also saw in her that she was vulnerable when he came into that world, into her world.

    Mike:

    Clearly. He groomed my grandmother. He groomed the house for sure. Absolutely. Without a question.

    Ashley:

    How does it … so what later came out with your dad was that he had abused some children. And you don’t know if that happened to you and your sister. That was not something … or I should say, was that something that you were exposed to when you were living with him?

    Mike:

    Ashley, if you would’ve asked me that two months ago, I would have said no for sure. Until I did my first psychedelic assisted psychotherapy journey with MDMA. That’s the first time that that situation possibly could have happened. I still don’t know. I’m still in the process of working through with that medicine. It’s underground right now, unfortunately, with a therapist or a practitioner. But I don’t know. I don’t know.

    Ashley:

    What did you see? So you knew that there was something going on. You mentioned when we talked earlier that, that he was up watching pornographic content. Did you see that? Was that something that you were aware of? What was the experience like? You’ve had your first … you started smoking pot at 11. Up to 11, what was kind of … before you were altered, what was that experience? What was it like in your world before 11?

    Mike:

    So just to disclose too, one of the issues with trauma is you lose track of time, timelines. So I can’t remember a lot of my childhood chronologically. But I think I was really affected when my mother was taken away from me at three. That’s when I became super defiant. Now, I can find you pictures of me with two middle fingers up at four years old, like f the world. And that’s how I rolled as a young kid. Now, defiance also saved me because I didn’t fall into the web of my father and the religiosity that followed, which wasn’t for my highest evolution and serving me, I believe. I think a lot of it was shadowed. I can get into that little later.

    Mike:

    But until I was 11, I poured the wine or the grape juice in church. I also skipped Sunday school and went and bought Now and Laters and gummy bears and was flipping my father off from the back of the church, my mother tells me. And I was out of control to some degree. And especially when my mother was taken away. So I played street hockey with the kids. I didn’t have a good relationship with my father, I can remember since the get-go. And so I did boy things, but I started to really venture off and seek outside myself when I was young, trying to fill something, trying to find some sort of ease, find some sort of regulation in this little nervous system that was so terribly disregulated and so stuck on in sympathetic arousal.

    Ashley:

    Yeah. I love that you said you didn’t have attunement and talking about that because that’s … feeling like you have a parent or an adult who is attuned to what your experience is, to what’s going on with you, just connected, like any kind of connection is also that safety and oxytocin and the development. They talk about with little kids, how their brain grows when you hug them. Just that alone, without the complications of all the other stuff you went through, is incredibly important and damaging. So I see how … we talk about that genetics load the gun and environment pulls the trigger. And if there was ever an environment that was going to pull the trigger, you found it.

    Mike:

    Oh yeah. The perfect storm. Yeah. So, yeah, exactly. [crosstalk 00:24:41] Yeah. And I didn’t … for those of you who are listening in, you’re like, “Well, I didn’t have all that trauma and da da da da da da,” the lack of attunement from your caregiver can be traumatizing for your little nervous system. If someone isn’t there to hold you and embrace you and acknowledge you, that can be traumatizing. So all of that stuff resides unprocessed in the nervous system.

    Mike:

    And many people who I’ve worked with and coached don’t … a lot of them say, I didn’t have those big T traumas, let’s just say. And then you get into talking with them and other things arise. And you’re like, “Yeah, that’s trauma. You didn’t have someone there to hold you and to acknowledge you into comfort you and to help support your social engagement system.” And in fact, the mother is the child’s regulator from zero to 18 or 24 months, the mother regulates the child’s nervous system. And I sit here today in Sedona, Arizona with my mom. She’s here and I’m supporting her on her healing journey. We can get into that if you want later. And of course I have my own practitioners that I work with. And I said to my therapist, not too long ago, I said, “I didn’t have a chance. My mother is 60 years old and she’s still disregulated. How did I ever have a chance?” Now, I’m not saying this as a victim. Yes, there is a part of me that grieves that. But I didn’t have a chance. So if you didn’t have attunement and someone there to support you and love you and acknowledge you and all that stuff, that can be traumatizing.

    Ashley:

    Yeah, 100%. I’m glad you mentioned that. We talk about … on this podcast, we talk about … we typically have guests on that have really unique stories and things to talk about. We also have guests on that don’t have super unique, but super relatable. But again, it’s all about looking for the similarities, not the differences. It’s about how we feel.

    Mike:

    Yeah. And part of my story … and I think I’ve been gifted with this much ground to cover and multidimensionality of my story is for to cover a lot of ground. For example, religiosity an, religious trauma is for real. Do you know how many people go to AA and 12 step and say they hated God and they’re gone. Not necessarily because they’ve been-

    Ashley:

    So many.

    Mike:

    Yeah. Not that they’ve necessarily been hurt by a clergy member. Maybe. I’ve met plenty of those too. But people-

    PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:27:04]

    Mike:

    The member, maybe I’ve met plenty of those too, but people that grew up as atheist or agnostic or they’re just not into that, don’t resonate with that. So it’s really important to recognize that religious trauma is for real. And I think that’s just one of the boxes, unfortunately I can check off amongst many, to cover the trauma story.

    Ashley:

    Yes, absolutely. And I think a lot of people do hear the God stuff, I mean, that’s something I hear all the time. And for me it was a huge turn off. It was a huge, huge turnoff. But I was desperate enough that I was willing to kind of compartmentalize. I don’t know what you guys talking about, whatever. How did you first start using, were you the person who the first moment you used, you knew that you had found your medicine?

    Mike:

    It’s an interesting question. No, I actually cried. I smoked my first joint and cried. And I was paranoid, I was totally outside of myself and I actually saw a kid on the ice skating pond there. His tooth got knocked out with a hockey stick and I was stoned for the first time. And I was like all just combobulated. So I didn’t think it was something I wanted to do all the time, but I kept chasing it. Booze was something else that when I drank it, it wasn’t like, “Oh, I fell in love with it.” I got wasted. I drank my first Mickey’s Ice 40 and got trashed. And I was like, “That wasn’t too fun.” But I kept going for more.

    Mike:

    So I started at 11 with marijuana and then drinking wine coolers. My fiance laughs at me every time I say wine coolers, she’s like, “These are spritzers.” Or whatever they are. I don’t know what they are anymore, 2021. They were wine coolers when I was drinking them. And it just progressed from there, to club drugs, to a little cocaine. I never really liked using cocaine. I have my whole hypothesis about that. I think depending upon where your nervous system is, if you’re down in the dorsal vagal, which is the ridden, immobilized, not enough energy, you might like uppers and methamphetamines. I was too buzzing high. I was sympathetic driven. I was on the go all the time, worrying, anxiety. Give me an OxyContin, and I’m in the sweet spot. So OxyContins, I started with weed, I ended with booze, did a lot of things in between that infused drugs, intravenously, but I did enough OxyContins to kill a small donkey. And that’s what brought me to my knees.

    Ashley:

    Yeah. OxyContin is really, really skilled at that. Bringing people right down the tubes, man, that opiates are just no joke. So how old were you, when you started using opiates?

    Mike:

    I think I probably used my first opiate around 16 years old. I remember splitting an OxyContin 40 with a bunch of friends, we’re on one of my buddy’s boat, so we’re on a boat party. And I got wasted off, it’s probably equivalent to 10 milligrams. And the cops came, I couldn’t even talk to them normally, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed. I could always talk to the cops. I was that guy that could always have his head on straight. Much as I would took it to my system, I could talk to you. And I couldn’t, I was totally knocked out. And I loved that. And why, I think I love that as we know, the pathways to opiates, the same pathways that light up with a mother’s connection is the same pathways that light up with opiates.

    Mike:

    So I had met that love I was looking for and that comfort from this pill. Through my neurobiology, my brain was really digging that, and that led me for three years. I was on an OxyContin run. And at the end I was 18 years old, I was 130 pounds. I couldn’t eat solid food. I had boxes and boxes of Ensures, which are what old people drink. And I couldn’t eat solid food or I didn’t want eat solid food because I would come down off the pills. So I knew I had to do something and I set a date that this was my last day using OxyContins. And I used about 600 milligrams. And then I stopped and I reached out to my mother who was in my life at the time, in and out a little bit, she, with her alcoholism. At this point, I had left my house because of my father’s, the stuff that was going on at my house with the pornography and discovering his secrets and all that sort of stuff.

    Ashley:

    It wasn’t heterosexual pornography?

    Mike:

    Yeah. So how I discovered that was, we got a computer in our house. And at this point I was about 17 years old. I had just graduated high school. I graduated really young and something was wrong in my home. We had a computer and my dad was up two hours of the night. His behavior was erratic. He was talking to people on the telephone and not paying attention to me or my sister, she was off to college. It was just a really dark time. We just knew things were going on. Meanwhile-

    Ashley:

    Like you could feel it?

    Mike:

    I could feel it, the house plants in the house were dead. It was-

    Ashley:

    Just energetically?

    Mike:

    Energetically, just, yes, exactly. And I was sitting on the edge of my bed and something told me, I’m very intuitive. And I listened and something told me, go look under his mattress, so I did. And I found pornography. And it wasn’t child pornography, it was pornography of young men. And I was like, “Oh, okay.” And was I surprised? No, just because of the whole dynamic. But I had concrete proof at this point. My father catered to young men in his church. My father did things that were very suspicious. But as a young kid, I couldn’t put it together. It’s all I could say at 14 was, “Dad, why don’t you have a f’ing girlfriend? What’s up?” No offense to the listeners.

    Ashley:

    So he’s still in the Catholic?

    Mike:

    No, no, no. He left the Catholic church when he met my mom and disrobe then became a Born Again Christian preacher. I’m a preacher’s son, not the priest’s son. The priest is an all lifetime that he-

    Ashley:

    You’re both. Right?

    Mike:

    Yes. Yes.

    Ashley:

    Lucky for you, you got both. Okay, so he’s gone and now he’s born again, and now he’s… Got it. Okay. But the allegations were from when he was a Catholic priest, right?

    Mike:

    Of course. When all this stuff started coming out in the newspaper, people, rightfully so wanted to go to court or want justice. I support the victims. Yes. People filed charges against him. He never went to jail, but he did lose a lot of money to lawsuits.

    Ashley:

    I always think about this with regard to when parents, because I have two little boys and so I think about… I’m an alcoholic, so I think about sick shit. But I’m always like, what do you do when someone who you love does something horrendous, right? I think about them when there’s a school shooting. I think about the mother, who her kid does something and it’s just, you have shame and a connection to this person. With your dad, how did people treat you or did they treat you differently? And how did you kind of integrate these different emotions?

    Mike:

    We need a whole other podcast for that. And for the listeners, I joked today, but I’ve done enough work to be able to play with this in a way. I mean, you can only imagine the severity of this topic. I was 18 years old. Let me go back a little bit to touch on that. I left my house because of the stuff with my father and pornography, it wasn’t safe for me. I wound up going to a buddy’s house and I was drinking Jack Daniel’s or Captain and Coke with them. We we’re getting all sloshy and whatnot and I couldn’t stop crying. I was crying and crying and crying and everyone was like, “Mikey, what’s wrong? What’s wrong?” And I was sobbing, and the whole story came out. I couldn’t hold it in.

    Mike:

    I was holding the story in and my father was a prominent religious figure. And he was a substitute teacher in a prominent school and actually my school as a high school. So I’ve had my father as a teacher before, which is totally gnarly, now that I think about it and talk about it. So I go there and tell them the whole story and my buddy Anthony, his mother’s like “You’re coming to live with us.” I’m like, “Oh, sweet. This is my ticket out. I’m out.” But at the same time, I was moving into a house that was, I was the drug dealer with OxyContins and I was living with a lot of people and supporting them with substances. And it wasn’t a good environment, but it was better than where I was living.

    Mike:

    So I’ve used OxyContin for about a year with them. Little past 18 years old, and I had met my match. Like I said, I was 130 pounds. I knew I was going to die. I couldn’t eat food. My mum brought me to my pediatrician’s office and she said, “All right, you’re going to get some help for this.” I was 18, I sat on this table of my pediatrician, little kid’s doctor with a baby scale next to me. And he looks at me, he checks me out. He’s a great guy, Dr. Moren, he says, “You’re okay. You’re good. You’re healthy. You’ll be all right. You’re ready to go.” And I was like, “Where do I go? When?” And he’s like, “You’re ready to go to detox.” And I was like, “Go to detox? No freaking way am I going to detox. Not a chance in hell.” And when I say that, it was coming from a place, my ego, I couldn’t give myself into detox.

    Mike:

    Now, when I say this, it’s not how I think today, but I’m going to tell you how I thought back then, only losers went to detox.

    Ashley:

    Quitters.

    Mike:

    Quitters. Yes. Okay. Quitters. And once again, this is not how I think today. I work with you beautiful people in this community and recovery is my thing and supporting you. So I love you. And at the same time, at that point, I couldn’t go to detox. I was like, “Detox? Wait, Are you crazy?” I got some methadone on the street. I detoxed myself off of 500 milligrams a day. And I’ve never touched an OxyContin till this day. 30 days into the detox, this stuff came out in the paper, was my father, the Catholic abuse scandal erupted in Boston.

    Ashley:

    Into your detox. Oh, that’s helpful.

    Mike:

    Into my detox at my buddy’s house. I was detoxing. I had a calendar.

    Ashley:

    They already knew. Right? You already came out with it?

    Mike:

    They already knew.

    Ashley:

    Okay. Which was good.

    Mike:

    Getting back to your story is, here I am 18 years old, thank God I graduated high school. Can you imagine going into school and your dad’s on a paper of being a pedophile? I’d rather have my dad be the biggest bank robber, not a pedophile. So you can only, once again, coming back to the story may be different, the feelings are the same. The shame I felt, oh my God, the shame I felt. But here’s the thing, Ashley, I had to work with that shame. The shame wanted me to not hold my head up high in my town, wanted me to not go into this store, that store. And I would go in anyways, because you know what, it took me a lot of time to realize this, but it wasn’t me.

    Ashley:

    Right. And that was the kind of thing. That was exactly what I was thinking. Like, how do you separate? I’m talking about the integration of the feelings, but also the separation you had to do, that this isn’t your shame.

    Mike:

    It’s not my shame, but that wasn’t just a one and done. I’ve been healing with therapists on my journey for years and years and years. And I had to talk about that story. I had to create some separation between him and me. So I wouldn’t take on that, now as we get into psychedelics and so forth that I take on energetic imprints. Oh, you bet your ass I did. And I have had to use different modalities and medicines like psychedelics to be able to, or I should say they’re showing me that. So that’s on a deep level, but yes, I had to create that space that it wasn’t me. And 30 days into detox, I wanted to crawl out of my skin, if anyone would detox on opiates. I was out of my mind that I said, “If I can stay sober through this, I can stay sober through anything.”

    Mike:

    So 18 years later, I know I said I’ve been in recovery for 16, that’s because it took me another two to put the other hors d’oeuvres down. But I met my match with OxyContins and they waved me off the face of this earth. And I haven’t touched them in 18 years. And that’s kind of how that went.

    Ashley:

    So when that happened and this happened while you’re detoxing. You said, “If I can stay sober through that, I can stay sober through anything.” And I’ve heard people say this about all types of events, losing children, spouses, cancer, whatever it is. And what did you do during that time? What was the thing that saved you during that time? Because that’s such a fragile time and what an incident to happen. Especially, the teacher thing and all of it, all of it. So what kind of cradled you?

    Mike:

    Well, I think spirit, a spirit definitely cradled me. Whether you call it God or whatever, the divine was definitely with me. The divine was supporting me. I remember having conversations with a couple of older kids that I looked up to, that were like, “Man, you’re so much more than this.” They could see me, like, “This isn’t you,” My mom, my sister, I was not so kind on those things as they make you agitated. And so I had some people in my corner that really supported me and loved me. But when you said that, what came up, or rose in my consciousness, was the gym.

    Ashley:

    Oh. There you go.

    Mike:

    So I wound up going to the gym so I could really get some endorphins going. And that’s a whole other topic that I can speak on if you want to go there. But it’s really important because so many of us who are unwilling to complete the arousal cycle of trauma. Jump into things that keep us at the top of that art for so long, right? Whether we’re chasing, whatever, use off that endorphins or cortisol, or adrenaline. Oh, like riding dirt bikes or motorcycles, or going to the gym or CrossFit until your arms fall off or whatever your escaping, we do this.

    Ashley:

    And when you talk about completing arousal, when you talk about that. What does that look like as opposed to the things that you’re describing?

    Mike:

    To allow your nervous system to complete and allow yourself to feel the downward fall of what’s here without thinking you’re going to die. So like resting in the present moment, and hanging out there for a moment. And opening up to the sensations in your body, and opening up to the committee that’s chirping in your ear all day long, that you think is you. And developing some space between that, without trying to run and run and run and run.

    Ashley:

    Mike, when I was frankly until maybe 10 years sober, that was like hearing Japanese to me. I heard people say stuff like that, and I literally didn’t understand. The idea that you would have a feeling, sit through it, and not go do something was not on my plane of consciousness.

    Mike:

    Me either girl.

    Ashley:

    Like if I had a feeling, it was like, I had to literally move my body or something.

    Mike:

    If it’ll react.

    Ashley:

    Totally, totally. So I think, one of the things that’s important when we talk about this stuff is to describe what that looks like. Because when people are like, “Oh, sit with your feelings.” I’m like, “I don’t know what you are saying.” And what it would look like, would be, I’d be upset. And instead of calling or doing, or blah, blah, blah, just literally teaching me to go and sit down in a quiet space and feel the feeling. I honestly didn’t know how to do that.

    Mike:

    Of course. And many people don’t because the habitual reaction or the habitual way of going about is to continue moving, continue going, not allowing yourself to settle, not even knowing you have a nervous system. If you want to really get to recovery, let’s talk about your brain and nervous system, flat out. This is the problem, per se. Yeah. So and later on down the line in this story we can get into is what brought me home to myself, was everything I’ve just shared with you. And you asked me if sexual abuse was part of my story with my dad, I said, “I don’t know.” Because I don’t. But it is part of my story.

    Mike:

    So everything I share with you and all that trauma and whatever I experienced was like a skip in the [tulapack 00:45:02] compared to what I experienced nine years into recovery when I got sick. So I didn’t know either. So I hear you. And so many other people don’t know how to create presence, awareness, how to let the energy of trauma titrate out of their nervous system. Then also, this is a whole other language we can go into and speak about, but this is where the healing is.

    Ashley:

    Yes. I agree. I agree. And I want to say something before we get into, the next piece of this, which was that for me, I did so much talk therapy. I did so much CBT, I did all the therapies. I did the other talk therapies. And in this past year one of the things that has become really clear to me, is that I now need nervous system therapy. I’ve reached the point where the talking has, I’ve maxed that out. And the nervous system therapy, my nervous system is still stuck in that high gear, still stuck in that high place. Because I’ve gone back to therapy, I’m like, “Why is this not taking, why is this not.” And this past year, 2020, all of the stuff, my nervous system it’s about that regulation of my nervous system and really working on that. And that requires something different than just talking about it. For me, it requires something different. And that’s been a really interesting journey of different therapies at different times, in your recovery.

    Mike:

    For sure. And what you speak about is important. And I know your recovery center is all about cognitive behavioral therapy. But trauma reside, subcortically, it resides, in the subcortical parts of the nervous system. And you have to begin to address, process, resolve, and integrate that story in an embodied way. Because why we can’t sit still, is because everything we’re running from is inside of us. And that’s the trauma, that’s the dysregulation in the nervous system. That’s the dis-ease, the dis-ease turns to disease, eventually. Hypertension, irritable bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, cancer, so many of these, fibromyalgia. The inability for the nervous system to complete and be restored to equilibrium. So the healing is when you begin to become embodied. It’s when you become… I’ll just share it to you. When I first got sober, my sponsor said, “Hey, you got a problem living in the past or future?” And I said, “Well, how does this fool know what I’m thinking? How does he know?” And he knew exactly what I was thinking, but not on a trauma level.

    Mike:

    And I’ll take it a step further is, you can’t access the present moment when you’re constantly being, let’s just say in a traumatic response, you follow me? Your nervous system, it’s in either fight or flight, or maybe shut down mode. So that’s the depression, that’s the anxiety. Then you go to the guy in the white coat who has a bunch of degrees. And he says, “Yeah, you’re f’ed up. You’re a bipolar.” No, shit happened to you, and your nervous system is dysregulated, and you can restore it. And you can regain equilibrium and you can touch your own wholeness. It’s the most difficult journey you’ll have to go on because at moments you’ll think you’re going to die. Because that’s what this fight or flight system is for. Trauma is a result of experiencing something that is too much for your nervous system to process.

    Mike:

    So it’s not what happened to you as Gabor Maté says, “It’s what happens within you as a result to what happened to you.” My sister isn’t an addict. My sister, she’s a police officer. She has a similar story as us, mine a little different here and there, but she didn’t express disease. She didn’t become addicted.

    Ashley:

    Yep. I have two younger sisters. You can have same house, different stories. And you talked about, you can feel like you’re going to die. Look, I’ve felt like I was going to die during a breakup. I felt like I was going to die when I was detoxing, when I was pregnant, all sorts of scenarios. That is not the indicator that, that’s going to happen. My nervous system telling me I’m going to die, not always accurate. In fact, most of the time inaccurate. So learning to override that, and move forward and, move forward through fear and pain. And that’s kind of why we start calling this The Courage to Change, because change happens as a result of those moments where you can’t go on like this. This is no longer working. And usually when that happens, it’s like feet to the fire kind of deal, it’s no longer working.

    Mike:

    My work is working with people who were in recovery for 10, 15, 20 years who have been on AA journey, whatever their path is. That’s all good. But people who are like, “Yeah, I still can’t access the present moment. I’m suffering anxiety, depression. My past is chasing me. All this different stuff is coming up.” They want to take a more holistic integrative approach. And it’s like, we have to become embodied. When you just said, we have to override, what overrides that ANS autonomic nervous system, is consciousness, is awareness. Yeah. So from my perspective, the best relapse prevention you could possibly have is your own conscious awareness.

    Ashley:

    But what does that mean? I love it, but people listening to that, it sounds like something that they would only understand in Sedona.

    Mike:

    Yes. I love that. Well, let’s just go back to some wisdom practices. Let’s go back to some ancient teachings, even with Christ, “Be still and know that I am God.” The Buddha, the Buddha is the awakened one, the knower, so “Who we think we are, is not really who we are.” And what I mean by that is, Eckhart Tolle talks about this a lot, presence, consciousness, the observer. So someone that can observe experience. So I’m not trying to get a woo woo with you, but this is very important. Because the road to healing from the root of addiction is directly correlated to accessing your higher levels of consciousness.

    Mike:

    So we’re moving up into the evolution of our nervous systems, of our prefrontal cortex here, of us having more agency over this body, over what comes out of our mouth, over a sensation that comes in that we can say, “Oh, that’s interesting.” Besides get hijacked by it. And then be often never, never land or having a thought come in and just saying, “Oh, that’s an interesting thought.” And letting it pass through like a cloud in the blue sky. Well, who’s observing that? Who’s watching that? So let’s go back to why we use drugs and alcohol, is to regulate the nervous system. To find some sort of comfort, whether you want to be up or down or all around, or even completely-

    Ashley:

    Be up and down at the same time.

    Mike:

    Up and down. That’s Right. So the substance as Gabor says, always does something. Creates that connection, allows us to be speak freely. We can come out of the volt of trauma, and tell people how we feel, and we can dance, or whatever it does. So when we begin to go on this journey of healing, we’re actually raising consciousness. We’re beginning to let go of these patterns, behaviors, things that no longer serve us. And we’re having access to the higher cortical parts of our operating system. To the point where if you are blessed, like me or fortunate enough then your socks can really get blown off. And you can have a whole transcendental experience and mystical experience. And then you come back and say, “Oh, shit. I’m not really who I thought I was. And this is pretty interesting being here in this skin suit.”

    Mike:

    So I know I’ve gone over a little far for maybe a lot of people, but let’s come back to basics and start with a little bit of awareness practice. Start relating to our experience in a new way. So we’re no longer attached to the good and grab onto more of that and pleasure seek. And we don’t push away so much of the discomfort.

    PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:54:04]

    Mike:

    As you’re sick and we don’t push away so much of the discomfort and say, “I don’t mind getting rid of that,” but we can begin to create this, let’s just say, practice the basics of sanity of dealing with what is, in a way, that leads to more wisdom, more compassion, more healing versus more of the same repetition compulsion that gets us stuck on the merry-go-round.

    Ashley:

    Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.

    Ashley:

    I want to interrupt this episode to have a short little discussion about support groups. There is no better person to talk to about this and my production coordinator, Ashley Jo Brewer, A.J.B. If you will AJB. Hi.

    Ashley Jo Brewer:

    Hi.

    Ashley:

    Okay. You’re a big fan of CommUnity. You attend CommUnity support group meetings. Give why should people care?

    Ashley Jo Brewer:

    I absolutely love CommUnity because it creates a community. And I know that sounds funny, but it truly provides a space for anyone and everyone, no matter what they are going through. Just to give you an example, I invited or told a friend about CommUnity because she was really struggling with binge eating disorder and had gone to many different groups and felt shunned or not accepted, or like it wasn’t a place for her and at CommUnity, she found a place because in CommUnity meetings, we don’t care what the substance is or what the struggle is. Everyone is accepted no matter where they are in life, no matter what they are recovering from. And I think that’s what’s beautiful about CommUnity.

    Ashley:

    I love it. And yes, I 100% agree with you that the value is that you don’t have to know what your problem is, what your struggle is, what you want to give up or not give up, or whether you’re abstinent or whether you’re stopping, whatever it is, you are welcome. And you’re welcome in this place and it’s a great place to discover the answers to all the questions that you’re looking for in a community and have that support. It’s free to anyone. You go to lionrock.life, and there is a tab with community meetings. There are different days, different times, different subjects. There’s even a cooking group called CommUnity Table. There are so many different options, something out there for everyone. So I highly recommend, maybe after you listened to this, if you are looking for more community in your life, more friends, more support, please go check out CommUnity, lionrock.life, click that community tab.

    Ashley:

    Mm-hmm (affirmative). One thing you said that’s interesting to me, you said, “Well, I’m not who I thought I was,” and you got to figure that out. Well, I experienced that figuring out that I’m not who I thought I was or who I told myself I wanted to be in my twenties and it was a very painful experience. A lot of what you’re talking about, I think is about learning to invite transformative experiences. And I think doing that one step at a time, like over the course of your recovery, part of doing that is learning to show up authentically just every single day, doing something where you feel authentic because over time I think it brings the ability to have that consciousness. If I had tried to just sit with myself in the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have stayed sober.

    Mike:

    Yeah. Everyone’s at a different place. Everyone needs, some people may need a little bit of this and some people may not need this, but they need a little bit of that. And yes, I very much agree with you. If you told me to sit, you did tell me to sit and meditate actually in 12 steps. That’s the 11th step prayer, “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God as I understood Him,” for the first 10 years, nine years of sobriety, I was not sitting in meditation. I was in the gym twice a day. I was running triathlons. I was running from any sensation or feeling that you could possibly want me to feel. So, then there comes the day where you have the potentiality to bloom your lotus. When you get that friction or whatever it is that you need to wake up.

    Mike:

    So it can be in longterm recovery. If you’re in long-term recovery now, I’ll speak your language. If you’re miserable and you’re still in the same stuff, and the patterns and behaviors are still driving your life and you can’t have, you can’t open up to intimacy and relationship. And this isn’t, I’m not saying negative things, I’m just saying habits that I had. I couldn’t commit in relationship. Women was scary because I had an alcoholic mother. I couldn’t stop the running. I was in the gym building up my armor twice in the day. So you couldn’t get close to my heart. I was chasing external things, money and finances and prestige.Then at the end I had to face myself. We all get what we need to wake up and unfortunately, it’s not comfortable.

    Mike:

    “Comfort doesn’t lead to awaken,” that’s by Adyashanti. Comfort does not lead to awakening. I’m concerned with your consciousness as someone who’s in recovery and it could start off by being, for example, I am a somatic experiencing practitioner, right? I’m currently going through the training. And when I talk to someone and say, “Okay, just pause for a moment.” It tell me something, they went through experience and just take a moment and stop and check in with yourself. “What do you feel right now?” “My chest is so tight. I feel like my throat is constricted.” “Okay. Let’s be with that for a moment.” Right? Then you can guide them to “Is there a place in your body that feels comfortable?” “Well, my right toe feels good.” “Beautiful. Let’s use that as a countable attacks and let’s begin to notice that.”

    Mike:

    Trauma is all about creating safety or trauma healing is all about creating safety, creating trust, and then beginning to explore what’s in the body below the clavicle because the issues are in the tissues and we can begin to hold space for the story and the story isn’t even that important. The activation of trauma that keeps us from living in the present moment, that keeps us from being serene and enjoying this beautiful blue sky, that keeps us on the hamster wheel of the constant chase is living in your tissues. And that’s what we have to titrate and move out. So you can actually feel comfortable in your own skin and have access to the present moment. [crosstalk 01:01:08] Am I making sense on my [crosstalk 01:01:10]?

    Ashley:

    Oh, absolutely. No, you’re making total sense. “The issues that are in your tissues” is one of my favorite sayings that I’m a big fan of “The body keeps the score,” and it’s not something I believed until I was sober a long time, honestly. It took me a long time to really understand how that was even possible. And I just, in the beginning it was really about just saving my ass like just save, just get me from, don’t die. Those were my goals, life goals, don’t die. And then my life goals got a little bit better like do say, do something, whatever, but it was, I remember talking to my mom about when I was a teenager, I was like, “You’re embarrassed of me.”

    Ashley:

    How I perceived that she perceived me and she was saying how she was once with a group of people who were talking about like their kids getting bad grades or something to that effect, something of that, “They weren’t getting into the right school or they won’t blah, blah, blah.” And my mom thought to herself like, “That is the least important thing. I could not care less about that. I want my child to live.” Those are the stakes. Those are the goals, the goalposts. In the beginning, it’s “don’t die,” and over time, my experience and kind of what you’re talking about. [Crosstalk 01:02:37]

    Mike:

    Actually, can I interject for a moment? Like impending doom?

    Ashley:

    With my mother?

    Mike:

    Not at all, like when you said, “I’m not trying to die,” could you label that as impending doom?

    Ashley:

    Can I label that as impending? I want to say yes and no, because I was staying sober and I had a sliver of hope that I was going to be able to stay sober and there were people on the way. When you say impending doom, I think to myself, “Yes, I had.” The impending doom was like I’d never stayed sober that long. I had never like it could go at any moment, but I had this sliver of hope. So it was like, I kind of had both, I don’t know if that makes sense.

    Mike:

    Of course, yeah.

    Ashley:

    So you got your story changed dramatically. You got sober, but then you got very sick in sobriety and that was the catalyst to change.

    Mike:

    Yes, that’s right. My body gave way, as you said that you read a beautiful book by Bessel van der Kolk: The Body Keeps the Score. And my scorecard had to run out and the disease had become disease. I bought my first home at this point, I was 25. I was almost about four years sober. I was renovating the house and had a lot of stress. Eventually, I got sick and I got sick with a lot of diarrhea and blood in my stool. I didn’t know what was going on. So I went to the doctors and they did a colonoscopy and I got the diagnosis of universalis ulcerative colitis, which is an autoimmune condition irritable bowel disease, similar to Crohn’s disease. And I left that hospital and I got a prescription of drugs to take.

    Mike:

    I took them and I got myself into remission, let’s just say. Nothing was really ever the same, but I was doing better. And I was dating a woman at this time. Lou lived in California, who I met out in Vegas at a buddy’s surprise birthday. And I thought I was going to go move out there and explore this relationship. And lo and behold, it didn’t work out. We flew back a bunch of times, saw each other and it didn’t work out, but I had this, I was going to say wicked or wicked sense of urgency to travel. I grabbed a backpack and traveled nine countries by myself. I got a one-way ticket into Mexico, went to Guatemala, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Chile.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Wait. I have to ask how did that go with the intestinal stuff?

    Mike:

    So, yeah, let me get to that.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Okay.

    Mike:

    I was in Guatemala, three countries in, and I got a parasite.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Okay. Yeah. I was going to say that’s a campy.

    Mike:

    Yeah. That didn’t go over very well at all. In fact, I was laid up in Guatemala trying to get rid of this parasite. And I was so determined to travel though. I was trying to get all the way down to Brazil for carnival. I had all my tickets bought and I was single at the time. I was [crosstalk 01:05:46].

    Mike:

    Yeah, it’s amazing. In the little microscopic parasites there. [crosstalk 01:05:56] Yeah. It took me down. So I came back to Boston, terrible symptoms of ulcerative colitis. I fired my old GI doctor. I hired a new one and he couldn’t really help me to the point where I was healing, but they were prescribing a lot of drugs to me. Then I was on one drug and at the end of taking it for 12 months, it had shut down my liver. They were giving me business cards to surgeons, to call surgeons, to remove my colon.

    Mike:

    So I would take the business card every time they gave it to me and I would throw it in my trunk and I would slam the trunk shut. I wouldn’t even look at it. And taking all my colon wasn’t an option for me. It wasn’t. At that point, the drug I was on, I was really, really sick. I was coming down with multiple chemical sensitivities, so something happened with my liver and the inability to process toxins. So there’s more to that in the sense of when I smelled the chemical, it would go up the olfactory nerve and the sense of smell is the only one that goes directly to the amygdala. And it’s so close to the hippocampus. That’s why when we smell things, memories come back like this. Of course. The traumatic memories can come back to people.

    Mike:

    So I was hyper aroused to the umpteenth degree. Now, picture your worst day with anxiety times a hundred thousand. Where my amygdala was stuck on, I was completely in a horrific fight or flight response. The doctors didn’t know what to do with me. He told me to leave and go see a hepatologist because of my liver. The hepatologist said, “Mike, if you don’t take care of this, you’re probably going to need a liver transplant in about eight years.” And I had two organs on the table, colon liver. And I knew it was that time. It was the time to leave Western medicine. So I left Western medicine and I started to embark on a holistic journey, which leads me to the work I do today with people as taking an integrative holistic approach to their life.

    Mike:

    I started changing my diet. I started growing vegetables. I changed my whole backyard into gardens. I was growing herbs and all these different foods, and I was going to yoga and I was doing yoga with a bunch of 50 and 60-year-old women. And I was just letting all this trauma come out of my body. I knew I was holding it all. The irritable bowel disease and the stress was a result of my nervous system being stuck on and from childhood, this was rooted in trauma. I knew it and know it.

    Mike:

    So I went on this journey to heal and I did some therapies that are controversial. I did some therapies that were extremely beneficial. One in particular, which I’m sure you’ve had no one talked to you about on your show, which I will, because it’s a procedure done that is out there and the FDA still won’t do it. Not because it doesn’t work, well, because there’s thousands and thousands of dollars in drugs. Now I’m not anti-Western medicine or anti-drugs just for the record, but our medical system is very broken. I had a dysbiosis in my colon. Now, if you want to get on top-

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Did you have a fecal transplant?

    Mike:

    I did.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    I’m so excited. This is awesome[crosstalk 01:09:18].

    Mike:

    Oh my God, she knew what a fecal transplant. [crosstalk 01:09:21] You need to turn my light on. Can I turn my light on?

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Yeah.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    I’m so excited.

    Mike:

    Ashley, you have to share if you know about a fecal microbiota transplant.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Okay. Do I know about… I want a fecal transplant, okay.

    Mike:

    Cool!

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    I want to take a crapsule or whatever it is. They eat some of that. They’ve literally shown they took a obese rat and put it in a skinny and that rat got fat. Yeah. Its incredible things with autism, with all sorts of, yes. I’m all about it. Tell me about your poop transplant.

    Mike:

    Yeah. It’s funny. When I asked the GI doctor who was a world-renowned GI doctor, he was working for Brigham and Women’s Hospital. I mean that’s one of the top hospitals in the world. I said, “What’s the prognosis here, doc? Come on. People just cutting out their colons. What’s the deal?” And he’s like, “Fecal transplant,” and I was like, “I literally thought they opened you up and put a piece of poop in you and sewed you back up. I had no idea.” And at that point, I wasn’t even interested in learning about that, which today boggles my mind. There are so many things we can do to heal. I mean, so many I’m like the hub of a wheel that can spit out a bunch of spokes to you. And that’s one of my gifts, but I mean, we need to work on this on all levels because trauma affects the microbiome, right? [crosstalk 01:10:44] When you’re stuck on and sympathetic or shut down, you’re spinning off some heavy duty chemicals in your body that are pro-inflammatory.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Yep. You’re more likely to get sick, so you’re more likely to take antibiotics. So you’re more likely to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all those things. There’s a great book called “The Good Gut,” and it talks about a lot of this stuff, but yeah, our immune system is in our gut, and also a lot of things that relate to mental health. There’s a lot of peer-reviewed journals, my friends, that talk about mental health as it relates to the gut. You destroy your gut and you can destroy your mental health. And one thing that was very fascinating to me, I went to this dietician who also has PhD as it relates to mental health. The first question he asked me, I’ve never been asked, this has never happened.

    Mike:

    You’re born vaginally?

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    No, but I was, but he didn’t, that wasn’t the question. It was similar. The first question he asked me was “How many times in your life have you taken antibiotics?” And no one’s ever asked me that. I was like, “What? I don’t know. I’m here for food advice. What are you talking about?” And I said, “I have no idea,” and he said, “Well, that means it’s too many.” That means you’ve had and I seriously could not. I said, “There are people out there who know how many times they’ve taken antibiotics in their life?” So yeah. That’s and what that does. So anyway, poop transplant, I want to hear all about it.

    Mike:

    Oh yeah. I’m just getting fired up right now, actually for the show. This is great.

    Ashley:

    How’d they get the poop in there?

    Mike:

    Okay. So real quick, just to piggyback what you said about mental health, how many people have mental health issues who are in recovery? I mean, it goes hand in hand.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Every single one.

    Mike:

    Yeah.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Let me just put that out there.

    Mike:

    Once again, when you have trauma and you’re dysregulated and you’re shooting off a bunch of hormones and cortisol and interleukin 6, and you’re super inflammatory, super inflamed rather. Your brain is going to be affected. Your body’s going to be affected. You might have a dysbiosis, which means you have a very high amount of bad bugs in a very low amount of good bugs. So we know today that the bugs are turning on and off inflammation in our bodies, not only doing that, they’re making the neuro-transmitters that support your brain health 90% or whatever the case may be. Don’t quote me exact, but somewhere super highlight that 90% or a little less of the serotonin is made in your gut. Come on, we got to start looking at this. The days of going to Tosta, meetings in Eden, Dunkin Donuts and drinking coffee, we have to think bigger.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Do you know Zach?

    Mike:

    Yep, of course.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Okay. I have like the world’s biggest crush on Zach Bush. If he ever hears this, I will leave my husband and marry him. I think he’s amazing and I have like a brain crash. He’s just every time I hear him talk, it’s just the best thing I’ve ever heard.

    Mike:

    Have you taken his supplement? I’ve been really curious about that.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    No, I haven’t. I should just to support him. I know.

    Mike:

    You should.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    I should.

    Mike:

    Yeah. So back to the poop transplant is I am sick as a dog. I have two organs on the table in these docs looking at me going, “We don’t know what to do with you.” So I leave Western medicine and I hire a functional medicine doc. At this point, I can’t even breathe the outside air. Now, when I say I can’t breathe the outside air, I’m not lying to you. I had to leave my corporate job because of the janitorial closet that was not too far from our office, had a bunch of chemicals in it. Everyone’s wearing perfumes and deodorants. Now, I have always been able to smell acutely. And this situation only exacerbated that to the point where, let’s just say, a gift of having a good nose turned into an extreme liability. And now I’m hyper aroused in my amygdala and brain is on fire from smelling chemicals.

    Mike:

    Okay. If you have a chemical sensitivity, that’s an indication that your immune system is already perked up. Talk to me more about that, you can contact me later. So here I am, don’t know what to do. I start researching everything. I hire this functional medicine doc. I fill out this paperwork, lots and lots of paperwork. She gets back to me and says, “Oh yeah, I know what’s wrong with you.” I’m like, “Oh my God. I was just at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and these dudes don’t know what’s going on, but you do, and you’re in Idaho. Boise, Idaho in Boston. Let’s connect.” And sure enough, she helped save my life. I just talked to her to this day. I still work with her here and there. I told her, I said, “I’ve been researching a lot of old fecal microbiota transplant. She did a poop analysis from Genova labs. I had a dysbiosis in my gut and I wanted to do a FMT.” That’s the short abbreviation. I didn’t know where to get healthy poop. So I-

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    That’s the other thing you got to be careful what kind of poop you do.

    Mike:

    Yes, people, please don’t stick someone else’s poop in your butt without, yeah.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    You can get all their other pathologies.

    Mike:

    Yes, absolutely. There is a beautiful website, I don’t know who the originator is of it, but thank you very much, it’s a woman.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Poopmatch.com?

    Mike:

    Nope. Thepowerofpoop.com

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Okay. I wasn’t far off.

    Mike:

    Yeah. You’re close and it has tons of data and I was reading testimonials verbatim of people that were on the same medication as me, same effects and suffering, and they did a FMT, fecal microbiota transplant. They’re were light years ahead of themselves. I said, “I’m doing this,” and I started to follow my intuition right. And at this point, do you want me to get into the spiritual experience at first or keep going on about the FMT?

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    I mean, hit me with all of it.

    Mike:

    Well, here’s the other component to healing. This is why I’m really supportive about the shift in your consciousness. This is what needs to take place, right? Cal Jung says, “We don’t become enlightened by imagining images of light, but by only making the darkness conscious.” The things that are driving the subconscious, we have to make conscious, so they stopped driving our life, including eating terrible food and getting ourselves into situations that isn’t supporting our health. So I began to practice meditation because I was overstimulated and I began to listen to my body and I’ll get into this spiritual experience later on. But I was first time I was so slowing down, I couldn’t run. I couldn’t jump on my bike. I sold my $2,000 carbon fiber road bike to a buddy because I never thought of ride it again.

    Mike:

    Once again, going back from where we were earlier, Ashley, is when do we begin to slow down and begin to be with things as they are? Well, for me when your ass and brain is totally on fire and you can’t run anymore, that’s what it took me. So I’m always intrigued by what it takes for people to actually stop and wake up and it’s a lot. And like you said earlier, having an ego death and losing who you thought you were, is extremely painful. This is now we’re getting into the work of spiritual transformation. Spiritual transformation. But before that, let’s talk about poop. So I reached out to a buddy and I say, “dude,” he’s good looking guy, got good skin, he’s muscular. He’s in shape. I said, “Bro, I’m struggling.” My buddies knew what I was going through. I go, “Can you donate your poop to me?” Right. That was a pretty vulnerable place to go. Yeah. But if you told me to sit on, sit on your head and spit nickels out of your mouth and you’ll be cured. Give me all the letters you got. So he says, “Yeah, I’ll do that for you.” So ready audience? Yes. This really happened. He would take a fresh poop in the morning. I would go get it. Now, this isn’t crazy.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    I don’t care if it healed you, I’m still going to laugh. Oh man.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    You’d go get it in the morning like your day. Okay. Wait, how did you get it? What’d you do?

    Mike:

    The crazy thing about him, he was so regular. I asked him, “We’re you vaginally birth? How many times were you on antibiotics? Did your mother breastfeed you? Give me the lowdown, bro. Now, do you have some sort of sexually transmitted disease that you can passed to me?” So going back to my functional medicine doc, for the record, I’m not giving anyone medical advice, but you just don’t do a fecal microbiota transplant without doing proper tests. I had his blood work done. His doctor was in on it. His doctor knew what he was doing. He supported it. His doctor knew about FMT. We got all his blood work done. I paid $500 at the time to get a Genova test and see his microbiome.

    Mike:

    Now, I ask you to check this out. This is wild guys. You’re ready? Your primary care doctor for the most part is not going to know this shit. The labs came back for his poop analysis and my functional medicine doc looked at it and said, “Ask your buddy if he has a toothache.” From the microbiome, sorry, I’m yelling. From the microbiome. I go, “Hey bro, you got a toothache?” He goes, “Oh yeah,” I go, “To my functional medicine doc you pop positive for this little inflammatory mark because of a tooth.” Talk about like moving from an old paradigm.

    Ashley Joe Brewer:

    Yeah.

    Mike:

    Talk about moving from an old paradigm to now my functional medicine doc going, “Oh yeah, he’s got a toothache?” Everything was cool for me to do it. I would go to his house. He was so regular every morning the same time I would go there, I would get it. I would drive back. Now, remember this at this point, we talk about the hero’s journey. I couldn’t even work. I couldn’t even function. I couldn’t. I was so sick and I had two organs on the table. I bring it home and I make what’s called a poop slurry, so you take distilled water and you mix it. Guys, read? The Chinese have been doing this since the fourth century calling it yellow soup. When another dog eats another…

    PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:21:04]

    Mike:

    Calling it yellow soup. When another dog eats another dog’s poop, there’s something in that poop that that dog needs.

    Ashley:

    Oh, man. Okay. Wait, hold on.

    Mike:

    Are you following me?

    Ashley:

    I’m here. I just, they called it soup and then you lost me. I was thinking about soup and wait, hold. Backup. Did you drink, the-

    Mike:

    No.

    Ashley:

    You put-

    Mike:

    Absolutely not. Come on.

    Ashley:

    Okay, I was like-

    Mike:

    You didn’t let me get to the-

    Ashley:

    Good Lord!

    Mike:

    No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, hey. You were the one talking about you wanted to take a poop pill. I still to this day never took a poop pill.

    Ashley:

    Crapsule.

    Mike:

    Yeah, crapsule. Yeah, people who are in on this, just check them, who are behind the scenes. I know must be getting a kick out of this podcast, who are doing the editing, whatever. But anyways, so you make a slurry with it, and then you… When I said about the Chinese, this isn’t a new therapy. Everyone’s like, “Oh, my God.” [inaudible 01:21:56] No, no, no, no, no. We’ve been doing this for a long, long, long, long, long time. So, and I would, I took it, made a slurry.

    Mike:

    I would screen it, right? And yes, I would have gloves. I would have even a face mass on at some point, but it’s tested. It’s good to go, and then I would put it in an enema bottle. I would put an enema tube to it and I would put it up there and I would give myself an enema. So I’m inoculating my colon with healthy bacteria, probably trillions of bacteria, and lo and behold, my nervous… Excuse me. My immune system began to turn on, right? In a healthy way, and I begin to have solid bowel movements.

    Ashley:

    And you must have had to, so you had to do it. How long did you have to do it? Because they have to colonize. Right? So they have to, you have to do it enough that they actually-

    Mike:

    Oh, you want to know how long I had to hold it for.

    Ashley:

    No. I mean, yes, but no. How many days? How often did you do it before you started to notice results? You can’t just do one enema and have it be…

    Mike:

    Yes, and just to back up here. I am so open about this because do you know how many people are suffering from irritable bowel disease? I have clients that have irritable bowel disease that are in recovery that haven’t linked to their biology, excuse me, their biography and their biology of what happened to them. I got one kid right now who’s in total remission, right? Off doing a deep work of healing his nervous system. So he’s not skewing off all these cytokines, which are causing inflammatory bowel disease. There’s a lot of components to this, but people, this is amazing and I’m a open book. So, you want to do it for about the recommended 10 implants, 10 days in a row. So, that was challenging. I had to wake up and do all that and to hold it? In a perfect situation, overnight.

    Ashley:

    Oh, no.

    Mike:

    It’s not like an enema that makes you go. To the contrary, it’s just, it’s just in there to the point where it just, yeah.

    Ashley:

    Your body absorbs the water?

    Mike:

    Exactly. Exactly. So, this is deep, what we’re talking about, but all of this is correlated. Now you might be, you could look at it another way your body expresses the dis-ease. I mean, asthma, obesity. What’s underneath it? And I’m not here to say, “Oh, every single person who has an ailment has trauma”. We all have trauma in some way. We live in a traumatized society.

    Ashley:

    Right. Right.

    Mike:

    COVID is traumatizing right now. We all have masks over our face. We can’t see each other’s facial expressions. We can’t, we’re social distancing. Wait. We’re social primates. We’re made for touch. We’re made for connection. So, healing my irritable bowel disease was a… Or healing, excuse me, irritable bowel disease was a journey in itself.

    Ashley:

    And you did, for the record, you did heal it?

    Mike:

    So, today I don’t have active irritable bowel disease. Do I know when there’s some inflammation here and there? Sure. Do I have blood in my stool and diarrhea? No. Do I have normal bowel movements? Sure. Is my belly still struggle at times? Do I have to take digestive enzymes hydrochloric acid. I’m on top of my stuff to function optimally with auto-immunity but no, it does not-

    Ashley:

    But I mean, you were at the verge of losing organs.

    Mike:

    Losing colon.

    Ashley:

    Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean talking about going from that to where you are, is in my book, healing.

    Mike:

    Yes. So, as my mentor taught me, all sickness is homesickness. All healing is self healing, a journey back home to your true self. This is the same for addiction. If you want to look at addiction as a disease model, which I don’t, but sure. If you want to, but the dis-ease. All sickness is homesickness, right? Addiction is homesickness. All healing is self healing, a journey back to our authentic self. So, that’s just the beginning of coming back home, was beginning to slow down, beginning to listen. Let me back up. But the transformation that happened, and it resulted in my nervous system resetting, and me seeing with completely different new eyes, was with the multiple chemical sensitivity, I couldn’t even be in the environment. So, the diesel fuel gasoline. All these things were triggering me, so I would find refuge in these state parks near my home. I live near Cohasset and Hingham at the time, beautiful worlds end.

    Mike:

    I would go there and I would practice meditating, and practice walking and being present, because what was happening in my psychology or my mind, was I was taking the present moment and it was painful to be with all these physiological symptoms, and I was projecting it in the, in the future. You know what that equates to? Suffering. So, we don’t suffer in the present moment. Suffering takes time. So, we can be in pain, but suffering and pain are more or less… Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. So, I began to notice through stilling my mind, through practicing meditation, that where my mind was going with the physiological symptoms, where it was going and projecting was a terrifying place. Now, true story. My functional medicine doc at the time had a population with multiple chemical sensitivity. I’m not the only one on the planet that has this. And if you have it-

    Ashley:

    I do.

    Mike:

    Okay.

    Ashley:

    It’s awful.

    Mike:

    My compassionate heart just rains on you and anyone who has this.

    Ashley:

    For me, it’s around propylene glycol, vegetable glycerine, any kind of perfumes, any of that, and I will get a migraine and a bloody nose and can’t be around it. So, any kind of vape at all, I completely deteriorate.

    Mike:

    Did you used to vape?

    Ashley:

    I did briefly, but I was around a lot of people who vaped and I was around a lot of vape and it poisoned me, and so then I developed this chemical sensitivity.

    Mike:

    All right. So, maybe me and you have a talk off the air and we can just, I’m more than happy to give you some insight or people to contact where you can begin to address that, because at the end of my road here with that, I was contemplating suicide and I was going to jump off the Tobin Bridge in Boston because I was so hyper-aroused that I was suffering so dearly. And the beautiful thing about that is if you ever heard the quote, “no mud, no lotus”, is the suffering, the darkness with that taproot of that Lotus flower, she taps down in through the water, into the mud, the murky, dark stinky mud. And then she has this beautiful taproot that comes up and she sits on a Lily pad and she opens and blooms. And she’s a beautiful symbolism in the Buddhist tradition and other spiritual traditions.

    Mike:

    But we need that darkness to awaken consciousness. So, everyone who’s in recovery has experienced enough suffering to awaken consciousness. And that’s where I get really excited about it because this is an opportunity where pain is teacher. Illness is opportunity to awaken consciousness. Addiction is teacher. It’s an opportunity to shift your consciousness. So, here I was in the woods. Now, when I say meditate, I wasn’t like, “Oh, I’m going to meditate for five minutes.” I was suffering so bad. I sometimes had to say, “Mike, make it to the next stop sign driving my car 10 feet down the road and just be here. Just be here. Just be here. Just be here.” So I had to stop this monkey mind that was connected with the smell sensitivity going to my amygdala. Now your amygdala is your threat detecting machine. For all you guys out there that are experience trauma, Your amygdala is sensitized. It’s probably a little bit more active than it should be.

    Mike:

    Especially if you have anxiety and you worry and all that jazz. So, nothing’s wrong with you. Your neurobiology needs a little upgrade and tweaking and calming and all that, which is the healing of the nervous system and brain. So let’s talk about the real stuff we need to do in recovery. A four-step? Yeah. Great. How about let’s retrain your nervous system? That’s what I’m about. Anyways. So, I began to meditate and meditate and meditate, and I had a profound, mystical experience. Now, when you say, “Okay, Mike, tell me about it.” It’s beyond conceptualization. It’s ineffable. It’s beyond what the mind can come up with. So, the best thing I can share is I got to experience the truth. Now in Buddhism, right, or, let’s just say in Christianity, the Christ conscious.

    Mike:

    So, Buddha-nature or Atman, right? These these places of awakening. Ascension, right? The chakras and moving up, and I had a full-blown moment where I didn’t exist. There was no me, there was no body, it was pure blissful consciousness. Now, at this point, I was going through the crucible. Months, weeks, and months, and I was reading books. I had left the company. I was seeking. I would show up a drum circles, yoga centers. I didn’t know where I was going, but I couldn’t be at AA meetings with a bunch of people smoking. I left AA. I just, I started a whole different path, and I had this profound awakening experience that shifted my whole perception on reality. So, there were many beautiful things that happened during that time.

    Mike:

    So, to have the whole totality of things, you have to have both the darkness and the light, and I was going through these moments of darkness, and then I would pop out to like touching the present moment with just the stillness of mind, and it was beautiful, right? As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “The miracle isn’t walking on water, the miracle is walking mindfully on the green earth, is to be here. The kingdom of God is in the present moment.” But none of us, not none of us, a lot of us don’t have the opportunity to touch the present moment, because we’re all in these trauma responses. We’re all stuck in this mind. We can’t access the moment. We can’t slow down.

    Ashley:

    When you work with coaching, when you work with coaching and talk with people and obviously if they’re, you’re coaching them, they’re self-selecting to you. But how, where do you get people to start? Who know nothing about this? This is their first introduction. You sound like you just made love to a ghost and come out talking woo woo. They’re just so lost.

    Mike:

    Sure.

    Ashley:

    Right?

    Mike:

    Yeah.

    Ashley:

    You’re going to drum circles. They’re like, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

    Mike:

    Mm-hmm (affirmative).

    Ashley:

    Where do you tell those people to start on this? Because it’s a language. It’s a different language that we’re using. Different words, conscious. These are different words. They’re not accessible to everybody. How do you show people that bridge to this new language?

    Mike:

    For sure. So, let’s just say, when I meet someone for the first time, establishing a safe connection for them is top priority. Most people in recovery, we are suspect of you and you and everyone else. What are you up to? Especially if you’re from where I’m from, New England. So, establishing, and also if you’re a traumatized victim, you’re like a threat detecting machine. Your nervous system is primed to determine or detect who’s friend or foe, but this is below your consciousness. This is something, a pattern you may not even be aware of. Or maybe if you’re listening to this for the first time, a light bulb may go on and say, “Oh, I do that all the time.” So, establishing safety with them. Establishing a rapport with them, just listening to them. Letting them just, and really allowing them to just slow down a bit and just to notice their environment.

    Mike:

    Right? We’re all on zoom now. So, let’s just take a moment to just feel this chair beneath your sit bones for a moment. Let’s just take a moment to drop in and look at maybe a certain color in your environment, or maybe there’s a window in front of you, and tell me what you see out the window. I see these trees and they’re swaying really beautifully in the blue sky and these clouds. Oh, let’s take that in together for a moment. Let’s just notice that. Right, and then let’s just notice how that feels. Oh, when I take it in, I feel like… We may even see them just take a breath, right? And already in that moment of just orientating to their surrounding, we take 70% of our information in through our eyes. So, this is a great sense store to begin to access what’s here.

    Mike:

    When we’re stuck in here our whole life, we don’t know we have this thing called a body. We don’t know actually what’s around us most of the time. We’re stuck in the story. We’re stuck in the proliferation of thinking. So, your first step is to establish safety, connection, and let’s just drop down a bit. Let’s hang out. Let’s get real curious about what this is about. And just to share with you is, a lot of people are like, “Oh, I don’t want to tell people my story, what I been through.” The story isn’t even really that important. It’s what’s going on in your body.

    Mike:

    Now, you need some context to begin to see the activation or what’s here, and what I’m expanding about here is in a specific situation where I’m establishing presence. Now, most of my clients are dysregulated. If you’re in recovery and you haven’t done your trauma work, you’re dysregulated. What do you think the addiction was about once again? The attempt to find that restoration balance and connection within your own body and outside of it. So, acclimating to the here and the now is a great first step, and that’s kind of where we begin.

    Ashley:

    Do you have books that you are like, this is my go to. When people are starting out on this new journey, do you have books that you highly recommend?

    Mike:

    Well, yes. Yes and no. Depending upon where each person is at. Some people come to me and resonate with Buddhism and the Buddhist teachings, right. I have another client who’s a Catholic, which is great. It’s his faith and his prayer. Great. I wouldn’t recommend a Buddhist book to him, but there’s even the point where The Body Keeps The Score is a little, it’s a little heavy for someone. Would I recommend that if I thought they could take it? Sure. So, yeah, there are books, but I’m more interested in moving beyond the cognition. I don’t want you cognitively getting involved in this. I want you embodied. I want you embodied. So, let’s connect with your breath in this moment. Tell me what you notice about your breath.

    Mike:

    What do you, how are your feet right now? Are they on the floor? What’s that like to feel rooted and grounded right now? What’s it like to notice you have support from the back of your chair and from mother earth under your feet? What do you feel in your body when we bring that sense of awareness and presence together? I’m more interested in this, besides any books. Books are great, but once again, healing trauma, you can’t start from the top down. I know your people at your office would probably want to crack me in the head. It’s a bottom up. And can you have both? And there’s a lot of, the jury’s out on a lot of it, but I start by exploring what’s here.

    Ashley:

    Yeah. I like it. I mean, I think, and for us or for me, I could speak for myself and is it getting… It’s all stages, it’s all different stages.

    Mike:

    Yes.

    Ashley:

    And I needed the CBT at this stage and I needed, I needed to peel the onion and that… I wasn’t ready to do that deep work in the beginning. So, it was just, again, like those goals were really basic and moving on. And then now it’s a much different story, but in the beginning, but what’s interesting is it’s not any less important or life threatening today as it was in the beginning. Right? The work that I need to do today is still as important as the work of don’t die, because for a person like me, if I don’t do that work, I do die. That’s how that goes for me. So, the stakes are the same, but the chapter is different.

    Mike:

    Yes. So, I hear you, and I very much agree with everyone is at a different spot in their process and needs different things. That’s why a good practitioner will know what you need in that moment.

    Ashley:

    Right. Right. Right.

    Mike:

    Right? So, yes. The other thing is, if you were my client, we’d be getting really curious about that part of you that thinks it’s going to die.

    Ashley:

    Yeah. I mean, that part of me, that’s my healthy fear of my drug addiction and alcoholism. That if I use, I will die. And if I do not continue to recover that I will end up using those things again.

    Mike:

    Yes, and that part of you that’s holding the fear also is holding the wisdom in the aspect that the old pattern of trying to keep you alive in whatever way worked for you might have been using drugs and alcohol. Right? Because sometimes that’s what they do in the beginning, or that’s a lot-

    Ashley:

    In the beginning, yeah. Yeah.

    Mike:

    They keep us alive. So, bringing a deep sense of curiosity to that, and really beginning to notice that these parts of us that hold the trauma also hold the wisdom. And to once again, making that conscious. So, we can begin to let go of that forward motion of trying to, I got to do this, I got to do that, because I got to stay alive and stay in recovery. And I got to keep going my recovery, got to do my recovery. I’m going to die, and I’m not saying you’re doing that, but hey, there’s a lot of people doing that. Right? If you’re going to six meetings in a day, I’m going to tell you there’s deeper work to do.

    Ashley:

    Yeah. That’s definitely not what’s happening. Yeah, no, but you’re right. You’re right. I heard someone say, I can never get enough meetings. I’m like, oh, that is, I absolutely can.

    Mike:

    So, we become dependent or codependent on that.

    Ashley:

    Right.

    Mike:

    Yeah. So-

    Ashley:

    And maybe for a time that’s okay.

    Mike:

    Yes, yes.

    Ashley:

    Yeah. And I feel like it comes back to those chapters, but the work that you’re doing is profound and I love how you got there, and I love that you didn’t… It’s incredible to me that you were able to hold onto the spiritual wisdom throughout everything that you’ve been through. I could easily see someone, even in their recovery, coming through all of this and with the early religious experiences, particularly also the switching. The born again, all of it. Coming through and that religious trauma really being a barrier to some of the spiritual aspects of what you have accomplished and experienced, and you were able… I think the ulcerative colitis, right, brought you that new level of spirituality and desire to live.

    Ashley:

    And it’s just really, your journey is really cool. Really, I mean, I’m sure there are parts of it you’re like, yeah, that wasn’t so cool, but that your journey is just really phenomenal. And the twists and turns of it are really beautiful and mostly because of where it ended up. Right? But it’s just incredible. I’m so amazed and you healing yourself that way is a Testament to who you are as a person. Right? Just that resilience of, no, you’re not going to tell me that I’m going to lose these. I’m not just going to go along. I’m going to find the answers.

    Mike:

    Ashley. I am a guy, I’m a seeker.

    Ashley:

    Yeah. You’re a seeker.

    Mike:

    I always have been, and there’s a big component to that spirituality that I was freed from when I had, or I shouldn’t say spirituality. There was a component to the religiosity, in the religious trauma that I was free from when I had an experiencing or excuse me, when I had an experience of the all-knowing, let’s say, because once again, there are multiple paths to the truth. These are all paths, right? It’s like Hinduism doesn’t work for everyone, Catholicism or Buddhism or whatever. These are all paths to experiencing the truth and when you experience the truth, right, it’s the truth that liberates, not your effort to be free. So, so many of us are trying to be free, but yet we haven’t got in touch with the part of ourself that has the wisdom.

    Mike:

    The wisdom is what begins to create discernment. With discernment, you’re able to navigate in a way that through comic law, that breeds more happiness or suffering, but you have to get your consciousness on board and begin to become self aware to some degree. So you don’t keep spinning the webs that get you stuck. So, my family in the lineage with my grandmother passing this priest off to my mother, everyone, and if you’re listening to this, great. Everyone, or a lot of people, there’s a tendency to spiritual bypass, and this is heavy in the recovery community as well. Right. Everyone, not everyone once again, but a lot of people in the 12 step, right. They throw God around like it’s no one’s business and I am spiritual. Okay, great.

    Mike:

    I hear you, and what does that really mean, and, how in touch are you with the moment and how are you behaving and how are you treating your loved ones? And so we can’t just mirror, just give it up to the old G-O-D. We have to embody and live in a way that connects us to the deeper aspect within ourself. That is God. God is within, is without. Right. Be still and know that I am God. And that’s what, that’s a moment that I got to experience that shattered that old framework of the dogmatic Christianity like a shard of glass. It shattered the sense of self of this big muscular guy hiding behind his pain because he was this hurt little boy that didn’t get loved. In those moments of truth is what set me free. So today, through practicing self-awareness and compassion is I can offer that. Am I perfect? Absolutely not. Ask my mother and my fiance and my sister. They’ll tell you. You follow me?

    Ashley:

    Yes, I do, and I love it. It’s incredible. I could talk to you all day and, about all of this, it’s amazing. Where can people contact you? If they’ve heard something that they like and they want to reach out?

    Mike:

    You can contact… My website’s mikegovoni.com. I have a podcast called The Healing Beyond Recovery podcast. Maybe we’ll get on that and riff together at some point, if you want.

    Ashley:

    Yeah.

    Mike:

    The Healing Beyond Recovery podcast, that’s pretty much on all these platforms. Yeah, so.

    Ashley:

    You’re on Instagram?

    Mike:

    Instagram, Mike Govoni. M-I-K-E G-O-V. V as in Victor. O. N as in Nancy, I. Govoni, and then Mike Govoni on Facebook as well.

    Ashley:

    Awesome. Awesome. I am absolutely going to follow up with you, and I think a lot of people, I think a lot of people listening to this will reach out because the stuff that you’re talking about is so relevant, especially today, and getting in touch with ourselves, and I think 2020 made the world pause. I think there’s been a lot of… A world, a paradigm shift all over and the stuff you’re talking about is a big piece of that. So, thank you so much for talking to me and telling me your story and sharing with me about your poop enemas. I am so grateful and I loved every second of it.

    Mike:

    Perfect. Thank you for having me, Ashley.

    Ashley:

    Thank you.

    Ashley:

    This podcast is sponsored by lionrock.life. Lionrock.life is a recovery community offering free online support group meetings, useful recovery information and entertainment. Visit www.lionrock.life to view the meeting schedule and find additional resources. Find the joy in recovery at lionrock.life.

    PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:48:00]

    Ashley Jo Brewer

    Ashley Avatar

    Ashley Jo is one of the producers of The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast team. With over a decade of experience working with C-level executives and directing corporate training events, she brings extensive production experience to Lionrock. In early 2020, she made a significant career change and stepped into the realm of podcasting.

    Her recovery experience includes substance abuse, codependency, grief and loss, and sexual assault and trauma. Ashley Jo enjoys supporting others in recovery by connecting with people and being a leader. She shared her story in Season 3, Episode 92 of The Courage to Change.