#97 – Adam Fout

Adam’s Story

Adam Fout was born to two attorneys in San Diego, CA. Although he didn’t know it at the time, Adam struggled with OCD, depression, anxiety, and binge eating from a young age. He began a ‘legal career of his own’ after a run-in with the Kansas City Bureau of Investigation while in college. Following this experience, Adam’s mental health spiraled out of control. He attempted suicide, spent time in multiple psych wards, and went to rehab. Like many with substance use disorder, Adam struggled with accepting that his substance use was a problem.

Today, by working the programs of Cocaine Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, and Alcoholics Anonymous Adam enjoys a life of long-term recovery. He travels with his wife McKayla, who is a travel nurse. Adam is a speculative fiction and nonfiction author as well as an addiction, recovery, and mental health blogger. Adam is currently querying his memoir, which includes several nonfiction chapters listed on his website adamfout.com.

Episode Resources

• Overeaters Anonymous | oa.org
• Bright Line Eating | brightlineeating.com
• Lionrock’s CommUnity Meetings | lionrock.life/meetings

Connect with Adam Fout

• Adam’s Website | adamfout.com
• Adam’s Instagram | @adamfout
• Adam’s Facebook | @AdamFoutAuthor

Connect with Us at The Courage to Change

• Podcast Website | lionrock.life/couragetochangepodcast
• Podcast Instagram | @couragetochange_podcast
• Podcast Facebook | @thecouragetochangepodcast
• Podcast Email | podcast@lionrock.life

Looking for Online Support?

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Episode Transcript

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Hello beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change, a Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame and I am your host. Today we have Adam Fout. Adam was born to two attorneys in San Diego, California. Although he didn’t know it at the time, Adam struggled with OCD, depression, anxiety, and binge eating from a young age. He began a, quote, legal career of his own after a run-in with the Kansas City Bureau of Investigation while in college. Never a good sign. Following this experience, Adam’s mental health spiraled out of control, he attempted suicide, spent time in multiple psych wards, and went to rehab. Like many with Substance Use Disorder, Adam struggled with accepting that his substance use was a problem.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Today, by working the programs of Cocaine Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, and Alcoholics Anonymous, Adam enjoys a life of long-term recovery. He travels with his wife McKayla, who is a travel nurse. Adam is a speculative fiction and non-fiction author, as well as an addiction, recovery, and mental health blogger. Adam is currently querying his memoir, which includes several non-fiction chapters listed on his website, AdamFout.com. Adam F-O-U-T dot com.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

All right. Hello everybody. Glad to have you back if you’re coming back, or if this is your first episode ever, welcome to the podcast. Adam is our guest today. He was awesome. This is really a conversation about all of the different mental anguish that we experience as people who end up in recovery and Adam really dives into the mental health aspect of it, which I think is great. And then we also talked a bit about struggling with eating disorders and binge eating, and I thought that we really got to the heart of what it looks like to struggle with mental health and particularly some good stuff after he got sober as well. So, I hope that this episode is helpful, and please feel free to reach out to Adam at AdamFout.com if any of this speaks to you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

All right, episode 97. Let’s do this.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You’re 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 Loeb Blassingame:

Adam, nice to meet you. Welcome to The Courage to Change.

Adam Fout:

Thank you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Thanks for coming on.

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So you found us on Instagram?

Adam Fout:

Yes, I did.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Awesome. Very exciting. And I was reading through your story and your notes and we have a ton of similarities, so I’m excited to chat about them. But one of the big ones that you dealt with very specifically was mental health issues, and that’s kind of a big thing you talk about.

Adam Fout:

Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, I almost forget. Before we get started on that, I have a fun order of business. I got a photo of you, which we will share. And this is supposed to be your bad haircut photo.

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But I’m going to shame you because this photo is not a bad haircut. I mean, I can see you’re very dazed and confused, but it’s not bad haircut. It’s just teenage dumb. But tell me about this photo. It’ll go up on Instagram so people will be able to check it out on Instagram when they’re listening to your pod.

Adam Fout:

Sure. Well, I’m glad you think it’s nice. Maybe I just don’t take bad haircuts. So, this was back when I was 18 and I decided my hair needed to be very long in a fit, a peak of rebellion.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Adam Fout:

I don’t know. That picture, I don’t remember. I’m sure I was very drunk. You should see the rest of the picture. Everyone else is smiling, they’ve got their thumbs up.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, how funny.

Adam Fout:

They’ve all had like two beers, and then I’m over there about to throw up.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The always-overdoing it?

Adam Fout:

Yeah. Exactly.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. I’m that. I was that person, too. Just always took it a little too far.

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So you grew up in San Diego?

Adam Fout:

Yeah. Well, sort of. So, I was there until I was nine and then I moved to Reno and lived in Nevada for three years, then we moved back to California for a year and a half, and then we moved to Kansas, and that’s where I started drinking and getting high.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Your parents were both attorneys.

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How did they move around like that?

Adam Fout:

So, my mom, she just kept getting promoted at AT&T. She was an attorney there.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Got it, okay. Okay. And dad, what kind of attorney was dad?

Adam Fout:

So, he’s a tax attorney. And then after we moved to Kansas, he stopped practicing and started taking care of us full-time.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Awesome. And mom stayed working?

Adam Fout:

Yeah, exactly.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay, cool. Looks like you’re the oldest of three boys?

Adam Fout:

Yes. Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Awesome. Awesome, love that. I’m the oldest of three girls. What’s the age span?

Adam Fout:

So, one of my brothers is four years younger and the other is nine years younger.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. And how old are you guys now?

Adam Fout:

So, I am 36, Marshall is 31, and Zachary is 27, somewhere in there.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Nice. Okay.

Adam Fout:

I think so.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, I know. I know, right? At a certain point, it just gets lost.

Adam Fout:

Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And what was your childhood like? Did you have any of the symptoms of mental health, using? Give us a little insight into what it looked like.

Adam Fout:

I mean, it was pretty normal on the outside and on the inside, as far as I could tell. I went to good schools, private schools. My brothers and I would fight, sort of, but not really. Moving around kind of sucked because you were always the new kid, but it wasn’t like we were every six months or something like that, it was only a few times. But I definitely had the mental health issues from a very young age. And I didn’t realize it until going back and looking back to when I was a kid that I had some pretty deep depression, I had some bad anxiety, especially social anxiety, OCD. So that was all there and I was sort of primed. For the first time I got high, I was like, “Oh hey. This is helping something I didn’t know needed to be helped.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So how young do you think that the depression, anxiety, OCD, how young do you think that started presenting when you look back now?

Adam Fout:

When I look back, I think I probably had that from day one, honestly. I think it was genetic and it was always there. And circumstances would make it better or worse, but I remember being a little kid and just being sad, just feeling like not a part of anything, even though I had friends and so forth. I just felt like I wasn’t normal.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Normal. Normal. Come to find out, that would be a tall order.

Adam Fout:

Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You started using around 17 with alcohol and drugs.

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What was your relationship like with food?

Adam Fout:

So, food had always been a problem and that’s where you can really see in my past, the addiction rearing its head because I would eat like crazy. And I remember even being 15 or 16 and talking to a friend and the friend was like, “Why don’t you try drinking beer?” And I said, “Well, man, when I drink Mountain Dew, I have like six Mountain Dews in a row, so I don’t know that this is a good idea.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh wow. So you had some insight into this.

Adam Fout:

Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did you know what addiction was, was it in your family?

Adam Fout:

No.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So you had no idea.

Adam Fout:

I didn’t even know it was in my family. It was, but I had no idea that it was. I was not anywhere around my family, my dad’s side, where the addiction was, so it was very much not something I was aware of or was on my radar. But I was overeating from, again, day one, I think. I was always eating all my food, eating lots of candy, eating lots of sweets, whatever I could get my hands on.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did the overeating present as a weight problem or just a food-

Adam Fout:

Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, it did. Okay, so tell me about that.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. So I was always overweight, and when you combine that with the social anxiety and the moving around, it was not fun. I did get bullied from time to time. It wasn’t anything that was terrible, but it was enough to make it clear, “You’re not one of us.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. So then, tell me about starting to use at 17 when you were in Kansas. How did you get introduced to that?

Adam Fout:

So, I had a girlfriend and the girlfriend was in Wichita, which was three hours away from where I was, and she had an uncle who was 21. She was 15 I think. And he smoked weed and she was like, “You should try this.” She smoked cigarettes and she had been trying to get me to smoke cigarettes and I tried, and of course, those attempts were ill fated and awful and I was coughing everywhere. It was pretty horrible. But I kept trying and eventually managed to smoke.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Good for you.

Adam Fout:

I know. I wouldn’t give up, and eventually managed to smoke some cigarettes. And then with weed, it was the same thing. I smoked and the first time, nothing happened, but I wasn’t going to give up.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No, we’re not quitters.

Adam Fout:

No, no, no. So the second time, I was like, “Whoa. This is something else. I need to do this every day.” And I was immediately hooked. Immediately.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I guess nicotine, cigarettes were your introduction.

Adam Fout:

Right. Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You got into marijuana, started smoking weed. When did you get to Oxy?

Adam Fout:

I was 20 when I started doing Oxy, but I mean, there was definitely some time in there where I was trying a lot of hard drugs between 17 and 20. Because I was like, “Oh, marijuana’s not so bad. How bad could the other drugs really be?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Right.

Adam Fout:

I tried a lot. And at some point in there, I did try Oxy and nothing really bad happened. But then I had a friend who had been hooked on it since he was 13 when he got cancer and realized that the opiates him feel good. And he had a stepfather that he would steal it from every weekend basically. So we started doing it every weekend for three weeks, and after three weeks I was hooked.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. The opiates will do that to you. You grew up, you have attorneys, corporate America attorneys for parents, you’re in college. I feel like so many parents are like, “Okay, if they grow up with good examples and good values,” and blah, blah, blah, “and they get to college, it’ll all be okay.” And obviously, you and I both know that if you’re genetically an alcoholic and you introduce those things that all bets are off. But what did you think, what was your mindset between 17 when you started and 20 when you got really addicted? What was the progression of the thoughts around what you were doing and how bad it was or wasn’t and how mental health played into that?

Adam Fout:

I think my thoughts around it was I just don’t care and I just don’t understand really. Any of the potential consequences, if there are any, I don’t care. Very much a, I’m going to do what I want to do when I want to do it. I’m doing it because it makes me feel good, and that’s kind of about it. I don’t think those values or morals or any of that played any role whatsoever. You know?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes, I do. I’m laughing because, I mean, laughing, not laughing. It’s like, I have two little boys and you’re describing one of them from the get-go, and you’re also describing me. As a kid, I’m the oldest of three girls, we moved around. Not a lot, but enough for it to be the new kid a bunch of times, and I started binge eating when we started moving around a lot, same as you. Mental health, depression, anxiety. Not so much OCD. I joke about that with Christiana, our producer and production coordinator because I really could use some OCD. I really could use some and I just do not have it. But yeah, I mean, I relate a lot to what you were talking about. And I started to lose the weight when I started to do the drugs.

Adam Fout:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And all this, nice parents and blah, blah, blah, but how that just … When you don’t feel comfortable in your own skin and I was laughing, thinking about my son, both my sons, but one in particular, how I can see that I can be the best parent and I am going to do the best that I possibly can, but I also understand, having been there, that I didn’t cause it, but I also can’t cure it. And I can say as much as I want to, but when you’re born feeling that way and you discover something that makes you feel so much better, getting in between that is really tough and it’s scary as a parent looking back at it. It really is. But I see how genetic it is.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, absolutely.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So you get to this place. At what point did it stop working for you? Because I always say we hired the substances for a job to do, they did a great job, they made us popular, six feet tall, bulletproof, all the things, and then they turn on us and now they go from being our solution to being our problem. When did that turn happen for you?

Adam Fout:

So, I think the real turn didn’t happen until I was about 25 and they really did stop doing what I needed them to do. But before that, I mean, life was falling apart so badly by 23 and 24 that you could say they weren’t doing what they were supposed to do.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. You’re totally right. There’s a point at which, where they are no longer doing what they’re supposed to be doing, but we’re still hyping them up. We’re still telling ourselves, “No, no, no. This is still working. This is still working.” But yeah, you’re right. It takes us a while to get to the place where we understand that it’s no longer working.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, exactly.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I had legal, emotional, financial, residential, lots of consequences.

Adam Fout:

Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What were some of the consequences you faced as a result of getting addicted to the Oxy, like you were talking about, that three week bender and then you’re addicted? What ended up happening?

Adam Fout:

Oh, what didn’t end up happening?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Adam Fout:

Let’s see. So, I lost every job you could imagine, which were all minimum wage jobs. I could not graduate from school for the life of me. I was in school for a long time and school was sort of my cover. That’s how I got my parents to keep sending me the money I needed.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes. Right.

Adam Fout:

And there would be times where I would, “I’m going to do it this semester.” And then I’d end up withdrawing from three classes and getting a C in a fourth one or something like that. So, school was constantly getting screwed over. Let’s see. And that was just in the beginning. I had lots of relationship issues with girls, with friends. I had lots of issues with apartments. I was constantly moving apartments mostly because I was selling drugs. I was selling Oxy.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. You got into the … I was terrible at that, so I always admire people. My ability to sell drugs is quite piss-poor, so I’m impressed when people can do it because I just absolutely could not make that happen.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. No, I had a penchant for finding old people and convincing them to give me their pills.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes. Yes. Did you tell yourself any stories, or maybe you knew people who did, about how this wasn’t a real drug problem because these were pharmaceutical grade and they could be prescribed by someone in a white coat?

Adam Fout:

Oh yeah. Absolutely.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. So that was part of the narrative, like, “I’m not like you guys, I’m not shooting heroin.”

Adam Fout:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Exactly. Exactly. But then the funny thing is, when heroin came around it was like, “Oh yeah, that’s fine.” That’s literally how it went down is I had a guy who said, “Hey, I got some Oxy.” And I was like, “Okay.” And I went over and he was like, “Oh, by the way, it’s not Oxy, it’s heroin.” And I paused for about one second and then I said, “All right. That’s fine.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Like, “Uh.” I mean, it’s really interesting because I’ve talked to a lot of people and I was actually talking to my sister last night and we were talking about where our stories diverge, my middle sister, and they diverged at the time we were talking about it specifically, the time where I first shot heroin. Because up until then, we did a lot of stuff together. We were talking about that moment in time, but I think that one thing that people don’t realize is that a lot of soccer moms and people who get in car accidents or all these things, they’re taking the prescription heroin, they’re taking the opiates, the prescription opiates, and they run out or something happens or they’re sick or whatever. And then the only option there is heroin. And I think that you really don’t realize that that could be you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And I hear this story so often, particularly with my company, hearing from people that really, truly get into it with pain and then, the next thing they know, they’re desperate and they have to use heroin. And it’s a hop, skip, and a jump, but by the time you’re using those pills, you’re in so deep. I feel like when you’re using a needle to shoot heroin, you’re like, “Yeah, this is a problem.” There was never a time in my life where I was confused about whether or not heroin was a problem. I was fully aware of that, but there were lots of times with other things where I definitely negotiated and I feel like pills are where people get themselves so deep in and they don’t even realize it.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It felt like it was okay for a long time.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Right. And how was your mental health during this time?

Adam Fout:

It was slowly but surely falling apart.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Adam Fout:

Because I was also doing a lot of Adderall and a lot of coke and a lot of, eventually, meth at the same time, and as a result of that, my mind was breaking, you know?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes, I do. I do. Because you always think, you’re like, “Okay, if I go up a little bit, and then I come down a little bit, and then I go sideways over here, and then I’ll drink a little bit.”

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And I used to say, “No, I’m doing a personal chemistry experiment.” I felt very scientific about it. Back in the day, I don’t know if you remember this, back in the day, we had a book called The Pill Book and it was a dictionary for pills.

Adam Fout:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes. I do recall this.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And I would sit on the floor and it had the pictures. This was way before you could google anything. I would sit on the floor and read through The Pill Book, and I felt very studious and official about what I was doing because I was reading about each drug and what they looked like and that kind of thing. So, when I would grab a handful of pills to take them, somehow, because I had read this book, I felt like that absolved me from being a drug addict.

Adam Fout:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was a connoisseur.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Exactly. A sommelier of pills. Yes, exactly.

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Not my fault they didn’t have a certification at that time. Okay, so then things get a little hairy because the Kansas Bureau of Investigation gives you a little knock on the door.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, they come calling.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How’d they find out about your little pop-up? What happened there?

Adam Fout:

Oh, that’s quite the story. So, I had this roommate and I met the guy, as we do, because someone said he had some drugs I wanted to try. And he was selling drugs and I was selling drugs, and I was basically getting kicked out of my apartment with the guys I was living with, and I was like, “Okay, let’s move in together. I’ll handle the hard drugs, you handle the hallucinogens.” And, how could this go wrong?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No, I mean, that makes complete sense. Like, stay in your lane.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, exactly. So, we move in together and he gets this girlfriend and every night, without fail, she comes over, they get into a fight and do a bunch of drugs, and then she leaves at like 3:00 in the morning after screaming at him.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Adam Fout:

And when I say every night, that’s very literal. I mean, it was every single night for three months. And it was horrible. And then one night, it escalates for whatever reason.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Ah, I know where this is going.

Adam Fout:

So, they go into the parking lot and she rips a mirror off of his car, so he rips a mirror off of her car.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Only fair.

Adam Fout:

So, she rips the other mirror off, and then they get into their cars and they start driving them into each other at 3:00 in the morning. Like bumper cars. Obviously, the police are called, so they both get arrested and taken to jail because they’re idiots. And when she gets into jail, she says to the cop, “So, what are you guys going to do about all the drugs they have in their house?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, yeah. Of course.

Adam Fout:

And they’re like, “Tell us more about these drugs that they have in their house.” So, they go and they do a little reconnaissance mission and my roommate has San Pedro Cactus, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that or not?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Like a mescaline?

Adam Fout:

You can cook it and make mescaline.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, exactly.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

See? I’m good. I still got it.

Adam Fout:

There you go. And we had that on the porch. So they see that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Wait. Is the cactus illegal?

Adam Fout:

Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The actual cactus itself is illegal.

Adam Fout:

I’m pretty sure it was. I just know that they used that to say, “Yeah, there’s definitely something going on here.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Adam Fout:

So, they come and they knock on the door at 9:00 AM and I am very upset because everyone knows I don’t wake up until 4:00 in the afternoon.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Naturally.

Adam Fout:

So, I go and I open the door and they come flying in. They had their little ram ready to go, but they didn’t need it. And yeah, they just go through the apartment and take everything they can find.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So, your parents being attorneys, I’m sure you were really excited to let them know that you, too, had an interest in the law and would be pursuing a career in needing legal help.

Adam Fout:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And so here’s the funny part is they didn’t arrest us.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What?

Adam Fout:

I know. They went through and they found so much stuff, especially in my roommate’s room because he was a manufacturer, so they took all of his stuff, all of my stuff, and they said, “It is going to take us a long time to go through all of this at a lab, so we’re not going to arrest you. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That makes no sense.

Adam Fout:

It doesn’t, does it? It was very bizarre, but I was like, “Well, I’m fine with that.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, totally. Totally. No, don’t ask questions, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth on that one.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. So, I didn’t have to tell my parents, I just ended up basically accidentally telling them when I was really messed up one night. And I told them in a bizarre way, I said, “Oh, I need more money because my money was in my wallet and my friend whose house I was at got raided by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.” They freaked out. And at this point, I hadn’t been in school for, like, six months and I had been lying to them that I had graduated and I had no proof of my graduation because I didn’t have my certificate or my degree. So, they were like, “That’s it. You are coming to Texas.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Where in Texas were they?

Adam Fout:

They were in Dallas.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. Okay. So they’re in Dallas, you come home to Texas. How’s that go?

Adam Fout:

So, it sort of seems to me, there’s a point there where … Because my dad drives up from Texas, it’s about an eight hour drive, and there’s this point there where I’m really relieved because I’m finally leaving all this madness behind. And that lasts until I get there.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

A cool eight hours.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, exactly. And then I’m like, “Oh jeez, I’m going to detox and this is going to suck. I’ve got to find something.” So I find some weed and I start drinking, and I get through the detox and I really kind of have it in my head, “I’m just going to smoke weed for the rest of my life and be cool.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay, and then what? What happened to “cool”?

Adam Fout:

And then, cool actually changed to, I am suicidal now.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Adam Fout:

Because I was no longer happy with the way that I felt.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Adam Fout:

And I was really-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What started going through your head? Sometimes when I was using, sometimes I would think to myself, like, “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to deal with this.” And then there’s the difference between that and, “I really want to attempt suicide. I’m contemplating suicide.” Did you get to a place where your thoughts really changed to, “I think I want to execute on this,” for lack of a better term?

Adam Fout:

Yes, because after giving this … And I had gotten several DUIs in the middle of all this, too. So, after I get these DUIs, and then I get raided, and then they say, “We’re just going to let you know.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. That’s terrifying.

Adam Fout:

And I know what they’ve pulled out of there. And they went through my phone and I know what they pulled out of there. So, it’s all bad, and I know that something is going to go to hell. And I haven’t graduated school and I have no job and I see no prospects for my future at all. So, the depression just gets worse, and worse, and worse, and I’m finally like, “Okay. I need to get out of here. There’s no point.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What were the thoughts that were going on for you?

Adam Fout:

Oh, and I had left a girlfriend behind in Kansas, too, who I cared about deeply, so I was really depressed about that, too, and I was like, “Okay, how am I going to do this?” Because I had been planning on doing it in Kansas before I ended up moving.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Adam Fout:

And at one point, I had went out and I bought a bunch of drugs, I bought a gun, I bought some alcohol and I was going to do it, but my girlfriend was the one driving me around to do these things and she’s not an idiot, so she just stayed with me for three days until all the drugs were gone.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Adam Fout:

And I was too scared to do it. But the thoughts were exactly that, like, “There’s no point in living. There’s no point in any of this. I have completely ruined my life. I’m in Texas, all my friends are gone. Everything’s gone. I don’t want to live anymore.” And I took several trips back to Kansas to visit my girlfriend, convincing my parents to give me money and so forth, and I go back one time and I steal $500 from her. Ostensibly, I love her, but now I’m stealing money from her to go get Oxycontin, and of course I’m the only freaking person in there, so she knows that I stole it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s a regular who-dunnit.

Adam Fout:

I know, right? So, it’s really clear that I stole this and she’s freaking out and we get in this huge argument, and I have all the Oxy in my hand and I say, “If you think I stole this, I’m just going to eat this right now.” And she didn’t say anything. And in that moment I was like, “This is my chance.” So, I ate it all. And then I was okay with it, I was at peace. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to die.” And I walked out of the apartment in a storm, but I didn’t want to be bored for the next 45 minutes, so I needed something to do until I died. So, I pull my phone out, and of course I hadn’t been charging it because I’m a drug addict, and I look at it and I’m like, “Oh, I have enough battery life to listen to some music before I die.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh good Lord.

Adam Fout:

And then the phone dies in my hand, and I’m like, “Okay. Well, I’ll just wander around.” So, I pass this alley that I had planned on dying in and I walk into … And keep in mind, I haven’t lived in this place in six months, in this town, Lawrence, Kansas. So, I walk around the corner and I find this Labor Ready place where you can go in and apply for jobs, and I go in and sit down and start applying for jobs.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh my God. That is amazing. You’re like, “It’s never too late to start.”

Adam Fout:

Exactly.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love the optimism.

Adam Fout:

I know, right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Skills.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. It was just totally crazy. And there’s this girl sitting across from me, so I start hitting on her in a peak of revenge and then I’m sure I just passed out, mid-sentence while talking to this girl. And I wake up and they’re hitting me with Narcan and I tell them that I did it on purpose and then I get to go to the psych ward for a few days.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Yeah, I know it well. Thank God for Narcan. Been to the party. So, you go to the psych ward, and the psych ward is a special place, I’ve been a few times.

Adam Fout:

Yes, it is.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s interesting being there as a drug addict, too, because you’re like, “Well, I’m not crazy,” because you see the people who are legitimately loony tunes, really struggling, and you think that you’re different. But meanwhile, you just took a handful of pills and applied for jobs during a suicide attempt.

Adam Fout:

Right. Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But I remember thinking, “Well, I don’t belong here.” So, how did you end up getting sober?

Adam Fout:

So, I left the psych ward and I was required for one of my DUIs to take some alcohol classes, whatever that is. And they told my parents at the psych ward, “He needs some serious help.” So, I start going to this place, an outpatient treatment center in Texas, and while I’m going to this, it’s dual diagnosis, thankfully, so I do some psych stuff and they put me on antidepressants, which almost immediately relieved the depression.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Wow.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, it was really crazy how well it worked. But on the other side, the alcohol and drug side, they’re like, “You know you have to stay sober to continue doing this, right?” And I’m like, “Yeah, but I’m just smoking weed.” And they’re like, “Well, when you were on the psych side, you could get away with that, but not here.” So I was like, “No problem. I can get piss.” So, I start getting piss from my little brother’s friend.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You’re talking about to get clean drug tests.

Adam Fout:

Exactly, exactly. So that I’m allowed to complete this program so that my DUI is satisfied. And because I just did not see weed as a problem, I did not think it was a problem.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Adam Fout:

But they forced me to go to AA meetings and that’s when I began to realize that it was a problem.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What made you realize that? What made it a problem?

Adam Fout:

I just started to make friends in these meetings and I realized that they are all really sober. They are all actually sober from everything and I wanted to be sober, too, eventually. And I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t stop on my own, but I got a sponsor like all my friends had and I started doing some step work. And eventually, I got to step three and I was lying to my sponsor, I told them I was sober. I was smoking weed the whole time.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

We call those dirty chips.

Adam Fout:

Exactly.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Taking dirty chips.

Adam Fout:

And one day, I went to do my third step prayer and I fell to my knees and I prayed, and I really wanted to stop. And I knew I was going to get high that day and I knew there was nothing I could do about it. And I prayed really hard and the desire was taken away.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Wow.

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s amazing. That’s so cool. It’s funny, I talk about this. I didn’t have that experience, having been sober in AA over 15 years. Well actually, I’ve been sober over 15 years, I’ve been in AA over 20, and my experience, I always thought I was doing something wrong because that desire, that deep desire wasn’t taken away from me, it happened over time. I always make mention of that for people who are in program or trying program, you’re not doing it wrong if that doesn’t go away, but a lot of people do have that experience and it’s amazing.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. It was so amazing that I went to my brother’s room, who was smoking weed a lot at the time, and I said, “I need you to load a bowl immediately.” And he was like, “What are you talking about?” And I said, “Just do it.” And then I said, “Now hit it.” And he was like, “What?” And I was like, “Just do it.” And he hits it, and I say, “Now, offer it to me.” And he goes, “Do you want to smoke?” And I was like, “No, I don’t and it’s very strange.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s amazing. That’s also an amazingly drug addict thing to do.

Adam Fout:

I know.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s so good. Oh my God. Okay. So now you’re fully sober?

Adam Fout:

Yeah. So, I’m fully sober for about five months. Three months in, I decide I don’t need the program anymore, that I’m good, and I relapse at five months. A friend of mine is like, “Do you want to drink?” And I hadn’t thought of it in five months and I said, “I do. Now that you mention it.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Now that you mention it.

Adam Fout:

So, she stayed sober that night, I went and smoked some weed after she went to bed, and that started a relapse that was about nine months that got really bad.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment. I want to interrupt this episode to have a short little discussion about support groups, and there’s no better person to talk to about this than my production coordinator, Ashley Jo Brewer, AJB, if you will. AJB, hi.

Speaker 3:

Hi.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. You’re a big fan of Community, you attend Community support group meetings. Why? Why should people care?

Speaker 3:

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’re recovering from, and I think that’s what’s beautiful about Community.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, I love it. 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 one … Whatever. Whatever it is, you are welcome and you are welcome in this place and it’s a great place to discover the answers to all the questions that you’re looking for in Community and have that support. And 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.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

There are so many different options, something out there for everyone, so I highly recommend maybe after you listen to this, if you are looking for more community in your life, more friends, more support, please, please go check out Community. Lionrock.life, click that Community tab.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

During the relapse, once you learn about recovery and then relapse, I feel like there’s the trite sayings of, “A head full of AA and a belly full of beer don’t mix.” Or whatever.

Adam Fout:

Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And as silly as that sounds, I have found that to be incredibly true, that it is no longer … If you have awareness about what you’re doing, it’s really hard to not have that in your head and be thinking about that. It’s really difficult to enjoy it the same way.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, it was a real pain in the ass. I mean, it really was. I tried to block it out, but as I started, I only smoked weed for a month and then I started going back to the hard drugs and it would just be really annoying because I would have to lie about going to meetings to my parents and I would think about the meetings, “Oh, maybe I should go to one.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Adam Fout:

And all that crap. But I would be using and I would be like, “See? This is the phenomenon of cravings. This is what’s happening.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You’re walking yourself through it but not out of it.

Adam Fout:

Right. Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. And then, at the same time, you’re dealing with pending felonies because of the raid, so it sounds like job prospects were less than abundant.

Adam Fout:

Well, so at the time, pending felonies were not happening because it took them a year and a half to go through everything that they found.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh my gosh. So stressful.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, I know. It really was. So, I had no idea what was happening with it at all. One day, I got a letter, basically. They were like, “By the way, you have five felony charges.” I was like, “Oh, cool.” But at that time, none of that was happening, so I was available for jobs, I couldn’t get them because I was getting high.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Got it. Okay. Okay. And then after that nine months, how did you get sober again?

Adam Fout:

So, that’s also a really weird story. I was not trying actively to get sober. I had been using really heavily and a lot of drugs. I needed to do an upper, an opiate, a benzo, I had to drink, I had to smoke weed, so the only way I could get okay was by doing a lot of stuff at once. And I couldn’t stop and I don’t think I really wanted to stop. And my parents are not really aware of any of this at all. They’re not aware of it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

They think you’re sober.

Adam Fout:

They think I’m sober.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Adam Fout:

So, they go on a trip to Wyoming and leave me and my brother there. And my brother is in high school, he’s 17 years old and he lives in this little … It was a weird house. It had a separate apartment as part of the house basically, and he lived in there and I lived on the third floor of the brownstone. So, I was basically like, “You do your thing, I’m going to do my thing. We don’t need to interact.” And he was like, “Okay.” And then one day, I get a call from my mom, like two days into the trip and she says, “Zachary is having chest pain and you need to take him to the hospital.” So I’m like, “Okay, that’s weird and not good because I’ve been up for a day or two.” And I was like, “Okay, I’ll drive him there.”

Adam Fout:

So I get in the car, I drive him, and my intention is to take him into one of those doc-in-a-box places because I’m like, “It can’t be that bad. It’s chest pain in a 17 year old. How bad could it be?” And I drive right past it because I’m so out of it and I go, “I’ll just take him to the main hospital,” which was Grapevine Baylor, which is a really good hospital, thank God. So, I take him there and they start doing tests and they’re like, “He has an infection in his heart. This is serious.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh my God.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. Really, like, “He could die. He might need a heart transplant.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Technical question. Sorry. Just for my medical mind. Was it a blood test that showed he had an infection in his heart?

Adam Fout:

Something like that. I was so out of it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, right, right. Okay. I mean, you must have been shocked.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, I was. And I was already kind of in a very tenuous place, so that kind of pushed me over the edge. I start freaking out, my anxiety is through the roof. My parents are calling me constantly, they’re coming back from Wyoming, my other brother is flying in from Chicago. It’s just this mess. And somewhere in there, I decide that I need a gun. I don’t know why.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

One of my favorite amusements is the thoughts of the alcoholic addict mind. I get it. I get why you’d need a gun in a moment like that, even though it makes zero sense, that’s addict logic, and addict logic is a really incredible thing.

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I mean, I know why I would need a gun in a situation like that. Why would you need a gun in a situation like that?

Adam Fout:

Sure. You know, I don’t know. I really couldn’t tell you why. I just saw this gun of my father’s that was in the house and I said, “Oh, I’ll take that.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You said, “Right now, we have a medical condition and I feel like the only solution is this handgun.”

Adam Fout:

Could be important. You know, I was a Boy Scout, you want to be prepared.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. You want to be prepared. Okay, good. Good, good.

Adam Fout:

So, I go to pick my brother from Chicago up at the airport, and it’s-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

With the gun? Oh no.

Adam Fout:

With the gun.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh no.

Adam Fout:

And I’m very clearly totally out of it and he’s seen it. And at one point, someone cuts me off, so I get out the gun and I’m waving the gun at this guy, and then I cock the gun, I make it very clear that I have cocked this gun, and then the guy, he disappears, obviously, and then my brother and I are driving to the hospital and I’m like, “How does one un-cock a gun?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh.

Adam Fout:

So, we get in this parking lot of this hospital and we’re googling how to un-cock a gun and we had to put a stick in it and take the bullets out and then pull the trigger. And my brother goes immediately to my parents and says, “Adam is completely messed up and he’s crazy and he has this gun.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Just what every parent wants to hear.

Adam Fout:

I know, right? And I’m nodding out into my soup in the cafeteria and it all becomes very clear how messed up Adam is.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Adam Fout:

And my parents are like, “Oh great. We have one child who is dying and needs a heart transplant, and then our idiot oldest son is completely messed up on drugs. This is just a disaster.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Adam Fout:

So, they had this experimental device that they end up implanting my brother that his heart stops and it pumps the blood through his body. It’s a little thing, a little bigger than a quarter, and that’s all he needs. And it pumps his blood for him for a while and his heart ends up healing and the infection goes away and afterwards, like a year later, it’s as though nothing had ever happened. He never needs a heart transplant, he’s totally fine.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Wow.

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How did he get an infection in his heart?

Adam Fout:

They never figured it out. I mean, they just said that this is just a thing that happens. It could have been a virus.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Got it.

Adam Fout:

They have no idea. He could have caught a cold or something and then it just somehow made its way in there.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh my God. Thank God. He’s better a year later. You, on the other hand.

Adam Fout:

Me, on the other hand. I end up going to an inpatient rehab because it’s very clear how messed up I am.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Adam Fout:

And they put me on Suboxone. Because I go to the rehab, I don’t remember this at all, but I go to the rehab and they give me the set of rules and I’m totally messed up and I’m like, “Well, I’m not doing that.” And I crossed out one of the rules. And I’m like, “Well, I’m not doing that.” And I cross out one of the rules. And they’re like, “Okay, he needs to go to detox. We can’t take him here.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh God.

Adam Fout:

I get on Suboxone and I finally get off Suboxone at the rehab, and that’s when I become very terrified because I’m finally sober for the first time in nine months and I’m like, “I have got to do something because now I really don’t want to go back.” And I’m very clear that weed does not work now.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Okay. Okay. And what happens? Take me from there.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. So, my rehab that I’m at lets people come in and do H&Is and stuff.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

For people who don’t know, hospitals and institutions, which, the 12 step program brings meetings into different hospitals and institutions. Sorry, go ahead.

Adam Fout:

No, that’s okay. So, this Cocaine Anonymous group comes in and they do a presentation called Stick Man. And there are variations of this presentation, but it just shows the cycle of addiction. And I see it and I’m like, “Okay, that’s very clear. I am definitely stuck in that.” And then this guy comes up and starts sharing and he’s really passionate, you can tell he’s sober and he loves it and things are good. And I just race up to him and say, “Hey man, I need a sponsor.” And he’s like, “Okay. Well, we’re going to read through this book. We’re going to,” and I go, “No, no. I have read the book. I need to work some steps, man.” Because it had also become very clear to me that I did not have any other options.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Adam Fout:

Nothing else was going to work for me.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Gift of desperation.

Adam Fout:

Exactly.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

G-O-D.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, exactly. So, we start going through some steps and I work them as quickly as I can and I get through in about 45 days and I haven’t thought about using or drinking since.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So, when you talk about working through the steps, I remember looking at the wall and seeing the 12 steps up there and going, “That’s great. I don’t know what any of that shit means.” And I also was like, “Why does this take so long?” Like, admitted to ourselves that we are powerless and our lives were unmanageable. Okay, done. I admit it. Turned our will and our live over to the care of God as we understand him, and God, I used Group of Drunks or Good Orderly Direction, and again, also turned my life over. Literally didn’t understand. Like, do I hand someone something? Do I turn something over? What does that actually mean?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I think where I did understand was the directions around the fourth step where we write our inventory about our resentments and we find our part, and I did understand sharing that, and then I did understand making amends. What were some of the profound moments for you that actually changed you? Because for me, that part of doing the fourth step and finding that I had a part in my resentments, that I didn’t have to think of myself as a victim anymore, that was a profound shift to this day in my life. I wonder, what was the profound shift for you? Because obviously, you’ve had one.

Adam Fout:

Right. So, it was in step nine when I started making the amends to people because my step four was extensive and step four is kind of funny. I went to my sponsor and I said, “Well, I’ve got about two resentments and they’re from last week.” And he was like, “Well, that seems like BS, so why don’t you pray this prayer and ask to be shown what you need to see?” And I do that and these names start flooding in my head, going all the way back to kindergarten. So, I have this long fourth step, which means that I have a long eighth step, of all the people that I’ve harmed, and this list has 150 people on it.

Adam Fout:

And I start making these amends and I make my first three amends to my little brother, who, while he was in the hospital, by the way, dying of this heart infection, I stole his wallet and I was like, “Well, he’s not going to need it.” So, I make amends to him, I make amends to my mom, I make amends to my dad. Those are very emotional. And I go out into the car and I can just feel this change, like, I know that there’s been a change. And I start going around Dallas, Fort Worth and making all these amends, and then Kansas sends the letter by the by, like, “You are now being charged with all these felonies.” So, I have to go back to Kansas numerous times for court and stuff like that, and in the meantime, I’m making amends up in Kansas, too. And that really was profound for me because I had always been the victim. Everyone else deserved what happened to them, and now, finally, I’m being serious about taking responsibility for what I have done.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love that and relate to it a lot. The fourth step, for people who don’t know, is made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, so there are instructions that a sponsor takes you through. And for me, the four columns, you write down a name basically, like Adam, and then you write down your resentment. I’m resentful at you for stealing my wallet and what that affects. That affects your pocketbook, that affects your friendships, that maybe affects your self-esteem, ego, and then you write your part and your part in that resentment. So, that piece, have I ever done the same thing? So, am I a hypocrite? Am I self-righteous? All these things.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And then you also write down a list of people you’ve harmed. And a lot of the time, the people who you resent are also people you’ve harmed, which is a really interesting phenomenon. It all comes out. And then in the fifth step, you share this. You share your fourth step with your sponsor or someone trusted. Some people do it with a therapist, some people do it with a member of the clergy, whatever it is, and you share that. And then in the eighth step, you make a list of all the people you’ve harmed and become willing to make amends to them. And then in the ninth step, you make those amends.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And the amends process, I think what you’re talking about, too, going around and making these amends, you’re not going around and saying sorry. The way that it was explained to me, which, being a poli-sci major, I much appreciated this, which was, we did not say sorry to the Constitution, we amended it. We made a change. There has to be a change. It’s not a sorry. Because people were used to us saying sorry or whatever it was, and when you make an amends, you’re taking ownership and proposing a change in behavior, how that’s going to change. And it’s very powerful to go from being this piece of shit basically who steals and does all these things that you would never do in your right mind, and to taking ownership. There’s something incredibly powerful saying, “I stole your wallet and it was a horrible thing for me to do.” Just that act of taking ownership and making that amends and saying how you’re going to do things differently and holding yourself to that, there’s just a psychic change that happens.

Adam Fout:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And that’s what happened with me. It was a psychic change.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What about the mental health and the food? How does that fit into this story of getting well?

Adam Fout:

So, the mental health, it was something that I thought I had taken care of because I was taking the pills, I was going to a psychiatrist, the pills were working. I get to a year sober and I’m like, “I don’t need these and I don’t want to be on them and that’s all there is to it.” So, I stopped taking them.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Which is an incredibly, as I’ve done before, an incredibly common thing for people to do who struggle with mental illness, to take yourself off your meds. Makes no f’ing sense. I don’t know why we do it. It’s like, “Why don’t I just stop taking them?” And there’s also this piece which I always laugh about where I say, “I don’t want to be on medication.” Or I’ve heard people say, “I don’t want to be beholden to something.” Meanwhile, being beholden to meth and Oxy, no big deal, but if it’s Prozac, that’s the end of the world. But it’s a very common thing to take ourselves off of our medications. For people who are listening, maybe you’re a loved one, maybe you’re that person who’s like, “Why do I keep doing this?” I think we just feel like we feel better, so forget or attribute it to something we’re doing instead of the medication or maybe we don’t need this anymore. But it is a very, very common thing to do. So, you took yourself off of your medication. I’m sure that went swimmingly.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. Oh yeah, it went wonderfully.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I’m sure you did a doctor supervised slow taper, too, right?

Adam Fout:

Oh yeah. Exactly. No, none of those things happened. So, I just come off of it and it was because of the side effects.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Adam Fout:

And the side effect was I sweat a lot. I was sweating a lot.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Interesting.

Adam Fout:

So, I was tired of sweating a lot.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, that’s reasonable.

Adam Fout:

The deep depression that led me to a suicide attempt is preferable to sweating too much.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Checks out.

Adam Fout:

Right, exactly. So, I come off of it, and really for the next eight years of sobriety, I am depressed.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Eight years. Oh, we’re just such an amazing bunch. Okay, eight years, yeah.

Adam Fout:

But I don’t realize it because I am so deep in the program.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Adam Fout:

And I’m carrying the message every week and I’m working with tons of sponsees and I’m going to meetings and I’m doing all the things I’m supposed to do. I don’t realize how irritable I really am, I don’t realize how sad I really am, and it isn’t until I lose my job, basically, through no fault of my own, and it’s a job I’ve been working at five years, it’s my first big boy job. The place basically shuts down and everyone gets let go, and I finally am like, “Holy crap. I am depressed and I have to do something about this.”

Adam Fout:

And I go to a psychiatrist and I slowly get on some medication, I get on some antidepressants. The depression goes away, I get on some non-narcotic anxiety meds, the anxiety starts to get lessened. And eventually I’m like, “Hey, I didn’t even realize this, but apparently I have mood problems.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And every girlfriend you’ve ever had is like, “No.”

Adam Fout:

I know, right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You don’t say.

Adam Fout:

I know, right? I remember this time really specifically when I was using drugs and alcohol and I was still selling, I had this friend come over who I was really close with and he would give me books and stuff to read and we took classes together and we were close friends. And he comes over to buy some pills from me and he gives me four $20 bills, a $10 bill, a $5 bill, four $1 bills and four quarters, and I look at him and I say, “If you ever come back to me with four quarters again, I will never speak to you.” And I’m so angry out of nowhere, and he’s like, “What is wrong with you?” And it had been there forever and I just didn’t notice it until almost nine years sober.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Also, just for those of us out there who made Coinstar our close friend, pretty rude of a drug dealer to not accept coins, okay? Just want to say. That just reminded me of going to Coinstar and being like, “They took f’ing eight percent.”

Adam Fout:

I know.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And this bag of coins to my drug dealer and just the look that you’re describing right now is like, “If you ever come back to me with a bag,” I’m like, “This is currency. You must take it.”

Adam Fout:

Yeah, exactly. This is legal tender.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, this is legal tender. Exactly. Don’t judge me. So, at this point, you married a woman who you met in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Adam Fout:

Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Was she with you at that time, when you got back on the meds?

Adam Fout:

Yes, she was, and we had been married for years at that point. She knew that I had anger issues. I think she was probably just too scared to say anything to me, which really sucks. It made me feel really, really shitty when I realized that. And I was telling my therapist, I said, “I don’t want to be that guy anymore. I want this to go away.” So, we started getting on some mood stabilizers and that helped immensely. So now, it is greatly reduced. That impulse still comes up, but it is something that I can manage now, rather than it just takes the reigns.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. A lot of people struggle to get sober with 12 step programs because of the God stuff.

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did you have background, did you have a faith before you came or was that easy for you?

Adam Fout:

No, I was a full-blown Atheist.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay, so tell me about that because I was, too, so I get that. But I hear so often people are so turned off by the God stuff and it stops them from having the experience that you and I have had.

Adam Fout:

Sure. Yeah, and I was. When I first started going and I was still smoking weed, I was reading in my Big Book and I was writing arguments in the margins.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes.

Adam Fout:

For why-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

This was a crock of shit. Yeah.

Adam Fout:

Exactly.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Adam Fout:

Which is hilarious. I’m arguing with dead men from the 1930s.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It sounds really on point to me.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. But eventually I had that experience that I told you about, where the desire suddenly lifted, and that convinces me more than anything else that there’s some higher power.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But when you were asked to pray, your sponsor said to you, “You need to pray for this to be lifted,” right?

Adam Fout:

Right. Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I had an aversion to the whole idea of prayer. How did you get to the point where you were like, “Okay. I’ll pray.” Especially if you’re an Atheist and being told to do that.

Adam Fout:

Sure. Well, I think because I really wanted to be a part of.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Adam Fout:

I really wanted to be doing the things my friends were doing.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes, I like that.

Adam Fout:

And I was very much a follower. So, when people said, “You need to pray.” I said, “Well, that’s dumb, but I’ll do it.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. Okay. And then you had the experience and slowly it just took.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. Exactly.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, I remember coming in and going, “Okay guys. You’re not fooling me that this is a Christian program. I went to Catholic school. It’s a Big Book that’s divinely inspired. Holding hands and saying prayers. I’m not an idiot.” But I also was out of options and I needed friends and I needed community and there were other things out there, but not as prolific. There weren’t as many. It was like, these were my people, so if they were going to do it, I had no place to have pride about … What do they say? A drowning person is not worried about the color of the life raft. And I was arguing about the color of the life raft, the life raft being Alcoholics Anonymous, saying, “Well, it’s,” blah, blah, blah. And I was a drowning person, so I needed to just hold on and shut the f up, which is what I ended up doing. Talk to me about eating disorder, your eating stuff, how that manifested and how that manifests as a man. I know that it can be a little more difficult to discuss as a man because it’s not as socially common.

Adam Fout:

Right. Right. So, that was very much something that was being ignored or not even looked at throughout my sobriety. So, at one point, I had always yo-yoed with weight, even when I was sober. So, I would get into these exercise kicks and I would start exercising regularly and I’d go for runs every day, and then it would get cold and I would stop running and I’d gain weight. And then I went to graduate school and when I was in graduate school, there’s no time to do anything. And I’m working full-time while I’m in grad school. So, I am just eating and I’m drinking sodas all the time and I’m drinking energy drinks and I’m gaining weight, and it starts to become visibly a problem. But still, I don’t really know what to do about it. And then eventually I realized, I’m like, “I need to check out Overeaters Anonymous.” Because I know that 12 step programs work and I have decided that this is an issue.

Adam Fout:

And OA ends up being much, much more difficult and still is. I still, to this day, I’m still struggling to get abstinence together and I’ve been in OA since 2017, I guess. And I have a sponsor, I talk to him weekly, but I just can’t, I can’t get it yet. And it’s hard because there’s 90% women in the program, so it’s hard to find a man. And you go to meetings and you’re the only guy there, so it took a while. Honestly, I think what had to happen was I had to get into pain around it and that happened after grad school where I was like, “I’m 260 pounds and I’ve got to do something about this.” And it had gotten worse over time. I used to be able to lose the weight and then I couldn’t lose the weight.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I’ve had the same experience where I just, for a long time, was able to manage it. Go on these kicks or whatever, lose the weight, blah, blah, blah, and then as my life got busier, more complicated, I got older, all those things, I had to deal with it as the problem it was and not with some diet or whatever it was. And going to OA has been amazing and really difficult and I see that with the men, how difficult that is, there being fewer people. But I absolutely admire that you have gone and persisted, and I get that it’s another Gift of Desperation because that’s why we do that shit, we get desperate so we do what works. I highly recommend checking out something called Brightline Eating, which has come out of Overeaters Anonymous. It’s a neuroscientist who, she was in OA for a long time and she’s sober a long time. She’s gnarly like us. And she created this program and it’s been just a really helpful thing for me as a sober person, and they have meetings where there are a lot more men and they’re basically 12 step based Brightline Eating Meeting. So I’ll send you the stuff if you’re interested in that.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, definitely.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s a battle. And I feel like with, I don’t know, with recovery, it’s just a progression. For me, I always say it’s not a matter of if I’ll use, it’s a matter of when I’ll use. So, I can either be involved in the decision of what I’m going to use or not, and if I’m involved with the decision of what I’m going to use to make myself feel better, maybe it’s meditation, or running, or some sort of self-healing thing, and if I’m not involved in the decision, I let that decision happen without my consent, so to speak, then it’s going to be food, sex, my phone, drugs, alcohol, et cetera.

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So, it’s never a question for me whether or not I’m going to use. I’m always going to use. Today, I get to have a choice in the decision making process. I get to get ahead of it. And if I stop doing that, which I have over the course of my sobriety, then the choice is made for me and it’s usually not one I like.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What does your life look like today? You’re nine and a half years sober, you’re married. Tell me about what it looks like today and what you’re doing.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. So, my life has changed pretty drastically in the last couple years. We were living in this big house and we had good money coming in, then I lose my job. So, this is 2018, near 2019, so this is pre-pandemic. And I start trying to find freelance gigs. I’m a content writer, so I’m writing marketing content and I have a lot of experience, but I can’t get a job to save my life. So, I’m doing freelance stuff on the side, anything I can get. I’m writing gambling blog posts. I’ve gambled twice in my whole life. I know nothing about it.

Adam Fout:

So, we end up selling the house, putting the house on the market, and the house goes on the market when the pandemic hits. So, we eventually do end up selling it and we end up moving into my parents’ house because they have a house in Wyoming. And they go to live in Wyoming for about six months out of the year. So, they’re in Wyoming, we’re staying in their house trying to figure out what to do, and then they eventually move back and my wife and I decide to become … She’s a nurse. So, we decide she’s going to become a travel nurse. So, we’re on our first gig right now and we are in Maine, which is very far away from Dallas and very different, as you can imagine. Very cold. But my sobriety, it really looks the same and different.

Adam Fout:

My program looks basically the same. I have continued to carry the message, now I’m doing it on Zoom from my old rehab. I’m going to the meetings from my home group back in Texas, but it’s on Zoom. I’m trying to do more meetings because we’re all locked in everywhere, so I’m doing meetings online a lot, trying to do OA meetings online. So, the program looks pretty similar. Life on the outside looks different, but it feels about the same inside. Especially because I have this medication that’s helping me so much. Life is pretty good today and I spend a lot of time writing on the side, I do a lot of fiction and non-fiction. I’ve been doing that for five years and that’s going well, I’m getting stuff published. And then the content writing career is going well. I started a business, I’ve got money coming in, so things are looking pretty good.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love that. I love that. And it’s really, it’s just putting one foot in front of the other. I mean, I don’t know about you, but my experience is when I took 15 years sober this year, I just couldn’t understand, my brain could not wrap my head around how it had been that long for a person like me. I mean, I’m not against drugs and alcohol, they just don’t work for me.

Adam Fout:

Right. Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

If you can make it work and have a great life, more power to you, it’s just not what works for me. And the fact that I’ve been able to do that for 15 years just blows my mind. And if you had told me that I was going to do that, I would have never believed you, but it’s really that trite saying of, one day at a time.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. No, it’s a very bizarre feeling to know that you have been sober for … When I think about it, nine and a half years, I’m like, “I don’t know how this has happened.” I just can’t believe it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Sometimes I’m like, “Am I lying?” I have to double check. Am I lying? Have I used? It’s really true. It’s really happened.

Adam Fout:

I definitely have that feeling when I wake up from a using dream.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh God. The worst.

Adam Fout:

My using dreams are always like, I have already used and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Adam Fout:

And I have been secretly using and I’ve been lying about it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The worst.

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s the worst feeling. Ugh.

Adam Fout:

It really is.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It is. It is. It goes away. It used to be bad, but now it’s a lot better. But you wake up in the morning and you’re just like, “Oh my God, what have I done?”

Adam Fout:

I know, right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You look around, you’re like, “Okay. Okay. I think it was a dream.”

Adam Fout:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Well, thank you so much. Where can people find your recovery blog and some of the stuff that you are publishing?

Adam Fout:

Yeah. So, AdamFout.com, it’s pretty easy to find. That’s where my recovery blog and mental health blog is, and I have links on there to all the non-fiction stuff that I’ve published. So, yeah, just go to AdamFout.come and you’ll find it all.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Awesome. Okay. So, that’s Adam F-O-U-T dot com, and you’re on Instagram, AdamFout.

Adam Fout:

Yeah. And I’m on Twitter, I’m on Facebook, I’m everywhere, so you can find me.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

Adam Fout:

Thank you for having me.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It was really great talking to you.

Adam Fout:

Yeah, you too.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

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