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Nov. 28, 2024
#55 - Chris Tait: Electric Six, Alcoholism, Passenger Recovery, Detroit Music Scene, Sobriety Transformation & Metropolis Records: A Call To Action
What happens when the highs of the music industry intersect with the lows of addiction?
Join Matt as he speaks to Chris Tait, keyboard player for Electric Six and founder of Passenger Recovery, about his journey through addiction, recovery, and personal transformation. Chris provides an insightful perspective on the challenges of addiction, drawing from his personal experiences within the music industry.
He reflects on his teenage struggles with alcohol as a coping mechanism and examines how the cultural landscape of the music scene both enabled and exacerbated these challenges. Chris shares key moments that led him to embrace recovery, offering an objective look at the complexities of substance use within creative industries.
The discussion also explores Chris’s evolution, from overcoming personal struggles to founding Passenger Recovery, an inclusive center supporting individuals on their path to sobriety. His story highlights the potential for growth and positive impact when lived experience is directed toward fostering community support and purpose-driven action.
🎹 Metropolis Records: A Call to Action 🎹
Passenger Recovery is proud to collaborate with Metropolis Records on the Metropolis Records: A Call to Action campaign. This initiative brings together unique contributions from the Metropolis roster to raise funds supporting musicians in recovery from addiction and providing assistance to those seeking help.
Honouring Dave Heckman’s Legacy
This campaign is dedicated to the memory of Dave Heckman, the founder of Metropolis Records, whose passion for music shaped the industry. Dave faced his own battle with alcoholism, a struggle his family and colleagues now share to confront the stigma surrounding addiction.
Addiction is a pervasive issue in the music industry, often hidden behind the glamour of the spotlight. The pressures of constant touring, performance demands, and creative stress can drive individuals toward substance use as a coping mechanism. Acknowledging these struggles is critical to breaking the cycle and offering meaningful support.
About Passenger Recovery
Passenger Recovery, founded in 2016, is a Detroit-based Recovery Community Organisation. Initially focused on connecting touring musicians and crew with support meetings while on the road, the organisation has grown to provide peer support, events, advocacy, and resources to the local recovery community. By using music and the arts as pathways to heali
Click here to text our host, Matt, directly!
Believe in People explores addiction, recovery and stigma.
For our full back catalogue you can visit our website ⬇️
www.believeinpeoplepodcast.com
If you or someone you know is struggling then this series can help.
You can see selected clips from the series on social media: @CGLHull ⬇️
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We'd like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Christopher Tait of the band Belle Ghoul & Electric Six for allowing us to use the track Jonathan Tortoise. Thank you, Chris, for being a part of this journey with us.
Chapters
00:00 - Journey From Addiction to Recovery
06:12 - Family History and Alcoholism Journey
09:46 - Exploring Alcoholism and Music Industry
24:42 - Understanding Alcohol Dependency and Culture
30:46 - Reflections on Romanticizing Addiction and Recovery
35:44 - Journey to Sobriety and Recovery
46:53 - Personal Experiences in Addiction Recovery
57:27 - The Creative Process in Sobriety
01:02:43 - Creating a Recovery-Friendly Community Space
01:10:07 - Supporting Sobriety in the Music Industry
01:22:29 - Perspectives on Excitement and Life
Transcript
WEBVTT
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This is a Renew Original Recorder.
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Hello and welcome to Believe in People, a British podcast award-winning series about all things addiction, recovery and stigma.
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My name is Matthew Butler and I'm your host, or, as I like to say, your facilitator.
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Today, I'm with Chris Tate, a multifaceted musician and advocate whose journey is as inspiring as it is transformative.
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As the keyboardist for the band Electric Six, he has travelled the world, captivating audiences with his music.
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Beyond the stage, chris has channeled his personal experiences into founding Passenger Recovery, a Detroit-based initiative supporting touring musicians, artists and local communities in their recovery journeys.
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His story is one of resilience and reinvention, showcasing the power of creativity and connection in overcoming personal challenges.
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To begin our conversation, I asked Chris about how his addiction shaped his life during Electric Six's rise to fame and what led to the turning point that inspired his recovery.
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As much as I'd love to hang my hat on rock and roll, making me into somebody who was an alcoholic and an addict and I use that language openly.
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Because I talk about it openly, I don't mean to offend anybody.
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I can say substance use disorder, whatever anybody's comfortable with, but I'm okay with saying that and that's what I am and it's okay it's saying using that language.
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It's just a general reminder to me of who I am and I'm totally comfortable with that.
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I have no shame attached to it.
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I'm sure we'll talk about it later, but I don't believe that my life would be what it is today without having to.
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I don't know that there's a version of me that doesn't go through that struggle, and I don't know that my life would be as incredible as it is without having been informed through that journey from substance use to recovery.
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So anyways, yeah, it started a long time before rock and roll or music or anything, not necessarily before music, but I guess you know, when I was a young person, I think like a lot of people, you know I felt like something wasn't right.
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I had weird dreams about people in my family being murdered.
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There was a little bit of indoctrination happening.
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There were things that made me feel like things just weren't right.
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And as a young man I went to parties, sat around the bonfire, put Led Zeppelin on, drank beer with people.
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That was one thing.
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Drank beer with people, that was one thing.
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But specifically in 1992, on the opening day of the Detroit Tigers baseball season, I skipped school with a friend and we got into some hard liquor.
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And that was the day that I remember things changing.
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I was 15.
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And when I say things changing, anybody who has been in my situation will know exactly what I'm talking about.
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Like magic in a bottle, it wasn't a beer here or there, it was.
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I felt two feet taller.
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I was communicating with people.
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Girls were interested.
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You know it did the thing that alcohol did for me early on, I guess.
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A few years down the line from that, it progressed, like, I think, anybody in my situation.
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Like it progresses if it's good once, it must be better more often, and if it's good on the weekends, it must be better every day, you know, or weekdays or whatever.
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And there was a point when I was in high school, which is I was a point when I was in high school, which I was a 17-year-old junior in high school, where I was making what we called road pops to go to high school to have on the way into school.
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And I was driving to school in the morning and I realized that I had left it like the you know the vodka and soda thing.
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I'd left the bottle on the bed at the family house and, as it hit within a split second of that, before I even really knew what was going on, I was turning the car around to go back, car around to go back, and it didn't.
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It did signify something then.
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It definitely did.
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But when I look back on it now, that was really the first time where I said, whoa, what's going on here?
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Like, how am I?
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Why?
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Why did that just happen?
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And was that the beginning of?
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Um, I need this as a coping mechanism.
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Uh, so that was the first time when it was like, okay, something about my actions just now didn't kind of surprise me, but by the time I got out of high school, which was only a year and a half later, I couldn't go to sleep without having a drink.
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And so for me personally, I believe that for all of us, our issues or our vices are the solution before they become the problem and I know a lot of people say that.
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But why would we bother otherwise?
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Whether it's a social thing, whether it's a trauma thing, whatever has happened that we need relief from when find it, why would we go anywhere else?
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You know?
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so your sounds like.
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It sounds like a social thing in the way that it's helped make you feel.
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But you talked a little bit about family life and indoctrination and things like that.
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Was it an escape from things that was happening like at home was?
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Was there anything there that was bringing you to that point of you know finding that, that release, I suppose in alcohol, what it was giving you there?
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uh, my, my family, my, I was very fortunate because my, my family was a.
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They're incredible people, um, they're just working class detroit folks.
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My dad, my uncle, had a little machine shop.
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My grandfather was a Scottish immigrant, strong work ethic, but also very in the family.
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So I'm going to kind of go all over the place.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it was absolutely fine.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, I completely understand that.
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Okay, so what I've learned over the years, and should I save this for later?
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No, honestly, just say it as it comes to you.
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That's probably the best way.
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Yeah, our family had a great work ethic.
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My folks are religious people but when they do maintenance around their little town that they live in, they do hot dog giveaways.
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They work on their church.
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It's a very different their actions.
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That's something that they taught me is that they let their actions speak for them.
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But around that for sure, there was a little.
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You know inherently.
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I think, with any kind of organized religion there is some stuff that goes on.
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I don't really want to get into the details of that, but something did happen to me.
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Two things happened to me, that kind of shaped uh where I went with alcohol.
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Um, one was that we kind of moved out of a town where I had existed and really loved because we were very close to what it was a town in the middle of nowhere, but it was right next to ann arbor, and ann arbor michigan is where everyone would go for import records and records, and that music has always been my first passion so um, and I had a.
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You know these are kind of gold-plated problems, but what that led to the same year, when that we kind of moved across the county that we were in, was that I got into a really bad car accident and I was in a coma for a week and I remembered, you know, all of this, like there was a lot of surgery that had to be done and, um, internal brain and head damage and, uh, this had all been kind of split and destroyed and I just remembered waking up going there's nobody looking out for me.
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You know, with regards to the religious things that were taught to me and a lot of fire and brimstone kind of things that had happened early on in life, it just sent me further down the path of something isn't right, and the way I view the world is being informed by something that I can't really explain, and why?
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when I say that, what I mean is, by the time that I reached alcohol, it was one more thing that was just removed by that you know yeah so by the time I was 15, you know, the two things I really cared about were music and escape one way shape or form.
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Um, so before I even met, you know, really had that significant change with with alcohol use.
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Music was an escape for me.
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You know I love bands like Blondie and the Cure, bands that were really theatrical, that kind of created their own worlds.
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But what I wanted to say about the family is it's interesting because I have a great relationship with the people that I didn't talk to for decades now thanks to sobriety recovery.
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But it's been interesting talking to them about what happened in the history of our family before I was even born.
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Because my grandfather was an alcoholic and he died very young.
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And when he died, my dad and my my uncle, who had both been through vietnam, my uncle had issues to the end of his life with drinking and my dad was basically forced into kind of working on the family business and he wanted to be a history teacher.
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And none of this is explained.
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You know, the family dynamic isn't really explained to you.
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Well, it wasn't explained to me, I kind of had to seek it out.
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But learning what happened, why it happened, and learning more about the characters that shaped me as a person really made it so much more clear why things were the way they were when I was young and what led to me becoming an active alcoholic.
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Just on that topic, then I think it's always an interesting argument when I hear people talk about the inheritance of alcoholism or being an alcoholic as a disease that is genetically passed on from our parents, from our grandparents.
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Based on your experiences, would you agree with that, would you think that was the case, or do you think it was social circumstance, that, and just the habitual thrill that you got from it?
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How, how would you have viewed that alcoholism and being an alcoholic?
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I think it's all of those things you know.
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Uh, I think it's.
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It takes a perfect storm, but when it, um, it's, it's a lot of variables that go into somebody having that gene versus somebody being an active alcoholic.
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I know a lot of people, myself included.
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I would say I was a dry drunk before I was an actual active alcoholic.
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Excuse me, the same thing like the, you know, the, the, the moods, the sense of dread all of those things that alcohol took away were there before I started drinking.
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The music that saved my life also probably didn't help, because I listened to a lot of very, sometimes heavy and dark stuff, but it was what I needed at the time.
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I certainly don't regret any of that.
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But yeah, so anyways.
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I mean, with regards to the reason I bring up the family, is because, like I believe, with sobriety, I have learned things in stages and chapters, and that was something that I didn't even really get into until I met somebody who suggested I do it.
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And the idea of you know, you keep your mouth shut, you go back to work, you get things done, dot, dot, dot dot, you don't talk about things.
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I'm not going to say that that was like nobody browbeat that into me, but it was definitely a thread through the family, and when I delved a little bit further into the history of the family, it was very easy to see why that was.
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It was because a lot of people that were working very hard through things and to keep food on the table for the family, um, anyways.
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So to go back to my teenagers, yes, that's me.
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I'd also go on continue uh, yeah, sorry, kind of a crazy sidebar there.
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But um, but yeah, I, you know, by the time I was out of high school I couldn't, you know, I, I was a kind of functioning alcoholic already and uh, so flash forward a few years.
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Um, you know, I, along with a slew of other kind of detroit garage rock people, um, I was playing in three different bands and and working at a brewery and kind of had surrounded myself with alcohol and drugs and music, because those three things that all go go together.
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But um, half of the people I'm sure this is the truth in any major city half the people who are in bands, are also working in restaurants and that kind of thing, but I was living with the drummer for Electric Six at the time.
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Then the band was called the Wild Bunch.
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Then this was about 2001.
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And everybody was like I, I was playing in a few bands.
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The wild bunch needed a keyboardist, um, so I started playing with them and then basically like a few months later and I I had gone to see.
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You know, everybody kind of went to see each other's bands in town and the Wild Bunch slash Electric Six was kind of a welcome break.
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You know you're talking about the town that gave us Eminem, mc5, iggy Pop, madonna, all of Motown.
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They take music pretty seriously and I took music pretty seriously and I took music pretty seriously.
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I remember the first time I went to see the band it was only one of their first couple shows, but they played a place called the Shelter, which is below St Andrews in Detroit, and it's these guys with leather jackets.
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They didn't have a keyboard.
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It was on stage.
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It was guys with with leather jackets, they didn't have a keyboard.
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It's on stage, this guy's black leather jackets and aviator sunglasses, and then the singer has like a Jamaican shirt on and you know they're doing their thing and he's doing.
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He starts doing pushups on stage and he's sweating profusely and he tears the shirt off and he's not exactly in shape and he throws it at a guy in the audience and then when the song you know ends, he's like thank you, I'm going to need that back at the end of the night.
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And that was Dick Valentine slash Tyler and I was just mystified.
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It's like I didn't think anybody down here had a sense of humor about music, you know, but it was great.
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So the drummer and I worked together at the time anyways, and so I would go see their shows, because it was always something fun like that, and when they needed a keyboardist I was thrilled.
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So but, um, I was playing with the group at the at the beginning of what became like the pre-fire, which was our first record, so it was the record that produced hits over here.
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So we went from playing the logger house, which is a venue in Detroit that holds about 250 people, to six months later mixing the first record at Abbey road.
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Again, I'm not going to blame that kind of meteoric rise or descent after.
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I can't blame my use on that, but it certainly was not something I was prepared to handle, and so because of that, it was that much easier to increase my usage to get through the amount of touring and recording and everything that we easier to increase my usage, to get through the amount of touring and recording and everything that we had to do.
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But yeah, I mean I was really fortunate.
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The things that we got to do in that first year, you know it, it was a combination.
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What happened that you know?
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The white stripes happened and then that kind of put the spotlight on Detroit and at the time there was a DJ collective from over here called Too Many DJs and they started playing Electric Six.
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Once we did the name change and then they put us on a comp where they did a mashup of the band with us with the Kramps, us with the cramps, and so there was all you know there were all these things that happened at just the right time, um, along with detroit kind of having a spotlight on it.
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And that's nothing to take away from the band.
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I think we're a great band, yeah, but, um, you know it, definitely there is a huge amount of chance or fate or things happening right place at the right time I'm glad you've said that because I think when I, when I look at success stories, so many people tend to mitigate that being a key point to any form of success and it's like, oh, you know, follow this guidance, follow these rules.
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But a massive part of any amount of success is is luck and chance, and I think so many people you know you read self-help books or something and it's like try and do this and do this and I was successful because of this, completely mitigating the fact that so much of this can just be down to almost right place, right time in some way as well.
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Yeah, I mean I.
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I think we have a very unique thing because of our singer you know, it's like a game show host on stage.
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He's a very unique character, um, but there were a lot of great bands happening at the time and, truth be told, at the time, personally, uh, there were probably three guys that I could point to in town that were better keyboard players than I was so that it is.
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You know you can say, yes, we put ourselves forward, yes, we busted our butts, but that doesn't necessarily.
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It's not like a collegiate pathway where you're going okay, I've taken these steps.
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It's not, I think, an expectation, is created by ourselves, but it's not really founded on anything, because you do have to have either a certain amount of luck or the right connections, or X, y and Z, for things to take off.
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And for us it was definitely like the too many djs comps and the fact that jack was on high voltage, because the white stripes had, were in the process of putting seven, seven nation army out which is you know, I mean they were already huge, and then it just so it was really it was.
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It was a great opportunity and time for us, you know to it was a great opportunity and time for us and we're very fortunate to have been there.
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But yeah, I agree with you, that's not to take anything away from us or any other band.
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Yeah, of course it's just looking at it from, I guess, a point of view of knowledge, I suppose, really, which a lot of people don't do.
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That's a lesson in humility too.
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I mean there's so many of those in involved with, like my relationship with the band before and you know, but before and after, getting into recovery from drugs and alcohol.
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But even before you know I might not have been willing to give those demons up, but I, I mean, I had to admit like I wanted to be my whole life.
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I wanted to be in a very serious band.
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I listened to serious bands and it was humbling to be lucky enough to get into any band that's been able to do what we did.
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But it's also very it's called like friends of mine in the program called it Godwink where somebody's giving you a nudge, like you may not have expected this to be your path, but you're about to be able to get to do the things you always dreamed of doing as a kid, like getting to play glastonbury and jules holland and these things that like were barely even.
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It was hard to even get to watch them.
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Yeah, you had to stay up to watch the, the show on MTV to even be able to kind of see some of these bands and stuff.
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And we were having this opportunity to back then yeah, yeah, absolutely, anyways, yeah.
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So it's, it's been, it's definitely been a lesson in humility that a band that I never thought.
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You know that was something I'd be part of has really like paved the way, but you know, I never thought I would still be, doing this 22 years later.
00:20:14.584 --> 00:20:27.708
We've been really, really fortunate um to have the fan base that we have I remember seeing these things in in, like, say, early 2000s, those music videos and and being a fan of like uh, you know karang music and watching those channels.
00:20:27.708 --> 00:20:37.073
It was just so different from everything else that was on there that you couldn't help but take notice of it because it didn't mix with everything else.
00:20:37.073 --> 00:20:41.592
But it still kind of hit those notes to be part of what you'd have maybe on your mp3 player.
00:20:41.592 --> 00:20:44.085
Do you know, like that sort of genre of music.
00:20:44.085 --> 00:20:45.428
But it was so different as well.
00:20:45.748 --> 00:20:51.319
Yeah, and I think I've just got a quote here on the topic of the music and and alcoholisms.
00:20:51.319 --> 00:20:55.599
One of your quotes here it says well, I know I certainly can't blame music for my drinking habits.
00:20:55.599 --> 00:21:00.160
All of my addictions got worse being in an accelerated musical environment.
00:21:00.160 --> 00:21:03.067
Talk me through through that.
00:21:03.067 --> 00:21:11.670
Then the culture of music you know, like you said earlier about these things going hand-in-hand, working in bars, you know, being in bands, all these sort of things.
00:21:11.670 --> 00:21:14.327
Talk me through that sort of acceleration of it.
00:21:15.519 --> 00:21:30.801
Yeah, I mean, well, that kind of ties in with what we were just talking about with regards to, like you know, it being very much, uh, the success at least with, with us personally being a list of variables.
00:21:30.801 --> 00:21:33.632
Uh, at the time it was well.
00:21:33.632 --> 00:21:34.496
Of course this happened.
00:21:34.496 --> 00:21:38.467
This is the way things were supposed to go you know, like there was still a huge amount of ego.
00:21:38.807 --> 00:21:39.890
yeah, and I knew better.
00:21:39.890 --> 00:21:53.593
But you know, I mean, everybody has their golden god moments and that stuff is fueled by alcohol and drugs, right, but while we were out touring the world, you know, I was getting in trouble with the law back home.
00:21:53.593 --> 00:21:55.948
So for eight years I didn't have a driver's license.
00:21:55.948 --> 00:21:58.207
Yeah, and that's another ego related thing.
00:21:58.207 --> 00:22:05.356
You know I looked at it as a right, not a privilege, and when I got sober I really had to work to get that back.
00:22:05.518 --> 00:22:06.682
yeah, and it changed another.
00:22:06.701 --> 00:22:09.550
That was another thing that really changed my perspective did you use?
00:22:09.570 --> 00:22:11.844
did you lose the driving license from drink?
00:22:11.844 --> 00:22:15.109
Or did, yeah, yeah so what was that situation?
00:22:16.071 --> 00:22:17.559
uh, I mean it was.
00:22:17.559 --> 00:22:21.205
It was the second time I got in trouble with the law.
00:22:21.205 --> 00:22:26.795
Um, I'd spent some time in jail and when I got out it was.
00:22:26.795 --> 00:22:39.541
They were like you're gonna have to go through the process of probation and then maybe get your restricted license back, and I was at the time I was like, well, I'm not gonna stop drinking, so I better just stop driving.
00:22:39.541 --> 00:22:41.165
Yeah, which is really.
00:22:41.165 --> 00:22:48.749
I mean to say that now that's something that's cunning, baffling and powerful.
00:22:48.749 --> 00:22:53.545
That's where I was at with it, but that's where we get.
00:22:53.746 --> 00:23:00.753
Yeah, I think you talked about alcohol giving you the feelings of feeling two foot taller, the increased confidence, and there's something in that.
00:23:00.753 --> 00:23:04.645
You talked about something being the solution before it becomes the problem.
00:23:04.645 --> 00:23:10.134
I guess there's something in alcohol can give you so much, but it can also take so much away.
00:23:10.134 --> 00:23:16.232
You know, I've got down here on my notes that you was hospitalized, that you lost your driving license, you lost relationships with family and friends.
00:23:16.232 --> 00:23:20.127
That's all those things that it does take away.
00:23:20.730 --> 00:23:24.282
Yeah, and by the time those things start happening, it's the problem.
00:23:24.282 --> 00:23:26.424
But it's got its claws in you.
00:23:26.424 --> 00:23:27.144
You know what I mean.
00:23:27.144 --> 00:23:28.727
So it's not.
00:23:28.727 --> 00:23:30.667
I think it's very enticing.
00:23:30.667 --> 00:23:41.376
Early on, I can see very clearly how and why I became an alcoholic, but by the time the consequences were starting to step on my neck, it had its claws in.
00:23:48.559 --> 00:24:06.003
It had its claws in, um, so yeah, and and it was interesting, you know so while we were on tour, these things were happening, those consequences were starting to pile in at home, um, and I was still working as a bartender, because I you know well, hey, I can drink as much as I want and work work at the same time.
00:24:06.003 --> 00:24:06.203
Why?
00:24:06.203 --> 00:24:08.730
Not you know, it was one of those things, uh.
00:24:08.730 --> 00:24:19.131
But when I lost my license it was like okay, well, I'm not going to be able to drive to work anymore, so I better just move in behind the bar, which I did you know, so I was literally like alcohol.
00:24:19.131 --> 00:24:29.904
I was shaping my my life around alcohol, you know music was even kind of just something that was happening along with the using.
00:24:29.924 --> 00:24:33.691
Um, excuse me, and yeah, it was hospitalization.
00:24:33.691 --> 00:24:41.251
Uh, I still I don't want to go into war stories, but I I actually, as of yesterday, had a bout with pancreatitis.
00:24:41.251 --> 00:24:51.424
It still flares up sometimes if I'm super stressed or too much caffeine or you know, I go wrong with my diet.
00:24:52.567 --> 00:25:03.724
Um, and that's even after 10 years of sobriety 14 years, 14 years, excuse me, 13 years, 14 april 4th so the the long-term effects of it are still there that you're having to to deal with now.
00:25:03.925 --> 00:25:10.112
And I had dealt with it many times and I, you know, as a sober person.
00:25:10.112 --> 00:25:24.750
One of the cool parts about that is I get to go to the doctors and I get to, you know, talk to a dentist and, you know, do the things I never did as somebody that was active, yeah, but so I know better.
00:25:24.750 --> 00:25:41.255
I know how to deal with it now, you know, as, as opposed to the way it was then, you know, just kind of pretending it's it'll go away if I keep drinking through it, or, you know, waiting for it to heal itself, and then going straight back to what I was wanting things to change without changing anything.
00:25:41.255 --> 00:25:58.325
Yeah, uh, I know how to take care of it now, but, um, it's, I've had a lot of stress in my life and I let things slip and, you know, you get into tour mode and start eating like shit and it's whatever you can eat and when you, when you're on the road and everything, suddenly it's like, yeah, that's a good idea yeah, so it's.
00:25:58.625 --> 00:26:01.432
I mean, nowadays it's nobody's it's.
00:26:01.432 --> 00:26:05.590
You know, it's absolutely my issue and I also know how to deal with it.
00:26:06.040 --> 00:26:08.608
It's up to me if I'm going to make the right choice, absolutely, you know.
00:26:09.141 --> 00:26:20.380
So, going back to you know, first being introduced to alcohol at a young age, at what point did you realize that you was physically dependent on the substance?
00:26:20.380 --> 00:26:22.907
You told the story about having to go home to go get.
00:26:22.907 --> 00:26:34.471
You know the mix that you'd made and whilst you was in high school, um, and that is is kind of like that mental you know I've got to go and get it at what point did you realize your body was physically addicted to it?
00:26:34.471 --> 00:26:40.643
Like when did you first experience withdrawal symptoms and did you even connect the two, that the withdrawals were because of a lack of alcohol?
00:26:41.544 --> 00:26:45.832
uh, yeah, I mean, it would have been in college like I realized that I was.
00:26:45.832 --> 00:26:56.365
Well, it was anytime post high school really it was, if I wasn't kind of staying lubricated as they say, um, you know the shakes and whatever would start to creep in.
00:26:57.367 --> 00:27:07.631
And a couple years after that, uh, you know the band thing was happening, the working in restaurants thing was happening, so it was being normalized in my life.
00:27:07.631 --> 00:27:19.683
Anyways, it was like by the time I got to hamtramck, which is the town my wife and I live in now, it's in it's inside detroit and I'll talk a little bit more about it later, because that's where passenger recovery is too.
00:27:20.605 --> 00:27:35.732
But, um, at one point Hamtramck originally was a Polish immigrant town and it was all people who came to the United States to work for the automotive companies and so work hard, play hard.
00:27:35.732 --> 00:27:40.810
At one point Hamtramck had more bars per capita than anywhere else in the world.
00:27:40.810 --> 00:27:44.086
There's a lot of dive bars and makeshift home bars and that kind of thing.
00:27:44.086 --> 00:27:49.160
So when I got there and was introduced to the culture it was like oh well, I've arrived.
00:27:49.160 --> 00:27:55.959
You know, this is, these are my people, because there is no stigma attached to anything.
00:27:55.979 --> 00:28:06.955
Yeah, yeah, yeah so, um, and that's where I ended up after I was lost the ability to drive as I was just working in dive bars there.
00:28:06.955 --> 00:28:12.625
But yeah, I mean it was mentally and physically.
00:28:12.805 --> 00:28:34.131
It happened very early on, but I was given permission, basically by myself and the culture that I chose to be part of, to not have to ever deal with that, because I you know I was staying lubricated, have to ever deal, deal with that, because I, you know, I was staying lubricated and then, along with that, at the same time, you know, become part of a band where I was, you know, we were fortunate enough to get some real notoriety.
00:28:34.131 --> 00:28:45.135
Um and so that culture is absolutely, you know, not only is, it is, is substance use accepted, it's encouraged you know.
00:28:45.215 --> 00:28:46.679
It's part of every relationship.
00:28:46.679 --> 00:29:06.714
You know whether you're on stage, whether you're talking to fans, whether you're partying at the after party, whether you're being courted by a label you know, and that's not to lay blame to anybody, because part of my journey is being self-aware and and uh, accountable, you know, but it is, it's just the reality of it, is, it's everywhere, you know.
00:29:06.714 --> 00:29:09.144
Um, so that was a big part of it too.
00:29:09.144 --> 00:29:12.353
Is, again, I was just given permission to keep going down that path.
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