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Episode 1 is an introduction to host Aaron Reason (A. Reason), discussing the low points of his journey into a life of substance abuse. Though Aaron’s story ultimately has a positive outcome, this episode focuses on the harsh realities of his world as a young person dealing with addiction.
Aaron Reason:
Hey, everybody. This is Aaron Reason. I’m really excited to bring this podcast called A Reason to Live to you guys. This podcast is designed to hopefully help the addicts that are still out there suffering. In doing this, I hope to reach people with my message of experience, strength, and hope and the recovery that I’ve found. We’re going to have a quick word from our sponsors and then, we’ll get back into sharing my story.
Speaker 2:
Located in Anderson, Indiana, Bridges of Hope is a detox and residential treatment facility assisting those experiencing alcohol and substance abuse addiction. Our treatment philosophy is based on a comprehensive and integrated approach to addressing all issues related to substance use disorders and co-occurring mental health issues. Addiction treatment at Bridges of Hope can guide you safely through withdrawal from drugs and alcohol and teach you important skills that help you achieve long-term recovery. Client care is our highest priority, and we offer our clients all-inclusive treatment services. Our ultimate goal is to identify the challenges, concerns, and problems related to substance use and mental health disorders to provide professional clinical treatment to all of our patients.
For more information on our services, visit us at bhoperehab.com or call 844-449-6392.
Aaron Reason:
Okay, guys, I’m back here. This is Aaron Reason once again, your host. I’m here with my producer of this podcast, Michael Whitlock.
Michael Whitlock:
Good morning.
Aaron Reason:
Hey, Michael. So we’re sending this message from Bridges of Hope here in Anderson, Indiana. Michael and I both work in the recovery field. I’m a recovering addict. Michael is not, but he’s been in this field for…
Michael Whitlock:
A little over a year and a half now, but just like every other family, I think, friends, family members, I mean, addiction touches all of us. I know it’s impacted my family. So maybe in a future episode, we could touch on that a little bit. It’s real and I’m inspired by the stories of success and everything that… I’ve heard your story, which started the idea of this podcast. And so I thought maybe this would be a great introduction to what we’re trying to accomplish here.
So what is your story?
Aaron Reason:
Absolutely. So my whole life, I’ve struggled with addiction, really, since the age of 15. I was a pretty good kid in school growing up and didn’t really start getting into trouble until about the age of 15. I started experimenting with drugs and alcohol at the age of 12, but by the time I was 15, I went through a real rebellious period. And I was already selling marijuana at high school at the age of 15 and I just started embracing that lifestyle and I went from selling drugs to doing other drugs. For me, marijuana was a gateway drug and I started doing, experimenting with other things, pills, a lot of LSD, things like that and it just progressed from there.
Michael Whitlock:
Did you start feeling invincible after a while like you couldn’t get caught or-
Aaron Reason:
Yeah, definitely. It really fueled the ego. I liked the feeling of people needing to rely on me, especially for selling drugs too. I liked that. I wanted people to want me. I wanted them to want me to be around and be a part of their lives and the fact that-
Michael Whitlock:
You were the fun guy.
Aaron Reason:
… I was the fun guy. Yeah. Oh, yeah, man. I had long hair, everything. It was beautiful and flowing, man.
Michael Whitlock:
Like Fabio, maybe?
Aaron Reason:
Okay, now, you’re just being disrespectful. But yeah, I mean, I was kind of a retro hippie, if you will. I went through that phase. That was still when Grateful Dead was touring and Nirvana and all these bands of the ’90s and so I just kind of embraced that hippie, drug addict lifestyle. But I think, even early on, I knew that I was an addict because I was always the guy at the party that wouldn’t stop drinking when everybody else was like, “Okay, we’ve had enough” and the normal people would go home. That’s not what I did. I was always the last one at the party. I was still awake after everybody was asleep. I was still doing drugs while everybody else was passed out and this disease is progressive and it’s fatal.
Michael Whitlock:
You were a professional in a world full of amateurs, huh?
Aaron Reason:
That’s right, man. That’s right. Yeah. And when I took my first drink, I was very, very small, man, in high school and it always amazed me. I come from parents that were alcoholics and immediately, when I started drinking, I could drink more than others. Even though I was smaller, it didn’t really matter. I could still put down more than other people and it started leading down the wrong path. I went through this rebellious phase and I started skipping school and getting kicked out of school. By the time I was 17, I was full throttle in the drug life and at 17, I got kicked out of my parents’ house and I was living with some friends in an apartment and our daily routine consisted of trying to get drugs. I started gang banging, and we actually robbed houses. That’s what we did for a living every single day. It was…
Michael Whitlock:
Is that for money or…
Aaron Reason:
… for money, for drugs. We just were living this gangster lifestyle. We really had this mindset of going out and stealing and getting what we wanted, taking what we wanted, and it all caught up with me. When I was 17, I ended up getting caught and getting charged and I went to juvenile when I was 17. I was held there until my 18th birthday. On my 18th birthday, one of the houses that I’d robbed, there was a gun taken from one of the houses, and the detective came and questioned me on my 18th birthday and he wanted me to basically tell him where this gun was at. I was in this mindset of I ain’t telling the cops nothing, man. I don’t work with police. I ain’t no snitch. And unfortunately, that mindset really defeated me back then and he said, “Well, I’m going to go get a warrant and you’re going to go to jail today.” So that was how I spent my 18th birthday. I went from eating pancakes and oranges for breakfast with a bunch of kids to eating dinner with a bunch of adults in jail.
Michael Whitlock:
I have to share with the audience that, obviously, I didn’t know you during this phase of your life or this era and the Aaron Reason I know now, it’s almost like you’re telling another person’s story. The Aaron Reason I know is a very loving, compassionate, easygoing, fun person. He knows how to relate to some of the individuals that are in our services and talk at that level, meet them where they are. And it’s almost like he’s spouting fiction. Now, all of this is your real story. I believe it, but to know where you are now, you really have come full circle.
Aaron Reason:
Absolutely.
Michael Whitlock:
And it’s amazing and I think it’s important that people realize that you’re not glorifying this. This is just who you were and where you have come from, but this is truly a story of transformation and redemption.
Aaron Reason:
Right. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I tell this story only because my past is my past and I think I had to get to a place of accepting all of that. And trust me when I tell you. I’ve carried so much guilt and shame for the things that I did, especially as a young adult, but it’s important for me to tell my story and it’s important for people to understand just how bad off I was because when I give a lead anywhere when I go to share my story, I always want to tell what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now. Those are the three main things I want to get across.
So I’m going to show you how bad that I was, not necessarily to establish myself and give you the street cred, but to me, it’s really a testimony of the good that can come from recovery if you really want it. And I think that’s the whole idea behind this thing and I appreciate what you said about who I am today. It took a long time to get here, man.
But yeah, so I mean, that was just how it was. When I was 18, I got waved to adult court and I got a lengthy prison sentence when I was 18 years old. So I basically spent… I got a 15-year sentence and then, I had three years added on top of that because other charges that I had as well. So I ended up with a 18-year sentence to the Department of Corrections at 18 years old. So…
Michael Whitlock:
Well, and we all feel kind of invincible at 18. We all feel like because we have the right to vote and whatever that comes with being 18, that you’re a grown man, right?
Aaron Reason:
Right.
Michael Whitlock:
But when you, as an adult man at our age, you don’t know anything at 18. Your brain’s not fully developed. You’ve got some ideas of what it’s like to be a man, but you’re not a man.
Aaron Reason:
No.
Michael Whitlock:
I mean, maybe legally you’re a man, but you were still kind of a child and now, you’re facing prison as basically a child. And so life really changed for you in that moment.
Aaron Reason:
Yeah, I mean, it really made me grow up fast. It really did. Like I said, I literally went from being around a bunch of kids to a bunch of adults and I had to grow up fast and I went into a world that I never saw coming. And I think that’s been the journey all along is the realization, “How did I get to this place? How did I get to this place in my life?”
I remember pulling up to the prison, and it’s an old mental hospital is what it is. And I can’t even tell you how terrifying this was. I could sit here and lie and say like, “Oh, I wasn’t scared. I went in there, and I handled my own,” but that’d be an absolute lie. Look, man, I was peeing my pants going in and one of the guys on the bus actually even saw that in my face and he looked like Cyrus “The Virus” from Con Air. And he was like, “Oh, they’re going to love you here, youngster.” And of course, I had to put my tough face back on.
And for my first few years, I kept that mask on. I created an image of myself. I felt like everybody was testing me. Everybody was trying me because I was small. I got in a lot of fights, got in a lot of trouble my first few years. And part of this recovery journey, I think it’s important for me to establish this in the start of my story is even back then, even though I didn’t see it then, God put people in my life at exactly the right time when I needed them.
And so God put a couple of old-timers in my life that had been there in the prison system and they’d gone through it a few times themselves and they really took me under their wing and they showed me how to do time because the way I was doing it was just I just kept bumping my head and I was going backwards. Instead of getting time cuts and trying to educate myself and do things that most offenders do to try to get out of prison, I was doing the complete opposite. I was just getting in trouble and acting up. So with their guidance, I got into some programs and-
Michael Whitlock:
Must have felt like kind of some guardian angels, if you will. I mean, it-
Aaron Reason:
… yeah, I mean…
Michael Whitlock:
… [inaudible 00:14:15] were scared.
Aaron Reason:
Some ugly guardian angels, but they were certainly. But no, they were good guys in the sense that they helped me out and showed me how to do time and they really got my focus back in the right direction. So I’d end up serving seven years on a nine-year sentence. I actually had a job in there where I made minimum wage and I saved up some money and I paid an attorney and the attorney got me modified out of prison at the age of 25. So at 25, I got out and started over again and a lot in the world had changed and I did really well for about the first year. Things went really good for me. I had two jobs, had my own place, got with a woman and we actually had a child together and I had my daughter.
And unfortunately, though, I had a hernia while I was lifting weights in prison. And I had that hernia operation done and that was actually what started my opiate addiction. I was very naive to pills, but I’m a true addict and I believe it doesn’t really matter what drug I do. I will do it to the fullest extent. And that was what happened with opiates. I got hooked and I started doing what they called doc shopping where I was going to different doctors and getting prescriptions and I was hiding all this from my daughter’s mom and it all came to a head after my daughter was born. And unfortunately, we parted ways and I ended up getting in trouble again and violated and I went back to prison and served another five years.
Michael Whitlock:
And do you think all this would’ve been avoided if you wouldn’t have had a hernia?
Aaron Reason:
I think about that a lot. I mean, maybe it would’ve.
Michael Whitlock:
Because what I’ve learned quickly in this industry is how many people are… I mean, so many people, rather, are not just going out and being reckless kids, partying, and then, through gateway drugs, getting addicted to heroin. How many people truly get addicted because of something medical, trying to reduce some sort of pain. And while it’s great at reducing that pain, after a while, you build up a tolerance and then you’re seeking and I mean, it shows where good people can fall down as a result of this horrible drug that has just taken over. And I think people have this stigma that addicts are bad people or they’re shady people or whatever and it could happen to the best of us. It could happen to anybody. Unfortunately, it could happen to our family members, our loved ones just by dealing with something medical. And before you know it, they’re at the mercy of this addiction that they never asked for.
Aaron Reason:
Right. No, yeah, I agree with you 100%. And there was a time, actually, when me and my daughter’s mom… after I understood that when the medication stopped, I started having the withdrawal symptoms and I didn’t understand what was going on. And it was actually a guy that I worked with that told me. He was like, “Man, you’re withdrawn from those pills that you’ve been taking.” And I was like, “I’m not withdrawing, man. What are you talking about?” I was like, “I’m not hooked on these.” He was like, “Yeah, you are.” He is like, “My mom’s on them too.” And so I went back to my doctor and talked to him and the remedy that they gave me was, “Well, yeah, we’ll just step you down. We’ll give you a lesser strength pill of the same kind” and so that was their answer. That was the solution was to give me more pills you and try to step me down, so…
Michael Whitlock:
You recently shared this in a private conversation, some of the story, and I remember you using a phrase that I only within the last probably six months learned and it was dope sick and I learned it because of the show, Dopesick, that’s on Hulu. Can you explain what dope sick is?
Aaron Reason:
Yeah. I mean, so in the world of addiction, especially heroin addicts, there’s certain terminology that’s used. I would use the term “I’m sick.” And it’s not just like somebody would talk if I had the flu and I would tell you like, “Hey, man, I’m sick.” It’s the same thing with drug addicts and a lot of other part of the terminology is “I’m just trying to get well. I just want to get well.” That said a lot, especially from heroin addicts. And it’s funny that it’s said like that like, “I just want to get well.” You’re not even attempting to get high. You’re just trying to stop feeling sick.
Michael Whitlock:
That was so enlightening to me because before I got into this industry… and I’ve tried to soak up as much knowledge as possible because I want to know my industry inside and out. I want to know what I’m talking about and be competent in my field. And that was one of the big light bulb moments for me was learning that people are not just trying to get high.
Aaron Reason:
Yeah, no.
Michael Whitlock:
Sometimes, they’re just trying not to feel like crap, if we’re being honest.
Aaron Reason:
Exactly.
Michael Whitlock:
And that was such a shocking moment of truth for me that people are really struggling out there with just feeling like crap and they just want to feel a sense of normalcy. So…
Aaron Reason:
Yeah, I used to always say this is I would tell people, “I’m not even living. I’m just surviving” and that’s all that you’re trying to do. From a drug addict’s perspective, you’re just trying to survive today. And sometimes, that just means getting the minimal amount that it takes just so you’re well and you’re not sick and you don’t have to experience those withdrawal symptoms. And the longer that it progresses, the more that your tolerance keeps going up and up. It’s much harder to attain that level, then, every single time. It’s such a struggle to ever even get high again. You’re really just maintaining at that point. And that’s all that we were trying to do. In my addiction, that’s all I was trying to do was just maintain and not be sick and…
Michael Whitlock:
… so why don’t we… we’ve got to throw it to our sponsor real quick and then, we will touch back here in just a few seconds.
Speaker 4:
At the Indiana Community Addiction Network, we offer the new standard in medication-assisted treatment. So if you’re ready to put substance abuse behind you, we’re here to help. We are a local family-owned center who will create an individualized, physician-led care plan to help you reach sobriety. At ICAN, we treat your addiction based on your unique needs and have full addiction treatment programs. Get started on recovery today. Call ICAN now to speak to an advisor at 888-635-1 470 or visit us at addictionsnetwork.com.
Michael Whitlock:
All right, we’re back and so where did we leave off?
Aaron Reason:
Well, like I said, I wasn’t even living at that point. I was surviving. But to get to the point of what I’m talking about because when I say that I was living or not living, just surviving, I’m talking about towards the end before I got sober and that was when I was using heroin intravenously, which actually was fentanyl because there’s really no heroin anymore. But to get to that point, I’ll go back in my story a little bit.
So I got released from prison the second time and I came out with such a different mindset. I was very bitter, wasn’t able to see my daughter. I had a lot of resentments filled up. And literally, the day I got out of prison, I started using immediately. I went back at it. My mom was diagnosed with cancer as soon as I got out of prison and I was living with them, her and my dad. And I took her to all of her radiation treatments and I’d love to sit here and talk about how great of a son I was and how I was there for them in such a terrible time in their life. But I’m an addict. And I got to be honest, right?
So at that time of their life, I was hooked on pills and I’d started stealing their prescription medication because right after my mom had her last radiation treatment done, my dad had started complaining about a pain that he had behind his right ear. And we took him to the doctor and they diagnosed him with terminal cancer. It was Stage 4, inoperable, had already spread and they gave him a six-month time period to live and they just tried to make him comfortable.
And so right around this time, I had an older brother and a cousin who were also addicts and so I’m stealing these pills from my parents and they’re getting really upset with me. They’re tired of it and they just see me going in a downward spiral. So they try to get me help. And so I actually did go to a doctor and I got put on Suboxone, which is a maintenance drug.
Michael Whitlock:
Right.
Aaron Reason:
And so I got on that and I wasn’t doing too bad on that, but my brother had called me. My brother had called me up one day and him and my cousin were in Chicago and he said, “Listen, I need you to bring all the money you can up here. I need you to come up here now. I need you.” Me and my brother, we’re best friends. A lot of brothers don’t get along. That wasn’t the relationship me and my brother had. We were super close and so when he called me, I went. So I did what he said and I didn’t know what he needed the money for. He sounded pretty desperate.
And when I got up there, I came to the realization that him and my cousin both were strung out on heroin and my brother was very upfront with me and honest with me. He was like, “Listen, I’m doing heroin, man, and I’m sick.” And he actually was so sick that he’d actually crapped in the hotel bed. I mean, that’s how bad he was and so I took him and drove him, got him some drugs. And from an addict’s perspective, this was the beginning of my heroin journey, right, and this is when I graduated as to what I called the big leagues. I saw how high my brother was on heroin and even though I’m taking this opiate, opioid blocker, I’m doing it, and I feel fine. Just seeing him and seeing how messed up he was, that attracted me to it. And I was fascinated with the drug. I honestly was. I was always fascinated with what heroin did.
And so I said this in the beginning of my journey too is I’d loved to sell drugs too and that’s what I did. I started, came up with a plan with him to be able to provide for him as well. I would buy heroin and I would bring it back. And I started running heroin from Chicago to Anderson. And in the beginning, I just started snorting it. And one day, when I was driving up there, I saw how much higher he got from putting a needle in him than I did from snorting it. And I asked him to shoot me up. And it was one of the worst decisions. And as my big brother, he didn’t want to do it, but I was pretty much blackmailing him because it was my money that was buying the drugs and so he caved.
And initially, I didn’t really like it. Honestly, it wasn’t that big of a deal to me. I didn’t feel that much of a difference. But I couldn’t keep driving to Chicago. And it was getting to the point that him and my cousin both wanted it all the time and I’m trying to supply their needs. Now, I’m doing it as well. And as the saying goes, “Monkeys can’t sell bananas,” right? So I’m sitting here just trying to sell these drugs, but I’m using so much of them that it just progressively got worse and worse. And so I ended up finding a connection around Indianapolis and started going there and had that guy start shooting me up.
And when I started doing that myself to where I was full-fledged in it and I was using heroin intravenously, everything changed. I mean, the desperation that comes along with that, when you don’t have it. Just like in recovery, we talk about going to any length to stay sober. I would go to any length to get high. Any morals and values I had at that point were absolutely thrown out the window. I did not care if you had what I wanted. I was going to come get it. If I could get it out of you any way I could, that’s what I would do.
And you enter into this world and you don’t really understand it. And people around you die consistently and constantly and you don’t realize it. I went from wanting to feel a certain way to now, I’m in this world where I just feel trapped and lost and it’s-
Michael Whitlock:
You’re just kind of numb.
Aaron Reason:
… yeah. I mean, it was almost like a dream, to be honest with you. Looking back at everything now, it was just this miserable dream, not a dream, a nightmare, if you will. I mean, because it’s a whole other world. And that’s when I talk about I wasn’t even living. I was surviving. You’re just trying to, literally just trying to make it through the day.
And as my addiction just progressed and got worse, some incidents occurred. Both of my parents were still very sick. My dad was dying. At one point, this is the story of my addiction. At one point, they called him into the hospital. We thought he was going to pass away then. And a nurse came in and she sat down. My mom asked me to come with her to the hospital. And when we went up there, I hadn’t done any drugs that morning, so I was getting really sick and it was going into the afternoon and a nurse came into my dad’s room and she sat down three fentanyl patches in front of me and she walked out of the room. I don’t know how long she was gone, but I knew how long it took me to steal one of those patches. And it was about two seconds. I mean, just immediately. I didn’t even care. And my mom and my aunt were there and I went outside and I did it and came back in and the nurse came back and she started looking for it. She couldn’t find it. And it’s one of those things where I thought, “She’s not going to notice.” Those things are accounted for. Of course, she’s going to notice.
And so they shut the whole floor down, wasn’t letting anybody leave. All the nurses were scouring the floors looking for it. And you talk about embarrassing, just this is one of my moments of shame. All my family starts arriving as all this is happening. And there’s a police officer that actually was working at the hospital and he came up to me and pulled me out of the room immediately. He must have looked at the footage and everything and he was like, “Listen, I’m going to give you a chance just to be honest with me. I know that you stole that pain patch.” He’s like, “You’re the only person that left the room and went outside on the floor.” So he said, “This is what I’ll do is I’ll have a warrant put out for you. You give me a confession [inaudible 00:31:00]. I will not take you to jail. I know your dad’s dying.” And that’s what he did. He kept his word with me and I admitted everything.
And a couple weeks later, just to give you a breakdown of what happened. So that happens about three or four days later, I was doing drugs with a friend of mine and I’d left him that night and called him the next day, didn’t get an answer. The following day, I went over to his house to check on him and I found his dead body. He had overdosed and just things like that.
Michael Whitlock:
Wow.
Aaron Reason:
So mentally, I felt so low in my life. I didn’t think then that there could be a lower point.
Michael Whitlock:
So you’re dealing with depression, the impending loss of a family member. You just lost your friend and you’re addicted to opiates.
Aaron Reason:
Yeah. And I just felt paralyzed.
Michael Whitlock:
And criminal charges are pending.
Aaron Reason:
And criminal charges are coming, so I know I’m going back to jail for certain. And so in this part of the story, this is where things… I really just wanted to die. At this point in my life, I was very suicidal. I was such a disappointment to my parents and my family. My whole family saw me get escorted out by a police officer while my dad’s dying. And in that moment, I just was like, “You know what? Who cares, right? Life might as well be over not.” And I was okay with that.
Michael Whitlock:
So why don’t we pause it on that uplifting note and I’m happy to report that when you come back for episode two of this podcast, we know for sure that it gets better.
Aaron Reason:
It gets way better. Just stay tuned, I promise.
Michael Whitlock:
So if you’re on the hook and you’re thinking, “Wow, what a bummer,” it does get better. And so come back for episode two of A Reason to Live. Thank you.
Aaron Reason:
Thanks, guys.
Hey, guys, this is Aaron Reason, your host of A Reason to Live. I just want to thank you guys for listening, and I want to thank our sponsors for making this whole thing possible, Bridges of Hope and any other community addiction network as well. Make sure you come back to listen to episode two to hear the rest of my story.
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