From Pain to Purpose: A Story of Redemption from a Musical Genius: Michael Haburay Part 1

From the death of his dad, to the consequences of addiction, Michael took his pain , did a 180  and now reaches the masses.  He realized he needed to change when he no longer recognized the man in the mirror and was compromising his moral compass on a regular basis.  He sought the help that he needed and is taking his musical talent  to stages all over the United States.

Watch a clip of him playing and listen as we discuss the journey that he took from burying the pain that he inevitably needed to face to passing on love to anyone who will listen.

When the chords of life play in unexpected harmony, the result can be transformative. That's the essence of our chat with Michael, who brings not only his incredible musicianship to the table but also his soul-stirring journey of personal triumphs and tribulations. This conversation isn't just about the music; it's about the man behind the guitar, his recent engagement, and the ripple effect of his influence as a teacher.

Mike opens up about the resilience born from loss, the rebellion of his youth, and the path that led him from the shadows of self-destruction to the light of sobriety and self-awareness. This episode is a poignant look into the human spirit's capacity for healing, underscored by the rhythm of music and a relentless quest for personal redemption. Join us as we unravel the transformative power of music in shaping not just a career, but a life filled with purpose and passion.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne. I am Anne and Mike. You are so special to my family and I have to say I am probably one of your biggest fans. I'm going to brag about you a little bit. You actually are a technically trained musician who graduated from Cleveland State University and you have played in many bands, landing with a band that you are in now, apostle Jones. You joined them in 2021 and since then you have played all over the country and on every stage in Cleveland. We will talk more about this later, but Apostle Jones was awarded the title of Best Band in Cleveland by Cleveland Magazine and Cleveland Scene in 2023, as well as Best Blues Band by Cleveland Music Award in 2023. And you're a recently engaged man by Shelby, who is also a musician, a music teacher in the public schools. So I got to tell you I am so honored to have you on today.

Speaker 2: 1:11

Oh man, it's a pleasure, thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:16

You know I'm going to play a small clip of you right now so everyone can experience just how talented you are. So what does that feel like to get lost in the music like that? You know, I've seen you live and you just get lost in it.

Speaker 2: 2:14

It's really about being up there with people that you connect with. On that level. I've played a lot of gigs where you know you maybe met, met everybody like once or twice and you know maybe had like one rehearsal and you know, maybe there's not so much of a comfort there, so like everybody's kind of thinking about what they're doing and and and and thinking about not messing it up, whereas when everybody has that comfortability together you can really just kind of like let go, because it's not a thinking thing. I'm not thinking about what I'm gonna play or what notes to use or what technique I want to use. I'm not thinking about any of those things really it's. It's just about you know, with the instrument, like what I've internalized to the point as far as like vocabulary with the instrument, that I can then use that vocabulary to really just kind of connect to how I'm feeling in that moment and letting just the emotional connection do it.

Speaker 1: 3:19

Yeah, it's like you become the guitar.

Speaker 2: 3:22

Yeah, it's it very much is kind of an extension of you, which but you know, to be clear, to get to this point like requires a whole lot of practice because you need to internalize that vocabulary to something that you hear where it could go without, like, thinking about the notes you can play or you think about how it relates to how you're feeling in that moment. So you're just kind of feeling you're not thinking.

Speaker 1: 3:47

You know I have another talented bandmate of yours, Sade Young, on the podcast and when I had her on we talked quite a bit about the band. And you know, whenever I hear Apostle Jones, I call you guys a bunch of misfits that are holding church, because whenever I listen to you I feel that I just went to church and I am so touched. How did it happen that your band was awarded the best band?

Speaker 2: 4:12

I mean honestly like how this band came together. It really kind of defies logic and reason. The connective skills of Mikey Silas is a huge part of it, of it. I mean he kind of has an intuition about who and what and when and where and why, and but the the collection of people that we brought together is from so many different walks of life and I think that's what really helps us to connect with whatever audience we're in front of you. You've got a little bit of everything on that stage as far as life experience. Everything, I mean I just every every possible perspective I can think of. I think we have it on the stage and it, and then you know you have every possible perspective, but it's all. It's all just love where we're all rooting for each other all of the time.

Speaker 2: 5:03

See, that's amazing and you can tell that I really think that is 100% of the reason why we are able to connect with such a wide audience and that really, I think, gets us to best. Band is just that rooting for each other and being on each other's team. And there's so much nastiness in the world that when people can see a group of people just really caring about one another and loving one another, I think it connects and it should, and I'm happy to be some small contributor to good feelings people have in their day, you know, because being a person is hard, you know, and life is hard, you know every single time I come to your band and watch you guys play, I feel different.

Speaker 2: 5:51

Like I said, I'm just, I'm just happy to give folks a be a small part of giving folks a couple couple hours reprieve from the stresses of day to day. Amen, absolutely. I mean Because at the end of the day, is that not what entertainment's all about? Because at the end of the day, I'm an entertainer.

Speaker 2: 6:11

Yeah, but it's about connection too, Well, absolutely, and you guys have that. People can smell fake a mile away, especially nowadays, because everybody's always looking for it. If you're just presenting something and you're not really about something, and you're not really about something and you're not authentic about something, people are going to smell it on you.

Speaker 1: 6:30

Absolutely, and I think that that's why we connected. I think that that's why my kids connected with you, because you're the real deal and I'm going to talk about that right now, because you are also a guitar teacher and I have to say that I try to be. Oh, you are. I mean, you have been a godsend to my kids and they look up to you so much. You and I have been able to talk quite a bit and I have been so blessed to get to know you over the last couple of years and you know like I said likewise, you and CJ and Sarah and Levi and everybody, I just you know what a what a pleasure it is to know you all.

Speaker 1: 7:09

You know you touch my soul when you play and even when we connect, when we talk. I don't think that there is a song that you can't play. You are one passionate, hardworking musician. I am majorly impressed with how talented you are. When did you know that music was your thing?

Speaker 2: 7:28

so that was. That was really young. So my, my father had a degrees in keyboard composition. So I grew up my first, my, my most basic formative years were kind of like looking up to him. I took my first lessons on keyboard when I was like three or four from him, but you know, I always just kind of marveled at his ability to just kind of sit down at a keyboard and do whatever the moment demanded, whenever and whatever state he was in. You know, I remember distinctly so.

Speaker 2: 8:02

Background my, my, my father had a. He's a alcoholic and he had a autoimmune disorder that affected his liver. He just couldn't find the path to stopping and it ended up getting him. Oh, wow, okay, score. This point is like I remember my mother would dump him out of bed on Sunday morning because the church we went to was right next to our house and he worked third shift. He was a corrections officer at Mansfield, so on Sundays and Mondays were his days off, but he was still worked all night the night before. But she'd still dump him out of bed if the organist at church couldn't show up, because organ was his main, primary focus. He, to put it in perspective, he went to Benedictine High School here in Cleveland which has the Benedictine Abbey connected to it. So he would play 6 am Mass before school every morning, when he was like 16, at the Abbey with the monks.

Speaker 2: 9:06

Oh my goodness. So my mom would dump him out of bed and be like, hey, the organist can't show up, Get your ass down, you know and you know still half asleep, you know, half whatever.

Speaker 2: 9:18

At that point would sit behind the organ with just a hymn book, not not sheet music, just the hymn book that the congregation reads. There's no chords in there, there's no organ part in there, it's just the vocal melody. And he would just sit down and harmonize that vocal melody on the fly and play the whole mass out of the hymn book and just be like all right, anybody need anything else. And maybe the vocalist would be like, hey, can you change the key? Be like all right, anybody need anything else. You know, and like you know, maybe the vocalist would be like, hey, can you change the key? Be like okay, and this is before. You know, this is an old organ so there's no like transpose button.

Speaker 2: 9:53

So like if it wasn't in the original key and she needed it, like a third down or something like that, he could just transpose at sight and move the key, which is pretty wild to do on an organ, especially when you're essentially making up what you're playing as you go. So my first experience musically was watching him be able to do that and you know, I always I don't know if I'm ever going to be as good as him, but just being around that and being so used to that I really think got me comfortable with, like, my ear and what sounds good and what works. And you know, when you have that that basic starting point, with like an understanding of the keyboard, which I think every, every musician should have at least a little bit just for explaining things to themselves, that really is kind of like the foundation of where I came from. And then, you know, after he passed, keyboards were kind of difficult for me because that was kind of our thing, so I started playing guitar.

Speaker 1: 10:50

And I was just going to ask you how you landed on guitar. You just couldn't circle back around to the keyboard.

Speaker 2: 10:56

Yeah, it also coincides too with, like, the music I was getting into at that time. My mom's 71 and my father would be 72 if he were with us. So for someone of of uh 28 years old, I had a ridiculous record collection lying around. You know, I remember the first couple albums I pilfered out of my parents collection was the white album from the beatles okay, earth, wind and fire, and then uh led Zeppelin 1. Okay, so at that point I was really starting to get into your Zeppelin and your Guns N' Roses and your ACDCs, and what logical path is there but to the guitar if that's the music that you're into? And yeah, so that's kind of how I landed on it and started taking lessons at 10 where I teach now in Worcester.

Speaker 1: 11:45

Whenever I listen to you play, you have such a mix in you. I mean, there's the rock stuff, but you're not doing that stuff on stage with Apostle Jones.

Speaker 2: 11:55

Yeah, it's not a metal band.

Speaker 1: 11:57

No, not at all. I mean, you've really expanded the type of music that you play.

Speaker 2: 12:01

Well, that's my thing, I'm interested in. Well, that's my thing. I was just like I, I'm, I'm interested in everything that's good. You know, you, you look through my, my spotify, history and and sometimes I'm listening to brahms or mahler and then I come back and then you come back a little bit later and maybe I'm listening to like the wu-tang clan and then you know, maybe like Al Green over here, or just just all the way across, you know classical to 90s, like gangster rap, like it's if, if it's good and it's authentic and it speaks to me, I'm into it.

Speaker 1: 12:35

You know you're kind of talking about the kind of heart that you have with the music that you listen to and you know you've got that thing where you are all heart and people rely on you. You're the one in the room that will get it done. I've watched you guys set up and tear down and everything in between and you are a leader. You have this ability to be professional but also know how to reach everyone where they are. You also reach my autistic kids, so not everyone can do that. What do you think that has made you able to reach a difficult seven-year-old autistic child and then 50,000 people? You know the masses when you're playing at the same time.

Speaker 2: 13:19

I guess I've just been really blessed in so much as that. I've been given the opportunity to go a lot of places and see a lot of things and experience a lot of different ways of life and a lot of different people. If I learned anything from all of that is that it's all beautiful and then it's all valid. I am my mother's a mental health counselor, so I am my mother's son, so I am. I found that I have a better ability to kind of pick up on cues and kind of understand what people are saying without them actually saying it. I've been blessed with the ability to kind of get a good idea of people or at least how the conversation continues from the jump. My big thing is is like I want to have a successful, like and pleasant conversation with whoever I'm interacting with, and that requires some degree of compromise in meeting people where they are and it's just like OK, well, here's where they're at, here's where I'm at, let's bridge this gap a little bit, and I've been very lucky to be able to do that.

Speaker 2: 14:23

And then, as far as like the, the, the work ethic, that is one thing I will always give credit to. Like my hometown and like my home area. I grew up in a very rural community. I graduated with 98 people, most of which farmed for a living. But you know what man? You know every, every kind of culture and way of life and in whatever area is, has its positives and its negatives. But one of the major positives there is is it. It's just you're, it's instilled in you from a very young age like the only way, the only way to it is through it.

Speaker 1: 14:57

Let's go get it I can't really picture you in a farming area yeah, I can.

Speaker 2: 15:02

I can still drive a truck pretty well and back up a trailer and all that fun stuff.

Speaker 1: 15:06

That's so cool, some stuff you never forget. That's so cool. You know you are more than just music. What made you want to not just be on stage but to pass this on as a music teacher?

Speaker 2: 15:18

I think the biggest thing is is just you know, whatever capacity you pursue music in, it's got just obscene benefits.

Speaker 2: 15:33

Unlike anything I've ever seen in the world, there's an emotional tissue that runs through it that can really kind of just relax your whole space and your whole point of view and keep you on the ground when things are crazy, and I don't know if I can think of a more crazy time to be alive than the 28 years that I've been alive.

Speaker 2: 15:51

And so I think, now more than ever, it's really important to keep going with the arts and disseminate the arts as much as possible to give people, like I said, whatever capacity, an outlet for their problems and the world and just something to connect to on a very emotional level. I think it helps build emotional maturity too, because you can start kind of connecting with your feelings in a different way, and that's a huge thing we got to be. All of us together have to, you know, really connect with our emotions and you know, understand what we're doing. And I think I think music just helps in so many ways that, like I, I would, I would feel like the worst person in the world for just keeping my skills to myself when you know, when you have something that can help other people.

Speaker 1: 16:39

you know, I think you you help other people well, obviously that there were people along the way that helped you get to here, so I know that you just didn't become this person overnight. So tell me about that rebellious kid that got here. How did you? How did you get here?

Speaker 2: 16:55

Came up through school like schools always come naturally to me, I was an A student. Much to a lot of people. A lot of my classmates and teachers chagrin because I was an A student much to a lot of people. A lot of my classmates and teachers chagrin because I was such a punk about it. I very clearly didn't try and I wanted to make everybody aware of it.

Speaker 2: 17:13

My band director in high school, who retired this year, was hugely important for me because, you know, in that time when I got to him you know that's like sixth grade, sixth grade band or seventh, seventh, eighth grade band. But you know, uh, the thing, the wounds with my father were still very fresh. But he really, my band director, really taught me how to like work at music, how to how to put everything into it and how to push forward with it in such a way that you're proud of what you're doing and you take pride in your work and you know, taught me so much about just how to be a person. So I took my first theory classes uh from my band director. Um, he taught uh university of akron music theory as a dual credit course and University of Akron music history and after taking those courses that, coupled with my knee injuries, really took my focus away from sports and kind of landed it where it ought to have been, which was music. Mr Negro really gave me a really wonderful foundation to go on to music school, where I was very, very lucky to have studied with Dan Wilson, who played with Joey DeFrancesco before he passed on, which is just one of the biggest names in jazz today. I was extremely, extremely lucky. The education I received at Cleveland State University was worth its weight in gold.

Speaker 2: 18:43

I studied with Chris Vance, who again kind of took the reins from my high school band director as far as just like teaching me how to function in a musical world and and teaching me about my instrument on an on a new level, as far as how to like function in different settings and bands and his goal for me. He always told me he always pushed me because he recognized straight out of the gate that he's like you know, for any other student this would be great. You're on a perfect progress path, but I see that you're being able to do this with minimal effort. So guess what? Your bar just got higher and I will appreciate him to the ends of the earth for that.

Speaker 2: 19:25

But one of the biggest things he tried to instill in me through his teaching was, you know, I didn't want to have any gigs that I had to say no to because I wasn't proficient in that space. You know that's led me to be able to do pit orchestra gigs no problem. You know jazz gigs no problem. Rock gigs no problem. You know jazz gigs no problem. Rock gigs no problem. Like cover band gigs no problem.

Speaker 1: 19:47

When I listen to you, no matter what, it's just about the music, being able to express yourself in that way.

Speaker 2: 19:53

One of the big things for me is, too, is like before Apostle Jones kind of changed like a lot as far as like my perspective on things, and so much is that for that. I was just kind of a music for the sake of music person. I barely ever listened to lyrics or cared about what message anybody was really talking about, I just listened to the notes and the rhythms and the harmony. I could listen to instrumental music and connect with it just the same way as I could as there was a vocal, and I think my experience in Apostle Jones so far has really kind of combined my love for music for the sake of music and message.

Speaker 1: 20:30

So do you think that music saved you? Did it give you a purpose?

Speaker 2: 20:34

Yeah, it absolutely did. I was trying to do the sports thing and I was trying to do like you know, go to college and get some sort of STEM degree. So I could, you know, make six figures out of the gate and my knee injury and being on crutches for months and having all the opportunities that were dependent on it evaporate with it.

Speaker 1: 20:56

That must have been tough.

Speaker 2: 20:57

Yeah, it lends perspective. Nonetheless, like I said, it really kind of forced me to kind of be like okay, but like, like, what are you really good at? Because like, you were pretty good at the sports thing, but like, were you gonna go pro? Probably not. What are you actually good at? And it was right there in front of me the whole time. Music was just kind of something that I I did up to that point, not something that was like my life, and I was just just like, well, well, there it is, bonehead, do that. An unfortunate situation can always, can oftentimes, be a beautiful opportunity.

Speaker 1: 21:34

Yeah, you know, one of the things that Sade and I talked a lot about was your path chosen for you or did you choose your path? And I think that it's a combination of both. But I'm hearing you say, maybe, that there were definitely some things that happened along the way in your life that chose your path.

Speaker 2: 21:54

Yeah, the circumstances definitely are, you know, contribute to the opportunities that are in front of you. But you know you still have to choose it and I'm just very grateful that I had some semblance of wisdom enough at 16 to choose right. Not a lot of effort. A student, I could have gone to pretty much whatever college program I wanted to and probably completed it and got a job that I hated and you know and done the whole thing, and I can't see you at a desk job that I've. I've gotten, I've gotten a lot better at it, but my, the general contempt for authority that I've had since my feet hit the ground don't really uh, don't really lend themselves to a corporate structure.

Speaker 1: 22:44

I think that comes with being a musician, I'm not sure being a creative person. I think a lot of creative people are like that. You just want to do what you want to do?

Speaker 2: 22:54

You know.

Speaker 1: 22:55

Yeah, like my one son that you know very well.

Speaker 2: 22:58

Levi, and when I think about my niece and I think about this young man, max Stachelich, that we played with. He was the shredder kid from the Browns game. He's this young kid, and he's an absolute shredder and he's on the spectrum a little bit. And I'll tell you what I think folks with autism have a superpower because, man, we say that all the time. Once, once you find that thing that they are on fire for, just blink Watch them become the best in the world at it Absolutely so.

Speaker 1: 23:32

You know we're talking about challenges here and turning them into something. You know, when Sade and I were talking, she said that fear and her own negative self-talk were some of her biggest challenges. What would you say? Some of your biggest challenges are?

Speaker 2: 23:48

I think everybody's is fear to a certain degree. I mean, I have mine. Ironically enough, social anxiety was a big one for me. People stress me out. It's very situational but it's still a thing. Depression has, has been, a part of my life. At you know, certain points, seasonal, like seasonal affective disorders is also a thing. The biggest thing for me is if I can be proud of what I'm doing. I can sleep at night, okay. You know, whatever I did, I did it in such a way that I'm proud of. Mental health is such a huge thing and kind of figuring that out. Everybody's path is a little bit different, but the clarity of goal and eyes on goal seems to be what helps me through a lot. I definitely share that with Sade. It's like a lot of negative self-talk, but my whole, my whole thing is is just like you know what we're going to do it and whatever's going to happen is going to happen. That's very much kind of my approach to everything.

Speaker 1: 24:52

Just keep getting up and moving forward, even no matter how difficult it is honestly been my philosophy, I think, my whole entire life. That's why I am here where I am. I've had so many different situations that are the same as you and I honestly could have given up at any time in my life, but I just made myself keep moving. You know the fake it till you make it, just keep moving. I really believe in that.

Speaker 2: 25:20

Yeah, in that, yeah, I mean I quote unquote winter in northeast Ohio as rough has been, you know definitely wearing on me a little bit. It can be something as trivial as just like deciding that, okay, when I get up I'm going to put away the dishwasher, make my bed and kind of reset the living room couch area and just tidy up the house. And you know, since I've been doing that every morning, you know I've been getting up at like eight, thirty nine am every morning and just kind of starting my day with that. You know, just that little bit of accomplishment, that just that little serotonin hit of like I did something gets the wheels turning and suddenly the rest of the day and the things that you don't you have, the other things you have to do, don't seem quite so scary.

Speaker 1: 26:11

Yeah, as soon as I make myself do something, no matter how, how difficult it is that first initial making myself do something, and then it just goes from there and it gets easier and easier.

Speaker 2: 26:22

You're just like oh, it's not that bad. I tell myself that a lot too. You're just like oh, it's not that bad, it's not that bad. I tell myself that a lot too. I'm just like oh, you are catastrophizing so hard.

Speaker 1: 26:30

Well, I'm sorry you go through the seasonal affective disorder. We actually did an episode about that and it's tough. It's a hard thing to live with.

Speaker 2: 26:39

Yeah, I need the sun man. I'm excited to do all these festivals this summer and camp.

Speaker 1: 26:45

Well, I can't wait to watch you guys play. I'm excited. I'm excited for the summer stuff too. But anyway, you know, we we talked a little bit about having that thing in common where both of our dads passed away really young, and you know, what it did for me was made me into this like rebellious teen. My dad died when I was 11. I don't think I was ever the same after that. I kind of call them mile markers in our lives, where something really changed our entire life path.

Speaker 1: 27:14

And and, and that did that for me, I think, for a long time. I was just angry with the world, and I really was. I was like this rebellious teen. How old were you when your dad passed away?

Speaker 2: 27:26

So that was 2006. So I was 10. And I guess a lot of the same for me. My whole thing was it.

Speaker 2: 27:35

It's weird, though, like mine kind of like hardened me, and so much is that, like most people who know me know that if it's a crisis situation, I'm the one they want at the wheel because I can, just from the aftermath of his past just having to deal with life keep the house, pay off all the bills he ran up and this and that and the other, moving forward with a single income home. We didn't have time to be upset. I've gained this ability, which PSA do not rely on this. All the time you have to connect with your emotions, because this leads to one of the next things we talk about. So it's not roses all the time, but you know it is useful when you decide to use it, to be able to kind of disassociate and be like okay, you know everybody else is freaking out, but we need to do this, this and this and this, and then other people will be like well, what about this? I'm like, well, that doesn't matter, because if we don't do this first, we can't do this first.

Speaker 1: 28:41

we can't even get to that, so we need to do to get through this.

Speaker 2: 28:47

And my rebellion, as opposed to like open rebellion, my whole thing in school was like I was up to a lot of stuff that nobody really even knew about, but like I was an A student and I was on the sports team, so like the administration left me alone, I was like undercover. I still wasn't listening to anybody about nothing. You know, I played the game because I saw it was just easier to play it. My other options were like detention and suspension all the time and I was just like, well, that's kind of stupid. Why would I do that? Like I already hate that I have to be here for seven and a half hours. Why would I want to be here for two more, exactly? So, yeah, I'll just give lip service to all that and make everybody feel good about themselves like they're the best and keep doing what I'm doing, but that's how my rebellion manifested itself.

Speaker 1: 29:37

Yeah Well, I was going to ask you about how it affected your path in life, which I already pretty much know, because you know, you and I also have another thing in common, and we both went the route of using chemicals to help numb. Yeah, and you know I got clean and went through the AA and NA and treatment and all that stuff and I started drinking really young after my dad died, unfortunately. So when did you start?

Speaker 2: 30:12

Like 14, 15, 16-ish. I was too damn smart for my own good, so I was able to sneak around and do what I needed to do and have fun how I wanted to have fun. You know, the root of it all goes back to what I said earlier is like I thought just hardening myself was just going to be the way to live. But all that pain and all that angst and all that, you have to deal with it somehow, because one way or another it's going to manifest itself somehow, whether you like it or not. Pain like that is, it's there, whether you like it or not, and if you don't deal with it it'll manifest itself in ways you can't control. You know, there I was thinking I was tommy tough nuts and like nothing could hurt me and this and that, and you know. And then I drank more. Then I drank more and then college rolled around. I was getting drunk every night. But in college everybody's just like well, that's what college kids do exactly to a certain degree that and to a certain degree, they're not wrong.

Speaker 2: 31:13

I think it was like my junior year of school when it really kind of started to hit me that like I'm just going to the bar, I'm not going because I want to, started really overtly being a way of just dealing with what was going on in my head all the time. And then you know, you get through college and now we're what at like 2018. I'd earned my first gold star DUI and, uh, you know, did the probation for that and played the game like I did in high school and did real nice and all that. And as soon as I was off off my papers, I went back to what I was doing and lo and behold, within six months after I got off my papers, I got another DUI and this time I was D runk, with a capital D. They threw the book at me for the second one, man, oh wow. So I did 28 days in the Wayne.

Speaker 2: 32:12

County jail, wow Okay. And 32 days of house arrest immediately following at my mother's, and then was on probation for two solid years. How old were you? You said college. So this, the second one, was like right after college. So I was like 22 or 23.

Speaker 1: 32:29

Was that a wake up call?

Speaker 2: 32:31

Yeah, because you know, whatever happened, whatever I knew, I knew I wasn't going back there and you know I did like the outpatient, but I still like after I got off, like the monitoring and like all this other stuff, I still drank again.

Speaker 1: 32:48

I did.

Speaker 2: 32:49

But finally, you know, the thing that really got me was Shelby bailing out of my life. This person who had been always with me could not deal with my crazy ass anymore for her own mental health and safety. Oh geez, that would be rough. I mean I in hindsight, I mean it was terrible, but in hindsight I absolutely earned it. She had to protect herself. At a certain point I was just a swirling whirlwind of chaos and anger, luckily. Luckily that anger manifested and, like the, the biggest threat I was to anybody was me. Luckily I, my stuff like that didn't manifest outward because I I don't know what I if I could live with having ever physically hurt anybody.

Speaker 1: 33:37

Right, you were just going inward with everything and ready to implode.

Speaker 2: 33:43

Yeah, exactly. But after that I was finally just like all right, this is ridiculous. I called up a friend of mine who had been sober for like 10 or 13 years or somewhere between there. I can't remember Eric Schmiedl. What a wonderful human, Grateful oh him, my life. And he asked him to like be my sponsor during lockdown. I decided my life and asked him to like be my sponsor during lockdowns. I decided so I went to my first meeting next to my mom's house, at the church, where we were in lawn chairs in a parking lot.

Speaker 1: 34:11

Okay.

Speaker 2: 34:12

And then, you know, my sponsor at the time lived in Sheffield Lake, so I would just go to my meeting once a week and call him up, you know, after the meeting, and we would talk almost every day. And one of the big keys, I think, to people making a good go of it is a you got to want it for you, because at that point I had no idea whether I was ever gonna see Shelby again, and you know, if I didn't, I was accepting of the fact that I absolutely deserved that. I just had to do it like for me. That's the big one. The first one is you have to want to. I'm like this is crazy, you suck, I don't even recognize the person I look at in the mirror, Like it, and a lot, of, a lot of the latter drinking really was to just kind of numb the pain of compromising my own moral compass on such a regular basis.

Speaker 2: 35:06

And the big thing is, though, too, is that I sought out help for my mental health. I started seeing this wonderful woman in Worcester. She runs a practice called Affordable Healthcare Partners. If you're in the Wayne County, ohio area, please look them up. She doesn't do business with any insurance company. It's all pay for service out of pocket, so she's able to, you know, do a doctor visit for like 60 bucks.

Speaker 1: 35:33

Okay.

Speaker 2: 35:34

That's great to know. Yeah, she's a nurse practitioner. She's wonderful. She helped me out. She saw me from like my mental health. You know we got on some really mild anxiety medication, started talking through some things. Um, aa also helped a bunch with that as far as like being more open and being willing to talk about things. But you know, the alcoholism or whatever chemical it is is but a symptom of an underlying problem. I think where people run afoul of of getting better is they're not actually dealing with their mental health, because you can't just white knuckle your way through the rest of forever not using chemicals.

Speaker 1: 36:14

Not if you don't deal with the pain.

Speaker 2: 36:16

No, you got to be okay with it.

Speaker 1: 36:19

When all that was happening to me and all of my young adult life probably until even I was around 30, I was the same way and that's the way I dealt with it too. I was completely hardened and I wouldn't let anything in, and I think that the numbing contributed to that. We're going to end part one here. I cannot thank Mike enough for coming on and sharing his story in order to help others. That's what we do here on Real Talk with Tina and Anne. We want to make a difference, one person at a time. We drop new episodes each week, and next week we will have part two of Michael's story, where he continues to share how he came from pain, kept moving through to become a musical genius. You will learn how he came to a point where he was no longer picking up the guitar and literally was wasting away, but eventually picked up that guitar and moved forward, one step, one note at a time, leaving the drink behind and figuring it out. With each step and each song that he played, he realized how to push forward through the pain with help from others.

Speaker 1: 37:30

Join us next week as we continue this amazing interview. You can visit us at Real Talk with Tina and Ann on Facebook and also on our website at realtalkwithtinaanncom. You can leave us a message and we will get back to you. You can also listen to us on WDJYFM dot com out of Atlanta, and online. You can listen to us anywhere. You get your podcast, of course, and you can listen to us also on Denver's radio station 92.9, 89.3, and you can listen online at DenverOpenMediaorg. You can watch us on San Francisco's Pacifica Community Television, on Comcast Channel 26 and 27, or online at Pacific Coast TV. Remember there is purpose in the pain and hope in the journey. We will see you next week with part two.