0:12

are you ready to talk?

0:13

we're ready to listen on this season of this is hard.

0:16

We journey with those willing to share their story and take control of the narrative.

0:20

This is hard, but it doesn't have to be.

0:23

Have you ever had anybody that you knew of um struggle with addiction to alcohol?

0:36

Yeah, yeah, I have openly, like they openly struggled, or was it just like a a known thing like to to just close people, or did everybody know?

0:48

It wasn't open as much as, like, everybody knew, but it wasn't like discussed.

0:57

Yeah.

0:57

You know what I mean.

0:59

So can I ask, was it like in the family?

1:01

Yeah, it was an older family member. Was it like in the family? Yeah, it was an older family member.

1:04

Okay, so like that person had to go through therapy and ended up at the Salvation Army.

1:16

Okay.

1:16

Which I don't know. If you know what that is.

1:18

Like a. It's like a. It's kind of like Red Cross, almost like.

1:22

Sure, I have no idea. Like Salvation Army, I know they do.

1:24

Like clothing stores, I don't know if you know. I meant I do.

1:27

Oh, you don't even know.

1:29

Well, I don't know if Salvation Army also does like housing.

1:31

Right, you know. But like I know, salvation Army does donations and they'll do like food pantries and things like that.

1:37

Right, right. Yeah, I have also like a place where, if you're, homeless or you're struggling.

1:44

you need a place to stay. I always thought he was dishonorably discharged from the Salvation Army, Apparently that's not a thing, who knows?

1:54

Yeah, so I was really young, so I've never really dealt with anything like that in my adulthood.

2:00

Okay, but how about you?

2:07

Yeah, I definitely did. I didn't know it at the time that I was dealing with, um, abuse from alcohol, right, and it wasn't in my direct home, luckily, right.

2:14

Um, my mother especially wasn't the type to just get drunk at the house.

2:21

Actually, I don't think I've ever really seen my mom intoxicated my entire life, which is probably a better thing, because with everything else I experienced, I couldn't imagine adding that right but.

2:31

I think the generation before her struggled with alcohol.

2:35

And funny story quick little story we used to go fishing with my grandparents when we were young and we didn't know at the time, but my grandmother was giving us wine coolers, thinking that they were like little juicy packs.

2:49

Uh-huh, but they were. They were in bottles, but she thought it was just like lemonade whatever and it was literally like a hard mike's hard lemonade but it was but it wasn't that brand, it was just like whatever brand existed when I was right, seven, eight, nine years old.

3:03

And so I'm seven, eight, nine, wondering why I'm having a buzz, you know and that's what started your problem um, I luckily never developed a an addiction to to alcohol, right?

3:17

Um, I got drunk once and I realized that that was a terrible, terrible feeling and I was like I don't really want to experience it now I'll be lying if I said I didn't get drunk more than just once, right, but I mean like really, really, really drunk, like the next day was just hell right.

3:32

So, um, but yeah, I did deal with people who had an addiction issue probably still do, who knows but I was a kid then it was kind of scary to see, yeah, and we I mean obviously we have very little knowledge on addiction yeah but, um, I think what you said is right you're, you're lucky that you weren't, you know, because yeah easily could have been any of us right now, and I find that I realize that, the older I get, is people that suffer with addiction and with all these things that society wants to mark you as a bad person, is people that were down on their luck and just one thing went wrong.

4:22

Right, you know, it's not a moral decision or anything like that.

4:29

Yeah.

4:30

It really comes down to just luck and happenstance.

4:39

Yeah, you know, do you think a little bit of it is like chemically you know, like you just didn't have that gene?

4:44

I think that's possible, that you can be more or less susceptible to it.

4:48

Yeah, yeah Well, I know addiction runs heavy in my family, in the addictive tendencies, not necessarily always alcohol, and I think that an addiction is an addiction.

5:01

It doesn't matter if it's a substance or a thing Right, or a moment, or whatever it is you're chasing or trying to get away from Right, or, yeah, exactly, you're trying to numb Right.

5:12

I would say the harder part of alcohol is that it does affect people who don't drink as well.

5:27

Um, and so I think the harder, harder, hardest thing I went through was with alcohol, was just losing a friend because they went drinking and driving during mardi gras and they passed away and that was that was tough, that was real, real tough, right, um, and so I've seen how alcohol has taken lives, so that part makes me even more like man.

5:47

It's so celebrated in society, like alcohol is such a you know's how men are supposed to release.

5:55

Basically, you know so.

6:07

So, that being said, we had the privilege of speaking with somebody who did struggle with that addiction yeah, and it almost cost them everything right.

6:18

So we got to listen to that journey and, um, it's, it's something.

6:22

And, like I always say, I feel like we only got to capture bits and pieces of his story in our conversation with him, but you can still feel the magnitude of like what it meant to this person.

6:38

So, without further ado, we'll go ahead and start this episode.

6:45

Let's start. You said you grew up in Christianity.

6:48

What branch of Christianity did you?

6:51

serve Stupid ass.

6:55

I served basically for 23 years.

6:59

Yeah where'd you do your time Southern Baptist?

7:04

Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah, time Southern Baptist. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they drink on the back porch, right, that makes sense.

7:12

Yeah, that makes sense.

7:14

Okay, and you grew up, obviously, in the South, so what was your childhood like and things?

7:24

like that Tell us about childhood a little bit, no worries.

7:30

So it was definitely. The primary introduction of religion was Bible stories.

7:38

You know, even though my dad was not a regular church goer he had grown up in small town, even smaller than where I grew up.

7:49

He grew up in Hellfire and Brimstone Baptist Church, right, Like wherever Sunday morning, If you're not on the same page, right then you're headed to the Lake of Fire, that kind of thing.

8:02

If you don't come this Sunday, you might not make it next sunday yes, exactly that, exactly that very fear-based right.

8:10

So I think it was, and I, even as a little kid, got the sense that it was out of more obligation maybe than anything else that that I was hearing a lot of the stories that I was hearing, because it wasn't necessarily a lifestyle outside of that, but the stories were just as important nonetheless.

8:30

Does that make sense?

8:31

Yes, he was the one that was pushing these stories.

8:37

I feel like I can relate.

8:40

I do want to also say that my mom set more of a positive example for what religion could be.

8:46

She was less hellfire and brimstone litigious about it and more was like love, your neighbor kind of person.

8:55

It's like I think we should go to church.

8:58

But then it's that family dynamic where if not everybody's going to church then the whole family doesn't really go.

9:07

It's it gets really political and really obligatory even within family dynamics and that's kind of one thing that's amazing to me right, right, and it's one thing.

9:19

Maybe, maybe not you know the actual practices, but but religion itself, man, it revolves around politics, for some reason.

9:29

And bribery, yeah, dude, as a kid.

9:35

you bribe people to get to church because you're like well, look, they're going to have snacks, bro, they're going to have like they say in Spanish refrescos, what?

9:46

That means is you're going to get some cookies? And some sugary drinks right after the service or during childcare.

9:53

So I'd be like you know what?

9:55

It's not so bad, I can get some snickety snacks see some friends.

9:58

And you're like. You know, church ain't so bad.

10:02

No, especially not if it gets you out of the house.

10:05

Yeah, you go socialize, you judge people and you figure out who's your clique.

10:09

You try to fight everybody who's not in the clique.

10:11

You know little gang wars going on politics, even in your adolescence.

10:17

I mean not adolescence, what's it called Juvenile stage, Real?

10:20

quick. One time me and my friend was passing this church.

10:29

They had signs up saying free pizza and we were wrestlers. So, like food, if it's free, it's for us I know that's a rhyme but um so.

10:37

So we went in and then had to sit there for an hour while the preacher yelled at people for just coming to church for food.

10:44

It was so fun oh my god, dude, you can't win any kind of way.

10:50

The pizza was I'd though, um all right.

10:56

So when, when you say that we was your mom and dad together?

11:00

yeah, no, they, they, they were. But it was one of those situations where indoctrination can kind of take hold uh, really early for people and sometimes people stay married.

11:14

That shouldn't stay married right.

11:16

That makes sense.

11:17

I understand that yeah, you know you don't want to.

11:21

You don't want to make God angry, right? Whenever you spend your whole childhood hearing that divorce makes God angry, right, mm-hmm.

11:31

Yeah, yeah, so all right. So how did you come up as a young guy?

11:37

What was adolescent Ike all about?

11:42

Did you lean more towards moms, love thy neighbor or no man, unfortunately, I are you trying to slay your neighbor ike?

11:53

I, uh, I definitely grew up in a, in a household that had a lot of conservative influences, um, you know so there was a lot of rush limbaugh in our house, a lot of a lot of voices like that.

12:05

you know so, unfortunately, as as puberty set in and all, of that, like you know it's, it was, yeah, I was taking a lot after my dad and you know then hearing the same kind of thing at church because again, I wasn't playing earlier whenever I said the church was, was basically the only way that I could get out of the house, right.

12:28

So I was gravitating to that and I stayed that way up until I actually won the talent show my senior year of high school with the most anti-science, pro-iraq war.

12:46

It was pro-life, very much anti-woman, anti-choice.

12:57

I was talking mad shit.

13:01

You had it I went off.

13:03

Yeah, and it was, and I got it's in the school.

13:08

Wait, you won a talent show with a lecture.

13:11

So it technically qualified as because it rhymed, it technically qualified as poetry.

13:21

Yeah, like spoken word I don't want to be right now, it could.

13:24

Could you rhyme it?

13:27

Can you rhyme that lecture? I could not.

13:31

I would not dare try. It basically was, though it basically was.

13:37

It was a white boy freestyle, and I won the talent show with it.

13:42

I got two standing ovations. I'm trying to think of a rhyme yeah, and I won the talent show.

13:45

I got two standing ovations.

13:47

I'm trying to think of a rhyme.

13:51

There were a few very progressive especially for that time teachers in small town Texas and I'm not lying fellas Whenever I say I went to the library the next day and the school librarian gave me a Nazi salute.

14:07

Oh, my God Wow.

14:09

She was like we got another one. That's it.

14:12

That's how it's done. I'm milked it, dude, I'm milked it.

14:15

Yeah, hell yeah, for everything it was worth.

14:18

I was like, oh my.

14:18

God, because you were doing everything that you were being told to do correctly.

14:27

Yes, doing. You are doing everything that you are being told to do correctly.

14:29

Yes, and, ironically enough, that is how I am able to take a deep breath and deal with some of the more frustrating members of our society.

14:34

Right, the uh, the counterpoint to, to our beliefs.

14:40

Like I've I've been on the other side of that, like I know what informs that belief structure and it's uh, it's very frustrating and it's galvanized, it's resistant, it's resistant to a lot of questioning and a lot of critical thought, but I I do think there's, I do think there's a way in yeah Well, there has to be if we're here.

15:05

Right.

15:05

Right and that to be, if we're here, right, right, and that's how I look at it.

15:08

I agree, because I was literally just talking to April about how I remember we have 95.7.

15:19

It's a classic rock type, all like the 80s rock, and then in the morning and in the night it hasosh limbaugh, sean, hannity, glenn, beck, um, all, all the guys marshawn latimore sean latimer.

15:35

I love marshawn lynch or jane it's a who's who of white supremacy.

15:39

Yes, absolutely none of those names are, but yeah, yeah, the first

15:44

ones yes, exactly so, glenn.

15:48

So I I used to listen to all them and, like I'm just thinking now, like I couldn't imagine, I don't understand what made me think.

15:58

Besides, you know, like we said, just society and and all that, but I couldn't imagine how I made it here.

16:04

I don't know how I made it from there being so sure, being so crazy, and you know, to now it just doesn't make sense no, and I end up thinking about that a lot.

16:18

You know what I mean because I, I was, I, I came from what I do consider very prejudicediced and at times hateful background.

16:26

I can't help but think that a lot of that school of thought is created to oppress people that are different.

16:37

And as I kind of lived my life, you know what I mean.

16:41

As I got further in, like further through it, um, out of high school, out of college, you know, I I got really interested in in film and that became a major passion for me.

16:53

That's that's where most of my time is spent nowadays actually.

16:56

Right.

16:58

And, um, I got, I won't.

17:00

Maybe the conversation of how it all happened is for another time.

17:04

You know, I'll try to bottom line, um, the high points of what got me to where I am, but but, realistically, I was living my dream.

17:15

Uh, I made a film at 24 years of age and I thought that I was uh, uh, you know, I thought I was going to the moon right then.

17:24

And I found out you know, some really shitty news and the, uh, the, the producer was a con artist and blah, blah, blah.

17:33

My life turned into a big legal battle, basically for about two straight years and my, my, my lifelong dream kind of became my worst nightmare and, uh, it caused me to become an alcoholic.

17:46

My lifelong dream kind of became my worst nightmare and it caused me to become an alcoholic and I was an alcoholic there for about two straight years.

17:55

I was drinking pretty much all day, every day, and it nearly killed me.

18:02

I was in the hospital for six weeks with pancreatitis and multiple failed organs and, of course, back home this is how it all ties in back home, even though my film that I had made had arguably been an anti-religion film, because I was already developing a few questions and wanted to kind of exercise some of those demons and figure some things out.

18:31

So here I go and I'm in a hospital bed and I'm on a prayer chain back home, where I'd come from Thank God, and have hundreds of people right Like literally hundreds of people, praying for my recovery.

18:46

And, as I'm coming out of a coma, that's all I'm hearing.

18:50

That's literally all I'm hearing is that it's a miracle that you're still alive.

18:55

You've had hundreds of people praying for you.

18:57

It's by the grace of God that you're here. It's really quite a moving emotional experience when you're coming out of a coma and everybody's saying that kind of thing to you, right?

19:09

So I was very moved by it.

19:11

I thought that I had gotten the answers that I was looking for and I decided to evangelize.

19:18

Right, I mean, how could you not? I mean, you thought that when you needed him he'd be there.

19:25

You needed him, he was there.

19:28

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much how it worked out and it was really hard.

19:34

And you know what I acknowledge even still to this day, it is very difficult to explain how I'm still alive, right, because the deck was that stacked against me.

19:44

The hospital was telling my wife and girlfriend at the time or my mom, rather, and my girlfriend at the time.

19:50

Oh, I was about to say my boy.

19:53

We gotta get into that. Let's fast forward to this time.

19:58

Yeah, that's where the story gets spicy. No um no, the people closed it to me were there.

20:05

He was telling me mom and your girlfriend right.

20:07

My mom and my girlfriend make funeral arrangements right.

20:10

It's time. He's got days, maybe hours, left.

20:14

How long were you in the coma? Three weeks, three weeks, three weeks.

20:19

Yes, I woke up and it was almost mid-November and last I checked it was late.

20:26

October and you were just. You were rushed to the hospital from your house.

20:31

No, I actually drove myself.

20:34

Thank God.

20:36

I did God was really wanting you to live.

20:42

I was dying. I was dying.

20:44

This dudebered himself he called himself uber and he literally called himself.

20:59

I remember passing out in the passing out in the waiting room and that was it.

21:07

That was all I like do you remember?

21:10

they're feeling like a lot of time had passed by.

21:14

I had no idea how much time had passed by, because you remember more things from a coma than, or at least, I did.

21:21

I can't speak for everybody, but I remembered more things from a coma than I ever thought that I would, and they were fucking terrifying too.

21:31

Um, it was, it was terrifying, the stuff that I remember from from being in there.

21:38

Man, it was dark, it was dark. And that was the stuff that I remember from being in there.

21:40

Man, it was dark, it was dark. And that was another thing that made it so impactful.

21:44

That made me think that there was some journey that I was supposed to go on spiritually.

21:55

You were halfway there. You were about to get to the gates, I think.

21:59

That's crazy, somebody probably sneezed in the room you was laying out in and woke you up.

22:05

That's what it was, it started bringing you back slowly.

22:08

No, because you were saying it was dark times.

22:10

That's what I can only imagine. You're sleeping for such a long time.

22:14

I can't imagine you don't have recurring dreams or like that.

22:19

You just start completely building a whole world on that side and then, like I don't know, it seems very scary in a way one of the one of the more vivid dreams that I had and I'm still kind of, I still think about it sometimes.

22:32

I still actually repeat parts of it uh, this day, but I have no idea how long it lasted, but it was like dreaming I was encased in concrete oh god yeah, like it was just like I had this shell oh, that would make me sick higher body, and I think it was coming from the fact that I was um physically restrained.

22:56

Yeah, not only were my feet fastened down for circulation reasons, but any time I even started to come out of that coma a little bit, my first instinct was to tear everything out of myself, which I did multiple times.

23:14

I had a port that was in my neck that I removed myself at one point yeah, and now yeah, I mean.

23:22

So you still have this dream? Oh yeah, every once in a while is it, do you feel like, do you consider it to be a nightmare?

23:29

I would consider it to be a nightmare yes, so you're meeting yourself back on that time, like when you were in a coma oh, yeah, absolutely so I can only imagine that it's a uh, it's something that you have to conquer.

23:43

You know it's got, it's got to be something that you have to finally face in in, uh, in your dream state.

23:49

So you gotta like, almost like, start preparing your, your mindset.

23:56

When you go to bed, you know that you're not, you're not contained like, you're totally free to move you know absolutely, and it's it's been interesting to unpack all of that in the years since, uh you know, because it since then I've I've gone, uh, I've spent uh two years in therapy and now understand where a lot of my addictive tendencies come from and a lot of that trauma that I was trying to process in my subconscious, even in a comatose state.

24:35

It's like looking at a roadmap retrospectively and being like, oh okay, that's where, that's how I got here.

24:42

That's interesting, right, and it's and it's operating from that platitude of of such profound religious gratitude, right of, of feeling so indebted to a deity, right and a specific religious practice, and I think it's important to dial in on that because of where that positioned me going into a journey of exploring like, for instance, sunday school.

25:13

All right, I will always look back on the mornings because I, I, I had severe nerve damage in my feet whenever I came out of that coma because my kidneys had failed.

25:25

I, literally, and I'd been on my back for six weeks, uh, so I, I couldn't walk.

25:32

You know, I went from being in pretty good shape before I went in, uh, whenever they wheeled me out of there, I'd go.

25:39

I'd gone from about two, two, 10 or two, 20, uh, to being 170 pounds, you know, with a, with a long uh, you know, coma beard in a wheelchair.

25:50

Right, I look like I had just been pulled out of a plane crash in the Alps somewhere.

25:54

Right, right, pulled out of a plane crash in the Alps somewhere.

25:57

Right right.

26:00

And now here I am. I'm being literally after a while I'm being wheeled into Sunday school and I'm very interested in what's being said in class to the point where I'm perking up and I'm asking questions and starting discussions and if you have that kind of personality, inevitably you're going to get a tap on the shoulder and it's like, hey, would you like to take a more active role in what we're doing here?

26:27

And I'm like, absolutely, that is my whole point and purpose to why I'm here is to take this message and spread it to the masses.

26:35

Right, and spread it to the masses, right.

26:38

So I start.

26:44

You know, as I'm trying to get healthier, right, I'm literally in a process of physically teaching myself to walk again, because I didn't have insurance, so there was no physical therapy for me, there was no going to a doctor every week and checking in and being like, hey, you know, none of that.

27:02

I was having to, uh, you know, graduate from a wheelchair to above a cane, like it was.

27:11

It was crazy, it's like I, I would.

27:16

I would say that was one of the most profound experiences in my life is having to learn to physically walk again, because that's not something most people endure.

27:27

Right, that's insane.

27:31

So um you said you had um your mom and your girlfriend when you went into the coma and all that right, yes, so how did that go?

27:45

Moving forward, like your relationship and things like that?

27:50

Well, I was convinced that I would never see my girlfriend again.

27:54

I just was sure of that when I woke up, but that was not the case.

28:01

Actually, she was there the entire time that I was in the uh, in the coma that she was.

28:07

She was either if she wasn't asleep or at work.

28:10

She was there. That's amazing, yeah.

28:12

And now, now she's my wife and, uh, it's we.

28:17

We have a, and we have a happy, wonderful life together.

28:19

We reflect back a lot of times on kind of that, Because that was the first year, that was the first year of our relationship and it was, miles and away the hardest.

28:34

What year was that? One of the most challenging.

28:36

That's 2013.

28:39

13 13.

28:40

Damn. So y'all just started dating that year.

28:43

You go into a coma in late October.

28:46

Yeah Well, so we started dating December 2012.

28:50

So it was.

28:52

Oh right, when the world was supposed to end.

28:55

Yeah, yeah, you know, some people say that it did.

28:58

It might have. So you started to evangelize.

29:02

Yes, yes, I did. I started to evangelize, started to teach Sunday school, and it was you know, I was not expected by any stretch to draw up my own sermon.

29:16

You know, I would have had a ridiculous expectation.

29:18

They give you workbooks, they give you a curriculum to describe.

29:25

Well, that was a good thing, though that was a good thing.

29:29

I mean, yeah, it's so interesting to learn.

29:36

I consider myself a pretty effective communicator, right, and I also especially.

29:44

If I'm going to instruct something, then I really have to know how it works.

29:50

I have to be able to approach it with confidence and, better yet, integrity, right.

29:57

It matters to me. If I say something to someone, if, if you know, if it's possible that it's going to be proven wrong, and you know what I mean.

30:05

Like I just I'd like to know, I'd like to know what I'm talking about.

30:08

So, um, these workbooks started presenting a lot of uh questions for me.

30:17

You know what I mean and it was inevitable, right?

30:20

Because I think we're all aware that religion another word for a religion is a faith, and we all know what faith actually means.

30:29

So the literal definition is right there for you, but you don't.

30:34

At least for me, it hadn't clicked until I was really starting to convey these messages, and the messages were becoming harder and harder for me to convey if I couldn't understand the evidence, right?

30:55

I couldn't identify what I'm supposed to tether on to right, like where is the meat and potatoes?

31:03

And that's what was so hard and that's why that's such a fantastic name for what you guys are doing here Because it was hard.

31:12

It was one of, if not the hardest things that I've ever done in my life, because you have to unpack and unlearn everything you've heard your entire life and it falls over like dominoes, like a house of cards.

31:30

Which analogy do you want? And it was such that whenever I would ask a question about a subject you know, let's just say, for instance, when people are encouraged to interpret um creation literally and seven day work week, basically right I wouldn't approach them with questions like how were we measuring a day if the unit of measurement that we all agree on today was not actually created until day four?

32:05

exactly no, that's, I mean that's yeah, so, yeah.

32:11

so what is the day exactly and what?

32:16

What I noticed consistently was that the answer to that question, time and time again, no matter what the question was well, we just don't focus on that, right, or we don't think about that or we don't.

32:29

We don't teach from that.

32:31

That was another good one.

32:34

We don't teach from that and I'm like what are we teaching?

32:36

we don't teach from that and I'm like what are we teaching?

32:40

this is what happens, man, when you try to convince somebody who needs more than just like faith, essentially because you're like wait, I'm not saying I don't believe, I'm just saying that I need evidence so that we can, because when you're right, you have evidence absolutely you have the facts to back up what you're saying and I feel like I've.

33:01

I've felt like I can, I feel like vick oh, yeah, felt this way too.

33:04

Like dude, you give me the proof and I will be shouting from the rooftops oh yeah that that everything is gonna be amazing when this happens, you know know, like, just give it to me, I want it, I'm going to find it, but when it's not there, it's not there and, like you said, everything starts to fall.

33:26

And you ask one question, it leads to another one, it leads to another one, and then, at one point, your family says you're being disrespectful, or why are you focusing on those things you know?

33:39

And it's like well, because I don't understand it, like I don't get it and as an adult argumentative yeah as an adult.

33:46

Now I like the same with you.

33:48

I like when it started to hit me because rocky actually told me you know where he was at before, you know when I was still very much in it and it broke my heart, I was like, wow, I lost a brother.

33:59

Like he's going to hell you know, like.

34:02

so, you know, whenever I started to kind of really reevaluate my faith, it was hard.

34:12

It was hard for me and then, like, even it took me even two years, I think, after like the realization, it took me two years to fully drop the logo.

34:19

You know, like, just be like, yeah, that's, I'm just not, and you know what, I don't care, like, I don't care that people have an opinion about what I believe, because I believe that I follow everything up with love period.

34:31

So if I live in a loving way, why do you care who I worship?

34:36

Why do I need to worship who you worship?

34:39

That sounds a little obvious Like, or, you know, it just doesn't sit well.

34:43

So, but yeah, it took me a while to get to that confidence Because when I left, like the whole religion, it was depressing, Like I was sad, Like.

34:53

I was like damn, my whole life has been a lie, you know, and I've just been honoring, like damn, my whole life has been a lie and I've just been honoring this terrible not terrible, but just something that I don't even believe in and I've gone to bat for it for so long You're listening to.

35:08

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35:35

And so Ike, is your dad still alive?

35:38

He's not.

35:50

Did you have him at this point, when you were starting to question everything.

35:54

No, no, no, no. Uh, yeah, that was that was actually actually instrumental in in one of my big steps against the faith, arguably kind of allowing that because, yeah, he was.

36:08

He was a complicated man, you know, he was, uh, he was in the public eye and uh it it caused it caused a lot of inner turmoil for him and we've learned a lot of things about mental health since he passed away.

36:23

But there were moments of my upbringing that were not a good time and, if I'm honest, I prayed for my parents to get a divorce whenever I was a kid, and it was the fact that I went unheard was the first time that I really started questioning my faith and, even though I regurgitated a lot of the points and I had a lot of the verses memorized, I knew the shtick about that.

36:56

I I knew how to, I knew how to walk there, I knew how to talk the talk, but I never uh, to my much to my detriment.

37:06

At that point in my life, I never really knew how to walk the walk, and that makes me really wonder how far it had ever really sank in to begin with, if I'm honest.

37:18

Right, but I knew that.

37:21

It was shaken whenever I was because it was at the end of 2013 when I was healing, so a lot of my evangelism was happening in 2014.

37:31

Over those two years 2014, 2015,.

37:36

I was on really shaky ground.

37:38

I just kind of took some steps back from it.

37:41

I was focusing on rebuilding my life and moving on in a better direction.

37:47

I was still kind of wearing that logo, like you said, victor, but my questions were growing in number all the time.

38:01

Right what year?

38:02

was this it was 2014 and 15.

38:07

And it was in 2016 specifically that two things happened that shook my face and pretty much put it on its last leg, and the first one was visiting Japan.

38:22

I went and saw my best friend in Japan and, you know, setting foot in a country where English is not a priority, you know, being an American is not a priority, being Christian is not a priority.

38:37

Being an American is not a priority, being Christian is not a priority.

38:39

All of the things that stroke our egos, our entire lives while we're here, totally irrelevant over there.

38:44

Wow, and that will get your attention.

38:47

Right, that will get your attention because, like in my heart, I couldn't help but think wow, you know, there are temples dedicated to things like foxes and all kinds of interesting things across Japan, and it is very much a social and cultural thing.

39:05

They do things completely differently and I'm just like, wow, according to everything I was ever taught back home, this entire country is going to hell.

39:16

Home, this entire country is going to hell.

39:23

Yeah, and I don't think a truly compassionate, rational mind can ingest a thought like that and not wrestle with it right, yeah, so you started to wake up a little bit so not only that's not the only thing in 2016 that happened.

39:39

The other thing that happened in 2016 was that the religious right in our country elected Donald Trump as president, oh man, I think I met you in 2017.

39:56

It was 18. 18? I feel like, for whatever reason, when we first started to get to know you, I felt like you were not Christian.

40:06

Then, the more I got to know you, so I thought I was like, oh, I think he is a Christian.

40:16

More I got to know you so I thought I was like, oh wait, he, I think he is a christian.

40:18

And then you had made a comment about jesus or something, or god maybe, at one point when we were together and I was like, oh, he is a christian.

40:23

I didn't know because, you know, based on the appearance and lifestyle, I was like, yeah, he's like a lot like us and you know.

40:30

But I was assuming you know. So what would you say at that time?

40:35

Like, what, where were you at? In your, in your, I guess, religious journey or spiritual journey?

40:41

I was reconciling to myself to being an agnostic.

40:44

Basically, um, I I felt really, I felt really silly.

40:52

After you know, because here are, here are the people that I have listened to my entire life right, that I have allowed to get in my head, that I have allowed to judge me and judge people that I love and judge people that I care about, and now this is their guy, this is their platform and it just it.

41:13

It's rung with such hypocrisy, god, yes, that it made me angry and it kept me angry for about four years straight.

41:24

Oh, my god, and it, yeah.

41:27

You know, to an extent, I'm still upset about it absolutely because we're about to.

41:32

We're about to get a big dose of the same exact thing.

41:36

It's already done.

41:40

It's just the infrastructure of what our politics currently like, our government currently looks like.

41:50

Yeah, but I think he hit the nail on the head with the hypocrisy. These are the people that grew up telling.

41:54

When we grew up, they were telling us to be nice and this and that and this and that.

41:59

Yeah.

42:00

Everything that Trump's against you know, and it just it doesn't make sense.

42:05

It's literally just hatred.

42:08

Yeah, I mean this dude.

42:10

He won his debates essentially like saying, just random, like clickbait stuff you know, and it's like funny because, like you know, we're children and we think it's funny to be like funny during a debate, because this is the time to be serious.

42:25

So he won a lot of people over by just being an ass, essentially, but at the end of the day, it's just like.

42:31

Has anybody ever liked the president?

42:34

Has there ever been an overwhelming like we love this man?

42:37

There's always the demographics who love them, the demographics who don't like you're always gonna.

42:42

You can have an argument for the rest of your lives about every freaking president, and it's because one person trying to make all the decisions is always going to be the scapegoat.

42:51

Especially one thing goes wrong, and it's it's the the world.

42:55

I don't think that we can compare that particular president to the standard that had been set before him, because I would make an argument that, even though I may profoundly disagree with policies of previous presidents, I would say for the most part they were pretty well round like qualified.

43:19

I can't say that qualified.

43:22

I mean, yeah, I think trump's probably one of the few who didn't really have much credentials other than like a businessman him.

43:30

Maybe reagan, but but, like you said, qualifications he had none the the actual morals of the people he was representing didn't match up.

43:42

It just.

43:44

Nothing seemed right, like it's just and, like you said, we're gonna get the same shit coming soon so, the way my mind works, I connect dots that maybe they're obvious, maybe they're not, but what I saw in the election of Trump okay, especially given the fact that he was primarily voted in by the religious right conservative Christians, et cetera, et cetera, questions, et cetera, et cetera.

44:19

Um, then, comparing that right, thinking back to the objections that I had whenever I was, whenever I was evangelizing, you know, many of the questions that I had, um came from my core values that I didn't realize at the time exactly how liberal they were, but I have been able to grow my entire life and just didn't know it.

44:37

So, carrying that forward and realizing that, oh my God, it really sounds like religion has been employed mainly as a political tool to keep people well, to keep people proud, just keep well, to keep people in many, yeah, keep people obedient, keep, keep things a certain way, um, in, in ways that are that are largely unfair and that, uh, you know it's being taught to be prejudiced, for instance, against homosexuals, is one, one of what I'm talking about, to the point where I even had a job whenever I was an asshole evangelical teenager, where I was proactively voting against gay marriage at that point, and then touting it going and touting it to my coworkers and using it to needle them and thinking it was funny, like.

45:38

I just voted against your. You know like it was.

45:41

It was. It was awful. Wow, it was awful looking back on it, but at the time I felt justified.

45:48

Right.

45:50

That's crazy, man, it is crazy, that's crazy.

45:53

And then. But but then looking back on it right and realizing how often that has happened to people, how people have been controlled by it and what a massive political influence it has had election and how many are and then whenever he loses the election, and then you've got things like covid that come about and conspiracies are literally everywhere and it's almost like to.

46:25

I mean how many. I heard even christians that I remain friends with to this day complaining about how many conspiracies were popping up in their Sunday morning church sermons.

46:37

It was like believing in conspiracies was becoming part of being a Christian.

46:43

During the Trump presidency.

46:45

Dude, if one person puts it online and one other person believes it, that's the end of that.

46:49

I'm pretty sure when you sound eloquent enough and you just sound, there's like this show.

46:56

Who is doing this right now, I guess, as a prank, where they just make people believe the most obnoxious shit and they go with it because they're like, oh, I don't know, this is what they're saying.

47:04

Um, it's absurd, it's like an illness, like we literally are, so I guess naive to believe these things.

47:11

You know, just because enough people said, said it, and whatever.

47:15

But, um, but yeah, when you were saying, when I was saying it was crazy with, with what you were, uh, with the marriage thing, um, I didn't mean that in a judgmental way.

47:25

Um, because I I'm saying it's crazy because I was the same, like I literally a lot of what you're saying.

47:31

I was taught the same exact way like we're gonna stand firm on this and're going to and gay people cannot get married, and that's.

47:39

You know, that's the worst of the worst of it.

47:42

You know, it's like characterizing or categorizing which sins are, you know, more than the other.

47:49

Whatever, I think that's like taught everywhere apparently.

47:53

I'll tell you guys a quick story um about, um, my, my an experience.

48:01

I had my first true gay friend, uh, that changed my, that ended up changing my perception and like cracked that whole uh purview that I had wide open, that I'd grown up with in small-town Texas.

48:16

I had moved out of state.

48:19

I'd actually moved to Georgia to pursue film when the film boom was starting to happen out there.

48:24

My girlfriend at the time was working at Applebee's as a bartender, so I ended up spending a lot of time at the bar at Applebee's.

48:34

Yeah, one of the bartenders there was this big dude named Jim and Jim talked exactly like Mr Garrison from South Park and you know he would talk about his partner named Chris and they had a daughter named Rebecca and they had been together for 25 years and of course in my mind I'm thinking of Chris as a woman.

49:04

Right, I'm thinking of the classic American family.

49:07

Of course.

49:07

It had been drilled into my head and you know.

49:12

Then one day he's talking about Chris and he says something in a way that clues me in that Chris is a man.

49:21

Bells start going off.

49:23

And my eyebrows go up and I'm like Jim, are you gay?

49:26

And he snapped his head back around at me like are you looking at me?

49:35

Like I'm a total idiot? He had the greatest line of all.

49:45

Time he looks at me, he goes oh no, honey, I just play one on tv and and I'm like dude, dude in my whole, you know, because here's this loving family that's been together for 25 years and I'm right holy shit, man is finding out that this person is gay.

50:03

Is that going to flip my whole perception of admiring this person?

50:10

Does that negate what they did or does that negate his life?

50:14

Absolutely fucking not exactly and that was a major wake-up call for me.

50:20

I did the same. I deleted facebook for a long time and got it back for my business, and I started to get memories of when I was also like conservative christ Victor.

50:35

Oh my gosh.

50:37

That's funny, I'm humiliated.

50:40

I'm humiliated and it's the stuff that I'm like.

50:43

I would have been okay if they canceled this person because, like, yeah, that seems like what the fuck are you thinking?

50:52

Right, but that was me. I was literally grew up thinking all kinds of stuff is normal, you know, and that was just pure ignorance.

51:00

But, like, I also grew up in a culture where it was like that this is normal you know.

51:07

But see, that's where I do object to our attitude towards cancellation as well, because anytime you threaten people's sense of free speech, regardless of whether they're being assholes or they're not, people are going to ultimately take umbrage to that and lean into it.

51:32

That's something that really, really concerns me, and the thing is like I don't even know that I'm bothered so much by people's opinion as much as I used to be.

51:43

Like. I just feel bad for them, like I'm just like well, I mean, that's just the world they live in.

51:50

I don't really care that they don't believe what I believe.

51:54

It's more so when it starts to infringe upon my quality of life, like now you're trying to impose your laws and regulations on me, where I think women have the choice to make their own decisions with their body, and things like that.

52:10

So it's like those are hard topics and it's like those are the topics that my family can't even discuss with me.

52:16

One of my siblings posted something online and I reached out and I said I would love to have a conversation with you about why this is not true and why this is wrong, and the response was very not open to dialogue.

52:30

It was very directly like hey, you're not going to change my mind no matter what you think you're going to say or whatever you already think you're going to try to convince me.

52:38

Nothing will ever convince me and I was like, okay, that's all I needed to hear.

52:43

And that's just unfortunately sad, because in those situations I feel like now you're infringing your religion on people and that's not right.

52:55

Taking a moment to ruminate on that and why it's so infuriating that we are where we are where Trump is concerned.

53:03

That dude did not win the popular vote.

53:05

He didn't come anywhere close to winning the popular vote, which means the majority of Americans did not want him to be president.

53:13

That did not stop him from moving forward and putting three ultra-conservative judges on our Supreme Court.

53:23

That would ultimately dismantle Roe versus Wade.

53:25

So it is such a slippery slope.

53:28

That's where our electoral college gave us the electoral college.

53:34

Maybe they didn't pull the trigger, but they certainly set everything up Absolutely.

53:39

It just it makes you sick, and that was the primary thing that pushed me away was that I felt that it was being used as something very militant and even if it was, at one point, what it professed to be, it is certainly not that thing in the era of Donald Trump anymore.

54:02

Absolutely and I can't tell you how many people I know personally that stepped away.

54:11

That took the exact same course that.

54:16

I did in a lot shorter order to get there.

54:20

Because the thing I think that stood out to me is where it pertains to religion is that in religion, you are asked to just not think, turn off the critical thinking part of your brain and just accept that certain things are what they are.

54:44

And if you're confronted with something pesky like science, like carbon dating, like dinosaur fossils, then you can just put those things to the side and you don't have to pay attention to them.

54:59

And the concerning part of that is is that teaches people how to think.

55:07

That teaches people how they like.

55:10

That opens up so many doors, and I think that's why conspiracy theories are so rampant today.

55:17

Even though there's absolutely zero evidence that there was anything wrong with the election in 2020, roughly or yeah, within 2020, roughly half the american people will say that there was funny business going on, because that's what their side tells them to think.

55:33

Yep, and they can just push whatever information, whatever statistics, whatever headlines they don't want to hear.

55:42

You can put those to the side, just like you can put science that confirms the theory of evolution, because if it's not convenient to your identity politics, then what good is it right and that that's the thing it's.

55:59

I really do feel like facebook for the older generations were so bad because it created this echo chamber even more than they already were in their churches and their groups and stuff.

56:15

But like now, they're just getting, bam you know, just slammed with all these theories and things, and although when technology came around, they told us to not believe everything that's on there, for some reason, now it's gospel.

56:34

Yeah.

56:35

Right, especially when it's coming from their side.

56:37

I think people started to. Really.

56:40

I think there was an obvious divide in two groups of people, and those people acknowledged it.

56:48

Like you know, you got the anti-vaxxers and then you got the Democrats or whatever whatever you get it um.

56:59

It was just like you, you could tell that some people and they were like well, have you, you know, and there was all these questions and and then like okay, you know, even myself, with my mother, my mom and I had like during covid, just unfortunately we had this like huge falling out and went down this really dark time and, uh, a lot of it revolved around just all of the pain and resentment from from religion, from from church, from from church people, people that had done me wrong, people who you know just were manipulators and you know whatever.

57:40

And then, like kind of just taking a stance to my mom because I've always put her so high on a pedestal, and really just saying, like you kind of messed up and like it's time to have this dialogue and, um, my mom has like this very innocent ignorance, like she means well, but it's like you should know better at this age, like at this time, somebody should have told you this already.

58:09

Um, and it's like little behaviors that we have in our culture as hispanic people, like we think we can get away with stuff because we're not white, apparently, and uh, so, yeah, I had to like call my mom on some stuff and be like that's like you can't say that you can't do that and don't come in like and you know I didn't hit her with it for real, but I was like my house, my rules, kind of thing like right, you're not about to come in here and talk about all lives matter.

58:34

I'm sorry, but like you don't get it.

58:37

You don't get it if you're in here and I said and if you don't get it, then I'm not doing a good enough job explaining it to you, and I had just finished watching the harriet movie, so I was.

58:47

I was like really, for the culture yeah, I'm like nah, y'all fucked up.

58:52

Nonetheless, it was, uh, that was a journey.

58:55

Going down that road with my mom and like seeing the vast differences in like our opinions and how we live and what we think and about gay marriage and about abortion, and I started to finally like stand my ground against my mom that was like a really big deal.

59:10

Um, so anyway, I say all that to say I Ike did you feel like, once you started to explore yourself in this new position, like this new version of yourself and the new understanding, do you feel like you know life moved differently for you or do you feel like you started to just see things a lot clearer?

59:30

How do you feel like you were at that time during like this transition?

59:36

How do you feel like you were at that time during this transition?

59:39

So the main thing that I will point out is that I was able to understand and ultimately forgive myself, and that went a long way, because feeling that kind of disenfranchisement, feeling that sort of distension within yourself where your religion is concerned, you know, because that is such a deep part of so many people from childhood, you know that whenever you find yourself at odds with that, it can way way longer than I ever realized I was.

1:00:16

So once I kind of made peace with certain things about myself, then there was a lot of forgiveness that came with that and I think that's really important for people.

1:00:29

Yeah, hey, I have a question. Yes, what are?

1:00:36

your thoughts on time travel.

1:00:39

I, to this point, don't really think that it will ever be a thing.

1:00:44

It's hard for me to imagine. But then again, there's a lot about the physical world that I do not even begin to understand.

1:00:57

Well, so I want you to imagine, since you don't think time travel is real, I want you to imagine that you're the first person who gets to talk to Ike as he comes out of a coma.

1:01:10

Okay, and you have five minutes.

1:01:13

Okay, you have five minutes to.

1:01:16

Ike sits up and you're in front of him and you're like dude I know I look different, but I am you and, uh, I need to tell you some things.

1:01:27

Um, I'm curious to know what would you say.

1:01:34

oh, my, my God, what a question, Wow.

1:01:37

First, I would say resoundingly as many times as I needed to until I was heard that it was going to be okay, because that's what I needed to hear more than anything else is that it was going to be okay and that what had happened, even though I was responsible for it, wasn't entirely my fault.

1:02:02

Right, and I needed to start immediate work on forgiving myself.

1:02:09

Um, I do think that it was a miracle in some way, shape or form that I lived, because I can't explain it.

1:02:22

It's going to be very important not to get ahead of yourself, not to go so head over heels with preconceived notions and what other people are telling you, but listen to yourself, listen, do not deny those voices, do not deny those instincts and those questions when you hear them, because no amount of trying to silence them will ever make them go away.

1:02:58

As a matter of fact, they will only get louder and they will only get stronger until they're addressed, whatever that looks like, and it takes a hell of a lot of strength to be able to do that.

1:03:11

But, like most things that we're afraid of, usually, there's a considerable breakthrough on the other side.

1:03:20

Right, yeah, pursue that breakthrough if I was you and I had to talk to myself as soon as I got up, I'd be like dude, everything you think that matters literally doesn't matter.

1:03:29

Like everything you think is so important is not.

1:03:31

And yet here you are, and I think a lot of you, you know.

1:03:36

I don't know if you take credit because, like when you were telling the story, I was trying to let you talk and let you do your thing, but, um, I wanted you to say, like you know, I'm back because, like I wanted to be back.

1:03:49

You came back. Like you took control, you know, like you're stepping into your confidence of, like, this is the life I'm gonna live now.

1:03:56

Like I was messing up before I was drinking, I was trying to numb myself, I was going to this and that, like now, like here I am, and like from what I know right now about you, you're a complete success story, you know.

1:04:11

So I hope that that's how you feel on the inside.

1:04:18

I appreciate that more than I can say, man, because I don't feel that way as consistently as I would like to, because I'm human and I'm destined to feel less than and not enough.

1:04:37

You know, and I can acknowledge that, um, but at the same time it is, I am very, very proud of the example that I've been able to set.

1:04:48

Uh, you know, being alcohol free for over 10 years now.

1:04:52

And you know, especially from going from a point where I could not sleep longer than four hours without having to get up and take a drink, right, you know, I would wake up shaking.

1:05:08

I was there on the edge of the PTs all the time.

1:05:13

And now you know, being able to wake up, uh, you know, with no hangover.

1:05:19

Yeah, there's not a day that goes by that I'm not thankful that I can wake up and function immediately without you know, because I knew what life was like for so long, being in such miserable shape, not just physically, not physically, but mentally as well.

1:05:38

And it's so important to take care of yourself, body and spirit and I think that's a lot of what we've been talking about here is being fair to yourself, giving yourself a fair opportunity to be heard and to experience this life to the fullest, whether that includes having a faith or not, right?

1:06:07

So again, guys, I just think it's a really important thing that you're doing here.

1:06:15

These are really important discussions that you're facilitating and, ironically enough, you're doing the Lord's work.

1:06:25

We wouldn't have it any other way. I really appreciate it.

1:06:29

Thank you for listening to this episode of this is Hard.

1:06:31

We want to thank our guests for participating in our show and we want to express our deepest appreciation to our listeners.

1:06:40

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1:06:46

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1:06:50

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1:07:00

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