Brut America
  • 2 years ago
"I could have missed it all."

One in six American adults have a substance use disorder. Brut filmmakers Leo Hamelin and Eleonore Finkelstein visited a retreat to uncover their stories of recovery and hope.
Transcript
00:00I'm going to light this for my sister and my dad who did not get the help that
00:10they needed and they died a year ago. So that's for them.
00:21My name is Ken, I'm a person in sustained recovery. My name is Lucas. My name is
00:25Kristen, I'm an alcoholic. I'm Renata, I'm a woman in recovery. I'm John, I've been
00:30in recovery for two years now. This is the first time I've ever done anything
00:34like this. I'm really grateful to be here, to be around friends, and to be
00:39comfortable in my own skin because it was a long time that I wasn't.
00:43This is our sixth Adventure Weekend. What I find out is that we're more alike than we are
00:58different. The situations may not be exactly the same, but there's so many
01:02commonalities between us. So whatever you want to do, there's a ton of
01:05activities. If you want to just, if this is your weekend to sleep and just
01:08recharge that way, then you can do that as well. But I'd encourage you to
01:12be involved if you can. I'm probably not nearly as far along in my sobriety as
01:18the rest of you guys and I'm super like self-conscious about that. Anytime
01:22someone asks me like how is my sobriety going, I'm like it sucks, I hate it, this
01:26is awful. And I guess I was acting that way and it was manifesting as aggression
01:31because I guess I just really wanted people to like see my pain, but I wasn't
01:35like expressing it properly. So I'm ready to not be so resistant and hopefully
01:42soon when people ask me how it's going, I can genuinely say like it's good, it's
01:45going well. Early sobriety, it does suck. Yeah. You know, it does suck because also
01:50you're feeling things that you've never, I short-circuited feeling those
01:55things. So like to go through them and you know sometimes sober, son of a bitch,
01:59everything's real. The catalyst for my substance abuse was the death of a very
02:05close friend of mine. She was an addict also and never really got the help that
02:09she needed. I've been kind of on the path towards recovery, but it hasn't been
02:16going great. I've had a lot of relapses along the way. I've felt a lot of anger
02:20and feeling like I'm kind of forced to give up this thing that was like the
02:24only thing that made me feel okay and now I don't have that, but I know that
02:27there's other ways to kind of get that feeling without needing a crutch. So I
02:33got kicked out of the Navy, which sent me like spiraling out of control. I knew
02:38that I was up to no good as soon as I got home, so I made sure that I pushed my
02:42loved ones as far away as possible. I like got kicked out of where I was
02:47living, so I didn't have people checking up on me. My friends were all annoyed with
02:49me. I just kept everybody very distant, so it was, it was very isolating, but I
02:56chose it and then I couldn't like get back, I guess. I really wanted to keep my
03:07personal health, honestly, very secret. Addiction is one of the characteristics
03:14of it is isolation. There's some orange in, they're wild. How long have you been
03:32doing your own thing, like living on your own and like? I've been on my own since nine.
03:37My parents were neglectful. They didn't, they weren't parents at all.
03:45They were just there doing their own thing, you know, drugs and stuff. When I
03:49was 18 and I downed a half a bottle of vodka, and that was the start. That was the
03:55start, but also I should have died that night. I drank every single day from the
04:00minute I woke up in the morning until I passed out. It was really, really bad.
04:05I've gone to church drinking. I've gone to their school functions. It's not like
04:11our behavior is ever excusable, right, but like we were sick. What was like your
04:17realization moment when you wanted to stop drinking? I was working at Amazon
04:24and I wanted to die. I was drinking heavily every night when I got home. I
04:31was getting high at work. I was thinking about jumping off the balcony because I
04:36would work on the third or fourth floor and I had a panic attack. I had a severe
04:41panic attack and I ended up in the hospital. It's the most extreme things,
04:45but like there's that wake-up call. It's that like I cannot go on living in this
04:50pain, but I also don't know like there's other options. I was like not living and
04:54then when I was 28 I got into recovery and then it was like my life started. So
04:59I always say my life started at 28 and now I've been sober for two and a half
05:04years. Yeah, life's great. Life's good. I could remember an assumption of someone
05:12with alcohol use disorder is sort of a disheveled person drinking liquor out of
05:16a bag. When actually these people could look like me and I think I look pretty
05:24well put together today by me showing up and just being who I am, I hope that that
05:29eliminates stigma because we can look like anyone. I felt that I was in a way
05:39protecting the people that I love from all of the negativity that I was feeling,
05:42but I've realized recently that people care and they want to help and to push
05:46that away, like it's selfish to do that.
05:51The loved ones in my life also get a lot out of offering the help. When you're in
05:56active addiction, I don't know, you just feel so isolated or you isolated
06:00yourself. The key actually is like the community.
06:06It helps you to know that you're not alone and it's people of all different
06:13age groups, but a lot of the time they're just going through the same struggles
06:16that you're going through. It helps you like be reassured that you're on the
06:26right path. I've realized I really need people, like I love people. It doesn't have to be
06:33focused on sobriety and recovering stuff, it's just like being a person, like
06:36talking to everybody, getting to know them, hanging out, laughing, but there
06:39always is that layer of like we can get like very real. Well I'm four and a half
06:46years sober, so I think this is my fourth year. Awesome. Yeah, nice, it's a good fit.
06:53Tell Honey Badger she's a good dog and if anything happens to me, I leave Jake
06:59with all my debt. I'm not going nearly that high, we are not going that high.
07:08I've never done this before.
07:10Oh, that's so much fun.
07:12Okay.
07:14You got this.
07:16I know.
07:18Are you getting ready? No.
07:20Because you look ready. No.
07:22I'm not ready.
07:24Alright, let's take three more steps.
07:26Okay, stop, stop it!
07:28Stop!
07:35I handle most of my bad days now by reaching out to someone, by talking to someone.
07:46We're going to move on to the meditation.
07:50Allow your eyes to gently close.
07:53Allow your breathing to be natural.
07:58Doing things alone is not, it's not healthy. We were meant to be around the fire.
08:08There's a reason why our ancestors came down from the caves and came around the fire,
08:13because we need each other.
08:16Right now, I'm sitting here, there's a bird, like, you know, a nice fire, good company,
08:24and, like, everything's fine right now.
08:28I'm around people that care about me.
08:30I care about them.
08:32I know we're going to eat s'mores later.
08:36Who's got it better than us?
08:40And I could have missed it all.
08:42I could have missed it all.
08:46When I, like, started treatment,
08:48I was so, like,
08:50I know everyone always says, like, I was so broken.
08:52Like, I was so not a person,
08:54and I didn't want to be.
08:56And one thing I really remember is
08:58that first month, PHP, the inpatient,
09:00there was another housemate,
09:02and me and him were talking one night,
09:04and he, at one point, had, like,
09:06I think it was two or three years of sobriety
09:08and then relapsed, and that's why he was there.
09:10And I remember staying up late with him,
09:12talking, and I was, like, picking his brain.
09:14I was like, what was it like?
09:16Like, I couldn't, I was trying to understand what that would be like,
09:18to have, like, two, three, I was like,
09:20what was it like?
09:22I hadn't had more than a few days,
09:24and I don't even know how many years at that point.
09:28He was like,
09:30it felt like freedom.
09:32I get what he says now.
09:40It's okay to feel pain
09:42and to suffer.
09:44It's a human thing. We all do.
09:46It's fine
09:48to, like,
09:50be vulnerable, be open,
09:52get comfortable being uncomfortable.
09:54It's better
09:56on the other side.
09:58It's clearer.
10:00It's happier.
10:02It's...
10:04It's great.
10:16You
10:20You
10:22You
10:24You
10:26You