EP 1:43: Straight Girls Like Meth Too with Nicole
19 Dec 2024 · 70 min
In this episode of the After Meth Podcast, host Dr. Dallas Bragg, a former crystal‑meth addict and sobriety coach, interviews Nicole Ploudre (also known as Nikki), a straight cis‑woman who spent over a decade battling crystal‑meth and polysubstance addiction. Nicole recounts how a teenage prescription for phentermine sparked her first encounter with weight‑related body‑image insecurity, leading to escalating use of methamphetamine, first by smoking and later by injecting ("slamming"). She describes the hyper‑sexuality, multiple partners, and the social environment of rural Arkansas that normalized meth production. Nicole details her functional employment while using, the transition to intravenous use, a 2012 arrest for possession, a year in prison, and the loss of custody of her son after CPS intervened during a relapse. She narrates her pregnancy while still using meth, the birth of her son Nathaniel on July 4 2014, and the subsequent struggle to maintain sobriety. The turning point was the adoption of medication‑assisted treatment (MAT) with Suboxone for opioid dependence, which she and her husband Neil also used, despite stigma from traditional 12‑step communities. Nicole explains how the couple’s shared commitment, mutual support, and the birth of their child motivated sustained recovery, even as Neil relapsed during the pandemic. Throughout, she advocates that recovery is not one‑size‑fits‑all, criticizes the “recovery police” of abstinence‑only models, and promotes MAT, therapy, and community‑based support. The episode also highlights Nicole’s extensive social‑media presence (≈400 k followers across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube) and her mission to provide transparent, harm‑reduction content for others in recovery. Dallas frames the conversation as a comparison of straight versus gay meth experiences, noting commonalities such as body‑dysmorphia, sexual disinhibition, and the allure of a “magic elixir.” The episode includes trigger warnings, resources (SAMHSA hotline, supplemental study guide), and calls to action for listeners to engage with the podcast community.
Chapters
Hey y'all, a few things before you listen to this episode with my friend and colleague Nicole. She's a straight cis woman in recovery from crystal meth misuse. I thought it might be a good idea to look and see what happens on the straight side. Nicole is brutally transparent about her drug use, just like me. I think that's why we vibe so well and why people call us Mr. and Mrs. Meth. But that being said, I want to give an extra trigger warning for some parts of her story around what we gays call slamming. Just be careful because she describes her experience in vivid detail. I left it in there in the episode though, because I want to show that eventually these things can be talked about and it not be a trigger to use. I also want to point out that the latter part of her story where she talks about finally breaking free from the crystal meth cycle, she used medically assisted therapy, medical assisted therapy, MAT, specifically Suboxone. Pay attention to her story regarding the shame she felt and received from the recovery community because apparently the recovery gods somewhere said you can't use any mind-altering substances and call yourself sober. Nicole and her husband were perfect candidates for MAT and have built an impactful recovery outreach, all because they decided not to listen to the, quote, old-timers around them and tried a recovery route that seemed out of the box, and it worked. And listen, MAT is not out of the box. It is perfectly common, and it works for many people. There are some who might say she's not sober. I personally feel that that's short-sighted and ignorant. If you can't seem to break free from the crystal meth cycle, and you too are ashamed to look into MAT, let Nicole's life be the sign you need to make the move. All right, guys, hope you enjoy our talk.
And then make a change. So you learn and you experience so you can change and grow. But you didn't lose all your positive progress that you made in the past. And I hate that they teach that in treatment centers, in AA.
Welcome to the After Meth Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Dallas Bragg, a former crystal meth addict, now sobriety coach. Join me on my mission to increase awareness around the epidemic of crystal meth among the gay male population and create a repository of resources for current and past addicts as well as and especially for their loved ones. This is The Aftermath. Trigger warning, this podcast will contain discussions pertaining to drug and alcohol misuse. If you feel triggered to use or relapse, please call SAMHSA's National Hotline at 1-800-662-HELP. Also, if you are new in your sobriety journey and you feel like you could be triggered, By discussions around drug, alcohol, and sex misuse, please do not listen to this podcast. All right, now on with the show. Welcome back to the Aftermath Podcast. We are glad to have you here. And I have to say, before we get started, if you have not rated and reviewed the podcast, please do so. And I also have been forgetting to mention on the episodes that there is a supplemental study guide available With each episode. You can find that link in the episode notes if you want to be on the mailing list. I also send out the study guide through email. Just, uh, you can just DM me or comment or whatever. I am everywhere on every platform. You cannot miss me. So just say, I want to be on your mailing list, and we will get you on the mailing list. But every podcast has a study guide that goes along with it. That includes actionable exercises, journal prompts, and reflective questions so that you get the most out of each episode. And you're going to get a lot out of this one. I am so happy to have my buddy, which some people refer to us as Mr. and Mrs. Meth on social media.
Yes.
But Nikki has been around a while. She has a huge following. And I just want to say, you have just been so generous to me and so kind to me and welcoming. And you've taken me under your little wing and just made me feel just so included. And, you know, I came into addiction and it didn't go away in recovery completely, but this feeling of needing to belong. needing to be accepted. Please like me. I want to be one of you, that kind of thing. And you just— it was so— the environment that you, you just reached out to me, you gave me your number, whatever I needed. Can you help? You know, you wanted to help me, and you did help me. Um, from the time we've met till now, I've gained about 40,000 followers on TikTok, and my Instagram continues to grow. But you just— you have such a kind and generous spirit, and I just love being your friend.
That's because I can relate to the way you feel, because I was the same way. I was the same exact way. I always felt like I didn't have a place or I didn't fit in when I was growing up and I was younger, and that's a lot of the reasons why I struggled with addiction in the first place. So especially with social media, um, when I saw your account on TikTok— I was just scrolling, you guys, like scrolling on TikTok— and one of Dallas's videos popped up And then I like went into his account and started watching the videos and I was like, holy smokes. One, not many, many people can hold a candle to the way I share about my addiction to methamphetamine. Like I share it balls to the wall, real deal, Holyfield. And when I found you, I was like, oh honey, he shares like me. He doesn't sugarcoat it. And so I had to reach out to you. If I didn't, I would be doing myself a disservice. You know what I mean?
Right, right, right. So Nikki, why don't you, uh, introduce yourself and tell us your handle again, um, on, on all the social media platforms too?
Sure. Um, so my name is Nikki, or you can call me Nicole. I go by both, um, Nicole Ploudre and, um, Nikki Ploudre over on Facebook. But my handle across all my platforms is Discovering Nicole. Um, you can just type in Discovering Nicole and you'll find me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and on YouTube. And I'm a person in recovery. I have been in recovery, recovery for nine years. I was addicted to multiple substances, but my addiction started well. It started with not like I was saying before, with feeling inadequate, struggling with my weight. I was a young girl about fourteen, fifteen years old. I was desperate. I felt like I was the fattest girl in my school. I wasn't. I wasn't even 20 pounds over my suggested weight that they say you're supposed to be. I think I maybe needed to lose like 12 pounds, but I thought I was so fat and so ugly. So, by the time I was 16 years old, I had talked my mom into taking us to see our family care provider, which was this amazing doctor. I had been seeing him. He delivered me. When I was born. And so my mom took me to see the doctor and I told the doctor, you know, I'm fat, I'm ugly, I need help, I can't lose weight. And when I look back on this and it's— I really can't believe that I was able to get the doctor to give me phentermine at 16 years old.
Jesus.
16 years old, a prescription for phentermine for 60 days. Not one month, 2 months I got this prescription, and the moment I took my first phentermine pill, well, it was like the heavens had opened and Jesus came down and kissed me on the forehead. I was like, where has this been all my life?
Oh my God.
You know, I had energy. Yeah, I had focus. I had mental clarity. I, um, I was on a bunch of extracurricular activities anyway, like fast pitch softball, dancing. I was on the dance team. I was on the marching band. So it wasn't like I wasn't an active kid already. But you add phentermine to this already like active regimen that I have, all these extracurriculars, and I was knocking it out of the park. Like I was, you know.
I bet that pitch was fast.
Oh, and I felt like I could take over the world. And for 60 days I took this medication, but it was probably around the second month when I realized, you know, when I take, I take one, like I'm prescribed one a day, it's not doing the same thing it was doing last month. So I started taking 2 a day.
Wow.
And then I ran out of the prescription before the end of the month, tried to get a refill, and the doctor was like, this isn't a medication that you need to be on for the rest of your life. I'm not going to refill it. You've already lost— I think I lost like 11 pounds on it. He was like, you're in your goal weight, you're in the perfect weight range, you don't need it anymore. You are very active, you're a teenager, you're going to be fine. And I just didn't— couldn't take no for an answer because I felt like I'd finally found something that like helped me be better because I was so insecure when I was younger. I was very insecure and very unsure of myself, which Now that I'm an adult, I realize that that's part of just being a teenager. But for me, like medical professionals, especially back then, they didn't sit down and tell you like, hey, if you take this medication, it could be the answer to all your problems and it could incur— it could make you feel like you need to take it forever. And I didn't have any knowledge of addiction. Even though addiction ran in my family real heavy. So anyway, that's how I started out using drugs, was through an insecurity about my weight. And so I started making content on social media to share my story once I got sober, which I got sober July 13th, 2015, after losing custody of my son to CPS.
Wow. Wow. You know, back to this doctor prescribing you this medication, what you really needed was some mental health, right? Some mental health help, not throw medicine at the medication at it.
100%. I needed therapy. I needed therapy like I needed. And, and so My family dynamic as a young girl growing up, my parents are still married. Like, I'm— my parents are still together to this day. But I come from a family of like, my dad is Italian and my mom is Mexican. Everything we always did was always centered around food. My dad has control issues with food, but he's always been able to balance it out because he works out all the time. So he's like, even now he's like 70 and goes to the gym and is like a bodybuilder. He has big muscles and everything. And so our family dynamic was always centered around food. And, um, a lot of the stuff that like went on in our family, because I have 2 little sisters, my dad was like really not able to handle like crisis. So he would freak out. He's very high-strung Italian controlling father. And so It created like me and my sisters. We were also very controlling, but we had a lot of lack of control in our lives where, like I said, we struggled with food addiction. Two out of three of my sisters and I struggle with addiction to drugs and alcohol. And so, like when we were growing up, my parents didn't have like an understanding about mental health, even though both of them came from families. Where like my dad's father was an alcoholic and my mom's father was an alcoholic, but they had no understanding of addiction or any kind of mental health education or understanding of it at all.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I wanted to do this podcast because one reason I wanted to compare and contrast, you know, like what, what are the similarities, but what are the differences between crystal meth misuse, substance use disorder in the gay community compared to the straight community. But what you're, what you're describing so far in terms of your childhood and your mental, mental health issues are very similar to what I hear from gay men. You know, this body dysmorphia and never feeling enough, and no matter what you do, you just don't feel like you're included. And then You get a magic elixir. For you, it was first this Phenydrine, right? Um, but this magic elixir that takes all that away. Um, so that's, that's interesting that it's very similar, um, in terms of what brought you, you know, originally to the drug.
I started seeking out meth. So after I got off, so after I couldn't get the refill from my doctor, okay, I grew up in a town called Hot Springs, Arkansas. And if you know anything about Arkansas, like methamphetamine is really prevalent here, especially where I grew up. It was nothing for like my friend's parents, uncle's brother to have a meth lab down the street because we all lived out in the country. We lived out in the country off dirt roads out by the creek. And so Like I would have friends whose brothers, sisters, uncles cooked meth. And so when I couldn't get phentermine anymore from the doctor, I remember I knew I can get a drug that's similar to this. And I had started dabbling with substances as a teenager. I was dabbling with alcohol, I was smoking ganja, I was partying because I was, like I said, I was on the dance team and I was going to the football games every night with football players. I was starting to be promiscuous and hook up with, um, the football player. This guy, I'll never forget, um, we called him Monster. He was the quarterback of the football team, and there was a reason why we called him Monster.
Okay, okay.
Now, I mean, he was the quarterback of the football team when I grew up in high school, and I started dating him and then like seeing this other guy on the side. So I was like kind of like, you know, getting a little wild. In my teenage years. And then I was at a party one night and this guy pulled out a pipe and he was smoking meth. And he said, hey, do you want to hit it? And I was like, yeah. And so I hit it. And that was the first time I had ever done meth. I was— I smoked it. And I remember I smoked it and not even 2 minutes after I hit the pipe, I felt like the hair in my head was growing out of the follicles. Like I could feel it. Growing out of my follicles, I could feel my hair on my arms. It felt like it was growing, you know, and I was like, "This is what this is. This is like fentanyl, only better. It kicks in immediately." And and I was like this. That was all I was sold. I was seeking out this friend, like, "Hey, you got any more of that? Like I'll pay you." And as a and as a young girl, I worked a job. I had a part-time job car hopping at Sonic. So I had, you know, money, but I was also pretty. I was— I fit in with everybody in high school because I was so active, because I was on the dance team. I fit in, but I didn't feel that inside of me. Like, if you went—
Yeah.
And you asked people I went to high school with, they would have been like, oh yeah, Nicole, she was so cool. But I didn't feel that. I felt like— I just felt so not cool. like a part of everything. But I, but I was, but I wasn't inside, you know.
Mm-hmm.
And so I, by the time I graduated high school, I was buying meth, like weekly buying packs of meth, buying bags, you know, to go to work, to use at school. Um, and when I graduated, I got a job and I was working, um, a job at a place called Shoe Carnival in Hot Springs. I was assistant manager at the store and I was snorting lines of meth off the back of the toilet and working long shifts.
Jesus. Wow.
You know, at 18 years old, 18 years old, and I loved it. I loved meth. It made me hypersexual. I loved having sex. I would have multiple sex partners. And this is kind of— it's embarrassing to talk about because I shouldn't. It's like, it's a little shameful, but it's the truth. Like, I had multiple sex partners. I was always experimenting and having like, you know, a guy and a girl with me.
Yeah.
And, or 2 girls and a guy. Or I remember one time I had these 2 twin guys.
What?
I had 2 sets of twins one time.
Oh my God. I see. Okay, now we're talking gay talk. We're talking about gay talk. Twins.
Yeah. And meth made me feel like I could— and I, I laugh and I, and I, and I joke about it, but like, it really made me feel like I had no barriers. And the confidence that I felt like I lacked in real life, it gave me that times a million. And so that's why I think that I kept, I kept on. I was on meth from the time I was, like I said, 17 years old till I was 31.
Wow.
So, and I started injecting it about 6 years after I started using it. So it took me about 6 years to work up to injecting it.
Okay. Okay. So did, did life change when you started injecting? Because it sounds like you were still functional in terms of holding a job down, at least.
Yes, I was highly functioning, um, smoking and snorting it. Like I said, I was working in upper management. After I left Shoe Carnival, I resigned. I didn't get fired or anything. I went and I got a job working for the state of Arkansas at the Department of Motor Vehicles. I worked there for 6 years.
Wow.
Towards the end of that job is when I started injecting it. And it was— I started injecting it. And let me tell you the story because I think a lot of your viewers will be able to relate to this. I had never injected anything before in my life. I was over at my friend's house. He manufactured methamphetamine. The way that I would like, you know, get it and not have to pay as much was I would shuck matches for him. So back in the day, the way they manufactured methamphetamine before it started coming over from Mexico is there was all this different process, you know, and one of the part of the process was getting the phosphorus off the matchbooks.
Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes. So I would separate the matchbooks from the matches and put the back, the striker in one pile and the matches in this pile. And then we would have to soak them off in acetone to get the phosphorus. So I would be there tweaking all night long, chucking thousands Just shit. Of matches. Okay. One night he had just got done, um, cooking off a batch and it was fresh, right? He was like, this is one of my best batches yet. And I was like, okay. And everybody went to the back bedroom and I was in the living room doing a hot rail. And I looked around and everybody was gone. And I was like, why is everybody gone? Why aren't they back here in the— why aren't they in the living room with me? So that's where curiosity got the best of me, and I walked back to the back bedroom. Oh, and everybody was tying off and mixing up, and I was like, "Stop! Wait! You ought to let me do that. You know what I'm saying? You gotta let me do that. It's in my bedroom. Sorry. Um, you gotta let me do that. Let me let him walk away for a second. Okay, there he goes. Sorry, my little boy came back here to ask me something. Um, you gotta let me do that." And I was like, and they said, "No, no, no." Nicole, please, you know, we don't want you to do this. It's not a good idea. And I hope this is okay for me to share this.
Oh yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, please do.
They were like, we don't want you to do this. We really think that, you know, you're not like we are. And it made me feel some type of way. They meant the people I was hanging out with were people who had been using intravenously for years. Their parents used intravenous drugs. Like they were, it makes me sad to say it, but they were a different level, I guess you could say. Like I came from a family where my parents were hardworking and they were married. These were my friends that I had hung out with. They were from broken homes. Their parents didn't have jobs. They lived in the trailer park, which I've lived in the trailer park before, but you understand what I'm trying to convey. Okay.
Okay.
You know what I mean? And so, yeah, I don't ever want to offend anybody because that's not what I mean at all, but it's just a different kind of group of people that I was hanging out with in active addiction. And so they were like, you got to try. You don't want to try this. We don't want to do it for you. And I told them, I said, if you don't do it for me, I will do it myself and then I'll end up hurting myself. You know?
Yeah.
And that's when My friend Tammy stepped up and was like, I'll do it. And, and I was like, I was just like so excited, you know? Well, I didn't know anything about injecting meth. I'd never injected anything. Well, she injected me with 40 units of—
Oh my God.
And it was so— she showed it to me. She made a point to show it to me. She tipped it upside down and said, do you see this little bubble? You see how it's barely moving? That's because it's thick.
Right.
And she gave it to me.
She made it thick too.
She gave it to me and I was completely sprung. I had an orgasm right there. Oh yeah, in front of everybody. I had never had that happen to me in my whole entire life except for that one time. And I have injected— I, for the next 15, 12, however many years it was after that, I spent chasing that one shot trying to get that feeling again.
Wow.
Because, wow, I could never get it again. And just thinking about it, like, it makes my neck feel red. It makes my heart palpitate. But that was the feeling it gave me. And the minute it hit me, I remember going, oh my God, I came in front of everybody. And they were like, it's okay, girl. And then next you know, it was a ménage à trois.
Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Yeah, after that, right.
We were all just naked, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
And that was the kind of— that's what it was like, like, for those first couple of years after I first started injecting, it was like, always sex, always sex.
Okay.
Um, but it was sex with like All whole, like I said, men, women, men and women, men and men. Okay.
Yeah.
But I wish I couldn't stop. It was like such an addiction for me. And then it was probably 6 months after I started injecting that I got arrested. I got arrested. I got pulled over. I had methamphetamine, a syringe in my purse, and I got charged with possession of a controlled substance, not even 6 months after I started injecting. I went all those years in active addiction, about 6, 7 years in active addiction, and then boom. It was because I could not control myself when I was on the syringe. I would lose total track of time. I wouldn't sleep for days. I wouldn't eat for days. And I would go into psychosis after about 3 days of being awake. I would start to hear and see people that were not really there. And so I was letting somebody drive my car and we got pulled over and I had meth in my car. And so I went to jail. He bailed us out and I was right back on the streets. But they put me on probation trying to like level with me, like, we're going to put you on probation. And if you can do your probation and pass your drug screens, then you'll get off in 3 years. Easy peasy, right? Yeah, easy peasy if you want to stop using drugs, but I wasn't ready to stop. I just got started on the needle, you know.
Right.
It was— I was just getting into it. And so I lost complete control after that, and, uh, I ended up in prison a year later. I went to prison. I did 1 year in prison, and then I came out and started trying to chase my tail and get sober, but was unsuccessful for 5 or 6 years after that too.
Wow.
Sorry if I talk too much, y'all, but I got so much to tell y'all.
You have so much to do. Yeah, so much to talk about. Um, yeah, it's, it's interesting because I hear a lot, and I've even said it too, you know, that, well, the way straight people use crystal meth is different than the way gay people use crystal meth. And there are some differences, um, but what you're describing here is so similar. It's so sex-fueled. Right. I think, I wonder what it would have been like if you had an app like Grindr as a straight, you know, in that as a straight woman, to be able to go on your phone at any time and access even more and more people using all around your area, if it would have been even more promiscuous for you.
Into my addiction around 2012, I came on to Plenty of Fish.
Oh, okay.
And I started to have— you can ask my old roommate that I lived with. I would have a guy come over at 10 o'clock at night, and then he would leave at 11, and then I would have another guy show up at 11:30. Like, I was such a hoe.
Okay, that's— yeah, that's gay culture.
I mean, but I mean, I wonder if it's because, like, I had a lot of gay friends, and maybe— I don't think they didn't influence me to be like that, though. I was just like, that's just how meth made me. I didn't slow down with my sexualness until I met my husband. And when I met my husband and I fell in love with him, even though we were using meth, we were only sexual with each other. We didn't like go outside of each other. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Before I met him— go ahead.
Go ahead. No, go ahead. Sorry.
Before I met him, I, I had gotten out of a really abusive relationship. In 2000 and— what was it? 2001, I broke up with my first boyfriend that I had in high school because I graduated in 2000. In 2001, me and my high school sweetheart broke up because I was being a hoochie mama and cheating on him with the football players. Then I dated a guy from 2001 to 2006, and we broke up. When I broke up with that guy in 2006, he was very violent towards me. He abused me physically, emotionally, and verbally. Oh my God. When we broke up, I made it a— I made a promise to myself that like, I wasn't going to date anybody, that I was just going to be a player. And I was going to do guys like they had done me. And so from 2006 until 2012, when I met my husband, I was just out there getting it.
Getting them all, getting them all. Yeah. Good for you.
Wow.
Wow. Yeah.
I enjoyed myself. And I will not lie and say it was great to be able to be a woman and to be able to be a player, to have booty calls and to not have anybody telling me that I couldn't have a booty call or that I had to be in a relationship because I had nobody governing me. Like, I didn't have— my parents lived in Hot Springs. I was in Little Rock because once I got out of prison, I paroled out to Little Rock. So I was just like, I don't know, it was just living my freedom, you know, living my wild, crazy self.
Yeah, yeah, very empowering, probably.
It was.
Yeah. So you and your— you got with your husband and you were using meth together. So did you use it for sexual purposes, or did you all just use it on a daily basis to function? How did you all use it together?
So when I met my husband in 2012, I got out of prison in 2010. Okay. So I got caught up in Hot Springs in 2008. 2009, I went to prison, got out in 2010. 2010, I moved to Little Rock. When I moved to Little Rock, that's when I developed the intravenous addiction to oxys, to opioids.
Oh, okay. Gotcha.
So I started to play back and forth. Intravenous oxy, then I needed to wake up and go to work the next day, inject methamphetamine, come down at night, inject oxy. And so, and I was an assistant manager at Kroger when I lived in Little Rock. Yeah. So I was burning the candle at both ends. And for a long time, I was able to get by doing that. And like, they weren't catching on quite yet, but eventually I started to lose control. And it always— that's how it always happens for me. Like, I would get control for a little bit, and then I would spin out, you know? And so I had enough control when I moved here to, like I said, obtain a job, move up in that job to assistant manager of the deli inside of the Kroger. And then I met my husband 2 years after I moved here to Little Rock. And I met him in a very low point in my life. My car had just gotten impounded. It was my car that I had since I graduated high school. And my parents were like, we're not getting it for you. So it, it was gone. And so when I met Neil, I was sleeping on a friend's couch, paying them $400 a month to sleep on their couch, and they were taking me to work. That was the deal. Like, you take me work, I'll pay you to live here on the couch. And so I met Neil. And I was doing the song and dance with the opioids and meth and, you know, Xanax, trying to just like sleep and then wake up and then sleep and then wake up. And then of course, there would be days where I wouldn't be able to get anything because I would run out of money. And I would be deathly ill, or I would go to my dealer's house. And I would trade, you know, sexual favors with him because I had He was my dealer since I moved to Little Rock. So I knew him for a couple of years and he would, you know, he would work out a deal for me. But when I met Neil, we were both using substances in the same way, like really chaotically. We were both addicted to opioids and methamphetamine. And when we came together, we met and we were both high when we met. And I didn't realize that he was a drug user. I thought he maybe was just like partying because he came over to my house or the house I was living at. For like a little get-together. But when we met, I was just like, wow, he is not like anyone I had ever met before because he treated me so— he treated me like a, like a person, like not a whore. He didn't treat me like— he didn't treat me like I was just some bitch that he could just get— have his way with. Like, he opened the car door for me, he paid for my cigarettes, he got me food and drink and Toiletries. He just showed me so much real support and real love that I hadn't had or experienced in years in addiction.
Yeah.
So I didn't even realize that he had an issue with substances until we had been dating for like a month. And I called him and I said, hey, I have to go to court. I had a ticket and I need to go take care of it. Can you come and get me from my job and take me to court? And he goes, I got a better deal for you. I'll come get you. You can drop me off at my job and take my truck and I'll, you know, you just bring it back to me when you're done. And I could not believe that he trusted me to take his car. And so I took his truck to court and he called me and said, check the glove box. I put a present in there for you.
Aww.
And I opened the glove box and it was 2 methadone 10 pills. So methadone is an opioid.
And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was like, jackpot, love at first sight.
That's right. He's a keeper.
So that's when I realized, I was like, oh, he's just like I am. And so once I realized that we both had the same afflictions, we just leaned into it together. And yeah, I, you know, I was, I had a lot of connections here and You know, we just got high together and we would just get high together. And it got to be really, really chaotic though, really dangerous because we both had no like off switch. And so like there was many times where like he would overdose and I would have to call 911 or he had a seizure. A lot of times it was him having these horrible medical situations. And then his parents started to think like, oh my God, this girl. is ruining our son's life, you know? And so they couldn't stand me. They thought it was like all my fault. But it was really just, we were both the same kind of drug addict. We both had no off switches. And when we got together, we just went balls to the wall together. But a lot of the things, you know, we would have, we would use meth and we would have sex, but because we were also using opioids, a lot of the times we would just be in a nod. And I would just like, He would catch me falling asleep with cigarettes and have to like put out the— I would be lighting the house on fire. The blankets would be on fire, the mattress would be on fire. And so we were like a— I know people hated seeing us come in because we were like a liability. Oh God, here comes Nicole and Neil. If they stay at our house, they're going to light the house on fire. The police are going to get called or somebody's going to die because we were so bad in our addictions. Yeah. And so that's a little bit about me and Neil.
Well, you know, it's—I'd like to talk about. I'd like to dive into you and Neil are still together, and and how you were able to get sober together because there are plenty of couples. I mean, there gay couples that I that I either work with or talk to who. really want to get sober. And it's tricky when you're involving another person and the other person's ebbs and flows as well as yours. And it almost seems like a better idea to just separate and go your own routes. But you two chose to commit and dive in there. And what was that process like for you?
It was the hardest thing I've ever been through my whole entire life. But there was a reason why we committed to it. And I'll tell you the reason. It was, it was November 2013, and I was in the kitchen at my mother and father-in-law's house. My mother and father-in-law had a house that they were almost finished paying off, and they had bought a new house. And they were, we were all living together in the older house, but they were transitioning into their brand new house. They were still living with us at this time. And I was downstairs in the kitchen fixing myself something to eat. And my father-in-law walked up to me. He said, you're pregnant. You're glowing. And I was like, damn you. No, I'm not. You know what I mean? He's like, yeah, you're pregnant. And I, I hadn't gained any weight. I was shooting methamphetamine and shooting oxys like I was Not healthy. And so I went upstairs and I told Neil, I said, your dad just said I was pregnant. He's like, you know, my dad's crazy. And I'm like, whatever. And a week later, I just kept having this, like, I think I'm pregnant because it just, he put that on my mind.
Yeah.
I went and got a pregnancy test. I went to the bathroom upstairs, took it and screamed, Neil! He came running upstairs like, what's going on? I'm like, your dad was right. I'm fucking pregnant. And I was just like, what am I gonna do?
Yeah.
I don't— I don't know what I'm gonna do. So I knew I had to do something though. Something had to change. I could not be shooting oxys, meth, and taking Xanaxes because that's what I was currently in this like vicious spin cycle with was benzos, opioids, and meth. And so I was like, I gotta quit some of these drugs. And my addict brain sat there and I looked and I justified like what drugs would have the worst effect on my child. Um, and I know that this is like the most shameful thing, y'all, but I'm just being so for real. I went through a process of elimination and I Was able to get myself off of benzos and opioids because I was continuing to use methamphetamine, and my thought process, which is skewed because I'm a I was you know addicted to drugs, was opioids and benzos cause dependency in your baby when you're when they're born they are dependent to the to the opioids and benzos. So I need to get off of those because my child would get taken from me if I am addicted to. Heroin, fentanyl, and Xanax, right?
Mm-hmm.
And so throughout my pregnancy, I was trying hard to let go of the methamphetamine. I would stop using for like 20 days and then I would slip back into it. And then I would, and me and my husband, Neil was trying to do it with me. So we're both trying to sober up during this process of me being pregnant. But I was never able to completely disconnect from methamphetamine throughout my pregnancy. And it was July 3rd night. It was midnight. I had taken a capsule with methamphetamine in it, and I was sitting 9 months pregnant, cross-legged on the floor, doing a crossword puzzle. And I got this sharp pain in my lower back, and I Got up and I knew right away that I was going into labor. So I woke my mother-in-law up. I said, we need to call Neil. He was working overnight at a company called Kimberly-Clark. And I said, well, you need to call Neil. I think I'm going to be having the baby soon. And she was like, well, we're just getting started. It's okay. You're okay right now. And I don't think she was really aware that I was high. I don't see how she couldn't be aware, but I think that she was in denial about it. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so she was like, don't worry, it's gonna be okay. Let's, let's start paying attention. So that was like at 12 or 1 o'clock in the morning. By 6 o'clock that morning, Neil had gotten home. And by 8 o'clock, I was like, we probably need to go to the hospital to just see if I'm okay. Now I'm high on meth and I'm in labor.
Wow.
And so I am so afraid that I'm gonna go into the hospital and they're gonna take my baby from me.
Yeah.
So I went there because I knew I had to go there to get checked to make sure I was okay. And they were like, you're fine. You're not even 1 centimeter dilated. And so I was like, okay, well, can I go home? And they were like, sure, go home and come back when you feel like you're farther along. It was like not a big deal, right? I was like, oh, okay. And so I went home and for the next 8 hours I labored at home and we went back to the hospital around 9 o'clock that night. And when we got to the hospital, I was 8.5 centimeters dilated and ready.
And ready to go.
Ready to go. They gave me an epidural and then they gave me some kind of other shot because my— the baby's heart rate was going down. So they had to give me something to bring it up. I don't know why I wasn't turned into CPS that moment and my son wasn't taken from me. The only thought process that I can understand was that it was a holiday. It was July 4th. I gave birth to my son on July 4th, and that somehow— and it was July 4th, 2014— somehow we slipped through the cracks because I had my mother and father-in-law there who were very well-to-do. My mother, who she actually— her and my dad were in New York, so they flew down to be with me. And so I had like a whole family support there. Nothing out of the ordinary except for that I was skeezed out, you know what I mean? But nobody said anything to me. Nobody confronted me about anything. Nothing.
Yeah.
And 2 days later, Nathaniel was born and he was perfect in every way. The only thing, the only problem we had was that he had, um, The meconiums. He had pooped in my belly and he had gotten a little bit of it in his mouth. So they had to like clean him out and all that kind of stuff. But other than that, he was healthy. He passed all his Apgar scores. And that's not because of me. So please don't think that I'm saying that. It's, it's by some higher power, the grace of God. Something protected my son from me because I was—
Something was looking out for him.
Yeah. I was unable, like I tried so hard to stay sober through My pregnancy off and on, but I could—I was unsuccessful. And so, two days later, after giving birth to my son, we left and we were able to take him home. And I was like, oh my gosh! We got away from the hospital without them calling CPS. Like I'm never using drugs again. And so I tried to white knuckle sobriety for the next ninety days. I think I made it sober for ninety days, and then I relapsed. And me and my husband both relapsed. My mother and father-in-law stepped in and would take my son when they noticed that we were really struggling a lot. But for the most part, they had my little boy a lot because I would get high and I would run off with my different friends. I would even leave my husband and like run off. And so one night my friend and I, we had an argument. She got really mad at me. She was my friend that I did drugs with. And she looked at me and she was like, I'm calling CPS on you, you bitch. And she did. She did. And they showed up at my house and they basically said like, we're taking your son from you because you're under the influence. So we know you are. And they drug tested me and they drug tested Neil and we were both under the influence. And so they took our son. And that is why—
Hmm.
I committed to getting sober and my— and I committed to getting sober with my— with Neil. We weren't husband and wife yet. Um, yeah, because we had this little baby that we loved so much, but we were just so sick and unable to, to, to get our lives together for. And I was just like, I know that if I'm not strong, then Neil won't be strong. Because through our whole relationship, I've always been the The the more headstrong or assertive of the two of us, and so I knew that if I caved and didn't get sober and didn't go to treatment and didn't get help and didn't follow what CPS told us to do, I knew Neil would lose his shit. You know what I mean? And so I put myself in treatment. When I put myself in treatment, he put himself in outpatient. You know what I'm saying? When I got out of treatment, I got myself in therapy. He got himself on MAT, and so he would follow my lead. You know, when I, when I got out of treatment and I saw how well he was doing with the MAT treatment for his opiate use disorder, that's when I said, hey, maybe that will work for me, because I was struggling. I was barely making it to stay sober once I got out of treatment, and that was I think a lot of it had to do with like the pressure of going to parenting classes, meeting with the judge every month. Like these people—
Yep.
They wanted to see us fail. It was almost like they wanted to take our son from us. They wanted to adopt out our beautiful little baby boy to somebody because our family members stepped up and said, we'll take custody of him. And CPS denied them. For no reason. Wow. For no reason other than no reason. The only reason was because they wanted to— CPS makes money when your child is placed in foster care. They don't make money if your kid is taken in by a family member. And so when Nathaniel— when my family members stepped up, my mom, my dad, my sisters, my mother and father-in-law, everybody tried to get my son, and they denied every single one of them. And these were all people With clean records, my mother and father-in-law. My father-in-law was a veteran, Vietnam veteran. Okay, like outstanding citizens. So there's like no reason for them not to allow my son to go, except for they wanted to make money off my son, which that's a whole another podcast for a whole another day, y'all. But I know people will know what I'm talking about if they've ever been through it. At the end of the day, I was using substances and. I take full responsibility for that. I should have never been using drugs and being pregnant and putting my child in harm's way because at the bottom line, bad things could have happened. I'm very fortunate that I had family members to step up and take him when I was running off and being crazy like I was. But that is why I committed so hard to getting sober with Neil because we were fighting for our son together.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you had a common, you know, you had a common goal here, something to bring you together. Or, you know, I even wonder sometimes if that's the purpose of children coming along like that, because who knows where your life would have gone.
He saved our lives. Yes, he did. If my son, if Nathaniel hadn't been born, I would have never gotten sober. I wouldn't have had the strength to do it because I just didn't care about myself enough to do it.
Yeah. Yeah.
You know, and me and Neil, we fed off of each other's addiction, you know? Yeah. And so we were both on this downward spiral together and there was no saving us. You know, we couldn't break free long enough to help each other get out of it. And so there had to be, I truly believe that God put us in that position and that my son was like sent here to save us. Like he, that's the only explanation for him not being taken from me at birth. Like he should have been taken from me immediately.
Yeah.
I believe that. I believe that God knew that if my son was taken from me at birth, I wouldn't have had an opportunity to bond with him. And so he was given to me for a year. me to bond with him, to establish a relationship with him, to love him, and to try and take care of him even though I was struggling, you know? And that was what made it so important for me because I had established this love and this bond and he was the most important thing to me. Even though I was on drugs, he was the light of my life. And so me and Neil fought so hard for him. We fought They tried to deny us to get him back because we were both on Suboxone, which is for, like I said, for opiate addiction. And so when we got on Suboxone, it was such a hard decision to make because we both struggled with opioid addiction and methamphetamine addiction and Benzo— just addiction in general.
Polysubstance.
Yeah, polysubstance abuse. And when When Neil got on it, he had called me right before I was graduating, was like, hey, I got on Suboxone. I've been on this before I met you, years before I met you, and it really worked for me. It helped me. Like, I had— he said that was the longest I'd ever been able to stay sober before I met you was when I was on that medication, and I think it will really help. And so I got really mad at him because I was indoctrinated into the 12-step I believed that the only way to get sober was through abstinence. And if you were not getting sober through abstinence, then you were not in recovery and it was wrong.
Yep. Yep.
And so I was mad at him. I cussed him. I told him he was trying to get around the system. He didn't really care about our son. And then I came out and I saw how successful he was and how it was almost like he was having such a much easier time than I was. staying sober, you know. And when I met with the caseworker, she was like, you know, why don't you try it? It could be the difference between you staying sober and relapsing. And you can't relapse, Nicole. If you relapse, we're going to terminate your rights to your son, you know.
Wow.
And so everything I had been taught all those years in Alcoholics Anonymous, Because I was in and out of those programs for 10 years.
Yeah.
Went out the window when I started taking Suboxone because now I'm taking a medication as prescribed. And guess what? I'm not having an allergic reaction. I'm not going out and getting high on crack. I'm not smoking meth. I'm not shooting drugs. So that means that all that was a lie that I learned because I'm not really allergic To substances.
Exactly. Yep, exactly. Yep.
So Suboxone helped save my life. It saved my life, that and my son.
Yeah, yeah, I was going to say it saved your family.
100%. Family here, 100%. And I'm still on— I started out on 12 milligrams of Suboxone, which is a substantial dose of Suboxone. And now I'm all the way down to half of 1 milligram. Half. That's literally like the tiniest little sliver.
Oh, wow.
And yeah, and I'm just slowly working my way down. And when I feel comfortable, I'll jump off of it. But I'm just kind of like waiting. And I'm also watching how my husband's doing because he's been doing really well. About 5 years into our sober journey, um, in 2020, he had a relapse. And so when that happened, it kind of set everything back a little bit because I got scared. I thought, you know, how do I know he's going to keep staying sober after this? It was kind of— it kind of reset everything. He had a relapse when the pandemic hit. And, you know, I won't tell you everything that happened, but basically he was working a very high-stress job. The pandemic hit. And then the stress was on, like they were making them work long hours. People were calling in, people didn't want to come in. So the managers, my husband was a manager, he had to pick it up. And so he was struggling and he did what he knows how to do best. And he had a friend at work who was like, hey, here's a Xanax. And that's all it took for him to take a Xanax. And then he was back on Xanaxes and smoking.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Back on the train. Wow. Wow. What a journey together.
But he's my best friend. Like, when I tell you, Neil is the most amazing, hardworking, dependable, loving, caring person I've ever met my whole entire life. And we both have, like, you know, our struggles, but we have come together to work through them together, which is— I mean, it's what life's all about. You know, my parents, they're still married. His parents are still married, so I feel like we have a really good example of like what it's like to navigate relationship by our own families, you know. And so we just know that like we got to put in work and communicate with each other, and that's what we try to do all the time, even still to this day, is what helps us in our sobriety is communicating about how we're feeling. There was a time where My husband was struggling with low testosterone. He wasn't wanting to be intimate with me. I was taking it as him rejecting me. He was taking it as his junk wouldn't work. So we were both like fighting because I was like, he doesn't want me. But it wasn't that he didn't want me, it's that he was like struggling, you know? So we've been through addiction. We've been through sexual intimacy issues. We've been through, you know, financial problems. When he relapsed, he lost his job, and then I had to step up and carry the weight of our family. And but we've done it. We've both handed off. And like, if something happens, I step up and I carry it. If something happens to me, he steps up and he carries it. And we've just balanced each other out.
That's a partnership right there. That's a committed partnership. And that's what love is. Is commitment, right? That's really what love is, is committed through— commitment through anything. Wow, what a special relationship you have. I love this.
He is just like my best friend, and I've never met anybody, anybody like him in my whole entire life. All those years I was fucking and sucking, and yeah, I was searching, searching for this, this real love, and now I have it, and it's just like Yeah, it's so much work though, but— oh God, it's the best thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm sorry, was I too long-winded?
Ah, no, no, not at all. I think, I think that as you've talked, I've said to myself there's about 5 different podcast subjects for us to care to cover, which, um, by the way, I do want to say That Nick— uh, Nicole— I don't know why I call you Nikki.
You could— no, everybody calls me Nikki because I'm Nikki on Facebook. You can call me—
Oh, okay, okay. Nikki, or Discovering Nicole, and I, um, are going live every other week on Wednesdays. Um, we're going to alternate, I guess, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Uh, TikTok is so stringent on what you can say. We can't say meth, we can't say sex, we can't say gay. If you can imagine any of that. So what came—
It's so hard, and you've heard our conversation tonight, so just imagine us trying to talk on TikTok, right?
But catch us live, and we can't— we cover all sorts of topics, um, and we cover— it's usually like, you know, the gay side, the straight side of, you know, of different things. And so, but anyway, I wanted to say— I wanted to ask you one last question about your mission now, because you've devoted your life and you have How many followers do you have? I mean, over 500,000 total in all platforms.
Is that right? Yeah, almost 195,000 on one TikTok, 39,000 on my backup, and then 139,000 on Facebook, and then 23,000 on Instagram, and 24,000 on YouTube. Yeah, about 400,000, something like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a following. And you've You've really devoted— you devote day in and day out to recovery content, and you're helping. I mean, that's 400,000 followers, but I would say you've helped millions with your message. And so I just want to recognize you for all this work. You inspire me every time I start to feel like a little, you know, unmotivated, or maybe I don't know if I should want to do this. I look and you've— you are everywhere. I look on social media and you're, you're here, you're there, you're there, you're there, you're saying this, and I'm just like You know what, if Nicole's doing it, I'm doing it. I'll jump right back, right back in.
So that's how I felt about you when I saw your content, because I was at a, um, I go through lulls, you know, where I'm feeling uninspired or I feel like, am I really making a difference? And then I found you on TikTok and I was like, I just relit this fire inside of me to talk about meth addiction recovery because I had kind of gotten like Like I said, I had gotten discouraged. So I, I started this whole journey sharing openly about being on Suboxone as an opiate, as a polysubstance abuser, right? Yeah. So I've always shared about my multiple addiction, um, problems. But the way I started it was I was seeking support from people who were also on MAT because I no longer fit in the 12-step community. And they were telling me that. They were telling me I wasn't sober. They were telling me I might as well still be shooting heroin. They were telling me that. They were telling me that, um, I couldn't get chips. I wasn't allowed to speak at meetings. All kinds of crazy shit. So I came online, and that was the first thing I started doing, was creating a community that supported MAT recovery. And that's, that's how it all started, really. It was okay. Okay. Having like, I was running online support meetings Monday through Friday, every single day for 2 hours at a time. I was live streaming on YouTube. That's how I built my YouTube channel was by live streaming every single day. Wow. And so I got, I get discouraged sometimes and I find like inspiration in your content. And so I have been making content though, and I think it's important for people to understand, for since 2017 I've been posting videos online.
Wow.
So this isn't like— that's why I tell Dallas all the time, like, you are killing it. You are killing— you're making so much progress. You're— the way you deliver your, your message is so clean and so precise and so easily to digest. The way you make your content, the podcast, the way you do everything is so professional. Like, I had to learn all of this stuff through trial and error and making mistakes. And so I don't think you understand how you're light years ahead of where I was at. Like, you are going to grow a lot quicker. It took me since 2017 to get to where I'm at right now.
Mm-hmm.
You know what I mean? So I feel like you'll have so much more success than I had in a lot shorter time. You're already having it.
You're blowing up on TikTok. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. So what have I not asked tonight— tonight— today on this podcast that you wish that I had of, or that you would make sure that you wanted to get in, um, from your story? Or not just your story, but maybe your goals for, you know, for your goals for recovery. Like, what, what is the impact What is your legacy? I guess maybe it's the question I'm going to ask.
I really want people to understand that recovery is not one size fits all. Recovery is what recovery means to you. And I feel like we're taught that there's like this recovery police, recovery like bottom line. And if you don't meet that, then you're— if you're not, if you're outside of that, Then you're not part of the recovery crew, and I want people to find what works for them. And I think there's so many different avenues, and I feel like if I had been given options early on, like we were talking about when I was 16 years old, if I had sat down and been talked to about mental health and given therapy services and have had a mentor, that I would have been in a totally different. I wouldn't even went down the addiction, um, road, you know. And so I want people to know that there's options to recovery, that it's not one size fits all. There's no just 12-step, no just MAT, no just religion. Um, Mm-hmm. I mean, you can get addicted to working out and that can be a form of recovery for you, you know. You can do therapy, working out, and recovery support group meetings. You can have a recovery coach or a sober companion. You can— there's, there Recovery is whatever you want to make it, and I believe that recovery is defined by any positive change. So I believe if you're somebody who's watching this video tonight and you were shooting meth but today you're just smoking it, I believe you're in— you're on your way to recovery and you're entering recovery.
Yes, amen, sister. You know, amen, sister. And I feel like this is why— this is why we love each other.
We put so much pressure on ourselves to make All the changes all at one time. And if it was that easy to just make all the changes all at one time, then we would've already done that. We wouldn't even be in the position that we were in to begin with.
Exactly.
And so, yeah, I feel like if I had found somebody like Dallas or myself when I was struggling, I would've gotten into recovery so much faster. I wouldn't have wasted so many years because I wouldn't have been doing this all or nothing. You failed. Now you gotta start at the beginning again. Bullshit. Yeah. You know what I mean? I don't believe that. I don't believe that's right. If you smoke the pookie on it on one day and you had ten years, and then you smoke pookie for one day, that you lost ten years. I believe what you do is you learn that there's something going on in your life. Yeah. What's the stress? What's what's the outside influence that is that is contributing to you wanting to smoke it? Right. And then make a change. So you learn. And you experience so you can change and grow, but you didn't lose all your positive progress that you made in the past. And I hate that they teach that in treatment centers, in AA and NA. I feel like so counterproductive to what recovery truly is.
I do too. Oh, I do too. Makes me so mad. Me too, me too. But you know what, we're getting our message out there. And I think, I think it's changing, you know. I feel this undercurrent of change in the recovery industry because so many people are coming forward to say, oh my gosh, I needed this. I needed somebody to tell me I'm not a bad person, you know. I needed somebody to tell me that this is part of the journey. Because yes, that program may have helped millions. How many millions Have it— has it hurt?
Oh gosh, so many. And there's not really a gauge for how many it's helped. That's all smoke and mirrors. Yeah. You know, I feel like when they tell people like, oh, it's helped millions. Well, I've heard that there's like a— that they say it's actually only about 5%. And that's being generous of people that are able to get sobriety through abstinence. So, right, that's why I'm such a huge advocate for like medication-assisted treatment. And I believe that in the next 5 to 10 years, there will be a medication-assisted treatment for meth addiction.
I— yes, I do too. I mean, you know, this Wellbutrin and Vivitrol injections are, are really helping. I mean, it's like, it's like a 40%, something like that so far, but it's helping.
And it helped me tremendously.
Mm-hmm.
Especially when I first started taking it, um, because I had no motivation and no energy and like lethargy. And the doctor prescribed me Wellbutrin and it helped me with that. But then what happened was I was on it for 6 years and I just noticed that I had basically gotten all the benefits from it. And so I tapered off of it last year in 2023 and Have been doing great without it. I haven't had any. Like people ask me all the time, like do I have cravings for meth? And I wouldn't even call them cravings. I just have thoughts sometimes. Like tonight, that's right. We talked about shooting meth, so I thought about it. You know? Yeah. But I don't. I don't think like I want to go and use that. You know what I mean? Like it's just kind of like having thoughts and then discussing them and then moving on from it. You know? It doesn't consume. My life or my thought process anymore, to the point where I feel triggered or the need to go out and get it. Like, not at all.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right. Yeah. Well, Nicole, thank you. Thank you for sharing.
I feel like I talked way too much.
No, I mean, that's what you're supposed to do. Okay. I, you know, I, I just, I hope that there, there were people listening, family members too, who, you know, we— for one thing, there, there's this issue of polysubstance abuse because I, I, you know, I talk about meth, but a lot of my clients and a lot of the people who turn to me also have trouble with benzos or, um, or whatever, opioids. Um, even there's some, you know, I don't know, there's Adderall too, there's nitric oxide.
Uh-huh.
Somebody came to me about nitric oxide, you know, um, just all kinds of different things. So It's probably helpful for people to hear some hope and couples also to see that, you know, it's possible to be committed through the fucking rough, rough bottom times and what it's like on the other end. I mean, look at the love then that you have cultivated with your husband and your family now. And so I just, I really appreciate your story and I appreciate your work. And really appreciate your philosophy because it matches mine. So really love that. But I appreciate your time tonight too.
Anytime. I love you so much, Dallas, and I support you 100%. I'm your biggest cheerleader. And like I said, anytime you need me, I'm always here. You just text me and you tell me what I need to do and I'll do it.
Thank you so much. Thank you. And guys, if you want to join in the conversation, You can comment on YouTube. You can also comment on Spotify. YouTube is a little easier to to interact with you on. If you do comment on YouTube, make sure you subscribe. I would like for you to really also share the podcast on your social media if you can do that. Tag me on it if you do that. We have a Facebook community called The Aftermath. You can join the Facebook community and we offer questions just about every day and have support in that community as well. on that Facebook page for, uh, people struggling. And not only those struggling with the addiction, but those with family members struggling with methamphetamine addiction, use disorder. So, all right, thank you. We'll see y'all next week.
