From Addiction Struggles to Advocacy in Mental Health | Evan Transue

00:00
And I started to accept that I am doing hard drugs on probation and that I'm not invincible, right? As every teenager thinks. I'm like, Evan, this is gonna end one of two ways, brother. You're gonna die or you're gonna go to jail. One of those sounds a little better than the other one, but I wasn't really planning for either of those things. And those are the routes. One of those is what I was heading now. Everything changed after that. I'm not saying it was perfect, but I made a decision that day.

00:29
that if I can't change for myself, I gotta change for the people in my life that love me and care about me and have had my back. My guest this week is Evan Transue. Evan's a dedicated mental health advocate. He's a public speaker and he's the host of Health Detective podcast. In our conversation, Evan shares his personal journey of really overcoming panic attacks and depression and eventually substance abuse and how all of these experiences led him to become this advocate for mental health.

00:59
We talk a lot about the impact of societal stigma on mental health and how this really influences someone's understanding of their own journey through mental health. Evan's experiences, which he shares with total honesty and bravery, underlines the importance of understanding different coping mechanisms and dealing with these particular struggles. Whether you've experienced mental health struggles yourself, or simply interested learning more about this topic because you know people in your life that might be facing similar struggles.

01:29
Evan and I hope this episode leaves you feeling a little less alone and hopefully more inspired to help others or understand how others are moving through their lives. Before we jump into this episode, I want to thank Traci and Emily for supporting two episodes every single month on the Patreon feed. This is super helpful for production costs and hosting and all the things that come along with podcasting that...

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I didn't really realize before jumping into this, but I'm so thankful for the support on Patreon. If you are interested in directly supporting the show, you can head to patreon.com/thelifeshiftpodcast and you can learn all about the different tiers that are there and I appreciate anything. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Evan Transue. I'm Matt Gilhooly and this is the life shift.

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candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

02:36
Hello, my friends. Welcome to the LifeShift Podcast. I am joined today by Evan. Hello, Evan. Hey, thanks for having me. Thank you for being a part of this. And I was telling you before recording that I always get a little bit nervous with other podcasters and you have your own podcast. So you're welcome for my awkwardness at the beginning. That's all good. You think you'd be most comfortable with us, but then you said you're worried about like, Hey, we know what you're doing wrong. Everything looks good to me. I only got the neon sign like probably.

03:03
a few weeks ago, just to be clear. So your setup already looks better than I have for the last four years. Well, there you go. So I'm winning, so thank you for that. And it's just awkward because I think sometimes us as podcasters, I always feel like I'm a little bit like I've been an imposter because there should be a way that you do certain things. But then the longer I do this, I realize like, we're all creating our own journey.

03:26
and it can be however we want it to be. So before we get into your story, can you just tell us what your podcast is and what you do on it? Yeah, thank you. It's called the Health Detective Podcast and that's by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. So quite a mouthful, Health Detective Podcast comes right up. And what we do there primarily is we interview people who have been through usually kind of insane health challenges and then have overcome them through functional medicine. So not that I'm necessarily against what I'm about to say, but it's not.

03:52
Hippie woo woo, I mean, these are doctors, nurses coming on. Sometimes just average joes like myself who have health stories, but very much sticking with the science-based stuff and how we can utilize certain things to heal from otherwise seemingly incurable or unresolvable chronic diseases. So it's very cool for people out there suffering with maybe chronic health issues, auto-immunity, even cancer. So it's the Health Detective Podcast. Well, way to go helping and serving the world through sharing these stories and these interviews and maybe.

04:21
also healing yourself in weird ways through those conversations. Yeah, I love this podcast. I was telling you before recording, and if you're new to this podcast, this show all stemmed from my own personal experience, but it actually started as a class assignment. I did a bonus master's degree during the pandemic, and I took a podcasting class just because it scared me, and I was like, I'll never be a podcaster. I'm just gonna do these assignments and carry on with my day. And by the end of that class, I had launched like nine episodes already and had these conversations. And...

04:50
I'm 130 into it now and just the feeling of how much I didn't know I needed this show to kind of heal the eight-year-old version of myself that had just lost his mother and felt so alone and like I was the only kid with a dead mom and like moving through life in that way. And so now I get to talk to people like you who have gone through seemingly really hard moments in your life and found your way to the other side. And I just hope.

05:18
that there's someone out there listening now that hears your story, and maybe because of what you say, they feel a little less alone in their experience. Sure, that's so cool. That's how you got into it. That's awesome. Yeah, it all just kind of came about. And now I guess I'm a podcaster, which is really cool. And I'm super proud of what we're putting out there. So maybe before we get into your backstory, maybe you can tell us like who you are right now outside of the podcast, maybe, or as part of that.

05:46
Yeah, so in addition to the podcast, kind of everything that I do, I really love what you said, Matt, about how this is healing in a sense, because I'm a big self-help person, I believe, and a lot of these cute little quotes that are out there. And one of my favorite is that the final stage of healing is using what happened to us to help others. And through that, we do heal ourselves, which is amazing. So everything that I've chosen to do with my life since this stuff started out so young, I actually found my

06:12
careers were all just parts of my passion mixed together. So yes, I do the podcast for functional diagnostic nutrition, FDN. I own a small business with my fiance. So we do functional medicine there, red light therapy, other alternative treatments. And then one of my biggest things over the last six, seven years of my life is I public speak. So I speak on mental health issues to kids, mostly late middle school and high school, some college, sometimes, but mostly high school. And then the parents as well.

06:40
That's not an uncommon thing for me to do like the parents later in the day if I talk to the kids earlier And i'll probably focus actually more on that mental health journey today because I had Physical health diseases or physical health issues as well but the mental health stuff is kind of the thing that I believe Anyone can listen to that and hopefully take something from it and that's one of my favorite things to do So i'm a public speaker, uh, not like cheesy rah rah motivational, but I share real stories

07:07
Give real encouragement to ask for help and just let them know that when you're in the middle of something as it sounds like you've been through quite a bit, right? We don't always know when we were in the middle of that, that there is a future, there is another side to this. So I'm trying to be that real life embodiment that, hey, I was like you, it might have even been worse for me. Maybe it was worse for you, but we can relate well enough. There is another side to this. So that's what I do. My life and career is just all surrounded by these things that I went through and I turned it into my passion and thankfully even some.

07:37
It sounds very fulfilling and necessary. I think that, you know, that age of people that you're talking to, like kids and teenagers, it can be really confusing, because I think you feel like you have to be a certain way, and then if you feel not that way, you feel bad about that, and then they introduce the shame, and there's a lot of things that go on at that particular age, so I'm sure what you're doing is...

08:03
maybe not on the surface getting in, but it's probably planting some seeds for them and helping them move through their life. Do you find that things are changing a little bit post pandemic, that people are more receptive or less? So it's funny that you asked that because I did six, seven years I started before the pandemic. And it was like the oddest thing because of course I would never wish for the pandemic purely selfishly career wise. It's like, we blew up. It sucked in the beginning because they forced you all on Zoom.

08:32
And it felt weird from a speaking perspective, but as soon as those places felt safe and comfortable to bring people back in, I went from speaking, you know, maybe a handful of times per month to I've done 20 presentations in a week. Some of which, just to be clear, are at the same school. I might do like four at the same school in a day, but it was like, whoa, what's happening here? So a bit of the right place at the right time. And again, take the career side out of it. Yes, we all need to make a living, but take that out of it. It just...

08:59
actually felt really cool to have a couple years of preparation before going into that, because I would not have wanted to start it then. Having that preparation and then being able to go in, you know, I like to let other people take my strength that I've developed, because I wasn't always strong, right? This is given to me by other people that helped me out. So I want to go in there and give them some strength so they can get through this. And the answer to your question is absolutely yes. It was actually very strange. It was almost eerie, because when you go into an assembly, you can be the best speaker in the world.

09:27
If you speak to four or 500 kids, there's always gonna be someone that is gonna act crazy. I was that kid. It didn't matter how good you were. I was already gonna talk before you even started talking. So I wouldn't even know that you're good because I never even gave you a chance. And what was very strange about the pandemic is when I started going back into the assemblies afterwards, there were times, many times, where I'm in a room with four or 500 kids. These are 11th graders. They're ready to get out of there. And no one's talking. Everyone's listening.

09:56
No one's screwing around. And some of that, I think, was just they were in a very weird social part of their lives because they haven't really talked to each other in person for a year at that point. But the other side was, when you do public speaking, you learn how to make something intriguing from the very beginning to let people know what you're gonna talk about. I think so many of them related to those first few paragraphs that I shared in my speech that they're like, okay, maybe I give this guy a chance and listen, so for better or for worse, yeah, it was definitely more received post-pandemic, still is.

10:25
Yeah, I feel like the people around me also are just more in tune with themselves and there's more awareness in general of like how they're feeling and how things that maybe they pretended serve them before. Now they're like, no, that's that's not I no longer allow that in my space. And so I was just curious if kids feel that way, too, because, you know, it's a global trauma that everyone kind of went through. So there's this shared trauma that I think we all have that we can attach to and hopefully move through and move past.

10:53
Yeah, in some way. I mean, Matt, there's clubs on it now. I was amazed. Like you're sitting there with... Like at school? Yes, I was always like middle ground popularity. A lot of kids didn't like me, some kids liked me. So it was not the worst, it wasn't the best. I certainly knew what it was like to be discarded by the most popular kids is my point. And you're going into schools, not every single one, but a lot of them were like, dude, there's clubs with 40 kids that are coming to talk about mental health and it is totally accepted. The coolest kids in the school, no problem with it. They support it. They'll come up after the speech and let...

11:23
me know that they even have that in their school. So it is, again, I really use this phrase a lot for better or for worse. I'm not sure because there's so many bad things that happened as a result of this. But I think we really might have seen the worst of the mental health stigma ever in the years prior to the pandemic. And I do think it's all upside from here. More people are dealing with it. I get that. But I think we might have permanently changed the stigma around this stuff into more of a positive direction when it historically really has just been getting worse and worse to some degree.

11:53
because so many people saw it, so many people experienced it. It was just like, it's stupid almost. There's no other way to say it. It's just stupid to be stigmatizing it because you know someone in your class, you know someone in your friend group who's dealing with this. Doesn't matter if you're the least popular or most popular kid. So yeah, they're widely open to it. It's really astounding. Yeah, I love that. And I mean, it's mental health. It's like you wouldn't make fun of someone that like broke their leg.

12:19
right, or they had a disease of that you could see, you know, like it just it is it's just what it is. And it's just part of our lives. So, you know, I love that you're doing that. And I love that you're helping them and unfortunately, or unfortunately, better or worse, the way you might say it, you know, they're they're leaning into it more. And I think that's a good thing. And you're able to bring your story. So why don't we get into your story? Maybe you can kind of paint the picture of what your life was like leading up to what you feel maybe was the biggest shift in your life. Sure. So everything started at five. I have

12:48
a bit of a different story. I don't think it's the most unique thing in the world, but it is different from the norm in the sense that I didn't actually have a lot of bad things happening to me when I was younger. Like what you've already described, I just met you, but what you've already described, I mean, it's tragic, right? I can picture what happens because of that. Whereas my life, you know, two parent household, only people they've ever been with, married still to this day for 30 plus years, treated well, middle class to upper middle class, depending on the year.

13:15
things were okay. And again, I had plenty of friends at high school, not the most popular, not the least popular. So things were were good. But I started to experience these health issues at five years old. And again, I'll focus more on the mental health thing today, because I think it might be more relevant for your audience and what they might want to hear and get inspired by. But the physical health issues were starting then as well. So at five, I'm dealing with panic attacks, occasionally, I'm getting like severe headaches, very bad stomach pains that are like to the point where hey, do we go to the hospital for this?

13:45
but they didn't happen every day. This kind of stuff probably only made up, you know, 5% of my existence at five years old. And that means the other 95% of the time, I was a goofy, happy five-year-old that was doing five-year-old stuff. So we go to the doctor and I'm 28 now, so this is 23 years ago, which is crazy to say, but 23 years ago, I think most of us that are listening, even if we're not, you know, 28 years old, you could still picture.

14:10
how much the stigma and mindset around mental health has changed in the last four years, let alone 23 or 24 years. So when my parents and I went into the doctor, I don't remember much from five who does, but I will never forget what he said that day. And he meant, well, it's not a bad person. He said, this isn't something to worry about. Evan gets himself a little too worked up and he's going to outgrow this. And my point in mentioning that is again, not to condemn this doctor, but to show that the stigma that happens in society

14:38
also affects medical professionals. They're part of society. They might be more aware than you and me, but it still affects them too. I just don't think he thought a five-year-old was coming in with panic attacks. And so, especially with two parents that love each other and are treating the kid well. So what happened is, since I didn't forget that, and I wasn't getting taught about mental health in school at that time, as I got worse and worse, because I didn't get better, I got worse and worse, I said to myself, well, wait a second, maybe not so literally,

15:08
is smart, the doctor's this authority figure, they said I'm gonna get better, and I'm gonna outgrow this, I'm not getting better. If smart doctor can't figure this out, I must be the problem. And this is something that I shouldn't share with other people. So the irony is the worse my health issues got, particularly my mental health ones, the more I became quiet about this stuff and really tried to hide what I was experiencing. And Matt, this went on all the way for another 10 years.

15:37
to the point at 15, that's when things really started to shift. This wasn't something that I could hide and still maintain some level of normalcy. Like up until then, you know, I had many bad days, but I could do well enough in school. I was straight A's when I was younger. I sucked at sports. It was all a school type of thing for me. I went from straight A's to like A's, B's, maybe an occasional C plus, but nothing, you know, that I'm getting in trouble at home with. 10th grade, it was, it was bad. That was when I was getting my first F's.

16:05
I'm literally failing classes. I'm not able to keep up with stuff anymore. And looking back, we now know that's when these depression symptoms started to kick in. So it wasn't not, I don't want to say just as if it's nothing, but it wasn't an anxiety problem alone anymore. Now depression was mixed in and depression, man, that changed me as a person. That changed my personality. And I stopped caring about this stuff. Maybe I didn't care, but it, or maybe I didn't not care, but it wasn't my top priority anymore. And I stopped.

16:34
worrying about that and it was the first time I ever humored drugs. All my friends around me, they weren't like doing them heavily, but they had all, you know, smoked weed at this point or drank alcohol. I was so against this total straight edge. And then I finally gave into these things and I didn't really, funniest part is I didn't really like it when I first did it, but it was something different. That's the only way I can conclude it. Looking back, it was just different.

16:58
It took me away from what I was worrying about. I was a little freaked out because I was like high off weed, but I was more worried about that than I was the rest of my problems. And it was just something different for the first time in 10 years. And that was the beginning of the end for me. When I started to deal with depression and then use these very negative coping mechanisms, it is the most stereotypical story of drug abuse you could imagine. You know, it starts with weed and alcohol doesn't work out. Now I'm getting different things that no one in the friend groups doing. So.

17:27
What was interesting to it, probably a better word for that, but what was interesting to me is I go from the last person in my friend group to ever try a drug to within the first several months of doing these things, I'm the one with the biggest problem. I'm the one that's willing to experiment with things that no one else has even thought about. They don't even know the name of it, let alone have they tried it. And so I'm abusing benzodiazepines. For those that don't know, that's like the category that Xanax, Clonopin, Ativan, Valium fall into. So I was self-medicating.

17:55
I was literally abusing drugs that were medicating my anxiety and depression. I was just taking them in way too high of doses for anyone, let alone a 15 year old. And it didn't go well. I was just curious, do you think, I know you brought us back to five years old, do you really feel that masking and hiding it kind of heightened everything to that 15 year old point? Or do you think it was more of a natural progression and that doesn't really play into it? Because I think there's something when we're

18:23
Thinking of my own experience, I pretended that I wasn't grieving for 20 something years, and I know that blew up in my face as well. So I'm curious if you see that pushing down and thinking about that from five years old to 15, heightened everything that you were experiencing and wanting to escape. Excellent question. And I mean this seriously, I'm not just trying to avoid it. I actually think it's both. And the reason is because from my functional medicine perspective, which-

18:50
You know, we may or may not get too in depth today. It doesn't really matter to me, but I ended up, I don't deal with these things anymore. I've not dealt with them in years. And a lot of that was getting my health under control and figuring out what we're doing wrong in today's world. But at the same time, the stress of over time, thinking I need to hide who I am, losing my identity as this once like nerdy, happy kid who would have like.

19:16
If someone else was being bullied, I would have bullied, I would have stepped in and stopped that. And now at 15, I'm the one being the a-hole to everyone. I'm miserable. I'm embarrassed that I'm good at school. Like, it was just the stress from that 100 percent made it worse, too. So absolutely. And it's like a compounding shame that comes with it, too, because you're like, I should be this way, but then I'm not. But then I'm a jerk. And then then you have the shame because you're that way. And then I can understand that. Plus, let's not forget, like...

19:46
as a teenager, you also have all these other hormones and things changing in your life. And so like everything I can see how that would, that would kind of lead you in the way that it leads other people as well. So it's not like you were unique in this situation in which you found something to mask or help or hide or escape, I guess, maybe those drugs were really your escape. Were they helpful? Like in the sense of when you would take them, were you not as...

20:15
bad in your mind? See, Matt, that's a question a lot of people don't ask, but it needs to be asked more because people don't do things that don't work. And I think there's a lot of ignorance around drug abuse and why people do these things. You didn't just do it because you were bored and then you continue to do it. Oh, it's not working, so I'm going to use it every day. That doesn't even make sense, right? So what you just asked, I think people need to be more open to because drugs weren't the problem. They were a piss poor solution to my problems.

20:42
And when I first did it, like I said, it actually was uncomfortable. I felt very uncomfortable and anxious with the idea of being high, especially off marijuana, but it was distracting. The worst thing I ever took was a Pralizams Annex because that actually does reduce anxiety in probably 90% of people that take it. So I was no longer anxious. That's for damn sure. When I took that, I felt no fear. I was crazy with what I would do on that. But again, you're trading problems because that was at the cost of

21:12
One, I mean, completely blacking out, not remembering what I was doing some nights. Extreme bouts of anger would come from that. And I don't even remember it. So you're getting into fights with people or causing issues somewhere. And then you wake up the next day and they're like upset or someone saying something to you and you have to play it off. Like you even know what the hell they're talking about and take responsibility for something you don't even remember that occurred. So but then you run from that to you, right? Then you just take more Xanax or you take more whatever.

21:39
to kind of mask that, right? And it just becomes a cycle of some sort. Yes. Right, and then at some point they don't work, right? Maybe, or they don't do as good of a job of hiding things and then you add other things or try new things, or is this just you're seeking out things just because? Though the second option, or the second thing that you proposed is you nailed it. Right? You start with weed, right? And you smoke it all day every day. And then it almost just feels like you're getting like zoned out. It's not even that you're high anymore.

22:09
So then the Xanax gets mixed in, you need higher and higher. One major problem with that drug, even from a legitimate Western medicine, therapeutical side of it, is you build a tolerance to it rapidly. I mean, if you take that to the normal dose for two weeks straight, you'll already find that the same dosage is not doing what it did on day one at day 14. So it's very scary and there's a lot of controversy around using that for a variety of reasons. That's why they were intended to be used short term. But so what I did is like,

22:37
Okay, that would work or maybe I couldn't get it because it was kind of hard to get at 15 where I lived. And so I started trying these different things. Like I actually didn't like drinking that much. I never did, it felt weird to me. Not even anxiety provoking. It's just like, I didn't feel good. I got a headache easily, stomach upset. I couldn't handle it. But I'm like, oh, well wait, if I smoke weed and take some Xanax and drink a shot or two with it, now I can...

23:01
you know, potentiate, I didn't use that word at the time, but potentiate these other things that I'm taking. It's a new combination, new feeling. So yeah, it's like I try to take more and more, but the goal, and I didn't admit this at the time, but looking back, it's obvious. The goal wasn't even to really get high. The goal was to be, I wanted to black out because I didn't want to deal with anything. No, I mean, that totally makes sense. At some point, does the anxiety grow when you can't find that blankness?

23:31
You know, like I feel like at some point when you're used to these things, you're trying new concoctions and stuff, then the thing you're trying to run from becomes the thing that's now part of your life trying to get you to the next. Like, I'm not trying to. I mean, it's not funny, but I mean, you know, like it's it's ironic in a sense of like you're anxious. So you're trying to blank out, basically find a blank space. But then you can't reach it. So then you get anxious that you can't reach it. And things just kind of snowball from there.

24:01
That's what happens when you use, as I worded before, very colorfully, piss poor solutions. The reason that a solution is piss poor is because it inherently comes with problems, right? That's kind of the loose definition of piss poor solutions. So that's the thing. Now you're in this cycle at one point where you're just focused on, there's a new focus in your life of like, okay, I need to get the drugs, then I need to do them, then I need to hide them, then I need to find a way to get more, I need to do them, I need to hide them. And again, you really end up living in your own world. I think-

24:30
Yeah, right. Were you functioning in like school and things like that? Or was it all just blank?

25:00
Like were you going to school and graduating and all those things? No, 10th grade I got through. I cheated on a lot of stuff. I was selling drugs at a certain point. Because you didn't care. So I'd literally pay people to be like, hey, here's 20 bucks, that's a lot in 10th grade, right? Give me the test answers, whatever, they were fine with that. 11th grade, I couldn't really fake. So basically the way it worked is my cumulative GPA was very high for my good grades at one point. So as I was plummeting, I could survive one year of this.

25:26
end of 11th grade, my cumulative GPA for high school is now a 1.8. And then I made it 17 days into my senior year. That's the literal number 17 days, including weekends. And I got kicked out of school arrested and sent to juvie. So no, it did not work out. Is that is that a breaking point? Or is that just a bump? A speed bump? Well, you know what, that's probably

25:51
point worth sharing. So if I can, I'll probably go into that a little more in depth and then the rest of this is probably purely- This is your story. So- Thank you. So after getting kicked out, that was definitely a wake-up call to me. It was like an earthquake shock factor because nothing bad. Like I hadn't really experienced a lot of consequences. I was getting away with this at school. I'm coming in high. I'm sneaking by my parents. They kind of know something's wrong. They have no idea to what degree. I was doing crazy stuff. Like we lived in the suburbs. So there's like there's some farms around like I-

26:21
I was almost too sneaky for my own good because I said, okay, well, they can't catch me at home if I never bring the drugs there. So I had a waterproof backpack, all my stuff in it, even the stuff I'm selling. I'm about to pull into my house at the end of the night. I'd throw the bag into the cornfield and then I'd go home so I could smell, but they can never prove, other than with a drug test, I suppose, what I'm doing. And they would never know the weight of what I'm doing because I'm hiding the stuff as soon as I leave that or I come back to the house. They have no idea what it is. So that was shocking.

26:50
But it was almost too much at once, because within a two week span, I end up, like I said, getting arrested, going to juvie, spending my 18th birthday on house arrest, because I was turning 18 September 30th, that's my birthday, all the, I'm like, whoa, whoa, what is going on? And it wouldn't be for a few more months that I kind of have this major, kind of dramatic aha moment. So this all happened in September of 2013, and I'm on probation now, I've gotten off house arrest somewhere.

27:18
you know, probably like in late October. So they're giving me some privileges again. And what was happening with those privileges is I was allowed to go out, like I could go see friends, but I had curfews, all this kind of stuff. It was a very weird situation because I got on juvenile probation 13 days before I turned 18. So when you become an adult on juvenile probation, it's a weird overlap of what you're allowed to do and not to. So New Year's Eve came around that year.

27:44
And I've skated by for another three and a half months. I am not using drugs every single day, but I am using drugs on probation. I went to the doctor as an 18 year old young man who can go to the doctor privately and got a prescription for Xanax. I told them I had anxiety, which was true. And so now I'm prescribed the thing that I'm getting drug tested for, and I can fail that test and there's nothing that they can do. I mean, it was really insane. And New Year's Eve, again, I wanna make this clear for people because I don't have enough time to explain everything today.

28:12
It's not like my parents or probation officer are dumb, but what the whole point of probation is, ideally, even though this doesn't happen very often, is some type of genuine rehabilitation. So there are little deals that are made. It was, okay, well, you can go out on New Year's Eve because you are an adult, and you are gonna be off probation, hopefully sooner rather than later, and we're gonna need to make sure that you can go live in these environments again and do these things without going back to how you used to be. So yeah, you can go out. Here's the rules, though. Mom and dad drop you off.

28:41
Mom and dad pick you up. If they accept that, then you're allowed to do this. So my mom and dad were going out anyway. They're not big drinkers. They're like, okay, cool. We'll pick them up. He seems like he's doing well. They all thought I was doing okay. So I go out on that New Year's Eve mat and I made it about 10 minutes into hanging out with my friends before I just started drinking and doing drugs, just like I always did. The most obvious thing possible, it's New Year's Eve for gosh sake. I get picked up by my parents at 12.

29:06
and we get in the car, I haven't mentioned we yet, so we is myself and my girlfriend of about four years at the time, I won't mention her name on this podcast, and so we've been dating already for four or five years, and I convinced her to do a lot of the same things I did that night, but she wasn't quite as into that stuff, and by not as quite as into that stuff, I mean she probably did 10% of what I did. So when we get in the car, it's a little more obvious that she's messed up than it is that I'm messed up.

29:35
and we made it about 30 seconds into the car ride, like, you know, pulled out of the neighborhood, driving down the road. And she repeats a full sentence to my parents because she's so drunk. Like she answered the question twice. And I'm looking at her across the seat. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, shut up, what are you doing? This is crazy. She's gone. There is no bringing her back now. She's making it very obvious that something's wrong. And I realized I'm going to jail tonight. Game over. My parents love me, but they're still firm. I'm going to jail.

30:06
I have never seen them so mad in my life still to this day, and I don't think I'll ever see them madder, thank God. They slam on the brakes in the middle of the road. My dad turns around and he is screaming at the top of his lungs at my girlfriend. Now I'm really confused at first. I grew up with a younger sister and I've gotten in trouble with her, so I kind of thought it was one of those things where one of us gets it first, the other one gets it next. And so I'm waiting for them to yell at me.

30:35
they never say a word. And after maybe, I don't know, a couple minutes of this, I'm like, oh my God, they raised, I probably didn't say it like this, but I'm thinking something along the lines of, they raised me better than this. They can't even comprehend how messed up I am, like in life in general, that I could get into their car on New Year's Eve, on probation, while actively getting urine tested on drugs and alcohol. It was beyond their comprehension that someone that they raised,

31:04
could be acting like this. So they don't say a thing to me, we drive home in silence, and when we got home, that's where things started to shift. I was very good at blaming other people for my problems at that point. When I said people that abuse drugs live in their own world, I mean like you literally live in a delusional world of your own. So I was at fault for none of this. This was all the world's fault. I'm a victim, why do I have these things? This is everyone else's fault but mine. So instead of taking responsibility for...

31:33
getting my girlfriend drunk and high that night and her getting caught and saying, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I yelled at her for making it obvious. And when I yelled at her that night, I probably had done a lot of stupid stuff, nothing physical to be clear, but you can still hurt someone very bad verbally. I think we all know that too well. I just, I said things to her you don't say to anyone, let alone someone that you love. And the last memory I have of this person,

32:00
Her just crying for about an hour straight before you know, you can call it went to bed But it's really just passed out and when I woke up in the morning Matt, I realized she had already left No, this was not like her at all This was very weird and I'm starting to remember the things that happened the night before I wasn't blacked out that I before I was conscious of what occurred but I'm like dude. This is whoa. Whoa. You cannot say those things to someone and I started to actually have this kind of realization moment I'm like, what are you even doing yelling at this person? You are on probation. She's like

32:29
10 notches out of your league, which for those on video, it's not saying much, but she was like 10 notches out of my league. She can go get any guys she wants and she's sticking with you, getting picked up by your mom and dad on probation at 12 a.m. because she has your back for the last four or five years while you're going through all this and you're not telling her a damn thing. Like you're not really explaining what's happening. You better call her, say you're sorry, tell her how much you love her. I don't think I've ever said, I love you out loud. I sent like ILY on text for four or five years. And so I grabbed the phone.

32:59
to go call her. And I'm just gonna spit out all this stuff beforehand. I'm not even gonna let her talk. I'm just gonna say everything that needs to be said and hopefully she responds well. But I was too late. And she's okay, she's alive, I don't mean it like that. But she didn't answer me. And normally, no matter how bad I screwed up, it was one of those toxic relationships. I could still get her to answer, I could still get her to say something. And it's the boy who cried, woof, because I'm finally about to call and say something good.

33:27
after four or five years, say something productive, but that was just the last straw for her. So it was no more, we're not gonna do this calling back and forth thing, I'm done, I need to get away from you. I would have had your back if you were willing to get help for yourself, but you're not even helping you, and now you're hurting me. So this is a dangerous situation. That was my aha moment. That's actually really what I speak about. And when I say an aha moment, I mean a moment where our self-awareness comes back.

33:56
where we've been walking through life with maybe a bad habit or a bad set of choices or an extremely bad set of choices, as was my case, for years and years and there's no end in sight, and finally, something snaps us out of it. And I started to accept that I am doing hard drugs on probation and that I'm not invincible, right, as every teenager thinks. I'm like, Evan, this is gonna end one of two ways, brother. You're gonna die or you're gonna go to jail?

34:23
One of those sounds a little better than the other one, but I wasn't really planning for either of those things. And those are the routes. One of those is what I was heading now. Everything changed after that. I'm not saying it was perfect, but I made a decision that day that if I can't change for myself, I gotta change for the people in my life that love me and care about me and have had my back. And what I always tell people, you know, is don't wait for those things for an aha moment. You know, sometimes we're waiting for a sign or a signal to get us in the right direction.

34:53
I would hope a podcast like this can maybe be that before something really bad happens because the truth is I'm lucky I'm lucky to be alive and be able to share a story like this with you. So thanks for giving me the space to explain all that. That's kind of the context. But that's what happened. Well, it's kind of interesting too, because you were in this victim mentality and then you know, you had this experience. And I think a lot of people that lived in that victim mentality might if you're if their girlfriend didn't answer, they might revert.

35:21
back to that victim mentality and be like, see, I'm fine, she's the one that's all messed up. And I continue playing the blame. And so it's interesting to look around at all those moments. Is it your parents finally seeing how they see someone else that was in a similar situation, but maybe not quite as bad as you were, but you were better at masking it or hiding it because of the circumstances? It's so interesting to look around that moment and see, what was it that woke you up? I'm not asking you, because you might not.

35:51
know which piece of that is, but it's so interesting because we are creatures of habit. And so if we're so in this, I mean, I did the victim mentality forever. My mom was dead. Like that was everything that went wrong. It was like, well, my mom died, so like I can't possibly be good at this or I failed because she's dead. But she died when I was eight. Like, you know, all these things. And it's so interesting to me that you were able to, and good for you, to like wake up.

36:18
Like, and see the damage that you were doing to not only yourself, because you probably saw the damage that you were influencing her, your parents, you were blindsided in your parents for so long, you know, in a way because they loved you so much. So good on you for having that moment, because I don't think a lot of people that were in that situation reach that moment. So it's teenage love, Matt, you know, that's I don't. And I don't know, because it's a good question. And I know it wasn't literal, but I always kind of wonder still to this day sometimes.

36:47
Was it the icing on the cake with all those situations or was it that particular thing? Because months ago I got arrested, kicked out, all that stuff, and I still didn't change. And I think there's something to be said about that teenage love or just, you know, your first love, maybe you didn't love someone when you were a kid, that's fine, but it's powerful. And to be sober the next morning and realize, dude, you made this person cry for an hour, they didn't do anything wrong. I was still human, I was messed up, but I was still human. And that just, that wasn't acceptable to me.

37:17
that something needed to change. Well, and you mentioned, I'm sure there were times where she was disappointed in you or you did things that weren't, you know, before that, but this was it. This was like, you know, maybe she did those drugs that night so that you would be happy, you know, and she did that for you, and now you're the one yelling at her because you're getting in trouble. Did you even get trouble with your parents? Did they eventually know or? They only knew years later when I...

37:45
started getting my stuff, well, I started getting my stuff on track relatively quickly, but they didn't know these types of stories until years later when I said, yeah, no, that's what I was doing that night. Because they kind of always wondered, like, what the hell happened? It almost seemed like the oddest New Year's resolution ever because it was timed with New Year's. And my probation officer was curious because, you know, I went from never, I never ever talked to my probation officer. He had to meet with me for an hour a week. I sat there, I thought I was the toughest kid in the world. Arms crossed, head down. I know he's got a schedule. I'm not saying.

38:14
And now I'm like pouring my heart out by the next week crying in the sessions. And so they must have thought this was associated with it. I'm just like, yeah, no, it wasn't a New Year's resolution. It's just ironically well timed. But yeah, no, they do know all these things now, but they're like, yeah, we had no idea. And again, they're not oblivious people. They just they couldn't wrap their head around why I would do that or that I would even be so dumb as to do that.

38:38
And the problem is when you're living in the drug stuff, you got a million answers for anything. So I'm already thinking five, this is what, I don't mean for people to be so skeptical of their loved ones if they're dealing with this type of stuff, but you do need to assume that they're three steps ahead because if my parents said to me, well, hey, you smell like alcohol. All right, you know what guys, everyone was taking a shot at midnight. I just said I would do that. So now I'm still, I'm admitting to something, but I'm underplaying, well, no, I've actually been drinking since 7 p.m. and I can just hide it well because I do this all the time, unfortunately.

39:06
And it's better than lying. Yeah, it's like a half truth. Oh, I don't know what you're talking about. Right, exactly. If you own up to something, it seems like you're telling the full truth and not the whole thing. Yeah, you become a master at that, unfortunately. Not a great skill. Yeah. So, you know, like, I know we taught we started this like about this mental health piece, which really probably triggered so much of this this journey for you of escaping, essentially, when you find this awareness, how do you get a hold of it without?

39:36
running down the drug lane again? Or do you have a fear of medication? Or is therapy a thing? How does life change in a way when you have used all the things that I guess technically you're supposed to use in a medical sense, but you use them differently? How do you find a safe space with that? Yeah, well great question. So I not only had a probation officer, but because of the nature of how I got kicked out, I had like, looking back, what was probably like a standard psychology type counselor. Okay.

40:05
I had these other people I didn't understand. I just knew that they showed up every week, but I had these different people in my life for a reason assigned. And so it was thankfully at this point, a fairly easy transition because, you know, these people were gonna meet with me that week anyway. It's my choice as to whether or not I participate. And I don't know that it was such a conscious choice. It was just the next logical step. When they came in that next week, I started talking about some of the things that I thought and some of the things that I dealt with.

40:34
and that, hey, I'm not just, because I got kicked out for a fight, I didn't even mention that. It was like, there's a whole story there, but this was a fight revolving around drug stuff. And when I'm talking to them now, I go from just, oh, angry, violent kid to, hey, I struggle with this stuff sometimes where I get for like 20 minutes, I think I'm gonna die and I feel like I can't breathe and I get dizzy and I almost disassociate and I'm super scared. And they're like, I mean, a counselor can't diagnose, but he's like, hey, I think that's a panic attack.

41:04
And then I say, well, sometimes, actually for the last three years, really, most of the time, I don't feel like there's a point to my life. And I wasn't not doing school because I'm lazy, not smart, or don't care about my parents and what they think. I just didn't think there's a point to any of this. So why would I bother doing something so stupid, like the homework tests are these dumb quizzes. And he's like, yeah, man, that sounds like depression, you lose motivation to do things you want to enjoy it is that's what happened. I haven't enjoyed anything other than drugs in a few years. Right. And so I was

41:32
getting these realizations and listen, some people could go through this and you might get diagnosed with something that's much less common. It might be a bipolar, which is it's common enough, but it's certainly less common than panic attacks or a major depressive disorder. So what was actually something to rejoice in for me with this is as I'm learning about these things that I deal with, I'm finding out because people will lie, but you can go on Google and search the stats. I'm like, there's millions, tens of millions of people who deal with this every single year in America alone, let alone the rest of the world.

42:02
So there was now, so people are so against the labels and I can understand that perspective too. For me, I was so happy to have a label for what I dealt with. I'm realizing I'm not crazy. That's what I thought my whole life. I'm not evil or lacking empathy because people don't understand this depression, especially in young males can almost, you can almost overlap this with a lot of antisocial personality disorder things. You might not feel as empathetic. You might be engaging.

42:28
in like low level crimes and stupid drug abuse. So you're thinking that something's like genuinely wrong with you that can't be fixed. It's like, dude, you're depressed, you're miserable. That's why you're numb. That's why you're doing all this dumb stuff. And so it's not an excuse to go do those things, but to have that label was something I was happy about because the label had treatments. The label had things that other people have posed solutions to or posed support to. So I was like super happy to learn about this stuff. So I started talking with them.

42:58
You weren't crazy. Yeah, I got around the right people. There was a lot of different things, but nothing's really that profound. I just started talking and then making one step at a time. Were these the first moments in which you vocalize some of these things, like in which like these words came out of your mouth? Because I feel like that is such like a release and sometimes can be overwhelming as well. Did you find comfort in that or was it scary to start sharing like the vulnerability? I think like because it sounds like you were masking that for so long.

43:27
but now you're just telling these people that life is hard. The first time I can kinda, it's hard to see yourself in the third person, but I can kinda see myself. I know myself so well back then. Red face, teary-eyed, all upset. Again, I'm going in, I know I need to talk, but I'm going in with the idea, I had legitimately convinced myself for the last several years that I'm miswired, I'm crazy. I used all these different labels and words. So...

43:54
I'm admitting it finally, but I'm assuming that that's correct. I'm like, I'm basically just telling you I'm misswired and you need to do something with me. So I was extremely nervous at first, but genuinely that actually became very rapidly soothed by the idea that, no, dude, you're not crazy or misswired. These are like things that a bunch of people deal with and you've just never heard about it before. I'm not not in depth. I wasn't educated on it. So first times were terrible. But as soon as I learned what these things were, I wouldn't say I was comfortable with it, but. It was.

44:23
night and day difference from how I've been living for the last 13 years of my life. Is there an experience of shame that comes in when you realize that it could have been something that they could have helped you with early on? And I'm not putting this on you. I'm just curious if that's a feeling that like, oh, perhaps I took the wrong route. Had I said this earlier, I could have changed, you know, like those kinds of things. Is there a piece of you that's like, oh, shit, why didn't I do that to begin with?

44:50
I've reflected on this a lot, so it's kind of hard when you're doing like, I know we're not literally live, but still a recorded podcast, so I don't want to answer wrong, but my initial gut feeling, shame? No. Good. And it's easy to say this now though, I guess 10 years in, that's why I'm really trying to think because when I look at this, I don't care what someone believes, God, universe, it's all fine to me. This happened to me exactly how it needed to. Because of what I've been able to do over the last 10 years, it's like, it's almost as if I traded this 13 year period of my life to go have meaning.

45:20
for the next 60, 70, 80, however long I'm here. Maybe less, maybe more, I don't know. So yeah, shame, thankfully no, not shame. Yeah, I ask that because I think sometimes we, or I, I guess I should say this, I look back at my grief journey and I'm like, what? I should have done what I did at 30 something when I was 12, you know, like, or when I was eight, you know, all those things. I'm like, all those years that I took.

45:46
hiding from this grief because I thought everyone just needed to see that I was going to be successful. So I poured myself into everything else, making sure everyone else was happy, when really behind all that was just a miserable kid, an eight-year-old just growing up, being chronologically older, but still stuck at eight. And then I look back and when I found my therapist and I found the right therapist and started like saying the words out loud and she was like, you realize you've made every decision since then with that eight-year-old fear.

46:16
of losing someone else. And when she told me that, I was like, that's like the easiest thing that I wish I could have realized. And so there was like this like, how dumb am I that I didn't do that? So that's where that question came from in just the sense of like, I can understand how that could be, but I'm glad it wasn't. Yeah, maybe, Matt, that's such a good point because like, I mean, again, we're going 10 years back and obviously if you, it sounded like you said you did this around 30, so you're already fully adult, even brain wise, it's like, my gosh, 18 to 25, your brain's still developing, I'm still getting out of.

46:46
being a literal kid and teenager, maybe at the moment, especially since I had, I definitely had embarrassment and shame around getting kicked out of school and stuff. So I'm sure in those initial moments, I was like, well, wait, I want them all to know I'm not crazy. I'm not violent, there's nothing wrong with me. I just needed to deal with this stuff and they'll never know. So full transparency, and I've never really reflected on this in depth. I'm sure part of my journey, especially speaking in schools.

47:11
was deeply personal in the sense that not only do I want to help other people, I want to prove to myself, I want to prove to others that no, no, no, I'm not crazy, man. I can go help people. I had something wrong. And I don't, I don't think that should be one's primary motivation, but I don't think it's inherently bad either to have 10, 20% of it be, Hey, no, I want to prove to myself and others I can do this. I think that's okay. Maybe I'm wrong. But if it's not the not the only reason I think that's that's appropriate. So yeah, looking back, it's like

47:36
There was probably a lot in that initial stage of like, no, I want to finish my senior year. This was supposed to be the only good year of schooling from five to 18 and I don't even get to enjoy it. Right. So yeah, there probably was something back then, but thankfully now hindsight's 2020. But I wouldn't. The only thing I would change is how I affected other people negatively. I wouldn't. I would do this 10 times over to get to experience what I've experienced in the last 10 years.

48:01
And it's weird to say that, right? I think like on the surface, it sounds really odd to be like, yeah, I would go through all of that and I would hit all these bumps in the road. And I even look back at like, I would not be this version of me had my mom not died, had I not struggled with grief for so long. And so would I change it? Probably not. Do I have some like regret that I didn't fix it earlier? Probably, but I wouldn't be who I am. I wouldn't have formed these.

48:28
particular relationships that I have or have this opportunity to talk to you, whatever that might be. And so, yeah, it's, it's weird to like think of these like pretty shitty moments that were like, yep, I'd do it again. And I learned from it in a way that, you know, is hopefully helping myself, but also helping the people out there. And it sounds like you are like daily helping these people move through their life and maybe avoid some of the things you did. Well, that's kind of what we were talking. That's how we started all this, right? We talked about

48:55
turning that passion into a purpose and using the final stage of healing is using what happened to us to help others. I, over the last year, because my fiance and I, we did get engaged during the last year and so there was a lot of different stuff changing financially. I spoke, the most I ever spoke was, go a year back, March of 2023, the five years prior to that was like packed. And so I said, all right, I need some time off. I'm not gonna do as many. So I only did like one a month, which was crazy. Cause again, I've done 20 in a week. I'm pretty much March to June of that year.

49:25
And I've only done some things here and there. And it's a very timely podcast because I'm realizing there is a hole in my soul, my friend, by not doing that. So I need to get back out there and I'm working on that. But by taking that break, it really helps me reflect on how much doing what I do makes sense of all this. And I don't think that's bad either. I don't think it's bad to rely on your mission and rely on your work. I'm not for a paycheck, but for the sake of getting some meaning and clarity to what goes on.

49:54
Listen, I went to presentations in schools to be clear where I've completely bombed it kids are screwing around and it didn't go Well at all. I'm not the best speaker in the world That's not what I'm saying, but you do enough of them You're gonna get lucky and there are presentations and this is one of the best ones ever is in my hometown My school district finally let me back in after like seven years. I think I was twenty five Well, damn, I was probably 26 when they let me in so almost eight years after this all happened and an eighth grader at

50:21
I'll just say one of the middle schools that I spoke at because there was several in the district, came up afterwards. This is like a movie. Said nothing else. I swear on my life, this is the truth. He grabbed my hand, eighth grade kid, shook it and said, I think you just saved my life. Thanks for coming in today and walked away and that was it. When you have that- Job done. I can never speak again. Everything that you ever went through, you like, yeah, job done, you're right. Everything was worth it just to be able to

50:51
do that one thing. If someone could go at 15 and tell me, I don't know if I would have had the mental capacity to comprehend this maybe at 15, but if someone said at 15, hey, I need you to hang in there, because one day you're gonna be the person where someone's coming up to you at 14, 15 and saying you just saved their life. I just need you to hang in there. Again, you can't know that at the time, but looking back, yeah, I'll do that again, absolutely. Yeah, no, I mean, that's a validation that your journey has all kind of come to this point in which you, it's like,

51:21
affirming that you're doing the right thing, you're on the right path, you're sharing your story, and you're sharing the hard parts so that other people can avoid those hard parts. And we assume, like, before you realize that maybe you had depression, or maybe you had panic attack, before you realized there was names and things to these things, you just assumed you were crazy and like, you needed to be fixed. When really, there were just things that were, you know,

51:48
going on and you needed to address those just as if you had broken your leg or you sprained your ankle or any of those kind of things and, you know, helping other kids realize that like, there are these things and they're okay. And they're just something that you work through with whatever help you need, whether that's actual medicine, whether that's working and talking and talk therapy and those kinds of things, whatever kind of thing you need to find, find it and making it okay for them. Because I think we assume the shame like there's something wrong with us. And it's like

52:18
We don't do that when we cut our finger and we're like, oh God, something wrong with me. You know, like you just, you deal with it and you fix it and you help yourself. So I'm glad you had that experience though because I can't imagine what that felt like when you got back in your car and you're just like, damn. Like, it's like a wave. Yeah, I don't know if I can comprehend it still to this. Because you're like, what does that mean? What does it mean when you say that? What were you gonna do? You know, I don't know, I don't know, but.

52:45
And maybe he didn't know. Right, yeah, it just makes it all worth it. That's cool. I don't even care if he's lying. It's still, it keeps you going because, I mean, again, speaking to kids, the only worse audience than that is inmates. They're waiting for you to fail, my friend. They want you to screw up and do something stupid on stage. So when you just know even one's listed, I'll go through 50 bad presentations where someone's throwing something at someone else or rubbing boogers on their classmate just to get that one. So, and that's how it works, right? You even just.

53:13
sharing your story and being popular. These people, they hold these things in for a while, man. They are ashamed of it and they're scared to share it. But I have another, again, walking self-help book here. One of my other favorite quotes that I actually put at the end of my book is the quote by Marianne Williamson, where she talks, now she's in politics, right? So I shouldn't even mention the name. It's not about that. This was years ago when I wrote it. She says, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give permission for others to do the same.

53:39
As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others. Ooh, man, I love that one. Like, it's so cool. And it encourages us just to live as ourselves and be our full authentic selves. Because listen, the bottom line is the greatest people of all time, the Buddhas, Gandhis, Mother Teresa's, Jesus's, they were all hated by someone. So no matter how good you and I are, Matt, we're probably gonna be hated by some people. So we might as well just be ourselves, let our own light shine, because that's gonna give other people permission to do the same.

54:08
Well, it also makes life a lot easier if you can just be yourself and lean into it, right? And not have to mask things or not have to hide things. And just like, you know, that first time you were honest with them and be like, these are the things I'm experiencing. Like after that aha moment, you're like, this is it. And they're like, oh, yeah, well, here's actually what's happening. Probably. Why don't we just look into that? And you're like, oh, I could have said this five years ago. And, you know, like it would have been a different path. But.

54:32
You know, we all take these paths for whatever reason, but it sounds like you're doing good things with it. You kind of jumped the gun on my final question, but I'm still gonna ask it. I'm curious if you could go back to, Evan, when you and your girlfriend got in that car or were about to get in your parents' car that night, is there anything you would say to Evan, not to your girlfriend, but to that version of you? Right before the car? Yeah, right before they picked you up and you knew your girlfriend was...

55:00
doing drugs and you were also doing drugs.

55:05
Now, whether or not he'd listen is a different question, Matt, right? But, um, what I would say, knowing what I know now, and I've never been asked this particular one, so that's really good question is I'd say, dude, enough's enough, go in and be honest, tell the truth, the new year's resolution or not, whatever it is, you got to figure this out and just say enough is enough. Because my parents actually, you know, they don't live in a bubble. Um, they're very aware of what happens in the world and the kids.

55:32
do stupid things, they were kids at one point. They've always been very realistic with that and I appreciated and respected that with them as I was growing up. And if I just went in and was honest and said, we screwed up, I promise I'm done with this, they would have received that. They would have been a little upset, but they would have received that because they know I wouldn't have said that. Being dishonest, there's no point. So I would have just said, dude, enough's enough, stop wearing the mask, you're exhausted. You use that word too, that's a word, people, again, you get a lot of this stuff, it's really nice talking to you. Yeah, I was exhausted because putting on a mask.

56:01
every day is exhausting. Living a fake life is exhausting. Said, you're tired, dude. Go home, you're safe, you're good. Your parents will be a little upset, but now they know at least why you guys are being weird or she's being weird, whatever, and let's figure this out tomorrow. So again, maybe it could have been something more profound, but what came to my head initially is just enough's enough. I needed enough is enough. Yeah, I mean, I think luckily you hit that point. The sad part of that point is that...

56:29
there was a victim in that, you know, and those are the things that we have to, this is just part of life and the things that we have to accept and we have to move through, but good on you for what you're changing in the world. If people wanna like be part of your orbit, to be in your circle, read your book, be connected with you in any way, what's the best way to get ahold of you? Yeah, thank you. So evantransu.com, so evantransu.com would be great, health detective podcast, and we didn't really talk about it today, and that's my choice, it's all good, but...

56:59
Bucks, B-U-C-K-S, buck is where we do the functional medicine thing. You can read my full physical health story there. We work with people not only throughout the country, but actually even globally as well. So thank you for allowing me to share all those things. Yeah, definitely make easy links in the show notes so people can just click on those. They don't have to spell things out while they're driving down the road. So thank you for sharing your story though. I think that.

57:26
Unfortunately, fortunately, I don't know which word to use there, but there are going to be people listening that can relate to the experiences that you had and see how you're able to use those things moving forward to probably heal yourself in every little speech that you do, but also heal other people just by listening to you, even if it's not in the moment, even if it's like, oh, remember three months ago when Evan came and talked to our school and he said this? Now it makes sense, you know? So you never know how long that's gonna take, but thank you for what you're putting into the world.

57:55
Thank you for having me. If you are listening and something that Evan said resonated with you or you know someone that might need to hear directly from Evan, please share this episode with them. We would be so ever grateful. And with that, I will be back next week with a brand new episode of the Life Shift podcast. Thanks again, Evan.