How to Heal from Addiction After Rock Bottom | with Samantha Harte

Michael: Samantha Hart, welcome to the podcast, my friend. I've been very much looking forward to having this conversation with you. There is something tremendously powerful about the journey that we go through addiction and learning self love and the chaos of understanding our families and the implications that they have on us. And then ultimately being able to become a person who's okay with the reflection in the mirror. And when I had the opportunity to sit down and research you and understand you, I thought to myself, this is a person who gets what the healing journey is really about. So first, thank you so much.

Samantha: Thank you so much. It's so refreshing to talk to somebody like you who thinks that way about healing because part of what I want to do in this space is bring a real rawness and authenticity that is desperately needed and missing. I made a post recently about…

Michael: It is.

Samantha: Some place in Malibu I went into. And every piece of swag that they were selling in the coffee shop said, good vibes only. And I stood there with my camera facing me and made a post and said, I call bullshit.

Michael: You have to have bad vibes. Like you have to have negative energy to find the light. And I think that, and maybe we'll get into this, but we live in a very soft society right now. And I think it's doing people a tremendous disservice, but I don't want to step into that just yet. In hearing your story, knowing your background. And what you do now in helping people, I think we have to start at the beginning because I really want to paint a picture here. So people understand that we're not just having a conversation about someone who changed their life and they're fucking great, because I don't think that benefits anyone in any capacity. What I'm really curious about, if you could describe your childhood in just one word, what would that be?

Samantha: Boundaryless.

Michael: What does that mean?

Samantha: I saw things, I was exposed to things, I tried things, I heard things that a young girl should never have. And the way that set the tone for what I would try as a young girl, what I would think was okay, what I would justify, what I would try to control that I absolutely couldn't, got pretty fucked up pretty quick. And there's other words, believe me when you ask that, that come to mind. But that one probably had maybe not the largest imprint, but one of the largest. So really there's so much fuzziness in the childhood experience. There's so much I don't remember that I wish I did. But when I really feel like my memory bank came online, it's an early adolescence. And by that time, my dad was resigned to the basement. He had done enough things to my mother when I was little that I didn't see and didn't know. I only had my mother's word to go off of that made him utterly irrelevant. He gambled away. They are life savings. He rejected my mother physically, emotionally for years and years and years. And as soon as my mom found out what he did with the money, she said, fuck you never again. And he was in the basement, we can't get divorced. That would be too hard on the kids. Oh, okay. So, the solution was my father was emotionally absent. And he put his tail between his legs and my mother told us everything about what he did and didn't do all the extramarital affairs that she was having, that she was completely justified in having. She was an untreated anorexic. She would eat like a bird and then spout off at the mouth saying how amazing it was to be able to eat in moderation anything you wanted. And all those fat people just couldn't control themselves. She would pop prescription pills at night and disappear emotionally and it would frighten me. One of my earliest memories is questioning. Why she took those pills every night because it scared me she was so emotionally vacant It was like being in the presence of a ghost. So I spoke up like kids do and She said do you like the things you have? Yes, in order for me to give you the things that you have I need to work and in order for me to work I need to sleep and in order for me to sleep, I need those pills. What did I learn in that moment? Oof. well, is it my fault to those pills? Don’t ever ask me that again. In fact, if you have an intuitive thought or idea, shut that shit down because that is going to put you in farther proximity. From the one caregiver you need to keep you safe and loved in the world. My earliest coping skills. If you will, was to self abandon was to people, please was to become of everybody else in the room at the expense of myself and also to please and perform as best I could, because another thing that was really drilled in my head as a young girl was going who believes in God is an idiot. And the only person you can count on is yourself. And you better get your degree because nobody can take it from you who gaining weight frizzy hair. And she was. Miserable she also had even to this day things I don't fully know or understand but sexual experiences that were Nightmarish she was experimenting with drugs. She was not sure about her sexuality So she was dabbling with men and women and I knew all about these things I knew when she snuck out of the house and did ecstasy. I knew when she was Sleeping with a woman versus a man. I knew when she was a boiling kettle ready to blow because she hated herself and what she saw in the mirror. And I was going to bear the brunt of that if I pushed too much. So, it was just insanity in a way in my home but then we would go to school and we were great in school and we were pretty and we were popular. And it was really confusing and I would overshare because my mom overshared. So, I would tell everybody everything. I know now that's what Brene Brown calls hot wiring intimacy, at the, wanted you to see me, and love me of what happened in response was everybody talks shit about me. So, I was the girl in school who was the slut and the lesbian. And I was feared, I was hated. I was admired. And I just felt tortured inside because my defense mechanism was, hold your chin up, act like you're fine, get the straight A, be beautiful, be thin, and then when you get home, whatever your mother says, might as well be God, because it is the truth. Dad's not around. That's all you got. By the time I went away to college, it was just like, I could video, out because whoever said you gained 15 pounds when you go away to college, I'll be the one to lose it. Whoever said you flunk out of your first semester, the show you how to get straight fucking A's. Watch me. So it was a fuck you. Watch how well I will please and perform and show you wrong. It was a real survival skill, and on the outside, it made me look like a million bucks. I came back from school first, first semester, winter break, thin, beautiful, and 99 percent of my peers academically. My mother was so proud of me. And of course a shell of my self, I was absolutely no sense of who I was, zero. And this is an interesting part of my growing up, how old are we when we go to college where we're still so young? I was choosing a major. that felt broad enough for me to fit into. What I really wanted to do was get a record deal, be a star, go on tour or at the very least I wanted to be a celebrity choreographer, dance, First, singing second, those were my love languages. Those were my escape. I had done them since I was four a there were very few things I did growing up in the sports or performing world an attorney that I loved. Mostly I did things Because I thought I was supposed to, or to win the approval of somebody else. For example, in high school, I joined the swim team. I was an average swimmer. But my coach loved the elite swimmers and I thought, shit, how am I going to get on his radar? I don't know that I'm going from average to elite anytime soon, but there's this diving component to the swim team. And I was a gymnast. I thought, huh, I can swim. I can do gymnastics. This seems like a natural fit. I told him, do you need another diver? And he got so excited. So what did I do for two years? I took professional diving lessons at St. John's University. I'm talking about the 10 meter board. I fucking hate it. I dreaded it in my bones, but I did it anyway, because I wanted my coach to love me. I wanted the best. So I was already, going to college, we're a degree. That I didn't care about for other people. I had really figured out the formula of how to present like I was okay.

Michael: Yeah, and I think so many people, obviously you had an idealistic childhood. I don't see anything wrong here. So, I look at this and I hear, Oh my God, abandonment and emotional enmeshment and probably, God knows what else in terms of neglect and then, by the nature of our human experience, what do we do under these dyer chaotic circumstances as children, we moved to these survival mechanisms, right? And for me, which I actually resonate tremendously with, like I learned how to become a chameleon, my superpower. I read people better than anyone. And that came from growing up in such an abusive household. Like I needed to be able to read people for my safety immediately. And so I know when somebody is full of shit within 10 seconds. It literally is a superpower, but before I recognized. How to be me. I spent all my time being what everyone else wanted me to be super codependent as a kid, super violent as a kid. I spent a lot of my childhood trying to do things to get people to like me because I, nobody liked me in my home. My mom popped pills. She, at one point, I think we were 12. She literally disappeared. And nobody knew where she went. And this was a interesting time when you could go down to Florida and get prescription drugs. And turns out she went to Florida and married some dude when she was already fucking married in Indiana. It was like this whole thing. And, I grew up with a super abusive stepfather and a crazy alcoholic racist grandma. And you look at these experiences and it's children will do what they have to do to survive. And so this idea about self abandonment that you mentioned, like it's even beyond that you turn off, you go on autopilot and then, God forbid, if you got to be…

Samantha: Oh God. Yes.

Michael: God forbid you don't get first place. Holy shit. And so what I'm really curious about, you talked about that word being boundaryless growing up, but it feels to me like in some capacity, and maybe this is, I'm a contrarian, right? So I will typically go against whatever anyone ever tells me, because fuck you. That's why I'm wondering if, because of the chaos of your home is maybe there is you're rebuking. That is I'm going to go be a high performer. Was there, was it just approval seeking or was it like, actually, fuck you, I'm going to go be great.

Samantha: Definitely by the time I went to college, there was so much pent up resentment about how desperately I wanted to be seen and loved and understood in high school with my peers and how horribly that turned out. And I can give a few crazy examples of that, that once I went away to college, I was like, fuck all of you. It was definitely like a fuck you to my peers to be like, I'm going to show all you fucking people. You can try to tear me down, but as far as my family unit though, it was really approval seeking. It was really, this is how I continue to stay safe and loved in the world and particularly by my mother. So however, Boy, did that take a turn and if I go a year or two into the story of Boston University, we will see how this desire to be perfect for others imploded, but also how I would not put that coping skill down for more than a decade after that.

Michael: I want to come into that just not yet because there, there's a question I have that I was very curious about because when I was researching you, I kept thinking to myself, there must have been this moment that she disappeared and I was wondering like, a, what did that look like? And B, how did I want to frame this the right way when I was 12 years old, my grandmother found out I had been living in an abandoned house for six weeks by myself, 12 years old, because again, my mom had disappeared to Florida on a drug binge, blah, blah, blah. She came and took me. I'm clearly Brown. I am biracial, black and white. My grandma is about as racist as the day is fucking long. We had a copy of Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf on our kitchen. She was a complete psychopath. And I had just hit this emotional break. Like I had broken as a human being, even at that young of an age. And I just started getting high all the time. Weed, pills, drinking by 13. And then when sex came into play, Oh my God, that's a whole another story. We need five hours to talk about. But I'm curious for you where did addiction start young for you? I know that's a huge part of your story and we're going to get into it, but do you remember the first time, like the first time I got high. Was literally the sun was brighter. The sky was a bluer, the birds were chirpier. Everything was better than it had ever been in my entire life. And, they talk about chasing the dragon and, part of that seeking dopamine and things of that nature we'll talk about later, but did you have a similar experience and what was the first time an instance where it was like drugs, alcohol, sex came into your life and it made you feel good.

Samantha: I dabbled a lot until early twenties and then it took off. It was a staple. In my daily life.

Michael: Do you remember how old you were the first.

Samantha: I was sneaking out to sound factory. If anybody knows New York city nightclubs back in the nineties and two thousands, that was like the club to go to. And I would be 14, 15 with a fake ID getting in and dropping ecstasy. And that was when ecstasy was so good. Buying it off of creepy strangers in the club. And I would dance for six hours straight and be in seventh heaven. It was unbelievable to me because I already felt joyous when I dance. So you add some ecstasy to that and the freedom to just be who I was, where I was doing what I wanted to do, but then I would come home and I would just straighten up. It was a thing on the side. I did not go into chasing the dragon moment. For several more years and in hindsight, having written my book and the work that's required to sit down and confront all your shit in that way. I really think I understand now the impetus, the thing that happened in my life that catalyzed my addiction to something that went from every now and then. To forever you and me forever kid and I can get to that and I can speak to that I would never have known even two years ago Why at that time did it take off the way that it did because things were so hard for so long I could have jumped on that addiction train way sooner and been off and running by the time I was 16, 17, 18, like some people are, but I didn't, I was able to stay highly controlled. And I thought without question, this was just a thing I could experiment with when I wanted to, and then put it down and go be that straight A student and get the praise and adoration of my mother.

Michael: Yeah, and that works until it doesn't.

Samantha: Oh, yeah.

Michael: I don't know if this is your experience, but for me it was like no, I can keep hooking up with all these girls. No. I can keep going out with my friends on Coke nights. No. I can keep doing all these, all this alcohol. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. And then one day it's not fine anymore. Actually, I'm going to go back real quick addiction. I have come to find is not something that is controllable. And I used to sit and look at my mother, her fucking bedroom floor would be covered in those little orange pill bottles cover. She didn't pay our rent. She didn't pay our electricity. We get fucking evicted all the time. I lived with 30 different families between eight to 12 years old because she was always chasing that thing. She got married like fucking six times. It was crazy. But my grandmother was an addict too. And so was my father and my stepfather and all the generations of my family from as far back as we can look. And I remember these moments I would look at, and I'm a child, so I don't know better by the way, like I really want to context this. I would look at my mother and be like, you are a coward. You are a loser. I am disgusted with you. You should be full of shame. And again, I'm fucking 12. I don't know what's happening. I have no rational understanding of the pain that she's probably in. And I have this very concise moment where at 18 years old, I said, I will never talk to you again. And till the day she died, I did it. And it's probably the greatest decision I've ever made. But what I've come to understand for myself, a through education, through my own journey, through looking at my family, like addiction is often labeled as this thing where it's you control this, you're making a choice, make a different choice. But on the other hand, I would be willing to bet that the diction in your family goes probably beyond your mother generationally. And and whatever addiction your father had with money and gambling, things of that nature. Did you, could you tell that something was wrong as a child? And do you think that you stepped into addiction because that becomes a question about nature versus nurture?

Samantha: Yeah. Also I should say my dad, I think absolutely was an untreated addict as well. He was also the family enabler. So when my doc, my mom's doctors would say, you are, we're cutting you off from this prescription. She said to my father who did anything she wanted. You better fucking get this medicine in your name and give it to me, and he did. And he continued to be until the day he died, the drug dealer of the family for my mother and my sister. I think the level of mental illness addiction, emotional cycles of dysfunction goes so far back. In my ancestral heritage, the second part, can you ask that again?

Michael: Yeah. I was asking you if (A) generationally, that you see addiction in the family. And then the other part of it was like, really, did you notice, did it feel like that was off? Like it was wrong. Like it was different. Like to me, it was so normal when I went to people's houses and their parents weren't passed out, drunk and high. I thought that.

Samantha: I, with the exception of that memory, when I asked my mom, why do you take those pills? Cause clearly it didn't feel normal or right to me in that moment or I wouldn't have asked her, that, oh yeah, totally normal. In fact, by the time I left BU, so we'll get to what happened there, I came back, I lived with my mother for a year. That was nightmarish. That was the beginning of my addiction full speed ahead and me going, fuck you, mom, fuck you for what you said and what you told me that I shouldn't have known and what you think I should do with my life. my father became my buddy, my drug dealer. My drinking partner and that felt I'm not normal, but I didn't care at all. I loved it. He was co signing my addiction, right? So I think for the most part, with the exception of that first moment when I questioned things, yeah, it was pretty normal for me. When I went away to college, it was the first time because out of New York, I was out of the house. That I felt like I zoomed out of my own life and went, what the hell just happened in that house? What have I been told? Where has my father been? Why didn't he say anything? I needed him is what my mother said. True. Aren't there two sides to the story? Wait a second. I was starting to go, huh? So that by the time I came back and ended up living with her, it was like the claws were out because her precious, brilliant daughter was now not in university. She was not in college and she was fighting back. My mother was so devastated, so disappointed. Of course I felt shame about that, but in response to it, it was just one giant rebellion and that's really when the, So guess what, mom, I'm not living in this shitty fucking apartment in Long Island. I'm going to move to Manhattan. I'm going to be a star and I don't need your fucking help. Bye. So I did. I moved to Manhattan and that's when I became a bartender. So hello.

Michael: Yeah. Standard story. This all adds up, it's because what do you do? Like I sought chaos in, really in the same controlled ways. Cause I was a high performer. I worked for a fortune 10 company when I was 20 years old. I made more money than everyone I knew. I crushed it in fucking business. But my family are in prison and my friends were getting murdered and my life was just so nuts that I would go to work, destroy it at work, right? In a good way. And then come home and destroy my life in a bad way. And I think that's a really interesting dichotomy for high functioning, high performing, not only addicts, but trauma survivors, like we, when my clients say to me. I thrive in chaos. I always say that's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard because our bodies are the somatic experience that we have to seek chaos for new math, normality, like that destroys you. So, it's not a surprise to me. Like you're now like, okay, now I'm going to go on this path of self destruction. Some of it's subconscious too, by the way. You don't even know you're fucking doing it, right? And you're like, why do I ruin every relationship? Why do I cheat? Why am I doing all these drugs? Why am I fucking in debt making 250 a year? And you're like, wait a second. So, you moved to New York City, you're a bartender. Now, is this where things go.

Samantha: Oh yeah. But let me just tell you what happened and why I left BU. So I'm in my second year. By the way, I also fell head over heels in love with a guy. And my idea of love was you make this shit work at any cost. I fell in love with a guy who didn't believe in monogamy. Haha. I'll make you love me. Just watch. So that was happening and I was squeezing and bending until I broke to just be okay with an open relationship as I was just face down in a pit of, I fucking love this guy's, his brain, the way he saw the world. He was such a breath of fresh air compared to the closed minded shit I had grown up with. It felt like I needed that as badly as the air that I breathe. So I was going to make it work. And at the same time, I got this one teacher. And this writing class, and I loved to write, I was a good writer. He would not give me anything other than a C and I was unraveling just like my swim teacher. How am I going to make this guy love me? How am I going to make this man that I'm falling in love with love me? How am I going to make this professor that's giving me a C, give me an A. Game plan. So I had to write a book review. American beauty had been out for a little bit. I loved that movie and I did some research on Book reviews for American beauty came across this incredible book review, used a bunch of the sentences from the review, did not cite my sources, handed in my paper, got it back with a big red zero and a see me after class. What that turned into was he had stapled on the back of the paper, the review that I plagiarized from and said, this piece of writing was so much better than your other pieces of writing that I immediately knew something was up. And all I did was go online, punch in some of the sentences and here's the review. You plagiarized. I'm submitting this to the academic committee. They will have a meeting and they will decide what happens. Can you imagine that phone call to my mother? And at the same time, I cannot get this man to commit to me. I know when he's, we've been spending more and more time together. I know he really cares about me. And then all of a sudden he disappears and he's not around for one or two nights. And I know he's literally with somebody else. So I'm just coming undone at Boston University. I finally, my mom was dating an alcoholic. She had separated from my father by now they moved out of the house. Now the kids are out of the house. So now they could separate. Because now it was okay. It was much better to have them in the same.

Michael: Now it's acceptable.

Samantha: But they were legally still married. By the way, till the day my father died. They stayed legally married, which the enmeshment and the codependency and the, literally the sickness of that dependency was so fucking insane to witness in the last couple of decades of my life, especially as I was getting sober and getting well, and the way it made my father come undone. And I actually believe in some ways, and we can get to this later, that all of this untreated emotional codependency inside of my dad is part of what triggered this rare autoimmune disorder that he came down with that shouldn't have killed him. That he died over. Okay. So I like literally think my dad died for not treating his emotional body, his spirit.

Michael: I think Bessel van der Kolk would actually.

Samantha: I think he might, yep. Yep. Yep.

Michael: And me, for that matter. You too. Makes sense.

Samantha: So, I got to tell this to my mother with the guy, he was two years older than me. So I was a sophomore. I'm about to have this. This hearing with the committee, my mom's dating this alcoholic guy living in Long Island and tells this guy, Oh my God, Samantha, please rise. What are we going to, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? The guy comes on the phone, Bill, ironically, his name is Bill. He's an alcoholic for anyone in 12 step programs. Y'all understand that joke. He was like, Samantha, listen, we're going to, we're going to make a case, you are a good kid, you didn't mean to do this. We're going to let them know how good you are. We're going to, we're going to this is not gonna be a big deal. Don't worry. We're going to figure it out. So my mom rested her little head on Bill's plan. Bill came up with a big script. He was a lawyer, big dissertation for me to present in front of the committee. And I was terrified because I just wanted to go in and say, I made a mistake. I'm sorry. I actually really love learning. And I'm not a cheater in my bones. That's never, ever how I approach, but no, you will follow the script line by line. So I studied it and studied it the same time. The guy I was madly in love with who swore we had made an agreement. You know what? We're spending so much time together. We're having sex without a condom. It's reckless. Let's make sure we're not sleeping with other people at the same time. Let's at least make that commitment. Okay, cool. We made that commitment. Within a matter of weeks. I found out these two things. Number one, he had been fucking without a condom. The one girl that I knew he loved and had a history with besides me. And that shit wrecked me. And the committee at Boston University said, we're not going to expel you. That'll be on your permanent record, but we're going to suspend you for 18 months, at which time, if you want to come back, you can, bye bye. That would mean I would come back that to my mother, they didn't give a fuck about the dissertation that I read. Bye bye. Cause it wasn't honest. It wasn't sincere.

Michael: You know what? I was literally just thinking to myself, I wonder what would have happened if she would have walked in there and simply said, I'm trying my best. I was doing anything to make this class work. I don't know if this teacher has a fucking vendetta against me. I was just trying to

Samantha: Do you know what though.

Michael: Through this. And if you would have humanized.

Samantha: That would have required, that would have required me to trust myself, which I did not know how to do you.

Michael: You can't know how to, you've never been allowed to. This is the thing that this thing people really don't. This is the one thing I am trying to help people understand. This is the reason I started this show and write the books and speak on the stages. It's you can fucking learn how to trust yourself. You will, you, your life will change so fast, but that takes time and it takes building confidence through these small incremental steps and learning how to trust your gut and showing up for yourself and doing hard shit, but you have to have a couple of rock bottoms or a hundred before that takes place. And this moment, it's all, it's so predictable, right? Samantha, and it's a weird thing to say because I can sit down and if you tell me your childhood, I'll tell you your future. Like unequivocally and I sit here and I go, yep, this adds up. But what I feel coming here, is a little bit more chaos, you're not done yet. ‘Cause I know the people are cut from my cloth. And so I'm like, where's the real.

Samantha: Yeah. Here's what the next chunk looks like. I move out and I become a bartender. And now I'm going to be a star so I'm auditioning I end up meeting this guy at the Jersey Shore He becomes my boyfriend eventually he moves in with me So both of us are two young dumb fools running around Manhattan And when I'm not trying to be a star bartending, we're going to swingers clubs. We're doing drugs together We're fucking other people but together we're just

Michael: We literally have the same adolescence. This is hilarious.

Samantha: Yeah, we were just out of our mind. And there was this one night coming and the thing is when you bartend, you're exposed to all of it. So eventually I would find the cocaine that somebody had and I was like, surely this will be a thing I can control, obviously, like everything else. And as soon as I realized that I could do cocaine and drink a lot, and then it would level me back out, lather, rinse, repeat, I could just go all night. I was like, where's the fucking cocaine? The truth is the first time I did cocaine, it didn't do shit for me. But I was like, but everyone says it does. Like I want to understand. What the fucking buzz was about so I did it until I had the desired effect and then it became just a staple in my life and there was this one night After a long night at the bar, my boyfriend meets up with me. We go fucking party at the after hours, whatever it is We're doing cocaine until the Sun comes up. We're Out of our mind. There's no shot that we're ever going to fall asleep anytime soon. We're taking a cab as a son is coming up and the mothers are strolling their babies in central park, right back to our shitty rat infested New York city, tiny apartment. And he looks at me and he says, I never want to do this again. And in my mind I said that sucks because I'm just getting started. So for the next couple of years, Him and I were living together and I hid really terribly by the end. By the way, I was fucking other people, a lot of women, by the way, because that was so normal to me. And I was like, that's not really cheating. Then I would break up with him for a little bit. So, I could fuck a bunch of guys and not feel bad about it. And then I would get back together with him. I was having my dad drive in and give me prescription medication. Anytime I wanted so that when I got home at 4 a.m. And my boyfriend was fast asleep, and I was raging and high off cocaine. I could douse myself with downers to try to slow my heart rate down and fall asleep. Because I was still very tethered to academia, I wanted to get my undergrad degree. So, I finished it up in communications at Fordham university. And my drinking and drugging was really a priority at this point. And the rejection I was getting from the entertainment industry was, It's unpalatable to me. I had no inner canvas for resiliency, so I thought maybe I'll be a trainer. Maybe I'll do something with exercise with the body. I was teaching dance that was going well, but I was like, ah, I don't know about this entertainment thing. Maybe I just need to figure out like the right degree for me. So I'm training. I meet this guy named Bobby. He's got 22 years sober from heroin addiction. He's cool as fuck, but I'm like, I don't want to be a fucking trainer for the rest of my life and make 25 an hour. That's also not prestigious enough. And I remember having a roommate before I live with my boyfriend, running around the city trying to figure out, how to survive and live, living with five people in a two bedroom apartment, that kind of a thing. Then this girl was getting her doctorate physical therapy and it was like a seed was planted. Oof, that sounds sexy as fuck. I can be a doctor and I could have a degree that allows me to open my own business, work with athletes, like change what I want to do. Really versatile, very personable. It just felt like I could fit in that box. So if all else failed and I couldn't be a star, don't forget that, Sam, you can be a doc. And so I decided to take a chance on physical therapy school, but I had none of the classes that you needed. Cause I was just an artist. I was writing, I was doing creative writing classes. I got a random degree in communications that meant nothing to me. And I found out you needed basically a pre med background to get into grad school. And I was like, Holy fuck. Like I hated science, like the plague. So I just started to take one class at a time. I remember getting a 50 on my first physics test and was and then watch me go, I'm going to get the tutor. I'm going to get the 90. And it was like, once I decided. Oh, no, nobody's giving me a fucking 50 or a C ever again. I'm way too smart for this shit. I'm going to be a doctor. Fuck you. There it is again. Fuck you. This is a surefire way to a stable life. Sierra Air. So, I ended up getting into graduate school. When I found out I got accepted into graduate school, I knew exactly how to celebrate. I called the one person I knew, not my dad, who partied as hard as I did. Then I said, girl, call the Coke dealer game. The fuck on the next day was Christmas Eve. My boyfriend was out of town, had the apartment to myself. We got an eight ball. We started blowing lines at two in the afternoon. We hopped all around the city. If you've ever been to New York city in Christmas time, it's a razzle dazzle. Lights are twinkling. The little tents are out in Columbus circle. You can get all these amazing things. So we had bags. We would go into the bar, have Corona, sniff some cocaine off the dirty bathroom stall, lather, rinse, repeat, got back to the apartment at 7 PM. I felt really fuzzy like I had brain fog and my friend not really a friend I had met her one other time was in the coke zone wrapping the gifts And so it was like talking to a wall. Hey, I don't I feel you know what? I'm gonna go in my room I'm gonna rest we had this little tiny TV in our closet on the top shelf. So I reached up to get the remote. Next thing I remember, I'm on my side and the girl, her name was Heidi, was standing right over me and my gaze shifted vertical and she looked horrified. And she was on the phone with 911 trying to explain my address. Meanwhile, she could have just walked outside. We were on the first floor. Story, she could have walked outside and literally seen the numbers, but she was too high to put that together. She didn't know where I live because she didn't know me and I knew right away something horrible happened and I was like, get off the phone. The thought of going to a hospital, everyone finding out, the boyfriend who I was about to go visit in a couple days because it was Christmas time. I'm about to be a doctor. I just got accepted. Fuck you. Get off the fucking phone. You are not about to ruin my whole life. She got off the phone. I called a mutual friend to come over so everyone could calm the fuck down, including me, Heidi left. And my friend Becca put me to bed that night and the very next day I went to Staten Island to meet up with my family, my sister and her then husband. My sister, also an addict, super high functioning at that point. I had leftover cocaine from the night before. Obviously, I wasn't going to throw it out. That would be really dumb. I brought it with me. I took the Staten Island Ferry. I didn't know they had drug sniffing dogs. I don't know why or how those dogs didn't smell the cocaine. But I got onto the ferry. I was like, this is the end of me. This is it. I'm going to fucking jail. It's over. I got on the ferry and I looked at my sister when I got there and shot her a look of, we got to fucking talk. Like I'm something happened. I need to tell somebody she was the only person I told, in those next few days. And we went up to the bathroom. I showed her the cocaine. I told her what happened. I had a big cut across my chin that was covered up in foundation. She said, Sammy, you just did too much here. Maybe of this thing. Only this thing. Cocaine. I remember that guy, Bobby, who was 22 years over. I never knew anybody. That was sober, except for him. So I called Bobby, told him what happened. It was a way to offload my shame. And he was like, want to go to a meeting? No, but okay. Sat in the back of a 12 step meeting. I was like, Oh, hell no. You religious, culty motherfuckers with this patriarchal antiquated language. I don't look like you. I am smarter than you, I am in way more control of my life and my using, like absolutely not. So, I didn't go back to the meeting for a year and a half.

Michael: Samantha, I want to pause you here and here's why one. That's a lot right, but I hear that and I just I'm sitting here. You probably saw me smirking a couple of times. I'm like, check that box. Check that box. Check that box. I've been there. What we will do to find chaos in our lives to feel normal when we come from such traumatic backgrounds is fucking insane. When I was 25, 26, I'm sitting here looking at my life. I'm making 200 to 50 year. And this is, this is 15 years ago. That's half a million bucks today. I made more money than all my friends. I had a smoking hot girlfriend. I lived in the, it was literally titled the best city in America had my dream car, but I'm fucking 350 pounds. I'm smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep. I'm cheating on this girl. God knows how many times. And, with all due respect, what the fuck was wrong with her to stay with a guy like me? And then, obviously I know looking back and then, my, my family wouldn't talk to me. I'm 50,000 in debt, dodging creditors, phone calls and not emails, but physical mail and making 250 grand a year. And then it's not enough. It's not enough. It's hooking up with the next person. And the next person, the cheating, it's the drugs. It's the alcohol. What I needed. And it's funny because I was on a podcast as a guest yesterday and this guy asked me, and nobody had really asked me this before. He said, what did you really need when you were in all that chaos? What I needed is, I think the thing that neither of us have, which a lot of people didn't get, which they did. Desperately need in those moments. They need someone to smack them in the fucking face and say, do you not see what you're doing? Because I think awakenings really only come with awareness because here's the problem that I ran into. You talk about enablers. All of my friends were doing the same shit. All of my friends were doing the same shit. My friends were fat. My friends were making a shit ton of money, smoking a bunch of cigarettes. Now, some of them were married and faithful, sure. But the majority of them, they're all fucking around on their girlfriends, right? We're all getting, cause we, we were young in corporate America and we're cashing checks for fucking 15 grand a month. And we're getting limousines and going to the underground nightclub and doing fucking cocaine on the way there. I will say this. I've never done cocaine, by the way. Because I know, I'm on my third coffee today.

Samantha: I'm jealous.

Michael: That if I fucking did cocaine, I would be under a fucking bridge right now. My drug of choice had always been women. Period. That was always my drug of choice and that comes, from having a crazy drug addict mother and all the other things that we won't get into right now. But the thing that I always tied back to was like, man, I just needed somebody to be like, you dumb motherfucker. Don't you see this? Instead of the people who are like, hey man, it's all good. You just had a hard night. Maybe don't drink a fifth tonight. My thing was, and this is insane, we would go to the bars, we would get VIP, cause that's what you do, we'd roll up in a limo, dress to the nines, young business owners. Now this wasn't every night, but it was a lot. Normally we had went and got beers at lunch. This is when I realized and I'll say this, I've never believed myself to be an alcoholic. Even to this day I don't think that. I just was so goddamn codependent. I would do anything anybody wants. And so my buddies and I, we would go have these crazy ass nights. And this is when Red Bull became a thing. Red Bull really hit the scene in the middle. Like I'm 21 Red Bull was at the, so you talk about cocaine. Like I'm sure it's close. We would smash two, three Red Bulls, got Red Bull vodkas, Jager bombs, the whole night, this, you were a bartender. I ran a bar for a while, of course, go figure. So I'm running this cocktail bar when I'm 25 on top of running my own business on top of working at the fortune 10 company. Cause I'm like a fucking workaholic psychopath. And it was just like, every day was like one more level, more intense than the day before. It was just like one more level, one more level, one more level. And my rock bottom came because here I am. On paper, you would look at my life and be like, this kid is a homeless kid, no high school diploma, no college education, making a million dollars by the time he's 25, smoking hot girlfriend, best car, best neighborhood, literally in the country, according to Forbes, like shit is good. And I'm fucked. I'm so beyond fucked it's not funny, and I hit, my rock bottom wasn't killing someone, my rock bottom wasn't getting busted cheating, she fucking knew, people are not stupid my rock bottom wasn't even the fact that I'm 50 grand in debt. My rock bottom was, I call my little brother. Who had gone do multiple tours in the middle east had gotten fucking blown up Had just been in a hell of a situation Luckily, he was fine didn't lose any limbs Maybe lost a couple years off his life from the stress, but he had been back home for months I did not call him did not text him did not come and see him nothing And one day because here because this is what we do I'm going to get my life together. I'm going to fix this shit. I'm going to the gym. I'm not getting drunk tonight. I'm not going to cheat on my girlfriend. And like 72 hours goes by. And so I call my little brother and I go, Hey man, how you doing? What's up? And he goes, you can hear the vitriol in his voice. He goes, what do you want? I go, Hey man, we just haven't talked for a while. How are you? What's going on? He goes, you're not my brother. Never talk to me again. And that was the moment where I was like, I have to change this. And so what I needed in that moment as painful as that was I literally needed my little brother To be like, go fuck yourself. And to have for the first time, this really hard gut check moment of this is the life that you created. Was it Bobby that gave you that moment?

Samantha: No.

Michael: Tell me about that.

Samantha: Oh, so much just came up for me when you were talking about that. As somebody who's default to feel good about themselves is to fix and save everybody else. Straddling the tension between, my inherent desire, especially from where I sit today to intervene in that way, in that harsh honest way, when someone I love is sick and harming themselves to say, wake the fuck up, what are you doing? Which, by the way, I tried to do many times with my sister and going, are you doing again? What you've always done. And can you stand down? Because really? amount of anyone doing that to you made you stop and maybe an act of healing for me. Is to not do that because that's what I always do. So that's a real whew, that's a moment for me. And I'm still working on that today. I just got into it with my husband before we got on this call, and I'm open to suggestions. And I said, no, you're not anytime I suggest anything to you. You don't want to hear it. You are the only one in my life who doesn't want my advice, even though I have so many good things to offer. You don't want any of it. So don't say you're open to a suggestion. Unless you really are right. I've had to learn not to do that. Bobby took me to a meeting I never went back for a year and a half. My dad kept providing prescription pills. I cut and paste my using I realized Yeah, no matter what I keep finding my way to cocaine. So I'm really just gonna go heavy on the downers I'm gonna smoke weed every single day. I'm gonna take these Xanax and Ambien and whatever Eventually the guy I was with found the pill bottle and he looked at me with disgust in his eyes. You're still fucking doing this shit. I knew he was on his way out. And the idea of him leaving the only proof really I had left that I was worth anything at all was unimaginable to me. So I called Bobby again, went to a meeting again this time. Cause I really felt like I didn't know I was fucked. Like I was so fucked. I didn't want to stop using, it really wasn't bottom, but this guy was going to leave and that was like so scary to me. Yeah. So it lit a fire under my ass that I had to do something. Bobby was the only person I believed. I hated the language of the steps. I hated going to meetings, all of it. I hated raising my hand. I followed Bobby around the city for the next year. I let him sponsor me. He bum rushed me through the steps. He knew I hated God, but I loved him. I loved him. I believed him, but I was really white knuckling. Mostly everything by this time I'm in graduate school. I have this opportunity to go to California for eight weeks for one of my clinical rotations. My then boyfriend who was staying with me by the, by a string was thinking about moving to California. And I was like, I need you, anything he wants to do. Oh, I no longer get a say in any of this. I've been such a horrible piece of shit. So let me just go do this clinical thing out in California and see if I like it, because then maybe we can move there when I get my degree. I say to Bobby, Bobby starts acting weird towards the end of that first year before I go to LA different. I couldn't put my finger on it. And I said, I don't know what's going on with you, but we were friends before anything else. I don't want our friendship to be compromised. I'm going to get a temporary sponsor in California and let's just be friends. I want to call him. I'm out in California. Amazing things are happening with dance. My clinical rotation was like the toughest experience of my life. I fucking hated my clinical instructor. He was so hard on me. I never ever got a pat on the back for anything. I would show up and hold it together. I'd come back and cry, but all the dance stuff, the choreography stuff, the doors were opening. So I wanted to tell Bobby about it. And he never picked up his phone ever. Finally, his wife picked up about four weeks in and she said, Bobby relapsed. That's why you haven't heard from him. Maybe you can see him when you get back sober, brightest light. You could imagine just an aura around him. The person that will extend his fucking hand to any newcomer, anyone who's suffering and any street I would walk down, by the way, in Manhattan, didn't matter what route I took ever. Bobby was there. Hey kid. I mean he was, he grew up in Hell's Kitchen. He was just, he was Manhattan to me, right? He was sobriety to me. He was hope to me. Maybe you can see him when you go back to New York. Couldn't wait to get back. First person I met up with was Bobby. Tried to look him in the face. What the fuck happened, Bobby? Did you relapse? Because I knew he wasn't happy in his marriage. Maybe his wife was lying. I don't know. Couldn't look me in the eye. I had a shoulder surgery. I got a staph infection. He has sling on his arm. They gave me fucking oxy. I want to fucking kill Heather. I'm so miserable in this marriage, but Bobby, I don't understand. Did you relapse or not? Nothing. Nothing. Just like the look in my mother's eyes when she would take those pills. Empty, a shell, I was really frightened. He hired me out of desperation and loneliness, couple years later, to help clean his apartment. See, I was about to be a PT, and he was in a sling. So he thought, I get Sam to keep me company. I’ll pay her couple, 20, 40 bucks, clean my apartment. And take my laundry basket lo the laundrymat on eighth Avenue. So I did that. So uncomfortable. I was so uncomfortable. I don't even remember what we talked about, but I remember thinking, I can't do this. Again, like I need, I don't know what is going on, but I need some space from this because I was so spooked by it. Two weeks later, my friend in recovery who had a lot more time than I did said, called me. She said, where are you right now? And I was in my apartment. Don't go anywhere. I'm coming over. Okay. So now I was scared. So she comes over, she sits me down on the couch, puts her hand on my forearm. She looks me in the eye and she says, Bobby is dead. He jumped out of his a story window onto 52nd street. Was that my bottom? My bottom wasn't my overdose, My bottom wasn’t getting suspended from university, my bottom wasn’t Bobby’s, suicide. What I learned in that moment is addiction out for blood, it doesn’t discriminate, I doesn’t care if I have 50 days or 50 years. And if I ever decide to relapse, to use, I'm dead. At that point, I was about to be a doctor, for God's sakes. I didn't want to die, but I did not know how to live. We moved to California, that boyfriend and I. He became my fiancé, he became my husband. I thought we had made it. Through all the fucking madness, the sick addict and the sick enabler, we finally made it. I'm sober now. We're going to be okay. Proof that I'm not a piece of shit after all. And then he's just disappearing. We're living in California. I don't know anybody. I'm a brand new PT. I have so much anxiety going into work. I'm a new clinician. He was all I knew and he was disappearing. He was hanging out with friends all the time. He was in banking at the time. I have a business trip. I have a business trip. I got to go here. I got to go there. His ring, his wedding ring would be on the nightstand. That's odd. You would, he need to take his ring off? The fighting between us a was so constant and so often. Because as he pulled away emotionally, physically, we weren't sharing finances.

We didn't talk about that before we got married. I just assumed we would, he kept everything separate. He was rejecting me sexually. He was like my dad. And the more he pulled away, the more I did whatI know what I do. I'm gonna make this around you. I want to control this. I'm gonna make this right. I'm going to make you love me again. And forgive me when I tell you that what that turned into besides daily fighting me. Just in a rage, just punching my arms and legs through the wall of this shitty house we were renting in LA, fighting so much that one day I called him a pussy about something and he got in my face. Never got in my face. We were never physically fighting ever verbally though. So he got in my face. I could feel his hot breath. Don't you fucking call me a pussy ever again. And in that moment I was like, if I don't get out of this house, I'm going to die. One way or the other, like I'm going to relapse and die. My spirit's going to die. This might turn physical, like it scared me. That still wasn't bottom, but I was on my way. I slept on a friend's couch for two nights. She was a mutual friend. I don't want to be in the middle. I'm sorry. You have to find somewhere else to stay. I had this other sponsor named Shelly. She had a room for rent in her apartment in this seedy part of LA. Perfect rented the room. She pressed God down my throat until I was fucking suffocating. God will solve your problems. Fuck you. I'm gonna solve my problem. There is no such thing as God. Fuck you and your fucking God. We fought like I fought with my mother that year that I was off from Boston University. Miserable. She would sneak around and look at my shit in my room when I wasn't there. Everything would be moved around. So, after a month of that, I found another place to stay. In a friend's house, mostly she wasn't there. It was a one bedroom apartment. She had a boyfriend, but when she was, I would sleep on the air mattress and her cat would piss on me in the middle of the night. And I would wake up and think, what the fuck is my life right now? And finally, when that was running out of time and she was like, yeah, we need to wrap this thing up. I think I stayed at her place for three months. I went to New York, visit family, called Rob, my then husband begging him. Can I come back now? Are we good now? I don't know. I don't think we're ready. It just doesn't make sense to come back. Sobbing. What do you mean? What do you expect me to do? We're fucking married, for God's sakes. I'm homeless. I'm sleeping on people's cats. What are you? Called a sober friend. My sober friend said, like your brother, my sober friend said, Samantha? Listen to me right now. If you are not ready to leave your marriage, you cannot fucking live like this. This is insanity. You got to get a place, sign a lease and heal. Was when everything was gone. I was bottom, bottomed out because the one thing I had left that was proof that I was good was gone. It was him. It was gone. It was an unfurnished apartment. I had a air mattress on the floor. I laid on my back. I looked up at the ceiling and I fucking sobbed. So five years into recovery, I had hit spiritual bankruptcy.

Michael: The universe will always support you.

Samantha: Ain't that the truth?

Michael: It's I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you gotta pay your taxes. This is like the thing that I, comes to mind. It's karmatic debt in some capacity. It's the universe must balance itself. You have to a tone's a strong word in consideration of the conversation, but you gotta pay your fucking taxes. You are going to have to clean up your mess and clean up your life and clean up your shit and make amends and solve your problems and forgive yourself and go down this path of healing and just fucking rinse and repeat that shit. For the rest of your life. And what's really fascinating is that it's just about a decision. That's all it is. This is the thing people don't understand. It's they're expecting this fucking miracle moment. The universe, the whole time was like smacking you in the face and being like, aren't you paying attention? Aren't you paying attention? And then the moment that you actually pay attention, that's where you really realize how bad it is. But what's so amazing about that realization is that's where the growth comes, that is the. Only place in which this process and journey actually begins an acknowledgement because we like to pretend. Oh, no, it's okay. It doesn't matter. It's not that big of a deal, but I'm still successful over here, but I did that over there, but I swear I'm going to be better. I'll be different. And then it's No, nothing changes until you change. Sorry. Hate to break it to you. There's no miracle. There's no Knock at your door someone begging you to do something different because you're not going to fucking pay attention Anyway, it is all about you standing in front of you. Life is you'll get this as someone's right life is literary It is a you versus you narrative And you can be the villain, the victim, or the victor. It's up to you. I've been all three. I promise you, the latter is the best. It's amazing. But becoming you is the fucking hardest thing that you will ever do. And I think you have to get kicked in the face. I think you have to get knocked down. I think you have to have people leave you. I think that you have to have these moments, and I hate to say it, You've got to hit the bottom because it's not bad enough yet and not until it becomes bad enough Do you do anything different and I wish that wasn't the truth I wish that I could just sit here and tell You listen to the podcast and your life's gonna be better, but motherfucker. It's not I promise you, you're probably even wasting your time listening to the podcast, go and take action, get the lease, leave the relationship, go to the other side of the world. I don't give a fuck, sell everything that you own, do whatever it takes. And it's because when you do that's where your life really begins. Unfortunately, we are out of time. Cause I need another hour with you minimum because we're just getting the ball rolling here. But I want people to have the opportunity to connect with you. We obviously will have you back. Cause I want to go into depth.

Samantha: There's a big part two.

Michael: Begging to have you. Yes, begging to happen, but I just, it was so important for me to create this level of context because as I sit here and I feel a reflection of your experience and mine, what I love is that it's not just me being like, I lived all this. And so can you, right? I get to have you here to two entirely different backgrounds, yet massive similarities who have been able to navigate this journey. And sometimes I just think to myself, it's not just my voice that people need to hear. And so first. Because I know the story and I want people to go get this book. I want people to connect with you. I want people to take the next steps with you. Tell everyone first and foremost where they can find you about the book and what you do to help people.

Samantha: My social media handle and my website is Dr. Samantha Harte, H A R T E. And it's D R not the full word doctor. And I'm super active on Instagram and my website shows just all the different ways I'm doing work in the world. The book came out on June 10th. It's called Breaking The Circuit, How To Rewire Your Mind For Hope, Resilience, And Joy In The Face Of Trauma. By the way, trauma for the people who are like, I didn't have that much trauma. I can't even remember my childhood was pretty idyllic. Trauma is a break. A severing from your self, capital S self, your highest self, any experience that separates you from your knowing, from your gut, by the way. And it's a modern trauma informed reinvention of the 12 steps, which at that rock bottom moment in that apartment, the right person came in and that's what we did with them. And for the last decade, that's what I've been doing with those steps is making them apply to the situation I was in. Making them land in my nervous system in a way that feels safe. And I wanted to do that for other people, not just in the rooms of recovery, but everywhere for everyone, whether you're an addict or not, because let's be fucking real. We are suffering big time, whether it's from perfectionism, which is really the thing that almost killed me, productivity, thinness, murderdom, rage, denial, we are all suffering and we don’t what to do with it. And I'm not interested in self care. My work, I coach people one on one. I have an online community. I'm going to give a, you a link for people to sign up for that, to give me their information. I'm also doing a book giveaway. So the first 10 people that sign up on the link to be part of the cycle breaker community, where there's workouts, there's emotionally intelligent conversations, there's practical application of the 12 steps, there's everything. The first 10 people that fill out the form will get a signed copy of my book from me. So I, I have group work in that way. That's super affordable, but I'm also speaking on stages, and I'm fusing so many parts of who I am and who I've become. Like singing. At the end of my talks for my book tour, I know I'm that bitch who's guess what? You are going to see all of me now, because at this point with what I've lived through, I am unapologetically standing in my power, but we'll get to that in the second part of the interview.

Michael: Yeah, I love that tremendously. And guys go to thinkubrokenpodcast.com for this and more in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Samantha: What that means is that no matter what happens. In your life from a great betrayal to a great success to the loss of a loved one, that you are always able to return back home to yourself, no matter what.

Michael: Beautifully said. Thank you so much for being here. Unbroken Nation, thank you guys for listening. Please subscribe. Leave a review, subscribe, definitely share this with someone in your life who is maybe a little fucked up like we are because it will probably help them their journey.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends, Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.