[0:00]Do you have any addictions with like candy, video games? No, no. No? Um, my stuffy dog. Stuffy dog? Yeah. For some reason, I can't sleep without him. So, it's kind of addiction. Doesn't sound so bad. Yeah.
[0:24]Hi. Hey, Micah. Hi. Nice to meet you. What's your name? Uh, my name's Tolichen. Nice to meet you, Tolichen. Yeah. Nice to meet you too. What are we going to talk about? Do I answer that question right out? Oh, okay. All right. Um, so I guess we're going to talk about young kids in recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction. Addiction? Yeah. It means like you're addicted to it, so you have to be with it every time. Yeah. I can't live without it. It's like your power source. Yeah, exactly. And what's the other thing? Alcoholism. So, that's, do you know what alcohol is? Basically, grown-ups drink it. Yeah. Drugs drink it. Yeah. So alcoholism is being addicted to alcohol. Yeah. Yeah. Were you addicted to alcohol? I was. I was indeed. Yeah. So that means you stopped. I did stop. Yeah. Um, why did you stop getting addicted to it? Basically, my life became unmanageable. It started out fun. Um, doing drinking alcohol, but it kind of... Got worse every time. Yeah, slowly threw me away from things that mattered most to me, like friends and family and... definitely took away from school. It took away from my ability just like show up and do like all the homework and stuff. Yeah, so you were like, instead, I'm just going to go do my thing. Yeah. Yep, exactly. How old were you? I was nine years old when I first smoked marijuana. What? Yeah. Nine years old? Nine years old. That means you were like in third grade? Uh, yeah. I never saw a young kid like me or like anybody do that. Yeah. I've never ever in my life for seven years. I've never saw that. Yeah. Did you feel good when you did it? Yeah, to be honest, I did. It started out very fun and after a few years of, uh... Experiencing. Yeah, experiencing and experimenting with drugs and alcohol, it, uh, it didn't start to feel as good. Why did you want to get addicted to it? I didn't want to get addicted to it. I started out drinking and doing drugs, not having a clue that I'd get addicted. I kind of just figured I'd try them out. Little did I know, very quickly I got addicted to them. How does marijuana make you feel? I guess at times, it made me feel very giggly. It made me laugh a lot.
[3:16]Made me, um, feel I guess like comfortable and relaxed. Not what I thought it would be. Completely different. The laughing and giggling, that's just weird. Yeah. Like I am now. When you stopped, were you like, yay, I stopped! The first time I stopped, yeah. And they call it like the pink cloud where you're just like, life's great. But then, uh, I fell back into drinking alcohol again and then. And the second time I tried to stop again, it wasn't so fun. It was a lot, it was a lot harder to stay sober and be have fun, but I slowly learned how to. Do you learn it? Learn how to stay sober? Yeah, I wasn't able to learn it on my own. I had to have like peers, like older people with that have stayed sober for a long time, kind of show me how to and teach me how to maintain sobriety. A big thing is this recovery high school I'm going to. It's a high school where... They help you recover. They help you recover. Yeah. Instead of like math, science, they just... Oh, well no, so it's actually a school and we still have all the subjects, right? But, uh, all the students that go there are sober and in recovery and at the end each day we like talk about how sobriety is going and how recovery is going and... Cool. Yeah, it's a helpful. I never heard of that. Yeah. And did you recover or did you become sober? Um, I'm recovering. Definitely not recovered, but... So you're still recovering? Yeah, I mean, I'll be recovering for the rest of my life. But I mean, I'm not, I'm a lot different than I used to be, so. Oh. Yeah. I've been sober for two years, so I've changed a lot in the past two years, but... Two years, that is long for me. It's a long time for me too. It's two years is a long time. Will you help other people stay sober? Yeah, I will. That's my plan. I'll, uh... Just like they did to you. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to try to pass it on. That's very kind. Yeah. Thank you for sharing the story of drugs. I'll just call it Drugsland, I don't know. You're welcome. Bye. You see you, Micah. Nice to meet you. All right.
