Crack Tales 
Episode 5

 0:00
Gospel call and blues music.

William
Hello everybody. I’m William and you’re listening to Episode 5 of Crack Tales.

It’s my story and the story of some people I love about my formative years and my ten-year addiction to crack cocaine. 

If you are just starting out with Crack Tales, I recommend that you listen to the trailer and to the previous episodes as there is a story to follow. There are also two pre-season episodes, Episode 0 and 0.1 that are also worth listening to.

A quick warning. This podcast contains adult language and is adult in theme including frank discussions of sex and sexual violence, suicide and drug use. This episode in particular, like Episode 4 has a description of a sexual assault. If you find yourself triggered by any of these topics, please honor that and consider carefully whether you should continue. 

William singing
Because passing through the eye of a needle isn’t as easy as it sounds, for those like me.

William
The making of this podcast, although it’s still in its adolescence, has already proven an exercise in experiencing really deep feelings and visiting places in myself that I have not gone in decades. This is a good thing. There have been beautiful memories and painful recollections. However, it has also been a most magical process and through connecting with my interviewees, I have experienced so much. Connection really is where it’s at, let me tell ya. Johann Hari, I’m not sure if I am saying his last name correctly, it’s H-A-R-I. He has a Ted Talk video on YouTube called “Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong,” which as titles go, hmmmm it kind of turns me off, but, it’s an amazing Ted Talk. He talks about the criticalness of connection and how isolation can lead to the seeking of relief. Drugs provide relief and then destruction, but along the way they definitely provide relief. I highly recommend this Ted Talk. It’s a good one. I recall one period of my flip-flopping between active use and abstinence, this was a particular period of abstinence and I was in the rooms of AA and NA, you know, going to meetings, doing the program. I was on welfare, I’ll tell you all about that in another episode, but I had come out of in-patient treatment and spent two months in a recovery house and then based on the sort of state sanctioned plan for recovering addicts I was granted 6 more months of public assistance presumably to get back on my feet. So, although the money was just enough, barely enough basically, I spent a couple months only going to AA and NA meetings, visiting friends and watching TV and cooking at home. I had no other money and often during that time didn’t actually make it until the end of the month. I had food stamps too but it wasn’t enough. Anyway, my very crazy but very smart AA sponsor gave me the best advice. Work. Go and work. Which I did. I did whatever I could – caring for people’s yards, doing odd maintenance jobs for friends or acquaintances. I would really do anything and bless their hearts for providing me the opportunity. This change to engaging in work was of course many-fold. It gave me more money, but more than that it gave me time in connection with other people. I was very isolated in the place I was living, an alleged Clean & Sober house on 14th & Yesler, and again, I was grateful to be living there because I didn’t have another place to go but it was quite a scene over there – not the most peaceful place. In any case, after I finished every little job, I was reminded that I was capable of managing the world I lived in. That little accomplishment of actually finishing a job - pruning, digging, sweeping, scrubbing and arranging it all with the clients too, moment by moment brought me back from the chasm of self-doubt, of isolation, of hopelessness to some moments of peace and ease. And that was all through connection. 

I decided to make this podcast because I think a crackhead’s experience is interesting on many levels and the truth is, it’s not a story often told. It’s not an accessible story and it involves things that perhaps 99% (I’m just throwing out a number there, of course I have no statistics), but I would guess the majority of the population will never experience those things. I have some pretty rich tales from those ten years, but also, this is a story of survival and of growth and of huge amounts of love. I know based on my experience and what could have become of me that I am born under a magic star or I’m carried by angels, or, oh yeah. Cannot go unmentioned that I’m white. I would certainly have led a different path had I not had the unearned privilege that comes with being Caucasian and you’ll hear more direct evidence of this in some of the stories. 

Episode 5 is one of the many unexpected and wonderful surprises that has come with the process of making Crack Tales. When I began to write up the basic storyboard for how the podcast would go, my vision included having a guest expert and getting their take on how trauma affects children and all the ways that effect can play out. I thought it would be helpful for me to see what the research indicates related to my experience and the path I took with my escape through drugs. So, I began looking around for an expert that I could tap into. 

Facebook to the rescue. I had connected with this person on Facebook way back in 2009. We are not going to reveal her name in order to respect her privacy and for those of you who may know who it is by her voice or just by the context, please respect her privacy and allow this to remain anonymous. Thanks. Anyway, we connected as Facebook friends because we’d gone to high school together, although we weren’t really close, close friends in high school. Looking back over our Facebook exchange it appears that what we mostly did since 2009 was wish each other “Happy Birthday.” Very warm birthday greetings, mostly to me. Facebook also reveals one’s flaws when you look back over the history! Anyway, flash forward to the spring of 2020 when I was looking for my expert guest and I remembered that my friend was a clinical psychologist. I was thrilled and decided to request an interview. I asked for an email address and sent off a note explaining that I was making a podcast and it would tell the story of my crack addiction but would also include a bit of my personal history including childhood trauma, including the rape you heard about in episode 4, etc. It took a while for my friend to respond, a week or so I think, and I learned later that she was grappling with just how to respond. I had asked for her professional and clinical input on the effect of childhood trauma - especially how it relates to addiction. She finally replied then told me that she too had been raped at 13 years old. 

When you listen, please understand that we are both almost 5 decades past the incidents and that both of us have engaged in extensive, incredibly helpful therapy. We have not only survived but because of the help that we both received in different ways, we are thriving. Discovering our shared experience, it forged a bond between us and that bond allows us to talk about these events with a sort of ease that is not usually associated with rape. Please keep all that in mind as you listen. 

Also, if you or someone you know needs any kind of help, regarding sexual assault, there are resources. In the USA you can call the confidential National Sexual Assault Hotline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 1-800-656-4673, that’s 1-800-656-HOPE H-O-P-E. You can also chat with them confidentially at hotline.rainn.org/online, that’s H-O-T-L-I-N-E dot R-A-I-N-N dot org slash O-N-L-I-N-E. RAINN, R-A-I-N-N stands for Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

Here is my friend and I. We start out recalling what turns out to be only one year together in high school, my sophomore year at Summit School, a fantastic and life-saving alternative school that really allowed me to be me in so many ways that I would not have been able to be in a regular main stream public high school. 

William

I don't remember doing anything with you specifically. I asked you how tall you were and you told me 5’ 2”. That confirmed my memory of you because I remember you being shorter than me, obviously and I'm six three, so. What I remember is a short person, but with a very strong stance. Shoulders back and chest forward and solid on the ground stance.

XXX

Well, I appreciate that because I think I was fronting, a lot. I was really working to … I was scared. I was scared a lot of the time. So, what I remember about Summit and about you is that you hung out mostly with Michele. And I remember going to that little cafe down on the corner and having a doughnuts and coffee.

William  

Kip’s Korner.

XXX

Kipps corner. That place was amazing.

William

I don't know that I learned a lot of academic things at Summit. But I sure learned about relating to people and I developed a sense of self.

XXX

What I noticed about you was, it was almost like the people around you were protecting you. They were very, very protective of you. You seemed incredibly sad and very, very withdrawn. When I would ask, "What's up with him? - obvious that you were in pain. I think I knew that your dad had died and I could barely relate to that. I didn't know what that would feel like or what that meant, except that, I will say that my dad left my mom and I, when I was eight and I didn't see him again until I was 17 or 18 for the first time, so, an emptiness for me but I couldn't imagine what it'd be like to have your dad die. But I knew there was something else. Probably the only time that I saw you sort of smile and begin to let loose a little bit was that there was a party on Capitol Hill that we all went to and I don't know if it was at your house or somebody else's house. The most amazing thing was, Songs in the Key of Life (Stevie Wonder album) had come out that year. Somebody put it on and I just remember you breaking loose. That was the first time that ever seen you not look sad.

We do all of these really amazing and creative ways to take care of ourselves, and that remove, that kind of dissociation is just such a powerful way to be in the world and still know that something happened without knowing it. 

William

Yeah. You know, a way to function.

XXX

Exactly. Like how else could we function in the world? If we had that, you know, in our face. It'd be impossible.

William

So you were, you were talking about you knew something had gone on, but you didn't really know what it was, because you didn't know until I emailed you this recently, right?

XXX

Well, actually, the first time I knew was maybe a year ago when you mentioned it on Facebook. As soon as I saw that I was like, I had a visceral response. I was like, (deep intake of breath), and then oh my god. It felt like one of those things where, how would I even tell you? I just felt like I needed to let it roll by and if we ever had an experience in which we could talk about it, then…

William

I’m moved to tears because I, and it's not about my own pain or anything like that because I'm, you know, I'm pretty okay, but just, you know, just someone in the world going, "Ah! Yes, that! Me too," you know, that kind of connection? Because I think, and probably where my tears come from is having to hold it alone for so long.

XXX

Yeah.

William Borden  14:10  

Nobody understands it. I mean, really, so.

XXX

No, no. I mean, no one can truly understand your exact experience, right? But to have someone have an experience like it, in any way at all… After that I gravitated to your page more. Because I just felt like kindred spirit. You know, we, we had something in common that very few people do. Yeah. 

William

Do you want to share your experience?

XXX

Yeah, so, let me figure out the best place to start. My mom was kind of a hippie mom. And at that point, I had a younger sister. She was only, like, one and a half or two.

William Borden  15:36  

And you were?

XXX

12

William

Uh-huh.

XXX

Maybe 13-ish. This person was actually the boyfriend of a friend of mine. He had just come on the scene. In Bellingham there was a network of families and community households that were kind of hippie-ish, and everybody knew each other and we would go to each other's houses. So, it was a very loose, hippie, community. You know, if you needed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you just went to somebody's house. If they had it, you could have it. Yeah, that part was good. But he was just some guy who just floated into the scene and had gotten together with a little bit older friend. So, I was asleep in my bed and I was on my stomach and I woke up to someone cupping my breasts and sort of pushing down on me. And he said, "Do you know who this is?" And I was like, uggggh, it was so, you know, when you're a kid, [laughs] you sleep so much heavier than you do? 

William

Yeah. Yeah.

XXX

I slept so much heavier then, and immediately after, never slept heavy really again in my life? 

William

Yeah. 

XXX

His demeanor was very nonchalant, and very matter-of-fact in a weird way. He had a knife and he laid it on the bed next to me or he was holding it on the bed next to me and he whispered in my ear that he was going to rape me and that if I made a noise or tried to get my mother's attention that he would go into her room and kill her and my baby sister. He used the word baby sister in a way that really punctuated how serious he was. And it also, the way that he glanced towards where my mom's room was, it was clear that he had been watching the house for a while. 

William

Yeah.

XXX

He knew exactly where everything was. I immediately became compliant. I mean, as much as I could. I made literally no noise.

William

Had anyone ever talked to you about that, situations like this and what you should do if something happened, or did you figure that out on your own?

XXX

I don't think anybody had ever talked to me about it. I don't think I was at an age where anybody felt like they should. In the moment, I felt a deep responsibility that I did not want my mom and my sister to die.

William

Sure. And he was very clear too. You know, as a control technique.

XXX

Exactly. I know for sure that he did it to another person that I knew. But I also have a hunch that this was something that he would probably go on and continue to do. There's not a lot that I can say about the rape itself. To be honest with you, that was the least of it. The actual physical part was the least of it. The worst of it was his indication upon leaving that if I ever told anyone, he would come back and kill all of us.

William

That's exactly what I was told. It's a technique, I mean, he didn't even know where I lived, so how was it gonna hurt my family - but that's what he told me. 

XXX

Yeah, yeah. Well so the aftermath was interesting because I was completely in shock. You know, he left a few hours later, he actually fell asleep for a while. And I didn't know what to do with that. [laughs] So, I just lay there. I may have kind of dozed myself because, you know, your body is just like, ugh. So, in the morning when he was gone, my friend who was his girlfriend, I think literally I think they've been dating for a week. [dog growling] 

William

What you just heard there in the background is my friend’s dear dog pal and he is just sitting with her during the interview no other distractions and starts growling. He apparently has our backs and doesn’t like to hear about our trauma. Animal friends cannot be underestimated.

XXX

So, the next morning, I didn't know how to tell her. She came to my house to pick me up to go to school. I mean, she just, you know, came by and then we got on the bus and just before we got to school, I finally got up the courage to tell her, and she said, “You're lying.” If you were telling the truth, you would have told me the minute you saw me this morning. You know, her evidence for me being a liar was ironclad.

William

When the truth is that every human is going to react in the way they do, which could be very different from every other human. I mean.

XXX

Exactly. So, what I got from that, and because my relationship with my mom was even a little more tense, I realized I couldn't tell my mom.

William

Mm.

XXX

That set off a chain of events that was horrible. One of the bad things, obviously about this is that I went on to hold this, you know, hold this to myself for 45 years.

William

Oh, I just, you know, I just want to hug ya.

XXX

Oh, I feel that.

William

I know. I know how much work that is.

XXX

Yeah, I was able to kind of hide it, sort of like how I see it is, I would hide it behind a curtain. And it was always there, but I didn't have to deal with it. And sometimes the curtain was filmy, like, you know, when, I think, Elizabeth Smart disappeared from her room, it became very stark…

William

Yeah. 

XXX

…became really real again, but other times it would just sort of disappear behind a curtain. I did tell therapists about it. Occasionally, I might have told a partner that I was close with, especially if something was feeling like it was bringing that up, you know. But really, I held on to it for a long time, so the consequence of it was that I really shut down with my mom, and we were already struggling. I remember this one day when she was really mad at me because I wasn't listening to her, and I'm putting quote marks around it because I could hear every word she was saying but my face was dead, my face was blank and it was pissing her off. She got so mad that she started hitting me and she knocked me on the ground and she said something and, I'm really sorry Mom, if you ever hear this, I'm really sorry to say this, but I think in the moment she was really mad, she said, "I wish I had had an abortion." 

William

Mm.

XXX

And it literally broke me because the one person…

William

Yeah.

XXX

…that I could have healed around this with, had told me that she wished I didn't exist. That just really led to a complete demise of any sort of connection that we could have. And so, by the time I was 15, she essentially said, I can't deal with this kid anymore and my grandmother said, she can move in with me in Seattle. I never told her though.

William

Was your grandmother any kind of respite, I hope?

XXX 

She really was in the way that a person really needs. She also got me some counseling. I went to see some people in the University District. There were a couple that worked with kids. 

William

Um hmmm

XXX

And I don't know if I told them about it. I may have been too afraid to because I think, once one person didn't believe me, I was afraid that I would never find solace. I was really fronting. I didn't want to be hurt again.

William

One thing I just want to say. It's interesting, this thing you say, “I was fronting,” and I understand what you mean, totally, because you had all this stuff going on inside. It's also a reasonable tool to use. It's not totally a front, because it's like, “No, you're not gonna fuck with me!”

XXX

Well, I have a, have a good story that I think would fit that. So, OOO and I one night, she was sleeping over or I was sleeping at her house, and we, it was, you know, darkish, and we decided to go to the store. I don't know, whatever, we were going to buy a candy. We were teenagers. What are you going to get? Doritos or something. 

William

Yeah. 

XXX

And, and on the way back, some guy stopped his car and was like, being kind of icky flirting, like, “Hey girls,” you know, and like, and he kept sort of following us along the street. So, I took like six steps back and I looked at his license plate? And I said it out loud. I said the numbers, whatever it was, you know eight whatever blah blah blah, mother fucka get outta here.

(Both laugh)

William

I love it! Oh, that's so great.

XXX

Well, yeah I was kind of fearless at that point. I think. I just was just like, no, no this isn't, and I think OOO was just like shocked, she, she even expressed to me, like, I would have never thought to do that. [laughs]

William

Isn't that fascinating, though, the resultant fearlessness. I mean, on the one hand, crumbling inside - I'm talking about myself. On the other hand, what you refer to as a front, it becomes this power also, in an interesting way. It's not really stable power, I don't think, but it's like, you know, it's a real power. Wow. I think I became the same way almost. Nothing really frightened me.

XXX

Is it possible, though, that you were frightened in a deeply core way that you hid?

William

Absolutely. What I'm more talking about is that I was willing to try anything. I think I was completely disconnected.

XXX

Yes, yes, that disconnect can make you really sort of believe in some kind of superhuman strength or super something?

William

Yeah, if you completely avoid what's really going on inside, then what the hell does it matter? I mean, that, what causes people to be afraid but what's going on inside of them? So, if you're completely disconnected from it, then what the hell?

XXX

Exactly. You can walk out on the street anytime and just be like, mehhhhh, nothing can hurt me.

William

After one year at Summit, my friend decided to leave school and move back to her hometown of Bellingham.

XXX

I had heard if you were 16 you didn't have to keep going to school. I guess I felt like there was some unfinished business or something. I decided that the end of that school year that I was going to move back to Bellingham. My mom and my sister and I had continued to have really difficult times together especially around holidays. There’d always be some sort of a blow up. I was often blamed for those blow ups and so we did family therapy once a few years ago but finally decided that we were going to try to do that. So one of our sessions, we were going to talk about what we hope to gain and during that time my sister seemed really angry with me, so when it came to her time to talk you know, she was just about ready to open her mouth and I thought she is going to rage on me right now, you know, XXX is always making a big mess, she's ruining everything and then her face kind of crumpled, and she said I just don't want XXX to be kicked out of the family again. Those words. It’s hard to describe it but I really want to. Well one, I was shocked because I didn't know that I had been kicked out of the family. I didn't know that I was in jeopardy of being kicked out of the family again from her perspective. It took me back to what was happening when I was 12 and it was a little bit like someone threw a 1000 piece puzzle, jigsaw puzzle into the air and it came down and all the pieces dropped into place and at that moment I realized that what had happened to me at 12 and because I could never tell my mom... that it was me who actually had like - do you know that old Hans Christian Andersen's story, or maybe it's a Grimm story about the little girl who gets a piece of glass, it was like magical glass from a mirror stuck in her eye, and she never again saw the world as a beautiful place. She only saw it as negative. Everything was horrible. And somewhere along the way that piece of glass is removed and she suddenly begins to see the world again as it really is, which is, you know, probably mixed, but also beautiful. And I felt like in that moment, that suddenly this thing that had happened to me at 12 was so much a part of what had created this tension and this distance between me and my mom and my sister, that I knew I had to tell them. Because the thing is if you can't tell someone that you've been assaulted because you're fearing for their life, you're protecting them by not saying anything. So, all of this time, I had this guard up, I had this tension to save their lives and to save my own life. And the problem with that was is that I was dying inside. I began to tell them and, of course, I started sobbing and they couldn't even understand the words that were coming out of my mouth. But I was finally able to say that this thing that happened meant that I had to protect you from him. And I had to protect me from him. You know, I didn't sleep right for 40 years, 40 something, 45 years, I think. And I, you know, would lock every door in the house and make sure I had my bedroom door locked every single night of my whole life. And, you know, there was some other complicated pieces about this too, which was that I was also angry with my mom for never locking the door at night. I was angry with her for going about her life in this casual way while I carried this burden. And at the same time, I was protecting my mom and my little baby sister from being killed. It was just a burden that once I was able to let it go, it changed everything.

William

I can imagine and because I know what it feels like to carry that, then I can just, you don't have to explain that part. I know what it feels like to carry that and my experience was different than yours, but I can totally see how of course that happened in your family dynamic. Of course, that happened.

XXX

Yes, of course. Right? And it's that disconnect too that I think that drives people to things like  alcohol and other substances, or to sex addiction, or, you know, to any addictions really, because that emptiness, that separation, that hole that you have inside needs to be filled. And for a moment, just one moment when you're just taking the first drink or the first, you know, hit, you suddenly feel complete. And that hole is filled, and you're okay. You could make connection with people suddenly.

William

Or those connections don't matter anymore.

XXX

Or they don't matter anymore.

William

The desire for those connections goes away.

XXX

Yes, yes, yes. So, I think in some ways substances save our lives while they're killing us. I mean, these are all attempts at wholeness and obviously they don't work, but they are very compelling for quite a long time.

William 

What drugs and alcohol do though is provide relief. You know, if I could keep the crack coming then I was relieved. It's that relief that kept me going back over and over and over again because without that diversion because it was a hugely complex system that I involved myself in when using. It involved sex and meeting strangers and all this kind of thing – the activity diversion, but then also the chemical diversion, which actually changed the experience I was having emotionally. Either shut it completely off or I don't know what it does, but, you know, you say you, you were able to let it go 45 years later and I'm just like, fuck, man, you carried that for 45 years. It's just, it's amazing that you're alive!

XXX

I know, I think the same thing. The hardest for me is that I feel like I lost 45 years of a relationship with my mom. The sadness that comes from me is that she's eighty. It pisses me off. I'm going to swear here, fuck that asshole for taking my relationship from my mom from me, fuck him. People don't realize that rape is not about your body in a lot of ways. It’s about what happens to your head and how you become so disconnected from things and how you lose the people in your life and how you lose your life. It's just such fucking devastation. There's never another place where your body is safe, especially when it happens when you're really young.

William

The other really interesting part about that is that it's not like you're aware of that, as you go through your life. You know (I: No!), you're just managing day to day, you're just doing what you need to do day to day. But it's only in retrospect, you can look back and like you said, “My relationship with my mother for all those years.” I knew it intellectually, because I did a lot of therapy. I did a lot of thinking about it but that didn't get at the emotional part of it. I did not know the depth of it.

XXX

It's like a core of darkness that goes deep, deep, deep and so you can see it on the outside, but you have no idea how deep it is. I think what my sister did was a miracle. I don't know that she knows how instrumental that was for me. Just those words took me back to a moment where I felt like oh, that's when I was quote, unquote, kicked out of the family. And it wasn't even between my mom and I. It was about this fucking asshole who devastated our family and then they didn't even my family didn't even know about it.

William

Yeah. You were managing what had happened to you and managing the safety of your mom and sister. I always had this sort of undercurrent of hopelessness. I functioned in my life. People liked me. I didn't have any intimate relationships, but you know, umm…

XXX

Yeah, what did you need intimate relationships for anyway?

William

Exactly!

XXX

I did start therapy and yes, this one trauma did come up, but a lot of other things came up too. I cried my eyes out for 12 years. One of the things I remember very, very distinctly was she did this process which felt horrible where I was being asked to speak to the little part of me that I hated. (W: Mm hmm). It's not fun. (laughs)

William

I love that. Yeah, I've done a lot of things I don't like and I've fought my way through them. You know?

XXX

Right, exactly. But it really highlighted for me the ways in which we become fractured selves, where one part of me could say, you know, if something bad happened to somebody, one part of me could say, “Well, welcome to the club. Life is shit, man.” And another part of me would go, “Oh my god, I can't believe the pain you're in.” And another part would just completely shut down. I did have a dream, you know, when the trauma happened, I had a dream that I had to find every penny that had ever been minted and I had to collect them all and this included like all the pennies that got you know, like swept up in the dustbin and were in a bag somewhere 20 feet down. I mean, it was just, it was one of those absolute impossible things. Oh, I know you're shaking your head, like…

William

'Cause I know the feeling.

XXX

Yes. I think what it represents, for me at least, is that daunting task of trying to find the parts of yourself that were sort of blown off and how do we collect those parts and integrate? That's when I think people feel like the therapy work is so daunting because it feels like you'll never be able to find these parts of yourself again.

William

I knew the feeling of trying to manage something as ridiculous as finding all the pennies in the world like I know that feeling. I had never really put it together with finding the parts of myself that were blown to hell and gone. My dream that I had for years, and…

XXX

Oh no.

William Borden  6:10  

…I haven't had it in a few years but, but even since I moved to Spain, I've had it. I end up close to graduation from high school and I don't have enough credits...

XXX

Uhh

William  

…and I realise at the last minute, well, I don't have enough credits to graduate but that never was the truth. I graduated fine. I had plenty of credits. It wasn't ever an issue. It seems to me it's that same feeling of trying to – “Okay, I have got to gather all the pennies in the world.”

XXX

Exactly. In the world.

William

I think you said this. If the parts of ourselves are blown out into the stratosphere as a child, you don't even know you have parts then and so you then operate with those parts missing for so long. I am terrified of it. Even just thinking about that process of “what if I can't?” You know, like, I get to the place where I recognize that I have parts that had been blown out to smithereens and I think, “What if I can't gather them?”

XXX

Panic, panic, 

William

Panic.

XXX

When trauma happens when we're young, and maybe at any time, there's a kind of an egocentrism that comes into play, where we begin to question what part we played or how we made it happen. Why did I go with that person at that time? What could I have done differently? And so, because of that, those are the parts that we begin to be angry at. Like, I shouldn't have done that. And so, once we start being angry at ourselves for various things, I think we split off even more. So, I think we begin to have probably many different selves, but one self that is angry and one self that is still striving for wholeness. A lot of this is about how do we integrate agaim? We really have to go back and save that part of us that began to split off - the part of us who's either angry at ourselves or who feels tremendously victimized and how do we do that, but with another person. It's like walking into hell. You can't do that by yourself. You have to have another person with you. But before we ever get to therapy, I think that we use drugs and alcohol to try to... to try to manage, right...if not integrate, at least try to lubricate to make ourselves feel some piece of wholeness again. To me the trauma work really is how do we heal or integrate or come back to wholeness with someone who not only is with us, but also who witnesses that. It's the witnessing that is so important. Some of those feelings are super difficult. I cried buckets. And sometimes it was just crying about amorphous things I didn't even know like, you know, my therapist being good looking. You know, I think I even said,' You know, fuck you for being so goddamn good looking and so present like....Fuck you.' I have to say that I started a group a few years ago and the only people who ended up staying in the group where people who have been traumatized as kids.

William

Wow. 

XXX

Each one of these people felt like they were completely alone in the world and what these people gained from that was that they were not. And that's why I felt like today would be so powerful too, because I knew that we would get each other, speak to each other’s pain, you know?

William  

It's kind of miraculous to me that now we know this about each other. Such a richer experience for me in my connection to you.

XXX 

Thank you. I feel the same way. It does feel like a miracle to me too. 

Credits

Thank you so much for listening. Crack Tales is written and produced by me, William Borden, but would not exist without my interviewees. Also, I’d like to thank the team who transcribed all of the interviews. 

Music for Crack Tales has been generously provided by my dear friend Cornell White. We’ve been friends since the seventh grade. Cornell’s music can be found on Soundcloud. CornellWhiteMusic, all one word. “Eye of the Needle” is a Brandi Carlile song. Definitely check her out. 

We want to ask you a couple favors. If you will, will you please go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a star rating and comment on the podcast. The more activity we get there with ratings and comments the more people listen. Secondly, if you could share the podcast or comments about the podcast on your own social media, it would be incredibly helpful. The more people talk, the more people share, the more people listen, and that’s what we want. The website is www.cracktales.com, that’s c-r-a-c-k-t-a-l-e-s.com

End.