#25: Raised in the Hill country of Texas, Jonathan has now planted his feet in the heart of Texas, Austin. He is a self-proclaimed cowboy but has ventured out in travels to become well diversified in the workplace. This has led him to various backgrounds such as corporate operations management and training, motivational speaking, and three of his own businesses. These have increased his ability to effectively communicate with people from all walks of life. Jonathan began his path to recovery in 2011. Through the guidance of his higher power, sponsor, family and fellow members of the recovery community, Jonathan understands the value of helping others and the importance of becoming an advocate for positive change in the Austin Recovery Community.
#25: Raised in the hill country of Texas, Jonathan has now planted his feet in the heart of Texas, Austin. He is a self-proclaimed cowboy but has ventured out in travels to become well diversified in the workplace. This has led him to various backgrounds such as corporate operations management and training, motivational speaking, and three of his own businesses. These have increased his ability to effectively communicate with people from all walks of life.
Jonathan began his path to recovery in 2011. Through the guidance of his higher power, sponsor, family and fellow members of the recovery community, Jonathan understands the value of helping others and the importance of becoming an advocate for positive change in the Austin Recovery Community. We invite you to tune in for this amazing interview where Jonathan discusses his journey in coming out to his family, his intense fight through years of addiction and multiple traumas, and ultimately finding his community!
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Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame and I am your host. Today, I will be interviewing Jonathan Wells. Jonathan was raised in the hill country of Texas and has now planted his feet in the heart of Texas, Austin. He is a self-proclaimed cowboy but has ventured out in travels to become well diversified in the workplace. Jonathan grew up as an Air Force brat. By the age of six, he had lived in three different states and abroad. He was introduced to alcohol, German beer, at a young age, raised by his mother. Having a mostly-absent father, Jonathan often felt isolated and lonely.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
His alcoholism reared its head around 16 years old and he started experimenting with pot and other drugs. At 18, he came out as gay to his Southern Baptist family after graduating high school. After many years of struggling with drugs and alcohol, major anxiety, and even at one point becoming a carnie, Jonathan found his way to recovery through treatment and a sober community. It was not without much difficulty that Jonathan figured out how to stay sober and create community in recovery while also being completely true to himself.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We are so excited that Jonathan found the time to come on our podcast. He has lots of speaking engagements, does a lot for his community, and we are just thrilled that he was able to make time for The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. Jonathan also has an art business and 50% of the proceeds go to a company called CLEAN and 50% of their profits go to scholarships for people in recovery. The Instagram for Jonathan's art can be found at recoveryartshop on Instagram. That is @recoveryartshop and again, 50% of the profits go to scholarships for people in recovery.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, without further ado my friends, please enjoy episode 25 and let's do this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Jonathan, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for being here.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely. So I have all this amazing background on you about your life, but I want to hear everything from your perspective on your recovery. How long are you sober?
Jonathan Wells:
So I've been sober since March 21st of 2013, so currently six years.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Awesome, awesome. Feeling good. I think the royal, 'they' say that after five years, you're no longer a newcomer so welcome.
Jonathan Wells:
Thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What was your... Do you think that you were born an alcoholic or that you became one?
Jonathan Wells:
Oh I was totally born one. They've always talked about on the news that they found a gene, the alcoholic gene, right? And I completely believe that because it runs in my family. It runs on both sides of my family. It runs mostly on my biological dad's side of the family. Most of them have either died from drug overdoses, alcoholism, or currently still drink. And then on my mom's side, they just don't drink. It's kind of weird.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There's something-
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, there's something wrong with them. They don't drink.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Very, very questionable.
Jonathan Wells:
Very questionable. But you know, my mom's side of the family, they grew up in the country, sort of the old folk. They're kind of the cowboy side of Texas I guess.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. And where in Texas are you?
Jonathan Wells:
So I'm in Austin, Texas. It is the wonderful, beautiful capital. The live music capital of the world is what we call it. So there's lots of bars that you can go listen to music, that you can then drink. We have-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Drinking in bars is very expensive.
Jonathan Wells:
It's very expensive. Let me tell you. We can get to that. We have Austin City Limits, South by Southwest. We have a new speedway. Austin is growing-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh. This just became a tourist commercial for Austin, Texas. I love it.
Jonathan Wells:
I know. So it's growing by-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm ready.
Jonathan Wells:
... leaps and bounds. Yes, you should come. It's great.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's a beautiful, beautiful place. What's the area where... the watering hole where everybody goes?
Jonathan Wells:
In Austin? That would be Barton Springs Pool.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, that's the one. It stays at like 50, 60 degrees all year round. They have a moon thing to when it's a full moon, you go out and you howl for some reason and then you jump in the pool at like midnight. It's the strangest thing I've ever seen. But it's also-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That sounds amazing.
Jonathan Wells:
It is amazing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It sounds amazing.
Jonathan Wells:
And they do it in the winter, too. I mean you're talking about it's 20, 30 degrees outside. Let's go howl at the moon and then jump into this freezing degree water. Sounds like a great time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, it's just too bad that we're not drinking for that. Because that would definitely make it also life-threatening and a good time, you know right?
Jonathan Wells:
Absolutely.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I feel like that's the kind of thing where if I was drinking, I would somehow take that too far. As if that's a thing, I would manage to take howling at the moon in the winter too far.
Jonathan Wells:
Well, you know, you could buy a wolf suit. You could wear that if you were drinking and on other substances. You could drink, because you have to stay warm when you jump in the pool. I mean there are so many- [crosstalk 00:05:53]
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Necessity. There's no other way to stay warm other than to drink alcohol.
Jonathan Wells:
Exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don't know of any other way.
Jonathan Wells:
No other way at all. There is no towels. There's no heat warmers. There's nothing like that out there. Nothing's been invented like that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely not. Insulation, nope, nope. There's just alcohol. I didn't know about this. So we belong. That's the good news.
Jonathan Wells:
Yes, we belong.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So did you grow up in Austin?
Jonathan Wells:
No. So I was born in Colorado and I stayed there for about four, five years. My dad was in the Air Force, so I'm an Air Force brat, which means I moved around a lot. After five years, we moved to San Antonio and that was where my sister Kristen was born. We stayed there for about a year and my dad got orders to ship us over to Germany. So we flew over to Germany and we stayed there for six or seven years.
Jonathan Wells:
So I grew up around a different culture than I was used to. We were on the base for a couple years and then we moved off base-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh cool.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, it was very cool. We stayed in a building that was sort of like an apartment complex, except each floor had a family. So it was like this building apartment complex thing. I can't really explain it. The landlord was on the bottom. There was about four families in the... So it was about four stories and each story had a family. I had to catch a bus... I had to walk uphill in the snow, you know, both ways.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Both ways.
Jonathan Wells:
It's Germany, it snows. Catch a bus to the base and that's where I went to school at.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you speak German?
Jonathan Wells:
[German 00:07:33]. No. [Spanish 00:07:36]. There you go.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God, you're the best ever. [Spanish 00:07:43]
Jonathan Wells:
Yes.
Jonathan Wells:
No, I used to. It's funny. I don't speak it fluently, but if someone spoke to me, I could understand it and somehow create some type of phrase that may not be correct, but they could understand what I was saying back to them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[Spanish 00:08:09]
Jonathan Wells:
Yes, exactly. The important things. Being in Texas so long, I know more Spanish now than I do German. But everybody in Germany understood that. When you go to a foreign country, they understand that you're an American and that you don't know their language. They kind of know your language. When you go to a German school, you learn four or five languages. It's pretty insane. So one of my good friends, Kristoff, I grew up with him in Germany and he went to the German school and we still keep in touch and he graduated learning five languages. It's pretty amazing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We're kind of a little narcissistic here that we only learn one language because we're like, "The rest of the world will adapt. We don't need to learn your languages. Just English and you guys figure that out."
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. So Germany was definitely an experience. After Germany, we moved back here to Texas. It was a very lonely time. Being an Air Force child and moving around a lot, you don't get to necessarily make the friends... if you were to stay in one state and grow up with those people and make those long-term connections that you're going to have for the rest of your life.
Jonathan Wells:
So I was very lonely. And that was very hard for me. My dad was really never there when I needed him. My mom mostly raised me as a child. So for most of my childhood and I think through my addiction, I was always trying to fill a void.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. How old were you when you left Germany?
Jonathan Wells:
I was... God I had to think about this. So 12, 11, 10... I was about eight or nine when I left.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. And did you start drinking young? When was the first time alcohol became of interest to you?
Jonathan Wells:
So when I was in Germany and my dad's buddies were over, every so often, my dad would give me a drink. It wasn't an entire drink, but it was like a little small glass, just to try out beer. Because I wanted to be a part of his group. I wanted to have that attention from my dad that I wasn't getting. And the only way I knew how was to say, "Hey, let me have some of your wonderful high-percentage alcohol beer." So he gave me tastes and I was like, "Oh, that wasn't very good." That was my first taste of alcohol.
Jonathan Wells:
My addiction didn't really start until well after... Well, probably in high school I would say, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So this was obviously an escape. Eventually, this became some sort of way to fill that void, that loneliness void it sounds like.
Jonathan Wells:
Absolutely. It was a way for me to meet new people. When you walk into a bar and the bartender knows exactly what you drink and he sees you coming through the window and he has your drink on the bar as soon as you come in and you don't have to put down a credit card because he knows you're going to pay at the end of the night, it's like, "Oh, I feel welcome."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I feel a part of, yeah.
Jonathan Wells:
"I feel a part of this bar." Then other people show up and you're like, "Hey, what's up? I haven't seen you since... six hours ago. What's going on with you? How's your bender life?" So it was definitely a way to fill that void, to create those friends that I didn't have. And as a kid growing up, I was very sheltered as a child. My-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
International travel, but sheltered, it's interesting.
Jonathan Wells:
Sheltered, yes. In fact, I remember one time I was so lonely and all my friends from the building were outside playing, my mom was asleep and so I decided to escape... Because we were on the first floor. So the top window, escape basically to the street. And I got to basically sneak out of the house and go play with my friends. And when my mom woke up, she panicked, found me, brought me back into the house, my dad immediately came home and punished me.
Jonathan Wells:
So I was very sheltered. They didn't let me out a lot. Even when we moved back to the States, I couldn't ride my bike out of the yard. I couldn't ride it down to the street because my mom... No offense, Mom, but she liked to watch the A&E channel where she would see people that would get kidnapped and that was her world. She was very scared because I was her firstborn son and she didn't want anything happening to me. So I get it from her perspective, but I wasn't able to do a lot of things.
Jonathan Wells:
So it was very hard growing up and not being able to experience the world like other kids did. If they just grew up in the States and they were able to go down the street and play until the street lights came on and then they went home for dinner. I didn't have that experience.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What was high school like for you? When did you come out to your family?
Jonathan Wells:
So this is going to be a long-winded answer, so I'm sorry.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, okay no no no.
Jonathan Wells:
So my parents divorced when I was in 12th grade, so sixth grade. Sixth grade was very hard and I went to Hays High School. When my parents divorced, my mom met my stepdad, who I call my dad today. So I'll say my biological dad and then my dad when I have certain conversations. But after they got married, we moved to Bastrop, Texas and that's where I went to middle school. Middle school was fairly normal for me. My stepdad really wanted to get to know me and really wanted to have the life that he never had with kids, because he didn't have any kids of his own. So we always went boating. We always had fun. We went camping. Middle school was great growing up.
Jonathan Wells:
After middle school, my parents decide to move us back in to Austin, Texas so I could go to Hays High School. I fought it for a long time because I was bullied in sixth grade in the same school district. Why would I want to go back to the same school? But they thought it was a better high school and so we went. I was very wary about going back. My first day of class, I think my first class was Health. And after Health, this kid came up to me and he was like, "Jonathan? Jonathan Wells is that you?" And I'm like, "Yes it is." And I'm like, someone remembered me. This is great. I have friends. Oh my gosh. I think his name was Jason. I kind of got into that group.
Jonathan Wells:
But as I grew in high school... because I moved around and I didn't have those friends, I had to discover who I was and where I fit in that in this new high school that I was going to be at for four years. So I made friends with all different types of groups who exposed me to a lot of different things. I'm talking about I hung out with the band geeks. I hung out with the science nerds. I hung out with the jocks and the sports teams. I did what we call the Future Farmers of America, FFA. I even wore my jeans and cowboy boots and belt buckles if you can imagine that. And we welded and dipped in school.
Jonathan Wells:
So it was hard for me to try to find a group, so I just joined them all.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I get that. Try them all.
Jonathan Wells:
Why not? Try them all out. So by the end of high school, I pretty much knew everybody and they knew who I was because I did a lot of things. I had to instinctively kick in my survival mechanisms as I think you mentioned in your story. Something that resonated with your story was you kind of joined everything, right? I did student council. I was in track. I did soccer. I was cross country. Anything that I could get my hands on to stay busy, I did. I was even on a soccer team outside of high school. I was a trainer that wraps the football guys' feet because I wanted to get to know them.
Jonathan Wells:
I did everything that I could. In regards to that, because I joined a whole bunch of groups, I got exposed to a lot of different substances and drinking. That's kind of when I guess my addiction started. That's when I started drinking before school. There was a gas station... I won't mention which one because I don't want to get them in trouble. There was a gas station that we knew a guy and he would sell us beer in the mornings. We would drink it before we went to school.
Jonathan Wells:
There were some friends on my soccer team that I got in and we would smoke pot before going to school. Sometimes we would skip class and then get our substance use fix and then go to school. That went on for three or four years. Because I just wanted to be... I guess belong to somebody and be accepted. So it wasn't peer pressure. It was, "Hey, if you're going to do this, I'm going to do this because hey I'm hanging out with you and I want to be your friend."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did the drugs and the alcohol do anything for you that... Of course, they were the ticket to being part of this group, but did the substance, the actual chemical composition do anything for you too? Or was it only to fit in?
Jonathan Wells:
No. It was definitely as an escape. My stepdad and my mom's relationship at that time wasn't the best. They wanted another child so they were trying to have another child on top of them arguing a lot. It wasn't the best time in our family. And so I needed an escape. That was my escape was to go smoke a joint in my car or- [crosstalk 00:18:13]
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. So it did something for you.
Jonathan Wells:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So then, you came out at 18. Were you still in high school when this happened?
Jonathan Wells:
No. This was after I graduated high school. I was hanging out with some people that I met that I was on the board of directors for. I was talking to them about... because I knew I was gay for a long time and I just kept it in the closet. My parents I think knew it but denied it. I had a very long conversation with those friends about... I need to tell them but I'm scared to because of the repercussions that may happen.
Jonathan Wells:
I made the decision to do that before I moved out of the house. I sat my mom down at the dinner table. I can still remember the ugly wallpaper that we stared at while I told her. Even before I could say that I was gay, my mom was crying and denying it. My parents were very religious Christians. That was my upbringing. They denied it for a long time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, let's stop right there for a second. Two things. When did you have this inkling? When did it start going... You said, "I knew I was gay for a long time." And the other piece was... When you say deny, you mean she told you that what you were saying was not true?
Jonathan Wells:
Correct. She said it was a phase, this isn't right. We can get you help.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Jonathan Wells:
All of those things that I think most religious Christian families with moms would say. And I knew that... I had this feeling since I was probably five or six that I knew that I liked guys. It definitely propelled itself heavily when I was in high school. I dated women all through high school, just as a kind of a cover. Most of the people in high school sort of knew. I did have some blowback after high school, after some people that were gay in high school were made fun of by some of the groups that I were in and when they saw me out, they gave me a really hard time because I didn't defend them. And I felt really bad and we made up, but it was very hard to mask that all through high school.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I'm sure. And I mean that's a complicated... All of that is very complicated. You also grew up in Texas and it's a very... I grew up mostly on the coasts and mostly in San Francisco Bay Area, so being gay was a non-issue and so it's interesting to me... There's all sorts of different reactions. So the idea that someone would say, "Oh my gosh, we can get you help." To me, that was not something. There were also other weird stuff, but that in and of itself was not... People didn't really bat an eye at that. So it depends on where you are.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah and Texas is a very conservative state. Even Austin. Austin's very liberal. We don't really belong in Texas. Austin is like it's own little state inside of Texas. It's like sometimes you don't want to travel outside of Travis County because you just don't know what's going to be waiting for you, even though I was raised in the country.
Jonathan Wells:
A lot of my family denied it. My mom didn't want me to tell any of my family. I didn't for the longest time. Even my brother, who is 18 now, they didn't let me tell him until I got married four years ago.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So the first time he found out that you were gay was when you were getting married?
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. But he wasn't allowed at my wedding. That's a whole nother conversation we can have later.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, yes of course.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay so you come out and was there any relief in doing that?
Jonathan Wells:
No.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Jonathan Wells:
No, no there wasn't. You know, I cleaned my side of the street on that part. I moved out of the house and into an apartment with a friend that convinced me it was time to tell my parents of how I truly felt. So at that point, I moved out. I was living with... I can't remember her name. But she was a very nice person and that's kind of when my addiction started to take hold. I started going out a lot. I started doing more than my drug of choice, which was alcoholism. There was a lot of other stuff that came into play, like cocaine, speed, and so forth.
Jonathan Wells:
So it got out of control so much in that I was in such a bad state that I was missing family functions. There was a year that my family took a family photo that I'm not in because I had been up all night before and I just didn't go. So whenever I pass by that picture in my house I'm like, "That wasn't a good year."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh yeah, that year. Not so good.
Jonathan Wells:
Not so good. I remember that year.
Jonathan Wells:
But yeah, it got to a point where I was such in a bad state and such in a bad state of mind that I got evicted from my apartment.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you're... Just out of curiosity. Your family did offer you help because you told them you were gay. Did they offer you help for your drug addiction? Or what was clearly a problem?
Jonathan Wells:
I don't think they understood what the problem was. I'm pretty sure that they thought that it was just me being gay and that was the gay tendency that you're just not going to make anything of yourself. And you can't be productive in life. I don't think that it was the drinking or the drugging to be honest.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. That's an interesting perspective.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. Because they didn't really offer me help until much, much later down the road.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right okay. So you get kicked out of this house and then you end up in Nashville. Is that right?
Jonathan Wells:
Well I got kicked out of the house... Or I was evicted and then I moved in with my biological dad and stepmom.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Which obviously was a situation that was wrought with all sorts of stuff because you called him your biological dad.
Jonathan Wells:
Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Implying that he was not the figure that was raising you.
Jonathan Wells:
No, no. My dad and mom raised me. I call him my biological dad because I don't consider him my dad anymore. When I went to rehab after I told him... After I went to rehab and after the law thing that we'll talk about later, they didn't want me to come to any family functions anymore and we haven't talked in about seven or eight years. Which I'm fine with, because he's the major alcoholic in the family.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Jonathan Wells:
So I'm quite okay with that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Not the best family functions to be a part of. Yeah, but you did move in with him and his wife.
Jonathan Wells:
I did, yes. I moved in with them for a time, until I met Sean, which was probably my first boyfriend that I moved in with. That went well for a while, until-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Doesn't it always.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. Probably for the first couple of months, it was fine. He was a lot older than me. I was 19 and he was 32. So much, much older than I was. And took me under his arms and taught me the world basically. Which, to him, was the bars, parties, and more cocaine. So we did that for the longest time until I got sick of it, got a really good job, and started cleaning myself up a bit. He just kind of went down that rabbit hole, so I moved out and into some friends' of mine that were lesbians. They were very nice, took me in. But I was still drinking on the weekends and partying and not coming home.
Jonathan Wells:
Well, one day after I turned 21 and I was out at the bars and so was Sean, he told me not to go to this one party. I did anyway. I think it was about three in the morning. I couldn't sleep. One of the partygoers said he was a dentist, gave me a pill and said, "Here, this is going to help you sleep." I was not in my right mind at the moment, so I took it and went to bed.
Jonathan Wells:
The next thing I know, when I woke up, I remember being raped. Vivid images that would come back. I called a friend of mine that I worked with and literally slept on her floor for two nights, balled up in a ball because I really didn't know what happened and I had to make sense of this in my mind. So that was really hard. Finally, when I went to the doctor and I called my mom and dad, they moved me out of the house that I was living in and in with them.
Jonathan Wells:
At that point, they started dragging me to the Southern Baptist church. I "found religion" and went back into the closet.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow. So the attacker was this dentist human?
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, I believe he was like a dentist or an eye doctor. One of the two. I don't remember his name. I don't remember what he looked like. All I remember is he saying that he was a doctor. People that were around me said that he was a doctor, and so I trusted that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. And so you... I'm sorry that happened. That's terrible and something that unfortunately, is so common when we're using. You know and it's one of those things where... and I think a lot of people can relate to this, those of us... I don't know many people who are in recovery who haven't had that experience because I think we become easy targets for the exact reason that you're talking about. Well we were already in this partying situation. So by the time we come out of it, realize what has happened, we don't feel that we have the right to say anything. Right? Well what am I going to say? I took the pill. What do you say?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So it becomes this shame spiral of shame about being in a situation, shame about taking the pill, the insert whatever it is, and then shame about what happened and then shame about not being able to say anything because you're ashamed of all of the other things. It's just this horrible shame spiral that we pour more alcohol on top of.
Jonathan Wells:
Absolutely. And it was shame for the longest time. It took me a very long time to understand exactly how to feel about that. Until I worked my steps, I really didn't understand and that was 12 years later.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, right.
Jonathan Wells:
Until I really understood the entirety and gravity of the situation. So it was interesting.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you went back into the closet as a... Was it this idea that maybe this would solve the problem? Another solution to whatever that void is? Maybe I just need to put this part of me away? What was the impetus for you being willing to go back into the closet?
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, you know going back to the Southern Baptist church my parents would go to, I sat down with the preacher. This was before or during the service, I can't remember. To confess our sins. So my stepdad went with me and I told him everything that was happening and we prayed and the, "burden" was lifted. I thought that part of me was gone. If I wasn't gay, then I wouldn't have gotten raped. If I wouldn't have taken that pill, if I wouldn't have been using substances or drinking... back-filling that whole story. So going back in the closet, supposed to fix everything, right? That's what the preacher said, so that's what I did.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And what was that like?
Jonathan Wells:
It was very... I'm not saying it was easy to accept. But I did stop drinking because I stopped hanging out at the gay bars. I started going to the Southern Baptist church every Sunday. I joined the choir. Everything was hunky dory. At that time is when I moved to Nashville with one of my best friends that I went to church with. We joined another Southern Baptist church up there. I got a new job and got into call center work. If you don't know anything about call centers, I guarantee you, about 40% of us are going to be LGBT. It's just a thing. I don't understand it, but about 40-50% of us are.
Jonathan Wells:
So going back into that world, I met more people that were LGBT and sat down with them and started telling my story. And so-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were you trying to convert to say, "You guys should come to this Baptist church?"
Jonathan Wells:
No, oh God no.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh good, okay.
Jonathan Wells:
They wanted to talk to me because I told them the story and they're like, "That's not right. Something's wrong." I'm like, "Are you sure? I'm pretty sure I've been doing great the past two years. I haven't drank." I was being celibate at the time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's really working out.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, an exciting life. Going to Alabama football games.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There you go.
Jonathan Wells:
So we started talking a lot and that person introduced me to another person who introduced me to another person and soon I was sitting down with a group of them. I started realizing some things. I started reading more books. There was one book in particular that they gave me. I started reading it and it was about a story of someone that knew they were a homosexual and they went back into the closet, what that was like for them and when they realized that that's really who they were and they had to come back out again and how tough that was. After I read that book, I cried for hours on end, because I knew who I was.
Jonathan Wells:
I started hanging out again with the LGBT community. When that happened, that person that I was living with found out and he kicked me out of the house. I moved in with some of the friends from work that were in this group and helped me kind of get back on track of who I was. The fun part was I had to come out to my family again.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because once is not enough let's do it again.
Jonathan Wells:
Let's have the experience all over again!
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hey listen. They got a redo. Did they do any better?
Jonathan Wells:
No, it became worse.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh God.
Jonathan Wells:
So I called my sister first and I said, "Hey sis, I got some news to tell you." She was like, "Oh, are you coming back out again?" And I said, "Yes." She said, "Thank God, it's about time." I said, "You knew?" And she was like, "Duh." I was like awesome. I love my sister. She's my best friend.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She's like, yeah, you were going to Alabama football games trying so hard.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. Called my stepmom, she pretty much said the same thing. "Duh, about time you came out." The hard part was calling my mom and dad. I told them what was happening and we had many fights over the phone. One Friday, after work when I was walking back to my car, I got into my car, tried to back up, noticed there was a car behind me and I'm like, "That's strange." Had a knock on my window and it was my dad. They flew from Austin to Nashville and they said, "We're taking you." And I said, "Taking me where?" And they're like, "We're taking you back to our hotel." And I'm like, "Okay."
Jonathan Wells:
So I obliged. They were my parents. They were trying to throw a lot of Bible verses at me and they couldn't really remember them so I told them back to them because I knew the Bible better than they did. Finally, they said, "Well we have a meeting in the morning with your preacher." And I'm like, "Cool." And they were like, "And you're going to stay here." I'm like, "No." I finally convinced them and I went home that I would show up the next day, and I did with a lot of documentation. It was a very painful meeting. It didn't go anywhere.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
With them and the preacher.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. It didn't at all. They weren't going to convince me otherwise of who I was and who I knew to be. So after that, I was like, "So, you want to take a tour of Nashville or what?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Now that we've gotten that out of the way. That was awkward guys, right?
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. Oh so awkward. They finally went back home. We didn't talk for awhile. It wasn't a great communication for a couple of years. At that point, I was out. I was going back to the bars again. I was trying to find my tribe of people. I did and I dated a couple people. Finally, I found... Well, I was house sitting for a friend of mine that I had met. He's like, "Yeah, go and house sit. Beautiful house in East Nashville, 1920 bungalow. Have a party if you want while I'm gone."
Jonathan Wells:
Sure. Okay. So you know, I went to a karaoke bar on the east side... Which in Nashville, by the way, karaoke? When they do karaoke, if you're not a country music star, you're probably not going to be up there getting to karaoke. They're really good. And if you're not good, they're going to kick you offstage.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Good to know. Good to know I will not be getting onstage.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, yeah. It's very scary. But you know, Ty Herndon would show up. We had the Dixie Chicks show up-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh. For karaoke?
Jonathan Wells:
They live there. For karaoke, yeah. Because it was a safe place that no one would judge them. No one would clamor over them. It was just between friends. And that's where I met Brian. We immediately looked at each other across the room after I came downstairs from the second floor. I said, "Hey, I'm having a party tomorrow night, do you want to go?" He's like, "Oh I can't. I'm going to my grandparents." I was like, "Oh, that's cute." I said, "Well here's my number. Call me." Wasn't expecting a call at all when he got back, but he did.
Jonathan Wells:
Me and Brian were together for about four years. I wasn't heavily drinking then. It was casual drinking. Funny enough, the house that I house sat in, we bought it because I was living there and I didn't want to move out. We bought the house. And we had a great partnership for probably about two and a half years. Until I met some group of people that were... I don't even know how to say this. Very influential people that had a lot of money and great jobs and I got myself thrown into that group.
Jonathan Wells:
That group also liked to... You know the terminology work hard, play hard?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jonathan Wells:
They liked to play very hard. Cocaine was introduced back into the mix. So was drinking every weekend. Which turned into drinking every week. Having after parties at our house all the time. Things went downhill pretty fast over a year. To where I was sleeping around with other people, not paying attention to our relationship. Brian knew that I was sleeping around with people, but I think the straw was when we had an after party one night at our house. He caught me with somebody else in our roommate's room. That's when he said, "Jon, I can't do this anymore. You got to find something... This is going to end." It threw me into a loop.
Jonathan Wells:
For the next month, I searched for a place. Me and a buddy moved in together. My alcoholism went out of control. So much that I was drinking every day. I would get anxiety at work because I wasn't drinking. I was drinking when I wake up. I was drinking at lunch. I was drinking during the evenings and staying up until three or four in the morning and trying to go to work. So I found a solution around that. I convinced my doctor that my anxiety was so bad, that I needed to go on FMLA. That I need her convincing to call my work and have a call so that I could get on FMLA so I could actually go out and drink and use and abuse and call in two or three times a week and not have any repercussions.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And for anybody who doesn't know FMLA is Family Medical Leave Act. So disability, basically, another way to put it.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. Completely abused the system. Now mind you, I thought that was a very clever way around keeping my job and using at the same time. At the time, I thought that was a very clever way. I regress and regret that in so many different ways. But it got pretty out of control. My roommate was worried for me, as he should be. One night that I was out... Sorry, go ahead.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, I was just going to say that one thing that comes up for me about that is from your perspective, you're taking advantage of the system, which I understand why you say that. What I also see is that you truly had a fatal progressive illness and a major anxiety disorder and probably weren't bringing your A game to your job anyway so going out on disability, you may have thought it was a scam, but in some ways, it was kind of an accurate depiction of what was going on.
Jonathan Wells:
It was. You know, at that point, I wish my HR department would have said, "Do you have another problem you want to talk about?" I guess they just didn't see that or I fooled them enough that... Yeah, nobody really paid attention. My job suffered, heavily. I never made my stats. It was very bad. It was very bad, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you started to... So from that point on, you ended up getting a DUI, is that right?
Jonathan Wells:
That was-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
God, I sound like a prosecutor. Read from line three. Is that correct? Is that right?
Jonathan Wells:
Yes. That was in 2012. But I want to touch on a couple things before that from when I was 27. I think I got my DWI when I was 29. So a couple years there I want to talk about because I think it's kind of funny. In my addiction, after Brian, I met this guy named Jamie Ruez. I say his full name because he's unfortunately now passed away.
Jonathan Wells:
He introduced me... I immediately fell in love with him at the bar, drinking of course.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is there another way to fall in love?
Jonathan Wells:
There is no other way.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Obviously. I don't either.
Jonathan Wells:
So I was like, "I can't go back to my place. But let's go back to your place." He says, "Oh I can't." I was like, "Why?" He's like, he wouldn't explain. Well, I got him drunk enough to where I convinced him to do that. So the state fair was right next to the bar. Well he took me back to the state fair and he was like, "Well this is my trailer," and I was like, "What do you mean?"
Jonathan Wells:
He was like, "Well, I travel around the state fairs and we have a booth and we take pictures of people in front of green screens and we put anything behind them and we put them on license plates and shirt and stuff like that and we charge people for that."
Jonathan Wells:
I was like, "That sounds great. How do I become that? I want to be a carnie."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh it's too good.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. So I became a carnie.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you move into this trailer?
Jonathan Wells:
I did, yes. It was a big trailer. There was enough room for the owners up front. We had sort of the middle master suite, and then we had four bunk beds in the back of the trailer. It was a custom made trailer.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I want to be a carnie.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. You would think that. When we were on the road... And right before I went on the road with him, I was supposed to go to Mississippi. But my mom got the swine flu and I got a call from my doctor... How they tracked me down to a Jiffy Lube is beyond me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Whoa.
Jonathan Wells:
But they said, "Is there a Jon here?" I said, "Yeah, I'm Jon." He's like, "You have a call." And I'm like, who the hell's calling me at a Jiffy Lube?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That would freak me out.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. They were like, "Hey, this is calling on behalf of your mom. I'm her preacher," and I'm like, "How did you find me?" They were like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, wait, wait. I know that my mom's sick. But can we get back to how you found me?"
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. Is there a tracker in my car I'm not aware of that my parents put when I left?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That part gets me real freaked out.
Jonathan Wells:
So they told me that she had swine flu and she wasn't going to make it. So I told the carnie people that I had to leave for a month. So I drove down to Texas thinking that my mom was going to die. So I wrote a eulogy. I picked the songs out that I was going to play at her funeral. And when I got there, she was in something called a RotoBed. She was in a coma. They had to put her in a coma because her lungs were filled with fluid and she couldn't breathe anymore. And a RotoBed... Imagine if you were lying down in a padded almost cell that rotated right and left every 30 seconds to keep the fluid moving in your lungs and to get the fluid out. So I didn't recognize her when I got there.
Jonathan Wells:
But when I was back in my hometown, you know I was trying to support my dad, but it was my hometown. I had friends to visit. I had parties to go to. I wasn't there for them. Thankfully, she pulled through and I left to go on tour to be a carnie in Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia and finally, down to Miami for six months and then to West Palm Beach to where they let me... Why they let me do this, but they let me open a retail store to do this. Give the alcoholic keys to a retail store and see what happens.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes, just fun experiment.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. Drank every day before work. Used every night afterward. Woke up to the exact same thing for seven or eight months until I couldn't stand it anymore and I called my parents and I said, "I'm done. How do I get home?" Moved back to Austin, where my substance abuse continued and got worse. Somehow, I got some incredible jobs-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know, you have all these jobs that you're getting. I'm so impressed. I was not employable.
Jonathan Wells:
I worked at Dell. I worked at Southwest Airlines. I worked at start up companies. I was managers. I was directors.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don't know if that's a statement about you or them.
Jonathan Wells:
I don't know. Who would hire an alcoholic as your director? That's not a great idea.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's... Do you have carnie on your resume?
Jonathan Wells:
No. However, there was one day at my current job that I was talking with my director. We were at happy hour. They were like three or four drinks in. We were going around. They were like, "Let's tell the most embarrassing thing that we've ever done or embarrassing job that we've ever had." And I'm like, shit.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're like, "Well this is easy."
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. And I said, "Y'all guess. Just start guessing." And they named out a whole bunch of things. And I said, "No, no." And they were like, "Tell us, tell us." And I'm like, "I was a carnie." And they're like, "You traveled with the circus?"
Jonathan Wells:
And I was like, "No. That's different. Circus is a circus. You travel with a carnie, it's the state fair. Have some respect."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes, seriously. Excuse me!
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. So they had a good laugh. I'm now known as the carnie guy. But so-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You earned it.
Jonathan Wells:
I earned it. I earned every penny of that. Every penny, every title. It was a hard life. You had to wake up at seven in the morning, go to your booth, open, close at 10, 11 o'clock at night, drink for the next four hours, get two hours of sleep, then do it all over again.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh. That sounds stressful.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, I wouldn't recommend anyone riding any rides at any carnival ever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's what I always say. And my husband, thank you... Okay now I have... I always say that stuff is not safe. I don't care what anybody says. That stuff's not safe.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, I got to go under some of those rides and fix them and paint them. You don't know what's under there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what I said. I was... This ain't no OSHA tested ride. It's reassembled by someone who's three sheets to the wind. But anyway, I'm glad... Yeah, no. Good news is, we've now disseminated that information.
Jonathan Wells:
Yes. So, Austin. I'm back in Austin. I'm back in my hometown, living with my parents. I'm still drinking and not coming home at night. It got to the point where I was working at Home Depot, dating this one guy, and one night, we were sitting around drinking and smoking and he looks at me while we were using substances and going, "You know, you would do with some good rehab." And I'm like, "What are you talking about? What?" I'm so confused. "Please, tell me more while we have this thing of whiskey sitting in front of us."
Jonathan Wells:
So he was like, "Well, you just seem to be going off the rails." And I'm like, sure. So I thought about it that night, woke up, and I went to my parents' house. I text my parents. I said, "Hey Mom, when you get home, we have to talk about something."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She's like, "Not again!"
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. She was like, "What now?" No one was home. I sat my mom down on the couch and I said, "Mom, I think I need to go to rehab." She was like, "Oh thank God." Because they actually would put around little AA pamphlets in my bathroom and on the counter and in my lunch. And I would look at them and I'm like, "I don't meet any of these criteria. I'm not an alcoholic. What are you talking about?" Total denial. "I've never done any of these things."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The irony that, "Mom I'm gay," and then, "Mom, I'm attracted to the same sex. Mom I'm attracted to the same sex." Freak out freak out. "Mom I'm an alcoholic." "Oh thank God."
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. Something clicked.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"Mom. I have a fatal progressive disease. Can you help me?" "Woo. All right. Now we're working with something."
Jonathan Wells:
I know. She was happy. So that was probably on a Monday. I stayed at their house all week. I didn't leave. I detoxed on my own.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, brutal.
Jonathan Wells:
I got to pick where I wanted to go to treatment. I didn't have insurance at the time, so my parents had to take out a loan and pay for it. At that point, I didn't realize how expensive treatment was.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh yes. Where'd you go?
Jonathan Wells:
I'm not going to say the name of the treatment center because-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What city?
Jonathan Wells:
It was in Wimberley, Texas, which was about an hour outside of Austin. It wasn't a fancy one. I could have chose the fancy one, but I wanted to really get sober. I wanted to get help. So that Friday, I ended up at the treatment center, one day of detox. And I was there for 31 days. I was so... When I talked to the doctors and got a lot of test results back, they said I had irreparably damaged my body. When they weighed me... I'm 5'10", 5'11". When they weighed me in, I was 123 pounds.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God.
Jonathan Wells:
So very malnutritious?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Malnourished.
Jonathan Wells:
Malnourished, there we go. It was... They put me on a lot of different medications, anxiety medications, sleeping medications, all that good jazz. It was a coed rehab facility, so guys on one side, girls on the other. When I came out to some of the guys that I was gay, there were four or five of them that bullied me through rehab. So I was actually bullied in rehab.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh.
Jonathan Wells:
The owner found out about it, came to the rehab. And on family day, while everybody was sitting around, made them get up and apologize for that. But I had to ride in the women's van because it was bad. It got really bad. It was the first time I've ever been bullied for being gay. And in rehab, no less.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Lovely.
Jonathan Wells:
So it was tough.
Peter Loeb:
Hi, I'm Peter Loeb, CEO and co-founder of Lionrock Recovery. We're proud to sponsor The Courage to Change, and I hope you find that it's an inspiration. I was inspired to start Lionrock after my sister lost her own struggle with drugs and alcohol back in 2010. Because we provide care online by live video, Lionrock clients can get help from the privacy of home. We offer flexible schedules that fit our clients' busy lives. And of course, we're licensed and accredited and we accept most private health insurance.
Peter Loeb:
You can find out more about us at LionrockRecovery.com or call us for a free consultation, no commitment, at 800-258-6550. Thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When you got there and you're 123 pounds and they're like, "You have irreparably damaged your health," were you surprised? Was it one of those things where there was some body dysmorphia like, I have? Or were you like, "Yeah, I figured I was sick. I figured I hadn't eaten enough, or whatever."
Jonathan Wells:
I knew something was going on. I just couldn't put my finger on it. And so when they told me, it was a shock. I just didn't know how bad it was. And I cried for about 10 minutes and then I realized, I'm in rehab. I need to focus on my recovery and getting sober. I'll deal with getting better from a more physically standpoint later.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Interesting that you separated the two. The mental and physical.
Jonathan Wells:
By that time, I had been sober... well, including detox, in the first week and a half that I had been in rehab, for two and a half weeks, oh my gosh. So I could understand everything that was going on around me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You were speaking English again.
Jonathan Wells:
I was speaking English, right. I wasn't speaking to the tigers and the other stuff that I was seeing... The shadow people.
Jonathan Wells:
It all made sense. I could comprehend it and separate the two.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did you get well while being bullied in rehab? How or what did you... How did you progress in that environment?
Jonathan Wells:
After the bullying, that was about the second week that that took place, I had another couple of weeks that I was able to really focus on my recovery, work with my counselor, and follow every direction that they ever gave me, even if I didn't like it. Who makes their bed every day when they get up in the morning? I mean... That was a thing that we had to do. You know, I never realized until after I got out of treatment why they did that.
Jonathan Wells:
That you had to wash the vans every Saturday. That you had to clean every other day. I was like, "Why are we doing this? We need to be talking about sobriety and stuff." But it was about creating those routines that you lost while you were using and if I didn't have that and I got out, I wouldn't have known what to do. So it made sense and I just had to buckle down and focus on it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. It is really hard when you're getting sober and so many things you're told to do that seem completely unrelated. I still have that. A sponsor or therapist, completely unrelated to the topic at hand, but it does. There's something about taking those actions and following direction. Someone told me, "Messy bed, messy head."
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And that was... There's some truth to that. And learning how to take direction.
Jonathan Wells:
It is a total truth. My current boyfriend... when he stays over... By the time I'm out of the shower, my bed's made. I'm like, "You're a keeper. I like you." He was like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hospital corners?
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. Everything. It's wonderful and I'm like, "Why do you do that?" He was like, "Because I noticed you did it one morning when I stayed over, so I know you like it that way." And I'm like, "You're a keeper. I like you."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh yeah, that's nice. God, I'm going to talk to my husband.
Jonathan Wells:
We can connect them on the phone.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, exactly. You talked a little bit... You've experienced some domestic violence in your relationships. How has that... What work did you do or was that just self esteem work in order to have a different experience in relationships in recovery?
Jonathan Wells:
It's been a long road. So when I... Right before I left treatment, my counselor said, "Jon, within a year, you're going to relapse." And I'm like, "Thanks?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is that a pep talk?
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, right. Like what? Is this encouragement? Is this like a goal that I should go in a year come back and go, "Ha ha, I didn't relapse?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Jonathan Wells:
And so he said, "You're going to relapse within a year and it's going to be because of two things. It's going to be because of finance or romance."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, finances and romances, yep.
Jonathan Wells:
So I was like, "Get out of here. You're lying." Yeah, finance and romance.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Turns out, he was completely accurate.
Jonathan Wells:
Within six months after rehab. But, I did a lot of work with my counselor in rehab what happens. And how I felt about being raped and how that played out in my life. How not having a dad as a child contributed to my alcoholism. Without going through those first crucial steps in treatment, I don't think that I would have gotten over it. I really didn't until I got sober in 2013. Until I truly started working my steps like I was supposed to. I worked some steps before. I tried it three or four times. Didn't work for me. My four steps were crap. I didn't put everything out there like I was supposed to. And because of that, I relapsed a couple times.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. You were lucky that you made it back to do that. Not everybody is so lucky.
Jonathan Wells:
I was lucky to be alive. There were a lot of my litter mates... Litter mates, to the public, is people that I got sober with... that died because they went out and drank or-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that one more time.
Jonathan Wells:
That one more time. And I see it every year.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's so scary.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. I've had close roommates that have committed suicide. I had three in one year that happened with like weeks apart. That's why I started painting, or one of the reasons. But yeah, it took a lot of work.
Jonathan Wells:
So you mentioned the DWI a little bit-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh we're bringing it back, bringing it back.
Jonathan Wells:
I want to circle back to that. In 2012, a year before I got sober, I got a DWI. I had driven and drove many times before. Thought I was great.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What is that? Everybody thinks that they're a great drunk driver. It's like liquid self esteem.
Jonathan Wells:
I don't know what you're talking about. I drive better drunk.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly.
Jonathan Wells:
Do you? Do you really?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you really? Where'd you come up with that statistic?
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. Got a DWI and possession, felony possession of cocaine.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Ooh. Felony possession. That's got to be bags for other people?
Jonathan Wells:
Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh wow, I'm good. Man I'm good.
Jonathan Wells:
You're good. You know your stuff. Are you sure you're not a lawyer? Am I on the right podcast?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know my drug charges. Anyone looking to hire me for drug Jeopardy?
Jonathan Wells:
You could be a... What is it? A court bailiff.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Court reporter.
Jonathan Wells:
Court reporter. You know this stuff.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Felony, yeah.
Jonathan Wells:
It was Labor Day weekend. I think it was Labor Day weekend. In Austin, they love to do no refusals for every holiday. So I could not refuse to either give a blood thing to blow-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
A holiday no refusal? Is that constitutional?
Jonathan Wells:
It's a thing. Yeah, they get-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How is that a thing?
Jonathan Wells:
Because they have court orders ready to go-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay interesting.
Jonathan Wells:
... to do that. So even if you say no, they're like, "Eh, we're going to do it anyway."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What?
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. Good old Travis County. Got to love it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That feels... Anyway, okay, so you were in doodoo.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah. I was in doodoo. Was in jail for three days. Got out. My parents left me in jail for a couple days as they should. I have no ill will toward that. If I had kids, I'd do the same thing. When I went back to the house that I was living in, Mark had changed the locks. He was there to open the door and said, "Sorry, you got to move out." He's this big guy. He probably stands 6'3". Bald, beard, but was always the nicest guy. He gave the biggest bear hugs. He was sweet and I understood exactly what was happening.
Jonathan Wells:
Got myself out... which I didn't have much at the time. I had maybe four bags of clothes, some shirts, and pillows and blankets. After I got all the stuff in my car, I went back and Mark and I had a conversation and at the end of the conversation, I said, "Mark, will you be my sponsor?" So when I tell my story to people, they're like, "So he kicked you out of the house and then you asked him to be your sponsor. What?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Bold move on your part.
Jonathan Wells:
It was a bold move.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know you don't want to live with me, but will you mentor me in program.
Jonathan Wells:
... mentor me, yeah. Great idea. I didn't have anywhere to go. I move back in with my parents. My parents had very strict rules. Don't drink. And come home at 11 o'clock. That's your curfew.
Jonathan Wells:
Within a week, I broke that. They gave me one more chance. Within three days of that, I broke that, and they said, "You got to move." I said, "Okay," put everything in my car and I didn't have anywhere to go for a couple days so I lived out of my car. I was homeless and at the bottom of my bottom.
Jonathan Wells:
Or so I thought. My friend Rob, which we call Nana in our AA group, he takes people in and gets them sober and gets them on track. I called him. I had a conversation with him and he said, "You're more than welcome to move in. I've got a bed for you." Great. Moved in, drank for six months while I was in his house. And he knew I was drinking. As long as I was paying the rent and I came home every night, he was okay with that. Because he knew I was safe.
Jonathan Wells:
At that point, I started dating the guy by the name of Angel... That was one of the reasons that I was kicked out of my mom's house. That last time that I drank, I actually went out with him. And even though I told him I wasn't dateable, he was like, "Let's see."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Sounds like a challenge to me.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, exactly. And I guess he took it up as a challenge. Well, after about... I don't know, six, seven months of dating me, he knew I had a problem and he tried to control it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It took him six months to figure that out?
Jonathan Wells:
Apparently.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
He's not the sharpest knife in the knife block.
Jonathan Wells:
No, but he was sweet and I appreciated that. I appreciated him trying. On March 20th... no March 19th, it was a Thursday, I went out. He was in another city, about 45 minutes away. Rob was gone. He was on vacation-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Rob was the person you were living with? Or your sponsor.
Jonathan Wells:
No, I was living with. I was like, he's gone, my boyfriend's in another city, I'm going to go out. It's a Thursday night, baby. So I went out and I had fun and I was using and I went to an after party and I was doing my normal thing of you know, looking online for a hookup at four in the morning at this after hours party. And sending emails through Craig's List.
Jonathan Wells:
At that point, I forgot that my boyfriend had my tablet, and everything time I sent an email, it dinged. So I got a text message from him and he said, "Are you awake?" And I said, "Yeah." He said, "Well what are you doing awake? Are you out?" I said, "No, I just couldn't sleep. I'm at home." He's like, "Oh, okay." And I stopped texting him. And I stopped emailing. And I was like, "You know, it's four in the morning. I got to work at eight. I should probably go home."
Jonathan Wells:
By the time I got home, I parked. I shut off my engine. I got a knock on my window and he was at my window. And he was like, "Where were you?" We had a big fight and I said, "You know what, I got to get some sleep. I got to work."
Jonathan Wells:
In the morning, I woke up. I tell my work, "Hey, I got to work from home. I'm not feeling well." By this time, they kind of already knew that I was an alcoholic. And they were just like, "No, you need to come in. It's mandatory." I said, "No I can't." They were like, "No, you need to come in." I said, "No I'm not going to." They were like, "Okay well we have a meeting set up on Monday." I said, "Shit."
Jonathan Wells:
So that Friday night, after I got off of work, Angel was still there. And I was taking a nap on the couch because I was obviously very tired from working all day and staying out all night. He grabs my phone. He knew my code. He logged into my bank statements on my phone, saw everything that I had been doing for months. Logged into my emails. Logged into my GPS tracking. Woke me up by throwing a pillow at me. Started screaming at me and we had a fight. That fight escalated to shouting in the living room for about an hour, shouting in the front for about an hour, and I decided to go out on the back porch.
Jonathan Wells:
I opened the door. I slammed it behind me, even though I knew he was coming. He opened the door. He pushed me down the steps. It was about four steps, and I landed on the deck pretty hard. I got up. I pushed him back. And he was above me. He grabbed me by the neck, body slammed me back to the porch and continued to choke me, screaming that he didn't know what to do with me. That he loved me. That he couldn't take this anymore. He was crying.
Jonathan Wells:
And I think through his rage and his crying, he didn't realize that he was choking me to the point where it was crushing my throat to where I couldn't breathe. Until he kind of came out of the trance, let go, left me on the porch, went back into the house, locked the house where I couldn't get in, and told everybody in the house that I was using.
Jonathan Wells:
It was very traumatic. It took me awhile to regain to where I could breathe. And I went into the room that I was staying in. I fell asleep. The next morning, I went to my parents' and I stayed in a spare bedroom for two days and I didn't come out. And in that time, I thought, "What am I doing with my life? What just happened? I was assaulted again. This seems to be a common theme." And I recapped the last year and a half of my life.
Jonathan Wells:
That was my tipping point. Not the DWI. Not me being raped before. Not losing jobs. Not having panic attacks, anxiety attacks. It was the fact that someone else... I'm going to say this and this is going to sound weird. That someone else... I'm going to say cared enough for me that they were crying out to me. Even though he was choking me, he was crying out that I can't take this anymore and I don't know what to do.
Jonathan Wells:
It was wrong for him to choke me. I will say that. And he and I have come to terms and then said our piece about that. But after that weekend, I called my sponsor and I said, "I'm ready." Rob got back into town, because I was banned from the house at that point in time and I said, "I'm ready to get sober." And there were rules put into place. I had to go to so many nights to rehab. Started working my steps.
Jonathan Wells:
I worked the steps like I had never worked them before. I was the embodiment of what a person in AA should do and what steps that they should take. By the book, by the big book, didn't miss anything. And it took me about four months to write my fourth step. This is the fun part. After I was done writing my fourth step, which was pretty much an entire-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Notebook.
Jonathan Wells:
... notebook, right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yep, same.
Jonathan Wells:
My sponsor said, "Well okay. I got to go out of town for a week." And I'm like, "No, I'm done. I've got to read it like tomorrow to somebody." He was like, "Well choose somebody that you trust that you're in a spiritual relationship with." I was like, "Well who am I in a spiritual relationship with?" And I was like, "Oh, I'm in a spiritual relationship with my dad because we've been going to church." I found a church that I liked. They started going and he was my spiritual running partner.
Jonathan Wells:
So I called my dad and I said, "Hey, I'm in the place in my recovery that I have all my fourth step written. I just need to read it to somebody. Could you just listen to me for like a couple hours?" And he was like, "Sure." He was like, "Wait. What's involved with that?" And I said, "Well I have to read you everything that I did that I had done wrong, who I needed to make amends to, all my sexual things that I messed up." And he was like, "Oh, okay." That was half the binder. And-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh God. Did you read your fourth step to your dad?
Jonathan Wells:
I did.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my.
Jonathan Wells:
I got to his house when the sun was rising. They live out in the country, so it was beautiful day. Got him coffee. It took me about two hours to read it to him. And I read a lot. We cried. He was shocked, a lot. But my dad is the one that knows everything about me. There is stuff that I told him that my mother will never know, that she doesn't ever need to know. My dad and I kind of made that pact. After I read it to him, we said a prayer. I called my sponsor and there was a rock in the backyard that I was able to get cell service and I cried on the rock.
Jonathan Wells:
I went to the bathroom. I cried while I peed. I cried pretty much for the next hour, because it was such a burden that lifted. I worked the rest of the steps from there. I made amends. I traveled to other states. Everybody that I made amends to understood what I went through after I left, including Brian. And I owed Brian quite a bit of money from all the credit card stuff that I racked up. He was like, "Don't worry about it. I'm glad you're well." I had so many people do that. And I cried. And I cried.
Jonathan Wells:
Getting sober, I got asked to join the board of directors for a recovery organization. We stared the first Recovery in the Park five years ago. It's still going on. This is the fifth or sixth anniversary. It's crazy to see that growing, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Jonathan Wells:
My sponsor said, "Now that you're sober, doors are going to open up. It's going to be like if you were at the bottom of the river, holding rocks and you suddenly let go. You went straight to the top. The river was a rapid and you're now going to go down that rapid and it's going to be bumpy for a while. But eventually, it's going to smooth out into a very nice river, and it's going to be smooth."
Jonathan Wells:
Being sober is probably the most wonderful thing that's ever happened in my life. I have gotten jobs to where I've been able to talk to moms and talk them off the ledge of doing something stupid because their kid was sick and was using and they didn't know how to handle. I had one mom call me one time that she was so mad that she wished her son would just die. A lot of times, I would sit on the floor of my office talking to moms for hours. Started groups with parents that they could join and help them understand what was going through. It was kind of a peer group for them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Jonathan Wells:
I became a peer recovery coach, the second one in the state of Texas that actually passed the exam. And things just kept on getting better and better and better. I'm not saying that being in sobriety is the easiest thing in the world, because it's not. I've been married. I've got divorced. That's when I started painting, when I moved out. Because I didn't know anything else to do. Through painting, I'm able to express myself in ways that I never thought possible. I can't explain what recovery means to me. Because there are so many words.
Jonathan Wells:
My biggest thing in recovery that I do is I give back. And that's probably the moral of my entire story. There's a quote by an anonymous person about volunteering that says, "Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in the elections once a year. But when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in." And that resonated with me from the time that I got sober to today.
Jonathan Wells:
Andy Andrews is a great... another speaker that helped me along talking about what I want to do in my life, how do I want to take it, and how do I want to live my sobriety? He's not a sobriety speaker. He's a spiritual speaker. But he has some books that blow me away in ways that I can't even imagine.
Jonathan Wells:
To this day, God, I do so much. I don't sleep. I am a crew chief for Love Hope Strength. We tour the nation signing people up to get on the National Bone Marrow Registry List. I think I've pretty much surpassed 5000 people. For every 1000 people that we sign up, we save about two or three people's lives. I'm on the planning council for the HIV and AIDS planning council for the city of Austin. That's directly under the mayor and we have about a $5 million budget that we help for different service organizations.
Jonathan Wells:
God I do so much. I own three businesses. My art business, an insurance business, and a vitamin business on top of my regular job. I also volunteer for the Hill Country Ride for AIDS. It's every year. It takes a year to plan. I feel 600 people breakfast, lunch, and dinner on ride day. But you know what? We raise... what have we raised so far? Last year, we raised almost $700000.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow. That's awesome.
Jonathan Wells:
So I don't give back in the recovery community as much anymore, because I was burnt out by working in a recovery organization.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I get that.
Jonathan Wells:
I give back in so many different ways.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And that's something I've talked about. I love that you bring that up. Is that... I've been burnt out before on recovery... giving back in recovery, talking about recovery. You know, you're in it for long enough. If you do it all day long, it does wear on you. One thing that I tell people who are experiencing that. Especially people who work in recovery. Is that you're giving back and your volunteer work can look like anything. You can go volunteer at an animal shelter and snuggle animals that need help. Whatever it is, as long as it's helping someone outside of yourself because I do think that there is something to be said about when your 9-5 job is working in recovery, substance abuse recovery, that sometimes the last thing you want to do is talk about that when you get off work, and that's okay.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, absolutely. It was very hard to work in that field and then go to a meeting and then go... I just sat through this for eight hours. I'm going to leave. I knew if I didn't leave that company, that I would stop going to AA meetings and that's what I was afraid of. So I switched companies and now I'm a Client Support Operations Manager, which is great. I love doing it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Super cool. Super cool and I love that you found your tribe and that you found what works for you and I think that's such an important message. That it doesn't have to look one way or another. It doesn't have to be always giving back in program or always... It's about finding what makes your heart sing. And that's just the beauty of sobriety is that it's in the seeking that you find where you need to be and what you were missing all along.
Jonathan Wells:
Absolutely. Yeah, and that's something I talk about a lot in AA and to my sponsees is... You know, they're like, "Am I supposed to be working at the coffee bar? Am I supposed to be sponsoring?" And I'm like, "You don't have to if you don't want to." I probably haven't had a sponsee for two years and I'm okay with that. Because I help moms out. One of my best friends, her son went through detox just recently and is going in residential treatment and I'm helping her create a plan where when he exits, what are we going to do with him.
Jonathan Wells:
I have a coworker... I won't name her... but I'm helping her through a transition, because her son-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But she wears glasses and has red hair.
Jonathan Wells:
Yes. So it's... Wait, how did you know?
Jonathan Wells:
So yeah. It's... I'm helping her out and I'm connecting them too. Connecting them to where they need to be to make sure that they're taking care of each other in this whole transition.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, you're being of service.
Jonathan Wells:
You're being of service. The big book doesn't say where you have to be of service. It just says how to be of service.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
If there's somebody out there who has your experience of... the experience of feeling like they couldn't be who they are. Maybe they are trying to come out. Maybe that's a contentious issue in their family and they're using alcohol to help anesthetize their feelings around that, what is the advice you wish you had had early on when your alcoholism was starting to brew?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No pun intended.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, that was good.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I didn't even mean brew.
Jonathan Wells:
Yeah, that was good. Touche.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you.
Jonathan Wells:
Be who you feel like you were meant to be. Don't be scared. God loves you. You have a higher power that is always going to be on your side, no matter what anybody else says. If you lose family over it, that's okay. You're going to sprout your wings and become somebody that you never dreamed possible. Keep plowing forward.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it. That's awesome. Thank you so much Jonathan. We're really grateful to have you here and have you share your story. I know that you've helped a lot of people and you're going to help a lot of people through this.
Jonathan Wells:
Absolutely. I am going to keep on fighting the good fight and helping whoever I can. And thank you so much for letting me be on your podcast. I am truly overwhelmed with honor and humbleness and gratitude.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast would like to thank our sponsor, Lionrock Recovery for their support. Lionrock Recovery provides online substance abuse counseling, where you can get help from the privacy of your own home. For more information, visit www.lionrockrecovery.com/podcast. Subscribe and join our podcast community to hear amazing stories of courage and transformation.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We are so grateful to our listeners and hope that you will engage with us. Please email us comments, questions, anything you want to share with us, how this podcast has affected you. Our email address is podcast@lionrockrecovery.com. We want to hear from you.