#27: Morgan grew up in an alcoholic home and felt the consequences of the disease of addiction from very early on. Her substance use began at age 10 and quickly escalated to daily heroin use after being prescribed opiates from an injury in high school. After facing homelessness and arrest, Morgan entered treatment and began her recovery journey. First addressing her addiction, and later addressing growing up in an alcoholic home and being an adult child of an alcoholic. Morgan is now married and has two young boys, raising them in a recovering home with her husband who is also in long term recovery. Morgan has been working in the substance abuse field since 2007, and she has been clean and sober since May 10, 2005!
#27: Morgan grew up in an alcoholic home and felt the consequences of the disease of addiction from very early on. Her substance use began at age 10 and quickly escalated to daily heroin use after being prescribed opiates from an injury in high school.
After facing homelessness and arrest, Morgan entered treatment and began her recovery journey. First addressing her addiction, and later addressing growing up in an alcoholic home and being an adult child of an alcoholic. Morgan is now married and has two young boys, raising them in a recovering home with her husband who is also in long term recovery. Morgan has been working in the substance abuse field since 2007, and she has been clean and sober since May 10, 2005!
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Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to the Courage to Change, a recovery podcast. My name is Ashley [inaudible 00:00:06], and I am your host. Today we have Morgan. Morgan has been working in the substance abuse field since 2007. She's been clean and sober since May 10th, 2005. Morgan grew up in an alcoholic home and felt the consequences of the disease of addiction very early on. Her substance use began at age 10, and quickly escalated to daily heroin use after being prescribed opiates from an injury in high school.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
After facing homelessness and arrest, Morgan entered treatment and began her recovery journey. First addressing her addiction and later addressing growing up in an alcoholic home and being an adult child of an alcoholic. Morgan is now married and has two young boys, raising them in a recovering home with her husband who is also in longterm recovery. You guys, this is such a good one. Stick around for episode 27. Let's do this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All right, Morgan, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for being here.
Morgan Pagels:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you've been a day one listener?
Morgan Pagels:
I have, yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did you find the podcast?
Morgan Pagels:
So I spend a lot of time in my car for work. I got really sick of speaker tapes, so I wanted to listen to something new that could really kind of support me in recovery. And I came across the podcast. And I listened to your first episode, and I was like, "Yep, this is it."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it. That's so cool. Well, we're really excited to have you. Okay. So you got sober at 19?
Morgan Pagels:
I did. Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We have that in common. Do you get a lot of people who tell you like, "I spilled more alcohol than you drank," and all that jazz?
Morgan Pagels:
I did in the beginning. And a friend of mine who had been sober a couple of years at that point told me to respond with, "Well, I didn't spill any because I'm a real alcoholic."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I like that.
Morgan Pagels:
Burn.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right? Yeah. Burn. How long have you been sober?
Morgan Pagels:
I have been sober about 14 and a half years in May, 2020. I'll celebrate 15 years.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That is awesome. So cool. So things have to get really, my experience getting sober at 19, when you really hit that bottom, you're like, "Oh my gosh, someone help me, I'm going to die." Or in my case I'm not dying fast enough. It has to get really bad. Right?
Morgan Pagels:
It's funny. I was actually listening to your episode with your husband today and talking about reaching this point of desperation. And I didn't hit that until I had a couple of years sober. I really got sober because I didn't want to go to prison. And I think that's a damn good reason to get sober.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Any reason is a good reason, right?
Morgan Pagels:
And that's what I say. There's no wrong reason to get sober. There's no wrong reason to come to for me AA. So I kind of stuck and stayed until the miracle happened.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So did you grow up in an alcoholic family?
Morgan Pagels:
I did, very much so. Very much an alcoholic home. Alcoholic family. Alcoholic zip code. So I grew up in a home where both my parents were alcoholic, are alcoholic. I can say for certain, one of them at least because she's in recovery. She's sober and identifies as an alcoholic. Very much a middle class family that worked hard and played hard.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So both your parents were an alcoholic and one of them is now clean and sober?
Morgan Pagels:
She's dry. She's dry.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. She's clean.
Morgan Pagels:
She's abstaining.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She's abstaining. Well you got to start somewhere. And you grew up in an alcoholic zip code. What's that?
Morgan Pagels:
I grew up in a small town just south of Baltimore, Maryland. It's exactly like it is on TV. I grew up in a suburb of Baltimore, that was very small. All of my friends, we grew up together. Our parents grew up together, our grandparents grew up together. And I'm sure a lot of people say this, but there was not much to do besides for drinking. A lot of field parties, bonfires, and we grew up on the water. So lots of beer. Lots of beer.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What were some of the messages around alcohol that you received as a kid?
Morgan Pagels:
It's interesting because it was just kind of a fact of life for our family that there was always alcohol involved. What I picked up, I don't know if this was told to me or learned over the years. Was as long as you fulfill your responsibilities, take care of your family, pay the bills, you can drink however you want.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Right. That was actually a very similar, and that is a message, right? The message is alcohol is okay as long as you keep it under control. Alcohol is a necessity. Alcohol is helpful. Alcohol is a tool, which it was a tool. Were your parents happily married? They were selling drugs at a certain point. How did that fit into the small town part?
Morgan Pagels:
It's funny, my mom didn't tell me about the selling of cocaine until a couple years ago. She was telling-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You didn't know at the time?
Morgan Pagels:
No, no. She had just recently told me that in the first home that they brought me home from, her and my dad were selling coke to be able to use coke. And my mom had a cocaine induced panic attack and begged God to keep her alive that night. And if that box old prayer, "If you get me out of this, I'll never use coke again." And she said she never really did after that. And then they just stopped the coke and only drink.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She's like, "Ha ha, I didn't mention all the other things."
Morgan Pagels:
Right, right, right. It's just kind of whatever you present to the world is perception. Perception is reality. And if everyone thinks everything's okay, then everything is okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. And was everything okay?
Morgan Pagels:
On the outside, yeah. We had a single family home, two cars, dog. I played sports. Both my parents worked. So very normal on the outside. But inside growing up, it was always unknown if my dad or my mom were going to be fighting, if there were going to be happy. If a plate was going to get thrown. If I was going to get spanked a little bit too much that night. It was just really unpredictable. Very, very unpredictable.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And do you have siblings?
Morgan Pagels:
I have a brother who is 10 years younger than me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh wow. Okay.
Morgan Pagels:
Yep. So I was an only child until I was 10.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow. And he comes along. What's that like?
Morgan Pagels:
He comes along very unexpectedly you can imagine. I was so excited to have a baby. I thought he was my baby. I thought I couldn't wait to have a baby in the house. I'm the oldest of gaggle of grandkids, so I've always been around children. I love children, love babies. And he comes around, and I was 10. He comes home. And two weeks after my mom brings my brother home, my dad says, "I'm having an affair and I'm leaving." Yes. And eventually he then goes on to marry this woman and kind of abandoned us and sort of-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What's going on for the 10 year old Morgan? The baby comes home, baby's two weeks old. Mom's probably stressed because she has two week old. And two weeks, you were happy, right? That was exciting. And then what is the thought that comes for you when dad's leaving?
Morgan Pagels:
It's funny. I have very little memory of childhood. I think that's kind of coping. My brain's way of coping. And I remember what I was wearing that day. I remember what I was eating for breakfast before I went to school when I found out. And it almost was like my world just kind of shattered. My mom, I just didn't know what to think. I don't remember feeling like, "Oh, this is my fault. I did this." But just shattered and just kind of in awe of how things change so quickly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you blame your brother at all?
Morgan Pagels:
No. Never. No. Never.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So he leaves your mom and marries this woman. Were you at the wedding?
Morgan Pagels:
No. So that period between him leaving and him marrying were really tumultuous. There were just a handful of visits that I had with my dad. In those visits was the time that I took my first drink, my first real drink that I sought out. The first time I got drunk, and some abuse from my dad. And after the abuse, I didn't tell my mom, I didn't tell anyone about the abuse. And just refused to visit him. And after that he moved to California. Cross the country, got married, has his family, hasn't contacted us since.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Since you were 11 years old?
Morgan Pagels:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What was the abuse?
Morgan Pagels:
There was one instance of sexual abuse, and a lot of continuous emotional abuse, verbal abuse, and some physical abuse. But there was one instance where he sexually assaulted me. Abused. I don't really know what you call it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow. I'm so sorry. That's pretty horrible.
Morgan Pagels:
Yeah. And horrendous. And immediately there's shame surrounding it. Immediately it became a secret that I can't tell anyone.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did he tell you not to tell anybody?
Morgan Pagels:
I don't really remember. I would imagine, I don't know why an 11 year old's immediate instinct is to hide this secret. But I did. And I didn't tell my family until I was maybe 14 or 15.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you think that alcohol was involved in the assault?
Morgan Pagels:
It wasn't on my end, but on his end, yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah. I ask that because I think so much of our traumas are the result of alcoholism and the mental illness that comes down to us from other people's untreated illnesses. Which is so much a part of the value of, the intergenerational value of working on ourselves. Because you can overtly bring down that trauma. But it can also be small things on a daily basis that bring that down. Okay, so you didn't talk to dad. From there on, the world changes, right? The world, it's a whole new whole.
Morgan Pagels:
Drastically, drastically changes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And you had started drinking for the first time, so you got drunk. Did the alcohol numb the pain from the abuse for you?
Morgan Pagels:
Absolutely. Immediately. I took my first real drink that I sought out because prior to that I've had sips of beer. I played cards. I knew [inaudible 00:11:54] half a keg. Very not normal for someone less than 10. But I was with my best friend and we steal these two long neck Bud Lights out of my dad's fridge and put them in my little blue corduroy book bag. Run into the woods, and I instinctively knew how to open a bottle of beer. And immediately I'm drinking for effect, stealing. I'm lying, I'm hiding. And I took that drink, and everything just kind of shifted. And I had the reaction like when Dorothy gets to Oz and everything's in technicolor for the first time. Or you don't notice the air conditioner's running until it shuts off. Everything just kind of shifted in my world. And immediately, I knew I had found something. I didn't know that, I couldn't call it my solution. But it definitely gave me the effect that I was looking for.
Morgan Pagels:
And shortly after that, I got drunk for the first time and that kind of sealed the deal. That was also at my dad's house. And it was off of the boxed wine. It was Franzia White Zinfandel out of a big-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh the good stuff.
Morgan Pagels:
The good stuff. There's where I peaked.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's the class, that hit the class ceiling.
Morgan Pagels:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hit it out of the park on that one. And I loved the effect produced by alcohol immediately. And I remember my dad telling me, "You're a funny drunk," and I had zero consequences. And that was the beginning of this sense of entitlement that I can drink this way.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You also got approval from your dad.
Morgan Pagels:
Right. Very much so. Very much so. So immediately, I had these very negative reinforcements for drinking to get drunk. And every opportunity after that, I made the conscious effort to only drink if I could get drunk. If I couldn't get drunk, I didn't want to drink. What's the point? And that's all she wrote.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So two things happened, right? You did very well in school. And it's your story. [Christiana 00:13:58] is so right because your story, I relate to it so much. There's so much in it that is parallel, which is doing really well in school. At some point you had a scholarship. And we had the same thought, which was if I keep my life together, if I stay on track, whatever that looks like, then all of this other stuff I can do. As long as I present to the world what they need to see. And then everything else I can medicate. I can anesthetize with alcohol and drugs. But I have to keep this stuff on track. And obviously that stops working at a certain point. You're living this double life. You were in the orchestra, you played sports, you held a job. Did those people know what was going on?
Morgan Pagels:
School didn't really know. My soccer team kind of new because we were teenagers. So of course there were parties and of course there was drinking. But I don't think they knew the extent. And then my job, everyone knew. I was actually a telemarketer. And-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, we got in this call right now. That's it. You're on my fourth step.
Morgan Pagels:
It was horrible. Our bosses, our managers were in their twenties. And they were young women. And they knew everything that we did. And it was kind of okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. People are hanging up anyway, so might as well be drunk.
Morgan Pagels:
Yeah. Doesn't matter.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It seems reasonable. But then you had an injury.
Morgan Pagels:
I did. I had an injury probably in the ninth or 10th grade. I got burned pretty badly on my hand. I was stoned and wanting to make ice tea, and was pouring the boiling water. Random, very strange. Only somebody who's high thinks like that. I need some iced tea. And went to go pour the boiling water in a pitcher, and the pitcher slipped. And the boiling water came directly on my hand. Very painful. Very, very painful.
Morgan Pagels:
And I got taken to the emergency room by my aunt because my mom was at work. And they gave me a bottle of hydrocodone at that point. And I took the first one. And after maybe 15 minutes, it's not working. Let me take another one. And felt the effect, and I loved it. And I took the whole bottle that day. The whole bottle was gone in a day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And did you know what you were used? Were you like, "These are opiates," or, "I've heard about that." Did you have any idea? Okay.
Morgan Pagels:
Totally, totally. Opiates have been on the scene in the town that I grew up in for a long time. It was very, very common to be using painkillers, buying pills.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. So you knew about this stuff?
Morgan Pagels:
Very much so.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You talked your mom was an alcoholic and you talked about a bit about that. Two things. She was a daily drinker. Right? How much was she drinking daily?
Morgan Pagels:
She would get a case of beer after work and drink the whole thing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like 24 pack kind of deal?
Morgan Pagels:
Yep. Anywhere between a 12 pack and then and a 24 pack.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. And would she appear wasted?
Morgan Pagels:
Over the course of the night, yes. By the end of the night you'd be slurring. She would be kind of fallen down a little bit, and she would eventually pass out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You had this younger brother that was 10 years younger. Did you find yourself in the adult take care of everything mode if your mom was incapacitated?
Morgan Pagels:
Totally. Very much. Yep. I remember doing this homework with him, getting ready for bed. Kind of taking care of them as much as I could.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were you close to your mom or did you have any resentments? How did you feel towards her when all this was going on?
Morgan Pagels:
So kind of around puberty for me, it shifted and my mom and I had a really difficult relationship. We fought very, very regularly. I was rebelling and trying to push the envelope as much as I could. And she was just trying to hold it together as best as she could. There was also this, I used it a lot. "You drink all the time, why can't I drink all the time?" And the, "You're 14," is just not a good enough answer for me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, "I'm 14 and I'm taking care of all these household duties too. So I'm the parent, the adult, why can't I drink?" I totally get that. So you go off on opiates. Tell me about your adventure into the land of opiates. Because it is an adventure.
Morgan Pagels:
It's an adventure, that's for sure. The hydrocodone quickly became Percocet. And using pills as often as I can get them. Buying them as often as I could. And that transitioned into Oxycontin, which I had a group of friends that I found that all did pills. And when that became expensive because it does, prescription pills are much more expensive than heroin. And I think I tried heroin for the first time when I was 16. Growing up just south of Baltimore, you can imagine how easy it is to get heroin. I'm driving, my friends are driving. It's a 10 minute drive into the city.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Next thing you know you're on The Wire.
Morgan Pagels:
Basically. I'm hanging out with Omar [crosstalk 00:19:54].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I just want to touch on that, and this is just kind of for our listeners, which is I can't tell you how many times I've seen. And you being almost 15 years sober, I know that you have had the same, I didn't even have to ask. I know you've had the same experience. Which is the amount of people that get hooked on opiates through prescription medication, which makes it feel safe. There's something about the prescription, the dosage, the officiality of it. That makes it feel safer than heroin on the street. But what happens is that that risk taking behavior and that reward and that cycle gets stronger and stronger to the point where it is not an option. It's a necessity to go get street drugs. It's a necessity to turn to heroin. And when you start, and I can speak for myself. My guess is you were the same, but please fill us in. Which is that when you start with the opiates, when you started with the opiates, there was no belief that you are going to end up where you ended up.
Morgan Pagels:
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I had goals. I had aspirations. I wanted to be a physical therapist. And there's this line in the big book that says alcohol, and I interchange it because I go to AA. Alcohol ceased to be a luxury and became a necessity. And I lost the power of choice, which I believe inherently is what makes me an alcoholic and an addict. I began using against my will every day. Every day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That is for me, I'm doing some deep diving and some personal work because I too like you after having kids was like, "Whoa. Emotions." All this stuff came up that I thought I had put to rest. But really looking back at wow, I truly did things against my own will. I used and did whatever it took to use against my own will. I mean I remember having thoughts where I was like, "I am not going to use that." Not because of any honorable effort, but because I was trying to save it for the rest of the day. I understood portioning or whatever it was. And it didn't matter whether it was in my best interest in using or not. I could not make a different decision. My brain was stuck on throttle. I couldn't stop using. It was a decision that had been made without my consent.
Morgan Pagels:
Correct. And especially with opiates, and the same goes for alcohol and benzos. There's a physical dependence that comes. In addition to the mental obsession. Totally two separate dependency. Oftentimes, my mind would want to not use. But I'd start to get withdrawal symptoms, and I have no choice. I have no choice.
Morgan Pagels:
And it's tricky. I'm continually at this point to using other stuff in addition to pills and heroin. I'm still drinking, I'm still smoking weed. Still doing a lot of other things. As soon as somebody gave me the option, I was always looking for the next thing. Very much excitement driven. What am I going to miss? Who's going to be there? What are we going to do? How are we going to get it? Where are we going to go? I loved that thrill and the excitement.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's like pathological FOMO.
Morgan Pagels:
Totally. Totally. So I always had something driving me. Whether it was physical withdrawal symptoms, mental obsession, serious FOMO. I was always driven by something that always convinced me to use or drink.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I heard a guy talk about it as chemical coping. That so resonated. Like yeah, I was chemically coping with all of the things that was going on in my life. For me, one of the things that was very intertwined with my drug use were my relationships with men. And particularly as a teenage girl, what I found was you go out there. And I don't know what it's like these days because I can see that the drug use climate's a bit different. But in those days, you needed a male advocate going into that world. And you needed someone to take care of you. And I needed someone to take care of me anyway. So I found that in a very controlling, abusive relationship. Which was a huge part of my disease and using. You had some of that too. Tell us about that.
Morgan Pagels:
Around the time that I was graduating high school, I had met a guy through some mutual friends. And I was just enamored with this guy. He was a couple years older than me. I was 17 at this point. I was enamored, and he was a middle high school dropout from Baltimore city who lived with his parents. And he was God's gift.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Winner. Winner.
Morgan Pagels:
Winner yes. I had a phenomenal picker. And I really thought he was it. And around that time. I graduated high school. I was supposed to go to college. But around that same time, all of those things that were keeping me accountable and keeping plates up in the air, like school, and soccer, and violin, and my job were immediately done. Because I didn't have school to be accountable to or soccer any of those things. So immediately, the things that I was keeping it together for were no longer there. I also had a friend who went to treatment that year. And came home and told my family all of this stuff in addition to alcohol that I was doing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Rude.
Morgan Pagels:
Rude. And in my family, my family, my mom was buying my alcohol. I was drinking with my mom. Very sick, very, very sick. So my family was very well aware of my drinking.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They're like, "Yeah, we got that. Why are you here?"
Morgan Pagels:
Yeah. Very, very well aware of my drinking. But they were not aware of all of the drugs that I was doing. And it's funny, I don't think they've ever said this. But my perception is it's okay to be an alcoholic, but you cannot be a drug addict. We are alcoholics.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. Because substances have moral character.
Morgan Pagels:
Correct. And an alcoholic is way better than a heroin addict.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Right.
Morgan Pagels:
So this friend comes home from treatment and I don't remember her talking about the 12 steps, or meetings, or sobriety. But she did tell my mom all of the extracurricular activities I was partaking in, and it was not cool. And my family had an intervention. And they said, "You can either go to treatment or you can't be here." And I said, "Peace out, cub scout. I am not going to treatment. I do not have a problem, because I have this man to take care of." And I took this tornado that was in my mom's house that was just wreaking havoc everywhere, and put it in his family's house. And we were selling drugs out of his mom's house, and they didn't appreciate that. They did not like that.
Morgan Pagels:
And almost as quickly as I moved in, I think I moved in without anyone's permission. I just showed up one day and I'm like, "Hi, I'm here. Yeah, it's me." And as quickly as I was there, we were kicked out. They were like, "You can't be doing this. You're insane. You have to go." And that was the summer of 2003. There's a part in the big book in The Doctor's Opinion that says our alcoholic life seems the only normal one. And my normal reaction to that was I'll live in a tent.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So I got into treatment, and was talking about my very similar version of this. And I was like, "Yeah. And then we went camping." And they were like, "Explain. So let me get this straight. In the middle of all this drug use Ashley, you decide to go on a nature camping trip?" I'm like, "Well, it was in a park, but sort of didn't have anywhere else to go." Yeah I was like, "We're definitely camping. We're not homeless we're camping."
Morgan Pagels:
Right. And that's how I justified it. I wasn't homeless, I was just sleeping in a tent.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Morgan Pagels:
Under a bridge in South Baltimore. But it's camping.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Morgan Pagels:
And it's funny, the park that we had our little tent set up in later got condemned for radioactive waste.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh, that's-
Morgan Pagels:
Funny. Funny. And it really wasn't that bad because I had my solution. My man and my drugs. And that was kind of the theme. As long as I had my solution, it was okay. I was willing to pay that price for the effect produced by drugs and alcohol.
Morgan Pagels:
And it was a pretty decent summer. I could come as go as I please, I can have my friends over. I didn't have to pay any bills. I can stay out as late as I want. And that lasted through October. This time of year in Maryland, the weather shifts pretty quickly from warm to cold. We have no fall. It's really just summer, winter. And it sucked to be homeless and 'camping' in October.
Morgan Pagels:
So we manipulate our way back in to his family's house and make all these promises that I think that inside I wanted to keep. I wanted to be able to get my stuff together and get a job and be 'normal.' I wanted those things. But again, I didn't have the choice to be normal. And I had gotten a settlement check from a car accident that I was in. And the only responsible thing I did was I bought this junker car. And blew the rest on baby fat and drugs. This is the early 2000s.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No no, it's okay. You're forgiven.
Morgan Pagels:
So when we get kicked out again, shocker. Because we're still doing the same things. This is maybe Thanksgiving of 2003. I said, "It's fine. We have a car, we'll just sleep in my car." So it's me and this boyfriend. We somehow picked up a dog along the way, an 85 pound dog. We're living in my car. And I thought it was fine. It's got leather seats, it's got a sun roof, it's fine. And didn't even bat an eye. I didn't even phase me.
Morgan Pagels:
So I said to myself, "You need to do something and get your life together." And that was not go to treatment or not use drugs, not use alcohol. I made what I know to be now, a geographical cure. And most people when they choose to go somewhere to kind of jumpstart their life, they go somewhere better. Like California, or New York, or anywhere. But I go to Southwest Baltimore. Which is not the area that you go to start your life.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Kickstart.
Morgan Pagels:
Yeah. That's not a propelling business move in any way, shape, or form. So I moved to the corner of Sergeant and Austin in Southwest Baltimore in a little neighborhood called Pigtown that is rough. And I had a little bit of money, and I rented a room for a week for like $25 from a guy who actually was my boyfriend's uncle, who was a daily crack user. Yeah, when jump-starting by life. And around that time my boyfriend said, "You know you can kick your dope habit, smoking crack." And I picked up a pesky little crack cocaine habit. Hated coke before that. Hated it, but immediately fell in love all over again. And the week came and went, and I didn't have rent money. And back in the car.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So during this time, Baltimore in these areas was predominantly black. Is that accurate?
Morgan Pagels:
Correct.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. And I'm going to go, I think you are Caucasian.
Morgan Pagels:
I am very Caucasian.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Was that an issue at all?
Morgan Pagels:
Not for me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Which I figured.
Morgan Pagels:
Not for me. I definitely stood out like a sore thumb. But I also had this appeal to me that I was-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You had baby fat jeans on.
Morgan Pagels:
Correct. Correct. I just kind of changed who I was to fit into my surroundings. And I always had my dog with me. And they were scared of my dog, so I didn't feel too terrified. It's funny. I was polite, I was nice to my drug dealers. And they didn't mind me. So it was just kind of par for the course, and we just kept it moving. I didn't really bat an eye at anything.
Morgan Pagels:
So I move out or I get kicked out because I don't have $25 to pay my rent. And I'm back in the car. And very quickly, I lent out, 'lent out' my car to a drug dealer, which was kind of standard operating procedure for people who had cars who were drug addicts. They would just lend them to their drug dealers, and I didn't get it back. Shocker. This is probably Christmas time, winter of 2003 into 2004.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And are you living in your car at that point?
Morgan Pagels:
From that point on was true homelessness, where I'm sleeping in abandoned houses. Seedy, seedy motel rooms that you can rent by the hour. Sleeping in Carroll Park, which is a park in Southwest Baltimore. Very much true homelessness.
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. 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:
So in terms of true homelessness, what were some of the feelings and the things that were going on? And when you looked back, did it make sense how you had gotten there? Were you like, "What happened?" What were the kind of solutions that you thought maybe how can I get out of this? Did you know you had a substance abuse problem?
Morgan Pagels:
I knew that I had a substance abuse problem for sure because I'm using heroin and crack cocaine all day every day. It's pretty clear that I have a drug problem. And I would try, there's an outpatient detox that's been around forever in Baltimore where you go and you get your buprenorphine pack and you try and detox on your own. I did that a handful of times, but I just couldn't. And I knew that it was going to end one day. I didn't know how. I didn't know if I was going to get arrested, if I was going to get murdered, if I was going to overdose. I didn't know how it was going to end, but I knew it wouldn't be like this forever. And I would say, "I can stop whenever I want to. I just don't want to." Even up until the day that I got clean, drugs and alcohol still did what I needed them to do. They still worked for me. Which was a really, really big barrier for me getting clean so young. You hear people in the rooms talking about the drink stopped working. It wasn't doing what I needed it to. But that was not my case. I still got what I needed from the substances.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's interesting. That's a really, I'm glad you shared that. Because I'm sure that there are other people who have that experience too. What was it like being homeless in Baltimore?
Morgan Pagels:
It sucked. It was horrible and it was hard. And I got into a lot of really scary, traumatic situations. A lot of kind of out of body experiences where I would kind of be able to look down on myself and be like, "What is going on? How did I get here?"
Morgan Pagels:
I remember one instance in particular, it was around Christmas time. And I happened to be in South Baltimore, which was kind of a nicer area. And I would see the Christmas lights. I remember sobbing and crying and be like, "What is my life? I hate this. I don't want to do this anymore." I had gotten into a fight with my boyfriend, which we fought every day. Super abusive.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So here's still around?
Morgan Pagels:
Oh yeah, he's still around. He's my-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. I'm thinking [crosstalk 00:38:19].
Morgan Pagels:
No, he's the Clyde to my Bonnie. But on the other hand I can look at it that he protected me in a lot of instances. He didn't protect me from him, but he protected me from everything else. So I was still very safe, or I felt very safe with him.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's an interesting point too, which is how a lot of women get a pimp in the prostitution area. Because they're not being kept safe from the pimp, but they are being kept safe from everyone else. And that's a sacrifice people are willing to make when you're in that situation and you don't have a lot of options.
Morgan Pagels:
Sure. I have this one aunt who is the only one in my family who was able to look at him in that sense. Everybody else in my family thinks me being heroin addict is his fault. Which is easy for them. Easy to get that, you know? But he very much kept me, I don't think I'd be alive if I hadn't been with him.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah. Well that's why I was wondering. I was thinking you ... so what is the time span between the hand burn when you got the opiates, and homeless at Christmas with the boyfriend? How much time went between those two things?
Morgan Pagels:
About four and a half years. Five years.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And if I had come into that emergency room, handed you those pills and said, "In four and a half years you are going to be homeless with nothing on the streets of Baltimore as a result of the pills in this bottle, what would you have said?"
Morgan Pagels:
I'd say, "Give me the pills. I don't believe you."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. It would have been unbelievable.
Morgan Pagels:
Correct. And looking back on my life now, had I not lived it, I wouldn't have believed it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally. And I was saying that earlier. I have this new therapist who I love and her talking, and I'm telling my story to her in detail that I don't, deeper detail that I don't usually share. I have a hard time saying this stuff because it sounds so insane. It's so often hard to even believe that the things happen, that happened. So you mentioned that you went to prison, and that that was why you stopped using. Take us to getting sober.
Morgan Pagels:
So I went to jail. I didn't go to prison. I didn't want to go to prison. So that's why I wanted to get sober. So I had broken into my mom's house. I'd been obviously a criminal at this point to sustain my addiction. Breaking into cars, breaking into houses. Stealing purses on the street. And I broke into my mom's house, and took everything. It's funny, she has joked about it over the years in anniversaries that she's been at where she tells a room full of recovering alcoholics that, "Morgan took everything in the house with a power cord, even if it didn't work." That I stole a box of telephones that didn't work anymore to try and pull on them.
Morgan Pagels:
It was shortly after Christmas of 2004. I stole all of my little brother's birthday presents, savings bonds. Anything that I could, that I thought would fund me getting high. Did the same thing to my boyfriend's family's house. And it's tragic. I think about it now, my brother endured a lot.
Morgan Pagels:
I can't even imagine what it was like for my brother to come home from school that day to see his house broken into, all of his presents gone. My brother's birthday is in January. It was after that. All of his birthday presents, Christmas presents, everything was just gone. And how traumatic that must have been for a nine year old at that point. And they knew it was me, that his sister stole everything. I have a nine year old son, almost nine year old son now. And it's just heartbreaking to think about.
Morgan Pagels:
So my brother, I will say endured a lot. Even with me being out of the home, he still knew I was an active using drug addict. And coupled with my mom's drinking at home, he really got the short end of the stick in that world.
Morgan Pagels:
But my mom knew it was me, and called the police. And she got a warrant out for my arrest. My boyfriend's family did the same, and we kind of waited until the day came where I got arrested. And I got arrested on May 10th of 2005. And had no intention of that being the last day that I used, but it was.
Morgan Pagels:
I went to jail, and fully expecting to be let out on my own recognizance, or a bale, or something of that nature. Because I had never been arrested. Up until that point, I had escaped a lot of close calls with the legal system. And I didn't, they said no bail. And I got put on suicide watch in jail. The nurse who did my intake said, "Do you ever think about hurting herself?" And I was semi joking when I said, "Well, I'm a drug addict and I'm using heroin and smoking crack every day. It's not really that fun to live."
Morgan Pagels:
That's not something they take lightly. And they put me in seclusion in a suicide watch. Which means no clothes, no bra, no underwear, no shoes. In a holding cell with a rip proof blanket and gown. And that is how I detoxed. I detoxed in jail on suicide watch. For about probably a week, week and a half. No medication.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God.
Morgan Pagels:
So it was pretty. It was horrendous. It was horrible.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. And for people who don't know. When you detox from heroin, your skin is on fire. You have diarrhea, you can't sleep. Your eyes just do this weird thing where they constantly water. You vomit, you poop your pants. Your body just loses it. I don't know what that would be like with crack on top of it, but I'm sure it didn't help.
Morgan Pagels:
Yeah. I was in addition to the heroin withdrawal, I'm very much, I'm not a psychiatrist or a clinician. But I am going to go out on a limb and say I was in cocaine induced psychosis. I was hearing things nearing my name. I was hearing a lighter flick. I was so paranoid. It was horrendous. I also hadn't been sleeping at that point because I was using so much crack. I hadn't slept in what felt like weeks. I wasn't eating, I wasn't showering. So malnourished on top of it. It was just a mess. It was horrible.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. So you come out of that. And what happens?
Morgan Pagels:
So I finally am well enough and off of suicide watch where I go into kind of general population. Still have no bail. Finally get to use the phone and I call my family. My mom is not speaking to me. Shocker. I call my grandmother and I say, "You have to get me out. I promise I'll get it together. I'll get a job, I'll go to school." And my family tells me no. For the first time in years, we know where you are. We know you're safe. We know we're not going to pick up the paper and see that you've been raped and murdered. And I cursed her out and I said, "I don't need you." And I hung up on her.
Morgan Pagels:
And I actually, I stayed in jail for about six weeks. And in that time, I actually signed up to go to a meeting. I went to an AA meeting that an institution committee had brought into the jail. Because I was dying to get out of my cell. And I remember being in this meeting and reading, I think I read It Works How and Why. And I remember feeling so sorry for this speaker that brought this meeting into jail. I'm in my jail jumpsuit. And I'm thinking, "Oh my God, I feel so bad for her. This is her life? She has to bring meetings into jail."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's amazing.
Morgan Pagels:
So delusional. So delusional. And that was my first experience with any kind of 12 step fellowship. And after a period of time, my family's taking my calls and they said, "We got you an attorney, we're getting you out. Get whatever you have, you're going to go to Phoenix."
Morgan Pagels:
And I thought I was going to rehab in Phoenix, Arizona. A celebrity rehab with Brittany Spears. It was not that. We wind up at Phoenix Recovery Center. I don't know if I'm allowed to say these names, but I wind up in a town called Edgewood, Maryland, which is about 45 minutes North of Baltimore. And I pull up and throw a temper tantrum in the parking lot saying I'm not going in, I'm not doing this. And my aunt said, "Well, if you don't want to go to prison, you're going to go." And I said okay. Because I'm not dumb. I know that this is going to be better than prison. And I go. And I was a peach. I was the worst patient that anyone could ever have. I cursed everyone out. I was rude, I was nasty. I just did not want to be there. And I remember they had tried to put me into EMDR when I was in this treatment center and I threw a chair at the therapist.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
A little bit early for EMDR.
Morgan Pagels:
Correct. Correct. And it's something that I've kind of advocated, because I work in the treatment field now. That EMDR is not clinically appropriate immediately after and during treatment. Not a wise move.
Morgan Pagels:
And I made it through 28 days of treatment and he said, "You're going to go to a halfway house." And I said, "No, I'm not." And they said, "If you don't want to go to prison, you're going to go." And I said, okay. And I wind up in a little town called Bel Air, Maryland, where I still live. And I go to a halfway house. And they tell me when to get up. They tell me what to eat for breakfast. They tell me to get a job. Get a home group, get a sponsor, go to meetings. And that's where I found the recovery community that became my home. And very, very, very fortunate to be sober in Bel Air. Exactly where my higher power wanted me to be, where I needed to be to find a solution other than drugs and alcohol. And I started going to meetings. And not that I was super excited to do so. I had no desire to stop using. I had none. I just wanted to get through, go to court. Not go to jail. My plan was to sell drugs, but not use them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Solid.
Morgan Pagels:
Solid. Solid aftercare plan. Solid.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly. "What are your financial arrangements after treatment?" "Oh, funny you should ask."
Morgan Pagels:
Yeah, funny. I'm a really good drug dealer.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The truth is though, we laugh, but I know people who did sell drugs while they were sober. Because they were addicted to that lifestyle.
Morgan Pagels:
Absolutely.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Even when they stopped using, they could not stop that process addiction, that addiction to them. So as silly as it sounds, it's actually not an uncommon thing.
Morgan Pagels:
Sure. But the halfway house. I got me a job at Wendy's. I think you have a term for an early recovery job-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
A get well job.
Morgan Pagels:
Yeah. A get well job. And my get well job was working in the drive through at Wendy's. And I had gotten a sponsor who had about a year and a half, two years sober. I thought that if I went to meetings and I read the steps or read out of the big book, that meant I was working the steps. And I think I did the best that I could with what I had. But was lucky to get sober with a lot of old timers who told me the truth about my condition. Who told me really kind things like sit down and shut up, and take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth.
Morgan Pagels:
They would say things like, "You have two ears and one mouth, and you should play the odds." And they said, "We're going to give you a job and your job is to clean ashtrays." I was going to this AA clubhouse where you could still smoke, and I cleaned ashtrays, and cussed, and screened, and through the ashtrays. And that's kind of where I learned the first lesson. The biggest lesson in my recovery is that you don't have to like it. You just have to do it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Act your way into new thinking.
Morgan Pagels:
Yep. And you can't live your way into right thinking, you have to think your way, or you can't think your way into right living. You have to live your way into right thinking. And that is exactly what happened to me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Me too. So during this time, you take your mom to an AA meeting?
Morgan Pagels:
I did. I did. I had celebrated a year. My mom came to my first anniversary loaded, drank the whole time going to the meeting. She peed herself in the car, got up to the podium. When I called on her. I don't know why I called on her, but I did. And she read the lyrics to Hoobastank The Reason.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God, I can't right now. Hold on.
Morgan Pagels:
I died.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God. This is some real life, a star is born (beep). Okay?
Morgan Pagels:
You can't script it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hoobastank?
Morgan Pagels:
Yup. And the reason is you. It was probably the single most embarrassing moment of my entire life.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You know what though? I think everyone in there was like, "Oh, you qualify baby girl. You belong here." They know what you had growing up. Oh my god. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So your mom pees herself and sings you Hoobastank.
Morgan Pagels:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Does she realize she has a problem at that point?
Morgan Pagels:
No. No. She continues drinking another couple, I think it was that year, maybe the year after. Is in a relationship. Moves in with a guy who's drinking. My brother and her move into his house. They're drinking every day. When I was in treatment, she actually had a drunken jet ski accident and broke her neck. Yeah. Still continued to drink through that. And that summer of either 2005 or 2006, she had broken up with that boyfriend and had nowhere to go. And was sleeping, her and my brother were sleeping in her car. And she would take him to hotels and let him sneak in to eat the continental breakfast, and take him to school and pick him up. And one night she was driving over one of the big bridges near where we live. A big bridge, not a little one. A big one. The Key bridge. And pulled over and got out of the car, and thought about jumping.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And he's in the car?
Morgan Pagels:
He's asleep in the car.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh good Lord.
Morgan Pagels:
I haven't thought about that in a long time. It just brings back a lot. And the next day, she had called me and said, "I need help." And I did the only thing I knew how to do, and I took her to a meeting. And I took her to a meeting, and I sat with her. And afterwards, I told her to sign the book and be a home group member. She had no idea what that meant, but she got a white chip. And I told the elder statesman in the group that they need to take care of her. And they did. And she has been sober ever since.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow, that's powerful. That's really powerful. How is your brother?
Morgan Pagels:
How is he now?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Morgan Pagels:
He's okay. He is 23 now. He'll be 24 in January. The jury's still out. He's okay. He's not horribly bad off. He drinks and uses some substances, but we don't really have that great of a relationship. We're 10 years apart. And majority of the last 15 years, I've been kind of the lame older sister who's sober. He shows up as much as he can. But he's okay. He's okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So at some point, you started going to ACOA, Adult Children of Alcoholics. Which from my experience and understanding with others, is an incredibly powerful experience for children who grew up in an alcoholic home and a really important one for them. What was your journey? You were already in AA, doing your work. What was your journey to getting to a place where you also wanted to go to ACOA?
Morgan Pagels:
So me being sober, I did not follow direction and I started dating. And I started dating my now husband, who was sober about a year and a half. And I had seven months. And we have very much been the fairy tale AA story. Both of us are still sober and in recovery. We were together for about five years dating at this point, living together. And surprise I get pregnant. And I had my son, Evan. December, 2010. And the minute that I held him for the first time, it was the most immense amount of joy that I've ever felt in my life. But it was also very, very evident immediately of what I did not get and what I missed out on. And it brought up so many feelings that I didn't even know I had.
Morgan Pagels:
And thank God for good sponsorship. I had a sponsor who is a double winner, meaning she is in AA and Al-Anon. And after I kind of recovered from having the baby postpartum and she felt I was emotionally ready to hear it, she suggested I start going to Al-Anon. And our focus of step work kind of moved towards Al-Anon and co-dependence. We codependent, 12 steps. And I did that. It worked as well as it needed to at the time. And my relationship with my mom has been tumultuous over the last 15 years. It is not a bed of roses. And there were a lot, a lot of instances of still abandonment and let down. Just really difficult relationship to repair. And I certainly wouldn't say it's prepared now.
Morgan Pagels:
And probably about five, six, seven years of going to Al-Anon, going to AA, dabbling with therapy. I still wasn't getting to the point where I felt freedom. And happy, joyous, and free in my relationships, especially with my family.
Morgan Pagels:
And my sponsor, God bless her in all of her infinite wisdom and timing. Waited until I kind of hit a bottom. And said, "I think it's time that we take a look at this." And handed me the big yellow ACOA step working guide. And we have been working on that over, I believe the last six months.
Morgan Pagels:
So it's pretty new to me being involved in ACOA, and it's been incredibly painful. Very slow growing, very, very slow going. But I feel hope for the first time that I found the solution to that problem, if you will. The spirituality of adult child is very different than the spirituality I experience in my alcoholism. I treat my alcoholism and AA, but I treat that abandonment in Al-Anon and ACOA.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And you've done a lot of therapy too, right?
Morgan Pagels:
Yes. Therapy has been kind of a double edged sword for me. I go consistently until I kind of plateau and they say okay, let's cut back and come back when you need it. And I forget about everything. That has been kind of my Achilles heel. I also know that I need to kind of jump into some trauma, and that's scary. And getting to the point, I have two boys now, and a career and a husband. Kind of getting to the point where I can be prepared to go into that work.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. What's the experiential difference between being in therapy and talking about your mom and growing up in an alcoholic home versus going to ACOA? What's the actual experiential difference?
Morgan Pagels:
For me, therapy was a really great tool for me to talk about how I feel, and talk about my trauma response to everything. But my biggest problem with, and maybe I just haven't found the right therapist or whatever. I felt like I wasn't given any direction on how to get on stuff. And it was really great for me to have someone who was not my sponsor, not my sober network, who was not just going to give me a recovery based response. Pray for them. That is not the response that I needed.
Morgan Pagels:
And it's really great for me too as an outlet. But for me, it has not been a method that has yielded a tremendous improvement for me. The tools that I've learned in Al-Anon and ACOA have been far more beneficial. Because there is some action and there's some self-responsibility that I can take ownership of and changes that I can physically make in my own life that yield me the positive results that I am looking for.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you go into ACOA and realize that some things that you had always thought were normal even after being in recovery for a stretch of time, were not normal, and that this group of people helped shine that light?
Morgan Pagels:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I immediately knew that what I had stumbled upon. These people understand me. These people get me in a way that I've never been understood before. Very much kind of a spiritual experience in and of itself to be able to talk to people who speak that language. I would talk to my sober friends, my AA friends, my support network about these feelings and my responses. And they didn't get it. So for me, finding people who have been through similar experiences are able to offer me the solution that I need. Just like you get to AA and you find a group of people who have a common bond. I found that common bond in Al-Anon and ACOA.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's amazing how healing finding people who truly understand your experience can be. Just believing you and understanding you. That in and of itself is definitely a very healing experience.
Morgan Pagels:
For sure. I've found that just in the short amount of time that I've been involved in this different aspect of my recovery, my responses have been dramatically different. So I'm already starting to see that change in myself. That, I know we're not in the results business. But I have a little bit of faith now. For me, I can't have faith until I have experience. And I've been through experiences recently that have grown my faith in that program, and in that solution.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah. I relate a lot to that. I'm trying to get to this place where I can have faith with that experience because it looks much more expedient. But I tend to need that. I think most people are like that. And the whole idea of spirituality has been a journey for me in the program as well. Trying to figure out what that even means and does that involve a religious God? Can I have something else? All the different aspects. And I find that in this stage after my boys were born, that pieces of my childhood came back. Floated to the surface. I had healed them in the way of being the child, but I hadn't healed them in the way of becoming the mother.
Morgan Pagels:
Absolutely. Being a mother has shown a completely different light on my experience growing up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Because you have perspective.
Morgan Pagels:
Right. I will say that I have found a good amount of healing and being able to provide that mother relationship to my kids. But on the other side of that is a lot of resentment that that inner child is saying, "Why didn't you get this?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. So a lot of conflict. And it's so cool. You went from being a transient. To being a mother, a wife, a contributing member of society. And have led this life of seeking and seeking healing. The journey that we're on of recovery. I don't know if you relate to this, but there's so many days there's like, "I don't want to do more interpersonal or personal work. I just want to be a normal functioning person. Why is that so difficult?" And I get resentful. Why can't I drink like other people? Why can't I blah blah blah? Why does everything have this difficulty attached to it? And then on the other hand, I have this program for life. And I can walk into any room all over the world and know that I'm safe with a group of people that understand me. And in that seeking, I see especially with parenthood, that there's this whole support system that I have built. That's already built in, that I have access to that a lot of people don't. And that makes life better and easier than it would have been, even if I wasn't an alcoholic.
Morgan Pagels:
Sure. Absolutely. And every time that I get my sponsor, points me in the direction of this new 12 step fellowship. I'm like, "Why do I have to do, I don't want to have to do that"-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I got another fellowship. Thank you.
Morgan Pagels:
"I got enough." And I get really resentful that why can't I just be a normal alcoholic, that AA is enough?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right?
Morgan Pagels:
And now I have to go to Al-Anon meetings, and now I have to go to ACOA meetings. How am I going to do this? But I do it even if I don't like it. I don't have to like it, just have to do it. And anytime that I pushed through that resentment and that inner child that's stomping her feet and saying, "I don't want to do this." I always feel better. So my pain threshold is definitely different now than it was prior. And I have a little bit more willingness. Because I have something to base it off of.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What do you think that you wish someone had told you when you started on this journey?
Morgan Pagels:
That's a great question.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Let me give you a better scenario of you're in jail for that six weeks, right? You've detoxed, and no one's talking to you. And you get that phone call that they're going to bail you out. What do you wish you had known then, that you know now?
Morgan Pagels:
I wish I would have known that there is a solution. I had never known that someone could be sober, and be comfortable. I never knew that there was such thing as recovery. I wish that I just would have know that it was possible in general.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Just like having seen it?
Morgan Pagels:
Yeah. It's funny because I do have an uncle who is 30 plus years sober, but he was never around my crazy family. Shocker. He set up a lot of boundaries, and had his sober life elsewhere. And I got very close to him when I got sober, obviously. He lives in the community that I live in now. But I just had no idea that I could be reasonably comfortable without drugs and alcohol.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. It's a pretty wild thing to experience and figure out. Well, you are an amazing, amazing woman, Morgan. I relate so much to your story and just the trajectory of things. What you've been through is a testament to what can be done if you put one foot in front of the other and do the work. And leave the results up to the universe, God, whatever power you believe.
Morgan Pagels:
For sure. That's the only thing that I know to be true is that if I do what's in front of me, I'm going to be taken care of. Very much that idea of just doing the next right thing. And if I can't do the next right thing, I just do the next thing. And just doing what's in front of me. And it has served me really well, so I keep doing it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's awesome. Well we're so grateful for your time and your story, and thank you for being a loyal listener. And I know that this story is going to help a lot of people. Thank you for coming on and sharing it.
Morgan Pagels:
Thank you so much for having me. It's been great.
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. 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.