Pat D'Enbeau is a phenomenal human being, and the Orange County Program Manager for The Phoenix - a non-profit that advocates for a sober active community. She found recovery through treatment and inevitably through a 12-step model. Tune in to this episode to hear Pat share the story of how she found recovery after a long journey of self-discovery and a traumatic childhood event. Her humor and light-hearted yet direct delivery will draw you in and leave you better than you were before! Check out The Phoenix and find your sober active community today! Website: www.thephoenix.org FB: https://www.facebook.com/ThePhoenixOC/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/perignemoc/?hl=en This episode is sponsored by Lionrock Recovery. Lionrock provides online substance abuse counseling where you can get help from the privacy of your own home. For more information, visit www.lionrockrecovery.com
#3: Pat D'Enbeau is a phenomenal human being, and the Orange County Program Manager for The Phoenix - a non-profit that advocates for a sober active community. She found recovery through treatment and inevitably through a 12-step model. Tune in to this episode to hear Pat share the story of how she found recovery after a long journey of self-discovery and a traumatic childhood event. Her humor and light-hearted yet direct delivery will draw you in and leave you better than you were before!
Check out The Phoenix and find your sober active community today! Website: www.thephoenix.org
FB: https://www.facebook.com/ThePhoenixOC/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/perignemoc/?hl=en
Our Sponsor:
Lionrock Recovery (http://www.lionrockrecovery.com)
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Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to episode three of The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. We will be interviewing Pat D'Enbeau today. Pat is a person in longterm recovery. She has not had a drink or drug since 2007. She currently lives in Orange County with her fiance, Emma, and is the program manager of an amazing nonprofit organization called The Phoenix.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Pat will be talking to us about her journey to recovery through trauma, living life under five feet tall, coming out as gay, getting sober and finding community. All right, episode three, let's do this. Pat, welcome to the program.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We are so happy to have you here in our SoCal office.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I'm excited to be here.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Awesome. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Pat D’Enbeau:
I grew up in Cleveland... outside, I was about to lie. Outside of Cleveland, Ohio. I always want to say Cleveland, but I didn't grow up there. I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think we all do that. It's okay.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Cleveland implies like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're cooler?
Pat D’Enbeau:
... that I'm cooler. But I grew up in this really tiny town, white picket fences, men sold insurance, women were all nurses or teachers. Very kind of Pleasantvillesque, it was black and white the whole town. Black and white, there's no color.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, no color.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Like Pleasantville, the movie.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were you black or white?
Pat D’Enbeau:
I was color. The movie was around me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I like it.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I was Toby... is it Toby Maguire?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don't remember that, I'm sorry.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I don't remember, I was Toby Maguire. Or the artist, it was an artist in that movie. Anyway, so I grew up there and there was nothing really interesting about my life. My parents were fine. I love my parents, but there was nothing extraordinary, there was no intense trauma happening, there was no intense abuse happening, there was no big thing going on. I was just this little kid, I'm very short.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How tall are you?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Tall enough to ride most of the rides.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Most?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Most. There's one ride at Cedar Point that I can't ride.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Seriously?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. It's called the Witches' Wheel. I have to sit in someone's lap. So I won't ride it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wait, how tall are you?
Pat D’Enbeau:
4'11".
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So you have to be five foot to ride it, I think.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Really? You don't seem that, maybe it's your presence.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Presence.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So therapists must have hated you because you're like, "Yeah, no, my life was fine."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, they do.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They're like, "No, what's the trauma?" And you're like, "No, that's fine."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. Well, and that's what I always say, but what happened is I learned later on, maybe last year, that trauma isn't what I thought it was. I thought it was me being locked in a closet for 50 years, like Flowers in the Attic kind of thing, and I never really understood that death by a thousand cuts mentality. There's all these little things that happened that caused me to kind of break down, and I just learned that. That's a new fact that I didn't understand.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
New discovery. Well, awesome, you're always growing. I mean that's the beautiful part of change in recovery, is that it's actually this ongoing process. You are never fully healed.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Never. And if you are, then you're probably doing it wrong.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're definitely doing it wrong, yeah.
Pat D’Enbeau:
For sure. So my family, I have two older siblings, an older sister, older brother, and then me. We had a dog. It was very normal.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How tall are they?
Pat D’Enbeau:
They are pretty average. Shorter, but pretty average. My sister's like 5'3", I think. My brother's like 5'11". I'm going to say that so I don't say the wrong one. I feel like if you say he's shorter, he might get upset.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Okay. So they all could ride the rides?
Pat D’Enbeau:
They could ride all the rides, I couldn't.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
At what age did you hit 4'11"?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Probably like 18. I don't really know. I was always short. There's the people that kind of stop growing, but I was always growing, I just was short. I was tiny. I think I was definitely like six or five pounds when I was born. My mom always says you could hold me just in one hand.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Does that make you feel good or bad?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Well, I feel like they should've used two hands.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes. Actually it sounds dangerous. Why were you doing that mom? Sounds really risky.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So I don't know. No, I think they were just like up against there. But I always imagine their hand out and me just kind of balancing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's like "Mom. I'm out here, help."
Pat D’Enbeau:
"Help. Need a hug." But I started drinking around 16, but not alcoholically. It wasn't just like open a beer and here I go. I had older siblings, my dad traveled a lot for work and my parents are divorced, so they were separated.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How old were you when they divorced?
Pat D’Enbeau:
18. They got separated and back together a couple of times, but it was kind of normal for me. My dad was gone a lot and he had this empty house, and so my brother and sister would have these parties and I would drink the backwash sips of beer.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Rough. No wonder you didn't start drinking alcoholically right away.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So I drank the back washes, and I would just pretend to be drunk.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I got to see that sometime.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's very weird. I was maybe 12, and I would just drink these backwash sips to try to impress these older kids like I was wasted.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were they impressed?
Pat D’Enbeau:
No, they didn't care about it. I was 12.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They were drunk.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I was just in their way. So that was my introduction to alcohol. I would see these people drink and have fun and I think for me it was always an issue of connection. It was like there was cellophane, like Saran wrap in between me and the world and I could see it, but I couldn't penetrate really. I couldn't rip it open and connect, and I was really dying for that. I think that's a big thing with substance use. We hear it a lot, like we hear, "I feel like everybody had a manual for life that I didn't receive," or that there was an issue with connection.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. And there's, I don't remember who says it, but that addiction is the opposite of connection.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, it's isolation. It is an isolating disease.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It is a disease of isolation.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. But I saw at these parties that social lubrication factor. People would drink, they would laugh, they would hug, they would whatever, and I wanted that. So I didn't start drinking because I didn't really understand. At the same time, I'm kind of coming to terms, I was about 12, with my sexuality. I'm gay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, okay.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So it was the '90s, late '90s, and we didn't have the vernacular in Ohio.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
At all.
Pat D’Enbeau:
None.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you know gay people?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Ellen wasn't out yet, so no.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. So then absolutely not.
Pat D’Enbeau:
No way.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And way.
Pat D’Enbeau:
We didn't have anything, but I found this singer, Ani DiFranco.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Hello!
Pat D’Enbeau:
So I found Anita Franco.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But she's straight now.
Pat D’Enbeau:
She's straight now, but at the time.... I think she's bisexual, I think. So I think she was dating women at that time, or dating a woman at that time. I don't know if she was dating multiple people, I can't say that about her.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don't want to speak out of turn.
Pat D’Enbeau:
But I was like, "Oh, I think she dates women, maybe I'm gay." But I didn't really understand what that meant, because you're 12. It was a very complicated kind of thing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, sexuality at 12 is incredibly complicated whether you're gay or straight.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, very weird.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So to have it be pre Ellen coming out feels...
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's very lonely.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, and especially in the suburbs of Cleveland.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. And so I had this long hair, it was super frizzy. I had braces. I had this really thick... I was a nerd. I played the cello. I wasn't winning.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Except for the cellophane and the backwash.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, the cellophane and the backwash and the cello. I was great cellist. But in high school or in junior high, the kid walking to school with the cello, if you remember... Have you ever seen Grease 2 where they raise the base on the flag pole?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Pat D’Enbeau:
That's kind of what I always think about.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So in high school you're maybe 4'9", and so this cello is...
Pat D’Enbeau:
Is 4'9" also.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... is also 4'9". I mean it was like a logistical struggle.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, it was a logistical nightmare really. But that was kind of it. It was just this... I couldn't figure, out all my friends were dating people. This was like the big thing in high school, was my friends were dating people, they were dating men. And I had a boyfriend, also poor guy, because everybody's getting action, he didn't get any action.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Maybe he was gay.
Pat D’Enbeau:
He wasn't. I feel bad for him, but thanks for your service, you know? I don't know. But I was really jealous of my friends all the time. Like they would get boyfriends and I'd be so jealous, but I didn't know what that meant.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. I want that, but I don't.
Pat D’Enbeau:
But I don't want it with him. Do I want it with... I don't really know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's very confusing.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's very, very confusing and so I would be mean to them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
To the friends?
Pat D’Enbeau:
To the friends, because I had all of these confusing things and then eventually they didn't want me to be mean anymore, so they weren't my friends anymore. And it turned into I just kind of lost all of my friend group and I didn't understand why, and so that's when I turned to alcohol.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How old were you then?
Pat D’Enbeau:
16. So I was eating lunch in the bathroom kind of loneliness. Lindsay Lohan from Mean... I quoting movies, I'm sorry.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, no, it's good.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I worked at Blockbuster in early recovery, so it's there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's so good.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And I was like eating bathroom... or eating bathroom. Eating lunch in the bathroom.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Keep that in, definitely keep that.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Eating lunch in the bathroom, and a couple of people that were also in orchestra, they used to go down to Bain Park, which is the park by my high school, and they would drink. So one day we were driving around. You know high school, you just kind of drive around, and we got this warm case of Natty Ice. It's disgusting, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yep.
Pat D’Enbeau:
You can kind of taste it coming up already. And we went to Bain Park and I remember so vividly that drink. I remember opening the can and taking a sip and just like growing, like I was 5'5". And I was funny and I was charming, the cellophane just came off. It just like unwrapped me and I was like, "Oh, all right. Well, I'll just do this every day. This is the solution."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
This is the solution. And it's like you don't even realize what the problem is, and then the solution shows up and you're like, "Oh, this is the problem," and then there's the solution. Yeah, exactly. "I'll just do this."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. It was a very conscious decision. I hear people talk about, "I don't know how I started drinking out of control or how this happened." I distinctly remember thinking, "I'm going to do this every day."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you think, "I'm going to do this every day with Natty Ice?"
Pat D’Enbeau:
I did it with Puckers.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh no.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's gross.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That is gross.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Like Sour Apple Pucker. So I'd find whatever alcohol my family had.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Isn't that a wine cooler?
Pat D’Enbeau:
I don't know what it is, but it is gross.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it is gross.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So I had it like by my bed in high school and I would just like take a swig of the sour, I don't even really know if there's alcohol in it. I think there is, but it's gross. We drank a lot of Jager. That was like the drink in Ohio.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That feels like a very Ohio thing to drink.
Pat D’Enbeau:
We'd get like those huge, those big long thin green bottles of Jager and we would just drink that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The problem with Jager is that you throw up Jager and you are bumbed.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's like throwing up Christmas.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It is like throwing up Christmas, except a really terrible Christmas.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, it is like throwing up the worst Christmas of your life.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's so like syrup.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. Minty. Gross. But that's what we drank, and I did that every day. I would take-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Every day?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Every day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Let me get this straight, so at 16 you are like, "I'm in the band, I'm as big as my cello and I might be gay or not. I love Ani, and I'm going to go to the park with my other band friends, I'm going to drink warm Natty Ice," and that was how you came to your decision?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yep. Seems kind of crazy when I think about it now, but at the time it made perfect sense.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean does it say something about me that it makes perfect sense now? I mean I feel like the upgrade of the alcohol was definitely an important growing part for you.
Pat D’Enbeau:
That's when I really arrived. We had two fridges in my house, so we had garage fridge where the beer was-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Drinks.
Pat D’Enbeau:
.... and then the food fridge inside. So in the morning I would go out to the garage fridge and take a Bud Light out of the fridge, drink it on my way to school and then that was usually enough to just kind of get me through the day. And then I started smoking weed and you get kind of connected with the people who are doing the stuff you're doing. I was a pretty good student. This is funny. I was a pretty good student. Not great, but I was good. I could've gotten into a good college, not Harvard, but good. I graduate, I think I was like 183rd out of 186. So it took me... It wasn't a lot of time for me to start just going down.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So that's what, two years?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Two years to just tank it.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. Tank it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So when you're doing that, are your parents and family, are they like, "Um...?"
Pat D’Enbeau:
I can't really remember what they were doing?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's the nice thing about alcohol.
Pat D’Enbeau:
At that point in time my parents were about to be divorced and so my dad was gone a lot, my mom, she was pretty upset by the whole thing. I think they were going through their whole thing. My sister and brother were in college, so they were gone. So my brother's five years older than me and my sister's seven. So by the time I'm in high school, they're gone.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. So it's just you.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. So it's just me, just there drinking Bud Light and Puckers, hanging out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
On the way to school.
Pat D’Enbeau:
On the way to school.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So how did it progress? How did you get from pretty good college abilities to almost the last in your class?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Well, it's an excellent question. I don't know. One thing that I think I have to say is that there was a sexual assault in high school or in eighth grade actually that happened, that I didn't tell anybody about. And I think that that was a huge part of that, like numbing kind of thing. I think a lot of substance use is trying to cope, and I didn't have the skills to cope. So I'm coping with sexuality and coping with the loss of my group of friends, and then this looming sexual assault that I don't really understand.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So with the sexual assault, when did you tell?
Pat D’Enbeau:
I didn't tell anybody until I was in rehab actually. I didn't tell anybody. My mom said when I told her that... We had a bench on our front porch and I rode my bike home afterwards, I had this like green Dyno, I really loved it. So I'd like ride my little bike home and I sat on the bench and she sat next to me and she asked me if I was okay and I said yes, and she said that was the first time I lied to her and she knew that the tables were turning, which is kind of sad.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She knew that you lied to her?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). She knew something had happened and she knew I wasn't going to tell her.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Why weren't you going to tell her?
Pat D’Enbeau:
I don't know. It felt like I shouldn't tell her. I think a lot of that is the times that we grew up in back then, things weren't talked about. I didn't get to read and see like the Me Too campaign or none of that stuff was there. Like nobody else had had a voice in that. I think that's the great thing about the generations coming up. It's like a lot of work has been done to give them space to talk about stuff. But I didn't feel like I had that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you understand what had happened?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, I mean I was old enough to know what had happened and that it wasn't okay. It was pretty violent and so I just couldn't talk about it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you have that, and then you're moving forward from there, what did that feel like when you finally did talk about it?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Terrible.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Not the answer I was looking for. No.
Pat D’Enbeau:
No, I mean it was hard. So I did it in rehab. so a bunch of time passed, I'm in rehab and we do these knee to knees. So you're sitting facing your person and you're supposed to tell them there's like three R's. One of them is regret, one of them is remorse, and one of them is something else, I don't remember. But in one of those, the one I don't remember, was stuff that you should be honest about. So I told my mom there, and she stood there so stoically with just tears, and I think she was always kind of resentful that I didn't give her the opportunity to help.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I could see that. I could see like that.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And I think that happened kind of often. She wanted to help and I would just rip it from her. "I don't need you," kind of thing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. "I can do this."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. "I got it." And I very obviously don't got it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Not a lot being gotten.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. I'm in rehab, I'm like, "Don't worry about it. It's good."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"Why are you so worried?"
Pat D’Enbeau:
"Everything's fine." I think she was always kind of resentful of that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you don't really remember much of high school, what happened when you graduated at 180?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, so I graduated. My aunt, my dad's sister was the Dean of this college and I wasn't getting into any college. I wanted to go to some college in Vermont because this girl I thought I had a crush on maybe, I wanted to follow-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, so you know you're gay at this point?
Pat D’Enbeau:
I don't. I don't.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, you don't.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I say that now because it's very obvious that I had a crush on her, but at the time I'm just stalking this girl at school and I don't know why.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We want to be really close friends.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. But he gets me into this all women's college. My poor father, at the time he was this very conservative guy from Iowa, and he gets me into an all women's Liberal Arts College.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wait, seriously?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yep. And he had no idea what he was doing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Really?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. Poor guy. I feel for him.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. You look back and you are like... I mean, on the flip side, really great choice.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, perfect choice for me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Perfect choice for you.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I lasted six months, a semester. Is that six? Three? Three months.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's 16 weeks.
Pat D’Enbeau:
16 Weeks, I lasted. But that school did an amazing thing for me, which was gave me the platform to understand that I was gay and to come out in a space that was very safe for me. It was very weird to not be gay at that campus. You were pretty much the minority and ostracized.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you were like, "I am gay."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, I'm definitely gay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you grow up in this place where it's black and white and you're color, and then you go to this school where everyone's color?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's cool.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, it was kind of cool. And that's kind of where...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wait, why did you last 16 weeks?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Well, because my drug use really took off. I fell in love with a stripper.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Can I say that on the podcast?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You might be the best guest ever. I love it. Yeah, you can say that. I mean, it happened.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It happened. So she was...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you meet her at the strip club?
Pat D’Enbeau:
No, I met her at college. She was at college. So she was stripping her way through college, which is like a real thing. She had no student loans. I had baller.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean amazing.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Right? I was like, "Good on you."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, no, seriously. Great.
Pat D’Enbeau:
She made a ton of money.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I bet.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So she was the first girl I was ever with and her name changed depending on the hour obviously.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They kept it interesting.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And she also introduced me to a lot of other substances. She was really wonderful.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Sounds like a great relationship.
Pat D’Enbeau:
We had a great time. So I started doing a lot of cocaine at that time, because that's what she did. And that was how I lasted 16 weeks. So I had this dorm room, I had a roommate I think, but I don't remember her. I don't know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She was not relevant.
Pat D’Enbeau:
She's not a part of the story, sorry. Sorry if we're Facebook friends and you see this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
16 Weeks of college.
Pat D’Enbeau:
But I was bringing all the drugs into the dorm room, and so how I got kicked out was I had hidden a bunch of baggies of drugs from myself. So I bought a plethora of drugs and I thought I'm going to divvy this up so I only do a certain amount every day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's called a serving size.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's done in most other consumption areas.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's completely normal.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So somebody tipped off the people, the faculty.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The fun fillers.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, the fun killers and they busted me and they thought that I was selling drugs on campus to which I would never do.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I would have loved to been in the room for that explanation to them.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. "I'm not selling them." They're like, "There's so many baggies measured out." And I'm like, "No, no, no. This is for me. This is going to last me like a week.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"You don't understand, I am portioning."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yes. I only have X amount of dollars, so I have to...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You know like meal planning?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yes, it's like meal planning. Same thing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's meal prep. It's coke prep.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yes. So they kicked me out, and I tried to appeal it and they were like, "You, A, have never been to class and you have so many drugs, and you're not allowed here." I'm like, "But please."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But please.
Pat D’Enbeau:
"My parents are going to be mad."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, it's amazing. Okay. So do you go back to-
Pat D’Enbeau:
No, I moved in with the stripper. In Pittsburgh, because we're in college.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But she's in college.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, but she got an apartment because she's making so much money she didn't need to live on campus. She got an apartment and I moved in with her. It was in an area-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wait, did you tell your parents? They must have known?
Pat D’Enbeau:
I think at that point I was no longer telling them things. I don't remember them in that part a lot. I'm sure they were there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Yeah, we block those conversions out.
Pat D’Enbeau:
But I don't remember what they were-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"Oh, you're disappointed in me, I'm going to not remember that."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, essentially. "I don't remember you in my life at that time. That's your fault, not mine."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's much easier. Right, right, "Can't do it, not doing it. Okay."
Pat D’Enbeau:
But I was living with her, and I was living in this area in Pittsburgh that was really rough, like a rough neighborhood. So I get mugged all the time, it was like a pretty much nightly routine.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Seriously?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Not like violent. They would just be like, "Give me your money." And I'd be like, "Okay, here you go." And then they'd go away.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So it's either mugged or bad boundaries, but-
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, both.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, both.
Pat D’Enbeau:
They had a knife, like "Give me your money," or "Give me whatever you have." And I'm like, "Here's my $5. I don't have anything." They'd be like, "Okay," and they'd run away. It's not like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. It's still taking your money.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, but it's like those little cuts, right? I lasted there for a while. We had this pet ferret. This is way I remember it, and who knows if this is true. We had this pet ferret, the ferret died and I was like, "That's it, I'm out. I'm leaving this, I'm going to go, I'm not doing drugs anymore."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. So the ferret dies and-
Pat D’Enbeau:
I'm done.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... you're going turnover a new leaf?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. If that's the actual way that happened, nobody knows. That's the way that I remember it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Fair enough.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So I moved back home to my mom, and I don't have any kind of community of recovery or I don't really understand substance use disorders yet or the disease of alcoholism. I have no idea. I'm 18 years old, so I just stopped doing drugs and I stopped drinking and I think I'm going to just not do any of that stuff.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That was Pittsburgh, this is Cleveland.
Pat D’Enbeau:
This is Cleveland. I enrolled in Cleveland State.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
New college, new me.
Pat D’Enbeau:
New college, new me. Live with my mom. She painted my room lime green.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's-
Pat D’Enbeau:
Rude.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... a move.
Pat D’Enbeau:
That was a move.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That might be like an anger move.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Power move.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's a power move. Lime green.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Where you like-
Pat D’Enbeau:
She was like, "It's chartreuse." I was, "This is lime green and I hate it, but okay."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like things we do for love.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yes. And I got this job at this chiropractic office. I was the only employee at this chiropractic office and I started doing drugs again. Maybe I stayed sober for 30 days, maybe. I was the only employee at this chiropractic office, and there was like a little lockbox with money. I took all the money.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Naturally.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I'm the only employee. He says, "Where's all the money?" I go, "I don't know." I get fired. My mom goes, "You stole all his money." I go, "No way. I didn't do that. I don't know where it went." The only people going into that office are elderly people and I'm accusing these people of stealing money at this chiropractor office.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"You know Violet? She's..."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). It was Esther.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was her.
Pat D’Enbeau:
She was moving fast that day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She can't walk.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you get fired.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So I get fired. I start running around doing stuff. I have like a vague memory of me trying to throw a bicycle at a window. I don't know where that comes into play.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it seems like it works.
Pat D’Enbeau:
But I started having seizures. So fun fact about cocaine that I learned is the more you do it, the more likely you are to have seizures because your kidneys shut down.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Really? That never happened to me.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Don't correct me with a doctor, because I could be wrong.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I won't correct you with any-
Pat D’Enbeau:
Personal experience.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I will not correct you. I have no idea. It just didn't happen to me.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I don't know, but that's what happened to me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Or no one told me if it did.
Pat D’Enbeau:
That's what happened to me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How much cocaine were you doing?
Pat D’Enbeau:
A lot. Quite a bit.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Quite a bit. Okay.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And how were you funding this?
Pat D’Enbeau:
I have no idea. I just always had it. I would do runs for people. Like a drug mule kind of, in my Dodge Neon in Fairview Park, Ohio. It was like so weird.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The visual is amazing.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So I would go run for people and then they would pay me in drugs.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean you don't look suspicious, but you probably looked different.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, I just had longer hair, but I still didn't really look... I don't think I do. Who knows what I looked like, to be honest? I thought I looked great.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's all that matters, girl. Self-esteem intact.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yes. But I had a seizure in front of my mom, is what happened, and I woke up from that seizure. I vaguely remember hugging her, but I was overdosing and seizing and all this stuff is happening, and then I woke up on the couch and my mom was a hospice nurse and she had her hospice bag in one hand and the phone in the other, and she was trying to decide if she was going to let me die comfortably or call for help, and that is how she tells it.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I woke up from that and I looked and I saw the hospice bag and I knew exactly, I knew that bag. She was nervous because she said, "Hospitals don't treat drug addicts well and they're going to kill you there, because they're not going to think you're worth saving." That's what she said. She's growing up like being a nurse in the '80s, '90s during the AIDS epidemic and all this stuff, so it's like a totally different thing then. But that's what she's thinking.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, scary.
Pat D’Enbeau:
She says, "You have to get help." And I say, "No." And she says, "Well, you need to clean the stove."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's the next logical step.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yes. And so I cleaned the stove. I'm so mad. "I had a rough night. How could you make me clean?" I'm not thinking about her night. She's like thinking about burying her kid. It's unnatural.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And we're worried about the stove.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I'm worried about the stove, yeah. Eventually I kind of concede I am going to go to rehab. And she says, "I gave you a pamphlet months ago. Go find it in your room." I have no idea what she's talking about, this pamphlet, what are you saying?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're like, "Yeah, so did the guy down the street giving out drink coupons, but I don't have that."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, "I don't have anything. What are you talking about?" I go in my room, I opened a drawer and the pamphlet is right there. And it was like a window, you know we talk about that window?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yep.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So I call this place and I go in. I go in on February 14th of 2004, '05? It's a wilderness program so they take everything from you, give you a pair of granny panties and some army pants in a backpack and a blue shirt and send you off into the desert.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Where, in Utah?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, in Utah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Duchesne?
Pat D’Enbeau:
It was outside of Loa, which is a tiny Utah town.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know Loa.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I was out there for 36 days. I came out of there thinking that I didn't need to do hard drugs anymore, that I could just drink and smoke weed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So when you went in there where you only using cocaine?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. I was doing some other stuff. Like I would dabble in some hallucinogens once in a while, but cocaine was the main thing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That was the main thing.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, so you come out and you're like, "I don't need to do hard drugs anymore."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. I remember telling my sister at this motel in Loa, Utah, "I'm still going to drink and smoke weed, I'm just not going to do the hard stuff." And she was like, "Okay, that sounds good. That's great. That's when everything went bad, so good." The place I went to, Passages To Recovery, said that I needed to go to aftercare. So this is in 2005, not 2004. Correction, 2005. So insurance wasn't a thing yet involved in the rehab thing, so it was actually cheaper-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Go figure.
Pat D’Enbeau:
... than it is now, which is strange. But they recommended I go to this place in California, and so I went. It was the first time my sister and I actually spent time together. We drove from Utah to Orange County and showed up at this doorstep that ended up being the owner of the treatment centers house accidentally. I'm like, "I'm here," and she's like, "No, no, no."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, you're not.
Pat D’Enbeau:
But I went to this house in Costa Mesa and it was a all women's treatment facility, it was a 90 day program, and I lasted... I don't know, I think I had like six months sober, and then I drank a Sparks energy drink with the first pretty blonde girl I saw, because I decided that Sparks energy drinks don't count.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Those were the ones with the alcohol in it?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, but they didn't count, because it's an energy drink.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, because this is energy.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's an energy drink that has some alcohol.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Right. It's not the same thing. Okay.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It doesn't count.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, definitely not.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Not really. So I just didn't tell anybody.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, no need.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And I did all sorts of stuff for recovery. So I drank this energy drink. I didn't tell anybody and I just stayed-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
In the sober living.
Pat D’Enbeau:
... in sober living, and did you know whatever we had to do and was a part of recovery. And I drank again and didn't tell anybody.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The same thing?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Same thing. No. No, no, no, I drank a beer. I drank a Newcastle. I was trying to live it up. I got this job at Albertsons and I moved out of the sober living, rented a room in this weird house that had a mobile home in the driveway. Very weird. That's what I could afford. I started drinking and lying about it, and I did that for two years. So the idea was that I didn't want to lose what I had built, but I also wanted to drink so I just did.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And that's the crazy thing, is like we get all this stuff from the recovery piece, we're in the recovery home, we're getting all the recovery so we want to keep that. And we want to keep the friends and everything that comes along with recovery, because there is so much that comes along with it, but we really also want to drink. And so there's the negotiation.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So I did.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, so you did.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I was like, "Oh, I figured it out. This is perfect, I got it." Eventually that drinking turned into cocaine again, which then in California, cocaine was harder to get. So that turned into speed, crystal meth, because that was easier. And then that turned into IV drugs and that turned into heroin and then it just all really just kind of...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And how long did it take to get you from drinking again, I want to keep all the recovery, to shooting heroin?
Pat D’Enbeau:
So probably about three months, six months. It was pretty quick.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that is quick.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It was pretty quick.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Especially for someone who hasn't done those drugs before, just to like-
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, I really was of the mentality of I just want to put the brakes. There's gas pedal people and break pedal people, and I wanted breaks and I was doing a lot of gas and I just needed to put on the brakes, and so that's what I wanted to do.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So at what point in this where you're like, "Okay, this is a problem?"
Pat D’Enbeau:
So I was working at Albertsons and similar to the chiropractic office, I stole a ton of money, but this time from a huge corporation.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Turns out they don't like that.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, it turns out they don't like that. They have this video of me going, taking money out of the safe, walking out the door and then going back in and like doing drugs or doing whatever I was doing. And so eventually I had been doing this for months.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And they keep seeing the videos and don't-
Pat D’Enbeau:
I don't know really.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's weird.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I think maybe they were... who knows what they were doing?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Backlog.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. I don't know. But eventually they took me up into the office and they showed me the video and they said, "Would you like to explain yourself?" And I said, "Well, that's not me."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That so great. "Yeah, I'd like to explain myself, I'm being framed."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, "I'm being framed, this isn't real. I don't know what this is."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That is gaslighting.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, it's the new bagger.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They were being gaslit, all right?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. I said, "It's the new bagger you guys just hired, he's crazy."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They were like, "He's six feet tall."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, essentially. So I got fired and there was a restitution case and there was all sorts of stuff going on. My dad really helped me out with those, and I stayed out for a few months longer, but really what happened is I ran out of money and ways to get it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So this is a really great point that I want to make, which is around family members. And I know you work in recovery space and so you'll probably have something to say about this, which is family members giving their loved ones who are using money is a very, very dangerous use prolonging thing. And it is so hard to explain to people how that's possible, because they think they're helping, and what they're really doing, even when you're giving them gift cards to the grocery store or whatever it is, you are allowing them more runway to use.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. My parents were pretty good at the tough love thing. It wasn't until I had like criminal stuff going on that my dad was like, "All right, no, you're not going to last in jail." But I agree. I think if my parents, like when I look back, if my mom or dad would have been giving me money to use my drugs or do the things that I was doing, it would have gotten bad quick. I don't know that I'd be here really.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But the thing that people don't think about is if you're giving money for the rent or you're giving money to sustain the life, that frees up funds to buy the drugs. So a lot of the parents that I talk to are like, "Well, I'm not giving them cash for drugs."
Pat D’Enbeau:
But you are though.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But you are, because you're giving them money that goes towards something and that money that they would be using now can go towards drugs.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, exactly. And so really the only reason I'm here today is because I ran out of money.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, you ran out of money.
Pat D’Enbeau:
If my family would've been paying my rent or given me food cards, which I could have sold for cash or whatever, that road would have been longer. Because there were things that for me I wouldn't do for money, and so I ran out of ideas.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So what did that look like?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Luckily I had some experience with recovery, even if it was kind of weird.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, but you knew where to go, you knew the people.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I knew where to go, I had some friends. I had these two friends I'm still friends with today that used to call me when I was loaded. They would call me every day. They were such buzz kills. I was so annoyed. And they would call and they wouldn't call to harass me or tell me to get clean, they would just say, "Hey, how you doing?" And I'd be like, "Oh, I'm good. I'm on my way to pick up," or I'm like doing this, I'm doing that. And they'll be like, "Oh, that's cool, we're at the gym. Like, whatever, just wanted to see how you're doing. We are with this person and she wants to say hi to you."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Never like pressure. So what that did, and I don't know that they knew they were doing this either, but what that did was when I was ready to get help, I could call them because that line of communication was open and I didn't feel like I was going to here, "I told you so," or judgment or pressure. It was just open. But instead of calling, I showed up at one of their works and I think I made a scene, I'm not sure. She'll correct me if I'm wrong in this, but I'm pretty sure I made a scene and I remember being asked to go sit in the stairs of the mall.
Pat D’Enbeau:
She was working at the mall, and she gave me the phone number of somebody who could help me, who then gave me another phone number, who gave me another phone number, and it was just series of me making all of these phone calls and eventually I found a place to stay. Unfortunately, I didn't have money to do a detox kind of thing and they just weren't around as much in 2007. So I kicked heroin with Benadryl and Midol.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Midol?
Pat D’Enbeau:
For the cramps, for the leg cramps. It's brilliant.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That is brilliant.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So yeah, the detox from heroin gives you the kicks, which is just like leg cramps and the Midol really helped with that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's interesting, never heard that.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And the Benadryl just helped me sleep, but I was essentially throwing up and doing all that stuff. And they would wake me up at 06:30 in the morning, make me go places and do stuff with them. They wouldn't let me alone in the house, because they thought I would steal everything, because I probably would have. But they also slept in the bed with me so that I wouldn't have to be alone.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow.
Pat D’Enbeau:
My one friend always tells me this story. The second night I was just praying, "Please God, make this stop." I was crying, crying crying, and she was just sleeping next to me. I don't know that I would have made it without somebody just next to me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Those are some good friends.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. They're amazing and they're still my friends today. They're my best friends in the world.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And then you have been in recovery for a long time now.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, since June 19th of 2007. So it'll be 12 years in June 19th of 2019.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Awesome. That's awesome. And so what does your life look like now?
Pat D’Enbeau:
So today it looks very different.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, that's good.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Which is great. That's the hope.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. That's the hope.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Is that you're still not doing that. But I work for a company called The Phoenix, which is a national nonprofit started in Denver. Boulder, Denver area, in 2007. But it's a sober active community. So essentially what we do is we use the transformative power of sport and fitness in order to help sustain and build longterm recovery and bridge communities together. And then we use that to also help alleviate and eliminate the stigma around recovery.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So what you guys are doing is so, so cool and I remember hearing about it because I think it was like Phoenix Multisport for a while.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yes, it was. So what happened is Multisport is actually a triathlon term, and I'm not doing triathlon. That is hard. No, I think that The Phoenix just is better. So it's like the Phoenix is like the bird rising from the ashes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So what has been your experience talking about all the different components of what the Phoenix does and creating community. What has it done for you on a personal level now working there?
Pat D’Enbeau:
I didn't always work there. So when I found The Phoenix, it was through... One of my friends was like, "My brother's starting this thing, it's CrossFit," and I was like, "Absolutely not. I have no interest." And she was like, "It's free," and I was like, "Oh, okay, let's go. It's free. I love free stuff. I'll do about anything for a free T-shirt."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I need to remember that.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Think about it, how cool are free T-shirts?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They are, but then you get too many of them.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Never.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No?
Pat D’Enbeau:
No. You just get rid of some old ones.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Marie Condo. If it doesn't spark joy, just get rid of it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that's true. I need to Condo in my life.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So I went to this CrossFit class, and in that time period I was... Also one thing I didn't say about Passages to Recovery, the wilderness program I went to, is that I fell in love with the wilderness. I fell in love with backpacking.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's awesome.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Like I just found passion there for that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You also forgot to tell something about that wilderness program.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Oh, yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It changed your family's life.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It did. So my sister has two kids now and the kids' father is the field guide from that wilderness program. So I have two nieces. The cool thing about that and a cool thing in recovery that you have is an opportunity to repair relationships with family. My sister and I were never close before that, the age gap is huge, but when I got sober this time, we started to become close, which is crazy because we've never been further away from each other. She's in Ohio and I'm here. So we started talking on the phone all the time and she was pregnant with her second kid and she said, "Hey, why don't you come for the delivery?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, wow.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And I thought, "Oh, okay, you want me there?" And so I got to be in the delivery room for her having that kid, which was a really amazing experience and really stressful also. Nobody really tells you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You can't explain that.
Pat D’Enbeau:
You can't explain it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You can't, because I remember coming out, I was in the room when one of my best friends had both her kids and I came out of the hospital and I was like, "Does everybody know about this?"
Pat D’Enbeau:
They don't.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like does everybody understand what... Like we normalize it, there's like a maternity ward.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Like on Grey's anatomy, they don't show what happens.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But even so, it's like your mind is blown.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, because it's very long.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah.
Pat D’Enbeau:
At one point I was like hiding in a cabinet eating pancakes really quick.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And you can't complain because the person's in labor, right?
Pat D’Enbeau:
You can't, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Pat D’Enbeau:
You can't complain.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There's no complaining.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's ridiculous, but I got to be one of the first people to hold that baby.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's so cool.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And so that little girl is like the light in my life. It's so cool to come from where we've come from and then have somebody be like, "Hey, hold my baby. I want you to have a bond with this baby." And you're like, "Okay, I can do that."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You trust me to hold your baby.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And I can keep that promise.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And you're going to use two hands.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I'm going to use two hands, mom, and I'm going to keep that promise. I am going to bond with that kid and I'm going to do everything I can from California to make sure that I have a relationship with them. Which I've done and now they won't stop sending me Instagram Boomerangs and it's actually kind of annoying.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, if you're listening...
Pat D’Enbeau:
They're six and eight, so they've just learned to Boomerang. They don't have their own Instagram's, but they're using parental monitored Instagram.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I wasn't judging. Just checking.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I'm just saying.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Just saying, just putting it out there.
Pat D’Enbeau:
My sister's a good parent. But they send me these Boomerangs of the two of them, I get like 35 notifications a day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I'm like, "Okay." I think I'm like really popular. I'm like, "Oh, I have so many... I'm famous." It's just all my nieces.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So it's like confusing because it's... My kids, I have two year old twin boys and they FaceTime everyone, and portal. We have one of those Facebook portals so they'll FaceTime and portal people to the point where people don't want to answer anymore because they'll take... So yeah.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Because then they don't know how to talk on the phone.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, they don't. They don't. It's like "Hey," and then they walk away and I come in.
Pat D’Enbeau:
You just hear a bang. That's what I hear. I'm like, "Hey, how are you guys doing?" Just, bang.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hope that was an expensive phone.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. I don't know what's happening over there, "Hello?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Seriously. Someone's crying, "Mom."
Pat D’Enbeau:
But I fell in love with backpacking in the wilderness.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh yes, backpacking.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So when I found The Phoenix, at that time of that CrossFit class, I had just climbed Mount Whitney. I had just done bottom to top Grand Canyon and I had just done a couple other things, but I'd done those alone.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Because I didn't have anybody that wanted to go with me. I didn't have that community. And I wanted to do that stuff, and so I just did it because recovery gave me some weird sense of-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Badassness.
Pat D’Enbeau:
... badassness, I guess, I don't know. Mount Whitney, when you say you've climbed Mount Whitney, it's like an uphill walk. It is not like...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
My husband did Mount Whitney, it's not an uphill walk.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It is. It's a hard walk.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's a very hard uphill.
Pat D’Enbeau:
But it's an uphill walk. Grand Canyon was harder by far.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All of those things seem very difficult.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So the thing with backpacking and doing it alone as a woman is very scary to be out there at night, and it's a pretty much male dominated community, as a lot of that stuff is. But I found community out there. The issue with that community was a lot of it revolved around alcohol. There's like, they call them Dirtbag Hikers, that's the term. And they just kind of, a lot of it is surrounded around alcohol and weed, because it's the lifestyle.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So I was still kind of alone, because I didn't want that lifestyle anymore. There's nothing like climbing a mountain and being up there to remember, A, how small we are as humans and how much we're capable of as humans. When I climbed Mount Whitney, I was at the top and I was going through a personal crisis and I just felt okay. There's hope up there on those mountains, you just have to go get it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Either that or oxygen deprivation.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Or oxygen deprivation. I did get a little lost at one point, which was probably... The park ranger was like, "Hey, you're going the wrong way." I was like, "Oh."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"Oh, I knew that. I knew it."
Pat D’Enbeau:
But I found The Phoenix then during that time period and what I found was I found CrossFit and I like CrossFit and everybody can have their opinion about it. I like it. But more than that, is I found a community of people that when I said I wanted to do something, they were like, "Oh, let's go do it."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's cool.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And they were also sober and some of them had done it before, and I found mentors and people that I could then help mentor and I found that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That was my experience somewhat coming in early on with the young people's groups in general was like I had that same, I think I stayed sober because I found those communities and in the young people's group, and this is young people's in AA I'm referring to, which was they were doing stuff like that. They were doing community, but as you get older those groups kind of disbanded.
Pat D’Enbeau:
You don't have time for those groups.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, I don't have time.
Pat D’Enbeau:
We have families, we have life, we get these beautiful lives. A lot of those groups, they just take a lot of time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
A lot, and those were the groups, at least for me, those were the groups where I got that feeling that you're describing that sounds like is such a big part of what can be had in The Phoenix, and it can be had with these big lives. That they can allow you to opt in and out based on what's going on with you.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Well, yeah, and I found The Phoenix... I had six years sober. I had been sober for a while. I had my shtick of what I did to stay sober, but I think a really important thing is when we take the drugs and alcohol away, that doesn't fix anything. It actually makes everything worse.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It breaks it. You're like, "Wait a minute, now I..."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Because alcohol is that solution. That Natty Ice was a solution to me. So I just ripped myself of my solution and so the Saran wrap is back, that feeling is back, and I spent six years in recovery and I didn't need to do this, but I spent six years in recovery doing all of the things that we do, but still feeling that lack of connection, like not really being able to get there. That Saran wrap or that like feeling came off when I was hiking, and that's what worked for me, but I can't hike every day. I can't climb Mount Whitney every day. Can't go hike the Appalachian trail, just on a whim. I would love to, that is my new dream in life. But that's not realistic. But I could go to a CrossFit class with a bunch of people-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And they can talk about it and create a trip.
Pat D’Enbeau:
... and we'd talk about it, but we can build a community there, because it's not really about the mountain or the trail. It's not about the CrossFit class, the barbell, the yoga mat. It's not about any of that stuff. That stuff is all kind of arbitrary to something much bigger, which is that nurturing environment and that sense of community.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. right. I mean that makes sense, and it's such a beautiful thing to see and I'm so glad that you guys are doing this and that it's spreading.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's huge, we have 41 events in 41 different communities right now.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's so cool, and you helped launch... You were saying you were in Boston for a while.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I helped with Boston. I've been involved in Orange County for five years. I helped launch... we have events in Signal Hill in Long Beach. We have an event in Portland, in Bend, Oregon, in Marin County. So those are the ones I've been involved with, but outside of that, it's all over the country.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it's so cool.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And there's chapters too, so there's like events and chapters and we have big chapters, big facilities in places like Boston and Denver and upcoming in Dallas, and it's kind of growing like wildfire.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Which is scary, but fun.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally. Totally. No, it's really cool and I think such a big part of, at least for me being sober, has been about moving my body and getting my brain to stop. That's been, aside from all the other vanity pieces, just being able to consistently do that has been so important. So when you combine the community, you combine the conversation about recovery, you combine the athletics, all those things, I mean that's amazing.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I think it's cool because CrossFit's such a great example, and I always hate to use that example because then people think we're a CrossFit gym, which is not all we are.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They're not a CrossFit gym.
Pat D’Enbeau:
We're not just a CrossFit gym. We can be if that's what you want, but CrossFit is so cool because it's so hard. It's hard. It's always hard no matter what level you're at, which is good.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Which is the point.
Pat D’Enbeau:
But when you go through that with somebody, with a group of people, you're kind of going through a dark place together. You're going through a really hard experience together and when we come out of a CrossFit class in Orange County, we come out of it, you see a bunch of people fist bumping, high fiving people, helping people up, whatever, and they all go walk to the wall together and talk about it and walk back. And everybody is bonded. I remember that girl because she was at my CrossFit class and she really helped me through that last round, she's awesome.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. And maybe you create that relationship that takes it outside, and you have more of those recovery experiences because people, when you just go to meetings... One aspect of recovery is not going to keep you sober. It's got to be the different pieces. Like you were saying, I was six years sober, I had my shtick. What that means is we have to do all these different things to stay sober. Only one of those things, it's like a three legged stool, you need all three legs, you take one out, it falls down. So this is such an amazing addition to having that sober community outside of AA meetings, or whatever community meetings including that.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, and that's the cool thing. Phoenix in general, we stay out of that. We're not clinical, we're not trying to do any of that stuff. And I always encourage people to do whatever they're doing, whether that be AA, smart recovery, refuge recovery, church, temple, mosque, like whatever, therapy. If it's Phoenix, whatever you're doing, do it. Because I don't know. I know what works for me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Different things work for different people. Recovery is... That's such a big part of this podcast is I just want people to get better. Talking about change and the courage to change, it's like if it's not working for you-
Pat D’Enbeau:
Change it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... then let's figure out how to change it. And I go through that in my own life.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Really?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"Okay, this isn't working for me anymore," and that changes the longer we stay in longterm recovery. The things that worked five years ago, I have to upgrade my recovery to wherever my life is, which is-
Pat D’Enbeau:
I think our needs change. My life changes, so my needs change. I think recovery in general is just mind, body, spirit, and so you have to do stuff for all of them. You just have to. I have to.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yep. I mean you can cheat it, but here's the thing, you have to remember, or I have to remember that the disease is centered in my mind. So I'm going to feel like crap if I cheat. I'm cheating myself into feeling badly. I think so many of us for so long had this experience of like what we can get away with. And then with recovery, you're creating pain for yourself. It's not about getting away with anything. So if people are interested in joining The Phoenix or finding out more information about it, where can they go?
Pat D’Enbeau:
So one thing about The Phoenix is it's 100% free for any individual.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's why you love it so much.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yes. With 48 hours sobriety. That's our requirement. We don't drug test, it's not that, but we have 48 hours and the reason we have that is there's two reasons, physical safety is of utmost importance, and also understanding that sobriety is not always a straight path for everybody. More often times it's not, and slips happen and things happen, but if we put a long time limit on that, if we say, "You can't come back for 30 days." You're not going to come back. We want people to come right back into that community and get reconnected immediately.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you find that that-
Pat D’Enbeau:
I don't want to say our statistics, because I don't want to say them wrong, but it's an 80 percentage rate.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You just gave a statistic.
Pat D’Enbeau:
80 Percentage-ish.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's a statistic.
Pat D’Enbeau:
80-ish.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
80-ish%.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's a high percentage-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's high.
Pat D’Enbeau:
... of people that have sustainable long term recovery that ends up being more straight line. I think it's the community focus. When I went to treatment, and I'm not going to get into a soapbox about the treatment industry, but I know when I went to treatment it was really recovery focused and community focused. That was what they wanted. They wanted us to take care of each other and in our sober living, while I wasn't sober, the people that were sober are still friends and they took care of each other, and they're all still sober. So that works.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it does.
Pat D’Enbeau:
We don't see it that much anymore, that kind of community base.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's vital. I mean for me it's vital.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's necessary, and so that's kind of what we're doing here, is like building that community and doing it in an environment that no matter who you are, where you come from, what you're doing, it doesn't matter, you're safe.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I love that. Talk a little bit about what you were telling me about the allowing space for people of all different levels to be there, because I think people do worry about athletic things and feeling like, "Man, I'm just coming off the couch."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Oh my god, the gym is terrifying. I remember going in a 24 Hour Fitness when I was in early recovery and being like, "I'm going to do back squats," and I go up to the back squat area. I don't even know how to do a back squat at that point in time. I don't know what I'm doing, and it's a bunch of macho guys and they were so mad at me because I'm in their way and it's just terrifying.
Pat D’Enbeau:
As a woman, it's terrifying. I'm sure for men it's terrifying, I just can't speak for them. And I hear so many stories about that, and I remember when I first wanted to do CrossFit being like, "There is no space there for me." I'm this tiny gay person, it's a bunch of dudes, they have huge chests and 12 packs and there's no space for me. And I don't know if I can lift a barbell. But what we've done and what we've created is a space for everybody. It doesn't matter if you can lift a barbell, we'll find you something else to lift. Everything that we do is 100% scalable and doable for anybody, no matter what.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's awesome.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I've had people... A few weeks ago, I had a woman walk into our gym for the first time, maybe a few months ago now, but she walked in and she started sobbing and I was like, "Oh, God, what did we do?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Am I wearing the recovery T-shirt?
Pat D’Enbeau:
Did I do something wrong? She was crying because it was the first time she walked into a fitness space and felt safe, and she felt that right when she walked in. It's one of those moments where, you know like in your job you're doing all these mundane things. You're like, "Why does this email matter about whatever?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Policy procedures.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yes, you're doing operations and you're like, "This is so boring," and then you have that. And she's in the gym every day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's awesome.
Pat D’Enbeau:
She's working on her fitness and she had a hard time in the gym. She'd been objectified and harassed and all of these things, and her fitness lacked and she has an injury, so she can't do everything. But she's in there everyday doing everything, because we found a space for her. She fits in. And we also have these guys that come in that are used to doing the machines at 24 Hour Fitness. They're huge, they're gigantic. I'm like as wide as their bicep. It's insane. They're so strong, but they can come in and there's space for them right next to her, and everybody in between that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And you guys are doing trips to Aspen.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, so they do an Aspen trip once a month and then we do a huge trip to Moab, Utah, and that's a camping trip and there is a cost to that, it's a very small cost, but it's four days and it's just a bunch of people in recovery going out there to be together and they're doing rock climbing, mountain biking, hiking, hanging out by the campfire.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's so cool.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And it's cool because Moab is very small town, and so it's just a bunch of people in Phoenix shirts in recovery just they take over the town.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Love it.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And it's like pretty cool to sit around a campfire with 200 other people in recovery from all over the country.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's not just locational.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's national.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's really cool.
Pat D’Enbeau:
All over the country, and to know that you're not alone no matter where you are.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that's so cool.
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's really cool. We have the trauma informed approach, we hear that a lot. Everything's trauma informed, trauma informed, and what we did is we took it one step further. Like, sure, we can be informed of trauma, but then what? So why don't we heal it? Why don't we do trauma healing? So in Boston, I worked with veterans a lot, veterans in recovery. I had no prior experience. I don't come from a military family. I've no idea besides what I've read in history, I don't know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Talking about the Civil War.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. I'm like, "I don't know, are you gray or blue. What's happening?" I don't know. And so I get these vets, there's a VA there and they're coming into The Phoenix and they're a jumpy. So we walk them in, and this is what somebody taught me, we walk them in and we put them up against the wall with us and let them see the space, and they're going to see the music's loud. Then they're going to see stuff dropping that's loud and they're going to see people all over them, and then we're going to say, "Hey, the bathroom's over there." And this is where the water is and this is where I'm going to be.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So simple little things and I've taken that, I do it to everybody that walks in now. That take it so that it's okay to feel whatever you're feeling, it's okay, because everybody has trauma, whether I like to admit it. Like in the beginning when I'm saying, "I don't have trauma," but we all do. Everybody has it and we have to acknowledge it and we have to give space to feel it, but we can also give space to heal it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. And so you're doing that by giving these people the opportunity to know where everything is and know where-
Pat D’Enbeau:
Which is so silly. It's a silly thing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But it was silly until you said it and I was thinking about it going, "Right." Because we walk in and it's scary, where is everybody? I've never been in this space. We're evaluating the space. Where you are going to be? And when you know a place really well, there's some just automatic-
Pat D’Enbeau:
The door feel lighter.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There's just this automatic level of comfort like, "Okay, I know where things are."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, and then they walk in, they throw their shoes in the middle of the floor, like it's their house. Great, one extreme to the other.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, exactly. Well, at least they're consistent.
Pat D’Enbeau:
But you know what I mean? Like come in, this is your home. Throw your shoes on the floor, pick them up, please. But this is your home. It's my home too, but our members and the people that come to that gym, that's their home. I want them to feel like they can walk in, in any mindset, in any position, whatever, if they want to work out or not. Sometimes they just come in for no reason.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's so cool.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I'm like, "What are you doing here?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm like, "I want to watch you work out."
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah. They're like, "We wanted to see you guys work out," or, "We just want to hang out. Is there anything that needs to get done?" I'm like, "Oh yes."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Glad you asked.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Magic question.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, no, it's awesome, I love it. And it's such a great thing. I want to talk to the Lionrock clients who are all over the-
Pat D’Enbeau:
Yeah, you guys are everywhere.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... all over and there are a lot of people who don't either want to go to 12 Step, don't have community. We have a lot of disabled people, all sorts of different things. So it's a really-
Pat D’Enbeau:
It's a cool thing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... wonderful, wonderful opportunity to plug in.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And a great way to be involved is to fundraise.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Plug, plug, plug.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Plug. No, we're starting a peer to peer fundraising campaign. It's actually pretty cool because a lot of our members will do cool stuff. Like we had a members swim from Alcatraz to the mainland, San Francisco?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. San Francisco.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Is that what he said?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You got it.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Like the mainland.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mainland.
Pat D’Enbeau:
But we had somebody swim that last year.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
China.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Or they'll do a marathon or they'll do a CrossFit competition or whatever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's awesome.
Pat D’Enbeau:
And what a better way to help us build awareness and raise money.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think it's a wonderful.
Pat D’Enbeau:
So if anybody's ever doing anything and they want to fundraise for us...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Awesome. Yeah, we'll put it on our radar and definitely want to help out with that. We really support what you guys do. It's super cool.
Pat D’Enbeau:
That's cool.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Super cool. I got to get my-
Pat D’Enbeau:
It is cool.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I got to get up to Costa Mesa.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Come see it. Yeah, come see it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Will you add childcare?
Pat D’Enbeau:
No. I don't know. That is not my job.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Right now we don't. Right now we do 16 and up, and that's just what we do.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You don't want my babies lifting weights?
Pat D’Enbeau:
I would love it if your baby's lifting some weights, but...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Just give them somewhere to go. Work them out.
Pat D’Enbeau:
I know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, awesome. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time, and where can people go if they want more information on The Phoenix?
Pat D’Enbeau:
So you can go to www.thephoenix.org. You can also check us out on Facebook. It's Phoenix, Orange County, the Phoenix Orange County, and our address is 850 West 18th street in Costa Mesa. You can come down anytime.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Any time, awesome. Thank you, Pat, we really appreciate your time. It's been awesome having you here.
Pat D’Enbeau:
Thanks for having me.
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 of how this podcast has affected you. Our email address is podcast@lionrockrecovery.com. We want to hear from you.