I met Justin 3 years ago in a little parking lot in Portland, Maine when he arrived for the 6 AM meetup for Maineworks, a B Corp employing only felons and drug addicts in recovery. My role at MaineWorks was as witness and photographer to their morning circle process.
Justin’s intensity was immediately obvious and embodied. My first thought was ‘He’s gonna’ kill himself. Or, ‘he’s gonna kill all of us.’ Simultaneously, there was a great sense of light emitting from him. To stand before him felt like standing before a bed of white hot coals.
He was not the average MaineWorks recruit, in that he was not a twenty something just out of rehab or detox for profound substance abuse disorder. In his thirties, he was from the Old Colony Projects of South Boston and raised in the Whitey Bulger era. He had served serious time including years in solitary. When he began to quote Dostoyevsky, Carl Jung and William Butler Yeats amongst others he had my full attention. What I didn’t know at that time was the level of commitment he showed up with, to forge a new life. He was determined to put the battered bricks together in a new way.
He was a warrior well established in the Art of War. This was at least, my supposition. In his struggle one could sense that he was becoming a spiritual warrior. To this end I took the chance of offering him a copy of The Bhagavad Gita. Justin reminded me of the ancient warrior Arjuna, dismayed and lost on the battlefield, where he engages in conversation with Lord Krishna about the nature of life.
When I handed the book to him I remember two things. One: The feeling of ‘I’m gonna die.’ Two: His crystal clear, ice blue eyes shone in unfathomable gratitude that shook me.
The following conversation took place on May 6 2020 in the midst of the Covid19 shutdown when he was temporarily laid off from his job as a union welder for Pipefitters Local 537. This is his voice exploring the relationship of trauma to his journey from prison, through rehab and re entry. These are strictly his opinions. I believe his insights serve us well to consider.
Note:
The Bhagavad Gita , often referred to as The Gita is a 700 verse Hindu scripture. The Gita’s call for selfless action inspired many leaders including Mahatma Ghandi.
The Plymouth House Is a 12 Step Retreat located in Plymouth, New Hampshire focused on giving addicts, alcoholics and their families a new way to live. www.plymouthhouse.com
MaineWorks is an innovative employment company with a social mission: to dignify the experience for people facing real barriers to workforce entry including people recovering from substance abuse disorder and people with felony convictions. Margo Walsh is the founder. www.maineworks.us
Please visit: Boston Accent Lesson with Matt Damon on YouTube. Justin’s voice is pure South Boston and liberally peppered with the F bomb. For these purposes it is written as f***, with it’s derivatives f***ed and f***ing.
If the use of this word offends you, please do not read the interview.
Trauma, Addiction and The Greatest Life Cheat : A conversation with Justin Downey.
Justin: For me, trauma is the great disconnector. Because the thing that happens with a lot of traumatized people is isolation. Right? There's a big difference between solitude and isolation. Solitude is needed for growth. Isolation is the ultimate f***ing killer of the human spirit. Big, big difference between the two. Isolation usually comes from a place of shame or maybe the person believes, and I know I certainly did, I thought that I was so f****** evil and twisted that I needed to protect people from me.
I was so f***ing unpredictable. I was like a f***ing monster. My body would sound this dread alarm. Danger. Danger. Danger. And my body would just go. And then this really scary thing started happening to me at a young age. I didn't have any remorse about what I was doing. When something would happen I was able to exact some retribution. It felt completely justifiable. But it set me on this path. I wanted people to feel my pain. I wanted people to feel the wrath I felt and that they had created a f***ing monster. It was human beings that created this. I wasn’t born like this. I knew that I was a very sensitive child and very open. But something happened and I lost that and now they were going to get what they created. And I'm not going to have any feelings over that whatsoever. No one apologized to me so I'm not going to apologize to anyone for it. Right? And I just started consuming people. Women just became objects of sex and pleasure to me. Men became objects of physical destruction right? And I didn't feel a f***ing thing for anybody unless I was either f***ing it or trying to kill it. And those lines start to get kind of blurry and when you do that to people for years you're basically living on an animalistic plane. And there's some part of our brain likes being in a primal state. I think that's where I make that correlation of trauma and violence and everything else. Your brain, certain parts of your brain, really like that rush.
And when I started on this path of getting well in this world, for the first time in my life, I wasn't numbing myself out with drugs.
Joanne: How did this happen? Was that just a conscious decision you made? You have shared publicly that heroin addiction was part of your life for years.
Justin: Yes. 18 years.
About heroin addiction and that amount of time? One: Usually people don't live that long with that lifestyle. They don't make it that long. Two: People don't usually bounce back because if you've been shooting heroin for 18 years you have f***ing hardwired the brain. Your endorphins are dependent on opioids.
I honestly just wasn’t interested in paying the consequences anymore.I’m definitely not interested in going back to jail or prison. But it has nothing to do with guilt. I can put guilt right out of my mind. I can easily live with myself through anything. It really has to do with wanting to leave a good legacy behind.
I don’t know what happens after here but I can tell you while I am here I want my life to be something I can look in the mirror at the end of the day and be proud of. It can be a testament for having gone down the darkest roads and finding my way out of that muck and mire. It can be a testament to the War on Darkness it took to come out of that. I want to help people learn to be okay when things are not okay. I don’t feel okay a lot. I definitely don’t feel okay a lot. It’s a huge deal to feel okay. And I want to help people because people helped me and I really do believe in reciprocity.
Heroin winds up being the only thing that can comfort any of the pain of trauma. It's the ultimate pain killer. So you take that away and you're left with a raw open wound on top of all these childhood traumas. I had experienced sexual abuse as a kid. And my mother got sick with HIV and died of AIDS. My aunt died of an overdose. My cousin too. My two uncles caught life sentences for murder. One uncle did 15 years, got out and died.These are the guys that raised me. I got taken away from my mom when I was six and sent to live with my grandparents, aunts and uncles on H Street in South Boston. Then all my friends f***ing died. Suicides. Murders or going away for murder. I have what you call compound trauma. The one thing I saw, the underlying theme, was that they all died with this torture in them.
I had a ton of people try and help me. A ton. To help somebody it's 50-50. Timing has to be right and self motivation has to be there. You have to be self-motivated enough to want to change.
I was in prison and this guy started corresponding with me. He was friends with my aunt who I was really close to, who passed away from an overdose. He started to tell me about this place in New Hampshire, The Plymouth House. He started telling me to go there and he would put together a f***ing plan for me and would get me in there when I was released. But I was skeptical. You know what I mean? I knew people who had been there though and I knew they make you do intense work on yourself, and this and that, but I knew what I was up against. I'm not an idiot. I'm a pretty self aware person. I knew that if you take the drugs away from me I knew I was going to be f***ed. I was not interested when he first offered this. I didn't want to dig through my stuff. I knew this was not going to be easy.
The heroin didn't take pain away anymore. So, you think it's going to be easy without that?
I'd been in prison I think three years when he started this correspondence. He left the brochure of the place. I started looking at the picture on it. It was in the mountains. And there was serene scenery of green hills and this little nice house and I'm thinking to myself what the f*** is my scenery going to look like when I get out of here? If I don't take this opportunity it's going to be project hallways.
It's going to be f***ing destitute. It's going to be crime scenes. My scenery is going to be police stations. It’s gonna be another prison if I don’t die. And I said to myself, Well, I would like to get some new scenery. I think I just need to get some new scenery. Maybe I start f***ing... feeling.
I don’t know...yoga, hiking, spiritual work?
F***, I thought, this is like a Club Med for Degenerates. So, I want to go there. I'm a degenerate. And I want to be okay. I don't know how I'm going to do it but I definitely want to be okay somehow at some point in my f***ing life. I went there for 30 days and they started telling me about places and locations they have connections with like Portland, Maine, and this and that. I didn't know what kind of path this was going to lead me on but I started to do this work.
All the step work and writing assignments. F***ing writing assignments. It was all based on AA.
I’m sitting in these f***ing rooms with people who are doing the same exact assignments as I am doing. They're talking about how f***ing* great they're feeling and saying ‘I feel blessed.’ and ‘I'm walking with God.’ and I'm like, ‘Are they giving out Methadone in this f***ing place?’ Because they ain’t giving me my dose in the morning. I'm not feeling like this. The majority of the people maybe were just saying it because they wanted to sound a certain way? I don’t know. I was very vocal. I knew immediately. I said this is a much bigger issue than addiction for me. I know I'm a f***ing heroin addict. But I know this is a trauma issue. I knew I had to dig into this s*** again.
I know exercise works for me. Silence works for me. I started doing yoga at the Plymouth House too and that was what I felt the most there. I was doing yoga every single morning there and that was what I longed for. But when they would start getting into those f***ing* groups, I'd be like ‘I'm going to my room.’
They have these really nice grounds and I would run every f***ing morning. I must have looked like a freak show. Because I came right from prison to this place. I had been in prison for three and a half years at that point. Worked out everyday and everybody else there, other than me, no bullshit, had come straight from detox or off the street. My body was extremely healthy and in extremely good shape. My mind was f***ed. Right? But these other people, their bodies were f***ed from heroin. So here I am. I'm the f***ing guy at 4:30 in the morning f***ing running 9 miles around the place. Doing f***ing burpees in the yard. Doing push-ups. Doing Army crawls across the f***ing grass. And then I'm in yoga. I must have looked like a f***ing lunatic. They definitely confronted me on it. They said, ’You look like a f***ing nut job. You work out more by 7:30 in the morning then we could in a week!
It's the only f***ing thing I knew how to do to keep me in some state of normalcy and as soon as I was done with that I'm f***ing out in Mars again. My mind was so f***ing far gone. I couldn't stay present. I couldn't read a f***ing paragraph in a book without forgetting what I just read. I was f***ed. The only time I felt one pointed was during meditation and in my physical exercise. So I made that my recovery base along with reading the Bhagavad Gita. It really helped me focus on my connection to God. I grew up Catholic. Everything is christian-based. The 12 steps are even christian-based. And that God just doesn't work for me. It just doesn't. You know the Gita really works for me because it was more your own psyche being your connection to God. I mean it wasn't this outer source. It's you being your own source of God.
Once you can become your own source of God other people are all God. We're all god. That's what really spoke to me.
Trauma makes your own psyche a built-in enemy. Imagine your mind as a separate entity, like another person that you're stuck with all day long. This person is small enough to sit right here on your shoulder comfortably and they
never fall off no matter what you do. They’re just stuck with you all day and all night. And all day long they’re like FUCK YOU.YOU SUCK. YOU’RE A PIECE OH SHIT. I HATE YOU. YOU HATE THIS PERSON. FUCK THIS PERSON. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. All day long. I’d want to rip that motherf***er off my shoulder and break his neck if I got stuck with somebody like that for 20 seconds. But that's how our minds are equipped to work against us. So, I understood I have a built-in enemy. My mind is telling me that every single person is a threat. What am I supposed to do? So I mostly I just lived this f***ing solitude existence for the last 10 years locked up.
I come out, every locked up guy is f***ing wanting to be out free, and I come out here, and now this is the first time I ever considered in my mind to do the right thing. So, I'll try and do the right thing with no knowledge of how to do the right thing. I'm f***ing 36 years old. I never, since I was 12 years old, had NOT committed crime. 12 years old. At 12 I was selling drugs. At 12 I was stealing cars. At 12 I was breaking into houses. I started using heroin at 16 years old. I had no f***ing idea. And now I come to this conclusion that I'm done with drugs. I ain't doing this no more. I got to do the right thing. How the f*** do you do that with no knowledge of how to? This is the first time I've come out of prison now with my mind made up. I'm definitely going to do the right thing at all cost. I'm like, I have no idea how to be a kind, loving, productive person. My life just hasn't allowed me to be that. It's not that I don't want to be. It's just my life didn't allow me. Now you take me from prison which is a hate factory and transport me to f***ing cream puff recovery community in Portland, Maine. I was like, what the f*** are these people talking about? What the f*** are ammends? I f***ing have to say sorry for everything I ever did? I got to go to these meetings every f***ing day? Every f***ing day?
But now that I was done with The Plymouth House and living in Portland, Maine I loved what I did with Maineworks. At least with the morning fire part, but then I had to go to work. I got to do this for 12 f***ing dollars an hour? And this guy has just f***ing yelled at me at a job Margo (MaineWorks founder) got me and the only reason I'm not bashing his head in with a shovel right now is because this lady Margo was just nice to me first thing in the morning. So I want her to be nice again to me tomorrow. I can't hit this guy on the head with a f***ing shovel right now because he snapped at me. That's the only thing I know how to do. Destroy everything in my path.
I want these two women to be kind to me. You know, this one woman who brings me blueberry muffins and gave me a book, that’s you Joanne, and the other one, Margo, who yells at me but I know she likes me. I want this little semblance of kindness I get around 5:30-6:00 in the morning. So, I can’t beat the fuck outta’ this person. I’m not kidding. This is seriously what was going on in my mind. I wanted people to be nice to me for once. And because I knew how good it made me feel, I'm going to learn how to do this for other people.
Because nobody should ever have to be this f***ing strong in life. Nobody. I've had mornings I wake up and say ‘How the f*** am I not going to kill myself today? How? I have no idea how I won't commit suicide or homicide today. Give me one reason, one f***ing reason. I catch a lot of depth out of little things. I always have. It can be one f***ing small reason why I would not end someone's life or blow my head off and be done with this. And when I got to Portland these little things kept happening every f***ing day. These little pieces in the morning. And it always started at MaineWorks for me. Every morning. It was an interaction with you or an interaction with Margo or with one of the other guys. Something had me hanging on every day. Human connection is really, really important for people with trauma.
I hated every single job Margo got me. But I liked how nice she was to me in the morning. And I liked how nice you were to me in the morning so I kept coming back. From there I would get out of work and go to the gym by myself. I’d go to yoga alone. I’d listen to music. I'd listen to spiritual talks. All by myself. It was like I was de -fracking machine. This don't serve me. This don't serve me. This don't serve me. I spent a lot of time in isolation but I always started my day off with you guys. It was the human connection part.
I’d go to the Eastern prom on a December morning and go plunge myself into the ocean like a f***ing lunatic and everybody walking by saying, ‘Wow. This guy’s fucked. Who's this guy? He's crying on the beach in a bathing suit in December.’ But that cold plunge would still my mind. I knew my brain was getting rewired. I don’t know how I started making these connections but I knew. Something was happening and if I'm getting emotional I know some type of disarmament is going on. And I don't know exactly what it is. Whatever it was it was good. I knew it was making me a better person. And I knew I was calming down and the war got quelled a little bit. Not all. Not even a lot. But a little. And a little was better than none. I started looking forward to things and my mind wasn’t telling me to kill myself or ‘Kill this person’. My mind was saying I really want to get down to that morning MaineWorks fire, introduce myself to everybody and maybe Joanne will tell me to get some book that I’ll read ‘cuz she’s got lots of knowledge. Maybe Margo could give me a little bit of motherly love she gives off. I haven't had that since my mother died.
I came into contact with the homeless community in Portland with Mike and other guys there and I started noticing in Mike when he’d look at me. Like wow I'm making a difference in his day. And that was the first time that kind of connection happened for me and that felt good. Okay so. Here I am, I’m comforting this guy and this guy's been through a f*** ton just like me. Just like I have, right? He's been through everything I have and he's a f***ing mess. But somehow my presence is comforting to this guy. I'm not going to change his life. Mike isn't even going to stop shooting heroin. Mike's not getting off the f***ing streets. But my presence is comforting to him. You know what I mean? And I'm not judging Mike. I don't give a f*** if Mike never stops shooting heroin. I do. But I don't. Obviously I want him to stop. But I don't care if he does. As long as my presence is comforting to Mike that's all that really matters. At the end of the day somebody’s presence comforting me, to quell my f***ing war for a moment, is all that matters. Mike's war is quelled. It might not make a difference in the day or the outcome of the day but for a moment, a split- second that war is f***ing still. And you return to a silent center of yourself. An innocent part of yourself and that's the journey with trauma. We're trying to find that innocent part of ourselves again. Before the world twist twisted us into what trauma twists you into. You know it's a return to innocence and it's a return to being childlike again before these f***ing things come in and reshape and turn you into the f***ing Joker. And that's what it was turning me into. I started getting feelings of hope. I was looking for people to guide me.
I had to ask myself, What was the time in my life that I felt the best?’ And aside from the situation and surroundings, I have to be 100% honest with you, it was prison. Why did I feel like that in prison? I was going to bed early. I was waking up early. I'm starting my day off with silence. There's nothing quieter than a cell block at 5:30 a.m. in the f***ing morning. Let me put it this way. Do you want to be the first guy to wake everybody up when you're in an environment with a bunch of lunatic animals? Prison is mostly a f*** ton of quiet time. And a ton of boredom. And that threat of violence is always looking underneath.
So I'm going to bed early. I'm waking up early. I don't have any kind of distractions. I have no phone to check text messages. I don't have a girl lying next to me. I'd have my morning coffee at my little desk in a jail cell. It’s cold and I’m staring at the wall. I feel one pointed.
So my day starts off with this meditation. And I feel good. In an hour of opening my eyes I'm eating a meal. After that I'm exercising. I'm starting my day off with push-ups - getting my body pumped. My body and my mind are becoming a cohesive unit. Then I take a little nap. I wake up. I read for 3 hours. I put the book down. I put my earbuds in and I'm listening to music.
Guys come out of prison looking like a million bucks. Not just because of the work outs. They're eating. They're reading and nourishing their minds. Whether you’re conscious or unconscious you’re making Psyche Spiritual connections within yourself when you're reduced to having nothing.
I got out and now all these people are telling me you got to write in a notebook and make 9000 amends and help everyone who comes into your past and you got to do this bleeding heart routine. And I thought to myself I don't even know if I'm a good person. Go out and help somebody? If I'm going to do that I got to be gentle. I'm not going to do it otherwise. I feel like an idiot and the whole time I've got this f***ing dread alarm going off in my body. I just wanted to kill them all. So I had to get back to what worked well for me and I had to find out my prison routine works great for me out here. The only difference is - I have to go to work. I start my day off with silence. Have my coffee. Have a healthy meal. Get my body moving first and foremost. Get that half hour a day before I hit the calamity and confusion. Where I can be present with anything that arises in me. I've had many healing experiences in my quiet time in the morning. I'm crying for no reason. I literally don't know why I'm crying. No idea what the f*** is going on. But tears are coming down. It happens in public too where I start crying for no reason and I think I must look like a crazy person. Like why is this giant tattooed 210 pound guy that could rip my head off, why is he crying. And we don't want to approach him because he'll probably kill us.
The majority of this bounce- back- to- myself has been darker than actually going through what I went through. The veil is lifted and it hits you in the heart and in the mind. And you have to come into deep intimate contact with these painful experiences again. And what exactly they did to you. You have to look at yourself through a lens of non judgement. I had to admit, Wow. I'm pretty f***ing selfish. I'm a pretty f***ed up person. My morals are fucking twisted and the way I look at the world is f***ing horrible. The way I look at people sucks. And why am I a moody f*** all the time and why do I hate everything all the time? That ends up being such a weight to carry around. When that hate gets lifted out of your heart you feel it in your body. My body feels gentle for the first time in my life and I feel like I can breathe and I'm not walking around f***ing on edge.
I can't tell you how many times earlier on this path I’d be sitting having a conversation with somebody and I'm doing the basic human stuff. I'm smiling at this person. But the whole time my mind was saying kill this person. And now I'm supposedly walking the spiritual path and I'm of God or whatever God is, right? I'm on this walk on this journey and I'm trying to learn how to be compassionate and this and that and my mind is literally saying kill this person. I'm like, this is confusing. What is going on here? I'd be sitting there meditating and I'd have these long drawn-out fantasies about how nice I'm going to be when I am enlightened and these long sexual fantasies and I’d look like I'm meditating but I'm a complete prisoner of my mind the whole time. It's confusing. It's very painful. It's more painful than the actual experience of what I went through because when I was going through that it was all based on reactions. I had to do what I had to do to survive. It's when you step back after surviving and you look back at the depth of what you've experienced. It's like, holy s*** why the f*** did I react like that? What the f*** did I put into this person's heart?
I caused my kids pain because I don't even know how to be a fucking father. He’s a teenager and I haven't seen him since he was seven or eight years old. I know what that did to me as a kid. I just did the same exact thing to my son. How the f*** do I fix that?
I firmly believe that life is a three-fold journey of resilience, wisdom and love. That's all it is. We are here to be broken. We are here to suffer. We are here to accumulate wisdom to get us out of suffering while remaining conscientious of pain and to love other suffering people and ourselves. And that's the reason we're here.
Wisdom is a gift to be passed on to people. So someone passes wisdom on to me. I put wisdom into action. Action changes behavior but it all turns to wisdom. You become calmer. You become more loving because of wisdom. A lot of power in wisdom. Our job is to teach other people wisdom. If I am teaching other people wisdom I'm loving them. And you establish that really deep connection.
Adversity of pain.That's the biggest uniter of people. Nothing will unite two people more than that. I have had numerous instances of one-time interactions with people through healing ceremony. I'll never see this person again, but they said something to me or put me on to something that stopped me in my tracks and you're forever bonded because they shared vulnerability with you and they shared pain with you. And those two things will melt through any f***ing hardness. I've seen the hardest motherf***ers, and I've been a prick myself, but when someone's vulnerable with their raw honesty, just raw f***ing vulnerability, we soften. That person is etched into you forever. They are to me anyways. And I'm a cynical prick. It is all a spiritual experience.
The things that excite me now are like Bhakti yoga. I'm on f***ing Google looking up Vedic chants. Because Vedic chants speak to me. If anyone ever told me 10 years ago that I'd be sitting in my house chanting OM with a Goldendoodle at my side I'd be like, right. I wanted to be that guy in Walpole with an eyepatch and a big scar down his face, missing teeth and just soaked in blood all day. That's what I had wanted to be. But these are the things that motivate me now. That keep me in a state of motivation. That state of motivation is so essential.
Pain gets very comfortable for people. The thing is most people don't consciously know they're doing it. I did it for years. When you're in pain you look for more painful things to mask the pain you're going through. So, maybe you're having this feeling and gone looking for heroin and now to get your next high on heroin you're looking to do robbery to make money. And now you want cheap thrills and sex. All that f***ing s*** kills you inside. People in that lifestyle and those behaviors don't feel good about themselves. So you're in this constant state of living like a barbarian and you don't know how it can be different. You might have an aunt like I had, but how the f*** do you get out of it? You have to learn to feel the pain. And to die into the abyss. The abyss is really, really terrifying. I was just kind of made for the abyss.
If anyone is reading this sees something that's stoked some curiosity in them, by all means reach out to me. Message me. If you live far away from me, make some f***ing time to come see me. Or I'll come see you. And we'll sit down as two human beings and we'll put our phones away. No distractions. We just dig. And maybe I help you. Maybe you help me. Maybe me going to help someone else really helps me. I don't have to wait to meet the Pope to have a spiritual experience.
I literally look at this, like I'm going to meet a child of God. I'm meeting someone who may have some enlightenment that I don't have. And I want that knowledge. I want that wisdom. So I've got to go on this journey. Then you get there and you have these raw moments with people and that's spiritual experience. You can have them all the time. And that's the beauty behind this journey. You can literally have these moments with people all the f***ing time. You just have to be willing to sacrifice time and be vulnerable. Let the guards down. Let the ego go. I want to sit down and just get quiet with someone in quiet scenery. Maybe I hand you off to a friend for more information. Maybe Ayahuasca speaks to you and you want to know my experience with plant medicine. And when I tell you about it I hand you off to someone who knows more and, boom. You're on another journey and that's the beauty. It's people meeting people. Connecting. Connecting. Connecting.
I had to say, I want to be f***ing better. I don't want this s*** to define me. Yeah, I went through all this f***ing horrible s*** but it's not going to kill me. I'm going to overcome it. I don't know how. I don't know how long it's going to take. And I'm dealing with all the residuals from it. I'm a f***ing lunatic. But I'm going to figure this the f*** out and it means I'm going to have to go out on a journey and meet people with ideas better than me and I have to be soft. I'm just a person that has gotten beat the fuck down. And I'm here. I had no idea what the f*** I was doing. None. And people were like ’ Try this.’ And I was like ‘Okay.’ If someone told me to bash my head on a wall three times and that would put me in a transcendent state I would need brain surgery by now. Cuz I would have done anything some people told me to do to get okay because of my pain level. I didn't want to stay the same anymore. The fear of staying the same has to outweigh the fear of change.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna talks with Arjuna about how we're going to keep recycling into the sorrow until we figure it out. Listen. I don't want to recycle here anymore. I just want to go. When I go I want to be with source. And whatever that source is I want my soul to align with it and be on a plane of love that makes sense of why I have experienced this and all other lifetimes of sorrow. And I hope this is the last one. I really do. Because this is not f***ing fun. (laughter) I'm not having a great time here. But I'm here until the bell rings.
In the Gita, Krishna describes to Arjuna that we're here to become a superior person. And the superior person isn't this beam of light. It's a beam of wisdom. How many times does Krishna mention wisdom in the Gita? He talks about wisdom. Wisdom. Wisdom. Wisdom blossoms love. Wisdom is the ultimate remover of pain. So that's what I got out of the Gita and I think my favorite part of that book is when Arjuna cries out to Krishna to reveal his form. And Krishna reveals his form. And Arjuna, he sees that he is everything. That everything is source and maybe it says to him in his mind, ‘Well you know. This might be it. We might not go anywhere. What if this is it?’ If this is it then we only get one shot at experiencing heaven here. I've already experienced hell. I want to know what heaven feels like. I start getting little snippets of it and it always ends up, is always in the form of another human being that gives it to me. So the f***ing thing that trauma did, which was to make me hate people so much...ended up being the rescuer of me. It was people. I was like, this is a f***** up lesson. The thing I hate the most is what ends up returning myself to me. Wicked ironic.
I still get that thought in my head like I f***ing hate everybody. I'm not like some f***ing yoga master here. But it goes out of my head quick. That's an ultimate lesson. Because even though that thought has never left my mind entirely, I really don't hate anybody.
We're talking about people who have addictions, violent tendencies, sexual proclivities and disconnection from other people. You don't allow people to get close to you even though you f***ing really want people to be close to you. And when I hear people saying, saying ‘ I f***ing hate people.’, I say to myself no, no, no. You love people so much it f***in hurts you. That's the truth behind it.
Trauma wants us isolated. Wants us alone. The opposite of isolation is solitude. We have to stop being isolated but we need solitude. There's a big difference in the two. You have to connect with people. You have to find your tribe.
The spiritual modality of yoga, plant medicine, Wim Hof Method, really remove the trauma very deeply from my body. And that's a journey with trauma that people have to make their own connections. It's very, very deeply embedded in our body. These traumatic experiences are not just in our subconscious mind. They go into us cellularly. They go into our muscular system. Into our skeletal system. Into everything. And you have to literally wring it out. Yoga is a good way to bring it out. Wim Hof cold water therapy is too. Not fun, but great way to wring it out. Ayahuasca. These ancient ways have been passed down for thousands of years. Meditation. Yoga breathing. Pranayama. Ayurvedic breathwork. Shamans. Going into spiritual Realms. Transcendent States. These have been passed on for thousands and thousands of years for a reason. They work.
When I wake up in the morning I say meditate, Justin. Breathe. Drink some water. Take your vitamins. Have a cup of coffee. Get quiet. Connect with some literature. On your way to work listen to a spiritual talk or two. Get your mind working right. While I'm at work, while I'm welding, I'm constantly plugging into Krishna Das. I'll look at your page and I'll see pictures of Maineworks or Margo or guys I was there with and it brings back these moments back for me. When I get out of work I'm saying to myself What is Justin going to do? I'm definitely not going to sit down on the couch and feel sorry for myself and numb myself out with whatever. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go get my endorphins pumping. I'm going to go to yoga. When I get my brain fired up I'm going to feed my brain all the natural s*** we have inside and that is what wrings the trauma out.
So it's very much in our body. It's not talked about enough. You turned me onto it, THE BODY KEEPS HE SCORE by Besser Van der Kolk, M.D. . A great book to read to understand exactly what trauma does to you on a physical level.
The average alcoholic drug addict is very highly traumatized person though and yes sometimes they are able to physically put down the drink. But if they don't address the trauma, guess what? It comes out in other areas.
For me trauma and addiction are linked but are two completely separate entities. Yes, trauma is the cause of a lot of addiction. But remove the drugs? The person is still a traumatized person.. These things always stay with you. They never go completely away. But you can remove them enough from your psyche and physical body so you can go live a productive life. But you have to literally learn the body. Learn the mind and you have to make that psyche spiritual connection. That 18 inch journey. Head to heart. It's the hardest and longest f***ing journey you'll ever walk in your life. But it's absolutely essential to healing from trauma. If you don't make that connection you're going to stay in a perpetual cycle of torture and soft torment. It's impossible to stay happy all the time. It's not ever going to happen. But the best thing it’s done for me is that I absolutely 110% know under any condition I am always okay. That's a huge moment for me. You're always okay. And you're not in the ER. You’re all stitched up. You're not in the OR anymore. You're eating ice cream with a f***ing big bandage on you. And a morphine drip (laughter). And your yoga is your morphine drip. Every time I’m feeling crazy instead of hitting the morphine drip I want to go to yoga instead. That's how my mind's working now. Or I need to go connect with nature or I need to go drink some Ayahuasca with my female
Shaman beautiful friend that I've made. She returns me to myself. Or I need to connect with you or I need to sit down and have a connection with Kelly my girlfriend and talk. We need to have good communication. That's what helps me.
So the morphine drip is no longer there. Actually, I have to have a new morphine drip. But one that makes me feel good. Has no nasty side effects. And that's what breathwork and yoga does. I can get high on my own breathing. Basically I learned how, and I was doing it naturally in my own physical body, to get high. And I don't have to go to jail. It's pretty great. I can hit all the same receptors and I don't have to pay any of the consequences for it. It's like the greatest life cheat.
To read a previous interview with Justin Downey, please see:
Have you heard sheltering in place referred to as Solitary? April 2020 Interview with Justin Downey