← The Shawn Ryan Show
Loading summary
Transcript99 lines
- [00:00]
Travis
My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big roas man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day.
- [00:14]
Joe
Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com results. Twitter terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn the place to be to be.
- [00:30]
HelloFresh Ad
Be honest, when's the last time you had a homemade meal? We get it. Between meetings, workout classes, and the kids after school sports, who's got time to cook? That's where HelloFresh comes in. No matter how busy you get, HelloFresh has everything you need to get an easy home cooked meal on the table. With flavor packed recipes like Parmesan Herb Crusted Salmon. You'll be filling your kitchen with the cozy aromas of a homemade meal in no time. So go ahead, try HelloFresh. It's homemade made eas. Learn more@hellofresh.com One of the most tragic.
- [01:02]
Travis
Events in American firefighter history I'd heard.
- [01:04]
Lewis
That my friend Lewis was missing.
- [01:06]
Travis
This is the straw that broke the camel's back and kind of sent you into the downward spiral of ptsd.
- [01:13]
Lewis
I looked down and I realized my hands were on the shoulders of one of our guys. His head should be right here, but there was no head.
- [01:21]
Travis
What eventually ended your career in the fire service?
- [01:23]
Lewis
We certainly weren't expecting any of that. Often referred to that as a death trap.
- [01:27]
Travis
When did you decide to put the bottle down?
- [01:29]
Lewis
It was something as simp as how do I want to view my world? The word is perspective.
- [01:35]
Travis
So the Sofa Superstore fire, which claimed the lives of nine firefighters and is one of the most tragic events in American firefighter history, if I'm not mistaken.
- [01:53]
Lewis
You're right.
- [01:54]
Travis
And you were a part of that and you responded to that and you mentioned that this changed your life forever. And out of all the traumatic events that you've witnessed and been a part of, this is kind of what? This is the straw that broke the camel's back and kind of sent you into the downward spiral of ptsd. And also I watched a I did a lot of research on this too, and it seemed to be a very controversial incident and a lot of lessons learned happened from it. And it seems that the men like yourself that survived it are considered legends in the community. But I wanted to before we get going on that, I kind of want to put everybody in the mindset of how, how horrific this was. So I want to roll the tape. That was your best friend on the phone and telling his wife that he loved her. And like, I really just want to set the tone on how serious and tragic this was. The day started for you at a memorial golf tournament. And I'd like to start from, from right there.
- [03:41]
Lewis
Yeah, yeah. His last words that you heard was my friend, my best friend, Louis Mulkey. And his last dying words as he was burning to death. Stuff to hear. June 18, 2007 started out as a normal day for us. We, we certainly weren't expecting any of that. We, we actually all got together. I was off duty that day, and we were having a golf tournament for another friend of ours who's a firefighter who was killed four months to the day prior in a car accident. And that was another really good friend of mine who got me, who got me the job in Charleston, actually.
- [04:28]
Travis
Really?
- [04:29]
Lewis
Yeah. He was one of, one of my other best friends. I mean, it's, it is so paying homage to him trying to raise some money for his family at a golf tournament. And we're doing what firemen do and just like, you know, what seals do when you all get together and cops do when they get together, we get drunk and we have a good time. And that's what that golf tournament was about. But by the end of the day, you heard the tapes, that's what we were all thrown into. And at the end of the golf tournament, everybody's phones kind of started ringing and we were all told, the Sofa Superstore is on fire. And we all knew that that was a horrible place to have a fire. We often referred to that as a death trap. If, if that's one of the calls we ever had to go on, because we, as firefighters, you preplan buildings, that means you find buildings in your area and it could possibly be a threat or get. Be very bad. So you had to like, kind of strategically plan how, how you would face this monster in the event that would happen.
- [05:28]
Travis
How many buildings were like that in that city?
- [05:30]
Lewis
Tons of them.
- [05:31]
Travis
Tons of them?
- [05:32]
Lewis
Yeah, I mean, they're, they're everywhere. It's just old, old furniture stores. Actually an old grocery store that was converted into a, a one story furniture warehouse. I mean, so it was a huge, like a hundred something thousand square feet. Don't quote me on the square footage, but it was a big showroom and then it had a big storage storage facility. Behind it. And that's where the fire started. So when we found out that that building was on fire, we. We all got in our cars and just went.
- [06:01]
Travis
What were you thinking on the way there?
- [06:09]
Lewis
I had heard that my friend Lewis was missing.
- [06:12]
Travis
You heard that before you even arrived?
- [06:14]
Lewis
Yeah.
- [06:15]
Travis
When you heard that it was the sofa superstore did that. Did you know it was gonna be fucking bad since. Since the. That was already pinging on everybody's radar?
- [06:27]
Lewis
Well, it's like I told you earlier, it doesn't never seems real until it's real. And seemed like another fire. But when I heard he was missing, had extra adrenaline kicked in and I drove faster. I broke through a police barricade with my vehicle. I mean, I didn't drive through it like smoking a bandit or anything. We just went around it. And the cop was like, what the fuck? And like, fuck you. I kept going. When we got there, the building had just collapsed. So I got there right when everybody had been pulled out. And my girlfriend was driving my car at the time. My firehouse was right up the street. I told her, I said, go to my. My locker in my firehouse, grab my shit and get it back to me. I gotta find out what's going on. And so this time you got hundreds of firemen on scene, man. I mean, hundreds. There's probably 300 something plus people on this scene. That night it was just a sea of red lights everywhere. And ran up to my buddy David Griffin, who was pumping, he was the Engineer on Engine 11. And I ran up to him and I said, david, what do we have? And he turned around, he said, lewis is missing. And he said, travis, we got a lot more guys in there too. We don't know how many. And I was like, in that. I mean, because now the building is down and there's just fire every fucking where. Everywhere you look it's just fire blowing. And in Charleston fire department, we didn't back out of fires. We were very cowboyish and we were very prideful of the way that we did things. And we were very, very aggressive. And this is hundreds of years of tradition finally caught us and bit us. And it cost us nine guys. And I remember hearing reports of like 19 or 20 initially is what they thought. But by the time the smoke settled, it was nine. And it was nine really good dudes. And all those dudes I knew very personally, I'd worked with every single one of them. We sat around that table breaking bread many a nights, having jokes, having laughs. You knew their families. And Lewis Just happened to be my best friend because I wasn't his best friend. He was one of those really cool dudes that had a lot of best friends, but he was my best friend. And when I started with Charleston fire, he took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. And I had a very special connection with him. And I didn't know by the end of the night, I still didn't know what lie ahead. I didn't know that I'd be the one next to his burnt corpse, sitting there looking at him in a manner I, I can try to describe, but it's gonna be hard.
- [09:06]
Travis
You did make entry. Yeah, you know, if I remember correctly, you did, you make entry and you got pulled back. Was that, is that right?
- [09:17]
Lewis
Well, we went around the delta side of the building. So when you're looking at a building, the front is alpha and then you go around clockwise. So we got to the delta side, which is square. Building would be the right side. And we go through this place, man, it was, it was just twisted steel. Look, spaghetti, Spaghetti noodles. And it was still hot. There was still a lot of fire present and. But we had guys missing. We didn't have time to not get in there. We really wanted to find these guys and I guess some of us thought that we were going to find them alive, but it's just not the case. There was, I think around 15 to 20 of us on the body recovery teams. We were all broken apart and put into five man teams. And we all came in from different parts of the building. And my five man team, we went in and it was literally, you couldn't move two or three feet and you had to stop and you had to figure out a way to get through the voids that were there. There'd be like a little hollow opening here and we'd crawl through that. And the next two seconds you're standing on what used to be the roof.
- [10:17]
Travis
So you're, you're in it at this point. And how many guys are with you?
- [10:21]
Lewis
Four other guys.
- [10:22]
Travis
And so just to paint a picture because you got really descriptive in your book about the smoke, you can't see your hand in front of your face, the heat, and. And there was nothing. And I could see how it would be easy to get disoriented and fucking lost in something like that. And you couldn't even, you couldn't even bring a hose in with you to retrace your steps to get the fuck out. And I mean, the amount of courage that takes, I mean, and it doesn't did it seem like it was even a courageous thing? Did it probably didn't even go through your fucking head.
- [11:05]
Lewis
It was just, we're going. Only thing is, is they wanted volunteers, and a lot of guys didn't raise their hand.
- [11:10]
Travis
No shit.
- [11:11]
Lewis
Very. I think, because those guys knew they didn't want what was on on the inside of that building. It's not that they're less of a firefighter.
- [11:19]
Travis
Yeah.
- [11:19]
Lewis
I think that they just knew. I don't want to fuck with that. And we're here to do whatever we got to do. But there was a select group of us that did. And I certainly, you know, often say the worst decision I ever made was going inside of that building that night. But the best decision I've ever made in my life was going inside of that fucking building that night and carry. Carrying them all home. And it didn't seem like anything courageous. It's just what needed to be done. You know, our guys are down. We got guys down. We got to do what we got to do. Let's push forward and go get it. So we didn't. We didn't have fucking air packs on our back because they were all used.
- [11:55]
Travis
Yeah.
- [11:55]
Lewis
So we're choking on smoke, and we have what we call flash hoods. Firefighters have flash hoods. And when you put your face piece on, you pull your flash hood up, and it protects the skin right here, protects your neck and your ears. So we're choking on smoke, literally gagging on black smoke, and you can't see, and you're crawling next to big flames fires, and they have ladder companies dumping water on top of us. And in a normal fire situation, you would never be operating inside of a fire when you have tower units raining water down because they're just so powerful, it could hurt you. It could injure a firefighter, blow debris on them. It could push fire on top of them and kill them. But we had no choice. We had to go in. We had to do what needed to be done. And it seemed like it took a long time to get to them. And once we started finding them, you would hear a team shout out, I got somebody. And we would do the same. I saw something silver, and it didn't look like anything we had seen up until this point because everything was just black. And then I saw something, and I went over to investigate what it was, and it was by myself, and I crawled up there on my hands and knees. I started looking at this thing, and I say it in my book. I was just turning my head like a curious Dog trying to figure out, what the fuck is this? And I realized that it was an air pack of one of our. One of our guys. And it was. We wore silver. Silver Scott air packs. And it busted open. It didn't look like an air pack. It was just like. It was like filleted open. And once I realized what it was, I had my hands. I looked down and I realized my hands were on the shoulders of one of our guys. And we wore black gear. It just looked like a pile of black, like debris. And then when I realized that, I pushed. I pushed back and I looked down and I realized these were his shoulders. That's his back, because the pack is on her back. So this. His head should be right here. But there was no head. There was nothing. It was. There was just a couple of teeth. There was no helmet. There was no skull. It was just teeth. Jesus. And I looked down at the opening. There was an opening and there's a spinal column sticking out. And that's when it got real for me. And I realized, because I'd been to calls where we had burned up kids on Christmas. I've seen burned kids. I've been to burnt people many times, but.
- [14:46]
Travis
Nothing hit like that one.
- [14:48]
Lewis
No. No. I realized right then whoever's in here is dead. Whatever account that they have on the outside, every one of them's fucking dead. And I knew Lewis was in there. And we just. We had no way to tell who was who. That's one thing when you got a dead body there that you can recognize, but when you know it's one of yours and you don't know who the fuck it is. So what we had to do is we were tasked with not moving the bodies and just trying to identify them the best way that we could without doing too much. And what the coroner was going to do after all the smoke cleared was come in and GPS them and locate where their bodies were. So that's what we did. So this one individual, Captain Billy, was a really good dude. He'd been in fire service 30 something years. He was off engine 19. And we ended up pulling his fire pants down. And his wallet was in his pants. And we. He opened it up and we saw his. His driver's license with his credit cards, man. And it was just like, God damn it. It's one thing when you're working with dead people and you have no relationship. You don't know them because it's not real. Now you go to these things and it sucks. It fucks with you from time to Time. But it's not personal. This is personal. There's no get back like we talked about. And you're just like, what the fuck do I do? So. But we got a job to do, man, and we can't sit around too long, so we got to find more of our brothers. And then we go. We go not too far away and stumble on another one. Because at this point, smoke's starting to lift a little bit more as the fire got knocked down. And we found Mark and he was. He was face down. Rolled him over, his hands were in front of his face, and it's almost like. Like he saw the flashover that happened in that building. It's not a backdraft. That's movie shit. I mean, those things happen. But flashovers happen all the time in fires. And that's when everything reaches its combustible limit at the same exact time. And everything just. All the superheated gases in the building go. And it's just a big ball of fire. And 99% of firemen that are caught in these things die because it's so quick and it's so violent. It's almost like he felt it or saw it and did like this and then turned and fell. His hands were like this. But I didn't know it was Mark. Mark was off of my truck, Ladder 5. And I had a fucking great relationship with Mark. We worked together many times. And so we rolling. You gotta think your bodies are still hot, man. You can still feel when you're touching them. I'm not wearing gloves at this point. And I had them. I would take them off from time to time, but every once in a while we'd roll a guy over and you'd have your gloves off and you could feel that heat in your hands from their gear, how hot it was. And they were fucking burnt so bad. And when I rolled Mark over, the best description I can give you is we have a plastic face piece right here that covers our eyes. And right here is usually rubber and it's black. I don't know if you've ever seen Ultrasound of a baby 3D. That's what his face looked like. It was baked into his mask. Damn. And he undid his coat, pulled his coat open. And we had metal name tags back then. And it had his name right there. And that's how we identified Mark. And we heard other teams yelling out that they were finding guys. And, you know, it sounds selfish and everything, but I was so worried about Lewis. You know, all of these guys were important to me. But this is. This is my dude.
- [18:35]
Travis
Yeah, it's your best friend.
- [18:37]
Lewis
And I don't want it to be real. And I want to hurry up and find everybody. And I'm not wishing that it was somebody else. But you can't help but in that moment to be like, please don't be my friend. Next brother we found was Brandon. My team, we go into this back storage room. It's like one of the only pieces of building that was really left intact. There was a lot of smoke damage, not a lot of fire damage. Brandon was huddled down in a corner and his body was just normal. We rolled him out of this corner and he just had a cut over his eye. And what happened is Brandon ran out of air, but he got away from the fire. But he died from smoke.
- [19:18]
Travis
Damn.
- [19:19]
Lewis
And he just looked peaceful, man. And his wedding invitations were in the mail. We're still being delivered everywhere around. And he died that night. He was actually just working for somebody else. He did a buddy shift for somebody else, and it cost him his life.
- [19:36]
Travis
Damn.
- [19:38]
Lewis
So that Brandon was. I knew we had eight at that point. And by this time it had come through that. We have nine confirmed. This is hours into the night.
- [19:47]
Travis
What's the. What was the fire completely out? Was there still smoke at this point?
- [19:53]
Lewis
The smoke was. Smoke was still there, but it was nothing like it was. I mean, it was. We were in there for hours. So the whole fucking building came down and there was really nowhere for the smoke to go except into the atmosphere. Part of the showroom was still. Still there. But after bulk of the fire was knocked down because you got to think fire was in all these different little pockets where the collapses were. And so once those were done, man, all the smoke pretty much dissipated. And that's why I think it took us so long to start finding guys, is because there was so much smoke. I really think we probably crawled over them a couple times, possibly. I just didn't know it. So now I know we have eight. And some guys were in there with Brandon. And I love Brandon too, man. And just like, I want to spend some time with him, do whatever we need to do, but I gotta find Lewis. You know that limousine company you talked about that I owned? I drove for Lewis's wedding. We had a lot of fucking fun together. Together, man. And he. This is actually the night after his anniversary. He lived 11 year and 11 day after his anniversary. So I put my helmet on and I got a job to do, man. And I was actually in a part of the building where you could stand up and I start walking out and man, I probably made it 10 or 15ft. And I walked through what seemed to be a doorway. I'm having to relive this because it's. Describe it to you. And. And when I did, as soon as I cleared that doorway, I looked to my left and he was laying right there. So I knew it was him just by looking at his skull, you know, I didn't need confirmation. I knew because he had to. He had a distinct face. And even when the, when his skin is baked off of somebody's face, you can still recognize them. And it's a sick thing to say, but I've witnessed that. And Lewis was on his back, man, and his left leg was underneath his right, his right leg was straight out and there was a piece of big ass piece of steel across it. And we ended up having to dig that out. But his arms were sticking up in the air and his fucking sleeves were burned off. His fire coat, all the skin was burned off of him and just his arm bones were sticking up his radius and ulna. His hands were burned off and his head was. His head was back and his eyeballs were burned out. Fucking skin was burned off of his face and his mouth was wide open. And I just got on my knees next to him, told him how much I loved him.
- [22:37]
Travis
What eventually ended your career in the fire service?
- [22:40]
Lewis
So it was a culmination of a lot of things building up to one major incident. So you say I got in a fight. I ended up going hands on with a lot of guys in the department over the course of two and a half years. And it's not something I'm proud of. I'm actually very embarrassed about it. But it happened and it needs to be talked about because the reason I talk about it is you can see a shift in people's behavior. Like we're family and when you see somebody acting differently, something is wrong. And nobody ever pulled me to the side to help me. Nobody ever pulled me to the side to try to figure out what was going on. What happened was this new behavior that I was taking on was just becoming normal. At the funeral for one of our guys, I got into a physical altercation on the bus. We had a bunch of buses brought in because the funerals were so big. We couldn't take everybody's cars. So they had to bring families on buses and firemen mixed with families. And I was on a bus with some firemen and some families, some young children, some old people. And something was said to another fireman. And he threw his hat at me. And kind of joking around, but kind of not. I just stood up and slapped him and slapped him into the seat, the empty seat. And everybody witnessed it.
- [23:53]
Travis
Yeah.
- [23:53]
Lewis
And this is somebody I'm supposedly love, you know, and protect. And I just did that in that event. Everybody got up, they left the bus, and I was kind of alone on the bus after that. And then after that was more of the same. I got into physical altercations at the training facility where I assaulted one of our guys that needed help. He fell down, and he was having flashbacks of the fire. He was there that night, too, and he was screaming all of our dead guys names. And I picked him up and started slamming him into the wall with all of his gear. And I was like, knock it off. And when I did, one of the training instructors came over and grabbed me and turned me around. And when he did, I threw him into the wall and told him, you put your fucking hands on me, I'll kill you. And then we had an academy instructor standing right there, and I looked at him and I threatened to throw him out of a window. And that was accepted. And it swept under the rug. And then again behind a grocery store. Training one day, I slapped one of our other guys right in the face. Because he just came close to me and said something, and I just lashed out and hit him. And at this time, I was drinking a lot, though. You know, I was drinking. I was coming to work drunk and everything. It wasn't acceptable. It's embarrassing, man. But nobody. It was just not an issue to anybody else. And it was just kind of. All this was on my plate for me to deal with and to figure it out. And this is what happens to these cops and these firemen out there. They end up losing their jobs or hurting somebody else because of all the shit that they're going through, and they bring it to work. And that's what I was doing. I had no outlet for it. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was. I came to work one day, my house, Engine 10, Ladder 5. And we had a new guy in our house. And he put his coffee cup on our dead guy's monument. And it pissed me off. I went over there and I grabbed it and I shattered it on the ground. And I opened the door and told him, if he wants his cup, it's in a million pieces, and if he does it again, I'll fucking kill him. And those are the words that I use. And that's how it truly felt.
- [25:42]
Travis
Yeah.
- [25:43]
Lewis
And when I said that, one of my other good friends said, why are you being such an asshole? And when he did, I took that as him defending the new guy's actions and not defending our guy's honor.
- [25:54]
Travis
Yeah.
- [25:55]
Lewis
And I told him, if he says another word to me, I'll kill him, too, in a minute. And he said something to me. And at that time, a bomb was lit inside of me, and the fuse was about that fucking short. And when he said what he said, it's like somebody poured gasoline on that fuse. And then the bomb ignited. And to this day, I can't tell you what happened because I completely lost it. And I blacked out. I just remember being outside with my captain shaking me, and I'm crying, and he just pretty much told me that I had assaulted my entire firehouse. And the cops were called, and they were on the way to arrest me.
- [26:32]
Travis
Do they offer any help at all, the department?
- [26:36]
Lewis
Man, I can't. So our department did the best they could with what we had at the time. We'd never. In the fire service. There had been other incidents, but not like this magnitude, I guess. So it was kind of like a free fall to try to figure out the best way to help guys. And they came up with some counselors really quickly. I don't know the timeline on it, but they wanted guys, hey, man, we got these counselors for y'all go talk to. And of course, me being alpha male like I am, I'm like them. I was like these. They've never looked at their friends like we have. They've never held dead babies in their arms. They've read books. Who the are they to tell us how to feel and how to be? Yeah, that was the problem. Because looking back, that was the worst thing I could have ever done. I hurt myself with that mentality. And I hurt other guys around me because I would tell them to. If you go talk to anybody, you're a. And that's one of the biggest regrets I have, because I talk about being a coward. And it's not easy to say that. That's me being a coward. That's me being too manly, too macho, and having too much of a fucking ego to accept the help that is available to us. We had people, licensed professionals, who would listen to us. Maybe had I listened to them, I wouldn't have fucking shoved a gun down my throat and pulled the fucking trigger. Maybe if I listened to them, I wouldn't have burned my entire fucking inner circle down to the ground. You Know, But I wouldn't even give it a chance because I was too macho. The culture that I had been exposed to my entire life, that's what I speak on now. I speak about how we're killing each other with this suck it up mentality. Because it's. Yeah, I understand it. Suck it up. We have to deal with certain things, but there's nothing wrong with a suck it up while we're doing this. We got a job to do. Let's go get our guys, and when we come back, if it. If it bothers you, let's talk about it. Because there's nothing wrong with me and you being completely human and not being okay. It's okay to not be okay. And that's what I'm trying to instill. And when I speak at conferences and everything, it's okay. Doesn't make you less of a man. Fuck, it makes you more of a man. It's worth me doing that. If it reaches one fucking person in our community or even outside, and it helps them become a better mother, father, husband, wife, child, whatever. If it helps them realize that they need help and they can go get the help they want, then it. I'll relive it. Because that's what we do. Yeah, we lift people up. We don't help bring them down. And I got caught in this vicious cycle of bringing people down because I was so up for so long when my whole world crumbled down on top of me. Right after that, when everything just started. I mean, everything just started eating around me. I fell into the victim mindset. And it was the whole, why me? Why me? Why me? Why have I been exposed to all this? Why have I experienced this? I got scared to go to fucking sleep at night. I was. I would cry alone, away from my wife. I would be in another room crying because I was afraid to go to fucking sleep because of what was coming for me in the middle of the night. I knew it.
- [29:40]
Travis
Yeah.
- [29:41]
Lewis
And I would hide that. And I'm not ashamed of that anymore.
- [29:45]
Travis
How long did it take you to be able to talk about that?
- [29:51]
Lewis
Long time. Many years. To talk about it the way that I talk about it now. Long time. Fucking decade. I tried. I tried later on in life to talk about it. And I'd shut down every time. Just couldn't do it. But I realized at some point that my experiences may help other people too. And by me speaking about it, it may help me as well. And that it did. And that's why I do know. I always say, when you're in a place that makes you sick. You can't get better. It's like a cancer patient testing cigarettes for Marlboro or whoever. You're only going to get sicker. I tried to stay. I hung on tooth and nail, man. But I realized when I realized I had problems and something needed to change. When I finally. Because people ask me, what made you reach out for help? And it was me sitting in my living room, dry, firing a weapon in my mouth while I'm choking on the weapon with the barrel down my throat with slobber and drool all over it, my tears running down my face, and a bottle of whiskey next to me. And then I load it, and then I go to pull the trigger, and I stop right where I thought it would go off. And luckily I stopped prior to it going off. And I knew right then I needed help. So I got the help. But it wasn't in time. But, yes, to answer your question, when I got away from the fire department, things started drastically changing for me. The anxiety I always had, the nightmare shit, I still do. But that. That rage inside of you, it calms. So getting away from there was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I didn't want to leave like that. I wanted to stay on the job 30 years. I wanted to be. I wanted to retire. I wanted do the right thing for my guys, ride that rig for them. But it wasn't in the cards for me. So I got away from there for a long time, and now I'm back. And now I do a lot of work with fire departments, police departments, But I'm better now, and I'm. I'm with them at a different capacity now, you know, so I'm not completely immersed in it all the time. I can step away from it.
- [32:00]
Travis
Yeah.
- [32:00]
Lewis
Yeah.
- [32:01]
Travis
When did you decide to put the bottle down?
- [32:05]
Lewis
That's the day after our wedding in 2012.
- [32:09]
Travis
Oh, shit.
- [32:10]
Lewis
Yeah, man. I got so fucked up at our wedding that my poor wife, she had to eat cold grits with the cab driver that took us to our hotel because her husband was passed out upstairs.
- [32:21]
Travis
Oh, shit.
- [32:22]
Lewis
Yeah. A great first night together.
- [32:25]
Travis
Oh, shit.
- [32:27]
Lewis
But I had been thinking about it for a while. That was just for me. That was just the thing. I woke up the next morning, I said, man, I don't ever want to touch this stuff again. And I haven't.
- [32:38]
Travis
Cold turkey, done.
- [32:39]
Lewis
Yeah. I looked at it, and I started looking at if I'm ever going to get better, it's going to. It's going to be a long road of hoe. But I need to look at the things I can control right now that are not helping me. And the biggest one that stuck out to me was alcohol. It didn't add any positive thing in my life. Nothing.
- [32:56]
Travis
Yeah.
- [32:57]
Lewis
Everything that it offered me was negative. So I was like, dude, just gotta go.
- [33:00]
Travis
Yeah.
- [33:01]
Lewis
So I just. I quit cold turkey right then.
- [33:05]
Travis
That's. That's not easy to do.
- [33:08]
Lewis
No, but it's. At first. You know, the hardest part about it is now being the sober guy around all the people that are drinking.
- [33:15]
Travis
Yeah.
- [33:15]
Lewis
And you're sitting there when you. When you don't want to be there. Like you talk about in your social anxiety posts. I get it.
- [33:22]
Travis
Yeah.
- [33:22]
Lewis
I don't want to fucking be here, but I have to put on this smile. And that doesn't mean I'm not contemplating fucking everybody up in this room, you know? But it's just something I've had to learn to accept and deal with, and I'd rather have that than going back home with that bottle and putting myself in a position and not be here anymore.
- [33:42]
Travis
Yeah. Well, for. For everybody that's listening who is from, you know, the fire service or military police who's fucking drowning themselves in a bottle right now, and there' of them. I mean, how fast after you quit drinking did. How fast did that acceleration start to get you into a better mental state? And. And I'm sure your business started taking off, too, at that point.
- [34:10]
Lewis
Well, honestly, I'd love to tell you it was lightning fast, but it wasn't. It was a culmination of things because I was so fucked up at the biggest hurdle I had yet to face was ownership and acceptance of everything, ma'am. And I. I always was asking why, and it was. I became the victim of, like, this only happens to me. Why me? My life is in such a horrible spot. Even though I wasn't drinking, I still had that mentality. And that's never who I was prior to all of this. I was very positive, upbeat guy. But this thing does something to you. It rewires your brain, and you have to be your own surgeon and go in and reconfigure the wire. It took years of me going in and trying to rewire until I finally fixed it. And it wasn't until last year when I realized what it was. It was something as simple as how the word is perspective. Something as simple as perspective. How do I want to view my world? Do I want to look at it through this victim feeling bad, horrible, fucking poor poor me lens. Or do I want to look at it from a standpoint of look, you have this beautiful life. You have these horrible experiences, yes, but you can do something with them for the greater good and you can make a positive impact on people with what you have experienced. And so I chose that. And the second I chose that, it was like a light switch.
- [35:34]
Travis
Well, how the fuck did that come to you?
- [35:37]
Lewis
It's funny you asked that. It came to me sitting in my car with a gun in my hand, ready to blow my brains out for the second time.
- [35:42]
Travis
No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this, please, like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and.
- [35:58]
Joe
Spotify Podcasts Hi, I'm Joe Salsihai, host of the Stacking Benjamins podcast. Every week we talk to experts about saving, investing, personal finance, trends, crypto. Can't do it.
- [36:08]
Lewis
You could have done all that research.
- [36:10]
Travis
All the bread crumbs and thought, this.
- [36:11]
Lewis
Company'S never going bankrupt.
- [36:13]
Joe
Foiled again. You never knew personal finance could be this fun. Throwing down the gauntlet.
- [36:18]
Travis
I'm bringing it today. I'm only going to be off by six figures instead of seven.
- [36:23]
Joe
Every boy has a dream, Doc.
- [36:25]
Lewis
Every boy has a dream for sure.
- [36:26]
Joe
Stacking Benjamins. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.