Transcription of Shawn McLaughlin for the show Gratitude in Action #167
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio. Show number 167. Airing for the first time on Sunday, November 23rd 2014. Today we’re speaking about gratitude in action. Are you grateful for the life you have? Maintaining gratitude despite sometimes seemingly insurmountable difficulties is an active process.
Today we speak with Shawn McLaughlin about his personal experience as outlined in Maine Magazine about living gratefully and with author Barb Smith about the ways in which she practices this process daily. Thank you for joining us. As listeners of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour know, it is always my great pleasure to spend time with people that I interact with on a regular basis but have more depth to their story than people might realize.
One of these individuals is Shawn McLaughlin who is someone that I worked with at 75 Market Street. Shawn McLaughlin is the manager of a sober house in Portland. He also volunteers at Preble Street. Is an A sponsor to many and speaks frequently about his struggle with addiction for local organizations here in Portland and in Boston where he is from.
Most importantly, I think Shawn has really become quite a member of the 75 Market Street family and works on the sales team, does a great job and really seems to balance a lot of things. It’s a pleasure to have you in today, Shawn.
Shawn: Thank you so much, I’m supposed to be here.
Lisa: Your story is an interesting one because you quietly dealt with some issues for a long long time before you said “Okay. You know what, this isn’t working for me and I need to do things differently.” To all, I don’t know, to all outside appearances. You didn’t have any problems. In fact everybody thought you were doing great.
Shawn: Yeah. My fears and insecurities were there long before I picked up a drink or a drug. Drugs and alcohol while it was medicinal for me really right from the beginning, it was something that helped me to face the things that I wasn’t able to without them. It end up manifesting the fear and insecurity and manifesting itself with addiction later on down the road.
Yeah, it was something that was always there. I always had that feeling that I was searching for happiness in all of these places outside because I knew that internally I was lacking something.
Lisa: You and I had the chance to talk about your story for the November issue of Maine Magazine. You were raised in Medford?
Shawn: I was.
Lisa: You have an older sister named Erin, who is a nurse.
Shawn: Yeah.
Lisa: A mother and father for, who knew each other for 25 years. By your report, you had it all. You stand out Lacrosse and baseball player. You went to prep school in your hometown area. You were aiming for the stars. Tell me a little bit about what that was like growing up.
Shawn: I was fortunate, I had a great family. My mother, my past marriage is an example to me of what I would like to have in my life. My sister is great, she is a nurse. My father is a court officer. Even my extended family is great. I was very blessed. I went to private school, I had everything I ever wanted, I really did.
I did have some success. My mother, my mother’s sickness, my mother got cancer when I was probably 13 years old. Things change for me after that. The reason why I think that I was so maybe successful if you will or looked at so from the outside was because that was the only thing that I cared about.
That’s what drove me. I made … The perception I had of myself was based entirely on what everybody else thought. I would do anything to keep up appearances and to impress people because inside being I don’t know, I was searching for something to fill that void. I guess you could say. After my mother ended up being in remission.
Her and I had this bond, we had this amazing relationship. We were super close and not until 15 years later when things came back to her and she got sick again did that change. In the meantime, I continue to do that. I think in a way that success that I had didn’t hinder me but it stopped me from I don’t know if you want to say hitting bottom or being forced to look at my motives and my intentions.
Because I surrounded myself with the people that I like, would co-sign if you will of the stuff that I was doing. I surrounded myself with industries where it was not only acceptable to do what I was doing but actually would make you succeed. I was in an industry where it’s all about looks and appearances and parties and events and drinking and drug use and something that’s not necessarily frowned upon.
It was like the glits and the glam. That’s like the guy that I became even though deep down I would tell you that I was really never that person. As I had more and more success, I became more and more uncomfortable with who I was becoming which led to just more drinking and drug use, afraid to deal with those failures.
Lisa: Why was it so important because it sounds like this started quite early. Why was it so important to have people regard you in a certain way. What was the driver for that?
Shawn: I don’t know, to be honest with you. It’s something that I still struggle with today. I really, for whatever reason, I would call it a spirit normality. I would say that I spiritually was looking for something where I was missing something and I didn’t know what it was and I tried a lot of other things.
It wasn’t just what people thought of me. It was [inaudible 00:08:16] with the parents, whether that’s going to the gym five times a day or taking steroids, whether it’s I need a different girlfriend and it’s her fault or I need a new car, I need a new … I was just, I’m constantly searching for these things that are going to give me that inner peace that I think that I need or that I’m missing.
As I check those off my list, I’d get in a new car and said to myself and say that didn’t really do it and then what else can I do. Looking back, I don’t think that I was ever really even happy. Maybe as a kid but other than that, I feel like my life was trying to collect things and put myself in situations to distract me from the fact that I was unhappy.
For me, I guess my answer to that question would be that it was, I was, I had a spirituality. I was spiritually sick. For me the only happiness was ever going to come from inside. That was just something that I didn’t know about and I probably wouldn’t have been interested in even taking that path at that time.
Drugs and alcohol ended up being something that brought me down and also brought me to the spiritual solution that most things or not many other things would bring me to. For that, I’m grateful for that as well.
Lisa: After high school, you went on to college and you studied criminal justice?
Shawn: Yup.
Lisa: You went to work for the Sheriff’s office.
Shawn: I did.
Lisa: You rose in the ranks. They actually had you doing some special ops work and then your mom got sick and it was a very strange and freak thing because she had been in remission from her, she had neuroblastoma. She’d been in remission from that. She was going in for a procedure to get her ready for, it was more of a cosmetic procedure really to get her ready for your sister’s wedding.
Shawn: Yeah. Yeah. She was … My sister was getting married and she had, my mother had some vision problems from where her incision line was and she went in to get, I guess what would be described as a mini face lift and I went with her at [Mass General 00:10:42] I remember the day vividly. I remember the room. It was funny.
A few years later I ended up there for something completely different and I was looking around the room and they brought me in the same actual office and everything. I said this flashbacks about to … It was definitely a moment that I’ll remember. We went in and she had this procedure that took all of five minutes, I held her hand, I was in the room, sitting next to her, didn’t seem like a big deal.
We went home, went to the wedding which is great a couple weeks later. Not too long after that, she just had some irritation in her head and it looked like kind of like a rash and where that was around the incision line, we’re sensitive to that. She went into the hospital and she had this staph infection.
We went in for like a quick check up and ended up taking her by ambulance and she had emergency surgery that night. At the time, it was thank God that happened that we caught it. She went to [inaudible 00:11:50] rehab for a few weeks. Came home and we’re pretty grateful that the caught is so early and then she went back for a check up a few weeks later to make sure that everything was still gone and it was back again just as bad as it was before.
They tried a different surgery. Then it didn’t really go away and the third time, they tried a more invasive surgery and then that would continue for the better part of two and a half years where it was a trick for a little bit she was on. Then it was, the surgeries got more and more invasive, she was home less and less. She was better for a less period in between.
Things just got really bad. She went through a lot of pain. It was difficult to see her and my father go through that. For me personally on my end, it was something that I used as an excuse to just continue what I was doing and even further it even more. I would like to say that I was there for my family and I stepped up and I tried to take care of my father and my mother, but that wasn’t really the reality.
I was already, I was definitely trying to escape at that point and I was unable to be accountable. I was unable to be dependent on, relied on, even when I was there, even when I was in the hospital, even when I was with my family, I wasn’t really there, I wasn’t really present.
Again it was, I was really concerned about myself, I was selfish, that was the biggest problem that I had. My mother is sick and my father has been with her since he was 13 years old and in my head I’m worried about for me and I’m losing my mother and I’m going through this. I really did. That’s the way that I looked at things at the time. I felt bad for myself over it.
Lisa: You weren’t really the person that ever took pills or drank a lot and you weren’t really the sort who parted, you were always very careful about your body and what went into it, until you hit a certain point and then you just gave in.
Shawn: Yeah. I was an athlete in high school. I drank like some kids do in high school. I guess you’re underage so it’s probably not normal. I drank a little bit in high school, college a little bit more. I don’t know. My mother was super protective of me and she had me I guess afraid moment anything else.
It was just drugs weren’t something that I was going to do. As people gravitated towards that in high school, certainly in college, I stayed clear. Even though I was in those environments, at the parties, at the night clubs, at the bars, that was just something I didn’t do and people didn’t really asked me to.
They knew that that was my stance and they respected it, and I respected them. I remember it as I got more and more uncomfortable with myself and uncomfortable with the situation with my mother and again I was letting it affect work and I was letting it affect my focus and it’s funny. I do remember specifically the night that I was, I’m with my friends and we’re getting ready to go into Boston.
I made a conscious decision to say, you know what, I don’t even really care anymore. I don’t know, the reason why I think I held off for long or that I didn’t do anything was because maybe deep down I knew that it wasn’t going to be good for me. That I wasn’t going to be able to handle.
I’m a guy that if I start going to gym I’m going to go five times a day and dedicate my whole life to it and that’s the way that I take things on. I think maybe I always deep down knew that if I was to go down that road, that I would do the same thing. Ultimately, that’s right. I remember specifically that night giving in or whatever, whatever if you will. That open doors for me that I wasn’t able to close for the next better part of seven years.
Lisa: Here on Love Maine Radio, we’ve long recognized the link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the topic is Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
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Consider this scenario that a lot of us have gone through or that you may be going through right now. You have money to support yourself and your family but it’s not always there at the right time or you don’t believe that you can access it, that happened to me recently and also in a big way in 2008.
Like you I have experienced these financial highs and lows. It feels as though you’re on some kind of a strange roller coaster. Then you’re constantly wrestling with what you want versus what you need. If you got bills and really want to pay them off, you’re living in the past, so you can move forward.
Finding peace in the middle of our culture can make a difficult to make good financial decisions, especially if you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. The first step is to stop and breathe, look around, walk around, talk to people. Trade and commerce are going to happen, money is what makes it easier. Like Shepard Financial on Facebook and we will help you evolve with your money peacefully.
Male: Securities offered through LPL Financial, member of FINRA/SIPC. Investment advice offered through Flagship Harbor Advisers. A registered investment adviser. Flagship Harbor Advisers and Shepard Financial are separate entities from LPL Financial. Love Maine Radio was brought to you by Bangor Savings Bank.
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Lisa: You went into 12-step program.
Shawn: I did.
Lisa: You did it twice.
Shawn: I did. Yeah.
Lisa: What was the first rock bottom?
Shawn: My, ultimately my drug use just came to the point where I think another thing that extended it for me was that I could afford it for a while, realistically that’s pretty much all it was. I would look at people, once I knew that I had a problem, I start going to meetings and I would look at other people there and I would compare myself to them and I would have a suit on, and a car on the parking lot, a job, a house and a girlfriend and a dog.
I would tell myself that although I know that what I’m doing isn’t normal, isn’t right and something needs to change. I’m not like these people. I guess I took a, I switch jobs because I thought that the liquor was the problem so I started working for a different company and we ended up, the company ended up closing and for the first time in a while I wasn’t making a big money.
I was home a lot more in front of my girlfriend and my family and they saw what was going on. Ultimately everything just came crashing down as far as finances and my health and my relationships with people. I was lucky enough to have a friend that had, had been through something similar and went to this 12-step treat in New Hampshire.
Suggested that I go there. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into when I went there, I wasn’t really familiar with 12-step program other than the meetings that I went to which to be honest where I’m from aren’t really based around the 12-steps. They have them on the wall and they talk about here and there but it’s not really what they do.
I went to the place in New Hampshire and that was the first time that I was exposed to a 12-step program where they reveal to me that I was the problem. That it wasn’t drugs and alcohol, someone actually sat in front of me and told me that much like myself, they at a certain point were drinking and doing drugs every day and then they stopped and their life got worse.
That’s when I sat up and I said “Well, you can’t say that stuff. Someone is going to beat you up in the parking lot if you say something like that.” In Boston, meaning. In reality that was my experience and I heard someone say that to me. Because that was my experience. I tried to not drink and to not pick up drugs and I did for a while and like I said I didn’t get better, I got worse.
Maybe I got better, all the ways that it looks like on the outside. I have a little bit more money obviously I’m not spending $1,000 a day. I looked a little bit better because I’m sleeping. People at work think that I’m great because I’m working 18 hours a day so like some things getting a little bit better just if you’re not doing drugs constantly ironically enough.
Where it counts, on my heart, in my head, I knew that I was getting worse, it was only a matter of time. This was the first time that I was exposed to that, when I was in New Hampshire and I’d like to sit down and say that ever since then things have been great for me and that wasn’t, that wasn’t my experience.
Unfortunately for me, I did what I’ve always done my whole life. What that is is I sacrificed any long-term happiness for that short-term pleasure again. I was willing to do anything or go to any length until I got some things back and then things changed for me. When I went there originally, I had nothing and my relationships were terrible and I had no job.
My life was a mess. Then all of a sudden, I’m given another great job and people like me again and my girlfriend trust me again and I feel a little bit better now. All of a sudden the things that I’m willing to do aren’t really the same thing as that I’m willing to do. I need to do 12-step work and I need to live this life but I need to do it as much as a smart educated guy like myself needs to do, which is a little bit less than everybody else.
Lisa: You hit that bottom, you went back to the 12-step program. This time you really believe that okay. I’ve got to do something because what I’ve been doing doesn’t, isn’t working for me. You stayed there, you really started to work more at this process. They asked you to stay on at the 12-step program. Then when you were done, they said why don’t you go to Portland.
Shawn: Yeah.
Lisa: That’s how you ended up here.
Shawn: It is. Yeah.
Lisa: Which is about two years ago?
Shawn: Yeah. Just about a year and a half yeah.
Lisa: You’ve been working since then. You worked, first you stayed in the halfway house.
Shawn: Yup.
Lisa: Then you were asked to manage the halfway house. With this understanding that you’re still actively involved in your own.
Shawn: Yeah. Absolutely.
Lisa: Sobriety.
Shawn: Yeah. I would like to say I went back to the place in New Hampshire with this better outlook and the reality is that I just tried it my way and didn’t work. I can’t really take all the credit for going back and doing it differently. I guess I did but it was because at this point I had tried everything else.
I didn’t really have a life to stand on to go back there and say I’m willing to do it completely 100% your way this time because my experience showed me that my way brings me back there. I was ready to do whatever it took to take the suggestions and what that look like was to stay there for a few extra months.
I was in New Hampshire for three months and then [inaudible 00:24:43] working on myself and trying to be maximum help to others. Part of that program, when you stay that longer is you’re clearly still working on your own issues and you’re in early sobriety but it’s an opportunity to help the new guy show people around, just be there for other people.
In a way that I never really was. It was already at that point, a feeling of usefulness that I hadn’t had in a long time. I made a few men’s trips while I was up there back to Boston and I come back up. That experience was crazy and another thing that I was unwilling to do the first time.
Lisa: Men trip would be to go make a [inaudible 00:25:27]
Shawn: Part of what we do is we make a list of all people that we’ve harmed and we become [inaudible 00:25:33] then we go and do so. Which is a big part of what the program is all about. That was something that I came right up to that point the first time. That’s when I started to hit the breaks a little bit.
You’re expecting me to go over to these people that think a lot of me that I might be working for in the future and tell them about things that I’ve done that they don’t even know about. I said this time let’s do it, I started doing some of the more difficult ones that I didn’t want to do.
That’s, again another thing, things started changing for me. Having some amazing experiences through that, positive, negative. They never went the way that you thought they were going to go. Again I’m willing and I’m doing what they’re asking me to do yet now I’m ready to go back to Boston and then comes the end of June.
They suggest that I go to Portland Maine. Now I hit that thing again where I got this now, I can take it from here, I’m glad I stayed longer than the first time but now I can take my will back. Now I can go back to my job, my career and not go to Portland Maine. Which when I picture Portland Maine in my head. It was the woods and a lot of cabin.
Lisa: It gets better because you were, it was the summer time in Maine and the room that wasn’t air-conditioned. [crosstalk 00:27:05] you had a room mate.
Shawn: I did. Something like two feet away from me.
Lisa: They expect you also to volunteer [crosstalk 00:27:13] you begin work at Preble Street.
Shawn: I did. Yes.
Lisa: Where it’s a whole other world.
Shawn: It is. I’ve volunteered down there. Kicking and screaming to be honest with you. When I finally said okay. I’ll go to Portland. Now for me that looks like go on the beach everyday and just relaxing and again, I keep constantly hitting those. Yes, I’ll do that but now here’s the next thing I’m not going to do.
For me that was volunteer where I can, and ultimately, I ended up going down to Preble Street and started volunteering down there. Honestly that place and the people there change my life. I’m volunteering down there. We needed to get a job [inaudible 00:28:02], Sue Owen who’s the kitchens manager down there approached me one day and said what are you doing for work?
She offered me a position down there, like a full time person in the kitchen which is [inaudible 00:28:16] cooking breakfast and cleaning the tables off, and just doing whatever needs to be done really. I remember looking at the application. Taking it home and thinking part of this whole program is to get out of my own way and the right things.
If I’m just doing what I’m supposed to be doing which I felt like I was at that point maybe reluctantly but I was doing it. The next right thing will be revealed to me. What’s the next right thing I’m supposed to do. I would pray about it. I would meditate on it and then I’m handed a job application by someone.
For me to look at that and say that this is the one I’m supposed to be doing would be lying to myself. I took the job at Preble Street and I start working there everyday and just the experiences down there with the clients and with the people. I’ve never been in environment where people went to work everyday to help other people and they wanted to be there.
They made a difference and see some of the gratitude on people’s faces that the way I looked at things previously, I wouldn’t look at them as people that should have been grateful for anything. It’s just me, we look at things differently. Day in and day out. Yeah. I’m going back to my tiny room with no air conditioner and a room mate and house rules and all the stuff that I want to do.
Then every single day I would go to work and see things for how they really are and realize how blessed I am and how grateful I am to be there. I say it and it’s not a joke at all, I mean it completely, that became the best job I ever had. I worked there for the better part of the year, until a few months ago.
The relationships that I formed down there are ones that I’ll keep forever. Sue Owens become one of the most important people in my life. I talk to her daily, her husband, the other people that I’ve met down there or people that have helped me out more than I’ll ever help out anybody that I work with.
All of a sudden, as I started doing that, I started finding myself being around the house more and guys have coming to me for help and all of a sudden the guys that were at that sober house that I moved into when I moved in were gone and I was the senior guy. I had been there for nine months and then when new kids coming in a months sober, that just wanted to go to beach everyday and refuse to volunteer.
I looked at them and I was wow, I know where you’re coming from. I know you don’t want to be up here, I know you want to be in Boston. Trust me, and I would bring them down to Preble Street with me and introduce them to everybody and let them, see them be useful and helpful to other people for the first time and [inaudible 00:31:01] see the looks on their faces and have the experiences of seeing somebody else start to get better is what really ultimately I think changed the way I look at things.
Lisa: You were asked to become the co-manager at this new house that was being opened up by the 12-step retreat out of New Hampshire?
Shawn: Yup.
Lisa: Which is where you are now.
Shawn: Yeah.
Lisa: By day you work here at Maine Magazine, Old Port Magazine. By night you are with this group of men, ages 19 to 50 something.
Shawn: Yeah.
Lisa: All of them are in various stages of sobriety just like you. You continue to work at Preble Street. You also have spent time working with Share Our Strength with a friend that you knew from Medford, John Williams.
Shawn: Yup.
Lisa: You’re, this feels all still very new to you.
Shawn: It does. Yeah, I actually moved in there. Now again I come up on this, I’m coming up, a year or so ago, what am I going to do next. Am I going back home? Then I’m asked to manage this house that they’re opening, this new house. Again there it is. The next right thing is revealed to me. I take the position and I move into the house.
I just started trying to put myself out there and help other people and all of a sudden, all of these opportunities to be helpful came up. Like you said John Woods who’s a family, he’s a friend, he’s a mentor. I started working with him on a couple different things for Share our Strength and he ultimately gave me an introduction to the people here at magazine.
Again it’s just another example of my life today. Once I started to just focus on trying to be helpful to other people and do what I can. The things that I need have just seem to be provided for me. I find myself in a better situation than I ever could have navigated for myself. Because the reality is once I take that control back and I tried to put things together, the way that I need them to be together, it doesn’t go well.
To say that the things that I have in my life today, how grateful I am for exactly where I am. I think I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be for the first time ever. Professionally at the house that I’m at in Maine, ironically enough. The love that has been shown to me by the state, the people here, the people at Preble Street.
The people here at 75 Market, the people that I interact with everyday is something that I’m just overflowing with gratitude for, honestly.
Lisa: Well, your story is one that I know is to be continued, I know this is one that people are going to be interested and continuing to watch, you’re out in the community, you’re sharing your story, you’re a sponsor for various people who are going through sobriety or working at the sober house. You’re really willing to share. You have already said to me, I don’t have the answers. You’re not coming out there as somebody who has achieved sobriety.
Shawn: No.
Lisa: You’re somebody who is in the process.
Shawn: Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m a work in progress. I think I sit here with 18 months sober which is relatively early sobriety, that’s not the amazing thing. The amazing thing for me is I say that and I’m relatively happy every day. It’s not because it’s nice overall because I have a lot of money or because I have a nice car or because my girlfriend was nice to me or any of that stuff.
It’s because I do what I have to do today to maintain that internal happiness. To maintain that spiritual condition and what that looks like is being helpful to the guys at my house and coming to work and working hard and trying to put myself out there and bringing love and compassion to every situation that I’m in.
I fall short constantly but that’s what I shout for today. I don’t wake up in the morning and say, I hope I don’t use today. I don’t take that for granted. I acknowledge is every morning and I take a first step every morning, I acknowledge the fact that my life isn’t manageable and I was powerless.
At night I’m thankful for that, so it’s not something that I take for granted but to say that there’s no time throughout my day, no energy exerted to fight drinking, to fight using is the reality. For me, it is all those other things that I was afraid to do today that I can do, because I’m still that guy that will make $100,000 but I think that this should be a parade if I pay my car insurance.
That’s just, that’s who I was and now I got to do that stuff today, it’s like a big deal to me. To have a different relationship with my nieces and nephews that I want to go down there and visit them and the time that I spend with them is just amazing to me. Rather than worrying about what I’m doing next or I have to go there. It’s like I can be accountable today, my family calls me for advice.
People in this community call me and ask me to speak at a school or a sober house or I spoke at the state house or whatever it might be. That blows my mind that people would ask me to do that, and that’s what I choose to do and that’s what I want to do. Because that’s just so far from the person that I was.
I was selfish and it was all about what I could get out of life. I’ve come to find out that it’s not, it’s what you give. I think that what I went through is one of the only, it’s a unique experience that would bring me to that realization. It goes back like what we’re talking about the other day.
I have a prayer that is give me the difficulties in my life, that will open my heart to compassion. I just find that for me and for most people, I think, I’ve learned the most about myself and grown the most spiritually through the difficulties of that. Spiritual experiences for me are tough and they’re gross and icky and they’re things that I have to walk through that I’m not comfortable and I come on on the other side, walking through a fear, doing something I didn’t want to do and I’m happy and grateful that I didn’t. It gives me moments today that I can have just great experiences with my family and friends.
Lisa: Well, Shawn I appreciate your coming in and sharing your story with me again but also people who are listening in, for people who would like to hear more about your story, they can read the article in the November issue of Maine Magazine. Obviously you are available if people would like to speak with you. [crosstalk 00:38:05]
We’ve been speaking with Shawn McLaughlin who is many things but is continuing to work through the things in his life that have, the things in your life that have troubled you and I give you a lot of credit for that and I give you a lot of credit for being willing to share with us today. Thank you, Shawn.
Shawn: Thank you, I’m very grateful for the opportunity. I appreciate it very much.