This is Ashley Stone and you're listening to the Comeback Podcast. Justin I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. I know that you have an incredible story and I've heard little bits and pieces from, you know, Preston and Tyson from Renaissance Ranch and you work at Renaissance Ranch too, which is so awesome.

And I've shared before that Preston and Tyson I probably wouldn't have had the guts to start this podcast had they not really like pushed me to do it. And so, yeah, so I really just think the world of all of you guys at Renaissance and yeah, and I've heard, you know, like I said, bits and pieces and And so I'm super excited to hear the whole,

the whole thing.

So you can just go ahead and start wherever you would like

and we'll be going.

Okay, sounds good.

Yeah, I appreciate being invited because yeah, Preston and Tyson can definitely push you to, you know, reach your potential, which is good. I love working with those guys because they saw something in me of value, which was cool. And so I've been working with them for, you know, a little while now.

So I enjoy it, but yeah, let me just kind of talk about my recovery experience

and everything that I've gone through in my life and how that relates to I guess the topic of the podcast which which is you know kind of people who have fallen away from the church and come back.

You know, my story starts, you know, as a child who never felt okay in his own skin.

You know, I grew up thinking that there was more to life. As an early child, I never felt comfortable being just myself. I always wanted to be like that other person,

wanted to have, you know, bigger muscles or I wanted to be, you know, more talkative or less anxious.

And I didn't make friends easy,

which really kind of limited me,

I guess you could say. I was a member of the church pretty much my whole life,

wasn't really too active in my teenage years, but prior you know about age 12 I went pretty much all the time and those are things that you you know the the gospel truths and the principles that you learn those stick with you at least they did with me they stuck with me and so throughout my addiction you kind of have that nagging voice in the back of your head of like, you know better, you shouldn't be doing this and you kind of have to say, you know, screw you or ignore it in order to continue in your addiction and then you start to build up this the shame bank on your back of reasons why you're a P. O. S, you know, or reasons why you're not worthy. And that was kind of hard. That was something I had to get through, but, yeah, I was always pretty talkative as a child until I started to get teased, I guess you could say.

And so I got bullied in school, elementary school, I was bullied, had my ear pierced in like, I think it was second grade.

And in California back then in the 90s that was kind of not a big cool thing, but I thought it was cool. I loved it, but I had it I had my ear my earring ripped out I mean there was just yeah it was crazy

just constant bullying where I felt here's another reason why I can't be myself.

And so I built this persona, I built this wall

of who I thought other people wanted me to be.

You know, and I really, I really kind of stuck with that and I think I was maybe 12 or 13 when I was introduced to cannabis and it was like this false blessing in my life. I felt this is what it's like to live.

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