In this episode:
How do you transform your life from a crippling addiction to a beacon of inspiration?
What if you could redefine your future, regardless of your past?
Join me for an incredibly raw and inspiring conversation with Nico Morales as we explore his tumultuous journey from addiction to recovery. Nico bravely shares his experiences growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and takes us through his struggles with the opioid epidemic and his battle with drug use, which escalated to the point of heroin addiction.
As we move further into Nico’s story, we learn about his decision to quit drugs and the process of self-work he had to undertake to overcome his addiction. We also touch on his struggle with avascular necrosis and how the motivation to be a good uncle led him to finally work to healing his body. Nico shares his ongoing journey to maintain a healthy, substance-free life and how he has replaced his dependency on substances with healthier habits. Listen in as Nico inspires us all with his resilience, determination, and journey to personal development.
Resources:
Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops
Transcript:
0:00:06 – Jessica Dueñas
I’m Jessica Dueñas and this is Bottomless to Sober, the podcast where I talk about anything and everything related to life since my transition from bottomless drinking to a sober life. Hi everyone, today’s episode features Nico Morales, a fellow comrade in the recovery journey, and I just wanted to give you the heads up that we do discuss drug use in detail, so if that is not content that you are able to successfully listen to at this time, please come back to this episode at a future time, but otherwise, I hope you enjoy. Nico’s story is beautiful and absolutely inspiring. Thank you, hey everyone.
So on today’s episode I have here Nico Morales, who is a fellow in recovery that we were just talking before I hit record and I was trying to remember when I had done like an Instagram live with him, probably about a year ago or so, but anyway, I wanted to have Nico on the show really to talk about his story, and I often talk about my addiction to alcohol, but really addiction is addiction and it impacts so many people in so many different ways and I feel like Nico’s going to present a perspective for folks to really stop and process and think about the different challenges that folks face living in recovery and also in active addiction. So, nico, I want you to go ahead and tell us about yourself.
0:01:31 – Nico Morales
Wait. Well, first of all, thank you for allowing me on to your platform. What’s up everybody. I love when people can pronounce my name correctly, so I appreciate that as well. You wrote jars, so that’s always fun. But yes, my name is Nico Morales.
I’m from Albuquerque, new Mexico, the Duke city. Quick fun fact about Albuquerque that most people don’t know is that it’s older than the United States, so we have a lot of deep culture and rich culture here, but we also have a lot of generational trauma that comes with this type of environment. I grew up in a middle class household. Both parents were participants in my life, didn’t really have any needs like big needs. We had all the meals, we had a roof. We had clothes. Was it the stuff that I wanted? No, because, just like most teenagers growing up, we want the best and sometimes they’re not going to cough it up. There was a few nights where we had beans for dinner, but, like I said, we never missed a meal at all.
I grew up in a very traditional, conservative household, but at a young age I had to spend a lot of time with my grandparents. So from like age two to age six, I spent most of my time with my grandma and my popla and we traveled from New Mexico to Arizona back and forth, because that’s where they are originally from. Reason for that was because my sister was pretty ill when she was not born but she had some complications at the hospital after she was born that caused my parents to spend a lot of time there with her. So there wasn’t anybody else to kind of watch me except for my grandparents. So I got to hang out with them, which I find as a key benefactor to where I’m at now, got one of those old souls, and it’s because I was hanging around with old souls since I was a baby. So growing up my mom and my family had a nickname for me that was little man and it was because I walked around like I was a little man.
Basically I had been around, been around grown adults. I spoke most of my time with grown adults. I didn’t really spend it with kids. So that’s how I kind of grew up from two to six. When I was six, my grandfather passed away and my grandmother was like, yeah, I can’t be watching him all the time on my own. So I went and stayed back with my family. I have a few cousins, probably about eight of them that were all within the same age bracket. So instead of traveling, we all used to get put at Grandma’s house. That was kind of like home base for everybody. So they’re my extended siblings. So from six to about 14, I was around them, hung out with them.
But at age seven I was introduced to wrestling, which is another key benefactor to where I’m at now. Wrestlers, if there are any listening, you guys are the dopest. Not that any other sports are bad, but we don’t play with balls in wrestling, let’s put it that way. And yeah, wrestling became my outlet. It became my outlet for understanding and understanding who I was, how I can grow mentally tough and discipline and what those key, what discipline and mental toughness, played in life overall.
And at 14, I was ready to drop out of school because I figured, you know, all I saw everybody around me do was work, so might as well just jump into the workforce. I felt like I was ready to do the workforce thing and I had my mom get me a job as a laborer on a construction site. So I was, my first job was a gopher go for this, go for that, go pick this up, go pick that up. Basically, my, it was my uncle, that was my, my employer, and he told me one day he’s I don’t pay you to think I pay you for everything below your neck. So just consider, that sounds like cool, that works, I can do that.
And so at 14, I was ready to drop out of school. I had seen enough of life that I was prepared to kind of leave Just like everybody else. There’s some adversity that I faced in my teenage years. Some stuff that was repressed from my childhood started to come up. One of the things that I struggled with growing up was abandonment, wondering why the heck my sister got to spend time with my parents and I didn’t, and that got expressed in narcotics. So I started to provide and be like hyper independent about age 14. I remember I got this idea because money was always a topic in the household.
There wasn’t ever enough, it seemed like, and whether it was my house or it was the family’s house or it was someone else’s house, it just seemed like everybody talked about money. So I figured I could help out by making sure nobody had to pay for me and I took my lunch money. One day I got three bucks for lunch, if you can believe that, and I went to. Instead of getting pizza and a soda, I had this older guy go buy me a pack of primetimes, those single or cigarrillos, and I started selling those when I was 14 years old, freshman in high school, and that’s kind of how I got introduced to narcotics, I would say, because tobacco at the time wasn’t, you, weren’t allowed to have it, but we were smoking them.
And then I took that and I did that a few different times until I had 20 bucks. And then I put that 20 bucks, I went and bought me a half ounce of swag and I started rolling blunts for people and selling the blunts, just so I could make more money. And then that escalated to more cannabis and by the time I was 17, I was selling cocaine pills and cannabis. That was one part of my life, right, because I always thought money needed to be coming in. That’s why I wanted to work. That’s why I wanted to be independent.
The other side of my life was all star athlete. I was pretty decent at wrestling because it was my outlet, like I could beat people up for fun and not get in trouble. Like I could express myself that would be the best way to say it the stuff that was going on in between my ears that I couldn’t like talk with other people about. I didn’t have the words to communicate.
I didn’t have the knowledge to understand the emotional intelligence I came out in wrestling so I got pretty decent at pitting people to the ground and winning matches I got so good that we set out some old DVDs for recruiters and I got picked up to go to a Northern Colorado University on a full ride scholarship. So as a junior in high school I had already kind of set that, set, that path. One of the other things that I struggled with not just abandonment, but I also struggled with authority. I don’t like being told what to do. Jessica, like anybody can ask me for anything.
If you ask me for my shirt and it’s the only shirt I got I’m gonna give it to you. If you ask me for my five bucks and it’s the last five bucks I got I’m gonna give it to you. If you try to take this stuff from me, oh, we have problems. Like, if you try to tell me that I need to give it to you, we have issues. So I’ve never liked authority, ever in my life, struggled with it even to this day.
I think that’s why I like entrepreneurship, my coaching and my trainings, because I’m my own boss. There’s nobody that tells me what to do. I get to set my own schedule. I get to work when I wanna work. Yeah, even with the book that I wrote, it was difficult to have somebody give me feedback and navigate me through writing a book, because I was like I don’t like being told what to do. So I say that because when I was a junior, we got this new wrestling coach me and him being in CIDI. When it came to that authority, I was on this ego trip that you know what? I’m a badass wrestler. I already got a full ride scholarship. What do I need you for? And he was like well, you’re on my wrestling team, so you’re gonna listen to me.
I’m like no, this is my wrestling team, you just get to be the head coach. I had a couple buddies that were in weight classes above and below me that we did what we needed to do because we saw that as our way out. New Mexico is a beautiful place but it’s very high in poverty and low in education. So with that, yes, I grew up in a middle-class household in New Mexico, but compared to the rest of the United States it was below the means. So we saw wrestling and sports as a way to get out of that cycle, that environment. Because when I was growing up we were always taught education is your way out and I totally believe in education, not and I know that you were a teacher, so I say this delicately- not the educational system but I do believe in lifelong learning.
Individuals who are always learning are the individuals who are always growing.
So I say all of that because in my senior year I had a really big head clash with this coach and eventually I quit wrestling, and because, again, I didn’t have the emotional tools, the communication skills, the know-how to tell people what was going on or even be self-aware enough to know what was going on.
I just went into the negative lifestyle pretty in-depth At that point. Oxycontin was a major pill that was being produced and we could find it everywhere here in New Mexico. There was actually recent there was a recent lawsuit between certain states and these opiate manufacturers and they found that in New Mexico it was targeted opiate distribution. What that means, jessica, is that they found three places here in New Mexico and they overprescribed and over-distributed opioids just to make a profit. Those three places are Taos, New Mexico, there’s one down south in New Mexico and then one’s here in Albuquerque, and those opiate funds actually just got approved in a lawsuit and New Mexico’s gonna have like $140 million come to it and I’m sorry, albuquerque’s gonna have $140 million come to it because of the opioid misdistribution. But I grew up but I should get back to that.
0:11:55 – Jessica Dueñas
Yeah, so with those areas where that happened, are these high-poverty areas? Are these places where folks have a lot of manual labor and are having a lot of injuries? Because I know, let’s say, if you look at Appalachia I taught in Kentucky there were a lot of issues with opiates in the state of Kentucky and particularly in communities, coal mining communities and things like that. So I’m curious if what made them target those cities in New Mexico, if you knew.
0:12:22 – Nico Morales
That’s a great question. Construction is one of the biggest industries here in New Mexico, as well as hospitality. So those are the two major industries here in New Mexico.
0:12:32 – Jessica Dueñas
So that would make sense. That makes so much sense. Yeah, okay, sorry to interrupt.
0:12:36 – Nico Morales
I was just like I wonder why, but okay, no that’s a solid question Because, you’re right, a lot of people had construction injuries and middle-class paycheck to paycheck is the majority of the people. So if you’re not at work, then you’re not getting a paycheck. So how can I work all here to take this pill and you won’t feel the pain you know. So that makes total sense.
0:12:57 – Jessica Dueñas
Yeah.
0:12:58 – Nico Morales
But I grew up in that epidemic opioid epidemic when it first started in 2008. And right about that same timeframe there was the economical decline with the housing market, so it was a beautiful, perfect storm for selling drugs. Quite honestly, there was high despair. There was people wanting to escape, because by no means am I trying to promote substance use, but that’s a solution for a lot of people and it’s a taught solution for a lot of people. Here you have a problem smoke this. Here you have a problem drink this. And then it kind of escalates from.
0:13:35 – Jessica Dueñas
There.
0:13:37 – Nico Morales
So at the time I would get 120 oxy, 80 milligrams. You know 120 of those. I’d keep 20 alone, I’d sell 100 and then I’d go re-up again. So I was taking quite a lot of opiates myself because I found that as to be a solution. My personal opinion there’s two, two like kind of users. One user like their brain is working so much all the time that they need something to slow it down, so downers help out. Then there’s the other user that’s working like not as quick in their brain, so uppers help them out. Like they just they feel like they’re on point whenever they’re using uppers. So at this point in my life I was 18 years old selling oxy cotton and then, about 2010, they stopped the production. They started making them differently.
And we found ways to get around that method, so they just started putting extra coding around there. We found ways to use without with by getting through that coding. But there’s a point in every addiction that it’s not so much the high, in my opinion, it’s the ritual behind the high right. So, like I’m sure, for individuals who, or even when I drink I’ll get to that in a little bit but when I drank, there was a ritual behind drinking. When I smoked cannabis, there was a ritual behind smoking cannabis. I didn’t like joints, I like blunts. I didn’t like smoking out of a pipe, I like smoking like something that I could hold in my hand, and that ritual was interrupted for me and I remember one night I was laying at home and my hand was throbbing.
I couldn’t sleep and it just hurt. And I had this little voice pop into my head that says you’re going through withdrawals, what are you gonna do? And I was like, oh, this is withdrawals, I am not trying to deal with this. So I hit up one of the homies that I had and he’s like I don’t have any oxy, but I got something else that’ll take that withdrawal away. I was like, all right, well, meet up with you, show me what you got. And he showed me some heroin, black tar heroin. He said this will take your withdrawal away, for sure it will. And he taught me how to smoke it off of a foil. Just, he was like it’s just the same as your pills. You freebase it, so just smoke it and it tastes like crap. It tastes worse than a pill. But I smoked it and immediately the withdrawal symptoms started to go away and I was like cool, I found something that’ll make me feel better. And now I have another product for the people that I am currently serving Biggie Smalls I hope everybody knows who that is.
He wrote a song called the 10 Crack Commandments and the fourth crack commandment is you don’t get high on your own supply. Well, I had broken that one and I started using more than I was selling and that became a big problem. The individuals that I was purchasing my narcotics from at this point it was heroin. They didn’t want to do business with Nico because money wasn’t coming in when it was supposed to come in and there was always some sort of excuse that I could come up with. So it was very difficult for me to get opiates. But at that point smoking no longer was benefit. I would smoke maybe about a gram of heroin and I would barely get high because oxycontin is so potent. It’s a synthetic opioid. So this girl that I was seeing at the time, she was like well, you know, if we inject it we can save ourselves some money. And I was like where? So she taught me how to shoot up and I remember taking a shot in my hand the first time shooting heroin.
And she brought over a needle. We were at my apartment, she showed me how to shoot heroin into my hand and from there game was over. I had never felt anything else that was so freeing and so uplifting in my brain. Like my brain was able to actually not feel the pressure that I had felt for most of my life. And I was when I was 20 years old, so about 20. Within four years yeah, about two to four years I was already hooked on heroin IV injection, and that continued until I was 22.
Weight 120 pounds, and I was using probably about three grams of heroin IV injection every day. Just to break that into numbers, at the time I could get a gram for 60 bucks, about $120 worth of heroin that I was using every day. Heroin is broken down into different. It’s not like your normal ounces, where seven is a quarter, 14 is a half, it’s three, six, 12. So it was about a ball of heroin that I was shooting every day for myself, just to stay well enough that I didn’t feel the withdrawals, because at that point you’re not using to get high, you’re using to avoid pain, the actual physical pain.
That of course, brought some very big social issues and familial issues. My family no longer wanted me around, the friends that I had didn’t want me around, and that resurfaced that emotion of abandonment that I had talked about when I was a kid and that just made me feel even worse Again. With now knowing how to communicate and express these things, I would just found myself in a very much downward spiral. There was a point where I had cysts growing on my body because of the injections that I was doing. I had reused needles. That shared needles, fish hook needles that’s when a needle bends back because you can only use a needle so many times, so it starts to bend back and it looks like a fish hook. And I learned how to fish, hook my veins and get high. That way I ended up robbing people because I needed to get high. And I say all that again not to promote it.
But there is a driving factor behind the mind of an addict. I have a belief that addicts are some of the most intelligent, hyper-focused individuals out there. Now, where that addiction is directed is their choice, so that skill never goes away. That hyper-focus, highly driven, highly motivated individual. They never lose that. They just direct it into a different place.
So at 22, I found myself sleeping in a Walmart parking lot in my truck with a weapon on me, because I had done some things where people were looking for me, and it was into the best situation. That little voice popped back into my head and said what the heck are you doing? You’re sleeping out here at a parking lot when you can go sleep in a warm home. It was the wintertime, so I was freezing cold. All you have to do is stop using. And I was like well, this stuff is my solution, like this is what keeps me All right. That little voice in my head was like are you sure about that? Look where you’re at, jessica. I’m not sure how many of your people believe in God, but that is where I stand firming.
And that’s who I believe was talking to me. I believe it was God was dropping these little downloads into me when I was going through these situations because there was other situations where I got out of that I shouldn’t have got out of and it was that same little voice that came into my head that was like you need to leave or you need to do this.
0:21:16 – Jessica Dueñas
You know what’s funny that you mentioned that little voice. It’s like I’m amazed that you had that little voice, because I feel, like so many of us, or in my experience, so often the voice in my head was like of self-hatred and I love that you had a voice speaking to you with like logic and like hello, like what are you doing? You know Because I don’t feel like that’s everyone’s experience that they have that common sense still in them, especially like at the depths of the worst. So that’s really powerful.
0:21:45 – Nico Morales
Absolutely, and you know those are self-negative, self-talk voices were there and that’s why that voice stood out so much. I think because I was used to that negative like you ain’t shit, Miko, the hell are you thinking? Like you can’t change. Look at you, Look what happened to you as a kid. No one loves you. Like those voices were constant, so I was used to hearing those. So that other voice when it came up in those health balls, like what the heck is this and why is it here? Why do I get this? Because I like that voice. So, yeah, I stopped using. When I was 22 years old Cold turkey is what they call it I didn’t go through any type of detox, Didn’t go to any type of rehab, Didn’t go to any medically assisted treatment center, and mainly because there was limited resources. There was one place that I could go, here in Albuquerque, and the stories that came out of there they’re like you might as well just go to jail, it’s better.
0:22:44 – Jessica Dueñas
Yeah, I mean, you know what’s crazy and I was thinking about it when I knew that you were coming on today. It is this idea, like, in terms of where do people go who are struggling with addiction to opiates? Right, because if you are struggling with alcohol, you can put it in a hashtag into Instagram or anywhere, and there’s like a million communities and you can literally almost go community shopping, do a free trial to this community, a free trial to that community right, and really find what works for you. But I feel like and you know, my partner had passed away from his addiction to opiates back in 2020, right, and he attempted to get sober by attending AA and calling himself an alcoholic when alcohol was not his problem, you know, and I can’t help but wonder, like what if he had found community among other people who knew exactly what he was struggling with, with the urge to shoot up that ritual? Right, like that whole thing that you described?
I feel like there’s just so much isolation when you can’t openly come out and say that that’s what you’re struggling with. And like if you’re trying to fit yourself into, say, an alcohol free space, when you’re not an alcohol lick or, you know, addicted to alcohol. I feel like that can be really limiting. So I was going to ask you like, how did you do it? But you’re basically you kind of just cold turkey on your own. What kept you going?
0:24:06 – Nico Morales
I knew if there was a reason that I was still around, so I was trying to figure out that reason. But that lifestyle there was enough people that I seen pass away from overdoses, using less than I had used. One of the big things that happened was there was this young kid and I call him young, he was probably about 16 at the time and I was maybe I was about 20 years old and he went to a party and he had taken a couple pills and he didn’t wake up the next day and his family and my family were pretty close and I had a revelation like well, I’m able to use 320 milligrams of oxy-ca and I’m able to shoot up grams of heroin and I haven’t passed away yet. Why Like that? Why was my biggest driver?
I was dedicated to figuring out the why that I was still allowed to be in this place when other people hadn’t. There was other individuals that I had used next to and watched them overdose, and there wasn’t Narcan at the time. There wasn’t these things that were available at the time to revive somebody. So when they went blue or on the lips, like you just knew, get your stuff and get out of there.
Like that’s what you knew to do. It was during that era that they had the law created where you could drop somebody off at the hospital when they were overdose. Because that’s what was happening People were dying using together and you would get arrested. If you called the cops. If you were there when somebody died and they saw a drug, you were going to jail. So there was no point in helping anybody because you were gonna be hurting yourself. So what really kept me going was why. Why the heck did I get to make it to all this stuff? And that’s one of my biggest drivers was figuring out the why. And I didn’t figure out the why immediately.
I stopped using heroin when I was 22 years old. June 13th 2012, 22 years old, that was the last day that I shot a heroin.
And from there. I just white knuckled it and spent time for me in prayer because I knew that there was something greater out there for me to do, and I didn’t know what it was. But I still had to deal with my issues, and I think that’s the underlying thing with all addictions is that there’s some sort of issue that you have to come to terms with. Doing my own self-work Some people call it shadow work. There’s different terms for it in different communities self-awareness, going to therapy but it uncovers something that’s been kidding for your whole life and that subconscious, hidden driver is what programs most people and when we can find solutions to that program that make us not feel pain anymore or even give us some sort of pleasure for a little bit. That’s what gets us hooked, and so my family started letting me back around them.
One of my homies was letting me around him and just a side note if you are somebody who has a loved one that you care about, that is using some sort of opiate. Right now, fentanyl is the biggest thing. Telling them that they can’t use that around you is okay. This guy, I love him to death, but I haven’t talked to him in 10 years because he told me he can’t be around me when I was using and it was the best thing for me because I was like dude, we were close, he was my brother and he straight up said don’t come around me because you’re not the same and that was the most helpful.
And I still don’t talk to him because we’re not there and I probably caused a lot of damage to that relationship, but he was one of the reasons that my life got saved, because I was like shoot, if this guy don’t want me around, then what the heck am I doing? My sister was someone else that was like Nico, I can’t be around you, you won’t be involved in my life if you continue participating in these behaviors. I hadn’t dealt with my abandonment, with my fear of missing out, with my need to be right, with my constantly creating problems that I could solve, because that’s what I was doing. I was making problems in my life so I could solve problems in my life, so I could feel better about myself. I was afraid of missing out on experiences and times, but I would use that fear to get high and get drunk and I’d miss out.
I didn’t like to change the way that I thought, and because I didn’t like to change the way that I thought, I would stay in a consistent pattern of self-harm. And then I needed to be right, because I have the issue with authority. So I needed to be right and using was the right thing for me, and so those type of thought patterns kept me stuck and I started drinking. Because I remember one day there was my old man who was like you can hang out with me, you can live with me if you want to, but you just can’t use drugs. I was like, okay, cool.
So I started drinking and because I hadn’t dealt with my underlying issues, alcohol became my escape and I repeated. I eventually found myself living in an abandoned building because my parents no longer wanted me around. My sister no longer wanted me around. I was drinking two bottles a day rum, and that was a solution that I had found. It wasn’t until that moment, and I was sleeping in this building with just a hot plate. They didn’t have no running water, they just had electricity that was rigged up and I had a hot plate, a TV and a mattress, and I was just like what are you doing, dude? You’re back at this same spot that you were a few years ago, and I was 27 at that time.
So I had a decent stretch without using heroin, but I became completely dependent on alcohol, and that tends to be a common factor for opiate users. They’ll stop using opiates, but they will begin drinking because it’s very much a depressant. And I’ll share this for all the alcohol-free people out there, people who are thinking about going alcohol-free Get some help. I didn’t get help on that one either, but get community, get accountability. Those are two main things that everybody needs to make any type of change in their life.
But, especially to remove or release this type of dependency, is accountability and community. And there’s like Jessica said earlier, there’s quick hashtags online. Stopping, yeah, yeah and you can find them, and there’s people who want to help you out that have been through it Now, because of the extent of my overdrinking, the extent of my opiate use. I got diagnosed with this rare disease it was called avascular necrosis when I was 28 years old and what the doctor said was that my hips were collapsing. The blood vessels that go into my hips go ahead.
0:31:24 – Jessica Dueñas
I heard about that actually with someone who I went to rehab with. She was addicted to heroin and she continued to struggle, even like in recent years, and she had posted about having to have like some bone replacement work done. But anyway, yeah, go ahead.
0:31:41 – Nico Morales
Yeah, it’s very common amongst opiate users and steroid users. Actually, those are the two main ways that they currently know about it. Last I checked, the numbers were 250,000 out of every two million people. I’m sorry, in the United States 250,000 people get diagnosed with it every year, but I was at stage four, so apparently I like stage one or two. They could put a piece of your other bone on there and it’ll regrow, which is really cool.
Our bodies are trippy, but with this one where I was at, my bones had already collapsed. So the way I like to describe it is I was walking around with two collapsed hips. Imagine trying to take a cinder block and put it through a metal basketball rim. That’s what I kind of walk around with. So I had this goofy limp. I look like a penguin that’s what I like to describe it as, because penguins don’t have the hip flexors where they can lift up their knees. They just kind of waddle. It’s exactly how I want and I felt.
You know this is a journey. So wherever you’re at in the journey whether you’re starting to identify the underlying issues, whether you know what your underlying issues are and you’re maintaining a healthy relationship with them, or if you’re in a place of giving back. I think that healing once you heal, you help other people who are behind you. But in my journey between that healing and helping and maintaining, I had this self punishment. Basically because I didn’t go to rehab, which I figured was a punishment, I didn’t go to jail, which I figured was a punishment. I was like, oh, this is how God is punishing me, this is how I’m being punished is my hips are collapsed, so I’ll just deal with it. So from 28 to 31, I was working full time at a call center, so I sat down all day, which was helpful, but I waddled everywhere else. I was back in school getting myself an education, because I was an area that I knew I could develop in and I was writing a book.
But in all that time frame I had two collapsed hips. I couldn’t sit down or to get up, hurt to use the restroom. Hurt to climb stairs. Hurt. I could hear the bones rub up against each other inside my body and I just thought it was. You know, this is my punishment. This is what I get for doing all the stuff that I did, and I want to speak to somebody who right now, I can sense, is feeling that self punishment, like well, I need to continue to punish myself. You don’t Like, you’re here for a reason, you’re listening for a reason. There’s no reason to punish yourself further. If there was a punishment necessary, then you know what. You’re, not the. You’re not the judge and jury of your life. Quite honestly, that’s my personal belief. And my doctor was like, yeah, you need to have your hips replaced and I was like, cool.
0:34:40 – Jessica Dueñas
I’ll just avoid that.
0:34:41 – Nico Morales
I’ll just ignore that. I’m not going to deal with that, because then you have to take pain meds you have to take, you know.
0:34:47 – Jessica Dueñas
I mean, if you have a surgery like that, typically I’m not assuming that that’s what you did, but usually that is the pain management. Like you’re going to have to take opiates because I mean, Dan, like you’re having entire bones sawed through and replaced with artificial joints.
0:34:59 – Nico Morales
Absolutely, absolutely. So yeah, at that point, I was just completely against it. I was just living in constant pain from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep. But you know, there’s another why you have to have wise. If I could share anything with people listening right now, there’s a why that you are doing what you’re doing. There’s a why that you over drink. There’s a why that you use a substance. There’s a why that you’re taking some sort of behavior. You got to have a stronger why to overcome that and that stronger why you’re going to be the only one that can identify it.
At this point in my life. I’m 31 years old, 30 years old. So this is 2020 now, and you know there’s a whole world event going on that we all live through. But my sister was. My sister was just getting married. She had just actually completed her first year of marriage and she told me that she was pregnant and I was like, oh, shoot, that means I’m gonna be an uncle. Right, that’s how that works. She was like yeah, you’re gonna be an uncle. I was like cool Now. I shared with you guys earlier that my uncle was the one who gave me my first job as a, as a gopher, so that title in my head holds a high prestige. And I was like, well, I need to be like the dopest uncle out in the southwest. Like there can’t be no cooler uncles other than Nico out here in New Mexico. Like I got to be the coolest uncle. That’s my goal. And how am I going to hold this baby, walk around with this baby, if I’m waddling? Like how am I going to play with the baby? How am I going to enjoy time with this baby? Is this baby’s memory going to feed Nico, waddling around his whole life living in pain? Can’t play with her.
So I decided you know, it’s time to get my hips replaced. And at this point both my hips are now in stage four. They’re. Both the doctors are telling me you need to get it replaced. Um, you’re, they’re going to collapse. And if they collapse, you have these arteries inside of your legs and if those get cut internally you could actually be in serious damage. And I’m like, yeah, whatever, all right, like guys don’t know who I am. I was using all this heroin, I was over drinking, that don’t face me.
But when my sister was like, yeah, you’re gonna be an uncle, something in my mind clicked and I was like, yeah, you need, you need to be a healthy person. Um, so I started searching for, uh, help. And you know what? That was another area that help wasn’t readily available. Um, because of my age, they didn’t nobody wanted to really do the surgery on me. The doctors that I was referred to. They’re like, yeah, we’ll give you a quarter zone shots and that’ll just remove your pain. I’m like, oh, I could live through the pain. I’ve been living through the pain. I need to be mobile. Um, I need to be able to move. And they’re like well, we don’t want to do the surgery. Uh, one surgeon. I asked him because I could tell there’s a sense that most addicts have, like it’s a sixth sense. You know, when somebody’s BSing you, you could read between the lines. And I was like look bro something seems off.
So what is it that you that you’re not telling me? He’s like well, the way I was taught is that these implants, they go from one box to another, and I was like, oh, I got you. What he was saying is that you know what, when I pulled the implant out of the box that I get it from from the manufacturer, the only other box that it should be in is your coffee. And since that’s not going to be the case with you, I don’t want to do the surgery. I was like got you, thank you, you’re looking out for your numbers and I appreciate the honesty, because now I know that for sure you’re not doing my surgery, we’ll go find someone else.
So it took me about another six months, looked into some robotic surgeries, because they have those available. My insurance was like no, I can’t pay for that. So I kept on searching and I found this doctor and he saw me walking and he was like yeah, you need your hips replaced. I got an opening, I’ll do it, and it was music to my ears. So in June of 2021, I went and got my left hip replaced. In August of 2021. I got my right hip replaced. So I did bilateral anterior antheroplasty within 60 days.
And like you said, Jessica, there was the opiates. Right, I have this belief and, again, your journey whoever’s listening is different than my journey, so you need to do what’s best for you. But I figured that if I was scared of opiates and they still had control over me, like if I was scared of them, scared to take them, then that meant that they still had a control over me. And again, my issues with authority, like nothing is going to control me Nothing. And so I didn’t tell the surgeon, I didn’t tell the medical team that I had issues with opioids. It wasn’t on any of my medical records. It was something that people knew, if you knew me, but like medically, paperwork, it’s.
One of the best parts about being from New Mexico is that they’d say you don’t put nothing on papers. Like nothing, Nothing on papers. It might not even be New Mexico, it might just be that poverty mindset of you know what. Don’t put your name on things, Because I haven’t had my name on very many things since I was like 18 until now in my 30s. It’s all under the table. And so I went and they’re like well, sat with the anesthesiologist. Here’s a couple of the different things that we can do for you. We can just knock you out so that you don’t feel it, but you’ll be awake. You can see everything happening. I’m like miss me with that.
0:40:34 – Jessica Dueñas
Now I’m good.
0:40:36 – Nico Morales
See them like bring out a saw and bring it to life. Cool, let’s flattery everywhere, like I don’t want to see any of that. It’s like there’s another way that I can do it and you may come in and out of consciousness. I was like you need to make sure that I don’t wake up, because if I wake up there’s going to be a problem. Like just, I know myself well enough that if I wake up and I’m in that type of environment, I’m going to freak out.
0:40:59 – Jessica Dueñas
That’s going to be hard for people. Yeah, like waking up mid-surgery. That’s traumatic, so no yeah.
0:41:07 – Nico Morales
Yeah, and with that description the anesthesiologist was like all right, cool, I’m going to completely knock you out there I was like, great, knock me out, that’s the way to do it. And then afterwards that’s why I say accountability and community. However you find that in your path, you need to have it. My community that I found was this personal development group, because I didn’t. I didn’t find community amongst the NAs, I didn’t find community amongst the AAs, I didn’t find community amongst these, like Jay. We both know Jay Chase. He has a group like that right. He works for another organization and mainly because they don’t pay me. I’m not dropping their names, that’s why. But there’s organizations out there that you can find community in and you know, even for those who don’t want to go that route and might lean a little bit more towards the spiritual side, that’s what a church is supposed to be. It’s really not a building, it’s a community of people that you’re supposed to be able to be accountable to, and that’s what it boils down to.
So I found myself a community within this personal development group and I had somebody keep me accountable, because they prescribed me oxycontin again when I got out of my surgery.
I had two weeks worth of pills to take and the people that I had around me. I was like I designated one person that could come and check on the amount of pills that I had, to make sure that I was taking exactly what I needed to be taking, which was very difficult. I could lie with that whole control thing that I have. I was like, yeah, this is hard but I had that to make sure that I had the accountability there and I removed my dependency on opiates like afterwards, quicker than they had prescribed. So like they had me prescribed for like two weeks and I did it within a week. And I did that because I knew what my body does on opiates. I knew how my mind works on opiates, but I replaced it with. I replaced it with cannabinoids. That’s what I use. It was a harm reduction method for me, so I’d take edibles and I’d smoke just to manage my pain for the time in between the two surgeries and then after the surgeries.
And then I got my second surgery and the same thing. I removed the opiates prior to the time that I needed to and the worst part was the doctor was like how’s your pain? Do you want me to give you another script? And I was like no, no, I don’t need another script. And really I say that because I don’t want anybody to think that there’s a time that you finish this like.
Every day is a day for you to choose how you’re gonna approach life. Are you gonna be dependent on whatever substance it is, or are you gonna be dependent on validating yourself through other things? So now I validate myself and I feel my gaps and I feel my mind with exercise, with reading, with journaling. So every day I do prayer, I do a workout, I do journaling, I do some reading and I make sure that those are the four things that make me grounded. Because it used to be get up and take four shots Used to be get up and smoke a couple pills. Used to be get up and smoke some weed before I could feel something, and now, as long as I do that, I feel whole and that’s really my biggest thing. That’s my why now is that I get to share with people.
Here’s another way that you can approach life. You don’t need to escape life. Life is supposed to be for the living. You’re not supposed to be zonked out, zombieed out. You’re not supposed to be a drunk all the time, Like what actual life is not a life. It really isn’t. And that thought process and that approach has been what’s helped me out and that’s what I share with people in my own programs. In my own, I put videos out all the time just to help people with their thoughts, their emotions and their actions. That’s what it boils down to for me, and I’ve reduced my life dependency. I used to be big on coffee, just not hating on anybody who drinks coffee but I used to drink like 32 ounces a day and I was like, oh shoot, this is the next thing that you could evolve. So it’s just constantly stripping things from my life that I feel give me a validation. That’s outside of me, Because we should all be validating ourselves internally, Because whoever’s listening, you’re an amazing human being. You got breath today. You got today before a reason.
Not for anything that you did, but because there’s a purpose out there. You’re supposed to smile at somebody today that’s going to brighten their day. You’re supposed to talk to somebody today that’s going to make their day better. You’re supposed to do something in this world that no one else can do, and my goal, my why now is to make sure that you feel empowered, motivated, encouraged and you see that hope. Because if you’re still around, that’s why You’re around, so that you can bring something to this world that no one else can. And, just like Jessica, she brings things to this world that I can’t ever bring. She brings a perspective that I can’t bring. We can sit here and we can partner and we can talk, but the ultimate goal of these conversations is to bring awareness to others, so that you know and you can join this realm of the living, this non-dependency, this beautiful life that we get to enjoy. And now I can hang out with my nieces. I’m getting a little bit emotional about it, but I get to pick them up and hang out.
0:46:52 – Jessica Dueñas
There’s more than one now.
0:46:54 – Nico Morales
There’s more than one now, yeah.
0:46:56 – Jessica Dueñas
That’s awesome. And you know, nico, one of the things that you said that I really loved in terms of your decision to get the surgery, like that transition of the almost like self-flagellation, like well, this is my punishment, I’m just going to deal with the pain and the suffering, right, really. And then you found out your sister was pregnant. There’s a baby in the picture and suddenly that light comes on and you were like that was my motivation to become a healthy person, and I love that.
Coming back to that, because I think for a lot of people, they think, just because they stop using substances, that that suddenly makes them healthy, right, and it’s like, and I think like your big shift to being healthy was finally loving yourself enough to take care of yourself inside and outside, right, not just stopping the cessation of the substance abuse, but like no, let me take care of myself so that I can be a human and connect and build meaningful connections with, like awesome little kids that you have in your life. Now. That to me, like that’s really powerful. I love that. So how is the Uncle life now? What does that look like for you?
0:48:03 – Nico Morales
Oh, it’s awesome. Every Wednesday I get to hang out and they yell out Theo, when I’m pulled up. They already know that we’re going to go do something fun. We’re going to hang out. I get to buy them little clothes Like Biggie Smalls is still. They got a sweater of Biggie Smalls that they each get.
Like it’s amazing. They have these beautiful blue eyes and they’re so brand new to the world. I got to take them on a school bus the other day. Like I’m a talker, I can talk to anybody. So my nieces love the school bus song, you know, and we saw a school bus when we were at the park and I started just talking to the school bus driver and all of a sudden my niece was on the school bus, in the school bus seat. So it’s those type of memories that I get to hang out with and create that I just know brightens up their life, and they won’t ever know the version of me.
that was there, Don’t get me wrong. When they get older and probably have some conversations, but they won’t ever know what that was like.
0:49:00 – Jessica Dueñas
And that’s what’s beautiful. They might Google their feel and be like what’s this? Yeah?
0:49:07 – Nico Morales
Yeah, yeah, uncle, you got this book out here. How come they talk about you like this? How come what?
0:49:14 – Jessica Dueñas
is it that you do?
Yeah, my boyfriend’s son is 12, and he’s on TikTok and he found me like I mean, at this point he’s known for like a year, but when he first found my stuff online he was like are you OK? Because in one video I was talking about blacking out and what that’s like, and he thought I meant that I was like currently blacking out. He was like are you all right? I was like, yes, I’m talking about my past, but it was a good conversation and hey, he’s a 12-year-old who now knows a whole lot about substance abuse and what it looks like. So, yeah, it can be really excellent role models for these kids in our lives.
0:49:52 – Nico Morales
Absolutely and not to say that I want that on them, but they’re going to have their own struggles and to even show that, hey, here’s how I overcame the struggles that I had. That can be an extremely good role model for someone else, because problems never go away. I don’t care how affluent you are, I don’t care what your background is, I don’t care what your demographic is Everybody has issues. One of the best parts about this journey is that now I can help people change the way that they think about themselves and visualize themselves and identify it, because when I started identifying as someone who loved myself, that’s when things really started to shift. When I identified as someone who had self-hate wasn’t worth anything, that’s when I did a lot of things that came with that, so that self-identity is huge.
0:50:46 – Jessica Dueñas
So, in terms of your future, now that you’re giving yourself the gift of being in the land of the living, basically, what do you see for yourself in the future?
0:50:59 – Nico Morales
Well, let’s go with. I’ll do personal, spiritual and business, because that’s kind of how I approach life. So, personal life I see myself marrying, having a kid, having kids. I like that, for that’s my goal, and Supporting them and teaching them from the stuff that I have learned, you know, in part of my wisdom on them and being that protector provider for someone else. I think that is Is Parts, that’s for sure, in my personal goal.
Spiritually, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ, so, you know, sharing the love that I felt from him to others, that’s something that I know I can do. You know, yes, I believe there’s some people who believe in God. There’s some people who don’t believe in God. Either way, you’re exercising the skill of faith, the muscle of faith. So I support anybody who wants to exercise that faith muscle, whether it is in God, jesus or someone else. But that’s my personal belief. So Any chance that I get to do that, I do that. And here’s the crazy part, jessica, I grew up around pastors and I hated them. I absolutely hated pastors. I can’t stand the church and now, just because of my own communities that I’m still a part of, people have now called me pastor and I’m just like, oh shoot, that’s full circle. So that’s the spiritual side of it, you know, just staying consistently in tune with this higher power. I think that’s the best way to describe it. For somebody who’s not any type of religious affiliation, that allows me to be the best. But again, I profess Jesus as much as I can. And then, business-wise, my goal is to be the number one speaker in the nation on substance use and recovery. So I’ve had some great trainings from some high-level speakers and I love to go and share the knowledge. This weekend I’ll be speaking at a global conference to help Share a technique that I’ve developed For emotional awareness, emotional intelligence. But yeah, that’s my goal is to be a speaker for this up to go to speaker and substance use and sobriety, if you want to call it that, I like to call it personal development, because that’s just how I view it. It’s helped me view it that way.
I also do consulting for organizations that behavioral health, organizations that employ people who have lived experience. I have some contracts with the state of New Mexico where I help them out in their human services department and then I do coaching for individuals who do want to Kind of get that life coaching. I do that and that’s what my future could system and it looks beautiful like. It looks beautiful being able to Coach people to their definition of sobriety, coach people to their definition of success, to consult and make sure that you know I’m giving the person first experience, because I was. One of the reasons why I never attended a behavioral treatment center was because it was Money first or organization first. It was in person first, and so being able to integrate that and have the backing to do it you know, credentials and education that supports it is very important to me. So making sure I do that and then speaking man, I love you like podcasts like this.
Just being able to share the hope With someone else is is the goal that I have going forward.
0:54:19 – Jessica Dueñas
And how could people find you like? Let’s say, somebody wanted to reach out to you. After listening to this, what’s like your website or your Instagram handle? Yeah, for sure. Thank you for the opportunity to share that a website is the best way.
0:54:33 – Nico Morales
I have a personal belief that no one was created to be a perfect little angel, so my business name is no halo. You can find me at no halo and em comm. That’s wwwnohalo nm com. My Instagram handles are at no halo and em, and that’s on Instagram, facebook and YouTube. Oh, and I got a tick tock now too. Actually, that one is at Nico Morales, with two underscores between the knee and the knee. Go Morales, with two underscores between the Nico Morales. That’s where you can find me.
0:55:05 – Jessica Dueñas
I’ll put those also in the show notes too. I’ll look all those up and put them in. Well, any last word, nico, for anybody listening.
0:55:13 – Nico Morales
Yeah, the last word is uh, you weren’t created to be a perfect angel, you were created to do better.
0:55:18 – Jessica Dueñas
today, let’s see. I love that Progress over perfection. Well, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much, nico, for sharing your story with everybody. Um, it is, it’s powerful, it’s beautiful and, honestly, I really hope that you know like I feel a lot of hope just listening for your story today, and I hope that you know everybody who’s listening also feels that way and feels inspired. So, thank you so much.
0:55:44 – Nico Morales
Thank you for the opportunity to share.
0:55:46 – Jessica Dueñas
Hey, if you are enjoying what you are listening to, I invite you to subscribe and share the podcast. But also go to my website, bottomless to sobercom, and find out other opportunities to work with me, from free workshops to Writing classes, to one-to-one life coaching opportunities. You can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomless to sobercom. See you then.
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