#1307 Five Giant Firemen

Mark has had type 1 for over 20 years and he is an educator.

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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, and welcome back to another episode of The juicebox podcast.

So Mark has type one diabetes. He's got a couple little kids, and he's an educator. My note here says that at some point, Mark just went off about the education system, and I went with him. So apparently that's about to happen. Nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. Hey, listen, if you have type one diabetes, or are the caregiver of someone with type one and you're a US resident, I would appreciate it if you went to T 1d exchange.org/juice, box and completed the survey, that's it. You're going to help. It's going to be easy. T 1d exchange.org/juice, box. You can help type one diabetes research to move forward right from your house. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40 percent@cozyearth.com when you place your first order for ag one, with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink, AG, one.com/juice box.

The episode you're listening to is sponsored by us Med, usmed.com/juice, box. Or call 888-721-1514, you can get your diabetes testing supplies the same way we do from us med. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Eversense CGM, an implantable six month sensor. Is what you get with Eversense, but you get so much more exceptional and consistent accuracy over six months and distinct on body vibe alerts when you're high or low on body vibe alerts. You don't even know what that means. Do you ever sense cgm.com/juicebox? Go find out. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, gvoke hypopen. Find out more at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juice box.

Mark 2:26
My name is Mark Picardo. I have been a type one diabetic since October 30, 2003 so that is over 20 years now. And beyond that, I am 33 years old. I have a small family, my wife and my my two children. I am an educator. You know, I'm really, I'm really excited to be here. And one, you know, something I'm passionate about is just bringing my experience and awareness with type one diabetes and being able to share that with the community around me and be able to help, you know, especially kids in my schools who are diabetic, looking for somebody who could be a mentor and just a shoulder to lean on.

Scott Benner 3:03
I'm going to pick through all this with you. Tell me how old your kids are.

Mark 3:07
My son, Angelo, and I don't mind sharing their names, he is four. He'll be five in June. Nice. And then my daughter, Alessia, just turned two in February. Wow.

Scott Benner 3:16
Oh, good for you. Congratulations. Have you not been married long? Or did you just get started with the kids? We

Mark 3:20
got married in 2016 so and we, my wife and I have been together for

Scott Benner 3:27
not a good look. Mark, if you can't come up with a quick 1414, years, very nice 14 years. Been married about eight he got two nice little kids. Okay, any other autoimmune in your family or with you. There is

Mark 3:41
no history of diabetes in my family. There's no history of autoimmune disorders in my family. Is it is just me. I am the special one, and

Scott Benner 3:49
just type one for you. Just type one. Okay. Well, I appreciate you coming on and spending the time with me very much. I feel like when I saw you for a little bit this morning, it looks like you're actually at a school right now. So I am

Mark 4:02
in, so I am in a classroom. I with my door shut, locked in, a sign on the door that says, zoom, meeting, but, but, yes, I am at a school. One of the good things about my position is having having some of that flexibility to be doing some other things, very nice, along with, yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 4:19
Excellent. Okay, so let's see, how did you how did you find me? I'm going to start there today.

Mark 4:27
So I guess that would be a good opportunity for me to just talk a little bit. So during during covid, 20, what are your 2020? Feels like it was, yeah, yeah. It feels like it was forever ago. I wanted to start an Instagram account for myself that just focused on diabetes. I ended up creating a brand called type one wellness. And through my Instagram and through the social media i i was able to just honestly stumble upon a community that was much larger and much bigger than anything that I had imagined. And a lot of. Of the people that I had been speaking to and networking with and learning from, you know, so many people reference the juicebox podcast as a place where they learn quite a bit from and really appreciate the awareness that you're bringing. And in addition to that, you know, it's, it's, obviously, it's, it's good entertainment as well, because it's something that you can relate with. I appreciate that. And then last year at my at my old school up in New York, I had a teacher who has a son with type one, and she was on your show, I want to say at least once, maybe, maybe a couple times she had, she had mentioned to me, Hey, you should just reach out. Because one thing she one thing she brought up was that there's not very many men who who talk about, you know, what it's like to be a father, to be a male, to be a man with diabetes, and what that's like. And she thought there would be some value. Yeah,

Scott Benner 5:54
I appreciate. Tell her thank you. And I She's not wrong. It's a little more difficult to get men, and even then, when you get them, it's sometimes difficult for them to emote and like really connect while they're talking, so sometimes they feel a little stiffer while they're sharing. But, yeah, but it's, it's, it's definitely something I want to do more of. So would you say that you went to Instagram to learn something for yourself, or did you feel like you had something to share?

Mark 6:22
I think a little bit of both. I would say my initial purpose was, hey, you know, this is what I do. This is my management. Maybe I can share. And I think a little bit selfishly too, I said, Hey, maybe I could turn this into something that might be a another career path. What I didn't realize was that within even just a couple of months of creating my account and then just following, you know, a lot of people within the community, how much I would learn and how much it would impact my my personal management and the way that I approach diabetes, and since then, I've pivoted, and I use it purely Just for awareness and to share my story, and really honestly, again, selfishly, to learn from others. I come from a really supportive family, and so being diagnosed at 13 years old, it was necessary to have parents that were supportive, and my management has always been fairly Okay, fairly good. I would say, within the last two, three years, it has gotten to another level, something that I'm really proud of. My family and I, we moved from New York to North Carolina last July, and so I went in and saw the end though for the first time in February, and my first A, 1c since the move was 5.70 good for you. And I didn't, and I'm like, wow, with with the amount of stress and the amount of anxiety and this and that, with the move, and just to be able to still keep that management, and that's not me tooting my own horn. That's just it's something that I'm proud of.

Scott Benner 7:52
Is it fair to say that you think that in the past, in that scenario, you would have seen a rise near a one say, if you take insulin or sulfonylureas, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with G Vogue hypopen. My daughter carries gevok hypopen everywhere she goes, because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes ages two and above that, I trust low blood sugar emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, jivo kypopen can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store GEVO kypo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use GVO kypopen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at gvoke, glucagon.com/juicebox, gvoke shouldn't be used if you have a tumor in the gland on the top of your kidneys called a pheochromocytoma, or if you have a tumor in your pancreas called an insulinoma, visit gvoke, glucagon.com/risk. For safety information.

Mark 9:12
I 100% Yeah. I mean just every, everything that so the the lift. I don't know if you've ever Scott, you know, moved, moved moved across states or this, but finding a house, finding a job, finding an area that you want to be happy in, moving your family, driving cross country with two little kids, it's beyond anything that I would ever imagine, that it's something I never want to do again when you add in the complications of diabetes, yeah, I would never have predicted that I would have been able to keep my management as strong as it has been.

Scott Benner 9:48
So what would you say, hearing from, hearing from you're not hearing from them, right? They have Instagram accounts. You have Instagram accounts, so you're seeing their life, what they're sharing, of it reflected back and forth. Of you, maybe you read a little blurb or something that they've written, and are you actually interacting? Are you commenting on people's things? Are you having personal relationships, or is it just the the act of receiving what they're putting out? I have

Mark 10:14
established some really great relationships with people that I've never met in person, strictly through the diabetes community. I have relationships with someone in Australia. I had a relationship with somebody in Dubai, people that I would consider pretty close friends, that you know, we talk, we talk on a consistent basis, and not just about diabetes, just you know, about our lives. And I think that's something that's a really great part of the community. And in a sense, social media, you know, all the negativity that comes with social media, it can be hard, but I think there, there, if you approach it the right way, there, there are some positives. And, you know, for me and some of these people, it's okay. Do you have a common ground? Do you have something that you can share, you could be vulnerable with each other? And it's much easier to break down those barriers and create relationships based on something that that is meaningful. And, you know, there's also, there's all. There's always going to be some people that you're that you're following and talking to, that it's just, you know, you're commenting or watching or this or that. But I was, but where

Scott Benner 11:15
does the value come from that actually impacts your A, 1c, so,

Mark 11:20
so for me, you know, and this is not in any way, shape or form, trying to downplay the significance and role of what my doctors have provided me and what doctors continue to provide with other people with this condition, but I have learned it's those little, intricate things that people share Just from their experience that I was never told in a in a doctor's office something as simple as a pre bolus. And that might sound crazy to you, because I know you talk about it quite often, up until I started my like, nobody ever told me, Hey, you should pre bolus for meals. Mark

Scott Benner 11:55
and I said, Have you ever heard, have you ever heard Erica on the podcast, like in some of the more like mental health stuff. She's a therapist. I

Mark 12:02
have, you know, I've listened to quite so it's hard to keep them, No, I

Scott Benner 12:07
know. Listen, that's, that's my fault. I make a lot of stuff. But Erica is like, Erica's had type one diabetes for, I think, like, 35 years. She's on a recent episode where she said, I think I heard about pre bolusing from descott, and she she grew up for, I mean, three decades, and had a brother with type one on top of that, has a brother with type one, and she's still, like, saying, like, I think I heard about on the podcast. I mean, it's hard to call even pre bolusing a building block of managing yourself. It's, it's a fundamental, it's like putting gas in your car. Like, we don't think about that as being part of the process to drive. You have to do that part. And it's fascinating that that the timing of the insulin is not spoken about between doctors and patients very frequently.

Mark 12:51
It floors me thinking about some of the times of the way that I personally manage. And then, I mean, to be completely honest, like sometimes, you know you go into the Enter college's Office, and you have to tell them what they want to hear, and then you know you're going to walk away whatever, whatever it is that you talked about, it's not it's not even what you're doing. Because so for me, for example, I was at a pump within six months of being diagnosed, and I was on a insulin pump from 2003 just until 2017 I wouldn't say I had. I had an incident in December of 2017 where I was unresponsive in the morning, my wife woke up and was not able to to wake me up. I think my blood sugar was like a 13. I finally came to I had five gigantic firemen in my bed, and I was fighting, fighting out of them, but, and that was the one and only time I've ever had, I had a complication that's severe, but I I had so I ended up switching to MDI shortly after that, and then I also switched over to the Dexcom shortly after that. And I tell you what, I will never go back on a pump. And, you know, maybe that's a too concrete of a statement to make, but for me, this is just what works. And I think, you know, I talked about the finite details that I've learned through social media in the community, but I think the biggest message that I've taken away. And this is something too that I try to share as well, is that everybody has to figure out what works for them. And I wish there was a little bit more of that mindset at a doctor's office and with the endocrinologist. And I'm actually really, really lucky, because I do feel as though my current one down here in North Carolina does support that idea of, hey, if this is working, you know, don't break it, or don't, don't fix it, yeah. But, you know, I would go to my old end though, and I was at MTI, and, you know, my, my ANC was maybe low six. And every time I go, it's, Hey, I really think you should try this pump. Hey, I really think you should try this pump. Actually, probably a year and a half ago, I did, I tried an OmniPod, and I tried the T slim. And for some people up. Sure they're absolutely phenomenal. And I think, you know, in a in theory and in a perfect vacuum, the idea of the closed system and the closed like is wonderful, but for me, it just it didn't work. And my my management was worse again, and I ended up, after about six months, going back to shots. And okay, you know, not everybody

Scott Benner 15:20
your MDI right now with the CGM

Mark 15:22
I use the Dexcom g7 and then I use FiOS for my short acting. I use tracebo for my log acting.

Scott Benner 15:29
Nice. Well, that's great, Mark. I'm going to need you to say something very, very interesting in the next 45 minutes. It stops me from calling your podcast episode five giant firemen. So

Mark 15:42
that's absolutely fine,

Scott Benner 15:45
because right now that's far and away my winner. It's the way you said it, like I woke up with five giant firemen in my bed, and I was like, that's hilarious, absolutely terrified,

Mark 15:54
like, like, and I mean, and I'm not, I'm not a really big guy, but I had at least three or four of them had to keep me down because I was fighting like no other.

Scott Benner 16:05
Did you flip out because you opened your eyes to five people or because your blood sugar was still where it was so,

Mark 16:12
so my blood sugar was my brother. Trigger was, whatever 13 I thought I was, I was sleeping. I thought I was dreaming. And like I recall, I recall, in that moment, trying, like, I wanted to wake up. I wanted to wake up. So they were trying to get the IV in me to administer some sort of, some sort of glucose, and I was fighting with that. And, I mean, I think it might have been just, you know, part of that reaction, that fear. And, you know, it's

Scott Benner 16:42
weird when your blood sugar's low and a dream state and that, listen, I fell asleep with my headphones in last night, and for two hours I thought I was Billy Joel. Billy Joel playlist on. It was like in my dream, I was just singing Billy Joel songs. And when I woke up, I thought, I wonder if I was singing in my sleep, but Kelly was asleep, so I couldn't ask her, that's, that's hilarious. How long did you try pumping for? And how long have you been off it?

Mark 17:06
So my first experience with pumping was with various Medtronic systems, and that was for almost 15 years. And in a lot of ways, again, a lot of ways, it was, it was good, but my, my biggest problem was, in my opinion, even though I've been told I'm wrong, was my scar tissue in sites I had towards the Scott towards the end of my use of Medtronic. There was days where I was using 678, different site changes because, you know, I I insert a site, and you know, my number would be, I don't know, say, 102 hours later, I'm at 350 and I'm bolusing and I'm stacking and I'm bolusing and I'm rage bolusing, and it's just not coming down. And I think absorption was your issue. Absorption was 100% my issue. And you know, I would go to the doctor. And I would, you know, I beg. I say, what like something is, is wrong? What do I need? So we tried different types of silhouettes. We tried, you know, and I was always fairly good about rotating my sites. Again. I'm not a big guy, you know, I I'm an I work out. I'm athletic, so it's not exactly like I have an endless amount of of areas to try, but I did the best I could. I tried as hard as I could, and it just it was so unsuccessful and so frustrating. And you know, I would drive like, I would literally drive around my car with my car, and I would have multiple boxes, not just like individual sites, boxes of sites. Because at any point I knew that there could be a failure thinking about, like packing to go on vacation, I would probably pack, like, a six month supply, because of sometimes, how often I would have to change, and how how frustrated it was. Oh,

Scott Benner 18:58
my God. And you did fight through that for a decade and a half, you try. So,

Mark 19:02
I mean, for the first decade, it was probably, you know, great, you know, be brand new. But then I would say the last four or five years on it, it was tough, and then it was progressively worse towards the end, okay, by the end, it was like, this is not even it's, this isn't functional. And, I mean, ever since switching to shots, it's just been, it's like a brother. It's like a breath of fresh air. That's great. I'm glad you found what works. Yeah. And, and I tried, you know, because I've always been open minded, and I did try the OmniPod and T slim, and it was the same thing. It was, it was the absorption again, was just, it just didn't work for me. Have you considered

Scott Benner 19:40
getting an in pen so you can get a little bit of the functionality and the math behind pumping

Mark 19:46
so that's the one that communicates right with your Yeah, with

Scott Benner 19:49
an app, and it's sort of like it helps you with

Mark 19:53
that's a great That's a great thought. I haven't really thought of about that I was presented with the with, I. First I was using the geo or with the refillable cartridges. And then, since I've just been getting the straight the FiOS pens, as they are, yeah,

Scott Benner 20:09
I was gonna say, I also don't know if in pen and fiasp go together or not. But anyway, I mean, it's neither here nor there. That's something for me to definitely Note, though. Yeah, you can look into it, if you like, just to go back so that people can hear it clearly when you were on a pump and it wasn't working for you in the end, this wasn't you ignoring your settings. It wasn't you not bolusing like you were doing all the things that you had been doing prior, and it just kind of stopped working for you as you wore it longer and longer.

Mark 20:37
Yeah, I mean always, to the best of my ability, you know, there's never, there's ever a perfect scenario, but, but yes, with, you know, with, with trying to do all the right things, and rotating sites, bolusing, increasing my basal, you know, talking to my doctors, and it just, I would again, like I would insert a site, and it wasn't like it was bleeding, it wasn't, you know, any of those types of things. You know, the pump was was good, and, you know, I'd be 400 before you knew it. And okay, I'm trying to pull and it's not coming down. And then I would change the site and give myself a correction, and I would see some progress. It starts to come down, but then again, it starts to go up. It's and it's like, What am I, you know, you mean, you can't help but think, what am I doing wrong? What? What is this? You know, what am I not? I'm clearly not doing something right. And I think circle back to, I wish somebody would, would have told me 10 years ago, or, you know, maybe less, but you know, you don't have to use a pump. You could, you could try something different.

Scott Benner 21:40
It felt like an imperative, and you were failing, because how long they hocked you about getting on a pump, correct? Yeah,

Mark 21:46
it felt like this was my only, my only option,

Scott Benner 21:50
right? And you weren't doing a good job at it. And that's correct. Then you have that pressure on top of everything else. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Hey, listen, just I'm not pushing you, but Humalog, Novolog and fiasp cartridges are accepted by the impen. Okay, I'm definitely gonna look at not a sponsor anymore, but Medtronic. I'm doing some ads right now for the Medtronic community stuff. But in pen, used to be a sponsor. They're they're not anymore. But yeah, I mean, I've just seen a lot of people use it and get something out of it. So definitely look into it. Yeah, when you decide to have kids, do you think about diabetes when you're making that decision, or does it not come to mind? How does that happen?

Mark 22:33
Diabetes factors into every part of your life. That is, that's for sure. But something an approach that I've always taken is that, yes, it's a part of my life and it's a factor, but it's, it's not going to be a deciding factor in anything that I do, if, if anything, I would say the biggest part of the thought process was, okay, my children have a 5% chance of getting diagnosed. And, you know, that's that scares the hell out of me, because I just would never want my children, or really anybody, to have to deal with the everyday struggle that you, that you, I know you as a father. You see that firsthand, and so but, but no, that that never deterred me to anything. Everything that I do is for my children. When I wake up at four in the morning and go work out and, you know, race to get home. And you know, when I try to take care of myself and keep my a 1c under six, that's not immediate. Is for me, but it's for them, because I want to be the best, the best parent and the best father that I can be for them. When I was growing up, it's actually funny. So we were having a conversation with my son yesterday, and we were just kind of joking around because he's going into kindergarten this year, and so, hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? And he goes, I want to be a daddy. And it's funny, because what I had the hardest time figuring out what I wanted to do professionally, and I still, honestly, I still really don't know what I want to do professionally, is for my the next 30 years, but I always knew that I wanted to be a father. Oh, that was always a driving point for me.

Scott Benner 24:07
Yeah, I can tell you, I, from a young age, knew I wanted to have a family, and so

Mark 24:13
it's a special, I mean, it's just, it's a very special thing, and I think that's a lot of the reason why I went to education, too, because, you know, I see, I see these kids, in many ways, as my own, but I just think about parents and the impact that they have on kids, and how meaningful it can be and and when I see that, when I see the flip side, and the parents who choose not to do that, it's hard, it's a hard pill to swallow. And so I enjoy being that person for for some of these kids who who don't

Scott Benner 24:43
this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the only CGM you can take off to get into the shower, the Eversense CGM. Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, well, I mean, sure you could take the other ones off, but then you'd waste a sensor and. Have to start over again, but not with Eversense. Eversense is a six month wear implantable CGM. So if you want to take a shower without anything hanging on, you pop off the transmitter, jump in the shower. When you get back out, put it back on, and you're right back to where you started. Come to think of it, you could do that whenever you wanted to. Maybe it was your prom night or your wedding day. Maybe you just don't want the thing on for a little while, but you don't want to go all through the hassle of taking it off and having to restart it and, you know, starting back over with, like, wonky numbers and having to, you know, all that that goes with it when you take off a CGM and put it back on. Oh, but you don't have to do that with the Eversense CGM, because Eversense is the only long term CGM with six months of real time glucose readings. This gives you more confidence, more convenience and flexibility. The Eversense CGM is there for you when you want discretion, a break, or maybe just a little adult time. Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, pop that transmitter off, pop it back on. You're right back where you started, without any wasted devices or time. I used to hate ordering my daughter's diabetes supplies. I never had a good experience, and it was frustrating. But it hasn't been that way for a while, actually, for about three years now, because that's how long we've been using us Med, usmed.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, us. Med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for OmniPod dash, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys. They have served over 1 million people with diabetes since 1996 and they always provide 90 days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping us med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGMS like the libre three and Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide and over 800 private insurers find out why. US med has an A plus rating with a better business bureau at usmed.com/juice, box, or just call them at 888-721-1514, get started right now, and you'll be getting your supplies the same way we do. Who don't get that at home. You think you see it more often than an average person because of your job. 100%

Mark 27:38
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Scott Benner 27:41
If you don't want to answer this, that's fine, but because you've used your name so like clearly, and we've belabored it over and over again. But what? What is it? Is it? Is it apathy, drugs, bad upbringings, intelligence, like, what? When you look across the desk and you see, you see who they are, do you know? Oh, I know how this is going to go already, because of, like, what's your generalization that makes you think it's going to happen, that you're going to be talking to a person who's not that involved or doesn't care so much? That's a loaded question. I know that's why you don't have to answer it if you don't want to. No, it's okay. I

Mark 28:16
don't I don't mind, because I believe in it and I'm transparent about it. I think, to back up a little bit, I think we have a and I don't, you know, I know this isn't necessarily political show, and this is a much bigger topic. We could probably go on for hours about this, but we have an enormous problem with our system. And I always say this is that when you go to a hospital, say, you you know, the absolute worst thing happens to you. You have, you know, a tuber in your brain. Imagine if your brain surgeon was getting paid the salary that a teacher makes,

Scott Benner 28:50
and you'd be upset.

Mark 28:52
You probably, you probably think, think twice, and I just think, how are we valuing education to such a minimal extent. You know, I would say just in my in my building here, you probably predict maybe 50 to 60% of the teachers have have second jobs, Second Incomes, because you can't live off of a teacher wage. And so when you go back to your question, so, what is it? So, I think it's a couple of factors. Number one, I think the my from my personal opinion, the institution of family is crumbling. And I think when you turn on the news and you see, you know, a lot of what we stand for as a country, I think it's really easy to see why. I think that the kids who are most successful are the ones that when they go home, are getting that support. I could be the greatest teacher on Earth, and I could sit here in the classroom and I could, I could speak the I could speak from, from the Lord. And what I'm saying is going into your brain, your alert, but then the minute they get off that bus and walk into that house, everything can be undone within seconds. You know, if you're trying. Into, you know, just is as simple as this. I want to teach my children about or I want to teach my my students about respecting each other. And they go home and Scott, you tell your your kid, you don't need to respect them. We don't like these kinds of people. Well, your word is much more meaningful than anything. And I'm going to say as a

Scott Benner 30:15
teacher. And so how do you think teachers are seen by some people?

Mark 30:18
I think teachers are very, very undervalued. I remember during covid, there was, like this one week where I was at home working out, and I had the TV on, and I saw like this commercial that said, thank you teachers. I said, Oh my God, I've never seen this before. And then, and then the next week, it was, we hate teachers, and they suck, and they're teaching critical race theory, and they're trying to indoctrinate our kids. Oh, I

Scott Benner 30:43
see. So that was quick. Okay, so if a news story blows up, then it's everybody,

Mark 30:50
yeah, I got it, yeah. But it's the same with, I mean, you know, there's always gonna be some bad teachers, but there's always gonna be some bad cops, there's gonna be some bad giant firemen, and there's gonna be some bad podcast like, there's always bad seats and everything that you do, but it you might get a bad average size fireman. Even you might get a bad average size and let me ask a difficult question

Scott Benner 31:10
about the that. So, because that's a pretty common response, you know, you're not paying teachers enough, what do you expect? So does that mean that, because of the salary, it's not attracting the best candidates. Where does 1,000% if

Mark 31:26
you had so it and again, it's multi best and multi layered. But I think about this. I think about it during my experience in administration, how challenging it's been over the past couple of years to try to try to hire. And you know, we have vacancies left and right. We have special ed vacancies. We have classic teacher vacancies. We had at my school last year we couldn't hire a music teacher, so we had to cut music programs. And so I think about this when I'm an 18 year old, graduated high school, and I'm going to go to college, and I'm going to think about what career I want to go into. There's two things that you think about, hey, what interest? Interests you? And am I going to make money? And it's just this is hard to say. But I would not encourage my own children with the current state of things to go in education, because I want them to be successful, and I don't want them to have to deal with the things that I deal with day to day, to still not feel comfortable.

Scott Benner 32:21
Are there other impacts, though, like, Could I be getting a good candidate who is just maybe working a second job or feeling undervalued, and that impacts their performance?

Mark 32:32
Yes, okay, so, so I think there's, there's lots of those things. My take is on this. If you my buddy and I actually just a couple weeks ago, he's another he's an administrator as well. We were having this conversation because he's seen conversation because he's seeing the same things. In theory, say that, say the minimum starting salary for a teacher was 75,000 which is a very good amount of income from my opinion. I think you could live very comfortably off of that. Sure, you would have people lined up out the door to try to, number one, enroll in teacher education programs to try to get jobs. When I first walked into education, you know, there was hundreds of people applying for a specific job. We just hired something, you know, a few weeks, two weeks ago, there was like, three applicants, and we didn't hire any of them, because not one of them was little bit of effective. And there's so many things that would come with that is that, number one, you're to attract more quality people. Number two, you could hold the standards much higher, because if my teachers are making 75,000 and I see Scott, who's teaching first grade, and he's showing up late and he's not following curriculum, and he's not assessing the students, you know XYZ. And I could say, Scott, you know we value and we appreciate you, but I have a line of teachers outside the door who would be happy to take your role, and so you need to live up to those expectations and

Scott Benner 33:52
do the job. I'll replace you. And, yeah, and that's

Mark 33:54
not I mean, and that's, you know, that doesn't that comes off in a very cold

Scott Benner 33:58
No, no way. I don't think it sounds cool. You're misunderstanding how I think, yeah, no, no, yeah, I'm good with it, and not just in teaching. And listen, Mark, no lie. Okay, so this happened to me in the last two days. I needed tires on my car, and I called a couple places. I found a good price, and I asked them, please order the tires. And they said, Oh, absolutely, come in on Thursday at excuse me, Tuesday at 4pm and we will put your tires on. I was like, that's great. So I showed up and parked my car. I went inside. I said, Hi, this is my name. I am here for my 4pm appointment to have tires put on that you ordered for me, and they take my car in, they pull the tire, first tire off, they deflate it, take it off the wheel. And, you know, I'm watching it. It's a very nice day, so I'm kind of outside, like I'm always inside. So I just kind of stood out front the sun. I had a drink, and I was just. You know, enjoying being outside. I wandered back inside to ask a question, because I thought I they weren't able to get me tires for the back just the front. And I was like, I'm going to try to order them online, would you you know, I went in to find out what that would cost to have them put on. And so I walk in there, and now suddenly, the manager and the guy who's working on my car are next to each other behind the counter, and they're talking. As I approach, I get up there, neither of them address me. I look at the one guy and he goes, you know, like I see him take my key, and he heads back to the car, but he doesn't say anything to me. And now I'm standing there because I want to ask my question of the other guy, but he's doing something. And so I very kind of, I take a half a step back. I don't want to pressure him. He's busy, like, you know, he does not acknowledge me. It goes on for three or four minutes where we are four feet apart, and he has not acknowledged me yet. So I say, Hey man, and he looks up. I

Speaker 1 36:00
go, when you have time, I have a question. He goes, Oh, you can ask me anytime. And I'm like, okay, so I asked my question. I end up having two questions. He answers both of them. I don't feel very confident that he understood one of them, but okay. I walk outside, go back in the sun, and my car is backing out of the garage. And I'm like, so I kind of walked towards the guy, and I put my hands up, and I'm like, hey, hey, hey. And he puts the window down, and he goes, What's up? And I said, there's two tires like you, you only did one. And he looks at me like, I have six heads. And he goes, did the guy inside not talk to you. And I said about what. He goes, your tires aren't here. And I'm like, wait, the tires you ordered me that you told me would be here and I should come here on Tuesday at four o'clock they they're not here. And he goes, No, the guy inside didn't tell you. And I went, No. So he talks to me for a couple of seconds, and I just leave. They just leave because I'm going to murder somebody if I stay. And I'm just like, I'm fascinated that neither of them looked at me and went, Hey, man, I can't believe this, but we don't have your tires. But as I'm driving home, I get past that, and all I can think is, you put tires on a car. The first thing you do isn't to check to make sure you have the tires. It's pull the car in, take the wheel off, Jack it up, rip the rubber off the wheel, and then go check to see if you have the new tire. Like that's can't be, right? And you do this all day long. And I thought, oh my god, we're all gonna die. And then, and then you tell me that we're hiring teachers that aren't qualified, but by the way, the parents don't trust the teachers, but maybe they shouldn't in some situations. And so now we're in a perpetual circle. And then I get home yesterday, my wife tells me about a news story about one of the major airline manufacturers who's saying that their new generation of engineers don't seem to know their job as well as the old generation. And I'm like, Oh my God, my car's gonna explode. I'm gonna not learn anything, or a plane's gonna fall out of the sky. What's the through line? It seems like people don't take their jobs very seriously.

Mark 38:23
I think part of that is accurate. I think the other part too is it's just that we live in this state right now where it's a opinion is more important now than fact. And again, that's a that's a but we just, we live in this, in this, in this situation where all of our values and all of our moral like, everything is just upside down, people, it's, you know? So when I was in college for my undergraduate, I was a sociology major, and I did a lot of work about the difference between a collectivist culture, which means people who live for each other, not necessarily socialism, but like people who you know, like a family, for example, is an example of a collectivist culture versus an individualistic society, where everything is competition and everybody is going up against each other. And when you look at the difference between, for example. A very strong example is the America versus Europe. When you go into European culture, it's, it is a collectivist culture. People bring each other up, people, it's not necessarily competition. It's it's, how can we do better together as a society or as a country? Whereas here it's, and it has been extreme. It has been an extreme in the past eight years. It does not matter what the person next to me is doing. It does not matter. It is what only matters is, am I getting what I want? Am I Am I winning? Yes, but if that makes sense,

Scott Benner 39:56
it's not winning through good work. It's just winning. Yeah. It's

Mark 40:00
just winning, right? Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's ladder climbing, right? Yeah, right.

Scott Benner 40:05
So I'll add my my opinion. I feel like it's possible that life is too good at this point for a lot of people, there's too many options of things to do to capture your attention, like cool things. But seriously, Mark from, like, I don't know, 83,000 different streaming services, yeah. And you know, you've got your computer and your phone, and you have an iPad and you have you could go outside. You could go for a ride in your car. Everybody has a car. Now, you know, like, you could used to be, everyone didn't have a car. You couldn't afford it. You didn't get one, and that was it. But now, but now, you know, you can get a loan without a job, and so, like, like, so now, everybody listen, there are some people who are broke. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is the Mendoza line for that has gone down and down and down and down. And there are more and more people who, I think, have access to things that are just, frankly, a lot more fun than working or being excellent at your craft or that kind of thing, like so when you have it used to be, you got up in the morning and you had an egg and you got in your crappy car. I don't know if people remember cars from the 80s, but they weren't a pleasure to drive in. And, like, now a car feels like a comfortable living room, like, you know, like, and so, like, you drag your ass to work and you do something that you if you weren't great at it, somebody was gonna fire your ass, and you needed to be great at it. So you were, and then you got home, and you'll, like, you know,

Speaker 1 41:40
I don't know what people used to do, stare at a wall, you know what I mean, and then probably read the newspaper. Yeah, he probably banged one out, went to bed at 830 Right? Like, so, like, That's it, over and over and over again. You couldn't go home and watch a guy play Twitch for 13 hours on your phone. You couldn't go play a video game that looked like you were in the middle of the goddamn Iraq War. Like, like, you don't even, like, there's so much going on now, I don't think anybody's got time to think about their job even

Mark 42:10
Well, there's a lot, there's a lack of urgency, because, because people, because of exactly what you said, there's, there's this great amount of privilege. And I think a lot of what it boils down to, too, is we just, we lack a sense of appreciation and a sense of reality. People don't, I don't think people understand how good in a large sense. I mean, yeah, everywhere you look there's people

Scott Benner 42:33
struggling. You've seen the first generation of kids whose parents lives were pretty easy. Yeah,

Mark 42:40
right. And so I'm a, I'm a big fan of Howard Stern. I don't know if you are, but he's one of, one of my most favorite things that he's has said recently is, you know, they go play tapes of, hey, we want a dictator here in America, or we want this or that. And it's like, Listen, if that's what, you go, go, move to Russia or go, and I care, you won't last two seconds and see what it's like, and people don't realize the opportunity that they're in. And I think a lot of what you're boiling down to is, you know, you said a plain, we're missing opportunity. And would you look at, you know, if you look at statistics, and see where we are as a country, as far as the, you know, what are we producing that's been exported. Where are we? Educationally, where is our? Where is our? Our economy? It's not the top 10, not in any of them.

Scott Benner 43:30
I would say, like, like, political stuff aside, if anyone is looking to be led instead of leading, I think that is, to some level, like an indication of, it's like laziness. It's like, I'll just let a person tell me what's right, and then empathetic, yeah, that's another thing I don't have to think about, you know, and, and I, honestly, I'm being serious, like taking any, like, left or right leaning ideas away from it. If you're in a position, in any spot in your life, forget politics, where you're just like, oh, I'll just go with what's being said. That, to me, feels like you don't want to think about it. Yeah, and yeah, so, but, but my, I guess my greater point is, is that I think it's possible that the guy at the tire shop is not qualified to be a guy at the tire shop,

Mark 44:24
and how it's pretty that's pretty challenging. How is

Speaker 1 44:28
everybody failing up? Is what I don't understand. Like, like, you know what I mean? Like, what happened? Like, did the manager at the tire shop stand in front of that guy one day and think to himself, I can't believe I gotta hire this guy, but I do. And by the way, the other guys that weren't like didn't have I went later in the day. Obviously, there were two guys there who were watching YouTube videos on their phones, like sitting in the garage, just the place wasn't perfect. It wasn't clean. There were stuff to be put there's stuff to do. Yeah, they were. Watching YouTube videos on their phone. One guy I tried to just like, say hello to, and he looked through me like I didn't exist. And I was like,

Scott Benner 45:09
Oh my God.

Mark 45:10
Like my what my experience is is that's a that's a lack of leadership. I think, I think in that instance, yeah, you have an employee who didn't change the tires and it was back. But he, as far as from my understanding, if I'm interpreting this right, he looked at you like my manager didn't take the time to explain to you why I couldn't change the tires, because he made this and and you know, you, if you have employees that are sitting there watching YouTube and not that comes down to the leadership, and that comes down to a top, from top from top to bottom, approach, right? There's no pressure. What am I teaching my employees and what is my expectations? What is my structure? Yeah,

Scott Benner 45:47
there's no onus on let's do let's all just do a good job while we're here. Yeah, yeah, yep. I worked, man. I worked in a sheet metal shop for years and years and years, and I got in there and I hit that time clock and I went for eight hours, you did not stop. You were happy if you had to take a in the middle of the day, because it was five minutes where you could just like, sit there and go, Oh my god, I can't believe how hard I'm working. And I made $4.75 an hour, and I'm still not sure I'm not going to get lung cancer one day from what I lived through and and I never went in there and thought they're not paying me enough, and by the way, they weren't. But I never thought this job sucks, which, by the way, it did. I never thought I deserve more. Like, I just went and I took the job and I did the job like I said I was going to do it, and I did it like, that was it. I don't understand the rest of it like, and I don't know if I sound like an old person at this point like I really don't, but you're gonna see a collapse of everything if everyone isn't working hard at the thing that they're being asked to do. And I think your point earlier, no one sees their job as their goal. They see it as something they're stepping on to get to their goal. You know, I don't know. I've seen it in a lot of different areas, like, forget guys in tire shops, you know, I know professional people who work with people who all make hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year, and they put about the same goddamn effort into their job as the guy at the tire shop does. So everybody's just like, I want to, you know, I'm trying to get to the weekend. I'm trying to buy a house. I'm trying to, like, go on vacation. I want this. I want that, like, and by the way, I want to back up from it for a second. Mark, you should enjoy your life, yeah, and you should be a focus. And you should be working towards all the things that you want and feel like you need, or whatever. Not if the planes are going to fall out of the sky. Like, you know what I mean?

Mark 47:45
Like, you know, there, there has to be some of that intrinsic motivation to sadatmos. I'm a tire shop, you know, mechanic, but I'm going to be the best, I'm going to do a

Scott Benner 47:57
really good job at this mechanic that I could possibly be. That's how I'm gonna get out of this one day. If I don't want to be here,

Mark 48:02
there's a lack of pride, and people don't. It's just, I mean, you, I think you hit it. It's just very people are very apathetic, to an extent, and

Scott Benner 48:12
it's not everybody, and I'm not, I'm certainly not saying it is, but I'm saying that when it happens, it's so obviously this thing right here. Yeah, you know, and I don't know, it's just fantastic. It's crazy to me. Somebody said to me the other day, do you make a living talking to people? And I said, I do. I was like, I don't know another way to put it, like I do. I sit down, I have a conversation with somebody, I draw out their thoughts, I add my thoughts. It is popular enough that people want to buy ads on it. That's how I make a living. And they, they were really perplexed by this. I and I know them personally. I said, That's so interesting. Like, so, so they're like, so you just talk. And then they kept getting stuck on it and and then the conversation went towards, you know, do you ever think you'll have a real job again? And I said, this is a real job. Like it was like, I said, I know what you mean, though. Like, you mean, am I gonna have to pick something up or hit something or carry something nine to five? Yeah, yeah. And I said, I don't know. Maybe, you know, I'm sure this could all fall apart. And then I you know, I'd have to go back to work doing something else, just to watch their heads spin about it. And I think in their minds, I'm part of what I just described,

Mark 49:27
yeah. And I yeah, I could see that, yeah, that was

Scott Benner 49:30
so that was really interesting. And I so I start talking about how it helps people and their health. And I even said, like, I have a an image of my mind, of a triangle with, like, three points, obviously, because it's a triangle. Can you imagine if I had a triangle with four points? Because what I would have

Mark 49:48
is a square, but quadrilateral?

Scott Benner 49:52
Oh, could I smush it around a little bit? I didn't really pay attention to geometry, from what you're telling me, it's not my fault. I didn't have a good teacher. But I said, like, I have. Something that I feel like I'm good at and I'm it pays my bills, and it helps people, and I feel very lucky to do something that touches those three points every day. And as I tried to explain how it helped people, what I could see in their face was they don't have a medical issue. They don't have this thing that they nobody's given him all of the details for, and he didn't understand why the value was there for people listening. And I thought to myself, I didn't say it to him, but I thought to myself, I hope you never know why this podcast helps people, because that's going to mean that you're having a pretty significant health issue. Yeah, you know. But he, he couldn't, like, make sense of it,

Mark 50:43
yeah? And I think it's, it's hard when you, when you are struggling to communicate a message and but people aren't open to understanding it, or even wanting to understand, oh, this is different, and it's okay that it's different. Let me, let me. Let me take meaning from it in my own way, doesn't matter that it's helping hundreds of 1000s of other people, but if it's not helping me, then it's worthless. Yeah, listen, before we I want to back up for a second and go so go ahead and so just to go back on teachers. And I just want to make sure my point is clear, that I think that teachers are the most wonderful, like some of the most wonderful people in the face of the amount of work that's done for for the turnaround, the income that's given is incredible. And I think if we didn't have teachers, you would have some serious, serious issues. I mean, not beyond the fact that we have education, but the teachers do what they do, not for the money, because of the passion for the work, and what I was just a circle back. And my point is this is that imagine how much better it would be if our teachers felt valued and were and were actually being paid something that matches the work that they put like it goes. You know, are we? Why isn't education valued? And just how incredible our teachers would be in the schools would be if they were funded appropriately. And yes, that what that does turn into is that you have people going to education because it might be a backdrop, or it might be it's not their first choice. And yeah, so the quality of what we're seeing and the people coming in is maybe not what we had hoped for, but it's not necessary. I don't think it's on the fault of the teachers. I think it's on the fault of the system. And I would say

Scott Benner 52:27
that just assessing your comp like your input, I would say that it doesn't really matter if it's money or what the reason is that it gets sideways, like, is it that we're not attracting the best people? Is it that they don't feel valued, so they don't give a full effort? Is it because they're working a second, it doesn't really matter. What matters is, is that that is that's the prevalent vibe, which is, teachers are very important, but we don't value them enough to do all these other things for them, and so that just has to be what's in your head. And I'm sure you come out of school. Listen, my guess is there's two different people that want to be teachers. There's people who want to help people, and there's people who don't want to work in the summertime. I'm going to guess that coming out of college, like, that's like, where you get like, that's probably the buckets that people come out of. Like, mainly, I'm sure there's others, but I'm obviously generalizing. And so the people who just want the summer off are probably not putting in a full effort to begin with. You probably were never going to get it out of them and and, God bless, like, whatever. You know, they still went and got their degree and everything. And then the people who were there to be like, I'm going to change the world six months into it, when they realize there's no way I can change the world from here like that probably weighs on them, that that's probably burnout. You probably get burnout. Yes,

Mark 53:47
oh yes, yes, yes, absolutely. You want to. You come because you want to save the world, and then you realize you can't even save the 20 something that are in front of you,

Scott Benner 53:57
and 15 of them don't want to be saved, by the way, yeah, right, yeah.

Mark 54:01
It makes you, it makes you reflect on what you you know, how can you serve that same purpose, and are you gonna be able to fulfill that, you know, doing what you're doing?

Scott Benner 54:09
It's interesting because you're describing, if you've heard any of like, kind of the Grand Rounds and cold wind stuff I've been doing this year where we basically, there's been a number of doctors who have said, look, at some point you can only say something to somebody so many times before you start thinking they're not going to listen to me. And you can see how it like, drags them down. And now I'm hearing that in this conversation about teaching, and I so I think it's not about the it's not about the specific job you're trying to do. I think it's just, again, it's just a human thing. You know what I mean? Like, like, you can't ask somebody to beat their head against the wall forever and expect that they're gonna willfully smash it into the wall forever. And, yeah, you know. And so is that not again, the problem of the person on the other side, whether it's the patient or the student. Or the family, or, you know, whatever, like, if you're not receptive to what's being given to you, you're just taking the ass out of the person who's trying to help you, and then at some point they're going to give up, and then you can't go, well, it's their fault. They didn't help me. Like, you know, yeah, yeah. A tough, a tough circle that I think we get caught in all the time. Yeah, and I think if we sat back and thoughtfully went through a lot of other parts of society and life, I certainly think we would see that happening over and over again.

Mark 55:32
It's as simple as just identifying the fact that I'm not perfect, and if I'm this, I always say this, if I'm the smartest person in the room, that's a problem. You know, I want to surround myself people with people who are smarter than me and who can, who I can learn from. And if I'm, if I'm closed off and refusing to take input and learn from the people that are around me, whether it's through education or through medical situations or whatever, then what's, what's the point? Like, I'm not, you know, that's your are you so that egotistical? Are you that self centered, that you think that you have nothing to gain from from others? And I just, I think, I think that's something that's helped driven me, is just identifying that I want to, I want to be a sponge and just soak in as much as I can for the people around me, whether it's type one diabetes or teaching or fitness or mental health, you know, whatever.

Scott Benner 56:28
I don't know if this is going to feel one to one at first, but when I my first real girlfriend, somebody who I dated for a stretch of time, she came from a family that was messed up, and my parents were divorced, and so I remember having this conversation one point when I said to her, I don't know really how to be a good like partner in this because I have no like, no experience seeing it firsthand, I said, but I think if we started with I'll put you first, and you put me first, and then we'll see. Like, I think if I have your best interest at heart, you have mine, we should probably do better. Do you know what I mean? And like, that's it's where we started, because we were young and we didn't know what we were doing, and neither of us had a good example. And so I still, I think that about this, about, like, life and and working and society, like, if, if you just realize that you're a small piece of a big thing that won't work as well without you, I'll put it first. And I don't mean you know that the first 90% of my effort goes out to society and, like, I don't care about myself, just when you're making decisions, you know, start there, like, just start with the greater good, and then, you know, get to you, I don't know, 10%

Mark 57:53
later, part of contributing to the to the bigger picture, sometimes, is just as simple as doing, doing your part. Yeah. I mean, you think about any sports team, and how many times do you see the pregame speech and the captain or the coach, it's just like, do your part, do your role, do your part, and the team will come together. Yeah,

Scott Benner 58:12
I've never seen the right guard of a football team interviewed once in my entire life. But you know, they got through a whole game and nobody got sacked on that side, or they ran through that hole. No problem. All day, I've never seen anybody put the right guard on television and go, Yo, man, you were blowing holes open left and right. Yeah. VP, yeah, yeah, you're gonna, you want to go to Disney World, baby? It's you. Yeah. No, they're gonna give it to the guy that ran through the hole you made and and that has to be okay to some degree. You know what I mean, like, if you're going to be a good right guard, you have to know. No one's going to know my name or give a crap about what I do. I'm just going to do this thing quietly, and if I do it, well, I get to keep doing it.

Mark 58:50
Everybody wants to be the quarterback, yeah, but not everybody can be the quarterback, unfortunately. Well,

Scott Benner 58:55
no, almost nobody can. Actually, some of the quarterbacks can. That's how hard it is, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what we've decided here today, Mark, but I think we've done it well. And I'm going to ask if there's anything we haven't talked about, and I did not answer you, and I did not want, I didn't mean to not answer you. I've been listening to Howard Stern since I was a sophomore in high school. Okay? He came to New York. He was in New York in the 80s, right? And then he expanded into Philadelphia, and I used to, I saved up to buy a Walkman that had an FM receiver in it, and I would walk out my front door in the morning, put on my little metal strap with the two foam things on my ears, and I would, I'd listen to Howard Stern on the bus walking into school as long as I could every day, we would set up double sided cassette tapes to record as much of the show as we could so we could listen to it in the afternoon. Noon. I was at the de Bella funeral in Philadelphia when John de Bell, when John de Bella fell out of number one. I was at his first book signing in Manhattan. I've met Artie Lang. I once flew in a private plane from Philadelphia to upstate New York with stuttering John

Mark 1:00:20
thanks. He's in Buffalo, right?

Scott Benner 1:00:24
So do you want to know how that happened? Before we go, I do want to know that my buddy worked at a little private airfield in Northeast Philadelphia. We were all hanging out one night after midnight at a movie theater where all my friends worked and where I met my wife, and guy comes up screaming up in his car, and he's like, Yo, you guys want to meet stuttering John from the Howard Stern Show. He's going to fly out of the the airport tonight, and we could, we could meet him. And I was like, I'll do that. So it's like, one o'clock in the morning. We drive to the airfield. We're waiting in the office. This car pulls up, and John Melendez, who most people aren't going to know, was eventually the, I mean, I think he was the announcer on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno for a little while. And he comes up, he had been playing in a band in Philly somewhere. Howard Stern was in the middle of a radio stunt where he was running for Governor of New York. Yeah, and he could have won, probably, he was polling really well, right? Yeah. And so he was going to announce his I know there was a big announcement, I think in Buffalo, right? Is that right? Buffalo? I

Mark 1:01:32
think so maybe.

Scott Benner 1:01:33
Okay. So anyway, John and his friends show up. We chat him up for a little bit. It's two o'clock in the morning at this point, and we actually wander out on the tarmac with him, and we're still talking to him, and he goes up. It's a twin prop plane, like, I want to tell you, it's like a it was like the pilot, the co pilot, and four seats, okay? And so we climb up, and he climbs up on the plane. He turns back to his buddy and realizes that his buddy is not getting on the plane with him. He goes, Yo, man, what are you doing? He goes, doing? He goes, I can't go with you. I have to go back to the gig and clean up. And John goes, I don't want to fly on this plane by myself. And he looks me in the face, and he goes, you want to come with me? And I went, yup. And so I just I walked away from my friends. I was like, five or six of my friends with me, my best friend in the world, Mike and some other guys I'm very close with. I didn't even think for a second about them. I was like, you guys can compound sand. I'm doing this, right? So, like, I start walking forward, and I look at my friend, Mike and Brian, and they look like puppies. And I said, Can I bring some guys with me? And he looks at the pilot, he goes, can we how many people can we put on this plane? He goes, you can bring that guy in one more. And I did turn around and pick somebody. I picked my friend Mike, and we get up on the plane and we're just chatting, and he's, like, I really appreciate it guys. Like, I'm nervous to fly by myself. Blah, blah. He goes, You can hang out when we get there if you want. Or I can. I'll have the pilot bring you back. Like, I didn't even have that much thought when I got on the plane, like, how am I gonna get home? Like, oh yeah. Didn't even think about it. And so, you know, I'm about 19 years old at that point, and I led a fairly sheltered life. I grew up pretty broke. So that's important, because as we're taxiing down the runway at 230 in the morning with stuttering John and some guy flying a plane, I don't know, the plane that feels like a goddamn car with a propeller on it, and it's getting ready to lift off the ground. My buddy looks at me, and he goes, you've never been on a plane before. And I went, oh my god, I haven't. And John goes, what I said, I've never flown before. And then the plane just picks up off the ground and goes. And then we talked about the show and music and stuff for, I don't know, maybe two hours for the flight. And we landed at four o'clock. The pilot's like, I gotta go to the bathroom before we go back. And that's when me and my friend were like, what do we do? And John goes, Listen, you can sleep on my hotel room floor if you want, but I don't know how you're gonna get home. And we were like, and the pilot's like, I gotta fly back. You can come and so we climbed back on the plane and flew home. And then we, of course, arrived at 6am our no there was no car there. So then my buddy and I walked for like two hours to get home. After that, I got home at like, 830 in the morning, and then I kept in contact with John, and I think I saw him a couple more times. I actually did spend the night in this hotel room once when he was playing a gig somewhere. And anyway, that's, that's my stuttering John story. I'm

Mark 1:04:37
pretty floor that stuttering John as a private jet, or I was able to get access to a private

Scott Benner 1:04:41
plane. Yeah, I'm assuming the show like they wanted him there. So I'm so assuming the show paid for it to get him there.

Mark 1:04:47
I so my quick two cents about Howard Stern. I mean, obviously all the antics and everything is hilarious, and it makes for great listening. But I I think. In our generation. He is one of, if not the best interviewer. And I don't know how many people that he has in the show. I think you know, one example for me is and for whatever reason, just because I'm an idiot, like Lady Gaga, I never liked Lady Gaga. I don't know why. You know, she's phenomenal. He has her on the show in, I don't know what the first time was, 2018 maybe, and I fell in love with her because of just the way that he, he conducts the interviews and pulls out the information about these people and gets down to their core and makes them vulnerable. And you know, beyond her, how many other people I've listened to him interview, and it's like, holy, I didn't know that about this person. Or, you know, he had during the election or after the election. He had Hillary Clinton on and and just to hear about her story, and whether you support her, don't support her, like or don't like her, but you have to appreciate her as a person, interesting

Scott Benner 1:05:50
story. Yeah, so Mark, can I tell you something that's there's a couple of ideas in there that I employ on the podcast. Yeah, I so mimic what you're saying that I can tell you that I know that Lady Gaga sang a song called I Am My hair during that interview, and I remember she started singing. I thought, What the hell are we doing right now? I still like that song. I don't know if the song's any good. What I know is, is that he introduced me to ideas from her head that I would not have gotten anywhere else. And I will tell you that you and I started talking before we were recording, and you said something about, like, you know, I appreciate you having me on. Like, a lot of these podcasts won't have you on unless you have, like, some big social media following. And I said, I prefer people who have no like, like, even once about that, because I like to talk to regular people, because I think they're more forthcoming, I think they're honest and they're not guarded, and all of these other things, and everyone's story, the part I didn't say to you back then is I think everyone's story is incredibly interesting, and the reason I know that is because in the 1980s I heard Howard Stern interview a porn star, and never once asked her about porn. And, like, just talk to her about her life and and that's kind of how I do this. Like I lead with the idea that you all have something really incredible, but you don't even know what it is like, you need me to, like, lead you through it so that you can let out the parts that are interesting. Because if you ask people about themselves, they say the same banal over and over again that nobody cares about, because that's how they see themselves, but they don't see the part that I see. And so, like, I think that that's why, that's how I do it. And if I'm going to be honest, I learned that from Howard Stern like that everybody has a story and it's interesting. I

Mark 1:07:46
mean, I think that's wonderful, I think, and I think your guests will appreciate that too, because, you know, just again, from my experience today, and you know, when I listen to it's it's important people want to feel valued, and that's also what makes a great content, is when people feel comfortable enough to open up and share, and you hit the nail on the head is that everybody has a story. Some are some might be much more fascinating than others, but everybody's story is important, and everybody needs an opportunity or an outlet to tell it, and you never know what might come from it, and you never know also who might resonate with it. That's

Scott Benner 1:08:19
the most important part. Like, it's nice for you to tell the story, but it's the people who pick up the tidbits on the other side that's important. And it doesn't matter if I agree with you or I don't agree with you, you would never know. While I was talking to you, you just you mentioned your experience listening to Hillary Clinton be interviewed. I have an opinion about that. I'm not it's not important. Like, you know what I mean? Like, my opinion, one way or the other is not important. It's, you know, it's, I mean, I could hear some like, you know, in your conversation today, there were some like, politically, like, marked things you were saying. But I didn't care where you got the idea from. I cared about the concept behind the idea. And also,

Mark 1:08:57
Scott, and if I, you know, I don't, I don't know you that well. But if I could make an assumption too, is that you and I, if you know, if you and I went to a bar and had a drink, we don't have to agree and and I think that that's another piece that we're missing, is that it doesn't matter if we agree. But can we have a discourse about it? Yeah, can we have a conversation about it? It doesn't have to be not everything has to be so volatile. I would find

Scott Benner 1:09:19
it more interesting if we didn't agree. Honestly, yeah,

Mark 1:09:22
let's have a conversation. Let's talk about why you feel that way. Let's but, and that's what our country was, was based on. And I wish more people would be willing to have that conversation. Have a conversation even

Scott Benner 1:09:33
when I end up doing the the stuff with Erica that I mentioned earlier. It's mainly about me trying to figure out how people's minds work. Yeah, like, that's the part I find fascinating. Even, like, moderating the Facebook group, like, like, I like that at this point I can tell which way something's gonna go, like, like, like, it's interesting how people fall into lanes and they don't know it. They think they're being very unique, and they and, and I'm like, oh, no, this is. Gonna happen, and then that's gonna happen, and then this is gonna like, I had a woman yell at me the other day online, and so she was being very unpleasant to people on Facebook, and let's call her Karen. Well, he called her Karen. I might call her something else, but she's being very unpleasant. She had a particular point of view, which I didn't I didn't agree or disagree with. It didn't matter to me, like she could have gotten out her point of view without being horrible to people, right? Yeah, so I removed her comments because they were horrible, not because of the content, not because of their their opinion. And so I hope that people can take me at my word. I don't. I didn't care what her opinion was or her perspective was. I cared that she wasn't being kind to people. I took it out. Well, in my mind, I was like, I'm going to get a direct message from this woman in 5432, here it comes, just because blah blah, blah and blah blah, and I'm not going to, like, sit by while you, like, push this liberal agenda. And I'm like, I'm like, All right, here we go. Like, I don't have it. Here's the agenda I have, lady, I want everybody to be nice to each other, yep, just be that hard be nice and have your incredibly conservative opinion about this, and that's fine. Or listen in getting away from that, go rant and rave at people about how great it is to eat Twinkies, or how great it is to not eat any carbs or anywhere in between. Like, I don't care, just be nice about it. Yep, right? Like, and I have, I have a thread I have to go back and look at after I'm done with you here where a woman is not being nice about it, and I'm gonna have to say, Hey, listen, you need to be kinder, and then 54321, Mark, she's going to do exactly what the last person did. She's going to send a nasty message and suggest that I don't agree with her, and that's why I'm doing this. And then I'm going to give her back a very reasonable response, that she will ignore every reasonable aspect of it, and then call me names and then leave the group. It happens every time it happens.

Mark 1:12:04
And honestly, in my opinion, good riddance, yeah, but, but

Scott Benner 1:12:08
the point is is, like, I don't have an opinion about you, like, just be a cool person and have your opinion. It's great. Like, it's fine. But my point is that the next five steps they take are always the same, yeah, and it's always in the same order. And then every once in a while, I get a save at the end where they'll go, You know what? I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm so sorry. And like, please, I'll, you know, I'd like to forget this happen. Yeah, those people are never a problem again, yeah? But like, if I read to you, like, the horrible things that this person said to me the other night, like, like, it went from like, and you can go back to their posts. Oh my god, this podcast is amazing. It saved my life. This helped me. That helped me. My a one sees better, my kids healthier. Blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah blah. This thing is Mecca for me, blah blah blah. And then five seconds after I disagree with you, you're a asshole, Scott, and you're blah, blah, blah, and you're, then I'm like, oh, which is it, did I save your life? You die? Yeah. Oh, my God, oh, very close. Mark, like, you know, like, like, so which is it, did I save your life, or am I a prick, like, you know, like, and by the way, if I saved your life, who cares if I disagreed with your point? Which, by the way, which, by the way, Mark, I didn't the irony is, agreed with her.

Mark 1:13:26
It's be it's people can't communicate and people can't

Scott Benner 1:13:35
think thinking is hard. Mark,

Mark 1:13:37
thinking is hard, and thinking for yourself is hard, and having a unique opinion is is difficult, and it's much easier, as you said before. It's much easier to let other people lead and and go along with the loud crowd than it is to say, You know what, I don't necessarily agree with one one piece. And I'm going to just tell you why. The

Scott Benner 1:13:58
point here, in case she's hate listening and still listens? Is that?

Mark 1:14:01
Oh, she, oh, she 100% is, yeah, there's a lot. I he might not be listening to get to my episode, but she's 100% still listen. Yeah, there's,

Scott Benner 1:14:10
there's just a few hate listeners. That's fine. I'll take your downloads. The point is, is that I agreed with her, like, personally, I agreed with her, but as the moderator, I can't let her be unkind to people while she's making her point. And also, those people have a point, which, if you thought about, you could find a way to agree with also, because it's not a black or white situation that we were talking about, and there's a lot of gray in it. But if you ask me, personally, I lean towards the person who was calling me all kinds of names, hoping that I exploded, and, you know, said I was pushing a liberal agenda. And by the way, I have a lot of liberal leanings. You're a teacher. I'm sure you do too.

Speaker 1 1:14:52
I also have, like, a lot of conservative ideas. And I have ideas all over the place. If you talk to me, I'd be a quite. Complex little person, which I think most people are, yeah, but there she was. She's like, I know what you're doing. I'm like, I don't know what voice in your head you're

Scott Benner 1:15:07
arguing with, but it's not me. I just happen to be the focus of it at the moment. So anyway, between you and me, Mark and no one else, I think she's out of her fcking mind.

Mark 1:15:19
I'll bet I'll make sure that tell anybody

Scott Benner 1:15:21
I think she's crazy. Don't

Mark 1:15:23
worry. You don't have to worry about anybody.

Scott Benner 1:15:26
She's either nuts or she was drunk. I don't know which one it is. I don't actually care.

Mark 1:15:29
I always, I always wish to, like, I wish I had that much time to, I mean, I don't have, I barely have enough time to give myself a shot of insulin, let alone sit and just troll you on a Facebook thread. Like, holy, if you're if you're that bored, go get another job. That's

Scott Benner 1:15:47
the other thing. Guess what? A lot of people need employees. Oh, Mark, that's the other thing.

Speaker 1 1:15:53
It's quarter or 12 at night, and I'm like, I just want to go to bed like I don't I, but I can't let this fester overnight, because I can tell her crazy doesn't sleep. So I'm like, she's going to be up all night picking at these people. And I can't wake up in the morning to a bloodbath of people who, by the way, just want to know how to pre bolus their goddamn insulin, aren't looking to have some existential conversation with her. And whatever it is she learned on whatever news organization she listens to, or person at work that she listens to, or whatever she got her ideas from. Like, I can't let that turn into that. And by the way, this is a very infrequent I'm being genuine. Like, this happens very infrequently on my Facebook group, because mostly people know I'm not up for these stuff, you know?

Scott Benner 1:16:36
I mean, like, I'm not okay with this. But it's fascinating how many times people have told me you don't have to, you know, blah blah blah, just because you disagree with me and I want to respond back and go, No, you idiot, I do agree with you. You're just an asshole that I can't do that. So I just go, you know, I tell my down the story, down the middle, like I'm doing this to protect everybody. Everybody has an opinion. Blah blah blah, you know, people need to feel safe while they're talking, etc. People come here for community not to be told that they're wrong. You know, you were very unkind in the end. You just, you broke rule number one of the group. You just, you weren't kind when you did this. It

Mark 1:17:13
takes minimal effort to just say, you know, at the end of the day, I'm gonna walk away from this conversation and know that I treated that person the way they expected it or deserve to be treated. Yeah, not important enough to make somebody else feel belittled or like shit. It's fascinating

Scott Benner 1:17:31
when people feel like they're saving the world three posters at a time. I'm like, you know, if you put this much effort into something that could actually help your idea, you might actually get somewhere, but you're trying to talk Marcy, me and three other people into it. I made up that name, you know what? I mean? Like, what? Then again. And have you ever ranted at someone online and had them go, Oh, my God, thank you. You've changed my mind.

Mark 1:17:56
I feel enlightened. Yeah. Oh, wow. Oh, thank

Scott Benner 1:17:59
you so much. Yeah, before I thought this, but now I see that you're right. I don't know. I don't know why everybody's so dumb sometimes. No,

Mark 1:18:06
I gotta make sure I join that group, because it sounds like there's some great things happening, as well as some good entertainment. My Facebook group is fantastic. It's got 50,000 people in it. Okay? I might already be a part of it. If I'm not, I'll definitely make sure I join Well,

Scott Benner 1:18:21
listen, I'm glad we ran out of time here. I would tell you about the Etsy seller who couldn't figure out how to send the thing to me now and now suddenly isn't responding anymore to my notes.

Mark 1:18:31
We'll save that for next time. Oh, yeah, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:18:32
don't worry. She's gonna I, you know, oh, it's on its way. It's blah, blah, blah. Then, you know, the the UPS the post office is like, I don't know where this package is. Like, it's somewhere, but it's going, Yeah, we don't say it. And, you know, like, I reach out to her, and I'm like, all of a sudden, she don't know how the messaging function works anymore in Etsy. She forgot how to message me back, but

Mark 1:18:54
she can, but she can accept your payment. I

Scott Benner 1:18:58
do think she's going to take my $100 and do do whatever she wants with it. Yeah, unbelievable. And she has something I really want, which she it's not her fault that it's not coming. But like, as soon as it turned into a thing, like, she suddenly, like, became non responsive about it, oh, off the face of the earth. Yeah. Everybody sucks, except for you and me. Mark, we're terrific. Okay, we're cool. All right, I'm still calling this one five large firemen, or whatever you said,

Mark 1:19:24
Five, five giant, five giant firemen, five giant firemen. And in the moment they seemed like like giants. I

Scott Benner 1:19:31
might say five giant firemen in my bed, but that seems very long. That's

Mark 1:19:35
it's more it's more descriptive, though it really is. All right, I'll

Scott Benner 1:19:38
figure it out. Mark, thanks. Hold on one second for me, a huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, GVO glucagon. Find out more about G vo hypo pen at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juice box. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, u. C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juicebox, I want to thank the Eversense CGM for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Learn more about its implantable sensor, smart transmitter and terrific mobile application at Eversense cgm.com/juicebox. Get the only implantable sensor for long term wear. Get ever sense the conversation you just enjoyed was brought to you by us. Med, us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, get started today and get your supplies from us. Med, okay, well, here we are at the end of the episode, you're still with me. Thank you. I really do appreciate that. What else could you do for me? Uh, why don't you tell a friend about the show or leave a five star review? Maybe you could make sure you're following or subscribed in your podcast app, go to YouTube and follow me, or Instagram. Tiktok. Oh gosh, here's one. Make sure you're following the podcast in the private Facebook group as well as the public Facebook page you don't want to miss. Please do not know about the private group. You have to join the private group as of this recording, it has 51,000 members in it. They're active, talking about diabetes, whatever you need to know there's a conversation happening in there right now, and I'm there all the time. Tag me. I'll say, hi, hey. What's up everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better, and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way recording, doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you, wrong way recording.com. You got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.

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#1306 Defining Diabetes: Post Prandial

Scott and Jenny Smith define diabetes terms In this Defining Diabetes episode we post prandial.

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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to another episode of The juicebox podcast.

Today's episode is another addition in the defining diabetes series with myself and Jenny Smith. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin. If you have type one diabetes, or are the caregiver of someone with type one and you'd like to help with type one diabetes research, but you don't want to leave your house or see a doctor. You can do that at t 1d exchange.org/juicebox, all you have to do is go over there, join the registry and complete the survey. When you complete the survey, you have helped T 1d exchange.org/juicebox, this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Eversense CGM. Eversense is going to let you break away from some of the CGM norms you may be accustomed to. No more weekly or biweekly hassles of sensor changes. Never again will you be able to accidentally bump your sensor off. You won't have to carry around CGM supplies and worrying about your adhesive lasting. Well, that's the thing of the past. Eversense, cgm.com/juicebox,

Jenny, we are going to define something today, something that I'm kind of confused, that we haven't gotten to already. Okay, yeah, this happens every once in a while where I look back at

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:42
definitions, where you're like, oh, that word, yeah, I guess, no, we didn't ever tell people what that

Scott Benner 1:49
is. So this has been on my list for very long time, and I guess we probably kept skipping it. I probably kept skipping it because it's kind of a big nothing burger, but at the same time, I don't think it is okay. You have to, you have to pronounce it, because I can't even pronounce it. Post brand deal. Okay, now it's going to be one of those things that you hear your doctor talking about all the time, and I have just like, look. You could go Google it and look it up and whatever. But in a 10 minute podcast episode, we can kind of talk about what it means and and how it works into your life, but I think your doctor should probably just say what

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:26
all it means is after the meal. We're looking at, what happens to your blood sugar, obviously, you know, in the case of diabetes, but yeah, it just, it just means after the meal, really, post intake of food.

Speaker 1 2:40
So is it prandial? Prandial? Okay,

Scott Benner 2:44
so postprandial means they're usually saying it. How does your doctor just say it like you're seeing a postprandial spike? Correct? That's Yes, right? Will people say postprandial low? You

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:56
could, because really, it doesn't have anything to do with the value of the blood sugar in and of itself. It really just means that it's following a meal. It's after, after you've eaten something, right? So it has no definition to actual being too high or being too low. You could refer to, gosh, you're having a lot of postprandial low blood sugars. That must mean that your insulin to carb ratio isn't quite right, or maybe you are pre bolusing for too long, or maybe you're always going for a walk postprandial, and maybe that's causing the low. And so we need to adjust the bolus that you take at the meal time so you don't have that postprandial low. So

Scott Benner 3:41
yes, I'm gonna read a definition. So, okay, postprandial refers to the period after a meal in medical context, it often relates to the body's metabolic process following food consumption. For example, postprandial blood glucose levels are measured to understand how the body processes glucose after eating. This period is critical for assessing metabolic health, especially in conditions like diabetes. So now, interestingly enough, I did not ask for a definition specific to diabetes. Okay, all I said was define postprandial, and it went back to that. Now, what other terms the doctors use that they shouldn't be throwing around the doctor's office because they're confusing. This whole series started because, I mean, famously, I had a person tell me they didn't know that they were using basal insulin. They didn't understand that, right? And then we look at it, and basal means baseline, and all this other stuff that you I learned while you were explaining it to me. But I just think that it's, it's one of those situations you get involved with the doctor, they start throwing out terms, and they're rolling through them because they're daily terms for them, but they're words you've maybe never heard before. So here we are making the shortest defining diabetes episode in the history of the podcast. I think it

Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:58
probably is because that. Yes, there's really not much more to it. The word just means after a meal or following eating periods or whatever, and that's it. There's nothing else.

Scott Benner 5:09
Well, then damage any we're done. I'm not going to stretch this out. I actually sat here and I thought, like, can I make this longer? Like, invaluable. And I'm like, I don't think I can. I think this is, this is what it is, but it's something. Hopefully it

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:22
helps clear it up for somebody who is clearly wondering what that what their doctor is talking about. I mean, could you potentially figure it out if the doctor's always talking about blood sugars around meal times, and then you're saying, well, it was fine before the meal. That must mean after I ate, my blood sugar's always high or always too low. But again, the word is just, I can't this. Just tell you after you've eaten, it looks like you're always high, right? I assume your

Scott Benner 5:51
context clues will help. For a lot of people, probably pick it up, but for those who just get stuck on I don't know what that means, then start to panic, which is what happens. Like, I swear to you, I sat in a doctor's office one time and they're saying this thing over and over and over again. I just raised my hand. I don't remember what it was. I was like, I gotta, I gotta stop you. I don't know what you're talking about, but I don't think a lot of people feel comfortable doing that, you know. So anyway,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:16
true. I think because there are also many people look at the doctor as the knowledgeable party, but people also don't want to feel like they're uneducated, and I mean that like in a broad sense, right? They don't want to feel like, gosh, I have to ask something about this. I've had diabetes for 30 years, and I don't know what this word means, and now the doctor's saying it, I'm gonna look like the quote, unquote, like uneducated or the dummy. And that's not by no means. I You should be able to raise your hand and say, You know what? You need to explain that in my terms, because clearly, you've got a lot of medical lingo in there.

Scott Benner 6:55
Don't get it such a good point. Because when I see adults, especially like you said, who have had type one for a long time? They'll, you know, you'll see them in the Facebook group. They'll learn something from the podcast when they come to say thank you, or they come to share a thing they learned so often, you see a little bit of an apology before they tell you, I'm so embarrassed to say this because I've had diabetes for so long, or that kind of feeling. And I don't want you to feel that way. I want you to hear post pray it, and they only go, I know that means. That means after, after meal, and then just yay, on with your life. All right. Thank you. Yes, this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by Eversense, and Eversense is the implantable CGM that lasts six months. Eversense cgm.com/juice cgm.com/juicebox, have you ever been running out the door and knocked your CGM off, or had somewhere to be and realized that your adhesive was about to fall off? That won't happen with Eversense, ever since won't get sweaty and slide off. It won't bang into a door jam, and it lasts six months, not just a couple days or a week. The Eversense CGM has a silicon based adhesive forge transmitter, which you change every day. So it's not one of those super sticky things that's designed to stay on you forever and ever, even though we know they don't work sometimes, but that's not the point, because it's not that kind of adhesive. You shouldn't see any skin irritations. So if you've had skin irritations with other products, maybe you should try ever since unique, implantable and accurate. So if you're tired of dealing with things falling off or being too sticky or not sticky enough, or not staying on for the life of the sensor. You probably want to check out Eversense. Eversense. Cgm.com/juicebox, links in the show notes. Links at juicebox podcast.com. A diabetes diagnosis comes with a lot of new terms, and you're not going to understand most of them. That's why we made defining diabetes. Go to juicebox podcast.com. Up into the menu and click on defining diabetes to find the series that will tell you what all of those words mean, short, fun and informative that's defining diabetes. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back soon with another episode of The juicebox podcast. You.

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#1305 After Dark: 12 Step Yang Yang

Tyler is 18, he has type 1 diabetes and at one point in this story he is homeless and using meth.

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Music - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio Public, Amazon Alexa or wherever they get audio.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to another episode of The juicebox podcast. We have an after dark today.

I'm just gonna read you my notes for today, it says call this episode after dark, 12 step Yang Yang. At one point in the story, Tyler is homeless and on meth. Yes, he has type one diabetes, but I'm not. And then there's an expletive in here. I don't know if we talked about it or not. Nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the juicebox podcast. Private Facebook group juicebox podcast, type one diabetes, but everybody is welcome. Type one type two gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me, if you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community, check out juicebox podcast. Type one diabetes on Facebook. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com. All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com

this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by AG, one drink. AG, one.com/juicebox when you use my link and place your first order, you're going to get a welcome kit, a year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs. Today's episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by Dexcom, makers of the Dexcom g7 and g6 continuous glucose monitoring systems, dexcom.com/juicebox, today's show is sponsored by OmniPod five. Do you have fear of missing out on OmniPod? If you do, you have fomu, but I can get rid of it for you at omnipod.com/juice. Box. Hi.

Tyler 2:14
My name is Tyler. I've had diabetes for 17 years, and I was diagnosed when was 18 months old. Oh, no kidding, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was, I was diagnosed, young man, but my mom was a diabetic. So, you know, I got lucky there.

Scott Benner 2:32
Hey, tell me something your mom was, or she is,

Tyler 2:35
she? She is sorry, okay, no, she's she's not dead.

Scott Benner 2:42
So your mom, I made you laugh. Your mom's the type one. How old was she when she was diagnosed?

Tyler 2:48
She was 20, so she was pretty, pretty. Later on, Butler than me, at least.

Scott Benner 2:54
Yeah, well, yeah, compared to you were all later on. Like, any, like, I don't have diabetes, and I'm still later on. You know what I mean? Like, I might still get it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's something my Listen, my daughter was two, and I thought that was crazy, right?

Tyler 3:06
You know, yeah, well, because when I, when I first learned about this podcast, because, you know, I'm, I'm like, freshman in college, age, I don't know how old your daughter is.

Scott Benner 3:17
She's a sophomore. She's halfway through her sophomore year college.

Tyler 3:19
Yeah, all right, yeah, yeah. So my mom started listening to your podcast when I was, you know, pretty young, which she was the one who kind of turned me on to juice box. So that's pretty cool. So,

Scott Benner 3:29
yeah, yeah. How about in the rest of your family, other brothers and sisters, anybody else with autoimmune stuff?

Tyler 3:35
There's not really any. I come from a family where it's kind of like, oh, I broke my thumb. Better get some electrical tape, you know. So there's, there's nothing that I've heard of that's really diagnosed. Okay, my grandpa deals with, like, some some problems with his insulin immunity. So, you know, there's definitely that part of it, but there's no other type one diabetics, no celiac. There's some thyroid issues though,

Scott Benner 4:04
yeah. How about you or your mom thyroid?

Tyler 4:07
Yeah, you know, I, I've never been, like, diagnosed with thyroid issues, but I, you know, I have trouble keeping off weight. I'm not like, you know, huge or anything, but my mom has some pretty big thyroid issues as well as my dad.

Scott Benner 4:22
Okay, have you ever had your thyroid checked? I don't think I have. You have other thyroid symptoms besides weight.

Tyler 4:29
You know that that's kind of one of the only ones I've really noticed,

Scott Benner 4:33
anxiety, depression, yeah, yeah. And then yeah, that's, oh, wait, you have that?

Tyler 4:39
I do have those are both things that I've dealt with in the past, for sure, but I think that a big part of that just comes from different things that I've dealt with in my life as well, you know. So it's kind of hard to tell.

Scott Benner 4:51
Will we talk about those things?

Tyler 4:52
Yeah, okay, I'm I'm open

Scott Benner 4:56
your game, Tyler, you're 18, right? Yes. Sure. Okay, cool. Yeah. So look, first things. First, you go to the doctor, just have them check your TSH, okay. Or if they'll give you a full thyroid panel, that'd be great. But if the if they won't, just have them do your TSH, if your TSH is over two, then say to them, Hey, what if we tried medicating my thyroid and see if this helps me with my weight.

Tyler 5:23
Hmm, that simple? Yeah, no, that's a good idea. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And that, you know, that kind of thyroid issue thing is kind of just some that's come up a couple times in conversation. Okay, no, it's not something I really thought about too much until, literally, right now,

Scott Benner 5:39
yeah, dude, it's one pill. You take it. You just pop this pill in in the morning, and you're on your way. And that's kind of it. Oh, wow, so yeah. And also other, other again, like, do you ever sleep and not feel rested? Oh, every day. Oh, wait. Are you tired all the time?

Tyler 5:58
You know, I am.

Scott Benner 6:01
Listen to me, your thyroids messed up. Man, yeah, dude, your dad's got it, your mom's got it. You have a lot of the symptoms. Go get the blood test. By the way, when we're done today, you go on the little portal to your doctor's office and you say, Hey, I have a lot of hypothyroid symptoms. My mom and dad have hypothyroid symptoms. I need a blood test. Yeah, send me a script. Go out, get the blood test, start taking the pill. You might feel better in a week, really? Yeah, no, I'm not kidding. Wow. Wow. Good. All right, now, okay, now, now that I've, now that I've possibly fixed your whole life, let's talk about other stuff. So what's dude, what's it like? Like never knowing a world without diabetes,

Tyler 6:41
I guess I could turn that around. You know, like, what's it like knowing a world without diabetes? You know, kind of my whole life, but

Scott Benner 6:49
you're not, but you're not interviewing me. Tyler, so I'm interviewing you. So, I mean, if you want to start asking me questions, let me tell you something, man, I did an interview the other day. I don't go on other people's podcasts, but there's this, there's this girl, this young girl that comes on here. Sometimes she's like, 15, she's got this podcast. She's like, Would you be on my podcast? Absolutely, yeah. She asked me a question. Like, 20 minutes later, I was like, oh my god, I'm never gonna stop talking. So don't ask me. Don't ask me questions or we're not going to hear your story, no, but you know what I mean, like you your entire life, you've got it. Your mom has it. Like you don't have like, even like you can't think, like, Oh, back on my sixth birthday, I remember when I didn't have diabetes, you don't have any of that. So does it? How does it impact you? Besides giving me my daily dose of vitamins, minerals, pre probiotics, adaptogens and more. AG, one has given me a morning routine, a healthy morning routine that I didn't have before in a recent research study, AG, one was actually shown to double the amount of healthy bacteria in your gut. These healthy bacteria work together to break down food and are known to alleviate bloating, promote digestive regularity and aid in digestive comfort long term. Hey, ag one is made with bioavailable ingredients that actually work with your body. So start with ag one and notice the difference for yourself. It's a great first step to investing in your health, and that's why they've been a proud partner of mine for so long. Try ag one, and get a free bottle of vitamin d3, k2, and five free. Ag one, travel packs with your first purchase at drink. Ag one.com/juice, box. That's a $48 value for free if you go to drink. AG, one.com/juice, box. Check it out. You

Tyler 8:36
know, I'm grateful for the fact that I was diagnosed so so young, you know, simply because I just think there's a lot of things that I learned over my lifetime that, you know, somebody who's diagnosed at, you know, even 1516 would not have the ability to do. You know, I've been editing my own basals since I was, you know, 11 or 12, right? You know, because that's just something I grew up doing, you know, education about, you know, the disease we have, and all that stuff was just a huge part of my life. And so I'm really appreciative of that. So you

Scott Benner 9:13
have this perspective and you have this ability to take care of yourself that you think maybe doesn't come if you don't have this responsibility.

Tyler 9:20
Oh, for sure. Yeah, no. I mean, I was staying with one of my buddies recently and one of his roommates. She was diagnosed at 18. I mean, you know, even in the harder parts of my life, where I'm dealing with different things, diabetes, I mean, it's never a second thought, you know, like, it's always something that, you know, I'm conscious of, but it's definitely something that I don't have to put a ton of thought into controlling, you know. And then, you know, she made a comment like, you know, oh my a 1c, was like, 10 because I was depressed. You know, and I've thought about it, you know, like, even when I'm depressed, you know, like, I still have that ability to kind of just subconsciously, you know, bolus when I'm high, or, you know,

Scott Benner 10:13
see what you're saying, eat when I'm low. So you think that it's such a part of who you are and how you have to be, and that, because you've never had a moment without it, that even in tough times, you don't deviate from your management, because it's just what you do.

Tyler 10:32
Oh, for sure, yeah, yeah, it's kind of like making your bed, you know, like, if you never make your bed, you're, you're not gonna, you know, get up

Scott Benner 10:40
in the morning and think about do it, yeah? And people, and people who do it don't think I'm going to make my bed before I get going, they just do it. Oh, exactly,

Tyler 10:49
yeah. Okay, yeah. So that's

Scott Benner 10:53
so that's how that that strikes you, and that so that's valuable. You feel more responsible. You feel more capable,

Tyler 11:02
yes, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that definitely came into play when I started to get more into extreme sports as well. Okay, you know, like that. That's someplace that being diagnosed so early has helped me a lot.

Scott Benner 11:16
Is that because you you trust yourself Exactly,

Tyler 11:20
yeah. So I know, like yesterday I was, I was skiing in a in the backcountry, you know, and it's like it wasn't even a second thought to stop and get some Starbursts in case I go low, you know, yeah, or fill up my insulin the night before. You're

Scott Benner 11:37
not, I don't know what the word is, but you're not frightful, you're not always worried about diabetes or anything like that.

Tyler 11:43
Yeah, no. And sometimes that can be, you know, a bit damaging, but

Scott Benner 11:48
because, why? Because you'll ignore things exactly,

Tyler 11:52
you know, yeah, and not in, like, not in a bad way, necessarily. I mean, it can be in a bad way, but I think that sometimes when, like, things go wrong, you know, it can just be a little bit stressful, because, you know, things don't go wrong very often.

Scott Benner 12:10
Oh, I see. Oh, so when something gets out of whack, it's not, it's so much, not the norm, that you kind of don't know what to do. Do you not have enough practice of things being upside down,

Tyler 12:22
like, I definitely have practice with things being upside down. Like, sometimes I don't give as much attention to that as I probably should be.

Do you know why that's a really interesting question. I think that might have to think about that one,

Scott Benner 12:40
it's okay. I got time. I'll tell you Tyler, why this is interesting while you're thinking about it is because sometimes, when you speak to younger people, yeah, they don't know why they feel the way they feel, or they don't know why they even think what they think. It's so emotional, and they haven't had enough time to reflect, to see themselves like it's why those questions are really interesting, because you just like, I don't know. It's just how I am, you know, yeah, yeah. And the truth is, there's, there's a reason you're just not aware of it yet. So you know it's that's why I find you might not know the answer, and that's fine, but it's interesting to ask, like, why, when you get into that position, does that

happen? Right?

You really? You don't have a thought about it, do you really?

Tyler 13:36
I'm trying to kind of come up with a thought. You ever

Scott Benner 13:39
seen the Three Stooges. Oh, Lord. You know, in curly, that's not what I like to hear. No, you know, when curly says I'm trying to think, but nothing's happening.

Tyler 13:51
Yeah? Oh, man, I

Scott Benner 13:54
know how that is. Don't worry. It happens to me all the time.

Tyler 13:58
Yeah, no, for sure, I think it's just because I'm just so used to everything, you know, like it. I mean, like you said, you know, like, I don't know life without diabetes,

Scott Benner 14:08
right? That

Tyler 14:10
it's, I mean, especially like, I don't know if it's the fact that I am almost like numbed out to situations like that, or if it's I know, I'm

Scott Benner 14:24
trying to think of, I don't want to put words in your mouth, and so I'm trying, I'm trying to,

Tyler 14:29
like words my mouth right now, that's funny, though.

Scott Benner 14:34
I wonder if it's so commonplace for you that, yeah, when something is important. You can ignore it because it seems so blah. Like, average, like, like, almost like, your room getting dirty. Like, you're like, You ever have that where your mom goes Todd, you got to pick your room up? You're like, yeah, I will. Like, I got you got it. You got it? You and you'll go a week, and you'll just be like, I will, I will. And stuff starts piling up. You think nothing of it. And then when you actually step back and look at it, you're like, oh my god, this is a hot mess in here. Yeah, and like, and like, How did I not notice that this week? It's because it's, it's all around you, and it's something you're so accustomed to that you just don't think of it from another perspective. And I wonder if diabetes isn't that because you were diagnosed so young you don't have any other perspective?

Tyler 15:22
Yeah, that makes sense. No, that totally makes sense. When you said, like, other perspective, that kind of, like, that's interesting, you know, I kind of have a thought about that, you know, it's like, I mean, I get that question very often, you know, of like, wow. Well, how is it to have diabetes? You know, it's like, I don't have another perspective, right? I'm pretty much just repeating what you said right now. But, yeah, you're like, I don't know totally right, yeah, I don't know totally right. Yeah. It would be

Scott Benner 15:50
like, if somebody asked me, like, what's Mars? Like, I'd be like, I mean, I can philosophize about it, but I don't have any perspective firsthand. That's so interesting, exactly, yeah, yeah. I

Tyler 16:01
mean, the human body isn't meant like that, you know, like, there's a reason we can't, like, well, know if there's a reason, but, I mean, it's kind of like imagining infinity, right? You know, like we can only understand it under, you know, different, different terms, you know, like, oh, it's forever, you know. But can the human mind really comprehend? Like, what forever is, yeah. And I think that somebody who has experienced forever probably could Yeah, understand what forever is, yeah,

Scott Benner 16:29
no, I'm looking back now on your very first answer, like, I don't know any different. It's funny. I tried to help you pick through it, but there's nothing for you to pick through. It's kind of, it's kind of wonderful, honestly, like, it seems freeing to me. It

Tyler 16:45
is. It is totally, yeah, one thing i i like that freeing kind of terminology, because it's like, one thing I do think of is, it's like, I mean, somebody who's diagnosed later probably feels like they're stuck in a cage, you know, yeah, because it's been on the outside of the cage Exactly. And yeah, there's no way out. The lock is the lock is on the door, the keys in the trash.

Scott Benner 17:16
Is that how it feels?

Tyler 17:18
I mean, I'm sure that's how it would feel if, you know, to someone who's diagnosed later,

Scott Benner 17:24
yeah, even that, you'd have to wonder, well, you've ever talked to your mom about it? Because she was 20. That's, I mean, listen, that's, you know, 20 years without it,

Tyler 17:34
you know, I don't think me and my mom have ever really had a conversation about diabetes in any way other than like, oh, you know, like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna adjust my basil to this. You know,

Scott Benner 17:46
why do you think you haven't? I don't

Tyler 17:49
know. I honestly don't think

Scott Benner 17:51
it makes her do you think it makes her uncomfortable? Or do you think it makes you uncomfortable?

Tyler 17:56
I don't know if it's uncomfortable. I think it just hasn't really ever came up?

Scott Benner 18:01
No, to be honest, do you and your mom? Do you and your mom have a good relationship? Maybe this is why it doesn't come up. Go ahead, good. Maybe,

Tyler 18:11
yeah, yeah. I mean, we do, you know, I don't know. You know, I dealt with a lot of addiction, you know, and that that definitely made us, you know, our relationship pretty rocky.

Scott Benner 18:26
Tell me about that. Where did that start? Yeah,

Tyler 18:29
so when I was 14, I think either 13 or 14, I went to a athletic boarding school, and I it was pretty much just a frat, okay, you know, like our dorms, and I kind of just found a lot of a lot of comfort in partying, and it kind of just got worse and worse. My daughter

Scott Benner 18:50
is 20 years old. I can't even believe it. She was diagnosed with type one diabetes when she was two, and she put her first insulin pump on when she was four. That insulin pump was an OmniPod, and it's been an OmniPod every day since then. That's 16 straight years of wearing OmniPod. It's been a friend to us, and I believe it could be a friend to you. Omnipod.com/juice box, whether you get the OmniPod dash or the automation that's available with the OmniPod five, you are going to enjoy tubeless insulin pumping. You're going to be able to jump into a shower or a pool or a bathtub without taking off your pump. That's right, you will not have to disconnect to bathe with an OmniPod. You also won't have to disconnect to play a sport or to do anything where a regular tube pump has to come off. Arden has been wearing an OmniPod for 16 years. She knows other people that wear different pumps, and she has never once asked the question, should I be trying a different pump? Never once omnipod.com/juicebox get a pump that you'll be happy with forever. The Dexcom g7 is. Sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast, and it features a lightning fast 30 minute warm up time that's right from the time you put on the Dexcom g7 till the time you're getting readings 30 minutes. That's pretty great. It also has a 12 hour grace period so you can swap your sensor when it's convenient for you. All that on top of it being small, accurate, incredibly wearable and light. These things, in my opinion, make the Dexcom g7 a no brainer. The Dexcom g7 comes with way more than just this, up to 10 people can follow you. You can use it with type one, type two, or gestational diabetes. It's covered by all sorts of insurances, and this might be the best part. It might be the best part alerts and alarms that are customizable, so that you can be alerted at the levels that make sense to you. Dexcom.com/juicebox, links in the show notes, links at juicebox podcast.com, to Dexcom and all the sponsors. When you use my links, you're supporting the production of the podcast and helping to keep it free and plentiful, you know. Okay, what were you, I mean, can you look back with some perspective and say what you were trying to escape with the party?

Tyler 21:11
Oh, 100% what? Yeah,

Scott Benner 21:14
what was, what was it you were trying to get away from?

Tyler 21:16
You know, I think there were just a couple of moments in my life that I never really got past, you know, okay? And I don't know if I'm past them now, you know, but it was just, you know, to me, it just felt great, just to not feel anything okay, you know, because, I mean, when you're when you're high or when you're drunk, you you just don't really, I don't know, it's almost like separating yourself from what's happening.

Scott Benner 21:43
Sure, you know, I mean, I understand what being high is, but what is it you were escaping?

Tyler 21:48
You know, my my dad had a had a stroke when I was 14. Oh my gosh, yeah, no, it's all good. He's all right. He's all right. He's not dead. You know, it definitely changed our relationship a lot, and made it, you know, made my my childhood a little bit interesting. You know,

Scott Benner 22:06
tell me. Tell me how it changed your relationship.

Tyler 22:10
You know, I think there were a lot of ways that he couldn't understand a lot of things that were going on. You know, I don't mean that in the way that like he was a vegetable, you know, who was just, you know, not able to comprehend the world, but I don't know if he had,

Scott Benner 22:27
you know, the skills to just be able to so, so he had some cognitive impairments. Oh, for sure. Okay, and has he overcome them, or has he just learned to live with them?

Tyler 22:38
It's actually so it's been, it's been a bit since I've really talked to him about it, but from an outsider's perspective, I'd say that he tries his hardest. You know, like there, I feel like anger management was a big deal for both of us. You know, when that first started, because I've always had a bit of a short temper, and then, you know, with that

Scott Benner 23:02
he did, did he have it before the stroke or just after?

Tyler 23:05
He definitely did, but it was a lot worse after, you know, and so we'd get in fights. We were just pitted against each other for a solid two years. Do

Scott Benner 23:15
you have Tyler? Can I ask you? Do you have similar personalities?

Tyler 23:21
Oh yeah, oh yeah. All right, no, me and my dad are kind of like, we're kind of like photocopies, you know. And sometimes that's awesome, you know, if, if something's going on, you know, we're both on the same, on the same playing field there, you know, it's just like, oh yeah, let's do this. Yes.

Scott Benner 23:39
So very similar reactions. Oh, for sure. So if you two are, if you two are involved in a personal discussion, that makes one of you angry, it's very likely going to make the other one angry too. Exactly, there's no yeah, there's no Ying to anybody's Yang, everybody's Yang, or everybody's Ying. Exactly, yeah, oh, wow. We could call your episode Yang Yang,

Tyler 24:00
yeah. Yeah, yeah,

Scott Benner 24:03
that's an awesome thank you. I like that. It's part of my it's part of my charm. I'm gonna write that down. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you and Yang. Yang are fighting all the time. It gets worse when he has a stroke, because he probably doesn't have as many of the interpersonal skills and the desire to stop fighting and stuff like that. Plus you see him sick, which for a young kid, is hard, yeah, right. And then you don't know how to process that, process that feeling that, Oh, my God, my dad's not invincible. He could die. Then, yeah, by the way, Tyler, after you have that thought, your brain goes, Oh, I could die. Did you know that?

Tyler 24:39
Oh, for sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 24:42
So then sports, boarding school. What sport did you play? Was it for skiing? Yeah.

Tyler 24:47
So I was fed of skier, and then while I was over there, I got into whitewater kayaking.

Scott Benner 24:53
It's funny, you said whitewater kayaking because I thought this is the whitest story I've ever heard in my life. But go ahead,

Tyler 24:59
I. Oh yeah, no, 100% Yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 25:03
You didn't know anybody with a tan at that school. I would even imagine, right, with a what? There was not even anybody there with a tan at that school, I would imagine, oh yeah, no.

Tyler 25:13
It was mostly gingers,

Scott Benner 25:18
kayaking, White Water white water kayaking. Yeah. Okay, so, all right, yeah. So to paint a picture, not to make fun, I'm somewhere where there's some kids who are reasonably well off, grew up pretty, like, comfortably that fair, yeah, okay, yes, yeah. And then we all get together with our different problems, we all feel a little above it all, because we're very good athletes. We're such good athletes that we get to go to a special school about it, right? Yeah, yeah. And then you're on your own in dorms. Then one kid goes, I have weed, and then the next thing you know, you're doing heroin. Is that about how it went?

Tyler 25:55
Yeah? And I heroin was never my thing.

Scott Benner 25:58
What did you do? Tom, what was your stuff?

Tyler 26:02
So, I was a big alcoholic, you know, okay, and then, from alcohol it, you know, I smoked a lot of weed. To this day, we're not, I'm not, you know, 100% sure exactly what it was. I started to go into a little bit of, like, almost a psychosis out of state. Yo, were

Scott Benner 26:20
you? What were you doing? Like, Turbo bongs. Like, what were you you doing, dabs? I'm being serious. How far were you going?

Tyler 26:27
Yeah, so, I mean, you know, there's, there's kind of a prediction among my family that I was smoking spice, you know, and I thought what you told them,

Scott Benner 26:39
Don't worry. We got at the gas station. It's fine. Oh, you're laughing because you've said that, because you've lied and sold somebody that before. It's Delta. What is it? Delta eight. Delta. What is that? Yeah, fake weed.

Tyler 26:53
No. You know, I had a lot of friends who were not getting their drugs through very reliable sources,

Scott Benner 27:00
really, you know, surprising, but go ahead,

Tyler 27:05
I'm gonna laugh my way through this episode, man. But I was like, legit homeless at this point. You know, this was a year after I left that boarding school because, you know, my parents saw me going down a dark path, so I went to a public school, you know, which was pretty interesting. You know, I had gone to public schools before, but not as like someone who enjoys substances.

Scott Benner 27:29
This is so interesting, how this moves around. Give me a second. You go to that school when you're 14, yep. How long did you make it before they kicked you out for drinking? I'm assuming,

Tyler 27:40
no, I actually, I left.

Scott Benner 27:42
You left on your own when I was 16. I see two years you gained a lot of knowledge about weed and booze while you were there, and then you and then you went back to a public school and spread what you knew to your new friend.

Tyler 27:56
Exactly. Yeah, they were meth heads. At that point,

Scott Benner 27:59
the kids in public school. Wait, the kids in public school are doing math. The private school friends were up to

Tyler 28:05
meth. Oh, no, no, sorry, the public school friends, ah, we're, we're all methods. So you

Scott Benner 28:11
were, you were a piker, like, when you got to back to school, you know the word piker? You don't know the word like, not a professional, an amateur, like you, yeah, yeah, your weed and alcohol looks like looks like Sunday in the Park to these people. Oh

Tyler 28:33
yeah for sure. Okay, yeah. Now,

Scott Benner 28:35
yeah. Now, Tyler, at that point, you say to yourself, I don't want to be like them. I'm not going to smoke meth. Or you say, No,

Tyler 28:44
I became homeless. Wow, holy,

Scott Benner 28:48
Tyler. Are you serious? And by the way, Tyler, no,

Tyler 28:51
I was never, I was never a method, okay, but one day, I got an ate the weed that smelled like straight Drano, and decide to smoke it fentanyl? No, I don't think so. So, so spice is like, it's like a synthetic weed, okay, but it's kind of turned to, like, it's almost like wet now, you know what they were getting, which is essentially just embalming fluid.

Scott Benner 29:21
Okay, that's great, yeah, yeah. Everyone should be really just they, I mean, my God, the world's a terrible place. Tyler, they say, I've got this weed, but if we mix it with Drano, I can sell more. That's a meth head thought, right there, by the way. Okay, so, okay, so you, so you are in private school. I mean, your parents are probably fairly disappointed you get kicked out of this thing where they were probably like, Oh my God, my son's gonna be the next white water kayaking champion of the world. Again, that's a white state. It. And then Dane Jackson's a pretty cool guy, yeah, okay, he's the one guy. I mean, it's not a thing to go after. So you so you come home, they're disappointed. You're obviously disappointed. You feel caught a little bit. You double down. You meet these kids at school, or literally smoking meth. And then how long until after you're 16, are you out of the house?

Tyler 30:21
It was like, two months into my senior year. Okay, so you made

Scott Benner 30:25
it at home for a year and a half or so?

Tyler 30:29
Yeah, I left my junior year from it's called CRMs school up here. I went to public school my

Scott Benner 30:38
Tyler. I'm sure they're thrilled for the shout out, by the way.

Tyler 30:41
Oh no, I hate them.

Scott Benner 30:43
I hate them. Okay, so Jesus Christ. Also, I'm realizing now all this whole story happened, like a year ago. This is like, not this is not like, are you clean right now?

Tyler 30:55
Yeah. So I'm eight months clean sober. Oh, good for you, man. Yeah, so I just got out rehab.

Scott Benner 31:02
Are you California sober? Are you sober? Sober? No,

Tyler 31:06
I have not touched a single thing. Yeah. I went to a kava bar the other night for an open mic. Did not drink a single thing at Kaaba.

Scott Benner 31:15
You went to a bar last night? What to test yourself? No, it

Tyler 31:18
was like two weeks ago, like tonight. I got out of rehab. Tyler, listen to me.

Scott Benner 31:24
If I gave you a cell phone, if I gave you a cell phone number, it's going to be a burner phone, don't worry. But if I gave you a cell phone number, would you run all of your decisions by me first, and I could just yay or nay them real quickly. You would. I think you need help with that. You got out of rehab and went to a bar.

Tyler 31:40
Yes, my buddy was hosting an open mic night at it's called, like, a cabo bar, so it's not like alcohol. And all my buddies were like, Dude, you're gonna, like, go there and get super fucked up on Cabo. And I was like, No, and I didn't, you know,

Scott Benner 31:55
well, Tyler, I'm fine. I'm proud of you for that. But could you make some friends that, like, read the kids at a library or something like that? I think that would be a better path for you. Oh, man, so I wish Are you? Do you think of yourself as an alcoholic or somebody who, at a young age, just drank way too much?

Tyler 32:12
I think myself as an alcoholic. Okay, you know, I'm in the 12 step program. Okay? You know, I go into meetings and I say, Hi, I'm Ty I'm an alcoholic, you know, and that that's a really important part, just because, you know, I mean, nobody starts out, nobody, nobody goes out as an alcoholic. And just like, like, the the signs of alcoholism don't start when you're, like, 30, you know, it's, it's not

Scott Benner 32:40
like you have an addictive personality to begin with.

Tyler 32:43
Exactly, okay, yeah. And I let that manifest for, you know, a long time, not a long time, but couple years. And then, you know, I decided to get my together, and it's kind of where I'm at today, you know.

Scott Benner 32:57
So, help me with the timeline a little bit. You're, you go, you go to the private high school. You're there a couple of years. You come out. You're an alcoholic. You're smoking way too much weed. Like what I said earlier, like, I'm not kidding, right? Like you were like, like, hitting heavy bongs, doing dabs, like you were off the deep end there. And you, you talk about a little bit of a psychosis. I don't know a ton about it, but I have heard people say weed is so safe for people, unless you have a little something like a personality issue, like disorder or something like that, then too much of it could really take you the wrong way, and you could lose yourself. Do you feel like you're on your Do you feel like you're on your way to losing yourself? And you stopped? I

Tyler 33:37
think I lost myself. Man, oh, yeah, 100% you know, by like, the way, I know that is because I was not me, you know, I was homeless for it wasn't a ton of time, you know, but by the time I came out of it, I was, you know, like I was suicidal, you know, I, I mean, I wasn't, like, hearing voices, but like, I had, like, No, I would say I had, like, no regulation of, like, what I thought or what I was doing, you know,

Scott Benner 34:09
kind of live like an insect. Like, you wake up, you you seek drugs, you sleep under a rock, like, that kind of thing. Like, it's just over and over, like, over and over again, right? Like, you're just in this very simple like thing, what drug got you home? Like, what got you kicked out of your house? Did you leave? Or did you get kicked out?

Tyler 34:25
I left, which, you know, looking back, I mean, you know that that's kind of where it's it's hard for me to look back at that, you know, because I just don't see me in that period of my life. You know,

Scott Benner 34:39
if you now, would you now have counseled that kid to, like, just ask for help, not to leave?

Tyler 34:47
Oh, 100% Yeah, yeah. Well, because, like, you know, all my meth head buddies were homeless, so I was like, hey, I'll come, you know, roam the streets with you guys. And so that's kind of, kind of how it went.

Scott Benner 34:59
There. How old were the guys in this very sad gang you were in? Like, are they all your age, or were they older? Did they vary?

Tyler 35:08
Yeah, they were all my age. You know, kidding. They were, like, Junior seniors in high school. Tyler,

Scott Benner 35:15
can you tell me, without being very specific, because I don't want to know what town you live in, but can you tell me, like, what part of the country you live in?

Tyler 35:21
I'm in the mountains of Colorado, Colorado. Okay,

Scott Benner 35:25
I gotcha the weeds. Okay, there's that story of when we got legal in Colorado. There was a big Fortune 500 company there. They had to leave, and one of them, but like, when, like, internal memos, like the one guy's like, look, I ask a package to be FedEx, and three days later, like, my employees are like, Yo, man, I'm getting to it. Don't worry.

That before it was like, we had, we couldn't do business because everybody was so high. They weren't, like, in our they weren't there to work. Oh, yeah, so yeah. But

Tyler 36:02
do you are you in a legalized state? I

Scott Benner 36:04
am. I'm in New Jersey. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I could drive 10 minutes from here in two different directions and and buy weed, like, in two seconds, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tyler 36:15
I mean, that was a big part of it, you know, like, at a certain point I started selling weeds, you know, to high schoolers, because it's 21 plus, you know, and then I started, you know, making fake IDs that I could, you know, help other people buy weed. So weed was, like, a huge part of my life. Yeah, you're

Scott Benner 36:34
an entrepreneur. I understand what

Tyler 36:36
you're saying. You're an entrepreneur. Yeah,

Scott Benner 36:38
that's what you tell people. Say, I was an entrepreneur for a while, small business owner, but I've moved on now. And yeah, so, so, but I gotta go back. Also, I lost your audio. You're a little dim all of a sudden. And I don't know why. Sorry. No better, but you know, much better. Awesome. There was a group of guys your age. Guys are guys and girls, guys and girls your age who were using meth and or somehow, like, strung out and literally homeless, yeah. And how long did that last for for you? And are some of them still out there?

Tyler 37:15
Yeah? So, you know, I was only on the streets for like, a month before I broke down, and I was just like, screw this. Like, I'm done. You know, yeah, a lot of them are still out there.

Scott Benner 37:26
I almost called you a quitter. Tyler, just trying to be funny. Actually, that's not what. It first occurred to me. I know I'm like, 30 years older than you. This is inappropriate, but at first you were like, I was only out there a month. And I thought, pussy. But, but, I'm glad. I'm glad so you you couldn't deal with it. You got away from it. How do you get out of it? Then,

Tyler 37:48
you know, I, the way I really got out of it was when I got arrested. That'll slow you down. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, because it was just like, you know, we had this, like, group chat and, like, the day, you know, they all thought I would turn, you know, and like, be like, Oh yeah, blah, blah, blah, you know. And, you know, like, literally, the day after I got arrested, like, that group chat, just like, didn't exist anymore. And I was like, Cool. Well, you know, I've wanted to, you know, I don't want to say get out of this life, because it makes me sound like I was like a Crip. But, you know, kind of get out of this life. You know,

Scott Benner 38:29
Tyler, listen, no matter how horrible your story is, you still sound like a white kid from Colorado. So you're never gonna You don't sound that tough, trust me, I know. I don't try to sound so it sounds like you fell off your your surfboard and, by mistake, did some cocaine. But Are your parents addicts? No, they're not.

Tyler 38:53
No, I have a pretty strong, you know, history of addiction on my dad's side, but my mom's side is, you know, pretty clean cut. Does

Scott Benner 39:02
your dad have addictive tendencies that come out different ways other than drugs?

Tyler 39:06
That's a good question, like through process, addictions and

Scott Benner 39:09
stuff, yeah, oh, look at you using look at you using your your recovery. Words, go ahead. Yeah,

Tyler 39:16
no, I think that, um, really interesting. I'm

Scott Benner 39:20
not looking for you to out your dad, just that simple, like, yes or no. Like, you don't have to give me a story about how he, like, you know, goes to hookers or something like that, and like to be dominated or something like, I don't I'm not looking for personal details. I'm sure also, your father does not go to hookers and like to be dominated. But like, what I'm saying is, like, you know, what I'm saying is, like, do you see those tendencies in him that are coming out in different ways. And for you, it came out this way.

Oh, man, I don't, you know, yeah,

you just skipped a generation almost.

Tyler 39:49
I think that is skipped a generation for sure. Yeah, yeah, no. And that that's kind of something that, like, we've looked over, you know, like, especially like when I was in recovery. I'm like, Well, where does this come from, you know? Because, I mean, like, I was in sober living, that's where I was, where I spent the past, like, seven months, yeah, and like, all these people, you know, they're like, oh yeah. My, my dad was, you know, a heroin addict, or, like, oh yeah, my, my mom was a, you know, she was strung out, and she was a hooker, you know? And I'm just like, oh, well, my dad's a compliance officer, so I

Scott Benner 40:26
was going to be a whitewater Raptor. It's only if volleyball didn't work out, or bocce, yeah, like, so, no, no, I yeah, my,

Tyler 40:35
my professional spike ball tournament does, or ever, yeah, yeah,

Scott Benner 40:39
no, no, I play soccer, that's interesting. So my point, my bigger point, is, so when this happened to your parents, really did not know how to, like, they didn't have the tools

Tyler 40:47
for this, right? Oh, yeah, no, not at all. And I think that was, you know, like when I was earlier on in recovery, you know that that was that put a huge block in a relationship, because it was just like there were certain things that I knew that I couldn't talk to them about because they wouldn't understand. Do you

Scott Benner 41:09
find yourself angry that they couldn't help you?

Tyler 41:12
I think I definitely had a lot of resentment towards them. You know, whether it was, yeah, I think that a lot of resentment kind of built up over time, and you know that that's, you know, not, not a good thing,

Scott Benner 41:28
yeah, and it's just because you, you're a little boy, and you need help, and your parents aren't helping you,

Tyler 41:36
exactly. And I that's not because, like, it's not like they neglected me. It's, it's the fact that, like, I mean, I'm, I'm a homeless drug addict, and, you know, like, they, they've never experienced that. It's almost like coming back to diabetes, you know, like, you know, so some random, like, some random guy who has a working pancreas, like, can't walk up to a diabetic and, you know, explain to them, you know, how their basal works, you know,

Scott Benner 42:05
yeah, no, it's interesting though, that, you know, the anger, but you also understand it's unreasonable.

Tyler 42:12
Oh, yeah, yeah. And that's a huge part, you know, because, like, addiction takes people and it makes them not them.

Scott Benner 42:20
You know, yeah, if you don't go to the private school, do you think you get caught up in it in public school anyway? Or do you think that being like trapped in those dorms with all that just you didn't have a chance? It's

Tyler 42:34
an interesting question. Never really thought about that. I think that it wouldn't really matter, you know. Like, I think that, you know, like, I mean, there were definitely places where I kind of started, like, looking back on it, I can see addiction kind of starting to form even before I went to that school, okay,

Scott Benner 42:56
you know, maybe what it looks like is just different. Like, maybe at the if you stay at the private institution, you're a closet drinker and a weed smoker and you've got all these problems, but it looks all clean cut still, and it gets shined up because you're at that school and you're in a public situation where these kids maybe have fewer things to prop them up and Help them, and it tumbles quicker plus those. I mean, if you look at the social aspects of what it takes to pay for somebody to be in a public school versus a private school, you probably weren't going to private school with a bunch of kids whose moms had to hook you know what? I mean, yeah, yeah. No, not at all. Right, so you kind of like you shifted the social aspect. So no matter what, you were going to end up addicted to something and on a bad path, but the physical manifestation of it, public school to private school changes. Does that make sense? Yeah,

Tyler 43:52
oh, for sure. And I think that. I don't think I would be where I am today if you know, I hadn't gone from, you know, like private school kid to homeless, you know, in a matter of a year,

Scott Benner 44:07
yeah, the bottoming out so quickly was probably, I can't believe I'm saying this, but probably good for you, because if you stay, if you stay there, you're going to get propped up by the system forever. You're just going to turn into a 30 year old drunk that's hitting somebody. Oh, exactly, yeah. So those kids, those kids at those private school, aren't any better off than you are. You just crashed faster than they are going to

Tyler 44:30
Yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure. That Interesting. Yeah, no. I mean, I look back at, like, my friends from that school, you know. And like, you know, we're on like Snapchat, you know, and they post videos them, like, binge drinking on a beach somewhere, because that's, you know, what they have the ability to do. And by the way, you know, like, I'm, I don't come from like a like poverty, but I, I'm not as well off. My family isn't as well off as, yeah, most. To those people just because I got, you know, huge financial aid and scholarship, yeah, my,

Scott Benner 45:04
my son once said to me at college, like, we're not we're not uncomfortable, and we're not wealthy, you know what? I mean, like, I'm I'm okay, yeah, but my son once told me, my, my son once told me, I am the poorest person here.

Tyler 45:16
I was by far the poorest person at that school? Yeah, they had a scholarship program for, like, indigenous people. So I don't know if I was like, the bottom of the bottom of the barrel, but I wasn't. I didn't fit in with those people close enough, like, right? Not like, I don't want to name drop, so I'm not gonna say anything other than, like, my, one of my classmates was the heir to a very well known diamond company, oh, you know. And, like, I lived in the suburbs of Broomfield, Colorado, you know, like, wow,

Scott Benner 45:56
yeah. And, and, did you feel a pressure to kind of do what they were doing. Did they seem more advanced or fancy to you?

Tyler 46:04
Oh, yeah, yeah. 100% Yeah. Like for one of my roommates, you know, we, we did not get along, just because that, that barrier was huge. He was from China, and his dad would literally send him 1000s of dollars at a time just to do whatever he wants with it, really, you know, yeah, like, he didn't speak very good English, you know. And he would literally, like, have me order him. There was this sushi place in town that served like a wagyu steak with like gold on it. And it was like, I think it was, like, 150 bucks, like, completely ridiculous, you know. And he'd be like, you know, order me this, like, here's my dad's credit card.

Scott Benner 46:50
Oh no, yeah, that's not healthy.

Tyler 46:52
It's not, yeah, you're

Scott Benner 46:54
not going to be okay in that situation. Yeah. And he

Tyler 46:57
ended up getting kicked out of school just because he didn't, he didn't have those skills to really deal with real life, you know, like he would sit on his computer for hours on end, you know. And so he got, he got, they don't call it expelled there. They call it politely asked to leave the community, yeah, just because it's that type of school,

Scott Benner 47:18
no one gets expelled here. That's, expelled everyone. We have a 96% graduation rate. Don't worry, of all the people who were reporting that graduated,

Tyler 47:29
yeah, yeah, pretty much, pretty much,

Scott Benner 47:32
yeah. How about that? Problems like this, they can touch anybody you know, Oh, for sure. But how it manifests does sometimes have a lot to do with your your social setting and your financial backing.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, 100%

when I was growing up, kids at my school drank and the kids at my cousin's school did Coke, and yeah, they had more money and that, in the end, that's all it was like, my my friends could afford beer and his friends could afford drugs. Like, that was all it was,

Tyler 48:03
you know, yeah, no, 100% Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just to say a little bit about my hometown, they they did meth. So, yeah, that's, that's my town, yeah,

Scott Benner 48:14
Tyler's like, I'm just trying to say I didn't have a whole bunch of money, but you were a hell of a kayaker. Slash. What else was? It was the other ski racer. Oh, my God, do you still ski? Oh, yeah, competitively, or for fun,

Tyler 48:33
I don't ski competitively. I was on a team last year, but this year, you know, I was in rehab, so I didn't really, it's

Scott Benner 48:42
hard to see. Have you heard Have you heard Chris Freeman on this podcast? He's been on a number of times. Chris is an he's an Olympic cross country scare. His type one,

Tyler 48:51
really? Yeah, I don't think I've ever caught one of those episodes. I'm gonna have to listen to it. Though he's a

Scott Benner 48:57
no bullshit guy. Like, I like him, like he's got his the way about him, his attention to detail and excellence and stuff like that. Like, there's no, there's no question in my mind how he ended up in the Olympics. Like, 100% Yeah, I just made me think of that just now that maybe you would like to hear that anyway. Yeah, why the hell did you want to come on this podcast?

Tyler 49:19
I don't know. I don't know, Scott, that's a, that's a really good question. I heard the after dark episodes. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 49:27
think you qualify, by the way, really, I mean, dude, wow. You think the nice ladies that listen are going to want to be blindsided by an 18 year old homeless kid with like, in a roaming gang of meth heads, sounds like an episode of like The Walking Dead you're describing to me. Oh, man, I'm sorry to ask like this, because I feel weird because you're younger, but was there a lot of unsafe sex in that month on the streets? Oh,

Tyler 49:58
oh yeah. Yeah, 100% I had, I had two separate pregnancy scares in 2022,

Scott Benner 50:05
you thought you were pregnant twice. Just kidding. Okay, Tyler, you got to tell him. Like, not here somewhere else. You know what I mean. Like, yeah, you can't, like, you can't let boys treat you like that. Tyler, Oh, no. But so with another, with a homeless girl, yeah, yeah,

Tyler 50:24
yeah, no, I'm, I'm very surprised I don't have the clap.

Scott Benner 50:29
No kidding. Did you get checked out when you got off the street?

Tyler 50:32
Oh, yeah, yeah, even though I was on the street, you know, like I would go to school every couple you know, every couple days, you know? But I was, like, in the system, I think I had officially dropped out. They had this clinic that I would go and get tested at in my school.

Scott Benner 50:50
There's a VD clinic at your school, yeah, yeah. I think when you get to that point, you have bigger problems. You just start, like, looking into like, you know what? It reminds me of? This girl came on one time, it's an after dark, and she talked about, like, how important it is to test your drugs before you take them. Oh, yeah. And I let her have that conversation because I thought, you know, if somebody's in that situation, I would want them to test your drugs. But there was that other voice in my head that was going, Hey, is this not a red flag for you? Like, you know, you live in a world where you're constantly going, I wonder if this is going to kill me, and your answer isn't leave the world, it's, I'll get a test. You know what? I mean? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is weird. No. I

Tyler 51:34
mean, I know a lot of fentanyl addicts, a lot of fentanyl addicts, yeah, you know? I mean, it's kind of one of the misconceptions, you know, is it's like, you know, fentanyl is an incredibly deadly drug, like, so is heroin, and there's a reason that people like heroin. Yeah, no,

Scott Benner 51:50
no. Did you hear the did you hear the after dark with the with the girl who was an exotic dancer stripper, and she said her father, like, died from a fentanyl overdose, like recently, like, when she was recording it, yeah, yeah,

Tyler 52:04
yeah. It was a bit ago. I don't know how long it was, probably a month or two since I've heard that, but yeah,

Scott Benner 52:12
Kyle, let me ask you a question that I know. Yeah, I know you're not gonna, like, know the exact answer to but every 100 kids in a in your public high school? How many of them are doing drugs out of every 100? Oh,

Tyler 52:27
well, like, define drugs, even

Scott Benner 52:30
that's a problem. That's like when I just said the other thing, define drugs. How many people smoke weed now?

Tyler 52:38
Oh, I'd say, well, like at my school, probably 75 80%

Scott Benner 52:45
they smoking to get higher. They smoking because they can't sleep or what do they say?

Tyler 52:49
Most of them smoke to get high. Okay, so I grew up, well, I didn't grow up here, but you know, like I've spent, you know, where the school was, where I went to or I went to public school is like an extremely, you know, underprivileged community, just because we're right near a huge, really rich, really famous ski town, you know. And so it's all immigrants. And, you know, I mean, I've met some of the best people I've ever met are immigrants, you know, but there's also a really hard way of life, and there's a way to deal with that hard way of life, you know. And drugs

Scott Benner 53:27
gotcha, yeah, okay, so 75 to 80% of kids smoke weed. How many of them drink?

Tyler 53:34
Oh, geez, I'd probably say 70% okay,

Scott Benner 53:38
so weed's more popular than alcohol at this point. But when they drink, they drink

Tyler 53:42
the blackout, you know, I'd say, like, casually, probably like 50% but like actual, like hardcore drinkers, I'd probably say falls more into like, 10% okay,

Scott Benner 53:56
so some of the Okay, cocaine, pretty easy to get at school.

Tyler 54:01
It was, I don't think a lot of people were doing coke. Okay, are there? Are

Scott Benner 54:07
there kids doing heroin? Even

Tyler 54:09
my meth head buddies didn't screw around with heroin.

Scott Benner 54:11
Isn't that interesting, okay? But meth was big.

Tyler 54:16
Meth, all right, yeah, so meth is like, meth is like the, I don't know how to describe it. It's kind of like the PBR of drugs,

Scott Benner 54:30
okay, cheap and readily available, that kind of feeling. Oh, exactly.

Tyler 54:35
It's, yeah. I mean, you know, you can get an eighth of meth for, you know, 50 bucks. I

Scott Benner 54:43
like, I like that. You think 50 bucks isn't a lot of money. I'm over here. I'm so old. I'm like, 50. Oh, my God.

Tyler 54:51
I mean, you can, you know, an ounce of wheat is 120

Scott Benner 54:55
so is it really, yeah. Oh, because you have to buy, you know. Buying it legally, though, right?

Tyler 55:02
Well, when I was selling it, I'd buy it legally and

Scott Benner 55:05
then resell it to underage people that couldn't get their hands on it. Exactly.

Tyler 55:09
So, like, that's good business. Like an eighth, you know, I could buy an eighth for probably 20 bucks, and I would sell it for 40 to 50. Okay,

Scott Benner 55:16
they just keep doubling up your money. Yeah, exactly. You are an entrepreneur, Tyler, see,

Tyler 55:23
I know, yeah, I need to put that on my resume. Yeah, drug dealer.

Scott Benner 55:30
You say you're an investment counselor, that would be the way to put it. I think, Okay, put a percentage on not your not the ones you just knew, but the whole student body. What percentage of them using meth, I think that more or less than the blackout drinkers.

Tyler 55:46
Oh, definitely less, less. Okay, yeah, okay, no. I mean, I was like, I'd say that like 90% of the students that were doing like meth at my school were in that, in my friend group, you know, just because it's like, you know, I mean, it's not really a thing, that we're not going to the party, and someone like, pulls out, and they're like,

Scott Benner 56:09
Oh my God, finally, It's finally Friday. I had such a tough day, uh, today with my testing, thank God I have my math as

Tyler 56:16
well. Stay up for five days. Yeah,

Scott Benner 56:21
get you laughing about it. So there's like, a handful of people, a fewer than 30

Tyler 56:27
there. Yeah, there were probably 15.

Scott Benner 56:29
Okay, that's still a lot of people in one high school.

Tyler 56:33
You know what? I mean, yeah, yeah, for sure. Wow, yeah. And, I mean, at the school I went to, like, my freshman year is, like the covid year. That's why I went to the boarding school. Yeah, I definitely say that Coke was a much bigger thing at my old school, just because it was just, it was, it was like the, the future frapros of America over at my old school.

Scott Benner 56:56
Yeah, no, I know they're all gonna, they're all gonna work in, um, in finance one day, right?

Tyler 57:02
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, right.

Scott Benner 57:05
Math majors gonna have a bottle of gin on

Tyler 57:07
their on their desk. Their boss is gonna be screaming at them all day, and that's the but they can say that they went to an athletic boarding school, so it's okay, yeah, yep,

Scott Benner 57:17
I know this story. Okay, all right, did you manage your diabetes while you were homeless?

Tyler 57:23
Yeah, that was another thing i i think we haven't gone over yet. No, yeah,

Scott Benner 57:29
you're like, No, I was not, by the way, if you were, I would have been so confused by that, like, no, Scott, I was having unsafe sex with homeless women and doing meth, but I was very careful to pre bolus whenever we ate out of a dumpster. And like, you know, so you were you doing anything? You're taking your basal? I'm sorry I'm making you laugh about something so serious. But did you, did you take your basal? At least? Yeah,

Tyler 57:53
yeah. So I have a Teasel next to and at that point the kind of control IQ thing was, was in existence, yeah, you know. So I think control IQ definitely, you know, played a big part in my ANC not being 15. I mean, it was tough, you know, like, I kept, like, a box of supplies with me, and I had like, two or three vials. So, you know, it wasn't like, you know, throwing away my insulin pump and smashing my insulin bottles, you know, like, you

Scott Benner 58:26
didn't want to die. I didn't want to die, right, right? Yeah, I was going to make a stupid joke about, like, wild tandem. Can use that in their marketing, the official pump of roaming meth head teenagers everywhere, but, but instead, I, I take it very seriously that it sounds like it it kind of like saved you when you weren't able to take care of yourself, at least you had that pump and that algorithm was running, oh, 100% Yeah,

Tyler 58:50
yeah, yeah. I I'd say that control IQ was just like, a huge thing for me. I didn't see an endo for five or six months. If

Scott Benner 59:01
only we could have got one of those endos hooked on meth, you probably could have seen him every day. Yeah, that's all we needed. Yeah.

Tyler 59:07
All he needs is a key to a pharmaceutical closet. Five

Scott Benner 59:11
months didn't see an endo. One month didn't live at home. We're still bouncing in and out of school, which I found a little confusing, but not in and out of your house. Where did your parents think you were and were they actively trying to get you back?

Tyler 59:23
Yeah, and that's kind of one of the big things I remember, like, I met with my parents, like, once while I was like, homeless, you know, it was kind of just to talk about, like, hey, this, this kind of sucks, like, we repair this relationship a little bit, you know. And I was drunk and probably high out of my mind, but that, you know, which I think made him really sad. But, um, yeah, it was definitely, you know, pretty it was hard on them, you know,

Scott Benner 59:53
is that part of your 12 steps? Have you apologized to your mom dad? Yeah, it's,

Tyler 59:57
it's step nine. Okay. You know, make a list of all all persons you've harmed. Make amends to them, except when to do so would cause personal injury to them or others. Okay?

Scott Benner 1:00:08
And you've done that with everybody in your life already. Yes, wow, yeah,

Tyler 1:00:13
yes. That was one of the things that I kind of went through in in rehab, is just working through the steps. You know, it's kind of a joke, you know, like, oh yeah, I go to the 12 steps. But it works. It works when

Scott Benner 1:00:27
you need something, you need something, you know, to, you know, I know people, some people bitch about it, and some people love it, but, you know, help a lot of people. So I can see the value in it. For short, do you think you're so. So it's funny because you've told a story that has, like, you should be 48 years old, you know what I mean? But, but instead you're, like, you're barely Are you in college right now?

Tyler 1:00:52
I, uh, my first semester is coming up. Good

Scott Benner 1:00:55
for you. Hey, can you do something real, not some white kid thing, like, like, skateboarding or something like that. Like, actually, like, do something

Tyler 1:01:01
science major.

Scott Benner 1:01:02
There you go. Thank you. I'm gonna do philosophy Scott and figure out why? Like, oh, god no, that's okay. I'm going into politics. So you've got your start. Gonna start college. My question was, can you, like, fast forward yourself, make yourself 60, and look back and think, like, this is all just gonna be like, a weird blip in my journey one day the like, a story I'll tell people, and they'll be like, God, really? Tyler, that's crazy. Or, do you think? Or are you very worried you'll backslide and that there's no chance you're going to escape this like, it feels to me like you're at the brim of a black hole in a science fiction movie, and we're not sure if your thrusters are enough to get you out of it, or if you're going to get sucked back in. Like, but where do you where do you think you are you're referring to, like, relapse, yeah. Like, do you think this is, do you think that's who you are? Do you think this is who you are?

Tyler 1:02:01
I think that, you know, I mean, it's definitely something that has crossed my mind, you know, a couple times it's, I mean, that that's kind of one of the things, you know, is like, addiction, you know, like most people, kind of like, tend to, kind of like, walk lightly when it comes to things that, like, can ruin your life, you know, like, you don't, like, ask people about, like, if they're going to be able to pay their mortgage this month, you know. But an addiction, it's like, that's something you talk about, you know, it's like, something that, like, you you get out in the open so that you can deal with it.

Scott Benner 1:02:36
Gotta be ahead of it. I would imagine Exactly, yeah, if I gave you $1 and I said, You got to bet Tyler, are you going to be this? Tyler moving forward? Are you going to be that? Tyler moving forward one day, like, Do you know what side you bet on right now

Tyler 1:02:50
I put all the money I have to my name right now on the side that I'm going to be my true self. Good for you. That's

Scott Benner 1:02:57
excellent. Well, I believe in you. You believe in you, that's for sure. And

Tyler 1:03:01
I think that, you know, I say that, you know, because, I mean, if I'm in this mindset of, it's just like, Oh yeah, well, you know, I'll probably relapse someday and be homeless again, and, you know, this time, I might get into fentanyl. You know, it's like that, that's, that's something that's on your mind. It's something that you know you're, you're thinking about and considering, yeah, you know, because, like any normal person, they wouldn't be like, oh yeah. Like, going and grabbing some fentanyl, sounds really nice, right now, you know,

Scott Benner 1:03:32
I don't Tyler, I don't know, but I'm with you. I understand what you're saying. Like, you know, when people are like, you know, and they're like, Yeah, I know. Like, yeah, I know. Like, you just said, you know? And I'm like, No, I don't. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have that piece. Like, do you think about getting high and you have to actively work not to? Or is it not a thing that's burdening you at the moment? Oh,

Tyler 1:03:52
every day you do think about it. Every day, okay, yeah, if somebody comes up to you and they're like, oh, yeah, you know, I'm an I'm an addict or I'm an alcoholic, but I never think about it, they're lying. You know, either that or they're not an alcoholic or an addict, you know, simply because that's the divining. The difference between somebody who has never dealt with addiction and somebody who has is craving. You know, okay, you know. I mean, once you've, once you've had that, you know, I mean,

Scott Benner 1:04:21
it's almost like you're like, your body's wired for it. Then, right, exactly,

Tyler 1:04:26
yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like,

Scott Benner 1:04:31
like you're like, almost like eating sugar, like your receptors are wide open for this sugar, and, like, exactly, okay, yes,

Tyler 1:04:37
oh, that's a perfect example. Because, like, everybody in modern culture is, like, addicted to sugar. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:04:44
that's the thing you can understand. Or, like, coffee drinkers who, like, you ever heard somebody's like, I can't get my day going without coffee. I'm like, Oh my God, you're addicted to it. And, you know, I just like it. Okay?

Tyler 1:04:54
So I can stop anytime I want. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:04:59
right after these three. Two liter bottles of Diet Coke. I'll get right to it. So you like the cafe? It's always the Diet Coke. Yeah. Do you like the caffeine? No, I like the flavor. Okay, so, yeah, why do I have such a headache? I haven't had a glass of soda in three minutes? Yeah, I hear you. Oh, man, it's a lot. You have your brothers or sisters or anybody close to you that can help you. I'm an only child, are you really?

Tyler 1:05:22
Yeah. I mean, I consider every single one of the guys that I want to recover with, you know, brother,

Scott Benner 1:05:28
good, good. You feel like you have somebody to lean on if you need it. Oh, 100% okay, yeah. Can I just say please don't go to a bar like, please.

Tyler 1:05:40
I won't. Thank you. I won't. I feel like that's not a good idea. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:05:44
like, so you know, I agree. Yeah, yeah, boy, man, that's a hell of a story. You got a lot, a lot to say in a short time of being on this planet. That's really something. By the time I was 18, if you would have been like, tell me about yourself, I'd have been like, I like movies. I don't know what I want to do. Like, I'm not sure about what I want to do for work. I just graduated from high school. I'm trying to get this girl to go out with me. Like, that's about the most I could have said about my life when I was 18. Yeah, man, you've been through, I wonder if you won't have the same experience with life that you had with diabetes, like you, like you, experienced so much of it from such a young age that your perspective is just so much different than other people's. Because even talking to you like Tyler, I don't know that this is lost on you or not, but you do sound like a background player from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. But at the same time, you're really intelligent and thoughtful and and you know what I mean? And you have a ton of like perspective already about things that most people do not get to gain perspective about at this age, or if it ever, you know, oh, yeah, yeah, no, 100%

Tyler 1:06:51
I remember, there's this question one of my buddies asked we were in like group, you know, and he was, he was basically just like, you know, like, if you could never be an addict, would you, you know? And that the answer was almost collectively, no, you know, like, I would stay in that, you know, I would keep the experiences that I had, you know, simply because, I mean, it's just like, it makes it's what makes you you you know, it's like,

Scott Benner 1:07:21
yeah, it's a defining gathering of information that you, you gave it away, you'd feel like you were a neophyte, like an amateur at life. Oh, exactly, yeah. So there's something like, like, you I was gonna use, I was gonna use a phrase I don't think you know, but, um, but like, like, there's like, this hard scrabbled nature to your existence that you wouldn't want to give away hard stress. Oh yeah, it's hard scrabble. Like, is that a word anybody knows? Hold on.

Tyler 1:07:49
I don't even know it isn't.

Scott Benner 1:07:50
I don't even know I know how to define it. Hold on. A second. I know what it means. People are like now he's using phrases he can't define hard scrabble, uh, defined out as involving hard work and struggle. That's it. Yeah, I used it correctly. I just didn't know how to define it in, like, in a split second. Yes, you don't want to feel like you want to get high, but it would also be difficult to give away all this perspective that you've gained.

Tyler 1:08:17
Oh, 100% Yeah, I hear that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, I I know that. I don't think I got a lot of addiction, you know, yeah, I got a hell of a lot of recovery,

Scott Benner 1:08:29
though. Okay, it's how I feel about growing up broke actually. Like, it would be easy to rub a genie's lamp and say, like, take me back. Don't make me flat broke, but then I don't know who I am. Then if I wasn't, maybe I'm that kid off pretending I'm a championship Kayak or getting blackout drunk because my dad sent me $1,000 for an expensive steak he had, you know what I mean? Oh yeah. 100% Yeah. Nobody bought me a steak. Once, never. No one was ever like, Here, have a steak as I was growing up, no one ever said, here's $3 and because yeah, and because of that, I have, I have a different experience and different

Tyler 1:09:08
next box. Can you pay for it? Yeah?

Scott Benner 1:09:11
Oh my God, dude, you know how young you are, that you said Xbox trying to make me feel like pick something a little older. Atari, 2400 my friend,

Tyler 1:09:23
that's one and 64 Oh, boy.

Scott Benner 1:09:25
That was fancy. When I grew up, I just wanted an authority. That's all. I remember when the joystick and the Atari would break. Oh, red, yeah, Tyler, real, real story. My grandmother bought an Atari because my parents couldn't afford it. She kept it at her house so we could play it while she was there while we were at her house. The joysticks, if people can picture them, this little square thing you held in your hand had a red button on it. And this thick, you move back and forth, they would break, and they were $8 and when they broke, we couldn't play the Atari anymore. Oh, geez, because nobody had a. Dollars to buy a different joystick.

Tyler 1:10:01
Yeah, go mow some lawns, dude.

Scott Benner 1:10:05
Four weeks of mowing lawns to replace the joystick. $2 $2 to cut the grass. Do it again next week. Do it again. The following week. Do it again the following week. All right, I'll give you a ride to the store to get the joystick, not not Amazon, by the way, like I had to drive somewhere. Yeah, the whole world is completely different.

Tyler 1:10:22
Mail was for like, texts and stuff. What was that? Say it again, mail was for like, texts on paper. Mail

Scott Benner 1:10:31
is the mail was text on paper. That's where they call them letters, Tyler. Now, paper is the thing you just roll your weed in. So what do you I'm gonna ask you one final unfair question that there's no chance you have an answer to, and then I'm gonna let you go, yeah, if we've covered everything you want

Tyler 1:10:48
to cover, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna move

Scott Benner 1:10:51
you into the future. Your Tyler now. You're married, you got a kid, you own a house like your life went the way you expected it to your little tylerettes on its way off to school. Are you immediately thinking a kid's gonna end up meeting somebody and doing math?

Tyler 1:11:14
You know what? I don't think I would be,

Scott Benner 1:11:17
you know, tell me why. Because,

Tyler 1:11:19
you know. I mean, that's one thing I definitely learned, you know, gained some, like, personal wisdom on is just the fact that, like, say, Tyler Rhett goes out and finds a meth chick, you know, like, and he's doing meth, you know, what? What am I gonna do to stop him? Yeah, you know.

Scott Benner 1:11:39
So the idea is, what, what comes, comes, and then we deal with it afterwards, exactly. So you give them a good I've thought about that. Yeah, sorry, no, no, no, no, please. I'm sorry. You give them a good, a good start, and you just hope for the best. You're not gonna blindly just send them out in the world and say, good luck, but you're gonna do your best to prepare them and then see

Tyler 1:11:59
what happens. Yeah, and just by the way, like, I don't know, you know, like a child of my own, you know, that comes from my DNA, you know, simply because of the things that that DNA contains,

Scott Benner 1:12:11
between between diabetes and addiction,

Tyler 1:12:15
between diabetes and addiction and a love for adrenaline.

Scott Benner 1:12:20
Okay, oh, that that skiing thing wasn't by mistake.

Tyler 1:12:24
Oh, yeah, not at all. Not at all. Yeah, no. I've been begging my dad to go skydiving since I was 14. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:12:32
let's do it. Yeah. So you said something a second ago that made me want to ask a question on how to ask it, but is there something about those meth girls? Are they exciting? Yeah,

Tyler 1:12:45
I've definitely, I definitely had experiences with meth girls that I don't think I will ever have again. And I'll just leave it at that. You

Scott Benner 1:12:53
think that's gonna make Do you think it's gonna make regular life, boring or difficult? Regular life?

Tyler 1:12:59
No, no, I had a non meth girl. She was more of like a, you know, Xanax girl. You

Scott Benner 1:13:09
were gonna say, finally, I thought we were gonna get to a girl who rented the kids at the library. But no, she was just more into pills.

Tyler 1:13:17
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, she was, like, my girlfriend right before I went to rehab. And, I mean, there was definitely something missing, you know, like uppers. Uppers make life more exciting for everybody around you. Wow. Yeah, it's

Scott Benner 1:13:34
a very interesting conversation. I could have this conversation for 20 hours. So I'm going to ask you if we've talked about everything you want to talk about and stop, because I'm going to keep asking you crazy questions, and we got to get on with our lives. Yeah,

Tyler 1:13:45
not gonna lie, man, I have a job interview at 330 so I would love to hop off, and that's in 30 minutes here.

Scott Benner 1:13:51
No, let's go. What's your job interview? What do you what are you trying to do, dude,

Tyler 1:13:56
just until I go to college, you know, like not saying my dream job, this is gonna sound so sad. I'm not saying My dream job is Domino's delivery driver, but like it is kind of that's all I want to do. Good for you. So that's great. I want to go

Scott Benner 1:14:10
online thing. Or do you have to go down to the Domino's and meet them? I gotta go down here. Go, go, go. Thank you. I appreciate you doing this very much. Go ahead and go. Yeah, thanks, Scott. All right. Tara, this was really wonderful, man. Thank you. Yes, sir. All right. Bye.

Today's episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Dexcom g7 which now integrates with the tandem T slim x2 system, learn more and get started today at dexcom.com/juice. Box. If you'd like to wear the same insulin pump that Arden does, all you have to do is go to omnipod.com/juice. Box. That's it. Head over now and get started today, and you'll be wearing the same. Same tubeless insulin pump that Arden has been wearing since she was four years old. I'd like to thank ag one for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast and remind you that with your first order, you're going to get a free welcome kit, five free travel packs in a year's supply of vitamin D that's at AG one.com/juice box if you're living with type one diabetes, the after dark collection from the juicebox podcast is the only place to hear the stories that no one else talks about, from drugs to depression, self harm, trauma, addiction and so much more. Go to juicebox podcast.com up in the menu and click on after dark there, you'll see a full list of all of the after dark episodes. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The juicebox podcast. If you're not already subscribed or following the podcast in your favorite audio app like Spotify or Apple podcasts, please do that now. Seriously, just to hit follow or subscribe will really help the show. If you go a little further in Apple podcasts and set it up so that it downloads all new episodes, I'll be your best friend. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongwayrecording.com. You.

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