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California Auto Emissions

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A negative pressure room inside St. Joseph Hospital

Aaron Taylor was a standout athlete at the University of Notre Dame. He went on to become a Super Bowl champion with the Green Bay Packers. But behind all that success, Aaron was a high-functioning alcoholic. After an injury ended his career, Aaron had to come to terms with his addiction and heal the childhood trauma he had never addressed. 

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Back From Broken is a show about how we are all broken sometimes, and how we need help from time to time. If you’re struggling, you can find a list of resources at&nbsp;<a href="http://backfrombroken.org/">BackFromBroken.org</a>.

Host: Vic Vela Lead producer:&nbsp;Kibwe Cooper Editor:&nbsp;Rebekah Romberg Additional editorial support: Jo Erickson, Erin Jones, Emily Williams, Andrew Villegas Music: Daniel Mescher and Brad Turner with additional music from Universal Production Music Executive producers: Brad Turner, Kevin Dale Thanks also to Rachel Estabrook, Hart Van Denburg, Jodi Gersh, Clara Shelton, Arielle Wilson, Kim Nguyen.

<a href="http://backfrombroken.org/">BackFromBroken.org</a> On Twitter: @VicVela1

Vic Vela: Hey, it’s Vic. Just so you know, there’s some strong language, including a racial slur and a description of sexual abuse. Please be advised. It was September 15, 1990. South Bend Indiana, at the legendary Notre Dame football stadium. [Soundbite of football broadcast] It was the first game of the season and fans were going crazy for the Fighting Irish, the top ranked team in the country. Their opponent: The Michigan Wolverines, one of Notre Dame’s longest and fiercest rivals. The atmosphere was thick with excitement and anticipation, as the Notre Dame Fight song filled the stadium. [Marching band playing energetically] It was the first college game for an 18-year-old offensive tackle named Aaron Taylor.

Aaron Taylor: It was surreal. It was against the University of Michigan. Those guys with those ugly-looking helmets. Came into South Bend. And I remember I had worked my way up in preseason in training camp to basically have an opportunity to be dressed. Now there was zero chance I was gonna play, but like I had shoulder pads and a helmet on and was like out there. And I remember we walked up into the locker room and coach NAME, if anybody knows, kind of talks with the lisp, he's like, small diminutive, seductive cat. And he was really big on this process about how we win. You know, you have to follow the steps, you gotta outhit and control the line of scrimmage and avoid foolish penalties when the special teams, all this different scenario. And he went through it verbally when we were all brought up and he said, we did this and we did this and we did this and we did this. And if you followed this plan, you will never lose a game here at Notre Dame. And that was the moment I got tingles thinking about it, just telling, retelling the story that I was bought in. He had a plan, a system, and we had the players necessary to be the best team in the country. And that win sold us. That was the moment that I understood that if I followed the plan, we're gonna win.<s>&nbsp;</s>

Vic: Did you ever, I mean you're playing for the University of Notre Dame, I mean there are just a, a fraction of people in the world who get to say that much less had the success that you had. Did you ever think you would make it that far at that point?

Aaron: I didn't. Um, so part of my story is at 14 years old I was a DNF student and got kicked out of the house ‘cause I was smoking weed and drinking most days. After about a week of sleeping on my buddy's floor and smelling socks and underwear, you know, ended up going back home and kind of walked me back from what I wanted to do, which I said is play pro football. Which was ludicrous ‘cause I had, you know, had played one year of tackle football period in my life and certainly wasn't good. And walk me back between choices, action, consequences, the things that I was doing today were directly impacting who and what I would become in the future.

Vic: Aaron Taylor would become one of the greatest athletes in Notre Dame history and a Super Bowl champion. But long before he blocked for quarterbacks like Brett Favre, Taylor was an isolated, biracial kid who experienced trauma. And later in life, as injuries knocked him out of the game he loved, he would open up about an addiction to alcohol that brought him to his knees.

I’m Vic Vela. I’m a journalist, a storyteller and a recovering drug addict. And this is “Back from Broken” from Colorado Public Radio. Stories about the highest highs, the darkest moments and what it takes to make a comeback.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Aaron Taylor was a troubled kid growing up in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

He was raised by a single mother and was disengaged and struggling at school.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Aaron: My parents got divorced at two. As my mom tells the story and she's no longer here, uh, he put a knife to her throat. And she was scared, you know, as she could possibly be. I'm trying not to curse here, [chuckles]. Uh, so, you know, she, they smoked a bunch of weed and you know, basically went in the bedroom and, you know, had their little trist until he passed out and grabbed us and left and called his sister and said, if you don't come get him, I'm calling the police. This is over. So that's kind of the backstory of how it ended. So that's at two, at five I end up going back to live with he and his family in Indianapolis. And that was not a fun experience. I was another mouth to feed. I was a light-skinned kid. So there was, uh, some colorism that was taking place. I was also young, so there were older cousins and things. And um, I had my forearm burned with an iron. I was tricked into putting a stick into, uh, a curb cutout, uh, where, you know, where, where curbs get corded and there was a hornets nest in there. And I got stung. Uh, they caught me in some lies. My dad brushed my mouth out with soap. And it was just, I just got tortured, man. It was, uh, not a fun experience. I also had my penis bitten by an older cousin as we played, you know, I'll touch yours, you touch mine. So there was a thread of sexual abuse that I think went through part of that family. So right away when I leave the house or get sent away from mom, bad things happen. Like, that's how I translated that at five years old. So when I got back to California, I was like, I'll do whatever it is I have to do to make sure that mama bear's happy. We moved every two years for one reason or another. So I was always the new kid in school with new friends, new teachers, new rules, knew everything. I was a biracial kid. So for some friend groups I wasn't black enough. For others, I wasn't white enough. For others yet I was too black. For others, I was too white. It was like I didn't know where my place was in the world and all I wanted to do was feel and to be loved. So that began a people pleasing, very enmeshed relationship with, uh, my mom, which got exacerbated by football because the better I got, the more it meant to her and the safer I felt. And, you know, those were the, the foundations of co-dependence that were starting to form me in my formative years. And I remember the first time I ever tasted alcohol at 13 and eighth grade, the thought went through my head of, holy blank, where has this been? Because it was the elixir that solved everything. There were two girls there. And for the first time in my life I wasn't nervous to talk to them. I had a swag about me. I was tingling and felt good and light in euphoric, like all the classic first use. Um, and, you know, didn't drink too much. But very quickly thereafter, maybe the third or fourth time I'd ever drank alcohol, I was throwing up ‘cause I drank too much. And the allergy was like – [big sigh] okay, you want to do this? Let's do it. And boom, I was off and running. So it became this management of the, almost the angel in the devil, the light in the dark of this life of wanting to feel good and confident and fearless on the one hand, but making poor choices in my life and my grades dropping and disrupting what had been a pretty stable household on the other.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Vic: Oh gosh. I mean that self-medication. Uh, you know, just – I remember vividly being in junior high school and all the pain I was feeling. And then the second that drug hit me, where has this been all my life? I love how you put that.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Aaron: I had been through a lot at 13 and just didn't know it. ‘Cause I didn't know any other, but I needed to feel some relief from this anguish that was going on inside where, you know, unbeknownst to me, I thought the world was telling me that I'm not lovable. There was an instance where my dad was supposed to show up when he was in California to take me to an amusement park and never, never came. He just – eight o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock in the morning all the way to midnight. And as my mom told the story, she said, you changed that day. There was a darkness with you that happened that day that – and she would cry when she was telling the story. And what I intuited was, I'm not good enough to show up on time for that. I'm not lovable. That's the best that I could come up with. And Vic, I gotta tell you man, those two things and those experiences colored everything in my life that would come after. How driven I was in football so that I could prove that I mattered. It was the women that I date that had the bird with the broken wing, ‘cause if they needed me, they wouldn't leave me. Like across the board in every area of my life, these early childhood experiences really formed who and what I would become in a negative sense.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Vic: I'm just amazed and you have this tremendous self-awareness around the things that plagued you for so long and the things that drove you to that first drink and, and kept you going. What a gift recovery is. You just rattle off some, some really heavy shit there.

Vic: Aaron had already experienced a lot of trauma by the time he was 13. But things turned around when he started living with his mom again. She was a healthcare worker in California. She knew her son struggled and wanted more for him. So, she switched jobs and moved the family to a new neighborhood. And thanks to his mom’s efforts, Aaron got an opportunity to play football at De Lasalle High School, in Concord, a school that produced many athletes that went on to play in the NFL. But Aaron wasn’t anywhere close to the athlete he would later become.

Aaron: If you wanted to describe my body type at that time, it was like a hairy lava lamp. Like I looked like a chew piece of bubble gum man. Like working out, weights and conditioning, uh, not really my thing. Uh, but at De Lasalle it was, so that was a, a pretty tough transition. But I worked out all summer and got ready for our first padded practice. So the first day of practice, I get up, my mom makes me breakfast at seven, you know, I eat, I get there at 7:30. And it was awful, Vic. Like I put my pads in wrong. If the play went right, I went left. It was supposed to go left, I went right. And I got berated: “this ain't that school across the bay. That's not the way that we do these things.” And it's the classic blue collar, you know, coach yelling at the new kid, you know, trying to see basically what he's made of. And it was excruciating. So I come in home from that first practice. And on day one, I'm waffling now. So I come in and my mom was like, “Hey honey, how'd practice go?” And I didn't say a word. I walked right into my room and I shut the door and I was crying. I was crying hard. So she comes in after a couple minutes, sits down on the bed and kind of just lets me get all the snot outta my nose. And she said, what happened? I said, it was awful, mom. Like, I couldn't, I couldn't do anything right. And they were yelling at me, and like, I, I was trying, but I just, I didn't know what I was doing and I just, I didn't feel like I belonged. And you know, I liked the guys, but I just, I had all this doubt that was going on. And she let me kind of purge everything that I was thinking and feeling. And she said, Aaron, I love you. Whether you play football or not. You're gonna have to make a decision. You're gonna have to figure out if what you want is worth the price that you might have to pay to get it.&nbsp;

So she said, tomorrow morning, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna have breakfast made for you. And if you want to get up and have breakfast, it'll be there. And if you don't come out, you sleep in, I'll know the decision you made as well. And I'll never say a word about it. But you have some thinking to do. And boom, she shut the door. I gotta tell you, Vic, sitting there on the edge of the bed, I had no idea what I was gonna do. There was no way that I had the resilience to be able to endure another practice, let alone practices that I had experienced that day before. I was so afraid. And somehow I got to sleep that night. And somehow I got up and walked to the kitchen and I had breakfast and I went to practice [choking up]. I got my ass kicked again, and they yelled at me again [tearfully speaking]. But I made a block. That afternoon, I made a couple more blocks.

And I went back home and I had breakfast the next morning and I went back to practice and I made a couple more blocks and I made a couple more [crying]. And I made a lot. And it turned out I was pretty damn good at football. I just didn't know it yet. That moment changed my life.

Vic: After a rocky start, Aaron became a stand out player at De LaSalle High School. He credits his mom for pushing him in the right direction. She also would help Aaron deal with some family demons.

Aaron: She was a pediatric ICU nurse at Children's Hospital in Oakland, California. Addiction wasn't a part of her own personal story. It didn't exist on her side of the family. That was a gift on my father's side [unintelligible]. And it's a gift that I'm, you know, probably gonna give to my sons if you, you know, understand the data. But it was hard for her to watch me struggle, period. And what's really interesting, Vic, is at the core of what my dis-ease was, my uncomfortability in my own skin was this deep need to feel a part of, to be lovable. I had had so many things that had happened, you know, prior to even eight years old that involved sexual abuse and mild physical abuse and abandonment. My mom was raised devoutly Christian. Um, and her mom asked my mom to not come to her funeral because she had married a nigger. So there were some things attached to the church, rightly or wrongly, that my mom associated. So I think her choice was to go as far the other way as she could. So that looked like reincarnation. So there were crystals and all this, you know, woo-woo stuff. And I think the truth probably encompasses all that we understand. So I was open-minded, but I had spent, you know, four years or two years at a Catholic high school, four years at a Catholic college. So it was a great invitation to kind of sift through what do I think, what do I believe in? I always sensed that there was a power greater than myself that was responsible for everything that was going on. And looking back, I believe that were the coincidences, the things that weren't rationally explainable over and over and over in multiple ways. The way that the invisible doors opened when I declared I wanted to play professional football. And that night the show comes on about De La Salle High School across the bay, all of these things, like there's no, no other way to look at this than something is going on. And I got curious about that.

Vic: With the help of his Mom, Aaron was finally coming into his own. But unfortunately for him, success and addiction went hand in hand. After the break, Aaron talks about reaching the NFL, his battle with his own identity, and how his addiction led him to the greatest breakthrough of his life.

Aaron Taylor excelled on the football field in high school. And at Notre Dame, he was simply outstanding. Aaron won all kinds of awards for his play as an offensive lineman. In fact he would later go on to be inducted into the college football hall of fame. After graduating from Notre Dame, Aaron was selected by the Green Bay Packers in the first round of the 1994 NFL draft. [Soundbite of football broadcast] He played in two Super Bowls, winning one in 1997 [soundbite of football broadcast listing Taylor’s accolades]. But injuries plagued Aaron’s career.&nbsp;

Aaron: June 6th, somewhere between nine and 10:00 AM I ruptured my right patella tendon in a non padded practice and the world, my world, came to a crashing halt. I had so many hopes, so many aspirations. I had finally lived out this childhood dream, um, that played such a pivotal role in my success equation up to that point. And boom, I knew I was done. So I didn't know how long I'd be done for, whether I could ever play again, but I, I was gonna need surgery. And the loud pop I knew was bad. And it hurt, but it didn't hurt as bad as what I intuited had taken place. So Pat McKenzie, who's a huge Notre Dame fan, was the orthopedic surgeon at the time and I think still is. He might've just retired …&nbsp;

Aaron: Yeah. Thank you. Uh, so he comes running over and he says, “Hey, uh, what happened boss?” I was like, my knee, my knee. I say, “Shoot me straight, Pat. Is it bad?” [Laughter] He looks at me like, are you shitting shitting me? The hell? Yeah, it's bad. It's really bad [laughter]. So we laugh about that. And it was like the classic again, you know, scene from a movie. Practice is going on, and I'm the first round draft pick. I'm unsigned. I don't have a contract, but they got 52 other plus dudes that are there, probably 85 at that time in the off season. Practice kept going. So they moved the drill 10 yards and the next guy was up just like that. [Laughter] My world's ending. And they moved the drill 10 yards.

So I have surgery a couple days later and Pat comes to visit me at the hotel like day three. And he says that it's one of the saddest scenes he's ever seen. I was at the Midway Lodge across the street, Best Western, that's where we all stayed back in the day, across the street from the stadium. And he comes into my room. The blinds are drawn, it's like one 30 in the afternoon. The blinds are drawn. There's about five pizza boxes stacked up in one corner about, you know, 12 cases of beer stacked up in another corner. And it smelled awful. And he walked in, was like, holy shit, this kid's in trouble. So, and I was, man, it was – that room was not a metaphor for how things were. It was literal. It was dark. It stank and it was lonely. So he pulled me out, took me to his house. You gotta understand, I'm weeks post-op, right? So what we know about the body – I was doing nothing at the time to help my knee recover. So the very thing that I was drinking over was this injury. The behaviors of the alcohol negated my ability to heal and to recover.

Vic: Oh. And this vicious cycle. Yeah.

Aaron: So here we are. And I think that’s what’s so common for so many of us. We're treating the symptoms without treating the underlying issue, which creates more symptoms. And it's this catch-22 of debauchery: until the pain of changing is finally less than the pain of staying the same. That's when we bottom out and we tap out [sound of smacking on surface] and we can start the long crawl back.

Vic: Wow. Because you, you're drinking it, it gets to a point where your body, the drinking does so much damage to your body that when you hurt yourself, it takes even longer to heal because you'd been drinking so much, I would assume.

Aaron: Right? No question. So there was a receiver. We had Robert Brooks who had torn his ACL halfway through the season. So he had another, a similar major knee injury that required reconstructive surgery. But if you remember those infomercial commercials with the Juice Man and the Juice Man plus – I forget what that guy's name was, but he was an old receiver for the Green Bay Packers and he still lived in Wisconsin. So he and Robert somehow picked, uh, hooked up, and he had sold Robert on the power of green healthy juices and the nutrients that were involved. And day after day I would come in there and I'd work my tail off as hard if not harder than Robert, but I watched him leaps and bounds past me and he was back on the field before me. And I was hurt before he was. And I worked out at least as hard as he was. And never once did I consider that I was putting, you know, the juju juice into my body and he was putting green juice into his body and that that was the key differentiator [chuckles]. Right? It never occurred to me because the mindset that – as athletes that worked really well with my personality type is work hard, play hard. I earn the right to go out and blow off steam. Not realizing that when you drink to excess, the maximum output within 72 hours is 87%. Like your muscles aren't capable of producing their optimal performance when you drink to excess. Like the data is crystal clear on that. And the numbers, I may be off a couple. But it's, it's there. So when you're in the NFL, the difference between 87 and a hundred, that 13% … It like … 3% … If you're at 97 versus a hundred that can cost you games. That could cost you plays. It could cost you a sack. It could get your quarterback knocked out. It's a game of inches. And I willy-nilly, ‘cause I didn't know any better, was thinking that if I worked hard in the weight room, I could go do whatever I wanted to when I was away from the facility. And that was to all of our detriment.

Vic: Yeah. ‘Cause we're talking about the best athletes in the world and, and you know, the difference between the, the worst player on the team and the best player on the team. Just like you mentioned, just that 2%, 1% thing. Uh, I mean that's just incredible to think about. Well, and Aaron, you had, I mean ‘cause you had been … I guess I don't know how honest you were with your drinking problem by that point because you had been keeping logs or journals of your drinking even going back to college, right?

Aaron: Yeah, I was, uh, I was Alcoholic Curious [laughter]. Yeah. In college – I, I remember looking back and I found these journals that I had kept and it was like, you know, hey, you know, things are going well. I'm playing well, my grades are up, but gotta keep an eye on the drinking. If I put an X on the calendar for all the days that I drink, there'd be a lot of X's. But again, my performance is good, my grades are good, da da da da da. So when I look back, I'm like, what's the first clue that you're an alcoholic? You're 19 years old, keeping a journal in college, talking about your feelings [laughter] and writing the fact that you're curious and concerned but you know, just keep an eye on it just to make sure it's, it's maybe not too much [laughter]. And it was that ability to be a high functioning, high performing guy that allowed me to deny. That I was an alcoholic and that I was struggling for so long. So my dear sponsor, Bill Z., who passed a couple years ago from ALS, would always say, man, I have so much respect for your recovery ‘cause you're a grinder. But you had, you know, this high bottom if you will, and you were able to function and make it work for you at a level that most people wouldn't. So even that was a badge of honor. Like – yeah, like [laughter]. I'm still like, I can do all this and still function.

Vic: Man. I mean you're a two time all American. Like, I mean, who's gonna tell you? It's like when I was in journalism. It's like, you know, I'm inter – I'm, I don't have a problem with drugs. I just interviewed the governor. You know, the evidence is clear that I am functioning. You retired in 1999. Uh, it was just, you know, just five years into your career. What do you remember feeling when you realized you couldn't play football anymore?

Aaron: The overwhelming feeling was relief. Like, thank God I don't have to do that anymore. I am so shocked that nobody in the NFL knew that I was a piece of shit and couldn't play. Like how had they not figured that out yet? Like they're … I see it on tape, how bad I am. And like, just the self-imposed pressure in my limited viewpoint of my performance, coupled with a ton of pain because I wasn't letting my body recover, um, began to be too much. So when I didn't have to do that, whew [sigh of relief]. Ooh man, that was a relief. So I thought at 28 years old I'm retired. I own a house. It's a nice house. I own a couple nice cars. I got some coffee cans buried in the backyard. Financially independent, no debt, no kids. This is pre-dot-com bust. This is pre-2008. Like I'm the living breathing American dream. But I didn't know what I didn't know. And what I didn't know is that in one fell swoop, I lost my income. I lost my identity, I lost my purpose, I lost my significance, and I lost my community. I would later learn to call those the five pillars of fulfillment. And that's what football provided and income was. Money I received and value that I received for the value that I brought. Hopefully it's an equal exchange of value. The identity piece was how I'm known to the world. But underneath that was how I'm known to myself. And that was a big one that I didn't really – took me some time to figure out. I knew who AT was. I knew who the left guard for, you know, the Green Bay Packers and who the Super Bowl champ was. But who is Aaron? I didn't really know cause I hadn't been that cat for a long time.&nbsp;

Why I get outta bed every day, what I was put on this earth to do. Uh, you'd take a look at significance and how I know I make a difference. Good block, good read, good adjustment, good recovery, you know, good boy Aaron. And the last was community. You know, how being part of something bigger than myself. So those five pillars of fulfillment were huge. And because I didn't know what I had lost, I didn't know where to look. And I did what a lot of us make the mistake of. And it's like, well, shit, I did this one thing and felt really fulfilled. It went away. I need to go replace it with another one thing. Not realizing just how lucky we were.

Vic: Aaron was only 28 when he began to spiral downward into alcohol abuse and depression. Not only did Aaron’s knee injury end his NFL career, it also left him wondering who he was outside of football. That’s when Aaron met a woman who would change his life.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Aaron: Her name was Jen and she was an angel. Um, and this was a woman that I was certain I was gonna marry. She was perfect in every respect. And I knew that because we were together over two and a half months. And I felt closer to her than I had ever felt to anybody else. And I'm joking because I didn't have any idea who this chick was. Right. But I had this fantasy in my head. The way that we were most compatible was the way that we smoked weed and, and drank alcohol together. She was a bright girl. Um, I liked her friend group, but we weren't in a relationship. It was a hostage-ship. And I was holding her emotionally hostage. And, you know, we were two, um, pre-broken people that had, you know, got brought together. She was, I was her rebound dude. And she ended up cheating on me. So what I ended up doing is almost, you know, my last act of trying to save this poor, troubled soul that doesn't know what she's missing out on was ended up taking her to a recovery meeting. And I'm like, yeah, nice cover, good play. Well played. Congrats. You know, you're gonna play the alcoholic drug addict card to, you know, justify your shit. Well, well done Jen. So I drop her off at this church. These, you know, old women come out and they put their arm around her and she's crying and they look back and wave at me and I'm like, you deserve to be there with the rest of the losers. And I drive off. So three or four days later, maybe it's a week and a half, I don't know, but like several days, but not more than two weeks, she calls me back and says, “Hey, uh, thank you for taking me to that meeting.” She said, “Uh, I've thought for a while that I've had an issue and I now know that I'm a drug addict, an alcoholic, uh, and I'm gonna start working this program of recovery. This will probably be the last time that we ever talk.” Um, but she said, “there is one thing that I wanna share with you.” And I said, yeah, what's that? She said, “you and I drink and use the same.” Click. Wow. That was the moment, that was the punch in the face of truth. Just the way that she said it. I believed it on a deep level. And it goes back to the journal I kept in college at 19 years old, keeping my eye on my drinking. All of that came to roost in that one sentence when she hung up the phone. She was the angel that got sent to my life just long enough to kick me in the right direction to a week later, walking into my first recovery meeting on Tuesday night at the top of Loma Santa Fe, across the street from the firehouse in Bill Zimmerman's garage. And I walked in there and I said, hi, I'm Aaron. I'm here to take a look and explore my drinking. I don't think I have a problem, but I just, I want to see. And everybody started laughing, nah, [laughter] yeah, us too, man. Sit down [laughter]. And there was this ball-busting element that only those of us in recovery can fully appreciate where they're mostly laughing with you, but a little bit at you and themselves at the same time. Yep, yep. But it's welcome. It's, it's not, you know, intended to be anything that's malicious. And we …

Aaron: Yeah. We have our own language. And that was where I caught alcoholism and that's where I caught recovery. I was probably 90 days in of not drinking and working the steps before I said, hi, I'm Aaron. Grateful, recovering alcoholic and meant it. I didn't think, I still thought I was different ‘cause all these problems that these guys had, I didn't really have. And that was my ego hanging on for dear life. White knuckling to that old life. And lie. Until finally I was able to let go and again, have to choose to get to, that's when I had the breakthrough. So when I let go of the ego of the lie, that's when recovery really started to kick it in high gear for me. And the promises came true in spades.

Vic: Yeah. Well, what did you, from day one were you're using, you know, different words to describe your problem to the day that you finally admit that you're an alcoholic. What did you learn about yourself in your drinking and early recovery?

Aaron: That I wasn't alone. And that was the big piece. That man, there were other people with this journey. And I had done enough work and been in therapy enough to kind of understand psychology and mindsets and personality types and profiles. And I was like, man, this is the human condition. This is broader than the areas that we grew up in or what our families of origin. There's like a lot of us out there and this allergy piece, like I get the obsession of the mind, but the allergy of the body – I'd never really heard it put that way. When I would hear people tell their stories about how when that first drug or drink hit their body, it was like, oh yeah.

Vic: Recovery taught Aaron not only to live a fulfilling life without alcohol, it also taught him how to forgive in a way he never expected.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Aaron: When I initially got sober, I had to go to meetings, right? It was something I had to do. I, they told me I had to do it or suggested it rather. Um, but I got a sense that I had to do it. Then I got some time under my belt and it was like, okay, I can choose to go to meetings or maybe not, it doesn't need to be a 90 in 90 and an everyday thing. And it went from have to, to choose to, to at some point many, many days in a row down the line, it became something that I get to do. And my journey in recovery has taken me from have to, to choose to, to get to. And that's when I had my breakthrough. When I started to become grateful for what I got to experience as a kid growing up. And those hardships. That I value those things. That those are treasure, the gold from my life that invited this, you know, introduction, this invitation to this different way of living and being. I mean, recovery's just a, you know, really shitty disguise pathway back to a higher power, right? Like, we can't sell that on the front end ‘cause none of us would ever walk in there. But you catch God. And when you walk into the rooms and you realize that God's always been there and all of those things served me tremendously and had to be the exact way that they were. My dad had to not be there because he was a mess, but he's not now. And he showed back up and we have this incredible relationship that we're building as a result. And he was doing the best he could with what he had, and it wasn't very good either. So that was the irony that unlocked the resentment that I had for him as I went through my fourth step and started looking. I'm a good man, but I hurt a lot of people and I did a lot of things that I still twinge when I think about it, right? We don't shut the door on it. We don't live In the past. I flushed and cleaned a lot of those wounds out, but there's a couple [groans]. When I had that realization about me that I'm a loving person that was doing the best I could with what I had and I unintentionally hurt other people around me, I had the thought, man, maybe that's what my dad did. And for the first time, I saved space for him being human. And I realized I had to let my dad off the hook for being human and suffering from the human condition no different from myself. And that little shift in perspective is just one of thousands we get in recovery, has created another outcome where he's in our house. We see each other. My kids know him. Uh, I remember he and his wife coming to our house and he's sitting across – this is not my mom, he's remarried – sitting across the couch in my living room and I'm sitting next to my wife and it's just the four of us. And we're having this conversation – I get a feeling the emotion coming up. We're having this conversation with each other about how hard it was to grow up without a father that was healthy in the picture. And like, I was crying and feeling his pain about that. And his dad was there, but was an everyday drinker and an alcoholic. And there was so much pain for him. And I was sharing that, but he was my dad. He was sitting across from me. It was like this surreal scene that both of us … It was, like, as true and authentic of a moment as I've ever had in my life. And it was the epitome, now that I'm thinking about it, the, the power of the shared experience. It's transformational. And that's what we get in the rooms of recovery is that I get to sit across from a dude I've never met, and now I'm across on a screen from you and get to hear you tell my story, and you get to hear me tell your story. And it's this transcendent vehicle, recovery, and the strife and the human condition and all those things that we go through that really is the portal to serenity and to humanity and to the best versions that each of us are capable of being. And for that man, yeah, I had to get sober. And then I chose to stay sober and now I get to be sober and I'm so freaking grateful for that [choking up].

Vic: While Aaron got to reunite with his father, his mom, who was by his side through good times and bad, was struggling with her health.&nbsp;

Aaron: Four years ago. A catastrophic stroke. Um, had been morbidly obese most of her life. Didn't really take care of herself. Lot of cardiac issues on her side of the family. Um, but it was sudden. But the gift that was given, oh man, this might get me … was that her body stayed alive for seven days. She was brain dead. But somebody did a wellness check on like day three – hadn't heard from her. And you know, there she was in her chair and um, the body still does what it needs to do. Um, do a number one and number two. And it wasn't a good scene. So she gets moved to this hospice house on the first day. A couple people were coming through that worked for this organization goes, oh my God, is is that Marty Taylor? Oh, you're Aaron. Oh my gosh. She's told us so many stories about you. Like, I'm gonna get off work and I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna tell you about your mom.&nbsp;

So Vic, I got this chance to get a peek into a part of her life that I knew existed but didn't know anything about. And hear how people thought about her and the things that she did that improved their lives. I got to brush her hair. I got to put, you know, lotion and Vaseline on her dry cracked-ass feet. Um, I got to sing her “Silent Night,” which is the song I fell asleep to as a kid till I was probably 10 or 11. And I got to love her and I got to talk to her body, this vessel.

Vic: About a week later, the day came for Aaron to say goodbye to his first protector.

Aaron: Notre Dame happens to be playing Stanford. And while we're watching the Stanford game, my mom loved football, loved Notre Dame. The nurse comes in and says, your mom's transitioned. And it was like, whew. And it was kind of the moment, you know, was coming, you're waiting for her. I'd already had the big gushy emotional goodbye and, you know, thanked her profusely for all that she had done for me. And we go into the room and there she is. And something was gone. It was her, but it wasn't her. Like, if anybody's ever seen an open casket or seen like an actual dead body, there's something that's not there. And they've measured when the soul leaves and you know, the 28 ounces or whatever it is. And I had that experience. So we circle around her and we start praying. Now this was in Pleasanton, California, at this hospice center with these old growth oak trees. It was a rainy day and it had been rainy for two or three straight days. She was in a room with louvier blinds. And as we're praying, I invite other people to pray and I finish and we say amen. And we open our eyes and a beam of sunlight comes in and lights up her face in this triangle [choking up] for like three or four seconds. The light just starts to dim out just on her face and like the angles of the tree and the clouds in the sun and the louvier blinds – impossible to recreate. And we just looked at each other, and had the greatest laugh-cry you can imagine. We couldn't believe what we had just seen. And it was undeniable. And that's the mystery and the gift of life. Things don't happen to us. They happen for us. Our job is to stick around long enough to figure out why. We have to do the work and be willing to do it. And when we do, we can un-mine gold and untap the wealth of life's possibilities. And that was just one of many moments in my life where it's like, all right man, maybe I'm closer than I think. I'll keep at this thing.

Vic: Aaron, I, I needed, uh, I needed this today [speaking emotionally]. Thank you.

Aaron Taylor has been sober for 20 years and still works his recovery program. When he’s not working as a college football analyst on television, he’s often advocating for addiction recovery, and mental health awareness.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

“Back From Broken” is a show about how we are all broken sometimes. And how we need help from time to time. If you’re struggling with addiction or mental health struggles, you can find a list of resources at our website, backfrombroken.org. Thanks for listening to “Back From Broken.” Please review the show on Apple Podcasts. It helps other people find it. “Back From Broken” is hosted by me, Vic Vela. It is a production of Colorado Public Radio's Audio Innovation Studio and CPR News. Our lead producer for this episode was Kibwe Cooper. Find a list of all the folks who worked hard to make this episode in the show notes. This podcast is made possible by Colorado Public Radio members. Learn about supporting "Back from Broken" at cpr.org.

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A podcast about recovery, hosted by Vic Vela.

Back from Broken

After a successful NFL career, Aaron Taylor had to come to terms with his alcohol addiction and heal the childhood trauma he had never addressed.

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