The Crucible:Conversations for the Curious

Hamish (00:29)
Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Crucible Conversations for the Curious. Today I'm chatting with Joshua and Joshua's got an incredible story about self-medicating. This is probably one of the darker sides of addiction. It's something that many people do without realizing. I realized after.

This is something that I've also done. So Joshua, thanks so much for turning up today. I really appreciate it.

Joshua Ashton (00:55)
Yeah, absolutely. It's a pleasure to be here and it's a pleasure to share my story and to share, you know, kind of some of the ways that I worked through it and, you know, some of the paths because oftentimes I don't think we realize when we're a substance and we're using it again and again that it's something that is added some kind of value at some point in time that assisted us to do something and then we ended up abusing it and continuing down that path because medical professionals

don't always have a grip as well as they like to think they do sometimes. We get misdiagnosed or misidentified as what's going on and they don't often listen to us, right?

Hamish (01:35)
I, you've, you've nailed it on the head. Yeah. I've mentioned this before. I had a conversation with my doctor a few weeks ago and, I said, you know, I was, I was drinking to help manage my ADHD and he just said, that was a really bad thing to do. And I said, no, I said it helped me make sense of life.

could not get his head around it. I realized that it's actually a good thing that he couldn't because he hasn't presumably been in that state where he needed to find a way of managing. So tell us a bit about your story and why you ended up self-medicating and then yeah, lead us on from there.

Joshua Ashton (02:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. Well, when I was growing up, I was a very, very naive kid. I couldn't understand like the regular social nuances of just general interaction. Sarcasm was lost on me. I could not tell it. So I was the most gullible person and people would, you know, they'd play with that data. They'd take advantage of it. It really shitty back when it was happening. And it took me a long time and I used drugs in the process to kind of

find a way around that because there's something particular you find in those social circles when you're using is that everyone is, you know, much cooler or nicer to each other if you're all sitting around, I don't know. I started out smoking weed together because you weren't supposed to smoke weed for a long period of time and then it evolved to other things. And that also kind of numbed my overthinking brain. My brain, you know, does sometimes still and used to run on 1,000 % almost the whole entire time, right?

And turning that down was a really hard thing to do. And finding people to kind of bridge the gap and come down to where I was at and make sense of me and understand who I was was not something that was easily found in the area that I was in. And so, you know, was in a two-home family. You my parents weren't together. So I was going back and forth between each house and...

Yeah, the journeys back and forth made it difficult. The families were broken and split. My dad was definitely someone that abused medication as well. At some point in time, had lost his leg in a motorcycle accident, which was a traumatic experience in and of itself. But after that, he had gotten the pain pill medications, like a whole slew of them, naturally, as rightly so when you lose a limb, right?

But he ended up finding ways to double and triple his prescription some months. And he went way down that rabbit hole. And there was me and my brother at the time living with him. You know, we used to take them all the time and follow down that rabbit hole. And that's the one of the first, you know, close social experiences I had when we were, you know, those partners in crime doing that kind of, you know, stealing from him and taking his medication and whatnot before realizing like,

those things were numbing some of the overthinking that was going on in my brain because I didn't have anyone there to kind of guide me and point me in that direction. Kids are geniuses. Zero through four, psychologically speaking, you're on a genius level, right? And if you're not properly cared for throughout that process, then you kind of start seeking the why and how do I...

How do I get on the same page as the people around me? Instinctually, right? Like, you're not doing it because you're like, want to dumb my brain down. You're not saying it because, I'm too fast or too whatever for the people around me. You just want that family, that connection with folks. And so I naturally kind of seeked out that space to kind of bridge the gap, I suppose. But.

as it evolved over the years, probably around mid-20s or so, about later 30s now, probably about mid-20s or so, I kind of got the inkling of the idea of why I was using. About that time was probably when I picked up, shortly before that time is when I picked up, you know, cocaine. And the way that that worked with me was that it actually kind of slowed my brain down a little bit and I was able to

focus on individual tasks in front of me, which I don't know if you know it, HD brain, but like, you know, like I was able to actually start accomplishing some things under that. And, and, know, that's it's, wonderful, you know, at first and in various moments between all of the other moments where, know, you get so far into it that you start abusing that you're not actually using it as medication.

There's not many that I've found that know that they're self-medicating that can still actually utilize it as medication, right? Because the problem with self-medicating is that you've got to set your own boundaries. And when it comes to a substance, especially a substance that's, you know, it helps us to an extent, right? To an extent, it was an assistant. And then you take a step or two beyond that extent and you're gone, you know. You've gone way too fast and now,

it's worse than if you had stayed sober in that area and not taken anything at all. And yeah, and that's kind of where I fell off at at some point. was at some point early on, I had experimented with Adderall, but Adderall was so much harder to get a hold of than the Coke was, right?

Hamish (07:31)
Crazy,

it?

Joshua Ashton (07:33)
Yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous.

Hamish (07:35)
I want to dive in there because so much of what you've said there, we can really unpack. Right at the beginning, you said, you know, children want to, they have to attach to their parents. And if there's not that love and support, they will stop being authentic. They will work out ways to survive. You know, I guess same as you at four or five, six, I didn't have that.

understanding of how an adult brain works. I still don't, but we won't go there. So yes, so we built coping mechanisms. You know, we, we formed, we pretended, you know, go to your room, do not come back until you're feeling better. Five minutes later, I'm feeling better, daddy, you know, because that horror of being by yourself, you know, it's, it's, learned to lie, we learned to identify with what they want, as you said, to make sense of it.

Joshua Ashton (08:26)
Yeah. Well, that same note, you know, one thing I continually come to realize, you know, I'll hear, you know, a parent talking about their kid and goes, they did this or that, and they need to figure this or that out. And I'm like, what do you what do you mean? They're a kid like they they learn by example, right? They're not going to figure it out. You can't, you know, send a kid to his room, especially that young and expect them to figure it out. Right. You have to example it. You have to

talk through the hard emotions, you have to sit with them. You gotta remember, know, 150, 160 years ago, 200 years ago, we were brought as kids with our parents wherever they were. We got to watch them, be around them, and understand them in a different way than our current society does this. We're separating our parents and kids constantly. It's not conducive for individual personal development. We develop our

emotional intelligence and how we understand the world from being around other people and watching our caregivers, the people that, you know, we're connected most with in this world. And when you don't have that kind of assistance and you don't have that person around, you know, who do you trust? If you're sending kids off, you're your kids off. And look, this is necessary. I'm not knocking anyone at all for, you know, needing to have caregivers for their children during the day, but

If you understand the mindset, it's easier to understand why kids act in those ways, right? So if we have to send our kids off to a caregiver every single day while we go to work, you know, they don't know this caregiver from Adam, you know, and how do you build that level of trust with a child? And now they're going to example the behavior around them. If they don't feel safe, then they're going to start to act out in various ways. And now you've started this cycle that bleeds into the home and the parent goes, well, you were bad at school today.

If you understand it from a perspective of they don't know this person from Adam and the tiniest little thing could have triggered them into feeling unsafe and uncomfortable. And now that attitude is being carried into the home as well. And now your parents wagging their fingers at you because, you know, you didn't feel comfortable or safe around the teacher and you wanted X, Y, and Z and then you lashed out because the teacher wasn't giving you that. It creates a really convoluted process that's

makes it harder to unpack and harder to administer to the child. The child is the one that should be, we should be centering our outlook around. And I think it's a bit difficult to do that in today's society and standards or along those lines, we're not giving them the grace and leeway to be bad in those areas, right? Like it's a double-edged sword, really.

Hamish (11:17)
It is, isn't it? And then you've also got to add to the fact that the parents are a generation older, they've got their own successes and failures, their own way that they were brought up by their parents, their grandparents, they didn't have that nurture maybe that we, the current generation, our children wanted, require, need. So it's tough. It's really tough.

I want to go back to finding those coping strategies because this I think is really, really important. Particularly if it is a substance or maybe also a way of acting. You you said they act, kids act out when they're not, don't feel safe. I think that's being safe is the key, isn't it? Expand on

Expand on that for me because I know this is an interest of yours very much so.

Joshua Ashton (12:11)
which was specifically being safe in a.

Hamish (12:14)
Well,

yeah, the need to feel safe. And then if you're not safe, that either finding a coping strategy, you know, as I said, a chemical, a substance, whether it's food, gym, whatever, or, as you said, acting out behavioral stuff, because that's no more safe than hard drugs or soft drugs, really.

Joshua Ashton (12:35)
Yeah,

yeah, absolutely. I actually found last week in a session with my therapist that I've just recently hit a point now where I have the safest that I've felt in about two and a half years in my current foundation and position and the people around me and my relationships, two and a half years. And it's funny looking back on all of it and seeing the ways that as an adult I was acting out while not feeling safe.

in various spaces, I was engaged to someone for a little bit and I lived in a somewhat dicey situation for a short period of time there. And all of the ways that we kind of shut ourselves off from the world and people around us, things that could actually be potentially good for us even, because if we don't feel safe inside of ourselves to ourselves, right?

and telling, I'm the one that said that because I was feeling really good. I was feeling really good this day. didn't have much to say to her. I was giving her all the good points of my life. And she sat and she was like, okay, well, what does that feel like? And I just, you know, it feels, it feels safe. And, you know, I kind of started tearing up a little bit as I was saying that. And not realizing that you don't feel safe in a certain environment is like probably more detrimental, right? Because we're using.

all of these things to kind of cram our brains shut, right? I'm cutting myself off from the rest of world. I'm spending as much time as I can on the computer and maybe even writing and doing things that are good for me, right, that are quality, except I'm not getting any kind of social interaction. I'm holding up, keeping to myself. I'm not fueling the emotional brain. I'm not, you know, connecting with other folks around me. And that's cutting people off.

And then in that process, I mean, I wasn't abusing, I wasn't, you know, doing bad during that period of time. But I was drinking a little bit and it was, you know, there were moments where it could have gone over the edge. If I didn't have the previous discipline that I'd had before when it came to drinking specifically because alcohol is the easiest thing to get a hold of. It's not been my biggest, it's not been my biggest problem. But I know when I can see myself on the edge, if I get one night or two nights where I've drinking a little bit too much, I'm like,

Okay, I can't drink for a day or two or a week and a half sometimes even, but that aside, yeah, kind of distancing ourselves from the people around us and not finding, we're not feeling safe enough to reach out and be vulnerable, right? Safeness is super important because it allows you to be your authentic self. And from what I've understood now recently,

You know, in my spirituality, know, love's always been the biggest thing, right? Love is the most powerful thing out there, but in reality, actually, there's one energy that kind of eclipses that by just a little bit, and that's authenticity. Your authentic self exudes those energies anyway. So it's all good and well to be super loving, but authenticity is where it really stands out, because if you're super loving, and this is back to the words definitions thing, but I'm not going to define it for you.

If you're super loving, you might end up feeling like you have to do too much for somebody and you might want to go out of your way to do those things. But if I'm authentic, I'm going to say, you know what, I would love to do that for you. I just can't today. I have to go do X, Y, and Z, blah, blah. And that holds you in, you know, your boundaries and allows you to survive and thrive because you can't pour from an empty cup. have to, your cup needs to be overflowing in order for you to give from it.

Every time you try and pour out that last little drop, you're teaching yourself that your needs are not the ones that are the important needs, right? And every time that you feel safe, you're able to be authentic and ask for what you need from people around you. Hey, can you come sit with me while I do this? You know, for me, in ADHD and executive dysfunction, those things were super important just to have somebody there sometimes, right? My place is a mess. Can you just come talk to me while I clean it?

And then finding, you know, that space. Feeling safe is, it's, you know, it's like a requirement for a healthy life. Do you feel safe in your job? Do you feel safe in your environment? You know, building that allows you to eventually feel safe in yourself, right? So even if you are working at a place that might not be the best environment, if you feel safe, you know that you can hold yourself and your boundaries here.

Hamish (17:05)
the

Joshua Ashton (17:20)
And if, God forbid, they decide to kick you to the curb because, you know, you're holding your boundaries right, which, you know, in capitalism, they don't like most of the time, then, you know, you're going to be safe. You know, your landing zone is going to be okay. You're going to be held up by, you know, the people around you and your social network and social circle.

Hamish (17:41)
Yep. I, you've really nailed it there. And I, is, it's, it's lots of steps, isn't it? It's going right back to the child, finding ways to cope, playing out the young adult, finding drugs, finding cocaine to slow you down, go figure. and, or, or food and anything, anything just to take that anxiety, that pain, that stress away, finding those coping mechanisms.

Joshua Ashton (17:58)
I can figure.

Hamish (18:08)
that make you feel externally safe. And then as you said, then you have to have to to thrive, you have to start feeling internally safe. And as you said, you're you're working with someone and they're helping you understand that. And as you once you Yeah, once you feel safe inside, someone says, you know, you're an idiot. That's like, well, so says you it just it is it's it's worn off a duck's back, isn't it? It just doesn't affect you anymore.

Joshua Ashton (18:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

It's irrelevant. know, once you've got that safeness in yourself, you can pretty much walk anywhere. know, it's that safeness builds into the authenticity too, right? you know, someone can walk up and be like, you've been an asshole. I'm like, yeah, I can do that sometimes, you know, right? What did I do this time? know, like, it's, but I'm not, you know, I'm not ashamed about it. I don't feel bad about it. I know it happens sometimes, right? So I'm going to try and find that kind of connection. And because I'm authentic and I'm safe in myself,

Hamish (18:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Joshua Ashton (19:07)
I can, was I driving? know, like, did I cut you off back there? It's possible. Yeah.

Hamish (19:13)
Yeah.

Yeah. And it's, it also allows you to look at your shadow, your dark side, you know, Hamish is manipulative, full stop, I can be. And I like to think of it as a knife edge, you've got authenticity on the right. Don't know why it's right. That's just the way it is. I'm left handed. And on the left, you've got that attachment, you've got that, you know, I am manipulative, because I want you to love me. I want you to support me. I want, I want, I want, I want.

Joshua Ashton (19:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hamish (19:42)
On the other side, I'm not actually manipulating, we'll use the same word, I'm encouraging. What's the difference? I think the difference between encouraging and manipulating can be as simple as what do I want to get out of it? I've, yeah, intention, absolutely. Yeah. So maybe let's have a look at that because you've talked about that importance of authenticity, but you've got to do that not from

Joshua Ashton (19:57)
Yeah, intention. Yeah, what your intention is. Yeah, yeah.

Hamish (20:12)
I guess not from requiring from anybody or requiring of yourself. You you're doing it for what reason would you be authentic? What are the benefits?

Joshua Ashton (20:22)
Well,

the reason essentially to be authentic is to, you know, kind of find your tribe, right? You know, be your authentic self and then you'll attract people around you that are going to be, you know, as similar to who you are as you can find. You know, if you're not out there being whatever your weird or normal self is, I don't know what normal means, but I just threw it out there because if we're going to go weird, we got to the other word, right? Then, you know, how are you going to?

know if there are people similar to you out there, if there are people that think like you, act like you, and have desires similar to your desires. Originally, that's the great point. The other one being the point of being authentic is so that you'll find a place where you don't necessarily need to, well, I guess that's kind of a strange one.

so that you can assist the people around you, assist yourself? I don't know, it's hard to say why to be authentic, right? I think it's as simple as finding your tribe and your people. The intention being though, to bring everyone to their highest good and their highest growth. That's my desire and my intention in my life. And that's why, you know, at times I can be someone that kind of.

tries to shove what I know down someone's throats, be a bit pushy with like, no, all you have to do is this, and then you'll find these steps of growth. And it's like, you gotta meet people where they are. And you can't try and elevate something or somebody. Well, you can't elevate anyone anyway. You can only help them help themselves, right? You cannot save any specific person.

you can only try to help them save themselves, offer them a hand, right? And that's kind of where being that authentic self comes in, right? Because if you're in your authenticity and you know who you are, then you don't need to fix somebody, right? Because I think that's kind of the shadow side of when it comes to spiritual workers. can help fix you. Like, no, no, no, no, no. People don't need fixing like that, right? They just need love and the space to feel safe.

Hamish (22:32)
Hmm.

Joshua Ashton (22:43)
be their authentic self because if you can provide a safe space for someone to be their authentic self, you can't imagine the number of times I've just created the space for someone to be that. a very non-judgmental person, you know. And I say that in that sequence because that's the super important part, right? I'll tell you how much I've been an asshole. I'll tell you the drugs that I've done. I'll tell you how much of a road rage driver I've been in the past. I've gotten a lot better. I'll tell you all of that because

Hamish (23:05)
No.

Joshua Ashton (23:13)
I've got no shame around it anymore. It existed. It happened. I was there. And on occasion, you know, I come close to going back there sometimes, right? That's the temptations of life. But when creating a nonjudgmental safe space, you'd be surprised the amount of people that walk into that space, tell their story, go through their entire story as you're listening to them, and then.

figure out the puzzle pieces to come out of that story and find growth all on their own. Like not a single word said, maybe an expression, maybe a hand gesture in that space that communicates, maybe you should think a little bit more about this spot, but really not much on my part just from creating the space. And then people change right there in front of your eyes.

Hamish (24:03)
I absolutely love that. Yeah, that making safe spaces for people is, it's a gift, isn't it? It really is. I, that is my superpower. And I got that because I never felt safe. You know, I just didn't. My dad wasn't present. He was busy making us a lovely home. My mom had, were four of us. I was the oldest. So she had four of us little buggers to run around with and contend with. And

For whatever reason, Hamish didn't feel safe. yeah, alcohol was great. Made me feel safe, made me feel sexy, la la la la.

Joshua Ashton (24:41)
Yeah.

Hamish (24:42)
The truth is I didn't feel safe and alcohol, as I said, alcohol really helped with that. then, yeah, in recovery in, I'm struggling here this morning. I'll start again. I just didn't feel, I didn't feel safe. And it took until I literally hit that rock bottom to realize that I had to do it. And I got encouraged and supported to feel safe and

Joshua Ashton (24:53)
Yeah.

Hamish (25:07)
understand it. And then, know, that's what I do now with people. And, you know, you do the same. And I think it takes a trauma or an event where you have to struggle with it before you step out of that and realize, I can do this.

Joshua Ashton (25:21)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think the difficulty being that when you don't grow up in that safe environment, you're always feeling kind of, so this I think is the roots of like codependency, right? Because you're looking for your parents to give you that value. You're looking to find that safe space, right? And so as you're looking for it later in life, you're still leaning on other people in a lot of different ways to kind of try and find that who's my safe space, where's my safe space kind of thought process.

And then along those lines, you're building your idea of worth and value in that area, right? Like, I must not be worth anything because no one's willing to help me create this safe space or be this safe space for me. And that's where, at some point in time, I had this aha moment where it was like, you know, I was always looking for validation from somebody else. I'd give them my ideas and try and find that validation from them until I realized at a certain point that like,

and not to feel over the top with this, but I knew best. I knew better than the people around me. And I started leaning on my own thoughts and what was happening in my head for self-validation in order to know, okay, no, this isn't safe. Okay, I am valuable here. Okay, I'm not good at this. Okay, actually, I'm really good at this. And kind of moving away from that codependent mindset, because when you're placing your value, allowing someone else to place your value,

then you're giving them the keys to what could be a safe space for you, which is in here, right? Where your safe space originates from at the very beginning, essentially.

Hamish (27:01)
Yep. You've just triggered about a hundred million little synapses going, Hamish is safe. And I have just had a massive sort of wow, awakening moment of, know, I just need to give myself permission to be safe. And as you said, know, inner wisdom, trust my knowledge, don't give it all away. You know, I've heard this a million times, but certain things have just connected in my head. So if I go off on a tangent or go vague, that's what it is. So that was a really

Joshua Ashton (27:06)
You

Please. Yeah.

Hamish (27:29)
Really, really important thing you just said there.

I could say it's simple, it's nothing that simple is easy, is it? It requires softness and forgiveness, self-forgiveness and a lot of self-compassion and naturally not listening to other people. I think what you said there, yeah, not listening to, sorry, Tony Robbins or other people just going, this is another conversation. I realized today that all this mindset stuff is brilliant, but it's not a cure.

Joshua Ashton (27:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hamish (28:01)
It is, it it allows you to vacillate. know, you have to, you have to go much deeper than that, much more gently and deeper. Monologue over.

Joshua Ashton (28:06)
Yeah, yeah, and

yeah, yeah. I know. No, it's perfect. That's kind of the idea being that like the simple statements are the most powerful and they're not the easiest ones, but they're ones that, you know, should ruminate around a little bit. And yeah, the mindset thing is great in everything, right? Yeah, you want to shoot for a certain mindset. But really like where are you right now?

Are you accepting the place that you're in right now and being okay with that? Because if you're feeling safe, you can accept the, feel like shit today and I don't feel like talking to anyone today. I still have those days, right? Like, and I accept them, right? When I start to feel like shit and I don't feel like talking to anybody, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna lean into it. I'm gonna watch a show. I'm gonna relax. I'm gonna keep myself in my room until my energy starts to build again. And then that acceptance alone half of the time.

will allow me to come out of that in a much easier fashion. Sometimes I just need to be there and recuperate and that's okay too. It's the acceptance and the love for yourself throughout the process that's really one of the major important things. And we all want to hear these words of affirmation from these, know, spiritual or cognitive gurus and everything and that's all good and well. But when you start kind of like needing to hear them or kind of like,

basing your identity around aspects of them, then it's a time to be like, what do I really not like about myself? Why do I feel like I have to distance myself from me so much so that I have to go there? And I also really liked what you said before that last question about the shadow side and the light side, because they tie together, right? Like if you're looking at acceptance of self, you need to know what both sides of you look like.

can't take the dark thought processes that you don't want to look at and you don't like and shelf them into a corner because that's a portion of yourself, right? I was driving down the road yesterday and this will be a hard admittance to admit because this goes back to my road rage thing, Driving down the road, got super angry at somebody about X, Y or Z and I have this little tick that happens sometimes when I get angry, right? It's right here, I'll have a cheek lip

Tick like like someone's put a thread there and and my cheek just goes up, right? It looks much worse when I'm actually it's much more obvious when I'm actually angry but what I realized to a certain extent is in that space where I'm super angry and you know, I've got this road rage and I and I really do not like this person in front of me to a to a bad point, right that tick happens and a process happens in my brain and I'm able to acknowledge that like

there's bad, like I could do this, I could fly around this person or do this or that, do some really illegal stuff and fall into like my dark shadow side. But I'm acknowledging that that's there with the tick, right? Like, I could do this bad thing right now. And at the same time though, there's a choice that happens there to not do it, first off the bat. And then there's also an acknowledgement that that's okay, that it happened, that that place exists within me.

Because honestly, in a lot of ways, you're not a peaceful person if you're not capable of being a harmful person. That is actually a defense mechanism for us. So God forbid something horrible was to happen around you. That is that shadow side, that dark side that would be looking out for us in that space. If you are capable of harm and not doing harm, that makes you a peaceful person.

There's a point to that, right? Our bodies, you need to have the ability to protect yourself at some point in time. God forbid something really horrible happens over here in the States and all of a sudden our government is really against us, blah, blah, right? I need to know that I've got the side. It makes me feel safe to know that if that were to happen, I would be able to feel like I can defend myself. And so acknowledging and accepting that shadow side and not trying to shove it into a box in the corner.

really helps us expand on the positive aspects, right? There is no difference between good and bad there per se, right? Because those are moral arguments. Yes, there are things you should do to come correct and there are things that you can't do. There are incorrect things in today's society, but they all exist for a reason. And building off of that, they all kind of are us. So we're shoving that portion of that shadow self into a box in the corner.

then you're saying a part of you is not good, a part of you is bad, a part of you should not exist, and you're trying to amputate it, right? And how's that really gonna look for your overall feeling of safety, especially if you're warring against yourself?

Hamish (33:05)
Fabulous. Yeah. mean, going back to your driving, dickhead, lalalala, idiot in front of you driving like all this kind of stuff. For some reason, he stands on his brakes. You know, you can go and go around him. Yeah, your dark side said you can go around him. I I love that. And that's what Jordan Peterson says, isn't it? He says, I like dangerous people who know they can defend themselves. They know they can be violent.

but choose not to. Yeah, you know, the wolf can kill, it'll only do it when necessary to protect. Yeah, I think that is, I love that, because you are, are balancing that side of you, you're acknowledging your dark side. I mean, that is one of the good things I had to do in rehab, is I had to look at...

Joshua Ashton (33:36)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Hamish (33:56)
a large pile of imperfections and go, yep, God, do I really have to admit that to myself? You know, yes, I did that. Yes, I did that as well. And then understanding why and then realizing that, you know, they are actually just part of who I am. I don't have to do them anymore. I just did them then because I didn't know better. And I think, I think part of that goes right back to

Joshua Ashton (34:16)
Yeah.

Hamish (34:22)
That goes right back to these coping strategies. We didn't know better. You didn't know better when you found your dad's pills. Hey, let's have a laugh. Hamish didn't know better that the alcohol was going to just chip away all of his moral compass. It kept me alive. It kept you alive. helped have a nice sense of things. So, you know, it's, it's what's happened. And then, you know, you, you and I, we're making sense of it. And

Joshua Ashton (34:47)
Yeah.

Hamish (34:51)
by the sounds of it, certainly I have, certainly you have, you have stopped requiring those coping strategies. I want to go back to that because that's fascinating. How did you begin to realize that these various habits were unhealthy? Did it get to a dark point or was it an awareness before you got there?

Joshua Ashton (34:57)
Yeah.

It was kind of an awareness before I got there. I had kind of always kind of had these feelings in the back of my head, you know, trying to distance myself from looking at myself like I was an addict, right? Like for the longest time there, I never called myself that. And, you know, even still I have qualms with that word addiction because there's so much, you know, shame that's heaped onto people that are addicts. And I think,

over a course of a many number of years, little by little, I found myself kind of in and out, right? So, know, go into it, do the thing, work through the addictions as best I could or would during that period of time, come out a little bit, you know, feel like, you know, I'm this new person or different or whatever that I didn't have this tick in the back of my brain that wanted to be, this itch that wanted to be scratched every other day or every couple of days or.

and then jump back into it again for another six, eight, 12 months or whatever. It's actually kind of funny not funny, know, chef industry, blah, blah. Even when I worked out of the chef industry, I don't know what it is about how friendly my personality can be sometimes, but there will always be that one person that will pull me on the side at some point when we're talking and be like, yeah, do you like skiing?

Hamish (36:23)
Mm.

Joshua Ashton (36:40)
What the fuck man? Do I really look like that guy? Like Jesus, like fuck. Like come on, like I didn't know anybody around that had any of that stuff for how long and now someone's gonna come poke me again. But yeah, but there are the gratifying moments are in those spaces are when you're like, you know what? No, you know, I mean, don't get me wrong, this happened a handful of times, right? Throughout that process, but.

It's all cycling. And my help when I think about it, I don't think that, you know, I fell each time I went back to it, right? I don't think I fell from grace, so that some people say, it was just the spiral, right? And people think of a spiral as the bad thing because you're circling and going down. No, what's happening is you're going up. So when you think of the spiral, you have to think, I've been here before, and I'm learning this again so I can nail this down.

Right now I've come back to this spiral with experience. If you come back knowing that all the things you did before were to help you here and get through it in a different way, right? Because I think the long end game being that you don't want to ever return there because God forbid, you know, you finally think you're done with this thing. You're healed, right? Which is, you know, we're all in a healing process. So I feel like for me, a lot of the times one of those

big yellow flags is I'm healed. I have healed all of my personal trauma. like, hopefully, yes, hopefully, but most of the times when I hear that it doesn't necessarily, it correlates to I'd like to not think about this anymore and I'd like to think that I'm done with it. So in that process, like, you if you had, if you don't go through those cycles again, in shorter periods of time, you know, God forbid four, five, eight years down the road,

This thing comes back up again, something in life triggers you to kind of pull your house of cards down a bit in your brain. You return to this substance again, and now all of a sudden you push yourself so far that you're gone, either physically or mentally gone and putting yourself on the streets in some kind of junkie mindset or something, right? So going through these cycles in a shorter period of time can help give us the steps necessary to remain outside of them, right? Like the whole goal being,

I don't need substances. And I can even correlate that on the spiritual side with certain things like hallucinogens that have gone through as well, because hallucinogens for me were a way of unlocking some of those mindsets in the same area. And I'll say with the same thing with hallucinogens, right? Yes, they were beautiful keys to help me find a universal energy. But I'm almost to the point, I'm pretty much to the point that I don't.

I have that and have found that connection without needing a substance to get me there, Even in indigenous times, right, these were just a means to an end to let you see and find that connection to show you something so that faith or belief wasn't necessarily needed, right? Like I know that there's this energy out there, right? I don't need this beautiful,

mushroom substance to connect to that substance anymore. don't need that. I find it in my everyday life. And it's the same thing with connection outside of drugs, right? You work through it and then when you're on the other side of it, you're able to find those people. We found ourselves, we've been through this so many different times and on that random Facebook group that you posted in that day,

Out of all the other kind of scammy, pay to play kind of speakers that are asking for speakers on there, I picked your post out very specifically and we were able to connect because we could see each other in that kind of way. That's how it works out in the rest of the world. I also found that through all of these processes, it has given me the ability to talk and assist other people through this. Coming across someone, the person that does offer me that,

you know, aside, you know, offering me, offering me drugs randomly, you know, without even having brought them up at any point in time, I'm able to find ways to like minister to that person. Cause now at this point in time, you've shown me your hand of cards, right? So now I can like, I can kind of let down the veneer of being in a professional environment or being a professional person and kind of connect with you on a one-on-one level because I've been there, right? And then I can also kind of like,

Hamish (41:16)
Yeah.

Joshua Ashton (41:24)
find through little tiny guiding questions why you're there, what's brought you there. And, you know, because I didn't judge you about what you asked me, you know, because I didn't judge you that you're doing this thing or this substance, you're going to tell me more than you're going to tell anyone else. And it allows me to find that really common comfortable space where, you know, we can talk about our traumas or we can talk about our stories. And I get to listen and hear and find and pinpoint, know,

Who made you feel unsafe? Where are your vulnerabilities coming at? And how can we, know, how did I work through those things? That's also, you know, the best way to minister is I don't sit there and, well, you should try this or why don't you try that? I do, actually. I misspoke. I do and have done that in the past at times. But the more powerful ways are to speak about your own story. Well, I worked through it this way. I found my way through it that way. I do this men's group.

Hamish (42:06)
Thank

Joshua Ashton (42:22)
that I joined last year. And I had never joined a men's group before in my entire life. I had always looked at them and the people around them seemed quite pretentious to me. And they seemed like, I don't know, some of them were, you know, cosigned to the alpha mentality thing. I don't know. There's lots of things that don't sit right with that mindset. I don't just, the words and the attitude anyway.

So they, the men's group really ever felt very comfortable with me because the people didn't feel very genuine or coming from a place with the best of intentions. It seemed like the men that ran them wanted to feel big and wanted to feel like they had something to give and that's where they were coming from. It was an ego place. This place that I found was much different and it gave me a whole bunch of different tools in this category, right?

when we're talking about identifying what our stories are and how we can connect with others, coming from a place of me, I, right? One of the first rules going into the men's group is that there's no general you statements. Like, you know when you get angry, you're driving down the road and blah, blah, blah? No, it's all I statements when I get angry and I'm driving down the road to take ownership of those feelings and what's happening inside of us.

At first I was like, okay, yeah, that's cool. seems kind of silly, but whatever. But it's actually one of the most powerful things that I have experienced in a group, you know, kind of setting like that, right? Because I've had to stop myself even after, you know, close to a year of being a part of this group. I've even had to stop myself and be like, wait, when I did this or when I did that, you know, and take ownership of those feelings without feeling shame around it, right? That's that's

you know, not feeling shame around what we're going through and what we've been through and what, not giving shame to what someone's story is in front of us. I can't, I don't know if I can say how powerful it is. I don't think I can, I don't think I can overstate how powerful that actually is. Wait, I lost track of where I was going. okay.

Hamish (44:42)
No, that's good. mean, think you've,

the I statement thing I think is super powerful. I'm in a community, a shamanic community, and that is the requirement. And it does, it stops me judging you, stops you judging me. It's brilliant. I think, know, shame is a favorite topic of mine because it is...

something that really kept me struggling for a long time. you you've you've really nailed it there. We don't need it. It's self inflicted at the end of the day. It is I am a bad person, which is nonsense.

Joshua Ashton (45:21)
I found there's,

and people that are looking to grow and be intentional, it's not necessary. is the people that should be looped on the people that are doing bad things, right? Like it exists for a reason, but it doesn't exist for us. It doesn't exist, it shouldn't exist for you and me, right? That's kind of my belief that comes around to it. Like, yeah, if you're going out there doing really bad things in a medicineally fashion, you probably should feel some shame around that, but.

So yeah.

Hamish (45:47)
Yeah. Now,

again, that's sort of intentional, isn't it? You're deliberately being, you're choosing to be unkind, to be aggressive rather than being human and slipping. And I think that is a big difference. know, an apology without a lie, no, try again, an apology without a behavioral change is a lie.

Joshua Ashton (46:03)
Right. Yes.

Hamish (46:16)
However, we do slip, you we're not perfect. So you're allowed to slip, apologize and just try and change again. You know, it's, it's, it is, it's subtle. It's being subtle. It's being kind. It's being gentle. It's forgiving yourself. yeah, it's, it's what I'm realizing. It is all about being so incredibly gentle that it's almost horizontal. yeah.

Joshua Ashton (46:16)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah. In that space, a powerful routine that I learned not long ago was standing in front of the mirror every single morning and telling yourself you love yourself 10 times. Stand in front of the mirror, look at yourself in the eyes, and tell yourself you love yourself. And it's funny too, the first couple of times that I did that, the first couple of days in a row that I did that, I got really teary-eyed as I was going through it. And then I went through

quite a number of months where it was just like regular, like, okay, I love you, man, I love you, I love you, you know, I love you. And you'll find in half those little moments where it's like random days where you find more depth in saying that and more depth in your eyes as you're saying that. It's like, you know, for eight, 12, 20 months, whatever, I've been fine just being like, hey, love you, I love you, I love you, you know, just regular. And then that one day will hit and you'll find some kind of deeper, deeper feeling there behind your own eyes. And it just hits.

so much harder and you just realize in that moment that like, I could take all of these days have been great. They've been so amazing and they led up to this point. And now it's like the world is on the world's, you know, blowing up like it's getting bigger, right? Like you're accomplishing more and you find that extra little bit of love for yourself. And, know, and you've had in the past 20 months or so that you've been doing it.

Hamish (48:00)
I like that. Yeah, I do that from time to time. I haven't tried it 10 times. I will do that once we finish chatting and just see. It's all those things just to keep you out of being unconscious, make you that little bit more intentional, make you that little bit more aware of who you are, what you're doing and yeah, getting curious about it. Yeah.

Joshua Ashton (48:22)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah. Well, connecting with self. Yeah, well, it's good to say connecting with self and, you know, who you would and who your desires are. That's what brings us, you know, back to being conscious again. It's okay to go through short periods of times of unconsciousness, I guess, right? Like there's a drift through capitalism, but ultimately, yeah, connecting.

Hamish (48:25)
Tell me a little bit of... Sorry, carry on.

Joshua, tell me a little bit more about what you do now when it comes to helping people and working with people.

Joshua Ashton (48:51)
Yeah, absolutely. So I created a website that I have recently and there's one, so I'll tell it along the story. I've worked with the largest holistic festival in my county and for 10 or 13 years now, KarmaFest is in the area and coming up through them, I've taught a number of classes with them.

Spiritually Position classes, Spiritual and Energetic Protection is the first class that I taught, which was a boundaries class as well. And then the second one that I taught was a wisdom workshop about discernment and about how, you know, it's a different level of critical thinking when you're discerning through something. And those two things have given me the ability to really minister and mentor to people one-on-one. I'm a very passionate mentor.

I created a website called Inner Puzzle Pieces. So what I like to do is I like to assist people through figuring out where they are right now. So whatever you're going through, whatever your experiences are, whatever you feel is holding you back, I'm there for it. there for listening to it as much as I can and figuring out your path, right? And I don't mean to say it's like your fated path. I mean like the mental path that you're walking down.

and where you're at on that mental path, right? It's not about what your fate is. It's not about what you're looking to do physically in the world around you. It's the path of emotionally, mentally, and physically and rationally, where are you at on your path? And that path is whatever, right? Capitalism, create whatever you want. Identifying where you are and where are the kind of missing holes in the structure that is your...

individuality, your way you look at your authenticity, the way you look at your authenticity, Where your vision is, how clear your vision is there. And kind of either A, find a puzzle piece to help you figure out where it goes, or B, figure out where the puzzle piece goes. Those are the two different things that I like to identify in my work. I do one-on-one work with people, video chat or audio, depending on what their needs are. I usually prefer video.

And then from there, we work through a half hour, 45 minutes to see if I've got something that I can give you. I do a free consultation if I can help you. If I can see that you're working your way around this puzzle piece or I can see that you have a puzzle piece and now we have to just figure out where to put the puzzle piece at. Then we'll move forward and we work with about...

I try to do an hour and 15 hour and a half minute sessions, but it ends up turning into closer to two, two hour long sessions, depending, no matter what I do, almost like, because it's that in depth, right? If you're having those aha moments and we're right there, what? sorry, guys, we're at an hour and 15. I can't cut anyone off. I love people way too much to do that. And I've done this with a number of different folks that will credit me for assisting them and finding whatever this puzzle piece is.

We'll define it, we'll sit there and we'll define it for as long as they need to in order to work through it. And this can come with addiction, this can come with codependency. I have a good amount of experience with mental health stuff. I am not a therapist. Although I have had therapists tell me that I'm very good at what I do. I've worked with therapists before. Even my current therapist is like, you're going back to school for psychology and that's like, that's like it. So.

I was working with a therapist not long ago who wanted me to do her text messaging service. She has this text messaging service that doesn't require the license or the certification to actually be the one messaging back and forth between the people. And she wanted to position me in that area because she knows that I'm pretty good at what I do. I'm not a therapist or counselor, but I have a lot of experience going through those things myself. And it lends to

stronger capabilities of assisting other people through that. Yeah, in a lot of different ways. And I help, I do relationship studies too, I've helped. So this is really funny. This is kind of a funny story. A friend of mine came to me a number of months ago, probably like eight, nine, nine months ago. And I've worked with, she's been one of my best friends for a long period of time. She's wonderful.

And she was asking me all those questions about this guy that she's been seeing, right? It's nothing serious and casual, but she just wanted to understand what his thinking was. And so I, you know, answer the questions, give her a lot of different nuance behind what the guy's thinking or what he's not thinking, because, you know, sometimes we don't think, right? And, you know, this went on for a couple of months there, I don't know, three, four, five months, until I realized like, I'm my female best friend's male translator.

So in some ways or another, I did that for a couple of other women that I know as well. So I mean, if you need a male translator, I will give you the nuance because that's not understood, right? Like how many quality male advocates do we really have out there in the world, you know? And joining the men's group, I bring that back around because it's men teaching men about emotional intelligence, right? And that's what I like to share.

If we're going to sit down and we're going to talk and we have these, you know, puzzle piece sessions, we'll inevitably end up getting into aspects of emotional intelligence. And if you're out there watching, you're you know, you're a guy that's not had much help working through that. Like, I'm there. I'm there with you. We've only ever been taught how to deal with emotions by by women. No offense to them. They are the only ones that could do it during those periods of time. And I'm so grateful for my mom. So grateful. my God. But.

Hamish (54:24)
Yeah.

Joshua Ashton (54:53)
Moving forward, we have to kind of figure out some of this for ourselves and figure out, you know, what is useful in that space. Yeah. And build off of that. And yeah. Yeah.

Hamish (55:06)
So how can these guys who need some emotional intelligence find you? Because it's incredibly important to have that measure of emotional intelligence because you're just able to understand yourself, aren't you?

Joshua Ashton (55:19)
Yeah, yeah. Well, so you're good. Yeah.

Hamish (55:21)
So how can, sorry, where can people

find you then? You've mentioned the website, but where else can people find you?

Joshua Ashton (55:28)
so I'm on Facebook. I'm still really just very new at starting out at this. So Joshua Ashton on Facebook, that's A S H T O N public profile. I don't have a lot of followers. I'd administer everything there myself. feel free to follow me, friend me, message me directly. I talk to as many people as I can, and I'm always willing to talk to people, until I figure out if, or if they are not scammers in that space. So

Don't worry, just send me a message and I'd love to speak to anybody on my website there. The booking software is not the best, but my information is there as well, interpuzzlepieces.com or Joshua Ashton on Facebook. My Instagram is not that well set up yet, but you can message me there, jberg713 if you're not on Facebook. Yeah, I spread myself around and I'm willing to listen and talk to anyone. I'm just getting this off the ground and

I just love the process. I love the process so much that I do, you know, I do a lot of work with my friends because I love them, the process and the experience. So, yeah.

Hamish (56:38)
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Yeah, I think that's great. It is so important and you've experienced stuff. You haven't necessarily got that piece of paper that says, Joshua can do this for you, but you've lived it and that is what is powerful. That's the authenticity. That means that people can go, yeah, I can relate to you because you've lived it. You've put your feet in it. You've fallen over in it. You've clambered back out again. You've fallen back into it.

Joshua Ashton (56:52)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hamish (57:07)
You've looked at it from another direction. Yeah, I think that's think that's fabulous and I love what you're doing.

Joshua Ashton (57:13)
That reminds me of a really powerful story that I always think about when it comes back to this. So there was this man in a hole, and he was shouting out for help, right? And every single passerby would walk by the hole and say something to him. you need to do this to get out of that hole, or you need to do that. And then they would keep on walking, right? And at some point in time, this guy walks by, and this man's in the hole is yelling out to this guy.

This guy jumps down in the hole with the man, right? He's, well, what would you do that for? Now we're both in the hole. And the guy says, don't worry, I've been here before. That's kind of, that's kind of, yeah.

Hamish (57:53)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

I think you've already answered my last question, but maybe not. What is your superpower that you have got from addressing all of your coping strategies and self-medicating and coming out the other side?

Joshua Ashton (58:11)
Hmm. Let's see. It can be burst in a lot of different ways, but I think that my superpower is grounding.

because not even just for myself, but for everyone that's around me in that space, creating the space is grounding. So when you ground and you bring yourself, you release all of that energy out, the anxiety, all of the feelings of lesser than, all of those other things. If you example that in the safe spaces that you're creating, then people feel free to be able to be themselves. And I think that ultimately is what I've learned. Like, so I could give out a million different little

little things that, know, I can do this, can, can, you know, I've learned some psychic abilities through this space or that space, but that only really matters if you're able to hear it, to listen and to be grounded and quiet and to get the rabble out of the brain. So I think grounding is my superpower, one of them.

Hamish (59:12)
That's that's I can really feel that from our conversation. It's that awareness going back to that favorite word awareness intention and how can I help? Here's a safe space. Here's my story. And let's really knuckle in and just listen. Yeah. Brilliant.

Joshua Ashton (59:28)
Yeah.

Hamish (59:28)
Joshua, thank you ever so much for a really, really interesting conversation. We will do this again because we touched on so many things and there's so many more we'll talk about another time.

Joshua Ashton (59:36)
Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you so much for inviting me on. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk with you.