Welcome to 1869, The Cornell University Press Podcast. I'm Jonathan Hall. In this episode we speak with author Rafael Alvarez and addictions counselor Bruce White, subject of Raphael's new book Don't Count Me Out: A Baltimore Dope Fiend's Miraculous Recovery. Rafael Alvarez is a former City Desk reporter for the Baltimore Sun and former writer for the HBO drama, The Wire. He is the author of many books of fiction and nonfiction. Bruce White is an addictions counselor and the founder of One Promise: A counseling, education, and housing program in Baltimore for those struggling with addiction. Bruce got clean in 2003. After decades of active addiction, and use the 12 step program to rebuild his life. We spoke with Raphael and Bruce about how Bruce's dangerous journey through addiction and his incredible recovery can offer addicts and those who love them hope and inspiration, and how Raphael and Bruce hope the new book and its message will help make a positive difference in the lives of those impacted by addiction. Hello, Rafael and Bruce, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you. Good morning.
Good morning, Jonathan. Good morning, Raphael. It's nice to see you guys this morning.
Nice to see you guys. So congratulations on this new book, Don't Count Me Out: A Baltimore Dope Fiend's Miraculous Recovery. I read in the introduction that you go over how you both first met. Tell us about that story. And how that introduction resulted in the book that we now have.
Well, I'll let Bruce say how he found out about me, and then I'll tell you about the cool phone call I got in August of 2012.
So I was going to Costa Rica with a buddy of mine. I guess I had a bad 10 or 15 years clean and we started being able to travel outside of the country started having a little bit of finance and stuff. And the guy's name was Mike Salconi. And Mike Salconi was Detective Mike in the HBO series the wire that Raphael was a writer on and I told Mike about my aspirations of having a book about my life. Because looking at it from outside of myself, it was a great story of redemption and recovery. So I wanted to be able to have somebody document that. And I wasn't the guy to do it. And he said he knew this guy Rafael Alvarez. And so then here we go to the phone call Rafael.
So it's, I believe it's August, late August of 2012. And I'm in LA chasing TV work. And things were not exactly going my way. Let's say I had had a good run on The wire. And I had written for NBC for about five years. Then the industry changed. And we had gone on strike as writers. And the phone rings. I'm walking my daughter's dog, like near the Capitol Records building in Hollywood. And it's I don't know the name doesn't even have a name. But uh it's a Baltimore area code. So I take the call and in my mind, it went like this. You Rafeal Alvarez in his voice, right? The voice you just heard. I'm like, yeah, and he goes, I hear you're a writer. I'm like, yeah. And then he says, and this is pure Baltimore. This part he dropped Salconi's name. And I've known Michael Salconi for years for Little Italy, and mutual friends. And in Baltimore, that's all it takes, you know, he dropped the right name. If he would have dropped some name I'd never heard of it would have been a different conversation. So now he's got my attention. And not because Falcone was an actor on the wire, but because he was a friend and says, I want you to write my story. And I said, All right, I'll be back in Baltimore in about two weeks. We made a date for coffee. And we kicked around some of the ground rules. And on this face of it, it was a great story. As I say in the in my introduction. I had written about a lot of bad asses before. But I never actually got to know one to really no one. I had been a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun I wrote about bad guys on The Wire, blah, blah, blah. And the cool thing was that every time I saw I heard the best story Bruce had he topic and then indicated no, I was doing this. But in between our coffee sessions, I go back, and double and triple check with my police sources with documents. Everything he ever told me panned out. So then we started really getting down to the serious work. This is long before we knew there was going to be a Cornell University Press in the game. This is just me and Bruce. One on One banging out a good story.
Wow, wow, it is an incredible story. I mean, I don't even know how to begin. It's a it's a page turner, a lot of the reviewers, both before the book as well, as you know, online and on Amazon things. They say once you open the book, you can't put it down.
Yeah, a lot of my friends have said they read it in one sitting, which says something in a day and age where the New York Times tell you something's a five minute read, you know, exactly. Those phrases didn't exist when I was reading the newspaper as a kid, you know, but um, yeah, a lot of people are reading in one setting.
That's great. That's great. And that's really good, because, you know, a compelling story, but also with a message and a mission. And one of the missions that you have is to kind of make a dent in the stigma of drug addiction. How do you both hope, don't count me out will make a difference in the world now that it's out.
That's a Bruce question.
When I got the inspiration to document my journey, it was never about me. And me being a different being it was about the message of recovery, it was about the message, that there is redemption it was the message that we can recover and we can move forward in our lives. And furthermore, we can be accepted by the highest offices in our judiciaries, and be valued and have the integrity to speak in front of these judges, to speak with the mayor or whoever, and be understood and heard and 100% believed, because you've earned that. It was about getting the message out there. I literally, you know, remember, in 2009, walking into the exact courthouse, I've walked out with 25 years of prison time, which I've done about 12 of that love and a half 12 of that. And people were very nervous. I mean State's Attorneys and Rafael goes to it elegantly In the book where they didn't want me in their courthouse, where one one of the judges, Ambrose was know, he needs to be barred when she was a state's attorney tried to prosecute me for some things that, you know, unsavory type things and, and they let me in. And yesterday, I was buying Girl Scout cookies from one of my friend's daughters who's a judge. And when I enter his chambers, he gives me a big hug and tells me how nice it is to see me. So it comes down to like there's a sociology aspect to the whole thing. Where if I continued working it like Atlas, my first job with this lovely sold Steve Sturgis, who helped me tremendously. When I first came home, from prison, if I'd have stayed there, I would have been a different being than get dropped and immersed into that more refined, gentlemanly society, you know, of wearing a suit and tie every day. You know, obviously today I'm not you know, I'm with you. So, so there was a lot I wanted out of the book, I wanted people to know, you know, that you can recover, you can reenter society. And I had to prove myself year after year after year, I had to prove myself. And what I understood is like, basically, I knew I might be the only copy of the basic text. These people ever see these lawyers and judges and prosecutors ever see. And when it started, it wasn't like that. I just wanted the message out there. But as it evolved as Rafael and I have worked together for years and years, and evolved into this thing that was bigger than either of us, this this story, and it's not about me or Rafael, it's about the message that you can come from where I come from, and you can end up sitting, I'm sitting in my own drug treatment facility, we got 100 beds in in mental health, and I have 23 people working with me. And, you know, it started it started with hope.
That's great. That's great. So, so this message of hope, it kind of leads me to one question I had you know that your story, there's so many twists and turns, it's an incredible story. And, you know, even says, you know, it's a miraculous recovery, it does appear like a miracle that you're here talking to us. Looking back from where you are, from where you are now, was there any running thread that that you feel like kept you alive? During this whole thing?
I think my ignorance to change, I think source energy as I prefer to call it, people call God, whatever. But universal energy that quantum physics of this particles communicate with that particle in the universe. And, and that I think, just kept me alive. And I think there was purpose in my life. But I had to get through so much to get there. And I don't think I had to do all this. I think when I made the decision to continue to use him to continue to do this, that the two outcomes were either my my horrific death that I almost met, you know, when I got shot up by the SWAT team, or this, or this, that that was, you know, the two outcomes, I don't think pardon me. Yeah.
Jonathan, there was several reasons that the first chapter of this book is Bruce's near death experience after being shot by the SWAT team. One is that it's a fascinating journey. But to I think it answers, at least for me, your last question to Bruce of what kept him alive. And his, you know, the stereotype of of the Near Death Experience is the white light in the corner, and you gravitate towards it. That was not what Bruce got. Not, you know, nobody wants to think about the flip side of that coin. And, of course, the Near Death Experience chapter, which I put at the beginning, because it encapsulates the whole journey while being very, very provocative. And it was the one chapter I couldn't double check or triple check or go to Documents for right. But it was very specific. It wasn't vague at all. And for those who believe, no matter what you want to call it, the names don't matter. Something wanted Bruce White on this earth. Certainly wasn't the parents of all the kids that he, you know, went down wrong roads with, there were people who would not talk to me, because years later, they're still very angry at Bruce, something bigger than all of us. If you read that first chapter, there was a design for him to still be with us. And I feel like I was part of that. There are plenty of writers in Baltimore, you know. And compared to the success I was having in Los Angeles as a TV writer, this is not on that level. This is almost a very private thing. As weird as that sounds, a very public book, but a very private story. Bruce White is supposed to be with us. That's all that's as much as I can fathom it. So there you go. That's powerful.
It's powerful. Do you think you want to add Bruce to that?
I think Rafael's said it perfectly. I don't really know why and I don't even feel deserving of my life and where I am and what I know it's not about like things it's about the work I do, you know, helping the addict is still suffers, you know, my door is always open. I'm the CEO of a fairly large drug treatment facility. And clients will come in here and they'll sit down in that chair right there. And it's goingt to make me cry but still. Pardon me. They'll want to talk about the first step. They want to talk about what what my first step look like with that. So right Under look alike. And they'll tell me that I've never, you know, met the owner of a treatment facility, and I've been in 10 of them. And I tell them, that's the problem. It's an honor and a privilege for me to be able to serve this population is intimately as I'm allowed to, you know, I have a case of basic texts (Narcotics Anonymous) right over there on that floor. I have a case of Narcan right over there on my floor. And when I go down to the service center, the Mayor Frank says, to me, says you're the only treatment facility that comes in, buys these basic texts to give the clients and, you know, he said, I'm so proud that you still do that. I can't imagine not given these beautiful souls, the tools they need to recover, you know. So for me, it's just such a privilege, it's a privilege to be, you know, I'm a 63 year old man with hepatitis C, destroyed, my liver, didn't know I had it, you know, I'm sitting here with cirrhosis, and I'm still moving great. And go to the gym, you know, four or five days a week, you know, I haven't had a substance in my body for more than 19 years, you know, anything, come back and nothing, you know, drink a lot of coffee, you know. But it's a privilege for me, to be able to interact with the judiciary, the system. And this population. To try to change...I've met, many people just need help man they'd need, they need an interruption in the addiction process. You know, so they can get a moment of clarity. A lot of times, we want to promise her that moment of clarity. If that makes sense.
I get asked all the time, Jonathan. Well, how did he quit? How did he you know, after the horrific, you know, first 40 years or whatever. And they will, you know, you want to know. And if you read the book, you'll realize there was no amount of earthly pain that would get Bruce to quit. And this goes back to the mystery of, of why he's still here. And I say, for as dramatic as the horror show was, the moment of awakening was very mundane. One day, he woke up and said, I don't want this anymore. I don't know. And I've heard that so many times, in the work that I do, I don't know how you get somebody to the point where they wake up and say, You know what, I'm done. That some combination of relation science has yet it's a billion dollar treatment industry, Bruce knows it far better than I because he's a professional. science hasn't cracked this thing. With all due respect to the medical community. It's got to be science, willingness, and then that weird third wheel of mystery, which all faith is, is a has a component of mystery in it. Over and over again, I've heard people who have changed their life the way Bruce has, and that's whether it's the, you know, the 60 year old little lady who's the librarian who can't wait to have a sherry every night, to the hardcore junkie shooting up in his neck. You know, they're all the same in a certain degree. They wake up one day, they look in the mirror and they say, I'm done. And no one has been able to crack that nut yet as to how that day arrives. It certainly ain't bosses, judges, spouses, or the law.
That's great. That's great. That makes sense. Yeah. So this this moment of surrender, as you said, a mystery. Science doesn't have the answers. And that within the 12 step program, the whole idea of hitting bottom, when do you hit bottom when? And you you're saying that, you know, there were many bottoms in the story, but that one day, as you said it in a mundane fashion, Bruce just woke up and said, Okay, I've had enough.
Yeah, he couldn't even tell me the last time he shocked Oh, he sort of knew the week so to speak. But, you know, I wanted that moment. Just like, just like the readers. Bruce, what was the moment where you were done because I think it was a Tuesday, like, Oh, that's great.
You want this crescendo...and that was not a crescendo, but it was but so much leading up to it. That's fascinating. That's fascinating.
I'll tell you some guys can handle more pain than others? It's, it's the pain of it's the pain that you know versus the pain that you don't know. I've never known anyone that was willing to take more pain than brutes.
I have such a high threshold of pain that we're at the end of a meeting when we start one, do that moment, a prayer before prayer. I always pray for the addict with the hot threshold and pain, because that's me. You know, in the day of fentanyl, they're not getting the chances I got, you know, I shot heroin. I didn't, you know, we didn't have that deadly drug. And today, I just see, you know, playing out with differently, you know, we're losing a lot about next generation counselors, our next drug treatment starters and owners who do it in an ethical, loving, caring way, we're losing that population to the to the fentanyl epidemic, you know,
that's brutal. That's brutal. So, tell us, tell us about so you your system is abstinence based. But then there's a lot of clinics that use methadone, like as a substitute to control addiction, tell us the advantages of the abstinence based recovery program in your in your mind.
Okay, I drank methadone for about 15 years, maybe a few years longer. It was always my starting point was just to stop me from being sick, until I open my spirit completely up with abstinence, that what the change that you see today that we're talking about today, Don't Count Me Out is written about that miraculous change is impossible to happen with MAT's in you now, one problem is we take people on methadone, now we have a property for them. And we take people on Suboxone, we have property for them. But we're still abstinence intention. We want people to live because the fentanyl changed, that we were 100% absence did not take people. And then since 2012, or 13. I remember I lost three guys, I sponsored like bam, bam, bam, in like 13. And I started saying we got to do something a little different. So we started structuring a little different. And tried to we get a lot of people now that are on Suboxone. And then when they leave us, they're not. And they're so happy when they get off of that. But trust me, I'm supporting you, if you need that, that's as good as it gets. That's way better than going out there and playing Russian roulette. And five years ago would have never said that. You know, but today I'm fine. If you're on drug replacement therapy, you know, it's not clean, and it's not sober. And some of those folks want to say they're clean or sober on Suboxone or methadone. They're not, you know, but they're a third tradition says All you need is a desire to stop using. So you're in recovery process, and you're welcomed into the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous, and we want to help you and love you and get you somewhere different. If that fits you. It's very personal at this point, you know, and fentanyl has changed that. Okay,
So the symbol for your clinic is says One Promise and then it's got the Yin Yang symbol. Tell us more about that and the connection to spirit and the spiritual approach.
So I'm working with the sponsor, he's from Iran after the Shah lost power, he walked over the mountains in Turkey with nothing but an ounce of raw heroin in his sock, because he knew the new regime would have done him. You know, that would have been it for him. And he came here and I met him in 2006. His name was Majeed. And he took me on this spiritual journey. I studied kind of all of the religions from Hinduism, Buddhism, Bodhisattva. You know, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Koran, I kind of looked through everything. I kind of settled in with A Course in Miracles came down, you know, Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, Carolyn Myss, you know, all these spirits. Listen, I did. After I finished the 12 steps. I went on this journey for about four years. And at the end, not the end, the journey is still going obviously. But what I came up with was we needed that balance and like, where you have the white and the dark of the Ah, ying yang symbol in the light part is darkness. And in the dark part, there's light. And that just touched my spirit my heart in such a genuine way that we adopted that symbol.
You know? That's great. That's great. So what would you how would you like you have an introduction, obviously to the book, but how would you like to enter that book to them? What would you like to say to that person who may have, who may be an addict themselves or have an addict in their family? What would be kind of like the introduction that you would give like, verbally to someone as you hand them your book?
Let me tell you a funny story that just happened in Los Angeles, like I told you, I've written for television out there. For about five years, right before I met Bruce. And I've got a lot of friends out there, some of them are still in the business. But the reason I go there is that's where my daughter and my granddaughter live. And I just got back. And I was having breakfast with someone that you might call a heavy hitter, somebody named dude who had some pool. And of course, I'm a human being Bruce as a human being, we're very ambitious, you know, I'm in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, you know, maybe this guy can hand this book off to somebody that could make Cornell University a lot of money. So I bring a book along. And this guy is also in recovery. It just so happens. And, and I'm of two minds, because this is really a spiritual book. But at the same time, if we're in the material world, you know, I'm a working writer, I want success. And in my mind, I'm thinking, you know, how do I ask him to see if he can put this into the right hands? The right hands, right? So finally, he goes to the men's room, and I just put the book at his place. And when he comes back, he goes, Oh, man, thanks. I know exactly who I'm giving this to. Well, let me tell you what, and Steven Spielberg. It was this 32 year old cokehead, who had a couple of weeks sobriety with just destroyed his life. And that is the god of recovery, working to get this book, where it's supposed to be, my guess is, and Bruce can answer this as well, that it's not going to be the guy that still shaking or standing in the methadone line or had peed his pants the night before. It's going to be someone who loves that guy. That's going to get this book. And then moving along. What would you say, Bruce?
I want to thank Billy Gardell for writing the foreword in the book. I mean, he is a heavy hitter, and I like him in the Mike & Molly show. And it touched my soul when this guy wanted to write the foreword. But for me, the book is about the message of recovery. It's not about Bruce White did this great stuff. And he recovered in Oh, it's such a great guy. I'm a guy riddled with anxiety. Still, I had so much anxiety. That's why I've had it for six weeks. My PTSD from being shot of being in motorcycle wrecks, shows up with absolute anxiety. I can kind of do anything I want. I'm financially secure, as F, and this book isn't about me being more fun. A matter of fact, any profit from this book on my behalf, goes back to the attic, this still suffers. I'm not taking one dime of profit from the wall. It's about the message, man. It's about the message that that you can stop using lose the desire to use and find a new way to live to met the message.
There's a really great part of the book, where Bruce has just been released from prison. And he's trying to find a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. And he goes to this place where they're supposed to be helping addicts and they don't have any directors right. And he's walking out and this woman by the door who's half nodded out that she's a junkie, somehow has overheard all these things have to line up exactly for this stuff to happen. She's overheard what Bruce has said she reaches in her ratty old shopping bag, enhanced Bruce in Narcotics Anonymous directory and goes here. You can have this I don't want it. Underline one right. That's how this book is going to save lives. I've been given I've given a lot of way we've sold a fair amount Somebody's you know, somebody's gonna leave, forget it on a bus, somebody's going to sell it to Goodwill, it's going to be laying in somebody's house. And the right person is going to say, Hey, what is this? And that's the person that's going to get sober.
That's beautiful. That's beautiful. So yeah, this idea, you know, Carl Jung would call synchronicity. Some of the faith might call grace, this book has an opportunity and will change lives and helps save someone. And so help save loved ones as well. So I'm really honored and grateful to be able to talk to you guys, I'm so glad that you have worked together from this phone call, you know, over a decade ago to have the book come out, and that this is a book that is going to make a difference, and that that message that you have is so hopeful, and I'm so proud that our Press is publishing it and I'm just glad that you guys got together that some synchronicity brought you guys together to make this happen. So thank
Thank you, Jonathan.
Jonathan, thank you so much for having us today. It was a privilege to be honest with you.
Thank you so much. You guys take care. That was author Rafael Alvarez and addictions counselor Bruce White, talking about the new book, Don't Count Me Out: A Baltimore Dope Fiend's Miraculous Recovery. If you'd like to purchase the new book, use the promo code 09POD to save 30% on our website at Cornell press.cornell.edu. If you live in the UK, use the discount code CSANNOUNCE and visit the website combined.academic.co.uk Thank you for listening to 1869, The Cornell University Press Podcast.
