From Addiction to Owning a Rehab
14:12Frank Wills spent years addicted. Today he co-owns a rehab. In the Introduction of Scars and All, your host tells his story. We start here.
This one’s for you if you’re in recovery, you love someone who is, you’re still deciding whether to start, or you just need to hear that someone made it. Frank isn’t a clinician looking in from the outside. He’s proof.
On Episode 1, Frank sits down with his friend AJ Banuelos to talk about life after meth, how he got here, and the work he does now as a counselor.
Hi everyone, my name is Frank Wills and this is the Scars and All Podcast. I just want to welcome you to the very first episode. The name of the podcast is Scars and All because I believe that each and every human being walking the face of the earth has scars. Some of them are very exposed. Some of them we keep hidden deep down and don't let anybody see them.
You know, as we go through life and when we're kids and when we're young adults and into our adulthood, we're exposed to things that we're not really equipped to handle, and I think they affect us in all kinds of ways in our workplace, in our home life, our personal life. Our idea here is to kind of bring people on and talk about these things, whether it be suffering from alcoholism or addiction, or if you've been um a victim of abuse, exposed to violence in the home when you were young, if you've been through divorce, if you've lost family members, just basically anything and everything that can create these types of scars that we hold within us.
Personally, you know, I I'm I'm an addict and an alcoholic. I've built my life up so many times and torn it down. I've been married twice. I've dismantled those marriages single-handedly as a result of my alcoholism, failed relationships, um, abandonment of kids. So many things that I carry with me on a daily basis that I'm not proud of, that I'm actually very ashamed of. But I carry on and I go through life and I try to make amends and I try to make up for the things that I've broken down in my life.
I'm 42 years old. I just celebrated five years of sobriety. You know, I've been dealing with alcoholism and addiction for the better part of my life. You know, um, I was exposed very early. I'm a product of an adolescent relationship. My mom was very young, my father was very young. He abandoned us when I was about two years old. Another man came into my life that I absolutely despised for the majority of my adolescence because he tried to bring law and order into a household where I was not having it.
I found peace and serenity and acceptance and love through my relationships with my friends. I didn't want anything to do with my family, my mother, my stepfather. I idolized my father who was in prison, which kind of gave me this bad boy mentality that I was constantly chasing. And so I gravitated towards those types of people. And wouldn't you know it? I started experiencing what those types of people experience.
You know, I started being incarcerated at a very early age, and I've been anywhere and everywhere you can think of, you know, whether it be county jail, juvenile hall, camp, prison eventually. And um, you know, I can honestly say that it was all due to my inability to cope with my feelings and my emotions and my identity of who I thought I was or who I thought I needed to be for any one person or any one group of people.
And I continually hurt people in the process and continually hurt myself in the process. And a lot of it was due to my alcoholism and my addiction. I was a slave to it for a very long time. You know, today I'm I'm a father of five girls. Um, I've been able to put together a very successful life, not just monetarily, but the peace and inner serenity that I have inside of me as a result of doing a lot of work and talking about the things that hurt me, talking about the people that hurt me, talking about the situations that I was placed in and the environment that I was put in and the environments that I put myself in and learning how to navigate those things and survive.
You know, I became very good at surviving and I had no idea how to live. I essentially became a product of my environment, you know, a very mean and angry individual that was just full of fear, and I had no idea how to be a human being. I had no idea how to pay bills, I had no idea how to have a job. I was a victim.
I blamed a lot of things on how I grew up and the things that I was exposed to, whether it be the sexual or physical abuse or whatever it was. You know, I just had that victim mentality and I didn't ever want to take accountability for the actions that I was taking. I first got sober around the age of 25 and I was able to build a nice little life for myself.
You know, and I tore it all down. Even with the the amount of sobriety that I had and the life that I had lived, I still didn't know how to be a man. I still didn't know how to process these feelings and these emotions. I still didn't know how to live. When push came to shove and I was faced with some dilemmas and some problems that I wasn't able to handle, I ran and I blew everything up and I abandoned those kids and I dismantled that marriage.
And because that's honestly the only thing that I knew how to do up to that point, I had just stopped running for a little bit. I had to come to terms with who I was or who I thought I was or who I thought I needed to be. And I had to just learn how to be me. That was a big thing because I didn't know what being me was.
I didn't know what me being me felt like. You know, I I think up to that point I was always trying to be who I thought you wanted me to be. Whether it was her or my mom or my friends or my dad, I was never allowed or never allowed myself or gave myself the opportunity to be who Frank is. Like if you would ask me what are the kinds of things that I liked, I couldn't tell you.
Okay, I like fishing. Well, that's because so-and-so and so-and-so likes fishing, and I like being a part of them because with them I feel accepted, with them I feel safe, with them I feel it was never the thing, it was always the feeling. And I had to address these things, you know, with copious amounts of therapy and and talking to people and just letting go of the simple fact that I don't have to be who society wants me to be, who what my family wants me to be, who what my kids want me to be.
Nobody. I could finally be me, and I could finally talk about these things that were so far deep inside of me that I never thought I would expose them or let them out or let anybody see because I was terrified of what you were gonna think of me. If I hadn't gone through every single thing that I went through, I wouldn't be the man that I am here today.
There's no there's this without a shadow of a doubt. The good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. All of my experience and my experiences have led me up to this point. 100%. And I'm eternally grateful. But I still need to talk about these things. I still need to talk about how I felt abandoned as a kid when in turn I did the exact same thing to my children that I swore I would never do because it was done to me.
In the grips of my alcoholism and my addiction and the sleepless nights that I put my mother through. That's the point of this podcast is to bring people on, talk about their scars, talk about how they navigate through them, how they process them, how they've changed them, how they've manipulated them into being who they thought they were and arriving finally at who they actually are today. I am no longer a victim.
I am an addict and an alcoholic. I have been a failure, I've been a success, I have fallen many, many times, but I have always gotten back up. So this platform and this space is for anyone out there that feels like they can't get back up, that they failed just too many times, that no one understands what they're going through. No one's ever had it as bad as me.
Because I can assure you there are people out there that have. I can assure you that there's someone out there that can relate, that understands you, that has been through what you've gone through, and hopefully we're gonna have people on that are gonna share your story, that gives you a voice, that lets you know that it's okay to talk about these things. These things aren't taboo, you know, we're all human, having human experiences, and we've all had things happen to us, and we've all done things to people, and all of that is okay, you know.
It's about what we're doing with it now. How are we flipping that into a positive rather than a negative? How are we using our experience to enlighten people that have been through the same things that we've been through? You know, because I am a father, I am a husband, well, not yet, I'll be a husband soon. I am a son, I am all of these things. I am an employer, I've been an employee, and I failed at every single one of them countless times, numerous times.
But, you know, I hope the people out there watching can understand that I'm here today because I didn't give up, I didn't quit, I didn't shy away from getting honest with people around me, with people that I trusted, getting vulnerable and exposing the truths about myself that I thought I would never tell a soul, and letting them know that it's okay to talk about. You know, because if we talk about it, it takes the power away from it.
I'm no longer a slave to my experiences in my past and my trauma. It no longer defines me, it no longer dictates who I think I am and how I feel about myself. And I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of the man that I am today, but it is it's only because that I was able and willing to talk about some hard truths. And that's kind of the goal of this podcast is to bring people on here and have those difficult conversations, to have those things that no one wants to talk about spoken about, you know, the things that you can't bring up at family dinner, you know, out of fear of it hurting somebody's feelings.
We're not here to protect anyone's feelings. We need to have the difficult conversations and and and talk about some real things. So I'd also like to add that, you know, as an alcoholic and an addict myself, I've made a career out of helping people. You know, I'm the COO of Luxe Recovery. We have three treatment centers and an outpatient facility. I am so passionate about this work that I have made it my sole vocation.
So I'm on the firing lines of people coming in off the street in detox, going through it, watching them rebuild their lives and in some cases, you know, tear them down. I see it firsthand each and every day, you know, the the that these individuals that are still continually living with their scars and being dominated by their scars and not allowing themselves to recover because of the guilt, the shame, the fear, the abuse, everything that they've been through, and get onto the other side.
I see it. I see it each and every day. And so my hope is that with this platform we can reach as many people as possible to talk to as many people as possible and get the message out there that you know there is hope. Recovery is possible. You can still get out there and be the person that what you were intended to be, and not be somebody fake and not be somebody that everyone wants you to be.
You can be yourself. But it starts with getting honest and talking about the things that no one wants to talk about. It's it's about getting vulnerable, it's about just simple truth. So the reality is we all have scars. You know, some people hide them incredibly well, others don't. You know, the truth is that we live in a world where everyone sees the finished product with the nice cars, the good job, the happy family, the successful children, the healthy children, but no one ever gets to see the truth about the struggle and the pain and the anguish that it took to get there.
So my goal is to have people on my podcast to talk about exactly that the real story, the truth behind the nice car, the truth behind the good job, people that have failed miserably time and time again, but somehow found the courage to pick themselves back up and try again. Because I know I'm one of those people. You know, everyone always just sees the nice things, but not the struggle that it took to get there.
And my hope is that somewhere someone will hear this story and this message and think that you know, if it can happen for them, it can happen for me too. You know, somebody sitting in a jail cell, somebody sitting in a treatment center, somebody driving in their car or at home, wondering how they found themselves in the same position one more time. These scars don't have to dominate you, they don't have to dictate your future.
I'm gonna have people on that have have many times failed from all walks of life. Doctors, lawyers, people in the recovery community, clinicians, nurses, because the reality is, like I've said, everyone has scars. Everyone. No one is exempt from this. I think it's a human requirement almost. Lastly, I'm Frank Wills. I'm the host of Scars and All Podcast, and I have a lineup of amazing guests, wide range of individuals that are gonna come on this show and talk about real things.
They're gonna talk about their scars and they're gonna talk about what they've done to navigate through them and become the inspiring individual that they are today. So stay tuned.
Short cuts from the conversations. The rest is in the episodes.
