Please give a huge warm welcome for our next storyteller, Duff McKagan, Duff
McKagan. It was Mukilteo. In my twenties I experienced a certain amount of success
in my musical career and really ever since I was could remember that's all I
ever wanted but also in my mid 20s I started to spiral deeper down into my
addiction of alcohol and drugs and at about 27 I realised three of my best
friends, my very best friends, had all died from drug overdoses and it just
seemed that it was everywhere around me and I I just became numb. I was getting
numb and I couldn't find my way out of my own addiction. I bought a dream
house back back home in Seattle, this house that myself and my friends when we
were little we'd look at the house and say "One day one of us is going to have
that house" and I was at that point, I bought the house. The Castle we called it.
And I got on a plane from LA to Seattle to take possession of this new home and
I sat on the plane and Kurt Cobain sat next to me on the plane and he was
famously in his drug hell and I was in mine and we just sort of commiserated on
where we were at and that was it, we landed and I went to my my house and two
days later I was there alone and I my phone rang and "Hey Duff, weren't you just
on the plane with Kurt? He's dead." And I I didn't think I was numb, it didn't
affect me. I just kind of figured that's the way it was going with a lot of us
and I figured I was next at that point. Four weeks later in that house I woke up
one morning in my bed and I had a sharp little pain and I thought it was gas so
I I just sort of rolled over in bed and the pain spread and got sharper and I
thought something bad was going on but I thought still was just a lot of
gas so I rolled again and the pain dripped down on the inside of me down
across my stomach and down into my quad muscles and it felt like dull knives
just cutting into me and I couldn't breathe and I and I couldn't move one
last time to reach my phone to call 911 or a friend or my mom and I thought "Well, this is
it," I didn't think I would last till I was 30 and here I was I was 30 now
and I'm this is it I'm gonna die alone in my bed in this in this house. And the
pain, I didn't think I would die in this much pain, and just then I heard my door
open downstairs and it was my best friend since childhood, Andy, and I heard
him say "Hey, where are ya?" and he could tell that I was home. My car was in the
garage and my keys and wallet were downstairs on the counter and I heard
him come up the stairs and I and I knew I just like I could die now at
least my best friend and he came into the bedroom and he said "Oh shit,
it's finally happened" and and he picked me up and the pain was was was so bad
that I I just I whispered in his ear and that it could could have only been a
whisper, or a whimper more like, "Andy, please just kill me," I just couldn't
take the pain. I remember a cold floor of the ER at a hospital there in Seattle.
I remember getting two shots of demerol and two shots of morphine and from
previous experience I knew what this stuff should do and it didn't work on me
and the panic that I suddenly felt like this pains not going to go away. The
nurse came in I said "Please kill me." I
remember at that point my doctor who
whose father was my birth doctor, had delivered me, and they were our family
doctor and now the son had taken over the practice and he came in, my doctor,
this son of the doctor who had birthed me, came in and they did an ultrasound and I
saw his face above me and it went white and apparently what had happened
my pancreas had expanded to the size of a football and it had burst and it
spills the bile that digests your food and it spills it all over your insides
and I remember seeing my mom there in her wheelchair with Parkinson's and me,
the youngest of her eight children, and with tubes running in and out of me. I had
intravenous morphine by this time an intravenous Librium from the shakes from
my withdrawal and my mom there and just thinking "The order of this whole thing
is fucking wrong. I should be taking care of my mom and now she has to see this
see her youngest son." They did another ultrasound. I heard them talking about
splitting it people open to let the steam out, to release some of the pain
before they died, and apparently there's only a 15% chance
of survival in this particular thing I had but I just wanted to die. I couldn't
take the pain anymore and there was another ultrasound and my doctor came to
me. A day had passed maybe two I don't know, but that that ultrasound he came to me
and he said "Duff, you've been given a second chance. You better figure out what this
is all about." Apparently my pancreas had gone back down to size which just
doesn't happen and they were gonna keep me in the hospital until the where it
ruptured I guess I don't know if they can sew it up or not but they were just
gonna see if it healed so they kept me in the hospital and I was thirsty, they
couldn't feed me, any water or food, it was ice chips and and I started to
heal and they took the morphine button away and I remember kind of like feeling
the withdrawal from that and the Librium button they took away but they kept
intravenous and I started to heal and after two weeks they said "You know
you're free to go Duff, we have a rehab for you to go to" and I said "I'm done" and
I was done I was I was done. This was the longest in this two weeks I had been off
of alcohols in my adult life, it's the longest I've been off street drugs in my
adult life, two weeks, and I was giddy. I left the hospital, I remember
seeing the doors of the hospital and starting to run and I doubled over in
pain because my insides were still raw from the burns, but this was my first
experience in sober life, in my adult life, and I remember smelling like things
we take for granted, fresh-cut grass, I smelt this and it remind me of up having
a lawn job when I was 12 and 11 and being so happy and and I got a newspaper
I smelt the newsprint, something I hadn't smelled since I was a
paperboy. I remember going to a grocery store on this rusty old mountain bike I
had I pulled it out of my garage, I just didn't
know what to do. I went to the grocery store and it was chaos in there to me, it
was there was sounds coming through the sound system, I'm sure clerks just
checking prices on grocery items but I thought they were all talking about me,
and this normal transaction. I went to get smokes
I bought some barbecue sauce, I don't know why, and and I was sweating and I
got a pack of smokes and I gave her the money was kind of crumpled up out of
my sweaty pocket and to her was a normal transaction but to me it just just
wasn't. I heard about this martial arts dojo and I knew I needed something else.
My first day I walked into this dojo, this school, and there was two guys in
the in the there was a boxing ring and these two guys were kickboxing they were
fighting they were sparring and other guys hitting heavy bags and guys jumping
rope and speed bags and then this man walked up to me he said "I'm Sensei
Benny, are you here to work?" and when he looked at me in the eyes he didn't just
look in my eyes, he looked down inside of me and I knew I just knew I didn't have
to tell him what had happened to me, that he already had a sense of everything and
what I needed. And what I saw in his eyes was something I wanted
I was desperate for it, it was peace and this whole time that the doctors what he
said to me "You're here for a reason Duff," oh I don't know what that means.
The sensei he put me to work that day we did some physical work but very little
and then he sent me home and he said "Duff, you clean up your house, wash your
clothes, fold them put them in your dresser, clean
your kitchen, clean all your dishes, put them in the dishwasher and when you use
another dish you put it straight in the dishwasher and make your bed and
tomorrow morning when you wake up look at yourself in the mirror." And I didn't
really know what this is about and he said "Be back here tomorrow at
9:00" and I did and I came back and I did what he said I looked in the mirror and
I cleaned my house and I came back and he worked me harder
and this went on day by day and that my doctor's words still reverberating
around in my head "You're here for a reason, you better figure it out." Well as
a physical workouts got more intense I was jumping rope I learned how to do a
lot of push-ups and start to spar and do defense and hit bags and then I was
emotions came out of me I remember one day hitting a heavy bag and emotions
came out and I started to cry I had no idea why I do I'm not a crier.
My sensei worked me out even harder. I
remember becoming unnumb and going home and making calls, the people I had
affected when I was out there doing all of that stuff before and I called my
family, I called friends, and I keep my house clean and I was looking at myself
in the mirror every morning and that my doctor's words kept reverberating around
in my head, "You're here for a reason." After two years of every day at this dojo
with my sensei, one morning I woke up and I looked in the mirror and and I saw
myself, I saw this person I liked, I'd done everything the day before I got it,
I'd done everything the day before that I was said I was gonna do, I didn't go to
bed with any weight on my chest, I returned to every phone call and it was
at peace and I liked myself and I came to this dojo said "Sensei, I saw myself in
the mirror." He says "I know, I knew you would." About a year later I met the woman
that would become my wife and we fell in love and a year after that we were in
another hospital room but this time it wasn't an ER, it was a birthing suite and
in a chaos of the long 17 our labor and me being with my wife and
the doctor finally coming in and I hear saying "One last push Susan, one last push"
and this little baby came out and they gave her to me and she was terrified, she
was crying and there was chaos in the room and I said "Hey baby, it's me it's
your dad" and she suddenly stopped crying and her big beautiful eyes just looked
up at me and she was completely calm and she was she knew she was safe and a
light came around me and I can't explain it, it was real it was a light and
surrounded my whole soul and this baby and in that instant I realized the
reason I was there, the reason I'd survived that pancreatitis. Thank you
Duff McKagan