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Ep. 4: Vic’s Story
Host Vic Vela has been through addiction, and now he’s in recovery. On this episode, Vic gives a first-person account of how his cocaine use affected the people around him. And he shows why there's hope for everyone who longs to make a comeback.
Transcript:
Vic:
Hey there. It's Vic. I'm sitting in my apartment right now, actually in a closet, working from home during this pandemic. I feel really confident that it's probably affected your life in a big way too. My hope is that this show is able to give you hope, especially right now. We could all use it.
Vic:
So I'm happy to bring you this latest episode with a quick disclaimer. It does get pretty heavy at times. There's talk of heavy drug use, overdosing and some strong language.
Speaker 2:
In 3, 2, 1.
Vic:
In the summer of 2002 I was unemployed. I was recently fired from a job as a morning show anchor for a TV network in Colorado, mainly because I was doing a lot of drugs. My drug dealer was a no nonsense, tough, tattooed guy. He had been my dealer for a long time and we developed a relationship where he would front me large quantities of cocaine.
Vic:
The idea was that I would sell the drugs while also paying for my own habit. I would use that money to pay him back. Problem is all my profits went up my nose. When you're a cocaine addict and you have several hundred dollars worth of cocaine at your disposal, you're going to do it. It's not even a question.
Vic:
So this time I owed him a lot of money, hundreds of dollars, but I was out of work and had no money to pay him back. So he's leaving me threatening phone calls and it was getting scary. He was threatening to kill me unless I gave him back his money. So I call my dealer to let him know my had his money, finally. I apologize for ignoring his calls.
Vic:
"Sorry man. I'm on my way though, I promise." And when I got there, he was calm, which put me at ease. That was until he shut the door behind me, and the next thing I felt was his fist against the back of my head. I fell to the ground and I looked up at the barrel of a gun.
Vic:
I'm scared to death and I'm begging for my life, but he just stood there with no emotion holding that gun over me. Then he started kicking me in the head, kicking my ribs, kicking me in the face.
Vic:
While that was happening for some reason I'll always have the memory of a fish tank in the room. I could just hear the water filtering from the fish tank and that's what I was focusing on while he was beating me up.
Vic:
And the whole time I'm thinking how did things ever get this far?
Vic:
This is Back from Broken, from Colorado Public Radio.
Vic:
I'm Vic Vela, and normally on this show I talked to men and women about their comeback stories. Stories about recovery from drug and alcohol abuse, from trauma, from the dark places they've escaped from. The same dark places that many people never escape from.
Vic:
Well today, it's my story. In other episodes I haven't held back about my own drug problem, but now we're going to really get into it. It'll help explain where I'm coming from and what this podcast is all about.
Vic:
I'm going to start from the top because my problems got going long before I ever started using drugs.
Vic:
I grew up in Longmont, Colorado. I have a loving family, a large Latino household, parents who loved me unconditionally, no doubt about it. But we had a lot of problems. My parents struggled financially. There were times when we were just flat out poor.
Vic:
My dad, who I love and adore, he was a family man. He served our country in the army. He would give you the shirt off his back, but when he drank he was often really miserable to be around.
Vic:
On top of that I'm gay. And I knew that I was gay at a young age, but this was small town Colorado in the 1980s and 90s, and being gay wasn't exactly widely embraced at the time.
Vic:
So here I am, look, I live in a poor family, my dad's an alcoholic, and I'm struggling with the fact that I'm gay and different than other kids. So already I'm dealing with all these insecurities at a young age. I'm dealing with them in really unhealthy ways.
Vic Snr:
By doing the drugs and the drinking, I think that was kind of his comfort.
Ida:
Hi, I'm Ida. And I'm Vic's mom.
Vic Snr:
And I'm Vic, Senior, and Vic is our son. Vic was always a smart kid in school. The only problem, Vic had was taking orders. What I mean by orders, I'm referring to teachers. He just felt like he wasn't being understood, I guess.
Ida:
He said he used to pray so hard to God that could take all his feelings away from the gay thing. I think that he was having a really hard time with that. The drinking and all that probably helped him through all that. I don't know.
Vic:
When I smoked weed and drank, it just made me feel like I was floating on a cloud. All my insecurities just seemed manageable.
Vic:
I remember taking LSD for the first time. I was laying in my friend's bed and listening to an old Grateful Dead bootleg from the 1970s.
Vic:
Watching the patterns on the ceiling dance to songs like Big River, and it just made me so happy. It was just the craziest thing I'd ever experienced. I was just thinking to myself, why wouldn't I want to feel like this every day? I mean, why wouldn't I want to get high every day? This is great.
Vic:
When I got out of high school, I was accepted to Metropolitan State University of Denver. And so I moved from small town Longmont to the big city of Denver and I came out of the closet.
Vic:
And so now I'm 18. I'm in college, first person in my family to go to college. My friends and family know and love me for exactly who I am. Every person I came out to, for the most part, it was a great experience and I'm grateful for that.
Vic:
In college I didn't stop drinking. I had a fake ID and I went to bars and everything, but I did start getting better grades. Now I'm taking classes, studying things I want to study, like journalism and broadcasting. I found that I was really excelling at those things. I graduated college.
Vic:
It was a huge deal. My parents were so proud of me. Then just a month or so after graduating, I got my first job in journalism as a sports anchor for an NBC affiliate in Texas. This was the year 2000.
Speaker 5:
And Vic is here. More March madness.
Vic:
Man, are we sick of it yet?
Speaker 5:
No.
Vic:
No.
Speaker 5:
Never
Vic:
This is like the greatest tournament there is. You just can't wait for it every month-
Vic:
I'm only 23 years old and I'm on TV. My face is on billboards, park benches, that kind of thing. The sky's the limit for me.
Vic:
Tom is the big jam. Final four once again for Tom Izzo-
Vic:
But a funny thing happened on the way to my dreams. I fell in love with cocaine.
Vic:
I first did cocaine in college, but it really wasn't until I was living in Texas, that cocaine and I got serious. It started off as an innocent flirtation, maybe doing some blow at a party on a Saturday night or whatever, but then I started using it every day.
Vic:
I started using it throughout the day. Often before I'd go on the air, I'd have a lot of time to kill, so I'd go to a bar, have some drinks, then come back to the station with a nice buzz, head straight for the makeup room before I said hi to anyone in the newsroom, put on my makeup, adjust my tie, and then do some lines of cocaine off the toilet sink. Then I would just go on the air and do the live sportscast. I did that all the time.
Andy Justice:
I'm Andy Justice, and I worked with the Vic back in the early 2000s. We both worked in sports there at the NBC affiliate here in Amarillo. The thing with Vic is the guy is so lovable. I knew that he was doing drugs. I had no idea how big of a drug problem it was. I mean, I really didn't, I had no idea.
Vic:
But then things took a bad turn when I was laid off from my job.
Andy Justice:
And that was really hard. Even though that I knew that Vic struggled with getting to work at times, and struggled with being mentally there 100% of the time, I was still rooting for him.
Vic:
So they said sorry, and they gave me a check, and I was on my way back to Colorado. This was 2001. After a summer of getting high and selling cocaine to pay for my habit, I got another TV job in Colorado's mountains.
Vic:
And from that purchase a legend was born, the legend that is Arapaho basin.
Vic:
It was a great gig, but I was doing a lot of drugs and that took a heavy toll on my performance at work.
Brad Williamson:
Vic was not a good coworker. My name is Brad Williamson, and I worked with Vic. He was a on-camera host and I was the production manager. Vic and I were not just coworkers, we were good friends. We would go out and hang out.
Brad Williamson:
The difference was is that I would go to work, and I can remember this specific morning, we had a show that ran from seven to nine, and he came in at probably 6:55 that morning. He was in bad shape. He was not nice to his coworkers.
Brad Williamson:
At 9:00 AM, as soon as we ended that show, he put on his coat and walked out the back door. I followed him and I'm like, "Where are you going? It's 9:00 AM. We have a full day of work here." And he ignored me and kept walking.
Brad Williamson:
I walked straight to the GMs office. Then I think five of us went to the GM. And we all said, we can't work with Vic anymore. And so that was the end of that.
Vic:
So I just lost my second TV job in as many years. So that brings us back to my story about the drug dealer. You know, the one who had a gun pointed at my face and was beating me up.
Vic:
So he's kicking my ass and when he's finished, I'm bleeding from head to toe. The second I got up off the floor and dusted myself off, you know what I did? I asked him if he could front me more drugs.
Vic:
Cocaine was my master, but somehow I did manage to advance my career at this time. I got accepted to the Walter Cronkite school of journalism and mass communication at Arizona State University. I started freelancing for big publications. I was interviewing a lot of big names like Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead, and Janet Napolitano, who eventually became the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
Vic:
But what was also going on was I was spending so much money on drugs that I wasn't paying my credit card bills. So I filed for federal bankruptcy in 2005. At that time my drug use was really taken off. It wasn't just cocaine, it was also meth.
Vic:
Had a lot of dangerous sexual encounters. I was using a lot of dangerous drugs and dangerous ways, whether it's snorting, smoking, or shooting, I was doing it.
Vic:
And so to escape from all that, I moved back to Colorado. Then one night I got a real big wake up call. I was driving a car with expired tags. I was high and drunk and sure enough, a cop pulls me over.
Vic:
He stopped me for the expired tags, but then he starts asking me questions like, "Have you been drinking?" I thought for sure I was going to jail, but before he could arrest me the cop's radio starts going off. He points at me, throws my driver's license at me, "Get this car off the road, go home now."
Vic:
How in the hell did I get out of that? So that was a little bit of a wake up call for me. And for the first time in my life, I was acknowledging to myself that, yeah, I think I have a problem here.
Vic:
For the first time I admitted that to friends and family. I admitted that my life had become unmanageable and I needed help. So in the spring of 2006 I checked into a 28 day rehab center, in Estas Park, Colorado. It would be the first time I had gone an entire month without drinking or doing drugs since I was in junior high school. I was about 29 time.
Vic:
I didn't take rehab seriously at all. I was breaking all the rules. I just wasn't ready to stop using. And so go figure, the day I checked out, I got high.
Rob:
It's very common for someone to relapse right out of rehab if they don't take the steps that the rehab teaches them.
Rob:
Hi, my name is Rob and my clean date is June 15th of 2003.
Rob:
The disease of addiction is something that you have, and just because you go to a 28 day rehab doesn't mean you still do not have that disease. With any disease, you have to take care of that disease and work on it.
Vic:
In the summer of 2006, I started to notice something that was going on with me. I wasn't feeling well. I was sick all the time. I was tired. And I kept getting bizarre rashes on my skin. And I just felt weak. I felt like I had the flu all the time. Doctors were running tests and no one can figure out what was going on.
Vic:
Until one day, a doctor who knew my history and my lifestyle asked flat out, when's the last time you were tested for HIV? The results came back. I'm HIV positive. I had what you would consider to be borderline AIDS. My viral load was through the roof and my immune system was almost totally shot.
Vic:
I fell into a deep despair. My drug and alcohol use just accelerated. I did start taking medications to combat the virus and they helped. They kept me alive, but my other disease, my addiction, got dramatically worse. More about that when we come back.
Vic:
So here's the thing about addiction. The same thing happens over and over and over again. It's like Groundhog Day. Drugs, alcohol, same patterns of bad behavior.
Vic:
In 2007, I got another journalism job. This one was in Santa Fe, where I was a crime reporter. I also had my first longterm boyfriend there, but old habits die hard. I got fired, again. So I was broke, and I moved back to Denver yet again, but I just kept getting high.
Vic:
But I got another job, covering politics at the state Capitol, for a group of suburban newspapers. So now I'm wearing a suit and tie every day, covering state house politics. I covered gun legislation, and elections reform, and all kinds of important controversial measures.
Vic:
Sometimes I would break news from the bar. I would just be in the middle of a day, random Tuesday at 10 o'clock in the morning, getting drunk at my neighborhood bar. My phone is blowing up. Lawmakers who liked me said, "Hey, I'm about to introduce this bill," and I would break the news from the bar, while my other reporter friends were at the Capitol working.
Vic:
So there you go. How could I possibly have a problem? I'm good, is what I'm thinking. While I was conning myself into thinking that I didn't have a problem, the people close to me sure didn't feel that way.
Vic:
My boyfriend, the guy I was dating in Santa Fe, we still maintained a long distance relationship when I moved to Denver and it was his plan to move and be with me. But he called me one day and broke up with me, said, "I can't handle the drugs anymore. I can't handle this anymore."
Vic:
And that was hard hearing that. So I did kind of go from thinking I'm doing all this great work at the Capitol to, "Maybe I do have a problem here. Maybe we should look into this."
Vic:
So it was around this time that I made another attempt to get sober. I met a sponsor.
Rob:
Hey, this is Rob again. I first met Vic when he called the phone line and at that point I said, "I'll meet you at a meeting." And then after that meeting I gave him my phone number.
Vic:
But that didn't last long. It was a halfhearted attempt at best.
Rob:
Yeah. My first impressions was he was an arrogant little prick that didn't want to do what he needed to do. And I was right.
Vic:
I wasn't ready to get sober. Cocaine had been the only life I had known. It was scary to think of life without it.
Vic:
Problem is, it was getting physically difficult for me to snort drugs anymore. My nose hurt in the morning after a long night of partying. My nasal cavities were just falling apart. So I started doing drugs a different way. And in late 2013 I started smoking crack, every day.
Vic:
When I'd be covering hearings at the Capitol, I would walk outside and my suit and tie and either dip into my car, or usually behind a dumpster in an alley, to get high.
Vic:
The crack high doesn't really last very long. So I was doing this quite a bit, making up excuses where I would leave the Capitol press room to go outside and smoke crack behind a dumpster across the street. And as the morning progressed, I would become more sketchy and paranoid.
Vic:
That's the thing with crack, or any type of cocaine or meth, it makes you super paranoid. It makes you feel super sketchy. So a lot of times I would just leave in the middle of the day and I'd go home, close the curtains in my apartment, no saw me and just get high throughout the night, alone.
Vic:
I didn't even show up for my own birthday party. A bunch of friends were throwing me a party at a bar and they would send me pictures of balloons and happy people holding a cake. They kept texting me to ask, when I was going to get there, we're all here. I ignored their text, shut off my phone and got high alone on my birthday while everyone else was out there celebrating.
Vic:
In December 2014, I was laid off from my job covering the capital. Budget cuts, newspapers. Around the same time, a guy I was really starting to fall in love with, a guy I was dating, broke up with me because of my drug use. Here we go again, broken record.
Vic:
It really was the coldest, darkest Christmas ever. I had no job, no money. My days consisted of walking my dog, Benny, in the morning, and sitting at a bar as soon as it opened. Getting a little drunk and then going home to get high the rest of the day.
Vic:
I was lying to my parents, to my friends. I kept conning people out of money. My life was in constant damage control. I can't tell you how exhausting it is to wake up every morning with regret. Wake up every morning, panicking over how to fix the day before.
Vic:
I'm getting my stories confused when I would tell friends what was going on. "Oh, my dog needs surgery," all this other stuff that I would come up with. I couldn't even remember what the truth was, and there were a couple of times where I actually overdosed. I don't remember any of it.
Vic:
I remember leaving the hospital, but I can't even tell you what I was doing leading up to it. So even though I was surviving an overdose, there'd be times I'd be laying in bed praying for my heart to stop beating so that all my pain would go away.
Vic:
Then on January 25th, 2015, something happened. I had been up for three straight days, but I just smoked my last crack rock. Of course I didn't have any money to buy anymore. And I was sitting on the floor in my bedroom listening to music on cell phone in one hand and holding an empty crack pipe in the other. My dog, Benny, my best friend was laying next to me.
Vic:
I was listening to the Radiohead song, Fake Plastic Trees. I listened to it over and over again on a loop, and I paid attention to the lyrics, "If I could be who you wanted all the time."
Vic:
I sat there, and I just thought of how so many people thought of me as this incredibly talented person, loving, funny, but I can never get out of my own way. I felt so helpless and hopeless.
Vic:
I also listening to Josh Ritter's Change of Time. And these lyrics really got to me. New worlds for the weary, new lands for the living. I could make it if I try.
Vic:
Maybe it was time to try. I was so tired of being tired. Tired of the damage control, tired of the pain, tired of the lies. Tears were streaming down my face. I scrolled through my phone and came across Rob's number. He's the sponsor I mentioned before when I made a half-assed attempt to get sober. It was three in the morning. Who knows if this guy was even awake? Probably not, or if he even had my phone number anymore.
Vic:
I had nothing to lose though. I dialed the number. He answered.
Rob:
Hey Vic, how's it going?
Vic:
And I just lost it. I was crying. I said, Rob, can you take me to a meeting tomorrow? I've been sober since.
Vic:
I'm not a religious person, but in recovery I embraced the possibility of a spiritual intervention. My recovery began with a 12 step program. Now I'm part of a Buddhist based recovery network.
Vic:
My idea of a higher power may not be the same as yours, but in my spiritual recovery, the bottom line is this. I believe in a power greater than myself. I believe in a power greater than my addiction. I also believe in the power of community in my recovery, that I can go to Broncos games with other friends in recovery and stay sober. I can go to a Grateful Dead show and stay sober. I mean these things are important to me because you got to have fun when you're sober.
Dan:
You have to live, you have to continue living your life. It can be really challenging too because so much of that stuff was centered around drugs and alcohol.
Dan:
My name is Dan Dolger and I was Vic's, and to some degree currently am still, Vic's sponsor in the 12 step recovery program that he and I are both a part of.
Dan:
Vic and I, we've made it to a few Dead shows. It's just psychologically safer when you're there with someone that you know, knows you. You know you're safe. You know somebody is there that knows who you are, and has your best interest in mind. You're there to truly have fun. So we do a lot of that stuff.
Vic:
In July, 2015, members of the Grateful Dead played Fare thee well shows in Santa Clara, California and Chicago. I was there in both cities. It was billed as the last time the four surviving members would ever play together on stage.
Vic:
At one of the Santa Clara's shows, my friend Ryan turned to me and asked, "What are you going to do if they play Wharf Rat?" Wharf Rat's a Dead song about an alcoholic who's down on his luck. The song is so meaningful to a lot of people in recovery that it actually led to the creation of a sober group of Deadheads called the Wharf Rats.
Vic:
Sure enough, during the second set of night two, they played the song. And when these lyrics hit, I absolutely lost it.
Vic:
But I'll get back on my feet some day. I know that the life I'm living's no good. I'll get a new start. Live the life I should.
Vic:
I just collapsed in my friend's arms and I cried. About six months of being sober, this was my first spiritual moment in recovery. I was seeing the Dead for the first time sober in my life and I was crying because I was happy.
Vic:
I experienced another pivotal moment in my recovery with my dog. Benny was my lifelong companion, a beautiful Brindle mutt. For many years, he saw me at my worst doing drugs, not treating myself or others very well. But when I got sober, Benny got the longest walks of his life. We went hiking, went to parks. I could tell he was thrilled with my transformation. It was so great.
Vic:
But then one day, he didn't want to get up off the bed. He wasn't feeling too good. I took him to the vet and they told me his kidneys were failing and it was time to say goodbye. My mom and my sister went with me that day. My sister drove on the way to the vet.
Vic:
I sat in the back seat with Benny, holding him, crying, telling him how much I love him. I said, "I don't know why this is happening to you buddy, but I love you." I made an amends to him on the drive, basically telling him how, sorry I was for all the years I did drugs and left him alone while I was out all night. At the vet he fell asleep in my arms and I said goodbye.
Vic:
The old Vic would have lost it, the old Vic would have not handled this moment without drugs. But instead of going to the bar, I called people in recovery. I talked about my pain. I shared my pain at meetings. I did not get high. I think I owed that to him.
Vic:
From downtown Denver, this is Colorado Public Radio News. I'm Vic Vela. Denver Mayor Michael Hancock will veto-
Vic:
Shortly after Benny's death, I was hired full time at Colorado public radio, my first ever job sober. A friend suggested that a given Benny's advanced age, maybe he was ready to go a long time ago, but he waited until he knew I was going to be okay, until I could take care of myself.
Vic:
I love you, Bennie. Thank you, my good boy.
Vic:
So I'm doing better. Not perfect, but better. Look, my problems didn't just disappear when I got sober. Nobody's problems just disappear like that. I constantly have to work harder at behaving than most people. I really do. And I'm getting help for that. Things like anger management, behavioral issues. That's okay, because that's the goal, is progress. I still have trouble dealing with authority figures, and dating, but I'm not afraid of these things anymore.
Vic:
I also wouldn't be here without the love and support of my parents and family, my sisters and my younger brother. And by the way, I talked about my dad's struggles with alcohol earlier. The man's been sober for 17 years. I celebrated five years of sobriety on January 25th, 2020.
Vic:
Look, I'm open and honest about my recovery and that's what this podcast is all about. My guests and I are open about our past struggles to show others out there, there is a way out, that recovery is possible. Because the truth is we are all broken. That's how I got the name for this show. Every one of us is broken in some way or another. The more we shine a light on our problems, the less scary they are.
Vic:
So this podcast, it's for the people who are struggling, whether it's drugs, mental health issues, addiction. It's for people who are trying to get better. And for the folks trying to help someone else in their life get better. So that's pretty much everyone, right?
Vic:
It's also dedicated to people I once knew, and loved, and lost. Like Richard, a jolly friend and an old Deadhead who died of liver disease. Betty, I once loaned him a prepaid phone card at rehab. He took his own life by driving his car off the top of a parking garage. Damien, one of the first guys I ever loved and shared a bed with, he died of a pill overdose a few years ago. People I know who are no longer with us, who I'll never see again.
Vic:
But for the rest of us, there is hope. If you're struggling with addiction, or mental health issues, or whatever is causing you suffering, I'm here to tell you, you don't have to feel like this anymore. You don't have to lie to your loved ones anymore. You don't have to wake up feeling like hell anymore. You don't have to live with fear and resentment and anger anymore.
Vic:
We can get better. We can heal. We can learn to live and love. We can do it. We really can. I'll close with the words of the Grateful Dead. We will get by. We will survive.
Vic:
Thank you all for listening and may we all be free from suffering.
Dan:
Hi, this is Dan Dolger. You heard from me earlier in the episode, what's going on in my recovery lately. I think the biggest improvement is in the relationship I have with my daughter. For 16 years of her life I was absent, her entire life essentially, and now over the last five years, we've built a really good relationship.
Rob:
Hello. This is Rob giving you an update from Denver, Colorado. So things are going good lately. I get to sponsor a bunch of new people in the fellowship and watch them progress through the 12 steps.
Vic:
We'd love to hear how you're doing in your own recovery or what small victories you're having in everyday life. We might share it in this podcast. Record a short voice memo or MP3 and send it to Vic at backfrombroken org.
Vic:
If you know someone who might benefit from stories like this, please share this podcast with them. We spent more than a year building this show on research, interviews, production and editing, because we know it's going to help a lot of people.
Vic:
But it does cost money to do this. People who listen to this podcast, people just like you really make it a reality. If you can, please contribute to the making of future episodes, at backfrombroken.org.
Vic:
Back from Broken is a production of Colorado Public Radio's Audio Innovation Studio and CPR News. Thanks to people in recovery who helped us develop this podcast. Ben, Matthew, Sean, and Mateo. Thank you so much for your guidance. The lead producer on this episode is Rebecca Romberg. Curtis Fox is our story editor for this episode. The Back from Broken team includes Rachel Estabrook, Brad Turner, Kevin Dale, and Daniel Mescher.
Vic:
Thanks also to Francie Swidler, Kim Nguyen, Hart VanDenberg, Kevin Beatty, John Pinnow and Demi Harvey. Please review the show on Apple podcasts. It really helps other people find it.
Vic:
I'm Vic Vela. Thanks for listening.
