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Give Up Crack and Drug Dealing or Die
- Dr. Carder Stout
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Welcome to “Healing From Within.” I am your host Sheryl Glick author of my new book in a trilogy A New Life Awaits: Spirit Guided Insights to Support Global Awakening which shares a look at 2020 and modern day challenges to realize we are not having an economic political social challenge but a spiritual disconnect from our true being or soul wisdom. Today I welcome Dr. Carder Stout author of lost in ghost town as he shows us that having everything in the material sense did not stop his descent into addiction and the darker side of existence.
As listeners of “Healing From Within” are well aware Sheryl and her guests share intimate stories and insights trying to understand the challenges of our energetic and physical life exploring the values and needs of our heart energy that ultimately lead us to know that we are spiritual beings having a physical life and that by self-investigation and self-mastery of our emotions, we can create a healthy productive joyful life experience, but as we discovered there are often missteps along the way before achieving true peace and success in all areas of our life.
In today’s episode of Healing From Within Dr. Carder Stout a Los Angeles based psychologist and therapist to Hollywood people in his community will share how his life morphed from self-absorbed rich kid to junkie when he tried crack cocaine for the first time. Most people don’t know that people who have a genetic predisposition to drugs alcohol or other addictive habits only need one time for the switch to be turned on and addiction to begin.
Carder when asked to remember a person place or event that may have signaled to him or to others the course of his future plans and what values were most important to him mentions his nanny Lily who loved him and cared for him and was always there even when his parents were busy with their own obligations.
Carder might also tell us about his older brother who wanted to run away and take him with him when Carder was seven years old and Carder writes, “But why run away, I like things the way they are.” And Craig responded “You know why. We talked about it. It’s because Mom and Dad don’t want us anymore.” “No they don’t so, we’re going to go away and live on our own. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.” Carder began to cry. He never really believed that my parents didn’t want us. They spent a lot of time away but I knew they had important things to do. My chest felt like it was burning and I gulped three times. Maybe I was too much trouble for them. I was always messing around and not clean -up after myself. I guess I understood why they wouldn’t want me. Carder predisposition to addiction as his mother was an alcoholic, began when his brother Craig encouraged him to drink and smoke and Carder describes it as spinning with the clouds and trees mixed together and feeling wozzy and happy like it was his birthday. Now it made sense why my father had a silver flask on hunting trips and tipped it into his mouth as we waited for the ducks. When I grow up I wanted to drink as much as them and even more.”
Sheryl says. So the predisposition to drink and be high was already genetically and environmentally in your psyche. Mark Treitler a former guest on the show and an attorney wrote a book Alcohol Drugs and You about his own problems with alcoholism describing how it is for many, an inherited tendency and that first drink cigarette or drug can begin a long road of addiction like “a switch turned on.” Other people can handle social drinking or smoking and not be addicted to it.
Carder tells us why he wanted to write this book and expose all the difficult private memories and events to the public. Carder wanted to share the problems of his childhood the insecurity of not knowing if he was loved by parents who had many of their own addictions and worries and while money was not their prime problem, their feeling to be truly content in their own body and to regard life as a gift or know their spiritual essence and power was a detriment to their well being and to their children’s sense of security. Carder suffered anorexia drug and alcohol addiction, lived in slums and almost died but eventually finding a higher power or source of energy saved him. Obviously his soul needed all those experiences of his earlier days for he found his way to understanding universal concepts that very few people do and as all healers eventually share this wisdom and truth with as many people as they can.
Carder tells us he remembers how he felt when using life -threatening drugs and about living in L.A where he knew many people who were also affected by their use of drugs. Carder writes how it was when he started using crack, “In the past I smoked with friends acquaintances low- lifes, dealers and prostitutes—everyone and anyone I could and when I first began to smoke I was the life of the party sharing my self-proclaimed wisdom with anyone who would listen.”
Carder concluded that the cocaine opened a channel in my mind connecting me to another realm. The proprieties of the drug had unlocked a doorway that lead to the resting place of souls. These spirits spoke to me when the portal was open very much like shamanic experiences that inform the beliefs of many indigenous peoples. I thought of it as a gift. The voices I heard were not random but rather those of my ancestors. I discovered this when I actually began to listen and heard my paternal grandmother Maxine with her low grumblings and distinct hyperbolic gasps. My grandmother had always professed her clairvoyance.
Carder tells us that when his father was at boarding school he fell on the ice and sliced his Achilles tendon. Before he reached the infirmary. Maxine had called several times and asked how her son’s leg was doing. The school hadn’t contacted her—she’d seen the accident in her mind. My father was proud of his mother’s gift and told us her powers might be passed down. I believed the cocaine caused my powers to surface.
Sheryl tells Carder of a synchronistic or a similar event happening when her fifteen year -old daughter wanted to go to a concert at Nassau Coliseum and Sheryl got a sick feeling and an impression in her vision that Stacey would be running in the crowded parking lot and could get trampled on and hurt. When Stacey returned home, Sheryl saw Stacey hobbling down the path to the house and soon saw she had a big hole in her leg as she had been running and fell on a metal pipe coming out of the ground. At that time Sheryl was not functioning as an energy healer or medium, but still was very intuitive though unaware of all the implications of that ability but often was paying attention to thoughts coming to her encouraging action in certain circumstances. At that time Sheryl only assumed it was her own thoughts not that from guides or souls in spirit. Later on after a spiritual visitation from her grandfather, the night before her Dad passed telling her to write something for her father which she did by writing his eulogy Sheryl then began in earnest to develop her own connections to spiritual communication healing energies and to tapping into the energy of Universal source.
Carder tells us something of Flyn’s grandmother Beatrice and Flyn and Tisha who helped him realize he had to give up crack and drug dealing or lose his life.
Carder tells us of his friendship with Flyn who moved freely in the hood where he made deliveries selling crack. The hood was the territory of the Shoreline Crips and you needed their permission to walk the streets there. Carder was safe also because he was Flyns driver.
Tisha was a prostitute who often visited him on cold nights. They were only friends. She was only 19 but in a weathered way looked ten years older. She was one of those rare ones who had survived on the streets for several years without being locked up or killed. She listened to Carder and Carder would have given her anything he could muster, unfortunately it wasn’t much. Although the scars of her profession were obvious she exuded a kindness that one could expect from someone whose circumstances were vastly better. She was never angry—there was no bitterness in her heart.
Carder tells us of some experiences that helped him break the habit stay sober for 14 I/2 years and found his way forward.
Carder writes of having a seizure one cold winter night and of Tisha saving his life. He writes of what seems like a near-death experience. “This is how it all ends. Goodbye to the people I passed in the night. Goodbye to the children I never had. Goodbye to the wife I never met. Goodbye to the happiness that never found me. Goodbye to love I once knew. Goodbye, Mother. I will miss your gravel throated laugh. Goodbye And I was gone to the other side. Lillie the nanny of my childhood approached me on a long open path in a birch forest I noticed everything and understood it all. I could see the past and future fuse together in one single stream of consciousness. Take me with you Carder said to Lillie I don’t want to go back. There’s nothing for me down there. “ Not yet Coda Not for a while A moment here is a thousand years there. You will see.
“
Tisha pounded on my chest and when I opened my eyes she said to me, “I thought you were dying I thought you were gone.”
“I was” Carder responded, “ I did. I saw the other side. ”
Carder never told anyone about that night. Not the textbook therapists the underdeveloped counselors the narrow minded doctors, the shallow life coaches or the best friends who tried and tried to help me. “No, that was just a memory for me.”
Carder tells us about the loving and beneficial relationship he had with Flyn and his grandmother Beatrice. Flyn who grew up on the streets went to prison shared with Carder how when he got out of jail he broke away from the gang The Crips because of a promise made to his grandmother The Crips didn’t bother him as long as he followed their rules or code which he did. Flyn barely remembered his father and his mother was also gone but his grandmother taught him to be good and made him read books for an hour each day. Grandma knew what was going on but still loved him with all her might. Had to survive in those streets and it didn’t mean he was bad. Flyn told Carder that now he loved everybody and had no hate in his heart. Each morning I meditate and clear my head Carder felt very comfortable around Flyn. They were from totally different background but there was a spiritual warrior underneath the violence of his deeds.
Carder explained to Flyn that he heard the voices of his family from hundreds of years back and Flyn said, “Like some kind of spirit world?” He may not have been as aware as Carder was of this higher dimension of life but he loved Carder and accepted with good nature what Carder believed.
Perhaps Dr. Carder Stout’s gift from his clairvoyant Grandmother Maxine enabled him to know that we are more than our physical bodies and a good healthy life was within our inner personal power to create.
In the introduction to her newly released book A New Life Awaits: Spirit Guided Insights to Support Global Awakening Sheryl wrote,
“Many years ago, after a series of mystical experiences that I could not explain with my logical mind, I found myself experiencing feelings within that related to a life that was more than my physical experience. As I began to quiet my mind, I began to know my inner thoughts in a way that went beyond the five senses and the way I was accustomed to experiencing the physical world. I became aware that I was able to use an intuitive sense that had nothing to do with my mind, years of education, or life experiences. It was a sense of knowingness and awareness to history, our humanity, and the past in a way that went beyond normal explanation. In dreams and in my interactions with numerous people that I later discovered were Spiritual guides brought into my conscious reality for the important purpose of realizing my life plan and my inner soul being, a new awareness emerged, enabling me to constantly review past beliefs seen purely from a physical indoctrination of this time, place, and present life experience into another way. I am incredibly more able to accept new ways of knowing myself and those who walk this journey with me and to discern the true meaning of life.”
Carder I usually have coincidences or synchronicity with my guests and I see you have an endorsement from Gweyneth Paltrow who writes that she was deeply moved and inspired by your story. Years ago my daughter Stacey Glick, a child actress, appeared in Neil Simmons movie Brighton Beach Memoirs with Blythe Danner as her aunt. Gwyneth was her daughter and they were both so lovely and natural not affected by circumstances it seemed. Gwyneth at the time was only 12 and looked pretty much like she does now, to me anyway, and she looked me in the eye and asked how Stacey had gotten into the business. She wanted to be working, but her parents insisted she wait a little longer to begin. So, it seems, perhaps we are born into the family and circumstances for our soul to accomplish what it is we most need for personal and soul growth. Actually, as an intuitive energy practitioner and medium I know that is true.
Carder tells us about his time in Ghost Town the dangerous Oakwood neighborhood of Venice Beach, California and the junkies, scammers hustlers and dealers who became his tribe. Carder wrote, “Today would be a day like all the rest. I would spend most of it looking for money. I hated to hold my hand for loose change, but I did it anyway. I’d be ashamed if someone I knew saw me panhandling on the street corner. At this point, my best options were to beg, borrow, or steal. I attended AA meetings pretending to be sober and hit up old friends for $20 bill……I lived a block from the beach in Venice California but rarely put my feet in the sand. My domain was further inland, where the rubber met the road. This part of Venice had appropriately been labeled Ghost Town. This was what the addicts called it anyway—so many ghosts walking the street. Venice had been a cross-section of race, ethnicity and class. There were starving artists who lived cheaply in craftsmen houses next to African American families that had moved into rent controlled bungalows in the s1930’s . Next to them were surf rats and beatniks who kept the culture of the 1960’s alive and drove their VW vans up the coast when the waves were big. Sprinkled among these eccentrics was a generation of Holocaust survivors and immigrant families that had move in at the end of World War 11…..But the most prevalent of them all was a gang called The Shoreline Crips and they struck fear into the hearts of most everyone…They controlled the cocaine trade on the west side of Los Angeles and their numbers were staggering..
Carder would like readers to take away with them after reading lost in ghost town to remember to have more compassion and love for those suffering from addiction. It is their choice and until they chose to put it aside and find another way to live, it is nearly impossible to stop the self- abuse. Maybe Carder smoked because he was loss or sad or never felt loved or maybe never let anyone love him. Maybe he felt a weight on his heart blocking him or maybe it was a physical problem like depression. It certainly was fear. Maybe it wad the family that had problems they didn’t handle well, but whatever one’s destiny is, life must be lived and judging how people do that is unproductive.
We thank Dr. Carder Stout author of lost in ghost town for an open hearted sensitive and honest look at cocaine addiction and lost time and health as a result of not understanding how one gets involved and hooked as often is the case for all addictive abuses. In finding the underlying traumas or fears of childhood many are able to rid themselves of the disease of addiction and find their way to more satisfying life experiences.
In summarizing today’s episode of Healing From Within it may be hard to imagine how Carder Stout whose difficult challenge with a father who was more interested in his own physical pleasure and his mother who he loved dearly but was an alcoholic and a brother who very early indoctrinated him into a life style of booze and drugs still had a privileged life -private school beautiful home was handsome but his material life benefits didn’t stop him from ending up in Venice California dealing and using crack coke and having a near death experience. In the end like it is for many who descend into the shadow of the soul something of light awakens their spirit and they choose to turn life around. While Carder was at his mother’s country home in the woods he heard clairaudiently.
Everything in the universe is thriving with intelligence and holding a bundle of secrets. I understand it all. We are here to thrive. All life is connected by the same energy. I can hear the water talking. And the wind. The snowflakes are singing. Carder had never experienced such an overwhelming sense of calm, and in that moment, I forgot about fear. There is no past and no future in this liminal space—only the present. The present is the truth. Nothing else matters. I can hear the heartbeat of the universe.
Sally Carders young girlfriend said to him. “God is all around us right now. It’s not a man with a white beard but the feeling we have in our bodies. That’s God.”
Dr. Carder Stout and I would have you remember that all of us suffer the pain and failings of our parents and family life, whether from a wealthy or not wealthy background, but the challenges of these events are within a plan that allows the soul to grow in greater awareness, higher consciousness and love, and if we listen to that small quiet voice within, we know we are loved accepted and encouraged by Divine Source.
