Political analyst Ryan Basham discusses addiction recovery and mental health after surviving the "Real Housewives" false realities of his high-functioning alcoholic mother. Imagine finding out the cameras were never there!

We're bringing you to the heart of Nashville, inside our studio on Broadway for an in-depth conversation with former Presidential campaign advisor and Out100 honoree Ryan Basham pulls back the curtain on a childhood that was a "rigged script" long before he stepped into the political arena. If you have spent your life playing a part in a story you didn’t write, this conversation is your permission to tear it up. You are not broken—you are becoming.

Ryan’s mother was the ultimate high-functioning alcoholic paradox: the charismatic, community-leading PTA President who maintained a polished public image while losing her battle with a bottle every single night. In this fascinating deep-dive, Ryan recounts the "alternate reality" his family was forced to maintain—one where facts were rewritten daily to validate the disease of addiction and protect a public facade of "perfection". This episode explores the psychological gymnastics required in dysfunctional homes and the "invisible" toll of keeping a secret for twenty years.

“People become attached to their burdens, sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.” — George Bernard Shaw

This quote highlights the core "a-ha" moment: we often cling to familiar dysfunction even when it is drowning us . Whether you are navigating your own addiction or are the exhausted "peacekeeper" in a chaotic family script, there is enlightenment waiting. You have the power to stop being a character in someone else’s false reality.

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⏰ AUDIO CHAPTERS:

00:00 Life is Too Important to Take Seriously

01:25 Meet Ryan Basham: Out100 & Political Disruptor

04:30 Comedy as a Survival Skill

08:20 Hollywood Hills vs. Small Town Reality

11:05 The High-Functioning Alcoholic Mom Paradox

21:40 The Moment I Realized Mom was an Alcoholic

28:50 Surviving the Alternate Reality: Rewriting Facts

45:50 Shame vs. Accountability: The Mental Health Reframe

51:03 Lethal Love: Why Boundaries are Your "Air Hole"

54:15 Reclaiming Joy: The Ultimate Act of Defiance

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📌 TOP 3 TIPS FOR FAMILIES:

1. Stop the Fact-Checking: You cannot cure someone else’s alternate reality. Shift energy to trusting your own internal truth .
2. Prioritize Your "Air Hole": You cannot save someone from a storm if you are drowning alongside them. Support is not enabling .
3. Reclaim Your Joy: Laughter is a biological survival mechanism and an act of defiance against a dysfunctional script .

📌 TOP 3 TIPS FOR THE "BECOMING" PROCESS:

1. Dismantle Shame: Shame is a global attack on who you are; accountability is a focus on what you do .
2. Embrace the Pivot: Your life doesn't have to follow the trajectory set by your trauma. Your most authentic self is found in the "becoming."
3. Refuse to "Shrink to Fit": If your environment requires you to hide your truth, it is the wrong environment. Take up space .

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🛟 HELP RESOURCES:

👉 FOR INDIVIDUALS:

- Addiction:

· https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline

· 1-800-622-4357

- Mental Health:

· https://loveyourmindtoday.org

👉 HELP FOR FAMILIES:

- Al-Anon Family Groups

· https://al-anon.org

- Smart Recovery Family Support

· https://www.smartrecovery.org/family

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Follow & Connect

✅ Ryan Basham (Official Guest Links)

Instagram: @ryanbasham - https://www.instagram.com/ryanbasham

TikTok: @ryanbasham - https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanbasham

YouTube: ⁨@RyanBasham⁩

Web: https://www.ryanbasham.com/

✅ Patrick Custer (Official Host Links)

Instagram: @thepatrickcuster - https://www.instagram.com/thepatrickcuster

TikTok: @thepatrickcuster - https://www.tiktok.com/@thepatrickcuster

YouTube: ⁨@thepatrickcuster⁩

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thepatrickcusterr

✅ The Patrick Custer Show (Official Show Links)

Instagram: @thepatrickcustershow - https://www.instagram.com/thepatrickcustershow

TikTok: @thepatrickcustershow - https://www.tiktok.com/@thepatrickcustershow

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thepatrickcustershoww

YouTube: ⁨@ThePatrickCusterShow⁩

Website: https://www.thepatrickcustershow.com/

🫵 You are not broken; you are becoming. Leave a review and let us know your biggest takeaway!

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Primary Keywords: addiction recovery, mental health, Ryan Basham, high-functioning alcoholic mother, alcoholism in families, trauma-informed storytelling, childhood trauma recovery.

Secondary Keywords: Real Housewives, Bravo TV fans, Andy Cohen, rigged script, NFL script meme, Super Bowl LX, Presidential campaign advisor, political analyst, stand-up comedy, Nashville Broadway studio, Out100, LGBTQ mental health, surviving gaslighting, alternate reality trauma, resilience and reinvention, system disruption.

Life is too important to be taken too seriously. We have to find how to find the funny again. Even when things are serious, I think. Especially when things are serious.

Yeah. I don't want to breeze over your mom.

I mean, breezes roll over my mom every day now.

My God.

His mindset was, it's not about me, it's about my kids. And if someone who is in a position to support other people makes it about themselves, that's no longer helpful.

I remember the moment when I almost, oh, my mom's an alcoholic. And all the weight of that and the import of that. She was deeply intelligent, and it's.

Unfortunately, her inner saboteur was as intelligent as she was.

You are a person of integrity, I hope. I mean, yeah, you know, I've known.

Those terrible jokes, but shame is an entirely useless experience. Feeling it has absolutely no positive value. If it ends up leading, you know, having a positive impact on something, it's. It's happenstantial.

Boundaries aren't for them.

No, they're for you. And it doesn't mean shutting yourself off. It doesn't mean starving yourself in some way, maintaining a relationship. He's an incredible person.

I'm a big fan of my younger brother.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Shame I don't have to kill him, you know.

I'm Patrick Custer, and you are watching or listening to the Patrick Custer Show. I'm so glad that you have joined us for this episode.

And extra, glad to have my friend, political analyst, comedian, and most recently named out magazine's 100.

I mean, it's Al 100, and I'm 99, I think, you know, like, almost near the bottom of the list, but that's okay.

Is that how they told you?

No, I'm just kidding.

Oh.

Although number one is Niecy Nash Betts, and everybody else is because she's the icon of the year, which makes her number one. And everybody else is, like, you know, also on the list.

Yeah. Did they name everybody in order?

No.

Did it all come out at once?

It all came out at once. And there are different categories of people. I think I'm in the innovators or disruptors category. I should know, but I don't remember.

That would fit.

Yeah. And they're like, people like me. And then there's this queer person who is National Park Service employee that got fired.

And then there's a drag king, I think. I mean, they're a wide variety of different kinds of people from different walks of life and stuff. So if you're a consumer of the.

Show and not an LGBTQ flesh informed person. What he was referring to as somebody who got fired for a worthy cause. Like, yeah, I don't know what, but.

I'm sure it was standing out. I don't remember all the details now, but it's in the. It's in the magazine. Yeah. And I'm sure this is somebody I'm gonna meet in a.

Like, here in like a week or so. Is like the. The gala. So. Yeah. So presumably Everybody in that 100 will be there.

That's awesome.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The person I'm most looking forward to is Matt Rogers. You know what I'm talking about. He and Bowen Yang are the Las Coltrissas podcast.

He has ignored me on Grindr several times, and I just want to confront him about it. And I don't think that's weird.

I'm actually not going to say my. Because mine's petty.

Oh, no, you have to now.

Why?

Because you brought it up. And I'm going to wonder.

We lost to them. Oh, twice.

That's unfair, though. They're kind of in a league of their own. That's like. That's just not fair.

So we most definitely didn't just take a break right there.

Not at all. I don't even know what you're talking about.

Yeah. So doing great things and not being jealous or petty individuals. Speak for yourself for the right reasons. I was actually talking about my goals.

I mean, I feel like you can be petty and jealous no matter what your goals are, no matter how far along you are in life. You know what? There's always room for petty jealousy.

That's true. Did the comedian aspirations come along because politics got too dark or vice versa?

Kind of the former. So I experimented with stand up comedy in college, and I've spent the last 20 years being asked, are you a stand up comedian?

And I usually just say, no, I'm just funny.

Also, being a political commentator, being a political person in the media became such an uncertain thing. And on top of all that, I needed to laugh, I needed an outlet.

I needed to not be so serious, because being so serious all the time was, you know, it was detrimental to my mental health in ways that honestly surprised me. And so I had been saying for years I was gonna get back into standup comedy. And then a friend of mine Whom I've known for many, many years.

Like, I've known her since before she was a legit standup comedian, and now she's, like an established standup comedian who produces her own shows. And she texted me one day, and she goes, hey, hey, do you have a type 5? And I was like, I have a loose 10. And I just pulled it together.

I feel like, especially now, politics needs comedy. My ultimate dream has always been to inherit the Daily show anyway.

But I think, as liberals and progressives have found the hard way, that taking ourselves too seriously doesn't work. And, you know, kind of one of my mantras is, life is too important to be taken too seriously. We have to find how to find the funny again.

Even when things are serious? I think. Especially when things are serious.

Is that a skill set that you learned later in life or earlier on?

It's born of a survival skill. I think my mom was a really sharp, funny person as well, so she kind of modeled that for me. But, you know, my survival skills.

Growing up as a. I felt like I was the only gay in the Village. I wasn't. There were others. Where'd you grow up?

What village?

Northeast, Tennessee.

What?

I am from Kingsport, which is next to Johnson City in Bristol. Bristol people usually know, either because of the NASCAR speedway or if you Drive down Interstate 81.

Everybody remembers passing from Virginia into Tennessee at Bristol. I don't know why people remember that. And Johnson City is most known for that Old Crow Medicine show song, Wagon Wheel.

Like, there's a line that goes, johnson City, Tennessee.

And so if you're in Johnson City and that song comes on somewhere, at a restaurant, at a bar, wherever, the entire room stops and goes, Johnson City, Tennessee. So that's where I grew up.

Wow.

I also grew up, like, 10 minutes away from where June Carter Cash, Johnny Cash's wife, was born.

I didn't know. I know that song. And I never. I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to look for the part that talks about Johnson City and.

It talks about how to get to Johnson City. But the lyrics. The way the lyrics describe getting to Johnson City is not possible. Like, there isn't.

I think it's, like, goes from Richmond to Johnson City or something. Whatever it says, go east.

I don't remember the exact lyrics, but it like, describes getting to Johnson City in a way that is not possible based on wherever the lyrics said they were before they got to Johnson City. And so, you know, people sing it and love the song, but we also know, like, you can't get to Johnson City that way from there.

That's funny.

Yeah. Rabbit hole for you. The 10 people who listen to this podcast, who cares, Might go look that up.

That wasn't funny. So it's been nice talking to you and now. I'm just kidding.

Bye.

So you grew up in, you know, I'm familiar with, you know, all those places. I mean, physically, yes, I've been there, but not spent a lot of time.

So I'm glad that you went into some detail with landmarkers for our, you know, non Tennesseans. Yeah, you're back and forth from both the coasts now.

Yeah, I spent.

I mean, I live in LA, where I've lived for 20 years, but I spend a lot of time in New York and D.C. and I have friends and family in both places, so I can stay for extended periods of time and live like a local without, you know, being a moneyed person. I keep saying that I should have gone.

So, like, when I was in my early 20s in L. A, Bryan Singer, who was then, like, one of the big action sci fi movie producers, like, he was doing X Men movies and stuff, was infamous for having these pool parties where barely legal twinks would come over.

And apparently, you know, there's a lot of cocaine, lots of shady stuff, but, like, all the cute young twinks were there, and I think I got invited to them once or twice. I was like, oh, I'm too good for that. I'm gonna make my own way. I'm not gonna be taken advantage of by older men.

I wish I had because I could be today super rich, having married some older gay who had a house in the Hollywood Hills. He might even be dead now. And then I'd be rich and single, you know, but that's not the case.

So now I have to stay in people's spare rooms when I go to New York and D.C. but, you know, it's cool.

Maybe you're actually making a difference now today and where you might not have been.

Oh, yeah.

Otherwise, so.

Oh, yeah. Also like the life of people who live in that party lifestyle. I don't know that I would have survived along anyway. So it's all good there.

You know, there are no accidents.

Yes. I didn't come out till a year after I got sober. And I'm so glad Because I, I would have, it would have taken me out, you know, the lifestyle of.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I also feel that way about if I had stayed in East Tennessee.

I know there are plenty of people who live there and love it and that's fine, I guess. But, you know, I've been broke a couple times in my life and my dad's been like, well, you can come back to East Tennessee.

And I'm like, dad, if I come back to East Tennessee, you will find me one day in a ditch. Because I don't, I don't, I don't want to be there. It's bad for my mental health. It's not. You know what I mean?

It's like, it's not livable for me living in East Tennessee again.

Well, living in my hometown again, I should say, might be more of a liability to me than being around drugs, just because I can say no to drugs, but I can't really manage my surroundings in East Tennessee. You know what I mean? Yeah, but I mean, it's a beautiful place. Lots of people love to live there. I don't cut to.

I run for office in 20 years from East Tennessee and this comes up and I lose because I said this.

Well, I don't know, you're going to be running for, like, trying to get East Tennessee voters, but no, they're going.

To have to be a very different place.

Yeah, I doubtless. Anyway, we love East Tennessee. Cut forward. We're talking about your mom.

Yeah, yeah, my dead mom. Let's talk about it. It's actually something I'm very comfortable talking about. I'm the one who's comfortable talking about it.

Other people who have dead parents are comfortable talking about it. The people who are least comfortable talking about it are people whose parents are still alive.

And usually what happens when it comes up is I am watching in real time other people whose parents are still alive process the concept of their own parents being dead and then figuring out from there, oh, crap, what do I say to this guy? You know, I'm so, so sorry to hear that, Whatever.

But essentially I manage their emotional experience of responding to my statement about my mom being dead. Because like, most people who have dead parents are like, eh, whatever. And some of my standup goes into this, like, you know.

In fact, one of my favorite things to do when I do standup is to bring that up out of nowhere and see how the audience reacts, which gives me a lot of stuff to work with. I'm not sorry my mom is dead. And I think that is Weird to people. But my mom was an alcoholic.

I don't think I have a clear memory of her being sober, but I also, you know, she was also my hero, though. Like, she was charismatic, gregarious, outgoing. So much of what I like about myself, I think came from her.

But I also don't think I knew what it was like to not live in fight or flight mode until like my mid-20s, because I was the older kid in this very broken household. And so parents divorced? No. And they should have. They eventually did. My dad left my mom on my 19th birthday, actually, which I knew was coming.

And I, you know, like my dad and I and my.

And to a lesser extent, my brother, we had, you know, that was a thing that we knew we had planned a little bit for because we wanted to make sure my brother was old enough to decide who he was going to live with. Actually, my dad told me that when I was in elementary school because he used to also be a big drinker. He used to be an alcoholic.

Well, he doesn't describe himself as an alcoholic. It's kind of a gray area. I think it's not worth getting into. But he. The.

Their life together in the beginnings of their relationship were around partying. And so there was an incident where my dad ended up having to go to the hospital because of a. Just a knock on effect of drinking a lot.

And he was fine.

But when he went for his checkup appointment to our family doctor, who, you know, he was everybody's doctor in my family, the doctor sat him down and said, okay, so now, you know, this is a problem. You need to know that your wife is probably never going to get sober.

And you have to decide now if you're gonna stay with her because of the kids or if you're gonna leave. And he chose to stay. And so, you know, I say my mom is my idol, but my dad was my hero.

Cause he chose Another probably 15 years of, you know, faking it and putting everything else aside for him internally just to keep our family together. Because my mom very likely would have won a custody battle.

Yeah, Tennessee.

Yeah. Yeah. And also my mom was the socialite. Like she knew judges personally in my hometown. So, like she was.

There was no way she was gonna lose a custody battle. And so, you know, that was the choice he made. But as a result of all that, I ended up being the older kid I was a lot. Anyway.

Will you remember where you are if I ask you a question?

Oh, yeah, probably. Maybe. We'll see.

Can you define for me how you Differentiate your hero from your idol.

My idol represented so much of what I wanted to be.

And my hero made great sacrifices for my well being that mattered and worked, made a difference, you know, and there are things about my dad that I value and then I think I personify that I got from him many things. But you know, you know how, you know, kids typically have a favored parent in any family? Yeah. I was my mom's kid. My brother was my dad's kid.

My favorite parent was.

Were you more gregarious than your brother?

No. He and I both have big personalities, actually. Yeah. Yeah. But very different walks of life. Like, I was an artsy fartsy kid.

I was outed early in my public school life in seventh grade. And so I was the big personality gay kid who did community theater and was in the orchestra. So I was a very specific kind of nerd.

He was on the football team and our high school's football team was like the first or second best in the state given the year. So he was. There are fewer higher echelon, socially things in my hometown than being on the football team.

And he was, in fact, he was going to walk on, which is a football term I now know with University of Tennessee football team. But his last game in his senior year, he tore his acl, which ruined his football prospects.

So he's had to figure out what his life is since then because football isn't a part of it.

That's really hard for a lot of people.

Yeah, but he's a gregarious person. He is an excellent bartender because, I mean, he's the perfect personality for a bartender because he listens, people trust him.

He's an incredible person. I'm a big fan of my younger brother.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Shame I have to kill him, you know.

But I'm okay. So, which leads us to what you were supposed to remember.

Mmm, let's see. What was it?

I don't know. But actually, I have another question.

Okay, great.

There are different ways we help people. Sometimes it's from afar, sometimes it's frontline. You're a personality that is elevated. So kind of separated from the masses. Right.

Like because you're either broadcast or on a stage or, you know, doing something like this. But is there a way that the hero part of your dad is translated in your personality?

Yes. Both in healthy and unhealthy ways.

You know, in the typical model of an alcoholic family, that typically the oldest kid is the hero kid and the second oldest is the clown. Well, there are variations of that. And that is how my family turned out. I am kind of the hero kid. I'm the one who fixes everything.

My brother is the clown.

The youngest was the clown.

Well, he is also the youngest.

Oh.

So the two of us. So I guess it's the youngest. Yeah, yeah. But he is kind of the clown from that model.

I have had to learn in adulthood how to be someone who leads in a supportive way and not in a self destructive way or in an enabling way. My job is to really hold space and facilitate more than it is to fix things for other people. And that's the thing that I've had to learn as an adult.

But there's kind of a stoic stillness that my dad kind of personified, which was mostly about he was doing the best he could to hold a space that his kids would be safe ish in. And so I relate that, that I can relate to. Like I think about one of my, one of the most important phrases I ever heard was it's not about you.

And that's kind of how my dad was when I was growing. It wasn't. He's like his, his mindset was it's not about me, it's about my kids.

And if someone who is in a position to support other people makes it about themselves, that's no longer helpful. And that's something I had to learn as an adult. On the other side of needing it to be about me is a much greater impact.

And it also, it's kind of like teaching people to fish as opposed to fishing for them. You know, I have a very doctor who attitude about the human race.

So like I think about it in these big like, ugh, the long trajectory of the human race in the context of the entire universe, you know?

Uh huh. So you're clearly going to answer everything.

Philosophically and then with lots of words. So feel free to cut me off. Yeah.

I don't want to breeze over your mom.

I mean breezes roll over my mom every day now.

My God. Grief, death, parents dying. Life is hard. So many topics wrapped up into one there.

And I love that you brought up because it's both funny and it's both so relatable because you know, I talk so much about mental health on this show.

Yeah.

So important to me. Our society does not prepare us for death.

No, not at all.

For ourselves or our parents.

No. And I think there's generally an expectation that if you lose somebody, it's a permanent anchor on you. It's a permanent weight.

It's almost impermissible Sometimes to move past someone dying, we say, when we dialogue, we have conversations about, oh, you gotta move on, it's okay to move on.

You know, we say those things in movies and stuff, but in reality, we also have a culture that low key judges somebody whose spouse has died or whatever, you know, and they're not sufficiently, you know, mourning. Or we also sometimes judge people for having new relationships once they. After they've lost a spouse. I mean, we do this to ourselves.

We only have ourselves to blame. Like, death is a natural part of life. It doesn't always happen conveniently. Sometimes it happens awfully. It's also inevitable.

And I think we spend a lot of our energy and time on this earth wound up in something we don't have to be because they're already dead.

Yeah.

And I could be wrong, but in everything that I've studied and researched, the real importance of when we're talking about spousal or partner passing, it's not necessarily the, you know, did you let enough time pass out of respect? It's, did you let enough time pass so that you could grieve properly?

Yeah.

Because otherwise you're not, you know, like.

Yeah.

You're not gonna be able to show.

It's kind of a double edged sword though, right? Because both of those things are true.

Well, yes, yes, yes, yes. I think the grief properly comes from an ang. Outwardly, like from society so much of the time, more of the, like out of respect for them.

Yeah, right.

Like, yeah, okay. But they're. But they're gone.

And there is the respect for that, you know, but like also, like, life is short, but it's different when it's your kid, when it's your parent, when it's your best friend.

Yeah.

What about when it's your mom?

Yeah. Well, I remember going back to my hometown when my mom died and I went to.

How old were you?

I was 20. My brother and I went to Target and our cashier turned out to be somebody that we. That the two of us and our mother had known were related to.

No, just. Right, I know, right? Well, we all are related probably. My parents are actually from West Virginia, which is a whole other thing.

Our cashier was someone we had previously known years prior and who knew my mom and. But not like, wasn't close to her, but they knew her. And she goes, how's your mom? We were like, well, she just died.

And that was such an awkward conversation because she didn't believe us at first.

And that's when you knew becoming a comedian was the key to everything. Just played it off and walked away.

Exactly. We tricked people into your mom jokes at her funeral. Like, we. Because she would have found that funny.

Oh, really?

Yes. Oh, yeah. Like, I used to say that if I ever win, like, an Oscar or something, my mom's the kind of person who.

When.

Well, yes, let's say when.

When I win an award that's broadcast on national television and I have to walk up a flight of stairs to a stage to accept it, my mom will, for the first time ever, physically materialize just long enough to trip me. Because that's funny. How did I know if that's what you were going to say? And, like, the thing is, my mom is somebody who.

If there's a will, there's a way, if it's possible, to will yourself into physically manifesting after death in this physical world. She's figured it out already, and she's waiting until the perfect time to be.

You're gonna regret saying that because I'm gonna channel her and make sure.

And you know what? Even if she doesn't now, I'm gonna trip myself. Like, I've. I've really. No, I'll be there. Oh, you better. You better.

I'll be there. Oh, man. People falling is so funny.

It is funny. And cringe sometimes, but.

Yeah, but then you skip past the cringe ones. I know some people who like the cringe ones.

I don't get that at all.

Judge those people.

Always.

20 years prior to your mom passing. All right, the doctor. What age were you when the doctor had this conversation with your.

I was probably in late elementary school.

Okay, so I'm so old now, I don't even know what that.

Not 8, 9, 10, something like that.

And old enough to know something was going, oh, and they weren't hiding stuff from you.

I distinctly remember the sensation of realizing that my mother was an alcoholic. I remember dawning on me in a way that was like, I already knew, but now I really get it because I.

Something clicked one day, and I realized that alcoholism doesn't look like it does on TV or in movies. Sometimes it does, but usually it doesn't.

And my mom was very high functioning, so the stereotypes of what you would, you know, what you would go, oh, that's an alcoholic. You know, those were not immediately apparent. And so. And I remember being. I remember the moment when I, oh, my mom's an alcoholic.

And all the weight of that and the import of that. I don't remember exactly where I was or how old I was, but I Remember that happening?

It was probably aggregation of. Oh yeah, yeah. That kind of developed that belief system at a certain point.

Yeah.

If you were to just think back to like it's an evening where everyone's home and this is an evening where you would use to describe how your family is different than the people who you would perceive to be normal.

Most of my memories of my childhood in the evenings on a typical day were ones where my dad's domain was the basement. He built things down there like model airplanes and computers and stuff. And I built some of those things with him.

I think I'm handy today because I did that with him. I tinkered with things and now I can kind of figure out how things work. I think I got that from him.

So he would come home and that's where he was and he would stay down there. He isolated and we. If we were spending time with him, it was cause we were down there with him.

My mom's domain was up the stairs from the basement in the kitchen. And she cooked dinner most nights.

And I remember our dinners being legit dinners, you know, it wasn't every night was like one of those pre made lasagnas from Costco or something. But she got progressively more drunk throughout the day. Some of those years, especially earlier, she was also involved in our life.

She was president of the PTA twice during my childhood. She ran for city council once.

All right, I need some context.

Yeah. Okay.

Cause when you talk to me, when you tell me about my mom died at 20, lifelong alcoholic, I'm picturing somebody that shows up very differently.

That's the thing is that was part of probably, that was probably the most mind fuckery of it all is that she was such a high functioning alcoholic.

Did she wake up at a consistent time each day? How did she dress?

I'm very curious because there's 10 year old, 12 year old Ryan Bishams that just think this is the cards or that life's drawn or this is normal.

I think I was aware by the time I was a teenager that it wasn't normal. But I don't think it occurred to me to have feelings about that until later because it was both not normal and my norm.

You know, I don't know this for sure, but I think when I was younger she rolled out of bed, got us fed and off to school, dropped us off at school, came home and I think she probably started drinking then. Earlier in my childhood, later in my childhood, especially once I was able to drive, I think it started as soon as she Woke up.

And in fact, there were times when she did drive drunk. Like, my dad was in the car because he was recovering from a surgery or, you know, my brother and I were in the car.

I remember her getting into a accident one day and being let off the hook. But we all knew that it happened because she was driving drunk. But she knew cops and judges and stuff, so she never got arrested.

I mean, like, alcoholism runs in my vein. I always say it's like there's more alcohol in the veins of my dad's side of the family than there is blood.

But at a young age, I don't know how she was a. At how old was she then?

I want to say she was in her mid to late 40s and early 50s.

Oh, okay.

But it had started years before that.

That was.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I. No, I'm just thinking about how. Because I got sober at 24, I know what.

What it's like to be the level of alcoholic in the same department as your mom. I mean, not as advanced because I wasn't that age. But what I mean by that is because I was drinking a minimum of a handle of liquor every day.

She was, too. Yeah.

You wake up and you drink and it's. It's different. I don't. It's so hard to explain to people who have never been there.

I know some people would want to argue this, but, like, I am not supporting anyone. Driving your children intoxicated.

Yeah.

Or driving yourself intoxicated. But I. I remember upon waking, the delirium tremens is so bad that until you have something to calm the nervous system, your whole body is screaming.

It's almost like you can't function safely until you've, you know. And so it's still so perplexing to me.

People think they know because they've had periods of time, whether it's college or maybe even some, you know, longer period of time where they were a really heavy drinker or an alcoholic that just didn't drink that much. Like that. There's a very. There are different categories of alcoholism, and there's like this very specific one that at a certain point you're like.

What you're talking about is you're hitting right where, like, I'm feeling it because it is purely to function.

Yeah. I mean, she was such a high functioning person, and she was someone who. Who was a high achieving person. She was deeply intelligent. And it's.

Unfortunately, her inner saboteur was as intelligent as she was. It was just the case for all of Us, but she was deep in it.

But I don't think I was in high school until other people in the community acknowledged that they thought she was an alcoholic. To me, And I'm talking about people who I was close enough to that they would have said something that I could ask or something like that.

You asked them and they responded, or they said, hey, buddy. We just.

Some of both, I think. And some of those were mentoring, nurturing kind of relationships in the community for me.

But I distinctly remember when I was earlyish high school, this woman named Janie Hobbs, who I think has passed since, but she was very much a leader in the community, especially in the church. My, my mom brought us up in. Who, you know, I have to ask.

Denomination?

Oh, United Methodist. United is important.

And she, she said, I don't remember if I asked, but I think she brought it up like, my mom being an alcoholic, like, how can you know? How could you tell? And she goes, I can smell it. And I, you know, I can smell it.

I know what it is because I've had it, experienced it in my life, you know, and, and I think lots of people go through life, not like it's not like smelling like booze. It's a different kind of thing. Like your pores excrete this thing that people who know what it smells like know what it is.

And it might go off the radar of somebody who doesn't.

But, you know, by that time, not only, I mean, her whole system so relied on it, she, you know that phenomenon where if you drink heavily for long enough, your brain shrinks and you start building up chemicals similar to formaldehyde in your brain. That happened to my mom, fully and completely.

In fact, she fell, had a concussion, had a brain bleed, and that brain bleed almost killed her because there was so much extra space in her skull from her brain shrinking. And even then she wouldn't really acknowledge she had a drinking problem.

I mean, I get it, I get it. You can't imagine nothing anyone tells to you. You cannot remember the goodness of life before. I had a goodness of life beforehand. Beforehand.

But I couldn't remember what it felt like or that it existed.

So therefore, when you can't remember that feeling of what it feels to have a day where your brain cycles through normally and you experience joy and peace and all these emotions regularly regulated, you know, and you're not walking through the fear of avoiding all the negative consequences of not having the chemical that you need you completely for, I mean, years. Years. I can't imagine being that age.

My mom longed for. So both my parents are from Charleston, West Virginia, which is the state capital. Backstory that really isn't that important.

But they were born in the same hospital, five days apart. But because my dad's family moved around a lot, they didn't meet until high school.

So they kind of had this pseudo high school sweetheart thing going on. And then they lost track of each other, and then they reconnected at a bar, I think in their late 20s, early 30s, in Charleston.

And at that time, my mom was a young adult in the town where she grew up, in a state capitol where someone could be ambitious and be up to stuff. She longed for that period of her life and what she had made up about what it meant to live that life.

Like, she had this idea of what living in Charleston as an adult, ambitious person was that wasn't actually factual.

She had kind of constructed this dream scenario out of partial fact from her former lived experiences and spent the rest of her life building an alternate reality that felt, I think, to her, like it was in touch with that part of her life.

I think for every instance where reality would have interrupted her worldview and made her face her stuff, that was another layer to her alternate reality she created. And so by the time I was old enough to know what was happening with her, she already lived on Earth, too.

Just give me a play by play of what you're saying every time something would happen.

Yeah, to give. To make her confront objective reality, for example. And I probably have a million things I've blocked that are good examples of it.

But something that comes to mind immediately is between being president of the PTA twice and also managing the. She also managed the production. The design and production of yearbooks for our elementary school every year.

And she was always late on deadlines like that. Always. Those kinds of activities exposed her to other parents being irritated with her for being late.

And she was able to craft an alternate reality that made them wrong for being irritated with her, or just made them wrong, period. She would actively rewrite the events and genuinely believe that that's what actually happened.

And she would actively rewrite the kind of a person a person is. Or she would actively rewrite what her deadlines for something were.

And, you know, this was before the age of, like, digital everything, so, you know, it's easy to fool yourself with deadlines and stuff. Anything that was ever in conflict with her, be it other humans or circumstances or whatever, she created complete earth.

Two facts that she genuinely, I think, believed were true to justify whatever she needed to feel about that. Vindicated, validated, not a problem.

I'm guessing your dad did not do that.

No, no, he just shut down.

Okay. We learn coping from our parents.

Yeah.

Or our caregivers. You are a person of integrity, I hope. I mean, yeah, you know, I've known those terrible jokes, but how do you process that? How do you.

You take that in?

As a kid, I have spent most of my adult life contending with this specific dynamic of, you know, my mom created realities, and my dad learned to be suspicious of and doubtful of and resent the creation of those realities. I think. And some of this is me filling in what I think is true about how my dad processed this because he's not a talker like I am.

But what I carried with me into my young adulthood and still I think rides with me somewhere to this day is I'm always cautious about my visions of my greatest aspirations, the most favorable description of my accomplishments, or any of those kinds of things, because my mom genuinely created those things out of thin air. And my dad. My dad saw all of that as deeply problematic, which it was.

And to this day, the version of my dad in my head judges me for these aspirational thoughts more than probably he does in real life. But here's the thing.

Wait, there's. Because there's two different. What I hear you talking about with your mom is her narrative of the.

Past, and he thinks yours.

When you talk about aspirational thoughts, you're talking about what I aspire to, which is future.

Well, for my mom, it was present and future related based on the past, so current today situation when she had big dreams and visions for me, because I did. And I don't know if it started with me or her. I distinctly remember her buying a VHS tape about how to get your kid into Hollywood.

So, like, she had these aspirations that kind of mapped my own. I don't know if I had them first or she did.

But all of that kind of looks the same to my dad, you know, those unhealthy things and also positive aspirations and a more favorable sense of or understanding of what I've accomplished or what, you know, all that stuff.

And complicating that further is there's lots of mental health diagnoses on both sides of my family that include symptoms in the neighborhood of mania and hypomania. And so I have the knee jerk reaction to second guess my big thinking, you know, big talking, any of that stuff.

And an awareness that on both sides of my family, there's a propensity toward A disconnect from objective reality.

I have active conversations with myself sometimes, especially when I like when I have been trying to explain the significance of getting on the 100, especially to people I'm related to and in particular my dad. I second guess every word I use.

And my aunt actually told me relatively recently that my extended family doesn't really understand what I do and sometimes they think I'm having hypomanic episodes when I explain it. And in one sense I was floored by it, but in another sense I was like, that tracks with the ongoing dynamic of all of this crap in my family.

I'm certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that that has been a handicap for me. I think if I didn't have that handicap, I would be further along today in my professional career and probably my personal life.

You know, they say though, that you're some of your greatest assets can be your Achilles heel if unchecked.

Absolutely.

Balance is the.

Oh, absolutely.

I think about something you and I were talking about before in the you know, your passion for having political discourse. And I don't think a lot of people. You said something to me actually, I'm not going to tell you what you said.

Do you remember what you said to me about. We were talking about how you prepare for your own points that you're going to end. Oh, yes.

I mean I aggressively attempt to prove myself wrong, especially things I believe strongly. Not because I expect to be wrong, I don't actually. But because I want to be prepared to.

A, I want to fully understand that topic or whatever as much as I can. B, I want to know if I'm wrong because I don't want to be going through life saying a thing that is objectively false.

I want to be prepared to defend. Makes it sound exclusively adversarial.

But I want to be able to discuss the thing with somebody who doesn't see the way I do and come from a place of certainty that is earned, that is validated by fact. That has helped me a lot in various aspects of my life. But it makes me a really good debater, knock on wood. I'll be debating later today.

It could go horribly.

I can't wait to heckle you in the crowd.

You better. I also have cultivated over time. See, now I'm starting to say hoity toity sounding things that make me doubt myself because I'm, you know, also just.

I'm just Southern.

It's only hoity toity in the South. In New York, you're still a hick. Is that Is that appropriate for me to say?

I don't think it's an objectively offensive term. Okay. And if it is, Hicks don't care. They don't. Usually don't. Oh, shoot. What was I saying? Something that sounded hoity toity.

Yeah.

It'll either come back or it won't. My grandmother, my mom's mom used to say, it must have been a lie if you have a brain fart like that. Must have been a lie, because in.

My brain lies a lot.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I just, I also want to be in touch with objective reality anyway because I know that I, one of my parents in particular, had a very weak skill for staying in touch with objective reality. I've cultivated over time, I think, a methodology for understanding the big picture of things so that I know how to prove or disprove myself.

There are people who are against gender affirming care for trans youth because they've heard a story or two that is really scary. Maybe they've met a person who validates that story or two. Anecdotes are not data. And here's where.

Big picture that matters, that helps me get to a place where I can trump anybody's opposition. The entire mainstream medical community in America is boldly, full, throatedly, unabashedly for gender affirming care for trans and non binary youth.

There is no greater standard than that. So people want to bring up individual, you know, reports they've read or stories they've heard, or data points that they've heard, whatever that is.

I don't have to know all their data points that they're going to cite because I can say the entire mainstream medical community sees everything you see and everything else. And they firmly support gender affirming care for trans non binary youth. Period. The end. There is nobody who trumps that.

And sometimes I like to cite this report UK called the Cass Report, does not trump the entire mainstream medical community.

And when I say entire mainstream medical community, I mean, you know, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological association, all of the major medical associations in America, the Endocrine Society, even the who. So I don't want to go to bat.

I mean, I'll do it on the fly if I need to, but I would prefer not to go to bat on an issue, especially if it's going to be recorded without having the big picture context and understanding who really is the most credible and most senior in the pecking order on this topic. And what do they say and why? You know, because it's possible for the experts to be wrong.

But generally speaking, we have now hundreds of years of evidence that in the medical community, wrong doesn't mean bad. Wrong means, oh, we learned more.

Now we're shifting as we learn more, and we don't stop doing, like, something like 20% of people who get knee replacements regret it. We don't stop doing knee replacements because most of the time, they increase quality of life.

You know, I have one of my best friends, her mom has needed desperately a knee replacement for, like, seven years to the point, and she is limping all because her brother had a terrible experience. Donna, I love you, and I know you're probably watching this.

You're gonna get a call from me soon because it's been a while since I've checked up on you, but that knee replacement is gonna happen.

It's funny you say that, because I think I try to give people a lot of grace. Because we are built to interact with the world around us based on our emotions, not our logic.

The part of our brain that does logic is the newest part of our brain, considering the evolution of the human brain, and it sits the filter between our conscious thoughts and actions. Are all the older parts of our brain, like the lizard part of our brain, you know, the lizard brain stuff and all that.

The logic part is the furthest away from where the decision gets made. So we have to actively choose to look at data as opposed to the feelings we get based on someone else's anecdotal experience.

If you've seen one person that you care about suffer as a result of this thing, that can be. Especially if you don't haven't disciplined yourself to. What does the data say? Which is a choice that most people don't.

Aren't even exposed to the possibility of making. Honestly, it makes sense that she would react that way.

Even if you went and said to her today, just to be clear, you know that 80 to 90% of people who get this, it improves their quality of life, and that's most likely what will happen to you. She'll probably still say, well, that's not what I saw, because how I feel feels Right. And we confuse our gut feelings and our intuition for fact.

Well, and it's. I mean, driving fear will drive us straight into absolutely pre sobriety, post sobriety.

Yeah, we literally evolved to react to fear. Yeah, we literally evolved to fear the unknown. We literally evolved to be cautious about things we're not super comfortable with.

That's fear evolved.

Yes, yes.

And we will go to great lengths to justify making that Unknown thing wrong circling back to gender for me care you know or allowing queer people to exist in your community or at all. You know, anything that is not already in the comfort zone of the populace is going to be problematic.

Which is why queer people have always known what it's like to be othered. And I don't think you and I are not going to live to see the day where that's not true anymore.

Because our society has a lot of evolving to do to get to a place where most people aren't driven not by those things that aren't familiar but rather thinking logically.

And the core is where you store up the memory of these are good decisions, these are bad decisions. Therefore when I have to make something similar in the future, this is where I go to decide whether or not it's what category.

It's where your knee jerk reactions are. Your autonomic functions, the things that happen below your conscious awareness. Yeah, all that stuff.

We see people going so much more rapidly into a change of how they make decisions in this advent of the echo chamber of social media because so much quicker the message is getting repeated. So if it's getting repeated so many times over and over and over and over, it gets hardwired that much quicker into that center part of the brain.

Yeah, that's generally broad strokes. Yes.

We actually did a research project on this and it's published at www.I'm right your bashem.com I don't want to leave off with your mom just yet. High functioning very people in community made mention to you. You started to notice things. Dad decided. How old were you again when dad.

That I was in like I was like 8, 9, 10, something like that.

What happened?

Our family physician had already figured out that both of my parents were alcoholics.

And he was good enough at his job to know that my dad had the intellectual and emotional intelligence capacity to thoughtfully interact with that dynamic and my mom didn't. He could tell that my mom. I'm putting words in his mouth. I don't know exactly this is what he thought.

But more or less he could tell that she didn't have the capacity to quit.

And I think what that means is he could tell she'd already divorced herself enough from an attachment to Earth one reality that the ship had already sailed for her. Cause he knew she would never quit. She's also a very bold personality and did not like being wrong about anything.

So that might have been part of it too. But you know, but she was already creating an alternate reality by Then, which.

Is typical for an alcoholic. I mean, so many of us mimic personality disorder as well before we get sober. Because I mean, like, yeah, kind of have to.

Dad may have been the problem drinker category. Not full blown, I mean like full blown alcohol standpoint, but making that choice.

Wow.

Do you think that she resented him for abandoning her in there? Because that.

That I think she did. There was a conscious awareness of resentment. And I also think there was more than that.

But I remember her saying things to me usually later in the evening that a parent wouldn't normally say to their kid that in hindsight were clearly things motivated by her resentment of him. And I don't remember what all of them were in part because I don't think I want to maybe.

I do think that she held both subconsciously, I think, trying to force a reality where the two of them still had a healthy, peerage loving relationship and her resentment of him leaving her behind in that place that she thought they were going to live in for forever.

And I actually learned recently, I didn't know this and I don't know how I missed it, but my dad told me recently that he had been sleeping on a couch in the basement for like 15 years or something like that before they divorced. I didn't remember that at all. And I did all kinds of things sneaking out of the house when I was a teenager, and I didn't notice that at all.

And he didn't notice it, apparently, I guess. So there were unavoidable facts that demonstrated that everything was broken. Some of her was able to see that. And I think she resented him for that.

It was all his fault, always. She had no blame at all whatsoever. And that only complicated things further.

Did you know that death was coming?

She had almost died a few times to my memory. Each of those times it looked like she wasn't going to make it. And then she did. And by that point her mother, my grandmother, was living with us.

And by that point, when my mom did die, it looked like she was going to come back again. And her mother, my grandmother, who was like such a proper polite person, said, not again, I can't take this anymore.

So we all knew that where this was eventually headed. And when I say I don't wish she was alive partially, that's what I mean. You know, I don't. I.

It's not as if who she would be if she were alive today would be some version of someone anyone would want to be around.

Do you think that she would want to be alive today?

If I think she would both want to and not want to. I think that she always had. There were two sides of her that weren't really. That didn't really discuss things with each other.

One of them wanted to be there and one of them didn't.

No. I think that you hit the nail on the head. Shame.

Yeah.

I don't want to. I don't want to cut out before we talk about it. Huge.

Yes.

Your experience with this situation and how did it play out? How does it play out today?

A personal value I have chosen to adopt is that shame is an entirely useless experience feeling. It has absolutely no positive value. If it ends up leading, you know, having a positive impact on something, it's. It's happenstantial.

It's not because shame is useful or good or any in any way. I have spent my adult life trying to unpeel myself from. Shame is a thing that appears, and especially when it does.

If it motivates me in some way, I don't want to be run by shame. Nobody should. I remember. I distinctly remember Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, among other things, wrote a book.

He had a whole chapter about how shame. We need more shame in life. If we did, there'd be fewer teen pregnancies. Shame is not a good motivator for any choice at all, whatsoever.

It doesn't solve any problems. Feelings are valid, but that doesn't. It doesn't make them accurate. If you feel shame, it's already here. It's fine. Process it. Let it go.

Decisions should not be made based on shame ever.

Way too many people get shame and guilt completely confused.

Yes, they are unrelated. Unrelated. And also guilt has. There's more than just. There's guilt as a feeling and then there's objective blame or guilt.

I mean, it's really kind of complex and we tend to distill all that down into, I feel shame or I don't. And if I did something other people think is bad and I don't feel shame, that could be bad. It's a trap.

Everywhere you go, guilt and shame and all of that, none of it is useful.

I would argue that guilt guides us. Yeah.

Yes. It's a guidepost. It's a sign. But it shouldn't be a core feeling, I don't think. And if it is, I think something needs to change.

Either what you're doing or how you feel about it.

No. Yeah. Not a core feeling, but it's data.

Yeah. That's how all our feelings are, though, really.

And that's how we should Think about ourselves is everything we think and feel and experience is this organic machine of our mind and body reacting to what's happening around it? And it makes the most sense.

If you can step back from all that for a second and look at it as data, like, what's happening and why and how can this change? Do I want it to change? What does it mean without having feelings about it for a second.

Once you start thinking things that make you feel bad, feelings, you have left the land of logical thinking. And if you can't get out of that, you are done thinking for today, Period.

Words of wisdom to live by.

There's basically no exception to that.

Mine is dinner time. Almost always.

I'm like, yeah, mine's. My meds wear off in the evening.

So I wanted to add on the same thing. Shame is bad data.

Yes. Right.

Guilt says I did something wrong or, you know, like a consequence of whatever.

Right. Or I think I did, and maybe I need to examine that.

Right. Shame is I am inherently bad or evil or corrupt or just whatever. And there's no redeeming. There's no hope. And shame.

No, there's no. And shame would be more useful if it existed on a scale that on the other side was somehow productive, but it doesn't.

If you find yourself run by shame, you are selling out on your ability to be a more evolved human. But most of us are, you know, have some version of being run by unproductive, illogical feelings.

And that's a one of the things that we grow in our lifetimes. I cannot imagine a situation where there isn't a more productive thinking framework and feeling framework than applying shame to a situation.

If you feel shame, you are again outside the land of logical thinking, and you're no longer thinking in a framework that leads to something positive. All you're doing is punishing yourself. There's a negative consequence payoff for you. If you crave feeling wrong.

If you feel like that's all you deserve.

Yes.

You can't find there's no other future you see for yourself. Yes, you're in your own prison.

We all have our greatest hits of the things we feel.

Negative things we feel almost always informed by some payoff that isn't actually objectively a positive, but something that you want to believe to be true.

The person that's watching right now has family member, a mom specifically. That hit me so hard, so deep. I don't know how many people I've talked to, but it's been very few that had a mom specifically.

That was A severe alcoholic, that to the. To the bitter end, there's a million things you could say.

But if you were to speak to that person, I always say, that person who thinks they're the only one watching, the only one listening, what would you say to them?

It's not yours to fix, and there's almost nothing you can do to change it except be honest. Your job is to build a full and complete life that does not require that person to be sober.

Along the way, there will be opportunities for you to be honest about why, you know, in my case, my mother doesn't get to be a part of this part of my life. That is the extent of your job. You cannot. You literally cannot rescue someone from their own addiction. All you can do.

Let me be really careful about this. You can give them evidence that hopefully they can use to heal themselves. But that does not mean the evidence is your responsibility or your job.

It just means that in the normal course of your life, when it comes up, you're honest, and that's what you can give them. You cannot save someone from addiction. You know, you can't save anybody who doesn't want to be saved. And if they're not out of.

If they're not in recovery, they don't want to be saved. Your job is just to give them facts without complicating your own life and feelings as much as possible.

And they, on their own time, whatever that looks like, can handle it. If they can handle it, they're the only ones who can. Oftentimes, when you hear somebody's sobriety story, it's about when blank happened.

That was a piece of information that was sobering enough for them, pun intended, to get them to change, to pursue change. But you can't do that. I used to feel guilty that I wasn't able to save my mom.

It is absolutely counterintuitive to every other malady in life. We're taught to lean in and love and to help people we care about. And you absolutely love someone to death. It's purely enabling.

Yes, exactly. It could be making things worse, in a way.

I'm a very open person, and I don't generally walk around with a lot of boundaries with people, but one thing I'm very familiar with is I can love you up into my boundary, and we can interact on that basis. But there's a line where it becomes unhealthy for me, and either there or further, it becomes me enabling you.

I can live my life and consistently have this boundary. Actually, when my mom was still alive, I created a boundary. We just don't speak. If I can tell you've been drinking.

She was never gonna be able to use that information to help herself get sober. I don't think. I think she was beyond the point of return at that point.

Boundaries. Boundaries aren't for them.

No, they're for you. And it doesn't mean shutting yourself off. It doesn't mean starving yourself in some way, maintaining a relationship.

Nobody's helping you.

Yes. And so that you can thrive, so that you can live a fuller life. And if you don't have that boundary, you end up.

It's kind of like a hole in the bottom of a boat. You know, you end up bleeding, you know your air and it sucks in water because you haven't plugged that hole. And those holes come from time to time.

You plug them. But you have to have boundaries so that you can live a healthy life. The best way for someone in your life to get sober, if it.

If it's because of you at all, is because you are living your best life and they see how little of it they can be a part of or they wish they could have more. And you don't give them that. And you're just, you know, you just like. And for me, it's like just sober minded and unemotional.

Like, I would love for you to be a part of that part of my life, but that can't happen until you're sober. That's all.

That's the biggest thing. And I'll say that just to reinforce that I wasn't able to get sober. My parents, with all they knew, because they had already dealt with it.

With my dad's father, with my oldest brother. I mean, with all the knowledge they had in their head. They had the hardest time saying no to me, the youngest child.

When they finally said no was when I hit my bottom.

Yes.

And I was able to actually feel what I needed to feel in order to accept help purely. As long as I think I've got options, I'm gonna keep going.

I mean, that's the thing, is the earlier you are in your relationship, your acknowledged relationship with an alcoholic, I feel like the harder it is, but the sooner you can create boundaries, the more likely they are to benefit from it. Not that it's yours to create. That benefit is not your responsibility.

But if you want to be supportive of someone in your life who needs to get help, Boundaries that are clear and maintained earlier make it more likely that if they're going to get something out of your relationship that inspires them to sober up, that it will actually happen and that it will take. The longer you wait to create healthy boundaries for guilt or shame or whatever reason, the less likely that.

Not that information of my son, my friend, whatever, won't talk to me when I'm in this way, the longer you wait for that to be true, the less likely it is to matter.

That's right. Comedy and politics. Comedy is connection.

Yeah.

I think in a different way.

Yeah.

And what you do in political discourse and analysis is also leaning in because it's a thoughtful way that you're doing it.

I think most people benefit from being able to deal with serious topics with the ability to laugh actively activated within them. And that is true for the most tragic and most serious things.

It is because it makes life easier, in a way, but it also keeps more parts of your brain active, which makes you better at solving problems.

Also, joy is the most vulnerable emotion that we can experience.

Yeah, we need each other. I like to say. We need to find each other, not fight each other.

We need each other, and making each other bad is the most caveman thing we could possibly do and the opposite of what we need if we're gonna. If our society, if our species is gonna make it.

My fellow evolved caveman, I'm so grateful for you.

Likewise.

Thank you for having me, Brian. Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation all over the place in the best ways.

That's how I like it.

I hope that the rest of your trip in Nashville is half as good as this was.

It's only. You know what? This is the great way to, you know, punctuate, like a great. A great moment and a great day.

This is just the highlight for me, but I may go drink and yell at people later. It's unrelated. Don't worry about it.

And with that, thank you again. And also follow Ryan.

Ryan Basham on all the platforms. I try to grab that every time a platform becomes a thing. Ryan Basham.

Yes.

Instagram is my main, though.

Oh, my gosh. Thank you all to being here for this episode. I know this episode changed some people's lives, and I would love to hear from you.

Please follow us on all the platforms at the Patrick Husker show and share the show with some friends. Thanks again, and we'll see you next week.