Stories of Hope Worldwide w/ guest Joshua T Berglan
Welcome to everyone out there for another Stories of Hope Australia from behind closed doors, looking forward to seeing you all in person again soon, but I’ve been really privileged to be able to connect up with people from all over the world lately through a COVID. And I have another exceptional, story for you today. Ironically, it’s a story of addiction and many of you that know me to know that that’s something that’s really close to my heart having been through that myself. But because I counsel a lot of people that are struggling with drug addiction and especially meth, I wanted to get this guest on because he knows all about the trail of destruction that addiction can bring.
Kerrie Atherton
00:00:53
And just this morning, I had the sad news that one of the young men that I had been walking alongside for a long time had fallen too. You know, he’s died from this addiction. And so it’s really important to me this morning, more than ever to be able to get the story of hope out there, that there is hope after drug addiction. Joshua T Berglan he knows about addiction from all aspects. He was addicted to drugs, cocaine, meth, sex, everything. So he’s got an amazing story that he’s going to share with us today. And I hope that if you’re listening that you too can find hope and know that you too can make it, if you are suffering with addiction to anything.
Kerrie Atherton
00:01:42
So thank you for joining us, Josh, on stories of hope Australia from behind closed doors.
Joshua T Berglan
00:01:49
Thank you for the opportunity to be here
Kerrie Atherton
00:01:51
And welcome from America.
Joshua T Berglan
00:01:54
Thank you very much blessed to be here. Right?
Kerrie Atherton
00:01:59
So I’ve looked Thank you really, we were really looking forward to your story today. Thanks. Josh
Joshua T Berglan
00:02:05
Oh, you were just telling me off like that. Yeah, I know. You’ve kind of let me forward, but I was like, wow, how is she gonna do this? So, and it, so it’s interesting. And I don’t like it to be asked questions. I don’t like to talk about myself and I have a talk show. So go figure a way.
Kerrie Atherton
00:02:27
Are you a guide? That’s what speaks from the heart though. And that’s what our stories about who gets lumps. Right?
Joshua T Berglan
00:02:33
Well, and you know, first and foremost, I’m going to start this off by saying that I don’t give two craps what you’ve done in your life. I don’t care who you’ve heard, who you have abused, including yourself. I don’t care what’s happened to you. I don’t care how many times you have been to prison. How many times you’ve been divorced? None of that really, really matters because in the end you had an opportunity to use all of it, to use every single one of those things. You have an opportunity to use it for good.
Joshua T Berglan
00:03:12
And, but it starts with confession. It starts with the truth. Nothing in your life will ever be what it was intended to be until you live in truth. The secrets that we carry have carried the secret betrayals secret hurts is a secret pain that you carry. It all gets to be used for. Good. And, but it won’t be used for good until you release it. So I’m going to start off there because I lived my entire life in the shadows. My double life has a double life.
Joshua T Berglan
00:03:54
Umm, I was afforded every privilege you can imagine. My mom was mrs. America. I father was a rock star, a amazing businessman. I grew up with every luxury you can imagine being a white guy in America can afford and allow to spend all my days at the country club from the age of five, until I was 17, had every privilege you could imagine that’s it. But even the privileged to get to deal with such things. When I was seven years old, my sister has disappeared and I thought that it was something that I did shortly after they disappeared.
Joshua T Berglan
00:04:43
Ah, the physical abuse from my father started and then I was molested by two men and then later a female babysitter. And then later more men yet when the physical abuse, the sexual abuse, the abandonment issues, all of those things that it all happen to all really in one the same year as when everything started, I was told that if I ever said a word that I would be killed, it could be hurt. Things would happen in my family. I’ll tell the whole world that you’re a faggot and so on. So I didn’t say ever say anything.
Joshua T Berglan
00:05:24
He never voiced what was happening to me and ever since I was little and even now at 41 years old, I’m a pretty loud charismatic, a high energy guy. And so to silence that created a lot of poison and a lot of angst and rage inside of me. Thank God for sports because sports became this outlet that I was on an ABL. I was able to unleash my fury on other people, American football or baseball. I’ve got kicked out a soccer because I was hurting people, baseball. I was hurting people.
Joshua T Berglan
00:06:04
A football seems like a natural fit, even though randomly, it was a good golfer. My temper somehow did it affect my golf, except for when I got in trouble for throwing golf clubs, that people, it was full of rage, anger, but I was able to get away with it because there was also a charming new how to talk my way out of everything. So I never had any accountability for any of the bad behavior I had because I could talk my way out of it. And it was a great athlete. Rage fueled my athletic success up until college American football. But after a football ended, I had no where to put my rage.
Joshua T Berglan
00:06:46
A lot of my rage STEM from the fact that I couldn’t talk about what was happening to me, but also that it was having horrible night terrors and of what would happen to me After sports ended, discovered ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine, marijuana, alcohol, all at the same time. And what I noticed with that is that then the, the drugs, a maid, the nightmares become fantasies and all of the things that I feared and I was scared of. But I was also curious about became highlights in my brain of things that I wanted to explore.
Joshua T Berglan
00:07:31
So back when chatrooms for started on AOL started seeking sex. I started going to a party is going to bathhouses is going to anywhere that I could explore sexually. And as technology has progressed that made sex access and much, much easier. I live this double life. Ah, I was so codependent that I needed a woman yet. Even when every time I had a woman, I would get it. I would sneak off and do drugs and then go find random men to have sex with or transsexuals or you name it sometimes I didn’t, I wasn’t even sure.
Joshua T Berglan
00:08:17
I didn’t care. I was just trying to feed this beast inside of me.
2
00:08:20
He
Joshua T Berglan
00:08:22
Had no respect for any other people that I was with. I cheated on every single person I’ve ever dated or was married to putting their health at risk. First wife ended with me, not just, I just quit coming home because I would do cocaine all night long or are they just after my office, do cocaine, not just quit, showing up, lost the right to see my twins when they were two years old, they are 15 now to give them up for adoption, it was the right to do, but I had no business being in their life because I was a junkie, Got married again to a woman that, you know, eventually it was funny because all these secrets that I kept, like, I really wanted to share that with somebody.
Joshua T Berglan
00:09:09
I wanted to tell somebody. So instead of telling my wife, I would tell prostitutes, that’s when I ended up in jail the first time thinking that somebody was a prostitute and they were a cop, Then the DUI jail got remarried to somebody that I shared my secret life with. And she was cool about exploring with me. And so we would do drugs and bring other men into the bedroom. And eventually she fell in love with me so much that she decided she didn’t want to do that anymore. And I said, okay, yeah, that’s fine. Yeah. OK. I’ll be fine. That’s a big deal.
Joshua T Berglan
00:09:49
I took about a week and I was cheating on her again. I got caught. She stayed with me. Then I got caught again. She stayed with me. Then he got caught again.
2
00:10:03
At times she left,
Joshua T Berglan
00:10:07
Ran into somebody that I started dated before I met her. And I actually told that woman that I have no business being a relationship with anybody and literally broke up with her. And a month later I was engaged with the woman that I get married too.
2
00:10:23
Right?
Joshua T Berglan
00:10:24
The, a M that woman loved my demons. She helped feed them for me. We were doing cocaine or meth about four or five days a week, bringing partners in every one of those times, sometimes three or four or five, six, or even seven different partners. Every time we did drugs,
2
00:10:48
Right?
Joshua T Berglan
00:10:53
That even that relationship with her, I, I couldn’t stop my double life. I couldn’t stop the things that these, these cravings in this, this beast that was inside of me, that I just wanted more and more and more and more and more ever. When I started traveling, sold my soul, my healthcare company came into a bunch of money, bought a skincare line. I started traveling all over the country, hanging out with plastic surgeons and celebrities and its got access to more party Cheated on her. A bunch got away with it until I didn’t.
Joshua T Berglan
00:11:34
She stayed with me too.
2
00:11:35
Right.
Joshua T Berglan
00:11:38
But the consequences of my life in that respect was that she had a broken heart and she liked to drink her rage when she drank. And then of course fuel, add some cocaine too. It caused a lot of a really brutal, awful fights. One of the fights that I avoided jail, even though the cops and the ambulance came, she got mad sort of throwing glass at me. And I moved out of the way. He grabbed her and through her, on the ground, as hard as I could and broke her ribs, she couldn’t move.
Joshua T Berglan
00:12:21
And I was scared to death because the cops came and had questions. Of course. And this is in Los Angeles and
2
00:12:33
Right.
Joshua T Berglan
00:12:33
She didn’t deserve it, but she covered for me weeks later, another fight, more violence cops didn’t show up that
2
00:12:46
Time.
Joshua T Berglan
00:12:48
Two weeks later, another fight cop showed up. When I went to jail, she went home back to Oklahoma where we were from. And then I went off the rails, just, I said, screw cocaine. Like I just gave you the meth started injecting meth Became even more out of control. If you can believe it. My health had shut down completely. He was losing everything, But yet I’m still calling her in Oklahoma, confessing my love for her and how I’ve changed and doing the right thing now.
Joshua T Berglan
00:13:30
But truthfully I was having sex with different men and women and going to bath houses and sex clubs and doing all kinds of ungodly things. She came back to California. She believed all of my life. She came back to celebrate, started drinking with friends while she was on her way back. He had already had the cocaine ready to go as soon as she arrived. So I’m wasted already high on cocaine. She’s now on cocaine and then gets wasted and more cocaine. Bring the party back to my house. And I’m like, I get hungry randomly.
Joshua T Berglan
00:14:14
So I’m going to go walk out the door to go get food. I don’t say I’m leaving anything. She’s there with my friend. And I just walk out. By the time I walked back in the door to try to go to the McDonald’s Dr through, by the way, with no car cops sent me home because I needed a car to go through the drive-through, who would have thought by the time I walked back in the door, she came right at me and he started accusing me of going to have sex with someone else. And that 15 minutes that I was gone, I didn’t really like the confrontation that much. And I pushed her. She came at me through her back on the ground. Lots of screening cops came, both, went to jail.
Joshua T Berglan
00:15:01
I was so high. So drunk the two eight balls that night. I mean collectively with three people, we did two apples had finished at at least a bottle of tequila and I’m angry and mad. But then when I, when we’re going through the booking process, I, I, I think it’s a really brilliant idea at the time to tell them that I have HIV because I had found out not too long before that, that I’ve had HIV. She also chose to stay with me after that. And, but I told them that thinking I was going to get special privileges, but they actually put me in the psych ward and put me in isolation.
Joshua T Berglan
00:15:50
Here I am in this really small cell. I can’t see anything on the side of me in to see the small little window right in front of me, but I can hear the Madmen screams of people. Just look, if you can match, if you can try to imagine what an insane asylum is like, imagine that can then crank up the volume 20 to 20 times. Just keep twisting the loud deafening, echoing vibrating in my spine. Every scream that they may be cursing, that the guards cursing at me taunting me.
Joshua T Berglan
00:16:35
All right, 24 hours in however much time. It’s really hard to tell, but I know it was at least a day. And finally their cocaine and alcohol is wearing off the noise. Continued. And I had no idea how it was going to distract myself. I thrown away at my life. I begged my mom to bail me out of jail. Like she had five other times before she didn’t this time, it started to realize that I had wasted my life. And I became angry sort of begging the guards for something to read because they wouldn’t give me anything to read.
Joshua T Berglan
00:17:18
Right. And you know, they wouldn’t give me anything to read and I’m like, I need something to distract myself. This is a key, I don’t know if I’m going to do it. He couldn’t find anything. He was like, why he could kill myself. But I couldn’t find anything. My fingernails weren’t long enough. Like, what am I going to do? It didn’t even have a bed sheet. And for some reason, I don’t know if it was from all of the prison shows I used to watch, but it was like, ah, you have to give me a Bible. So I asked the guard for a Bible. He goes, yeah, I’ll be right back. Be right back in jail means you in a few hours. But they’ve came back with the Bible here on the breed, trying to read this little Gideon Bible, reading Genesis, what is this?
Joshua T Berglan
00:18:08
How does this even make sense? And I went to a revelation. I never read Revelation’s in jail. Just letting you know, it’s a horrible idea. It was like crap. But am I gonna do a bit of reading? I know what to som. Oh my God. Okay. This is, OK got the Proverbs sort of, you have reading Proverbs like line by line going, I’m doing that wrong. I’m doing that long. I’m really doing in that wrong, that wrong, that wrong. Jeez, what have I done with my life?
2
00:18:40
And then I just get so angry
Joshua T Berglan
00:18:51
And you, why would you change me? Why would you fix me? Like everybody else just started screaming at God. I was so angry. So many times that I change. Let’s take this from me. Like I don’t want to be this way anymore. I don’t want to be an abuser. I don’t want to be an addict. I don’t want to be a junkie. I don’t want to be an embarrassment to my family.
2
00:19:15
Right?
Joshua T Berglan
00:19:15
Screaming, bloody murder at God. Why would you fix me?
2
00:19:20
And you have to forgive your father. How in the hell
Joshua T Berglan
00:19:29
Am I supposed to do that?
2
00:19:33
Because that happened to him too.
Joshua T Berglan
00:19:39
The very first time that I’ve ever heard God talk to me in my life.
2
00:19:41
You know,
Joshua T Berglan
00:19:45
All of those words, I heard it. I started to understand that not only the end of this man, that I hate it with all the reason why my sisters disappeared. The cheating on my mom, the all of the public and embarrassments, all of these things that I hated my father for being inappropriate with my sisters being, you know, abusing me, abusing my mom, cheating on my mom. Not they never being good enough. Never been able to make them happy to be him blaming me for destroying his house. Instead it was one of my girlfriends when it was actually a lady, he was having affairs with her husband, the destroyed his house.
Joshua T Berglan
00:20:27
When he blamed me and his own me, after that, he never apologized
2
00:20:33
Hated it.
Joshua T Berglan
00:20:34
I showed up an hour late to his funeral, high on cocaine.
2
00:20:40
I hate
Joshua T Berglan
00:20:40
It in that much. I mean a mockery of as death. Cause they didn’t care that it was dead. I wanted them to die. But now I realize that I’d become not just like him, I’d become worse than he ever dreamed of being. That allows me to start having compassion for him to the point that I started asking my father for forgiveness. Dad, would you forgive me? Sorry for making a mockery of your funeral. I’m sorry. I didn’t spend time with you as you are dying from melanoma. He was suffering. I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry.
Joshua T Berglan
00:21:21
Sorry for a line to you. I’m sorry for lying to your face. When you ask me how I’d remember you. And I told you that I would remember you as an awesome man that did the best he could. And it was a lie. I begged him to forgive me. And it was in that forgiveness that I felt this light start to kind of like chip away at these boulders in my shoulder, it was weeping and a set back down and started reading the Bible again and went back to Proverbs than it was like, wow, man, I really had been doing this wrong.
Joshua T Berglan
00:22:03
And then all of a sudden, I remember I hear this name. And then I remember it was a guy I had partied with and high school that in bed and rested with him a few times, not going to jail, but it had been arrested a few times with him that got sober and he end up starting this recovery program called good fight, a good five ministries. And was it like an AA for, you know, Bible based AA? Who is John? Okay. So I went through, when I started reading John, it was the reading Jon that I actually started to understand who Jesus was and what he did for us.
Joshua T Berglan
00:22:50
And it doesn’t matter if you believe it or not. The truth is that what happened next is very real and very true. And I can’t deny it even if I wanted to there’s times that I wish I could deny it. But the truth is is that as I’m reading it and I’m realizing the sacrifice that this, this manmade, and I didn’t want to believe it. I never really believed it before, but I’m like reading it and trying to it and actually like comprehending that somebody would die for me. It just started weeping.
Joshua T Berglan
00:23:31
And it started asking my head, the creator sort of asking him him to forget me. And I started begging him to forgive me. And as I, as I’m begging him, I started to get these flashbacks of the visions I got when I was first molested the vision, the vision after being beaten too, to just nothing like every trauma in my life afterwards, I would get a vision. And I started to understand what those visions were.
Joshua T Berglan
00:24:14
Those visions of me doing these things. Since I was a child on where God’s showing me what was possible, how could I just, if I just choose him. And so I chose him, I chose him and that moment, and I said, I’m done running from what you called me to do. I will serve you. Do you even behind bars? My life was no longer in my own. Take my life. I’m yours. And that moment I got knocked on my butt and lifted up at the same time in the craziest most
2
00:25:00
Right
Joshua T Berglan
00:25:03
Earth. I know who are like body shaking, electrifying moment of my life. I swear to you. It was like lightning shot through my spine out of my But back through my head and then just weeping, right?
2
00:25:24
<inaudible>
Joshua T Berglan
00:25:30
Oh, my life changed forever. Or in that moment. And it had committed that in my life was no longer in my own. And I was going to live my life in service from now on. It was looking at five years in jail and it committed that even behind bars that I was going to serve him and do what I was called to do. And I knew what I was supposed to do. And I just ran from it. I got out of jail after the fifth day and under the streets of Los Angeles and my life has not been the same sense. It’s not been easy.
Joshua T Berglan
00:26:11
My life has been a journey. I’ve had relapses I’ve failed publicly and miserably, but I learned just how powerful truth is because part of what I was called to do was to start a talk show. Now I have a media company now and my own network and it’s great. And I’m very fortunate. We’ve just started two weeks ago and like blown away with how well it’s doing. And it’s, it’s, it’s all God. But when I realized tho through this journey over last five years, is that 98% of the truth is not the truth.
Joshua T Berglan
00:26:56
Meaning I was sharing my heart and talking about all the stuff that I’ve been through and, and, and, and all the bad stuff I did, but I wasn’t sharing everything I wasn’t talking about. I would share four of the six times I went to jail and I would share, I wouldn’t share that had HIV publicly. And you see, not only did I hold myself prisoner by that, not only did I hold the people that love me prisoner, but I also blocked all of the blessings in my life that were intended for me because truth people say the truth will set.
Joshua T Berglan
00:27:38
You free without understanding how many layers there is too. The truth. The truth is a universal law. Whether you believe in God or not, it is a universal law. You can’t heal a wound that you’re not bringing light to a wound like a lie, like an addiction, like an affliction. If you don’t bring it to light that it won’t heal. All right. 98% of the truth has not the truth. If you do not heal, if you do not commit to doing the work, to heal your wounds and you don’t have to do it all at once.
Joshua T Berglan
00:28:22
So it doesn’t happen that way. But the commitment to do the work, to heal, to face yourself to it, it starts with truth. But if you commit to that truth, well, you start to realize is all of these things that you are ashamed of actually get it to be the greatest blessing of your life. HIV is the greatest blessing of my life. I am healed. Now the fact that I’ve been to jail six times, the fact that I have been bankrupt twice, the fact that I’ve been homeless, the fact that, you know, borderline PR have borderline personality disorder are in did it’s the greatest gift in my life. And its very much a thorn in my side. It’s still like, I still wrestle with BPD borderline personality disorder.
Joshua T Berglan
00:29:08
It’s ma it’s like Paul in the Bible. But for me it’s BPD and it’s demonic. I find it real demons every single day, but it doesn’t stop me from making my dreams come true. But it started with truth. It started with no secrets. It started with the commitment to doing the work. But here’s the thing you’re never going to be perfect. You’re never going to have it all figured out. Even in sobriety, you’re going to be addicted to something, whether it’s taco’s or sex or whatever, like you’re going to change and working out can be something to help you to get addicted, iced tea.
Joshua T Berglan
00:29:50
Your brain is wired that way. But the truth is that you also get to use that in a good way. There’s gonna be you, you, you, you we’ll never have it all figure it out, but that’s okay. Because the more willing you are to be honest and authentic and show up in serve, it all gets to be used for good life has not about being perfect. God loves it. When you screw up ’cause he gets to show up and use it. You get to see some pretty cool miracles. When you go, I can’t do this. Like I can’t do this on my own. I surrender like die will be done.
Joshua T Berglan
00:30:34
Take this for me. Okay. I screwed up. I, I curse somebody out or you forgive me. I’m sorry. And the sooner you ask for forgiveness for whoever it is that you’ve harmed the faster that God gets a step in and use it. Life is not about being perfect, but trying to pretend that you are perfect by hiding all of the secrets. And now I don’t want people to know about this and that, that will keep you further away from your greatness. That’s inside of you.
Joshua T Berglan
00:31:15
Every single one of you are created for a very specific purpose. And that is even with your mental disorder or a mental uniqueness. As I like to call it, even with your addiction, even with your narcissism, your unfaithfulness, like it all gets to be used for good because your story, your confession, your truth, you see everything that you go through in life. It’s not even about you, your trauma, as much as it sucks.
Joshua T Berglan
00:31:55
It’s not for you. You are meant to live. This is the beauty of God. If we, our core of our creator is that he knew that life was going to suck. Sometimes it was going to hurt. It was going to be painful. My heart’s we’re going to get broken. We’re going to be abused and traumatized or we’d have injustices in the world. He knew all of that. That’s why he gave us an opportunity to two, to heal from it and everything that we heal from everything that we set ourselves free from, we get to use to help set other people free in the cool thing is it gets to be the revenge on the enemy.
Joshua T Berglan
00:32:40
The enemy that set out to hurt you. The enemy that’s set out to, to hurt you and break your heart, that it gets to be the revenge. You don’t have to lash out at anybody. You don’t have to, to, to go hurt anybody. Your healing get to be the ultimate revenge, your love, your joy, your happiness. That is the revenge that you want.
Kerrie Atherton
00:33:12
Oh, thanks heaps. Josh. That was absolutely incredible. Such a brave ripe story. And I hope that it really touches people out there. All of the things that you touched on about your story are things that so many people battel with. And like you said, Cape in the dark and I live in shame from And childhood sexual abuse. It is one of those things. And, and one of those things that are, that leads greatly to, to people battling addiction’s, but that is right. What about we tape? And the dark and hidden could never be dealt with.
Kerrie Atherton
00:33:53
And it’s only when it’s out in the light that we can start to heal. So thank you so much, Josh, for your amazing story of hope today and thank you to everyone that’s been listening and see you next time.
