Adrenaline Junkie Finds Peace, Recovery In Nature
Morgan O’Kane and his husky Coo
You can learn more about Morgan O’Kane and his music here.
TRANSCRIPT
The Making Of An Adrenaline Junkie
Morgan O’Kane grew up at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Charlottesville, Virginia. His parents were artists who introduced him to the outdoors at a young age taking him camping at a place called Saint Mary’s Gorge.
And we just kept going back there. And then as I got older, I started skating and then mountain biking and then rock climbing. And it just became like my outdoor life just consumed all and it's all I wanted to do. As a kid, I was an athlete. My body, I think, and my mind always craved that kind of exercise and energy and drive to like climb mountains.
His dad got a job teaching art at a private school so that Morgan could enroll and get what he thought would be a better education than what was offered at the public school.
But it kind of backfired and became really hard for me. And just like the economic gap in the students, among other things, and I was held back and that kind of killed my spirit.
As Morgan grew to be a teenager, things at home became more volatile with his parents often fighting.
A lot of my like drive to like rock climb and my, it's kind of like adrenaline addiction. It was kind of turned in, shifted into like drinking in my ninth grade.
The principal expelled Morgan for selling weed, so he transferred to a public school where he had an easier time fitting in. He went from being bullied to revered overnight.
All of a sudden I was a new kid and all the cool kids liked me. And that was a new thing for me. But then as soon as I got to know them, it was like, actually these people really aren't that interesting. And the people I gravitated towards were kids with dreadlocks and mohawks and it's like that kind of almost troubled children that obviously had things happening outside of their perfect little worlds.
His new friends shared Morgan’s desire to escape from reality.
The feeling I got when I would go skiing or like these other things, it was like I would work for those things, but when I drank, it's like, oh, it was just like right there in a bottle. I can just be excited like this easily. And then it was also like skipping school and like doing, it was like the adrenaline, you know? It was like the high from like skipping school and like doing those kinds of things and drinking underage and… hiding and that was kind of all part of it, the allure of it
LAUREL: Mm-hmm. What did you drink?
MORGAN: Whatever I get my hands on, whatever I could get, whoever to buy for me… That was also part of it. It was like a mission every time.
During his senior year of high school he was given a writing assignment to answer the question: what do you want to be in your life?
The last, like, paper I wrote in high school at like the screw up kids school. It was like, what do you want to be in your life? And I was like, I want to be a mountaineer like backcountry skier with a husky. And I wrote like a whole essay on it. Yeah, that was like the dream before it turned to something else.
This is a story about how Morgan lost sight of that dream then years later found it again … with the help of a dog. This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.
Freedom Rider
Morgan O’Kane had it tough as a teenager. His parents divorced, he skipped school to get high, and not one but three high schools expelled him.
And then there was the only other school left was like the halfway house to juvie jail pretty much. It was like, where all the screw up kids go. And it was just like a place for them to be during the day. You don't really learn anything there, but the teachers there were great. They were just like having to deal with all of these like crazy kids.
On his way to school he’d put in a tape and crank the volume.
Music kind of guided me through that whole time in my life. Like, I mean, everything from like the Dead Kennedys, Led Zeppelin to the Pogues …And it just like kind of drove my, my attitude and feelings towards my life, you know, like anger and frustration.
During my parents divorce, some things came to light that I hadn't known about, and it kinda sent me over the edge. It was just like, it was enough to make anyone just like lose it, lose the plot a little bit.
Life at home had become unbearable for Morgan.
MORGAN: So a friend of mine from Philadelphia showed up in town and he had ridden a freight train down from Philly, and he was like, "'Hey, I'm riding trains across the country. So you wanna come?' I was like, let's do it. And like the next day I just left and I didn't look back.
LAUREL: What did that feel like to hop on this train?
MORGAN: It was an incredible feeling. It was like I had control of my life all of a sudden. I was free. I was leaving all of these things behind.
But just within a few days the excitement wore off when he and his buddy got stranded in West Virginia.
We didn't have any money or food. And we were like, had to get off the train and we were walking and it was just like, I was like, what am I doing? Like we're gonna have to sleep in this like, like these woods tonight with nothing. … There's a moment where like fear sets in. It's like, what am I doing?... And we got to this river and all of a sudden it was the 4th of July and I didn't even know that. And all these fireworks went up in the air and like it was a river there and they were like reflected in the river. And it was this massive moment when I was like, oh, things are going to be okay.
So he hopped another train, then another, and started meeting other people his age who were doing the same thing.
…pretty much for the same reasons. And that like things weren't working out where they came from. And they were just searching. And they were a bunch of punk kids usually. And they became my family. It was like you would see someone on the street, a street kid, never met them before in your life and they would like take care of you. They would be like, ‘hey, come here. Like, I have this squat, like we can stay here. This is where you get food. This is where you make money.’
He kept up this nomadic life for five years until it no longer made sense. He’d have a destination in mind like New Orleans for Mardi Gras and he’d hop the wrong train.
The train would take me like north, like out of the way 600 miles, you know, and I would always get arrested numerous times. And just the loneliness of waiting forever.
And it no longer felt welcoming or even safe. On his last trip to New Orleans he encountered a group of guys he didn’t know.
They thought I was like some like, Oogle kid from the suburbs, like spending the weekend in New Orleans to party. And they like beat the crap out of me. And it was just like this moment, I was like, what the hell? Like, this doesn't make sense anymore.
So in the mid 90s he headed north to New York. He met a woman named Anna who had a two-year-old son Nemo and together the three of them stayed in a friend’s apartment.
So it was a different, it was like, all right, I'm gonna get my shit together. I'm gonna get a job and have an apartment and like pay rent…It felt good in the sense that I was like helping protect this child, you know, and like, it gave me like a sense of purpose. And yeah, the payoff was great. Like, it was wonderful. It's like what I needed.
Music Therapy
Around this time Morgan went to see a Virginia band called the Hackensaw Boys. The lead singer Bobby St. Ours played the banjo.
Their music just like blew my mind. It wasn't just the music, it was like his energy, the energy of the band. And then he, after the show, he played this song for me in the bus they were traveling in, the Dirty Bird. And it just like changed my life. And I was just like, that's what I needed to do. And it was like the first time in my life, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
So Morgan picked up the banjo but it proved to be more challenging than it looked.
I tried to play every which way, you know, to teach myself. And I couldn't do it…I don't have the patience to do this, to learn an instrument.
It wasn’t until years later working construction he fell off a roof. At 28 he was stuck in a wheelchair with two broken feet and nothing else better to do than learn to play banjo. And friends came over to play with him. When he healed one of them invited him to go on tour.
…and I was hooked. I was just like obsessed. I loved it. I loved performing. I was drinking a lot. I was partying. It was like nonstop. It was like the old days. It was like riding trains. But now we had like a purpose… And it was, that was a wonderful time, but it strained my relationship with Anna and Nemo because I was gone a lot and I was drinking more and more and I was using more… I just turned into that street kid again. And I started smoking angel dust every day.
Music became his life, his therapy.
BRING IN MORGAN PLAYING AND SINGING ON THE STREET
It was like screaming and howling. A lot of times there weren't even words. It was just like raw emotion coming out. And the better I got at it, the better I was able to channel the emotions in certain directions and then capture audiences, mostly on the street because when people aren't expecting... like that kind of energy, it hits them the hardest. The responses I got from people kept me going. People would come up to me and be like, ‘yeah, I lost my brother yesterday. And I didn't know if I could even like come to work today. And then I heard you singing and it just changed everything.’ And I kept like getting reactions like that and people reaching out to me. So that’s what kept me doing it because that’s why I was doing it.
On sunny days he played on street corners and sidewalks. When it was cold he preferred the acoustics of subway stations providing the soundtrack to scenes all over New York.
There are a lot of days and nights where just no one's paying attention, no one's giving you any money, and you're down on yourself because you're not sounding good. It's like really hard. But there's a part of it that is like, well, I'm doing this on my terms. The best music I've ever played in my life is usually when I'm alone in the middle of the night in the subway and maybe there's one homeless person that can hear it somewhere and like...I'll hear them clapping in the distance.
The more he played the better he got and the more people threw money in his banjo case. One day he was playing in Union Square and a little girl gave him a pudding cup as a tip. Turns out the interaction was being filmed for a commercial.
And they just were like, ‘hey, give me your email.’ And I got paid $10,000 for my banjo case to be in a Jello commercial for like a fraction of a second. And stuff like that just kept happening. I got asked to write scores for shows and movies and theme songs. And I asked to be in shoots and all kinds of parties and flying all over the world. Like someone would come up to me and like, ‘hey, I'm a huge fan. I live in Northern Italy. Would you come and play at our bar on the ocean?’
Climbing Higher
Busking was conducive to his lifestyle of late nights in seedy bars. When the bars closed, he went in search of a place to crash. He frequently drank until he blacked out.
MORGAN: I would always wake up on top of the Williamsburg Bridge. There were some scary moments. I woke up laying on the i-beam. Usually I would make it up to the room on top of the bridge, the little lighthouse room thing. But one time I woke up on the i-beam that was slanted, laying on it with my feet dangling off the sides. And there was like traffic a couple hundred feet below me. It was terrifying but also just like kind of awesome to wake up there. Like I wouldn't remember getting there but I would have a lot of fun getting down. And sometimes I would wake up on rooftops. It would always be me climbing something… and I think it was just like, can I get to the highest place possible? The hardest highest place I can find.
LAUREL: But there had to have been something in you motivating you to like get this high or this energy. What did it feel like?
MORGAN: I think it was the same reason I started riding trains. It was like, you're not, it was like, you could walk across this bridge on the path, you know, like everybody else, or you could climb these wires and like climb over the top of the bridge. And like, I'm just gonna climb over top of it. It was like, no one does that. It's much harder. It's much more fun. Like it's there, it's like a jungle gym. And...That's kind of my mentality. It kind of still is my mentality. It's just healthier these days.
LAUREL: And so it's kind of this manic energy you had doing these things.
MORGAN: It was very manic. And the mania was what I was the allure for me, the manic, the manic state I used to get into when I drank and use drugs.
Becoming A Dad
In 2006 Morgan began playing with a band called Casa de Chihuahua, a sort of punk folk band. That’s how he met Domino, who played washboard and sang. The two dated on and off.
She was the first one in my life that was like, ‘have you ever thought about not drinking?’
After one long tour Domino called up Morgan to tell him he was going to be a dad.
That same feeling is like, oh, there's a child that needs me. And so it gave me like another drive in that direction to like be healthy and do the right thing. I don't know if I had trust myself at that point to be on my own without completely going off the deep end.
The couple stayed together during the pregnancy but after their son Cassius was born, broke up and decided to co-parent. Morgan was still living in squats at the time, few were childproof. He had to move out of one condemned building when he discovered it had black mold.
So the nights that I had him, I would just get on the ferry and like East River ferry and just like do loops in the ferry with him and take his toys.
Morgan made a point to never drink around his son.
I got an opportunity to live in an abandoned cathedral, like German cathedral from the 1800s. And he called it Daddy's Castle. And that was an amazing place. He would ride his scooter around and move all the church pews out of the way. We had concerts there.
Rock Bottom
He fixed up the top floor and stayed there for a year, until one day after he dropped Cassius off at school, Morgan came home to find chains on the door and a notice demanding he vacate immediately. He called everyone he knew looking for a place to stay. But as the hours ticked by it didn’t look promising.
That's the night that I hit like rock bottom. Like I was just in this had nowhere to live. I couldn't keep the mania up to a sustainable level. And I remember sitting in the church that night. It was the last night I could be there, like the police were coming in the morning. And I had my banjo and a backpack and my chihuahua Stanley was there with me. And there was like a case of warm PBR I found in the trash. And it's like, had this moment where … I had exhausted all of my resources. I had nowhere to stay. I called all my friends. Nothing was available. I was just kind of in this moment of despair. I was like, I could drink this beer and pass out in the alley. That was my option at the moment. I was like, or I could just not drink that ever again. And I had this, I just broke down and it was...this moment of complete, just let everything go. I was like, wept for a while. And then it was like, I can sleep in this alley and it's gonna be fine, but I'm not gonna be drunk. You know, it was like this pivotal moment. I had tried to get sober for five years and can never really pull it off for very long. But this felt different. And then right after that, my phone rang.
It was a friend who had a place for him to stay.
And it was like right after I had made this decision …And that was, no matter how bad I felt, it was also like the best I had ever felt in my life. Because I knew that's what I had to do now. And I've never drank since.
Of course it wasn’t easy.
In the moment when you hit bottom, when like it's just this like. You just know, there's no, you can't do this anymore. Like, you're gonna die if you keep doing this. And...you can either keep doing it or, you know, not, I think. And at that moment… Yeah, there's this excitement and high of changing your life, making this change for the better. And when that wears off after the first year, that's when you start to have to try to figure out the big things. It just became about the work, you know, the work that you have to do. It's like grueling and it goes on forever. And there's like years of depression. You have to learn how to like enjoy yourself again. And playing music was really hard for a while. And like learning who I was again, as a performer, I was always drunk on stage. You know, that was part of my thing. And I would always stay up till the sun came up and like party with everyone. It was like I had tons of that energy, that mania that drove me... So I had to like shift all of that.
He found a community in the trailer park where he now lived and focused on being present for Cassius and AA. Committing to a 12 step program meant Morgan had to deal with his resentment toward his dad.
MORGAN: There was a lot of anger and rage in me. And there was no way, it was pretty apparent, there was no way I was gonna get sober unless that had been dealt with, you know? And...like resentment. I was living in a resentment and there's no way you can get sober with that. So I reached out to him andIt was a very difficult but like wonderful experience and for both of us. And yeah, he came to me with everything. He was honest. And then that was hard for him. And that was like the beginning of my journey to be sober. It was like getting through that massive resentment and forgiving.
LAUREL: What's your relationship like with him today?
MORGAN: We have a great relationship now and yeah, I love him.
The Dog That Changed Everything
It was around this time Morgan heard that Domino had brought home a puppy husky for Cassius.
And I also had always wanted a husky… and I would see him every time I picked Cassius up. And it was like cute as hell. Cass named him Coo. And...At some point when he was a puppy, he ate like a dead rat on the street and got lepto from it or lepto from somewhere and got really sick.
They found out he probably wasn’t going to survive so Morgan convinced Domino to let him try to nurse him back to health.
Coo was like this little glimmer from my past. It was like this little dream.
Morgan brought him meat from the butcher and got him outside.
I started taking the train up to the, to Harriman Park or anywhere the train would go and just started camping with him.
That’s when Morgan was struck with a revelation.
The first night I went up there and slept on the top of this mountain with them, like to just change my life. I was like, right, this is, this is what I used to love to do. It's like, oh my God. Like it was right there in front of me. Like this was my life before I started drinking. Like the mountains and nature and camping and just being in the woods and seeing the joy of these dogs like being up there and just hiking all day. And that's when it just like, everything changed and I just fell in love with this dog. Like Cassius loved it. And it's so like it's strengthened me and Cassius's bond, like immensely, like doing those, having those experiences and yeah. Yeah, it just reminded me of all the dreams that I had when I was little. It was wonderful.
Thanks to all his efforts Morgan and Coo healed each other.
And about twice a year I go up in the mountains by myself. It's usually on the anniversary of Coo's death and spread his ashes on the top of some mountain in February. Sleep in the snow for three nights.
Morgan finally found his adrenaline rush naturally – climbing mountains, running with the dogs, connecting with his son outdoors – and that revived his creative spark.
MORGAN: I started writing music about recovery. And before that, I was completely stagnant. It was like, couldn't write anything. And after I started going to the mountains, all these new emotions, old emotions started coming up and excitement for life.
LAUREL: Wow.
MORGAN: And that's when you have like hope for recovery. It's like, oh, it's working, you know, this is all paying off. Like I feel like myself again.
He wrote an entire album and called it “The Good Cage.” The title comes from 1970s addiction research by psychologist Alexander Bruce.
PLAY EXCERPT OF “THE GOOD CAGE”
He put a rat in a cage with cocaine and it does cocaine till it dies. It drinks the cocaine bottle till it dies. And this one guy was like, well, the rats alone in a cage, of course it's going to drink cocaine and die. You know, like why, why would it have a reason to live if it had, if it was alone? So he took drug addicted rats and put them in a cage with lots of rats with like toys and like still the drugs in the cage, but also like water without drugs and all the rats would wean themselves off the drugs and …he called it the good cage and it's like a proof that like your surroundings like if you're alone then yes you were going to do these things and whatever happened to you in your life that makes you feel alone.
Today Morgan and his girlfriend live in a small house In upstate New York? They’re expecting a baby who they’ve nicknamed Wolfie.
Now I'm 11 years sober and there's a new baby coming into my life. It's like, I feel like I don't need this baby to carry me. I don't need this responsibility to stay healthy. Cassius is almost 15 and we've had some pretty great talks about substance abuse and alcohol and I'm really honest with him, straightforward about my history with all of it and I hope that, and I've told him this, I hope that my experience will help guide him so he doesn't have to go through that. And I think, yeah, he listens. and he understands how hard it was and how hard it can get and I hope that he doesn't have to go through that and same for like Wolfie.
This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.
