Surviving Rock Bottom: How Christian Struthers Rebuilt His Life After Addiction and Trauma

Rachel: Hey everybody, I am Rachel Kugel and this is Rachel Defends You. Today we are going to hear an incredible story and have an incredible conversation with Christian Struthers. I’m so excited to share him with you. He is an incredible story of transformation, resilience, and hope. He’s moved his life from pain to purpose in a way that very few people have successfully done. We’re going to hear today how he’s gone from being a college baseball player with full-ride scholarships and a future full of promise to finding himself in the midst of addiction and the court system and all of the crap that comes with that. Ultimately, he has dug his way out and now is a professional motivational speaker who shares his message of hope and resilience in recovery centers, communities—I’m sure he’s talked to jails, I’m sure he’s talked to entrepreneurs. It’s a message that can really resonate with all types of groups. It’s one that is close to my heart; I am a criminal defense attorney who focuses on DWI defense. I love his motto, which I hope he’ll tell us about, which is “I get to”—a daily reminder of gratitude. He’ll teach us about that before he goes. Christian, I am so happy to have you and so excited. Thank you for being willing to share your story with me.

Christian: Well thank you, Rachel. I’m really excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Like I said, thank you for the opportunity; this is what I believe my purpose is, so you’re filling my cup in the sense where we can fill others as well for sure.

Rachel: I would love to hear about kind of what life was like for you before addiction. Like, tell us who you were and what was going on.

Christian: Yeah, so I am actually from Northern California—I live in Montana now—but I was from Northern California, Lake Tahoe area.

Rachel: I’m from Vegas.

Christian: Okay, yeah! Not anymore?

Rachel: Now I’m in New York.

Christian: Okay, that’s awesome. Yeah, I love traveling, always love traveling. But yeah, I played baseball all the way through Little League. I was a straight-A student for a lot of the time and got into high school and that started to go away a little bit, but still, I was an athlete. Everything always came natural to me; I didn’t really necessarily put in extra work or extra effort and everything just always worked out for me. I was the best catcher, I got scholarships, had dreams of playing professional baseball, and I would like to believe that they could have come true—they were not unrealistic. So, great family life, great mom and dad, I’ve got a sister.

It is weird how, about my senior year, I kind of started to dabble in parties and smoking. It is weird, I definitely chose that path. I know a lot of people are put in that world and they almost seem like they don’t have another option, it’s just what everybody’s doing, but my story, I weirdly went and sniffed it out. I was always the type of person that if someone told me not to do something, I was going to do it twice, I’m going to take pictures and I’m going to show you. Then in college, of course, I went to Chico, California. I played up there and so that was kind of the beginning to the end. It’s a pretty heavy party school and that’s where I really found that crowd. Just started drinking and doing other recreational drugs. I made it about a year at that college before they, I say, “politely asked me to leave.”

Rachel: I can’t wait until they ask you to come back and speak. That’s inevitable.

Christian: That’s right, that’s what we’re working on. I think the same coach is still there, so yeah, no, it’s high on my checklist of goals to come back. I speak it into existence.

Rachel: I love it. Manifestation.

Christian: And then I ended up going to Miles City Junior College, which is a town of maybe 600. I come from a town…

Rachel: You’re like, “How can I mess that up? There’s only 600 people there.”

Christian: I found a way! If anything, I can do that. I ended up getting in a fight with the dean of the college because she wouldn’t let me drink when I turned 21. They said that I couldn’t drink on campus. For some reason, I thought that was more important than baseball at the time. So, got in a fight with her and walked out. Then I got blessed enough to get a job with mud runs and color runs—5K runs. Traveled around the country and I was a “hype man.” The crazier I was, the more money I made, getting everyone hyped up. I just didn’t know how to turn that off.

Rachel: That’s a cool gig, though. But I hear that you literally were the hype man all the time everywhere.

Christian: Everywhere I went. Didn’t matter: bar, mud run, with the dean. It’s kind of always been my personality. I was even the loudest one on the baseball field—I was a catcher, so I was always back there yelling.

Rachel: Well, and that’s the thing too. We’ve all been to college, we’ve all done our shit in college, we could all stay there but for the grace of God. When did you realize there was a difference between what you were doing and what everyone else in college was doing? Because everyone’s drinking, everyone’s smoking, everyone’s dabbling. What was the difference for you versus the roommate or the other people at college?

Christian: The amount in which I did. I’d get next to someone and they’d be like… well, they would taper off or they had that self-control to be able to put it down. And then that’s when I really, like, I couldn’t put it down. I started smoking and I had to smoke when I woke up, I smoked before practice—I smoked… you do everything big. Blessing and a curse. That’s one thing I’ve realized through this: there’s such a negative connotation on “addict” and being addicted. Yes, when you’re addicted to the wrong things, it can become really bad, but if you can get addicted and have that same personality to the right things…

Rachel: I love that.

Christian: It’s amazing, yeah.

Rachel: And that’s a big part—I definitely want to get there because that’s a big part of my message too. I deal with people on their worst day going through their worst shit, and the shame of that can really stop people. They can define themselves by that and it can end up being the rest of their story, or they can figure out a way to channel that as you’ve really done. You’re an example of it—to channel not just the personality, like in your case how do I channel this personality for good instead of evil, but also how do I take this thing that was bad and make it a force for good? Part of that is by owning it. I feel like the people that won’t own it and won’t say… I always encounter clients all the time that I’ll try to get them to go to AA or something because I think it’s going to help their case, and I get them to try to go and it’s like, “I’m not like those people. I’m not… those people aren’t like me.” I feel like I know when someone says that, it’s not going to work for them right now until you can sit there and be like, “Oh, I’m exactly like those crazy people.”

Christian: Yep, 100%. That’s you taking accountability for it. Even when I got in the car crash, I have a lot of people like, “Oh, you got in a car accident?” I’m like, “No, it wasn’t an accident.” Like, that was a car crash.

Rachel: Prosecutors always say crash and defense attorneys always say accident. Just FYI, little tip, we always say “don’t accident.” But so, tell us about that. You have this, you know, you’re in college and to some extent it’s kind of like what other people are doing although you’re doing it to the highest level. And then is the car crash the moment that’s really the turning point?

Christian: Well, no. So, that was back in… I guess I was done with college in about 2011-2012 and shortly after I got that job traveling and that’s when it really turned. Parties, clubs—you’re traveling, you think that’s part of work, like you got to do it, I’m getting paid to do it. Came home and got involved in the wrong crowd in California, in the Sacramento area, really running around doing really not good things—selling stuff, doing it all. My family, again, my family’s been my biggest support system. They saw that. I’ve crashed about six cars and all just being dumb. I totaled the rental car in Oklahoma, I ran from that. But again, it worked out for me: I didn’t get in any trouble, I didn’t lose any money over it, I didn’t lose my job. So that was kind of the first wakeup call, but I got away with it so I was like, “Ah, it’s not my fault. I can get away with everything, I’m good.”

Then about 2014, after I’ve crashed another some other cars, I got a DUI. I rolled my car three times drinking and driving. I ran from that. Then ended up getting picked up, and then the person that picked me up, we got in an argument and they turned around and dropped me back off with the cops.

Rachel: Oh my god. They turned her in? They did.

Christian: So that was kind of the first time it didn’t work out for me, but it all just kept getting a little worse and I still wouldn’t learn my lesson. I still wouldn’t take responsibility for what I was doing. So then we moved up to Montana because I thought, “Well, if I just move away from my surroundings, everything’s going to change.”

Rachel: But then your problem is you’re still there.

Christian: Right! It’s not my fault, it’s everyone around me, it’s their fault. I was in Montana about two months and this was in August 3rd, 2015. I met up with a friend, he came and picked me up, and we went to about three bars. I was the passenger. And that’s always too—everyone’s always like, “Oh well, you’re the victim in this.” I’m like, “No, I got in the car. I knew.” I was sending out videos and Snapchats and laughing, like “Look at 130!” You were getting in the car with someone who’s also into it 100%.

I don’t remember this. We got in the crash and I woke up about 7 days later in the hospital. But from what I hear, we were going about 130 miles an hour. They said that we were passing them on the highway as if they were standing still, passing other cars. We ended up going into the center divide. I flipped, they said I flipped for about a football field and a half end over end. I was wearing my seatbelt; the driver was not and he didn’t survive. When I got done flipping, they said the car landed on top of me. My legs were actually hanging out the driver’s side window and I was bent backwards—like you’re sitting down but they’re going the other way. They said that the seatbelt was choking me out and I would have died from that, but somebody came from afar, cut my seatbelt, and then disappeared into the crowd. I’ve told this story a lot, and it’s been 10 years and I still get chills just thinking about that.

I had 17 major injuries: I broke my neck, had two strokes, shattered pelvis.

Rachel: How old were you at that point?

Christian: I was 26.

Rachel: Wow, that’s a lot for a 26-year-old. Losing your friend… I’m sure there’s guilt around that, survivor’s guilt.

Christian: It’s weird, yeah, it comes up in waves here and there. He would have probably gone to jail had he survived, more than likely. I was seven days in a coma. The right side of my body wasn’t working, my arm didn’t work from the strokes. They said I stopped bleeding out on the last bag of blood that they had in the hospital. They were telling my parents… my mom had to come find me. I was so messed up that they couldn’t even identify me. From my past life, it was something she would do when I didn’t come home: she would check jails, she would check…

Rachel: Oh god, as a mom, a terrible place to be.

Christian: I never even knew, and this is the one thing that woke me up to that. I still see it in my mom; I still see the scars that I’ve left on her and that kills me almost more than what I had to go through on the physical pain side of it. So yeah, amazing. Again, it was a blessing. Now I can look back at it and it was one of the biggest blessings of my life. It went from “they told me I’d never walk again,” they told me…

Rachel: What was your attitude like? Do you remember when they’re telling you? Were you immediately this enlightened person I’m sitting across from today or were you like… when they’re telling you you’re not going to walk again, were you wanting to drink and go…? What was your immediate attitude? Did you have to find your way to this attitude or did you have it from the jump?

Christian: That’s the weird part. In the hospital, I’ve always been a pretty—again, “hype man”—so I’ve always been pretty happy and go-lucky. I remember the nurses always asking my mom and dad, “Is he always this happy?” Because with brain injuries, you don’t know—they can get loopy or they get really angry and aggressive. My mom’s like, “No, this is him.” So I always, throughout the hospital, had that attitude and just being stubborn. To have professional doctors telling me I’m never going to walk again or wanting to amputate my leg… I just told them no.

Rachel: Do you think in a way having someone say something bad to you motivated you? Like, “You’re never going to walk again” made you be like, “Well, f that, yes I am. Watch.”

Christian: Exactly. There’s a book—I don’t know if you know who Patrick Bet-David is, but he’s a podcaster and speaker and entrepreneur—anyway, he has a book, it’s really a business book but it’s called Choose Your Enemies Wisely. It’s basically like that: people are more motivated by having to show something or someone than they are for… like if your mom always believed in you, that’s not going to motivate you as much as somebody saying to you, “You can’t effing do this.” And that’s going to motivate you more. Anyway, made me think that’s crazy.

Christian: You know, it’s crazy that you say that because again, my mom was always super supportive, but like with a baseball game, I’d hit a home run and I’d be like, “Mom, I hit…” and she’s like, “Yeah, well, you could have hit another. There was that other chance, you didn’t do better.” So she has always been that way; that’s even kind of our joke where she’s always like, “Okay, well, you know, yeah, proud of you, you did good, but hey, there’s do better.”

So my “secret sauce” is when I was coming out of the coma, my parents didn’t know what I could hear and what I couldn’t hear, and one of the only things I remember is them promising me a dog.

Rachel: Did you like always want a dog or something?

Christian: No! I didn’t even really like dogs. As a kid, I got bit by dogs, I was a little nervous around dogs. I don’t know why they said it, I don’t know why I remember it. But after two months of being in the hospital, I got out. I was in a wheelchair, still couldn’t walk. I had to learn how to sit again at the age of 26. Like, oh my god, sitting is hard!

Rachel: Really make you appreciate all of it, all the things that you were taking for granted. You were not only healthy, you were a baseball player.

Christian: I was a fine-tuned machine. I came out of the hospital, I was about 115 pounds—I’m six foot—and my elbows were the biggest thing on my arms, my knees were bigger than my thighs. When I got out of the hospital, I had my down days. I’m human. I thought like, I came from that life where I could do anything and now I’m thinking I’m going to be in a wheelchair the rest of my life, I’m limited. Brain injuries… they said I had equivalent to “shaken baby syndrome” at the age of 26. The car shook me like an infant.

But then we got my dog; we found a German Shepherd named Millie. So I went from not liking dogs to getting one of the most “scary” dogs that you can get, and she was going to be my service dog. That’s really like—I don’t know how I did it some days—the only thing I think back to is knowing and getting up for her. Her making me smile on my deepest, downest days. She would be cuddled up—dogs are so intuitive—and so she would be there, cuddle with me, try to play with me. She knew when I was down. That’s how I started trying to stand: I’d be in my wheelchair and I’d be pushing up and just doing that over time. I got stronger and stronger and started walking—had a walker, had a cane—but yeah, everyone’s like, “How’d you do it? How’d you get through it?” And the love of a dog. The love of a dog got me through everything.

Rachel: I was reading something the other day that was talking about that: the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it’s connection. People choose or go down paths because they’re trying to numb out; they have a problem. It’s hard being human, it hurts being human, weird being human. And if you can make a connection, a meaningful, intimate connection with someone or in your case something… I believed that drugs are the solution to the problem. Drugs are not bad… drugs are bad, but I don’t believe drugs are necessarily the problem. That is the solution that you go in search of to numb, to escape, to try to fix something weird that you choose drugs for. Building a connection or giving yourself a purpose totally changes the game.

Christian: And so that’s where I got, and then I started “Dog Dash” as an event because I just wanted to celebrate Millie because I had the event background and I didn’t know what to do and didn’t have a purpose. I just wanted to do something. I was like, “Well, I want to celebrate Millie.” So I started an event with all her favorite things: doggy ice cream eating contests, 3K obstacle course, toys, treats, anything and everything a dog could want. Then that grew into a bigger purpose for us; I was like, “Whoa, this is bigger than us,” and we started donating back to animal shelters. Whatever city we’re in, we’ll donate back to animal shelters because I really want people to be able to have that connection and have that opportunity that I had, that they can go get a dog, get a best friend.

Rachel: Was she like a trained service dog or…?

Christian: Oh no, she was a princess! She was going to be, but she turned into a princess.

Rachel: You were her service dog! You were working for her. I wonder, have you thought about bringing the idea of having a service dog or a companion dog to people that are in recovery or dealing with… because it does seem like it gives people a reason to function and stay with it.

Christian: Yes, it does, and I would love to do that. I’ve been in contact with some trainers because you got to get real special training to really do that correctly. Figuring out what that all looks like is the process we’re going through now and when we get a little more rich and famous, we’ll definitely… it’s definitely on the to-do list.

Rachel: And then how did that morph into speaking and teaching and sharing the message?

Christian: I was telling my story at the events, and so to see that touch people… I’ve had so many people come up to me just in tears just like, “Oh my gosh,” and show me their dog, like “This is my soul dog, this is my story.” I’ve talked to a handful of high schools and schools and just gotten into it a little bit, and I’m like, “This is my purpose. This is why I was saved, this is the reason I’m here.” It’s crazy; I always thought that I had the best life and that my best life was behind me, but now being able to touch others and give… I never gave like this. I wasn’t necessarily a taker, but I definitely didn’t help like I do now.

Rachel: I think people misinterpret what it is to be happy. They think happiness is like, “Oh, have fun, pleasure seek, hedonistic pleasure.” But true happiness is really meaning, and sometimes that even is pain, but being able to share that and have it all make sense and have your past make sense as to how you got here—that’s like real happiness.

Christian: Yeah, and people ask, “What would you do? Do you wish you didn’t get in the car?” I’m like, “No!” Like I said, it is a blessing now. Waking up in a hospital, that’s not necessarily what you’re thinking. When I say “when I woke up dead,” that’s not what I was thinking. But a handful of years afterwards I was like, “Wow, that was the best thing in my life that happened to me.”

Rachel: What does life look like today? Are you able, do you have all your function back?

Christian: I got it all. I can’t see out of my right eye, but there’s nothing… you don’t need that. Today, yeah, still doing the Dog Dash. My Millie girl actually passed away last year; she had heart disease and passed away young. So that was another hard thing to…

Rachel: How did you get through that and stay sober and stay positive? It must have been devastating.

Christian: It was a struggle. I’ve lived a hard life, I’ve lost people, family members, and nothing has hit me as hard as losing her. I definitely struggled; I started drinking a little bit again, a little/a lot of it. And I just got to pour myself back into doing stuff like this, getting back into work and remembering why I’m here. I actually got back on tour with “Mud Factor,” the mud run, for this year. I’ve definitely got the self-control now where I’m back, it’s a different program, different group of people.

Rachel: How about another dog?

Christian: So I did! I went from a German Shepherd to a little French Bulldog. We got a little Frenchie now, she’s my little friend, my little peanut. I didn’t hardly waste any time. If it had that big of an impact on you, you’re someone that should have a dog.

Rachel: You need someone who needs you.

Christian: Yeah, and I even started working on a nonprofit called “Millie’s Heart Dog Sanctuary.” It’s a little bit of a slow process, but we’re building it.

Rachel: Tell me about the “I get to” message. That’s all about reframing. I liked it about you because it’s something I happen to say to my kids when I wake up in the morning and my kids will say, “Do I have to go to school today?” And I go, “You get to go to school today.” They don’t always buy it, I’m not going to lie.

Christian: No, 100%. It came from when I would have those bad days in the hospital and “Oh, I don’t want to do this or that,” it’s like, “No, I get to. I’m alive. I did wake up today.” A very short time ago, they did not know if I was going to wake up. I get to sit—I couldn’t even sit at the age of 26, people had to help me go to the bathroom. Even the smallest things where I didn’t get to leave the house, I was bedridden—it’s like, “No, I get to go to the grocery store.” That’s how I remind myself. It reframes it, it reframes your mind, and then that starts to snowball. Positive Mental Attitude, we call PMA. It reframes your thoughts and then it reframes your actions.

Rachel: I’m thinking also about your advice. What would you say to somebody who is in a really dark place, maybe because of decisions they made? I work with a lot of people who have made bad decisions—by sitting across the table from me, they’ve already kind of made a bad decision just by having to be in that predicament. I’m big into the idea of not defining yourself by that worst day, but it’s hard for people to not… because your identity can get wrapped around being a “bad kid” or being an “addict.” How do you go through something bad and resist attaching your own identity to that bad thing?

Christian: It’s a really fine line because you want to use it, you want to own it, but you don’t want to be a victim. I think owning it is the first step—realizing, give yourself some grace, don’t beat yourself up about it. It happened, it is what it is. But just knowing you’re one decision away from changing your life completely for the better, completely for the worst. One decision at a time, you don’t feel like you’re changing yourself a whole bunch, and then all of a sudden after a week, you look back and you’re like, “Whoa, that’s not even me anymore.”

I was a smoker, I smoked weed every day, all day, and I thought I was going to smoke till I died. With all the surgeries I’ve had—about 13 surgeries—I didn’t take any pain medication. I came home and I smoked and that’s what helped me through that. I even would call myself sober when I was smoking weed—”California sober.” But I just got tired of it and I took it one day at a time, and I didn’t beat myself up if I went a day without smoking and then the next day I smoked. That was the biggest changing point for me: giving myself that grace. A lot of people fall apart, a lot of people relapse and don’t pull themselves back. I’m always like, “Look, there’s no guarantee of not having a relapse in the future. Shit happens, life happens.” The real question is not whether you’re going to have a relapse, but how quickly you’re going to pull yourself back together.

Rachel: I feel like two things are coming to mind. One is so much of your message is about self-love and forgiveness and not having that shame. And the thing with the dog—before you can do it for yourself, you can get up and feed the dog, you can get up and walk the dog. It’s almost a bridge between those two worlds.

Christian: You almost need that purpose for something else, which then helps you realize that you deserve the same. A lot of these people they never were loved like they should be or could be, and so it’s like you take care of something else and you’re like, “Whoa.” And to see like with dogs, they love you; they don’t care if you relapsed, they don’t care what you did in your past. They just know who you are right now and they love you.

Rachel: How can people find you and learn more?

Christian: I’ve got a website, christianstruthers.com, and then “Dog Dash” is also everywhere on all social medias. Connect with the story and dogs. I’m available for speaking to schools and communities and events.

Rachel: Absolute pleasure. I’m going to share all your information. Thank you so much for sharing your story with heart and purpose.

Christian: Thank you so much for having me and the opportunity.

Rachel: Keep in touch!

Christian: Definitely will.