#798 - Foster Care, Death & The Navy - Forrest Lang

#798 - Foster Care, Death & The Navy - Forrest Lang

What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? This conversation between host Paul Gilmartin and guest Forrest Lang gives a raw, unfiltered answer. The episode sits firmly in the Mental Illness Happy Hour sweet spot: a "perversely safe" space where heavy topics are met with honesty, dark humour, and a lot of compassion.

It’s aimed at people living with trauma, addiction, and mental health struggles, along with anyone who cares for them and wants to understand what those battles actually feel like. Forrest, an author and child sexual abuse advocate, walks through his childhood in a violently religious home, removal into foster care, and grooming by a female predator who posed as a caring adult.

He talks about being told as a suicidal teen that he "can’t even kill myself right," and how comments like that cemented his shame. The foster system, homelessness, and emotional starvation all show up here, but so does the grit it took to stay alive. Alcohol enters as a coping tool: "Drinking saved my life. Until it didn't." From there, Forrest shares how the Navy gave him structure, brotherhood, and eventually sobriety.

He describes the accidental death of his best friend during a reckless moment with a firearm, the crushing guilt that followed, and his attempt to "hopefully die" by volunteering for a combat deployment. Instead of death, he found purpose treating marines as a corpsman and later as a tattoo artist. Paul brings his own struggles into the mix, from pelvic floor therapy for stored trauma to learning the difference between pain and discomfort.

Together, they talk about self-worth, healthier ways to soothe yourself, and why saying "I love you" to the mirror can feel like tearing scar tissue. If you’ve ever wondered whether recovery can coexist with grief, shame and a very dark sense of humour, this conversation might be exactly what you need today.