From Hopelessness to Faith: The Unexpected Turn That Saved a Life

Summary

In this inspiring interview, Devin Fish shares his journey from a challenging childhood and military service to overcoming hopelessness and finding faith. Discover how hope, faith, and resilience can transform lives and learn practical insights for mental health and personal growth.

Key topics

• The impact of hope and hopelessness on mental health
• Devin Fish's personal journey from adversity to faith
• The role of faith in overcoming life's challenges

Titles

• From Hopelessness to Hope: Devin Fish's Journey of Resilience
• How Faith and Hope Transformed a Life of Adversity

Sound Bites

• "I considered heavily taking my life in 2019"
• "Believing I am happy can make me happy again"
• "Walking in truth will lead to the light"

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Hope and Hopelessness

02:04
Devin Fish's Journey: From Hopelessness to Healing

17:43
The Role of Hope in Recovery and Faith

27:59
Social Media's Impact on Hope and Connection

Resources

• Answering the Hard Questions (Book)
• Devin Fish's YouTube Channel
• Devin Fish on Facebook

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Live from the Clarity from Chaos Studios, heard worldwide, it's Dave Campbell. On every episode, Dave and his guests explore, discuss, and work on solutions to some of life's biggest challenges. So if you're ready, be prepared to be enlightened, amused, and even shocked by what you hear. And now, the real, the authentic, the one and only Dave Campbell.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

Hi, I'm Dave Campbell, and you are listening to Clarity from Chaos. This is somewhere where we try very hard to unwrap the nonsense that you hear from corporate media on a daily basis. And I want to thank you for making us part of your day. On this edition of Clarity, we're going to be discussing a term that society has conveniently avoided, and that term is hope. In my opinion, it's the root cause of a very wide variety of issues in our society today, and our guest on this episode is the experience of the loss of hope and all of its evil, numerous outcomes. Growing up in a household shaped by his parents' struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, he was removed from any kind of safety, moving frequently, relying on food stamps just to get by. Bullied at school, combined with the environment at home, he stopped caring for life. After the loss of his mother, his mental health began to spiral down. An overwhelming sense of hopelessness caused him to self-admit to a hospital. From there, he began his long journey of courage, perseverance, and healing that ultimately brought him to where he is today. I am incredibly pleased to welcome the author of the best-selling book Answering the Hard Questions, Mr. Devin Fish. Devin joined the Army and served nearly 10 years as a Cavalry Scout and later a career counselor. In 2021, he was awarded the first CAV Division Retention NCO of the Year Award. While he was stationed in Kuwait, Devin wrote Answering the Hard Questions. He has channeled the lessons he has learned into that book and into inspiration for others. Welcome to the show, Devin.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Yeah, thank you for having me. And of course, you know, thank for letting me be a part of the conversation and thank you for the great introduction.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

Oh no, no, no. You're welcome. You're very welcome. So, as painful as is, and I hate to ask this question, could you kind of give people a somewhat of a background that brought you to the book and everything, you know, your past experiences and stuff like that that you drew on later after your recovery that that helped, you know, write the book, the experiences?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah. Uh so I can get a pretty brief background because sometimes it'll take me like an hour and a half to give like the full story. But I'm sure, you know, probably don't have like two, three hours to actually sit down and get all the questions.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

Yeah. No, whatever, whatever you feel is necessary.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Yeah. So I come from a town called Rockford, Illinois. So I grew up, I was born and raised there for the first 18 years of my life. During that time, I know, like you said in the introduction, it was pretty ins instable. Um, so I moved about 16 times before I was 18. Um, I recounted it when I made the book, and it's around like 30, and I'm 28 years old now. So I've moved more than the years I've been a lot. From there, I also grew up in poverty. Like you said, you covered it with the food stamps. I also went to like seven different schools. I've lived in like houses, apartments, trailers, farms, all the way down to like a motel. Living conditions weren't always great. So um sometimes we didn't have ACs, sometimes we didn't have hot water, sometimes we didn't even have a toilet for a while. And then I've also lived with like my mother and my father, two different aunts, friends of family, and I've also lived with grandparents. So I lived a little bit of everything, and that was you know, before getting thrown into the army. And then that didn't really stop because you know, there's also stuff happening on with my parents. So, like you said, you know, drug and alcohol addictions. So, like right before I left the army, I saw my father in the hospital, and what happened is that he resisted arrest after having fireball whiskey and cocaine in his system and essentially destroyed our apartment. I then went to basic training immediately after that, so about a month, and then I was in the basic training environment for about a year straight. I went to three different basic trainings due to you know going back and forth. I failed out of one, and then I had to pass basic training two more times after that. Just kind of got unlucky there. 2019 comes around, so I was heading to my first unit, and then unexpectedly out of nowhere, my mother dies. That one did have a little bit of a toll on me, but at the time it was happening, I wouldn't say that's what led to me to the hospital, but these are all kind of like events that were happening, you know, within one year of each other, so it kept adding up. Um, and what really sent me to the hospital was in 2019 I got to the point where I was past like not caring for life, and I entered like the self-hatred stage of my life to where I'm like, maybe it's just me, maybe I'm the blame for all this. And so I kind of put that burden on my shoulders, which you know wasn't the right answer at the time. And I got myself into situations to where I started getting into the dating realm. Um, I didn't really find any genuine people though. I was, you know, because I was filled with self-hatred, I was kind of like looking for love, but because I couldn't find it myself, I was looking for others, I never found it. So 2019 comes around. Um, I'm not getting any matches. The only people I'm finding are like people who are scamming me, catfishing, and everything like that. And so throughout the year, I got blackmailed at least several different times. They cleared out my bank account more than once. And the reason for this was that I didn't care at this point because even when I knew, even I got very good at detecting when I was going to get blackmailed or when they're going to ask for something based on what they're asking for. And it got to the point where like, I'm I don't care, I'll just give them the money, I'll give them the photos, I'll do whatever they want at this point. And then the real breaking point was at the end of it in 2019, I got myself caught up in the worst scam you could possibly get yourself into, which is the dating scam, or not the dating scam, it's the age scam. So you start a conversation, they swapped their ages. By this time, I black I've been blackmailed six other times, so I'm like, I don't care at this point, even though you know I had that six feeling in my stomach. Sent them the photos, anyways, gave them everything they wanted. Next day they blackmailed me. And then it was from that point to where I kind of realized what I just got myself into, and it was the realization, well, what if this was a real person, or what if it is a real person? And so for the next month, I'd say I was considering heavily taking my life day by day, and the only reason I didn't do it was that they didn't they decided not to leak anything, and I just kept paying the money. And so that, you know, that kind of gives people like a brief background of everything I kind of went through.

SPEAKER_03 7:06

Wow, it sounds like you know, I could I can certainly understand at that point that everything continued to pile up and pile up and pile up, and you just couldn't, you know, you couldn't see the the surface of the water above you anymore, right? You were just getting deeper and deeper and deeper. Well now you were in the army at this point, right? Still, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yes. So I was so at the time of getting blackmailed and I submitted myself to hospital, I was probably a brand I was a brand new NCO just like a couple months into it. Um so there's not only you know my family stuff going on and like the death of my mother, the father, going to training for like a year straight, but there's also the fact that I have people under me that are looking for me for guidance, and you know, so there's also that stuff going on in the background as well.

SPEAKER_03 7:57

Right, right. So at what point did you did you the counseling that you got in the hospital were was there some specific trigger Devin that that just kind of started to unlock it? Or um was it was it a religious moment? I mean, there I I would think there was some moment where you you looked at it and and all of these bad choices, and then you went, enough of the bad choices, we're gonna start making other choices, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

What so was that transition, Devin?

SPEAKER_00 8:38

What it was is in the hospital, so the counseling itself never really helped me out too much. It kind of gave me a little bit of direction when I got out of the hospital because I had to do mandatory counseling. Um, so I'll probably get into that one a little bit. But what really changed me was I read two little pamphlets in the hospital. So it wasn't even you know the hospital itself. It was, you know, just these two little pamphlets. And the first one said that there are a lot of suicidal people who don't want to end their life. And I thought about that. I was like, I don't really want to end my life, and that's kind of why I sent myself to the hospital. And answering the hard questions, that's where the name of the book spawned. Because before I went to the hospital, I asked myself, I'm like, do you want to die? And luckily the answer I came up with was no, because I was like, I I would like to live before I die, because I look back on my life and I'm like, this isn't life, you know, this is just suffering. And so I kind of had to make that decision before I went to the hospital, and before I'm like, okay, let me try to get help. And then the second one, which really changed my perspective on life, was um that you can have a perfectly healthy mind, but if you believe you are depressed, then your brain will slowly make you depressed. So I saw that and I'm like, okay, I know I messed up in the head, I know I'm depressed, I know I hate myself. I knew that very clearly, and so I was like, I I took that statement, I reversed it. So I'm like, okay, if I if I hate myself, but I believe I'm happy, maybe I can be happy again. And I I really I pursued that for a lot. And then I know you asked a little about if there was any faith in it. At this time, I was still pretty heavily anti-religious, and then when I wrote the book, that's where faith kind of came full circle to me. So it this was in 2019, so I just came to Christianity in 2026. So that was that was a big struggle. But I I did notice the correlation that the more optimistic I came, the more faith I started to develop, and that eventually led me back to the faith.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

You know, it it's kind of funny, and it as a side as a side note, Devin, I I wear a wristband that basically is Philippians, Philippians 4, 8, which is basically what you think uh is is the most important thing. So you need to concentrate on honesty, purity, the good things out there. If you if you maintain those in the front of in the front of your mind, uh that's where you're going to be. And and and to your point, if you're on the other side of the hill and all you think about are the uh the ugly, ugly twists of the world, eventually you bring those on yourself just by just by foc by focus, you know, if you know, by transferring your energy to the negative as opposed to transferring your energy to the positive. So I think that's kind of interesting. That's the reason I was asking about was there a faith element in it? So does the VA in in your your opinion uh what are they doing about this? Because I I I've got to believe, Devin, that the the the mental challenges in the military are there. And you already had said that the hospital didn't really do you a uh pardon the expression, a damn bit of good, that it was a pamphlet that you read, right, that was the triggering moment that started you to think about other choices. So my I'm I'm curious about your thoughts around the VA and and what they're what they're doing now because when you were in the service, it was the it was the different vibe with the military in 1920 and up until the change in leadership in 24. And I was just curious your your thoughts around it.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Yeah. Uh so I would say that when I went to the hospital in 2019, I I wouldn't say, you know, those pamphlets are the two things that kind of activated for me, but I wouldn't say, you know, the hospital trip was absolutely like useless. It's just that that is what happened to do it for me. Um, you know, so some people need that counseling. There are a lot of programs in the army right now, especially. We have briefs like a lot, and then there's always services offered and stuff like that. And so they are a lot more available. The big issue for me back in 2019, I was still a Cavalry Scout, and Cavalry Scout still falls under like the combat MOS. And so I kind of had that mindset. It's like, okay, if I ask for help, then I'm going to be seen as weak. When I went to that hospital and all the scouts saw me there, they're like, hey, we had no idea any of this was going on. And it actually, I think it changed some of the scouts' minds of like when I actually went there because no one was expecting it. But at the same time, you know, all those people who went to come see me, they're like, they were completely there in support. And so that was kind of one of the lies I was actually telling myself to where I just kept telling myself that I was alone, that there's no one to support me. But when I actually admitted that I needed help, you know, there was people there. And then, you know, I just got out of the army about three weeks ago. It was like May 5th. But even, you know, within a week or two out of being service, I had a call from the VA. They're like, hey, do you want to do any mental health counselings? And I've received that call like twice already now. So the service is definitely out there. It's just, you know, what helps the individual at that point.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

Right. Yeah, but okay, so they are stepping up. So that's encouraging. I don't know that they did so much in the past because when when when I was in uh there wasn't a whole lot of, you know, you mentioned, you know, about being weak. There there wasn't a whole lot of of um people that really cared or, you know, that you they expect you to be strong, period. You know, the weakness part of it, you could, you know, uh hide somewhere, do whatever you wanted to do with it, but they didn't want to hear it. Right. So I was just curious if they've you know, I know there'd been a a big DEI push and a big all of this other kind of push on the military up until 24 when things, you know, when Secretary Hedson took over. So I was curious about the change, you know, if they were taking things seriously about some of the aspects of the mental health in the military.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Yeah, I I would actually say to it's kind of opposite now to where like if leadership tries to call you weak or they try to prevent you from going counseling, now they're going to get separated for that reason. So the army has been trying to get away from that for a long time. You know, however, you know, with 2024, 2025, you mentioned a little bit, that they're kind of going back to that old school army feel. And that's kind of what I kind of I ex I did start noticing that trend right around when I was getting out.

SPEAKER_03 15:27

Oh, okay. Okay. So it is.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

I don't know. I don't know as far as like if anything's going to change, you know, counseling-wise, but I know they're trying to go back to like some of those older army routes. When it act when it comes to like physical training, that's the big one they're trying to get into. And then the army's coming up with like a bunch of new systems right now. But that's all I know about it.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

So counseling, how did how did you make the shift to the to being a counselor? I f I find that intriguing because a lot of people don't have the empathy for it, don't have the uh intuitive components, you know, relative to themselves or to be that insightful and patient and empathetic as that you need to be a counselor.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah. So one of the big things with being a career counselor, I kind of have to go get a little bit in the background of the story. So when I originally joined the army, I was going to be a 60-year Charlie, which was a nurse. Um, the reason I was in um the basic training environment for so long was that I went to um nursing school for about five weeks. I ended up dropping out because I couldn't keep up with the classes. They essentially throw three years of school into one. Normal army tactic when it comes to the initial training, they're trying to get you through as fast as they can, you know, while they'll get their bang for their buck, and so that you don't, you know, know nothing once you get into the real army.

SPEAKER_02 16:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

I failed out of that and then I became a scout, which had nothing to do with and it didn't really go with anything I was about as a person. And so uh when I got out of the hospital, I'm like, okay, what would make me happy? I kind of like look back at that 68 Charlie and say, okay, I signed me, I signed up to help people. So, and the type of counselor that I ended up becoming was a career counselor. Um, so for no one who's been in the army and they don't know the terminology, so essentially we help the soldiers with their careers. And so we do like their contracts, their reenlistments, we help them PCS, do their reclassification if they want to try a new job, and we we assist them throughout their careers and stuff like that. So it's not like a mental health counselor, but you do have to have some empathy, you have to have a lot of patience because you do have to work with the soldiers, and they're you know, they're they're disgruntled as well. Um, so you kind of have to work through that, and you have to be told no a lot of people like, hey, um, I know you're the retention guy, I don't want to re-enlist. Please don't talk to me. Um, so there's quite a few of those conversations. So you do have to be calm, you do have to be empathetic. But you know, it's kind of one of those positions where it's like I experienced the army for the first five years of my career doing a job I didn't want to do. So me being able to help people transition out of their job or go to a base they want to go to was actually very useful for me. And then on top of that, what becoming a career counselor did for me, it I don't think it was necessarily becoming a career counselor itself that changed me, but what it required me to become. So, like when I was filled with like self-hatred, you know, I hated the army at the time. I had to become an advocate for the army, so I had to change that. I didn't like people, and I was a pessimistic person, and then so I had to get used to talking to people daily, the random strangers who don't know me. And then I also had to be, you know, the optimistic person because you know some of these people are coming to me to strong, and I kind of have to, you know, help them change their mindset and stuff like that. So it required me to become a completely new person, which helped me get out of that old self-hatred mindset.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

Right.

SPEAKER_03 18:45

Okay. So l let's let's dive into a little bit of the the whole term that I started out with was the hope and hopelessness. Because I don't think it to me it's the root cause of an awful lot of things. It you know, and we don't seem to want to address the root cause, which is hope and hopelessness. And and I was curious, you know, your book, Answering the Hard Questions, obviously goes down that road, right? So maybe you could spend a few minutes because I think raising hope helps a lot of people because I think there's a lack of it right now.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yeah. So answering the hard questions, um, so there is a subtitle of the book as well that is Let It Be at the end of the chapter, not the end of the book. And that's kind of you know, you know, looking at your life and then like turning to the next page, turning the chapter, and you know, beginning a new life. But what the original title of it was going to be, I I ended up initially changing it because the original title of that was The Untold Consequences of Suicide. Uh and you know, that's still the overarching theme of the actual book. I just kind of made it a little more poetic and easier for people to read, and they're like, hey, yeah, that actually sounds pretty good. But what, you know, let it be the end of the chapter, not the end of the book means it's like, okay, well, look at me in 2019, I was in the hospital. Well, what if I didn't well, what if I didn't put myself in the hospital? What if I ended my life instead? And I looked at it from that aspect and I'm like, okay, so I lost hope, so therefore I took it away from everyone else. So by me writing this book, me continuing on with my life, I am passing that hope on that I found in myself.

SPEAKER_03 20:29

Yeah. Yeah, that's that's kind of the sense of it that I was getting to was there there's not a lot of it. And so that from that point right there, I want to shift a little bit to the church because I know the church probably had an ever-increasing effect on on who and what you are and where you are today, right? And so your thoughts on uh do you think you know, people just standing at the pulpit and and talking about the verses in the Bible and how you know Jesus died on the cross for uh your sins, so therefore you should have you know all of this hope and everything else. And I I'm not really seeing it change, Devin. So I was curious about your thoughts around that whole thing, because to me, a certain amount of it is performative, and I I don't think I don't think Christianity should be performative, you know. It so your thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Yeah, uh so this is actually a new experience I can talk about because uh so I guess to give people background on the story is you know, minus all of my stories, the other thing I started to do in this book was the contemplation of God again in my life. And it was kind of almost inevitable when I started to tell my story that I had to kind of include them in the story, and I had to come up with a reasoning of like, well, why am I suffering? Well, then I kind of you know looked at the story of. Job, I didn't and at this point I didn't read the Bible, but one of the conclusions I came into was like, well, what if God threw me in the darkness so that I could tell a story of hope later on? And that was really what reconciled me to bring me back to the faith. And I also looked at it is that when I was younger and I went to the church, I don't think anyone sat me down and told me who Jesus was. I learned this when I was on the appointment when I was writing the book that people believed that Jesus was God. And I'm like, okay, that changes my entire perspective of what I know about Jesus because that means God humbled himself, came down in human form, lived a sinless life, and then said, I'm going to die for you. And so that was that was the other concept that really brought me back to the faith. It's like, okay, if the god if my God is going to die for me, then I should also be able to die for him. Now, I said, so I guess to catch it back up to the church and everything like that, I was very hesitant to going back to the church based on kind of my background to where I was very anti-religious and I had a lot of resentment built up for the church. So I read the entire Bible before I went back to church. Um, and I and I'm including this because I'm I'm writing another book to where I'm I'm pretty much recording, um about a hundred pages into where I'm recording my experience of going back to the church, reading the Bible, and then reconciling all my thoughts that I had in this first book. So it literally starts where the last book left off. So and it's called uh Answering the Call Call, a continuation of faith and questioning. So book one is not over, it's it's just going to continue right with this next one. And that's kind of what I've been doing for about the last six months while I was waiting to you know get out of the army. And I originally started actually going to a Baptist church and I went there for about four weeks, but the issue I had with the Baptist church is that they were rough on the teaching and they kept every other week they're like pointing and calling people non-Christians and not true believers, and that really broke my faith because I was already struggling, I was already struggling to come back to the faith. I was struggling with like learning everything, and then so when they kind of like pointed at me, and they didn't point at me per se, but I was the one I felt I was feeling it on a personal level, and I'm like, okay, I will show you what a not a Christian is. And I started and I almost fell from the faith completely, but then I kind of had to remember, I'm like, okay, if I abandon my faith right now, then I'm I'm abandoning the entire premise of my first book, and then you know, so that was one of the things that kept me going, is like if I lose hope, then you know, I'm going to end the chapter of my book or whatever it is that I, you know, I said on the previous, and then I'm going to essentially ruin my book because one of the things I I say in the book is that I'm looking for truth, and you know, I found that in my faith. And then so I ended up going to a Catholic church a little bit after that. I'm I'm still interested, I'm still interested in Catholicism, but I I haven't reconciled all the dogmas and their beliefs yet. And then I ended up going to an Anglican church. Um, I'm still going to that Anglican church. I've been going there for a couple months now. I've been participating in all their groups, but essentially it's a it's more of a reform slash traditional church to where it's like there's not really a sermon, but it's it's you know, it's very um traditional in the sense that everything we do has been carried on for like hundreds and hundreds of years to where it's almost like that reflection of the Catholic faith. And so it's not like he's getting up on the sermon and he's talking directly at us, but we we are all there together as one rather than you know just a one-hour sermon of you know the preacher talking to you.

SPEAKER_03 25:26

Right. Or yeah, talking down to you, or however you wanna you you you wanna view it. You know, that's interesting because currently I'm reading a book by Henry Scogel, which was the the was one of the books that George Whitfield read. And I don't know if you've seen the movie Awakening, The Awakening, but it it's an a it's an incredible book, and so I would highly recommend it. So what do you think the church I I would imagine I would imagine that in your spiral, your downward spiral early on, that you know, you probably had a pretty good glimpse of what hell looked like.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Yeah, you know. So um I ironically, you know, there's a ch uh section in my book where I call it a glimpse into hell, and I'm like, the way if you know that you're on the road to hell, then you also know that there's a heaven. And so that's when I kind of like started looking at it, and that's when I was then that chapter introduces like I actually go into depth of each time I got blackmailed, and I talk about each situation, each one getting more explicit, each one getting more vicious. And you know, I I compared that to a small glimpse of hell to where it's like this was very minor to what it could have been and where and then the level it could have got to.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

And then but the other part was that you know, because of my early church rebellion and I was atheist, and you could argue antichrist as well, that what was going on in my head at that time was actually very hellish images. And to this day, I still uh you know, I was into horror movies for a long time, which made my mind very dark, and to where, you know, I still have a I still have horror movie tattoos, you know, from my stomach all the way up to my chest, one of them being a Hellraiser tattoo, um, which is a fictional hell priest that would drag people to hell and then torture them for eternity. And so, you know, that would that would tell you like some of the dark images that were like in my mind, and that wasn't you know helping my journey at all. And because I picked up horror movies probably when I was like 12, 13 years old, so I picked them up pretty early, and you know, getting into like heavier music and stuff like that. Um, so I I was down a very like dark and heavy path way before then, and then you know, kind of when I start stopped, started putting all these things off to the side and started becoming more optimistic, that's you know, where I found that faith. And I'm like, because when I in 2026, when I officially like, okay, I'm doing this thing, you know, I I gave up the horror movies, I started getting rid of my music. I had like tarot cards, I was into tarot for three years. I recorded that in the book. I almost took it out because I was at the point to write this right at the bottom. I'm like, oh my, if I keep this in the book, I might be getting myself in a lot of trouble. But then I kind of settled myself down. I'm like, hey, this is part of the story. Maybe I can use this to help someone else that's going down the tarot realm and how I got away from it. And you know, this is one of the things I reconcile in some of this new writing I'm doing as well. And so I don't I don't try to go away from my story, and in fact, I'll I get very explicit and I will be brutally honest with myself. I'm like, yeah, I did all these things, but it's so that I can have the conversation with anyone else who is going through those things, and that they know my stories are real, and that's and that's what I say when I'm when I talk about my blackmail, I get very explicit in details, and it makes people very uncomfortable, but it's like there's not a conversation I couldn't have with the person that would make me uncomfortable at this point.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

Right. Yeah, well, there's a there's a a great deal to be said for the authenticity of all of that, right? And and that's I think people tend to fall short because they uh they don't want to be that honest with themselves. And I think that's you know, that's probably a stumbling block. Let me shift gears just a little bit, Devin, on society as a whole. What are your thoughts around um social media and what it's doing to drive uh uh hope out of the environment? Because to me, social media is going a long way to isolating people, doing a lot of bad things, right? And I was just curious your thoughts based on your experience.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Yeah. Um, so going back to getting blackmailed and everything like that is because I was addicted to like dating websites, and that is part of you know the social media and and um digital realm. The problem with the digital realm and social media in general is that 90% of it is fake and we don't know who is authentic anymore. And so the social media realm is like making a lot of people famous who shouldn't be famous, or it's made people teachers who shouldn't be teachers and everything like that. And the problem I found, even you know, back to this Christianity conversation on the churches and everything like that, is like if I get on social media, there's so many denominations of Christianity that all we're doing is arguing with each other, and it's very hard to actually see the truth in it when everyone's like, Oh, you're going to hell, you're going to hell, you're going to hell, you're not a real Christian, you're a non-believer. And so it's very difficult. And when I'm and that's kind of why I I limit myself on I try to limit myself on social media and what I'm watching, and that's kind of why I ended up in the Anglican church right now, is that because I saw you know truth in like Catholicism, I saw truth in the Protestants as well. And so now I'm just, you know, continuing on that journey. But I think the digital realm is very dangerous because it is fake and most of it's not real. The problem with it is that we still get the gratification from the fakeness. And you know, I saw this with the dating websites, and I saw this. I used to be a heavily uh heavy gamer, and occasionally I still get on gaming now, but I I used to be a gamer to where like that's all I was doing on my spare time, and it was giving me satisfaction, but the problem with it was that I was losing out on my actual life and I wasn't getting actual life experience, and I think that ended up adding to the dating realm experience to where I wasn't getting any matches or anything like that because I don't know how to hold a conversation at this point, and so it it took away from my social media, the digital world takes away from your actual life, and it makes it very hard to come back from. And I think our entire society is kind of running into that to where it's like we don't know what to do anymore because we're so reliant on technology as well.

SPEAKER_03 31:46

Yeah, I agree, and I think it's the the the current state of the family is suffering greatly from it. You know, all you have to do is look around and you you almost have to pry somebody's dead fingers off their cell phone because they're they're texting, they're doing this, they're doing that, and uh there is no there is no real interaction with people anymore. And and and I think it's it's becoming worse. Uh, you know, uh, I think some countries now are are banning children up to, I believe there was one country 16 before they, but I don't know how they're gonna enforce something like that.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

I think I was gonna say, um, I know you said it's getting worse, and I I would agree with that because I know I I I hope I I'm glad I never got into this, but I know it's getting to the point to where it's like a people are thinking they have like AI girlfriends to where like they think they're dating AI, and I'm like, that is terrible. I'm like, this is worse, this is arguably worse than a real person, to where they're creating a literal fake girlfriend and think this is a connection. And people are selling this right now, and it's getting more and more popular. And I I think that's going to be an even more dangerous realm than what I fall myself into, where I was getting stuck with real fake people. I I think AI would be even more dangerous.

SPEAKER_03 33:08

Yep, I agree with you completely. So, where where can people a find your book, B, find your social media points so that they can, if they're in any of these spaces that we've talked about, can start to find, you know, some some kind of uh piece or or avenue to where they can a buy your book and start to get a change in direction of their life or or you know the counseling or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Yeah. So to find the book itself, uh we'll start there. They can find it pretty much anywhere online. I don't know if it's any physical stores yet. I haven't been notified or they haven't asked me, but I've seen it on like Barnes and Noble online, I've seen it like on some other real retailers online. Yeah, it's on Amazon. Um ebook, it's on paperback, it's on hardcover. The only thing it's not in is Audible right now, just because I have to see if there's a market before you know I get further in there because it costs like $7,000 to do the audible recording and everything like that. But it they can also get it like on ebook, they can get on Kindle, Codobo. So they could pretty much get it on all the websites. When it comes to me, they can find me on Facebook right now. I'm not doing too much social media, but they could always hit me up there if they have any questions on the book or if they have any personal questions. And then last week I also started a YouTube channel. Um, so that's been uh something new I introduced. And the channel is called Answering the Hard Questions because I I noticed no one took the title yet. Very surprising. I was on a podcast a couple weeks ago. They're like, ooh, answering the hard questions, that would be a good podcast name. And so I typed it in YouTube. I'm like, oh, no one has it yet. Let me take the and then I already, you know, I already made a book about it, so I guess I kind of have it copyrighted as well if they want to come for me. Yeah. But if they type up that, I've just I've been doing I've been trying to do like a video every day. Sometimes they're like five minutes, sometimes they're like 30 minutes. Like when I was telling my actual story, the long version, it was two 30-minute videos, and I just did my testimony last week, and that was like another 30-minute video. So well, anytime I talk about my story, it's it's very long. And then some of the smaller stuff I'm doing is like reflecting on my book, plus uh working with some of the new stuff that I'm writing and you know throwing it out there for the uh anyone who wants to listen.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

All right. Well, listen, I it's been an absolute honor and a pleasure to have you on, and uh I can't wait to talk to you when your new book comes out. I think that'll be that'll be a lot of fun. And if you don't mind, I would like to take a moment and offer a quote from the Bible, and this is from Ephesians 6.12. It says, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. So again, I would like to thank you so much, Devin, for coming on and spending your time. And uh, I know the audience has got a great deal of information from you.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Yeah, yeah, of course. Thanks you for having me. I was gonna say, I know you quoted some scripture, and I was gonna say to the quote that I actually wrote a quote in the book that actually led me to scripture and what made me believe in scripture, which was I I said, in truth you will find redemption. And then I found the line line uh John 3 21, which is really what brought me back to the faith, and I'm like, okay. And the line was I I can't, I always forget this line, even though it's my favorite line. But essentially it is for those who walk in truth will find the light, and it will be clearly seen that their deeds have come from God. Well, God bless what brought me back to the faith.

SPEAKER_03 36:43

God bless you, my friend, and I wish you well, and I hope to talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more Clarity from Chaos shows on demand, go to Clarityfruit Chaos Podcast.budsprout.com or send Dave an email at info at ClarityFruitChaos.com for information on previous shows. You can also visit this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Twitter, or Google Podcasts. Until next time, please remember: it's not about Wikipedia. It's about be well, everyone.