Justin Furstenfeld - lead singer of Blue October
“Everyday I try to find a quiet spot and just focus on what I need to get done, what I need to do better, who I need to thank, who I need to pray for, and mostly connect for just a bit internally.”
To say that music is my life doesn’t quite exemplify that I would literally be lost without it. In early 2015, before I made the decision to become sober, I was in a very bad place. I lost someone close to me to an overdose and another person I loved dearly admitted to using and I took them to rehab. I was such a zombie. I knew that I couldn’t drink because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop if I had one drop. I also stopped listening to music. For about three months I welcomed the silence because every song seemed to haunt me, sending me further into my zombie state. I’m not sure when it was, but one day I started scanning around on YouTube. I came across the Blue October song “Hate Me” which was his getting sober anthem to his mother. But then I found out that he had relapsed and was sober again and changed his life around… and there was new music about his new journey.
Listen to the song that saved my life here.
I listened to this song on repeat for about a week straight. I wasn’t sure where I was headed. But I finally had the one thing back in my life that I had lost… Hope. “Today, I don’t have to fall apart.” It was my first introduction to understanding living one day at a time. And for 383 days now I have continued to live one day at a time.