Anthony Carrasco - phaware® interview 543

How I Survived Meth Addiction, Lung Failure, and Found Purpose

Anthony Carrasco was a meth addict by 15, and nearly dead by 35. Diagnosed with PH after years of drug use, his story spiraled from homelessness to hospice. But a double lung transplant and a deep surrender to recovery transformed everything.

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My name is Anthony Carrasco. I'm from the Bay Area, born and raised there. I'm here to discuss what my part in the pulmonary hypertension world was like. Basically, I am a bilateral transplant post-patient, so I had my lung transplant last year. I started with pulmonary hypertension. I wasn't able to breathe or walk too far without breathing heavy. It was very hard to breathe. They diagnosed me in 2005. I took medications after medications after medications. I'm still on medications because it’s post-transplant, I take the anti-rejection medicines. But before, I tried maybe 15 different medications while I was going through my pulmonary hypertension to try and bring my oxygen levels up, and my pressures down in my heart. I took them as the doctor prescribed. We did that for 19 years. Nineteen years of taking medications to try and help me with my pulmonary hypertension. They worked for a while, and then after that, they didn't work.

In 2023, I was told that my oxygen levels were not going up, even with the medications and the oxygen. Still, my oxygen levels were not going up, so they made the decision to put me on the transplant list. It's pretty crazy. Four days later, they called me and said, "We have a match." I freaked out, of course, a little bit, because it's my first time ever having a major surgery. I was praying and trying to get my head in the right place with God. They got me all prepped at UCSF. I was laying on the gurney, just waiting. The last thing that the doctor has to do, the transplant doctor, is hold the lungs that are coming in for transplant, because they come in in a little ice cooler. If the doctor feels like they're good lungs and he's okay with moving forward, then we move forward. But if there's anything wrong with the lungs when he holds them, he calls the whole thing off.

They prepped me for a good 12 hours. The next day, when they came in, the doctor held them and said, "Nope, I don't like these ones," so they called it off. Fortunately, I had my transplant the right time, but I had been called four other times to go in and get prepped, and they called it off four times in a row. On the fifth time, the lungs came in, and the doctor said, "It's a go." All of a sudden, I'm saying bye to my wife, and next thing I know, I wake up. I asked the doctor, "Hey, when are we going to get my transplant?" He goes, "You're already done. You were just in a 12-hour surgery." I go, "What?" They had me tied down and everything, because some patients get excited when they come out of a surgery like that. I was okay and they released my hands, and the healing started to begin.

It was a very, very hard process to get up, walking, and getting used to your new lungs. Actually, I was to a point where I didn't really know how to breathe normally. I was always trying to gasp for air. It took me a good couple of days to get used to the lungs. What my brain was telling me, what my lungs were doing were two different things. Right out of surgery, I said, "I'm ready to walk." The reason why I wanted to walk and do this so quickly, because I wanted to get back to playing golf. I got up that same day and I walked a little bit, and then I was doing laps in the hospital, and they said, "After nine days, you're ready to be released, you're good." So nine days later, I'm getting released after having a major surgery like that.

Here I am today, with no oxygen, breathing at 98 to 100. Before, I was breathing 78, with 10 liters of oxygen. I feel different. I feel like my skin color's back. I'm just really, really excited about life now, and it's really flowing over into my real estate company that I have. People would just say I'm excited and I'm a different person. I was a gray and purple person before. Now, my skin is pink and brown, which was my normal color. It's just crazy how changing the oxygen in your body will affect your body, your nails, your hair, everything, eyelashes.

Now, I can tell you that going through this process, I look at life differently now. I definitely thank God for the breath, every breath that I take in my life. Before, I would take it for granted. We just breathe and it happens. But now that I've been through this, when I think about my breathing, it's just like every breath is a miracle from God. Every breath. I still am on a lot of medication, but that's post-transplant, but nothing to do with pulmonary hypertension. It's all just post-transplant medication, which is like the anti-rejection drugs.

I want to share with you and go deeper into my story of how I got the pulmonary hypertension.

I was actually raised with my mom. My mom and dad got divorced when I was five years old. My mom had to work and take care of four boys, and we were all a year and a half apart. So, all she did was work. I basically raised myself. I started hanging out with the wrong crowd. I was 13, and I started smoking weed, and it was like, "Wow, this stuff makes me feel different.” I really liked it. I found out later that anything that I like, I have the addictive personality. It's all the same thing, with every kind of drug that was out there. This all happened the same way. Basically, I smoked weed on Friday and Saturday, then it turned into Sunday, and then Monday. Then, now I'm a full-blown pothead at 13 years old, smoking weed every single day.

After a year of doing that, I started experimenting with other drugs, and the same thing happened. We started with coke, and started doing that on Friday, Saturday, and it turned into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and now I'm full-blown coke addict. Then, I smoked crack for a while. I smoked crack twice in my life, once for six months and once for four months. That's how fast it took me to lose everything that I had. Crack is an addiction that it's just like you have to have more, and you'll do whatever it takes to get it.

But the last drug that I did, I started doing meth, methamphetamines, when I was about 15 years old, and I loved it. It made me awake and alert, and just like a different person. I stayed with the meth from 15, all the way up until I was 35. So that long of doing meth. I never injected it. I smoked it and I snorted it. Sometimes I would eat it, depending on the situation, but it took me out, basically.

When I started doing the meth and I turned 18, I pretty much hit the streets and got into a little apartment. I had a bunch of little apartments, but I lost them all during my addiction, all of them. I was still working, making great money. I was working for Cellular One when the phones first came out in 1989. So, 1989 to 1999, I was making a boatload of money. I was making $250,000 a year, and I'm a 19-year-old kid. With that money, I just went full-blown addict. I was going to Vegas and justed lived that life. It was crazy.

But what happened was, in 2003, I was actually homeless at that time, living on the streets. I had a girlfriend, and we were both just living on the streets, and we'd sleep wherever we could if we needed to sleep, but most of the time we were up. If I was awake, I was loaded. Alcohol was a part of my story too. My flavor was Budweiser. I would drink Budweiser all day, all night. If I was awake, I was drinking along with the meth and cigarettes, and it all came together. In 2002, I would walk a little bit and I would pass out, and I didn't know what the heck was going on. I couldn't breathe. It happened quite a few times, and I would go to the hospital. They would give me albuterol, prednisone, just to make me feel really good and where I could breathe. I felt like a lot better than I did before. So as soon as I would pass out, they'd take me to the hospital. I'd get out and do the same thing over again. Just start with the drugs every time, even though they told me, "Don't do them because you're going to die." The drug was that powerful, where I didn't even hear those words. I just kept doing what I was normally doing.

Those last three years of my addiction, it really was hard for me. I kept passing out, and I couldn't breathe. And at the end, I went in for the last time, and I said, "My ankles have swelled up really big. I was retaining a lot of water. I didn't know what was going on." I thought I had some bad dope. So, I went in there, and I told the doctor. They knew me in there, and everyone knew my name is Worm. Everybody called me Worm. Nobody knew my name, Anthony. That was like another person, really another person. When I got clean, I read about the worm, what a worm is. It's the creature, the insect that goes the lowest in the world, way down in the dirt, lower than any other species. That's what I was. I was a worm. I was at the bottom of the bottom.

When I went into the hospital, and the doctor said, "Hey, man, we've been telling you for three years now that there's going to be a day where you're not going to make it, and today's the day you're not going to make it. Your heart is failed. Your lungs are shutting down. Your organs, everything's shutting down. So we're going to give you morphine to make you comfortable." Basically, they put me in hospice. They said, "Do you have any family?" I said, "Yeah, but I haven't talked to them in three years, because I was embarrassed of my appearance, and my family for what I was doing, what I chose to do." He said, "You should call your family."

So, I called my brother, Jim, and he came over the hospital after I hadn't seen him for three years, and then my other brothers came. My mom came and my dad came. I can remember them standing around me. Sorry, I'm getting a little emotional. Sorry. I remember them standing around me, and they were crying. I just looked so bad. I was 110 pounds. I wouldn't eat. It's really hard to eat when you're on meth. They just sat around me and held my hand, and they gave me morphine, and just waited for me to die.

I woke up 10 days later. I just came out of the morphine high that they were giving me. I was just out of it, didn't really know what was going on. I came out of it and I looked around, and I thought I had died. I looked around and I saw all this hospital stuff, and I pushed the button. The nurse came running in. "Are you okay? Are you okay?" "Yes, I'm good." In my mind, it told me that, "Let me get out of here, so I can go back out there and use again." But the doctor came in. I'll never forget him. He said, basically, "Hey, you might make it. Everything's starting to wake up again. We're start giving you a lot of medications to get you back to being okay. So, you need to make a decision, Anthony. You can go back out there in the street and use again, and die," exactly what he told me, "or you can get help for your addiction, and live a life that you should have been living a long time ago."

He told me straight that you're going to die. My brain told me, "Hey, if I go into recovery, I won't be able to drink anymore." This is disgusting when I think about it, but I asked the doctor, "Does that mean I can't even have one beer?" after he just told me I was going to die. He just looked at me in disgust. He said, "Yeah, well, you figured out what you want to do. You didn't want to die or you want to live." He was an older doctor and he wasn't playing. I called my mom, and my mom had been in recovery already, so I knew a little bit about recovery. I said, "Mom, I got to go back out there and find my girlfriend," who was cheating on me anyway. It was just a horrible situation. I told the doctor I want to get clean, but I need to go find my girlfriend, which was a bad choice, because I could have easily picked up again.

I went to the apartment that we were staying in, and I climbed through the window, and I saw all these pipes on the floor, and it just looked like it was a meth party. I started breaking them. I just started stepping on them. It made me sick. I just started breaking them, instead of picking them up and using, and I could have did that. I just started breaking them. I walked out of there. I got out of the house. I just went through the window. That was our entrance, and I called my mom. My mom came, pick me up, and my recovery started.

The first time I went to Sunrise in Concord, I had a lot of doctor appointments, because they diagnosed me with congestive heart failure and pulmonary hypertension. They had all these doctor appointments set up for me, and they put me on a program. I started to try their medications, and everything was getting a little bit better. I felt a little bit better. I went through a 90-day program in Concord called Sunrise. Then, from there, I went to my mom's, but my mom couldn't handle me because I was still a mess.

So, I went into an SLE. An SLE is a sober living environment. I stayed there for a year and a half. After six months, I became the house manager. I was the house manager for a year. With the program, they teach you how to show up and be accountable and responsible, and how to take transportation. I had no car. I had no cellphone. I had nothing. My mom paid for my SLE, and I stayed there. It was like $500 bucks a month. Then, from there, started going to all my doctor appointments, and everything started to get a little bit better. They were starting me on medications. They told me that I would need a heart and lung transplant within two years. If I didn't get it, that I wouldn't be able to make it.

All those years later, I was following directions from the doctors. That was the most important part right there, because I had to do that if I wanted to live. My life was so good. I felt better than I ever had before. I walked outside. I was in Hayward. I walked outside of the SLE. I'm walking to the bus stop, and I'd hear the birds so loud, and the flowers looked so bright, and the mountains. I didn't know there was mountains in the Bay Area, because I was always walking with my head down, and I saw the mountains and I was surprised.

I included God in my life and I started to go to a thing called Celebrate Recovery, a 12-step program that I'm still involved with today. I was going to AA, NA. I started sponsoring people. I'm totally blessed by God, that he took me from living down in the dirt to buying a house in Alamo, California. We used to call them pipe dreams. I would take a hit of a pipe, and then I would dream about whatever I wanted. They were called pipe dreams. That's what they call it, pipe dreams.

I always wanted to do real estate. As soon as I got clean, two months later, I went and took my real estate test. I passed the first time. Nothing ever good happened to me. It was always bad. In and out of jail in Santa Rita. I've been over there 20 times. Sometimes, I would like getting arrested because I had three hot meals and a cot. Three hot and a cot, that's what they call it. I lived at Santa Rita, basically, sometimes. In and out of the street, get picked up, and that's just the way it was. The whole time, I was doing meth. It ruined my lungs from smoking meth. That's how I got pulmonary hypertension, through smoking the meth and doing the meth, and the alcohol, and just not taking care of myself.

By the grace of God, I'm totally healthy today. I went from living under the bridge to living up on a hill on Alamo. It blows my mind. I have a 16-year-old son that I was able to raise. I got custody of him when he was 10. His mom still struggles with alcohol and drugs. I was able to go through a two-year court battle, and I got him when he was 10. Full legal, physical custody of him. He's still with me today, and he's doing great. He's getting straight A's in school. God has given me a second chance at raising kids, because I've had kids before that I wasn't present for. I have three other kids that I wasn't able to raise, because I didn't even know how to take care of myself. So, a lot of blessings.

People that come in from homelessness, drug addicted, I'm the first one to talk to them. That's my heart. I've been there. I can relate to them. I pull over to talk to the homeless people. I'll eat lunch with them, or I'll pray with them, or whatever it is. I can remember. I just wanted them to know that there's hope out there, and that if I can do it, you can do it. I'm here to support you all the way through, show you how to change your life, like I did, and I'm passionate about it.

If you know anyone that's struggling with addiction, and they're going through the same thing of not being able to breathe, please call me. I'd be happy to walk you through the steps and bring you through the whole process to get to where I'm at today. By the grace of God, I'm successful. My heart is to help people. Most of all the drug and alcohol addicted, I want them to make it, as well. That's where my heart is at. I'll do whatever it takes to get them where I'm at. So, I'm here for you. My information will be below. If you have any questions or want to ask me questions, personal questions, I'm here for you. But I'm doing great.

I just celebrated my two-year lungaversary. We call it lungaversary. It's the anniversary for when we had our lung transplant. It's a big day for me, and a big blessing that I can say I'm here after the transplant, two years later, without oxygen. It is all because I am staying clean. It's crazy. When you stop doing drugs, you stop going to jail. Just remember that. I haven't been to jail since 2005, and that's because I stopped doing the meth, right? I'm trying my best to live a life the way that God wanted me to live. I just want to thank you, and thank you for having me on your podcast. It's amazing to be here with you, and I'm just so, so honored that you would ask me to share my story. Thank you.

My name is Anthony Carrasco, and I'm aware that I'm rare.

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