Hi, my family. Join us for our next Moth mainstage presented by Literary Arts on Saturday, December 5th. Don't miss another night.

As for storytellers, share true stories told live all on the theme under wraps. Get your tickets at the Mostaghim Portland mainstage.

From NPR. This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles, and in this hour, we'll hear four stories recorded live on stage in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and St. Paul, Minnesota.

The backgrounds of the storytellers are wildly different.

We'll hear from a medical analyst and aspiring writer who pays the bills waiting tables, a woman from a small town in Alaska and a world renowned rock star. The one thing they all have in common is that they've shared their stories on the moth stage.

We'll begin with a story from Pam Flowers that she told at the historic Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. The evening was produced in partnership with Minnesota Public Radio. Here's Pam live at the mall. Well, when I was a little girl, we had this radio in our house and this thing was as big as a piece of furniture, and I used to sit there on the floor with my ear pressed up against the speaker. And I would listen to my favorite radio program was about this guy named Sergeant Preston and his dog King.

And they used to have a dog team and they'd go running all over the Arctic righting wrongs. And I used to fantasize about how one day I was going to grow up and I was going to do those very things. But of course, life kind of got under way a little bit. And believe it or not, 40 years later, there I was standing on the outskirts of Barrow, Alaska, alone with an eight dog team. And we were going to dog sled across Arctic America to the east side of Canada.

Well, I just didn't get up one day and say, well, I guess I'm going to dog sled across the Arctic America. I actually spent about 10 years in Alaska and I had learned how to dog sled, how to take care of my dogs and gone on a lot of expeditions to gain experience.

So when we left Barrow, Alaska, on February 14th, 1993, I believe that my eight dogs and I were ready to go.

Now, the way it works in dogsledding is you you have a team of dogs, in this case I had eight and you put a harness on them and on the end of the harness, there's a line and the line goes back to the front of the sled and the musher stands on the back of the sled and you tell those dogs what to do.

So you don't have any leash or rain.

You just use your voice to control the dogs. Well, of course, it's kind of tricky to figure out how to make eight dogs do the same thing at the same time.

So you have what's called a lead dog, and that's kind of, you know, the head dog, the number one lead dog. My dog was a dog named Douglas and I called him Doggy Dog.

And Doggy Dog was a big old seventy five pound floppy guy and and he was just happy go lucky he'd do anything I ask him to do. Duggie had a son named Robert, and as far as anyone knows, Robert never did a single thing he was told in his entire life.

So why is he in the team? Well, the bitter truth is I didn't have much in the way of money.

I needed eight dogs. I only had eight dogs. So if you were in my kennel, you were going so.

So I took Robert along and I put him in the back of the team where I thought he couldn't cause any trouble, and to be fair to Robert, he did work pretty hard.

So. So off we went on our first day. And our first day was absolutely spectacular. I mean, everything went just the way it was supposed to go. And I'm standing there in camp that first night and I'm looking around and look at my dogs all snuggled up behind the sleds. My little red and white tent is waiting for me. And I'm looking around and I'm thinking, you know, we're pretty isolated. There's nobody else around us for a long ways.

But that's OK, because I'm a person who really loves solitude and isolation, and anyway, I always suggest I mean, my dream was coming true.

Well, I was going to be the first woman to dog sled across the Arctic, no woman had ever done this alone before, and I had spent a couple of years looking for sponsorship. No one would help us, no one. So I borrowed every nickel it took to make this happen not too long before we left, I ran into my neighbor guy named Dave. I like to call him Neighbor Dave.

And I told neighbor Dave my worries about money and neighbor Dave, you know, he's this big guy is like six four and two hundred pounds. And he looks down at me and he says, well, what do you expect?

Your five feet? Nothing. What are you, 100 pounds soaking wet? And those eight dogs, yours, they're nothing but a bunch of clunkers.

Nobody believes in you and you're going to fail. Wow. Thanks, Dave.

So I'm standing there in that camp that first night, and I thought to myself, you cannot listen to people like Dave. And I thought, you know, these people that they don't see what I see, they don't feel what I feel when I'm up here and I'm looking at the sun in the western sky and I'm looking at the Arctic Ocean, this giant sheet of ice and all this land frozen.

And I think about the power it took to make that happen. My dogs and I have the same stuff in us as what's in all of that, and when I look at that, I don't feel small, I don't feel weak, I feel full of power, like I can do anything.

Well, I wasn't naive enough to think that this was going to be a day at the beach, this was going to be a pretty arduous thing. As it turned out, there were going to be there were more storms in the Arctic that winter than there had been in recorded history.

So when a storm is coming, you need to stop before it comes and you set up your camp and I would put it my dogsleds on their sides and then put the dogs behind the sleds out of the wind, set up my tent and I'd get in there and snuggle up with a book and read.

But it is not a time actually when you can just rest, because I would go out every four hours round the clock and check on my dogs, make sure they had enough food, and if it was so windy, I couldn't stand up.

I did that on my hands and knees. Well, of course. It wasn't all bad weather, we had just so many spectacular days out there are so beautiful in the Arctic one day that stands out. Most in my mind is this one day right before we crossed the Canadian border. And I'm looking off to the south and there these mountains, and it's just got a little snow on. It looks like scrimshaw in the Arctic Ocean. And the air was so pure and had no smell is so quiet.

There's no sound. It's just total peace. And we continued along or sledding, we came around to this beautiful big beach. And it looks so perfect. Look like a superhighway right in front of us and I got this idea, I thought, I'm going to take Robert, my dog, Robert, and I'm going to put him up in front beside my number one lead dog, doggy dog. And I'm going to give Robert a chance to show that he can learn commands.

What could he possibly do wrong?

About five minutes later, we came around the corner and they're up in a ravine.

Off to the right was a mother, polar bear and cub there about 100 yards away.

And they're standing on this beautiful white snow in this perfect blue sky.

Behind them is like a picture. And I thought, you know, the dogs aren't even going to see her.

Well, Robert's a bit of a tourist. And he just happened to look after the right and he saw the bears, and so now he swings to the right and he wants to go and visit the bears.

Now, I'm sure that Robert thought those bears were dogs because dogs really don't like bears.

And I'm yelling at Doug IHA and that means go left hander Jihae because I'm trying to get Doug to take us away from the Bears. But now the other six dogs see what Robert is seeing and they decide they need to go see the bears. So now the whole team swung hard to the right and we are rocketing across this frozen beach. I'm standing on this on the brake as hard as I can, but it's not working because there's only about an inch of snow on this beach and there's nothing for it to bite into.

I'm trying to flip the sled over, but I can't flip it over. We are walking across this beach. We get to the bottom of the ravine now the ravine. Is full of hard packed, windblown snow and the brake lights, and we jerked to a halt.

But now my lead dogs, Doug and Robert, are only about three feet from this bear and I'm like maybe 60 feet and I'm yelling at Duggie, ha ha, go to the left.

But he doesn't hear me. It's just total chaos. I have no control over anything that's happening. And this bear is standing there and looking at us and she is not happy. And she looked at my dog, Duggie, and she ran towards him and kind of a false charge. She tried to stop before she hit him, but actually the ravine was so slick that she banged right into him and sent him tumbling to the bottom of the ravine, taking the whole team with him.

She turned around and hightailed it back to her cabin when the dog saw her running away. They try to chase after her, but they couldn't quite get to her because, of course, the brake is still in the snow.

And now this bear is getting really agitated.

The dogs are lunging and lunging and barking, and she's getting more and more agitated and she starts to draw, you would have to be there to see how much drool can come out of an agitated bear's mouth.

This is like for water faucets going off at one time and then she starts wagging her head.

And clawing at the snow, and then she made this sound. I had always been told by native people, when a polar bear makes that sound, they're getting serious and you better be ready. Amazingly, I just got real calm. And everything around me started happening in slow motion. I reached into my sled bag and I pulled out my shotgun, turned off the safety, and I aimed it at her. And I thought, if she's going to hurt one of my dogs.

I'm going to shoot her. And then everything stopped, it's just got totally silent. No more barking, no more hissing. Just silence. And then the bear seemed to see me for the first time, she took one step towards me and she looked at me with those cold black eyes. My stomach just lurched. And I stepped away from the sled one step and I held out my hand and I said, it's OK, it's OK, we're going to go now.

And I swear, I heard that bear say to me in my mind, I don't want to hurt you. I just want you to go. And with that, she just walked to her den opening about 70 feet away and slipped inside. In her little cub is running over there trying to catch up to momma, and it got right beside the den opening now it had had its first lesson on how to be a big, tough polar bear.

And it looked over at us and it went. And then it jumped inside and I never saw them again, so I ran I've got the lines on Tangled and jumped on the sled and I said, all right, let's go. And I wanted as much distance between us and those polar bears as possible.

We didn't stop for three hours and it took me three days to stop shaking.

We had many more challenges on this journey, but somehow we always managed to rescue one another. This journey took 11 months. And then my eight dogs and I went home happy and healthy, I had wanted to prove. By doing this journey. That my dogs and I were good enough that we weren't a bunch of clunkers and together we did that. But what I gained most was a profound respect for my dogs and for myself. And as for neighbor Dave.

Now, who cares what Dave thinks? Thank you. Pam Flowers, 2500 mile trek across Arctic America was the longest solo dog sled track by a woman in recorded history. She likes to tell people you're never too young to have a dream and you're never too old to make it come true. If you have a story you'd like to tell. Go to the moth dog and leave us a two minute pitch. Here's a pitch from Jaclyn Medina-Mora, who told us a little about a childhood experience growing up in Nigeria.

When I was growing up, I suffered severe and blinding migraine headaches and fever. Some days it was so bad that I could not even get out of bed. My father decided that evil spirits were the cause and that someone had put a curse on me with powerful magic. And the only way to get rid of this was through an exorcism. At about seven p.m., one fateful evening in Lagos, Nigeria, at the age of 13, my mother drove me through medicine man that would banish the evil spirits and restore me to normalcy.

You can pitch your story at the morgue, and when you do, don't forget to tell us where you're located. Our favorite pitches are developed for mosquitoes all around the world. Coming up, a young boy tests his faith with a slice of pizza. From Prick's, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles, and our next story comes from Moesha. Shulman Moesha told this story on our main stage in New York City. The theme of the evening was Secret Hart.

Here's Moesha live at the moment. When I was a child, I was given a blessing to become the greatest rabbi of my time.

But at 15 years old, I was struggling in school and I felt like I couldn't live up to the pressure of my blessing anymore. On the fourth of eight children and I was raised in an ultra orthodox Jewish community and months in New York.

For those of you who haven't been raised Orthodox Jewish, it's kind of like growing up Amish only we had electricity, but still I wasn't allowed to watch TV, read secular books, you know, eat non kosher food or even talk to girls.

And and I was taught from a young age by my rabbis that if I disobeyed any of God's commandments, I would receive a punishment.

And by punishment, my rabbis meant that God would most likely, you know, kill me. And here's the thing, I believe them. I was a good boy, I got straight A's, I, I listened to my parents and my rabbis, but as I got older, I started to question, I wonder, would God really hurt me if I didn't obey him? So I started to test them.

One morning at school, I moved my yarmulke from the back of my head to a few inches closer to the front of my head. Now, that was a sign of modernism that was like upgrading from a prepaid flip phone to an iPhone. And then I started secretly listening to Howard Stern on the bus on the way to school, and I was wondering if the other boys were listening to him, too. You know what's fascinating to me, to listen to someone who was discussing about something other than, you know, the Talmud and the Torah.

And even more thrilling was the fact that this Howard Stern guy was Jewish.

He was using Yiddish words and talking about Chavez and the Jewish holidays.

And that got me thinking, wait a second, if Howard Stern is Jewish and he's practically sinning every day with the things I've heard him talk about, why hasn't got killed him yet.

But even though I was starting to push back, I was still afraid of going too far.

And at the same time, I was becoming quickly disillusioned with my upbringing. My things were falling apart at home. My parents were going through a pretty bad divorce and I wanted to get away from them and my rabbis and the religious restrictions.

So for winter break that year, I planned a trip to Florida with my older brother, Israel. Israel had left the fold a year earlier, a year earlier, and moved in with my non-religious aunt Linda and Bellmore, Long Island.

So the plan was to meet him at her house and then we'd leave for the airport on Sunday. And now I always wanted to go to my aunt's house.

You know, my brother told me she had things I could have only dreamed of having one day, a grand piano, a spiral staircase and two fifty inch screen TVs.

So I got to my aunt's house on Friday afternoon and time for Chavez, and she was kind enough to buy me some kosher food. But but it's but for the duration of Chavez. By the time Chavez was over on Saturday night, there was no kosher food left and I was hungry. So we all got into the car to go graze for kosher food out on the pastures of Long Island.

Now, I was pretty good at searching for food because it seemed to be a theme in my family, you know, being one of the kids, I always felt like there wouldn't be enough of it. And I constantly paced the kitchen, you know, looking in the pantry, in the fridge for my next meal.

And sometimes I'd even go as far as the food, you know, out of fear that there wouldn't be any left.

And I always wish there was some sort of pill that would substitute a meal like like the Mona and the Torah. You know, when the Jews were in the desert and they complained to Moses and Aaron that they would rather have died with pots of meat surrounding them in Egypt than die of thirst and hunger in the desert.

And God, hearing their complaints quickly answered and told them, look, I settle down, I'm going to show you how great I am. I'm going to fill the camp with bread and meat.

And I believe the direct quote was because then you will know I'm the Lord, your God.

And sure enough, my rabbis taught me that you could ask him for anything and it would literally drop from the sky anything you wanted. Pizza, ice cream, candy, it would magically appear.

But nothing was magically appearing in Long Island.

So we continue driving around looking for a kosher restaurant, but none were open.

So I recommend that we go to the local stop and shop to look for kosher frozen pizza. For some reason in my community, that's a delicacy.

So we scanned all the aisles and stop and shop, but I couldn't find anything that had an O u marked on the package. Now the o u symbol means that it has officially been certified kosher.

And if you were only allowed to eat food with an O u marked in the package, that meant you were most likely ultra-Orthodox, which I was. But if you were only allowed to eat food that was watched over by a specific rabbi, then marked with an official stamp by that rabbi, that meant you were Hasidic.

But if you were allowed to eat food that had a kosher but made with dairy certification, then you were most likely modern orthodox or also known in my community as a borderline Jew.

And if you were allowed to eat food that had a Kmart on it or worse than that, a capital case surrounded by a triangle or even worse than that, the Hebrew National Certification, you could forget about a seat next to God in the world to come because he won't even consider Jewish eating that food was just as bad as throwing your yarmulke to the ground, cursing God and biting into a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich.

So having found a kosher frozen pizza, we all sit outside, stop and shop, contemplating what to do next in our search for kosher food has been going on close to two hours and we were all frustrated. I you know, I was beginning to feel like the Israelites in the Torah, I would have preferred to die MUNSIE with kosher meat surrounding me than die of hunger in the desolate suburb of Bellmore, Long Island.

My aunt asked me what I wanted to eat and I didn't know. She asked me if it had to be kosher.

And again and again, I didn't know, you know, I was just wishing there was no such thing as kosher or non kosher. So I pressed me again.

Does it have to be kosher or not? And I was beginning to realize it in the moment, that even if I found something relatively kosher, I would have been disappointed. I secretly wanted something not kosher, but I was too afraid to ask for it or admit it. My answer to my brother Israel for some help. And my brother said, hey, look, I don't want to force them to eat, not kosher if he doesn't want to.

And I am I was, you know, getting angry.

So she said, well, what is this kosher stuff anyway? You know, it's just blessed by a rabbi. Right? So why don't I buy some food? I'm blessed. We'll just get this over with.

And I have to tell her. Well, my rabbis told me that women aren't allowed to bless the food and that got even more angry.

So she started to walk away.

And then I said, well, maybe I could eat something if I don't know that it's not kosher.

So she quickly turned around and yelled, well, how does that work? So I explained what I learned in Talmud class. Follow this, guys.

If a Jew is in an airport and he buys a kosher hamburger and while he's gone, you know, to wash and make a blessing on the bread, you know, someone switches his burger out with a non kosher one and it eats it. It's OK.

Now, that logic, my aunt agreed with me. She was excited about that. So she had a plan.

She told me that she'd go into the store and buy the food for me and I wouldn't have any idea that it's not kosher.

So I agreed.

So we all got back into the car and drove to Stella's pizzeria on Merrick Road. My aunt asked me what I want and I told her a mushroom slice and she said just one. And I said, yes, I just want I didn't want to piss God off more by getting to. So my and my brother went into the store and I sat in the back of the car waiting for God to blow up the pizza shop, the car or both.

You know, my fifteen year old mind was being filled with every rabbi I ever had in the Shiva yelling at me, you know, that I was going to be thrown into a pit of fire for sinning. I was in a Galatia car and in a Galatia parking lot next to a geisha store. And I watched closely as the the counter boy put the slices into the oven. And I was afraid of my touch pork.

You know what if there's pork flavor in the oven or what if he cut my slice with the knife, that he cut a slice of pepperoni or bacon and my heart races is that Linda paid the cashier and I thought God was going to take a right.

Then he's going to take an arm off or sever her head. And I thought about that saying, don't kill the messenger to try and comfort me, but God bless God. I could do whatever the hell he wanted. And I was scared for my brother, too, even though he didn't order or pay for the slices.

But the fact that he was in the store with my aunt made him an accessory to my downfall as a kosher Jew.

And I started to get a stomach ache and I couldn't even tell if I was hungry anymore. And the guilt was racking up pretty heavily. And I realized I wasn't that good boy that I used to be.

So my aunt and my brother walked out of the store, got back into the car.

My brother held the pizza box of the slices in it, but I couldn't look at them or the box of pizza. I was too nervous. I just stared out the window as as we continue down the street, afraid of the car crashing into a tree or a telephone pole. And I could already see the breaking news headline. Orthodox Jew buys non kosher slice of pizza and is immediately killed on the way home. Then you will know I am the Lord, your God.

I thought then you will know.

So when we got home, Israel placed the pizza box in the dining room table. Linda went into the kitchen to grab some paper plates and I asked her if they take my slice out and he said, no, I don't want to get involved.

My aunt told us we were both nuts and she cut my slice on a plate and they ate my and my brother always started eating, so I thought that little encouraged. And I figured if I was going to be taken out, they'd go with me. So I pick up the slice, took the first bite.

I chewed it. I swallowed it. They asked me how it was and I told them it was pretty good. But but it was better than pretty good, but better than any kosher pizza I had ever had, you know, tasty tomato sauce than Crus, fresh mushrooms and cheese.

But I didn't want to come off as too happy or cocky, you know, I don't want to piss him off even more upstairs.

And so I quickly finished the slice and I checked to make sure I wasn't dead and thought, please, God forgive me just this once, please. It's just a stupid mushroom slice of pizza. I enjoyed the slice, but I just broken a major commandment, but the next day Israel and I went to Florida and it was over the course of that week that I that I traded in my amica for a baseball cap.

I was finally free from the pressure of my blessing and my rabbis and my parents cannot divorce, it was just me and my older brother free to do as we pleased.

We spent four days at Universal Studios riding the roller coasters and playing arcades.

We stayed up late in the hotel watching movies, and I couldn't stop eating pizza that week.

I think I had pizza for nearly every meal.

You know, Florida was my Sodom and Gomorrah, but of course, it isn't that easy.

It's not like I just say that one slice and, you know, everything is all good. You know, it's been ten years since I ate that mushroom slice. And I have since made a full break from the religious fold.

And yet I'm still scared that something horrible is going to happen to me for breaking the rules. And I imagine ordering a bacon egg and cheese sandwich one day. And I can already see the breaking news headline. Former Orthodox Jew orders a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich and is instantly struck down by lightning and local diner. Then you will know I am the Lord your God, then you will know. Thank you.

That was most Just Show Me Most is a writer living in New York City, the place rabbis warned him were the people who walked the streets where little more than build a higher wild animals to see a picture.

For most life changing week at Universal Studios, go to the MCG.

Our next story comes from Jennifer Sodini, Jennifer threw her name in the hat at one of our monthly open mike story slams in Chicago, where we partner with public radio station webzine. Here's Jennifer Sodini live at the mark. I was living in Pittsburgh at the time and dangerous and ill, and I lived in a very small apartment building and I lived on the top floor and it was my apartment and the apartment of a man named Gary. I didn't know Gary very well.

He just seemed like a typical Pittsburgh dude. He had a girlfriend. Maybe I never saw her. He had like, what's it called?

Like like Rose Friars Club roasts.

DVD's show up a lot. That's really all I knew about. On the second floor were two more apartments with a clear glass door and the bottom is a basement, two apartments in the basement, a garage. And then all the way across the garage, there was the laundry room.

Now, at the time, I was working a lot of different jobs, going from one job to the next. I had an internship and then I worked as a waitress and I was running very late one day.

And so pull into the garage in my car, throw my uniform, which was still in my car from the night before into the wash, ran up to my apartment.

I'm thinking, OK, here's what I could do.

I could either go all, you know, change my clothes, put on pants and a shirt, go all the way back downstairs through the garage to the laundry room, get my clothes, then run all the way back upstairs to my apartment change and then go all the way back downstairs to my car, drive to work as a waitress.

And I thought, no, no, no, here's what I'm going to do. Put on my underwear and undershirt. I'm going to sprint down the stairs through the garage in the laundry room, put the fresh, warm clothes right from the dryer, get in my car and leave. This is going to save, like, minutes. It's brilliant.

And then then I think.

Wait a second, Jennifer, this sounds like one of those stories where you're going to really embarrass yourself.

And then I thought, wait, no, because I thought that nothing is going to happen.

So underwear on out the door, third floor, lock the door. I am on the landing between the third floor and the second floor and I hear the buzzer ring. Now, like I said, this is a clear glass door. So whoever is on the second floor ring, the buzzer is going to see me. Fine. Crisis averted. Run back upstairs. I hear Gary coming out of his apartment. So now I have to make a choice in my underwear, do I run upstairs, fumble with my keys, as Gary just inexplicably sees me in my underwear trying to get back into my apartment?

Or do I sprint past the unknown person at the door, obvious choice, right, sprint past the person in front of the glass? I mean, this sounds like minutes. This is like seconds. And so I run down the stairs, past the door in my underwear, get to the downstairs, and I look up and I see a woman who actually kind of looks a little bit like me, kind of my same shape, same hair color.

And I look at her and I give her the best life. So fucking weird.

Sometimes you see someone run by in their underwear and she looks down at me and there is a look of murder on her face. And I realize that must be Gary's girlfriend.

What happened was she rang the doorbell. And a girl in her underwear drinks by, looks up and keeps on going. And I just thought, how is Gary possibly going to explain this? She's going to say, Gary, I rang the door. Who was that girl in her underwear swinging from the top floor? What are you talking about, honey? What do you mean, what am I talking about? There's just girls sprinting around her apartment. I did get to work on time, but I did not come home for three days after.

That was Jennifer, so Dean says, telling that story, Jennifer's worked for the Warhol Museum as an intern, held a job at a publishing company, and now works as an analyst for a medical consulting company. She says she spends the rest of her time deejaying, playing pinball and telling stories. She's currently the producer and host of the Chicago Storytelling Live Music Show called The First Time.

You can find and share the stories in this hour and hear many more if you check out the Moth archive on our website. After a break, the former basis of Guns N Roses finds himself in a very real life or death situation.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRICK'S. This is the Moth Radio Hour from Pyrex IMAG Bulls, and our last story comes from Duff McKagan, the former bass player for Guns N Roses and for Velvet Revolver. He told this story at a show we produced in Los Angeles. You can imagine Duff has a million stories, but he decided in the end to tell the one he said meant the very most to him.

Here's Duff McKagan right at The Moth. In my 20s, I experienced a certain amount of success in my musical career and really ever since I was a kid, remember, that's all I ever wanted.

But also in my mid 20s, I started to spiral deeper down into my addiction of alcohol and drugs and.

At about twenty seven. I realized three of my best friends, my very best friends, had all died from drug overdoses, and it just seemed that it was everywhere around me and I, I just became numb. I was getting numb and I couldn't find my way out of my own addiction and. I bought a dream house back back home in Seattle, this house that myself and my friends, when we were little, we'd look at the house and say, one day one of us is going to have that house.

And I was at that point, I bought the house, the castle, we called it, and I got on a plane from L.A. to Seattle to take possession of this new home and.

SAT on the plane and Kurt Cobain sat next to me on the plane and he was famously in his drug hell and I was in mine and we just. Sort of commiserated on where we were at, and that was it, we landed and I went to my my house. And two days later, I was there alone and my phone rang and I dove. Weren't you just on the plane with Kurt? He's dead. And I thought I didn't think I was numb, it didn't affect me, I just kind of figured that's the way it was going with the lot of us.

And I figured I was next at that point. Four weeks later in that house, I woke up one morning in my bed. And I had a sharp little pain. And I thought it was gas, so I just sort of rolled over in bed and the pain spread and got sharper. And I thought something bad was was going on, but I thought still was just a lot of gas, so I rolled again and the paint dripped down on the inside of me.

Down across my stomach and down into my quad muscles, and it felt like dull knives just cutting into me and I couldn't breathe and I and I couldn't move one last time to to reach my phone, to call 911 one or a friend or my mom. And I thought, well. This is it, I didn't think I would last till I was 30, and here I was, I was 30 now and this is it. I'm going to die alone in my bed in this in this house and the pain.

I didn't think I would die in this much pain. And just then I heard my door open downstairs and it was my best friend since childhood. And I heard him say, hey, where are you? And he could tell that I was home. My car was in the garage and my keys and wall that were downstairs on the counter. And I heard him come up the stairs and I and I, I knew I just I could die now at least my best friend.

And he came into the bedroom and he said, it's finally happened. And Andy picked me up and the pain was was. Was so bad that I just I whispered in his ear and that it could have only been a whisper or a whimper, more like. And he please just kill me. I just couldn't take the pain. I remember a cold floor of the E.R. at a hospital there in Seattle. I remember getting two shots of Demerol and two shots of morphine, and from previous experience, I knew what this stuff should do and it and it didn't work on me.

In the panic that I suddenly felt like this pain's not going to go away. I remember at that point my doctor who. Whose father? Was my birth doctor delivered me and they were our family doctor, and now the son had taken over the practice and he came in, my doctor, this son of the doctor who had birth me came in and they did an ultrasound. And I saw his face above me and it went white. And apparently what had happened, my pancreas had expanded to a size of a football and it burst and it spills the bile that digest your food and it spills it all over your insides and.

I remember seeing my mom there in her wheelchair with Parkinson's and me, the youngest of her eight children, and with tubes running in and out of me. Intravenous morphine, by this time, an intravenous Librium from the shakes from my withdrawal. And my mom there and just taking. The order of this whole thing. It's fucking wrong. I should be taking care of my mom and now she has to see this, see her youngest son. They did another ultrasound.

I heard them talking about splitting people open to let the steam out to relieve some of the pain before they die. And apparently there's only a 15 percent chance of survival in this particular thing I had, but I just wanted to die. I couldn't take the pain anymore and. There was another ultrasound. And my doctor came to me a day passed maybe two, I don't know, but that ultrasound, he came to me and he said, Duff, you be given a second chance.

You better figure out what this is all about. Apparently, my pancreas had gone back down to size, which just doesn't happen, and they were going to keep me in the hospital until the word ruptured, I guess.

I don't know if they can sew it up or not, but they were just going to see if it healed. So they kept me in the hospital and I was thirsty. They couldn't feed me any water or food. Who the ice chips. And and I started to heal and they took to the morphine button away. And I remember kind of like feeling the withdrawal from that and the Librium button they took away, but they kept the intravenous and I started to heal.

And after two weeks, they said, you know, you're free to go. We have a rehab for you to go to. And I said, I'm done. And I was done. I was I was done. This is the longest there's two weeks I'd been off of alcohol in my adult life. It's the longest I've been off street drugs in my adult life. Two weeks. And I know I was giddy, I left the hospital, I remember seeing the doors of the hospital and starting to run, and I doubled over in pain because my insides were still raw from the burns.

But this was my first experience in sober life, in my adult life, and I remember smelling like. Things we take for granted, fresh cut grass. I smelt this and it reminded me of having a lawn job when I was 12 and 11. And be so happy and I got a newspaper and it's not a news print, something that I hadn't smelled since I was a paper boy. I remember going to a grocery store on this rusty old mountain bike I had, I pulled it out of my garage.

I just didn't know what to do.

I went to the grocery store. And it was chaos in there.

To me, it was the sounds coming through the sound system, I'm sure Clarkes just checking prices on grocery items, but I thought they were all talking about me and this normal transaction.

I went to get smokes. I bought some barbecue sauce. I don't know why. And I was sweating and I got a pack of smokes and I gave her the money.

It was kind of crumpled up out of my sweaty pocket and to her was a normal transaction. But to me, it just just wasn't. I heard about this martial arts dojo and I knew I needed something else my first day I walked into this dojo, this school, and there was two guys in there was a boxing ring.

And these two guys were kickboxing. They were fighting, they were sparring and other guys hitting heavy bags and guys jumping rope and speed bags and. Then this man walked up to me and he said, I'm Sensa Beny. Are you here to work and when you looked at me in the eyes, it didn't just look in my eyes. You looked down inside of me and I knew. I just knew I didn't have to tell him what had happened to me, that he already had a sense of everything and what I needed.

And what I saw in his eyes was something I wanted, I was desperate for it was peace. And this whole time that the doctors, what he said to me, you're here for a reason and I don't know what that means. The since he put me to work that day, we did some physical work, but very little, and then he sent me home and he said, Duff. You clean up your house, wash your clothes, fold them, put them in the dresser.

Clean your kitchen, clean all your dishes, put them in the dishwasher, and when you use another dish, you put it straight in the dishwasher. And make your bed. And tomorrow morning, when you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror. And I didn't really know what this is about, and he said, be back here tomorrow night and I did and I came back and I did what he said. I looked in the mirror and I cleaned my house and I came back and he worked me harder.

And this went on day by day and my doctor's words still reverberating around in my head. You're here for a reason. You better figure it out. As a physical workout's got more intense, I was jumping rope, I learned how to. Do a lot of push ups and start to spar and do defense and hip bags, and then I was. Emotions came out of me. I remember one day hitting a heavy bag and emotions came out and I started to cry.

I had no idea why I I'm not a crier. My sensei worked me out even harder. I remember becoming under numb. And going home and making calls out that people affected when I was out there doing all of that stuff before. And I called my family and called friends and I keep my house clean and I was looking at myself in the mirror every morning. And my doctor's words kept reverberating around my head, you here for a reason? After two years of every day at this dojo with my sensei, one morning I woke up and I looked in the mirror.

And I saw myself I saw this person I liked. I've done everything the day before I got it, I done everything the day before that I was said I was going to do I didn't go to bed with any weight on my chest. I return to every phone call.

And I was at peace and I liked myself. And I came to this, the dojo said, since I saw myself in the mirror and he says, I know I knew you would. But a year later, I met the woman that would become my wife and we fell in love. And a year after that. We were in another hospital room, but this time it wasn't an E.R., it was a birthing suite. And in the chaos of the long 17 hour labor and me being with my wife and.

The doctor finally coming in and out here saying one last push season, one last push. And this little baby came out. And they gave her to me and she was terrified. She was crying and there was chaos in the room and. I said, Hey, baby. It's me, it's your dad, and she suddenly stopped crying in a big, beautiful eyes, just looked up at me and she was completely calm. And she was she knew she was safe and a light came around me and I can't explain it, it was real, it was a light and surrounded my whole soul and this baby.

And in that instant, I realized the reason I was there. The reason I survived that pancreatitis. Thank you. That was Duff McKagan death is best known as the basis for Guns and Roses, but he's also a writer. He's written columns for Seattle Weekly and ESPN Dotcom, and he's the author of How to Be a Man and Other Illusions. His daughter, Grace, we mentioned, is all grown up now and in her own punk band called The Pink Slips.

You can find out more about Duff and all the storytellers in this hour by visiting the radio extras page on our website, The Mogg. That's it for this hour. Thanks so much for listening. And we hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour.

Your host for this hour was Meg Bolls, Meg also directed the stories in the show. The rest of the MOS directorial staff includes Kathryn Burns, Sarah Habermann, Sarah Austin Jinnah's and Jennifer Hickson with production support from Whitney Jones. Both events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Rust. Our theme music is by the drift of the Music. In this hour from Thomas Liebe Croquet, Lawless Music and Guns and Roses links to all the music we use or at our website.

The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation committed to building a more just verdant and peaceful world.

The Moth Radio Hour is presented by projects to find out more about our podcast. For information and pitching your own story and everything else, go to our Web site, The Moth, Doug.