Michael Bugary: Episode Transcript

This transcript follows the spoken episode and has been formatted for readability.

Episode Transcript

Heather Holt

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They are rooted in real aromatherapy. Visit pureenergyvt.com and use the code PURECHANGE for 20% off just for being a part of the Change Happened community. Pure products, pure purpose, pure energy. Welcome to Change Happened, Then What? Where in Season 2, you'll hear voices drawn here by one thing. Change. Each episode brings you a story of hope, unpolished and unfiltered, where stories got messy, where people questioned everything, but also where they found a way forward. And maybe, just maybe, you'll find your own next steps in their words.

Because when life breaks open, that's often when the most beautiful truths finally have room to grow. I'm your host, Heather Holt, and I am so happy to have you here today. That I wasn't excited when I saw the email from Michael asking if he could be on my podcast would be an understatement. I mean, the Boston Red Sox, they're my team. And even though his professional career was short from 2009 to 2011, That didn't matter. It was baseball. And I was intrigued.

Plus, let's be honest, he shared my brother's name. And for me, that's always a sign. So this, this was an automatic yes. But what happens when being yourself never feels like enough? When you feel like you have to become someone else or to be seen just to belong? When average isn't enough. Who do you turn to? How far will you go to be noticed? In today's episode, Michael Bougueri opens up about the dark truth of that world, how he built a life that looked perfect from the outside, and how it came crashing down, and how one rescue dog named Lingo helped him find his way back to love, humility, and home.

This is a story about ego, identity, and what it means to start over. It's about the curveballs life throws you when you least expect them, and what happens when you finally decide to stop chasing the game and start listening to your heart. Welcome to Season 2, Episode 1 of Change Happened, Then What? When Life Throws You a Curveball, The Distance Between Ego and Love, Michael's Story.

Michael Bugary

You know, I come from a military family, right? We eventually settled in California. They thought that'd be a good place to raise their family, you know? You know, early on, I just felt like people should pay attention to me, you know? And I couldn't understand why other people didn't think, like, I was as cool or as popular, right, as I thought I was. Still, and I started playing baseball, and early on, it was like, you know, kids love for the game.

I quickly learned that the better that I performed and the better that I got, I got that attention and validation that I was desperately seeking. And when I went out to play, as I progressed, you know, I begged my parents to send me to travel ball teams and to play with professional coaches. And when I saw all those coaches and those players that had success in baseball, they had everything that I wanted, like the confidence and the way people treated them and the popularity.

And I knew that's what I wanted to be instantly. And so I created that character around baseball. And so, you know, I practiced and I played and I practiced and I played and I got better and better and better. And I started to get those things. And I started to get letters from colleges and all the recognition. And, you know, by the time of my senior year, I got a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley.

Heather Holt

A scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley? For any athlete, that's a dream. But for Michael, it was more than that. It was proof he was good enough to belong. At Berkeley, he joined the Cal Golden Bears. And after an early setback, knee surgery, shoulder tendinitis, he came back fighting. By 2009, he was finally finding his rhythm. He appeared in 28 games, sixth most in the Pac-10 that year. Nearly 50 innings pitched, 69 strikeouts, one save, a fastball in the upper 80s, a sharp slider, and a changeup that could keep hitters guessing.

From the outside, it looked like everything was falling into place, but inside, the pressure was mounting. Because college baseball isn't just about talent. It's about surviving the grind, the expectations and the noise that comes from being the guy. And somewhere between the practices, the pain and the pressure to perform, Michael started to lose sight of the kid who just loved the game. And that's where the cracks began, where the path started to shift. Not with one big mistake, but with a series of small ones, the kind every player swears they'll never make until they do.

It's the kind of inning you don't see on the scoreboard, the one where your ego steps up to the plate. And your heart gets left in the dugout.

Michael Bugary

Started to drink a little bit here and there and started to do some things to keep up that character off the field and with alcohol early on, but I never drank like every day because as long as I had baseball in my life, I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize that and alcohol didn't really help me on the field. It helped me more off the field to keep up that character to lower my inhibitions because I just had this like fear of rejection too where I just wanted to keep everybody at arm's distance and so I created this character that I would project to the world that would keep everybody away, this intense fear of being average.

There started to be some consequences to my actions. The stakes got a little higher, and there was more distractions, and I ended up getting hurt my first couple years, and I got introduced to Adderall, a prescription medication, too, and that was something that I've had my aha moment where I found that it was something that helped me on the field, but also off the field, too, and I thought it made me a better person, and that became my secret weapon, and I had a really good season that year, and end up getting drafted by the Boston Red Sox.

So I decided to leave college a little early and, you know, not get my degree and just to go pursue my dream. And same story again, next level, a little higher stakes. You know, I'm more of an employee now, right, than a member of a team. I'm more of a, like, piece of property, you know, and they scrutinize everything that you do. And my first year, I was kind of caught up in distractions again and had some issues. But the next year, I came back to spring training just more focused and in better shape physically and mentally than I've ever been.

I've been pitching the best that I ever had and I was just on this cusp of greatness that I thought. As I'm playing really well, the spring training right before we break the seasons, I throw a pitch and I feel my arm pop.

Heather Holt

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Michael Bugary

You know, I knew that I was hurt. So I tried to throw through it, tried to play a few more games through it. It just wasn't happening. So I ended up having to stay down there and get surgery. And right around the time that I was injured, my dad had had a major heart attack in California. And I didn't really know how much this impacted me at the time. I hadn't told my family about that at all. And my dad, I guess, he nearly died, flatlined a few times.

And I guess when he woke up, the first thing that he said was, don't let Michael come home. He didn't say that because he didn't want to see me or didn't want me to be there. He just said that because he thought I was out pursuing my dream. And I didn't realize how much my family was invested into my baseball career, you know.

Heather Holt

Chasing a dream isn't just about the athlete. It's about the whole family that rallies behind them. The weekends sacrificed for travel ball, the long drives, the siblings sitting in the stands while their parents chase hotel check-ins in tournaments, It's a family affair, one I know many of you have been a part of. I've seen it firsthand, and maybe you have too. So when life throws a fastball no one saw coming, like Michael's dad suffering a heart attack, everything shifts. And then, while his family focuses on his dad's recovery, Michael keeps quiet about his own surgery.

That silence, that need to hold it all together, starts pulling him down a different path, one led by ego, fear, and uncertainty. Suddenly, it's not about chasing a dream anymore. He ends up losing himself to something more than he can handle, and finds himself out of the game completely.

Michael Bugary

The prescriptions that I had, I could always get away with it because I was prescribed it so the drug test and the things that I was subject to I was always staying within those lines because like I mentioned the baseball was my higher power and as long as I had that in my life I could stay somewhat in the bounds of the rules that I guess that I created and and you know so that that summer was really rough on me mentally and I kind of turned inward more and I always felt like I needed something for something I just I needed a solution outside of me because I was never like good enough and I just had this weird combination of perceived

confidence and entitlement and like superiority combined with this fear and insecurity. And I went and got my surgery, the surgery was unsuccessful. The next year I came back and my arm just wasn't right. I wasn't throwing as hard as I was before. And my arm, it was just noticeably wrong. And that year, that next spring training, the Red Sox released me. I lost my purpose, and I went and got all these tests done in California on my arm to see what was wrong, and the doctors didn't know.

And basically, I was just told that I probably wouldn't be able to throw right again. I didn't know how to hear that. My mindset at this time was I was willing to die at 40 to play 10 years in the major leagues. For me, it was attention. It doesn't matter how much I get, it's never going to be enough. I had been introduced to painkillers and opiates before. I tried them a few times, but I never let it get out of hand.

I knew I liked them. And I wanted to forget about, I made it a point in my life that everybody knew me for baseball, and I didn't want to talk about baseball anymore, and I just wanted, I didn't want to feel. And that was my solution, was painkillers and OxyContin, and it worked. You know, it kept me alone into myself and numbed me. And I heard what the doctor said, and I knew it was kind of true, and I felt it in my arm.

But I also had that, like, belief that I'm going to prove them wrong. I'm going to show that I can't understand a life without it. So I just went through this roller coaster of like six months of trying to build my body back, exercising to go throwing and going playing and then getting hurt and falling back into addiction again for six months of disappearing off the map, binging oxytocin and other opiates that I could get. And this happened for a couple of years.

And finally, one time it happened where I got hurt again, and I just knew it was over. And at this time, I progressed to heroin. And once a drug like that comes into your life, I stopped caring about living, because I was really good at managing this dual life. Nobody really knew what was going on with me, because I could hide it really well. I could be out in public. So I was so good at pretending. I was so good at wearing masks and manipulating. and finally people started to take notice.

I walked into an intervention one day, I was joking, I call it like the reverse surprise party, you know, and so I wasn't ready to go be out on my own and I was too spoiled to be homeless. This was my first experience in like treatment or AA or anything and I just almost compared my way out. I just didn't think I was like any of these people. I knew I had a problem with the hard stuff but I didn't think that I could not drink.

So how was I going to have any fun or how was I going to function in life without other prescriptions? and stuff. And I just, I learned how to say the things that I needed to say to get people off my back. I spent 10 months there.

Heather Holt

I asked Michael what his family thought would happen when they held that intervention. Because as you can probably tell at this point in his story, even though treatment is what he needed, he's just not ready. He told me addiction wasn't really something that ran in their family. No one had really been through it before. Maybe somebody had seen too many TV shows where an intervention suddenly changed everything. And they figured, why not give it a try and hope for the best?

So Michael reluctantly went to rehab. But here's the thing. Most people don't realize recovery rarely sticks the first time. Studies show that only about a quarter of the people stays over after their first attempt. For most, it takes time. It takes falling down and getting back up. And Michael's story, it's no different.

Michael Bugary

I got into a little bit of legal trouble. I got caught with some paraphernalia on me and I entered a deterrent program where I had to get tested and, you know, just through courts and stuff and required to go to meetings. I got a serious girlfriend. I had a job. You know, things were starting to turn around for me a little bit. Then I started to experience these really bad headaches. I was just not able to wake up. I was nodding off and my girlfriend at the time thought that I was on drugs, rightfully so, again. And we get in the argument one day and she drops me off at the emergency room.

And I go in and they, you know, when you go into the emergency room complaining about the things that were going on in my head and they take it pretty seriously. And so I got brain scans done immediately and it turns out that I have a medulloblastoma.

Heather Holt

A medulloblastoma is a type of brain tumor that starts in the cerebellum. That's the part of the brain tucked in the back of your head that controls balance, coordination, and fine motor skills. It's aggressive, and it tends to spread through the fluid around the brain and the spinal cord. For many, it shows up in childhood. But when it appears in adults, like Michael, it's even more complicated. The odds are slim, the treatments are brutal, and the road ahead is filled with more questions than answers.

Now, keep in mind, Michael's fresh out of recovery at this point. His first thought isn't about his tumor. Because when you're still learning how to stay sober, survival looks different. Addiction recovery is a long road, and for some, it's a lifetime journey.

Michael Bugary

You know, my mom had come down from California, and I remember sitting in the hospital bed when my mom's sitting in the chair next to me and the doctors writing all the treatments that I'm going to have to go through and these surgeries and all this stuff about, you know, 40% to live for this and 30% to live for this and 50%. It's that moment I didn't, like, turn to my mom and, like, think, hey, what she must be going through.

Like, she just put her son through treatment, and now he has brain cancer. And after just being a promising athlete, you know, being so proud about that, I thought about, hey, well, I'm going to get some, you know, good drugs in the hospital now, so I'm going to get through it. You know, there was never there was never that moment to where, hey, like I never thought that I wasn't going to live. I think my ego was too big. I didn't care if I lived or died.

You know what I mean? Just my actions to clearly say that. And so I had to have. Multiple brain surgeries. The treatment itself did to me was, it just destroyed my nervous system, basically. My mom especially had, roughly so, I told the doctors that I had an opiate addiction history, and so they didn't really give me a lot of stuff. I needed a solution because what they were giving me wasn't working. And, you know, two weeks after I learned that I'm in remission, my mom finds me passed out of my bar with drug paraphernalia on my lap and probably thinking I'm dead, right?

I didn't think about her or… And that's the story of my life through addiction. It's not that I don't have compassion. It's just, I'm so concerned with my own immediate desires right now. And that's why I call it the disease of me. I don't think about the consequences or the people I hurt or any of those things. And so eventually after that, then she leaves and the girlfriend leaves and trying to live in myself, just a skeleton of myself. You know, I lost all my hair and I'm really underweight. And as someone who's pretty superficial and cares about it, it was a new level of low for me, I think, going through all that.

And then I remember being on my couch and an opiate withdrawal and through all that, just thinking like this is what rock bottom must be.

Heather Holt

Michael's superficial ego the same one that once kept him chasing attention finally starts to serve him he's in arizona all alone he's hit rock bottom standing in an outfield that feels as foreign to him now as the game itself and by the grace of god his family is still willing to give him another chance but not without some boundaries. This time, Michael trades his dealers for doctors. Rehab replaces the high, and he heads back to California, back into loving arms of his family.

But does he find what he's looking for? Or is he still searching for the version of himself he lost somewheres along the way?

Michael Bugary

I went back to treatment, and I got put on all these different medications. But on the inside, I still had all these unresolved issues. All I did really was trade my drug dealers for doctors. My mom, Terry, was working at the military base. So my mom saw she had a son at home and she had a dog. They're both hurting. And so she brought us together. And so we met and he showed me that, you know, unconditional love like a dog does.

And I think, you know, after all those bad things that happened to me in a row, Lingo was like the first good thing to happen to me.

Heather Holt

It's amazing how out of nowhere, a dog named Lingo might just be the cure. Michael never knew he needed. Linko was a therapy dog for military members, already trained to comfort, to listen, to love without even asking for anything in return. He'd been living on the face where Michael's mom worked, waiting for almost a year for a handler to be assigned. But when Michael came home, his mom saw something others didn't, an opportunity for healing on both sides. She brought Lingo home, and in that moment, something quietly shifted.

You see, it's these small, unexpected moments, the ones you don't plan for, that often lead to the biggest changes in life. And sometimes, that change shows up with four paws, a wagging tail, and a kind of unconditional love that finds you when you need it most.

Michael Bugary

And I knew in order to keep him, that I had to keep getting better, right? I had to keep working on myself, and I was eventually able to adopt him. And I promised him that I would continue his work as a therapy dog to help other people the way that he helped me. And that was when I really started to work on myself. And in that time, I started to have these spiritual experiences where the right people coming to me at the right time and hearing the right things.

And I started to realize what a jerk that I'd been. I started to really feel. And when I had these moments where I just, I finally, that they say that that 18 inches between your head and your heart is the longest distance. And I finally had that moment where I just felt it. I felt what I've been doing to the people around me. And what I did was it just breathed a little bit of honesty into me for the first time. And that maybe all the bad things that happened to me were my fault.

And it wasn't, it wasn't like a moment to where that's okay. You can't change that. You can only do better in the future. And that willingness led me to want to get off these medications and just to find a different solution to my pain and my problems. And I started learning how to meditate. The thing with my nerve damage is that I had really bad peripheral neuropathy.

Heather Holt

What Michael is saying is he had peripheral neuropathy. It's when the nerves that connect your brain and spinal cord to the rest of your body start to misfire, or stop firing altogether. For some people, it feels like tingling. For others, it's numbness or a deep burning pain that doesn't seem to have a source. It can make walking hard, holding things harder, and sleeping almost impossible. In Michael's case, it's likely mixed of what his body went through. Surgery, medication, maybe even the stress of years spent fighting himself.

Because the truth is, when your body breaks down, your spirit often follows close behind. And that's what makes healing, real healing, such a long road.

Michael Bugary

And once my movements and the way that my body became more purposeful, just being really aware and conscious of all the little things that we take for granted, you know, like the way our toes grip the ground or the way that we are in space. Once I started to really focus on that, then my thoughts and the way that I processed things became more purposeful, too. I decided to just get off all these medications. And I went a little bit crazy when I got off on medications.

It was hard stuff to get off. That was about the time when I decided to move to Ohio. I went back into treatment in Ohio right away to get off these medications because they had pretty bad withdrawal symptoms in them. And so I went to the treatment center for a couple of weeks, and then I decided to take the suggestion finally that other people were telling me to do. And something ate at me about what I went through in my cancer and the fact that it happens mostly in children.

You know, I knew what I went through, and I felt some culpability in it because, you know, in my desperation to fix my arm and to try to throw right again, I tried human growth hormone and other antibiotic steroids that I bought from a shady source and I didn't use under medical supervision, and I believe ultimately that's what gave me my brain tumor.

Heather Holt

Yep, you heard him correctly. Michael truly believes he gave himself the brain tumor. Now, medically speaking, medulla blastomas are extremely rare in adults. They make up less than 1% of all adult brain tumors. They usually appear in childhood, but when they do show up later in life, they tend to be more aggressive and complex to treat. As Michael said when he was trying to heal, he had used human growth hormones, or sometimes as you hear them called, HGH, a substance many athletes turn to chasing performance and recovery.

While there's no direct proof that HGH causes brain tumors, research has shown that in rare cases, excess growth factors in the body can accelerate tumor growth if the conditions are right. And for Michael, that belief became a part of his awakening, part of him finally taking ownership of the choices that led him here. But what's extraordinary is what happens next, because instead of staying stuck in the guilt or pain, Michael finally finds purpose and healing in service. He and Lingo start volunteering at the Cleveland Clinic's Children's Hospital, visiting kids who were facing the very same battle Michael once fought.

Michael would visit with the parents while Lingo, he would bring smiles, laughter, light, and hope to children in treatment. And maybe for the first time since everything fell apart, Michael realized he wasn't there to fix what was broken. He was there to share what he'd learned. That even when life throws you a curveball, love still finds its way home.

Michael Bugary

And what it does for me is it makes me think of my family, right? It makes me think of the things that I've done and how I can be better in the future. And these thoughts are hard to have for me. But I can only have them when I help somebody else without any expectation in return. That's the way that it continues to change the way that I think because it makes me want to do better in the future. It makes me want to see all those little things and to have more compassion and be open.

And that's the solution for me and my disease is I have to think outside of myself. And this will be our fourth year now. I think early on, I stayed at the children's hospital because I was kind of avoiding the big cancer center for adults just because of the things that I went through. Maybe subconsciously, I thought that would be a little hard for me. But then when we started to do that, to go to the big cancer center, you know, it becomes less about lingo and more about me.

Like, lingo gets me in the door with them, right? But when I'm talking to them and I share my story with them and they see me, there's that hope that they can get through this and they can, you know, potentially thrive afterwards, too. And that healing process of crying with them and just talking to them. It's fundamentally changed me. Ultimately, helping other people helps me, right? And that's part of the reason why I do it. But the main thing I think we talked about earlier is just sharing stories.

And I can just, I see and feel the way that it changes and helps other people. And once I accepted that there's things that are greater than me that are working, I just changed the way that I really view the world and I can have gratitude and like I said, I found purpose in sharing my story.

Heather Holt

Michael is finally able to put his ego down and admit something deeper. When Michael said a little while back, the longest distance is the distance between your head and your heart. I think in that moment, he realized those 18 inches might just be the hardest walk any of us ever take if we choose to take it at all. It's a phrase that's been passed around for years in spiritual and motivational circles, often credited to Andrew Bennett. And it rings true, doesn't it?

Because it's one thing to know something in your head, to plan it, to reason with it, to hold it tight like a play you think you've mastered. But it's something entirely different to feel it, to live it, to let it move through you. That gap, those 18 inches, for some of us, it might just as well be the distance from home plate to the outfield wall. You can see it, you can dream it, but getting there takes everything you've got. For Michael, closing that distance was the beginning of a whole new kind of game.

He learned how to trade ego for empathy, pressure for peace, and performance for presence. He found a way to pack his ego up and fill himself with a new kind of light. The kind that shines whether you're the star pitcher or just cheering from the stands. The kind of light that makes you feel whole and human again. So as we closed our conversation, I asked him, what makes you smile today? And this is what he had to say with a little humor.

Michael Bugary

My dogs, you know, when I wake up, I got three big dogs on my bed, you know, when I wake up, that makes me smile, it's the first thing. Not him right now, because he's begging for food. Hey, I got all three of them just looking at me right now. You know, people come to me after I speak, and they relate to me, and we have that human connection.

Heather Holt

His dogs and human connections are what make him smile today. What an amazing way to wake up every day after everything he's gone through. So I asked him, if there is one piece of advice he would leave with you, what would it be?

Michael Bugary

I think being able to look at yourself and be comfortable with the flawed human being that you are.

Heather Holt

Of course, his answer was simple and deeply human. Be comfortable with the flawed human being that you are. Because really, is there such a thing as perfection? Or just our perceived notion of trying to find it? In my opinion, there's no such thing as being better than anyone else. We're all just humans walking this world one day at a time, trying to find our way. One pitch, one hospital room, one speech, or one podcast at a time. Just telling our stories, hoping they land in the heart of someone who needs to hear them. because maybe then they'll find the courage to put their own version of the baseball down and start to heal.

And of course, find their smile again. Michael doesn't have much to do with baseball these days. He says it was his first addiction. And as I record this in 2025, he's four years sober in the process of releasing his book, The Disease of Me, and speaking publicly about recovery, purpose, and resilience. And as we talked about in this episode, he and his therapy dog, Lingo, now bring smiles and hope to hospitals wherever they go. If you'd like to learn more about Michael, you can click the links in the show notes or visit changehappenedpodcast.com.

Just head to the season two guest page for his full bio and ways that you can connect with him directly. If this episode spoke to your heart, I'd love for you to visit changehappenedpodcast.com to join our monthly mailing list. It's also where stories like this continue with blog reflections, more about each guest, and ways you can support the show. And if you've got 30 seconds, leaving a review or five stars helps more people like you find stories like this. Think of it as paying for your coffee at the local coffee shop.

Change happened then what is written edited and produced by me heather holt with the loyal background vocals from my two sidekicks whalen and dalton until next time keep smiling and maybe let your dog produce your next big idea

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