Anthony Carrasco - phaware® interview 543
Oct 22, 2025
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.
This Special Edition Episode Sponsored by: Johnson & Johnson
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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