Change Your Brain Every Day - Signs of Different Substance Addictions, with Chris Browning

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

Sons of Anarchy and Westworld actor Chris Browning went from living in a house in Malibu to living in a tent under the 405 freeway. The progression of his downward spiral was reflected by the different drugs he was using at the time, from cocaine to meth and ultimately to heroin. In the second episode of a series on Chris’ downfall and redemption story, he and Tana Amen discuss what it’s like to find yourself at rock bottom.

We are going to start your new year, your new decade off with a bang. Tan and I are going to do a six-week live class. So starting January 21st, every Tuesday, we're going to be with you for an hour. And at the end, we're going to give away over $20,000 in prizes. We look forward to helping you kick off this new year by becoming brain health revolutionaries. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way

podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amonclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. So I'm still here with Chris Browning.

I am just, I'm really enjoying this. I've had such a good time having you here today, Chris. We actually got to see your brain. I forgot to say that in the first one. Yeah. So it's good. I mean, you've actually been clean now for 15 years and we got to see your brain. Yeah. Well you, and you're really honest about injuries you've had and, and those moments where you've done painkillers a couple of times, but, but for the most part, you've been pretty good to your brain for the 15 years yeah and um it certainly could have been much worse if you had been in 15 years ago it would have been much worse yeah so we what was exciting is we can show you the improvements you can make which i'm looking

really forward to like taking you on that journey um but i just i'm actually pretty amazed you were able to get as clean as you did and do as well as you have through these last 15 years. So how did it happen? How did you, like, I want to know, like you're in Malibu, you're living in this house, you make that first purchase of heroin, like what was on your mind? This is a good idea or maybe I shouldn't do this. No, it was, you know, I, i uh what got me in trouble when i lived in malibu was cocaine because i was going and i was going downtown i had this bright red 66 impala convertible that i would take from malibu all the way downtown to alvarado to buy cocaine i didn't even have a dealer i'm such an idiot so i'm going down in

this red flag of a car white guy going right in the hood to buy buy drugs every day getting an eight ball and then i would i would cook it because i was a purist i wasn't going to just buy crack i was going to get powder and cook it and make my own free base and like, like a, like a purist. Who knows what they put in that crack, you know? I like to know what I'm smoking. So I'm like driving down the, down the 10, you know, with a test tube and baking soda and water and cooking this stuff up and, and smoking it while I'm driving a car. Yeah. And so it got, that's what got me in trouble.

That's because the sitcom, the last sitcom I was on, that ended and I knew I wasn't coming back to the next season. And I hated that job anyway, but that's a different story. But so I knew I wasn't coming back and I had, I was making money, you know, the coming back. And I was making money. The last couple of years, I was making money like I'd never had in my life. And I would get a gold card in the mail like every two days.

So I took them. I was like, yeah, I'll take those. And then it just got to the point where I didn't have to be ready for work. So I was running the wheels off of it, you know, and I was just smoking Coke and drinking, you know, for days at a time and praying that an audition wouldn't come in because I don't want to go to it. I'm a mess and I know it. And ran out of money and just started getting cash advances on those credit cards.

And I maxed out on those credit cards. I maxed out like 10 gold cards. And that's what it was. And then when I kind of stumbled into heroin one time. But you know what? That wasn't even what it – yeah it was it was it was heroin because i told you i had a i had a period i have been this the meth the tweaker guy i've been the crackhead i've been the straight alcoholic and and heroin was where i i found my calling i i so so you experimented with all of them and you found the one well more than experimented i Heroin was where I found my calling.

So you experimented with all of them and you found the one that you wanted? Well, more than experimented. I mean, it's a whole different lifestyle. Crackheads are a crackhead. They hang out with other crackheads. And tweakers, the meth people, that is definitely their own little world. They don't even hang out with heroin addicts. They think that heroin addicts are the worst. You know, we were talking about that before where I said,

the tweakers will say, oh, watch out for this guy. He's a heroin addict. He'll steal your wallet and help you look for it. And I'm like, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Because the tweakers are the shadiest. I mean, because I've been one. And when I was a tweaker, my soul left my body and hid somewhere because I was full of demons and it's just evil. And the example I would give when I'm in jail arguing with tweakers about who's the shadiest.

You realize how crazy this sounds to someone sitting here. It's a conversation happening in jail. There's a warning sign. Yeah. crazy this sounds to someone it's a conversation happening in jail there's a warning sign yeah yeah and i'm gonna convince this tweaker that he's worse than me right right but he is i'm sorry those tweak because i was when i was a week when i was a tweaker it's the difference is as a heroin act i'm gonna go steal i know i lived in the bushes next to the 405 and and and uh my everybody's got a little hustle right they've got to come up somehow and my thing was i was a thief and i would steal i would shop lift vodka and and sell it to the russian mafia guys okay i just with my russian with my russia

speaking skills oh my god from going to russia so's funny. Now it would not be funny if it was still happening. But the funny thing was, you know, these guys are, they're, they're, they're playing cards in the park looking like retired, you know,

guys. And, and, but they're, they're bosses and they all own bars and restaurants and they would take as much as I could bring them. And the other guys, you know,

I learned about that little hustle from another guy and and that's how I found it so lots of junkies were coming through the park and going up and and you know saying hey I've got you know 15 bottles in the car and they just would say yeah here they pretend they don't speak English and they just give him like some you know take it because they know they're going to take it, whatever it is. Yeah. And then I would go in and I would haggle with them. And these are Russian Jew mobsters who love the whole game. They love haggling and they don't care about the money, but we can do a little back and forth and i can get i'm getting 25 and the other guys are getting 15 for a bottle and they're like what are you doing and but the russians are like

yeah it's hard to show those after how to show and i'm like yeah yeah and they just like they're saying you're a good kid come here come see me tomorrow you know it's so funny so the other junkies are going well hey what hey, what's going on? And that turned into, can you do mine? And so then some days I wouldn't even steal. I would just meet all the junk, broker like a couple hundred bottles. Meet me at the park. I'll be there at noon.

And they'd show up, and I'd take my piece of that. But I wouldn't even have to steal anything. I could still make $400 or $500. So I thought I had a crazy story growing up this story is this story's pretty crazy yeah but see that was the difference is a heroin addict would i'm gonna go and do whatever illegal thing i gotta do to get my my my money i'm gonna get to get the uh the dealer on the phone and and get a page him and get the and get my drugs and go back to whatever little camp i'm you know wherever my mattress is laying and spend the rest of the day being high tweakers will get high and then go out and do shady shit for three days. Like that's the highest just a given. Right.

The activity of doing scandalous, shady, stealing identities and ripping off cars and being a burglar, that's what they like. That's the fun thing to do while you're high. So I just have to say, you're sitting here describing, like classifying different addicts, but as someone who grew up with addicts, to someone on the other end of it, you're all scary.

Oh, yeah, sure. Like, you're just all scary. Sure. Like, I'm sitting here thinking, it just all sounds horrifying and terrifying to me. Yeah, it is. Because I'm a little kid. If you're another person on the other end of it, it's just like, you know, it's just scary to us. Yeah, it is.

And all of them hurt your brain. So you've done them all and they all hurt your brain. Well, you know, that was the other, other point that, you know, people used to tell me, they're like, you were, you know, you look so young. I mean, when I was 40, I looked like I was 25, you know? And, and when I tell people I'm 55, they're like, wow, that you look, you know? And that's because my, I always say that I think I was like, it's like being cryogenically frozen for all those years because my heart rate was about 40. I was slowed down a lot.

And I didn't even sweat. I was homeless and I had no BO. That's so funny. I wouldn't bathe for two weeks i'm like no i'm still good and and the tweakers were coming through and it was like watching time lapse photography these guys would come in especially women it was tough on women they'd come in and there's this 30 year old girl who just ran away from home and she's a tweaker next year she looks like she's 50 oh yeah no it's bad yeah and that's

and that i mean i mean their teeth everything just starts to yeah and that's the thing i would have been in a lot worse shape if i would have stayed in that world right because that's just like pouring corrosive i mean on your nerves and everything well and so and when you look at someone who's been doing drugs like that and you see their skin and you see their teeth, what people don't realize, it's hurting your brain before it's hurting the rest of it. Right. That's the outside of the plant. Your skin is a reflection of what's going on in your brain. Right.

Yeah. And so that's, you know, that's one of the things that we try to explain to people is like, as it's aging your skin, it's just destroying your brain. Yeah. So, you know. Yeah, because that's the last indicator is the outside of the plant exactly you're dying from the inside out exactly yeah so no one really gets out of it free like with that with the get out of jail free card at some point it catches up to you and it caught up to you obviously you're living under the freeway so you know it's like you said you even said it

sort of steals your soul when you're doing you know know, the tweaker thing. Um, but you know, at some point you obviously decided that it was time you were done with that. So in our next episode, I want to, I mean, not a lot of people can do that. So kudos to you. Um, not a lot of people are going to go from this extreme of being successful to living under the four or five freeway to then having the will and the, just the heart and whatever it takes to be able to come back from that. So in our next episode, let's talk about what you did. How did you come back from that? Okay. And go on to, you know, to have the successful career you have now. Cause I mean, I read the list earlier and you've got a very successful career. Um, you've, you've been in

some great, some, some great shows you've got, you've got purpose in your life. And so we'll talk about all that. Okay. All right. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.