Danny Jones Podcast - #106 - Crystal Meth Addict: The Real Jesse Pinkman | Sean Dustin

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

Sean Dustin is a former crystal meth addict who spent time in Federal and State prison for drug trafficking and fraud. Sean hosts the "Nowhere to go but up" Podcast. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpit4jnGTbhgLt2UFs0efyA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Howdy, Sean? How you doing? Good. How are you? Oh, I'm great. Great. Thanks for coming all the way from San Francisco. Yeah, right. Yeah, thank you for inviting me to come on your platform, come on your show, and be able to tell my story and maybe provide some value to your listeners. Yeah.

I love stories like yours. What is your shirt? Nowhere to go but up. Can you explain that? Yeah. So this is the nonprofit that I started. It's actually nowhere to go but up incorporated. That's what it's the umbrella it's under.

And then nowhere to go but up project. is the, basically what it's going to be, and I'm building out the board of directors right now for it, but it's going to be a living facility for males specifically, 18 to 24 years old, that are coming out of incarceration and re-entering into the community. And so basically it's like a one-stop shop. It's going to be a year to a year and a half with programming

and also like everything that you would need to integrate back into society from, you know, skills to, you know, counseling to job placement, job assistance, resume building, all the stuff that you would need to kind of like seamlessly get into society, figure out how to become a man again and get your dignity back and then be able to move on. Either, you know, the successful ones could either come back and be teachers and work for the nonprofit itself or just move on and continue on with life. So what made you want to do all this? It sounds like a lot of work.

It is a lot of work, but my, the podcast, nowhere to go but up. And also, like, my journey, it all started with, you know, I'm part of that population. You know, I did time in federal and state prison, not long periods of time, but, you know, enough to let me know that I don't want to go back there, right? And so what I ended up doing was, you know, well, let's go back to the beginning. You know, my story is not one of those prison stories where I'm going to tell you about all the people that I saw stabbed or, you know, all the bad things that happened while I was there. I mean, to be honest with you, I did 18 months in the state of Nevada and then I did 18 months in federal. And so that's literally, by the time you get there, you get comfortable, it's time to go to the next spot. So I didn't get a chance to do any of the programming and all the stuff that you should be able to do when you're there because you're there to be rehabilitated.

So they say, right? None of that stuff happens. There's no rehabilitation there. There may be for some guys that are there doing 10, 15, 20 years, but a lot of that they do on their own. They figure, okay, well, I've got enough time here. I don't like the person that I was, so let me figure it out. But the guy that usually has about five years and under, none of that stuff happens. Hannity presents. In the red corner, the undisputed, undefeated weed whacker guys.

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A Lego set is a gift that always clicks. And clicks? So beautiful. And clicks. For kids who love. love to create, choose a Lego step, a gift that always clicks. So the behaviors that actually get you into prison never get dealt with. Yeah, I got, I, you know, got my body nice and, you know, I was able to, you know, do a hundred burpees with no problem and, you know, all the other stuff. But

the toxic person that was inside there that got me to prison to begin with, none of those behaviors ever were able to change. And so when I got out, it was just a continuation of what got me there to begin with. Yeah, I did a couple of, you know, stints of clean time and stuff like that. But let's go back a little bit further to what got me there. And a lot of that was I grew up in an abusive household. My parents divorced when I was about five. And they used me as like a pawn in their game, right?

You know, to get back at each other. So I was the tug-of-war piece. and so for me that that was kind of like the trauma that I suffered when I was a kid that made me angry and I couldn't control the situation I couldn't control what was happening you know I'd go to my dads every other weekend and when I was there my grandparents and him they would just talk horribly about my mom while I'm at the table and so when I go back to my moms I think she's this horrible person and so I just take it out on her and she's the reason why I'm not able to see my dad as much as I want to.

And so that just led to me being a super angry kid. You know, I couldn't control my situation. So later on in life, I became a control freak. But I also got in so much trouble up until literally, like, I got kicked out of preschool, like daycare. I go, what kind of kid gets kicked out of daycare, right? Why did you get kicked out of daycare? There were some kids walking behind the daycare.

care that I was at. I go to the elementary school that's over probably about half a mile away. And there's a big, big field. There were some kids walking by. They were, you know, running their mouth. And like, I'm in the third grade. I pick up a dirt clod. And I, you know, I thought it was a dirt cloud, but there was a rock in the middle of it. And I throw it. And it misses the person that I was trying to hit and hits a little girl right in her face. Oh, fuck. And she starts bleeding. And, you know, nothing that I was trying to do. but, you know, that's just kind of a lot of the things that happened to me. I would do stupid stuff and get in trouble for it because the thing, like something would happen that wasn't planned on happening, but just out of circumstance, I ended up being the one

that gets in trouble. The first time I ever got in trouble with the law, same thing. I was, I'd say I was a freshman in high school. And I had, over that summer, I had slept with this chick, and she was dating some guy that, I guess, was a gang member. He calls up my house, leaves a message on the answering machine, you know, the ones with the tape. So I took the tape out, went to school. And I was a kind of kid that, like, I was a chameleon.

I could hang out with the drama nerds. I can hang out with the moads. I can hang out with the stoners, the gangbangers. I can hang out with all of them. And I would. I would just bounce around. When you were a freshman in high school? Yeah.

I don't know those gang banging freshmen. Well. It's like, how old do you have to be? It'd be a freshman in high school, like 15 years old. Yeah, I like 15, 14, 15. Damn, that's young. Where were you? In Panoa, California, which is near, in between Richmond and Rodeo and Hercules.

So it's not really the, so all of the, so they would bus kids in from, from like, the poor neighborhoods to that high school. And so, I, you know, they weren't like gang bangers in the way that you think of like, say, bloods and crips and stuff like that, but any kind of, it's just a, kids being a gang, right? And so what I did was, is I had a couple of friends that were involved in that. And so at lunchtime, or not lunchtime, the first break I went down, I let them listen to the tape and they're like, oh, man, fuck that, man. We're going to go get them, right?

And so I was like, okay, cool, let's go. Lunchtime came and sure enough, we got in the car. Went to the next high school over and by the time we got there, there's three car loads of guys. And we get out. We start walking down towards the convenience store. I see her and him walking this way. She bolts. He keeps walking.

Everybody surrounds him. He starts to put his hand in his pocket. And somebody comes from behind me and hits him. And then he just pinballs and then makes his way to the convenience store. two guys catch him at the store front, start hitting him. They pick him up and they throw him onto the counter and they drag him across, knocking all the cash register and everything else off. He ends up getting the knife out of his pocket,

which he was originally going for to begin with, and slashes one of my friends across the face, and it's all on camera. And I never touched the dude. And I ended up getting charged with inciting a riot. And so that was my first sort of, of like inkling of getting into trouble in high school, right? My first trouble with the law. Not to mention, if we go back to junior high, I got expelled from my junior high for having a

butterfly knife and playing with it and missing the pocket when the teacher came in and hit the floor and clank-clank, and I ended up getting expelled from that school. Went to my dad's, flunked out of seventh grade, had to go to summer school, got kicked out of that school, went to my uncles, got kicked out of that school, went back to the school that kicked me out to begin with, and was, ended up getting suspended five times, got sent to the office like 37 times within half of the school year. Three weeks before my freshman year, or the summer break, they called me in and they said, you know what, Mr. Clark, just go home. We're not suspending you. We're not doing anything. We're just go. We don't want you here anymore. We're socially

promoting you to the ninth grade because you have straight Fs. And basically it's like, dude, that's what my life was, right? Like I was constantly in trouble. And then I was constantly doing things to reinforce me being a bad kid. And it just went and went and went. And the meth started when I was, well, it wasn't called meth back then. It was called crank. This is escalating quickly.

Yeah. It was called crank. It was a dirty biker dope. It's really stinky, nasty stuff. But how old were you now? 15, 16. Okay. And so I start doing that, start getting in a lot of trouble, running away, not coming home.

My mom ends up, I think I go to Juvenile Hall once. I did a 151, 151 days at the Boys Ranch. But my mom ended up giving me up as a ward of the court to the state because she couldn't control me. You know, I'm running away all the time. I'm not coming home, not sleeping, you know, being... Your mom has, like, custody of you? Well, she has physical custody of me, but she gives, like, control over me over to the state. Okay.

And so now... Where's your dad during all this? You still seeing him or no? No, not really. Okay. Like, once I started getting in trouble and after I left, after I moved out from him, he just kind of like, he's your problem now. I don't want to deal with it.

And then we were, you know, we talked down. every now and again, but, you know, it just, it wasn't, uh, what ended up happening there is I had taken the, uh, I'd taken a bus up to Sacramento when he wasn't there. I ain't know he wasn't there. I was going up there to see some chick and I go, I go to his house. He's not there. I jump over the fence because I know how to get in because I was living there. Uh, the neighbor sees me, calls him up. Unbeknownst to me, my grandmother's in the hospital dying. in the Bay Area. He has to drive all the way up,

come get me because, you know, he doesn't, for whatever reason he did. On our way back down, my grandmother dies. And so that was a sore spot of contention with him because he blamed me for him, him not being there when his mother died, which was my grandmother.

So, you know, there's all these little things that, like, because of my decisions, they weren't, like, directly things I was trying to do, but things that indirectly happened because of what I was doing. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. And so the meth starts or yeah, the crank starts, getting in a bunch of trouble, incorrigible, all that stuff. Did the 151, ended up. What's the 151? 151 days at the Boys Ranch. Oh, okay. And so when I was there, my mom had got me out on.

on a temporary release thing because it was like Thanksgiving. And so to go hang out with my family and be with them on Thanksgiving, I was allowed to leave. When I was there, I had gone on the phone and called a girl that I was dating before I went. And I was like, hey, do you want to hang out and let's meet up? And I'll take the bar and I'll meet you. And so basically I was going to run. And I did.

And hung out with her for four days. Ended up catching an escape charge. So I added another year onto what I was facing and ended up getting out of that. I turned myself in, ended up getting out of that. And one more time I got in trouble because I think I got a dirty or I was doing something that I wasn't supposed to be doing. Got in trouble. They gave me an option to go to nine months in juvenile hall or six months in a rehab.

And so, I mean, obviously, I was like, well, six months and there's girls at the rehab, right? It's co-ed. And so I chose that. And little did I know that in a rehab or a therapeutic community, it doesn't go by time. It goes by progress. So that six months turned into 16 months that I ended up there. And so this whole time all the way up to here, I'd been learning how to manipulate really well. And, you know, from getting the people to beat somebody up for me, that was.

my first inkling of, oh, I have a little bit of power. I know how to move pieces and manipulate people and get them to do the things that I need them to do. Women, same thing. I was learning how to manipulate women from a really young age as well. I mean, I was raised by women, but, you know, switching schools and going from, you know, being the new kid at school all the time, I always got tons of attention from the females. And so, you know, I would learn how to kind of use them to get what I needed out of them. Why were you getting so much tension from the females? I guess I was a good looking kid.

Oh, really? Okay. I don't know. That's just, you know, that's what I noticed when I was younger. Okay. And so it just continued when I felt like I had this, this like, I don't know if it was a gift or, you know, just this thing about me. And I was using it to my advantage. And so, you know, that went on for a long time.

including into, let's see, I would say, I got out of that rehab after 16 months, went to my brothers who, which I didn't really know, was turning into my sister now. So he was trans. Oh. And, wow. Yeah, that was kind of strange. I went to move with him and his girlfriend. He was dressing like a woman every day, and he was saying it was for a part in a movie because he was an actor.

I guess I should be saying she now. She's an actor, right? Or an actress. With a girlfriend? So he's still like girls? Yeah. It was a strange situation all the way around. No, I've met people like that.

Yeah? It was different from me because this was somebody that I looked up to. I'd played ball with. I'd go and, you know, we'd go out on trips and we'd do things. And so it was, it was just different, right? It was, I just didn't know how to take it. And so at one point we ended up getting in a fight and I told her I was going to kill her. And, you know, I got in some trouble previously to that.

Got in trouble as an adult now with the law. I had got a car. My mom co-signed for it. I was able to go hang out and do a bunch of stuff. I picked up some guys that I was hanging out with. We stopped somewhere. I stay in the car. They go and beat somebody up with steel-toed boots and kicking somebody.

we get pulled over as we're leaving. I'm the adult because I'm 18 and they're 17 and I catch the charge. Why were they beating people up? I don't know. I have no idea. To this day, I have no idea why they beat that person up. I was just hanging out and,

you know, I didn't have anybody to hang out with and I was in a newer place. And you were smoking meth every day? No, no. Oh. So the meth, it was like 18 years of addiction, but on and off.

So sometimes I would be doing, meth, sometimes I wouldn't. And this was a period where I'd gotten out of that rehab. And so for about two and a half years, I'd stopped using everything. And so when I'd gotten in trouble with the law, when I was 18, I was drinking. So I'd started drinking again. And so that kind of like was, you know, why I was not making good decisions, I guess you would say. And so yeah, anyways, ended up leaving there, going back to my mom's. Then I went and moved to Sacramento with my buddy. And our neighbors downstairs did crank.

So after two and a half years of not doing it, bam, here we go again. What was it like the first time you tried meth? What made you want to try it? All of my friends that I knew growing up, they were all older than me, and they were doing it. And they wouldn't let me do it. And so every time we would go. and hang out, they would disappear into a room, locked the door, and they'd be either smoking

it or doing lines, and they would never let me in because I was the youngest. And so I don't know if they didn't want me to be responsible for letting me try it, or whatever the reason was. But from that point on, it's like when somebody tells you can't have something, now you want it, right? And so I knew

that a lady down the street from me, the reason why I know that is because my dad ended up marrying her sister when she divorced my mom. And I knew that she, She was like a stoner, right? And so I knew that I might be able to find it there. And she was about 15 years older than me. So I'm, let's say, I'm 15, and she's got to be at least 30, 33.

And I go and I start hanging out down there. And sure enough, she lets me try it for the first time. Wow. And what it was like was, it was like nothing that I'd ever done before, right? It's just, it, what I, what I didn't realize about it is that, and looking back on it after I got out of prison and all the other things that I did is that I was undiagnosed ADHD. And so it really allowed me, when I would get high, it would allow me to super focus on things, projects, you know, anything that I was trying to do. It was almost like when Bradley Cooper and Limitless would take that pill. You remember that?

Yeah. It was almost like that except without all the, all that. But it just really focused me. And so. But at 15, what were you focusing on at 15? Just doing, doing anything that I could to get out of doing what I was supposed to be doing, like going to school. Yeah. Doing other stuff.

I don't know. It's just growing weed. You know, just every little project that I had when I was a kid, it just I was super focused on. Yeah. And it just, I mean, it wasn't as prevalent as when I got older because the things that I got focused on, you know, started escalating. Okay. You know, so, you know, let's just say, I think I'm about 19 now. And I'm on the run again doing drugs.

Meet up with somebody. Stop. I stopped doing the crank, but then I start selling Coke because I meet this guy. and, you know, I meet him in a club, and I got him out of some trouble because I had an entourage of people with me, and we were hanging out, and he got in some funk with somebody, and I got my people to kind of assist him. And from that point on, me and this dude became, like, best friends.

Like, you know, you ever have one, I guess you would call it, like, a bromance. Yeah. Like, one of those guys that you just click with, and, like, when you meet them, you guys are just inseparable. You're on the phone all the time. You're talking all the time. You're just hanging out. Just doing whatever.

So that was what it was like with this dude. And he was a Coke dealer. He sold GHB, sold ecstasy, sold all that stuff. So, I mean, that's what I started doing. Okay. So I started selling drugs for this dude. And that's kind of where I got my start into, you know, selling more quantities and doing bigger things. And everything that I was selling at the time, I would be addicted to.

So like I was getting high on your own supply. Basically. I was a horrible drug dealer. To be honest with you, the only thing that... Did you make a lot of money at least? No, I made enough money to get by and to pay the bills and to party all the time. Okay. And it was really just a facade, you know? The only thing that kept me from getting beat up is that my biggest clientele was in the strip clubs.

And so I had a lot of strippers that were hanging out at the house. They would, you know, friends, you know, I wasn't banging all of them. What were the strippers doing? What kind of drugs are they like? They like Coke. They like GHB and they liked ecstasy. Okay. Yeah.

So and that's why I wouldn't get beat up because if I owed a drug dealer money or one of my friends money or him money, he was like, well, all right? Because they'd all come out and hang out, you know, because the girls would be around and they didn't want to blow that, right? Right. So I had a little bit of an edge there. But, yeah, I wasn't a very good drug dealer. I was a good drug doer. Yeah. So, yeah.

I mean, I mean, just the whole story just continues and continues and continues and continues. You know, if we want to fast forward a little bit to when I have my first daughter, I get a stripper pregnant, which is my first daughter's mother. At how old? How old were you when that happened? It was probably about 22. Okay. So I think it was about, she was born in 2000. I'm 47.

So, yeah, I'm going to say it's probably. like mid-20s. Okay. And so I get in some funk with somebody, and it was going to be one of these things where the next time we see each other, one of us wasn't going to walk away, and it probably was going to be me. Because up to this point, like I'm a bigger dude,

but nobody ever has really challenged me. And so I usually get away with kind of, you know, flashing a little bit, and people wouldn't mess with me. This dude was completely different. And it was like, all right, well, I know that if I don't leave town, I'm probably going to die. You know, just because of the, this dude's really crazy. And I... He's crazy enough to murder you?

Yeah. Yeah. And so I didn't want to stick around. Did you know he'd murdered people before? Well, I knew that he was crazy enough and tried. Okay. And I had, like, we had got into it and he had came up to me driving. And why did you guys initially get into it?

We were doing, I don't know, he was another meth addict, right? Yeah. And we were working on a job together. It was a really weird story, but we got into it. We were working on a job together as painters, right? I'd got him a job as a, the painting company that I was working on. Love painters. Yeah, right?

Yeah, they're always smoking crack. They're all about the uppers. Yeah, they're all about something. Every one of them that I've ever met has either been on some sort of drug and alcoholic or something. Oh, yeah. And so this dude was like really bottom of the barrel. And he had almost killed somebody before. And we got into it on the job site.

And when he was driving away, he had said something to me and I hit him as he was going through the car as he was going, driving by. And he didn't stop. But I had left. And he came to my house maybe an hour. and a half later had a gun on him and was like trying to get into the house and I was like oh man so basically he like scared the shit out of me and I was like well look you're pregnant I don't have a job anymore let's move to Vegas because there's tons of strip clubs and you can get a job anywhere which means I don't have to get a job anywhere I don't have to get a job you can and so we move there

and yeah I mean just kind of like that was just my pattern like I would use people. People weren't, they were assets. They were things that I would see as, what can I get out of you? You know what I mean? But that was like a reaction that you just wanted to get out of where you were. You didn't really, did you have any kind of plan when you got to Vegas? Did you know what you wanted to do?

No. I just wanted to get out of town. No, no, I wasn't really getting high when I left there. So, I mean, there's period. Like I said, there's periods of time when I would get high. and then there's periods I would stop. And so usually when things were getting bad or, you know, I was doing stuff like partying too much, not coming home and doing all this stuff

and kind of putting my own situation in jeopardy, like, all right, well, my girlfriend might kick me out or if I keep doing this. So I would tow the line just enough to get her to, all right, well, I'll believe you now. I see that you're trying. And, you know, then at some point I would fall back around and do the same thing over again.

Does that make sense? Yeah. So it's just a long line of this. And when I went to Vegas, I was doing well. We had our daughter, but I'd let my friend move up from Sacramento. And, well, actually,

I found out that he was living there already. And he was with another stripper that, it's a whole other story, but ended up moving him into my house because he wanted to get away from her. Me and him start hanging out and just didn't really work out there because my girlfriend was like me and him were partying all the time and she's pregnant about to have the kid. And I'm nowhere to be found most of the time off doing whatever.

Even to the point when I had my daughter, remember Johnny Depp in that in Blow and how he was in the delivery room but he wasn't really there. Well, I was like that on GHB when my daughter. daughter was born. Didn't he overdose on coke when he was in there? Well, I was on GHB when I was in there. And so nodding out, just could barely stand up. Luckily, the neighbor that took her to the hospital was there because he's ended up being the one that cut the abelical cord. No way. Yeah, because I couldn't do it. So, I mean, I'm surprised even let me in the room, to be honest with you. That's wild. Yeah. And so, I mean, just another example.

example of, you know, all I care about is what I want and not really the things that matter in life. Just because I, look, I was a latchkey kid from the, you know, in the third grade. So, I mean, I never really had any supervision, never had consequences, kind of, you know, lived my life the way that I wanted to all the way up to this point, you know, using people along the way, having, you know, just craziness, man. Yeah. So what happened after your daughter was born? What'd you do? Did anything change? Did anything click? Not really. I think we were, I was starting to get more aggressive in the relationship, like being more abusive, verbally, mentally, emotionally. And like, I was never really a physically abusive guy, but I would do everything short of hitting you because I knew I didn't want to go to jail. but if I wanted you to you to bend to my will or bend you to the way that I need you to be,

then I would start becoming more aggressive and, you know, until you submitted. And I got more like that and she had had enough of it and was basically like, all right, well, that's it. We're done. And the friend had already moved out and he got a two-bedroom apartment because he knew that this was going to happen at some point, right? He was like, I know you're going to need a place to stay. so I was going to get a two-bedroom apartment. And so I ended up moving there. And while me and my ex were trying to,

or my first daughter's mom were trying to work things out. Well, she was paying all the bills, right? Because she was stripping. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. I was working on and off. But, I mean, I really,

my whole thing I always tried to do was get out of working. Right? And I think Boziak said it the best. Anything to get out of having a regular job, right? didn't matter what we were doing. You know, if I could, if I could finagle a way to, to not have to go to work and get by and be able to do whatever I wanted, that worked for me. And so she had, they were going to go back to California for Christmas. She had a pathfinder and she asked me if I could take her to the, and drop her off at the airport in it.

She didn't want to pay for parking, which she probably should have after what happened. But anyways, she, I drop her off. I end up going to the rum jungle on Christmas Eve by myself. The rum jungle. Yeah, I think it's a club. Okay. Maybe at the Luxor or one of the other ones. I can't remember the names of those places.

So I went there, was doing some more GHB. When I left, the last thing I remember is turning off Flamingo going south towards Boulder Highway. and the next thing that happened is I hit a light pole. So I basically I was driving blacked out and I hit this light pole. And any further to the left, I would have went straight into, like if I went any further to the left or the right, I would have went straight into a liquor store. Wow. What is GHB like?

I've never tried it. It's hard to explain. It's almost like when you first do it, it's sort of like drinking. Like maybe you've drank two beers if you take one capful. What I believe it was for, to begin with, was for guys that were taking steroids and bodybuilders, they would take that as a supplement as well because your body naturally produces it. And it burns fat while you're sleeping. Really?

Yeah. So what could you compare it to? I couldn't compare it to anything. It's not like any other drug? No. Is it an upper downer? I mean, what the, how do you feel? So it starts out as a downer.

And like, the more you do it, so I built up a tolerance to it because I would do it all the time all the day. day long. Right. And so for me, it turned into an upper to a certain degree. So I would take a cap in the morning on an empty stomach and, you know, an hour and a half later, I'm like wired, you know, vacuuming the floors and, you know, doing whatever. And so it gives you a little bit of energy, but then when you go past a certain point, it knocks you out. And so that's why it was one of the date rape drugs, because when you would give it to somebody, if you give them more than, like, say a cap, let's say you gave them two caps or you threw it in their drink or something, that would knock them out.

Oh, God damn. Yeah. Did you ever do that? No. I had people that tried to do it that were around me to other people. I caught somebody doing it and ended up kicking him out of the house. But, yeah, it was like those people gave it a bad name because, I mean, it's not, to me, it wasn't that bad.

You know, if you just use it in the right way, I never used anything in the right way. You know, I abused everything that I touched. From people to drugs to anything that felt good, I overindulged in. So what ended up happening from there is, and this is just kind of how bad I was. And I did this more than once. When I was in California before I moved to Vegas, there was a point in time when I remember blacking out driving and missed my exit, woke up 10 exits down the road. Had no idea how I got there.

So, I mean, I'm having like risky behavior all the time. And what I came to find out later through just thinking about things and like, gee, why you're connecting dots and everything else like to my past and why am I doing the things that I'm doing, I really believe that I was trying to kill my same. myself. You know, we had mentioned to you before, I'd had three overdoses up to this point, you know, so I OD'd on, on ecstasy and a bunch of other stuff once. I overdosed on some, some meth by taking too much of it. What happens when you overdose on those drugs? So in this particular instance, which is the one that I can actually remember the most, we were all partying on like

a, on Halloween. I started out doing some Coke and drinking. The night progressed, did some more Coke, did some GHB. Then I did a hit of ecstasy. And then when we got to the- When I got to the party, or to the after-party, a bottle of tequila went around. I took a couple slugs of that. And then went to the bathroom and somebody gave me a,

like a gel pill, right? It's like a pill with powdered ecstasy in it, something called black licorice. Anyways, a girl that I was hanging out with had said, well, you know what? You should do it as a suppository because it hits you harder. So if you... You took it up your ass? Yeah. Jesus Christ.

And that's the last thing I remember. Whoa. About five minutes later, lights were out. And from what I heard from everybody that was left there when I woke up, the next morning is that I was foaming at the mouth and probably should have been, you know, taken to the hospital at that point. But they just stuck me in a room and put me to sleep and like, you know, I'm lucky I didn't. I woke up.

What was the drug again? It was called black licorice. Black licorice. And it was like some sort of powdered ecstasy. Powdered ecstasy. Yeah. So MDMA, it was powdered and you would, you would cap it up in gel caps. Brutal, dude.

Yeah. And the media. Immediately when I woke up, I should have been pissed, right? When they told me the story. Instead, I'm like, all right, well, who's got a cap? CHB. Yeah, let's do some more. Let's keep going.

So, I mean, just craziness like that, man. And how old were you then? I was probably my mid-20s, you know. Fuck. Or early to mid-20s. So the story when I wrecked that car. All right. Your girlfriend or your baby mama's Pathfinder?

Yep. so immediately nothing happens to me i pop out of it i don't know how um there's a 7-11 across the street i get out of the car i walk across the street to the 7-Eleven i go buy a gatorade the the the clerk the clerk is looking at me like she's just seen a ghost she's just like i just i just i just saw you wreck that car yeah like dude you're walking like nothing happened i get the gatorade I go back to the car, guess what I do? Another cap. Blackout again.

When I wake up, I'm standing down the street in front of a menu for a drive-through that's not open, just nodding back and forth like this. I come to, I'm like, oh, my God, where am I at? Where am I at? Get my bearings. Look around the corner. They're loading up the pathfinder on a flatbed. I run over there really quick. I'm like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, wait, that's my car.

Go in, grab the GHB, take another cap, blackout again. And the next time I wake up, I'm in the, in front of the porno rack at the liquor store I almost ran into. They've called the police by now because I'm standing there nodding back and forth. And they come in. I come to, and they lead me, they lead me into an ambulance that's waiting for it. me. And they think that what's happened is I'm having brain, like I have a brain trauma because of the accident. So this is just like the effects of being, you know, right. They can't smell anything because GHB is undetectable. And so they, and I just go along with

them. Yeah, yeah, okay, whatever. Go in. Uh, you take me to the emergency room, check in and walk out. And I get a $90 ticket for the telephone pole or light pole. Wow. That's it. Oh, but, but, where'd you do with your GHB? It was in the, it was in the car? Yeah. Oh. They don't know anything about it. You didn't want to take it with you? How am I going to take it with me?

It blacked out. And it was already gone with the flatbed. Yeah, but you went back in there to get another cap right before they put it in the flatbed, remember? Yeah, but I took the cap. That's a good point. I don't know where it went. It must have went. It stayed in the car.

Okay. So you just left it in the car. Yeah. I don't want it. Well, I don't want it. Yeah. just they were going to take it i don't know that's a good question you would think that you're like oh wow my car's going away i'm going to want more GHB in a couple minutes maybe i should just

take the whole bottle yeah i don't know i didn't um so yeah it uh when it ended up happening from there is she had my rights terminated um for for you know because i it just cost her like 18 grand it wasn't paid for she let the insurance laps oh wow and so that was he was he end of that. So any kind of reconciliation or any sort of like, you know, we're working shit out. Not no more. So she had my rights. She had me petition to the courts to take my rights as a parent away from my daughter. Okay. And it took about six months for that process to happen and for me to be served. And when I got served, I was in jail for a DUI. So I was hanging out in another strip club called Cheetahs in Vegas. Been there. I like that. I love that strip club.

Yeah. I was drinking a whole bunch and thought I was okay to drive. And when I left, blacked out again. From the police report that I read, they said that when they rolled up on the side of me that I was literally asleep with my head like this and still driving. And so they hit the, they hit the sirens and they said, I looked over and waved at them. And I pulled over because, I mean, what are we going to do? There's no, I can't go anywhere. Right. When they pulled me out, I could barely stand up. And so what happened next was, I guess they said that I tried to headbut the officer, but I couldn't stand up.

So my head kept going back like this. And so they beat the shit out of me right on the side of the road there. And when I got, they knocked me out. And when I came back to, I was in front of the booking. And they were getting ready to pull me out. What do you keep saying came back to? Does that mean like coming? Like I got knocked.

They knocked me out. They literally knocked me out. They beat me up so bad that I've. Okay. Like I knocked out. Okay. So came back to means like you became conscious again? Yeah.

Oh, okay. All right. Sorry. No, no worries. And so I was pissed. I knew something that happened, right? Like I felt like I was violated. I knew that I didn't wreck my vehicle because I saw it perfectly there, what I remember.

And when they brought me into the booking, I was like irate man I was taking off my shoes throwing it at the booking people and I think I had my hand right here handcuffed to no actually they didn't even have me handcuffed because I was pulling off my stuff

and I was throwing my stuff an officer went by and I tried to hit him and they like four of them jumped on me and we were in like a portable unit so it wasn't like a concrete floor it had some give to it but they slammed me and I landed on my head and the next time I woke up again, I was in the emergency room

making sure that they didn't, you know, do any serious damage to my, to my skull. Wow. Still talking shit. A lot of brain damage you had up to that point. Yeah. Well, that's, what I didn't realize, too, after talking to a bunch of people about my story and some other people that had some TBIs and traumatic brain injuries. And I had one when I was a kid, too.

Oh, really? Yeah. So when I was a kid, I lived on a steep hill and I made a ramp, right, to jump. And I was, the bike that I had was, I had was, one of the ones that didn't have freewheel. So the pedals kept going no matter what. Yeah. And so I jumped this thing and the pedals keep going. And boom.

A fixed gear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And hit my head, ended up in the emergency room there. So that was the first one. How old were you? I was probably about seven or eight. Fuck. So, yeah, there's a lot of brain trauma.

Got knocked out a couple of times. Boxing as a kid. Had some Samoan friends. And I don't know if you've ever met Samoans, but... I know if you. Yeah, they're huge. And so I was, you know, play boxing, got knocked out a couple of times. Isn't the rock Samoan?

I think he is. Is he? Yeah, I'm pretty sure he is. Yeah, he's one of those. He's an islander of some sort. You know, we used to say in prison when we've seen them... He's from Hawaii. Yeah.

All they got to do is stand next to the weight pile and they grow. They're just huge, man. Yeah. So where are we at now? Brain trauma. They smashed your head on the floor of that portable cop station. Yeah. And so when I wake up, I'm talking shit still, pissed, you know, that all this stuff is happening.

I'm still kind of drunk. And the cop that's sitting there, which I don't blame him for what he did, because I was just being, I was just being an asshole. He walks up to me. I'm just, you mother, this, this and that. He takes his, he takes his hand. Just goes, what? It hits me hell of hard. Right in the throat?

Right in the throat as I'm talking. And I'm like, that's amazing. That's fucked up. So, yeah, I mean, that's just kind of life, man. And that's what I was doing. And, you know, this, I'm still not in prison yet. Still haven't been rated.

You know, I do a geographical and I move down to Florida after I get out of jail for that, you know, go and do the DUI stuff that I need to do. Take a job. I got served the papers, you know, to get my rights terminated. And I kind of abandoned my daughter. I was like she's better off without me. I'm going to get out of paying child support. So, you know, all right, later.

See you. Tried to act like it didn't bother me. When I moved to Phoenix to take a job down there, I stayed drunk the whole time I was there, blew that opportunity off, came back to Vegas, knew, I moved in with some friends, but they were getting ready to move back to California. So, like, I knew that I didn't, I was running out of money, didn't have a job,

needed to make a move. And I was like, dude, what can I do? What can I do to make money? What do I, where can I go? And I'm like, strip clubs. I ain't go be a bouncer at a strip club. I used to do it before. So that's exactly what I did.

I went and got hired as a strip club. Got a girl to want to hang out and went and hung out with her one time. And when I showed up to her door, she opened it or she said to come in. I came in and she's smoking a bowl of meth. And I hadn't been doing it for about a year and a half to two years, right? I was drinking and doing all the other things, but I hadn't touched, you know, I knew I It was crazy, man. I was like really surreal because I knew that I saw her doing it.

And in my head, I'm thinking, walk away, walk away. Don't go, don't go, don't go, don't go. You know what's going to happen. And as I'm saying that to myself, I'm walking right to her. I take it and I take a hit. And that's it. From that point on, I start really selling drugs. I start getting guys that slam dope.

to like steal shit for me. So basically I'm getting them to, I'm moving a lot more drugs now. I'm hooked up with some person that's, you know, giving me about an ounce to two at a time to get rid of. Oounce of what? Meth.

Okay. So crystal. Okay. And so that's going all right. I'm doing it for about a year. In that process, I'm figuring out how to do all kinds of stuff because I'm not sleeping very much.

You know, maybe every, you know, staying awake for three days, figuring things out. Did you ever, you never cooked it, right? Okay. No. If I, if I would have known somebody that could teach me how, I probably would have. Have you ever watched Breaking Bad?

Mm-hmm. I watched the whole series, well, at least the first six seasons on a, on a four-day weekend. Oh, really? Yeah, the whole thing.

Were you on meth when you were watching it? No. Oh, okay. That would have been, that would have been a fucking trip if you were. Yeah, I felt like it after I finished watching it because I literally had to stay up

damn near 24 hours, 48 hours to watch all of them. Is it pretty accurate? Would you say? I would. Like the lifestyle? Kind of. Yeah. Or the business part of it?

Yeah. Well, I can't tell you about the business part of it as being a successful drug dealer because I was never a successful drug dealer. Yeah. Not even when I was doing the stuff that I was doing, even as I had the enterprise. You know, I was... You would have been to a Jesse's degenerate friend. probably that was like where you were yeah i would i would have been jesse oh you'd have been jesse

but not cooking stuff not doing any of the other things right so what i would what i always referred to myself was as the king of the dipsets because i was the one that always had like i would hang out with the the guys that were slamming dope because i'm not that bad right as long as i'm not slamming dope i'm better than you even though i'm an addict too Right? Slamming it? Is it mainlining it? Yeah, yeah.

Injecting it. And so that's what I would always think of, right? Like, well, I'm better than you because I'm not doing that. You're just smoking it. I'm just smoking it or I'm just doing a line or, you know, I'm not slamming it. What's the best way to take meth? To not take it? No, but if you are, I mean, what's the most effective way?

Like, what's the optimal? It's different. I mean, there would be, like, the one time that I OD'd on it, it was probably the, it felt the best, but it probably was the closest that you can get to slamming it without slamming it. So what I would do is I would smoke it out of this thing. They called it a quag, right? So it was like a bong for meth and it would run through the water. And I'd run ounces through there and, you know, take it and dump the water out and put it in the freezer for maybe a rainy day.

or if I ran out or something. And so one day I did. Like meth bong water? Yeah. And so one day. Do you make popsicles out of it? No. Oh.

It was just in there. So I took a couple scoops of ice slush, whatever. Yeah. It was like maybe about this much. And I drank it. And it was way too much. Like a meth slurpy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Dude, it was horrible. Wow. I mean, it felt really great until it didn't. literally like my my my uh all my pores started coming out like started beating with sweat and i'm just sitting there and all of a sudden i'm just like shaking like this from the inside out whoa and i literally felt like i was gonna i was gonna die and uh it took it lasted for about i don't

know 30 minutes like that and i couldn't move um just profusely sweating out and are you afraid you're gonna like die or have a heart attack yeah i was afraid Jesus Christ But I was the only one there So there was nobody Nobody there with me And so I mean it was I just had to ride it out

And luckily I did But yeah That was horrible What was the guy doing In Breaking Bad? I think his name was Tucker He was like out front in the front yard Digging holes with a shovel the whole time

Remember? He lived at his dad's house And Breaking Bad And one of the characters One of Jesse's friends He was always out Outfront digging holes with a shovel.

Tucker! I don't remember that. You remember that part? No. Okay. I think I want to say that was meth too, but they were, the dude was locked in there for like weeks of the time, just in one room. Yeah, I remember.

Yeah, I remember that he had two of the, the two of his friends that, you know, always were trying to get him to do, do bad shit, or make dumb decisions. And, um, but I don't remember that part. Hmm. Um, but it doesn't surprise me.

And that's, that was the thing. So like, wanted the best way besides mainlining it is to just straight up drink it drink water from a bong i i would say if you're going to do it like it's it's completely different the best way obviously is mainlining it yeah um you know because that hits you straight up and you know a lot of the the guys that like i was selling to do it i mean they would do it right in front of me it was really hard to watch especially when they're sitting there digging because they can't they can't get a vein oh my god yeah It's pretty gross, man.

And finally they would hit it. And, you know, the look on their face once they did it was like, oh, that looks like it feels really good. Jeez. Except for that part, right? That part, I could never do it. And that's probably why I never did slam dope is because I just couldn't get past the needle part. I don't like needles. Yeah, I'm right there with you.

I'm not a fan of needles. Yeah, that's bad stuff. I'd be down to try the slurpy, though. I don't know. It needs to be better off to... I'm down to try anything once. Yeah, that's not a good one to try. But, you know, to each their own.

Yeah, so, I mean, where did we end up living off? I forgot. Oh, yeah, you met the girl. You met the girl, and then she, the stripper, and she was smoking it, and then you started smoking it, and then you started selling it by the ounce. And how I got her to let me move in is... because I'd met her doing that, right? And we'd worked at the same club.

I went and moved to the shittiest roach-infested fleabag weekly rental, right? And I invited her over because my goal was, was to get her to see how bad I had it. That way she'd say, hey, come move with me. That way I'm not manipulating you. You wanted to make her feel sorry for you? Yeah, so she would say, come live with me. And I wasn't, I wasn't, it wasn't my idea, it was your idea, so you can't say that I'm trying to use you. Right.

Part of that manipulation. Yeah, for sure. And that's exactly what happened. She went over there, she saw the roaches running around and she's like, dude, you got to, you got to get out of here. Come move and live with me. And I'm like, are you sure? Are you sure you want to do that? Knowing that that was exactly what the plan was to begin with.

Wow. So I did a lot of that. So you ended up dating this check? Mm-hmm. I was with her for a long time. Probably I was with her until I went to prison. Okay. Until I got arrested.

How did you end up going to prison? So, like I said, I was doing all of this stuff, had these guys going, stealing these things for me, providing them with the truck and all the money and all the, you know, the gas and everything to go to smash and grabs at businesses and then also burglaries and homes. And they would come back. They would bring me everything. I'd fence it off and pay them in drugs. And this went on for a little while.

The guy that I was dealing with that I didn't know at the time, he got busted and turned me, turned his confidential informant onto me. And I sold to that guy five times. And I was sold him meth? Yeah, sold him five ounces, five different times, to an undercover cop that the guy that I was dealing with for a year put on to me. and so what ends up happening there is that I didn't realize that I was under surveillance for a while

they're watching me they're they're seeing me getting in and out of my cars I'm you know going to make a run or doing whatever I always carried a gun with me so I would take it out of my back I'd put it in my under the seat do the same thing when I get out so they know that I'm armed right when they were breaking into houses for me they were pulling and, you know, firearms and all kinds of stuff. I had about five or six of those and filed, you know, the serial numbers were gone off of them. And at one point, I just felt like it was over, right? Like trouble was around the corner, like my run was up.

I just had this feeling that something wasn't right. Got rid of all the guns. Just, I don't know why I did that, but I just felt like I needed. to. So I got rid of all of them except for one. About a week later, it's about three o'clock in the morning. I have tons of electronic shit, right? Like all the stuff that they've stolen and I wasn't able to fence. Like I've got stacks of like, you know, decks and amps and all kinds of stuff. I have in the living room, there's a, like, I've got like 36 fucking speakers hooked up. in the surround sound, right?

Bow's system, all kinds of stuff. It's about 3 o'clock in the morning. This is all in that Strippers house? Yeah. Okay. So it's like a townhouse. Okay. So two bedrooms.

One of the bedrooms I have put a deadbolt on. Is it a pretty nice house? Stippers make pretty good money? In Vegas? Some of them do. Depends. Depends on how broken they are. Okay.

Because the broken ones usually have drug problems. Not always, but a good portion of them. do. There are some that are... Do you use any strippers that make $100,000 a year? Mm-hmm. Really? Mm-hmm. One's that put themselves through college. You know, they're the hustlers that, you know, my...

I know that my daughter's mom, at some point, she was making $1,000 a night. So... Really? Yeah. Do you still talk to her? No. Not at all. Mm-mm. Not at all. So... Where we at?

Electronics stacked up. You're living in Radio Shack and in a townhouse. That's a good way to put it, man. So, yeah, there's all kinds of electronics and stuff in there. There's a huge loud stereo. It's 3 o'clock in the morning. It's on. It's pretty loud. My girlfriend and her roommate are asleep in our room.

I'm in the next room working on $100 bill because I'm counterfeiting at this point, washing $1 bills. So basically taking $1 bills, stripping all the ink off of them, and imprinting the old 100 on top of it. How do you do that? Very meticulously. Okay. So basically you would strip all of the ink off of the original dollar bill.

How do you strip the ink off a dollar bill? It was a certain degreaser that you used. I can't remember what the name of it is. I remember that that's what we were doing. A degracer? Yeah, soaking it in it. Okay. And then just wash all the ink off of it, dry it, flat, right?

Flat on a piece of, so basically I'd squeeze it. it to like a flat piece of glass, let it dry on there. So it's very flat. I tape it to a really a piece of paper, run it through a printer, and it would print the old hundred on it. And so the old hundred didn't have the barcode on it, didn't have the stripe in there, the little strip that it has that people look at,

didn't have the hologram either. It was before that. Mm-hmm. And so that's what I was doing. And they were passing. And you were just printing them out on a regular printer? Mm-hmm. Just a regular everyday printer. An ink printer.

Right, like an inkjet or something. Yeah. So it didn't have the ridges. It didn't have the ridges. Like you can scratch on them like in the lapel. You know what I'm talking about? How there's those ridges that you can feel. It didn't have that.

But, I mean, most people didn't know that. Because when they would go and they would mark it, it's 100. Right. What do these things look like after you stripped all the, you degreased all the ink off of them. They just looked like blank white. They looked like the blank sort of, you know, with the under, what wasn't green, it was just that and in all of the red and blue fibers.

That's wild. Yeah. And how many of these things were, how many of these $1 bills were you turning into $100 bills? I did probably, I would say, close about $5,000 or $6,000. Okay. I mean, because it was a meticulous process. I mean, it wasn't fast. It wasn't, and I would never be one of the ones to go and bust them, right?

I would have the guys that were working for me go and try and pass them. Oh, okay, so the guys that you were that were working for you, what were they buying with the drugs? No, they would just go and buy, like, because you didn't want to do it to the drug dealers. No, why not? Because they'd fuck you up. Yeah, pretty much. So what I would do is I'd send them out to, like, liquor stores or other places and they'd spend like maybe 40, bucks and get 60 back.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. You would look for places that had teenagers as cashiers because they're not going to know. They're not going to pay attention. They're not going to care. So, I mean, it was a meticulous process. And I would do other stuff like all of the computer towers that were stolen. I would swap those hard drives out and I would go and buy with. cash at Walmart, the Seagate 80 gigs, those were just started to come out.

I'd buy those, take those out, clean the other hard drive, strip the hard drive, like basically wipe it and replace that used one in the new one. Use a blow dryer to peel the label off of it, re-shrink wrap it, and put the label back on. Wow. And then return it and get my cash back. So it's a lot of work. A lot of fucking work. For a little return, right?

But that's meth. Like, what else am I doing? I can't sleep. Right. Jesus Christ, man. You're just burning the candle at both ends. Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, that's just the kind of stuff that was going on at that point in time.

Like I said, now we get to the point where... And this is what you got arrested for, eventually. Yeah. Well, I got arrested for the five controlled buys. That's what caused... Oh, yeah. The guy flipped on you, put an undercover dude. Yeah, and so that's what caused him to do the initial raid.

And so on that raid that day, that evening or that morning, I hear a bunch of like, boom, boom, boom. And my door is shut. I got a friend over here. I'm working on $100 bill. And I just like the TV's on hell aloud. So I'm not sure what it is. I don't hear any like, get on the ground or anything because they. hear, I think they focused all of the force into the living room because they heard,

that's where they thought I was. Right. There was double paying glass windows because they lived next to Ellis Air Force Base. I tinted the inside of these windows. So one of the flashbangs that they shot in made it through the first pain and then bounced back and blew up on them. Oh, fuck. Which then in turn caused the police dog that they had, the drug sniffing dog, to bite the officer

because he got scared and just bit the office. Oh, shit. So they're pissed when they get in to begin with, right? They're like, oh, dude, this guy, we're going to fuck this dude up. I know that's what they're thinking. I tell my friend to get down the ground. I opened the door, and remember I told you the hallway at the end of it to the right, the door is over that way.

And in the front of this door is a huge big screen projection TV, which is like the six feet tall ones at about 3,000 pounds, the real old ones. The door doesn't open up all the way. It catches on like the edge of the big screen. Okay. So literally they got their SWAT shields up. And when I come around the corner,

I have this little Derringer in my hand. I look and I see that there's, that's the SWAT team. And I ditch the gun behind the TV. And I dive on the ground and put my hands behind my head. If they would have seen me, they would have killed me with that gun. So, and the reason why I didn't get

caught with that gun is when I'm they hog tied me on the ground they zip tied me a mouth and off to them and uh they picked me up and two of them and they ram my head into the TV. Oh. And it pushes it up over the gun. And so they miss it. Oh my God. That would have been an extra five years because it was, it had a serial number five off of it.

They never found the drugs. because I kept everything in a TV VCR combo in the corner that was hanging off the ceiling and so in where the VCR slot was was loaded with cash and dope. And they never found any of that? The drug sniffing dog can't sniff up there. Oh shit.

So he missed it. Oh, smart. Did you do that on purpose? Nope. I wish I was pre. I did it on purpose, but no. Lucky break. Yeah, it was lucky.

So I ended up. up going, I took the fall for everybody. I could prove that, now this was planned. I could prove that they didn't have anything to do with it because I kept a deadbolt on this door right here where I was doing all of my computer stuff and were like 14 grams of methware that they found. And then I had another back room that I had another computer in where I was washing all the bills. And so I had all the counterfeit money in there. Maybe you can explain this to me. I had, I bought a house a couple years ago and I renovated it and I know there was a bunch of

drug addicts living there because when I'm in the sink in the garage there was just a bunch of needles there's syringes there those syringes up in the attic we found and that you know they were in some of the cabinets or everywhere and on one of the bedrooms

there was dead bolts on the outside on the outside of the bedroom like they were locking somebody in the bedroom well the reason why I did it was because I was the only one that had the keys. So I knew that if I ever got rated, that if I'm the only one that had keys and access to these rooms, everybody else could claim ignorance. I didn't know what he was doing. Okay. You know, I didn't have it. I didn't have any access to that. I don't have keys to that. Right. And they literally went and checked everybody's

keys to make sure that nobody had access to it. Okay. And so I took the fall for everything. Okay. I mean, it was all my, all mine anyways. I mean, what's my girlfriend? going to do. Right, right. I'm going to do what I want. So I ended up going, getting booked into Clark County Detention Center, and they released me three days later on my own recognizance. So they went through all of that to just turn around and let me out three days later because I didn't have a criminal history.

At that point, I was like, you know what, fuck this. catch me if you can. I'm going on the run. And I did. And so left that spot. Had enough money and liquidated, sold all the, all the drugs I needed to, um, to get the money to move to a new spot. Reinforce that whole place with, uh, I put a, uh, one of those, you know, those front doors

that are metal that you attach to you, in front of your front door. So you can open it up. Yeah. So I put one of those, uh, at the entrance, um, to the, so it's kind of, it's kind of weird how I did it, but it was just another layer that they'd have to get through before they get to the door before they can get to me. Don't say people put like burglar bars over their doors, like actual bars and they can lock them?

I use one of those. I just put that, that was the cheapest way that I could do it. Put cameras up everywhere. The place where I was living at, I was on the top floor and I could see up this way and I can see down that way. So anybody that was coming, I could see them coming. You can only get in two ways. Okay.

And so that way I would have time the next time that it was going to happen to either get rid of the drugs or, you know, maybe jump out a window or whatever it is. That lasted for about, I'd say, three months I was on the run. In this process, I was starting to figure out how to use credit card numbers and make IDs and checks. And I was selling to this one girl who worked at a tour agency and was getting me stacks of information like papers that had customers' information. their name, their address, their credit card number, their CCV, their date of birth,

everything except for their social security number. But that wasn't hard to find once I had all this other information. You know, I can just do a background check on you and cross-reference some things. And, you know, I was able to find their social security numbers. I had so much information that I was trying to figure out how to do Western Union wire transfers for, like, You can do $999 at that point in time. That was around two, I would say 2003, 2004. Figured it out, burned a bunch of information, decided to go on the road.

And I rented a car, was able to do identity theft and get a person's, I stole someone's identity, got a credit card issued in my name or in their name to me got around all of the different stuff that they ask you you know you know how they do when you apply sometimes you have to give them information they'll ask you questions about their family members or or this or that which is all information that you can find in a background check because that's what they use the credit card companies to find the questions to answer anyway to ask anyways so I was able to get that, I got a, I rented a Durango. I put the whole operation in the back of the Durango. My girlfriend was driving at the time and I had six different cell phones that I was using and I was

switching the, the prefixes of the phone numbers to the prefixes of the people that I was using their credit card. So what Western Union was doing is, so when I would, when I would, when I would online I would do all this and do all this stuff to do a wire transfer. I give them that phone number so they could contact me and I would act as if it was like my work. As we were on the road, they would call to verify

that I did this and my girlfriend would answer and say, oh, this is so-and-so business. How can I help you? And they'd say, can I speak to so-and-so? Yeah, hold on, one second. They'd give the phone to me or if it was a woman who I was using, I would answer as the business. and hand her the phone as she was driving and say, yes, I approved this.

And there's $999 waiting for me. I would print out the ID that I needed for whoever it was that I was having the money sent to in the car. And I did this all the way from, from Vegas to Amarillo, Texas. And I planned out all the Western Union stops on the way. Got to Amarillo, ran out of math, and couldn't. find anymore and crashed for three days even went to the strip clubs and with my chick couldn't find anymore wow and so we were both forced to have to like crash for three days um went back uh did the

same thing at different places on the way back and so by the time we got there was about 40 grand in cash we had um our roommate at the time which is the same girl that was with us when um we got raided and she was the one that was sleeping with my girlfriend in the bed. Not sleeping with her, but, you know, they were doing that too. But she kept calling. And this chick never really cared about anything that we were doing, right? But all of a sudden, she kept calling one and knowing when we were going to be back. And so I was like, dude, this is, no, there's something wrong here.

She never does. And I'm just going to, I'm going to go and stash the money before we go back to the pad. So I stashed the cash, went to the house. We get there. Her friend Steve is there and this other dude. And what ended up happening is Steve was a hangaround for the Hells Angels. And he's like one of these dudes that's trying to, you know, it's a hangaround. He's trying to get into the club, right?

So he tells them that we're coming back with a bunch of drugs and all kinds of stuff, trying to make his stripes with this dude. We get there. I don't think anything of it. We start getting high because I hadn't been high in like three days now. three, four days, start getting high. The dude pulls out a gun, puts it on his lap. And I'm like, dude, what are you doing?

Put that away. He's like, you don't understand. Get on the ground. You're being taxed. And I'm like, what? All right. He separates me and my girlfriend. Our stories match.

And I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, dude, I got to get this dude out of my house. How can I fucking get this guy out of the house? And I'm like, hey, you know what? Dude, you're kind of stupid for what you're doing. I'm like, come over here. Come look at what I'm really doing. and I started showing him some of the stuff that I was working on. And I said, if you really want to make some money, you'll not do what you're doing right now and join me.

And we can partner up and I'll show you how to make some real money. And he bought it. And so I sent him off with a Cannondale fucking mountain biking some fireworks I got. Where's that place called? New Mexico on the way back. and once I got rid of him, the only thing that was on my mind is I was going to kill this dude now. And I went and bought a shotgun. Like two days later, I worked, I made the ID and everything else I needed to.

Bought the shotgun at a big five, waited the time. Where I screwed up was as I was cheating on my girlfriend this whole time. There was this girl that I wanted to sleep with and we went and rented a hotel room. And I think my, she knew what I was doing. But since I was supplying all the drugs and I was, you know what I mean, the money and everything else, she was just kind of putting up with it. Plus, she was sleeping with my, with the girl, the roommate girl at the time too. And really wasn't sweating it.

So she ends up, she bought, she pays for, I give her the cash for the hotel room. She puts a hotel room in her name, the girl that I'm trying to sleep with. And that first night, everything was good. the next day I didn't get enough I want more and I put it in my name well not my name but in the identity that I'm using in the credit card what I didn't realize is that

when you try to rent a weekly they send your information to Metro to make sure you're not a fugitive right well the person's identity that I stole was a black dude so when it came when it went to them it was my picture but when it popped up was a black dude. And so I go and pick up the shotgun.

And I get the room. They say it's not going to be ready for like three hours. It didn't put two and two together to realize that, well, it's 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock. Why isn't a room ready? They said, come back in three hours. So I go pick up the gun, have it in a car or in a Durango. And when I get there, they're waiting for me.

So divine intervention? I don't know. You tell me. That saved me from a murder. And how long did you get sentenced to? I did. They were trying to hem me up for two to 15 years to begin with. I caught the public defender working with the prosecutor.

Because I knew that from... Your public defender, working with the prosecutor. Yeah. So this is what I did. I knew that there was a backlog for them to test the drugs. And so in order for them to convince, to you in a trial, the drugs have to be tested, the purity and all that other stuff. I didn't waive my right to a speedy trial.

I said, no, I want to have a trial within 60 days because I was banking on the fact that I would beat the time. And right about a week before I was supposed to go to trial, my public defender goes, oh, well, you know, we're going to have to push this off for two weeks. I'm going on vacation and all this other stuff. and I protested it in the middle of courtroom. I'm like, dude, I don't agree to this. I said 60 days.

It's supposed to be 60 days. And so right there it was kind of like, hmm, something seems off. When he was supposed to be on vacation, he called me from his office. And I'm like, dude, I thought you were supposed to be on vacation. Why did you push off my date? And he's like, oh, well, uh, uh, and I'm like, oh, dude, you guys are trying to fucking string me up. And so that's at the point where I call my mom. And I'm like, hey, man, I'm going to, they're trying to give me.

me, I didn't mention the two years. I said, they're trying to give me 15 years. And so I could get her to come down and get an attorney for me. Right. And that's what happened. She got an attorney for me. She came down. And I ended up getting 15 to 60 months in state prison.

But when I got busted. How close were you with your mom up to this point? Not really. I mean, it got to a point where she had actually sent the cops. and reported me as a missing person because I just dropped off the face of the earth. I didn't contact anybody. I was just off in my own world, right? And so when I would be using, I would never, like, want to be around anybody that I knew.

Didn't want to be around family. You know, my dad's really kind of out of the picture. And my dad's a cop, too. So my whole dad's side of the family are law enforcement. So, I mean, that didn't go really well. Yeah, like during this whole time, like throughout your 20s when you were running through Vegas and doing all this stuff. Like were you calling your mom every month, every week?

Sometimes. Yeah. We were talking. I mean, she's, we've always been close. Okay. You know, but she's always been the person that's bailed me out.

Right. Like up to this point, I mean, dude, I've ran the truck through the house, you know, her truck through the house in our, you know,

like grew up in, caused a bunch of damage there. She sent me through an outward bound program that was like 15 grand. The lawyer. I mean, I've cost this woman probably in the upwards of about 50 to 60 grand.

grand. So she came, where was she living when she came down to help you out? She was living in California. Okay. She came down there and she hired a lawyer for you. Yeah. And so that, they gave me 15 to 60 months. And so I paroled out in 18 months. But what happened and how I got the federal charges was that the guy that processed my place when I got raided showed up at the, when I got arrested at the hotel room. And so, because it was a fraud and forgery, right? And so he showed up, and he was like, ah, I've been waiting for you to pop up. He's like, you went on the run and thought you're going to be able to get away with this, huh? You can try to become somebody else or whatever it was.

He was like, so I'm going to tell you what. I'll make a deal with you. If you take me to your house, because I remember process in your last place and you had a shitload of stuff, I know you probably have that much or not even more at your new place or wherever it is that you're doing your business now. Yeah. And he's all, if you take me there and you give me everything, I won't charge you with any of this. And I'm like, well, that's a great deal. Let's go, right?

Because all I want to do is go to sleep. I've been up for, you know, a couple days now. And like I was falling asleep in the 120 degree back of the cop car, right? Literally, I just went to sleep. When he got there, I was like, yeah, that's a deal. Let's go, man. Let's just get this over with. I know I'm not going to leave.

I'm done, right? Yeah. And so I didn't realize he had a secret service guy doing a ride along with him, and the secret service guy picked up the gun charges, and there was a box in the back of that SUV that had 30 credit card numbers. I didn't know. So I got charged with false information for a firearm acquisition, and then also 30 counts of access device fraud,

which is having access to credit cards and aren't yours. So I ended up getting indicted for that. was fighting my case there. They released me back. Once I got indicted there, two charges, 18 months running concurrent. They released me back to state custody, went and did my time in high desert, and then moved to Indian Springs in Nevada. Then I ended up going to paroleing out to do my federal time.

In 2006, I got out. And that was really. different. How much time were you in total? About three years. Okay. And, but I mean, if you want to count all the times like was it like low security, medium security, high security like high? It was medium. It was medium. Yeah. I've never been to. I mean, I started out in a high at high desert. And the worst thing that I'd ever seen in prison, like I don't have any of those crazy stories where you hear people getting raped or stabbed or any of that stuff. The worst thing I saw was a guy get doused in the face with a hot pot full of baby oil.

Mm. You know, all across his face is, his bubbling up and all that sort of stuff. Jesus Christ. But none of the other stuff. I was lucky. Yeah. I didn't have to go and do all that. I didn't have any co-defendants in any of my stuff.

I mean, it was all me. You know, they had me dead to rights anyways. Right, right. So I get out in 2006, moved back to my moms, go to halfway house. I'm doing okay. I stay drunk probably for the first six months that I get. it out, just decompressing from being in, I mean, it's, it's pretty traumatic when you go to prison, man.

I've been jumped a couple of times while I was there, you know, got into it with some South Siders and ended up getting jumped there. I was going to run my whole bid by myself, but then once that happened, I realized that you can't really just, there's no way that you can't click up with people because you need protection, you know, for whatever. Maybe there is a way to do it. I didn't do it that way. And so, yeah, I mean, it just, it was kind of, it was sort of a shock when I got out

because everything's segregated when you're in there. Yeah. I mean, even when you're in a medium, it's not as bad as the politics aren't as bad as when you're in a USP, but it's still there. Like you can't eat after a black person. You can't eat after a different race. You can't, like, grab somebody's, like, take a drink off of somebody's drink. like they don't really like you playing, you know, games and stuff with them as well.

They just, they like you to be segregated. And you start taking on the- You say, day, who are you talking about? Your car. Like, I was running with the whites, so the whites weren't going to, you know, didn't want you doing all that stuff. Right. And, like, I'm not that kind of person, right?

I was a chameleon in high school. I hung out with everybody. But I had to start taking on that sort of mentality while I was, there. So, you know, not liking black people, not liking Mexicans, not liking anything that was other than white. And I started falling into that. And when I got out, it was hard to decompress from that, you know, that kind of attitude and trying to change that mindset. And so I struggled with it for a little while. And I started doing okay. I got into my union. I did some other jobs. It was an apprentice in my union in 2008 hit. And the final final.

financial crisis, which, you know, everybody got laid off of work, especially if you're in construction, had a lot of time on my hands and ended up, I'd gotten married in the process in between this for all the wrong reasons. She was a stripper? No. Oh. She was somebody that was in recovery. I met her in a AA meeting. Oh, okay. And so I went to AA because I was doing, you know, drinking daily up to like a fifth of alcohol a day.

and I had stopped one day. I was just like, dude, you got to quit. And I just quit cold turkey, went through the whole, locked myself in my room, went through the DTs, the shakes, the sweats, all that stuff, got it out of my system, went to AA, ended up meeting her, and thinking to myself, well, dude, I went, I went to prison, I didn't have anybody because the chick that I took the case for, stole all my shit, my trucks, all my stuff, sold it all,

and I didn't get anything, didn't get money on my books or nothing. And my mom even went to the door to try to, you know, get some of my shit back and was unsuccessful. So the last thing I was going to have due that if I ever went back to jail, then I'm not going to be stuck with nobody, you know, to write to me or, because, I mean, that sucks when you're, the one thing that guys like or count on is getting mail, right? And I never got hardly any mail. And so I remember that feeling, you know, sitting there waiting at, you know, are I going to get something and not.

And so I'm like, well, if I get married to somebody, if I ever go away, then I'll have somebody that can write to me. Which is a stupid reason to get married, right? Yeah, the attitude is usually the opposite from everyone else I've talked to. They say when they go to prison, the last thing you want to do is have to deal with not being around your loved one or not being around your girlfriend or your spouse, whatever. Like being separated from them is like the most difficult part because they go through the depression, the jealousy. Like, what are they doing out there? Are they getting with anybody else? Yeah.

Well, I didn't experience it. Mine was the opposite. Right. So the person who I thought was supposed to be there wasn't. And the thing that I didn't like to do is be on the phone. So the phone, they call it a stress box, right? Because you're talking to people. You're hearing what's going on.

They got people in the background. Like I told my mom, that's the person who had my back always. And I would tell her, I'm like, look, I'll call you once a week. but like don't bother coming to visit me. Don't, you know, do any of that stuff because you're just going to make it harder for me to be here. Yep. You know, and so that's kind of how I did mine.

Maybe I thought about it in the wrong way. I don't know. But that's kind of what I tied it to, you know, getting married to this person for not the right reasons. And so. But wait, you said you got married to her so you would have someone to be able to connect to if you ever went back to prison.

But when you were in prison before that, you didn't want to have any communication with your mom at all because you didn't want any communication with somebody outside of prison. So you're basically saying you didn't want those letters. You didn't want those phone calls. If I went back, my mom wasn't going to be the one that was going to take care of me, right? Because she's not going to do it again. You failed again. This is the last time I'm helping you.

Okay. So I'm securing. Okay. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, now I see you're saying. I'm securing somebody that could actually take care of you and bail you. you out next time that you got that you got fucked up exactly okay so like I said all the wrong reasons and more of that manipulation right so it wasn't it wasn't so much the emotional part of it okay

it was the financial the you know making sure that I got money and and all the other stuff and so when the financial crisis hit and I lost my job um I had tons of time on my hand she was working and I started making my way back to the people that I knew that were doing meth. And so started again. AWOLD from my marriage because I knew, so I knew that, like, I had a bunch of money. I was getting unemployment and I was going back to work periodically because I'm in the union. So they, you know, they'll, you get laid off. You're on a list.

If your name comes up and you take a job. So there were some jobs that were going on, you know, every once in a while. like, you know, one, two week, three week, four week projects. And so I was taking them, but I was also getting unemployment still. I didn't, I was double dipping. So I had a bunch of money. What I did was I knew that I wasn't done. I want, there was some stuff out there that I knew that I could do, which was carding,

which was what Boziac did. I knew that was possible. And I wanted to do it. But I knew how to do the credit card stuff, not the credit start, but, the check fraud. And so I started buying with the money that I was getting from unemployment. I was buying printers. I was buying check stocks or the check stock paper that you use to write, make checks.

I was doing all this stuff, preparing. And when I got everything I needed, I awalled for my marriage and just disappeared. Went to a place called Martinez. I was hanging out with a bunch of CD Underlife people and was hanging paper, which is making checks on ID. and having them cash all of them. Hooked up with my buddy from Sacramento from before, and I asked him, I'm like, hey, man, this is kind of what I want to do. I know that you can buy credit card information online.

I don't know where you can get it at, but I know it's possible. I know there's things out there that I want to do, but I don't know how to do them. Do you know somebody that's doing it? Because he knew a lot of people who are doing a lot of different things. Found me somebody. And this was the second dude. that I clicked with like that.

Another bromance. So this dude taught me everything. He taught me how to get the cards from Russia using the dark web, taught me how to make your own. So we started out with the blank plastic, right, with the mag stripe. And he had all these different things that he had bought that you could print different, like bank logo. and like just banks from anywhere you want to like from I can't remember what they were

some of them are for like from Brazil like Bank of Brazil or all these different things so you just put them on there what are you doing with them pressing cards out were you selling somebody what were you were spending buying shit yeah we were buying stuff okay so around that time is when Best Buy started doing the purchase online and pickup in store and so what we were doing is And the only thing that they were requiring that you give them to prove you were who you were was the last four digits of the credit card number. So basically, you just press out the card, not have any intract information on there and just show them the card and you walk away with the items. So we were buying MacBook Pros. And so at that time, they were $2, $2,400.

And they never go on sale. And so when we would put them on Craigslist, we could sell them for about $2,000. and they were going like this. And so we were making a bunch of money that way. We were getting some cards that had pin numbers on them to like bank accounts. So we would go and hit all, like, H Street had about 25 different ATMs on that street alone. And so I just would literally go down from ATM to ATM until I ran that card out and then hit another card and, you know, just got a shitload of cash that way. Wow.

And that's what we were doing for a while. We had two different offices. We had one office where we were getting all the information, and we had all of our stuff to, you know, get information and everything stored there. We had another location where we were pressing out everything. And so basically using the embossor, the tipper, and, you know, finishing it. And we did it that way just in case one place went down. We still had the other place.

And so, I mean, it was pretty organized. Most of it wasn't me. It was the guy that taught me how to do all of it. and we disbanded that probably after about three months. And I had gotten up to this point, I mean, I'm on federal supervised release while I'm doing all this. Still towing the line there. I haven't had to do too many UAs yet. I ended up getting a dirty, though.

And I got sentenced to a 90 day. A dirty D, a dirty U.A. Like a pissed dirty. Oh, okay. For my probation office. Oh, okay. I end up getting a, uh, For smoking meth?

Yeah. Okay. I get a violation. They make me do a 90-day drug treatment center. My P.O. was a woman. And I went in there and started crying and was like, oh, I got a problem. I don't know what I'm going to do. Right.

I need help. And so she's like, all right, well, we'll send you to a treatment center. I went to that treatment center. I was a 90-day men's treatment center. And probably within a month of being there, my buddy, I contacted him. I said, hey, man, I, I need you to do me a favor. I'm going to say I'm going to come work for you, right? Because he had a business front.

And, you know, so I can get out of here every day. And they'll allow me to have my truck. So they bought it. And every day I was leaving and I was going to do doing fucking crime. And staying high the whole time, I carried a synthetic urine on me in case I had to come back. And they asked me to drop a UA. I screwed up, though. nine days before I was supposed to graduate from this.

So I almost did it, right? Nine days before I was supposed to graduate from this thing, I ended up, I did some GHB and nodded out. And blacked out again, driving. Didn't wreck anything, but just, I was supposed to be back at like six or seven. And it was like midnight, had to call in and say, hey, man,

I made up some stupid-ass story. and they tested me as soon as I got there. They knew I was dirty, but I used the synthetic urine and piss clean. The very next day, they kicked me out. My PO, I had to call her up, and I'm like, well, dude, I didn't piss dirty. Like, they can't prove that. And she's like, dude, you didn't successfully complete it. So you're going to go back.

I'm going to send you to another place. I'm going to violate you again. And you're going to, you're going to go to 90 days in a facility, not like a contract facility for the feds. Okay. So basically like a county jail. Okay. And so when that was going to happen, it was like all these things, man, just started came piling down on me. And my buddy took off.

He went to go live with his girlfriend. I had to come running back to my wife. Like, oh, you know, I messed up again. You know, things are going to be different, I promise, you know, all this stuff. And, you know, I'm kind of being sort of, you know, physically, not physically, but mentally, emotionally and abusive in that relationship as well. She doesn't buy it. And the point when I decide where I'm going to change everything was on the side of a highway. I was on a high-speed chase with her.

We run into traffic. I'm chasing her down because she's not buying my bullshit. and I'm trying to convince her that, you know, or bend her to my will like I did everybody else. She's in her car and you're in another car chasing her? Yeah, chasing her down. We hit traffic. She pulls over. I pull over.

And I'm like trying to convince her on the side of the road. There's a bunch of cars going by all of a sudden. Oh, my God. It was a mess, man. Were you on meth? Well, yeah. Jesus Christ. So what ends up happening, man, is I fucking fall apart.

I'm bawling on my knees, just fucking crying uncontrollably. And there's people honking going by. And like the most surreal shit happened. I'm like, I feel like I'm floating above myself, looking at myself, going, dude, you're just a pathetic fuck. You know, look at you. You're sitting here crying like a little bitch because your life is the way that it is. And what are you going to do?

And from that point on, like I said, I knew I was going to a, county jail that I'd never been to. I didn't want to be kicking drugs while I went there. And so I stopped doing it before I went in for about like about a month, six weeks before.

Stop doing the meth, stopped smoking cigarettes, went there, got out after the 90 days. My ex-wife now, well, I mean, she's still my wife then, but she takes me in, but she knows that she doesn't want to have nothing to do with me. She just does it out of pity. But I don't go back to it.

So I start going to AA. I start playing adult slow-pitched softball. Get away from the group that I was hanging with, right? Managed to not fuck up my chance in the union, so I still have my apprenticeship that I can go back to. Start working. Not doing drugs, not doing any of that stuff. Playing softball was kind of a trip.

I didn't like the league I was playing in, so I decided to start my own. And I did everything to start it. Did all the stuff, got the insurances, the teams, all this stuff that I did together. It took a lot of planning. It took a lot of, you know, thinking about how to execute it. You know, I had a goal, and I achieved it. And what happened was I realized that that was the way that you're supposed to build self-esteem and confidence. is by having a goal, achieving it, getting that good feeling from it,

and then leveling up and going, well, if I can do that, then let me try this. And if I can do this, let me try that. And I just kept leveling up, leveling up, got into the rowing team on my union, did that for like five years, became a sergeant-at-arms for my union. So I really got involved in other things that kept me away from, you know, the people and the places and all the other shit. became a trustee for my union for two years. Then I was on the executive board for two years.

In 2019, I ran for a business agent position and lost. The thing that I didn't realize and that I do now and that this is really what I advocate for is I'm still a toxic person. none of the things that that I'd done and all of the like inline things subconsciously that I learned and all the habits and the bad habits and the bad behaviors and everything that I learned up to this point those were all still there they didn't go anywhere they're just just because I'm not on the drugs doesn't mean that those things went anywhere have you ever heard of the dry drunk no it's the dry drunk so it's the guy that that stops drinking but still an asshole.

Still an abusive person, still, you know, the same guy that has the problem, but it's just not using the substances to, you know, subdue it. Okay. And so I start, what I start doing in is, as when I'm at work, I start listening to podcasts. And this is the part where I told you about where I started listening to Joe Rogan and I was listening to him for like 10 to 14 hours a day in my ear, Buds and I'm following him. I'm following people like Jordan Peterson,

Sam Harris, Lex Friedman, like all these people that have great ideas and their philosophies and their perspectives are like pretty spot on, man, and I'm like buying into it. And little did I know that my mindset started changing as I'm listening to this content all the time. I start taking on their ideas.

and their, you know, sort of philosophies and, you know, their thought processes. And I decide that I want to start a podcast. Because Joe Rogan's always going, hey, you should start a podcast to everybody that he talks to you on his podcast, right? Well, I really thought he was talking to me because I thought we were friends, right? I've been listening to this dude for so long that, like, oh, man, this is, you know, he's like my buddy. And so I'm like, yeah, I should start a podcast too.

And so I did. And what happened after that was pretty amazing. As I'm, the podcast I started, I called it nowhere to go but up. And I wanted to tell stories of other people that were like me that had been through things like myself, bottoms and life struggles and kind of how they got through it, right? Yeah. And as I'm listening to their stories and I'm relating to where they're at and I'm talking about it, I'm healing at the same time. So it's sort of like therapeutic for me. and I'm using the podcast to leverage guests to help me go through some of the things that I'm struggling with,

like from, you know, self-sabotage to anger to, you know, all the things that are still kind of prevalent in my life. The one thing that I missed on this is that while I was playing softball, I end up in an opium addiction. So I got hooked on painkillers for seven years. Jeez. But because I got an injury playing softball, right? Yeah. And so in my, and I told this story earlier today, but in my medical record, it says I'm an addict. And for them to get around giving me pain pills, they made me sign something that say that I won't come back and sue them for giving me these pills, right?

So I take those. So they keep giving them to you. Yeah. And so I'm taking these, dude, and I'm like, I turned into it. to a full-blown addict again. I'm buying $500 a month and extra pills. I'm like, you know, everything's revolving around these pills, but it's not to the point where it's affecting a whole lot in my life.

I'm still able to level up and do the things that I'm doing versus meth that every time I tried to do it. So you're functioning, you're playing softball. He started a podcast and you're, what kind of pills you take in Vicodin? Vicetin. And when I finally ended it was Perkissette's tens. And so I was doing like 120 a month. And then, you know, I buy another extra 100.

So sometimes it was 200. It wasn't like full-blown. Like some people I've talked to that have done like they were doing 20 or 30 pills a day. I was at about 10. And so, but I mean, it was just my whole like everything revolved around these. You know, like even from the point where I would, you know, would sort of start running out, take too much, couldn't find any more and would start to withdraw. And, you know, all of that stuff that goes along with it, you know, from trying to wean, you know, from trying to wean. myself down. It was just a mess.

And so I'm that's going on. I'm still doing that. The podcast I wanted to start that. Oh yeah, I haven't started your podcast at this point. Well, I skipped a little bit forward. Okay. So before I started the podcast

was I knew that if I was going to be because part of what I wanted to talk about, I wanted to be transparent about who I was and what I was struggling with and I wanted to be as authentic as I could be. I couldn't do that if I was still taking pills, right? Right. And so I stopped. And how I stopped was, is I weaned myself off.

So I was taking 10 a day. I went to five a day to half of that, to half of that. And until I got to about quarter pill. And then I started using edible marijuana to kind of lessen the effects of the withdrawal symptoms. And so that worked. Did it? Yeah, I did.

And I still do it today. I use it as a I microdose THC daily. Really? Mm-hmm. Microdose THC. How much is a microdose? Five milligrams.

Okay. And so I use... You take it in the morning? Mm-hmm. With my coffee. Jesus Christ. It's not enough to get you high, but it's enough to... Five milligrams gets me high as fuck.

No way. Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah. I'm a lightweight, man. Yeah. So, I mean, I've built up a tolerance. So five milligrams doesn't do a whole lot for me.

10 milligrams and I'm meat the devil. I see demons. On edibles? Yeah. Wow. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Super lightweight.

Well, then you know that that's no fun. No, it's not. So, I mean, that's what I had to learn too. Yeah. And like I make all my own edibles. And so, like, there'd be sometimes when I would make chocolate and this piece had a little more than it should. And I'd get to that point where I felt like, I was going to die.

Oh my God. Oh, my God. Yeah. I'm dying, right? That's not fun. It's the worst. But if you can get it to the point where you don't get to that, you're not high, but you're just before that. To me, it, it's almost like taking a, like, like what people would take Zola for, right?

It helps me to focus a little bit because I am ADHD. and so it calms me down. It makes me focus a little bit. I still go off, you know. It's not 100%, but it's a lot better than it was. Where we at? Are we good?

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So yeah, you know, what ended up happening, and then I had a daughter too, my daughter that I have now. Another daughter? Another daughter, yeah. And she was, she's almost four.

And that's where the change really happened from me wanting to become, like stop being this abusive person. and it was all because of her. Okay. And my ex, me and her, were super toxic together. And what it ended up happening to change that was we were, I was in a rage and we were fighting about something.

My daughter was behind me. I noticed her. I'm still yelling and she's gone. I stop what I'm doing. It just like snaps me out of it. And I go and I look for her. And she's in the furthest part of the house. curled up in a ball crying, shaking, scared.

How old was she at the time? She was probably about two. And so the only thing that could go through my head at the time is like, I wonder if that was me. Like when my parents were fighting and when I was going through that, I wonder if that was me doing the exact same thing. That was an eye-opener. A lot because I didn't want her growing up.

thinking that this was normal, right? That, oh, well, if she ever ends up in this situation 20 years down the road where she's got somebody who's being abusive to her, and she just goes, well, that's normal. My parents used to do that all the time because it's not normal. People shouldn't be treating other people that way, especially somebody who you claim to love, right? And so it happened one more time, and we were, we were already split up, but we were, we were We were trying to take her to see Santa together to just kind of like, I don't know, like some sort of normalcy.

And we were going at it in the front and she's in the back seat. And out of nowhere, she just goes, stop. She's only two, two and a half years old, man. And so that was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I started coming out in my podcast and talking about being an abusive person. kind of like I don't know I wasn't hiding from it anymore

and what I noticed that was happening was is the more that I talked about it the less of power it had over me and the more transparent I was being about it the more people were reaching out to me going

dude that's I deal with that too you know and so I just I was reaching all kinds of different people you know from from women that were that was happening to them and you know or had happened to them to dudes that were you know struggling with that themselves yeah and so at that point it was just like well this is going to be my mission now have you heard a soft white underbelly i have you watch his videos i've watched a couple of them

yeah that guy's making some pretty amazing content yeah yeah he all those people he interviews all the the hookers the pimps the drug addicts the homeless people they're the one common denominator with all those crazy fucked up people is fucked up parents and really bad parenting. Well, I mean, the number one, the gateway drug is trauma. All right.

And not necessarily for everybody, but at least for my population of people that have been incarcerated and you have gone through something in their childhood, it's trauma. And the number one public safety issue should be untreated trauma. Because look at,

just look at, the people that he deals with, right? That's untreated trauma. And it rears its head in all kinds of different ways from unwanted pregnancies to drug addiction, to domestic abuses, to all of these different things. If that got dealt with, what it should be dealt with is a mental health issue, which, what it is, we would have a whole lot better of a situation instead of using this punitive model. And I've heard you talk in some of your shows about, you know, sort of, um, sort of, um, you know, how everything kind of is as far as society right now and how systemic stuff. And, you know, we actually shared a guest that was on my show that's been on your show.

Patrick Lavelle from The Con. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, he's a great, great documentary. Yeah, yeah, that dude's super smart. Yeah. It makes a lot of cool stuff.

He sure does. I think he would be good to talk to. Matt Cox. Hmm. I think that would be a good introduction for them. Yeah, they're both definitely in the same world. They both, he, that guy spent a lot of time studying that whole financial crisis and all the banks.

What's that movie? What's that famous movie about the 2008 financial crisis? About the short, the big short? The big short, yeah. That was a good fucking movie. That was a good movie, but the con covered everything that it left out. Yeah, but the con, I mean, it's a very, it's a, how long is that thing? How long is the con?

It was like a three-hour documentary. It was six. It was sick. And it was multiple episodes, right? Five. Yeah. I watched all six, no, it was five episodes. I watched all five episodes back to back six hours worth.

Because I think, it was either five or six, one or two. Because you lived through that time. You could really relate to a lot of that stuff. Yeah. And then I watched it for another, I watched it two more times because you got to screen it, you got three viewings of it. And so I watched 18 hours of this. God damn.

Well, because I was trying, because I was going to have them on the show, right? And that was the whole reason why they let me screen it so I could bring him on the show. And, uh, I was looking for inconsistencies. I was looking for something that I could like, you know, pick a part on. And I couldn't.

Really? Yeah, I couldn't. There was nothing, man. I mean, he put it in such layman terms to where, like, you have no, you, you could be the dumbest person and still understand what was going on. Right. And it was an amazing documentary to me.

I started plugging that dude shit and all my, you know, just because I was like super stoked. And then I had his other producer on and then another one of their producers on at the same time. So yeah, it was, it was pretty cool. That's awesome, man. And I've hooked him up with Patrick with another woman that I had on my show who was a, so she got put in prison for three years. And she's a, she has a PhD. She's a black woman, and she was calling out the corruptions in Baltimore, Maryland, where they were doing illegal foreclosures in 2009. And they were trying to get her to shut up.

She was on the NAACP, Baltimore Chapter. I mean, this person was like a legit community member in the black community. Somebody prominent in Maryland asked her to stop saying that there were illegal foreclosures and kind of like, hey, shut up. Stop saying this. Prominent? Somebody prominent? Yeah. Like who?

I don't know. Oh. It's in her book. Okay. She wouldn't tell me because she didn't want to, she wanted, she didn't want to, spoiler. Spoiler. Yeah.

So what ended up happening was, is she got wrapped up in an indictment with some people that, uh, she had done business with, but I mean, she was doing, uh, credit restoration. So somebody, you know what that is, right? No. Okay, so credit restoration, like let's say you have, you need a 700 credit score. You've only got 600. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah.

So in order to get that loan, you need to satisfy some of these debts. And so she would just kind of figure all that stuff out and work it out for you to where you've been able to do that. She had her own business doing it. And so there were, I guess the feds found somebody that she was, had worked with where her name was in and they wrapped her up in this indictment. and she ended up having to do three years in federal prison. So basically they shut her up. And she's been to the Supreme Court. She's going back again for the second time.

She just started a nonprofit. I talked to her yesterday. She started a nonprofit and she's got Judge Joe Brown advocating for her nonprofit. So, I mean, she's not some bullshit person, right? And so what happened to her was sort of the backside of what Patrick Lavelle was covering. Right? So the big short tells you about the, the short. He covers, you know, the mechanisms by which they were using the appraisal companies

and all these other different things that they own themselves and how Wall Street was incentivizing by packaging up all these mortgage-backed securities, but they're bad securities, bad loans. And so that's what he was covering. And she was the fall guy that they were trying to blame this shit on. And so I hooked her up with him. And I think that, because he's doing a sequel to his to that okay and so she's probably going to have a part in that oh cool yeah did the con have a good response that have a positive response did where did they release that they released that they released that was like right in the middle of the pandemic yeah yeah it was right around i think you had them on in november and i had him on probably i mean we did you get reached out

to somebody i don't remember so long ago i do so many of these things like yeah barely remember yeah i know i barely remember some of the guests I know. Do you feel bad, though, when somebody asks you about something and you're like, oh, fuck, I don't know. Yeah, no, I just feel stupid. It's hard to retain all this stuff I talk about. Yeah, how many episodes you have? On audio, there's probably 120.

Okay. We're around the same. Okay. I just released one. I don't do that many. Yeah, I just release 128. Wow. And I've got about 50 in the queue.

It's a lot of work, huh? Is this all you do? Well, yeah, because I was on temporary disability because I had some repetitive motion stuff, and I was able to get on right before the lockdown. Oh, cool. And so I've been on for a year. I got released back to work on the 29th, went jet skiing on my skis on the 19th, broke my fucking two toes, and I was supposed to go back to work on May 1st.

And so that's going to get pushed back. But yeah, but the whole time I was doing that, I, you know, I was, I've done a bunch of stuff with the podcast. I was trying to do everything I could to pivot out of it, you know, learned everything on my own, been doing it for about two years, can produce, can edit, can do all of the stuff. And so I've been trying to like move myself into that direction, right, to get out of doing construction because it's not really, the one thing that I realized from the pandemic was I was, I was, I was. willing to sacrifice the time with my kid to chase this career and being a business agent and all this other stuff right when the pandemic hit and i was able to co-parent with my daughter and have her more time i realized that i need to be with her if i'm going to raise her the right way then i need to be around and not sacrifice that time so now that put me in a different direction it's like all right well now

I don't, I'll do this over here if I have to, but I need to try desperately to get out of it. And, you know, whether it's speaking, whether it's book, you know, all the different things that I'm trying to do. Like, I'm just about ready to turn that corner. Like, I could see it. Like, I could, oh, it's just right over there. Right. But it's just not there yet.

Yeah, it's definitely a maturity thing. I'm the same way. If I'm not doing this, I'm with my, I'm with my son all the time. If I'm not, it's either that or this. That's, that's my life. My life's changed so much as I had a kid. Yeah. But, um, how do you like it?

Love it. How old your son? It's the best. Two. Two? Yeah. Those are, that's a good years. These ones right here are good years. Yeah, it's definitely fun. You can definitely, uh, you can definitely know, see how you mold them and shape their personalities and, you know, their values and all that stuff, like right around this age. Our mind is just so fucking plastic. Everything's so new and, you know, it's wild. Yeah. Well, what happened? Oh, and so one thing that I forgot to mention, so remember the daughter that I gave up on?

Yeah. So about two months ago, she reached out to me and wanted to start a relationship and started to get to know me again. Oh, that's cool, man. Yeah. And how old is she now? She's 21. Okay. She lives in Vegas.

She was funny. So the story on that one is when she turned 18, my grandparents had died prior to that, left her about 20 grand. And she came up with her mom. She bought Bitcoin with it? No. Oh, okay. Darn it. I hear you talking about Bitcoin.

time but there's some different i don't know man i don't know i feel about crypto yeah i don't know enough about it and like when people try to talk to me about it i'm just like dude i don't i have no idea just stop because i don't i don't want to i don't want to know what i'm missing out on um so anyways her mom i guess or her dad stole that or her stepdad stole that money from her and so she called me up and was like hey man i don't talk to my mom anymore and you know um i I need some help financially. And, you know, I was like kind of, I don't know. It's just kind of weird, right?

You know, because I'm always suspect of everything considering the life that I've been through. And her mom's pretty shady, too. At least she was when I knew her. But, yeah, we're a, she worked it out. You know, I've loaned her some money and she's paid it back. So, I mean, she's, we're feeling each other out. We haven't met each other yet. We're texting right now.

We're not talking on the phone yet either. I'm just kind of letting her do her thing. Like when you're ready, I'm here. Don't worry about it. So it's kind of strange, but it's kind of cool at the same time. But having my daughter really showed me how important that relationship between father and daughter is by going through it with my own. And then realizing what she must have missed by not having me around. And so it's almost like I'm trying.

to, poor kid, like she's having to, she's having to deal with me overcompensating for the mistakes I made with this one, trying not to make them with this one. Right, right. You know. Yeah, well, they always say the daughters are the ones that grew up to take care of their dads, not the sons. That's at least what I've heard. But who knows? Yeah, I don't know. Well, dude, thanks for coming down and doing this. I appreciate you being here, man. Yeah, travel a long way. You've had a fascinating fucking story. Well, thank you for letting me tell it. And, you know, it's a privilege and an honor to be on your show and yeah dude i love watching it i'm a fan also where can everyone find your podcast uh the best way

to find it right now is i have a website in the works it's all getting taken care of but the best way to get a hold of my podcast and anything that i'm doing and to support the show social media all that stuff is on my link tree which is l i nk t r dot e forward slash nowhere to go but up and otherwise just go nowhere to go but a podcast or Sean Dustin on Google, and I'm the first thing that pops up. Sweet, man. Thanks, bro. I appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you, man.