Dhru Purohit Show - Former Drug Addict Reveals How To Completely Turn Your Life Around In 2023 with Doug Bopst

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

This episode is brought to you by Birch Living and WHOOP. It’s part of the human condition to run away from pain. Most of us have habits we acquired as a way to cope with painful childhood experiences or traumas, which unfortunately don’t serve us as adults. These habits can manifest as addiction in a wide variety of forms, from substance abuse to overworking.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru talks to Doug Bopst about hitting rock bottom in jail from a felony drug charge, overcoming addiction, and how he turned his life around with the help of fitness.  Doug Bopst is an award-winning personal trainer, author of three books, and host of The Adversity Advantage Podcast. He is on a crusade to inspire others to overcome adversity and become the best version of themselves. He’s a former convicted felon and drug addict who spent time in jail for “possession with intent to sell.” While locked in a cell, he slayed his personal demons, kicked addiction, and reinvented himself, and he hasn’t touched drugs since the day he was incarcerated in 2008.  In this episode, we dive into:    -Doug’s early childhood experiences and the development of emotional pain (2:39) -Doug’s first experience using drugs (25:03)  -The importance of having strong mentors in your life (32:56) -The difference between blame and responsibility (40:05) -When Doug started to spiral out of control (46:08) -Doug’s first exposure to opioids (57:04) -The night Doug was arrested (1:10:10) -Doug’s experience in jail and the conversation that changed his life (1:18:14) -Five lessons Doug learned from his cellmate (1:37:17) -The power of letting go of resentment (2:07:04) For more on Doug Bopst, follow him on Instagram @dougbopst, Facebook @dougbopst, Twitter @dougbopst, YouTube @dougbopst, and through his website, dougbopst.com. Get his book, From Felony to Fitness to Free, here. Check out his podcast, The Adversity Advantage, here. This episode is brought to you by Birch Living and WHOOP. Birch mattresses by Helix are made from organic latex, organic cotton, New Zealand wool, and American steel springs. To get $200 off your Birch Living mattress plus two free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru today. WHOOP is a personalized digital fitness tracker and health coaching platform that monitors your physiology 24/7 and provides personalized recommendations based on what your body needs. For me, it's been a game-changer to optimize my sleep and improve my fitness, performance, and overall health. To get yours, go to join.whoop.com and get 15% off your membership with code DHRU15. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My entire life up until I was in jail, I had proven to myself that I couldn't handle life without being completely numbed by substances or by just being a menace to other people. Welcome to the Drew Perot podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Doug Bopest. Doug is a former convicted felon and drug addict who spent time in, jail for possession with intent to sell. While locked in his cell, he slayed his personal demons, kicked addiction, and reinvented himself from the ground up. And today we have Doug on the podcast

to talk about how to rebuild yourself from rock bottom. Now, maybe you've never suffered with a drug addiction. And maybe you've never been sent to jail. Most of us haven't. But you will resonate with Doug's story if you've ever felt like you've fallen and you didn't know how to get back up, even if it's something small in your life, even if it's a new business venture. You wanted to write a book and you quit on that project. You wanted to make progress in your health, but you staggered on that journey. Today's episode is about redemption. Now, Doug is an award-winning personal trainer, author of three books, and the host of the Adversity Advantage podcast, and he's on a crusade to inspire others to overcome adversity and to become the best

versions of themselves. And what I love about Doug and his story is that, he does that with a deep sense of awareness. One of the things we talk about a lot in this podcast is how early childhood experiences, early childhood trauma, for example, even if you've had a great life, even if your parents have been together, even if you grow up in a loving household, everybody has some version of childhood adversity. And in today's episode, Doug and I discuss how that childhood adversity can shape who we become. It might be more pronounced in Doug's story as you'll see here in a moment, but we all have themes that follow in our own life. Now, Doug has been featured on NBC's Today Show, Men's Health, the Rich Roll Podcast,

Impact Theory, and many, many others. His first book is called From Felony to Fitness to Free, Everyone Deserves a Second Chance. Are you going to make the most of yours? I hope you're inspired by today's podcast and that you learn that no matter what you've been through, you not only deserve a second chance, but that second chance is part of your hero's journey. Stay tuned for a fantastic podcast with my friend, Doug. Doug, welcome to the podcast. Pleasure to have you in L.A. Drew, thanks for having me, man. I want to jump into your story, and we were just chatting about our mutual admiration for a guest that's been on my podcast and

yours, Gabler Monte, and he has a very famous quote, which is so related to your story, your narrative, your story of hitting rock bottom, ending up in jail, dealing with addiction, going through recovery, changing your self-identity, getting the people around you to see you as the new person you are while also making amends for your past. I mean, we're going to cover all that stuff.

It's an incredible story, but to Gabur-Monte in our opening question here, he has this quote that relates to addiction. And he says, when I talk about addiction and when I tell people about addiction, I say, don't ask why the addiction. Don't ask why someone is addicted.

ask why the pain. So I'd love to start there because I know you've done a lot of work when it comes to pain. And I'd love to talk about your story growing up. How does pain play a part in a role in your early childhood life experiences? And then we'll get into the addiction stuff and more of the story. So let's talk about pain first. So growing up, man, I mean subconsciously and consciously, I dealt with a lot of emotional pain. And I think initially it was subconscious because I was five years old and my parents got divorced.

And it was a pretty rough divorce. I mean, looking back now, they hardly spoke to each other. They communicated via email. And at the time, it's 30 years ago, Drew. And how old were you at the time when your parents got divorced? I was five. So you're five. And can I just interrupt the story with a question?

Do you have, what's your earliest memory? Do you have an earliest memory? My early life? Growing up. It's funny, man. Like, my earliest memory is my dad, like, walking out of my mom's or of our house. That was one of your earliest memories. That was like, I mean, I'm thinking back, and I've thought about this before because

I've done a lot of work on healing childhood trauma, and people are always like, well, like, what good memories do you have or what's your earliest memory? And that's, like, the earliest memory I have is my mom and my dad splitting up. And back then when I was five, I didn't really know how much it was impacting me emotionally. I mean, I was starting to ask some questions because I was wondering as a kid who, most of my friends, their parents were still together. They were still sharing family dinners. They were still doing everything as a family under one house.

And I was always wondering, like, why am I going from one house to the next? Why am I going with my mom half the time, my dad half the time? Why are my parents not communicating? and it started to develop this level of emotional pain, but it also started to develop this mindset of what's wrong with me. Why am I so different? Why am I different than other kids? And then when the pain started to become more conscious was as I started to get a little bit older,

and I would try out for sports teams. And I was probably like, you know, 9, 10, 11 years old, something like that, like I'm in between elementary, middle school, somewhere around there. And I loved sports. I loved playing sports. I love watching sports. I love collecting baseball cards, football cards. The problem was I wasn't athletic.

So I would try out for these sports teams that all of my friends would try out for. I would engage in physical activities during gym class. But I was always the kid who was either cut or picked last. So now I started to question myself in those moments. Like why? I started to question God. I started to question the world, the universe, whatever you called it, because I was like, what's different about me?

Like, what is wrong with me and how come I'm doing the same thing that all these other kids are doing? Living life, going to school, playing sports, but I'm not making that team. My parents aren't together. And then I started to get a little bit older and I'm in middle school and I started to gain a little bit of weight. And back then I was eating like kids do. I mean, I grew up eating pop tarts. I grew up eating pasta like stuff that, I mean, And sadly, you know, kids ate a lot of back then.

But I think emotionally, I was using food in a way to numb a little bit of the pain that I had consciously become aware of at that point in my life. And I started to get a little pudgy when I was in middle school. And now I'm wearing like husky pants. I'm having to go up a size and clothes. And again, the pain is, what's wrong with me? Why am I different? Why are my friends eating the same types of food as me?

why are my friends doing the same things, but they're not gaining weight. And then as I progressed into my teenage years, I started to obviously go through puberty. I started to be attracted to girls more. And I was rejected by girls my entire life through school. Never had a girlfriend at all in grade school. And so again, the emotional pain became so much deeper in this mindset of like what's wrong with me. Like, why am I different than everyone? Started to develop in such a way that it was just bound to explode if it wasn't dealt with,

if it wasn't suppressed, if it wasn't medicated, which I know we'll get into, but that ultimately led to me choosing in a way to completely numb myself with drugs for the years that would follow. And I just remember, like, thinking to myself during that time, I was like, am I ever going to have a girlfriend? Am I ever going to lose weight? Am I ever going to have success? Like, am I different? Because along that same time, too, which is kind of sad.

I was bullied a lot in school. I was told that I looked like I had Down syndrome in grade school. So I started to question myself even more to be like, all right, like, is there something wrong with me? I have all these kids that are telling me that I look like I have Down syndrome. And then I'm also experiencing this emotional pain at home and then some emotional pain in the community without with not making these sports teams and not having a date to the dance and that sort of thing that I just thought that I was just destined for complete failure. This episode is brought to you by Birch Living.

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That's Birch, B-I-R-C-H-L-I-V-I-N-G.com to get $200 off your mattress plus two free eco-rest pillows today. And by the way, if you're worried about taking the plunge and buying a new mattress, they have a 25-year warranty and a 100-night-risk free trial. Birch also offers free shipping, and they'll pick it up at no cost if you don't absolutely love your mattress. You know what's been a game changer for me as far as my fitness goes, my daily performance, and my overall health? Sleep. But, you know, sleep is not as simple as just closing your eyes and hoping for the best. The quality of your sleep is ultimately what matters the most, which is why I love wearing my WOOP device. Woop is a personalized digital fitness tracker and health coach platform that monitors your physiology 24-7.

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at checkout for 15% off any Woop membership. And I want to ask you a question about the bullying side. I mean, there's so many things that you talked about there, we're going to pull on all of them. And I know that traditionally, you know, I love interviews that you've done with a lot of my friends and other things like that, Rich Roll and Max and Tom Bill You, who I don't know personally, but I'm a fan of.

But I want to pull on some threads here that we haven't had a chance that I haven't heard you talk about as much, but I know you have a lot of interest in. So I want to shout about bullying first. second, were you also ever, you know, I remember when I was being bullied a lot because my family moved a lot when I was younger. So I was always like the new kid when we moved to a new city. And it was just my dad trying to provide a better life for us. And he would get kind of promoted up the corporate ladder. He'd get a new gig as a CFO and that sort of thing. And he's doing it

all to like make a better life for us, right, to pay for our college, to do this, to do that, the American dream as immigrants. But it was tough every time you move to a new place and you have to make friends and other things. I remember being bullied pretty hardcore when I first moved to Delaware, just because I was like, looked different. I'm the brown kid in a school that's primarily white kids and black kids. And I'm just like, who are you and where are you from? And that was probably the first time of my life that I also became a bully as well.

I was bullied so much that not consciously, but in a way, it was a little bit of like kind of of what you hear about jail, which I'd love to get your thoughts on later on. We'll come back to it. it's kind of like you got to fight somebody else or pick on somebody else. Now, I didn't choose that, but I got pushed to the place that I felt like I need to take out that aggression on somebody else. I need to show all the kids that I was tough. So a question for you, did you ever become the bully?

Were you ever the one for other people, whether intentionally or not, that was also pushing on them? I can relate to what you just said a little bit in a sense where, you know, jumping around from new place to new place because when I was 16, I was kicked out of my mom's house and I went to go live with my dad full time, and I changed schools within 24 hours. So I go to this new school, and now I am forced to, you know, meet new people, find new ways to fit in. At the time, I had, you know, started to develop a pot habit.

And I was, like, always, like, you know, trying to figure out ways to find out who the kids were that smoked. And people actually thought when I first went to this new high school that I was a narque. Because I came in, I came to the school within the first few days, I was telling people that I had weed because I was trying to fit in. And they were like, yo, I think Doug's narque. You know, just watch him, right? And so the reason I bring that up is getting back to your questioning, your question on bullying,

I was never a bully. But what I did find myself doing at times was to, as a way to fit in and like try to impress some of these kids that were either picking on me or that I wanted to get closer with and develop like a deeper friendships with was I would find ways to like nitpick at certain people, every once in a while. It wasn't like I was just the kid who was so angry in my way of dealing with my aggression

was just becoming a bully to other people. But I did find myself at times like picking on certain people throughout my high school career. Was that through like humor? Like were you like the funny guy? I tried to be but I, it was more as I looked back.

It was just a way of just masking a lot of this pain that I had suppressed and it was a way of getting attention and validation because I would do things I wasn't doing things to like tell I wasn't telling jokes or doing things to essentially make people more like ranking on people yeah would you kind of like rank on people and say like your mama jokes and all that stuff that was like probably popular back in the day yeah it was that or you I mean

just given people like hard times about like things they were doing in in gym class or if um you know somebody was making fun of a of a kid I would kind of gang up on on them a bit again to fit in and And I look back and obviously it's not something I'm proud of, but that in the reality, that was part of my survival. That was how I survived high school, was finding every which way I possibly could to fit in and mold into this character that I thought if I could become that character that people would like me. And as I've gotten older, I've learned that if you don't develop your own form of identity for yourself, your own values, your own beliefs, you will get your identity from other things, other people quickly, fast. Because I think as humans, we need to have some sort of identity to survive. And that can either be from things we truly feel about ourselves or we can be camellions and just go around and be like, all right, well,

I think that person acts that way. So I want to act that way. I think he or she likes that stuff. So I'm going to like that stuff. And then you slowly, you know, lose track of who you truly are at your core because you have this deep desire for community for relationships, for love, and you do whatever it takes to get that and to fit in to be around other people. So you're building the story and the narrative for us. You're going through all this pain, this childhood trauma, parents separating. But again, there's plenty of parents that separate, right? Divorce rates and things.

but a very tumultuous separation. Before we get into addiction and how that led to rock bottom and the recovery process, again, I want to put on this childhood trauma thread. Before you came into the picture, right, so you say your earliest memory is like your dad walking out, what do you know about your parents' relationship, right? How they got together in their kind of early life because, you know, it's usually not like if you have a really bad divorce and I've had friends whose family, have had that, you know, parents growing up, it's not like everything was great beforehand,

and then all of a sudden you're just like, you know, we're different people who were on the and you have a really bad divorce. There's usually a bubbling up of things. So what do you know about your parents' relationship? Because so much of childhood trauma, as we've known from like Dr. Gabor Mante's work, is like, it's kind of like passed on from the trauma that the parents are going through. So yeah, tell us a little bit about what you know about your parents' life at the time. it's hard to actually know what was real and what wasn't because at the time as I grew older

and I was starting to ask more questions about what happened, like why the divorce, what their relationship was like. You know, sometimes when people get divorced, they almost become, it's like a battle where people are trying to win and decide who's right and who's wrong. So I had a hard time believing what was real between me asking my dad what happened and him telling me one thing and my mom asking or me asking my mom and her telling me another thing. And they kept some, they kept a lot of things under wraps as far as the specifics of their relationship, I guess just to maybe shield us from some additional emotional pain.

But I think what I do know, I gather is that their relationship likely wasn't the greatest. and I think things were bound to unravel in the way that they did. You know, they were bound to unravel in the way that they did at some point, whether it was at that point in their lives or later on. And I think based on what I know about my parents individually, I think they both just had a hard time self-regulating and maybe dealing with some stuff in their past or dealing with some stuff in their current lives that they just weren't equipped to deal with. You know, there wasn't as much talk about mental health and mental wellness back when they

were growing up. When they were growing up, it was like, if you had a problem, you just, you know, you just picked yourself up and that was it. You didn't talk about it. Yeah. And now we're in this world where it's like, if you're not talking about your mental health issues, you're not cool, right? And I say that because I just think there's this massive disconnect that exists right now in

society where there is a lot of kids and people who are struggling with their mental health. And I think it's hard for parents to understand how to deal with it because their way of dealing with it is essentially completely opposite of how people now are taught to deal with it. Now you're taught to share openly, to be vulnerable, talk about it online to help other people, which I think obviously is great. But I think it's created this gap because parents, my parents at least grew up where you didn't talk about that stuff. Absolutely.

I mean, most parents, same situation, right? A lot of people can relate that their parents went through that. And that's an unfortunate, you know, our modern day and age gets a lot of shit, right? People want to talk shit about social media. They want to talk shit about this, that, other stuff. And listen, there's a lot of problems that are there in the world, no doubt. And yet, there's so much stigma. Yeah, some of it's still there, but there's been a lot of stuff that has changed through the

free flowing of information, even if somebody's listening to this podcast today. And their story is not your story or their story is not my story. But the themes are the same and they hear us. And even if they don't feel like they have a friend group or they don't feel like they have a family that's supportive, they're hearing two people that they don't know who are talking about how the power of opening up, sharing with people, talking about what you're going through. That makes it more real for them to want to feel like they can do that in their own life. And that's the part, there's so much more good that's going on. That doesn't mean there's not problems today. I always get a little bit of, you know, emails from people who are listening. Like, don't you know how bad things are today?

There's so much more good. And one of the best forms of good is the free flowing of information that people can see examples that are there. So I know you've done a lot of work in this area and we'll come back to it. But I think let's give the audience a little bit more of a sense of the story. So let's pick up from the idea of the pain that's building up inside of you, right? There's childhood pain, which for the most part, it's like, it's kind of unconscious. We don't know that we're running these patterns. I had a mentor of mine, his name is Serano Kelly, and he would call it, like, when we're younger, and it's one of the first times in the world that we see something, things that don't go well,

like our parents separating, whatever. And kids have this need for certainty. They're trying to figure out, like, why did this happen? And so the brain will make up a story. even if they have like loving parents and things are great and other stuff and it's not just about divorces and stuff. So we come to conclusions. And one of the themes that you've said that's a consistent sort of conclusion that you're

coming to through these things being maybe not finding a partner or not having a girlfriend being rejected in sports teams is what's wrong with me? And you ask a question enough and the body in a way, even fashion the brain is really good looking for answers. So you're asking this question, what's wrong with me? And give us the list. What are the list of things

that you're adding up in your head of things that are wrong with me? I mean that I'm unathletic, I'm unattractive, ugly. I didn't feel that I had like real friends that didn't pick on me

you know, throughout grade school. I felt that I didn't have like deep meaningful connections with my family, with my parents. I had great, I had my grandparents.

to this day are still super close, so I don't want to discount that, but they'd have a deep emotional connection with my parents. I just felt this massive amount of confusion inside of me to where I was wondering why I was so confused all the time, where I didn't know, like, who I was, like, I was always, like, going back and forth between the idea of thinking the right thing to do was to fit in with this one group of crowd, this one group of kids that I would end up becoming friends with. But then, like, part of me was like, it's probably not the right choice. Like, they're making all these poor choices in their lives. And I don't think it's in your best interest. And so I would often go back and say, I'm going to go hang out with like a different

group of kids that weren't getting themselves in trouble. They weren't partying. They weren't doing drugs. And that started to pull at me from different angles because now I'm forced to say, okay, like, do I just go down this path where I think I want to go where I'm fitting in with these kids that are making the sports teams. They are getting the girls. They seem happy with their lives, right? Or do I want to go down the path, the other path of these kids that maybe they were happier, but I didn't see them like achieving some of the things that these other kids were doing. So I was caught, you know, in this mess, I was caught with this mess internally of like, all right, where do I go? So I go down this one path where, you know, I fit in with this one crowd or I go down this other

path. It's a little safer. But it's not as exciting as hanging out with the cool kids. And so how did things turn from there? And what was some of your first exposures to substance abuse? Yeah. So when I talk about like marijuana now, I always try to provide some context in that for the longest time I thought marijuana was a gateway drug because I started to connect the dots and I was like, all right, marijuana led to me using cocaine. Cocaine led to me using oxycotton. And oxy cotton essentially like destroyed my life and it led me to being incarcerated. But as I've learned more about childhood trauma and the work of Gabor Mate, I realized, like, if there was no trauma, then would I have chosen to use those drugs in the first place

to deal with the trauma? And the answer is, I have no idea. So I think the gateway, there was gateway pain and gateway trauma that led me to first exposing myself to marijuana. The other thing I want to say is I never thought in a million years that me taking a hit off of a marijuana pipe would eventually lead me to being incarcerated on felony truck charges. I think nobody thinks that way. But it happens. And I want to kind of explain the initial stages of why I think it happened. So as I'm entering high school, as I explained, I had all this pain that I was dealing with, all these questions I was asking myself. And I had this massive monkey on my back that I just had been carrying for so long. I couldn't figure out how to get it off

me. And one of my neighbors had some marijuana. And I knew that some of the cool kids had smoked. And I was like, oh, if they're doing it, I wonder if this is something else that I can do to get their approval and I can fit in. And so I tried taking a hit off this marijuana pipe and Drew, like, I kid you not. When I took that hit and I got the euphoric feeling that it can give you on your first time, I felt that pain go away. For the first time of my life, I could feel comfortable with who I was. I didn't have to worry about my parents' relationship. I didn't have to worry about girls rejecting me. I didn't have to worry about if I was going to get picked on at school the next day. I didn't have to worry about not making the sports teams. All that went away. And I became

addicted to chasing that feeling. I don't think I became addicted to pot per se at that point. I became addicted to numbing myself and as a means of survival, finding a way to bring myself back to a place of normal, to a place of normalcy mentally and emotionally, which I had been not able to do for years. And so one hit leads to two hits and we all know how the story goes. And now I'm smoking a little bit every single day. It's because I've now built up some tolerance. And now I'm like thinking to myself, all right, this stuff's experience.

I was spending like, I don't know, like $20 a gram or something back then. And I was working at a minimum wage job. And I'm like, I can't afford to smoke every day like this while I'm making $5, six, seven dollars an hour, whatever it was. I was like, all right, I'm going to buy like an eighth. And I can sell a couple grams at 20 bucks each. And I can pay, you know, either 10 bucks or 15 bucks or whatever it was and smoke the rest for free or smoke the rest for 10 or 15 bucks, depending.

on how much I sold. And that became like a thing for me for a few months after that. So now I'm like finding a way, I mean, because is drug addicts, sometimes you find a way to manipulate people in whatever way you can and manipulate situations to get what you want. For me, what I wanted was to suppress the pain and feel good about myself. And everything kind of fell apart right around my, it was right before my 16th birthday, I believe is when things started to really unravel where I had begun to smoke, smoke pot daily. I had developed a habit with that. I was starting to sell a little bit on the side to smoke for free and that sort of thing. But one of the things that I would always think about doing that I never got to do was having a party when my parents weren't home because that's what all the cool kids did.

The parents left the house for the weekend. Kids would throw the party. You'd have an influx of people coming in. You're all of a sudden the cool person because you got everybody coming to your house for the party. you feel wanted, you feel needed, you feel loved. And I never had that because my parents never went away. And so my mom ended up going to the hospital and she was having like a hysterectomy or something. So me being the kid who still needed to do whatever I could to fit in decided that it would be a brilliant idea to find a way to have a party at her house while she was in the hospital. So I remember I created this story of where I would be staying so that it was believable for both my mom and my dad. and they were cool with it.

And then I left like the basement window unlocked and snuck in at a bunch of people in my mom's townhouse, drugs, alcohol, the whole nine yards. Of course, the cops come because, you know, you're in a townhouse. There's houses on each side of the house and neighbors complain called the cops. I decided it was a good idea to run. So I run from my own house. End up getting found by the police. I end up getting found, excuse me, by my uncle, who I guess came to the house once the

police were called, come back. And that completely broke my mom's trust. Because at this point, I was still living with my mom half the time, my dad half the time. And at that moment, my mom, I could just see the look at my mom's eyes about how heartbroken she was that I had done this to her. When really I was just trying to fit in, it wasn't like I was directly trying to hurt my mom. I was just simply trying to do what I could, Drew, to fit in and be cool just like the rest of the other kids. So after that, I think it was like a few weeks went by or something. I'm coming up on my 16th birthday. And I'm now, again, like I said, selling a little bit of pot on the side to support my

habit. And I was weighing out some pot for my neighbor. And my brother at the time, my brother who actually lent me the money that you were asking about before, he had asked me. He's like, hey, man, like, I want to get in on this. Is there a way that I can get high with you? I was like, nah, man, like, I don't want you involved with this. But can you watch the door?

because I'm about to weigh out some pot for our neighbor. I just want to make sure mom doesn't walk in here. Sure enough, in walks my mom. I don't know what happened. She walks in, catches me, like, selling a little bit of pot. And then all hell broke loose. And I was kicked out of my mom's house that night to go sent to live with my dad. And this was probably like one of the biggest turning points in my life because I still,

to this day, I haven't lived with my mom since and I was 16, that it completely shattered my relationship with my mom. And I get emotional when I talk about this because there's not a lot of things in life that I regret, but this is one of them because it permanently changed the relationship with my mom. And the regret, just to clarify there for me and the listeners, the regret is that you put your mom through that. The regret is that your mom kicked you out.

The regret is for just the whole totality of the situation. The regret is that because of that choice that I made, we hardly had a relationship for years after that. She was done with you. She was essentially done with me and I broke in her trust and I said some things like on my birthday or my birthday or when I got kicked out that you would never want to hear as a mother. I hate you. I hope you die. Like all the stuff. It was just out of pure anger, resentment.

I felt abandoned like the whole nine yards. And the regret isn't necessarily that situation. It's what transpired afterwards to where I didn't have an emotional connection to my mom for years. You shut it off and out of protection for herself. It sounds like she shut it off as well. Right. And it was just so painful during that time for me. I want to ask you a little bit more about this because this is, I think, another thread to pull on.

I haven't heard you talk about this before. In between that time that you're facing a lot of this rejection, a lot of this pain and really, you know, giving a preview to what's coming up in the future, not having any strong mentors in your life, not having any strong male figures in your life. Because as far as I understand, your dad was there, but not really involved on a regular basis in your life. Is that correct? He was there. I would say he was involved, but not emotionally involved. I mean, my dad and I butted heads, like, when I was a kid, like all the time. We hardly ever got along. So it was such a, to me, like a slap in the face. The way I saw it when I got kicked out and sent to live with my dad 100% because my mom knew how much I despised at that time going there.

You know, you despise your dad because he's not emotionally available and now your mom's rejecting you. That adds on to everything that's there. So before this incident of you weighing out the pot and your mom catching you and before the party and stuff, how much do you know of what your mom was feeling and going through during that time of, let's say, like, between the ages of like five to 16 when all this happened, is she seeing you struggle through school? Is she seeing this stuff? Do you guys have conversations? Is she just so busy trying to provide for you in her life and deal with the basics that,

like, you guys are just kind of doing your own thing? Like, tell me a little bit about that. It was a stressful situation, I think, overall for the family, because throughout my childhood, they would fight over custody and divorce stuff like all the time. They were always going to court for certain things and spending money on attorney's fee attorney fees in court and that sort of thing. So there was always, it seemed like drama going on between them because they were fighting over custody of us. And so that would, I guess, indirectly cause, or directly cause my mom to become emotionally unavailable because she's a single mom. My dad remarried fairly quickly

after the divorce. My mom just got remarried. I think it's been three years now. And so she was a single mom, three kids, and I think she was just doing what she could for us to make it and survive. And I think, like, I don't know if she knew that I was struggling so much with a lot of the bullying and emotional pain that I was going through at the time because I never felt comfortable to talk about. I mean, as a kid, you know, there's no playbook. on how to come out and talk about these things, right? You just deal with it. Especially for a young boy, right?

Young man. You don't know what to do. And that's why I think going back to what you said earlier, the beauty of today's landscape with social media is there's so many tools out there that speak directly to like teenagers and to that population of what to do and how to handle things when you're feeling and going through a certain thing, which didn't exist when I was a kid. But I think behaviorally, I would act out a bit in my mom's house, whether it was slamming doors or yelling or whatever. And I just think it was obviously a byproduct of me trying to tame this emotional

baggage, this burden that I had been carrying for so much of my life that I just didn't know how to deal with. So it would come out in anger. It would come out in taking it out of my mom at that time, but she didn't really know what was going on as far as me with the addiction stuff with the pot until she would find things. She found like a bong one day or I think people would, I don't know if I would, you know, I got my brothers involved at one point with the pot and then I think they might have said some stuff to her and then she could just smell it on me. And she could start to, she could begin to tell that I was going down this path of debauchery. but one of the most interesting conversations

I had with my mom later on in life which relates to this part of the conversation is after we had gotten to the place where we had totally forgiven each other we had rekindled our relationship and things were kind of good we were having dinner one night and we both were kind of emotional

having this conversation and we both in a way apologized for what happened and she said is there anything that you think I could have done differently? And I said, Mom, you know, I think you did the best you could with what you had. And I know you didn't really understand a lot of this stuff. I said, I just wish you would have asked me why.

And I get emotional talking about this because there was so much that I could have done in those moments to maybe bridge the gap and have a better relationship with my mom at that time by opening up and being honest about what I was truly struggling with. Like mom, I'm like really getting picked on in school. Mom, I feel like a failure because I'm not making these sports teams. Mom, I don't have a girlfriend. Girls don't like me. Like, what am I doing wrong? But I was so afraid to say anything because I was already getting bullied and picked on by kids at school. And then if I thought if I said anything, well, now my mom or my dad or whoever is going to call the school.

And now I'm going to get picked on even more for being a rat. And I just. I just think to myself now, like what I would have done differently. And I think that is one of the things that I would have done differently if I was talking to like my 12 year old self was just to open up and be honest and explain to my mom what was truly going on so she could gain some level of understanding because, you know, it's not, it wasn't fair to her that I was acting out in this way and I had all this stuff that I was carrying and I was expecting her to read my mind and understand what I was going on.

what I was going through without even, you know, saying anything, saying anything to her about it. And I think that is just the biggest game changer for our relationship between my mom and I was when she asked me that question of like, like, what could I have done differently? I said, I wish you could have just asked me why to where she gained some level of understanding of what I was going through. Yeah, and you know, you said it best, which is that she was doing the best that she could. And I think this is an important part of sort of modern day healing that a lot of people are going through because you know again going back to gabur mathe and you know you having more on your

podcast recently and me as well his new book the myth of normal right um a lot of people have these tough tough as relative everybody has their different definition of tough even if people grew up in a house that their parents are together and we're you know loving and everything else like that there's still a version of like adversity and things that people go through and kids just know it to be relative They don't know that, okay, yeah, I'm not starving and, you know, living in India or whatever, but like, I'm going through a tough time in life. And inside of there, so so many more people are going through tumultuous upbringings and primarily out of the fact that a lot of just parents don't have the tools. I remember interviewing Dr. Monta on this, and we were talking about the difference between blame and responsibility, right? He's like, you know, for healing to be there, there has to be responsibility on both sides of the

relationship, your mom understanding the part that she played, you understanding the part that you played. And obviously, you can never force anybody to have that understanding. They have to just come to that on their own if they're in that place and you have to have forgiveness if they're not in that place. But that's completely different than blame. You know, I feel for people today, and sometimes you'll see this on social media or other stuff when it comes to the world of like sort of they call insta psychology where it's like okay

my problems in life my narcissism my habits my lack of ability to form positive attachments and love it's my parents fault which is that means that they're to blame and if i had a better upbringing i wouldn't be the way that i am and it's like that only yeah but then you know you start from there and then, well, who made them that way, right? Which is why I was asking a little bit about, you know, your parents' relationship growing up. And I'm curious about what was their childhood like? What was your parents' childhood like? Why did your dad become the person that he was, both the positive things and maybe the things that weren't that great? Same thing with your mom. You know, what are the things that made her into who is? And if we continue with that blame cycle,

we're going to get back to, you know, Adam and Eve, right? Like, we're going to just keep on blaming, blaming every generation. But when we understand responsibility, a different question starts to emerge, which is, number one, forgiveness, because when you know that everybody's doing the best they can, you know that nobody is intentionally really trying to harm each other, even when it looks like absolutely they are. And you also understand that if they're truly doing their best, then really we're talking about environment. Your mom, as you mentioned, probably didn't even have the capacity to give you guys the attention that she needed. She's in fight or flight with this whole divorce situation and the custody, which is probably really interesting for you because you see your dad trying to fight for custody, but at the same time you feel like he's not emotionally available to you, which is a common theme.

I want to talk to you about that a little bit later on. And then I've heard you in another interview talk about you didn't even know at the time, but your mom was silently suffering from multiple sclerosis. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. So she's dealing with a health issue. She's not feeling good.

And on top of that, three boys? Three boys. Three boys who are all running around being boys and just having kids in general is difficult. And now you just have nothing but like a deep sense of compassion. And yes, the responsibility side is like, I wish you could have asked me why. And yeah, that's that's okay. It's like, yeah, you know what? I didn't ask you.

I didn't ask you why. I'm curious actually to hear what your mom, what did your mom say to you when you said that? She just said, I had no idea. Yeah. And she didn't have any idea how bad my like opiate addiction had gotten. That's exactly it. Parents have no clue and kids are good at hiding it. And that's what you become good at.

When you're in a lot of pain, you become good at hiding. And so the responsibility side is, yes, she didn't ask. And okay, great, you know, I would have loved to. And then the other side of it, the compassion side is that there wasn't the tools to be there. She's dealing with her own stuff. And when we have that perspective, we're just left with a sense of, you know, compassion for you and compassion for her. And that blame thing is it's funny man. I mean, when you said that it just something came to mind in that, you know, once you can

transition from playing the blame game to accepting that something, you know, unfortunate did happen in your life. However, it's my responsibility to, you know, take the right steps that I need to either heal from that or move forward in my life. Like once you do that, like game over. It's a complete game change. I think what happened, Drew, is so many people, and it's easy to do, right? Because it's so easy to do that when something bad happens in their life, they can now make

whatever choices they want, no matter how bad they are, and they can always just point back to that. They can always continue to blame their childhood. They can always continue to blame divorce or getting fired from a job because they learn to create a story and build this case that it was so bad. And I'm not saying that things aren't bad in people's circumstances because certainly they are. I'm talking like for the most part though people start to build these cases and justify making any bad choice that they make and then bringing it back to because they went

through that one thing. And I think it's really hard, and this is just from my own experience, to admit that you did something wrong and take responsibility and not blame people when you're in such a low place. Because you're feeling low enough already that you know, you opening up and sharing that you did something wrong or you're responsible for something that didn't go well or something that you did is such a risk, right? Because now you say that and you're like, oh my gosh, like, is somebody else going to be mad at me or oh my gosh? Like, how is this going to impact my life? And then you risk, your thoughts go, like, I'm going to risk now potentially bring my self-esteem down even lower. And that's why I think when it comes to recovery from addiction,

when it comes to healing from a lot of trauma, I believe that rebuilding your self-worth and self-confidence is key because you'll be able to get to a place where you understand that people were doing the best they could with the tools they had and you learned to accept that. Then you also learn to take ownership and responsibility for your life and knowing that, okay, that happened, but now this is on you.

And I think that's so important for people to hear. Super important. Let's continue the story, right? Things are going downhill. You get kicked up by your mom. You're facing rejection on rejection. Now you have the rejection of feeling like my mom doesn't want me. You're being sent off to your dad.

Your brothers too, like all three of you, or are you just you? Just me. Okay, so you're being sent off to your dad. It's like this punishment. Give us the lay of the land. Where does your dad live? What does a town look like? And how does being there start to spiral even further downhill?

So I think, again, intentions were good by my parents. I don't think they were intentionally doing anything to hurt me. I think their thought process was my mom's going to kick me out. I'm going to go live with my dad. I'm going to be exposed to a new environment, new group of people. I'm going to get a fresh start, that sort of thing. And it's going to allow me to hopefully make different choices. It's almost like fast forward a little bit, but it's almost like your mom was putting

you in her version of jail, right? I need you to get you out of this environment. you need to know that there's consequences for your decisions, selling pot, whatever. And I'm going to try to have you be with somebody who maybe is a little bit more stern with you. Was that your dad's relationship? Yeah, he was stern, but I think he was stern to a fault, which is why we butted heads a lot. So my mom, where I grew up where I went to school with her was in a very suburban area where people wore like pink polo shirts.

They were very preppy, right? And when I went to live with my dad, he lived in a very rural, like, country atmosphere where there was a drive-or-tractor to school day, for instance, at my high school. That's how rural it was. Rural it was. And so, again, the idea was good that my mom was going to put me in this, quote-unquote, jail-like situation. But the downstream effects, as far as my emotional pain and mental pain that I'd already

been experiencing were it was disastrous. because now I had all the stuff that we talked about before. And then on top of that, add in abandonment issues now for my mom, rejection, mistrust. I'm now not seeing my brothers half the time. All this stuff is now exploding inside of me and just waiting for the first opportunity to either get suppressed or just explode by means of the way I acted and behaved. And so as I said earlier on, I go to this new high school. And the first thing I needed to figure out how to do was, all right, well, I need to figure out new friends to get high with.

I need to fill this void inside of me because my community and my friends of people became so addicting because my family dynamic was kind of disordered that I used friendships and the people that I hung out with to fill that void and seek connection. Everybody wants to belong. Right. Even like a 16-year-old boy who's like completely maybe in their parent's size doing all the wrong things, but you want to belong. And you're going to look for that influence that's out there that you can attach to. And so I end up eventually finding new people to get high with after they realized that I wasn't a narc, continued to sell a little bit of pot on the side to support my habit that was now growing because I went from smoking a gram of pot a day. So I think at this point I was smoking at least an eighth a day. And then all my friends and I would do throughout high school was get high.

Every single day we would get high. And we would even skip class a fair amount to just ride around on joy rides, listen to music and get high. And it was so bad that I almost didn't graduate high school because of so many missed classes and poor attendance. And so right around when I graduated high school, it was a turning point for me because some of my friends went off to college. Some of my friends, you know, did things with work. And I'm in this place where I knew I was a smart kid and a good kid, but I had just sold myself short and I had created this mindset that I was going to permanently fail. So there was no point in really giving it 100% in trying that I had not gotten into some of the schools that I wanted to get into.

The money wasn't there to get into some of the schools that I had gotten into. I didn't fill out like financial aid stuff that I might have been able to do to maybe get some help and going to these schools. So I made the decision. I'm going to go to community college right after high school. However, I'm going to also start to sell drugs to make money, not just to support my habit. And so after I got out of high school at this point, I'm smoking like a quarter ounce of pot a day, which is a lot. I'm like, it was a lot of weed. And I found this new addiction, which was was selling drugs because I found Drew that when I would pick up copious amounts of pot to sell to people, I checked all the boxes that I'd been looking to check for a while. I felt wanted, felt needed,

I felt the sense of belonging, I felt purpose, I felt meaning, because now I would go on a joyride with my friends for an hour, come back with 400 missed phone calls and texts because people started to know that I was the guy with pot not too long after high school. And so that became addicting that I was like the guy that could help people out and I could finally fill that void that I had been looking to fill. And then so as you graduate up the drug ladder, if you will, I was no longer interested in hanging out with people that were just smoking pot. Now I was looking at, all right, who can I get connected to that might be interested in buying like some decent amount of weed from me? Who can I get connected to that might be able to introduce me to people

that are selling other drugs or larger quantities of drugs. And so I think I was like probably around 17, 18 years old. I found out that one of the guys that I was getting some pot from had some coke. And again, I was at this place where I was doing whatever I could to fit in and be cool. I saw like people in the movies. I saw like famous musicians that you know you'd heard about that did drugs like cocaine. I was like, wow, like this could make me cool. This could actually help me feel better about myself. Because what the pot did for me is it suppressed things. It brought things down for me.

Like I wasn't feeling anxious anymore. I wasn't feeling uncertain about whether I was going to have a girlfriend or success or all those things. Like that's what pot did for me. But Coke, that was able to tap into a new part of my brain that I hadn't been able to tap into, which was this feeling of euphoria and having some self-confidence. And so when I bought a little bit of Coke, I remember, rushing up my first line and doing it, I felt like this sense of euphoria that I could do anything,

that I could ask out the girl, that I could make the team, that I could do all these things, which obviously this was all fabricated and it wasn't true, but I felt like it for a moment. And then I would come down and then I got addicted to Coke. I got addicted to chasing that high. And I started to do that every day as well on top of selling the pot and smoking the same amount of weed that I was doing. and the problem with with coke and myself because I had anxiety was that it like tripled my level of anxiety because opiate is a severe or I mean because cocaine is a severe stimulant so it's now

making me even more on edge more anxious more uncertain more you know overthinking and that sort of thing and I got to a place um I believe I was like again like right around 18 because my my addiction to Coke didn't last long because it completely destroyed my brain and like lit a fire on my anxiety to where at this point in my life I was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day as well I'm doing coke doing pot selling pot but I'm also eating very poorly and I began to gain even more weight so like a meal for me at this time would be I'd eat it like two or three o'clock whenever I got high be a cheese steak pizza maybe four double cheeseburgers from McDonald's like that's how I ate And one night I was driving home.

And at the time, I was living on my friend's couch because I had, after high school, my dad and I, we butted heads so much that he kicked me out of my house. And then I was bouncing around from couch to couch during that summer. And one of my buddies ended up just keeping me in his house for a good period of time before he went off to college. And I'm driving home, driving back to his house. my face starts going numb, Drew. And I felt my heart race.

I felt like these weird tingly feelings and pain. And I was like, holy shit. I think I'm having a heart attack. I think I'm dying because at this point in my life, I'd already been to several funerals for people that I knew, people that I was friends with for substance-related deaths. And I was like, maybe I'm dying. It's a possibility.

So I drive home to my friend's house. I go like rushing into his house. And at this point, he had just gone off the college. And I say to his mom, like, I think I'm dying. I think I'm having a heart attack and she's looking at me. She's like, Doug, you're like 18. Like, there's no way. And I'm like, no, I think I'm dying.

And so she was like, all right, let's go to the emergency room. So we walk into the emergency room. I'm screaming. People listening to this can imagine like how embarrassing I guess this is now. But I'm like, help, I'm dying, I'm dying, help, help. And people are like, sir, you need to just sit down and chill. I'm like, I'm dying. So they get me back into a room.

They're like hooking me up to all these sensors. They're taking a look at my heart. They're asking me questions about my life. and what I'm doing with my health. And I started to tell them a little bit about what I was doing and some of the drugs I was doing. They were like, you know, Doug, for somebody who's doing as much as you're doing, your heart's pretty healthy.

They were like, you just had a panic attack. And again, this is back in, what was it, 06, 2005, 2006. Nobody was talking about panic attacks back then. And so this is kind of funny too. after that, I had a choice to make where I could either change my habits, change my friends, change my choices because now I just left the hospital for a drug-related panic attack. Or I could just do what I could to figure out how to survive and stay connected to the people that I had become addicted to and the lifestyle that I'd become addicted to.

So I ended up going to a bookstore, buying a book, like how to deal with panic attacks. It was as simple as that, like what to do when you have a panic attack. We'd keep it in my car. My buddies would all mess. They would mess with me like if I was ever feeling anxious. Like, Doug, read your book. Read your book. And it's just kind of, it's just so funny now to like look back and think about that stuff.

But that's what we would do is if I got too high and I had a panic attack, I'd have to pull over. My friends would drive. I'd be in the back freaking out, be reading this book and trying to figure out how to calm myself down. And that became normal for me for a period of time, Drew. until I'm about, I think at this point now, I'm about 19. One of my friends offered me a five milligram percassette. And I took the percassette and I felt that same feeling that I felt when I first started smoking weed. That all this emotional pain that I have been feeling from my childhood and then throughout high school and everything that happened with my mom kicking me out,

my dad kicking me out and everything that transpired afterwards, all that pain was. was now able to be suppressed by this percocet, by this painkiller. And I was like, holy shit. I'm high on pot and I'm not having a panic attack because of this painkiller. Holy crap. Like I have all this crap that's going wrong in my life right now. But because I'm high on this painkiller, I'm not worried about any of it. All just another way of you trying to fill the void, which was created by pain in the first

place. Exactly. And I didn't realize, I mean, I knew that what I was putting in my system as far as, the pain killers were addicting. Like I didn't, it's not like, I'm not going to say that I thought I was putting kale on my system because it was, I knew that oxycotton and percocet and that sort of thing could potentially be dangerous. I didn't realize how fast I would get addicted to that drug.

And quickly, I'm talking days, weeks, five milligrams, turned into doing 10 milligrams every day, 20, 40, 80, and then up until the point where I was doing three, 400 milligrams of oxy cotton. my nose every single day to support my habit every single day. My addiction to opiates got so bad, Drew, that I didn't have a bowel movement for nearly a month. Wow. I really don't talk about it's, it's embarrassing and I, you know, but you're trying to share the magnitude of how bad things got. It was bad. Because I think the other thing is that if there's any parents that are listening with their kids too, is that you really have to paint a portrait.

trip because so much of what people, and obviously people can be addicted to a lot of different things besides drugs. People can have a shopping addiction. They can have porn addiction. There's a lot of different forms of addiction. People can have one of the most common ones that's out there is like this addiction to being people pleaser. So even if somebody's listening to this and it's not drugs that they're dealing with or it's not substance abuse that they're, you know, struggling with and and maybe they don't even drink or touch stuff, there's still areas in our life where until you're super present to the depths of pain

that this addiction, on that spectrum of addiction, people pleasing, being an isheolic, you know, saying yes to people all the time, shopping, porn, all this different addictions,

until you really paint a picture and admit out loud to other people or hear somebody's story that you're sharing your story and being very vulnerable here, like not having a bowel movement for a month, you don't, you're not present to actually how bad the situation is, right? So I know it's embarrassing, but I applaud you for just opening up and sharing about it. Like, what did you finally do? Did you use like an enema or something like that to like get things going?

Yeah, because at the time I was living in an apartment with two of my buddies. And I remember like I had to like figure out a time where they weren't going to be there because of course, it's just, A, it's disgusting. B, it's embarrassing. And C, like you didn't know who else was going to. walk in when they came home because my apartment was like a party apartment where people would we would have people over like every night and we would you know get messed up that yeah I finally used an edema and I was finally able to go to the bathroom but at that same roughly around that same time

um I think one of my one of my best friends had just been killed in a drinking and driving accident and I was so embarrassed by the person that I had become um by my inability to have a bowel movement by the fact that a lot of my left nostril at the time was missing because of just snorting so much, so many things, but I didn't show up to like his house in which, you know, I was close to this. For the friend who passed away. Yeah, he was one of the couches that I would sleep on when I was kicked out and I was close to his parents at the time that I didn't show up at his house after he died.

And it wasn't because I didn't care. Surely, of course I cared. But I was so embarrassed by who I was. I had become that I was scared to show my face. I think that's pretty common with people who are struggling with addiction, where there's this transition period with drugs to where initially you're doing drugs, I think, to fit in, to have fun, to feel like outside of yourself a little bit, to experiment whatever it is.

But I think once you change your brain and now you become addicted to these drugs, there becomes a time where now you're doing drugs to numb the pain and the shame of the person you've become as a result of doing those drugs. Sure. It's a double crash. Right? It's a double whammy. Double whammy, man.

So take us to the moment here, right? You're with your dad. You're now in community college. Right. Right. Probably going a little bit, not going fully. Right. Like just doing the basics.

But most of your money and finances coming from selling drugs. Yep. That's filling in a little bit of that void. You're graduating up the ladder. You're now an oxy. There's a hard addiction that's there. Take us to the story of you had been procrastinating for a little while on getting your headlight fixed.

People were like, look, you got to get your headlight fixed. You know, it's a good reason for the cops to pull you over. You're like, no, no, no, you're procrastinating. probably procrastinating in a lot of different areas, just doing the basics, you're dealing with everything else you're going through, like the anxiety and other stuff. Take us to the day where now you're back in your car.

So right after I graduated high school, going to community college, like you said, I had begun, like I said, to sell more pot than I always support my habit to make money. I'm bouncing around from couch to couch. And then I had that panic attack where I was in the emergency room. And then after that, it was very awkward

between my friend's mom and I, where I had to find somewhere else to live because she had just found out now that I needed, I needed some real help. Like I needed my family to be more involved. I couldn't just sleep on a couch and essentially bring their family into my mess. And so I ended up moving in with my grandparents.

And I was there for a period of time. And I always joke, my grandmother was the best grandma for a guy doing a lot of drugs because she would pack my lunches for me. And so when I would go to community college, I'd be like, you know, a big thing of cookies, two sandwiches, a big soda, full bag of chips. Like, it was the best, right? I had the, I was, I was totally good for the munchies, like, all day.

But it got to a point when I was living there that my habits became so bad that I ended up being kicked out of their house because I was sleeping into like two or three o'clock every single day, bouncing around from job to job because I would have these jobs just to make it appear that I had my life somewhat together and that people didn't know that I was selling drugs, specifically my family. And so I was kicked out of their house because they were like, Doug, you know, I think you're taking advantage of us. You're sleeping in. You're doing all these things. Like, I mean, it's time for you to, you know, get up on, get out and be on your own. So I got that apartment with my two friends. And that became, like I said, a few minutes ago, this crazy party apartment

where people were over virtually every single night. We were partying, doing drugs. And the whole nine yards. And as that progressed, my habits became sloppier. With my selling drugs habit, my drug selling habits became sloppier to where I started to just lend people pot that I really didn't know and expecting them to pay me back and I would get burned. Or I got robbed by people stealing from me because I was doing whatever I could to just sell it as fast as I could to be able to.

to make more money and be able to pick up more weight to not only fill this, this character that I had built up in my head of being this big drug dealer, but also to have more money in my pocket to be able to buy things like oxycontin. And so as that story progresses, I began to get into debt with my then drug dealer because he would lend me a bunch of pot. and then it was my responsibility to take the pot, break it up, sell it, pay him back what I owed him for that weight, and then I keep the profit that I made based on what I sold. And so my ability to do that became less and less each time I got robbed because now I'm not able to sell the pot that has been stolen from me. I'm now in debt to this guy a little bit. And this is an important conversation

that I don't really talk about a lot in that there was a time where I was a time where I was I went and sat down with my grandparents after I had been robbed big time by somebody where I was in death of this drug dealer. I was like, can you guys just please give me the money to pay off this guy? I just want to be done. I want to be done with drugs. I just want to change. And they said, no.

They're like, we're not going to enable you. You know, this is your battle. Like, this is unfortunate. We love you, but we're not going to give you money to support an illegal activity, right? And I'm sure there was part of them that loved you so much to know that. In that moment, you meant it, but it didn't mean that you necessarily had the ability to actually carry forward with that. Right. You can love somebody and know anybody who has a family member that's like an alcoholic or struggle with, you know, substance abuse or other stuff or a friend.

You know that in that moment they absolutely want to be that best person. They really do believe that they want to change. And they're also an adult, right? they're also an adult who gets to make their own decisions and other components. And if they don't have the right environment, structure, recovery process, etc., you may understand that at the time, the best thing that you could do is actually not give them that money, not give them that help that they're asking for unless it's obviously, like, directly into a path of recovery, which is probably the most heart. It was probably such a heartbreaking conversation for your grandparents to have with you,

but they knew that if they really loved you, they had to say no. Right. And so, of course, in my head, I'm taking it as you guys don't love me, you guys don't care about. me like, you know, I just want this money. I want to be done. I promise I'll clean my life up. But at that point, I had proven to everybody that it was the complete opposite. I wasn't going to make those choices based on my track record over the years. And my life at that point, Drew, had become so entrenched with addiction and doing whatever I could to fit in by selling drugs, by doing drugs, all that stuff that I didn't care about anything else. It's crazy. It was, It was almost like this religion, this cult that you get so obsessed with who I'm going to sell to.

Who do I have to manipulate to be able to get more money to buy more drugs? Where am I going to buy the drugs to support my habit? Who am I going to hang out with? What am I going to listen to when I'm getting high? What am I going to eat? There's no room in your brain to care about anything else. And one of those things was this busted headlight that people around town at this point in my life, I'm now 20 years old. knew who I was, what I was doing.

They knew I was the guy who sold drugs. They knew I was the guy that, you know, couldn't clean his life up. They knew I was the guy that just would bounce from job to job. And one of my friends' parents was like, Doug, you have a busted headlight. You're riding dirty with, you know, drugs, money, everything, all the time. You have to change that headlight. Like, you're going to give a cop a reason to pull you over. And I was like, I'll get to it.

I'll get to it. I'll get to, like, drug addicts are the king of procrastination, right? Always putting things off. I'll do it when that thing happens. Or I'll clean my life up when something else bad happens and it just never happens. And I would even just change it to addicts in general. Yeah. Could be drugs.

Could be something else. It could be workaholism. That's actually probably another top addiction that's out there that interferes. But obviously from the outside, because it often comes with a lot of success and accolates, often encourage it. But that can be a super addiction that ruins relationships that does this. But yeah, for a lot of addicts in general, everything else, minus the thing that they're focused on, becomes deprioritized. It does. And I didn't care about anything else that didn't involve my ability to get or sell drugs. And so one night, Cinco de Mayo 2008, it was the night that I thought

my life was going to be completely shattered. It was going to be my greatest setback ever, but it ended up becoming my biggest blessing. I was riding around with a few of my friends to make a drug deal that night, and I had a busted headlight that I should have gotten fixed a long time ago. And I had a half a pound of pot in my trunk, $2,000 in cash in the glove box. And a cop was sitting there running radar because Cinco de Mayo, duh, was one of the biggest drinking nights of the year. So I guess he was either sobriety checkpoint or he was running radar. And I decided to be a good idea to flash my high beams at this police officer to hide the fact that I had a busted headlight. But it just gave him a blatantly obvious reason to pull me over. They're like, why is this

guy flashing his high beams at me? Pulls me over and my heart went into the pit of my stomach. I just knew at that moment my life was over. I'm like, all right, this is it. I'm done. He's going to pull me over. He's going to find the drugs, the money. I'm going to jail, and that's where I'm going to be the rest of my life. And pulls me over, comes up to the car, and I stammer to get my license and registration I have to give to him. And one thing leads to the next, and he ends up searching my car, finding the drugs,

finding the money, found a scale, which then sealed a deal of him being able to charge me, of them being able to charge me with possession with intent to distribute marijuana. And I remember being in handcuffs in the back of this cop car. And this was an important moment in my life as well because I was just sitting there. And I don't know if anybody listening to this, Drew, I don't know if you've ever been in a moment like this to where you start to just stack so many bad choices or bad habits in your life. And all of a sudden everything comes to a head.

And you're like, how did I get here? Like how did the kid who just wanted to fit in? how did the kid who just wanted like his family to be together had the kid who just wanted a girlfriend had this kid who wanted to be good at sports like how is he in the back of this cop car facing felony drug charges like how like why and now i can say that it was just my inability to deal with that pain that's been the theme of this conversation is my inability to cope with life. It was my inability to deal with, frankly, like, things that a lot of other people struggled with and have struggled with in their lives, but didn't turn out the way that I did.

And so I'm taken to jail. My dad bails me out because, you know, I was charged with a felony, possession with intent to distribute marijuana. And my dad bailed me out the next day. And it was a funny experience that day because my brother, who I had dinner, with last night in LA. It was his birthday that next day. And he came with my dad to pick me up from jail. He was like, happy birthday to me. I'm like, hey, like, how you guys doing? But as funny as it was, it was really sad because I was so scared, Drew, of what was going to transpire next because I was the kid, as I shared, I was unathletic, I was bullied, I was I had hardly any self-esteem without drugs, right? Drugs obviously helped with that a little bit.

How am I going to survive jail? How am I going to manage that? What's going to happen to me? All the thoughts of the bad things that go on in jail are going through my mind nonstop. And so because I was charged with a felony, now there's a process where I was arraigned, and then several months later, I end up going to court in September, September 30th, 2008, I go to court. And at the time, my, I guess maybe it was like a few months before that, my car actually blew up. I think it was Memorial Day weekend, actually, where I hadn't changed the oil in like, I don't know, a year or something. And I put like 70,000 miles or something extravagant on my car because I was driving around selling, selling drugs and delivering pizzas.

That's what I did as my cover-up job. Let my family know that I actually was doing something real for work. And my grandparents were like, all right, you're in trouble. You need a car to be able to get to your job, drive around to do your odds and odds and heads and stuff. We'll give you money for a car or for a lawyer. Like, which do you want? Like, huh.

Well, if I don't have a car, I can't sell drugs. I can't buy drugs. I'll take the car. So I got like this geoprism, I think, that they ended up helped me get. And so this is important because when I went to court, I didn't really have a real criminal defense lawyer to represent me. I just had some, I think he was like a general counsel or somebody my dad had known that I don't think specialized in this sort of thing, but he was just there to, I guess, support

me. And the judge in my mind at that time threw the book at me where he sentenced me, he convicted me of the felony, found me guilty, and sentenced me to five years in jail, suspended everything but 90 days, which means that if I had failed a drug test, if I had committed another crime, if I had done anything to violate the terms of parole and probation, I could potentially go back and serve that full sentence that he suspended. Then on top of that, he gave me five years of probation, 200 hours community service and all kinds of fines and drug classes. but he looked at me.

And he said, Doug, you're young, you're 20. This felony conviction is going to haunt you for the rest of your life. He was like, I'm going to deal. And I'm like, deal. Like, where's the deal? I'm going to jail. I got five years probation. I feel like my life's over.

I got to do community service. Like, where's, what's the deal? And he was like, if you complete everything without messing up, no misprobation appointments, you don't fail any drug tests, you do your community service. You do everything right. I'll take the felony conviction off your record at the end of the five years. of probation and give you a PBJ probation before judgment. And at the time I was 20, and I honestly wasn't confident that I would live to see my

25th birthday. I mean, like I said, I had already been to several funerals of kids that I hung out with. And also at the time it's 2008, like, didn't Nostradamus say the world was supposed to end in 2012? Like all these things were going through my mind where I was like, whatever, it's not even worth it. Like, I'll take it. Yeah, you remember that?

I was like, I'll take the deal. And you would think a smart person would get out and do what I could to get sober, clean up my life a little bit and prepare. Take the few weeks the judge gave me to prepare for going to jail and actually use that time wisely. But now the level of pain just increased exponentially because now I'm going to jail. and I've had all the terrible thoughts that people might think when they're going to jail were running through my mind based on the reality I had created in my own mindset and also based on how I was treated by other people growing up and also like how unathletic and

unconfident I was. And so I reported and so so no, so then my addiction continued the way it had been continuing snorting copious amounts of oxycott not my knows every single day. And the last thing I did before reporting to jail was get high with a few of my friends. And I almost missed like the debt. They gave you a deadline. Like you have to be here by X time or you could potentially be charged with like escaping. It could escape charge. Yeah, put a warrant out for your arrest. Yeah. And I like made it at the last minute. You know, I didn't really save much time to say goodbye to my family who was waiting there to say goodbye to me. I just was there reported.

and I cried the day I went into jail because I didn't want to go in because of all the fears and emotions that came with that. And then the day I left, I cried because I didn't want to leave. So let's talk about the in-between. Yeah. Right? A pivotal moment that I kind of hinted to previously was in a crazy way in jail, you found somebody who became a mentor to you.

So set that conversation up. Yeah. So I walk into the gates of this detention center and I had all this, these pain, these emotions that I was dealing with from my life that I had brought with me into entering this. But on top of that, I had a horrific opiate addiction to kick cold turkey.

So I had to detox cold turkey from oxycodden for a few weeks. And what that felt like was having like the worst case of the flu. uncontrollable bowel movements, vomiting, pain, some depression, anxiety, like sleepless nights. Like, there was so much that came with that. But the symptom that bugged me the most, that was ironically the symptom that has been most meaningful to me now was this feeling of that I was trying to crawl out of my own skin. And as I look back, I think it was just so God could use that time in my life for me to

like shed that version of myself so that the like the new version of me that was being built in jail could become whole. And my soon-to-be cellmate who looks like a more, looked like a more jacked version of Brad Pitt from Fight Club, was sitting at the Scrabble table playing Scrabble. And he looked at me. He was like, well, what are you doing here? And I kind of gave him like the some bits and pieces about my story. And he was like, okay.

He's like, you're going to start working out with me when you get through your detox. I was like, dude, bullshit. I'm like, do you see me? I could have been a model for Pillsbury at the time, Drew. Like that's how heavy and out of shape I was. But he could tell that I just needed something. Like people listening to this, they might hear me sound pretty confident, that I have pretty good self-esteem, that I'm pretty assertive in the way I speak.

But that was so far from who I was when I was in jail. It was very soft-spoken, hunched over, you know, barely talked because I was afraid to say anything because I was afraid of being judged. I was afraid of what people might say in response to what I said. And so he knew that I needed something to kickstart that. And I remember watching him not too long after that workout himself. And he was doing thousands of pushups, hundreds of pull-ups, like running all over the place in the common area of the jail.

I was like, who is this guy? This guy is like insane. And not too long after that, we're having this conversation that this conversation completely changed my life. And it kind of goes back to the blame versus responsibility thing that we were talking about earlier in that he started to ask me more questions about my story. Like why I got addicted to drugs, why I was in jail, like everything. He wanted to know everything about what I was going through. I started to blame my parents. My parents got divorced.

Girls rejected me. I didn't make the sports teams. I was bullied. And he looked at me. He's like, quit being a bitch. I was just like, what? And he told me what I needed to hear and not what I wanted to hear. Because at the time, what I wanted to hear was like, oh, it's okay, Dougie, like, your parents are bad,

like these kids, like, it's not your fault. But he looked at me and he said that to me and I was just like, well, what do you mean? He was like, you're blaming everybody else for your problems except yourself. He was like, there's plenty of people that go through what you went through that aren't in jail, right, Doug? And I'm like, yep. He was like, so you have two choices. You can be a man, look yourself in the mirror and say you got yourself here.

You chose to behave in the way that you did to land yourself in jail. And you can take responsibility and full ownership for your life and make the possible, make the changes that you know will possibly lead you to getting out of this mess. Or you can be a bitch and go cry in the corner and say, woe is me, be pessimistic and blame everybody else for your problem. He's like, most people will do that. And it was just the timing was just perfect, I guess, because I was at this point in my life where the drugs had started to come out of my system and I had started to think a little bit

more logically where I was saying, clearly I don't know what I'm doing. I'd had 21 jobs with that point in my life. I've damaged relationships with my family. I'm in jail for a felony drug charge. I'm a drug addict. I have all this stuff that's wrong in my life. So clearly being a victim and blaming everybody else for my problems and using my circumstances as an excuse to behave in whatever way I wanted to, like was not working.

So I took this guy, this guy's name is Eric, up on his offer to start exercising with him. And it was embarrassing, man, because he got me in front of all the guys who were in the common area of the jail. And he was like, all right, let's, we're going to start with pushups. Can you do a push up? Of course, like, part of my ego was like, you know, I can do a push up. I can do this. But then I knew in the back of my head, there's no way. Get down to do a push up.

collapsed. And I said, Eric, like, why can't I do a pushup? He's like, because you're fat. I hated that word, Drew, because I was called that a fair amount growing up. And it just really bothered me. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, Doug, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. You have excess body fat. Your core is weak. You have no upper body strength. So you don't have what it takes to do a pushup so you're collapsing. Try one from my knees. Couldn't do one from my knees. Then I would like walk up the stairs in the pot I was in jail to kind of rest a little bit. And it was like huffing and puffing because I, before jail, I was smoking a pack to a pack and a half of cigarettes every day.

And I just felt so motivated and inspired for some reason at that time because I think what happened is I had my face just like so thick in the mud. I couldn't see anything full of fear, full of uncertainty, full of pain, full of anger that this guy just came into my life. I still don't know why. I really don't. And he just pulled my head up just a little bit. So I could see just a little bit of light, a little bit of hope, a little bit of faith.

And that came with, and the way that showed up is by him agreeing to train me during my sentence every single day in there. And we set some goals. He was like, all right, by the time you get out of your 90 day sentence, what are your goals? And I was like, well, I want to be able to run a mile, which I'd never been able to run. able to do and do a set of 10 pushups, which now looking to where I am, looking at where I'm at now is somebody who's been a personal trainer now for, you know, over 11 years, that's some people might be like, that's not that much. To me, it seemed like Mount Everest at the time.

This is why I think like making these small changes in your life when you're trying to make a transformation is so pivotal because it's all relative. And so we just started, by me being able to hold myself up from my knees. And once I was able to do that, then we'd work on doing a pushup from my knees and then do a set of two, three. Then we built up some strength to where now I was able to do a set of 10 pushups from my knees. And then that transferred. And then along the way, I'm building all this self-confidence because at the beginning I was like, I'm never going to be able to a push-up from my knees. Like, look at the way I just collapsed in front of all these people. But then I was able to do one. I was like, wow,

I can do this. And then you get motivated because you're like, wow, I never thought that I could do this. Let's keep doing more of that. Then the one push-ups leads to two. to three and then and now I'm able to start doing them from my feet. I was able to do a pushup from my feet, able to do two pushups from my feet. Then slowly but surely I built myself up to being being able to do that 10 pushups. Same thing happened with running. There was like this perimeter inside the pot I was in where you could either run or walk and I would have a deck of cards in my left hand and every time I would either run or walk a lap I would pass a card from my left hand and my right hand to be able to track my mileage. It's not like there was, I didn't have an Apple watchback

10, right? And so I started to see improvements with that. And what it also gave me the ability to do was start to process some of the pain. I would think about a lot of what bothered me during my childhood and people that pissed me off, people that treated me wrongly while I was walking and then, you know, or jogging as I progressed throughout my sentence. And I was able to do the pushups, run the mile by the time my sentence was over. And I felt that I was finally ready to change my life. So almost like at that moment, jail is your ashram. Yeah.

I mean, it's the highest expression of what society when probably we're coming up with jail, or at least the way that, you know, people perceive it to be today, you know, not to get like political, but like, let's take, for instance, like, people that are more on like the conservative side of looking at things, people that believe that, look, there's got to be like consequences and, you know, people got to be held accountable, right? Sure. Like, let's say like moderate to like slightly moderate conservative, not that people on the left don't believe that, but you got to go to jail and that's your opportunity for rehabilitation.

What's unique about your circumstance, though, is that, you know, we know through everything that we dealt with during the Clinton administration, other stuff, is we can't just like arrest our way out of stuff. And a lot of people go to jail and they get worse. That doesn't mean that there shouldn't be consequences. It just means that jail doesn't often work. prison doesn't often work, but you had this mentor, this almost like, have you ever read the book Peaceful Warrior or heard about that story at all? It's, uh, Dan something, I'm forgetting his name.

I'll have to look it up here in a minute, but it's called Peaceful Warrior. It's a beautiful tale, but in that book, this guy Dan, who was actually like a real life, like gymnast and everything, like college gymnast who went to, I believe, like Stanford, really exceptional. He is going through this sort of coming of age story and in the depths of the lowest depths, I don't want to ruin it for anybody who might want to go watch it. It's a movie. But he has a major accident. He's not able to do the thing that he loves to do. And in this period of time of hitting his rock bottom, which is really the story that we're talking about with you. We're talking about the hero's journey, right? This is the hero with a thousand faces story, Joseph Campbell, like your

story is the universal story. And again, if somebody's listening today and your still with us over here. It doesn't matter. You don't have to have substance abuse. You don't have to have this. It could be these same themes. These pillars are there for you with your work life. These there are there for your relationship. They're there for this book that you want to write. They're there for this business that you're trying to build. And in this story, Peaceful Warrior, there's a gentleman that shows up who calls himself. It's not his name, but he calls himself Socrates. And he becomes the mentor of this young guy, this young gymnast that's at his rock bottom. This guy, Eric, who seems like just incredibly wise.

And I'm sure people are thinking like, so wise. Like, what was he in jail for? Like how, you know, what was it going on? Like, that's an incredible amount of wisdom. And then not only that, but to take somebody under your wing and to give them that healthy dose of, it really feels like tough, grandfatherly love, right? It's like that encouragement, but it's also like, I'm going to like be tough because I can tell that's what you need right now.

But it was delivered with a certain level of love. It was like, I'm going to show you of what you're possible. I've heard you talk about him in other interviews and in your book and other stuff. I'm going to remind you of what you're possible for. And by the way, I'm not going to take any bullshit from you. Right.

Right. And that's a rare combination. And that's actually what a lot of, you know, in society right now, I'm going on a little tangent here. But in society right now, we have a little bit of a,

we have a major crisis of young men in particular. young men are going through a lot. They have a higher dropout rates. They have higher rates of loneliness. They have higher rates of drug abuse. Not to mention like every pretty much mass murder situation, other things you hear about. It's all men, young men. Addiction, other things that come in.

And in a way, the big piece that's missing from like their environment. And these are complicated situations and I named a bunch of them, which are top things. that tough aspirational figure that you look up to, but who's going to hold you responsible, but also remind you that like you're loved in a language that makes sense that's there. It doesn't have to be like, oh, don't worry, Doug, you're loved, you're in jail, everything's like, it's like, look, I know what you're capable of. I know what you're possible of, like, do a fucking push up. Right.

Right. It's like tough love, right? That is what so many people feel like they're missing in their life. And it's crazy because, you know, there's a book that I have here on the shell. It's called Tribes by Sebastian Younger. And it's a book about, it's a journalist that was embedded in a military unit was talking about basically how this is what a lot of young men get in the military. And then when they come out of the military, they have this like severe sense of withdrawal of going back into normal life.

And they deal with depression and suicide rates are so high in the military and other things. They're missing that sense of, I have this brotherly love with another group of men. men, we have a purpose, we have a mission, and we're focused on something. And kind of feels that that's a big part of what young men need. I'm not saying the military, but those themes of an aspirational figure, a mentor, somebody you look up to, somebody that you look up to so much that if they're going to call you on your shit, you're also going to be willing to hear it. And in the sense of a common sense of purpose and the sense of like a goal that you're working towards. So to take it back full

circle on this monologue that I've gone on, I feel like that's what everybody hopes what jail would be. And it's not often that situation and recidivism rates are really high, but imagine a future where like there could be some of those themes and elements that are brought into incarceration for unfortunately people who end up in that situation or even recovery programs well before that, it would be an amazing world. I agree. I mean,

I definitely think there needs to be some reform because, yes, I agree that people need to be held accountable and there should be consequences for people's actions. I think that people often think of people who go to jail as quote unquote, bad people. And sure, there's some outliers of people that do some heinous crimes that you would probably say are pretty bad people, right?

But I would say there's a majority of people that just made some bad choices, or maybe mismanaged pain or just didn't have the proper tools to figure out their life at that point. And then as a result, you know, committed some drug-related crimes or something like that, and now they're in jail. And then the problem I think, and again, I haven't been to jail in a while, but from what I remember, and I don't think it's changed a whole lot is you go there and you just kind of buy your time. You bide your time.

You're not there to just rehive. have yourself. There's not like, I don't think there's a lot of group therapy. There's not one-on-one therapy. There's not fitness. There's not these mentors like you said that come in. And I mean, there's volunteers, I think, from like, you know, church organizations that come in. But I think structurally, there's not. Because I think, no matter what side of the venture on politically, I would think everybody would agree that they hope that if somebody goes to jail for a crime or they go to someplace where they're, you know, kind of forced to be held accountable for something that they did. You hope that they could become a better version of themselves and they come out.

Like, that's everybody's hope. But the problem is, I don't think the system is necessarily set up to help that. I got really lucky, which is why I'm so passionate about sharing my story and talking about stuff like this, because I think that I was an anomaly that this guy decided to help me before even helping himself to, in a way, I think, um, could kind of not deal with the problems that maybe he had going on internally and using this helping me as a way to, you know, take that pressure off of himself and find something else to make himself, to find something else to make himself feel like he was a contributing member of society at that point.

Yeah, and he could have had a revelation, right, you know? Could have been a few months before you came, could have been a year before you came, that it's like he went through that same thing that you did. He was blaming everybody. And maybe he read something. Again, I don't know how much of his story that you know. But, and now with that understanding, it's like this feeling of wanting to pay it forward. Yeah.

Which is interesting because I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but that was a big part of what he was telling you. You were asking him, how can I ever pay you back? And he's like, no, you just need to pay this forward. Yeah. I mean, I didn't know how I was going to survive without him. That's how much he meant to me when I was in jail. And I was scared, Drew, because my entire life up until I was in jail, I had proven to myself that I couldn't handle life without being completely numbed by substances or by just

being a menace to other people. And now I come to jail and I'm able to change my life. And the only, the most meaningful variable in that was my cellmate, Eric. So the day I leave, I was crying because I was, A, I was so moved that this guy came into my life and help me transform. And then also that I was like, what am I going to do without this guy? And I just asked him. I was like, how can I ever repay you? And he said, pay it forward, which I didn't know what that meant the time. I had never read a personal development book. I didn't know what being of service meant. I was just like, all right, man. And then he just said, don't fuck up.

Like, just keep doing the right thing. Keep working out. Keep taking care of yourself. And then he gave me a workout plan that I still to this day have framed in my place. So I never forget where I came from. And it was just some basic, like, calisthenic routines that he wrote. And he had some sayings on there. I think one of the sayings was, remember, you're no longer a fat ass. You never, you're, you're not a fat ass. And you never have to be one again, like eat smart. There were stuff like that that inspired me to keep going along the journey. And we stayed in touch throughout the first few months when he was still in jail. We would exchange some letters. And then when he got out, I actually was able to work out with him and do one of his actual workouts.

that was for him and it wasn't just him training me which was really meaningful to me you wrote this great post I was shuffling around trying to find it here and thanks Patrick for bringing my phone

said five lessons I learned from my cellmate I'm just going to go through these really quickly and you kind of you can share a little bit more about it number one your choices matter so does that go back to the idea of like you made choices that brought you here

and let's not blame anybody else It was that and then it was also coming to terms of that but then it was also like moving forward like how I carried myself your choices spiraled you downwards but your choices can spiral you upwards too right I mean there's you can stack bad habits

but you can also stack good habits I love it number two don't give up on yourself it sounds so basic but tell us what it meant to hear that from Eric trust me it wasn't pretty in there when I first started working out there was plenty of times

where I wanted to quit and give up on myself and he would just remind me to stop being a bitch. Like, shut the fuck up, Doug. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear your complaint. Just get the fuck down and do your push-ups. I'm just like, all right, whatever. And it just taught me that, it taught me, it taught me, and I think it teaches, I want to

encourage the listeners that you're capable of much more than you think you are. You just have to keep trying and not be afraid of failing, not be afraid of falling down. I think the only time that you actually fail is when you quit. then you're automatically discounting yourself from having any kind of success. I'll add in one component to that that I feel, you know, from having read about, you know, reading your writing about your story and hearing you talk about it. Don't give up on yourself. It feels like very cliche and it's so true.

And there are people in their life that are in so much pain, they don't even know where to start. Right. And that was you. Yeah. And in your instance, you know, as tough as. is to say this because a lot of times people are feeling like, well, I don't have that person in my life yet. And obviously, sometimes you get put or the universe or God or whatever puts you

in a situation where that person is there. And other times, you have to go find them, but that is somebody that can help you start to see what it looks like to not give up on yourself. So it's like, it's tough because it's like, you know, you want to let people know that they're capable of doing anything and also too we're social creatures and sometimes we're so stuck in a hole we're so stuck in a pattern we're so stuck in a thought process we need help and that help could be even just a friend a friend that has a little bit of a growth mindset who's now you're starting to take tiny steps in the right direction of so sometimes people are so in so much pain they can't believe in themselves they need a little bit of a help and I think this is important for especially

parents, you know, I have a few friends that are struggling with, um, addiction and kids. And it's kind of early and it's high school and everything, you know, like, just like the rates of like smoking and other stuff and just what kids are into today is like just super high. And kids are better than ever at hiding it. And not to mention, we talked a little bit about this, but I had somebody close to me that had a weed induced schizophrenia, uh, episode. And I think I posted something online and you were like, yo, man, like, this is like a real thing and it's getting bigger. We were chatting about how a lot of things, like, you know, where it's not like an anti-marijuana episode.

And marijuana today on the market is up to 50 to 100 times more THC, which especially for young men who are already at risk, high risk of schizophrenia between the ages of, let's say, like, 18 to 35, there's more rates of schizophrenia and young men than, let's say, for young women. And then there's obviously genetic history and other stuff and lifestyle. how weed and high THC weed and young men don't often know what their tolerances can really F you up and send you over the edge. And for parents that are dealing with this, even, you know, even just bad behaviors, bad habits with their kids, I think that your story is just another example that kids want to belong

and it's tough to learn that from your parents, even if you have a great relationship with your parents, which I did growing up, it's tough to see your parents as that mentor. there has to be another in the case of men, like often another man, somebody older that they look up to that they aspire to. Sometimes people get that from their church group. Sometimes people get that from, you know, some sort of, you know, mentorship organization. But if there's not somebody that's else out there that's somebody that the kid looks up to, it's so difficult to have somebody start to show them what it looks like to believe in themselves. You're right, man. I mean, I think pot now it's a, it's a problem because. sure, I think it can have some benefits. I know people that have used it successfully to recover from addiction from, you know, harder drugs. I know people that, you know, there's obviously some medicinal benefits, I think.

But I think what happens is people now will say, well, they're doing it and it's legal, so I can do it and it's okay. And I think you really have to look at your situation and what you're using it for and also be aware of some of the, you know, side effects. and dangers that can come with it. Yeah, and I think that's the part that's been a little bit tough. There's been a little bit of a media embargo on talking about the downsides of pot, especially because so much it has come with a lot of good things like decriminalization.

President Biden just, you know, did a big, what's it called, clemency where you let a bunch people out of, pardoned a bunch of people who have low level drug offenses and everything. And like, obviously, that's like super bipartisan. A lot of people are like in favor of that. like a lot of those individuals shouldn't have even been in jail in the first place. And there's another side of it that's getting more attention. New York Times did an article recently. We'll link to the show notes.

There's a guy I've talked about him before on the podcast. He's written kind of probably one of the pivotal books on this. He's a very controversial figure because of his take on COVID and other stuff. But this book is solid and it's Alex Berenson. He wrote a book called Parents, Tell Your Kids, The Truth About Weed. And it goes into a lot of the data that really just hasn't been highlighted about the downsides. Because a lot of times people think they do know the downsides, but they don't fully know the downsides. That's there. Anyways, I digress a little bit. Let's come back to the lessons that you

learned from your cellmate. Eric, shout it to Eric. Number three, nobody owes you anything. Right. So for the longest time in my life and even into my time in jail, I thought that the world owed me something because of what I went through. I thought my parents owed me an apology. I thought they owed me money. I thought they owed me something. I thought that girls owed me something because of how I was shit. I thought the world owed me everything because of the hardships that I went through. And I had to learn that nobody owes you shit. Like life is life and life is hard and people treat you in ways that maybe they shouldn't and they do things to you that are unfortunate. That's just life. And it's on, it's my response. It was my responsibility to take control of what I

could and focus on myself. Because again, it's easy. to spend time on the things you can't control and just wait for your parents, wait for the government, wait for your partner, whoever, to give you all this money and save you. But that's not going to happen. The reality is no one was coming to save me.

I had to become crystal clear with that. And I had to understand that it was up to me to do the right thing and change the way I behaved. And then maybe as a bonus, yes, my grandparents ended up taking me in after I got out out of jail. I had, you know, certain other people in my life kind of helped me out from a mentorship side. But that wasn't like, they didn't just come in right after I got out of jail and just lift me up. It was more because I was focusing on myself and making those conscious choices to become a better version of myself. And those people, those other people just happen to show up along the way. there's somebody that I'm close to that we chatted a little bit about it before but ended up in jail

because they had a DUI right nobody really in their family knew family is a well-to-do family and like dad as a doctor physician everything like that you know immigrant family so like a lot of strong family values and stuff but like many people probably had a share of childhood stuff that was there, childhood trauma, and a lot of that pressure that comes often with immigrant families about what life you have to live, what job you have to have,

et cetera, other things. So got a DUI, got another DUI, and like, then ended up getting a third DUI and was like told to report back to the court for the hearing. Completely skipped it,

kind of just swept it under the rug, didn't know how to deal with it. It was dealing with just too much pain, like the bubbling up a pain, pain, pain, pain. And at this point in time, only a few people close to him really knew what the situation was. Most people that were close to him did not know. And then didn't show up. And then a warrant went out for his arrest. In fact, many of his friends and family found out about it because the local precinct, the police office, posts about it on Facebook.

because they post on there just in case, you know, people see it and say, ended up, you know, then going in, turning himself in and got put, you know, in jail. And, like, everybody in the family was shocked, other stuff like that, his family, a lot of our, you know, folks that knew him and stuff. And much like you, you know, didn't have like a direct, maybe mentor that I'm aware of, but it had a major transformation that happened in. jail and the understanding of the responsibility that he played into it and the blame and many of these things here that you said that you got from Eric. And the other component that's there for both

of you is that both of you did, right? You did the work that was needed. You're putting in the time for self-reflection, et cetera. And it's not to discount, though, how important that family structure is because even I'm sure just the fact that your grandparents believed in you and it sounds like you went back and lived with them for a little bit. Yeah. After there. Like even that one thread of hope from a family is enough to help somebody get them back on their feet. They didn't do the work for you. You did the work, but then they're there to help receive you. And it's another reminder of just how important strong community and social ties are. And not everybody has a great family or great grandparents that they can rely on. So again, people have to figure that

out from other areas, but my heart goes out to people. And often these people are people that are in the lowest rung of the economic spectrum, who even if they have a glimmer of wanting to do some of these things, they have zero family support system. They have zero sort of friend support system because everybody's in the same situation that they are. And they come out. And even if they're at like 40%, 50% enough to get there, that other side, they don't know how to get it. Right. They don't have it. And those are the people that my heart goes out to because just with a little bit of somebody

caring about you, again, it's not doing the work for you, but it's that one hand to kind of pull you up on that last rung. And that's not to take away from anything that you did in your story, all the stuff that you got from him, the fitness transformation, other stuff. But I do feel that that hand that's there to receive you is still needed. For sure. And I think that I'm super grateful for my grandparents because they gave me that hand when I got out of jail. I guess the thing that the way that I see it though, and the way that I guess I see that story is that I wasn't necessarily expecting them to help me.

Yeah. Right. I wasn't like all of a sudden just creating this reality that I'm going to get out and I'm going to expect everyone to come rescue me. Totally. It was more they kind of came in on their own and said, hey, we want to help you out. And I think that is so, that was so important in my life. From your perspective, whether they were there or they were not there, you were ready to change your life around.

I was ready to change my life around. But what they did for me, which I think is an important lesson for parents, not to say that you have to do this exact thing, was they blended, I think there's two extremes when it comes to handling somebody with addiction or problems like this where it's either 100% tough love or it's 100% like enabling them to make sure that, you know, you're trying to fix them, right? They met me in the middle in that I was able to live at their house, but under their terms, I was, I had to be responsible for taking care of my, my room, keeping my stuff straight,

making my bed, I had to have a job, I had to work out. I had to communicate with them when I was like leaving and coming home and what it was for. But on their end, they didn't charge me rent. They provided me food. Yeah. They would give me some spending money if I wanted to go out and do some stuff with my friends, but I had to bring them like a receipt of exactly what I spent the money on. right they had you on a short leash right but with a lot of love with a lot of love and not only

is that important to them but it actually gives you an opportunity to make and keep promises which also builds your confidence yeah is that how you felt that's how I felt because I was able to rebuild trust with myself because I think that's like I think being able to gain trust back from others, it starts with yourself. Like you said, keeping the promises you make to yourself. So I was able to tell myself, like, all right, I'm going to go out. I'm going to be home at 9 o'clock. Boom, show up at 9 o'clock. Now I'm rebuilding trust with myself that I'm following through with what I say I was going to do, building trust with my grandparents. And then you start to do that over time and it starts to add up. And then I was like, all right, I'm going to do my best to get

a job. So it was a process. Being a convicted felon, it wasn't like I was able to knock on a door and get a job within 24 hours, it took months because you have to check a box. Have you ever been convicted of a felony? Blah, blah, blah. But my grandparents knew that I was going out. I was hunting for jobs every single day. So I'd come back and I would rebuild the trust of myself that I was committing my committing to trying to get a job and they saw that. And then when I got the job, I was rebuilding trust with myself and that I said I was going to show up to work. I would show up. I'd do a great job. I'd leave on time and I come home and they knew I was going to go. going to work every day because and people might be listening to this where I go, well,

like, that's like a given. That's simple. But before jail, Drew, I had 21 jobs where I would either quit or be fired. I would just quit because I didn't feel like going to work. I was like, well, why am I going to make six bucks an hour when I can go sell drugs? Right. I mean, and so that's who I was before jail. So for me to be able to be consistent and disciplined with showing up to work was a big deal from me. And then that's not even talking about the the benefits I got from working out, where that, you know, reestablished a lot of trust within myself outside of what Eric could help me do because when I got out of jail, I was so concerned of how I was going to survive without him helping me that I didn't trust. It was because I didn't

trust myself enough to follow through with my fitness and my health because I hadn't for so long. So being able to stick to the routine that he gave me and doing that sort of thing, like at their house. I worked out in my grandparents' basement because it was all calisthenics. It was just pushups, jumping jacks, sit up, stuff like that. But again, I started to rebuild this level of trust with myself. And now I started to just grow as an individual where I started to reestablish, I mean, I guess establish some belief in myself that I was actually, I'm a man in my word. I was actually capable of being a contributing member of society.

And that I was loved and that I was worth it. And it was worth me doing these things to be able to change my life and then again, be able to help other people do it. Beautiful, brother. Two more things on that list. Yeah. Five lessons I learned from my cellmate Eric. Number four, play the long game.

Yeah. So this is funny because this has helped me. Now I'm a trainer. So when I have conversations with my clients, like this conversation in the cell really help me because we often want instant results, right? If we have, say, you know, 25 pounds to lose, most of the time we want that weight to come off super fast, even though it's unhealthy to lose a lot of weight at once. Like, ideally we want it gone as fast as possible.

So I had this weight to lose and I had this transformation that I was looking to make. And I said to Eric, I said, man, how long is it going to take for me to lose this weight? And he was like, Doug, how long you've been beating your body up? Like, a long time. He's like, I think a long time. He's like to just be patient. And I was taught that early on in my transatlose. transformation, right? I was taught that at the very genesis of that. So I was, I had it had ingrained

in me that this was going to be a process and just to do the things that I needed to do every single day. And eventually, the weight would come off. Eventually, I'd be able to do those push-ups. Eventually, I would get some muscles, right? I had to play the long game and that was so pivotal for me. Last one. Do whatever it takes. I had to do it. Yeah, I mean, gosh, this is so, So important, man, because... And how is that also relevant to you as we're now closing out the interview? Do whatever it takes.

What it means to you then? And now, what does it mean to you now in the next phase of your life? I'm very curious about that. Let's start off with what it meant to you then. So what it meant then was it was essentially, like, right after I had that conversation with him in the cell where he was giving me that tough love and that conversation to where I was faced with two choices. I was faced with the choice of counting myself.

out, which I had done regularly up until that point in my life, where I knew I was going to fail, so I didn't even bother trying. Or I could do whatever it took and just give it every single ounce of effort and energy each and every day to keep myself in the game long enough to be able to help transform my life. And that was also meaningful for me when I got out of jail, because most of me doubted me when I got out of jail still. I mean, you talked about the people that go back to jail after they get out. That's pretty high. People who relapse off drugs, that's pretty high.

And also based on my own track record on how I'd behave before I got to jail, I was, you know, most people would say if they were betting, they were like, Doug's probably going to fail. But if I leaned into that mindset, Drew, and focused on that 80 to 90% or whatever it was, I was going to fail because then my behaviors and my choice would reflect that mindset, which it did as I was a kid growing up. But I knew if I could just tap into that left over 10 to 20% and have this level of blind faith and do whatever it took every single day to become a better version of

myself each and every day, that it gave me a shot to be that person that I'd always wanted to be. Didn't guarantee it, but at least kept me in the game. Because like I said earlier, when you quit and you automatically assume, like, I'm not going to make it. I'm not going to do it. I'm just not even going to try. Well, then you've already got the biggest thing you're afraid of, which is failing.

You've already got that just by you not betting on yourself. But I just developed this whatever it takes mentality to lean into that after I got out of jail, it's just focus every single day on becoming a better version of myself. And now, I mean, in the world that I'm in now with having a fitness business, podcast where there's so much competition, right? and it's so easy to fall into the comparison trap and look at, you know, whether it's people's shows that I've been on and look at, you know, how much their show might be growing or where it's ranking in the charts and then compare it to myself and be like, man, like, why aren't I like growing faster or

why aren't I there? I mean, it's easy to fall into that trap. But the difference I think now with me is I acknowledge it. And I'm like, all right, that's normal. As humans were competitive. It's normal to look at somebody and be like, I wish I was that. And I admire people. Like a lot of the podcasts, that I've been on or the reason that I do my podcast now and why I stick to it is because I enjoy conversations so much and I saw so much value in going on other people's shows. I'm like, this is inspiring to me and I want to kind of pay it forward in that way. And so now I just do whatever it takes. I focus in the podcast world on doing the best I can with finding the best guests for my

audience. I do the best I can with staying engaged in conversations and focusing. on things I want to talk about, do the best I can with research and all the things I can control and doing whatever it takes on that front to have a successful podcast. Because if I had just said, all right, like, everybody else is ahead of me in the charts and I'm not growing as fast as I would like to and I'm just going to quit. Like, what does that do? It gets me the very thing that I was afraid of most, which is not having a successful podcast. Yeah. And if I could jump in on one other thing is that we tend to, when our mind gets competitive, we tend to look at a very narrow spectrum.

So on the charts and on the downloads and seeing whose podcast is doing better or not better, we forget the fact that most people, forget a podcast, just even with a book, how many people even write a book? Right. Like so few people, write a book. And of the books that are written, like the vast majority sell less than 100 copies. So if you sold more to 100, which I know you have, you're like outshining, you know, not that it's us versus them, but if we were truly.

trying to use competition and comparativeness to look at the reality often we'd see that the race that we're running, we're doing things that are so unique in the first place if you even started. That's number one. Number two. And my wife has a podcast that she started when we started dating and everything. And I was like, oh my gosh, you're meant for podcasting. It's called Behind Her Empire.

By the way, Doug's podcast is called Adversity Advantage. We have the link in the show notes over here. Adversity Advantage of Podcast. I want to ask you about a few episodes that you think that people should listen to after this. But we often look, and I would tell my wife, I'm like, downloads is like one little thing, right? You forget about all these other forms of currency

that you're getting. Number one is relationships. Everything amazing to me in my life that's happened that looks like outward success. Things I've been invited to. People have met financial opportunities. businesses that have sold, it all first started with a relationship. Everything starts with a relationship. Somebody who gave me advice, mentored me, showed me an opportunity. And I think one of the

number one reasons to have a podcast is to build a relationship with other people. Right. So that's another form of almost currency in a way, the same way that we think of downloads as being valuable. These relationships are valuable. Then the third idea is self-expression. You know, your cellmate, Eric told you pay it forward. And by the way, I'm not telling you any of these things. I know these are things you all know, but I'm using this as an opportunity to basically highlight conversations that I have, even with myself.

Your somebody told you pay it forward. What better way? I mean, he didn't know about podcasting. He didn't maybe know about that medium. He maybe didn't have accessibility to it, to create it, et cetera. He didn't know the people. You know, you've been part of all these great masterminds that have helped you shape kind of how you put out your message and stuff.

What a better way to be accessible than to be. be on a free medium that anybody could listen to. A parent could save it and play it for their kid. They could give it to a family member. Somebody could give it to their brother or sister who's struggling with addiction. They hear your story. They feel inspired about it. And that's the silent majority. You won't hear from the vast majority of those people. But you just know that you're impacting them. So there's all these other things that are out there that we get a chance to do and shine on. They're not always front and center and they're not always on a chart and you don't always get an award for them. But I think it's important to remember those things because I feel

that's also part of do whatever it takes. It's like, do whatever it takes to be willing to do whatever it takes, which means doing a weekly podcast where you do two episodes a week, your podcast, you do two episodes a week, and you've been doing it for how long now? It's been about two and a half years. So you've been doing it for two and a half years, all those man hours that went into it, do whatever it takes to make a difference. Right. And that's what you're doing. 100%. And you're so right. And I think that, I think the lesson for people to hear, here is that it's easy. I mean, because so many people will say, well, don't compare yourself to others. And that's, I think that's kind of cliche, because I think naturally as humans, we compare

ourselves all the time. Right. But I think you have to look at other things and you have to remember, like, why you're doing a certain thing, which going back to like the whatever takes mentality for me now, like that's what keeps me grounded. Like, sure. Like, do I look at the charts? I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, I guess in a way you have to at times. But that's not where all of my focus goes. I look at it. I'm like, all right, like, I can't control that. Like, what can I control? I can control having meaningful conversations, building relationships, um, listening to other podcasts to, to hear like maybe like what a host is doing maybe differently or being

able to learn from them, um, you know, being able to master my craft and stuff. Like working on that is what really helps me because again, like what I was saying, it'd be easy for me or anybody to just focus on what other people are doing, especially in the podcast world. But I think if you just put all of your, you gauge your success on that, then I think you're just completely destined for failure because like you, a lot of the relationships that I have and a lot of the joy that has come in my life is all a result of having conversations on the podcast. So you wrote a book about your journey. It's called From Felony to Fitness to Free.

Everyone deserves a second chance. Are you going to make the most of yours? Who should read that book? I think anybody who is struggling right now and they just feel that they're down and out and that they have no hope, they're full of uncertainty, they're full of fear, and they just feel that their life is going to be destined for failure. I think they need to read the book because it just describes my story pretty much from the beginning, from my childhood all the way through after I got out of jail until becoming

a personal trainer. and it just shows where my life was. It shows the choices that I made during that time. And it also shows the positive side of things where I got my second chance and made the most of it in jail, where I was able to transform my life and then become this version of myself that I never thought I could be. Because that's the thing, right? I never thought in a million years that I could go from being somebody in jail to doing what I'm doing now. I think that's something that people struggle with Drew is that they just they just don't see that it's possible.

But the only way to get there, the only way I've gotten here is just by these small wins, like doing the pushups, right? And then paying it forward with what my cellmate gave me. And then I became a trainer. And then that I started to share my story with my clients. And then that inspired me to know that my story is kind of powerful and people liked it. So I started to do some media. Then I started to write a book. And then people liked the book.

And then you can see where I'm going with this. So that started to stack. And now all of a sudden, I've gone from that guy in jail to being a podcast host, you know, and sitting across from the table talking to you. But it didn't start there. It started with me just giving it all my all, doing whatever it takes every single day and then just letting the journey unfold naturally. A little bit more about the layer of your land, separate from the podcast and the book,

are there any of the things that you have that you want to let our audience know about or ways that people can keep in touch with you? Yeah, I think one of the things that I'm really excited about. now is part of my training business is I help kids like, you know, young adults that are struggling with addiction and stuff, use fitness as a catalyst for their transformation. So I'll have parents reach out to me and they're like, listen, I love your story. I'd love to get, you know, so-and-so in to see you and see if you can help him. And what happens is they'll come in and they'll start training with me.

And then I don't really like, I'm out there like therapist or anything. I just, well, I'll train them. And because I've gotten good at doing this, I'll organically, you know, ask them questions about their life. And then I'll kind of relate it back to my life. And I'll start to share a little bit about my story. And then they're like, oh, wait, you were in jail. And then naturally we start to build this relationship and connection. And then my hope with this and what tends to happen is fitness becomes this catalyst

to help them rebuild self-esteem, their self-confidence, focus on refocus their discipline and developing some structure in their lives. then it correlates into them making other changes in their lives, whether it's going back to therapy, whether it's like rekindling relationships with their parents, or, you know, taking a lot of the pain that they've endured during that time in their life and then just channeling it into not only fitness, but potentially like going and doing something else with their life. Your mom and dad today, you know, I'm sure people want to know a little bit. about it, you know, how's your relationship with them?

My relationship with my mom is better than it's ever been. Like we're very close now. I helped walk her down the aisle when she got remarried a few years ago. So beautiful, dude. Yeah, she lives in Florida now in Cape Coral. I'm blessed that they survived the hurricane. I mean, some damage to their house, but I mean, you know, relatively speaking, I mean, they came out pretty well.

And my dad's down in Miami now. My dad and I are, I've forgiven my dad and I've accepted, you know, that part of my life. But I wouldn't say that we have like the greatest relationship, you know, I've gotten to a place now where I don't hold on to resentment or anger towards my family anymore. Because for the longest time, it did nothing but hurt me too, right? And I just saw it playing out in other relationships I had where I was, you know, having trouble in romantic relationships or dating or just. even certain friendships and I was wondering where it came from and a lot of it came from this suppressed resentment towards my parents. And so that required me doing work on myself, going to therapy, learning the power of forgiveness, acceptance, and that sort of thing. But I have

no ill will towards my dad. I mean, my dad and I talked yesterday. Yesterday is my birthday. So we talked yesterday and- Happy belated. Thanks. But I'm sure the question everybody wants to know as well as what happened with my cellmate. And my cellmate unfortunately passed away earlier this year. Oh, man. Yeah, it was, it was bittersweet. I mean, it was, it was very hard for me, but there was also a silver lining. And this is, this is why. So I get a message. And I've been trying to contact him, because we stayed in touch for a little while off and on, but I've been trying to contact him to get him on my podcast. Because I was like, I were hearing that. You were on, like, ritual and a few other people and you were like, yeah, I've been trying to, like, reach out to him.

It's like three years ago. Yeah. And we kind of lost touch. And I got a message from his mom. that he had passed away and the way that she knew about me was like that he had talked about me so much and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I was heartbroken because that was part of my purpose and changing my life even when I got out.

I was like, I don't want to let this guy down. And, but what was more beautiful, what was more beautiful than her telling me how much she talked about me was, I was getting, I got a message from somebody else in his family that found out who I was and they started following me on social media or something, but they saw me doing podcasts.

and they would listen to my story and they would hear me telling the story of Eric. And they were like, I'm so happy to hear like the side of him that we all knew that got lost in his struggles. And I was like, man, I never, again, it goes back to the things that you never thought would happen.

I never thought in a million years that me getting on podcasts would be able to help, like, his family have these positive memories of him. Wow. And then his mom invited me to speak at his funeral and I went and did that. Oh my gosh.

I was able to come up there and just tell the story. And he just, He's keeping his legacy alive. Yeah, and life's crazy, man, how things work out. Wow. Yeah, and it's still, I still think about why me. Like, why did he choose me? And why did he choose to help me before helping himself?

And I think people struggle with that today, and I think it's an important lesson that that becomes addicting is the fixer and trying to fix other people. And yes, it can be positive. Like, having Eric in my life saved me? Wouldn't be where I am today without it. But I think the downside of that is you bypass some of the things maybe you need to work on yourself because you're using helping other people to fill that void.

So I think it's just something for people to pay attention to. An important message. It's almost like it's the synthesis of Eric's message 2.0. Help other people, but don't forget about yourself in the process. Exactly. And that's what you're out there doing, brother. That's what I'm doing, man. Thank you for coming on the podcast.

Thank you for sharing your story. I've sent your story to a few people in my life that have struggled with similar themes. And why I was excited to have you on the podcast is that, again, even if somebody hasn't dealt with substance abuse, even if they haven't dealt with some version of societal identified addiction, even though, like I said before, so many people will deal with addiction without even knowing it, all these themes are the universal themes. All these themes are the hero's journey. and I hope that you as the audience saw yourself and Doug's vulnerability because I know I definitely

did. Thank you, brother, for coming on. Thanks for having, man. I really enjoyed it.