Digital Social Hour - Avoid These Mistakes: Lessons from a $115M Exit | Eric Spofford DSH #611

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

🎙️ **Avoid These Mistakes: Lessons from a $115M Exit** 🎙️   Tune in now to hear the jaw-dropping story of Eric Spofford's incredible journey from rock bottom to a $115M exit! 🚀 In this episode of the Digital Social Hour, Sean Kelly dives deep with Eric, who shares his raw and unfiltered life experiences—from selling dr*gs in the 5th grade to overcoming addiction and eventually selling his business for a massive $115,000,000. 💼💵   Don't miss out as Eric reveals the crucial mistakes to avoid in business and life, and how he turned his darkest moments into a thriving success story. Packed with valuable insights on addiction, entrepreneurship, and personal transformation, this episode is a must-watch! 🔥   Join the conversation and get inspired by Eric's resilience and determination. Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀   #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly #Podcast #EricSpofford #Entrepreneurship #AddictionRecovery #Inspiration #BusinessSuccess #LifeLessons #ApplePodcasts #Spotify   #BuildingABrandOnline #SuccessfulExitStrategies #PersonalGrowthAndDevelopment #LifeAfterAddiction #SuccessStories   CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:49 - Eric's Speech at Salt Lake City 01:18 - Selling Drugs in 5th Grade 05:16 - Robbing Someone for the Last Time 15:51 - Importance of Self Education 18:05 - Losing a Step After Selling for $115 Million 20:28 - Starting a New Company 21:45 - Finding Your Next Mission After Selling Your Business 23:20 - Launching Another Addiction Treatment Business 25:15 - Building Your Personal Brand 28:26 - Why Recovery Rates Are So Low 31:32 - Lawsuit Against NHPR 36:40 - Addiction and Politics 39:50 - Impact of Addiction on Chris’s Life 44:50 - Root Causes of Addiction 48:35 - Rat Park Experiment 51:13 - Dislocation Theory of Addiction 55:19 - Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) 56:28 - Book Recommendations 56:44 - Outro   APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]   GUEST:  Eric Spofford https://www.instagram.com/ericspofford   SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly   LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This dude from South Boston, Kevin, he said, you want a job? I was like, yeah, I need a job. He gave me my first job. My first job was working at a call center. You hated it? It was terrible. You want to know what's funny about it, though? Do you want to know what they had us calling on?

God's so funny. He's got so many jokes. We're collecting donations for the New Hampshire Police Association. So here I am, like, collecting money for the cops, like, on the run from armed robbery. Wow, that's crazy. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe.

It helps a lot with the algorithm. It helps us get bigger and better guests, and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting, and here's the episode. All right, guys, we are here with Eric Spofford. He just spoke in Salt Lake City in front of 4,000 people, man. What'd you talk about there? Yeah, crazy, man. I told a lot of my story. It's a story of coming from below rock bottom and being able to accomplish the impossible. And so I shared a lot of that with them

and some of the principles and just lessons that I learned along the way and tied in some entrepreneurship and business stuff and talked about shooting drugs and robbing people and selling my business for $115 million. What a story, dude. Let's start from fifth grade. That's where you started selling drugs, right?

Yeah, man. Yeah, I guess I started real young. And fifth grade that's where you started selling drugs right yeah man yeah i guess i'm real young and uh fifth grade selling weed uh my first you know entrepreneurial endeavor was uh you know selling that mexican mexican brick pack weed back in my generation and just a badass little kid dude packing a bb gun listening to rap music you know getting in trouble getting thrown out of school, getting all sorts of shit. It was crazy. Fifth grade.

Wow. Did you have a father figure at the time? Yeah. Yeah, dude. My dad was strong. My dad, you know, was a blue collar guy, cut trees down. There's a logger, a little logging company. And it's just, I don't know.

That's the way it was back then. So you didn't even know any of this was happening? Your parents? No, they didn't. I got in a lot of trouble and got caught for a lot of shit yeah yeah i don't know i just i don't know why i was like that i really don't but i i grew up and just had this affection for like you know being a punk kid you know you know if it wasn't for drug addiction taking me out and, like, bringing me to my knees and really, like, breaking me down to the point where I needed to change my life, I probably would have ended up like a crime figure.

Wow. So you were at that volume in terms of selling it? I got there. Not in fifth grade, but I got there, you know. I'm pretty intense. I mean, if you follow me and know my journey like i'm an intense dude i'm all in on everything that i do and so for all that period of time growing up like i was just all in on all the wrong things right but interesting journey along the way. Find OxyContin, 14 years old, 15, become a heroin addict.

15 to almost 22 was really like about seven years of just wild stories and addiction and pain and suffering. Yeah. Yeah, because you dropped out of school at 15. Dropped out at 15. And that was to pursue drugs full-time pretty much yes sir wow yeah and what was that moment at 22 where it just came to a halt a lot happened between 15 and and i was actually it was a couple months before my 22nd birthday um and so it was this death by a thousand cuts, snowball effect of burning my life to the ground

in that I broke all the promises and broke the hearts of the, you know, that I made to the people that love me. I broke their hearts. I overdosed five times times ended up on life support all five wow uh in and out of jail getting arrested promising i never doing it again doing it again a hundred more i counted at one point of just all the little times and big times that i tried to change my life and i had in that time period more than a hundred times where i tried to be different i tried to get sober i tried to go legit and failed miserably um i ended up putting my dad in a position where he had to put me out you know whoa they're like he said you can't come home you can't come around here anymore.

You're not welcome because of what you've become. And the last few years, I was on the street heavy, bouncing around, staying here, staying there, and all sorts of stuff. Are you interested in coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest? Well, click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to about business and life. Click the application link below, and here's the episode, guys. So the pivotal moment, what came down to it was I had just gotten out of jail. I had a mean dope habit. My addiction was out of control at the time.

I was walking through the hood and I was walking through the neighborhood that I was staying in, which was not a nice one. And a guy that I knew from the street wanted to buy drugs. This is December 6th of 2006. And he asked me if I could get him. I said, yeah.

And I took him behind a building in that neighborhood and I rushed him, but I rushed him with a big kitchen knife and I robbed him for 82 bucks. And I took the 82 bucks, about four bags of heroin. And that was the last time I ever used drugs or alcohol. Wow. I took the 82 bucks, about four bags of heroin, and that was the last time I ever used drugs or alcohol. Wow. Yeah, man, that night, it's a crazy, crazy story, bro. I get back to the apartment. I buy the drugs.

I get back to the trap house on the third floor of this apartment building, triple-decker in the shooting neighborhood that I'm in. I am sleeping on a pile of blankets in this like drug house that's my life right i have two pairs of clothes that i have no possession of nothing and i i shoot these four bags of heroin and the neighborhood fills with police blue lights everywhere. The gig's up. I'm like, they got me.

The house that I'm staying in, it's like a well-known police house. Yeah, for sure. So I'm like, they're coming in here. They're just going to come get me. I'm going to prison. And it is what it is. And so I hid in the closet. And in the closet, I stayed there all night long didn't sleep got on my at some point you know in just the quiet hours of the middle of the night

it's just you and God you in silence right and I just got on my knees and I just had this moment where I was like I I just started praying. I wasn't like a religious guy. I'd never actually been to church. I'd never actually prayed. Wow. Just like it was brand new for me. I don't know what else to do.

And so I just had this moment of kind of surrender where I, the prayer went like this. I said, God, you know, if you're real, this isn't going so well. And, you know, I don't, I do not, I just remember not wanting to live another single day the way that I was living. And I remember telling him that, like, if you can't do something different for me, like, I'd rather die like i'd rather just not be here i do not want to continue and i don't know how to do anything else and so i need some help and i never got high again wow all from that prayer there's a lot of action that

followed that prayer up but that prayer was the beginning. Yeah. And, you know, my mom, God bless, she passed away back in 2020 of cancer, but me and her had had a crazy relationship where, you know, she was in and out of my life, I was in and out of hers. And I hadn't spoken to her in some time, but it was the middle of the night.

It was probably like 3.30 in the morning, and I started, I got on my cell phone and started calling her, blowing her phone up after the prayer. Like I said, the prayer, and the only thing I could think to do was call my mom. And she picked up the phone, and finally, I was like, you have to come get me. She was like, what are you talking about?

I was like, I can't, I don't have time to explain. You just need to come get me she's like what are you talking about i was like i can't i don't have time to explain you just need to come get me be here early in the morning and so the next morning um a few hours come by i'm still awake the sun starts to come up and i go through the trap house and i start like putting together this disguise. I got like this white, this like homeless dude that was staying there had this like white button up shirt. Yeah. And I got like these khaki pants. And I like put the button up shirt in the khaki pants and like tied the belt on.

And then I got a pair of glasses. I don't wear glasses, but like they found them somewhere. They're like reading glasses. I put the glasses on, and I just dressed myself like I was leaving the house to go to work. And I walked out of the trap house building thinking that I was, I swear to God, as I was walking out, I was like, the second I walk out, I'm going to get tackled by cops.

And I walked out and beelined to my mom's Subaru, opened the back door, jumped in the car across the back seat, laying down the car across the backseat, laying down, shut the door behind me, and screamed, go, go, go. I remember stopping at a rest stop on the way back. It was a couple-hour drive to our house. And just puking my guts out in the bathroom of the rest stop from being sick and withdrawals from kicking heroin habit.

Yeah. That's where it started, man. Wow. So that transition into- That was day one. Yeah, day one. Day one. December 7th of 2006.

That was that day. That's my sobriety date, 12-7-06. It's been 17 years. I haven't used drugs or drank or had any mind altering substances whatsoever since that day incredible and have a lifelong commitment to never do it again that's so cool man so your mom took you back in the house that day she let me she let me stay on the couch for a couple weeks okay your dad wasn't happy right my dad was pissed oh man yeah he wasn't he wasn't messing with me like it took me months of being sober for him to even start talking to me again, really.

Yeah, I mean, dude, I told everyone that I was going to do, you know, be different this time so many times that they were like, yeah, okay, kid, shut up, you know. I started walking to AA meetings and just took it one step at a time. God gives you what you need when you need it. He doesn't always give you what you want, but he'll always give you what you need. And it doesn't make too hard of terms for those who seek him. And at the time, I was certainly not you know, certainly not this spiritually evolved creature.

But, like, I was saying these little prayers and walking to these meetings. And just one thing at a time, like, life started to work out for me. Right? I was at the meeting. It's a crazy story, bro. This kid keeps calling me, right? Because I would hustle drugs and sell them and do the street thing. This kid keeps calling me the first few days that I'm like sick, bro.

I'm going through withdrawals trying to get clean. And he's like, I need you to get me heroin. I need you to get me heroin. Obviously, I didn't call it heroin, but I need you to get dope. And I was like, dude, I'm trying to get sober. I'm trying to just leave me alone. Like, stop calling me. And he kept calling.

I felt so disrespected by that, you know. And I was like, you know what? Cool. Come down here. And I was like four or five days clean. Yeah. Maybe three or four. And he had one of those little, I don't remember the car, little Honda CRXs.

It's like a two-passenger Honda. It's like a little two-seater car. He picked me up. And I was like, yeah, bring me over here. I got to go in and get it. And I had no intention of getting the drugs, bro, not whatsoever. He just pissed me off so much. This is the funny shit that would happen to me, though.

And it was Saturday. It was a Saturday. And I opened the door, and I was like, I got to go in this building right here and get the shit. Give me the money. It's like 600 bucks. Yeah. And he was like, no, no, no, I'm not giving you the money. I was like, no, give me the money. I need to bucks yeah and he was like no no i'm not giving

you the money i was like no give me the money i need to go get the stuff you call me fucking days what do you mean you're not giving me the money so i'm not giving you the money i'm like all right all right let me see the money he's like or just make sure you're not trying to rip me off show me the money and dude the kid pulls out the like money and like fans it out and i just rocked him and i took the money which isn, I'm not proud of that, but I ended up going to this NA meeting, right? Yeah, NA?

Narcotics Anonymous. Oh, okay. Like AA, but for drugs. And it was a Saturday night Narcotics Anonymous meeting, bro. And I'm like, five or six days clean, 135, 140 pounds.

So I'm like 206 right now. Jeez. Think of how skinny I was. And I remember I just raised my hand and I was like, I don't know what to do. Trying to stay clean. Some kid wouldn't leave me alone. So I robbed him earlier.

All this money. I probably shouldn't even have money right now because the only thing I really know how to do is get high. You guys want to go to Denny's? And dude, I took the entire NA meeting out to Denny's with the money that I robbed this kid. It was crazy.

And then at the meeting, this dude from South Boston, Kevin, is sitting across me. He's like, what's your deal? I'm like, what do you mean what's my deal? He's like, what are you doing? And I started talking to him. He said, you want a job i was like yeah i need a job he's cool come down monday morning he gave me my first job my first job was working in a call center for 200 a week wow plus commissions sitting there a little fucking desk with a little headset with

an auto dialer you know you hated it it's terrible you want to know what's funny about it though do you want to know what they had us calling on what dude here i am big bad gangster right yeah fucking tough guy killer from the streets ego out of control right big badass god's so funny he's got so many jokes he puts on um i, I don't even know what the job is, right? I go down there. I'm like, whatever, dude, 200 bucks a week. I can get some food. Like, cool, I'm in.

And he's like, all right, man, listen, you just sit here. He explains the whole thing. We're collecting donations for the New Hampshire Police Association. So here I am, like, collecting money for the cops the cops like on the run for armed robbery wow that's crazy yeah so ironic so even though you had no money you said you had a big ego yeah dude like big street ego right i mean dudes hit jail with big egos that have nothing you know yeah yes i had a whole lot of recovery and personal development work to do ahead of me that's interesting because now you've made a ton of money and I don't see any ego.

So a lot of personal development there, right? Huge. Yeah. I saw on another show, you're a big reader. Even though you dropped out at 15, you said you're one of the most educated people you know. I mean, arguably, you know, one of the most educated dropouts and yeah, I forget how I said that. I didn't mean to sound like more educated than everyone else, but people always ask me like, Oh, what's your last grade of school completed? Or where'd you go to school? The truth is that I dropped out of

high school in the 10th grade of 15 years old. The truth also is, is that I'm highly educated because I've been in self-education this entire time. I taught myself enough on my own without ever stepping back into a formal classroom or any formal academic training or education or even getting a GED to build a business that did $55 million a year that I sold for $115 million, let alone the real estate and all the other stuff that I've accomplished in my life. Right. That's all through being able to, understanding how to access information, how to learn, how to process, how to digest it. Right. But some people are professional students forever. They'll just sit there. You see them at these masterminds right and i'm like well i've

seen you in like 20 masterminds what have you done like you know what i mean like what what you dude you've heard from the best of the best you've heard from everybody at this point the next part is like being able to take that education that information and and make it actionable yeah with a plan of execution yeah take action on it right 100 some people read all the time they go to events every day but they don't do shit and then but it's it's that's important self-education huge being being you know a student of the game but a lot of people lack the humility to even get that part down see that a lot on the scene right they're so they're so committed to what they already know that their glass is so full that there's nothing left to even add to it.

Right. Right? So like staying with that hungry appetite, that curiosity of constantly in the pursuit for more information and more understanding, but then also being able to, to execute on the information. Absolutely. So selling that company for 115 mil three years ago, did you feel like you lost a step after, or were you more motivated to keep going? Dude, I don't talk about this a lot, but I sold that company on December 21st, 2021. I was 36 years old. I was 23 when I started it. I grew up there.

Think about the life of a young man at 23 years old and how much happens between 23 and 36? How many times do you evolve and change? How much life happens in between that? And so like I was so ingrained in that business as part of my identity, part of my day to day. When I sat at the closing table and everyone signed off on being closed um and they said that they had sent the wires i don't know why they had like retained me as a consultant i don't know why i thought this but like i'd like eight minutes later i think i counted it was eight minutes and i went to refresh

my company email and it asked me for my password. And I was like, they waited eight minutes to lock me out. God damn. Like, you know, and so I struggled. Like I went from the general of 325 people on this team, you know, to having a mission, to being busy, to getting emails and all the little dopamine hits from the texts and the group texts and the emails and the, you know, and all being busy all day long to like nothing. Wow.

That next day I woke up and it was like looking at my phone, like nothing, bro. No emails. I had a new brand new email address. Nobody was emailing me. Like nobody was texting me. My friends, you know what I mean? Stupid stuff.

But like compared to like how busy my phone is now, if I can go to that thing for 25 minutes while I'm running a company, there's 50 things on there. Right. And so like the quietness, you know, the stillness and all of that created space where I struggled. I was in Miami. I, like, started going out. Like, going to, like, clubs. And I'm like, all right, yeah. I'd never done it, bro.

I'm sober. You know what I mean? I was sober. I was 21 years old. So I'd never been to, like, real nightclub. I'd never, like, done that whole thing. And so I spent a couple months out doing that. And I was like, this sucks.

Dude, this is so terrible. I bought a plane. I bought a boat. Big boat. And I, like, had all the stuff, dude. And I was like, this is fucking miserable. Wow. Yeah. It's crazy, right? That is crazy. Because you could buy whatever you want with that money. the stuff, dude. And I was like, this is fucking miserable. Wow. Yeah.

It's crazy, right? That is crazy. Because you could buy whatever you want with that money. I did, bro. I bought a 92-foot boat. I bought a mid-sized jet. I bought a $20 million house in the hottest neighborhood in Miami. Fuck.

I bought Richard Miller's stupid shit jewelry. Fucking. It's just a lot of cars. Yeah. And just all kind of like, I was like, this sucks. And so I made it a couple months. And I was like, I need a lot of cars. Yeah. And just all kind of like, I was like, this sucks. And so I made it a couple months and I was like,

I need a mission, dude. I'm not, I'm a guy that like, I got to get up and go, you know what I mean? I got to start, I have to build,

I have to create. I'm happiest when I'm in that. And so that's when I made the decision to just like turn back into it and start building again. Right. Yeah. How long did it take you to find that mission after you sold these? A couple months. It took me a couple months to realize that I needed one.

And then it was a process of figuring out, okay, what am I going to do next? You know? Yeah. Like, what am I going to do? Real estate. I do a lot of real estate, bro. It's so fucking boring. I'm glad someone said it, right?

Because no one talked about that. Stop pretending like real estate is sexy. It's not. It's great. You want to create wealth. You want to create cash flow. You want to invest and capture appreciation in your money, turn your cash into an asset, depreciation for taxes.

Like there's all the, dude, I could talk on it all day long. Don't talk about real estate for this podcast. Talk about real estate. I've been doing it forever. I've done hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions. But God, it's boring, dude. It's hurry up and wait. Put the offer in.

Wait. They respond. Think about it. Respond to them. Volley it back. Do this. Wait. Do that.

Wait. Do this. Wait. Get the deal closed. Wait. Wait. Like, it's just like, So, like, yes yes I was doing real estate

but I was so bored with it and don't get me wrong I still do real estate I love it it's necessary you should but then I was like I need to do I need to be like active in a mission so that's when I did took up really two things one of which was I've started another addiction treatment business. We're on our second facility now. Nice. So we have a big one that we built from scratch in Ohio. We have another one we've recently acquired and are integrating in West Palm Beach, Florida. We're sitting probably accumulatively, I don't know, maybe 140 employees.

Wow. That was quick. Yeah. You know, I started putting the game plan together in 2022 and got the real estate in 2022 and developed the business, hired the staff, and we admitted our first patient on January 1st of 2023. Holy crap. So a year old.

Yeah. It's, well, you know, a year and what's it? crap. So you're old. Yeah. It's well, you know, a year and what's it? Three months. April. Yeah. So 15 months, 16 months, something like that. So we're kicking ass. We're fucking kicking ass and taking names.

We're just getting started. Because you've already done it before. So you could probably do it in half the time now. A hundred percent. And that was part of that figuring it out, right? It was like, I was looking at restaurants and nightclubs and solar businesses and, you know, all these different things. And I'm like, anything that you do, there's this index of time that it takes to become a world-class expert at it. I'm a world-class expert at addiction treatment.

I've been doing it my entire adult life. I understand it inside and out. And so like the learning curve on something else was going to set me back so much time. Plus I'm in recovery. It's a labor of love. I want to help people. And I really, you know, care about the business and care about the people and the mission. And so we're, we're doing very well with that. And that busy it's non-stop so it's very mission-based it's very fast that's more exciting right you know um and then then the other thing that i did was entered into kind of our space was i decided to want to build like a personal brand yeah content see if i could you know i had no idea how it would go.

I really didn't. I was like, I don't know. You know what I mean? I'd already been like covered in the news for more than a decade and like very well known in my home state, my home area, but not on social media through content and not, you know, speaking on stages for 4,000 people, you know, doing stuff like that. Yeah. You've been killing it too.

Thank you. Yeah. Getting a ton of views. Yeah. I appreciate it. And so, you know, made the decision to pivot and start to build that up. And, and that is probably one of the funnest things that I'm doing because I get to do stuff like this, dude. I get to pull up and see you and meet cool people and go to events like Limitless and meet. I mean, dude, think about who was there. Who we like for everyone was Trump, Trump Jr.

Dude, like even Ed Milad, Bedros, some of the best humans that you could ever wish to meet at one spot, you know? Yeah. And like just how impactful that is to be able to be a part of that community. Dude, the ripple effect just from that event will be probably a billion dollars. Crazy. Just all the business that's going to be done over the next 10, 25 years from that event. Yeah.

Yeah. And so I've really enjoyed that. And that has been more a game of like relationships and impact. Right. Yeah. I was at the gym this morning, dude, in Vegas, bro. I'm, I'm in Vegas maybe three or four times a year. And I had like three different people come up and like, thank me for my content and tell,

not just like, Hey, thank you. You know, take a picture and thank you for content. But like, bro, you inspired me to stop smoking weed. Wow. You inspired me to stop drinking. Like, it happened to me just in both airports. I probably met six or seven different people between Utah and Vegas. And like that stuff is like, bro, that's legacy shit.

Yeah, that hits deep, man. You're saving families now. Yeah, so that's cool. Absolutely. I enjoy that. And you yourself were in a sober house, right? For two years, you lived with 11 guys? When I started, yeah.

I mean, I myself was a client at many sober houses before I finally got sober. And then that was the beginning of the business was, yeah. And I think that's important that you got that perspective as a client. And I think that's a big part of why you're crushing it. People ask me all the time, how'd you figure that business out? I was like, I was a client a couple of times. I went to so many of them.

I saw all of them. You probably saw the shitty ones, the good ones. A hundred percent. What they were doing right. What worked right, what went well, what didn't. A hundred percent. Most of them have high turnover, right? Yeah, dude.

I mean, the statistics for people finding recovery are not good. It's very hard, right? Out of every person that comes into an inpatient treatment facility, they say, whoever they is, the people with the studies, say that one out of 33 will make it to a year of sobriety. Dang, that's it? It's only 3%? 3%.

Super low. 100 people come in, dude. Three are making it to a year why do you think it's so low that's how challenging it is a lot of it's mental right it's all mental it's all mental and action and like dude like you come to recovery what do you need to change everything absolutely everything bro everything's gotta go yeah you know your old ideas your belief systems your friends where you go like all of it yeah to change all of it you know absolutely it's very hard and so you know like people you ask them to give up addiction as a as an illness is like this internal

condition of unrest unease and discomfort right you see an addict or an alcoholic in sobriety while they're in the grips of their illness right they're they're not doing so hot right you ever see an alcoholic try to like white knuckle staying sober it's tough right my dad was an alcoholic yeah and so like i don't know if you can relate to this i don't know if it's true we've never talked about it but like in periods of time where your dad would like give up drinking for a couple days or a couple weeks he's probably a bear yeah suffering with anxiety depression restlessness irritability discontentedness like you know like crazy shit because we have such a difficult time regulating our affect and our emotions

because we've become so accustomed to, I can take this, pop that top, drink it, and 100 times out of 100 times, I know exactly how I'm going to feel. Right. And I'm impervious to the world around me, right? Like, if I'm drunk, I'm know drinking or i'm under the effects of heroin dude anything could happen and i'd be like whoa you know what i mean like you'd be emotionless yeah yeah fully totally like it just totally numbs you full affect regulation damn and so you think about that and now we take it away from you like you can't have it anymore

now figure it out. Do the work. Yeah, and sometimes you're in jail, so you're just withdrawing jail too. Yeah. That must be tough. Jeez. What was the longest stint you had in jail?

Months. I was in and out a lot. Okay. Yeah, I was in like a big long term. Nothing serious, nothing like years. No, I never did years. No, no. That's not my story.

Which is impressive because you were dealing it. So most of those guys get. Oh, listen, let me tell you something. It's crazy. You know, running in a circle like myself, I get lumped into all these guys with these crazy stories and like all this stuff. And like somehow like going to prison for long periods of time becomes a badge of honor like i just to put this out there for the world like going to prison doesn't make you like a gangster criminal it just means you got fucking caught yeah like you see what i'm saying yeah they call it street crowd

right i like my i like my gangsters and my criminals are the ones that don't get caught yeah you know the smart, intelligent ones. Yeah, I'd rather roll with those guys for sure. Yeah, you know, and so I did my best to try to avoid ending up in there for a long period of time. Did it, man. On your site, you have a tab dedicated to a lawsuit. Yeah.

You're suing New Hampshire Public Radio? I did. It's over. Okay. Yeah. What was that about? 92 days after I sold my company, they wrote, they were a very liberal news agency.

I have had very conservative political ties for a long period of time. I was tight with the Republican governor. I, you know, had ties to the Trump administration. I mean, I did a lot. And they're a very liberal organization. And they wrote a defamatory hit piece on me saying that I sent, it was, I sold my business December 21st, 2021. And the article came out in March of 2022. Okay.

And they said that I sent a disappearing picture of my penis on Snapchat to a former patient in 2017. Wow. And made it like headline news and called that sexual assault jeez i was like i didn't realize i could assault someone with a fucking dick pic i mean yeah they said did you send a dick pic i said many just not that one you know i never did it it was complete fucking fabricated bullshit damn Damn. And they came at me hard, this little New Hampshire, you know, thing. And it was a bunch of shit. And so, you know, I'm a fighter, dude.

Like, if I was wrong, I would have taken the L. I've done it plenty of times in my life. I would have been like, you know what, guys? I was at a rough time in life, and my conduct was not good. And I own it, and it is what it is. But the fact is, is that they wrote an article with no evidence. There's no picture. They didn't even have a pic. They didn't have anyone that said they saw the pic.

Oh, they didn't even have a girl. Like they had the girl. That's it. Oh, okay. And there's this whole other, there's this whole other, like she had asked me for all this free treatment for her friends. Of course, it's such a big story here to unpack that, you know, I never had a chance to defend myself. They never even, they said that, well, we asked him for a comment.

They just said, they never, like, gave me, like, hey, this is what they said. Would you like to respond? If they had, I would have been like, yeah, I have that girl texting me for two fucking years here's all the messages like of me ignoring her and like all this crazy shit as she was like asking me for free scholarship beds and i was just nuts bro crazy and so yeah when they came at me i had to sit back and i was like i got two sons i got two little boys and i was like i can't just take this dude i'm not i'm not like in this day of you know when things have cooled off a lot that was 2022 this is 2024 yeah but you remember like they had all this like fucking everyone getting me too

and all this crazy media and all this crazy shit going on some of which for those dudes was probably deserved you know what i mean some of which probably was not yeah cancel culture was huge that year i remember huge i was scared of it that it was 92 days after i sold my business yeah so they could still revoke it right they came out of the woodwork yeah something like that could make i don't know what what could happen but i don't nothing i mean there was no there was no case there right i never was i never had a single litigation attorney contact me to sue me they they structured the headline in a way where people thought that i was arrested oh my god law enforcement never not one time contacted me with a single question

not a fucking email not a nothing crazy like there was no investigation there was no report there was no civil suit there was no report. There was no civil suit. There was no anything. There were no witnesses. There were no evidence. Yeah. It was just one fucking lunatic reporter who's obsessed with me, who hasn't written anything about anything besides me since the beginning of COVID. Her entire career has been fucking chasing me around. That's insane.

Just for political belief? I don't know, dude dude she needs a mental health evaluation yeah i i kind of don't so i sued him yeah that makes sense yeah i was like all right you know and at least and the reason i put it on my website it's 398 pages yeah it was long i couldn't even go through the whole thing it's like bro you got a question about he's everything yeah full open kimono right like it's all there every related document to the entire thing so if you have a question about it you google it you see the stupid article you can go on my fucking website the whole lawsuit's there and so before you have

a goddamn thing to say you better read the whole thing before you form an opinion yeah because the facts are crazy dude she used my kid's mom. My contentious, open custody dispute, not a great situation with my oldest son's mother was one of the people coordinating people against me. Really? In cahoots with the fucking reporter. That's going to be a biased opinion, obviously. You think? She's my baby mama.

You know what I mean? I don't know about the rest of you gentlemen. If your baby mamas are in huge support of you. So anyways, I don't really want to talk about it too much. But that's what happened, dude. They came for me. And I had to stand on my back legs and fight for what I thought was right. Yeah, I feel that.

Yeah, certain info. I'm careful with publicizing. Politics is one of them, you know? It was the biggest mistake of my career. Really? If I didn't have i didn't go read the article okay and it's that and then and then the two-thirds of the article or something is about my political relationships how much money i've made how much stuff i have yeah like it was just

this total smear job about nothing that's fucking relevant and it was like tying me to all the political stuff and i threw myself in the political arena yeah i testified to the united states senate in 2015 and the republican party is the one who put me in there in washington dc on the senate floor eric spofford crazy december 7th it's the day that i was celebrating nine years of sobriety and i was in 2015 which is the same year that is leading up to the 2016 election cycle where trump gets fucking elected and so i in that time period i got in there with good intentions, but addiction became a very politicized issue. In the 2016 election, it was the number one issue for voters. Yes, people don't know that.

Oh, I had no idea. Google it. I mean, now that's what, eight years ago? Yeah. Right? So what was the divide there? Like certain side was in favor of these houses, certain side wasn't? No, they were both trying to jockey the issue.

And so if you were an addiction treatment or recovery person of status with an audience, you either got grabbed up by the Republicans or the Democrats. And they like show ponied you. And that's exactly what happened to me. I got show ponied and here's our recovery guy with the Republicans, which put a giant target on my back. Dang.

For sure, dude. Yeah. Cause you're segmenting half the population at that point. I didn't know that. I mean, candidly, like I wasn't, all I was thinking was mind you bro in 2015 the political scenes a lot different yeah it was way more casual way more casual conversations across the aisle shit is fine like people weren't like crazy yet like that stuff is about to happen right it when i got in there it didn't happen

and so i got caught in all of that and like the truth is this is that like i don't care that much you know what i mean i really don't and so they painted me as this big republican i donated to republicans they had all the money that I gave them, and they accused me of fucking getting these – it was crazy, bro. And I care about, like, freedom. I care about our country. I care about addiction. I care about – like, we all have our core issues, right? Like, this is the stuff I really care about.

All of it's important, but, like, I really care about these issues. And addiction for me was mine because all the impact that it had on my life it killed all my friends wow all my friends are dead bro holy crap i almost cried in that stage i played it off if you watch that talk again for anyone that wants to see it or be on my youtube the limitless speech it's 20 minutes long um there's a point in that talk where i stopped and i said that i just explained to people that like everybody that i grew up with is dead all of them they're all gone every single one of them i'm the last of the mohicans i'm the only survivor holy crap and i say it that dramatically so you can really understand how much i mean like

bro i'll give you an image i'm like in my teenage years 16 17 18 years old partying at my dad's house it's a summer night that's happened a hundred times i i got people in my backyard people in my basement you know it's up in new england so we have those basements with like the bulkheads the stairs the double doors open yeah we got the big tall speakers with the speaker wire like going out into the backyard this the cd player bumping dude playing music people drinking beers smoking blunts chilling right i can i can remember some of these parties walking through them philly blunt cracks you know you used to crack the blunts and open them up the philly blunts rolling up weed all my friends all the homies drinking and i'm like walking through and seeing this one and these

people are talking and this group over here and that group over there, this group. And I remember that. And this isn't a made-up thing. These are like actual memories that I have of these parties that I would have at my dad's house. And there's maybe 100 people there, 75 people. And out of those, there's probably like fucking less than five that are still alive. That's insane. When I think about that memory walking through, bro, I'm looking at a bunch of ghosts they're all gone i attended every one of

their funerals every one of their fucking mothers cried on my shoulder oh my gosh and so when it came to like mission this is how i got into politics i started to reach something needs to get done i started reaching out and how i got into the Republican thing was they were the first ones to grab me. If the Republicans, I didn't even, when I started doing that, bro, it sounds stupid, but it might make fun of me. I couldn't have fucking told you what a Democrat or Republican was. We had some senators and I just started writing everyone. I was like, something needs to get done here.

Like, what are we doing? And then the Republicans grabbed me up. Like, I didn't care about politics at all i wasn't even thinking about that so you would have went democrat if they approached you first i would have went the issue anyone that would have listened my fucking friends are dying i'm not only are my friends dying and i talk about them i'm on the front lines of america's addiction crisis and i'm watching thousands of young people die. There are 112,000 people died of fentanyl overdoses in America last year.

You are statistically, as an 18 to 50-year-old American, more likely to die of a drug overdose than a car accident. It surpassed car accidents as a leading cause of loss of accidental loss of life years ago. Wow. Think about that. That's not talked about. New Hampshire, my home state is one of the top per capita overdose death states in the

country. It's, it leads to the top three spots are New Hampshire, Ohio, and Kentucky. Why is New Hampshire so bad? I don't fucking know, dude.

It seems so random.. Seems so random. It's so random. It really is. I have never been able to figure that out. Because they're like, oh, well, maybe it's because there's not a lot going on there. I'm like, there's not much going on in North Dakota either, or Idaho, or Indiana, or you know what I mean? Like, there's a lot of boring states.

Yeah. So I don't know why that is, man. I really don't. But I'm watching people die just falling out around dude like i don't know how to explain there were days single days where my phone would ring and i would know five people that died holy crap on one day yes which sounds dramatic bro but like it was wiping out an entire generation right in front of me yeah because one bad batch is spread mind you i'm the ceo of the largest addiction treatment provider in all of new england so i have visibility like stem to stern you know what i mean like all

the data yeah and so i mean did we treat it we We had 5,000 patients a year. Holy crap. That's like 10 a day, 15 a day. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's a ton. And so, like, it was just overwhelming, bro. It was traumatizing and it was overwhelming. And so that's how I got involved in politics. I did not get involved in politics because I was like, you know, what I'm trying to think of something to say,

I don't even like that. I didn't care about any of it. The only thing that I cared about was what was right in front of me. Yeah. So the Republicans helped out though. Did they, I mean, some things got done,

but we haven't even moderately slowed down this problem. Like nothing's better. It's worse. Yeah. It gets worse every year, right? Health in general is just declining every single year. 100%, yeah. So.

So is the fix just making more of these centers? Is that going to fix it or is there more proactive? No, because you're going to think of it like this. Like only a small percentage of the people that even need treatment get treatment. So by the time they need treatment, they're already a drug addict. So you have to fix the front of the problem. There's a manufacturing line that's creating this. So you have to start asking hard questions like,

why are people becoming alcoholics? And why are people becoming drug addicts? There's more now than ever. Just look at my grandparents, probably your great-grandparents, something's generation. Wasn't like this. Wasn't a predominant problem the way that it is today. There's an amazing guy.

His name is Bruce Alexander. He's a social scientist from Vancouver, Canada. He wrote the foreword to a book that I published, co-authored in 2019 called Real People, Real Recovery, Overcoming Addiction in Modern America. If anyone wants to look that up, it's on Amazon or wherever else you buy books. And he wrote his own book called The Globalization of Addiction, A Study in the Poverty of Spirit. And I believe that he scratched the surface of the root cause of addiction. It's in a really interesting way. I'll tell you about it.

He looked at the belief systems of how we teach addiction to our clinical and medical people in the textbooks. And essentially what he found was there's a science experiment that a lot of people are familiar with, right? They take a rat. They put it in a rat cage. They give it two bottles of drinking water. One has regular H2O. The other one is infused with drugs. They run it with morphine,

which is essentially heroin. And they also run it with cocaine in that they, the rat tries both feels the euphoric intoxicating effects of the drug water prefers the drug water continues to become addicted to drugs, starts to refuse food, goes through full blown addiction and almost always overdoses and dies or dies of drug-related complications from using the drugs, right? The belief system that's born out of that is that drugs are bad. There are chemical hooks in heroin and cocaine, right? Don't you believe this? If you do heroin, what's going to happen?

You'll do it again. You'll be a heroin addict. Yeah. Right? Cocaine's addictive. Don't do it. That's interesting. So the substance is the problem.

So the substance is chemical hooks. And so what stems out of that? Prohibition mindset. The war on drugs. If we, I mean, how many Americans believe that if we eradicate the streets of heroin and cocaine, that there will be no more addiction? Well, we spend fucking a trillion dollars on it, so somebody better at least believe it. It's not true, but they should at least be convicted in that belief, right?

Yeah. should at least be convicted in that belief right yeah bruce looks at you see so you see this little rat and this philosophy and how it stems all the way into how it's had widespread ripple effect through all society crazy okay bruce looks at it and says bruce like in his 80s by the way now i had him come to new hampshire for a live event he took a train wow away i didn't even know that was possible i didn't either. He figured it out. He went here and went there and went here. And then he ended up there.

And, um, but he looks at it and says, wait a minute. We have not considered the environment. What's the worst form of punishment we have for a human being? Jail prison. And if you're bad in prison, what do they do? Sentence you to? And if you're bad in prison, what do they do?

Sentence you to death? If you're bad in prison, what do they do? They make you stay longer, right? They isolate you. Oh, isolate, yeah. They go to SHU, Security Housing Unit. Isolation. One man cell, 23-hour lockdown. They let you out to maybe shower

if you're not birdbathing in your shell or let you out to an isolated cage. It's complete isolation. It's the worst form of punishment besides capital punishment that we have for human beings is isolation. We ran this experiment on a rat who is in the worst form of punishment that we could possibly offer a human. And so he came along and said, let's try something different. And he tried this experiment called Rat Park. And Rat Park was he built this enormous rat cage.

And it had wood chips and rat toys and aluminum cans and, like, dude, everything that a rat would want is in this giant fricking rat cage. It was, like, 10 feet long. And in Rat Park, it's got tunnels, all sorts of shit. And in Rat Park, he introduces the drinking water and he introduces the drug water. If heroin has the chemical compound that will create addiction within a rat or a human being, and that's true,

and the substance is the problem, then the environment doesn't matter. Meaning that those rats are going to be in Rat Park, they're going to go up there, they're going to try both, and they're going to do what the other rat did in isolation. And they're all going to, what's going to happen? If we just gave heroin to society right now, same thing, what's going to happen?

Everyone's going to become a heroin addict in this thing all these rats should become addicted to heroin right yeah the rats try both they get intoxicated they feel the euphoric effects they understand the presence of the drugged water they understand the regular drinking water they rarely ever use the drugged water every once in a while they'll take a little bit because they like to party. But not one rat becomes addicted. Not one rat becomes physically addicted. And no rats die of any overdoses.

Wow. So it's all environment. So interesting enough, to complete the experiment talk, and then we'll unpack that a little bit, what that means for society, and why this will never get any airplay. He goes and takes a rat and puts it in an isolated box, gets it addicted. Now you have this rat that's in isolation that's addicted to heroin. And now he goes and introduces it into this lovely rat park where these rats are procreating, having rat babies, playing in the tunnels and the aluminum cans and living this very productive, modern rat civilized life, right? It's like releasing someone from, you know, whatever, into society.

What happens? The rat understands the drugged water's presence, understands the drinking water, sees the rat community, and chooses to not use drugs, chooses to endure painful withdrawals to come that it should be if a lot of the ways that we think about addiction in modern America and society and Western civilization is correct. And so what he came around, came off of that with is what he describes as the dislocation theory of addiction. And the dislocation theory of addiction, when you look at decade over decade and really peel this back, it's like, wow, this makes a lot of sense. We have a growing stress response. We are under significantly more stress as 20-something and 30-something. How old are you? 27. Okay, I'm glad I didn't fuck that up.

20-something and 30-something men than our parents were at 20 and 30-something. So you think people are more stressed? 100% they are. Interesting. 100%. And as opposed to our grandparents and our great-grandparents. Society is fractured. It's fragmented, right? Connection is the opposite of addiction. When you look at what a human being

is, is that we are native tribal animals, sophisticated pack animals that are meant to be interconnected to each other and have jobs and roles and tasks and missions. We're so far away from our traditional ways and our cultures that like we've become completely dislocated. And as a result of that, we live under a heightened state of stress response. I mean, look at the numbers, look at how many people are diagnosed with a mental health illness. Look at how many people take, I don't know the number, but it's enormous, how many people are prescribed SSRI antidepressants and antipsychotic medication. And there are 330 million Americans,

and there are 46.5 million Americans that have a substance use disorder. Jeez. Think about that. Really high. Fucking enormous. It's huge. It's the most prevalent crisis this country is facing

that nobody talks about. Even I got diagnosed, and I feel like I got pretty good mental resilience, but I got hit with anxiety and depression in college. Yeah. Pretty crazy. Very. You know? And so, you know, why will that never, why will that, that information,

if you have addiction, that information is mind-blowing, right? Why will it never get legs? How do you make money on it? Medicine. This is about changing society. This is about changing the way that we live. You can't prescribe Rat Park to someone, right? Right. And so the reason why it'll never really be impactful on policy or things that happen in modern society is exactly that.

Big pharma, you know, just there's no way to capitalize on it. That makes sense, though. That's why something like AA works because you're around a bunch of sober people. AA is nothing but modern day Rat Park for fucking alcoholics it's a community there's uh traditions there's like it's literally that is why it works yeah and that's why it was so unbelievably successful even though it's so unorganized and not profitable so it's not profitable they don't make any money oh wow i didn't know nobody nobody you can Oh, it's not profitable? They don't make any money. Oh, wow.

I didn't know that. You can't buy stock in AA. But don't you pay them like a fee? No, you go free. Oh, really? They pass a basket and you put a dollar in it as a donation so they can buy cookies and coffee for the meeting. Oh, that's cool.

That's how it should be though. 100%. Yeah. But that's why it blew up and that's why it's so successful. You know? Love it. Yeah, that's great advice though because people watching this, there's going to be someone with addiction if they just get around.

Always, bro. Fuck, always. Dude, I get dozens. I love them. I read every single one of them. I try to respond to as many as I can. Messages and people that come up to me that see this content and it's impactful to them.

Yeah, just change your circle. Get around sober people. 100%. It's it's everything wow that study is fascinating i never would have thought super yeah i would have played the drug yeah anyone who thinks that's fascinating you can get bruce alexander's book globalization of addiction a study in the poverty of spirit that's a book that really it's like this thick love it it. We'll link it below, man. Anything else you want to promote or close off with? Nah, man. Just talking shit. Appreciate it, man. We'll link your IG below. Yeah. Appreciate it, bro. Thanks so much for coming on, man. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for watching, guys. As always, see you tomorrow.