In Search Of Excellence - Damon West: Sentenced to Life in Prison at Age 32 | E119

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

Damon West is an inspirational speaker, author, and college professor with an extraordinary story of redemption. A former college quarterback, Damon fell into meth addiction and organized crime, leading to a life sentence in a Texas prison. During his incarceration, he transformed his life, inspired by the metaphor of a coffee bean that changes its environment. Upon his release, Damon authored four bestselling books, including "The Change Agent" and "The Coffee Bean," which have sold over 10 million copies. Now a motivational speaker and professor at the University of Houston, Damon uses his journey from addiction and crime to inspire others to embrace personal growth and resilience. His powerful narrative is one of the most compelling stories shared on this show.Timestamps:0:00 - Introduction and Damon West's initial experience with crystal meth1:29 - Welcome to the podcast and Damon's background3:03 - Damon’s family and upbringing in Port Arthur, Texas4:14 - Childhood trauma and its impact6:16 - Early exposure to adult behaviors8:20 - Early substance use and athletic career10:22 - Dealing with the aftermath of molestation12:05 - Becoming a star athlete14:15 - The pressures and challenges of being a star athlete16:27 - College football and introduction to hardcore drugs20:56 - First exposure to meth and rapid addiction22:10 - Descent into criminal behavior25:50 - High-functioning addicts and the dangers they face28:14 - Becoming a criminal to fund addiction31:06 - The first burglary and escalation of crimes32:57 - Arrest by the SWAT team33:07 - Initial experiences in jail and realization of the situation35:57 - Impact on family and conversations after sentencing41:08 - Promises to his mother about prison conduct47:59 - Advice from Muhammad and the concept of being a "coffee bean"51:58 - First day in prison and the decision to fight56:39 - Earning respect through basketball1:00:02 - Final fight and handling threats in prisonSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

I fell in love with crystal meth. It's the most evil, most destructive, most addictive drug ever created by me. I smoked it one time, and I was instantly hooked just like that, Randall. And I'm talking about hooked to the point where I started giving everything away. Because that's what addicts do. We give things away. Addicts give up their goals to meet their behaviors. And it's in the period where I'm studying for my Series 7, my Series 63. I'm passed out of sleep at work one day because I've been up partying the weekend before, doing blow and stuff like that. So the broker comes up, he sees me sleeping, he wakes me up and he's visibly shaken. He's like,

man, you can't sleep on this job, Damon. Markets are open. You're messing with people's money, they'll fire you. He said, come on down to the parking garage. I got something to pick you up. So I'll follow him down the parking garage that day. Randomly get into his nice little sports car. And he hands me this glass pipe with these crystal rocks in it. Now I've never seen a glass pipe before. I didn't know what we put in a glass pipe. And I'm like a little bit, I'm like, well, what is that, man? He's like, Damon, just relax. It's crystal meth. He said, you're going to love this stuff. Truer words have never been spoken, brother. When I'm saying that, I mean this,

you can be addicted to anything in life, food, money, clothing, shopping, sex, gambling, pornography, the internet, Instagram, whatever it is. An addict gives up their goals to meet their behaviors. Driven people, focused people, successful people, they'll give up a bad behavior to meet a goal. That's how you know if you're an addict.

If you start giving away the things that are important in life over something, anything, you have addiction issues. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers, and trailblazers of excellent with incredible stories from all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives. My guest today is Damon West. Damon has one of the most incredible and inspirational stories I have ever heard in my life. He's a former meth addict and head of an

organized crime ring who ascends to life in prison, who is now a college professor at the University of Houston, one of the most sought-after motivational speakers in the world. He's the author of four best-selling books that have collectively sold more than 10 million copies and have been translated into more than 30 languages. His books are The Change Agent, How a Former College Quarterback Sentenced to Life in Prison Transformed His World, The Coffee Bean, A Simple Lesson to Create Positive Change, How to Be a Coffee Bean, 111 Life-Changing Ways to Create Positive Change,

which he wrote with our friend John Gordon, and The Locker Room, How Great Teams Heal, Hurt, Overcome Adversity, and Build Unity. Damon is also a dedicated philanthropist. He started the Coffee Bean Foundation to help provide for children of incarcerated parents, one of the reasons of which is because a child of an incarcerated parent is almost 50% more likely to go to prison themselves one day. Damon, thanks for being here. me be here today. I've been waiting for this for a long time. To be in your studio, listen, man, one of the cool things is I've got to watch you grow as you've got to watch me grow, right? We became friends a few years ago and I've watched the ascension, watched the rise. I'm honored to be here, brother. Thank you for having me today.

No, thanks. Thanks for being here. I mean, we did a show two years ago when I was just starting out and you wanted to do it in person, which says a lot about you. You flew here specifically to do the show today. I'm so grateful. And we're going to have just a ton of fun today. I wanted to redo, man, because we did that show and not that the content wasn't good, but the quality wasn't the best we could do. Right. And if you're an overachiever, which I know you are, and I am too, you want it to be perfect. And especially if you become friends with that person, I've become friends with you. And I'm like, I've got to get to LA to do Randall's show. So, I mean, like I get, I got to speak tomorrow right outside

of LA. I'm like, it called you up. You're like, you made it happen. Thank you. I love it. Let's start at the beginning. You're raised in Port Arthur, Texas to what you had said is a dream family. Talk to us about your mom and then especially your dad in the sense that how it is that you can stand alone in spite of all the pressure against doing the right thing. Yeah. And great. I came from a great family, right? My parents were married for 55 years and my father just recently passed away. But 55 years, this two-parent home. My mom's a school teacher and a nurse. My father is a sports writer. God's at the center of everything. You know, this is a wholesome Texas town, middle-class family. My dad was a very famous sports writer, too. He was the first sports writer in Southeast Texas to put black athletes on the front page of sports pages.

Which is 1971. 1971. This football player named Joe Washington Jr. who goes on to play pro football. But when my dad does that in 71, he starts getting his tires slashed. You know, people break his windows out. They send a bunch of hate mail to him. But my dad saved all that hate mail. And when I was a little boy growing up,

he made me read the hate mail. Made me read every nasty negative word that people said about my father and my mother because my dad puts a black guy on the cover of SportsMedia. But he told me this, Randall. He said, Damon, I want you to see what it looks like to take a stand and do the right thing. Because he said, sometimes, Damon, taking a stand and doing the right thing means you're going to stand alone. But he said, it's always okay to stand alone as long as you're standing on the right side of history. So I had a tremendous influence from my parents, right?

They raised me right, came from a great home. I was a good student, great athlete. God blessed me with a cannon for a right arm. And back in Texas, we got this little thing your listeners may have heard of called high school football. Friday Night Lights, right? This is where it originated from. It's the biggest thing ever.

I grew up in it. I grew up in it and it's intoxicating to grow up and you're the man in Friday Night Lights. Like I'm the star quarterback for my town. A three-year starting quarterback for a 5A school. It was the biggest division we man in Friday Night Lights. I'm the star quarterback for my town. A three-year starting quarterback for a 5A school. It was the biggest division we had in Texas back then. Stud quarterback. Everything's going my way. I get a scholarship to play Division I college football at the University of North Texas. By the time I'm 20, I'm a starting quarterback for a

Division I team in America. And I thought I had arrived, Randall. My head was this big. But life, as we know, gives us these days that I call fork in the road days. And those are the days you get knocked down hard. You get up, think we all have challenges in our life that happened to a young kid. I was bullied. I stuttered. Sure. But it was nothing like that. So can you get into some of the details if you're comfortable in terms of what happened? Yeah, absolutely. It was a female babysitter that my parents had hired. She was 18 years old. So she's an adult. And we started experimenting sexually and stuff. Did everything but have intercourse? You started, though. I mean, like, you're nine years old. I mean, you don't just start. I mean, say, hey, what was her name?

First name. I mean, we're not going to get into her last name. We'll say... We'll call her Sheila. Yeah, let's change the name and call her Sheila. Yeah. Okay, so... We'll say Sheila.

Yeah, so Sheila, I mean, she's 18. Yeah. And she's making the move on you. You're nine years old. No, no, no nine year old is reading Playboy at that at that. Yeah. Or interested in that. No, but I mean, she makes the first move on it, of course. And then it starts, you know, cascading into more and more stuff. And, you know, there's stuff you're feeling. Here's the way I just I can describe it to you. When I was nine years old, I got introduced to some very big adult behaviors. Think about it like this, like a big door. Right. That big door. When you're a little kid, you can't get on this other door. It's chained. It's padlocked. It's got two key locks you can't get into. That's the adult door. But if some adult lets you into that door one day because they have all the keys to it, you're walking to the side of the door. But if some adult lets you into that door one day, because they have all the keys to it,

you're walking to the side of that door. Now on the other side of it, there's all these other doors that are just flung open. There's no locks on the other side. So once you're an adult, you can go through any door you want. One of them is drinking, doing drugs, having sex, doing all these different things that are adult behaviors. When I was nine, I got on the other side of that door, man. I was on the other side of the adult door at nine years old. And here's what happened to me, Randall, from the whole thing, is I got introduced to adult behaviors at a really young age, and I liked it. I liked it a lot. And it affected every relationship I had after that,

because everything after that became something of a sexual nature, right? Wait, at nine years old, at 10 years old, I know you began drinking at 10 years old, smoking pot at 12. But at nine years old and 10 years old, you're thinking of sexual thoughts the entire time? Yeah. I'd just been introduced to something like no nine-year-old gets introduced to, right? So that's the thought of it. When I was 12 was the first time I ever had sex, right? At 12 years old? At 12 years old. With someone other than the babysitter? No, the babysitter would never had intercourse. So how old was the woman at 12 years old you had sex with?

14. She was 14, I was 12. And how did that come about? Was it just a friend? Oh, yeah, I can tell you. It was 1988. I remember the year. And it was 1988. I was 12 years old. I was staying at a friend's house. My parents were out of town that weekend, so my two brothers went and stayed at a different friend's house. I stayed at a friend's house for, my parents were out of town that weekend. So all of my two brothers went and stayed at a different friend's house. I stayed at another friend's house.

And that friend had a sister who was 14 years old. And, you know, throughout the weekend, there was, you know, vibes going on, stuff like that. And I'm like, so it happens, you know, that weekend. 12 years old. It happened in 1980. But that was where I was focused. Every relationship I had, Randall, I'm telling you, was infected with this thing about sex. And the other bad part about

relationships for me is that it was always about me. It was a very selfish thing. And relationships are two-way streets. I don't even understand relationships in my life until I get to a point later in life where I work a program recovery, a 12-step program recovery, right? Arrested development happens for me at nine years old when it comes to like sexuality and selfishness and stuff like that. So yeah, I was very stunted in my growth after that. That's what happened to me at nine years old. I got introduced to some adult behaviors that most people don't get introduced to at that age that you don't need to be introduced to at that age, right? So when I talk about that, it's always like to denote that the molestation thing, it wasn't one of those events where it was traumatic for me, like it is for a lot of people that get molested,

right? A lot of people get molested and it's very traumatic. For me, it was that introduction to another world that I didn't need to be introduced to at that time. That's what it did for me. Many kids who are molested and it's a horrific problem, they're ashamed and they don't tell their parents. Yeah. So I think we should send a message to all the people out there today who have been molested to go seek help. Absolutely.

And to go get help, because I think it's very hard to recover from. But you're spot on. You're hitting the next part of this thing. So my parents send me to a family psychiatrist. You told them what happened. Told're what's your spot on. You're hitting the next part of this thing. And so my parents send me to a family, a family psychiatrist. He told them what happened, told him what happened. How old, how long after it happened? Did you tell him? That's six months into it. And it came out in a conversation. Um, my brothers knew something was going on because I mean, I got two brothers at the time, there's something going on. So it came out of the conversation. And I mean, it wasn't a cry for help kind of thing. It was just like, hey, you know, this is going on. And of course, you know, the babysitter's

fired immediately. But this is the 1980s. They're not going to press charges on a female babysitter. And that's another thing about it too, Randall. This is a female babysitter that this happened with, right? So it wasn't- If it were a flip, there would be very different consequences. Oh yeah. It'd be very different consequences, right? And so I'm not here to diminish anybody's seriousness of what they've had with molestation. But what happened to me is I got introduced to those dope behaviors. Like I told you, I'm on the other side of that door. Now, at 10, I see my dad drinking beer all the time.

You know, not all the time. He had a beer, you know, every now and then. But there's beer in the fridge. I got into his beer one day. Liked the way that tastes. I liked the way the alcohol felt in my system at 10 years old, Randall. My mom smoked cigarettes in the fridge. I got into my beer. I got into his beer one day. Like the way that tastes. I like the way the alcohol felt my system at 10 years old. Randall, my mom smoked cigarettes at the time. I started stealing my mom's cigarettes and smoking cigarettes when I'm 10, 11 years old, 12. Now I'm smoking joints for the first time in sixth grade. I'm having sex for the first time in sixth grade. You see the progression of adult behaviors that's happening for this kid

that was once on the other side of that big door. And you're a stud athlete, right? Stud athlete. And I mean, like you said, Friday Night Lights in Texas is everything. So the girl, I mean, you're a very good looking guy, great personality. So are you just the man at high school and just- Oh yeah, and I was so full of myself too. No one's telling you something negative either, right? No, man, no. You didn't want to hear it anyway, even if they did. No, man. And I mean, and I knew I was so full of myself, too. No one's telling you something negative either, right? No, man, no. You didn't want to hear it anyway, even if they did. No, man. And I mean, I knew I was very cocky, very arrogant back then. I hadn't been humbled yet, right?

That was going to come later in life when I got really humbled. But yeah, I was a really cocky, arrogant guy. You know, you're a starting quarterback for a 5A school for three years. You got some juice, man. You're good. Because that's the biggest division there was in high school football back then. You get a scholarship to play D1, you're pretty good. When did you first learn that you had the cannon for an arm? How old were you when you said, oh, I got a gift? I'll tell you this. Whenever I was 11 years old, up until the

point where I was 10 or 11, I was the last picked in every sport for everything. I had no idea that I was a good athlete. This coach named John Bass was my little league baseball coach when I was 11 years old. He sees something in me that no other coach had ever seen because these are, you know, these are parents that teach the coach the teams, but he was a real coach. He's like, man, you have the best eye hand coordination I've ever seen. If you listen to me, let me instruct you. I can make you to a great player. That year I won the batting title in Little League. Then I'm throwing the baseball around. He's like, man, you've got a cannon for an arm. Let's get you throwing with the right mechanics. Now I'm throwing the ball in the seventies when I'm 12 years old, you know, seventies. And by the time I'm in high school,

I'm in the high eighties, you know, low nineties, high eighties, that kind of thing. I pick up a football in seventh grade. I can throw that thing too. Then I start working out really hard because I fell in love with playing quarterback. I love the role of quarterback, Randall. I mean, the quarterback, it's the most cerebral position, first of all, in all the sports. Yeah. You got to know what the 11 guys on defense are doing, what your 11 guys on offense are doing. You've got to know what everybody, you're the general on the field. You've got the decision-making power. And I love the idea that the quarterback was the man that touched the ball in the way we play, you know, on offense. That was something I wanted,

man. I wanted the spot, right? I wanted the responsibility of having the ball in my hand. I think we've talked about this. I didn't play football, never played it down. I've seen you throw a ball. I've seen you throw a ball. You can throw a ball. So the highlight of my career is i never played football and i think i shared this with you but i'll share with the viewers and uh listeners today was i'm at a wedding in baker's bay in the bahamas and there's this guy jawing at me you know stocky guy oh you know let's throw the ball and he said i i can go i'm like well i kind of throw it too and so we get out there and he's you you know, you warm up.

I mean, you want to warm up the arm, right? And just kind of get it going. And he's firing a bull's threat. I'm like, oh man, you know, whatever. Tom Brady is at this wedding and Giselle is there too. So you got the water, the beach. Giselle is maybe a hundred yards up in the shade reading a book. And this guy and I, you know, back up, back up.

And, you know, once you got the arm ready and, know we got the tight spirals okay whatever so we're 20 yards 25 30 35 and at like 35 he's he's having to come in and i'm having to come in to catch his ball but i'm having no problem with you know yeah spiral and it's you know there's a little bit of arc on it but not that much and you know they're coming in hard and it finally goes okay back now we're about 40 yards and for a 140 come back and then i said okay back up back up and he goes like this there's no way man and tom brady i see walking behind me so tom's walking this way and my wife is right here just watching you know she's just chilling in the sun watching y'all or watching tom um tom she didn't know tom so her bat so she was facing the water yeah and tom is walking behind her towards us yeah and i'm here and he's walking this way but i can see him uh uh the corner of my

he's going in the water and so i waited i paused and as tom was walking by i fucking let one loose i mean i threw it 50 yards so i went way over this guy's head and tom stops they said holy shit what a cannon and then i turned so when the goat tells me i got a cannon it was the best thing and my wife is sitting there and she said i heard it i heard it i'm gonna hear it for the rest of my life i said you're damn right you're gonna hear for the rest absolutely that was the best moment i've ever career for a guy that never never played a down a football that's a cool story randall that's really cool yeah yeah it's cool so you said you're the star of the team you're the guy but he said what comes up must come down yeah so talk to us about that

what do you mean by that yeah what goes up must come down. Like, I'd function at a very high level because I worked hard at it, Randall. I got up every morning while everybody else was asleep. This is high school, man. I get up every morning. I'm running. I'll go to the weight room. I've got a tire swing in the field across from my house. I've got a bag of footballs.

I'm doing stuff no one else do because I want to go play college football. I want to be a Division I college quarterback. Problem is I'm 5'10", right? This is back in the early 90s. No one wanted 5'10 quarterbacks. There wasn't this Johnny Manziel thing. No Drew Brees. No Drew Brees.

This is way before all these people. And so my dad, who's a sports writer, he knows how the game is played. So recruiting is going on in football, and I'm being recruited by everybody because he said, hey, Damon, my dad's 6'2", my older brother's 6'3", my mom's like 5'7", 5'8". You're going to grow. Don't worry about that. So what we're going to do in these highlight films,

you made little VCR tapes of your highlight films of all your stuff, and I had a great junior year, Randall. I'm a blue-chip quarterback. This is before they had the star system. I'm one of the best quarterbacks rated in America going into my senior year. And my dad, we have put out there that I'm like 6'1 or 6'2, like 175 pounds. So all these colleges are watching this tape of this guy with this cannon. I can throw 65 yards, 70 yards. Sick, man. I'm chucking the ball three-quarters of the field out there in some of these plays. Cannon. And prototypical size.

Dude, everybody in being recruited by Miami, Florida State, Florida. Think about Florida State, Florida, Miami in the early 90s. Bobby Bowden was a coach back then? Bobby Bowden was a coach back then. Terry Donahue was a coach at UCLA at the time. So all these big schools are recruiting me, man. And I think, man, this is great. All these schools.

I watch college football with my dad on Saturdays, right? I'm going to go play for one of these big schools. Steve Spurrier is writing me handwritten letters from University of Florida, right? So in the spring, going into my senior year, we're wrapping up spring football. Just came off that good junior year. Terry Donahue from UCLA is coming into Port Arthur, Texas. He wants to see this stud quarterback, this bullshit named Damon West. Gets to the parking lot, pulls up, and I see him getting out. And I'm like, man, that's Terry Donahue. So I'm warming up and I'm doing what you're doing with throwing the football. I'm

putting a little more pepper on it, warming up the guy. This guy named So Stan that I'm warming up with. And I see him talking to my head coach and they had this conversation, arms were flailing and stuff like that. And he gets in his car and he leaves. So after, after practice, I'm dying to know what's going on, man.

Why did he not stay? Where's Terry Donahue? Where'd he go? After practice, my coach told me, he said, man, listen,

he came out here and he, and he, first of all, he said, where's, where's Wes? I want to see, I'm here to see Wes.

And he points, Wes is warming up over there. He said, well, I thought Wes was white because the guy I'm warming up with is a black guy. He's tall. He said, yeah, he is. He's a white guy standing next to black. He's warming up with a black guy.

And he said, that guy's not 6'2". How tall is Wes? He's like, look, he's 5'10", but he's going to grow. He's like, I don't want to hear about somebody who's going to grow. And Terry Donahue leaves that day and he lets everybody in America know that Damon West is 5'10", but he's going to grow. He's like, I don't want to hear about somebody who's going to grow. Terry Donahue leaves that day and he lets everybody in America know that Damon West is 5'10". I've never told this story before actually on a podcast. That's when the word got out that I wasn't really this prototypical size. The game was up. The lie that we had going on in the highlight films, it was eventually going to get caught because I didn't grow, but everybody dropped me, man.

None of these schools wanted to recruit me anymore. I ended up playing. I ended up signing at the University of North Texas, Division I college football, University of North Texas. And, man, I went out there with a chip on my shoulder. And a chip on your shoulder is not a bad thing to have sometimes. I mean, you can play at a different level when you're playing with something right there reminding you.

Tom Brady had a big chip on his shoulder, right? Massive chip on his shoulder. He was Mr. Insignificant, right? Yeah. But I had a big chip on my shoulder playing college football, and I went in there and eventually earned that starting job when I was 20 years old, my redshirt sophomore year. I'm three years into college football.

I redshirted my whole first year, played a little bit my redshirt freshman year, and then redshirt sophomore year second game of the season i get the starting job first game first game ever started was against arizona state jay plumber's a quarterback pat tillman's on that team but against pat tillman played against all those guys they were number two in the nation that year great american hero for those people who don't know absolutely just give the one-liner on pat tillman yeah he is he was he was incredible player too by the way i mean vicious on the field for people what what what happened he left the pros oh yeah he volunteered to go to afghanistan i believe yeah

he played for the played for the arizona cardinals his dream of playing pro football uh after september 11th we go to war in afghanistan in iraq he leaves the nfl dream. Dream job. Everything. Money. To go defend his country and become an Army Ranger. And he's killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan a couple years later, or maybe a year later. I don't remember exactly the timeline. I read the book in prison, boots on the ground by dusk. True American hero. True American hero.

This guy walked away from the NFL to go fight for his country. Yeah. And I can tell you, man, just from playing against him that one game, he was vicious on the field, man. Just brutal on the field, swung me around. And after the game, he comes up and gives me a hug. Man, great job. You did great. You took it well.

You know, super nice guy. But when you're in between the 60 minutes playing a game against him, he was ferocious. He was a great competitor. So let's talk about you're done with college. You go to work in D.C., ending up as a stockbroker. And then some guy invites you down to his car. Yes.

Because you retire. So, yeah, the week after the Arizona State game, playing against Texas A&M, third play of that game, I go down. Career and injury. My career is over. College flew out prematurely. And it's really a big fork in the road for me. That's when I get into hardcore drugs. The hallmark of being an addict is that you can't live life on life's

terms. That's what addicts do. We don't live life on life's terms, so we put in chemicals. Now I'm doing cocaine, ecstasy pills. I'm partying a lot. My grades are suffering. But I'm functional enough to graduate college in 99, move off to Washington, D.C., work in the United States Congress. After that, I worked for a guy running for president, doing political fundraising all over America for this guy running for president of the United States. Who was it? Dick Gephardt. Okay. Dick Gephardt was the minority leader of the U.S. House Democrat for Missouri. Okay. So after Dick dropped out of the race, I moved back to Dallas in 2004 to be a stockbroker. Now imagine, I'm getting ready to go be a broker dealer for UBS, United Bank of Switzerland. And I've just been dealing with millionaires and billionaires doing fundraising. I've got a book like this of people with money.

And so UBS is like, yes, come work for us. And I go to Dallas and go to be a stockbroker. And it's in the period where I'm studying for my series seven, my series 63. I'm past out of sleep at work one day because I've been up partying the weekend before, doing blow and stuff like that. So the broker comes up, he sees me sleeping, he wakes me up and he's visibly shaking. He's like, man, you can't sleep on this job, Damon. Markets are open. You're messing with people's money. They'll fire you. He said, come on down to the parking garage. I got something to pick you up. So I'll follow him down to the parking garage that day, Randall. We get into his nice little sports car and he hands me this glass pipe with

these crystal rocks in it. Now, I've never seen a glass pipe before. I didn't know what you put in a glass pipe. And I'm like a little bit, I'm like, well, what is that, man? He's like, Damon, just relax. It's crystal meth. He said, you're going to love this stuff. Truer words have never been spoken, brother. I fell in love with crystal meth. It's the you're going to love this stuff. Truer words had never been spoken, brother. I fell in love with crystal meth. It's the most evil, most destructive, most addictive drug ever created by me. I smoked it one time. I was instantly hooked just like that, Randall. And I'm talking about hooked to the point where I started giving everything away. Because that's what addicts do. We give things away. Addicts give up their goals to meet their

behaviors. When I'm saying that, I mean this, you can be addicted to anything in life, food, money, clothing, shopping, sex, gambling, pornography, the internet, Instagram, whatever it is. An addict gives up their goals to meet their behaviors. Driven people, focused people, successful people, they'll give up a bad behavior to meet a goal. That's how you know if you're an addict. If you start giving away the things that are important in life over something, anything, you've got addiction issues. So one of the things that I want to digress for one minute, because I was having dinner last night, my wife and I with a friend, very successful guy,

who has been in the program now 15 years. He just had his 15-year chip and was working on Wall Street, very successful in New York, and finally realized he had a problem. Highly functioning, making millions of dollars a year, and even in the community where we live and throughout the country, there's a lot of very high-functioning people doing cocaine every day and doing drugs. I've never done drugs before. And I'm very

surprised how it's very common in the workforce, way more than I thought, highly functioning, successful people. Let's give a little encouragement to all the people out there today. If you're doing drugs, doing cocaine, I mean, these are people that have families, kids, young kids. I've seen people doing cocaine at kids' parties, you know, lines on the table, and I'm just, I'm blown away. Yeah, it'd be tough to be a kid right now too, especially with the fentanyl and everything else that's in drugs. I don't think I'd be alive right now if I were still out in the street doing drugs because of what's laced in a lot of the drugs. Right. Kids now are bringing, kids in college, cocaine is rampant in college,

are bringing fentanyl tests before they do cocaine now. That's things that are standard for a lot of kids who are doing even recreational, not daily, which is just crazy, crazy. It's crazy that we're at that point in America like that. But I get the addiction stuff you're talking about. I was a very functional addict for a very long time. But once I touched crystal meth, it was over, man. I thought it was a wonder drug at first, right? I'm up for three or four to eight. I can get all this stuff done. But what goes up must come down.

All right. Let's talk about the down now. Yes. We're coming down now at this point. What's that? That's it. We're coming down now. We're coming down now. So you smoke it for the first time and then you became a drug kingpin. Walk us through how it came from daily use to dealing to being a kingpin and then talk about someone just crashing through the living room one day after three years, people trying to find you. Yeah. So in the word kingpin, like we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll back up until the audience that the, the mastermind of the organized crime

ring. I wasn't ever a drug kingpin because I was so addicted to drugs. I couldn't be a drug kingpin, right? But drugs were the center of everything in my life at this point. Meth, meth specifically. Once I try it for the first time, I'm instantly hooked. And I gave away my job, my home, my car, my savings account, my family, my tethering to God. In 18 months, I go from working on Wall Street to living on the streets. And when I say living on the streets, Randall, I've slept in abandoned buildings. I've slept on park benches. I've slept in dope houses. I slept in a lot of cars at first, too.

Anything to keep a roof over you, right? And then I become a criminal to fund my addiction. And it started off with petty cars at first too. Anything to keep a roof over you, right? And then I become a criminal to fund my addiction. And it started off with petty crimes at first. And it's shoplifting, breaking into cars, breaking into storage units. Then I start breaking into people's homes. Now, Randall, this is a serious crime. These burglaries I committed, burglaries are very serious, Randall. I mean, I've got a family now. I've got a stepdaughter. I've got a wife. I've got pets. I've got my mom. I'm building a house for my mom. I can't imagine someone breaking into my house and doing what I did to my victims. I can't imagine that.

Walk us through the mentality of the first time you realize this is a step up, right? Shoplifting to cracking open a door, going through a window and entering the house for the second. Were you nervous? Holy shit, like this is a whole nother level. Nervous? Yes, because I don't want to run into anybody. I know what I'm doing is wrong too, Randall. I'm fully aware of that, but I'm a drug addict. Drug addicts can justify anything, man. That's what addiction does. It's a disease. You justify any of your behavior. You justify, I know what I'm doing's wrong, but I want to get high and I don't have a job. I'm unemployable. I live in and out of dope houses, stuff like that. And I know that what I'm doing is wrong, but I want to get high.

That's what drug addicts do. You do whatever it takes. You want what you want when you want it. And the first time I broke into a house, yeah, nervous about it. No one was home. I knew no one was home. Some of the way, I would always make sure nobody was home. But how do you know for sure?

You hear these stories about you're going in there and someone's in there that's not, they're sleeping in a room. Great question. You hear this all the time. Great question. When I first started doing it, before, we'll start with the very first one. So you go up above the first floor in a condo building, right, in Dallas, in Uptown Dallas. They called them the Uptown Burgers.

They called me the Uptown Burger. Before they even knew who I was, these Uptown Burgers are happening. And they didn't just happen in Uptown Dallas. They called them the Uptown Burgers. They called me the Uptown Burger. Before they even knew who I was, these Uptown Burgers are happening. And that didn't just happen in Uptown. We've broken into places all over the DFW Metroplex. This is on the news. I mean, you got a name. This is on the news. There's a newspaper. Yeah, there's about a dozen meth addicts in this ring. Young and old, male and female, black and white, and everything in between because drugs and addiction don't discriminate. Addiction doesn't care who you are, where you come from. So there's all kinds of different people in this burglary crew. But when I first start doing this thing, it's not a burglary crew, it's Damon West. And I go

anything above the first floor of a condo building, right? And you see a bunch of menus and stuff shoved in the door, or you see a bunch of papers and packages in front of the door. Nobody's home. There's no back door you can go out. Your back door is a balcony. You've got gravity working against you when you're above the first floor. That's how I knew no one was home. When you have a bunch of flyers and newspapers are a dead giveaway. Newspapers aren't so much anymore because we don't see that as much in society. But when you have a week's worth of newspapers, you can kind of date how far back someone's been home, right? They're not home. So that's how it started. Then I realized that that wasn't, you know, if I was going to really do this, I needed more information to break into people's houses. I mean, because Randall, I didn't want to run anybody. I didn't, I knew what I was doing was

wrong. The last thing I want to do is run into somebody, they get hurt or I get hurt, you know? Right. I'm not a, I'm not a violent guy i'm a drug addict so that's the first one first one what did you steal i broke into a post office you don't know the first first burglary first burglary oh electronics i mean that was tv tv walking out of a condo building with a tv in your hand and putting it into a trunk without someone saying i mean you can you can easily. It looked like you're moving something, right? Eventually when the burglaries got going on more sophisticated, we had a white moving truck. We had guys dressed up in Dickie overalls. I mean, a guy walked around with a clipboard. We would take a moving company, you know,

and people were getting the gate for it. So holding the security gate for, Oh, let me get the gate for you. You know, you got dollies, you're rolling people's stuff out. That's when it gets more sophisticated. But when I first do it, you know, you're looking for TVs, laptops, jewelry, stuff like that, you know. So that's how the burglaries first start. You're doing that. And I mean, you can get the stuff out of a place. If you can get it out of the door, you can get out of the place. But one of the break-ins I did when I first started doing this, I broke into a U.S. post office and I stole a mailman uniform because no one really knows what the mailman looks like. I mean, some people might, but I mean, in this area of Dallas where I am, I get a mailman uniform and that becomes my key to get into a lot of places.

You know, sometimes I'd wait till the real mailman would leave that condo building and I'd go in after him. And they have a mail kiosk inside of these condo buildings. And, you know, on three sides of the wall in the mail kiosk are these little slots on the outside. You have your key to one of your little box. But if you can get in that big door, again, we're talking about going through doors. If you can get in that big door, inside that room is all these slots that are open that the mailman goes in and does the mail. Some of the slots would have mail stacked up. No one's home. Some of the slots would have a note that says out of town from this state to this state, hold our mail. And that's how I would go and select who some of the victims would be. I'd make sure no one was ever home. All right. So talk to us about the day you're sitting in the living room and all of a sudden

you wake up with, there's a blast, right? Man, it's so- It sounds like a bomb. I can tell you the date. It's July 30th, 2008. These burglaries have gone on for three years, right? And this crew that we've got together, I got a partner in crime named Dustin. Dustin's my right-hand man. He knows everything about the operation. And Dustin had just been picked up 10 days before. The Dallas police had him in custody. So they got my partner in crime in custody, which means it's only a matter of time before they have me in custody.

He knew it was coming. Oh, I'm sitting, yeah. And I'm sitting on the couch. My dope dealer's there. His name is Tex. And I'm sitting there smoking meth with Tex. And I'm like, dude, Tex, drop off the dope. Get out of here.

You got to go. The cops are closing on me. The end is near. And just as I pass the pipe back to Tex, the window on my right blows out and shatters. Pew! And tumbling across my living room floor is a little canister going end over end and smoking

Randall. I've seen this movie, right? I know what's about to go down in this living room, and I think I can get out of there in time. I get up and start running. It was too late. This flashbang grenade blows up in my face. Boom! Bright white light, loud noise. Loud. Loud. Bang. My ears are ringing. Blows me back on the couch loud. Bang. Boom. I'm back. And when I came to, when I can see it here again, I'm on the ground. There's a cop. He's got his boot on my chest.

The barrel of a rifle sticking in my eye so I could get his fingers over the trigger. This cop is screaming at me because my ears have been ringing, right? He's screaming, don't move, don't move. And I'm like, man, don't worry, don't worry, right? Like I'm looking at the barrel of a gun, right? You know you're high, by the way. High as a kite. But that'll sober you up real quick when a SWAT team comes into your living room. And one of the Dallas SWAT officers screamed out loud, we got him. We got the uptown burglar. They said it out loud. I heard it from them.

They were rejoicing. They were happy and good because I was a bad guy. They got a bad guy off the streets. But I look back on that event now, Randall, the Dallas SWAT team didn't just arrest me that day. They rescued me that day. They pulled me out of a situation I clearly was never going to get myself out of, right? The angels in my story don't have wings. My angels had assault rifles, shields. They had helmets on. They came through the window. They busted my door off the hinges. They pulled me out of this world that I was in. They saved my life that day, Randall. But I didn't understand it then. I didn't understand it until I was years into prison. And I finally put it together. The SWAT team saved me. And when I talk to audiences, sometimes I talk about the SWAT teams of life that come for us in different ways,

right? The SWAT team can come for you through a divorce, through a bankruptcy. Something happens to your child. Somebody dies, your pet. SWAT teams are always coming for us. But the idea is when we can look at the situation of adversity when the SWAT team comes, what's the opportunity in that adversity? What's life trying to teach me with this adversity I'm in right now? Dallas SWAT saved my life that day, man. So we'll get to the sobriety in a minute, but did the sobriety start when you're in the backseat, coughed, knowing you're not going to get more meth? And what was the feeling you had when they put you in the jail cell for the first time? You know, you get the headshot and you're sitting at some point. Do

you remember the exact moment you got in that cell and you're looking around? What are you feeling that day? Trapped. Trapped. And how am I going to get my dope now? That's exactly what I'm thinking about. I'm an addict, right? No. Am I just stone cold sober because I just got arrested? No. I'm sitting here plotting out how am I going to get dope right into Dallas County Jail. I'm talking to some of these cartel guys that are coming off the street from East Dallas, these Hispanic guys, and I'm trying to get them to bring dope in. And oh yeah, we'll get some in, but nobody could ever get any dope into Dallas County Jail. I'm fiending for this stuff, Randall. I'm coming down.

This party that I've been on for three years is over now. Are you shaking at this point? Because you hear all this stuff. Well, I'm not going through shakes. What I am doing is I'm sleeping a lot more and I'm eating a lot more, right? I put on 65 pounds when I was in Dallas County jail. Yeah. When I got arrested and when I went to prison, I put on 65 pounds when I was in Dallas County Jail. Yeah. When I got arrested and when I went to prison,

I put on 65 pounds. I'm sitting around eating honey buns and ramen noodle soups. I'm depressed. I'm locked up. I couldn't get any dope in. I'm going to trial for a first-degree felony for organized crime, potential life sentence hanging over me. All my world fell apart. And one of the things, criminals are stupid. We're stupid people who are criminals, right? I'm on the phone in that jail because I'm trying to get out, right? The dope is talking to me, get out of here. That's how you're going to get high. So I'm calling people from the dope world that owe me money. My bond was, when they first sent my bond, when I got there, it was a quarter of a million. And I'm like, oh, I got to get 20, I got 10% of that, right? I can get 25,000. I can hold a telethon on this phone. So I start calling people up from the dope world that owe me money. I'm like, man, you owe me for this job. Bring that money down here. And I'm in jail, man. These guys aren't going to do that.

Yeah, we'll see you in a little bit. But what was happening is the police are listening to these calls. They tell you before you get on the phone, it's being recorded. The cops are going and picking up every single person I'm calling, right? The biggest witness against me in my trial was me. And I didn't take the stand. They played back all these recordings. And I sound like a mob boss, right? They're trying, they call me the Al Capone of Dallas at my trial, the Tony Soprano of Dallas, right? Because on this phone, I sound like one of those guys. I'm like, man, you owe me, bring me my money. I want my money right now. Stuff like that, they're here on the phones, but I'm just a dope addict, man. I'm a junkie. I didn't have anything in my name. When the cops came and

got me that day, there was no money to be found. There was a bunch of stolen goods at another address. We called it the safe house. It was about $2 million worth of stolen stuff was there. Everything from wheels to handbags to electronics, you get so messed up on this dope, you can't even move the stuff you've got. And one of the things that happened too, Randall, is you become addicted to the burglaries, you know? You become addicted to the process of getting ready to break into a place. You know, you get the rush from it. And you're an addict. Now you're breaking into places. You're not even moving your stuff

fast enough. I got dope guys coming in, getting stuff. But as long as I have enough in my pocket to keep me high, I'm not trying to move the rest of the stuff. So when the cops get me, there's another address that has all this stuff. There's nothing in my house. But now I'm in Dallas County jail with a quarter million dollar bond. I'm making these phone calls and they're listening to them. And then one night in Dallas County jail, within the first month I'm in Dallas County Jail with a quarter million dollar bond. I'm making these phone calls and they're listening to them. And then one night in Dallas County Jail, within the first month I'm in there, I get hit with like 15 indictments in one night, 15 indictments. And every indictment has a bond amount attached to it. My bond goes from a quarter of a million dollars to 1.4 million overnight because they're afraid of my bond out, right? I'm having these calls going on. So my bond is $1.4 million. To give you some context for this, there's 9,000 people in Dallas

County Jail. This is one of the biggest jails in America. 9,000. 9,000 people in Dallas County. This is one little county in, not little county, it's a big county in Texas. Just think of that, that's a half of basketball stadium or a hockey stadium in one building. That's crazy. Yeah. 9,000 people. County jail, not. Dallas County jail, 9,000 inmates, no one else, not murderers, child molesters, rapists had a bond of 1.4 million. I had the highest bond in Dallas County jail. And my crime, my crimes are property crimes, Randall. No one's ever home. No one got hurt. No weapons were used. And we didn't hurt anybody physically, right? But we stole.

This is what I was going to tell you a while ago. The seriousness of the burglaries that I understood later on is when I broke into people's homes, I didn't just steal their property. I stole their sense of security. I can't get that back to them, Randall. I can't fix it for them. I can't change what I did. I can't even it for him. I can't change what I did. I can't even apologize

to my victims. In the state of Texas, they've got a law that says it's a felony to apologize to the victim of one of your crimes. They will send you back to prison if you ever try to make an apology to any of the victims of your crime. Because they don't want you having contact with that person. No contact with the victim. And I think- It could just make them relive what happened to them at that moment. And that's why the law is there. And scare them that you're going to come after them. I understand why the law is there.

I'm not a violent guy. I think the law is designed because I think... Think of the victim of a rape. Yeah, right. You think of the victim of a rape, really wants the rapist to get out of prison and say, hey, I want to come back and tell you how sorry I am for doing that. So Texas has a law there for a reason. And I've got to obey the law. I'll never apologize to victim of a crime. I can't do it. In recovery, like your friends in recovery, the eighth step

of the 12th step says you make a list of all the people you've harmed. You become willing to make the amends. Now, the ninth step. Ninth step was where the robber meets the road in a program of recovery. That's when you go out and make amends to all these people you've harmed, but they have a little caveat in there. Except when to do so would cause you or that other person harm. So, I can't make an apology. Going back to prison causes me harm, right? So instead of making apologies where you can't make them, you do what's called a living amends. A living amends means you go out and do good deeds and you expect nothing in return. And that's how you clean your slate for the apologies you can't make in life.

Go back to the moment that you're in jail. What did your parents say to you when they came to visit you for the first time? And did you cry having to explain what you did to your parents? First of all, the phone call that I made to my parents, you know, my dad is, my dad's in tears. I've never heard my dad cry. I've never seen him cry. But it was the first time for that for me. And he's like, how did we go wrong? You know, with all we raised you right.

All these things a parent would say. My mom takes the phone from my dad. She gets on the phone. She's like, Damon, I've never seen your dad like this before, but we need to have a serious conversation. We need to talk. She said, you need to understand that we love you unconditionally. She said, unconditional love. There's nothing you can do to understand that we love you unconditionally. She said, unconditional love. There's nothing you can do to make us not love you.

A phone call, not in person. This is a phone call. Yeah, this is a phone call. There's an in-person visit I'm going to tell you about in a second too. But she said, there's nothing you can do to make us not love you. She said, that was the deal we made with God when he loans you to us. She said, are you understanding what I'm saying? And I was like, yeah, I got it.

And she said, good, because we just gave you back to God. She said, there's nothing we can do for you anymore, Damon. You're now in Dallas County Jail. You're now a captive audience to God. You better start listening to him. And so these phone calls that I have of my parents, you know, I'm still talking about how I'm innocent. They got the wrong guy. I'm an addict, man.

I'm delusional. Addicts have delusional thinking. We lie. They got the wrong guy. I'm an addict, man. I'm delusional. Addicts have delusional thinking. We lie, we cheat, we manipulate, we steal. But all that's going to come to an end on May 18th, 2009. Now, Randall, I got arrested on July 30th, 2008. 10 months later, I'm in a courtroom for a first-degree felony organized crime, RICO case, right? In 10 months, they got me in the courtroom. That's called the rocket docket. That means they want you in a courtroom. They want to make an example out of you. They got me to trial fast. That's rocket fast, right? The trial lasted for six days. For six days, the jury heard this overwhelming evidence of my guilt. Overwhelming. I'm guilty of everything,

Randall. I did everything they said. It's an organized crime. So in a RICO case, this is how it works. The guy at the top, that's the targeted prosecutor. And to get the guy at the top, you can take all the crimes that people below that guy committed, and he stands trial for all the crimes of the whole group. So now I'm at trial for crimes I committed and crimes that everybody else committed. There's some crimes at the trial that I wasn't even in on. I didn't even know about. In fact, I realized I got cut out of some of this stuff once I got to my trial, right? But at the end of that trial, the jury heard so much overwhelming evidence, they went to deliberate for 10 minutes. 10 minutes. I don't know how much law and order you

watch, but if a jury's gone for 10 minutes, it means they smoked you. They bring me back to the courtroom, and. The judge reads the sentence out loud with a grin on his face. He said, Damon Joseph West, you are hereby sentenced to 65 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Randall, 65 years in Texas is a life sentence. They stopped calculating time in prisons in it's 60 years. 60 is life. Anything you hear above that is just window dressing for juries. 65 years is a life sentence. The jury gave me life.

First felony conviction ever, man. Number one. That's it. Life in prison. Parents coming to visit you? Parents in the courtroom. I mean, my mother gasped when the judge read the sentence out loud. Immediately, the sheriff was on me. The bailiff was on me. They handcuffed me. They get me out.

Heaven's fast. It's like you've seen the movies, right? They handcuffed me, get me out of the courtroom. I lock eyes with my mom on the way out. And I'm like, I'm fighting. I'm like, mom, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. They whisked me out of there. They put me in this little side room. There's a bulletproof glass. It's the area back there where you talk to your attorneys away from the courtroom. They bring my parents in a few minutes later. They're going to give my parents one last visit with me before I go to prison. They feel sorry for my parents because I just got lice. My dad, he can't even talk. He's in stunned disbelief that his son, who once had all this promise in life, just received a license in prison.

So my mom steps up and she does all the talking that day. And she tells me, she's like, baby, debts in life demand to be paid. And you just got hit with one hell of a bill from the state of Texas. But you did everything they said you did. So you have to go and pay that debt to society. She said, you owe Texas that debt. But now you owe your father and I debt too. She said, Damon, we gave you all the opportunities, love and support to be anything in life, anything at all.

And that's the path you just chose. She said, it's we gave you all the opportunities, love, and support to be anything in life, anything at all. And that's the path you just chose. She said, it's not going to work. We raised you in Port Arthur, Texas, a giant melting pot of a city. We gave you a great moral compass, but you chose to not use it. So here's the debt you're going to pay to us. When you go to prison, you will not get in one of these white hate groups, one of these Aryan Brothers type of gangs, because you're scared because there's a minority in there. It's not going to work.

You were never raised to be a racist. You're not going to start now. She said, you will not get any tattoos while you're inside that prison. You know, I got no ink, man. None. These guys in prison want to tattoo every inch of your body, man. These guys hit me up constantly in prison for tattoos. They were like, man, Wes, let me put a tattoo on you, man.

I tell them the same thing every time, man. I can't do it, man. My mom said no. Your mom? Oh, my mommy. But it's the best I have. And the good thing is, here's a little known fact, right? Because now you're talking to the criminal justice professor. I'm putting my professor hat on now. In American prisons, the busiest visitation day of the year in American prisons every year is Mother's Day. Mother's Day, man. The line's out the gate when mother's waiting to see their sons and their daughters in prison. Father's Day is just another Saturday and Sunday in prison. Not everybody has a dad, but everybody's got a mom, right? So the guys will let me make it

in prison. But my mom told me that day, she said, no gangs, no tattoos. You come back as the man that we raised or don't come back at all. Dude, I'm floored. I'm stunned. I don't know how I'm going to do this. And she finishes the conversation. She said, do you understand the debt you're about to pay to us? Yeah, I got it. But Randall, I don't know what I just promised, man.

I've never been to prison before. I don't know if I've been to prison before. Did you apologize to your parents when they came to visit you in the cell the first time? Or were you just bawling and say, I can't believe I did this, mom. I'm so sorry. The apology started, the apology started after the trial, you know, but- Not before when they came to visit you in county jail. No, my dad came to visit me one time in county jail in the 10 months. My mom never came to visit me in county jail. County jail is not a real visitation friendly type atmosphere. I mean, my little brother came to visit me one time. A friend of mine from high school named Danielle

Degadillo and Teresa DeWen, they came to visit me one time. I didn't have a lot of visitors in County Jail. Lonely. Lonely. Institutional living is very lonely. Now, when I got to prison, that would be a whole different story. And we'll get into that. I was in prison right by the town I grew up in. So my parents came to visit me in prison over 150 times and no one got that many visits, Randall. The wardens, the majors, the chaplain people, they're like, man, I've never seen somebody get this many visits. And I never felt like I had both feet in prison the whole time I was there. I had one foot in, one foot out, because I had this family on the outside that loved me and wouldn't let go of me. But yeah, so they send me back to my pod that day, right after I get my sentence, had the conversation with my parents. They send me back to my pod in Dallas County Jail.

I got about two months, I know, before the prison bus is about to pick me up. And I'm frantically asking everybody in County Jail that's been to prison before, how am I going to survive? What am I going to do? And every guy I'm talking to, man, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, they're all saying the same exact thing. Universally, you got to get into a gang. You won't survive without a gang. They said the gang is your family now. But there was this one guy, Randall, that was so different, this older black man named Muhammad. Now, and Muhammad, in my book, The Change Agent, I call him Mr. Jackson. Let's time out because I want to take steps before we get to Mr. Jackson.

Okay. So we see on TV, and we all know stories. You go to prison, and everyone's worried about getting raped, and you don't have a choice to go into a gang sometimes you know someone's going to make you and and i hate to say this word and i i'm not sure i i can say it on the podcast i have friends that have gone to prison and this is what they're going to quote i'm not i'm going to use their words so they're not my words but i said they're going to make you their bitch and so are you worried about getting in there and getting raped? And then tell our viewers what actually happened, how you prevented that from getting happened your first or second day when you were in there.

Well, so in Texas prison, they had a little saying, and I'll just say it in the words of the people that told it to me. You got three choices when you get to prison, especially if you get a life sentence. Now, when you get a life sentence in Texas, you don't live with the rest of the general population in a supermax prison. You live with lifers. All right. I live on a building called Seven Building that's got 432 men. Every man's got life.

Most of these guys are never going home again. This is the most dangerous world you can live in. Right. This is the edge of the earth. It's over after this. This is the most dangerous because there's no hope. When there's a void of hope, negativity, evil, darkness. That's what fills the void.

But they have a saying when you get in. You got three choices. You can fight, you can fuck, or you can bust a 50. Bust a 50 is $50 a commissary. You can pay for protection. So you can fight, you can get raped, or you can pay for protection. One-time fee, $50? No.

Every time you go to the commissary, every two weeks. Yeah. This is a $50 deal forever. Every two weeks. Every time there's a commissary, there's a store in prison, that was what they said. You could fight, fuck, or bust a 50. And so those are your three choices. You got to pick one of those paths. I chose to fight. Now, to get into the story,

the guy in county jail is going to give me the game. Do you want me to give him the game before I get into the story in prison? Yeah, you tell it how you want to tell it. So this old black guy in county jail, and in my book, The Change Agent, I call him Mr. Jackson. But the name that I knew him by was Muhammad. I changed everybody's name for that book. We're going to talk about Muhammad because I found Muhammad in real life now. So Muhammad's this older black guy in Dallas County Jail, career criminal. He's been in and out of prison his entire life.

But he's really a positive guy, right? And he's got a smile on his face everywhere. And every morning, he comes to check on me. He's picking me up. He's like a positive guy, right? He's got a smile on his face everywhere. And every morning, he comes to check on me. He's picking me up. He's like a positive person inside there. So one morning, he comes up. He's getting ready to bond out of Dallas County Jail. The prison bus is getting ready to come pick me up, take me to serve my life sentence.

He's like, West, I've been watching how you're dealing with these knuckleheads and these dummies talking about you got to get to a gang. He said, don't listen to these fools. He said, you want to keep the promise you made to your mom and your dad? Let me tell you what prison is really going to be like. So he told me, he said, the first thing you need to understand about prison, prison is all about race. He said, race runs the whole institutions out of prison. He said, that's the way the inmates want it like that. When you get into a supermax prison, you're expected to break off in your own racial group and stay with that group. He says, what I'm telling you is when you walk in the door, the white gang get the first tips on you. Aryan Brotherhood, Aryan Circle, White Knights, the Woods, fight all the white gangs. You survive that, now you're fighting the black gangs. And the white gangs will actually send black gangs after you to beat you up so they can push you in the right direction, right? But he said,

if you can survive all that and you can survive all that, you're under the right to walk alone. He told me, you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights. A big lesson in life. He said, don't get caught up in wins and losses. No one in there cares about wins and losses. All they want to see is you're going to defend yourself. What he's telling me this back in 2009 in Dallas County Jail, he could see the fear in my eyes. And he's like, look, I'm not getting through to you. Let me break it down for you a different way. He said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of boiling water. And he said, anything we put in the boiling water is going to be changed by the heat and the pressure.

He said, I'm going to put three things in this pot of boiling water and watch how they change. A carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean. So here's where I first heard the story of the coffee bean. It was 2009 in Dallas County Jail. And he walks me through it. He's telling me that a carrot goes in hard, but becomes soft in boiling water. The egg goes in with the soft liquid inside, the heart, right? But in the boiling water of life, your heart can become hardened like a hard boiled egg. But he said the coffee bean, the smallest of the three things, changes the pot of boiling water into a pot of coffee. In fact, he said the coffee bean can't even do its job until the water gets the highest. So the pressure is the hottest, right? So he told me, if you want to

survive this experience and come back as some of your parents recognize you, you got to be like that coffee bean. In fact, the last words he ever told me were, be a coffee bean, right? Before he leaves Dallas County Jail for the last time I've ever seen. So I get to prison. It's a baptism by fire. First day I'm in, first day I walk in within 20 minutes, I'm fighting this big dude from the Aryan Brotherhood, huge muscled up dude. He came after you. He came after me. But he told me, Muhammad told me, he said, this is what's going to happen your first day. The first guy's going to approach you, going to be a white guy because you're white. He said, the first guy's not a threat. He's an information guy. There's a scout going to ask you one relevant question. What gang are you going to be a part of? He said, get him out of your face as fast as you can and get ready. Get your head on the swivel because the second guy coming up to you, he's not coming to talk to you. He's coming to hurt you. He's the enforcer, right? He said, when the second guy gets within range, put your fist in his mouth. He said, just reach up, hit him as hard as you can, get your jump on your first fight. So I walk into prison that first day in 2009, right? I've got a mattress under one arm, a couple of bags of property. This guy comes up

with a ball-headed white dude, comes up first, just like he said he would, man. Gets in my face, he says, hey, white boy, what family are you riding with? They call gangs families. I was like, man, get out of my face, little dude, I'm ride with God. Please just leave me alone on a ride with God. He laughed at me. He said, God isn't here, white boy. You don't get it. We kicked him out of here a long time ago. He said, matter of fact, we are God. You're going to get ready to meet God right now too, because we're coming to get you. And he runs up the stairwell on the right side. And man, I'm standing there. I'm ready to pee in my pants, but I don't have time for that. Because the biggest, like I said, the biggest corn fed white dude I've ever seen in my life, big Aryan Brotherhood guy. He points from the third run, he comes running down the stairwell. I get a good look at this dude head on, Randall. Huge, muscled up dude, bald head with a swastika all around the top of his, and in 20 seconds, my first fight in prison is over. He beats me from one side of the day room to the other, man. I can't even get up off the ground.

I hit him back. He keeps hitting me. I'm banged up. Inside of 20 minutes, I'm in my first fight. I lost. But remember, you don't have to win your fights. You got to fight your fights. So I pick myself up. I go to my cell. I mean- No guards are around trying to help you at this point? No, man. The guards, man, for the guards, for the most part, they're like, most part, they're like, man, you want to fight, just wait till we leave the cell. Don't do it in front of us, you know?

That's when everybody fights in prison. And fighting is just a part of prison, especially with the lifers, right? So I gather my stuff up. I go into my cell. I meet Carlos, my first cellmate, you know? And then the fighting really began. For the next two weeks, I fought the white gangs. After that, every day, damn near every day,

I probably got in three dozen fights in two months, and I lost 75% of those fights, Randall. I got my butt kicked all over prison. Carlos showed me how to make a mouthpiece. You take a bunch of wet toilet paper, and you put it in your mouth, and you form it to your teeth, and you set it out overnight on the little desk in the cell. And in the morning, it's like a piece of wood.

It's hard, right? That paper gets hardened, and that mouthpiece is good for one fight. You the little desk in the cell. And in the morning, it's like a piece of wood. It's hardened, right? That paper gets hardened. And that mouthpiece is good for one fight. You just stick it in your pocket. And if someone challenges you to a fight, you slip your mouthpiece in, you go fight. And it's mush when you get done fighting. But that little toilet paper that hardened up like wood,

that's your mouthpiece. So Carlos taught me how to make a mouthpiece. But I'm fighting constantly in the first two months. Six weeks in, I'm ready to give up. I can't take it anymore. I fight the black gang still at this point, just like Muhammad said I would. It's a Monday morning. I get up. And, um, the only thing I haven't used to earn respect inside this prison is my athletic ability. Now, remember God blessed me to be a tremendous athlete in life. I'm a D one quarterback guy, right? And I'm in, I mean, you see the guy in front of you right now, and I'm an athlete.

But I haven't used my athletic ability because the rec yard where you play sports, it's the most intimidating place I've ever seen because it was the most segregated place I've ever seen. Every sport on the rec yard of the license building was segregated by the color of your skin. Let me walk you through the rec yard. Let me walk everybody through the rec yard. You go out there, they got a sand volleyball court. That was for the whites and Hispanics. Handball, those big handball walls, all the races can play handball. But if you want to play doubles in a game of doubles and handball with somebody,

your partner has to be the same skin color as you. You couldn't mix the races. The weight sag, just like you see in prison movies, man, everybody wants to push that iron in prison and all the races can lift weights. But if you want someone to spot you or work out with you, your partner, your spotter has to be the same skin color as you. You cannot mix the races. You couldn't even sit down at a table, Randall, and eat a meal in the chow hall with people of a different race. Race is everything. So that day, six weeks in, I go out to the rec yard. I face my fears. I'm going to go out and play sports that morning.

But I pass up all the other sports I just told you about. And I go to the basketball court. Who do you think runs the basketball court? The blacks, the brothers, they run it. And no white boys that look like me are allowed in that basketball court. But do you know why I go out and play basketball that Monday morning? Because I know that in America, sports is the great unitedness country. Randall, sports is the one thing that brings people together like

nothing else can in this country. I mean, think about it for a second. Before there was Martin Luther King Jr., there was Jackie Robinson. Before you integrated lunch counters in the South where I grew up, you integrated locker rooms. I watched it with my dad. My dad was the first sports writer to put black athletes on the front page of the sports page. I knew sports would do it for me. And I went out there and played basketball. And that's how I finally earned my respect in prison. And I thought the fighting was over, man, because the blacks told me after a week of playing basketball with them, you're done fighting with us. There was one more fight to go, man. But at that point, you're the only white guy out on the basketball court. No other white guy?

No, man, no. I mean, you have to be invited to play with those guys, right? But I belong now. I'm out there. I'm playing with them. In fact, after playing with them for a week, and it was the most brutal basketball I've ever played, too. It wasn't five on five.

It was nine on one, right? I got black eyes and busted lips to show for it. I learned two things about adversity in the rec yard, though. I'm going to tell you, it's what I learned. Adversity is never as bad as you think it's going to be. And you are always capable of way more than you think you are. Because sometimes in life, we allow overthinking to get in the way of overcoming. That's what adversity does to people.

We overthink our situation sometimes. But I got to a place in life where there was just no more room to think. I just had to do. You know, my back is against the wall. I think I'm going to die in this place. So two months is over. The violence is finally over. The threat to my physical safety is gone, I think.

Because these guys come and get me every day to play basketball with them now. They're banging on my cell door. Come on, Wes, let's go shoot some hoops. I belong, right? So a few weeks after that basketball game, I'm coming off the rec yard. I'm going to get ready to take a shower. My cellmate, Carlos, he's agitated. I can tell. He makes a beeline for me and he pulls me under the stairs. Under the stairs is where you go to talk and there's no cameras there on the stairs. They can't see what you're talking about. He said, when you go to the shower today, Blackjack's going to be there to rape you. Now, Blackjack is the biggest rapist in prison, man.

This guy's about 6'4", 260, big black guy, loves to rape white guys. That's why it's called Blackjack, right? Loves to rape white guys. Does it with a knife, and he's HIV positive. This guy's death in several ways. He said, Blackjack's going to be in the shower for you today. When you go in there, he's going to come rape you today. He told me Blackjack's been watching me out there being the only white guy on the basketball court. He said, Ijack's going to be in the shower for you today. When you go in there, he's going to come rape you today. He told me Blackjack's been watching me out there being the only white guy on

the basketball court. He said, I told you. I told you don't go out there and play basketball. Those guys, you don't belong in the basketball court. Now Blackjack's in this pod right now. Now Blackjack doesn't even live in our section. He's come all the way over here to rape me that day. So I told Carlos, I said, man, look, I'm not going to take a shower today. I'm not going to the shower. He said, you have to go to the shower. He said, if Blackjack comes in here today, doesn't rape you, he's going to rape someone else. Now that's on you too. Now you got two problems to deal with.

He said, you're on the track and the train is coming. What are you prepared to do? I'm like, man, Carlos, he's got a knife, man. I've never fought with a knife. I don't have a knife to fight him with. Man, Carlos pulls a knife out of his pants about this long. I don't know what he's going to do. It's hot. He's like 5'4".

He's got a knife this long in his pants. And he puts it in my hand. Now, a knife in prison, it's just like you see in the movies, man. It's a piece of steel. It's been sharpened to razor's edge. Got duct tape around the handle. Puts it in my hand. I'm holding his blade.

I give it back to him. I'm like, man, Carlos, I've never fought with a knife before. I don't know how to fight with a knife. This guy's going to cut me up. There's got to be another weapon, another way. He said, there is another weapon. He said, meet me back in the cell. So I go up.

We live in the third tier. There's three different tiers in there. I live in the third tier, 45 cell. I go up there and wait for him to come back. And he comes back a few minutes later. He's got some tools in his hands. Now in Texas prisons, there's no air conditioning, Randall. None.

It's hot. And Texas is a hot state. I live on the Gulf Coast in prison, man. It's humidity. Man, Texas is a hot state. I live on the Gulf Coast in prison, man. Humidity is about 100% most of the summertime, right? Instead of air conditioning, you have these little bitty fans that are supposed to keep you cool. So he takes my fan apart. He's got some tools in his hands. He cuts the fan motor out of the fan. It's a five pound motor. Throws it in my shower bag and he starts swinging the shower bag. He said, this is your weapon today. It's like a medieval weapon, like a ball and chain flail. He said, do everything I tell

you to do. He said, go into the shower. It's a one man shower. Go in there. They got to change area off to the right side. Go to the back, turn the shower water on and get it real high. Get steamy in there. He said, get in the change area and wait for him to come through the door. And when he comes to the door, hit him in the head with his fan motor. He said, the first hit won't kill. It's going to stun him. He said, but when you get him stunned, get him on the ground, hit his head. He said, do not stop swinging this thing until you see his brains come out of the skull. He said, you got to kill this guy. Are you going to kill him? I said, yeah, I'm going to kill him. He said, West, one of two things is about to happen to you. He said, you're either going to kill this dude and you're never going to leave prison alive

because you got another life sentence and they're never going to let you go or he's going to do something to you that you wish you were dead. But either way, you're never leaving prison alive. Do you understand that today? I was like, yeah. So he gave me the fan motor. I go to it. Man, I'm scared to death, Randall. My heart is thumping. I go there. I put the shower water on. I get in the change area and I wait. I don't even know how long it was, man, a minute and a half, two minutes, maybe. And they had these little half saloon doors back then on the showers. And I remember he pulls these doors open. He's got the knife in his hand. He pulls these doors open. He's got this big grin on his face. Kind of like a dude's about to get laid at two o'clock in the morning, right? And that grin broke it open for me, man. I saw the grin and I saw red.

And man, I just, bam, I hit this dude as hard as I can, man. I swing this fan motor as hard as I can. He raises up at the last second. I hit him in the chest, shoots him out of the shower, right? Now he's on the ground. The knife is on the ground next to him, and I am bashing him with this fan motor, and I'm going, I mean, I'm trying to get to his head, but he's got his head covered up. I hit ribs cracking under this thing. Two of his gang brothers flopped. He's a Mandingo warrior. Two of his gang brothers are flying up the stairs because everybody's seeing in the day room that this thing went south quick for Blackjack. I'm going to kill him. These two guys run up.

They're guys that we basketball with. Guys I've been playing basketball with for two weeks that led me into their world are now in front of my face. They're like, West, don't hit him again. Don't swing that bag. Don't do anything. And I'm like, man, he tried to rape me. They're like, he's a rapist. That's what he does. But he's our brother. You can't kill our brother. You can't hurt our brother like that. If you lay another hand on this dude, we're going

to throw you off the run. We're just going to kill you today. They said, man, get your bag, get out of here and go. So I grabbed my bag. I go to my cell. I throw the bag on the ground. Randall, I get in the ground in my cell and I just start crying like a baby. I ball up on the ground. I almost killed this guy, man, and I wanted to kill him, right? That takes for blood, but I'm in there, and I start crying like a baby, and the adrenaline burns off, and I pass out. I'm laying in my bunk. I mean, I'm laying in the cell on the ground by the toilet,

and I hear the cell doors rolling, and I'm so hungry. You ever get that hunger feeling where you can feel the back of your stomach, right? I'm hungry, man. All that adrenaline burned off. And I'm like, man, I look at the clock and I'm like, okay, cool. I can make it the last chow. Man, that clock was for the next day. I'd been out for 12 hours, man. Passed out cold. And I'm like, oh shit, it really happened. And what a nightmare. I look back, the bag is over there. It's got blood all over it, man. Man, this guy's HIV positive. I start looking around, see if I'm bleeding.

It's not my blood, it's his blood. I'm like, all right, good. Like I walk out the cell door now. I don't know what's going to happen, man. I don't know if someone's going to stick a piece of steel in me and stab me or what. But when I walked out that cell door, it was a whole different prison for Damon West. Because everybody in prison just saw that I spoke the only language that everybody speaks in prison. That's violence. Violence is the only universal language of prison. Either someone speaks violent to you or you speak it to them, but you become fluent in

the language of violence. And everybody saw that I could take another man's life if I had to. I didn't kill him. I banged him up really bad, but they saw that I was willing to do it. Never had to fight again.