Julian Dorey Podcast - #431 - “Destroying Young Men!” - Louis Ruggiero UNLOADS on Polymarket, Darkest Moments & $10B SCAM

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

SPONSORS: 1) SHEATH: Sheath. The underwear of legends. Go to https://www. https://sheath.com/JULIAN and use code JULIAN for 20% off. 2) ULTRA POUCHES: Don’t sleep on @ultrapouches. New customers get 15% off Ultra Pouches with code JULIAN at https://takeultra.com! #UltraPouches #ad JOIN PATREON FOR EARLY UNCENSORED EPISODE RELEASES: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey CLIPPERS DISCORD: https://discord.gg/8QmWEKJ3BT (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Louis Ruggiero is an ex gambling addict and Youtuber. FOLLOW LOUIS: YT: https://youtube.com/@nothingsoffthetable IG: https://www.instagram.com/nothingsoffpod TT: https://www.tiktok.com/@nothingsoffpod FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY YT: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://x.com/juliandorey JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ****TIMESTAMPS**** 00:00 - Losing your Innocence and A Decade of Addiction 16:38 - Survivor’s Guilt and “The Obsession” 27:58 - Root of Addiction, Jimmy Confesses a Mu*der, and Overdosing 44:17 - Life After Rehab, Confessing Jimmy’s Confession 53:58 - Jimmy Gets Locked Up, Losing $50k in Vegas 01:05:31 - Gambling Keeping Louis Afloat, Family Ties, Married in 24 Hours 01:21:11 - Three Month Drug Psychosis in Colombia, Losing $10 Million 01:32:21 - Louis Plotted Suicide Before Thanksgiving, Gambling Lies 01:43:33 - Pressure Relief Group, The Massive Problem w/ Legal Gambling 01:57:39 - Horror of Prediction Markets, “Gambling is a tax on the poor” 02:05:58 - Life After Gambling, Living Without Fear 02:19:38 - Privileged Life, Recovered After Feeling Consequences 02:26:48 - Louis' Work CREDITS: - Host, Editor & Producer: Julian Dorey - COO, Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@UCyLKzv5fKxGmVQg3cMJJzyQ - In-Studio Producer: Joey Deef - https://www.instagram.com/joeydeef/ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 431 - Louis Ruggiero Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And lucky for you, we got a special deal for our listeners as well. You're going to be able to get 10% off your first month of Blue Chew Gold using Code Julian. That's promo code Julian at Bluechew.com. That link is in my description below where you can get more details and safety information. Once again, that's bluechew.com, Code Julian, and we thank Bluechoo for sponsoring this podcast. Yeah, you can't be. That's really where I'm sitting at right now with it. And you're originally from New York?

Born and raised in New York City, Upper East Side. I didn't take you for an Upper East Side. Yeah, you know, my sponsor said to me, he goes, you don't have a silver spoon in your mouth. You got a gold spoon lodged all the way up your fucking ass. And you're the only one that can fuck this up, dude. You're the only one that can fuck this up. And he's like old school Italian guy, Ronnie A, dude, he's got the big white tea.

He's got like the chain, the gold chains. And I grew up on the Upper East Side. My mom's a news anchor. My mom's Rosanna Scotto. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, he's been on TV fucking longer than you and I have been alive. And my dad's a lawyer. So good family, good upbringing, no emotional trauma, no physical, you know, abuse, very

loving parents. I had no wants or needs. And anything I ever wanted, I, you know, I earned. Like I was like, oh, let me get mad in Madden, mad in 2005. I was like, go get a math test Friday. Get an A on your math test and I'll get you madden. You know, it was like always the sense of like, you have to earn things. And I leaned into athletics the majority of my life.

My dad played college football. So. What were you good at football or? Baseball. Baseball was my jam, man. I was like a- You want to go pro? I didn't, you know what?

I thought I did. And then I got to like the end of high school and I was like, I want to party and being a frat. And like I thought that was like more appealing to me than grinding out four years of college playing baseball and practice and this. And that was like, I want to chase girls and do drugs. You know, my priorities were not in order. Yeah, you fucking 16, 17, 18 years old. That's what you're thinking about.

Yeah. And by the way, I got to college. I did that. And that's where my journey and addiction really started. Right. high school I was B plus A minus student. Wasn't really in trouble that much in high school. From kindergarten to eighth grade, I was in trouble every other day, suspended.

I can't even tell you how many times. What would you be doing? So I went to school for a little bit in Brooklyn and I had to take the school bus all from Manhattan all the way to Bay Ridge, which was like next to the Barzano. So. Yeah, it's a long, it's a long fucking way. And I was a fifth grader on the school bus with like, six, seventh, eighth, ninth, 11th, 12th graders.

So like the older kids, I would instigate, and they would instigate me and they'd be on the BQE and I'd take a snapple bottle and I throw it out the window and hit a cab driver. Just like really crazy shit. So I got suspended a couple times for doing stuff like that. Then I got into a fight. I'd, you know, beat the crap out of some kid in seventh grade.

They kicked me out of there. And then I ended up at this place called Dwight in Manhattan. And it was like a school for kids who were, if you got kicked out of the good private schools in Manhattan, you went to Dwight. And they like dealt with like, I was dyslexic. I had ADHD and they had this like program that like basically would help you with your learning disabilities, all things that I didn't know. It was just kind of like wherever my parents told me I was going. I went.

Right. You know. But I got my shit together in high school. I stopped acting totally crazy. Focused on athletics, did decent, got a 31 on my ACT. We wound up going to George Washington. university yeah it's been a while yeah 306 is the highest yeah so i went to gw in dc and dc and i joined a fraternity like i wanted to and uh that was it man someone gave me half a x we were pledging our fraternity

someone gave me half a xanx tried it for the first time and i was like fucking awesome this is how i want to feel forever and like a month later dude i'm doing like 10 bars a day Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge huge help. Thank you. Had you done anything in high school besides like just party with some alcohol, smoke a little weed? I smoked a little weed. I had tried, I'd done like cocaine in high school, like maybe like three or four times total.

In high school? Yeah, in high school. Yeah, dude, listen, we grew up in- You didn't get addicted to that? No, I wasn't crazy. I wasn't crazy about it. But growing up in Manhattan, like, we didn't have the house party. that you guys had growing up in the suburbs

and getting a keg in your parents' basement and shit. Like we had fake IDs our freshman year of high school. We were going to the dive bars that would let the underage kids in. And then we were going to like one oak, butter, S.L. Kiss and fly. In high school, you're going to one oak?

Yeah, bro. It's kind of tight, not going to lie. I mean, it was yes and no, right? Because yes, you felt cool. No. like, dude, growing up Manhattan, your innocence is just ruined way earlier. Like you don't have a normal upbringing. You're taking the bus.

You're taking the subway. You're like making sure the crackheads are like going to bother you on the subway at 13, 14, 14, 15 years old. But the other part about growing up Manhattan is that you, you learn independence a lot quicker. You learn street smarts a lot quicker. You're more like you can wipe your own ass quicker than a lot of other kids can growing up in the suburb. having, you know, your parents drive you to school and that kind of just like shelter you have. So your parents both worked a lot too because they're both successful. So you were spending a lot of time like on your own obviously. Yeah, we had I had a nanny. I love her. She's still she's still

with our family. But you know, that that to me was like I didn't understand the sacrifices my parents made. When I was a kid, I would get angry that like my mom has to work. And like my nanny's picking me out from school and all my friends' parents are picking, you know, picking them up. But 32 years old now, looking back on it, if my mom and dad weren't as successful and didn't have the resources they had, I'd for sure be in prison. I'd for sure be dead right now. Wow.

Like guaranteed, guaranteed. So when you took that first X, though, in college, because obviously, like, even if you were experimenting in high school, you didn't seem to have like a problem with anything. No. And for some reason, you're given the bars and you're like, I want to feel like this forever. I think that's what you said. Yep. And how quickly did it spiral after that?

So, you know, I say that like the athletics in high school kept me somewhat structured, right? Because I had friends who didn't play sports and they were smoking blunts in Central Park every day. I wasn't doing that because I had practice or a game or whatever. And so I get to this fraternity. My friend gives me half a Xanax. And, dude, I think it was like October. of my freshman year by like Thanksgiving weekend. I was going home and I was eating like 7, 8, 9, 10s, 10 bars a day.

Sticks, the 2 milligram white sticks. Yeah. And then- Did your parents pick up on it? So my parents knew something was up, like Thanksgiving weekend. They were like, you look like shit. Thanksgiving weekend I had dinner with my mom and my grandfather. And like the night before I fucking blacked out,

I had no idea how I even got upstairs to the apartment. And I woke up and had a fucking gash on my forehead. So I show up to lunch with my mom, my grandfather. And I was like, what did you? I was like, oh, I fell in the shower. No idea what happened yet. That night, I come back home and my doorman's like, not going to say thank you. And I'm like, for what?

He's like, dude, you fucking open the door and face planted it. I carried your ass upstairs last night. So that weekend, my mom was like, you're drinking too much. You know, I don't know what you're doing, but like, you got to, you got to chill, you know. And she's like, I hope your grades are good. My first semester, 1.04 GPA. Not great. No, I'm not great.

Not great. Not great. I go back for my second semester. Three weeks in, I get pulled out. I had like a mental breakdown essentially. Like I was just doing so much to annex, drinking, partying. And I couldn't handle it anymore. Like emotionally, I was so unstable.

I just like had an episode one night and I like called my parents and I was like, I need to come home. I need help. I can't do this anymore. Come back to New York. Go to my first ever treatment center, Hazelden, which is down on, like, church or Canal Street somewhere down there. So you're asking for this, too.

It's not like someone had to intervene. Well, like, it was basically like they knew, my parents knew what was going on. They just couldn't like, they couldn't figure it out, dude, you know? Yeah, but I'm saying you then had the presence of mine on your own to be like, yeah. I got to get out of Dodge right here. Yeah. It's pretty impressive.

Yeah. It wasn't as graceful as I just made it sound. I'll just say it was like it was a call for it was a desperation call. It wasn't like, hey, I'm struggling. I need help. I think I need to come home. Something happened. I was like, it was like three o'clock in the morning when I called my parents and

I was like hysterically crying, couldn't even speak like, I need to come home. I want to kill myself. Like just super fucking barred out. Whoa. Yeah. It wasn't like a mom, you know, I've really thought about the way things have been going here and I think I need some help. It was more of like a...

I didn't think it was that business casual. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that really started. That was 2013, January of 2013. And from January of 2013 until January of 2023, it was in and out of sobriety, multiple arrests. I had to testify against an ex-best friend in a murder trial, confess.

confessed a murder to me that was all over the New York Post. And then just, dude, just total obliteration. Build my life up for a year. Burn it down. Build my life up for a year. Burn it down. Like just consistently, consistently until eventually I was just like,

if I wake up at 35 years old and I'm doing this fucking song and dance, I'm going to put a bullet on my head. Yeah. You know, like I can't live like this anymore. And so something finally clicked and thank God it did. But, um, well,

let's go back. too. Yeah. Like, obviously it's a lot of things that happen in those 10 years. Yeah. When you first go into Hazleton, it was called? First of all, like, is that a full 30-day kind of rehab thing? Outpatient. Okay. So you go five days a week for four hours or five hours a day. Was that, it sounds like that didn't end up being at all helpful. So I went there with, with this, this notion of like, I'm going back to school and I don't, think I'm an addict. I don't think I'm an alcoholic. I just think that like I was addicted to Xanax and like it was it was just a bad little moment, a blipping on the radar type of situation,

you know, but even my parents were kind of on the same page of like, he's going to go back to school, he's going to drink, he's going to smoke pot and like, we're okay with that as long as there's nothing harder going on. There's no cocaine use. There's no pill use. And that's what I did. So it's funny. I was in this Hazelden thing and they were like, yeah, go to AA meetings and this and that. Like, dude, I'm not fucking going to AA. No shot. I'm not doing it.

I'm like, I'm going to stay sober for the next, you know, a couple months. I'm going to prove to everyone that I can do this. And then when I go back to school, like I'll try drinking. I'll try smoking pot again and I'll be fine. And I went back to school and had this like, this like therapist that basically I'd see once a week. I'd pee in a cup for him so he can call my parents and be like, yeah, you know, he's peeing clean essentially, you know, sure.

shows up they smoke and weed, but they didn't care. See, I'm really lucky. I actually like my doctor, but so many of my friends out there are always complaining about how they get nothing out of their appointments with their guy. A lot of times doctors will just test them for basic blood work, tell them they're fine and to drink more water. No real data, no game plan, just a pat on the back

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stop guessing about your health with superpower. For a limited time, our listeners are going to get $20 off to unlock their new health intelligence. So, Head on over to superpower.com, link in my description below, and use code Julian for $20 off your membership. Once again, that's code Julian. And after you sign up, Superpower is going to ask you where you heard about them. Do me a favor and tell them I sent you. Slowly but shortly, bro, I started figuring out. Like, I'm seeing him Thursday.

So like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I can do some blow on my piece clean by Thursday. And then next thing I know, I'm like, I can't do Xanax. Oh, my friends are popping perks. My friends are snorting oxies. Like, let me try one of those. I'm like, oh, I really like those. Those are really nice. And I got hooked on oxies.

And then I'm like, you know, call my therapist, yo, Aaron, I got a big test I'm studying for tomorrow. Can't make it today. I'll see you next week. And then I, you know, get clean four or five days next the following week so I could pee clean. How do you pee clean oxies in four or five days? It's usually out of your pee in like 72 hours to, five days.

Yeah. You don't have to like do anything extra. No, weeds in your system for 30 days. Right. Pills, Xanax, Coke, oxy, that kind of stuff is normally out of your pee and like three to five days max.

Wow. Yeah. Dude, I had this down to a fucking science. Like Googling it and finding it. Googling it, buying my own pee test, making sure I'm peeing clean before I show up the next day.

Buy a Wiseneter. So we'll get to this. I'll get to this. So my first semester of my junior year, this is when things started really taking a turn in my life. My first semester of my junior year, my best friend in college passed away from an accidental overdose. And that was like the first kind of situation where I was like,

I was with him until 3 o'clock in the morning. We did the same drugs together. I'd buy drugs, I'd give him to him, he'd buy drugs, he'd give him to me. He was like, like this with me. And that was the first situation where I was like, okay, like, this is getting, this isn't good anymore. You overdosed on oxycontin? Oxycontin, cocaine, lethal combination. And I went.

You left him, obviously. He was- He left him. He went to this other kid's house at 3 o'clock the morning. He was in my, we were all in my apartment. He was like, I'm going to my friend's house, our friend's house. do you want to come and I'm like no I was I had a girlfriend at the time I was going to stay here and do my thing and um he went there I woke up the next morning and I woke up at like 9 a m my phone's blowing up and everyone's like hey like have you heard from will and I'm like no and they're like

well he's not answering his phone but we we think he went to the hospital like something's wrong and I'm like what the fuck did this kid do I'm thinking like he did something crazy you know I'm not putting two and two together and so after like two hours of trying to figuring shit out I kind of, I was like, all right, let me call his mom. So I call his mom. And I'm like, hey, I'm like, you know, where's, where's Will? Like we heard Will went to the hospital and she was like, Lewis Will's dead. And that was like the moment.

Like, did I remember? I just like, I was like, I was like this. I was like in a trance. You're just like, you're 20, I'm 20 years old. Never dealt with tragedy like that in my life. grew up on the operas side like very privileged very very very sheltered type of upbringing and so you know i like process it over the next hour i call my parents my parents are like get your ass home get on a train right now come home and um i came home my parents were like you know

were you doing the same drugs what he and i'm like i'm like lying to my family i'm like i was not i don't do that you know i'm fine don't work I'm fine, I'm fine. Did they believe you? Yes and no, I think. I think they knew, but I think they didn't think obviously it was to the same extent. And then that whole week, we're all back in New York for his funeral proceedings. And I'm fucking snorting Roxy's in the bathroom that whole entire week of his funeral.

Same shit that killed him. I'm doing. Did you feel like guilty because you were so guilty, bro. So guilty. I had, it took years for me to work through that survivor's guilt of kind of just like being I'm the piece of shit. He was a great kid, bro. He was a really great kid.

Stand out athlete in high school. Good student. Never got in trouble. Wasn't like me. Like, was a really good kid. And so I kind of struggled with that for many, many years. And from that moment on, like that really exacerbated my, my drug use. And my parents, like, I grew up in the.

this old school Italian household where these feelings are kind of just brushed under the rug and keep kicking the can down the road and move on and blah, blah, blah. And so like I kind of, I kind of played off like, mom, I'm good, I'm good, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. And about six months later, I was back to Dewan's annex again all day, all night. I go out to Marquis with a couple of my friends and I'm barred out. I steal a woman's purse. Get arrested for stealing a woman's purse.

Do you remember doing it? They, like, I remember, I remember walking outside and cops asking me whose purse that was. And I said, my girlfriends. And they're like, okay, what's your girlfriend's name? And I said, you know, my girlfriend's name at the time. And they opened up the woman's purse and they look at her ID and her name's not Laura. Right. And they're like, dude, let me see some ID in a hand.

I'm a fake ID and a bag of blow falls out of my wallet. So I get arrested You hand him a You weren't 21 yet at this point No Oh so you were still 20 I wanted to hand them my real ID But I was so fucked up

That I just handed them a fake ID And an eight ball of blow Falls out of my wallet With it so I got a few of those in Marquis Yeah Yeah So I get arrested for that

I get processed I get booked I wake up the next day New York Post Daily News Daily Mail They're like Rosanna Scott O'S son

arrested for stealing purse with a fake ID and cocaine on him. And I got lucky. I got lucky. I got a good lawyer who's my dad's partner. He's my uncle. He's basically my guardian angel. That's what I tell everybody. And he basically worked out a deal where I had to go to a drug mandated program for a year. P clean, complete this program for a year, don't get in trouble again. And three, felonies are a disorderly conduct misdemeanor peeing in the street ticket so you think right you think that would be the moment that'd be the moment i'm going to this program five days a week i'm back home i get pulled out of school full time now now i'm never going back to gw and six months in bro i'm like

how can i beat the system how can i beat these tests i buy a whizinator and i'm like all right like let's Let's give it a go one time. Let's give it a go one time. Let's see what happens. I'm not going to use. I'm not going to start using yet because what happens if they test the pee and they see the pee is synthetic or something, right? And then I'm like, oh, that's weird. I'll pee again for you right now and I'll have clean pee still.

So I did that a couple of times. And nothing ever came back. So I said, okay, I'm good. Were you staying at home this whole time? Oh, yeah. I would hide the Wizzinator in the stairwell of my building. There's like an electrical box on our floor. And I picked the lock and I would put the fake dick in there and then close the electrical box.

And so every day when I went when I wake up and I'd go to this outpatient for five hours a day and walk in and go on the stove, put the fake dick on. Was it black? No. No. But I got it a little bit bigger than what my actual dick was. I wanted to feel good about myself a little bit, you know? For sure.

Where did you get a Wizzinator? Amazon. Oh, you got it on Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. And I bought... Shout out Bezos. Yeah, and then there was a smoke shop near my house that sold like synthetic urine that I just loaded up.

So there's a bag that goes against your body right here. So it heats up to your body temperature. Yeah, see, that's the part I wasn't... I'm glad you said that. That's the part I wasn't following because I never heard the buy a WISNAider or anything. I thought that you got like you had a friend pee and you actually had real pee. So this is fake fucking pee. You mix it with, you put, it's like a little bag right here, right?

And it's like sits against your body. You put the synthetic urine in. You put water in. It mixes. Then your dick is already on. It's like a strap on, essentially. And by the time you have to pee, it's already, the bag is heated up to your, your body temperature. So in here, your pee is showing because they'll look at the pee cup and they'll, they'll see the temperature.

If it's too low or it's too high, they'll know something's up, right? It should be around 97, 98 degrees, what your body temperature is. So, yeah, I had this whole system down, dude. And how many times did you do it before you're like, I can try again? I did it three times before I actually started using the width, before I started using. Now, because you're at home this whole time, like you're obviously going, like you said, you're going to a program, so you're filling your time that way. Are you doing any jobs as well?

No, I enrolled in Pace. So I was going to Pace downtown and trying to finish college, which never happened, thank God. Now, did you feel like, first, like, how did you feel during this time being off drugs? Did you feel like- I wanted to use, bro. Yeah.

There's this thing that we talk about in the program, right? It's like, once that light switch is turned on, you can't turn it off without working a 12-step program, in my opinion, right? And like, it's called the obsession, right? a phenomenon of craving. Once I take one drink, I can't stop. I have no control over what happens next. And I hate to be corny and cliche and say that stuff and say, dude, I used to go to these meetings and all of these sayings that I'm going to say, I'd be like, yeah, that's fucking corny.

What a loser. And now all of those saying since I finally bought it, I'm like, man, that's fucking true. That is so true. That was me, you know? And, um, I have this obsession the whole time. Dude, the whole time I'm in there, like three felonies, the whole time I'm in this program, I'm just thinking about when I could start drinking and drugging again. Did you feel like life, this is what I was asking. Did you feel like life was kind of flat and not exciting at all because you weren't?

Yeah, dude. And I felt like you look around all your friends are young. You're all like in your junior and senior year of college and your friends are at school, having a good time, getting good grades, figuring out like what they're going to do in life and your home and a fucking drug mandated program after being arrested for stealing a purse you're like you know you're me personally I was seeking something to make myself feel better because I felt like such a fucking loser dude and I was

and I was and the reality of it was is that at that time I was not ready to make that decision yet and say I am an alcoholic or I am a drug addict and maybe I should try this path let's see what happens if I try this path. It was like, they're pushing me this path and I'm like just pushing back until I can finally get on my path. When you're going through such extensive effort, though, with something like the system you described with the Wisenator, for example, you got to order it, you got to bring it in, you got to hide it, you got to learn how to use it, you got to go get the synthetic urine, you have to make sure it's at the right temperature, you have to go through this, run three tests at three different times to make sure it's good before you even try anything.

Like this is exhaust. Exactly. It's exhausting. It's planning and everything like that. Was there ever a moment where you stopped and you were like, oh, shit. Like, I really am compulsively after this stuff because I'm going through so much of it. You never have that second. You know what my thoughts were? What were they? Six months until I beat this case. And then I can do whatever I want. Five months, four months, three months. And then what's even crazier is, I finished the program. Two days later, I go to court with my lawyer. I sign off on everything. Everything is done, finished, signed, sealed, delivered, no felonies. And that night, my idea of celebrating was going out, drinking, picking up a couple of Roxy's and getting fucking loaded. What did your parents say? Like, when you're going out, I'm assuming they're a little suspicious. They were like, so my dad comes from a long lineage of alcoholics. My grandfather was a compulsive gambler. My dad's sisters are addicts, alcoholics. Oh, wow.

So like my dude, my dad was like, he smelled my shit from a mile away, dude. He knew. And he was just like, he would always try to gently tell me there's a better way of living, this way of life for you. Like, you're just going to end up in trouble. And you're going to eventually do something that we can't help you with. and that purse snatching case was like the first little taste of it, right? And like, I got preferential treatment because of who my mother is.

The prosecutor was like, he comes from a good family. Like, I'm not trying to make an example out of him. Like, I just, I want him to do well and be okay. And so. That's, wow. Yeah, dude, I got like full white privilege, you know, whatever you want to fucking call it. But the reality of it is is that, that, that, that, wasn't enough to make me consider even thinking about changing the way I thought, I behave,

I treated other people, I treated myself. It was just like, I want to get back to what I was doing. Was it looking back on it now, do you think it was pure addiction? Addiction. Pure selfishness or both? All the above. All the above. Addiction, the main thing of addiction is that the root of addiction is dishonesty and self-centeredness. that's it and ego yeah and my ego was that's my daily battle today three and a half year sober

a year and a half into not placing a bet is like keeping my ego in check and having to remind myself that I know nothing I know nothing about anything how do you do that so you know not to get too far ahead but like I work a very rigorous 12-step program and alcoholics anonymous and gamblers anonymous. I help a lot of newcomers. I pray and meditate every day. I write inventory frequently. Inventory? Like my fears, resentments. I put things on paper where not to make it about the other person, but to see my part in things. Because as addict, as an addict and alcoholic, like, dude, I'm just like my baseline is angry and resentful if I don't work on it. And that's the shit. really when you get into this,

you find out that drugs and alcohol and gambling is not my problem. It's a solution to my problem. My problem is the way I think. Oh, wow. So that those behaviors, right? That like symptom of my thinking was like, if I drink drug and gamble,

like I can escape and not think about how angry I am at this person because you wronged me. Meanwhile, I fucking did you dirty 10 times before you did me dirty once. Do you think like at the beginning or just relatively speaking at the beginning, which is where you are in your story

talking about going through this program in college after you get charges reduced and all that. Like, you know, obviously there ended up being a lot of time after that that we'll talk about where you struggle with different things. But you were, as you said, you're like chasing that feeling again to be free, counting down the days until you're free to be able to do what you want. Was there a part of you looking back on it where it's like obviously like there's a selfishness aspect to it?

There's addiction aspect to it for sure. but like also because you were at that a very early, I would say, crossroads in your life where you didn't know what you wanted to do with your life. You said you felt like a loser. Maybe you weren't in your head living up to like the success of what your parents were. And so to use the same word you used, like this was an escape from the reality of life completely. Can we talk about the most underrated organ in your body? This is an organ doing 500 plus functions in your body every single day. Everything from filtering unwanted elements to supporting digestion to helping with energy.

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Let's do something for it. That's D-O-S-E-D-A-I-L-Y. Dot C-O-S-Julian. Link in my description below for 35% off your first month subscription. I think that growing up being my mother's son, there's a lot of pressure that comes associated with it. There's also, listen, there's a lot of pros to it also, right? There's a lot of like, I got to do cool shit. I got to meet cool people. But the pressures of like, who am I going to be? What am I going to do?

How am I going to be as successful or more successful than my mother? Did you have siblings, by the way? Yeah, I'm 32. I have a 37-year-old sister. Got it. Okay. By the way, she was an angel. She got straight A.

She went to Trinity, like the number one private school in Manhattan, like, got fucking read a Harry Potter book a day. I haven't read one book my whole life, bro. So, you know, she went to a good college. She was like an English literature major. She wrote a 70-page thesis on the comparison of magic in John Keats' poetry and Led Zeppelin's music. You know what? I kind of like that. Dude, I'm like trying to figure out one plus one my, like, freshman year of college.

So, you know, there was a lot of, there was a lot of spotlight on me because I was like the black sheep, the troubled kid and always in trouble and this and that. But yeah, I think the pressure of being my mom's son played a role in it. But I think ultimately, I believe that I was born with this disease and the switch got turned on, bro. And once I got turned on, the only way to turn it off, in my opinion, is a spiritual program and a spiritual, spiritual principles and a complete people say, oh, you got brainwashed by A. I'm like, yeah, my fucking brain needed to be washed. My, my, I was lying, I was robbing, I was cheating,

I was stealing from anybody. You had a dog that had $5 on them. I was taking money from your dog, bro. I didn't give a shit about anything or anyone. It was whatever I needed to do to get high or place that next bet, I did. And so I finished this program. and I start hanging out with this kid who my mom had this this this friend and he was

his famous jeweler his name's a I don't know if I should say his name fuck it fuck it fuck him he can do it every once his name is Jeffrey Rackover he was did Melania Trump's engagement ring Oprah's earrings and he calls my mom one day he's like you're never going to believe this I had this kid who showed up on my doorstep and he's my long lost son we took a DNA test and he's my long lost son so I said my mom calls me she He says, you not believe this. Jeffrey says he has this son and showed up on his doorstep and this whole cockamamie story. Can you meet him?

He needs friends in New York. I said, it's weird, but sure, I'll meet him. I meet him. And a kid like you shows up. He's all not tied up. He's all tied up. He's in good shape. Like good looking kid, normal.

I'm like, oh, this guy is cool. Like, I can be friends with him, whatever. And we become best friends. he loves drinking he loves doing blow he loves banging hookers he's got a lot his his dad is giving him a lot of money and i'm like oh this is this is great so for the next like two years me and this kid are off to the races tearing everything up and um you know are you still living at home now during that during that period yeah yeah and my i tell my mom i'm going to jeffreys i'm going to hang out with jimmy and Jeffrey, Jimmy was the son.

And my mom was like, okay, like, what are you guys doing over there? I'm like, well, Jeffrey takes us to Campanola. He takes us to Wolfgang. And like, we just hang out. And like, you know, that's, that's really it. My mom's like, okay. Like, my mom was, like, starting to get weirded out while I was hanging out with Jimmy and Jeffrey.

Yeah. My dad was like, that's not his son. That's his gay lover. And my mom was like, that's no, no, no. So anyways, to make a long story short. That, you know, I didn't see that one guy. I'm not going to lie. We're going to get there.

We're going to get there. And this is all, by the way, Googleable public knowledge. We can pull it up. August of 2016, we're in the Hamptons. And we're in Montauk. And I'm with Jimmy. And, dude, I got a fucking Ziploc freezer bag full of drugs. I got a 10 gram rock of Coke.

10 gram rock of Coke. I got 100 bars. I got 20 oxies on me. And my friend Jimmy is fucked up. And he starts walking up to like random guys and starts grabbing them by the throat and trying to fight them. So I get into a huge fight with Jimmy, not a fist fight. I'm like, I just got off of fucking probation.

Like, I'm just trying to fucking get high, find some girls, and have a good time. I'm like, I'm done with you. I'm not friends with you anymore. So we start, I start not hanging out with him, but like we stay connected. He's texting. He's calling here and there. And I'm like, all right, whatever, you know, dodging him basically. And that was, that was Labor Day weekend of 2016.

So fast forward two months later, it's November 2016. And I wake up on a Sunday morning. He's been texting me all night Saturday night, four or five o'clock in the morning. He's like, hey pal, you up. I wasn't up, thank God. And you'll hear why I say thank God. Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon I wake up.

Saturday night, only night, I would say in my whole drug addiction that like I was asleep Saturday night at 5 o'clock in the morning. And I was like, yo, bro, like, sorry, like snorted a bunch of oxies last night. I was fucking out for the count. What's up? He's like, I got to talk to you. I'm like, all right, like, pull up on me, come to 88th.

He was like, I'll call you later. Doesn't call me. The next day, Monday. He texts me. He's like, where are you? I'm like, I'm at the gym across the street from his house. So he's like, I'm coming over. He comes to the gym, pulls me upstairs.

We go to the locker room. He's like pacing around. He's like, Man, I got to tell you something. I'm like, all right, what's up, dude? I'm like, what, what's going on? And he's like, this kid came over with Larry for this after party. And there was a bunch of girls there.

And Larry brought this kid with him. And Larry and this kid got into a fist fight. And Larry knocked him out. And, you know, I didn't want this kid, you know, dying on my floor. So I slit his throat and I stabbed him. And he's like, he's like, dude, he's like, don't worry about it. He's like, we rolled him up in a comforter. I threw him out my window.

We drove the body to Jersey and we buried and burned it. And I'm like, like, dude, you're, I literally said to this. I said, you're a good little Jew boy from Manhattan. You're not in Goodfellas. And he grabs me. He's like, oh, damn, serious. And I'm like, yeah, okay, dude. Then he's like pacing.

He's like, don't worry. He's like, look, the detectives are calling me, showing me private numbers calling him. He's like, don't worry. He's like, dude, they're not going to find anything. I bleached the whole apartment. He's like, they'll find nothing. I'm like, all right, dude, whatever you say.

I'm going to shower. I got to go to the Nick game. Take a shower. It's not hitting you yet. Dude, take a shower. I go to the Knit game. I tell my friend who I go to the Knit game with. I'm like, listen to what Jimmy just tells me.

Ba, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My friend says to me, goes, dude, that kid's a pathological liar. He'll literally say anything for attention. I'm like, yeah, I know, bro. It's fucking wild. That night, I go about my life. I'm drank and drug him. Tuesday morning, I wake up.

I go to the gym. I'm walking to the gym. I said, you know what? If he's not lying, there's got to be some type of police activity outside of his apartment, right? There's common sense thinking. So I'm walking down the block. Look down his block.

NYPD unit crime trucks. The guys in the fucking hazmat suits wheeling out his like super flamboyant Louis Vuitton luggage and like dogs and all this shit. And so now I'm looking down the block and now I'm like, dude, by the way, I'm strung out on oxies. I'm doing 900 milligrams of oxycon a day. And you're working out every day too.

I go to the gym and steam. Okay. Yeah, you got to cleanse. Yeah, you keep going. And we look like you work out now. I do now. I do. I do.

I do. So, dude, I'm looking down the block and I'm like, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, my God. He did this. So I call my mom and I'm like, Jimmy fucking killed someone.

He confessed the whole fucking murder to me. I know where the fucking body is. He told me where the body is. My mom's like, what are you sick? She's like, shut the fuck up and get home right now. I fucking jump in the cab. I go home. I go upstairs.

Six o'clock news comes on. Literally before I even get to tell my mom anything. Six o'clock news. Missing kid from Connecticut. Last scene at 418 Sutton Place. Oh my God. I look at my mom. My mom looks at me bro.

My mom's face is white. And I said, Mom, I'm like, he told me he buried and burned the body behind this flower shop in Jersey. It's this and that, blah, blah, blah. He told me he stabbed the kids to his throat, comfort,

comfort out the window. No, the whole thing. I was like, fuck. So we call my lawyer, who's my dad's partner. His name's Peter Frankl. I call him Mr. Minter because we played Candyland so much growing up. He'd always land on the mint guy. So shout out Mr. Minter.

So I call Mr. Minter. I'm like, Jimmy fucking killed some candy. He fucking confessed the whole fucking murder to me, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's like, what the fuck are you talking about? So everything gets connected, obviously. And he's like, listen, you keep your fucking. mouth shut. You don't tell anybody anything. And, uh, we're going to talk tomorrow. Now, that whole night, bro, I'm, first of all, bro, I'm doing 30 blues a day, 900 milligrams of oxies a day. So like,

emotionally and mentally, like, I'm like strung out, dude. So I'm like alone that night. I'm fucking snorting. I'm fucking freaking out. Like, dude, they're going to come knock on my door. He texted after after I left the locker room. He texted me. Don't. tell anybody what I told you. Yeah, that's nice. And he goes and stay off the phones. My lawyer said to stay off the phones. So let me text you on the phone.

Don't say nothing. So the next day, thank God. The next day, his co-defendant, Larry Dillian, he folded. He went to the cops and told them everything and told them where the body was. They found the body. So you didn't have to do that. No. But what happened was, was that the next two weeks was my real, like, spiral.

And I overdosed. On oxies? Yeah. And so I overdosed alone on oxies. In your parents' house? No, at the Gramercy Park Hotel. I'd been kicked out of my house. My parents kicked me out about two weeks later because I got caught stealing and pawning

my mom's jewelry. So they kicked me out of the house. And I was on. on my own for like 72 hours. I got overdose, got Narcan, woke up basically alone. You got Narcan, like someone gave it to you, obviously. Yeah. Who gave it to you? Security. Okay. Yeah. And so I basically go home and I just get on my hands and knees. I'm like, I'm done. I need help. And the next day, I was on a plane to my first inpatient treatment center ever called Sierra Tucson in Arizona. And that was the first time now where I find,

finally was like, all right, I might be one of these fucking addict, alcoholic type guys. You know, I'm like sitting on the plane, two credit cards. I'm crushing up oxies on the plane in my seat. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to rehab. So I might as well just finish everything I got before I get there. So I get there. I'm in detox for four days. And then I go to-

How was that four days off oxies? Oh, dude. Well, when you go to detox, they like taper you off. They're giving you Valium. They're giving you Xanax to like, make you comfortable kind of as you detox, but I slept for three days straight. I would literally woke up with pound a gatorade, pound some food, take my meds, and I would just go back to sleep and I'd wake up, bro, drenched in sweat, drenched, bro, like I ran a fucking marathon. I've heard

some horror stories about people coming off that. It's the worst. It's the worst. So I get the residential treatment. I complete 45 days there. I'm like, okay, like, I'm all in on AA. I'm all in on this, like never going to drink and drug again. I'm sober. No, yeah. Like, dude, I'm sober. Like, I'm, I'm loving this newfound thing that I got. And, uh, did you feel any like, besides like realizing, like you said for the first time, I'm like, I'm going to have a little issue here. And therefore, maybe listening to these people, did you feel like there was any type of, I don't want to say spiritual switch, but like mental switch that got hit on you? Yeah. Where you're like, all right, I can do this now? I was kind of like, okay,

This is getting bad. Yeah. Like my friend died. My friend confessed a murder to me. Like I'm dodging now situations of like real prison, real death by in by mere inches. And like, dude, by the way, if I was up that night when he texted me at five o'clock in the morning, hey pal you up, I would have been like, yeah, what's up? Come over. I got girls here.

There's blow here. I would have fucking five minute cab ride from my house. I would have been over there in a second. I would have walked in. Who knows? Dead body in the bathtub. you're going to fucking help me now or I'm going to kill you too. Ben, what do I do?

Or I walk in and say, whoa, I don't want any part of this. My life has changed forever, no matter what, if I walk into that moment. So my life has changed forever, by the way, not even walking into that moment. Ironically, that was like the most important oxy you ever took during the whole time. Holy shit. Yep. That's like a weird thing to think about it because it's like you're doing something that you look back on it's like it's wrong. I think God.

One time it actually did save you. Dude, I think God every day. I was super strung out that night. Wow. Now, I'm sorry, had the cops talk to you or you gone to the cops at all at this point? So you're in rehab and the cases going on. They're charged. Larry flipped like you said. You haven't had to talk. But you, I think you were telling me before camera because you were referring to a case like this where you did have to talk. So I'll tell you what happened. So towards the end of my stay at Sierra Tucson, the therapist is like, you're going to sober living in Los Angeles. I'm like, I'm not going to.

a fucking Cali, fuck Cali, fucking surfer bros, I'm not a surfer bro, fuck this shit, fuck that shit. My mom gets on the phone, she's like, you have $20 to your name. You're going to go wherever the fuck I tell you to go. I was like, all right, I'm calling to Cali. So I go to Cali, I go to the sober living in Santa Monica. And by the way, I loved, as soon as I get there, like January, fucking 75 and sunny, I call my mom three days in.

I'm like, I'm never coming back. Like, I love it here. but my first my first fucking night in sober living i get subpoenaed by the fbi by the fbi yes so so it became oh because he went to jersey so this is what happened oh shit they couldn't they didn't have any direct evidence of jimmy murdering him or larry murdering him larry was saying jimmy stabbed him jimmy was saying larry stabbed him no direct piece of evidence yet to charge either one of them. So they both initially got charged with tampering with evidence

and concealment of a human corpse. Those are the first two charges charged to both of them. Then they subpoenaed me. I obviously have to fly back. And the feds basically, what happened was the feds were like, we're not letting this kid Jimmy walk. So they're building a separate case on distribution of drugs against him. And there was a point in time where me and Jimmy were talking about

and doing some stuff along the lines of like cocaine and strippers at Sapphire and them selling cocaine and all that stuff. I'm pretty sure I'm good to talk about this. It's 2026 now. Yeah, one goes with the other. Yeah. So they came, they basically subpoenaed me and they were like, look, like, that's what we got. We can, you know, I don't want to charge you with these things, you know. Oh, they said that to you?

Yeah, you're a good kid. You know, we don't want it. We don't want it. What were they going to charge you with? I was going to get, there were some like felony distribution charges. Oh, on the other. Okay. All right.

I'm sorry. Yeah. What, like, did he tell you anything about that night? You know, what did he tell you about that night? And basically like, dude, I got subpoenaed. I didn't have a choice, you know? I did not. My fear came true, right?

My fear was that this was going to go to trial. I was going to be put on the stand. And then he was going to tell his lawyers all the fucking horrible things that we had done together and how I was such a piece of shit, which I was. And then I was going to get blasted all over again. So I didn't want to be a part of this. And I didn't have a choice. Right.

Lose, lose. So I said, I was like, yeah, this is what he told me. I was at the gym. Confessed this whole thing to me and all of these things that he's telling me. And they didn't, they hadn't previously known that at all. No. That he confessed to you. They were just looking for any information you might.

Wow. I mean, listen, I'm sure they read his text to me saying, Don't tell anybody what I told you and fucking stay off the phone. Like an idiot. So anyways, they then passed me off to the Manhattan District Attorney. And I tell the Manhattan District Attorney. And the feds obviously dropped the case. They didn't move forward charges because my testimony was the testimony that put Jimmy away.

So. Wait, why didn't the feds? Because the feds were afraid that the state DA wasn't going to have enough. charges to charge either one of them with murder. I got you. So they're like, these fucking kids are going to get off with maybe five to 10 years unless there's a murder charge here. And we don't have anything that puts it on one of them.

So. Because they're investigating because they took the body across state lines to Jersey. Correct. Could be prosecuted in state court in Manhattan once they are able to say it was a murder there. Correct. Got it. So after I get put in front of a grand jury, obviously. What's that like?

So the grand jury is is is fairly easy, right? The grand jury is, is me sitting in this chair right here. And then there's a room of 12 U.S. citizens. And the prosecutor is basically saying, we intend to charge James Rackover with second degree murder and lays out all the facts. And then they call me into the room and they're like, they ask me the questions. How long were you friends with Jimmy?

How did you know Jimmy? What did you guys do together? Like they paint the picture of me being a credible witness because I was so close with Jimmy and he would confide in me and everything and I would confide in him. We were best friends. And then they ask you about what did he tell you about that murder? What did he tell you about that night? And then I tell them the story.

I leave the grand jury and then the next day they filed former charges and they they charged Jimmy with second degree murder. Did he end up pleading? No. Oh, he went full blunt to trial. So Jimmy went to trial. I had to testify and you can you can you can you can Google that um you know Rosanna Scott O'Sun star witness in in murder trial and you know if it was fucking

horrible for me bro because it was there was by the way that was two years between the date had happened till the one the trial happened and for two years I'm flying back and forth from LA to to New York with a sober companion with a sober companion yeah like someone that like my mom paid to fly with me and stay with me and stay in our house with us to make sure that like I was staying sober because the worst thing that could have happened for the district attorney was that I went off my rocker again and I started doing drugs right so I did that and we went to he went to trial he went to trial and I had to testify against him I had to sit at this chair here and look at him like I'm looking at you what's that like so

dude i was so angry at him by that point like i had processed it a hundred million times right i was so fucking angry like you fucking idiot why would you tell me this like i'm your boy i'm your boy why are you telling me this if you're my boy and you do something like that and i have no part in it you don't fucking wrap me into it. So like that was my defense mechanism that kind of kept me somewhat sane through the process. But then, you know, I go and I testify. Prosecutors ask me the questions. And then his defense team gets up and cross-examines me and they fucking dude, they rip me. They rip me. They rip me. How long were they cross-examining you for? Two hours. You were the one that bought the drugs that killed your friend in college, right?

You stole money from your parents, right? How did you supply your $1,200 day drug addiction? Because Jimmy knew that I stole from my family. Jimmy knew that I pawned my parents' jewelry. Jimmy knew that when I was in trouble for that case, that I was doing drugs with him. So he told them everything, because their job is to make me not look credible.

Thank God, the jury thought I was credible. Why do you think they thought you were credible just because they looked at it like, well, Because I answered honestly. Yeah. And the prosecution also did a great job of asking me these questions before they cross-examine me. So the prosecution said, you know, you had your issues with drugs. They asked me in a much nicer way.

How are you, how are you, how are you, you know, paying for your drug addiction? Oh, I was stealing for my parents. So I already got honest before they ripped me in a stretch, which was, you know, fine. that's that's like he got sentenced to 28 years to life by the way he still uh he has a phone in prison he's in elmira he has a phone in prison he posts shit on instagram all the time when i started my podcast my first episode my friend kevin interviewed me and i went through this whole story and uh dude all the clips went viral on ticot and instagram like four or five million plays on all these clips. And so obviously he came across them. And he's posting on

Instagram, like pictures of himself, never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut. Like just basically call me out. He has people messaging me still. Like I got a message maybe two months ago from a girl who was like, hey, I'm good friends with Jimmy. You know, I was an ex-girlfriend of his. Listen, like, you're a father now, you're a husband now, all this stuff. Like, is there anything about your testimony that you, you know, you're you want to change? Like, could you imagine the pain of his mother that her son is locked away for life? And, like, I didn't even respond to the message.

I mean, he killed a guy. What I want to say is he's a fucking piece of shit who murdered somebody. And, like, he should rot in prison. You're not, like, look, you're not in the mob. You know, like, he killed a guy. For no reason. For no reason. There was no beef.

They just met. They just met that night. No reason, bro. Came to you, burdened you with that information, and then fucking texted you about it so that they know you were fucking told. Like, what does he want you to do? Dude, it was... I've seen some mob situations where it's like,

I'm going to stay out of this one. This is not that. This is like... No, by the way, people message me all the time. You're a fucking rat. You're a fucking snitch. I'm like, you know what, man? I was sober.

I was trying to clean up my life. I had nothing to do with it. If we had gotten arrested for some type of drug charges together, I would never have rolled. I would have said to my parents, I would have said to my lawyers, I'm not rolling on my friend. I'm going to,

whatever time I got to do, I'm going to do. But I was so angry that he roped me into such a gruesome, heinous act that I had nothing to do with. That like, dude, my moral compass of rolling on my friend, like it was nowhere near that.

It was like, fuck you, you should rot. By the way, the kid who he killed was a great kid from a great family, went out to the city, he was from Connecticut, went out to the city to party with his friends, was not looking for trouble, was looking at have a good time, maybe meet some girls, get laid, whatever, normal 23 year old behavior. I got fucking brutally murdered. To this day, we don't, for no reason. We don't know why.

That's crazy, man. It's really heavy too. And it's happening in the middle of you. like having your own trying to like get your fucking life in order too yeah so at this time i'm sober i'm in l-a and uh i basically basically fall into this like this ticket business this high-end concierge business that i was in that i was doing well before we get there you had $20 to your name when you went out there yeah so is it like immediately you go into the ticket business or you doing anything like just to get money in the account okay i'll so i'll tell you this story so

I've been sober living for about six and a half months. And at about like month four or five, I call my mom. I'm like, look, like, you know, I got seven months sober. I'm like, I'm doing well. Like I'd love to get an apartment out here. My mom's paying 10 grand a month for me to live in the sober living. And she's like, she's like, no. Like, go get a job.

And I'm like, mom, I'm going to save you money with a $2,500 a month apartment instead of 10 grand, excuse me, 10 grand. in a month sober living. She's like, I don't care what you tell me. Like, you need to be an adult. Go get a fucking job. And then you can move out and you can afford it. And I'm like, oh, all right.

So long story short, I call my friend Josh, who at this time, he's in that concierge ticket business. And I'm like, yo, he makes a lot of money for our age at that time. And I'm like, yo, put me on, man. Like, what can I sell? And he's like, you know, Coachella's in a month and a half, two months. like try selling some artist passes. And I'm like, all right, cool.

So no drugs at Coachella. No drugs at Coachella. I'm like, you know what? Post an Instagram story. Hey, I have artist passes available for Coachella weekend one, weekend two. If you're interested, hit me up. When I went to college in D.C., I became really good friends with one of the, basically the babysitters, the handlers from one of the princes of Saudi Arabia.

He messaged me, hey, bro, I need Coachella passes. weekend one, weekend two. It's like 160 artist guest passes for weekend one, or 80, 80 artist guest passes for weekend two, 160 neon carnival passes. And so, bro, I have no idea what Coachella passes cost. I have no idea,

I'm like thinking, maybe like $500 tickets, whatever. Call my friend Josh, I'm like, yo, and you know, 160 artist guest weekend one, 80 weekend two. He's like, dude, stop wasting my time. Fucking Vladimir Putin, who? I'm like, bro, I'm serious. It's for the royal family. He's like, he's like, wait, you're like, what?

I'm like, yeah, I'm like, my buddy. He's like, all right, get me on the phone with him. Get him on the phone. That was a Tuesday. By Friday, my first deal ever, I made like 300 grand. 300 grand on the deal. 385,000 was my profit on my first deal. I mean, that's ashtray money for fucking Prince Bin Sultan or whatever.

But holy shit. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, dude, I was like, like I have arrived. I'm here. I found my call. I'm like, I'm the man. I'm going to call him.

I'm like, I'm fucking moving out. I'm moving out. She's like, what do you mean? I'm like, I'm fucking moving out. I just made $400 grand. She's like, LJ, what did you do? What did you do? Is this legal?

Is this legal? She was asking all, you know, my mom's, dude, fucking seven months ago, I'm like, Sornoxys being a degenerate. Now I got all this money. And I'm like, yeah, I'm like. Is this before you testified? Yeah.

Okay. So this is in that in-between period. Yeah. Got it. And so my mom basically called Josh. I was one of my best friends since high school. Josh, is this legal? What the fuck is going on here?

Did he really make all this money? Josh's like, yeah, yeah, he did. He did. And so I basically move out. And I start working at this company in L.A. A concierge company called Confirm 360. And they specialize in these kind of high-end experiences. Right?

Not like nosebleed seats to a game. It's like very exclusive bespoke things you can't gray market. You're not really supposed to be buying these things. So I start working for them. I build my own business and after about like six, seven months there, I'm like, I'm using my mom's phone book. I'm hitting up the head of Sony, the head of Republic records for things. And I'm like, why am I chopping 50% with my, I don't need this fucking. Schmuck, I could do this on my own.

So I leave. I start my own company. You're like 23? I'm 23. In year one, I made 720,000 profit. That's pretty good. Here, too, I made $1.2 million profit. I got to take some notes from this guy, Dief.

Yeah. You're making that kind of profit. As that started to happen, so did my gambling. And when I tell you that... Had you ever gambled before? Yeah, I was gambling. I was gambling a lot. But nothing like...

I got one jam with a bookie for 10 grand. When was that? That was like right around the time that Jimmy murdered him. Okay. Murdered the kid. Was that over like sports? Yeah, sports betting. And so like I wasn't sure if I had a gamble problem.

I was just like fucked up on drugs gambling, trying to gamble to get money for drugs. You know, it wasn't like a thing yet. So 2017 Connor McGregor Floyd Mayweather fight, right? That was 2017 or 2017 summer. Yeah. Went to Vegas my very first time. I lost 50,000 that weekend. What does that feel like?

Dude, I'm walking out of the wind. My tail between my legs. And my friend Mason's like, by the way, I spent like eight grand on a parlor suite at the wind for the weekend. My friend Mason's like, you should go talk to a casino host. I'm sure they'll refund your room. I'm like, what? What are you talking about? I was like, yeah, he's like, that's what they do.

They comp shit for people who lose a lot of money. Like, what's a casino host? He's like, blah, blah. So I go meet this guy. And I'm like, hey, dude, my, I lost a lot of money this weekend. My friend says, you can comp me in my room. Is this true? And he starts laughing.

He was like, do you have a player's card? I'm like, yeah, looks it up. Oh. Okay, Mr. Regiro. I'm refunding you for your room. And anytime you want to come back here, you text me. we'll comp you a salon suite a salon suite a salon suite's real fucking nice what's in there it's like 3,000 square foot room that's that'll do yeah so we'll comp you a salon suite uh you need

transportation we'll pick you up at the the airport and next thing you know every other weekend i'm going to vegas i'm getting picked up on the tarmac with a rolls royce for me an escalade for my luggage by the way i had i'd bring a fucking duffel bag i wouldn't bring anything They brought an escalade for the duffel bag. Yeah. It's a good service. Yeah. It was, by the way, they opened the door.

You get there. I was getting free dinners. Have you ever been to the win in Vegas? I think I have been inside the win. You know, that steakhouse? I was there for the first time last year. We went to a fuck ton of casinos when we were there. You know, SW Steakhouse?

That's the Steakhouse in the wind. That sounds familiar. Free dinners are SW Steakhouse. That'll do. Free tables at Encore. beach club. Oh, we did go. Yeah, we went to encore. Yeah, yeah. So we were at the one. Yeah. All you got to do is pay for tax and tip. Is it free dinners? I said, all right. I'm going to test this theory. I will see how fucking free this shit is. My first night there, I'm with four of my

best friends, Dean, Shane, Marcos and Mason. We go to SW. Steakhouse. We run up a $7,000 tap. Crab legs, caviar, this, that fucking three porter houses. Sure enough, all I had to do is pay for tax and tip. I said, wow. This is amazing. I lost $2.7 million at the win from 2017 to 2020. It's a good investment on their part. Yeah. I got a lot of shit for free though, bro.

That's, yeah. Julian, you're not understanding. I got free rooms, bro, and free dinners. I think the balance sheet's a little, a little skewed there. So wait, did you, so you hadn't really gambled before except like really kind of, for the most part, had any. issue with that one, it was that one time where you were 10 grand into a book in New York. Like when you were first doing this, again, I asked, was there ever a moment where you're like, maybe this is the same part of the brain I was having an issue with on the other stuff?

Or it's just like, no, this is cool. This is the problem. This was the problem. I was making so much money in my ticket business that I'd lose 250 grand in a weekend. And then I'd come back on a Sunday ready to kill myself. But Monday morning, I'd wake up and I'd have like. 300K and wires come in. What and so you're like you said, you're selling a lot of exclusive stuff.

You went off on your own. You had your own company with it. Like can you go through some of the things you would sell again? Yeah. So I would sell like front row seat, front row seats to Taylor Swift, private meet and greet for 150,000 a person. How do you get access to sell something like that? Knowing their security guards, knowing their managers, knowing their tour managers,

uh, knowing people, executives in the music industry who also, also love free money. You got to remember those types of things when you're doing them, the people on the other end who are facilitating them, it's free. Yes. So when you're,

I'm calling you saying, hey, I want a private meeting with Anthony Pompliano. I'm going to give you $75,000 for four people. Your boy's a pump. So like that for you is like, yeah, wire me the money.

I'll bring you to his office tomorrow, no problem. Right. You just made $75,000. And so the accessibility, you just had to know the right people. That was the whole name, the whole game of the business for me was knowing the right people. So like with Taylor Swift, that example and the people around her, let's, I'm just going to make up a numbers. Let's say you sell four passes of like meet and greet behind the stage for a hundred grand or something like that.

You're paying them a cut obviously. Yeah. So would you get the same kind of percentage every time or are you like negotiating that every time? It was negotiated. I did, I only did two meet and greets with Taylor Swift because she was, the accessibility was very hard for her. Yeah, it's two more than I've ever done. But I charged, both times it was for four people each.

I charged 150,000 a person. I paid her, the person who I paid, 50,000 a person. So I made, I made 100 grand. 150K a person. I made 100 grand a person. Yeah, I made 400 grand on those deals each. It's a good day. Yeah.

Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. Like I did maybe two hours. of work total to get that money. So for me to go to Vegas and lose it all, it wasn't like I was fucking, dude, grinding 7 a.m., 7 p.m. in an office, like, just fucking crunching numbers all day. And I was like, dude, I woke up in fucking Beverly Hills. I got in my fucking B6 alpina that, you know,

and just drove around fucking hit Earth Cafe. Said what's up to my boys. I need a private mean green Taylor, so it's okay, boy, okay, yeah, send me the wire and fucking go have lunch, go have a second lunch. What made you so good at building relationships to be able to do that? Because obviously, like, you're making it sound so easy

because for you it was. But if this was so easy to be fucking a million people doing this second out there. The same way I have, I'm good with people. I'm charismatic. I'm charming. I can easily

manipulate people and we'll get into the gambling side of things because it didn't always end with me gambling with my own money. I gambled with a lot of other people's money later on. But I've used that charm and charisma and making you feel special for good. And I also use it to manipulate people. And so I had a way of like just like getting my way with people. Like I had a way of getting my way with my parents, you know, and I just carried on later in life and, and did you have a good relationship with your parents by this time? It was good because I wasn't home. I caused so much damage, like, part of the reason why I went to L.A. was like to be away from my parents, to get that autonomy, to have my parents not breathe down my neck, to not be like, you know,

them watching me 24-7. It's like, if I was home, even if they weren't trying to, you know, if I was home, even if they weren't trying to watch me 24-7, they couldn't help themselves because of the trauma and the damage that I've caused. So it was hard to do that when I'm on the other side of the country. The gambling part aside, though, you're not doing drugs or alcohol, right? No, I'm sober.

You're sober. I'm sober gambling, bro. And you're making, again, putting the gambling aside for a second because they don't know about that yet. But like, you're making a success of yourself. You got your own business. You're out in a new place, making a new life. You're staying sober.

They're checking in on that. seems like that's the case. Did you feel like, was there a point, again, minus the gambling part where you're like, oh, my parents might actually, like, really be proud of me now? So, yes. And then also at the same time, they were worried because they knew I was going to Vegas all the time. And so my dad, my grandfather was a compulsive gambler who gambled the way of the house three times growing up for my father.

So my dad and this gambling thing, there's a lot of generational trauma there for him. Yeah, I'll bet. Holy shit. Three times? Yeah. Like he'd come home from school and he'd be like he packed the bags we're going to stay with Grandma Ray. Wow. So, you know, for me at that time, though, bro, I was like, this gravy train's never going to end.

What the fuck? Like, this business, like, whatever. And like, by the way, at the end of my gamble, like, towards the end of, right before COVID hit, dude, I was gambling so much. I had a booking in L.A. I was going to Vegas at least every other weekend. And I'd go to Vegas. I'd lose 200,000 in Vegas. And I'd also lose another 100,000 with my booking in L.A.

So I'd lose the money in Vegas. I'd get back to L.A. Sunday night, Monday morning, I got to meet the bookie in L.A. and give them $100,000 also. So I had all this money coming in, and I was just recycling people's money. Like, I was taking money from orders that were like not only just my profit, but money to fill the actual order. Oh, shit. The order was three, six months away.

I'm like, dude, I don't need to worry about filling this order until, you know, it's January, the concerts in July. I don't need to worry about this 300 grand and filling it until like June. And between now and June, I'll have, you know, a couple million dollars in gross money coming in that I can just keep recycling and keep recycling and keep recycling. And what ended up happening was essentially COVID came and wiped out concerts and my industry and I was left with a $20,000 a month rent for my house. Oh, you leveled up at that point.

$6,000 a month in car payments. You know, $1,000 for insurance, $1,000 for utilities, blah, blah, blah. And I had like 40, 50 grand on my bank account. Whoa. So, and by the way, I can't gamble. There's nothing to gamble on. There's no sports. Casinos are shut down.

I mean, my buddy, Aunt the Buki, had people gambling on, like, fucking European table tennis and the KBO in Korea at that time. I was gambling on Nicaraguan B leaks on there. I was going to say, so you found something. Yeah. Yeah. And then...

I remember that era. And then eventually... The KBO, you can't lose. Yes. Yes, you can. Dude. And then you want to hear what's even crazier? And then UFC, Dana White.

He opened up. He opened up. He started going to Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia and he started doing those COVID UFC matches where there was no fans. Yeah. By the way, I love UFC. I was never that in love with UFC.

I became a UFC specialist. And I was firing 10,000 to 20,000 on every single game. Oh. On every single match. Yeah, that's going to go. Okay. So that started.

That was, let's say, 2020 and COVID. I was engaged to a girl at this time. I'm sorry, that was a question I haven't asked. During all that time period when you're on drugs, you mentioned when you're a marquee, you were in a relationship. Like, you're still dating women during a lot of this time period. How do you keep that straight with all these issues? The marquee girlfriend, we broke up.

Right. And then when I got sober and right around the trial for the murder, I started dating this girl, and I wound up getting engaged to her. and then during COVID called off the engagement. You did? Yeah. Why'd you call it off?

It wasn't going well to begin with. And then I started drinking and drugging again. Oh, you did. Yeah. Yeah. So around. What caused that? What caused that was, I'd say, disconnection from AA in the program.

And then another main thing was financial stress and pressure. I owed out about 400. granted refunds to clients for Coachellas and concerts and meet and greets. And I'm like, guys, I don't have the money. I paid the vendors. They're not giving me refunds. And like, next time I know, I got like fucking three lawsuits and a judgment and like that like, dude, it was, it got really, really fucking hairy. And so essentially what happened was I started drifting away from my, my ex. And she was just a, I don't want to. She was a ball buster and it wasn't going well and then I started drinking and using COVID came

Started drinking and using that I really drifted away from her and then I just I ended things Did she call you out for drinking and using? Yeah, and she supported me. She was like I'll You know, I'll stay with you but like dude I was under so much pressure that like I didn't want to stop drinking and using Right. It was it was it was really really bad this was a really dark time my life and coincidentally enough, it was, it was a really dark time, but about a couple weeks after my ex and I broke up, Vegas was reopened and Halloween weekend 2020, Halloween weekend 2020, I was trying to think 2021 or 2020, Halloween weekend 2020, I'm like depressed and my boy, Jacob, may he rest in peace. He was like, he was like, yo, let's go to Vegas this weekend.

And I was like, I'm in. I was like, I'll get us a private jet. I got us a jet. A private jet. Got us jet from LA to Vegas. And I'm like, tell my boy chick, I'm like, let's bring some girls, you know, some like, some girls. And he was like, no, like, let's bring some normal girls. And I'm like, all right, whatever, we'll bring some normal girls.

And lo and behold, he invites this girl, Alyssa. She has three best friends. They all come on the plane. I meet this girl, Mia, on the plane to Ville. who I fall in love with. We get married 24 hours later in Vegas at a fake wedding. And she's actually my real wife today. No.

Yeah. We have a two-year-old son. It worked out. Yeah, it worked out. It worked out barely, barely, barely. But it worked out because... This is the second Vegas wedding in a week we've had in here. Yeah.

Yeah. Was Brian Callan at the front desk saying, my friend, my friend? I got to pull up some pictures of that one. Oh, my God. And you said it was a fake wedding, but it was a real wedding. It actually got legally married. No, it was a certificate of commitment. All right.

That's Japanese. What does that mean? It's like we didn't go to the courthouse and get it like certified, you know? It was a fake Elvis Presley who did the whole wedding. Yeah, we got married, but we weren't married married. Like I, like, she couldn't come after my money if we got to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a real 50-cent marriage right there.

Yes, yeah. So we're getting fucked up in Vegas. We get married. We get back to L.A. I take her on a honeymoon for 10 days to Cabo. Oh, you went on a honeymoon for 10 days longer than you dated. Yeah, yeah. I had known her for about 72 hours.

What made you fall so in love with her? Well, one, she was really fucking hot. She still was really fucking hot. Like, hottest girl I've ever been with. But I was drinking and drugging with her, and she was partying with me. And I was like, this girl that just loves me for me. It's not the private chat we're on. Dude, she just, finally, someone's not fucking judging me anymore.

You know? So fast forward, like that was October, I'd say, it's Christmas time. Come home and meet my family. I've only known you for about 90 days. Come home to my family. All right, I'll come. We're on a plane back to New York. You hadn't told them.

I look at her and I'm like, by the way, listen, my parents, you could drink in front of my family. My parents don't know I drink. You're 26 years old. What do you mean your parents don't know you drink? Like, well, I was sober, but now I'm not.

I'm like, it's all good. Don't worry. She's like, uh, okay. Well, guess we'll talk about this another time. And, uh, me and my family, it was all good, whatever. My parents think I'm fucking nuts. They're like, you know, three months ago, you were engaged and now you got a fucking new girl you just married in Vegas you're

I was like a hundred pounds like you're fucking fat like what the fuck is going on we go back to LA after the holidays and uh 30 days later I had another fucking crazy breakdown from the amount of drugs I was doing I tell me my my wife then my wife my real life now I said I'm I got to go to rehab and so I got on plane I go to our um circlodge and uh Utah. Four days. I'm there. Four days.

Four days. I call me four days. I said, you gotta get me the fuck out of here. I just said, I can't do that. It's not a good idea. And we were broken up.

I had broke up with her before I went to rehab. I was like, you gotta leave me. Like, I'm gonna fucking burn this. I'm burning my life down and you're coming with me if you don't leave me. So I break up with her. And so she's like,

I'll get you a plane ticket if you'll get back together with me. Oh, no. Mind you. to think of that. My wife at this time is 22 years old, bro. She's a baby. And you're what?

Like 26? 27. 26. So she gets me a flight out of there. I break out of rehab. I come back to L.A. My parents are freaking out. You break out of rehab.

Yeah, like in the middle of the night. I didn't tell anyone in the middle of the night. I booked a 6 a.m. I'm, I wake up and I go to the tech on call. And I said, yo, I need my passport. I need my wallet. And I need my phone.

It's like, I can't do that. I got to call the direct. I said, get him on the phone. Director's like, just wait till I'm there. I'll be there at 8 a.m. We could talk about this. I'm like, Circlodge is like these big, beautiful windows. You're overlooking like the fucking mountains in Utah.

So I get on the phone, I'm like, yo, dude, I'm going to start smashing your windows out one by one unless you give me back my shit. Sounds like you were better. Yeah. He was like, all right, give him back to stuff. So I leave and go back to L.A. I'm in L.A. for about two weeks. And my friend Darius is like, he's half. Columbia, he's like, yo, I'm going to Cartagena for a week.

You want to come? And I'm like, I've always wanted to go to Columbia. I heard the blow is great there. I said, I'm coming. So my wife then says, you go to Columbia, I'm leaving you. I wasn't planning on taking sand to the beach. So, yeah, I understand. No problem. You got to do what you got to do. Bro, I go to Columbia, which was supposed to be a one-week trip. I stayed for three months in a full-blown drug psychosis. Calling people, asking them for 100,000 so I could buy an island off the coast of Cartagena.

Well, that's not popular to do these days. No. Yeah. No. So early. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred K for an island?

Dude, I was like, I had. That's it? I was like going to build the next four seasons of Cartagena. Less than pre-Eptstein, I would have done that too. But now not so much. Yeah, that was bad. Anyways, Mia, my wife, winds up flying out there at about like 70,000. eight weeks in to try and get me to come home.

She stays with me out there for the last four weeks. And so finally one day I woke up and I was like, what the fuck am I doing in Bogota? I got to get the fuck out of here. This is a real rider die, bro. So she stays in me. I eventually, we come home. I fucking burn my life down in L.A.

over the next 60 days. I pack my bags. I'm like, I got to get out of here. I moved to Florida. I try to get sober with my cousin. Were you gambling over those 60 days? Yeah. Yeah.

I had to leave LA for multiple reasons. One of the reasons was that people were coming after me for money. And the second reason was because I got evicted from my house that I was throwing these COVID super spreaders at in LA. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm talking bangers, bro.

Like 150, 250, 200 people in the middle of Benedict Canyon drive. Weren't they, like, turning off fucking electricity when people were doing it? Yeah, they threatened to do that to me once. They never did it. No. They did it to Jake Paul, I think. Yeah. Was it Jake Paul?

I hope I didn't get that. They did. They did turn it off. Yeah. So anyways, so I, I want to focus a little bit on the gambling because from May of 2021 until December of 2024, I don't know the exact number, but from 2016 to 2024, I lost $10.2 million totality. That includes a $2.7 million from the win.

That includes booky payments. That includes Fandul. That includes C. Caesar sports book, draft kings. 10.2 million. Yeah. Yeah. And so essentially,

I'm home in New York from 2021 until January of 2023. And bro, when I tell you that I am coming up with the craziest stories to get people to wire me money. And I'm not talking like, yo, Julian, can you zone me five grand? I'll pay you back in like a month. month or two. I'm talking like, you know, Julian, I got this crazy ticket deal. It's going down. You send me

a hundred grand right now. I'm going to send you back 120 grand in like, you know, three months, two months. And you're like, we've done business already a hundred times. I've always paid you back. So you're like, yeah, everyone I know who'd send it, sent it. And like that. Bro, I had no ticket deals going. Very minimal ticket deals going. I was gambling. I was going to fucking at the time fan duel was only legal in jersey wasn't legal yet in new york so i'd drive over the fucking bridge i'd go to fanduel metal lands i'd fucking put down cash or i'd sit in my my car and i'd place bets on my phone and um from that point on until from 2021 to 2023 i was gambling like a madman i started drinking and drugging again and what ended up happening was to

wait and you weren't with mea no she was back in l-a i was in New York. She was doing her thing. She hated me, but she loved me. And like, we kind of like still talked, but it was very unhealthy. It was very unhealthy. And then December of 2022, I had this really great job. I was a general manager of this restaurant. Make a long story short, I get fired for drinking and drugging. And I just remember being like, all right, I can't take this anymore. Like I've had enough. I'll do, I'll do whatever it takes. I can't put together longer than a year sober. I can't stop burning my life down.

I can't stop breaking my mother's heart. Like, what's it going to take? You know? So my parents find out I get fired. And my mom and dad, I was living at home. They're like, you can go anywhere in the world you want. We'll buy you a plane ticket there. But you can't stay here.

And we want nothing to do with you. And I was like, shit. I was like, all right. So I call my sober friends out in L.A. And I'm like, I need to go to treatment. My parents won't pay for treatment. My health insurance won't pay for treatment. Like, can someone help me get a scholarship?

Long story short, I got a scholarship at this place. I was supposed to get a scholarship at this place. And I called Mia. I said, baby, I miss you. I love you. Can I come stay on your couch for a couple days before I go to rehab? She's like, oh, it's like, yeah, it'd be so fun. Yeah, come.

So I come out to L.A. And January of 2023, January 8th. And I was supposed to go to treatment on the 11th. They call me on the 10th. We're pushing your bed back four days. And the same thing happened over and over again. So make a long story short, I'm drinking and drug in every day in L.A. now as if I'm going to fucking rehab in three days.

Finally, on January 22nd, 2003, I was with Mia on a friend and I was parting hard for like three weeks straight and I started convulsing in my sleep. Mia woke me up crying like, I thought you were dying. I'm like, I'm fucking fine. What the fuck? Blah, blah, blah. The next day, she was just like, look, like, if you want to stay with me, that's fine, but you have to get sober.

If you don't want to be sober, you can't stay here anymore. And in that moment, bro, I just remember just being like, this girl, I could fucking walk on water with her, dude. I could do no wrong. I've done everything horrible you could possibly imagine, and she doesn't want me around anymore. And that was it. I woke up January 23rd.

I was getting sober. Didn't go to treatment. didn't go to rehab, no therapy. You just turned it off. Dude, I went to three AA meetings a day. I got a sponsor. I started working steps. I took commitments.

I was a coffee guy. I brought donuts to meetings. I went to a morning meeting. I went to a noon meeting. I went to an evening meeting. I stopped hanging out with all my old friends. Dude, in the beginning, I called my sponsor for everything. I was like, yo, should I wipe up to down or down to up?

I called him on everything, bro. I was so desperate finally. Someone came on my podcast and said, the pain of staying, once the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change, that's when people will change or something like that.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And I was at that moment. I was at that moment. I was just like, yo, I can't, I can't live like this anymore. So I went to AAA every day, right? And I said, okay, I'm not going to gamble either. I'm going to solve the gambling in AA also.

I didn't last too long. So I start gambling again. Are you doing any ticket deals during this time? I'm starting to again. I'm starting to again because that was like my thing. It was like I'm on me as couch. I'm not going to go get a nine to five type job. So I started hitting up old contacts.

You're back in the business. What's up? What's the vibe? What do you need? What can I help? What can I get? Da-da-da-da. Started closing a couple of deals.

And at about six months in, I get me up pregnant. And, you know, we decide we're going to keep the baby. And I call my mom, like, look, you know, Mia's pregnant. We're keeping it. My mom's like, you're a fucking six months sober. You're out of your fucking mind. Mind you, look at the last 12 years of my life. Imagine your son calling you and telling you that when you got, you know, six months sober.

And I'm like, all right, well, I said, listen, you don't have to be on board now. You got nine months to figure it out. So, you know, essentially was what I said. So. Oh, my God. December of 2023. Holy shit. I know.

Mia's like seven months pregnant. No, yeah, she's seven months pregnant. I proposed to her a real proposal, not, you know, the fake Vegas stuff. Was there something that happened in your head, though, where you're like, I'm going to be a father now? Yeah. This shit's different. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I also felt for the first time, like, two feet planted in recovery. The obsession to drink and use had been lifted. I had no. Just by working the steps. And just by helping other alcoholics. Like, very, very simple things.

And they say it's a very simple program for very complicated people. And that's really what it was, bro. It was like, I just had to stop doing things my way and take some suggestions. But the song. and the gambling thing in A, it didn't really work out that well. So me and I go on a baby moon right after I proposed to her.

We go to Mexico again. And something just compelled me to start gambling again when I was there. I joined this group chat and it was a group chat of big,

big shot gamblers, you know, guys bet in 20, 50, 100,000 a game. And I jumped right back in. And what were you betting on? Dude, NFL, NBA, MLB,

European soccer, you know, like anything. Really? Did you have much money? So at that time I was making my ticket business making good money. It wasn't making crazy money, but I was probably back out like 40, 50, 60K a month and profit. But the problem is is that like, okay, 40, 50, 60K is profit. But let's say I get a wire and I make 60 grand on it.

It's probably like 240,000, 300,000 total. So I get a wire for 300 grand, right? 240 that I have to send to someone else to actually fill the order. The 60 grand is what I get to keep. I got you. So now I'm getting these wires in. And you're using the wires. And I'm using all of it to gamble.

And it's not like 2017, 2018, 2019. Yeah. Where I have so much money coming in, I can keep recycling. Right. So what happens is I dig myself a nice little hole my last, December, 2023 until December of 2024. Found myself in the hole, million dollars. Gambling.

A million dollars in debt. Yeah, I entered Gamblers Anonymous, December 2nd, 2024. And when was your son born? My son was born February 6, 2024. Okay. So I gambled for the first 10 months of his life. And Thanksgiving of 2024, I was suicidal. I had a plan to go to this beach by my parents' house in the Hamptons,

bring my gun with me, swim out halfway, and put a bullet in my head. and just hopefully wash away because my mom had bailed me out two million bucks over the last 10 years from gambling debts i just felt like dude like what i want to focus on really is like this gambling shit is so fucking insidious bro like i come in here tweaked out on oxies and whatever you're going to look at me you're going to be like yo like are you okay i could be sitting here right now with Right now, and I can have my entire life savings on the basketball game, and you'd have no idea. No clue. How are you going to know?

It's not physically, it's not physically altering. It's not, it's emotionally altering. It's mood altering. Real quick, Lewis, I got to go to the bathroom, but this is a good, good time to dig into this. There's a lot of stuff obviously this happened legally with gambling as well that is interesting as a one zero to 100. But we'll be right back. Guys, we just pulled up an article while we're on the break there. So this is from that same case where you had to testify from the New York Post.

What a wild fucking headlight. News anchor's son filmed having sex with hookers and sextortion plot, according to prosecutors. The suspect on trial for murdering a young man in an Upper East Side apartment secretly filmed the son of Good Day New York host, Rosanna Scotto, having sex with hookers so that he could extort him into making his famous mom foot the bill for his own massive gambling losses. What a great friend. Yeah, he was a good guy. He was a real gym. Jesus Christ. Wow.

He's the kind of friend you do need more of, you know? You need more of them. Yeah. And you need to definitely never, you know, cover your ass when he murders someone. Yeah, exactly. Jesus. But anyway, we left off. So your son's born in February, 2024.

You then are full, you're a million dollars of gambling debt. You have a full-blown plan to commit suicide around Thanksgiving. Like, why didn't you do it? So during this time, I'd say when I moved back to New York in 2021, I got a host from Fandul, right, a VIP host. A VIP host. Yeah. So basically I lost 100 grand in like three days. And then I get an email from Fandall being like, hey, I'm your VIP host at Fandul.

Your play warrants VIP attention. And essentially is like they send you to the Rangers, they send you to the Fandul box at Madison Square Garden for Rangers playoff. games, Yankee games, Knicks games, you deposit 10 grand, you get $2,000 or $2,000 free play on top of it. Just like this VIP program to keep people hooked, to keep people locked in. And essentially what happened was that kept me playing longer. You know what I'm saying?

Like I got all these cool perks. They wrap your losses up in a bow and make it fucking all nice and dandy and you get to go to games and you're this big shot and all that. But really my life. last year of gambling was was, was nothing enjoyable. It was, it was pain, it was isolation, it was misery, bro. And I tell people that gambling addiction is like living in a prison built by yourself. And every day the walls just start to get smaller and smaller and smaller and talk about

exhausting. I mean, the lies and the con. and the stealing and the robbing Peter to pay Paul. Like, bro, that that in itself is more exhausting than fucking running a marathon. Like having to remember what I told my wife, my mom, my dad, my sister, my coworker, my friend, you who I borrowed money from, you who I borrowed money from, you who I borrowed money from, you who I borrowed money from, full-time job. And then on top of that, this disease tries to tell you that the only way,

out is to keep going. Right? Like this is the only disease where technically you can win. There's nothing about drugs and alcohol that you're getting winning from, right? You're just getting high. But the gambling, right, and I tell people this, like, I, it's not humanly possible for me to snort $100,000 worth of cocaine in one night. I can blow everything.

I have access to on one game. Right. One quarter. One quarter. I get better at the first quarter. Yeah. So I'm gambling and I'm basically in this, this massive hole. What would happen like at night or whenever when you're home and you see your son and you know

you're doing this on the side? Like is there like an intense guilt that like you're stuck in this separate life or you're or you're literally telling yourself what you just said where it's like, well, I just got to win a few more bets and then I can quit it forever for him. Both. Both. So before my son was born, I swore to my wife that I was going to stop. And the night my son was born, I was gambling.

On your phone? Yeah. Yeah. One like Vandal. Yeah. And my biggest regret in everything that I've explained to you over the last 12 years of my life is that I didn't stop gambling before my son was born. And I'm obviously super grateful that I stopped when my son was 10 months old.

He's going to have no recollection of me not being present. But the first 10 months of my son's life consisted of me lying, cheating, stealing from everyone around me, including my wife and going to casinos, sports betting constantly, not taking care of myself, not taking care of my family, and basically just doing everything and anything possible to keep this shit going. And the only reason why is because, dude, I was in such a hole. I owed the wrong people money. And then on top of that, I owed people money that like not bookies or or like, you know,

people that were going to hurt me, but people who I took 250 grand from that, if they didn't get their money back, dude, I was going to prison. I'd rather owe a bookie 250 grand because with a bookie, I could be like, look, dude, I'm going to pay you know, five grand a month until this is paid off. 9.9 bookies out of 10 are going to say you're cut off pay me 5 grand a month you miss one payment then you're going to have problems and your life goes on but with someone who's like a legitimate business person who is a company who I said I'm I need this money for X that's wire fraud that's wire fraud that's embezzlement that's that's that's fucking stealing that's stealing

and um so I kept gambling and And, you know, the crazy thing is like August of 2024, I got a wire for a ticket order. It was $55,000 wire. And I loaded up 52-5 into my Caesar's account. And I turned that 52-5 into $375,000. I was on a Friday, Sunday night, I had $375,000. Tuesday, it was gone. And I remember sitting in the basement and every night, bro, every night, I'd go up to sleep.

three, four o'clock in the morning because I'm up all night. I'm up betting West Coast baseball at 10 o'clock. I'm up betting fucking overseas tennis. How would you make a decision on what to bet on? If there was a line on it, I was betting on it. You just, do any money, ma'amow? Yeah. Wow.

I'd listen, I'd do some, I'd do some research, you know, type in, you know, Yankees, Orioles predictions, and I'd see the time the last pitcher, you know, how many days the pitcher's on rest. and I have like some type of system obviously. I mean, brother, this was my full-time job. I was a gambler. But it's a system designed for people to lose. Fandul profit.

Fandil made $1.5 billion last year. They grossed nine, 10, whatever it was. 1.5 billion they profited off of people like me. And so what my frustration is, is that they have this responsible gaming slogan they use, but they have people who are VIP hosts who prey on people like me. Can't have both. Can't have both, brother.

Yeah. And there's no guard rails. There's no guard rails. Like, dude, you want to go buy a house. It's like they're looking up every fucking nook and cranny of your financial situation. They're like, they're basically doing a colonoscopy before they approve you for a house loan. Right. You want to bet Fandol, you could deposit your whole bank account.

You could do anything you need to put money in there. right so November 27th the day after Thanksgiving I owed somebody 27,000 for three weeks and I was you know bro every week it's Friday it's coming oh my dog my cat my computer's broken I can't get to the bank I'm so sorry I'll get you next Friday finally this guy calls me he's a good family friend he says I know you're not drinking and drugging but I know you're fucking gambling and if you don't get honest with me right fucking now. I'm going to send you to fucking prison because that's the only place you're going to stop

terrorizing yourself and your family. Bro, it was the first time of my life or something went off and I was just like, I can't live like this anymore. I said, I'll call you back. Hung up. I walked outside and I was in a store.

I walked outside. Started crying. Got on FaceTime with him. I was like, I'm a compulsive gambler. I've been doing this for 12 years. I'm in the whole million dollars. I know this person, I know that person.

If I don't pay this person, I'm going to go to prison. I promise you'll get your money back, blah, blah, blah, blah. I bet on the, like, just fucking. And he just says, he said, all right, this is good. Get your mom on the phone. I'm like, no, please. I can do my mom's not have a fucking heart. I'm a stroke, blah, blah, blah.

And he said, okay, get me on your sister on the phone. I said, okay, fine. I was, in my mind, that was better than my mom. Get my wife and my sister on the phone. I get honest about everything. My wife's a mess, bro. My wife's a mess. By the way, she's been postpartum alone, raising this baby on her own, can't figure out why one week I can afford $200.

I can't afford $200 diapers. And then the next week, she's getting a new purse. So, you know, like anytime I won, I'd go and buy my wife something nice because she hated my guts. So I was like, oh, you hate me? Here you go. Here's a fucking bag. Please don't be mad at me. Didn't work, by the way.

Right. All she wanted was me to be present and help. And so, by the way, I confess this, I feel so good. Yeah, it's all pure. Dude, I haven't felt, I haven't, I got off the call. I'm walking up, I'm walking up Madison Avenue. And I'm like, okay, it's all out now.

Can't get any worse than that. Like, I had to, in that moment, I had to keep telling myself, it cannot get any worse than it is right now. Even then, you, you're saying that, even after all these years to where you had all these different, they're all different. You were able to be like, whoa. It can't get any worse than right now.

And I had gone to Gamblers and Autonomous in 2016. 2016, I got up in front of a room of 100 guys, and I said to them, I'm not like you. If I just win, I don't have to come here. And they all looked at me. They're like, he's fucking entitled, spoiled little shit. Good luck. Good luck to you, my friend.

So eight years, I come crawling back down to GA. And all these old timers who got 30, 40 years. years who seen me 10 years ago, we're like, you were a real fucking asshole the last time you came down here. I hope you're going to do things differently this time. And so I want to just backtrack for a second. This is really important to me. So November 27th, November 26 with my last bet, November 27th, I confessed to everything. And I didn't gamble that whole weekend. And then Monday, December 2nd, I get a text from my VIP host at Cesar's. Hey, hon, I saw you didn't deposit anything or place any bets this weekend.

Is everything okay? She has no idea that if I didn't get that call on that Friday morning, either Friday night or Saturday morning, I was going to kill myself. I just smile back to her, no, L.O.L. I don't have any money. She said, oh, hon, okay, I got you. Just loaded you up a free play. Open up my Cesar's account and a $5,000 free play.

So my last bet became December 2nd because I knew Tuesday night is my GA meeting. It's the largest GA room in the country. There's 100 guys down there every Tuesday night, 715 to 930. So I knew. I was going to rehab the next day. I'm going to do drugs the night before. I'm not going to rehab sober. So I said, fuck, I'm going to load up this.

I'm in a million dollars to debt. I said, I'm going to load up this fucking free play. I'm going to do a four leg parlay, five grand to win $316,000. It was a four leg anytime touchdown parlay. So I had to pick four. players to score a touchdown in that game. I lost, obviously. And I went down to GA Tuesday night and I shared. I was in a ton of pain hysterically crying. And I didn't know if my wife was going to leave me and take my kid. My parents were just like, dude, my mom was, my mom was like,

I don't have any more cash for you, dude. Like I, I'm tapped out. Like, you got to figure this out on your own, which, by the way, is the best thing that she's ever done for me. And the first time she finally didn't bail me out. So I went to GA. I'm fucking bald, crying, sharing my story, whatever. And this guy comes up to me after the meeting and just gives me a hug and says, if you don't gamble and you keep coming back, you're going to be fine. Oh, I'm going to be fine.

What the fuck are you guys? Don't worry. It's just money. It'll all get worked out. Just keep coming back. And so I went home that night and I wound up calling that guy and I was on the phone with him for an hour after the meeting. And I got home that night and I said to my wife, I said, I know you fucking hate me. She's a mess crying.

How could you do this to us? You have a kid, me, like my wife doesn't work. And she just, I said to her, I said, listen, if you're going to leave me, just do it now. don't wait until six months until like life is starting to get okay again and then you fucking you know pull the rug out from under me again i say if you're going to leave me leave me now i'll figure it out i'll take care of you and vincent for the rest of your lives no matter what i said just make that decision she looked at me and she said we have a family now i'm not going to leave you but if you drink you drug or you gamble ever again i'm packing the bags and you will

never see us ever again so i said okay Fair enough. And in that moment, bro, I had this unwavering feeling of like, I knew I was going to be okay if I never gambled again. And my only fear was losing me on the baby. So when she said that to me, I had like a breath of fresh air where I was like, okay, now I can now I can really get into the work of like, why am I a compulsive gambler? And so I went to GA. I went to GA Zoom meetings. I went to AA meetings. I got a sponsor in GA. And we do this thing down there. It's called a pressure relief group. Right. And so you list out everything. How much you make a month, how much money you owe out, who you owe out, the priority of your creditors, right?

Who's the most important? Who's pressuring you the most? Are there legal consequences for creditors? Is your life in danger? Is your safety in danger? All these things. And then how much money you need for like diapers and food and rent and this and that. And so you list this out and and and there's GA veterans in there with a lot of time 30, 40 years who go through this with you and they say, okay, listen, you owe out $875,000 and you make X amount of dollars a month. You're going to put for your budget, you have, you know, $100 a month in Uber's, $100 a month in city bikes and MTA transportation, $300 a month for Ubers and whatever, right? Like groceries, rent, this, utilities, how much money you give to Mia each week

and the nanny and this and that. And then this creditor is applying the most pressure to you. You owe him $300,000. He's going to get X amount of dollars a month. This creditor's going to get X amount of dollars. And then they coach you and they teach you how to speak to your creditors. So I'd call you and say, Julian. I took $300,000 from you.

I said it was for a ticket deal. I took the money and I gambled it away. I've entered into Gamblers Anonymous. I'm asking you for a 60 day moratorium while I get my feet back under me and I work on a respectable payment plan for you. It's going to take me time to pay you back. But I'm committed to paying you back every dollar, every penny on the dollar in full. I ask you for your patience and your understanding and your forgiveness.

while I am trying to save my life. My hopeful reaction would be that you would say, oh, yes, yes, LJ, I'm so happy you're getting help. Most of the reactions were, well, it fucking finally makes sense now. It all makes sense. And some of them were like, you owe me 200 grand. I'm not taking $1,000 a month from you.

I'm not, fuck you, I'm not waiting 10 years, 20 years, fuck you. So- You can't blame for that. No. So it took a couple of months for me to get all of these people at bay, all my creditors at bay, because I didn't owe any institutions. I didn't owe any AMX or Visa or MasterCard or-

It's people. It's people. So it's different, right? Like institutions, dude, I would be like, send me to collections. I'll deal with it then. I don't care bang out my credit, but it's people and it's relationships and it's people that I prayed on that were close to me, that trusted me, that loved me, that I manipulated and used my charm and used my goodwill that I had earned with them to harm them because of my

gambling addiction. And what I can tell you is that of any of the addictions out there, gambling has the highest suicidal ideation rate of any addiction. Gambling is destroying young men across the country right now. It's like the cool thing. The cool thing now is to gamble. But what happens is you get hooked. You start chasing losses. You start lying. You start borrowing. You start cheating. stealing and then that disease starts talking to you. Julian, just put that four-legged parlay in, bro. You owe $20,000, you put $1,000 on it. You can win $22,000.

You can pay everyone back and then you got money. You could start all over again. You lose and you lose and you lose and you lose and you lose and you lose. And now next thing you know, I just borrowed $7,000 for seven different parlayes. Now I owe seven different people $1,000 and it just keeps going and going. and going and going next thing you know you wake up and you're like holy shit i'm in the whole million dollars yeah and then you hear i'm going to kill myself it's it's like you hear stories like this and you see it get to that point and you see how real that is and i you know it's interesting that like

we got connected because this is something i've been thinking about more a lot recently because i don't know i say this i'm really fortunate whatever that gene is to like want to keep betting on sports or something like that, I don't have that. Right? Like, it's just not interesting to me to do that. I think, you know, we bet like five or ten bucks here and there, like on bullshit on a game. But, like, if I don't go on an app or like, it's not going to bother me at all. Yeah.

But I know a lot of people that it does. And then I see the system as it's set up because I tend to be, I'm a freedom of choice kind of guy and a free markets kind of guy. So the idea is like, okay, you legalized gambling so the people can make their own choices on the surface. I agree with that. Where I take an issue with it, and this is on me for not looking at this as much in the past as I have over the past couple of months, is the scope and accessibility of it. Meaning the fact that it is right there on your phone at all times, especially if you have a problem, and the fact that there are people like the people you described who are literally paid a salary to prey on your problem with no limits whatsoever. That is a guardrail that has been just fucking run over at 150 miles an hour and I can't support that. And like I actually, I texted a couple weeks ago. I texted one of my one of the guys who works at the marketing company that we have because we've done like a few ads in the past for like I won't name them, but you can run the tape a couple different companies.

I said no more. No more because I don't know what they're doing to people out there. and I don't know which people in my audience are predisposed to that in a way. And I'm like, listen, if it's out there and it's in the free market, fine. But like, we're not gonna do that. Your demographics on this podcast, a lot of young men?

Sure. Okay. Oh, yeah. I'd say, I'd put the scope at over 70% of those young men have been or are being affected by compulsive gambling as we speak. 70%. I guarantee you.

What makes you say that? It's not that I don't believe you, I'm just. What makes me say that is that, In my gamblers anonymous room, every single Tuesday night, there's about 10 to 20 new guys all under the age of 30 years old who come down, crying, who've lost their ass, who owe out a bunch of money. And listen, the following week, maybe one of them comes back. The rest of them go back out and keep going the same way I did.

But I will say this, right? Like, it's wild. I'm not anti-gambling. I'm not anti-drinking. I'm not anti-drugging. I work in my family restaurant. I'm poor and fucking Class Azole. Please, let's do a shot.

Please do a shot. It's just not for me, brother. That shit ruined my life. But I don't have reps from Clossé Azul calling you at 7 p.m. You went to Fresco time. Why weren't you drinking Clase Azul? Here, take a free Closset Azul. Yeah.

Yep. Here's the other part, right? How, I know kids at 21 years old who have deposited over $150,000 into their Fandu account in less than a month. How is there not some type of red flag going up that a 21-year-old kid is depositing six figures into a gambling account? Yeah, there has to be some sort of. And what does happen is that they get that alert and they call them and say,

hey, Julian, I'm your VIP host. You want to go to the Yankees game? You want to sit front row behind first base? Keep betting, brother. Oh, you lost $20,000. You know, here's a 2K free play on us, man. Sorry. You'll heat up eventually. You'll heat up eventually. You're on a bad streak. Same shit that was said to me. How about and this is what this is what really got my attention

before the sports betting. The thing that got my attention is the scope of it was ironically the first thought was like an Anthony popular tweet that I'll get to in a minute. But the scope of prop betting in the real world on like polymarket and things. like that where you can bet on where a cat takes a shit on 6th Street at any given moment. Besides the fact, by the way, there's a lot of people doing insider trading with this stuff, too. That's a whole separate issue. We can talk about that too. But I would see this and like polymarket tweets stuff out.

That's like actually like news reports and stuff. And so a lot of times like when I'm commenting on news reports, it'll be like polymarketing and stuff. And then I realized I was like, oh shit, they're tweeting this out and then people can go find a bet like this and actually like bed on it. that's fucking crazy to me what's crazier to me even crazier than that is that polymarket and kalshi are saying that like we're not a gambling company what we're not a gamble they said that yeah they said they're not a gambling company by the way i think it's like 71 percent i i read something two days ago i can't believe i'm forget it's another 71 percent or 91 percent of

the people who are on prediction markets are losers. That's how they, that's how people make money on. And by the way, the balance sheet thing. Correct. And the other people that are making money are probably insider trading.

Yeah. So my, my thing is this, right? How come, if I want to go buy a house, you have to basically fucking crawl up my ass to look at what's inside of there before you approve me for a loan.

But I want to place a bet for 100 grand. As long as the money hits the account you're I'm good now why is that though for the house banks institutions yeah but why it's gonna it's it's gonna it's gonna be obvious after I say it but like say it's you used to be able to get a house you walk in on a fucking Tuesday you had a house by that evening they didn't even check in 2000s and then the oh eight and blah blah and now it's like it was actually when I worked on wall street mortgages when we had to do it for clients drove me fucking nuts because they would take months and months and months

and I do think there was like in some places like okay guys that's a little bit overkill but that was the one thing that there was a lot of bullshit red tape and banks that was just bad for clients and drove me nuts that was the one thing where I was like you know this is but this is actually better than the alternative

because the alternative crashed the whole world let me ask you let me challenge you on something why don't we have the same financial underwriting process for people to gamble that's what I'm saying do you want to on Fandwell, Draft King Sears, okay, you have to download this app. You have to go through a two-week process where they go through your salaries, your pay stubs, your trust funds, your assets.

And they say, okay, Julian, you're worth, you make 100 grand a year and you have access to 500 grand, whatever it is. And then they determine you are only allowed to lose 50,000 a year. And you can try 100 different apps, but it's all under the same financial undertaking. Once you lose 50 grand across those apps or on one app, that's it. You're done. You can't gamble again until next year. That would make too much sense, Lewis.

And they wouldn't be making as much money. And the states wouldn't be making as much money. And the congressman who approved it won't be getting those payouts under the table. 100%. I think it's a great argument. But you know what's going to happen? And this is really sad. And this is, I hate to say this, but it's true.

Either a very wealthy, powerful influential person's child is going to get wrapped up in gambling, is either going to kill himself or end up in prison or a senator's son is going to kill himself or end up in prison because of compulsive gambling. And then, and then they're going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, guys. We got to pull the brakes down on this. That's Senator Will. Listen, I am, I've really started challenging vocally.

Fandul, all of them. I attacked the CEOs on LinkedIn. I was going at the head of legal on call sheet today on LinkedIn. He that CEO of Kalshi blocked me on LinkedIn already. I made one. You got blocked on, you can do that. Dude,

I fucking commented. I said, if, I said, if Kalshi is not, is not gambling, then why do you give people the option to self-exclude? You only do that on gambling apps.

Yeah. So regulated prediction markets or financial exchanges. That's hilarious. Is it, it's regulated prediction. It's regulated. It's a financial exchange to be able. to bet on sports.

Is that what they're saying for that thief? Or is that for... That Wall Street Journal article was the one I was referencing to. And this isn't actually what I think either. But here's the definition argument that makes it a little weird. Do you think the stock market

is legalized gambling? Yes and no. Okay. Yes and no. Because, right, like you could be an option trader. That, in my opinion, is gambling. You could be a day trader. That, in my opinion is gambling.

But, like, I have a brokerage account for my wife and I that I don't fuck around with or touch. I just deposit a little bit of money in there every single month. I agree. And hopefully, by the time I'm 61, there's a couple of million dollars in there in 30 years. And I can fucking sail off into the sunset. But I'm not checking my brokerage account every day. I'm not calling, yo, fucking load up on Tesla, dude, load up on this.

Like, yo, give me. Don't do that. Yeah. But, like, that's what I'm saying is like, Yeah. You could be in the stock market and be in it for the long haul and trying to build wealth. And right, it's not, it's not smart for me to just tuck away $500 a month to a savings account and just let it sit there at 3% compared to put it into a money markets account, bonds, treasuries, whatever the fuck. All this shit.

I don't even know. I have my financial advisor is actually in program with me, in GA with me, him and his dad. That's actually kind of interesting. So he, like, dude, he, he, you know, he'll call my wife if he thinks I'm like acting up. If I try to take out any money, he calls my wife, which I've never done, obviously. But like, the guardrails are up. He's like, dude, your money will grow at 8 to 12% every year. We are not loading up on Tesla.

We are not loading up on fucking Apple. Like, yeah, you like those stocks. Okay, cool. When you have enough money, you could put a little here, a little bit there. But like most of your markets is like funds and. hedge funds and all not hedge funds i don't know i don't even fucking know what i'm saying because i don't i don't care i don't pay attention all i know is that here's the money i'll check back in in in in 30 years and hopefully i can take some money out and retire make sure he's not pulling any money out

you know you know what i'm saying no he wouldn't be i know i know there's guard rolls on that but it's it gets interesting it does when you start looking at that and you know yeah and i had said there was an Anthony Popliano tweet that like kind of came back to me ironically that really made me think about this. He sent it a while ago. This might have been too, I don't know I haven't checked in a while, but it might have been two years ago where he tweet this. I just kind of like had it in the back of the subconscious and didn't think about it again. But he broke down like all these different industries and like gambling trends that have come into them from the most obvious things like calcium and polymarket that then goes into culture, pop culture, politics, all that, to the sports gambling,

which is also extremely obvious, to things that were less obvious. And he said, just saying this, like as a general statement, not an opinion, just like a fact, we're a gambling economy now. And you start to think about that and you wonder if there's something to that. If there's some type of real predatory preying upon that's going on there. People love the risk. People love the idea of what I think social media has done to us as a society is instant gratification at our fingertips. So the idea that you can win a 16 leg parlay and make a million dollars like bro, like that shit, you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than hitting like a five leg parlay. These are all things. And by the way, it's like they're engineered.

There's push notifications. Like it's all things that just keep you going. That's right. Keep you going. Keep you in action. Keep you slowly, slowly, slowly, just bleeding out. And furthermore, bro, gambling is a tax on the poor, right? The really rich people can go and gamble like fucking, you know, Kevin Hart and LeBron James and like Michael Jordan.

These guys can go to the casino and lose a million dollars tonight. And like, they'd be like me and you losing. Five dollars. But what happens is that you go to a casino, you look around, 90% of those people are lower class sitting at a slot machine or at a table. And by the way, those are the people that can't afford to lose $100, $200, $300 a week, let alone in a night. And what happens is they can't come home, put food on the table.

They're missing rent payments or missing mortgage payments. or missing car payments. And so what you're, what I think we're going to see over the next five to 10 years is an epidemic that frankly is probably going to make the, the Sackler family and Purdue Farm on OxyContin look like a fucking walk in the park. Because what you're going to see is the financial ramifications

of what gambling is going to do on our society is going to be far worse than whatever prediction they have for this, right? most people in America cannot afford to lose $100 or $200 on their paycheck yet people are blowing their entire paycheck on these things so that's wild it it's it's actually very very scary I'm so happy to be on the other side of it I'm do you feel firmly on the other side of it now dude like I've made my whole brand and logo anti gambling Mr. Gambler's Anonymous Mr. I want to help people. And I love that because this thing, bro, almost drove me to the brink of suicide.

And like 18 months later, I am the happiest, most hopeful, most optimistic, most joyous human being that I've, I honestly think I've ever been. Maybe since I was fucking five, dude. Like, I'm present. Forget the money aspect. The money aspect of it is like, it's going to, I'm a lot. on a 10-year payment repayment plan with all of my creditors. And it takes me 10 years to pay back my debt. All of them are okay with it.

And I'm hoping that as things progress, maybe I can be eight years. Maybe it can be seven years. But no matter what, in Gamble's Anonymous, it's you pay them back over time. We call that GA medicine every month to pay back your creditors, right? If I made $10 million today, my GA advisors would not allow me to pay my debt back like this. They would not. They would still want me to pay it back over five, six, seven years. Why?

Because I need that reminder still of what the fuck I just did. Right. But it, dude, it's insidious. It's the hardest of the addictions. And one of the reasons why is like, you don't need drugs and alcohol to survive. You get sober. You don't need to redevelop your relationship with alcohol. You don't, you shouldn't have a relationship with alcohol when you're sober.

Same with drugs. Right. You stop gambling, bro. Most, like my relationship with money was, was dog shit. So. What is it now? It's better. It's better.

How do you think of money? Dude, I get $1,000 now and I'm like, I feel like I'm fucking Jeff Bezos. Like, nice. Got a G-bone. Let's go. Like, that, like, to me, is a lot of money, you know? And in the grand scheme of things, it's really not. having a wife and a kid and bills to pay like you've come to realize a grand is not a lot but like

dude i get 50 000 i'd load 485 into a gambling account if i got 50 000 dollars today 25 it's going to a brokerage account this is going to savings this is going to uh bills and whatever like it goes places and like i think the most important thing is that i don't live looking over my shoulder anymore i'm not stressed about money i'm present with my wife and my kid i can enjoy the little moments i'm not big balling i'm not flying i'm not taking jets to Vegas i'm not going on you know 50 000 vacations anymore but like maybe one day i will but that stuff ever make you happy no looking back on no there was no real happiness i'm happier now being in the whole a million dollars than i than i was when i was making a million

dollars meaning like this is what i let me be more specific before you were like, for example, in debt when you were soberish, right? And you were making a lot of money on your ticket business. You had got some of your life in order and you had access to nice things that then led to you gambling and stuff like that. Was never enough, bro. Never enough, right. I got the gold Rolex after a week.

I'm like, what the fuck that I didn't even buy this thing? This thing is not making me happy. Got a stupid B6 Alpina $2,500 a month car. After like three months, I was like trying to find some sketchy Armenian men in LA to total it for me because I don't want to pay the no down it anymore. I didn't do that. But that's like my crazy story for a day. That's my crazy way of thinking like as an addict, like thinking that like all of these external solutions for internal problems. Right. And addiction and recovery from any addiction is an inside job. It starts within, starts with like

being proud of who you are, doing a steamable acts and not like holding open. the door for the grandma at the grocery store and then like, yo, Instagram, I just held open the door for grandma. Performative bullshit. Like, just like doing the right thing, being honest, being a man of integrity. I say, Julian, I'm going to be here at one o'clock. I was late today. But I'm here at 1255. Like texting you, yo, bro, I'm going to be 10 minutes late. Like, sorry, you know, like just like, esteemable, esteemable things and being a man of your word, that's what makes me feel good today. And to anybody who's listening or watching and struggling with any type of addiction, there's no person or thing or place, including a treatment center that'll fix the problem

you have inside of you unless you are willing to fix it yourself. Then all of those other things can help you on that journey. But if you are not willing to change and take some suggestions, you know this might be bad advice but I tell people this anyways go back out and keep drinking and drugging until you're ready go and feel a little bit more pain because for me I had a fucking they said don't touch the stove it's hot I had to fucking burn my hand on that stove right so the other thing is I got to GA and I did three things to stop gambling not three things three roadblocks I set up the first one was I self-excluded and then

the state of New York and New Jersey. So filled out a form, I mailed it in, copied my ID, photo myself. I am banned from all the apps. If I try to log into any gambling app, um, call sheet, polymarket fit, it says your account, you're not allowed to gamble. If I walk into a casino in New York and I try to play cards or slot machine or anything, I'm arrested for trespassing. That's the first thing. The second thing I did in my first year was, um, I didn't watch any sports as a sports better. I did not watch any sports for you not one game bro good for you um it was it sucked because i wanted to watch the nicks last year when they were in the playoffs but i was like you know what this is my punishment i deserve this and i didn't watch any sports and i felt so good about myself after even was it coming

back to watching sports i barely watch like i've been watching the nicks and the playoffs i haven't i've maybe watched in the last six and a half months i've watched maybe like five games total when i used to sit and watch sports 16 hours a day like my time has been filled up with so much any other positive things. Like I don't want, I don't want to go back to that behavioral pattern. The last thing I did and men are probably not gonna like to hear this, especially if you're struggling, I turned over all of my finances to my wife. So my wife runs all of my bank accounts.

I have a credit card. It's got a limit on it. If I need to spend more than $500, I call my wife, babe, I need to make a charge for $800. What's it for? I wanna, I wanna buy shoes. whatever whatever it is okay cool put it on the card that's a really humbling thing to do but good for you man and and now now a year and a half in like do i have access to my bank counts yes i do like my wife is on them if anything get sent out a zelle get sent out

she gets a notification yeah and listen she for the most part she trusts me she does trust me but takes a while to build that back right long time bro my parents don't really trust me. I think seeing you blame him. No. I think seeing me in the podcast like, okay, my mom's like, okay, like I'm very confident you're in recovery and you're doing the deal now. But there's always

that stomach feeling for them of like when's the shoe going to drop again. How do you or do you, I should say, ever have even a split second, whether it's alcohol, drugs, gambling or whatever where like

your mind goes away for a second? And you think about, well, what if I just, does, A, does that ever happen? And B, if it does, how do you deal with that? So I don't have the obsession or the craving to use, to drink, to gamble anymore. And I can say that I don't have that because that's the result of working the 12 steps. The 12 steps of any A-A-G-A-N-A program, SA, sex addicts and honors program is meant to do an inventory, clean. house ridge yourself of all this resentment anger fear etc etc so that you can clean slate fresh start and that obsession has been lifted am i going to sit here and tell you that i don't reminisce of the times of winning half a million dollars in blackjacket the win in las vegas which by the way i lost over the next 48 hours after i won that of course i do of course i do you're human yeah the addict mind though Like, I am an addict.

Part of my disease is that I have this incredible forget button. Forget all the bad times. And all I remember is the good times popping bottles and having money and not being stress and not being in a jam and not this and not that and only like good times, movie picture moments, like amazing incredible moments of like doing a little bit of blow and not being a total fucking crackhead. but the reality of it is even though maybe some moments started like that they always ended with me alone isolated miserable drank too much did too much blow woke up the next day i'm never

doing blow again four hours later i'm dealers on the way and that that really is like they say play the tape out anticipate the consequences of interactions i play the tape out bro every time I said I didn't want to do it anymore left to my own devices I did and that's addiction in a nutshell for you but what the point you make there is actually really important about how to visualize it it's like you have to imagine a bad movie that you want to avoid you can't look at the good things that lead to the climax of like the disaster you have to look at what the disaster is and see how much worse that feeling is than what the good feeling is on yeah there dude I tried So long, so many different ways to drink, to drug, to gamble normally. Right. Like a gentleman. I tried just smoking pot. I led me back to drinking.

I tried just drinking not doing drugs. Anytime alcohol touched my lips, the fucking bag was on the way, bro. The bag was on the way. And then I'd say, I'm only doing one eight ball tonight. Three o'clock in the morning tweaked out. What am I doing? I'm calling my dealer a hundred times until he brings me another one. Yeah.

And like it got to a point where like my dealer would bring me an eight ball and he'd be like, dude, just take another one. I know you're going to need it. I'm not going to be up at 4 a.m. for your fucking 800 phone call. So just take another one. You can pay me later. Dude was like, I'm like, oh, that guy's a nice guy. Not like, oh, maybe I have a fucking problem. You know, but that's that was addiction, bro.

That really for me was the prison that I lived inside of for so long and suffered for so long. And the amazing news that I have for everybody is that you don't have to live like this. There is a solution. There is hope. And I understand not everybody is a 12-step person. Not everyone likes AA and finding a higher power, a God of your understanding like that.

Those words freak people out. By the way, I went to Catholic school. When I went to AA and they said, trust in a higher power, I said, fuck God. I'm fucking God you're kidding me there was God there wouldn't be kids dying in Africa

like you know what I'm saying like I was very resistant to that whole spirituality program but it's like I don't I don't have to believe in Jesus Christ or God or this person like my higher power is a higher power of my own understanding something that you got to be humble

in the face of there's something greater out there than myself and that's like goes back to deflating my ego on a daily basis. I wake up every morning. I hit my knees and I pray. Every day.

And I was talking to my wife about this. I said, it's interesting when I don't pray and meditate and I get disconnected on that spiritual front for a long time, my behavior start to show a more restless, irritable discontent. I'm a little bit more argumentative. I'm a little bit more angry.

You cut me off. I'm like ready to fucking chase you down and rip you out of the car. You know, it's like there are tools in this program that have, that this program has given me where like I can live life like a normal human being free of this fucking nasty disease that's going to eventually put me in prison or six feet under. Yeah, you dodged a lot of things, man. So today I'm grateful.

I spent about 4% of my day doing some work on myself so that the other 96% I can live a free day. Well, I'm really glad about that, man. And I've said this to a few different guests over the past six months who were telling like some harrowing stories. And it's true about them in all different ways. Like you have a really intensive self-awareness about the places you've been, the things you've done, the decisions you made, the resources you had that could have helped you not make those decisions that other people don't have. And you still found a way to make bad decisions. And like now you finally got yourself to a place in your life where it seems like you're on the right path, which is great.

to see. What I will say is that I've been around a lot of drug and alcohol addiction in my life personally, like people around me. In this show, talking with fans a lot over the years, I've been around a lot of people I've spoken with who have struggled with drugs and alcohol. Ironically, I don't know that I've ever had someone reach out to me that I saw at least about gambling addiction. And I've had people around me before whom like, all right, you're definitely gambling a little too much, but nothing, anything clear. to like what you talked about. That said, the stats are the stats and you're right. And it's something I'm more aware of now that like there are a lot of people who have a serious, serious problem out

there. But for no matter what the, the problem someone might be having is whether it's drugs, alcohol gambling or all the above, one thing people might say to someone like you is, damn, bro, you were really lucky to have a backstop in so many points in your life. Because as you said like your A.A. guy was saying like you were born with a golden spoon up your ass. Like your parents were there to bail you out again and again. And the fact of the matter is a lot of people listening right now who have dealt with this with people close to them or have dealt with it themselves or the people I'm thinking about who have dealt with it, they didn't have that. You know, do you ever wonder what it would have been like if you were more of a regular Joe and didn't have connected parents,

you know, or didn't have access to money and things like that, like where you'd be right now? Two folds to it. Ready? The first fold is the obvious. I probably would be in prison or I'd probably be, probably be dead. I don't think I would have been a homeless under the bridge type of guy. I was so extreme that I would have been in prison or I'd be dead. The other flip side of it is, is that this last time around, my parents didn't bail me out.

And they finally stopped enabling me. And what happened? I had to feel the consequences, the full-fledged hammer of the consequences. And I stopped. And my dad for years told my mom, don't send the fucking money. Well, these people are threatening to come and kill him.

They're not going to fucking kill him. And you know what? Maybe they will. But you send him this money, he's not stopping. And my mom, listen, My mother bailed me out half the time because she was afraid of the consequences of her own career. Maybe someone calling work or the newspapers and saying Rosanna Scott O'Sson is a degenerate gambler. He owes me 100,000.

He's a deadbeat, this and that, whatever the case may be. And the other side of it is that my mom is an Italian loving mother that loves her kids and was afraid. and thought that throwing money at things would fix the problem and that eventually I'd say, okay, that's it, mom, you're right, I'm done. Thank you so much for bail me out. Okay, I'm done.

I'm gonna finally fix myself now. And so, you know, people say this to me all the time. Like, oh, you're looking. You go rich parents. Like, dude, my rich parents, yeah, kept me out of trouble and maybe did protect me. But like, maybe if they didn't bail me out that first time ever,

maybe it would have just stopped right then. there. I'm not saying it would have. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. But the enabling definitely elongated the process. Yeah. And so I tell people, tell parents all the time, my son's getting my, what should I do? Stop giving him money. Well,

I'm afraid. They're threatening him. Listen, your son's going to pay them back and he's going to call them and be a man and say, I can only afford to pay you X amount of dollars for the next year, two years, whatever, take it or leave it. And I guarantee you 9.9 times. that attend, the people are going to take it. And it's not to, like, strong arm the person you stole money from or the book of you owe money to or whatever the cases.

It's like, we gamblers and addicts need to feel the fucking consequences in order to change. And that's my experience of being around the rooms for 10 years on and off and the last three and a half years, like in-in. We, the moment we feel the consequences, the greater the change. chance of the addict actually changing. And so that's my response response to that. But yeah, dude, I'm fucking grateful that my parents. Yeah. Super grateful. Yeah, I look, I'm not a parent yet, but I have a lot of friends who are and you know, you can't know what that is until it happens, but there obviously, as you well know, your perspective totally changes. And there's a protection

aspect that comes over here where you'd fucking move mountains for your kid. Yeah. And so I think, you know, and I've seen, you know, different stories of different contexts that are described like yours where like parents are trying to do the right thing and like it's actually a thing that's having the opposite effect. But like the intention is not that. It's very clear like the intentions were to help you. But it is to me, I agree with you.

I think it's important that at least they finally got to a point where your mom was like, you know what, I need to try the other way. Yeah. And now it helped you. Seems to have saved your marriage. Yeah. You know, you'll be able to raise your son and, and I'm sure coach him about the pitfalls in life through your own experiences when the time is right. And, you know, it can be turned into something good for all the struggle.

Yeah, definitely will. Definitely will. Well, that's awesome, man. And you're a great storyteller, too. Thanks. This is like, we're sitting here on the edge of our seat most of the day. I'm glad you're alive and kicking and doing your thing and helping people out. We'll have your podcast link down below where you talked to, as you said, all different types of addicts about their experiences.

And you've talked about how you help people obviously off the camera as well who are dealing with this. I do think it's always a really cool thing when people who struggle with that stuff, like also like kind of pay it forward and try to either help people get better or prevent people from doing it. So you're definitely doing that. Got it. That's really what, you know, like I said, that's the mission of the podcast, man. I would love to make money on it. but if my first intention is to help others, then I know God's going to take care of me, no matter what.

And so whatever God thinks I need, he'll provide for me as long as I just stay the path. Well, keep going, brother. Thanks, bro. Thanks for having me. You're the man. Thank you. You guys both got to come into Fresco. We're doing that.

Yeah. Yeah. I have something in mind coming up. But everybody else, you know what it is? Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. What's up, guys?

Thanks so much for watching the video. If you have not subscribed, please hit that subscribe button before you leave, as well as leaving the like on the video to Hsu chelp. You can join my Patreon via the link in the description, and you can also join my clipping community via the Discord link down below. See you for the next episode.