Julian Dorey Podcast - 😭 #93 - INSIDE CRIME: The Man Florida Deemed "Uncorrectable" | "Big Dan" Thayer

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

(***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Dan “Big Dan” Thayer is a former convict, businessman, and mentor. Despite entering prison by age 15, spending the next two decades involved in crime, and being labeled  “incorrigible” by the state of Florida –– Dan successfully turned his life around, became an owner of multiple businesses, a community leader, and a mentor to people of all backgrounds. ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Intro; Dan’s Childhood in Newark; The plant explosion that changed his father’s life; Buying a piece at age 8; Mom took in kids; Working for mobsters and a tuna sandwich disagreement 28:35 - Environments and how they shape you; Dan’s first arrest & prison stint at age 15 (story); Dan’s Nurse girlfriend in Prison; Prison was Dan’s college 51:38 - Breaking a guard’s jaw; The odd thing that made his friend turn himself in to the authorities; Why Dan preferred robberies to burglaries; Dan’s first experiences with drgs; How Dan figured out if you were a snitch; Dan ran his own crew; Dan’s various relationships 1:10:58 - Dan’s first run in rehab; A mix up in a school zone; Picking up Georgia college girls off the highway for the weekend story; Dan’s very odd source for drgs in prison; The curious reason Dan read the Bible as a kid 1:32:00 - Why Dan  robbed drg dealers like a real life Omar from “The Wire”; A dustup with the DEA; What Dan did to people he forgot he robbed; An unfortunate confidential information sharing story; Why Dan was addicted; Filling the void of a  lost childhood; Why Dan’s ex ran off with his daughter; Dan’s detox and post detox (stories); Getting “permission” to screw you over 2:01:40 - Dan talks about the first time he experienced  empathy on death row; Dan’s last stand in court and the moment he was labeled “incorrigible” by the state of Florida 2:13:36 - Working on death row in Florida Prison; The Cannibal; “Life Plus 5”; Death row organ transplants fun fact; Dan was later hired to demolish the prison he was in; That time the governor visited and did an odd thing; What people think about before death 2:34:09 - Health > Freedom; Dan’s experience with death (and a funny story); The fake nurse who broke Dan out of the hospital for no reason; The power of memories 2:54:23 - Dan’s life after prison; The business Dan opened; How Dan turned his life around ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q ~ PRIVADO VPN FOR $4.99/Month: https://privadovpn.com/trendifier/#a_aid=Julian   Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “TRENDIFIER”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Ju... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

there was people one guy ate his parents back in 70s or 60s he'd be down here yeah he's a cannibal he actually got released in 2012 no way so he wasn't on death row he was on death row he was sentenced to life but he outlived their life sentence like life sentence is not always life it's 25 years he's parents and they gave him for yeah i was nice don't say this isn't a country of second chances yeah yeah yeah i don't think he's gonna do too well what's cooking everybody if you are on youtube right now please hit hit that subscribe button, hit that like button on the video. And as always, if you have a second, would love to see you drop a comment down in the video comment section as well. I said this last week, and I'll say this again to everyone who

has been sharing the links to these episodes with friends. Thank you so much. It is not only huge for the algo, it is huge for word of mouth, even on Apple and Spotify, not just talking YouTube everywhere. It is absolutely great. So I i really really appreciate everyone who's been doing that and let's keep that rolling to everybody who is listening on apple or spotify right now thank you for checking out the show there if you haven't already be sure to follow on either one of those platforms and leave a five-star review if you have a second and i look forward to seeing you guys again for future episodes now i am joined in the bunker today by dan aka big dan thayer and if you saw the intro snippet if you're on youtube you can tell dan's a big dude he's like i don't know six six six seven 320 something like that big big guy the kind of guy that when i cross him in the street i'm looking

up at him like oh shit but Dan's life is a giant comeback story against all odds this is somebody who for years now has been a mentor to many other people and for years before that never should have statistically gotten to the position to be able to do that this this is a guy who was deemed incorrigible by the Florida state correctional system or whatever it is because he was in prison by the time he was 15. You're going to hear all about that. That's a whole other story. Somebody I think was definitely very fucked over by the system.

But he was in and out of prison for, I don't know, 15, 20 years, in and out of crime, all this different stuff and drugs, all of it. And he took control of his life completely and Again, it was not this is not the kind of guy who? Statistically is supposed to be able to do that given all of his circumstances that he was working against But he found a way and so we had a great conversation about the psychology that went into that over the years He's a very funny guy. So he tells a lot of funny stories. He also tells tells a lot of real stories you know it's it's an ugly life when you're in crime it's not and drugs specifically I should say it's not it's not something that anyone should ever want to be a part of and so a lot of Dan's messages

here's exactly why you don't want to get involved with that stuff and so I really really appreciate the conversation we had our buddy Mark in here who was actually the connector of making this thing happen which I really, really appreciate the conversation. We had our buddy Mark in here who was actually the connector of making this thing happen, which I really appreciate. Even if he wouldn't shut up about his friend Megan the whole time, you should probably give the guy a call, Megan. He's going to kill me making it happen. And I hope all of you enjoy. That said, you know what it is. I'm Julian Dory, and this is Dreadfire. facts everyone understands this but you seem to do it if you don't like the status quo start asking questions walking by he goes sir sir can you tell me what your decision to be here is and what you think of the impending storm and the guy goes into like this full-blown like biologist explanation like straight out of like galaxy brain right he's like well according to the winds from the north that say that we're going to be at approximately six knots per second which is not very good for a

storm like this and the dude holding the mic's like what the for like three minutes he gives this thing and they go back into a meteorologist they go back to studio and they're like that that was some of the smartest we've ever heard in our life yeah give that guy a job hope he's alright pull that so this is okay here?

yeah never farther than that yeah yep and I gotta put these on or no? yeah put those on cause you'll hear me

you'll hear me in there I was trying to get that I think I turned that down how's that? that's good pork and beans man pork and beans pork and beans what's that? That's good. That's pretty good. Pork and beans, man. Pork and beans.

Pork and beans. What's that a reference to? Something about America. Yeah. That's it. That's it. I'm going to take Dan's headphones off. Frank and beans. Frank and beans.

Frank and beans. I'm going to take the headphone off. Dan will kill you. Frank and beans. Touch my headphones. I remember watching that movie for the first time i spit over a whole family myself i did i was like this is a funny shit i've ever seen my life poor family in front of me i spit my diet coke all over twice twice what was the one thing where he's like he's trying to get the nerves out

so he's jerking off in the bathroom yeah and then he comes out he's like where is it that was the part i spit on i was like i couldn't believe it i couldn't hold it in i just took a big sip and she goes oh look moose and her head's like a peacock or something remember she had it she had it like standing up oh my god oh i gotta go back and re-watch that i got embarrassed for the people in that like you know what i mean i felt the embarrassment of like i don't know just i could feel it transmitted hysterical and this by the way this thing right here you can pull that up too okay see that there you go now point keep it pointed at you now there you go all right that's beautiful now i got you like real good in my ears right here. Nice. Big Dan. Yeah. Thank you for coming down, brother.

Hey, thanks for having me. All the way from Florida. Yeah. And where are you in Florida? Naples, southwest corner of Florida. That's like bougie area of Florida. That's like the place now. Yeah.

Way above my pay grade. Yeah. How long you been there? 32 years. 32 years. Yeah. With a little pit stop on the way. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of them. Yeah. Something like that well our guy mark here made the introduction and i for people

listening out there i got to speak with you on i guess like zoom like a month ago or something yeah and i always say this i try to make these conversations short when we do it because i like to just do it live in here but once in a while it's usually like one out of three somebody starts going and i'm like oh this is too good but i was listening to tell some of these stories and i'm like goddamn people are gonna eat this up so wild wildlife you've had man yeah a little bit i didn't experience much of it what do you mean you didn't experience much of it i kind of stayed uh i just didn't experience it. I was there. I got the documentation. I was there, but I lived in my head.

So it was a pretty, like some people feel almost sorry for me. I was like, yeah, my life wasn't that bad. Yours was rough, you know, being out here dealing with people and stuff like that. It was a weird, yeah, weird perspective. I didn't start experiencing life till, uh, maybe 38, 39. Is that when you, is that when that was like shortly after you got out of prison, right? Uh, I got out in 08 out of my last bid and that was on, um, that was in, uh, Florida, the Florida state prison, uh, Rayford, they call it Death Row. I got out of

there in 08, and I had been practicing some things, some different ways of living, and this guy was writing me and giving me books to read, and I started looking at things differently. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life, but you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way.

Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile. Different is calling. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Who was doing that? This was a guy I met. He was from Poughkeepsie, New York.

And I met him in Fort Myers, Florida. You know, a friend of mine that was, he actually escaped from, he escaped from Broadway. And he was, you know, doing good for a short period of time. And I had called him for some help help with uh something you know pretty dark you know and and so when i called him he goes yeah i'm gonna bring you up here to fort myers and i was like no no you know i'm okay down here just you know uh do what i ask and that's it so he ends up like kind of tricking me into going up to this place up there and getting my head together and

introduces me to this guy who i thought getting my head together and uh introduces me to this guy who i thought was a clown you know what i mean but the guy was like really smart not that i was any brainiac but we had a certain percentile that we hung out with that there was uh just no room for joking got it yeah so so and when i met this guy he kept saying things but they were like slick and i didn't know if he was being slick or yeah yeah and uh but they were hitting me they were like i don't know how to explain it but they were talking to my inside yeah things i haven't brought up or talked about in years and And so anyway, we got pretty close. I ended up living with the guy for six months.

After you got out. Him and his wife, after I got out of this little place here. I was living with him for like six months, and he kept almost getting, I almost wanted to choke him out a couple times, because he would say things that were truth, and I couldn't debate it. But they were hard truths. You need that, though.

You need that. But I've never had that. Nobody's brought that type. Well, they tried. They tried to bring that kind of truth up, things that were evident that I should have just surrendered to. I would just make it to where you never said it again. You know what I mean? And it was a weird like defense mechanism I had that I couldn't let

you in. And if you knew the real truth about me, well, I just made sure you never brought it up again. You know what I mean? And it was all confusing because I made it confusing. I used drugs on top of it. I didn't really know what it was growing up. I obsessed about things. I blocked out everything except for what I was obsessing about and I would achieve it, but it never seemed to be what I was really wanting. It never brought me any satisfaction. I really want to dig into this. And you and I actually did talk about this a little bit when we were on our call. And I think that's like when people are listening to stories of other individuals, regardless of where they come from, I think a lot of us have an innate interest in the psychological journey that goes on. Because it's different for everyone.

And everyone has their weaknesses. Everyone has their strengths. And some people, they lean into their weaknesses for long periods of time, and they don't even know they have the strengths. And sometimes there's people who are incredibly ahead of their years, and they lean into all their strengths, and they wash away their weaknesses. And I'm curious about what makes people fork in the road on different things. And to me, one of my favorite things is i love a comeback story yeah and like your life is a giant comeback story and i think that that is very much at the middle of it like how you when you were talking about like getting in touch with your own thoughts

and understanding exactly like oh this is why i think this way or oh wait i shouldn't have done it like that yeah you know started clicking yeah so there's clarity that comes from certain things like not using drugs and stuff like that but before we go to that like let's let's go through your journey here like you got a story sure let's start at the beginning all right where were you born and uh i was born in new jersey you know and i and i moved from uh my dad was a chemist, so we always lived close to plants. We started out in Camden, moved to Newark, Essex County, Bloomfield. And my cousins used to say a weird thing when they came to our house.

They'd say, we used to love going to your house because they were in Livingston, which is a very nice, compared to where I was at. He goes, we always felt like we were doing something wrong. Like mischievous or something, you know. So I grew up in, I grew up mostly in Newark and in Bloomfield, East Orange, West Orange. I was always, I had a friend that we, you know, we'd be on bikes constantly. And my father worked pretty hard. My mother had a place up in montclair uh that's a nice

neighborhood oh yeah church street she had a gourmet pantry uh she started really sounds very montclair yeah yeah yeah i remember i made a peanut butter and caviar sandwich and she made me eat it i thought it was jelly peanut butter and caviar yeah a little packet of caviar you know like 55 dollars whatever it was at the time. That sounds worse than prison food. Yeah, she told me to eat something, so I went in there and made a peanut butter and caviar thinking it was jelly, you know. And she goes, yeah, you're going to eat that. So that was a very expensive sandwich.

And that was after driving all the way up Bloomfield Avenue to go up there on my bike, you know. And, you know, just the thing about living there is there was nonstop chaos always, you know. And so I never had a time to process. It was always react, react, react. When you say chaos? Like people stealing the car, breaking in the house. You know, there was always something. Fights out in the house um you know there was always something uh fights out in the street um you know but my my father who was uh he was a golden glows boxer and you know pretty well known he always handled things and up until about 81 um you know he's pretty good at keeping the house safe and secure. But I remember in 81, the plant blew up down in Newark, Quality Varnish.

It was a big explosion. I didn't know about this. Yeah, I actually looked it up. It's on the—I'm not the most technologically advanced person. Check it out. What's it called? Quality Varnish. And this was in 81? 81 or 83. It's a little i think

it was 81 but i'm pretty sure if you look up uh early 80s um quality varnish so what what happened so they were making these they had these huge vats and i would go to work with my father all the time uh and he ran the place you know all his guys were very loyal to him and uh they sent in the wrong chemicals and a reaction started and the whole place blew up my dad got sent into a wall he was in a coma for eight months he lived he lived through the explosion yeah he lived through the explosion but his good friend who was like an uncle to me a guy named jerome he died and uh when my dad came out of the coma you know they all got settlements and he went from like a functioning you know drinker you know pretty responsible guy to burned head to toe his tattoo was off his arm

like that kind of burns looked weak and decrepit and they were i just have i'm sorry, I'm sorry, I have the article behind you now from the New York Times. I was just pulling it up while you were talking. So it was only Jerome and your dad who were in it. Yeah. Your dad was hurt and Jerome was killed. Yeah, yeah. Wow. That's on there?

Yeah, because it says one killed, one hurt. Yeah, yeah. So it sounds like there's only two people. Right. They're the only two there. And the part that was really messed up is Jerome got out and went back in and got my dad out. Because he was like a loyal good friend of his, you know. And my father just, when he came out of that, he was pretty, they had a party in the burn unit.

And I forget what hospital it was, but the nurses came in there when he just came out of a coma after eight months. They got a keg in the corner bottles of jack and they're all like you know trying to you know get back to uh business as usual but my father was really messed up over that and um and it changed him you know and was he ever normal again like physically and everything oh yeah no he's yeah it's crazy he he's almost died like he's been run over by a truck uh he was left for dead the guy just keeps coming back in fact yeah about about about seven years ago they wanted me to sign a paper saying you know let him die oh there's no chance yeah yeah and i said just act like he's gonna live and he did he's fine now he's got you know a bunch of years of doing good.

Wow. He still, you know, he face plants every now and then. But he's good. He's a tough guy. But, yeah, so when they had that party, that was the beginning of the downfall between him and my mother. And things got really chaotic now because he came home weak and I was like, I got to be the man. How old are you? I was, let's see, eight, about eight years old. Yeah.

Yeah. I remember trying to buy a pistol from a- At eight. Yeah. You tried to buy a pistol at eight years old? Yeah, from a crackhead in my neighborhood. I was like, dude, I need you to get me a gun. Yeah, I got to be the man. Somebody somebody comes in the house now i'm a captain you know i was i was all screwed up but i

i really had this pressure on me to um you know do things that i didn't even know how to do but i knew i was gonna do you know look out for my family and and you know until my dad you know if he was going to make it but it didn't look good he was he was gone for eight months yeah like the weakest i ever seen him and he's always been about 6 2 2 20. you know i i went got bigger than him but he had strong hands and um before he got sober again this last time down in florida i think it was like eight cops on him before they asked him can you just calm down yeah he's like why didn't you just ask me that he was slinging him around he's like what a new jersey yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah he used to i was telling mark on the way over here when i seen the atlantic city he rode limos when the chemistry was you know when it was

down or whatever they didn't have a job so he would drive limos for this company out of Boonton. He was a good friend of ours and a good family. And they would say, don't drink and drive. We'll do it for you. We're professionals. We know what we're doing. And that's what the job was. That might have made me think twice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, back then it was like, yeah, these guys know what they're doing. They're really good. They got no history of accidents or, you know. So, yeah, it was like yeah these guys know what they're doing they're really good they got no history of accidents or you know so yeah it was a little crazy they're giving limos down in ac now for like 10 bucks outside i swear to god my buddy got one like three four months ago we played on this podcast too because he was on right after but he was like oh we're gonna go to the club and we're like no we're gonna stay here and then i go outside and he's got like a i don't know one of those like six-door limos here and then i go outside and he's got like a i don't know

one of those like six-door limos pulling them out i'm like what the fuck like jesus christ like you're just coming to the club right and he's like dude it costs 10 bucks what is that i'm like damn times are getting harder yeah yeah yeah crazy shit it was rough back then but only when you walked off the the boards you know what i mean like once you got off a certain area you would get mugged there yeah it's it's still not certainly not the it's not a place without sketchy areas yeah let's put it that way yeah for sure still remains yeah you could be two seconds and you're in a you're in a bad predicament you know but your your dad and your mom got divorced after this whole thing yeah it took a few years yeah Yeah, my grandfather had passed. He took his last drink in front of me

and kind of face-planted it in some eggplant parm. And they moved me, you know, around to that family in Boonton and then my cousins in Livingston. What family in Boonton? I had somebody come up to me this past weekend, who shall remain nameless, and asked me with a straight face if they thought 8sleep was as good as Sleep Number. That was tough to hear that question. It was very difficult.

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There's the family that grew up with us. They were real close with my pop. Like their names, you mean? No, no, no. I just wasn't sure if that was like someone you were related to no they all played guitar together they were just real close they were like like brothers and sisters so you lived with them for a little bit yeah while they were figuring out what they were doing uh my dad kept getting kicked out of the house you know my mom was getting fed up and uh yeah so finally she you know ended it sold the house and we moved down to we were moving to Clearwater Florida and then she picked Naples

off the map we ended up in Naples for the last 32 years yeah and so how old were you when you went down there it's about 14 15 and um I had like I think a year of middle school which is eighth grade and then uh and then i went into ninth grade and the education was way behind like so the the book work was almost boring in florida in florida yeah yeah it was pretty and florida man yeah it was pretty crazy how far behind i was like this this is really easy. And the teachers were serious where I was from in Jersey. Like they would come snatch you up if you cut school. Like I used to be terrified of the Truman officers. They would come, they'd find me. I'd hide in a, you know, those salt barrels where they put out the salt. They had these big barrels

on the second floor in a storage room. I'd hide when they were coming. To not go to school. Yeah, I hated school. Yeah, I didn't like it. It was always hot when they put the heaters on it. That's a first. Why didn't you like school with the heaters, man? Yeah, the heaters were killing me. And I was going through amazing growth spurts, and I was tired.

I don't think nobody caught that, that I was getting real big real quick. And my mother used to take in every stray, sad story and feed them all the same as me. And I'd be like, yeah, I'm hungry. And I didn't want to say nothing, so I got a job from these guys that were connected in a rubbish removal company. Yeah, they gave me a good job. Barone Sanitation? Yeah, yes. Rubbish removal, they called it.

And it was very nice. Yeah, quick story about that. I got a job making $60 a day cash in the summer. I think I was 11. You had 11? Yeah, at 11. i had a lot of money back then yeah i wanted to have money in my pocket to get the extra things because i didn't want to say nothing to my mom like hey you're feeding all these they were there were people down on their luck and stuff so that's pretty cool though that your mom did that yeah she was a sweetheart she pulled people in i mean she helped a lot all of them were there when she was

dying uh they all came down from New Jersey. Very good people. Like half sisters, half brothers. A bunch of them over time. Where would she find them? Well, they'd be like my sister's friends. I had an oldest sister that was, they'd be like her friends. You know, just people in the neighborhood.

You know, if they seen them abused or anything like that. My mom, for some reason, she was like a magnet for that. She gave away pretty much everything. She never tried to make money, but then she'd say, I need to make money. But she'd give it all away. But I remember them giving me that job. And the first day I got there, he goes, I'm going to give you day I got there he goes, I'm going to give you 60 bucks a day cash and I'm

going to buy you lunch. I was like, alright, cool. That sounds good. So we stopped at JJ's in Newark and I ordered like 20 cheese dogs, 20 hot onions and mustard, 20 chili dogs, a bag of chips, RC Cola. And the next day I come

in and he goes, I'm going to give you a hundred bucks a day of cash and you buy your own damn lunch. And I was like, wow, I must've did really good yesterday. You know, it never, I never caught the, the. Didn't register. Yeah, it didn't register. I always thought everybody was like, man, you know, people treat me really good.

And what kinds of things were you doing for them? I would pick up furnaces from them like i was strong yeah and i would pick up these big uh cast iron pieces of furnaces in the in the basements and whatever rubbish you had i would throw it on this truck we'd go to the meadowlands and dump it and i'd ride in the back of this truck on top of the load yeah it was cool like i really i really enjoyed it. You know what I mean? And what family was this? Genovese?

No, no, no. Lucchese? Nothing like that. Yeah, they were, yeah, I don't know if I should put their name out there. I don't know. I've told Mark. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, good people, though, for me.

But I started noticing I was picking up on things, you know, that later in Florida caused me a lot of problems. The way they handled stuff and the way they did stuff, there was a, you ain't got no choice, this is what we're doing. And I didn't notice it until one day I was in Summit, New Jersey. We were doing a removal, and I go in to buy a tuna fish sandwich, and they charged me like 18 bucks or something like that for a tuna fish sandwich sounds about right for some some yeah so my boss goes uh he goes uh

he goes in there he takes the sub and he slams it in their face and he's like um how are you gonna charge this kid 18 for a can of tuna he starts going off and flipping out and he's and he starts taking stuff and giving it to me here you can have this give him his money back and i was like wow that's pretty cool you know he uh straightened that i didn't have a problem where i wanted the tuna fish sandwich kind of through it yeah and i was like wow that's pretty cool he's got like some you know like that's all you got to do is just go in and start throwing stuff i picked up on these things it wasn't you're like 11 12 years old yeah yeah and i didn't know this at the time because i was 11 or 12 not developed i'm picking these things up and then later when they came out

i'm like where did that come from oh yeah that works you know and i started becoming like a goon almost you know and uh just doing whatever I wanted and when there was an opposition I did like him I just went off you know it was uh it was crazy it's almost like being taken over hijacked in the brain by your thoughts until you take time to process them and see where they came from that's where I learned all that stuff there's one later on in life when I started realizing I'm not living I'm kind of existing and reacting you know what I mean all that stuff. It was later on in life when I started realizing I'm not living. I'm kind of existing and reacting.

You know what I mean? And that's all I do. I don't. And then I'm obsessing when I'm not doing that. So I'm not taking any time to give myself. And your worth gets diminished. The more you shut it down, the more you don't listen. Like you're giving somebody else attention, but you're not giving yourself any attention.

Your worth goes down. But you don't realize it yeah it's almost to the point where you don't care if you you know everything loses meaning eventually and apathy is a horrible um existence like total apathy that's the word yeah that's that's the perfect word yeah that's a good way to for me to try to describe this and ask the question I have here. But like I'm very obsessed with environments and how they shape us throughout life. But especially when you're growing up. Why is there more crime in places that have less money, for example? That's a broad one. It's kind of obvious.

People got to survive, right? And they turn to whatever they can to do it. And so there's a huge part of me that understands that but when you're wherever your environment is when you're in a rougher type of place where people especially adults handle things in rough ways when you're 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 you know your brain's firing all over the place you got all the you're going through your growth spurts your hormones are coming out and everything you're earning money for the first time in some cases if you're working young and you're you're looking around to people to look up to and so when you do this and you see even if it doesn't register it's just my thought here when you see the apathy on their face like that

guy goes in there he's like give this kid a fucking tuna fish sandwich for two dollars not 18 and you know what we're gonna take the rest of the store you're like oh okay i guess that's what we do it's a lot better deal then fast forward 15 years later which i guess is what you're getting at yeah someone does something like that whatever the parallel in the world is or something not even parallel something simple right you're like oh i'm gonna straighten this out right you know it's like it gets the apathy gets trained in you because apathy is a way of not feeling anything it's just like huh okay that's literally i think that's like the definition yeah you know so it's it's curious to me that that's the word you chose there. But I think it's very telling.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. It gives you a position of power, too. Like, apathy got to the point where I don't care if you die, I die. This is happening. And that didn't happen right away. But like I said, you whittle away at your worth over time. You keep getting told by the state or the government or whatever, you know, because you're doing wrong things. But you're getting told this underlying thing that you're getting a life sentence.

You're not going to make it, you know. And that happened to me in that first year I had in high school. I get down there. To Florida. Yeah. I did really good in sports, you know, sports I excelled in. I was getting looked at by schools and at the end of the year i had just won everything there was to win and wrestling and and you know and my coach goes we're not gonna have a team next year i said coach i'm

a freshman i'm varsity wrestling i'm varsity football so i got three more years he goes you'll be in prison next some next year and i was coach said yeah yeah now i thought he was like i was like i laughed it off i was like what i never even did a chart you know i never did a crime and uh and it was just funny to me but at the end of the summer i was in prison and i was like i was like a prophet at 15 yeah i got sentenced as an adult yeah yeah what happened uh i'd like to say it was a misunderstanding but the judge when i you know i told the truth my uncle was a lawyer up here a big lawyer and uh his partner still has a practice in newark and they had two in new york and uh when he passed he was like you know um attorney general or whatever he was really high up there he's doing

these ironclad indictments overseas for for drug cartels and stuff so once he wrote these up they had him do that he's like a specialist oh so he ended up working with the government i believe so yeah at the end there he's yeah they um it was unexpected death at uh saint barnabas but um the the i talked to him because he you know i knew this stuff and he goes yeah just tell him the truth you know this guy started it and well what happened well i had been loitering and prowling what they call in florida is when you're walking through a business area or something and uh so i left the girl's house kind of late i didn't want to get her in trouble so i didn't say what I was doing I just said I'm going home my house is over there I used to get lost in Naples because the

same road is like five different places and so I'm walking the you know the beeline right to my house and I go behind these businesses and these cops roll up on me and he's's like uh you're lawyering and prowling i said i'm walking home i said i don't know what that is lawyering and prowling i've never heard this one yeah it's something they make up to sounds florida yeah yeah it's very it was very redneckish when i was there and uh and and it took me a while to I used to say I hate Florida I'm from Jersey but I hated you know I didn't hate Jersey but I hated my environment it was rough you know what I mean and um I love the people you know this is what I come to find over the time is I loved

connections with people and I would have never known that or admitted that when I was growing up but I had some strong good people in my life always somewhere I always had these solid good people tons of people like who besides your mom uh well my mom wasn't one of them she was always my uh cheerleader defender like you know uh but but I would never I never opened up to her, but I had friends from East Orange and Newark and that were just tight. They had went through hard times. A lot of them, their parents, one parent would die, something that would happen to them.

And I clicked with these people. And then even when I got to Florida, I clicked with a certain type of people that was just looking to live not so rigid, you know? Nobody tells you what to do, that type of thing. And I bonded with people like that, you know nobody tells you what to do that type of thing and i and i bonded with people like that you know and some of them are really good people i don't uh i wouldn't you know name them or nothing but good people and uh stand-up people people that wouldn't snitch if they were facing 100 years that type of yeah and um you know you're not all of them some of them betrayed and

and did what they did but uh so i lost uh a little bit of my point when i was going there we were starting on you were pulled over for oh yeah so i'm walking behind this building yeah it's a business and i said i don't know what loiter and prowling is i'm walking home and i tried to walk away you you know. And there might have been a few more words. But I was pretty much like, dude, get out of my face. You know what I mean? Like, not what a 15-year-old should have said to an authority, you know.

But I really thought he was out of place, even running up on me like that. I never done nothing wrong, you know, that I got caught for. You know, just kid stuff, you know. And got caught for yeah but you know just kid stuff you know and uh so i try to walk away and he grabs the back of my shirt and like yanks me back and he's like you don't go nowhere but when he did that i just spun around hit him in the jaw you whacked the car yeah yeah yeah i spontaneously combusted i guess yeah he got knocked out i broke his jaw i had to pay for his hospital bills yeah it was not good yeah i was 15 but i was six four six five 315 pounds yeah they all jumped on me they beat me up they broke a tooth yeah or two i forget but not then but right then i hit the guy and i ran i went

home and then i showed up in my house and i was like, Oh, you know, I'm in trouble. And, uh, my mother was just like, you know, she was showing up to court, you know, I had grounds, but at that time, when I look back on it now, every single parent with a kid, they didn't want that in Naples, Florida, they were really not helpful. You know what I mean? The whole thing was set up to get you out of there you know and not be there and uh so it wasn't like a because you came from at least like some pretty rough neighborhoods yeah up north but naples is never really no it's a beautiful place very nice but they but the cops are like gangsters you know what i mean the cops at that time were on

the take for you know they were just uh they were well taken care of to keep their community the way it is. Got it. Yeah. And I wasn't the best, you know, I had a lot of entitlement, I guess, to like the same rights as you. But for them, that was disrespect and stuff like that. It was. It's also profile, too. Profile, yeah.

You're a 6'4", 200-some pound, 15-year-old from Newark, New Jersey. Yeah. We don't like your kind down there. Nah, nah. We don't want you around, yeah. And then you knock a cop out. Yeah, that was not good. And then when I got to prison because I had, they sent me to prison.

They sent you to prison for that? Yeah, as an adult. With adults? Yeah, they sent me as an adult. At 15? At 15, they sentenced yeah as an adult yeah they sent me as a 15 at 15 they sentenced me as an adult how long uh five and a half years five and a half years at 15 yeah and stay prison yeah and my mother was like uh crying you know yeah terrible yeah and she was in the background when i was taking the sentence and uh you know the judge i said your honor i said five and a half years for a fight and they go uh and the judge says um yeah good luck son and i

said yeah thanks dad i like you know i was so blown away that i was like is this even real you know and uh how do you even process that i mean like i can't imagine processing that at like 40 or 50 or 20 something like that but 15 yeah it was it was i tell you it was it's kind of like camp for me though like when i went there yeah it kind of lined up with my i kind of seemed cool you know what i mean there was another kid in the jail that was same thing as me his father died in the bronx his mom moved him down and we clicked and we met up in the Bronx. His mom moved him down. And we clicked, and we met up in the county jail, and I just got sentenced. He wrote me.

Like, you know, I felt like when I came out, too, I felt like kind of like cool. You know, it was weird. And now I wouldn't. You know, now I wouldn't. But I did. I remember at the time feeling like, everybody thinks I'm pretty cool. Yeah, it's like you're hard. Yeah. And at that age, I can see exactly what you're saying.

Yeah, and at that age, too, like a year later, I was in there. I got a nurse as a girlfriend. So I had, like, everything. In the prison. Yeah, yeah. Well, I smacked this guy. He smashed the tip of my finger. I smashed the tip of the finger off.

He laughed at me. And I was growing habaneros. So I bashed his eye, cut it open, and shoved the habaneros in it because he laughed at me. You know what I mean? And so I went to the nurse every day, and they would give me sponge baths because they were worried because I was still a minor. But as an adult, they're worried about me getting infected because the bone was showing.

I took two of these cinderwood blocks, and I was all into my garden. I had a horticulture class I was taking. Did you grow in a garden? Yeah, I was growing in a garden, yeah. And at the same time, I was collecting for these other guys that couldn't collect. Is this like an indoor? It's outdoor, but the prison's real big. Yeah, you had like a field of grass.

You were allowed to work on a little patch. It's kind of cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was something. All right. I'll tell you, I got more vocationals than I can count. None of them that did me any good. But what it did was it distracted me.

Like jails and prisons were made for you to sit with yourself. Yeah. And it sounds like a good idea. Let's educate them. I got my GED. I got a perfect score. I got my little hat on. I took a picture.

I sent it to my mom. She still got it. She had it on the wall. They use a background so you don't look like you're in prison. And you would think all these are good things, like reform. But the problem is, it's just like when you see people out here in the world, you give them education, you give them ability to make money, but inside they're not whole.

And they cause, like, mass destruction. Like, I know kids that tap into resources that they shouldn't have, and they get themselves in those elements where you can get your legs broke, and they have no idea why they're in those elements and it's because of their ability to tap into things i came from a position of not able to tap into nothing so immediately i started collecting in prison for other people and i would collect and i would get paid for that what do you mean collect uh so if a guy was doing drugs i never did drugs at this point and um you know and they didn't pay which happens sometimes you know i would i would go collect it and uh and

i would get it to the guy and the guy would look out for me now i like doing my little class because i wasn't obsessing i didn't know this at the time but i was getting freedom from uh that constant agitation in my brain, which I later identified as obsession. But at the time, nobody's telling me nothing. Anybody that comes with a solution, I bat them down because I feel like they know too much, you know, and I didn't like that. So too familiar, you know what I mean?

So I did my little garden garden thing but when that kid exposed me and he's like because i mulched two things together and i was pretty proud of it and i said something the kid made fun of me that's the kid i split his eye and this is that apathy coming in yeah this is what you do makes funny okay i'm gonna beat the out of you just stand there then i go back to my plant you know what i mean so but he never said it again you know what i mean i'll bet he didn't yeah yeah yeah he had to deal with that you know you put a habanero in his eye too i split them and then i shoved the habaneros in there and they were hot they were fresh nice touch yeah yeah yeah i knew but see the hurt i gave him was the hurt i was feeling. Yeah, it sounds crazy, but I was this,

I guess you would call it like hypersensitive. This one literature I read that I learned a lot from talked about hypersensitivity. I was like, oh, I don't feel anything. And that's not the truth. I learned to kill the expression of those feelings and not be seen for those feelings, but I was still ruled by him so i would just smash something you know that kicks in the fight or flight mine was um

apathy for i don't care if i die this i will not feel this and that grew into something really uh really dangerous yeah almost out of my well out of my control a bunch of times yeah it's kind of like though you've heard expressions like this before probably from usually like in gangster culture or something like that but when you get into the system so young yeah that's your college yeah you go to college there you went now you got you ironically also got your ged there and everything but in in reality you're in a state prison with a bunch of hardened criminals at 15. You shouldn't have done what you did, but, I mean, you turned around and punched a guy. This wasn't – it was a reaction, whatever.

This isn't like – the fact that the judge looked at you and said it that way, the way you described it, like, to you son or whatever i i really struggle with that kind of thing because even though sentencing and things like that in the criminal system it's always going to be so weird like the concept of like someone has to complete a amount of time in like another place where they're not allowed to leave it's so bizarre but i think about the humanity of it that's missing sometimes. Like, you have a 15-year-old in front of you. All right? Your balls apparently had dropped because you were leaving the chick's house. But barely. Right?

Like, they dropped a couple years ago. You were probably earlier than most people. There's all these things going on in your head. You have no criminal history. And a judge looks at you and goes, yeah, five years. That, to me, I understand that in the courts and in the legal system, there has to be a ton of objectivity. It's what they teach apparently.

I don't know. I didn't go there. But that's what I hear they teach in law school. I get that. But there's still a human element. And so he sends you, good luck son, to a college that's not of your choice right and while you're going through the rest of your developmental phase you're doing it around all these other bad people and then you you learn to you learn to react i think that's i think you said react instead of respond which i

like you learn to react to the impedi impetuses around you right by shielding all this stuff such that you know instead of being like hey i don't like that that person made fun of me and dealing with that and then trying to talk it out with them i mean we're talking like five-year-olds right now right this is the idea you don't you don't learn this you're like i'm gonna i'm gonna smash your face real quick oh i don't feel that anymore we're good yeah and that's because of where you are you might not even though you might have had some some proclivities towards being more physical with people because of your jobs when you were 10 11 and the guys you saw you may have very well not developed that if you had had a chance to just

be a normal kid take it out on the football field right you know yeah like that's that doesn't sit right with me that that happened to you yeah it's it's – I'm not – like, I might have been a victim at that point, but I carried that not knowing it and the resentment towards the police and, you know, any authority. But I learned pretty quickly that you're a volunteer after a certain period of time. What do you mean by that? Like, if I re-sign up to that which i did and that's what caused me you know to go to prison three more three more times um i had a i was coming from a victim mentality almost you know like i was done wrong you know what i mean and i did do something wrong like so and then i definitely reinforced that with drug use and legitimately doing some bad things, you know.

But I learned that I was volunteering for that because I didn't look at I still didn't take time to process. It wasn't until I got on death row and it wasn't because I murdered anybody or nothing. I was just deemed incorrigible by Florida. And we'll get there yeah so it wasn't until then that i started reflecting and giving myself an opportunity i all of a sudden i realized i need to get some kind of connection with myself i i have no idea who i am what i'm doing and i don't want to be in here for life uh there's only you know it's just not a life were you were you thinking that at all i don't want to be in here again when you were 18 19 20 no you get out no i was those were my

most impressionable years so what i left with 15 when i went to go in there it was stuck in my head for a long time what was great you know and i rel that. Like I got all that stuff and I'm like, this ain't really it. You know, what I thought at 15, I kind of held on to the ideas I had at that time at my most impressionable time, like getting the, getting with the nurse, getting stuff brought in. Every time I did something like dangerous or illegal, I was in the moment and I didn't know that that's what i liked that's what i liked i liked the hyper awareness of being in the moment where because i lived in my head everything else so even even when you were like in prison and you're going

around and and you're collecting money and stuff like that it gives you a purpose and you you kind of know like all right we're not supposed to be doing this but i'm the guy that gets to do it yeah yeah even yeah stuff like that that was kind of condoned i'm talking more like the paying guards taking over prisons getting kicked out of prisons which is crazy but i've got shifted from prisons before because i was just yeah i was i was there wasn't nothing I couldn't sit back and take time to just start running. If I really look at it, we were talking about it the other day. I mean, a friend of mine, he doesn't like his name being brought up.

But we were talking about it the other day, how if you sit back for a year and observe any environment, you can know pretty much the way you want to do it to take over you know you know you're you know your biggest problem you know you're you're you know you got to get that taken care of first and then the rest will kind of fall into place you know it's funny though like think about that i. I think about this a lot. But think about that from the perspective of, on one hand, the laser good CEO of public company X or whatever who works his way up and as he's getting up starts to see like, okay, here's how – or better yet, starts the whole company. Here's where we're at. Here's how we get to that kind of thing and here's how we're going to change the business environment for whatever the product is, right?

In 10 years. Right. And they have that vision. And then if they're great, they figure it out. They change the game. And then they're huge, right? Right. It's no different even like being in a prison.

You're like, okay, well, I'm here. This is my environment. How do I run the prison? Yeah. It's the same thing. It's just one is in a forbidden place of society, right? And another is in, oh, yeah, that's what happens every day. Right.

It's the same human thing. Yeah, I believe it's easier in a controlled environment. And you know the rundown within a certain amount of time. And then knowing the individuals takes a little longer, a couple thousand people running around. You got to make sure, you know, there's whole sections of people you could just kind of discount as they'll go along with anything. But, and then the guards individually getting to know each one a little bit, you know, without bringing suspicion to talking to them. But just finding out, seeing where they're weak at. And, yeah, it was a crazy game but when you got 24 7 to work on

it you could yeah yeah you're not doing nothing else all i did was work out read books and study people and um and just to get the creature comforts of of the streets because it was actually easier living in there i used to feel like i disappointed everybody with my lack of connection with people and stuff like that. Like, you know, I learned to be charismatic and go along with stuff. But it baffled me, you know, how much trouble I would get and how much it would hurt my family members. You know, I'm like, what? You know, like, I got this under control. Don't worry about it.

Like that type of i didn't understand how they got so wrapped up in what i'm doing you know and and especially if when i was uh providing results you know later when it got money yeah you know when it got when it got really messy i couldn't do anything right i understood then and then on the flip side of that when i had a daughter that's when it really hit me i was like i gotta change you know can't have a bunch of people like me running yeah yeah yeah something changes inside you yeah protection mode right all right yeah you just start looking at things different yeah but you you did five it was five and a half years well i did a little extra time i broke another guard's jaw in there oh what happened there uh he was making remarks about me um

hitting a cop and he thinks he's a tough guy it was my almost when i first got there they tacked on two more years so i was about i don't know 20 22 when i got out something like that got it so you get out after a stint now you've spent like almost a 30 year life and you're yeah at that point you know the developmental years of your going into adulthood right in prison so what was your plan coming out uh i knew i was gonna learn to live without the law being involved in my life. Like that was kind of my resentment. I didn't really have any personal grudge. You know, I didn't do too bad.

I made some money in there. My mom, you know, I was able to send her stuff for her birthday. And so I didn't really hold on to nothing that I knew of. But I did have this inward idea that I don't mess with cops or anything to do with government or none of that. And they don't, you know, they don't come in my life either. And that didn't go so well. But I would, yeah, it just started building up a big, like, fear factor for cops messing with me. You know what I mean?

And, uh, yeah, it just got out of control. I started getting indicted for murders. I didn't do like, but I was creating this, uh,

persona myself. So what were you doing? I was just hanging with it. Like I said, a good friend of mine, he was on escape from Broadway up here and, uh, he got a girl pregnant.

So he wanted to go turn himself back in up here and um what do you mean turn himself back in yeah oh because he didn't mind yeah he wasn't gonna turn himself back i was gonna wait till he caught him but yeah his yeah his daughter uh ended up becoming my goddaughter um she's doing well now but having a kid back to prison yeah i gotta go back to prison i can't deal with this shit yeah that's it was tragic both of them the mom and the dad are dead now but it was tragic the way that went down but for like from the time i got out so you know in and out of bids this guy stuck with me you know and he was a he was a thorough you know solid dude for me. But society would probably deem him a maniac. What kinds of things were you guys doing for money?

Well, he would do burglaries. And I never did burglaries. It made me feel. I didn't like stealing. When I was a kid, I did it because it got me in the moment. But I learned it made me feel like I had to go to the bathroom because I just didn't feel good. Yeah, yeah. I'd be like, this doesn't feel right you do this you know and i would rob people and just

let them know i did it you know oh yeah if you could see him you'd do it if you couldn't see him yeah like i wanted you to know not really me because i'd have sometimes i'd have some i don't know how much I should say about that. But I would have like, you know, like, I looked like I was there to confiscate your stuff. And you weren't going to do anything about it. And I found that robbing, you know, people who dealt drugs, I thought you can never get in trouble for that. Turns out you can. Oh, so you would rob drug dealers.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, this is some Omar Little shit right here. Omar Little. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. would rob drug dealers yeah yeah yeah this is some omar little right here yeah yeah from yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah long before i i watched that show which is funny the wire yeah the wire people listen right and um long before that show though i was in naples florida which is really nice i would go to miami i would go to i ended up going into east st louis i ended up going all these places and i would find out real quick people didn't like people you know

what i mean and i'd find out who you didn't like if they had a lot of stuff and um and it and i started feeding a drug supply too like i was doing drugs at the time i started doing drugs and i was like yeah i started doing drugs with him actually i, yeah, I started doing drugs with him. Actually, I started getting into hardcore, you know, drugs and stuff. And, and it helped, it helped kill the conscience. What kind of drugs? I mean, it got pretty, pretty bad heroin, you know, cocaine. I wasn't a weed smoker because it left me defenseless against my brain and I would hate it. I just like a fat blob on the, I was like, ah, my brain wants to kill me and I can't do that about it but

opiates I discovered I got stabbed a couple times and they gave me these these red things I don't even know what they were at the time but I remember feeling like this is where I want to be. And before that, when I was like about eight, I think I was like seven right before my dad hurt himself. I used to steal sips of his little Budweiser's. I bring him one. It was total relief. I was like, wow, that's weird.

So I started bringing him like empty cans. He'd be like, what happened? I'd be like, I spilt it. I don't know what happened. So he started getting his own beers. But yeah, it was, I didn't pick up on it but what it did was totally relieve the pressure of being me yeah i don't know why i was under so much pressure i really didn't live up to much you know you don't no i don't i i'd never really picked up on why that was

i mean i'm guessing here i'm not you but i would think just from like a human being perspective right you come out of prison after five years right you didn't get to do high school you didn't get to do college you're labeled a felon by society like you have a distrust of government and police and things like that some of it very righteously so right and so you're like oh yeah yeah reaction that was part of it but this was back when i was seven i had this pressure oh yeah you were actually talking about that right yeah well i didn't uh well i didn't put i didn't pick up on it but when i was about three or four my dad taught me how to play chess and i thought this is a good way for us to bond or whatever.

Subconsciously, I played chess, like, every day, every night down in the parks. I would play with old-timers, and I started winning a lot. And one night I was, like, ready to play them and try to beat them. He came home. He was drunk, you know, and he was kind of, like, sleeping on the table. And I was like, ah, this shit don't work. And I kind of threw away the trophies and everything i won i won like statewide tournaments and i was like it wasn't for the chess it was this pressure to live up to what i already had my pop you know what i mean he didn't you know he didn't not love me or nothing like that but i thought i had to like super

perform or something and i'm fighting for something that's already there you know and uh that weird thing I have no idea where that came from um you know I just recognized it through this uh one uh fellowship I was going to I was like ah that's what that is that pressure is obsession you know and then when I compulsively act on it I do a lot of crazy stuff and then I seem to not be able to stop and this is what using drugs this is long before i even picked up drugs as a as a thing so when you did pick up drugs though you were saying it took away the pressure of being yourself yeah i was less dangerous i was less uh less dangerous on cocaine yeah yeah cocaine would make me uh very calm

what yeah it would make me very calm i would talk talk to people. I used to use cocaine. I'd snort cocaine with people all night to find out if they were snitched. This is when I first started doing it. And I loved talking and grilling them. You know, just finding out little hidden contradictions. I'd be like, yeah, wait a minute. Go back to

this part right here. Kind of like what you do here. Yeah. And so I would do that because i started getting snitched on by people i couldn't believe it like i would help people buy their apartments you know dude i did some nice things my whole point behind selling drugs was to help my friends and family oh so you were selling it too right away right when i came out yeah i had all these connections from prison i look cool from the the environment. Naples is a very nice, rich place, but I would go into the hoods and get stuff and bring it over. Because you were also protecting people in prison who were selling it, you said.

Yeah. Right? So you had connections through that. Right. And then when you got out, I was like, okay, well, there's a market for this. Yeah. Yeah. It was a...

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Kinsta. Simply better hosting. It was like, like you said, the school to learn how to pretty much be a criminal. You know what I mean? I didn't stop doing that for a long time. But until I started, like I said, I had my daughter. I started caring about people. I was like, man, I can't be condoning this at all. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to rob all the drug dealers. I'm going to use all the drugs. So I became like a garbage can for all the drugs out there.

I was just going to use them all. I'm more making money off of it. Can I get a little bit of a timeline here? Because there's a few things there. So you came out. You were at first were selling. Yeah. Okay. You have a daughter. Not yet you came out you were at first we're selling yeah okay yeah you have a daughter not yet not yet not at that time but i'm saying like when when like oh this is uh 98 and 99 and how old are you um uh at that time um let's see 26 okay

yeah had you been back to jail yet uh or prison? I actually met my daughter in prison at a work release center. Right. But I'm saying when you, this was a girlfriend, I guess you got pregnant? Or your wife? Yeah, I was in a rehab and I got a girl pregnant. We skipped a few things. Let's go back then. So you came out, you were selling.

Yeah. Right. Then at some point you were like i think you were saying it was when your daughter was born that's when you were like no i'm just going to rob drug dealers well a little after that a little after that because after her i started caring like i knew there shouldn't be people thinking like me so i was like i got to change and then when i started doing that i started caring about things i refused to care about before because it was too intense for me.

In the middle, though. That's what I'm looking for. So in the middle of those two things, your daughter's at 26 or whatever and is born, like, when you actually went to prison. We'll get there. But in the middle, come out, you're selling drugs. Before that, you got addicted to drugs at the same time. Yeah. And so you were just, were you a part of, like, an part of like a organization we just selling like a one-man army kind of

deal no I affiliated with a bunch of one time they they labeled me an international gang leader which I thought was ridiculous I never been in a gang so but I had a bunch of different people that I dealt with so I never I never was prejudiced or or I never cared like if i'm trying to get something done i'll use whoever's there and i don't matter so it looked like i was coordinating with a lot of different types of people and um where'd you get the stuff from uh miami mostly miami yeah we uh west palm beach too we had a connection there for a while but miami um at the time i actually ended up moving over there because it made it easier and i had my daughter at one time every time i had my daughter

i stopped doing everything and i tried to do good but my ideas of what good is uh they grew they started somewhere but they weren't great how'd you end up in rehab oh that's the question yeah so i end up in this i i got to the point where so i'm out a couple years and um i get on these drugs immediately i go to you know uh mainlining drugs after like six months all of a sudden i felt i found the answer i just do this stuff and i'm fine i don't have to deal with uh motions or all that complicated stuff i could just get things done i end up you know of course this thing turns its back on me because i'm using it 24 7 eventually but what happened was i the reason why i started dealing was my friend that i told you that um came from the bronx it was in jail with me before he stayed in touch with me so i

put him on and i put a bunch of other guys on. And I started feeling a good connection with a bunch of good people. And then I started hooking them up with people. Making them money, too. Right. So 2 o'clock in the morning, this guy comes to my house, and his nose is running. He's like, hey, I need an 8-ball.

I was like, are you using this stuff? At that point, I hadn't used nothing. And I said, no, we don't use this. We sell it. We, you know, take care of our families. We do what we got to do, but you don't use it. And he's like, no, no, no, I just need it. So anyway, I end up using with them.

We were going over to Lauderdale at the time. Oh, Club Boca. We were going at the time. It was a big three-story club. And we had all these ex-Seminole football players with the brand that you know just got our back and it you know it felt pretty good and uh I'm in there with you know some whatever and uh we're going back and forth and I'm bringing them over there I start doing bumps and like six months later I'm main and stuff when my boy came down from uh raw ways from jersey city uh

he's like uh banging all the time i'm like yeah i'll never stick a needle in my arm there ain't no way you know and uh like uh about two weeks later i'm in coconut grove and coconut grove they got a street called uh grand there's a a line where you go from hollywood people to the ghetto and and i'm in this hotel that's looking down that strip and i'm with this girl and i'm doing like lines of you know heroin pretty big and you're doing lines heroin at this point i'm doing lines of heroin and coke you know pretty big and she's doing this little bit and she's putting in her spoon and little bit and she's like blasted and i'm like i don't even feel this yet you know i got my tolerance went through the roof and uh so what like six five six six something like that i'm already uh six five yeah six five dude yeah at that time I was about 330. I was like benching a lot and whatever.

But I was strong and I couldn't feel nothing. I got to where my tolerance was just ridiculous. I mean, it was like a $4,000 or $5,000 a day habit. Wow. And I don't know how I was keeping that up. Because you were selling. Yeah, I guess so. But I constantly shot these speed balls.

But this girl girl she did this little bit and she was just like blasted i was like look that up you know what i mean she's like you sure i was like yeah yeah i said my buddy does it all the time the needle yeah and she blasted me and i like grabbed her by the shoulder poor girl and i'm like uh-oh the building's moving and um i don't know how appropriate this is you might no it's this is what happens on yeah crazy drugs yeah so you're not trying to do anything it's just this is why you shouldn't do them right here definitely yeah train running through my head and uh so i was hooked right there and then i realized you could do a lot um you get a lot more done when you get those kind of well i don't know it's it's confusing

but uh but so i started finding a perfect way to suit my crazy brain what i called it at the time a brain that wouldn't turn off and stuff like that uh that took care of that and then i get to do whatever i want now the problem is i i had that freedom I was doing what I thought was making me happy but when that freedom ran out from that and the noise got louder and louder because I kept doing more and more you know seemingly crazy things um I actually practiced insanity enough to become insane to where I was diagnosed with like things and stuff like that. I practiced that, you know, so I, yeah. So I had to, I had to, you know, try to refocus and slow it down. So I ended up in this rehab. Yeah.

That's a pretty wild line that you said in there. I had to practice insanity long enough to become insane. You started to explain that a little bit, but can you expand upon that some more? Yeah. Well, I learned from coming out of that that I had to practice sane actions to get back to being restored to sanity. I had common sense things that I thought I knew, but I never applied because I knew them intellectually and I didn't apply them. I just assumed I was doing them. And it actually forms like it's a derangement of sorts when I upset the working order of my mind.

And that's what I did. I practiced something that was out of my nature for so long that I became deranged. Drugs, in this case were the at the center of it yeah they're well they were the relief the real Insanity was practicing things I was I was running away from fears I didn't even know I had so through like crime type things through crime yeah through getting in the moment through uh you know, just crazy. It took crazy things to happen for me to feel alive, you know, and it was all just a feeling. There was nothing produced by it.

So that was the insanity, that I need just one more thing to go back in my head and live and be at peace for a second more. But then the brain kind of turned its back on me and said, this is unacceptable not one more thing is going to work and that's when i started getting really uh fearful i transmitted a lot of fear um that was another thing you brought up earlier was how i uh how i reacted was just me um trying to keep my fear down yeah yeah it's like that thing it's the same thing people what's the quote people express their insecurities by taking it out on you

something like that same deal yeah it but what i didn't know was that you transmit that fear to somebody else and and that because i used to get some crazy reactions sometimes when i go at somebody and i thought they were like terrified of me but they were really what they were doing was feeling the fear inside of me and it's a it's a theory that i came up with it's just my experience it's not uh it might have been something i read but i it's integrated in me that you transmit what's inside of you to people when you show up or anything now if they have preconceived judgments they go along whatever like preconceived notions when you show up or what it's going to be that's a lot of sense yeah it's a bias but they but you

pretty much transmit who you are to people like uh i used to get a lot of uh you know good girlfriends that were beyond me why i would get them it's because they felt secure around me i i put off a lot of um you're safe but the first line i would tell them was you're probably gonna get shot hanging out i used to say stuff like that and they'd go right up under me and i'd be like i can't get rid of this girl you know i left one in my mom's house for like a month one time. I was in Miami. I came back. Oh, you left her at your mom's house?

Yeah, and I was like, you're still here? And yeah, she was ready to shoot at me. But I couldn't believe she was still there. You know what I mean? I ran from the house, jumped in a car, didn't come back for a month. I said I'd be back the next day or something. She didn't want me to go. She actually was trying to save my life,

but I took it as you're trying to hinder what I'm doing. But the girl who you were in the hotel room with and you tried shooting up for the first time, that's what got you hooked on that? Yeah. And you're what, like 24 or something like that? Yeah, I was about 20. Yeah, about 24.

Okay. Yeah. or something like that yeah i was about 20 yeah about 24 okay yeah so this then is what really spiraled it to addictive crazy use because once you go to the needle it's a whole new level oh it's a whole addiction in and of itself and what made you go to i can't remember if you said this or not there's been a lot but what made you go to rehab at 26? At, let's see, that was 1998. Yeah, it was about 26. I ended up in this rehab. Let me see.

I ended up, I was on the, I was wanted for something. I ended up going to this job corps in Kentucky. And they actually flew me up there and I was wanted for something. I was about 24 and a half, 25. And it was kind of like a break for me to go to this place. What was it? A job corps? A job corps, they called it.

They taught me how to operate heavy equipment. It's like for, it's a vocational thing, but it's on a federal, you know, reserve. And yeah, I can tell you, and I'm wanted. They flew me out of Naples, which was great. I was like, yeah, you'll take me? And they're like, yeah. I was like, oh, cool. So I go on there because my girlfriend at the time talked me into it, and she went too, and she became a successful, you know,

whatever you call it, administration person or whatever. And me, I started, you know, I met the pizza guy. I had drugs coming in underneath the pizza. I couldn, uh, you know, I met the pizza guy, had drugs coming in underneath the pizza. I couldn't stop, you know? And, uh, so eventually I got kicked out of there. They tried to put me on like mental medication for bipolar or something. And, uh, they really tried, they were trying to help me out. So they ended up, they put me on a bus. I go back to Naples. Now I'm wanted. And what are you want it for uh at that time it was um it was uh dealing in a school zone i put a i put a friend of mine up yeah they made it sound

like i was peddling the kids or something it was just some school that was within a thousand feet it was two o'clock in the morning no kids at school but they set me up in this school zone um i put a kid up that he got thrown out of his mother and father's house. So I put him up in this hotel. He sets me up. He, like, you know, calls me up. He's like, I need this. And I was like, you don't need anything.

Just sit tight. Your hotel's paid for. So you don't need nothing. Just calm down and, you know, try to act right because his parents were nice people and so uh he he insists that he makes some money so i'm not just paying his his tab and uh i had a weird feeling about it you know and i knew it was a setup um so anyway i got another guy to hand him the stuff and and i told the guy i said look this might be a setup you know oh you told him that yeah i told the dude he didn't care he just wanted to make some money i was like you could do it or you could not do it i totally understand either way but you know this he says he's got all this

cash there and whatever i'm not touching nothing but i will fight with you uh you know in and out of this and he knew he knew i was serious you know so we went we got in we got out and uh i kept getting calls for more and i was like nah and at this time i had like a i guess one of my first awakenings is i kind of knew i was going to go away for that and i i just knew something was telling me i was on borrowed time so a friend of mine i said hey get me a job at your thing he was a manager at a super grocery store i said give me a job i don't care what it is i said i want a job i want to work and do what's right so i put some money up and i start working this job and this poor guy he's like the manager of this place he wears a suit he's very into this career and next you know i'm on the bleach aisle putting bleach up and there's like 20 officers coming this way 20 officers come this way they could get me to do anything else so

they just came and picked me up on the deal and then the school zone so that was what i was wanted for i was on bond oh you were on bond yeah i got on bond for that skipped or something yeah i skipped yeah and uh and so they were looking for me and everything else so i you know naples florida will indict you for a petty theft if you're in australia they don't care they will get you here and they're gonna get theirs they don't care if it costs them a million dollars they're coming to get you so i get bro you know i get back to naples there's a crazy story with that, too. Let's hear it.

Yeah? Okay. So I'm coming back. It was the last Freaknik. It was 1997. You know Freaknik down in Georgia, Atlanta? No. What's this?

It was a big college party. I don't even know how to say it right. I just know it's like Freaknik or something like that. But anyway, you can look it up. It was a big party. So all of I-75 is backed up. I'm on a Greyhound bus. Three girls in a convertible Mustang or something are pulling up alongside the bus.

I'm like banging on the wheel. I was like, I want to go with you guys. And they're like, come on. So I just told the bus driver, I mean, it was gridlocked traffic on I-75. If you are looking to search the web privately and not have all these websites track you when you leave, check out my friends over at Privato VPN. Privato is the best VPN company because it gives you all of the privacy, loses you none of the speed, and allows you to use the vpn on multiple devices at one time so if you hit the link in my description for privado you will go to my landing page with privado and you will see a plan for 4.99 a month it is fantastic it's the same one i use you'll get all your

privacy with all your speed and you can use it on any device at any time so check it out so it's like i'm going with them you know i said let me off and i had like a like about a half pound of this krippy weed i got from the pizza guy up in kentucky yeah and i'm on a greyhound because they were got a half pound yeah half pound and it turns out in atlanta they they loved like so i got coke i got heroin i'm just breaking off little bugs everybody's giving me stuff. I end up taking these three college girls down. They're like, we want to go wherever you're going.

They thought I was like, Naples is not like this. This is awesome. Naples is like a dead town. We got parties in people's houses. And she's like, no, no, we'll drive you down there. And they drove me down there. Actually, we lost one of the girls. What do you mean one i don't know she just disappeared over the weekend she's disappeared yeah yeah they said they're her two friends i was like you ain't worried about your

friend i was like i don't know where she is and they're like nah she disappears all the time i was like so i end up in this really wild situation i I get back to Naples. A friend of mine who's wanted by the feds at that time, he was about to go away for eight years. I didn't know this. But he gives me the keys to his apartment. He's like, it's too hot for me in Naples. I got to get out of here. I end up, as soon as I got there, there was a big party, a house party.

And these real estate guys I know, they're real estate guys now, but they used to come out and party with us all the time. They got this nice house, big party. I show up there. A friend of mine's there. I bring these three girls. They're like, I knew it. I knew you were holding out.

I said, look, it ain't normally like this. We got lucky. We go in there. We're partying. Everybody's having a good time. Then my boy gives me the keys to this place. It's in a rich part of town. The guy who owns it left him the keys to that and told him he has to run the boat you know once a week he wants his motor being run away so i got a watching basically

yeah hey a house watching and the guy didn't care so and there's a credit card there for the gas it was like and they're like the girls are like i knew you were holding you know i kept saying it really is never like this i was like man i must be dying soon or something because everything was just going too smooth so we end up partying the whole weekend i'm riding this boat you know i almost took my buddy's head off i never rode a boat before yeah i told him the duck we're going on this bridge but uh the girl disappeared we end up eating all this you know good food she might have been in the motor yeah we might have lost her out there bump on the water right there head off yeah but so we end up back at this house we're

partying all night and my friend who had a wife at the time that had like a she must have had a transponder in his neck or something she always found him i was like there's no way your wife the place got cameras you could see everything coming and he's been paranoid looking at the cameras watching for his wife sure enough sunday morning she shows up i don't know how and she's like banging on the door we got these girls um we've been partying all weekend and uh then next thing you know, she caused a commotion. Cops show up, and I'm going to jail. It was like a great weekend, but I knew it was just too smooth.

It was one of those weekends where I didn't get caught up in nothing. I had a really good time. They come bum-rushing the place. They say some other person's name, my buddy. I said, look, I'm not him. They're like, yeah, that's not him. We know who that is and they said hold on we're just going to run your name and then you can go i ran my name the warrant came back ah man and i got yeah i got no bond because i skipped you know and um so yeah anyway i yeah it was a great weekend great time it was

the last freak nate they never did freaknik again where all the colleges come to Atlanta. That's why I don't know. Closed down. Yeah. That was 97. Yeah. You can look them up. Some of the, all the artists used to go there and all the rappers or whatever at the time.

And, and, uh, it was a good time, but, um, yeah, so I'm going, yeah, I went to jail for, for, for, uh, dealing in the school zone. Did you, I'm forgetting, did you end up in rehab too? Yeah, so right after this, this is when I end up, something happened to the CI, the confidential informant, where the case didn't work out. He said one story. The cop said that I was the principal. And they brought this other kid who wasn't the guy I brought. They brought him in, and he ended up calling me because I ended up, or he ended up getting a hold of me through the other blocks.

I was like, dude, I don't know why you're involved in this. I said, just keep your mouth shut. You're fine. You weren't there. And so they tried to charge me as the principal, and then they tried to charge him as the principal. And the judge is like, you just told me that this guy handed you the stuff, and you handed him the money. And then you said me at a different time. And it was the same judge. And he's like, what do you think?

I'm stupid? And for the first time, the judge kind of took my side. He threw the whole case out. So I get out out and i'm like i want to do good you know and i started dabbling a little and uh i was like i'm going into a program i think i need help oh while i was in that county jail that time there was this little short lady she's a drug counselor and um we had we got a really tight relationship after that. But she comes into the block, and I'm in a block with some of the most,

you know, the ones facing a lot of time. You know what I mean? They never let me go in the blocks that were nicer. They always put me in a block with guys that were serious or coming back from prison. And so I'm in this block, and this little lady comes up to me, and she goes, you got a drug problem? I said, no, I got a cop problem. problem she goes you're coming to my drug block and i was like whatever i was

like you bring me in there if you want to we'll see what happens but i like the lady she was feisty and short you know what i mean and took an interest in yeah yeah and she she spotted something and uh and there was a chaplain there too he used to call me and bring me you know we drink coffee he always wanted to talk to me and i was like that's weird you know what i mean yeah so but i like getting out of my block i like drinking a coffee so we would sit and talk and then going to this counselor lady she started saying things to me that later on made sense you know and uh like what kinds of things like she would say you you know the the clogging of my brain the drugs i would put in there would clog

me from who i really was you know and every time you do it the allergic reaction is not the crazy things you do it's that you make these decisions uh disconnected from yourself so then you get results and they're not your results so you're not happy with them and then you go crazy you know so so it made sense to me later right then i was just like yeah whatever yeah yeah yeah she was yeah she was fun to watch and whatever so in the block i lasted about two weeks and i smashed somebody's face into something or whatever i forget what it was oh i broke a chair they had these chairs and the chair shattered a piece went up and i told them i said let me sit on the stairs these chairs are not gonna hold me oh you broke that you were sitting on it yeah there was these plastic chairs honey and the guy

laughed so i beat him and uh yeah later on as soon as the class was over i went to do it in front of the lady i start beating them you know and i was like yeah i'll laugh again yeah you ain't gonna laugh again and uh they kicked me out of the block some other kids snitched on me but i went back to the but she planted a little bit of a seed because when i got out i dabbled and i didn't like where it was going and i kept thinking allergic reaction allergic i don't want that did you get serious withdrawals when you first went in there oh yeah i was going to say because you were doing yeah the but the county's kind of the best place for me like i did i choked a nurse one time and took his vicodin because i

knew the guy from the streets like collier county was you know i knew people so you knew the nurse from the streets yeah he was a dude who ate viking and i and so i you know choked him one time and got something he was a nurse and he was abusing viking yeah yeah he had a prescription well he had a prescription but yeah he always had a bottle of them and uh yeah yeah so i knew that and i prison nurse too yeah prison jail yeah yeah so i figured out little ways to get things but the habits i had grew i was like i can't sustain this i just gotta you know i would lay down and get sick but but it goes quick when you convince your mind that you're not doing this yeah yeah after that point it's just physical and i did that so many times that i learned to just you know override

that the worst was coming off methadone it was like 60 days of vomiting i went to the hospital three times with seizures from the xanax and yeah from the county to the hospital back on christmas and christmas eve and on new year's and new year's eve i was in the hospital or in the ambulance on the way to the hospital from the jail. And I'm hearing all the radios, Happy New Year. I'm thinking, man, I'm so lifeless. You know, I don't even care about. Oh, so they were taking you back and forth while you were in there.

Yeah. That was the last bid. Yeah. Then when they sent me to death row, I was kicking all the way up. We're going to get there. Yeah. Let's stay on track with this. So we get to this rehab.

Yeah. You come out, you go to rehab right and uh so it was a one step two step three step program they were pretty much breaking in their recovery and um they sent me to this fellowship that said if you know pretty much if i don't drink, I'll be fine. And drinking was never my problem, nor was the drugs. It was the obsession that I couldn't get out of, the fixed thoughts, the endless loops in my head of I got to get this done, and I don't care what happens. The drugs and alcohol, whatever it was at the time, I got to get this amount of money. I got to fix this problem.

All the people that would bring up things I don't like I gotta make sure they don't do that there's a lot of work so they were you're saying that the drugs and or alcohol whatever it was masking the problem and you wanted you're saying I misunderstood you at first I thought you were saying like oh no that wasn't a problem but you're saying that was just a problem that was a problem you created on top of the real problem. Right. It was a solution to me at a time because it gave me instant relief from the pressure of the brain of all these things I thought I had to do. But yeah, it was definitely a big problem. It was the first thing I had to do to get to the solution was stop putting it in me. But at this rehab, I was convinced that i was cured as soon as i was physically cured

so intellectually i read all these books since i was a kid i've been reading the bible trying to fix my family so i knew all about principles and i mean read the bible as a kid oh yeah i read it like three times by the time i don't know how many yeah about three to five times from time i was eight till um till i was about i don't know how old but in prison too i read i read a bunch of religions but really yeah what i mean like it's kind of surprising to me given like your whole life story before and even going to prison and all that like you always had to look out for yourself but you did you have like a relationship with like god um no i was just i was trying to i was trying to but not for me i was doing it for to fix you know my family would have these problems like even a funeral i went to when i was a kid

i remember my grandfather passed very close to him very sad but people were like tearing themselves apart and i was like i must not care as much as these people and i started misinterpreting and making valid how i felt you know because uh i don't know if they were acting or they just rather their minds but i couldn't tell but i really fell out of place because i felt sad i was gonna to miss him. But I thought it was, you know, it was just time. You know what I mean? Like, I kind of looked at it like when, you know, like nothing was permanent. We were going to meet up again.

It was just his time. And I felt, you know, fine until people wouldn't come out of their rooms. People weren't eating. They were acting, you know, really strange to me. And I kind of felt like a like I wasn't part of the human race for a minute there or at that time I didn't have that kind of introspect but but I knew I felt alien to them and the way there and I felt a little guilty I was like man I don't you know I don't feel

like hurting my side I don't think he'd want me to hurt myself mmm you know and I was like trying to honor the guy and he'd want me to hurt myself you know and i was like trying to honor the guy and he was a good guy i was like really close to him um but yeah later on i found out my mom resented him for leaving my grandmother get with another woman that wasn't very nice i didn't realize that people act in accordance to their guilt and shame and at that time I had nothing but good connections with the guy so when he left there was just sadness there wasn't no I should have called them more or not because I wanted to spend every moment with him got it yeah so you sir you turned to meaning like in the Bible because you saw these other people and how they were acting

and you wanted to be able to act like that but you couldn't and so you're like well i must be able to get answers in this thing well i wanted them to not feel so um destructive to themselves over things so i thought this god thing was a good idea but my mom and my two sisters were jehovah's witnesses at the time they were a little over the top and well were they doing the whole knocking on the door thing? No, they weren't doing that. No, they would just tell you how wrong you are and how they're right. I got you. Yeah, and they wouldn't let me have any play guns,

so I got a real obsession with guns. I liked guns because they would always take my toy guns. You know what I mean? So you were trying to buy real ones. Yeah, I got real ones. I know we have to cap them if they try to take them. No, I'm just kidding. But so, yeah, so we get, I had those little events where I just started, you know, alienating myself.

And then at the same time, I'm reading these books to try to give them, like, make some sense of what, you know, you're're doing this it doesn't make any sense you're suffering from it stop it you know what i mean and they couldn't do that and i was very willful and prideful when i was a little kid if i didn't want to do something like i didn't smoke cigarettes i didn't uh i thought people that did drugs were you know scumbags weak yeah yeah weak yeah and i it wasn't until i got to naples florida where everybody's all glamorous nobody's losing teeth or sleeping in a bush that i said ah drugs might not be that bad yeah these people own houses they're doing good and but where i was from they come crawl out of the bush i had a box cutter put to my throat when i was a little you know taking my bike you know

stuff like that my dad would go get it back but you know somebody puts a blade to your throat you're just like all right take it you know you get used to yeah this kind of thing yeah so i that's what i connected the drugs and drug users and all that and later on when i started robbing drug dealers i didn't have any mercy you know yeah now that's an interesting let's jump to that for a second because you know one of the reasons we mentioned like omar little earlier one of the reasons people loved that character not just because he was like this complex guy and had just a really really interesting character play one of the best ever in tv but he was a robin hood you know he he would he's like i robs drug dealers he'd run around and he'd take money from

drug dealers and he would always have enough to be able to spend for his own life but he lived in the hood too and it was he looked at it like he was also doing public service because these people are just giving everyone their fix right and so you came at it from the end of like you were a drug user too right so you also knew at least probably by that point the downsides of what this can do to people yeah and so there's a part of you that obviously has like a care in that like okay a yeah i'm gonna find myself here and some of my habit which you know negative in that respect because that's robin and all that but but b maybe there will be people who

won't end up like me because they can't get it there isn't a guy right here right right yeah and i and a lot of uh i scared people into recovery yeah a lot of times that happened too and i was like yeah i'm just sending people back into recovery you know drugs take you out i send you right back you know because i'm doing all the drugs but uh yeah so it was a persona i guess that i took on that was yeah it gave me some sense of purpose you know and i really remember saying one time i don't know if i can get in trouble for this but i whatever I was on, this house was being watched by a certain drug cops, you know, drug cops. DEA? Yeah.

So anyway, I go in on New Year's Eve, and I knew there was a bunch of stuff there, and a friend of mine told me all the logistics. So I go in there, and I just pick a guy up, throw him through a table, rob everything there. And I get caught on camera. And this kid tries to snitch on me, and he tells my friend, the buddy that was on Escape from Raleway, well, we've been running together for a long time. He didn't do robberies because he had a bad memory, and he wanted somebody coming up. And I had a really good memory at the time, and I said, yeah, I don't care if they remember or not.

You know what I mean? But him, he didn if they remember or not. You know what I mean? But him, he didn't want to get stole. You know what I mean? He didn't want to get what? Like, stole on, like, caught unaware by somebody. He forgot he robbed. Oh, right. They come up to him and start stabbing him.

I understand now. Yeah. He wasn't afraid of it. He just didn't like that, somebody being out there. You just didn't give a shit. I didn't give a shit. Yeah. Yeah.

There was a guy, I forgot the story I told him and he was in front of my boy's house and he starts saying, you know, and the, and his girlfriend's, you know, boosting him up. He's like,

you did this, you did that. I said, man, I can't remember the story. So whack, whack him in the ear. And I said,

shut up and leave. And my boy goes, what was that for? I said, I couldn't remember the lie. I told him. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so his girl and I was that for i said i couldn't remember to lie i told him yeah yeah and uh and so his girl and i was like shut her up too and um yeah i just i remember like ringing his ear i didn't want to hit him because i didn't feel right i already robbed

him apparently i couldn't remember i was you know everybody was a mark or or the next thing you know so i said yeah i probably did it but whatever you know and um so so rehab didn't work you were back out and you were robbing people because your daughter was born and you're like well i'm still on drugs but at least i'll rob drug dealers right well the short time i i left rehab they graduated me early and said they couldn't teach me anything again right over my head i was like oh i knew i knew this well i'm good at this yeah yeah i'm good at this i could teach this stuff they're like yeah you can teach it but you can't live it you know they didn't tell me that part they were they were nice about it they graduated me early the girl who i

was messing with in the program she left right after that came with me and uh and i told her i said look the nicest i ever been has been in that little 20 days I was there or 15 days. That's not a long time. No, but I was like really buying into it. The first week I was there, it was a little rough because they were doing this circle thing where people share their deepest stuff. I was like, that's insane. Fuck that shit. Yeah, yeah.

So this one dude who confessed to blowing you know, blowing a guy for crack, I was like, damn, this same guy said he messed with my boy's brother, you know, thoroughbred from Jersey. He said he punked him. And so I didn't know about anonymity or keeping people. I called him on the phone. I said, hey, there's a guy in this program that just almost too close said he sucked dick for for crack and then he and then he said he punked you so the guy comes to i said we're

going to this meeting tonight so we go to this meeting he just starts beating him in the meeting he shows up there he's like oh you punked me huh and it was oh no later on like years later i was like oh that was a bad thing to do. But at the time, I was like, yeah, I didn't know. He was talking. I was like, he ain't here. Why are you talking about him? You know what I mean?

And I know this guy. He's not a big guy, but he don't back down from nothing. And he tried to hit me with a bat one time. I had to snatch it out of him. Yeah, I put him under my tire. No, he was a nice guy yeah i put him under my tire no he was a nice guy you put him under your job yeah i was like stay there while i run this car and he wouldn't stay there but uh he was annoying but he was so funny he used to bite my arm all the time even after the whole tire incident yeah he's still cool oh yeah yeah it's

all in love and war he's oh yeah you gotta love him he was just he'd be in the middle of the hood telling racist jokes to the and having people laugh at their own. Yeah. Some people. It's just hilarious. Yeah. There's some things that you'd hear someone say if you've ever been around someone like that. And you're like, how are you not getting shot for that?

Yeah, I used to say that. But then everyone's like, oh, it is God. We love him. Yeah. What? Nobody takes him that seriously. Do you hear what he just said to you? Yeah.

Yeah. And he's doing it all for the next thing he brought me one time he brought me a fat gold chain for like a rock he's like all i wanted a rock a needle in a bag and i'm straight i was like you sure you know yeah but i gave him a lot more no but that's what he loved he died doing that he had leukemia he was in the hospital mainlining it through his uh jesus christ yeah i beat a guy up for that too in the hospital yeah i was like why are you bringing i'm bringing the guy soup i'm clean at the time you know and uh i'm bringing him soup and trying to look out for him and this

guy's bringing cocaine in the middle of the hospital i'm like i had a weird moral system in my head i guess you did you had a very warped all over the place yeah system like there are things that were so obvious that you thought oh nothing everyone else would be like why the fuck are you doing that yeah and there's a lot of things where it's like oh wow he took a stand on that you know what i mean like yeah out of nowhere too bizarre yeah i would find things that were just i couldn't live with it but you were coasting this whole time you never really i mean that's what you've been talking about the whole time. You were never, you never thought about this. Yeah.

Never experiencing, yeah. It sounds like you never thought about it even when you were like reading the Bible and stuff. It was just kind of like you were reading it. No, I was finding the answers for other people. Yeah, I didn't realize at the time. If I would have looked at that stuff as this is to keep you at peace, like myself, it would have worked. But because I never integrated it, I just intellectually understood it, told people if you do this, apparently this will happen.

And, you know, it seemed sound in theory that if you're forgiving, you don't run around with this resentment, you don't feel so bad. And I would try to explain this stuff and i would get discounted you know and because i didn't have any experience with it when i was young and uh but these ideas made sense to me that you what does that do replaying something in your head that makes you miserable over and over again why why if you got a choice of a billion thoughts why are you holding on to this you mean and you try to say that and you look like a a little punk to people that have been alive for you know years and years and they got stuff or whatever so i was frustrated i was like ah this don't work god doesn't work you know know what I mean? And I get foxhole prayers sometimes, but no real connection to that for years.

And the life I ran seemed to go uncontrollably. It just got worse and worse and worse. Like I would keep reacting, reacting. I had no time to process. I would just react. And I get stopped periodically. Like had no time to process. Right. Just react. And, um, you know, I,

I get stopped periodically. Like prison was breaks for me. After that, I would get small bids, work them down, go take a break for a couple of years. People don't, uh,

they're not so frustrated with you. You're not so frustrated. Controlled environment. Controlled environment. Can't go certain places. Yeah. It got, it kept me out of trouble.

And I liked, um, I had a bigger obsession of not going to sleep at night with a feeling of being chumped. So I stayed spiritually fit, not spiritually fit, physically fit, mentally strong, you know what I mean, and always ready to wreck something. And that was a bigger obsession than using. So I wouldn't use for years at a time. Really? So you could just kind of.

Yeah, well, like I said earlier, I wasn't a drug addict. using so i wouldn't use for years at a time really so you could just kind of yeah it was well like i said earlier i'm i wasn't a drug addict i was at a i was addicted to altered realities i was addicted to living in my head perceiving things the way i want to not feeling things i don't want to now when you were doing the hardest stuff though obviously you still had scientific withdrawals oh yeah no physical withdrawals yeah but those you know like i said the worst one was the methadone and that lasted 60 days and a lot of that was caused by like a bid in jail or something like that so it might be involuntary to get off it but then you'd just be off it yeah once i'm off of it i didn't i had bigger bigger fish to fry

that's interesting so the thought you don't have a natural a lot of people have a very natural like addictive gene in anything yeah right just you know i i decide that i like pepsi oh fuck it i'm gonna have more pepsi gallons of it yeah it seems like you were more and you keep on talking about but you were more on the psychological side like you were addicted to feeling a certain way about the world and if you couldn't feel that way if you couldn't like coast through then you wanted to do drugs yeah but this way when you weren't so focused on i'm trying to make sense here but when you weren't so focused on that end of it you can kind of just cut the drugs at least for a time being because it was like that wasn't what it was never there for the

oh i feel this way on heroin oh i feel that way on coke it was more so like oh i get rid of this other thing on that and if you didn't feel like you had to get rid of it okay yeah well what i discovered later on was when i was in the thick of trafficking or doing stuff i i stumbled upon living principles like i was living safety i was living security i was like if i had a bunch of ammo you know i mean i felt safe uh i had a purpose i was bringing a purpose i was there was all these little things that i thought these these things i thought up were the things making me feel this way but it was actually these these fundamental things that I didn't have growing up the

safety security significance and I found that these things that I stumbled upon were the real thing I was trying to get through my own means like like I had no way to do it and I wouldn't let nobody help me because i didn't know how to let people in but i'm gonna get it you just hit something really big right there and this is some i don't know the name for it but we probably look it up it's some sort of psychological principle but when you look at people's lives for better or worse whatever the actions that they take as an adult are to fill some sort of priority that they wanted to have as a kid. And it can be good. It can be bad. It can be, but I think usually it's probably some form of both. But like you just said,

you wanted safety, security, and what was the other thing? Significance. Significance. Okay. And these are things you didn't have as a kid because, you know, we already went through your childhood and like some of the things they're moving around your parents divorcing your dad went through all that stuff almost died you know and then you were you were around people who i would characterize as on the more of the dangerous type of side of society so you didn't know peace you didn't know like oh regular middle class living you know what i mean right but you wanted it and so all the things you did wrong even older was in a weird way trying to

get that yes exactly and when it when it seemed like i was getting it like uh times i had my kid was working uh was valid at work where were you working i was working for a concrete company called uh baker concrete in miami we built uh we poured all the concrete for dolphin mall oh wow yeah so i was on a prison work release crew i kept the job when i got out i got my daughter back i got her mother who you know wanted to party sometimes i couldn't do it i said you know go do what you got to do i I can't do that. I just want to be a dad and work. One day I come home, they had dipped.

She had it enough or I wouldn't go out and drink with her or nothing, and I just knew I couldn't. After I held her, I knew I couldn't drink or do anything and change the way I needed to change. But at some point you did go back to drugs. Oh, right after they left. Right after they left. Now it makes sense.

Yeah, I didn't care about the job no more. I went right into Wynwood, which is, you know. Yeah? Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And that happened a few times. I built my life back up to the point where I was ready to be the dad

or ready to be you know upstanding member of society and then my my reason for doing it was this or that it wasn't just for the sake of doing right you know and it never never lasted as soon as the picture fell apart i fell apart yeah because i was like man this is just hopeless you know i just keep uh i keep building up but i didn't have any meaning beyond another person i cared about i didn't i couldn't uh my worth was so low i didn't see the point in doing anything uh if i didn't have a goal i was working towards well when you were eight years old looking to buy a gun you were doing it because you needed to be the man of the house in your mind.

So you didn't have protection, but you wanted to give protection. And so then when you're older, even down to like drug dealers who are working for you, like a negative environment, that kind of thing. Well, I need to protect them a little bit. Don't go this drop because I think it's a setup. Okay, still want to go? I'll go with you just to watch you. You know what I mean? And then you get the ultimate one.

You have a kid and you're like, well, my life my life just changed we're gonna cut all this other shit like i'm gonna protect her right and then she's not there right and now it's like just fall apart yeah yeah because somehow i always thought i'll be all right i can do whatever but every once in a while i'll stumble upon somebody i cared about and they can't do whatever, you know what I mean? And some reason I thought they were different in that sense. Like I can handle all kinds of, you know, pain and, but you can't.

And that was a weird, uh, non-existent virtue. I, I plucked out of somewhere. And, um, because I have been a little close.

Yeah. I have been there to the point where I was in a box for 13 months in isolation. There was nothing you could do to me. In fact, leaving me alone for 13 months is fine. It's when I'm having to deal with different people's disappointment in me or anything like that. Those are the things that hurt. So I'm in prison. I don't care what you know i have no i had no uh your opinion doesn't matter so your your daughter

left though and then you didn't have her and so now you turn back to drugs yeah now you're robbing drug dealers and stuff what what else went on well a weird thing happened i went on another running thing and uh it was getting, it was getting worse. It was getting worse to the point where, uh, the drugs weren't getting me no relief. I didn't know what I was working towards. And, uh, and I'm going a hundred miles an hour and not really, you know, going anywhere. So I kept getting stopped. I kept getting knocked off and going back and forth and trying again and trying again. It wasn't until this buddy of mine came down to get me, and I was actually looking for more bullets. That was the thing I wanted him to grab and bring down for me.

He brought me down and tricked me into going on this detox in Fort Myers. That's where I met that one guy that started making sense of some stuff oh we were talking about way at the beginning i think right yeah yeah we yeah we talked about it a little bit uh that guy learned how to he knew how to separate what i did from who i am yeah even when i would write stuff down it was all true and it all happened but he said i don't see that in you you know and i did a lot of stupid things when i was with him like one time his wife kept bothering me about he wasn't she wasn't bothering me she was nagging him about my food about the food bill oh because you i got my appetite back yeah you live with

them after the detox for six months yeah this guy's taking me to five meetings a day. I'm sleeping on this futon, which is like five feet long. I'd wake up with lines going through my leg, my circulation cut off. I had a line right here. I can't see you sleeping on my queen bed. Six months I stayed on that thing. That's how interesting this guy was. Six months I stayed on that thing.

After the detox. Yeah, I had a king bed that i could have went back to in naples it was a house that i kind of took over and made the guy move out but uh i mean you took over and made the guy move yeah it was this nice neighborhood i used to you know and then one day he just annoyed me and it was his house but he said dude you gotta go yeah i was like you gotta go man i can't he's like my. I said, just don't argue with me. Just leave. And he laughed.

And I even said to him, I was like, yeah, your girl can stay, but you got to go. I was like, yeah. That was one of the most dickish moves. He was a nice kid, too. He just left. Yeah, he just left. Never came back. Yeah, well, he complained about it to a few people. And I was like, what?

I'm at the house. Yeah, and I called him. I said, dude, you complaining about this? about this no no i didn't say nothing i was like you know you're doing me because i used to have this weird thing where i had to make the person i was offending okay with it like if you were going to be around i was going to see you i don't want my conscience feeling all bad so get happy about the way i'm taking advantage means i care about you yeah yeah not really i just cared about my conscience driving me crazy yeah later on i felt like such a jerk i did that so many times i was like you're not really mad right you know and i would say it over and over again if i liked the person if i didn't it was easy but if i liked the person and i knew i was

being a dick i had to get them okay with it you know i had to get them okay with it. You had to get them okay with it. Yeah, it was a weird thing. I couldn't go to sleep. My conscience would bother me. And it's such a, even if I got them to say it, that was good enough for me, but that didn't change nothing. It's a participation trophy. Yeah.

You needed to feel like you had something to point to. Well, there's the evidence. They're cool. They're cool with it. They said it. Why would you say it if you're not cool with it yeah well yeah there was weird things going on i truly believe we're you know we got this big power inside of us and um it can go either way but the the right way to do it is you know lovingly and and respectfully and i you know abused that for a while you know yeah yeah but you when you got out of this whole thing and you were living with that couple

for six months right what what you left so one night i got tired of hearing her you know nag about it's about three months yeah well it took about two months for me to start eating once i started eating people realized i'd rather yeah i'd rather you know clothing than feed you but um so i i go into this hood in fort myers knock this guy out i leave the drugs because i'm trying to do right and i take the money and i bring it back and i give it to her don't worry about where it came from well she didn't care she just wanted the money she was a funny lady and a sweetheart of a lady but her husband finds out about it and he starts yelling at me he's like where's your worth i was like what are you talking about and uh and he's like you're not gonna tell me i was like

i don't know what you're talking about you know what i mean i said what are you talking about he's like did you uh do that you know he didn't really know what I did. He goes, where did you get a bag of money? I found it. Yeah, yeah, and that's what I started out with. And I was like, nah, I like this guy. I said, yeah, I went, you know, this guy was not doing the right thing. I'm like a little kid. I feel like he's hating me right now because that was another thing.

I interpreted discipline as you hate me. Anytime somebody tried to discipline me, I thought they hated me. And I don't know where I got that from, but it was just avoid, avoid that person. Don't go around them or get rid of them, whatever. And so he started doing this thing where he was like, does it make any sense that you can't hear any nagging, but you'll face so many years in prison if a cop's seen you, you know, knocking this guy out and taking his money? And I was like, yeah, he's a bad guy.

You know what I mean? And I would just brush it off. And another time, this guy was giving me, like, pizza all the time. So I was like, ah, that's pretty nice. I was walking around talking to people. I was starting to be nice. And so the guy was just being nice giving me a pizza i started like showing up with friends give me three pizzas and i and then one day he refused

me and i was like oh no problem and i walked out and i thought i was being you know recovery like i thought i was doing the right thing i walk out to get in the car with this sponsor at the time he was my sponsor and he goes where's your worth i was like yeah you're right and i go back in and i'm i'm punching the guy now oh shit yeah i got pit and he comes in get out here dickhead and he calls me dickhead and uh and i was like that's not what i meant yeah yeah i was like what do you mean i'm getting my worth he's like ah i was so confused what he was giving me um and trying to explain things to me one time he this guy was yelling at him yelling at him and i heard it and i'm on fort myers beach and he's like really in his face and i like this guy so like i'm gonna hurt this other dude so i come running back because

he was parking the car and the guy was yelling at him for something stupid so i come running around the car and he's like whoa whoa whoa and i was like no no no no whoa whoa and i go to beating him and uh he yanks me by my hoodie pulls me back i was like what are you doing let me go yeah i said and the guy's like he goes you did what you were supposed to do you you know what i mean you stunned them from being uh you know a dick to him you know right he was going overboard and you know yeah yeah that's what he was saying and because he took me in a few places to get people out of dope poles girls that couldn't get out or they would call him and i would go you know help him with these things and he would never let me get too violent you know what i mean i was like dude this is

something i could do and you don't think that's the thing you're not thinking of it like that yeah i'm playing my game. I got to take care of this. Yeah, I got to look out for him. It's not like I'm going to go beat the shit out of this guy. You're going to watch his nose bleed and everything and his face. It wasn't like that. It was more like, wait, that guy is yelling at that guy.

That guy is a good guy he's yelling at. So let's just, yeah, he's not going to do that again. No, I'm not going to let him do that. And that was a big thing he taught me was everybody has the same worth. Everybody, even that guy that's yelling, he has the same worth. And even though his actions are calling for a bad time for him, he still has the same worth as any other human being. And that was a weird concept i mean i was like well not everybody has the same way that's like what about this person that and i had an argument about all of it but later on i realized he was 100 correct you know what i mean that people's statuses go up and down you know money goes up and down but your worth as a human being in your welfare there was a guy a long time ago that

famous guy I can't remember but he said you could judge a country or a place by how it treats its prisoners because I thought about that for a minute I was like you know prison is kind of weird you're not doing too well here yeah yeah well they're doing a lot better in some countries you know yeah that's fair that's yeah yeah that's fair they but you're right though but lock it they lock it like florida they got like 45 you know privately owned prisons people making money off yeah that's that's a whole nother thing but how they treat them though i used to think like when somebody's cutting themselves or throwing you know feces at the cop or something they deserve to you know at that one time i was like yeah it's kind of disgusting you know like i used to think some people deserve death just

because they were out of um you know out of their mind or whatever i'm like who's gonna put up with that like nobody puts up with that when I act like that. And I would get this. But after that guy, I started realizing that their worth is the same. Their worth and their welfare is the same. And I get the idea where people start, you know, trying to make it a perfect world, which is impossible, you know, to make everything, oh, if everybody would just act this way.

Well, no, embracing all the diversity is the first, you know, first part of that. Then I learned how to be at peace during anything. You know, that's what this guy taught me. And it took years and years before it started making sense to me. There's kind of a difference, though, right, in certain things. Like like not to say that the concept's not right i'm just trying to understand like when you if you were to see this was definitely something i'm sure that would have pissed you off based on your actions like with principles but if you were to see someone

let's say robbing a little old lady and beating the shit out of her right you're gonna go you're gonna go hurt that dude and you should in that case you know get them off or that whole thing but like in your mind you're not thinking like their worth right there is not the same their their worth is is the same their their actions are calling for a world like where that's what happens to them like they're see that's the thing yeah you're you're creating your world all day long with your decisions and so if you're a if you're a guy goes around beats up old people or any of that you're gonna be an old person that gets beat up you kind of create a world like that where everybody's so cold and you're already in your own personal hell. Now, definitely, somebody would definitely deal with that.

And I don't think they'd be wrong if it wasn't premeditated. Like if it was happening around me, I would beat that guy. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, and then I would get him in a mental institution now, whereas before, I might try to, you know you know, never let this guy do this again. Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale, expertise, and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at Visa.ca slash fintech now okay now it makes you're looking at people as everyone like let's look at

it from the negative end like like bad people they're doing it out of some sort of injury they're fucked up and we can treat them as fucked up but let's wherever we got to take them and that may obviously for things include prison and stuff like that, where it's supposed to be like correcting people. Right. I'm not so sure about that. But, you know, like we got to get them there rather than just say off with his head right now. Right. There's at least some form of empathy for everyone.

Because you create a world of murderers when you murder that guy. Yeah. That's the world you're creating now. It might take a while but it's it's like okay well he did jaywalk let's murder him you know and that's wow that's interesting yeah you ever see and i don't know this topic nearly well enough to speak on it as like a historian but you ever look at like the french revolution at all right yeah so those people who started that the revolution was based in like class warfare you know they wanted to upend the monarchistic whatever system because all the people were

being treated badly and left to be poor and all that right and so then they take power and when they do they got to kill the people who caused everything because they got to be out of the way and then what they start doing they start turning it on themselves and on all the people they yeah it becomes their nature they overcorrected and now they they're a victim of the same thing they were a victim of fuck yeah yeah so that's where it's tricky though because this guy beats this woman on emotion you know i mean i would hurt yeah yeah beyond yes you know anything and but but logically if I did that I would carry that this is where I seen it happen I was on death row at the time as a medical orderly there was a guy dead on the ground he had been dead for about 30 40 hours and

the EMT has to come in and declare him dead. Then, uh, I get to take them down and bring them and wait for the coroner. I was standing here. These guys, these cops knew the, the guard, the corrections officers, they knew he was dead. The EMTs come in, he's, they start putting stickers on. I'm trying to act like they're trying to revive them. They have been making jokes before that. I had seen, I had empathy for the first time in my life.

Usually I'd be like, you know, shittier, and I would go at them too. The inmates were all screaming stuff, throwing stuff. It was a very volatile thing, like a panoramic view of just how, you know, like sick this place is. And so I see these EMTs come in to declare him dead, and they're terrified because they think these are hardened criminals. But I could feel their fear, and I could feel their fear. Both of them. Yeah, all of them. Even the guards, they go home to their families,

and they just treated just uh treated a human life now i don't know that guy's background but he was the same age at me at the time i was 33 and i'm looking and he's dead and he looks horrible and there's nobody there and his nose is smashed over here and it's just decrepit picture of a really white pasty dude who got beat to death in his cell and left you know and pretty heartless and then they're acting like they're resuscitating them and normally i would get really violent towards the guards about right there i'd be like you pieces they were joking around joking around with somebody you know and i don't know the guy's background maybe they thought but i but i had

empathy this time i started uh it was like uh I recognized their fear of not want to look soft getting vindicate all we're doing a job here guys we you know this guy's dead he deserves it there you know they got like camaraderie but these are people that are gonna go home to like families and and expose that to them and they're gonna create a world where it becomes like that. Real sick and cold. And countless things like this. But I had this panoramic, empathetic view of everybody involved. And I could sense all their fears.

And I'm like, these poor people don't even, you know, they just signed up for an EMT job. They're coming and getting exposed to this. They're getting conditioned to be okay with human mangled you know mangled human people and stuff so i'm sitting with the corpse later that night now i don't talk to nobody about what i really feel on the inside at this point i'm just now getting close to this this guy he he kind of broke through all that he could see through it and he tricked me into doing different things. This is the guy I'm trying to make sure I follow.

That sponsor. Yeah, that guy that my boy introduced me to. Because now he's writing you in prison. Yeah, he's writing me his law letters, telling me what to read and look into. And I'm having this weird experience. Like, actually kind of, like, one of the better experiences of my life. Just making sure. I got to remember.

Is this the same guy who you were on as Futon? Yeah. Okay. So same dude. I went back out. I got my daughter back. Same thing happened again. And she took off.

The mom took off with her. You left the house, though. You left the place. Oh, yeah. I got my own apartment. Yeah. From there, I did pretty good for a little while. was uh that was something that you know i felt like i was cured again you know like i was cured of this uh obsession thing i had a way to deal with it without using drugs

what i didn't know is i had a fixed idea that was more important than the drugs so i didn't use the drugs my idea was be a father work hard all this stuff that came with being a good father so when you have an idea bigger than your your circumstances you could you could live above them you can get power that you didn't have before it's like a you know motivation or drive now I didn't know that that's what I was doing at the time, but I documented a lot of stuff with my history because I was wondering, like, how do I do so good and not go down so bad? And it was over this coming up with a fixed idea

that was not going to be anything I thought and having expectations of what it was before I got there. All right. So this is clearly a major watershed moment for you, but I want to go back because this is your last, this was during your last bid then in prison, this is years ago now, but I want to go back to right before that, because we had kind of skipped in the middle, just of like your story timeline. You had been on that guy's futon you ended up leaving after the whole money thing with the food and all that right you said you got your daughter back correct right so she was in your life and how old was she at that time at that time she was about six wait what was that 2005 wait yeah 2005 2006 so she was about seven eight okay so you had her back and then she was

taken from you yep and that how much longer later was that when she was taken like how long was she in your life i had her for a few months and then you know one day i came home from work i used to take her to the gulf and throw around in the g. And, you know, I was working all the time. I had two apartments, one for her mother and one for myself because her mother still was, you know, doing stuff at the time. And I couldn't afford that. And plus I wanted to be a father. So, you know, I was just doing everything I could. I thought I was doing everything right.

But one day I came home and they were gone. So I just, you know, my friend who brought me into doing good decided to go and start trafficking again. He thought he can do it because he was so clean and everything else. It didn't make any sense to me at the time. I didn't know what to tell him. I just said, I don't think that's a good idea but then when my daughter left i went right back to hanging with him and and we went um on another you know maybe a couple years before maybe a year or two yeah about no not even maybe about uh let me see what year that was not too long did I go off the deep end and then it was all blur

you know I remember trying to detox him again he couldn't get clean again I couldn't get clean again and you were selling and I was yeah well at that time I didn't like I didn't like drug dealers and I thought I'm not selling drugs because i knew i knew what it was doing to people from being in recovery so i went to robin you know just robbing drug dealers and doing all the drugs yeah and then my my father at the time told me he's like hey if you want to get off that you know heroin uh i know people from back when he was in the service, he said, they do this methadone, and we'll go to the doctor and get you the methadone. You'll be fine. Oh, shit.

So that's how that happened. Yeah. So me and him were, you know, going to these doctors, and the doctors were just handing out. At that time, there was the big, you know, whatever. And I had enough messed up with me, and he had enough messed up with him where we were each getting bottles of 300 440 milligram uh methadone wafers a month and i'm eating all like i'm eating like 20 a day to start out you know and then i'm doing you know coke and xanax i'm just trying to kill this hurt inside of me i didn't know at the time i just there wasn't enough and i'm doing you know crazier than i ever been and uh so i i end up getting uh i end up getting caught uh you know just a simple

possession i had um i was getting pulled over i threw a couple guns out the window luckily they didn't see it you know and then uh you know by the time they caught me, there was something in the back. I didn't, you know, it was like one pill in my sock and the judge was trying to give me like life in prison as a career criminal. For just possession. Yeah, for simple possession. And, uh, and I told the judge I was, uh, you know, I, I stayed out on bomb for a while. And right before I turned myself in to go to that court date, I knew I was going to take a plea if they would give me one. So that night before, I'm watching this like Hallmark commercial of a guy and his daughter. And I'm like, I should be feeling something.

I can't feel anything. I got nothing. Were you still using? Yeah. Well, I was on all that methadone. Yeah, I was using. I wasn't getting high anymore, but I was using still. Just physically addicted.

And so the night before I turned myself in, I got this like, I'm like the walking dead. You know, I was like, I'm going to court tomorrow. I'm eating all this methadone. Nothing's, you know, I'm shooting coke. Nothing's, I'm not getting, you know, nothing. I'm not getting any feelings. So I go into court the next day i'm kind of defeated anyway and i'm like i was like i told my lawyer i said tell him i'll take two years right now if

he wants to give it to me for one pill i had a script for it was out of the bottle it was in my sock now granted i had you know had a couple guns i got away with stuff so i was like you know what i'll take two years and uh and and the judge is like why am i not giving him life right now what is it how was he getting the life uh well they got a thing down there called career criminal and i already i did three bids and uh they were just tired of me they deemed me incorrigible like i said they said that right then yeah this this sentence he was like this guy you know he's incorrigible he you know and the doc too they deemed me incorrigible that's why they sent me to the only prison in

florida not a correctional facility so for people who don't understand incorrigible is quite literally it means yeah not correctable yeah not correctable and so is that also like a physical stature thing because you're also like a huge guy and they're like oh he's got an aggressive history so he'll beat the shit out of anyone or maybe kill somebody yeah they they had all that all the ingredients of why i should never be in society and statistically i should have never been out more than a week according to them you know so so you know at this point i'm you know 31 felonies deep you know they're pretty much done with me. And they're trying to. So I told the judge, I said, look, I'll take two years right now. Or I said, oh, we can go to trial and I'll beat this and I'll just wreak havoc.

You know what I mean? You said that. Yeah. I said, I'm not giving you an ultimatum. I said, that's exactly what's going to happen if I don't go lay down for a while. Because you were addicted. Yeah, I was addicted to this methadone. He goes, so you're high right now?

And I said, no, I ain't been high in a long time. I said, I'm using. But do I look high to you? And I said, I'm talking to you. I said, I'm not high. I'm just done. I want to go lay down. What did he say?

The judge, he turned a little red. We called him heartless heart. But he's like, two years. And he yells he yells you know and he's all frustrated gives me two years i go to jail that day and i start kicking and uh it's right around uh december 6th of 2006 and um so i i end up in the hospital no it was december 16th or something like that right before christmas i end up in the hospital. They took me to the hospital on Christmas Eve, was there through Christmas, and then New Year's Eve, there through New Year's.

This is what you were talking about going back and forth earlier. Yeah, because I guess my kidneys, and I was having seizures for the first time, and Xanax or some, I don't know what it was, a combination of things. But so anyway, they end up shipping me right out to prison in Miami and then to Rayford up in, you know, up in North Florida. And what's the difference? You said this is the only state prison?

State prison, yeah. This is where they send people that correction is not deemed necessary in their case they they're just they're not going to be corrected and it's not here's what i'm confused about though right they don't just send because you went there you had a two-year sentence you didn't have a life sentence or something at a two-year sentence well at that time they had allowed for workers to go there so i had a small enough charge but almost horrendous enough record to uh justify putting me there you know what i mean got it and they made me a medical orderly where i you know if guys tried to kill themselves or i would take them and go get them i didn't mess with the people being executed they have nothing to do with them but they made prisoners maybe i should know this but they made

they gave you like that kind of responsibility yeah they don't want to do it yeah nobody wants to pick up a body or I picked up a guy one time broke his neck trying to hang himself he started blowing up I didn't want to deal with him dead bodies are fine but when they're almost dead or looking at you like you could save them and you're wheeling them down the mile there it's it's not a good good look yeah yeah the first thing they did was cut his throat and stick things down his throat i was like man this is above my pay grade you know and uh damn yeah so you know i've seen a lot of crazy things like that and i was just um

i was reflecting on that you know while i was in there i was kind of like still not living but observing you know what i mean and then i was kind of like still not living but observing you know what i mean and then i started observing without judgment and this is where that moment came in yeah yeah one of those epiphanies was that empathy right the second thing was there was certain guys there that were waiting to be executed knew they were going to die and they had this piece about them that was beyond anything i'd ever seen yeah it was almost like an aura. I was like, man, how are these people so peaceful? Everybody says they're scared of dying, not scared of dying.

But I know a lot of guys that said that. And when it gets to that point, they're terrified. Yeah. But there's a lot of tough guys out there that act like they're not scared. And then you find out they're really terrified. I think it's also the scheduling of it. Yeah, like knowing the exact date yeah and some of these guys been there waiting and they knew it was time but the interesting thing was i because of the guy writing me the letters i was

i was observing i was like this is kind of weird you know what i mean like these guys got this piece about what's going on with them and because their predicament, they didn't really talk to guys like me that were going down, you know, going back out in two years or whatever. So somehow I've always, psychopaths, have always opened up to me, I guess. So they just start, you know, we start, you know, and plus I can hand stuff from cell to cell. I said, no drugs, you know, if you need this or that, I got you. But don't put no drugs in there. And most of them respected that. And the ones that didn't, other people handled it.

So I used to tell them, hey, look, I ain't got a life or death sentence. I leave here. Respect what I'm doing, and I'll do the same. No shooting blood at me. They shoot blood at the guards. They cut themselves or whatever. None of that. You know what what i mean or you won't get nothing you know and i and i did i i went without it was pretty cool i got to meet some uh wild people um like who uh well there was there was people one guy ate his parents back in 70s or 60s he'd be down yeah he's a cannibal he actually got released in

2012 no way yeah so he wasn't on death row he was on death row he was sentenced to life but he outlived their life sentence like life sentence is not always life it's 25 years he hit his parents and they gave him parole yeah i was nice don't say this isn't a country of second chances yeah yeah yeah i don't think he's gonna do too well like not too long i was a medical early one time he took his dentures pulled a chunk of calf out and ate it his own calf yeah yeah yeah how long had he been in there he'd been there quite a while i don't even like talking about the guy if he's out walking around oh my god my God. I want to show up at my house with a fork and a knife. Yeah, you're a big steak, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's looking at me like. But I actually stopped a woman from getting eaten by him or whatever he does to people. Because she was disrespectful to him. And I said, look, lady. I said, I know you're new here. You really shouldn't talk to people that ain't got nothing to lose like that. And she was kind of rude to him, you know. And he had a little shank and stuff. They didn't have the whole Hannibal't got nothing to lose like that and she was kind of rude to him you know and he had a you know he had a little shank and stuff they didn't have the whole

hannibal rector thing on him like that no not when he was in there getting uh because the way i met him and started you know kind of talking to him was uh i ran these uh beta dine baths and then they bring them in all you know like silence of the lambs up and then they release all that so he could take these baths because his calf, he couldn't have that getting infected down there. Funny thing about death row is if you're on a waiting list for a liver or a kidney, you get first priority over everyone else. Like regular people. Yeah, because they're not going to kill you until you're healthy. Yeah. If you got cancer, they give you the treatment.

They get you nice and healthy for your execution. That's one of the most fucked up things. Yeah. It goes back to that thing I told you. I think they bought into that. You could tell a society by the way it treats its prisoners. And they buy into it in some senses, but then there's always people that are doing really heinous things so i got to know these guys and the ones that i found that had this piece were calling their their loved ones and saying don't worry about me uh let's talk about

my niece let's talk about this and that and so they had got outside of themselves they like uh transcended even their execution and I was I thought that was interesting because the guy that was sending me these letters and having me read these books they said that most of the problems is caused from a self-absorbed becoming aware you know going back to the Bible like who told you you were naked you know what I mean like like it was like a who told you to be aware of yourself well we've taken it our society's taking that to a whole nother level selfies you know all that but the but these guys knew uh they had surrendered and accepted their death and then

they looked to be helpful now that's something i identified with. A couple times I was facing life for different things. Some I did. Some I kind of did. Some were blown up out of proportion. Oh, so you were in court other times? Oh, yeah, a lot of times, yeah. But you always walked free? Yeah, yeah, basically. If you just sit quietly, people pretty much, they don't really do good police work.

I'm not going to knock them, but what they do is they try to get somebody to snitch. If nobody snitches, which I never had a co-defendant, like I didn't keep a co-defendant. So if you just be quiet long enough, eventually they come down. And if it's doable, fine. But they would come to me with like life plus five. I'd be like, all right, well, I didn't kill anybody, so I'm going to go ahead and pass that one. And then I would look to uh i love the plus five yeah yeah plus five person you know what plus seven yeah plus seven they should have

gave lurch that that cannibal plus something because well again he's out so i don't want to talk about it yeah but uh yeah so anyway uh going back to these people that i picked up i detected a uh sense of peace that i didn't even know i was attracted to and i didn't know that's what i was looking for from this obsession with the drugs with you know getting this getting that uh acquiring money or all these things when i had a goal and i got to it i was ready to blow my head off because i was like this ain't the answer and um so i pretty much sought out everything except for what was right in front of my face to just be myself, you know, really look at things honestly, ask my close people what do they think to open up my mind, you know, to allowing somebody into my thought processes

why I act like this. Because I used to play i used to like it when people said i was crazy or whatever because they left me alone you know what i mean i didn't have to deal with them you know yeah i'm crazy but i really thought i knew what i was doing but in the meantime i was practicing so many insane things that went against my grain that i i suffered from derangement i upset the working order of my mind. And now I am kind of insane because I don't even know when I'm doing something. I kind of know, but it's like, yeah, that's not important.

What's important here is that we don't deal with that. And so just a totally compounded ignorance, I heard one guy call it one time. I didn't know what I didn't know. I lost touch with all reality. you living because you said like you were at that state prison and you were an orderly on death row you weren't living on death row though yeah i lived well no not on death row with the inmates we had a it was all there was three prisons there was a new river east there was union and there was Rayford I was in Rayford they they committed people to death here and then in Union they did

the same but there's fences separating us it's like a triangle got it yeah I took I took a friend of mine to see the place one time and and it's a very gloomy place nice nice nice uh resort attraction over there mark yeah so mark doesn't look like the type of guy who's going to be visiting anytime soon yeah yeah so he uh so you know i took him there because it was a place of no hope but it was the first time i got hope in my life i was like if these guys know when they're gonna die started talking about these things and what they said was two things there was two themes not exactly the same words but the ideas i got from them my interpretation of it was the only thing

you think about over and over again when it's time to die is how you treated others how you treated yourself did you live your potential did you help anybody else live to theirs those play over and over in your head and you will go insane and feel like you're in a personal hell if you don't come to terms with that and if you have even a day to do something about it you get to work on it and these guys had years after their sentence to be waiting to die they have to be they have to go through appeals you know if they fight it but in have to be, they have to go through appeals, you know, if they fight it. But in the midst of that, they came to terms with their, their, how they treated every single person, why they did it, you know, what was going on, finding surrender, acceptance,

honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, humility, finding these principles that gave them a place to rest inside, inside themselves. So it didn't matter if they were in Supermax or, you know, on death row or whatever. So this was a place I got to be in so much because I stayed pretty much in the medical office and on death row. And then when I wanted to go to sleep, I went to a little, you know, we had about a 40, 40 guys. No, maybe 200 guys. I don't know. Two bunks all the way around. Probably 150 guys in one little bay that did all the jobs of the prison.

Like I said, I wasn't in there for killing. Yeah, the workers. Keep the place going. But I got to spend most of my time where the other guys didn't. It was being in medical early and nobody wanting to touch dead bodies or nothing. I didn't seem to have a problem with it. It was a good job. They brought me in.

I had my first fried turkey there. Yeah, they looked out for me. A bunch of big. Touch a couple bodies, have a fried turkey. We're all good. Yeah, yeah. The funny thing is, governor at the time came through there and all these fat. Was that Bush?

No, at the time it was. No, the governor. It was not not bush but uh chris no not chris christy maybe no christy was jersey no no no i'm sorry yeah you're right it was hold on i'll remember his name it was was it this is like oh six oh seven yeah this is gonna be bush okay so it's gotta be jack i didn't know. Like I said, I know nothing about politics. All I know is they locked us all down. This big shot comes through, sees all these inmates all jacked up, and sees these guards like belts, like their bellies are over their belts.

And he goes, all right, take all the weights out of the area. Instead of teaching these guys how to go on a diet and work out, they just try to make the inmates fatter. Yeah. And I thought that was, I was like, that's politics. That's why I don't try to understand it or even look at it because it's ridiculous, their solutions. You know, instead of getting these guys healthy, you know, we ain't going to do that. We're just going to take the weights out.

And they did. They took our weights out i feel like it's all politics and this is just a great example where it's like you know you're talking about other human beings regardless of where they're at what they've done right it's like it's all about checking a box to solve a problem in your head that you can then speak to from a stump somewhere and be like there was an average weight of blank in the prison and the average amount that someone could bench was blank and now it's not and our guards are looking good yeah yeah he seems like it's not like statistics why is that guy here all right first of all why is that guy a guard over there

like maybe he should do some fucking push-ups you know what i mean like there's no there's no like sitting down and having a conversation i'm sure some guys do that but obviously he didn't yeah the majority of uh you know that and i'm sure there's people that mean well and try to do it for the right reasons but they get discounted quickly by they want numbers they want yes let's get this different and um so yeah he came through and then you know but but what I learned from those guys was they got out of themselves. They became unaware of themselves anymore and working towards something else. And what they did was they transcended even the fear of death. Like, truly, like, they weren't, they didn't not care about death and they didn't care about death. They just, that's just that.

And they're fine with it. So they did what some smart philosophical people say, you know, you should contemplate your death pretty regularly so you're not such a nuisance, basically, when you're going to die. Yeah. To everybody around you all freaked out. Like, dude, you knew this for almost 100 years now. Come on. You know, but I get it.

It's still a very, you know, fearful thing. But these guys did in a very short amount of time within one to three years under the worst maybe the best circumstances no stimuli no extracurricular nothing to you know no pretense alone with their thoughts along with their thoughts and they worked them out because they had to were there any guys in there you thought were innocent uh that i thought were innocent. Where they told you they were innocent? Yeah, yeah.

There's a lot of guys that claim to be. It's not really talked about too much because there's a lot of snitching going on. If you get a guy, they had a guy in there that buried a little girl alive. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, a horrible, horrible human being. But they used to light him on fire at least once a week

and then put him out you know they'd squirt this stuff and light him on fire the guards would uh other inmates other inmates all condoned yeah i don't i should probably talk about that stuff too much but yeah they would they would torture this guy so it gave him recreation it was a recreation of sorts like this guy is the devil you know this guy and no doubt that guy you know i i personally uh question marked his nose and you know just crushed all this you know hit him tip the cameras up and hit him and because he smirked at me when he came in there and uh that was right in the beginning kind of when i first got the job there and that's basically what kept me good with that job because they knew i i was in there of course i'm a

criminal i'm not that kind of criminal you know what i mean there was degrees of uh people and and when they told me this guy's story i got sick to my stomach i felt the right way i should feel yeah i acted out of out of uh maybe i don't know uh some self-righteous it wasn't a good place where i was coming from um because it's already been done he's already being sentenced to death he's gonna get lit off there was like things coming in that guy's future i just got so uh confused you know i hit him yeah but i had enough sense to tip the camera up so they didn't catch me on camera and they wouldn't care no they wouldn't care but they gotta stick to some sort of rules we don't see it don't ask don't tell right everybody kind of turned around right when i did it but anyway this guy so he comes in. Now they have a target of why they feel the way they feel,

not owning their own stuff. This guy, this guy is bad. Yeah, so we're going to attack him. So that keeps a lot of people from doing what these other guys do. Now these other guys, they don't participate in the knowledge of what that guy is coming in for. They don't even, it's like gossip to them. They don't want to know.

They're fixed on their being about their families, their last days. They got a very strong sense of minding their own business. So there's a mix. There's a mix, yeah. And then there was these other guys that used to eat their own poop and try to kill themselves and cut themselves.

And I have to go in and clean up and get them. Well, not get them in and clean up and get them and, well, not get them, but clean up afterwards. So I wear these big, you know, hazard things. And these guys were on the phone with people from their family. Like, you don't care about me still being selfish, self-centered, you know, granted they're in a bad predicament. You know what I mean? They're, they're waiting to die too.

But these other guys who, who said, you know what I mean? They're, they're waiting to die too. But these other guys who, who said, you know what? I probably deserve it. And this is where I discovered every time in the past, why I got out of stuff. It wasn't because of my thinking. Yeah, it was my thinking was so stupid. It wasn't even funny, but it wasn't nothing I did. It was a little simple procedure of I surrender. I accept that. I i i probably deserve this i'm gonna stay honest open my unwilling but how i'm gonna do that is i'm gonna be quiet and i'm gonna stay humble yeah you know i'm not contesting this nor am i uh admitting it it sounds like you kind of took that step to doing that though right in court yeah right in court yeah it's like you kind of

even before you got in there that was your whether it was like watching the Hallmark commercial the night before. Right. Like whatever the little thing was, you were just like, this is fucked up. I'm just defeated. Yeah. Yeah, I'm in a state of surrender. What I did, though, is by writing that stuff down, I caught it. I was a very slow learner.

But when something clicks, I put it in all, like I integrate it. Once I know it works, I use it everywhere until it's part of me. And what I noticed was the theme. I was like, how did I get out of that? How is this happening? How come every time I surrender, it gets better, and then the minute I start rebelling, it goes bad for me? And there's this, like, little voice inside of you that tells you,

you shouldn't go out tonight. And I've, I heard that a thousand times. Like it always told me the right thing to do. Like, yeah, I hear you. We're going to do this and then we'll figure it out later. And I'd be in there going, God, why didn't I listen to myself? And, and it ain't me, but, uh, but there, I think this is in everybody.

It's kind of like a, maybe it's self-preservation, maybe's god who knows but the uh but it's there and now i i've learned to nurture that and to hear that more clearly and it bring it brought me here meeting you which you know it's a gift to come up and and just meet somebody off the off the fly like that and then and then um you know it's it's just a that happens to me all the time like that's how i live now that only started happening a few years back when i started uh getting the concept of my worth i hang out with sometimes some people own tons of stuff some people own nothing they live on the streets i got friends and all from everywhere from all yeah and they're all just as meaningful not that i hang out with all of them some of them i do some of i

don't it has nothing to do with their status in life it has to do with whether they're sincere authentic people today because that could change any time i had had my guy Charlie in here last week or two weeks ago, whatever it was. And he had been a prison guard actually on death row in Nebraska for I think like 10 years or something like that back in the day. And he had a lot of interesting takes there that I really got to review myself again because it was all over the place. I mean that in a good way like he had a lot of different takeaways about life and similarly to the way you're looking at things but he made a point where he was like i think he asked me first he goes what's the most important thing in your life like to survive or whatever and i said my health and he goes i disagree and i'm like why and he goes it's freedom i said why freedom he goes because

i can't tell you how many people i met who would have given terminal cancer just to live one day where they got to make the decision of where it was because they were forced to be somewhere else and so like i guess my question for you is was there there obviously was a major turn here that happened right before that that last bid but when you're in there looking at all these guys who are on death row they're never going to get out or even the guys in there who in there for life or whatever the crazy shit you seem to have stayed above it and taken even some of their stories with you as like an example but it sounds like you were finally ready to be free not just free of like walls of a prison but like free of drugs free of worrying about you know my status with everyone else. Right. Free of being concerned about who does what in the world as you just laid out like everyone else.

Like, you know, where their ranking is. Free of all these thoughts that it was like you used to live by this. I do this with these people at this time because that's what it is. And if I don't, it's fucked up. Now you're like, whatever, man. If I'm free on the outside and living and being good to people that that's that's kind of it yeah yeah you get to go anywhere do anything and it's fun when you're not you know um like there's not a driving force controlling you so when this um when the guard

that you were talking to was talking about how you would give anything like I remember looking out the window in South Florida and it's a dirty closed screen but just to be able to see a you know something something that nobody could see right now like a plane flying by or something you know it was um it was almost spiritual in nature you You know what I mean? A cool breeze coming through the window. There's no AC in Florida. So yeah, cool breeze coming through the window and looking out at a sky, a night sky. I love looking at night skies.

I was in prison long before the walls went up. I was in prison in my mind. I couldn't leave my mind. Like that's what it became. I lived in my head so long that I couldn't get out. And even now I have to go through a process i need a i need to pray i need to do all i need to do a million things not so much now it's become more of a nature but at first there was like a 50 point checklist to just get like a breath of being just being you know and this is a gift that i was given a long time ago

due to fear due to using my brain my for the wrong things i uh i made it something unachievable to be a human being i always had to be go go go you know don't stop you're building some i didn't know what i was doing and uh but i was i was putting a lot of effort into it i spent a whole career of i didn't think money was the answer i thought the people that could take the money was the answer so you know what i mean because it didn't matter to me how much money you had if somebody could just come and snatch you up street justice thing yeah yeah and if you had that kind of power and i kind of digested that at an early age too that power was more important than uh a monetary you know a symbol of of energy it's a loaded word power yeah power yeah so it's a it can

mean a million things but it comes back to the same result no matter what it for me it was uh surefire way of getting deranged because i thought it was power to control what feelings i'm gonna feel and not have the ones i didn't like i I didn't know that's what I was doing yeah yeah but I was setting a world around so there's a guy uh you know David Goggins oh yeah he's it yeah he's awesome I was sitting on that floor yeah I'm like this is my life this is my life right here yeah yeah I had a time when I OD'd and I was dead for a couple minutes. When was this? Oh, this is one of the Miami times.

I got airlifted to a hospital in Coral Gables, I think. And this doctor brought me back. And the first thing I said, because I had such a peaceful experience, first thing I said was, like, who ripped my shirt? And I had, like, bullets falling out of my pocket and and i was like what's that noise and he's like looks like bullets i said well they ain't mine he goes well they ain't mine so and i was like uh doctor's kicking him away like yeah yeah yeah it's all good it was a nice place they were very nice to me he's like i just saved your life can you forgive

me for the shirt i was like yeah no problem, um, but I had this experience where I wanted to go back. Cause it was like something euphoric. It was peace. I didn't know it at the time, but I had this, you know, I had a bad experience with lights and all that. And, um, did you see anything? Well, everybody was a global light. I don't know if it was space, but it kind of looked like that.

And I started getting real worried about where my mom was and and something came over me were you anywhere like were you in a place or i was just i was floating out with no body so i was floating out with no body i've been dead two minutes some 37 seconds at a time total of like three minutes and then bring me back and yeah doc said uh usually you have like some form of retarding i'm not saying that's not the case for you but i think you're all right you know i would have said that in court yeah i'd have been like technically technically i might be retarded i'm a little off yeah so when i had this experience though it hit me later in life when somebody said god doesn't talk to you in your head. He reveals things to you.

That's when you get this revelation that, oh, man, you know, I didn't see it that way. And you start seeing something totally different. I had that. I had a revelation that, and I put words to it to explain it sometimes when I would, people would ask me what happened. I would say, oh, I heard this voice. But that's not the truth. I didn't know the truth at the time. I just didn't know how to explain it.

I heard it, but it wasn't a voice. You saw it. You saw it, but you didn't get the sense of it. It was revealed to me that everybody's connected, that the only thing I suffered from was the illusion of disconnection from others. And that didn't make no sense at the time, but I had a lot of peace.

But since I've grown into that knowledge or revelation because it's not my knowledge it's not something i knew it was just something yeah it was an experience that i had that i i never even thought really much about other than i like that piece and you didn't at the time you didn't really because you didn't reflect on anything you just kind of did yeah so then later you're like well wait a second let's think about that yeah way later because right after i left the hospital i had a friend of mine he dressed up a nurse and to get me out of there we came up with this plan i could have just walked out the doctor so my boy he's a big trafficker he's doing 28 years right now but um he comes with this nurse that he took to a Halloween shop with the Halloween nurse.

She's got this skirt. And she comes in with a wheelchair. He's like, I'm Dr. Pex. You know what I mean? He's like, I'm here to take this patient. They're like, okay, whatever. And I'm like, wow, that's a really good plan. The girl could barely push me.

She's in high heels. She's got like titty pasties on. It was so hilarious. I go out of the hospital and he's got a limo. My girl at the time, my daughter's mother, is in a car in front of us. She starts going down on me and I'm like, oh, Lord. My girl's right there. I said, take me to the Hyatt.

That's where I left this stuff. I had buried my gun and my drugs that I OD'd on under these plants on a balcony in the Hyatt. In the Hyatt Hotel. Yeah. And this stuff just killed me. Under the plants. Under the plants. I kind of dug them up a little and just kind of put it on there. Like in the lobby?

No, no. Up in my room. Oh. Yeah. So I had to get back there. Yeah. It was juvenile and somebody was performing around there and they were in the juvenile what a throwback back then holy so i was over there

doing some crazy stuff i needed to get that gun back and i had those drugs that i just i was like i came out of that bathroom i was like i did too much and that's all i remember my girl started calling saying her dad was a governor he better save him they got me this hospital private i didn't get arrested so i get back to i said take me back to that hotel so the the my kid's mother at the time she's like where are we going i was like i gotta go back there i can't have that gun out you know running around so i said we gotta go back there and uh go right up in there and do the same stuff that just killed me. And I come back down and I told her, I said, go back to Naples.

I'm going to stay in Miami with Dr. Peck and this nurse. Yeah. Oh, it was crazy. I forget why I brought that up. We were talking about the experience that you had and how you got right out of it and didn't think about it. Didn't think about it didn't think about yeah So when this guard was talking about how if you can get one minute of freedom It's you crave that you built that idea That's not really what it is because if freedom was achievable for the guys that were waiting to die that weren't leaving their cell

Freedom is achievable now here in this present moment It is never anywhere else So even though they painted that picture, convinced that guy that that's all they needed, they'd still be in prison when they left there. I was still in prison when I left prison. Yeah, because I couldn't get that gratitude for that moment. Whereas in that place, all I had to see was a touch of life,

and I was so grateful, and I was in the moment. And that's when I realized it was an inside job all along. It was an inside job all along. It had nothing to do with my outside, you know, the exterior. That was actually a manifestation of what I was living. When you say, can you explain that? Yeah, so I'm in this cell. All I need is a bird, a sign of some kind of life with this cool breeze hitting me

i'm happier than i ever been in my life and i and that's freedom that's kind of like freedom when you see when you when you line up with it and you're in the moment you get to experience it that was freedom for me i over i over i overshot it so i would get out and i let's go get a drink let's do girls let's do all these things just chipping away at my freedom it's never anywhere else it's not something else it leads to crime and drugs and all that always oh yeah that that leads yeah well the the thing that leads to all that is the the the search for what's already right here like right here right now with you most important time in my life when i get to the next moment most important time in my life presence the presence yeah yeah because that's where that's where life is everything else is

just in the head uh the one doctor that uh my friend turned me on to he says um the memory should only be used to recall what doesn't work and not do that you know what i mean that's like kind of how you survive but we use our memory for all this stuff and then we got pictures replaying uh realities that are gone they're not reality no more so so you get it he's saying not even to look at that don't even yeah like i try not to pay attention to it all just recently because of uh you actually i got back on instagram because i wanted to you know sign up yeah because yeah it's your fault no but it's funny how i did that for a good reason next you know i'm looking at this thing too long i'm sitting on the toilet you know we start going through all the oh this is interesting and i end up two hours on totally with hemorrhoids so i i uh i thought to myself i was like damn i really like being

connected and this is the way people connect i said you know what i don't need i don't need to be on this thing so i practiced some self-control and i left it alone but there was a time when i had the facebook that my my little nephew did some skit my little uh 12 year old nephew with another 12 year old and they did a skit on this tiktok and then they sent me the thing and i had to get the thing to look at the thing and you're on tiktok yeah now i'm on tiktok and i was like and now i'm hooked on tiktok it was like one after another dog's doing funny shit i can watch it all day yeah i got dogs doing dog things on my Instagram. I got very limited technological prowess or whatever.

But the – I forget again where I was at. We were talking about presence. You were saying like seeing a bird outside. Right. You said really compelling that was freedom. Freedom. Like that moment was freedom. Right.

I had no idea what that was. I was in South Florida. That moment was freedom. Right. I had no idea what that was. I was in South Florida. Again, I was in there. I had this experience. Kid comes in. He's got two life sentences. Young kid, 22, but he was trafficking big weight. He had a cut list.

He had a good life. He had a whole family album of all the hot chick, good life, maybe a kid or two. And he's gone forever. And we were talking, and I was coming off of something. I was sick still. But I had some creepy weep, so we started smoking. And I remember having an experience of laughing. I hadn't laughed in, at that point, probably a long while.

There was nothing funny. You know what I mean nothing and but in the midst of of smoking this weed and it wasn't just because of the weed it was because this kid had a need for how to live now and he had a lot of life in him he's a tough you know kid he had you know he had good heart and everything and i got to let him know how to do time and in the midst of that we were talking and we we cracked a joke about something and it was a real laugh nobody getting hurt just a moment and i was like wow that's weird what was that you know and i felt it it was like a rumbling like a big laugh and this this is in the state prison right this is in a state prison down in miami yeah and uh and so i was like wow it was like a spiritual awakening now somebody might

say that was from uh smoking a kribi weed which was definitely probably getting the the self obsession out of the way but it was a was a it was something i was missing out on so when i got to i think it was around that same time I was doing that time and there was a cool breeze coming through. It was a cooler month or whatever. And I had that little experience. Later on when I woke up, I realized what that was. You know, I was finally in the moment. Just for a second. I think I like cells when

they were all locked and it was it was like a secure place for me you know I mean my you know inmates never been a problem for me you know they throw people in what they didn't last long but they weren't a problem once the whole world was locked and they can only come in one door and I could see him there's blocks all around me i could chill for a minute i could be late at night not when they're doing all their stupid head counts and stuff but but the late at night when it was peaceful and quiet you know i'm looking out that window i had that experience that all clicked later on that living is being in this presence the memory is

only for things that keep me out of the present You know don't do those things to remember that you know and maybe do some things that keep you in the present better yeah, I feel like Good memories can be a torture or or a or a Beautiful thing depending on your perspective, so I don't know if I go that far. I understand why that was such a, why that concept, though, like memories are only for learning from something, was so important for you. Because it's like, well, so many trains went off the track here, and it was strictly because I wasn't paying attention at all. And so now I know where i wasn't

paying attention right i don't want to remember some of the shit that person did right so let's not even mess in that let's not even swim in that pool and let's focus on the present and the future if i were in your shoes i'd probably think the same way yeah it would be nice though one day if you could look back because i mean you had a daughter in this time like there was some good stuff oh yeah there's always good stuff i mean it's it's a good one when when you tell a story it is technically a memory when you're talking about like you know even like when you picked up those chicks in in georgia and brought them to florida like there's still stuff that shines through if even if you don't realize it or not you should be able to look back on that even if it got you arrested at the end. Yeah. And be like, you know what?

There were a couple of things there. It was a good time. You're living a little bit. You know what I mean? Good stories to tell in the cell, you know? Sure. But like the other thing is this, the last bid, you keep on saying that this is where you found those little moments of freedom and everything.

I got to think it's tied to the fact that you were always on the take at every other point that you were in prison before that when you went in at 15 you had to learn how to survive you had to learn how to make money you know protect the guys do whatever you get out in life of crime you get back in same deal let's get out of here but let's make money before we get out we'll run the prison you talked about that whole thing and this is the first time where you're like you know what yeah i'll i'll cool off i'll be in orderly i'll talk to these yeah yeah you know and then you're like oh damn wow i didn't need to like i need to run around here like i run the place i just you know it is what it is right that i believe that 100 that um i used i abused the memory to fulfill my own wants

and needs so bad that i had to only use it so when that guy said that it wasn't too long ago that he said that i i experienced that because i practiced that to start somewhere it's like you know what the memory is no good for me i can only think about these things so i knew i was i was my nature was to obsess and fix on an idea so i gave my brain something to do an idea like god something i can't figure out something i can always work on add a little more up later on but it gave it something to do while i can be you know what i mean sure so that makes sense yeah and and now like like you said um actually my my friends around me bring up things like they'll say sometimes, like, you do have a good memory.

Or they'll say things like I had to point out to a friend of mine that he was happy. I took a picture, and he smiled, so I blew his face out. And I said it to him. I said, do you even know you're happy here? Because he didn't know. Yeah. And he sent me back that he flipped me the bird. He thought I was making fun of him.

I was saying, no, dude, you constantly say how miserable. And then I turned around on myself. I was like, you know what? I say a lot of this stuff that I have to revise. You're making my point for, and this is a good thing. You're making my point for me. And maybe you should just keep doing exactly what you're doing because it works for you. It's working, yeah.

You're more tricking yourself, and I mean that in a good way just to like stay out of your own way of where your mental is taking you in the past yeah that's healthy it's a good description that's fine yeah that's a good description of what i do i always say that i try to stay out of the way of these principles i try to stay out of the way of this you know higher power uh that i don't fully understand but i know it works you know what i mean so so i stay out of the way of that and i end up in remarkable situations with remarkable people all the time clearly yeah it's now now it's 15 years past any of this and you so i want to talk about what you ended up doing i mean you own you own a business and everything like it's such a cool

story and i want to hear about that but like how long did it take to even get there? How did that all come together once you got out? Well, I came out of prison that last time. It was during the crash, which you spoke very good about. Yeah, and the guests you had, very knowledgeable. But I came out when there was no jobs, with no history of working. So I was like, I don't care. I'm just going to go to a homeless shelter.

Now, my mother was like, no, just come home. And I said, I've been homeless for a while now. I need to let the outside match the inside. So I went to this homeless shelter, and I made my only job. I think this was based in that guy, kind of honoring him. So as long as I got that guy and my mom, that sponsor, I told you about that. Yes.

Started making sense of stuff. He'd been writing me the whole time in prison. So I tried to honor what he does. So I made my only job while I was there, if a guy came in shaking, I was physically fit. I came out, I had built my life, built my physical back up and it was sharp. So I said, I'm gonna get to know every single person came out i had built my life you know built my physical back up and you know it was sharp so

i said i'm going to give you know i'm going to get to know every single person that comes through the homeless shelter and i did that and i started volunteering and then i started working i didn't care what it was eight bucks an hour ten bucks an hour i didn't care so i'll work you know and then all of a sudden i started getting calls i was like well i can't do this and that i said well what about this guy he needs a job but my only job from the time i woke up to the time i went to sleep was to respect the welfare of people especially the ones coming in broke down i give a pair of socks something basic they didn't have and meant a lot to them you know i would do stuff i'd go work you don't need a lot of money to help a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And I would just show up whether I was doing it for free or doing it for, I used to say

I'm on the clock with God if I get paid money, spiritual money in the bank, whatever. These were all ideas I digested listening to this one guy that was really good to me. Yeah. And so I made a 90-day commitment there and by the time like 80 75 days came my brother was uh offering me his place to take over the lease and i had enough money i saved up i went from like eight bucks an hour up to like 25 30 an hour pretty quick yeah pretty quick and then um and then i got a pretty good job with a guy I was helping. He brought me to this other guy who owned a bunch of stuff. He ended up being a big influential guy. He caught me, because I knew sign language from, not like fluently, but you had to talk to people through very little spaces sometimes. So you'd have to know sign language. And so he caught me talking sign language to this lady that was selling these little flags or whatever.

She was deaf. And so I was going back and forth with her just because I was curious to see if I could remember any of the stuff I knew. Yeah. And he caught that and he took it on like I was a, you know, like a gem or something. Like a genius. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Holy shit. I think that's one of the reasons. And then I ran five of his warehouses like it was nothing.

All the designers came to me. I started moving furniture. That's the first thing. He became his guy. Yeah, yeah. He liked me a lot. But for a certain amount of time, I seemed to turn into the leader of any place and he owned his own place and i wasn't trying to do that i was trying to be his guy and take pressure off of him

so all these designers started coming to me directly and he's like dude he goes you want to go in business he goes everybody comes to you anyway he goes why don't you just you know go do your own thing and i'll help you and i was like and what specifically like demolition and stuff no no this was the furniture the moving company so this was just the moon this started with just you know this guy giving me two trucks to use i started going all over florida up to new york you know moving people no shit yeah and all in my free time i still worked 40 hours a week for him so i would leave on a friday be back by sunday night he would like hey a ticket came through it was in, Delaware

He goes what he goes. What were you doing in, Delaware? Because I told you you can use the trucks to do local jobs like I didn't say you're running through it Wait for the camera. Yeah, I just tell him the truth and he's like that's what I like about you one time I lied to him and he lit up into me He's like one thing I hate is a liar and I you know I didn't want him to feel bad because my buddy I was trying to cover for him, I kind of lied a little to him. First time I ever did it, it was for somebody else. And he lit into me.

I was like, dude, I'm sorry. I apologize. He's like, no problem. Just don't do it again. Never did it again. And he was just a good, he is a good guy. To this day, he's always asking how I'm doing. He tells me to come by his stores.

And, you know, we do a lot of different things. How many people do you have working for you now? Well, right now I've got three that are solid. And then I hire anywhere from, I don't know, could go through 20 people. Wow. It's just what they need to get going, put a few bucks in their pocket. Some of them stay, some of them don't. I've had up to 32 guys working for me.

That same prison that I went to at first, I had a demolition company too. They paid me to demo that prison, which was crazy. You demoed the prison you were in? I demoed the prison for this. You don't do demolition anymore though, do you? Sometimes, yeah. You still do? For certain contractors, I kind of like it.

So I get a bunch of guys. I get to work. I just kind of make sure nobody gets. It's a good business. Yeah. It's good money. I'm not the best at it. Some people do it a lot faster.

You add up the hours for your bill. Yeah, I do. I do. I do. I milk it. Took your time on that prison. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the prison, it was awesome because we were we were working with these um these uh they're like

kind of confidential very high up in the killing you know for the government type stuff so they were training these um communication specialists and uh so they wouldn't get when they got overrun they wouldn't get killed they were coming down from canada but these guys that were training them serious they're really nice people i got to talk to them sometimes and um they uh they did some some crazy stuff out there uh uh it's kind of it's kind of low key but i got to look out at a field that i remember looking out at when i was young and it was so surreal like such a weird experience i had so much hope in me and so much good stuff going on of course i'm not in prison or nothing like that but it's something

totally different than that it was the same place and i remember like eating sandwiches right there you know beating that guard up right there you know all this stuff the places i was forbidden they left me to paint the warden's house one day, and I put eggs down the sockets. Me and my boy had a mosh pit. Why would the warden let pastors paint his house? What a dumbass. I guess they thought I was scared or something, or I wasn't going to do nothing. I was like, dude, I hate you.

At the time, I was like, yeah. It's like having a, yeah. So, yeah, I was incorrigible for a time there. I think you're proof that there is correction. Oh, yeah. I think they should revisit that term for who they give it to. That's true. I think they probably, like, you know, that last time in court, every sign was there that, no, maybe something's different here.

You know, just based on based on i mean just read the court record without even being there right and you can kind of be like wait this is not the same this is the same guy's been fighting all these cases and ci doesn't show up and shit and now suddenly he's like you know what just just want to lay down me to jail yeah i just wanted to lay down i was so defeated yeah and then uh the you know and the miracles that's happened since then like and it's only been a few years like it took a lot of years of gaining a nature of not being just being transparent yeah like i kind of seen those guys that were you know waiting to die that had that peace about them they only had that because they didn't mind saying what was

exactly on their inside without being unkind or but you had to grow into that i had to grow into that yeah yeah it was a lot of fear a lot of fear like what if you know i've been doing this my whole life hiding how i think what i feel masking it masking until almost diminished to nothing not even knowing you know nothing like people say what do you want to do i don't know I have no idea you know and then every once in a while something caught my attention I ran it into the ground you know if a good chick or anything that felt good well this is the answer and I'd run it in the ground didn't know how to just be yeah and then last few years I've learned how to do that kind of living in um my one friend described it

as living in in acceptance and i guess that's basically what i do is nothing needs for me to act right now i could observe without judgment i could wait a little bit and see what this is and if somebody's if correction has to happen it doesn't have to be by me like they'll get corrected but it won't be by me and uh and most of the time i'll walk into a scenario and i know it can go either way one thing i used to fear is if you don't give me the answer i want i'm gonna get in trouble because you are gonna do this thing whatever it is Now I'm in acceptance of whatever you do. I have no expectations. I'm just going to let you know what I need to say.

Kind of like I need to express this and leave it alone. And almost all the time now it instantly turns into good stuff. And I don't expect it. It just turns into good stuff. That's what happens. Yeah. You just kind of manage. Look, and I think't expect it. It just turns into. That's what happens. Yeah. Yeah. You just kind of manage. If you look, and I think this is applicable to anybody, regardless of where you've been

or what you've done in your life. If you just kind of, if you go with the flow, but control how you treat the world and have at least somewhat of a positive attitude on things and you're not just negative all the time, usually over time, better things than not are going to happen are gonna happen yeah you know even when it doesn't feel that way some everyone's human i think most people are i guess you know you have a moment where you're like oh this all blows right now i do that but you come out of it when you're not stuck in it because you're you're at least putting yourself in the position every day where something can improve right and it's like when you come from i mean to me like being in prison is like the bottom right yeah and

but you got to recognize you're there right you know and for you it didn't happen when you were 15 it happened it happened later when you have that recognition everything's up from there you know even if it takes time even if it's you got to read you almost have to like rebirth yourself in a way that's exactly right yeah it can still you just have to go with the flow and let it develop right you know yeah my aunt used to call me a late bloomer that's a nice way i think she's right yeah yeah late bloomer that's me do you ever do you have a good relationship with your daughter today not really right now uh we did and i made my amends with her she's 22 now so i'm pretty much excluded from her individuality so yeah i was yeah i'm not the i didn't do all the things perfect

but i did i did let her know where to come. You know what I mean? For anything, anytime, there's no, you know, and I gave her some peace about the past. You know, it wasn't nothing to do with her. You know what I mean? I wanted to be there all the time. But right now she's going through whatever she's going through. She's not communicating with me for like about a year now, year and a half.

And, you know, it's upsetting sometimes i try to reach out uh reach out to the mother sometimes i just sent an email last night because um good friend of mine said why don't you email her i was like i don't know her email and he's like and i looked up my messages i have her email damn yeah i could have been sent an email but she hasn't answered it. So it's humbling. You know, it is what it is. I just, if there's anything I can do, I'll do it, but I'm not going to think about it until I can do something. You know what I mean?

And if I meditate on it, I just want what's best for her. You know, I really do. If anything, I can do anything, I will. You know, and eventually she's gonna from everything i heard about um that age at about 26 or 27 they start getting out of that and they start thinking for themselves i think she has a lot of uh responsibility that's not hers that she's taken on as hers yeah i mean i don't have to ask what that is it could be a few different things but i think it's the same thing in the sense that there is something to it when you're 22 23 it's like you're kind of coming into the world now yeah it's a very weird time it can be

a very fun time too i had a lot of great times probably happens but it's weird yeah it's like what do i do yeah what's going on with my life you know these choices and you never really had a shot to do that yeah so you don't you really actually i mean it's fairly like you can't even speak to that yeah you know yeah you had that you were in survival mode right yeah in a lot of ways she mature more mature than me in a lot of ways like i've come closer to my age now yeah but in a lot of ways yeah i was kind of emotionally stunted at 15 i mean anyone you went to jail at 15 yeah okay yeah you're not gonna be mature you'd be mature about a few things you've seen some shit yeah yeah but you don't get a chance to really grow up that's why i think i think you're a great example of where the the legal system needs to and i said this earlier but needs to have some humanity in it

with with especially like youth offenders right there's usually an enormous cry for help on things or like sometimes you're just a kid and you do something stupid you know right like that's how you turn around some guy grabs you by the collar it's a natural human reaction i know it's a cot you can't do that but like yeah you knock the guy out then they all beat the shit out of you after you paid his hospital bills you know what i mean like i don't know i that's it's wrong with me but you're sitting here today i really really enjoyed talking with you same here i love your perspective thank you for hooking this up mark yeah appreciate it brother but mark's a great guy i love i love story like i said i love comeback stories and your life has been a giant comeback story and and i think you're the way that

the way that you have such a soft view on things like you're you're a very unjudgmental guy you're you're not there's nothing about the way you had to be for years that's stuck in you today and that's that's a really amazing thing. Yeah, it's been a big turnaround. Good people in my life brought it out of me too. That's it. Yeah, you're one of them now too. I appreciate your time here.

Absolutely. It's been great. Well, thank you for rolling through. And I hope everyone else enjoyed that like I did. Thank you once again, Mark. We'll do it again. All right. Everyone else, you know what it is.

Give it a thought. Give back. Peace.