Locked In with Ian Bick - Combat Veteran On Surviving Ambushes, Drugs & 10 Years In Prison | Michael Springer

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Michael Springer shares his compelling story of serving in the Iraq war, the subsequent trauma he endured, and his challenging journey back home. We explore how he fell into the clutches of addiction, ultimately leading to nearly a decade behind bars in a state prison. But most importantly, we uncover the inspiring tale of how he managed to overcome these daunting obstacles and successfully transform his life. Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Big thanks to www.findagreatattorney.com for sponsoring this episode. If you are injured anywhere in the country, visit https://findagreatattorney.com, a free service that can find you one of the best lawyers in your area. You focus on getting better and they’ll do the rest. Connect with Michael Springer: IG: https://www.instagram.com/springer9175?igsh=NGVwOTcwaXlpOTli FB: https://www.facebook.com/michaeldane04?mibextid=LQQJ4d Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:07:50 - Troubles in Childhood and Teenage Years 00:15:53 - Unexpected Friendship 00:23:34 - Memories of Iraq and Cultural Differences 00:31:15 - The Sadness of Baghdad 00:38:59 - Chaos and Uncertainty in Baghdad 00:46:28 - Intense Combat Situation 00:54:22 - Driving Through a Warzone 01:02:23 - Survivor's Guilt and Reflections 01:10:36 - Special Type of Soldiers 01:18:15 - The reality of war and its impact 01:26:03 - The Destructive Path 01:33:42 - Arrests 01:41:09 - A Close Call at the Airport 01:49:02 - Trouble in the Barracks 01:56:06 - A Rough Ride to the Hole 02:03:30 - The Consequences of Getting Caught in Criminal Activities 02:11:07 - A Mother's Struggle 02:18:46 - Reflections on Prison and Recovery 02:26:21 - Finding Purpose in Helping Veterans 02:33:53 - Preparing for the Next Chapter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usaa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. We're driving to Baghdad and we passed its kill zone three times, bro. And that third time we passed it, the biggest explosion I'd ever seen in my life. I mean, it had to be, it had to go up at least 100 feet up in air explosion. It was huge. It was a 1-55 round, bro. I don't know if you know what that is, but it's an artillery shell packed up

steel ball bearings, and they had it perfectly arched on the side of the road. So when it blew, it blew up and out. I was the second Hummer. And when it exploded, it picked my hammer up three or four feet off the ground just from the blast. I remember hitting the ground, and I was stunned. And my team leader's over here, and he's just like, go, go, go. I had the privilege of meeting Michael Springer during my visit to Arkansas at the peer recovery conference last year. He joins me on the show today for an episode that is both my longest and most captivating, delving deep into his extraordinary journey. Michael shares his compelling story of serving in the Iraq War, the subsequent trauma he endured and his challenging journey back home. We explore how he fell into the clutches of addiction, ultimately leading to nearly a decade behind bars in a state prison. But most importantly, we uncover the inspiring tale of how he managed to overcome these daunting

obstacles and successfully transform his life. This is the first time Michael is ever sharing his story, and I'm so grateful he chose our platform to do it. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at find a great attorney.com. If you are injured anywhere in the country, visit findagateaigate attorney.com, a free service that can find you one of the best lawyers in your area. You focus on getting better, and they'll do the rest. Big thank you to Richard Hastings and find a great attorney.com for sponsoring today's episode.

And also, guys, exciting news. I'm going to be speaking at the National Association for Reentry Professionals annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee, April 14th through 17th. Grab your tickets at the narp.org. That's the narp, N-A-R-P.org. It's an amazing conference for re-entry professionals. and I'm looking forward to speak and connect with folks out there. And remember, if you enjoy this locked in podcast, leave us a review on Apple or Spotify

and subscribe to the Ian Bick YouTube channel. It really does help us push the show out to more people, and I'm grateful for every comment and review and follow left. Now, sit back, relax, and get ready to lock into this roller coaster ride of an episode with Michael Springer. Michael Springer, welcome officially to, locked in with Ian Bick.

It's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. You came to us all the way from Arkansas. Yeah, man. You're staying in the city this week, so it worked out. We first met back in September during the peer recovery conference for peer recovery month, and you were the one that picked us up at the hotel to bring us to the Lowen Oak County Jail. And the big truck. This is luxury, man.

What's up with this truck? That was the nicest truck I've ever been it. Like the screen covered like the whole windshield. It was amazing. Yeah. But it was a really great time, and we were talking in the truck on the way there, and we were there to interview people and interview the sheriff at the county jail. And the whole time, you had this incredible story, too.

Right. But, you know, shout out to Jimmy McGill for connecting us, and I'm very thankful that you're here right now and excited to do this. This is like your first official podcast, right? Yeah, I'm just going to say, Jimmy McGill really wanted to get me on first, man. but I'm here with the end big, locked in end, so we'll go over that. I got one playing with him Saturday, so. You know, he might hustle to get that one put out before mine,

but he's got to remember who the goat is, you know? I'm kidding, I love Jimmy. Jimmy's a good guy. Yeah, he's awesome. Yeah, he was on this show when we filmed him actually at the sheriff's office, which is, you know, pretty interesting that we filmed him there because he was incarcerated there. So coming back full circle, Jimmy's just, you know,

the world has so many nice things to say about Jimmy McGill. He's such a good guy. Yeah. And we're not talking about Jimmy from Better Call Saul. But, yeah, Michael, thank you so much for coming, man. Congratulations on just getting married. Thank you. And let's start at the top of your story.

Where are you from? Where did you grow up? What was childhood like for you? I'm from Graveridge, Arkansas. It's a small town right outside of Iraq. It's a north of Iraq. I had a difficult childhood, I would say. I had, it was pretty normal at first, my earliest remembers of, being about five or six.

My dad from a previous marriage had three other kids with another ex-wife, and they came, moved in with us when he was about, I don't know, six or seven years old. And, bro, and everything just changed from there. You know, they were raised up in Little Rock, and, you know, I would say we was raised in a middle-class family. My dad served 20-something years of military, retired as a master sergeant, and worked for the VA for 30 years. But they brought, when they came in, they brought the smoking and the drinking and the sniffing gas and the just chaos that came with them. So we were raised, me and my little brother were raised in fear pretty much. A lot of physical abuse. My dad was one of the old school we were seen, not heard.

and it didn't take long before we started wanting to be like our older brothers and sisters naturally. But they had came through and caused so much chaos through the streets of where neighborhood we lived in. I mean, you could literally go down the street and hear doors locking as we're walking down. That was from my older brothers and them. My brother, I don't know if Jimmy McGill wants to put it out here, but I've known Jimmy since I was a little bitty. Oh, you guys are friends growing up. Yeah, well, he was a little older than me. He was friends with my brother.

And actually, my brother, all my dad's kids were kicked out before the age of 16. And he, my brother David, got kicked out, was put in a boys home. And they sold a church van and was in a high-speed chase for the police and hit a tree going 77 miles an hour. All of them were pronounced dead, including my brother. And Jimmy McGill's brother was in that van. So that's how far we go back. You know what I'm saying? Jimmy was the person that they said, the mom and they would say, hey, do not turn out like this guy.

He's the bad guy. Okay, how he turned down now? Yeah, you know, I believe the most beautiful souls come out of the darkest holes, man. And he's living proof of that. But we had a lot of child abuse, turned into sexual abuse. I was sexually molested. I think about my seventh grade year, I started suffering from, major depression, suicidal adiations.

It was just a, it was a dark time my life at that point. I had a tough time expressing myself because I was raised in fear. I mean, it was, I can't explain it. But so we was raised in fear. Didn't know how to process things. Didn't know how to talk about things. And I just learned to, you know, I believe any child that goes through trauma growing up, You learned a defense mechanism of blocking stuff out and put that wall up.

And that's pretty much what I did. Did you have any friends at all, like a support circle at all, that you could look at? Yeah, I was the funny kid. I was the extrovert. I was always trying to make people laugh. And, you know, I had a problem with being accepted by everyone. I had people-pleasing tendencies. I was always pretty popular at school.

I would say but that was that was my deal I would use my laughter to hide up the pain and that was my way of people liking me was through my comedy

and act class clowns and stuff like that so I'd ran away in the seventh grade I think wrote a suicide letter and took off

and I thought I was G.I. Joe man I'm sitting in the woods bro and I'm eating leaves off a tree. I mean, if I don't know what kind of survivalist mode I was in.

But anyway, I came back. I got picked up by the police, came back, went to juvenile, and was put on probation for it. So, I got a lot of trouble in school, smoking in school. I think my eighth grade year I was suspended 22 times, you know, ended up

getting expelled. The ninth grade year, I was in ROTC, and I had my ROTC uniform on. And I ended up up having this like fingernail file, folded a fingernail file that was in my pocket inside my breast pocket and I pulled it out and I seen it. Somebody saw it told on me and, you know, I had already made a name for myself by this time and they had called the police and locked me up.

What was it? It was just literally a, it looked like a knife that was a fingernail file. Okay. That was considered a weapon? I guess so, man. But like said, man, I'd already named, you know, been named. So you're getting into trouble at this point? So I got expelled from school. I got arrested. I'm on the way to juvenile for the first time of my life and in my ROTC uniform. And so I'm in jail. I stay there three days.

I get put on probation again. So my oldest brother, one of my older brothers got me started. I smoked marijuana for the first time at 10 years old. And, I mean, it was just chaos, man. everything that comes with dad everybody was drinking and me and my dad's the only two that didn't pick up the alcohol taste you know because i couldn't stand the taste of it and still this day i don't and uh i was fortunate enough for that my little brother but you know he got took on to drinking he liked drinking a lot and he became an alcoholic later died by alcoholism by getting a car wreck but um so after all that you know just years of that piled up, bad grades, just not paying attention, not doing anything.

My dad divorced his wife, who raised me pretty much, and got remarried again. And my turn was up. Like I said, all his kids were kicked out by the age of 16, so I was kicked out. Well, I think about my biological mother from Florida, she left me when I was 18 months old, and then called me out of the blue one night at 1030 when I was. I was 14 years old. Two weeks later, I packed my stuff up and I left, went to Florida. And that was the first real experience.

I realized that the grass is not greener on the other side. And I didn't stay down there long, maybe eight months. I realized then why my dad had shielded me from her was because, you know, but I did learn a lot from that little season in my life. I learned to who I really was. Because, you know, look at my dad, man. My dad's, you know, he's a registered nurse practitioner. He's squared away.

He's been to college. He's got degrees. And I'm like, and then there's me. Where the hell this comes from? You know what I mean? So when I met her, I all understood what this other side of me was where it came from. How did you feel about your dad? And did you have a lot of pressure to kind of live up to his standards and what he had done in his life?

Yeah. My dad is not really a, you know, his dad was killed at 10 years of. old from alcohol. I don't think it really understood, you know, really what a dad was, you know what I mean, I guess. Very emotional disconnect, you know what I'm saying? It didn't really talk to you. Didn't really say much to you. Never did nothing with you. I mean, it was just business, all the time business. You know, he grew a garden, we're out slaving in the garden in the summertime. We're, you know, hoeing grass and, you know, doing all this stuff out there. I guess he loved, I know he loves us, but it was just real weird, and it was, he was real stone cold.

You know what I mean? So it did take a lot of pressure. You know, I always wanted to make him proud, but then I realized it was just the inevitable. It was never going to be good enough. So when he got remarried, I then came back. I was quickly kicked out pretty much after I came back, and I was on the run. and I got caught and I was going to court.

Now, this is what I was trying to do. I tried to get an apartment with a guy. I was 16 years old. I said, look, man, I called my dad. I said, look, I got a job. I'm working. I got an apartment. Can I get emancipated?

You know, can you go up there and just let me get emancipated? You know, he led me to believe that he would try it. It was already preordained and worked out. When I got there, I went straight to foster care system. So. So here's the problem when you're a 16-year-old in the foster care system. On paper, no one wants to touch you. You're 16 years old, you're a foster care.

You've been in the game a long time. Even though they don't know the background. I come from a middle-class family, and, you know, I just got in the system. No one wanted to touch me. Damage goods? Exactly. Nobody. So they sent me to a boys home in Russellville, Arkansas, right by Jimmy's Place, Clarksville.

It was called the Sunshine Shelter, and it was anything but sunshine. I'll just say that right now. Creative marketing on the name. But anyway, I stayed there. It was horrible. It was horrible. End up going to court again, and I stayed on the run. One time I came out at a courthouse, I had one of my girlfriends at the time,

followed me. And I said, if I nodded my head when I come out, follow us wherever we go. And I came out, I nodded, and she followed me. and the ladies genuinely tried to help me find a place to go. But at the end of the day, no one wanted a 16-year-old that's been in the system. So they were going to send me back to Sunshine Shelter. And I told the lady straight up, I'll stay here because she was genuinely trying to help me. I'll stay here as long as you can.

But if you tell me you ain't got for me a place to go and I've got to go back to that place, I'm going around the back door and I'm gone. I told her. So she comes at the end of the day. and she was genuine, I'm sorry, we're going to keep working on it, we're going to have to have you go back there. I said, can I get the bathroom real quick? Gone.

Running man. So I stayed on the run, and then when they finally caught me, the judge wised up just about the third time, he says, we're going to take you out of your element and see how you survived then. So from there on out, I had police escort taking me all the way up to Suppressiveville to Sunshine Shelter. So I came back on another court date month later And I'm just really a lot of rage bro That I felt like I was punished

I was kicked out of the house And I'm standing these boys' homes And it was a really confusing hard time for me at that time And I come back and they Try it again I'm in Little Rock this time They're trying again We can't find nobody

We can't find nobody And they were like would you mind living with a black person? I said, no, let's do it. You know what I'm saying? Let's go. They are the nicest people I've ever met in my life. I still, to this day, go see these people, you know. She took me in.

I was the only white kid there, but she didn't make me feel any kind of special type of way. She always treated me as everybody equal, and I loved them. There were great people. I stayed there, and it's a funny story later on the road. The foster dad. was worked in Arkansas Department of Corrections. So you'd run into him later. Yeah, yeah, I ended up running him.

He always said, but spurn up, don't come down in the prison. I think I'm going to help you. I'll say, yes, sir, ma'am. I got out. When I left there, I got with my first wife. I ended up married her. At Hyundai of Glendale, Lisa New,

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Who available at this payment? PH 715229, PH71529, PH714659. Felicia, and I was at this point in my life where I didn't know where I was going. I was not happy where I was at. and I felt stuck. I didn't know what was going on. You know, I was at that awkward time in your life

when you're trying to figure out what you're going to do forever and, you know, I was making a lot of bad decisions and, well, September 11, 2001 happened. I'll never forget,

I was sitting on that couch, getting ready to go to work in the morning, and I turned on the news, and I'm smoking a cigarette and I'm drinking a cup of coffee, and I says, oh, snap. I don't know if I can cussling her or not, but I said, oh, snap.

You could cuss. And, um, I seen that plane, I said, I said, Alicia, get up. There's a terrible accident of plane landing into one of the World Trade Center buildings, you know. And, you know, she ain't getting up. So I'm watching this. And then on live TV, when I seen that second plane come in and hit that tower, I said, this ain't no accident. And from that moment on, there was not, there was nothing I was more sure of in my life that I was going to do.

And that was going to be served my country. So I then started the process of joining the military right after September 11th. A lot of people did, actually. And I thought, this is it, man. Uncle Sam is going to help me. He's going to be the answer to all my problems, right? And that was the furthest thing from truth, by the way. I found out later.

But the Army did teach me a lot, man. You know, my dad was in. I said, maybe this is we. I'm going to make my dad proud, joining the military. You know what I'm saying? I'm finally doing something with my life. So my dad was medical and I just couldn't look myself in the mirror and say I was anything but infantry in the Army. I mean, the infantry is the backbone of the military.

Everybody else backs us up. And I just couldn't, my pride, and a lot of pride at the time, wouldn't allow me to do anything else but infantry. So I joined right after September 11th. The day before my birthday, I signed up. They see no I ship out. I'm at Fort Bend in Georgia and doing basic training in AIT. And I complete that. I come home.

And I was an National Guard. And the ex-wife I had the baby mama. She was born. My son was born. Well, there you go. She brought a bunch of hot checks in my name. Now, get on this. I got the best luck in the world, man, I'm telling you.

I'm at basic, bro. I didn't know anything that's going on back here in the rear with all the gear. She writes a lot of hot checks my name. As soon as I touched down in Arkansas, I'm with my brother. We're driving and we get pulled over. And I'm going to jail in full dress A uniform for some hot checks I know nothing about. It's great, good times, great times. So I get out of jail and my wife went on a Hotor, currently comes to the neighborhood near you at the time.

But we weren't married at the time. You know, but she went on Hotor. She was consistent about that, too, by the way. And so me being young and dumb, I stayed with her. You know what I mean? I learned a lot from that relationship as well. But right before we went to summer camp, and I remember right after summer camp,

I'd got my orders cut to be at military police. I was wanting to try and get money trainings in I could, you know. And I go to Little Rock to turn my paper at my orders in to go to MP school. And they were like, oh, no, you're 11B, you're staying 11B. And that's when I knew we was fixing to go to Iraq before it was even put out. So the timing of all this happened was my wife got pregnant. She got pregnant at the time. And right before I got activated, going to Iraq.

My son was born maybe a month or so before I went to Iraq. and so I go to Iraq. I'm training. We are at Fort Hood, Texas. And I'm training to go to Iraq. And, man, I look back on it. I was one of those, let's kill them all. You know, let's do this, you know.

Just I think back at that time of my life and it was just just what I try to tell everyone today is, it's that silver spoon in our mouth, that cockiness that Americans have that we live in this bubble and we think nothing exists that we're untouchable. I was in that cloud. Because that's true.

We are. A lot of people here don't understand it. We think that we got to make it. And literally, I've been outside this country several times. No one really likes us outside this country. I don't know if anybody knows that or not, but they're not really friends of ours, you know. And they should.

For the most part, we do have silver spoons in our mouth. We are, take a lot of stuff for granted. You know, but it's America. That's the best country in the world. So when I found that last Will and Testament, bro, that's when everything hit me. I like, shit's getting real, you know. And so I kind of got forced into a marriage,

and I know it sounds crazy. She didn't put a gun on here or nothing, but it was the right thing to do type situation. I'm, you know, fix to go to Iraq. Army says, we're not going to take care of your son unless you're married. I didn't want to leave him with nothing if that was the case. So I got married. The worst mistake everybody in my life.

One of them. I made a few. But that was on the top list. Like I said, I'm getting ready to go to Iraq. I get on the plane and I'm flying. She went on a whole tour. I'm telling you, like, Debbie does doubt I think I've got nothing on her. You know what I'm saying?

So spend all my money. You know what I'm saying? I was with in this relationship for eight years. You accumulated a lot of shit in eight years. I didn't have a pair of underwear when I got back. Let's just put it like that. You know what I'm saying? It was bad.

So I'm in Iraq, and it was, man, it was so different. I remember never in my life ever again will I get on a commercial plane with two machine guns and sit on a plane and fly somewhere, which was pretty cool. We went to Czechoslovakia, we went to Ireland, We went to, you know, all these stops before we had to get there. And then we hit Kuwait, and it was like, I was training in the desert for desert training at Fort Polka, Louisiana, and sleep and rain, ice. And I was like, wow, that's what we're training for the desert for. But anyway, I go to Iraq, I get off that plane, it just felt like 30 blow dryers, full blast, max heat, blowing you.

And it was intense. And I was like, oh, snap, this is terrible. and I mean we get out of the plane they hand us our magazines right there on the spot you know so we're going we're staying at this place called Camp

Camp City we had a bunch of New Yorkers got New Yorkers attached to us which they were pretty crazy I'm going to say that right now and it was a place called Camp New York and it was in the desert man it was so beautiful over there

it was it's real crazy coming from a small town in Arkansas and then just travel the world like that. You know, my dad used to have this awesome bumper sticker. It said, only in the Army where you can travel to exotic places, meet new exotic people, and kill them. So it was pretty cool to be able to do this. And I just think back, you know, I would have never been able to do this except never really with what never happened.

You know what I'm saying? This is what changed my life to what I'm doing today. And so I'm in Iraq. I was selected to be a part of my battalion commander's personal security team, which basically is a bodyguard, pretty much. It sums it up. But we escort the commander all over Baghdad. We have to go and observe every raid.

And the politics in it, you know, they're trying to develop these villages and turn them into like mayors and trying to get everything set up. So we're on top of rooftops, 130-degree weather, pulling security, counter-snifers. windows, we're checking everything out. There's a lot of that stuff that's going on. So we're going there and everything's good. I think they assigned me to be the turret gunner. I don't know if you know what the turret gunner position is.

The one in the truck? Yeah, well, we're all in the truck. In the Humvee? Like on the top? On the strap, yeah. It's literally a strap that's just like this. And you sit and that's how you mount on the machine gun. And that's probably pretty dangerous, right?

You're exposed? It is what? Well, it is. And it was one of the most, at that time, dangerous positions to be in. Because when we went over there in 04, bro, at the end of, you know, got activated 03, went in 04, there was none of this high-speed walls they had built up around the turrets. We went over there with Humvees from Arkansas, bro, and it had canvas top hoods on it. We're talking before we went into Iraq, we're going to the Boneyard in Kuwait,

row. We're stripping. It's like a bunch of meth wars. You know what I'm saying? a bunch of guys stripping off these metal and adding it on our Humvees and sandbags in the floor bag, bro, top speed, 22 miles an hour. It's crazy, man, you know what I'm saying? But that's what we went over there with. And, yeah, so we get there, we do that.

I'll never forget the convoy. We're going from New York, Kent, New York, to Baghdad. And it was a 72-hour convoy. and I'll try to put things in perspective for you. We were coming in, and our convoy stretched out 26 miles. That's how much, how many people were coming in.

And we had air support coming. We had everything. And long time. So we get into Baghdad. I'll never forget this, man. I'll just tell you what kind of asshole I was back then when I first got. This was how young and dumb I was. We get into Baghdad.

Dad, before we're outside of Baghdad, they stop us. They say, hey, we're having to split these routes up. You know, I'm thinking shit's at the fan. They're ambushing up here. We need to make more gun trucks. Okay, so we were escorting a group from Pennsylvania to come in. And they were a communications unit. We were escorting them in, in the convoy.

So they need more gun trucks. We jump out, and here we're at, all right, who's going to volunteer, man? My dad always told me. son don't ever volunteer anything in the army. But it was that moment, man. I felt like, this is me. I got to do it. So I look at my buddy.

I was like, hey, man, if anything happens to me, man. You're like, man, stop and shut up, man. So I come out of my fully up armor and hummer, all right, because we're escorting, we're using their hummers to get out and make a gun truck. So I go into the lead commander's vehicle, which was a canvas top hummer. We rolled the top back. I look in there as an ice chest in there, right? I'm like, oh, this would be great, man.

I can just sit on this ice chest, and I can do this, and I'll never forget his name, Captain Prendergast. And as soon as I sit on that thing, I laid the saw, which is a squad automatic weapon, 250 round drum. I got it sitting up there. I got my AG with me, Assistant Gunner. He's got the barrels and the more drums. And I'm sitting there, and he says,

uh, yeah, if you wouldn't put all your weight on that ice chest, I'm going to be here for a while. I'm going to need it. And I'm thinking myself, dude, I'll just come out of this up Hummer and Hummer to come up here and be a gun truck for you. I kicked it out the way. Take that damn thing. Get out of here.

So, pull security. This is how we're going into Baghdad. And I'm nervous. I'm scared to death, bro. I'm not going to see her in front. I was scared to death. They were teachers of the culture of Iraq, you know, the Iraqis. You can't show on the bottom of your feet.

You can't shake with your left hand. You know, he's still wiping her ass with that. over there. Hate to interrupt this amazing episode, guys, but I need to tell you about find a great attorney. It's a free service revolutionizing the way injured parties find one of the best personal injury attorneys in their area. I've known the founder, Richard Hastings, for a long time, and I'm impressed with his abilities as a lawyer and how much he really cares about his clients.

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You can't do this. You know what I'm saying? That means if your wife or your mother, you know what I'm saying? And this means stop, Kif, Kif, stop, right? And this is how you flip off over there. Okay? So we're flying through these intersections. And I, in my mind, nervous, I was just, instead of doing this, I went like this.

And I'm doing it both ways. So I'm flipping all these people off going through these intersections, bro. and they're not happy people at this point. You know what I'm saying? I was a mistake on my part. But anyway, we get into Baghdad and we're right outside of Taji. And it was, bro, it was the saddest thing I've ever seen in my life. It was a landfill as far as the eyes could see like an ocean of a landfill right outside of Baghdad.

I'm seeing people's houses built up in this garbage. I see kids walking around naked looking for food. in this garbage. I see cows walking around with their hips. They're so skinny. Their hips are protruding. There was like no meat on them. You know what I'm saying?

It was crazy. It was a sad one. You know, coming from Arkansas, it was a huge culture shock for me. And I'll never forget that day, man. The smells in Baghdad were so terrible, so terrible. If I smelled today, I'd probably throw up. And I saw that, and that was really humbling to me because, you know, this is a There's not no commercial just 27 cents a day you can feed them.

This is real shit, and I'm seeing this. But they told us under no circumstances, are we to feed any Iraqis or give any Iraqis water? And you need have to worry about that for me, bro. I wasn't there for no vacation. I was cocky, and I thought I was 10 foot tall and bulletproof. And I see up the line this Iraqi coming around here, and he had this piece of paper. hand and he's ripping it up and he throws it at this officer and it just confetti's down and I'm

like what the hell's this dude doing over here man this is an officer got out and all his infinite wisdom so this is an officer gets out do it throws the paper in his face and I'm like it like oh yeah and it's about 15 trucks up I'm watching this so apparently we had declared martial law on Iraq at that time and if you're out past 7 o'clock well fuck if around to find out because that's not going to be good for you. So it was the Wild Wild West No, 4. I'm just here to tell you. It was crazy.

And anyway, this officer and all his infinite wisdom said, I'm going to give him an MRE and had a soldier, two soldiers, get out of their Hummer and pick every bit of that confetti up. Meanwhile, I'm looking at my left and my right, and I'm seeing a landfill as far as the eyes can see, man. And I'm like, who the hell is this dude? What the hell's going on here? So he gave him that MRI, he gave him that MRI, and he'd come walking down the line.

And I said, this mother coming down here, he stops right by my Humvee, and I'm looking down at him. He says, Wawa, Wawa! I said, dude talking to me. I'll tell you, that dick I was, bro. I feel bad today, man. I pick up this leading a half bottle of water. I open it up. I turn it up like a 40 ounce.

Poured the rest out on him and threw the bottle at him. I'm going to say that because of this. The more I got on this personal security team, I ended up getting kicked off for showing too much aggression toward the Iraqis. Okay. So, anyway, I was a dick. Today I feel bad about that. I really do feel bad about that the way I treated those folks.

But, you know, part of me does, part of me don't, man. You just had to have been there to understand. So that's how it started my tour off coming in. We come into Baghdad at Camp Cook and Taji. And it was six miles by six miles. It was huge army post. And anyway, since we walk in, we park, and there was about 13 motor rounds come in. Doof, doof, do, do, do, do, do, do, they started walking them in.

And everybody's like, what is that? And I was like, welcome home, boys. It's going to be a long ride here, man. They'd walk these motor rounds in all over the place, you know what I'm saying? And then you got our guys, our artillery, around the place. They're going to get the coordinates. They're going to fire back at them. Doo, do, do, do.

But these dudes, I swear, like McGiver, bro. I mean, they can't read or write or wipe their ass with a toolpaper, but I tell you what, they can make a bomb. And they were really proficient at it, you know. These guys would have a metal rack with wire and a big diesel batter, and they're firing rockets at us, bro. In the back of a moving truck, there was no way for artillery to zero in and hit them. They were dropped in row.

And, you know, sometimes they were good. You know, it was six miles by six miles. You're just playing battleship at that point, you know what I'm saying? So anyway, Taji, I thought was a hellhole, but they were Americanized, you know, it had street names. They had street names, roads, buses, picking people up, taking them all over the post, and they had a PX, and they had chow halls. And they're serving four meals a day, you know, at midnight one, and permission to go in the morning hour. I mean, it was legit. I thought, when I first got there, I thought, oh, man, this place is a hellhole.

But we moved from there to a place called Gunslinger. We opened up a fob by the Water Treatment Center called Gunslinger. It was right next to the college. Man, that was a hellhole. I mean, that was, when we went to Todgy, that was like a vacation, bro. When we were going there with the colonel, we knew that we was going to stock up with our PX. We're going to do it. They had a big building, man.

It was just nothing but Nintendo stations, PlayStation. You can just go in there and just play games. I mean, in Air Condition 10. That was great. You know, they'd come a long way when we first got there. But April 24th, man, start coming around. Let me just give it back on this. They assigned me to that turret gunner position, and I hated it.

And I didn't want to be there. I wanted to be a dismount. To me, that's where the action was. And I was a bit of an action junkie. Anyway, so I complained, I complained, I complained, and finally they gave us a new guy to our fire team, came into our squad. And he knew how much I wanted to be a dismount, so he volunteered, took my spot. So I'm like, bet, everything is going great now. I'm a dismount.

This is going to be great. So we went to Camp Taji. We ended up coming back to gunslinger, and we get the word that they fired in morning rounds, and it killed three people. And those three people from Arkansas, one was reading a Bible in a lawn chair and a mortar round lever on top of him. And one of the captains died, Beau Felding from North Ler Rock. He was killed, and it was, that's when reality starts sinking in, bro. You know what I'm saying? That untouchable bubble I said we was all living in

and started diminishing at this point, you know what I'm saying? And I was like, damn, that was April 24th. So when somebody dies over there, they cut all the phones off. No one can make any calls home because they got to wait to the first contact family. They contact their families back home. So now, you know, you just want to talk to somebody at this point that you know and love. You know what I'm saying? And you just couldn't do it.

So it usually took about 72 hours where they turned the phones back on. So the next day, April 25th, 2004, we ain't been in country long, bro. I mean, not at all. We were still doing, just got off what they call right seat rides. You know, since the people we replaced

was the 4th Infantry Division. We ride with them. They ride, you know, they'll ride shotgun with us and they'll take us through all these routes and they show us how to get, that's called a right-seat ride. and you basically know where your zone is. I mean, pretty much, we're like glorified cops on the cool,

except with different ROE, rules of engagement, and you patrolled it, and that's what we did, in essence. So, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, bro. There's a shift coming on. They're patrolling the streets where we're raiding houses. You know, they're doing it. And so, April 25th happened that morning. It was a Sunday morning.

It was early. I'm dismount. Well, they asked me to be a driver that day. So I was like, all right, so I'm driving. Well, the Humvee that we had did not have a, it was a canvas-top hummer. There was nothing. So he volunteered to jump in the truck ahead of us that had an actual turret gunner. And this was a fully up-armored Hummer.

They started slowly but surely started creeping one of these new hummers in. to each platoon. We were just waiting on our turn to get ours, you know. But anyway, he gets in the turret gunner, we're riding. And we are lost. Okay, we're lost in Baghdad. And you don't understand, man. This place was like, they turned it to a jungle as far as they put concrete barriers up.

We're driving down the one way or the wrong way. I mean, dude, we're running people off the road. We're throwing batteries at you if you're getting too close to us, slingshot and stuff at you. If you're trying to come in our convoy. I mean, it was, it was wild over there, bro. So we were lost. We're driving in Baghdad, and we passed this kill zone three times, bro. And that third time we passed it, the biggest explosion I'd ever seen in my life.

I mean, it had to be, it had to go up at least 100 feet up in there explosion. It was huge. It was a 1-5-5 round, bro. I don't know if you know what that is, but it's an artillery shell. packed up stillball bearings, and they had it perfectly arched on the side of the road. So when it blew, it blew up and out.

And I was the second Hummer. And when it exploded, it picked my Hummer up three or four feet off the ground, just from the blast. And I remember hitting the ground, and I was stunned. And my team leader's over here, and he's just like, go, go, go!

So I ended up hitting the gas. I'm throwing through flames, dirt, dust, smoke. And what we was trying to do at that point in time we were there was the vehicle that gets hit, the next vehicle behind it blow through that kill zone. The other two, we only had four hummers in this personal security team, okay? So the first two blow through, the last two stay back. You get out, you start pulling security, you start trying to find this trigger man. And, well, we found out pretty quick that finding the trigger man,

hands like catching a crackhead. Shit just don't happen. You know what I'm saying? They're pretty quick. And so this bomb wheels off. Now the first timer pulls up pretty far up from me. And I stop. We jump out.

I'm pulling security. I got my in four in my hand. And bro, I'm scared to death. I probably said a million cuss words just back to back. I mean, dude, I was, I ain't going to front a bit. I was scared to death. You know what I'm saying? At this point, I thought everybody was okay.

So I'm watching. I'm looking for his trigger man. I'm trying to take it all in. I'm trying to process all this in real time. See what's going on. I start seeing this. I was on a four-lane highway, right? I start seeing this fence over here.

I don't know. It was about a 12 to 18-foot chain link fence. But there was Iraqis building up on it coming up to it. And they were swaying this fence down. And I'm just freaking out because now I'm doing math in my head, bro. We got one-humber down. Curried a one, carried a two, track three. I'll try to see what we got to do

because there's 20 or 30 people up on this fence, bro, trying to sway it down. So I got one eye on that. I'm watching. I see this guy, this Iraqi, out in the middle of this field, had one of them geyser blades. You know what I'm saying?

And he's cutting this grass. I'm thinking to myself, this bomb just went off, bro. You know what I'm saying? And this dude's out here cutting grass like everything's okay. That's the mentality of these folks over there. You know what I'm saying?

The culture shock for me coming from a small town in Arkansas, gravel ridge, thrown here. And that's, they live this life. This is what they, this is what they do, man. You know what I'm saying? It was really hard for me to take that in and understand that. And so I thought, this is no way.

This got to be the trigger man. 100% take it. I put my paycheck on it, bro. So I dropped to a knee, man. I'm cussing, me and cussboard, scared to death. I point my M4 at him. And I'm seeing this guy through the red dot. and I'm sitting there

and then the major comes down the line. Don't you pull that trigger unless you positively identify the trigger man. Since I couldn't positively identify him, I didn't shoot him, so I put the weapon down. So I'm back pulling security. I'm scanning my sector. I'm watching everything that's going on.

I've seen this fence. More Iraqis coming up on this fence trying to sway it down, trying to come to us. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is about turn crazy. So the combat medics in Iraq were spread pretty thin so they didn't have really enough

combat medics to stretch out because there's no supposed to be a combat medic attached to everybody. It goes out. So what they did is, is they assigned a person in each fire team to be what they call a combat lifesaver, a CLS. So I was chosen to be a CLS for my fire team. And

the major comes down the line again, man, and he says keep your eyes open, we already have one KIA. And then dude. That's what shit just hit me, man. I'm thinking who the hell just died? You know what I'm saying? We were a tight squad.

You know what? I couldn't fathom what was going on. So as I sat there and I'm scared of death bro and I'm trying to soak all this thing. I'm processing all this. I'm watching these guys over on his fence. I'm checking this guy over here. It was crazy.

Then he comes down the line and says, I need to see a less truck. So I jump in the truck. We pull up to the Humvee. And man, it was chaos. I mean, when I pulled up to it, I mean, it was something out of the freaking movies, bro. I mean, it just would look like. I jump out.

I got my CLS bag. And there was a sergeant. Old Arkansas boy had to wind it down. And it was a fully up armor and hammer. So he had thick armor. But it's hot, too. You know what I'm saying? So you've got to weigh your options there.

You know what I'm saying? Sweat in the sweat box. at least get some airflow in there. He has an arm up like this in the window. And when he did that, when an explosion detonated, ball barons came through, and one ball baron hit him right here in the hand and both his fingers were hanging.

And when I came up to this guy, bro, dude's a freaking warrior. You know what I'm saying? He, Com's day, looked at me, and just said, wrap it. And I was like, oh, my gosh, dude. So I pick his hands up and we're wrapping it up. I set him on the curb.

and there was the most craziest screaming I've ever heard in my life. And I was like, what the hell's going on, man? So I go in, I go in through the passenger door, when I had to pull that sergeant out, and the driver of the vehicle, he took shrapnel that came in, the ballbearance came in, caused more metal, and it sliced, flayed his back open.

Like, it went right up under his vest right here and just flayed his back open. He is screaming bloody murder. He would not let us take his vest off, because it took this, moving that. So they had to cut this dude's vest off, which is Kevlar, which is no easy task, by the way. I'm just saying this is what the adrenaline is doing. He cuts it, split, they open it up.

We patch him up. We pull him out of the Humvee, we set him down. I go back in the Humvee. I see the guy in the backseat, back passenger side. He had his window up, and there was ball bearings all in his glass, this armor. And dude was just staring at the window, man. He had that thousand yards there going. He was really contemplating shit.

And I just remember yelling his name, man, over and over before he finally came to and looked at me. And I said, you're all right, man. And he said, yeah. So he jumps out of the Humvee. And the last guy in there was behind the driver's seat. He had trapnel in his forehead because then Bob Barron's came in, hit me, and called Moore Stratton. He'll go all over the place. And he was bleeding a little bit.

And I said, you're all right? And he's like, yeah, man. So he got out of Humphi, and we sat him down. Then we go back in, and the turret gunner's left, and he slumped over the turret gunner. So we're talking, let's talk about standard weight. You're going to have your vest on, your two plates. The SOP, standard operating procedure was you have to have 17-30-hour mags at all times. Grenades, flashbangs, and that's just standard operating procedure.

Now you could add more to it. Basically, you had your whole kitchen sink, everything on this vest, everything you needed. So I could not bring him down through the bottom of the Humvee. So I literally had to get out and had to get on top of the Humvee, and we had to pick him up through the top, lay him on the top, bring him down to the hood, and then bring him down to the ground. And the guy who volunteered took my spot was in that Humvee. and so I started doing CPR on him

and he was gone man there was nothing I could do about it and I had blood from head to toe and they finally grabbed me and said there's nothing we could do we got to go we got to go so me and my other buddy picked him up we buddy carried him to the back of my Humvee we put him in the backseat of my Humvee

and we were instructed in to go back to that hump B and we had to rip out all sensitive items out of this hummer. We're talking radios, we're talking Blue Force Tracker, we're talking ammo, we're talking food, we're talking maps, anything had to be stripped out. So they got this team called a QRF, which is a quick reaction for us. And their job is to, in case shit happens, you're going there straight up. Everyone rotates it and goes to this rotation.

You go through it for like a week. You know, we all fall in a rotation. One week we're just QRF. We're there in case it pops off. They're on the way. They're en route. But we have wounded in one KIA, so we had to get to an A station quick.

So we rip all the sensitive items out. And I'm watching this guy, man. He's a freaking monster, bro. He's ripping, I don't know to this day how he got this shit out of that Humvee without tools. He ripped this shit out of there pretty much. And I just remember this Blue Force tracker, which was I thought probably the most,

high-speedest thing you've ever seen in your life. It's an up-to-date, real-time satellite imagery. You can call fire missions off this thing. It was like a, this is 04, bro. Imagine what they got now. Yeah, it's probably nuts now. Yeah, imagine what they have now, bro. This is back then. I thought I was like, oh, my gosh, just CIA shit here, you know? But anyway, he ripped that out. Do it. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it

all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed. Pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 30% your first year at lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply. All right, class, settle down. Today's lesson is on the Argo Rewards app. Try to stay with me. The fundamentals are simple. Earn at least five cents a gallon in rewards, then redeem them later for up to a off every gallon. Now here's where it gets complicated. Oh, wait, it doesn't. It's as simple as downloading the Arco Rewards app to get started.

Class dismissed. Savings of up to $1 per gallon redeemable with $20 rewards dollars in your loyalty account. At participating locations, terms and conditions apply. That's our blue four strike. That's our GPS. Just keep that in mind. So he throws that. We jump in Humby.

I'm the second Hummer again. We're driving. and we're going through all these mazes. We pulled at this place called Mauders Monument, and it looked like a big Hershey Kiss, if you can mention it, a huge Hershey kiss, split. They all set each other. We pulled in there.

And when we pulled in there, they told us at the gate, we don't have an A station. You're going to have to turn back around and go to the green zone. And I thought, oh, my gosh, this is crazy. We got wounded, you know, adrenaline's pumping, man. and we roll back out. I'm second Humvee again.

We're going through this maze. In order to get to the green zone, we had to pass the crash site again, right? So we had these concrete barriers up, and it was like literally a maze. So we had to come do a U-turn so we can get to the green zone. As we're coming up on it,

that Humvee of ours was there, and there was a four-lane highway. And they had done raised the hood up on this Humvee, doused it with gasoline, lit it on fire, and they're up there dancing and prays them all on top of this Humvee. And the rage that we got from that, that I had from that was unbelievable. So I remember seeing my buddy gets on that 240,

he was in the front Humvee and got on that 2-4 and started laying down rounds downrange and just was wiping these people out. And it was the first bit of combat I had seen in that realm, you know. What was going through your mind when he was doing that? This is not a game anymore. This is real shit. I got my buddy that's dead in the backseat, man. I got a guy pretty much sitting on his legs.

And we see that shit, and I see George Pulley take off. It's just start firing these rounds downrange, bro. And cars had stopped even with this hundred. Humph B, man. He hit every windshield. They started running like roaches. He's taking them out, man. Said a guy get hit on the shin that was on top of the Humvee, flipped him off that Humvee when he hit that pavement. Everybody started running. And so he, so picture of mine is concrete barrier, right? He's coming up like this, shooting, and he just pulls out to the front like this, and he's laying rounds down range. and I'm the second Humvee. I come around.

I got my buddy in the back seat. He's got a saw. He's laying rounds down range out there. We bust this curve. The third Hummer come up. His name was Pappy. The oldest son of a bitch in the U.S. Army who was the E4. The E4 Mafia, baby.

He just didn't want to change. He had a saw and a 240 at the same time. Just laying rounds down range. So, I, I guess. come around his curve, I'm the lead Hummer. I'm a lead convoy on this. Now I'm freaking hell out. Because I don't know where the hell I'm going.

And the last Humvee, the one that started firing first, he pulled in and pulled in, and he was in the rear. That was the officer who had a radio to the talk tactical operations center at battalion headquarters. So since we don't have a Blue Force tracker anymore, we don't have a GPS. We don't know where the hell we're going. We're trying to get to the green zone. So I'm waiting on the officer back there who's getting instructions from talk telling them which way to turn.

He then gets on another radio to tell my team leader who's sitting next to me, go left, go right, go left. And then he's relating to me all in real time. You know that was a cluster. Okay. And I freaked out, dude. I was, I cannot tell you the amount of stress I had in that time, man. It was crazy. I'm screaming.

I'm yelling. where am I going, where am I going, where am I going, and I'm waiting on this cluster for all this information to come out in real time. So he tells me right before we turn, he says turn right, turn right, turn right. So I turn right, and as I turn right, and this is a market area. Like they got 7-Elevens over there. You know, they don't have gas stations.

They have outdoor market areas. There was literally hundreds of people on both sides of street. and it was like these buildings the street was in between it and the sidewalks were in between that and that's the market area we pulled right on the street and as I'm turning I see a guy on the rooftop

come out with a K pops up over the roof and I yelled AK AK AK AK those start opening fire on us so in essence what we think it happened was was that they were not expecting us to come back

they were going to ambush the QRF team coming in. But we came back and they ambushed us. So now we're hitting. It's a crowded area. It's kind of like New York City

and these cars are everywhere. People are walking everywhere. And I'm ramming these cars. Bam, bam, bam, bam. It's my job and my duty and my responsibility now to get out of this area of operations. I got a whole team behind me

and these people are firing. I'm in a canvas top Hummer with a top I'm just waiting for a round to come in and touch one of us you know what I'm saying so I'm driving I got my M4 out the window

three round burst and bro I'm gonna be straight up with a disclaimer I don't know if this is going to come back to bite me an ass but I was laying rounds down range scared to death didn't know what I was shooting at didn't know what was going on I look over man

and that's I'm telling you man it was just like slow motion self-thustrated out of the movies, man. I look over and see my team leader. He's hanging out of the Humvee busting rounds on these guys on his rooftops. And I'm seeing these guys fall off these buildings like old Western movies, bro.

And I got, we had an up-armored kit on our Humvee. All right? So that means where the canvas type Hummer stopped, there was a gap between this up-armored kit to come around. So there was an opening that goes just like this all the way across the side. So my buddy picks his saw up

and he's laying down rounds from building top to building top to building top as I'm driving through here. And I don't know if you've ever been hit with a hot shell before, hot brass. I don't think I would ever have been hit by anything. Well, if you did, you'd definitely know about it. Just imagine all three of us in this Humvee

firing at the same time. One's got an automatic weapon. My ears are ringing, bro. It's loud. And when he's spraying these rounds, those rants, those brass are coming out the other side. And it's hit me on my neck as I'm driving. And it burnt the shit out of my neck, bro. And I remember leaning my helmet back like this and hearing that brass just

did-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-off my helmet. It was slow-motion. It felt like it was the most intense. the most intense thing I've ever been in my life at that point of time. And it was crazy. I can't tell you the thought process I had going on then. I was just trying to get out of this area of operations. I ended up hitting a car and he jackknifed.

And we stopped. About that time, I see a Zuzu truck over there. He picks up a AK-47 collapsible stock. And I picked M. 4 up and I fired three rounds of burst. It went door, shoulder, neck, flopped over. And when he flopped over, man, I looked over there, I've seen this kid could have been older 10 or 12 years old. I was big of silver dollars.

And that, to this day, haunts me. And, you know, I just can't imagine, you know, if somebody had done that to my son, you know what I'm saying? This is all later down the road thinking, you know, right, not the time. But my dad told me before I went to Iraq, he said, son, you're going to go to war. You're going to come back and you're going to think everybody's changed. But in reality, it's going to be you that's changed. and I never really sank you until I got back to understand what you meant on that. And this is just all within like your first few months, right?

Yeah, just got there, bro. Wow. And just got there. So I back up for that jackknife. I pull around and I'm drive through. It felt like it took 30 minutes. Probably took three minutes. You know what I'm saying?

Just getting through this area of operations. I smashed through it. Let me get out. And I'm just like crazy that none of us got hit from the same. canvas-type roof. You know what I'm saying? The rounds are hitting a Hummer. They just didn't hit the roof.

And I was like, oh my gosh, dudes, we're driving. We get to the green zone. I pull up at the green zone. And brother, it was already on the CNN news called the Baghdad massacre. There was 109 killed seven children. And let me tell you what they used to do, though. What they used to do was stage an explosion like that. They wouldn't show that part.

They would film the retaliation part of us fighting for our life. They would film that and post that all over the news media here back home. And that's what they did for their media, the RPO war, PR wars. That's what they were doing. Well, they had to show it was being effective. The war was being effective. So back home, all you hear to see is us killing everybody, shooting everybody and blowing everything out. They don't show the shit that happened before.

that. So it was already on Al Jazeera. Al Jury, cross-referenced that shared it to CNN, headline news. It was on headline news. And all the doctors and team was waiting for us out when we pulled up. And the bullet holes and humpies, it was crazy. We get out and they take the wounded, they take my buddy that was killed, Kenneth Melton, God bless your soul, thank you for your service.

Pull him in there and we're sitting there. And this is where shit gets crazy, man. So I got to pull of blood this thick in the back seat of my humber that I'm driving for my buddy. And I'm just, I'm sitting over and I'm looking at this, man. I'm just trying to process all this. It's intense, craziness I've ever seen in my life. I'm just like, what the fuck just happened, you know? So a teammate comes to us and says, hey, we need to get together.

We got a quarterback this. they were locking soldiers up for wrongful killing over there. You know what I'm saying? And I just don't agree with that at all. Now, granted, if you're just going around to killing folks, that's one thing. But if you're in war and combat happens, you know what I'm saying? Unless you've been in that split decision, one or two seconds to pull that trigger or not, you don't have no idea what I'm talking about.

But those who have know what I'm talking about, I get it. So we had to quarterback our story, bro. and we had to say this is what we're going to do this is what happened and I'm saying that because I was shooting out a window I can't tell you how many people was hit

I don't know I was focused on the road I was scared to death so by all rights I could have been locked up and arrested been in prison for that the quarterbacked our story we got everything together we figured out what was going to say which we told the truth

but, you know, that ambush part, you know, I shouldn't, maybe it shouldn't, a couple of us did that, you know, shouldn't have done that. But anyway, neither here or there. A combat stress team flew in. And we had, I remember taking us up to this room and had this, like, big presidential oval desk, big long desk. We had to sit around this big long desk. And these guys flew in. And they sit down. We had to give our name rank.

Social Security never told them what happened. Well, you already know, and I told you before my childhood that I'm not a very expressful type person. I don't talk about my feelings, and especially something like this. And if I really didn't have no talk for these guys, man, I wouldn't. It really a Dr. Philly-ass type of dude, man. You know what I'm saying? And so I gave my name rank, Social Security, never said what happened the best I could. And they let us go.

So we go back. and this is where it gets even worse. Not only do I feel guilty now because that should have been me on that Humvee, but I complain like a piece of shit until he volunteered to take my spot. Now he's gone. So I had a lot of survivors' guilt from that.

And to make things worse, I was instructed to take the Humvee and get to clean all the blood out of the Humvee. It's not I'm cleaning The guy's blood out Who volunteered took my spot, man So I pull up At this place

When they told me to go And they've been through this drill before They've been here a long time You know, they were the first wave that came in They got simple green They got water hoses And as soon as they open the door It was like no questions asked

They open the door pop it open Start spraying simple green Start scrubbing everything out And I felt disrespected as fuck man because I mean like this is my buddy man

y'all just blowing this shit out like it ain't nothing you know what I'm saying I really had feeling some type of way about that whole operation and that one guy saw that and he pulled him by the side and he just talked to me man kind of calmed me down

had to get all the blood cleaned out got all the blood cleaned out go back to the fob I mean go back to where I was at and then I was instructed by captain to go through all his personal belongings. And I had to read every one of his letters.

I had to check everything on his computer. I had to look through everything he had. I invade this man's privacy. He just volunteered for me, dying from me. I mean, it just, it really, it was hard time for me in my life at then. The word is, they told me it cannot say anything to devile the, you know, the Army's name or his family's name. So I'm looking at reading all his notes.

Anything that could be possibly that could hurt his family, his name, or the U.S. Army had to be taken. The Army took his hard drive, that was a laptop, lifting with nothing. They took all his electronics, SIM cards, blast drive, everything. And I'm reading letters. And there was a picture of him holding somebody else's kids. Could have been, I don't know what that's going on, but I couldn't send that home. So I had to take all this crap out, man. and I just felt like the biggest piece of shit

in my entire life right then at that moment my life and I get all that done I get back to the fob at Gunslinger I think I stayed up for 24 hours pretty much on just pure adrenaline alone just like really self-reflecting on what just fuck happened it was crazy do you wish you had told those

those people that came flew out to talk to you guys how you really felt looking back on it now? No, they were really just wanting to know what happened. You know what I'm saying? And I would never volunteer to say, hey, I put my M4 out of window and I was just laying rounds down range. I would never volunteer at that time. But I'm still, I wasn't a Dr. Philly type of ass dude.

But I was reflecting on just how serious the shit is, what it just happened. and I have to write a letter to his wife now. And gosh, man, that was rough, bro. That was rough. And, I mean, what do you say? You know what I'm saying? I mean, so they allowed us to call our families.

I remember there's a nine-hour difference from here and there. And I think I called. It was like 2 o'clock in the morning when I called. And I remember, I'm like calling my dad. and just crying that is what's going on you know anyway

like I said it was already on CNN it was this is nuts how the PR war was going on and everything that was going on with the politics of this war that was going on with that so uh

went to the funeral you know they had a little memorial there and everybody's crying it went to dry out of the room in I'll never forget we all got to go in there two by two the day he was killed at the hospital.

And this is just how young I was, man. The doctor that was there was a Muslim. He was the U.S. Army, who's a Muslim. And when I seen that moon and the star on his collar, I just like, bro, how could you be this? I had a lot of hatred to that guy, man. You know, I was very young at this time. I just couldn't look at him. why would you represent anything like this when this just happened

this dude right here? You know what I'm saying? I just couldn't fathom it. So I remember tapped him on his chest. I said, we got him back, brother. That was the last thing I said to him. And we went out, our commander talked to us, and said, we still got a mission to do.

We still got a job to do. Mission first. So we blocked that out. We put it back of our memory. We drive on. And it was crazy. That set the tone for the whole tour right there that was on. How long did you stay in Iraq for?

We came back in 05. So you did about a year? Yeah. Maybe 14 months over there. And then you did the rest of your service time in the States or you were able to just get discharged? Yeah. So as up there, the rest of the tour,

it was kind of off and on. And what I mean about that? It was like they wouldn't do nothing to you for a while. You know, then all they're doing is regrouping. You know, then they assault us again. They hit us IDs and it would just be crazy shit all the time. And then they, you know, we kicked their ass. They stop.

And I got kicked off the PSD team. And let's just rewind the things that's going on back home. My wife saw that whole tour. I'm calling home. she's never there. You know what I'm saying? My first father's day I call home. I'll never forget this, man.

First father's day, I call home, and a dude answered my phone. Proceeded to tell me, never call again on the phone. I'm paying for it 10,000 miles away. And said that he's got a new daddy now. I thought, he's just a special fucking people, bro. How can you, dude's going to serve your country

and you fucking being like that, bro? That takes a special. cap of do right there, man. You know, I just couldn't understand it.

So right after that, we had some mortar rounds land in this on the farm. You say that just so casually. Yeah,

I mean, it happened all the time pretty much, man, but I get off the phone, we was in this Hodgy stand and we got to

use the phone and as soon as I come out, they rocked in, I don't know, about five or six motor rounds, two, two, two, too,

too, and sorry, I never forget, yelling, screaming to my ass, get your ass up and get down and we get down

and we get down behind these sandbags. Well, they figured out where it was at. Like I said, the college was there. And there was some westernized Muslims over there. You know what I'm saying? It wasn't all just hardcore gangster Muslims. And we go out,

it's the first time I got to see how ingenuity these guys had. We're doing a patrol. We're walking through the college. We're tearing down propaganda. Mutata Al-Sadda al-Sidar was the, the gangster of the time, you know, vaulting all these people up. I'm constantly ripping these posters down.

Anyway, we come up on this yard. We're walking the streets by the... We knew it wasn't far. We pretty much got, you know, an azimuth where it came from. And I walk up on this dude. It was an American Jeep there, which I thought was odd.

And I come walking up on him. And I see this metal rack with these PVC pipe tubes, bro. And this wire running to this big-ass 18-wheeler battery. And this dude's backing out. I'm like, hold the fuck up, bro. Where are you going?

You know what I'm saying? Let's get out and talk a minute. He just leaving like it, you know, he don't know what it was. You know where it come from. In his front yard, you know, we ended up, you know, flex cuffing him, put an old black hood on top of his ass. Let him come in for a while to talk to him. But that's my first father of the day, man. Dude, I can't even imagine.

Like, I'm so sorry for what you went through. Just all of that, just right in the beginning. And then the troubles at home. and that's just a whole other. Dude, it was, man, I'm telling you, you know, I used to have thoughts to this, man, I don't know,

but everybody come home from that war fucked up. Everybody. And sometimes I said, you know, that was the Holy Land over there. You know what I'm saying? I can't tell you

what the fuck we was doing over there. I didn't find any weapons of mass destruction. I didn't find anything over there. And there's no question. Saddam Hussein needed to be taken out of power. He should have been done the first time of Desert Storm. But we were sent over there with her hands tied behind her backs.

You know, can't fire, let's fire the pond, ROEs. So you didn't feel supported? At all. Now, George Bush gave us everything we needed to fight that war. He just sent us in there with her hands tied behind her back. DOD did. Did you feel supported when you came home? Mm.

State of Arkansas was not ready for the influx of soldiers coming back with the multitude of problems they had from serving that combat. They were not ready at all, period. But wasn't it just beyond the state level? Shouldn't have been the federal level, too? Well, the VA is federal. But, yeah, it was intense. I would say I didn't know anything about the VA, bro, when I got out. They didn't know nothing about it.

I know my dad worked there, but I didn't know anything to help me, you know what I'm saying? but back in Iraq we get kicked off now look we had our trucks that come in we would do 12 hours patrols out there and this is after I get kicked off the PSC team I get put back on the line unit which is that's home baby

that's where I want to be at that's where we're getting into the shit we're kicking doors in we're tactical checkpoints we're stopping vehicles we're searching them everything you know we drive through a neighborhood and lieutenant get outside first squad here, second squad here,

we'd hit every fucking house on the block, bro, kicking doors in. We're searching everything. And they're better hiding stuff than inmates, okay? I'm telling you, like, they are intense, creative with the way they hide shit. They were allowed one AK and one 30-round magazine. When we was there.

Just let that sink in from that, okay? Just let that sink in. That kind of tells you how crazy it was. I've gone in houses. now I'm on the line unit. I got to see both sides of the war. Let me say that. When I was on the PSC team,

I got to see the politics side of the war. Because really everything for Captain Bubbs' politics. And I got to see that side. And then when I got put it on the line unit, I got to see the real shit, the dudes in the trenches for real, what they're doing, which is where I'd rather be.

I remember we were paying the Iraqi National Guard we were paying them their salaries. I was sitting out front of this building one day, and I've seen this guy talking, and, you know, if they had English for interpreter, I always love talking to people. And he said he was a major in Saddam's army. Republican, I don't forget what they called,

a Republican Army or whatever I remember what it was, but he was artillery. He shot down the S-16 fire pilots and did a storm. I'm just looking at this little like, for real, bro, What the fuck you're talking through, man? But is what he told me.

He had an order from Saddam Hussein to either, I don't remember, if he either put everyone in this house or take everyone out of this house, he didn't do it. He put him in a one meter box underground. One meter box, bro, on his knees. All he could do was lean back, one meter box. They had a lid on them. They would piss on top of this dude, put cigars out on him,

throw his food down there. He'd use the bathroom down there. did everything down there. Six months, bro. Wow. We came over, invaded Iraq. We freed these people and gave them jobs. So, I mean, just a humbling experience, bro, just seeing all this, taking all this in, listening to all this shit that's going live around there. So half these people we freed, they were prisoners.

But you've got to understand, Iraqi people didn't know what free will was, what free choice was. They were ran by food, water, and electricity. And they didn't buck back. There was none of that. Either you went for what they said or they killed you. And anyway, I met a guy that's at our gate. And I just pictured this. We stayed right by the Tiger's Uffredi's River on this fob.

You had an outer gate, then you had the inner gate. The outer gate was ran by the Recky National Guard, which I didn't trust all of them, you know what I'm saying? Then you had Argate, right? I'm going to tell you why I didn't trust them. The highest paid one guy that I was telling you about it was a major was being paid $147 a month, a month, okay? And they thought they were king shit living.

So you've got a sergeant that comes through and says, hey, I'm going to pay you $50 cash. You tell us when this convoy comes by. Who do you think they're going to do, man? They're going to do it. They take that money every time. And not only that, if you don't help them, they'll kill you and your family. So, man, we spent more time watching guys that was supposed to be on our side than the actual enemy that's out there.

So keep that in mind. We're at our gate one day. And every week, just like rotation, I said we did a QRF. Once a week, every month or so, you had to pull five security. So you were there in towers and you were there at the gates and you're pulling security. and I remember seeing this guy at this gate had one tooth on his mouth, in his mouth, in his head, man. But every time we drove out, he blew kisses and said, I love you.

Every time I've seen this guy, I'm like, I got to a point I was like, what the hell's wrong with this dude? Every time I come through here, man, he's blowing the peace signs and throwing the kisses up. And so I'm now on FOB's security, I got an interpreter with me. I actually get a chance to go talk to this guy. And I was like, man, I'm just wanting to know. No. Every time I see you, you're throwing up to peace signs and blowing kisses at us, man. What's going on? Brother, he told me that he was learning to speak English. And when Saddam's regime found out, they killed his entire family, locked him up in prison, pulled all his teeth out, drilled holes in him, put cigars out on him, cigarettes out on him. And when we came to Iraq, we freed him.

Oh, wow. I'd be a little of America, too. Now it all made sense You know what I'm saying? I'm like, oh, okay, yeah. So he gave us some homemade sweet tea. They had some crazy-ass sweet tea over there, bro. I'm from the south.

I like sweet tea. But it was hotter in Africa. I'm just telling you, it was just hot. But, you know, you're in 140-degree weather. You think you'd want some ice. There ain't no ice over there, man. Yeah, they don't have ice, right? Well, they do, but you ain't wanting it

because they sell it on the side of the row and big blocks and they'd cut you off, cut you off with a machete, he'd hand it to you. I'm like, I'm good. I'll pass on. that. But, so I drank this hot tea, man, because, you know, I didn't want to disrespect them. Oh, my gosh, bro. I felt like I was on meth. I'd think I don't have so much sugar in that.

I got diabetes. I don't have to rip. But anyway, so I meet these guys that just really touched my heart, man. It's just the craziness that these people were. I stayed at Uday Hussein's palace a couple times. And I met a cook. who used to cook for him. You know, these folks had like four or five food testers before he even took a bite of his own food. I mean, bro, that's... It's like the president.

Yeah, I mean, that's crazy. It's got to live a life like that, you know what I'm saying? But he would tell me stories about Uday, who I think was probably more evil than Saddam, would pick these women up at the colleges and rape them, right? We're in the backpool. This palace is so big. Well, this whole compound was huge

But this palace was so big, bro We dropped a 220-pound bomb in the living room And the other half is still intact It came outside to this marvelling gold-heated pool It cascaded down to the Tigers River It goes underground Everything's gold Gold spigots, gold badees

Everything down there And I swim in this pool He had this artificial grass Like you see at a golf course You know what I'm saying This big old chunk of this artificial grass And with a swing sitting on it and do it would tell me he would take these women he'd rape them

then he would put him in a wood chipper feet first alive and sip his tea and watch this entertainment these people are crazy bro fucking nuts fucking insane you know americans are doing the fucking wood chipper shit too you see those murders that are put away for the wood chipper yeah yeah yeah they maybe those people get it from the americans dude it was insane the stories i heard about

uday and the shit that went on man it's just oh my gosh, man. So when I hear people today say they hate America, I just, I just, I'm flabbergasted, bro. I don't understand these people at all. You know, goes back to that bubble. But anyway, we'd have at the FOB one hot meal a day that would get transported from, from Taji to us. They have a mobile kitchen. We'd get one hot meal a day.

Every day was MREs, you know what I'm saying? I'm telling you right now. I slept on a cot. and I ate chili cheese burritos for breakfast. It started getting really fucking old. You know what I'm saying? Chicken Tetrazini's and, you know, everything you can think of. The MRIs are pretty good these days, but got done with all that, man, started doing that.

Got put on the line unit, started doing a lot of raids, started doing a lot of, you know, in the trenches shit that was going down. You know, seeing it come across one guy. I'll never forget, it was doing a 12-hour shift patrol. Hot or the, it was hot. And we pulled back into the fob, and they said, there was an explosion that took off on the route between Taji and Gunslinger, which is our hot mill. We got our mail come through there. We've got clothes cleaned through there.

Everything deployed on that supply route. Well, they kept hitting this thing with IEDs, and then they'd stop getting anything. So then we're not having clothes, right? we're wearing the same pair of musty-ass uniforms. Let me tell you something. You take five guys. You can put a brand-new uniform on, okay, and go out to do your job and come back.

And when you take them off, they would stand up on their own and you would look like something off twilight from all the sparkling salt that's coming out of your body. That's how bad it was. Now, that's just one day wearing it. Imagine going multiple days with no laundry because the supply rats keep getting IADD.

and you're having to wear the same-ass, funky-ass uniform every day, smell like a bag of smashed up assholes. Then you times that by four other people in a Humvee. It's rough. It's rough. So, and I love this shit. You know what I really love it? What was the last time you reflected on all this?

Have you ever even had a conversation with someone about these things, these memories? So here's the deal, and I tell that toward the end, but I never used to talk about this, you know, because I had so much survivor's guilt. And it wasn't until the last time I went to prison that I went to the VA and I laid everything out and got transparent. And come to a realization that every time I talked about this, it had no longer had effective power over my life. And the more I talk about it, not only am I telling my story, but I'm telling his story. You're also able to help others in the process.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, but from this point, it was a long way away, man. Anyway, I finished a tour out. That one patrol I was telling you about, we turned around, we had to go back, and these dudes were setting up an IED and blew themselves up. And, bro, there was body parts everywhere, all over the place, and we come to the scene. And this dude's heart looked like it was perfectly cut out with a pair of surgical scissors how great it was.

I was like, oh, my gosh, man. I'm like, I told him a captain, I'm not picking that shit up. You can hang it up. Call that Rack and National Guard out here. You know what I'm saying? So we go back, man. And anyway, we lost three more people to an IED. Three good buddies of mine.

We lost a total of four out of our company. My wife, who's currently on that HOTOR, got on drugs or bad. I didn't even know who she was anymore. Eight years was the person, didn't even know who she was, man. That was when you came back. Yeah, so I'm catching all this in real time.

So let me tell you what she did. Some of the games she played real quick. She would go to it. Now, look, she's getting all my money. And when I caught wind to it, 10,000 miles away, I had, my numbers were just decreasing in my bank. That means I was dodging bullets and bonds for free over there.

It sounds really awesome. You know what I'm saying? Team American. and I finally put a stop to that. I was paying her in my BAH housing and my family separation pay, okay? My mom back in the rear with all the gear was keeping tabs on this right on the paper trail.

And she then goes to the National Guard and said, I had abandoned my child. There's two things the Army does not like. Beating your wife's ass or not paying for your kid. So the State Command Sergeant Major in Arkansas, lies to Iraq to have a meeting. And you know it's pretty serious when I was a discussion of this meeting of her flight,

the state commands, Art Major, come flying Iraq, and I'm a part of this conversation. Bro, you know how humiliating that was for me? So I'm on my battalion commander's personal security team. And apparently she got all this free money, emergency funds, thousands of dollars, emergency funds. and the colonel calls me in his office and he asked me what the hell's going on you're not paying for your kid well i mean humiliated bro like i was doing this you know what i'm saying i did

now i'm looking like a piece of shit for my commander who i'm on his personal security team and i assured him sir i am doing everything i'm supposed to be doing i'll get all the documentation you need to prove i'd do it but here's the problem it ain't like you just put in a fax machine you send it over it's three three weeks to a month before you get mail over there. So I called my mom, and I got to wait for a whole month. I felt like every time he'd see me, he thought I was a piece of shit, you know what I'm saying? Tells they were to prove otherwise.

But anyway, these were the game she was playing while I was in Iraq. So she abandoned my child. And what that happened, I came home. Now, they sent me home a month early before everyone else did. And so this is where I kind of got. screwed on the whole deal. I came home before everybody did. And I told you, actually, I was not ready for the influx of soldiers

that came back from multiple problems. So I came back and I fell through the cracks. You're supposed to demob, you know what I'm saying? Demobilization, prepare you to reintegrate into society from a combat zone. I never got that. So this is the biggest joke that the U.S. Army says, if you're infantry or anything, if that matter.

Go to combat, do the shit you do. see the shit you see experience all the experiences and then they come home and say hey be normal again that is the biggest joke of my fucking life bro right there so i'm back i'm in this fucked up crazy relationship man and you know i just wanted to keep my marriage working and uh i didn't know who she was anymore man so i came home to a fucked up mess bro i'm just I'd rather put me back on the front lines in Iraq and I came home to deal with this shit. So I came home, got cuts to my kid, grabbed him, took him.

But then, you know, I'm coming to reality and I'm thinking, I am in no place to be a full-time mom and my dad right now, just coming off my rack. You know what I'm saying? Like I said, my dad said, you're going to go to war, you're going to come back, you're going to think everybody's changed. In reality, it's going to be you that's changed. Well, that never sank in until I got back home.

When I got back home, the silence screamed the truth to me. You know what I'm saying? It all hit me like a ton of bricks. And now I got this kid and it was bad time. So I decided to make the adult decision was to leave him with his grandparents who was raised him already. Your parents or hers? Her parents. Okay.

So I did that. Now, I didn't know anything about the VA, bro. I didn't know anything about PTSD. I didn't know anything about trauma. I didn't know anything about anything. You know what I'm saying? So I just know I was coming back

and I was supposed to be normal again Which did not happen by the way So The more I started Understanding this The more I tried to get to the person I was Before I went to Iraq And

The harder I chased it, the further loss I got And I had Come to a realization I was chasing ghost That person is not there anymore He'll never come back I'm a different person now and there was no matter what I did to get back to that, going to work every day, coming home to one woman, paying my bills on time, all that was out the window.

I didn't know anything when I got back. So I started hanging out with this guy, man. I had a lot of bad dreams when I got back when I first got back, and he said, man, I got the answer for it. Let's do some meth. That sounds like a great idea. Did you know anything about drugs at that point? I did. I had tried meth before, but I didn't.

never got bad on it, you know what I'm saying? Like just, you know, junkied out, nothing like that, you know? So, when I got back, I got on it. And that was it for me, man. That was like that instant gratification, self-medication, you know what I'm saying? Finally, I got something to cope with this shit. It desensitized me from all my feelings. Any time something came up about anniversary dates that my buddy had to kill, anything, his name come up, anything like that, man, I go get high.

Go get high. Go get high. And it worked at first, man, for it was designed to do. But that's a trap. It's always the trap. And by the end, I couldn't get out of bed unless I had it. You know what I'm saying? So I got bad on it, man.

I went balls deep in it. You know, man, I had the world by the balls when I got back, man. I could have done anything I wanted to. My actual dream has always been a cop, believe it or not, which is crazy. And so anyway, that ship sailed, you know. So I started catching these charges, bro. I'm doing dope. And then I knew in my mind that I was not going to be buying dope off the street.

And he'd want to do screw me over because I'll just fuck around and kill somebody. I mean, that's how I was in that mindset then. And I didn't have time for that. So what do I do? Well, I'm kind of like you, an entrepreneur. I just started to start cooking meth. You started cooking, but? a great idea. Not really. But yes, I was cooking methamphetamine. And selling it too?

And selling it. And using it. Oh yeah. I was my best customer. Don't get that twisted. So you weren't like a kingpin masterline. You were just like a low level. I was never really in it for the money. You know, I was at it to get high. To support your habit. That's right. And it makes you appreciate a home cooked meal so much better. You know what I'm saying? So I'm cooking dope now. and, you know, I'm not worrying about this chasing people down and getting screwed, cutting my dope up. No, I don't know what's going on this. Better ingredients make better picture of Papa Johnson. You know what I'm saying?

There's fresh ingredients in here. So I'm doing that. Still at this point, I'm just like I'm not really seeing how bad this is destroying my life. What about your fellow army soldiers that no one's in touch with you? There's still in Iraq, bro. But when they came back, yeah. So when they came back... It was too late.

It was too late by the end, bro. I was already locked in. And when we get high, when I get high, I disappear. Like, I don't want to be around. Nobody's normal. The last thing I wanted to do was going around somebody who got this shit together. I'm not going to drill. I'm not reporting in, you know.

So... Oh, you're still in the... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you were done. But see, I came back. When I came back, I fell through the cracks. And you were on drugs while still in... Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But see, I was no way to be held accountable, because everybody was gone to war at this time. You know what I'm saying? But when everybody came back, I started going AWOL. I wasn't coming in like I was supposed to. I was too ashamed too.

And anyway, meanwhile cooking dope, going through everything, going crazy. I get charges here. They never actually busted me cooking meth, but they busted me with like, I got busted alone oak. You know,

just like Jim. I did time at jail at Lone Oak. Oh, you're at the Lone Oak County Jail? I went to prison twice from Lone Oak. The same one that we were in that you work in now, which we all got into. Yes. Wow. So I got busted with a heat lamp bulb and a quarter gram of dope and a hose, and they charged me a criminal intent to manufacture.

Okay. Well, no, it was Red Devil I. So I got that charge. You get on probation. All right. And I'm just thinking to myself, I never want to come back to this town, Lone Oak, again. So I've transferred my probation to Plaskia County. Now, I'm trying to keep us on the loop because if the Army found out I got these charges,

then I'm going to be grown up on UCMJ, uniform code of military justice, court martial through them. They didn't even know? They didn't even know. Oh, man. So anyway, so I'm skating by through this, man. So I transfer my probation to Plasca County, which is if you're going to do time and you're going to be on probation, Placcanany is a place to do it because they're so overwhelmed.

there's so many case loads on them they don't even care. If you ain't breaking charges, breaking law or anything, you're good to go. Paying your fees, you're Gucci. You know what I'm saying?

That's how they look at it. So when you get those small rural towns, that's when they start getting an anal retentive on drug testing and make sure your home checks. They never did that in Plask County. Never. So, anyway, I'm accumulating all these charges.

I got some violent charges. I never thought they'd put my, my pocket guy's in prison. You know what I'm saying? I never thought to lock somebody up in prison, man. So, um,

they told me, I got arrested one time. Well, the Army put an AWOL warrant for my arrest because I went AWOL. And I remember going to jail, getting locked up. And while I'm in jail,

they come down and pick me up the Army does. My buddy does it in a combat with. And I'm sitting there. I'll never forget, the Lurrock cops are like, you're not going to put him in handcuffs? They were like,

no, we're not going to put him in handcuffs. I was like, fuck you, you know what I'm saying? So I ended up getting in the van with them. They ride me all the way out to search the Arkansas where my unit was at. I get there and I come out and they are busting my rank all the way down. And then they were like, we're signing you at. We're letting you go from the military.

We're releasing you. Honorably or dishonorable? I got an honorable. They were like, they could have screwed me. They could have gave me, you know, unhonorable. Oh, and then you wouldn't have gotten your benefits. Nothing. Wow.

But they knew what was. going on. And I served with these guys. They knew I was genuine. They knew I loved my country. They knew I loved serving. They knew I loved this. And matter of fact, Shane Griffith, the guy that was served with over there, he was like, don't do it. Don't sign it. File an appeal. And you don't take your rank, but you still stay in. File an appeal. But at that point in time of my life, I felt like I had let down my country so much by doing the shit I was doing that I just went ahead and did it. I thought that was the honorable thing to do. How much time did you have left in your contract.

About three more years. Oh, you would add three. Wow. Did you renew, like, for a second time? Mm-hmm. That's my first initial one, you know. And I, man, it was one of those cross-road moments for me, man, and I really felt like this was the right thing to do that I let everybody down.

Do you feel like your country let you down at all in any ways at that point in time? Absolutely. Absolutely. I felt like they let a lot of folks in. they're still continuously doing that. So, but at this time, I didn't really understand all that until literally understand all that until little down the road. But I signed out.

I got out. And I'm just depressed, bro. I'm just like, man. So what do we do when we're depressed? Well, we go out and cook more dope. We get desensitized to it. We just pushed those feelings away like it never happened. So that's what happened.

I stayed high. I had a lot of things on my mind, bro. I had nothing positive. I felt like I had failed everything in life. relationships, my country, my buddy that was killed in Iraq, and all this kept me in this addiction, man, and it just kept me there. And when that civil back of river gets on your back, it's a done deal. And, you know, my life revolved around getting pills to cook the meth, pseudephedrine,

getting my stuff to make dope with. And if it didn't involve me cooking meth or getting high, I had nothing to do with it. So I shut everybody out, man. I was just isolated. And it was a really dark time of my life, bro. And that's what my, that's, that was my whole life right there. And then I kept getting more charges, kept accumulating more charges, kept accumulating more charges.

And I got, I get with this girl and a strictly gutter butt. Trithin, asshole. Currently comes to the neighborhood near you. I've been knowing a few of these, by the way. We throw that out there. We go to Colorado, bro. So here's the deal. State of Arkansas stopped selling the pseudiphedrine, right?

Then they stopped selling the cell of 7% tintred iodine, which was a key ingredient to make math at the time. But this girl I used to date lived in Colorado, and the iodine and everything's wide open there. She's like, fly here. You know, and then I'll get you some I die and you can make cooked dope. Bro, I'm on my way to Colorado. We're not even thinking about it.

Let me tell you how crazy I was. I just want to make this clear. I'm not glorifying any of this shit because I don't really like talking about shit like this, but I'm going to say it. I cooked dope the night before I went to Colorado. I did about two pulls off of it, left the rest with the dudes at his house. I had a, you know, quarter ounce of dope. And my dumbass, how high I was, I'm going to a little.

The Rock National Airport would dope in my fucking pocket. So I remember I had an Arkansas jacket. I had khakis on. I'm a cool, calm, collective. I'm walking up. I'm seeing everybody take their jackets off, their belts off, and their shoes off. So I calms day, reached my hand in there, pull this sack of dope out, which was fresh. You can still smell the cat fuel on it, right?

I just got to cooking it. I put in my pocket. Take my shoes off, take my belt off, take my jacket off, sitting in the thing, run through a bearer belt. Bam, I'm walking through the thing, and he tells me, hey, I need you to step over here. and I'm like, fucking freaking the fuck out. Like, why did he pick me out of all these people? There was a glass partition wall there, two foot stamps. I had to go over there, and I had to hold my hand out.

So I'm nice and calmly, put my hand in my pocket, water that dope up in my hand, and did it just like this. Two little rock cops sitting five feet away from me, bro, talking. I'm ready to gumby out of my clothes, you know what I'm saying? So I'm sitting there, he passed me down. I put the dope back in my pocket, grab my shit, I get on the plane. Wow. Dude, how fucking insane was that? You know what I'm saying?

How insane was this? So anyway, I'm just rolling on a cloud, bro. Life is going nowhere. It was darkness, man. It took everything from me. It took my place to live, my cars, you know, dignity, everything. Freedom. It took everything.

So I'm doing an hydrantia's cook one night with the sky. and I've been up for days and I fall asleep well he woke me up to a 30 unit bump in my arm intravenous choosing for the first time of my life and I came up out of a coma it was like Lazarus coming up for the dead bro

and I got that taste of what it felt like to shoot up I would never done that myself I say that but probably not and but once I got that taste, it was over with. And then that's what things really took a dark turn for me, because that was everything. I chased that high all the time.

I'm cooking more dope. There was not one night I could tell you that went by it. I was not manufacturing something. And, you know, people were snishing on me. I was getting set up. They were telling them, like, I'm supplying half of North Littal Rock. You know, no, bro, I'm cooking for myself and a few people around me. You know what I'm saying?

but I got set up. I learned a lot, man. I learned a lot of the dope game and how trifling it was and you couldn't trust nobody. A buddy of mine I served in combat with was on dope, and he was still active duty,

drill sergeant at camp, Robinson, and they ended up getting caught and they set me up. And I got busted again. And by this time, I had accumulated a shit ton of jobs. charges. And when you start throwing them violent charges in there, and that's when they hurry up, got my punk ass off the street. So I go to court one day, and I'm sitting there and 16 felonies.

I'm labeled a large habitual offender first time down. I'm on the way to ADC at the Plasky County. Now, when I switched from Lone Oak County to Pulaski County, my probation, when I got in trouble in Plaskin County, they sent a petition to revoke my probation at a loan note. And here I am. Now I'm back in a loan note. Which is a very strict, tough on drugs. Does not play no sillies. I'm going to tell you, does not play no sillies, bro. I mean, Arkansas general, doesn't play when it comes to the drugs. So I get sentenced 10 years out of Plasker County. I've never been down before. I'm new to all this.

You know what I'm saying? So I don't know what to expect. Of course, you see the movies and Hollywood and what they portray. I'm like, oh my God, this shit's about to get crazy. And I'll never forget sitting around one night cooking dope. And the guy who taught me how to cook dope was in there. We're sitting around telling flash stories. And he tells him, he says, Springer,

when you go to prison and you're going to go to prison, sit back and watch the entertainment. It'll be a part of the entertainment. That really stuck with me. You know what I'm saying? Because that was a very true statement. So I'm in prison.

I get sentenced. I go to prison, bro. Before I get sentenced, I get transferred over to Plano County. They gave me five years rank concurrent at the time I got out of Plask County. So I'm like, bet I'm done. Clean slate. Let me go knock this time out, and I'll be out. I'm starting off fresh ground, get my head right now.

By this time, I've already been in jail. So by this time, reality is starting to come back. That monkeys go off my back, right? you know, I'd say this all the time. Einstein said it best. You cannot solve a problem in the same mindset of which the problem began. Someone who's an active addiction cannot see any reality from that. So it's tough for them for me.

So when I got clean a little bit and came back to reality, that's when I started saying, what the fuck am I doing? I mean, I have gave everything away. I've lost everything, freedom. So a very sobering experience for me was this. and it was, I want to Iraq and fought for fucking people's freedom who did not like me, who did not want me over there in Operation Iraqi Freedom, to come home and have my own dumb ass strip my very freedom away was fucking eye-opener.

You know what I'm saying? Unfortunately, I did not learn that to the third time I went to prison. But how much time did you do in total? So let me tell you this funny story. So the 10 years I got out of Plask County, the way Arkansas works is I got 10 years. I got five years out of Lone Oak. The bigger sentence always eats up to the litter sentence. It's rank concurrent regardless.

So I'm going to do that 10-year sentence. I go to diagnostics. I sit in this one-man cell for about 14 fucking days. I leave there. Thinking I'm going to my prison unit. No, we're a part of this rotation that goes to this called J.C.J. Overflow in case it gets overflowed. We're sitting there for another 35 fucking days.

And then I finally get to go to my actual unit. Brickies, the Brickhouse. And bro, it was fucking crazy at Brickies. So I'm there. I do my time, bro. I became 1B, which is one of the highest trustees you can get. I was working farm crew, and I went there at classification after I did my whole squad, which is no fucking joke, by the way.

I don't know if y'all have a whole squad up here, but down in the south, they got host squad. Yeah, Jimmy was telling me about that. No fucking sillies, bro. I mean, it's 60 days, hardcore gang bang action. You know what I'm saying? And I went to basic training. It wasn't as rough as that down there. Give us like one crazy story on that.

So we would go to these places in the middle of nowhere, bro. We'd march about two miles out with these hoses, nine-pound Aggie that's dull as shit. And we'd go out there to these big rivers, you know, ravines and stuff, right? Grass be this tall, man. We'd get at the top, nut to butt lined up. and we're chopping every bit of this glass, grass, and sidelining it, which means it's nothing but dirt. And we're dragging it all the way down this hill.

When you get to the bottom of the river, the mound, the grass beat is high. And then they turn around flip on it. We're flipping, we're dumping it in this river. And it looks like just straight dirt action all the way down. That's what we did. That's all we did, bro. That's what we did for no reason. So every day, all day action, we're out there doing that for 60 fucking days.

and the problem was you could adjust to the work I guess you know what I'm saying you can adjust to that but the problem was the psychological warfare that went with it because you have the whole squad rider up there saying shit like

get your grass or at your ass I'm gonna write you up now if you're getting your grass and you don't get your grass and somebody else has to get it for you that means you're gonna be paying something when you get back into barracks man some kind of you know something

and if you didn't get the grass juror and got your name and number man he was on your ass and he could write you a disciplinary and once you wrote you that disciplinary that Miller Yellow that made you're stuck in the whole squad for another six months for you get your class back bro

so it was very a lot of anxiety high stress to make sure you do what you did just to get the fuck out of there so I got blessed because they have classification they have a job called

farm crew and apparently it was a drop made 300, 400 some packs of top tobacco was dropped and the major he comes down there he says I know there's a drop made

I know you motherfuckers got it I'm gonna get in that fucking truck I'm gonna go down that fucking road and when I come back that top better be on this table tobacco better be on this table when he gets in that truck he goes down the road

there was three bosses that worked civilian bosses that worked in the farm crew. And he's like, man, I don't want to see you guys get locked up. And just bring the tobacco out. Just set it on the table. You know what I'm saying? Just give him what he wants, man.

I don't want to see. No, y'all get locked up. He said he's going to lock you up if you don't get all that tobacco. So they go back there and they dig up these five-gallon buckets of tobacco. And they drop two of them on the table, like 60 packs. He says, man, he said there's something like 300-something packs, guys. I'm telling you, I don't want to see you guys go to jail. Let's get these packs.

Let's put it on here. They go out there and they get every bit of his fucking tobacco. They bring it back. That Major comes down the road again. He looks at that tobacco on the table. He says, lock all these motherfuckers up. So, dude was ruthless, man. You know what I'm saying?

So now the whole farm crew was empty. So I'm going up to classification. First time up, you know. I don't know how it is in the feds, but in the state, man, you stand on this two footprints. You got this whole panel. And like every job in the prisons, bosses are there. Oh, really? And you have the warden in the center.

They don't do that in the fence. Yeah. And the warden's in the center, and they just pretty much talk shit on you. And behind you is a projector that's got all your charges, everything about you on there. You can't look back and look at it at her nothing. They drew your ass out. So they're sitting there and they're all to decide who wants who. You know, they ask me what I do and all this.

And one guy said, can you drive a tractor? Hell yeah, I can drive a tractor? Yes, sir. I want him. Bam. I'm on farm crew. I'm one B, which is great. I'm literally in Compton

what they call Compton. I call Compton. South Hall, whole squad barracks. This is the biggest joke ADC does. So when you first come into prison your class two, all right? And while you're there, they throw you in the mix of class fours and class threes. Who people don't give a shit,

who whole squad junkies, you know what I'm saying? And they throw you in the middle of this and expect you. If you get into trouble, bro, you're going to class four. You know what I'm saying? So I've made it through that. I get one B. I'm down in the easy barracks, bro.

I'm like, these folks work for the warden. They're going to bed at normal times. It's quiet. It's okay. I like it. Well, anyway. So I do my time. I'm a farm crew.

Everything's great. Let me tell you what happened. You asked how much time I did. The OJTs, which is the new trainees, they came in and gang banged the whole bus loads. And what they do is they'll hit a prison and they hit it all simultaneously and they hit it all simultaneously

and they hit every barracks at one time. They found weed, they found tobacco, they found knives, janks, cigarettes, I mean, lighters, everything. Tattoo motors, cash, they collect it all.

And apparently they take it out to this one spot and they burn it, the cash-ays. So, I'm working farm crew. There's a job called Horse Barn where they get the horses ready for the host squad riders for a host squad and all this.

He's out there bush hogging one day, and he comes across his cache. You remember me telling you earlier, but New York reminds me of the penitentiary. Everybody's hustling something. Well, he comes across his tobacco, and he's like, oh, my gosh, I've hit the jackpot, man. So what they did do, they went up there and a lot of them didn't burn. But what they did is poke holes and everything. He pour hydraulic fluid all over it, and they'd light it on fire. So he's got a ton of tobacco that it didn't burn.

And, of course, everybody got that hustling. they want to put it in the barracks. So you're everything in the ADC's control movement. So what they do is they bring it in. I know how they bring this shit in, too. You know what I'm saying? They bring it in, and then they give it to a barracks reporter, and the barracks are the only one who's allowed to go to the next barracks.

And now that's how shit gets transported all the way down the hall. And that's how it's going. Well, they're smoking this shit in the barracks, bro, and I'm seeing it, and it's got that hydraulic fluid on it, bro. So they're smoking it. It's like sizzling at the end of the cigarette, like known cancer edge of state of California. You know what I'm saying?

It's pretty terrible. So everybody's pissed off about this tobacco. So Doug takes it out there to what he's got a lot, and he starts washing it in water. And I was talking to him. I said, bro, you can't put tobacco in fucking water? You're going to take it all away. I said, bring it to me at the horse barn.

I'm a dope cook. I'm thinking dope cook mentality. All right. It's just like making metal. He brings it out. out there to me, I put it in newspapers, I put it in a vice, and I'm pressing it out. Take it out, replace it, put new newspaper. I do it about 16 times.

You're never going to get all the hydraulic fluid out of this fucking tobacco. But it started coming back to natural color, then I gave it to it. That's about the extent I had with that operation. Okay? Well, this black guy in prison, he was a barrack reporter, gets talk crazy to one. night. Now, he's been down 18 years on a rape charge. You know what I'm saying? Gets to talk crazy to

about this black dude. And the next day, I come in the barracks. I mean, I felt embarrassed for him. You know, it's that bad he talked to him. I come in and he said something smart to me. I was talking to my guys around. I was saying, bro. I wouldn't even talk to you, man. You know what I'm saying? I was talking to these dudes. I don't know, why are you even talking to me like that?

You know, why aren't you asking me shit? Well, then he got in his films. I guess he wasn't going to get talked to by a white guy. crazy. So he was like, oh, I don't think you hit no gorilla. I don't think you hit no gorilla. And I'm like, oh, shit, here we go. So in the hallways, they're like 20 foot high glass bars, you know what I'm saying? And the guards just walk up and down the hallways if they're in the guard booth. And he's here he comes. He's coming to me, man. I don't think you hit no gorilla. I don't know. He went to grab my shirt. And I just hit him three times. And it went

defense. Pam, blocked a punch, pushed him back. And then we got separated from the guys in the barracks. So I learned just by watching entertainment, not being a part of the entertainment, right, that you never go to bed with someone angry at you. You know what I'm saying?

You never know what's going to happen in there. So I'll let everything go down for a little bit. And I go up there and I shake his hand and say, hey, we're good? He looked at me, smiled, a little go-tooth, and he said, I don't think he's going to hit no gorilla. And I said, well, now that we know, I just want to make sure we're good.

I say that to say this He takes that tobacco Because dude didn't want to pay him back his money for it Takes you straight to the major's desk Drops that big old sack on the desk And puts my name inflicted in all this crap that's going on All right So

I'm driving a tractor Miles away from the prison Enjoying it I mean just really Getting away from the prison It's good I don't have to have a gun on me by myself I'm just tilling up the land

You know, I don't know you don't know about that up here But down there they look at that a little differently And I see this truck coming to the field, bro And it's the fucking lieutenant And it's a fucking host squad rider I stopped the tractor, turned off And he says, Springer Come catch his cuffs, man

I said, what the fuck? I get down, they put me in his handcuffs And what they do it down there is they'll throw you in the back of that truck and your handcuff behind your back and then they hit every bump going everywhere. You're flopping around this truck, man, like all over the place, bro.

I mean, it's serious. It was a couple miles away from the prison, bro, so this was a pretty rough ride. So I get there. They pulled me out of the back of the truck. I got dirt. It looked like I've been a coal miner.

I got so much dust on me from these fields in my face from the way they were driving. And I pulled me straight in the majors off from the front of the major. Major says, Springer, tell me about this tobacco. I said, Major, I don't know nothing, sir. He said, lock his punk ass up.

Bam! Do not pass gold. Do not collect $200. I'm going to jail. I'm max traffic heading to the hole. I'm like, what the fuck? And it's summertime. Let me tell you about Arkansas down now.

Arkansas's heart and son of a bitch. You know what I mean? They don't have AC in the hole. They have an attic fan system that blows hot air in there. You know what I'm saying? And that's all you got. That's it. I'm in the middle of deadbeaty summer, bro.

I'm locked in this fucking cell. So I got to experience the full experience. All right. I'm in the hole now. They come in and take your mat at 6 o'clock in the morning. You don't get it back until 8 o'clock at night. We're supposed to be 6, but usually 8 or 9. And you get no books.

You got no nothing. This was the biggest fucking joke. They would come in when you're locked down 24 hours a day. They would come in and handcuff you to these bars, and they would shake down your fucking cell. What the hell I got in here, man? I ain't seen nobody. You the mouse bringing me something here?

Because I ain't seen shit. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, they'd do that. I guess it was a psychological thing, bro. But they would take you three days a week and shower. And when they would take you the shower, that's the only entertainment excitement you got for the whole week. That was it.

That's all you look forward to. They would handcuff you, had a leather strap that goes to your feet shackles, and they would walk you like a dog down in the shower. And if you get to acting up, they would just pull up on that strap. and you're going to go down face first. Bust your ass open.

Which I never did that, by the way. I hadn't seen it done. But I put you in a shower. They lock you into the shower. They turn this fire hydrant, fucking pressure water on. If it was hot, if it was cold, I don't know, you were lucky.

And then we'd break off this half a bar of soap and they get it to you. They say, you've got three minutes. I'm in there washing my ass. Then they got me out. Give me this half a piece of sheet or a little towel, whatever they had, conveniently located.

I dry off with it, put back in the meantime I had to give them back the towel and they'd escort me like a dog back to my cell. Wow. I'm there. So, 45 fucking days, bro, I'm in the son of a bitch. Just because I told him I didn't know nothing about the tobacco.

So you hit me with a disobeyed a direct order and out of place of assignment. That's what I got charged with. You can't beat it. So I'm sitting there. And this attic van system that's going on, I'm hearing people constantly rap scream, yell over these vents, bro.

People are losing their mind. People couldn't handle it. I mean, it was fucking sad, man. So I'd get out of there two days before, oh, hold on, hold on, hold on. Sorry, I forgot the major part. After I got in that fight, right? I was on the laying roster to go home

for Arkansas Department of Corrections. I did two and a half years in prison. That's only 10 years sentence. Yes, say it. Parole and out of eight. ADC, Michael Dane Springer. I'm just like, man, I made it. But some just didn't feel right to me, bro.

You know what I'm saying? You know, people are like, oh, you just fucking trip to do. You're going home. Chuddle fuck out. Well, me and this other guy in the barracks were going home that day. And they called Chow Call. So we lined up going to Chow. And as we're in line at Chow Call, they called dude out.

He's going home. I'm like, what about me? Now, we'll get to you in a minute, Mr. Springer. So I go in there, I'm eating. You know, I can't even eat, man. I'm so nervous right now what the hell's going on. Expecting the worst. So I hurry up, jump out of there.

I stink in the line and go see the IPO, internal parole officer. I talk to him. He says, oh, Michael Springer. Lone Oak County called and said they have to pending charges on you. I said, what? This whole time I've been locked up. I'm thinking I'm coming out on a clean slate, brand new, doing the right thing,

and you're telling me, Possibility more time I got to do now? Because now it's not concurrent if I got more charges. You know what I'm saying? I'm tripping, bro. I'm tripping. He says, go back down to the barracks. We figured us out.

We'll call you back down here. And I said, I'm down there waiting on a test results. That's how I'm feeling right now. You know what I'm saying? It was fucking rough. About two or three hours go by, they call me back down there. He says, oh, Lono County called. They said they already prosecuted you on these charges.

they just never turned your commitment papers into ADC. So you're not going home today. You got to go back up front of the Pro Board, and I was fucking drunk. So what that means is translation that once I got prosecuted, the prosecutors, after they dot every eye, cross every T, they're supposed to send that form into ADC, and that's how my time gets commuted into the Senate. They never did that.

The Loth of the cracks. So, fast forward. I'm in the hole. It's the day before Christmas Eve. I get something sliding under the door. I open it up and look at it. And it's a new time card. This new time card says,

there's Lone Oak County finally on it. Now, when I came down in prison, I've seen that Lone Oak County was on there, but I never questioned it because my first time down I didn't know any better, but I know I was sent it, so I thought everything was going to be all right. Now I see Lano County on there.

Here's the kicker, though, Ian. They sent it to me five years. You know what they gave me? They gave me five years on a fucking 70% which is the controlling sentence, which means they would ate up that 10 years they did. 70% of my time, right? So now I have another two and a half years to pull, bro,

because now it's turned into a consecutive sentence. So you ended up doing about five years in prison? Well, I'm going to tell you how they saved me. I remember being in the barracks of prison and hearing all these people complain, but about time they started like any bob folks up. But, you know, meth changed a game in Arkansas as far as ratio as far as people in prison.

Time card came to the mail one day, and I get this time card in the mail, and it said, pretty much translation. There's too many white boys in prison right now for selling meth. It's getting overrun. As long as you're in good behavior in your class one, you only have to do 50% of your time. I was like, oh, you're just like,

Oh, shit. I'm out of here. I'm out of here, man. You know, so I said I'd do two and a half more years. You know what I'm saying? But, you know, it was three and some change on the 70. So turned that concurrent sentence turned into consecutive sentences, two back to back. And I did four and a half years the first time down.

And I said to myself, I am going to do the speed limit, seat belts. I am following the law, and I am doing everything that I am not coming back to. this motherfucker again. It didn't take me long in to realize once I got there that I don't belong here. Like, this place is not for me. I mean, I granted I was, I deserved to be there. But, you know, there's some crazy people out there. You know, you're sleeping somebody with murderers and rapist and...

Did you end up sticking to that promise? No. Let me tell you how that worked out. But I will say, I got out. I got custody of my son, full custody with child support, which is unheard of coming out of prison with 16 felonies, large bitch offender, right? I was enrolled in college. I had my own apartment.

I got everything back that I'd lost. And I had a strict script and I stuck to it. My problem was was I got with this girl. And there was a repetitive cycle of that. And I ended up relapsing. As soon as I relapsed,

it's like overnight, man. You know, my bank accounts, I'm overdrawn. I loves my place. I dropped out of college. I mean, everything is going to shit. I pretty much lost my kid again, going back to the grandparents. And I go to prison again. Simultaneously the next time got me with a rifle and some dope.

And I hired a lawyer who used to be a judge. I think it was Willard Proctor. and he beat the San Bataanus for me, but I still had to go down for the dope. So I did 17 months, 17 and 19 months of prison on that one. Now, I'm with this new girl. I won't say new girl. I've known her since kindergarten,

but we've been together. She was with me through two of my prison trips. And what's crazy, I spent more time in prison than pretty much in the relationship with her. But neither here or there. I go to prison, and when I came out of prison, the first time I had lost everything. Everything was gone. You know, I learned a lot of valuable lessons on that. The second time I went to prison, I came out with everything I had, which speaks volumes to me.

Like, a lot of people don't understand that. Like, if you could go to prison and do some time and know when you come back that all your shit's going to be there and, you know, your money's going to be there and everything's good, that speaks volumes to me because Sarah went to Iraq and she went on a whole tour. They didn't press the pond yet. You know what I'm saying? I lost everything. So anyway, I got with her, stayed with her on that, got back, and, you know, she was always all my ass, quit selling out, quit doing that out. But, you know, I just wasn't hearing none of that shit.

You know what I'm saying? I was, once I get high and get back into it, I'm stuck in it. You know what I feel like I was stuck in it. And once I said, like I have been asked, I said, became a problem the same way I said the problem began. And I stayed in it, stay in it, go to prison again, do that time. I get out. And this time, I'm not even faking the phone.

I'm going out at the gate and a spoon by then, man, straight up. You know what I'm saying? And so, I mean, I'm with the Mexicans now. I'm taking this ice and I'm using it as a red cook

and making rice. And I was doing a bunch of crazy stuff and doing a lot of this, a lot of that. And it seems like, bro, you know, when I look back on it for the times I got busted for the first time on up, every time I got busted

was bigger and bigger and bigger every time I got in trouble. You know, saying so the last time I got busted I was set up again and I got bustled 17 grams of meth and it's really not a lot grants came of things but I just dropped off a pound and I was all my way to go re-up and I had a hundred ninety seven grams left I get set up and I go to jail that last time in Lono County and And for me, that was the game changer.

You know, my girl at the time would always bitch about me cook it up, sell a dope. Quit doing that, bring it down to the hash. Too much traffic, too much traffic. I just, you know, wasn't hearing any of that shit. You know, I thought it was untouchable. And I always told her, if we get busted, I'm going to take it all. You don't have to worry about nothing. This is my operation.

I'll take it all in trouble for it, you know what I'm saying? I had 100% was going to do that. But they came in. I'm going to tell you what happened. I just cooked a batch of dope at my house the night before. Once I got pulled over, I seen the whole play happen out. This cop was waiting on me. And soon before he even passed, he turned blue lights on.

I was going to sell some dope with this person at Dollar General right there. They're watching me the whole time. You're calling me, texting me, saying, hey, police is here. Be careful. So as soon as I pull in, I call her. I said, listen, I got pulled over, it's done, I'm busted. She hung up on me because she was busy at work. I called her back, the bitch, don't hang up his phone again.

I'm telling you right now, it's a rap. They got me. She said, what do you mean? I just got busted there, pulled me over. She hung up the phone. She walks out of her job, hauls ass to the house, goes in the house, cleans the entire house out, get the meth lab out, get everything out, takes it to her brother's house that lives right down the road from where we was living

and drops it off. So, I had crossed everything. As far as I have a search where I'm wrong file. They could search me at any time, any place. So nothing was in my name. That was her house, not my house, right? They didn't bust me at the house. You know what I'm saying?

So they went back to the house, and she was there. And they said, Hi, Howard, Detective, da-da-da-da-da. We just busted Michael Spring with a large substantial amount of methamphetamines. We have reason to believe there's more meth in the house. Can we come in? She said, yeah. go get search warrant.

And that's what I always told her to do. She got, they got fucking pissed, bro. Pissed. So I'm sitting at the lone-known county jail, not knowing any of this. I'm going to live with all this. And I got busted with another dude

who was in the car with me. I'm talking, bro, I got this. You ain't got to worry about this. She was just wrong place, wrong time, da-da-da. So they had to wait until this happened early in the morning. They had to go all the way to Carlisle. to get a judge that sign off on this about 6 o'clock at night for they finally got to come over.

Of course, they stayed there and made her stay outside the whole time. And he went in and searched the house, they found some shit. You know, you're living in a trap house, or you're not going to get everything at one time. They found some dope, found some other shit. And he took her kid from her. And that for me, bro, was the ultimate, the eye opener for me.

She was a good mom. You know what I'm saying? She did try to warn me. She did try to get me to stop doing that shit. So when I seen her coming to jubber her, jail. I thought, dude, I was like, oh my gosh. They arrested her.

DHS took the kid. And they tried to give me for drug trafficking, bro, which is, you know, the type of Arkansas, you have to have 200 grams of water to be a drug trafficker. I had 197, beaten by three fucking grams. So, that way, the sensor grid changes

at that point. It goes, you know, more than 10 grams less than 200. It's a entirely different sentencing order. And anyway, she gets out jail, she gets able to bond out. And when I finally bond out, later on down the road, I get out of jail. And I'm like, the end of the point of my life was like, I didn't give a fuck about me, bro. You know what I'm saying?

I didn't care about what happened to me. I didn't care whether I lived or died at this point. I was just, bro, you know, at that point in time, just killing me doing me a favor. I was, I was walking in place. Sometimes I was walking backwards. It's how bad it was. You know, it was crazy. DHS, you know, I hear people, I'll call them normies.

I know that's probably stigmatizing language. People have never been to in addiction. They'll say, how can this mother not get her child back to what she has to do, get her child back? And for the first time I was able to see the hoops you have to jump through to get your kid back. Someone who's just fresh out of addiction. It's rough. I mean, it's rough. And if you don't do one of the things they say, bro, you're done.

You know what I'm saying? They make it even harder for you. So I don't say it's right, but I get it. I see it. I understand it. And she had to go to rehab for 30 days. Now, we still had a court case going on, right? So the court ordered her to go to rehab.

I took her to rehab, fighting the whole way. Didn't want to do it. So she goes there, I draw the profit. We have a court date. I go to court. and I tell the prosecutor, I said, hey, she's in rehab right now. We got ordered to go. She's not going to be here today because she's in rehab.

They're like, oh, great, good. We're just glad to see she's in there. That's good. She'll have some documentation. I said, yeah, she'll have all that. So we go to court. They set it off. So I'm still getting high.

I'm still doing the things I'm doing. I'll tell you this, I got worse, man. The day she got out of rehab, I wouldn't pick her up. And I know that she would have followed me back into that fire. 30 days ain't enough time for shit, bro. You know what I'm saying? So that day I picked her up. My old house is right here.

Her brother's house lived right here at the corner. I'm driving through Cabot in my car. And I pull up in her brother's house. And I had my buddy pull up behind me kind of blocking my car. And the Drug Task Force from Cabot saw me, recognize my car. And they just followed me in there. And they just swooped in like nights of shining. armor and Pearl Harbor my ass and I didn't see him coming I was like oh my gosh I got canines I got

everybody here I'm like oh fuck you know I'm saying and so that's God man because God knew I would have taken her back into that fire you know what I'm saying and I got busted right there thank God they didn't search a car but they took me into custody because this is what's crazy the state of Arkansas changed this deal and I've probably did a pro violation before you're getting trouble you're guaranteed you're going to go to the front of this kangaroo court parole thing and then you're getting found guilty

and you're going back six months which translates to nine months before you get out. That's how it was last time I went well they told me hey man if you just turn yourself in

bro you'll do a sanction seven day sanction you'll be out I'm like yeah I'm sure I'm not falling for that shit bro I'm way too high to believe something like that

so I didn't go in so then that's when they put the warrant out for my arrest so that first it was three days then it was going to be a seven day, then it turned into 90 days. So I had a warrant out for me. They knew it.

They followed me over there. They got me. Locked me up. I'm in jail. I'm sitting there. I'm here. I'm clean again. I haven't come off this.

I've been on a bender, bro. I've been on one hard. I'm sleeping. I'm rough. And 90 days comes up. I work my way all the way up to trustee out there in the shop. And, anyway, so I'm sitting in jail.

I'm going to tell you this funny story, man. This is real shit, but this is kind of crazy. This guy named Chief McCoy, who was the chief deputy there at Lono County, I just sell dope to him. Not directly, but through somebody else. It was their hustle. I'd give us some dope. He'd get a teener, and he would take the gram down there,

sell it to her full price to pay for his teener and some dope. And he would get high. She would get high with him, right? So, now, I'm a trustee in the shop, which is as high as you can go, bro. It's like mafia style living at Lano County Jail if you're a T3. You got your own shower, you've got microwave, you got big screen TVs, you got DVDs, you got your own phone in there. I mean, real mattresses, real pillows, everything.

Food, steaks brought up to me. Bro, it was nice. There wasn't nothing I was going to do to lose that. You know what I'm saying? So he'd come out of the head at the beef in the pediment. He talked like this. He said, Springer, Springer, Springer. I never forget, Springer.

He said, I know you. I know who you'll be hanging out with. I was like, yeah. He said, Eddie, Eddie Butler. You're hanging out with Eddie Butler. That's the guy I was in combat with. Who set me up, by the way. So anyway, I'm sitting there and he said, yeah, he'd do a lot of myth, don't it?

He was feeling me at, fishing me out, bro. And I just played dumb. I said, man, he don't do that shit no more, man. You know, he does and still does. but I didn't bite. So he'd really try to see where I was at because, you know, I really believed he'd got my podcast out of there.

So we go back. I don't do what the business was going on the whole time. I get out. I do my 90 days. I was supposed to go to court. This is what they did in me a solid favor. They came up and said, hey, we're going to let you out.

We'll let you get your affairs an order. You fix you go to prison. You know it. Go get your fairs and order and come back. and I was like, I didn't want to leave, bro, because I was scared because I just got clean and I had really made my mind up at this time. I hit my knees in that Lone Oak County Jail and I said to God, I said, God, I can't do this anymore.

I don't know. I can't control this. I can't do this. And I says, whatever I need to do, let me do, just do it. And however you can use me, use me, I'll do whatever I need to do. And I said that. So when it came time for them telling me, I need to do. get out. I was scared to get out because I didn't know what was going to happen when I got out there.

So I ended up going and I asked the sheriff. I said, sheriff, please let me come back out to T3 when I go to prison because you don't want to start back up and ground level and then work your way up. So he never would give me an answer. You know, that's how he goes. But anyway, I do my time. Well, that time got extended, right? So then it went from two weeks before I go to prison. and then it shot out to like six months. Didn't get high. Didn't entertain it. Didn't think about it.

And this was the first time of all my prison times in that I actually, most of the times I get locked up and never get to go out. I'm just, I'm sit there and go to prison. This is the first time I was actually being able to on the outside knowing I'm going to prison and trying to stay positive. You know, I had a, you know, trauma as a kid, I was able to block things out. but you can only block that out so much because you knew that you were fixing to go do some time. Very depressing. It was very, very hard to, it was just very hard for me.

But I go in, turn myself in, go to court, I got in, I look like I'm walking like this because I got so many whites on. I got six pairs of socks, four or five pair of draws on, three long johns and thermals. And I don't do the business, you know what I'm saying? So I go in there, they put me in intake out there in the intake cell. where we did a cook-off.

There's a one little cell that was on the outside where we did that cook-off. That's where you'd come in when you first get in. I was out for about 15 minutes. One of the guards came out there. Springer, get your shit.

I said, where are you going? He said, you know where you're going, man. Put me right back at the 2-3. I was like, hell, yeah, here we go. So, I'm in T-3. I do my time. I see it. I see Mitha McCoy, right?

And I'm watching him. This is, I don't know if you know anything about the meth world or what that does, but usually people get on dope and they start going that face in. They'll start compensating for that and they start growing thicker beards out to make it look like their cheeks are full. Classic. I can see it my way.

That's what he was doing. You know what I'm saying? It started to look like a cancer patient. And they start growing that beard out. You know what I'm saying? Well, anyway, I go to prison, do my time, right? And I became, you know, pretty close with everyone at the sheriff's office. administration side. You know what I'm saying? And I go to prison. I'm down there. I'm working

horse barn this time. I'm at Dermont prison, which is in the dirty delta, way down by Louisiana, Mississippi, down now. And it sucked, by the way. Sitting there and a guard came in who was a guard. Now he's transport. He's ranked moved up. Now he's transporting these guys back and forth to court. He happened to be coming through Dermont. while I was sitting down there on this horse. And he says, Brigger, I was like, what's up, man? We get to talk in. You know, we're chopping it up.

And he tells me they started this new program at Lono County called the Pact Program. And I first thought it was like, these motherfuckers wait until I go to prison to start this? You know what I'm saying? But anyway, I was like, he said, man, you need to get involved in when you get out, bro. That's what you need to do.

I got to think it on that, man. I think, man, that's what I want to do when I get out of here. I had no idea what that was going to look like. So I do the rest of my time. I'm thinking about what I'm going to do. And I know I've come to the realization in it by this time. Like I told you, the sovereign experience for me was to know that I went over and fought for freedom

and come back and stripped my own freedom away. So I came back and I got out of the prison and went straight into the VA. When I went straight into the VA, it was for this. I can stay clean, but when those triggers come up, anniversary dates and things of that,

I usually, I've done enough now to know that I'm going to go back, I get high, I need to get this fixed. So I'd been to the VA several times, but never took it serious. And this time I got serious with it, and I laid it all out there.

I got transparent, bro, put it on the table, cried like a little five-year-old baby, and let it out. It was the biggest relief I've ever felt in my life. And I had to do this training. It was an inpatient in PTSD, very intensive. And I had to do this train, I don't know what you call it,

the CBT crap or whatever it was, but it worked. And I would sit in this room, but this guy who's probably 21, 22 years old, and it kind of looked like you baby face, you know what I'm saying. And never been to war, never probably never even served. He was a social worker, you know what I'm saying? And I had to sit in a chair and I had to tell that whole story, that combat story, that first firefighter got into from start to finish. And I thought, anytime I used to think about this, I had to run and go get high.

You know what I'm saying? And now you want me to replay from the way I started it to the last thing I was. saw over and over and over. It had recorded. I had to go back to my room at night and listen to it and listen to it and listen to it and come back in his office and do that. And I thought, man, I was so fucking mad, bro. I was ready to kick a puppy.

I love puppies. You know what I'm saying? This shit was driving me crazy. But the theory is, was that if you were a kid and you watched a scary and you watch it over and over again, it was no longer scary. And I started thinking of it like, yeah, they made a lot of fucking sense to me. When I was stopped for the thought of thinking about that, the more I told the story, the more I took power over that, the more I started taking control back over that. It did not control me.

It did not make me want to go out and get high. So that saved my life. That was one of the best things that saved my life right there. I was able, because I told you, I was never a Dr. Philly type dude. I was never expressing my feelings well from childhood up. It bled into my adult life. I had trouble processing shit, man. So when I went to prison, I learned a lot.

Prison taught me a lot, man. It really taught me. I say I grew up in Iraq, but prison taught me how to be a man. And I mean that by respect and boundaries and, you know, things of that nature. But I get out the VA and I'm with this girl. And I told her, I said, look, man, if you stay clean, she stay clean, got her daughter back, so everything's back to normal again. I'm telling her, stay clean, I'm going to be here, you know.

And she started drinking. And of course, her dad comes from a long line of alcoholics. She started drinking. So now I try to justify my mind. Okay, well, you're drinking and she's not doing meth. That's okay, I can deal with that. You know what I mean? I don't drink, never have.

So I'm putting up with that. Now I'm at this point. where I'm back at home again. I have no job. I'm service-connected. I have 26 felonies. Walmart's saying, I'll put your application on file.

We'll call you if, you know, we need you. That's the kind of shit I was dealing with in Arkansas, you know, but I'm going to the VA. Well, the VA finally come to me and pursued me and said, hey, we think you need to be rated at the 100% rating. The VA came at me with this, which was odd.

So I got my 100% unemployable. So I'm blessed. I'm truly thankful that I was able to get that. Because I have 26th, he's been in prison three times, bro. There's not much out there for me. There is. There is.

But anyway, it's solved that problem for me, finances. Now I'm at home, though, and I'm scared to getting stuck back into that old motion because that's what I was in. I didn't work. I didn't do anything. I stayed at home, bro. I don't times devil's place.

ground we all know that so um Michael Brooks is a buddy amount of spent in combat with serving combat with he has started an organization Arkansas called We are the 22 it's a veteran suicide organization and he went to Iraq he did another tour after we did we came back and while he was there he got hit with an IED and we got hit with that ID I mean TBI I mean TBI being a threat shrapmer going up and down his legs and body they shipped him to fort sam in Texas and while he's down in Texas they pumped his body full um you know opiates had him fully addicted to opiates medically retired him out of the military which depressed him because he was

wanting to be a retire as a soldier you know it was his life kind of like I was and um sending him back to Arkansas when he sent him back to Arkansas they take him off the opiates Well, what do you think he's going to do that? That's going to turn straight to illicit street drugs. So he went down a dark path as well. And it's like I said, everyone come back from this war, fucked up some way. And he found himself in an abandoned home in Baltimore, Arkansas, and rural part shooting a shot of heroin trying to kill himself.

It was freezing cold. He said, he woke up off that floor. I was in the VA. I went to the VA. He was there. and it was an eye-open experience for him. He saw a lot of people talk of the talk wouldn't really know a way

walking to walk as far as veteran suicide. So he started this organization called We're the 22. If there's a veteran struggling in a crisis, any time of the day, any time of the night, holidays, weekends, rain, snow, sleet, or hail, you call, we're going to activate a two-man teams and we're going to go directly to that veteran talking about that crisis.

We have an MOU with the VA in Little Rock. We will take that veteran straight there and get him into a program. So, I believe that anybody's been through addiction, anybody who's been in the trenches, on the other side of that, you're going to be filled with compassion and empathy for those in the struggle. I believe that 100%. Some of the most beautiful souls come out of the darkest souls, all right?

So everyone's calling me and say, hey, man, you need to get in this way or 22. You need to do something. I didn't have a mission and purpose, and that was my problem. And I think a lot of people in their recovery process don't have that mission of purpose. When you don't have a mission of purpose, you're just spending going nowhere. You know, I went to Iraq. I did all these great things. I come home and I just pissed my life away in prison and drugs.

You know what I'm saying? I wasn't doing Kenneth Melton any favors, the guy who took my spot and died. So, and I had all this going on me. So I call him Michael. and I'm talking to these people, and I have random people calling me I served in Iraq with, and they're just trying to fill me out over the phone, just to see where I'm at. Because let's look, let's be honest, habitually speaking, statistically speaking, I get out of prison, I'd do good for a while, and then I'm back at it.

Why would anyone want to give me the opportunity? I can't blame nobody. So finally, two people called me, and then Michael Brooks called me. And I didn't know this until about a year ago, when Michael Brooke came to my house and celebrated my five years clean, or four years, whatever it was, is that he heard the hunger in my voice and he knew that I was ready.

And I truly to this day, I believe he saved my life because he gave me that voice back. He gave me that mission of purpose that addiction had stole from me and told me that was worthless and I'll never amount to anything and that everything I touch turns to shit.

You know, all those negative feelings addiction comes with. He was able to put me give me my voice back. So, fast forward. I'm going to the sheriff's office in the meantime. Every time I got out of prison, my goal was to be a peer recovery specialist.

I wanted to do what that job was. I felt like that's what I need to do. It would be great. Every time I go there, that Chief McCoy stops me. Every time I get to, Springer, Springer, Springer. Theraf I ain't here right now.

Springer, but I tell him you call. Come up here. So I would leave. About the third time of that, bro, I just like, well, God, what's going on? You know what I'm saying? If this is not what you want me to do, just let me know I'll stop coming up here.

You know what I'm saying? Every time I come up here, I'm getting shut doors every time. So I get back, start doing this WeR 22. So now I'm devoting all my time of this WeR 22 deal. I go on 16 responses my first year, bro. I was a fucking animal. You know what I'm saying? I want to be there to help everybody I can.

So I got named responder of the month. and they took his picture of me, did a bio, and just did this badass fucking social media post, you know what I'm saying? And posted it all over social media. I guess Sheriff Staley saw it. And when Sarah Staley saw it,

I got a call from him on Messenger. And I'm like, prank call, prank call, what the hell the sheriff called me for you? You know what I'm saying? I was freaked out. So I answer it, and I'm talking to him, and he's like, Michael. I'm like, what's up?

And he says, let's have a lot. I said, all right, when? He said, well, how fast can you get here? I said, well, as fast as law allows, I'll be there. So now I'm driving up to the sheriff's office. Now, I'm thinking my mind, because we work for law enforcement, We are 22, veteran crisis, they'll call us, and we'll go help them out. That's what he wants to team up and do with, right?

So I'm getting my presentation all together. I'm going to talk about We Are 22 and everything's going on. I got everything in my head. I go up there and I sit down and I've started talking to him. Bam, telling him about this, we are 22. That's good, man. Listen. That's not what I'm going to talk to you about.

He was like, you were one of the biggest meth dealers in Lentham County. They're going to listen to you before they listen to me. I want you to come help us run this PAC program. And I was like, that's God open the doors. No man can close right there. I said, absolutely, sign me up, coach. Let's do this. That's awesome.

And that was one of the. Greatest of consciousness right there because I had been working on this, man. And I'll tell you, when I was at the VA, I was there at the New Year. And I had sat down and wrote a lot of goals I wanted, easy attainable goals I wanted to do, right? And I kept up with that whole year. And I found out the things I kept checking off, more doors started opening up. More goals started opening. You know, and that goes.

And I think, man, that changed my life on that. My goal was to be a peer specialist and how it happened. You know, I started doing what was right, and those doors started over to make it happen. And I believe God was putting me through all this to prepare me for this chapter.