Locked In with Ian Bick - I Lost Everything to Meth — Then Fought to Stay Alive | Ed Kressy

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

Ed Kressy had a successful career and a promising future—but behind the scenes, he was fighting a deadly secret. What started as teenage drinking spiraled into a brutal meth addiction that stole his life, his sanity, and nearly his soul. In this interview, Ed opens up about the depths of meth psychosis, the devastating impact on his career and relationships, and the moment he finally hit rock bottom. Now clean and rebuilding his life, Ed shares what it really takes to come back from the edge. #MethAddiction #AddictionRecovery #MethPsychosis #RockBottomStory #FromAddictToRecovery #SubstanceAbuseRecovery #TrueAddictionStory #LockedInPodcast Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Ed Kressy:http://www.instagram.com/edkressy Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps:00:00:00 Ed Cressy's Battle 00:05:19 The Need for Alternative Incarceration Options 00:10:18 Early Memories00:15:47 Meth-Induced Psychosis and Conspiracy Beliefs 00:21:05 Overcoming Personal Struggles 00:26:18 Spiritual Beliefs00:31:49 Struggles with Personal Identity and Self-Destruction 00:37:02 The Meaning of Life and Material Possessions 00:42:20 Personal Descent into Psychosis 00:47:46 Experiencing the FBI on Meth00:53:12 Transformation Through Adversity 00:58:40 Turning Point in Addiction Recovery01:04:02 Advocacy for Recovery and Incarceration01:09:17 Contrasting Life Circumstances at Volunteer Events 01:14:25 Overcoming Unfair Advantages 01:19:45 Lessons Learned from Recovery 01:24:49 Building Effective Partnerships with Correctional Services Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The AG Jeans Summer 2026 collection is here. Inspired by the relaxed elegance of California wine country, designed for easy mornings, slow afternoons, and elevated evenings. The collection features effortless silhouettes, premium denim washes, and refined details that move naturally through the day. Our limited edition capsule with Napa Valley's Stony Hill Vineyard includes raw salvage denim and timeless essentials designed to age beautifully, like fine wine.

Discover the collection at agjeens.com and enjoy 15% off with code summer 15, even if you've shopped with us before. I would stay up all night doing meth. The FBI would be talking to me through the walls or so I believed. Then I would go in, show my ID. It was obviously not in a coherent state. I would write out complaints. They would give you a piece of paper and you could write out what you wanted to talk to them about.

Finally, I pushed it too far. Ed Cressy had it all a successful career, a bright future, and every reason to stay on track. But behind the scenes, he was. was battling a meth addiction that would cost him everything. What started with drinking as a teenager spiraled into a full-blown meth psychosis, paranoia, and destruction. In this powerful interview, Ed opens up about the breaking point that finally got him clean and how he rebuilt his life from the ground up. Ed, welcome to Lockton, another Massachusetts resident. Ian, thanks for having me. It's great. We get to do this. Thanks to Darren Prince.

and Tim Ryan for putting us in touch. Oh, that too, connected us? Yeah, yeah. I think Tim Ryan originally connected us, and then I got to be friends with Darren Prince. He's been very good to me, very helpful in my recovery and my nonprofit work and connected us. Oh, yes, you run the weekly Zoom meetings, right,

in the prisons? Yeah, we do a weekly Zoom meeting, mostly in Arizona, but we also recently expanded to Maine and Ohio, one facility in each state. We've been doing it since April 24. So we just had, I think, our 57th weekly meeting. We bring guest speakers who carry a message of recovery, transformation, guest speakers. We've had Josh Brolin, Tim Allen. I'm sorry, I said Tim Allen.

I meant Tom Arnold. Tom Arnold, a remarkable, powerful messages of recovery. Jay Moore, who's a good friend of mine from Saturday Night Live and done a lot of movies, Tim Ryan, of course, and many others who are advocates for recovery, criminal justice reform. We had the director of the state of Arizona, Department of Corrections, speak for us. We had a professor from the Bard College Prison Initiative. So we get these remarkable guest speakers to come in and deliver power. powerful messages. We get a lot of support from the Arizona staff and staff in Maine and Ohio

and just an amazing group of incarcerated residents who are engaged in recovery, engaged in the process of transformation. It's powerful work that we have the opportunity to do. I'm very grateful to you and to your team for what you're doing. You're showing the world that it's possible to turn one's life around and what most impresses me about your work is how you form partnerships with law enforcement and corrections. You've had people on your show from the corrections realm. To me, if we're truly going to solve what a lot of people think of as the incarceration crisis in America, and we, you know, we're not. the numbers, I think $80 billion spent on incarceration every year in America.

$80 billion, I've heard it's enough to pay the salary of every school teacher in America or the tuition of every student in college or in a public college university in America. So that's $80 billion we're putting into incarceration. and, you know, what are we getting out of it? We're losing, I feel, and the mission of incarcerated, our nonprofit, you know, what we're looking to do is make our streets safer, our communities healthier, and our children's futures brighter. You know, that's something I think by and large we can all agree on to lessen the taxpayer burden, to make our streets safer, our communities healthier, and our children's futures brighter. So it's thanks to remarkable work by people like yourself, Tim Ryan, Darren Prince, many others, especially in law enforcement and especially who are incarcerated and working very hard to turn their lives around and make things better for the society that we all share. You know, something like 95% of incarcerated people will be released, right?

Over 95% I think will be released. So we're going to be sharing our communities eventually. How do we wish to prepare people for that day, which will eventually come in most cases when we will share our neighborhoods? I feel that the work that you are doing and hopefully the work incarcerated, our nonprofit is doing, I hope we, we being our nonprofit, I hope we're contributing some small thing to helping people overcome substance abuse and other challenges which lead to recidivism. and take so much away from our communities here in America and worldwide. Yeah, I think you definitely are. I mean, when I was in prison, we never had any Zoom call-ins or meetings or anything like that with speakers.

We didn't actually even have any speakers come in in-person or virtually. That was just not-existent. And I think it's time to start looking at alternate options for incarceration. Like the camp was the biggest joke I've ever seen. You're going to put someone in a federal prison camp for five, six, ten years, and it's, It just doesn't make sense. I think there would be better served on like home confinement because you're basically doing everything as you would be on home confinement. But instead, you're eating taxpayer dollars on it.

It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. And depending upon how we interpret certain numbers, something like 85% of the incarcerated population has a substance use disorder. They were there because they're actively addicted to drugs or alcohol or they were under the. influence when they committed the crime for which they ended up incarcerated. So 85% if you think about it, you know, ballpark, you can cut down a great deal of the burden of incarceration by addressing substance use and alcohol issues. And there's more to it than that. But that's a great place to start. Or I guess I should say continue the remarkable work that others are doing.

Absolutely. Now share with us where you're from, what your upbringing was like. I am from Massachusetts. I grew up in a small town out in the woods, about an hour outside of Boston. Idylic childhood in many ways catching frogs and snakes in the summertime and going sledding, tobogging in the winter. I love to read. The greatest gift that was given to me was probably the love of reading that was instilled in from a very early age. My parents were both university professors. They're retired now. My house was filled with books.

I would go to the town library, bring home stacks of books almost too high to see over, you know, caricature, comical almost. I love those feelings of escape. The world of fantasy that I found in books was to me always much more doable than the reality that was right around me, especially as I got a little bit older. I loved, there was a Hardy Boys mystery series. There was Essie Hinton, you know, the outsiders and Rumblefish. There was Judy Bloom.

There were The Wizard of Oz books, certainly the Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia. I just read Lord of the Rings for the first time. Oh, fantastic. It was so much different than the movie and so good, too, at the same time. Like, especially in Return of the King, there was so much that didn't make the movie. That was interesting to see for the first time. And Chronicles and Arnea I read, too. I love that.

And Netflix is making a new series on that. Oh, are they making a series? Yeah, they bought the rights to C.S. I think it's C.S. Lewis, right? C.S. Lewis. Yes. And so they're redoing all of the movies and putting it into a TV show, which is cool. Oh, fantastic. That'll be great.

Yeah, those are great books. Great books. Yeah. And the world's, just the escape, the fantasy and the themes of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, solving mysteries, finding answers within them, in the case of the Wizard of Oz, you know, what they're looking for out there. Ultimately, they find within them. These are themes, maybe I didn't understand as a kid, but that I would, in a way, looking back, I see I internalized a lot. lot of it and carried it with me. Certainly as, well, as I got a little bit older, what happened was I was just a weird kid in a lot of ways. You know, I was very uncoordinated, couldn't compete in

gym class or on the athletic fields. I would cry very easily. I was a sensitive kid, so when the teachers yelled, I would often cry. And where I went to junior high and later high school, crying, reading, being uncoordinated. That's not exactly, you know, a campaign platform that you used to run for class president, right? So when I was about 14, I found it drinking. Drinking, man. Here, you know the same story. You hear over and over.

I was, when I started drinking, the other kids are laughing with me and said at me. Drinking, I could find friends to make, found the courage to ask girls. on dates. I learned how to lift weights. I made very strong associations between feelings of social acceptance and feelings of being intoxicated. These very strong associations because the earliest memory or some of the earliest times as a young adult, I felt accepted by my peers. I was also intoxicated. Those associations would prove very difficult to break. my life followed two kind of parallel paths on one path. A lot of opportunities came my way. When I was 16, I got a chance to go to San Francisco, spend a summer with relatives out there.

When I was 17, I left high school a year early, started going to college in San Francisco, owned a home, had a professional career with a very successful biotech firm. I worked at Stanford University at one point, relationships, family. I rode a big BMW motorcycle for a while, had this wonderful dog. You know, a lot of opportunities, a lot. On that other, on that parallel path, binge drinking, blackout drinking from age 16, followed by very heavy cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy, and for the final devastating 11 years of my addiction, methamphetamine. I was a meth addict for 11 years. I took all that stuff I mentioned, the home, the career, the motorcycle, the life savings,

the relationships. I took all of it, put it in a glass pipe, smoked it away. I ended up destitute for years. deep in methamphetamine psychosis, hearing the disembodied voices. You know, the FBI was following me in an invisible stealth bomber with my family and friends and former employers all on board, beaming the voices into my, you know, in my delusions. I don't think the FBI was really up there. They might have been, but I probably was the psychosis.

I used to go to the FBI office and high on meth. I would go there and I would submit paperwork saying, Dear FBI, please stop following me. Please help me find out who is following me. What had happened was, if we back up a little bit, my life had become sort of a seesaw in the year 2000. In the year 2000, I had that job with a biotech firm that I mentioned. I was, I tried to, you know, I,

I did what a lot of us do when we're struggling with addiction is I put on this, I constructed this facade, this facade of a person who works out all the time. So I did a lot of waytai, like kickboxing. Yeah, I've heard of it, yeah. All right, yeah. So I would do a lot of waytai. I would compete. I was never any good because I was very cowardly and just didn't respect the sport.

But I would train a lot in waytie, compete as an amateur, work at the biotech job, then binge on the weekends using the meth and the Budweiser, tallboys, and the bong hits. So I could strike that balance for a while, for years even. You know, I could, because it was a lie. The lie I told myself was, hey, people that trained in Waitai, people that hold down nine to five jobs, people that ride a motorcycle and spend time with their family, those people aren't addicted. You know, an addict doesn't do those things. Therefore, if I do those things, I must not be addicted.

It was a lie that I sold myself. It was much easier, therefore, to sell that same lie to other people and keep that addiction buried, keep it from, keep people from finding out. Because I, you know, I believed it myself. So that seesaw, it was something I could balance. In 2000, I got a chance to go to bank, to train with some of the professional and weight type fighters there. I was not a professional, far from it.

Spent a few days, a couple of weeks in Bangkok, staying at what they call a camp. This is where the pro fighters, they train full-time. For me, it was like a fantasy camp. I had a friend named Tarek. He was a guy I met there. He was my roommate, my friend, he was Muslim, He was from France.

So we hung out for a little while, Tarik and I in Bangkok. Then I went back to the States, and I stopped using meth every weekend. Started using it every day. Started using meth after work every day. Then I was using meth before work every day. Then during work, then instead of work. That was my progression. What happened was I found out that Tariq, the guy from Bangkok, my friend, my roommate, he had actually been a 9-11 hijacker.

What? He'd been a 9-11 hijacker, but moreover, he had been an undercover counterterrorism operative who had been embedded within the hijacker teams. And therefore, I knew something about this cover-up conspiracy and the FBI was out to neutralize me. You get the point. You know, we can go on and on and on. This is all my meth. It was fake. He wasn't a real hijacker.

It could have been real. I mean, when I look at pictures of Tarik and I look at the hijacker, even to this day, you know, to be honest, because I quit meth in 2007. But the after effects linger on. Even to this day, I'll entertain beliefs about FBI, CIA interest in my life. the point is that thanks to a lot of help, thanks to a spiritual path, I was able to overcome these mental health challenges as a result of the meth psychosis and do something to bring benefit and bring value to the world around me. That thanks to a lot of help. The, but I spent year, you know, before that day came in 2007, I spent years in the state of psychosis, deeply believing.

Everything I told you about Tarik and the FBI and the invisible stealth bombers, I didn't just think all of this was true. I believed it. As sure as we're sitting in this room, I believe there was an FBI conspiracy. Go into the FBI office. I got, I spent, I finally bounced in and out of county jail, a couple of months in county jail, up in a psych ward, stripped naked by the sheriff's department out in San Francisco because I had broken into my relatives home to steal for meth money, then refused to cooperate with the arresting officers, demanding instead an audience with the FBI due to my counterterrorism,

top secret agent status, you know. The point is I was out there. I was so far out there on meth in psychosis, yet again, thanks to a lot of help, was able to turn my life around. If I can do it, I feel others, I've seen others, and many people have come back from far worse than where I was at to do much greater things than I've ever done or probably ever will do. So hope, there's hope. There's hope. Did your parents have any addiction issues, alcohol issues, anything like that? Not really. No, it never, It never ran in my family. Mental health, perhaps, yet it didn't, no, it really wasn't, really wasn't part of my family

or part of my upbringing, meaning I wasn't exposed to alcoholism in the home. Was it common for teenagers to drink alcohol back then? It was in my town, yeah. It was a small town out in Massachusetts, great town, beautiful place. I live there now. I live in the same home that I grew up. up in wonderful people, natural beauty is remarkable. For a kid of, at least back then in 1980s, for a kid of 14, 15, 16, the idyllic nature of a

small town becomes this crushing sense of boredom, at least for me, you know, where I was at, with my mistaken beliefs about life when I was a teenager. to me it was just a very boring place, not because of the place, but because of me. I didn't have self-confidence. I didn't believe in myself. I always wanted to be an author. My dream was to be an author. I wanted to write the kind of books that sparked my imagination so that I could spark the imagination of others.

My dream was to be an author, yet the drinking and drugs. and my own lack of discipline, my own lack of belief in myself, quickly derailed the dream. Yet when I got clean, when I quit drugs, I was able to put that dream back on track. Why do you think you didn't become the author? Like, why didn't you pursue that? I didn't believe in myself. I didn't believe it was something I could do. The drugs, when we struggle with drug addiction,

a lot of times, at least for me and maybe for others, drugs are not the problem. Drugs are our attempt at a solution. Drugs were my attempt to solve my problem. My problem was me. My problem was I was always that bullied kid in my mind. I was always that bullied kid afraid to stand up for himself on the playground or in the high school hallways. I was always the weird kid, the outcast, the one who couldn't fit in.

I had a lot of negativity towards myself, which I projected onto the world around me. A lot of negative thinking, judgmentalism. Just I had these, yeah, so my drinking and the drugs are my attempt to solve that problem, the problem for me. You know, if I want to find the source of any problem that I've ever had or ever, or do have now, if I want to find any one of my problem's source, I look in one place, the mirror, right? I'm the source of any problem I have. These are the things I learned, thanks to a lot of help from others. I learned that things will happen, circumstances will transpire, people will say what they're going to say, thoughts will enter my head.

I can control very little of it. You can control very little of what goes on around me, yet I can choose how I'm going to see all of that. I can choose whether I'll see it as a curse or whether I'll see it as a blessing. Either way I'm right. Either way I'm right. If I decide it's a curse, it's a curse, a curse, a blessing, it's a blessing.

I didn't understand these things when I was using drugs, and even for years after I quit using drugs, yet and not believing in myself, not believing in my ability to turn what I perceive as negative circumstances into growth opportunities, never having, but believing myself that I had the discipline to try as a writer, to fail as a writer, yet to continue, yet to learn from failure and eventually to succeed. I never believed I could do these things. It wasn't until 2007 when I quit drugs and other people started believing in me that I learned. Own it all.

Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot Machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. U-N.

Details at Yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. Crack a Cayman Jack margarita and taste your escape. It's America's number one for a reason. Cayman Jack is a premium malt beverage with flavors.

Please drink responsibly. Camin Jack beverage company, Chicago, Illinois. How many discounts does USA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount? New vehicle discount. Words discount.

Legacy. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. I'm not to believe in myself. That feeling that you're just describing of having when you were a teenager, do you think that's something that's fixable in the moment? Or is that something someone of that age can't really, you know,

adapt to or overcome until they're older and have experienced life? That's a great question. It probably depends on the person. For me, looking back, I like to think that I always had a choice. Every line of Coke I did, every alcoholic drink I drank, every hit a speed of meth from the glass pipe, I look back and I believe I had a choice. I always made the wrong choice, very often made the wrong choice.

I think it depends upon the person. I think it probably depends upon what we were exposed to as, youth. I mean, I had almost everything you can ask for of a material nature. I had parents who loved me and gave me a lot, not only of material things, but also that love of reading, curiosity, a means to express myself creatively. It's hard to say. I think ultimately what saved my life, what turned my life around were our spiritual beliefs. I came to believe in an afterlife. I came to believe in a spiritual path, a path of service.

When I quit drugs in 2007, I came to realize that, although the way I was doing drugs was killing me, it was also keeping me alive. The drugs were tamping down those negative. feelings, that negativity that we talked about. It took, right after, for years after I got clean, uh, suicide. I was deeply suicidal. I had, uh, my 357, which I'd retrieved from the police after they confiscated it.

I lived within walking distance of the Golden Gate Bridge where unfortunately a lot of people take their lives. I would fantasize, man. I would fantasize about putting that 357 in my mouth. yanking the trigger or go. I had this plan. I was going to go out to the Golden Gate Bridge, shoot myself as I leapt from the bridge. I mean, you know, just to just to make sure I don't, you know, these are the things I would think about that, that consumed my thoughts, that consumed my life. I met a couple of people. I mentioned all the help I received. Some of the greatest help came from

two guys, Patrick McGuire. Pat McGuire. Pat McGuire. grew up in San Francisco in what we would call a gang, but you think more of like a gang of kids, of young men that would fight with their fists and drink and cause trouble. So Pat was sort of a lead. He wasn't sort of. He was a leader of this Irish street gang in San Francisco, very tough upbringing, got in a lot of trouble, yet turned his life around. Now helps a lot of other people turn his life, turn their lives around. Michael Descend was a meditation teacher, done a lot of work in the, done a lot of service in the prison environment and also a lot of work in Zen monasteries, a lot of meditative type of work. Michael and Pat instilled in me a belief that there was an afterlife, that if I took my life, if I committed suicide, I would have to go backwards through.

many lifetimes. It's funny, I'm looking over your shoulder, and I guess right here, there's Mike Tyson. One of the reasons that I believed Michael Descend and Pat was because Michael Descend had interviewed Mike Tyson back when he wrote for Sports Illustrated. I think he was one of the first guys, first people to interview Mike Tyson. It's a longest story that, you know, we don't have to go into right now. But if I had heard, if I had read in a book, or heard somewhere, okay, there's an afterlife, and if you commit suicide, you'll go backwards through many lifetters. I might have said to myself, well, you know, maybe, maybe not. But because Michael, my meditation teacher had interviewed Mike Tyson and because Pat McGuire was, had come from

the background that he came from and helped the people that he helps, I took those beliefs in the afterlife to heart. Took them to heart. I started to think, there is an out. afterlife. I don't know if there is. I don't know if there isn't, but I believe that there is. That's the only reason I didn't kill myself long before now. We're talking years after I quit meth. The point I think there was, I circled away from your, you'd ask a question. Oh, we were talking about how that feeling during childhood, if it's curable, like in childhood or if it takes time to develop over, you know, over having experienced things in life. Hmm.

I think, yeah, so I didn't have spiritual beliefs in childhood. I was, I'm Jewish by birth. My mom's side of the family is Jewish. So that makes me Jewish also. But we didn't practice any form that I recall. We didn't practice religion. I didn't have spiritual beliefs. So that probably contributed to the path that I took.

How do you transition from just? alcohol in high school to then going into this career and job, but then all of a sudden going into hardcore drugs? Was there a trigger somewhere along the line there? I wanted more ways to not be myself. I didn't drink and do drugs to be a high version of me. I drank and did drugs to become somebody completely different. There aren't enough drugs in the world to become a whole new person, but I could kill the old me, even though that's what I wasn't consciously doing. That's what was going on internally now that I look back. Drinking probably wasn't a fast enough way for me to get to where I wanted to go, which was oblivion. I did drugs to obliviate myself,

meaning literally that wasn't what was going on consciously. Looking back, I see that's what I was trying to do, kill myself through using enormous quantities of drugs. How were you introduced to it? The people, I remember the first time I did meth, we called it ice back then, no, yeah, ice maybe or glass. I think we weren't even really calling it meth at the time. I lived with a couple of guys from college. There were, I think, five of us living in a house, a couple of streets down from campus. One day, it's the middle of the day,

this dude drives up on a Kawasaki ninja, big old ninja, like a 900 or something, buffed out dude, this big, big weightlifter known around campus. The me, and he had glass, meth, you know, speed. That was the life I wanted. to live. I wanted to be the person who knows the phone numbers to call to score drugs. I wanted to be the person who knew the code words to use. I wanted to be that guy who is doing drugs on a Saturday,

or I don't know if I'm the day of the week. You know, with the guy who I described, you drove up on that Kawasaki Ninja. I got the, you know the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? That's Hunter S. Thompson. It's about these guys who, a book from the 70s, Hunter S. Thompson and his friend go out to Las Vegas and

binge on drugs. And Hunter S. Thompson is a well-known political writer from back in the day. If you read the book, that was all I wanted to be. I wanted to be that character from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I got the cover of the book tattooed on my shoulder. That's how much I wanted to be. So I was trying to create a persona for myself with the drug use. And like we were saying, I was also trying to

kill myself. It's very the complexities and the layeredness to it. I don't know if I fully understand it myself and I was in it, the dynamics of it were very challenging to escape. How? No, I was just going to say, I certainly didn't understand. I don't understand it that well now, even though I've had years to reflect on it, and certainly at the time, I didn't understand it. How could someone have so much success, a good career, everything they wanted in life like yourself and still not feel, you know, fulfilled or happy and still deviate off that success course. The success was all external. It was external. I was not an internally motivated person. The paychecks, the motorcycle, the home, the rest of it, I woke up every day still being me.

I was a compulsive person. I was a compulsive liar. I was a compulsive masturbator. I was a compulsive masturbator. I was a compulsive thief. I was a compulsive drug taker. I was a person who resented you, who would act like your friend and actually be your friend, but would deeply resent you. You meaning anyone, just about. I was a person who I was a dishonest person, and that's who I woke up as every day. So these external things, I've never felt like I deserved. A lot of things were also given to me. I had a lot of advantages. My education was paid for. A lot of things came my way without me working for them, without me having to earn them. So they seemed false. They seemed not. When things came to me so easily, they were very easy for me to also let go of or to throw away. If you,

you were, if you treated me poorly back in those days, I would resent you. Yet if you treated me well, I would resent you even more, even more, because I knew the real me. I thought, not maybe consciously, but internally, I thought that, you know, you must know, I knew the real me, therefore you must know the real me. Therefore, if you're treating me well, you're either stupid or foolish because why would you treat someone well when that someone is me, the me I knew I was, or you were out to get something over on me. These were my thought processes. My thinking was distorted, even before the mess psychosis. The way I viewed the world was distorted. I thought it was normal. I thought it was just, I didn't see anything wrong with it. My thinking was very

damaged, very distorted, very, and I never, never had the confidence in myself or the self-knowledge of the self-awareness or the spiritual path to address these core problems. And the core problems were the way I viewed the world, the way I thought about people and things. How long did your career last before? It was completely derailed by the drugs. Five years. I had five years with the biotech firm, Genentech. They were the number one best company in America. to work for, according to Fortune magazine. This was after I left, but they were still very highly regarded. Genentech treated me extremely well.

They sent me away to, or they sent me back to college. They sent me on business trips overseas, one business trip anyway. Yet I resented Genentech, and I resented the people there, because, again, why would you treat me to my way of thinking, why would you treat me well if, you know, I knew the real me. So I was there at Genentech for five years, some other biotech jobs here and there. I had a career with a management consulting company right out of college. They treated me very well.

A lot of good opportunities, a lot. Stanford, I got clean for a while, and Stanford University hired me. You work for Stanford, you get a free Stanford education. There is a good chance I had that I threw away. I was, Stanford has this very unfair rule. They're, Stanford will not let you stay home smoking meth and not show up to work.

They, you know, draconian man. But yeah, you know, that was another chance I threw away. Because I never felt, I deserved it.

And ultimately, these things were meaningless to me, not because in and of them, themselves, they're meaningless, but because I never had a spiritual path. I never, I have a mentor who likes to say, you never see a U-Haul following a hearse, right? You never see a U-Haul following a hearse. Nothing that we accumulate in this lifetime can we take into the next, if we choose to believe in an afterlife, which isn't to say that material things are unimportant because they are homes, careers, certainly relationships.

I know a relationship isn't necessarily a material thing. Cars, motorcycles, all that stuff is important, absolutely. Yet, at least to me, knowing that, having known somewhere that there is something else to life, something of a spiritual nature, and knowing, of course, deep. inside that the only thing I'm certain about regarding the future is that my time on this earth will end. That's the only thing I'm certain about regarding the future. I don't even know if we'll make it to the end of this interview. You know, there could be a meteor strike, right? I can't even say with 100% certainty that I'll make it to the end of today. But I do know that my

journey on this earth will end. If I know that one thing for certain about the future working backwards, I have to think that a spiritual path for me has got to be first and foremost. You mentioned C.S. Lewis, right, when we were talking about the Chronicles of Narnia. C.S. Lewis has a great line where he says that to speak of a person searching for God is like speaking of a mouse searching for a cat. All the mouse has to do is get out there and run around on the floor and the cat will find it. These spiritual beliefs, organized religion is, I've found a lot of value from organized religion. I've done a lot of searching. I mentioned I was born Jewish. I was baptized Christian. I converted to Islam. I dabbled or I explored Buddhism, Zen, even Hinduism. All of it I got

value from. All of it, to me, had extreme value and beauty in many ways. Yet it was that path of the 12 steps and certainly the spiritual opportunities that incarcerated people and people in law enforcement, ironically, ironic that people in law enforcement, including the FBI, gave me these remarkable opportunities to pursue forms of sense. service as manifestations of spirituality. So that spiritual path, starting with Pat McGuire and Michael Descend, the beliefs in the afterlife, keeping me from suicide, those led to an exploration of service opportunities. Do you think you're struggling internally during that time that you had the successful career because you weren't doing what you truly wanted to do?

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, that's, I never, attempt, I never really attempted to become an author. That was a part of it. It was definitely a big part of it. I would, you know, I'd go to a coffee shop on a Saturday morning thinking that, you know, I'm going to spend four hours writing and I'm going to get, you know, however many pages of my book written. And I would be there for, what, you know, 20 minutes before I'd be going back to my apartment to rip at the bong hits or, you know, start calling the, uh, whomever to, to, to see.

set up the party for that night. So, yeah, not pursuing my dream of becoming an author. Yeah, that was absolutely a big part of it. Now, your parents as professors, did they think you were doing well in school and these careers, or did they have some inkling of what was going on? They probably, I got good at hiding what was going on, lying, masking my problems. I had convinced myself that I didn't have problems, and when I believed my own lies, it was a lot easier to sell them to the people around me. So I was able to hide it fairly well

until I turned, I think, 33 years old, and that's when the wheels began to fall off, and my family found out about the drugs that I was using. What happened to cause that? I started, you know, know my friends, for some reason, when they saw a person, me, who was tearing apart the drywall, looking for hidden microphones and cameras and talking about how people were conducting surveillance against me, I, you know, somehow that, I'm trying to be funny. And, you know, looking back,

I can, I can laugh at it. But my friends, understandably got very concerned because, I began hearing these disembodied voices in 2003. I'd gone from snorting meth to smoking it. When I started to descend into that psychosis, that's when my friends, I resented what they did at the time and even for years afterwards, but they must have been very concerned,

you know, obviously, and they reached out to my face. family. My family attempted to have an intervention. They tried to have me 51-50, which in California is involuntarily committed to psychiatric observation, which probably looking back would have been the best thing for me, yet that I ended up spending several more years, you know, spiraling, sinking deeper and deeper into the psychosis, into the addiction. I got, it contributed to my, well, it didn't contribute. I contributed to my paranoia by repeating my poor choices. I made more and more poor choices to solve my problems with drugs. All the people who

loved me and there were many, many such people, I pushed them away. The people who tried to help me, I pushed away, I isolated, spent all my money in strip clubs on meth. I would buy guitars and smash them in fits of rage, buy stereo equipment and rip it apart, looking for cameras and microphones. At that point, despite all the help that my family and friends tried to give me, and they tried to give me a lot of help, I was not at a point where, unless I made my own decision to honestly seek help and to do the hard work required to transform that help into a form of recovery, which thankfully I was able to end up doing because I got a lot of assistance.

Until I made that decision, there was very little my family and friends or anyone else could do despite the fact that they tried, and they tried very hard. Tell us about meth psychosis and what that was for you. Meth psychosis is, for me, is hearing a voice that's as real as I hear your voice right now. the voice sounds exactly like you. The voice is telling me, it's a disembodied voice. Hey, Ed, I'm Ian Bick.

You know me. You were on my, we recorded an interview, but, you know, I work for the FBI, and we know that you, Ed, had something to do with 9-11, and this is your voice talking to me constantly. And then your voice goes away and in comes my mom's voice.

And then my mom's voice goes away and my dad's voice. And this is consistent through the course of every waking moment of every day. These disembodied voices, then I would see the things. When I used to rip apart the walls

looking for the cameras and the microphones, I found them. I always found them. Now, obviously, they weren't actually cameras and microphones, but when you're in the grip,

when I was in the grip of psychosis, everything I looked for I found in a larger sense that kind of is turned out to be a lesson in life because it applied to a spiritual path. You know, if I'm looking for spirituality, I find what I'm looking for. So in an ironic way, the psychosis probably taught me a lesson about finding what I look for, whatever I'm seeking I'm going to find. When I started out with these beliefs about the FBI conspiracies and about the disembodied voices and people out to get me, I've always found evidence that supported what I'd already concluded. What I'd already concluded was, you know, again, FBI conspiracies and my family out to get me and the rest of it.

Is meth the only drug that put someone into that psychosis? meth was the one that really cocaine put me into temporary forms of psychosis not anywhere near as intense as the meth when I would binge on coke almost every night almost every night I was doing coke would end up with me peering out the blinds peering through the drapes aside and peeking through the window certain that the police were landing helicopters on the roof to repel into my apartment. Every Coke binge would end like that. Yet when the morning rolled around, the psychosis would go away. With the Coke, I don't think it was really so much of a psychosis as much as it was just a very intense paranoia. Feels like every product claims real protein these days. But real doesn't start on a label.

It starts at the source. Like real California milk from California farm families, it's real dairy delivering high quality, complete protein, with all nine essential amino acids to help build muscle, give you energy, and keep you satisfied longer. So keep it real. Look for the seal. Real California milk.

Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin. way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice.

Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking. Maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them.

But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. Meth was more full-on psychosis. Share with us a story about going into the FBI office.

I would, yeah, I'd stay up all night doing meth. the FBI would be talking to me through the walls or so I believed, then I would go in, show my ID. This is what you, this was back in the day where you could still go to the FBI office. I don't think you can do that anymore after 9-11. So this was after 9-11. I think they changed things. But at that time in San Francisco, I could still go into the FBI office.

They would, you know, they treated me. they they as I recall they always treated me respectfully they you know I was obviously not in a in a in a in a coherent state I would write out complaints you could get a they would give you a piece of paper and you could write out what you wanted to talk to them about finally I pushed it too far one day I'd gone in to the FBI several times there was a warrant out for my arrest the I I had been arrested for, I don't know, trespassing. There was a, I had, I'd failed to show up for a court appearance. The judge put a bench warrant out for my arrest.

The FBI arrested me for failure to appear in court, right? But looking back, it represents a much greater failure on my part. I failed to, I utterly failed to serve society. In light of all the advantages society gave me, in light of the, in light of the college education, the economic advantages I had, so much was given to me, yet I ended up like we've been talking about, you know, high on meth at the FBI offices,

written complaints, please stop following me. I wish I could say that after the, The FBI arrested me. I turned my life around that day. It took several more years. It took at least another year or a couple of years. I'm extremely grateful to the FBI. They gave me a chance.

They gave me a second chance. So I wasn't simply some dude sitting by himself in an apartment conspiracy theories. I was that. The FBI, they knew who I was. I showed my ID. I put my name on the forms that they arrested me. I ended up in 2019 receiving an award from the director of the FBI. Director of the FBI recognized me with his Community Service Award.

I was one of 57 Americans to be honored for my work to help reduce recidivism in the San Francisco Bay Area. by no means was I recognized with that award because I'm some great person or because I'm some heroic, you know, far, far from it. You've heard my story. The FBI gave me a second chance. They put me through their Citizens Academy, which is a program that allows community leaders, such as I was given the opportunity to do through volunteer work and through other help that I received. received, we had the chance to interact with FBI people, to learn about their work, to dispel myths about the FBI, to understand, and so much to their credit, to understand the mistakes that were, that the FBI is made and or mistakes that were made in the name of law enforcement

that the FBI has remedied in many ways and the efforts they're making. to their ongoing efforts to further improve their service to Americans. And they gave me a second chance. You know, some guy high on meth, going to the FBI offices, getting to meet the FBI director years later and receive an award, that to me speaks to the power of second chances. That's a powerful testimony to what we can do. We as a society can do when we give incarcerated, formally incarcerated,

incarcerated people and people overcoming addiction second chances. What were some of your lowest moments during the peak of your meth addiction? Getting arrested, I'd broken into my relatives home, the same relatives who took me in when I was 16 years old and first moved out to San Francisco. I'd broken into their home to steal for meth money, which I did. I accomplished my goal. The next day, I'd smoked all the meth. I repeated the process. The police were called.

That's when I was stripped naked by the sheriff's deputies. And I was put in a padded cell. They call it a safety cell for a 24-hour observation. A sheriff's deputy bangs on the door every so often, and I'm supposed to say something to let them know that I'm okay. That was one of the low. points. And I was very, I was very resentful towards and angry at those sheriff's deputies. I tried to sue the sheriff's department for having stripped me naked and put me in that safety

cell. Yet today I'm grateful to those sheriff's deputies because I realized that had I never smoked meth, no one would have stripped me naked and put me in a safety cell. Right? If I trace the problem back far enough, I'm at the source. That goes for every problem I've ever had, really. Instead of suing the sheriff's department, today now I work with sheriff's departments and departments of corrections who give me opportunities to go into prisons and tell my story in hopes that my story might help others in some small way, the way that so many people help me. Once you lost your jobs because of your addiction, how are you supporting your addiction financially?

I know you said breaking into places, stealing, but were there other methods? Cheating welfare, you know, we had, what's it called, food stamps. There's another name for it, but, you know, fraudulently obtaining city services in San Francisco, stealing, very low-level drug dealing, holding jobs. I worked for the Larry Flint's Hustler Club for a little while out in San Francisco. They treated me very well. They gave me an opportunity. But I would show up high, drunk, steal from them.

I would get these jobs for a little while. People would give me a chance and I would make them pay for it, so to speak. You know, I repeated that cycle for years. and this is how if I was basically cheating, lying, stealing. Did you move around a lot? Did you feel like you had to leave San Francisco or was all of those years just spent there?

Almost all the years were spent in San Francisco. I lived in Palo Alto for a brief while when I worked for Stanford, but most of the time. I got clean in San Francisco and almost all of my drinking and using was in San Francisco. What happened in 2007 that forced you to get clean? There was, I hadn't showered or brushed my teeth in months.

I lived in this little hotel room above a strip club that I hadn't paid the rent on in weeks, months probably. In my hotel room, there was a little sink in the corner where I would ash my cigarettes, wash my clothes, and urinate. I owned nothing, almost nothing, except for the clothes on my back. I had these tattered canvas converse shoes held together with duct tape, these filthy black Ben Davis pants, filthy black baseball jacket, you know, no socks, no underwear, nothing like that.

Then I had my sort of evening attire, which was this tuxedo from when I, I worked at the Hustler Club, this filthy, disgusting tuxedo that I would wear out at night. That was it. I owned almost, you know, I had maybe a cell phone with some, you know, a couple of prepaid minutes on it, something like that. I'd bounced in and out of rehabs, in and out of, I sought help, but I'd never truly applied myself to doing the hard work that it takes to recover. it was on October 19th, 2007. I'm in my filthy black tuxedo. I go to a hotel in downtown San Francisco

where there happens to be a wedding taking place. I didn't know there was a wedding. I just wandered into the hotel. I was hoping to go to the bar and if somebody sets down a drink and turns away, pick up their drink, you know, that trick. People do that? People, yeah, people.

I mostly read about it in books. I did it once that I recall, but yeah, that's a trick that you hear about. At this wedding in October 2007, I'm standing at the threshold to a ballroom where the reception is taking place. It occurred to me at some level to think back to the previous five or so years when when five weddings had taken place, five weddings of people I knew. And these were really ten of my closest friends. So in the years leading up to when I quit drugs, five weddings had taken place, ten of my closest friends. One couple had asked me to be their best man. You know how many of those

weddings I showed up to? None. Zero. Not one. On that night, yeah, with my filthy, ridiculous tuxedo, it occurred to me at some level just how much I had hurt other people, not just myself, but other people. I went back to my hotel room. There was a little bit of meth in my pipe. I had a little roach, you know, marijuana cigarette, smoked that. Then the next day, got up and started going to AA meetings, really applying myself, accepting the copious amounts of help that were offered to me. Thanks to a spiritual path and thanks to others started turning my life around and I've been on that path ever since.

I always find it so interesting that individuals like yourself go through years and years of addiction, loss, suffering, failure, you know, rock bottom. And then there's always just this one moment that seems so small, but it's so monumental where they're able to just have that revelation to turn everything around after all the like the storm that's behind them it just like if you told someone that that you just walked away from it after that one moment it's kind of like unbelievable but so pretty much everyone i've talked to that's had years of addiction has that one moment of like mental clarity for the first time yeah it's like the point of a spear you know the the point of the spear we were talking about lord of the the tip of the spear is what pierces the dragon scales and and kills the dragon, but it's the, it's the weight of the spear and the force of the, of the, of the, of the, of the knight or whomever throwing the spear. I guess that night in October for me was like that that tip of the spear. And there was, you know, the, the efforts I'd made before

maybe, but more so the efforts that other people had made to try to help me. Some of it, it just came to a head on that day in October 2007, and all the help that people had tried to give me turned out not to be completely in vain, despite the fact that I hurt so many people. Eventually, the help that they put out there, it took hold. It did something, and just like you said, I... Looking to start 2026 with an unforgettable getaway. Fiji Airways sale is on now.

Fly non-stop round-trip to Fiji from just 748. Or enjoy a sunny Fiji stopover on your way to Australia with round-trip fairs starting from 839. As a One World Alliance member, an American Airlines Advantage program partner, your miles go further across the South Pacific. Book now at Fiji Airways.com or contact your local travel agent. Conditions apply.

I made that decision that, what do they call it, the aha moment? Mm-hmm. Yeah. During that recovery process, how long did it take for you to actually feel like, okay, I'm not going back to my old life? There's no relapse in sight. The drugs pretty quickly. I realized very, very early on that I wasn't going to go back to drugs.

The mental health to this day is still the, especially the depression. the anxiety, the negative thinking, certainly negative thinking for much of my life until very recently has been very challenging. I never took medication. I took some psychiatric, what you would call psychiatric meds, small doses for, not for that long, and they were helpful. They were helpful, but But for the large part, psychiatric meds were just not for me. I'm not saying it's right or wrong for anybody else, but for me it was not my path. I got a lot, and I still to this day get a lot out of meditation. I was taught to meditate by Michael Descend and Pat McGuire, who I mentioned.

The path certainly of service, I was shown a path of volunteering, the starting early on in my recovery, I began volunteering for the Red Cross, the fire department, the police departments for in service to incarcerated people, understanding that I have value because I can do some small thing to bring value to other people's lives through volunteering. And finally, I achieved that dream of being a writer. I wrote thousands of pages. Most of it will never be read and rightfully so because they were the efforts of a person

learning, teaching himself a craft of writing. Eventually, I published a few articles in the Washington Post. To be honest, I'm not that happy with the Washington Post articles. the people at the post were great. My editor, I feel that the value of those Washington Post articles is that they advocate for people. They're not of the quality that I like to think. I look back and say, you know, that's not really the,

I wasn't really being true to myself when I wrote those articles. Although they're good enough, I feel mostly because, because of the quality of the editor at the Post. Yet what's most important to me, and this supersedes my own egotism or whatever I attach to my writing, my articles advocate for people in recovery. My articles advocate for people overcoming histories of incarceration.

That's what I'm proud of. The Washington Post, it's cool, it's great. I'm very grateful and happy I was able to do it. but it's that advocacy, that path of advocacy that was shown to me. I wrote a book. The book is called My Addiction and Recovery. Not the most creative title, maybe, but it tells the story. It's a story that, you know, sort of what we've been talking about here.

I wrote the book. We published it in April 2000. and in my mind probably it was going to be made into a movie, you know, it was going to be a bestseller, people lining up to see me do a book reading or to probably these were the thoughts that were going to my head. Yet we know in April 2000, in April 2020, we had the pandemic.

What had happened was in 2014, I was working for a biotech company. I'd been off drugs seven years, something like that. biotech company treated me very well i was getting paid uh the equivalent of a six figure salary great people to work for yet i was miserable you know i was just miserable i would sit at that office in that office thinking about suicide thinking about i wasn't going to actually take my life again because of the the spiritual beliefs in 2014 i found a path that uh led me to volunteering inside of prisons and inside of jails.

I worked for, or I volunteered and worked for a nonprofit called The Five Ventures. I hope it's okay to say the name. Of course, yeah. Thanks. And the Five Ventures, as well as a related organization with some people from the Five Ventures called Hustle 2.0, they gave me the chance to go inside prisons. including places like Pelican Bay up in Northern California. I spent about six days volunteering in Pelican Bay State Prison,

another six days in high desert state prison. I'd done a lot of Toastmasters, the public speaking organization. I was very afraid of public speaking. I knew that if I was really going to achieve in life, what I wanted to achieve, I had to overcome my fears. So I got involved in Toastmasters. and then was helped to deliver a lot of speeches to improve myself. So on Pelican Bay, I guess it was in early 2000,

we did these coaching events, we being that place, that company Hustle 2.0. One evening up the Pelican Bay, it was the end of the day, I was peeling blue painters tape off of a cement floor because they would do this exercise called step to the line. How this exercise works was there were three lines, three parallel lines. This is on the cement floor up in the gym at Pelican Bay. All the incarcerated people stood shoulder to shoulder along one line. All the volunteers stood shoulder to shoulder along the parlor.

line, so we're all facing one another. And then there's a third line, again, the blue painters tape right down the middle. The facilitator, who was Catherine Hoke, Catherine started the Five Ventures and has done remarkable work in service to incarcerated people transforming their lives through entrepreneurism and employment. Catherine would say something like, she would make a statement. And if the statement were true, you would step to that line. line, that line in the middle, right? So Catherine started saying something like, or started

with statements like, I enjoy hip-hop music. So many volunteers and many incarcerated people would step forward because that was true for them. And Kat would say something like, I'm a natural-born hustler, and a lot of people would step to that center line. I did not. I'm not a natural-born hustler, and I never was. As the exercise progressed, Kat would say, things like I heard gunshots in my neighborhood. I lost a family member, a close friend to addiction or violent crime. For these types of statements, almost all of the incarcerated people would step forward. She would make other statements like, I grew up in a home with more than 50 books. I graduated college. And when she made those statements, almost everyone from the

volunteer side. And the volunteers, these are business executives, they were entrepreneurs, these were successful people. So you could see very clearly how circumstances from the incarcerated person's life differed from those circumstances from people like me. You could see that very clearly because of the number of people that were stepping to that center line. We go through that exercise, I always like to stay late, to show up early to events to help where I can. So someone's got to peel those blue painters tape lines off of the cement floor, right? And that was my job. You ever try to peel blue painters tape off a cement floor after people have been trampling on it for now?

It's impossible, man. You peel a little bit and then it breaks and you've got to have, you know, it started again. I was thinking about how when I owned, at one of the depths of my meth addiction, I used to do a lot of painting. And I would use this blue painter's tape. I would paint the inside of the home I owned at the time. At the time, I had this dog.

I know I'm jumping around a lot, but the story has a powerful conclusion for me anyway, hopefully for the audience. Keep going. So, you know, when I'm at Pelican Bay, I'm thinking back to when I painted my home and I had this dog, this beautiful dog, incredibly smart, a wonderful companion, yet I would mistreat this dog. One of the things I'm most deeply ashamed of from my addiction was how I would treat this beautiful dog.

I took this water gun at times. I had one of those big water guns, you know, the kind, and I would shoot the dog when he would disobey me. I would shoot him with the water. Now, to be, to try and be fair to myself, when I was a little kid, I lost a dog. He got run over right in front of me. I was riding my bike and on this country road. So there was some trauma associated with that. Yet in my beautiful, palatial, three-glorious story, home with that dog, I talked about, there was a lot of anger in my heart when I was shooting him with that water gun. I thought I was so out there on meth. I thought the dog was disrespecting me.

And there was real anger. And the anger was born from trauma, having lost my childhood dog or whatever. So all these thoughts jumping back to Pelican Bay and the blue painter's tape on the cement floor. A couple of incarcerated guys come up to me at Pelican Bay. And this one guy has a big smile on his face. And he hugs me. You know, we hug each other. And he's telling me that he's never, as I recall, he's never leaving.

You know, he's in Pelican Bay right now, and he's never going to go home from Pelican Bay. And I knew this guy had committed murder because of that step. I think because of the step to the line, right? Catherine had said, I'm incarcerated for murder. And I saw the guys. For some reason, I knew that he had taken someone's life. and as he hugged me you know I realized

I realized I didn't care if he had murdered someone I mean I cared of course I cared for the victim and I cared for this person but I realized that that the anger that he was me

and I was him you know because the anger I had when I was shooting that dog with the water gun had I not been born, and it's very important to me that this is my story only, right? I don't mean to say that this should be true for anybody else. But I learned from that guy in Pelican Bay and from the many other incarcerated people

that I've been given the opportunity to be of service to that, again, my story only, had I not been given certain unfair advantages in life what I think of is unfair, and let's face it, the color of my skin, is an advantage in our society for my socioeconomic background. And to me, it can't be said enough that I'm not trying to say that anybody who's white and from a privileged background, but this is my story. I wouldn't have been in a home shooting a dog with a water gun, in a home basically paid for by my family.

I would have been out on the streets because the anger in my heart, was the same. And the trauma that I had come from was the same, but because of my unfair advantages, I grew up with a trauma far different than for the most part people who I've met and who I've worked with who end up in places like Pelican Bay. I always thought, and this is embarrassing to say, but it's true, I always thought the reason I didn't go to prison that I only served a little bit of time in county jail. I always thought, you know, I'm a better criminal. I make better decisions, you know. I truly believe that. Yet these men and the women I've worked with in county jail and elsewhere, they showed me that it's these unfair advantages I was given that

are the reason that I'm out here and they are in there. These beliefs, again, it sounds obvious to say, but for me, it's different when you live it, and I had the chance to live it. These beliefs are what make it so that I can dedicate myself to achieving that dream of being an author and that I can pursue that spiritual path, that I'm not going to go back to drugs. I don't think. I know today. I'm not going to do drugs today. Tomorrow we'll see what happens, but probably tomorrow I won't either.

These are the reasons I can believe in myself because incarcerated people gave me the opportunity to be of service to them because the FBI and many in corrections and police gave me the opportunity to be of service. After I published that book in 2020, what we did was we donated copies to Pelican Bay. We photocopied, I don't know, 100, 120 copies, something like that, and sent it to probably the guy I mentioned who I, who hugged me that day as I was pulling up that painter's tape. Hopefully he got a copy, and maybe it helps him in some small way. The book quickly, I realize that the path of that book would be to hopefully help others, the same way so many people helped me. Today, the book, my book, is available to 500, I think 600,000 incarcerated learners.

There's a tablet system that's in many prisons and jails throughout the United States. United States. So if you're incarcerated and you're one of the 600 or however many thousand people who has access to the tablet, you can get my book for free. It's free. It's all donation-based. I don't make any money from it. In fact, I spent ridiculous amounts of money getting this thing written and published. Yet when, like we were talking about, when that day comes, as I know it will, when my journey on this earth is finished, that day will come someday in the future. what do I want to look back upon? What do I want to be able to say to that God or Yahweh or Allah or the great spirit or whoever,

who or whatever I choose to believe in? You know, to me, some sales receipts from a book, bank accounts, home, nothing wrong with any of it. In fact, it's all great in many ways. Yet I will look back on having... having accomplished a dream, written a book, used that book to hopefully improve the lives of incarcerated people throughout the United States. That to me makes my life a life worth living. That to me is a spiritual path, path of service, and it's all thanks to people who helped

me despite the many, many reasons I gave them to give up on me. Do you think building the community you have now is what you were kind of searching for as a teenager? Probably. Trying to fit in and build or have some sense of community. Yeah. Yeah, probably doing something to bring good to the world around me in light of all the good I got from the world. Yeah, build community. That's a great way to put it.

How do you make amends with the people that you heard along the way that you were referencing throughout your story? There's the 12 steps. They have an amends making process. So I worked with sponsors and others. I learned how to go to people and say that I was never the best, I was not the best brother. I was not the best cousin. I was not the best friend. I learned to without, there's different ways to do it and whatever. is right for any individual, is right for that individual for myself and the men's making process worked well when I didn't necessarily dredge up old details, although there's nothing wrong with that, you know, if done in the way that the 12 steps teach you, which is a beautiful way to make amends. For me, I like to move right to the part where, you know, Ian, if I had harmed you in some way, hey, Ian, I wasn't the best friend, but the good news is that you're really helping me by allowing me to express these sentiments. The good news is I put that life behind me, and by having this conversation, you're helping me to go forward, never go back to that life and do something to help other people to structure and to frame it as something positive and looking at the future.

And that also, I learned, opens up the space for other people to, one of my mentors taught me that very rarely is anyone 100% right or 100% wrong. It's always, you know, I was 90% wrong, 10% whatever. By making the amends, it opens up the space for somebody else to say, hey, you know, there was two sides of the story and here's what my part was. That's, of course, not the objective of making amends, but it does open up that space. It creates for stronger bonds, stronger connections with family, stronger connections with friends. So it's a beautiful process.

What do you think most people misunderstand about addiction? That drugs are not a problem. They're an attempt at a solution. It's probably different for every addicted person, but that's what I most misunderstood about my addiction. and I believe that probably it's a common misunderstanding. Yeah, we're using drugs to solve our problems and without. I always would think that I would tell myself, hey, you know what, when I want everything to be okay,

I'll quit doing drugs. No problem. I want my life to be all right. I'll quit. It makes sense. It was something that, you know, on the surface, it seems sensible. drugs are the problem. I'll quit drugs. Things will be okay. Yet every time I quit drugs,

things got worse. Things got, because I was still me. I still, I had that, that whole, that negativity, that judgmentalism, the negative thinking, the drugs were tamping it all down. I could bury my, my problems under that solution, quote unquote solution, the ultimately false solution of drugs. And then, you know, I would quit drugs. My life will get worse because I didn't, have the tools. I didn't accept the help that was offered. I quit drugs. My life would get worse. I would say, you know, forget this. I'm going to go back to drugs. And then, of course, the spiral continued and continued until finally things changed. Finally to, I changed. What advice would you give to a parent who has a child going through addiction right now?

Oh, yeah. My heart goes out to you. If you're a parent with a child who's struggling, I think there's two things. There's the spiritual, whatever form of spirituality you may choose to believe in, pursue that. On a practical level, I would, I talk to people who have undergone who have faced similar challenges as the challenges you face now. I don't know. I'm not apparent. I've never been a parent. So I don't know.

I've never tried to help a son or a daughter who's struggling because I've never had a son or a daughter. Seek out people who have done what you're trying to do, who are experiencing or have experienced what you're experiencing now. Read books. Watch TED Talks. Listen to podcasts. approach every conversation, every book, every talk, every whatever as a process of obtaining a piece of a puzzle, like a jigsaw puzzle. No one piece is going to form your entire puzzle, yet you need every piece to complete that

puzzle. Go into every conversation, every learning opportunity with that in mind. You're gathering pieces of your puzzle and find a way. find a way to believe in, if you don't already, or to deepen your belief in a spiritual path. I love that. Well, Ed, thanks so much for coming on the show today, man. My man, thanks for having me. Yeah, it was a pleasure to talk to you.

You told your story beautifully, and it's very insightful, and it's always interesting hearing a different perspective of addiction and how that person got sober in the end. Thank you. I appreciate Dad. And thanks to your audience. You know, I know your audience has many different options for how they can spend their viewing time. So I'm grateful for all the people who make up your audience for their dedication to transforming incarcerated lives. And if we didn't mention before, the partnerships that you form and put forth between law enforcement and corrections in the incarcerated community, very valuable work you're doing. I'm grateful.

Thank you, Ed. Same to you. and we'll have the links to your organization, everything in the description this episode for people to check out. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks.