Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 704 - Doug Bopst: How Finding Fitness In Jail Saved His Life, A Gateway Drug Story

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

Doug Bopst started down the slippery slope of depending on drugs to escape his reality. Drugs led to selling which led to jail time where his cell mate introduced him to fitness. Doug is a personal trainer and speaker who can help you transform yourself into the best you. Services include Training, Wellness, and Nutrition. Follow Doug on IG: https://www.instagram.com/dougbopst/ Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yJsNEMBr Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/ Code POWERPROJET for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Power Project family, how's it going? Now, we like to look good in the gym and out of the gym. That's why you always see Mark and I and Andrew is stepping up on the short, short game, wearing shorts from Viore and clothes from Viore. And honestly, the number one compliment that I've seen that I've gotten and even Mark's gotten is, damn, your butt looks good. And that's because, well, the clothes we wear make our booties look delicious. Andrew, how can they get it?

Yeah, you guys both have pretty big wagons uh you guys can head over to viore.com slash power project that's v-u-o-r-i.com slash power project to receive 20 off the most amazing apparel that looks so good inside and outside it's gonna make your ass look fat and your ass will look fat links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes ah god damn it that's a good one make your ass look fat if someone uh african says it they probably say it it probably sounds way different right it sounds different it's like it's it's somewhat not necessary for americans try. Right. Because there's always some little – it's like it's funny. Like even when, for example, somebody from another – like, yeah, if an Arab individual or somebody that's like Chinese or whatever and they have their original name, I'm like, okay, let me try to say it.

And they say it and I say it. They're like, there's something wrong. And in my mind, I'm like, I thought I was perfect. So I don't blame. I don't get mad at Americans. You're like, no, I said it the way you said it. Because it's different. You know? There's different you know there's different but it's like nah he didn't if somebody pronounces Mark's name wrong they got there's a problem like how do you get that wrong

they got issues but let's think about this real quick imagine a Japanese person trying to say yeah learning Mark yeah it's like we think it's easy that but they're like Mar like I'm not even trying to be fucked up no no no no But this is how it is with all languages. And if we try to say something with somebody's Chinese name and it's something and we say it, we sound stupid. It's just that's how it is. Sound like a little kid trying to mimic something. So what's up, my man? How you doing?

You came from L.A., you said? Came from L.A., originally from Baltimore. I'm doing well, man. It's nice to be here. Yeah, great to have you here today. And I think we got in touch with you through Gabrielle Lyon, right? That is correct. Yeah, she's the best.

She's a great person. Yeah. So what's your story, man? You kind of been through the ringer. Been through the ringer, man. You know, it's funny now. I'm a trainer, podcast host. I've written a couple books.

But like back in 2008, I mean, I thought my life was over. I was incarcerated on felony drug charges. How old were you? I was 21. And fitness ended up saving my life from the depths of addiction when I was incarcerated. And just to give you an idea of what I looked like, what I acted like. I'm just picturing you working out in prison, getting all jacked big tattoo and the tattoos all stretching out and shit yeah something like that but i and i mean i had a horrific addiction to oxycontin so i was snorting three four hundred milligrams every single day up until that point to support my habit half my left nostril was missing i know we're all into health

here i didn't have a bowel movement for nearly, for nearly a month. Yeah. Wait, how, okay. How early did you start doing stuff like drugs in general? So I started when I was 14, not with the, not with the hard stuff. I started with just with smoking weed. And like I said, we were talking a little bit before we recorded, um, that like, I'm not the weed police. Like, I don't, with everything going on now, and I know it's legal in many cases now, and people use it safely recreationally, and people use it safely medicinally. Like, for me, I was using it to self-medicate and to numb some pain and some insecurities that I was going through. And it wasn't that I liked being high, so to speak. It was more of the numbing feeling that it gave me for my problems.

Because my parents went through a pretty rough divorce when I was a kid, so I had that that I was battling with because the divorce rate wasn't as high as it is today. I was bullied a lot in school. I was picked on. People told me that I looked like I had Down syndrome. I loved sports. I was picked on. People told me that I looked like I had Down syndrome. I loved sports. I loved playing sports. I loved watching sports. I loved reading the newspaper, collecting cards, but I wasn't good. I wasn't coordinated. I wasn't athletic. So I was always

cut from the teams and I was always picked last in gym class. So I had this what's wrong with me mentality that I developed very on. And it also got me caught up in the victim mindset, which I know wasn't good. But frankly, I was a kid. So there was no, I had no idea of really what was going on. Do you have brothers and sisters? Yeah, I have two full brothers and then one half brother, all younger than me. Do they have similar experiences, similar interpretations of what was going on? Or are their lives a little different?

Similar, yes. experiences similar interpretations of what was going on or are their lives a little different similar yes um we there was there's a lot of similarities in our experiences and what we what we went through but i was also the oldest so i guess i i saw a lot more yeah and then i was the first one that was making all these mistakes right so i was kind of the the test case of how to handle things and the other thing too was i ate a lot of junk food as a kid. Pop tarts, like a lot of like breakfast meats, like sausage, bacon, like cinnamon buns, like, and then pasta. Like I just ate very unhealthy as a kid. And frankly, it wasn't much different than what my friends and I ate. It was the standard American diet of what kids were being kids ate, right?

But the problem was I had was I also had poor genetics. And I say this because I was eating the same amount of food as my friends, but I gained weight at a young age. So I started to get a little bit of a belly when I was 10, 11, 12 years old. Now I'm wearing husky pants. I'm wearing bigger shirts. And now I'm looking down and I'm like, why do I have belly fat? And my friends don't. So again, this what's wrong with me mentality just became bigger and bigger and bigger. And then fast forward to when I started to smoke pot, I was at a neighbor's house, a friend of mine that I went to school with. And she was like, Hey, I have some weed. You want to try it? And I was like, huh? Like all the cool kids I knew were smoking. It was like the cool thing to do. A lot of musicians that I followed or listened to were doing it.

I was like, oh, it's worth a shot. Worth a shot. And the experience that I got after that first hit was something that I wasn't expecting at all. Because what happened was I took that hit and I felt that monkey come off my back. That what's wrong with me mentality just kind of went away, dissipated. And I didn't have to worry anymore about whether i was gonna have a girlfriend because i didn't have a girlfriend in grade school i didn't have to worry what my parents relationship was going to look like i didn't have to worry

what my athletic ability was going to be i just could be i could just be myself for the first time and that feeling became very very addicting which is why i when i talk about to people about when they smoke pot i always look at like like why are smoke pot, I always look at why are you doing it? You have to look at why you're doing it. Because if someone was to say, yeah, I'm recreationally smoking pot. My relationships are phenomenal. I'm doing well in school. I feel good about myself.

I'm taking care of my health. I have goals. All that to say, who am I to say what you should and shouldn't do? But the problem is with most kids these days, that's not the case. Yeah, the brain is still developing, right? And we don't have a lot of life experiences, so we're still trying to figure stuff out. It sounds like that's what you were doing. I've actually never smoked weed before.

I never even tried it, so I don't really know what the experience is. But I have tried things like mushrooms, psychedelics, stuff like that. Is marijuana anything similar to those things? Like, is it introspective rather than, I think that like alcohol is a little bit, in my opinion, feels more like an escape. It feels more like you put the world on pause for a little bit while you, you know, go and enjoy yourself type of thing. But my experience with psychedelics has been they've been introspective. Is marijuana that way in any way? It can be.

I mean, I think it used to be, and don't quote me on this, but I believe back in the day it used to be classified as a hallucinogen. Marijuana did. And, yeah, it's like an experience where you can be introspective and you get high and you start to think about things and you have a good time with your friends. It becomes like a religion, right? Because you're sitting down and you're like,

what are we going to watch and laugh at today? What are we going to eat? What music are we going to listen to? Which is much different than like alcohol, right? Like obviously alcohol, there's rituals involved and there's experiences, but not like you just said, Mark, with mushrooms and pot where you're now like kind of bringing yourself down a little bit and just vegging out

and then your mind's kind of going in certain places that it wouldn't normally go. You know what? It's such an interesting thing. Number one, as a kid, I'm so like, I'm grateful that I never got my hands on weed as a kid. Uh, the first time I smoked was like when I was maybe 23 or 24, but it's, it's really interesting. It's like, it can be a, it can be something very negative because I mean, I smoke every now and then too. But I've seen people that latch on to that, latch on to, oh, the way I feel when I'm high is how I want to be all the time. So then not only do they smoke maybe every few evenings, but then it turns into, okay, me just smoking in the afternoon. Well, I wake up, I got to get high.

It can turn into that. up, I got to get high. It can turn into that. But it makes me wonder, how can individuals learn how to regulate that for themselves? Because my experience with weed as an adult nowadays, it's like sometimes when I've smoked and I've had conversations with certain people, it's allowed me to be more open in certain ways that I typically wouldn't be. I'd be a little bit more closed and it's helped me get to certain realizations with people because of that. Right. So I've seen how positive it can be, but it's so easy for someone to start latching onto that and it's spiral, you know? So that's why I don't like for kids, I think it's horrible, but I don't label it as something bad. I look at marijuana. I look at mushrooms.

I look at kratom, which like mind bullet, right? People have gotten addicted to this before. And there are people on the internet that are like, this is the worst thing ever. I use this every now and then. And I find, oh, I'm just able to maybe have more open conversations, but I don't find a need for it. So it's tough because drugs can lead people down bad rabbit holes, but they can also help people come to really cool realizations and have really cool different thought processes that they sometimes wouldn't typically have. But how do you tell that to a kid? You don't want the kids to do drugs, but you know, it's, it's,

to a kid. You don't want the kid to do drugs, but you know, it's, it's, it's hard, man, because now it's, it's, it's so normalized, especially pot. Like back when I was, you know, getting into trouble as a teenager, this is back in the early two thousands. And if your parents caught you with pot, it was almost like your parents finding heroin today, you know, because of the severity of what they thought it was back then. And in reality, that pot back then isn't nearly as strong as it is today. Especially the stuff from the pens, the concentrated shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's called dabbing, I think, or something. But it becomes like this religion. And that was almost one of the hardest things for me to break was the community of people I surrounded myself with who filled in for the family that I didn't really have at home. Cause my family was broken up. Um, again, like what you're going to do when you get high, uh, what you're going to eat afterwards. And then also I couldn't eat without being high.

I couldn't do anything because I was, I became so attached to, if I'm going to go to this event, I got to smoke. If I go to a restaurant with my friends. I got to smoke. If I'm going to go to this dance, I got to smoke. So you started to feel like the person that you were when you were high was better than the person you were when you weren't high. And it was that. And I'd also just rewired my brain to know

that in order for me to survive, I needed pot. It was kind of like what you were saying before of how when you start to do it, it just starts out with a little bit and you do more and more and more of it. And now you realize that it becomes part of your identity now. And when it comes to how people should use it, I mean, I can only speak from my own personal experience. But again, I always come back to how does it play out in your life?

Does it make your life better or worse? It's kind of like the people when they drink, they become jerks. They shouldn't drink. Or they need to go work on themselves and figure out what's causing that and then make different decisions about it. But like I said, if it's you and you're having amazing conversations, you're nurturing relationships, your life's good, you feel good. I mean, I'm not the pot police. But when I'm talking to parents with kids and they're asking me for advice, it's more like, all right, like talking to these kids, like, like how is it helping your life right now? How does it align with your goals? Like, is it helping you get better at school? Is it helping you become a better man or a woman? Is

it helping you in the gym? Like whatever it is. And most of the time it's, it's not for these kids. And we live in this world with social media and you we see it a lot in the diet and exercise space where we believe what works for one has to work for all. And it's just not the case, and I think that's the way it is with weed. Kids today have to – and people in general need to be really careful of fentanyl. For sure. That's like in a lot of the stuff that's placed right now, and that's pretty wild. Lots of stuff is replaced right now, and that's pretty wild. I think some of the things you mentioned, you mentioned not having a girlfriend.

You mentioned your parents getting divorced. I think that a lot of people are caught up in – I actually think that people are more caught up in their future is haunting them, the things that they don't currently have more so than just the past but uh in your experience do you still feel some of that now like do you still feel like you don't have this you don't have that does that still give you angst and then also do things from your past still kind of bug you or have you been able to patch a lot of these things up yeah i've been able to reconcile a lot of that from my past. Because what happened was, can I cuss on here? Yes. Okay. So when I was in jail, which is like what literally saved my life,

and this is an important part of the story to kind of tie it back into what you just asked. My soon-to-be cellmate was sitting at the table playing Scrabble. And mind you, when I walked into jail, I had to detox cold turkey off opiates, which was horrendous. It was like having the worst case of the flu for like— People can die from that, right? No, people can die from like withdrawal from alcohol and benzodiazepines, Xanax, stuff like that, but not opiates, at least to my knowledge. Right. And so it was like having the worst case of the flu for three weeks. And he looked at me and the way I describe him is he was like

a more jacked version of Brad Pitt from Fight Club. And he's recently passed. So it makes me even more inspired to share this story. He was like, you're gonna start working out with me when you get through your detox. I was like, bullshit, man. Have you seen me? Like at the time I could have been a model for Pillsbury. Like I was just fat. I was, you know, 50 pounds heavier than I am now, but I was like 40% body fat. And he was like, all right, man, he could just tell that there was something up with me. He could just tell that my shoulders are rounded forward. I talked very quietly. I had my head down a lot and he could just tell that I just needed to do something to build my self-confidence. And shortly after that, we were having a conversation in the cell

and he was getting to know me more. He was asking me more about my story. And I was like, man, like my parents got divorced and that's why I'm here. Or the girls didn't like me or my athletic ability. And he looked at me and he was like, quit being a bitch. And I was just like, whoa, like I, it was not what I wanted to hear, but it was what I needed to hear. and i was just like whoa like it was not what i wanted to hear but it was what i needed to hear and i was just like obviously no one wants to ever be called a bitch in any situation i was like what do you mean by that he was like you're blaming everybody for your problems but yourself yeah he was like there's plenty of kids whose parents get divorced that aren't in jail there's plenty of kids who don't have a girlfriend they're not in jail there's

plenty of kids who get cut from sports teams who aren't in jail he There's plenty of kids who don't have a girlfriend. They're not in jail. There's plenty of kids who get cut from sports teams who aren't in jail. He's like, you got yourself here, Doug. He's like, you have two choices. You can be a man,

look at yourself in the mirror, and say that you chose to get yourself here based on how you responded to the circumstances. And it's up to you to change that. Or you can be a bitch,

go cry in the corner, say, woe is me, blame everybody for your problems but yourself. He's like, and most people will do that. And I gotta tell you guys, I felt empowered for the first time in my life in that moment because I had started to think a little bit more logically and I was like, man, this guy's right.

I've had 21 jobs at this point by the time I was 21. I damaged so many relationships. I'm a drug addict. I'm a convicted felon in jail. Clearly like what I thought was right was not right. And shortly after that, I decided to give exercise a try. And I remember like one of my biggest fears was what people thought of me. And a lot of my self-validation came from external validation from other people and i remember getting down to do a push-up in front of a bunch of grown men which was humiliating and it also helped me squash my insecurity of what were people going to think of me when i couldn't do a push-up got down to do a push-up and i collapsed and i remember looking at my cellmate i was like why can't i do a push-up. Got down to do a push-up and I collapsed. And I remember looking at my cellmate. I was like,

why can't I do a push-up? He's like, because you're fat. And I was just like, what do you mean? He's like, dude, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. He's like, you got a bunch of belly fat. Your core is weak. You're out of shape and you can't hold yourself up. So that's why you're collapsing. And I hated that word fat. I mean, I was called that as a kid and I just swore to myself I'd never be called that again. And this guy, like I i said he was as fit as they come he was doing like thousands of push-ups hundreds of pull-ups like running all over the gym he was like the textbook like fitness guy in in jail but he just saw me to have yeah i'm gonna say like is this guy actually real or is this tyler durden is this fight for real all over again like did you make this guy no i know i swear you

know and um you're in there talking to yourself all the time like this motherfucker do not go to that cell that motherfucker is crazy he's got his own cellmate in there don't put anybody else in kicking his own ass like this guy is definitely nuts but he he trained me in there every single day during my 90-day sentence. And what I had to agree to is to be accountable. Like I had to stick to the diet that he gave me where essentially, I mean, it's hard to do in there, but cutting out a lot of the carbs and the bread and the processed stuff they gave you and eating a bit more protein in there. And anytime I messed up, I had a choice. I was either going to have to run or he was going to punch me in the stomach, he told me. And I was like, man,

he would have broken my ribs if I had either broken the diet and chosen not to run. But I got to the point where I was able to do a set of 10 pushups and run a mile in there, which was the goals we set. And I felt this massive sense of hope that I'd never had before, that I was finally going to change my life because I finally did the thing that I knew I should have been doing deep down, which was taking care of myself,

changing my habits, dealing with my demons in a positive way. I was finally able to get comfortable being uncomfortable, develop some self-discipline, and really just take ownership for my role in a lot of that situation, which I'd never done before. And the day I left, I cried. Like I cried when I walked into jail because I was

terrified. And I cried when I left because I didn't want to leave. And I said to him, I was like, hey man, how can I ever repay you? And he said, you know, don't fuck up, pay it forward. He gave me a workout plan that I still have framed in my place today. So I don't forget where I came from. Got out, lost a bunch of weight and then got to a place fitness wise where I wanted to help other people use fitness to change their lives. And that's what inspired me to become a trainer. You know, one thing you were mentioning about the responsibility aspect of it, it's like taking responsibility for your childhood because like it, it makes me wonder, you know, you, you had a parent, like parent like when when things were going on did your mom

or your dad did they do anything to like i don't know did they did they mentor you in any way or were they not present in that way because like i can under i can understand when people say oh this happened to me because my mom and dad or whatever did this but as an adult like you can't use as an excuse for anything anymore even though though it may have happened, which is the tough thing because it happened and you are who you are, but you are in control now. So you can't blame them. Right. And that's one of the things I talk about now is that, you know, as much as I blamed a lot of my situation when I was, my late teens, early twenties, like it made my life worse. Like I was a victim for most of my younger life and it ended up costing me my freedom in jail. Right. I mean, my dad wasn't necessarily the role model. I mean,

he just wasn't, what I observed is just like, he wasn't a guy that I aspired to be. We had a fairly toxic relationship growing up and I'll just kind of leave it at that not to get into details and my mom was emotionally unavailable from the divorce and she I mean she was there but she wasn't like as present I think as most parents just given the situation and there were times where yeah that I was getting yelled at and screamed at for what I was doing in my behavior because that was like the best way they knew how to handle things. Right. Um, but in no way did I really want to change or have the confidence to change because I had this coping mechanism that was helping me to feel like myself, like nothing else had helped me feel

before. And I actually ended up getting kicked out of my mom's house on my 16th birthday after a couple of bad decisions. I mean, you know, one of the things that you do as a kid, at least when I was growing up, is you have parties when your parents aren't home. And my parents hardly left, right? And so my mom was having an operation in the hospital. So I decided it'd be a good idea to leave one of the windows unlocked

and go sneak in and throw a massive party in a townhouse. And- You threw a party in a house that wasn't yours? I did. Oh, shit. Well, no, that was her house. I mean, okay, so you threw it in her house. Okay, I thought there was like a random townhouse

that you threw a party in. Okay, gotcha. That would have been a better idea, actually. So the cops came, busted it. I ended up running from my own party and obviously I got into some trouble with my mom. And then I was still smoking pot. And at this point I was 15.

I started to sell a little bit on the side to support my habit. And on my 16th birthday, I was weighing out a little bit of pot to sell to my neighbor. And my little brother was supposed to be the watchdog looking out for me to make sure she didn't come in.

And in she walked. And then that next day, I was up and living with my dad full time, changed high schools all within 24 hours. And they thought that that would help me change my friends, change my environment, change my habits. But really, it just created more pain for me because, you know, as a teenager, like I just needed that love from my mom and I felt abandoned, even though, like I said, I think they were doing the best they could and I don't blame them for that right now, obviously, but then I was hurting, you know, because I was already experiencing some other stuff at school and that sort of thing. And it just made things a lot worse. A parent tip is, I think, two things when something happens with your child is,

number one, you can try to go from their perspective. That's one of the easier kind of tricks to do is just to think about, like, I wonder why they're doing this. Sometimes I think kids today, they don't have a lot of like physical experiences. Like kids are just – they're more at their desk. They're more on computers. They're more on phones. Here in the United States, like a lot of us have it pretty easy.

And so I think drugs are like exciting. You know, shit's kind of boring, you know? Yeah. Most people would agree like their hometown's kind of like, they'll say, oh man, nothing ever happens. And you're a kid. You're like, nothing ever happens. It's lame ass.

Everyone always talks shit about the place they live. Yeah. They always think the other place is better. Yeah, this place is so fucking boring. It doesn't matter where you're talking about. And so I think that is a reason why some kids reach out to do some drugs is to have a different kind of experience. So that's one thing you can do as a parent is you can just say, I wonder what it's like from their

perspective. I wonder what they're like, why are they doing this? Maybe like your mom thought it was great to get you involved in sports a lot to keep you like occupied. My parents were the same way. Try to occupy my mind, occupy my time something other than uh me being able to get in trouble and then the other thing you can do and this like works for all relationships but uh is to uh just well this works in business and stuff too just try to think the act the opposite of your initial reaction you know so so i'm your dad i see that you're smoking pot i walk in your room, your room smells. Initial reaction would be like, I fucking talked to you about this before. Flip your desk over.

What the fuck are you doing? Your sister's in the room next to you. Flip out, right? Just lose your mind, yell at you, you're grounded, taking your car keys away or whatever. So what's the opposite? The opposite is to sit down next to you and say, hey, what's going on, man? What do you think you need? What's going on? Say, hey, I think this is a good opportunity to have a conversation. I'll give you a little while to think about it,

but I really want to have a conversation with you about this because I think it's important while you're living here, you know, you, I found some drugs that you're taking and, uh, I'm not particularly pumped about it and I want to talk to you more about it and just leave the room and say, I'll give you a few hours and come downstairs and we'll talk about it. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a great approach because one of the things that I try to tell parents when they ask me for advice is that, listen, like the more you shame your kids about what they're doing, the worse it's going to get because they already feel like crap. You know, sometimes it's hard for them to admit

it because they feel so low about themselves. But I guarantee you, like most kids, when they're dropping out of school and they're getting high every day and they're just losing their minds, they feel like crap. Doug, what you're saying when a kid feels like crap, it cracks me up. Not because kids feel like crap when that happens, but it reminds me of when I was 15. This is the second time I got caught for porn on my laptop. The second time my uncle went through my search history. He's an IT guy, and I thought I'd delete the search history, but he found some way to get into the backlog and saw all this shit i

was watching like border bangers.com and all this shit and he told my mom wait what yeah was that just like a bunch of mexicans or it was i'm not gonna go through the plot if y'all want to check it out just google it um, we want people to watch less porn. Yeah, we don't want you to watch porn. But if you're interested in what I'm talking about, that was OG shit. Anyway, what I'm saying here is my mom brought my best friend, Brian, to the house. And she sat me on the bottom stairs. And she's like, Brian, look at what your friend is doing.

He's watching porn. And he was keeping it together but then he was like after that man he started laughing he just started just fucking with me after that that's amazing but she a it kind of worked it didn't because i kept doing it in secret but either way the shame kind of worked a little bit i don't know yeah no you're right but what i I see with parents now, at least from my experience, is that they continually focus on the drug. Like Mark was explaining in the first example, his initial reaction would be to focus on the what. Like, I told you to stop doing this. Everyone smokes pots a loser.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you flip the desk over instead of like the second example where he was like, all right, let's get to the why. Like let's see how I can help and come alongside them. I think it's really important, at least in my experience. Do you think it's good to maybe educate young kids on like, okay, these are all the reasons why drugs are dangerous. But there are legit reasons why a young mind shouldn't be getting on anything that will get them higher hallucinogens. Like I have a relative that smoked some weed. They had a, uh, there is an intrinsic thing for schizophrenia and it triggered that. It's not that weed causes schizophrenia, but if you do something like that before you're fully developed up here and it triggers something that could change your

life forever. And there's a lot of other things in which it changes the brain i don't know if there are a lot of like within schools if kids are getting educated on what it can do more so people are just like it's bad and people that are gangs and this they smoke weed it's like nah but if they i don't know like you probably know more than i do about like what kind of education kids are getting about drugs well i mean i've been out of uh that scene for a little while just because i mean since my days in high school what they did was they brought in dare did you guys have dare out here yep and they bring the cop in and they'd be like all right if you do drugs you're going to jail and it hasn't clearly that approach doesn't work doesn't work it. Now, I have heard what you just said, that I think there's been some research that depending on the type of kid,

like teens who smoke a fair amount of pot, I think it can trigger the schizophrenic, the psychotic and psychological stuff. That's why I was scared to smoke until I was an adult. Because I was like, that could be with my genetics. So I'm just going to wait

until I'm more up here. Yeah. And it's hard because I don't know what the answer is. I do think that trying to have conversations with your kids, I'm sure it can be important, but I think modeling is also important. Like I know like growing up, like one of the things that my dad tried to get me to do was to eat healthier and not do this, not do that. But then, and I'm like a teenager, then I would see him eating junk food. And I'm like, wait a second, you're telling me not to eat this, but you're eating it. So they created this level of cognitive dissonance that

I think from the way I grew up and the way I saw things, what I saw mattered way more than what I heard. So I think that's an important thing too. Like, so if parents are getting drunk in front of their kids and then they're telling their kids not to drink and then they get mad. Or not to do other drugs. Yeah, whatever. Because kids are smart. They'll figure it out. They'll be like, oh, wait a second.

Alcohol is a drug. Like, we just learned that in health class. Right. It's all very similar. I think, you know, pointing out that drugs are amazing too. And they've been around forever. Like they've been around since the beginning of time. People have been trying to escape life from the beginning of time.

There's a reason for it. Like life is not always easy. It's not, and it's not always, it's, it's not always comfortable. Right. You know,

so people want an escape. So alcohol, I mean, we created these things. We found these things. We've harvested these things for a fucking reason. And so with my kids, I've told them before, great music, great poetry, great – a lot of great things have come from people being really fucking high.

Right. Including podcasts, including Joe Rogan's show. It's not all negative. For sure. A lot of wonderful experiences. People meet each other when they're high, when they're drunk, being drunk and being high, the same thing. And I'm just, I'm waiting for the day that people can kind of see that together. Cause when you say that someone's high for somebody, that's a super negative, but it's to me, it's all the same. that's a super negative, but it's, to me, it's all the same. It's kind of, you know, lowering some,

some of your, you know, reservations on, on what you might normally talk about or do. Right. And so therefore it's easier to like meet people and stuff like that. So it's not all bad. It's not all negative. For sure. And that's why I think it comes back to like what we were saying a few minutes ago on like, how is it impacting your life? You know, because obviously obviously there's there's been some great experiences when people have been high like you mentioned but like if somebody is continuing to like use substances and it's making their relationships and life worse and i think like there's a time then they should that needs to be a time to look in the mirror and say like all right, is it worth it? Is it worth ruining my marriage?

Is it worth ruining my relationship with my kids? Is it worth ruining this job because of the way I'm letting my addiction or my choice in using this substance impact my life? It seems like people just need to do a lot of self-work before they decide to turn towards certain substances. Because if certain people who are angry drunks there's something going on there if like when you get drunk you get angry certain people who like get massive levels of just crazy anxiety maybe there's some some reason why you shouldn't just be doing that you know what i mean um but real quick i'm curious mark because you said being drunk and high is the same thing i think you should one day you should just try some weed because being drunk and high is the same thing. I think one day you should just try some weed because being drunk, it's just like a sloppy experience. Even like if I try to journal or write something.

I've done THC before, but I don't think it's the same thing. I don't know if that's the same as smoking weed. I believe we had the capsules when we had the protein creator guy. I forgot his name. I've been high on mushrooms and stuff too. But those capsules was like THC. And then that's what you're that's what's getting you high so right yeah i've felt that before yeah okay i'm just saying like you you're you're just not the same yeah you're not the same like you're just you're i don't know you're having a a different

experience like but and there's a reason why people have done shit like that to themselves for uh since the beginning of time absolutely but you brought up a good point like i i don't know what your experience is like using pot now but i mean like you mentioned you when you do it you enjoy it you're you're able to have deeper conversations i can write i can write read i can come up with some shit sometimes and i it seems like you've done a lot of work on yourself right yeah so i'm like do you ever are you like, man, I'm so anxious and stressed, and is your default to go get high or is it to go like work out or something? My default is to go work out.

I don't use alcohol. I don't use weed. I don't use shrooms in any time that I have distress. Andrew, have you seen this? I've actually seen him like a little frustrated and he goes right into the gym and works out. Oh, absolutely. Have you seen it before?

Yeah, of course, yeah. This is what I mean. That's his default yeah this is an important point right this is what i mean this is where i mean like again i'm not the part the police to begin with but like to me i'm like well then if it's not impacting your life and you're able to like self-regulate in a healthy way where it's not getting out of control then yeah do you right so i mean that's an important point i think for people to hear though is that you've gotten to a place where you've done some work on yourself you know that it can lead down a destructive path if you're not careful and you're using it to numb yourself and you have these a

healthy coping strategy for when life throws curveballs at you there's a lot of people lying to themselves about that though too oh yeah right and a lot of people lying especially about alcohol right people drink way fucking too much and people eat too much junk food for sure. But the alcohol is a real slippery slope, I think, for a lot of people. They just, I mean, I think a lot of people could admit like, hey, I should probably back off a bit. But they just have a hard time with it. And I think the problem with alcohol is the same problem that we're seeing with pot now is people were saying, well, it's legal. It's okay.

Well, there's right there's a lot of other things that are legal that aren't good for you right i mean going and eating mcdonald's double cheeseburgers is legal and that's not good for you going and smoking cigarettes is legal that's not good for you right but just because something is legal doesn't mean that it's right like like legally you can cheat on your spouse does that make it right i mean of course not right so you can see where i'm going with this, that I think people, and it's also become so normalized in our society. You think about like when people are celebrating a 21st birthday, what do they do? They go out and they get hammered at the bar. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. Yeah. When people are

going out, they have drinks. When people are going to a football game, they tailgate for like three hours. So it's become this part of our part of our culture if you said i went out had a great time and snorted some oxycontin people would be like right yeah for sure yeah they'd be like huh that was strange yeah yeah oh go ahead i was gonna ask because like for for you and your situation it was pretty extreme, right? You were in jail. So, and when you said fitness saved your life, it was kind of that or get punched in the stomach by an even bigger Brad Pitt. But for a lot of people, you know, smoking weed right now is obviously people like comfort and that makes them comfortable. They come home from a job that they hate. We all know like, dude, if you just got in the gym, maybe before you went to work, it wouldn't be a bad day at all. Like you'd never have a bad day at work, but to convince somebody like, Hey, put down the joint and pick up a dumbbell. Like it's pretty hard. So outside of that extreme situation, how would you recommend people, you know, like I said, put the weed down and like hit the gym?

Because it's hard to break that, you know, that habit, right? And to switch it with another habit, that's a lot more difficult to do. Yeah. I mean, that's a really tough question. I think a couple of things come to mind. I think there's so much value in being proactive with things, meaning like, there's so many other things that are involved besides just the drug it's like who you're spending time with um what your family life's like and what your financial situation is what your level of happiness is because here's the thing like for me a big problem was my environment created like this false sense of normalcy because everybody around me was doing exactly what I did. So whenever anybody would say something to me, I'll be like, I don't have a problem. Like everybody else is doing it because

everybody else was doing it. Right. So you, that becomes what you know. I think the other thing too is you have to get like a really, really deep rooted why, you know, and you see this a lot in the fitness space when you want to make a transformation. And deep rooted why, you know, and you see this a lot in the fitness space when you want to make a transformation. And I'm not just saying like, like, I mean, I've been a trainer now for, for over a decade. And anytime someone wants to lose weight, they don't want to lose weight. There's something deeper. And the situation goes like this. I'll have a client and I'll say, yeah, I want to come in and I want to lose 20 pounds. And I'll be like, all right, well, why? Like, why is that important to you? And they're like, well, I just want to, you know,

feel better in my clothes. I'm like, why do you care so much about feeling better in your clothes and i'm like well because um i look in the mirror and before i go out like i just there's just like this level of self-confidence that just doesn't come when i put my clothes on like well why does that matter to you and then then they'll break and they'll be like well the truth is i'll go out with my friends that night and i'll come home and i'll bawl my eyes out because i'm so insecure on how I look. And that's the why, right? Is like, they don't want to lose weight. They want to feel more secure. They want to feel happier. They want to feel more at peace with their health and who they are. And so I say that because let's just say the person that is smoking too much pot wants to make a change. Well, if the idea is they just want to take something away and just

stop smoking pot, I think that's very baseline. Whereas if you're like, all right, I want to stop smoking pot because my marriage is falling apart or my kids have said that they don't want to talk to me when I'm high. Then you can start to get to a deeper root why on how to make a change and there's an emotional connection to that. And the other thing I would say is to start small. You see this a lot with the recovery community where people are afraid to take one day of sobriety or recovery or however you call it because they're looking at the person who's been sober for 20 years. And they're like, well, how am I going to get to that place? How am I going to get one year?

years. And they're like, well, how am I going to get to that place? How am I going to get one year? Because as addicts, and I think it's in human nature, we're always like all or nothing and thinking so far into the future and future tripping, kind of like what Mark was asking about earlier, that we almost like disqualify ourselves before we even start. And in the world we live in, where there's so much access to information on what works, what doesn't, what a lot of people fail to mention is the importance of taking small steps. So I would encourage that person to put the joint down and just go for a walk, go for a 10 minute walk. Tell me how you feel, right? Do a few sets of pushups. Tell me how you feel. Instead of what tends to happen, you'll see parents or you see people be like, all right, you need to start working out every day. You need to quit this habit. And some of these kids have A, never formally exercised or B, they've been so attached to this one coping mechanism that the thought of

that is just so daunting. Does that make sense? That makes sense. That makes sense. There's a few things I want to ask you something, but I've mentioned this show to Mark and Andrew. People, I got gotta watch the show euphoria you ever heard of it i have yeah i mean i've seen parts of it yeah it's good because it's actually a very deep show that examines like the experiences of kids who are doing drugs nowadays it's it's very it's very cool but i have i have a question for you about the um like the a type community and those type of communities because when they start some of those meetings, they say, hey, I'm Bill and I'm an addict or I'm this, right? And there's probably a process that goes behind that and the reason why they're saying that.

But when I see that, it's probably because I have no experience with that, but words are powerful. And the things you say are powerful and the things you say about yourself and the statements you say of who you are and your identity are extremely powerful. So if you tell yourself that you're an addict and you identify with that, how is that helpful? How has that served them? So first I didn't go to AA or NA. Like I, when I got clean in jail, like that was scary enough for me to, um, in a way organically like turn other parts of my life around. Right.

Um, but with that said, I totally agree with you. And that's why I have plenty of friends who have gone through the 12 step program and they've been sober and it's been to work miracles for people. I think it's a great program. I really do. But I do have a problem with that part, like identifying yourself as an addict, because I think in a way for a lot of people, it can limit you to where now you're like, oh my gosh, the rest of my life, I'm going to be an addict. And what does that do? Well, when you think of yourself as an addict, to me, I think of how bad of a person

I was, or I think of where my life was when I was addicted to drugs. So that's always in the back of my mind. And I also think it limits people in this way in that one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make in recovery is that their only goal, it stops with them just getting sober. They don't try to rebuild other areas of their life. And I believe that fitness, wellness, nutrition is some of the most underutilized tools to help people recover from addiction. You just said it yourself. Like you, I just, I asked you, like, do you ever feel like you want to go get high when you're stressed? And you're like, no, I just go to the gym.

And I guarantee you, if you didn't have fitness as an outlet, where would you go, right? You don't know. And so I encourage people to not just look at the fact that they're sober. It's like, all right, get healthy too. How are you going to deal with some of the stuff that led you to use drugs in the first place? How are you going to improve your mindset? How are you going to give yourself some sense of security and meaning that the drugs were giving you? How are you going to reestablish a community? And the thing about fitness, which I love, which I know you guys will agree with as well, is that when people are trying to change their community and find new friends,

going to the gym is one of the best places to do so. Because once you get over the fear that no one's looking at how you're squatting and no one's looking at what you're doing, you realize that people are in there to get better and to help each other and that you can find new people in the gym. That's why I just love wellness and fitness as a part of any recovery program. And I agree with you wholeheartedly about like just tying yourself to that name for the rest of your life, I think can be very limiting for some people. I think wellness and fitness is a great way to put it because it doesn't have to look like you go into the gym. It doesn't mean that you're going to play basketball or that you're going to jujitsu. For some people, it could mean they garden.

For some people, it could mean they have chickens that they tend to like, you know, find a habit and choose something other than just having a negative interpretation of stress. You feel stressed or feel a little anxious. You're a little worried about some bills coming in. There's really probably not anything you can do about it at the moment.

You're going to have to work on building skills so you can kind of take care of that some other time. Why not go in the garage and work on your car? Play the piano, play the drums, play a guitar, or whatever skill set you have. Some people get used to hitting a heavy bag or a speed bag or jumping rope. There's so many options.

So it doesn't always have to just look like a pure workout i know i think andrew said that his dad is very mechanical and loves and my dad was the same way and i as i had children myself and as my kids matured i'm not about to go do any yard work because i'm a pussy i'm not gonna get my hands dirty but i told my dad one day i was like i understand why you were doing yard work all the time right that's because he didn't want to fucking be inside with his kids it's like totally understandable he's like mowing the lawn and fucking moving around rocks and shit doing things that are totally and completely unnecessary like dad you've been outside for 12 hours on a saturday that's impressive he's like move that pile of wood

from over there to over there back to over there there again. And the next week I'm going to do it again. That's why they're saying Tom Brady's coming back. That's right. He spent two months at home with his wife and kids. And he can't handle it. But I mean, also like it's, you were mentioning, I'm actually really curious how, after you got out of jail, who you started to hang out around? Because like, I think of it too, okay, going and doing jujitsu or working out, I feel better

afterwards. Right. But also it's like all the people around me or the community of people that around me are healthy people with generally healthy minds. Like they're, they're doing things that are serving them. And it's like, they probably don't drink excessive amounts of alcohol, do a lot of different types of whatever, right? So it's the community aspect is a really, really big deal. What did you do to get yourself into a different community when you came out of jail? So when I got out of jail, A, like I said, I felt like I had this massive, like spiritual awakening where I had this guy just come into my life and for no, really no reason, helped me save my own. i felt i felt connected to

that i didn't want to let this guy down and i knew that if i came back into jail that it wasn't going to be good right and so when i got out my grandparents took me in and they gave me this tough love coupled with like i call it like real love like where they they gave me some structure they were like all right we're gonna pay for your food you don't have to pay us rent we'll give you spending money for gas we'll give you whatever you need but you better bring us receipts for every single transaction that you make you have to keep your room clean you got to work out you got to get a job you got to be respectful you got to work out yeah but they're and they're like the minute you you like lie to us you don't bring us a receipt, you're out.

So they gave me this love that was like, all right, I know you're in a tough spot. We're going to help you out a little bit. But the minute you lie or go back to your old ways, you're out. There's no room for error. Because I lived with them when I was younger, and it just wasn't a good situation. And I started to obviously pay more attention to what i ate i started to read things like muscle and fitness like the first book i got when i got out of jail is the encyclopedia of bodybuilding arnold's book which i still have and i started to slowly develop

new interests that i didn't have before like more into health and wellness and i still hung out with my old friends and there would be times where i'd be like more into health and wellness. And I still hung out with my old friends. And there would be times where I'd be like on the couch and they'd be outside going to get high. And they'd be like, you sure you don't want? I'm like, yeah, I'm sure. But because I developed this sense of discipline and self-confidence during those few months when I was in jail and when I got out,

I was able to finally say no. Like, you know, before we recorded, I was saying that when people used to always pronounce my last name wrong and I'd be afraid to stand up for myself because i didn't have confidence in who i was and my experience in jail like shifted that for me and it got to the point where i'm having conversations with my friends about like what i'm eating or what i'm doing in the gym and they didn't seem interested and it was almost became like an awkward first date where i just didn't feel connected and i was always like i was contemplating like what's going on. And then I slowly realized that it's because I just didn't have anything in common with them anymore like I did.

And I think that's a big lesson for people to hear because part of what keeps people stuck in these same communities is loyalty. They're like, man, I've known this person since I was five. We've been playing sports together since we were teenagers or whatever. And they feel like they have to stay connected to them for the rest of their lives, even though they don't, their, their, their choices aren't conducive with where they want to go. And I had to really come to terms with surrounding myself with people who had common futures and not common paths. And it turned, it took a lot of isolation for me. It took a lot of me

laying on the couch with my grandparents and watching like the Food Network and dancing with the stars and stuff. But it forced me to get comfortable with my thoughts and who I was as a person, which was something I was never able to do before I went to jail. I was always escaping, whether it was with drugs, people, strip you name it like i was just i couldn't be alone if i had nothing to do that was the worst thing for me and i think people struggle with that and i think it's a lot better to i think you feel way more alone spending time with people that don't bring the best out in you than you ever will by consciously choosing to isolate yourself and take some time for yourself.

And organically over time, I started to meet different people who were in the health and wellness because I was more focused on that and I was putting that energy out. I don't know if it was just luck, God, law of attraction, whatever it was, but I started to slowly build another community. And then when I became a trainer, it was pretty easy to surround myself with other trainers who were in the health and wellness space. I ended up going to a mentorship in San Diego, this guy, this trainer, Todd Durkin, you're familiar with Todd? He's down in San Diego. He owned a gym called Fitness Quest. He owns a gym called Fitness Quest 10. And he trained professional athletes. He trained guys like Drew Brees and others. And so I got drawn to that because when I became a trainer, like what's the first thing we all want to do? Like how can I train?

For me, it was like how can I train professional athletes or whatever? I was like I'm going to go like learn from this guy because he seems to know what he was doing. He was doing a lot with Under Armour too. And I went there and it was total opposite of what I expected. Like yeah, we learned like some cool things about training and building a business. But we learned a lot about like life and like how important it was to let go of certain things how important it was to set like big goals how important it was to take care of yourself like all these things that I'd never really those athletes just need encouragement and positivity right like the program I know that

everyone wants to make a big deal about this program that program but yeah they're already amazing athletes yeah they're already amazing athletes yeah they're already just so gifted they just need to be coached in the right way right and and so i started to meet people that got that where i was connected to through going to that and then others and then it just taught me the importance of like networking and going to conferences and meeting people and i would go to these events and i would come home to like my regular environment i'm like man like this sucks and i just like man i need to start spending time with other people that have that same kind of energy and that's what i continue to seek out yeah you start hanging around certain people and you're

like i don't think this is really moving me forward right which is okay here and there but like you don't want to be stuck in that too too that too much if you're trying to be a person that's growing and moving forward I think there's an addiction too in the personal development space where people are constantly looking to better themselves and they can just get so caught up in nitpicking every area of their life and that becomes an addiction too and again people fail to realize that that creates a false sense of normalcy too when you're following say 500 people in the personal development space or in the fitness space and

they're all doing well or whatever like you start to compare yourself to that and you don't realize like how far you've actually came in the last few years in your business and your health journey and whatever and we're finding a lot of these things we're like fuck i gotta train my neck oh shit i gotta train my forearms oh shit i gotta train my big toe i gotta train my hands i gotta train my fingers i gotta train yeah train my tibs before the podcast train my yeah tibialis train my pelvic floor train my mind that's right i mean i was like yeah i gotta do some calf raises before i come in here you know we it's funny you mentioned the comparison thing because we were just talking about this yesterday. And I think what you said there, though, that's the other side that people need to understand, how far they've come already.

Because there is a strength in comparing yourself to other people. There's a benefit there. If you can interpret it the right way, if you can look at that comparison and be like, wow, that's amazing. Oh, wow, they did that in two years or whatever, even if it's ridiculous, but just look at what somebody else is doing. See how amazing it is. Maybe instead of going off of why you're not there or why they're there, all the reasons why they're able to do it, maybe think, I wonder what aspects of their success that I can draw onto myself and emulate or copy. And then also remember you've done a pretty good job of how far you've come and where you're at and be grateful for that, but don't look at comparison as a bad thing. 100%. And I think a lot of it comes down to

self-worth because the people who have, if you have low self-worth, then you're going to compare yourself, I think, in a negative way. And I think when you're on the come up or you're somebody who's done some work or you're just – I mean, not even that. You're just comfortable with where you're at. You can acknowledge that that person is different from you, but you can also see the other side and say, wow, they have it going on. I want to be like that because success leaves clues, right? Yeah. And that's a little cheat code, right, is that you see how somebody did. You're like, oh, I want to try that.

And that's how I honestly did stuff with fitness. When I was reading Arnold's book or I was reading Muscle and Fitness or Men's Health or some of the old fitness magazines, I'm looking at how these guys did it. Greg Plitt. Remember Greg Plitt? Yes, I remember Greg Plitt. Fucking love that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. RIP.

But just watching some of the stuff people like him would do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, RIP. But just watching some of the stuff people like him would do. And I'm like, God, I can take certain people, or Kai Green or some of these other big bodybuilders that maybe I didn't want to be a big bodybuilder, but I was like, well, I mean, I like the way that guy's doing that exercise or his meal plan or whatever,

that I could just see how it worked for me. And that's where I think comparison can be really positive. One thing I want to go back to real quick, because when you were talking, it reminded me of something that my mom always used to tell me, because my mom was a single parent. She, I, it's funny because I remember as a kid, I was never thinking, oh, all my other friends have two parents, blah, blah, blah. Like I never thought of anything bad of having a single parent. Number one, because she did a great job. But number two, there's something that she did. And I remember remember it now she would always tell me about other

successful people who had single parents she'd always bring up the example of bill clinton and she's like bill clinton like he became president and he played the saxophone and he had a single mother and he like she would always give me like she'd always tell me all these different really successful people that had single parents, and that was ingrained. And I never thought because I had a single parent I had to end up as a statistic. I never thought that because I always was like, well, they all had single parents. I do too. We're good.

But that's a healthy way to compare, right? Because she brought that in a positive way and was like, look at all these people who have had success, and now you're comparing yourself to them. You don't feel alone. Yeah. And I think that's part of the deal. Is OxyContin off the market nowadays? Is it illegal? I forget what.

I mean, on the street, I believe it's illegal. Right, right. But I think they, didn't they ban it or something at some point? I guess the medication? I think they, I don't know if they banned it, but I do know they cracked down, I think, on the doctors and the amount they're allowed to prescribe because you had dirty doctors and you had pharmacies that were doing something. I mean, I had a kid that would work at a pharmacy. I had people we would meet with cancer that would give us their scripts.

think what's happened is it's increased the street value of Oxycontin because back when I was doing it it was maybe for an 80 milligram pill it was anywhere if I remember correctly it was like anywhere between like 40 and like 70 dollars a pill depending on who you got it from and the timing and stuff now I think it's probably I think it's at least double that I believe from what I had spoken to a few people about a couple years ago like I'm so thankful that I'm not in the depths of my addiction now with fentanyl I really am because I was the guy that would do anything to get drugs like now there's painkillers and there's stuff that's laced with fentanyl back in the day I remember this one this one scenario this is funny I had this guy that was selling me painkillers and he's like like, hey man, I think I got like a bad batch. And I think some of these,

these are fake. I don't think these are real 80s, like OC 80s. And the OC 80 was like the holy grail, right? That's like getting the best possible grass fed, grass finished, like ribeye. I love this comparison. You possibly can get, right?

And so that's like all, that's all I did. And I got this bag of pills and you had to, the way I did it was there was a time release because they're meant to like last you for a significant amount of time. But when you take them as prescribed like that, they don't, the rush isn't nearly as euphoric. So we would like the time releases off. So you get that instant rush. And they would have this certain taste to them that you could taste like to where

you knew that it was oxy it was just it was awesome and i and i remember opening this bag and licking the time release off every single one of these pills that this guy had given me to see if they were real and i found i remember finding like one that was real and i was like oh my gosh like this is amazing but now i mean crap if i that, I could be licking fentanyl. Okay, so guys, what's fentanyl exactly? Because you've mentioned that multiple times, and I'm kind of clueless. I don't know exactly what it is, but it's a drug that's killing a lot of people. I'll Google it.

But yeah, I just know that it's really bad. From what I remember it to be or what I understand of it now is it's a way more potent form of heroin and Oxycontin. It's like super strong. I believe that – I don't know if it's carfentanil or fentanyl. It was like an elephant tranquilizer or something that was used to like tranquilize like large animals. Yeah. It's crazy. What do you think about like – so your situation, you know, you ended up being locked up

and your freedom was taken away for a while and you had to kind of like do your time, I guess you'd say. What do you think about like doing some things the way that certain states are doing it where they're decriminalizing a lot of drugs? I think it's good in a way. I mean, I think, you know, a lot of times what, what happens is a lot of people, they are not criminals. They're just drug addicts. Right. I need to go to, they need to get, do some healing. They need to go to rehab. And, um, you know, you see a lot of people that were, I saw a lot of people in jail that just had possession charges and they were just addicted to drugs and there's not a lot of rehabilitation when you're in jail. I mean, I was very lucky to have the cellmate I did. And I will always say that. Yeah. I mean, I had to take action, of course, but I was fortunate that this guy came into my life. It was just, I was so crazy,

but there wasn't like a lot of, I think there wasn't like group therapy. You could go to like AA or NA, but a lot of times people were doing whatever they can to get out of their cell. So I would go into one of these meetings and I could could have cared less about what they're talking about I was like well I'm not myself so it doesn't matter um but I do believe there needs to be something there needs to be something needs to be done about how we're treating like drug addicts in our country because I don't think so maybe rather than like getting arrested and going to jail maybe uh maybe there's some repercussions but maybe you just somehow get help instead of going to jail

yeah i think a lot of that i think a lot of it specifically like obviously like i believe like the non-violent drug offenders for sure right now you get into some of the violent stuff i mean of course like those people should definitely be prosecuted right or if somebody's selling like tons of drugs and they're contributing to um to the pandemic and the drug use and stuff that's a totally different story but for the average like person who just a non-violent criminal and just has a drug addiction like i don't think they should i don't think they should be in jail and i remember so like we're about the same age but i remember some kids that would get caught smoking weed like their parents would send them to boot camp and shit but out of like the few

that i do know only one like i think maybe survived but he like made it out and he's actually like he ended up being like a marine and shit but like what about those type of approaches like does that shit work or have you wanted to send in the school? Yeah, some shit like that. I want to add in there in the African community, what parents will do when they have relatives in Africa, Nigeria, they'll just send the kids back to Africa. I, one of my, one of my cousins, Ike, who was sent back to Nigeria. And it's a real thing. Like, can I send my son over to relatives? It's a legit fear. I really had, I really had this fear when I was 16 16 because me and my mom are going to go visit relatives.

And I was just like, okay, so when's the flight back? Like, all right. Like a few days and I'm like, so can I see that ticket? Like you have two? Because I really thought she was going to leave my ass in Africa. But that's what they do. When kids are acting up in America, they send them back home. And then when they come back, they're reformed because they understand what they got.

Right, right. Yeah, it's a tough situation because some people will say to me, like the devil's advocate, will say, well, you went to jail and it changed you. Like, why can't it change everybody? And like I said, like, A, everybody's circumstances are different. And B, I had this guy in my life because up until I really started to talk to him, I didn't want to change. I was just trying to do my time so I can get out and repeat whatever I'd done

before I went in. And it wasn't until that one conversation we had when he, you know, gave me that quote unquote tough love that I decided that I needed to really make a shift in my life. Yeah. And, and it's hard because I think there's a, there's a lot of people that they get systemized in jail, and then there's not a lot of rehabilitation.

They get out, and they don't know how to respond. They don't know what to do. They don't know how to take care of themselves. They don't know how to adjust to society because they haven't been taught to deal with life in the way that they maybe should have before they went in. I was just thinking because there are some parents that are just like, I don't know. He's a teenager.

I've given him everything and he still won't calm the fuck down. I don't know what to do. I'm just going to send him away to someone. So someone else could deal with him. Right. Like that's kind of where I was thinking like, that's how that shit happened. It just doesn't seem like it's the right answer.

Well, I think the bootcamp thing can be helpful for some people, right? Because it gives you structure, it gives you discipline, gives you accountability. I'm sure they're going to be, some people, right? Because it gives you structure, it gives you discipline, gives you accountability. I'm sure they're going to be, you know, exercising. So it gives you that.

You get the group setting. So you get people like lifting you up and cheering you on. But again, it's like, I don't think there's a silver bullet for everybody. Like looking back at what I needed for me and how I responded, I think the bootcamp thing like may have worked for me. And it's interesting. I look back as a teenager when i was a teenager and i'm like what would what would have made me happy like what would

have made me not go down that path and i always when i was a kid like what what i wanted to to uh to do to be happy was to date a hot girl and to have big biceps in a six pack. Like that was what I wanted. And I thought that would like lead to everlasting happiness, right? And it's a very, very, very fleeting experience because I've done that. Like in, you know, I've gotten to a place where I'm, you know, pretty lean and I've dated pretty girls and I still wasn't happy.

As a matter of fact, I was more pissed off that when I got to that point, I wasn't happy because I had built this up on a pedestal and I'd worked so hard to be like, all right, when I get to this percentage body fat and when I can see like all these ab muscles and I go out with this girl, life's gonna be perfect. And it just wasn't.

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I've really been thinking of the idea of, because we've talked about seeking happiness and that stuff before, and it makes me wonder because for myself, and I'm assuming for Mark and Andrew, the stuff that we do gives us meaning and makes us feel fulfilled.

I'm not happy all day long, right? I'm not like, I'm generally just like here and then I'll have moments where I'm just like, ah, sick. And then I'm back here. But I think it's somewhat odd when just constantly trying to seek, because like, you know, when people in relationships are like, you make me so happy. Yeah. And then some some if that

relationship's gone they're down in the dumps and they're like oh that now that was my happiness that was that's it's dangerous when something like something makes you happy it's like you gotta you gotta somehow manage that or have some level of i guess meaning to yourself right where you're not because like when people seek happiness or euphoria, that's when people sometimes start seeking alcohol and drugs because it brings you to this high, this happiness. There are some situations where like, there are things that like make you.

So like, I think when you go to the physical is when you get a make, you know, when you exercise, literally, it's causing a cascade of hormones to end up in your favor to where you could kind of say, like, this is making me feel better. I think in the case of a relationship, if things are going pretty good and you're both pretty happy and, like, you're both excited about kind of where you're going, then you can kind of feel that happiness or share that happiness together. Yeah. kind of feel that happiness or share that happiness together. But I think other than like it being physical,

like just kind of saying it, I think, or trying to seek it out can be hard. I think what people are actually trying to seek out is, people are actually trying to seek out problems. And that's why when we go on the internet, we're so quick to be able to recognize how much we hate someone's post or hate something that someone says or does is because we're always trying to be able to recognize how much we hate someone's post or hate something that someone says or does is because we're always trying to error correct and error correction

is where in my opinion a lot of happiness happens if you're trying to solve problems that's what you're trying to do so you go and exercise because you got like a little angst going on and it solves a problem for you you come back and you're like hey let's do a podcast yeah yeah yeah that kind of stuff there's a big happiness trap right right so for me when i met happy i mean i was feeling so low about myself i wanted to just try to get back to like baseline right because i was so down in the dumps like i wasn't hard i was hardly ever happy i was just very very like dumbed down as you know as far as like how i about myself. It was so low. And I think we, in a society,

we were taught that we should measure our success based on the level of happiness we experience. And the fact is, life's not always going to be fun. And here's another thing. Some of our greatest achievements, some of our greatest moments that have made us the strongest have been during times when we weren't happy. Because you're forced to dig deep. You're forced to be persistent. You're forced to really look within and say like, man, I got to look in the mirror and just remember who the fuck I am. And those are the moments we remember. We don't

remember the top. We remember like, man, I remember like back when i was broke and could barely pay my bills and i just hustled my ass off and now here i am or i remember when my relationship was completely falling apart and we're sitting here screaming at each other now we have a healthy marriage you're not remembering like oh i remember like how happy we were like three days ago like no like those aren't the moments that stick out that's true yeah that's true how did you go from because people like like, he's talking about weed, like weeds everywhere. Like you were saying, how did you go from weed to snorting shit up your nose and then in jail? Like there's some steps there, right? How did that happen?

So after I took that first hit, again, we'll fast forward to after I got kicked out of my mom's house. Because that's when I explained that I started to sell pot a little bit on the side to support my habit. Cause I was making five, six, seven, eight bucks an hour, whatever it was,

you know, working jobs and it couldn't support my daily weed habit. So after I, what? Just funny. For my weed habit. Yeah. When you're starting to,

you're starting to, uh, almost build up like a, uh, tolerance. Well, tolerance, but a multiple personality almost in some sense. Right. my weed habit. You're starting to almost build up like a... Tolerance. Well, tolerance, but a multiple personality almost in some sense, right? Because my experience with addicts has been that

they really learn to lie really well. They learn to cheat and steal and do all kinds of stuff. So maybe that was kind of developing kind of in the background as you were kicked out of your mother's house. Yeah, for sure. Because I was always looking at ways to hide what I was doing.

I was always looking to manipulate people and break trust. I remember one of the first jobs I got. It might have been my first job. I was working at a nursing home or an assisted living, and I was washing dishes. And my mom had worked at a hospital. And I think that she had helped me get that job. And my only job was to wash dishes. And one day I just wanted to leave and go get high,

so I left all the dirty dishes out, and the people couldn't eat the next day. And then people were taking pictures and emailing them at the time to my mom, and my mom's like, you know, what's this? And I got fired. And so I was doing stuff like that fairly consistently where I was just so involved with my addiction and wanting to feel at peace with myself through pot that I didn't care about anything else. And so when I went to my dad's house, I needed to do what I could to fit in with this new crowd because, again, I became addicted to the community of people I was spending time with when I was younger. So I continued to sell a little bit of pot on the side, continued to find new people to get high with, barely graduated high school because all my friends and I did, we would

skip class and smoke weed. And then when I graduated, I ended up selling more pot, but now this time to make actual money where I was picking up significant amount of weight and now distributing it in quantities to other people. And the way it goes is like the more drugs you do, the bigger drug dealers you meet, the harder drugs there are. And I got introduced to cocaine. And I remember doing my first line of blow, and I felt this sense of euphoria. I don't want to ever touch that shit. It sounds like it would be so good.

Same. Everybody that's described it is like, you feel on top of the world, you're invincible. For sure. That's not good. But for me, initially, yeah, that's how I felt. But once I started to develop a habit and I started to get tolerance to it and I started to do more of it every day, it started to impact my anxiety because I had bad anxiety when I was a kid.

And I started to get crazy panic attacks into my late teenage years. I started, I was in the emergency room twice because I thought I was dying from having a heart attack. Because at this point, we had already buried several of my friends for drug-related deaths, car accidents, stuff like that. And you still probably at that point didn't think that would ever be you.

No. Right? No. And you go to these funerals and you really don't know what to make of them. Yeah, you're emotional, but you just are almost in shock. But that just became the norm of like you were like, all right, I guess this is kind of what happens, right, unfortunately.

And after like just multiple bouts with the panic attacks and not being able to get high anymore without having a panic attack, I was at a crossroads, you know, and I was like, man, I could either change my habits, change my friends. I'm clearly like doing drugs is ruining my life. Or I could find a way to continue to go down this road. And that's where I got introduced to painkillers. So a buddy of mine gave me a five milligram Percocet. I didn't really think much of it. I mean, I didn't, I didn't think I was putting anything healthy into my system, but I didn't realize how quick I would get addicted to these things. How does it make you feel painkillers? Cause I'm, I'm just thinking you just get numb. It numbs pain, right? But what else does it do? It numbs pain, emotional pain, mental pain,

spiritual pain. So you just feel just like, like, yeah. And you get a sense of you, you get a euphoric rush when you initially do it. Cause you just feel just like like yeah and you get a sense of you if you get a euphoric rush mm-hmm when you initially do it because you just feel like outside of yourself you know for a second or whatever but but yeah you just feel so sedated and you feel so at peace with yourself and you know kind of like blah you know and that became it became quickly it quickly became so addictive that I lost control of it. So where the 5mg Percocet became doing 10 a day,

20, 40, 80, all the way up until, like I mentioned, I was doing 300-400mg every single day up my nose to support my habit. 150-160mg a day just to get out of bed. And that escalated quick quick like the pot thing was pretty gradual like i started smoking when i was 14 and i smoked all through high school and i

believe yeah i don't think i touched any hard drugs during my time in high in actual high school it wasn't until after i got out of high school like three four years later where or three four years after i started smoking pot where i started to experiment with coke right and then that escalated just super quick into the painkillers and the painkillers just took a took a life of its own and that's what ended up um essentially leading to my arrest because i got sloppier with my drug dealing and i would do whatever i could, to get drugs, whether it was lying to people, manipulating people. And there was one night where my friends and I were sitting at my buddy's house and I was going to make a drug deal and I had a busted headlight and everybody was like, dude, you got to change your headlight. Like you're riding around with all this stuff in your car. Like it's a red flag for police to pull

you over. And it was Cinco de Mayo of 2008 which is one of the biggest drinking nights of the year and so my friends and I go in the car and we go to make a drug deal had a half a pound of pot in my trunk a couple grand in cash in the glove box a scale and a cop's running radar I'm guessing it was like a DUI checkpoint or something and I decided it'd be a brilliant idea to flash my high beams at the police police officer to hide the fact that i had a busted headlight when reality gave him a reason to pull me over because what do people do when they want to alert you that a cop's running radar flash your high beams right pulls me over my heart sinks into the pit of my stomach my heart's racing

and i'm so scared at that point i just knew my life was over um i stammered to get my registration and license out to give it to the police officer one thing leads to the next he pulls me out of the car and finds everything finds the pot finds the money finds the scale and uh puts me in the back of the cop car i'm in handcuffs and facing felony drug charges i remember just sitting there being like man like everything kind of came to a head like how, how did I get here? Like, how did the kid who just wanted to be loved? How did the kid who just wanted to fit in? How'd the kid who just want to be good at sports? Like, how did he get here? And now as I look back, it was just a result of the choices I made in response to my circumstances. But I did a lot of like thinking in those moments. Cause I don't know

if anybody who's listening to this or watching this is going through something like this. You know what I'm talking about because you're like, why? Why is this happening to me now? Because you don't think about it until something bad happens. You don't think about all the bad choices you're making or all the things you shouldn't have done until something forces you to look, which is why when we talked about how to get the kid to stop smoking the joint or whatever, where I said you have to have a strong why, you have to have a strong why into why you're doing something before life attaches it for you

like life attached that why for me when I got arrested it's like all right dude you're going to jail now like now you have to change or you're gonna go back to jail and then a few months later I end up going to court and the judge at the time I thought threw the book at me, but he gave me a massive blessing. He convicted me of the felony, which was the possession with intent to distribute marijuana, sentenced me to five years in jail, but suspended everything but 90 days, meaning if I messed up, violated probation, failed a drug test, I could potentially do the full five years. Gave me five years probation, 200 hours community service, all kinds of fines and drug classes. But he was like, dude, Doug, you're young, you're 20. This felony conviction is going

to haunt you for the rest of your life. He was like, I'm going to make you a deal. And I'm like, deal after what you just told me, like, where's the, where's the deal? He's like, if you complete everything without messing up, no missed probation appointments, you do all your community service, you don't miss a drug test. We'll take the conviction off your record at the end of the five years. And at that point, like I didn't think I was going to live to see my 25th birthday. So I was just like, all right, dude, I'll take it. And the rest is history. Wow. Why do you think he did that for you? I felt sorry. I don't know. He, he, he, and in all reality, I think he saw that it was my first offense as an adult. Yeah.

And he just knew that he was going to teach me a lesson and maybe he could just tell that that's what I needed. Mm-hmm. And that he could give me enough for me to be scared of. Because he could tell looking at me that I wouldn't last in jail based on how I carried myself, based on my my athletic ability that I just wasn't going to last and I just think that maybe he just gave me that shot because he believed if um he believed that if I could just do my part that it would not only help myself but it would hopefully give meaning and hope to other people that were experiencing what I went through painkillers you mentioned them hitting you really fast and being hooked on them very quickly. How quickly? A couple days?

Yeah, I mean, the feeling is instant once you snort a painkiller, but I mean, I got hooked on them within, yeah, a few days. I mean, it was very quick to, because once you have that feeling, like the same feeling I took when I took that, or the same feeling I got when I took the five milligram Percocet

was the same feeling I got when I started smoking pot. Like the monkey came on off my back and feeling at peace with myself all over again, but just more on a more intense level. Like when you first start doing drugs, at least for me, you're always trying to chase the first high. It's like a dog trying to chase its tail. It's just not going to happen, right? So I was always trying to chase the first high and you think you can do that by doing more and more, but it just, it's, it's always going to cancel itself out. Right. It just doesn't work. Did you, um, ever believe that you were like in pain or, and, and is that like, or was it like a, maybe like a mental pain or something like that? It was mental pain and emotional pain. Because you get desensitized, right? When you take

painkillers for a long period of time. You do. And I never like had a lot of, I don't think I had any injuries or anything growing up. So it wasn't like, I was like, oh, I can take this and it can help my pain. My ankle hurts or whatever. No. Yeah. I had no reason to have anything hurting because I didn't really move. But I remember when I, when I detoxed, I got a lot of aches and pains though. And I think it's probably because I was so sedated all the time that I just, my body just was not used to, my body was used to having so much, so many painkillers in there. And that when I got off of them, like I felt aches and pains that I didn't really know I had. You know, a few times you mentioned faith and like in the 12 step program, that's a big deal.

Like that's something that people have to buy into. Oh, yeah. Right? So for you, you mentioned how that's important for you. Was that important for you before all of this? Like were you raised in a household that went to church at all? Or is this something that you developed later? I developed it much later.

And ironically, at the time that I developed it was the time where I had this like aha moment that being ripped and dating pretty women is not the key to happiness or being fulfilled. How old were you, by the way, when that happened? I was in my mid, I think I was in my mid twenties. Okay. But yeah, growing up, my uncle was a priest at a Greek Orthodox church. So I grew up like old school religious.

But then my dad and my stepmom, they went to like a different like lutheran church or something so i was raised like going to church but it wasn't like i didn't believe in jesus yeah i just was going because you know i didn't want to get grounded or whatever and i also just knew that i mean the old school thing was if you're good you go to heaven if you're bad you go to hell and i'm on the to hell, so I might as well just keep on down this path. And I also believe that if God was about love and all this stuff, then why is all this happening to me?

Because again, I was addicted to that victim mindset of everything was happening to me. And then one of my personal training clients was a pastor at a non-denominational church. And he was like, man, you you gotta start coming to church with me he's like we can go chipotle after i'm like i'm good man i'm like i'm like i'm going to hell for putting you through this workout like that's what i would say and around the same time um a mentor of mine um just knew i was kind of struggling with some stuff and he was like man

like you got you're a good-looking kid. He's like, you have a lot going for you. You have a good group of friends around you now. He's like, people like you. He's like, but there's just something missing. Because I was so caught up in my past still. I still saw the old version of me in the mirror. The felon, the kid who resented his parents,

the kid who had a strained relationship with my mom and my dad and dad and everything else. And I was at a, an event or like a networking event one weekend. And like my life had in my mind fallen apart to where I had this epiphany that these things that I thought would give me happiness just didn't. And I decided to call my client and say, Hey man, I think I'm ready to give this Jesus thing a try. And I kid you not, his reaction was like he had just won the lottery. I was like, what's wrong with this guy? He's like, all right, man, I'll see you.

I'll come to my office on this day. I'm like, all right. So I go in there, and obviously I'm kind of skeptical. I'm like, what the heck is going to happen? I can't make this up. And I pray this prayer, and he walks me through it and i just start crying like in the same monkey that i felt come off my back with doing drugs came off my back that day and i remember walking out and and calling my mom and for the first time like apologizing

like really not just like i'm sorry i'm sorry like really like apologizing and the way i view that kind of stuff now and it's not in a dogmatic way it's more about like the relationship i have like i'm not a guy who check the box go to church i'm a guy who just believes in something yeah and it's all about how i treat other people and remembering like what's been done for me and i started to connect the dots and i'm like it's no coincidence that this guy came into my life to help me use fitness to save my life. And now I'm doing the same to help other people. I didn't go to any personal development conferences where they're like, yeah, you got to like turn your pain into purpose. I didn't.

This was all organic. And then I also realized that like I wasn't proud of a lot of my choices because that's what haunted me. It was times I what I did to my family or how I treated myself or others but even though I wasn't proud of that like God was because um he was able to not only like use that experience to help me but now to help other people and I felt like part of me like died when I was in jail and I was made new and I think about this in this way and that like one of the hardest withdrawal symptoms for me was this feeling of trying to crawl out of your own skin. Like that's how anxious I was when you literally, like you're so restless that you feel like something's going to come out of you. Right. And as I look back now, I, I, I think it was part of

like, it was like the old me trying to leave so that like I could be like reborn in a way. It was part of like, it was like the old me trying to leave so that like I could be like reborn in a way. And, and that's how my relationship is with faith now. And so what I tell people is you don't have to be religious to have faith. Like to me, faith is just believing in the unseen. Like even though you can't see like success, even though you can't see that healthy relationship, even though you can't see that your health transformation, like you just know it's going to come eventually. You don't know when, you don't know how, you don't know where, but as long as you keep doing the things

necessarily on a daily basis, you believe that you'll get there. Yeah. I think you can get there through a lot of different mechanisms, sometimes even working out, you know, you ever listened to like David Goggins. I mean, some of these people they'll reach so deep uh i just did a half marathon the other day and i saw some people that were running in it and they're like crying as they're running you know they're having like a spiritual i don't know what they're going through maybe they were addicted to drugs or i do know that some of them were you know cancer survivors and stuff like that and so i've worked out before where i'm like i would just do anything to be somebody else just for a couple minutes because this fucking sucks yeah so i think you

can push yourself there and it doesn't always have to be that you're backed up against a wall like you were in your situation for sure and that was something that i had to unlearn was for a while like um i was still caught up in some of those same patterns where I was almost putting myself in situations to put myself back, put myself against the wall, not in a, in a legal way or in a necessarily a bad way. But I was like, after I developed some success as a trainer and written a book and that sort of thing, I started to still get like crazy amounts of anxiety and stress. And I would stress myself out for no reasons. And I became almost like ashamed

because I was like, I have no problems. Like, why am I anxious? Like, why am I stressed? Like, why is this happening to me? And I was in therapy, which I think can be a great tool for people when they're going through stuff. And I just remember asking my therapist,

I was like, like, why am I anxious? Like, I make good money. I have this, why am I anxious? I make good money. I have this, that. I'm feeling good. I'm not depressed. I didn't understand it. And she said, what was your childhood like? And I was like, I don't want to go through this.

I've already talked about this, and I feel like I'd owned part of that. And what I hadn't understood was the neurological component of like homeostasis that she was like like Doug you grew up in chaos for a good bit of your life so that's what your brain is used to so you're gonna recreate chaos in your life even if you don't even realize it based on maybe what I'm stressing about maybe it's the types of people I seek out in relationships, whatever it was. I was like, man, you're so right. And for me, like, I'm just

a guy that once I can understand like why something happens, then I'm like, okay, got it. That makes total sense. And now I can work on it. Because I think for me, I was so uncertain on what was going on that I didn't have any answers on what I could do to improve it, that it made me feel worse. And once she let me know, like what was going on, that I didn't have any answers on what I could do to improve it, improve it, that it made me feel worse. And once she let me know, like, what was going on, it made sense. I was like, all right, yeah, I can see that. Because my brain was developed, getting used to that. And so I, it forced me to do even more work on myself, where I would work through the anxiety, the pain. I mean, man, this is funny. So my anxiety got so bad that I would get anxious when I worked out sometimes. And you got to imagine like fitness was like the ultimate form

of therapy for me. And I had panic attacks when I did drugs. So I started getting panic attacks in the gym. And so I was like, oh crap, this is going to be the same thing as the drugs where I can't do drugs anymore without having a panic attack? Is this going to be like that with fitness? Listen, this is funny. This is like one of my lower moments like after I got out of jail was my anxiety got so bad I started to go to my primary care and I was like, oh my God, is something wrong with my heart? Like am I dying?

And of course he's like, no, you have anxiety. And I was like, well, I want to get it checked, you know, because that's what you do when you start spiraling. So I ended up going to like a cardiologist or something. And mind you, I'm fit and I'm a trainer at this point yeah and i remember walking in there and i was like yeah i'm here for a stress test he's like oh like where's your grandparent he's like where's like where's your family member like i'm like no this is for me he's like what do you do i'm like i'm a personal trainer he's like why do you need a stress test i'm like i don't know i think there's something wrong with my heart. And he put me on this, the treadmill and I ran for like 20 minutes on this thing. And I'm like freaking

out, panicking the whole time, you know? And he was showing me like where my heart rate was and everything. And he was like, I've never had anybody like run like this on here, let alone like at this time. And he's like, dude, you just have batting. He's like, all right, we'll do one more thing. He was like, I'll have you lay down. I'll see how you recover. Like, that's a big thing. I think with the heart. And he was just like, dude, you're fine. He was like, it's actually makes me feel good that I can actually hear a heart like this. Cause most of the people that they bring in there, it's just not the case. And so I started to really do some work on that. And one of the things that helped me with, with anxiety was just accepting the feelings that

come with it and knowing that it's just part of what happens. Because my biggest problem, and I think a lot of people struggle with this, is when you start getting anxious symptoms, they start focusing on those symptoms. Oh my gosh, my heart rate is racing. Oh my gosh, I'm spiraling out. I'm nauseous. And then when you focus on that, what's it do? It gives you more anxiety. And one of the things that I was taught was just to accept those feelings and just know that it's just normal for what's going on neurologically. And it's going to pass. It's going to pass.

Does that still happen to you every now and then? Do you still get anxious feelings, and all you do is you just know it's going to pass? Do you wait it out, or are there other? I mean, I still get anxiety. I, knock on wood, haven't had a panic attack in a very long time because i've gotten comfortable with those the symptoms and stuff but on my on my way out to california on on sunday i mean i was anxious but now i know i need to focus on the solution in action because and i was anxious not to come out here but i was supposed to take a 6 6 20 flight

non-stop from Baltimore to LA. Would have put me in LA at LA and like 9 a.m. or something, LA time. Get to the gate and last minute, flight's canceled. I'm like, oh no. And I had two interviews to do the next day and I'm like, oh crap. Like what am I going to do? And tons of, with everything going on, tons of flights were getting canceled, right? And so they ended up rebooking

me on a flight that would have connected me to dallas and then dallas to la well the flight from bwi and baltimore to dallas was delayed two hours so i was going to miss my connecting flight from dallas to la so now i'm scrambling i'm anxious but it's different that i know i need to like it's going to pass if i just get to the solution. I just need, I know I need to get to California. And once I get there, it'll be okay. And then I end up, they end up putting me on a flight to Austin. I was going to try and connect to LA there. And then that flight was booked.

And I ended up spending like seven or eight hours in Austin. Wow. And ended up flying into Long Beach like Sunday night. lying in a long beach like Sunday night. And the moral of this story is that when I was younger, or even in my days of mismanaging anxiety, I might've just turned around and just gone home. Like, you know what? Like I'm just not meant to go. But now I just accepted that if I wasn't anxious, there'd be something wrong with me. And my flight just got canceled. I have two, you know, big interviews the next day. And I have all these plans that out West, like there'd be something like wrong with me if I wasn't experiencing anxiety with that situation. So acceptance

has been a big part of that. And that's just, this is just like a real time example from a few days ago and how that played out. I think people need to recognize it's a, it's kind of a medical condition. Like you should get help for it. Right. That you said you went through therapy. You know, it's a great idea. Likeamine how do I – okay, I'm feeling – I'm really worried about something, like more so than normal, and my heartbeat is going out of whack, and your body is going out of whack. Why not just do some searches and look up stuff on YouTube? How did you end up coming to go to therapy?

I just got to a point where I knew what I was doing wasn't working. And with, with everything I had kind of gone through, through jail and everything after I knew the importance of, I knew that it wasn't that I didn't know everything. And the minute that I thought I knew everything, you know, I knew nothing or what's that old, I guess it's that old saying. And I learned that from just my cellmate, like teaching me that and then getting out and having mentors that I knew it was okay to put my hand up and say I needed help and to let my guard down. So it was pretty easy for me to go into therapy. But when I, when I went, it was at a time where my life, I felt started to fall apart where I was getting all these anxieties

and stuff and somebody was like maybe you should just go talk to somebody help help them have you um have them help you like work through that and so i saw out somebody who had actually worked a lot with people who struggle with addiction and and stuff so she knew my background and could relate to a lot of what i've been i've through, so she understood it from a more fundamental level. Anything else over there, Andrew? I did, and it slipped my mind. Oh, no. But, no, it's been fantastic.

And what's crazy is, because I was saying we're kind of similar ages, a lot of the stuff that you're just talking about, I mean, it's cool. I want these two to understand my story is written in light pencil with kind of like an eraser over it, but you can still see some of the grooves in there. But his is like a fucking big-ass marker, but over the exact same thing. It's just that I was able to—I'm trying to think, like, where the fuck did I make a turn where he maybe went the other way, and he went down this path, and I went this way. And it was like—I remember I got arrested for drinking when I was like i think like 15 or 16 and i just remember the next day we all woke up ate breakfast and acted like nothing happened and i was like oh i dodged a bullet there and like that was kind of

it for me and then after that i didn't really fuck with anything but it's just yeah it's just really strange how like i was pretty close to being just like Doug. Yeah. But somewhere along the lines, I don't know what the hell happened to me, but it just, thankfully, you know, we both got here eventually. But, you know, it's just, yeah, dude, it's, and that's what it was. I was going to ask, so you did say you grew up in a, like, a chaotic household and stuff. Even though your parents were divorced, did you guys have any struggles with money

or anything like that? Not really money specifically in the way where there wasn't food on the table, but there was always fights between my parents over money and custody and stuff like that. So that's where the chaos came from. Well, they didn't talk to each other, but through like email, like there was a lot of hatred between them.

And did they live close? Because when you, when she, her mom told you to go move to your dad's and you did, did you still, were you still able to see your siblings or were y'all far away? They lived, so my, they had shared custody at the time. So it was 50-50. So when I moved to my dad's a hundred percent, I was always going to see them anyway, like half the time. So it was 50, 50. So when I moved to my dad's a hundred percent, I was always going to see them anyway, like half the time it was like 30 minutes North, but I felt like alienated because now they're spending time with my mom. They're doing dinners. They're going away and stuff where

I'm not allowed to go anymore. And that was, that was hard for me. But what was interesting was the high school that I'd went to was in a, like a suburban area. And you know, you wore like preppy clothes and stuff. And then when I went up north, it was a rural high school where they had a drive your tractor to school day. Drive your tractor to school day? Yeah. Kids are in overalls.

Oh my god. Seriously. Carhartt. Wow. I was wearing Carhartt back before it was cool. Carhartt? What is Carhartt? Carhartt is just like. It's a brand. Yeah, it's a brand.

Huh. Just like, imagine like a more hardcore Dickies. Okay. Okay. It's like denim jackets and stuff. Yeah. It's actually amazing, especially for when it's fucking cold out. Oh, yeah. Popular in New York.

Yeah. But then also in rural. I can't say that word. Rural. Parts of the world. But the reason I wanted to bring that up was because you're pretty good with it it's like a mating call now yeah i wanted to bring that up because it's like you know yeah you said it was chaotic but like you guys weren't struggling like you weren't necessarily like in a um inner city ghetto where like drugs were all

around you and stuff it was just a bunch of dudes just like you. Like I just want to get high, you know? So it's like that turned into a really big deal. And so that's kind of like what it was like in the neighborhood that I'm currently in. People still talk about the kid that lived in the house that we bought, how he was friends with a kid down the street.

And then they found somebody else down the street. And like this little crew ended up all selling drugs in this really nice neighborhood and everybody was just like well i remember he smoked weed or whatever but then all of a sudden now they're doing like hardcore drugs and people joke around about weed being the gateway drug you know like oh it's just weed that's no big deal but it's like man some of this shit can spiral out of control very fast and it just fucking it just it sucks because yeah it is and again just like you i don't want to be like the fucking nerd over here saying weed's bad but it's a little bit too comfortable these days that people are just getting weed left and right right and and also like my dad i mean i don't want to i just want to get in i got into too

many details about it but he was just like it was hard to deal with with him growing out he was very very like tough i mean it was just a it was just not a good dynamic yeah on how um how he was and we butted heads a lot and the way he handled things and that's what a lot of that i think played into the way i i felt about myself at times because I was always kind of hard on myself too. And that sort of thing. And, um, and you're,

you know, Andrew, you're right. I think you don't want to be like the pot police, but you also, like we've said on multiple times, you kind of want to look at like, like,

why are you doing it? You know, are you doing it because you don't like yourself? Are you doing it because you genuinely want to be creative and enjoy it or whatever, and you can handle it in a way that's not destroying your life? You have other people in your family that have had similar experiences with drugs? Yeah.

Well, yeah. I mean, there's definitely been people that have had their fair share of struggles with stuff. I think those are good things to point out, too, as parents. Yeah. You can say, hey, you know your uncle so-and-so, your whomever. You can point to the family and say, well, for them it started – they started with marijuana as well. And then it turned into A, B, and C.

My brother died from drugs and my uncle died from drugs. And I've had, I don't know, 30 friends die from – maybe more now. I don't know. I lost count. But many, many friends have died from drug overdoses and various things of that nature. Is that what kind of kept you off of it for a while? Yeah, that's what led me to keep them at bay. I never even had a sip of alcohol until I was like 21, 22, something like that.

And that's why I never smoked weed. Just everybody in my school smoked weed. Not everybody. A lot of people in my school smoked weed. And from what I saw, my interpretation of that as a kid was like, I'm going to get myself out of here. Like I don't just, I didn't like my hometown just like every other kid, right? I'm going to like make something of myself,

and that doesn't seem to get me moving forward at all. So I was always like, this doesn't seem progressive in any way. Performance enhancing drugs, that was a different story. I was like, that sounds like it might move me forward a little bit. And I was also just trying to fit in too, and I saw all these kids that I thought were the cool kids doing stuff. I was like, I want to be cool, so I'll do whatever to please them we'll do whatever to fit in it's a funny story um when i

went to that new high school people thought i was a narc because i was so eager what you got hey kids you have marijuana cigarettes well because i was so eager to meet people that did drugs to get high with they were like who's this new kid just ask us about drugs like day one or whatever they're like yeah sure your name is doug yeah right yo doug you you mentioned some you mentioned like you and your dad had a strain but you also mentioned like when you found your faith you called your mom and you apologized right were you able to reconcile things with your father or are things still rough? I mean, they're better now than where they were. One of the moments that, just to paint a context

on how our relationship was, was that really shifted things for me was when I was in jail too, was there was a time where I'd been working out consistently for a bit and he came to visit me and he's with my two full brothers um and you know anybody who's either watching this or listening to this you've either been in jail or you've seen it on tv you know how it is there's the glass you know and then you got the two phones on each side and he's on the phone he was you're going you're going to rehab. I'm like, no, I'm working out. I feel good. I'm not going to rehab. He starts screaming at me on the phone, like screaming.

That's kind of how he was, and I was like, why are you yelling at me? I'm in jail. How much worse do you want my life to be right now? And I just remember being like, man, he doesn't have power over you right now. I hung up the phone, and I just walked out, and I went up to my cellmate, and I'm like, let's work out. And that was one of the things he had actually been trying to get me to do. My cellmate was think about what makes you angry.

That's what a lot of these guys, when they work out in there, they, they, they learn how to tap into their pain and using it for something positive. And I was always like trying to figure out how to do that because I was so just emotionally numb that point that I didn't figure out how to do that. But once that, that happened with my dad and I wanted to work out, I was like, Oh, this is what they were talking about. And, and now I've,

I've, I've learned to accept him for who he is, which I think is big because just me continuing to pull, we all have flaws, right? Like I can point out flaws of, of, of anybody.

Right. But like, what good does that really do? And it's accepting him for who he was and really being thankful for maybe the things that i didn't like about him have made me who i am today and who i want to be as a man as a father as a you know when i get married as a husband and um just more i get again like just being at peace with that yeah i was gonna say last question for me so in your your pursuit to get abs, biceps, and a hot girlfriend, did you consider performance enhancing drugs since you already

experienced with other drugs? No, because I kind of equated any drug to me going back to jail. I did, not that I'm, I mean, obviously I'm not like for or against, I don't really know much about performance enhancing drugs to be honest like I was I was the guy who just early on did like protein shakes um and like casein at night like whey protein after a workout casein at night took like the multivitamins and ate well um but I was just I was always into just just learning and doing whatever I could now I did see I saw i sought out people that i think trained like bodybuilders who you know used peds to help me with diet and stuff i mean it's the old school um you guys remember kevin laroney the bodybuilder yeah yeah so the guy um who trained kevin or did his nutrition and stuff was in my hometown because

kevin i think i think kevin was in my hometown. I think Kevin was in Maryland. And so I went to him and he helped me with some diet stuff. And it was like the typical oatmeal, egg whites in the morning, chicken breast, broccoli, that kind of pattern. And I just became like a sponge for information. And I would just tweak things. Oh, I like this, but I definitely want some peanut butter. I want a sweet here and there.

I can't just live off bland chicken. The only people that absolutely love or will die for peanut butter is people on a bodybuilding diet because they're eating chicken breasts and broccoli, so peanut butter sounds so good. Have you ever dipped peanut butter in chicken? It's actually pretty fucking good. Oh, yeah, it's fucking unbelievable.

When you're doing a bodybuilding diet, that's the fucking problem. Yeah, you put it on anything. But it got to the point where that became like an addiction. My constant yearning and drive to stay lean led to me. And not that I think there's anything wrong with this for people who are in the space of competing for bodybuilding. I'm sure it's necessary. But I was traveling on the plane with frozen chicken and broccoli in a suit. I was carrying, I was checking an extra bag

with my food and I wouldn't go out on the weekends with my friends and I'm in my 20s. So it wasn't like I was older and I had kind of gotten past that time. I just had no life other than that. And that became like a, like a God for me. And that was part of what contributed to my like downfall that eventually ended up helping me find faith as well. You know, there's – I want to rewind real quick to when you were talking about – when you were talking about your dad and you mentioned how there are certain things he did that you now see and you don't want to model for yourself. people when they think about if a parent didn't do that great of a job when they think about their parent they will look at that and look at that and be like oh this is why i am the way i am i've heard people say that or my mom did this to me that's why i'm like this but like me and my dad we have a good relationship now we talk via whatsapp and shit um and i love the dude but i

definitely look at certain aspects of him i just like like – I can't say I'm happy. But I can say that I'm somewhat grateful for some of the negative things that he's done because it gave me literally a partial model for what I don't want to emulate for myself. And if people can take that, if you have had hardships with parents and they maybe haven't done a great job in certain areas interpret it differently you know use that as just interpret it differently yeah something that really was powerful for me i was watching a tony robbins video um back in the day and i forget how exactly how he said it but i think it was like if you're gonna blame people for all the bad you better blame them for the good too yeah and he was telling the story about like how he kind grew up, and I was like, man, that's so true. And it helped me shift my perspective in saying, yeah, my dad, in my eyes, wasn't the best dad for me. I mean, I think he was doing the best he could with what he had, right? But I'm like,

what are some characteristics that I didn't like that I can never do? Like my dad, there were certain things that I was like, all right, I'm never going to do that. And that's helped me, helped propel me to say, all right, I'm going to stick my ground on certain things that I was like, all right, I'm never going to do that. And that's helped me, helped propel me to say, all right, I'm going to stick, stick my ground on certain things when I feel like there's a part of me that could revert to doing something he would do. And I've also had pretty good boundaries. Like I've also like during the holidays, I've done my best to go around and see him. I've also like on his birthday or father's day, like tried to communicate with him or on my birthday, I pick up the phone. So it's not like I, a lot of people just cut them out of their life. Right. I don't think that, I mean, if there are certain situations, yes,

but I mean, for, for many people, maybe it's not the best approach, but why I was able to do it more with my mom, I think is because she and I were able to have deeper conversations and she was able to own her side of the street. And I was able to own mine. There was a time we were out for sushi one night. And this was after we had really started to mend our relationship. And she said, is there anything that you wish I would have done differently? And I just was like, you know, I think you kind of did the best you could. But I was like, I wish you would have just asked me why. Like why I was behaving in

the way i was and um and it created this this bridge for us to come together because you know after that i apologize she apologized then now we're both happy i think that's what happens is we both people hold on to resentments and they think it's the best thing that i think the best thing to do is to apologize but they don't want to because they want to be right. Everybody wants to be right and protect their ego. And they're like, I'm not apologizing until you apologize. And what happens?

Like nobody, either nobody ever apologized or you get to a place like my mom and I got, and one of us apologizes and the other person apologizes. And now what happens? We give each other a hug. Our relationship deepens and we both got what we wanted, which was, you know,

for, for, for both of us to, to have a good relationship. You think it would have said anything if she said why? Or would you be like, oh, no. That's a teenager, see? Yeah, that's true.

Or cuz. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, back then, I mean, what i could have maybe said if and but part of it like also was i was afraid to admit some of the stuff that was going on in in the house or i was afraid to admit that kids were bullying me because what do parents like when when what do parents do they're i'm gonna call the school well that that's not gonna solve anything i mean at least in my eyes i was like oh my gosh they call the school they're gonna find out i'm solve anything i mean at least in my eyes i was like oh my gosh they call the school they're going to find out i'm going to get beat up after school

and so there was all these other fears going through my head but i do think like when like mark's approach when he was talking about like the the opposite of what his initial reaction i go back to that because i think that approach works because i was putting myself like in my young doug shoes and i'm thinking about if somebody came along and like came up and said hey like Because I think that approach works. I was putting myself in my young Doug's shoes, and I'm thinking about if somebody came along and came up and said, hey, what's going on? How can I help? Instead of, why are you doing that?

I think those are two totally different conversations. There's one more thing I was going to mention, too. Looking at what's helped me out sometimes is like not just looking at maybe the things I didn't want to model right but there are certain aspects of my father that are positive he was a massive book nerd that man's read hundreds of books and my mom told me that and then I had conversations with him he'd talk about that I'd be like all right well I mean I do have some of you so maybe I can kind of delve into that part of me and start reading more and learning more. And that was one of the things I was like, that's an endearing part of my father that I can take

away. You know, even though there's a lot of these things that are, no, I don't want to emulate. I can take some of these aspects of him because like he, to an extent, did the best that he could too. But it's sometimes hard to do that, especially when like a parent hasn't had the most positive impact on your life. But it can be somewhat beneficial if you want to get to the point of forgiving them to look at the endearing aspects of them because part of them did make you. So it's something. Yeah, for sure. Jesus. Phone's making noise.

something yeah for sure jesus phone's making noise um i was uh i was really lucky because my mother would like make jokes about stuff yeah so she would like she would make it seem like it was like her and i you know she'd make it seem like hey look if anything ever happens like let me know like if you get in trouble at school like tell me about it because i want to help you get out of trouble like she would kind of say it that way even though it wasn't true when I did get in trouble she would be pissed yeah um but she kind of always made it seem that way and it was just easier just to kind of like just to flat out tell her you know a particular situation so I was very fortunate my parents were like that I think creating an environment where the kid or whoever it is that's struggling feels comfortable to open up I think is everything because what you see a lot now is you see these

kids are just so shut down and they won't talk to their parents I think a lot I think a lot of it comes down to relatability because some of my clients like a part of my demographic that i work with is these kids who have struggled with addiction or have stopped using drugs they want to use fitness to repair themselves or feel better about themselves build self-confidence and it's always becomes like a gateway for me or for them to open up and share stuff to me and vice versa to help them with other things because they have some relatability with me. Because I can relate to a lot of these

kids who have hard relationships with their parents or not feeling good about themselves versus the parents. I mean, I think there's a huge disconnect, I think, a lot of times with parents and kids, especially now. I mean, my parents didn't grow up with the technology we have now, right? And when I have kids, I mean, I'm not going to – I didn't grow up in the world of TikTok and Instagram and stuff.

I mean, I don't think I had Facebook until like right around after high school or something. So it's just different. They're just different generations. something. So it's just different. They're just different generations. And I think the more you can kind of do your best to, to relate to the kids on whatever level they're at, I think that's going to be the best recipe for success and getting them to open up. Take us on out of here, Andrew. Sure thing. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Please make sure you guys like today's video and drop us a comment down below on anything you found interesting. You know, pretty, pretty pretty awesome now crazy but uh awesome

life and life story that we got to hear today so please drop us a comment on what you guys uh really liked about today's conversation and uh subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already and follow the podcast at mark bells power project on instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter my instagram twitter and tiktok is at i am andrew z and sema where you at and sema in yang on instagram and youtube and sema yin yang on tiktok and twitter and by the way i want you guys to chime in because i think it's a really interesting conversation that we were having on like how to talk to kids about drugs because it's inevitable that they're going to get their hands on it at some point right but what what is the best way because it's not like drugs are bad

you go to jail kids are like no i'm, motherfucker, I ain't going to get caught. So like, right? So how, what do you guys think? Let us know. Doug, where can people find you? So you can find me at Doug Bopst on Instagram, TikTok. On YouTube, I think it's Doug Bopst, like dash Adversity Advantage Podcast or something.

Or you can go to DougBopst.com and you can find my books and more info about me there. Thanks for your story today. Thanks for sharing your, your time with us too. Strength is never weak. This week is never strength.

Catch you guys later. Bye.