Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Boston Gangster Jonny Hickey

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

A one-time street kid from Boston, these days Johnny is a celebrated filmmaker, actor, and anti opiate crusader.

All my dreams deterred from ever happening. So I said, I'm just going to become the best criminal they've ever seen. And I just put together these crews of kids. And I would go into the raves now. Now they're fist fighting. He doesn't know that I'm there. So I kind of come up around him and I suck at him. Oh, these kids are fucking scared now because I got their boy.

And then boom, in the back of my head. And I woke up seven days later in Boston Medical Center. They threw me off an 80-foot cliff. So I ripped the morphine out of my arm. And I'm like, I don't want this no more. So I went cold turkey and they read that. And they read it out loud in the courts of all the people who were like, Mr. Hickey fell 80 feet, refused all narcotics for 30 days.

He's like, that says something. So you know what, Mr. Hickey? I think you're all set. I don't think you're going to be on drug court for the next two years. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I am here with Johnny Hickey, and he is a filmmaker, actor, X-Con, who's got a really interesting true crime story that actually leads up to him. becoming a filmmaker, and we're going to get into it, so check out the interview.

Let's start at, you know, at your childhood, like you were, you were born in, um, in Boston. So it's born in Boston, but specifically Charlestown. So if you don't know Charles down the section, it'd be like, if you compared Hell's Kitchen of New York, that would be the Hell's Kitchen of Boston. It's this square mile on the north side of Boston, uh, similar to South Boston, as far as like it was heavy Irish blue-collar community. And Charlestown, if you've seen the town with Ben Affleck, which is over the popular. I was just because that's, that's about what I know is the town.

Yeah, so that's a popular crime drama that's based off of the guys, a couple of my uncles included that were just serial bank robbers. They were crews of these guys in Charlestown. There was really no mob boss there. Like, so like Whitey Bulge was in the South Boston, like mob boss and Winter Hills. which is some of all these. The Charlestown was just like crews of guys that was smoking angel dust when I was growing up. Like, you know, my uncles and stuff, smoking angel dust doing blow in robbing banks and killing each other.

Like at a, you know, for me to wake up in the morning and find out that somebody's mother's head got blown off was like not, and it was like that happened multiple times. It wasn't like a rare thing. And so my childhood was, you know, I brought up in this housing development, the Bunker Hill projects. which is the first and largest housing development ever built on, you know, in the Boston area. It was built for Irish longshoremen and veterans that came over in the 30s. And I think that's kind of what put the bank robbery stuff. You know, so the reason Ben Affleck did the town, but never explained the why bank,

there's more bank robbers per square capital than anywhere else in the country come from Charlestown. So it's like a statistic, right? So it's like, how. And it was the IRA. I believe, you know, from my research that I've done is the IRA at the time needed money to fund the IRA. So they would supply guns to the crazy Irish guys in Charlestown and go out and have them rob banks for all them, split the money up, you know, protect them, do all that kind of stuff. So, and then eventually it spiraled off into this generations in like the 80s and 90s where these dudes were just going out and just robbing banks or raw banks and make money robbing banks, like heavy, heavy levels. meanwhile 49 unsolved murders in my neighborhood still to this day so there was like a code of silence

people would go into like a bar blow someone's face off 30 people in the bar nobody seen shit you know that it was that kind of neighbor yeah so it was rough tough Irish mostly Irish at the time neighborhood in Boston when Boston was still kind in the 80s and 90s in the segregation kind of era you know yeah I was going to say the other movie is like the departed I think I also think you know like they departed no none of these movies really nailed on the head i i think the town's good i'll give the town credit for sure it's not as good for me because i'm from charlestown so the specific little things that are like there's like a mob boss in in the town there was there was no mob boss you know you ever told like one of these bank robber dudes to like you're

going to go do this for me or else they blow your faith you'd be dead you know what you mean um like My uncle Bobby, I was referring to him because he did about 20-something years, like almost 25 years in the feds for robbing banks. So he was one of the original guys that like the town is really based off of my uncle was, you know, a serial bank robber and ended up doing 20-something years. But before he did his time, Robin Banks, like he'd get into fights with people over money, bank it, you know, whatever it was. And like he got shot in front of me when I was, I was almost like when I was like,

or 10 six times like I remember like the bullets hitting them like you could I live in the project so you look out into the courtyards and my uncle also lived in like a one bedroom in there my other uncle lived across the street from him so I had two uncles that lived right next to me in the projects you know it was this crazy world and you know you always looking out the window and see what's going on in the courtyard and my uncle was coming home and he got shot six times and I remember the bullet like you see like a thing like just a flash and like something come out of his neck you know so like he was getting hit with a bullet it was going in one part of his body coming out another part of his body's crazy uh he survived that went on to rob banks do 20 something

yeah so that's all like pre his bank stuff but that's the environment that i was being raised in and then i had cousins that were doing similar stuff you know that same uncle stabbed my other uncle in front of me whatever remember those rambo knives yeah the yeah the car with a compass on the bottom yeah the cable they called yeah he fillet my other uncle in front of me, like, before he got shot. So, like, when I was, like, six, I watched him filet, my other uncle over something in the, so these are, like, these are memories that I just have kind of stored because they're, they're intimate to me because of family and blood, but that stuff was going on around

every hallway, every doorway, every doorway, and 1,100 apartments in that three-story section housing development that I was growing up in, and then beyond the rest of the square mile. It was just always violence, and you had to fight, you know, and it's like you grow up scheming, robin, stealing. Like, that's what your environment is. That's what you're looking up to these mailroom. I didn't have a dad at the time. So I eventually find my dad, but as a child all the way until my 20s, I didn't know my dad. So I had no dad growing up.

So my uncles were my male role models. Then I had a stepfather, like that was like my mother's boyfriend that was. just with it forever. But he was a druggie mental case from another neighborhood. So everybody that was kind of like, you know, that I was looking up to was definitely heavy into crime and stuff. So when you learn, you know, grow up learning these things, it's like where do they really expect you to become, right? Like a product of your environment. Like if everyone in, you know, my family were cops and lawyers, then I'd probably be a cop or a lawyer, a politician, you know, whatever it is. But it was just, you know, it was more crime and scheming for my generation.

of like the adults above us and I didn't want to be a part of that I wanted to be the first hickie to not go to jail be successful go to college you know do all these things so in my youth like growing up from you know elementary school I was bused so did you know we have forced Boston in Boston right to break the minorities so I'd get bused from Charlestown all the way over to the south end of Boston. So like, you know, like a 50-hour drive on a bus, like through these tunnels and like just through traffic in Boston to the south end to do the same thing back home in the afternoon Monday through Friday. And then after I was done with elementary school, I got to go to middle school in my neighborhood in Charleston, which is good. So I was at the

eddies in Charleston. And I was involved in like science fairs. I was one of the only Caucasian males like to even like get in a state science fair. Never mind. win. I won a couple of science fears and stuff. And I would also do mock trials where you go into the district courthouse and you act as a public defender or a prosecutor and you work with like a basically like a local lawyer and whatever team you're on and you have a court case in front of a judge. It's it's mock. It's fake. But they have a winner and you actually argue with the laws and stuff. So I won two mock trials back to back freshman year in high school, sophomore year in high school and uh was the defense one year and the prosecution the second year so i was on both

sides and so all the way up and still yeah it was a unit that's kind of interest right like yeah it's when i tell people that especially people some people from boston remember it and a lot of people don't they're like really i'm like yeah fred cephalo that was my that was my coach both years he was he was my attorney you know years later i end up hiring him to defend me because now i'm a criminal um and so which is wild right but um so all the way through like elementary school and like the beginning chapter as a high school even though i was growing up in charlestown and you know single mom all the reasons to like kind of fuck up i was doing good i was doing good in school i didn't have to do anything crazy because i had all the cousins that looked

off me and stuff you know i get into street fights and typical things but i was out of like i wasn't breaking into cars. I was like really kind of wanted to get out of school, go to college. I wanted to work, you know, be a filmmaker. I wanted to learn media, radio. I loved all that stuff. And I was like really into film, very young. Like, go, that was my escape. I would go with kids where I play street hockey, but other than street hockey, well, kids are playing football, basketball. I'd get on a bus and I take a bus over to where the movie theater was, you know, like half, you know, 25 minutes away, whatever. And I'd watch movies. all day. I'd buy a ticket and then I'd sneak

into all the rated-on movies and I'd go crime dramas, horror movies. That was my, that's the stuff I love. And I would pick the movies apart and I would catch continuity issues and like studio film. I was just very like heavy into that. So I was like, oh, I want to do movies. And then

they did a film about busing in Charlestown. It was a series, a mini-series called Common Ground. Gene Currant was the mom. And I got a little small pot in it. It's like an extra would like have like an under five line had like one line in it and i was i played her son who was like the lead boy actor's friend in a parade scene in the bunk hill day parade with like clapping

and i like yell something yeah go mayor or whatever and every time they would um break us up into groups so they'd take all the extras and like kind of under five neighborhood people and they bring us over to st catherine's which was my parish my catholic parish in the projects that i was growing up in and then they'd take jane curtain the kid that i was with her you know the lead actor boy and all the other actors and people they get in a white van and go off somewhere else so one day like after like shooting for two days i asked the kid the boy where i get on like a break and i'm like hey when they do the lunch break where do you guys go and he's like oh we go to craft services over at st mary's which is like on the nicest side of charlestown the other catholic

parish and i'm like craft services never heard of fuck i don't even know craft services me He's like, oh, I go craft services, what's that? He's like, oh, it's like, what we eat, our food. He's like, and he starts telling me what they have over there to eat. And this is shit that I don't get to eat. For me, as a kid growing up, like, I'm hot dog, spaghettios, like, fucking cereal, baloney sandwiches with fucking chips crushed on. I'm like, nothing fancy. This kid's talking about filet mignon and fucking haddock and chicken salads and, you know, all these desserts and all this.

I'm like, read. I'm like, listen, when the van comes, I'm getting in with you guys, don't say nothing. He's like, okay. So when they did the break, I jumped in the van in the back of the corner with him and just, like, kind of laid low, went over to St. Mary's, and I got to experience what craft services was. So I already love movies and I'm already, you know, into the arts of film. And now I'm in this room with all these, like, actors and famous people and this array of fucking food that I, like, for me as a kid, I'd never seen anything like that. And I was like, I want this life. This is what I want.

And then eventually, now the other side lives. Yeah, and then eventually the walkie-talkie start going off with the production assistants. And they're like, wait, where? And they're like, because my mother's looking for me because I didn't come to the other side of Charleston, the church where they give us a paper bag with a bologna sandwich and an apple in it and a little juice drink. That's what we were getting, right? So I was like, I want that.

So I had this hunger for that world and wanted to be in movies. And then at 17, my mother, you know, the thing about my mom, being a single mom was, I always give her credit. And I think that's where I get a lot of my fighting me from to, like, be above and beyond the streets, is she was going to community college, got her associates degree at Bunker Hill. Then she got into Suffolk University, which is a big deal. So she was the first, she was the first person in our family to get an associate's degree. And now she's going to Suffolk University, which is a very decent fucking university in Boston. And she gets her teacher certification. She wanted to be a teacher.

And so she gets a business degree, teach certification. And she lands a teaching job up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which is about 45 minutes north of Boston. It's this island in Cape Ann. And it's a different world for me. So senior in high school now, I'm in, you know, in Charlestown High, I was going to Charles Charleston High was like prison. It was like Charleston kids were actually a minority in our high school because, again, forced busing. So all the like white Charleston kids would sit at one table.

There was like seven or eight of us. It wasn't many of us, believe it or not. And then like Dorchester kids wouldn't sit with Roxbury kids. It was all neighborhoods. It wasn't like gangs. It was more neighborhoods. But the Japanese kids and the Chinese kids didn't get along either and they separated themselves. So it was this segregation in like the cafeteria where you would eat.

And sometimes there'd be like fights. and all this shit. But overall, like, that's the environment that I was used to. And now I moved to a neighborhood where they got, like, where it's like the shit you see on TV as a kid for me. We're like, there's kids with jock jackets on with their, you know what I mean, football players and then like freaks with like green hair and all that stuff. I never seen any of that at that time.

And Boston was very, very different at that time. So now I'm in this whole new environment. And I'm like, okay, whatever I can do this is easy. And the kids in that neighborhood tested me constantly because of, I was a city kid because I wasn't one of them they picked fights with me did shit with me and one day I put some kids face in a locker smash the locker on his face a bunch of times cracked his eye socket busted a bunch of his teeth his face up and the judge up there wanted to make an example of me I never been in trouble I have no criminal record no juvie record at that time

or anything like that I said I always been able to like kind of like fly through my neighborhood like I was a part of it but I was always like the things I did there were never like we're looking for him. But in Gloucester, doing something like that, like a big fight and hurting somebody, they wanted to make an example of me. So they locked me up. They held me for 30 days. And I was at that time, they put me in a cell with a guy who's on, you know, waiting trial for murder and his wife, although they didn't have a body. And he eventually, this guy ended up becoming the first man, a person in Massachusetts, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is to be convicted without a body.

They convicted him on bone fragment and blood samples that they found in his neighbor's woodchipper that he borrowed from his neighbor. Yeah, right? So this is what, so I go from, you know, 17 years old, I can't buy scratch tickets, I can't buy cigarettes, I can't buy booze. I can't even enlist in the military yet.

And I'm in, you know, I'm in a county jail, but I'm in a holding pot where it's just everybody. It's fed inmates, it's state, you know, people who are from murder. and so they put me in with this guy who was actually very fucking nice and like cooked for me every night but you know he'd start to talk about

his story and I'd look at him he was a construction worker dude and I'd look in his eyes and I'd be like yo he absolutely fucking did this right about it in my opinion you know just from the way he has that look like Michael Bobby like this fucking like that like soullessness and um but

you know that being said so I was being now you know bread with these him and there with these other guys from my neighborhood that were like all the guys knew my uncles knew my cousins that looked out for me but now would teach me the ways of like this is what you got to do you know what I mean don't do this always come out with your shoes on fucking don't wear sandals do you know what I mean don't talk to this group so now I became that for 30 days and then when I got out they gave me um you know and I was to make an example of me which is a bad way to like help a 17 year old kid who got no fight but whatever it is what

it is that happens and then I get out and I just want to get out so I take a probation deal because I don't want to go back for 90 days and finish this thing. I want to give me probation. I don't do drugs. I'll, you know, I'll pass probation. And then the police in that town is a small island. They just targeted me. So I'd be like cutting through an alley after school

and they'd grab me on their mountain bikes and say that I was trespassing. And hit me with a trespass and charge just to fuck with me. You know what I mean? Just when I look back now, I'm like, you know, they were fucking punks because 18 years old, 17, 18 years old, you're still a fucking kid. You know what I mean?

You're still like learning and growing. And so to purposely, like, poke and do something to a kid who's not doing anything, if he's doing shit and doing bad things, like, I get it. But, like, that's all they could do. So, you know, 30 days turned into 90 days. 90 days turned into a year. And so now I became this. And so I got expelled from high school, too.

So all my dreams of, like, going to school for film and all these things that I wanted to do were now deterred from ever happening. So I said, I'm just going to become the best fucking criminal they've ever seen. Fuck these motherfuckers. I'm going to bring them on a fucking ride. I'm going to make this, like, this is going to be my ride. And I, you know, I started building friends in jail from other neighborhoods. So, like, me kids from this neighborhood, you know, other kid from Charlestown that I was friends with that now was also, like, earning his stripes. and I just put together these crews of kids

and I would go into the raves now that was like where I found my place at one point in time now getting out of you know getting out of like high school and now on probation and I would go to these raves and I would sell ecstasy fake ecstasy and you know

fake K I'd sell strawberry quick as strawberry K to people in the rave like yeah they already are fucked up on acid and shit so they buy it they don't know and I'm selling literally quick for like 20 bucks a bag and then I'm robbing people for ecstasy robbing people for k like robin drug dealers for money just like with my crew and just like running rampant in these raves robin thieving um counterfeit money um so when i got pinched on the

the last thing where they basically at the end of the rave cycle um ecstasy started like kind of fading out for a moment in in catch rank lies and shit like it was very very hard to get and the raves who were getting shut down especially in new england they were like closing them down like raiding them and everything so people were doing these pills oxies these green pills that were like pharmaceutical pills like i'm like what the fuck of these everybody wants these now and then my friend's like bro i'm like getting like fucking 60 bucks a pill and i'm like 60 a pill because i'm getting 10 15 for 100 packs of ecstasy right so i'm like what you know what is the deal with this shit so we got some we're flipping them moving them. Everyone's like, I took a couple, hated them because they made me nauseous,

made me sick. I didn't, I was like, I didn't like them. So during this time, what a lot of people don't know about me, even some people that know me and know of me, know of oxymorons is like, my involvement with oxycontin, I wasn't really addicted to the oxycontin. I was addicted to the benzos. So when I'd go in and get the oxy pills for everybody, I'd get Xanax, Clonopinant Valium, the V-cuts, the punchouts for myself. Because when I would take my Valiums and my Xanax and a fistful of those, I didn't give a fuck. You know what I mean?

I was fearless. I was just running amuck. And everybody was buying these oxies. And so then, you know, the score started happening because it's like, why are you going to rob a bank, right? And get a die pack and you only give you like 10 grand. And you're looking at like tons of time. And you do pharmacies, which don't have alarms, don't have.

die packs and you can get hundreds and thousands of these pills that they're pumping out that are going for you know on the low end if you're selling like hundred packs 55 bucks a pop right money bank so charlestown my neighborhood turned in from like that generation of bank robbers into a forced generation of pharmaceutical robberies like all the kids that would have been bank robbers became pharmacy robbers in childstown and then all the rest became addicted and then most of the people doing the robberies as well became addicted and odied died you know did tons of time you know whatever it was so so are you i'm sorry are your guys are your guy crews going in and doing these robberies you're saying this is happening but are you saying that everywhere

oh my my everybody me and every pretty much every kid at my level of like every kid like in my generation of like crime and stuff were doing oxy scores whether they were doing them in pharmacies or they were getting drug dealers see what i would do a lot is i would be like oh xyz just hit the pharmacy right so he's got a thousand pills on right now let's tell them we need a 10 pack or a 20 pack or whatever and let's go get them you know and so we'd go and meet with whoever just did a massive score and then we'd take their take their product you know Are you ever hit in the pharmacies? Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, they, allegedly they said I was the original, like, ringleader of these pharmacy robberies.

So they were trying to come heavy at me. And they had no proof. They had actually no proof. It was all hearsay. It was all people telling them and a bunch of, you know what I mean? They never had me on camera or doing anything. And they never caught me after a farm. pharmacy robbery, but they had tons of intel that I was like the original scheme artist that said,

hey, let's go into the pharmacies instead of, you know, going into banks kind of thing. Right. They grabbed me outside of an apartment up in the north shore of Boston one day. I got set up somehow and I got caught with possession of a firearm counterfeit money. And then like a bag of boxes, you know what I mean, a bag of pills. and some other stuff so they gave me how did how did you get set up like who set you set you up i still don't know so this what happened was i was on the run i had other warrants too like i had like a parole i was on a parole and i like told them to go fuck themselves catch me when you can

that's the attitude i always had you know like barking peace like fucking let's do this run um i was a runner and so i was staying at my friend i think his aunt was an informant or something at the time something was going on with her. I don't know this for sure, so I can't put the tag on her like that. It's inappropriate for me to do that. But that's what I always lean to because she hooked me up with her friend. I needed to get a car.

And he said he could get me a rental car, even though my license was suspended. He could get me into some place that did like, you know, rentals without credit cards, that kind of thing, cash deposit, you know. Right. So this guy was coming to pick me up in the morning to bring me to rent a car. and it was through my buddy, one of my good friend, Mikey's, you know, his aunt.

And he believes that his aunt did this, too. And so I go down, and this is, and now I'm in a town where I'm not known. I've never been arrested before. It's a pretty rough city. Clubs there could know who I am and maybe seen me, but the way the story goes is the guys outside in the Cadillac, black Cadillac, I get in with him, and he's going to bring me, and he's got sunglasses on. And I'm already kind of like got this like weird spidey sense going on.

And before we pull out of the spot, the car in front of us and the car behind us and the car that pulls up on side of us, a violent fugitive task force, right? So they pull me out of the car. I got all that shit on me, possession of a firearm, the pills, the counterfeit money. And so they got me on the car. And then they got the other guy. And they got him in the back of the car. And they're like, they're already like putting the cuffs on him before patting him down.

I noticed that right away. so I'm like you know something's fishy with this fucking guy I thought it when I got in the car with them and then of course when I get down to the station when they're doing the booking he's not there getting books so he was really a fucking you know an undercover or an informant himself you know so I mean it could have been as much as like

my buddy's aunt who was involved in crime too even though she was a woman she was like involved in some crazy shit she might have not told me she might have told this guy Hey, this is this kid, Johnny, he's crazy. He's got the pills, drugs will pay you. And then he might have been working and said, hey, I, this. And they might have been like, oh, shit, we're looking for him. Like, let's get him.

So I end up getting grabbed for that. And they want me for, you know, I get questioned by everybody for pharmacies. The secret service comes to fucking see me because of the counterfeit money. And it sounds more elaborate than what it was. It was literally like those raves selling. fake shit you get duped it was like we all everybody got duped and then you would just go in like be like all right i got 400 fake 20s i'm going to go buy some stuff in the rave and recycle them back in so the secret service so now i got the secret service coming to see me i got

those you know pharmacy task force coming to see me and i'm like man they won't be heavy and um i ended up linking with this criminal defense attorney um so i hired that original attorney the one that I was telling you about earlier, the mock trial ones. And, you know, good guy and everything. And I don't want to knock him too hard, but he just wasn't the right attorney for like what I needed. Right. And so this white-collar criminal that I had did like one of my 90-day bids with that had

this like high up-and-coming, former DA, assassin, you know, Jewish attorney from Boston, Wilkorman. So I ended up hiring Will Coleman for one of my like lighted cases for like an assault battery or something and he gets me it gets me a deal he gets me a fourth amendment deal with legal certifications of something he gets me a bunch of stuff and this guy ends up becoming my attorney throughout my whole even till this day um for other stuff even outside of like criminal stuff um he ends up representing me a bunch of stuff for free because what i do is now i go into the jails when i'm doing my time and i and i sell him you know i'm like oh you got you need a lawyer

you get this guy this is the guy that's going to get you up and so Lawyers Weekly did a story on him, and he said that 70% of his clientele now came from me, came from this one client that we're going in. So me and he became friends, and he just legitimately represented me on a million things for free and saved my life multiple times. He's like a brother to me now. You know what I mean? Now he's like my fucking friend.

And the fact that I do what I do now has made him so proud. Like, wow, dude, I did all that for you and like, look at what you're doing. You know, he's, he's pretty amazed by it. But so I had him and I had all those probation, parole things hanging over my head. He's like, John, he's like, it's your second class B in the school zone. They want you for all this other shit. He's like, just, he's like, if I can get you everything just on a concurrent time, he's like, I think you should take it.

And he's like, and then we can make a move to get you over to the minimum because we, because he knew somebody in the sheriff's department. So in Boston, if you're driving on the highway and you see a sheriff, you can literally you drive by them and be like, fuck you, because they're not like a Florida sheriff that could pull you over and arrest you or detain you or give you a ticket. They're the correctional officers. So when you see a sheriff's view on the highways here, that's them doing like a detail for the town or a detail for, you know, guys doing pick and stick on the highway. So that in the sheriff here is the warden of the county jails. They're not a cop that like drives around

and does it. The police. Right. Yeah. So we have police, state police, you know, all the federal agencies, obviously. And then sheriffs are, they're who run the correctional facilities here. That's it. So that's it.

It's all they do. They just run the correctional facilities with COs and details. Yep. Correctional officers details. And the sheriff here is like a political figure. And they're the ward. They're basically the warden of the jail. Okay.

And so it's different. So very different structure because I've been with people. You're boss with me from out of town, and I'm, like, whipping up the highway and you see this, like, sheriff's van vehicle with a blue lights on. It's a sheriff right on in Essex County Sheriff. And they're like, dude, slow down, slow down. I'm like, he can't do shit. And you're like, I'm, you know, they're not going to put you over. So we knew some people in the sheriff's department, and I had a little bit of money from all the stuff I was doing on the side.

So I was like, why don't we take some money, invest in the sheriff's fund through my lawyer, like, you know, make a donation, and then ask for a favor. So I plead out. I take 30 months. So I get 30 months. So this is probably the biggest sentence that I've ever done, you know, since all these like little like 90 days. You know, I've did a ton of like 90 day, 30 day fucking bullshit. So I get an hour probation run, you know, six months, run, a year run. So now I get the 30 months, two and a half years, which is heavy at this camp. Which is where my brother's at right now. My brother's at this camp right now. And it's his first time at this camp. It's called Middleton. And it's just hell because. because it's a county jail, but there's no movement. There's tons of gang activity. And so, again, like, I come from a place where it's neighborhoods. Like, you hang with your neighborhoods and other neighborhoods like you, and you guys kind of stick together, whereas, like, these jails have a lot of Hispanic gangs, like the disciples and the kings and the bloods.

You know, they're always going at it. And so it's all that shit going on there, this gang shit. And so then you've got to kind of, like, find your place as a solid white guy in there because again like geo rules are different than the streets and all this purple rainbow perfect shit that they want everything to be and then you have these facilities they're like we're back in time you know we're back in the right cowboy days um and there's just no movement there that's the hell of it there's no fucking movement there's no yard time there's a 30 minute gym run maybe every other day a week you know the food sucks and you're just like locked down sometimes you know there's 23 hour day lockdowns and you know what I mean and then when you're not locked down you're not locked down you're you're just in a pod it's just so to do three years there is like fucking wild you know what you mean that's fucking brutal that's you'd rather do more time in a camp where you could like move around and shit obviously you go to school and you know fucking go in the yard all day right so so but so i take the time then knowing cautiously optimistic that will be able to get me

move to the minimum early in my bid so typically what you'll do is you'll do is you're you'll go and you'll do two years of your two and a half year sentence and for the last six months you'll go to the minimum they'll put you on work release you wear your own clothes um it's still a it's still a minimum security it's got a fence and you know but this movement and then you're out on work release all day or stick and picking on the highway whatever it is the food's better and it's just easy fucking living as far as like doing the end of your time goes and they help you end up going to a halfway house do you end up in a halfway house or so they can yeah so depending on your charge. So at the time, it was only if you had drug-related charges, which I did.

So if you had the drug-related charges and things like that, that would help you get into sober houses, halfway houses. They actually wanted you to do that more. But they would cut you to the street as well if your time was wrapped when it was wrapped there. So I went there and so, no, actually, so I go do my bid. I get, you know, I go in on this, the sentence with the parole member, no, remember this, I have the parole, um, detainer from my parole violation. So I get that serve concurrent with all this stuff. And so now I'm six months in on a 30 month sentence and I get moved. The whole maneuver that we do gets me moved to the minimum six months in with two years left. There is nobody else at this minimum security

with that much time left in their sentence. So the second I go there, I'm under fucking question. You know what I mean? And even the staff there is like, how the fuck did this? kid get here with two years left in a sentence. So they were, they were fucking with me. You know what I mean? They were like, we're going to get rid of you. Like, the superintendent there specifically was just a motherfucker. It didn't like that. The guys at the other

facility made this power move for me, you know? Right. And so, so I'm there. I got my friends there. And you know what I mean? Everything's good. And they're like, you're not going on work release for at least a year and a half. So you're just going to sit here in the building.

I'm like, all right, whatever. Sitting in that building is way bad. There's still tons of movement. The food's great, whatever. And I'm wearing, fucking, like, you know, gray sweats and, like, you know, some of my own clothes. You can't wear, like, logos, but, like, you can have, like, your own sweats dropped off and stuff like that. So I'm wearing my own clothes. And it's just a little bit more freedom.

And people are going to work where at least and bring them back cell phones to use and fucking food, snacks, cigarettes. So I'm, like, there for a couple weeks. And I'm just like, whatever, this is better summertime. And I go out in the yard. It's fucking sunshine on me. and then of course they're just consistently trying to like fuck with me and I was in a room I wasn't even smoking but like the people in the room I was in with smoking cigarettes and so they're like everybody you're all you know fucking

get a D ticket or whatever you know what I mean which typically can be like trash duty for a week you know what I mean some sort of like bitch work or whatever but they can give you really whatever they want and so when the superintendent they found out that I was in the room he was like we're sending him back and so when you go back for a D board violation for From the minimum, they put you in the hole for 30 days. So I know that now I'm going back to the fucking max in July. It's like, fucking 90 degrees and no AC in a box for 30 days of torture.

And so I'm like, fuck this. I'm taking off because the superintendent wasn't in that day. And I was there when he was on speakerphone with the D-Boad officer. And he was like, he's like, keep hicky there. I want to drive him back to Middleton myself. And I'm like, this dude just hates me for no reason, you know? Right. So he didn't like that I was able to like, you know, get favors or whatever.

He just, you know, maybe he didn't like the person that did the favor phone me. Who fucking knows. And so I go to a kid that is from that town that we're in. He's in the facility and he goes to work release and he has a phone. And I'm like, I need to use your phone. Make some phone calls. I'm like, listen, you've got boys around here. Because his boys would always combine like drop packages, kinds of cigarettes and shit on the highway.

And they go out and stick on the phone. farm and grab bring him in and i'm like i need a ride out of here tonight he's like wait what i'm like yeah dude they bring me back to middleton i'm like fuck this dude i'm taking off dude they catch you in like 24 hours they have a 24 hour recovery rate and the best recovery rate in the state i'm like fucking catch me again catch me if you can't catch me if you can motherfucker and so he had his friend i said listen tell him i'm like tell him i'm like tell him i'll get him some money i'll get him some drugs i'll give him some stuff and get me the ride and he's like all right so there's this um like door you got to get out at night if you're

doing like trash duty where it's like you go into a a room that door locks behind you there's a glass window here with a cop and then there's the main door here and so I come in with an officer because I go down and tell the kitchen guys I'm like hey I have to do trash duty tonight I got caught smoking cigarettes you know and they don't know that there's this whole other plan going and I know that I know that these CEOs are segregated from what's going on in administration. They have no fucking clue. They're just like, all right, hey, gee, yeah, you have new trash. Come on.

Grab all the fucking trash. So it's pouring out. And my thing is like, there's a little fence I got to jump once I get into the pocket in where the dumpster is. And to do that, I'm going to have to knock this fucking cop out to get up and get over this fence. And it's a jump over the fence too because I got to go over like a little bit of bobby. But it's raining.

So it's all mud because it's on a river. It's on the side of this place called the Merrimack River. and so we go out we go through the mic and I'm like you know fucking like stressing like the whole time like fuck fuck this is going to work like just getting through the rooms you know what I mean and they buzz me out and I'm like wait for that cop to be like wait no he's not doing trash he's not go back and he's like all right boom boom boom I'm just like keep my head down and I get out and it's pouring out and I'm with the CEO and I'm walking out to the parking lot with the thing and then staff pox over like the other side of the building and he's getting wet and he's like

hey listen he's like he's like just fucking throw that in the dumpster get right back in Okay. I'm like, yeah. I'm like, really want me to hang out in this? I'm like, oh, shit, I don't have to fucking blast this guy. And so he takes off to his car. I go over like a little of the dumpster, drop the bag, climb up the dumps, just like scale this telephone pole and then just like push myself off the pole over the fence into the mud. I'm like up to my knee up to above my knees in mud like just like like quick sand like stuck in mud and I pull myself out of it and I'm running through the farm covered in mud raining and the kid's friend is up underneath the billboard. waiting for me as promised, you know, because he thinks he's getting money and drugs for doing

this. So I end up hijacking him, taking his car, going to my friend's house, and then I'm hiding in the, and then I'm hiding in the rape scene for like six days. And again, remember, they have a 24-hour recovery rate. And so now I last six days. And the way they caught me was I had, I had cell phones, burner phones and they had HAs literally beating up my friends in this neighborhood that I was connected to for the sheriff's department to find out where I was and find out this phone number because the sheriff's department had to go to other measures to try to find me because their own 40-man apprehension team couldn't find me so they had to say hey look help us find this guy and when you guys get in trouble and come here we'll take care of you and make sure you go

them in a moment so they got one of the burns that I was using and they pinged it to where I was in Vermont I was up in Montpelier Vermont and I was on my way to California I don't know what I was like I had no like real structure of like how I was going to do this forever but I was like slowly figuring it out like I always do and like six in the morning I'm in this apartment with these two girls and I hear all this like banging and crashing and loud noises and they're in the And all of a sudden, there's the task force in the room with me. And I'm like, fuck. So then I get held up in, like, Billy Goatville in the mountains of Vermont, like at a jail up there, which was still better than what I was going back to.

But I was there for a few days. And then I just waived extradition, came back to Middleton. And they would put me in the hole. And my lawyer, the guy will have gone involved and said, listen, if you're going to punish him in, you know, in the facility. before he has a trial, he's like, I'm going to pull up a double jeopardy clause because if you're going to put him in segregation for 30 days, 90 days, whatever,

they're talking like 90 days. He's like, then I'm going to utilize that as a double jeopardy punishment for court, you know? And so they let me out of the hole. So they let me out of the hole. And then I go to court for the escape and they lost all the records somehow. They lost all the reports and nothing,

everything was gone. Everything just kind of like, fucking disappear. Nice. You don't know how. whatever so the judge dismisses it without prejudice though and of course they read do the reports fine and whatever the fuck they do and six months later while i'm still doing my sentence i get charged again but because all of their like fuck-ups the judge was like listen we're just going off of my lawyer he's like how about this how about we give him what was he do how much time was he

doing before he escaped and he's six months he's like all right we're going to give him the six months back so that's six months that you did before you escaped is null and void you have to do that now on the back end so i did 30 i ended up serving 30 months straight but that's like not a bad fucking deal all things no for an escape they they got to double my time he'll be five years it was like so many other way worse options that could have happened and so that kind of you know launched the big story of like johnny hickie everybody knew because everybody now was in like everybody in the jail was ripped into a room and interrogated like where is he he escaped you know they were

they were raiding people's houses anyone i wrote a letter to so it was just like viral before things were viral it's like my space stage you know what i mean yeah i was gonna say the the the the street cred you got for that was probably huge among your peers and i was already known for like the other crazy shit the scores and shit i was doing so my peers are just like oh higgies a fucking nut like he just you know he's not i can't believe he escaped and then he you know so then i so i do that I do that bit and when I get out of that sentence, now I'm on five years drug court. So I got two and a half in it. So I got two and a half left of drug court where you have to go at this time every Wednesday

you go to the court. You have to take a year and before court. You know, if you're clean, you're good and you go back out and have to show that you do your meetings and all the bullshit. I was paying, I was supposed to be in a sober house. I knew the guy that was running the sober house. So I was paying him to say that I was in this. So I had a room of the soberhouse, but I was never, I didn't live there.

But to everybody else, I was, you know, the courts, everything, I was there. So I had the sober house thing going. I was, you know, I was doing clean urine overall, but I was eating pills and doing, like, some fucked up shit sometimes. So I would get those drinks. And who knows what those things did to my fucking body back then. I gave those, like, those purple drinks that, like, flush your body out. Right. They can't detect drugs.

And so I was doing those things. And I was passing my urine. So I was doing good in drug court. And then I just kind of got caught back up and everything, obviously. I went right back into the, you know, rob and scheme and doing things. And we were in a stolen car, me and my friends, we stole, like, I dodged neon. And it had no reverse in it. And we were down the South Shore mass.

And we're down the South Shore of Mass. And I'm in there buying cigarettes and, like, at the time I smoke with cigarettes and candy, whatever the fuck I was doing. And I see my buddy, Mikey, arguing with another kid outside the store. Like, you know what I mean? Something's going on. So I'm like, all right, give me my stuff. And I get out there.

And now they're fist fighting. They're fist fighting. And they're up against the door that's open with a stolen car that we're in. And I see his friend, the kid that's fighting my friend, friend like creeping in on my boy. And he doesn't know that I'm there. So I kind of come up around him and I sucker him, hit him in the jaw, like a good fucking, like haymaker. soccer punch him he hits the ground i look in at my friend mikey's who's like now that on his back in the back of the stolen car and the other kids on top of him and i'm like running over to

help him now with this kid and mikey all of a sudden i just see them like go from like this to like mike he's now moving this way and this kid's falling out of the car screaming and mike he's breaking a hineken bottle over his face stabbing him in the face repeatedly the kid looked like fucking freddie kruger and we're like pushing now with pushing he's going to blood all over his hands were pushing this hut box in reverse out of the parking lot because it has no reverse in it to get away. So we get away. And then that's the thing.

And so we're out of that. The cops don't get involved. You know what I mean? Those other kids were like street kids. So they didn't say nothing. And the next night, there was a big party in the same neighborhood at a hotel. And I was hooking up with this girl down there, make a long story short on this. Like we went to this hotel party and it just turned into chaos.

And they knew we were the kids that, you know, had beef with these other kids someone made a phone call and before you knew it they were like you know 10 car loads of kids in the park of law waiting for us and the way the fight broke up in the hotel and we like security came up and we were like all like kind of like making our way down stairwells and shit to like get out of there because cops are coming and I want to go out into the park along my buddy mickey was a fucking mental case like he was just so fearless there's literally like 13 kids like with fucking weapons and shit ready to rock and roll and he just runs right into them like my top father fuck is you know and then all of a sudden he's on the ground

his shirt's over his head it went from a white t-shirt to a to the color red yawaring and just covered in blood and it was you know i was still in that kind of like street you know mentality back then where it's like can't leave my boy i'll never live that down i won't be solid you know what i mean knowing that i'm going to get my ass kicked like there's no way like we're going to like just run through 13 kids but i had a i had a knife on me had this gerba knife on me I'll never forget it. I was like, I'm just going to start stabbing kids. Like, not to kill them, but, like, I'm going to stab this kid in the ass,

stab this kid in the arm. Like, I'm going to fucking stop poking people. Because they're going to, when you stop poking people, they get the whole. Yeah, that, yeah. Yeah. The whole demeanor changes when you're poking somebody. So I'm like, I'm going to, and when I tell you this, like, I think I'm crazy, whatever, I snap the gerb a knife out, ready to do all that.

And it literally just, like, fucking disappeared out of my hands. Like, it was just gone. like I don't know where it went I don't know if I flew up in the sky I don't know if I dropped it and I'm looking on the ground I got it and I just don't know and I you know what I mean I was always flicking it out so it wasn't like I flipped it and it was just like it was a light nice gerber knife you know but a hollow handle and I flipped it out and it was just gone right so this is that so who knows what what happened maybe I dropped and didn't see it maybe something above and beyond what I understand happened I don't

know because maybe I would have done something that night that I would have regretted forever and I want to be able to be on this podcast talking to you right now. Right. So, I'm like in the middle of this, like, fight with it, you know, bashing my boy's face in the ground, stomping them. And I'm just like, who's like the ringleader of this group? Who's like the one that they're all?

And I see like this kid, he's a big kid jacked, you know what I mean? It looks like he just did time, fucking came home, you know. And I'm just like, come up on him too, sucking him. And he like did the like one leg where like, oh, my God, he's not going down. but then he went down and for probably like I don't know three seconds I put my hands up and was like what's up what's up like put your fucking hands up to like the rest of the group and it paused for a minute when my boy was like getting off the ground and I'm like oh these kids are fucking scared knugs because I because I got their boy and then boom in the back of my head

like they hit me with a rock or something and I woke up seven days later in Boston Medical Center they threw me off an 80 foot cliff dislocated my hip separated my pelvis my bladder exploded tore my erythra and i was in a coma for seven days was told i would never walk again was told i would never be able to use the waist down and have kids god whatever you believe in call it what you will i don't force my things on anybody else or i'm not like that kind of guy i keep you know my spirituality is like mine you know because i just have a different way of things um but you know through prayer and manifestation of my own you know like refusing to accept that in my mind i was like i know how to walk again and i was so

mad at myself for putting myself in the situation now where i'm being told by you know doctors that i'm not never going to walk again never going to have a kid never be able to use my dick and i was in that hospital for 30 days and i had i was on morphine on the six minute drip button so like every time uh you know i felt pain or whatever i hit the button morphine would go to my now remember i did on Oxys didn't like them. So my pills of choice for Benzos, right? My pills of choice of Benzos.

And so I never wanted to be a heroin addict, right? And I frowned upon heroin because my sister OD'd on heroin. And when she odied on heroin, it was when heroin was actually, like, had this, like, little mini comeback, like, right when Oxi was coming out. And at that time, I hadn't put two and two together, which nobody had, really, that OxyContin was heroin in a pill form it was the same fucking thing right so overall right so it's like 13 perks in one pill and so i always frowned upon becoming a heroin like i hated heroin and i was so mad at myself for my involvement in the oxy cotton world because if i knew it was heroin i don't think i ever would

have got i really truly the my morals for like my sister o'd dean and stuff in her i never would wanted to do that and and so I'm on the morphine which I know is also heroin basically you know what I mean another opiate fucking painkiller and when I would do the six minute button it wasn't that it killed my pain like my bones and all the shit that was broken it made me fucking not care that I was never going to walk again for those brief moments that it brought me to that level and they were brief they didn't last forever again it's a six minute button right so I'd have these moments where like I just didn't give a fuck about anything and yeah it's all gonna be okay this is fine and then I come out of the morphine right and I'd be like what the fuck I'm like I'm

never gonna be able to fucking use my dick like I'm never gonna be able to walk like and and then it started giving me nightmares I started doing the morphine and I'd come when I would come off of it and sleep at night I'd have like fucking these demonic nurses coming in my room and trying to like do evil things I was I was on another fucking level of like dreams sequence. So I ripped the morphine out of my arm, and I'm like, I don't want this no more. And they're like, well, let's try Demerol, Delada, this, that, the other thing. I go, I don't fucking nothing. I'm going cold turkey. So I went cold turkey in Boston Medical Center. This is documented, too. I can get you to, you know what I tell people this. And I swear people don't

believe me, but I had, uh, Mike Nurny was the doctor. And he wrote a letter for my drug court. Remember, I'm still in drug court at the time, too. And I'm like, now I got thrown up a cliff. And so he wrote a letter saying that if anybody, you know, deserve to be on pain killers and morphine and opiates and stuff for their injuries, it was this man right here. And he has refused all narcotics during his 30-day stay here at BMC. And I truly think that me doing that in my manifestation with God inside of me and everything and just like where my head was at, I was able to get everything back. I taught myself how to walk again to the point where like because my pelvic bone separated they couldn't sometimes if you break your pelvis depending on how you break it they can put go in cut you open and put a wire in kind of wire it back together and hold it in place

right they couldn't do that would be because my bladder exploded all these other infections I had going on my white blood cell count would notice that is an infection and then the other infections could kill me the other bacteria that were going on so it's too high risk to do that so they said my pelvis would heal like this like widened like how it's separated and my best option would probably be that i could walk on you know stilts or a walker you know that would be my that would probably be the best i could get to outside of a wheelchair and then carrying around a fistbag forever too because i tore my urethra and there's no way to fix that right so i would go home on my walker and i would like teach myself how to walk again and like walk on my good leg and just slowly bring in my bad leg

slowly bringing my bad leg and then before you knew it I was on crutches a cane and I'm going to BMC and they're like can we give you and they couldn't explain how my pelvis went back on its own and that same doctor that Mike nerdy doctor the main doctor there's a bunch of different like a urologist I had all these different doctors but the main um physician there he said well you know muscle has memory he's like so why can't bone he's like you know what I mean he's like that's the explanation it's like your mind your brain your body you just decided to make your pelvis go back to where it was. We can't explain medically how that happened,

but your pelvis is back in the same position it was in before you fell 80 feet. So I was like, oh, so then I got really, like, heavy spirits. I'm like, oh, my God, like, this is, like, real. I got this a miracle, right? And then I had to go in for a urology test because my catheters would get backed up. They got, like, crystallized,

and they have to take them. I was like, the worst pain ever, like, taking this tube out of your fucking dick. And, you know what I mean? And so I go in and they make me drink this, like, milky shit they put me in a machine to like see how it is and stuff and like I come out this is four months later now and the doctor taps me on the shoulder and he looks at me and he goes have a good night and like smiling and I'm like what do you like what do you mean have a good night and he's

like have a good night like your shit works again he's like he's like your erythro healed around the catheter he's like and that's why it keeps getting backed up because your body wants to not have this in you no more he's like so right like you're all good and I'm like wait what I'm all good like I wasn't expecting that the fact that I could walk again was I was grateful enough for and I was like willing to live with you know the catheter thing I just didn't think it was going to heal like because it just doesn't typically and it healed and now like I was telling you early I got full custody of my four year old full custody of my teenage daughter you know so um so I have two beautiful girls now how long ago was this so this was um

2005, this happens. Okay. And so then after the accident happened and I manifest, I didn't walk in, I ended up going to drug court with that letter from the doctor and they read that and they read it out loud in the courts of all the people who were like getting high and relapsing. And he were like, what was your excuse to relapse? What was your excuse to relapse? Because you're going away for 30 days.

You'll be in hell for 10 days, forever. You know, like, Mr. Hickey fell 80 feet. dislocated his hip, separated his power, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And refused all narcotics for 30 days. He's like, that says something. He's like, that willpower and that commitment says something. He's like, so you know what, Mr. Hickey? I think you're all set.

I don't think you're going to be on drug court for the next two years. I think this is a wrap, and I think you should go and live a new life. And I was like, wait, what? And they cut my drug court. So now is my probation cut. It's not like a free man, too. All these miracles happen at once. And I said, well, what do I do now?

And I was like, you know what? I'm going to live my childhood fucking dream. I'm going to take all this negative shit that I went through. All this crazy chapter of my life, especially the OxyContin stuff, because it's such a big topic and it's affecting so many people. And nobody's doing anything documentary, why jet, film what? Nobody's doing anything on this. I'm going to make a movie about this chapter of my life. And so I decided to get involved in how do I write a screenplay?

And I'm sitting there writing in a notebook, chicken scraps. And you have no idea how any of this works. No idea. You're going to wing it. I'm going to fucking wing it. And I'm like, all right. But here's my biggest thing is like when I was a street kid and I was running cruise and going to raves and doing all these things, I was a networker. I always knew how to get to the next level of people that I needed to be involved with to be that much higher up on the totem pole.

So how do I get not only write the screenplay, but how do I get connected to Hollywood, right? Right. And I remember when I was a kid, my cousin, my older cousin, worked as a door guy at the comedy connection in Fanio Hall in Boston's iconic comedy club, right? And he had this cork board with like Polaroid pitches back in the 80s when I was a little kid. and I remember it was like Jim Carrey, Jamie Fox and he was friends with a lot of these guys and he had like, you know, he'd talk to a lot of these guys

and when they would come to Boston, they would hang out with him, both with drinks, that kind of stuff. And so he was friends with all these like comedians and eventually some of them became like huge Ailer celebrities. So I'm like, man, what if I could get a job of the comedy connection and network with comedians? Like just take the same social networking skills I have and apply it in there

and just become, you know, become like a, you know, a door guy. make a $12 an hour at the time, and I get the job through my cousin makes a call. Hey, you know, my cousin, he's doing good. He wants to get his life around. So they did it. And I was going to Bunker Hill Community College at the time for media technology, you know, to try to learn film and stuff. While I'm doing the college stuff and working at the club, I end up talking to like two of my professors. And they're like, Johnny, like, honestly, you should just not waste your time.

Like literally said, there's not waste your time here. and just go for it like go for it because they heard all my ideas and like what i want to do they're like this is going to slow you down you have a you know you have a mission like you've got go my sociology professors is like go go do this plan that you have like to talk to them about like the comedy connection and stuff and so i work full time in the comedy connection every night of the week meeting with comedians like jim brua who just asked me to be on his podcast a few days ago so i was talking to jim brua on there bill burr is a friend of mine now who's always been super of um all my films and tweets about them and talks about me on his podcast and stuff but at the

beginning stage um i brought my notebook of like a synopsis i guess you could call it maybe my story 20 pages of like my idea you know and chicken scratch to this comedian lenny clock and i got an audition for a short film that he was in with this guy john feore who was on the Sopranos. He played Gigi. He was the mob boss on season one, two, and three. He dies on the toilet. Right. So, yeah, so Gigi who's in it. So now I'm in a room and a short film, but he'll do some little role with this guy, Lenny Clock, who's Dennis Leary's best friend. He's in Rescue Me. He's, he's iconic Boston comedian, like huge. And he's an actor. He's in a bunch of movies and stuff. And John Fiore from the Sopranos. And so I'm talking to both

of them about my idea they love it and then I show it to Lenny and Lenny's like reads it and he's like hey let me see what I can do so Lenny took it and because he was friends with Dennis Larry brought it to this writer at Apostle Pictures who wrote for rescue me and that guy Doug he taught me how to properly write a screenplay format it like what you had to do how exterior is you know outside of building interior is inside of all that stuff where the dialogue goes and he hooked me up with final draft at the time Me We went to take a final draft to teach me how to, you know, format and write a screenplay. And so then I wrote oxymorons and did, you know, multiple rewrites on it and got it into an official screenplay that now by that time, working in the comedy club and writing this movie, I had become friends with this guy, Frank Sinarelli, who was also on the Sopranos.

He played Georgie at the Bada Bing, at the bartender, the Bada Bing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he's like, oh, let me see what I. So everybody loved oxymorins of the screenplay. And so that led me to getting James Gandalfini flying here after reading the screenplay to Boston, having a poo-poo platter with me at this place called the Kaloon that's just like infamous Chinese restaurant here. And James Gandalfini wants to option oxymorons from me. So he wants to give me 50 grand, which at the time to me was a lot of fucking money, 15 points in the back end.

But it becomes his property now. he wants to take it, make it about kids in New York, not Boston. I'll have nothing to do with the acting, directing, or anything like that. I'll own 15 points in the back end, which equals nothing, you know, on the back end, you know, in the net, you know, not in the gross in the net. I'll have 50 grand, and I'll get a story by credit. And I looked at him and I go, you know, this is my life story. This is a chapter of my life.

This is I'm like honoredness, be sitting. here with you like eating with you and that you're even interested in in my thing but like i believe in fate and destiny and i need to be a part of this like i can't just sell out i have to be a part of this and he laughed and he was like good luck with fate and destiny and i was like blown away like this close away from being like fuck you how's that you fucking punk like because that's you know what i mean i don't get right and i was like but i was with other guys that introduced me to him that I did respect, so I composed myself. We took him the airport, and when we took him the airport, you know, God rest his soul,

he died not long after this, but we took him the airport. He stopped before he went into the gates, turned around, came back to me, and he's like, hey, something just been bothering me for the last few minutes. He's like, when you said the fate and destiny thing, and I kind of clowned on that, he's like, I take that back. He's like, you should believe in fate and destiny, and he's like, and you should fucking go far and you'll do it. And then James Gendlofini gone on an airplane, I never seen him again.

But that created a news frenzy of, like, James Gandalfini was in town to buy this movie, you know, to produce this movie, oxymorons about Johnny Hickey, the pharmacy, rob, the bandit. So I had every major radio station, everybody calling me the next day. I'm living in my mother still. And I'm getting limos coming to pick me up to bring me to, like, Maddie in the morning, which is like the number one radio show in Boston, top three in the global market at the time, huge. and everybody wants to know why James Gandalfini was here and, you know, is he buying my movie? And I told him this story. I just told you now.

Like, you know, like, well, I'm going to do this. Working on the comedy club. Here's my story. Here's why it's important to me and I don't want to sell out. And it would just so I was able to then go to people in the north end of Boston, the Italian neighborhood where like, they were like, why is Gandalfini want this? Because like Gandalfini of them was like a god. You know, they would pay, these restaurant owners would pay like other guys from

The Sopranos that weren't him to come in to an appearance at their restaurants. So they all wanted in. So I got 10 grand here, 50 grand here. So I started raising my own funding to do oxymorons. And then I would come up with these ideas in my head of like things I wanted to do that, you know, and some people's minds would be impossible. But I was like, I want to get a UFC fighter to play this role. It's like I'm talking to Forrest Griffin now at the time.

who's, like, at the time, one of the top UFC fighters. And then he wins the belt against Rampage. And now his management wants too much money. And I go from talking to Forrest on my own on the phone every fucking day and emails in Facebook or whatever to now I've got to deal with his management who wants $30,000 a week that I don't have to give him to be in it. And then Tim Sylvia reaches out to me, who's the five-time fucking champion, who's originally from Bengal, so he's from New England, had a football injury,

He was going to be a football, you know, pro football he was going for, got injured playing football, ended up hooked on Oxy's, fucked up his football career, but then went on to become the fucking heavyweight champion of the UFC. And he, and I'm like, well, all right, well, maybe this was meant to be for him. And so then Tim Red for the pot killed it. So he's in Oxymor, and Tim Sylvia, plays my cousin in it. So I got Tim Sylvia. I got this camera, the red camera at the time was a big fucking deal. It is still to this day. It's the, you know, you got your red jari's and black magic.

But like, but red is, this was the red one. No other red existed yet at this time was the red one. So I end up finding a Chilean DP who actually knows how to owns a red, knows how to use it. He shoots for national, never shot a movie before, but he shoots stuff in National Geographic and like Chile and shit. Like animals attacking each other, Mount lions, like whatever, on red. And so I bring it to him and he's like, I would love to do this, Johnny. he's like how do you want me to shoot this though i like i'm literally wanting you shoot this movie like you're shooting fucking animals in the jungle like these scenes that are going to happen

we're not going to get to do them two times three times because we know that kind of bite we got to capture this shit like you know what i mean like it's animals fighting in the jungle and he's like i'm all in so i end up getting this heavy-duty camera with a professional fucking high-end dp with the lenses and everything we need and then everything else that's coming in and fall into place for me the city of boston waves all my permits. Wherever you want to shoot, just let us know. We'll get you detailed cops. Bungahill Projects were up. Reach out to the head of housing. Yeah, go ahead. Shooting the hallway, shooting the rooftops. And then they had shut down. Remember, I told you

about my church earlier. My Catholic church, where they would send us for the bologna sandwiches. Right. That was like my Catholic, there was a Catholic school there too, and they had shut all that down because the Catholic churches obviously had gotten all to the trouble and stuff. And so the church was empty. And I had a church scene. And then the whole school was empty. so they gave me the whole because I was it they knew me and I was an altar boy they gave me the entire school to use as my headquarters and I also turned into a police station the rectory which I turned it to my mother's project department in all this property is in the middle of the housing project so it's like housing projects surround and encompass this property so it's like

being in the projects that we need to shoot the fulfillment the perfect location really right yeah absolutely and they give me the church And then I remembered when I was doing time, you could put in for transfers. And again, my camp was like hell. So there were a few camps that were like decent camps, like Bill Ricka, 12 and a half days a month, good time, yard time, Bonstable, 12 and a half days a month good time. So you wanted to go to one of those camps because your good time was 12. If you was, you know, doing a program or work or whatever, it was 12 and a half days a month knocked off your sentence.

It's close to half, you know, half your sentence, about 40% of your sentence knocked off. So those are good camps and good easy living. So I knew that Bonstable stopped doing transfers during my last bid because what happened was they had they were overrun with inmates and had people sleeping in tents outside of the county jail and the odds, which is like super illegal, super like inappropriate. And so they applied for a federal grant to build a new prison and they blamed the amount of inmate overflow on the opiate epidemic that was going on. the opiate-related deaths, crimes, you know, drug use, all that stuff, because no one had ever seen that before, and it was true. So that was down the, down Cape, which still to this day has been so hit hard by the opiate epidemic.

So I knew that they got a new jail, and I knew that the old jail was sitting there now as like a community center for like one part of it, but like the whole rest of the jail was just vacant. And I was like, well, listen, they got a federal grant because of opiate, so I'm going to go to them with my journalist friend who's writing a story about me. And so I went in, met with the commissioner down there and one of the superintendents and said, you know, hey, this is my friend, Chris. He's doing the story about me in the Phoenix. So right away, like, let them know that, like, we're doing a story.

And, you know, I wrote a movie about, you know, the collateral damage of OxyContin, and one is done to communities, my life, who I've lost. And, you know, I'm trying to turn my life around and live my dream as a filmmaker. And I want to use the jail for the jail scenes. And I know it's empty. I don't know if there's something we can do here. and they just like you know let us get back to you tomorrow and they knew i had the journey and the next day and they were like hey johnny we're gonna uh we're gonna give you the jail for two weeks you can have it for two weeks jaws come get the keys i was going i literally have the

master keys like this fucking metal ring with a giant i'm an ex-con you know what i mean yeah yeah and i'm walking out master keys to a county jail even though it's empty but still and when i remember i went in and i was started pissing in one of the metal toilets to have the you know they have the sink connected to them that you got to like you fucking make your soups out of your shit and I'm pissing that toilet and I remember the surrealness of like I thought I dreamt about this I dreamt about making a movie but I never even like dreamt about like how I'm in a jail now where I used to be like this used to be the worst place for me and now it's I'm living my dream here making a movie yeah this that can't be happening this nothing falls into place like

this nothing falls into place so then I get a cop involved and give him a role as like one of the other cops, you know, and he's a homicide detective in Boston until he starts making calls to all his buddies. And so now, before I know what, I got a helicopter from the state police for a helicopter scene that flies over. I got correctional offices from another county coming down to do the move team scenes and play correctional offices in the jail scenes at the empty jail that I'm in. So I literally had the whole move team from another county come down and do a move. move team scene in the movie to attack Tim Sylvia and

gas him. So everybody in this movie turns out to be real street kids, playing street kids, real cops playing cops, real Boston cop cars, real Boston police, real there's a scene where they raid us and they come in and their gear

and it's the DEA task force, not like the federal DEC, it's like the Boston Police DEA task. with that and they come in full gear black helmet's vest real fucking assault rifles their assault rifles i don't know if they're load it's like so illegal like even them doing the state but them and they boot the door off the hinges for us and they come in and they we got these real guns pointed to our head and everybody that i know that works in law enforcement watches that scene and

like yo those those real guys i'm like those are real guys you know and so the whole community because of what it was about came together for me you know we just had everything extras and jails and cop cars and just the run of the city to make this film um and so i did it i made a movie and then i had to go into the the next steps of like yeah i was going to say that's only one part of process and yeah the next part is equally as as um as important is actually getting it out there and getting the media attention and getting it into theaters and festivals and like that's that's another whole group of impossible impossibilities that you have to attack with no experience right so i so they so there's

this just to not jump out of it but like during this moment right here we're at we're like now i'm done filming and the executive producer who also plays a role in the movie he plays the dirty cop this guy who owned these restaurants in the north end was one of the big investors um he's sitting with me in his restaurant we're eating food like we're always he always has over for food and you know stuff like that you know during production after production and we mean him having a conversation like me and you are right now but face to face right and I'm doing just how I talk like this in my hands and how I how I discuss you know dialogue and he's like man he's like you remind me so much of my friend Victor and I go huh and I go and I go

So that's funny. My dad's name was Victor, but I don't know him. I just know that his name was Victor. He had a brother Jerry. They made pizza at Francesco's in 1987, and that's all I know about them, you know? And he goes, ah, that me. And he remembers the story because it was a one-night stand with my mother, my dad, who was 17 at the time, my mother was 21, Charlestown Irish neighborhood girl,

North End Italian guy, you know, that time was like, frowned upon certain things you know what i mean so he disappeared he but he ends up getting deported he ends up getting in trouble and getting deported uh back to naples italy and then gets in trouble in italy and ends up in london throughout my life you know what i mean my childhood and stuff right but from oxymorons my film after i finished it sitting with my executive producer eating in restaurant i find my dad i find my dad who i've never known never met but all my other family members my grandmother my grand all live in the neighborhood right where i'm sitting in that night i go and meet everybody and they all look at me and i so i grew up in an irish

neighbor my mother's blonde hair blue eye my brother's blonde here blue eye everybody's blonde hair blue eyed but me i'm dark hair dark eyed and i look greco's the italian side of my family i look just like i mean there's no then i didn't even need a DNA test it's that scary right me and my dad like and he's like in that executive producer guy was like can't believe this is like fucking weird right so my dad can't come to the united states even though everybody else can come here now my dad can't come to the united states and i'm talking to him though on facebook and stuff which is like super fucking cool you know what i mean like i found my dad and i'm doing this whole thing with the you know getting the movie out to where it needs to be so we end up uh getting

editor in South Boston, this guy, Paul Buell, to edit it for me. And we get a two and a half hour cut of the movie that we end up going to Los Angeles with. And I end up finding a big post house in L.A. that, again, fall into place. Like, they just love what I'm doing. And they donate, like, a $200,000 post package to the film with nothing in return just to help believing in who I am, what I'm doing and what I'm trying to do. At the same time, I get a phone call from this woman, He's like Portuguese, and she's like, hey, I'm looking for Johnny Hickey. And I'm like, yeah, she's like, my name's Mariana Venzella. I'm with Current TV.

Current TV was Al Gore's channel and Keith Oldman's channel. It was like a national geographic channel for a while on cable, current TV, very heavy documentary style stuff. And she was in Boston doing a story on the OxyContin crimes because that's where the biggest amount of like robberies and stuff were taking place. And she had just won the Peabody Award for the original OxyCon Express about the pill mills in Florida and the doctors with the scripts. So she went from there and she was traveling from like, here's what's going on in Florida. But now here's what's going up in Boston, how they're getting them in Boston. It's two different ways, right? Because people from Boston were going down there now to get their pills in Florida because all the pharmacy robberies were getting too tight and everyone was kind of dying down in Boston.

And she's like, your name keeps popping up everywhere. She's like, I'd love to interview you. So I go and I meet with her and her husband, Darren Foster, who he just won Sundance, a huge documentary. And now she's on National Geographic, has her own show. And she's doing this thing called the Oxycontin. Darren Foster wrote what? Science Fair.

American Pain? The book American Pain, which is what was. Yep, yep, that's him. The guy... So that's him and his wife's Marianne Aviontel. The guy Derek Nolan, who's in the OxyExpress. Yeah, he's the... So he was the manager.

He was the manager of the American Pain Clinics. Really? Yeah. So I actually wrote a story called Pain. I was in prison with him, and I wrote a story about Derek. It's called Pain. Wow. Yeah, that's right.

That's nuts. So, but anyway, you were saying. But so they, so they come to Boston and then they meet me and they love me. Like, we just connect. And they asked me to become a field producer on their production and help bring them into the underbelly of like people that, now it was per 30s. So I was explaining to them. I'm like, listen, oxies aren't even relevant no more. And now every, now there's perk 30s, blue percocet pills are 30 milligrams.

I'm like, and now that's what's kind of taken over. So I introduced them to everything that was going on and I brought them to the methadone clinics and like every, every little thing. And then as they're doing that, they're telling my story in this documentary of like what I was doing, the pharmacies and all and all the stuff. And so part two of the OxyCon Express, they was all basically about me and then the places that I brought them to. So now I have this, like, major documentary team for a major, like, you know, the time was like a National Geographic Card TV doing a story on me. Then Channel 5 news locally is doing a story on. So the media just came out and play for me. And I was like the biggest thing in Boston now, the biggest thing in Boston.

And I got this thing in L.A. with a really amazing post package attached to it and eventually stumble on a young distributor who's still my distributor to the state with all my films in a friend of mine. Anatole and he pitches it to Netflix and I get a Netflix deal out of it but the interesting thing about the Netflix deal was the girl in my movie I ended up dating but I was dating her sister first then dating her being a fucking mess you know what I mean like I had I had gotten rid of so many of my bad you know traits like as far as like crime goes but I still had these other things that I was just kind of fucked up you know so I got get into a big fight with her and she calls the cops on me they actually throw her out of my house but then she goes and fucks the homicide detective that was in my movie right because he always

wanted to fuck her on set and was like jealous that I was fucking her and so she goes and hooks up with him he calls the police where I'm at he's like you know she got bruises on her legs she had bruises on her legs because I had a rut while the box a mix at the time that was very aggressive like with especially with a female in the house. And so if anyone went near her, he was like, and so she would go out purposely and, like, run by construction sites, like in little tight shots, you know what I mean, to get guys to whistle or say something

so that my dog would aggress at them. You know what I mean? She liked that. She was that kind of girl. She liked that kind of, like, controversy, you know what I mean? And so one day, she's out jogging them in her little Daisy Duke shots, my big dog, and guys drove by in a truck. They said something to her.

And this was days before the incident and my dog went crazy and went after the truck wrapped the leash around and neck and dragged her like, you know, a fucking few feet or whatever. But she had like scrapes and bruises. But you could tell in the photos that they were old, that they weren't fresh from like the day of the incident with me and her. You could tell they were like dark and healing and whatever, right? And so I ended up getting arrested for that. And then they hit me with another charge in another state, which is very weird. So someone like, listen, dirty cops exist. So basically I got held up in New Hampshire.

They did on purpose, so I couldn't get a bail for the interstate. So they would charge me an attempt to murder for her because she said I, I choked her and threw her down a flight of stairs. And I never had all my crimes and things, and I've been a shipbag, and I've done some horrible things, but I don't beat women. You know what I mean? Right. So that was the first time I'd have been charged, something like that.

But, you know, so I had that now because she's saying I choked her, it's a time to murder and then they tie me to a gun case. I was in an event a couple weeks before that where I was doing like an appearance. Like they paid me to come hang out with the nightclub and gave us a bottle of vodka and all that bullshit. And some girl that was there, a woman that was there at that event that night, that venue that I knew nothing about her gun went missing in the parking lot. And they had a list of like what was going on at the club last night who was there

because they were looking for this gun, right? Right. And so now because of this thing in, um, mass with her now they pin that gun missing case on me with no video of me taking the gun no me's nothing it's just a complete hearsay case but in new hampshire they can do these kind of things that's just a different criminal system up there and up there it's massachusetts is very liberal so the amount of crimes i've done in in boston throughout my histories and adolescent and stuff If I did those in like Florida, California, even, it's LaMosea, like, New Hampshire, like, I'd be smoked.

I would never have gotten, like, the, like, 90-day bids and, like, these, like, so they were trying to give me a, um, a 7 to 20, right? 7 to 20, right? Is your film done yet? Or are they still editing the film? My film's done. My film's edited. Is it out? And nope, I'm trying to distribute it.

So I make my Netflix deal from fucking jail. where I'm being held for an attempted murder on this girl that was in, plays my girlfriend in the movie, oxymorins, mind you, right? And then unlawful theft of a firearm, Class A felony New Hampshire on a gun that they didn't even give me a probable cause hearing on. And my lawyer, the same guy, Will Corman, represented me on both cases, right, comes up to New Hampshire to see me. He's like, Johnny, he's like, they got nothing on you.

He's like, but they're going to take a pound of flesh out of you for whatever reason because of this cop, you know what I mean? like they just and he's like we're gonna the attempt of murder is going to be gone he's like we'll beat that he's like you didn't do it he's like i got enough proof the cops kicked her out of your house that day and then all of a sudden the next day they get a call from the homicide detective that was in you so there's all there was enough in that but it's still like a lot like to have to go to travel attempted fucking murder after i had and now mind you i've had like fucking seven years five to seven years of like not a fucking speeding ticket like completely turning my life around

chasing my dreams working a job for the first time going to college all these things and a little girl too i have my daughter jayberg she was three at the time so when they took me and held me in the six months for these cases when i tell you that the six months that i was held these cases was like 10 times longer than the three year bit i did because i have my little girl now and because i wasn't a criminal no more and i legitimately wasn't guilty of any of the shit and i was like so in a fucking like panic attack of like a conspiracy theory of like how can they do this like i don't even know with this fucking gun is anything to do with this gun and they're holding me on this with no like zero evidence and then and then and then and then this bitch fucking making up you know just saying this shit

about me and then going to fuck a cop to like work it against me so eventually we we take it to trial so now i'm indicted in new hamps from the gun charge so we take it to trial we go in front of a judge And now I also have, like, people in Massachusetts, like probation offices that were on, like, ran the heroin education awareness to have people that were very proud of Boxing Morns, like, writing to, like, the, uh, the district attorney up there and stuff saying, like, what's going on with this? Like, did, you know, and they're, like, looking at the, they're looking at the evidence and they're like, like, he didn't do this. Like, people are fucking with him right now. This kid's turned his life around. Like, we truly believe that. Like, like, we need to, like, help.

So the, so even the DA at that point now was on my side when we went to the indictment, when my lawyer. with my lawyer like they just want to give me time served so in order for me not to go to trial and risk going away forever i had to plead guilty to something i didn't do but whatever i get time served wrap it up the judge didn't want to do it she's like where's the gun and the judge the fucking the DA's like we don't have it she's like well we i don't understand why is he being and so she's like i have to let him go and she didn't want she's like eve like and so they they let me go from that so when they let me go from that uh The guys, the DEA task force I was telling you about that were in my movie that, you know, came and played.

They sent their task force guys to pick me up for the case in Boston, for the attempted murder. And so when they got there, they picked me up. They didn't cuff me. They just brought me in the CEOs at the New Hampshire. You're not going to cuff them? They're like, Johnny, nah, he's fucking good. They get me in the car. They got a coffee for me.

They got cigarettes. I'm like, I don't smoke anymore. They're like, all right, whatever. They're like, yeah, and they give me their cell phone. You know, call your lawyer, call whoever you need because we've got to bring you there. But when we bring you in, we're not giving them this case up here. We're not going to let them know you'd be in hell. We're going to bring it in that you turn yourself in on your own.

I was like, oh, my God, all right, cool. Like, guys, thank you. And they're like, we know the case is bullshit. We know what's going on. And I'm like, all right. So do that. I go in and the judge is like, I can't let you, I can't hear this today. I need his lawyer.

So I go back to the original jail where I did the three years now. I'm held there overnight. And that place felt like fucking Disney World compared to like where I had just been in New Hampshire. I was just in New Hampshire and a complete like it's rated like one of the like the third worst living conditions in the country is something next to like the one in New Mexico where they make you wear pink. That's how I at this place. I lost my voice. I'm on the phone with my distributor. I couldn't even talk.

The other thing that happened is when they so when they held me on the six months because it was like $100,000 bail. And then the attempt to murder had nothing, had no bail at the time. So I couldn't go nowhere. So it was like having no bail. And when I got to that facility, my uncle's friends did this bank robbery up there in the 90s called the Hudson. And they killed the Amman Truck Drive as New Hampshire. Okay. Yeah.

And so I've heard of that case. Sorry. Okay. So Mike O'Halloran is like, he was my uncle's best friend who was part of that. I know all the guys, but like Mike O'Hallon was actually like very close to me and my family. And look out for me when I was a kid when my uncle was doing time. My uncle, the bank robber. So they were like this.

So I knew Mikey very well and his whole family. And so they call us townies. Like that's what it says in my aunt like townies. So townies is something. And everyone thinks it's a gang. It's not. My mother's a townie. My grandma.

Anyone, if you were born and raised in Charleston, your town, your childstown town. It's just a thing. That's just like a neighborhood thing. But when I went to that, GIL New Hampshire, because when those guys went there, they tried to escape. They took CO's hostage and shit after they killed these armed truck. I was in that jail that I was in. So when they seen my name,

seeing where I was from from Charlestown, seeing that I had an escape on my record, because even though it was kind of really a walk away from a minimum, it was labeled an escape as far as on paper goes. And they were like, you know, fuck this. And so they buried me in the hole. And I'm talking like, their hole was like, luckily if I got food one day,

some days I didn't eat at all, you know, never got out to shower, maybe once a week. I was just like buried in a room losing my mind you know completely like fucking losing my mind because I went from like living my dream making a movie finishing it being in LA to like this psychotic girl causing all this shit for me and I'm taking away from my little girl too

which was like the most important thing to me who was three at the time so I was just my soul was ripped out of my chest and I literally lost my voice like I can talk obviously and I have a very good dialogue always did and for whatever reason when I like I'd get on the phone, like to talk to my, I couldn't, I could be able to talk. I was like, I was so broken inside. I was like really fucked up.

But that being said, my, you know, on the phone, I distribute the other guy and he's like, Johnny, I can get us a Netflix deal right now for like 90K, you know, for an $90,000 for, which is huge money for me at that moment, for an 18 month license. And I'm like, do it. So I made my Netflix deal while being held, barely even to talk from that, that jail in New Hampshire. that's how i'm in my netflix deal from jail so i get out my guys bring me that i know bring me back to middleton i'm there for the night and then i go back to court the next day my lawyer's there will's there and will just fucking like attacks and he's like my client turned his life around

he made a move you know it just goes down the line he's like i got letters from probation offices you know state officials everybody like saying that this guy is turned his life around and he's being held an attempted murder when two officers escorted her out of his apartment because she was being hostile in front of the offices and he's like and then the next day

they charge him for an attempt to murder different offices because she goes and she's having intimate relationships with the and she's like and we're going to plan on bringing him into the trial too

and so the judge is like because of his record I can't let him go in a personal he's like what can he get and I had like two grand left to my name and he looks at me and I'm like and he's like $2,000 you're on

and he's like okay except bill $2,000 So I'm on an attempted murder case, $2,000 cash bail. So we know how weak cases now at that point. But then, you know, there was a year of me going to trial, you know, waiting for her to show up, waiting for this one to show up, knew what they're going to believe, you know? And no one showed up. No one made it. No one did it.

You know, they get to go walk around and do that to me and then get to walk free after making those accusations. But not guilty. So beat that case. and then had this like slump period where I was like not beat up but like I ended up with full custody of my daughter at the time who was now four and I was just doing nightlife events um you know like club appearances booking DJs booking comedians and just you know there's the guy who made oxymorons

and was a filmmaker but just now like trying to make money to survive and take care of my daughter and kind of lost my way of, like, filmmaking for a moment. And then in 2016, I got cast in a movie through my friend Tom Seismore. Tom Seismore, and did I become the act of Tom Seismore from Save and Private Ryan. He's the bank rubber and heat. Yeah, right. He died recently, right?

Did he pass away? So he just passed away. Yeah. Actually, hold on. I'll show you something. So Tom was a very good friend of mine. Um, there's a crazy story about when I was out in Hollywood and I met Tom and he was originally going to be in oxymorons, but he wasn't clean. He was still all, all fucked up on, um, on drugs.

Fast forward, though, I always maintained a friendship with him and could understand because of what I, you know, the world I'm from, his addiction. And, and I loved him and I looked up to him as an actor. And so he would do acting coaching with me every time I'd be in L.A. I'd go to his, whether he was living in a hotel or a condo or. wherever he was bounced around he was a gypsy but i would hang out with them with my daughter and everything he was he was actually a really good guy just drugs you know encompassed all the goodness in him and uh he you know obviously died recently so this was his uh this is from his his um memorial yeah and then um if you look

look right there. Right. Johnny Hickey. Yeah. Yeah, I was one of the guest speakers at his memorial and spoke at his memorial and told the story of Tom and how we were friends. Because his management knew how close me and Tom really were.

So, yeah, so Tom was a friend of mine. And he got me, he got me a role in this movie, movie, this MMA movie, they were called Blood Circus, that's on Paramount as an MMA fighter in this movie. And I did some of the fight choreography because they loved the fight choreography I did in oxymorons because I make everything look real. I don't want it to be, you know what I mean? Like, there's a scene that oxymorons where I have the kid playing my brother.

I'm like, dude, this is going to look so stupid if you don't just really punch me in the face. I'm like, don't punch me in the nose. Don't punch me in the mouth or the eye. Like, aim for my head. I'm going to lean my head down when I come in the cell and just hit me in the head. and he blasts me in the fall head. We fall back. We have his whole fight scene.

And earlier in the movie, even though it was shot after that scene, but it takes place earlier in the storyline, you see a bruise on my head when we're cutting up drugs at the table. There's like bruise on my head. And that's from me letting him punch me dead in the fucking face so that it looked good, you know? Yeah. So Tom got me into that.

So 2016, I did that movie and I was like, what am I doing? I'm like, why am I doing like events? I need a, I'm a fucking filmmaker, you know, and I was sick of, you know, the social media warriors and the haters being like, one hit one, yeah, it's easy to do a move, your boat. You know, it's like, you know, people hate. So now, I've reached a level now where I'm like, you know, when people hate on me and talk shit about me and say things about me, I laugh because it's like, yeah, you have to talk about me because if you talk about yourself, nobody's listening.

That's what I tell them. It fucks them all up. You know what I mean? because it's the truth because if they go on and start talking about themselves no one cares but if they go on and start talking shit about me now they have now they have some attention so they use me rent and space in their head to get attention so it's helped me grow in so many ways these these things like between my my life the streets the fakeness the paramed schemes and then like the film industry and i think that's why i've been able to kind of evolve in the film industry world

because i can just read through the bullshit and i've been through so much that all the Hollywood shit is like easy for me to kind of sift through and then find the real ones like you know guys like like Tom my buddy um and so he got me that and then I said all right it's on to the next thing what do I want to do and I always wanted to make a movie about the rave scene and I love horror so I decided to write this psychological horror film called Habitual which is about a group of like young adults going to rape parties doing ecstasy in Molly because that's popular again and they go into this raven

this abandoned lunatic asylum and so again I pulled the Johnny Hickey like you know I'm making a movie to showcase you know collateral damage of drugs and I got permission to go into all these abandoned state hospitals that are like you know

we're talking like the equity of like the set design of what those things look like for a fucking movie next like it's just ridiculous and so we shot in all these abandoned lunatic asylum in the dead of winter and it's about kids doing molly that's cut with fentanyl you know what i mean it's cut with fentanyl and kids are dropping dead from doing designer drugs which is a whole new generational thing where you got these kids that aren't even

opiate addicts but they're doing something that they think they're doing coke you know what i mean at a bar college kids and it's fentanyl and they're dying so i wanted to make that the next chapter of my kind of niche like drug thing that's going on because fentanyl's a problem and kids doing substances that they don't really know where it comes from a dying because they're doing something they don't even know they're doing so that's what habitual is so the habitual isn't like oxy where it's based on a chapter of my life but the crime drama element of it the first half hour of the movie is like a crime drama like kids potty and doing drugs they do some bad shit like as far as like they do some like rimy street shit and hurt somebody and they end up going to

this raven this abandoned lunatic asylum and when they get there it turns into a mind-flucked psychological horror film so it shift gears real fast really dark really gory um and i just always wanted to do something like that so that was my second film uh we won again we won a ton of awards for that we had at the actual release and it put me on a it put me on a new position of like connections in l a networking uh me as a filmmaker now now that i have two movies under my belt and in kind of like obviously the niche market that I'm going to and also tying into all these anti-drug groups and stuff like that and building that cult following kind of with people that like dark crime dramas.

They don't have to have been affected by drugs. But at this point in today's society, it doesn't matter if you did drugs like someone in your family, your brother, your cousin, your boss. Yeah, you're affected somehow. You're affected. You know that you know what you know. Yeah, you've been, you know, your best friend's daughter. And just something horrible, you know, has happened, if not a ton, right? So that's kind of my audience has become these people that love the rawness and the realness of these movies and this content that I'm making because I don't glamorize shit.

I don't candy coat stuff. I'm very raw, real. And I'm also, you know, I don't have millions of fans, but I have hundreds of thousands of people over the course of the last, you know, 10 years, say, since oxymorins was made that. reach out to me even still to this day and I'm like, dude, I have my, my kids back and my life changed because of your movie and, you know, like I had a woman come up to me and they tell me her and a husband got like seven years clean now because they watched my movie together and decided to get clean after watching oxymorons. And I always said like one person watched oxymorons and it deterred them and helped them get off drugs and I like changed the world

like I did my justice and after it became one person to like a thousand people I was like wow okay I have to like that's why I'm doing this that's why I survive the 80 footfall that's why I have the willpower and the manifestation to fight through all this bullshit is to not make content that's just making content to be Hollywood or to be a movie star and to be famous it's to really make content that people connect to it and can change their lives and bring awareness without being and, you know, candy-coated, you know, don't do drugs and put drugs all in one basket, you know? Yeah, listen, all that Hollywood shit wouldn't make you happy anyway, in the end. No, no, no, no, I've seen, I've been out in Hollywood, I've lived in Hollywood, I see it all.

It's so, so fake. Yeah, I was going to say they're all miserable out there. Yeah, it's, you know, like I was, like I had tons of money, tons of people pretending to be my friends, you know, like prior to, going to prison thought I was super thought I was happy and that's it was all bullshit all bullshit but yeah you got like you know you've got a uh you have a purpose now you know which changes everything so I just did this um we just wrap this I guess you call it a pilot like for TV series or a short film it's 25 minutes long but it's called Methodomile and it's about methodome mile in boston which is this um it's like probably three to four block radius

where the south bay correctional facility so the county jail of boston south bay three methadone clinics two homeless shelters in boston medical center which is like the nastiest hospital which is where i was when i fell off the cliff all intersect and it's become a skid row of boston like safe haven for drug addicts which we know that's a bunch of fucking bullshit it's just like a place to like keep everybody you know in the revolving door dying you know um and it's you know tent city and when i made oxymorons and was exposed in the opiate epidemic to the public in massachusetts and beyond we didn't like the methadone clinics are down there but we didn't have like this homeless population where people were allowed to like sleep down there in tents

cops aren't allowed to do anything i could walk up to you hand you a fucking brick of fentanyl and the cops can't do anything about it if it's in that area They just, unless someone's dying or getting stabbed, they're not allowed to do anything. There's people having sex on the stairs in front of kids going by and bus. Brutal, you know, that they allow this to happen. So I just did a narrative pilot. I'd like to turn it to a series. We could go feature film with it, but we made a really, really, like, it's just like well shot.

And it's just probably the best work I've done, even though it's a smaller version of the things I've done. It's probably the best thing I've done as far as, like, the quality, the cast. I was able to, Tom was going to play the dad in it, and I cast Tom, and he came on board to play the role of the dad, I think, about a week before he passed away, before he took a stroke. And so then I had to find somebody to take his place. And I ended up going back to that guy, Lenny Clark, the comedian, that hooked me up with Dennis Larry's people. And, you know what I mean? Because I never worked with him again since then. and he's the perfect like Boston guy he's like he's been on drugs in his past and you know been on a boozer and he was a street guy and he's a brilliant comedian he's a brilliant actor he was just in the new Halloween movie he had a pretty decent role in that and I was like Lenny's the guy so let me see if Lenny wants to do this so I pitched it to Lenny

Lenny was like anything he's got to take a bullet for you Johnny those are his exact words which was like you know very honorable that I've earned that kind of reputation now guys like him that he's willing just to come on board and help and then uh this girl justina valentine who's huge on mtv she's on um while and out she like raps and battles dudes and she's like really witty and she's like a verbal assassin and she wanted to get into acting and she was really supportive of like oxymorons and the stuff i was doing and she's got a huge fan base she's got you know like 15 million followers on ticot five million on instagram and she's just real and she was so adamant about like learning the Boston accent, which is very important. Like you say, the movies like the depotted with even the Boston actors don't eat.

That sounds fake. And so I was like, if she can do this, like I would cast her, you know, but like, and she did it, man. She studied and she practiced and she hung out with me and my friend Jimmy LeBlank, who's from South Boston, he's a boxer. He's a bunch of Boston movies. And she like learned the accent to like, you, you would think that she's from South Boston or something.

So she plays the lead, Missy, in this. I play the brother. I also co-wrote directed it. More a bunch of hats on it typically is just how I have to do things right now to get them done. And then Lenny plays the dad, and it's just a really good crime drama about a dysfunctional family whose lives all intersect in this Methodomile kind of world. And that one is getting me a lot of attention. It's something that, like you say, for the purpose, I think I'd like to tour in high schools

across the country. I already did a test screen in in Maine, which is like two states up from us here in Mass, just because when the executive produces, it's kind of politically tied there. So we got like the governor, a senator, got all these people coming on board to support it and get it into the schools and stuff,

which would be great, which is really what I'd like to do with my content, is yeah, have it be out in streaming world and obviously making an income so I don't have to work a night to five and I can do this full time like I have been. And I don't work at night to five. This is my full-time job, since Oxy is speaking, minus those events I was doing.

And so Oxy does well, habitual does well for me. But be able to, like, tour schools and, like, really, you know, utilize my content as a deterrence because it's not candy-coated and it's raw and it's gritty. It's the stuff that the kids are seeing on, you know, the stuff they see on TikTok is worse than, like, my movie stuff that's actually, like, educational for them in a sense. So bringing this into schools where kids are going to connect with me in this content more than the cop coming and being like, dear, you know, weed is bad. So isn't heroin. Apples and oranges?

No. No, apples and oranges, yes. Like, you can't go in and tell them to stop vaping and tell them to stop smoking. That you've got to, like, kind of pick and choose your battles. And this is opiates and fentanyl and pills that are cut with this is what we need to stop. We don't want these kids to end up creating, you know, what they want, which is a. overflow population of drones and just dumbed down population where it's okay to have this whole section of a city tied up with people living intense and dying on drugs right so that's kind of what

my mission is is becoming with this now all right well when's that until you've done a pilot or are you pitching it or is it already been picked up somewhere oh no so we're in during post production right now so we're about to pick your lock this week so I have I can send you actually you get you know keep it close to your chest obviously but um i can send you the rough cut so you can check it out um right it's about 20 25 minutes long but it's very watchable it has a score it has to go into final color final sound design final sound mix and some visual effects um just for some like little stupid things but but it's very watchable right now as a screener like it's this music there's a score that everything sounds and looks great and the story's very very beautiful very put together well

So we have an option already on the table from a big company, I can't say who, but to fund it as a feature film. But we're also shopping it as a pilot for a series because series is really where the longevity is with something like this. So two reasons. One, the big streaming sites like Netflix and stuff, they would rather have a series, even if it's a mini series than a feature because the more. content that keeps them keeps the viewer on their platforms the better that's how they look at it now right and people stick around instead of for four months they stick around for five years six years seven years they keep coming back for yeah yeah or even or even if they're just on that platform for four hours as opposed to one hour right one and a half hour so even that alone

and if you have longevity of like season yeah keeps people tied in so that that's what they want um so we're trying to take it that route but you know the all else feels like option right now is that we have bigger funding to do it as a feature which is also great and we have it written both as episodic one season we have about seven episodes done almost actually eight episodes done and then we have it as a feature version too where like a lot of this stuff is chopped out and the rest of it's encompassed in this feature film that is also just as great So whatever home, it's going to find, it's going to find. But it's out in L.A. right now.

I work at Sugar Studios, L.A. out in Hollywood, that's kind of my post house. My editor, Paul Buell, the guy that cut OxyMorons, is now that I brought him out to L.A. with me with Oxy. And since then, he's become a big editor at this big studio. So my guy that I brought out with my first film is now the senior editor at Sugar Studios, L.A. and he's like Rob Schneider's editor, Michael Polish. He edits for all these big name direct, but he's my guy still and will always.

So now, you know, he's part of the, he's in the union out there and everything. And he just, so I have all this equity now built for me in L.A. where this post house is, it's like friends and family rates and stuff like that. So I'm able to kind of navigate these kind of low budget independent films into equity that is, makes it a much higher production value. Right.

So I would say we're going to do screenings with it. We're going to tour it. Like we're submitting it to some big festivals, but we're also going to tour it in cities. Like I'll definitely end up coming down to Florida. Like I said, I recently spoke to Jim Brewer, who's down to Florida wants me to maybe come on his podcast.

I go down to Miami and stuff a lot too anyway. So I'd like to do like Florida, Philly, Chicago. You know, the cities that are kind of hit hard with this, obviously, which everywhere, but like specific ones also where I know I have audiences and do pop-up screenings with Q&A is after, dialogue like this, tell my story, ask me a question, but you know what I mean, whoever it is. And in kind of bringing around to communities like that, I think it's how because it's a pilot version. And then as we're doing that, you know, maybe the other one of the other things

too is like Massachusetts just got their $900 million for the Purdue Pharma lawsuits after all this time. So each state is getting their money now for. for the, you know, amount of people that Purdue Farmer killed and got away with. So $900,000, Massachusetts got a portion of that has to go into education and prevention. And I think what I'm doing falls into that bracket. So if I can, I might be able to tap into funding from the state that could potentially fund the series of the movie. Because again, the stuff is proven, you know, time and time again to help people, you know, really want to get clean.

So, which is more than what anything else is doing as far as like methadone and suboxin and the revolving door of addiction. Okay. Well, I mean, let me know. Keep me, keep me, you know, let me know if, you know, whenever this happens, you could, we could always do another episode on it, right? Like on what's happening. Yeah, I love to. I mean, yeah. Yeah, and I gave you, I mean, I started late today because of my fault.

but um you know i there's so much there's so much story i i jumped out of you know what i mean i kept it kind of i kept it kind of the progression of like my childhood you know into high school a little bit stuff about my uncle and like you know my bits and pieces of my criminal life into becoming a film but there is big sections left out which would be great for another you know another uh run maybe what would be great we do one, you know, down the pipeline after you get to check out my films more and kind of, you know, learn more about those and how I did stuff or why I did stuff, what's based on true stuff and, you know, well, a lot of people ask me like, I was going to

say, I was going to say, we can put the links in the description box, you know what I'm saying, for, um, for oxymorons and, uh, I want to say, habitual, habitual, like habitual offend it yeah yeah habitual yeah i mean the other stuff's not out yet so no the other stuff's not out that i'm in this stuff but it's not my stuff and it's not what you know what your audience is too which is like true crime and right you know and um true crime and uh you know drugs and stuff like that i am doing a documentary too right now about the housing development i grew up in the bug hill project called the dying breed i'll send you the proof of concept for that too.

I'm going to put that up on my YouTube channel because I haven't gone public with it yet. But I'm doing a true crime docu-series about the housing development I grew up in dating back to you know, dating back to when they built them in the 1930s for Irish veterans

that were longshoremen. And they literally the BRA burned people's homes down to build this housing development that generation after generation has experienced just horrific stuff. You know, you have the race riots of the 70s. The 49 unsolved murder is still to this day. You know, there's probably bodies buried in there. And the reason I'm doing this

documentary is because they're tearing them down because now it's the highest real estate. It's on the water in Boston. It's like the highest real estate in Boston, my neighborhood, Charlestown. It's not what it was. Like my neighborhood that I grew up in and the dangerous, you know, psychotic stuff that was going on is, is just, you know, it's flatlined. Flatlined. It's end, big money people, multi-million dollar condominiums and homes, and then this housing development that's just an eyesore on the water, across from the new casino they built. So, of course, they're going to tear them down to turn 1,100, 3-story units into 3,000, 10-story units that will be high-end housing development, right?

So they're displacing 1,000 families throughout the city, they're scatter them, wherever they scatter them, and then they're building this thing that's supposed to be this beautiful thing and it's just going to erase the history of what has gone on there all these years you know the unsolved murders the bank robbers so i'm doing these true crime episodes in you know in my research i found out that in the late 1500s the first woman ever executed a first person ever executed uh for witchcraft in the history of the united states was a woman maga jones who was hung in that same area where that housing development is and the little boy that was involved in that case when she was a midwife and the governor

signed off on them hanging her um he was the priest that inspired the Salem witch trials years later no one knows this i mean unless you're a history like buff and you go that far back so the history of the thousand development and like the cursed things that have gone on there even the 1700s the battle of bunker hill you know where all this bloodshed took place that has gone on since the 1500s there, you know, all the way up until, you know, the OxyContin craze and now the things that go on there now. So I'm going to do this whole like true crime series documentary style of of that as well. So I can update you more on the next time we talk on where that's at. But I'll get you the proof of concept. It's really solid. And it's gives you kind of a history,

quick, you know, seven minute history of like, of that development that I grew up in. Okay. I was going to say tearing him down and building something new, And erasing that part of history may be a part of the overall plan, you know, for the developers or for the city. You know, this is the world we live in, right? So it's like real estate property. It will make it clean a better place. But it displaces the people. And, you know, the way I look at it is like I go down to Charlestown all the time to the projects because I don't live there no more.

And I remind myself of like, this is where I came from. And I filmed my movies there. And I did a little horror series for Scan Network, too. that I filmed some scenes in there as well, just like a horror series, not about drugs or anything. But I always go back there and I'll, like, go up on a rooftop

and I'll just sit there and I'll, like, meditate and just, like, reminisce, you know, of, like, how bad it was there when I was growing up, all the horrors I've seen. You know, a million things that I left out of this dialogue with you, and where I'm at now and how I survive that. And so that's my neighborhood.

It's like going back to your home, you know what I mean? So imagine going back to your house that you grew up in, kid and it's just gone it's just torn down and there's another house there's all right that's one thing but imagine what would you where'd you grow up what neighborhood uh temple terra it's kind of like a suburb of tampa florida all right so imagine going back to tipletarian it's just completely torn down like it just nothing exists that you remember no more it's just all new buildings like nothing the cornerstead not just the stores and the anything like they just every home every street

just changed. So that's why I'm doing it is like just to let it have its piece of history. You know what I mean? Right. And let those stories not be forgotten and be told through the docu series of like what went on there. And then if anything else crazy happens there, even when it turns into a high end place, you know, it just reflects that the energy of that place is so bad because so many bad things have happened there that, you know, maybe that's why these things continue to happen there so um so it's something else that i'm doing that uh that's another project that i'm that i'm on right now okay do you feel like there's there's anything else you want to cover or what you feel good about this i feel good yeah yeah yeah i'm good yeah

i got to go pick up my um i got to pick up my oldest in 15 minutes and i pick on my little one 10 minutes after that but yeah i think uh i think we did good on this one this is anything else you want to ask uh no i'm good do you have any social media links or anything do you have like Instagram or Facebook anything do you yeah so everything is so Instagram I'm heavy on that's kind of like where I'm I maintain most of my stuff but everything Twitter Instagram YouTube um Facebook the Johnny Hickey everything's the Johnny Hickey so the J O H-O-H-N-N-Y H-S-E-Y and I'll send that stuff to you as well I'm taking I have an old YouTube channel and the the Johnny Hickey is my

new one because it's where all my you know everything else I want to might as well keep everything the same it just makes sense and so I just have to upload a bunch of the content this week up there I'm going to do that so I'll have a bunch of my old videos new stuff that's never been seen before I'm just going to kind of organize that and have a nice YouTube page going this week but Instagram's really where I'm heavy at if people ever want to reach out to me ask me a question contact me they have an idea they want to throw at me I'm very responsive with other people as long as they're not weird you know i'm always i always try to like give back and respond to people so uh instagram always people dm me on there i'll i'll eventually hit you back and then facebook twitter you know thud johnny hickie

hey i appreciate you guys watching i hope you like this interview i'm going to leave all of johnny's social media links in the description box we're also going to leave the links to his movies i hope you guys liked it let me know if you didn't let me know if you did if you did do me a favor and subscribe to the channel, hit the bell so you get notified, share the video because sharing the video really does help with the algorithm. Leave me a comment. I really appreciate it. If you're interested in being a guest, please hit me up. My email is in the description box. Also, really appreciate you guys watching. See you. So you sent me a, you sent me an email. We talked on the phone a little bit. Um, uh, Alaska. The credit card thing, were you born in Alaska? I was born

and raised in North Pole, Alaska, not the North Pole. but North Pole, Alaska. Born and raised there, I had a, I mean, well, can I stop? One more. Can I stop? What was it? Are you in Alaska?

Were you from Alaska? We were both born raised. Neither one of you look like someone that I, see, when I think Alaska, I think Native Alaskans because I've seen all those programs like, like, Life, Life Below Zero. Yeah. And, yeah, and Alaska State Troopers and all those. And when I saw one where they were.

like it was almost like a tribe or something like they were they were running their own the whole town was run by basically like a tribe yeah we're it's not like that i mean we're probably like 30 000 people population it's so north pole and then there's fairbanks so north pole and fairbanks are only like 10 miles away so like if you you live in north pole most of your jobs are in fairbanks you got to commute 15 minutes but it's probably about 30 000 people population uh there there is a lot of natives where was twilight found twilight is that alaska no are they in alaska that movie with Vanessa Hutchinson when she's the prostitute no that's not that's not no no there was one shot in no wow that was way off oh yeah there's there's that's a true that's a true one

do you hear that you need to get that dude what the the hunting the prostitutes of a true story that happened in Alaska. Wow. Yeah. Probably. Do you hear that? It's a car alarm going off. Yeah.

Anyways. So, I'm sorry. Anyway, so yeah, yeah. Okay. So we don't know, we don't know where Twilight was. This is nothing to do anything. No, anyway, I don't think he has anything to do with Alaska. But, I mean, I had a fairly normal childhood.

I, there's, I mean, there was some trauma, you know. I mean, there's things that I went through. I felt like I never really kind of fit. into the norm. I always felt kind of odd. I'd only had like one best friend. There was just, I felt like there was just, it's hard to explain. I just, there was something different about me that I didn't fit in with most people. I got picked on and stuff and just because I was quiet. And then, I mean, eventually it led to like in my, before high school. So I started drinking like 13, 14 years old and tried weed. Were your parents married? They were they were both together.

They're both together and they're still together. Yeah. And there's just like a normal like middle class kind of. Yeah. But you just wasn't it wasn't working for you. No, it wasn't. And so at the time, let's see, my dad has been in recovery for almost as long as I've been alive. So they were doing the best with what they had. They were growing as I was growing. All right. So they had to learn how to parent and like the older I got like the better that they did like I they're the best parents now that I've ever had like they've done a great job like it's supporting me especially everything that I went through do you have any brothers and sisters I do have a brother and a sister but they're the same dad different mom so half half brother and

half sister but they're see my four older my sister's 43 or 44 and then my brother's like 41 43 44 she's only they're almost dead just no shit I mean I'm I'm I'm 33 I mean so I'm like I'm 53 yeah 43 is 43's 43's ancient yeah yeah I just heard them over there and she's like and I'm only 22 I'm a decade older than her um I hear you like them young they're they're they're they're they'll put you shapeable they'll yeah yeah put you in your place real quick. Yeah, they will. And then I mean so eventually kind of led to like when I had my my first drink or my first mind-altering substance. How old were you? I was like 13. Wow does that happen. I mean my sister

always had had pills or had drugs. I mean my best friend at the time he had a bunch of weed all the time and then his parents were kind of out of town or not really just present enough to notice that what we were doing. And I would drink beer and then I'd smoke weed. I had like a little Yamaha blaster and after I got all hammered and shit, I would drive home and try to avoid my parents and let them know that I was under any kind of influence. But what it did is it triggered something like inside of me that felt like I was like, this is how I was supposed to feel like. Right. Like, just a total addict, like, kind of personality. Like, I'm an addict through and through.

And, like, no matter what it is, that'll get me outside of my head to make me feel, not make me feel, that's the point is, there's too much going on all the time. And the instant that I, like, I had that stumpsence, I was like, I can talk to people. Like, I feel calm. I have, like, I can communicate properly. and I felt like people liked me. So I continued with that through my high school years. I would hide a bottle of Soco behind my subwoofer in my truck.

And before I'd go into class, I'd take a few shots and go into class. And I'd be like, I was cool. Like, I felt good. Yes, you're self-medicating. Oh, yeah. It's anxiety. It's got to be, it sounds, I mean, not that I'm a psychiatrist or anything, but it sounds like it's super connected to anxiety for you.

definitely is yeah i was i'm totally uncomfortable with myself if i if i wasn't under a sub under any kind of substance right um there's just it it's it's it's it's horrible really until until you reach a point in your life where you're like i'm i need to do something about this like i need to change um but uh after going through like um going through high school and drinking while going to school and not getting in trouble or anything. I was going to say, it never caught up, never caught up to you. Nobody ever, nobody noticed. They just, they just thought like Matt's in a good mood, like how I usually was because

I was always under a substance. Right. And then after high school, it was like, it was, yeah, right after high school, I had a buddy that I would go to, so in, I went to school in Isleson, which is an Air Force base, because because I went to North Pole high and I got too much in trouble or just there's things going on and I went to Isleson so they sent me there. Plus I had a girlfriend at Isleson that I wanted to go to Isleson so I could be with her. And that lasted like two months. So I ended up finishing junior senior year at Isleson and then I had friends that I went to West Valley and I would go go

see them and then we were kind of into the same substances and same things and then that's when the oxycotton thing kind of arose. And that was in the C, 2009, 2010. And we figured out, like, you know, you can smoke them. You can smoke on tinfoil because these oxycotton 80 milligrams, I mean, they're synthetic heroin. Right. Like, that's exactly what it is. And I never in my life thought of smoking a pill.

What are you, like, what are you guys doing? and um one of one of these particular persons is one ended up being one of my co-defendants in in this thing um so me and him we would i would go to his house and we would smoke oxycotton off tinfoil and then i did that like off and on for like you know a few weeks or then three weeks four weeks and then i just i stopped i was sit i was back at north pole at my parents house and um I started feeling like shit. I was like, man, I must be getting the flu. Like, I just, I don't feel good.

And then it dawned on me. I was like, wait a second, I'm withdrawing. I'm going through withdrawals. Like, what do I do? Like, I either I need to go get more or I'm just, this is going to get, I'm going to feel like shit. So I asked my parents, I'm like, just some phony fucking reason. Like, hey, I need $80 to go to fill up my tank, go do this and do this.

And at that point in time, they didn't, I don't think they had an idea. I mean, there was, they didn't have an idea that I was up to something. And I went and got the oxycotton and then I smoked it and I instantly feel better. So I was like, okay, this is it. I'm hooked. Like I have to do this now in order to function. And this is an 80 milligram. Yeah.

So what do you, you break it in half or something? You can't, yeah. Yeah, you can hawk it. so you bite it in half so and you put put inside down the 80 is like the controlled release right like no back then it was it was the original oxycott until they switched it over the to the OPs okay so the OPs like they had a plastic in there where you you couldn't smoke it you couldn't the original ones you can inject them you could smoke them you could do snort them anything and uh um shit where was I'm sorry you were you were saying you smoked it and you said okay I'm not I'm

I'm definitely hooked. Yeah. This is, this is it. Like, I'm, I'm either going to have to support my habit in order so I don't feel sick or just stop. And at that, I kind of had the realization like that I don't want to stop because it makes me feel better. It makes me feel normal.

I have no anxiety. Do you have a job at this time? Yeah. So I was working at a small engine repair shop also where my co-defendant worked. and so we were both I mean we're hooked on the shit and then we'd come to work and like we're sharpening chains and just like I feel like shit and like look over at him like you you feel like shit too he's like yeah we need to get something and then we find a way to come up with money or whatever and we'd go for our lunch breaks and find one go get high come back to work and put all these engines engines together and start sharpening chains and start sharpening chains and and got all our energy back and everything. And then he ended up leaving because he got a new job at a construction company,

a fairly large construction company in Fairbanks. And I continue just doing my own thing and making money through the job that I had, but then also making up phony fucking lies to my parents, why I need this money, and I need this money, I need this for this, I need this for this, or my insurance or my gas or like uh i want to take a girl out on a date like i mean right how old we get at this time i think uh 19 19 going on 20 um and then it came to the point where uh so my

like i said my dad's in recovery so my truck was acting up and we pulled it in in the garage and he was helping me work on it and he goes matt you know i know you're there you're up to something and I just want to let you know that, like, whatever you're doing, you're going to only end up in three places. You're going to end up either in jail or an institution or you're going to die. And then your friends, you're not the girlfriend that I had, you're going to lose your girlfriend, you're going to lose your truck, you're going to lose your job, you're going to lose everything.

And then eventually, you're going to lose the connection or your family's not going to want to be around you anymore. and I didn't, it just went right out. I was like, you're 19 years old. Yeah, I was like, what, yeah. You don't, you don't know. You've only been cleaning sober for 15 years. Right.

Well, at that time, it would have been 19 years. And, yeah, one ear out the other and, like, it told me straight up. Like, I knew where I was heading. And then about, uh, maybe a month into it. My co-defendant told me that he's getting ready to leave the state because he's got another job from this construction company

that he's moving to like a different state or whatever. And he has a gas car that he's been using to obviously fill up the fleet for the construction company, all the trucks. And then he's like, I've been using it for my personal vehicle. And then he's like, so I get free gas. And then I've been filling up, you know, my brothers. I'm filling up this person. I'm doing this.

Yeah, because they have a ton of vehicles that have to be tough. Yeah, they're not going to notice a slight fluctuation of a few hundred here. No, a few hundred there. No, because they haven't an entire fleet. And so he didn't ready to take off. And he's like, you know, you can have this if you want. I was like, well, fuck yeah. Yeah, I'll get free gas because then I can save money for my drugs.

But he's like, you know, you could, you know, you can make money off of it. And I was like, well, what do you mean? He's like, you know, I charge people, just blah, I don't know until I'll take 20 bucks off or just like for my friends. And I was like, just that idea, just the idea that he planted, like, I just took off with it, totally took off with it. I ended up, so I would sit at any gas station. So in Alaska, there's Tesoro's, there's Tissoros.

That's what the gas gas stations are. And I would sit there. And I'd just, I'd wait in my car and I'd go up to. anybody i mean it's usually it's like little old ladies or whoever and i had like a sales pitch for this guess this gas card and so i go out to me like oh ma'am i have a a gas card from the state and i have to use a specified amount of gallons and if i don't they're not going to reimburse me these gallons just i just totally made that up the first time that i went up to this lady and i asked and i was like i'll fill up your vehicle and i'll take 20 bucks off like like i look

If it's $80, just give me $60 cash. And she's like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, of course, because she thinks she's, like, helping me out. Right. And, I mean, I didn't necessarily look like I was strung out on drugs or anything. Right. And in Alaska, I mean, you know, and people are fucked up. Like, it's not hard to miss.

Right. And so I kept that little sales pitch. And I would go up like, shit i'd go from one person like just right there and then on the other side i'd give them the sales the same sales pitch and they'd be like yeah for sure yeah oh whatever like however much it is like i just take 20 bucks off or i'll do this or just how how much how much cash do you have right now i'll fill it up just give me all your cash and they're like oh all right yeah for sure and then i'm still working full time and then on my lunch breaks i would go do this and so

So just in the span of like at a lunch break and talking to three or four people with that little sales pitch, I'd make six, seven hundred dollars on my lunch break in 30 minutes. Right. And then on the weekends, you know, that's pretty much where I spent most of my time. And then all, of course, all this money. In Alaska, oxycotton got up to one pill was two to $300. for one pill for an 80 for an 80 so yes what is that a millionaire i'm like fucking that's like like 10 15 bucks a milligram yes yes there so it was outrageously priced and um so even me making

eight hundred dollars a day i could get maybe two or three pills right and my i mean my tolerance is already going through the roof so that that's enough to keep me well right and so i'd wake up and just fuck I don't have any energy I'm sick so I'd like then when you're sick and withdrawing and I go up to these gas stations and like I'm just like guy I just need you know like I'm fumbling over my words and shit and uh still I mean it still worked yeah um you giving people a reason to do it even if they think ah something's fucked up if but if let's face it if I get a if I got if I get 15 gallons of gas you know they fills up my tank like I don't have to give them the money until I

after. So yeah, sure, let's see what happens here, bro. Right. The card works. It fills it up. Cool. Yeah. Like, you know, if the cop showed up, I'd be like, whoa, whoa, he told me this and that. I didn't know. They're totally unsuspected. They have, they have no idea. Well, I mean, even if they had an idea, at least you gave him an excuse. No, you don't understand. This is what he said. Golly, G. Whiz. Are you saying the card was stolen off, sir? Yeah. Yeah. At least. Yeah. To me, I would immediately.

Well, yeah. Of course, other people would be like, yeah, this seems pretty fucking fishy. Yeah. But the way that I said it, and then, I mean, of course, like I said, probably the way that I looked probably helped a little bit better too. Right. And so it got to the point where I would have, like I was a gas dealer pretty much. I would, I had taxis and semis. So, semis. I was thinking I would have gone straight straight to a truck stop. Yeah. Because those guys are spending $1,000.

Exactly. And that's what I ended up doing. and so they would I had taxis and semis that would call me probably you know four or five times a week their semi is like five six hundred dollars wow and a semis they have to pay for their their own gas and uh I was like dude I'll take two hundred dollars off of that even if it's seven or eight and he's like no doubt right there you go man and um that went on for so you can be you can be pretty generous when it's somebody else's money i'm i'm always when i have when i've stolen a bunch of money from the bank i'm pretty generous with their money too yeah it's easy it makes you feel good yeah it makes you feel like you know i'm doing the right yeah i'm doing you i'm

doing you a great favor while while committing a felony i'm a good person yeah i'm gonna get you a break 200 dollars off no no no no i'm feeling a little generous today right right with my employer's money sorry so okay it's not even your employer No. Oh, okay. No, I don't even know who this construction company is. And so then about, let's say, 40 to 45 days later of me doing this, I'm back in the shop at the small engine repair shop that I was working at.

And my boss comes back and I'm like sharp on a chain and he's like, Matt, there's a detective up front to see you. and I was like oh fuck like and I was like for me yeah and I'm like

no go back and make sure he's got the right guy yeah and that and so when I walk through and I see him he's in his suit and he's like he's got his badge on his hip and everything he was very cordial and he goes

I'm here to see you about you know he's like you know I was like you need some gas that's what I think I'll meet you now I'll meet you at the circle

because you're a cop I'll give you a 50% off 50% and so he's like I'm sure you know and I tried to play stupid I was like no what do you mean

what do you what do you hear for golly cheap yeah and then he's like I figured you would say that and then it goes like they grab his briefcase plop it's like this thick

big manila folder At your work, is your boss there? Are you in like a back room? I'm in the front counter. And your boss is sitting there going, well, boy, you look like you're in trouble. I don't know what you've been up to. They were hanging out behind and I know that they were like, they, I mean, they had to know. Like, I mean.

Did you ever fill their tanks up? No. As soon as he said gas, they most turn around a bolt. Yeah. No, they didn't know. They were unsuspecting. And so like the counter, the way it is, like there's the front counter. and then you can go over to the side

where it's a little bit more personal. So we go over there and that's when he plops it out and opens it up and he's like, all right. So this is you, obviously. My face blown up in a picture, flips it open. He's like, here is you getting out of your car, filling up this person.

Here is you getting out of your car, inserting the car, filling up this person. So it's just over and over and over. And then on the other side, He's like, so you see all these transactions, there's over like five or six hundred transactions that you have here. And every single one of those is a felony. And I was like, okay. Say, first of all, officer, you've done amazing work here.

Yeah. You've done a good job. And he does look a lot like me. Yeah. I'm going to help you find this guy. Nobody's more upset about this than me. Yeah. I didn't eat theft.

That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, no shit. See, you got to be faster, bro. I know. I know. I just took it. I was like, dude, yeah, you fucking got me. Like, there's no denying it.

And so I was like, okay, so what is that? He's like, every time he swiped, it's a felony. So what do you mean? I have, I have 500 felonies against me right now. And he's like, well, I mean, due to the sheer amount that you made within 45 days, which ended up being $21,000. dollars. He's like, I just want to let you know that the FBI is going to be picking this up because this is no longer a state investigation. Oh, yeah, I thought this guy was the FBI.

No. He was a detective. He was just a detective and he was letting me know like, we got you. Pack your bags. Yeah, we're still doing like our investigation and everything. I'm not here to arrest you. But I just, I want to let you know that the FBI is going to be picking this up. And so I was like, what do you think? How much time do you think I'm looking at? I didn't I was like I was fucking just pale I was a ghost I keep fucking hitting this thing I damn it sorry and like I was just you know pale sweating and uh after that and counter he's like obviously I'm and you're fucked up mama yeah now I've got to go through detox yeah I gotta go to jail I gotta go through detox I'm already fucked up right now but so well obviously so he

said I'm not here to arrest you so he's like but obviously you know I'm gonna need that card. I was like, here you go. You can take that and he's like, I'm not here to rest you. We're still doing our investigation. And so you're going to have to go check in with a pretrial federal probation officer. So I have to go to the federal building. And so I go and meet my federal PO. And she's like, so you're on, you're on pretrial. Okay. So you went from, I mean, immediately went from the this guy just asking you questions he just told you go downtown like you was there a did they give you a they gave you a public defender or anything or a no he's he said show up and sign in i think he gave me like uh like a 72 hours or something to train yourself in

to check in to check in with the with the pretrial because he said that the investigation is still going and we're not going to arrest you yet like so nice they're I mean you go to Alaska, like they came in. They're like nice to you. Like, they were. You got 72 hours. You know, I'm sorry what you're going through, buddy. You made some bad decision.

Like, fuck. Yeah. I never talked to that guy. Never. I mean, looking back on it, I mean, it was probably, yeah, the easiest way to ever get in trouble. Yeah. And so I go and see my federal PO. And then so we start pretrial.

And obviously, I'm still doing. drugs and I'm doing I at the time probably yes yes oh yeah that's not good yeah so she's like I'm gonna I'm gonna give you UA's and I failed the first time of course surprise surprise what what does that stand for now um and you so you fail well if you failed like did they well they don't they can't revoke your probation you don't when you're on pretrial you didn't you just okay yeah because you know Like, if you were on probation, then you're a pretrial. If you're on pre-trial, then they could lock you up for that, right?

Can't they lock you up? No, they won't really lock you up anyway. You haven't been charged. You haven't been sentenced. You haven't been sentenced to anything. I don't know. Yeah, you're okay. So, why even give you a piss test?

I don't know. They were trying to clean me up before, before I went in or something. I don't know. They were trying to give me some rehabilitation in some way. Right. I'm going to get you healthy before they. knock your head off exactly no it's nice it's the right it's the right thing to do yeah so I fail it and she's like well I'll obviously have opiates in your system um I'm gonna so you got

next week I'm gonna try to get you to go to like an inpatient program or do something because like if you keep doing this we're what we will put you in we're gonna take you in so you're no longer on pretrial where while you're in under investigation um can I you a question what does your parents say like have you told you you tell you go straight home and say dad oh yeah oh okay yeah so i told them i i laid it all out because my they knew i was up to something yeah obviously like i was up to something and they knew like i mean i'm sitting at dinner and doing the nodding out or watching tv and so sleepy i'm working so long yeah yeah i've been working 12 hour days fucking all this gas and stuff and man people wearing me out wanting gas all the time

and uh so i tell them i was like yeah so caught came and pretty much caught me and uh my dad he was like yeah i figured you were up to something so i mean what are you going to do and i was like well i don't know what do i do he's like well i mean you can try to get clean you need you need to do something before to try to show the judge that you're trying to change and try to make a difference and that you're uh you know they feel some remorse for what you've done for charging this company you know over $20,000 and 40 days like you put it got which probably ended up having to pay at the most 50 bucks that once they called their probate once they called the once they called the gas company and said this is all the fraudulent charge someone's been caught then

they write that off immediately and the most they can charge them under the um electronic transfer act is like 50 bucks and they don't even charge them that so they have to reimburse them within like 24 hours so you didn't really cost them anything they did have to make some phone calls I'm sure oh yeah which was agonizing I'm sure I'm sure yeah and then um so after yeah that was that was that was dad so your dad was saying sorry yeah he I mean he did he knew I was up to something and my mom is uh she she's she's very sensitive and she's she was crying and i know i know that like i broke her heart and but my dad he's uh he's not hard to read he's just a very um what's what's the word what is it

mellow yeah he's mellow very mellow i've never seen him angry at all um but um shit i forgot where i was so he was telling your mom mom was upset and your dad was kind of like, look, you got to get clean, you got to get your shit straight, trying to show the judges you're changing. Yeah. And then, so I go through, I mean, I'm trying, I'm trying to stop and I'm getting sick. I don't have resource. There's no resources. Right. In Fairbanks. We have one rehab. That's it. Like, if I came to Florida, there's rehabs everywhere. I mean, Jesus Christ. But there's only one in Fairbanks. And there was limited bed space. Can't get in there for months. So, so like, they expect you to like, I have to keep up my habit for two months until I can get in there. Is that what you're saying? Like, I like that. That's the, that's the drug dealer mentality.

So what you're saying is I have to keep my hat. I keep this going for two months. Yeah, until you can. And you definitely don't want to go to prison. I mean, you don't want to get pulled into the holding cell and detox in the holding cell. But inevitably, that's what happened because I could no longer afford oxy in, and, Fairbanks at the time because then they were becoming so rare that they stopped making them and they transferred. They started making the OPs. And I can't smoke those. I don't like I want

the instant high. I want to smoke them. And so heroin comes along way cheaper. You can get it for 40, 50 bucks for a point, 0.1 or you can get like a half a gram for 100 bucks. And it's way stronger or I mean sometimes depending on where you got it and it was like the black tar kind and uh so I started to switch to that because it was cheaper and uh the small engine shop still kept me employed thankfully nice I still worked there and then um towards the the end of so I got to talk to my the public defender uh federal public defender and um Um, she wasn't, uh, she wasn't very nice. She, um, she, she just kind of laid it out on me and, uh, told me about the point system and everything.

And she's like, they'll take your childhood, your, I mean, your petty theft, uh, a DUI, um, uh, like, I had a theft for under $4. Like, that's a point. And then I had a criminal, it's criminal history. You're, they'll keep every single little thing. They'll bump up your criminal history every single time you've ever been in trouble. So you can have been arrested once for a DUI. You could have been arrested two years later for, you know, shoplifting, you know. And then, and now when you get to sentencing, you're at a criminal history level of three.

Right. So it's like, so you're already now, you're already instead of having like being at like a level six, you're like a level 13 and at a level eight, you're going to prison. Right. So you're already done. Yep. Yeah, no matter what. Uh-huh. So, and then after, after meeting her.

I was just clarifying that so that people understand, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So even though all those charges are ridiculously stupid charges, it doesn't matter. Every one of those is going to count for more and more months in prison. Speeding tickets even. Right. Yeah. Any kind of, yeah, it's ridiculous.

But, um, so she tells me about that and tells me I think I had, I think it was around 16 points or something. Um, and at the time, I was. on state probation. So I had an SIS, suspended in position of sentence that was called, I believe, for a forgery that I did. And so as long as I didn't get in trouble for two years. What was the forgery for? I was like for $300 or something. I mean, I was withdrawing. I was, I just found a check and $300. And I went to the bank that it was, and they're like, oh, yeah, hold on, just a sec yeah hold on well one more second and waiting for the sheriff yeah for the deputies oh wait they're here yeah that's exactly what happened they're like well one one one more minute

and I'm sitting in the drive-through and then cops come around on both sides and then I mean I was like that I was being an addict you're willing to fucking do anything at any cost like I had I had had no regard for any any anybody's feelings or I didn't I just didn't care like I just Well, and your risk versus reward is, you know, vastly skewed because you're like, you're willing to risk anything to get to stay high because you're in such pain. Yeah. I mean, you get to the point where you're, you just don't want to be sick. That's just the worst feeling.

It's funny, too, how all the got, how, like, especially the opiate guys, to always describe it as being, just like being sick. It's, like, it's always, you know, it's, it's like their bones ache. Like, it's a different, like, compared, like, other. people that go that I've talked to that go through withdrawals like they always describe it as being like violently like ill your whole body's aching your bones hurt yeah i was heard i've always heard that like literally your bones yeah you go you like alligator roll all night and like there was a point where i had a cell that was right across in the shower so like i'd fucking i'd be well freezing kind of

hot flashes and bones hurt and so i'd run into the shower and i'd sit in there for 15 seconds and then run across to my cell and get under get under the blanket so I could just finally sleep for maybe 30 seconds because you can't sleep either um but so that's that's another the forgery so the forgery you did the forgery you're on state probation for that already mm-hmm and you're on federal probation and you're trying to get into a drug rehab yeah I'm trying to right it never happened no well you keep failing the UA's yeah and so it really very unfair to criminals yeah yeah and so i did it just leads up to i think it was another six maybe not even that long four or five months later um they get up to like the the

the pre-trial and then the the some court dates like there's a there's a court date before you're sentencing it's like the um you accept your acceptance of your plea yeah you go and you say yeah i'm i'm guilty yeah guilty plea and so i the guilty plea is actually when they arrested me on the spot but i had a few um court dates before that just like um i fuck these like like an arraignment like you were cross you went in your process they took your finger prints they took a picture of you yeah right that whole thing so you were being arraigned they let you out immediately on what on uh oh r bond like you didn't put up any money right they just no okay no yeah i was never i was never incarcerated until the date of my sentencing.

Yeah. And so on that, on that date, I have right here, 221-11s when I was, when I was sentenced. And I go in there and my co-defendant, he's already, he's already been sentenced. He's never had anything on his record. So he gets probation because, I mean, obviously through, when I was talking to the investigator, he's like I just want to know when when you came into possession of this card and I was like whenever you see it spike like whenever you see it's being swiped every day that's that's me right so like they calculated the differences and everything and they know it's his card yeah then he

took a plea yeah yeah yeah and he just got probation yeah that was it and so come to mine um I I had written now like a little letter just just to you know kind of level with him be like you know I'm not I'm not a fucking awful person like I'm not evil I'm not I'm not trying to do this to try to just you know fuck everybody over like I'm I have a problem I'm I'm an addict like I have issues who I'm saying this to the courtroom I'm saying this to the judge and I was just you know like I feel remorse for what I did it was it's awful it's stupid um I mean, it's just a very immature way of trying to deal with my addiction. And I said, I mean, if it wasn't for the case of me being addicted to drugs, this wouldn't be happening, obviously.

And he actually kind of leveled with me, and he's like, I have a daughter that's caught up in that stuff right now. And I feel for you, kid. I honestly feel like you need a rehabilitation more than you need a prison sentence but due to the sheer amount of money that you made within the 45 days or whatever like you gotta be sent in to something. Right. What were they already recommending? What was

probation recommending? 16 to 18 months. 16 to 18 months? Yeah. Oh, okay. Jeez. Okay. For fucking 21 grand? Yeah. It was because all my little priors, my little points. I don't know why I'm looking at Connor. doesn't he's not gonna help he doesn't understand he looked at me like he looked at me like I don't how am I so I don't that sounds reasonable yeah but no yeah that that's that's outrageous yeah I know people have sold a couple hundred

thousand dollars and ended up with probation so so it was it's all of your it's all of your your criminal history level yeah okay that's that's what led up to me having to have that much and so and what he said is like you know I have to sentence you to something, obviously. So I'm going to give you three months. I was like, three months, okay? I've never done any, any time at the time. Like, I've done three days maybe for driving without a license because at that time, driving without a license was a jailable offense. And I had a, I think I had a DUI or something. And never done any time before. So he sentenced me. I was doing heroin up to that day. I did I smoked heroin before I went and got sentenced and uh he told me that

and then my both my parents there my mom was crying and like I kind of broke down I was like I all right here I go and then they handcuffed me and they put me in a little federal holding cell kind of broke down bro I cried like a small child dude yeah yeah like you could yeah was unconsolable yeah I got considerably amount a considerable amount of more time than you but it doesn't matter if it's a month no it's devastating yeah because you're taking you i mean you're getting taken away from everything yeah yeah especially for your first time ever like you get taken away to go through detox or you have to go yeah i have to go withdrawals i have to go withdrawals good times yeah so then from there i they send me to

fcc fairbanks correctional center um and uh question when they locked you up right there in the courtroom they lead you away the marshal leads you away right they lead you down the hallway and then they put me in a little gate right and they leave me there until like until they're ready to transport all right which the federal building to FCC is three miles away but I'm in there for like four hours and just with me in my head and my thoughts and be like oh my god I can't believe I did this I'm so fucking I'm never going to do this again like this fucking I'm I need to change my life around I need to do something and finally after three or four hours of me in there, bawling my eyes out and fucking beating myself up and saying how much I, like,

slandered my last name. I, like, hurt my parents and all this. So many, everything goes through your head. The most awful fucking things you can think of. And they come and come and get me and they handcuff me and go to FCC. And then, like, by that night, I'm like, I'm already tossing and turning. And FCC, like, there's a lot of people in there that are. going through the same shit. There's a lot of people that are going through withdrawal. So like, what's that major problem in Alaska, right? Isn't it? At that time, it was, the, the Oxycont epidemic was huge. It was really big. Yeah. Back in 2010, 2011, it was, that was the main thing. There was a lot of people doing it. And so I get to FCC and I, of course, I know quite a few

people in there because it's just a small town and they're they're like here this will help take some candy and then you know like whatever anything that'll help and he's like make sure you go take a shower go do this and like everybody knows that I'm going through withdrawals so they're like just leave them alone and let them sleep it off because there's probably and so there's a a wing B wing and C wing and A wing is the the the higher higher um like uh higher security and then b wing is like the low level and c wing is the workers and b wing is just like it's just it's disgusting like it's like the kind where you just look down it and there's like mold and dripping water onto like the cement and all

the paints scratched off and it's just it's not very clean right um and so yeah i'm kicking for seven to ten days before I start coming out of it and coming out of myself and eating and kind of socialize and talking to a few guys that I know outside of there but that they're in as well and then like I start to understand some of the because I've never done time I know that there's certain politics certain things you should do like in jail it's not there's no politics in FCC really right at all yeah there's too

mixed up there's not enough there's not enough guys to get together to be dangerous it's whites and natives yeah that's it so after 20 20 30 days like I'm playing spades you know playing spades with these guys and I'm eating hanging out I'm like this isn't actually isn't

too bad I can do this I can do this for what I'm not I've been here for 28 days I can do this for 70 more. This is easy. Maybe they won't even take me to federal pen or a federal FCI. And then on day 30, they go over the intercom. La LaLan, roll it up. And I was like, and everybody was like, oh shit, Federale, here we go.

And, yeah, I knew. So I rolled it up. I mean, all I have is my blankets and my paperwork. So you throw your sheets and your blankets at the bin. and so they walk me up to booking so that's it's no longer just the correction officers I walk over and then there's the FBI so they got there I always know their FBI because they got their tan pants and they're blah blah um you mean the U.S. Marshals yes yeah the U.S. marshals yeah and so there I think there was maybe two or three I think there's three

total including me that were all federal and we were getting transported and uh it's at that time January December February so it's about February so it's fucking cold at that it's Alaska yeah assuming it was cold the whole time I thought it was cold it was a warm spot there there is for about three or four months and oh nice yeah other than that it's cold um so they out they chain gang us and put us in the van and then we fly up to this little private airway and they put us in the little bush plane and just a little two propellers and uh so fly us marshals with you the whole time yeah yeah two marshals um they were they were super chill um comparatively speaking to the marshals that i encountered later um so then i fly to anchorage and they i go to the anchorage jail

And I'm, at the time, I'm like, where, where am I going? Like, are they just going to, am I going to Anchorage? Am I going to stay here? Like, they don't tell you anything. I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do. So, and then they put me in some po-dunk cell. They put me in a tub, a little tub, like, because there's no bed space anymore. There's two bunks, and then they put you in the tub, pretty much with a mat.

A boat. They call them a boat. It's an orange, right? Was it orange? It was gray. was gray yeah it's like a it's like a looks like a almost like a what do you it's like a shallow fucking canoe or something yeah like a like a really shitty low boat that yeah yeah like a trying to think not a canoe like a kind of like a

kayak kind of like a kayak canoe kind of thing yeah yeah yeah and then you stick your mat in there and then I got some guy up front on on the top that's fucking of course annoyingly snores every damn night and then I got the guy on the bottom bunk that's going through with draws himself. So I'm on the floor and this guy is in full-fledged withdrawal, shitting himself and puking. And I'm just like, I, dude, I need to get the fuck out of here. Like, I'm seeing, seeing that in perspective, like, he was like, got to be 50 years old. And he's still going through what I just went through when I was 20 years old. And then it like kind of put it in

perspective. I was like, dude, I'm not going to be 50 years old and going through this shit anymore. right no way i do not want to be that dude and uh i was in there for two two or three days and you were locked in the cell the whole time 21 hour 21 hour to lock down so we're just out for breakfast lunch dinner that's it and uh in there for for three days and then yeah they bang on bang on the door the lawn roll it up i was like thank fucking god i don't care where i go anymore. I don't want to be in here. And I try asking them. I always try to ask. I'm like, where am I going? I'm like, we can't. I can't tell you that. And from there, there was probably about 10 or 15 federal inmates that were in Anchorage. And they, I think on this one,

so they do the hip restraints to your handcuffs, your hips, and then your feet, and then they attached you to two other people and then puts you on the bus and then from the bus then we go to the another private airport or something and put us on the plane and I'm my public defender said that with the amount of time that you have you as far as you're going to go with Seattle C-TAC like there's there's no other reason why you'd go anywhere else because you're low you're low level like there's that's as far as you should go so after i was i'm on the plane heading to seattle right and i'm like okay there's no federal you told me earlier there's no there's no federal prison in alaska no there's none um so i know that's where i'm going i'm like okay so i can kind of relax this is this

my last destination and uh so i get in there and walk in and it's it was a whole different kind of feeling because it's it's not a jail it's prison jail and prisons are like I didn't I didn't realize that's lead yeah so I walk in and this it's like a big two-tier where you say something I was going to say something this is with a plane no this is all yeah oh yeah sorry so I yeah I walk in and it's a whole different feel because all the whites approached me there everybody's like hey do you need anything I like I do you need any food do you need it I mean socks do you need any shower slides yeah yeah do you need the toothbrush like i get soups for you do you need kifee coffee exactly what do you bro do i got a lock for your locker give me that back

when you go to commissary yeah yeah yeah and like this it it was so i never experienced something like that it was like i just felt like they're like hey we're here like if you need us let me know support group definitely and then but then i noticed like the other guys that they came with their their race went up to them yeah and did the same same thing. I was like, oh, that's, that's kind of cool. I mean, and so I go to my cell and I'm kind of situating myself and I'm in there with, he was just Mexican. I don't know if he was a north side or south side or anything, but he was really super chill. I think he was younger than I was. And he's, we have lockers in there and he's got like cans and cans of like

Sprite and Pepsi and all this stuff. He's, you can have some if you want some. and or I was like I don't want to accept anything from anybody that just I've been told yeah you've been told don't accept anything yeah because then they want something they want something back from you Connor yeah that's how that works it is yeah remember that time you know yeah remember that you're gonna help me now now now I need you to meet me in the shower yeah whoa whoa bro it was the fucking seven up man it was a fucking can of soda what you thought that doesn't that does not add up that's crazy interest I don't get. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So I used to say the difference between being in the medium when I was in a medium at Coleman, I was in the medium for like three years. Difference between being in the medium prison and being in the low was in the medium if some guy left a snickers on your pillow, don't eat it.

Oh, fuck, no. But if they leave it at the medium, you can eat it. Because that dude comes and you says, hey man, you got my, man, fuck you. Yeah. I ate your fucking Snickers. I might be in your fucking locker later. What room are you in? Yeah.

Because they're not going to do anything in the medium. They're pretty much, fucking, they're pretty much set. They're okay. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, sorry. Go ahead. But you don't want to take that Pepsi.

Yeah. No. I know. I've heard about you. Predator. Yeah. I know what you're trying to do. Set me up, motherfucker.

And then, so first night. First night, I'm at C-Tac. And just getting comfortable. I'm like, finally. I can. This is where I'm going to be laying down. I'm starting to fall asleep and on my door. Lalahn, roll it up. I was like, you got to be fucking shitting me. Like, no. No, you got the wrong person. Like, are you sure? I just got here. That's yeah. That's what I said. I just got here. He's like, no. He's like, looked at his paperwork. He said, Lalonde. I was like, yes, that's my last

name. He said, yeah, roll it up. I was like, okay. I mean, so I don't have anything because I just got here. Um, so they put me, I mean, do the, the whole fucking wrist restraints, put it to your hips, put it around your angles, blah, blah, blah, lead us all out to this shittiest fucking plane I've ever seen. Like, I swear there was duct tape holding this thing together. yeah yeah they're not it's it's not delta no no no it's it's it's not even like like what it's spirit it's not even spirit like and it's just a plain gray just there's nothing on it yeah and the stewardesses are fucking horrible no they've got shotgun yeah yell at you the whole time yeah yeah they're they won't let you go to the bathroom nope don't get fucking that lights off or not you're not going you just pissed yourself yeah because you're probably sitting in a seat yeah that's been pissed in multiple

probably yeah yeah it's good stuff they're i mean fairly fairly nice um so i get we all get situated get on the plane and we're all sitting there and then uh the pilot goes oh i think we're having a problem with one of our engines so we're going to have to you know everybody's going have to get off we're going to have to try to do this again another time that's what you want to hear yeah yeah yeah especially um yeah when you're all restraint and getting ready to fly to another another state um could you imagine if something happened And do you ever see that one plane? I hate to say this, but if you remember that one plane that I don't know what it was at DC, whatever,

it actually like the top of the plane blew off and they lost one of the fucking one of those stewardesses flew out. Like if you were chained together with like five other guys and one guy goes out, like you're all going out like anal beats. Like you're like, you're like even if you're going to be like you're, it's even if even more if you could hold on, the other guys are going to be flapping around hitting the fucking yeah, the fusel lodge on the outside. Yeah. We're a pretty strong guy. You'd probably be all right. I mean, I try my best.

So anyway, I'm sorry. go ahead so the plane's not good what an imagination you have so the captain said listen there's something leaking out of one of the engines we don't feel good about this yeah so anyways um so we all fucking we're all getting off and then go head back to the uh to the to the anal penis I always thought of when I they would chain me to the guy in front of me I was always like we're like a bunch and we're all in orange yeah sometimes you'd be or you'd have like the paper dresses that they put you in. And I'd be like, there's like, there's like 12 orange guys in orange chain together.

And I would always, for some reason, I always thought, you know, anal beats. I don't know. I'd once seen some anal beats, you know, I, well, I knew someone. And, you know, they were, you know, and so I saw, you know, and they were, they were orange. Yeah. That's all I'm saying. Don't, don't judge me. I'm not.

I mean. Okay. Okay. Got that covered. We go back in and into the pod. everybody's like oh shit everybody's back blah blah making fun of us like and then that night the one of the white guys he approached me he's like hey we're making a spread for all the white guys like I've never had any like real food right since being in it was always just like

what they gave us and so like in the in the federal institution you can you can order a lot of shit you can order I mean pretty much anything food wise or drink drink wise and um he made us like not this big plate of nachos with like sliced up sausage and put jalapinos and cheese and yeah what was it little chubs yeah chubs and then the squeeze cheese no squeeze cheese and all squeeze cheese and all that and he just he had it for all the white guys and that night I was like man this is fucking awesome like this was pretty cool like it and uh then that night again so this is is my second night bang bang on my door again the lawn roll it up four in the morning yeah i was like

okay yeah well i know this time where i'm potentially going and uh we all get on there get situated there's another problem there's another problem um yeah we're all gonna have to uh on the plane you got on the plane again mm-hmm like you'd figure that they would check the fucking plane before you get on the prisoner on there but yeah yeah it goes to show where our our government money is going um we all fucking get off the plane again and now now the pod's like really laughing at us they're all hollering and shit and making fun of us and i was like yeah we're at we're back here we go like yeah yeah can we get some ratchez um then third night of course same thing repeat like i was expecting it i wasn't even trying to sleep i was sitting like this like on my on my

bunk waiting for him and uh the lawn roll it up same thing we all get on the plane and and then pilot doesn't say anything so we start rolling back i'm like oh fucking here we go finally going somewhere i'm gonna die um take off everything seems pretty kosher and and then they're then they give you two day old sandwiches and a little box of juice with your hip restraints and yeah they want you to eat them like this like you're you have to scoot up the chains heart just enough so you can reach down it's it's comical watch you drop something it's just gone it's it's comical watching like like the hardest dudes like tattoos everywhere and buff and like they're just struggling to try

to eat their little sandwich it's just I saw a few guys are like fuck that I'm not even gonna try and then we land I don't know where we where we landed until until I got off the plane because I was like this is I mean I'm in Vegas I can see the Chris Angel fucking pyramid I can see the strip I was like this cool I'm getting all my vacation spots checked off on this because later I found out that they're moving me because of limited bed space whatever the fuck that means but that's why they were moving me around and so they put you on a bus again and we're driving through I drive through the strip like I'm on a bus

I was just like, oh, this is fucking cool. I'm looking at everything. I've never been to Vegas. And you still really haven't been to Vegas. Being in the prison transport on the way to prison driving down the trip, it's not really being to Vegas. Yeah. But I mean, I was in the location of.

So, I mean, I didn't get to experience, of course, real Vegas. And then we'd drive past it. We started going through like this desert, like where there's absolutely nothing. and we pull into like it just it looked like an army base because you can't you can't see the fence like it's all the the ground is above the fence and everything so you have to go around through where the gates are until you actually can see the prison and then it's a it was a um a privately owned federal institution called it was just perum FCFCI and never never heard of the place it's so I guess it's a it's a

holding or a transport like facility I guess I have no idea why they sent me there but that's where I know who own that facility was it like CCA I have no idea I a bunch of private there's a bunch of private companies that like there's CCA there's is it global and they were they they build private prisons and they they house a federal and state inmates yeah yeah I just I was obviously brand new because I mean paint was all everything was brand new and they put us all in the little paw that a holding cell and they're doing their little classifications and stuff and finally get out of my cuffs and I think

I I'm wearing my so in C-TAC they give you brown you're wearing your brown and brown and I'm wearing my shower shoes. That's all I got. And, uh, and there it's the yellow jumpsuit. So you got to go through I got a, you got to change out from your, from my CTAC clothes. You got to go through your whole inspection and do, I'm sure you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's real fun. Yeah. Yeah. The bend over squat and cough. Yeah. Yeah. Looked up your sack. Yeah. Let me see what you got in there yeah yeah that's fun uh and then they they gave you your yellow jumpsuits and then i i turned the corner and i just it was just huge like i could i couldn't see the end of it was this one big long haul and um they assigned me to a pod so and i walk in it's just it's literally

it's you don't have a cell there's no cell it's just it was like probably a open bay yeah was probably like a 60 by 60 yeah just with lines of beds and then one big TV up here and then you have one two three four five tables so there's all your beds and all the little shitters with the um with the divider that's probably this high so you can look to the guy next you've taken a shit and say hi no um or masturbating yeah that's he's mastering sometimes they'll bring in some uh some lotion yeah you know yeah you make sure you keep your blind on whatever you're doing you don't want to look over ever or sometimes maybe you do maybe you say Tom what do you look at at there come on stop at Cox you know what I'm doing

what you doing what's all that noise you eat macaroni yeah it's going on bro worry about your damn cell and can I read that later is that is that the one with uh what's your name at cox yeah so we're and I go into this one and I'm not approached by the white guys this time like this is just a big fucking dorm and so I find out this is where I'm at

and where my bed is and I'm in fucking Nevada I'm like what am I'm like thinking I'm like how much time do I have left like I bet this is okay half your sentence has been to transport yeah I mean like I'm at this point I was like I think I have probably 50 days left

Shouldn't you be putting me in for a halfway house? No, yeah. And so I find my bunk and then eventually to like talk to. I mean, he was white because obviously he was a skinhead, had a bunch of tattoos and blah, blah, blah. And he, this place was super politic-y. Like, he was, he let me know. This is where I learned where there's the no deignos and the serenios.

He's like, okay, so you can associate with the south siders. And you can tell that there's south siders, because they have a shaved head. The Northsiders don't, but some of them do. I was like, how the hell? Is there a manual? Yeah, I was like, how do you expect me to, I was like, you know, how about I just don't associate with any of them? Then I'll be okay. And then he's like, and there's this one guy, he's mixed. He's, he has a white mom and a black dad, so he's, he's mixed. So he runs with us. So I just want to let you know that, like, that's, that's, that's what we're doing around here because the pod i think there's 10 11 white dudes

rest of them are north side or south siders or or blacks and uh how many people are in the unit total probably 40 or 50 i want to say this 40 or 10 if 10 of them are that's like 25% white guys yeah yeah and yeah and And so, what's so funny is in prison, like having this conversation, like, you can't have this conversation in the real world because in the real world, like, it's funny, you go to prison and it, like, the black guys can be right next door, right next to you. You say, listen, let me tell you about the black guy. Don't talk to. I fucking see. And they're right there.

You're like, you know, you just get off the street. You're like, bro, there's a black guy right there. Like, what are you saying, bro? Yeah. And then, you know, and it's like such a. an issue in in prison and then you get out and it's the exact opposite yeah but it's you know it's and it was so funny as people out here like they're like you know you know racism and prejudice they're like this is not racism no you have no idea what racism is but so

he gives me that a little bit of blow down and then one one morning we get uh it's like waffles or pancakes and little apple slices for for breakfast and they give you like a little spoonful of peanut butter and the the white slash black guy the mixed guy that ran with us he was allergic to peanut butter so you get nut allergy or something he's like here you want mine like I can't have it I was like yeah sure I'll take it and put it on my waffle or my pancake ate it and then like a couple hours later the that white dude that first talked to me about the politics and everything in there he goes so i saw you took uh some peanut butter from what's his name earlier uh you know that i should beat your ass for that how big is this guy by the way

because basically did you tell him you're like a tourist like i'm i'm i'm on vacation this is this is a couple of months for me bro this is in my fucking life he yeah he knew that i was like this is my first time obviously well and it's your your short time right you yeah let him know like I'm on, I'm on my way out. I've been on my way out since I got in. And that's what he was like, that's what he said. He was like, so, but since I know you're new here and I know that you don't got much time, I'm going to let this one slide, I was like, oh, thanks, buddy.

Yeah, yeah, thanks for that. Like, I mean, he wasn't, at the time, I mean, in 2010, 2011, I mean, I was a lot smaller. I mean, he wasn't. I was going to say, you're a pretty big guy. I was sitting out. Like, how big is this guy? Yeah. I mean, that that time, he was a lot bigger than me. Right. Yeah. Like, I think after the withdrawals and everything I started eating, I was maybe

140, 150 pounds. Oh, shit. Yeah. And, like, I can't imagine you at a buck fucking 40. Like, yeah, I was, I mean, I was strong out. You're probably what? It's 170 now, 180? No, I'm pushing almost 200. Oh, fuck. I think last, yeah, it was like 1903. Well, it would have been a different conversation.

Yeah. At 200. It wasn't 140. Yeah, if you said that, I would have lifted him up by his neck and threw him away. I'm much more polite to people that are 200 pounds. Yeah. No shit. And then, so yeah, that happened.

And I was like, okay, well, all right, I think, thank you. I understand, sir. And then I was there. I was at Perump for maybe a week or two. And they had, you could go outside whenever you wanted, but it was just like a fenced in area. Yeah. So there was the pod and then you could just walk out to maybe a 15 by 15, obviously gated. You could just go out there and chill. There wasn't enough to play handball or anything. It was just to go outside. And me being from Alaska, like I didn't get that much sun. So I'd just go and sit like kind of in the corner and just sit there and soak up the sun.

And all the guys like, oh, hey, look at Alaska. I'm like, yeah, leave me alone. just fucking soaking up son i don't have anything else to do i'm out of here like i what and then um yeah about a week later um over the pa again luland roll it up i was like it where the fuck else could i possibly going now like i i'm i'm pushing under 40 days now like i've been to two well if you count the from fcc to anchorage from anchorage to c t to CTAC to perump. I mean, I've been to four different places already.

And I roll it up. I'm like, okay, where the fuck am I going to go now? And then I think this time, let's see, I was in Vegas. So I we took a bus this time.

They didn't fly me. We took a bus all the way from from Nevada and then I ended up arriving to Sheridan, Oregon, FCI and that's where I did the remainder of my time. And

in FCI or in Sheridan it was three man cells and you have to go there first you have to go into the classification pod and at that time I think I had 35 days left or something so they didn't they couldn't classify me to put me into where I was supposed to go right because most guys stay in classification in that pod for a week and in that classification pod you're on 21 hour lockdown same thing lunch I mean breakfast lunch and dinner and three man sells and um first couple nights they were pulling people out and be like okay you're going here and then you're going here and then I'd get a cell to myself and be like oh this is nice and then until more came in

and then so in in Sheridan they give you of course when you get there I'm in another yellow jumpsuit but they also give you a a jacket with a hood because in that particular pod or that that uh federal detention center it's it was it was just cold in there and i mean they give you jackets and because you can go outside too and it has a hood on there and there was one morning right there they pop the doors and it's it's breakfast time and i have my jacket on everybody's wearing their jackets like and a lot of them put their hood on because and that doesn't fucking matter but I'm sitting in line like shuffling you know waiting to get my breakfast and I'm shuffling and then I hear um a CEO say hey take off your

fucking hood and I was like that I know there's plenty other people wearing their hood so I didn't pay any attention to it and kept going hey do you fucking hear me take off your goddamn hood and I kind of like look back and I look I was like I know he's not fucking talking to me that way like I I yeah he is I know and he was and I was like I didn't I'm I'm not gonna I don't care I'm at the point I was like I you can't we can't talk to me that way I just no matter who you are like I've just that's just how I felt like I just it got got me I was like just you motherfucker and uh so he came up and grabbed me on the shoulder and I said did you hear me you said take off your fucking hood

I said, I don't go fuck who you are. You're not going to talk to me that way to say, hey, can you take off your hood? Like, why do you give us a jacket with a hood if you don't want us to wear the fucking hood? And he said, do you know who was asking you to do that, to take off your hood? You know who was asking you to do that? That's the warden. And I was like, okay, what does that mean? He's like, well, you're disrespecting the warden.

And the warden told you to take off the hood. And that's insubordination. And I was like, I'd shut the fuck. Like, I don't care. The warden was, he was like a five foot two little Mexican dude. And he's yelling at me to take off my hood. He's like, all right, well, take him to the hole. So I get sent to the hole for wearing my hood on a jacket that they give you for no fucking reason.

So I get sent to the hole. And I get, I mean, the hole is, that's a whole. is that's a whole different place there's i mean there's people fucking screaming i mean it's loud it's very loud and then i learned that i mean after being in there like for the first day you you only get to shower three times a week when you're in the hole and they bring it to you they bring the shower to you while you're in the hole okay well i mean i've heard of those that's that every every institution's different yeah so it's on like wheels right like they wheel it to you yeah and um you only get three showers

week I mean obviously you're in the hole you're not allowed to do anything and I went in there with some dude that I was by myself for the first couple days then they moved me again and then I get into this cell that's withdrawing from coffee withdrawing from yeah coffee from caffeine yeah because he's I mean he he said he would drink those little instant packs that you get little blue ones I think he said he was going through like three of those a day and he's just laying in bed with the migraines and shit himself all the time on the toilet and like it was uh it was horrible during that i mean but when

he was sleeping like i had time to it was actually kind of peaceful in a weird way and being so it's weird what your what your mind can adapt to so easily like you understand i've done your entire sentence in the shoe. Yeah, really. I did 45 days one time. I mean, I know guys have done six months. Oh, yeah. You know. Yeah. But it's, but it's insane that how what your mind can just, it just makes it okay. Yeah, yeah. No, you can adapt to any, I mean, pretty much anything. Yeah. And it's, I felt, I felt comfort and solace and being alone all the time. Yeah. Like, I was like, God, this is nice. And then I started writing.

I started doing like just, just writing my life story and like what I've been through. And like I started having like, you know, I did maybe I should, you know, make an audio, autobiography or something or write a memoir. A memoir, yeah. Because to me, I mean, it's, to me, it's a big story. To other people, I mean, it's, it's small. But like, to me, I went through a lot of shit. and after i got i was only in the hole for a week um i got back to my to the

the um classification one and uh there was this this older dude that i like i talked to him here and there and like i liked to listen to the radio of course and uh he's like i got an next radio if you want to use it because I know you're only going to be here for what he's like two more weeks he's like you can keep it and I ended up having a sell to myself for the remaining three weeks I think that I had there and they started the the breakfast lunch and dinner hour and then between those those three hours they would let you out for a half hour so you got I was on 20-hour lockdown instead of 21. And I was walking, I was just walking around on the tier.

And then I had this, this, this, I think he might have been a North Sider. I'm not sure. But he had like a big, big tattoo of like, you know, like the Georgia Bulldog or whatever. I don't know his chest. And he was just, I'm a lover. Yeah. Yeah. And he just, he loved to talk.

And I mean, I like to listen. you just we just walk around and he'd bullshit and we talk and then blah blah blah and then the old dude he was doing my laundry for me like he was just because he was a worker in that facility so he was allowed to be out the whole time um yeah a lot of guys will do that just to be able to be out of the cell like yeah it's it's it'll it your time goes so much faster if you're working absolutely and you're just laying in and your fucking bunk the whole time yeah and i of course was I hated reading before I went in and then I ended up reading a bunch of books

while I was in there and then I would listen to the radio and I had this, the window was probably about this big probably about three feet tall and I'd just sit down there and listen to my music and you can see who's coming in from where I was you could see all the new arrivals and everything and then

towards the I think it was my second to the last day the guy that I was walking around with that I would talk to all the time with the big tattoo I mean he was pretty pretty big scary looking dude but he was he was funny like

he's like hey you got a new cellie and I was like oh fuck I was like come on I almost had it almost had myself to myself the rest of the time and I walk in there and it's this this pudgy little just white dude never been in trouble in his life. He got caught for embezzlement because he worked at a bank and he got like 48 months or something. The first time, never seen jail. He was petrified. He was so fucking scared. I walked in there. He was like, hey, um, is it okay if like if I put my stuff here

because it's a three-man cell. There's two bunks right here and then there's a there's a single bed. And of course, I want the bottom bunk. I was like, you can sleep on that one. I don't care. You can take the top I don't give a shit and I had a blast with that guy so I what I did no I'd have been like said they raped you yet so the dude that I that what I was walking around with he's like you want me to fuck with him I was like dude oh yeah okay let's take it let's go ahead so he walks in there opens the door he's hey man you owe me my fucking money you got my fucking money I know you fucking stole my money he's like backing up and fall he's like no I swear I swear I didn't do it And he's like, I'm just fucking with you, man.

And I was, and then I grabbed it, grab that dude. I was like, all right, that's enough. He's gonna fucking shit himself. And I was like, so this is my, I'm getting out tomorrow. I'm gonna give you all the, you know, the rules and regulations of what you should, shouldn't, shouldn't do. And he's like all night till like 12, 1. He's like, well, what if I, what do I do this?

Or who do I talk to or where can I sit or like, I was like just. keep to your own man like just you know you don't want to get in a car you don't want to fucking do any of that shit like you don't want you don't want to get involved i can tell by the way you look and what you're doing i i don't think you're this off is gone yeah yeah and uh hard like me baby see not running that fucking place Oh man. So, and then that morning, they're getting ready for release. So they, I think it was like 8 o'clock. And it was like a female CEO and she was like, so she's like, oh, Matthew, are you ready to go? I was like, yeah, fuck yeah. Let's get the hell out of here. And they get me. And, gee, you're damn right. I'm ready to go, boo.

Say no more. Yeah. Sorry. And so they give you, I didn't have any clothes. So, of course, you get your gray sweatpants, your white tea, and your fake chucks. And I think I got 120 bucks that they gave me. They gave you $120? $120?

Yeah. Motherfuckers. They got a fly-me back to Alaska from Oregon. What? Huh? But you said they gave you money though. Yeah. Yeah.

Was there... Fair well. Not farewell, but it's like... Was anybody... It's gate money. Oh, gay money. I didn't get any gay money. It was all like of 13 years.

I didn't get gate money. I got a good luck to you, bro. That sucks for you, then. My God. My God. Was anybody putting money on your books when you were locked up? Were your parents putting money on your books? No, not so much.

I mean, they did sometimes, but they, my mom, of course, wanted to talk to me, and I couldn't because she just, she would break down every time. She's just, I just want you to do better. I hope you can make it. My dad just, he's fine. Yeah, just fucking let the kid do his time. He'll get out and figure it out. and then uh so i get out i'm walking out and i can hear everybody banging on the windows because

they can see me walking out and i go to this to the van and he's wearing like prisoner uh or oranges and i was like are you you're my driver he's like yeah because it's a camp so like i had just i had no idea that they would let a prisoner drive me 30 miles away to the airport they put Jess on a bus and let her drive her or go to the other like they gave her a fucking voucher her and a bunch of girls they got to go hang out for a couple of days

and showed up at the prison when they wanted to not really I mean they had a time day to be there but they hung out they went on a bus they would you stop Atlanta Atlanta Tennessee we stopped in Nashville they called a show

I'm joking about the show but still went a couple bars ridiculous wow I just I didn't have any idea that they would have You fuckers had a different experience that I had There was no gate money for me

Yeah Nobody gave me a bus ticket I would love to ride the bus You got fucked Jesus And then Before I went in I was a smoker

So I was like he's like Do you want me to stop anywhere I was like yes Let's go get some fucking cigarettes And I bought a pack of cigarettes Bought a lighter Took one drag And fucking coughed my ass

off and I was like okay well I'm over that oh yeah I don't fucking want to smoke cigarettes if I'm not fucked up on opiates so that's that's gone and then I get to the airport and they had like they haven't like a Nike shop in there and I was wearing my white tea and they gave me the money and I was like I want to get a black Nike sweatshirt so I don't look like I just fucking got out of prison and and then I got some Burger King and then got on my flight yeah I got on my flight, and they told me, of course, you need to report to your federal probation officer within 24, 48 hours or something. And I report, and they, as soon as I get there, my federal PO that she was assigned to, when she saw me, because she saw my federal, my inmate card, and, like, I had my head shaved.

And she's like, I was, honestly, I was really worried about you in there because you're picture. looks really bad. Like, you look like you were having a very hard time. I was like, I mean, and I was, but I mean, not really. She's like, so are you doing okay? I was like, yeah. What are they give you for a PO? My PO fucking was constantly going to throw me back in fucking prison. She needed my guts. They were the, I mean, probably the nicest POs that I've ever dealt with. You could just go to Alaska, you guys. And then, yeah, I report to her. And she says, well, of course, you need to get a job and you do this, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Check in once a month. And I did, I had five years, five years of federal probation. Did not fuck up once. Did absolutely like the last year, she's like, or last almost two years, she's like, you can check in every, every four months, I think. She's like, you can check in every four months, and you don't even have to come in. Just call. Just call and check in. Because I was passing all my piss test.

I was working. I was doing everything, right? Passed all my piss tests? I had to take a year worth of criminal behavior modification classes with a psychiatrist once a week for an hour. While I was every twice a month being pissed tested, I didn't even have a drug charge. Jeez. God, man. I'm still on federal probation.

It's been three years. I just got denied. I tried to get off early. They said, no. They're holding a grudge. It's resentment is what it is. They're still, they're irritated. They're up on $6 million.

But it's, you know, they're holding it against me. But anyway, I could see why. You're a vastly different experience. Yeah. So. Well, okay. You've got a, you know, this like giving you like hugs and say, you're okay. Yeah.

Jesus. Yeah. There was only two of them, and they were both females. So it was like, it was, yeah. It was the blonde hair, blue eyes didn't. You know, that probably went a long way with them, I'm sure. Yeah, it did. She was pretty attractive to anyway.

Hope she doesn't see this. So I did that. I finished it without a hiccup. And that was five years. And then I lasted about one year. off being probation so at that time you lasted one year I last so what is that hold on hold on I lasted one year after being off probation without fucking up again so fucking up mean like I relapsing yep so I relapsed and uh during those five years I I was

working at a very very good business I had a truck a car a place like I had I had two vehicles up my own place, and I was doing very, very well for myself. Like, I felt like I was like, I did it. Like, I told myself when I was walking out of Sheridan, like, I'm never going to touch that shit ever again because it ruined my fucking life. Like, I have this stain on my record now, and it's going to haunt me forever. And I was like, I'm going to do everything within my power to try to turn my life around. And I did it for five years, and I thought, like, I thought I had it licked.

I thought, like, you know, I did it. Like, I came out. And that's the funny thing about addicts is, like, I mean, you, one change of thought, like, and you're done. And so at that time, like I said, I think it was like six years, I had my own place. and I woke up one morning and I had my closeted mirrors and next to my bed and I like I swung my legs over and I just I just have this distinct memory of like I looked at myself and I just said I'm not happy like I have everything that I could possibly want materially but I don't have I feel unfulfilled there's there's a hole somewhere and I just I just said fuck it literally I said fuck it and I was like I'm on a mission to go find whatever I can find and get high because I'm not happy I just I want to feel happy I there's something missing and that within that day of course I found I found heroin and within the first week I found the needle And then I started becoming an intravenous heroin user. And then within the second week, I figured out I can mix meth and heroin in the same syringe and then put that in my vein.

Holy fucking shit. That was a, that's the best feeling I've ever had. And within probably, I would say, a month and a half to two months of me shooting meth and heroin into every vein that I had in my body I had no money again I fucking my car went to shit my truck went to shit I would came to the point where I was having to steal steal shit and then no gas card no more gas card so I had to figure out some other way so I would go to like empty like construction sites and steal all their tools and then pawn them off and do or trade him for for heroin or meth or whatever and uh i had i had there was a construction site where

we took a bunch of stuff and then there was this this it was like a heater that like when i when it's under construction in alaska they have these big huge heaters that you can put it under under the like under a tarp and it'll heat the entire place and And we didn't have a place to put it, and it was me and two other people. And we just, I put it on the top of his truck with no, no straps, no nothing. And I just went down this, we went down the street and hopefully it didn't roll off. And we put all the tools and everything inside my house. And I brought a bunch of stuff to one of my dealers.

I got like three grams, three or four grams of heroin and a couple grams of meth for just these tools. The guy's running a pawn shop. Pretty much. Yeah. And then some of them I took to the pawn shop as well. Under my name, like I just didn't give a shit anymore. Like I don't, like I'm going to get caught eventually. So fuck it.

Like, let's just do it. Let's get it over with. That was my mindset. Like, and within, yeah, like I said, after. After about two months, I had three or four cops banging on my door with a warrant, and they, I opened it like I was still, I was like halfway out of it. I woke up on my couch like with, I think like a needle still stuck in my fucking arm, and opened the door and they like grabbed my arm, took me out and put them in the car and started

searching my house and found all the tools and all this other shit. booked me back into FCC and then they charged me with the mix for which is like in possession of drugs a burglary two and then a theft two so I ended up pleading out to the the theft two and so that's going to be that would be my second felony I was looking at this state though this is state now yeah and um i think that she told me i was looking at three years i was like i did i made 21 thousand dollars and i went to the feds and they gave me three months and i took three thousand dollars worth of construction uh construction stuff and i'm looking at potentially three years and uh so what they did is they did uh two years one

suspended and then four years probation I did so the state prison in Alaska is Goose Creek and that's state and federal prisons I mean they're vastly different yeah vastly and then so in Alaska we you don't have you don't have a bunch of Mexicans or anything run around there's it's it's a lot of whites blacks and natives and that's it and in Goose Creek, you're allowed to wear whatever you want as long as you have one article of yellow clothing. Like if you can wear your jeans, you can wear the shoes

that you came with, you can order your shoes off East Bay or whatever, you can get you can get all kinds of shit. A yellow t-shirt. Yep. Or you just put on a yellow hat. Anything. But then, I mean, if you get nice shoes, you're going to get jump for your shoes. Like I've seen guys getting fucking jump for their shoes all the time. it's ridiculous i won't wear nice shoes no and i didn't and not for long and no and so while i was in that prison so there's if there it's like one long stretch right here and then this is in the middle that's the yard and then right here is like a b c d e f pods and come like uh come like uh

breakfast time when they announce it you have to go from your pod across the across the yard at six six o'clock in the morning at 30 below and every like you have to sprint to go to go get your breakfast like it's it's horrible um how much time did you get though three years they did two years once two years one's two years one suspended so and then with good time you do eight months okay I didn't understand that Yeah. So I was there for eight months. And then still, I mean, that was that eight months isn't, it's not that long. You get into your routine. You started going to the gym. They had a track. And then like you, I had a little, a couple friends that I hung out with. I mean, it was all the time

that I did, it was easy. I mean, I learned in state like, okay, and in, and in Goose Creek, you have a card for your door. Like, it's only your card that opens your door. so you have your own cell well you have one sally but you both of you only have the the lock or the card that unlocks your door

right um like a hotel room pretty much and then you learn because you have a glass window that's probably about five by five that you can see into your cell and I learned very quickly you don't want to look into people's cells because you don't want to see shit that you don't want to see

right and yeah I learned that real quick um And then, so I ended up getting a sally that had a TV and that he worked all the time. He had a TV? Yeah, he had a TV. In prison. Yes. Dude, I'm telling you, you guys need to go to Alaska.

I don't. Wow. Yeah, he had a blue jeans, tennis shoes, and TVs. Mm-hmm. Jesus. Okay. But it's cold. it's cold yeah i'm not i don't i'm not good with the cold no no i mean either but i'm not good with the heat

either bro no it's just as miserable with here no i thought i was trying to change my tire and i was like i was dripping in sweat and then hannah she was like you need to stop like i'll take over from here because it looks like you're about to die jess works outside all day i don't know what she's thinking no the first job that i took here was landscaping Oh, that's ridiculous. And I got heat stroke twice the first week I was here. I don't like walking from the front door to my car. Dude.

There's, I mean, if you walk outside in Alaska and it's 40 below and you walk out, your face just freezes. It just 40 below. I can't even imagine. It takes your breath away, like in your face. What 40 away. What 40 below is. I don't know. I have never experienced anything like that.

I don't recommend it. I, yeah, I wouldn't do it. but like it's yeah you walk out and you like your face freezes and then if you're out there for too long like your your lips will start to like it's just it's so weird because your your lips will get stuck and then it gets harder to talk and it's yeah it's not fun but then comparatively to walking out here and now like I'm instantly sweating yeah it sucks anyways stay prison state prison um your key uh he uh he worked a lot he i think he was in the kitchen so he'd go for for two hours at breakfast two hours at lunch two hours at dinner and so i'd sit there and i'd watch

um ridiculousness i'd sit there and watch the reruns of ridiculousness every single day and then i would go they had a gym um they didn't have any free weights so it was all cables and pull up bars and dip bars and there's no fucking Nautilus equipment in federal prison there's no free weights there's nothing

none of that stuff there's no there's no but I mean in federal there's no like equipment no no you guys because we had free weights

engine you were to camp yeah camps because yeah I saw I saw the entire like layout of the gym when I was coming into into Sheridan on

the bus and I saw it. There was like free weights, a bench, everything. So unfair. You're, you're, you're, you're burglarizing places. She's running a, a fucking meth ring. I filled out some paperwork. I was in there with guys, I was in there with serial killers and shit. I'm I used to have, I used to have, I used to have, I used to have lunch with a guy that killed like 11 people. Yeah, I mean, but I'm sure he was a really nice guy. He was, well, yeah, it's nice to me yeah he was old now he's pretty much feeble and not able to kill me but i'm sure he would if there were times he wanted to kill me i saw it in his face yeah you could tell so yeah anyway i met i met a lot of really nice murderers no yeah no well they and they have a low recidivism

rate too one the road lowest like like they almost get out almost never do it again yeah i mean almost i sometimes depends on yeah but the uh yeah like i said um watch tv go to the gym, I would, at the last month, I would say that I was there. I got, they pulled me over to the booking side and there had me signed paperwork. They were going to send me to a halfway house in Anchorage. And I go to the halfway house in Anchorage. And I end up getting on the utility maintenance crew. So the maintenance crew has the top level of the halfway house, which is like the pent suite, the penthouse suite, because it has a big screen TV, it has a couch, and then you have three different rooms and you get your own room. And the guy. I had nine guys in the

half. I was the only white guy with with eight black guys. I was the only white guy in the halfway house in my room. There were nine people in a room. I bet that was uncomfortable. It was it was uncomfortable. I used to listen. And the cops when they would come around to count, they would be like, Cox, you okay? You okay? I'd be like, we need some, we need some, uh, diversity in here. You know what that? And, you know, there's never any diversity. It's kind of dark in here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then, uh, so I go to the halfway house and, and then I realize that they have a lot of suboxone. there and I'm clear you've got a problem dude yeah you think and my god and so they then I found a guy that had meth and they have Suboxone and I have two or three weeks left at this

halfway house and they call me down for you a way those fuckers yeah why would they do that yeah don't they know God I just I have a problem I just didn't I accepted the fact that I was going to be just like this career like criminal just oh just a repeat offender that's that's what i accepted my life as being like i'm just you know i have no worth anymore i have i have i have no umf no no desire to i just i feel like i fucked everything up i how old were you uh during state when the halfway house when i was in the halfway house i was so this was in 2016 17 18 uh so i was 27. Oh, yeah, 27. It's too late to turn your life around at 7.27. You might as well just kill

yourself. Yeah. What is going on? Anyway, Jesus. I mean, try starting over at 50. I spit on that thing. Yeah, he almost got me. Jesus. Yeah, that's, I mean, it just, you get a, a feeling of being just so defeated. Oh, my God. Okay, go ahead. Shut up. You're 27. He's like 27, 5 foot 10, blonde hair, blue eyes, good looking. I mean, oh my God.

My life is over. Obviously, I have some confidence problems. Okay. I hear you. I hear you. And I know. Fuck all you guys. That's how I feel.

Yeah, so it's, it's, it's a, it's, it's never, no, it's, yeah, either as she, so it's hard for people that aren't addicts to understand, like, there was, okay, there's just, there's just, there's one, I have, I have, I have, I have, I have, I have things I deal with. I mean, I'm not, I do, like, it's hard to look like this. It's hard. Like, life's not easy. You look like this, like, you know, people, people, people constantly, women call you all the time. It's, you know, people want to just give you money. People just, you know, I mean. It's hard to look away from mirrors. I have issues. Yeah. I have an addiction. Mm-hmm. Sorry, go ahead. I hear you.

There was one story that, so... So not how you thought this was gonna go. But I love this. It's funny. This is fun. There was a... She asked me. She was like, so why didn't you like,

like when you would get your drugs, why don't you just wait till you get home? She is the girlfriend. the girlfriend that i'm telling us too yeah yeah okay well because these guys don't know that there's a girl there's a girlfriend over here that yeah she just got off a got off a boat from norway yeah um blonde hair blue-eyed fair skin very pretty tall whole thing she's yeah viking viking yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um so i she asked me that she's like why don't you just wait until you at home till you did your drugs and like to to somebody that's not an addict like yeah that makes sense yeah

But to an addict, you're like, once you get your drugs, you fucking want it now. You're going to do, I'm going to pull over and I'm going to put it in my fucking jugular vein. Like, that's, this is how I was wired. That's how I am. No, that's how, that's how, you know, all of them are like that. Yeah. And it's like they're like, pick up the drugs at the, at the drug dealer's house and can't make it the, the four miles to get home. No.

Fuck, no. I'm doing it right there. Then, yeah. It's, uh, okay. Anyways. That was that was that one. Yeah. Yeah.

So halfway house. failed the UA. Failed the UA. Failed the UA and I was like, so when am I going to go back? She's like, honestly, I don't know, probably another week before we can get you process. And I was like, oh, that's cool because by then I'll have two days left. Yeah. So.

That'll be the plane flight there and back. Yeah. So they, it was literally like six days later. They're like, okay, yeah, you need to go back since you failed your UA. So I go to Anchorage. Are you serious for two days? So stupid. I go to Anchorage Jail for two days.

And so I thought that I was going to get like a, I thought they were going to give me, shit, what's it called? Just like a write-up, like, where they could take away your good time. Right. So I managed to, they were going to give me a write-up for failing the UA while I was at the UA or at the halfway house. But they suspended a, you said they suspended a year or something like that? it was two years yeah two years one suspended so can't they now give you that or that's if you commit another crime not not a failure of a ua no no they they could they could take away my

good time though okay so which i i accrued good i had never got in trouble so they could have been like oh well i'm going to give you another seven days but i beat i beat the paperwork out the door so to speak so like they were getting ready to process and be like hey you know you know you got in trouble for getting uh failing your ua and but i beat it out the door so i walk out of anchorage jail and uh i get a plane ticket and and then i i got back to fairbanks and um no gate money no game money this time no nothing uh and i didn't have i didn't have anywhere to go i mean at that point i i had really had no contact with with anybody um what mom and dad no done no they didn't they didn't trust me i mean obviously yeah with all the shit um so i walked

to uh from the airport there's there's a a friend of mine luke that lived pretty close there there and uh i mean i just walked up and he was like well you just got out of jail didn't you i was like yeah and i don't i don't have anything i don't have the clothes on my back and that's it I was like, can I, like, try to reestablish something here? Can I stay with you? He's like, yeah, it shouldn't be a problem. And still, after still going through all this shit, I still wasn't ready. I still didn't come to the realization that drugs are fucking up my life and that I had a problem.

um so i'm on four years of probation now from my second felony uh state probation and now in the story or now in the story oh yeah i've been i've been off state and federal probation for a few for a few years now um and i'm staying with him and uh i get a car from somebody and then i met somebody in jail that got out at the same time around the same time I did and I saw him and he looked like shit and obviously he was on drugs and I asked him where he can get it obviously and I just it's totally um absolutely insane to to think that like I can continue to do what I was doing and make something of myself like I'm I'm fucking just hurting myself so like I called my mom and she she met me in town it was after I got out of state

state prison and she was crying she's happy to see me and everything she's like you know I wish I could take you home but we we just we can't right now you need to you just you need to figure it out. And it took after, so the way that Alaska's probation is, you get your first PTR petition to revoke probation, you get three days. Your second is five days. Your third is ten days. After you get your fourth, you can get up to the rest of your time. So after my first two weeks of being being out i already had my first ptr for um uh failed ua and then second one i was like out of area or something i wasn't where i was supposed to be right um the third one uh i was i was i was i was i was i was walking down i think it might have been university or airport road and it was still like

probably 20 30 below and i had found a truck that i was i had keys i had a lot of keys that i acquired through found a truck i found uh well i was keeping an eye on a truck on this in this parking lot that I may or may not have been able to steal. And that my idea was is that I'm going to take this and I'm going to take to my dealer and the pawn shop. Yeah. Paul in the truck. On the truck. Yeah. And UAF, it's a university of Fairbanks police, they stop, put their light on me. And they're like, are you the lawn? And I was like, what are you infamous? No. Like, I, like, my my PO dude she bless her heart she she was she really wanted the she was really trying to help me and I just didn't want the fucking help I didn't I was a fucking maniac in my own head and

I didn't I didn't want anybody's help I was committed to just fucking getting high fuck everybody else my life's not worth living like we were joking about earlier but that's how I felt um so this is my third uh probation violation so I'm about to if I get one more I'm gonna get the rest of my time I'm not trying to do another fucking year like I'm like I'm done with this shit and uh are you I'm yeah you know it doesn't sound like you are you are it sounds like you want to go back yeah okay I hear you and uh so they pick me up and I'm on doing my 10 days and then on my ninth day I call

Are you still staying with your buddy? Yeah Like he's still You keep going to jail Coming back sleeping on the couch Yeah Fuck that I'd be like bro

Done You're your shit I know It's in bags Yeah he But unfortunately I mean he's been through A lot of the same shit that I was

And like He He helped But I mean Also in the same sense He was also Enabling me of course And on my ninth day, I had this old fucking native dude.

He had a revolver tattoos on each arm. And then he had like his feather tattoos like up here. And he had really long gray black hair, like really like hardcore. What you would, if you think of a native, that's what he look like. Super skinny. And I was, I was talking to him. and he said that he knew my dad and he's like your dad you know he kind of he saved my life I was like what do you mean he's like he he saved my life by by showing me that there's

there's more to life than you know just drinking or drugging your life away and he's like what would it take what's it going to take for you or what are you willing to do to to get clean And I was like, at this point, anything, anything, I will do anything. And he's like, okay, well, remember that. Remember, you're willing to do anything to get clean. And so I call, I can call my counselor to go upstairs so I can use their phone because it's my ninth, ninth day I'm about to get out. And they need to know where, where are you staying?

Yeah, where you're going? Yeah, what's your address when you get out? What are you going to do? And I told her, I was like, I don't, I don't. have anywhere. She's like, well, you got to have something. So I call my dad. And I was like, dad, I'm at the point in my life where if I get out of here, I'm going to overdose. I'm going to die. I'm either going to die by overdose or I'm just, I'm going to do something else stupid and I'm going to end up just doing the rest of my, I'm going to do more time and I'm going to

continue down this path that I feel like I do not want to do any. anymore. I want to change and I need your help. And he goes, I was kind of, I was expecting that call. I was expecting for you to call. And I was talking to mom about it. And he's like, what time, what time you're getting out tomorrow? It was like 8 p.m. He was like, all right, well, I'll be there. I was like, okay. I appreciate it. Like, thank you. So I get out and he's sitting there waiting and he's stoic. That was the word that I was trying to find a long time ago. Very stoic and he's hard to read because he's very, he's mellow, like it's easy to talk

to. But that whole ride there, it was very quiet and he's like, you know, and it was towards like when we were getting home, he's like, you know, there's going to be a lot of rules and there's going to be a lot of things that you're going to have to do to show, and prove us that you're willing to do anything to get and stay clean you know so that's that's what i did i got plugged into a support network and people like-minded people that have the same problems A.A. or... I just a 12-step kind of deal.

And I got to realize and see that I had an old friend from high school at the time. He had like five years clean. And then some other dude that I used to get high with, he had like three years clean. and then another old buddy of mine had seven or eight years and they're like on there they have houses and they have like wives now like i feel like i'm so behind on life after doing all this shit like they're they're so far ahead of me and i'm i'm comparing what i'm doing is i'm comparing their outsides to my insides what i'm doing like i'm just seeing all this stuff that they that they have quired and getting down on myself but I uh I got plugged in and I did I

went to these support meetings and stuff for every single day for uh there's they recommend doing like a 90 and 90 but I think I did probably 140 or something every every single day and then uh I just kept going and eventually like built trust obviously back into my parents and i uh i after going to those and like really kind of digging deep into myself and realizing my fucked up thinking and thinking that i'm so so unique and so different than every everybody else i really wasn't and uh that i just i have a fucking problem that i'm going to deal with for the rest of my life i just need to learn to keep it at bay um and uh so that was that's over three and a half years ago now so i've been without any

substance for over three years coming up on four years on december second yeah you moved to florida i moved to we moved to florida a year and a half ago um never never moved anywhere else never been anywhere else we were both born and raised in north bowl fairbanks alaska and And at first, like we mostly her, wanted to go to Florida. And she was looking at Tallahassee. And I was like, we talked to a few people. And they're like, ah, it's just a big college town. You don't want to go there.

And then, but we knew that going further south is going to be more expensive. And at the time, I mean, we didn't have a lot of money, but we just, we had enough to get the fuck out. And I was like, well, why don't we try, you know, Jack? Jacksonville and then we got there and realized that it's I mean not what it's all I mean it's kind of the hood it's kind of hood yeah yeah so now we're planning our next escape yeah but it was it's I was been on probation since I was pretty much 18 years old I wasn't allowed to leave the fucking state right I'm a lot now I'm 33 and I want to you know figure out like I want to I want to travel I want to see what

there is out there. I want to experience life because I'm a little late now because I fucked up between all my 20s and everything. And that's where we're at now. That's what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to figure out like where I fit, where I sink in. And I ended up getting my first first year sober. It's called a forensic peer specialist. It's helping people that incarcerated find other opportunities get their insurance like food stamps and try to help them out because they've never done that shit before and then I got my CDC one chemical dependency counselor level one and that was that was my main that's what I wanted to do when we came here and I had like seven or eight

interviews with rehabs and as soon like right after the they're like I want you we want you yes and they were like what's how's your record and i told them what's on there how long ago and they're like oh that shouldn't be an issue i mean i'm not a violent but i don't have violent crimes no that shit and uh yeah it's one of a few careers where it's an attribute yeah like i mean they want people with lived experience like trust me i've lived it like i know what it feels like and then they'd be like well uh you have to be off probation for longer than this or blah blah blah yeah oh really yeah so he can't work in the field until this upcoming yeah so i mean so well what are you doing now right now i i mean i work at a performance shop

engine shop uh i'm kind of i mean what my boss calls me is the conductor uh i mean i'm just the service writer the conductor the manager i mean i just i make sure that everything on we have a machine shop side then we have a mechanic side and then so we have an engine builder and then people that do all the machinists on the head and and then i one of the machinists actually just a few days ago he's like hey we want to show you how to build this and i was like yeah sure so we do a lot of performance stuff and and then we do the mechanic just basic fucking your brakes your oil change whatever the fuck um but that's that that's just what's doing now like that's that's just what's keeping me afloat it's uh i mean it's it's not what my heart desires right don't think um i mean i enjoy it uh but it's not that's not

my calling right like i i have a calling for something and i still have yet to figure it out um the there it is yeah stay at home dad but you won't let me have kids with you yet so well stop taking your birth control right now of basically we're wrapping up anyway you're you're you're you're you're you're living in Florida mm-hmm um you're you're you're waiting out the time for you to reapply and be a I'm gonna say drug treatment specialist what do you call it a chemical dependency counselor yeah this sounds better than lunch lady like what is it like what they call them nutritional specialist isn't

right all right so that's a good one that's good what is it called chemical dependency counselor wow it's important doesn't it um stop come on just playing jesus um bro it's it's it's difficult it is these fucking chicks you know yeah they're they're they're a pain really yes you know um so yeah um so yeah uh Yeah. So, okay, so cool. So you're, you're doing okay, right? You're doing good. Yeah. Yeah, I've been doing the clean thing. And I mean, I don't have the want to dive into that world anymore. It's just, I mean, I don't want to say I've grown out of it or something. It's something that you've got to take day by day. I mean, I just want to be better than I was the person. that i was yesterday like i'm slowly you know slowly but surely you know i'm

trying to get my life back on track i'm pretty sure that i've done i mean i'm worlds apart from where i was when i tell people the like the shit that i've been through that i used to shoot up meth and hair up into my jugular and fucking all this stuff they're like i can never see you doing that right there's no way like you didn't deal i was like yeah i mean i got track marks approved well not anymore but i i just i'm it's a uh a jekyll and hide kind of thing like uh it's nobody when i get when i was doing on drugs and stuff and like it i mean it's uh i was a horrible person horrible and i have no um no want to to ever be that way again it's uh terrible really i i just

I gotcha I got to take a day by day and I don't want to I don't want to be like that I'm I'm trying to trying to create something with somebody that I love and she's back in Jacksonville oh oh yeah I'm sorry okay yeah and that's I mean like 33 I mean you figure I feel I feel like I should be getting my shit together and and getting life started and that's you know know that's kind of my goal is i i don't want to be in jacksville anymore that's for sure um i want to get back over to maybe like the northwest somewhere uh where i think you can have four seasons and you don't walk outside and instantly start sweating um yeah somewhere up there not back to alaska i don't yeah i can't do that shit i lived in tennessee for about a year and a half it's nice is it you get snow in tennessee yeah oh yeah not well not much no you know they don't get much yeah and maybe only for a month or so yeah but uh yeah but it's nice yeah i just i had a snow plowing company while i was in

alaska and i mean shit i raked in a lot of money doing that a lot like all you got to do is have a plow in a truck that's it and do commercial and and uh residential driveways i think there's enough snow no no no that's why i want to go like further further northwest like Montana or Utah, Colorado. Colorado is kind of expensive. Listen, there's drug addicts everywhere. Yeah, there is. That's why I got to stay away from them.

Or... You thought you're supposed to be a counselor. Yeah, that's what I say. Or help them. Yeah. If I ever find a place that's willing to, I mean... I don't think that's going to be an issue. I think it's getting off probation.

I've been on probation. Oh, I mean, sorry, the length of time. yeah what was it four years it's it was six or seven years yeah and i'm coming up on coming up on seven yeah so i just i i just need to get plugging along and i just you know keep the drive and everybody that i that i talked to that i did the interview with too um that's that then when they said that they wanted me they're like just don't just because you have more one more year to wait don't let that fucking fade like you have it in you like you that you have you have the want to help people and we can see it and we want that kind of person

we want the person with lived experience that's been through it because nobody wants to talk to somebody that's not an addict or hasn't had a drug problem yeah and book read and diagnose them with something or be or this is you can't relate to somebody right that way