Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Rise, Fall, And Redemption of a Boston Gangster | Johnny Hickey

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

The Rise, Fall, And Redemption of a Boston Gangster | Johnny Hickey

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 fistfighting. 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 said. 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,

nine or ten 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 yeah the car with a compass on the bought him. Yeah, the cable. Yeah, he filet my other uncle in front of me like before he got shot. So like when I was like six, I watched him fillet my other uncle over something

in the, so these are just like, these are memories that I just have kind of stored because 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 you it's like you grow up scheming robin stealing like that's what you're that's what your environment is that's what you're looking up to these male role 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 her 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 yeah it was a unit that's kind of interest right like yeah 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 in like a 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 out for 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, would go, that was my escape. I would go with, well, kids where I'd play street hockey, but other than street hockey, well, kids are playing football, basketball, I'd get on a bus, and I'd take a bus over to where the movie theater was, you know, like, you know, 25 minutes away, whatever. And I'd watch movies all day. I'd, like, 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, you know, 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 with, like, had like, an underfund. five line. I 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 Funk Hill Day parade where I clap in. I like yell something. Yeah, go mayor or whatever. And every time they would break us up into groups. So they'd take all the extras and like kind of under five neighborhood people and they'd bring us over to St. Catharines, which was my parish, my Catholic parish in the projects that I was growing up in. And then they'd take Jane Curt and the kid that I was with her, you know, the lead act of 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 it's like what we eat our food he's like 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 right cereal bologna 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 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, 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. Right. It's not the other side lives.

Yeah. And then eventually the walkie talkie stock going off with the production assistant. 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, I always give her credit. And I think that's where I get a lot of my, 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 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 Charleston High. Charleston High was, like, prison. It was like Charlestown kids were actually a minority in our high school, because, again, forced busing. So all the, like, white Charlestown 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 as 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 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, smashed a locker on his face, times cracked his eye socket but 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 um they wanted to make an example of me so they sent they locked me up they 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 and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be convicted without a body they convicted him on bone fragment and blood samples that they found in his neighbors 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, 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 are from Mer. 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 looked in his eyes and I'd be like, yo, he absolutely fucking did this. Right. He's not 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, but, you know, that being said, so I was being now, you know, bred 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 we're teaching 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, they 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 in charge just to fuck with me. You know what I mean? Just, when I look back now and 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 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 have 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 built 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 my place at one point in time now getting out of you know 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 a bag. And then I'm robbing people for ecstasy, robbing people for K, like robbing 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 hard to get and the raves 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 oxy There's green pills that were like pharmaceutical pills.

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 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, but a lot of people, 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, clonipine, and volume, the V cuts, the punchouts for myself. Because when I would take my volumes and my Xanax and a fistful of those, I didn't give a fuck. You know what I mean? I was, I was fearless. I was just running amok. 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 100 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 Charlestown. And then all the rest became addicted. And then most of the people doing the robberies as well became addicted. And Odeed died, you know, did tons of time, you know, whatever it was. So are you? I'm sorry, are your guys, are your guys, crews going in and doing these robberies? You're saying this is happening, but are you saying that?

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 schools, whether they were doing them in pharmacies or they were getting drug dealers. See, I would, what I would do a lot is I would be like, oh, X, Y, Z just hit the pharmacy, right? So he's got a thousand pills on him right now. Let's tell him 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 product, you know. Are you ever hitting 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 didn't have me on camera or doing anything. And they never caught me after a pharmacy or Aubrey. 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. Um, they grabbed me outside of an apartment, um, 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. Um, and then like a bag of oxies, 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. 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 parking, like fucking, let's do this, run. I was a runner. And so I was staying at my friend. I think his aunt was an informant or something at the time that 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 like that's what I always leaned 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 the and it was through my my buddy one of my good friend mike's

you know his aunt and he believes that his aunt did this too and so I go down and this is Now I'm in a town where I'm not known. I've never been arrested before. It's a pretty rough city. Obviously, I couldn't know who I am and maybe seen me. But the way the story goes is the guy's outside in the Cadillac, black Cadillac, I get in with him and he's going to bring me. 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 warrants right 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 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 uh my buddy zant 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 pills drugs he'll pay you da da da da da da da da da da and then he might have been already 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 them.

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 in those raves selling fake shit, you get duped. It was like, everybody got duped. And then you would just go in and like, be like, all right, I got 400 fake 20s. I'm going to go buy some stuff in the rave and recycle them.

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 want to be heavy. And I ended up linking with this criminal defense attorney. 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. And so this white-collar criminal that I had done. did like one of my 90 day bids with that had this like high up and coming former d a assassin you know jewish attorney from boston will corman so i end up hiring will cormon for one of my

like lighted cases for like an assault and 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 of stuff, even outside of like criminal stuff, 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 sell him. You know, I'm like, oh, you need a lawyer? You need to 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 go in and 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 where in the fact that i do what i do now has made him so proud like wow dude like i i did all that for you and like look at what you're doing it's you know he's he's pretty amazed by it but so i 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 be in the school zone they want you for all this other shit he's like

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 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 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 offices. So when you see a sheriff's, if you're going 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. Well, you're right. Yeah. So we have police, state police, you know, all the federal agencies, obviously. And then sheriffs are, they're who are on the correctional facilities here. That's it. And so that's it. It's all they do.

They just run the correctional facilities with CEOs and details. Yep, correctional officers details. And the sheriff here is like a political figure, and they're basically the warden of the jail. Okay. And so it's a very different structure because I've been with people. Yeah. You're boss with me from out of town, and I'm like,

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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, um, so he, 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, uh, 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.

It's like in 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 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. So you hang with your neighborhoods and other neighborhoods like you and you guys kind of stick together, whereas like these GEOs 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 like 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 that like we're back in time, you know. know we're back in the right cowboy days um and there's just no movement there that's the hell of it there is 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 just in a pod it's just so to do three years there is like fucking wild you know what I 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 going the yacht all day. Right. 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 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. 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, all 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 end up going to a halfway house? Do you end up in a halfway house or? So they can, yes, it depended on your charge. So if you're, um, 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

Soba houses, halfway house. 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 sentence with the parole member. I remember this. I have the parole 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 on the 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 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 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 better. There's still tons of movement. The food's great, whatever. And I'm wearing, 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 release 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 whatever this is better summertime and go out in the yards it's 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 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 90s degrees at 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 board 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 of 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 the guy i need to use your phone make some phone calls i'm like listen you've got boys around here because this boys would always come by and like drop packages kinds of cigarettes and shit on the highway and they go out and stick on the farm and grab bring them 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 the middle to talk this dude i'm taking off dude they're like 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 motherfuckers and so he had his friend i said listen tell him i'm like tell him i'll get 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 in it

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 they're like

these CEOs are segregated from what's going on in administration they have no fucking clue they're just like all right yeah hey yeah you go do 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 parking lot 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've 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 going to go back. And he's like, all right, boom, boom, boom. I'm just, I keep my head down. And I get out, 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 parks over on the other side of the building. And he's getting wet. And he's like, hey, listen, he's a kick. He's like, just fucking throw that in the dumpster. Get right back in, okay? I'm like, yeah. I'm like, what do you 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, I'm going to 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 there and then I'm hiding in the rave 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 um i had i had um cell phones burner phones and they had h a's 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 to them in a moment, so they got one of the burn phones 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 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 say, listen, if you're going to punish him in, 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 90 days. He's like, then I'm going to utilize that as a double jeopardy punishment for court, you know, and it will, like, you know, and it will, 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 disappeared. You don't know how, whatever. So the judge dismisses it without prejudice, though. And of course, they redo 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 up, the judge was like, listen, we're just going to, off of my lawyer, he's like, how about this? How about we give him, what was he doing? How much time was he doing before he escaped? 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. No, for an escape. They're going to double my time. He'll be five years. There's like so many other way worse options that could have. happen 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 days you know what i mean yeah i was going to say 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's 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 um so i got two and a half in there 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 urine 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. I had a room in the sober house, 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 a 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 could be 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 would dodge neon. And it had no reverse in it. And we were down the South Shore Mass. We were down the South Shore of Mass.

And, um, in Quincy. 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 you 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 soccer 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, who's like now 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 Mikey's now moving this way. And this kid's falling out of the car screaming. And Mikey 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 we're pushing. He's going to blood all over his hands.

We're 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 it to 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 carloads of kids in the pocket of our 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 were coming and When he got out into the park alone, my buddy, Mikey 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, how the 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 the color red yarn wearing and just covered in blood. And it was, you know, I was still in that kind of, like, street, you know, mentality back there 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 gerb a 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.

Stap 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, yeah. The whole demeanor changes, you know, the whole demeanor changes when you're poking somebody. So I'm like, I'm going to, and when I tell you this, like, like, I think I'm crazy, whatever, I snap the gerba knife out, ready to do all that, and it literally just, 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. And I got it, you know what I mean? I was always flicking it out. So it wasn't like I flicked it, and it was just like was a light, nice gerber knife, you know, but a hollow handle.

And I flipped it out and it was just gone, right? So there's that. So who knows 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 wouldn't be able to be on this podcast talking to you right now.

Right. So night's gone. And so now 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, I'm like, oh, my God, he's not going down, but then he went down. And for probably, like, I don't know, three seconds, like, 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 where my boy was, like, getting off the ground. And I'm like, oh, these kids are fucking scared knugs at 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. 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 this situation now where I'm being told by, you know, doctors that I'm 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, you know, I felt pain or whatever, I hit the button, morphine would go to my, now remember, I did oxies, didn't like them. So my pills of choice, benzos, right? My pills of choice were 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 little mini comeback like right when oxy was coming out and at that time i hadn't put two and two together that i which nobody had really that oxy cotton 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 was 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 i really truly the my morals for like my sister o'd dean and stuff and her i never would have wanted to do that and and so i'm on the morphine which i know is also heroin basically you know what you 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 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 going to 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 going to be able to fucking use my dick like I'm never going to 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 dream 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 demoral

dilata this that the other thing I don't want fucking nothing I'm going cold turkey so I went cold turkey in Boston medical center doc this is documented too I can get you to you know me I tell people this and I swear people don't believe me but I had, Mike Nurny was the doctor, and he wrote a letter for my drug court. Remember, I was 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 painkillers 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 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 as an infection. And then the other infections could kill me, the other bacteria that were going on. So it was 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 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 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, this is, like, real. This is 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 had 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 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, 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 earlier, I got full custody of my four-year-old, full custody of my teenage daughter, you know, so I have two beautiful girls, you know. how long ago was this so this was um 2005 this happens okay and so then after um after the accident happened and i manifest i didn't walk in i ended up going to drug court with that letter from um 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 you know 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, blah, blah, blah.

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. 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 like 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 wajette 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 have no idea how any of this works

no idea you're gonna wing it I'm gonna 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. 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 Bunk 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 always your time here and just go for it like go for 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 don't work full time in the comedy connection every night of the week meeting with comedians like jim brewa 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 supportive of all my films and tweets about them and talks about me on his podcast and stuff. But at the beginning stage, 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 Clark.

and I got an audition for a short film that he was in with this guy, John Fiore, 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 in a short film,

but he'll do some little role with this guy, Lenny Clark, who's Dennis Leary's best friend. He's in Rescue Me. He's iconic Boston comedian, like huge. And he's an actor. He's in a bunch of movies. 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 then he'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 interiors inside of all that stuff where the dialogue goes and he hooked me up with its final draft at the time, hooked me up with like 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 Sanarelli, who was also in the sopranos. He played Georgie at the Batabing. at the bartender, the bottom bang. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he's like, oh, let me see what I.

So everybody loved oxymorons 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 Kowloon 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 directed or anything like that i own 15 points in the back end which equals nothing you know in the back end you know right in the net you know not the gross in the net um i'll have 50 grand and i'll get a story by credit and i looked at them and i go you know this is my life story this is a chapter of my life

and I'm like honouredness be sitting here with you like eating with you and that you're even interested 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 because that's you know what I don't get fuck 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's just been bothering me for the last few minutes. He's like, when you said the fate and destiny thing and I kind of clown 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 Gandalfini 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 Vandad, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. 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, the global market at the time huge and everybody wants to know why james gendolfini 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 madame 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 gandilfini want this because like gandilfini 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 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 got to deal with his management who wants 30 grand 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 was originally from Bangor Mates who he's from New England

had a football injury 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 I'm like, whoa, all right, well maybe this was meant to be for him. And so then Tim

read for the pot, killed it. So he's in OxyMorans, Tim Sylvia. He 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.

You got your red to Ari's and black magic. But red, this was the red one. No other red existed yet at this time. It 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 want you to shoot this movie like you're shooting fucking animals in the jungle like these scenes are they're going to happen we're not

going to get to do them two times three times because we know that kind of by the 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 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 bunker hill project for 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 um my catholic church with where they would send us for the bologna sandwiches right

there was a Catholic school there too and they shut all that down because the Catholic Churches obviously had gotten all 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 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 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 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 Bondstable 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 death, 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're 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 going to 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 around master keys to a county jail, even though it's empty, 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 can't be happening this this 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, 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 correct. office is 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 team scene in the movie to attack Tim Sylvia and Gassum. 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 they're gear. And it's the DEA task force, not like the federal D.

It's like the Boston Police DEA task that works 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 do it. And they boot the door off, the hinges for us. And they come in.

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 real guy. Like who trained them? 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 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 hit where 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. He's sitting with me in his restaurant. We're eating food. He always has his over for food and stuff like that, you know, during production, after

production. And we meet 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 discuss, you know, dialogue. And he's like, man, he's like, you remember. remind me so much of my friend Victor. And I go, huh. And I go, 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 Charles down 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 but he ends up getting deported he ends up getting in trouble

and getting deported 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 a 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. And 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 hair, blue eye.

Everybody's blonde hair, blue eyed, but me. I'm dark here, dark eyed. and I look Greco's the Italian side of my family I look just like I mean there's no I didn't even need a DNA test it's that scary right just me my child like and he's like

in that executive producer guy I can't believe this 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 getting an 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 first. 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 who'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 Vintella. I'm with Current TV. Current TV was Al Gore's channel and Keith Oldman's channel is a 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 OxyContin Express about the pill mills in Florida. Right. And the doctor's 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? um uh 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 marion avianne south the guy Derek nolan who's in the oxy express 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 Payne. Wow. Yeah. That's right. That's nuts. So, but anyway, you were saying. But so they come to Boston and then they meet me and they love me.

Like, we just connect. And they ask me to become a field producer on their production and help bring them into the underbelly of like people that, now it was. 30s. So I was explaining to them. I'm like, listen, oxy's aren't even relevant no one. Now there's per 30s, blue percocet pills with 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 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 OxyConn 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, local, he's doing a story on it. So the media just came out and played 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 this day with all my films, and 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 man. you know what I mean like I had I had gone rid of so many of my bad you know traits like

crime goes but I still had these other things that I was just kind of fucked up you know so I 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's got bruises on her legs. She had bruises on her legs because I had a rut while of blocks a mix at the time that was very aggressive, like, 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 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 with 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 I got 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 end up getting arrested for that and then they hit me with a another charge in another state which is very weird like so someone like you listen dirty cops exist um so basically i got held that up in new hamps they did on purpose so i couldn't get a bill for the interstate so they would charge me an attempt murder for her because she said i i choked her and threw her down a flight a flight of stairs and i never had all my crimes and things, and I've been a shit bag, and I've done some horrible things, but I don't beat women, you know what I mean?

So that was the first time I'd have been charged, something like that. But, you know, so I had that now because you're saying I choked her, it's 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 a 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 and um in 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, Massachusetts is very liberal. So the amount of crimes I've done in Boston throughout my histories and adolescent and stuff, if I did those in like Florida, California, even is liberal Zia are 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 seven to 20, right?

Seven to 20, right? Is your film done yet? Are they still editing the film? done 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 plays my girlfriend in the movie oxymorans 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 both cases right comes up to new hampsion

just seen 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 don't know what I mean? Like they just, and he's like, we're going to, 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 that 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 and 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 J. Bird 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 this shit and I was like so in a fucking like panic attack of like and conspiracy theory of like how can they do this? Like I don't even know with this fucking gun is or anything to do with this gun and they're holding me on this with no zero evidence

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 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 and now i also have like people in massachusetts so like probation offices that were on like ran the heroin education awareness to have people that were very proud of oxymorne's 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 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 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 with my lawyer like they just wanted 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 didn't the fucking the DA's like we don't have it she's like well I don't understand why is he being in it and so she's like I have to let him go and she didn't want she's like Eve like and so they let me go from that so when they let me go from that the guys the the DEA task force I was telling you about that were in my movie that you know came and played the they that they sent their task force guys to pick me up for the case in Boston for the attempt of murder and so when they got there they picked me up they didn't cuff me they didn't cuff me they didn't

He 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. I 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 in that you turn yourself in on your own. I was like, oh, my God. All right. I'm 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 was. I lost my voice. I'm on the phone with my distributor. I couldn't even talk because the other thing that happened is when they, so when they held me on the six months because it was like $100,000 bail, 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 a 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'Hallan was actually like very close to me and my family. And like, look out for me when I was a kid when my uncle was doing time. My uncle the bankrupt. So they were like this. So I knew Mikey very well and whose whole family. And so they call us townies.

Like that's what it says in my aunt like townies. So townies is somebody. And everyone thinks it's a gang. It's not. My mother's a townie. My grandmother, anyone, if you were born and raised in Charleston, you're a town. you're Charleston townie that's just a thing that's just like a neighborhood thing but when i went to that jail new hampshire because those when those guys went there they tried to escape they took

ceo's hostage and shit after they killed these armed truck drivers in that jail that i was in so when they seen my name seen 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'm went from like living my dream making a movie finishing it being in L.A. to like this psychotic

girl causing all this shit for me and 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 would get on the phone, like, to talk to my, I couldn't, I could really 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, my distribute 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, dollars for, which was 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 Jill, New Hampshire. That's how I'm in my Netflix deal from Jill. 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 in he's being held an attempted murder when two offices 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 attempted 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 why I can't, because of his record, I can't let him go on 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, he's like, okay, except bill $2,000. So I'm on an attempted murder case, $2,000 cash bill. 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, 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, Heat. 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 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, wherever, he was bounced around. He was a gypsy. But I would hang out with him with my daughter and everything. He was actually a really good guy, just drugs, you know, encompassed all the goodness in him. And he, you know, obviously died recently.

So this was his, this is from his. his memorial yeah and then if you look right there right johnny hickie 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 and because his management knew how close me and Tom really were. So, yeah, so Tom was a friend of mine, and he got me a role in this movie, this MMA movie they were called Blood Circus. It'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? Right. There's a scene of OxyMorans where I have the kid playing my brother, 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 blast me in the forehead. We fall back. We have this 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 just 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 so tom got me into that so 2016 i did um that movie and i was like what am i doing i'm like why am i doing like events i need 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 uh yeah it's easy to do move your boat you know it's like you know people hate so yeah now i 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 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 things, like between 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 sift through and then find the real ones. Like, you know, guys like Tom, my buddy. 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 young adults going to rave parties doing ecstasy in Mali, because that's popular again, and they're going to this rave and 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 asylums and 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 don't even 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 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 of like kids potty and doing drugs they do some bad shit like as far as like they do some like grimy 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 fuck 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 new position of, like, connections in L.A. networking, me as a filmmaker 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, 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, 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 it, I don't glamorize shit. I don't candy coat stuff. I'm very raw, real.

And I'm also, you know, you know, I don't have a million. 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 kids back and my life changed because of your movie. And, you know, like I had a woman come up to me a day and 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 with and can change their lives and bring awareness without being, 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. That's, it was all bullshit. All bullshit. Yep, it is. But yeah, you got like, you know, you've got a, you have a purpose now, you know, which changes everything. So I just did this, um, we just wrapped this. I guess you'd call it a pilot, like for a TV series, or a short film. It's a 25 minutes long, but it's called Methodomile, and it's about Methodomile in Boston,

which is this, it's like probably three to four block radius where the South Bay Correctional Facility, so the County Jillo, Boston, South Bay, three methadone clinics, two homeless shelters in Boston Medical Center, which is like the nastiest hospital in Boston, 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 and it's you know a 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 methadal 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. 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 a 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 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 Clock the comedian that hooked me up with Dennis Leary'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 bull it for you, Johnny. Those are his exact words, which is like, you know, very honorable that I've earned that kind of reputation now with guys like him that he's willing just to come on board

and help. And then 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 TikTok, 5 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 potted with even the Boston actors don't eat. It 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, learn the accent to, like, 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 methodome mile kind of world. And that one is getting me a lot of attention. 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 and in Maine, which is like two states up from us here in Mass, just because one of the executive producers is kind of politically tied there. So we got like the governor, a senator. We've 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 I don't work at a five this is my full time job since Oxy is making 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-coded and it's raw and it's gritty and 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 opiates and fentanyl and pills that are cut with this is what we need to stop we need we don't want these kids to end up creating you know what what they want which is this 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 and so you've done a pilot or are you pitching it or is it already been picked up somewhere? Oh, no. So we're in post-production right now. So we're about to pick your lock this week. So I have, I can send you actually, you know, keep it close to your chest, obviously. But I can send you the rough cut so you can check it out. Right.

It's about 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. Just for some, like, little stupid things. But it's very watchable right now as a screener. Like there's 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 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, then 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 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, it keeps people tied in. So that's what they want. 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 LA And he's like Rob Schneid is editor Michael Polish He edits for all these big name direct but he's my guy still and will always So now 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 um like we're submitting it to some big festivals but we're also going to tour it in cities like i'll definitely know coming down to florida like i said i recently spoke to jim brewa who's down in florida wants me to maybe come on his podcast um i go down to miami and 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, and the OBWDF, which is everywhere, but like specific ones also where I know I have audiences and do pop-up screenings with Q&As after, dialogue like this,

tell my story, ask me a question, but you know what I mean, whoever it is, and 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 Farma lawsuits after all this time. So each state is getting their money now 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, you know, let me know if, you know, whenever this happens, we 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 it's 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 at But there is big sections left out, which would be great for another, you know, another run. Maybe what would be great is we do on, 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. 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 for oxymorons and I want to say habitual habitual like habitual offender yeah yeah habitual yeah I mean the other stuff's not out yet so

no the other stuff's not out I have other stuff 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 true crime and you know drugs and stuff like that i am doing a documentary too right now about the housing development i grew up in the bugger 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 still to this day you know there's probably body's buried in there uh 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 high-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. thousand 10-story units that will be high-end housing development right so they're displacing a thousand 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 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, 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 a 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, 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 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 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 them down and building something new, and erasing that part of history, maybe 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 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 all the you know a million things that I left out of this dialogue with you

and where I'm at now and how I survived 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 as a kid and it's just gone. It's just torn down and there's another house there. All right, that's one thing. But imagine where'd you grow up?

What neighborhood? Temple Territ's kind of like a suburb of Tampa, Florida. All right. So imagine going back to Templetera and 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 has changed so that's why i'm doing it is like just to 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 and then if anything else crazy happens there even when it turns into a high end place, you know, it, 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 it's something else that I'm doing that 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 you feel good about this? I feel good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm good. Yeah, I've got to go pick up my, I've got to go pick up my oldest in 15 minutes and pick on my little one, 10 minutes after that.

But yeah, I think we did good on this one. This is anything else you want to ask? 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, Facebook, the Johnny Hickey. everything's the Johnny Hickey so the J-O-H-N-N-Y H-I-C-E-Y and I'll send that stuff to you as well I'm taking I have an old YouTube channel and the Johnny Hickey is my new one because it's where all my you know everything I 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 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 always try to like give back and respond to people. So Instagram, always people, DM me on there. I'll eventually hit you back. And then Facebook, Twitter, you know, Thud Johnny Hickey.

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 mm-hmm 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 raised there I had a I mean well can I was it one more can I stop what was it were you in Alaska were you from Alaska like we're both born and neither one of you look like someone that I think see when I think Alaska, I think Native Alaskans, because I've seen all those programs, like, like, life, life below zero. And, and, yeah, and Alaska State Troopers and all those. And, but 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. 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 um where was twilight is that alaska no are they in alaska that movie with Vanessa hunchinson when she's the prostitute and prostitute no that's not no no there was one shot in no wow that was way off. A guy that would kidnap prostitute, bring him to the cabin in the middle of nowhere, and, like, hunt him.

Oh, yeah, there's a, and that's a true story? That's a true one. Do you hear that? You need to get that, dude. What, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, prostitutes? 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. It is enough to do anything. No, I don't think he has anything to do with Alaska.

But, I mean, I had a fairly normal childhood. 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 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 led to like in my before high school so I started drinking like 13 14 years old and tried weed and were you your parents married they were 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 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 they've done a great job like it's supporting me especially everything that I've 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. My older.

Yeah, my sister's 43 or 44. And then my brother's like 41. 43, 44, she's only, they're almost dead. No shit. I mean, I'm 33. I mean, so I'm like, I'm 53. Jesus. 43's ancient.

My God. Yeah. I just heard them over there. 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 in your place real quick yeah they'll put you in your place real quick yeah they will um and then i mean so eventually um kind of led to like when when i had my my first drink or my first mind-altering substance how old were you i was like 13 How does that happen?

I mean, my sister always 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 not 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. Right. Like just a total addict 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 stomach. since I was like I can I can talk to people like I'm I feel calm I have like I can communicate properly and I felt like people like me so I continued with 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 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. It 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. There's just, it's, it's horrible, really, until, until you reach a point in your life where you're like, I need to do something about this.

Like, I need to change. but after going through like 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 um after high school it was like it was yeah right after high school um i had a buddy that i would go to so in i went to school in ielson which is an air force base uh because i went to north pole high and i got too much too much in trouble or just there's things going on and i went to ielson so they sent me there plus i had a

girlfriend at ielson that i wanted to go to ielson so i could be with her right and uh that lasted like two months so i ended up finishing junior senior year at ielson and then I had friends that went to West Valley and I would go see them and then we were kind of into the same substances and same things and then that's when the the oxycotton thing kind of arose. Right. 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 oxy cotton 80 milligrams, I mean they're synthetic heroin 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 tin foil 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 I was back in North Pole 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 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, 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 I have to do this now in order to function and this is an 80 milligram yeah so what do you're you break it in half or you can't yeah yeah you can hock 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 they 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 i'm sorry you were you were saying you smoked it and you said okay i'm yeah i'm definitely hooked yeah this is this is yeah 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 feel like shit too. He's like, yeah, we need to get something. And then we find a way to come up with money. whatever and we'd go for our lunch breaks and find one go get high come back to work and put all these engines together and start sharpening chains 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 continued just doing my own thing and um making money through through the to 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 I want to take a girl out on a date like I mean right how old are you at this time I think 19 19 going on 20 and then it came to the point where so my like I said my dad's in recovery so my truck was packed it 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 in either in

jail or an institution or you're going to die and then your friends are 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 yeah and then eventually you're going to lose the the connection or you're not your family's not going to want to be around you anymore and uh i didn't that just won't yeah yeah right on i was like 19 years old i was like what yeah you're 19 year old drug addict yeah you don't know you've you've only been cleaning sober for 15 years right um uh well at that time it would have been 19 years and uh yeah one year out the other and like it told me straight up like uh i

I knew where I was heading. And then about 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 so they're not going to notice a slight fluctuation of a few hundred here no hundred there no because they haven't entire fleet and um so he getting ready to take off and uh 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 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 I would sit at any gas station so in Alaska there's taseros that's what the gas gas stations are and I would sit there and I 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 him be 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 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 the, it's, 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 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 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. for sure and then um i'm still working full time and then on my lunch breaks i would go do this and 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 um then on the weekends uh 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 it was two to three hundred dollars for one pill for an 80 for an 80 so yes what is that a millier I'm like fucking that's like like 10 15 bucks a milligram yes yes so it was outrageously priced and so even me making eight hundred dollars a day I could get maybe two or three pills right and And my, I mean, my tolerance is already going through the roof.

So 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, I just need, you know, like, I'm fumbling over my words and shit. And still, I mean, it still worked. Yeah. Are you giving people a reason to do it?

Even if they think, ah, something's fucked up. But if, let's face it, if I get a, if I got it, 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 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, 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 officer yeah yeah at least yeah to me I would immediately well yeah of other people be like yeah this seems pretty fucking yeah yeah but the way that I said it and then I mean of course like I said the 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. 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 $5,600. Wow.

And semis, they have to pay for their own gas. And I was like, dude, I'll take $200 off of that, even if it's seven or eight. And he's like, no doubt. Right. There you go, man. And that went on for, so you can be pretty generous when it's somebody else's money. 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 thing. Yeah, I'm doing you. I'm doing you a great favor while committing a felony. I'm a good person. I'm going to get you a break.

$200 off. 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 uh me yeah and and 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 in his suit and he's like he's got his badge on his hip and everything he was very cordial and he goes hey 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 this at the circle day since you're a cop I'll give you a 50% off 50% yeah 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 what do you hear for golly yeah and then he's like I I figured you would say that. It's like this thick, big manila folder. At your work. Uh-huh.

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. I was going to say. As soon as he said gas, they most turned 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 like 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 card filling up this person so it's just over and over and over and over and then on the other side he's like so you see all these transactions there's there's over like five or 600 transactions that you have here and every single one of those is a felony and i was like

okay um say first of all officer 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 did any 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 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, 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, God, 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. Back 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. God damn it. Sorry. And like I was just, you know, pale, sweating. And after that encounter, he's like, obviously I'm saying, and you're fucked up on. Now I've got to go through detox. Yeah.

I got to go to jail. I got to 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 going to need that card. Yeah. 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, well, so you, so you went from, I mean, immediately went from the, this guy just asking you questions, he just told you go downtown. Like you didn't, was there a, did they give you a, they gave you a public defender or anything or a, no, he said show up and sign in. I think he gave me like, 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 go to Alaska like they came in they're like nice to you like they're like

you got 72 hours you know I'm sorry what you're going through buddy you made some bad decision like yeah I didn't have never talk to that guy you didn't 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 my federal PO and then so we start pre-trial 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 she's like I'm gonna I'm gonna give you you ways 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 have to probation. You just signed it. You didn't, you just, okay.

Yeah. Because, you know, like, if you were on probation, then you're a pretrial. If you've, you're on pretrial, 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 any. I don't know. Yeah, you're okay. So, why even give you a piss test? I don't know. They were, they were trying to clean me up before, before I went in or something. don't know they were they were trying to give me some rehabilitation in some way right but get you healthy before they knock your head off exactly no it's nice 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 a 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 trial while you're under investigation um can i ask 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 him 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 this

all this gas and stuff. Man, people wearing me out wanting gas all the time. And so I tell them, I was like, yeah, so caught game and pretty much caught me. And 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 to do something before to try to, 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 or the credit card comes a fraudulent charge someone's been caught then they 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 yeah and then um so after yeah that was that was your 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 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 was upset and your dad dad was kind of like, look, you got to get clean, you got to get your shit straight, trying to tell and 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 drug dealer mentality. So what you're saying is I have to keep my hat. I think 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 in fairbanks at the time because then they were they were becoming so rare that they stopped making them and they transferred they started making the ops and i can't i can't smoke those right like i want the instant high i want to smoke them and uh so um heroin comes along way cheaper you can get it for 40 50 bucks for for a point uh 0.1 or you can get like a half a gram for a hundred 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 shops still kept me employed thankfully 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 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 you're I mean your petty theft a DUI um like I had a theft for under four dollars like that's a point and then I had a criminal criminal history you're they'll keep every single little thing they'll bump up your criminal history yeah every single time you've ever been in trouble so yeah you can have been arrested once for a DUI you could have been arrested two years later for 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, 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. You know, no matter what. Uh-huh. So.

So, and then after, after meeting. I was just clarifying that so that people understand. 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

s is suspended in position of sentence that was called i believe for a forgery that i did and so So as long as I didn't get in trouble for two years. What was the Fortry for? I was like for $300 or something. I mean, I was withdrawing. 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. One more second. Waiting for the sheriff. Yeah. For the deputies. Oh, wait. They're here. They're here.

That's exactly what happened. They're like, well, 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 no regard for any any anybody's feelings or I didn't I just didn't care like I just well and your your risk versus reward is 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 to how all the got how like especially the opiate guys to always describe it as being just like being sick it's it's the worst you know it's 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 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 so get under the blanket so I could just finally sleep for maybe 30 seconds because you can't sleep either. But that's another. The forgery, so the forgery, you did the forgery, you're on. state probation for that already and you're on federal probation and you're trying to get into a drug rehab. Yeah, I'm trying to, but it never happened. No, well, you keep failing the UA's. Yeah. And so it really very unfair to criminals. Yeah. Yeah. And so 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 pretrial 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 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 at like an arraignment like you were processed you went in your process they took your fingerprints they took a picture of you yeah right that whole thing so you were being arraigned they let you out immediately on what on a OR 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 day I have right here 221 11 when I was when I was sentenced and I go in there and And my co-defendant, 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 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 me.

Right. So, like, they calculated the differences and everything. And they know it's his card. Yeah. And he took the plea? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And he just got probation. Yeah. That was it. And so come to mine. I had written out like a little letter just to, just to, you know, kind of level with him. Be like, you know, I'm not a fucking awful person. Like, I'm not evil. I'm not trying to do this to try to just, you know, fuck everybody over.

Like, I have a problem. 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 letting them know like I feel remorse for what I did it was it's awful it's stupid I mean I 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 for the case of me being addicted to drugs this 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 got to be sent into something. Right. What was, what were they already recommending? What was probation recommending? 16 to 18 months 16 to 18 months yeah oh okay geez 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 he doesn't he's not going to help he doesn't understand but he looked at me like he looked at me like i don't that sounds reasonable yeah um but no yeah that that's that's that's outrageous that's ridiculous that's ridiculous yeah i know people have sold a couple hundred thousand dollars and ended up with probation so so it was it was all of your it's all of your uh 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 a jailable offense and I had a think I had a DUI or something and um 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 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 all right here I go and then they handcuff me and they put me in

the little federal holding cell kind of broke down bro i i cried like a small child dude yeah yeah like you could yeah i 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 and you have to go through detox or yes i have to go yeah 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 I was 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 stupid. 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, yeah, 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 uh 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 major problem in Alaska right isn't it at that time okay 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 uh 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 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 uh a a wing b wing and c wing and a wing is the the higher higher um like uh higher security and then b wing is like the low level and then c wing is the workers and b 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 seven to 10 days before i start coming out of it and coming out of myself and eat and kind of socialize and talking to a few guys

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, uh, the poll. 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. No. 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 federal FCI. And then on day 30, they go over the, over the intercom. Lilan, roll it up. And I was like, and everybody was like, oh shit, Federali, 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 no longer just the correctional 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 uh 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 Alaska yeah assuming it was cold the whole time I thought it was cold I didn't know 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 uh airway and they put us in these little 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. They were super chill, comparatively speaking to the marshals that I encountered later.

So then I fly to Anchorage and I go to the Anchorage jail. And I'm not, at the time, I'm like, 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 the boat they call them a boat it's an orange right is it was it was gray it was gray yeah it's like a it's like a looks like a almost like a what do you what it's like a shallow fucking canoe or something yeah like a like a really shitty low boat that yeah yeah like a um trying to think not a canoe like a kayak kind of like a kayak canoe kind of thing 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 withdrawals 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, 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 I was in there for two, two or three days. And the, you were locked in the. sell the whole time 21 hour 20 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 uh i try asking them i always try to ask him like where am i going like we can't i can't tell you that and um from there there there was 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 is Seattle CTAC like there's there's no other reason why you 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 were told me earlier there's no there's no federal 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 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 this like a big two-tier Where do you say something?

I was going to say something. This is with a plane. No, this is all. Yeah, I'll tell you that. Yeah, sorry. So, yeah, I walk in and it's a whole different feel because all the whites approached me. Everybody's like, hey, do you need anything? I like, do you need any food?

Do you need it? I mean, socks. Do you need any? Shower slides. Yeah. Do you need the toothbrush? Like, I got some soups for you. Do you need Keefei, coffee?

Exactly. What do you, bro? I got a lock for your locker. Give me that back when you go to compensations. you know 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 i came with their their race went up to them and did the same thing i was like oh that's that's kind of cool i mean and uh so i go go to my cell

and i'm kind of situating myself and i'm i'm in there with uh he he was just uh mexican i 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 we have lockers in there, and he's got, like, cans and cans of, like, Sprite and Pepsi and all this stuff. You can have some if you want some. And I was like, I don't want to accept anything from anybody.

That's just, I am told. 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 yeah remember that you're gonna help me now uh now i need you to meet me in the shower to whoa whoa bro it was the fucking seven up man it was a fucking can of soda what you that doesn't that does not add up that's crazy interest i don't that's crazy interest yeah yeah yeah so i used to say the difference between being in the medium when i was in a medium uh uh at colman 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 ain't fucking ate your fucking snickers i might be in your fucking locker later what 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 but you you don't want to do you don't want to take that Pepsi yeah no I know I've heard about you

yeah yeah I know what you're trying to do set me up motherfucker um 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 La La Lawn roll it up I was like you got to be fucking shitting me like no no you got the wrong person 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. Okay. I mean, so I don't have anything because I just got here. And so they put me, I mean,

do the whole fucking wrist restraints, put it to your hips, put it around your angles, blah, blah, blah. Lead us all out to this shitty. 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 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 yeah yeah they're they won't let you go to the bathroom nope don't give fucking that lights off or not you're not going you just just pissed yourself yeah because you're probably sitting in a seat yeah that's been pissed in

multiple times 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 to 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 flight he went to another state um could you imagine if something happened you ever see that one plane i hate to say this but remember that one plane that i know what it was a 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 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 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 beats. I always thought of when 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. Like 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 guy guys in orange chained 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, they were, you know, and so I saw, you know, and they were orange. Yeah. That's all I'm saying. Don't judge me. I'm not. I mean. Okay. Okay. Got that covered. We go back in and into the pod and everybody's like, oh, shit, everybody's back, blah, blah, making fun of us. Like, and then that night, 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 federal institution, you can order a lot of shit. You can order, I mean, pretty much anything, food-wise or drink-wise. And he made us, like, not this big plate of nachos with, like, sliced up sausage and put jalapinos and cheese and what was it? The chub. The little chubs. Yeah, the little chubs.

And then the squeeze cheese, and all squeeze cheese and all that. and he just had it for all the white guys and that night i was like man this is fucking awesome i guess it was pretty cool like it and uh then that night again so this 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 get up plan you got on the plane again 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 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 going to die um take off everything seems pretty kosher and and then then they're uh 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 watching if 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 going to 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 around 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 just like oh this is fucking cool looking at everything I've never been to Vegas and you still really haven't been being in the prison transport on the way to prison driving down the trip

this is 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 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 perump, FC, FCI. And never, never heard of the place. 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, who owned that facility? Was it like CCA? I have no idea. idea. Because there's a bunch of private, there's a bunch of private companies that, like there's CCA, there's, is it global, and they, where they, they build private prisons and they, they house 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, little holding cell and they're doing their little classifications and stuff. And finally get out of my cuffs. And I think 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 there it's the yellow jumpsuit. So you've got to go through, I got to change out from my C-Tac clothes. You've got to go through your whole inspection and do, 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 your yellow jumpsuits and then I I turn 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

and 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 it was like 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 to you've taken a shit and say hi no um or master Yeah, he's mastering. Sometimes they'll bring in some, some lotion. Yeah. You know, you make sure you keep your blinders on, whatever you're doing. You don't want to look over, ever. Or sometimes maybe you do. Maybe you say, Tom, what are you looking at there? Come on, stop it, Cox. You know what I'm doing. What are you doing? What's all that noise? You eat macaroni? Yeah. What's going on, bro? worry about your damn self and uh can i read that later is that is that the one with uh what's your name in it yeah gotta hear my cox so we're and i go into this one and uh i'm not approached

like by the white guys this time like this is it's just a big fucking dorm and uh so i find out this is where i'm at and where my bed is and i'm in fucking nevada i'm like like what am I'm like thinking I'm like how much time do I have left like I bet this I was to say half your sentence has been to transport yeah like I'm at this point I was like I think I have probably 50 days left you should be putting me in for halfway house no yeah and so I find my bunk and then eventually to like talk to so I mean he was white because obviously he was a skinhead had a bunch of tattoos and 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, the Norteños and the Sireños. He's like, okay, so you can associate with the South Siders, and you can tell that they're South Siders because they have a shaved head. The North Siders 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, I'm, how about I just don't associate with any of them? Then I'll be okay. And then he's like, um, and there's, uh, there's this one guy. He's mixed. He's, he has a white mom and a black dad. So he has, he's mixed. So he, he runs with us. So I just want to let you know that like that's, that's what we're doing around here.

Because the pod, I think there's 10, 11 white dudes, the rest of them were north side or south siders 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 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 say listen let me tell you about the black guy don't talk to them i fucking see and they're right there you're like you know you just get off the street you're

like bro bro there's a black guy right there like what are you saying bro yeah and then you know and it's like such an issue in in prison and then you get out and you still have that mentality but it's the exact opposite yeah but it's the you know it's and it was so funny to 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 yeah but so he gives me that a little bit of blow down and then one one morning we get 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 guy that ran with us he was allergic to peanut butter to 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 some peanut butter from what's his name earlier 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 on vacation. This is a couple of months for me, bro.

This is in my fucking life. Yeah, he knew that I was like, this is my first time, obviously. And it's your short time, right? Yeah. Let him know, like, I'm on in a week. 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 not going to let this one slide. I was like, oh, thanks, buddy. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for that. Like, I mean, he wasn't. At that 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. Like, I was saying, 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, 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's 170 now 180 no I'm pushing almost 200 oh fuck I think last year I was like 193 well it would have been a different conversation yeah at 200 it was it 140 yeah if you said that I would have I'm much more 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 thanks thank you i understand sir and uh and then i was there i was at perump for maybe a week or two and they had uh you could go outside whenever you wanted but it was just like a fenced in area 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. Like 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. I'm just fucking soaking up sun.

I don't have anything else to do. I'm out of here. like I would and then um yeah about a week later um over the PA again the lawn roll it up I was like it were 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 CTAC 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 prompt 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 the, 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 a 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 of 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 yeah he is I know and he was and I was and I was like Like, I didn't, I'm not gonna, I don't care.

I'm at the point, I was like, I, you can't, you 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 just 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? He said, take off your fucking hood. And I said, I don't go fuck who you are.

You're not going to talk to me that way. Just say, hey, can you, 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, uh, he, um, he said, do you know, 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 in subordination. 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 it's it I mean the hole 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 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 you only get three showers a 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 coffee, from caffeine. Yeah, because he's, I mean, he said he would drink those little instant packs that you get, little blue ones.

I think he said he was going to like three of those a day. And he's just laying in bed with the migraines and shitting himself all the time on the toilet. And, like, it was. 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 secluded, 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 and being alone all the time yeah like i was like oh this is nice and then i started writing i started doing like just just writing my my life story and like what i've been through and like i i started having like you know i did maybe i should you know make um an audio autobiography or something or right write a memoir a memoir yeah um because to me i mean it's to me it's a

big story to other people i mean it's it's it's small but like to me it's i went through a lot of shit and uh after i got i was on 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 like to listen to the radio of course and uh he's like i got an extra 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 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 uh they started the the breakfast lunch and dinner hour and then between those those three hours they would let you out for half hour so you got

i was on 20 hour lockdown instead of 21 and i was walk i was just walking around on the tier and then I had 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 on his chest. And he was just, he loved to talk. And I mean, I like to listen. So 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 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 you know a bunch of books while i was in there and and 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 for where I was you could see all the new arrivals and everything and then um towards the I think it was my second to the last day uh the the guy that I was walking around with what I would talk to all the time with the big tattoo i mean he was it's pretty pretty big um scary looking dude but he was he was funny like uh he's like hey you got a new celly i was like oh fuck it's almost

like come on i almost had it almost had myself to myself the rest of the time and uh i walk in there and it's this this pudgy little just white dude never been and never been in trouble in his life he got uh got caught in 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 you can sleep on that one i don't care you can take the top i don't give a shit and we're not 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 what I was walking around with he's like you want me to fuck with him and 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 he's like I'm just fucking with you man I was and then I grabbed it grabbed that dude I was like all right, that's enough. He's going to fucking shit himself. And I was like, so this is my, I'm getting out tomorrow. I'm going to 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. He's like, well, 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 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 right like you ran the last one oh man so and then um That morning, they're getting ready for a 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? And I was like, yeah, fuck yeah, let's get the hell out of here. And they get me. 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? Yeah. Motherfuckers. They got to fly me back to Alaska from Oregon.

what huh that but you said they gave you money though yeah they get yeah there was their fair not farewell but it's like was anybody it's gate money okay money i didn't get any money i didn't get any money i didn't get money i got a good luck to you bro that sucks for you my god was anybody putting money on your books when you were locked up uh were your parents putting money on your books or no not so much i mean they did sometimes uh but they they uh my mom of course wanted to talk to me and i 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 um and then uh so i get out i'm walking out and i can

here 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 jazz on a bus and let her driver 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 they had to be there.

But they hung out. They went on a bus. They, where did you stop? Atlanta? Atlanta. Tennessee. We stopped in Nashville. No, they caught a show.

I'm shoking about the show. But still. Went to a couple bars. Ridiculous. Wow. I just, I didn't have any idea that they would have. You fuckers had a different experience than 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 uh 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 then i got some

burger king and then got on my flight yeah and 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, the, 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 your 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's what? Who did 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 the hour 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 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 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 off federal probation. It's been three years. I just got denied. I tried to get off early. Yeah. They said, no. They're holding a grudge. It's resentment is what it is.

They're still, they're irritated. They're up six 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 got a Pio, this like giving you like hugs and they. 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 long hair blue eyes didn't you know that that that probably went a long way with them I'm sure yeah it did they she was she's pretty attractive too anyway hope she doesn't see

this um uh 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 does that mean? Hold on, hold on on. I lasted one year after being off probation without fucking up again. So fucking up mean like a relapsing. Yep. So I relapsed.

And during those five years, I was working at a very, very good business. I had a truck, a car, a place. Like, I had two, like, 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, 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 uh that's that's the funny thing about addicts is like I mean it you one change of thought like and you're you're done and so at that time uh like I said I think it was like six years I had my own place and I I woke up one morning and I had the my closet 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 unfafeited. filled 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 um I 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 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 them 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 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 uh we we didn't have a place to put it and it was me and two other people and uh 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 uh 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'm going to get caught eventually. So fuck it. Like, let's just do it. Let's get it over with. That was my mind. set like and and uh within yeah like I said after about two months um 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 uh open 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 and um book me back into FCC and then they charged me with the mix for which is like in possession of drugs um a burglary two and then a theft two um so i ended up pleading out to the theft too and so that's gonna be that would be my second felony I was looking at just state though this is state now yeah and I think that she told me I was looking at three years I was like I did I made 21,000 dollars I went

to the feds and they gave me three months and I took three thousand dollars worth construction construction stuff and I'm looking at potentially three years and so what they did is they did 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 there are 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 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 um but then i mean if you get nice shoes you're going to get jump for your shoes like i see 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 is 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 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 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 for eight months and then still i mean that was that eight months isn't that's not that long you get into your routine you started going to the gym they had a track and then like 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 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 cellie, but you, both of you only have the lock or the card that unlocks your door. Right. 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 cellie that I had a TV and that he worked all the time and TV yeah he had a TV prison Yes. Dude, I'm telling 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.

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 it's it can't

even imagine it takes your breath away like in your face 40 away what 40 below is I don't 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 stay 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. No. There's no, there's no, but I mean, in federal, there's no, no, like, equipment. No. You guys, because we had free weights and you. You were to camp. Yeah, camps. Camps because, yeah, I saw the entire layout of the gym when I was coming into Sheridan on the bus.

And I saw it. There was like free weights, a bench, everything. So unfair. You're burglarizing places. She's running 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 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 was 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 have, 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. And they have a low recidivism rate, too. One of the row lowest. like they almost get out almost never do it again yeah i mean almost sometimes depends on yeah

but the uh yeah like i said um watch tv go to the gym i would uh at the at the last month i would say that i was there um i got they pulled me over to it's like the uh the booking booking side and they had me signed paperwork they were going to send me to a halfway house in Anchorage and uh 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 as a couch and then you have three different rooms and you get your own room and uh the guy I had nine guys in the half.

I was the only white guy with, 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 I was that? And, you know, there's never any diversity. It's kind of dark in here. yeah yeah um then uh so i go to the halfway house and and then i realize that uh they have a lot of suboxin in 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 suboxin and i have two or three weeks left at this halfway house and they call me down for ua those fuckers yeah yeah

Yeah. Why would they do that? Yeah. Don't they know? God. I just, I just, I wasn't. 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 no, I have no desire to. I just, I feel like I fucked everything up. I. How old were you? during state when the halfway house when I was in the halfway house I was so this was in 2016 17 18 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 it yeah you almost got me Jesus Um, I mean, that's, I mean, it, it just, you get a, uh, a feeling of being just so defeated.

It's just, oh my God. Okay. Go ahead. Shut up. You're 27. Yeah. 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. I, I, I, I, okay. I hear you. I hear you. And, uh, I, I know. You man, fuck all you guys. That's how I feel.

Yeah. It's how it's, it's a, it's a, it's. He's never. No, it's, yeah, either. 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, I have, I have, I have, I have, 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 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 God I hear you there was there was one story that so I'm not how you thought this is gonna go I but I love this is funny this is fun um There was, uh, she, 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. Then I'm telling us to.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, because these guys don't know that there's a girl. There's a girlfriend over here that looks like she just got off a, got off a boat from Norway. Yeah. Blonde hair, blue-eyed, fair skin, very pretty tall, whole thing. She's a yeah, Viking.

Viking, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah um so i she asked me that she's like why don't you just wait until you at home to 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 like once you get your drugs you fucking want it now you're gonna do i'm gonna pull over and i'm gonna 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 all all 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 was that was yeah yeah so halfway house failed the ua failed the ua and uh uh i i was like so when am i going to go back and she's like honestly i don't know probably another week before we can get you processed 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 yeah and back yeah so they it was 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 i go to so stupid i go to anchorage jail for two days and so i thought that i was going to get like a uh

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 they could so i i i managed to they were 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 it didn't 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 could they could take away my good time though okay so which I would I accrued good I never got in trouble so they could have been like oh well

I'm going to give you another seven days, but 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 got in trouble for getting, failing your UA, but I beat it out the door. So I walk out of Anchorage jail, and I get a plane ticket, and then I get back to Fairbanks. And, um, no gate money. No, game money this time. No, nothing. And I didn't have, I didn't have anywhere to go.

I mean, at that point, I had really had no contact with, with anybody. What, mom and dad? No, done. No, they didn't, they didn't trust me. I mean, obviously, with all the shit. So I walked to, from the airport, there's a friend of mine, Luke, that lived pretty close there. And, 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 shouldn't be a problem and uh still i 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 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 absolutely insane to to think that like I can continue to do what I was doing and make something of myself like 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 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 just we can't right now you need to you just you need to figure it out um

and it took after so the way that um alaska's uh probation is you get um your first um ptr petition to revoke probation you get three days your second is five days your third is 10 days after you get your fourth you can get up to the rest of your time so after my first two weeks of 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, where was I? 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. You found a truck. I found, 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 do you? infamous no like my my p.o 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

talking 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 I'm not trying to do another fucking year like I'm like I'm done with this shit and uh are you yeah I'm yeah it doesn't sound like you are it sounds like you want to go back yeah okay I hear you and 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'm 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 my and on my ninth day i had this old fucking native dude he had a um 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 uh 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 saved my life by showing me that 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 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 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 are you 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. um 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 uh he's he's hard to read um because he's he's very just he's mellow like it's easy to talk to um but that whole ride there it was 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 my i got plugged into a support network and people like-minded people

that have the same problems the a or um i just said just 12 12 step kind of deal um and uh i got to to realize and see that, like, I had an old friend from, like, 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 I was, they're, like, on their, 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 have that they have acquired 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 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 everybody else I really wasn't and 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 and 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 2nd. 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 Pole Fairbanks, Alaska. And, uh, at first, like we'd mostly her wanted to go to Florida. And, um, she was looking at Tallahassee and I was like, We talked to a few people, and they're like, I was just a big college town. You don't want to go there. 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 had enough to get the fuck out.

And I was like, well, why don't we try, you know, 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 up there. Um, so now we're planning our next escape. Yeah. Uh, 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, I want to experience life because I'm a little late now because I fucked up between all my 20s and everything. And, uh, that's. 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 year sober. It's called a forensic peer specialist. It's helping people that are 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 how long ago and they're like oh that shouldn't be an issue I mean I'm not a violent but no violent violent crimes no that shit and yeah it's one of a few careers where it's an attribute yeah like i mean they want people with lived experience yeah yeah 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 i mean so well what are you doing now right now i i mean i work at a performance shop uh engine shop uh i'm kind of i mean what my boss calls me

is the conductor. 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 then one of the machinists actually, just a few days ago, he was 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 but that's that this is what I'm doing now like this is what's keeping me afloat it's I mean it's it's not what my heart desires right I don't think I mean I enjoy it but it's not that's not

my calling right like I have a calling for something and I still have yet to figure it out that there it is yeah I'll stay at home dad but you won't let me have kids with you yet so well stop taking your birth control so right now of basically we're wrapping up anyway you're yeah you're you're you're living in Florida mm-hmm 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 like what is it like what they call them nutritional specialist isn't right so that's a good one that's good what is it called chemical dependency counselor

wow that sounds important doesn't it um bro it's it's it's it's difficult it is these fucking chicks you know yeah they're they're they're pain really yes you know um so yeah uh yeah so uh okay so cool so you're you're you're doing okay right you're doing good yeah yeah i've been doing the clean thing and uh i 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, like the shit that I've been through that I used to shoot up methamphetamine and my jugular and fucking all this stuff, they're like, I can never see you doing that. 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 just, I mean, it's a Jekyll and Hyde kind of thing. Like, it's nobody, when I can. get when i was doing on drugs and stuff and like it 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 uh she's back in Jacksonville oh oh yeah I'm sorry okay yeah yeah and uh 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 that's kind of my goal is I I don't want to be in Jacksonville anymore that's for sure um i want to get back over to maybe like the northwest somewhere uh where they can have four seasons and you don't walk outside and instantly start sweating um yeah somewhere up there not back to alaska though 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 month or two but uh yeah but it's nice yeah i just i had a snow pond 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 no that's why i want to go like further further northwest like uh montana or utah colorado Colorado was kind of expensive but listen there's drug addicts everywhere yeah there is that's why I got to stay away from them or I thought you're or you're supposed to be a counselor yeah I was that's I say or help them yeah if I if I ever find a place that's willing to I mean they don't think that's that's that's going to be an issue I think it's getting off probation I've been on probation oh I mean sorry that the the length of time yeah how are the four years it's 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 it's just you can't

relate to somebody right that way