The Nick Bare Podcast - 015: The Power of Choice: How A Drug Addict Turned Fitness Trainer In Jail - Doug Bopst

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

In this deeply inspiring conversation, I sit down with Doug Bopst, an extraordinary individual who defied the odds and reclaimed his life from drug addiction. We delve deep into topics that resonate with us all: finding transformation even in the darkest times and the incredible power we possess to choose a new path. Doug is now an acclaimed personal trainer, author, and host of the Adversity Advantage Podcast - but his journey here is one of struggle and resilience. Within the confines of a jail cell, Doug rewrote his story by finding freedom through fitness, creating new habits, and pursuing healing. His story reminds us that, regardless of our past, we hold the power to craft a brighter future. BPN Key Lime Protein: https://bit.ly/bpnkeylime (use code NICKBARE10 to save 10%) Follow for more:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Doug here: IG: https://www.instagram.com/dougbopst/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1xly1FdiIE2s8c5wUr2dgw Topics: 00:00 Intro 1:34 Doug’s life-changing night 8:37 Finding escape with drugs at 14 13:49 Drug dealer lifestyle 18:24 Panic attacks 24:43 Harsh reality of addiction 34:27 The blessing of going to jail 37:56 Finding normalcy in addiction 41:14 Impact of a felony on one’s life 46:00 Going to jail 51:35 Finding fitness in jail 1:00:59 New diet habits in jail 1:08:30 Maintaining great habits 1:16:20 Internally driven 1:19:04 Relationship with God 1:26:06 Using therapy for healing 1:34:45 Importance of internal validation 1:40:28 Making the choice to change your life

Did you know that when he was searching the car, did you know you were going in jail? I think I wanted to go to jail in a way. I subconsciously, like, I look back now and it's like, I knew I needed to clean my life up. But I didn't know how to do it. And even like when the cop pulled me over, I mean, he asked me to see if he could search the car and I said he could, which is like a cardinal, you know, sin that you don't do that once he pulls you over. I look at where I am now and I look at like, I have a lot of confidence, I have a great business. I built, you know, an amazing thing.

None of that would have happened without me getting caught. Because even before I did drugs, I was unconfident, had no self-esteem, wasn't fit, wasn't good at relationships, wasn't good at public speaking, but all that has come as a result of what I went through that day. Do you think if you wouldn't have gotten caught, it would have killed you? Yeah. I mean, because I was in a way trying to do it by myself. I would crush up like a line of Coke and a line of oxy in one, like line. And I would think to myself, like, I wonder if I snorted this and I didn't wake up if anybody would miss me. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to thank you for tuning in and supporting the podcast.

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You can go to the link in our description and use code Nick Bear 10 to save 10% off your order. so go try our key lime pie weight protein and let us know what you think Doug boapsed welcome to the podcast Nick thanks for having me man thanks for being on man of course happy to be here so I would love to really just jump into it right away and then we'll kind of peel back some layers and unpack the story Cinco to Mayo 2008 can you describe the significance of that day and how it changed

the trajectory of your life. Yeah, man, it's an important day. It's funny, like a couple days ago, actually was like the 15-year anniversary of this day that I thought was going to be the greatest setback in my life, but ended up becoming the biggest blessing. And so at this time, I'm 20 years old,

I'm a drug addict, I'm heavily addicted to oxy-cotton. I'm also a drug dealer. I'm selling copious amounts of pot. And Cinque de Mayo 2008, a couple friends and I were riding around to make a drug deal. and I had a half a pound of pot in my trunk, a couple thousand dollars in cash in the glove box, and I had a busted headlight that I had been meaning to fix for several months,

but the issue is when you're in the thick of addiction and when you're selling drugs, nothing else matters to you other than who you're getting high with, who you're going to sell to, who you have to manipulate, what you're going to listen to, what you're going to eat, like nothing else matters other than like the religion of addiction. So I didn't change the headlight. and there was a cop running radar and so I thought it would be a great idea to flash my high beams at the police officer

to hide the fact that I had a busted headlight but in reality it just gave him a reason to pull me over because he's like why is this moron flashing his high beams at me and I see the lights go on from the cop car and my heart sinks into the pit of my stomach in that moment I was like man my life is over because I just knew that I had all this stuff in the car and I just had this feeling that something bad was about to happen.

So he ends up pulling me over as he's walking up to the side of my car, my heart's racing, I'm like shaking, I'm incredibly scared and nervous because of everything I had in the car like I just described. Walks up to the car, I stammer to get my license, I stammer to get my license and registration out to give to him. One thing leads to the next, and he ends up pulling me out of the car and searching it and finding everything, finds the half a pound. a pot, finds the money, finds a scale, puts me in handcuffs. I'm sitting in the back of this

cop car and I thought my life was over. And I was now then, I was getting ready to potentially face, you know, being charged with a felony because it was a felony. The felony was possession with intent to distribute marijuana, which kind of seems funny now, given that this is 2003 and marijuana has become like fairly decriminalized you know all over the united states but back then like weed was a big deal and selling weed was an even bigger deal and so i'm in the back of this cop car and like i said i thought that my life was going to be over and any dreams that i had had because you know as a kid nick i was a smart kid i had aspirations to do certain things in life i could just never find my own way i never had any self-confidence never had a high level of self-esteem

wasn't good at, you know, formulating, like, intimate relationships, had a lot of anxiety and depression growing up. And so I just thought to myself, like, how did this kid, like, when I was in the back of this car, I'm like, how did this kid, like, get here? How did this kid who just wanted to be good at sports? How did this kid who just wanted to be loved? How did this kid who, you know, wanted a girlfriend? How did this kid who wanted his parents to get on? How did this kid in the back of a cop car. And as I look back now and I'm able to connect the dots, it was because of like the choices that I made to get there.

And that I went through a lot of adversity as a kid, whether it be my parents getting divorced when I was five, being bullied a lot in school. Like I was told that I looked like I had Down syndrome by kids. Kids would call me Down syndrome, Doug in grade school. I loved sports, love playing sports, love watching sports, but the problem was like I wasn't good. so I had this mentality that there was something wrong with me given everything that was going on

given that my parents got divorced at a time where a lot of kids' families weren't being separated given the fact that girls weren't interested in me given the fact that I was bad at sports even though like I liked it and I tried hard given the fact that I was bullied in school for no reason like I was like man there must be something wrong with me and so I'm thinking about all that stuff in the back of this cop car

and I end up getting taken to jail that night and charged with the felony possession with intent to distribute marijuana and ended up getting bailed out the next day by my dad which was kind of awkward in itself because May 6 happens to be my younger brother's birthday and so he was with my dad

picked me up and was like happy birthday to me and I'm like hey how you doing? Man. Yeah. But you would think at that time given what I just explained that I was heavily addicted to drugs I was selling drugs, my life was a mess

that I would be like, all right, maybe it's time to make a change and try to clean my life up and try to prove to like the judge who I'm about to go in front of several months down the road that I'm actually like committed to changing so that he could maybe lessen my sentence a bit. He could give me a little bit of a break. But no, because I had, you know, in my years growing up, I couldn't manage my pain. I couldn't manage my anxiety, my stress, my depression without numbing myself with the substance. What was the pain stemmed from? Was it was it the divorce from your parents grown up? Was like mainly the bullying? Like was it all this compounding? Like where where was all this pain

coming from when you were younger? I think a lot of it was just compounding. I mean the divorce certainly was like the start of the start of it but I wouldn't say that was like the main thing. The main thing I think was I think as a guy and I don't know if you can relate to this when you're a kid. I think your level of success as a man, young man is measured by your athletic ability. whether or not you're getting attention from girls, who you're spending time with, are you going to the parties, are you hanging out with the cool kids?

And so for me, I felt like a complete failure, and I thought that something was off with me given what I just said, that I was being picked on for no reason, given that I tried so hard at sports and I wasn't good at them. And so I thought that because I wasn't good at sports, and because girls weren't giving me attention,

and because I was getting picked on all the time, that I was a loser as a kid and that I was going to fail in life because even though I was a good kid, like I didn't start, you know, picking on people or I didn't start like, you know, I wasn't a mean kid.

Like I was doing all the right things it seemed like. And even when I was doing the right things, I still would fail. So I was like, well, I guess I'm just going to fail the rest of my life. So I might as well just numb the pain and feel normal. And drugs for me, like, gave me this sense of normalcy.

And for my understanding, first time you ever used drugs was 14 years old. Yeah, and that was where I finally felt at peace with myself. Because up until that point, things started to snowball. Like I already explained, like, you know, with the bullying and the divorce and not making the sports teams did to me. But then I started to, I think, initially, like, self-soothed with a little bit of food, even though I didn't really know it at the time.

I mean, I was eating the same thing that, you know, my friends would eat. I mean, I was eating pizza and hot pockets and pop tarts and stuff that, I guess, kids frankly just ate during those times but i think i probably just ate like a little bit more of it and maybe i had some bad genetics thrown in with it where i started like gaining weight at 10 11 12 years old developing like some body fat i'm looking down i'm like why do i have like a roll here why do i have some fat my friends don't they're eating what i'm eating we're kind of the same activity level like i'm going out and playing with them after school i'm playing sports like why is this happening to me and then also now I'm shopping for husky pants and bigger clothes at that age.

So it was just this compounded thing where all this just started adding up and it was just ready to burst. And the way it burst for me was when I was 14 years old, one of my friends offered me a hit off a marijuana pipe. And I took that hit and all those problems I just described went away. I was like, wow, I can finally like have some peace in my life. I don't have to worry about the kids bullying me today at school. I don't have to worry about what's going to happen at home. I don't have to worry about the girls. I have to worry about anything because now I'm able to feel this sense of peace in my life.

And I didn't actually like marijuana in itself necessarily. I liked what it did for me. I liked how it allowed me to escape. I liked how it allowed me to just numb pain. I like how it gave me this thing, this thing that I could just use. as a tool any time that I felt discomfort in my life, which became a recipe for disaster because that became my new normal, where now I became addicted to that feeling.

And so that first hit turned into me then smoking every day. And then once you start smoking every day, you start to develop a little bit of a habit and a tolerance, and you smoke a little bit more every day. And that starts to build up. And then now you're like, man, I'm 14, 15 years old, and this stuff's expensive. were like just friends dealing it.

Did you know someone that had it? Like where were you getting the money for it? Yeah. So at the time like you just, you just happened to know some people, right? And then you like, when do you end up doing, for me,

I would do anything to make friends because I was just so insecure with myself, had low self-esteem that I just wanted to, to fit in with people. So I would do what I could. But yeah, I knew people who had it. And then like eventually what happened was,

you know, because you're making, making like five, six, seven dollars an hour, or whatever it was back then, what the minimum wage was or just above it, you couldn't really afford like a daily habit like that. So what I would do is you would buy like an eighth, an eighth of an ounce. Let's just say you bought it just is an easy example for 50 bucks, which I think was like a going rate

back then. So you buy it for 50 bucks. Maybe you sell a gram and a half out of that for 30 bucks to somebody. And now you have two grams for, you know, $20, right? Instead of like the street value of a gram back then was $20 a gram. So I've just saved myself half the money, right? Just since you're buying wholesale. Yeah. And then retailing. A little bit, yes, in smaller portions.

Because an eighth of an ounce really isn't a whole lot of pot. At least like in the stuff I eventually end up dealing with when I was picking up like pounds, right? And so I started to do that. And then the more I started to smoke every day, the more my brain just started to change a little bit and get used to this feeling of, needing to escape and needing to get high in order to feel normal. And once your brain, in my experience, like, finds that and gets addicted to like that feeling, you'll do whatever you can to get it. Whether that's not going to class because you know that you can go get high with your friends at that time,

whether that's hiding like a bong in my backpack and weed and bringing it into the house, like whatever it was, you'll do whatever you can to get that fixed because you know at that point it's in a way it's like survival like you know that you need that thing to feel a certain way so you don't lose your mind like i was because i was losing my mind i mean i would come home from school at times and i would sometimes just go in the room and i would cry because i was just so upset and i was just like thinking to myself like why am i being picked on like this why am i being treated like what did i do like what did i do like what is wrong with me why am i different from other kids and the more that happened and the longer that went on i just accepted that was the way it was going to

be. And I think because I did that, I started to behave in ways that reflected that, started to self-sabotage. I started to say, like, well, I know I'm going to fail anyway, so I might as well just do this, do that. And that's a really slippery slope because, you know, it nearly cost me my life. And how did, or how quickly did it evolve from starting to smoke marijuana and then into more harsh and addictive drugs like cocaine and oxy and stuff like that. How did that evolve in a sense? It was a couple years. I mean, there was a big event that happened on my 16th birthday.

This is after I'd had a party when my mom was in the hospital and just had been acting out and stuff where I'd already created some tension in my relationship with my mom. I was weighing out a little bit of pot to sell to a neighbor of mine on my 16th birthday. My mom caught me doing that and kicked me out of her house. And I went to go live with my dad full time the very next day. And at that time, you know, when parents get divorced, the traditional thing is they split custody. So I was living with my mom half the time and my dad the other half the time.

My mom and I's relationship was much better than my dad and I's relationship at that time. So I felt so betrayed. I felt abandoned. I felt hurt. Like all the feelings that you could possibly feel when you're kicked out of a house. And, you know, I was blaming. me, giving everybody else for my problems,

but myself, like, in a way, like, I chose to do what I did to get myself kicked out. And I think my mom

did the best she could with the tool she had back then. I mean, it wasn't, like, addiction and mental health and stuff wasn't, like, talked about, like, nearly as much as it is today. I'm kicked out of her house,

go to live with my dad full time, change schools all within 24 hours. And so I end up meeting new people to get high with, do drugs with this, at this new school, and ended up barely graduating high school because all my friends and I would do,

was ride around and get high and listen to music and stuff like that. And so shortly after I graduate high school, I ended up beginning to sell pot now to make money. So it wasn't like I was just picking it up to smoke for free or smoke at a discount. Now I'm like picking it up, picking up weight, like whether it be a quarter pound, half a pound at a time, all the way, you know, eventually I ended up picking up like, you know, a pound at a time. to then distribute it to make money.

Were you ever afraid of getting caught during this time? I mean, kind of, but I think like, you're in that mindset that it's like, that's part of the allure. It's like the chase, right? It's like, that's part of the rush. Right. It's like doing that and just not getting caught and thinking that you're never going to get caught.

Did you find joy in that? Like, knowing that it was something wrong and you were kind of undercover trying to get away with it? I mean, yeah, because that creates like an adrenaline rush. It creates the dopamine rush. I know we were talking before we recorded about dopamine. I'm like it gives you this rush of like you feel like you're on top of the world.

Plus it was like at a time where I had no identity, you know, I was doing what I could have fit in. I felt like I had this identity now of a drug dealer. And I like accepted that. And I felt cool that like because people wanted me. I would get, you know, people would call me. They would text me. They wanted to hang out with me all of a sudden.

And that became addicting because especially coming from a guy that didn't get attention from girls. was doing what I could to fit in. Like now people actually choosing to hang out with me. Like that was awesome. And it filled this void in my life that needed to be filled. And when you start doing stuff like that, you end up like graduating in the drug game.

So now the people that I was just getting high with on a daily basis, they weren't cool enough for me anymore. Like I had to like now like spend time with people that could get me, you know, more quantities of drugs or that would buy from me and stuff like that. And also you don't relate to the, those kids as much that were just smoking every day. It's like, well, I don't really relate to you. You're just smoking a little bit of day. I'm smoking a lot and I'm now selling it. And so you start to meet more people that are doing different things than I got introduced to cocaine not too long

after I graduated high school. And doing a line of that gave you this massive feeling of euphoria where you felt like on top of the world, especially somebody like myself who didn't have self-confidence, didn't have self-esteem, like doing that. You're like, wow, like I feel, like I can do some stuff. Almost like you're alive. You feel alive and you feel like you just have this energy that you didn't have before and this level of, like, confidence and you feel almost like just completely outside of yourself

and completely different from who you were. And then that became addictive for me, where now I'm snorting Coke every day with my friends and, you know, I'm now the guy who has Coke. So now I'm getting even more people to come and see me and people are like liking me, I'm the cool kid and they're like, you know, call Doug, he's got Coke, or let's go good high with Doug or whatever.

But the problem was, like, cocaine, you know, is a severe, like, upper. And I had anxiety back in the day, and cocaine and anxiety go about as well together as somebody trying to, like, you know, lose weight and just eat, like, pizza and cookies all day. It just doesn't, doesn't really, like, mix well. And I started to develop, like, crazy paranoia. when I was like, you know, I think it was like 17, 18, something like that. And what would happen was I would get high, I would smoke weed with my friends, or I would be high on Coke or whatever, and I would get this, like, tightness in my chest.

My heart would start racing. My face would feel weird. I didn't really know what it was. Like, then it would kind of go away and it would subside. But eventually one night, I was high as heck on Coke on weed, and I was smoking cigarettes at the time too. And my face went numb. My heart was racing like crazy.

had these pain, like different pains, and I was like, holy crap. Am I having a heart attack? I literally thought I was dying. And at that time, I was, it was like not too long, it was the summer after I graduated high school. I was, I'd been kicked out of my dad's house because I didn't want to abide by the rules and I felt like I could do better on my own and I wanted to maintain this drug dealing, drug doing lifestyle that I had been doing for the past couple years.

And I was bouncing around from couch to couch throughout that summer. and I had finally found my, like, a more permanent, quote-unquote residence on my one buddy's couch, but the rules were I could stay there until he went off the college in the fall. And so this is like right after he went out to college. I was able to just stay there, you know, until I was able to find a spot. And so that night that I thought I was having a heart attack, I ended up going back to his house. He's not there. It's his mom and like his dad and I think maybe his siblings might have been there.

And I'm like telling his mom, like, I think I'm having a heart attack. need to go to the hospital. She's just looking at me like, Doug, you're 17? Like, what? I'm like, no, I'm dying. And she's like, all right, so we go to the local hospital. Did she tell you were high? Yeah, I mean, everybody knew what I was doing.

Like, people, like, knew this kind of stuff I was doing. I had a reputation, which, again, at that time, I loved. Now, looking back, I'm like, you know, I can't believe I actually, like, enjoyed having that type of reputation. Right. And we end up going to this local emergency room. I walk through the doors. I'm like screaming, help, help, help, I'm dying.

I'm dying. and, you know, the hospital workers are like, sir, sit down. Like, you're okay. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm dying. I'm like, sir, sit down. And they ended up, like, just strapping me down to a, you know, in a room and, you know, getting my vitals and stuff. And they were just essentially confirming, like, listen, you don't have any heart issues.

You're just, you know, you've done a lot of drugs and you just had a massive panic attack. And I was like, oh, what's a panic attack? And they started to explain it to me. I had no idea what it was. because again, this is back in 2000, what, 2005-ish? Yeah, 2005, I mean, nobody was talking about this stuff, so I had no clue what it was. And I leave the hospital, and again, like,

we talked about those moments when I got arrested of, like, you know, you would think I would change. Like, there was other moments where stuff happened that was bad that I didn't change because the lifestyle I was living and these tools that I was using to cope were so addicting. and so the 16th birthday getting kicked out of my house that was a big moment where I should have

probably changed right could have easily changed a lot of people would have didn't that moment in the hospital walk out I'm like man I just thought I was having a heart attack I'm in the in the emergency room it's 17 years old you think I should probably change and end up leaving there and now I'm like all right how can I deal with these panic attacks while still getting high and so some funny stuff kind of happened. I went to this bookstore and it was like, I bought this book, like how to deal with panic attacks and I would be riding around with my friends and we'd be getting high and I would get paranoid and start panicking. And my friends would be like, Doug, get your book, start reading it, try to figure out how to calm yourself down. And I can laugh

about it now, but it was incredibly embarrassing and shameful that I'm driving my car, we're riding around getting high and I'm having to pull over to the side of the road and let them drive my car instead while I calm myself down. Was it more meditative type self-soothing techniques? Yeah, I mean, in a lot of it, I was just so erratic at the time and so impatient and so just flustered that it was just hard to manage. It was hard to understand what was going on. Because I didn't, again, I thought that there was something wrong with me because I didn't know anybody else who had like panic attacks like that when they got high. And I was like also thinking to myself, like, I've built like this business and this identity and this lifestyle around me doing and selling drugs. like I need to keep this going or I'm not going to be able to survive.

And so I thought all of that was in jeopardy when I had that panic attack in the hospital. So I just kept thinking to myself like there's got to be an easier way because as an addict, like you're looking for the easy way out. You're looking for instant gratification. Like I don't even honestly remember what it told me in that book, but I guarantee you it wasn't like this is going to be fixed overnight. It's probably like teaching me some self-regulating techniques that were like, you know what, you're going to have to try this for a while.

and practice it for it to work. And when you were like, you know, someone like myself who was looking for the next best thing to take away my pain and take away my anxiety, that wasn't going to work for me. But what did work for me was a friend of mine offered me a five milligram percassette one time. And this was in the midst of us all kind of getting high at his house.

And I took that percassette. And the same feeling that I got when I first started smoking weed was the same feeling I got from this percassette. and even better, I could get high with my friends and there was no anxiety anymore. And that, it was like off to the races after that. I mean, I didn't realize, obviously I knew I wasn't putting, you know, something healthy into my system. Like, I know what I was doing was wrong.

But I didn't realize how fast I would become addicted to this stuff. And it quickly became five milligrams a day to 10, the 20, to 40, all the way up until eventually I was doing like hundreds of milligrams every single day up my nose to be able to just support my habit and get high for the day. I find addiction so interesting, and we were kind of talking about this before we started recording. Yeah.

When we were talking about the book, The Molecule More, and it's all about dopamine and how dopamine desires drive us to make certain decisions, and addiction is part of that. And I think when most people think of addiction, I think most people who are addicted to something

don't know or believe they're addicted to something. Right. But when we hear addiction, we always think of drugs or alcohol. but there's porn addiction, sex addictions, food addictions. You can be addicted to a lot of things. And it's this dopamine that is released that makes you desire something or some sort of feeling. But then when you finally get it and you have it, it doesn't live up to the expectation of what we thought it would be.

Can you kind of describe like what addiction looked like and felt like kind of through the lens of dopamine and wanting something and then when getting it, it wasn't really fulfilling or amazing. It was just the want and need for the next thing. Yeah. Well, first, like, the best, I'll keep this PG because I don't want to be too vulgar, but the best description of, like, what addiction actually feels like as far as, like, doing the substance and the shame, it's like almost like a guy, if you're a guy, like, making out with, like, the hottest girl ever. And then as soon as you make out with her, she takes a brick and smashes you in the face. And that's what it is. It's like you end up chasing this thing.

Part of the rush becomes like, who can I manipulate? Who could I lie to? To say that something went wrong in my life or that I need money for this to get money for a thing and to get this drug. And then you're also like planning out like what you're going to do with the drug, like who you're going to get high with, what song you're going to listen to, where you're going to eat, like how you're going to go on to the next, who you're going to meet up with for the next score, what you're doing that night. And then once this becomes this massive rush, you get so much excitement and joy out of because you're like plotting all this stuff in your head and you're excited. And then once you do it and the high starts to wear off, there's this

massive amount of shame. It's like you piece of shit. Like, why'd you do that again? Like, you piece of shit. Like, why did you lie to your family? You piece of crap. Like, you should be doing better. like why is your life like this? You see because what happens is, and you see this a lot with addicts where there's a period of time where people are getting high to have a good time and then eventually there's a period

when you become a full on addict like I was where you're getting high to numb the shame and the pain that's been created from doing the drugs. It was described to me by a psychiatrist wants really well with addiction. And what it does is it hijacks your brain and it hijacks our pleasure system.

to where like a non-addict, you know, I'll just use this as an example. Like, they might find like a going to the Grand Canyon at a pleasure level like 10. Like that might be incredibly exciting, hiking, being outdoors, maybe you're with your family, like somewhere you've never been. Like, that's really exciting for people. But with a net, when you start doing drugs, what ends up happening is now that pleasure for the Grand Canyon becomes like an eight. and the drugs become like a two.

The more drugs you do, that Grand Canyon number becomes lower and the drug becomes higher. Because now you've completely warped your brain, and again, you're getting, the pleasure is coming from getting rid of the pain in your life and self-soothing and checking out

and doing whatever you can to feel good about yourself. The problem is that wears off super quick. And then you're having to like do whatever you can to get back to baseline, which it never happened. It's like a dog chasing its tail. You're never going to get as high as your first time, in my opinion.

Yeah. And so we're always looking for ways to get back to that point. And it just doesn't happen. I was telling you, as I was kind of researching your story and learning more about your experience, I went back and I reread part of the molecule of more

to kind of learn more about addiction. And I don't want to compare it to this, but the way I was thinking about dopamine was, you know, I went and ran the Leadville 100 two years ago. This 100-mile ultramarathon, the Rocky Mountains, at Leadville, Colorado. And it was stunning. It was beautiful.

It was the first time I ever experienced these mountains, these trails, a run like that, an ultramarathon. but I know that if I would go and do that same course over again, it wouldn't be the same experience. It wouldn't be a 10. It'd be a 7 or an 8. It would never live up to that first time I did it. Same thing applies.

Like the first time I did a marathon, like that first time you do a marathon, that experience is like maybe a 10 on a 10. You'll never get that same out of a 10 of experience no matter what. You know, once you kind of transition into opiates being oxy, perks, how different was that addiction or you using them compared to, you know, marijuana? Was it night and day? And did you see your life kind of change significantly right away?

Yeah, it's night and day because that completely takes over your life. And because, like, I don't know the exact science of it, but the problem with drugs and dopamine, too, is it gives you this massive artificial, like, influx of dopamine when you do drugs. That's the other part of it. It's a big problem. where like, you know, you going for a run, you know, you like going for a hike, you, you know, even like having success in business, whatever it is, you get dopamine from that. But the rush you get from doing like a substance like, you know, cocaine or oxy or amphetamine

is way, way higher than that. And the thing with oxy is those two things. Like you obviously get the dopamine rush from like the chase and the pursuit of doing that thing and the euphoric feeling you get when you snort it. but it also, you know, attaches to that pain system and gets, it's a painkiller, right? And not only is used for numbing physical pain, but emotional pain. So it does both of those things. So it's completely dangerous once you, like, go down that path.

And my life just started to fall apart really quickly because of what it did in my brain and because of how it was able to completely mask all of my problems and sedate me to where, even though like at that point you know I'm a teenager my friends are off at college my friends are off at college my relationships at that point with my family are pretty damaged my relationship with myself as you can imagine is completely destroyed I'd lost credibility with myself and trust and manipulating and lying to people in my family like all these things that if you thought my my anxiety levels were bad and my lack of self-esteem when I was 14 it's now like 10 to 20x at at this point of my life because now I've created all these other problems on top of these other problems that I never even dealt with, right?

And so that was able to heavily sedate me from all of that. And because that just took over my life, now it wasn't about selling drugs anymore. It was now about like, okay, like, how can I get as much oxycodone as possible? Who can I scheme to, you know, try to get this? Who can I, you know, who do I have to, you know, kind of burn or, you know, in a way like, rob to get these drugs because they're so addictive and once you're addicted to those things your brain is just convinced that you can't live without them and what ends up happening is that your whole life every single day is just consumed with how you're going to get those pills and my my drug dealing

also became like pretty sloppy at that time to where you know I took pride in like I mean my my little drug dealing business and like I took pride and taking care of customers and making sure I got back to people and all that stuff. And then like as I started to get addicted to Oxy, that became less important than me. You know, I wasn't as good at, you know, meeting up with people on time or I wasn't as efficient at like weighing stuff out to make sure that I was actually giving the customer what they actually wanted because I was like, all right, how can I make as much extra money as possible to afford these pills that were expensive? And, Because back then I'm spending like hundreds of hours a day on these oxy cotton pills.

For myself. For myself. I couldn't get out of bed without snorting 150, 160 milligrams at my nose. I mean, because they are just so much, I mean, marijuana is not really physically addictive. Oxy is. Oxy just completely overtakes your system from a physical, emotional, and mental standpoint. And again, it just completely was something that I knew I needed to continue to do every single day. to maintain survival for myself.

But my life fell apart quickly because I ended up, you know, not really even being able to afford those pills. Because I was, my drug dealing got sloppy. I got robbed a couple times. I mean, people were threatening to pull guns on me. I had people walk out of my apartment with weed that I had once trusted. And because it was like I was so, like, almost just numb to life that I wasn't paying attention to stuff like I used to.

I'm assuming because of this sloppiness, this is one of the reasons you ended up getting caught and going to jail. Yeah, and I think I wanted to go to jail in a way. Like, subconsciously, like, I look back now and it's like, you know, I knew I needed to change that headlight. I knew I needed to clean my life up,

but I didn't know how to do it. And even, like, when the cop pulled me over, I mean, he asked me to see if he could search the car and I said he could, which is like a cardinal, you know, sin that you don't do that when somebody pulls you over. Did you know that when he was searching the car, you knew the outcome before it even started.

Did you know you were going in jail? I knew. I mean, I just knew that something was bad was about to happen. I mean, it started because, like, my friend in the back seat had an open container of beer, which I didn't know about until we got pulled over. And then I think he, like, kind of mouthed off a little bit to the cop. And then cop found the open container or smelled the beer. And then he was, I was just trying to, like, be nice to the cop, I think.

And just be like, all right, well, if I, like, cooperate with him, he won't arrest me or whatever. Even though like in the back of my mind, I'm like, we were so freaking screwed. Yeah. Just given what I had in the car. But it ended up like, honestly like, you know, without that day, like I look at where I am now and I look at like, I mean, I have a lot of confidence. I have a great business. I've built some, you know, an amazing thing. None of that would have happened without me getting caught because back, even before I did drugs, I was unconfident, had no self-esteem, wasn't fit, wasn't good at relationships, wasn't good at public speaking.

But all that has come as a result of what I went through that. day. Do you think if you wouldn't have gotten caught, it would have killed you eventually? Yeah. I mean, because I was like in a way trying to do it by myself. Like trying to, I mean, I wasn't trying to like kill my, I wasn't trying to commit suicide, but I would crush up like a line of Coke and a line of oxy in one, in one like line. And I would think to myself, like, I wonder if I snorted this and I didn't wake up if anybody would miss me. I really wondered that. It's heavy. It's heavy. I just felt so low about myself and about my life and then I knew I was made for more.

Like I just knew that, again, I was a good kid, smart kid, it was kind. I just didn't, I just knew that I could, there was something that I could be doing that was better than what I was doing. I just didn't know how to do it. And so I'm really thankful that I ended up going to jail where jail ironically gave me the tools that I needed to transform my life. Because when I was addicted to oxy cotton, like that, that slope was getting slipperier and slipperier and slipperier as time went on. I mean, I was going to friends' funerals.

I was, you know, getting robbed, like I said. I was burning, you know, bridges with my family. I had 21 jobs at the time I was 21 years old. Like, it was crazy. Like, my life was completely a mess. And I was convinced that I wasn't going to live the season, my 25th birthday. birthday because I just knew that I was a failure and that I was going to just be this loser for the rest of my life given my track record, given the fact that I had all these jobs, given the

fact that girls didn't like me, given the fact that I was, you know, being picked on, given the fact that I was now not only this drug dealer, but this drug addict that, you know, had half my, had half my life nostril missing in the thick of my opiate addiction, didn't have a bowel movement for nearly a month. It was bad. That alone sounds like a nightmare. Yeah, it was bad. But I also, like, and I say this a lot,

like I thought in a way, as much as I felt ashamed about my situation, as much as I was like, you know what, I need to do better, it felt normal to me. And I think your environment creates a false sense of normalcy in that all the people I was surrounding myself with

were doing exactly what I was doing. They were scheming, trying to figure out a way to get OxyCot. And they were, some of them were selling drugs. A lot of them, you know, we're doing a lot of drugs. We all kind of hung out together. We all knew each other. I mean, it's honestly no different than like the podcast world or any other like business, you know,

where you're kind of networking and you're like trying to do what you can to help each other out. And that sort of thing. It's just obviously in a completely different way. You're kind of living in this bubble. Yeah. And all you know is that bubble for the moment. Yeah. And people are looking at you and they're like, you have a problem.

I'm like, I don't have a problem because I'm doing what they're doing. I'm doing what that person's doing. And it just seemed, your world just becomes completely warped. And your brain is so changed, you're convinced that this is the way you're supposed to live. And this is the way that you're supposed to just carry on with your life. I didn't know any other way. All I knew was that I needed to do a lot of drugs and sell drugs for survival. But towards the tail end of my, the tail end of like my drug dealing career, I guess,

as you could say. I got sloppier. And then I also was just, I wasn't making any money selling drugs because now all my profits are going up my nose. And so, you know, I'm now like using the money that I'm making to support myself to, you know, buy all these pills every single day. And then that ends up getting me, you know, into some trouble because now I owe to a drug do. After I got arrested, I owed a drug dealer five grand. And this drug dealer was like threatening me. Because what had happened was, you know, I said like, you know, somebody walked out of my apartment with a bunch of weed and they stole from me and then somebody else had robbed me, threatening to pull a gun on me before that. And then when I got arrested, the $2,000 that I had was his,

money I owed to him, plus the half a pound that I needed to sell to pay him. And so then in total. Now I'm in debt to him like five grand. And what ended up happening was after I got out of jail, one of my brothers had gotten win that this drug dealer was kind of after me. And he was like, you know, I want to help you out. I want to give you the money to pay him off. I'm like, no, I don't want you to get involved in this. And he was like, no, I want to do it. So he ends up giving me five grand. I pay off this drug dealer. And that was it with him. But then again, like, it was again, one of these other moments that you think that I would change. This was certainly, you know, before I went to jail, but it was after I got arrested that my brother lends me this five grand,

nicest thing, you know, a brother could do. And I'm like scheming ways to find ways to get more money from him. And my other brother, because I was still in the thick of addiction, still like hooked on opiates, that I would just lie about certain things or find ways for them to give me more money. And I ended up being in debt to both of them, like 10 grand by the time I went into jail. It's crazy. I would love to talk about the transition through jail and kind of how your life started evolving after that. Before we do, I kind of want to talk about the weight that a felony brings. You know, being convicted with a felony charge, what can you do?

What can you not do? What does that mean for the rest of your life if you never get that taken off your record? Yeah, I mean, so thankfully it's... gone for me now, but before, for people who haven't had it off their record and when I didn't have it off, it's like you can't vote. I don't think you can own a handgun. I don't think you can leave the country. If you're on like parole or probation, you have to like check in with, you know, an officer or something like that if you're leaving the state or even like on a weekly or monthly basis if you're still on like supervised probation. So it's, it's hard. And plus I think I don't even,

I don't know how it is now because I haven't applied for a job in a long time. I think, You might even have to check a box if you ever been convicted of a felony, if they say, you know, yes or no. People do background checks, right? And they'll be able to find that. So it really does limit you in a lot of ways. Again, like when it, when it does limit you, you have the opportunity to look at it and say, okay, I can't control that this limits me. What can I do about it? You know, how can I prove to other people that I'm a changed person? and how can I prove to other people that I'm going to use this situation

to become a better version of myself? You know, I might not be able to work this job because of my felony, but what can I do? So I just wanted to point that out as well. Because while, I mean, I'm going to be honest that it does limit you, right? When you check a box and an employer

and they have to do a background check, I mean, that can cost you not getting a job, right? Oh, definitely. Yeah. I mean, especially if it's for like a drug-related crime. I mean, selling drugs, I mean, that's the thing. Or if you're stealing, like, it's a big deal, right? and not being able to leave the country, big deal, right?

Especially like when you end up like, if you get married and you have kids and like your wife and kids, you want to take them on a vacation, you want to go explore the world, like you can't do that. It's hard, right? You want to vote? You want to like, you know, do your duty as an American to vote? Can't do that? It's hard.

So there's all these things that go into that that make it more challenging. But again, like one of the things that I've had to do, throughout my life is just say like, you know, like, I can't, you can't change that. You know, if you're unable to get the felony removed from your record, like, you're never going to be able to, you can't physically change that.

But what you can do is you can change how you move forward. You know, like how you're going to be able to evolve and grow as a human being so that you can not let that define you. There's plenty of people like that, they'll have something like that happen in their life. You see this a lot with anything. convicted felon, divorce, lose a job. And they just point back to that event as an excuse to behave poorly moving forward.

It's like the person who gets divorced and then they start drinking every day. And then because they're drinking every day, that costs them their job or that costs them a relationship with their kids or that costs them their health or whatever. And it's like then they blame the divorce. And it's like, no, like the divorce didn't cause you to lose your job. relationship with their kids like you the way you responded to the to the divorce did that i think this is such an important message now because you know even now like people are like well your life must be so great because you know you're in recovery and you've done all these things and it's like no like life's still hard sometimes i still get stressed i still get anxious still get depressed i still like feel insecure

i'm still like worried you know all that still happens it's natural it just makes me a human being. But which changed is how I respond to that. Like when I was a kid, when stuff like that would happen, when I was afraid of going to a party and maybe like seeing a girl I liked or I was afraid of, you know, getting, like applying for a job as a kid or whatever, fill in the blank, I would just numb the pain so that I wouldn't have to deal with a discomfort. And now it's like I look for ways to embrace that and use that to my advantage. And also accept that that's part of being a normal human being is that like if you're not experiencing discomfort because you'll lose a job like there's something wrong with you, right? Yeah, definitely.

You know, it's just part of the way it is. But I wanted to make sure I just kind of like touched on like both sides of that. That the felony, I mean, yeah, it can certainly limit you. But again, it doesn't have to define you if you let it. You don't let it. Yeah. Now, I appreciate that. Now, when you got to jail, I'd assume that you were at that point still pretty.

heavily addicted to drugs. Was there a pretty difficult kind of washout period of dependency and withdrawal when you got there? Yeah. I mean, so for some context, I end up going to court September 30th, 2008. And again, like I've mentioned a couple of times, you think that between me getting arrested in that point and that, you know, me going to court, that I would have made a decision to try to figure out a way to get my life together. and obviously I didn't.

And so I end up going to court and the judge convicts me of the felony which was he found me guilty of the possession with, he found me guilty of the felony which was possession with intent to distribute marijuana. He ended up sentencing me to five years in jail

but suspended everything but 90 days meaning if I like failed a drug test, if I violated probation, if I committed another crime, like whatever, if I did anything to violate their terms that I could potentially have gone back and done the full five years. He gave me five years of probation, 200 hours community service, all kinds of fines and drug classes. But he looked at me. He's like, Doug, you're young. You're 20 years old. This felony

conviction is going to haunt you for the rest of your life. He's like, I'm going to give you a deal. And I'm thinking to myself, like, deal. Like, where's the deal? Like, I'm going to jail. Like, I don't understand. He's like, if you get through the full five years of probation without messing up at all, I will take the felony conviction off your record and give you a PBJ, which is probation before judgment, which is kind of like giving you like a bit of a pay. past, right? At the time, I was like, all right, whatever, like, I'm not going to be able to make it through these next, you know, five hours without getting high. How am I going to make it five years? And like I said, I was convinced I was going to die by the time I was 25. I had no self-confidence

and I was convinced that I was going to fail because that, based on my track record, I had failed at essentially everything up until that point. So obviously, I know their choice was like, all right, whatever, I'll take the deal. And I report to jail a few weeks later. He gives me some time to gather my stuff and get some things situated. And it was a week after my 21st birthday. And I ended up like walking through the gates of this detention center, incredibly like scared because I was the unconfident, unhealthy, overweight kid who like wasn't a fighter or anything.

So I was like, I'm definitely going to get the crap beaten out of me. I'm going to get picked on like all these things are going through my mind about what's going to happen to me in there. And plus I had this oxycott an addiction that I needed to kill. kick. And so when I got in there, it was rough. I mean, it was like, I think one of the most, one of the hardest things is going through that when you're in a cell with another guy and you're having to like vomit and like, you know, take a shit in front of another man. Like, you know, there's no stalls. You're just there. You're in a cell. And I detox cold turkey off oxy for a couple weeks in there. And some of the symptoms where,

uncontrollable bowel movements, vomiting, tons of pains and aches. You have to remember, oxycotton is a very potent painkiller. So of course, being somebody who was overweight and not really physically active, I probably had, you know, I developed some certain aches and pains and maybe like certain things of, certain ways that I walked or moved throughout the day, like that maybe would have hurt had I had not been under the influence of oxy. Like, now I felt a lot of those pains that, um, that I was kind of hiding from. And then, like, like, you know, depression, anxiety, like the whole nine yards. I mean, it felt like having, like, the worst case of the flu for a few weeks.

But the biggest, like, symptom that actually pained me the most while I was in jail was, like, the most transformative for me, I think, because it was the symptom where, I don't know if anybody who's listening to this or watching this has ever experienced this, that you feel like you're trying to almost, you feel like you're trying to crawl out of your own skin. It's very strange. I don't know how else to explain it, but you feel like there's, like, you need to leave your body. And as I look back now, it was like the old me, like trying to leave so that I could become this new person of myself. The reason I say that is because my soon-to-be cellmate was sitting there at the Scrabble table.

And he looked at me and he could just tell like that I was not confident. He could just tell that I was wondering why I was there. He could just tell that there's something going on with me that was kind of off. Because people said when I initially walked through jail, I was like a zombie, completely out of it, had no idea where I was, didn't know what was going on because I was still like heavily sedated. from all these drugs that have been to my system for quite a for quite a long time before you went in in the jail did you do one more big hit going in yeah celebrate oh yeah because i mean you're supposed to because i you know a lot of times when people go to when they go to court and they're convicted and

they're sentenced to jail they just go right to jail so technically i was still supposed to be in like jail you know during the the weeks that led up to me actually having to report you know because he had just he had just done a nice thing, give me a few weeks to kind of gather my stuff. And so I was set to report, I forget what the time was on October 21st, 2008.

And I was supposed to meet there and my family was going to be there to say goodbye. I was like, all right, I'm going to do one last thing. And I met up with some friends and did a bunch of oxy, smoked a bunch of weed.

And it was almost late to reporting to jail. And if you're late to reporting to jail on the day you're supposed to report, like they can almost get you with like an escape charge because you're technically supposed to be in jail.

Right, right? So, yeah, I definitely went out with like one last bang. And so my cellmate just, like, knew that there was something off where he could, where he knew that he needed to try and help me. And so he looked at me and he was like, and I describe him like as a more jacked version of Brad Pitt from Fight Club just to give some context. He was. He was super jacked. He was just kind of like, just kind of a little rough around the edges, but just this. Jacked, super nice guy. And he was like, you're going to start working out with me

when you get through your detox. And I was like, dude, bullshit, there's no way. Like I said, I was 50 pounds heavier than I am now, completely unathletic, unhealthy. I was like, there's no way I'm working out, let alone I'm not working out in front of a bunch of grown men given my fitness level. Given the guy that is super insecure,

wants the fit in, cares a lot what other people think, has like no self-worth, has no self-worth, there's no way I'm going to try and exercise knowing that I'm going to fall flat on my face if I try to do anything. So he kind of looks at me after I tell him no. He's like, all right, man, whatever. And then I see him work out. And like, he's, you know, I've been a trainer for 12 years.

And he's like the most, one of the most fit people I'd ever seen in my life. Doing all kinds of pushups, pull-ups, like running for hours. I was like, man, this guy's insane. And then not too long after that, we have a conversation in this, we have a conversation in the cell that I like to tell because it goes. completely changed my life. And he looked at me, and he was like trying to ask me, like, more questions about my story and why I was in jail. And I started to blame everybody else but me.

I said, you know, my parents got divorced. Girls picked on me. I was bullied. You know, I didn't make the sports teams, like all this stuff. And he looked at me. He said, quit being a bitch. I was just like, what? You know, at that moment, he told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear.

What I wanted to hear was like, it's okay, Dougie. Like, the world's against you. like, you know, it's okay. Like, it's okay that you're here. Like, you know, it's everybody else's fault. He's like, dude, you're blaming everybody else for your problems but yourself. He was like, there's plenty of people that went through what you went, that went through that aren't in jail, right, Doug?

And I'm like, yep. He was like, no one's coming to save you. He was like, you have two choices. He said, you can be a man. Look yourself in the mirror and say that you got your. yourself here and it's up to you to change or you can be a bitch and go cry in the corner say woe is me and blame everybody else for your problems like most people will do that but he was like you know no one's coming to save you no one's coming to rescue you because before that I was

looking for anybody anybody and anything to come save me and rescue me from all my problems I was looking for drugs I was looking for attention from girls I was looking for attention from people who wanted to buy for me or that wanted to get high with me I wanted attention from my family like everything to rescue me and save me from Doug Boebst. And it wasn't until that moment that I realized, you know, like I don't have everything figured out. I don't. Like clearly, I mean, what I was doing wasn't working.

Like I said, 21 jobs at the time I was 21, convicted felon, in jail, drug addict, damaged relationships, completely broken from a mental, spiritual, and emotional level. So in that moment I felt like a little inspired. I was like, man, like I guess I have no other option to give this a shot. Because I was like, I certainly don't want to be a bitch, right? I don't want to be that. So I was like, let's give this exercise thing a try.

And we're getting out in front of a bunch of grown men, which was again, like one of the most uncomfortable things in my life. Because I just was like, man, everybody's going to look at me and think I'm a complete loser. It was kind of like triggering me back to school where everybody would pick on me, everybody would make fun of me because I, of certain things or the way I looked or my weight or because I wasn't good at something even though I liked it or whatever and I was like the same thing's going to happen now like I'm going to try and exercise

and people are going to make fun of me and you know what happened I got down to do a push-up couldn't even do one for my knees and my I said to my cellmate I'm like why can't I do a push-up he's like because you're fat because I felt like you know I felt like

a shame then I was just like man I kind of pretended like I thought I could do one even though I knew I didn't. I was like, why can I do it? He's like, you're fat. And I was like, what do you mean? He was like, dude, like, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. He's like, excess body fat. Coors weak. You have no upper body strengths. You're collapsing. But the other thing that happened is I looked over and nobody was like laughing at me, which I thought was going to happen. I was like, wow, like this is cool. Like nobody cares, tuck. Like as much as you think they care, they don't. Nobody cares.

Like everybody's in there trying to just do their time and get through it. Like nobody's nobody's there to make fun of you. And it really helped me because my entire life, when I did stuff, I was made fun of, whether it was me playing sports I was made fun of. When I would ask a girl out and I got rejected, I got made fun of. You know, when I would try and hang out with certain kids,

I would get made fun of. So my mind was convinced that any time I did something around a bunch of people, whether they were familiar or not, that I was going to be, like, you know, made fun of and laughed at. and so I got up off the ground and like I said I was also smoking cigarettes before I went to jail

smoking a pack or a pack and half of cigarettes and so detoxing from that was like a whole other level and it's hard to say like how much that played in but I was I mean I quit cigarettes and oxy cold turkey awful right and so I walk up and down these steps in the jail and I'm like huffing and puffing because I can barely walk to come back down and my cellmate and I we said some we set some goals.

Because he was asking me what I wanted. I told him, I was like I wanted like a six pack and all this stuff. You know, these instant gratification like type like vanity goals, right? And he's like, well,

that's going to take some time. He's like, but you know, we got to get you some strength first. And so the goal was to run a mile and do a set of 10 pushups by the time I left my sentence. And the way we did it was fascinating.

It was interesting because it's taught me a lot now about success, playing the long game and focusing on small wins. And the reason is because it wasn't like we just got down after, it wasn't like after that moment we just got down and tried to do a set of 10 pushups. It was super small, super micro.

And that looked like me just trying to hold myself up from my knees. Trying to hold myself up and a plank on my knees to like, you know, work on my core strength, work on my upper body strength, work on stability, work on shoulder stability and stuff like that. And then that led into, I'll describe how I built the strength and then the running thing I think you'll find fascinating too. So it started with, you know, holding myself up on my knees, then doing a pushup from my knees,

then doing two pushups from my knees. And now I'm building this confidence. Like, holy crap, like I'm doing this. I'm doing the thing that I never thought I could do. I never thought I could do a couple pushups from my knees, like real pushups where I'm actually going down. And so now it's like, all right, I can do two. Let's try three.

Did that, do four. And then all the way up until we did a set of ten pushups from my knees. And then now we went back to the feet for like a real, regular pushup. And I could hold myself up and I could do a push up. I was like, oh, crap, this is amazing. Like, at that time, I felt like I just climbed Mount Everest. I was like, I can't believe that I just did this. And then that led to me working towards two push-ups,

three push-ups, four, all the way up until I made it, to do that set of 10 push-ups, which was awesome for me. You know, it was so instrumental because it taught me the importance of just doing something, even though you're not good at it at first. It taught me the importance of staying disciplined. It taught me the importance of getting comfortable, being uncomfortable. taught me the importance of like focusing on small wins. Right, because so many people, you know, today,

they're like going from like zero to 100. They're trying to go from zero to 100. And so you got to go from zero to one, zero to two, zero to three. Like you're doing that 100 mile race. You didn't just get up one day and just start running 100 miles. Started with one mile and built off of that, right? And so that was a big turning point for me in jail

because it shifted that instant gratification perspective that I had as a drug addict to playing the long game. And, you know, my cellmate was very instrumental in some of the mindset shifts because he was like, I was like, how long is it going to take me to get abs? How long is it going to take me to lose all this weight? He's like, how long you've been fucking up your body? I'm like, a long time. He's like, it's going to take a long time, Doug.

And I was like, okay. And so early on in my journey, I accepted that it was going to take some time to build that. And the running was cool because they had this perimeter in the common area of the jail. And of course, it's not like we had an Apple Watch or iPhone or anything that. track distance. So I think somebody had calculated how many feet were in the perimeter just by walking it. And I'd have a deck of cards. And so it started off with me just like walking, you know, around the perimeter. And every time I would do a lap, I would take a card from my left hand and move it to my right hand. That's how I would track my distance and how far I would go. And every time I'd run a lap,

I would move a card from my left to my right hand. Every time I would do a lap, I would move the card from my left to my right hand. And then once I build up some endurance, that's started, I started to be able to do like slow jog and then, like, run jog. And then eventually I started just running. And it got to the point where I was able to run a mile in there. And it was game changing for me. I would love to talk about this cellmate of yours. I believe his name's Eric, correct?

Eric, yeah. Was Eric viewed and perceived from everyone else in the jail as a leader? As I'm listening to this story, and I'm painting this picture of my mind, I kind of view this man who's respected by everyone else. The reason he was respected a lot, I think, was because he had done a lot of time. And I think when you've done a lot of time, you gain respect from other inmates

because they're like, oh, okay, this person obviously, like, you know, those are rules. They know the ropes around here. They've been here for a while. So it's almost like a certain level of respect. But he was like, I think he was originally on parole for something in the state of Maryland, in Hartford County.

And then I think he went to Pennsylvania, got arrested for something. did like years up in a state penitentiary up in Pennsylvania. And then because he had violated his parole in Maryland in Hartford County, he had to come back and go to court for that violation. That's where I met him was in that period. It was crazy like the time, that how the coincidental the time frame was when I met him.

But yeah, he was very well respected in there because he was just somebody that like was just consistently working out, kept to himself, hyper-disciplined. Again, like knew the lingo, knew his way around because he had been there for some time and people just looked up to him. But what was even cooler, I think, was that people changed how they saw me too.

Is that because of your affiliation with him? It was that, but also, like they saw me. Like I said, when I came in, I was a zombie. who was completely unconfident, no self-esteem. I was just walking around, like I didn't even know where I was. And they saw me change. And people started to cheer me on. People started to, like, clap when I would do things.

Because they were proud to see who I was. They were proud to see how I've changed. And they just, I mean, I think everybody loves like a story like that, a transformation story. And these people just saw that. And they were like, wow, like, good job. Like everybody was so proud of me for doing that. But they also held me accountable. because Eric had told me

it's funny he had me on like a little diet when I was in there too I do want to talk about that I want to talk about like what diet in jail is like and what he had you eating yeah I mean because diet in jail it's like you know breakfast they normally have like some you know they have eggs they have like

I think they might have had toast or different I think they I don't even think they had like they couldn't have actual meat I don't think in there because of religious stuff I believe if I remember correctly so it was like maybe like soy sausage pad and stuff like that. And I think we got grits every morning too.

And there were certain things I couldn't eat. And I think like the easiest way for him to cut my calories in jail was like we would get like five or six pieces of bread, I think at night sometimes for dinner. So I couldn't have that. Couldn't have the bread at breakfast. Had to, you know, not eat like some of the starch and stuff that came with certain meals. Because it was just the simplest way for him to help me cut calories. And also, like, when you cut carbs, you lose a lot of water weight.

And I'm sure maybe part of that was, like, I need to give this kid some confidence. So I think if he gets rid of some of these carbs and loses some water weight, he'll actually, like, feel good about himself enough to keep going. And see some immediate changes. See some immediate changes. We can only have a cheat meal like once a, like I can only have a cheat meal in there once a week. What was the cheap mail? It was called a hookup. So what we would do is there was a store, like a commissary store, and you could order like ramen noodles.

It's like a famous prison food, obviously. ramen noodles, you get like this cheesy rice, you could order like, I think it was like slim jims or a version of a slim gym where it was like a meat stick and other tuna and other stuff. And we would save like our, like certain, you know, meat throughout the week that we would get, you know, throughout the course of the week

because we would get, you know, like a sweaty meat sandwiches. They called them for lunch, which was like a soy bologna, I think. It was just kind of gross. But it sounds delicious. Yeah. When you're in jail, you don't have much, you don't have many other options.

But you would save like the, whatever, like the meat you would get throughout the week. and then like on Sundays it was like chicken day where we would get like, you know, chickens, almost like a rotisserie chicken for dinner, so we would save that. And what we would do is we would take this big plastic bag. We would take the meat we'd save from the week.

We'd put it in the bag, add the cheesy rice, add the ramen noodles, add the slim gym type meat stick, and then the tuna and whatever else. And you would put boiling water in it, tie off the bag and let it sit for like 30 minutes. And that was like a hookup. You made this like smorgish boards almost. or came out like a casserole, I guess.

Have you had one since getting out? I remember when I first got out, like when I, I would be with my friends. I was like, I want to make you guys a hookup. And they're like, wait, what? And I would tell them, like, I would tell them what it was. Like, that sounds disgusting. And I'm like, just try it.

And yeah, I made it because I wanted people to like experience what I experienced in there. And I don't think they thought it was as bad as it was. But eventually, like, I started to take nutrition seriously when I got out of jail. And I started to make, like, different, shifts in my life with that and reading more like muscle and fitness and things like men's health and men's fitness to just get an idea of like how do I lift to continue on with the physique goals

that I wanted because when I was in jail like Eric had me on this diet and I wasn't allowed to eat certain things and I'd have that cheat meal but he could only really help me with the food in jail and how I could create a plan in there. I mean he gave me certain pointers and tips about like how to eat when I got out and gave me some recommendations but a lot of it I had a lot of it I had to learn on my own and figure out what worked for me. But, I mean, I developed this innate level of personal accountability after being in jail because I just developed these new habits and this and self-discipline that I'd never had before in there that transferred into after I got released. And I also got used to, in a way, just having like, in a way getting used to like

dealing with it with a negative reinforcement because what Eric told me is like, all right, if you cheat on your diet, I'm either punching you in the stomach or you got to run three miles. It was something like crazy like that. It was enough of a punishment that I wasn't going to cheat. And I remember like one night, somebody caught me like eating like a thing of ramen noodles or something like outside of my plan. And I thought I could just hide it from him and they ended up telling him. Because like I said, like everybody was cheering me on and they were like in it They were like trying to hold me accountable and he was, he came into a cell. He was like, all right, Doug, you're either gonna run or I'm punching you.

What'd you take? I ran. But I don't even think, I mean, I don't think at the time I could run that long. I think we negotiated, you know, to do a smaller distance or something like that. But, but it taught me that I need to be held accountable to myself. You know, I needed, I needed that stability and that discipline because before I went to jail, there was no accountability. I just did what I wanted. and there wasn't any consequences until I went to jail.

There wasn't any real consequences until I went to jail. And when I got out, I just found this new level of passion for just trying to figure out what else I could do to improve my health. Were you scared when you left jail that all those old habits would come back because obviously in jail,

you learned self-accountable. you were building confidence, you had this foundation of fitness that was now introduced into your life. Was there any part of you that thought the day you walked out, you were going to go back to doing drugs? Yeah. I mean, I feared that greatly.

I cried the day I left jail because I didn't want to leave. I mean, it was that bad. Because up until that point, up until I went to jail, I was a failure. And I had proved to myself that I couldn't stick to anything.

I proved to myself that I was going to be addicted to drugs and I was going to not be held accountable and I was going to do all these things that made my life a mess and turned it into chaos. But the thing that happened, you know, in jail that really helped me, I think, was I learned how to, you know, reattach certain behaviors to certain emotions to where when I was in jail, I couldn't run from and hide from my emotions anymore. I couldn't act out the way I would before. I couldn't self-soothe. So if I was stressed or I was anxious, I had to figure out a way to deal with it. So that came in the form of exercise, obviously, walking, came in the form of just sitting in the painful emotions.

It came in the form of just talking to other people about my problems, which this was all very new to me. You know, because I didn't really do that, obviously, before I went to jail. So I had a little bit of confidence in myself to be able to take all of that that I just described and apply it to when I got out of jail. But I was also incredibly overwhelmed with fear about what was going to happen without my cellmate. Because, you know, he, I was, I was somewhat convinced that the, without him, I was going to fail. Because I did before, before I met him, I mean, I was living the total opposite of what I was doing in jail. So, the day I left, you know, I cried because I didn't want to leave like I mentioned. And then I asked him, I said, you know, how can I ever repay?

you. And he just said, you know, don't mess up and kind of pay it forward and gave me a workout plan that I still have framed in my place today, so I don't forget where I came from. And then, like, I just was convinced that there was two paths I could go. I could go the path of convincing myself that I was going to fail without my cellmate and that I was going to go back to being the person that I was. And if I believe that was going to happen, that probably would have happened. And that was like, I would say, like, most of me believe that I was going to go down that path because of my track record. But there was a small part of me that was convinced that I could transform my life and continue on this path that Eric had helped pay for me.

And that if I focused on doing everything I needed to do on a daily basis to become a better version of myself, that at least gave me a shot to get towards the person that I wanted to be. like there's a lot of value in focusing from for me at least in focusing on the person that you could be the version of you could be if you do these things like i wanted to be fit i wanted to date pretty women i wanted to be successful i wanted self-confidence and i knew the way to get there was by doing certain things on a daily basis exercise eating a certain way staying away from certain things certain people, the way I talked to myself, the way I treated other people. I knew I had control over that. Again, it didn't guarantee me that I was going to get to that place of where I wanted.

It didn't guarantee me success. But I knew that if I went the other way, it essentially would disqualify me from even getting any of that. And so I just started to focus on that stuff every single day. Like I knew what I needed to do. Stay away from drugs. Exercise. Eat well. Run. Stay away from certain people. Then I was like, boom, day one with, without Eric, awesome, confidence. Next day, boom, same thing. Day two, day three. Then you look back and it's like, I've been doing that,

I've been doing that now for a week. It's like, wow, for the first time of my life, without any accountability from somebody else, without being behind bars, I'm clean from the drugs I was abusing, I'm engaging in healthy habits, I feel better about myself for the first time of my life. It's like, wow, I never thought I could be here.

And then you just keep going. And then eventually that becomes a month, three months, six months. And then throughout that process, other things are happening within that. I'm getting motivated now to run a 5K. I'm getting motivated now to actually join a gym for the first time.

Because when I got out of jail, I couldn't really afford to go to a gym because I hadn't gotten a job yet. But I was also still kind of terrified to go into the gym and worry about what other people were going to think of me inside of a fitness facility. because I still had that

in the back of my head a little bit. Right. But again, I was able to do that and then joined a gym, started to exercise and lift weights and learned more about how to do that. And I started to build some strength and started to be able to do other things.

And I was like, man, like, I can't believe I'm where I'm at now. You know, and then like another like a few months go down the road and it's like, I want to figure out a way to give back and help other people use fitness to change their lives. And so you see where I'm going with this.

Like it just, my ability to, To have the confidence to move on without the help of my cellmate came from me doing things that reflected where I wanted to be. I don't think confidence is built from just thinking your way into doing something. Confidence is doing the thing. Confidence is making sure that your actions are aligned with your values. Confidence is making sure that you're doing the things every day that you know you should be doing to get to that goal of whoever you want to be.

and that's what happened is I just literally took it day by day and then those days added up. And again, like I said, early on, my cellmate taught me the importance of small wins and just starting small and just focusing on that day.

Like that workout where we were going to do a push up from my knees or walk a few laps or whatever that workout was early on. It taught me like, all right, don't worry about what we're going to do a week from now. Don't worry about what we're going to do a month from now. Focus on what we're doing today

and just build off of that. And so that mindset carried on with me when I got out of jail. Another big thing that really helped me, and I think it helps a lot of other people that I've talked to, is being able to channel into this dark side of pain, anger. Because I had a lot of pain, I had a lot of anger that was still pent up inside of me, because all that stuff didn't just magically go away. I had this chip on my shoulder that I wanted to prove to these people that doubted me,

to prove to the people that bullied me, prove to the people that rejected me, that I was going to show them like who I really was, that I was going to transform myself and I was going to be this person that they're like, wow, like, look at this guy.

Like, wow, like how attractive he is or wow, like I can't believe he did this. And so that was something that really drove me too was when I would run when I got out of jail when I was like stressed out about, you know, what was going on in my life or stressed out about the future.

I would think about stuff like that. I would think about people who picked on me. I would think about the girls who rejected me. I would think about myself and what I did and not in a malicious way, but I would just think about it. And remember why I was doing that stuff. And it's not to say that you need to spend your entire life doing things in spite of other people,

but I think that can certainly help you get off the ground a little bit. Yeah, because I think I've heard you talk about how that was where it started. That was the fuel to a lot of the decisions. but at some point you stopped searching for external validation and it didn't necessarily fuel your future decisions anymore. Would you say now that a lot of the accomplishments you work towards isn't because of the chip on the shoulder anymore

or for external validation, but more internally driven? Yeah, I mean, I'm way more internally driven than I was back then. I mean, because, you know, back when I was a kid, you know, all I wanted, like I said was I wanted to be like by girls. I wanted to look a certain way. I wanted to have success. And I thought that getting those things would just get rid of all of my problems. I had a root awakening in my 20s where, you know, I got, it became like, you know, I got out of jail and I was just focused on survival and staying, staying away from drugs and actually, you know, exercising and keep myself fit. But once I saw a lot of progress with that, I was like, wow, like I can really keep going with this.

Like I started to get abs, started to get biceps, started to get veins. My body fat percentage was dropping substantially. And I was like, where can I take this? Where can this go? And then what ends up happening is I'm like, well, wait a second, I'm getting more ripped. I'm still like not in a relationship right now. I'm still not happy with myself. Like, what gives?

Like, I thought this was it. And I got in a really dark place emotionally. Not like, I mean, I never, I didn't relapse or relapse or anything, but this was years after getting out of jail. Yeah, I mean, I thought I was lied to. And mainly, of course, by myself, that I lied to myself and saying that, like, you know, Doug, once you get to this certain body fat percentage, once you get to this certain level of, you know, athletic ability, once you, you know, get attention from girls, like, your life's going to be much better all the time. And in my 20s, I got to a place where I was 5% body fat. and I was getting attention from girls

and I was making great money as a personal trainer but I still wasn't happy because I still hadn't dealt with a lot of the dark stuff from my childhood and my past that had plagued me throughout my life. I was just using that as fuel right? But eventually you reach a point

where that fuel kind of runs out and you're like, all right, I can't keep, like, thinking about, like, what my parents did or what these girls did to me, like, years ago. Like, eventually I got to figure out, like, why is it that I'm so still angry about that stuff that it's still fueling me years later? There was a, there was a turning point in my life where I had, I didn't have a former relationship with, like, spirituality or God or anything, which is paramount for, you know, almost everybody I know for people in recovery.

But as a kid, I hated God, hated God. Because I was like, if God is about love, God is about like, you know, being this person that creates, if God is the creator of the earth and is in charge of my destination, like, why is all this bad stuff happening to me? Or he must really hate me to, like, pave my life the way it is.

Like, again, I was still, like, caught up in the victim trap with that. And also, I understood that if I was good, I went to heaven. And then if I was bad, I went to hell. I was like, well, I'm on the highway to hell, so there's no point of view in believing. And so around the same time where I had, you know, been incredibly ripped, I was getting attention from girls,

I was having success in my career, I started to train a guy who was a pastor at a non-denominational church. And he was like, there was something different. He was always happy. He was always smiling, very kind. Like, no matter what he's always like, I want what this guy has.

What's wrong with this guy? I was like, what's wrong with him? Like, why is he so happy? And he would, like, invite me at church. and I was like, dude, like, I don't, I don't want to go to church. It's not my thing. Like, I'm going to hell for probably putting you through this workout because it was like a hard workout or whatever.

And then eventually, like, some time went by and after certain other events in my life to where, like, you know, things didn't work out with a girl or I would still have, like, anxiety about my past. I just felt this nudge to the, like, all right, I got to, like, call this guy and tell him that I wanted to give this Jesus thing a try. And when I talk about this,

I don't want to say that I'm like this dogmatical, religious person because I'm not, but what this did for me was instrumental and here's what happened. So I end up by going to this guy. First of all, when I called this guy to tell him that I wanted to become a Christian or try it, I felt like I just told me one of the mega millions. I was like, why is this guy so happy? It's just so bizarre to me. And end up going to his office, praying this prayer that I believe that Jesus died for my sins and yada, yada, yada. And I started to like cry. And I just felt this same weight come off my back that I did with drugs. Like I felt free. for the first time on a long time.

I remember walking out of the church. I called my mom and I apologized to her for the first time in my life. Like authentically, like I meant it. It wasn't like I was trying to get something from her or trying to just get her to like me or to like me in that moment or whatever. Like, I really, truly was sorry.

And then I began to realize that, like, even though I'm not, I wasn't proud of my past because during that time as well, I was so ashamed of, once you come out of it, like once you come out of the days of addiction and doing what I was doing, you look back and you're like, what the fuck was I doing?

And there's all this shame and sadness and sorrow attached to all that, because you're like, look at these people that I hurt, look at all these years of my life that I wasted, look at how I nearly destroyed my body, look at what I did to this part of my life, that part of my life. Like, I can't believe I did that. And what being a Christian taught me was, that even though I wasn't proud of all that, God was

because he's used all that pain in my life to help myself transform and then help me use that pain to transform the lives of other people. Like, there was no coincidence that I was in jail like in the thick of like, you know, complete destruction in my life. That there was a guy that just was placed there

to help me use fitness to change my life. And then now I'm helping other. Other people use fitness to change your lives. You can't make that stuff up, right? Right. And I started to connect it out. I was like, oh, this does kind of make sense. And then I just started to do the work and understand more about how my past was impacting my future

and that I wasn't that same person anymore and that I needed to figure out a way to like Doug for who I was and have a good relationship with me and not use the way I looked, attention from girls, accolades as a personal trainer. success as a way to validate who I was without being, without myself validating myself first. So I think that stuff's important. Like I think being attracted to your partner is very important. I think health is certainly very important. Success is important.

Money's important. But if that's your end all be all, I mean, that cup gets empty, very, very quick. And now I don't have to drink from that cup. you know i mean i the cup that i drink from is like how am i treating myself um how am i showing up you know for my clients how am i showing up for the podcast how am i showing up in my relationships how am i treating other people what's my mindset like um and then all that all the other stuff just you know makes that makes makes my life adds it adds then all the other stuff just adds value to my life because it's a result of validating myself and doing the work

work internally that just makes those other things better. Once you establish that relationship with God, do you find that that emptiness started to go away and fulfillment and purpose and passion started coming back into your life? Yeah, because I still was in a way, I mean, I wasn't lost. Like, I'd found this new passion in helping other people use fitness, but I was trying to figure it all out and connect the dots with everything and being like, all right, well, like, how do I reconcile my past? Like, I still had this emptiness and brokenness. Because eventually, like you get to a place where you have this wake up call where you're like, well, all right, like, I'm 5% body fat and I'm like, I have like a 12 pack and I have like big, you know, big biceps or whatever. And like girls still aren't like wanting to get into a relationship with me or I'm not, you know, really in a place where I feel comfortable being in a relationship or I still have all this anger from my past and all these things.

Like obviously fitness isn't going to be the tool to save me from all of that. So like, what do I need to do? Right? Because it's like I can't get much more lean without like destroying my life. Because at that point like I developed like orthorexia too where I was like traveling on planes with, you know, chicken breasts and broccoli to to eat like where I went. I was afraid of going out and eating with my friends. I was afraid of cheating it all on my diet.

I've been there. Yeah. It's tough. Yeah. Take it to extremes. You know, you've convinced yourself. in a way that what you're doing is healthy. You're like, well, how is this unhealthy?

Like, I'm eating chicken and broccoli. Like, how is that unhealthy? I'm exercising, like, consistently. How's it unhealthy? Or I'm wanting to avoid processed foods. How's that healthy? But then when you realize that you've alienated yourself and you don't have many personal relationships,

that road becomes very, very narrow and very, very lonely. Have you used and participated in therapy to kind of navigate the things that you felt based off things you've experienced to find solutions for some of the emptiness or problems that you've had? Oh yeah. Because, you know, I go to therapy

and we just dissect my childhood and a lot of it, like, all I wanted was to, for somebody to tell me that it all made sense. There wasn't anything wrong with me. that of course, like if your parents get divorced, you're going to have abandonment issues and you're going to feel like insecure around women at times.

And of course, if you get, if you were bullied a lot as a kid and you didn't get validation from sports, even though you wanted to or validation from girls, of course, like, you've wired your brain in a way to say like, okay, like, nobody's going to love you or people are always going to make fun of you

or blah, blah, blah. Or like that's, or that, or that, Or the opposite is also true. That because those things made you miserable, that in order to become happy, you have to have those things, right? Because not having those things would make me miserable.

And so once I understood that that was all like normal for me to feel that way, given where I came from, we were able to unpack it and say, okay, like, like Doug, like fitness is important, but it can't be your entire life. You can't live your life hiding in the, you know, in your room, eating dinner,

not going out with your friends. You can't live your life, not cheating I mean not you know not cheating on your diet at all not like eating out like not socializing you can't do that or you can't just be looking at yourself

live your life looking at yourself in the mirror like 24-7 and seeing like if you've gained any body fat or stepping on the scale or whatever it was I was doing back then and what the biggest thing that we had to do is like I had this level of cognitive dissonance that still existed between who I was

back when I was a kid and who I was in that present moment. And like, it was so bad that girls were telling me that I looked like Mark Wahlberg. And I didn't believe it. Or if I didn't believe it, I thought it was an insult. Because I had been called names when I was a kid. I mean, people told me that it looked like that guy,

Pat Nosswald from King and Queens back in the day when I was heavier. And they would call me like Spence and stuff. And that was like a way of like kind of picking on me. And so that was obviously to me. it was used as an insult. It wasn't a compliment. And so people, I just got used to,

when people would say, I looked like somebody that it was like an insult, but I remember talking to somebody, I'm like, yeah, somebody said, I looked like, I looked like Mark Wahlberg

and I'm like, oh, it's like a really good compliment. I was like, is it? Like, I didn't believe it. Because when I looked in the mirror, I still saw this old fat version of me. Like, the outside had really changed,

but in my mind, because my mind had been wired for so long and had been hijacked because I believe these lies and what people said to me about who I was, that was how I still saw myself. So it was really unpacking all of that. And I would literally like make a list of like

who I was back then, what I was doing and what I am now. So it was like, I would write down like who I was spending time with when I was looking like that or doing what I was doing, what I was doing on a daily basis, what my self-esteem was like, all these things and it was clearly vastly different from the stuff I wrote down from today. And I started to see, like once I started to put it on paper, I started to see like, dude, you're so different.

Like you're not that person anymore. You're not that version of yourself. And then that just became like a habit I had to develop. And the discipline and time of like really transforming who I saw in the mirror from that person that I hated and that I loath as a kid to this person that I saw now that I actually really, truly, in a way, like was inspired by because of what I had been able to do. But it took a lot of time.

Going to therapy definitely helped because it just taught me that, A, all this stuff was normal. Once I figured it out, like, I'm a very type A guy and, like, I want answers. So, like, once I'm able to understand, like, why this is going on, like, okay, this makes sense. Now I can address it. Now, like, what are the steps moving forward in order to do that? A lot of it came down to self-affirmations and, like, the way I talk to myself.

But then also, like, doing things. I was terrified to go talk to girls in public for the longest time, mortified, terrified, because of my past and because of being rejected, that I just assumed that because I was rejected by women during a certain time of my life, that meant that that was going to happen for me in the future. And so I would just have to go up to women in grocery stores and just start conversations with them. And it was awkward at first, but it gave me, again, confidence because I was like, oh, like, they're not afraid to talk to me.

Like, they're not going to tell you to go away like they did before or whatever. Or the same thing happened with public speaking. Another thing that I was terrified of, but as a trainer and as somebody that had a lot of success, doing what I was doing,

I started getting pulled in and doing corporate wellness stuff and giving presentations. And so, of course, I was like mortified of what people were always going to think of me. I was like, are people going to know about my past? people are going to think of my failure,

people are going to think of my piece of crap. But no, you get up there. Nobody's really worried about you. They just want you to kind of do a decent job and share some health information. And then I would share stuff and I'd be like, oh, like, people clapped. People didn't think I was a loser.

Like, wow, I'm definitely am different than who I was. And the other thing that really was helpful was I was afraid to talk about my past because during the first five years or so of my first few years, I should say, of my training career, I still had the felony on my record.

And I was a concern, like, well, what are people going to think of me? Because I was battling these two sides. Well, on one side, I was a super healthy dude who, for the most part, had my life together. I mean, I talked about some of the emotional baggage and mental baggage. I was still caring, but I was still, like, living on my own, paying my bills, saving money for retirement, being a good employee, you know, crushing personal training records at the gym I was working at, like, doing all these things. But then on the other side, it was like,

I still have this darkness to me that people don't know about to where I was this drug dealer. I was a drug addict. I was a liar, a manipulator. I was a guy that you just wouldn't want your son to hang out with. You wouldn't want your daughter to hang out with. And I'm training these people who really don't know that part of my story. And I was training this woman one time that I began to get close with. She almost became like family to me.

And she's like, so how did you get into fitness? And I was just like, well, you really wanted to know the truth? And she was like, yeah, I was like, oh, I was in jail and fitness saved my life. I told her a bit about the story. And I was thinking that this person was going to fire me. And so, you know what, you're a great trainer, but I can't train with somebody who's a convicted felon and a former drug addict. Like, I just can't. And she looked at me and she's like, you know, I thought the world of you before, but I think even more of you now.

Like, I'm so proud of you. It's amazing. I keep sharing that. It's amazing. and so that helped inspire me to keep sharing and being like, you know, if people are going to judge me for my past, this is an important lesson for anybody. If people are going to judge you for your past,

those people aren't meant to be in your life. Because we all make mistakes. You know, some are bigger than others, obviously, but we all make mistakes in life. We all do things that we look back on. I'm like, oh, I definitely shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have said that. We're all human beings and no one's perfect.

Once you can accept that and know that in life, like things are going to happen and don't go your way. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to have failures. You're going to have setbacks. You begin to see life differently because you begin to see like, all right, like, I'm going to do things that I necessarily, you know, didn't want to do or did something that I shouldn't have done. But what can I learn from that?

And how can that move me like towards the next phase of my life to the next version of myself versus what tends to happen is people are like, oh my gosh, like I failed at this. so that means every other time I do something, I'm now going to fail. Instead of looking at it objectively and being like, why did I fail, how can I learn, and how can I move forward to use that knowledge and wisdom I gain from that thing I shouldn't have done or that thing I shouldn't have said to, like, propel me into, you know, growing into a better version of who that person is. Self-love and, like, loving the person that you are is super important.

I think a lot of people hate the person they are. They wake up, they look in the mirror. They just hate what they see. They hate who they are. There's no confidence. So especially with social media now, they go and they try to achieve external validation, posting certain things, talking certain ways, attracting certain groups of people trying to fit in. And what I've observed personally and through other people as well is the more you lean into external validation,

the more you're going to hate yourself. it's not going to solve any of the issues you're trying to solve. But when you can truly look in the mirror and love who you are, not hate you who you are, but love who you are, you're not searching for that external validation, that's what's going to start transforming your life. Yeah, I mean, you're so right,

because I think once you get hooked on that, in that external validation trap, you're no longer living for yourself, you're living for other people, and that's a very scary place to be in. Extremely. Extremely. Because if you don't develop an identity for yourself,

Other people that you try to please or other people that you spend time with or try to fit in with will develop that identity for you. And then what happens is you don't even know that's happening because now you're a chameleon and you're posting stuff or you're doing things just to get that rush, that adrenaline rush, that feel good rush from the external validation. And that becomes addictive and a very slippery slope. And then time goes on and you've morphed into this completely different version of yourself. that's not even necessarily, that's not good because you haven't done it from a place of self-awareness or internal validation or values.

You've done it from a place of wanting to get attention from other people. And then you just start to slowly sway away from who you truly were. And then all of a sudden, like, you wake up and you're like, what the hell just happened? Like, why do I not like myself? Well, it's because you're not even being yourself anymore. Yeah. I think just having the awareness around what external validation,

can do and how addicting it can be is so important because I think it is in a way it's important. Like if if you have a podcast episode that bombs, I mean, I'm sure you're going to look at it and be like, well, what happened? What did I do wrong? How can I, how can I re, how can I fix this or how can I do better next time? Like, because you've got validation from other people, but you're using that in a way that's constructive. You're not saying because this podcast episode bombed, I'm going to take my podcast down. I'm never going to do it again. Because you

doing the podcast wasn't dependent upon the validation from other people. So I think it's a double-edged sword and that I think it's important to pay attention to feedback from people. It can keep you honest. It keeps you honest. It keeps you accountable. Right? Like if people weren't buying VPN products, it's not like you're going to keep

sending out the same products, right? You're going to be like, well, the feedback I'm getting is is not good. Like, what can I do to shift this? Right? But you're not closing down business. Or you're not like going into a, you know,

a horrific mental state because of what people say about you. Because you know who you are and you know your mission, your vision, what you stand for, and you're sticking to that. There's a huge difference in that. Yeah, if people keep telling you, you're an asshole,

and you keep saying, I'm not an asshole. They're wrong. But people keep telling it, it's like, maybe I am an asshole. I should look, that. It provides this pulse that does keep you honest. It does. And I think it's an important thing to pay attention to while also, you know, not living for other people and not having your happiness

and who you are as a person depend on like what other people say about you. And I think, I think the way to do that, the way to mitigate that is to again, like develop this not, I mean, not just self, I mean, self-awareness is obviously very important, like being aware of what you're doing in your life, who you are, what you want to be, your values, your beliefs, where you want to go and doing your best to stick to that, doing your best to, like, make sure that, you know, your words match your actions. But then also, like, learning to build self-trust within yourself. And just, and just sticking to your commitments. Like, that's the best way to, like, build any kind of self-esteem or self-worth is to be able to trust

yourself. It's like if you tell yourself, well, I'm going to exercise today and then you don't exercise. And the next day, you're like, I'm going to exercise day and you don't exercise. And that adds up for like weeks. Well, to your mind, you're a liar. You know, to a mind, your mind's going to say, like, I don't believe you. Like, you're not doing that. So what's going to happen? You're going to convince yourself that, you know, that you're not going to be able to do certain things or stick to certain things. Or, I mean, it's in the same example applies to anything to where if you don't follow through with your actions, you just create this level of distrust within yourself.

Yeah. And that adds up over time. And a lot of people, because the reason I say self-awareness is important, I mean, it's not the end-all-be-all because obviously so many people are aware of their problems and don't do anything about it. But you have to understand, like, what's going on. You have to understand it on a certain level, like, okay, like, the reason I don't trust myself. The reason I don't believe in myself right now is because I haven't stuck to my commitments.

I've said I was going to do things. I didn't do them. Right. And it's like to me, that's just a huge thing that people have to develop is this ability to trust themselves and sticking to the things they know they should be doing in order to like continue to guide them on that path to the person they want to become. Whenever I'm planning on episodes, I always have like this kind of just a little blurb at the top that I add to my notes. And for this one in the beginning it, it was it's never too late for a second chance. But the more I thought about it, something I always say is growth is a choice. And something else I always say is when you're about to die one day, life's about to be over.

Some of the decisions you've made across the lifetime has put you in that position. Your relationships, who you are, your worth, your legacy, what people think of you. and along the way you make all these decisions, millions of decisions. And some of those decisions have pros and cons and consequences and collateral damage, but it puts you to where you're at. And I always say that gross as a choice is not by chance. So I kind of take back, you know, that first note of it's never too late for second chance,

but it's almost it's never too late for another choice. Right. And if people look at their life in terms of you have the choice to change the trajectory, you had a choice when you got out in jail, do I go back to my old life or do I pursue this new life? And it's all these choices before you went to jail and after you went to jail that have put you in this position now that have changed its trajectory. And that's like my message to the listener or viewer is you have the choice to change your life. But you have to realize you have that choice and actually make that choice that makes a change. but it's not going to happen on its own.

No, it's not going to happen on its own. And you're right, like, you know, a lot of maybe what may have happened to somebody might not have been their choice, you know, if they were in some horrific circumstances. But how they, how people respond moving forward, like they have to make different choices. They have to own those choices and make sure they're making them that are in line with who they want to be and not blaming somebody else for the results you didn't get. with the choices because you didn't make those choices you know you needed to make, right? And I think it's really important to have understanding of where you're at

and not making choices based on what somebody says on social media, not making choices based on what your friend is doing or what your mom tells you to do, your dad, and just saying, okay, like with where I'm at right now in my life, like, you know, and fill in the blank. Like, just say fitness, for example. That's an easy example. So if you're a person who has never run before and you want to start,

or you haven't run, you haven't gone to the gym, you haven't exercised in years, and your main goal right now, the choices you want to change right now are you want to become healthier, you want to move more, you want to change your, you know, your lifespan. Well, the choice that you,

you shouldn't be making the choice right now to go to the gym for two hours, five days a week. It's not going to be sustainable for you. The choice you shouldn't, The choice that you shouldn't make right now is to go out and run a 5K. It's not the choice that's going to serve you right now because of where you're at. The choice that might serve that person is just putting on their shoes and getting outside and going for a five-minute walk and just checking that box and saying, wow, like, I made a choice today that was so much different than the choices I've been making for the past 15 years.

And then that adds up. Then you can add, then you can, you know, build off of that over time. Because what happens when you do that is not only you're checking that box and saying, I made a different choice and I made a choice that's now leading me to where I want to go in my life, in that area of my life, you're also feeling good about yourself because you actually followed through the things you knew you should have been doing the whole time. Like a lot of times when people have been putting their health on the back burner for a long time, they know that they should focus on it.

But they're just either caught up and making excuses. I don't know how. They're fighting off more that they can chew. They're confused. There are all these things that, all these variables that happen with why people don't take care of themselves. So when that person finally identifies where they're at in their life and what they want to change in that specific area of their life

and they make that first small change, so much confidence is built. Because that's often the hardest thing is for somebody to get off the couch. Just get out the door and go for that walk. And they're like, wow, like I come back in. I feel so good. let me try this again tomorrow and boom feel good let me try this again tomorrow and so on and then next week it's like oh i did five minutes like five days last five days last week let me try six and then

that builds and then like months go by and now you're outside walking for 20 minutes a day 30 minutes a day whatever it is and then time goes by and now you're running and then like you look back and you're like holy crap like i can't believe i'm like running like a 5k right now when like nine months ago I couldn't even get off the couch. Where did that come from? Didn't come from just getting up and running a 5K. It came from slowly making these choices on a daily basis that are in line with their goals and that person they want to become.

And then once they get to that place, they're running a 5K, then maybe either along that way of them running or walking more, they've built up motivation to maybe even hire a personal trainer or join a gym or whatever to work on other areas of their health. but all that came from being consistent with those choices, but also from starting with what they could manage within the context of their life. And that's a huge thing I think a lot of people miss, is that people are looking to go from zero to 100,

because people want results quick. They want to lose 50 pounds overnight. They want to be able to run a marathon, you know, a week. You couch to 5K, right, like all these things you see. But that's just not reality. The reality is you have to be comfortable with where you're at, or you have to be comfortable doing the things that you're going to do based on where you're at in your life, and then slowly build off of that.

And what I can tell you from my own experience is that the confidence doesn't come from running the 5K. The biggest level of confidence will come from the first few days, first few weeks of you doing that thing for a few reasons. Number one, because you're just changing your behavior in it. itself. And two, you're proving to yourself that you matter for the first time in a long time. That you do trust yourself. That you do believe in yourself still. That you're worthy. And that, I think, is some of the most powerful things that can happen to somebody is when they're able to make that shift from just feeling stuck and sedated on the couch and unsure of what to do, when they're able to just say, you know what, no more. I'm going to do what. I'm going to do what.

I can today. I'm going to go out for a walk. And then they come back in. They're like, man, I feel so good. I'm so glad I did that. And it continues on. I mean, there's so much power and all that. incremental wins. Yeah. Well, Doug, I appreciate you sharing the story. Truly insightful.

And I think it's a reminder to people that you have a choice. The choice is yours. Part of that choice is not searching for external validation and truly shaping the trajectory of your life to end up where you will find true fulfillment and happiness.

Yeah, man, I appreciate you having me on. I'm glad I could able, I'm glad I was able to come on here and help your audience and hopefully it inspires people, again, to own your choices. Because like you said, as hard as it is to accept that where we are right now is because of a combination of all the decisions and choices that we made. And it's on us to change our choices and our decisions in order to become a better version of ourselves. Thanks, brother.

Got it, man. That's the wrap.