EP 84: My Last Relapse's Matt Handy | 2 Addicts & A Moron

I racked up 14 arrests in like 11 months because they would I found this loophole where I would yeah you got arrested 14 times brother what was it like weapons selling drugs to cops or salts robberies like a bunch of stuff and I would tell like at pre-screen now I tell them like I swallowed drugs and they would send me to the hospital and guess who's at the hospital during covid covid patients yeah so the cops weren't going in there so they would just drop me off and say we'll catch you later oh and they did this over and over and over and over and over dude it was so great until it all caught up to me and then it was genius yeah dude it was amazing wow that's so cool bro you're the most interesting man alive did you learn that yourself or did someone give you the wisdom it was just like a one-off thing and I just said it one day you did it one day and it was like holy shit I can do this dude and then my wife tried it and they cuffed her to they cuffed her to the thing it was so funny bro know that like during covid you remember like when you would be in a store and someone would cough the the look that people gave you was like you have fucking aids yeah trip out on this I was homeless like for years right and I was homeless pre-covid and then all during covid and then I got arrested uh December 28th to 2020 for that bank robbery right and I there's they did a bunch of like uh the annual census and stuff like that and they said that there was 2,500 homeless people downtown San Diego for that year and I knew all the ones that weren't mentally ill right which is maybe a hundred of them so I knew I've done drugs and knew all the rest of them right I don't know a single person that caught covid I don't I like during that time period I don't know a single homeless person that caught covid yeah that's crazy isn't that crazy and then we found out that Amish people weren't catching covid and somebody was like yeah they don't have tv's and we're like we don't have tv's either yeah try to like clue it together yeah for sure just it was the meth it was the meth math for sure yeah bro when I moved in this house the apartment that I was in I had I hadn't fucking paid in like 16 months right but covid was coming to the end yeah right where the uh Austin mayor remember he he was making he made it where you couldn't get evicted right yeah the moratoriums but that shit was yeah that shit was coming to an end so my apartment place they left me a note on uh they tried to kick me out a few times but they couldn't yeah because like my electricity went out a few times because I didn't have the money to pay it and then that that was like code for them to fucking get in there and get me out because you can't live here without electricity right but then I'd have it turned back on that same day so they left me a note on my door one day it said um if you will just vacate the money that you owe us we won't even put it on your credit we won't do nothing we just want you to fucking leave yeah just take your shit and please go and I was like I had to make it do it in writing yeah saying they wouldn't bring me to court or anything so they just let me scout free on like 20 grand that's so just go ahead and move on COVID was so great yeah COVID kind of ruled oh yeah it's funny like all these people talk about like mental illness spiked and I was like that's because they were doing COVID wrong yeah like dude yeah yeah COVID fucking you didn't get the vaccination either did you uh after I got arrested they forced us really yeah so I was on my way like I was facing in Cali or where yeah of course in California yeah because I was in Texas there's no way they would fuck so I was I mean I should have I should be in prison right now really yeah the deal was 33 and my max exposure was 85 to life right and it was like they were like if you are going to prison you're getting this shot or we will lock you in a cell until you get it I was like all right I guess I'm going to prison like there was there was no doubt in my mind I was going to prison you know it was like residential it was just fucking crazy and so I was like okay I'll get it and then so I got it and probably 90% of people in the jails got it at the time yeah and then so I got like that first round and then the deal came through and I was like fuck that I'm not getting the second round and then I got to I got to the program that I got sent to which is a whole crazy story but Kamala Harris had her party at the facility so it was like a it was like a liberal stronghold yeah so the the lady that owns it she outbid the San Francisco giants for their headquarters right so like just politically connected and then like so I get there and they're like everybody's getting the second round if they've already got the first round I was like fuck so I got forced to get the shots yeah what's your last name brother handy handy handy so mad handy got it got it yeah have you been fucked about with your name your whole life so I'm 37 how old are you I am 45 okay 45 okay so Jack handy you remember from SNL yeah I got that all the time yeah and then I got great sketches by the way amazing Chris Farley was dude so we literally lost like a gym like just a the most amazing person you know his brother sober right yeah right do you ever met him I've never met him dude he's amazing no he's like an amazing person too I mean Chris was yeah Chris was so imagine imagine Chris but got sober is his brother really yeah just like the most loving caring like pure funny looks just like him too yeah and uh yeah dude but Chris Farley was definitely my favorite movie like to this day it's actually our family movie we like all quote it back and forth through our texas and stuff was almost heroes with you guys yeah with uh with Matthew Perry yeah dude it's so funny it's so underrated have you seen it no I'm gonna go oh my gosh it's almost heroes almost there's for these dude it's a parallel story to Lewis and Clark uh-huh and so they like almost beat them to the west coast oh no so they're like but it's dude it's these two just fuck ups and like one's like a dandy and the other one's this tracker that like fucks pigs and stuff and like dude it's like this a pig fucker dude there's like this scene where he's like sniffing this cow pie and he's like the buffalo or near now he's like oh you can tell by sniffing their poop he goes no I can see the herd over there it's so good dude it's so good I'm gonna watch it tonight dude it's so good bent twig oh yeah dude he's like getting into slap fight with them I'm gonna go watch it again tonight dude it is so but I saw in the movie theater no yeah dude I saw dude check this out so I was raised Mormon holy shit and my dad wow yeah my dad goes to be a great episode my dad goes with like my dad was in like a position of of like authority right and he goes with like a couple other guys that are also like serving in the same capacity yeah to see it and one of them is like his really good friend and the other one is like another good friend but he's just like super straight laced right yeah and the dude walks out and then this is like pre this is like analog days right so they have like phones or whatever and he was like texted both of them and said like I'm sorry I had to leave him they saw him on Sunday and he was literally telling the bishop that he had to have like an interview about this movie like it was so crude and so off the wall the scene where he's like talking about the king and queen of France dude he's like pay good money up in weatherloo to see this step up there they're dressed like the king queen of France dude it's I'm gonna watch it oh dude dude anything with Farley in it is was incredible and those were like that was like it was so he filmed that movie and then started recording shrek yeah and then passed away and then died yeah no he was supposed to be the voice of shrek yeah and then mike mires like his friend like stepped in I didn't know that yeah can you imagine shrek is chris farley is shrek it would have been so much better dude so good I know I've seen the uh the his death pictures yeah yeah dude fucking sad dude like sad you know he's got a you can if you zoom in he's like clutching a fucking rosary bead mm-hmm he knew what was going on like he knew like this is not normal what I'm feeling like he knew that it was not do you know that that man lived I just I just watched I am chris farley have you guys seen that no not yet dude it's good I literally watched it two days ago yeah and I was like you know we get our emotions back and all that shit I was like literally because this is my childhood yeah I'm a pussy when it comes to emotions I cry dude it was I was like my wife was like what are you are you crying I was like look I'm not crying but this is making me like very emotional she was like it's chris farley I was like you're two years younger than me yeah how do you know to us yeah yeah and so the the one that got me recently was john candies oh because he was a gentle giant too sure part of my and like transplains and automobiles dude and even his little parts like in home alone yeah buck and like all these movies yeah and so many that you forget dude wasn't he in like little he was in little giants no are you sure I think he had like a spot in it he was like the announcer or something no I think he was he was already out of there okay it already passed away he passed away like 91 oh like 1991 then the early 90s remember him like so much more than well my parents are really young too yeah you guys are like 10 years younger than my parents nice yeah I'm older than destiny's parents you're older than your wife's new parents my wife's 22 that's amazing yeah dude I I tell people because you know like in the sober like community there's like the there's like the huge disparity in age a lot of the time with like yeah and I was like I have a friend that's going through right now he's a doctor he's 40 he just turned 43 and he was like telling me about his dating problems and I was like dude you're dating you're sure you want to have kids and you're dating people are 35 yeah like you have the most dating collateral like you're a doctor you're well put together right 13 years sober you got 20 year old fuck dude go go find it go find somebody who is equally yoked in the dating like find a 25 somebody out of college got a little shit together dude you don't have to pay for their college I was like dude you fucked up but I was like dude you should have waited for your dating outside of like your your your um your possibilities right now you're dating down bro you're way dating down you're dating down he's like oh well I was dating you know I was dating this and I was like dude stop dating people in recovery like dude if you're that sober and that recovered quit dating people in recovery you yeah but you also so here's my boxes codependency check someone that has daddy issues check check like you got it you're if you had a fucked up childhood and all the shit yeah check check check check yeah those are all my fucked up check boxes for sure and then I want to take care I want to save people's lives so I'm like I'm going to save this person like even during my addiction like I spent most of my time at the at the strip club because I was going to save all these whether sure yeah dude I've never been like I would have went to a rehab that was co-ed no way I would have fucking got sober I would have been trying to like fucking just have babies in that mother for sure and I mean it happens all yeah no dude hey look at look at you man yeah your year right well dude I went to a good the I went to the last treatments and I went to I was there for three years and this place was you only you were in rehab for three years straight straight and you only go there if you're fighting a life sentence or you're coming out of a life sentence from the feds right so there was like jail politics in a work camp that was synonym based you guys know what synonym is no oh dude it's a synonym is that a recovery place so synonym was the original therapeutic community in Santa Monica so it was based on synonym right and I was like so now we're like playing game like there's this thing there's this clinical tool called gaming where you like we all sit in this room and we try to just get people to react and so people are like making shit up about people and like just lying and there's only two rules like you you can't use physical violence and you can't stand up while you're talking oh so anything else dude everything goes so people are like like like if you came in yesterday mm-hmm you would be like like fresh meat right for sure well not even the target right people would just like deflect on him for a while and then like get the feel of the room and then you've been here for two years but everybody hates you so everybody's already got this coordinated attack we're gonna make this shit up about this person yeah because after this three out it's three hours six days a week at night where we just sit in this room and just try it on each other yes so there was a girl that came on the podcast who was the girl that came on the podcast that they they did the same fucking yeah they did the same exercise okay and but it was like you're a fucking two once they found out she was a mom and she wasn't a great oh dude like you were a fucking terrible mom for sure and I don't think you should ever have babies like you should have had the baby that you had and she's like fucking just balling dude yeah and she said it was like everybody just fucking once they realized this was her shit everybody was just on her shit like you're fucking kids probably gonna grow up without you and fucking hate you yeah and it was like that was their exercise it was like sending on a thing was is that what it's called yeah I mean that's that's gaming for sure that's like a component of the programming and like the the thing about this what what's the whole reason behind it is it to fucking you know there there is like philosophy behind it right but what they found out was that it's actually therapeutically damaging to people to do that and so they like after like the third person killed themselves they're like oh dude and so like on a mainstream stage that really kind of like got the nicks in like the 70s but like there's still been there's like core components of therapeutic communities that have continued the tradition and to be honest with you like that probably moves the needle more than anything else in that type of programming because you leave there and these are people that are like coming out of doing 45 years in prison or like whatever and you can leave there and like words just don't bother you well also like you know how like we try to hide our fucking that you know in effect it does pull shit out when it pulls the defects out and it's like oh now you know that I'm a fucking terrible father too yeah like I can't even lie about I'm always there for my kids yeah no actually you weren't motherfucker you wasn't there for six years yeah now I can maybe now that that's came to the forefront maybe I can fucking like okay now I need to work on the shit so that would be the ideal right program that I was like uh if you talked about God or the 12 step program you could like get in trouble oh really yeah it was so the program was you're gonna work until you like to work and then you're gonna work some more and so like there were different departments like there was the the moving company department the woodworking the mechanic shop like that makes money for this program right and um so like we this was in LA like the the the facility I was at was built for the 1985 Olympians to stay at it was an old Hilton yeah that turned into like just a fucking crack den at one point it got condemned and she bought it and fixed it up and turned it into this but um the so in in December starting like the day after Thanksgiving it's deco right Christmas mode and they like split up these teams and you know there's like people that I've already been setting up these decorations for months right and so we go out into the city and we decorate all of the high rises downtown LA and like the malls like engage with them so like they have like political weight in LA and like the the grand piano was donated by Flea the um the laugh factory oh no it was um what's the other comedy store the comedy store used to donate comedy shows to us so all the comedians would come to the facility and like yeah and then like the we would get like free ticket like balcony seats at the opera and show like that like people love this program right yeah we moved Chester Bennington into his new house right before he killed himself like uh dashboard confessional like all these bands like employ these moving companies and so like my team during Christmas mode in 30 days made 20 million dollars just decorating out really and it all goes it all goes back and there's four teams so dude it was like huge amounts of money is is like generated by this by these businesses right and so it's like the the structure are we recording yeah we have been recording oh yeah no I mean this is gonna work out great okay this is like this is the fucking best no I fucking love this shit okay this is some of our best episodes is when we're just chopping it up for sure even really get into it yeah some of the funniest shit is what we do right for sure so so we'll do some editing or something but ladies are gentlemen so I will say this a lot of people leave right and most people that are court mani there they're choosing prison over this program really yeah oh yeah it's like if you're going there it's because you have a substantial amount of time I have a friend that like was there for two murders another friend that was there for like he had like 37 years oh I had 33 right it was like so if you leave there like you're choosing prison over it and people leave all the time fuck it right it's like that crazy wow but it's structured in such a way that it's like the the people who have been in this program there are people that have been in the program for 40 plus years right like you never have to leave you can you do commitments so my commitment was for three years but then after that I could recommit for two years at a time I know people that take tenure commitments yeah there was like a couple lifetime commitment like people have made lifetime commitments right and in the program after 18 months you can date right and like you can go like on weekends with whoever you're dating and like it's a very the the the program is structured in such a way that it's like people find success in this program and never leave yeah and you can start making money I know people that have had kids and raised their kids in the program really dogs like yeah that's cool so it's like you know it's like if you can make it past whatever you're mandated to a lot of people stay they also have like a trucking school you can get your a your your acdl in there yeah and then they they have like cross-country moves where you're driving a semi right like you can make after you're mandated you can find the life in there for sure and and think about it it's like you've got people who are maladaptive and like antisocial anyway they're coming out of life sentences they're getting out of life sentences and so they find like their place in life you know like a lot of people the one of the guys that I was there with I got there he had gotten there like maybe two months before me he was the guy that killed the cardinal for he thought he was killing el chopo and he shot and killed a cardinal like a catholic cardinal instead on accident yeah and the cartel like gave him up right so he ended up at this program getting out of his life sentence I remember when that happened yeah dude crazy right dude that guy I mean they shot the wrong fucking car or some shit no it was it was it was misinformation yeah right somebody told him okay he's gonna be in this car he's gonna be dressed like a cardinal right and then that wasn't true is they they it was a cardinal well for a minute they literally just thought someone assassinated a fucking cardinal for sure for sure and right and then the whole catholic world like spoke out against what was going on the cartel was like oh my gosh like we are gonna bring hell down on us yeah so it was him and his brother and they were like check it out you know the he was already on the run in in America and the brother was in TJ and they were like turn yourselves in and we got you so the brother turned himself in TJ and they like he wasn't going to turn himself in but like they told him where he was or something and the dude the feds came and swooped up on this guy and uh but dude they killed his brother in the TJ prison system because they didn't want him to talk about whatever the cartel killed his brother cardinal Fernandez was this a thing I don't know Martin probably I don't know if it is Cardinal Fernandez that's a fucking amazing memory that's gonna have yeah let's figure this out yeah for sure if you remember we can't be spreading misinformation on two ads and more on this reputable fucking bottom yeah if it's Fernandez I'm gonna be like holy shit I can't believe my meth addict brain remember that you don't really well I used to I used to read a bunch about the cartel like I was fast during my addiction but it was so fascinating it was Juan Jesus Pasotas Ocampo okay I was fucking way off yeah wasn't even close 93 I don't even know that I had a fucking a letter right Fernandez Ocampo I don't think I got a letter there right yes the yes yeah man you got her I mean you said what Fernandez Fernandez yeah yeah you were you close enough he was in the realm of Spanish yeah wasn't like father Thompson yeah or something for sure some French name you know it's crazy I went to uh there's a place in Houston I met this guy outside of we went on vacation of Fredericksburg and I met this guy super cool dude he was selling out crosses right outside of a Walmart and he was in this place that when you go there you go there for like a year or two to get sober yeah and you work for the place like you build crosses on Monday Tuesday Wednesday like crosses and like different I've got some out here like different signs and then they have a call center they have a wood shop that they make all this shit and then on they have a call center in there that are calling around and setting you up like at Walmart HB different places like Fredericksburg Houston Friendswood and you would go there Thursday Friday Saturday and you would set up shop and you'd sell that's how you made money back for the place right so you got to stay there for free you got to eat for free you got to stay sober with a bunch of guys and then you go to all these different places and sell your crosses and then you come back Sunday turn in all your money and then you just rinse and repeat yeah well I met him in Fredericksburg he's seen me and he was like hey you have a podcast blah blah blah so I took some pictures with him super cool dude and then when he graduated from the program we drove out there to his graduation to watch and we got to hang out with him and then we went back to the facility that he was at and he showed us like all the wood shop dude it was dope yeah it was so fucking cool and then they had so many local businesses like donate food and stuff to them and what they would do is like all these and like all the grocery store full aid all of them pizza dude it was they they ate like kings yeah all kinds and then all the stuff that they would get every Sunday they would hand out to homeless people yeah so when we were there on Sunday when he graduated there was a line down the road yeah and it was people like they start getting in line at four and at five they hand out all the extra groceries that they have for the week that they weren't going to eat so homeless people would come by and it was actually really it was really cool once he graduated they hired him as the man as a manager he still works there right now do that so cool yeah he works there right now I'll find out what the name of it is he literally just texted me the other day asking if he can come on the podcast for sure and I said absolutely absolutely he's in Houston he's in Houston dude I'll have my mind yeah he's super cool dude super cool I got to meet his kids his he hadn't seen his kids in like a year yeah so they got to come to his graduation and it was like it was dope dude it was super super cool super humbling too yeah he's got a room twin size bed like a bookstand a fridge and like just the most humble and nicest dude yeah and just like dude this is this is what I need in life dude's a lot of um faith-based and state-funded programs get a bad rap right um uh I've done a lot of treatment yeah and but the most effective treatment episode that I had participated was Salvation Army yeah for sure really oh yeah yeah for sure and it wasn't I'm not a Christian in any way and uh it wasn't it was so pre-85 the you guys like you know the treatment industry right pre-85 it was called the field of recovery right and they used to say length of exposure to treatment dictates outcomes and then fast forward treatment industry it becomes industrialized a bunch of stuff happens they marry themselves to the 28-day model they marry themselves to the insurance companies who have a fiduciary obligation to maximize profits love that word right and um and then they drop two words and it completely changed the meaning but it still sounds very similar right so they used to say length of exposure to treatment dictates outcomes now all they say is exposure to treatment dictates outcomes right but it completely changes what you're telling people what you used to say the longer you interact with your treatment episode the higher the likelihood is that you'll stay sober right right now it's if you go to if you go to treatment you'll get sober and you know pre-85 it was they had a 76 success rate of people staying sober for a calendar year yeah right and then you move it into the industrialization of this thing this business of saving lives and um I mean outcomes have plummeted year over year over and you can look at the graphs and it's like we're at a 98% failure rate once all of like the math is done 98% of 98.5% of people will go to treatment an average of seven times before they get their first calendar year sober that's not even for the rest of their life right so the statistics go even farther than that so it's like faith-based programs are typically long-term programs right and it's like they get a bad rap because they're pushing Jesus and they're doing all this stuff and it's like yeah but for me at least it wasn't and I went Salvi Shnarvi is one of the biggest churches in the world right yeah it's also one of the biggest fleets in the country do you know that I mean it doesn't shock me when I went there this is where I learned that I love to work right and then I put a bunch of other stuff in place I built like a community of I've relapsed immediately right but it was like still like that moved the needle on the foundation of my recovery today even more than anything else because of the length of time that I was allowed to get yeah yeah his his program I'm gonna I'm gonna get Destiny in here to tell us what the name of it is I don't remember but you have to sign up for a year yeah you have to go there for a year there's no questions there's like no family no nothing you literally have to lock in for a year so on stuff like that you definitely have time attached to you right a lot of state funded or faith-based clients do have court stuff over their head right yeah so they're like you can do this yeah or you can do that yeah yeah yeah like the Salvation Army that I went to was in San Bernardino California I mean this is the the Wild West to this day everybody's strapped everybody's got four generations of their family living in their single house they got people in sheds living in the back like you walk in and people are living on piles of trash like dude it's just so crazy everybody's on meth everybody's got guns right and everybody's fucking freaking out dude yeah and it's like dude it's the Wild West and so everybody not not everybody but a large majority of people that I was in the Salvation Army with were trying to escape consequences trying to escape consequences or they were like already geared for like a spiritual walk with their recovery and so it's also free yeah what's the place that dude don't cover the mic I'm sorry the place that we went to when we watched a boy graduate what's the name of the facility he was in that he worked at when we went watch the guy that we met in Fredericksburg selling crosses selling crosses when we went to his facility what was the name of the facility do you remember will you bring me my phone please okay I figured you would know bro you didn't know either forget like I mean don't don't look at her like it's like she forgot to I mean I know I feel like called her for no reason yeah you kind of did I think there's a good is that was she in recovery yeah yeah oh okay well maybe she did yeah I remember daddy issues right right right she checked all the boxes okay no plug me in I'll do okay all right thank you I'll find the name of it but that's great it was it was so cool whenever I went and explored it yeah for sure I was like dude this is like I could see where at first I was like damn you gotta sign up for a year but then when I seen like in the different guys that are there so all guys you know you got I can only imagine like sitting in the wood shop doing this just I know how guys are when we get together just fucking hot you know hacking on each other stuff probably awesome yeah dude I mean I I've done a lot of treatment and I mean we're all like in a warehouse like hanging you're the first thing that you do like the first day you do the first day you get there at the Salvation Army you've got to go like hang up dirty clothes yeah right and it was like perfect yeah perfect job dude you immediately start bonding over how much you hate whatever you're doing yeah and then you you've got like you know and it's like you're there for a long enough time it's like you respect the people that have been there longer there's also like plenty of room 28 days just isn't enough to like do anything really no I agree with you there and so like you're talking about like it was a six month stay I I stayed for seven because I fucked up yeah and like they were like you got a year a month extension I was like fuck whatever yeah yeah you know like but uh by the time I left there there was like bonds that I had made in in sobriety that I had never made in my life up to that point you know like I started doing drugs when I was 13 yeah got kicked out at 16 and was running like after that right yeah I was like that's why I like I've never had a job I'm never because the life that I was living was like I'm like come on dude like I can just sell drugs which is how I ended up selling so much drugs at cops but yeah well listen you uh you say you you've never had a job but you have several I mean I mean you're talking about addiction payroll person well no not an addiction I'm talking about like right now no yeah no yeah for sure you're you're definitely carrying a lot of hats yeah you know so what I tell people is that I I put on the yoke of manhood when I got sober right like I started to do things that men do because I had examples of what men do right and it was like well okay you know I've got at the time it was just a three-year-old because remember I'd been in that program for three years and so I had a three-year-old that I was like disconnected from I have a girlfriend at the time who I married while I was in the program and it was like okay I'm starting to do things that men do but I've got dude my rap sheet I look like I'm a 60 year old convict yeah like what am I gonna do yeah right like how do I do this like at this point in my life you know like I'm at the time I'm 31 32 33 I'm like you know all my peers have gone through education started probably have like 10 years of their career under their belt you know maybe they got a house but maybe they don't yeah you got a family whatever it's like yep well I've got the family part what I don't have is the ability to like I have no professional acclaim to anything and I was like what up well like what am I like how do I translate what I've done in my life into something that a productive member of society does right like how do I do this and so what it what it ended up turning into is I I literally used my lived experience and I was like how do you monetize this like what what what do people with my experience do like oh they start treatment right I was like okay so I started a treatment center but then you know there's there's so much under the hood of the treatment industry that most people are just fucking oblivious to right it's like and I uh so I'm sober at the time but I was in a program for three years that I was anti-AA right anti-recovery so to speak it was like you're gonna turn your life around by doing what normal people do so I was like okay foundation of recovery not there but I've got sobriety right and I was like okay what am I gonna do how am I gonna do this and I started going to meetings and like trying to do that whole thing and and got to working steps and then started sponsoring people and I was going into rooms dude just fucking miserable dude like miserable leaving the rooms even more miserable right and I've got like two sponsors and like going to like dude at the time I didn't have a job so I was going to like three or four meetings a day right and I was like there's something wrong yeah like fundamentally there's something wrong and um and I you know I reached out to this dude that I have like a lot of respect for and he I kind of gave him like the rundown and he was like you're gonna fucking relapse like the writing's on the wall dude yeah if you go back to another room you're probably risking relapsing and I was like well fuck what do I do this guy he is the only navy seal in the history of the world that when he got kicked out for PEDs he picked up a fentanyl habit started selling coke like dude it was like his his life on the outside pitching decks like multi-million dollar decks for this uh weed company and then like was an executive at a construction company like got the jobs right got everything but it was just a fucking wreck inside and uh so when that all exploded in his face he was like in Hawaii um shout out Taylor Kavanaugh but uh he was in Hawaii with a shot-off shotgun talking about like if I blow my brains out my family's gonna have to clean up the mess he was like I could just go jump in this volcano right yeah yeah hey dude let it that's gonna be the worst fucking dude way to kill yourself I don't know he was like dude how epic like I jumped like that's how he ended it all he jumped in a volcano jumped in a volcano dude and this was like a high perform he was like a JTAC sniper for the seals yeah right like this some of his stories are just like a me he woke up one day in Iraq like on us in a sniper's nest and the sun started coming up and like the prayer call started and he was like what the fuck am I doing like dude just insane right but high performer fucking drug addict right so when he got kicked out for drugs ultimately he was like just hit the ground running started stacking addictions and when that exploded he was like you know what I'm either gonna get my shit together or I'm gonna kill myself and so he got a payday loan for 500 bucks put himself on a plane to France and joined the French foreign legion for five years whoa dude the only seal in the history of the world that after he left the seals went to the French foreign legion dude that's insane yeah yeah what a cool guy I want to meet him he's he's amazing and so he built this empire just off helping men right yeah he monetized it he figured out how to make it work and so like this is who I reached out to and I was like dude just fucking tell me like I'm sober and I'm miserable tell me what to do like just yeah tell me what I don't want to jump in the volcano yeah dude and it was like the place where I was at I was like I know I'm gonna relapse I was already contemplating and planning how I was just gonna take all the money that I had I had like maybe 15 grand in the bank and I was like I am just gonna fly to San Diego and just get lost party and just no just go I'm gonna fly to San Diego be homeless in San Diego for a while and then go get lost in TJ and then just end up dead down there and I was already making these plans TJ T wanna yeah okay yeah yeah come on and so I was already like making these plans and I tell this guy like this is where I'm at dude and he was like check it out dude first of all quit acting like a bitch right go to sleep this is at like 10 p.m. right he's like go to sleep wake up in the morning go to the gym and call me and I haven't stopped since yeah right but then also what I did was I found peer support right and the peer support world has opened a recovery world to me that is magical right my whole recovery really evolved and like who I am fundamentally evolved after I put those two things in place it was like Taylor's mentorship working out and peer support and dude it's like my whole life I tell people all the time I'm like in the backseat of my own life like something is in control of this I don't really know what it is like we can call it God the universe whatever like me and my God have a very unique relationship but I'm in the backseat of my own life and as long as I don't fuck shit up like you don't jump in that driver seat dude for sure right it's like as long as I don't like fuck this up like I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be good no matter what happens like I'm gonna be good well with that man let's introduce you for sure like we definitely the longest we've ever just this is the coolest one yeah like this is like us in a nutshell man is just getting here and chopping it up I hope you've I mean you've watched us a little bit yeah and but ladies and gentlemen man Matt Handy everybody what's up dude thank you guys for having me on dude no thank you so much for coming yeah came a long way you got a lot of shit going on I do you have a recovery center as you've mentioned what's it called harmony grove behavioral health and where is it it's out of Houston right now it's the outpatient levels of care but we are 90 days from opening a residential nice yeah dude congratulations on that thank you appreciate that and you have a podcast I do what's that called it's called my last relapse all right but you had you said there was like two other ones or something that you're doing no we have live series on like as part of the show got it yeah and so I have we do like weekly episodes live series and shorts well dude we're honored to have you on dude I like I said dude I appreciate you guys have me on this is this is the best I love this conversation and you are producing some movies or something right yeah me and my brother got into this thing like I still not really sure where he met this guy but it's a direct he's a director for short horror films dude yeah speaking my love language right here dude yeah he loves horror movies little tattoos and shit yeah yeah yeah we I mean we talked about it a little bit yeah it's this uh you know it's it the horror genre is interesting right it's uh very eclectic in the like the the the breadth of subjects that they cover right well it's like it's shock value there's a lot of it's just a ton of that yeah a ton of I mean I where it really started for me in the horror genre was the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the exorcist so wait the original one the original exorcist the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre my watching it when I was seven wow I should not have been watching for sure movie is reckless so what do you think of the Jessica Buellen I mean they were okay like I'm real good about shutting my brain off to what she's hot dude she's so good looking but like I'm good with shutting my brain off and taking a movie for what it is for sure and especially in horror genres they're all ripping off for sure the same thing I mean it's rinse and repeat over and over again yeah but you love it right it's just how many different ways can you kill somebody is ultimately what it all comes down to how inventive can you get with this right what do you think of the saws very very creepy dude that was a new inventive way of of fucking killing people for sure for sure um and they made a lot of them dude yeah it became a franchise like and it had a household name yeah I didn't realize how many there were I think there's like 10 there's 10 of them now you know it's funny is we we rent movies all the time or we buy movies right off of um fucking uh Fandango yeah yeah and now we have this box that we bought where we get all the free shit now so we'll find nothing else but I was looking at our Fandango the last night and like if you look at the last 40 movies that we bought they're all horror films I was telling Destiny I was like dude we're fucked up like there's no funny movies there's no it's all like kill me kill me kill me well to be fair they don't make funny movies are my favorite they were great they were the newest one have you seen the newest one no it's like the resolution final destination oh yeah those are like in the last six months I don't like to I don't classify those as so much as horror no it's just more or less like gore shit it's just gore yeah like but dude I was a preteen when the first one came out dude it was amazing my daughter wanted to watch the newest one and we were like okay she made it seven minutes she was like I'm out I'm out yeah man the uh the horror genre is it's really cool and the like I was saying Texas chainsaw massacre to me looked like it was made for like 10 bucks right if I watch it now as an adult when I watch it as a kid terrifying but what terrified me so much about it and what I do now I still take breaks when I watch it because it like it just is like oh god you feel like it's a snuff film for sure I mean it's grainy and the camera's bouncing around is they're running after the kids you know it looks like that shit is like really really happening you know and it's a good point and it wasn't but I'm like oh fuck man putting that chick up on the hook and you're just oh yeah it gets me every time but that's so awesome dude like I commend you for that and good luck with it I mean so I can't say that I'm like a horror film so like Planet Horror is that the no no no no what's the Quentin Tarantino something planet you know it's like the chick with the machine gun leg oh yes yes uh uh dude you're gonna it's gonna drive me nuts red dude do you know no uh the Quentin Tarantino they were comics they were yeah they were comic books yeah and it was like Planet Horror it's something like that now hold on yeah dude go ahead and look it up it's fine Planet Terror Planet Terror Planet Terror so like that was kind of like my first like I was also raised Mormon yeah we didn't have like rated R movies in the house yeah and those are the rated R movies that we did have was like the Patriot and the Gladiator and it was like there's no sex in it there was no like horror is very sexy there's a lot of sexy horror right and uh I mean because it's porn it really is really right it really is I mean it's shocking it everything about it yeah like and it got worse over time like I feel like um so I'm a big Halloween fan oh yeah Myers yeah and um and watching that as a youngster too I speaking of documentaries like going on these deep dives like it made me disrespect now Friday the 13th and that whole franchise yeah because that producer you know he's wearing the hat and he's douchey glasses he's like yeah I made this movie we just saw Halloween we made the same plot changed up the killer and added a lot more tits and sex in it like and if you really watched Friday the 13th that's exactly what it is dude it's like all they did was add so much more sex yeah so what do you think about nightmare on Elm street I dig it yeah because and it was terrifying as a child but as an adult like I like your slasher to be like a little charming yeah and Freddy like kind of was the first one to have like a charm to him like yeah you know I'm your new boyfriend you know shit like that that was always like really cool to me yeah was like oh I kind of like this guy that's one of those horrors that has a really good story too yeah very what I liked about it was I think it was part three yeah it was the first one where like the person the victim actually had like a little power they learned how to do it yeah where where they had like magical powers where they actually got after the Adderall stuff working yeah they had afflicted a little bit of pain on him you know like when scream came out the killer was always getting his ass whipped yeah but I think it was nightmare on Elm street part three yeah where they actually had powers in their dreams where they could like fucking electrocute him and shit like that dream masters or something yeah I think it was dream masters it was the first one where the killer is actually getting his ass whipped a little bit too before he finally kills yeah that's what I liked about it it's like oh the tables turned a little bit the recent one where have you seen the most recent one yeah so it was the most there could have been another one I don't know but the most recent one that I saw was on Netflix and it was the guy that was in that played in the watchman he played yes it was that guy he was also Kelly leak in the bad news bears did you ever see the bad news bears the baseball yeah the baseball the kid baseball movie the old Kelly the old bad or the newest no the original Kelly now with no no no no no no I didn't see that one so the one I didn't know that the one with the walker so he was a kid yeah he was a kid in that movie that is crazy he is now like he was playing Freddy yeah and did a bang up job that dude's a great actor that dude is a great actor what was his name in the Watchmen it's don't remember it's that it's that therapy it's like psychol psychological there row yeah Rorschach yeah dude that was the first time I was exposed to that guy yeah realize that it was him or whatever I was like he was in small children too played a played a like a child molester well in small children dude he plays like a really good bad guy he plays a lot of dark roles yeah I mean in Freddy in that last nightmare in Elm Street I was like what dude he didn't last any of those kids yeah fucking burn like what oh my gosh where's the real guy no wonder why he was pissed yeah dude yeah I'm chopping people up to matter of fact like dude this guy's vindicated who we can we all like give a round of applause yeah and then it like it totally destroys the whole like this guy's a bad guy yeah molester I was like actually he was a wrongly convicted man that like they held court in the streets yeah it's like I I've been the victim of that yeah right yeah it happens a lot so man we've gone on this deep dive with you already yeah just in here talking but like I always ask how long have you been sober on April 14th it'll be two years again nice yes and so my show is called my last relapse yeah because my last relapse was after three and a half years of sobriety okay right and it was the most pivotal 11 days of my life and nothing happened like I mean there was no like bottom I didn't lose anything there wasn't any like real consequences so to speak and but dude I multiple prison terms years homeless alienation for my family alienation from society like dude all of the negative consequences that a 17 year year heroin addiction will get you I've got lost a family lost a marriage lost a kid like all of that yeah there was nothing more pivotal than that 11 days where nothing happened really mm-hmm how so so I you know people always talk about like relapse isn't a part of recovery right I was like depends on who's story it is well also it's like that may have been true a hundred years ago when they had like a hundred percent success rate right but that's just not true yeah but that's quote in quote though huh that's quote in quote like I mean who knows right like you know who's no no no you're talking about the hundred percent success yeah no they it's pretty well documented the first thousand people that did a a got sober and stayed so yeah okay yeah that you had you actually had to be welcomed into the group yeah they just didn't open their doors like you had to be welcomed in and they had to be invited in yeah so then there's like the anonymity part to where it was like you know they say that anonymity is the the foundation of all their their principles right and the reason why they did that was because they didn't want somebody to reflect badly so if like you know when it first started it was a lot of prominent people well Wall Street people politicians doctors dr. Bob yeah and it was like if they relapse they're gonna reflect badly on us so they implemented anonymity to stop that from happening right well fast forward today everybody that's in recovery talks about it publicly knows that we're in recovery right one thousand right and it's like dude well they always say recover out loud so that's recover out loud right so I've actually had a couple people you asked me about like do people call back or whatever I've had I've had two people that recorded the episode and called me back and said you know what my my sponsor said I can't do this because it's breaking my animity yeah and then I like go on their Facebook and it's like you post about all day long time dude 2000 followers a hundred percent of them know that you're in recovery I lost a sponsor because of this podcast really yep he wanted me he felt like this was against all the traditions I mean and but we don't ever we don't ever we very rarely will say the two letters mm-hmm right we we we try to stay away from all that yeah and it was crazy because he was a terrible sponsor like he never like checked in on me or this or that or vice versa but whenever he found out I was doing this it was like oh you're a terrible person is the way he made me feel mm-hmm and like the the messages that he was sending me that day I was like bro you never like cared this much about my sobriety like he was like you're gonna relapse and you're gonna do this this is how you know Hollywood actors once they open up their anonymity and they they let it be known they always relapse you're gonna go down the same road and he was like if you if you're gonna continue the podcast like who Matthew Perry and people like oh dude what about like Brad Pitt yeah what about all about Robert Downey Jr. yeah and uh celebrated 17 years like last week and he posting all about it he was one of those people that he sponsored a lot of people and he's probably done a lot of good in the program for sure it's inevitable but I felt like he was he was also being very judgmental for sure like you're doing something that I don't like and I hope it doesn't work out for you it's kind of how I felt mm-hmm he was so he was like you know if you're gonna do it I just can't be your sponsor and I was like bro I don't even want you as a fucking sponsor anymore yeah and that that was literally I think the one of my last sponsors I kind of gave up on the whole sponsor thing from there but yeah I literally he didn't want to be my sponsor anymore because of we were starting a podcast yeah yeah I get a lot of backlash for my messaging around the program mm-hmm but I will never I will never like bash the program right yeah the program's in the book right like going to meetings and all that stuff that's kind of like extracurricular that's community mm-hmm right that's like fellowshiping that's all that that's all part of the program but the work is in the book mm-hmm and so like I certified peer support specialist right yeah and I do a lot of peer support work and I tell everybody dude this is to prepare you this should be your first lily pad in your journey of recovery I'm gonna help you realize a bunch of stuff I'm gonna give you the language we're gonna prepare you to step into those rooms and I'm not telling you to go in there and become an a a member right tell you go to do the work mm-hmm right because that is a clear cut path you know who William White is I know okay so William White was the director of the recovery research Institute for 40 years right this dude is like a pillar of the recovery history of America right written books on it ethics books history books like just a bunch of like a wealth of knowledge has come out of this man and he was like he is severely anti 12-step model mm-hmm like what I mean by that is treatment should not have adopted the 12-step model because you're doing two things that are fundamentally anti a a right you are now making something that's supposed to be voluntary mandatory and you're attaching consequences to it mm-hmm right so it's like if you know the insurance companies are like in order to justify more treatment we want to know what step they're on how many meetings are going right and if they got a sponsor like dude that should not be happening mm-hmm right and so he was like he's super anti what the treatment industry has evolved into mm-hmm but a huge proponent of the work right he says it in the history of addiction treatment there has never been anything more successful and probably never will be then the then the 12th step doing the work right right but then he breaks that down into like you know there's like theory and philosophy of 12-step there's also theory and philosophy of recovery like what is recovery right right how do you define recovery right like when is somebody in recover like how do you know when somebody's in recovery right right you there there's these philosophy like philosophical points that have to be made before somebody can accept whatever it is you're trying to feed them right but a lot of what has like a Bill and Bob showed up today and walked into a random room they'd be like what what is the fuck is going on no doubt right so like it is evolved into this thing that it was never supposed to become mm-hmm and a lot you know they say principles before personalities well the problem is the majority of it is dogmatic because of personality right right it's like you got to do it this way you've got to do you know that you've got in pro lot of ego in that well so yeah dude these are addicts right you give them like power and prestige yeah and it's like we're in this situation because of our ego and now you're gonna inflate this person's ego and give them access to sex and people and influence and it's like what do you think's gonna happen yeah and then you got all these people that talk about all aa's cultie and it's like no the there are rooms that are called there's rooms I've been I've been to good rooms and I've been like oh dude for sure yeah especially being a drug addict and not an alcoholic oh dude that was so dude yeah yeah I found a home in the original program mm-hmm because you know throughout my prison what I learned was that history is massively important yeah the history of your gang the history of the organization like if you don't really know the history of these things like you're kind of just a nobody right like but if you get shown this stuff and you're like privy to this information like that knowledge is gold it's power it is it's power right and so it's like what I learned you know I got inducted into the programming and do deep dove into the history of the program mm-hmm and found out that it's like that the average person picks up those two books and maybe as Bill sees it yeah there's nine other core parts of the literature that most people don't even know exist yeah and the reason why is because it goes into depth about like their experimentation around like seances and like spirituality LSD different things I do yeah all of them and they were they were on this path where they were like we don't give a fuck what works yeah we're gonna find whatever and also it's like it was the exact same time as like the sexual revolution and like all this stuff's going on and everything dude everything everything and and so when you inject like the truth of the history into it it kind of sheds a different light on the the philosophy of what the originators had when it was like we don't care as long as you get so yeah as long as you don't fuck about including using other substances to get off this right and it was like oh so you know people's interpretation of this they've systematically blocked out parts of the literature mm-hmm where it's like you go into any random room there's pamphlets like everybody has seen these pamphlets but nobody knows what's in it there's one pamphlet pamphlet it's called the P11 pamphlet and it's medication and outside outside issues right and it goes into detail about how sponsors deal with sponsors that are on medications right and I think like in the the very end of it it goes to thine own self be true mm-hmm right and so the signaling is like nobody should define what other people's recovery is right right everybody should make a decision about what their recovery is and when it started and why it is and all that right it's like yeah I can't tell you if you're you're in it how do I know if you're in recovery yep how do you know if I'm in recovery right and then it brings up like today you've got this whole California sober thing I get into fucking heated debates with people about this all the time so I'm the kind of addict that can't smoke weed I just can't every time I've smoked weed I ended up on a needle yeah right and so I just don't even want to play with fire right it's like the life that I have today that I've been gifted today is like do I want to like take a chance on that right it's like just really not worth it right yeah but there are there's people that can so many people out there that are California sober yeah for sure and you know those people are stigmatized in the rooms and a lot of it really has to do with like it isn't your path and so it's wrong right right and for in order for me to feel justified in my path I have to make the next person do it exactly like I did it and then if it works for them they got to make somebody else do it and it's like you are self-validating by dogmatic belief systems and practices right it's like dude get into the book the book says nothing about like having to write 10 pages the book says nothing about like having to have 20 people on your men's list at least right it's like yeah that's all you that's all like you trying to do yeah and then there's like the dishonest currency right it's like the hypothetical that I give is based on something that I actually saw but there was a there's a guy that's got five years of recovery right and he's got 20 sponsors right but all the sponsors are relapsing like he can't keep his shit together he's like 13 stepping people or whatever but he's got five years of sobriety and 20 sponsors yeah and then there's the guy that's got two years of recovery and three sponsors but the guy's doing the deal right right but he doesn't got five years and he doesn't have 20 sponsors so like that guy's kind of put higher on the pedestal right right right and it's like but all of that dude's sponsors are they're all staying sober right and he's really working the deal yeah you should be judged based on if you're gonna be judged right let's judge you based on your results rather than well I've got 20 sponsors and all of them have relapsed and constant like it's just a circus of like but dude I got 20 sponsors right and it's like and I've got five years sober bitches yeah yeah and it's like dude so it's like there's dishonest currency right and so I talk about this a lot publicly but the bottom line of it all is like the the spirit of the program is not in the meetings right the spirit of the program is in the book and for anybody that is entering dude fuck that dude for anybody that is alive they would benefit from a 12-step program yeah I say it all the time yeah I need to do it so most people live their lives in such a way so we can't we're coming from the problem towards the solution right like I don't know your background too well right but it's like so people like us have a different lens on life in general right we are capable of willing to do and have done things that the majority of the world would never do right so we're never even think to do dude and it like if it is ever a viable option like they think they fucked their life up yeah it's like oh dude I would never smoke crack with a fucking prostitute that has AIDS and then share a needle with her like yeah but I would right yeah did I mention a fucker too dude it was like so we are coming from the problem towards the solution and the majority of the world live their life in the solution and try to avoid the problem and all the problems yeah and so the lens that we are looking through is fundamentally different yeah right because just because of the things that we have like we have already tested our limits and once we find out that our limit was actually just kind of like a road sign that was like oh yeah look at that yeah it's like keep going oh yeah as hard as possible like full stop into that brick wall and we're gonna crash through that one too and it's yeah but and and so the majority of the world don't have a chance for introspection on the level that 12 steps afford you right right right and then if you're being brought through that work with somebody who's done it with somebody else who's done it like dude those are all generational things that are inherited right like the techniques the lessons like when you sit down with a sponsor that has never brought somebody through a fifth step you can tell right when you sit down with a sponsor that has brought a hundred people through and sat in on a bunch of others you can tell yeah right and so it's like you have there are inherited traditions traditions right and so it's like you know there's dishonest currency in the action right it's really like it should be merit yeah I'm a huge believer in a lot of things that probably most everything that you just said because I always say you got to find your own sober for sure right I can't tell you I can tell you what my sober looks like yeah I still drink from time to time okay I can't do any fucking drugs whatsoever I know that if I do one drug I'm gonna burn it out of the ground for I enjoy meth way too much right but some people would say well you're not sober because you drink well I've never claimed to be an alcoholic I've never been an alcoholic I'm a drug addict right now some people can smoke weed and not burn their life to the ground sure if that if you can function on smoking weed and still be a good dad a good employee a good family a good everything do whatever the fuck you want to do yeah I know people that can still do cocaine and still function for sure well I know a lawyer that's their own I'm a huge believer in that one of my one of our friends Christy she's probably one of the best sponsors a girl kid a woman could ever have and that's one thing that she always says to each their own yeah whatever it is that is that gets you through it and whatever it is that gets you to be a good person in society yeah if you can do this or you can do that whatever if you have to take Suboxone not to do heroin like there's a lot of people that judge on that too and as I've looked in I used to be one of those like man you shouldn't probably be on Suboxone for five years or ten years but if that keeps you from going and doing heroin then who am I to say that that that you know I mean there there's different there in you know I don't know everything about that but there's things that I'm a huge believer that I can't tell you what your sobriety should look like you can figure that out on your own I can tell you what mine looks like but that doesn't mean that you have to follow all the same paths that I do for sure just like I won't have a sponsor that's never been a drug addict I couldn't do it like a sponsor that's just an alcoholic is not gonna understand some of the reasons why we shoot heroin with prostitutes that have AIDS that's not gonna make any sense to you so I really can't listen to what like I can't tell a homeless person what it's like to be homeless because I've never been there yeah I'm fucking I don't know what it's like to live on fucking Skid Row or sleeping at tent and shit yeah not less I'm camping you know so yeah I think that that's one of the biggest things that people mess up I think in the program is they try to tell you how to do everything yeah and every it's to each their own you got to figure out your own path like you can take suggestions yeah and you can make it your own it's kind of like in sales right I can take what he says and what you saying what you say but I've got to make it my own for it to work for me otherwise I'm just using someone else's blueprint and that blueprint might not work for me yeah it's it's the dogmatic tendency to do to propagate what works for you right and the the whole like you can go in any room in America and somewhere framed in there it's gonna say to that I don't tell it to be true right yeah and the I think the so what I tell people all the time is my goal is to get you from a degenerate piece of shit to a productive member of society yeah right like and whatever that means I don't give a fuck like yeah my if if if you were a piece of shit father and derelict in all of your responsibilities let's get you being a productive member of society first like get you foundationally set to become a good father right and if you smoke weed on the weekends like just cuz I can't doesn't mean that you can't yeah yeah right and it's like my whole goal is to you know the peer support philosophy you know what C car is no and I want you to talk more about peer support because most people have probably never even heard for sure for sure so they I've heard like fellow shipping right yeah but pure support something a little different your support is a whole different whole different yeah yeah it's and I a lot of people try to frame it as a replacement for the 12-step programs and I I I think it's fundamentally you're missing the mark on what peer support is if it's supposed to replace 12 stuff because it can't I just there are things that are happening in the work of the 12-step program that peer support can never touch right right but peer supports core philosophy is you're in recovery when if you say you are yeah and everything springs from that right and so what it does is it takes instead of an abstinence based program you can now go to the person under the bridge and say you can be in recovery today if you start working towards it right and so the biggest hurdle for me entering recovery is putting a needle down and I'm not gonna put the needle down to go be a part of this fellowship of people that don't like me anyway right right and so it's like what I always tell people is this should be the first lily pad that people land on to prep them for abstinence and an abstinence based program to do the work of the 12-step program and then they decide where their life goes after that right yeah there there are my belief is that there's two people like archetypes that end up in those rooms right it's people who need it and people who it's become their lifestyle right and the people who it becomes their lifestyle there is a divergence you can actually see the people that are working the program and helping other people because at the bottom line at the end of the day for everybody in recovery we all owe a debt yeah for sure right and if you are not fulfilling that obligation to that debt there is a high for me at least there's a high likelihood that I'll relapse for sure and the only way to service that debt is to help other people give it away yeah and so you can see the divergence where there's like the people that are in there for the altruistic like literally selfless act of helping somebody else and then somebody else who's just hiding in the rooms right and it's like that dude that's in the back of the room that's got 30 years sober and he's like well I didn't drink today so that's a win like dude you're 30 years sober why the fuck is that a win right if you're not like doing 12-step calls and like whatever it's like that was your win today you need to evolve like there needs to be so like especially as men right like I believe fundamentally nobody should be able to tell a man that they can or cannot do anything if they understand the consequences yeah like if I choose to go get high tomorrow understanding the consequences that is on me yeah right it's when people don't understand the consequences and they're ignorantly making decisions that's when you have an obligation to step in and be like dude what are you doing right but other than that it's like we should be able to do whatever we want right as adults really I speak from a man's perspective because that's my lived experience right yeah so there's also like the obligation side of like manhood where it's like our fundamental obligation is to provide and protect and it's like I know I know a lawyer that smokes meth daily am I ever gonna do this what I ever who am I to tell this person that that's bad for them right there's health ramifications and there's obviously like other things that are at play right where like maybe you shouldn't smoke meth every day right but like dude if that works for you it's working for you whatever like did I know it's self be true who am I to judge right yeah but peer support sounds pretty dope so peer support as a model is I mean it's taking over everything right every court system in Texas has peer support specialists assigned to their clients right so when you go into court you're gonna get a public defender you're gonna get a case manager and now you're getting a peer support specialist right Copa was implemented in Colorado in 2021 and there has been a 33% drop in overdoses year over year and they're attributing it to peer support right I mean I mean it peer support as a model has been around for 20 something years C car was like the first gold standard a lot of the philosophy there is kind of outdated but today what you're actually looking at is a situation where the treatment industry can uncuff themselves from the 12 step model and give back what it was supposed to be originally right so now you're not attaching now it's a voluntary thing right and all of my peer support work is to push people into the work of the 12 step model but peer support as a whole is what it's telling people ultimately is that you can be in recovery no matter where you're at in your journey right and that kicks the door wide open for anybody that is struggling with substance abuse anybody that's struggling with mental health anybody that's struggling in general to be able to start working towards higher function in their personality right and so it's like do I think that peer support is the answer to addiction absolutely not I think it's a multifaceted issue I think a lot of this is really when you boil it down comes down to like family dynamics right and so it's like that's probably especially in today's day and age with like the only fans revolution and all this stuff that shit's just gonna get worse but so if we can't fix fix it at like the root of the problem which is ultimately if you guys there's a book called addiction as an attachment disorder and really what it's saying is that people use addiction in lieu of of healthy attachment right where it's like you get to now substitute your unhealthy attachments with the substance that will never lie to you that'll never abandon you that'll never beat you that will never sexually assault you and it is so consistent right it's like I know for sure if I go and pick up some heroin what it's gonna do for me right right and people find peace and solace and continuity in their life in these substances because they have these core attachment wounds that typically happen in in childhood right right and so it's like building a tat everybody's got an attachment style right and so it's like going back and fixing those attachment styles and making them healthy and not just healthy but like contribute to the quality of life right if you can fix that then a lot of people are having success switching their paradigm from this disease model to an attachment disorder dude it's so effective it's it's amazing right and so it's like there's all of these things that are happening in conjunction today in the treatment world that I think five years from now I think you'll start seeing a rebound on outcomes it's gonna be amazing because you know just in the time that I've been sober yeah sober for four years okay there's been so many you know the stigma with drug addiction was so bad for like nobody wanted to talk about it for sure right and now like you have people that are willing to talk about it and people that are willing to tell their stories and not get sober and run away from it they bring it to the forefront they said they'll talk about their heroin addiction or you know this or that you have people that were never addicts yeah that are willing to sit in on podcast and learn about it and become a part of the podcast and then like get a whole different side of it right because he says it all the time you either are an addict or you know someone who is so there's we're all it we're all in it in some way shape or form yeah they did a big study and they found out that every American adult is either one or two degrees away from an active addict so that's either a family member or a friend dude I found that out firsthand yeah we started doing this like how deep seated in the shame of even being an addict and going through the recovery process but this thing started going out on the internet and my family started figuring it out and I mean I had a family member fucking hey dude I really love what you're doing I made your sober I'm like what yeah you know like yeah fucking no idea yeah but to me that showed me everything right was like the more you talk about it the more comfortable somebody is gonna be coming to you about it right and that's what's open my eyes the most yeah and we've had people just like yourself that aren't really like they're they're not they're abstract in the way that they went about their recovery yeah very yeah you know middle finger up to the traditions yeah of it you know and they did it and I love that yeah even though I might not agree with it or most of the world might not agree with it I tell people all the time dude like don't do what I did right like there's a well-worn path follow the well-worn path right don't don't go out there and just think you're gonna like statistically it isn't possible right right like it's just it's a better idea to do what works for millions and millions and millions of people than to try to go make your own way out there yeah the the biggest problem is if you go out there on your own you're missing a core component of what recovery is so treatment happens in facilities right recovery happens in community right William White said that in the history of addiction treatment never has rehab gotten anybody sober right it's like that that starts the second you hit the door right so if you go out there on your own dude if you don't have a community what so another thing that peer support does is it talks about the quality of recovery mm-hmm like what is the quality of this person's recovery like versus like what are what stepper like how many sponsors it's like no no no what is the quality of the recovery yeah is this person's like life fundamentally better for the path that they went down you know the the treatment industry has one metric that they measure success on it's like how long are you staying sober right the peer support world has 12 different domains that they measure success through right and it's like just the most off the wall stuff that when you hear it like oh yeah that makes sense it's like yeah improving quality improving the quality of relationships with providers and the client right reducing recidivism reducing stigma like there's all of these things that they are quantifying the peer support specifically is doing that the rest of the recovery world is kind of doing right but it's like the only thing they care about is how long are they saying it's over yeah yeah how long you've been sober yeah it's um it's there's so many different ways to do this oh yeah and like you've heard of people in the rooms like you I've listened to people talk in the rooms where they're like five years sober or 30 years sober and they sound fucking miserable yeah like this person is on the verge of a fucking relapse and from listening to them are you know when I got sober I was going to like three meetings a day right and it wasn't so much like when I got out of rehab I was scared because in rehab I'm safe I'll be safe and yeah that's that's very hard to realize that 30 days is pretty unless I snuck shit in with me that 30 days is pretty simple yeah in my opinion just for me but when I got out and I didn't go to sober living now I had to engulf myself with people in recovery for sure and that we're also doing the same thing that I was so I was catching like meetings every day three meetings sometimes right and then I it would get to where my last meeting ends at nine we go in fellowship eat I get home at 1030 I'm ready for bed now if I can get off meth for 30 days I'm tired as fuck so go to sleep and then I rinse and repeat and then one of my buddies was like did you only get sober just to go to meetings right and that was a big question for me big deal that's a big question because no I got sober to go enjoy life yeah right recovery should so I think recovery's mission is to give your life back or give you a life that you never had right yeah right so and that's kind of what I was like I've watched people go to three different meetings for 10 years right I've seen them we've seen them in the but that wasn't what my recovery I wanted it to look like yeah maybe that's what works for them and that's fine everybody has a different recovery sure but I wanted to be a better dad I want to be a better family member I want to be a better employee a better friend I wanted to be able to show up for people that I love yeah and I wanted to so mine was I'm gonna catch a meeting here and there whenever I feel like it like when I feel like I'm spiritually unfit I definitely need to go catch a meeting or go to church mm-hmm but I just want to be a better member of society for sure and I want to enjoy life that's what sobriety for recovery for me is yeah yeah yeah I mean it's the quality right sure the quality of the recovery is what should be measured and and a lot of I mean really a lot of people how do you measure the quality of somebody's recovery other than how they're showing up in life right it's like I know so my I have a somebody who's close to me that was in the rooms like heavy into WIPA mm-hmm and he like built this core group of friends that I was like start off like 20 of them and some overdosed and some just went back out or whatever and then they ended up with like 10 years later this core group of like 10 people mm-hmm right and people like you can inject random people in there or whatever but it was like this core group and they kind of all looked at each other one day and they were like what are we doing like what other than this like what are we gonna do with our life mm-hmm right and so they all kind of like left the program and now it's like dude they're they've got careers they've got families homes and it was like that's what recovery did for them right right that's what that that early investment into themself via the rooms gave to them right and it's like I think that there is a misconception like fundamentally because it's a program right like it's it's a pro there's programming right there's like indoctrination there's it you know and it's like people these things get like a bad connotation but it's like this is what's saving lives mm-hmm right but what's the exit plan right right and it's like oh no you this is for life now and it's like you got if you don't continue this like dude it's like people leave the rooms and you're gonna die you're gonna die yeah I'm afraid you're gonna die yeah like bro that is not what you want to fucking tell somebody no my shoes dude and and and let's be real like about this like other than like this whole fentanyl fucking fiasco that's going on like how many people go out there and just die before fentanyl not many not many right it was like when they go out there now people say I don't got another run in me what you really probably don't have is another recovery in you yeah right and so it's like you can play with that fire mm-hmm and ultimately I understand why people leave the rooms at like dude that they did this thing in Houston where it was a long-term sobriety meeting because after five years you are just as likely to return to addiction as somebody who's never been addicted right and so it's like statistically you're in the clear right spiritually you should have these fundamental building blocks in place but they're fucking human yeah right it's like you still got human ish and now for somebody who's lost their coping mechanism you still have problems that pop up in life dude and it's like some of these problems seem insurmountable in the moment right and it's like so they started these long-term recovery meetings so that people in long-term recovery could openly share about whatever they're going through because they were scared to share it in front of newcomers that makes a lot of sense I mean it does right it makes a lot of sense but you're supposed to be the pillar right for sure but what kind of signaling does that give to the newcomer that like after five years you have to get your shit in order I was just about to ask dude it's like no share that shit dude like like one of the do you guys know why in the Bible it says don't cast your pearls before swine no yeah I don't know if this is like so pigs will eat anything yeah right so it's but pearls don't digest this is just like some trip that I had one time I was like it's because you got to dig back in their shit to get it back yeah right and it's like well are you casting your pearls before swine in your recovery it's like once you're in recovery your story belongs to everybody right right and it's like now if you're like hoarding that story what is the you know I get backlash about this all the time I tell people it's like if you're gonna enter recovery and not help people just stay using because you're fucking pointless to us yeah what the whole point of it what I was taught is you owe a debt yeah and your debt is to pay this thing forward yeah go help as many people as you possibly can yeah I always say like God pulled me out of the fire not so I could just run off it so I can go back in the fire and start pulling people out with him yeah and that's it and if I lose that in recovery if I lose that paying it forward then I could be fucked quick for sure dude I that's that's a relapse in my opinion waiting to happen for sure I lose sight of what I'm feel like I'm supposed to pay back yeah that's a relapse waiting to happen I mean it there there comes a I don't know if you feel it I you probably do right it's like I feel the debt right it's like if I'm not helping somebody or do it like so a big part of my recovery today is what you don't want to oh it's special dude most of the time when I don't want to do something I get the most benefit out of it yeah right and it's like I've told people before like how many times have you felt like shit whatever like shit was like you were up against the wall you were gonna relapse or whatever how many times when you're in that position did you help somebody else and immediately get relief every fucking time it's it's a tried and true this isn't a math equation right like you can it's it's shitty situation plus help somebody else equals relief yeah across the board always true no matter what so it's like how can you enter recovery like how can you be pulled out of that and just fucking dip right it's like so dude if if you're doing that you know and I get all these I get all these people like commenting like dude is a selfish program and it's like you only got sober for yourself and it was like actually dude I got sober because I already lost a kid already lost a marriage and I mean dude it was my pattern repeated over and over right like yeah I found out that she was pregnant a week after I got arrested didn't meet that kid till she was three and my parents adopted her yeah I get arrested for this bank robbery and it was a month before that that my girlfriend told me she was pregnant I was like this shit's gonna happen again and my whole lot I'm the oldest of ten kids my whole life all I wanted to do was be a dad right and I was like every single time I get this opportunity I fuck it up dude yeah and so it was like so finally yeah like I'm in recovery and my wife gets pregnant and I'm sober through I'm there for the whole pregnant I'm there for the delivery and I've got a four month old and it's like the gifts of recovery are contingent upon your obligation yeah like if you are not fulfilling your obligation then you are not earning the things that you get in life and therefore they are subject to being taken yeah right and most of the time it isn't taken we're giving it away right and it's like dude I'm very very cautious about my intentionality with what I'm doing like I am very very intentional yeah the calling you self is kind of a weird thing just you have a fucking treatment center yeah people yeah like and I can tell very clearly that that's your intention yeah so my my intention around this okay we're gonna get into it you want to get into it let's fucking go dude so the the treatment industry fundamentally is sick currently right like everybody how many how many people do you know that have been to treatment and stayed sober forever after it'd be a better question probably to ask Mike then so I know I have my theory yeah the state funded ones oh yeah in my opinion are fucking trash okay I went to a rehab that somebody opened themselves yeah and they didn't have to go by the guidelines and all that shit like they people donated money yeah and I wait well I shouldn't say that they're all trash I shouldn't say that my opinion if I would have went to a state funded rehab I don't know that it would have worked for me okay the place that I went to it was just a group of guys and we literally just it was just a place where you could just recover for sure where you could get how long was it I went for 30 days okay now I wouldn't went for more if I didn't have my daughter for sure 60 days 90 days that after seven days I stopped counting the days down because I was having so much fun yeah it was like summer camp and it was with the best group of guys like you mentioned bonds that you created for sure I created bonds and I've lost a couple of these guys along the way but the bonds that I created in them are gonna be for life yeah I mean it's I could call any one of them now and they would pick up same with me yeah but I think that he closed the place down shortly after because of the donations and everything yeah and I hope that he opens up another place because I feel like whenever it's all about insurance and it's all about you know different things that you have to get funded for I think that's where you lose a lot of these people and unfortunately I don't know what the state the statistics are but I would be willing to guess that they're not that high it's heartbreaking and so like five percent or less I would say probably even worse than that no if they're statistical anomalies yeah they're called one chip wonders right like and people try to like bottle these one chip wonders experience and like extrapolate it out yeah dude it's the it is preparation meets good timing is luck right yeah so and that's all that really is is like there were whatever circumstances that like fed into this situation and then like this person like these are literally statistical anomalies that people go to treatment and they say clean forever okay and what you know it's the business of saving lives and what I found out is that it's the business of saving lives that can afford it okay so thousand percent okay so if that's true and which it is right it's I mean it's just it is what it is because first thing I say is what insurance what insurance do you have or what what kind of resources do you have yes it's like so if that's true which it is there's like a logical path that we can go down to like a bunch of questions and it's like so the next question that I ask is like are we setting people up for failure in hopes that they make it back and if that's true like if you honestly answer this it's true right because every treatment center that I know of is paying their bills with their return clients and if that's true then are we sacrificing lives to make money and if that is the affirmative then what we're really doing is we are making mathematical like mathematical calls around like how many people are worth it to continue to pay our bills right and it's like my people that like fundamentally who I am like as an addict they get relegated to die all the time right like those are the ones that are okay like it we can sacrifice these ones because they weren't gonna get it anyway I was treatment resistant I was a chronic relapser like I had all the labels right homeless for years 10 plus years of like intravenous drug use like these are I hit all of the checkmarks for hopeless yeah right and helpless no resources right so I'm not going to get quality treatment right right and so it's like what a hopeless and helpless yeah dude it's it's and so those people and then you see this all the time where it's like mom and dad with little Jimmy started at 17 like fucking up with weed or whatever and he gets pushed into the treatment industry and then 10 years down the line now there's remortgaging their house for the second time for little for now not little Jimmy but middle-aged Jimmy to go back to treatment and then when that doesn't work we're gonna drop him on his head and blame him because he didn't do it right yeah and so what I always ask people is like look do you guys know what value-based healthcare is no so this has been implemented around the world and a bunch of other places this has been on the menu like for Congress to pass stuff like this in America for a long time and what it says is this like if you go to the doctor because you need surgery on your hand insurance will pay for that but if you need a second surgery because it wasn't done or whatever right the doctor pays for it right so that's value-based healthcare and I ask people all the time this is something that is possible in the future okay so let's say that they implement this in the treatment industry do you think that people would need to go back to treatment multiple times if we had to pay for it people like oh no they're no we no absolutely not we wouldn't be they would get sober the first time well then why can't we do it now yeah like what is stopping us from implementing that now would change to make sure that they don't come back what kind of programming would we implement right and people like oh shit right it's like and and and fundamentally addiction professionals are not to blame for this right there's three groups of people that should be held accountable for this it's the owners the investors and the payers right because they're the ones that set the pace for what what is what the product is it's delivered and a lot of what's being implemented and this is healthcare period like we're not trying to heal people we're trying to alleviate symptoms right because help people cope if you heal chickenpox then you don't got return customers right if we eradicate diseases well if we eradicate cancer if we eradicate whatever it's like dude there's no money in healing there's money in return customers repeat business right and so it's like we're an industry okay that word in itself signals something right we're also in healthcare right we're in behavioral health that should speak volumes for like what the intention is right and it's like the average addiction professional most of them are in recovery and so this is a part of their recovery right they're actually think they are actually helping people their intention is an altruistic nature right they're in this to help save 100% right what they don't realize it when you know when you go to these events and these like marketing events and these huge conventions where people are flying in from all over the country but the local people like the local owners they're showing up in Ferraris and Porsches and all the shit what they don't realize is that they are just a cog in the clockwork of an industry of a company that's a piece of an industry hundred billion dollar annual right industry either that or they do realize it well this is the thing I start talking to people about this and they're like yeah but what can I do and it's an honest question it's like you can't personally do anything like the average BD rep out there that their their whole job is to get heads in bed they can't do anything about it right the clinicians the CEOs the administration the nursing staff like these people have no say in what company policies and standard operating procedures are implemented or why right it's like if there needs to be something tweaked because of whatever like some kind of like practical reason like they'll change it or whatever but at the bottom line these are companies that are monetizing suffering multi billion dude it's a it's a hundred billion dollar industry annually right and you know I my consultant helped this guy he started with a six bed boutique treatment center seven years later sold his company for 1.4 billion damn these are companies like when you look at like fortune 500 companies and like you look at their performance they've got like nine ten percent profit margins a low performing treatment center has a 35 percent profit margin whoa hi like oh you go to a nice place it's like 20 fucking grand 30 grand a month dude no is it more there's one in Houston it's 80 grand a month for their base service it goes up to like 120 grand a month yeah right when you go to like these boutique out of pocket out of network from Malibu California and shit dude they're so Betty Ford the Hazelden model right like Betty Ford who goes there oh Robert Downey Jr. Lindsay Lohan you know 120 grand a month right and you're getting yoga in the morning and massages at night and you're getting the the diet plan by a five star chef and it's like you know it's like that's comfortable that sounds amazing dude I would love to go for sure right like oh dude I fucked my life up again guess I gotta go back to rehab do some yoga yeah dude so it's like but a peak performing treatment center still 55 percent profit this is better than selling drugs right this is better than selling drugs and it's better than running your own like a legitimate company like dude these are profit margins that like the majority of the world is like lusting after like we're talking about like high performing multi-billion dollar companies have like single-digit profit margins and if you think about it when someone relapses if I've been to a good treatment facility of course you're gonna go back of course am I gonna change it up no that place is man there was great people there dude because normally the people that work there are staying because they are very good yeah they've been through they've and it's like you said they don't they don't know until they know yeah it's kind of like when we send troops to war they're literally going there thinking they're fighting the enemy thinking they're fighting the enemy when really it's just a billion dollar industry yeah that's gonna make a lot of people more and more money yeah it's like dude we've got 34 trillion in debt let's fuck it let's go to war yeah yeah let's pull ourselves out of this so i'm just curious man i mean you've talked about it a little bit but you've got to catch a lot of shit for having some of the opinions that you I do yeah i've been labeled an industry disruptor wow well to be fair it sounds like that's what you were even when you were in your addiction yeah industry disruptor you fucking robbed a bank dude yeah got away with it too yeah yeah did you get how much am i 8600 oh hey yeah that's that's ultimately what saved me was like i didn't get a lot out of it yeah and the feds really only investigated it because i told them that i had a bomb in my backpack and i kill everybody yeah yeah yeah way to put that over the top yeah i know someone that robbed a bank i won't say his name on here but i do and he got arrested for it but he he hid the money before he got arrested yeah so he went away for seven years and when he got out he was able to go just so he could dig the money up right in front of the right in front of the cops yes not a fucking thing they could do about it well check this out when i got arrested the feds were like look you know they did this whole like scare tactic thing and it's like a long story but basically they were like look we don't even give like i got booked with the money they they put the money that i took in the bank and yeah and now they're like look we know you're booked with them we don't even care about the money where's the bomb yeah they're like dude like there's seven of us here you think we're here because of eight eight thousand dollars like come on where's the bomb i was like dude i told my out of bomb my backpack i didn't even have a backpack on yeah right and they were like okay you know and so like the but it's like these well that's a whole different story but yeah some of the people the reason why i ended up robbing that bank is because like i had friends that were like robbing banks and armored trucks and i knew i could get away with it right and so i was like as long as it's like under this and like as long as i don't do this like the feds aren't gonna pick this up and they'll they'll just let the state prosecute it and that's ultimately what saved me was like i knew what i could get away with and what i could say and whatever and like they let me keep the money yeah right they're like you fuck it you fucking stole it like you're gonna get charged with it you fucking keep it but where's the bomb wow dude you how long were you in prison dude so i success like effectively escape the consequences of my actions by changing my life right and it was like my first prison term i became friends with this guy that he got out of two gang related murders by going to this program the program yeah i was talking about right yeah and so he always told me like i made a decision after my first prison term um that i was gonna run until i couldn't run anymore and then if i made it out alive i would never look back like i would change my life and never look back and so like i effectively cut all ties with my fam i'm the oldest ten kids like i have loving parents that are like great parents and shit you know it's like um the situation that i was raised in was you know it was like inner city san diego and they were fucking dirt poor like we'd invite people over on sundays and like dig through the couch to see if they drop change yeah right but like um the the choice that i was made that i made around doing that was like i knew for sure that i was going to systematically burn all the bridges with my family if i tried to do this one foot in one foot out thing yeah and so i was like when i made the decision to run i was like i'm not gonna this way like i can for sure not do anybody dirty in my family and like come back and like be able to come back of it yeah right makes sense and uh and so when i made that decision i also said that i wouldn't play games with like the court system if i get busted i'm just gonna go do my time i'm not gonna go to like a program and fuck around or whatever it's just when i get caught i go to prison and it is what it is right also my first prison term i learned how fun it was and how much drugs there was and like i was like dude prison was not a deterrent yeah it was like wait you're gonna you're gonna send me to like hang out with the fellas for a couple years work out like you're gonna send me to criminal university i'm gonna have somewhere to sleep sleep eat work out do as much drugs as i want fuck up people like this is like politicking dude i had so much fun like the first time and so i was like you know like when i when i fuck up like i could go to prison and everything's good right so i never played games with the court system either like it was i'll sign whatever right send me up and uh and so when this hit the fan right i had racked up all those charges over cove it because i found that loophole and yeah super cool loophole dude it very effective that was fucking awesome yeah very effective yeah and uh and so but when i when it finally caught up to me dude my max exposure was 85 to life 85 to life oh shit yep dude they were gonna strike dude it was the deal so they told me the deal is 33 years did you know about what the time was gonna be or did that like that just caught you like what the fuck what you hit me in the gut and i was like did you just say 33 was the deal he was like yeah dude your max exposure is like really fucked up i was like what is it he's like 85 with a with a life if they strike you out i was like what yeah what am i gonna do like dude what you're gonna die in prison and then i'm like and then i'm like what did i do like okay i robbed a bank okay residential burglary weapons charges sold drugs to cops multiple times robbery gotta cut it that i was like fuck yeah this actually makes something like god damn it yeah i really give me like 33 yeah well dude and it was like so this guy told me he was like look i got out of it and it's this card that you can play but if you play it too early you'll never get a chance again so only play it when you really really really really need it right and i was like okay and mind you this guy's like back in prison telling me this right yeah yeah yeah and uh and so i'm like now's the time right like dude if there was ever a time also you know my my addiction i had a long healthy addiction right and i always tell people it's it was like an abusive marriage right i had this really long honeymoon phase with it where it was like dude on top of the world it wasn't like a party thing i was like a real addict like off the bat right like isolation but it was filling all these holes and it made me feel this certain way that even though like i knew things weren't gonna be okay like it it made me think it was and so like i had this long probably seven eight year honeymoon with substances and then about five years with heroin before shit kind of turned on me right and uh and then after even after it turned on me i i used it as like the stabling like stabilizing like continuity throughout my life because i was like i'm i'm gonna do this yeah i'm gonna see this to its logical conclusion yeah whatever this means right and i knew there was three outcomes it was gonna be i'm gonna die i'm gonna go to prison for life or i'm gonna get out yeah right and so it was like i was okay with all three of those outcomes right what j klans mom used to say locked up sobered up sobered up covered up covered up yeah and any one of the three yeah and i was perfectly okay with those outcomes i was like if i die in my addiction i'm cool with that if i end up doing life with prison i'm fucking i'm cool with that too yeah and if i get out of it fucking i'm cool with that too see i never even thought that far ahead like i just thought of today right and if tomorrow comes it comes it's kind of how i looked at it i never like fucking thought like the consequences down the road i just looked at it like this is what i need right now to feel better yeah and this is just who i who i am this is what i am you know a lot of people that is the cycle that they fall into yeah right the problem is this was just my life this is what this is all god had for me this is it yeah and and the problem that i see with that is that like i woke up one day and it was like three years later one time i was like wait what what do you mean i'm turning 28 when the fuck that happened yeah i was like wait yeah i was born 89 wait a fucking yeah i am turning damn it what what have i done for the last three years it's like oh yeah this is like the longest i've ever had on the street it's like dude i i stayed out of prison for three years like yeah fucking yee haw right yeah but the time flies so fast and the next thing you know you're a fucking old man with nothing before too long yeah right and it's like so for a lot of those people that don't play that tape through they eat up a good amount of the prime of their life right and it's like those are the people that are owed by whoever loves them around them to tell them like do you need to wake up right but like for me it was like nobody could tell me shit because i accepted the consequences before i made the decision right and so you know like with when this whole fucking 33 year deal that was the deal right when that happened i was like oh okay um how am i gonna get out of this yeah i got my this card yeah and i was like okay i'm gonna play this card but it was covid and we were single cell lockdown it was single cell lockdown and they would release one cell at a time for 15 minutes to shower right every other day so i was isolated in a cell for six months so i just had time to read and think and like dude there wasn't like a whole lot going on right i had some store because i robbed this bank and had that money and so that lasted for like six months and uh so i started making these moves in in jail but i started asking myself like you know and before that for like a couple of years before i got arrested i was like i am done like i'm i i actually don't want to do this anymore i was at that same spot i just didn't know how to get out of it the same here i was like you know it was the honeymoon was over for sure and then so in the abusive marriage cycle it's like yeah it's like long honeymoon abuse cycle and then the divorce cycle right where like the abuse will happen and you just accept it you don't want to leave but you don't want to stay but staying sounds a whole lot better so leaving doesn't even come into the play you know and it's like but then once the divorce cycle starts right it's like now it's this real back and forth of like love and hate right it's like i don't want to do this anymore i don't know how to get out of this relationship right right and for like probably three years that was where i was at you know and i would tell my girlfriend at the time uh who's not my wife homeless together like rand dude fuck dude that's a fucking trooper right there dude like fucking she's so crazy but dude you think i'm crazy she's fucking nuts yeah i mean that's the gender a little bit yeah they're a lot yeah a lot more crazy they have the ability dude they can get away with shit that like we can oh yeah you know what's crazy is i've seen like couples that are homeless yeah that i've often wondered like sometimes they look fucking like they they're just fucking so in love oh yeah and i'm like dude if they can go through that together imagine if they could get out of that what they could fucking go through sure you know what i mean you know it's those like the struggle right binds people for sure right it's like people that go to war together they i mean i know vets that it's like they call their brothers and they are all the way across the country and they will fly to them to rescue them from a bar fight yeah right so like when when couples i only know one other couple that was homeless together that made it out right these are not fairy talonings right the romance is fucking gone we're not like holding hands walking down the street skipping we were in our addiction though yeah right and it was like we're literally bonded in a way that like it's probably unbreakable so let me ask you about that went so did y'all get sober together separately because i got sent to the program and she got caught with my drugs at the border and was there for the residential burglary and dude it was like a whole bunch of shit so and she was pregnant yeah and couldn't stop using because i would think like a lot of y'all's bond yeah was fucking uh trauma bond right in some way like living homeless right like fucking y'all went through the shit when y'all got so i've heard i've heard people that have relationships were alcoholic drug addict blah blah blah and one gets sober i have a buddy that he his wife got sober she was a bad alcoholic and he would show up and rescue her from everything yeah right and then whenever she got sober she realized i'm not in love with him i was in love with the guy that rescued me all the time yeah but now i don't need him to rescue me and that literally split them up for sure so did y'all go through anything like that from when y'all got sober to where damn this isn't it wasn't the same or no no because those relationships are built on emotional dishonesty right okay right whereas like we knew each other's deepest darkest secrets we like we knew each other in a way that probably very few people get to know anybody else right dude i i got this i i don't know what i got i got this bug and i was like uh projectile vomiting and shitting at the same time yeah and i was homeless at the time and like i got kicked i got kicked out of the apartment she didn't right throwing up and shitting everyone no no no that was i got kicked out and then i got this bug all right and she like came out and like was wiping my ass for me i don't know like right she seen me at like the the very very worst the most very most vulnerable very worst like dude we were like extorting doctors together like it was so yeah there there's probably you know i just to be very upfront like there's probably a level of trauma bonding but what takes precedent to that is we know each other like inside and out and accepted each other's faults for what they were yeah for sure and you've seen all of the pretty much like like you know like she she she was getting a lot of flak for me because towards the end there you know i was like robbing connects and like she broke up so she found out that she was pregnant Thanksgiving of 2020 she told me the next day that she was pregnant and that she was leaving me and the words that she said was basically she goes i'm leaving you because i'm pregnant and um you're gonna get me killed like people are gonna kill you and they're probably gonna kill me right unless i separate myself from you yeah and i was you know i was like well fuck what am i gonna do now you know like yeah you know like well what about me yeah i robbed that bank at her yeah i started robbing all the people around her so that they would tell her like oh matt robbed me that you know and then and and we're fucking with people bringing drugs across the border and shit and i'm like stealing money from people and like finding out later on that it was a cartel members money that i stole and people are like looking for me and dude it was just a it was a fucking man i was a i was out of my mind yeah making decisions that nobody in their right mind would make like yeah you know and so i see that all the time too where like people will get involved with people in their addiction and then they get sober or one of them gets sober and and they fundamentally fall apart because they don't actually know who each other are outside of the addiction outside of the addiction yeah but y'all knew each other inside and out we knew each other the worst and your best the worst and the best and yeah there was like a continuity of drug use but we kicked with each other we like and we were using the same drugs so that probably helped that like we understood each other's struggle on a daily basis but then we also understood each other's on a macro right like we knew the family issues we knew the everything you know the isolation and recovery when you're in a relationship in that isolation it's you too right and so it's like all of my darkest moments she was there for yeah yeah i mean i say nice which probably made you a thousand times stronger for sure 100 and like i said there's trade-offs right like not everybody's fantasy is like the fairy tale ending but a lot of people want it right it's like her and i have traded off like an unbreakable bond for like the sparky romance and it's like we're not i'm not gonna go home and like make out with my wife right like a lot of people do right but it's like you know it's like we talk shit to each other and it's like uh so have you guys watched Yellowstone oh yeah our relationship is like rip and his yeah dude it's so much like that it's insane like she'll be like fuck you you're a piece of shit dude like any white before he's like i love you too yeah walks away yeah leaves yeah we're 90 percent bullying each other yeah that's what they're and she'll tell me like dude when you come home you don't do shit like i'm like dude you know what i've been doing all day though like come on dude she'll be like dude you're just so fucking lazy how can somebody who works out and works as much as you be so lazy i'm like i have a three month old that i take care of from the second i go to for the second i get home she sleeps with me i change her i wipe her ass like dude i feed her like you deal with the four-year-old i'll deal with the baby like that was the trade-off and she was like but if i would have known that you get to just sit there while i deal with this tornado i would have never made that deal it's like you should have had more brothers and sisters yeah i should have thought this one through yeah dude i was like dude you know that was like uh conversations that we had while she was pregnant was like how are we gonna deal with this i was like i got this idea yeah i'll deal with the baby yeah you know you can recover you know at that time she's probably that's gonna be the worst fucking job for sure oh dude take the baby i was like i'll deal with all the blowouts and like dude and dude from the day that the baby was born she slept with me yeah and remember like this is all i ever wanted out of my life was like just be a dad and so it was like and be a present dad yeah oh dude for sure and it's like i uh the nurses would come into the room and be like you can't sleep with your newborn infant on your chest all night long like there's like legalities around this you got to put her in the thing i'm like all right put her in there take her right back out and you know it's like dude come on and so it's my kid she saw that in the hot yeah dude who the like yeah well then what i you know it's like oh whatever the uh the reality is we don't own our kids the government does right that's how they can take them yeah right and so it's like uh yeah wow yeah yeah that but that's fucking real no yeah it's really shit when you sign their birth certificate you are signing them over to the government and then they give you custodial guardianship over your kids you have parental rights you have custodial guardianship like these are legal terms that are used to apply to your children their property damn right and so but she saw this in the hospital right like i took the baby and dude it was like the happiest moment of my life right like dude it was amazing right so in the hospital i'm already scheming it's like oh yeah dude you're gonna deal with this fucking four-year-old though yeah right but so she got to like heal and like all this stuff and like and now like the downstream effect she's like dude fuck you she's tired as well yeah and i'm like dude well i don't i don't know what to tell you this was the deal and and mind yes yeah and mind you it's like well i had to wait a month before we could do anything yeah and so and the deal that you made was at least every other day so now pay up yeah she's like dude fuck you yeah that's awesome you know yeah literally yeah let's do what i was talking about actually you know that's awesome dude i've got a question to ask you okay that shirt yeah it's a fucking shirt dope yeah so this is a testament to this epidemic of silent suffering yeah right absolutely this is what men are going through today yeah like as a whole evolving into fucking eating a bullet yeah that is we need to win into some of those shirts that is that's a supreme shirt yeah so that was like 900 dollars no dude initial drops they're all 38 bucks for real yeah dude you got to get there you got to get invited to their app okay right you get their app or maybe you don't even need to get in i don't remember how it worked but you get on their app they drop every thursday and but dude if you don't get it it 160 bucks the next day i think i'd pay 160 bucks for that shirt this is an amazing shirt that's a badass shirt yeah like i think i want that shirt yeah everybody's like oh do you wear a lot of supreme like i pay the same amount for this shirt as you pay for yours yeah dude that's fucking cool so the place is called project hope recovery have you heard oh yeah yeah for sure so that's where nicholas shout out nicholas meyer that's where he works for sure okay and that place literally changes life i believe it dude i know that your opinion of like state-funded faith-based stuff is based on your experience right or what you know of it but here's the reality is that you cannot pay for the experience of time you just can't right and so the longer you engage with treatment the greater your likelihood is of staying sober and i shouldn't say that i'm against it i just the first question like what resources do you have what your insurance for sure i just think that's just like we're trying to get recover well like what the fuck does it matter yeah what i have you know i'm saying well like i'm gonna get i'm gonna get better treatment because i got blue cross blue shield like i literally had to help someone two months ago i paid for their blue cross blue shield for their first month so they could get insurance yeah so they could get into a better place and then once they get in the place they just drop the insurance you know one of your friends recently called me right who uh we can edit this out right dude named michael called me yeah and we're gonna have a lot of editing right here and you know what he told me he was like mike from from two addicts and a moron told me to call you that is not true okay i was like i was like and i've never met this guy in person okay he's only ever watched the podcast yeah we'll talk about it dude i'm fucking fired up now so i need to know about this so but i think we're at a pretty good stopping yeah we can we can talk about it now fuck it yeah i so let's let's let's end it yeah let's end it and how do we find you brother yeah uh we're gonna get you back on too yeah because we still haven't heard all your fucking crazy and we're gonna go out to yours yeah have us dude it's an open invite for you guys for sure just tell me the day you're coming and i will push everything aside cool okay right so you guys come out i want to check out the treatment i want to go i want to like my studio is at my treatment center cool nice so we can meet some of the people there and all that sure yeah well let's do it i'm down yeah my dude so my marketing director here is like an nfl legend right randy grimes played for the buccaneers for 10 years yeah yeah uh dude i got a bunch of really really awesome solid people i think just in my administration team there's like 70 years of recovery damn something like that like 60 70 years something like that right so one person's got 25 years another person's got 15 another person's got 15 that person's got 16 5 4 and all live in good lives dude yeah and all of us are walking in a different path for all of us have different recoveries yeah right and so it was like one of you know during the interviewing process i have my executive director run all the interviews but i sit in on him because i want to ask two questions it's like what do you do for your recovery and where do you see yourself in 10 years yeah if you don't see you with us in 10 years and it's same for you yeah right and so we like got to selectively build the team based on like none of us do the same shit but we're all sober yeah and so part of the messaging and programming around of what harmy grove does is like we don't care what you do as long as you get sober and there's proof you can go talk to all of the people at work here we're all doing something different yeah that's good yeah good shit dude yeah instagram so instagram is it's like matthew dots okay here we go wait yeah matthew dot handy dot 17 all right youtube is the most important one right if you guys want to follow me go to at my last relapse on youtube and then all of my links are on there yeah right at at my last relapse on youtube please like and subscribe we are absolutely please and we'll be out soon we will take a we'll take a weekend or something or a pto day when do you record any day seven days a week 24 seven okay perfect yeah let's go man let's do it yeah can't wait dude thank you so much dude thank you guys for having me dude we're gonna have you back because we want to hear all the fucking crazy sure yeah and i always i always enjoy the second time around yeah because then it's like more chopping it up and we know we do yeah so yeah dude i i can't wait me too this is this is super dope yeah thank you guys all right thank you all right we're out like and subscribe comment we love you all okay