Imagine facing the vicious cycle of addiction, where every day is a fight for survival, overshadowed by the looming threat of relapse or worse. Daniel Regan's gripping narrative details a plunge into the underworld of drugs, from his early days of experimentation to the misery of rock bottom. Our season finale walks you through Daniel's ascent from these depths, guided by the unwavering love of his mother and the birth of Healing Us Centers. It's a testament to the human spirit's capacity for transformation, a story that charts the treacherous terrain from substance abuse to sobriety and service.
Season three of 'I Took a Hike' culminates with personal tales of addiction so raw, they blur the lines between a cautionary narrative and a thriller. From the confines of a crack house to the corridors of a psychiatric hold, each chapter peels back the layers of a struggle that knows no bounds—and the resilience to overcome it. Daniel's journey intertwines with insights from others—professionals in medicine and law enforcement—each ensnared by addiction's indiscriminate snare. Their stories shed light on the systemic challenges and triumphs inherent in battling this crisis.
As we wrap up this chapter of our podcast, we not only reflect on the journeys traversed but also the lessons carved from adversity. Daniel and his mother's unwavering commitment to aiding others shines through the darkness, illuminating the path for countless families to follow. Their work at Coming Full Circle Loud and Clear embodies the essence of turning pain into purpose, reinforcing the mantra that connection and positive experiences are integral to recovery. As we step away to recharge and prepare for season four, we invite you to carry these stories with you, to foster hope and ignite conversations that can change lives.
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Imagine facing the vicious cycle of addiction, where every day is a fight for survival, overshadowed by the looming threat of relapse or worse. Daniel Regan's gripping narrative details a plunge into the underworld of drugs, from his early days of experimentation to the misery of rock bottom. Our season finale walks you through Daniel's ascent from these depths, guided by the unwavering love of his mother and the birth of Healing Us Centers. It's a testament to the human spirit's capacity for transformation, a story that charts the treacherous terrain from substance abuse to sobriety and service.
Season three of 'I Took a Hike' culminates with personal tales of addiction so raw, they blur the lines between a cautionary narrative and a thriller. From the confines of a crack house to the corridors of a psychiatric hold, each chapter peels back the layers of a struggle that knows no bounds—and the resilience to overcome it. Daniel's journey intertwines with insights from others—professionals in medicine and law enforcement—each ensnared by addiction's indiscriminate snare. Their stories shed light on the systemic challenges and triumphs inherent in battling this crisis.
As we wrap up this chapter of our podcast, we not only reflect on the journeys traversed but also the lessons carved from adversity. Daniel and his mother's unwavering commitment to aiding others shines through the darkness, illuminating the path for countless families to follow. Their work at Coming Full Circle Loud and Clear embodies the essence of turning pain into purpose, reinforcing the mantra that connection and positive experiences are integral to recovery. As we step away to recharge and prepare for season four, we invite you to carry these stories with you, to foster hope and ignite conversations that can change lives.
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Follow The Journey on Instagram
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All right, daniel Regan, are you okay with being recorded on a podcast? Absolutely, there goes that liability. This is I Took a Hike. I'm your host. Darren Mass, founder of Business Therapy Group and part-time wilderness philosopher. Here we step out of the boardrooms and home offices and into the great outdoors where the hustle of entrepreneurship meets the rustle of nature.
Speaker 1:In this season-ending episode, we hike the trail alongside Daniel Regan's harrowing journey from literally the bottom of the rock all the way to the top of recovery to form new beginnings as the founder of Healing Us Centers. Our topics delve into some of the most profoundly impactful conversations that I have ever encountered. That I have ever encountered. We explore the harrowing journey of a hard drug user, from the early entanglement of mewling for the cartels, enduring multiple arrests, and the unwavering determination of a mother who refused to let her child succumb to the darkness. This is an inspiring tale of resilience, as Daniel shares his life's hardship towards recovery and discovers a newfound will to survive, living a positive and purposeful mission. There are moments that are profoundly challenging to absorb, serving as a wake-up call for many to confront the raw truth of pain, anguish and despair, intertwined with the harsh realities that plague society. Experience this transformative and inspirational journey when I took a hike with Daniel Regan.
Speaker 1:This episode is proudly brought to you by Brand Built, a dynamic social media networking community designed to elevate your success, feeling stuck in a brand loop. Your brand matters more than ever before and falling behind is not an option. Join our dynamic community for expert social media guidance, valuable lessons, education, weekly spotlights, monthly speakers and a robust brand building network. Explore more at mybrandbuiltcom and join me in the chat fora. Thriving journey to success.
Speaker 1:All right, daniel, if anyone's done a background research on you, you have had some challenges and I want to hear about those challenges. The way that I got connected with you is through your sister. Yes, she took an opportunity. Maybe she saw me on a post on LinkedIn, since I do a lot of that, mm-hmm. And she reached out to me and said my brother has an awesome story and he's very successful and he's been through F and hell and back. And then you applied and you shared some of your videos and content that you've had and I remember seeing one of those bits. You were on a Chris Hansen special. Yes, now I'm going to pause, not to catch the predator.
Speaker 2:There we go.
Speaker 1:You were on a different one, yes, but yeah, it's not to catch a predator, go. You were on a different one, yes, but yeah, it's not to catch a predator. But you were on a special called crime watch and I remember it was friday night or whatever, and I was watching those shows at that time in my life and I remembered the exact episode. I don't know how many I must have watched, but when I clicked on that link I was like holy shit, I saw this episode. So why don't you start off by telling us what was hell?
Speaker 2:like hell is hell? Not so much for the physical things that come with it all those, those are terrible. But what the mental anguish that you go through as an individual, that you're living and existing at the bottom of society really and just the bottom of self. You don't know who you are anymore. You start to adopt a feeling that that's all you can be and there's no fixing you. There's no other avenue in sight, there's no other opportunity for you, and the scariest part of being there was that I was accepting that and I didn't think there was any other route for me. And that acceptance of that fate led me to some really dark places in my mind and in life, and I didn't know if I. I didn't think I'd ever get out and I was on the pathway to end it as quick as I could. Wow.
Speaker 1:And just so we can draw attention to it. What was the hell reason? Why did you get there? What were you doing?
Speaker 2:I think everything stems. You know, it's a snowball effect For someone to get there, it's just not one day and then the next right. There's a perspective that's grown over time and we feel a lot of the times. I always say your gifts can be curses in a lot of ways. I've always been a very empathetic person, always cared about the world, always wanted to make an impact, always felt the the hurt in the world. So I I always dealt with that. I mean, I saw, saw one of those commercials on TV where you get, you know, 99 cents a day you could save a child and wherever.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're that guy you fell for that no, no, I mean, but I saw that as a four-year-old kid and I started saving my food every dinner and, you know, stick it under my bed. My mom will tell you stories of these kind of things all the time.
Speaker 1:So your character is good, but I just wanted to clarify your hell was a major substance abuse and I'm not talking about a middle. I'm not talking about smoking a joint outside of school. I'm not talking about just a party drug with your friends at a club. You were in a literal hell hole.
Speaker 2:Of course. Yes, what I'm getting to is basically that feeling of uncertainty. All the time it was reaffirmed in my life in multiple different facets, because when you're focused on the negative, what happens is you find it right Anything that I'm attracting into my life and setting an attention for that's what ends up being attracted.
Speaker 1:Well, the same goes for positive too. If you have a positive mindset, you find it. If you have a negative mindset or surround yourself with negative people or junkies, you will be a culmination of those people or that situation.
Speaker 2:Right, so you know, that mindset was very. It was reaffirmed in multiple different facets. My mom got cancer when I was younger and stuff like that. I had a hard time with change. I didn't know how to adapt to life's changes. I wanted to control and keep things comfy and in doing so I kind of would always find myself in a state of chaos, because life is always changing. Nothing is permanent, right. So I was dealing with this and, unfortunately, before I learned how to regulate that or cope with it, I found substances and it seemed to cure that fear, that anxiety.
Speaker 1:It seemed to help me cope thoughts in the mind right so what was the first substance you tried?
Speaker 2:marijuana. It was the first one. Who didn't? Yeah?
Speaker 1:now it's legal yeah it's typically the first.
Speaker 2:Right now it's legal and not even cool. Yeah, typically alcohol is the first, but I actually I could care less about alcohol. I never have really cared for it, but we'd got into that and it just seemed to cure all my issues. All of a sudden I was making friends, because it was easy to make friends that are doing the wrong thing. It's easy to get into those circles. You just have to do the wrong thing with them, right? And uh, it just kind of took on a life of itself, because I became the kid that was daring and would try different things. And you know, I came into middle school with a cool story of the weekend, of what I did and got up to.
Speaker 2:So peer pressure was just.
Speaker 4:It was more.
Speaker 2:There was peer pressure, but no one actually was making me do it. It was what I was getting from doing those things right. So the validation of others, like wanting to know what my weekend was like, what I got up to. And, of course, as get older, other people are trying weed now, so you got to up the ante. Right, you have to up the ante, yes, and I was. I grew up. My parents are great parents, so they struck me with the fear of God with drugs. You know you smoke weed, you're going to fall down and die, kind of thing.
Speaker 1:This is your brain on drugs. Yeah, exactly, dad, I learned this is your brain on drugs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, dad, I learned it from you and all those 80s stupid commercials that we laughed exactly.
Speaker 1:No one bought that shit, but I could. I give out, your mom is clearly. I've seen the interviews your mom is clearly a good mom. You didn't grow up in a neglected home.
Speaker 2:You were just that kid that fell prey to influence yeah, and you know, once you try weed and you didn't fall down and die and you had a great time and you were laughing and giggling and all that stuff, you're like, ah, I guess they lied to me about everything, oh shit. So that's where it kind of took effect. And you know I have family members that also were into drugs and substances so it was easy to get introduced to them. You know, everybody thinks it's like a drug dealer lurking in the corner of an alley. It's never. It's someone that you trust and love. That's probably going to show you the way with this, whether it's a friend, a family member, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you know I've been in these situations as well. It's someone you look up to. They're getting high and like, hey, you want to try, but they don't realize what they're doing because they have already self-justified their own medication, correct?
Speaker 2:so it's like hey, you want to be at the level I'm at right, try this, it'll be cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but uh so how old were you when you, when you smoked your first? What joint bowl first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a bowl, but uh, that was 12. That was my first one.
Speaker 1:That's about typical.
Speaker 2:I look back at pictures of myself at 12, and I'm like, oh my God, I was a baby and in my head I thought I was grown.
Speaker 1:you know Well of course you were always older in your mind when you were younger, but when you get older you are younger in your mind. Of course that works out. It's funny how that works out. All right, so you go on from there. What's the next drug?
Speaker 2:So cocaine was next. Okay, what age? I love cocaine. Yeah, I loved it. Gave me a sense of control over my life, felt like I could do anything, so you fell with.
Speaker 1:Superman, Exactly Now. Were you doing cocaine at parties, or was it? You know I need a quick bump before school.
Speaker 2:No, at this time it was parties, it was recreational. Next came psychedelics. I've always been a hippie at heart, so you know got into psilocybin, lsd, things like that. Okay, a lot of my friends in my friend group now are entrenched in drug culture, so we're dealing drugs, we're kind of being the people that introduce others, okay. Um, and we had a close knit of friends. We all went across together dirt bike stuff like that, okay. So we go into the woods and party, okay.
Speaker 1:And that was college for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and many others. By the time we were leaving high school, oxycontin started. That became really big.
Speaker 1:So you were getting pills of Oxy? Were you just ingesting the pills or grinding them and snorting them?
Speaker 2:I didn't mess with them at first. To be honest with you, I hated downers. I loved loved uppers. Love speed, love doing hippie, flipping things okay, like ecstasy mushrooms. And then we uh, I broke my back dirt biking. I ended up up crushing my L3, l4, l5. Oh wow.
Speaker 1:I think I know where this is going now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, so my friend, what age? Was this. This was right before I left high school. Okay, so this was 17, 18.
Speaker 1:Very impressionable kid at that point Correct, very susceptible to not understanding right and wrong and addiction. Exactly Got it.
Speaker 2:So this isn't a forewarning for all parents.
Speaker 1:What you're about to hear is reality. It's what happens, and a lot of our opioid crisis comes from wisdom teeth.
Speaker 2:Yes, it does, and sports injuries.
Speaker 1:And sports injuries. So, yeah, this is a good message to hear. So you get prescribed opioids yes, oxy, oxy 30s.
Speaker 2:Yep, okay, which is strong? So my, my friend, nick unfortunately nick's not here anymore. Okay, he passed away, but he, uh, he, he knew how to sell these things. That's what he was doing. He was also learning how to doctor shop. So what he was doing is getting five to seven different doctors to prescribe him pills. So he was getting anywhere between 400 to 830 milligram Roxy's a week. Wow.
Speaker 1:And sold them for 15. And the doctors?
Speaker 4:didn't know yet what they were doing.
Speaker 1:They knew no, but they didn't know what was going to happen. Obviously.
Speaker 2:They all knew Really. Yeah, everything was under the table. Ah, cash, oh, understood. I mean, he was brilliant at it. He would get homeless people in Newark, okay, and he would have a line of them. Everybody was getting these pills. He'd hook them up with a couple.
Speaker 1:And the doctors knew what was going on. Yeah, oh, wow. I mean, they pretended not to know. I hope they all lose their license.
Speaker 2:They did certain things to kind of cover their tracks, but everybody knew these weren't good doctors or home wall kind of places, crooked doctors, okay.
Speaker 1:so so you get these pills yeah, so he he goes score.
Speaker 2:You know, my friend has a legitimate injury.
Speaker 1:I'll teach him how to doctor shop, but you already were getting a prescription for oxy, yeah, but I hated it.
Speaker 2:okay, I really didn't like taking downers, but when I started doctor shopping, you know I had thousands of these things. I'm making money. How much? Now I'm in college. How much money are you making? We were making probably close to $10,000 a month. Wow.
Speaker 1:Did you realize?
Speaker 2:it was wrong. Yes, but I had this kind of rebel mentality. Okay, that we, uh, you know you justify it and rationalize the most rational stuff well.
Speaker 1:so I often say this on the show human beings were born with two things that separate us from the animal kingdom one posable thumbs it's great for tools and two, the ability to rationalize everything. If you're making a lot of money, you could rationalize it. You can give yourself a reason or an excuse. You could steal the loaf of bread if you're hungry Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it's amazing how we can do this and that's the it's survival, yeah, and it's the abuse of the prefrontal cortex. Right there you go.
Speaker 1:Science not, uh, yeah, all right so you are now dealing, you're bringing in a substantial amount of money.
Speaker 2:Yes, for 18 uh, yep, 18, going on 19 and uh, at this point, like I'm in college. So now I'm doing, I'm doing cocaine and ecstasy is like every day. You know, now, because I don't have my parents, I'm really good at living two different lives. So I was a straight a student, okay, captain of the swim team through high school, oh, wow, tsa student for engineering. I got a full-ride scholarship to FTU.
Speaker 1:So your parents had no knowledge.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's little signs, but there's so much evidence, I'm doing it right then.
Speaker 1:Because why correct something if everything else is working right? Correct. So they're thinking maybe you're partying every once in a while, but they don't realize how bad the habit is yeah, they think I'm smoking weed every once in a while.
Speaker 2:But yet you're still getting straight A's, and chances are you know your parents grew up in the 60s and all right, that didn't kill anyone, whatever, okay, and so now I'm in college, I don't have their oversight, I don't have to pretend to be anybody else, so it's just, you know, balsa to the wall in that direction. So I got addicted to partying and having ecstasy and cocaine all the time. That stuff is very expensive.
Speaker 1:And you're dealing to everyone around, correct. So you're the fun guy that everyone comes to.
Speaker 2:Yep exactly. So I take on that personality of being that guy and eventually one time you know all my dealers for Coke and everything else they run out. They don't have anything. This is when opiates really started becoming so popular that that's what they were selling heroin or pills.
Speaker 1:Okay, before we go into, that?
Speaker 2:how many pills a day were you doing Once I started using at this point because they ran out of coke and everything else I started with about a quarter of an oxy and in two months I was doing 14 a day.
Speaker 1:14 a day, Wow.
Speaker 2:So at that point I'm totally lost. I'm gone, I can't go to classes, I'm avoiding my house, I'm not calling home. My whole life just downhill real quick and it gets real ugly real quick, doing things that, putting myself in really dangerous situations, going into Patterson and, you know, getting drugs from gangs, making alliances with them. You're making alliances with gang members. We had to because it was a cost thing.
Speaker 1:What does that look like?
Speaker 2:Well, they like you. You know I'm the white boy that can get through things a little bit easier. If I get pulled over, I'm usually let go. So typically you become a mule for the gangs and then I get cheaper product. So that's what's happening, because now I'm using my own supply. So, uh, you know that took over then my I remember my college roommate that you know I was involved with. You know that took over. Then I remember my college roommate that you know I was involved, you know, doing all this stuff with. He brought heroin one day when we made one of these runs to Patterson and I remember going to him and being like what is wrong with you? Like why would you bring that in here? We don't do heroin, we're classy, you know drug addicts, he's like it's the same thing.
Speaker 2:I'm like, no, it's not, it's heroin, it's different. And he's like, no, just try some. It's the exact same thing. And I was hurting. We didn't have anything yet so I tried it. I'm like, oh, my God, it's the same thing. Injected, no, snorting. We were only snorting at this time and uh, only snorting. But uh, he, uh. I was like how much was that? He goes, it's five dollars.
Speaker 2:So it's cheap so that five dollars is about equal to sixty dollars worth of pills. So I was like it's cheap game, it's easy and it's cleaner, correct? So we were selling pills and buying heroin that's what it turned into which was very economical for us at the time.
Speaker 1:You were using that smart calculated brain Right Not for the Purpose of good, but yeah, I ended up.
Speaker 2:I came home for summer break and I got pulled over in my car and I had everything in my car because we just moved out of our dorm room and I was found with 200 Oxycontin and a list of people who owe me money and about like $15,000 in cash. You're guilty and they knew what I was doing.
Speaker 1:You're guilty yeah.
Speaker 2:There's no question. Luckily I had some prescriptions over in my name, so you know. I told them I was a bus boy and it was my tip money that I've been saving. They weren't buying it. No, I was stupid.
Speaker 1:They have to arrest you, no matter what. It's up to the DA. I was arrested.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my parents are waiting for me at home for dinner. They have no idea I've been arrested.
Speaker 1:And they have no idea what you're doing.
Speaker 2:No, and I talked them out of it and said look, I know what you think this is. I'm not going to say whether I am or not doing these things. I am taking these pills. I am getting more than what I should be getting. I'm like I'll introduce you to the doctor so you can take care of the problem as long as I can go right now and they allowed that to happen no jail, no jail.
Speaker 1:Hey listener, Thanks for hiking along with us. Discover more episodes at itookahikecom, or to recommend an adventurous guest, apply to be a sponsor or to simply drop us a line. All right, let's continue on this trail. So what year was?
Speaker 2:this, so this was the line. All right, let's continue on this trail. So what year was this? So this was.
Speaker 1:You got arrested, just to be clear, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got arrested.
Speaker 1:The officer has no choice. They have to uphold the law Correct.
Speaker 2:Okay and I was charged. They didn't charge me for dealing, even though they had more than enough evidence.
Speaker 1:They didn't charge you for dealing Okay.
Speaker 2:No, they just charged me for the pills that were not in the prescription.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'm going to ask this polarizing question Do you believe that you were not charged for dealing because of the color of your skin?
Speaker 2:I believe I wouldn't be able to. This situation wouldn't happen unless I was who I was. I was, you know. I got a, got pulled over in freehold. I'm from Freehold, I'm white. I wouldn't, probably have that opportunity yeah. Do you believe that was fair. I mean, at the time I thought it was fair because I wanted to get away with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and no, I'm not trying to set you up for anything. This is just the unfortunate reality of the polarization of society. Yeah, Do you believe at that time that was fair, or should you have been arrested and sentenced to something?
Speaker 2:I 100. Let me, this is like. There's many different layers to this. I think anybody who is addicted to drugs shouldn't be punished because they're addicted to drugs. I fully agree with that. I believe that they should have an opportunity to get well. I fully agree with that.
Speaker 1:Over that Dealing, though, is a different story.
Speaker 2:Dealing is a different story, but I do agree there's levels of dealing.
Speaker 1:Peer pressure, especially in the young minds of teenage children, can cause your life to take a different path and you don't know how or when to say no, and sometimes it's that one pill that gets you Correct. So I do agree, especially if you are under a certain age, that you should be given the opportunity to not go to jail but get help Correct when you're dealing that's a different story.
Speaker 2:Yes, I agree, and you need to. There needs to be consequences to actions right, equal and opposite, and I totally, 100% deserved a chance to get myself well, because really the only reason I'm dealing is to support my drug habit.
Speaker 1:It goes hand in hand sometimes, right, and how much was this habit?
Speaker 2:dollar.
Speaker 1:Wise is to support my drug habit. It goes hand in hand sometimes, right.
Speaker 2:How much was this habit? Dollar wise, I was using about $400 a day. That's a lot of money. Yeah, it's hard to do Every day, seven days a week yes, no breaks, no breaks.
Speaker 1:Were you high all day, all night.
Speaker 2:Yes, but you get your tolerance builds up so you're able to function and you regulate it in a way.
Speaker 1:I have friends where they smoke pot all day, all night. I don't know how they do that, but to them that's normal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, with THC, you have THC receptors in your brain, so basically they get clogged up after a while and you don't feel high anymore, got it. So that's why they take a break every once in a while. Yep, okay, got to knock it off, yep, and then All right.
Speaker 1:So $400 a day, habit, yep, you get arrested. Handcuffs that had to be scary, it was.
Speaker 2:I'm scared to death County. No, when I tell you I was in and out in three hours. I was in and out in three hours, all right you got a lucky break.
Speaker 2:Yeah, back to the street. Now I had a clean record. So, not anymore, not anymore, okay, but I actually still have a clean record to this day. Okay, because they set me up with, you know, their special detectives. I had to go into these doctors, wear a wire and do deals with these doctors. Okay, everything was recorded, and so you were an informant Became a snitch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so we all know rat snitches and all that. Of course, that's the movie stuff. Yeah, real life. You became part of the solution, so you are now back on the streets. Did you learn your lesson at all? As you were an informant, you were sober or what happened?
Speaker 2:Not at all. All right, so you're an informant and you're still getting high. I'm trying to live this double life right, but now I'm home from college, I'm with my parents again. They're starting to notice some stuff up with me, they're aware, correct, they have no idea. I've been arrested, some stuff up with me. They're aware, correct, they have no idea.
Speaker 1:I've been arrested your night, no idea that I'm being an informant. Wait, wait, wait. They had no idea that you were arrested.
Speaker 2:Nope, no idea, I was 19. I was in.
Speaker 1:I told you I was in and out in three hours. They're waiting for me for dinner at the house while I'm being arrested.
Speaker 2:That night it was so surreal, but that addictive ego just tells you you're just so good, you just feel like you got away with it and your parents had no idea. No idea, I sat back down at dinner.
Speaker 1:They're like where were you?
Speaker 2:Probably got held up with traffic. I totally got pulled over for speeding ticket or something. It was just normal for me. I had a super WRXX, so I was always speeding Okay understood. Loud, farty, exhaust. Yep, gotcha, you're that guy, I'm that guy. Okay, thanks, still that guy. All good, all good, but they had no idea. I mean my mom. After it all came out, she just starts second guessing her motherhood, you know which is?
Speaker 1:not her fault.
Speaker 2:No, not at all.
Speaker 1:You're an upper class human being in an upper class town, Nice, educated parents right, Mm-hmm the classic cliche. How could this happen to my boy? We were always there for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, my family was like the Brady Bunch.
Speaker 1:But that's the crazy part, is it happens? Oh, it knows no bounds it knows no bounds. Good people, bad people, it doesn't matter, anyone can have that situation, in your case, a back problem. Mm-hmm, you were probably going to go there, by the way, chances are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was well on my way even without that.
Speaker 1:That expedited.
Speaker 2:Accelerated yeah.
Speaker 1:All I was well on my way even without that. That expedited, accelerated, all right. So now I'm going to jump back. You're an informant, you're an arcing, you're doing drugs. Are you still dealing as you're an informant?
Speaker 2:No, the dealing stopped. I was too scared. But I still have a $400 a day habit Of heroin, of heroin, of snorting.
Speaker 1:Yep Ever doing, of heroin, of heroin, of snorting, yep ever doing?
Speaker 2:injectables. Uh, not until later, until later yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:So what happens next?
Speaker 2:so so, basically, I have this habit and I'm at this point I have to resort to stealing. That's the only way to get the money for the day. What were you stealing? Anything and everything. Did you steal my car radio?
Speaker 1:No, I did not, I didn't have mine.
Speaker 2:I was really big into see. I always had like a business mindset in a crazy way. So like I started this junk business where I was picking up people's junk, selling the metal I was doing odd jobs doing you know power washing and stuff like that, and copper was a big one for me, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:So I came from the telecom industry. Copper is very good to recycle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so undisclosed. I'm not going to give locations or anything. No, no, please don't. But you know we would like new building sites, you would you were that guy, yeah, the one that the contractors hate.
Speaker 1:Correct, I got you.
Speaker 2:So we would do that stuff. I live on a farm so there's a lot of random stuff, tools, everything around the farm, so I'm stealing from there, taking from my dad's wallet, when I can Like anything and everything. Do you think they knew? What Did they know they would catch? They would ask me questions Like where'd my 20 go? You know, I thought I got away with it, but they knew where I was going. You know I would hack into their online banking system, transfer money to myself. We did this last time too.
Speaker 1:Sorry, forgot our one turn because the marker is not there. Gotcha Did this last time, all right, so your dad called you out on it. Maybe once in a place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean you're talking only like a span of you know, the June is when I got out of school. Yeah, like end of May, june, and then by July is the first time my, my mom's like you need to go to treatment. Got it?
Speaker 1:So she at this point, your family's having the discussion. My mom's, like you need to go to treatment, got it. So she, at this point, your family's having the discussion. They know they're aware.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what. What exacerbated and made my parents know like I need to do something. They need to do something about it is uh, my uncle came down for the weekend from New York. He has a prescription for anxiety medications. I ate the whole bottle and found me it was Xanax.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a very abused drug. Yes, I was hurting.
Speaker 2:I couldn't get my heroin that day.
Speaker 1:What's the difference in the high between Xanax and heroin or an opioid?
Speaker 2:Completely different, better or worse, not enough. Personally, I hate Xanax because I black out. Every time I take it I forget everything. I lose my phone, my wallet. I have conversations with people I can't remember and this time I've basically like sleepwalking around and had a whole conversation with my parents about what I've been doing. Basically had a whole conversation about how I need help and didn't remember. I woke up the next day to my family sitting around the kitchen table and they're like we're going to get you some. Remember? I woke up the next day, it's my family sitting around the kitchen table and they're like we're going to get you some help. I'm like what are you talking about? Like you don't remember anything from last night. I'm like I have no idea what you're talking about and so that's just started my journey.
Speaker 1:What was that? They send you to a treatment facility they did.
Speaker 2:Now they're very, very. You know, like most families, you have no idea what to do in this situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no one does yeah, you can watch every show in the world, but when it's you, yeah you're, you're in a panic mode they have no idea where to start.
Speaker 2:Yeah, where do you send me? What do I need?
Speaker 1:yeah, there's a lot of self-doubt and blame on themselves a lot of questions it probably came between your parents relationship a a little bit Correct.
Speaker 2:Oh, a lot, A lot of it Showed you some fighting.
Speaker 1:It's your fault. No, it's your fault. You didn't hug him enough. Type stuff.
Speaker 2:Not so much that it was more of what needs to be done. My dad comes from a poor background. He grew up in Manchester, england Okay, and had an alcoholic mother has seven siblings, so there is a potential gene for abuse? Oh, 100%, okay, yeah, it runs in both sides of my family. Okay, just, we all have different ics. Yeah, workaholic my grandfather was a gambling addict, got it. My uncle had drug issues.
Speaker 1:So it does stem in my family, so then I can imagine your parents were saying it's your family that caused this.
Speaker 2:No, your family no it's just my dad wanted to take the harder route. Let him figure it out. It's a phase kind of thing when my mom was like, no, we need to do something before he dies, break a cycle Right.
Speaker 1:And uh, so you go to rehab, where and how long?
Speaker 2:So the first time, like most parents, they call the number on the back of their insurance card. And you know, this is the screwed up part of the industry where people they don't know the toxicity that exists in any health care industry.
Speaker 1:Well, health care is a business it is and its purpose is a business it is and its purpose is to drive down the cost Correct and make sure that Also keep you patient. Yeah, they're providing you only enough.
Speaker 2:Right, so they call the number on the back, of course, they send me to the cheapest treatment center that they could find. Okay, which is where it is in Bowling Green, pennsylvania. Yeah, it was a homeless shelter Awesome, as well as like a soup kitchen, okay, and a treatment center all in one, okay.
Speaker 1:So they're not treating you, they're treating other people, correct?
Speaker 2:Okay, I mean it was a horrible experience and I was 20 years old. I had no intention. I'm like how am I gonna be sober if I live to 80? Yeah, how am I gonna be sober for 60 years? It doesn't make sense. How do I have fun without?
Speaker 4:drugs.
Speaker 2:How do I? It's been my identity for so long. How am I the party guy without drugs? How am I gonna be the life of the party? How am I the party guy without drugs? How?
Speaker 3:am I going to be the life of the?
Speaker 2:party. How am I going to be cool? How am I going to fit in All those kind of questions swirling around. So I went into the first treatment center. Horrible experience flooded on the second day there's mildew. I got sick. I was in a room with someone that had alcohol-induced dementia.
Speaker 4:Oh, so he keeps waking up Real alcoholic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he keeps waking up, thinking I'm his wife and screaming at me. So I was just like I need to get out of here and convinced.
Speaker 1:Did that scare you To the point where you would just say you know what? I don't want to be like this.
Speaker 2:No, Because I already thought I was a dirtbag at this point. I was already going into that mode that there's nothing better for me and like I didn't see another side of life.
Speaker 2:I didn't see anything being different you accepted your position Correct and I felt bad. There was a lot of shame and guilt. I didn't want to upset my family, I didn't want to steal from them, but I did these things already. So like there's kind of like a how am I ever gonna get forgiveness? Kind of thing yeah, you know, I wouldn't forgive myself, kind of deal and so convinced my parents that I was cured in two weeks and I'm all better.
Speaker 1:Did they believe it?
Speaker 2:Ready to go? Of course they did, because every parent does.
Speaker 1:They want it. No, it's confirmation bias.
Speaker 2:They want it to be over. Yeah, because they're scared too. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And their pain, which you know, you're putting yourself and the people who love you in jeopardy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I come home. Mom has like a whole plan for me. We got all these great things. You're going to wake up, you're going to do this, and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:She got her boy back.
Speaker 2:She got her boy back. She actually got me a dog, thinking that the dog is going to.
Speaker 1:That's the best medicine I'm going to have medicine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was totally down for it. But she thought it would give me responsibility and structure. But she wasn't wrong. I just wasn't ready. Within a week, less than a week, my drug dealers lived right across the street from me.
Speaker 1:That's rule number one is you separate from anyone that brings you back or had association. Yeah, it's very hard.
Speaker 2:I was very young and immature. There's no way you were gonna separate me from my friends. So relapsed, went down real quick, real fast. It's like zero to a hundred.
Speaker 1:Went right back to where I was Straight back to heroin.
Speaker 2:Yep, okay. And then my mom caught me because she took off her wedding ring to wash the dishes and grabbed it. You did not yep, and I grabbed it to go sell it. I got to the pawn shop and I couldn't, I couldn't do it, I couldn't, I couldn't sell it. All right, good, so all right, I was about to hate on you for a second. Yeah, I couldn't do it are you married? Yes, you are you said?
Speaker 1:you're married. Yep, imagine. The most ceremonial gift you can ever give your spouse in a moment of pure love is now swiped by your child. Mm-hmm, yeah, it was filled with pure evil at the time.
Speaker 2:Pure evil, that's evil, and that's what drugs do that's what drugs do?
Speaker 1:Okay yeah.
Speaker 2:They don't care, they don't. You're so in your head you're gonna die. You're so in fight or flight response and you're so in survival mode that they're, and you lost who you are at this point. So you have no moral compass, you don't. You don't have any core beliefs anymore. They're gone.
Speaker 1:You're not a member of society.
Speaker 2:You lost everything that you were, you're not a contributing member of society.
Speaker 1:You are now a drain.
Speaker 2:You are a robot solely going trying to sustain, getting the only need that you need at this time, which is drugs. You will forfeit sex relationships, water, food, shelter, security.
Speaker 1:You're on pure survival, all for that substance. So let's fast forward to the Chris Hansen special Yep, where I saw your mom's scared face talking to the camera. She found you kicked open the door of a crack house, needle in your arm and about to die. So let's talk about that. And then we're pivoting to why you're such an awesome human.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I went back to treatment, ended up in California this time. Real treatment. What was that? A real place? Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, they're all real places. No, but like a place that gelled with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, no, yes and no. It was a nicer place, 100% Good counselors. They were a 12-step model of care and I went out there and I really wanted to make it work in a way, not for myself, but just not to hurt others anymore. Okay, that's the thing. You're not going to really make change happen unless you have that internal motivation at the end of the day, and external only takes you so far. Yeah, so I got about 60 days of recovery and then, uh, was in a sober living. Someone started using lined myself with them. I was off to the races. This time I met methamphetamine, oh, and, like I told you, I love speed, so I found my new love. At this point, did you stop heroin for meth?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would still use heroin every once in a while, but it's more to come down than to get high. All right, so before we pivot, that's shocking. Yeah, I've heard of people with a lot of heroin, but it's more to come down than to get high.
Speaker 1:All right, so before we pivot, that's shocking. Yeah, I've heard of people, when they're too into a psychedelic trip, smoking weed and that brings them down. But using heroin to come down off of meth, yes, okay, it's a downer, I get it. So what does heroin feel like before we pivot to meth it? So? So heroin feel like before we pivot to meth? Walk me through the feeling, because we all hear heroin stories. You're not the first, you're certainly not the last, but no one, I think. If for those who have not tried it, myself included, what is it like?
Speaker 2:for me it's like a warm hug, warm hug, you know you fall asleep. I mean, sometimes you nod out, but it's not like. Isn't that a waste? It's not like falling asleep though You're going into like a warm bath of euphoria. For me, methamphetamine was the whole grill for me, okay.
Speaker 1:Now we all hear horror stories about that. Yeah, In fact, on the show in season two, someone who is a phenomenal person, inspirational. He's a business coach. His name is John Firth. Mid episode he had asked what's the most shocking thing a guest has ever told you? And we're sitting on a bench what's the most shocking thing a guest has ever told you? And we're sitting on a bench in Liberty State Park and I told them a few things and they were pretty shocking to me. And then he said well, I have a substance abuse problem currently. Wow, and I said, okay, coke, weed. And then I made a quip Well, you have your teeth, so it's definitely not meth. And he goes no, no, no, no, meth. Yeah, and I held my composure because that's what I do, a business therapist. You can't shock me. But my mind went bonkers. How could this individual talking to me be actively having this conversation while high on?
Speaker 2:meth.
Speaker 1:I've met neurosurgeons that do surgeries high on meth okay, jesus, okay Yep, as all people on this trail just shocked themselves. What the what? Mm-hmm. Neurosurgeons.
Speaker 2:Neurosurgeons Working on your brain. So yeah, so I'll get there, because I met him in my last treatment center, but he we don't say his name. Obviously I won't say his name. I don't know how he's doing. I haven't spoke to him in years but I hope he's not doing. He was practicing medical medicine. He was doing surgeries and Literally smoking meth in the operating room while doing surgeries. Yeah, Tweaking filmed himself doing it.
Speaker 1:Expletive yeah meth is one of those things that like so now, if I need brain surgery, I need to say by the way, do you do meth?
Speaker 2:in the cup, please wait.
Speaker 1:So do the nurses and the anesthesiologists and the people in the room they all know what.
Speaker 2:They're the ones who made him go to treatment.
Speaker 1:You know that person should be thrown in jail for life period.
Speaker 2:I don't care if he's got a habit, because what it does to you? The world becomes gold, it becomes the most exciting thing ever and you are the king of it. That's what it makes you feel. It doesn't matter what it is, you will beat it, you will take control of it, you are it in all of it. It makes you extremely hyper focused. It allows you to stay up and work past any kind of physical barrier.
Speaker 1:Listen, I took Adderall in college to study for tests. I get that. That's nothing.
Speaker 2:Multiply that by a hundred thousand. I'm going to say this with my hat off.
Speaker 1:Kids. Drugs are bad. Stay off of them.
Speaker 2:Well, it deteriorates, you you know, very quickly, because you can only sustain that level of energy for so long. Now, when I was using, the longest I stayed up without sleep was 11 days. 11 days straight, no sleep.
Speaker 1:Just tweaking. So right there, we know sleep deprivation is you go into a psychotic trip, correct, and you can't fall asleep. It's not like you didn't try, you just can't, you can't, you can't 11 days and now you're hallucinating. So you're the zombie you see on the New York City street walking like this. That person's on meth.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:No, no, that person's on heroin?
Speaker 2:That's heroin. Yeah, that person's on heroin? That's heroin, yeah. Tweakers is. I'm erratic.
Speaker 3:So the one that's doing this, yeah, like itching all around that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So it's like a South Park special, correct.
Speaker 1:My mind is blown and I hope these people go to jail. I'm sorry I hope they get treatment and lose their license to practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean when he told me that I was like what? Yeah, dude, like I thought I was bad, I didn't up with that. Okay, it's on another level, all right, you know, pivoting back, so I end up on meth. I go wild, I'm. I'm mulling for the cartels out there to supply my habit mexican turtles. I'm in, uh, palm springs, california, so we're very close to tijuana. Okay, so again I'm the white boy.
Speaker 1:So is that a shit your pants scenario when you're talking to anyone in the cartel? Yes, I would Do you have any stories of that where it's just like you thought you were not coming home? Many of them. Pretty much every interaction so is it kind of like hey, gringo, come here and then gun to your head type situation Yep.
Speaker 2:Like having to switch. You know, they never want to tell me where they are, so I'd have to meet somewhere. You'd have to get the bag over your head, they'd have to drive you to the next place. Meanwhile I'm 20 years old. You know, I'm tiny. A guy From the use of meth I was 97 pounds. Because I'm not eating, oh my God. And so I'm tiny. I mean I'm wasting, god, and so I'm tiny. I mean I'm wasting away and getting a bag thrown over my head.
Speaker 1:I had a girlfriend at the time You're getting a bag thrown over your head.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you got the hood so that's literally where you're going. Oh yeah, the movies are real.
Speaker 1:Are you really afraid? Are you just so high that you're just like okay, cool, I need my drug?
Speaker 2:It's the only way that I'm going to get it it. You know, and they know that they got you. Yeah, they're gonna use me for what I'm worth, which is I'm gonna get through the border without many questions and you got through the.
Speaker 1:So you, I used to watch this show arrested abroad, where I think that's the name of it, and it was all about these essentially mules people that were lured out of countries. You know, honest, innocent people, but they were enticed by a $10,000 payday for just putting something in their in their suitcase.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me. They would give me a couple ounces of meth, which you know was a huge score for me and you would cross the border. Yeah, so we would go over with a Toyota Corolla. You know that had secret compartments in the back, whatever this is in San Diego.
Speaker 2:Drop it off somewhere. They would take it somewhere else, they would load it up, bring it back to you. Did you ever feel like you were about to get caught? Oh, every, every second. Why didn't you get caught? Well, again, because I'm an American citizen, I'm white, I look like a kid that was just gonna go enjoy spring break.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but every other mule that you see is also a white American citizen. They get caught, so why not you?
Speaker 2:Well, you've got to think At the border, what are they processing, like hundreds of thousands of cars a day? Got it? It's just a lot of probability. I'd like to think, because I'm just so good at mulling, but that's not the case. It's just the luck of a draw, okay, but it's. You're scared, you don't? You're just crossing your fingers and hoping you get through and you're just thinking about I'm gonna go get high after this, so that's all you're thinking all right, all right, I understand.
Speaker 1:So how many trips did you take?
Speaker 2:um, we did about seven, seven trips, like that and it was only meth.
Speaker 1:And you said how many.
Speaker 2:I mean, honestly, I don't really know what. They put it in the back of the car. You don't want to ask, I don't want to ask, you don't ask, you don't look you don't touch it.
Speaker 1:What was the scariest moment in front of?
Speaker 2:the cartel. The scariest part is I had a girlfriend at the time. You know, obviously, being a girl in those situations, you're extra vulnerable.
Speaker 1:She was physically with you. Yes, At the cartel also a drug user, I imagine.
Speaker 2:Yes, we were both using. She's the one who introduced me to injection. She was a nurse, so she taught me how to inject Meth, meth, all of it. It didn't really matter at this point.
Speaker 1:All right, let's go there in a second, but so the scariest moment in front of the cartel.
Speaker 2:Scariest moment is that we ended up out some kind of you know, flop house kind of ordeal. It's a stash house In Mexico. No, this was in California, okay, and you know we're in the desert, so you go through like massive areas of nothing.
Speaker 1:And then you come to like a little town. You're driving over bodies that have been buried Probably yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:You end up at this little house. I think they were just messing with us. But you know they started, like you know, grabbing her, telling her what they're going to do. He's going to have to watch.
Speaker 1:Just you know, messing with us. How old are these cartel members? I have no idea. The kids or adults.
Speaker 2:They probably range. I mean, all of them look older than probably what they are. Okay, just because you, just because they're all tattooed up and stuff like that, but they're like hardened criminal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, these guys are hardcore, so I imagine it must have been something like Breaking Bad when they meet Tuco.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's something like that. I mean that's an exaggerated standpoint, but oh that's exaggerated Cause.
Speaker 1:that scared the shit out of me when I watched Breaking Bad at least a dozen times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do love that show, but when they meet Tuco you're like that dude that dude's crazy.
Speaker 1:And then they meet his uncle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I mean he would do meth and he was always blasted out Tuco in the show.
Speaker 3:I mean, these guys didn't really yeah, they didn't.
Speaker 2:They didn't mess with their supply. You know they were businessmen. At the end of the day, they're just willing to kill you to get a business deal. You know you, you're a pure number.
Speaker 1:You are a commodity to them correct and uh.
Speaker 2:So you know all this was happening. That was the scariest point because I didn't think we were going to get out of there. You know, I was worried about my girlfriend at the time that you know she's. They're just going to keep her there and do whatever and I'm not going to be able to do anything. Like I said, I'm 97 pounds. One of my fight there was about 15 guys there, so yeah, all strapped up. How did you?
Speaker 2:get out of that situation so I think they're just messing with us basically at the end of it. I mean yeah, it was about 40 minutes of them just messing with us like I, and I really didn't think I'm getting out of there they take your driver's license so they know who you are.
Speaker 2:Type of situation oh yeah, they know everything. Yeah, they're looking you up on facebook, you know, you know, telling you, you know your mother's name, that kind of stuff, oh shit, you know. So I mean, I don't know if they are that capable, as I say they are, but of course, though, you you were in a room with 15 adult men tatted and their life of crime.
Speaker 1:They could have easily done whatever they wanted to do with both you and your girlfriend and buried you and no one would ever know you existed.
Speaker 2:Correct? Yeah, there is no law At that time. 100% when we were.
Speaker 1:You could have buried me in the backyard and no one was going to find me there, but they didn't because you were of use to them as a mule, correct? And what did they give you in that situation? Um, for that, for that job, we got about two ounces of meth. Two ounces, yeah. Making a hand gesture, oh, that's two ounces of meth. A brick, yep. Two ounces of meth in exchange for literally two people's lives. And how much money did you make? I?
Speaker 2:didn didn't make anything, I just used old meth oh so walk me through why they would give you two ounces of meth. It was cheaper for them to give me meth and cash they're going to make. Oh, so that was your payment for mulling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was my payment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't care about cash at this point, talk about an addictive business model.
Speaker 1:Yeah, their product costs them virtually nothing. Yeah, their product costs them virtually nothing. Right, it gets you hooked to come back. Right, the drug in America that is very popular is called money. Mm-hmm, right, that's what keeps you working at your desk, correct For a job. Money is the addiction that we all suffer from, and in your case, the real addiction is true addiction. You have no choice. Mm-hmm, oh, geez, guys, are we learning in all of your days on the, on the force, yes, whatever you call it. Have you ever heard this story like this?
Speaker 2:so you're aware of this oh yeah, what was up?
Speaker 4:I don't know what branch they belong to, but I probably my one of my last cases, about four years ago, was a kilo of meth, so it started as coke. Kilo, yeah it started as coke on Renwick Street in the city of Newburgh Turned out it was meth. Sonola cartel was pushing it into Newburgh through some hubs in Jersey Philly there's a. Florida Connect and Arizona Connect, but the majority of it. The mules are crossing the California border right down to Tijuana, but that was insane.
Speaker 1:But have you ever heard the story from the mule like this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, interviewing them. Yeah, yeah, interview them, because usually that's that's your only way into the bigger guys.
Speaker 1:So I'm obviously not recording you guys on video, because there's probably people that would love to know who you are, so we're going to go by the names of Bob and Michael the doctor thing man.
Speaker 3:That was like some of my last big cases were working on these doctors in Queens and it seemed like every person we locked up in Manhattan had a pill bottle with the same doctor from Queens.
Speaker 1:They obviously lost their license. I hope it was a giant case.
Speaker 3:I mean the DA that we worked with. She wrote a book about it and everything. It was pretty impressive. But at one point there was a doctor downtown Manhattan, one of the hospitals Boy, I wish I could remember what hospital. Anyway, there was a doctor there and he was geeked out of his mind constantly on heroin. Geeked is like a inside term.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was like yeah, just smashed always.
Speaker 3:And he had a substantial habit and he was in the operating room operating and him and another surgeon were taking turns in shifts. His shift was up, he came out, he was not feeling well, needed needed more heroin, overdosed and died mid surgery. Oh my god. So you can see how that can screw things.
Speaker 4:That's a lawsuit oh my god.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not like you can find another neurosurgeon just running on by exactly no, it's no bounds, that's so, but it's it's unfortunately.
Speaker 3:Have you guys ever felt bad for the mule like? Have you heard this?
Speaker 1:story that's. I mean, that's like you. You ever felt bad for the mule Like. Have you heard this story that's?
Speaker 4:I mean, that's like you know you're in the game. Next thing you know you have an addiction and then you know the gang's using you as a mule. I mean they're using you any chance they can, because it's true, well, he's a number, right, he's just a tick.
Speaker 3:Until I actually struggled with my own addiction problem. You had your own addiction problem While working, and once I got past that, it started moving on.
Speaker 1:So you were a detective at that point, yeah, and you were. What were you addicted to as a?
Speaker 3:police officer like a substantial part of my career. I mean it was just active, you know, and it all. What were you addicted on Pills. Same thing pills how. Started as an injury in the Marines and you know. Then they were just like here. You know how many do you need. What do you want Like? What do?
Speaker 1:you need Because you're a Marine. Yeah, you can take it, do whatever. Yeah, well, the VA sucks.
Speaker 3:And then it just slowly progressed to the point where I had a surgery, I had to have another surgery and after that surgery, while I was home, I started to feel better, like no pain. And then I saw myself taking these pills when I wasn't in pain and I'm like, man, I gotta, and you're a cop. Yeah, I identified it and I was able to put my finger on it for a while and I was home for oh, I was home for oh, I was home for a broke, something at work, like my foot or something like that, and I was out for a while and then I just like a switch went off and I said I'm done, that's it.
Speaker 1:So I had to detox in my house in my base and you can't tell anyone because you're a cop. Yeah, and cops don't have have p tests they, um, they do.
Speaker 3:But I had a prescription for everything. You know. I had a prescription. I doctor shopped.
Speaker 2:This doesn't shock you. Well, with our treatment centers, we specialize in PBA officers and VA.
Speaker 3:When you mentioned your treatment center, I know it's the farm, I know that's where the guys go. So, guys, we're going.
Speaker 1:We're probably midway through this. This episode is going to be a long one, because this is a great story, not great in that sense.
Speaker 3:Everyone needs to hear this episode. I never sympathized with these guys until I had my own experience.
Speaker 1:Until you were on that side.
Speaker 3:And then I was like man, I get it, like I get it.
Speaker 1:Did it make you a better cop?
Speaker 3:I wouldn't say better man it gave me a lot of false confidence. I wouldn't say better man. It gave me a lot of false confidence.
Speaker 1:Did it make you understand the plight of a informant a little better? Oh yeah, so would you be more lenient on them? Never more lenient.
Speaker 3:So you upheld their game better? Yeah, but I was always. I had like I don't want to say a soft spot, but I was empathetic. Like I have conversations with these guys, I'm like, look man, like I get it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these are relationships.
Speaker 3:I don't know how else I could tell you, like I get it. That's the best I can do for you. Like I understand where you're coming from, whatever, but now we you know there's also stuff that we got to do.
Speaker 1:I got a job to do. Or are you Mike? Which one are you? I'm Mike, you're Mike, that's Bob. Okay, when I first met Mike, I asked him this question Did you ever have an informant die on your watch?
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, I had my business up. That's funny. He had my business card in his pocket when they found him dead.
Speaker 1:And he was killed because he was an informant.
Speaker 3:He had the 20 bucks on him that I gave him the 20 bucks I gave him.
Speaker 1:So he was killed because he was discovered as an informant I.
Speaker 3:I don't know if it was because he was discovered. I think that he was just involved in a lot of man. He was a street guy did you feel bad?
Speaker 1:no you didn't feel bad? No, mike, I asked you this question did you feel bad when your informant was killed?
Speaker 4:I. That was something I always knew was. I actually would tell him that all the time.
Speaker 1:He's going to get killed.
Speaker 4:Yes, I said, if you don't change paths, you're either going to be in jail forever or I'm going to be standing over you one day.
Speaker 1:But it's bittersweet though, because you want him to continue as an informant. You, essentially, are using these informants as your own mule to bust the bigger guys, as much as the bigger guys are using the drug mule guys I was informing with, like the cops that were doing this, like I mean they were nice guys, like they, I mean they're in it.
Speaker 2:I I felt bad for them because their their job is to go into my life, like some of these guys have been undercover for years and biker gangs, and like I couldn't imagine faking, the pressure of faking. We saw the sons of anarchy and what you're I mean you got to use drugs. If you're in those situations Like you can't be fake.
Speaker 1:You know what I?
Speaker 3:mean Do the undercover ones? You can't. It's a big misconception. Like you can see how you can get into a situation where you may have to, or something like that. All right, so let's just say the job has zero tolerance in going into it. You know that.
Speaker 1:So what I'm about to say is a completely contrived scenario. But I'm in a biker gang, I'm an undercover cop and my test you know the old cliche are you a cop? No, okay, well then you can't. That's bullshit. We know that's not true. A cop can tell. They say okay, prove, you're not a cop. Here's a line.
Speaker 3:It happens, but nowhere near as much as you would think.
Speaker 2:Most of the gangs that I've been involved with like the top guys. If you're at that level, they're not messing with the stuff. No.
Speaker 3:And if they're trusting you to come into their business.
Speaker 2:They don't want you messing with the stuff. I mean, I was scum of the earth.
Speaker 3:They expect the lower level guys, the users.
Speaker 2:The ones that are in the street risking their life every day.
Speaker 3:You know, using it as a business to make money.
Speaker 1:They know that they're really not All right, so another question about informants Did you get a sense that the majority, if not all of your informants, or none, were happy that they turned at least a life of good or had an opportunity to be good, or did you feel like they were reluctant?
Speaker 3:You know they were. It was like a mix. Some of them used the money and the resources that we gave them. Oh, you gave them money. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Good money, yeah yeah, just for their own good or to buy, yeah, yeah whatever they wanted.
Speaker 3:A lot of times they used it to get high, um, so we would pay them to to go in someplace and make a buy. You know we give them like 40, so it's like my kids, keep the change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, go in there. Except I'm giving them a 20, you know, and I expect 14 back. We do that a few times.
Speaker 3:And then I get a warrant and I go to a location that we boom the door, we lock up a bunch of people, I get a supplier and all that. Then I'll go back to that informant. I mean, you know, hey, meet me at wherever and I'll give them, you know, probably a couple grand and that comes from the police department.
Speaker 1:Right, it's not your money, no, no, the police department has their own funds for that. Where were you getting your drugs from all legal um?
Speaker 3:mostly yeah, from the pharmacy and the doctors again.
Speaker 1:your name is bob, so no, no one knows you. Wow, but when you were getting your street, when you were giving informants drugs, was that from cases or people that were arrested?
Speaker 3:So we never gave informants drugs.
Speaker 1:What about you, mike?
Speaker 3:Never, ever ever, never, never.
Speaker 4:So it's not like Hollywood.
Speaker 3:If we were in a situation we were in a case where that was part of it and we had to 99.9% of the time, I feel like they would have been fake. They would have been fake drugs. Your informant's killed on that one. The agencies really wouldn't let you mess around with real drugs. Once they came in, they never went back out.
Speaker 1:All right, let's go on with our journey. This is a season three finale. Eye-opening, because I am not that person Now. I have dabbled in your world a little bit, but not with extremes to that extent, and I don't have an addictive personality. So I was confident in any time I used a drug to party or for the night. I was confident I would return, not needing it the next day. But you have to know your powers and your limits. I am not telling people to never use drugs. In fact there are drugs that are really good out there. This study is on psilocybin and ketamine to help depression are showing far better results than the prescription drugs, which are equally, if not worse, right.
Speaker 2:So it is a good versus evil. We utilize those at our treatment centers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and psilocybin growing in the ground is a natural drug versus the prescription for whatever this pharmaceutical company made up just to get the money out of your wallet and get you addicted, correct?
Speaker 2:You know we get it. It's good versus evil. I mean it's a balance when you're dealing with mental health, with a lot of those you know, a lot of them are outdated, those medications. Of course, A lot of them come with serious side effects that would lead to depression anyway.
Speaker 1:Or or the. The one I love is, if you are having increased suicidal thoughts or hard thoughts of harming yourself because of the use of this anti-depression, yes, please speak to your. Stop using it immediately, right? That wording right there tells you this is not for you yes, and there's no long-term studies on this so let me, let me pivot now. Let's go to the moment your mom kicked in the crack house door. What happened?
Speaker 2:so I'm running and gunning in california. I kind of come to the conclusion that I'm not going to hurt my family by, I'm just going to disappear, essentially. So I'm running and gunning to the fullest extent, completely just living in a state of psychosis. My drug habit at the end of this is about three grams of bath salts.
Speaker 1:Methamphetamine about a teener, Three grams of bath salts which are legally purchased? Correct, Because we don't. The laws can't outlaw things as quick as they come out. Correct? Are bath salts illegal now or legal still?
Speaker 2:Depends what formula.
Speaker 1:So some chemist in the Dutch world comes up with a new formula.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all shipped over from China. They have super labs that do this stuff Okay, but it basically gives you the effect of methamphetamine and LSD together. Oh my god, that is not a person.
Speaker 1:I want to hang out with for the night.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm doing that methamphetamine and then I'm using Xanax and heroin to come down after I've been up for too long and I'm seeing too much stuff. Okay, and so my mom wants to rescue me. She's trying to figure out where I am. She gets a hold of my girlfriend's mother and finds out that she's going to go out to California to try to get to my girlfriend. The mother said that she's been in contact with my girlfriend because at the time it was tax season, so my girlfriend's trying to get her taxes back so we could use it for drug use.
Speaker 2:The mom said hey, I got the check. I don't want to mail it or whatever. I'm going to drive it out to you.
Speaker 1:Us, we didn't care, it's like an intervention tax, yeah, so her mom's coming out here, but she doesn't.
Speaker 2:Her focus is her daughter Doesn't really want to help my mom, so my mom's just like screw it. I'm going to go out to California and she literally hid at the airport in a bush and waited for this woman to leave the airport and saw my girlfriend pull up for her and my mom literally jumped in the car and hijacked the car. I might have been running with gangs, but my mom's the only gangster in the family a mom with her baby, you know, in in jeopardy, just like a father they do everything.
Speaker 2:So she jumped in the car. You're taking me to my son right now so they pull up to the. At this point we're living in an abandoned hotel and uh, she squatting, yeah, squatting in the hotel and she I hear the pounding at the door and honestly, I thought it was the cops and I was just about to shoot up some more meth. So you really were shooting up meth. Yep and the door opens, do you?
Speaker 1:have track marks still scars.
Speaker 2:No, not really. I'm very vascular, okay, so it's very easy Bro for vascularity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so IV use was very easy for me. I actually was so skinny that I had veins that ran down my ribs into my stomach and I used those veins, not my arms. So your mom knocks on the door. So my mom knocks on the door. No one answers because I think it's the cops. And then she basically kicks the door open and I stood there with a spoon and needle in hand and I just saw a silhouette and light coming through and I hear my mother's voice and I'm in a state of psychosis so.
Speaker 2:I'm like what the hell is going on right now, and the only way I could describe it is like I regressed to like a four year old state and I didn't like what I was doing. I you know, I saw myself wasting away in front of in the mirror. I hated myself, you were ready to die.
Speaker 2:I was ready to go and I was trying to Actually the shot that I was going to shoot up was a full gram and a half in one shot. You were about to do a shot to kill yourself. Yeah, every shot at this point for the last, like three days, up till my mom was there, I just kept putting more and more kind of I'm suicidal, but I didn't have really the balls to kill myself, yeah. So like I would just put a little bit more to see if that one was the one that I go.
Speaker 2:So this is kind of like fear and loathing in las vegas yeah, a little bit, except different drug obviously alcohol, and one of these it was like the second day I I did overdose. Overdosing on meth is different than heroin. How so? It's kind of it's because it really has to do with your heart, like all I could really describe is I think I had like a mini stroke and I went unconscious and you know, the people I'm with just dragged me out to the alleyway on the side of the building and I just happened to wake up from it and came back too know that was happening and and the shot that I had ready to go was, uh, it was about a gram and a half of meth, that's a lot, which is a lot of meth like usually a gram will last you like three days, so I was doing a gram and a half, so you knew at any moment you were going to do the dose that would do you in
Speaker 1:yeah and you wanted that I did, and you think that when your mom knocked on that door, broke it down, down and saw you that was. If she hadn't done that, you would have been dead that night.
Speaker 2:I very well could have been yeah, and I was okay with it at that point. So she comes in and I regressed to a four-year-old state. I was just like Mom, like, because I'm in California, I'm 3,000 miles away, like, how like mom, like because I'm in california, I'm three thousand miles away.
Speaker 1:Like how did you find me here? You know, this is like the I saw my life flash before my eyes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, real, and I. I followed her back to the car, um, and she's driving me to, uh uh, mutual friends and she was gonna her. Her plan was that she was gonna get me on a plane and compete, kind of do like, chain you to a radiator style recovery, get me back to new jersey. But I was well, you'll die. I was a mess. I mean, I was. I was up for multiple days.
Speaker 2:At this point, you need to be weaned off, otherwise you'll die. Yeah, and and the drug mindset came through about like halfway through the drive and I and she, I remember asking me, like what are we dealing with, dan? Like what do we need to do? And, um, you know, I lifted up my shirt and pulled up my arms. I'm like this is what you're dealing with.
Speaker 2:And like I was a mess, like I had, you know, track marks all over the place and you know I'm 97 pounds a mess and I'm screaming at my mom. You can't save me. Like let me go. Like you're, we're gonna go here and get you help. I'm like there's no point. Like let me die, mom. And I couldn't imagine being my mom and hearing your son say this, like pleading with you to let him die. Like and I'm dead set, like I am vicious with it. And now I try. I'm trying to leave the house. No one's listening to me. I'm trying to leave the house. They called the police on me and they 5150'd me, which is when they take away your rights, you're in danger to yourself or others. And they didn't have to do this. Like, thank God for the cops Good cops, yeah, they wanted me to get help and I was ferocious man.
Speaker 1:I was not in a good state of mind. You got the strength of ten men.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they're trying to tell me that they're going to take away my rights.
Speaker 1:I'm reciting the Constitution that they can't do that.
Speaker 2:And one cop takes out his taser, hits me in the neck. I thought he hit me with a bat. I thought he took his baton out and hit me. That's what it felt like and I was like you mother, like how are you going to hit me right now? So I got up and I punched him right in the face.
Speaker 1:I broke his nose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I broke his nose.
Speaker 1:Wait, you hit a cop. Oh yeah yeah, how are you having this conversation with me, and not in jail?
Speaker 2:I don't know, man, I have a guardian angel or something. Yeah, I got four more tasers to the neck after that you broke a cop's nose.
Speaker 1:No charges.
Speaker 2:No, I didn't get any charges, you're going to ask the same question.
Speaker 1:You weren't who you were. The color of your skin probably a little different.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, I think honestly. Where I was, there's a lot of rehabs in that area. So they see it time and time again kids that aren't from that area, that get lost in the mix and that, and then they're dealing with it. So there's a frustration on their part to help right if I get this person help, then I don't have to deal with it kind of mentality, right? Have you seen these, these police officers? These cops after uh, yeah, I've seen some of them in in the mix and not all of them yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I. I wouldn't have this chance of life if it wasn't for them putting up with that all right.
Speaker 1:So how so you beat up a cop? They tase you a whole bunch of times. You've got the strength. I fall down.
Speaker 2:I I have a scar from falling into you do the uh into a table. I cut my whole, my whole eyelids hanging off my face I pissed myself um. I didn't know they had straight jackets. I thought that was a like a thing in the movies I was putting in a stray jacket put in the padded room yeah, they never padded me down, though, so I ended I still had three grams of basalt on me, so in the padded room.
Speaker 1:So now you're entering a holding cell with with drugs. So okay, stack these charges.
Speaker 2:So I uh take everything out. You, my hands are bound and stuff. So like I managed to get them open with my mouth and stuff and get them on the ground and I snort the three grams in the floor of the pad room. You know they rush in. They're like what the fuck? They hit me with some kind of shot in my butt. I'm out, cold, gone, and I wake up in the ambulance on a drive to a psych hospital somewhere in Aurora, california, and I'm locked up there for days. It took me five days to come down.
Speaker 2:Every day I tried to escape somehow. One day I ripped the light switch off the wall and I used that to unbolt windows. To try to push the window out and escape. I ran down the hallways. I'd call my mom like you need to let me die, and I'm like I'm leaving, and I run down the hallway, get tackled, shot in the butt, wake up. It was like Groundhog's Day. I just kept waking up in this padded room and then on the fifth day, my mom came in to visit me and I crawled in her lap and I cried and I'm like I don't, I'm sorry and I don't know what to do. I don't know where it goes from here. I don't know what I'm to do. I just feel like a lost cause.
Speaker 2:If you want me to try something, I'll try something. That's kind of where I was, so you're at a state of I want to kill myself.
Speaker 1:I can't do it, so I'm just going to keep upping my drugs until I do it. So now you are fighting for your life because you don't have the drug to where you've given up on life and you're like fuck it, my life is. So, whatever it is, I'm just going to now commit to being sober I I.
Speaker 2:No, I was just I. I was just broken I I. There was no commitment, it was just, it was just. Uh, I put down the sword if that you gave up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I went with the flow yeah, I'm like I'm gonna just go with the flow. I mean, I was beaten up at this point I was. I was a mess man like just emotionally all over the place, spirit completely broken and just physically drained. I haven't eaten in months. I'm just a mess, you know. And it just so happened my grandfather was reading, saw a commercial for a treatment center that happened to be like right down the street from me and the only way for me to get out of this place is I literally had to have someone that was going to guard me from the psychiatric hospital to this location. And they just so happened to provide that service where they would make sure I got to the next place. Because I'm a ward of the state, I'm literally the property of California at this point. So I was forced into the next treatment center and it was the whole other side of life. This place was in Malibu, california it's on the cliffs of.
Speaker 2:Malibu. No, no, it's called passages, oh passages yeah, you know, I once was an addict.
Speaker 1:No, I'm not yeah, yeah, I've seen that commercial and, um, wow, it was.
Speaker 2:You know it was absolutely stunning. I had a five-star chef and infinity pool. I was like this was you know it was absolutely stunning. I had a five-star chef in Infinity Pool. Oh, so there's. I was just like this is amazing. You know they're wooing you at this point Well, yeah, I mean it was. All those things were great you know what I mean and awesome. That's not what gets you sober, though.
Speaker 1:No, but that helps you realize that there's something better in life to at least experience.
Speaker 2:It gave me a sense of maybe there's something to go after in life, maybe I'm worth it if I somehow ended up here by chance.
Speaker 1:Like you know, I started believing in something more you know, you started believing that you could do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that I had a little bit more self-worth, Like maybe I'm worth trying for Okay Well clearly you are because someone was worth fighting for you.
Speaker 1:Correct, it's your mom. Yes, all right, so you're here. How long are you at Passage?
Speaker 2:I'm here for 30 days and what was fantastic about this program is that I got eight different therapists that I met with individually each week and they all had different disciplines, so they really pulled me apart in a million different ways. I attribute a lot of my success today to a man named noah rothschild, who his discipline was inner child work and really unraveling. You know what is this unhealthy perspective that you have that keeps leading you to this cycle, this unhealthy cycle? So this guy saved you. Yeah, I attribute a lot of my mindset today to the work that we did together while at Passages and beyond Passages, because I kept up with him.
Speaker 2:So, this works this.
Speaker 1:You're still over for at least 30 days.
Speaker 2:What was great about this is it was non-denominative. So a lot of these 12-step treatment centers what they do is they say, hey, here's a box of recovery, this is how you recover. Fit into this box, you'll find life. If you don't fit into the box, you're gonna die. That's pretty much the synopsis of the teachings in most of these places. That's the Minnesota model of recovery.
Speaker 2:The this place was cold, completely non-denominative, like there is no box of recovery. You build the box of recovery. It's yours. We're going to give you all the materials and tools to build this box. It's up to you to take the action, but we're going to let you experience all these different things. Yeah, and I love that.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh my God, I can build my own house of recovery. And a lot of things spoke to me. I took to a lot of Eastern medicine and philosophy and Buddhism and inner child work and DBT tools. All these different things started exercising, eating healthy. I was just on fire. I'm like, oh my god, I could do this. Yeah, and then at the end of that treatment center, I'm like, yes, okay, I just got to keep this up and do these things. Now this is 2010, 2011.
Speaker 2:So at the time in New Jersey, a lot of these holistic therapies like now everybody likes holistic things, yeah, but at the time, like yoga studios weren't even really a thing in New Jersey yet. I was like a California thing, yeah. So I was gonna go home and I met with my discharge planner and they handed me my aftercare plan of what I'm supposed to follow when I leave and it was go to 12 step meetings, 90 meetings in 90 days. I'm like wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You just literally taught me this way for 29 days and now you're telling me go do that other thing that didn't work for you all those times before. Yeah, and I'm like how does that make sense? Yeah, it's hypocritical. So I call my mom and I'm like mom, like let's go this way.
Speaker 4:What am I gonna?
Speaker 2:what am I gonna do, you know? And I'm literally upset crying with her on the phone and she's like if it doesn't exist, we'll build it, dan it doesn't exist, we'll build it man, your mom is a warrior, yeah, she's a badass.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, okay, whatever you say, ma. And so I came home, built a recovery plan we had to search far and wide for the things that I was into and built a recovery plan for myself and I was doing fantastic. And then she pushed me into doing prevention work. She went to some presentation for back-to-school night or whatever for my sister. There was a guy speaking about his story and it was a prevention type of scenario at high schools and she was like my son would be great for this. And I got hooked up with him and I was nervous as hell.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to tell my story. I didn't do public speaking. I was actually a very shy kid. You know, again that that change thing, all that old stuff that I was dealing with with the child that went away by using drugs, came flooding back without the drugs, you know. So I'm not adapting to change. Well, again, I'm socially awkward and nervous and anxiety and all that kind of stuff. So I remember sitting at my first speech and I literally had to read my own story off a piece of paper because I was so nervous I couldn't even remember me and I'm shaking, and after that I had like five kids come up to me and they're like I have a brother who I have a dad who a mother who you know. Thank you for saying that. I needed to hear that there's hope on the other side and I'm like wow.
Speaker 1:I made a difference, you know. I mean, I thought I was awful, you know, and you lived many years where you were low.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, I was well seasoned at that point, as I like to call it. So I I started doing that. I started doing speeches at schools. I pretty much hit every high school in the state of New Jersey doing middle schools. My mom got involved with me doing it and she's like let's make an elementary school program. So she was Crazy Susie and I was Traffic man Dan and we had a right lane and a lost lane and kids had to tell you which way to go with all these decisions they had to make. It was like a play and elementary school started wanting that presentation and all my friends, every single one of us from high school, my group of friends there's 14 of us Only one didn't do drugs. The rest of them ended up addicted. So they started seeing me doing well and hearing me doing well, seeing me do these speeches, seeing me on facebook, and they're like what are you doing?
Speaker 2:that's working because they wanted it yeah, and I'm going back to school at this point for social work, so I'm in psychology classes. You're purposeful. We had a dream uh, to you know, start a treatment center and uh, so I'm going to school, working horse shows, doing all this, just grabbing life by the horns. And I started helping my friends build a recovery plan for themselves, started helping people get into treatment, got certified as an interventionist. So then I started traveling around the world. I mean, we did interventions in Scotland and England and all across America. I was getting called by families and I loved it. It was like exciting for me. It was a way for me to pull somebody out of the wreckage and, you know, being on the other side of the table kept me sober at the end of the day, you're finding extreme purpose and it's almost like a new addiction.
Speaker 1:Your addiction is helping yourself and staying sober and helping others.
Speaker 2:Yeah, helping others it was is helping yourself and staying sober and helping others. Yeah, helping others, it was what I always wanted, like back from the kid when I'm hiding the food underneath his bed, I I just, from the work that I was doing, I really became in, in tune, in my authentic self. I like wasn't afraid to be goofy and quirky, and I didn't have to be the cool kid, I didn't have to be the life of the party, I just was.
Speaker 2:You found yourself, yeah, and I like it just seemed everything, even when it's bad, you're going to get to the other side of it. You know that's how everything became so. Challenges in life, those lulls of life, those valleys. I look forward to them because I know something great is going to come out the other side, as long as I stay to and I keep Dude high five for that.
Speaker 4:Well, that's a low five you gotta be a nerd in that one. Let's go this way.
Speaker 1:Holy cow.
Speaker 2:So my mother and I, after a bunch of my friends, started asking me what to do. I was like there seriously needs to be a place for people to come to that are like me, that, you know, don't particularly do the 12 steps. Um, you know, I was 21 at the time. So how do I meet girls in sobriety? Like, how do I fit in as a 21 year old into this world when I don't drink? You know, I started getting into fitness and doing mud man axes and all those kinds of things. And uh, by the way.
Speaker 1:This is your addictive personality. So there's a good addiction and bad addiction. We know that the dude at the gym pumping iron like crazy is addicted to not only looking at himself, but addicted to the pump.
Speaker 2:Arnold said right, it's better than a comic right.
Speaker 1:Can't do an Arnold voice, but anyway. But you have an addictive personality, so whatever you're into positive or negative will be your addiction. So I promise that this story and Daniel Regan's journey would be very positive, so let's hear it. So what do you do now?
Speaker 2:So now I realize that there's a lot of people that are like me, that are not really fitting into this Minnesota model of recovery, that are interested in the things that help me get sober. I love helping people, so we need to create a place for them to come. That's where my mother and I started our nonprofit organization. That's where my mother and I started our nonprofit organization called Coming Full Circle Loud and Clear. Coming Full Circle Loud and Clear.
Speaker 2:Okay. So everything was about being on that other side of life, right, coming full circle from where you're at, because that's where we were being your authentic self, loud and clear, right. So that's where the name came from, okay, and what we did was we built a community of people that were going to have good, sober, social fun and we were going to grab life by the horns. We have self-help groups throughout the week. We're going to do wellness recovery action plans for everybody and built a community, and it started literally with like six people at our kitchen table and has grown massive. We have multiple locations right now with the nonprofit. This is today, today. Okay. So how many locations do you have? So we have multiple locations right now with the nonprofit. This is today, today. Okay, so how many locations do you have? So we have three locations for the nonprofit and four sober livings underneath that. So you've been sober for how many years?
Speaker 1:now 13 years, 13 years. That episode that I saw was what? 2013? Yeah, right, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:So 11 years 12 years ago. So Sober, at that point Okay.
Speaker 1:All right, so you were three years sober when it fell. Okay, so the dates line up.
Speaker 2:Okay. How many people have you helped. I know from a data standpoint. On average we help about you know 20,000 families, because help is very.
Speaker 1:Thousand families.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it gets over yes. Because we help them in many different levels.
Speaker 1:I'll give you the single clap. That's mothers, fathers, children, mm-hmm, spouses, friends. 20,000 people have found sobriety through you, okay so our program?
Speaker 2:because so we do. You know, individual sports are always important to me and I really attribute that to I have a really good way of honing in on chaos. Okay, I, you know, when you're riding a dirt bike, racing a car, skiing downhill, doing these extreme sports, a lot of people aren't good at them because they try to control what they're doing and to really go fast, to really be able to conquer that sport, in a way, is you have to let go, you have to let go of the fear, you have to let go. You have to let go of the fear you have to let go of that. You're not actually controlling anything, you're just guiding it.
Speaker 1:So the fear, uncertainty and doubt which I speak of often, the FUD factor, holds a lot of people back from business success or life success right as an adult. Our adult brain has more fear than a child brain. That's why children can learn activities like skateboarding right or riding a bike a lot easier than an adult Correct. So they just, they let go and they just trust the environment. So yeah. Yes, experience has its fear consequences. So you're, you're deep, you're deprogramming that fear, that FUD in the people you're helping.
Speaker 2:Okay programming that fear, that FUD in the people you're helping. Okay, so I tapped into a lot of this in my recovery, Knowing what that feeling feels like of letting go and being able to let the motorcycle do its thing and just guide it to where it needs to go, not fear the you know obstacle in your way that it will make it over, and that kind of like recovery. You got to let go and let it, let it do its thing and, um, that's a lot of our programming. So we push people like I just got. I just took everybody skiing um two weeks ago and, uh, you know, they never skied before, they never had that experience. The more experience that someone gets in a positive light right, they build more connection that plugs them into life. The opposite of addiction is connection.
Speaker 1:So the opposite of addiction is connection.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, what does our addiction try to do? It tries to take you away from everything you plug into life. So in order to fight that or counteract it, I plug you back in. So the more experience that I could give you, more opportunities that I can put in front of you. It's your responsibility to take that commitment and action, to take a hold of that opportunity. But that's what we do. We provide you with opportunities to have positive experiences, to do something that you've never done, to learn how to challenge yourself, and not necessarily conquer it, but just try it and to see how it fits you, because that's how you discover yourself. I mean, life is really about discovering yourself. Every time we're comfy, we stop growing. Only in uncomfortability do we grow. So is this a business? This is purely a non-profit.
Speaker 2:Oh non-profits are businesses. It's a business. It was never.
Speaker 1:I never made a dime, so you didn't make any money, no, so how do you make money today?
Speaker 2:So so, we, through this helping people, what we were discovering is that, you know, the treatment centers industry is failing. It's really built on people coming back in through those doors, so they want you to come back Right. And I'm finding that at our nonprofit we're doing work that counselors should be doing and we don't really have the proper set up to do that, nor can I ever find enough funding to get this done the proper way, and then I feel like I'm doing a disservice to people. So I started wanting to open up my own treatment center to basically fill in these gaps, and so we started this journey of trying to open up our own place, probably in 2014. It took me a while to find someone to invest in a 24-year-old man who just had addiction issues and just has these big dreams. And I did find those people. My mom and I found them and they literally gave me a million dollars without even operating agreement and said make it happen. And that was 2015. I got.
Speaker 2:I started with two sober livings and started the licensing process for the treatment center. We all go. I had rose colored glasses. That's probably the biggest thing that I've always dealt with.
Speaker 2:I'm a very optimistic person, that mindset of if I just go through this, I'm going to get to the other side. Um, I don't really. I believe in planning, but I believe not over planning, because you could get into the reeds of just giving yourself anxiety over something rather than just jumping in and doing. Um, and I learned that from my mom mostly and uh, so we just jumped head first into and I thought you know, hey, you're going to get this license. You just have to do this piece of paper and, like you, fill it out, they give you your license and it's not that process whatsoever. Um, business is hard, not. Profit is still a business, yes, but but not just from the license, not just from a structured business standpoint, but you're fighting society at the same time, because just finding a place for my treatment center took four years, because it's not in my backyard, I'm not going to have those people here, and I had to go through four years of fighting with different towns to even find a building that they would allow me to open them.
Speaker 2:Then the licensing process happened. Submitting my application to when I actually got a license took about 26 months and it's not my fault, it's just the way our state works and I literally the hippie in me came in and I literally had to chain myself to a bench at the Department of Health and the chef from the rooftop was like there's people dying here, we need beds. And like you're just not answering my emails. Like this is ridiculous. Like I have everything in order. I have a building. I built out the building at this point. I'm paying for that overhead. I have to have all these people on staff.
Speaker 2:You know, I was scared because we blew through that million. We, you know I was. I was scared because we blew through that million. We blew through another 400,000 and I needed to come up with more money for operating. When we opened and um we, uh, they gave me my license about like five days from me training myself because when I was there, someone overdosed in the bathroom at the department of health and and I said and I had it on film on Facebook Live and I was just like literally there's people dying in your building right now and you can't even answer your phone for me to help them.
Speaker 2:And yeah, obviously probably pissed some people off, but you know, I've always been a fighter in that way, an advocate, and I will continue to be the plow and create change. Sometimes it causes some obstacles in my life with business, because there's a lot of people that don't want to mess with me because I'm the loud guy in the room that, so that's okay.
Speaker 1:So this is. I mean, I took a hike as a business inspired, right, it's a passion and I like to tie things to business and that's why your story is a successful journey. Clearly, you have endured far more than many people in this life. Right, you've been through it all and now you are running a successful business and you're learning the lessons that every business owner will learn. It ain't easy Not at all. You've got to fight for what you think is right. You have to fight for, in your case, permits and the ability to conduct business. You have to fight for your first client. You have to fight for everything. You have to raise capital. You've done that all. So what are your biggest learning lessons in running a business?
Speaker 2:The biggest lessons is keeping myself is not losing my authentic self in the business Because, um, being in the human services, you got to die Like I. I like working in the trenches. Yeah, I, I, I like working in the trenches. I'm empathetic. You want to do everything, um, but balance doesn't balancing that with business. Business doesn't always allow that to take place. So finding that balance is key Learning how to move and navigate in a complicated way of keeping the doors open and making profit and paying all your employees, but doing right by every single person that comes in your door. It's a very hard balance.
Speaker 2:I came from the nonprofit world that we make a dollar and give it away In business. I can't do that. There's way more overhead at these treatment centers than the nonprofit. You're the CEO of a business, correct, so learning how to keep my sense of self and not getting the reads because it gets chaotic. You know you're dealing with hr. You're dealing with investors that want their money. You're dealing with, um, just regulation from the government and things different happening and insurances that don't want to pay you and all this kind of stuff. So you could get so lost in all those fights and lose what the real meaning of what you're doing, and that would be like the death of me if that was the case. So the biggest lessons I had to do was learn how to balance those two things. I'm a really good mediator. I'm a really good person to be in the middle. I'm very calm, I'm very patient, I don't lose my head, I don't get emotional with decisions. I'm able to take pause. That's probably one of my greatest attributes.
Speaker 1:So, being steadfast, sticking with your morals, your ethics, focused on never lose yourself. Where can we find you? Um, yeah, because there. There are definitely listeners here that they've reflected through this whole journey of yours. They they could either align or they're equally as in shock as I was in moments. You know, they know somebody that needs help. They know someone in the trenches.
Speaker 2:That that has suffered yes, immensely.
Speaker 1:How can they get to you?
Speaker 2:there's multiple pathways to me, um, but healingusorg is our website for our non-profit, where you know we'll help no matter what, what the case is, and find you a resource that you need. If you're a family member and just needs to talk to somebody, give us a call. There's someone there to help you. If you're someone that's looking for recovery you need to get detoxed, need mental health help, whatever it may be that you're dealing with there's someone there to help guide you through that. So you don't have to call the number on the 1-800 number on the back of your card and figure it out for yourself. You can talk to people that have experienced it and have been there moms and and you know peers alike. You know it's, it's been a beautiful journey and I keep the mindset of one life at a time and you know the byproduct of that has been success in multiple facets.
Speaker 1:When you were injecting your almost final dose 1.5 grams of meth into your arm, did you love life?
Speaker 2:No, not at all.
Speaker 1:Today do you love life.
Speaker 2:Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1:And you right. There are proof that even your biggest junkie, the person that you walk by on the street and dismiss, they're a life. They have value 100%. Someone just needs to be there to save them. Someone needs, they just need that opportunity. Dude, you are an inspiration. Thanks, man. This is a very different episode than we normally recorded Season finale. I am proud to have hiked with you. I am proud of you. Your journey, you have faced something that hell true hell. I'm back. You now run a thriving business. You're making money, you're profitable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we. I mean that one treatment center is now growing into three, which by the end of next year will be four or five.
Speaker 1:You found a positive addiction, which is business, and business is life right.
Speaker 2:And I found my wife, my life partner. She's my best friend. She comes from a world of chaos too. She's not in recovery, but she's a child of the system. She was taken away from her parents, and I wouldn't be who I am if I didn't have the family that's next to me. I didn't do this myself.
Speaker 1:I have been talking and hiking alongside someone that should not be here. For all intents and purposes, you were. There's some people in this world that are just meant for something better. They have a purpose right, we all have a purpose and it's up to us to find it. But there are some people that, just chance after chance, like a nine live cat and you are that, chance after chance, you were put here to save others. Clearly, you punched an officer in the nose, you got tased, you got arrested, you had drug deals written on a piece of paper, you've been an informant, you've met with cartels, you have almost injected yourself to death, yet every time there happened to be the right person or the right instance that saved you to now the person you are today. Do not ever go back, because you are needed. So thank you for that, and with that, we are at the end of the trail. Our season three journey has reached its conclusion, and with that, we are at the end of the trail.
Speaker 1:Our season three journey has reached its conclusion, filled with inspiring and remarkable achievers. A heartfelt thank you to all of you, wonderful listeners, for trekking alongside us. Now it is time for us to rest, regroup and recharge for season four of I Took a Hike, with details to follow soon. In the meantime, stay tuned for bonus episodes and additional content to enhance your listening and hiking experiences. We are immensely grateful for everyone who has joined us along this incredible adventure, sharing in the joy of inspirational accomplishments for your auditory delight. For those not already following us, connect with Darren Hikes on Instagram and I Took a Hike podcast on YouTube. Find us on LinkedIn as well under I Took a Hike. Keep those adventurous guest recommendations coming along with relevant sponsorships. Let's continue to pursue, thrive and explore this journey together Until we reunite on the trail, signing off with anticipation for our return. See you soon.