CTP (S3EOctSpecial1) Prison to Purpose: Douglas Smith's Redemption Journey

CTP (S3EOctSpecial1) Prison to Purpose: Douglas Smith's Redemption Journey
Douglas Smith shares his journey from addiction and incarceration to becoming an author and advocate for those with mental illness and substance use disorders. His book "The Path of Rocks and Thorns: Leadership Lessons from a Prison Cell" explores how true transformation comes from internal reckoning rather than external validation.
• Born in Princeton, New Jersey and eventually settled in Austin, Texas
• Earned a social work degree and worked in public policy before addiction led to prison
• Served six years of a 15-year sentence for robbery charges related to his addiction
• Found meaning in prison through reading Dante's Inferno and connecting with others
• Discovered that collecting certificates for parole hearings was less valuable than genuine self-transformation
• Now focuses on developing leaders among people with experiences of mental illness, substance use disorder, and incarceration
• Planning a future book addressing "imposter syndrome"
• Available at d-degree.com for contact and more information

Chapters

• 0:38 Meet Douglas Smith
• 4:33 Path to Prison: Addiction and Transformation
• 9:21 Writing "The Path of Rocks and Thorns"
• 15:02 Finding Humor in Unexpected Places
• 18:23 Leadership Through Vulnerability
• 23:42 Final Thoughts and Future Projects

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:19

Welcome to Institutionalist Politics Podcast, aka C T P. I am your host, Joseph M. Leonard, and that's L-E-N-A-R-D. C T P is your no must, no fuss, just me, you, and occasional guest type podcast. Really appreciate you tuning in. Graham Norton will say, let's get out of the show. Oh, Douglas Smith. Okay. I have my note here. You can see I'm holding up from Mickey Mickelson, a a joint acquaintance of ours who is a publicist out of Canada. And Douglas Smith, I'll repeat it again. Hopefully it'll say, right? You got to say it three, four, five times. Get it. This is Douglas Smith. Although, how hard is it to remember Smith, right? Is the author of The Path of Rocks and Thorns Leadership Lessons from a Prison Cell. This will be interesting. As I was telling them in the green room, I've had on a couple people that in prison didn't have great experiences. I'm for those benefit of the transcript and audio. I'm using air quote great, but they had a positive, transformative type situation occur while in prison, and of course, now leading wonderful, great lives. Hello, Douglas.

SPEAKER_02: 1:53

Hello. Thank you for having me on your show.

SPEAKER_00: 1:57

Oh, happy to have you here. Happy to have you here. Before we get to the book, let's do the nitty. Well, and this is gonna be odd for my regular listeners. I usually say cue the who song. Who are you? Right? Where were you born? Where were you raised? And with a lot of guests, I will tongue-in-cheek joke say, How much time did you spend in prison? But in this case, it's an actual legitimate question. Go.

SPEAKER_02: 2:31

Beautiful. Well, yeah. So I was born in Princeton, New Jersey. We moved around a lot. My dad was unsettled inside, so therefore we moved, probably lived in about nine different places by the time I was 10 years old. And we settled on Austin, Texas. And my parents split because my mom liked Austin and was not prepared to move again. And so I always say that I moved to Austin the summer that Star Wars come came out. So that's how long ago.

SPEAKER_00: 3:05

There's a reference for people. And before we go any further, just tell me you're not a New Jersey Devils fan.

SPEAKER_02: 3:13

I am not. I don't watch much hockey. So okay.

SPEAKER_00: 3:18

Well, at least you had a clue while I was talking about. Yeah. You could be a Dallas Stars fan, former Minnesota North Stars, moved to Dallas, became the Dallas Stars. Enough NHL history. So indeed, you did spend some time in prison? Do you want to say for what? Or do we want to not go there? Or you know, I don't know. I mean, I want to be sensitive to what I mean, it's sort of the nature of the book.

SPEAKER_02: 3:50

So, you know, I am a social worker. I got my degree in social work at the University of Texas at Austin, worked in in public policy, working in and around the Texas legislature. And I'm also someone with a co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorder. And those conspired. I tried street drugs. The street took me to prison. And I committed out of desperation for drugs at my lowest point, committed four counts of robbery and got a 15-year sentence to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. And I served six of that on the inside and the remainder on parole. And I've been free of parole for a good two years now.

SPEAKER_00: 4:35

Oh, you answered the obvious next question. How much of that did you serve? So you you some good behavior involved in that?

SPEAKER_02: 4:45

Oh, who knows? The Texas parole system is too opaque. It's you, you, you never meet with a parole commissioner. You you meet with a clerk, they type down your information, and so four times in a row, I got turned down for parole. And basically, it's just the nature of the crime. Really didn't matter what I was doing with my time, what classes I was taking, things of that nature. And in fact, that was actually a really good thing for me because I the more I tried to like get certificates, go out all these Christian classes and things like this to try to like convince the parole commissioners, hey, look, I'm I'm a good guy now, right? It was you really had to do all of that for a different reason, you know, something more on the level of like really reckoning with yourself, internal transformation. So, you know, I eventually learned to stop collecting certificates and just uh do my time and learn to be myself.

SPEAKER_00: 5:43

Yeah. Amen. That transformational experience I was talking about. Yes. So it wasn't a great experience, but it was good that you were sent there. You are who you are today because of it. Otherwise, you might be six feet under of a drug overdose.

SPEAKER_02: 6:04

100% I often bristle when people say prison saved my life, because I would love to imagine all of the things that we could have done to save your life prior to prison. But I will say that I literally would be dead had I not found the back of that police car at that very moment. Um so yeah, I'm grateful and I wouldn't change it.

SPEAKER_00: 6:29

Amen. God working in mysterious ways, right? Hey, I I don't like to talk about it often, it's not something I'm happy about, not something I'm pleased to talk about, but I feel I must confess to being a suicide attempt survivor, right? Oh god, I I was saved at that point. In a way, I was born yet reborn yet again as a new person, and God had something for me. I like to think it's the show, although I I'd appreciate a few more listeners. If you're up there listening, if indeed this is my purpose in life and part I feel calling to do, I'd appreciate some help driving some more people my way. But anyway, you know, all kidding aside.

SPEAKER_02: 7:25

Well, you have me on now, so it's just gonna be a sensation.

SPEAKER_00: 7:29

Oh, oh, my listeners will be tenfold, right? Turn it over to God and He shall multiply it. Exactly. So we indeed I I I view it the same way as me. God had other plans for you, and from that came segue, the path of rocks and thorns, leadership lessons from a prison cell. If I didn't have it written down, I wouldn't be able to remember. So did you feel called to write the book now then and share this experience?

SPEAKER_02: 8:13

Yeah, so honestly, it didn't start as a calling, it started as a lark. I read a leadership book by a Navy SEAL by Jocko named Jocko Willink about Navy SEAL operations that went wrong, and he as a leader learning to take full responsibility for it. And it's a really good book, and I was like people die, people die, and was like, hey, I could write a leadership book, I could talk about turning points in prison that that helped me to enter back into the world of public policy and leadership that really served me. And I was like, I could do that, but I'll tell you, when I started to write my story, I didn't realize how difficult that would be. Like no one goes into prison happy, well adjusted. There are there were things that that led me to prison, and I had to reckon with it when while I was writing, but that's cathartic.

SPEAKER_00: 9:16

Yeah, it not only helps others, you're helping yourself through that process, which is why I have my how to write a book and get it published, hints, tips, and techniques. All kinds of people have stuff in them that even if they don't publish it, get my how to write a book and get it published so you can figure out how to write the book, even if you don't publish it, because it's personally cathartic.

SPEAKER_02: 10:17

Absolutely. In fact, in my book, so uh I do discuss leadership lessons, but they're really light. That is to say, like I offer it, it's an invitation to pull it to yourself. But um, but I always say, you know, your life experience gives rise to leadership. I'd like to read the book that you want to write about leadership.

SPEAKER_00: 10:39

And with my book, they can do that. Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 10:42

Exactly. Go get it, go get the book today on Kindle.

SPEAKER_00: 10:46

Yeah, Kindle print available anywhere, books are sold. Amazon Kindle is the only ebook, but uh at any rate, I'm not here to plug my book. But yeah, we don't want to give away all of the path of rocks and thorns leadership lessons from a prison cell by Douglas Smith. But do you have one you want to share? Can share to entice people to buy the Path of Rocks and Thorns leadership lessons from a prison cell. Can you tell I've been doing this a while? I I know to keep repeating things.

SPEAKER_02: 11:25

Thank you. Wow, wow, I love it. You know, I'll tell you that one of the cool things about it is I uh I always thought of Dante's Inferno when I was writing it. Right. I because we did a book club in prison and loved it, and then people saw me reading it with someone else, and then everyone would be like, Hey, will you read it with me? And I ended up reading it three times with people. You know, people are always looking to improve themselves.

SPEAKER_00: 11:54

But there was just something about it that seems to me a perfect book for people behind bars.

SPEAKER_02: 12:02

Exactly. It says, Midway through my life's journey, I found myself in the dark woods, the right road lost. That I read that and I was like, okay, I'm in. And the whole metaphor is that Dante couldn't find his way back up, he had to go through it.

SPEAKER_00: 12:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 12:19

And on the other end of it, he started to climb again. So that's the metaphor of it is that you go through it.

SPEAKER_00: 12:27

And yeah, so each chapter I'm so glad you use the word metaphor because in the book I'm working on now, I'm calling Project Carpe Diem. That won't be the title. By the time this airs, that unless if I'm hit by a bus tomorrow, that book should be on Amazon print and Kindle exclusive, calling it Project Carpe Diem. I I go into that and I joke. I'm far too clever for metaphors. I use MetaSixes, but I'm bummed. Oh you like that one?

SPEAKER_02: 13:01

Oh my god, that is the best dad joke. I love it. Please let me use that.

SPEAKER_00: 13:07

It is the perfect author joke. Just hey, don't forget where you heard it.

SPEAKER_02: 13:12

Okay, I'll quote you.

SPEAKER_00: 13:14

That's right. I want my accreditation and attribution. I have no doubt AI scrubbing the web has probably already stolen it and given it to others because I've used it before. Yeah. And AI isn't properly accrediting me, so I need humans to actually give me my attributions. You can use it in your next book, just make sure there's a footnote. I shall. I shall. Hey, because I I like to joke, I'm gonna write down here humor when I edit the episode. I wind up putting a banner there of an article I wrote. Even in my Terror Strikes Coming Soon to a City Near You book, there's a comic relief chapter. So in a book that deals with terrorism, I put in comedy because we've got to maintain a sense of humor or we'll go crazy. And at this point, in the behind the scenes video, for those watching, popped up will be the online article at the Liberty Beacon that correlates with that also, right? Look rabbit hole, humor in prison, value.

SPEAKER_02: 14:31

Yes. Absolutely. I write about sometimes you find humor in the weirdest places. I I remember like I had to reckon with race, you know, I had to like the clash of race was really prevalent, and and I broke the cardinal rule, and I talk about it in the book, and that was that a white prison gang was setting up a tattoo parlor and breaking the circuit for the only fan in a hundred-degree storm. And I I broke the cardinal rule and I said to the officers, you gotta do something. And of course, they walk in looking like they were in a high school play and go directly to that person's bunk to search.

SPEAKER_00: 15:28

Do you understand the concept?

SPEAKER_02: 15:30

Yeah, and then you saw all the people getting up and like the the gang members kind of like talking amongst themselves, and then they fanned out. It looked like a detective squad going to trying to collect clues. Hey, did you see this person? Did you do you have any evidence? It was it was hilarious.

SPEAKER_00: 15:51

Of course, I got beaten half to death, but yeah, I'm like because of the moron Keystone cop-ish idiocy, not able to use subtly, not able to use their brain power to understand you gotta handle that different. I mean, I I've never spent any time in a I have spent time in a jail overnight, but I've never spent any time in a prison. Whole other long story there, obviously.

SPEAKER_02: 16:22

But well, we count we count that. So you you're you're one of us one day in jail. That's all it takes. So glad you uh glad to have you as part of the club.

SPEAKER_00: 16:32

Thank you. I appreciate that. That's uh one more badge of honor. I'll have to have the tear tattooed uh on now. Uh at any rate, but uh you know, I mean, that's just common sense, and it has nothing to do with prison. Common sense on this entire planet is so rare these days, yes?

SPEAKER_02: 16:57

Yeah, well, I'm not even sure what it is anymore. It's a loss. Exactly. Yes, so thank thank God for irony.

SPEAKER_00: 17:11

I I I don't use an iron, I take them to the cleaners.

SPEAKER_01: 17:15

Oh, okay. The jokes keep coming.

SPEAKER_00: 17:19

My audience knows I cannot pass the lame puns. Yes, no, I have them pressed over at Brown's Cleaners. Yeah, yeah. And anyway, yeah, yeah. Hey, you owe me a dollar fifty for the ad. Time has flown, and indeed I call it today's Twitter attention span. You gotta keep things shorter. People won't watch, people won't listen, people won't pay attention. It's like everybody wants the condensed version. So let's wrap things up. Do you have final thoughts on this?

SPEAKER_02: 17:57

Well, I hope that people will enjoy it. One of the when I talked about the metaphor of going through that was really what it is. It's you know, I invite people to just I think part of addiction, part of mental illness is you're trying to change how you feel. And that ultimately nearly destroyed me. And in prison, I learned to actually experience my emotions, to learn about myself, to not hide, to not change how I feel. And you know, on the other end of that, I the things that mattered before no longer matter, and I get to go and live my life. I had a great career in public policy after that. I was more concerned about investing in other people and not in myself. And I got to watch them go on to amazing positions. And today my uh my life is really developing leaders among people just like me with experiences of mental illness, substance use disorder, incarceration, trauma. That's who I spend my time with investing in them.

SPEAKER_00: 19:10

Not the proper application, but as a metaphor, it does work the remove log from thine own eye, and indeed learn to understand oneself, learn to love oneself, to be corny about it, right? And that all that my sixth book working on right now will be out by hopefully by the time this airs. All about life and living, and all life has value, meaning, purpose. Whether you see it on a day-to-day basis or ever in your life doesn't mean it's not true. A small smile that you give another, who then gives another, even if forced, can make somebody's day better who might be contemplating suicide. Going back to again, not happy to talk about being a suicide attempt survivor, but and then if their child, I call it the pantine ad effect. You know, the shampoo. Well, we're both, yeah, don't need have need of shampoo. For those on viewing the video, you know what I mean. But and I had leukemia in 2010. I didn't choose the hairdo, it came out so I shave it, save a ton on shampoo and conditioner. But pantine, the shampoo, they tell two people, then they tell two people, then they tell two people, and pretty soon you've got a movement, right? A butterfly effect, also, if you will, right? That small smile you give to another who then's child who wouldn't be her otherwise, hadn't you given them that smile goes on to cure cancer? What little part did your smile play?

SPEAKER_02: 21:05

That's beautiful. I love it. So you gotta get my true in the world and in and in prison. That word smile you can give.

SPEAKER_00: 21:15

Yes. Oh, oh, I can imagine, yeah, tying it back to that, bringing it back to that. Uh, smiles, you know, you get more with sugar than vinegar, as the saying goes. A smile is certainly helpful rather than a snarl, but even a smile might be perceived as a smirk and get you into trouble, so you gotta be careful. It that opens another rabbit hole, begs a question. Do you have another book in development yourself?

SPEAKER_02: 21:46

Not currently. I I'm thinking about something I'd love to sort of take down the whole concept of imposter syndrome. I want to I keep hearing it among people I work with, I just want to completely obliterate it.

SPEAKER_00: 22:00

I I hope you do write that. I'll look forward to having you back in 2026 to talk about that book. That sounds like fun. I want to read that book. Do you have a website?

SPEAKER_02: 22:17

I do. It's dyphen degree, like college degree, dhyphandegree.com.

SPEAKER_00: 22:26

I remember seeing that because uh our email back and forth is was I don't want to give out your email, but yeah, uh hey, there's a contact tab at d-degree.com. I take it people can reach out to you at right?

SPEAKER_02: 22:41

Sure. They can cut the there's a contact way to reach out to me on the website. So yeah, I'd love to hear from readers.

SPEAKER_00: 22:50

Okay, sounds great. Thank you. Let me read it again, even though it's a simple name to make sure I get it right. Douglas Smith, no middle initial. So you already checked there isn't another Douglas Smith. Like, I've got to write under Joseph M. Leonard, because there is a Joseph Lennard out of South Carolina, who's also a Christian author. And it's like, he's not me, I'm not him. We are two different people, people. Douglas Smith and The Path of Rocks and Thorns: Leadership Lessons from a Prison Cell. I'm sure if they remember Rocks and Thorns, they should be able to find it from that. There's probably other few books with that term in it, but I'm sure remember Douglas Smith, not John Doe, Douglas Smith.

SPEAKER_02: 23:46

That's right. It was so great. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 23:50

Yes, thank you for stopping by. I really appreciate it. Take care. God bless. God bless you. Like and subscribe to Christitutionalist Politics Podcast and Care Episodes. We need your help. Thank you for having tuned in for Christitutionalist Politics Show. If you haven't already, please check out my primary internationally available book, Terror Strike, coming soon to a city near you. Available anywhere books are sold. If you have locally run bookstores still near you, they can order it for you. And let me remind, over time, the fancy high production items will come. But for now, the starter, it's just you, as a very appreciated listener by me, all substance, no float, just straight to key discussion point, a show that looks at a variety of topics, mostly politics, through a Christian U.S. Constitution plan. So again, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Take care. God bless.