Breakfast of Choices
Everyone has stories of transformation. And some of them include moments, or years of intense adversity, a time when it felt like there was no hope. This podcast, "Breakfast of Choices," holds space for people to share their true, raw and unedited stories of overcoming extreme struggles, like addiction, mental illness, incarceration, domestic violence, suicide, emotional and physical abuse, toxic family structures, relationships, and more. Trauma comes in so many forms.
Every week, as a certified Peer Recovery Support Specialist, Recovery Coach, Life Transformation coach and your host, I will jump right into the lives of people who have faced these types of adversity and CHOSE to make choices to better themselves. We'll talk about everything they went through on their journey from Rock Bottom to Rock Solid.
Through hearing each guest's story of resilience, my hope is that we'll all be inspired to wake up every single day and make our own "Breakfast of Choices". More importantly, that we'll understand we have the POWER to do it.
When someone shares their story, it can be unbelievably healing. And it can be just what someone else needs to hear at that exact moment to simply keep moving forward. So I hope you can find "that one little thing that sticks," along with hope and encouragement to just keep taking it one day at a time.
And now let me be the first to welcome you to the "Breakfast of Choices" community, a non-judgemental zone where we learn from, lean on and celebrate one another. Because the opposite of addiction is "connection", and we are all in this together.
If you would like to tell your story, I sure would love to listen. Please email me at Breakfastofchoices@gmail.com.
Respects,
Jo Summers.
Breakfast of Choices
Part 1- A Long Road Home, Walking Through Fire: How a Father Reclaimed His Life and Family-David Levi's Story
David Levi's life story reads like a road map through the shadowy terrain of addiction and the uphill climb back to recovery. A proud member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, David grew up in western Oklahoma surrounded by the wide-open spaces and close-knit community of reservation life. Though his childhood was relatively sheltered from substance abuse within his immediate family, the community around him struggled with addiction's grip.
The death of his father in 2009 marked a devastating turning point. Losing his "superhero" sent David spiraling into increasingly dangerous territory as he sought to numb his grief with cocaine and alcohol. What began as weekend partying evolved into daily use, and eventually, a fateful introduction to methamphetamine changed everything. "I never thought I had a problem," David reflects, describing how he watched his life unravel without recognizing the severity of his situation.
As addiction tightened its hold, David's life became a revolving door of county jails across Oklahoma—what he calls his "county jail tour." He lost his casino job, relationships crumbled, and most painfully, he became estranged from his children. "My son went from being a little 10-year-old boy to almost as tall as me. How am I missing this much time?" This realization became the catalyst for change as David finally embraced the structure of drug court and rehabilitation after facing a potential 10-year prison sentence.
The road to recovery wasn't straight or easy. An 18-month drug court program stretched into three years, but David persevered. Today, he works as a group facilitator, along with our host Jo Summers, at South Coast Behavioral Health Treatment Facility, using his lived experience to help others find their way. David is also very active with Wellbriety in his community. Most meaningfully, he's reunited with his children who now live with him. His journey from client to counselor represents recovery's full circle—proving that even after hitting rock bottom multiple times, transformation is possible with determination, structure, and support. This is Part 1 of David's Long Road Home...
From Rock Bottom to Rock Solid.
We all have them...every single day, we wake up, we have the chance to make new choices.
We have the power to make our own daily, "Breakfast of Choices"
Resources and ways to connect:
Facebook: Jo Summers
Instagram: @Summersjol
Facebook Support: Chance For Change Women’s circle
Website: Breakfastofchoices.com
Urbanedencmty.com (Oklahoma Addiction and Recovery Resources) Treatment, Sober Living, Meetings. Shout out to the founder, of this phenomenal website... Kristy Da Rosa!
National suicide prevention and crisis, hotline number 988
National domestic violence hotline:
800–799–7233
National hotline for substance abuse, and addiction:
844–289–0879
National mental health hotline:
866–903–3787
National child health and child abuse hotline:
800–422-4453 (1.800.4.A.CHILD)
CoDa.org
12. Step recovery program for codependency.
National Gambling Hotline 800-522-4700
Good morning. Welcome to Breakfast of Choices Life Stories of Transformation from Rock Bottom to Rock Solid. I am here with my guest today, david Levi. David and I actually work together at South Coast Treatment Facility here in Oklahoma City. We're both group facilitators. David's my coworker works right across the hall small hall from me, so we hear each other and see each other all day. So how are you, david?
Speaker 2:I'm great, just enjoying my day off. It's been a long week and a half, so it has been yeah.
Speaker 1:And thank you for covering for me, too, on a couple of days that I was gone. I appreciate you there and that was a pretty big, significant event in my life. So again, thank you for that and I know that made your week a little longer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, but I appreciate you very much, and thank you for taking your time on a Sunday too. We don't get much time off, so I do appreciate that. So, david, tell us a little bit about you and how you, towards the end, became the group facilitator, and just a little bit about your story in between.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my name is David James Levi. I'm 40-year-old, cheyenne, arapaho, from Oklahoma, fort, western Oklahoma. My folks are from around the El Reno area, my mother is and my father is from around the Gary area. Yeah, my mother is Cheyenne and my father is Arapaho and we've got some, I think, a little bit of Jewish in us. That's where my name comes from. I think the story is that back in the 1800s, whenever Fort Reno was going on here, one of the soldiers married a Cheyenne woman. That's where the last name, levi, comes from.
Speaker 1:And David Levi as well. I was like, okay, so you don't know this about me, david, but my mom's real dad is Cherokee and my dad was Jewish, so putting those things together has always been a very interesting combination of religion and values and all the things.
Speaker 2:Thank you. So, yeah, I've got my father, I've got a few kids. Let's see, I think it's five kids now, two boys and three girls.
Speaker 1:Wow, is there more coming?
Speaker 2:My wife wants another one, but I think my baby girl does need some more company. So I have a 21-year-old son, another 20-year-old son, 16-year-old daughter, an eight-year-old daughter and a two-year-old. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And yeah, so I've got the majority of them living with me. Again, I have the eight-year still living with her other side of the family, but I'm making efforts now to get her back into my life.
Speaker 2:I'm seven, but I've recently just started getting all my kids back into my life. You know, for a while there my addiction took me away from a lot of that. But you know, let's start with my childhood. My childhood was great. I was raised out in, like I said, northwestern Oklahoma. There wasn't really too much alcohol or addiction in my household, but the community there's definitely a lot of it. Yeah, I know that I never see my mom drink. I remember my dad. I think he had a drinking problem before I was born. My earliest memory was him coming home drunk I had to have been about three or four years old out in Erie and him and my mom were arguing and it was a really bad domestic abuse situation. He ended up breaking my mom's arm right in front of me.
Speaker 2:I remember my brother and sister coming in there and swooping me up out of the living room. I don't know if the cops were caught or what Next thing. I know we're just kind of like we left the town of Geary. We're in El Reno, from motel to motel, kind of on a run for a few weeks with my dad, I think Living with my dad, I think Living with my aunties and uncles, before he finally settled down. I don't know how my mom and dad handled that situation, but I think I'm pretty sure that my dad had to give it up. You know he had to sober up to get back into our lives.
Speaker 1:And that's what he did.
Speaker 2:I really commend him for doing it. I'm not sure how he did it, because I know that, like for me, you, Because I know that, like for me, you know I'm blessed to live in an age where we have plenty of resources to battle our addiction. And I don't know how my dad did that in the 80s. But you know, I'm glad that he did Because, like I said, he was there for me. There wasn't too much neglect or trauma in my life after that. I would say the only thing was we just weren't rich, we didn't have very much money.
Speaker 2:My dad was a heavy machine operator and my mom actually kind of did the same thing we're doing. She worked in the treatment center for my tribe. She ended up retiring as a drug abuse counselor and that was very, very cool. You know, because I grew up out in Concho, which is like a small reservation north of Oklahoma City, and about six families lived out there. Each of the other families had issues with drugs and alcohol Growing up. In the 90s too the early 90s there was a lot of that gang culture. Gang banging was a big thing. It was blowing up all the movies, all the songs. Everybody wanted to be a gangster, you know, yeah, and I feel very fortunate because my family comes from a long line of athletes, so that's what our main focus was. For my dad, football and baseball was what his higher power was.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:I think he was more agnostic besides from that. But as long as I was getting into sports, in sports, involved with sports, he fully supported me. Same thing with my mom. So I wrestled as a kid, played basketball and baseball as a kid and, like I said, childhood was good. We moved around. We ended up settling down in a concho. It was just like not even a community, just a few houses out in the country. So we had horses, we had pigs to take care of cattle, some buffalo right there on the tribes land, so a lot of country living. My hobbies back then were a lot of video games and going out shooting prairie dogs, stuff like that, you know. Like walk around in the woods trying to find a deer, like I was some hunter, you know. But yeah, so another big thing like hunting was a big thing in my family too, you know.
Speaker 1:so I didn't know you were such a country, boy, david.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, definitely a country boy, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:So yeah, those are my hobbies. If I wasn't playing a video game, me and my friends were running around out in the fields or out in the woods, you know, or helping out with the horses.
Speaker 2:So yeah, my younger childhood was good, like that's all it was. I got around in teenage years. That's whenever I started getting influenced by drugs and alcohol, but not too much. I remember once I was probably 12 or 13. Some older kids pretty much influenced us to smoke some weed. We did that and I tried to stay away from home all day but I had to go home eventually. I get home about 7 pm, it was dark outside and my older sister says that I'm high. She ends up kind of whooping my butt. That's kind of how it was back then. She whooped my butt pretty good. My other sister found out, whooped my butt too. Then my dad came home. He kind of just grilled me. My mom probably showed up and got another butt whooping, which was a good enough butt whooping to where I didn't want to mess with that stuff again for a while, Until I was a senior in high school, had a few drinks for graduation and it wasn't bad, you know.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so I played sports all throughout high school. Things were good. See about 18 or 19,. I graduated high school at 17. I just kind of just jumped into the life of adulthood. You know, I just had some freedom, a little bit of money. I started working at a little star casino. You know, when you grow up with nothing like to get the first patient, you're just out there just having fun. You know, yeah, I was actually had an opportunity to be an extra in a few movies. I was an extra in what was the movie called the Alamo. That's awesome. Yeah, I can't remember what the other movie was, but it was a great experience. Got to meet Billy Bob Thornton, you know. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So, but around the same time I met a young girl the same age as me about 18, at another casino. We ended up talking for a while. She ended up getting pregnant. She broke up.
Speaker 1:You'd do more talking if she ended up pregnant.
Speaker 2:I do a lot more talking, but yeah, so at that time I was young, I was drinking a lot, still holding down my job. I also started gambling a lot. I remember my first time I won, so my gambling addiction really revolves around poker and blackjack. I love poker and blackjack.
Speaker 1:Still to this day.
Speaker 2:I just don't mess with it too much anymore. But I remember winning my first blackjack tournament when I was 17. Oh, wow, yeah. So with a fake ID and stuff like that. But I ended up working at a casino a year later, Meet that girl at another blackjack tournament. We hook up for a few weeks, a few months, and she ends up pregnant, Breaks up with me and then, like I said, I'm 18.
Speaker 2:First girlfriend had my little heart broken, you know. I didn't know what to do. I think that's the first time I actually used alcohol to numb my feelings. So I remember at that time, me and my friend, we would buy just a big bottle of vodka every day, Go to work, slam that bottle of vodka, you know, and it made me feel good. And then a few weeks later I meet another Indian girl and she was beautiful. She ended up being my co-worker and I was about 18 or 19 at the time. We ended up getting into a long relationship. She also got pregnant pretty quick. So I got to my boys like 21 and 20. Now they're only a few months apart, eight or 10 months apart from each other. So that relationship was good. I was with her. We didn't get married, but we worked together for like 10 years.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, yeah, by the time I was 18, I was about 28, 29. But during those time, during the time I worked at Lucky Star Casino, the culture there was just everybody drank, everybody used a lot of coke.
Speaker 2:You know, even the general manager there did coke with a lot of people. So it was something like on a weekend and throughout those years I never realized. I didn't know much about addiction. You know, I knew that there were people that were crackheads and meth heads and alcoholics, but I didn't think it would affect me at all because it just wasn't around my family. You know, I was just. I was sheltered from it and I thought I was better than all that. You know, I used to look down on people that did meth and crack and couldn't stand to even be around them. But that all changed After a while. I started learning to cope with my coworkers on the weekends. For years I was just cultivating my addiction. I didn't realize that, but that's what I was. It was like more and more here and there. Here and there Also, my drinking was pretty bad.
Speaker 2:I didn't know it was bad, but me and my ex we would probably get a 30-pack of beer a day. We always had at least a 30-pack in the fridge just to drink. After work Friends would come over play poker, hang out, you know. So that went for a while. Nine is when things really got out of control. I was doing good at the casino. I used to work as a pit boss for the blackjack department.
Speaker 1:That's why you have such a good poker face. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I used to also run the blackjack tournaments, you know, and uh, made a good living, you know. But around 2009, my, uh, my dad passed away and uh, it was tough. He was a he's like I'm kind of a big guy. He was a little bigger than me too. He was a vietnam veteran, so he was up in age. I think my mom now is like I think my mom's gonna turn 78 this year, so he would have been, I think, 85, 86 now, if that's right. Yeah, so, um, yeah. So growing up we had a lot of horses and that's kind of what led to my dad's death. Let's see, probably in early 2000s my dad caught West Nile virus from one of the I think it was from feeding the horses and a lot of mosquitoes around, you know, and he battled that for like six, seven years and it ended up ultimately taking him out in 2009. And years, and they ended up ultimately taking him out in 2009.
Speaker 2:And you know, I was a young guy then. Now I look back at it, you know, 26, 27, got the kids, got the family, but then I lose my superhero. I didn't know how to cope with it. You know so much. I remember after the funeral I would just drink a drink I started using more and more. It's more turned into like more of an everyday thing. At the same time I started cheating on my ex uh, this girl, that kind of that little side relationship. That's just like a year or two. But during that time my ex was getting wind of it, she was getting suspicious of it and she would accuse me of that girl and I would just lie through my teeth as much as I could. You know, I got a good poker face. I would lie, lie, lie, lie. You do you know, and anytime she would think about it, I would just, you know, come up with something else. But that went on for like two years. But then I started losing weight. So I'm doing so much, so much coke. You know we split up because you know she found out the truth. That's really what it is. She found out the truth and we split up At the time. The split up was okay because the kids stayed with me. I had my daughter Maya by then I think Maya was about four or five. My son Devin was about eight or nine and we split up. They stayed with me for a while and that was another thing. I just didn't know how to cope with losing that relationship. We've been together for 10 years she was really one of my best friends and you start coping more with coke, you know. And then I remember the one night that really changed it all. We're split up.
Speaker 2:Me and my cousin went out one night to the bar hopping and our goal that night was to try to find some coke. And, you know, go back home and we knew some girls that wanted to hang out. But we're at this bar and see a cousin of mine who was the type of person that I looked down upon. I knew he was strong out on something all the time. I didn't mess with him. When I seen him walk by the bar, I was like, oh, he probably knows what he gets up.
Speaker 2:So I asked him for something, some Coke we were looking for and he ended up not having any Coke. But he had a bag of some methamphetamines, some ice, you know, and I was like, man, I don't do that, you know, whatever, I'm not sure, I don't even know how to do that. And he told me you know, it's honestly simple. You can just crush it down and do lines. I was like, oh, okay, well, I'll do that and I just kind of took it and I want to say it was a bad of the best nights of my life. Cats were kind of like turning me out. Like me and my cousin were these two girls and we had a great time. You know we mixed the young men and young women and met them. You know it's a good time, it's a whole other world.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, um, I kind of like turned me out, I ended up going to that morgue. I was saving money, but choosing that over coke.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was easier to get to. I was still working at the job and I started losing all kinds of weight. You know, it was probably about when I started using meth. I was probably about the size I am now, but I got down to like probably lost like 60, 70 pounds. You know, lying to everybody, telling everybody I'm working out when I'm not doing anything. You know, just trying to BS myself. Yeah, and I'm pretty sure that I started missing days at work. I started, you know, I got put on probation at the casino for missing so many days. And then one day I show up at the casino, just high as can be, you know, and I walk right into the HR lady like bump, right into it. So I walk in and she could just tell. She could just tell. So she takes me in there and gets me a UA and you know I failed but I'm already probation. So I ended up losing that job.
Speaker 2:That was in 2012. I can't specifically remember. It was around like May of 2012. About the same time I meet this other Indian lady. She's beautiful, she's beautiful, she's nice, she's outgoing, Everybody knows her. She's got a job, she's got some kids, she's got a car. We started dating and right about the same time, I lose my job while we're dating and I'm just hiding my addiction from her for months and I didn't want her to know that I did meth. She knew that I did some coke, but I didn't want her to know that I did meth. It was kind of like that stigma, you know, and that goes on for a few months. And then finally, like we're going out on a date one night and I had the bright idea that how am I going to keep this lifestyle? Like I had money in the bank, but how am I going to keep it without getting a job? I didn't want to get a job for some reason. I just wanted to stay with this woman and go out. And you know, my bright idea was to cash out my 401k.
Speaker 2:You know, had a cool amount of money in there, cashed it out, which gave me the amount you know enough to like live for like a few months without having to do anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And around the same time, me and the woman I was with at the time. We were together for like five or six months doing meth on the side.
Speaker 1:So once we so she was doing it too, without you knowing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I remember specifically being at the at my mom's house in El Reno and I had a stash of it outside in the back yard of my mom's house and I was even trying something. And I went and got it and when I showed it to her, she had one like in her purse too, and I was like, oh too. And I was like, oh, we could have been doing this for months, you know, but we ended up doing that relationship for years. We were together from like 2012 to 15, 16, and we didn't really have to do much. Like I said, I had some of my 401k money. She also owned a lot of land, so she had a lot of oil leases going on. You know, we were just allowed to just have our kids and use. You know, we're just, we're just allowed to just have our kids and and use. You know, and she was, like I said, she was a raging alcoholic and I've never met somebody like that. I mean, like 9am, she would be at the liquor store. Get her a bottle, uh, right after that, if I needed something, I can get mine too. You know went on for years until, um, I have all this money.
Speaker 2:I started just getting deeper into the game deeper, deeper, deeper. Buying, more, buying, more. Get to the point where I'm starting selling it, you know, and um, around those few years too, like I'm getting further away from my kids. They go back to their mom's house around 2013 and 14. And I would see them, you know, on the weekends, after a few months, every two weeks after a few months, like once a month, and then I think it was around 13 or 14, I moved to Kansas City with her and I was just away from them for six months. But that's where stuff got really bad for us up there. Our drinking and using got worse, our fights got worse, going to jail up there and having to bond out. But while I'm gone these few months, I've also got child support for my first kid building up.
Speaker 2:I've been paying it for years. But then when I'm in Kansas I just let it go. So I get a charge in Kansas City. I sit in jail for a few weeks, get out and Custer County comes and picks me up for child support. So I get a free ride back to Oklahoma. The positive spin you just made on that yeah, for child support.
Speaker 1:And so I get a free ride back to Oklahoma.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the positive spin you just made on that. But yeah, that's when I kind of, like I said, started just catching charts. You know, and I've never been in trouble before, not when I was a teenager, not when I was a young adult but that happens and then me and her split up, going separate ways, and I still hadn't thought about it. I never thought I had hadn't thought about it, I never thought I had a problem, I never thought there was an issue. Back to Reno, it was probably around 2015 or 2016. I'm just fully into the game.
Speaker 2:Some things happened to where one of my Mexican friends that I've been hanging out with he's the one that got really involved, not me. He got really involved with the cartel which allowed me to like work under him. He just had a lot of a lot of money, a lot of product. We lived that lifestyle for like two, three years, making a lot of my fast life, fast money. And then, um, we all start catching charges here, start catching charges in oklahoma city. I'll start catching charges like down in Norman, south of Norman, otonga. You know, just little dump charges here and there Ends up going away for a while, just caught with a lot of stuff around 2016, 17,. I think it's 17. I'm just glad I didn't get caught up with that stuff, you know, because I think, he's doing like 40 years right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's tough. So so I kiss charges in like four or five counties. There's time, like I said, my kids are seeing me periodically, you know, and I remember around 16 or 17 years when I finally started like my, my tour. I call it my, my county jail tour. I get arrested in, uh, I see, like January, in uh, south of Norman, south of Riverwind Uh, and I go from sitting in that county for like two months, get out on probation. Oklahoma County comes, picks me up for some charges. I sit there for like a month, get out on probation. I have a charge in Blaine County. By then they come and pick me up, sit in county for like another month, and then Custer County for like the fifth or sixth month, the Canadian county for like the seventh or eighth month.
Speaker 1:Were you using during that time? Were you using in jail?
Speaker 2:No, no, I wasn't. I mean occasionally like somebody would have something, you know, but I wasn't, it was just. I was just, you know, going through the motions, like waiting on another county to pick me up, hoping I wouldn't go to prison you know, but so then I also couldn't wait to get out to use. That's what it was like I can't wait to get out. But I had this mindset I'm going to hit the ground running, you know, f this probation, they're going to have to come find me, you know.
Speaker 1:I just had the mindset you were just taking a break. You're winding down for a minute, taking that break. You know hitting the button.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I remember Each time those handcuffs got on me. I was like, okay, I can just relax. That moment was very influential in my recovery. When those cuffs clicked on my wrist. I always remembered how much of a relief it was, how much I could just sit down. I'm not always going to be looking over my shoulder, no more. I can go in this place, regardless of what jail I'm in. I'm going to be okay because I'm a big guy. I'm going to get some food. I'm going to get some rest.
Speaker 1:Three hots and a cot.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm in jail that time for like seven, eight months. Get out, hit the ground running, don't check in with nobody, don't pay no fees. I last probably two months and then I get picked up for a ferry trip here, I won't count it. Then I started another journey, another sim, and I paid much of that, you know, all throughout late 2018. I finally get out 2018, same mindset Hit the ground running.
Speaker 2:These people after the program, I was very, I was very, I was very just, I don't know. Just out there, you know, but, uh, hit the streets right again and this time I'm like I'm gonna do something different. I'm gonna do something different. I'm not gonna be messing with these drugs, no more. He's fucking me up.
Speaker 2:And then one of my friends is really big into the bigger to the credit card scene. You know, scamming credit cards, cloning credit cards, stuff like that. So we do that for a few months. We weren't getting rich off of it or nothing like that, but it allowed us to stay in some nice motels throughout the city, throughout Dallas, throughout Tulsa. You know we were doing stuff like that, but I ended up getting caught up for that, you know, one of the. I didn't think it was a big problem. My friend told me that you know, it's a victimless crime, everything's insured. They're not really going to be on our butts, you know, but one day, man, like they have a whole task force just for that you know, they run in on us at a motel in Oklahoma City Boom, back in Oklahoma County.
Speaker 2:I think that was in, yeah, 2018, I think it was Late summer, it's like springtime and I'm back on tour for like it's probably like two years. I've been doing this. Now, you know, I'm getting really tired of it because I'm starting to recognize that nobody has my back. Nobody's putting any money on my books, nobody's writing me. I don't remember any phone numbers to call, you know, and by this time, my mom is probably the only one still showing up. I think she would throw like $20 on my account a month still showing up.
Speaker 2:I think she would throw like $20 on my account a month. You know, if I had court, she would show up, no matter what county it was. My friends, my parents, my uh or my mom, my sisters they stopped bailing me out. That's what I'm like. I was like, yeah, I'm burning all these graces, Let me start doing something different. But I get out. I was in there from 2018 to probably like 2019. I started begging for drug court. But I get out and I didn't get drug court. I'm begging for it. That's the time before I started thinking about how am I going to get all of this stuff wrapped up together? I'm going to get out here and I'm going to do something to get everything wrapped up. So I get out in 2018 and I actually get a job with AT&T, Start paying all my stuff. I'm doing pretty good. But I run into a couple friends that come in to try to buy a phone, end up using it again. So I lose my job. I take off the streets again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is late 2018. It's about the same time I met my wife. It was just a crazy story. I met her, Me and my friends were right around the city trying to find a place to hang out. I knew this apartment where I knew another girl was there and I go there to meet that girl. She wasn't there. But Brittany opens the door and I see this cute little Indian girl and I ask her if we could come and hang out. We're very nice out every now and then.
Speaker 2:For a few months it goes around it was late 2018. That's because I remember it was Thanksgiving. I was there. It's how crazy my lifestyle was. I remember showing up the day before Thanksgiving to Brittany's house in a stolen truck with a sawed-off shotgun in there, some dope in there, a lot of alcohol drunk. I pull up and I just hang out with her. We spend the night with each other. The next morning I remember it's Thanksgiving morning I wake up Brittany's gone, my truck is gone and I'm so pissed yeah, who should think she is stealing my stolen truck, you know, but it's crazy, you know. So I sit around and I wait in her house for a couple hours, but she had taken the truck to her mom's and had Thanksgiving dinner or whatever. You know Comes back and I said I've got to go see my family.
Speaker 2:I knew that my family was all in my sister's house in Norman, so I drive down there and in a stolen truck, still got the shotgun in there, started to dope on me Barely make it there, you know. And my kids are there and I remember, like my whole family's there, I come inside thinking I'm not 185 pounds, thinking that I'm still the dad I was before, the person I was before. Really, I remember I ate a plate, sat on the couch and just fell asleep all day. That evening I wake up and I so badly wanted to take my kids back to the mom's house that I was willing to take them in a stolen truck with a shotgun. You know, my daughter fought like 10 years old at the time, my son's like 13. I was really willing to.
Speaker 2:I was mad at my sisters because they wouldn't let them go with me. I'm like why not? Like what? What am I doing wrong? I'm sober, you know. It's crazy, just talking crazy, you know, because I leave my sisters.
Speaker 2:That day I was mad and I'm going down towards to Riverwind Go, blow some steam, blow some money. I ended up missing the exit. And then the next thing I see the turnoff on. I do something and get pulled over, get pulled over, get locked up again. I'm like oh man, here we go again. I'm on tour again In a whole new county. You know like like I sit there for a few months and I remember the only thing that was on my mind then were my kids and britney. I think it's not like how I like grew this big attraction for it because I that's like the only girl I was on my mind for those months I was in jail, and then my kids and after going through all these counties again, I'm like I'm so tired, as I've been doing this for like three years now. My kids son went from being like a little boy, a 10-year-old boy, to where he's like now 11, 12, 13, like 15. He's almost as tall as me. I'm like, how are they growing so much? Am I really missing this much time? I've got to do something. I've got to do something.
Speaker 2:I sat in jail for a while that year. I think that was the longest time I sat in jail like 11 months, but around, yeah, 2019, it was almost 11 months, yeah, but that last jail I was in there I would start praying for things Like how am I going to get this taken care of? This other kid I remember one friend of mine was like you should go to California and I was like for what he's like for rehab you should go to California. And I was like for what he's like for rehab you should go to California. He's like that's where I'm going. He's like man, I'm facing like 15 years.
Speaker 2:He's like, well, I'm about to go to California and they're going to let me work it out. I was like man. I wish I had the confidence. I wish I knew what to ask. Then, you know, because I just brushed it off, like I don't have an insurance, because he told me my insurance paid for, I said I ain't worked in years. My insurance is not going to pay for it. So I didn't know how it worked, you know Right, but I wish I did, because it could have went.
Speaker 1:Had you thought anything about rehab? Was that even a thought in your mind at that time? That was the first time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was the first time anybody mentioned rehab to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so. But I started to recognize, like man, I need some kind of structure or I'm going to end up in prison or dead, you know. So, yeah, so, yeah. When he tells me about rehab, that's kind of the first time it got put into my mind that these guys, somebody, these people are going to rehab somewhere. You know. And I remember like a week later too, they came and took him out of the jail. He'd been in that county jail for a year or two because I hadn't left once or twice. He was still there, you know. So if they were allowing him to go to California, they must be doing something out there, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:So another kid had a bunch of charges from all these different counties and he told me he's like he said, drug court gives you the power to get everything together in one place and you won't pick up any other warrants anywhere else. They will all be on hold while you finish this program. It'll take care of everything. I'm like, okay, well, let me try to do that. And I applied for it to speak with the drug court director and, uh, none of my charges were were drug related. They were all just stolen car charges. I had this thing about stealing cars. You know. I don't know where I got it from, but I loved to steal cars, but yeah.
Speaker 2:So the first time they told me, no, it's not drug related, I'm not sitting there for another month and they pulled me back out. They interviewed me again. The drug court lady was like she was like these crimes that you committed? She was like were you under the influence when you did them? I was like well, of course, I'm not a dumbass, I'm not going to be doing this shit when I'm sober. Yeah, I was high, I was drunk. Each and every time she said oh well, that qualifies you for drug court if you'd like to get in the program and do it. I was like definitely, definitely. This was around May 2019. So, yeah, I remember sitting there praying for it and I got it. So that's one of the times, that one of the first times I think prayer really worked for me. But it was also a foxhole prayer, yeah.
Speaker 1:Please, I'll never do it again.
Speaker 2:I'm going to do right. I'm going to be a good father. I'm going to be a good dad Now. I'll finish the program I think it's like an 18-month program and they let me out on May 9th of 2019. And I make it to like one or two classes. I pass probably like two or three UAs and I'm right back out to take off, go AWOL, you know.
Speaker 2:And I meet back up with Brittany. Hadn't seen Brittany in like almost a year. She like almost barely remembered me, you know. Oh, wow, but I meet back up with her in Oklahoma City and by that time I already got a fast sack. I already got some money.
Speaker 2:I'm like I was Ubering around, just running amok, selling and hustling dumb stuff. But I meet up with her and I talk her into going with me. She's like I kind of glamorize everything. I'm going to be riding around, we've got this Uber. We're going to be riding around get a motel room, we'll go out to the mall, we'll do all this now, you know, and she ends up going with me and she hasn't left my side since. I mean like probably a lot of codependency yeah, I think that's what's gotten us through a lot of our stuff. But yeah, she stays with me.
Speaker 2:Then we end up going back to her mom's place in Oklahoma City and staying there because I was on a run, didn't want to go back to the arena, stayed there for a few months. She ends up getting pregnant, I think around August. She tries to pump the brakes and chill out, but I don't. I just leave her at her mom's house and take off and go do whatever. I'm still on the run, still riding around in a stolen car, still just being dumb. I think it was around September 15th. That was around the time I got arrested. Yeah, around that time I got arrested. I got arrested around the time in Shawnee, I remember, because my son's birthday is on September 25th and he was turning 15. They sent me back to Canadian County and they blessed me.
Speaker 2:They gave me a blessing. I went to court. They sent me to Canadian County. I went to court the next day and they let me out, like just restart the program Fresh start. We're going to let you do this. I'm like cool, it was like a $50,000 bond they just let me out on. So I'm like, okay, cool, my son's birthday is next week. You know, I get high the next day, I fail a UA and I go to court.
Speaker 2:That following Thursday I think it was the day before my son's birthday they put me in cuffs. I think everything's going to be okay, but they put me in cuffs. I'm sitting in the court box. I remind you, brittany's a month or two pregnant. Whenever the judge gets to me, they're saying we've given you enough rope. We've sanctioned you IOP classes. We've sanctioned you a weekend in jail. Keep messing up. We're going to send you to rehab. So they send me to Northeastern Oklahoma Council on Alcoholism. It's called NOCA. A lot of people I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but a lot of people are familiar with it being called the chicken plant.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, okay yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. Okay, it's way far northeast of Oklahoma and the reason they call it the chicken plant is like a lot of people would go work at a processing plant called Simmons. You know they produce a lot of chickens, you know. But I'm there and I didn't want to be there. I remember the drug court director telling me you're a dumbass, I got a dumbass in the car. We're coming up there, we're bringing him. I'm in handcuffs all the way up there Three hours. You know he's talking crazy to me. And when we get to the facility, it's just it's in Miami, oklahoma. They let me check in, they give me some cigarette and I go outside. There's no fences or nothing like that. You know I didn't know what was there. This other one was back into town. In my head I was thinking I could just call Brittany and get the hell up out of here. I was facing 10 years. If I didn't finish the drug court program, I had to do 10 years in prison. I was like man, I could just get out of here.
Speaker 2:It was fall. It was beginning to become fall time. It's still kind of hot. The trees are still green. I was thinking to myself I'm going to be here until these leaves turn brown. They're going to fall on the ground. It's going to snow, it's going to melt. It's probably going to snow again. It's going to melt. Everything's going to grow back. It's going to be green by the time. Back to what I've been doing, I said, man, I can stick it out, maybe I'll get something out of this. You know, I don't want to make my situation any worse. Yeah, I give it a shot, you know, and I just embrace it Like I'm going to be here regardless. I'm not going to find nobody, I'm not going to do it, I'm just going to be here. Yeah, this is how their program works. You're inpatient for 30 days, take classes Monday through Friday, kind of like ours, four classes a day and then, after the 30-day mark, you are let out to go get a job and start paying rent.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a PHP slash sober living kind of thing, yeah, and if you do good, no write-ups during this time, you don't have to stay in the original facility. The original facility was just like a brick and mortar. Like a brick and mortar, like a jail without doors, you know, without cell doors. But if you can go that first 30, 45 days without a write-up, they move you to a nightstand facility, a sober living facility. It was just a bigger nightstand facility, not a house, but it was nice.
Speaker 2:But the thing they taught us was primarily just like the science behind it Not too many coping skills, nothing about prayer or meditation. It was just like this is why you're doing this, this is why you're doing that. Nothing to like, no solutions, yeah, no, they just explain why we're doing what we're doing. Yeah, we started going to AA meetings. We'd go to a couple AA meetings. You know I ended up getting a sponsor, then sponsors in, but I didn't know what to do with it. You know, like I remember my I don't know if my sponsor knew what to do with it either, because he would come pick me up, like every few weekends and we'd go have lunch and just talk. You know that's about it.
Speaker 2:I wasn't calling him on a regular basis, I didn't.
Speaker 2:I didn't even know what the big book about Carlos Santos was, you know but, it was a good program because it allowed me to to get used to the structure of what drug court is, because drug court is just. You know there's hoops and hurdles and things you got to do. You know so many things you got to take care of. You know, like I remember it was just, it was overwhelming when I first started it, but at the NOCA they just prepared me for it. You know, like so, going to all the classes, having to check in every day, having to take call my ua color every day, you know, getting a job, uh, getting to work, paying rent, you know, gave me a lot of structure. At the same time, I hadn't had a car in like five, six years, you know, except stolen ones, yeah, not your own car.
Speaker 2:I've had my whole car like five or six years. Britney was still. I remember the one big part, important, bad part about it was I was there for like two or three weeks and Brittany had a miscarriage and it sucked because I couldn't be there for her. She was going through a lot, you know, and my mind was racing about oh, I've got to be here, I've got to sober. If she's still getting sober now, I don't think she's going to, but I couldn't, you know, not on the back end. I would just waste my energy on that. You know, I shouldn't expect her to get sober because I put myself in the situation, you know. But she goes through that, but and she's still stuck in the mall, there's no car. But after working for like a month or two, I was able to send her enough money to get her a car, you know, because I really wanted her to come visit me. But, yeah, so we got a new car while I was up there, and it's good.
Speaker 2:I graduated the program. I think it's late march of 2020, right whenever the pandemic hit, you know, I remember like everything was fine and dandy one week, normal, and then I graduate from the program. Britney comes up there and picks me up and I remember all the way home. It was like going through tulsa.
Speaker 2:There was like no cars in the middle of the day, anywhere, you know it.
Speaker 2:It was eerie. Same thing in Oklahoma City. And we get back home, I check in, stay sober, and it was just a weird, a weird process with being in drug court right about the time. Everything went virtual. One thing we had to really do was UA and stay on my. I did everything on my phone online meetings, online groups, you know, and even online court, like we didn't have to go to the courthouse. But so as long as I could do the UAs, I was fine. Pay a little something. My PO wasn't on my butt for nothing. I got on unemployment. Unemployment was going crazy.
Speaker 2:Then, you know, employment, yeah, so I with my probation officer. She wasn't really on my butt about getting a job, so I was like provide some paper, show that I was working. She would let me go out and do that once a month and one of my cousins would print off a paper saying that, hey, we're doing law service. You know now I would do that occasionally go most laws with them at the evening times, so that let me slide for like a year, a year and a half, and I remember I got through phase one and two pretty quick and phase three was like. I can't remember how long it was, but it was before a while. But I get through 2020 pretty easily. I think it's like wintertime and a new probation officer comes in there and she's on my butt about everything. You know. She's like things are changing. Everybody's going back to meetings. No more virtual this, no more outside. You know, under the table jobs I'm going to need like pay stubs, clock in, clock out. You know, just checking in and everything. So, yeah, she gave me some more structure. I ended up having to get a job at at a Nortec Nortec. Nortec is an industry place building AC units, like commercial AC units. It was the first time I became a machine operator. I worked there for a while.
Speaker 2:It was a good time too, because my two of my children, who I'd been away from for so long, back in the malls 2013 and 2014, their moms started recognizing I'm doing good again. They got to stay one summer with me in, I think, 2020. That summer with me and then in 2021, I think it was my daughter was yeah, they were going to come stay the summer with me again and then, after the end of that summer, my daughter wanted to stay with me. My son wanted to go back to his mom. But his mom was nice to us, like, okay, she's like you're doing good, I know you got some time to make up to her, so I'll let her stay with you. I was like cool, heck, yeah. I was like started becoming a dad, you know again and getting her to school. And that year went by great. And the next summer my son came and stayed with me. So I had both my kids two of my kids in the house At the end, mom, let him stay too. So they've been staying with me since I think it was like 2021. They've been back with me. Yeah, my teenagers, man, it's been great, you know.
Speaker 2:But I graduated drug court in 2022. I'm like, uh, yeah, january 2022. But it took me three years you know, an 18 month program to a little over three and a half years to get it done. Man, it was, I remember, like a sense of accomplishment. Yeah, the love and support I had like on facebook and for my community to complete to get it done. Man, I remember like the sense of accomplishment.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The love and support I had like on Facebook and for my community to complete the program. You know it was cool but you know that all went out the window that night.
Speaker 1:That night.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that night.
