One Last Hit | A Sobriety and Addiction Recovery Podcast

One Last Hit Podcast Episode #2 with Hunter S. | Cocaine. Booze. Molly. & Miracles.

• Austin • Season 1 • Episode 2

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 What does it look like to live inside a full-blown addiction spiral — cocaine, alcohol, and ecstasy — and somehow walk out the other side?

Hunter S. sits down with Austin Rampt for one of the most raw, honest, and redemption-filled conversations in One Last Hit Podcast history. From putting cocaine in his contact lens just to feel something, to a wire that nearly hit his father's neck, to a courtroom miracle nobody saw coming — Hunter's story will stay with you long after this episode ends.

This is addiction without a filter. And this is what recovery actually looks like.

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Meet Hunter S. & Austin's Welcome

SPEAKER_03

What is happening, ladies and gentlemen? My name is Austin. I'm the host of the One Last Hit podcast. Thanks for listening in and joining me today, Mr. Hunter S. Hunter. What's going on, brother?

SPEAKER_00

What's going on, Austin? How are you doing, buddy?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, I'm good, man. I'm good. So I'm eager and uh excited to dive into your story. And I know I've heard I've heard parts of it, uh, but probably not to the detail that we're gonna get today, which is uh very, very exciting. Uh so what was what was early life like? Like let's start, let's start from the very beginning here.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, dude, early life for me was great, man. I've got no excuse to have a problem with alcohol or drugs, man. I just uh I mean on the outside, if you look at my life, you would go, man, that kid should be a straight A student and board like like private school, uh, you know, just all the stuff like that. Have you ever seen one of those magazines for your local city with that family on the cover? Like socially, like that should have been, I should have been right right like front and center of that. But that was not my story.

SPEAKER_03

Um so when you say that, do you mean do you mean like two-parent home, uh upper middle class, you know, dinner on the table type of shit?

SPEAKER_00

Or what let me answer it like this. So I I I grew up in Virginia, and

Growing Up in Rural Virginia

SPEAKER_00

people ask me, like, where are you from? I'm like, Virginia. Uh we've got 1,485 acres of uh hunting property that we got a little cabin on, and they farm cotton, corn, soybeans, peanuts, and and pretty much whatever the farmer is told to farm, and we hunt that property hard and spend you know quite a few weekends up there a year, about four to five weekends a year there. And the other the other weekends of the year we spend at my parents' vacation house on the water in the Chesapeake Bay, mouth of the Rappahannock River. You got the golf cart community, the jet skis at the end of the dock, the boat, you're either fishing or tubing or sitting out on the beach. Like it was tough. Brutal, brutal. I mean, we really struggled. Yeah, and then uh, you know, the 3,500 square foot house in the middle of the city and and uh and like the Hampton Roads area, and that was that that was where uh that was that was where we we spent Monday through Thursday. Uh and then that was pretty much it. But it look it should have looked, I shouldn't have had much of of a life to escape from. But man, when I when I took my first drink, I realized that I was like, I was like about like five, ten years too late. And and mind you, my first blackout, I was 14. Um, and even that was like another like what that first night, man, I knew I should have had one of those like years before.

SPEAKER_03

So uh I'm curious, did you did your parents work in government or or what was No, I don't want to be tarred with the same brush as the the the Yankees up in Northern Virginia.

SPEAKER_00

I don't uh we're from a cut from a different cloth. Um my dad's my dad's in the insurance business, and my mom is in the uh the landscaping business, uh commercial landscape, um not the residential stuff, and and so she was pretty high up with the company she was with uh for years, decades. Um, managed an insane book of business for commercial contracts. And then my dad was uh in commercial real uh commercial insurance for uh mostly maritime stuff, like pretty big contracts in the Norfolk, Virginia, Virginia Beach area, um Portsmouth, Hampton, just the Hampton Roads area. My dad was pretty involved with that. Um cool stuff.

SPEAKER_03

So you've told us what the what the outside looked like, but like as a child, as you know, the age of six to ten, like what was it like being like what it what did Hunter feel like on the inside, I guess is what I'm asking.

SPEAKER_00

So my my dad took this huge job uh and moved our our main house, the place we sleeping in throughout the week while we're in my brother and I are in school. I've got a younger brother who's like four years younger than me. Um we moved from Richmond, Virginia, uh suburb of Richmond, out to uh Hampton Roads area. Um

Blocked Memories & Early Childhood

SPEAKER_00

I have consciously or subconsciously blocked out almost every memory I have from prior to that move. Um I've sat down with therapists, I've talked to counselors. I I couldn't, I could not close my eyes and picture something or or describe a situation to you of of really any detail from prior to 10 years old. Wow. And I started like at third grade, I was I guess it was third grade when I started uh school here or well in the Hampton Roads area. I didn't tell you anything from before that. I could tell you a lot about how much my life sucked after that for the first few years until I found alcohol.

SPEAKER_03

That's interesting. So, like even looking at pictures or anything, it doesn't like you're like those are nice pictures, but I don't quite remember what that what that is.

SPEAKER_00

I I live in Orlando, uh you know, suburb of Orlando now, and and uh Disney World, granted, cost of things are a little higher now than it used to be, but my grandmother used to bring like 10 of us, family members, fly us from Virginia down to Florida, put us up in a Disney resort, the whole like 10 members of our family for a week every summer for like 12 years. I couldn't tell you I have zero recall of any of those. I I look at the pictures and I don't even I can connect to one core memory at the ESPN wide world of sports, but over that 12-year period, that's all I got.

SPEAKER_03

Wow, that is wild, man. Wow, okay. It's strange. I hope we get to pull back on that. So you're uh let's see, you're 10 years old, you move, and then you start having you're able to recollect that part, right? So starting at age 10, roughly.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there was a kid across the street. Um, my backyard ran to a pretty popular street, and his backyard was was to that same road. And um, you know, the six, seven foot tall, you know, wooden fences was pretty common in like my neighborhood. Like every house had a fenced-in backyard, but a lot of them had that one gate that went through the the back. So he and I talked uh or hung out a bunch. Uh got to know him pretty good. He had a twin brother. His twin brother was they were like kind of in between the ages of me and my brother, and his twin brother was like more of a video game, like hang out inside the Pokemon Yu-Gi-Oh stuff. Like, I'm like, hey, don't worry, my head's hard, don't need a helmet. Let's try that, you know, let's try to build this this quarter pipe and skateboard and and and bike and and and you know, just beat the crap up out of myself trying to do like what I thought was like fucking like guy stuff, always outside. Um

First Drink — The Beer Fridge

SPEAKER_00

like I could remember a lot of that stuff. Okay, but when I found alcohol, man, there was uh there was a neighbor to the right of us. Uh if you're looking at my parents' house, it's to the left, and he had he had this beer fridge in his garage. And I knew that if I could get in the side door of his garage, which the dude never locked, because you had to go through this the the fenced in backyard to get into. And you go in there and with a little backpack, and I'd, you know, take, you know, uh whatever, you know, whatever I wanted, uh depending on the day. But I remember specifically um detailed memories of getting out the window or which stair on the staircase squeaked. I knew like which one I had to skip over, right? Uh, how to get out of the house and back in the house without the dog going weird, you know. Um, like I have those core memories, like how to break in and out of my parents' house.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. To steal some booze from the neighbor. I I'm I am curious. So you you stole some booze from the neighbor. Let's talk about the first the first one. Because leading up, I mean, you've mentioned it a few times, and clearly it's one of those memories, and it is for me too, like my first buzz I ever caught. So tell me tell me tell me about that.

SPEAKER_00

So, what's weird is I don't I can't tell you where my first buzz was because drinking was a popular thing. Uh, and you and back to the question you asked that I would completely uh skirted around unintentionally was how how did I feel? Like, man, I just uh best way I ever heard it explained was like if I could have if I could have traded my life with anyone else's, I would have. Like I like dying wasn't uh uh you know on the on the table. Um drinking into oblivion didn't look like the answer either, but staying as I was, I would trade the consequences of getting in trouble or doing anything to change how I felt over the consequences of staying how I how I was.

SPEAKER_02

Right?

SPEAKER_00

Like I can I I I can't tell you how many days sitting in grade school thinking, dude, if I could just like restart, like equipped with this new information of life, like if I could just restart, I wouldn't be here and wasn't so bad to just be able to rewind the tape to like somehow get around where I existed, right? Like as if like somewhere, like you know, like that was the answer. But when I found alcohol, um you know, I don't know if it was the rush or or or thrill of getting in and out of the house or because it wasn't really fun to sit in your bedroom. I had a Nintendo 64 and I'd play really drunk. I'd like do like this like drunk driver Mario game by myself as like a teenager, just for entertainment purposes. I tried to chug a beer before every lap finished, uh, and then you'd be blasted by the end of a couple grand prix. Um but

Drinking at the Hunting Cabin

SPEAKER_00

like the the first real memory I have of drinking was uh was in a tree stand. And I remember the disappointment on my dad's face and and uh coming back to the hunting cabin. That's a great story. Uh tell it. But that that's that's the one I remember. Um this to paint the picture, right? This little hunting cabin's not much. I mean, you if you looked at it, you'd be like, yep, that's abandoned. Uh but you walk, you walk in, man, and it's just concrete floors. The kitchen is the hallway from the front door to the bathroom. Like, okay, and the cabinets are all mismatched. You hang a left into this great room, and then that's the bedroom. Now, on workday weekends, they've we've added two wings and brought like busted down a hole in the cinder block house to create a doorway to the two wings. And the wings have have just three sets of bunk beds in them, and then the living room has the wood stove, and then this huge kitchen table and some mixed mismatch couches that I think probably guys picked up off the side of the road where people like just like throw their shit out to to like let the trash people pick it up, like like cigarette birds in them, like different colored cushions, like the cushions don't even match on the same couch. Um like high flute in place, bro. And but that was dude,

The Wire Incident — His Dad's Near-Death

SPEAKER_00

so many memories from there. Um, and so it's it's a Sunday. They hadn't passed um the law yet in Virginia to where you were allowed to shoot deer on Sunday. So we went scouting. Now it must have it had to have been a holiday weekend because we normally pack up on Saturday or Sunday morning and drive home. Uh, but Monday was a holiday. I can't remember what holiday it was, but we were staying for Monday. And um and we me and my buddy Harrison went scouting. The only other friend from my drinking days that kept in touch with me through my my last like six to twelve months of drinking, mind you. All the people I knew and met, I had two, and one of them wasn't even my brother. Um Harrison and I just come up with this brilliant idea to go scouting. We get into the tree stand, um, and the backpacks are heavy, and you know, I so we've got this little uh blunt rolled up, right? I've got one. Didn't know he had one. He's got about 12 beers in his backpack that he's stolen from somebody's cooler, and I've got like 12 beers in my backpack, and we look at each other and just start cracking up because we've got we know exactly what we're about to do for the next like three or four hours, yeah. Yeah, you know, and uh nobody's gonna come bother us. Cell phones weren't really a thing, and and if we had them uh where we were hunting at, there's no cell service, right? But we had this decoy out in this little peanut field, it was just a riot, man. And um, he and I drank every beer and smoked both blunts in a matter of like three hours, and as like mid-teenagers, and we were so torn up. We were trying to get the um the decoy like unassembled and back in the bag, and it's just like plastic, like like deer. It's like a life-size deer. Yeah, and we're trying to get it back in this bag, dude. And it's like it's like that that like middle school sleepover where mom yells at you to roll your sleeping bag up type of thing. Like, it ain't happening, dude. Like, there's no way we're getting that back in there, and um, and so he and I are like putzing through this field. Um, he's got like part of the deer. I've got like a leg and like the torso, you know, and we're just like walking through. You can see us on trail cameras later on. We we went rolled back and looked at the foot. It was just it was hysterical. The freedom and and joy for life and the presence of the present moment was just more rich than I can ever I can ever articulate. I've never been that here and now in my life. And and I still I can still like picture his face and like so many different little instances from that from that night, like some core memories. But man, when we got back, all the dads are around. Yeah, everybody, everybody knows, everybody knows. Like, it was dark, like an hour and a half before we got back. Like, dinner's already cooked, they're playing some cards, like, and the look of disappointment on my dad's face. Now, and Harrison's dad, he's pretty, he's like a he'll he'll he'll whoop the ass of like your buddies, yeah. Like like like he's he'd put his hands on me a couple of times when I acted out over at his house, like that was a different time, right? Like, you know, but um he was like he was ready to just blow up. Uh and Harris and I like we came in, like you know the look. Like if if one of your kids came in at to your house having just faced a couple grams worth of weed and and uh 12 12 beers in the last like three hours, like yeah, dude. I and we just come in and and the only thing that my dad said was hope you had some fun, you won't be doing that for another for a while. And um, like I was expecting him to yell at me or whatever, but you know, I kind of got off easy on that one. But that that was like for me, and I had to have been like maybe 16, 17 at the most when that happened. Um, but if we weren't at the hunting cabin with every cooler you looked in with every kind of beer and liquor and mood shot uh in it, we were at the bay, and the bay was the same thing. Like I look back as a as a parent now. My I was I was born in 1990. My dad was 30 years old when my mom and dad were 30 and 28 when they had me. So when I was when I was about this age, right, they're like they're like kind of in the prime of their life, they're like early mid 40s, you know. Um shit, dude, coming up kind of close to that right now, and having plenty of friends that are that age, like, dude, like I must have been such a pain in the ass to them, you know, they're just trying to have a good time, dude. And they've and like looking back, like even now, dude, 2026, the cost of living is gotta be like 250 higher than it was, you know, just 20 years ago. Like, probably even low. I'm I might be even low on that. But to have that life, and like my parents, my parents kicked some ass, dude. Like we weren't millionaires or anything. Like, we still had a shop. My brother and I still had a shop at Walmart, but we my par like for for back to school shopping, clothes and all, unless you could like guilt trip grandma to come pick you up, she would take you to the mall and you could go like Cole's or Dylan's, right? Um, my parents were just like frugal in that way. Like, we'll buy the boat, the jet ski, the house, another house, you know, a property. But you're wearing Wrangler jeans from the sail rack at Walmart. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody gives a shit, right? Right. But the life that they had created for themselves and for me, like, I was totally remiss on that. Like, I it it took me a couple fist steps to get to a place of of understanding. Like, not only did they have no idea what to do with me, like you want to talk about a justified resentment, like busting ass and being that successful in your own right to be able to afford that kind of a life. And then you have this sh shit kicker over here that's stealing all your beer out of every cooler. But that was just that was just life, dude. Every Friday and Saturday, it was a drink until you until you have to go to bed. Somebody's either taking you or you're basically crawling there. And I that was just normal for me. I saw that every single weekend, Friday and Saturday, whether I was at the hunting club or at the bay, and everybody drank like that. Everybody, well, I thought they drank like that. Maybe they didn't. It just that's what it looked like to a kid my age. So when I was able to start getting access to alcohol, that when I needed to get it on my own, that's that's where I started. That was my only base point. But I rarely ever needed to be in a position to where like I never had a fake ID. I didn't need to go like stand out in front of 7-Eleven and like, hey, Mr. Somebody. Like it was just it was available and everybody was doing it, and so I don't like it's not like I'm I certainly I'm not trying to come across like you know, my parents did a poor job of like, you know, taking care, like, dude, they were just living their life, and I was I was taking full advantage of it.

SPEAKER_03

So you're 16, getting in trouble, getting, you know, I mean shit. If you put down a dozen beers to the head and then smoked a blunt, you were probably quite lit. And uh, so what how old were you when you graduated high school? 18, 18. You were 18. Okay. And so I know your your story does, it kind of takes off at a point. I know you had a pivotal thing happen uh with your dad and some other stuff, and I don't know the exact one.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the the thing with dad, like I mean, that's that's probably a lot less of a fun story, but like it's a hell of a it's a hell of a moment in my life. Yeah, yeah. Um and you know, just to run through it, for the sake of the podcast, my dad had a wire get run over by a bush hog. We were on a four-wheeler, bush hog was about 150 yards ahead of us. Uh-huh. Um, and it uh I guess there was some chain link fence underneath the brush that it ran over and it kicked up a piece of wire and hit him in the neck. And it missed it, it hit him like right here in the side of the neck. And then like from the side, like it only stuck out like a little bit. And he had a blood of uh a drop of blood on the collar and just above the pocket of his of his t shirt. And it was snug, like they like it was in the shape of a seven, so it had like almost like a little handle that you could grab. And we took a boat, like there was like, I don't know, about a dozen guys at the workday, and they took a vote on whether or not they pull it out or leave it in, and they were trying to feel around and couldn't. Didn't come out the back for the sake of time. Bro, this wire. The surgeon came out and said to my mom, me and my brother at the hospital a couple uh about a day later, I think it might have been the same day. Maybe it was this next day. I feel like it was the next day because he had a stroke and some major, major complications at the hospital as they went through the surgery. Bro, this wire went through his carotid artery and jugular vein and stopped less than half an inch from his spinal cord. And so they didn't pull it out though. No, no, no, no. They didn't they didn't pull out. But to paint a picture, right? Think of a chain link fence, like the thickness of that wire, right? A carotid artery and a jugular vein are about the thickness of a number two like school pencil. The margin for deviation is like almost but it means it's so small.

SPEAKER_03

It would have had to hit it dead on.

SPEAKER_00

Any varying degree.

Dad's Stroke Mid-Sentence

SPEAKER_00

Wow. And it pierced both of them perfectly. I mean, just perfectly through both of them. And then he and then it gets even crazier. He said, Look, you know, talk about divine. Like if you were closer to the bush hog, it would have had too much velocity and it would have hit your spinal cord. And if it didn't kill him there, it would have certainly paralyzed him. Sure. And if he was further away, the wire possibly wouldn't have been hot enough. The wire from the blade of the bushhog was still so hot that it cauterized his carotid and jugular when it went through both of them. Nuts, right? I still I carry the the wire in my uh my my basic tech text big book. Um but at the at the time, right, holding on to mom's leg at the hospital. I was like, I was 10, which may be the connector, right? Had a therapist, you know, uh make you know their own opinions on that. But that experience, the doctor said that it is only by a divine act of God and just pure love and providence that your father's gonna live.

SPEAKER_03

And he had a stroke in the hospital during surgery, you said?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and he had another one a few days later. Like he was reading, uh, my parents are Virginia Tech alumni, and he was reading something out of the newspaper about the basketball team and the um basketball team, maybe baseball. Uh it was from the sports section, and like halfway through him reading this like story, he had a stroke, like his whole his speech went to shit.

SPEAKER_02

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00

Like in the middle of talking to we were at his mom's house, um, and he just went fucking stupid mid-sentence um back to the hospital, you know, and and so, but here's what came out of that, right? Like this should be like a like a hallelujah, like praise God kind of story. But the reality for me, the man that went into that hospital with a wire in his neck was the most loving, caring, considerate, patient, calm, quiet man anybody had ever met. Like it wasn't even it wasn't even close. The man that came out of that hospital, the man that came out of that hospital was he was a scary dude, angry. Like I say one thing out of line, like he's off the rails. I do something out of the out of ordinary, like that comes across as disrespectful, he's he's ready to, you know, put hands on me. And um, and and so for the next like couple of months or years, I just I came to believe that God took my dad and made him into this militaristic like asshole drill sergeant

Childhood Abuse & Home Life

SPEAKER_00

that physically and emotionally by today's standards, DCF would have been would have been there a couple times a week. I mean, it was it was a granted the the early 2000s was a totally different ball game, but in today's world, physical and emotional abuse was a light way to put it. Like it was just uh and I wasn't a good son, like the power of a fist step, like I came to learn a lot more about my dad than I learned about me, and and and forgave him instantly. Like he didn't, I don't think he did anything wrong, but um at as a teenager, he couldn't do anything right, and and it was all God's fault, man. I didn't look back toward God for uh for probably like 11 years. Because Austin, my first my first blackout was 14-15 years old. Okay certain of it. The the last drink I've had was four months and a day after my 21st birthday.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so seven, a little over seven years of drinking. Yeah, maybe right on.

SPEAKER_00

And and dude, I didn't I didn't touch I didn't touch weed for two of those, two almost three of those, first three. I swore off of of of drugs. Uh well, I'm gonna do it. Um until I did it. But within a month, until within a month of smoking weed for the first time, I was selling weed and coke.

First Joint at 17 — Straight to Selling Coke

SPEAKER_03

That's the natural that's the natural progression of things, you know, definitely cocaine salesman after your first joint. How old were you when you were doing that?

SPEAKER_00

Uh I was 17, still in high school uh high school. Um my connection gave me a pretty bad, you know, hookup. When I got to college and met somebody else, he and I became friends. Like he was my he was my first higher power.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Second higher power. I think I think I I knew I knew about God and and wanted to live a godly life before my dad's accident. Um my second higher power in life was was Maddie. Because this dude, I he just took a fondness of me. And he had he had like a like a number one on the side and like like a four to six inch long mohawk. Like just and it was purple, and he looked like we met at a community college, and I'm I'm in uh interning with my dad's insurance brokerage. I'm in a shirt and tie with a suit, you know, showing up as a college, already a college dropout. It's my third semester of my freshman year, second college. Um, and the guy that sits down next to me, dude. I'll now to talk about another core memory. I look at him and I'm judging the shit out of him. I mean, it looks like if if you had fucked a parrot, you know, this would have been his offspring. You know, it

Meeting Matty — The College Drug Connection

SPEAKER_00

was wild, bro. And I just look over at him and he looks up at me. Well, get close enough to the camera. He looks up at me and he goes, What's up, man? And I immediately knew this is a guy I gotta get to know. Yeah. We've we finished this class, dude. This is the first and last time I went to this history class. I can't speak for him. I know it was for me. First and last time I went to that class. And after the class, I had I had a parking pass to a parking garage down the street a couple blocks away. We walked down there, and he's I don't know if you remember the uh like the sweatshirts that looked like they were hand woven with like yarn, you know, like the reggae. Yeah, that's what he's wearing, right? And and a bathing suit and shoes, like sneakers, right? Like totally makes sense, you know? Purple, purple, you know, mohawk. And we get into this this car I had, um, and I thought I was I thought I was cool. I mean, I had just come out of this, was still freshman year, like I was selling, you know, a couple ounces of bud, you know, and I didn't really sell a whole lot of coke because I did it uh before anybody wanted to buy it. Um and I remember I thought it was kind of a big deal, and I had, I don't know, it was probably like a quarter ounce or something like that, like small. And I pulled it out of the center console, and it was it was like it was mid. You still had the seeds and shit in it. Right, right, right. But

A Backpack Full of Bricks

SPEAKER_00

I I mean, I'm ready to impress this guy that I just met, you know, and um he leans down, he grabs his backpack, you know, and he reaches in and he pulls out a vacuum sealed brick of bud and hands it to me, pulls out another and hands it to me, and then pulls out this little Tupperware container with some some purplish, bluish, green shit that I had never seen in my life. And he goes, If you don't mind, we're gonna smoke my stuff. And I'm like, Yeah, dude, absolutely. And uh, and then he reaches down and he pulls out another smaller tupware container, and it was filled with what looked like like tumps, just much smaller. And I said, What is that? And he said, Oh, this is just ecstasy. This is just for later. And I I guarantee, I mean, it was a Tuppware container like that big around, like that deep. I mean, it had to have had you know 500 plus ecstasy pills, and this dude's wearing this backpack, Austin. He's cool, no books, nothing in it, just drugs, bro. He's got out, yes, on the college campus. He probably had I'm assuming that that was at least two and a half pounds of bud. Wow, and probably 500 X pills, and not to mention, he's got he probably had, I don't know, maybe maybe three or four ounces of blow on him in the same backpack scale, and he carried a 1911 in the small of his back. Um, and that was dude, that was massive. I see why that was a core memory. That would be a core memory for me, too. Oh shit, yeah. I can I can see you're getting excited about it right now, dude. I do, I can't. From that day forward, he and I were buddies. Man, I feel he'd come over every Sunday and drop off whatever I told him I was I was I was able to sell. Like he didn't fact check anything. I'm just like, yep, I'll sell that, you know. And he just dropped stuff on the table. He's like, All right, I'll come back next weekend. This is what I want for this, this, and this. And um, within about two months of knowing him, um, so I had a condo downtown, downtown Norfolk. And he was like, Hey, bro, like I have some uh like some mushrooms that I'm growing at my apartment, but I want to grow more now that you're because I was living on the like right on campus of Old Dominion University, and he's like, I need you to take over this like mushroom operation. And within a few months, Austin, I mean, we were moving, dude. I was I was pumping out probably a pound or two of mushrooms a week, and on a college campus that you don't attend school at. Real easy to sell. And and so that that I became that guy within like six months of doing

Running a Drug Operation on Campus

SPEAKER_00

coke for the first time. Man, I was I was growing mushrooms in the second bedroom of the condo, probably selling 200 to 500 ecstasy pills a week. Hooked me up with the the liquid um little like visine bottles of acid, and I I became Matty. It was my higher power. I had the backpack. The only difference is how we dressed. I'm wearing sperries, khaki shorts, and uh like a long sleeve like button down. Yeah, nobody would suspect. Well, dude, and no, absolutely not, with like the little Jan Sport backpack, you know, uh dude, with like the the brown bottom. I don't know if you remember those, but oh yeah, yeah, dude. Everybody, everybody had him, and so that just confused.

SPEAKER_03

You're like 18, 18, 19.

SPEAKER_00

I was 18, 9, 18, 18 uh at the time. Um from 18 to 19, the only difference in my life is from when the time I met him to the time I had to leave Virginia was the best way to describe it is that like I kept coming up shorter and shorter on the money he came to pick up because I kept doing more and more. And my life was a party, dude. I didn't have a normal normal bulb in my apartment, two-bedroom condo, and every bulb was a black light, and I had the mushroom posters on the walls that glue in the dark and the laser lights that you bought from Spencer's, and that was my it was my little dope hole, dude. And uh, and I'm like I had this vanity at this condo was big, it was probably like four feet long, four feet deep with the mirrors. Totally a makeup vanity, and I had it staged like it was like a glass shop. I had every long laid out, the mirror never left the the countertop. I mean, any anytime you came over, there was there was at least an ounce of blow on that thing. Um, all the tables, night tables, or coffee tables and end tables in that apartment were made out of glass. That was that was just that was what we did, bro. That was what we did.

SPEAKER_03

To get sober at four months after your 21st birthday, between this point and that point, something I mean, maybe it's progression, but you know, you don't see a lot of people that get sober.

SPEAKER_00

I lost a vision in my left eye. Uh, I had gotten arrested six times, and I got arrested six times between 18 and 21 in three years. Two of those were for DUIs. Um, like I wasn't supposed to be driving, like, and and my dad retained an attorney. Uh, like it was and like and the arrests were kind of lame, like stealing stuff at golf galaxy, stealing stuff at like a local mom and pop golf store. I had this thing like from my childhood. Sounds ridiculous to say, if you can sneak into somebody's garage and steal their beer, sneak in and steal their golf clubs. And I would take the drivers in the three woods and the five woods that have the head covers or the putters, and I would yank them out of their bags, and I would take them to the golf store. And I would go in with the old club head cover, grab a new one, new club, put the head cover on it, and leave the old the old club that I stole from somebody. And then I take this and sell it on eBay or sell it to some guys that I played golf with on the golf team. Um, and that was like a thing before they put those little plastic, you know, safes on them. Little BB things they didn't have those then. Um, and so like that was like a normal, like I got arrested for a couple of things like that, stealing from Dillards, peeing on a cop uh outside of a frat house. Like really unimpressive. You you had Dallas on earlier, like he's a criminal. Yeah, like right. Like he can rock that, like, and and you could look at him, you could listen to his story, and you'd be like, Yeah, dude, like you came from like some really tough stuff. All of mine was self-inflicted and manufactured. Like I was, I never should have been in those situations, but I just I just found him. I just found him. I was in the middle of a conversation with a cop one time, and I told him I needed to go to the bathroom, and he said, Well, I'm not quite done with

DUIs, Arrests & Losing His License

SPEAKER_00

you, so I just whipped it out and just pissed right on his wow.

SPEAKER_03

You you mentioned, all right, so pissing on cops, stealing DUIs, you mentioned losing your vision. What happened there?

SPEAKER_00

Uh, this is everybody's favorite story. Um, and the uh narcotics uh rooms, uh, if you're picking up and I'm putting down. It's it's bad. I don't know if you've ever been to uh to one of their meetings, but they're they're like professionals, retired professionals, right? And when you go in and share this story in that room, and you have people coming up to you after and going, like, dude, you are really sick human being. Yeah, I never would have imagined trying to do that. Like, you're really special, and I'm glad you got some help. Like, that's usually a sign, like you might have missed, you know, the mark from success. I I just I had two buddies of mine that that came over on a daily basis, and every day they would bitch and moan about how wasteful snorting coke is and how much more how much higher you can get if you shoot it. I intuitively knew that they had a drug problem because they use needles, and I'm not a drug addict, I just like to party, and I'm competitive. So um I came up with this brilliant idea, and mind you, right from

Three Years Without a Sober Breath

SPEAKER_00

like 18 to 21, you want to like I said, like I just kept running out, like I couldn't I couldn't come up with the money Maddie needed me to come up with. I did not draw a sober breath for at least three years of my life at all. Right. If I slept, it was two or three nights a week, and it was only because like I could I like my body went to sleep and I woke up loaded and continued to party. And I had some combination of alcohol, weed, coke, mushrooms, and acid and ecstasy in my system for the better part of three years. That's what my life looked like in college with no college classes, you know. But to to back up to the eye story, I'm 19, 18, 19, and um I just got tired of listening to them tell me that I gotta get the coke straight into my bloodstream. So I came up with this brilliant idea. So I thought to take my contact lenses out, and I just put a couple key bumps of Coke and the contact lenses and put them back in my eye. Now, I when I broke, uh when I when I finally got contact lenses uh earlier on in my life, I had um a full cast on this arm for getting blackout drunk and waking up with a broken arm. I don't I don't know. Full cast. So I taught myself how to put contact lenses in with one hand. You pull the eyelid down and pop them in. Um, and so I just pull it out,

Cocaine in the Contact Lens

SPEAKER_00

pop them out, fill them up, put them back in, and your eye, the I'm sure there's like some scientific explanation for how this works better than putting it on your tongue. But the the fluid in your eye eats it up like candy, man. It and the high you get if you can get past the abrasiveness, I would imagine insane burn that you would probably if you imagine what it would feel like to put cut cocaine in your eye, that you probably had creatine or you know, who knows what was in that. But um I my eyes started showing some signs of wear and tear uh within a couple of days, and I I intuitively knew that I could this wasn't sustainable, but it also wasn't stoppable because the high that I got was so much better than snorting it. So I just committed to losing my left eye. Like if it if it's gonna go, God gave me two. I'm willing to sacrifice my left one. I love to hunt and shoot, I can do that with my right eye. You got to close the left one anyway. The justification of an addict is just insane. Like it actually would be better because then I don't have to worry about closing my eye, it won't work, so I won't even have to close it, type of shit. Just insanity. And I went, I came to in a hospital three months later. They they surgically ready to remove what was left of a contact lens, my cornea got infected because within a few days, because it really hurt, I started to dilute the coke with acid to get the coke to kind of soften up before the contact lens went back in the eye.

SPEAKER_03

Dude, the only thing I have to liken that too, and I and I granted, I've never done anything in my eye. I don't want to say yet. I hope I hope I never have the desire. But if you miss a vein like with heroin, it's no big deal. If you miss a vein with cocaine, it hurts like a motherfucker. Uh like, oh yeah. Like you would never go intramuscular or like if you miss it, oh your arm will burn. And I've I've done that, and it really it's like it hurts bad in the arm. I can't even imagine what that would feel like in the eye.

SPEAKER_00

If um the the best thing that I could liken it to is sand at the beach. Okay. Okay. But it it dissolves over the course of like 15 minutes. I don't think anybody Realizes this until they've had eye problems, but the amount you of movement your eyes do, just because one's closed, doesn't mean the eyeball doesn't move, bro.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

The recovery from that surgery was miserable. I had to be on medicated eye because it ate away part of the cornea of my eye.

Wax Paper Vision — Living Half-Blind

SPEAKER_00

Like if you took wax paper from your kitchen cabinet out and put a piece of wax paper over your eye, that's what looking out my left eye was like for months. Wow. Months. Probably I was on medicated drops for a long time. That happened in 2009, August of 09.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. All right. And so at this point, is this is this the lowest point like in the hospital? Is it just kind of like the the most bone-head one?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it was um it wasn't even a wake-up call. I don't think I've ever really looked at that. Like you're asking it. Um, yeah, it wasn't even it was just like, oh well, damn, like we can't do that anymore. We'll have to find something else, type of thing. Like I I don't even and because of the of the influence I was under for those years, like my memory is so spot. I mean, I know I know for a fact because it was documented, and I won't disclose in in what way, but uh I for one summer I ate mushrooms every day. Every day. And um not like the micro-dosing pussy shit they do now, like like three to five grams of mushrooms a day minimum.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Um at one period I stayed up for six six nights. I made it a whole week from a Monday to a Monday, um,

Rock Bottom in Florida

SPEAKER_00

almost Monday, and uh on mushrooms and acid and coke and boost. But I don't remember a lot of that shit. I just I I do remember this that um the darkest was when I moved to Florida because I had no no couches to stay on in Virginia. Mom and dad, dad was gonna trespass me if I came back to the house. Um mom loved me but didn't want me to and my dad to go back at it again. It was either she side, it was this was like a three-year conversation. Honey, if you side with him, you're I'm leaving you both. Like that was that was the wow, that was where my my my household was at at home between mom and dad. And um like brother was still living at home. I only had a couple of friends that still answered their phone, like I had nowhere else to go. And so, but no big deal, resourceful. I contacted a family friend that my parents knew really well that I knew years prior that were um were uh down in Palm Coast, Florida. And I reached out to them and said that um, you know, some opportunities opened up in Florida for me to pursue my professional golf career and um had preyed on it and taken uh take gonna take this leap of of stepping away from collegiate golf to pursue a mini tour career. And I would absolutely love to um talk to them about either a room for rent or if they can help me find uh at their house or a room to rent um with somebody that they knew or because the the the my uncle uncle Mike um is a realtor. And they they lived in a 4,500 square foot house in this private neighborhood called the Sanctuary. And they said, dude, you don't need to move in somewhere else. We got we've got rooms, we don't even we don't even see, you know. Uh it was just three of them, Mike, Cammy, and their son Brandt. Like, come on down. Brandt was 15. 10. Shit, probably, yeah. 10 at the most, actually. And man, you want to talk about destruction. They held up really well, but what I put those people through and what I brought down from Virginia into their home was insane. I moved my I I moved my contacts. Maddie just started mailing shit. Problem with the mailing stuff is a lot of it doesn't show up, and somebody's gonna get caught for that eventually. Right. So that was a short that we did like two drops, and one of them one of them wasn't successful, and I didn't have the money to pay for either one of them, so I was asking for a third on the front. He's like, dude, no, absolutely not. Right. You're gonna pay me for the last one that did show up. I'm like, nah, I don't, I ain't got it. Um and so it just went to drinking, and that was that was in September of 2011. Okay, and I drank I drank enough alcohol to offset the lack of coke, mushrooms, and and and weed, um, in addition to the amount of alcohol I was already drinking. I mean, it was I don't even know the level, like I laughed when I'm in a meeting and hear people refer to the amount of of alcohol that they consume. I it was a lot. I mean, it was I was drinking from the time I came to to the time I passed out.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And it was vodka before lunch, it was it was it was liquor after usually Southern Comfort and Orange Juice after, or or Southern Comfort and Mountain Dew. Vodka and Orange Juice, Southern Comfort and Mountain Dew until until it was like, you know what, fuck it, let's just drink like three or four pitchers of Yingling. And what I was doing was I was driving to the golf course. Most of the days my clubs weren't even coming out of the car. I was playing golf with one of the men's league at this club. They'd go play, I'd drink until they got in, and then I'd drink with them until everyone went home. Wow. And then I would go home. And I did that for I was I was involved in two men's leagues for five days a week. Um, and then Saturday and Sunday I would just go up there and just drink. Um, and so they didn't see it. Mike and Cammy didn't really see it, but they saw who came home. Both of them were really um grinding, uh, you know, look providing for their family, and I was just a mess. Like, I don't really I can't really speak to what kind of condition I was showing up at their house, but I can only imagine what that looked like. And it lasted like three months. Um, and I got arrested again. Um and you know, not to get too deep into the specifics, but that was like that like just the disappointment and confusion on Mike's face when he bailed me out. I was just done, dude. Like there I hadn't been partying for a long time. The Coke and and and mushrooms were my master for years prior to that point. I just wanted to live somebody else's life. Like I just you ever you ever play those video games where like you get to a certain checkpoint and then when you die you just restart back at the previous checkpoint.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That's the best way I can describe my outlook on life. Like if it just goes bad enough

Detox & the Moment Something Shifted

SPEAKER_00

tonight, I'll just you know start back here, you know, and just and dude, it was just so dark. I remember going to detox and looking at the the group of clients and thinking to myself, like, I would love to have anyone's life but mine. And I had a good dude. I mean, we've talked for the last like 50 minutes. Like, dude, I had it pretty freaking good. There was no reason why I would want to run from my life. Shit, I'm trying to recreate the life I ran from. Uh yeah. For my wife and kids, you know. Um, give me a hunting property with 1400 acres and a in a and a house on the water with a beach and and jet skis. Like, dude, sign me up. Um God, I just I've been to so many meetings over my lifetime, like um, and heard it so many wonderful ways, but like that's like the like in my core, like I would have I would have bed somebody if they were willing to give me their attention and detox to trade their life with mine. And 100% meant it. Yeah. Like and and with no regard for the consequences. I love I love that description. Like, I was willing to trade the consequences of getting loaded for the consequences of stance over. There at the end, I I couldn't buy the lie that the consequences of getting loaded were worth it. But I knew I had to drink. Like not drinking wasn't an option. Never tried it. Sure. Hell, I might have I might have been able to do it. We could, you know, we could run it back. No, I just um you know, just couldn't couldn't get myself there.

SPEAKER_03

So what is life and and just for anyone listening, you've stayed continuously sober from that day to this, from the point that you got sober until this day. Is that accurate?

SPEAKER_00

I can unpack a couple of tie-ins that are amazing. Yeah. Uh that really like if we switch gears from the doom and gloom, right, to to what this power has done in my life. And I say that not to separate me from anybody or anything, right? Like any listeners, like there is something that has has shown up and has an has had an undeniable presence in my life in the last 14 years. And what that presence or power has done is we'll just start from the top, right? Like I showed up to court with a few months sober and a completion certificate from a from a rehab that the attorney that I uh retained in a blackout and cussed

The Courtroom Miracle — License Reinstated

SPEAKER_00

out and told him that he had to call my mom if he wanted to get paid for his retainer. Knew the judge's wife went through a rehab down the road a few years prior and was still sober and knew that if I showed up with a completion certificate from that treatment center, it would really, really look good in my favor from the judge. And he was right. And he also put me in touch or put a couple people, um, got a couple people to write notes on my behalf. I I've tried to find this guy, um, Mr. Miller. I I don't remember his first name, and I can't find any documentation on it. My mom doesn't know it, you know. But Mr. Miller, um, there's a lot of attorneys in this the name Mr. Miller in uh Florida. Um, but dude, I walked into that courtroom, my license was suspended. I had a warrant out for my arrest in Virginia. Um, I had um when I got arrested, dude, I had I had about an eighth of blow, two pounds of weed, a scale, uh, a pistol driving my mom's car without her knowledge. Uh well, the state called it stolen. It was my mom's car. So I don't really know how you steal mom's car, but it was reported that way. Um and blew a 0.28. I was already on probation. I had a warrant out because I I skipped town on probation for my last DUI that I got underage, you know, and so like like it didn't look good. But dude, I walked into this courtroom, I walked out of this courtroom after that judge read a bunch of those letters with my license reinstated. I don't know how do you how do you do that? Like, how do you go, how do you get there without some sort of intervention on my behalf? You can't. It's impossible, dude. I've been in too many courtrooms with sponsees over the years. Like, you don't get that kind of a break. I got that kind of a break, and I I started to I started to be willing to change my mind about the power that I was told I had to rely on in order to live. I was willing to believe that what you claim to believe might be real. And a few months later, I started making some financial amends. And um I I don't know how else

Financial Amends & the Job Offer

SPEAKER_00

to describe it, but but divine timing and inspiration. I made a couple financial amends. I get a phone call from a buddy of mine who was my grand sponsor who owned a bunch of hearing aid practices and said uh owned a hearing aid practice with like 20-something locations and said, Hey, I want you to come work for me. I want you to help people here. Um, we're gonna you can practice under my license. I'll get you through the training program, the distance learning course and the the residency or whatever you want to call it, and and um, and you can come on and practice under my license, and I'll teach you everything I know about the about the industry and serving God's kids. And um within months of making my first my financial amends that I put off for months after finishing the rest of them. And um, dude, the and then in the next for the next six years, I made over six figures as a 20-something year old um helping God's kids. Like that was the focal point of my life. Few years later, um, my dad and I have a relationship. Uh, you know, uh again, we're talking. We we're we almost we damn near became best friends within like five to seven years of of sobriety. And that was the number one resentment on my list for obvious reasons. I hated that man, I wouldn't talk to that man. Like that guy didn't want to talk to me or see me when I got splaked. It was um there was some animosity there, but he and I were like, I mean, he he was my best friend within seven years. Restorative, restorative power of only only one guy that I know of uh can make that happen. And uh, and it happened. His heart got healed and mine did too. And um, and around the same time, I had um I had a friend get LASIK surgery, suggested I go back to the eye doctor. Um and and I had gone, I hadn't gone for a couple

His Eye Healed — The Doctor's Disbelief

SPEAKER_00

years, was just doing the drop still, and this at the time was uh 2018, so like nine years later. And I went into a doctor, and the doctor did this scans or whatever and said, dude, like I don't know how the scarring on your eye is gone, but you have no scarring on your eye. Is this your x-ray? Like, this is your name, your date of birth, like these are your scans, and I'm like, Yeah, and he's like, dude, there is no medical explanation for this, like it is only a divine act of intervention and providence that your eye looks like this and no longer like that. And this scan can't come from this scan, but we know a guy, yeah. Yeah, we know a guy, and he told me almost verbatim what that doctor told my mom about my dad and about how he lived and was going to survive, and now how I might be able to get my vision back. And so I know we're at the top of the hour, but you know, just to just to keep the the tie-ins going, like I I set an appointment and got LASIK a couple months later. I've I still have 2020 vision. And and every doctor, eye doctor that I've seen for the last, you know, I don't know, 15 years goes, that's not possible.

Making Amends With His Dad

SPEAKER_00

But it but it happened anyway. And um and the amends that I started making that got me in place for that job, uh, you know, some people would call this a coincidence, but that amends looked a lot like you know, making sending uh this Jesus calling devotion to my dad every morning. That was part of what my sponsor told me to do. And I started sending this devotion. And then and you know, years go by and and I'm in some financial trouble. I outspent my income for a long consecutive period, uh, you know, many months in consecutive, uh, you know, whatever, you know what I'm trying to say, and and ended up in some financial trouble. And um my grandmother, dad's mom, the one that took us to Disney every year, had a little too much in the bank for the insurance to pick up the cost of getting her into a home. And so we had to divest some of her assets. And sure enough, I still had some student loans and some credit card debt. And, you know, through the power of an amends, she was the first person that thought of me to uh, you know, give me a front, if you will, on my will, on my inheritance. I mean, um, the reason why she thought about me is because my dad would go over there and see her and read her this Jesus calling devotion, and got,

Losing His Mom — Reading Devotions Together

SPEAKER_00

as my dad put it, like I got like another couple years with my mom more than my sister. Because I'd go over there and I'd read her these devotions, and when we talk about God and scripture, she would light up and she would the brain would turn back on for 15, 20 minutes because she knew what she was talking about. Wow. And and I got two years with my mom that my sister didn't get because those devotions that you kept sending me to try to, you know, mend our relationship. And I got one with my mom. And um, you know, I don't know how that makes sense, bro, but we know a guy, and and what makes sense uh doesn't usually happen, and what is absolutely impossible happens all the time. And and that's what that's what happened for me. I was uh the lucky recipient of that's not there's no way. Just one more time. A couple years after that, I met my wife, uh, or well, got got to marry my wife, and um just a couple more tie-ins. My dad stood next to me as my best man, and there wasn't even a close second. Like, I've got some really good friends that I've I've been running mates with that are like shoulder to shoulder with me on this recovery journey. And there was there wasn't even a second thought. Like, I knew exactly who I wanted standing next to me, and he sat there and cried the entire time. Um like that, like just another that that can't happen type of deal. And then I'll I'll I'll close

Meeting His Wife & Building a Family

SPEAKER_00

with this, right? Like, um the biggest struggle I've had in sobriety is falling in love at the very first time I met my wife. First time I met her, we sat at the kitchen table and talked about the doctor's opinion, Bill's story, there's a solution, and more about alcoholism for about three hours and rapped back and forth about her life and mine. Um within a couple months of us getting married, we ran into some medical stuff that rendered us uh incapable of having a family. She had two kids from a previous marriage and um what looked like you know, just this beautiful, just this beautiful life, like this storybook life. Like 10 years, I was 10 years sober, she was five years sober, like fell in love, dated for a bit, and and um got engaged. She sang at the choir. I proposed to her with the choir director and the pastor all hooked it up to where I snuck in from back backstage while she's singing in the choir and hit a knee. They put it up on the screen, like it was like like it was so beautiful, like all of it was just so freaking beautiful. And then that doctor said, You guys aren't having kids, and you gotta have the surgery, and it's you need to push the wedding back. And she said, Well, we're gonna have to do something else. We're not pushing the wedding back. And for the next handful of years, we've dealt with health problems, and that poor girl's gone through gone through everything imaginable, hormone issues, and and all sorts of trouble. That's just been and she's been a trooper through it, right? Like she's she's done a hell of a lot better of a job than I would have done. The hand of cards she's been dealt wasn't even a hand at all, and uh And her chip count was down too. And um, you know, but that girl's rallied through it, and we've we've faced some struggles, but um, you know, this may get me in trouble. Well, probably not, because that dude's not gonna see it, but the kid's dad, right? Full circle. God takes my ability to have kids, and the the kid's dad, I don't think they've stayed with him for a handful of nights in the last four years we've been together. We've got those kids full time overnight. And um I don't know if I'm a good dad, but I can tell you this that my oldest son is the worship leader in his youth group. And an incredible kid does Bible study on a regular weekly basis with kids over at the house, has his quiet time every day, straight, straight A, I B student, incredible kid, comes down to to the living room the other night, and he says, I want I want to take your last name. You're more of you're more of a dad than I could ever ask for. And I want the same last name as you and my mom. And

Life in Recovery — Faith & Fatherhood

SPEAKER_00

um like I said, I don't know if I'm a good dad, but I know in my heart that that meant the world to me, and was just a little bit of a reminder like, hey, dude, like you might be on the right track, right? Um and I've just I've seen too much evidence at this point to think that that old lifestyle is something of interest to me, or is the only option for anybody else that's struggling, right? The message of hope is like like this, I didn't do anything to deserve any of this stuff that I just described to you in the last 17 minutes. Nothing, absolutely nothing. The only thing that I did was what somebody told me, and I disagreed with every single suggestion, but did it anyway. And and the message of hope, if if anything, right? Like for the guy that's that's still the man or woman that's still struggling and and maybe can relate and identify with something that I've said is is like it this it can happen to you too. It can happen to you too. Like if you can identify with the the first 45 minutes of this talk, like you can you should give yourself the opportunity to identify with the last 20 minutes of it, right? The darkness at the bottom and and and the brightness at the top uh is is available. I've never met anyone that couldn't experience it,

Message of Hope for Anyone Struggling

SPEAKER_00

but there's plenty of people that don't. And that sucks. That really sucks.

SPEAKER_03

What would you say, just in in in closing, you know, because we're gonna get people that will listen to this that maybe want to get sober, that never have tried. There's gonna be people that uh are sober before people people that that have relapsed, you know, a number of times, like me, right? I was uh a chronic relapser after years. Um what would you say to those guys?

SPEAKER_00

To the guys that and men and women that constantly relapse, like I I for a long time I thought I couldn't relate to them or speak to them because I've got one white chip. But the reality is that I've got one white chip since my last one. And eventually those people pick up one white chip, and it's the it's the only one they've got since since they picked it up. Eventually, it's their last white chip. So I think that like I think that it applies to them just as much as it applies to everybody else. And and the message of hope that I've got for everybody is that um it's available. Fine, like if I chase if I chase recovery like I chase alcohol, there's absolutely no way that my I can't have a storybook life. Like the news that we share in a meeting is the greatest news ever. And it's available to anyone, literally anyone. Like,

The Sponsor's Challenge — One Week on Me

SPEAKER_00

and and so here my first sponsor had a Rolex on his wrist, AMG Mercedes G-Wagon out in the parking lot with the with the Mercedes-Benz keys on the desk. And he said, I'll foot the bill of your first week out after you let me take these, take you through these steps. If you still want to go back to that life, I'll I'll fund the first week on my dime, not yours. Let you do anything and everything you want to do. I'll foot the bill if you're not satisfied after you go through these 12 steps. And I said, dude, shake my hand. You're the biggest idiot I've ever met. For anybody that's watching this that has tried it, wants to try it, thinks about trying it, like man, I believe that alcohol could work for what I had going on in here, and I acted accordingly. I would say to them, pretend like what is happening in the rooms of recovery in your neighborhood can fix this in here and have an experience with it. Give it give it an opportunity, and let's see where see where things go.

SPEAKER_03

Awesome, man. Hunter, thank you so much for joining us today. For anyone that was listening or watching along, we appreciate you. Uh, like the video, subscribe

Outro & Sign Off

SPEAKER_03

to the channel. I forgot to say that on my last one, so I'm gonna say it now. And uh, we're gonna get the hell out of here. We'll catch you on the next one, folks.

SPEAKER_02

Bye bye.