%20(1400%20x%201400%20px)%20(1400%20x%201400%20px)%20-%201.PNG)
Successful Life Podcast
The Successful Life Podcast, hosted by Corey Berrier, is a globally recognized show that ranks in the top 2% of podcasts worldwide. It offers expert insights tailored for contractors, focusing on business strategies, sales skills development, and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry.
Successful Life Podcast
Embracing Gratitude: Unraveling Morning Routines, Overcoming Challenges, and Harnessing ADHD as a Superpower with Corey and Justin
Navigating the tumultuous journey of addiction and recovery, this episode delves into my personal story of struggles, challenges, and the transformative power of vulnerability. With Justin Judd, we discuss gratitude, childhood influences, the impact of relationships, and the ultimate importance of asking for help at crucial junctures.
• Exploring the value of gratitude in daily life
• The influence of childhood experiences on later choices
• Reasons and repercussions of substance abuse
• My personal journey through rehab and relapses
• Recognizing pivotal moments that lead to change
• The significance of vulnerability and seeking help
• Embracing spirituality and the concept of surrender
• Reflections on the ongoing journey of recovery
https://www.facebook.com/justin.judd.96
https://www.audible.com/pd/9-Simple-Steps-to-Sell-More-ht-Audiobook/B0D4SJYD4Q?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=library_overflow
https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Steps-Sell-More-Stereotypes-ebook/dp/B0BRNSFYG6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1OSB7HX6FQMHS&keywords=corey+berrier&qid=1674232549&sprefix=%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1
https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreysalescoach/
Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, corey Barrier, and I'm here with my man, justin Judd. What's up, brother? What's up, corey? Today's going to be a bit different show. I had a gentleman ask me if I'd ever told my story here on my own show, and the answer is I haven't really ever gone into my full story, and Justin and I have been friends for quite some time now and shared very similar stories, and so I've asked Justin to come on today and just get into my story and the things, some of the things that we've both kind of gone through, and so it's gonna be a bit of a different format today.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thanks for having me, man. That meant a lot that you reached out to me in regards to that. That was pretty cool. Yeah, dude.
Speaker 1:You're a special person to me, brother, and I really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Thanks, man. Shout out to Corey A lot of people talk the talk but don't walk the walk. But I think I've received a gratitude list for the last I don't know six months, maybe more than that every single day and I don't think I've ever responded to it. And I still get it every single morning. That's pretty awesome, dude. Where?
Speaker 1:did you learn?
Speaker 2:about like where did that come from?
Speaker 1:That's a great question and I got to give my girlfriend credit for this because she started sending me her gratitude list and, as you've seen, some of mine they're long and hers were really long and I thought who really wants to read?
Speaker 2:all this shit, yeah, and who's like gonna consistently do that every single day? Because I get it every day from you yeah.
Speaker 1:So then I started sending it back to her, and then it just as I would meet people and think about people that were important in my life or have played a role in my life, then I would just either ask them if they wanted to be on the list or I just put them on the list and if they didn't like it, they would just tell me. It hasn't happened very too many times, but it has happened. The reason I started that is because, no matter how I wake up, I usually wake up in a pretty good mood, but, regardless of what I have going on in my head that day or that morning, forcing myself to write that gratitude list always shifts my mind to a place of gratitude, and you can't be upset and grateful at the same time, and so I use it as a hack to get my day started.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome. The other thing about gratitude is it's one of the higher frequency vibrations to the universe, which is really interesting, because the more that you're grateful, the more that you actually are attracting that kind of stuff back to you, which is really cool. You said something really interesting. You said something that caught my attention because I was just talking about it this morning. So you said usually, every day you wake up, you're in a pretty good mood. Is that the truth?
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, because I'm a morning person, I like getting up early. I look forward to the day I pray. I usually pray at night, I usually pray in the morning, and so, yeah, I do usually wake up in a pretty good mood. I'm excited because I'm going to the gym.
Speaker 2:I love the gym and I spend about I don't know, three hours at least just hanging out with me and just doing my thing in the morning, which is my favorite three hours of the day. Yeah, the reason I asked that. So I went to the gym this morning and I got a little bit of a late start and the person that I went to the gym with we were having a conversation and when we got out of the gym I was like and maybe I'm wrong here, because you just said you're a morning person but in my mind you hear those people all the time that are like I'm not a morning person, I can't do it, I just I'm not a morning person. Well, fuck, I'm not a morning person either. Dude.
Speaker 2:Like when I wake up, I don't pop out of bed just like super stoked to go to the gym. I wake up and I'm tired and I don't really want to get up, but I get myself up anyways, because every time I get up early and go to the gym, never do I get done doing that and say to myself I wish I wouldn't have done that. So when you say you're a morning person, do you just you wake up and it's just pop out of bed and you're ready to go, or do you think you've just disciplined yourself long enough to where it's gotten easier?
Speaker 1:I think discipline has a lot to do with it, because I was going to ask you which kind of falls right into the same category. I go to bed pretty consistently at the same time every night and that's key. It's key and so routine for me is it's important. And so, as long as I get in bed at my normal time, if I'm asleep by nine o'clock which is for some people that's like they're just getting started, but for me, if I get started, if I go to sleep at nine and I wake up at four, that's a pretty, you know, seven hours. If I sleep the whole time, which I'm probably not going to sleep exactly the whole time, but if I can get six and a half hours sleep, I'm ready to roll.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so nine o'clock, that's pretty early. Do you have a process that you follow before you go to bed so that you can start to slow down your mind and you're not sitting there in bed for an hour or two before you actually pass out? Or is your mind still pretty busy at nine o'clock and it takes you a while to go to bed sometimes?
Speaker 1:So I think it depends. So if I've got something that I'm trying to control that's outside of my control, that's eating my lunch or in something that I'm trying, if it could be that I had a conversation with Maddie and it maybe didn't go really well that usually doesn't happen or it could be something with work that is not maybe not going the way I want it to go, yeah, and those nights are much tougher and some of those nights I don't't sleep and if I miss a certain window of time I have a hard time sleeping. I will tell you, I just stopped taking ambien it's probably been three months ago approximately and I'd taken it for probably 20 years and I talked to my buddy, doug Wyatt. I don't know if Doug, you will know him.
Speaker 2:I know. I don't know him, but I know of him, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:He explained to me how important sleep was and he told me about two books, why we Sleep. I think is one of them, and Breathe is the other one. Because I told him I snore and so I've stopped taking Ambien and I take melatonin at night. If I take it consistently, sometimes it stops working. So I may pop a Tylenol PM, but I still believe that it's got to be better than taking Ambien every night.
Speaker 2:Ambien is a serious drug dude. Yeah, did you like withdraw from that, or did you go a long time without being able to sleep? Some people can have pretty bad comedowns off of Ambien, believe it or not.
Speaker 1:So I tapered. Of course I didn't talk to my doctor about it, but I can't imagine they would have told me to do it any other way. But maybe Either way, I just cut it in half, took it for five or six days, cut it in half I wasn't taking a huge amount but and then I started taking melatonin. So, to answer your question, it really wasn't a terrible transition, but I think a a lot of that and you'll get this is I made up my mind, oh yeah, that I was going to stop taking ambient and that was it it's crazy how powerful that little shift in a mindset can be.
Speaker 2:And it's hard to explain that to somebody, because a lot of times people ask me like how I got sober? And it's such a hard question to answer because it looks a little bit different for everybody. But at the end of the day, when I quit this last time, I made the decision that, no matter what the emotion, no matter what the circumstance, no matter what the stress, I was never going to pick up another substance and I haven't looked back. Yeah, but I don't know why that just doesn't click for certain people. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:yeah, and you're you're. Your journey's a bit different than mine in that, I don't know, without having a recovery program for me, I'm not so sure. I'm not. I don't think I could have done it. If I'm being honest with you, and part of when we get into the story, you'll understand why I say that, because once I got away from that the program, I made decisions that ultimately, I couldn't say I was sober anymore. I wasn't drinking, but I wasn't sober, and there's a big difference there. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was a lot of stuff that led up to me getting to the point of making that decision, which I can get into in a bit, but it was an internal thing. But. But once I made that decision, I just I't looked back, and the power of making a decision is extremely powerful. So I want to ask you tell me a little bit about life growing up. What did your life look like growing up?
Speaker 1:What did your life look like growing up? I grew up in probably one of the nicest neighborhoods in my town. I grew up in Mayberry, like the Andy Griffith show. It's just a small town, everybody knows everybody. I grew up on a golf course, at a country club, and my parents we weren't by any stretch the wealthiest people by any stretch. In fact, we were probably the the least wealthy of the people in the neighborhood. Which has it mayberry, north carolina. Yeah, it was mount airy north carolina now, but it is like it was made. Yeah, mayberry where everything started being filmed and and yeah, so everything's still Mayberry downtown today.
Speaker 1:And so I grew up around people that were doctors and attorneys and they had everything that they possibly wanted. So I always felt like I didn't fit in. I always felt like we were. I just felt like I was different, and it wasn't because I lacked for anything, because I had everything, really anything that I wanted, and I think part of that led into some of the decisions that I made, because I didn't have a whole lot of boundaries. My dad and mom split when I was 12. So we were. I was with my mom pretty much after that. My dad was still in the picture. But he traveled and so our boundaries. We didn't have a lot of boundaries and I got into a lot of trouble. I got into trouble at the age of boundaries and I got into a lot of trouble. I got into trouble at the age of five I caught stealing, and age 10, I burnt down a barn and Stealing at five.
Speaker 2:Yeah, where does that?
Speaker 1:come from? That's a great question, just no, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't know. That's that's pretty interesting Cause usually if we're doing that kind of stuff that young that's usually it's usually coming from something like I got caught stealing people's wallets from seven peaks, which is a water resort. I was going around and freaking jacking people's wallets at 12 years old and got caught and got taken to the police station. But later on I did some therapy and learned that I got sexually abused by my third grade teacher when I was eight years old. So that's really when I started acting out like I really started acting out because it created some internal, an internal belief system in me that something was wrong with me and I was broken and um and I don't know. Just I wasn't good enough and I started surrounding myself. I think I started attracting those kind of kids in my life and I really just started acting out a ton, and so it's interesting that that happened at five years old. I'm not saying that something like that happened to you, it's just I wonder what put you in that kind of mindset at such a young age.
Speaker 1:Only thing I can figure is I was a spoiled kid and so I didn't have I didn't really five, but there was a level. There's always been a level of entitlement. There's always been a level of I should be in another place, I should be higher, I should be doing better, I should be making more money, I should be in a different place than where I am.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that carried on for a while, what did your parents do for work? Because you said that you guys were middle class in comparison to the other people around you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So my mom was a school teacher. She made no money. My dad was. He worked on the tobacco market so he made pretty good money. I don't know back then maybe a hundred grand, maybe I'm not sure really to today's dollars what that would be, but he did pretty well. But he traveled six, seven, eight months out of the year. So really when they divorced it wasn't a real huge difference in how I was being parented. My mom would have a little brother that's three years younger than me. He didn't really get into a lot of trouble and so it was a lot for my mom to handle, I think.
Speaker 2:Looking back, yeah, Did your parents the entitlement that you talked about? Did your parents the entitlement that you talked about? Did your parents? They're surrounded by all these rich people that have a lot of stuff. Do you think that got to them at all and that, in turn, translated to, transmuted to you? Do you think that's where you picked some of it up, or do you think it was solely because you saw all of these people around you that had everything that they wanted?
Speaker 1:I think it's both because we were a member of the country club, but we were like we were in debt up to our ears and of course I didn't realize that then. Realize that then. But there for us to I don't know there'd be a minimum at the country club and we would have to. We'd have to make that every month and it would be a conversation about what day of the week or what day of the month we were going to go spend this two hundred dollars at the to just make the minimum to be able to be a member there. So it was almost like we were scraping by to a degree to stay up with the Joneses, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when your parents got divorced at 12 years old, you said that it didn't really change a whole lot just because your dad was already traveling a lot and stuff. But did it affect you in different ways?
Speaker 1:it did actually so it did. I shouldn't have said that it didn't change a lot, because actually I think that is when things really turned, or turned for me, because we moved out of the country club to the other side of town, which was devastating because I had I'd grown up with these kids all my life and we moved across the way and now I don't have these friends anymore. They're just turned their back on me. And my mom had she dated this guy. Mom had she had dated this guy, but I guess in college for years he went into the army, she went to college maybe that's what happened and this guy, after 20 years or 15 years, pops back into my mom's life. It just, it was an accident. They just happened to see each other walking through town and sort of talking he was getting a divorce, she was getting a divorce.
Speaker 1:So now I've got this dude who I had zero respect for and he was starting to come around, and then he eventually moved in and he wasn't a bad guy. I just didn't moved in and he wasn't a bad guy, I just didn't. I was just I. I hated him, right, because now, for whatever reason, I hated him and so yet that took a lot. I took a toll on my psyche, moving and realizing like I'm not in the same group that I was in before. It was like literally moving across the tracks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, did your dad pretty quickly start dating anybody?
Speaker 1:He was probably dating people before they got divorced. If I had to guess, yeah, anybody, he's probably dating people before they got divorced. If I had to guess, he moved to Tennessee. But quite frankly, justin, we saw him more after they got divorced than we did before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the reason I'm asking that question is, once you start looking into the amount of effect that you're, the development of a child's brain is so fundamental and it will affect somebody's life for the rest of their life, whether they're conscious of it or not. So that thing that happened to me when I was eight years old, I literally blocked it out for over 15 years and I blocked it out. And when I hear people tell me that they block stuff out, I thought they were full of shit, but I literally blocked it out until I was in a group therapy session later on. But that's another story. Did you block it out until I was in a group therapy session later on, but that's another story.
Speaker 1:Did you block it out Subconsciously? You couldn't have blocked it right?
Speaker 2:No, subconsciously, that was my point. Subconsciously it was still affecting the way that I was viewing the world. It was affecting the way that I was living life. It was affecting the way that I viewed myself and the lack of like self-worth that I had for myself. It was affecting me, but I didn't realize it, and that's scary dude. Stuff that we learn about ourselves later on in life is correlated to things that happened to us when we were growing up.
Speaker 2:Yes, I agree so did it make you the guy that your mom started dating? Where did you just initially hate him? Were you mad at your mom for?
Speaker 1:I. I don't think I was mad at my mom. I just I did. I wasn't very cooperative, I didn't really listen to him. He was just. I didn't feel like I needed to listen to him. I have a dad, I don't need to listen to you and we did everything possible to get him to leave. We put sugar in his gas tank, just some really gnarly shit. And if it had been me I probably would have killed me. If I would have been him, I should have said it was rough going. It was rough going. Plus, he had two kids and it was just. It was a lot of changes. It was a lot of changes and that's I would say. That's probably when I mean I started smoking cigarettes.
Speaker 2:How old were you when you started doing that? Probably 12 or 13. So was that the first thing that you tried substance-wise was smoking cigarettes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Alright, and then where did it go from there?
Speaker 1:I had a buddy of mine this was probably in junior high, so I want to say 13, 14, 13, 14 years old lived in a neighboring town, like in virginia, and he had a four wheelers and all kinds of shit, and so I would go out to his house on the weekends and that's where I first drank. And the best way I can describe when I first drank was my anxiety was gone, like I felt like I could talk better, I could think quicker, I felt comfortable in my own skin, yeah, and so I wanted more of that every chance I could get.
Speaker 1:Yep, and then it stopped working.
Speaker 2:So you've already talked about it a little bit, but do you know where that underlying feeling came from at that age? I guess it could be a mixture of a lot of the stuff that that we've talked about but I don't really I can't pinpoint a specific like situation, like sort of like you alluded to.
Speaker 1:I don't have anything that I can really point it to, like that.
Speaker 2:I just don't remember not feeling like that.
Speaker 1:Well, I tell you so around seventh grade. So I was a fat kid and this could play into it. I was a fat kid and I was when I was. We finished up sixth grade and we went to a pool. I went to a pool party with the same kids from the neighborhood in the first neighborhood. I talk about this in my book. Actually, I walked up and got on the diving board. You know how you bounce up and down on the diving board, but my boobs would flap up and down because I was fat.
Speaker 1:These girls asked me after I got out of the pool to do it again. I'm thinking, oh, they must think I'm cute, so I do it again and I get out. And one of them asked me if I ever thought about wearing a training bra. So it's fucking crushed. I mean, it was the most embarrassing thing. I can't think of too many more things that would have been that embarrassing. And so that summer, dude, I dieted and I lost weight and I've never gained that weight back. So I think the insecurity maybe started from me being fat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a pretty, that's pretty young. So how old were you when you were on the diving board and that happened? Twelve, twelve, yeah. And the girl said something and then you dieted that summer.
Speaker 1:Yes, I did.
Speaker 2:That's pretty crazy if you think about it, dude.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Twelve years old to already like start worrying about that stuff to the point where you're going to like, from your own decision, like choose to start dieting. That's pretty impactful.
Speaker 1:I was never going through that again, and I haven't.
Speaker 2:And I won't, so you've never fell off the wagon in regards to that aspect again.
Speaker 1:Nope, nope I mean don't get me wrong have I gained a few pounds here and there yet, but it's never gone. It's never gone to the point where I've been uncomfortable so you started, you started drinking a little bit around.
Speaker 2:Was that around 12 years old too? 13, around 13, 14, 13, 14, and you instantly felt that, oh, this is what I'm supposed to feel like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I hated the taste. It was awful, but the feeling outweighed the taste and it outweighed throwing up. I just wanted the feeling. I just wanted to feel comfortable. I just wanted to feel normal and that's what made me feel normal. Where'd you get it from? That kid's house? His mom was kind of. She kind of just did her own thing and left us there. All weekend. She'd be at her boyfriend's house so we just kind of had, we just did whatever we wanted to.
Speaker 2:How often did that start happening Probably just did whatever we wanted to.
Speaker 1:How often did that start happening? Probably two, three weekends a month. Yeah, I would say so. That's quite a bit at that age though. Yeah, every chance I got.
Speaker 2:And then, how did it progress?
Speaker 1:I started. It's interesting I got my first DUI when I was 16 years old, but I hadn't been drinking At this point. I didn't drink, so that little stint of going to that guy's house on the weekend didn't last, I don't know, six or eight months. Maybe I started dating this girl that was a preacher's daughter and so I didn't have, I wasn't drinking. But I had a wreck, a really bad wreck, I don't know 15 or 20 days after I got my license and almost killed the girl that was with me and almost killed this other lady that I hit head on. It was a really bad accident and I smoked cigarettes and the deal was I could get my license if I quit smoking cigarettes. Well, I didn't quit, so I had this pina colada spray in my vehicle that would, I thought, was going to cover the smell up. Well, the cop who was my first cousin, who was also the person who was called when I got caught stealing at five, was the first one on the scene and they smelled the pina colada spray and they gave me a DUI.
Speaker 1:It was on the front page of the paper with the wreck. They gave me a blood test, naturally, and it came back zero. But it doesn't matter because it's already been on the front page of the paper. Matter because it's already been on the front page of the paper which was a really tough time because it was dating this preacher's daughter Her name was involved with it. Just not a good situation.
Speaker 1:And so I had switched schools in my 11th grade year and I hadn't really got into drinking at this point. I took, you know, I just I hadn't really got into it. But after that wreck I was separated from her parents, didn't want to meet, anything to do with her, and so I switched back to Mount Airy High School in my 12th grade year and that's really where I picked up drinking, because I was going to parties with the same people that I grew up with. I was kind of back in that same crowd and they all smoked, weed and drank and we could always do it at somebody else's house, and so that's really where where my drinking picked up around my 12th grade year.
Speaker 2:Did you fight that DUI? Oh yeah, it was completely dismissed, so you fought the DUI, but it was still out there, to everybody, exactly.
Speaker 1:It was dismissed because my blood came back and it was zero, but still living in a small town. Everybody found out, probably not shocked, but still it is what it is.
Speaker 2:So how was junior high and high school for you? I know that you mentioned that seventh grade was tough and you went on your diet, but in general, did you have a lot of friends? Were you part of the popular crew? Did you play sports? It's such an awkward age because you're still trying to figure out who you are and and somehow fit in. But how was that?
Speaker 1:experience. I played sports up until seventh grade, all the everything baseball, football, playing baseball, football played golf, because I grew up on a golf course. But seventh grade I lost that weight in between sixth and seventh grade and I thought this is going to be my year, but the reality was I wasn't great in school and a lot of the kids that I'd grown up with they were good in school. So I wound up with being in the not so great crowd. I mean because I was looking for acceptance. I was looking for people that I guess smoke cigarettes and I took shop class. So my choices of classes were like we take the easiest fucking class that I could possibly take and that breeds the same people, right, the people that are trying to take the easy road.
Speaker 1:So seventh and eighth grade was not. It wasn't an easy time because of my choice of people that I hung out with, because I didn't feel comfortable hanging out. I was really not accepted, it felt, with the crowd that I'd been with because I moved and so I just kind of hung out with people that were not really on the right path, so to speak. It doesn't necessarily mean they were on a wrong path, and actually now I think about it. I did drink during that time Not a ton, but I did drink during that time with my other buddy.
Speaker 2:Now that I think about it, yeah, so did you meet that preacher's girlfriend at your new school? When you moved to schools?
Speaker 1:So I'd met her before I moved schools and then that was part of the reason that I moved and I actually the reason I moved back to Mount Airy High School is because I skipped so many days my 12th grade year and I was going to fail and, like a lot of times, my dad called the principal because he knew the principal got me back in. I wound up making all A's and one B, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I initially moved for the girl and then moved back because I was going to fail. Were the grades because you didn't apply yourself, or have you had some difficulty with learning and that type of stuff?
Speaker 1:I do have ADHD and I'm sure I don't remember if you have ADHD or not but putting me in a box room and having me sit still for eight hours is just not conducive for me. It's just not. It's just not going to work. And I didn't apply myself because I hated it. I absolutely hated it. I just wasn't very good in school. I just wasn't very good yeah.
Speaker 2:I was diagnosed ADHD and depressed and bipolar and, like the whole reason I'm saying this right now is just be careful when a doctor gives you a diagnosis, because I am not on one prescription medication anymore and I am clearer than I have ever been in my life and a lot of times and, by the way, I'm a huge mental health proponent I understand that in certain cases medication can do a good job, but a lot of times that stuff that we're trying to solve through medication is really just something going on internally and if we work from the inside out, then then a lot of times we can. We can figure that stuff out without having to have some kind of medication, and I believe that certain things like ADHD are actually a superpower when you can learn to harness them and focus them in the right direction. I think a lot of times we just focus those things in the wrong direction and, yeah, they can become direction. I think a lot of times we just focus those things in the wrong direction and, yeah, they can become bad, but when you focus that stuff in a positive direction, it can be a superpower, and most of the most successful entrepreneurs out there have some type of mental I don't like to call it a disability, but that's what people would call it. I think it's a mental ability.
Speaker 2:But whether it's ADHD or autism, a lot of these entrepreneurs have these things, and the only difference between them and some of the people that really struggle with those things is, number one they learn to focus it in a positive direction. And then, number two, they switch their perspective on it, because the story that we tell ourselves is always true. That's right, and so if you're looking at that stuff in a negative way, it's going to affect you negatively. If you tell, oh, I've got adhd and depression and it's fucking killing me and I can't do anything about it and it's ruined, yeah, that's gonna happen. But if you take that stuff, I've got adhd, I'm gonna use this to fucking smash. I've got autism, I'm gonna use that intelligence to do shit that nobody else can do. That slight shift in perspective is a game changer 100%.
Speaker 1:I think maybe we've even talked about this. When you feel like you're in flow, when you feel like you are at your absolute best, I'm going to guess that's when you're having a conversation with one of your partners and you're talking about how. You'm going to guess that's when you're having a conversation with one of your partners and you're talking about how you're going to collaborate, you're in the conversation. Let's shift that for a second. When you're sitting in front of a fucking computer trying to figure out a fucking spreadsheet, it's I want to jump out the window. So it's. If you can figure out where your strengths are like what I'm talking about, because I'm exactly the same way it'll take me four and a half hours to figure out a spreadsheet. Opposed to I can have a conversation with somebody all day long and make 10 times the progress than I will sitting in front of that spreadsheet.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep. So you got to figure out where your strengths are and you got to bring people on to help you out where you're not strong. That's right. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And if you do have to do some spreadsheet work or some things that are difficult when you have a busy mind, one of the things that you can do to help with that is you want to move your body somehow. So even if you're doing a little like leg stepper under your desk, or even if you have, even if you just tap your desk, like with your hand while you're doing work on the spreadsheet, if you want to slow down your mind, you have to move into your body. So for people that's why I like going to the gym why do you think it's so easy to get into a flow state when you go to the gym? Because you're moving your body and it naturally slows down this mind and your thoughts become clear. Why is it easy for athletes to get into flow space flow state?
Speaker 1:Because they're doing a physical activity and they're moving their body and that naturally slows down their mind and they can just they can just focus yeah, yeah, but you put yeah and I think the awareness of knowing what you're good at and the awareness of knowing where what you're not good at is key because, yes, if you don know, then you're going to keep banging your head against the wall trying to figure out this thing that you are not supposed to figure out to begin with.
Speaker 2:Totally agree. Yeah, I'm only saying that stuff just as it helps to do something with the body If you are trying to slow down the mind. But I'm with you at At Chirp. I'm really good at what I do. It's like a superpower. I'm a really good relationship builder. I'm really good at going out and getting partnerships, but I am not good at building systems and processes. I'm not good at HubSpot. I'm not good at onboarding commission software. I brought on a girl sales manager to do all of that stuff for me because, number one, I'm not good at it. Number two, it takes me forever. And number three, I don't fucking want to do it. Dude right, I don't want to. I don't want to do that kind of stuff it's not where you're best suited.
Speaker 1:it's not beneficial for you or the company for you to be doing the things that you're not good at. People say focus on the things you're not good at. Absolutely don't do that, Yep. Find someone that can help you do those things.
Speaker 2:Yep, and it's a skill to be able to recognize what you're good at and what you're not good at, and some people just have a hard time admitting that they're not good at certain things, and it makes life a lot harder when you're not just willing to say, okay, here's my strengths and here's what I'm not so good at, and I'm going to focus on this and have somebody else help here. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's help here. Yeah, totally yeah.
Speaker 2:So let's, that was a good talk right there. How did it progress? So I think we're at like 12th grade. Did you graduate?
Speaker 1:I graduated all A's and B's and I would and this is interesting, it's a great segue so I took a job. So my dad was the vice president of a tobacco company and I took a job with the tobacco company and the job was I was training to be a buyer. Let me explain what that means. So, like following sale they don't do this anymore, but I was being trained to follow sell, like an auctioneer auctioning tobacco hand signals. It was wild.
Speaker 1:The main job was to learn how to follow sell and to drive the people around that were, if you want to call, executives or whatever they were, because the tobacco industry is a drinking culture, five o'clock, every day. They're all in the hospitality room. That's completely stock to the ceiling with anything you can think of, and it was okay for me to drink as well, even though I was 18 years old. It didn't really matter, right, I was. This is just a different industry, and so that is where, truthfully, that's where my drinking really took off. Because it was free, I was able to drink whenever I wanted to Damn near encouraged, to be honest with you and so that's when my alcohol abuse really kicked in. Was it every day, every day?
Speaker 2:I mean five days a week day, I mean five days a week, yeah, five days a week, and most of the people that were doing it with you were do you think that they were like, were they able to control it, or do you think it was a lot of alcohol?
Speaker 1:everybody was an alcoholic, I'm pretty sure, really. Yeah, yeah, dude, I mean it was like every day, not at one, not at five, oh, one at five o'clock.
Speaker 2:Everybody was. Did you realize that it was a problem? Or to you Was it just? Oh man, everyone's doing this.
Speaker 1:This is normal, because I felt normal for the first, like I felt normal when I drank. So this was like a new lease on life for me. This was the best thing that could have ever happened. Now I get to get paid and every day at five o'clock, I get to drink. Sign me up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so how did you, did it slowly get into drinking on the weekends and drinking after work, or how did it progress from there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it just didn't really stop. I drank every day. I started drinking every day and, yeah, I would drink on the weekends for sure Wasn't really doing a lot of drugs. In fact, I wasn't doing any drugs really at that time. I'd smoke a little bit of weed, but weed and alcohol wasn't really doing a lot of drugs. In fact, I wasn't doing any drugs really at that time. I'd smoke a little bit of weed, but weed and alcohol wasn't. It didn't really serve me well. At the same time, I would always choose alcohol over weed, because alcohol helped some people. It slows them down and makes them tired. It did the opposite for me. I was ready to go, and so weed would slow me down. I would be be tired, I wouldn't be able to think as much, so it just really wasn't that appealing to me so when was the when, oh sorry, were you gonna go at where you're gonna say, oh?
Speaker 2:when was the first time that you realized it was a problem, even though it made you feel good? When was the first time that you were like, damn, even though this makes me feel good, I can't control it.
Speaker 1:I started working at a restaurant. So I only worked six months out of the year at this job. I got paid for 12, but I only had to work six because of the tobacco season. So when I finished that, when I finished that first six months, I would play golf every day and drink on the golf course regularly. And so then I started working in a restaurant, because I wound up not going back to that job which is a whole different story but I started working at a restaurant.
Speaker 1:If you know anything about restaurants, it's pretty easy to drink at a restaurant and by this point, by this point, I had started doing drugs. So I would say I was around maybe 19, yeah, 19, 19 and a half somewhere in in that vicinity and I was working at a restaurant. So I couldn't drink at the restaurant, but I could drink on the way home and so I worked about an hour away. And so, to answer your question, every night I would buy two 40 ounce ice house and drink them before I would get to my destination in mount airy, and then I'd drink a third one when I got there and then, yeah, and I mentioned you, you started to get into some drugs at that point.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure during that time how it was there, but I know, know in Utah cocaine's pretty big in the restaurant industry. So is that kind of what introduced you to start getting into some drugs?
Speaker 1:Actually crushing up my Ritalin and then cocaine.
Speaker 2:So you had Ritalin for your ADHD. Yeah, how long were you on that for? When did you first get prescribed that? Eight years old? Yeah, I don't want to come across the wrong way on this podcast people because I know it can come across offensive to some people, especially parents that have kids and they're just trying to do the best that they can and trying to help their kids out. But I will say just think twice before you just go and put a kid on some kind of heavy prescription medication. So eight years old did you take it?
Speaker 1:as prescribed. I'm sure I did at eight, but it's interesting because I remember at that early age when I would take it, my palms would sweat, I wouldn't get very hungry, I would feel really nervous because you're taking an amphetamine and at eight years old it's really like doing a line of cocaine is really what it was like and I wondered. I really did believe for years that probably led me to drugs and alcohol. But what I've discovered?
Speaker 1:So before I wrote my book, I interviewed like 50 different ADHD professionals because I wanted to understand why I do the things that I do. I wanted to understand why I fucking leave my keys somewhere and I can't find it for four hours. I wanted to understand why, just why I couldn't get out of my own way and unanimously. What I figured out was if I hadn't have been on medication. If I hadn't have been on medication, the drugs and alcohol would have probably been far worse, which is not what I thought for years. I thought for sure and I'm still not totally convinced that's 100% the case I think that the Ritalin likely started that desire to feel different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Yeah, did you ever go without it, like when you were? No, you never went without it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for 25, or I don't even know how many years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah I mean, really the only reason they ask is because when you go without it then you really start to, you really start to see what it's doing for you. But it sounds like you just took it pretty consistently and for the most part, probably as prescribed while you were growing up, until the restaurant and you started sniffing it a little bit that's right and it's interesting because I hear people say they they'll take it by mouth and they can just keep taking it, like just like an addict would do.
Speaker 1:That was never really my experience, but when I snorted it, the I would be up for days. I mean, I would just like I just couldn't really stop and I would be. It's just like if you're, if you've just finished up an eight ball and you're just completely locked up and your mind's running a million miles an hour but you don't really want to talk to anybody or see anybody. Yeah, I would get the exact same way with riddell. The same way. So what?
Speaker 2:made you decide to crush it and snort it because you had done it for so long and you had taken it by mouth, kind of as prescribed. What made you all of a sudden one day be like I'm gonna crush this bitch up and take it to the dome?
Speaker 1:I'm guessing somebody probably was doing it around me. I really don't remember.
Speaker 2:if I'm being honest with you, yeah, yeah, but you do remember that it was a different feeling when you did that A hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, and it would be, you know, and I would do it working in the restaurant. You know I'd go in the bathroom and crush it up and it's a wonder, like I'm not even sure how I function, to be honest with you yeah, but when you were doing it, it made you feel like that you were way better at whatever you were doing. Right, yeah, 100, that's one of the challenges that comes, but when you were doing it, it made you feel like that you were way better at whatever you were doing.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, 100%. That's one of the challenges that comes with when you stop doing that stuff is you've gotten into this habit of telling yourself over and over that I'm so much better at this.
Speaker 1:When I remove the substance, whether it be from sports or work or whatever it is there's a rush of dopamine from this substance that you're not used to having, and so then, when you've got to go without it, it's almost like you've got a depletion of dopamine. Yep.
Speaker 2:All right, so walk me through kind of the next little while in your life. So you're at the restaurant, you're drinking, you're crushing up, you're riddling. Where does it go from there?
Speaker 1:So I moved to Charlotte to go to college and I did enroll and I did go a little bit, but the truth of the matter was I got there, my God, I got alcohol poisoning the first night I was there, if that tells you any idea how things went and I had to come home for three days. I was so sick and it didn't really matter, like I was just ready to get back after that three days, and so I didn't go a day without drinking. So that was really that first year in school. That was when I had to go to my first rehab and I don't remember if I'd gotten a DUI yet probably. So I got two DUIs back-to-back in Charlotte when I say back-to-back 30 days apart by the same cop on Like legit DUIs.
Speaker 2:You were drinking, got busted, got charged with a DUI.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 1:You have to do jail time no, and the reason I didn't is because I got charged for the first one second and the second one first, because if they would have been charged consecutively I was going to lose my license for eight years. My attorney said this is how we're going to do it and that's how we did it. So I only lost my license for four years and so I still drove, naturally. And it turns out I didn't work anyway, because I got my license back after that four years for one day and the next day I get a letter from the DMV saying you're not driving for another four years. So the plan didn't work. Plan didn't work but in between all that time I mean there was I would get up and drink vodka before I was working in restaurants. I would get up and drink vodka before I went. Like a pint, like a pint glass, pretty much full of vodka I was.
Speaker 2:It was one of my worst times, for sure I want to touch on a couple things here because I think this is really interesting. It was one of my worst times, for sure. I want to touch on a couple things here because I think this is really interesting. So you went to college, you blacked out or got alcohol poisoning your first night. You got two DUIs pretty quickly. Thereafter you went to rehab, right, yep, was that influenced by your mom or your dad? Was that you? Was it the courts that had you go? Do you remember?
Speaker 1:wasn't. It may have been suggested by my attorney, I don't recall. I knew I was in bad shape was, was it an?
Speaker 2:inpatient. Yeah, how long did you go? For? Two weeks, so did you not complete the program.
Speaker 1:I did, but it was more of a drunk tank, it was more of a. It wasn't like a 30 day rehab, it was like a come here and get cleaned up and then go to the next spot. I just didn't go to the next spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, my last one was 73 days, 70 patient program. So the reason I brought that up is because I'm always trying to figure out what gets somebody sober. I think if we had the answer, there would probably be like a set in. And I know you follow the AA program and I know that works really well for some people, but it also like there are people who go to AA and drink again right, so that I don't think there's one miracle solution that everyone can just follow step by step, and I'm going to stay sober for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2:External consequences do not. It's really interesting. External consequences are not always the thing that is going to drive somebody to change, and you would think that they would. You would think that getting your first DUI would, and then your second DUI and then going to rehab, and you would think all of these things would make somebody stop and think, fuck, I have a problem, I'm not going to do this anymore. But it's not quite that simple and so in my opinion, it's more of an internal thing. But we can get to that a little bit later on. So you got out of rehab two weeks. Where do you go from there?
Speaker 1:Less than a week, I was drinking again, and how much were you drinking at this point? That's a good question.
Speaker 2:I would be honest I don't know, Was it more hard liquor beer? Not at the time.
Speaker 1:Maybe shots. It was like going out to a club. There was some ecstasy going on in there as well.
Speaker 2:Do you have any small moments in there where you wanted to quit? No, not really the only reason.
Speaker 1:I would want to quit is because to get out of the thing I was in trouble for or whatever it was. Yeah, yeah, there was really no desire to quit. In fact, I didn't really think I'd ever quit. I couldn't really ever see myself not drinking.
Speaker 2:To be honest, it was, and is that because it made you feel so good, or is that because you didn't think you had a problem?
Speaker 1:I knew, I believe, from early on. I would always say that I'm an alcoholic Not in the sense that I say it now just kind of, as this is just. It was almost like an identity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah for me. I know I had a problem, but I'm so prideful that I always felt like I was the one person that would be able to figure out it, figure it out and control it. Yeah, so I never quite I never fully quite wanted to give it up, cause, even though I was going to stop doing it like I was doing it, I could still just do it a little bit here and there, and I was smart enough and strong enough to be able to figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I went through that for years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pride and ego is. It is probably one of the most powerful things to have to try to overcome. In my opinion, it has been for me for many years. I mean, even sober years is still, and there's different levels of it, and it could be what you're talking about. I can quit when I want to, but I'm just going to do this, or it could be. I'm just not going to tell anybody that I'm going through this thing. There's so many different levels of pride and ego that can just smash you to death, I agree, and sometimes it's hard to even recognize when that's happening.
Speaker 2:So how do you recognize it?
Speaker 1:so how do you recognize it? I have to step back and think about what are, what are my intentions here, and am I looking at this from everyone's perspective, or is it just my perspective? There may be something that I don't agree with that someone does at work, potentially, or in our relationship and I have to look at. Am I looking at this of just how it affects me, or am I looking at it at where that person could be coming from?
Speaker 1:It's really empathy and putting myself in their shoes, and I can't all the time, I can't necessarily always put myself in their shoes because I don't know what they're going through, I don't know what kind of day this person's having for them to make this decision. And the only way and this is where I fail sometimes is if I communicate well and I ask good questions, and sometimes I assume that I know because of my pride and ego, but my assumption's wrong because I didn't ask the right question or I didn't ask any question or I didn't communicate, and that's hard and I deal with that regularly. I think that I know what someone's thinking or what their intentions are, but it and I don't want to ask because I think I already know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting that you're talking about this right now. I think the key takeaway here is we will never have it all figured out. We are always, there's always room for improvement and we can always continue to work on ourselves. Me personally, right now, my word for 2025 is leadership. The reason that's my word is because you would think that somebody like me that's gone through everything that I've gone through and been at the bottom of the bottom would be the most patient and empathetic person in the world.
Speaker 2:It didn't work out like that for me. The exact opposite, the exact opposite, because I have been through everything that I've been through and I overcame it and I took accountability for life and stopped making excuses. I have very little patience for people that don't live life the same way, and I tend to. I don't tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and I'm super passionate and, unfortunately, with what I've been through and the mindset that I have, mixed with that passion. Unfortunately, when I'm trying to bring people up with me, I can actually, I'm actually bringing people down and so I'm really that's. That is what I'm working on in 2025 is being a little more empathetic towards people, giving people the benefit of the doubt and really trying to be a leader that people want to follow because they respect them and they want to work hard for them, and not a leader that people are afraid of. So it's a challenge.
Speaker 1:So tell me what happens, because obviously there's a time that you can think of that. This exact thing happened and, looking back, you wish you could have had the leadership mindset that you're talking about now. How did you recognize that and then correct it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that and then correct it. Yeah, one specific situation would be at Chirp. I've built this partnership program and I like value keeping my word these days and when I create these partnerships and when our sales team and they're referring us deals and our sales team is closing those deals and we tell people that they're going to get white glove support because that we take pride in it and we're going to take care of them. And don't get me wrong, we didn't really take care of a big partner of ours and one of their customers and it upset me. It upset me because I've put a ton of work and energy into this partnership and when I tell a partner that we're going to do something, I expect us to do it. And this person on that side of things this is going to sound bad man, but not everybody's going to be like me there. They might be here more just to have a job and it doesn't mean that they're like doing a bad job, they're just they don't care as much as I do. And what I ended up learning was, yeah, they dropped the ball and they admitted that, but they were also working on building out a software for the customer success manager team for us to be able to track the health of accounts, and so they were really focused on getting that software built out and long-term, that's super important and so in their minds, that's why they kind of dropped the ball over here is because they were focused over here, and if I would have just taken a little bit of time to understand where they were coming from, my approach could have been a lot different.
Speaker 2:Do I agree with how they did it? I still don't agree with it. I still think that they could have been doing this and taking care of the partner at the same time. But that's not what's important. What's important is I came across wrong to that person and I think I kind of hurt their feelings and that's not the type of person that I want to be. I want to be the type of person that, even if I don't agree with someone, I can go have a real conversation with that person and I can bring them up. And the way that I've been approaching those times, those types of things, I haven't been getting that kind of result and so that's on me. So that's something that I realized I got to work on. That was a long answer. Hopefully that made sense. It did.
Speaker 1:Because you're so personally invested in the partner and it's tied to your word and the partner doesn't give a shit if it fails, because you're the guy that said it's not going to fail. Yep.
Speaker 2:So it affects your character, yeah, and that's something that I take a lot of pride in these days, a lot.
Speaker 1:Yes, me too. For somebody to assassinate my character is probably the worst thing that you could do to me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they're still an employee here. I've still got to do what I can to make the most of them and give them an opportunity. And so it's.
Speaker 2:I definitely haven't figured it out, let's just put it that way, but the good thing is it was Ryan Fenn, the owner of Chirp.
Speaker 2:He's the one that really I already knew it, like deep down, I knew it, but he pulled me into his office and had a conversation with me and just let me know that, hey, man, we really need to work on this because we want this to be a place where people enjoy coming to work and they feel like they can be comfortable here and they feel like there's opportunity for growth here. And I may not have been bringing that to the table as much as I should, so, anyways, he had the conversation with me and, for whatever reason, really hit. And the good thing is, even though I I don't have it figured out yet, I'm noticing it. I'm noticing it all the time. I'm noticing it in relationships outside of work, I'm noticing it with friendships, I'm noticing it at work, like I'm just starting to be a lot more conscious of that challenge that I have in general, which is a good thing, because that means that I'm thinking about it before. I'm just reacting to something.
Speaker 1:So what if you treated this person, as challenging as it may be? What if you treated them like you would a partner? Yeah, because there'd be a different kind of conversation, right, you wouldn't have that conversation with a partner the way you had it with the support guy.
Speaker 2:That's a really good point. It's a really good point, I'll think.
Speaker 1:good point I'll think about that, yeah, I mean, think about if you were trying to bring on a huge partner, whoever that might be, and you're, you're talking with them, you're just having conversations, you're building the relationship. It's dating right and it's the same kind of the same thing with this individual. You're just you're starting a little bit in the rears because you've already made them feel like shit or whatever you did, but it's kind of like you've got to build that relationship. On that side as well, I'm focused on what I need to do, which is part of the problem. I'm focused on what benefits the company, what benefits me, and sometimes I don't think about the support people. They're like they just should do their job and that's not my part of it until it affects me. But if I have a good relationship with the support team, then they're probably going to work harder for me.
Speaker 2:I know, exactly, exactly, yeah, that is really what I'm. That's the growth that I'm focused on right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense, and it's really just trying to put yourself in that person's shoes and understand that our goals and the things that we want to get done, it's not their goals. It's not. They may not give a shit about that for us and maybe they shouldn't right. Maybe I mean their goal is to do get this fucking software up or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah and see, but you still got to figure out a way to to push them towards their goals. Right, you still got to, but it's it's going to be. It's going to be different than yours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. And so I think you know, I think the takeaway from that is sometimes we've got to put self to the side and really it goes back to empathy and just try to put yourself in their shoes, and the great thing is, if you can do that before you fire off at them, you're going to be in better shape, and it doesn't always mean that's going to happen. So we all say things that we shouldn't, we all make sarcastic remarks or raise our voice or whatever fill in the blank, but sometimes it is easier just to not have to go in and make that amends, if you will.
Speaker 2:Which's kind of interesting is, and it kind of goes back to how you're talking, how you talked about to be conscious of your strengths and be conscious of your weaknesses. So now that I'm conscious of this and I'm working on it, I was also like, ok, so what's an immediate solution, because it's going to take some time for me to work on this. And so what I did was I removed myself from communication. So I'm not normally I'm not communicating daily with really anyone in the company anymore. That's not a manager or executive, which honestly, I probably shouldn't have been having to do that anyways. But this situation just kind of made me realize that. So I've just taken myself out of that communication and given that responsibility to somebody else on my team, so that while I'm working on this, I just have some space.
Speaker 1:How easy is it for you to delegate stuff like that Not easy. Not easy at all.
Speaker 2:No, I like to control things. I tend to think that if I don't do it, then it's not going to get done as good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's a fine example of people that are in recovery or maybe people that are not. Like we try to control, I've tried to control. I try to control everything around me, and this is something I have to work on daily trying to control everything around me. And this is something I have to work on daily and a lot of times. The book Power of Now is just such a powerful thing for me because it really put in perspective I can't control anything that I can't touch right this very moment. I can't control what happens 10 minutes from now. Sure as hell can't control what happened 10 minutes ago. And if I sit and try, I can't be here with you and so it takes you out of like experiencing the things that you're supposed to experience.
Speaker 2:Yep, it's actually a really interesting concept and thought when you start thinking about that everything happens right now. Anything that's going to happen in the future is going to happen in the now, in that moment in the future. Anything that happened in the past, it happened in the moment, right right now is all we really ever have, is it Right now? I read that book when I was locked up yeah, and it was a game changer, dude because I was not happy to be there. I wanted to be out. I was upset, there was a lot of things that I was just upset about, and so reading that book in there really helped calm me down and helped me just focus on Getting through that moment and not so focused on what I had just done or what I was going to do when I get out, but just like really focused on then and there and taking control of that moment.
Speaker 1:Talk about being in a place for somebody that likes to control things. Being in a place like jail or wherever. It is suffocating because you have zero control over anything. Yep yeah, that was a tough time. How long were you in jail or prison or what? 16 months?
Speaker 2:Okay, just jail. So nine months in one and then got transferred to another one for six months tough time right there yeah, or 15 months, I guess that is yeah it's a long time.
Speaker 1:Yep did you use when you got out. Yep, of course. Yep, of course, of course, because one would think you spend that much time in jail. You'd learn a lesson, but, as you mentioned earlier, consequences don't always determine a shift in change. And really, when I stopped, when I stopped drinking. So I stopped drinking in 2009.
Speaker 1:And I had gotten the blow stick in my car and I had blown into it and set it off and for those of you who don't know what that is, it's a detector, basically, that you have to blow in to start your car. It's a pain in the ass, but I was able to legally drive, so I'd set it off. I had to go down to the DMV, because it immediately reports to the DMV and you have 48 hours to get down there and explain yourself. So I explained myself to the lady. Of course, I lied and, for whatever reason, she let me go and she said if I see you in here again, you'll never drive on the streets of North Carolina. And that was the day that I made a decision I can't do this anymore, like I just I've burnt up my last nine lives or whatever. How long ago was that? 2009.?
Speaker 2:So in between you going to like rehab and getting out and drinking a week later in 2009, like you basically just drank that whole time 2005, I got busted with four ounces of cocaine.
Speaker 1:So, one would have thought I would have stopped then, but I didn't. I had a great attorney. I went to a rehab for six months. I did not go to jail. I mean, I did go to jail but I didn't spend a bunch of time in jail. Wow, yeah, I know I really can't really get into all the reasons for that. That's crazy dude. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it is what it is. I got out of that rehab. I drank the night I got out of the rehab. It was a six-month Pentecostal holiness like not a medication rehab, but like a work camp. It was a nightmare, but it wasn't prison. So 2009 is when I stopped drinking. I didn't use drugs. After that time I haven't used any, not any hard drugs and so I got sober in 2009, after that experience with the DMV and I worked. I was in recovery working program, getting everything back in life that I thought I that the promises teach you. I started a business and in about 20, let's see 2015 ish, I started smoking weed, and so I didn't.
Speaker 2:I still you left from 2009 to 2015 and didn't drink, didn't drink, didn't do anything.
Speaker 1:That's a long, that's a long time six years, and so I started smoking weed on not a lot but a little bit, and what that did is it slowly pulled me away from going like I, you know I. I slowly pulled me away from the program and I started listening to Tony Robbins around that time and I heard him explain that you say I am. Whatever comes after, that is going to be true.
Speaker 2:So I thought and this, I use this as an excuse- I want to hear a cool quote from my mentor about that. What follows I am follows you right makes complete sense.
Speaker 1:So I thought I am follows you right. So I said what I can't keep going to this place and saying I am an alcoholic, because that means I'm broken, that means means that I'm going to. I just associated it with not the person that I wanted to be, which really, to be honest, was just an excuse for me to not go back. And so I didn't go back and I continued to smoke weed and every year continued to smoke weed and every year things got slowly worse, so slow that I didn't recognize how bad they were getting until they were completely out of control. When I say out of control, my marriage was falling apart. I had lost that business. I had taken control back over my life, opposed to depending on God or anybody else, and I was running things and doing a piss poor job at it.
Speaker 2:What do you think it was that kind of got you into that mindset and living life like that? Because a lot of people would say it's just weed right, which okay. Ego.
Speaker 1:Pure ego. I can do this. I don't need the program, I've got this. I don't need God, I don't need anything. I can do this, this. I don't need God, I don't need anything, I can do this. And my ego took over and I just could not figure out what the problem was. I went and tried to do ayahuasca twice. I mean, I was searching for anything to solve the problem of me outside of going back to the program that I knew had given me the life that I wanted, right, but what didn't even enter my mind? Because I had convinced myself 100% that I didn't need to go back there. I believed my own story, that I didn't need to go back there. I believed my own story and some things happened. So I went down to RoofCon. This was in 20, let's see, we're in 2024 today. So this was in 20, I've been sober almost two years. So let's say it was 2021, I guess November of 2021.
Speaker 1:And Jeff Boab introduced me to a guy named Eric Obrant, who has been sober and in the program for a while, and in talking with him I said I'm just not going to go back to the program because I just feel like I don't really need it. And he said maybe it's really not about you, corey In fact it is not about you, but you've made it about you. I didn't know. I've known this guy for 20 minutes. He was like you need to go and give back what was fucking freely given to you. And it hit me like a lightning bolt and when I got back I started going back to AA. I was still smoking weed and I had a conversation with God and I said I know that this is not gonna completely work if I keep smoking weed, but I'm to quit. I'm just not willing to quit right now. And so I was leaving.
Speaker 1:Things weren't getting a lot better really, and something happened with my stepdaughter that brought me to my knees. There was, we got a call from a lady, the church where her biological father and her went. They got a call from a lady that said she had claimed that he was watching pornography with her. She told another kid this. I almost lost my mind, like I almost. I called every judge that I know, every cop that I know private investigator. They all said there's something not right with this. But I couldn't figure this out and almost lost my mind because it was. I just couldn't understand how this cps was called. I had to do an interview with them. They interviewed him, they interviewed my ex-wife, the daughter.
Speaker 2:Nothing happened so no one ever admitted any of it.
Speaker 1:Nothing, and and the own, and so that's what brought me to my knees and I, just, I was just, I was losing my mind because I could not get any traction on this, I couldn't figure it out. And so that's when, so shortly after that, I was leaving a meeting and I'd hit my weed pen and I almost ran a red light going 70 miles an hour. And about two minutes later I almost ran another red light going 70 miles an hour, and I knew at that moment that was it. That was the time I'd already been warned twice. I know what this looks like.
Speaker 1:I don't need the third warning, and so I threw the weed pen out, and that was March 25th, two years ago. This two years will be March 26th will be I'll be completely sober two full years and just in my life since then has gone from not knowing what I was going to do for work, not knowing if the marriage was going to hold up, not knowing how we were going to make our bills, to all of those problems are totally solved now and I don't worry about any of those things and I'm no longer in the marriage and I'm in a relationship where I'm extremely happy and in a job that I love and I believe that it's all because I surrendered and asked for help.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, man. That's huge. Do you Congrats, bro? Do you so? When you hit that weed pin for the last time, you saw those two red lights. But do you really think that that's what it was that made you finally surrender? Or do you think that it was a feeling that you had inside? Do you think that it was an internal thing where you just got to the point where you were like dude, I can't fucking live like this anymore, because that's what it was for me. For me, it got to the point where it was either I got sick of feeling like I wanted to die inside. Yeah, I didn't want to feel like that anymore. So for me, it was all right. It's time to either give up or fucking change, surrender, and luckily I'm not the type of person to give up. So at that moment I decided to change and and I haven't looked back, but it was. I don't know. I'm just asking that because I'm always trying to figure out what it is that makes someone finally get to that point.
Speaker 1:I think it was. I was to the point where I was ready, I was ready to surrender. I needed those two instances to scare me enough, Cause it wasn't like I was high, I just left the meeting. So it wasn't like I was intoxicated and that's why I almost left the meeting. So it wasn't like I was intoxicated and that's why I almost ran the risk, Like I can't tell you why I almost ran those lights. It makes no sense and that tells me. If there's something that doesn't make sense to me, but it's telling it. But I see this as a sign I better listen, Because if I don't listen, I don't know what may happen next. Cause what, what happens if? What happens if I don't, if I do run the next red light and I T-bone and kill somebody? And that's what I think about.
Speaker 1:Or kill myself, for that matter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I was going to ask you that. So when you say sign, you've talked a few times. You've said God For you. Is that what it was? Was it a sign from God?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:So do you think that some of the reason that it had such a weight carried such a weight for you?
Speaker 1:is because there was a spiritual connection to it. Yeah, I think internally. I mean for sure something internally spoke to my soul that said we made a deal and the deal was you weren't ready to quit then, but now you've got to fulfill your part of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the reason I'm asking that is I think spirituality, whatever you believe in, is super important when surrendering, and I know that it has been for me, I think I probably I may have some different beliefs than you do in regards to my spirituality. I believe in the universe and vibration and frequency and energy, but one way or the other, whatever you believe in, I think it's important to believe that there is something out there greater than yourself.
Speaker 1:And that's it. We're on the exact same page. You can call it whatever you want. Do I think there's a man in the sky hanging out? No, not necessarily. I don't really know what it is, but what I do know is there. You said it, vibration. You said it. Vibration sound just that internal. There's an internal clock or an internal something that guides us. That's outside of me, and I've proven this, like I know for a fact how my life goes when I tap into that power. Yep, and I know how my life goes when I don't tap into that power. Yeah, dude, and control is a great way to look at it. When I'm trying to control something that's out of my control, I am not depending on anybody else but Corey, yep.
Speaker 2:And I don't work. Nope, no, it's not. It takes work, right, it takes work to really be conscious of the all of the different things that you're trying to control in life that really you don't have any control over.
Speaker 1:And the truth of the matter is, if you hand that over to the universe or higher power whatever it is you want to call it you're going to get through it easier, like it's really just like a life hack, if that's how you want to look at it. At least that's been my experience. Yep, me too.
Speaker 2:Me too, me too. So what advice would you give to somebody, whether they're struggling with substance abuse right now, or whether they're depressed or just struggling internally and not really getting much out of life and kind of struggling? And wonder what is the fucking point of this do you have any yeah, any recommendations that you would give to somebody like that from what you've been through?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the hardest thing that I had to do to get to this point is to ask somebody for help, and it takes a lot as a man. It takes a lot to admit you don't have all the answers. It takes a lot to admit that you haven't got it figured out. It takes a lot to admit that you need somebody else's help. But something happens, and it may not happen the first time, but there's something that happens when you genuinely ask someone for help If it's the right person. You can't just ask someone for help if it's the right person. You can't just ask anybody for help and expect them to help you.
Speaker 1:But I think asking for help has been one of the that was one of the biggest challenges that I had. But once I asked for help, people were willing to help, to help. But again, you got to be careful where you're asking for help, because it's not always going to be sound information. You know what I mean and I think people want to help. People want to help you, but they can't help you if they don't know you need it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a couple of key points there. That's a really good suggestion, by the way, but I think for you it took two things. Number one the hard part is you have to admit to yourself that you need help. That's hard for people to do, I think. Whether you're a man or a woman, it's sometimes hard to take a look at ourselves and admit that we need help. And then the second step is to go ask somebody. That's hard too, and I do think you're right, I do. I think it's hard for men and women, but I think there's a little bit more ego attached to men in asking for help, because we're supposed to have shit figured out and be the leaders. The other thing that I wanted to mention there is, I agree, I think that for the most part, I think people want to help.
Speaker 2:Vulnerability is what you were talking about there a little bit. So again, I'm going to go back to the universe, but I just talked about how gratitude is one of the highest vibrating frequencies of the universe, meaning like the more grateful you are, the more that stuff's going to come back to you. An opposite of that would be like shame. Shame is the lowest vibrating frequency in the universe. Shame is no good like feeling shitty about yourself and things that you've done. It's fucked up, because the problem is is when we feel shitty about stuff, it makes us do the exact stuff that we're trying to stop. Yeah, because we want to continue to numb it. Yeah, authenticity is the highest vibrating frequency in the universe.
Speaker 2:They put over 400 people in a I don't know what it was some kind of machine and it could measure emotion. I don't know what it was some kind of machine and it could measure emotion and they put people through different scenarios that would bring up different emotions, and authenticity vibrated 400 times stronger than love, which is the second highest vibrating emotion. Now, the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think that in order to go ask somebody for help, it's a super vulnerable thing to do, but I think vulnerability is directly tied to authenticity, and so I think if you can find the right person to be vulnerable with and you're authentic about the fact that, hey, I need some help, I think that creates for a super powerful opportunity for change and opportunity for somebody to help you out, and I don't know. That's just kind of where my mind was going while you're talking about that.
Speaker 1:Well, I think intention right If you have the right intention when you're asking for help, if you have the right intention when you're asking for help, not the intention of let me see what I can get, let me see if I can get this guy to help me do this thing so I can get to where. I need to go. It's genuine.
Speaker 2:It's authentic.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yep, and you got to be careful about intentions, because you can get sidelined with the wrong intentions. But if you keep the other person's intentions at the forefront, it pays back in dividends. The universe will pay you back in dividends, as long as you're not expecting it.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly, yeah. This has been awesome, man. It's been cool to learn more about your story and I'll come onto your podcast here soon, once we've released the one here. But I'd love to be back onto your podcast. But, yeah, it's been super cool to learn more about your story. I'm proud of you. I know firsthand that it is not easy and it's weird. It's when you've been an addict or an alcoholic and you see somebody else doing the damn thing. It's impossible to not have respect for that person, whether you like him or not. Yeah, I got sober with some dumb ass people, dude, that I don't really care to be friends with all the time, but it will never take away my respect for what they're doing, because I know that it takes work, dude, and I have the utmost respect for you and what you've been able to do.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. I appreciate you spending the time today to just to allow me the space to talk. That's really cool. Yeah man, it's been awesome. Yeah man, I appreciate you. I'll let you know when it comes out. All right, sounds good, brother. Thank you, brother.
