April 16, 2025 • 47 mins
In the heart of every shadow that plagues our communities, from the silent cries of the trafficked to the silent battles of addiction, We Fight Monsters stands as a beacon of hope and defiance. Born from the shared experiences of those who've faced the abyss and emerged to tell the tale, our organization is a testament to the power of resilience and the strength of unity. We are the ones who navigate the night to bring back the lost, who stand in the face of evil not with weapons, but with the unwavering belief in redemption and recovery. Ben is a daddy to eight (sometimes ten), grandparent to one, humanitarian, fighter of evil, bringer of hope, formerly addicted, alcoholic and homeless. He's also the owner of BlackRifle Co, a data intelligence and digital media agency not to be confused with the coffee company of similar name, and co-founder of two non-profits—We Fight Monsters and Flanders Field—that help people in some of the worst places in America and the world. Ben loves sharing that his wife Jess can drive, load, and fire a M18 Hellcat, a WWII tank destroyer. He’s also the only crackhead ever invited to CIA headquarters. When they’re not in South Memphis helping others rebuild their lives after addiction, Ben and Jess can be found in rural Georgia where they live with their family.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Root from us. If it doesn't work, you're just not
using enough. You're listening to software Radio, Special Operations, Military
nails and straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hey, what's going on. This is rad your host for
soft Rep Radio and I have a great guest today.
But first, that's right, say it with me. The merch
store rad that's right. You can go to soft reap
dot com Forward slash Merch and you can get any
of our merch items that you guys want to support us.
We really appreciate it. Thank you for keeping the lights
(01:01):
and the gas on over here for the soft Rep
Radio that I am truly grateful for. Second is our
book club. We have the soft rep dot Com Forward
Slash book hyphen Club. So go check it out. There's
a lot of special operation people on the back end
that are picking these books. They're curated by them like librarians.
They're like here, read this, you know. Go check out
(01:22):
Brad Thor's latest book. Go check out Brandon Webb's latest book.
All these different books are in there. Go read a
book and gain some knowledge and use your brain. Now
today my guest is going to have a unique conversation
on addiction and human trafficking and how he can get
involved and how you can get involved with you know,
his organization, which is called We Fight Monsters Dot org.
(01:45):
And I'd like to welcome to the show, Ben Owen. Welcome, RD.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Thank you so much for having me. Man, how are
you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Hey, I'm doing great. Hey, welcome to the show. Randy Searle,
you know, he's like, hey, Rad, you need to get
Ben on your show, and so we coordinated with each other.
We got some time together, and so I'm really happy
to have you on to talk about your organization. But first,
you know, we like to get a little bit of
information from our guest, right, We like to know a
little bit about where you came from and how you
got to where you're at today, because here you're on
(02:13):
a podcast, right, and we're talking about your mission. So
what were you doing at seventeen? Where were you at,
what was your like when you joined the military? What
was going on with your head in high school?
Speaker 4 (02:25):
So I had graduated the high school with honors. I
was raised by an army ranger. The plan was always
for me to go to the military. I was a
little bit of a brainiact growing up, So I decided
not to go to the military. I wanted to be
a heart surgeon. I went to college on a math scholarship,
but was drinking myself out with alacrity. I was in
ROTC at Auburn when the towers came down, and I
(02:48):
thought it would be a great idea to drop out
in the list, and so that's what I did. On
September eleventh, two thousand and one, I dropped out and
enlisted the infantry, which was a terrible decision because I
was favored into ROTC due to a torn ACL, and
I just lied about that at MAPS. So I ended
up at Fort Benning and osit with no ACL and
ended up breaking my leg and getting discharged before the
(03:10):
summer of two thousand and.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Two was over.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
I went back home with a major chip on my shoulder,
which I just continued to drink at. About five years later,
Easter Sunday at two thousand and seven, I totaled a
car going a buck thirty drunk. Somehow dodged the DUI
as a single car accident.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I think the state trooper figured I'd fucked myself.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Up good enough already, so they didn't charge you with anything.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I got sober that day, but I was I was
very stubborn.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
I didn't didn't go to AA or any of that
stuff like I knew I should have. And so I
started drinking again in like twenty eleven or twelve, and
then I ended up getting a metha cyline resistant staff
infection in that same leg, and so prescription opiate c
entered the picture. Within two years, I had an eight
dollar a day heroin habit. It progressed, oh prescribed to
(04:04):
me to painkills that are prescribed to somebody else, to heroin,
and that you know, that same progression happens with a
lot of people.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I ended up getting arrested in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Now at this point I had I had gone, I'd
finished college, I'd gone to a fortune five hundred. I
left that startup my own business. So I had like
thirty employees and a multimillion dollar year business. But I
also had an eight hundred dollars day heroin habit. I
ended up getting arrested. I'm away on the fire and
range with my own guns and my own drugs, but
I had a suppressor sub machine gun, all legally, but
(04:38):
when you have dope in the vehicle with those things.
They'll typically frown on it. So they charged me like
I was Pablo Escobar. I got cord ordered into a
drug court program. The veterans court program wouldn't take me
one because I didn't even serve a year, but two
because of the gun charges. They were convinced the Feds
are coming after me. So I get court ordered into
drug court. I had destroyed my marriage, destroyed my business,
(05:01):
lost my home, all my vehicles, and my freedom. I
ended up meeting who is now my wife in narcotics anonymous.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I don't recommend meeting women.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And it's so you got a bad habit. Let's just
get it out of the way right now. You got
you guys already know each other. It's cool, it's cool,
it's cool.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
It's actually I.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Got another friend who has a friend and they met
in the same type of space, and I was like,
you know, all right, you guys both got on the
same plane together with the same kind of luggage. Okay,
going south.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
You can guess how it ended. We ended up relapsing
together and oh my gosh, fifteen to twenty nineteen, I'll
spare you all the details, but it was a constant
roller coaster of you know, back in jail, getting stabbed,
getting shot at heart attacks, we got kidnapped, who were
held hostage for ransom with our two year old at
one point in time. But anyway, that the high sight
(05:54):
of the story is in twenty nineteen, we hit rock bottom,
We got sober, I got my business is back off
the ground. And this is why we met Randy because
the story is pretty fucking crazy.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Like we have. Yeah, it is crazy, right, and you're
so open about it. Thanks for being so vulnerable. I
just want to say that out there. Okay, first of all,
I appreciate.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
That man, but it's the boy I look at this.
I didn't live through all of that for nothing.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Like if I keep that story hidden in secret and
it doesn't do anybody else any good, then I'm just
a selfish jackass who shouldn't have lived through some bad things.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
You know.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
I've got to put those scar stories into the service
of somebody else.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
So we rebuilt our.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Businesses and in twenty twenty one, I own a company
called Black Rifle, not the coffee company. We new data
intelligence for the gun industry and it took off really big.
During COVID and Jess and I had been through this cycle.
Jess as my wife now, the one I met in
Narcotics Anonymous. We've been through the cycle of building businesses
and having a lot of money and relapsing, like we've
(06:51):
done that plenty of times. And so in twenty twenty one,
when we had a lot of money again, we were like,
you know, we don't want to just destroy this, like
we actually like life. We want to stay clean, and
so we started a nonprofit to be of service and
it was called flanders Fields, and the idea is to
help other vets battling opiate addiction. If you haven't figured
this out already, I have like crippling weaponized ADHD.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
So I'm very it's good. You're flowing just fine. If
you feel like those speed bump I'm going to say that,
you know, because I was going to say flanders Field
is the first thing that you guys got involved with,
and then you transitioned into we fight monsters, you know,
And that's a dot org, right, So everybody understands that
right off the bat.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yes, And so shiny object syndrome is something that gets
me a lot, and that happened with flanders We got
pulled into evacuation out of Afghanistan. So you know, twenty
years prior, I hadn't listed to go kill terrorists in Afghanistan,
and part of the chip I always had on my shoulders,
I never got to actually do anything good for our nation.
(07:51):
And I saw this as an opportunity to help our
allies and honor a promise that the America I believed
in had made to our partner nation forces. And so
we get pulled in on the data side, on the
Black Rifles side, but ended up bringing that original nonprofit
to bear a full force. We ran one of the
largest networks of safe houses in afghanistandard and evacuation, and
(08:13):
that's how I ended up getting a linked at with
Scott Man during an Operation Financial Express. And then we
went on to did some more stuff in Ukraine. But
the whole time, like we're trying to bring all of
these cool guy circles that we're building and these new
skill sets we've got to bear for Memphis, the streets
used to be homeless, and so finally in twenty twenty
(08:33):
two we did that. We started We Fight Monitors, which
is to help really anybody battling addiction, but especially traffic
females prostitutes, because when we were at their homeless I mean,
those are our friends.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
They are the people that fed us when we had nothing.
That are the people at parof or help, you know.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
And so we went back to Memphis like hell, bent
on fighting sex and narcotics trafficking, but from a different angle.
Instead of shooting people and putting people in jail, you know,
we're trying to meet everybody where they're at, drug dealers, prostitutes,
gang members, addicts, full circle. We're trying to stop violent crime.
I don't know if you're aware of this, but Memphis
(09:10):
is America's deadly a city. In the last two years,
it's had a steeper population declined than anywhere else in
the country. The overdose death rate in Memphis is twice
as high as the national average. Men on the streets
of Memphis are more likely statistically to be dead or
in prison than they are to have a job or
be in college. I could go on and on about
(09:30):
stats for you know, illustrating how bad Memphis is. But
we felt a very strong pull to go back to
that city, and so that's what we've done.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
So today I just want to say that it's also
here in Salt Lake City. Okay, I just want to
let you know that there's phenol is in Salt Lake
as well, and usually the people getting busted are white. Yeah,
I just want you to know, like the people that
are bringing in it that we're seeing out here, it's like,
you know that it's not who they're painting a picture of,
(09:59):
right right, Like in Pennsylvania, that big bust was a
bunch of dudes that were just Americans that were making
doing that. It's just I came out of PA, you know,
and Memphis. You know, I just want to say that.
You know, it's the same thing with the eighties with
crack all right, where did they put that? Where do
they get that? Where'd they leak it? You know, where
do they sell that? Where did jay Z sell that?
(10:21):
You know what I'm saying, right one hundred percent, Let's
not forget that, right and so disenfranchise get it to
people who will just go get whatever they can to
get that fixed. And the drug, the drug is the problem. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
the drug is the problem. The people that bring it
to them knowingly know that they're taking money and from
people who get money from wherever they can, however they
(10:41):
can because they're feeding it to them.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Yeah, well, and you just touched on the crux of
the issue there, and it's it's that you know, people
are essentially once you get them addicted to an opiate,
they become a slave with that dope. They'll do whatever
they have to stay well to not get dope sick.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
And so it fuels right already a violent crime.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
And Memphis and so you know by attacking that primary
driver of instability there, well, really.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
It's twofold and you kind of touched on it there too.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
It's it's the economic instability and then it's the addiction
is the escape, and both of them are that they've
factor in together. To date, we've been able to shut
down four fentanyl trafficking operations, one human trafficking operation.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
We've turned two dope.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Houses into what we call hope houses, one brothel into
a hope house at any given point in time, or
housing about seventy five men, women and kids. We've gotten
a total of about four hundred people off the streets
and back into the workforce. And we did all that
without shooting anybody or putting anybody in jail other than
three child predators. I don't feel like incarceration is going
(11:47):
to fix an addict or a gang member. But when
you're talking about child or sexual predators, I mean, they've
got to be removed from the community. They cannot be free,
So we don't really consider them any sure.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
I can inn stand that, you know, you have them
labeled as like, you know, just inhuman you know, just
you know, all the all the names, all the clothing
that's out there that has like you know, I'd rather
see a pedophile shot or something like that, you know,
all these things. I understand that now. I do also
understand that since the dawn of time, you know, sexual
services have been a thing, right, and so there's a
(12:22):
way to have like, you know, legitimate a brothel or whatnot,
Like in Las Vegas they have that. Is that a
thing in Memphis? Is does Tennessee allow that legally? Or
are these brothels all just underground that you're going in
and trying to you know that you're checking out there.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
It's definitely all illicit.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Prostitution is not legal in Tennessee, and to date, we've
not encountered prostitution or sex trafficking in the city of
Memphis a single time.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
An absence of addiction.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
It constantly seems that addiction is the tool of coersion
that's being used even even to get minor or females
sell their bodies for sex. So by the addiction, we're
going after the prosecute at the.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Same time, Yeah, we would have like current likeire, what
that congressman who's all screwed because he was baiting with
drugs these miners, Matt Gas Okay, right, the congressman from Florida, right,
forced to retire from the Congress immediately so that it
wouldn't all come at him. I mean, he is exactly
(13:29):
the example of power abusing women with drugs.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Yes, and you know you and I have to accept
some form of responsibility for this. Men are the number
one customers of sex traffic. Uh, there's no doubt about that.
We drive this problem.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Oh men, Well, men just want to stick it in something.
They don't care. It's just like a guy's just like
got on one mode. But to be to be real
about it, you know, it starts like you think these
people that are put in positions like here in Utah
just right now, there is a judge and a fire
chief in the same county who are now behind bars
(14:19):
for sexual explicit of children and minors. And then here
here yeah, yeah yeah, And guess what, they're not trans
they're not migrants, they're not you know bad ombres that
are in America. These two dudes are church, white church
members of their faith, of the Mormon faith, and they
(14:41):
just go around and are in charge of the youth
programs in their church. It's the fire chief, it's a judge,
these guys. Man, Like, so, who should we really be
looking for, right, because a lot of people are out
there painting a picture like, look for these bad ombres,
look for somebody that's man. They're the they're the judges,
they're the congressman.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
They're the church leaders.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I mean, they're the church leaders, dude. Yeah, look yeah,
a hundred percent. They're the they're the president. He's got it, dude,
he's got it. He's only gotten off because of money.
We all know it. We all know it. Epstein's Island,
we all know it.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Yeah, you know, that's a great point.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
We've got Epstein's dead, of course, and then.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
He seems like he's living on you know what I'm saying.
It seems like these guys are.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Like not a single person that went and paid for
sex with these kids that island who has been locked up?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
What the hell? What the hell around there?
Speaker 2 (15:40):
No, I don't get it either, because, like you know,
they're by they're paying twelve million pounds, you know. Prince
Andrew's like, oh, I didn't even know her, So here's
twelve million pounds. There's a photo with me with her,
but I don't even know her, you know.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Yeah, it's disgusting, man, it's disgusting.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
It's got a tweet. It's got to tweak someone like
yourself who runs an organization that is against this exact thing.
You know, to see these folks you're like sitting here
trying to help people like in your neighborhood, you know,
and then you see these guys on these large levels
stages just doing it, you know, like I mean really
like there's people locked up like p Diddy right now
facing all these charges.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
You know, if people with money deal with unconstable things, man,
And it's it's really fucked up because the people were
out there on the streets trying to help. They grew
up with nothing, you know that they have. They don't
even know how they're gonna eat tomorrow. You see exploiting
them who never have to worry about a single thing
that money can provide, and that's that hurts.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
It hurts, And I think five hundred bucks is a
lot for their services. Here's five hundred bucks, you know,
or like let me vendomly you three hundred bucks for
your day. And they got all this money and it's
chump change. It's like, where's the five foul dude. Maybe
I'm just high priced. I don't know, but then again,
you know the fetanyl, the fetanyl and the coke and
the crack. It's so addictive and the heroin that. Yeah,
(17:01):
twenty bucks is twenty bucks, right.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Oh dude, I've seen women turn a trick for half
a pack of Newports before. It's it's hopeless south here. Yeah,
it's absolutely heartbreaking. A lot of you know, they were
first exploited in the home. We've got a fifty three
year old female out on the streets that we've been
trying to get into rehab for years. Her first chapter
(17:25):
was her mother when she was twelve. Her mom told
her to the dope man for crack. And she's been
out there for forty years now in.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
The really lifestyle.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah, her mom is seventeen years cleaning that and she's
still out.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
There and she literally moved her shoulder, traded her set
here and now her daughter. All she knows is just
that life of living in that life, and forty years later,
that's sad, you know. And I've got I've got a brother,
you know, and he's not he's he's hard pressed. I
(18:02):
get it, you know. It's we all have family, but
somebody has somebody close to them. It's not to be ignored,
you know, we have, you know, and it's just it's
it's terrible. And when you think of human trafficking, you know,
I don't know if it's just me, but you think
of like what's been painted these days is like you know,
(18:23):
the cartel's coming and snatching them, or you've seen the
movie Taken and it's like, you know, they're they're bidding
on them. I'll take four hundred thousand dollars for her,
you know, things like that. It's like, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
I'm not going to say that doesn't happen, right, I
mean too, what I will say is I have never
seen every instance of sex trafficking that I have borne
witness too, which has been a very large amount last
three or four years, well, three or four years fighting it,
and then ten years when I was out there on
the street seeing it every day. It's all right, without fail,
(18:58):
addiction fuel exploitation. It begins with the woman selling well,
I just gave an example. It didn't begin this way,
but usually it begins with the woman selling her arm
body to feed an addiction. And then at some point
a pimp is going to come in and take advantage
of that situation. He's going to offer them protection, housing, food,
you know, he's going to meet some basic needs in
(19:20):
exchange for his services as a pimp. And then now
she's she's gone from essentially trafficking herself to being trafficked
by a.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Pimp and he he and she Because now let's just
be real like again, in Salt Lake City, there's this
area where it's you know, everybody's kind of walking around
and you're just like, why is there just random people
walking around the corners in this area over here? It's
boy and girl? Yeah, you know, And.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
We've had a number of females come through, come to
us from jails and institutions who were traffickers. A lot
of them were trafficked themselves too, but they became Madams
point in that journey.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Sure, yeah, because I mean, you know, it's just kind
of like maybe someone has some business skills and some
organizational prowess and they can say, hey, it works better.
Maybe if we try to unionize or do something right.
I'll about trying to say no and be safe. Somehow,
it's safer, you know because.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
That same business savvy that you just brought up on
the back end on the work we're doing, that actually
comes in very handy. We've been able to flip a
lot of former pimps and former drug dealers to our
side of this fight by helping them stand up businesses.
So today, like we've we've got a former dope boy
that is running a business where he's.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Employing all the guys he used to sell crack to.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
And that's you know, one of the tactics we use
to really flip these streets around to get the bad
guys to become good and start helping the same people they.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Used to exploit. And it works.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
You know, it doesn't surprise anybody to hear that a
dope boy makes a good business man.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
They're entrepreneurial. At at the court.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Bro who did I mentioned earlier in the show, who
has a book written about his selling crack. You know
what I'm saying, Jay z Okay, if he had not
been doing that and focused on the business aspect of
other things, you know, but that's what he wanted to sell.
That's what he was selling. Yeah, you know, and that's
what other and other people see that and say, oh, hey,
(21:23):
this is something that people want to feed off of, right,
they want it all the time. It's like gasoline for
your vehicle. You know, you need to have it. So
it's like where you're gonna get it, the local gas
station on the corner. Dude. You know what I'm saying, Well,
even if it's three fifty nine here, I'm already here.
Imight as well just get it. If it's three twenty
nine over there, I'm already here, here's three fifty nine.
It's like, you know, different gasoline dealers dealing same stuff.
(21:45):
Everybody needs gas. It's like you gotta have it, gotta
have it. It's the same thing as a drug. It's
like you gotta have it, whether it's weed, whether it's crack,
whether it's coke, cocaine or fetanol or opiates. Here at
Soft Rep, we have this big mantra and it's called
thrills before pills. And what that is is get outside,
(22:05):
go snowboarding, go for a hike, Go walk around a
river that you is near you. You go walk a
creek bed you know that might be dried out, but
just look at the rocks and just go explore before
you start taking some type of a pill to help
you explore. Okay, So like you want to ex I'm
just saying, right, I get it, you know, just thrills
(22:29):
before pills, and for someone like yourself, went to the army,
got out of the army, found yourself in a rough spot,
rough patch, dealing with it on the streets, seeing it firsthand,
knowing that these people are good people. You know that
they're good people. They fed you and they probably gave
you things off their own back as you probably did
(22:51):
for them. And it's not so much to it's not
so much to fight for yourself. Sometimes sometimes you're that
person who's still so giving even when you have nothing.
You give everything that you can you get to somebody else. Right,
I've seen it, I've got I know. It's it's human nature.
You're gonna be who you are, even in the worst situation.
So if you're a giver, you're always going to be
(23:11):
a giver.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, and you run into a lot of givers on
the streets.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Man.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
It's weird.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
And some of the purest arts we have in this
country I firmly believe are in homeless camps.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
I don't doubt that. You know, Like in La, they
just tore apart. What they said, like there's an La
River and there's the cement channel that it flows through
in La. It's one of those types of canals and
along like the tree line. Somebody had built all these
shanty homes. They're like little they had like curbside appeal
(23:45):
right like, like they had like windows and like somebody
was just somebody there was just really savvy to say, hey,
this is how we do all of this here. You know,
maybe he became the mayor of Shantyville. But they came
and just tore it away. No one was staying there,
No one cared about that until all of a sudden
somebody had a place to stay, you know, that was
looking for a place to stay. And then we just
(24:06):
get you know, you know, Governor Gavin Newson was out
there cleaning it up with them all you know, showing
he's out there cleaning up there built unlicensed, unpaid tax
SENTI you know, you can't even set up a tent
in some places, you know, I don't mind organ where
they allow like people to have a place to set
up a tent. You know, they understand the need to
(24:28):
like sleep.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Well.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
And I mean a lot of the times, if you
go out and you deal in a homeless camp in
any capacity whatsoever, you're going to realize, like everybody in
that camp, for the most part, has one of two
things going on, if not both, addiction, alcoholism or mental illness.
You know, you rarely find people homeless in absence of
those conditions. And until we have a better way to
(24:53):
address mental health in this country, I don't think homelessness
is going anywhere.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
I really don't.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
It's not, especially in the veteran population. You don't just
wake up one day and have bad luck and end
up homeps. It doesn't work that way, you know. It
takes a series of bad decisions that usually go back
to mental health or addictionary alcoholism. Until we can address
those things, you know, I don't think homelessness is going anywhere.
(25:19):
So being able to deal with that population in compassionate
way is an important thing.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
You know. What I don't understand is I do a
lot of my listeners will know that I do large
scale airsoft wargames in Utah and around the nation, and
we'll use like, you know, old military bases that were
decommissioned and the housing is still in place. All of
the three story buildings with the dorms are still there.
(25:45):
The old hospital is still on the base. Because I
fight through all of it. It could have easily not
been just left to the desert to go away and
be leased to play wargames. I'm thankful to be able
to play war games at such a great, cool military base.
That doesn't matter if I kick a wall down. But
I can only imagine. I can only imagine, you know,
(26:05):
when we're not there, that one weekend or the three
weekends that there's games out there, there's a little security
dude driving a car around the whole base just making
sure nobody's sleeping inside of these buildings. You know, it's like, yeah,
why why not just it's already there, like tax creat
is already paid to have it in Victorville. Why not
just you know, okay, put some drug. Yeah, I'm just confused.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
You know, there's a there's what we call buy back
the block, and that was the block we started shutting
down Dope palses on in Memphis. Immediately adjacent to the street,
it's called Melrose. There's a seventy six thousand square foot
abandoned nursing home that's been empty for twenty fucking years.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Let me think about that.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
And this is a in a zip code in Memphis
as a higher infant mortality rate than Haiti does you know,
And I already gave you a bunch of depressing statistics
about it. This huge atibility could be we could bet
could be cut. Wow, could be put to good use
out there. We finally got in contact with the owner
and she wants to do something big with it. The
(27:06):
city wants to do something with it. So I think
we're gonna make something good happen there. The point I
make it is like with these military bases you've got,
you know, maybe somebody just needs to go with the
idea and get it in front of the right person.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
That's what we had to do.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
You know.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
Uh, we were set there and fitched.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
We sat there and bitched about the seventy six thousand
square foot abandoned facility for two years, just complaining and saying,
wouldn't it be great if And then one day I
got the wild hair up my ass. Let me find
out who owns it, and I'm gonna color And that's
what I did. And then the first time we spoke,
she's like, that's a great idea.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Let's do it.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
We're gonna turn it into West Tennessee's largest treatment facility.
So sometimes with these abandoned places like that, it's just
a matter of getting to the right person. Now the
issue you might really it's federally on, you know, and
exactly the personal.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
No, there's no more people at the government. I think
it's all. But everybody's been your fire it everybody's been
fired these days. I don't even know. Bro. It's like
because it's not the only base. You know, there's other
bases around the country that have been decommissioned. It's like
they're just sitting there growing grass.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
There's tons of men. You know, maybe they turn over
to the state or something. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
If they remain federal property, it'd be worth looking into
that because that is a great idea.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I'm just thinking, you know, all the facilities you could
ever need. You get huge dining halls, you get dorms.
You know, it's it's.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
A good I mean, and all those things we're talking about,
I fight through with like, you know, three to eight
hundred people. So it's street to street, house to house,
and so we're fighting in a one mile square grid
with like war machines and tanks and deuc and half
dropping people off at the rear, you know, streets like
Washington and Utah and Idaho and North Carolina, and you're
(28:47):
crossing them as phase lines. So I can only imagine
you know, like let alone the hospital that you get
a fight through, it's it's in that grid as well.
And so like you're not only clearing a hospital of
all of its rooms and like looking for anybody in there,
you got a whole you know, one mile square grid
that you're hunting people through, which could easily be converted
into like tiny homes. I'm just me, I mean, you know,
(29:12):
and uh, even the bases like up in northern California,
like Alameda, and there's bases out there, the naval bases
and stuff, they could also be caro a refuge if
they haven't already. I just you know, why let them
go to waste?
Speaker 4 (29:26):
Exactly, we have a tremendous amount of waste, especially at
the federal level in this country. I mean, did hell
how much stuff do we leave in Afghanistan? It's like
eighty billion dollars of military equipment.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Bro sold it to him, dude, the current guy in
charge right now sold all that And then December twenty
second of that same year, after he had voted out
of election because Biden had won, he signed that a
cord to pull out of Afghanistan.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Yeah, don't.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
It's like, like, what was he even doing that for?
Why was even getting involved? You know who wants the
Talibans to the White House? You know that guy? Did
you know? And that guy is the current president and
so you know, I'm not afraid to say it because
it's the facts, right, But everybody's gonna blame, you know,
the last guy that was in charge of it, and
that was going to be President Biden, who got the
(30:16):
full blame for the fall of Afghanistan. But when I've
had so many people on the show who have been there,
who have been helping move people like what you're saying,
who've had their feet broken when they were captured because
their sas and they never said it while they were captured.
But for four weeks my friend got his feet hit
and broken and broken because he had helped four hundred
(30:36):
and somewhat people like kind of safe house to safe
house to safe house to Afghanistan, bro, just like what
you helped with you know yourself as well, that kind
of safe house stuff. So again, there's just a lot,
you know, the different diplomats that we've had on the
show who have been there. There's always two sides to
every story. Now, the images that were shown coming out
(30:57):
of Afghanistan are awful. Afghanistan awful.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Right, I think there's like eight sides to it, and
I still haven't figured out which one's real. No, right,
you get two presidents that both sucked up. I mean
there's no way around that. But what was really weird
is while we were doing the evag it seemed like
our biggest enemy was the State Department. Like the White
House was supportive, the Biden White House was supportive of
(31:21):
a lot of the efforts, but the State Department was
roadblocking everything. We never could figure out why, Like to
this day, I don't know who the boogeyman.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Was right, Well, it's the opium fields. Bro, we're talking.
My whole conversation with you is about addiction, right now. Yeah,
let's get and then I'm cracking into Afghanistan with all
of Afghanistan quote unquote. But there's da huts out there
that are surrounding these little opium fields that aren't little
quote unquote. And the whole point is what we got
(31:49):
to keep that going to supply? What to who? Where
is that opium going? Yeah, exactly, So, so what does
China do and what do other countries do? They try
to get it into us with what fentanyl?
Speaker 4 (32:04):
I mean, really, if you can just look at this objectively,
they pulled a brilliant move. You know, the CCP has
incentivized Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturers with tax breaks. If they manufacture
precursor chemicals to fentanyl and they export them. Now they
sell them inside China, they don't get tax breaks. They
probably get death penalty. But if they export them to Mexico,
(32:27):
the Chinese Communist Party gives them a tax break. I mean,
this is like the most beautiful if if it wasn't
affecting me the way it is, it's the most beautiful
payback for the opium war.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
You could ever imagine, bro, you know the fact that
it's being distributed to you know, coherse a nation. M hm.
That's what happens. They funnel all the drugs into America
to get America to get addicted to the drug, to
then coherse them into feeling that this is what it
(32:58):
should be X, Y, and Z. And it's the same
thing that we do with the poppy fields, which is
in Afghanistan. Let's not lie about that. That's there. It's
very much real and it's very much protected.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Oh dude, ninety plus percent, I want to say it
was like ninety eight percent. The WEA actually has statistics
on us. Ninety eight percent of the heroin that was
in the United States when I was on heroin came
from it originated.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
From afghan poppy field.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
Now today, you know, just the simple dope dope economics
of fentanyl.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
You can't even find heroin anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Because fentels so much cheaper and so much stronger for
the dope boys to do, you know, for them to
mix up their dope.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
I mean, they can step on it one hundred and
fucking times, and so.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
I don't even get it. I don't even get I
don't even get it. Someone who I knew, very close
to me, who passed away from breast cancer, she had
fetanyl lollipops yep, okay, and she'd have it in her
mouth all the time to cut the pain, right because.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
Very effective Antal Jesus. If you've ever had surgery, you've
probably been given fentanyl. But they do sit in micrograms,
like the lollipops. I think most of them are one
hundred micrograms. So that's that's point one milligrams. Let's say
next to nothing. You're going to trust a drug dealer
to mix that up for you?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Come on, man, no, And that's what I'm saying. It's like,
why all of a sudden has it become So I
just want to know the I don't know the root
of it. Like, it's not like it's weed, like cannabis.
It's like setanol.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Bro It's like, here's how it happened. Okay.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
So if if you're addicted to opiates and you don't
get your fix, you get violently ill. Being dope sick
is one of the most terrifying experiences a human can
ever go through.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
I can't describe it. It's like the fluid plus covid
plus food.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Poisoning plus a panic attack, and it lasts for three days.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Fentanyl is an opiate, analgesic.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
It prevents dope sickness, and the euphoric effect is very
similar to hydrocodon, oxycodon, or heroin. So from the a standpoint,
they don't get a shit. Fentanyl does what they need
the drug to do. Now, from the dope boys standpoint
or the cartel standpoint, we need a much lower quantity
(35:09):
of fentanyl to.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Produce the same effect as you do heroin.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Heroin also had to be grown in a poppy field
in Afghanistan, exported illegally because the Taliban will kill you,
exported illegally to Iran, and then finished into a product
called heroin, and then exported. And it's like the supply
chain is very very expensive to get heroin from a
poppy field in Afghanistan into the US supply chain. Fennel,
(35:34):
on the other hand, China is basically paying Chinese pharmaceutical
companies to send the precursor chemicals to Mexico, whereas refined
and pharmaceutical quality laboratories and pressed into you know, fake
pills or just across the border as bulk caroin I
mean sorry, bulk fentanyl. So it's like orders of magnitude
cheaper for the narcotics trafficker side of this to get
(35:57):
the exact same effect that the attic needs. So that's
why Fittanel has pretty much replaced heroin on the streets.
You know, we've been working on the streets of Memphis
actively since twenty twenty two. When I left the streets
in twenty nineteen, there was fentanyl.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
You could get it, but there was still heroin.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Since twenty nineteen, I've not seen heroin a single time,
not once. I've seen ounces announces of fentanyl at the time.
I've never seen heroin since went.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
It's gone.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
That's wild, bro, It's just crazy. I mean I get it.
You know, there's there's a will, there's a way, and
then you know, yeah, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
I know, I get those three things right there. That's
that's the la guns, rock and roll, lifestyle, sex, drugs,
and rock and roll. You know, they named an album
that because if you could put your business into one
of those three categories entertainment, you know, uh, drugs, sex, drugs,
(36:47):
and rock and roll. Bro, you're gonna yeah, you're gonna
print money. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
It's simple economics.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
And if you understand that, then then it makes sense
how fentanyl skyrocketed. The thing about being addicted to opiate's
like the loygic goes out the window. When I said earlier,
you're a slave to that substance. I mean like, I can't,
I can't overstate that you really are a slave to
that substance. So things like oh, no, I might overdose,
(37:15):
that doesn't even enter your brain. All that goes into
your mind is if I don't get this now, I'm
going to be sick. And it's not just like an
remarkable sick, it's you'll do anything to prevent that. And
so fentanyl we've seen a drastic rise in sex trafficking
because of it. Because if you get a female addicted defense,
(37:36):
she's going to do anything to prevent being dope sick.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
So if you control the dope, you control those women.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
And so that's why to go hand in hand so
frequently in Memphis or anywhere.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Else anywhere else really, No, really, Memphis can just be
also Salt Lake City, you know what I mean, It
could be any other It could be your town, USA,
you know. And I know that Memphis has a higher
crime rate and you say murder rate and a declining population.
That's crazy, right, I mean I know that that happens
here too, but not as much. Bro. First of all,
(38:11):
sorry about Memphis having that kind of you know, violent
crime action going on. Dude, I can only imagine. It's
just unnecessary. It's unnecessary.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
It sucks.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
We had We've had two murders in the last forty
eight hours in our little internetwork and I'm eulogizing an
eighteen year old year old tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yes, it's just unnecessary.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
It is very unnecessary. It's heartbreaking.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
But you know, if you look at what we're doing there,
if we're able to do that in a city whose
outlook is as hopeless as Memphis is, we can do
it anywhere. Then to your point, these issues I'm describing,
they may be worse in Memphis, but they're everywhere.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
They are everywhere, you know, And like, let's just talk from.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
A national security standpoint, Okay, recruiting is at an all
time low for I think every branch except the Marine Corps.
Fentanyl is now the number one killer of fighting age adults.
You know twenty four to I think fifty four is
the number one killer more than heart disease, murder, suicide,
carrex and cancer combined. So we're at all time low
(39:21):
and recruiting, and we're losing basically a generation of Americans.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Two battalions a week.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
We're losing to a single substance that's being funneled into
our country by our biggest political enemy, China.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Do these do bro I wish there was more insight
into this fentanyl thing, because it's like, what are they
doing to they are they giving it to the kids
in different types of drugs, not calling it fentanyl and
it's bad and they're eating it, and that's what it is.
That's what it is. It's got to be these kids.
I don't think these kids they got to be scared
of it, like heroin scared me growing up.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
Yeah, Well, what they do They press fentanyl into fake pills.
So if you go to buy a xanax or a
pain pill from the street, it looks just like what
comes from the pharmacy. But instead of having you know,
I've gone brain dew, instead of having a benz to
the azepin in it on, instead of having hydro coat on,
it's fentanyl, and so you end up fentanyl was just
(40:17):
getting sold everywhere. A matter of fact, we had a
sister organization of ours in Texas. The founder's brother bought
Adderall in Phoenix, Arizona last year and it was fentanyl
and he's dead now.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
Like it's it is in everything.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
So it's just they're just like saying, yeah, that's what
you want. Here you go and then buy and then they're.
Speaker 5 (40:38):
Gone, yeah, that's exactly right. And you know, holy cow,
they don't want you to die. They want you to
have a customer. But it's such a potent substance. It
doesn't take much of an overdose. And by overdose, I
don't mean in your body.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
I mean they have overdosed a single caps and for
it to kill you.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Oh, I've lost a family member to a heroin overdose.
So it's like, you know, she had gone clean and
then she relapsed with a text message to the guy
because we have her phone and it was her text
message that last messages. It said like hey, I want
some and he's like, yo, I think it's too strong
for you. And she's like I'll be the judge of that.
(41:20):
And then the next morning she didn't wake up from
that straight up. And then I went and cleaned out
her apartment. Man, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and watched her
get buried at like eight nineteen nineteen to twenty one. Sorry,
I don't want to she's it's a family member, you know.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
And so just this is the thing. This touches everybody.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
Yeah, everybody at this point has had a story like that, Like,
we should be doing something about this as a country.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
I mean, this should be like front page news everywhere.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
It should be politicized though. It should just be like
it shouldn't just be like painted a picture of like
this is bad. It should actual we'd be done something
about it. It shouldn't just be I'm doing something but nothing.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
The war on drugs has been an abject's failure by
every metric measurable. And the only people that really even
bring fentanyl up they used it as like a political
talking point.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
They want to blame Biden because we had.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
A porous southern border right now that we yell at
Trump because he's not doing X, Y and Z.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
Nobody actually wants to tackle the fucking issue.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
No, okay, look at it in this context, if we
had a voting seven forty seven crash. Today, it would
be on front page US everywhere because three hundred people
are on that plane and they're dead. We lose that
many people every other date to fentanyl every other day.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Right, Like that, How are we not? This should be everywhere.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
And you're seeing it, you know, you see it. You're
you're seeing it, especially from your neck of the woods
where it is worse in Memphis area, you know, so
I mean to, but that's what we fight. Monsters. Org
is all about. When when you go to your website
and check that out, it's very easy to navigate. There's
like operations and you have like operation buy Back the Hood, No,
make the Hood great Again, right, and like you have
(43:13):
like these different cube or squares that you can like
click on and start with, like a donation for bring
the dog to see you know, bring this service dog.
Help bring our service dog to somebody. There's a lot
of like what seems very worthwhile things that you can
just donate to this specific cause. Right, It's like this
person got her car stolen and could use some help
(43:37):
getting back on her feet because she was on her
feet until her car got stolen. And if you've ever
had yeah, right, and so at We Fight Monsters dot Org.
You guys have a really nice platform, and I can
see why Randy was like, hey, Rad, you got to
get you know, get you on Ben and have you
talk about your your organization and and just everything that
we just went back and forth about. Dude, right a dick,
(44:00):
It's it's real. It's very real. Say that one more time.
I didn't catch it.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
We got a lag here. I'm sorry I was saying.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
I really appreciate you sharing your platform with us, man,
I really do you know. Randy's been helping us with
our books. It's on Kickstarter right now. If you just
look up We Fight Monsters on Kickstarter, you can check
it out.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
We got some cool add.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
Ons on there. But man, thank you so much for
sharing your platform. You seem like one hell of a
could dude. If I'm ever in Salt Lake City, I'm
gonna look you up for sure.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Oh please, you know, and come do some wargames with me.
You know what I'm saying, Because it's it's like it's
thrills before pills, bro, That's what right man? Okay, And
so I just want to say thanks again for being
on the show and talking about we fight Monsters dot Org.
Talking about your story and the hardships that you've been
through and the successes that you've had, that you know
(44:53):
life is worth living for and that you're continuing to
live because we've all been like one, am I am,
I supposed to be here today? Okay, I'm here today.
We've all had those moments in life, dude, all right,
(45:13):
a little bit of a little bit of a lad
go ahead.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
The struggle something we've all had to go through.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
And you know, I think purpose in the veteran population
in particular, and also in the addicts and recovery population
is a very important thing. We have to find our purpose.
I love your concept of thrills before pills. Every example
you gave of a thrill is amazing. I would add
one thing to that. Try to find a way to
be of service to somebody who can't ever repay you
(45:41):
every day, and you know, in that act of being
in service, I think a lot of us will will
maybe identify something tied to our purpose here on the surface.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
I appreciate you very much, dude.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Hey, and I really appreciate those last few words of
being kind. It's infectious and helping someone without expecting something
back in return. You know, you know, I've given uniforms
from my shop to people who come into my shop,
and some people might look at them weird, but they're
on the spectrum and they may just you know, think
that I'm a safe space. And my customer will be like,
(46:12):
why do you help that guy? And I'm like, because
he needed it. I'm just thinking, you just got to
I love how you put that bro be very boy
scout in life and open the door, help others, do
the best you can and all you do. And and
on behalf of Ben Owen and his wife Jessica. Right,
is that right? She's out there. Give her a shout out. Okay,
(46:32):
she's your sounding board. Okay, you know we fight monsters.
Dot org is a very cool website, so go check
that out. And on behalf of Soft Rep, the merch Store,
the book club, and Brandon Webb and all of the
operators behind us that push this ship forward. I want
to say peace, you've been.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Listening to your self.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Red Radio
Root from us. If it doesn't work, you're just not
using enough. You're listening to software Radio, Special Operations, Military
nails and straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hey, what's going on. This is rad your host for
soft Rep Radio and I have a great guest today.
But first, that's right, say it with me. The merch
store rad that's right. You can go to soft reap
dot com Forward slash Merch and you can get any
of our merch items that you guys want to support us.
We really appreciate it. Thank you for keeping the lights
(01:01):
and the gas on over here for the soft Rep
Radio that I am truly grateful for. Second is our
book club. We have the soft rep dot Com Forward
Slash book hyphen Club. So go check it out. There's
a lot of special operation people on the back end
that are picking these books. They're curated by them like librarians.
They're like here, read this, you know. Go check out
(01:22):
Brad Thor's latest book. Go check out Brandon Webb's latest book.
All these different books are in there. Go read a
book and gain some knowledge and use your brain. Now
today my guest is going to have a unique conversation
on addiction and human trafficking and how he can get
involved and how you can get involved with you know,
his organization, which is called We Fight Monsters Dot org.
(01:45):
And I'd like to welcome to the show, Ben Owen. Welcome, RD.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Thank you so much for having me. Man, how are
you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Hey, I'm doing great. Hey, welcome to the show. Randy Searle,
you know, he's like, hey, Rad, you need to get
Ben on your show, and so we coordinated with each other.
We got some time together, and so I'm really happy
to have you on to talk about your organization. But first,
you know, we like to get a little bit of
information from our guest, right, We like to know a
little bit about where you came from and how you
got to where you're at today, because here you're on
(02:13):
a podcast, right, and we're talking about your mission. So
what were you doing at seventeen? Where were you at,
what was your like when you joined the military? What
was going on with your head in high school?
Speaker 4 (02:25):
So I had graduated the high school with honors. I
was raised by an army ranger. The plan was always
for me to go to the military. I was a
little bit of a brainiact growing up, So I decided
not to go to the military. I wanted to be
a heart surgeon. I went to college on a math scholarship,
but was drinking myself out with alacrity. I was in
ROTC at Auburn when the towers came down, and I
(02:48):
thought it would be a great idea to drop out
in the list, and so that's what I did. On
September eleventh, two thousand and one, I dropped out and
enlisted the infantry, which was a terrible decision because I
was favored into ROTC due to a torn ACL, and
I just lied about that at MAPS. So I ended
up at Fort Benning and osit with no ACL and
ended up breaking my leg and getting discharged before the
(03:10):
summer of two thousand and.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Two was over.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
I went back home with a major chip on my shoulder,
which I just continued to drink at. About five years later,
Easter Sunday at two thousand and seven, I totaled a
car going a buck thirty drunk. Somehow dodged the DUI
as a single car accident.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I think the state trooper figured I'd fucked myself.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Up good enough already, so they didn't charge you with anything.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I got sober that day, but I was I was
very stubborn.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
I didn't didn't go to AA or any of that
stuff like I knew I should have. And so I
started drinking again in like twenty eleven or twelve, and
then I ended up getting a metha cyline resistant staff
infection in that same leg, and so prescription opiate c
entered the picture. Within two years, I had an eight
dollar a day heroin habit. It progressed, oh prescribed to
(04:04):
me to painkills that are prescribed to somebody else, to heroin,
and that you know, that same progression happens with a
lot of people.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I ended up getting arrested in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Now at this point I had I had gone, I'd
finished college, I'd gone to a fortune five hundred. I
left that startup my own business. So I had like
thirty employees and a multimillion dollar year business. But I
also had an eight hundred dollars day heroin habit. I
ended up getting arrested. I'm away on the fire and
range with my own guns and my own drugs, but
I had a suppressor sub machine gun, all legally, but
(04:38):
when you have dope in the vehicle with those things.
They'll typically frown on it. So they charged me like
I was Pablo Escobar. I got cord ordered into a
drug court program. The veterans court program wouldn't take me
one because I didn't even serve a year, but two
because of the gun charges. They were convinced the Feds
are coming after me. So I get court ordered into
drug court. I had destroyed my marriage, destroyed my business,
(05:01):
lost my home, all my vehicles, and my freedom. I
ended up meeting who is now my wife in narcotics anonymous.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I don't recommend meeting women.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And it's so you got a bad habit. Let's just
get it out of the way right now. You got
you guys already know each other. It's cool, it's cool,
it's cool.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
It's actually I.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Got another friend who has a friend and they met
in the same type of space, and I was like,
you know, all right, you guys both got on the
same plane together with the same kind of luggage. Okay,
going south.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
You can guess how it ended. We ended up relapsing
together and oh my gosh, fifteen to twenty nineteen, I'll
spare you all the details, but it was a constant
roller coaster of you know, back in jail, getting stabbed,
getting shot at heart attacks, we got kidnapped, who were
held hostage for ransom with our two year old at
one point in time. But anyway, that the high sight
(05:54):
of the story is in twenty nineteen, we hit rock bottom,
We got sober, I got my business is back off
the ground. And this is why we met Randy because
the story is pretty fucking crazy.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Like we have. Yeah, it is crazy, right, and you're
so open about it. Thanks for being so vulnerable. I
just want to say that out there. Okay, first of all,
I appreciate.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
That man, but it's the boy I look at this.
I didn't live through all of that for nothing.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Like if I keep that story hidden in secret and
it doesn't do anybody else any good, then I'm just
a selfish jackass who shouldn't have lived through some bad things.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
You know.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
I've got to put those scar stories into the service
of somebody else.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
So we rebuilt our.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Businesses and in twenty twenty one, I own a company
called Black Rifle, not the coffee company. We new data
intelligence for the gun industry and it took off really big.
During COVID and Jess and I had been through this cycle.
Jess as my wife now, the one I met in
Narcotics Anonymous. We've been through the cycle of building businesses
and having a lot of money and relapsing, like we've
(06:51):
done that plenty of times. And so in twenty twenty one,
when we had a lot of money again, we were like,
you know, we don't want to just destroy this, like
we actually like life. We want to stay clean, and
so we started a nonprofit to be of service and
it was called flanders Fields, and the idea is to
help other vets battling opiate addiction. If you haven't figured
this out already, I have like crippling weaponized ADHD.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
So I'm very it's good. You're flowing just fine. If
you feel like those speed bump I'm going to say that,
you know, because I was going to say flanders Field
is the first thing that you guys got involved with,
and then you transitioned into we fight monsters, you know,
And that's a dot org, right, So everybody understands that
right off the bat.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yes, And so shiny object syndrome is something that gets
me a lot, and that happened with flanders We got
pulled into evacuation out of Afghanistan. So you know, twenty
years prior, I hadn't listed to go kill terrorists in Afghanistan,
and part of the chip I always had on my shoulders,
I never got to actually do anything good for our nation.
(07:51):
And I saw this as an opportunity to help our
allies and honor a promise that the America I believed
in had made to our partner nation forces. And so
we get pulled in on the data side, on the
Black Rifles side, but ended up bringing that original nonprofit
to bear a full force. We ran one of the
largest networks of safe houses in afghanistandard and evacuation, and
(08:13):
that's how I ended up getting a linked at with
Scott Man during an Operation Financial Express. And then we
went on to did some more stuff in Ukraine. But
the whole time, like we're trying to bring all of
these cool guy circles that we're building and these new
skill sets we've got to bear for Memphis, the streets
used to be homeless, and so finally in twenty twenty
(08:33):
two we did that. We started We Fight Monitors, which
is to help really anybody battling addiction, but especially traffic
females prostitutes, because when we were at their homeless I mean,
those are our friends.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
They are the people that fed us when we had nothing.
That are the people at parof or help, you know.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
And so we went back to Memphis like hell, bent
on fighting sex and narcotics trafficking, but from a different angle.
Instead of shooting people and putting people in jail, you know,
we're trying to meet everybody where they're at, drug dealers, prostitutes,
gang members, addicts, full circle. We're trying to stop violent crime.
I don't know if you're aware of this, but Memphis
(09:10):
is America's deadly a city. In the last two years,
it's had a steeper population declined than anywhere else in
the country. The overdose death rate in Memphis is twice
as high as the national average. Men on the streets
of Memphis are more likely statistically to be dead or
in prison than they are to have a job or
be in college. I could go on and on about
(09:30):
stats for you know, illustrating how bad Memphis is. But
we felt a very strong pull to go back to
that city, and so that's what we've done.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
So today I just want to say that it's also
here in Salt Lake City. Okay, I just want to
let you know that there's phenol is in Salt Lake
as well, and usually the people getting busted are white. Yeah,
I just want you to know, like the people that
are bringing in it that we're seeing out here, it's like,
you know that it's not who they're painting a picture of,
(09:59):
right right, Like in Pennsylvania, that big bust was a
bunch of dudes that were just Americans that were making
doing that. It's just I came out of PA, you know,
and Memphis. You know, I just want to say that.
You know, it's the same thing with the eighties with
crack all right, where did they put that? Where do
they get that? Where'd they leak it? You know, where
do they sell that? Where did jay Z sell that?
(10:21):
You know what I'm saying, right one hundred percent, Let's
not forget that, right and so disenfranchise get it to
people who will just go get whatever they can to
get that fixed. And the drug, the drug is the problem. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
the drug is the problem. The people that bring it
to them knowingly know that they're taking money and from
people who get money from wherever they can, however they
(10:41):
can because they're feeding it to them.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Yeah, well, and you just touched on the crux of
the issue there, and it's it's that you know, people
are essentially once you get them addicted to an opiate,
they become a slave with that dope. They'll do whatever
they have to stay well to not get dope sick.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
And so it fuels right already a violent crime.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
And Memphis and so you know by attacking that primary
driver of instability there, well, really.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
It's twofold and you kind of touched on it there too.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
It's it's the economic instability and then it's the addiction
is the escape, and both of them are that they've
factor in together. To date, we've been able to shut
down four fentanyl trafficking operations, one human trafficking operation.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
We've turned two dope.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Houses into what we call hope houses, one brothel into
a hope house at any given point in time, or
housing about seventy five men, women and kids. We've gotten
a total of about four hundred people off the streets
and back into the workforce. And we did all that
without shooting anybody or putting anybody in jail other than
three child predators. I don't feel like incarceration is going
(11:47):
to fix an addict or a gang member. But when
you're talking about child or sexual predators, I mean, they've
got to be removed from the community. They cannot be free,
So we don't really consider them any sure.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
I can inn stand that, you know, you have them
labeled as like, you know, just inhuman you know, just
you know, all the all the names, all the clothing
that's out there that has like you know, I'd rather
see a pedophile shot or something like that, you know,
all these things. I understand that now. I do also
understand that since the dawn of time, you know, sexual
services have been a thing, right, and so there's a
(12:22):
way to have like, you know, legitimate a brothel or whatnot,
Like in Las Vegas they have that. Is that a
thing in Memphis? Is does Tennessee allow that legally? Or
are these brothels all just underground that you're going in
and trying to you know that you're checking out there.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
It's definitely all illicit.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Prostitution is not legal in Tennessee, and to date, we've
not encountered prostitution or sex trafficking in the city of
Memphis a single time.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
An absence of addiction.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
It constantly seems that addiction is the tool of coersion
that's being used even even to get minor or females
sell their bodies for sex. So by the addiction, we're
going after the prosecute at the.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Same time, Yeah, we would have like current likeire, what
that congressman who's all screwed because he was baiting with
drugs these miners, Matt Gas Okay, right, the congressman from Florida, right,
forced to retire from the Congress immediately so that it
wouldn't all come at him. I mean, he is exactly
(13:29):
the example of power abusing women with drugs.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Yes, and you know you and I have to accept
some form of responsibility for this. Men are the number
one customers of sex traffic. Uh, there's no doubt about that.
We drive this problem.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Oh men, Well, men just want to stick it in something.
They don't care. It's just like a guy's just like
got on one mode. But to be to be real
about it, you know, it starts like you think these
people that are put in positions like here in Utah
just right now, there is a judge and a fire
chief in the same county who are now behind bars
(14:19):
for sexual explicit of children and minors. And then here
here yeah, yeah yeah, And guess what, they're not trans
they're not migrants, they're not you know bad ombres that
are in America. These two dudes are church, white church
members of their faith, of the Mormon faith, and they
(14:41):
just go around and are in charge of the youth
programs in their church. It's the fire chief, it's a judge,
these guys. Man, Like, so, who should we really be
looking for, right, because a lot of people are out
there painting a picture like, look for these bad ombres,
look for somebody that's man. They're the they're the judges,
they're the congressman.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
They're the church leaders.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I mean, they're the church leaders, dude. Yeah, look yeah,
a hundred percent. They're the they're the president. He's got it, dude,
he's got it. He's only gotten off because of money.
We all know it. We all know it. Epstein's Island,
we all know it.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Yeah, you know, that's a great point.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
We've got Epstein's dead, of course, and then.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
He seems like he's living on you know what I'm saying.
It seems like these guys are.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Like not a single person that went and paid for
sex with these kids that island who has been locked up?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
What the hell? What the hell around there?
Speaker 2 (15:40):
No, I don't get it either, because, like you know,
they're by they're paying twelve million pounds, you know. Prince
Andrew's like, oh, I didn't even know her, So here's
twelve million pounds. There's a photo with me with her,
but I don't even know her, you know.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Yeah, it's disgusting, man, it's disgusting.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
It's got a tweet. It's got to tweak someone like
yourself who runs an organization that is against this exact thing.
You know, to see these folks you're like sitting here
trying to help people like in your neighborhood, you know,
and then you see these guys on these large levels
stages just doing it, you know, like I mean really
like there's people locked up like p Diddy right now
facing all these charges.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
You know, if people with money deal with unconstable things, man,
And it's it's really fucked up because the people were
out there on the streets trying to help. They grew
up with nothing, you know that they have. They don't
even know how they're gonna eat tomorrow. You see exploiting
them who never have to worry about a single thing
that money can provide, and that's that hurts.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
It hurts, And I think five hundred bucks is a
lot for their services. Here's five hundred bucks, you know,
or like let me vendomly you three hundred bucks for
your day. And they got all this money and it's
chump change. It's like, where's the five foul dude. Maybe
I'm just high priced. I don't know, but then again,
you know the fetanyl, the fetanyl and the coke and
the crack. It's so addictive and the heroin that. Yeah,
(17:01):
twenty bucks is twenty bucks, right.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Oh dude, I've seen women turn a trick for half
a pack of Newports before. It's it's hopeless south here. Yeah,
it's absolutely heartbreaking. A lot of you know, they were
first exploited in the home. We've got a fifty three
year old female out on the streets that we've been
trying to get into rehab for years. Her first chapter
(17:25):
was her mother when she was twelve. Her mom told
her to the dope man for crack. And she's been
out there for forty years now in.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
The really lifestyle.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah, her mom is seventeen years cleaning that and she's
still out.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
There and she literally moved her shoulder, traded her set
here and now her daughter. All she knows is just
that life of living in that life, and forty years later,
that's sad, you know. And I've got I've got a brother,
you know, and he's not he's he's hard pressed. I
(18:02):
get it, you know. It's we all have family, but
somebody has somebody close to them. It's not to be ignored,
you know, we have, you know, and it's just it's
it's terrible. And when you think of human trafficking, you know,
I don't know if it's just me, but you think
of like what's been painted these days is like you know,
(18:23):
the cartel's coming and snatching them, or you've seen the
movie Taken and it's like, you know, they're they're bidding
on them. I'll take four hundred thousand dollars for her,
you know, things like that. It's like, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
I'm not going to say that doesn't happen, right, I
mean too, what I will say is I have never
seen every instance of sex trafficking that I have borne
witness too, which has been a very large amount last
three or four years, well, three or four years fighting it,
and then ten years when I was out there on
the street seeing it every day. It's all right, without fail,
(18:58):
addiction fuel exploitation. It begins with the woman selling well,
I just gave an example. It didn't begin this way,
but usually it begins with the woman selling her arm
body to feed an addiction. And then at some point
a pimp is going to come in and take advantage
of that situation. He's going to offer them protection, housing, food,
you know, he's going to meet some basic needs in
(19:20):
exchange for his services as a pimp. And then now
she's she's gone from essentially trafficking herself to being trafficked
by a.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Pimp and he he and she Because now let's just
be real like again, in Salt Lake City, there's this
area where it's you know, everybody's kind of walking around
and you're just like, why is there just random people
walking around the corners in this area over here? It's
boy and girl? Yeah, you know, And.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
We've had a number of females come through, come to
us from jails and institutions who were traffickers. A lot
of them were trafficked themselves too, but they became Madams
point in that journey.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Sure, yeah, because I mean, you know, it's just kind
of like maybe someone has some business skills and some
organizational prowess and they can say, hey, it works better.
Maybe if we try to unionize or do something right.
I'll about trying to say no and be safe. Somehow,
it's safer, you know because.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
That same business savvy that you just brought up on
the back end on the work we're doing, that actually
comes in very handy. We've been able to flip a
lot of former pimps and former drug dealers to our
side of this fight by helping them stand up businesses.
So today, like we've we've got a former dope boy
that is running a business where he's.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Employing all the guys he used to sell crack to.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
And that's you know, one of the tactics we use
to really flip these streets around to get the bad
guys to become good and start helping the same people they.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Used to exploit. And it works.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
You know, it doesn't surprise anybody to hear that a
dope boy makes a good business man.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
They're entrepreneurial. At at the court.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Bro who did I mentioned earlier in the show, who
has a book written about his selling crack. You know
what I'm saying, Jay z Okay, if he had not
been doing that and focused on the business aspect of
other things, you know, but that's what he wanted to sell.
That's what he was selling. Yeah, you know, and that's
what other and other people see that and say, oh, hey,
(21:23):
this is something that people want to feed off of, right,
they want it all the time. It's like gasoline for
your vehicle. You know, you need to have it. So
it's like where you're gonna get it, the local gas
station on the corner. Dude. You know what I'm saying, Well,
even if it's three fifty nine here, I'm already here.
Imight as well just get it. If it's three twenty
nine over there, I'm already here, here's three fifty nine.
It's like, you know, different gasoline dealers dealing same stuff.
(21:45):
Everybody needs gas. It's like you gotta have it, gotta
have it. It's the same thing as a drug. It's
like you gotta have it, whether it's weed, whether it's crack,
whether it's coke, cocaine or fetanol or opiates. Here at
Soft Rep, we have this big mantra and it's called
thrills before pills. And what that is is get outside,
(22:05):
go snowboarding, go for a hike, Go walk around a
river that you is near you. You go walk a
creek bed you know that might be dried out, but
just look at the rocks and just go explore before
you start taking some type of a pill to help
you explore. Okay, So like you want to ex I'm
just saying, right, I get it, you know, just thrills
(22:29):
before pills, and for someone like yourself, went to the army,
got out of the army, found yourself in a rough spot,
rough patch, dealing with it on the streets, seeing it firsthand,
knowing that these people are good people. You know that
they're good people. They fed you and they probably gave
you things off their own back as you probably did
(22:51):
for them. And it's not so much to it's not
so much to fight for yourself. Sometimes sometimes you're that
person who's still so giving even when you have nothing.
You give everything that you can you get to somebody else. Right,
I've seen it, I've got I know. It's it's human nature.
You're gonna be who you are, even in the worst situation.
So if you're a giver, you're always going to be
(23:11):
a giver.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, and you run into a lot of givers on
the streets.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Man.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
It's weird.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
And some of the purest arts we have in this
country I firmly believe are in homeless camps.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
I don't doubt that. You know, Like in La, they
just tore apart. What they said, like there's an La
River and there's the cement channel that it flows through
in La. It's one of those types of canals and
along like the tree line. Somebody had built all these
shanty homes. They're like little they had like curbside appeal
(23:45):
right like, like they had like windows and like somebody
was just somebody there was just really savvy to say, hey,
this is how we do all of this here. You know,
maybe he became the mayor of Shantyville. But they came
and just tore it away. No one was staying there,
No one cared about that until all of a sudden
somebody had a place to stay, you know, that was
looking for a place to stay. And then we just
(24:06):
get you know, you know, Governor Gavin Newson was out
there cleaning it up with them all you know, showing
he's out there cleaning up there built unlicensed, unpaid tax
SENTI you know, you can't even set up a tent
in some places, you know, I don't mind organ where
they allow like people to have a place to set
up a tent. You know, they understand the need to
(24:28):
like sleep.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Well.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
And I mean a lot of the times, if you
go out and you deal in a homeless camp in
any capacity whatsoever, you're going to realize, like everybody in
that camp, for the most part, has one of two
things going on, if not both, addiction, alcoholism or mental illness.
You know, you rarely find people homeless in absence of
those conditions. And until we have a better way to
(24:53):
address mental health in this country, I don't think homelessness
is going anywhere.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
I really don't.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
It's not, especially in the veteran population. You don't just
wake up one day and have bad luck and end
up homeps. It doesn't work that way, you know. It
takes a series of bad decisions that usually go back
to mental health or addictionary alcoholism. Until we can address
those things, you know, I don't think homelessness is going anywhere.
(25:19):
So being able to deal with that population in compassionate
way is an important thing.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
You know. What I don't understand is I do a
lot of my listeners will know that I do large
scale airsoft wargames in Utah and around the nation, and
we'll use like, you know, old military bases that were
decommissioned and the housing is still in place. All of
the three story buildings with the dorms are still there.
(25:45):
The old hospital is still on the base. Because I
fight through all of it. It could have easily not
been just left to the desert to go away and
be leased to play wargames. I'm thankful to be able
to play war games at such a great, cool military base.
That doesn't matter if I kick a wall down. But
I can only imagine. I can only imagine, you know,
(26:05):
when we're not there, that one weekend or the three
weekends that there's games out there, there's a little security
dude driving a car around the whole base just making
sure nobody's sleeping inside of these buildings. You know, it's like, yeah,
why why not just it's already there, like tax creat
is already paid to have it in Victorville. Why not
just you know, okay, put some drug. Yeah, I'm just confused.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
You know, there's a there's what we call buy back
the block, and that was the block we started shutting
down Dope palses on in Memphis. Immediately adjacent to the street,
it's called Melrose. There's a seventy six thousand square foot
abandoned nursing home that's been empty for twenty fucking years.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Let me think about that.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
And this is a in a zip code in Memphis
as a higher infant mortality rate than Haiti does you know,
And I already gave you a bunch of depressing statistics
about it. This huge atibility could be we could bet
could be cut. Wow, could be put to good use
out there. We finally got in contact with the owner
and she wants to do something big with it. The
(27:06):
city wants to do something with it. So I think
we're gonna make something good happen there. The point I
make it is like with these military bases you've got,
you know, maybe somebody just needs to go with the
idea and get it in front of the right person.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
That's what we had to do.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
You know.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
Uh, we were set there and fitched.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
We sat there and bitched about the seventy six thousand
square foot abandoned facility for two years, just complaining and saying,
wouldn't it be great if And then one day I
got the wild hair up my ass. Let me find
out who owns it, and I'm gonna color And that's
what I did. And then the first time we spoke,
she's like, that's a great idea.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Let's do it.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
We're gonna turn it into West Tennessee's largest treatment facility.
So sometimes with these abandoned places like that, it's just
a matter of getting to the right person. Now the
issue you might really it's federally on, you know, and
exactly the personal.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
No, there's no more people at the government. I think
it's all. But everybody's been your fire it everybody's been
fired these days. I don't even know. Bro. It's like
because it's not the only base. You know, there's other
bases around the country that have been decommissioned. It's like
they're just sitting there growing grass.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
There's tons of men. You know, maybe they turn over
to the state or something. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
If they remain federal property, it'd be worth looking into
that because that is a great idea.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I'm just thinking, you know, all the facilities you could
ever need. You get huge dining halls, you get dorms.
You know, it's it's.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
A good I mean, and all those things we're talking about,
I fight through with like, you know, three to eight
hundred people. So it's street to street, house to house,
and so we're fighting in a one mile square grid
with like war machines and tanks and deuc and half
dropping people off at the rear, you know, streets like
Washington and Utah and Idaho and North Carolina, and you're
(28:47):
crossing them as phase lines. So I can only imagine
you know, like let alone the hospital that you get
a fight through, it's it's in that grid as well.
And so like you're not only clearing a hospital of
all of its rooms and like looking for anybody in there,
you got a whole you know, one mile square grid
that you're hunting people through, which could easily be converted
into like tiny homes. I'm just me, I mean, you know,
(29:12):
and uh, even the bases like up in northern California,
like Alameda, and there's bases out there, the naval bases
and stuff, they could also be caro a refuge if
they haven't already. I just you know, why let them
go to waste?
Speaker 4 (29:26):
Exactly, we have a tremendous amount of waste, especially at
the federal level in this country. I mean, did hell
how much stuff do we leave in Afghanistan? It's like
eighty billion dollars of military equipment.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Bro sold it to him, dude, the current guy in
charge right now sold all that And then December twenty
second of that same year, after he had voted out
of election because Biden had won, he signed that a
cord to pull out of Afghanistan.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Yeah, don't.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
It's like, like, what was he even doing that for?
Why was even getting involved? You know who wants the
Talibans to the White House? You know that guy? Did
you know? And that guy is the current president and
so you know, I'm not afraid to say it because
it's the facts, right, But everybody's gonna blame, you know,
the last guy that was in charge of it, and
that was going to be President Biden, who got the
(30:16):
full blame for the fall of Afghanistan. But when I've
had so many people on the show who have been there,
who have been helping move people like what you're saying,
who've had their feet broken when they were captured because
their sas and they never said it while they were captured.
But for four weeks my friend got his feet hit
and broken and broken because he had helped four hundred
(30:36):
and somewhat people like kind of safe house to safe
house to safe house to Afghanistan, bro, just like what
you helped with you know yourself as well, that kind
of safe house stuff. So again, there's just a lot,
you know, the different diplomats that we've had on the
show who have been there. There's always two sides to
every story. Now, the images that were shown coming out
(30:57):
of Afghanistan are awful. Afghanistan awful.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Right, I think there's like eight sides to it, and
I still haven't figured out which one's real. No, right,
you get two presidents that both sucked up. I mean
there's no way around that. But what was really weird
is while we were doing the evag it seemed like
our biggest enemy was the State Department. Like the White
House was supportive, the Biden White House was supportive of
(31:21):
a lot of the efforts, but the State Department was
roadblocking everything. We never could figure out why, Like to
this day, I don't know who the boogeyman.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Was right, Well, it's the opium fields. Bro, we're talking.
My whole conversation with you is about addiction, right now. Yeah,
let's get and then I'm cracking into Afghanistan with all
of Afghanistan quote unquote. But there's da huts out there
that are surrounding these little opium fields that aren't little
quote unquote. And the whole point is what we got
(31:49):
to keep that going to supply? What to who? Where
is that opium going? Yeah, exactly, So, so what does
China do and what do other countries do? They try
to get it into us with what fentanyl?
Speaker 4 (32:04):
I mean, really, if you can just look at this objectively,
they pulled a brilliant move. You know, the CCP has
incentivized Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturers with tax breaks. If they manufacture
precursor chemicals to fentanyl and they export them. Now they
sell them inside China, they don't get tax breaks. They
probably get death penalty. But if they export them to Mexico,
(32:27):
the Chinese Communist Party gives them a tax break. I mean,
this is like the most beautiful if if it wasn't
affecting me the way it is, it's the most beautiful
payback for the opium war.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
You could ever imagine, bro, you know the fact that
it's being distributed to you know, coherse a nation. M hm.
That's what happens. They funnel all the drugs into America
to get America to get addicted to the drug, to
then coherse them into feeling that this is what it
(32:58):
should be X, Y, and Z. And it's the same
thing that we do with the poppy fields, which is
in Afghanistan. Let's not lie about that. That's there. It's
very much real and it's very much protected.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Oh dude, ninety plus percent, I want to say it
was like ninety eight percent. The WEA actually has statistics
on us. Ninety eight percent of the heroin that was
in the United States when I was on heroin came
from it originated.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
From afghan poppy field.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
Now today, you know, just the simple dope dope economics
of fentanyl.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
You can't even find heroin anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Because fentels so much cheaper and so much stronger for
the dope boys to do, you know, for them to
mix up their dope.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
I mean, they can step on it one hundred and
fucking times, and so.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
I don't even get it. I don't even get I
don't even get it. Someone who I knew, very close
to me, who passed away from breast cancer, she had
fetanyl lollipops yep, okay, and she'd have it in her
mouth all the time to cut the pain, right because.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
Very effective Antal Jesus. If you've ever had surgery, you've
probably been given fentanyl. But they do sit in micrograms,
like the lollipops. I think most of them are one
hundred micrograms. So that's that's point one milligrams. Let's say
next to nothing. You're going to trust a drug dealer
to mix that up for you?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Come on, man, no, And that's what I'm saying. It's like,
why all of a sudden has it become So I
just want to know the I don't know the root
of it. Like, it's not like it's weed, like cannabis.
It's like setanol.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Bro It's like, here's how it happened. Okay.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
So if if you're addicted to opiates and you don't
get your fix, you get violently ill. Being dope sick
is one of the most terrifying experiences a human can
ever go through.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
I can't describe it. It's like the fluid plus covid
plus food.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Poisoning plus a panic attack, and it lasts for three days.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Fentanyl is an opiate, analgesic.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
It prevents dope sickness, and the euphoric effect is very
similar to hydrocodon, oxycodon, or heroin. So from the a standpoint,
they don't get a shit. Fentanyl does what they need
the drug to do. Now, from the dope boys standpoint
or the cartel standpoint, we need a much lower quantity
(35:09):
of fentanyl to.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Produce the same effect as you do heroin.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Heroin also had to be grown in a poppy field
in Afghanistan, exported illegally because the Taliban will kill you,
exported illegally to Iran, and then finished into a product
called heroin, and then exported. And it's like the supply
chain is very very expensive to get heroin from a
poppy field in Afghanistan into the US supply chain. Fennel,
(35:34):
on the other hand, China is basically paying Chinese pharmaceutical
companies to send the precursor chemicals to Mexico, whereas refined
and pharmaceutical quality laboratories and pressed into you know, fake
pills or just across the border as bulk caroin I
mean sorry, bulk fentanyl. So it's like orders of magnitude
cheaper for the narcotics trafficker side of this to get
(35:57):
the exact same effect that the attic needs. So that's
why Fittanel has pretty much replaced heroin on the streets.
You know, we've been working on the streets of Memphis
actively since twenty twenty two. When I left the streets
in twenty nineteen, there was fentanyl.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
You could get it, but there was still heroin.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Since twenty nineteen, I've not seen heroin a single time,
not once. I've seen ounces announces of fentanyl at the time.
I've never seen heroin since went.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
It's gone.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
That's wild, bro, It's just crazy. I mean I get it.
You know, there's there's a will, there's a way, and
then you know, yeah, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
I know, I get those three things right there. That's
that's the la guns, rock and roll, lifestyle, sex, drugs,
and rock and roll. You know, they named an album
that because if you could put your business into one
of those three categories entertainment, you know, uh, drugs, sex, drugs,
(36:47):
and rock and roll. Bro, you're gonna yeah, you're gonna
print money. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
It's simple economics.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
And if you understand that, then then it makes sense
how fentanyl skyrocketed. The thing about being addicted to opiate's
like the loygic goes out the window. When I said earlier,
you're a slave to that substance. I mean like, I can't,
I can't overstate that you really are a slave to
that substance. So things like oh, no, I might overdose,
(37:15):
that doesn't even enter your brain. All that goes into
your mind is if I don't get this now, I'm
going to be sick. And it's not just like an
remarkable sick, it's you'll do anything to prevent that. And
so fentanyl we've seen a drastic rise in sex trafficking
because of it. Because if you get a female addicted defense,
(37:36):
she's going to do anything to prevent being dope sick.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
So if you control the dope, you control those women.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
And so that's why to go hand in hand so
frequently in Memphis or anywhere.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Else anywhere else really, No, really, Memphis can just be
also Salt Lake City, you know what I mean, It
could be any other It could be your town, USA,
you know. And I know that Memphis has a higher
crime rate and you say murder rate and a declining population.
That's crazy, right, I mean I know that that happens
here too, but not as much. Bro. First of all,
(38:11):
sorry about Memphis having that kind of you know, violent
crime action going on. Dude, I can only imagine. It's
just unnecessary. It's unnecessary.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
It sucks.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
We had We've had two murders in the last forty
eight hours in our little internetwork and I'm eulogizing an
eighteen year old year old tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yes, it's just unnecessary.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
It is very unnecessary. It's heartbreaking.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
But you know, if you look at what we're doing there,
if we're able to do that in a city whose
outlook is as hopeless as Memphis is, we can do
it anywhere. Then to your point, these issues I'm describing,
they may be worse in Memphis, but they're everywhere.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
They are everywhere, you know, And like, let's just talk from.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
A national security standpoint, Okay, recruiting is at an all
time low for I think every branch except the Marine Corps.
Fentanyl is now the number one killer of fighting age adults.
You know twenty four to I think fifty four is
the number one killer more than heart disease, murder, suicide,
carrex and cancer combined. So we're at all time low
(39:21):
and recruiting, and we're losing basically a generation of Americans.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Two battalions a week.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
We're losing to a single substance that's being funneled into
our country by our biggest political enemy, China.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Do these do bro I wish there was more insight
into this fentanyl thing, because it's like, what are they
doing to they are they giving it to the kids
in different types of drugs, not calling it fentanyl and
it's bad and they're eating it, and that's what it is.
That's what it is. It's got to be these kids.
I don't think these kids they got to be scared
of it, like heroin scared me growing up.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
Yeah, Well, what they do They press fentanyl into fake pills.
So if you go to buy a xanax or a
pain pill from the street, it looks just like what
comes from the pharmacy. But instead of having you know,
I've gone brain dew, instead of having a benz to
the azepin in it on, instead of having hydro coat on,
it's fentanyl, and so you end up fentanyl was just
(40:17):
getting sold everywhere. A matter of fact, we had a
sister organization of ours in Texas. The founder's brother bought
Adderall in Phoenix, Arizona last year and it was fentanyl
and he's dead now.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
Like it's it is in everything.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
So it's just they're just like saying, yeah, that's what
you want. Here you go and then buy and then they're.
Speaker 5 (40:38):
Gone, yeah, that's exactly right. And you know, holy cow,
they don't want you to die. They want you to
have a customer. But it's such a potent substance. It
doesn't take much of an overdose. And by overdose, I
don't mean in your body.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
I mean they have overdosed a single caps and for
it to kill you.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Oh, I've lost a family member to a heroin overdose.
So it's like, you know, she had gone clean and
then she relapsed with a text message to the guy
because we have her phone and it was her text
message that last messages. It said like hey, I want
some and he's like, yo, I think it's too strong
for you. And she's like I'll be the judge of that.
(41:20):
And then the next morning she didn't wake up from
that straight up. And then I went and cleaned out
her apartment. Man, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and watched her
get buried at like eight nineteen nineteen to twenty one. Sorry,
I don't want to she's it's a family member, you know.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
And so just this is the thing. This touches everybody.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
Yeah, everybody at this point has had a story like that, Like,
we should be doing something about this as a country.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
I mean, this should be like front page news everywhere.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
It should be politicized though. It should just be like
it shouldn't just be like painted a picture of like
this is bad. It should actual we'd be done something
about it. It shouldn't just be I'm doing something but nothing.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
The war on drugs has been an abject's failure by
every metric measurable. And the only people that really even
bring fentanyl up they used it as like a political
talking point.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
They want to blame Biden because we had.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
A porous southern border right now that we yell at
Trump because he's not doing X, Y and Z.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
Nobody actually wants to tackle the fucking issue.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
No, okay, look at it in this context, if we
had a voting seven forty seven crash. Today, it would
be on front page US everywhere because three hundred people
are on that plane and they're dead. We lose that
many people every other date to fentanyl every other day.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Right, Like that, How are we not? This should be everywhere.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
And you're seeing it, you know, you see it. You're
you're seeing it, especially from your neck of the woods
where it is worse in Memphis area, you know, so
I mean to, but that's what we fight. Monsters. Org
is all about. When when you go to your website
and check that out, it's very easy to navigate. There's
like operations and you have like operation buy Back the Hood, No,
make the Hood great Again, right, and like you have
(43:13):
like these different cube or squares that you can like
click on and start with, like a donation for bring
the dog to see you know, bring this service dog.
Help bring our service dog to somebody. There's a lot
of like what seems very worthwhile things that you can
just donate to this specific cause. Right, It's like this
person got her car stolen and could use some help
(43:37):
getting back on her feet because she was on her
feet until her car got stolen. And if you've ever
had yeah, right, and so at We Fight Monsters dot Org.
You guys have a really nice platform, and I can
see why Randy was like, hey, Rad, you got to
get you know, get you on Ben and have you
talk about your your organization and and just everything that
we just went back and forth about. Dude, right a dick,
(44:00):
It's it's real. It's very real. Say that one more time.
I didn't catch it.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
We got a lag here. I'm sorry I was saying.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
I really appreciate you sharing your platform with us, man,
I really do you know. Randy's been helping us with
our books. It's on Kickstarter right now. If you just
look up We Fight Monsters on Kickstarter, you can check
it out.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
We got some cool add.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
Ons on there. But man, thank you so much for
sharing your platform. You seem like one hell of a
could dude. If I'm ever in Salt Lake City, I'm
gonna look you up for sure.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Oh please, you know, and come do some wargames with me.
You know what I'm saying, Because it's it's like it's
thrills before pills, bro, That's what right man? Okay, And
so I just want to say thanks again for being
on the show and talking about we fight Monsters dot Org.
Talking about your story and the hardships that you've been
through and the successes that you've had, that you know
(44:53):
life is worth living for and that you're continuing to
live because we've all been like one, am I am,
I supposed to be here today? Okay, I'm here today.
We've all had those moments in life, dude, all right,
(45:13):
a little bit of a little bit of a lad
go ahead.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
The struggle something we've all had to go through.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
And you know, I think purpose in the veteran population
in particular, and also in the addicts and recovery population
is a very important thing. We have to find our purpose.
I love your concept of thrills before pills. Every example
you gave of a thrill is amazing. I would add
one thing to that. Try to find a way to
be of service to somebody who can't ever repay you
(45:41):
every day, and you know, in that act of being
in service, I think a lot of us will will
maybe identify something tied to our purpose here on the surface.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
I appreciate you very much, dude.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Hey, and I really appreciate those last few words of
being kind. It's infectious and helping someone without expecting something
back in return. You know, you know, I've given uniforms
from my shop to people who come into my shop,
and some people might look at them weird, but they're
on the spectrum and they may just you know, think
that I'm a safe space. And my customer will be like,
(46:12):
why do you help that guy? And I'm like, because
he needed it. I'm just thinking, you just got to
I love how you put that bro be very boy
scout in life and open the door, help others, do
the best you can and all you do. And and
on behalf of Ben Owen and his wife Jessica. Right,
is that right? She's out there. Give her a shout out. Okay,
(46:32):
she's your sounding board. Okay, you know we fight monsters.
Dot org is a very cool website, so go check
that out. And on behalf of Soft Rep, the merch Store,
the book club, and Brandon Webb and all of the
operators behind us that push this ship forward. I want
to say peace, you've been.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Listening to your self.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Red Radio
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!