Mikki Mase: From Homelessness to High Stakes

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So I went all these months with like surrounded by
hundreds of people, like also like complete isolation, like zero
human contact, and I'm like this is so weird. So
I got fed up, so I go, I'm just gonna
stab my roommate. I was just a messed up guy,
you know, young man, you know mine screwed up body,
screwed up. You know. I planned on dying in that box.
I remember the last time I got high. I was

(00:22):
in there and I gained consciousness and I was laying
there on my back just like just like like a
like a dead body. I just laying man. I opened
my eyes and I just remember saying to myself that
I had this dialogue like I don't got it in me.
I learned there's a consequence to every action, whether good
or bad. Chris rest in peace. Both of us together

(00:42):
were like, what can where can we go every night
just to be safe and like not get high and
not die. They go strip club in twenty four hours,
so we go to Tutsies. You can get into Tutsies
for free.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Welcome back to The Sino Show, Season three, episode one.
I need you to subscribe, he describe, I just gonna
start this brother, thank you for being here. I just
want to say that I love this man. I'm blessed
to be in spiritual partnership with him. He is a survivor,
he's a hustler, he's an unbelievable work ethic. He's a

(01:20):
fucking good human being. He's beat the system. I can
go on and on about what this cat's created, why
he's still alive doing great things in the world. He's
gonna break down, maybe a little his gambling stuff, maybe
talk about some late I don't know what direction you
were to go, but it's gonna be fun. Welcome brother, Welcome, welcome.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Thank you. So this is episode one of the new season.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Episode one, season three man, Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, I'm gonna try to give you my best kick
the season off.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, I know, I know. I'm not worried about that.
I picked you for a reason. Man, Look at that smile.
That's it. See that's smile. You smile more on my
show than any other shows.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
I think maybe we'll see all right, I never smile
on camera. I know you do.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Why are you smiling now?

Speaker 1 (01:58):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Happy to be with you on the love right, Yeah,
I feel you know I got mad love for you, man,
because you're honest, Yeah, thank you, and you're vulnerable and
you always want to go higher and you're not afraid
to take Christian feedback, right, and that's what makes you
really fucking special.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
I'd like to stand on those character traits.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, I know it's powerful.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Man.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Let's listen, a lot of people know about you, they
know your story. I thought some interesting things. I mean
I almost felt you came out from the woomb with
cards in your hand just about right. Yeah, you came
from a family good folks, but you know you pop
like the hustle a little bit, right, That's right. Is
that a nice way to say it?

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, that's actually I might steal that for you.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
You want to say, yeah, you want to fill the
little blanks on that. Tell us about young Mickey.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
I was born into a family of like a long
line of very high stakes gamblers. My dad he didn't gamble, actually,
but he grew up with it. So so his dad
and mom, who had raised me pretty young, started raising
when I was pretty good. Where were you born? I
was born in Jersey, Jersey, ye, yeah, And then as

(03:02):
a very young guy, I moved to New York, and
then from New York, where I lived like you know,
like my whatever stages of life. Then I moved to Miami,
and I was in Miami for eight years and then
moved to la almost six years ago.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
All Right, we'll get in all that talk about young age,
talk about what you're like, what's going on through with
your head.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Well. I was always a bad kid, that's for sure.
I was always in trouble. I was never malicious. I
just had this like lack of fear of consequence. And
I learned something really early on. I remember I was
on the playground very great. I was in like second
grade or something, and this teacher, Misses more and so

(03:46):
all the kids went out for recess, and I remember
me and this other kid named Evan. I remember really well.
Evan lived up the street from me. So we're on
the playground. Miss Moore blew the whistle, which meant kids
come back, you know, have to go to class. And
I remember Evan was like trying to hang around me,
and I go, I don't think I'm gonna go back,
and he's like, well we have to, and I go,
I was like, what if we don't, you know? And

(04:07):
he said, well we got to. And I was like,
I don't think I have to. I remember sitting on
the playground. He was he didn't want to leave me,
but he didn't want to get in trouble, so he
was just on the the woods Chip's part like you know,
you know what I mean, And I'm just on the
jungle gym and Missus Moore blowing the heck out of
this whistle, like just see, yelling and hoot and hollar
and at me. And I was kept saying, like I was,
I'm gonna go, and Evan was like stuck in limbo.

(04:30):
He finally gave in and went. I just like stayed
on the playground, and I remember like when all this
was said and done and I finally like was done playing.
I went back to class. There was no consequence, nothing happened.
She like yelled at me, and I'm like, all right, cool,
We're gonna continue on. She's like, yeah, continue on. I
kind of remember that. I always felt that way. I
was like, I don't think I have to do anything,
and I can do anything, and I did. Sometimes it

(04:54):
got me in trouble. I learned there's a consequence to
every action, whether good or bad. You work really hard,
the consequence success you go to a club instead of
get finishing your work for the day. The consequences there's
a pay cut or or you know whatever that consequence is.
So I go, okay, I'm fully responsible for the outcomes
of everything in my life. So there's a lot of

(05:14):
times where I would just like kind of weigh it.
So I don't want to do something, or I do
want to do something even though people say I shouldn't,
and I go, well, let's look at what the potential
consequences is the is the output worth the input? And
I make my own decision. There's a lot of times
that it didn't go well. I've done some years incarcerated,
I've done some years homeless. I've had a lot of
problems in my life. But I did all that pretty young,

(05:37):
and so pretty young, I was able to find the
limit to consequences, and as long as I act within
those bounds, I think those bounds are way further than
most people believe they are. And I think because that
people live in like their own self prison imprisonment.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
You're early on, I mean you kind of like fuck
them to do what I want to do. Yeah, pretty early, right, Yeah,
and you even early on, you had a gift to
be an entrepreneur. Yeah, talk about that.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
You know. One time somebody asked me, I forget what
I was doing. I was in some like some group something,
I don't know what, and they asked me. They're like,
what's the first business you ever did? Like ever, but
not like as an adult making money, just like your
first hustle as a kid. And I think most people
were talking about, oh, I got selling drugs whatever. Actually
have a cool story. I must have been about seven,

(06:29):
and I've raced motocross competitively since before then. And I
remember I was at a race. It's a two week
it's called Loretta Lynns and it's in Tennessee and it's
like over the span of I think two weeks or
ten days. And when you pull in and there's so
many riders and families, like thousands. They give you the
sticker pack and in the package has a couple of
dirt bike magazines and all these companies the sponsor stickers.

(06:53):
So I remember like looking at the stickers, like these
things are pretty cool, and I'd see the kids start
trading them. And I was young, like seven, and so
everyone's trading stickers and I go, oh, there's something here.
So I remember like trying to trade all my friends
for like all the cool stickers, and I would like
make good deals. I'm like, oh, I got this really
big one, you know, I'll treat you this for like
five of those you know, green ones. Whatever. And after

(07:13):
I basically monopolized my little friend circle, I put a
picnic table in front of the the RV and I
started selling the stickers, and then these other kids caught on.
These other kids caught on, so I basically monopolized my
little section of the track, like the pits I got.
I found a way to acquire the majority of the stickers,
started selling the stickers. I remember the stickers that I
didn't have, some of my buddies still had. I said,

(07:34):
I'll give you a cut if you let me sell
your sticker. So then I got one hundred percent of
the stickers in that part of the the like the
RV park. Basically, some other kids across the way caught
when that I was doing this. They set up a
table and they started selling stickers. So I went over
and I bought all their stickers out, came back to
my table and just sold everything for a buck.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Moore, Yeah, that's smart buddy. I mean, I mean that
kind of sets the tone, right, I mean that's kind
of who you are. You figure out an angle, you
figure out, you think differently, even at that young age.
But also you were quite an accomplished motocross racer, right,
Yeah I was.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
I was.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, you want a few champions, and yeah I did
want to You want to tell all the folks what
you want?

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, one of all types of stuff. Matter of fact,
there's a series of dirt bike movies called Mini Warriors.
I think it's like eleven of them total, starting like
ninety seven or ninety eight, probably filmed to like two
thousand and six. I'm in most of those movies racing.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, and what made you get out of it?

Speaker 1 (08:31):
So my first race, I was three years old. I
was on this bike. I don't know if you know bikes,
but it's called the PW fifty. It's this little tiny Yamaha.
Yeah little exactly. Yeah, I'd just like stupid yellow helmet
like just you know, my first race, and anyway, I
went like basically, my family I was too young to
know the difference. My family was committed to it. They go,

(08:52):
we're going to do this full time. You seem to
like it. I'm like okay, and my brother as well.
And so my whole life consisted of it. Training five
days a week, traveling for a day, racing for a day,
do it all over again, you know, so seven days
a week. I didn't feel like a normal kid. I
was always getting hurt. I was breaking bones left and right,
and I didn't understand the I didn't understand basically how

(09:15):
good I was. I just didn't know it was just normal,
you know, like all the top riders, we all traveled together,
trained together, race together. So to me, it was just like,
I don't know, me and the other kids are just racing,
and I just got so burnt out. I wanted to
be a normal kid so bad. I was always hurt
out with injury that I just basically just gave my
parents enough of a nightmare that they just gave in.
I said, finally quit got it?

Speaker 2 (09:36):
And when and how old were you with them when
you did that?

Speaker 1 (09:38):
When you quit, I'm not sure, but I'll say twelve
or thirteen.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Is that when you start kind of chipping away with
drinking weed? Is that kind of when that path starts.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
I started a little bit before I started getting high
when I was eleven, and I started selling drugs when
I was twelve, not that I was like a kingpins
like selling whatever I could and I didn't have like
access like that, you know. And then I did a
little bit, and I think that I might have gone
harder than the other kids in my age because I

(10:09):
felt like I'm always on the road, traveling and training,
that I only have like a couple days a month
to be a normal kid. So on those days, I'm
gonna try to pack in as much regular kid stuff
as I could. So when the kids started, you know,
drinking a little bit, I was like, I have a
month's worth of drinking to do in one day because
I'm gonna go back on the road to keep training.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
If I remember correctly, Buddy, your dad goes to prison
when you were twelve or thirteen.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
No, he got indicted when I was about twelve or thirteen.
He didn't go to prison until I came home from
Juvi around the same time I came home from JUVI
when I was sixteen, fifteen, sixteen.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Let's talk about that Juvie.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Uh huh, horrible.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Horrible Netflix.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
There's a mini series on Netflix about it.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, what's it? Call place for the audience the program, right,
I was there walk people through what that experience was like.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
It was rough. They starved us a lot, they beat
us a lot. I was in two places, and both
the places I was in is in that Netflix series,
and there are polar opposites in different ways. The second
one was, as far as I'm concerned, was a cakewalk.
The first one was physical abuse. So a lot of

(11:19):
a lot of kids got beat and starved, and it
was it was interesting. It was like you lived in
this perpetuated fear of physical harm without justification at all times,
and there was no protection, and it was sort of
like then, I you know, as a grown adult. Now
I can look back and I can make a lot

(11:40):
of sense out of it. First of all, a lot
of us were really bad kids. And second of all,
at that exact age, there's so much happening to I'm
sure women also, but I can only speak on myself.
Took a young man. There's so much happening in his
body and in his brain, you know, puberty and testosterone
and all these things, and nobody really knows how to
cope with it. Plus you add on like the emotional

(12:01):
of why did my family put me here. Why am
I abandoned? Why is the court system not taking me home?
Why is the court system leaving me stranded? You know?
Doesn't doesn't the judge know that I'm being starved, you know,
and I'm crying out and nobody will help you. So
you have all these things going on at once, and
you never know when you're going home. So it was
built for failure to leave the program. There's two things

(12:24):
that can happen. It's that your only two options is
one you turn nineteen because they can hold you from
a minor to you're nineteen. And the second thing is
that you graduate. But the way they built this it's
supposed to be like a behavioral reform program in this
detention center, and the way the program was built was

(12:45):
always to set you up for failure because they get
paid by the month for every child inmate they have,
and it was not as secret. They want to keep
us as long as possible because it's a cash cow.
And in the first look that I was at, I
didn't know this till a long time later. You're not
allowed to okay okay, to contact your family. They give

(13:08):
you fifteen minutes every Sunday to sign into we're also
homeschooled by the way, you know, we're in like a
juvenile prison, so we're homeschooled, but there wasn't teachers. We
taught ourselves and they'd give us this program and to
not get a consequence, which was oftentimes physical, you would
have to pass I think it was like three tests
a week or something like that, and you would just

(13:31):
sit at the computer. It would give you like ten
pages of information and on the eleventh page was the test,
and you'd like two tries to pass the test. I
think we have to pass three of those a week
to not get a consequence. And Sunday was our day
off from school. You'd sign into that same school program
and you'd leave a note. You'd type a note into
the computer. You have fifteen minutes. So the mail would

(13:51):
only go to one address, so you had to know
whose address is going to receive the mail, and then
you'd break it up from there. So let's say I
knew it was going to, for example, my mom's house.
I'd write, I knew I had fifteen minutes. I go
to mom. Everything's not good. I haven't eate in three days.
You know, they beat me a few times. You know,
I've been sexually assaulted. Blah blah blah blah blah. And
I go to next one. I go, hey, Dad's want
to let you know. You know, I hope one day

(14:13):
I can see you again, you know, when you go
to prison, like, I hope you're okay, blah blah. Next one, brother,
you have fifteen minutes. Now what happened? I didn't learn
this till way way down the line, way after I left.
This whole situation is that when you push update, you
have a case worker. Mine was a woman named Miscasts.
She would go in and edit everything to take out
those bad parts, then print it out and mail it

(14:34):
to my parents. And it took like years for that
to come out, and by all these places got shut
down by the Feds. By the way, it became like
a huge problem. And if anybody watches the documentary, like
they'll see it. So I didn't know for years. So
for years leaving this place, I would say to my parents, like,
you knew the abuse that I was having, why didn't
you come save me? And the truth is they actually

(14:55):
didn't know. They were sold a different image, you know,
And I go, why wouldn' you go? You know to
to the judge and tell them that I have been
eight days whatever it is, and they go, we don't
even believe you. And they would do this thing called
PC one, PC two, and PC three. It says for
a parent child and there's three of them. And on
the third one you get to go home for good.
It means you've completed your prison term. And I never

(15:18):
made that. But on PC one, which I did make,
they have your parents come and you get to see them.
I think it's for like six hours or something. And
what they do is and the one that I was in,
they have a room that I never saw before. It
was this giant, beautiful gymnasium, like brand new flooring and
like basketball hoops and like brand new blown up basketballs everywhere.

(15:39):
It was like so beautiful, and I'm like, for all
the time that I've been in this prison, like I
never even knew this part of the building existed, none
of us did. And they had these huge rows of
tables with more food. I saw more food that day
than I saw my entire prison term. It was unbelievable.
And my parents are sitting in that room with all
the other parents waiting for me, and I show up
and I have a black eye, and like what happened?
And I'm like and writing you in the letters and

(16:01):
they go, what are you talking about? And I told
you I've been getting starved. And I remember my mom
looked and she's like, how are you starved? There's more
food here than any of us could ever eat. And
it was like, I don't know. You know that scene
where North Korea invites the American journalist and it's all
stage of like a fat kid standing on the corner
to be like, people aren't starving. That's exactly what it
was like, you know. And my parents never got to

(16:21):
really know the truth until years later as I became
a young adult, and they go, once they start to
trust me, basically, then they start to understand what I
went through. And then all these stories came out about
all the things, and I go, my parents, like, those
the same stories that our kid told us. And then
the FEDS came and shut these places down and it
became public information.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
A lot of people that went through that it cracked them. Yeah,
they end up kill themselves. High diction rate cyclic. How
did you survive that? It's I mean, one of the things,
it's mind blowing about you. Of all the stuff you've
been through, you've stayed balanced. Somehow you still have a
fight in it. You're not nutty, arguable, how did you

(17:03):
come out of there with your head high?

Speaker 1 (17:05):
So I was in the first one for exactly six months.
Then I got transferred to another one, and again both
of them are in the show on Netflix. And so
the second one I went to, my brother was there
three months after I went to the place. I was
in New York. After three months, my brother got sent
to a place in Utah. I do another three months

(17:25):
in New York, so I was six months total, and
they transmitted to Utah. I ended up doing another six
months in Utah. So I did exactly day for day
a year. And and this place had a different type
of abuse. I don't know if i'd use the word
abuse there. Really, I just don't know another word. I'm
a fly to describe it as. So the first place,

(17:48):
you were in constant fear of your physical safety from
both the other kids and the staff. The staff were very,
very vicious, violent abusers, and so were the kids. But
the thing is like kid versus kid is kind of
an equal fight. We a lot of the things happened.
That was jumping was really what it was. But it

(18:09):
was like like all the kids were in gangs, but
it didn't matter, crip blood, indifferent it. One day you
just pick somebody and that's who you took out your
anger and your confused feelings physical and emotional. You just
took it out on that person. You beat them up,
and you carry on. There'd be no reason for it,
which is kind of what led to a lot of
the fear. At any time, someone can walk behind me
and just tee off on me and you know, beat

(18:31):
me pretty badly, and then the next day those same
guys who jump me'll come to me and be like, hey,
today we feel like jumping Jimmy. Let's get our aggression
out on Jimmy. Then we jump Jimmy. And the next
day it'd bet Timmy, and then so on and so forth.
In the second place, that wasn't a fear, the physical harm.
It was. It's like this weird emotional torment. It was

(18:52):
so odd I had I had specifically had an odd
journey there. So they there was like the guy who
owned it, his name was for his last name, and
he's so egotistical. I'm pretty sure that he was that
he would sexually abuse the inmates. I'm pretty sure that
it came out later on the abused the girls in
the women's side, you know, children, young girls. I didn't

(19:16):
have that. He didn't sexually abuse me. But so he
did this thing called Ron's meeting, right, named it after himself.
And Ron's Meeting was he picked. So there were so
many people there and he would group us up, I
don't know, like ten or so kids per group, and
that's how it was organized. And each group had its
own own staff, and then like two groups per caseworker,

(19:39):
so that's how it was decopartmentalized. And he would pick
a different group each day and he would come in
and he would just like do like checkups. He called
it Ron's meeting. Now, the thing is, there was a
consequence for breaking rules called staff buddy, and they'd put
you in a bright orange shirt. It was the only
shirt you were allowed to have, and you couldn't communicate

(20:00):
with any of the other inmates, even the other staff buddies.
So nobody acknowledged my existence. So I get there. I
never heard of this, and I'm there for like a day,
and the new kids go to Ron meeting or whatever.
I go and he looked at me and he goes,
I'm putting you on staff buddy. I don't know what
that means. A staff comes and gives me an orange

(20:21):
shirt and says, this is the only shirt you're allowed
to wear.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
All right.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Again, i'man there for a day. I'm fifteen or sixteen
years old, like, I don't know what this means. Sure,
I'm in an orange shirt. Cool. Then the next day
a staff comes in and says, hey, you have to
go to Ron's meeting. You're a staff buddy, all right, whatever,
And I go and he looks at me and he goes,
do you know why you're on staff buddy? And I go,
I don't know what staff buddy is. And he goes, great,

(20:45):
i'll see you tomorrow. I go, okay, I don't know.
Next day he asks me the same deal, same thing.
So all these months go by and the thing on
staff buddy is nobody's allowed to acknowledge you or they
get put on staff buddy. So it's isolation, is what
it is. So an adults, it's being in the shoe.
It's isolation. As a kid, they called it staff buddy,
and it's because I don't know actually why they called

(21:06):
it that, I don't know. But the inmates are the
other kids can't acknowledge that you exist. They can't say hello,
they say can't say goodbye, they can't say excuse me,
they can't say past me that. So I'm like, yo,
can you get me a glass of water? If they
look at me, they get put in the shoe. So
I went all these months with like surrounded by hundreds
of people, but like also like complete isolation, like zero

(21:26):
human contact, and I'm like, this is so weird. So
I got fed up. So I'm just gonna stab my
roommate and I'm gonna go of course, yeah, obvious natural transition. Yeah,
So I'm gonna stab my roommate and they're gonna send
me upstate to like a regular state prison, and there
at least people can acknowledge my existence. So in the

(21:50):
first place, I can't remember what utensils we had, it
was probably a plastic spork. In the second place, Utah,
where I was staff buddy, the only utensil we could
eat with is a metal spoon. I remember getting there
on day one thinking, why are they handing me a
metal utensil? This is probably a bad idea, Like I
remember so vividly thinking this is this is gonna be
a mistake. So for months I'm on staff buddy, no

(22:12):
human contact. I'm over it. I steal a spoon from breakfast,
and every day in the yard, I'm just sharpening the shift,
you know, I'm just sitting there. So every day I'm
real discreet. Don't nobody can communicate with me. Nobody can
look at me. Because they look at me and we engage,
they get put on staff buddy. So it's really easy
to get away with it. I just sat in the
corner like this, just chipping away on the concrete. So

(22:35):
I have it ready and the you know, the spoon
party you put in your mouth, sure, so easy, just
bend it into a handle. I have the perfect shank. Ever,
right the day that I planned on stabbing my roommate,
I have to go to ron meeting first in the morning,
and for no reason at all, it takes me off
staff buddy, and I go, there's no way you just
saved my roommate. I didn't even like my room. I

(22:55):
didn't like the kid anyway. I was like, there's no
way he takes me off staff, buddy, and I'm like,
all right, I won't stab them today, Like, let me
let me feel this out, let me feel what it's
like to be like human contact again. And I went
another few months and I never stabbed a kid. And
then my dad was going to federal prison, and so
there's a petition to the judge to allow me for
early release. And that's what happened.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
Okay, how so you were sixteen.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
I was sick when I came home. Was uh So,
I went in September eleventh when I was fifteen, and
I came home September eleventh when I was sixteen, so
a month before I turned seventeen.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
What was it like when your dad went away for you?

Speaker 1 (23:36):
It was kind of weird, to be honest.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah, be honest, it was weird.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
So, like the neighborhood I grew up in was a
lot of mobsters, gangsters, yeah, gangsters, a lot of made men,
a lot of you know, mafia, and so there were
dads that went to prison, you know, but it was
always like this kind of thing, like you don't want
your dad to go to prison. You know. It was
like it was like wearing a dunce cap. So anytime

(24:00):
like a kid's dad went to prison. Everybody knew, like,
your dad just went to prison, and you were kind
of like not ostracized, but sort of like the thing. Yeah,
it was like a thing, you know. So it wasn't
like I lived in the neighborhoods when I got a
little bit older, where it was almost like going to
prison was cool, like, oh yeah, my dad's in the joint,
my brother's in the joint. I just came home, Oh
I got you know, I'm getting sentenced next a month.

(24:22):
And people bragged about it. That was in a different
type of culture. The culture that my that I was
in when my dad went to federal prison was naturally
that prison was taboo. I mean that's normal. Sure, so
these everybody, So my dad had gotten indicted. I was
pretty young before I went to juvie, and my dad

(24:45):
was a part of a very very public case a bit.
It was New Jersey's biggest racketeering case and he was
in the newspaper every day and case yeah huge. Chris
Christie was the prosecutor at the time, and he used
this case to promote right. Yeah, so Chris Christy could think.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
A lot of people were involved in that case.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
A lot hundreds, hundreds, huge politicians.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
Went down.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Exactly a lot of politicians, a lot of folks, a
lot of people went down, huge indictment. Yeah, hundreds of people.
And uh yeah, they said, like my dad whatever, it
don't matter. But my dad was very publicized in an
already very public case. So like anytime you turn on
the TV to the news, like when I was a kid,
like at this age, every day I like see my
dad on there, and every day he's in the paper

(25:34):
and every day, like I was already a bad kid
on my own, right, I was always like fist fighting
and selling drugs and doing drugs and whatever, and anytime,
like I'd be for the neighborhood kid. It was like
always a thing to like talk about my dad in prison.
It was like always a thing. And I it was
just it was like a really ugly stain for me
for a while, you know, and I guess that was it.

(25:58):
Then then yeah he went I was there, so he
self surrendered. It was in Morgantown in West Virginia. Yeah,
I was. I don't know. I drove him there and
he's self surrendered. I remember him walking up to the
gate and I'm like, all right, Dad, you know, I'll
catch you when I catch you. Wow. My high school
sweetheart and I were together at the time. She and
I together were together forever, and I remember we would
go make the drive from New Jersey to West Virginia.

(26:22):
I think it was like once a month, me and
her would go out there. It's my mom, my brother too,
and we made like a whole weekend out of it.
That was really nice, but it's also kind of embarrassing,
you know, like, hey, baby, like, will you come with
me to go visit my dad in prison?

Speaker 2 (26:36):
You know, date night this week's gonna be What was
your relationship with like with your mom then? How is
she dealing with their thing? What were you guys like?

Speaker 1 (26:48):
By then, my grandparents took over raising me. Uh, my
mom was like I didn't see my mom for a
lot of years around this time. Also, I didn't see
my dad for a lot of years. I did visit him,
but like there's a certain time where I know for
sure I went at least five years one of the
times without any contact to my parents. But I have

(27:11):
like some faint memory I'd go to my mom's house
to check on her, and I'd open the front door
and the living room was right at the front door.
It was like almost not like a lobby, how you say,
Like there's like an area that like was nothing, and
then right past that with the living room. So I'd
open the front door, and I felt like every time
I went, this is exact same thing I saw. And

(27:33):
by the way, it could be super true that it
was the same thing, right cause I'm pretty sure she
lived like this the whole time he was in prison.
I would open the door, I'd look past like the
hallway or whatever and see her in the living room
with her dog in a blanket on the couch, watching
Spanish soap operas with this really like really like almost
looked like a permanently sad look on her face. And

(27:54):
I just remember, like it was so depressing and it
was so sad, and I'm like I don't get it,
you know, like I don't know, like every time I
opened I swear like every time I went to go
check on my mom, open the door and look at her,
and she like look up at me and then back
at the TV as if like I wasn't even there.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Wow, that was for like a few.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Years, a lot of years actually, And you're getting in
trouble at that age for sure.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
You're right, I'm a bad kid.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, you're a bad kid. Yeah, just doing crazy shit. Yeah,
things are getting worse, your addiction's getting worse. Correct, and
let's just then you're homeless?

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Correct?

Speaker 2 (28:29):
Are you homeless in New York City?

Speaker 1 (28:30):
The last time I was home? I was homeless in
New York a couple times. But the last time I
was homeless it was in New York. I was homeless
in different countries even, But were.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
You Were you in Central Park or you were you Harlem?
Where were you at?

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah? I was in the Heights. I was in Highbridge
Park in Washington Heights. Yeah, I was homeless a little
bit in Harlem too, like when you fit the Madison.
I mean I lived over there as well before being homeless.
But but I think what you're referring to is me
being homeless of Washington Heights, Washington Heights.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, what's and hold you then?

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Twenty three to twenty four?

Speaker 2 (28:58):
What's going through your head? On a hill? Right? You
wake up? You're in your tent. You have a nice
little tent.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Six set up.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah right, yeah, right, you're proud of your tent. Yeah,
but what's going through your head, like what people are
walking by, what's going through your head?

Speaker 1 (29:13):
How I fell on top of the world. Honestly, that's interesting.
The tent that I'd lived in wasn't a tent, it
was it was actually a six setup. So okay, So
the way Hybrid Park.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Is, it's crazy and I love you pride your thing,
that's the thing.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
That's how it was, you know, I don't know. So
in highbridg Park in Washington Heights, it's an entire homeless community.
Like it, bro, I mean, Washington Heights is the hood,
like whatever, Bro, there's bums everywhere, right, It's it's Spanish Harlem.
So so uh. Highbridge Parks specifically had a homeless community
and they lived on the under you go to the
backside of the park, there's a way to walk down

(29:49):
like a cliff side, and under that cliff side there's
an entire encampment. And I believe, actually I forget what
year it was, there was a serial killer that lived
in that underside and and what they would do is
they would wait for a bump to smoke some crack
and get too high and get stuck and come out
and stab the bump to death. I'm pretty sure the
guy got caught though, this before my time. So I

(30:10):
remember when I yea, yeah, yeah exactly. So I remember
I would when I first was homeless over there, I
went and I seen the underside and it was like
so cat. It was kind of like skid row, right,
but like Tigier, like I'm really on top of each other.
And I remember like I'm like, I don't want to

(30:30):
make new friends. It's like almost like going to like
school for like a new school. It's like get in
with everyone, forgot what table to sit at and hushu
and what's what. I don't want to talk to these bombs,
like these crackheads. I was like, I'm on my own hustle.
I got my own drugs to get, I got my
own stuff to do. I don't want to deal with
these guys in their politics. We're gonna try to rob
my little you know, if I even get my own
little tent in this like underpass thing, we're gonna rob
my tent every time I leave, Like I make friends

(30:51):
with people. I don't want to do that. So I
spent a few days there, I think, and I was immediate.
I was like I'm out. So I started living just
in the heights just and watching heights, you know, I'd
find like like like door like like a it's like
sometimes they have uh what do you call it, like
the doorways that have like a like a gap on
the porch, like on the stoop. So if I can
find a good building like that, I would just sleep
in the stoop under the doorway. It was also becoming

(31:14):
winter time, so it's raining and it was cold, so
you could block the wind in there. So it's basically
I was just living on park benches, right. And then
I went to a cop drugs one time. There's a
short black dude. His name was Shorty. He had rob me.
I got like fifty dollars and I forget what I
want whatever, I gave it to Shorty. Sure he ran
off on me, robbed me. I think Shorty was homeless too.

(31:34):
In watching heights, like we're gonna see each other. We
only go twenty blocks in one way and like five
blocks the other, like we see each other, you know.
And so I've seen him, like yeah, it was so stupid,
and so I seen him a couple of weeks later
and I'm like, yo, bro, how you want to handle this?
You know, like like you need a consequence, and he goes, okay,
how about this, He goes, instead of a consequence, he goes,

(31:55):
why don't I show you my setup? I'm homeless, you're homeless.
I got a good setup. If you like my setup,
you can live with me in my box and call
the debt. Even I was like, all right, it's getting
pretty cold out, it's like snowing. I'm like, let me
see your spot. It takes me back to Highbridge Park,
the same park that had like that under that underplatform thing,
and instead of going down though, there was like a

(32:18):
snow pile kind of and he walks me around the
snow pile. It wasn't a snow pile. It was snow
covering his box. It was like perfectly camouflaged in the
middle of the park. So what he did was he
took shipping pallets, like you know, like the it's like woods,
like double layered, and he put I think four on
the bottom, one two, three, four on the sides, but
plywood on the top. He insulated the whole thing with

(32:39):
like he probably robbed like a construction site and took
like insulation and carpet padding and whatever you can find
like that insulated in between layers of all the palettes,
so super warm in there. Then he got a blue
tarp put it over the top, and because it was
snowing all winter, the snow just went over the blue tarp,
and it's just like a little like snowy hill like

(33:00):
it looked totally like natural terrain. There was a knee
wall there, and behind the knee wall was sort of
woods kind of, and eventually that's how you can get
down to the other homeless encampment. So the knee wall
was if you just walk the new wall, that was
the entrance to his box, so you couldn't even see
from the outside, like passer buyers didn't even know that
he was living there. And it was warm in there,

(33:21):
and he had like a whole his whole means was
in this box or whatever. And I was like, honestly,
it is a good setup. And I took him up
on the offer and I moved in there.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
How long did you stay there for a while?

Speaker 1 (33:30):
I got sober there, right almost ten years now?

Speaker 2 (33:33):
Yeah, no ship, brother, but you had an angel, somebody
helped you get to Florida. Yeah, let's walk down into
that amazing story.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
So I got a friend who's somehow still alive. His
name is Charlie. Will call him Charlie. His name is Charlie.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
Let's call him Charlie.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Charlie is like a famous gangster from New York, real
gang banger, real criminal. He's known and I knew him,
and we had been in Miami together some years before that,
both like trying to get sober. And Charlie had kept
in touch with my mother and he said to her

(34:08):
at some point, if you can to my mom says,
if you can find Mickey and get him on a
plane flying back to Miami, and I'll make him my problem.
I'll take care of him. I have very faint memory
of this, but somehow my mother found me. She honestly,
I would say, she probably did do this. I can
probably call her right now and ask. But she probably
drove around the streets of Harlem NonStop, relentlessly asking people

(34:31):
if they've seen me, you know, showing a picture. She
probably did that, if you want, my guest, but I
don't really know. Somehow she found me and she told
me she goes. Charlie says, if you get on this plane,
it'll take care of you. And I remember, like, well,
it's the Dead O Winner. It was December. It was December,
and I'm homeless in New York City.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Fucked up.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, And well, well I got sober
in that box with Shorty. So I was messed up, yes,
but I wasn't under the influence. I was just I
was just a messed up guy, you know, young man,
you know mine screwed up body, screwed up. You know.
I planned on dying in that box. I remember the
last time I got high. I was in there and

(35:10):
I gained consciousness, and I was laying there on my back,
just like just like like a just like a dead body,
just laying there, and I opened my eyes and I
just remember saying to myself that I had this dialogue
like I don't got it in me. I'm not gonna
get high unless somebody walks up and puts a needle
in my arm. And if they do, I'm not gonna

(35:30):
stop them. And I'm not gonna get up and get sober.
I'm just not gonna get high unless someone puts a
needle on my arm. I remember like laying there, thinking
like I'm gonna lay here till I die or something
else intervenes I just like, I'm not getting up to hustle,
I'm not panhandling, I'm not eating. I don't I don't
care about food, I don't care about water, I don't
care about anything. I'm gonna literally la, so I either
wither away and die or something else intervenes. That was

(35:54):
kind of and I stayed sober. I don't again, I
have like pretty faint memory, but I stayed sober in
that box for a while. And at some point, if
you want me to kind of bridge a gap, probably
at some point I started to gain my physical strength back,
and I left to go find food and water and
stuff like that. Probably, and on one of those missions
is probably how my mother found me in the street

(36:16):
and she told me this. And I just remember thinking
like I'm messed up, you know, like I'm just cold
and hungry out here. I don't want this. And she's like,
you know, get on the plane, a fine. And I
got on the plane and I flew to Florida and
I landed Charlie picked me up at PBI and I
remember exactly where his house was. I know, I knew
the area. We drove past this house. I'm like, where

(36:37):
are we going? And he goes, you have no money,
You're only a liability. You're only gonna be problematic in
my life. You're gonna work in a tattoo shop for free.
You're gonna scrub their toilets and mop their floors. You're
not gonna get paid. But I'm gonna let you live
in my house. I said, deal.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
And so why'd you say deal?

Speaker 1 (36:53):
Oh it's a sick deal.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
Why was it a sick deal?

Speaker 1 (36:57):
All I had to do was hang out a tattoo.
I was like, scrub toilet I was like, bro, I
used to like shoot using water from toilets. I was like,
so what you want me to like scrub some toilets
and mop floors? But then I get to live in
your crib? You know?

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Got it?

Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (37:09):
And you did that.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
I did that for a while. I didn't eat for
a long time, Like I mean, like obviously I ate,
but I remember, like one guy gave me a month
supply of ramen one time, and I don't make that
last a long time, and something I would do. I
didn't want to ask nobody for anything, because Charlie already
gave me a second chance at life. He's let me
stay in his house. And I'm just a full time liability,
and so I dodn't want to ask people like, yo,
can you buy me food? Can I get a couple bucks?

(37:31):
Nothing like that. So I didn't say nothing. But anytime,
so I won't bring home leftovers. I was like, hey,
by any chance, you know you're gonna finish that, and
then go go ahead, bro, So I survived off leftovers and.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
Romen, you would take the bus there, right, yeah?

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Yeah, so that first day, so so Charlie, yeah yeah,
So so okay, say take me to the shop. It's
on Federal Highway. To this day, all these people are
still my friends. And he walks me up. There's a
husband and wife owner. It's Michelle and Chris, and he goes, Michelle,
Chris is Mickey. He's gonna, you know, scrub your toy,
to mop your floors, and he's just gonna live here
like he's gonna just survive during the day in this

(38:06):
tattoo shop and that'll be it. They're like cool. I said,
thank you guys, and he left, and as he left,
he gave me twenty dollars and he goes, it costs
a dollar eighty to take the bus. The two towns
to my house. I'll see you when you don't work.
I'm like, all right, cool. So I did my first
day whatever, day was over. One thing that I was
that was really I'm really grateful for is the bus

(38:26):
stop was right at the shop. When I get home.
His house was very far from that bus stop. It
was a guy to walk through the town and get home.
But at least it was only one time, Like I
don't have to do it both both sides of the jurmy.
So I remember I worked all day like again, you know,
mop floors, whatever, took out trash. They're like, yo, here's
your money. Go next door and get his launch, Like
all right, whatever, I did all that stuff. And the

(38:47):
day ends and I and I go to the bus stop.
I wait for the bus. Bus comes. I got twenty
dollars walk in, going to give me the change, drive
me two towns over. I walked pretty far when I
got when when the bus, the bus only went up
and down the highway. He lived far from the highway,
and I never had bags or anything. I was homeless,
so like that didn't matter, you know, And I'll just
walk all the way through town, go home, go to sleep,

(39:09):
wake up. Walk all the way back, take the bus
bus two towns over. Shop was at the bus, and
so on and so forth.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
And then yeah, why did he make a bet on you?

Speaker 1 (39:16):
I think because he was so similar to me. He's
older than I am, and I think that everything that
I was doing he was doing when he was my
age or however, you know if I said that right,
But h he and I were really close back when
we were both affiliated and doing crime and stuff like that.
We were very close. We ran a lot of the
same game, and I think we respected each other's hustles

(39:40):
and we liked each other's style of crimes. And then
obviously mine was not sustainable. I went back into homelessness,
and I think he just like felt for me. He goes,
you know, like there was two ways that crime was
gonna go. Either you're gonna make it or you're gonna
go to prison or be homeless. You didn't make it.
I made it. Let me, let me, let me help
what he believed to be like his younger self.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
That's beautiful, man. Yeah, what'd you learn in that tattoo shop?

Speaker 1 (40:04):
I learned gratitude. I was so stoked to have a
job that didn't pay me I was so stoked to
scrub their toilets. I was just stoked to like exist,
that was cool. I'm like living in South Florida. A
week ago. I lived in a snow covered box with Shorty,
a dude who robbed me, you know, in New York.
I was like just chilling. I was just happy.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
And who introduced you to twelve ship rooms?

Speaker 1 (40:23):
Their? So?

Speaker 2 (40:24):
How did that all go down?

Speaker 1 (40:25):
So? I had been court ordered to meetings when I
was twelve. That's when it started, and pretty consistently like
my whole life. So I was always familiar with them.
I've attended a bunch. But I had a conversation with
Charlie one time. So I was at his house for
about a month and we're sitting down and he's like,
he's like, Mickey, wild step you on. I said none.

(40:46):
He said, Mickey, you got a sponsor. I said, nah,
it's how many meetings you've been to? I said none.
He said, Mickey, you're gonna get high. People have told
me that forever, like, and everybody was always right, you know,
like those times I sustained from using they were short lived,
Like we all knew they were short lived, and something
happened when Charlie told me this time, which was probably
like the millionth time that I've heard that feedback in

(41:10):
my life, But something happened, like in my brain was
like almost like in a like in a movie. It
was like I had like all these like like in
my head of every single time somebody called me a loser,
a scumbag. You know, I'll never be anything. I'm gonna
die in prison, get away from me, we can't be friends.
When my high school sweetheart broke up with me, all

(41:30):
the bad things she said to me, all that flashed
in my head and I went back to reality, and
I was like, you're right, I am all those things,
and I am gonna get high and keep being those things.
And I didn't like the way I felt. So I
went back to the shop because the day prior, I
heard a dirt dude use the word sobriety. But I
don't even know the truth is, I don't know what
contexts even used it in. Honestly, I just was so

(41:51):
desperate not to feel the way I felt when I
had that moment with Charlie, reflecting on how big of
a loser I really was, And so I went to
this dude, his name was also Charlie, call him Skinny Charlie.
I went to Skinny Charlie and I go, a, bro,
can you save my life? Like I need help? And
he goes, yeah, I worked the twelve steps, and I
go I already know the twelve steps. I've been going
at this time. I was like, I've been going to
meetings for ten years. I was like, bet, I'm in,

(42:13):
and he goes, nah, Bro, he goes, it's only going
to work one way, and he goes, I don't care
which way you work it, because I got a sponsor
and I work it correct. So whatever you do, give
me your business. I'm just gonna help get you there.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
I'm like okay, wow, And he brought you to me,
and that's where you met your sponsor, right.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
And then yeah. So so he became my sponsor for
the first nine months and he took me to the steps.
I worked with Skinny Charlie for about sixty days, and
I got through my twelve steps roughly on days, you know,
day sixty or so, I already had my first group
of five sponsees, and that's where I actually started to recover.

(42:49):
I'm just some kid who's barely not homeless who doesn't
know how to have a job. I can't even if
I knew how to make a resume. I have nothing
to put on a resume. So i'd even to this day,
I don't know how to make a resume. Why would
I I got none to put on it, you know.
So yeah, then all of a sudden, I have like
grown men. I remember when my first sponsees was a lawyer,

(43:09):
and I wouldn't say like a big fancy lawyer, but
I remember thinking like, it's a pretty serious lawyer. And
he's calling me on a daily basis, asking like how
do I save his life? And I'm like, this is
a grown man with a wife and kids. I've been
to his house, got a beautiful house. I'm living on
my buddy's couch, like hardly not homeless, and I'm saving

(43:31):
this lawyer's life. And I remember feeling with that, dude,
how serious I had to take this? I go, this
grown man and his whole family's relying on me. Some
punksnot nos twenty four year old kid. You know. I said,
let me get the answers, and then I'd call and
not talk in meetings, and I'll call anybody that I
knew that I can trust in the rooms, I'd be like, Hey,

(43:53):
this is a question. My sponsor asked me. This is
like real life stuff that I never had to deal with.
I don't have a wife, I don't have kids, I
don't have any of this. How do I deal with it?
And all of a sudden, I take all this information
in and that's where I really start to learn the
real truth of how to stay sober, get sober, and
stay sober. And that was the information I'd give to
my sponsors. And that's when I start to really recover.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Wow, and and no cravings. It was taken away from you.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
I have time for cravings talking to that.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Fuck yeah, man, I worked at this. You just knew
to get right in service busy.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
Yeah. I didn't know anything. I just did what I
was told to do. When Skinny Charlie took me, he goes, Okay,
we're gonna work your twelve step. I'm like, all right,
he goes, here's an address meet me there.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
At this time, I'm like, all right, you say yes
to everything.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
Yeah, you have to say yes. We talk about how
am I gonna say no? How am I gonna say
that I know better than you? My brother. I'm I'm
six seconds sober, barely a needle not in my arm,
and barely not living in a box in Washington Heights.
I'm gonna tell you how to live our life, our lives.
You know, I'm not that stupid. So anything, Skinny Charlie said,
I go, yeah, of course, like yeah, no, probably be there.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
And then somebody asked if you want to come pay
some houses?

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah yah yeah so so yeah, so just so you know,
when I had like nine months sober, I started to
plan my relapse and that's when I got the new sponsor,
the one that just passed away.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Talk about that, but it's super important people get hit
to this. That's right. I forgot about that.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Yeah. So so Skinny Charlie says, you know'll meet me
at this time at this at this location. I met him.
There's outside of a meeting all the way and Pompino I.
It was like in a strip center and we go
in the meeting and as the meeting's ending, they do
like the the literature or whatever, and the person's the chair.
The chairperson of the meeting says, is anybody here need

(45:31):
a sponsor? And my sponsor was sitting next to me.
He goes, pick one of these people, remember what they're wearing,
and like all the people raise their hand. I picked
one person, remember what he wore. He goes, when it's
time for the prayer, you're gonna hold his hand during
the prayer. I'm like, okay, So the meeting ends, time
for a prayer. I be line it right for the
dude who I remembered what he was wearing, I be
lined it. I held his hand and we did the
prayer and my sponsor on the other side, and as

(45:53):
soon as the payer ended, he goes ask him to
be your He goes, he goes, tell him that you're
a sponsor now, and I just looked at the kid
and I go, hey, I'm Mickey, I'm your sponsor now,
and the kid goes, okay. You know, the kid knew
less than I knew. So both of us don't know
how this works. We're both listening to Skinny Charlie. So
when Charlie told me that I'm his sponsor, I just said, yeah,
you're right, I guess I am now. And when I
told that kid that, the kid's looking at me like

(46:14):
you're skinny. You're the skinny Charlie in my life. So
if you're telling me I'm your sponsor, then then you're
my sponsor. And you know, that's how I got my
first spon Sea. And then he's like, go back tomorrow
and dude, again, I did it again. I got five
spons ce's And he goes, now we're gonna start taking
them through the work. And he would coach me on
how to take them through the work and so on
and so forth. So anyway, so then I'm working at

(46:34):
this shop and I'm making no money. I have no money,
and I'm not really eating whatever. The house that Charlie
was renting was owned by a dude named Sean, also
to this day changed my life, such a good friend.
And Sean was the landlord. And Sean was like basically
within the same general general age age age ish you

(46:55):
know of us give or take. You know, there's like
a ten year gap between the three of us. And
he was like in the middle. And he shows up
to the house like check on something, and he sees
me standing next to Charlie and he goes, uh. He's
like basically he goes a kid, you want to make
a hundred bucks And I'm like, bro, I haven't made
a hundred dollars in a long time. And by now
it's like the middle of summer. We're in South Florida,

(47:16):
and he goes, you're gonna paint the outside of a house.
Should take you half a day, but I'll pay you
for the whole day one hundred bucks. Like for sure.
So he drove me dropped me off with some buckets
of pain and some paint rollers, and he's like, go ahead, paint.
I painted the house and at the end he gave
me a hundred bucks and I was so happy. And
he goes, you want to paint another house tomorrow. I'm like, yeah,
for sure. He goes, I'll pay you a hundred dollars.
Like cool. Paying the other house gives me a hundred dollars.

(47:38):
He goes, do you want to work with me full time?
Maybe hundred dollar a day, just do whatever I need
you to do. I'm like, yeah, for sure. So I
called the tattoo shop and I was like, hey, guys,
I'm really sorry, but I have to quit. And they're
like so happy. They're like thank god. You know. They're
like you're just like a burden, like you don't give anything,
you know, like you know what I mean. That wasn't
getting paid anyway. Nobody cared and we all remain really
good friends. So so quitting the tattoo shop was super easy.

(48:01):
And then I started working for Sean, and it was
I was just a day laborer, is what I was.
And I was doing demolition, and then Sewan would teach
me how to do demo. I did demo, you know,
took the stuff, then threw it out. And then when
that was done, he would show me how to do construction.
He taught me how to cut tile, lay tile, hang
sheet rock, taught me how to frame, taught me how
to do like surface level plumbing like I can't, like

(48:22):
you know, I can't build a trench, dig a trench
and then build a pipeline through it. But I can,
you know, take out and reinstall toilet sink, you know,
faucet's bathtub, shower. I can do all the I can
do all the the molding. I can do cocking, I
can you know, all that kind of basic stuff. He
would just teach me every day, whatever task Sean needed

(48:43):
done that day, he would take an hour show me
and then say good luck, and then I would do
it and I did it good. And he was able
to leave me at job sites alone and take other
job sites. So he started doing that. Now he's getting
twice the income with no additional overhead. So he starts
making a bunch of money. And he decided to buy
new work truck. And he gave me what basically was

(49:03):
my first car. Wow, And it was our old work
van and it was one of those rate vans, but
no windows on it and just just total, you know,
just totally destroyed. And I was so stoked on that thing.
Me and my buddies. We'd push all the tools to
the back. We put lawn chairs in there so we
could all drive around together. We went to the club
in that thing. I took girls out on dates in
that thing. I love that thing, you know. That was cool.

(49:25):
That was my first set of real wheels.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
God, I hope you have a picture of that because
it'd be fucking great, right, I wish. Wait the relapse
story though, you were planning the relapse.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
So okay, So it happened a little bit after that.
So so then I'm doing that basically, and that's my life.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
You're making a few bucks now.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Yeah, yeah, away. It was so cool and it was like,
I don't know, how much money your average person makes.
I don't know if one hundred dollars cash off the
books is a lot er a little, to be honest,
like for someone else at that point, they're like, have
no idea, But for me, it was all. It was
more than what I needed. It was like the perfect setup.
I got a free car. I got one hundred dollars
cash every day in my pocket. My boss paid for
my lunch most days. On Fridays we went to the

(50:02):
strip club and got free lunch, and he paid you know,
the ten bucks to get in or whatever. Like bro,
I had the coolest job, and you know, one hundred
bucks a day cash every day, in a free car.
And looking back, I probably didn't have insurance on it
because I know I wasn't paying it, you know, but whatever,
you know, it was cool. It was a good setup.
And then I started planning my relapse and I didn't

(50:26):
realize it at first. It was like a slow subconscious.
A little time went by, and I remember the house
I stayed in. I remember everything about that house. I
remember my bathroom. I remember my shower, and I was
in the shower when it dawned on me. I remember
when I was in the shower. I was like deep
in like my imagination land, you know, it was just

(50:48):
like chilenged in my head thinking and something like snapped
me out of it, and I realized what I was
doing was for like a month prior I started piecing
together the opportunity to start using drugs again. And at
that moment in the shower, I was so deep in
thought glorifying how good this relapse is gonna be. And
it's like struck me in the shower and I go,

(51:09):
I've been planning my relaps for a month. And I
remember thinking like, there is how much money I have
saved up, So this is how long I can get
high for. I go, this is how long I cannot
pay my rent. And I was paying for a room
in a house. I go, this is how long I
cannot pay rent for before I have to leave this room.
Then when I have to leave this room, I was like, oh,
then I can go stay there for probably this amount
of time. And I just started thinking how long would

(51:31):
it take before I hit bottom again? And I even
started planning once I hit bottom, who can I call
to come save me? And I was so deep in
this shower like thinking, oh, it's gonna be so good.
It's gonna be so good. I never like actually said
to myself, I'm gonna go get high and it's gonna
be good until that shower. And that's when it dawned
on me. For a month, I've been slowly piecing together
the piece is to enable a relapse, and I go,

(51:54):
something has to change or I'm gonna relapse. And I
got a new sponsor. I quit my job, I changed
my phone number, I like canceled everything everything. I was
going to strip clubs basically every night, and the reason
for that is I didn't have a curfew right, so
I didn't have any accountability at night. And my buddy

(52:14):
who's trying to stay sober too, he's dead now, but
you know, Chris rest in peace. Both of us together
were like, what can where can we go every night
just to be safe and like not get high and
not die. We go strip clubs at twenty four hours,
So we'd go to Tutsis. You can get into Tutsies
for free and it doesn't cost you a dollar unless
you sit at the catwalk or get a section. So

(52:35):
me and him would go in there. We'd each buy
a cheap cigar, like ten bucks. You get in for free.
We'd each pay ten bucks. We sit in the back
and we just smoke cigars and hang out all night,
and sometimes we'd shoot pool. There's a room attached to
the club with like thirty pool tables in it. We
just go in there and shoot pool me and have
for like five dollars whatever. So that's how we didn't
get in trouble during those bad hours.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
That was your safe house.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
That's our safe club.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
Yeah, we don't recommend that for everybody, but it worked
for you guys.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
I don't recommend it, but it did save my life, right, Yeah,
but I don't recommend it. Yeah, and then so so
so anyway, So I quit everything when I did, when
I was when I realized I was planning a relapse,
I quit everything, and I only let back in my
life what God saw fit. And coincidentally, it's been nine
years since that moment. God never saw fit that I

(53:20):
had to attend a strip club again, and I've never
been back. God never saw fit that I had to
associate with certain types of people, so I never have,
you know, and and I only put back what God
forced back into my life.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
Beautiful buddy, talk your numbers, guy, talk about the two
percent you came up with. I love that story.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
So as I said, I was court ordered to meetings
since I was like twelve, So I basically thought I
got it, Like I like, I get it. You know,
I'm like you idiots, you need us, You need someone
to hold your hand through the steps, like you can't
just do the steps, like would not smart enough. I
felt like that about it as a child, like an idiot.
So so I had attempted to get sober so many times.

(53:59):
And what's interesting about steps three and four is that
people have a misconception. But the only people have a
misconception are the ones that's never done it. Every time
I hear someone say, oh I went out on step four. Oh,
step four was so scary. Step forward so hard in
my head as loud as I can, I'm screaming, you

(54:19):
never did any steps. Steps one, two, and three have
no proof. There's no validation that you ever did those steps.
You just tell your sponsor the word yes and you
say step completed. There's no proof you did one, two,
and three. The first time that you ever have to
show proof of doing any work is on step four.
And all these people are always talking about mostly men.
For this example, they go, how can I share with

(54:41):
another man my deepest, darkest secrets? And I go, you
just prove that you've never done steps in your life,
because that's not what step four is. That's step five.
Step four is made a searching and fearless moral inventory.
That's just you and you. Brother. You know what you did.
You were there when you did it. Putting it down
doesn't change anything. If you were mean to your ex,
you cheated on her, you mean to your mother, you
stole from an old lady, whatever some people may have done,

(55:02):
you were there when it happened. You're writing it down
to a change anything. Didn't make it hard. So if
you're scared to show with another man telling about a
fifth step, you can't do five without four. For me,
I had a possibly an interesting perspective on step three.
I did relapse on step three a lot of times.
It's not because I wasn't doing the work. This park

(55:23):
is kind of interesting. I did it because I wasn't willing.
Step three is about willingness, and I can justify my
unwillingness pretty easily. I remember I was living in a
halfway house and I had a sponsor before Skinny Charlie
you know previous times. His name is Johnny Juice. Actually

(55:46):
it's dat Nyland. So Johnny says, you know, how's your
steps going. Let's go step three. I'm like cool, and
he goes, you know, what are you up to? I'm
doing great, man, And I always knew like to be
honest with your sponsor. And I go, I'm doing great.
You know, I'm selling some drugs, but like, that's it.
He goes, they're selling drugs in sobriety and I go,
I'm not selling it to people in meetings. I'm just
hustling on the street, you know. And he goes, you

(56:08):
shouldn't do that, and I go, buddy, you know, I
never graduated high school. I'm a convicted fell in. I
got face tattoos. I was like, I'm not getting a job. Like.
I was like, what do you want me to do?
I'm selling drug you know, I gotta pay bills. And
he's like, you probably shouldn't do that. I was like, Johnny,
you don't get it, brother. I'm never late for curfew
at my halfway house. I'm not disrespecting women. I'm not
cheating on my girl. I'm not fist fighting at anywhere,

(56:31):
you know. I go, I'm crushing it. I can do
one thing, dog, I gotta pay bills. I could treat
myself with a route to do so, you know, don't
knock my hustle. And he goes. He goes, you probably
shouldn't do it, and you just don't get it. You
just don't get me. He goes, all right, brother, no problem, Okay,
I relapsed, right, so I come back. I called Johnny.

(56:51):
I go, ah, Johnny, I'm done. I'm gonna get sober again.
He goes, all right. I go, you're right, by the way.
You know I was selling drugs. You told me it's
gonna to my demise. It did. You're right, I'm not
gonna sell drugs. He goes. Cool. I go, I'm gonna
pimp some girls out. He goes, you probably shouldn't do that.
And this is back when pimping was cool. This is
before Jeffrey Epstein and p Diddy. This is back when

(57:12):
it was really cool back in the day. And he goes,
you probably shouldn't do that. I go, Johnny, you don't
get it. Girls love me. I'm really good at this,
you know, And he goes, yeah, I hear you, but
you shouldn't do I go, Johnny John, you're not listening, bro,
I'm you don't get it, bro, I'm not late for curfew.
I'm always you know, I'm always respect Yeah, the whole thing,
the whole nine. And I go, I'm also not selling drugs,

(57:33):
the one thing he told me not to do. And
he goes, now you got two things. Don't pimp. Oh,
you don't get it, bro, I'm doing excellent. And so
I built this idea that if you take a test
in school and you get a ninety eight percent, you
still get an eight plus. There's nothing better than an
eight plus. So ninety eight percent is maxed out. You
don't need a hundred, ninety eight and one hundreds the
same thing. The problem is that that two percent of

(57:53):
the time, I'm gonna do whatever I want. Sometimes I
want to get high. So if you ask me all
one hundred times, mickey, do you want to get high?
Ninety eight percent of the time that I'm doing the program,
I'm listening to my sponsor, and I'm doing the steps,
and I'm living the principles. I'm doing all the right things.
Ninety percent of the time, I'm gonna say no, and
I got a defense for that. But at two percent
of the time that I do whatever I want, you
asked me one hundred times and ninety to them, i'm

(58:15):
gonna say no, but two of them i'm gonna say yes.
My relapse is one hundred percent either got high or
I did it, and I did every time.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
And that those are the numbers. Those are the real numbers.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
Those are the numbers that controlled my life.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
I'm gonna flash for a little bit, so briefly, this
is amazing. You figure out the rehab game and you
become unbelievably successful at it. Correct you always, I always say,
how fucking smart you go. I'm not that smart. You
figured out something very cool, you sold it. You had
a like a real chunk of change, now not one
hundred bucks down. You moved to Los Angeles, right, you're

(58:48):
living downtown in a penthouse. Yeah, COVID comes.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
You're in a funk though. Yeah, you're sad, you're depressed,
yeah right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:58):
So I sold my companies when I was living in
Florida in like my mid late twenties. And while the
sale was happening, I had two partners who were also
my best friends. One got murdered and the other disappeared,
and so they're out of the picture. My girl, who
lived with me for years, she and I split up,
and I sell the companies. I have this, you know,
chunk of change, and I go my two best friends

(59:21):
are gone, either dead or missing. My girl and I
split up. I'm alone, and I have all this money.
And the thing is like, I went from you know,
being in prison to addiction, to being you know, in prison,
to homelessness, to being in prison to just trying to
stay out of drugs and homelessness, to then work. And
when I was building these companies, I was working sixteen
eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, like no breaks,

(59:43):
no vacations, no holidays. You know. Anything I did that
was for fun was really just catered around more work.
And so finally, for the first time my whole life,
I had freedom, not just with time, but also financial freedom.
But I know, nobody ever taught me how to spend
that freedom, and I didn't know how. And I remember
sitting at all this money and I was salon, you know,

(01:00:04):
friend's gone, girl's gone, work's gone, and I'm like, I
don't know what to do now, And I go, I'm
gonna move. I'm gonna go to LA. And the reason
is specific for La, not that it's relevant, probably, but
I had an idea for a new business model that
to this day, no one's ever done. And I think
it's a genius and it's not impossible one day that
I attempt to do it. But I needed a place

(01:00:25):
in close proximity with incredibly high income and incredibly low income.
So I needed to beta test, and I wanted to
know in which demographic this business model would work best.
And I had my ideas, but I need to prove
a concept, and I go, La County has incredible heis
and low in such close proximity that that's a great location.
So I decided to move to LA to start this
new business. And I moved to LA. And in the beginning,

(01:00:48):
I'm just like this, like young, rich bachelor, newly single
and all this money and I'm chilling. I'm having a
good time. And then I had partners, new partners, and
we're gonna start this business. And I go to sign
a lease on the building and not that this is relevant,
but just so funny that building is walking distance from
the house I live in today and we go to

(01:01:09):
sign a lease and the same week we're signing a
lease on that building, they announce COVID. So my partners
and I decide, we don't know what this COVID thing is.
Let's chill out, let's just let's pull out. Let's just
wait and see, like how long this last. We don't
know what it is, and when it's over, then we'll
take a building and do this business. We all agreed,
no problem. So COVID happens, LA shuts down. LA took

(01:01:31):
it really seriously. And now I'm still alone. I can't
meet new people. I can't go out to eat, I
can't go anywhere. I can't I don't know anybody. All
my friends are dead and gone, and I have all
this money still and I'm all alone, and I'm like, oh,
my brother, this is so miserable. And I wanted to
kill myself. And it was so hard. My sponsors are
far away from me, can't go to meetings, I don't

(01:01:54):
know anybody. It's just tough. It was a weird spot
to be in and it was scary. And then I
had one friend from the business who uh lived in
LA and He's like yo, you know, Vegas is open.
He's like, do you want to go? And I'm like, yeah,
let's go. So we drove three and a half hours
to Vegas and we gambled and just had fun and
Vegas was open as if Vegas basically acted like COVID

(01:02:14):
didn't exist.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Vegas in Miami.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
Yeah, right right. And so I'm in Vegas and all
these girls there and like all this like partying and
all this stuff's happening, and I love to gamble, gambled
my whole life. Boom. We start gambling, you know, I
buy in like twenty k. Boom, I win twenty k,
like profit, cool, having a blast, meet all these people,
get laid sick, whatever. Weekends over. We go back to
LA and me and my buddy just chilling in the
penhouse and we're like, now what, Like this is terrible.

(01:02:40):
We're depressed, we're bored, we're lonely. We're like, should we
go back to Vegas? Okay, let's go get back in
the car, drive back to Vegas and do it all
over again. And I started winning every week like twenty
thousand and thirty thousand, sometimes fifty thousand. But we didn't
go trying to win money. We were just going.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Get the fuck out to get some fun, right, so
we want it, and then you start winning more.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Then we start winning more, and casinos start noticing and
they go, would you like a bigger room? I go, sure,
my room's fine. They go, no, no, we'll give you a
bigger one. It has a few bedrooms in it, so
you and your buddy don't have to like share, you know,
like a thing, you know. You know, they put the
two beds next to each other. Yeah, they go, we'll
give you guy, separate bedrooms in the same room. And
I'm thinking like, oh, I've never even seen that before.

(01:03:22):
I mean, yeah, sure. They show it to me. Got
seventeen foot vaulted ceilings and chandeliers and a butler, and
I'm like all right. And then you know, they go, hey,
let us know when you want to come back, and
we'll fly you. I got sick and it started pretty light.
You know. They put me on a commercial flight. That's cool.
It's nice of them, right, you know, it's like one
hundred dollars ticket whatever, so thoughtful. And we get there

(01:03:44):
and they give us a bigger room and a bigger
room and so on and so forth. Then all of
a sudden, they're giving me private jets and this and that,
and me and my buddy were winning. We had lost
a few times, for sure, we lost. We never cared
about the winning. I would have spent the money to
have gained the hanging out and the partying and the
girls and so. But we had won most times, mostly always,
And we just said to each other, what if we

(01:04:06):
bought in with an extra zero, buy in more. Instead
of buying in for twenty or thirty K, we're buying
in for two hundred and three hundred thousand every week.
What happened was our cash outs had an extra zero.
So now I'm winning two hundred, three hundred and five
hundred thousand a week. This went on for like a
few months. At that level, we said to ourselves, and
by the way, by then, the casinos are giving. They're
just all out anything I want. They gave me a

(01:04:27):
private jet, they gave me a Maybox, they gave me
a Rolls Royce, they gave me you name it whatever,
twenty fiur butler service in any suite. The sweets, some
of them were like five bedroom suites. It's just like
me and my buddy, you know. They would send anything.
They said, send us hookers, give us massage, anything though,
anything that the casino thought we might be interested in,
they would just do it, you know. And it was like,
what a cool way to live. Honestly, it was such
a cool way to live. And then it became enough

(01:04:51):
money that it was really worth paying attention to, seriously
paying attention to, and we did, and we had our
first million dollar win. It was one point one five
zero million. I took a video of it. I remember
after we won, staying in the in the Presidential in
the palazzo, and there's a baby grand piano in there,

(01:05:12):
and I taught myself how to play. I lived for
a lot of years. There's always a piano wherever I lived,
so I kind of taught myself how to play. Like
I'm not like good or anything, but I remember I
was like playing a tune and Ian put the one
point one five million in cash across the top of
the piano I'm playing and just took all these videos.
I still have the videos. And so when we hit
that million dollar win, we knew that we reached a
level that we can't come back from, and we didn't

(01:05:34):
want to come back from, and we said, how do
we do this every time? And then pretty shortly after
I was buying in for three million dollars every time
I played, and I mostly never left without doubling up.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
And your biggest haul was eleven.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
My biggest single session win was eleven million, five hundred
twenty six thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
Tookty seven days to get that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
You go home, you go to your hotel. What goes
to your head after you just won eleven million dollars
in the casino?

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
I do the same thing every time I in. As
soon as I win, I go to cash out, and
as I'm doing that, I grab one of the butler's
and I say, can you please make me a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich slightly toasted with sliced bananas and
take the crust off and a glass of like oat

(01:06:18):
milk or whatever. And the thing is, it takes about
thirty minutes for them to make that sandwich and bring
it to me wherever I am, so I know for
thirty minutes, I have zero ability to make any decisions.
For thirty minutes, I have one goal, and that's wait
for my sandwich and eat it so well all these
crazy thoughts are going in my head. You should go
buy this, you should go do that, You should call
this person, tell me should do this, you should go

(01:06:39):
do that. Oh what happ when you get home, you
can visit. None of that matters. For thirty minutes, no
matter what I'm thinking, my body's doing one thing, and
it's sitting down and waiting for a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich. And by the time I'm done eating all
these stupid thoughts, I've came and gone through my brain.
And now I'm sitting with a rational mind, and I go, Okay,
now that every dumb idea has gone through my brain,
what should I actually do with the money? And every
time it's the same thing. It's very slow, it's very steady.

(01:07:01):
I took all the cash, not just the eleven and
a half. I took any penny I had, and I
invested in real estate. I created a little team of
people I trust who are in real estate, and together
we formed an investment portfolio which is rather exclusively real estate,
and that's where all my money sets to this day.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Super cool man, smart, that's smart.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
I needed to save me for myself, because I'll flip
a coin for all the money in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
But let me ask you something. People hear this. I
even talked to you about, like, how do you How
are you in Vegas? We'll get in the girls in
a sec all the party, all the stuff throwing at you,
you don't want to use? Right, what's going on? How
are you feeling right with God? Do you feel right
with truth? Do you feel like you're on a mission?
Do you feel sober? Do you feel like I'm on point?

(01:07:48):
How does is that not?

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
Yeah? So I did. My life was very intense for
all those years, and with the level of intensity that
I was living, there wasn't a lot of room for
second guessing. I had a job and one of my
jobs was to stay sober, and I know how to
get that job done successfully. And I didn't have time

(01:08:10):
to consider will wondering hurt. I had too much going on.
My life was too intense. It's too busy to even
contemplate doubt or second thinking, second guessing. I had a job,
it worked, it gets ober, stays sober. I know how
to do that. I do that. The next job, gamble win,
take the money by real estate. I did that. I
do that fine. But next job is so on and
so forth, and that took up twenty four hours of

(01:08:32):
my day every single day. There was eventually a time
I got banned from almost every casino in the world,
and so I stopped gambling. And this is basically pre
social media, and it's still COVID time, and I think
it was still COVID. I gotta. I want to try
to give you the best, most accurate chronological order, because

(01:08:54):
the banning happened over a series of time. It's a
little tricky the way it works, because some of them
will unband. You're give me permission to come back. The
short of it. I know the answer you're looking for,
and the answer is that there was a time where
I didn't have a job anymore, and I sat there.
I have a job to do, you know, a spiritual job.
I didn't have a job, have something intense keeping me occupied.

(01:09:17):
And I sat there and I had a problem with God,
and he and I had a falling out in a
way that might be hard to explain to like the
general public that'll be listening. And it's not my denial
of his existence. God definitely exists. He got me sober,
he kept me sober. But I feel like something had
happened in my life. A lot of things happened a

(01:09:38):
short period of time, and I sort of felt like
he looked at me like, you're doing great, Bud, you
got this. I'm gonna go help somebody else. And when
he did that, everything started collapsing around me in my
personal life and I haven't spiritually recovered from that. I
am seeking that spirituality, as you know, I'm a regular

(01:10:01):
attendee in a pretty heavy depths in pursuit of that spirituality.
And that is where I'm at my journey today.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Are you comfortable telling the folks a little exercise I
gave you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
What's the exercise? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
Which exercise about how good to talk to God again?

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Yeah? So my assignment this week was to hit my
knees and talk to God, have a conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
Be the bigger person to say listen, I'm just gonna
say hello again.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
It's not dating, yeah, but just kind of getting to
know each other.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
Yeah, that's my assignment this week.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
Beautiful, All right, Listen, everybody knows the story about Drake.
Everybody in the story about little Baby. They look you
up all that kind of stuff. Because of the time
I want to hear if you're comfortable, Do you want
to talk about your online casino? Okay, because that's amazing
that you've done. That you should promote that. Do you
want to talk about girls? I love girls, I tell
you do like a lot of girls.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
I love. I love all girls. I think all girls
could beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
Are you comfortable talking about some of the exploits and things?

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:10:59):
Yeah, yeah? Would you can see yourself a sex addict
love addict?

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
So you know, as I've said in open format before,
I don't think I'm a sex or love addict, but
uh sorry, but I'm aware that a lot of my
behavior is unmanageable and has a negative impact on my life,
and therefore I am open to continuing the journey to
find out because if so, I'd like to work on it. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
I mean, you've talked about you know, I get it.
I don't you know orgy's a bunch of girls, girls
running out? You know, blah blah blah. You're changing your
life now about that you want something different.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
I'm doing good. Let's not taking every assignment you've given me,
and I've done it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
I know, brother, you're working hard. But one thing you
talked about it made me laugh. But it's let's talk
about fake love, okay, and why we do fake talk
about fake love?

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
Okay. So I'm a serial fake relationship er.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
What does that mean? Tell the audience what that means.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
It means, first of all, it means I'm an idiot.
So so I I've only been in relationships like my
whole life, like for the last fifteen years, with five
girls total filled that fifteen year gap. And I had
a year single two times somewhere in those fifteen years.

(01:12:14):
And even in those relationships, I still do all those
girls mostly like let me see other girls also, So
it's like pretty easy to do it. And in the
times that I've been single, it's it was for a while.
I'm getting better at now, but it was getting rapidly worse.
I would do this thing where I'd find a girl
who looked the part, which is really the only thing

(01:12:36):
that mattered to me, and she was she like was
into me for whatever reason. To this day none of
us can figure out. You know. I'd grab a beautiful
girl and I'd say, hey, we're gonna be We're gonna
love each other, we're gonna be in love now the
girl and usually I don't know why, but women seem
to really respond well to that, which was never my goal.
I didn't do it to I pick up Jake because
I was just doing it because that's just the type

(01:12:57):
of time. I was honest, Hey, we're gonna be in love.
And they'd be like, okay. I'd like, tell me you
love me. Let's say I love you. Okay, I love
you too. And then then I'd sit and I go,
wait a second, I spent this girl yesterday. I don't
think we love each other, you know. And then I
would run that gamut for a week, and I'm super
codependent and I have this thing I can't be alone.
I don't know why, and so I would force these

(01:13:19):
relationships and then a week would go by, and then
I'd find another one and do it again. And I
feeled every day of my life for the last fifteen
years like that, basically, mostly while simultaneously having a long
term girlfriend. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
Yeah, a lot of work, brother, Yeah, why you could
a pendant?

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
That's my job figure out right.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
Yeah, that's out right, it's your job. Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
Let me ask you this, brother, when's the world the
scariest for you?

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
When is the world the scariest when I feel helpless,
when I'm not in control, when I don't know the power.

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):
When's the last time you felt that?

Speaker 1 (01:13:57):
I feel it on a micro level pretty regularly. You know,
a thing, a specific thing will come up that is
out of my control, and I sort of lean on
the rest of the things in my life that I
have control over. I lean on those I dig in
to get through it. When did I feel the problem

(01:14:18):
is when everything in my life is out of control,
when everything I have no power to change, and I'm
helpless to all of it at the same time, That's
when it's the scariest. And the last time that happens
when I had that falling out with God.

Speaker 2 (01:14:32):
You want to talk more about sex and levediction.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
I think it's so raw the way everybody, Yeah, I
think because everyone's always asking the raunchy stuff like the
war stories of glorifying, you know, yeah, And I think
they miss the marks.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
What are they missing?

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
Like? I think that those are all versions of acting out.
And I think if they can understand the internal workings
of it, that it would be so applicable in so
many ways. It would not just make sense, but I
think they'd be able to rationalize their own bait behavior
and improve their own lives, because I don't think a
lot of that stuff is good. And sometimes it's good,

(01:15:05):
but I think it depends on the inner working stone.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
Why don't you think it's good? When's it not good?

Speaker 1 (01:15:09):
When I go out with the new girl every night,
it is the same conversations every single time. And the
truth is, I don't care ever what their answers are.
I don't even need. I don't even need to hear
their answers. It's not relevant. I have one goal to
fill time not being alone and then have sex. And
it's like every night, the time it takes to pick

(01:15:30):
the girl, the time it takes to just put on
the show, pretend that I care, it was just super draining.
I do not care. I don't care. I don't know
these girl's name. It doesn't even matter. It's the same
thing every time. They all look alike. It doesn't matter.
Do this whole thing and then do it again tomorrow.
It's it's like a six hour block, plus I don't

(01:15:51):
get to sleep alone of time. It's just I don't know,
and I just don't care, and it's very draining. And
you can't stop, and I can't stop because you're.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
So fucking lonely sometimes and you're willing a guy who
makes a lot of money, who can build in the hour,
who can make hundreds of thousands of dollars, you'd rather
be at NOBU with some fucking dumb girl talking about
dumb shit, trying to figure out the numbers how fast
you can get your ass back down on pch to
get back to your house and do your thing.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
And then I have nobody to call when something good
happens exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
And we're trying to break that because I'm teaching you
the word. We want to go with life, well, I
want to be frugal with your energy, learning how to
be alone and love yourself. But also, let's talk about
this about love addiction. Why it's so powerful. You've been
through some fucking painful shit, violent stuff, horrible stuff. Would
you not say some of the worst pains being with
the girl and you think she's giving her attention to
somebody else. It's the worst, it's the worst. Why is

(01:16:42):
it the worst?

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
You can heal from a broken bone, Your black eye
will go away. You know, you can avoid people that
are gonna jump, you know, if you're if you're in
a different sets territory, you know every time someone a
member of that set sees you, they're gonna you know,
they're gonna try to hurt you. You can just stop
going there if you want. There's nothing to do to
get away from the pain when a girl breaks your heart.

(01:17:05):
There's like, I'm sure that a healthier man than I
has coping mechanisms for that. I'm sure that there are
men who know how to deal with heartbreak. I'm sure
there's men that know how to navigate a relationship healthy
to maybe mitigate the pain of a heartbreak or a
separate or separation or so there are I know good

(01:17:27):
men that women have done really bad things to them,
and I go that man didn't deserve that, and they
there's probably men out there that's happened too that know
how to handle that. I never needed that skill set.
I never needed to know how to cope with women
doing me dirty because it never happened. And then, as

(01:17:48):
a very far grown adult deep into long term relationships,
it happened to me, and I realize I'm really just
a child. I had no idea what to do, nobody
to call. I didn't know who to call. I don't
even know what I ask, I don't even know what
I say, and I didn't know how to get through it.
And it was like this pain that like still lasts

(01:18:10):
to this day. And it changed the way it changed.
It broke me as a man. It changed me as
a man, changed me as a person. The way I
navigate relationships to this day is really just a defensive
play from the pain I felt from the breakup.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
Right, we're gonna put an end to that, aren't we.
You figured out a way you beat Vegas at their
own game. You figured that out, which is a monumental thing.
You know the game. You know, it's read. You've talked
about that. We just have to do that with your
brain now. But that's a different hack, isn't it scary?

Speaker 1 (01:18:46):
Yeah? It's something I never learned, but we were.

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
You're doing good, though, But we're breaking it down. We're
getting better, We're getting healthier, right, yeah, right, it feels better.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
You're learning how to say no.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
Yeah, I've been saying no so much. It's so empowering
to right, Why is it in power? Oh? My god?
So there's been girls that are just out of this
world offering me everything and one thing about it, whatever
it may be, the detail. I go, that's not convenient
for me. No, thank you. And every time, Bro, they're

(01:19:19):
looking at me, like, bro, you look like a bridge
strow and you're saying no to me, and I go, yeah,
I'm not interested, and it's like super weird. And it's
almost been fun. It's almos. I'm almost feeling addicted to that.
It's been cool. It's been cool. There's a lot a
lot of a lot of you know, beautiful women have
reached out in the last how long has been like
two months? I'd say've been working on this in the

(01:19:40):
last two months, and like I say, no, like like
for fun. I don't know. It's been really cool. I
don't know if that's healthy either. By the way, there's
probably like a correct answer somewhere in the middle.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):
No, that's pretty good. It's a good start, but it's
just a stop sometimes. Yeah. No, all right, let's do this, brother.
Let's thank you for that. Man, I'm really grateful that
you broke that down. For books. Folks watching the show
struggling with addictions, struggling with relaps, struggling with depression, struggling
with maybe calling in the day. What's the message for them?
What's the message?

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
I hope. I don't have all the answers, but I
do know that if I do my job, that I
get a paycheck at the end, even spiritually.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
What's the job?

Speaker 1 (01:20:19):
Whatever it may be, like, whatever my task is. Sometimes
it is work. Sometimes I know I have to set
an alarm. I have to wake up really early when
I don't want to, and I have to go show
up and do a task. I don't feel like it,
but I can pay my rent. Sometimes it's I gotta
hit my knees and talk to God because I know
that there's a spiritual payoff. I know there's a benefit
of my life. Sometimes I know I don't want to

(01:20:39):
bro I hate sponsores. Sponsors are like the bane of
my existence. But I know that if I don't work
with sponsores, I relapse, and so for me, I will
go find sponsores and I will work their steps with them,
and I will answer their calls despite a million trillion
better things as I rather be doing in my day

(01:21:01):
at that time. But I know that that's my job,
and in return I get to stay sober.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you for shat, Thanks for being
on the show.

Speaker 1 (01:21:09):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:21:10):
More to be continued and I really love you. I
appreciate you big time, buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
Thank you for you. Okay man, I'm gonna see tomorrow too.

Speaker 2 (01:21:17):
I'll be here, I'll be here. The Sino Show is
a production of iHeart Podcasts, posted by me Cina McFarlane,
produced by pod People in twenty eighth. Av Our lead
producer is Keith Carnilac, Our executive producer is Lindsey Hoffman.
Marketing lead is Ashley Weaver. Thank you so much for listening.
We'll see you next week.

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