July 9, 2025 • 41 mins
Why is homelessness surging in California? To find the answer, we tell the story of an inspiring young American that journeyed from the White House to Skid Row, and hear what he learned along the way.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
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Red Pilled America dot Com Now on with the show.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
This episode was originally broadcast on February first, twenty nineteen.
It's a personal one to us for reasons that will
become evident. There's a lot that needs fixing in California,
but perhaps its biggest black eye is the homeless. California
has the worst homeless problem in America.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Well, hundreds of homeless people in Orange County now have
two options, move out or get arrested.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
The county Board of Supervisors agreed to temporarily house at
least one hundred homeless in Huntington Beach, at least two
hundred just south of the Great Park in Irvine, and
more than one hundred in Laguna.
Speaker 5 (01:08):
Neguel Right now, we're in a homelessness crisis.
Speaker 6 (01:11):
If we keep leaving this without a crisis response, this
is what you're gonna see on every city block in LA.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Homelessness is surging in the home state of Hollywood and
Silicon Valley. But why why is homelessness surging in California.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I'm Patrick CARELCI and I'm Adriana Cortez.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We are all about telling stories.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
The media marks stories about everyday Americans at the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
You could think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pill America. Southern California is facing a spike in homelessness.
(02:14):
The problem is surged in Los Angeles. But why why
is homelessness surging in southern California. To search for the answer,
we'll follow an inspiring young American that journeyed from the
White House to skid Row and hear what he learned
along the way. Ryan Hampton is the author of American
(02:35):
Fix inside the opioid addiction crisis. His road to author
was an unusual one. Ryan grew up in the Sunshine State.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
You know, I came from as much of a normal
childhood as you could think. Born in Miami, Florida. You know,
my dad was a stockbroker, my mom was a school teacher.
Grew up going to private school in middle school, went
to a really good public high school. Never really had
a problem with drugs or alcohol.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
He was always striving for more in his youth. He
excelled in academics, started a radio show when he was
sixteen years old, became the class president, and was even
on the swim team. But it was politics that called him.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
I was a weird kid after school, you know, starting
in middle school, I got very interested in politics. One
of my kind of like idols growing up, and as
weird as it sounds, was Ronald Reagan. I was excited
by politics, I was excited by following it, and so
I decided to enter and get involved. When I was
thirteen years old. I spent my days after school from
(03:36):
five pm to ten eleven o'clock at night putting together
posters and yard signs for Jeb Bush's first campaign. For
governor in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
But as Ryan got older, he found his calling in
liberal politics.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
And got really involved and took a look at the
other side of the aisle and worked for the Clinton
re election campaign and got in really tight with those
folks and was able to land an internship my first
year of college with the White House, which is really
where a lot of my political organizing work began.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
After his White House stint wrapped up in two thousand
and one, he decided to stay in Washington, DC. He'd
eventually get a job working at the Democratic National Committee.
Ryan's career was on the ep swing, but on an
otherwise normal day, the course of his life would take
an unexpected turn.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
Had a roommate and right around mid two thousand and three,
it's a great trail in between Maryland and Virginia. It's
pretty famous in the area called the Billygo Trail. And
I went hiking with my roommate. It was steep, and
it was just after it had rained one day, and
I slipped and I fell, and I injured my ankle
and my knee pretty much split my kneecap and injured
(04:48):
my ankle really really bad and ended up in the
care of a urgent care center in Maryland. The doctor
wrapped my knee up, said hey, you're going to need
to get this taken care of.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
The urgent care patched up his knee and told Ryan
he needed to get an MRI.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
And in the meantime, here's a prescription for something that
will help with pain. And what they prescribed me was hydromorphone, which,
for folks who don't know, that's a very high grade opioid.
It's also known as delauded. It's basically morphine in a pill.
I took that prescription and I never really went for
that follow up appointment. I didn't get the MRI. Did
(05:24):
I like the feeling that I got from that prescription? Absolutely?
Did it take away my pain? Yes? Did it take
away a lot of other stuff that was going on
in my life? Yes? Did I get the MRI?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
No?
Speaker 5 (05:33):
But what I did get was another prescription. You know.
I went back to that same doctor about a week later.
She wrote me another script, this time for more pills.
I went back a third time. She wrote me another
script for even more pills.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Because of a simple hiking injury, Ryan was becoming addicted
to opioids. The death of his father eventually drew him
back to Florida.
Speaker 5 (05:58):
You know anything about South Florida in the mid to
late two thousands, particularly Browd County, it was the height
of the pill mill crisis.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Tonight pills, pills and more pills, prescription drugs easy to get,
all in the name of pain.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Back pain, neck pain.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Everyone who goes to that clinic would basically come out
with the same prescription.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
In the first decade of the two thousands, Florida had
been experiencing the rise of pill mills or pain management
clinics that were popping up in Florida. Pharma companies who
manufactured opioids in pill form took advantage of Florida's relaxed
regulations by reportedly incentivizing doctors to push opioid prescriptions for
pain relief.
Speaker 5 (06:44):
There were these huge bonuses for them to get into
the pain management business. You saw doctors who were coming
out of retirement from being obgyns or I remember having
one who was an eye doctor coming out of retirement
and getting into the prescription pill pedaling business and it
just started to take off.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So when Ryan arrived in South Florida, he was entering
the worst possible environment for his growing habit, easy access
to opioid pills. The drug was taking a hold of him,
and he began to exploit this system.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
And I had gone to my primary care physician and said, hey, doc,
you know, I've got this problem with the knee, and
you know it's causing me issues and I haven't been
able to get it followed up on. And you know,
my insurance nucticle was really high and I'm not sure
if I can afford to get surgery right now because
of work, you know, but I need to take away
the pain. And he had referred me to a pain
management position, and that's where things really began to take off.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
His dependence was becoming physical. But strangely, the pill mill
environment in Florida seemed to normalize his behavior.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
When I went to that doctor's office that first time,
and they wrote me that prescription for oxycotton, and they
wrote me that prescription for xanax, they wrote me the
prescription for percocet, I mean I walked out of that
office with three or four bottles full of meds. I
kind of felt empowered in a sense as a drug user.
I kind of felt like it was co signed and
it was very weirdly and oddly accepted too. When this
(08:06):
whole pill mill crisis kicked off, it really wasn't shamed
and people really weren't talking about it. I mean, I
can remember at work having my pill bottles on my desk,
you know, I can remember colleagues asking me if they
could have one.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Over the coming years, he became more and more dependent
on the drug. When he needed more drugs than one
doctor would prescribe, he began doctor shopping, a practice used
by addicts where they find a new doctor to start
a completely different prescription regimen. Things started to spiral out
of control for Ryan. He became unemployable and had several
bounts with homelessness. In two thousand and six, he tried
(08:40):
addiction treatment for the first time. It didn't work. By
this time, the states started to get hip to the
pill mill problem, so they decided to do something that
would almost instantly kick off the opioid crisis as we
know it today.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
In two thousand and eight, the state of Florida decided
that they were going to fix this now emerging prescription
pill problem that they had. The state just felt like
it was flooded with opioids. They actually called I ninety five,
which starts down at Key West, goes all the way
up the east coast through Kentucky all the way up
(09:18):
to New York. They called that highway Oxycoton Express because
people would come down from Kentucky, come down from West Virginia,
go down to Broward County, literally a couple blocks from
where I lived, and get their medications and then go
back up and sell them and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Ryan's neighborhood had become a large distribution center of opioid
pills from much of America. By two thousand and eight,
Americans all across the country had become completely hooked on
the pills. So to fix the problem, Florida passed a
series of laws to try and stop the madness. They
created a statewide prescription database. That way, if an attict
(09:54):
began to doctor shop to get more and more pills,
the physician could search a database to see if the
patient had recently been prescribed opioids by another doctor. But
this created an unintended problem.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
Their intent with this was to just cut the pills off,
and they thought if they cut the pills off that
this problem would stop. We now know what that did.
That created this current day opioid crisis, this current day
elicit heroin infentanyl crisis. You can't just cut drug users
off and then expect them to stop. And that was
my story. I mean, I lived it.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
What Florida didn't anticipate was that no one understood the
drug market like the South American cartels. Eld Chappo and
hiszilk knew that countless Americans were now hooked on opioids.
Any change in the laws cutting off the supply of
prescription pills would open up a black market for the drug.
The cartel was ready and waiting.
Speaker 5 (10:49):
I went into my doctor's office in late two thousand
and seven, early two thousand and eight. This is a
doctor who knew that I was abusing or over using
my medications for quite some time. She knew that I
had a problem, but this visit was different.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
The new Florida law track drug prescriptions had just went
into effect.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
I remember very clearly, she said, you're going to get
me arrested. I'm going to lose my license. You're a
drug seeker, you're a junkie. I don't want you in
my office. If you come back here, I'm going to
have you arrested, I'm going to put in a treuspass
order for you. And this wasn't just happening to me.
This was happening to like everybody. It seemed like. I mean,
there was like an entire office full of people who
(11:26):
were getting discharged that specific day, and I was sick.
I mean, I was physically dependent on these medications. The
power of making that choice of just stopping had way
since passed for me. I was in physical withdrawal. I
could hardly move. I needed my medication. And when I
walked outside of that office that day, it was not
(11:49):
even a split second thought for me to start using heroin.
There were actually, you know, elicit opioid kind of like
black market dealers who were right there outside the office
pedaling heroin and pills and just selling pills for cash.
Was my descent into heroin.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
The cartel predicted a market before it even existed. Literally
the day the law restricting opioid pills prescriptions went to effect,
heroin was on the streets to fill the void.
Speaker 5 (12:13):
It was a split second bought from someone who had
worked in the White House and had this like up
and coming career a couple of years prior to becoming
a heroin US.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Heroin was everywhere, and it scooped up anyone that was
addicted to the prescription opioid pills, which by two thousand
and eight had spread throughout the country. The opioid crisis
was underway. Brian had tried several drug rehab centers in
(12:44):
South Florida, but they didn't help.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
Even when I was able to be lucky enough to
find myself in a recovery residence or sober living down
in South Florida, they weren't really what they were sold
to be. I mean, it was a scam. You know.
They were taking money from my family. They were taking
you know, money from the public insurance that I was
on and getting services. So the system was kind of
set up back then to keep us sick.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
He eventually made his way out west.
Speaker 5 (13:09):
I had a small brief period where I was sober
in Florida, came out to California. The job didn't work out,
ended up using again, ended up right back where I started,
except this time on skid row in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Here, Ryan was someone that once worked in the White House,
someone who, while trying to be healthy, busted his knee,
someone who was introduced to prescription painkillers and whose body
told him to take more, someone who found himself in
the epicenter of the pill mill crisis created by Big Pharma,
and who was now on skid row. Perhaps one of
the harshest environments for America's homeless. Unlike the rest of
(13:46):
the country that largely provides shelter, the true blue sanctuary
city of Los Angeles leaves an appalling seventy five percent
of their homeless on the street. In New York it's
only five percent. The environment wore on Ryan. He was
sick and tired of living on the streets. He wanted help.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Researching at public libraries what treatment was available where they were,
had opened up dialogue with my family again really expressed
a desire to get help, and they didn't have the
money to send me to a private, kind of shiny,
five star resort treatment center, but they were willing to
help me look for one that would take me on
Medicaid for free through public service and put my name
(14:25):
on waiting lists, multiple waiting lists, and towards the end,
those were some of the most terrifying days for me,
because I didn't know if I was going to make
it and I was constantly waiting for that phone call
that I would get a bed, and eventually I did
get that bed.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
On Thanksgiving Eve, twenty fourteen, Ryan's hopes were answered.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
I did get into a detox for about five or
six days. After being in that particular center for fi
six days, was kicked out and told that there was
no room for me to stay any longer because they
had to open up the beds for other people that
needed to get detox. So I was back in that
kind of revolving cycle of now where do I go?
And was very lucky to find another place. And February second,
(15:18):
twenty fifteen is when my recovery began. It was the
day that I that I left treatment. I hold on
to that day because I feel that that's where it
really started for me.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
He left the treatment center with nothing but two garbage
bags full of his belongings. He had no place to
stay again, but he got a helping hand.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
Lucky enough, there was a guy who was also in
recovery who picked me up from the treatment center and
got me a bed in a good sober living They
let me stay there for free for some time until
I was able to get a job and This was
very hard for me because I had always thought of
myself as someone who was going to go places in life.
I had always excelled as a kid. I had always
(15:58):
set these expectations within my family and within my community
that I would do something big with my life, that
I would find some sort of purpose, and was always
chasing after that, whether it be for a political campaign
or starting a radio show when I was like sixteen
years old, or being class president, being on the swim team.
(16:18):
I mean, I had goals and so to be really
minimalized in my head to this point where I had
nothing and was just kind of living day to day
and on foodstamps in the beginning, it was incredibly humbling
and very very hard. But I did it, and you know,
I just focused on the day ahead of me, and
I stayed close to my recovery community and I met
(16:39):
some people who I got really really close with, my
friend Greg, my friend Nick, Guys who I kind of
consider myself growing up with, because that's really when I
grew up, is when I entered recovery.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Ryan didn't have an AHA moment that pulled him off
of skid row. He just had a series of people
that helped him string together enough days to begin cleaning
himself up.
Speaker 5 (16:59):
I say I was lucky because I had a peer
who picked me up and took me to a safe
recovery house, a safe sober living where there are other
people who had more time than me, who were really
trying to do the right thing too. And I hate
to say, like fake it till you make it, but
that's kind of how my journey took off. It wasn't
(17:20):
this white light moment. It was a lot of other
people collectively believing in me when I had no faith
in myself whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
The road to recovery for Ryan wasn't easy.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
So those first six to eight months, I mean I
was ashamed. I was silent. My mom didn't want to
talk about it, my family didn't want to talk about it.
I didn't want anybody to know, you know, outside of
my small universe, that I was in recovery and that
I had gone through these issues for like the past
decade of my life. I just kind of wanted to
(17:58):
shut the door on all that and put a big
lock on it and just move forward with my life.
It was like this big secret that everybody kind of knew,
but I wanted it to remain a secret. It was
just kind of like the unspoken truth outside of my community.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
The shame kept Ryan quiet for a while. But then
something happened that would change that.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
It was a little bit before my year, my first year,
and I was still having a really hard time kind
of grasping this whole recovery thing. And you know, we
had been hearing about this opioid crisis, We had been
hearing about the addiction crisis. You know, I think it
was President Obama's final State of the Union he mentioned
heroin for the first time.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
So I hope we can work together this year on
some bipartisan priorities like criminal justice reformed and helping and
helping people who were battling prescription drug abuse and heroin abuse.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
You know, the federal government really started to address it
late twenty fifteen. Friends of mine, people I really came
to like love and admire and get close to it
just started dying to the other after the other. And
it had a profound impact on me. They weren't just dying,
they were dying in the process of looking for help.
I had become the manager at the house where I
(19:15):
was living at and Nick came home one night and
he said, I, you know, I've relapsed. I'm using it again.
I can't stop. You know, I want help. My parents
won't take my call. I have no insurance, I have
no money. I'm afraid to go talk to my job
about it because they're going to fire me. You know,
I know that I can't live here tonight.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
The owners thought his presence would make the other's relapse.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
But Nick really expressed this desire to find some help
and was terrified and scared. And he was only twenty
four years old. And it was about eight o'clock at
night when he came home and shared this with me.
And so I spent about three hours that night with him,
just talking to him, just listening to him.
Speaker 7 (19:53):
You know.
Speaker 5 (19:53):
When ten eleven o'clock came by, the owner of the
house said, look, you've got to get off the property.
So Nick packed up his two bags and we had
come up with this plan. I said, well, listen, man,
you know what you could do. There's an er room
about a mile away from here. I said, go to
this er room, get in there. Tell him you've got
a heroin problem. Tell him you can't stop using, ask
them for help. Tell them what you just told me,
(20:14):
and get some help, get treated there, get detox for
a day, two, whatever it takes. Call me when you're finished.
I'll come pick you up and we'll let you back in.
We'll do what we do and press the reset button
and just keep moving forward, right, And so that's what
he did. He went to that er room. When he
was discharged, he was given a white piece of paper
with a lot of phone numbers on it. They weren't
(20:36):
able to treat him. They weren't able to give him
any medication. There was no addictionologist on staff. They had
no idea what to do with him, and they kind
of treated him as just like quote unquote a junkie,
somebody who really wasn't worth it. And they kicked him
out and Nick died that night. Walking back to our house.
He used one more time and his body was found
about four blocks from our house on the sidewalk, just
(20:56):
slumped over. And that was the moment. Absolutely nothing about
that scenario sat right with me, felt right with me,
and at that moment I knew something had to change.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Welcome back to red pilled America. So in late twenty fifteen,
a little bit before his first year of recovery, Ryan
Hampton lost a friend who was in the process of
begging for help with his drug addiction. The death of
his friend had a profound impact on him, and he
decided to go back to his roots. He turned to
political organizing and ran to become a delegate to the
(21:34):
Democrat National Committee. But Ryan had a problem.
Speaker 5 (21:37):
I mean, I didn't have two pennies to rub together.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
He didn't think he had a chance of winning, but
he thought at least he could rally his community around
this overdose crisis.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
And I went around to sober livings, I went around
to treatment centers, and my pitch was something like this.
It was like, you know, are you sick and tired
of the overdose crisis? You know, I lost my friend Nick,
or not getting funding? What's happening. Here's something you can do,
you know, register to vote, show up at this caucus.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Ryan convinced about one hundred people from the sober living
in treatment center community to show up to the caucuss.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
And when I got there, there was this huge line
that snaked around the labor headquarters where it was being held.
There might have been six or seven hundred people there.
The seventy candidates had slick flyers and buttons and their
kids and you know, talking to everybody, and everybody knew
everybody else, and it was me who didn't know anybody
that was there. And basically all these younger recovery folks
(22:30):
who were there, and we didn't have flyers, we didn't
have t shirts made up, but we did have a
story to tell. So what I did is I worked
that line. My friends worked that line. We fanned out,
all hundred of us, and we talked to every single
person in that line and we told them while we
were there. I told them that, you know, I had
lost my friend Nick and my friend Greg, and that
(22:52):
people were dying right in our backyard. And this was
a story that needed to be told and an issue
that needed to be addressed. And I got to tell you,
I couldn't get fifteen seconds into my pitch. Every second
or third person had a story to share it with me.
A seventy two year old grandmother told me the story
of her granddaughter that she lost in Texas six months
prior to an overdose. I had a woman whose brother
(23:15):
was in treatment at that very time for alcoholism. Another
woman who grew up in an alcoholic household. And it
felt as if our community was waiting for an invitation
to talk about this, and we gave that to them,
and we had that election. I ended up winning. I
won big.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
En route to the DNC, Ryan went on a cross
country trip to speak about the crisis. He spoke to
young folks in recovery, he spoke to policymakers. The mainstream
media wouldn't give him the time of day, so he
turned to social media.
Speaker 5 (23:44):
Within eight months, we were reaching three four million people
a month who wanted to tell their stories, and the
platform just kept growing and growing and growing.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
By the time Trump won the election, Ryan had built
a major platform for the victims of drug addiction. So
he was left with a question, what am I.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Going to do with this? And what I ultimately decided was,
We're going to use this platform for impact. We're going
to use it to push for new legislation. We're going
to use it to fix some of these issues in
these states. We're going to use it to get at
the table with President Trump. We're going to use it
to make members of Congress listen to us. We're going
to use it to make the mainstream media listen to us.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
And he did just that.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Our next question comes from Ryan Hampton from Pasadena, California.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
Ryan. Hi, Ryan, there's a mic coming. My name is
Ryan Hampton. I'm a person in sustained recovery from a
substance use disorder and what that means to me is
that I haven't felt it necessary to have a drink
or a drug and most importantly to me, heroin or
opioids since February second, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Amongst other things, he saw stable recovery housing as key
to fighting the CIS, and he also identified a particularly
evil practice that needed to end, one that was directly
targeting vulnerable opioid addicts, something called patient brokering.
Speaker 8 (25:14):
So I spoke to a couple of people and I
that turned on to you from Alice. She said that
you'd be a good person to speak to. I believe
she told me that you might have lost a loved one.
I'm not sure.
Speaker 9 (25:27):
Yeah. I lost my son, Nicholas last December tenth. He
was twenty three. He was out in Los Angeles like
going through the rehab and recovery homes.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Nicholas grew up in the Lehigh Valley area, Pennsylvania. He
was tall, six foot three, two hundred pounds. As a kid,
he was outgoing.
Speaker 9 (25:50):
He was handsome. He would do anything for you. You know,
he had a good heart, and it's just all taken away.
He had a girlfriend that they were going on four years,
and that's a long time when you're twenty three. You know.
He wanted to have kids and get married.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Right before he started the tenth grade, Nicholas was introduced
to opioids, and the way that it happened may sound familiar.
Speaker 9 (26:16):
He had a product gland removed, and then he also
had the wisdom teeth removed. With both, he got prescribed.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
To pain till Nicholas was prescribed percocet, which contains oxycodone,
an opioid. The pain pills led to heroin use and
things began to spiral out of control. From there, he
began to bounce around to different rehabs, sometimes near his
home and then sometimes in South Florida. And why the
bouncing around, He met what is called a patient broker.
Speaker 10 (26:48):
And patient brokering is a phenomenon that basically is getting
kickbacks for referrals to different facilities.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
In a nutshell, that's pat awesome. A licensed counselor with
Partnership for Drug Free Kids, a national nonprofit that supports
families and victims of addiction and substance abuse. Patient brokery
is particularly prevalent in Florida and California because of its marketability.
Who wouldn't want to go to those sun drenched states
to clean up? Pat explains the process.
Speaker 10 (27:20):
I run a parent support group of family support group
in my town in New Jersey, and one of the
moms in the group had sent her son to Florida
for treatment. He was in treatment for a while, he left,
he relapsed, and then he was back in Dtox and
went to an AA meeting. And at the AA meeting
(27:40):
he met a young man and the first question was
actually what kind of insurance do you have?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
He had the Platinum standard and health insurance.
Speaker 10 (27:48):
So the young man said, well, look, I can get
you into a really great facility in California, and I
will fly you out there and I will put you
up in a hotel and give you some money for
the evening, and then we'll get you into Detox the
next time day. So now you've got a kid who
actually was working toward recovery, who's now on an airplane
(28:10):
going to California.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
His insurance card was shopped around to several California rehab
facilities to find the best kickback for the patient broker.
Speaker 10 (28:18):
They finally settled on one. He gets out there, he
goes into a hotel. There are three other kids that
are with him. They're given a couple hundred dollars to
use for the night. So of course they bought drugs
and then you know, went to detox. They were in
detox for four or five days, and then he said,
I've got a place you can go to back in Florida.
It'll be an intense about patient program affiliated with sober Living.
(28:43):
So the kids back on a plane. His insurance is
shopped around again, and it just repeated the cycle several times.
And of course the broker is getting kickbacks, and the
kickbacks are supposedly anywhere from I've heard five hundred to
five thousand dollars yesterday. I think I heard somebody say.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Ten thousand again, Ryan Hampton.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
I've scene get paid upwards of ten fifteen thousand dollars
for one person. So envision the scenario. You know, somebody
(29:24):
who was on the streets homeless like myself, goes to
addiction treatment. They get better, they get well, they enter recovery.
Their first month or two or three, they're living in
a sober living you know, they're working some nine to
five bare mimum wage job, but they're going to a
lot of recovery meetings. They're very well known in their
young recovery world. These providers will target those people young
(29:50):
in recovery and they'll say, hey, we helped kind of
save your life. You're an alumni of our center. Here's
a way you can make a lot of money. You
can save someone's life and you can make some money.
And it's the right thing to do. If you come
across someone who's in one of these meetings or a
friend of yours, or somebody in the community that needs help,
bring them to me, send me their insurance card, and
I will pay you a commission on that.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Predators have been around in the drug treatment world since
the beginning of drug treatment, but the amount of predators
began to explode over the past decade because of a
good intentioned program with unintended consequences.
Speaker 10 (30:24):
So, as an example, this particular mom that I'm referring
to talked about how her insurance company was built twenty
thousand dollars for one urine screen. What happens is there
was part of the I believe this is part of
the Affordable Care Act right allowed people to be on
their parents' insurance until they were twenty six, require that
(30:47):
different screenings be paid for by insurance.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Obamacare made certain drug treatments mandatory. Drug screening became covered
by insurance, So a drug addicts blood in urine became
a lucrative pathway for rehabs to build insurance. A name
has even been given to this blood and urine again
Nicholas's mom.
Speaker 9 (31:07):
People in that world call it like liquid gold because
they contract with the laboratories and charged to do like
the drug tests.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Testing blood and urine became a major financial opportunity for
unscrupulous treatment centers. That's what happened to Nicholas. An old
friend of his had become a patient broker in Los Angeles.
The treatment facilities gave Nicholas quote unquote scholarships to stay
in these houses to build his platinum health insurance for
the blood and urine screening and more.
Speaker 9 (31:39):
And they can go to like a cute partial program
whatever they set them up for, and you know they
can build insurance that way.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
The patient broker flew Nicholas out to a Los Angeles
treatment center in early November twenty seventeen. When he landed,
his insurance was getting billed almost immediately.
Speaker 11 (31:59):
We have bills for six thousand dollars that was just
blood work for one day, and his insurance was built
over one hundred thousand dollars for the five weeks that
he was out there.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Nicholas died of an overdose in Los Angeles while being
bounced around in this patient brokering system.
Speaker 9 (32:17):
We were supposed to come home and he just didn't
make it. The person that's addicted isn't getting placed in
the right treatment. They're just getting sent wherever the kickback
is for money. And then when the insurance stops paying
or they stop getting whatever financial incentive they got for
referring the person, you know, they're done. So if it's
(32:37):
not someone that has money to get back home thousands
of miles away, then yeah, then they're stuck there.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
The homelessness problem today, addressing it today. You know, I
live in southern California. It is booming. We have a
huge homeless population now, particularly in Orange County, because what
we're seeing is families are sending their loved ones to
these treatment centers across state lines, you know, that are
marketed as these big beautiful shop places that are going
(33:04):
to just fix your kid. They bring them out to
Cali and a lot of these young men and women
end up relapsing, they end up using again. And what
happens is they just boot them to the streets. They
just put them on the streets. You know, if you
walk them downtown LA or in Orange County and see
homeless folks or homeless kids particularly, and you ask them,
you know, how'd you end up here? And I do that,
(33:25):
the seven out of ten of them will tell you, well,
I came out here for rehab and now I'm stuck
and I have no way to get home.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Do you want to hear Red Pilled America stories ad free?
Then become a backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilled America
dot com and click join in the top menu. Join
today and help us save America, one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. It's impossible to get
an exact answer of how many of the homeless and
Los Angeles and Orange County are there because of patient brokering.
One because like illegal immigration, it's hard to track people
living on the street aren't in the system. But also,
like illegal alien crime, law enforcement are largely barred from
capturing data on the homeless for fear of litigation.
Speaker 6 (34:13):
You know, we had different municipalities and police departments that
straight up told us that they avoid tracking this information.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
That's Jordan Graham, a reporter for the Orange County Register.
He's been part of an investigation team that did a
series of deep investigations into how some of southern California
drug rehab centers were exploiting addiction.
Speaker 6 (34:34):
Addicts are protected under federal ada laws, and so the
notion that police would be tracking people who are in
the community to get help for addiction, you know, they
see that as potential to a lawsuit, and so no
one's really tracking this data.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Their reporting found plenty of anecdotal evidence that patient brokering
was exacerbating an already bad homeless problem.
Speaker 6 (34:57):
What we do know is that the change to Obamacare
actually help expedite it. And that's because under Obamacare, drug
addiction treatment is guaranteed.
Speaker 5 (35:07):
Through insurance companies.
Speaker 6 (35:09):
It's something that has to be covered there and so
one of the things that we were seeing was addicts
being imported from other states and then enrolled in a
preferred provider organization health plan in California through the state's
covered California insurance marketplace, and then you know, treatment centers,
you could collect payments that you know, exceed what would
otherwise be built or paid by medical and then you know,
(35:31):
even at that point, even in a case when they
had to pay deductibles, then sometimes the rehab would step
in and say we'll cover your deductible.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
The rehab would pay the health insurance deductible because it
was far less than the amount that they could build
insurance for blood and urine screening.
Speaker 6 (35:47):
So basically they were flying people in, signing them up
under the state marketplace, paying for the deductibles, and then
just doing urine tests every single day, doing these different
procedures that were potentially unnecessary, and just you know, billing
the heck out of different insurance companies.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
However, and acdotally, Jordan says that patient brokering is likely
only exacerbating a homeless crisis that's been driven largely by
a lack of affordable housing, which brings us back to
the question why is homelessness surging in southern California. The
answer is homelessness has always been a problem in California
because of the weather in California's failed political policies, but
(36:24):
a practice like patient brokering has made an already bad
problem that much worse. Florida passed a law outlawing patient brokering,
and because of the work of the Orange County Register
in Ryan Hampton, former Governor Brown signed a law to
outlaw the practice as well. Ryan also worked to get
this evil practice outlawed on a federal level.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
So something I spoke to President Trump about at length
and voiced my concern around patient brokering, and at the
last minute it wasn't expected to be part of the
opioid legislation, but they did put it in there, the
President signed it, and it is now federal law.
Speaker 7 (36:55):
We're gathered together today to address America's drug and opioid crisis,
and a crisis it is which now claims seventy thousand
lives a year. One year ago, I addressed a nation
in this very room and declared the opioid crisis a
national public health emergency. Today we are here to update
(37:18):
the American people on the historic action we have taken
and to sign landmark legislation to defeat the opioid epidemic. Together,
we are going to end the scorge of drug addiction
in America. We are going to end it, or we
are going to at least make an extremely big dent
(37:39):
in this terrible problem.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Time will tell whether either of these laws will work,
but Ryan says America is only just beginning to address
this topic and much more needs to get done.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
And I believe that you know, every candidate for president,
if they don't take the opioid crisis seriously, if they
don't bring our community to the table and talk with us,
they're going to have a very hard time getting out
of the primer.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Ryan had a parting message for anyone touched by drug addiction.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
But what I would like to close on, and I
think is the most important thing, is you know, all
these things I've talked about can't happen and we can't
move forward unless and I understand it is a very
personal decision because stigma and shame and discrimination when it
comes to folks who are suffering, most of them in
silence or people in recovery, it's still very real today.
(38:26):
But if you're in a place where you can share
your story, if you're in a place where you can
talk about your struggle, where you can talk about your
recovery or your family's experience, please do it. Please do it.
I promise you. It is a scary thing to go through.
But if you're in a place where you can do
it for the ones who can't, because that's how we're
(38:47):
able to get to solutions, by standing up, putting our
hands up and saying that we exist. And in closing,
if you have a family member or a loved one
who is struggling with this right now, I understand how
difficult that is and how hard it is to look
beyond that, but please don't shut them out of your life.
If anything, be there just to pick up the phone
(39:09):
and listen to them and tell them that you love them,
because sometimes that's all we have to hang on to
when we're out there.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Well, Ryan, I guess now's the time. I've always hesitated
to say this publicly, but I'll say it now. My
dad was a veteran, a Trump supporter. He was funny.
He was also a drug addict and homeless. Homeless for many,
many years. I tried to help him, but at some
(39:38):
point it became too painful and I cut him off.
I forgave him last Father's Day, but didn't have the
chance to tell him in time. He passed away this
past July. Not letting him know I forgave him was
one of the biggest regrets of my life, one that
(40:01):
I'll never be able to fix. Luckily, my sister remained
his family connection to the very very end. Drug addiction
and homelessness is an issue that has touched me personally,
and I'm here to tell you. Ryan's here to tell you.
Nicholas is here to tell you it can happen to anyone.
(40:23):
If we can't help America's most vulnerable, what business do
we have addressing the other problems of the world. This
is a big reason why I supported America first. It's
not because racism, xenophobia, or any of the other slurs
that are thrown our direction. I supported it because we
need to take care of Americans first, and I suspect
(40:45):
it's a big reason why many others have supported it
as well. Dad, if you're listening, I love you, and
I forgive you. I hope you forgive me. And to
our red Pilled America listeners, next time you see someone
(41:06):
living on the street, please just smile and say hello.
They don't want to be there. Try to think of
them as human beings that need help. They could be
the next Ryan Hampton, a true inspiration. Let's do what
we can to show them that their lives matter to
(41:28):
thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcasts produced by
Patrick Carrelchi and me Adriana Cortez for Informed Ventures. Thanks
for listening.
This is Red Pilled America. Why aren't you a Red
Pilled America dot com subscriber? We need your support. You
can listen to all of our episodes add free by
going to Redpilled America dot com and clicking join in
the top menu.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
If you believe in honesty and value the truth in storytelling,
then join us.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Become a Red Pilled America fanband member by going to
Redpilled America dot com and clicking join in the top menu.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Red Pilled America dot Com Now on with the show.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
This episode was originally broadcast on February first, twenty nineteen.
It's a personal one to us for reasons that will
become evident. There's a lot that needs fixing in California,
but perhaps its biggest black eye is the homeless. California
has the worst homeless problem in America.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Well, hundreds of homeless people in Orange County now have
two options, move out or get arrested.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
The county Board of Supervisors agreed to temporarily house at
least one hundred homeless in Huntington Beach, at least two
hundred just south of the Great Park in Irvine, and
more than one hundred in Laguna.
Speaker 5 (01:08):
Neguel Right now, we're in a homelessness crisis.
Speaker 6 (01:11):
If we keep leaving this without a crisis response, this
is what you're gonna see on every city block in LA.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Homelessness is surging in the home state of Hollywood and
Silicon Valley. But why why is homelessness surging in California.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I'm Patrick CARELCI and I'm Adriana Cortez.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We are all about telling stories.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
The media marks stories about everyday Americans at the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
You could think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pill America. Southern California is facing a spike in homelessness.
(02:14):
The problem is surged in Los Angeles. But why why
is homelessness surging in southern California. To search for the answer,
we'll follow an inspiring young American that journeyed from the
White House to skid Row and hear what he learned
along the way. Ryan Hampton is the author of American
(02:35):
Fix inside the opioid addiction crisis. His road to author
was an unusual one. Ryan grew up in the Sunshine State.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
You know, I came from as much of a normal
childhood as you could think. Born in Miami, Florida. You know,
my dad was a stockbroker, my mom was a school teacher.
Grew up going to private school in middle school, went
to a really good public high school. Never really had
a problem with drugs or alcohol.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
He was always striving for more in his youth. He
excelled in academics, started a radio show when he was
sixteen years old, became the class president, and was even
on the swim team. But it was politics that called him.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
I was a weird kid after school, you know, starting
in middle school, I got very interested in politics. One
of my kind of like idols growing up, and as
weird as it sounds, was Ronald Reagan. I was excited
by politics, I was excited by following it, and so
I decided to enter and get involved. When I was
thirteen years old. I spent my days after school from
(03:36):
five pm to ten eleven o'clock at night putting together
posters and yard signs for Jeb Bush's first campaign. For
governor in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
But as Ryan got older, he found his calling in
liberal politics.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
And got really involved and took a look at the
other side of the aisle and worked for the Clinton
re election campaign and got in really tight with those
folks and was able to land an internship my first
year of college with the White House, which is really
where a lot of my political organizing work began.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
After his White House stint wrapped up in two thousand
and one, he decided to stay in Washington, DC. He'd
eventually get a job working at the Democratic National Committee.
Ryan's career was on the ep swing, but on an
otherwise normal day, the course of his life would take
an unexpected turn.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
Had a roommate and right around mid two thousand and three,
it's a great trail in between Maryland and Virginia. It's
pretty famous in the area called the Billygo Trail. And
I went hiking with my roommate. It was steep, and
it was just after it had rained one day, and
I slipped and I fell, and I injured my ankle
and my knee pretty much split my kneecap and injured
(04:48):
my ankle really really bad and ended up in the
care of a urgent care center in Maryland. The doctor
wrapped my knee up, said hey, you're going to need
to get this taken care of.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
The urgent care patched up his knee and told Ryan
he needed to get an MRI.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
And in the meantime, here's a prescription for something that
will help with pain. And what they prescribed me was hydromorphone, which,
for folks who don't know, that's a very high grade opioid.
It's also known as delauded. It's basically morphine in a pill.
I took that prescription and I never really went for
that follow up appointment. I didn't get the MRI. Did
(05:24):
I like the feeling that I got from that prescription? Absolutely?
Did it take away my pain? Yes? Did it take
away a lot of other stuff that was going on
in my life? Yes? Did I get the MRI?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
No?
Speaker 5 (05:33):
But what I did get was another prescription. You know.
I went back to that same doctor about a week later.
She wrote me another script, this time for more pills.
I went back a third time. She wrote me another
script for even more pills.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Because of a simple hiking injury, Ryan was becoming addicted
to opioids. The death of his father eventually drew him
back to Florida.
Speaker 5 (05:58):
You know anything about South Florida in the mid to
late two thousands, particularly Browd County, it was the height
of the pill mill crisis.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Tonight pills, pills and more pills, prescription drugs easy to get,
all in the name of pain.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Back pain, neck pain.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Everyone who goes to that clinic would basically come out
with the same prescription.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
In the first decade of the two thousands, Florida had
been experiencing the rise of pill mills or pain management
clinics that were popping up in Florida. Pharma companies who
manufactured opioids in pill form took advantage of Florida's relaxed
regulations by reportedly incentivizing doctors to push opioid prescriptions for
pain relief.
Speaker 5 (06:44):
There were these huge bonuses for them to get into
the pain management business. You saw doctors who were coming
out of retirement from being obgyns or I remember having
one who was an eye doctor coming out of retirement
and getting into the prescription pill pedaling business and it
just started to take off.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So when Ryan arrived in South Florida, he was entering
the worst possible environment for his growing habit, easy access
to opioid pills. The drug was taking a hold of him,
and he began to exploit this system.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
And I had gone to my primary care physician and said, hey, doc,
you know, I've got this problem with the knee, and
you know it's causing me issues and I haven't been
able to get it followed up on. And you know,
my insurance nucticle was really high and I'm not sure
if I can afford to get surgery right now because
of work, you know, but I need to take away
the pain. And he had referred me to a pain
management position, and that's where things really began to take off.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
His dependence was becoming physical. But strangely, the pill mill
environment in Florida seemed to normalize his behavior.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
When I went to that doctor's office that first time,
and they wrote me that prescription for oxycotton, and they
wrote me that prescription for xanax, they wrote me the
prescription for percocet, I mean I walked out of that
office with three or four bottles full of meds. I
kind of felt empowered in a sense as a drug user.
I kind of felt like it was co signed and
it was very weirdly and oddly accepted too. When this
(08:06):
whole pill mill crisis kicked off, it really wasn't shamed
and people really weren't talking about it. I mean, I
can remember at work having my pill bottles on my desk,
you know, I can remember colleagues asking me if they
could have one.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Over the coming years, he became more and more dependent
on the drug. When he needed more drugs than one
doctor would prescribe, he began doctor shopping, a practice used
by addicts where they find a new doctor to start
a completely different prescription regimen. Things started to spiral out
of control for Ryan. He became unemployable and had several
bounts with homelessness. In two thousand and six, he tried
(08:40):
addiction treatment for the first time. It didn't work. By
this time, the states started to get hip to the
pill mill problem, so they decided to do something that
would almost instantly kick off the opioid crisis as we
know it today.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
In two thousand and eight, the state of Florida decided
that they were going to fix this now emerging prescription
pill problem that they had. The state just felt like
it was flooded with opioids. They actually called I ninety five,
which starts down at Key West, goes all the way
up the east coast through Kentucky all the way up
(09:18):
to New York. They called that highway Oxycoton Express because
people would come down from Kentucky, come down from West Virginia,
go down to Broward County, literally a couple blocks from
where I lived, and get their medications and then go
back up and sell them and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Ryan's neighborhood had become a large distribution center of opioid
pills from much of America. By two thousand and eight,
Americans all across the country had become completely hooked on
the pills. So to fix the problem, Florida passed a
series of laws to try and stop the madness. They
created a statewide prescription database. That way, if an attict
(09:54):
began to doctor shop to get more and more pills,
the physician could search a database to see if the
patient had recently been prescribed opioids by another doctor. But
this created an unintended problem.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
Their intent with this was to just cut the pills off,
and they thought if they cut the pills off that
this problem would stop. We now know what that did.
That created this current day opioid crisis, this current day
elicit heroin infentanyl crisis. You can't just cut drug users
off and then expect them to stop. And that was
my story. I mean, I lived it.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
What Florida didn't anticipate was that no one understood the
drug market like the South American cartels. Eld Chappo and
hiszilk knew that countless Americans were now hooked on opioids.
Any change in the laws cutting off the supply of
prescription pills would open up a black market for the drug.
The cartel was ready and waiting.
Speaker 5 (10:49):
I went into my doctor's office in late two thousand
and seven, early two thousand and eight. This is a
doctor who knew that I was abusing or over using
my medications for quite some time. She knew that I
had a problem, but this visit was different.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
The new Florida law track drug prescriptions had just went
into effect.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
I remember very clearly, she said, you're going to get
me arrested. I'm going to lose my license. You're a
drug seeker, you're a junkie. I don't want you in
my office. If you come back here, I'm going to
have you arrested, I'm going to put in a treuspass
order for you. And this wasn't just happening to me.
This was happening to like everybody. It seemed like. I mean,
there was like an entire office full of people who
(11:26):
were getting discharged that specific day, and I was sick.
I mean, I was physically dependent on these medications. The
power of making that choice of just stopping had way
since passed for me. I was in physical withdrawal. I
could hardly move. I needed my medication. And when I
walked outside of that office that day, it was not
(11:49):
even a split second thought for me to start using heroin.
There were actually, you know, elicit opioid kind of like
black market dealers who were right there outside the office
pedaling heroin and pills and just selling pills for cash.
Was my descent into heroin.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
The cartel predicted a market before it even existed. Literally
the day the law restricting opioid pills prescriptions went to effect,
heroin was on the streets to fill the void.
Speaker 5 (12:13):
It was a split second bought from someone who had
worked in the White House and had this like up
and coming career a couple of years prior to becoming
a heroin US.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Heroin was everywhere, and it scooped up anyone that was
addicted to the prescription opioid pills, which by two thousand
and eight had spread throughout the country. The opioid crisis
was underway. Brian had tried several drug rehab centers in
(12:44):
South Florida, but they didn't help.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
Even when I was able to be lucky enough to
find myself in a recovery residence or sober living down
in South Florida, they weren't really what they were sold
to be. I mean, it was a scam. You know.
They were taking money from my family. They were taking
you know, money from the public insurance that I was
on and getting services. So the system was kind of
set up back then to keep us sick.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
He eventually made his way out west.
Speaker 5 (13:09):
I had a small brief period where I was sober
in Florida, came out to California. The job didn't work out,
ended up using again, ended up right back where I started,
except this time on skid row in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Here, Ryan was someone that once worked in the White House,
someone who, while trying to be healthy, busted his knee,
someone who was introduced to prescription painkillers and whose body
told him to take more, someone who found himself in
the epicenter of the pill mill crisis created by Big Pharma,
and who was now on skid row. Perhaps one of
the harshest environments for America's homeless. Unlike the rest of
(13:46):
the country that largely provides shelter, the true blue sanctuary
city of Los Angeles leaves an appalling seventy five percent
of their homeless on the street. In New York it's
only five percent. The environment wore on Ryan. He was
sick and tired of living on the streets. He wanted help.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Researching at public libraries what treatment was available where they were,
had opened up dialogue with my family again really expressed
a desire to get help, and they didn't have the
money to send me to a private, kind of shiny,
five star resort treatment center, but they were willing to
help me look for one that would take me on
Medicaid for free through public service and put my name
(14:25):
on waiting lists, multiple waiting lists, and towards the end,
those were some of the most terrifying days for me,
because I didn't know if I was going to make
it and I was constantly waiting for that phone call
that I would get a bed, and eventually I did
get that bed.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
On Thanksgiving Eve, twenty fourteen, Ryan's hopes were answered.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
I did get into a detox for about five or
six days. After being in that particular center for fi
six days, was kicked out and told that there was
no room for me to stay any longer because they
had to open up the beds for other people that
needed to get detox. So I was back in that
kind of revolving cycle of now where do I go?
And was very lucky to find another place. And February second,
(15:18):
twenty fifteen is when my recovery began. It was the
day that I that I left treatment. I hold on
to that day because I feel that that's where it
really started for me.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
He left the treatment center with nothing but two garbage
bags full of his belongings. He had no place to
stay again, but he got a helping hand.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
Lucky enough, there was a guy who was also in
recovery who picked me up from the treatment center and
got me a bed in a good sober living They
let me stay there for free for some time until
I was able to get a job and This was
very hard for me because I had always thought of
myself as someone who was going to go places in life.
I had always excelled as a kid. I had always
(15:58):
set these expectations within my family and within my community
that I would do something big with my life, that
I would find some sort of purpose, and was always
chasing after that, whether it be for a political campaign
or starting a radio show when I was like sixteen
years old, or being class president, being on the swim team.
(16:18):
I mean, I had goals and so to be really
minimalized in my head to this point where I had
nothing and was just kind of living day to day
and on foodstamps in the beginning, it was incredibly humbling
and very very hard. But I did it, and you know,
I just focused on the day ahead of me, and
I stayed close to my recovery community and I met
(16:39):
some people who I got really really close with, my
friend Greg, my friend Nick, Guys who I kind of
consider myself growing up with, because that's really when I
grew up, is when I entered recovery.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Ryan didn't have an AHA moment that pulled him off
of skid row. He just had a series of people
that helped him string together enough days to begin cleaning
himself up.
Speaker 5 (16:59):
I say I was lucky because I had a peer
who picked me up and took me to a safe
recovery house, a safe sober living where there are other
people who had more time than me, who were really
trying to do the right thing too. And I hate
to say, like fake it till you make it, but
that's kind of how my journey took off. It wasn't
(17:20):
this white light moment. It was a lot of other
people collectively believing in me when I had no faith
in myself whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
The road to recovery for Ryan wasn't easy.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
So those first six to eight months, I mean I
was ashamed. I was silent. My mom didn't want to
talk about it, my family didn't want to talk about it.
I didn't want anybody to know, you know, outside of
my small universe, that I was in recovery and that
I had gone through these issues for like the past
decade of my life. I just kind of wanted to
(17:58):
shut the door on all that and put a big
lock on it and just move forward with my life.
It was like this big secret that everybody kind of knew,
but I wanted it to remain a secret. It was
just kind of like the unspoken truth outside of my community.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
The shame kept Ryan quiet for a while. But then
something happened that would change that.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
It was a little bit before my year, my first year,
and I was still having a really hard time kind
of grasping this whole recovery thing. And you know, we
had been hearing about this opioid crisis, We had been
hearing about the addiction crisis. You know, I think it
was President Obama's final State of the Union he mentioned
heroin for the first time.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
So I hope we can work together this year on
some bipartisan priorities like criminal justice reformed and helping and
helping people who were battling prescription drug abuse and heroin abuse.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
You know, the federal government really started to address it
late twenty fifteen. Friends of mine, people I really came
to like love and admire and get close to it
just started dying to the other after the other. And
it had a profound impact on me. They weren't just dying,
they were dying in the process of looking for help.
I had become the manager at the house where I
(19:15):
was living at and Nick came home one night and
he said, I, you know, I've relapsed. I'm using it again.
I can't stop. You know, I want help. My parents
won't take my call. I have no insurance, I have
no money. I'm afraid to go talk to my job
about it because they're going to fire me. You know,
I know that I can't live here tonight.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
The owners thought his presence would make the other's relapse.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
But Nick really expressed this desire to find some help
and was terrified and scared. And he was only twenty
four years old. And it was about eight o'clock at
night when he came home and shared this with me.
And so I spent about three hours that night with him,
just talking to him, just listening to him.
Speaker 7 (19:53):
You know.
Speaker 5 (19:53):
When ten eleven o'clock came by, the owner of the
house said, look, you've got to get off the property.
So Nick packed up his two bags and we had
come up with this plan. I said, well, listen, man,
you know what you could do. There's an er room
about a mile away from here. I said, go to
this er room, get in there. Tell him you've got
a heroin problem. Tell him you can't stop using, ask
them for help. Tell them what you just told me,
(20:14):
and get some help, get treated there, get detox for
a day, two, whatever it takes. Call me when you're finished.
I'll come pick you up and we'll let you back in.
We'll do what we do and press the reset button
and just keep moving forward, right, And so that's what
he did. He went to that er room. When he
was discharged, he was given a white piece of paper
with a lot of phone numbers on it. They weren't
(20:36):
able to treat him. They weren't able to give him
any medication. There was no addictionologist on staff. They had
no idea what to do with him, and they kind
of treated him as just like quote unquote a junkie,
somebody who really wasn't worth it. And they kicked him
out and Nick died that night. Walking back to our house.
He used one more time and his body was found
about four blocks from our house on the sidewalk, just
(20:56):
slumped over. And that was the moment. Absolutely nothing about
that scenario sat right with me, felt right with me,
and at that moment I knew something had to change.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Welcome back to red pilled America. So in late twenty fifteen,
a little bit before his first year of recovery, Ryan
Hampton lost a friend who was in the process of
begging for help with his drug addiction. The death of
his friend had a profound impact on him, and he
decided to go back to his roots. He turned to
political organizing and ran to become a delegate to the
(21:34):
Democrat National Committee. But Ryan had a problem.
Speaker 5 (21:37):
I mean, I didn't have two pennies to rub together.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
He didn't think he had a chance of winning, but
he thought at least he could rally his community around
this overdose crisis.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
And I went around to sober livings, I went around
to treatment centers, and my pitch was something like this.
It was like, you know, are you sick and tired
of the overdose crisis? You know, I lost my friend Nick,
or not getting funding? What's happening. Here's something you can do,
you know, register to vote, show up at this caucus.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Ryan convinced about one hundred people from the sober living
in treatment center community to show up to the caucuss.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
And when I got there, there was this huge line
that snaked around the labor headquarters where it was being held.
There might have been six or seven hundred people there.
The seventy candidates had slick flyers and buttons and their
kids and you know, talking to everybody, and everybody knew
everybody else, and it was me who didn't know anybody
that was there. And basically all these younger recovery folks
(22:30):
who were there, and we didn't have flyers, we didn't
have t shirts made up, but we did have a
story to tell. So what I did is I worked
that line. My friends worked that line. We fanned out,
all hundred of us, and we talked to every single
person in that line and we told them while we
were there. I told them that, you know, I had
lost my friend Nick and my friend Greg, and that
(22:52):
people were dying right in our backyard. And this was
a story that needed to be told and an issue
that needed to be addressed. And I got to tell you,
I couldn't get fifteen seconds into my pitch. Every second
or third person had a story to share it with me.
A seventy two year old grandmother told me the story
of her granddaughter that she lost in Texas six months
prior to an overdose. I had a woman whose brother
(23:15):
was in treatment at that very time for alcoholism. Another
woman who grew up in an alcoholic household. And it
felt as if our community was waiting for an invitation
to talk about this, and we gave that to them,
and we had that election. I ended up winning. I
won big.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
En route to the DNC, Ryan went on a cross
country trip to speak about the crisis. He spoke to
young folks in recovery, he spoke to policymakers. The mainstream
media wouldn't give him the time of day, so he
turned to social media.
Speaker 5 (23:44):
Within eight months, we were reaching three four million people
a month who wanted to tell their stories, and the
platform just kept growing and growing and growing.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
By the time Trump won the election, Ryan had built
a major platform for the victims of drug addiction. So
he was left with a question, what am I.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Going to do with this? And what I ultimately decided was,
We're going to use this platform for impact. We're going
to use it to push for new legislation. We're going
to use it to fix some of these issues in
these states. We're going to use it to get at
the table with President Trump. We're going to use it
to make members of Congress listen to us. We're going
to use it to make the mainstream media listen to us.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
And he did just that.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Our next question comes from Ryan Hampton from Pasadena, California.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
Ryan. Hi, Ryan, there's a mic coming. My name is
Ryan Hampton. I'm a person in sustained recovery from a
substance use disorder and what that means to me is
that I haven't felt it necessary to have a drink
or a drug and most importantly to me, heroin or
opioids since February second, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Amongst other things, he saw stable recovery housing as key
to fighting the CIS, and he also identified a particularly
evil practice that needed to end, one that was directly
targeting vulnerable opioid addicts, something called patient brokering.
Speaker 8 (25:14):
So I spoke to a couple of people and I
that turned on to you from Alice. She said that
you'd be a good person to speak to. I believe
she told me that you might have lost a loved one.
I'm not sure.
Speaker 9 (25:27):
Yeah. I lost my son, Nicholas last December tenth. He
was twenty three. He was out in Los Angeles like
going through the rehab and recovery homes.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Nicholas grew up in the Lehigh Valley area, Pennsylvania. He
was tall, six foot three, two hundred pounds. As a kid,
he was outgoing.
Speaker 9 (25:50):
He was handsome. He would do anything for you. You know,
he had a good heart, and it's just all taken away.
He had a girlfriend that they were going on four years,
and that's a long time when you're twenty three. You know.
He wanted to have kids and get married.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Right before he started the tenth grade, Nicholas was introduced
to opioids, and the way that it happened may sound familiar.
Speaker 9 (26:16):
He had a product gland removed, and then he also
had the wisdom teeth removed. With both, he got prescribed.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
To pain till Nicholas was prescribed percocet, which contains oxycodone,
an opioid. The pain pills led to heroin use and
things began to spiral out of control. From there, he
began to bounce around to different rehabs, sometimes near his
home and then sometimes in South Florida. And why the
bouncing around, He met what is called a patient broker.
Speaker 10 (26:48):
And patient brokering is a phenomenon that basically is getting
kickbacks for referrals to different facilities.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
In a nutshell, that's pat awesome. A licensed counselor with
Partnership for Drug Free Kids, a national nonprofit that supports
families and victims of addiction and substance abuse. Patient brokery
is particularly prevalent in Florida and California because of its marketability.
Who wouldn't want to go to those sun drenched states
to clean up? Pat explains the process.
Speaker 10 (27:20):
I run a parent support group of family support group
in my town in New Jersey, and one of the
moms in the group had sent her son to Florida
for treatment. He was in treatment for a while, he left,
he relapsed, and then he was back in Dtox and
went to an AA meeting. And at the AA meeting
(27:40):
he met a young man and the first question was
actually what kind of insurance do you have?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
He had the Platinum standard and health insurance.
Speaker 10 (27:48):
So the young man said, well, look, I can get
you into a really great facility in California, and I
will fly you out there and I will put you
up in a hotel and give you some money for
the evening, and then we'll get you into Detox the
next time day. So now you've got a kid who
actually was working toward recovery, who's now on an airplane
(28:10):
going to California.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
His insurance card was shopped around to several California rehab
facilities to find the best kickback for the patient broker.
Speaker 10 (28:18):
They finally settled on one. He gets out there, he
goes into a hotel. There are three other kids that
are with him. They're given a couple hundred dollars to
use for the night. So of course they bought drugs
and then you know, went to detox. They were in
detox for four or five days, and then he said,
I've got a place you can go to back in Florida.
It'll be an intense about patient program affiliated with sober Living.
(28:43):
So the kids back on a plane. His insurance is
shopped around again, and it just repeated the cycle several times.
And of course the broker is getting kickbacks, and the
kickbacks are supposedly anywhere from I've heard five hundred to
five thousand dollars yesterday. I think I heard somebody say.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Ten thousand again, Ryan Hampton.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
I've scene get paid upwards of ten fifteen thousand dollars
for one person. So envision the scenario. You know, somebody
(29:24):
who was on the streets homeless like myself, goes to
addiction treatment. They get better, they get well, they enter recovery.
Their first month or two or three, they're living in
a sober living you know, they're working some nine to
five bare mimum wage job, but they're going to a
lot of recovery meetings. They're very well known in their
young recovery world. These providers will target those people young
(29:50):
in recovery and they'll say, hey, we helped kind of
save your life. You're an alumni of our center. Here's
a way you can make a lot of money. You
can save someone's life and you can make some money.
And it's the right thing to do. If you come
across someone who's in one of these meetings or a
friend of yours, or somebody in the community that needs help,
bring them to me, send me their insurance card, and
I will pay you a commission on that.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Predators have been around in the drug treatment world since
the beginning of drug treatment, but the amount of predators
began to explode over the past decade because of a
good intentioned program with unintended consequences.
Speaker 10 (30:24):
So, as an example, this particular mom that I'm referring
to talked about how her insurance company was built twenty
thousand dollars for one urine screen. What happens is there
was part of the I believe this is part of
the Affordable Care Act right allowed people to be on
their parents' insurance until they were twenty six, require that
(30:47):
different screenings be paid for by insurance.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Obamacare made certain drug treatments mandatory. Drug screening became covered
by insurance, So a drug addicts blood in urine became
a lucrative pathway for rehabs to build insurance. A name
has even been given to this blood and urine again
Nicholas's mom.
Speaker 9 (31:07):
People in that world call it like liquid gold because
they contract with the laboratories and charged to do like
the drug tests.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Testing blood and urine became a major financial opportunity for
unscrupulous treatment centers. That's what happened to Nicholas. An old
friend of his had become a patient broker in Los Angeles.
The treatment facilities gave Nicholas quote unquote scholarships to stay
in these houses to build his platinum health insurance for
the blood and urine screening and more.
Speaker 9 (31:39):
And they can go to like a cute partial program
whatever they set them up for, and you know they
can build insurance that way.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
The patient broker flew Nicholas out to a Los Angeles
treatment center in early November twenty seventeen. When he landed,
his insurance was getting billed almost immediately.
Speaker 11 (31:59):
We have bills for six thousand dollars that was just
blood work for one day, and his insurance was built
over one hundred thousand dollars for the five weeks that
he was out there.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Nicholas died of an overdose in Los Angeles while being
bounced around in this patient brokering system.
Speaker 9 (32:17):
We were supposed to come home and he just didn't
make it. The person that's addicted isn't getting placed in
the right treatment. They're just getting sent wherever the kickback
is for money. And then when the insurance stops paying
or they stop getting whatever financial incentive they got for
referring the person, you know, they're done. So if it's
(32:37):
not someone that has money to get back home thousands
of miles away, then yeah, then they're stuck there.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
The homelessness problem today, addressing it today. You know, I
live in southern California. It is booming. We have a
huge homeless population now, particularly in Orange County, because what
we're seeing is families are sending their loved ones to
these treatment centers across state lines, you know, that are
marketed as these big beautiful shop places that are going
(33:04):
to just fix your kid. They bring them out to
Cali and a lot of these young men and women
end up relapsing, they end up using again. And what
happens is they just boot them to the streets. They
just put them on the streets. You know, if you
walk them downtown LA or in Orange County and see
homeless folks or homeless kids particularly, and you ask them,
you know, how'd you end up here? And I do that,
(33:25):
the seven out of ten of them will tell you, well,
I came out here for rehab and now I'm stuck
and I have no way to get home.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
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today and help us save America, one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. It's impossible to get
an exact answer of how many of the homeless and
Los Angeles and Orange County are there because of patient brokering.
One because like illegal immigration, it's hard to track people
living on the street aren't in the system. But also,
like illegal alien crime, law enforcement are largely barred from
capturing data on the homeless for fear of litigation.
Speaker 6 (34:13):
You know, we had different municipalities and police departments that
straight up told us that they avoid tracking this information.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
That's Jordan Graham, a reporter for the Orange County Register.
He's been part of an investigation team that did a
series of deep investigations into how some of southern California
drug rehab centers were exploiting addiction.
Speaker 6 (34:34):
Addicts are protected under federal ada laws, and so the
notion that police would be tracking people who are in
the community to get help for addiction, you know, they
see that as potential to a lawsuit, and so no
one's really tracking this data.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Their reporting found plenty of anecdotal evidence that patient brokering
was exacerbating an already bad homeless problem.
Speaker 6 (34:57):
What we do know is that the change to Obamacare
actually help expedite it. And that's because under Obamacare, drug
addiction treatment is guaranteed.
Speaker 5 (35:07):
Through insurance companies.
Speaker 6 (35:09):
It's something that has to be covered there and so
one of the things that we were seeing was addicts
being imported from other states and then enrolled in a
preferred provider organization health plan in California through the state's
covered California insurance marketplace, and then you know, treatment centers,
you could collect payments that you know, exceed what would
otherwise be built or paid by medical and then you know,
(35:31):
even at that point, even in a case when they
had to pay deductibles, then sometimes the rehab would step
in and say we'll cover your deductible.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
The rehab would pay the health insurance deductible because it
was far less than the amount that they could build
insurance for blood and urine screening.
Speaker 6 (35:47):
So basically they were flying people in, signing them up
under the state marketplace, paying for the deductibles, and then
just doing urine tests every single day, doing these different
procedures that were potentially unnecessary, and just you know, billing
the heck out of different insurance companies.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
However, and acdotally, Jordan says that patient brokering is likely
only exacerbating a homeless crisis that's been driven largely by
a lack of affordable housing, which brings us back to
the question why is homelessness surging in southern California. The
answer is homelessness has always been a problem in California
because of the weather in California's failed political policies, but
(36:24):
a practice like patient brokering has made an already bad
problem that much worse. Florida passed a law outlawing patient brokering,
and because of the work of the Orange County Register
in Ryan Hampton, former Governor Brown signed a law to
outlaw the practice as well. Ryan also worked to get
this evil practice outlawed on a federal level.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
So something I spoke to President Trump about at length
and voiced my concern around patient brokering, and at the
last minute it wasn't expected to be part of the
opioid legislation, but they did put it in there, the
President signed it, and it is now federal law.
Speaker 7 (36:55):
We're gathered together today to address America's drug and opioid crisis,
and a crisis it is which now claims seventy thousand
lives a year. One year ago, I addressed a nation
in this very room and declared the opioid crisis a
national public health emergency. Today we are here to update
(37:18):
the American people on the historic action we have taken
and to sign landmark legislation to defeat the opioid epidemic. Together,
we are going to end the scorge of drug addiction
in America. We are going to end it, or we
are going to at least make an extremely big dent
(37:39):
in this terrible problem.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Time will tell whether either of these laws will work,
but Ryan says America is only just beginning to address
this topic and much more needs to get done.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
And I believe that you know, every candidate for president,
if they don't take the opioid crisis seriously, if they
don't bring our community to the table and talk with us,
they're going to have a very hard time getting out
of the primer.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Ryan had a parting message for anyone touched by drug addiction.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
But what I would like to close on, and I
think is the most important thing, is you know, all
these things I've talked about can't happen and we can't
move forward unless and I understand it is a very
personal decision because stigma and shame and discrimination when it
comes to folks who are suffering, most of them in
silence or people in recovery, it's still very real today.
(38:26):
But if you're in a place where you can share
your story, if you're in a place where you can
talk about your struggle, where you can talk about your
recovery or your family's experience, please do it. Please do it.
I promise you. It is a scary thing to go through.
But if you're in a place where you can do
it for the ones who can't, because that's how we're
(38:47):
able to get to solutions, by standing up, putting our
hands up and saying that we exist. And in closing,
if you have a family member or a loved one
who is struggling with this right now, I understand how
difficult that is and how hard it is to look
beyond that, but please don't shut them out of your life.
If anything, be there just to pick up the phone
(39:09):
and listen to them and tell them that you love them,
because sometimes that's all we have to hang on to
when we're out there.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Well, Ryan, I guess now's the time. I've always hesitated
to say this publicly, but I'll say it now. My
dad was a veteran, a Trump supporter. He was funny.
He was also a drug addict and homeless. Homeless for many,
many years. I tried to help him, but at some
(39:38):
point it became too painful and I cut him off.
I forgave him last Father's Day, but didn't have the
chance to tell him in time. He passed away this
past July. Not letting him know I forgave him was
one of the biggest regrets of my life, one that
(40:01):
I'll never be able to fix. Luckily, my sister remained
his family connection to the very very end. Drug addiction
and homelessness is an issue that has touched me personally,
and I'm here to tell you. Ryan's here to tell you.
Nicholas is here to tell you it can happen to anyone.
(40:23):
If we can't help America's most vulnerable, what business do
we have addressing the other problems of the world. This
is a big reason why I supported America first. It's
not because racism, xenophobia, or any of the other slurs
that are thrown our direction. I supported it because we
need to take care of Americans first, and I suspect
(40:45):
it's a big reason why many others have supported it
as well. Dad, if you're listening, I love you, and
I forgive you. I hope you forgive me. And to
our red Pilled America listeners, next time you see someone
(41:06):
living on the street, please just smile and say hello.
They don't want to be there. Try to think of
them as human beings that need help. They could be
the next Ryan Hampton, a true inspiration. Let's do what
we can to show them that their lives matter to
(41:28):
thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcasts produced by
Patrick Carrelchi and me Adriana Cortez for Informed Ventures. Thanks
for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Adryana Cortez
Patrick Courrielche
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