#632 - Thomas Dockstader - Founder The Chi Codes Shares What It Was Like Growing Up In Polygamous Community

In this episode of The Jimmy Rex Show, Jimmy sits down with his good friend Thomas Dockstader — author of The Chi Codes, founder of The Chi Codes company, and a powerful leader inside “We Are The They.” Raised in a strict FLDS polygamist community under Warren Jeffs, Thomas shares the raw details of growing up inside a closed-off religious sect, being indoctrinated daily, and the moment he chose to walk away from it all at just 18 years old. His early life reads like a movie — from wearing pilgrim-style clothes in West Jordan to working grueling construction jobs across the Southwest while hiding his true family story.

Thomas opens up about how childhood shame, hidden trauma, and deeply buried beliefs led him down a path of severe alcoholism, multiple marriages, and even a near-suicide attempt on his front lawn. But this story is far from over. He dives into the moments that transformed him — the life-threatening coma from a brutal assault, the pivotal realization that alcohol was only masking deeper pain, and the way transcendental meditation and ayahuasca ceremonies ultimately led him to profound self-acceptance and purpose.

Today, Thomas is eight years sober and dedicates his life to helping others break through their own patterns of shame and addiction. He shares how he turned his past into a mission — offering his teachings, free courses, and powerful message of hope to anyone ready to heal. Whether you’ve faced addiction, struggled with identity, or just want to hear an incredible redemption story, this conversation will hit home and leave you inspired.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Jimmy Rex Show.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Today in the podcast, we sit down with my good
friend mister Thomas doc Stater and he is the author
of cheek Codes and also has his own company, the
cheat Codes Randomly. And one thing I love about this man,
he's in my coaching program, We Are the Day, and
he's one of the leaders in this program.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
He's somebody that every time I talk to him, I'm
just like, Wow, I learn a lot. There's a lot
of wisdom inside of him. And so it's no worry
or no.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
It makes so much sense why he's been so popular
with the things that he's done. He also has such
an interesting upbringing. He was raised in a polygamous cult, and.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
We're going to get into it.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
We're going to talk about how that affected him as
a human being, what he's done about that, and where
he's at today. So, without further ado, let's get to
the show with Thomas doc Stater. Today's podcast is brought
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(00:57):
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(01:29):
me so good.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
To have you here, man.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, you know, ever since I met you, I've wanted
to do this podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
You have such an interesting story.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
You know, I obviously know you through the program and
through Weird the Day, but I really want to have
you tell your story. I don't do this a lot
because when I go on podcasts, I hate when people
are like, tell me all about you, because they don't
know what they want to get out of the podcast.
They don't have questions prepared for anything else. In your case,
you just have such a fascinating story. And I've had

(01:56):
three or four people on my podcast now that have
come from polygamous communities more, you know, celebrity types.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
That dude that has like the Me and my five.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Wives guy or whatever, I can't remember.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
It's really cool guy. I actually really like him.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
But anyway, so I'm gonna just start it there. Man,
let's get into your story. Tell us a little bit
about that, and uh, I'll let.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
You kind of take it away. Yeah, absolutely, I think, uh,
you know, I think the unique thing about my story
is we I was born into the FLDS. The Warren
Jeff's was the was the is the famous leader of
that church actually still runs the church from prison.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
He's still running.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
He's serving two life sentences and he's still people still
follow him. How strong is the church today with him?
Way way less people than it used to be a
lot of people left. He excommunicated a ton, like so
many people, tore people's families out of their hands and
just greaked havoc. But even still being in prison, he

(02:54):
actually still has a following. People still follow him.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, pretty crazy. But what's interesting is so that church,
it was based out of Colorado City, which is southern Utah, Hilldale,
Colorado City. But they had a smaller group of the
church lived here in Salt Lake City. So I was
born in eighty two, and the prophet at the time,

(03:18):
which was Warren's father, Rulin, he started a school in
his house. He had a huge twenty thousand square house.
Started a school in his house that was up by
Little Conwy Canyon, and Warren was the principal and it
was a first through twelfth grade. But there was only
about three hundred students in the whole school. Pretty small.
I attended that school. Oh, so I read about that school.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
There was a lot of like abuse and things thet dude,
it's crazy, Sorry, keep going.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
I went to that school and so from first grade
on I saw Warren every day. So what was different
about that school is, yeah, we had math and English
and stuff like that, but we had like three hours
of seminary, well you guys call it like LDS calls
it seminary. We called it morning class priesthood history chorus.

(04:06):
So it was like three hours a day of church
and then mixed in they had you know, your regular
math classes stuff like that. So I knew Warren like intimately.
I saw him all the time. He knew me very well, right,
And so I had a really close relationship with him,
And I don't.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Want to cut you off as you tell them this story,
but it's so intriguing, and so I do want to
like kind of just chime in questions every now.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
And what was it? I mean, what was he like
when you were a kid? What did you think of him?
What was he like?

Speaker 3 (04:36):
So that guy always made me uncomfortable. And he was
the type you could fill his presence, like if he
was like behind you, you could fill his energy. It
was not a it was not a good energy. I
would say it was an uncomfortable energy. But because the
church was telling you that he was like this good man,
you were kind of like in conflict. My mom, dude,

(04:58):
she's like never being a room alone with him, she.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Knew she Oh she knew. Did everybody know?

Speaker 3 (05:03):
No, like other people would argue, he's oh, he's the
greatest man. And the way he talked his voice, I'm
sure if you've heard it really low or soft, I
mean super creepy. Yeah, the most creepy voice. So we
would listen to him just the indoctrination, dude. And I'm
telling you, like, if you go listen to some of
the tapes, it was just you could see actually he
had everything planned out from from from a very early

(05:25):
on time of how he was slowly manipulating people into
belie like because he would say follow the prophet, stay
close to your parents, this and that. But he's like,
no matter what all you follow the priest, or the
priest would come first, this and that. And so what
I noticed over time is like he he would like
slowly like move the goalpost. And it was this was
decades of time that he was doing this to eventually

(05:48):
where he usurped his father and well his father had
a stroke and yeah, wasn't really like and he kind
of like snuck his way in there and took He
was the.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
One that kind of did away with like made you
wear weird outfits and changed a lot of those.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Read I remember that growing up in school.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
No ready, just sell all your like toys and things
like that.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
And as as things progressed, he told people to get
rid of no toys, no, no sports, no bikes, no,
I mean just and then he got into like your
diet and it was like no flower and just flower,
just just wild stuff to just know, who knows where
he's reading pulling this stuff out of thin air. But
he I think he believed he was inspired, right, Like,

(06:26):
I think he had so much validation by the group
that I think he thought that he was this man
of God, I really do. Wow. But grew up in that.
And the awkward thing though, was I also lived in
West Jordan, so like, and for those of you listening,
West Jordan's just a small suburb town here in Salt Lakes. Yeah,

(06:49):
and so I lived in it, in your standard neighborhood,
but I had to wear the you know, the Pilgrim
clothes and like all that my sisters did.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
And I got asked, did you just have one mom
at your house up at two two?

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, that's still pretty tight knit compared to some of.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
The yeah families. Yeah. But and this is actually something
that I talk about a lot in my book. See
I talk about trauma, right, and like how things happen
in your childhood that you kind of like you just
tuck them away and you don't really address them, but
then what you find out later in life is they're

(07:25):
actually affecting you quite heavily.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
So one of mine was this. My mom told me
when I was like five or six. She's like, don't
tell the neighbors that Donna or other mother is your mother?
Tell them it's your aunt, and don't tell them what
kind of church you're what church you're in? And I'm
like five, and I'm like, what, I don't even know
what church were in? What are you talking about? Well,

(07:49):
fast forward to when I'm an adult in my either
twenties and thirties. Girls that I would date they would
bring me to meet their family and stuff, and I
would stand in the corner with my arms folded, and
I be very uncomfortable, and they would say, what's wrong
with you? What's what's like?

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Why?

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Why won't you why don't you be you know, social?
And I was like, I don't know, I really don't know.
And when I started to dissect it, I realized, and
this is in this work that I did, you know,
and I document in my book what I did. But
I started to document, like, Okay, well, how do I
connect the dots and what's causing this? Right? So, what
I realized was if you go up to someone and

(08:24):
I don't know if this is just in Utah or
if it's everywhere, but you up someone to shake their hand,
They're like, hey, what school did you go to? Immediately
I'm faced with this like thing of like, Okay, do
I tell them I went to this alta academy or
do I lie?

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Well, the only thing I have to compare is when
I was going to Arizona State and people say where
you're from? And I didn't want to say Utah because
I didn't want to have that conversation. I didn't want
to talk about THEYU or Utah sports, or I didn't
want to talk about the Mormons. I didn't want to
talk about the sexuality or the politics. It's like they
say the three things to never bring up on a
first day to sex, politics, or religion. If you say

(08:57):
you're from Utah, you just brought up all three, and
so I would just make it up and say I'm
from Vegas.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yes, but that's actually a great point. Yeah, because to
your point, if I tell them the truth, right, your
dad had two eyes. Dude, I'm in trauma with someone
I just barely met. So what I realized is I
was like, So I realized I was actually quite ashamed
of where I came from and what, you know, what
I grew up in. But I didn't. I did not,
But I didn't understand that does that make sense like

(09:25):
I was in I was, I was ashamed of who
I was, and even even tracing it back to the
point of like my mom didn't do this on purpose,
she was just trying to help me, but like she
also made me feel ashamed of who I was because
I had hide it. So that's that's a big that's
a big thing that I that I talk about and
teach with people is like that that in and of

(09:45):
itself is not like this dangerously traumatic event, right, but
in reality it actually is something that affected me really
quite a lot, where my my, my mother, my protector
was telling me that I that what I I was
was not good. Okay, So if we trace that, that's
that's kind of what leads to later in life, I

(10:07):
became a massive alcoholic and went down a lot of
horrible roads, suicide attempts and this crazy stuff like that.
Because we experience these things in childhood, in your in
our younger years, and we kind of just brush them
aside and we don't really understand that they are actually

(10:27):
like a cavity or like a like a like a
weed that's growing within us that unfortunately, time does not
heal all wounds, right, It actually it actually gets worse
and worse and worse, And the thing is it comes
out in ways that they're not directly connected to the
trauma itself. So like for me, it was alcoholism. I

(10:49):
was drinking I mean gallons of vodka per week on
a regular basis for years, and to me, I thought
that was just like I didn't even think it bad.
Does that make sense? Like I just thought, oh, this
is how you get through life.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
You just did you know why you were drinking so much?

Speaker 3 (11:06):
No, I'd never not until it got to the point
where it was like tipping point, which is in my
early thirties, where it was like what age were you
when you left the church? I think we skipped some steps,
absolutely did skip some steps, but so I basically stayed
with the church. I was super valiant. I was like,
follow the rules. In fact, I was even like getting

(11:27):
after my dad for not following certain rules.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
You're judging the.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
Show, I really was. I was like, Nope, we got
to do it this way. Rules was doing well, Like
we're not supposed to have TV, and so he had
a TV and I'm like, Dad, we're we're not supposed
to have TV, so why do you know, why do
we have this TV. Like I was calling my dad out.
I'm like fourteen. But the crazy thing is, dude, the
church school closed after I finished ninth grade. They closed it,

(11:51):
and so I had a choice. I could do homeschooling
or I could go work in construction. And I was like,
there's no way I'm sitting at home at fourteen years old,
Like because we couldn't do anything. Does that make sense?
Like we couldn't like we couldn't be You're not like
a normal kid.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
You couldn't go to normal school.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
No, absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
That was like against the religion.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Totally got it.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
That's why you couldn't.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
Okay. Yeah, So I was like, I'll go work.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
So I was like, does the government ever, Like do
they have problems with people just like can a fourteen
year old just not go to school?

Speaker 3 (12:23):
No, but they just don't do it. They don't have
the resources. But this way, my mom didn't get my
Social Security Card number until I was like ten. So
I was born by a midwife, right, Oh, so there.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Was no record of being born until you were ten.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
I my I think my my birth certificate wasn't like
granted until like I was like ten years old. Okay, okay.
So anyway, just needless to say, they don't exactly follow
all the rules when it comes to like communicating, right. So,
and I was never registered in eating school, so they
wouldn't know, right whatever. Anyway, so I chose to go work.

(13:01):
I went worked construction. I was doing ten twelve hour
days when I was fourteen years old, making twenty five
bucks a day, which is basically enough to cover your food,
because they didn't feed you, like you had to pay
your for your own food.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
We were twenty five bucks a day and you had
to buy your own.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
Yeah, we're in Vegas.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
We were in Phoenix, eat and gas stations and stuff, just.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
Eating it Wendy's and just like stuff like that. You know,
at least back then it was five bucks right to
eat a mill. But dude, I loved it. I loved it.
As a child, I thought it was the coolest thing
because I was with a bunch of other kids my age,
and we were just traveling around. But we slept in
like they'd get us like a two bedroom apartment. They'd

(13:39):
be like twenty five kids of us in.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Come on that fun kind of We thought it was fun.
It's like standing in a hostel.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
Yeah, it really was. It really was. But in reality,
when you look back, like if someone was doing that
to my kid, I'd be like, yeah, freaking pieces of crap.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
By the way, you guys build amazing houses.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah, the best labor, dude, because we would, we would
really like it wasn't about like being lazy, was about
who could work the hardest, who who did the best work.
Like it was a huge competition that way. So anyway,
so I spent you know, from fourteen to eighteen doing that,
just working a ton. I got a hernia when I
was sixteen from lifting walls, like and just and the

(14:16):
the owner of the company, he's like, well, he's like
a lot of times you get those when you're a kid,
when you're younger, Like he was basically trying to like
not take any accountability, which they didn't, and my dad
just paid for it and we just nobody said anything
and wow, move on with your day.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
Did you end up so okay? Sorry, keep going.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
So this is the this is the wild thing in
my family. I was like the valiant one and I
don't know what it was, but I turned eighteen in
December and then like June of that next year, I
just woke up one day and I'm like, I'm leaving.
Wait what Yeah, I just decided.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
I was like, I'm leaving, leaving the construction leader, leaving
the church.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
What I'm leaving?

Speaker 1 (14:58):
I don't want to do nothing happened.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
No, I was like, I don't want to do this anymore.
I'm out of here. Where did you go? I I got,
I got a one of my buddies, and two of
my buddies had left like.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
A year You've seen some buddies leave, So that's kind
of like sparks the curiosity a little bit.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
They had left, and but I thought they were evil.
And then I just one day just in my mind,
and what's crazy, dude, is I went and sat down
with my mom and I told her and she's like good,
really yeah, she was like, good, go get out of here.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
What does that look like when you leave?

Speaker 3 (15:27):
Well, for a boy, they don't really care.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Oh they don't know. That's what I call him, Like
the Lost Boys. A lot of like this was.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
So when I left was right before this whole pandemic
of the Lost Boys happened. Okay, So I like right
like maybe a year after I left, it was like
then it was just a flood because.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
I started like kicking a lot of the boys out right.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah, so right at the time I left, Right after
I left, I mean, it makes sense.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
I don't care if the boys leave because they're marrying
all them girls up.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
I mean, by the way, you don't have enough.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Warren was taking all the hot ones.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
I was really I've always thought about this, like would
they really take? Like he would just snatch up all
the those looking girls. Dude, you know how mad I
would be at a leader or a quote unquote profit
or this person is supposed to be your spiritual or
this had really messed you up, and you like have
a crush on a girl you're fifteen years old, and
he snatches.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Her up as his new wife.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Yeah, dude, bro, there's no there's I look think about
that and it just boils my blood to think about
how mad that would make me.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
Well, I always used to be worried. I'm like, I'm
gonna get stuck with some like homely looking I guess
that's another side of it, because all the cute ones
are getting more. Yeah, think about it. If you're a boy.
If you're a boy, you're not You're You're just gonna
get married. You're gonna get married to a woman who's
never been married, right, and it's gonna be you and her.
But they don't You don't get to choose. They can
do it for you. They tell you who to marry.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
What age do they do that.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
It can be as early as eighteen, as long you know, for.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
The boys, as early as eighteen.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
It could be for boys, it could be as early
as eighteen up to some of them didn't get married.
Tiller twenty five, twenty six.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
The hold it over you sometimes too, right, Oh, big time.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
Dude, it's one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
It is a if you get married, it's a measure
of your worthiness. And that goes the same forgetting extra wives,
like if you get two wives, three wives, that's like
you're just you're rising in the room.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
That always come from above, like from the prophet or whoever.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
Always yeah, so yeah, So when I turned eighteen, I
was like, I'm out. Well that happened to be two
thousand and one. So I left in June of two
thousand and one. In September eleventh happened and I was like, later, shit,
thought it was your fault. I thought it was the
end of the world.

Speaker 4 (17:31):
You'd never really watched TV or no, No, dude, well no,
because here's the thing. They had been telling us that
the apocalypse, the destructions, the end of the world was
coming around the year two thousand oh for real.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
For my whole life. So you thought I was a
little kid. So when I left, dude.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
That's actually freaky, Like, well it's I had, you know,
I had a buddy. Sadly, he he went crazy during COVID.
He did a way too much psychedelics and frieda his brain.
And he was going on Instagram Live every day, our
Instagram stories and just saying the most preposterous things. And
he was predicting the future. He said, he was talking
to Joseph Smith, I mean really lost it.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
He got a tattoo that said Elohem on his neck
to give you an idea, Like dude was sending it.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, he was just like and he predicted an earthquake
and like two days later, that damn earthquake in Salt
Lake Hill. Oh no, but he was predicted a massive
destructive earthquake. But he says it on his Instagram. Two
days later, there's this earthquake, So it validated all of
his bullshit. To himself, right, and he ended up killing
himself a couple months later, and it's just the saddest thing,

(18:33):
but it was I don't know, I look back on
that a lot, but it was just the coincidence.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Of that earthquake.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
I'm just like, geez, that was like the one thing
that we didn't need was for him to be validated,
you know what I mean by that?

Speaker 3 (18:44):
So yeah, dude, that's so wild. So yeah, so I
but here's the thing. Imagine this. Imagine you're in a
religion where it's super restrictive, like literally they're telling you
no music, no TV, no movies, no women. And then
you're eighteen and then you leave, so.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Kind of opens up a lot of possibility.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
Just like just like the Olds Church, it's like, if
you leave your son in perdition, you're you're going to
go to the darkest, deepest portion of Hell.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
I don't feel like the LDS church necessarily stresses that
quite so much. I mean it's like if you just
leave your just go to the Middle Kingdom or yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
So well yeah, and see that's I mean.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Out of darkness is saved for the FLDS.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
Okay, so the outer darkness is where they told us
we would go.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, No, it was a lot more. I mean the
penalty for leaving your church. I'm just trying to emphasize,
like is a lot bigger than for us. For us,
it's like you still go to the t lastal Kingdom
or you know, it's like all right whatever and still
be a moon, you.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
Know, consolidation. Yeah. So so and then this is something
I talk about a lot is because I started so
young in the church, well, going to that school specifically, right,
and just getting like I'm getting hours of church per week,
just so many. So my whether I consciously wanted to
believe that or not subconsciously, it's there. And so I

(19:56):
went like it was like a pendulum that swung. It
was like drugs, alcohol, women, just like all at once. Yeah,
just straight into it. And that's what we see with
that church a lot is a lot of those guys
just like they go hard.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
Oh if you already think you're probably a sen of perditions,
like what's the point?

Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yeah, you know, might as well, right, like might as
well have fun. So for me though, it was I
was so green, dude. I was just like I didn't
know anything about anything, Like I was doing construction. I
was like, I don't want to do construction anymore. So
I was buying a car one day and I asked
the guy. I was like, hey, what kind of degree
do you have to have to work here? And he's like,

(20:34):
do you want to work here? And I was like yeah.
So they hired me at Carmel and Toyota dud when
I was eighteen years old, out there selling cars. But
that was my entry into sales. But it was just
such a such a a like a wake up call
to reality of like I was so unaware of like
what the world had to offer and like my innocence,

(20:58):
I guess you could call it. I married, like literally
one of the first girls that I met, I married
or when I was twenty years old, wow, because I
thought I was like, oh, we've got we've we've we've
had sex, so we we I think we have to
get married like that. That was how my brain worked.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
So when you.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
Left, I just want to kind of get it's just
a very fascinating to me. But like where did you stay?
Where'd you go?

Speaker 3 (21:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (21:21):
Did you have?

Speaker 3 (21:22):
So? I worked construction, so I was able to get it.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
I was heavy, quickly got it raised immediately.

Speaker 3 (21:27):
Yeah, oh yeah, dude. I was making eighteen bucks an
hour and I thought it was I was like, holy cow.
But I was a heavy equipment operator. So I just
immediately went into an excuvating company and got a job.
It wasn't even it wasn't hard at all. So I
got it. I got I rented a room from a
friend who was renting a house, and it's three hundred
bucks a month. And I had a little white Saturn

(21:47):
for a car. And that was it, dude. I mean
I was off on my own. Never moved back home
from that day. Wow.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
What was your relationship after that with your father and
with the church like all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yeah, so with the church, there was no relationship at all.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
They don't reach out. There's and that goes.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
The same for like all the guys that I was
friends with, all the people I grew up with, my
best friends, just complete cut off, no communication.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
You're now a son of tradition, you can't can't communicate.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
With, You're out of here. That to this day, I've
reconnected with a lot of those guys that are not
in it anymore. But I mean it's not this you know.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
Of course, twenty years later, but you've had.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
Some Yeah, I've had reconnections with some of those guys.
In fact, I had one of the guys on my
show on my podcast Great story. But yeah, he's good.
He's a cool guy. But yeah, but but at that time,
like you basically are severing everything you know, your friends,
your your community, like your family. You're just chop it

(22:46):
all off. You're completely new and green out in the world.
You have nothing, you don't know anyone. I had communication
with my family, but it was pretty slim. They lived
down and they had moved down to Colorado City, and
so I was living in Salt Lake and so, yeah,
just kind of on your own, I mean, trying to
make it in the world. So I immediately got married
to some girl. How'd you guys come to?

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Was she comfortable with your background and your story?

Speaker 3 (23:10):
And everybody was so fascinated with very fascinating. Yeah, so
I And that's another thing too, is like I talked
about it a lot, but everybody was really fascinated with it.
And so but I think maybe maybe you know, you're
an Actually I think people saw it. He's a pretty
solid kid, like he's he's a hard worker, you know,
he has manners. He treats women well, right like, because

(23:31):
that's kind of how you raise right so you have morals,
you're realised on hyper morals. So I think everybody you know,
even that family, I mean, they're awesome people. And I
don't really have contact with her anymore. But anyway, we
were married for about two years and it was just
a huge mistake, like in every aspect, right, I just

(23:52):
didn't I didn't know who the heck I was. Anyway,
my dad ends up dying from cancer at fifty three
years old, and that like rocked. My mom left the
church with all her kids and my dad died, and
it just like destroyed our family, dude, like destroyed our family.

(24:14):
My oldest brother spent twenty years in prison, my second
oldest brother was homeless. All my brothers are addicts or
have been at some point. Some are recovering, like myself.
Everybody just struggled so bad, like it rocked our whole world,
just like losing our dad at such. Even though my
dad wasn't really like the kind of like rule with

(24:38):
an iron fist like some of those people out there were,
he still loved his kids and he still was like
we still you know, whatever. So when he died, that
was really tough. So that I got divorced. My sister
got divorced, like it was just mayhem. My youngest brother.
My mom pulls all of her kids out of Colorado
City and puts them in school in Saint George. Keep

(24:58):
in mind they've never been toublic school. Well, what happens
to my youngest brother. Someone tells him, Hey, if you
sniff this white powder, it makes you feel really good.
He's like thirteen years old, does heroin for the first
time to day right now, he lives on the streets
downtown addicted to heroin like he never He has never
been able to shake it from that point, So tried

(25:19):
to get him to go do iye be again? Dude?
So I just heard that I began as being legalized
in Texas.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yeah, Scott a former governor or, not Scott raw Rick
Rick Scott is no Rick name.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Anyways, the dude that ran again was Romney, but former
governor Rick something or another.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
He's trying to get it legalized in Texas.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
But you can just get him to can kun Can
they go to cancun if if they have felonies sneak
him across the border.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
That's serious. Well, you didn't have to sneak him. I
think you just go across the border.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
I hear what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
You can't fly.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
So he was on it. He was just in a
halfway house when my mother died. But he went back.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
So it's eighty percent successfu getting people.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
High one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
You literally just have to drive Hi across the border.
It's in like insanata. How does he get back talking
about I don't know, swim across the world. I'm get serious,
like what what are we talking about? Like, how did
he get back? How do you get he's an American?
You just start going, what are you doing? I'm an American?
I lost my walle I'd like, I need to get back.
They'll let you back in if that works.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Does he look like in American?

Speaker 3 (26:30):
He looks like in America?

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yeah. And I'm just saying, like, if it was I
want him to do he.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
Opened anything like that. I mean, I mean, if we
could get him to just keep getting aside tright. No,
it's fine, It's.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Just like I really feel out of it. I had
a podcast I did about a year in fact, a
year ago. Today, I did a podcast with Rob O'Neil.
It's a big thing he's doing because it's like, dude
has like an eighty percent success, right getting people off heroin.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
Well yeah, and so to my point, like if they
can make it legalize in the US to make it
more accessible for people versus have to swim back.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
That was just the first sea.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
Anyway. So look, things got bad when my dad died.
I got divorced, and I went down a deep hole
of alcohol and drugs and like it was like two
years of just really bad behavior in general. And then
I got this bride idea. I was like, man, I
need to like clean my act up. So I stopped

(27:27):
drinking and I was like, I need to meet like
a really really good woman. And I was working at
best Buy and I met this girl. She's super LDS.
Her family was super LDS. So I get this brid idea.
I'm like, oh, maybe I should join the church and
that is the true church because I had had all
this trouble for the last couple of years. Right, So

(27:48):
I meet her, joined the church, We get engaged, I
get my tea and by the way, I had to
go to one of the twelve apostles to get into
the church. Wow, just because of your because of the FLDS.
So I met Elderworthlyn and got approved to get baptized
and get into the church. So I get into church.
I meet this girl. She's really great, and we go

(28:11):
through the whole process and I go in to do
my endowments and I'm not shitting you, dude. When I
walked out, I was like, fuck, I joined another cult. Wow.
That's really how I felt. I was so defeated because
I was I thought I was wanting.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
Like this hold the just this ceremony being I was just.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
Wanting like a really spiritual experience, and it wasn't. It
was the opposite for me. And I was really really
really sad about it. But I was like, okay, well
I'll make this work. Whatever. Marry this girl. Six months
into being married, this is my twenty four I was like,
let's not go to church, Let's just go each at
Chili's or something. She's like, okay, she's twenty I'm twenty four.

(28:51):
She doesn't care. We go and do that, and then
we go to her parents for dinner that night and
her mom's like, I always release society and he's like,
we didn't go we went to Chili. She's like crying.
So then she goes and talks with her mom in
her room, and then her mom comes out. She's like,
she's going to stay with us tonight. And I was like,
what are you kidding me? So I go she won't

(29:13):
come home, and her parents are like, get rid of him.
Why I'm laughing down a path of destruction.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
She's so crazy.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
But so stupid, like they didn't ever like it.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
I mean, you you know what you signed up for.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
I always say like, there's a lot of empathy to
be had if you're because I remember when I was
all in the church. Dude, it's like, if you meet
somebody and you get married under those premises, I think.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
It's okay to feel that way if.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
The premises changed, because the church means so much to them, right,
and so if you change the rules a little bit
of the game, it's very uh rattling of the cage.
You could say, it's it's pretty hard for him. Yeah,
so I have empathy there, you know, it's still I
would think I'm laughing because it was like, you didn't
cheat on her, you went to Chili.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
You want to you know, like.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
It was a big deal right for no reason anyway,
So we ended up getting divorced. So you're twenty four,
twice divorce, twice divorce at twenty four, no kids. Well
then I really went down the deep end. Raves, ecstasy,
freaking you name it, just cocaine, blah blah blah, all
of it. But all the while, by the way, I

(30:22):
was high functioning and slowly building up in my sales
career working for like I was working for Hewlett Packard
and like kind of going along that way. But on
my personal life, dude, it was just like a slow
progression of like just getting worse and worse and worse
to the point where it was like party on the
weekends to like, okay, I'm drinking every night. And then

(30:44):
then then I met a girl at work and we
started dating, and okay, this is crazy. So I was
living downtown and the reason I decided to move downtown
is because I'm like, I want to walk to the bars,
I don't want to drive. So I'm living down there
and me and my brother decided to go to Graci's.

(31:04):
One night, we go to Graci's, we get so freaking drunk.
These two guys are like talking trash to us in
the bar, and my brother likes to run his mouth
and this dude head bunts me.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
So that's a bold move.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
Yeah, we were just kind of like and he's bam,
hits me in the head, right in the nose with
his head. So then the bouncers rush over and pull
them out, and then they pull us out like twenty minutes,
like not twenty minutes, like literally like three minutes later.
So they put us both out there. So we're walking
home and we come around the corner and we see
him down in the parking lot and I'm like, let's go,

(31:38):
come on, and he's like all right, So we go
down there and dude, I just remember walking up to
this guy. He was with two other guys, and he said,
I'm going to beat your fucking ass. And then I
woke up thirty days later in the hospital. Wow. I
literally never even got up a swing off. I didn't
get a dodge off. He knocked me out and then

(31:58):
stomped on my head. Bruises all across my forehead, and
there was a whole thing. He got arrested, he got
aggravated assault. I didn't press any charge or anything. They
just like, yeah, people witnessed it and everybody was seeing it.
Was like right by Gracis there was did he do
time for it? He's dead now. I don't know what happened.
He was into drugs and all that stuff, but he

(32:20):
plead he got a plea deal. He plead out. But
I had to go to the court cases and like
all that stuff. But dude, coming out of that coma,
Like my mom was freaking out because she's like they
told me in the beginning that you were gonna have
to learn to talk and walk again and like all
that stuff. You had a major bleeding brain injury, traumatic
brain injury. I came out of it with really unscathed,

(32:41):
but just with loss of sense of smell. So I
never I haven't been able to smell since that happened.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Really wait, so I'm kind of fascinated with this. So
you come out of a.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
Coma, what's the experience of waking up her?

Speaker 3 (32:52):
I thought I was at the dentist. I'm not kidding you, dude,
I'm not kidding.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
I thought it was so it's not like you have
no pain, Like I.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
Was so confused, dude, I was.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
I was just like, was anyone there.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
When I woke up? Did you fully wake up? And
I woke up and I was just like, what's going on?
The nurse came in, and then once I woke up,
I was kind of.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Were you supposed to wake up? Were they expecting that?

Speaker 3 (33:18):
They? They induced it, okay, and then they let me
out of it. And when I I was like coming
in and out of it, and then you know, it's
kind of like real groggy, and you're just like.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
What like when you wake up from anesthetical?

Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yeah, exactly. So I finally come out of it, and
then they tell me what happened, and I'm just like
what the freak? And the cops had come and taken
pictures in my hands because they wanted to make because
the guy said that I hit him and I never did,
and so he got arrested. And anyway, what happened to
your brother? Where was he? He freaking scraped his hand?

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Did he break up the fire?

Speaker 3 (33:48):
Like?

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Well?

Speaker 3 (33:49):
Some other guy came after him and he ended up
falling down and but he got back up. And then
once once I was like unconscious, every was.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Like whoa like, got it kill you?

Speaker 3 (33:58):
Freaking he might have killed this guy?

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (34:01):
So coming out of that experience, though, Dude, I was
in like a fog for like a year. I'm not
kidding you. It was so bad. I would smell like
these weird smells. I couldn't lay back the little you know,
the little there's like little rocks in your in your ear, okay,
and they like roll on these this membrane that tells
your brain where what your position is. Oh yeah, and

(34:23):
when they get knocked out of place, you'll just get
dizzy spells, like at any moment.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah, they say, dude, they say, that's like the worst
thing when you lose that equal.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
My brother had some water.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Stuck in his air, yeah, from like a cruiser or something,
and he told me it was like three months. He goes, Dude,
if it went for a few more months, I was
gonna have to kill myself. Yeah, He's like it was
that bad.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
It was.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
It was a solid year for me, dude. And I
finally went to this clinic that was able to like
fix it. They'd blow like hot air in your ear
and like tilt you back this way. It was really
because I would like get nauseous when I would lay
down because it would just like spin.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Oh man, I I took a gummy on before I
got on a plane one time, and I don't like marijuana.
The last time I ever did this was four or
five years ago. I hate marijuana. Actually, I hate gummies.
I hate all of it now. But I got on
a plane and I remember I was trying to watch
the US Open. It was a nine hour flight. That's
why I took it. I was all my way to
the airport and I ran into a buddy and he's like, dude, here,

(35:19):
take this for your flight.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
It'll help you.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
I'm like, okay, whatever, and oh man, I when I
would close my eyes, it felt like I was doing
backflips in my chair. So it just was like I
was on a roller coaster and I was meeting somebody
where I was going, so I wasn't I was by myself.
It was like just the two seats on the side.
I told the dude next to me, I'm like, hey, man,
I'm not feeling so hot. So if I start throwing up,
I'm so sorry. I'm I'm gonna. I just had the

(35:42):
bar back and I started throwing up. Dude, winn't even
taken off yet.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
Oh my gosh. And I was doing.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Backflips in my chair for like.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
It was the worst feeling ever.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
So I kind of on a small scale, couldn't know
what you mean, but it was terrible.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
But anyhow, in that process, I also met a girl
at work and we were dating and whatever. Well she
gets pregnant. Okay, and once again, good old polygamist Tom
is like, we should get married.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
So this is your third marriage, so you still have
the polygamist in Yeah, you just kept divorcing him.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yeah, but not always my fault. Let's just say it
just okay. But anyway, so we get married and she
has the baby, and about when he was six months old.
I'm not going to go into details on that because
we have fifty to fifty custody and all that stuff,
But when he was six months old, we separated and

(36:36):
we got divorced. So I was then and I fought
for fifty percent custody. So I had fifty percent custody
in my son when he was six months old. From
that time on to today he's thirteen, now, i've had
fifty to fifty custody of him. And dude, when I
got when I went through that divorce with her, with
my son, it was the one of the hardest things

(36:57):
I've ever gone through in my entire life, because I
love my son so much and the thought of like
not being with him, it was, it was like gut wrenching,
and it like accelerated my drinking to a place where
I would literally carry around a bottle with vodka in
it at all times. Anywhere I went, I would have
adasawny bottle and it would have vodka in at all times.

(37:17):
I was drinking all the time. I would wake up,
take six shots. And in the meantime, I'm winning President's
Club at work, I'm making I made me a cue.
I moved to a software company and I made my
first hundred thousand, and then I made two hundred thousand,
and then I was winning President's Club. And but all

(37:37):
the while, dude, I'm just drinking myself to death. Literally,
like my stomach felt, I was drinking so much vodka. Dude,
it was just like it was. It was disgusting. And
it got to the point where I wasn't getting drunk
and having fun. I was sitting in my house alone
drinking and going through gallons of vodka. To the point

(37:59):
where I made all I made this money. I bought
a Porsche, and I was like, it was like one
of the worst days in my life because I was like,
I'm supped. I was in a brand new house, brand
new Porsche, had money in the bank, and I was like,
I'm supposed to be happy and I'm miserable. So I
was like, I need to buy a gun. I never

(38:22):
owned a gun. We didn't have him in the church,
never owned one. I was like, I need to buy
a gun. I just had this thought in my mind,
so dude, I literally like thought about it for like weeks,
and then I was like, Okay, I'm gonna go buy
a gun. So I go, I go, I go to Shiels,
I buy a gun. I buy a forty five and
a nineteen eleven handgun twelve thirteen hundred bucks like megagun.

(38:47):
And then I bought a safe, a big one, and
I and I hauled it in my house and all
this stuff, and I had the gun in the safe
in my house, so I was, Okay, my son can't
get it, and I have it. A couple of weeks
go by and I'm just drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking.
I can't believe I didn't lose my job. I can't
believe like anything.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
I'm just like, did anyone do you have anyone around
you to like rill you in or talk to you
or sit you down?

Speaker 3 (39:11):
No arguments with my family.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
Did you have close friends or anybody like that?

Speaker 3 (39:17):
No? Not really. I would push people away, like I
never would allow anyone.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Hard to be friends with somebody.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
Yeah, and my I mean I had, you know, family,
but I would see some of my other family going
through it. So I was just like, there's no one
that can help me, and I really do.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Want to get out of that space.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
Well for well, here's the thing, Jamie. For a long time.
See this is what I tell people about alcoholism. You
don't start drinking thinking you're going to become an alcoholic.
In fact, everyone thinks they're not right, and when you are,
you still think you're not. And it it it for me.

(39:57):
It was only it was it was just before that,
before the incident with the gun, that I was like,
I have a problem. I literally said to myself, I'm like,
this is not this is not like normal, Like I'm
like drinking all the time and I can't stop. And dude,
I was so bad. I lived alone. I was hiding
alcohol bottles in my own house because I didn't want
people to see that I had alcohol, because I didn't

(40:19):
want to think that I had a problem. That's how
bad the problem was. So it was it. You just
wake up one day and you're an alcoholic. It's not
like you know and you only you only are an
alcoholic when you realize that you are. Yeah, you know
what I mean.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Well, one of the things I've done is every year
I'll take at least at least once I'll do seventy
five hard and take that two and a half months
off just to make sure, Okay, can I not drink
if I don't want to.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
You'll start to bill it in a couple of days
if it's a problem.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah, that's my point, is like, because I've even had
stretches for like a week or two, Like, dude, did
I just drink every night?

Speaker 3 (40:51):
Like? Or every day?

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Like? Did I just have a drink like eight days
in a row? What is wrong with me?

Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (40:56):
And all of a sudden you're like, okay, kind of
dial then you know, and sometimes it takes a few
days before you actually decide.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
Oh yeah, you get used to it. You get used
to that like numbing. I mean it just it does.
It just kind of numbs you, it kind of calms
you down. And but for me, it was it was
getting so much that it wasn't even calming me down right,
it was actually accelerating. And it got to the point
where I actually couldn't. I couldn't stop. Like I tried, yeah,
and I was like, I'm shaking by and you just stopped.

(41:25):
I was shaking violently. But also my ego was like
I don't want to. I don't. I don't I don't
want to rehab or I can't. I can't show people that,
Like that's how Bat was. So I'm like, I'm just
going to kill myself. So one night, it was about
three in the morning and I was like, hey, it's time.
I walked up the stairs grabbed the gun, and then

(41:45):
I was like, wait a minute, I'm not going to
do it in the house because I live alone. People
might not find me for weeks, and then my family
will find me. For sure, it will be my family
that finds me. So I was like, oh my gosh,
I have the greatest idea. Yeah, I'll do it on
my front lawn because then some random people just will
see me and then they'll call and then they'll take

(42:06):
care of it. There will be no mess in the
house and my family has to clean up. This is
how much I was thinking about it. Yeah, I'm gonna
see the logic.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
But you're not a bad no, I'm just saying, like,
I can see how your mind went there. But uh, okay,
So were you drunk at this time when you're okay?

Speaker 3 (42:21):
Yeah, I was drunk for years, dude. God, I was
never not drunk.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
But that's crazy, by the way.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
Yeah, it was years of not being not drunk. It
was just all the time. You'd go to sleep, you'd
wake up, you drink anyway. So I get out on
the front lawn and then I was like, oh, man,
I haven't even shot this thing. I don't even know
if it works. What if I pull the trigger and
it doesn't work, that would be worse.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
That would be worse, dude.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
I'm in the middle of draper, pointed up in the air. Bam, bam,
two shots of a forty five in the middle of draper.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
You can't get away with that these days.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
No, My bro wasn't that long ago.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
My brother shot at twenty two in our backyard in
Tarza one time and we'd laugh about it all the time.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
It's like just in the middle of the.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
Hey, this was nine years ago. This was not that
long ago. Okay. So then so then I put it
up to my head and dude, I'm telling you, it
was like it was so close. I felt the like
I felt myself pulling the trigger, and I felt like
the resistance on the trigger, you know that oh before
it clicks. And then I just had this thought in

(43:20):
my head. I was like, wait a minute. I'm like, like,
I have money and all this, and no one knows
anything about my life and I do have a son.
I was like, the very least I can do is
just like leave some information because it's going to be
a real pain in the butt for everyone to track
all this stuff down and figure it all out.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
I like, how reasonable you were, I know.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
So I was like, all right, I'll do it. So
then I go in the house. I fall asleep. I
wake up in my living room. The gun is sitting
there on the coffee table. My mom, sister, and brother
are sitting in my house. I had texted my mom goodbye. Oh,
and so they're sitting there like what are you doing?
And so then we got in this huge argument. They
took the gun and then I went and drank just

(44:03):
right after.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Were you still wanting to kill yourself? Were you still
thinking like, I'm still going to.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
Do this, yeah, okay, okay. But then what I realized
is I was like, Okay, I'm either going to drink
myself to death or I'm going to kill myself. It's
one of the two. One of the two is gonna happen.
Because I'm drinking so much, it's not out of the
question that I'll die from that. So I was like,
all right, well I have to stop. So I I

(44:29):
quit drinking could turkey and I went three months and
I felt really good. But then for whatever reason, just
out of the out of the blue, I just fell
off the wagon, just just this, I just fantasized about
getting some tequila, and then before I knew it, I
was blasted. And I went like on a three day
bender and I cried and I was like, what the
hell is wrong with me? I can't stop. Then I

(44:50):
did it again. I went three weeks, three months, fell
off the wagon, went three months, fall of the wagon.
I did it four times in a year. The final
time then I fell off the wagon. It was in
twenty seventeen. My ex my son's mom was pregnant. She's
with another guy pregnant, and she said, hey, you need
to come get our son when I'm going to go

(45:13):
into labor. And I was like, okay, well, i'd happened
to have been drunk. She calls me at like one
in the morning, She's like, you need to come get him.
So I run downstairs, jump in my fore Runner. It's
in the garage, and as I jump in, I started
it and I flipped it in gear, and then I
dropped my phone and I was I had passed out,
but I was still drunk, right, So I realized, oh,

(45:36):
I dropped my phone. So I get out of the
car to grab my phone and the car is in gear.
So the door of the freaking car gets pinned against
the garage and goes the other direction like tommy boy. Yeah,
So I jump in and park it, and I'm like, dude,
that was my point where I'm like, I'm not freaking
doing this anymore.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
That was your moment.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
That was it. Like, of all the stuff that I
had gone through, freaking, the con concussions and the broken
heads and all this stuff, that was the moment where
I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. So I came.
I came out of that. I went a couple months sober,
and when I realized I had I had an epiphany.
I realized and that this is probably basic information for

(46:20):
a lot of people. But I was like, oh, the
alcohol is not my problem. The alcohol is my solution.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
This is your way of coping with it.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
It was it was my coping mechanism. And this is
when I realized. I was like, oh my gosh, there's
a problem under the alcohol. I'm a slow learner, but
I did. I was like, there's a problem under the alcohol.
So once I got once, I got sober, and then
I was like, Okay, how do I start working? So
I actually quit my job. I was working at Domo,

(46:49):
a big tech company. I quit. It didn't have a
plan on how I was going to make money or anything,
but I'm like, I have to figure this out. So
I quit my job. I started digging deep I read
all these books du Deepak Chopra. I met Tony Robbins.
I met Deepak Chopra. I read a bunch of his books.
I started doing transcendental meditation. I learned how to do
transndental meditation, which actually saved my freaking life, dude. It

(47:12):
saved my life because I had read all these books
and it's like do meditation, do meditation, and I'm sitting
there trying to do these guided meditations and it won't,
like it can't it just it just won't work. And
it's like the most tortuous twenty minutes of the day.
And then I'm listening to Howard Stern one day and
he talks about TM transcendental meditation, and I was like,
wait a minute, there's different kinds. So I go and

(47:34):
research it. Find there's a trainer here in Utah. I
go to him on I remember this very clearly, twenty
eighteen New Year's Day. I'd learned to do transndental meditation, dude.
And the first time that I sat down and did it,
it like made me cry because I actually stopped my
mind and I went into a state of infinite consciousness

(47:54):
or whatever you want to call it. And I was like,
holy crap. And from that day forward, I didn't skip
a beat. I did two times of meditation for three
years straight. I did not miss and I'm telling you, dude,
it like changed my brain It completely changed my brain
to this point today where I'm coming up on eight
years sober. This is not the end of the story,

(48:14):
but that was the moment when I realized there there
is more to this than just like I have to
understand this, like what is causing this? Because to that point,
I even believed that my childhood was fine and everything
was good. I had like suppress, suppress, suppressed, suppressed. And
once I started to realize this, then I said, Okay,
I got to write my entire life down. So I

(48:36):
just started bold and pointing my life, just everything, all
the little things I told you, Oh my mom told
me to do this. Oh, I remember crawling up the stairs.
I remember this. I remember that. And I would come
across feelings that would hurt me. I would actually not
want to think them. They would actually feel like someone
was stabbing me in the heart thinking this feeling this memory.
And what I realized is I was like, oh my gosh,
I'm like these all traced too. What's causing me to

(48:58):
want to cope all the time? Because I couldn't understand
why I wanted to drink all the time. When I
realized that there's so much unaddressed stuff, in my childhood
that I didn't know how to process, so I was
covering it up. So I literally wrote my whole life
down and then I realized I was like, I should
write a book. So then I wrote a book. And
then I basically went, let's call it tears. I was

(49:24):
two years sober, and I said, I've never manifested a woman.
I've always just taken the woman that is there. So
I write this list down. I want a good looking
woman that's never been married, no kids, successful and beautiful
and my age, and I'm thirty four or five at
this time. I go and give this to a real

(49:47):
life matchmaker and I say, Matt, find this person for me.
The second person they set me up on a date
with was a woman who she was two years older
than me, never married, no kids. She got her master's
degree at Oxford. She got her PhD at the University
of Utah. She was a business professor at the University
of Utah. She owned her own orchard, never married, no kids.
She was missed ten Utah.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
Boom boom, boom boom. I was the.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
Greatest manifestor in the entire world. And she was into me.
She loved my story all this stuff. Three months into dating,
she's like, look, I gotta be honest with you. I
want to have kids. If you're not interested in that,
like we should not continue to date. I'm like, no,
one hundred percent, I do I want to So almost
a year from the day we met, we got married.

(50:31):
Six weeks later, she's pregnant with the little girl. Eight
weeks into the pregnancy, she couldn't fill the bait the
little girl moving. We went in. They're like, you gotta
you gotta like go through the pregnant, you gotta give birth.
The baby was had passed away, five pounds, six ounces,
little girl. We named her Dark Hair. It was horrible,

(50:51):
a terrible experience. But one thing that I didn't do
well hold on this was a devastating. It was devastating
for me. It was devastating for her, and I don't
want to speak for everything about her, but we just couldn't.
We didn't, We couldn't make it work. It just ended

(51:12):
our relationship. Basically, we lost the baby. Our relationship was over.
And then I got a call that I was being
laid off. All in like a three month period, Like
my life literally exploded. And I was two years sober
I didn't go back to alcohol. I actually dug deeper

(51:34):
into discovering and I started to find value in everything
that was happening, Like you can't pay for those experiences.
They're so valuable, they're so incredible because they rip you
up so raw that you actually get access to your
true self and you can create something incredible out of

(51:56):
that terrible experience. So I didn't go back to alcohol.
I didn't go back to drinking. I actually dug deeper
in and I ended up getting a better job with
a startup, and I ended up like working a lot
and really becoming successful. And it wasn't until six years
sober that I just I felt like everything was great,
but I was like there's something there's there's just something

(52:18):
missing and I don't know what it is. And I
had this deep like feeling to go do ayahuasca. I
had read about it, heard about it. I had this
deep feeling to go do it. Well the third night
in the ceremony, I had this massive breakthrough that it
basically told me I'm enough and I can fulfill myself

(52:40):
and I don't need anything else. I'm everything there is
there is no I don't need anything to make me
something I already am. And when I had this great
rush of this feeling come through, I like laid back
and I was like, oh, I'm finally healed. And the
medicine said you never needed to be healed, you are

(53:00):
always this and I.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
Was like, holy shit, you know my first journey, that
was my message.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
You're good enough. It is the truth for everyone. So
after that, I had this like deep burning desire to say, like,
like the medicine basically told me, it was like, Thomas,
all this stuff you've been through, all of these trials,
all this incredible divorce and death, and like all these
things that you've been through, and you find you found
the ability to like come out of it and overcome

(53:30):
it and to have such a positive attitude. That is
your purpose. Your purpose is to go and tell people
that they can do the same thing, that they are
also just as valuable as you are, and that you
can tell them your story and because your story is
so wild, it grants credit to give them the ability
to also do it themselves. And so it was like

(53:52):
this rush of just like I don't know, what do
you feel when you finally understand what your true purpose is?
Because for so long I believed I wasn't good enough.
I'm not I'm not enough. I'm right, Like the Church
has pounded this into my brain. And then in losing
these people and these divorces and this and that and
the alcoholism, you just you believe it. You're like, I'm not,

(54:16):
I'm not enough. And then for it for for for
me to like make that change and then come through,
and then for me to see for myself that I
am was the greatest feeling you can anyone can feel. Yeah,
I think it builds.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
I mean the word that comes to my mind is confidence,
because to me, confidence is you know, knowing that you
walk with God and like having that purpose figured out,
you know that you're you know, found what you're supposed
to do, what you're on this planet to do. I imagine
there was a boost and just that confidence and self
love and all the things that we work so hard
to gain.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
Well, the best, the best thing about it, Jimmy, was
that it made everything that I had gone through valuable.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
I guess purpose to your pain, Yeah it wasn't.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
It was no longer feel like.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
That's part of like the quantum field is that it
goes back and retroactively heals all those moments because it gives.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
The purpose I've had that with weird the day, I like,
I'll have.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
So many of these moments. I'm able to connect with
people because of my bullshit, because of the mistakes I've made,
because of these problems I caused, And I'm like, oh,
it's all worth it, and it just gives purpose to
the pain, and it no longer becomes a negative thing
in your life.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
You can just honor it, right and and it and
it validated my entire life, like everything that I had
struggled with and all the things when we would begin it,
when we begun to talk, when I was ashamed of
who I was and I didn't want to tell people
what I was and who I was, it changed that
into I now preach my story, tell my story, sell

(55:49):
my book, to tell my story as much as I
possibly can, not in shame, but in honor of the
ability that I had to be able to go through
that but then find value in it. And then it
helped inspire others to see that they can do the

(56:10):
same thing. They're like, that is that is that is
my mission?

Speaker 2 (56:14):
Well, that's the I mean, that's the hero's journey, right,
It's like, look like, the only time you lose the
game is when you stop playing.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
You just kept getting back up?

Speaker 3 (56:22):
Was it for the fourth marriage? Also got a divorce.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
I believe fourth marriage because I know you're dating someone else.

Speaker 3 (56:26):
I'm getting married in July seventeenth.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
You know you you know you could just date people, right.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
Yeah, But here's the thing I told somewhere between you
and I will get this score.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
I told something.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
I was like, I don't give up. Yeah, okay, hey,
I'll give you this. Man, you got a good one.
I think you're I think you're making the right route.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
Yeah she's awesome, but yeah, and hey, actually to that
very point, and I think this is very important. I
always struggled with women always because there's many that I
didn't marry that I you know that we're right, like
long relationships. In the ceremony, I saw that I met
a short, little Hispanic girl and she was like the

(57:07):
she was like the one. And when I came out
of it, I was like, oh, I think I put
the one of the staff members in my mind and
just kind of like thought that was it. And I
literally thought to myself, I'm like, that's just not true.
Four months after I met her and two months into
us dating, we had this super transformative moment. I won't

(57:32):
go into crazy details.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
But.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
I saw her and I was like, holy shit, it's you,
and like, dude, I'm telling you, the level of like
connection that her and I have is like everything I've
looked for and been begging for my entire life, not
only from another partner, but from my mother. Like she
is like this powerful feminine energy that is like been

(57:58):
absent my whole life. And I know, oh for a fact,
that she never would have come into my life if
I did not find myself first.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
Oh yeah, she.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
Never would have come. Dude.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
All I hear when I hear your story is a
success story.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
You know, it's so beautiful because I think so many
people and they're in one of the stages in their life.
I call it being in the tunnel. And the only
problem with being in the tunnel it sucks in the tunnel, right,
and you don't know what it ends.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
That's the only problem with the tunnel one.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
But you know, you get through it. And I mean,
it's how many stories like yours you got to hear
before you have. It gives you some confidence when you're
in the tunnel that Hey, man, I'm going to figure
this out, like I'm going to get through this. Yeah,
eight years sober now, dude, congratulations on that.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
By the way. It's so incredible man, and it's really cool. Man.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
It's a real gift that you have, and it's why
you're able to help so many people now. And I'm
honored that you're in our program, that you're able to
help so many other people. You're a leader in the group.
I do got to ask, what does chee codes mean?
Why did you call your book that?

Speaker 1 (58:49):
I kept waiting for you to throw that in there,
but nothing came up.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
Yeah, So I call it the cheek codes because it's
it's obviously a play on words, right, Like I was
a big video guy growing up, and I love the
cheat I guess TV cheat codes. Well, dude, So here's
the thing. We would go to the neighbors.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Got done your dad for having TV you went and
played in.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
We'd go to the neighbor's house and we would like, see,
you know what I'm saying. And then my grandma she
was not she did not follow the churches I could
go in. I'm just saying anyway, you know, cheat codes.
And then for me. Oops, for me, I found like
my chi, my balance, my energy. I found it. And

(59:32):
the the the book is literally a it's it's a
process of basically explaining like your past, your experiences are
your chi or your cheat code. They that's what it is.
It's your coding, it's your it is your path. That
is your path, your your past is your path to

(59:55):
finding yourself and it's your code. So that's like it's
like the secret codedes that you have in your life.
They're there. They've been there all along, like everybody's looking
for meaning, what am I here for? Why am I here?
What's my purpose? It actually is your life that like
if you go, so I encourage in the book, I'm like,
go and get intimate with your life, get deep into
what happened in your life, because there is codes that

(01:00:18):
are telling you what you are. They're there. So yeah,
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
You're a gift. Man, Appreciate you. Thanks for coming on,
my friend.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
Thanks man.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
If people want to buy the book, by the way,
just Amazon Amazon.

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
I have the cheek codes dot com where I actually
built an entire course that's free. You might not like this,
but I give everything away, okay, And so this is
my I like that. This is my motto.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
This is my motto right now.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
Jimmy is. I want to give as much as I
possibly can away until the point where I don't have
the capacity to give my time or or whatever it is,
and and and then at some point I want to
turn it into a charity and literally just say hey,

(01:01:04):
if you cannot give a donation, then I can give
you some of my time. Because just like with the
Transcendental Meditation, I was always bothered that they charge one
thousand dollars for it. Only not because it's whatever, but
it's because it's such a powerful tool that I think
it should just be taught to everyone for free, Like
everyone should just have this access.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
If only the people in charge wanted us to have
the right things that would actually help us.

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
Right exactly so, Thomas doc Stater at Thomas dock Stater
on TikTok and on Instagram. I want to share my message.
I want to offer as much as I can to
anyone who needs it, literally to my capacity. I want
to help other people.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Thank you, my friend, Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Thank you again for listening to the Jimmy Rex Show.
And if you liked what you heard, please like and subscribe.
It really helps me to get better guests, to be
able to get the type of people on this podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
It's going to make it the most interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Also, want to everybody about my podcast studio, The Rookery Studios,
now available in Salt Lake City and or in Utah.
If you live in Utah and want to produce your
own podcasts, we take all of the guests, work out
of it for you and make it so simple. All
you do is you come in, you sit down, you talk,
and leave. We record it, edit it, even post it

(01:02:20):
for you. If interested in doing your own podcast, visit
our Instagram and send us a DM Rookery Studios, or
go to our website, therookristudios dot com