[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mark Rose podcast.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are on the countdown till its solo episodes only, which I'm so pumped about.

[SPEAKER_01]: I will probably make exceptions for like guests that I've always wanted to have on that I just haven't had on yet.

[SPEAKER_01]: People that I really want to dive deeper into conversations about.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean really what I'm inspired by the soul about our connection in nature about [SPEAKER_01]: and what is this relationship that we have to what cannot be named to what is a theo how do we create miracles how do we create things in our lives you know ultimately coming down to how do you create epic love but why reserve that for just romantic relationships why not create [SPEAKER_01]: If you're going to create it there and become a master of it, you then can't sit in mediocrity anywhere else.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's something that I continue to be really inspired to dive deeper into and understand more for myself, you know, ultimately, and also in service of the world, in service of how do we really become the best we can be at this human thing, at this life thing, and it is such a finite experience, you know, when we blink.

[SPEAKER_01]: time has gone by like I'm forty six now hey what I was just a new university hey what I was just in high school wait what I was for playing in my backyard with my brother you know and and so here we are now and in this very moment in time [SPEAKER_01]: And I consider it a real honor to share today's episode with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And before I get into that, I want to ask you a favor.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wherever you listen to your podcasts, if you could hit that subscribe button.

[SPEAKER_01]: That helps support the show.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's one very free way to do that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It allows it to move up the rankings because that's actually how rankings are based is on new subscribers.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I really appreciate if you could do that and also if you could share this episode or any episode that really resonates with you with someone that you think could really benefit from it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: So with all that said, I think it's interesting our relationship with [SPEAKER_01]: crime and with people who have gone to prison and are fierce about even exploring any of that and what's possible for our lives when we make mistakes and also what is possible for us when our communities receive us with love when they hold as accountable but they also don't [SPEAKER_01]: Buries in shame and what is possible for people if we put in the right structures to both hold a standard for behavior and a community so making sure that the values of the community are maintained through behavior and [SPEAKER_01]: What is possible for somebody when they're met with love in their mistakes?

[SPEAKER_01]: And what would be possible for even, I mean, gosh, prison systems, that did that.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're talking about a whole systemic overhaul, but with all that said, you know, I think about today's guest and what he's been through and what he changed in his life.

[SPEAKER_01]: and the many serendipitous moments that have occurred in his life to get him to the moment where he shared his story and that story transformed so many people's lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: We think about, okay, maybe you've never committed a crime.

[SPEAKER_01]: and being caught for it, I'm sure we've all committed some form of crime not to project on you, but I tried to return stolen genes for money when I was in high school and hey, I'll blemish on my record, but I'm human and we make mistakes and the way I was received in that by my father when I got in trouble and my mother, but especially my father, I'm very memorable experience, you know, where he said, why did you do it and he sat down and understood it and then [SPEAKER_01]: He gave me work to do around the house and really listen and cared.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a really beautiful response from a father to a son who, I don't know, was just making a bad decisions.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think we're all prone to making bad decisions at any age, but especially when we're young.

[SPEAKER_01]: So today's guest is someone who's been through that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Doug is, I mean, famous for his story and his motivation and his podcast and his YouTube channel.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm really excited for you to hear today's episode.

[SPEAKER_01]: So without further ado, here he is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mark Gross podcast today.

[SPEAKER_01]: I got no what's up buddy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Mark, thanks for having me, man.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm excited to have you here.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think for a lot of people, the concept of prison in general is foreign or it's like a fearful topic.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some people don't want to approach.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think lastly, it's probably something probably the last thing that people think will save your life or change your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Although I would imagine that's the underlying intention of sending people to prison, the rates of it being a curative process are probably next to zero.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm curious how did prison change you?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like how did you end up in there and how did it change you?

[SPEAKER_00]: So sync it in my of two thousand eight I'm riding around with a few of my friends to make a drug deal and at this time I had a horrific addiction to pain killers and I was also addicted to coke and selling copious amounts of weed which is kind of funny to talk about now given how mainstream it's become and it's been criminalized and legal and all that stuff like taxes off that now.

[SPEAKER_00]: So so back in a way.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm riding around to make a drug deal with a few of my friends going to pick up some pain killers.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had a half a pound of pot in my trunk.

[SPEAKER_00]: Had a couple thousand dollars of cash in my glove box.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had a busted headlight that I had been meaning to get fixed.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when you're in the thick of addiction, it's really hard to care about anything other than drugs and selling drugs when you're in it because anything else can kind of take away from your ability to manipulate, to cop, to sell, whatever you have to do to kind of maintain that habit.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't get the headlight fixed, and there's a cop running radar, because Cinco de Mayo is like one of the biggest, you know, drinking party nights of the year, and I flashed my high beams at this police officer to hide the fact that I busted headlight, but it just gave him a reason to pull me over.

[SPEAKER_00]: Pulls me over, I struggle to get my license and registration out, because I just knew in my gut mark that things were about to take a turn for the worst.

[SPEAKER_00]: given my stuff, he has reason to believe there's stuff in the car he wanted to search for, search my car, found the weed, found a scale, found the money, found everything, puts me in handcuffs, I'm sitting in the back of a cop car, and I just remember sitting there in handcuffs, and I was just thinking to myself, how did I get here?

[SPEAKER_00]: This is going to paint like a picture for how jail saved my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was my inability to deal with stress and adversity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's interesting that I host this podcast now, which you've been on called the adversity advantage.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I use adversity in my complete disadvantage.

[SPEAKER_00]: And growing up, my parents were divorced that, and I thought it was a pretty hard divorce.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was tough on me.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was bullied a lot in school.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't good at sports.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I had a lot of reasons to look at myself in a negative way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And instead of like owning that, which I guess they teach you to do now, [SPEAKER_00]: I used it as an excuse to behave like a jackass, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: As an excuse to act out to do drugs, to sell drugs, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I say this is because when I got arrested, I was taken to jail, and I was charged with a felony, possession with the intent that is should be marijuana.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I went to court several months later, and the judge looked at me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was twenty years old at the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, Doug, you're young.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're twenty years old.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm about to give you a deal.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so he said, I'm sentencing you to five years in jail.

[SPEAKER_00]: He convicted me of the felony because I was found guilty.

[SPEAKER_00]: The writing was on the wall that I was selling drugs.

[SPEAKER_00]: five years probation.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, but I'm going to suspend the five years of jail for you to only do ninety days, meaning if I had made another mistake, if I got arrested again by later probation, I could have potentially had to fulfill the full five years sentence, gave me a couple hundred hours community service, all kinds of fines and drug classes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as he's describing this, I'm waiting like, where's the deal?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm about to go to jail as a twenty year old who is scared of my own shadow.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, my deal is this, you complete everything without messing up once, no failed drug test, no misprovation opponents, nothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will take the felony conviction off of your record and give you probation before judgment, which is a kind of like a pass at the end of the five years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had no choice but to like take this opportunity he gave me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then a few weeks later, I reported the jail.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I went to jail, his high is heck on oxy cotton.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the story of me and the back of that cop car is about to make sense here in a second of how I described the way I responded to my childhood.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when I went to jail, I cried because I didn't want to go in and when I left, I cried because I didn't want to leave.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I was a guy, twenty years old, Mark, heavily addicted to drugs that I talked about, convicted felon, very overweight, like fat, like a lot of body fat, super unhealthy, twenty-one jobs that's the most twenty-one years old.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was the kid, you didn't want your son to hang out with.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was the kid, you didn't want your daughter to date.

[SPEAKER_00]: Go into jail, detox cold turkey off the pills for two to three weeks.

[SPEAKER_00]: which is like having the worst case of the flu.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's really, really, really bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: Dude, it was the worst.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they know your detoxing option, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: When you come in.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but, and the thing is, they can't, they don't have to give you anything to help because you can't die from opiate with jaw.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that may have changed now.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the rules, but, I mean, traditionally, from my knowledge, you can only die from two types of withdrawal.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's from benzodiazepines, things like Xanax value, et cetera, or from like alcohol.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, I'm in the midst of this detox.

[SPEAKER_00]: My soon-to-be-sellmate who looked like a more jacked version of Brad Pitt from Bike Club was like, dude, you're gonna start working out with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, bro, there's no way I'm working out with you like he was super ripped.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I could have been a model for Pillsbury at the time, like I was pretty fat.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, all right, man, whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I see him work out in the common area of the jail.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's doing all kinds of push-ups, pull-ups, climbing the rails and stuff in there, and just in insane shape.

[SPEAKER_00]: But not so long after that, we had a conversation in the cell that changed my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this cop car scenario is going to make total sense now.

[SPEAKER_00]: He kept asking me questions about my story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why are you in jail?

[SPEAKER_00]: What happened?

[SPEAKER_00]: blah, blah, blah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I kept blaming other people for my problems.

[SPEAKER_00]: I blame my parents, blame kids for bullying me, blamed me not being picked for the sports teams.

[SPEAKER_00]: I blame it was blaming everyone for myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in that moment, I was expecting to be coddled by him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they could say, OK, Doug, the world's against you because I don't think that's the problem when you face adversity, especially stuff where it's like uncontrolled and harsh things just happen to happen to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can use that story to get attention and to get coddled from people because it is like tough, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: But at the end of the day, I think it blocks people from actually making that shift and that transformation because you end up taking away, you know, responsibility and ownership.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, he looks at me and he says Doug quit being a victim.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, you got like Tony Robbins sell me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the PG version.

[SPEAKER_00]: He can put two and two together.

[SPEAKER_00]: What he actually called me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember just kind of just sitting there shocked and he is like, [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what I'll tell you, man.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, you're blaming everybody else for your problems, but yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said there's plenty of people that went through the experiences that you went through, that aren't in jail, right, Doug?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, yep, he said, you have two choices.

[SPEAKER_00]: Be a man.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look yourself in the mirror and say, you got yourself here and it's up to you to change.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are going to be a victim and cry in the corner and say, what was me?

[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, most people will do that because that's easy.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, nobody's coming to save you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And at that time, I, I wanted the drugs to save me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted attention from girls to save me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted validation from my peers to save me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what all these things to save me from the misery that I had that I had been pushing away that I had been so scared to face for years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it inspired me to start working out in jail.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember [SPEAKER_00]: Um, getting down to a push-up couldn't do a push-up could barely welcome it down to steps to the common area because I was also smoking cigarettes at the time, too.

[SPEAKER_00]: Could barely do a push-up for my knees.

[SPEAKER_00]: And with his motivation and encouragement, I was able to do a set of ten push-ups and run a mile by the time my ninety-day sentence was over in jail.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it completely changed my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it taught me the value of discipline.

[SPEAKER_00]: It taught me the value of showing up for yourself even when it was hard and you didn't want to.

[SPEAKER_00]: Last thing I wanted to do was get down in front of a bunch of grown men and embarrass myself to push up, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It taught me the value of just like loving myself and knowing that if I wanted to change, it had to be up to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it really taught me the importance of getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

[SPEAKER_00]: And how to tap into the dark side of pain.

[SPEAKER_00]: I remember when I first got to jail and I started to work out, some of the guys and they were like, think of what makes you angry.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I couldn't understand how to tap into that for myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then eventually people were doubting me and stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: People were my family were doubting what I was gonna do, all this stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it just really fueled me to work out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I would think about what made me mad.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just found this way to channel my purpose or my pain in the purpose.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the day before the day I left jail, I literally cried because this dude who trained me in there during my sentence kept me accountable, showed me what it's like to support somebody unconditionally.

[SPEAKER_00]: All the things, I was like, well, what am I going to do?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, how am I going to pay that pay it forward?

[SPEAKER_00]: And he said to me, he said, don't mess up.

[SPEAKER_00]: and pay it forward.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he gave me a workout plan that I still have framed, so I never forget where I came from, and then got out, lost a bunch of weight, became a trainer, and then that really was the catalyst for what I'm doing now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're the guys in the prison pretty like cheering you on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you'd be surprised, man.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like everybody in jail is just trying to do their time and like get out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like they're not in there to like do scary stuff like certain people may think.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I had that thought when I was going in there, I was like, man, I am like, can I get beat up like all the things?

[SPEAKER_00]: But you realize like unless you like blatantly disrespect somebody, [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody really messed with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of true like in a real world.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, people are genuinely kind to each other for the most part unless you go out of your way to disrespect somebody.

[SPEAKER_00]: And people, yeah, they had seen me come in there as this, like I was a zombie.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could barely like think straight, barely see, you know, I blacked out for a bit because I was just, I was on so many drugs.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, dude, I was doing at times like four, five hundred milligrams of oxycontin today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a lie?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's like, you know, if you were had like a wisdom teeth or like a pulled where you get like a bottle of like the hydrocodones.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're like type, but what do they town all threes?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, with like five to seven and point five milligrams and there's like ninety pills.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was doing and I was snorting an entire bottle those at my nose every day.

[SPEAKER_01]: No one or yet are like keeping up with that kind of addiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know that saying from the board mock day where he says that the wrong question is why the addiction the right questions why the pain Yeah, I mean that I think about that a lot and yeah, he also says something that's like instead of asking what's wrong like ask what's right, you know like what are the drugs doing for you?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it comes back to what you just said, they're numbing some flavor of emotional pain.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what they did for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's every, most, every other person I've ever talked to is struggle with addiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you peel it back enough, there was some level of emotional pain they were dealing with.

[SPEAKER_01]: had you ever like when you were in those ninety days had you ever confronted your anger before had you ever confronted your you know I suppose it's like martyrdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean I gone to therapy like before I went to jail but because I wasn't really ready and I was just doing it either because I was forced into it or because I just wanted to make myself look good.

[SPEAKER_00]: I never really got real value out of it plus [SPEAKER_00]: Like I wasn't, I was still like hopped up on drugs, which were really preventing me from getting to the root of the problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I had to disconnect the relationship with my parents.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was hard for me to like talk about a lot of this stuff that was really going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: And plus when you're a teenager, it's just tough to like share your feelings.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then especially like if it's related to some of the people you're spending time with or school, like what are you gonna do?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you're in like seventh grade, you're gonna come home and tell your parents that you're being bullied, they call the principal.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then like now you create a whole other cascade of problems in school where you're being bullied even more for being a snitch.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just, I don't think it's easy as people think, you know, I was asked the question on a podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was on Tom Billy's podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember if it actually made it into the episode or not, but he said something like, he challenged me.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, you know, what would you tell like a twelve-year-old version of you if you were being bullied or something like that?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I gave like the traditional self help answer, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Where I said, don't worry with the, you know, the way somebody's treating you is in a reflection of you.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's about them, which is true.

[SPEAKER_00]: But he was like, do you really think a twelve year old wants to hear that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it made me think I was like, you know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, twelve year old just wants to make sure that they feel good in school.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't have to worry about like people making fun of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't need them.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't need them.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't need to see like an Instagram post to make them feel better.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even though it's the right thing to say, it's the wrong thing that a twelve-year-old wants to see.

[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think they want here?

[SPEAKER_00]: I just think that everything's going to be okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: That if you could somehow convince somebody that they're going to be okay, and that they will find their way, and that this is only going to be a short amount of time, and that you are loved, you are supported, you are liked.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's what people need to be reminded of, because when you are picked on, and it's not to say that that's like bullet proof, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: What I am saying is this, [SPEAKER_00]: when people are being bullied.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: You focus in so much on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: that you're not able to see anything outside of it because, you know, now that just lingers in your head and negativity breeds negativity and so you're like a twelve-year-old going to school and you have, you know, maybe a bunch of great friends, but then you have these group of like two or three people that are making fun of you saying you look like you have down syndrome, which is what they would say to me, like all these things, it warps your sense of well-being [SPEAKER_00]: because at the same time like if the cards are being played right like if they were for me like I wasn't good at sports I wasn't coordinated so like I was like is there something wrong with me or could these kids be right you know what I mean and then you start to believe that and then you behave just like anything else you but you behave in that matter [SPEAKER_00]: It just completely shifts like the way you see things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I honestly given what I was going through, I didn't know if things were going to be okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I knew I would live.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't like, I didn't think I was going to die or anything, but I was like, man, am I going to ever have a good solid group of friends?

[SPEAKER_01]: You mean when you were in junior high?

[SPEAKER_00]: In junior high?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, not like when I was older, I was fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, I had a lot of people in my corner, a lot of friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can high school, like, and we can get into this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I had [SPEAKER_00]: It was I had a lot of people around me, a lot of friends, but a lot of them weren't the best friends because of the activities we were doing together, which created a whole other subset of problems because that created a false sense of normalcy and how I was living my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: How old were you and you started doing drugs?

[SPEAKER_00]: I was fourteen.

[SPEAKER_00]: So again, I'd had all these [SPEAKER_00]: I want to say problems.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was more as I dial it back and look into it more.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a mountain of what's wrong with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like on my back, weighing me down.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's wrong with me?

[SPEAKER_00]: Why can't I make the sport seems wrong with me?

[SPEAKER_00]: Why am I being picked on for no reason?

[SPEAKER_00]: What's wrong with me?

[SPEAKER_00]: Why my parents divorced and my friends' parents aren't.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was this what's wrong with me mentality, where I felt scared.

[SPEAKER_00]: I felt uneasy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was stressed a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the solution for that became weed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I initially started to smoke weeks.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was like the quote unquote cool thing to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, this thing will get me high.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the feeling I got from that mark became the very thing I needed to chase for the next seven years of my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was this numbing feeling, the numbing of Paige didn't feel the pain.

[SPEAKER_00]: Cause not like I was smoking this, this first batch of weed and I was like, oh, man do I feel cool or gosh, this plant tastes so good.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, wow.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel anxious anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel stressed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have to worry about how my life's gonna play out in the next few months or a few years.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was more like, dang, I finally feel like peace in my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then that became the addiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that when people are addicted to drugs, they are chasing the wrong thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're not chasing the high.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're chasing the ability for the substance and on their pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: That one won't change their state.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if we don't have really good mentors or people who can even see us struggling, you know, below all that, who may be call us forward and [SPEAKER_00]: you know imagine if if someone sat you down were did your parents have a painful divorce like was it pretty hostile I mean it was yeah it was high conflict for sure a lot of going back and forth over the ins and outs of the divorce and custody and child support and stuff like that yeah brothers and sisters yeah two full brothers and a half brother and so you know with that you know there was a lot of tension in the house and that became normal for me [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think obviously I think what my parents did the best they could in that situation, you know, the worst is never obviously easy and we've been able to talk about, you know, things, you know, after that and even me, you know, me taking obviously responsibility and ownership and [SPEAKER_00]: the way I behaved in response to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I just think it was, it was hard for me to truly go to them and tell them that what was going on for a few reasons.

[SPEAKER_01]: One, I didn't want to be a burden while they were already overwhelmed.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I knew that they probably couldn't fix whatever it is I was going through because I was like, well, what are they going to do?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they're not going to, they can't come to school with me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think the, what do you think was the origin of the bullying?

[SPEAKER_01]: you know like I often think about if you take a kid is being bullied any move them to another school they still get bullied because there's some sort of energetic thing that the bully picks up on right because the bully doesn't just go bully anybody the bully sees a doorway in someone that they could [SPEAKER_00]: You know, hurt.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a couple things there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I had really low self esteem to where I didn't stand up for myself at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I was a kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I also, you know, because of early on, seeing how unathletic I was and people call me names and stuff, you know, I began to feel pretty low, myself as it was.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I would walk with a certain way, it was very soft spoken.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I also just wouldn't really do anything about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would just let people do whatever they wanted to do because of just being afraid of not having friends or whatever the example was.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I think I definitely became like a target because of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I also, you know, I don't know if it's because of what I went through, but I've also just been this, you know, super kind person.

[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe like people took advantage of my kindness.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it created a subset of problems where, you know, I had a chip on my shoulder for a while where it was like, okay, just, you know, being kind doesn't get you anywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just be a jerk.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then that obviously is just as bad just in a different way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I got to add a similar, you know, in grade five, six, seven, eight, which I think are really hard ages for kids, you know, because you're there's not really much of a social hierarchy before your seven or eight.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when I used to teach soccer camps, you would see this difference in kids that were like four or five.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then as soon as you did the groups that were ten, eleven, twelve, you started to see social hierarchies.

[SPEAKER_01]: So like guys started to be basically ranked based on height, strength, athleticism, and then women based on beauty, etc.

[SPEAKER_01]: I found my I find that social hierarchy being created in me staying at the bottom.

[SPEAKER_01]: And now I look back and I [SPEAKER_01]: I just wonder, like, what would have been like when you were going through your doors?

[SPEAKER_01]: Or sorry, through your parents' doors?

[SPEAKER_01]: And even being bullied at school, if a kid who was like a year older or two years older was like, don't fuck with this guy.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll fuck and kill you.

[SPEAKER_01]: you know, maybe that's a little aggressive, but it stands up for you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And even if your parents were like an aunt or uncle, or someone said, your parents divorce isn't about you.

[SPEAKER_01]: It has nothing to do with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And like actually there was a [SPEAKER_01]: initiated or mature person who was able to translate or get ahead of the impact of the things on your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, when I was in jail, my people knew like my cellmate had my back.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that prevented people from if they wanted to pick on me from picking on me.

[SPEAKER_00]: What a blessing to get him as a cellmate.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, for sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: And with my parents, yeah, I mean, I don't know because [SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't, I don't think I was as upset about the divorce as I was about just the tension that was there because of the lack of safety in the house, lack of stability.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was just, it was just different, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, like, I don't blame them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think they, again, they did the best they could in the situation they were in, but it definitely still caused issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and it was a lot of unlearning I had to do as an adult.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think the main takeaway for me is that I just, I became like this person that needed community end of it in because of my lack of connection at home.

[SPEAKER_01]: I see what you're saying.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you don't even saw it somewhere else.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I found, you know, what do you find love in all the wrong places, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because you didn't have it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have it for myself, and I didn't have it.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the way that I guess I wanted it from home, my parents loved me.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I can't, I'm not going to sit here and say that they're in their time.

[SPEAKER_00]: That would be a blatant lie.

[SPEAKER_00]: They definitely loved me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think just because of all the tension around that, I felt just stress where I felt like I needed validation from things outside of the home.

[SPEAKER_00]: just given the situation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And people aren't like talking about like they are now.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think it's almost become harder in many ways to deal with this stuff now, because it's become normalized.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it takes away from the situations of people that have real problems.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I feel like everyone has anxiety for instance now, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's, which I think there's like there's reality to that.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's some truth to it, but there's also a lot of, if you don't have anxiety, then how do you get attention?

[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't, if you're not depressed, if you're not, and again, there's a lot of confounding things here, but social media itself is creating that for a lot of people, especially young people, especially young girls.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it's almost like if you don't have some sort of victim [SPEAKER_01]: card to play, then do you have power, do you have strength, do you have status?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's really interesting to sort of watch it unfold and not have been raised in that environment.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, because if you complained about some things when we were younger, you were just told the suck it up and shut the fuck up.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, funny story.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the reason I started to do oxycom was because I was something so much coke and smoking so much weed that I started getting panic attacks.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you ever had a panic attack, but [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're the absolute worst.

[SPEAKER_00]: And imagine having them like, two thousand five, two thousand six, you know, somewhere in that era where no one talked about mental health.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even know what a panic attack was.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I honestly thought I was having heart attack.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I remember I would have to like, if I was driving and we were like riding around doing drugs, I'd have to literally pull my car over for my friends to drive because I was freaking out so much.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then that came out and we were triggering that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Coke.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think also the fact that my life was just chaos.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was selling drugs the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wasn't going to college even though I probably, I even though I wanted to because I was I think deep down a smart kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just a lot of turmoil that I thought I had that was self-induced, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we ended up buying this like panic attack book from the book store.

[SPEAKER_00]: My friends and I.

And so every time I had a panic attack, that's just, uh, industrious.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they just go, you know, go read your book.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then, but then I would go with a therapy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, I wouldn't tell the therapist that I was doing a shit ton of drugs, because then they would tell my parents, or they could potentially tell my parents, or the police or whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was never truly getting to the root of the problem, because if I've been like, yeah, I'm snoring an eight-ball coke a day.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm smoking a quarter ounce of weed, like ripping bomb hits, like barely sleeping, eating fast food every day.

[SPEAKER_00]: They'd like, oh, like, why don't you just stop that and see, and see if you're anxiety goes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then you could have had the therapist explored the feelings that are being, you know, attempted to be resolved by all the other things.

[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting, there's not safety to actually say all the things that are happening that allow you to actually get to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I just think it, none of this stuff is as normal.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's great that it's been normalized because now you can talk about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can go to a therapist and you can tell them what I'm basically saying now and the fear of being like ratted out is kind of gone, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because of how normalized talking about things like substance abuse are and stuff which I think is really good.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I remember having an opportunity to change my life when I first had a panic attack.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was taken to the emergency room like strapped down a hospital begs I thought I was dying.

[SPEAKER_00]: They found all the drugs in my system, everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I didn't want to make that decision to change because I had become so addicted to the lifestyle.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of the selling and doing drugs.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the thing that I think you'll kind of enjoy listening to based on some of the content that you talk about.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I started selling drugs, it was the first time in my life, I felt authentically like seen, wanted, validated.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I loved having my phone rang, text messages going off saying that people needed me, which was something that I hadn't really felt before.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that feeling became addicted to me, where I wanted more of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I couldn't like, Ella, because I was like, all right, if I stopped selling drugs, where's that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Where is that going to come from?

[SPEAKER_00]: If I stopped doing drugs, who am I going to hang out with?

[SPEAKER_00]: If I get on a straight narrow, you know, how boring is that going to be, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: As a kid who's, you know, late teen, early, you know, twenty years old.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had all these things I was battling that people now still battle.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I can't tell you how many people when they're like, hey, I think I want to like, I'm a blatant alcoholic, but if I go out, if I stop drinking, I don't know what I'm going to say to like my friend if he's like, why aren't you drinking?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's a hard one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now I have a totally different perspective on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just given, you know, the amount of people I've seen and talked to have gone through recovery and stuff, but [SPEAKER_00]: The addiction to the lifestyle became just as hard to get up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it was a compilation of the fact that I wanted to fit in.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to feel like I was the cool kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that was all the expensive legal trouble in my own well-being.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was the guy selling drugs, doing the thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for what?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I went to jail, which I'm really thankful that I did because it obviously did save my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I got super lucky.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I always like to reinforce that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And not lucky that I changed my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I chose to make those decisions.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if I, my soulmate wasn't there and he wasn't the person he was, I probably would be like buried somewhere in a graveyard.

[SPEAKER_00]: I went to countless funerals when I was a kid of lost.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've stopped counting how many people that I've died that I've [SPEAKER_00]: that were friends of mine that I've used with.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm talking, I went to my first funeral when I was like, seventeen of my friend who overdosed, drinking and driving accident.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was, but yeah, there was overdose, drinking and driving car accidents that were caused by drugs.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, so many people like died.

[SPEAKER_00]: People that I like, they weren't just like, oh, did you hear so and so from like English class died?

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like people in my crew, people that I hung out with.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I became like numb to death.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a really weird thing because I was going, and I remember going to my grandparents funeral, my mom's parents, and this is kind of, this is horrible to say, but not having much emotion about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't because I didn't love them, it was because I had gone through, like typically when people, their first experience of death is like a grandparent dying, a great grandparent dying, maybe like a dog or something like, you know, like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you're going to the funerals of people that you like saw on a regular basis, it changes the dynamic of things where you're now getting introduced to death at a younger age and in a completely different way where it's like the circle of life is being interrupted.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're not sitting there looking at somebody who you can tell is on their way.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was already on their way there, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Looking at somebody that was a crap that could have been me and it's a totally different outlook.

[SPEAKER_01]: to have so much loss so early in your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, it's, of course, you know, as you said, you're already numb to the experiences of life.

[SPEAKER_01]: But at that point, did you want to die?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, man.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there was like, and I get emotional.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm not going to cry, but just thinking about this, that, you know, there was times in my life during that time where I didn't want to live.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't because, and it honestly wasn't because I'm like, oh, [SPEAKER_00]: my life is horrible right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was because what my life ever get any better.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was because I didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel at that time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it got so bad that there was times where I would think about who would be in my funeral.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there was times where I would cut up a line of coke, kind of a line of oxy cotton, mix it together, a lot of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I would just sit there and I'd be like, man, like if I overdosed with anybody missed me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And those are the thoughts that we go through my head because I just think that I had so much pain in my life early on and my condition myself that was gonna be a failure, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So I couldn't, there was so much darkness in my life from a variety of things as we discussed that I felt like I had no way out.

[SPEAKER_00]: until ironically I go to jail, which is particularly when people are like, all right, now I really have no way out because I'm a jail.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like, I'll never get a job again, I'll never think about all the serendipitous, like the judge you got, the Selma you got, like, clearly there was a greater plan for, you know, which I think we all have a greater plan, but you said yes to the invitation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and at first I didn't want to.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was ready to rot away in that jail cell, do nothing and get back out and do the thing that I was already doing, just because I just, that's all I knew.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was just what I thought the plan was.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't know how to manage my stress.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know how to manage adversity.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know how to manage this comfort until I started finding, until I started exercising.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that gave me this new outlet.

[SPEAKER_00]: to channel things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's the best mark like, I don't care what you do.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care if you rock.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care if you do yoga.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care if you're the gym.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care what you do.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when you exercise, you pick a movement that works for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're focusing on little bits of self improvement.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're focusing on bettering yourself and looking into the future and trying to become a future version of yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you're rocking, you're like, hey, can I carry a heavier pack?

[SPEAKER_00]: Can I walk a little bit further with this weight on my back?

[SPEAKER_00]: When you're doing yoga, it's like, how can I improve this pose?

[SPEAKER_00]: How can I hold this pose longer when you're lifting weights, you're getting stronger, maybe you're doing more reps.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever the example is, but it's something that is getting you in the habit of self improvement.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think fitness is the ultimate gateway.

[SPEAKER_00]: for self-improvement because of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a, it's a railroad hanging fruit and the benefits for transformation are so powerful.

[SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to community building, when it comes to the way you feel about yourself, stress management, and all the things that we talked about earlier, you know, fitness is that is that thing because it just gives you that natural endorphin rush.

[SPEAKER_00]: that that drug is used to.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it takes some time to kind of recalibrate because there's nothing that will compare to snorting a fat line of cocaine.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like when people are like, man, like, I did a cold plunge and I felt like I just did a line of coke and like you've never done coke.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, because that's funny.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the dopamine rush you get [SPEAKER_00]: from doing drugs is irreplaceable, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's very dangerous, but it's so addictive for the brain because you can't get that in other ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, that's such a, I've never done Coke.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I laughed just so much when he said that because I remember human men saying that it releases the same amount of dopamine as cocaine.

[SPEAKER_01]: And now I'm just laughing thinking when I get out and I'm like, [SPEAKER_00]: Well if he he made he's what he's a friend and he's a lot smarter than me.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if he if he obviously has the science to back that up then I think I believe but I rent yeah right it's different also the context of it is completely different although maybe people do a line and then get into a coal plunge than you double enough but you know the other day I was listening to the Jonathan height who wrote the coddling of the American mind happiness hypothesis but his recent book is called the anxious generation [SPEAKER_01]: And in it, he was talking about fast drip versus slow drip dopamine in that social media creates that fast drip, but completing a task is a slow drip.

[SPEAKER_01]: So for like kids, the dopamine release from video games is very different than [SPEAKER_01]: You know, working outside New York and building something.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so you get the rewards, but they're slower and build up.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was just thinking when you were saying that of like, when you're used to, and this would be true of social media for people, when you're used to just the constant flood of novelty and excitement and chaos, like, [SPEAKER_01]: boring is not even a boring is standing in line at a Starbucks without your phone.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then people having an addiction to needing to be stimulated by something.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you must, because you started to then train people and notice the difference that fitness did to people.

[SPEAKER_01]: I agree with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think fitness is one of the best doorways [SPEAKER_01]: to changing a belief because one just by acting on it, you start to love yourself because the very act is an act of self-love.

[SPEAKER_01]: But secondly, you'll see results actually relatively quickly, putting boundaries in your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: You don't see the results that quickly.

[SPEAKER_01]: You actually might see chaos at first.

[SPEAKER_01]: But with fitness, you might feel shitty while you're in it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But when you're done it, you're not.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, [SPEAKER_01]: I just put my shoes on and walked around a block for the first time, or I just ran up a flight of stairs and never done that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just moved some weight and never done that.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's something so powerful about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I totally agree.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that, and also like, people, if they're going through any theme of adversity, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just say like, you know, my experience, I went through, you know, horrific drug addiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: People who are going through like breakups, people that, whilst the job, just pick your flavor of life transformation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Typically when people are looking to change your lives for the better, they're looking to spend time with better people, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: The best way to find better people is at the gym.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Great.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Where there's people there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Typically are there to better themselves to get stronger or typically, you know, they're kind.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're open as long as you're not being creepy or talking to them in a middle of a set, they'll at least talk to you, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just a great way to meet people that are on the same path as you versus, you know, a lot of times people kind of like, all right, well, where do I go to meet people?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like coffee shop, I mean, [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe depending on what the coffee shop is, but I mean, there's a lot more people in a gym.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and a shared value is being, you know, coffee.

[SPEAKER_01]: I could argue is a good value, but you know, it's a growing out.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, working out is you're moving towards similar goals, even though they might be different.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, I think with fitness, it just gives you this amazing tool to have in your pocket that can help you not just feel better about yourself long-term, but like when you're going through like something stressful, it's okay, like for me, when I got in a jail, life was still very stressful.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a convicted felon, I'm on probation, a lot of life changes, I'm trying to get a job, like all the things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I had to find a way to manage it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was going on runs.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was going for walks.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was doing pushups.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was doing the stuff that I had done in jail.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then that became like a great coping strategy for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the older I've gotten, I mean fitness is still a great coping strategy for me now, but the older I've gotten, [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I've learned the best thing for me to do is just to sit in the pain or in the emotion and just get some gain some awareness around what's going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: But generally speaking, like moving your body and finding a way to make that energy shift is going to be a game changer for people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's what people have a hard time doing is they want [SPEAKER_00]: to especially people like me who were so primed for addiction and my brain.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to feel better now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not how life works.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't just feel better now.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can feel a little bit better, but not better to the fact that you're like going from [SPEAKER_00]: You know, head in the sand to like head up in the sun.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's more like head in the sand, head out of the sand.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're feeling a little bit better.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you compound that, then eventually you get to the sun.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just having the patience to like withstand that, which is top of what I can tell you.

[SPEAKER_00]: is that once you get good at managing that, I think your days in the sand become less and less because now you understand that it's part of life.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you're not bearing your head in the sand as much, but also you know what you're gonna do to like get out of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you're right, time becomes smaller because you have the tools now to kind of transform yourself out of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So when you get out of prison, you put in fitness as a sort of new coping strategy, a positive coping strategy.

[SPEAKER_01]: You, I'm guessing, get invitations from old friends to be like, oh, you're out.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's celebrate.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is that happened?

[SPEAKER_01]: It did happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, for a while, I did hang out with my friends that I was using with and partying with because they were my friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't, I don't think anybody backed them as a bad person.

[SPEAKER_00]: They just weren't aligned with where I was going in my life, any of that time, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And that I think that's a distinction I like to make.

[SPEAKER_00]: Did you notice that that gap like between your new lifestyle or did you relapse even in the now I didn't relapse but what I found was it's just it got weird so like for instance like I'd be like with my friends and they'd be like doing drugs and I wouldn't do anything and it would be like just kind of weird [SPEAKER_00]: or there was a time where my friend, I just got out of jail, my friends wanted to pick me up and take me to like the mall or something.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hadn't been to the mall since I got out and I told them, you know, no funny business and they stopped to make a drug deal on the way and the police showed up and I was in handcuffs and thankfully like my friend's vouched for me and like he had nothing to do with this.

[SPEAKER_00]: But scary moment, right, where I could have easily gone back to jail were [SPEAKER_00]: just other situations that I put myself in because of the people I was around, that it would have been easy to me and so scary.

[SPEAKER_00]: It would have been after I got out of jail.

[SPEAKER_00]: You imagine like going back in because of something I, you know, that I didn't do.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then there was a couple other situations like that where it was easy, it would have been easy to like kind of associate me with certain things that were going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what really changed things was I don't know, I don't remember what the time frame that it wasn't that long, but it wasn't like right after jail either.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was super like, until like reading, you know, fitness magazines and, you know, I have Arnold Schwarzenegger's encyclopedia of body building underneath the computer to like keep this propped up a little bit that, you know, that was one of the first books I read when I got out of jail.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so my interest became like, all right, how am I going to get more protein and how am I going to cook some chicken to make sure that I get my enough calories in for the day from trying to build some muscle?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then my friends are still getting messed up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then there came a point where I was like sitting on the couch.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like an awkward first date where there was like nothing at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was just like silent.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was just weird.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I had grown to realize that we just had grown apart, you know, and that's just what happened sometimes in life and with friendships.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I made the decision to like really allocate a lot of my time to spend by myself.

[SPEAKER_01]: and then meet people through the gym.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when did you start your podcast?

[SPEAKER_01]: Start the podcast during the pandemic.

[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of time I passed since you arrived at jail.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so when I got out of jail, I went through that phase.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just described if getting rid of the friends and then moved to a migrant parents.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I got out of jail as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I spent a lot of time by myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, just really thinking about what I wanted in my life, who I was going to become, types of people I wanted to attract.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I started to meet like solid friends along the way, you know, through that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I decided I want to become a personal trainer, became a personal trainer.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I just celebrated actually fifteen years of being a trainer.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is, yeah, like, two thousand ten.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got a job with a gym in two thousand eleven.

[SPEAKER_00]: I became a trainer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fifteenth anniversary.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's been like roughly fifteen years.

[SPEAKER_00]: But, and so I became [SPEAKER_00]: very interested in like paying it forward and helping other people use fitness to change their lives just like I you know I had done behind bars and and got like a new high and helping other people like do that and then built a very successful business as a trainer time flew by and my probation was up the five years that the judge giving me back in a wait [SPEAKER_00]: We wrote a letter.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of my clients is a lawyer, wrote a letter to the judge.

[SPEAKER_00]: He granted me my day in court and took the felony conviction off my record and gave me a PBJ.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's now it's now been fully expired.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then that inspired me to write my first book because this is back in twenty fourteen wrote my first book from felony to fitness to free to inspire people to make the most their second chance turn negative into a positive.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then I like, you know, I hit this emotional rock bottom, not too long after that, where I thought because I was so successful as a trainer, making great money, ripped, had all the things that I would just be happy forever.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was getting attention from girls.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had everything that I thought I'd want it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I still didn't like the person I saw in the mirror.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was still a lot of collateral damage that had to be addressed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so then I started to go to therapy and understand where a lot of these self-beliefs had come from and the way I viewed myself and forgiveness and resentment and doing with all that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then what really, which shifted things at that time was I was training a guy who was a pastor at a non-denominational church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, Doug, you're going to start going to church with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, dude, I'm already going to hell, man, like, for everything I've done in my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's no way I belong in church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, all right, man, like whatever, but this guy was always like joyful.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this guy's so happy all the time, like, what the heck, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm going through all this emotional stuff where I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing my life, I'm trying to figure out.

[SPEAKER_00]: these lies, I believe, about what actually what it takes to be happy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I decided to call him, you know, and tell him, and I was ready to give this Jesus thing a try.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I, when he, when he answered the phone, it was like, I just told him he won the lottery.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, why is this guy so freaking happy?

[SPEAKER_00]: I went in his office, you know, prayed the prayer, the acknowledged that Jesus died for my sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I started balling my eyes out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the same, like, wait, they came off my back.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I was doing drugs, came off my back that day, called my mom, and like, you know, authentically apologized to her for the first time in my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And just really began to understand that there was a lot of purpose in my pain, which I had a hard time grappling with, because man, like I still have all this stuff in my past that I feel like it's still there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like how do I open up how do I share?

[SPEAKER_00]: And that became like a spark for me to not just want to be a trainer, but to want to be somebody [SPEAKER_00]: that was like a life transformer and and stewing speaking and coaching and mentoring and adults who were struggling with addiction, training people who were in recovery from addiction, fitness training and then wrote a couple more books along the way and then the today show ended up spending a couple days with me back in [SPEAKER_00]: It was twenty-eighteen.

[SPEAKER_00]: The video came out early, twenty-nineteen, where it was a nice highlight of my story.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a cool.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I got some other national media and went on some big podcasts.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the feedback from going on these shows was like really instrumental.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, what I do now, because I was like, man, my story is touching the lives of so many people.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm super blessed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm super thankful.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what inspired me to start my own show was like if I can get if I'm getting the feedback like how can I pay that forward and get feedback from other people.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's like a big part of like the in between between getting out of jail and then like you know starting my show.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's incredible.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: What I think we are all given the option to turn our pain into something and I don't even think we know it's possible to we meet someone who's done it and then the paradigm of [SPEAKER_01]: Like I imagine how many addicts have heard your story, how many people who get out of prison have heard your story are in prison.

[SPEAKER_01]: And all of a sudden it's like, wait, he did that.

[SPEAKER_01]: You overcame the significant weight.

[SPEAKER_01]: You overcame so many things.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then you take all of that and turn it into more giving, more giving, more giving.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's really powerful, man.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate it.

[SPEAKER_01]: What advice do you have for people who are in that state of they know they're being invited?

[SPEAKER_01]: They're listening to this and they're like, oh, I got to make whatever change it is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever the invitation is could be lose weight, could be addiction, could be step in the purpose, could be starter podcasts, could be any of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you have a different advice for someone on addiction, great.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think you got to follow it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you got to follow your heart.

[SPEAKER_00]: You got to follow your gut.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, addiction specifically.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think if you're got telling you you should do something, there's a good chance that you should.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think when people do that, I think what people can do is, is just to reach out and ask for help.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whether it's a medical professional, whether it's somebody that you know and trust, whether it's showing up at a meeting, whether it's joining an online support group, whatever it is, like just taking that first step.

[SPEAKER_00]: And just saying, you know, I, and I'm not even saying that I have a problem, I deserve to make that [SPEAKER_00]: to make this improvement in my life because I know that I deserve better.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in just to start small, don't focus on not addictions different because obviously you don't want to like, yeah, like I'm just going to slowly like taper off of cocaine, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, just do what whole plunging.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, but like, [SPEAKER_00]: Just start with the basics and start with like taking the next right step and then compounding those small wins.

[SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to fitness, like I just think sometimes if somebody hasn't worked out in a while, like the simplest thing you can do is start your shoes on, go for like a five minute break, come back, see how you feel, build off of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: If somebody's gonna start a podcast, just record an episode, don't worry about the fancy equipment, don't worry about the thumbnail, just record because you see, I see so many people, [SPEAKER_00]: Focus on everything else that it takes away from their ability to focus on the thing that matters, which is actually doing the podcast and recording.

[SPEAKER_00]: People overindex on the big wins and underindex on the small wins.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think confidence in yourself and your ability to transform your life comes from mastering the zero to one, zero to two, zero to three, over the zero to fifty.

[SPEAKER_00]: The biggest, the framework that has built what I do now all came from me behind bars, which is a long time ago and very, before I did anything professionally, really, before I became a trainer, before I started the podcast, before I was, you know, seen on media, it was me doing like pushups on my knees and jail.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what built the most amount of confidence in my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: That has become like the framework for how I handle things now.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's not like when I go through hard times.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I started a podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's been challenging.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's like no, I freaking survived jail and I changed my life back then.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like that's what I think about.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, though.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Long-winded advice.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's great.

[SPEAKER_01]: Those little shifts we don't realize that when you say I'm going to go for a walk and then you do, you build trust in yourself, you build ammunition, you build evidence.

[SPEAKER_01]: It gets Alex or Mozi who has a great quote where he says, [SPEAKER_01]: Basically, like confidence is not built by saying affirmations in a mirror.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's built by aligning your choices with what you desire, like seeing evidence of who you are.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I totally agree with that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Doug, this is so great.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate you coming on.

[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate you as a human being.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're always so unconditionally loving as a friend and so supportive.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really just appreciate it having a connection with you and I'm curious for all the people listening where can they find more of you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Mark, appreciate our friendship as well, brother.

[SPEAKER_00]: It really means a lot that you have me on the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: People can find me at Doug Boobst on all the social media channels, YouTube, Doug Boobst, adversity advantage podcasts, repeat your podcasts, or Doug Boobst.com for when I check out some of the interviews I'm done and by my books, it's like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.

[SPEAKER_01]: We'll put all the links in the show notes, everybody, and Doug, thanks so much, man.