Chris Cella: Opioids, Robbing the Mafia, Burning Down the Entourage House, and How God Saved Him

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Speaker 2 You pepper sprayed a member of the Mexican mafia and stole his heroin. I sprayed him in the face with pepper spray and put something to his throat and said, don't move.

Speaker 2 It's making me tense, man, just telling me this story.

Speaker 2 And he had girls in his halfway houses that he was giving heroin, giving crack, and pimping them out, and then sending them back to treatment where they would ultimately fail their drug test and have to go to detox.

Speaker 2 And guess who gets a kickback from the detox center? No way. It's a revolving door of suffering and just pain for the addict, but they're making money at every stop.
This is disgusting.

Speaker 2 And then she pulls out a handgun. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 She's like, what the are you doing in my house? My kids are in there. And I'm like, oh my God, you have kids? If you have your kids sleeping in there, you're kind of a shitty mom.

Speaker 2 So you insult the lady with the gun points.

Speaker 2 Gut balls, I'll say that.

Speaker 2 Thanks for doing this, Chris.

Speaker 2 How long were you addicted to opioids? So I was addicted to opioids from the age of 15 to 23, kind of on and off, you know, in and out of rehab for those eight years, but yeah.

Speaker 2 15 to 23. How did you grow up? So I grew up in, I was born in Dallas, grew up in South Orange County, moved there when I was five, kind of bounced around, but all in kind of relatively the same area.

Speaker 2 Southern California. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Southern California, Orange County.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 my sister, or my family, you know, addiction kind of just runs in my family. Like my as it does many.
Yeah, right. I, you know, I do believe it is.

Speaker 2 There is a genetic component to, you know, kind of the addictive personality, you know, absolutely. 100%.
You think?

Speaker 2 How much alcoholism is there in Israel? How much alcoholism is there in Sweden? You know, it's a big difference. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. So,

Speaker 2 you know, my, so, so growing up,

Speaker 2 my dad was, he was a general counsel at an oil company in Texas. So he was traveling a lot, and he was also

Speaker 2 a heavy drinker. He would, he is not the type of person who like needed to wake up and, you know, drink in the morning to function, but he would go on benders, you know, for days, weeks at a time.
And

Speaker 2 then my

Speaker 2 mom,

Speaker 2 she was a long distance runner and she had a diving accident that left her basically, she was a victim of big pharma's push in the early to mid-90s for oxycontin

Speaker 2 and then eventually fentanyl. And, you know, this little pathetic pill-pushing quack is giving her just massive amounts of oxycontin.
And she didn't like the way she, she hated the way it felt.

Speaker 2 And she, she's like, I don't like this. You know, it's making me like comatose.
And the doctor's like, well, you need to keep taking it. And so she decided to flush them down the toilet once.
And

Speaker 2 she went into excruciating withdrawal. And I'll touch more on withdrawal later.
But it's, yeah, she, so she. Were your parents married? Yes.
Yes. Yes.
They were married.

Speaker 2 So your dad's the general counsel of a big company. Your mom is a distance runner.
So these are like. competent people who've got their act together.

Speaker 2 These are not like, this is not the junkie profile. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah.
Like my father, he was, um, he graduated college at 19

Speaker 2 and he went to Columbia Law School. I mean, you know, so.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, because I think that I think it's important to set this in a socioeconomic frame.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because there's, yeah, addiction does not, you know, it does not, it doesn't matter whether you're rich, poor, black, white, whatever, you know, it's indiscriminatory, indiscriminate.

Speaker 2 So yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, my.

Speaker 2 So this doctor keeps pushing opioids on your mom. Yes.
By the way, to be a distance runner,

Speaker 2 I admire that, but it suggests like true self-discipline, a high level of awareness of your body.

Speaker 2 I mean, who's a distance runner? You know, only people who are very, very into fitness and very, very kind of like batten-down people. Right.
Correct? Yeah. Yeah.
No. My mom was

Speaker 2 absolutely, you know, one of the most disciplined people that I've ever met. You kind of have to be, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And I mean, the thought of long-distance running to me is absolutely sounds like torture. Well, it's torture.
It is torture. Yeah, but it's highly impressive.
Yeah, no, it is absolutely.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, she had these multiple surgeries that only exacerbated the issue. And a neck injury?

Speaker 2 Yeah, a neck injury that she got from, it wasn't related to her long distance running, but it was a diving, diving incident. She hit her neck on the diving board.
And

Speaker 2 so, yeah, this guy's for first he's pushing uh oxycontin on her and then he says okay well let's try something different it might be less um like you know less addictive possibly you know because fentanyl is brand new and uh you know might might work make you feel a little bit better to where you can function throughout the day so he puts her on fentanyl and fentanyl is so powerful

Speaker 2 no no it's i mean it's it's yeah you have to laugh otherwise you'll cry because it's like fentanyl is the most so powerful that it has to be administered in micrograms yeah like you know like the 25 micrograms which was most drugs are administered in milligrams.

Speaker 2 So like that just shows you how potent. How many kids does your mom have?

Speaker 2 Three.

Speaker 2 So she's got three kids. She's married to a general counsel of a company.
She lives in Southern California. She's a distance runner.
All of a sudden, she's on fentanyl. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, no. She, well, she was living in Dallas when she became addicted to the fentanyl or addicted to the Oxy, at least.

Speaker 2 And then when we moved to Southern California, we moved to Southern California. My dad started his own practice with his brother.

Speaker 2 They were both lawyers.

Speaker 2 And then, yeah, so my sister, and then my sister, she had a serious

Speaker 2 issue with bulimia and anorexia from the age of 10 to 28.

Speaker 2 Like so serious that, you know, her potassium levels were so low that ambulances at our home were like a regular occurrence.

Speaker 2 And there was multiple times when they said, you know, your daughter might make it, not might, might not make it to, you know, to my father.

Speaker 2 And so witnessing all of this at a very young age, and again, I'm not trying, again, I just want to like preface, this is not an excuse for my actions.

Speaker 2 Like I own everything that I did and all the terrible things that I did.

Speaker 2 It was not, but I think that the chaos that I had, that I, you know, basically, I didn't have this, the necessary things like structure and discipline that I think are so important for everyone, but especially for people with addictive, addictive personalities to

Speaker 2 have that, you know, that rigid kind of i'm going to wake up i'm going to make my bed i'm going to do this i'm going to do that and and so like my parents i was never sure i knew my parents loved me like my parents they

Speaker 2 um i was never you know short on that but they were so busy trying to deal with my sister and you know and their own issue my my father he's been clean uh he's been off stopped drinking he just cold cold turkey stopped drinking for it's been 25 years now yeah good man um

Speaker 2 yeah and you know he never went to aa or anything like that and so so again it's, it's, you know, addiction or, you know, treatment can be as simple as, you know, going to therapy.

Speaker 2 It doesn't have to include, you know, rehab and all these different things. But

Speaker 2 so, yeah, my, so my. And then your mom?

Speaker 2 She, so she

Speaker 2 eventually switched over to Suboxin. from fentanyl and then she weaned herself off of that.
So now she's, yeah, totally. And Suboxone is a miracle drug.

Speaker 2 I mean, compared to like the alternative, which is um methadone which is so so addictive it gets into your bone marrow i mean the the withdrawals from that um

Speaker 2 i've heard are much worse than you know your average opiate or even heroin um

Speaker 2 just because it's it's more drawn out and yeah it's terrible

Speaker 2 nightmare um

Speaker 2 so she got better yes And your dad got better, but you grew up in an environment where there was a lot of this going on. Yeah.
And

Speaker 2 so, yeah. And lacking that structure, it made me, you know, I think it led to a sense of low self-esteem and the constant need for the approval of others.
Like, I look back now and I'm like,

Speaker 2 you know, why the fuck do I, did I care so much about what other people thought? Yeah. And it's,

Speaker 2 I guess, you know, I

Speaker 2 can't, you know, but after years of therapy, they've kind of pinpointed us to like, you know, you know, your quote unquote inner child didn't get enough emotional nourishment, so to speak.

Speaker 2 And so, yeah, you know, I was so constantly trying desperately to fit in. So, you know, when I got into middle school, high school, and, you know, I was, you know, an honor roll student,

Speaker 2 very, very, you know, I was very, you know, I have a high IQ. I was blessed with that.

Speaker 2 But once I got into like college, where you actually have to start kind of trying a little bit, like algebra two and, and whatnot, I was like, you know, because I'd started hanging out with kids who were smoking weed, drinking and smoking cigarettes.

Speaker 2 So, not that I necessarily wanted to smoke weed, drink and smoke cigarettes, but that's what they were doing. So, I wanted, you know, I wanted their approval.
I wanted to fit in.

Speaker 2 I wanted to be a part of the cool crowd. And so I started drinking, you know, smoking cigarettes and smoking weed.
And so that went on for, you know, I quit the wrestling team.

Speaker 2 I, you know, I pretty much abandoned everything that, you know, was positive, you know, all the positive things that I was doing for my life and just kind of became a stoner.

Speaker 2 And, um, and, you know, I know a lot of kids who were potheads in high school, you know, that I'm friends with that are more successful than I today. So I'm not, you know, trashing them at all.

Speaker 2 But I mean,

Speaker 2 then what happened was it progressed to

Speaker 2 the, because I was in, you know, advanced placement classes. So I was in like algebra too as a sophomore where, you know, I was, it was mostly juniors and seniors in the class.

Speaker 2 And so I started hanging out with the juniors and seniors, and they were doing,

Speaker 2 it's called oxymorphone or opana, opana.

Speaker 2 They were, you know, snorting that, taking Xanax, pills, stuff like that. And my stoner buddies.
Where were they getting the pills?

Speaker 2 So they were getting them. There was pretty much, we had like one source, and he was a guy that just lived in down the street in an apartment complex.

Speaker 2 It's always a guy in an apartment complex, isn't it? Yeah, for sure. I've been to those apartment complexes.
And

Speaker 2 his grandmother was

Speaker 2 getting these prescription drugs and just had like a boatload of them. So, you know, he would sell them for 60 bucks a pop

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 we would buy them.

Speaker 2 But eventually, you know, that it becomes too expensive. The pill habit becomes too expensive.
And that's why so many people transition to heroin.

Speaker 2 But, you know, even my stoner friends were like, hey, you should, like, you should try to steer clear of those guys over there.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm going to take your heaping loads of moral condemnation, stoner.

Speaker 2 But in reality, it's like, when the potheads are telling you to stay away from these kids, you know, they're bad.

Speaker 2 No, no, it's right. Like, yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so, you know, of course, you know, my, again, that low self-esteem, that desire to fit in, started using pills and opiates in particular,

Speaker 2 they took away that feeling of that, like that low self-worth. I felt, I was confident.
I, you know, I felt great at the beginning, in the beginning, in the very early stages of my addiction.

Speaker 2 So, like the first, you know, two, three months. And I had a job.
I was a telemarketer at a golf club selling quote unquote custom made clubs.

Speaker 2 They're literally made in a warehouse underneath the call center by illegals. And it was either graphite or steel, and they might give you extra grips on the clubs.

Speaker 2 That's the extent of the quote unquote the customer.

Speaker 2 Yeah. But comparable to the Taylor-made R11, you know, okay, yeah, right.

Speaker 2 So you're selling custom, faux, custom-made golf clubs from a call center. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And, and, uh, you know,

Speaker 2 go in the car, do a line of opanom, and come back in, and it's just like, oh my gosh, you know, I have more confidence and I'm pushing harder on the sales and things like that. And

Speaker 2 my sales numbers are going up. So I'm like, why would I stop when this is like, I feel great about myself? I'm performing better at work.
Yes.

Speaker 2 So, you know, I saw it as like, there's like, there's no downside until.

Speaker 2 Totally fair question.

Speaker 2 And by the way, there have been a lot of, as you know, artists, jazz musicians, you know, who used opioids because they thought it increased their,

Speaker 2 you know, ability and enhanced their performance. Yeah.
And I think, you know, it

Speaker 2 to an extent it can, but that is short-lived. It is not, you know, it's temporary because especially with opiates, they, again, they can, what they do, they literally, they erode your soul.
And

Speaker 2 you're eventually going to run out of money and fine, and you're going to have to get desperate. And so.
So what happened in your case? You started by doing a line in your car during work. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And, and it kind of just progressed.

Speaker 2 Um, you know, I was like doing like, you know, one, one pill, one 40 milliburam pill every couple days to two every couple days to, you know, know and just kept going up and up and the cost was getting too expensive um what why did you use more you developed a tolerance yeah yeah yeah you you you quickly develop a tolerance and uh

Speaker 2 yeah and you just need more and more to get to that because you're always chasing that first high there you never you're never gonna get it again but that's what like you know the chasing the dragon um

Speaker 2 you're always trying to get to that level, but you're never going to get there. Right.
No.

Speaker 2 I think it's, I'm, yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think every childhood weed smoker remembers that first time when you just like burst into laughter hysterically with your buddies and it's like the funnest, funniest thing that's ever happened in your life.

Speaker 2 And it's like, it's true. It is fun.
I mean, that's truly fun, but that doesn't ever happen again. Yeah.
No, it's, and, and you, you, you're so desperate to try to get back there.

Speaker 2 And, and that kind of, you know, the whole like, you know, addiction makes you insane. It's like, you know, you're never really going to get back there, but you're still trying.
And

Speaker 2 so.

Speaker 2 addiction makes you insane. That is true.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, you know, like the definition of insanity, trying things over and over again, expecting the different result, especially when you get into the point where you're like, you're trying to get sober.

Speaker 2 And like, okay, yeah, this hasn't worked 15 times. Maybe it'll work the 16th.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 2 And so, but yeah, so I was, yeah, so it progressed very quickly. So you're in like 10th grade at this point? Yeah, 10th grade.
Yeah. And

Speaker 2 progressed within, I don't know, maybe like two, three months to buying heroin

Speaker 2 up in, you know, South Los Angeles. And what was that like?

Speaker 2 Wild, dude.

Speaker 2 So, you know, basically what happened was we met this guy,

Speaker 2 I think he was at like the continuation school down the street from our high school. And what's continuation school? It's like basically if you get like booted out of,

Speaker 2 you know, a regular high school, it's kind of like

Speaker 2 it's kind of like a way to get a get a diploma without having to get a GED but like it's like kind of like a it's like a bootleg diploma

Speaker 2 nice

Speaker 2 so some of the kids who've had a bumpy rotor in the continuation school yeah yeah for sure for sure for sure yeah I mean

Speaker 2 I mean they even like they like even though they was like mostly kids under the age of 18 they had a little smoking section at the school

Speaker 2 hilarious I grew up with that

Speaker 2 yeah and I yeah I mean I'm still a a nicotine fiend. I vape, but I quit smoking cigarettes.
I was like, you know, I

Speaker 2 was, and I was honestly, I was pretty impressed with myself that I was able to do that because that was almost, I don't want to say almost as hard, but very difficult and, you know, trying to get rid of that addiction,

Speaker 2 you know, compared to my opiate addiction. But, you know, just I quit drinking and drugs at 33

Speaker 2 and I quit cigarette smoking at 45.

Speaker 2 So that tells you. Right on.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It, it's, yeah, it's hard.
It's really a hard addiction to break. And I'm still addicted to nicotine, you know? Yeah, me too.

Speaker 2 But I'm enjoying it, I will say, Chris. Yeah, me too.

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Speaker 2 Okay, so 10th grade,

Speaker 2 all of a sudden you go from like

Speaker 2 doing like bumps of some ground up

Speaker 2 oxy derivative pill at the at the golf sales place to driving to South Los Angeles. I'm sorry, I stepped on your story.

Speaker 2 You meet this kid from the continuation school and he's your heroin connection. Yeah, yeah.
What's he like?

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 just some,

Speaker 2 this like slimy,

Speaker 2 just dirtbag. Um,

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 I don't, yeah, I mean, just, yeah, just some guy that, you know, we were were only, the only reason we associated with him was because he had that connection.

Speaker 2 And yeah, not exactly, you know, he's the type of guy who would steal your wallet and help you look for it. But again, that's what most junkies are.

Speaker 2 Was he using heroin too? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a big user.
And he was actually ripped. I found out he was ripping us off when I got a direct connection.

Speaker 2 And he was basically saying it was double the price for the amount because you get like a you get a little package with 12 balloons in it and it was $45 and he was saying it was $90.

Speaker 2 So he was able to get to pocket one and give one to us.

Speaker 2 So, did you have to go with him to South LA? Yeah, we would drive him. He didn't have a car, so

Speaker 2 you know, I would drive him in my 1998 Jeep, and we'd all just pile in there. And this, the feds were watching like these, like they literally, there was an article in the OC Register.
Um,

Speaker 2 I think it came out while I was in rehab, but uh,

Speaker 2 basically, just kind of giving an overview of the whole thing the number you call the guy's name was boss so you call this phone number and and this guy goes all right what do you want and you tell him how many packs you want and then he's like all right meet and it would be like one of three freeway exits you know right in that area and like always like a fast food parking lot something like that you know what what town uh it was southgate boy that's just depressing that area so so

Speaker 2 yeah so you're meeting at like in and out burger or wendy's or something yeah yeah yeah just yeah some yeah we can just pull in real quick um and then

Speaker 2 they'd um

Speaker 2 they you'd meet the they would always send a runner and usually it was a different person but um i started you know so yeah they'd meet you they'd say all right you know come into the car that you get into the passenger seat they reach into the um the air vent pull it out give you the give you the dope give them the money boom and to get into their car yeah

Speaker 2 what were the guys like who were selling it um you know this is this is the kind of one of the crazier things about this whole this whole experience so the runner that i had the most contact with uh he was you know he's a cool guy just this little hispanic guy you know i mean obviously a gangbanger who would you know shoot you as soon as they look at you but um he was very you know very nice to me um

Speaker 2 and you know he would give me discounts occasionally and he actually finally he was like hey you know what you no longer have to call boss you can just here i'll give give you my personal line.

Speaker 2 And then you can just call me and then, you know, have to save you the hassle of going through the whole, the whole process. I was like, all right, cool, man.
Thanks.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, we developed a kind of, you know, friendship, I guess. And

Speaker 2 it's probably the wildest story that I have. So

Speaker 2 my friends from South Orange County, again, very affluent. You know, I don't know if you've heard of like Nelly Gale in South Orange County.
It's like

Speaker 2 one of the ritsiest neighborhoods in the country. It's got like horse trails running through it.
You know, and, you know, the houses are like at a minimum, you know, $5 million.

Speaker 2 So yeah, it's a very nice area, very affluent area. And that's where pretty much all my friends lived.
And but this girl we knew, her uncle was

Speaker 2 owned the house. Have you seen the show Entrage? Have you heard of it? Yeah.
Yeah. So he owned the house that at least like two seasons of the show were filmed in.

Speaker 2 And she's like, yeah, we can go up there for the weekend. And And I was like, oh, awesome.
And so

Speaker 2 funny, we drive all the way to Beverly Hills. It was like a two and a half hour drive and up this private road to this, you know, this beautiful mansion.
The door's locked.

Speaker 2 And she kind of lied or, you know, misled us about having permission to go to the house. And so I'm like, are you fucking kidding? And anyways, excuse me.

Speaker 2 So I ended up finding, I saw like a... door-sized window like on the side of the house.

Speaker 2 And so I maneuvered my way up there, pushed on the door and it just popped open and i was like waiting for an alarm to go off like

Speaker 2 okay

Speaker 2 so i walk in open the front door and and we're in and uh and then i was like oh man i really need some some heroin but i don't want to drive down to southgate you know um and so i called the guy and i was like hey man

Speaker 2 we've got a huge mansion you know there's only like seven of us this is why you don't let your niece bust into your house with her junkie buddy we'll just wait um

Speaker 2 and I was like, yeah, you know, if you want to, if you can, you know, I know you don't typically, typically do deliveries, but if you could bring me an order, you know, you're welcome to stay and bring whomever you want.

Speaker 2 So he brings like two, two big, two big Mexican dudes and like 10 big booty Latina, beautiful, beautiful chicks. Like,

Speaker 2 yeah.

Speaker 2 And.

Speaker 2 A candy dish with all these different pills, Valium, Xanax,

Speaker 2 you know, Oxys,

Speaker 2 just all that. And at at least an eight ball of Coke, a giant bag of Coke.
And that was, those were just party favors. And he brought me my order, obviously.

Speaker 2 But,

Speaker 2 and so we spent the night partying,

Speaker 2 you know, hanging out in the indoor pool, you know, doing lines off of, you know, girls' stomachs. And it was a wild, crazy time.
I mean, it was like literally like the show entourage, but like.

Speaker 2 junkie version

Speaker 2 just going on. It's unbelievable.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Did the uncle ever come back? Well,

Speaker 2 so the next morning, and thank God. Were you in high school at this point? Yeah, I was

Speaker 2 16, I think.

Speaker 2 It's so like, because I was going back and trying to remember things, and it's like some of it is so blurry that it's hard to like, wait, when? How old was I? And how do I like?

Speaker 2 I grew up in that area, so I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so,

Speaker 2 yeah, the next morning, myself and a few other people leave.

Speaker 2 Did you sleep at all or just play through? No,

Speaker 2 no, I didn't slept. Didn't sleep for a second.

Speaker 2 And yeah, I left the next morning with a few of my buddies and the gang bangers departed.

Speaker 2 And the big booty Latina girls too. Yes, yes, they left as well.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, I go back to Orange County. And

Speaker 2 the next

Speaker 2 day,

Speaker 2 a police officer comes to our house. And

Speaker 2 it's like a female

Speaker 2 investigator. And she's like asking me questions, like, were you at this house and blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, I was there on, she's like, were you there Saturday?

Speaker 2 I was like, no, I was there Friday. I was like, I was there Friday.
I was told we were allowed to be there because I thought it was breaking entering. That's what I assumed.

Speaker 2 And so I was like, I was told we were supposed to be there, allowed to be there. And, you know, so.

Speaker 2 And she's like, well,

Speaker 2 you're not aware that that portion of the house was burned down. And I'm like, no, what are you talking about? And so she proceeds to tell me a story.
Apparently,

Speaker 2 some of the other people that the girl invited out for the next night, one person

Speaker 2 got really high, fell asleep with like a frozen pizza in the oven or something like that and started a fire. And instead of like trying to put it out, they just left.

Speaker 2 And drug addicts are all the same, aren't they?

Speaker 2 And so there's like literally literally smoke billowing from this, and it's like on a hill, like too. So like you can see it from like

Speaker 2 very far away.

Speaker 2 It is called Beverly Hills. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 And so like they're driving down the hill as the fire, you know, the ambulance and the cops are coming up the hill. And the cop flips a U and he's like, because it's a private road.

Speaker 2 It only leads to that house. And so they're like, are you leaving that house? They're like, no, you know, idiots, no, of course not.
We weren't there. You know, lying, lying, lying.

Speaker 2 And then the cops are like, come on. So, you know, and

Speaker 2 the, I think one of them ended up getting charged with like fleeing the scene of a crime or something like that, but nothing serious came out of it.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 yeah, it was wild. And like when she told me that, I was like.

Speaker 2 How did they know you were there?

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 the house owner basically gave her a list of everyone who was there.

Speaker 2 Like the girl who took us out there basically gave the investment. But it was her uncle's house.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, he owned it.

Speaker 2 So as you're doing lines off the navels of Big Booty Latinas with your gangbanger heroin dealer buddy in some girl's uncle's house where Entourage was filmed.

Speaker 2 What are your parents thinking at this point of like what you're doing?

Speaker 2 Well, my parents, you know, God bless them they're so naive and like and my and my dad you know had this consistent belief that you know

Speaker 2 our kids will do the right thing because it's the right thing to do not because of the consequence that could come from it and you know as as you know as noble as that is it's just it doesn't work you know you you have to have consequences otherwise you will run rampant and think you can do whatever you want.

Speaker 2 And that's how it is. It's not.
I don't judge them. I grew up around.
I mean, they sound like Southern Californians in their attitudes that way.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And, you know, yeah, my dad was just, you know, very, you know, had a very strong moral conviction that, you know,

Speaker 2 he believed just was passed on to us. And so

Speaker 2 my parents were, again, you know,

Speaker 2 had no idea what was going on until

Speaker 2 kind of

Speaker 2 another story. Basically, long story short, I had a friend who was put into a coma.

Speaker 2 We were at a party and this guy, this guy came out really angry and just punched my friend in the face. He fell, hit his head, put into a coma.
And

Speaker 2 he wakes up three weeks later, and my mom is there. I wasn't there.
My mom was there. And she, and he says, Patty, you need to get Chris away from.

Speaker 2 And she named out, she named, you know, some of the kids that I was associating with. And she said, why? You know, because, you know, they were at my house.

Speaker 2 You know, they're that was the first thing he said when he came out of a coma? Yes.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 God exists.

Speaker 2 yeah, yeah, God bless him. Uh, really, it was, uh, and then, of course, you know, at the time, I was like, that you know, snitch, uh, you know, that kind of mentality.

Speaker 2 It's like, why are you trying to rain on my parade? You know, I'm just having a good time. Um,

Speaker 2 and uh, but yeah, you know, I mean, my friends tried several, like, you know, my, my, my, my quote-unquote stoner friends tried several interventions. Um,

Speaker 2 and I was just like, you know, extremely defensive and like, who are you people to tell me anything? You know,

Speaker 2 and, you know, but again, they had my best interest at heart. And of course.
And,

Speaker 2 you know, many of those people I'm still in contact with today. And

Speaker 2 I'm so grateful that they, you know, took the time and the effort to try to save me from myself.

Speaker 2 Incredible. Are you still in

Speaker 2 are you still in high school at this point? Are you going to class? Are you?

Speaker 2 Yeah, going to class, you know, leaving early, stuff like that, you know, ditching, you know, like fifth fifth period, fourth period to go hang out.

Speaker 2 And, you know, how often are you doing heroin at this point? Every day. Every day.
At what time of day? Like, what's the schedule for heroin? So, so wake up. So I wasn't shooting it up yet.

Speaker 2 I was sm I was smoking it at first. And how did you smoke it? So it's so in California,

Speaker 2 heroin's mostly black tar heroin. Yep.
And so basically.

Speaker 2 From Asia, correct?

Speaker 2 Sure. Okay.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 yeah, it's like this like little black, yeah, like square. And so you put it on a piece of tinfoil, you put a lighter underneath it, and you get a straw.

Speaker 2 And it makes like it goes, it'll like trail down the tinfoil and you're, and the smoke's coming up, and you suck it through the straw with the lighter.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 yeah, that was the. What's the highlight from it?

Speaker 2 I mean, just total euphoria. Again, you feel like you're on, you're on top of the world.
You can, it doesn't matter if you're literally, your life is falling down around you. You don't care.

Speaker 2 It's like you're fine. Everything is fine.
Everything is great. Wow.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Again, the insanity. How long does it last?

Speaker 2 I'd say smoking it. And again, it all depends on like your tolerance level and things like that.
Things like that. But I would say like, you know,

Speaker 2 probably

Speaker 2 three, four hours, five hours.

Speaker 2 so while you're in high school, when are you smoking heroin? Uh, so I would do it uh before school, uh, you know, at home in your bedroom, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And uh, and your parents had no idea or in my shower, in my shower, yeah.

Speaker 2 And uh, yeah, no, they didn't, yeah, they didn't, they, so when my friend got out of the coma, they, you know, started to kind of try to keep a closer eye on me, but I was still, you know, I was incredibly deceptive and very manipulative.

Speaker 2 Of course, very manipulative and deceptive with my parents, making them think that, oh, these kids are great. No, they're, they're actually the good kids.

Speaker 2 And, God, when I think about like the torment that I put my parents through, it is just where were you getting the money to buy all this heroin?

Speaker 2 So I was,

Speaker 2 I still had that job at the

Speaker 2 golf or selling golf clubs. And

Speaker 2 then I, you know, I I would occasionally take money from my parents,

Speaker 2 whatever I needed to do.

Speaker 2 And things I'm, you know,

Speaker 2 not proud of. I bet.

Speaker 2 But yeah, that's the nature of the disease is you will do anything to

Speaker 2 get that, get that next fix. Yes.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so from smoking, it quickly deteriorated to

Speaker 2 shooting up because, you know, I'd say within like a month of smoking it, I started shooting up because, you know, my couple of my buddies started doing it and they're like, oh my gosh, dude, you only have to use like

Speaker 2 one-fifth of the amount and you get like a high that's like 10 times better. I'm like, oh, great, save money.

Speaker 2 And yeah, I remember the first time, like, I remember the first time my buddy and I did it, we looked it up how to inject, you know, great Google search, how to inject heroin into your body.

Speaker 2 you google searched it yeah it's like they have like images of like because you're supposed to go like diagonally like with the you know like just go straight down to your like because you want to you want to go into the vein yes and then and then you basically draw back the syringe and once you see blood because you know that it's in the vein then you inject it but um

Speaker 2 if you miss it's really painful uh you basically what happens is like

Speaker 2 you don't and you don't get that immediate euphoric rush that you, that comes with shooting up. That's, that doesn't come with smoke.

Speaker 2 Like smoking it, yes, you get euphoria, but shooting up, it's like that inst, it's instantaneous and it's, it hits so much harder. It's like crack versus cocaine.
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And yeah, it was just a very, very... Can I just ask you for perspective?

Speaker 2 So how long between you, you know, the moment you first crushed a pill and snorted it

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 the moment you first shot heroin? Like, how long did that progression take?

Speaker 2 I would say less than a year, probably about like nine months. Damn.

Speaker 2 That's a pretty progressive illness.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Progressive illness.

Speaker 2 So what was it like the first time you shot heroin? Where'd you do it? It was at my

Speaker 2 buddy's house in

Speaker 2 Laguna Hills, in

Speaker 2 that neighborhood that I mentioned, Nellie Gale.

Speaker 2 The $5 million house neighborhood. Yeah, exactly.
And

Speaker 2 so, yeah, we were

Speaker 2 in his room and I did it. And yeah, again, it's that just this overwhelming sense of euphoria.
And

Speaker 2 yeah, everything is wonderful, even if, you know, you're, even if your life sucks. And

Speaker 2 again, I understand why a lot of, you know, like homeless people do drugs. It's like, because their life is literally just in shambles.
And, you know, so, I mean. Yeah, they're so broken.

Speaker 2 There's no way to fix it. This is their thinking.
So, like, this is the escape. Yeah, so what's the point? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 Why not just live in like a, you know, almost like a metaverse, you know, kind of? Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 Nicely put.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 yeah, so I went to like probably, I would say, not exaggerating, over 10 rehab centers in California. Wait, so how did you get? Okay, so you start shooting heroin.
How did you get busted?

Speaker 2 How did you wind up going to rehab? Oh, yeah. So

Speaker 2 I I was uh so I was shooting up on a on a daily basis and I actually

Speaker 2 started going to a continuation school because I was just I stopped going to class

Speaker 2 my grades were too low

Speaker 2 and you know I basically got kicked out of school and so I was at a continuation school so you wind up in like

Speaker 2 yeah yeah the the place I mock the place I would ridicule and mock like and then I'm now I'm one of them

Speaker 2 was your junkie friend still there

Speaker 2 The guy who first

Speaker 2 was like

Speaker 2 much older. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. He was a senior when I was a sophomore and he and he barely attended.
Like I saw him a few times on campus, but he barely went to school even when he was at continuation school. So yeah.

Speaker 2 And yeah, we really didn't associate with that guy other than just to go buy drugs. But

Speaker 2 because he was not an exactly, you know, a fun person to be around.

Speaker 2 And so I

Speaker 2 doing drugs, doing or doing shooting up heroin before school. And for some reason, that day, I decided to take my take all my drugs with me.

Speaker 2 I had a little like Ziploc packet with my syringe, my, you know, my,

Speaker 2 what I used to tie off, you know, you know, all my equipment. Where'd you get the syringes, by the way?

Speaker 2 So there are certain pharmacies that will, you know, if you say, you know, my, my grandmother's a diabetic or whatever, that, and I think nowadays they just give them to you in a lot of places, especially like Northern California.

Speaker 2 Um, anything they can do to encourage a drug-addicted population, therefore, yeah, 100%. It's disgusting.
Gavin Newsom makes me sick.

Speaker 2 The money, like you know, he talks about this multifaceted plan to attack the opioid epidemic. It's like, yeah, you've spent billions of dollars and it's only gotten worse.

Speaker 2 I think encouraging people to be addicts, yeah, yes, absolutely. Um, and so I got uh, so I decided for some dumb reason to bring my uh drugs to school with me that day.
And uh

Speaker 2 and I also did something that I would never normally do. It's I told some random person that I'd never met that I was high on heroin.

Speaker 2 Like in class, like someone I sat next to the first time seemed like a cool person, cool guy. Like, yeah, I'm on heroin.
Yeah. And he's like, oh, really? And like,

Speaker 2 didn't seem like he was going to

Speaker 2 tell on me. And

Speaker 2 so I'm in, I remember like two periods later, I'm in class and

Speaker 2 some administrator comes into the room and says, Chris Cella, can you come to the office? And I saw a cop behind her and I was like, oh, fuck.

Speaker 2 And so I go down to the office and

Speaker 2 she's like, yeah, we heard a rumor that you were doing drugs. And I'm like,

Speaker 2 who said that? She's like, well, I can't tell you. And I was like, well, it's not true.
You know, I deny, deny, deny, deny.

Speaker 2 but they're like she's like okay well um you know we're gonna search you and i was like i don't think you guys have the

Speaker 2 i don't think you guys have the legal right to search me and she's like if we have probable cause and like you know the

Speaker 2 basically i i allowed it i wasn't sure if it was legal or not but um i was hoping that and and so they searched me in pants you know

Speaker 2 belt, all that stuff. And she was about to turn away.
And then she says, wait, let me check your socks. Literally, like last thing she did.
And I was like, oh, fuck.

Speaker 2 And so, of course, got caught, got arrested.

Speaker 2 You had the kid in your socks. Yeah.
Yeah. It's just like high socks with it, just like right here.
And

Speaker 2 so I get, you know, arrested or detained. And my, you know, the cop releases me into my mom's custody.

Speaker 2 And my mom drives me home. She says, you're, you're going to rehab.
Like, you know, I don't want to hear anything about it. You're going to rehab.
And I was like, okay.

Speaker 2 And your mom is like someone who knows opioids, like, how bad it is. Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 And, um, and that's why she would,

Speaker 2 you know, at times, you know, when it was like, I was in terrible withdrawal. And I was like, mom, I, I'm dying.

Speaker 2 Like, I, I need to, like, please just give me like, you know, and, you know, she would occasionally give me a little bit of money just to,

Speaker 2 because she felt, because she knew that she knew. And God bless her, you know, she just

Speaker 2 I put so I you know I rained down so much terror and chaos upon my parents they just they were just trying everything they could think of and you know some things they did really well some things obviously you know again being a parent is hard especially a parent of a wild psychotic drug addict yeah

Speaker 2 and and and and dealing with you know obviously you know my sister's issues as well you know just goodness

Speaker 2 but as soon soon as my mom turned her back, I stole the $80 she had in cash out of her wallet and drove to LA.

Speaker 2 And obviously,

Speaker 2 um,

Speaker 2 oh, so the gangbanger that I left this out, the gangbanger that I was partying with, and I really regret doing this because, you know, I consider him a friend, but I was desperate at the time, and so I was like, all right, I'm going to rob him.

Speaker 2 You're going to rob the gangbanger, yes,

Speaker 2 yeah. Um, and so I, I guess that doesn't doesn't seem like a a good decision no no

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 again but you know so desperate in in agony and like what else can i do um

Speaker 2 so i got this like 220 pound 225 pound scottish kid and this big kid from the football team um and i'm like yeah we're just gonna rob this little skinny mexican guy it's like no problem and they're like all right cool and um

Speaker 2 what as as we were getting up there wait wait wait wait

Speaker 2 Like super dumb people then. Yes.

Speaker 2 One of them became a meth head. He mocked me for being a heroin addict and like, you know, shunned me, but then he became like a hardcore meth head.
And

Speaker 2 but when like. So but you just go to them cold, hey, we're going to rob some Mexican kid.
Yeah. And I

Speaker 2 failed to mention that he was, you know.

Speaker 2 a gangbanger and you know had associations with the mexican mafia and uh and so i i kind of let i accidentally let that slip on the ride up there. And they're like,

Speaker 2 we don't want to do this anymore. No.
Yeah. And so like, we get there and I'm like, you fucking pussies.
And so I just, sorry, cursing. So I just

Speaker 2 get into the car myself

Speaker 2 and commit it, commit the robbery. How do you rob him?

Speaker 2 So I sprayed him in the face with pepper spray

Speaker 2 and I

Speaker 2 put put something to his throat said don't move and just reached into the because i knew where he kept it and just reached and grabbed it and uh

Speaker 2 and then jumped out my friend was in the driver's seat and i was like go and he's driving like a maniac and i'm like dude calm down slow down like um because of very narrow streets in that area things like that and so we're driving and uh you're making me tense man just telling me this story and and where were you what town was this uh this was in like southgate like the same same area that you know i was going to pick up up the stuff before.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 you pepper sprayed a member of the Mexican mafia and stole his heroin. Yes.

Speaker 2 You got balls, I'll say that.

Speaker 2 Again, have you apologized to him, by the way, years later?

Speaker 2 I haven't had the opportunity. You haven't been back to Southgate? No.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I apologize, man.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I do regret it.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 so, yeah. So, my friend's driving down the street and I see him driving down the like perpendicular street behind us.
And I'm like, how the fuck is he driving? I just

Speaker 2 unloaded a bunch of pepper spray in his face.

Speaker 2 He's armed too. What? He's armed.

Speaker 2 Yeah, probably. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so we're like, my, so I'm like, all right, just keep driving.

Speaker 2 And he, for some reason, he like just does like a wild turn onto a very narrow residential street, crashes into an on-coming oh come on yeah

Speaker 2 and i'm just like you

Speaker 2 idiot do you go to church yes i i've i've i've yes i've gone to confession so many times and and yeah and

Speaker 2 i'll say thank you too for being here for being alive yeah no exact i should have died so many times

Speaker 2 like yeah i mean the amount of not just you know the stupid things that i was doing outside of my use but i mean the like if i was an addict in the age of fentanyl where like fentanyl is laced in it, I probably would have died.

Speaker 2 Just because I stopped in 2016 when that was like when it started to really get like when they started to put heroin into fentanyl or fentanyl into heroin and other drugs.

Speaker 2 Because when Trump got elected and the Chinese decided to just like kill a huge part of our population.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Flood our country with poison, basically.
Right.

Speaker 2 And yeah, I remember that. I'm sorry, I'm stepping on your story again.
I know you're not going to be able to do that. That's why you're blowing my mind with this.

Speaker 2 And by the way, can I just make one other editorial comment? As a product of Southern California, it's really a decadent society. Just being, I'm like, for real decadent.

Speaker 2 And I grew up there, you know, in the early 80s. It was when I was your age, you know, the age you describe.
And it was so decadent that

Speaker 2 I almost never think about it.

Speaker 2 But you were a product of that society. I mean, I'm just telling you that.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

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Speaker 2 Anyway, okay, so

Speaker 2 your friend,

Speaker 2 you see the guy for the Mexican mafia. He somehow recovered from getting shot in the face with pepper spray.

Speaker 2 Of course he has a gun in the the vehicle and he's looking to kill you. And you see him perpendicular, your friend swerves down a narrow road and head on,

Speaker 2 yeah, with some, you know,

Speaker 2 driver by. And

Speaker 2 so I jump out of the car, stash my drugs.

Speaker 2 Have you used the heroin yet? No, no. So you're still like jumpy withdrawal guy at this point.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And but I like, I stashed it and this one,

Speaker 2 like, there was like, because there was a bunch of people, like, they immediately started like, and my two friends take off, by the way. They just start running down the street.
I'm like, why?

Speaker 2 Running down the street. Yeah.
Yeah. And, in South, in South Carolina.
And this is not an Anglo neighborhood. So, like, they stick out.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Like sore thumbs.
Like a big, yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, well, one of them was Hispanic, so maybe not so much, but the Scottish guy. Yeah.
Like,

Speaker 2 um,

Speaker 2 and uh, so

Speaker 2 we uh

Speaker 2 so so uh so I jump out of the car, I stash my drugs, sit down on the curb and wait for the police.

Speaker 2 You know, because there's so many people there, so many witnesses.

Speaker 2 And, but again, no one knew that what had just transpired. All this, all, again, like it was just

Speaker 2 a car accident as far as they were concerned.

Speaker 2 And as far as the police were concerned. And so,

Speaker 2 yeah, my friends run and the cops, the cops come, they show up. They're like, you know, hey, what are you doing out here? I was like, we were trying to find a friend's house.
We got turned around.

Speaker 2 Um, uh,

Speaker 2 yeah, made up some bullshit stories. I was trying to find a friend's house,

Speaker 2 and um, and he's like, Well, do you need to go to the hospital? And I'm like, No, no, I'm good, I'm good, um, I'm fine. And he's like, Okay, well, um, do you, do you have a ride?

Speaker 2 I was like, Yeah, I'm gonna call somebody to pick me up, and he's like, Okay, and um, so you know, I wait for them to depart and go back into the little bush, and of course,

Speaker 2 grab my drugs, can't forget that. Uh, and um,

Speaker 2 then I ended up getting a ride from a buddy, another user. I was like, hey, I'll

Speaker 2 give you some dope if you pick me up. Because I was very concerned that they were going to like, you know, I was like, I need to get out of Southgate fast.
Yeah, like right away. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so I was like, dude, just please come pick me up. I will make it worth your while.
And so I get picked up. So you had to wait on the sidewalk.
Well,

Speaker 2 I was actually this nice lady.

Speaker 2 She was like, her house was like right next to where the accident took place. And so I was like, do you mind if I just like post up on your on your front step?

Speaker 2 Like, I was like, I'm, I just want to wait for my ride. And, you know, it's kind of, I'm kind of scared.
I'm in a dangerous neighborhood. You know, played like the little, oh, oh, oh,

Speaker 2 you know.

Speaker 2 And she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, very kind.

Speaker 2 And so I just sit there and wait. And,

Speaker 2 you know, I have like the drugs in my fist ready to like toss them at a moment's notice if I need to or whatever.

Speaker 2 And then I get picked up and that's that.

Speaker 2 But what transpired after, because thankfully they only knew me by CJ, like because Chris Jr., my initials, that's what I went by, my nickname from like kindergarten through

Speaker 2 high school.

Speaker 2 And then they and they knew I lived in South Orange County. And but they didn't know anything else.
And so they would, so they switched up the way they did their

Speaker 2 like the way they did the process of selling the dope where they would now you had to so you had to meet up then follow them down like this empty street or an alley or something like that then stand up against a chain link fence and get searched

Speaker 2 and then you could get into the car and get your stuff and and they would ask every single person do you know cj do you know who uh cj from southorns county do you know where he lives oh and yeah so for a very long while um and you know i was like so grateful when i saw that oc register article article, the fact that they had, and I saw that his picture in the, you know, his mugshot in the article.

Speaker 2 It was wild. And his name listed,

Speaker 2 I'm just not going to say it.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 yeah, I mean, crazy stuff. Let me just pause to ask you,

Speaker 2 the guys who you were with on that caper

Speaker 2 where you assaulted the member of the Mexican mafia, did they turn out okay?

Speaker 2 Well, one of them became a a meth head. Yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it's ironic because

Speaker 2 when they got

Speaker 2 caught, they got caught at like a seven or a Starbucks.

Speaker 2 Cops picked them up and they immediately just spilled everything. They told the whole story for no reason.
And I know for a fact because my father represented him in the hit and run.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it took the DA like until almost the end of the trial to figure out that I was also associated. And like, he's like, wait, your son was involved in this.

Speaker 2 And so, and my dad was like trying so hard to thread the needle, you know, to not get me, not expose me to any potential criminality and also, you know, defend my friend. And

Speaker 2 yeah, it was. So one became a drug addict.
And the other one I kind of lost contact with. I have no idea.
How many of the guys that you partied with in high school are sober now? How many are dead?

Speaker 2 Do you Do you keep track?

Speaker 2 From high school,

Speaker 2 most, yeah,

Speaker 2 one friend passed away,

Speaker 2 opiate user, good guy, but

Speaker 2 he wasn't like a

Speaker 2 particularly heinous junkie. I mean, he just was a junkie,

Speaker 2 but he was a good, I like, you know, good-hearted.

Speaker 2 And, uh, but he passed away

Speaker 2 of an OD. Yeah, overdose.
Uh,

Speaker 2 and, um, you know, I had, I met a few friends in rehab. One whom I was very close to lived in New York.
And, you know, we stayed in contact, met in Florida, stayed in contact

Speaker 2 for, you know, like four years. And then, you know, I got a call from his mom that saying that he had OD'd, you know, relapsed.
And,

Speaker 2 you know, it was just heartbreaking. But

Speaker 2 yeah, most, but no, most of my friends, like the, like the stoners from high school

Speaker 2 are

Speaker 2 very successful individuals, college graduates,

Speaker 2 you know, working in finance, working in different, you know, sectors and having a great life.

Speaker 2 What about the opioid users?

Speaker 2 The opioid users are kind of like,

Speaker 2 they have the advantage of like

Speaker 2 many of them that I hang out with or hung out with, excuse me, were already, you know, their family was just uber wealthy.

Speaker 2 Like one of them, one of their fathers was the CEO of a company called AmeriQuest. He was worth like, you know,

Speaker 2 $80 million.

Speaker 2 So they,

Speaker 2 they had a, you know, a lot of money to fall back on. So like they tried opening up like a clothing line and different things, but ultimately music label.
What? Music label. No, not yet.

Speaker 2 That's kind of the classic one. Yeah.
No, there were other kids in our, in our, uh, in, in Orange County that did do that, that started, that tried to start a, start a rap group.

Speaker 2 And I'm just like, of course, yeah.

Speaker 2 I could write this story.

Speaker 2 It's just, yeah, Orange County is so weird.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 anyway, so yeah, so I've

Speaker 2 yeah, but most of my friends from high school are very successful. And I mean, my, like, the one, the stoners are, yeah, you know, um,

Speaker 2 but unfortunately, yeah, I've lost

Speaker 2 multiple friends, you know, people that I actually genuinely cared about, not just, you know, acquaintance, acquaintances. Yes.
You know, I had too many acquaintances to count, but,

Speaker 2 you know, real friends, it's been like, yeah, like five. Do you have any idea what happened to the guy you pepper sprayed?

Speaker 2 No. And oh, this is this is nuts.
When I was in rehab, so the guy, the guy boss, right, he had different runners, like, you know, multiple guys who would run into cars.

Speaker 2 And one time I had this guy, and so I was in rehab, and it was like a, it was in, it was in San Diego. Um, and uh, I think Chula Vista,

Speaker 2 great place to put a rehab, but it was like a restaurant. Wait, your rehab was in Chula Vista? Yeah,

Speaker 2 and uh, yeah, it's like you're setting yourself up to fail.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 they

Speaker 2 had like, it was a mansion and then

Speaker 2 kind of like a bungalow. They had little like bungalows, like type things.
And so it could house about like 30, 40 people. And so they

Speaker 2 had me there.

Speaker 2 And this guy comes in and I'm like, he looks familiar. And I didn't like, I didn't, I couldn't put my finger on where I'd seen him before.

Speaker 2 And he goes, he goes, hey, man, he said, he he said, I used to, he said, I used to run for boss. And I, uh, he's like, I deli, I think I delivered to you once.
And I'm like, oh, my God.

Speaker 2 And he's like, and he's like, he's like, he's like, you're friends with hubby, right? And, and the guy that robbed, the guy that I robbed. And I was like, yeah,

Speaker 2 yeah, great friends. And I was like, I heard he was locked up, though.
He's like, yeah, no, he's out now. And I was like, oh, okay.

Speaker 2 And he's like, I'll tell him you said hi when, because you get a seven-day blackout and you can't use the phone when you first first go and a lot of treatment centers have that rule this place did um

Speaker 2 and so

Speaker 2 he's like yeah i'll tell you said what up when i uh when i talked to him i'm like oh my god he's this guy's gonna knife me in my sleep you know and i was seriously i i was concerned i was gonna tell uh like my therapist and see you know what could potentially be done because I was genuinely because you could easily in that place sneak out of your bedroom go and go into someone else's bedroom if you wanted to.

Speaker 2 It's not like it's locked down. You know, they have, you know, quote-unquote

Speaker 2 people that are watching at night, but the place is so big, it's, you know, you could do it if you wanted. And of course, there are no locks on the doors.
No, no, of course not. Because

Speaker 2 people were buying air duster and like using, you know, like anything to get a buzz. And I was just like,

Speaker 2 wow. That was kind of eye-opening for me, but not eye-opening enough to stop.
But it's like, wow.

Speaker 2 So how many times did you get a rehab?

Speaker 2 Total between California and Florida, probably somewhere between 15 and 20. 15 and 20? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because I got kicked out of a bunch of places for stupid, for

Speaker 2 reasons that were not related to drugs necessarily.

Speaker 2 Fraternization. What does that mean? Hooking up with girls that were.
Grabbing the girls, yeah. Yeah.
I mean, not, again, consensually. Right now, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 I meant that in an extra point. I just said it.
Yeah, Just let me clarify that. In a pre-Harvey Weinstein sense.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. And

Speaker 2 so, I mean, I was like, 17, 18 years old.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 you have... Does heroin affect your sex drive? Yes.

Speaker 2 It lowers it a lot. And then when you come off of it, you're horny 24-7.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Because it's like.

Speaker 2 Cocainus like that. Yeah.
And

Speaker 2 it's interesting because like my, one of my therapists described

Speaker 2 withdrawal as your body basically being in shock because you've been numbing all your senses for so long. Yeah.
And then when you stop, your body is like, everything is just like taking in light,

Speaker 2 chewing food. Everything hurt, like my eyes hurt, my teeth hurt, every muscle and bone in my body ached.

Speaker 2 Like it, it is, if you could find a way to like inject that into, like find a way to like inject that feeling into it like a, for interrogation purposes, let that guy sweat it out for a day.

Speaker 2 He'll tell you where all the bombs are. I assure you.
You know, it is like,

Speaker 2 truly, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Really? Yeah, it is so bad.
So did you have to detox, I guess, every single time, 15 or 20 times you went to rehab? Pretty much.

Speaker 2 There were a few times when I was.

Speaker 2 like kind of just on and off using and so it was like the withdrawal was like yeah I kind of felt it, but there were, yeah, probably about 10 times when I went through hardcore withdrawal. And

Speaker 2 yeah, every single time I was like, I never want to feel this feeling again, you know, and, but I wasn't, I still wasn't

Speaker 2 committing to myself that I wanted to stop. I was just like, how long does it last, the withdrawal agony?

Speaker 2 I mean, it's, they say like up to like seven days typically, but I mean, in reality, I, I mean, my

Speaker 2 withdrawal,

Speaker 2 my last withdrawal lasted about like three, it was like three weeks before I remember, I remember like the day I was like laying in bed and I was like, wow, I actually feel comfortable.

Speaker 2 Like my body doesn't ache. Like I, I can, I'm like, I feel, I feel kind of normal.
Three weeks? Yeah. I mean, and it's like, the first week is just like absolute hell.
You're sweating bullets, you're

Speaker 2 cold, like the sweat on your body makes you cold. And it's just, it's, it's terrible.
And again, all the other things I described. Um, and that just slowly, and then, and then the discomfort.

Speaker 2 It's like the epitome of discomfort. Gastrointestinal, too.
Um, I, some people, some people got like diarrhea, things like that. I did, uh, I didn't.

Speaker 2 Some people got like would vomit and stuff, but that never really happened to me. It's, I, I guess it's just, you know, it depends on the person.
But yeah, it just, just, uh,

Speaker 2 overwhelming overwhelming like sense of just, yeah, shock, I guess is the best way to put it.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 again, just terrible.

Speaker 2 Interesting. So rehab, I mean, you're making a pretty strong case.
It doesn't work very well. I mean, if you went to 50, I mean, God knows what that cost, by the way.
You know, someone paid for it.

Speaker 2 I don't know if it was your family or some insurance program in the state, taxpayers, whatever, but someone's paying a lot of money for it. Yeah,

Speaker 2 so the first rehab I ever went to was, was it was called the phoenix house and it was in um

Speaker 2 it was in like northern orange county and it was a state-run facility and like you it was like a kind of like a boot camp style you had to like fold your bed with the military you know corner crease and everything like that all your um shirts had to be lined up your um

Speaker 2 you know your toiletries had to be perfectly in a row all that stuff um

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 you know i

Speaker 2 did did that and I was like I was like I hate this this sucks and all I want to do is get out and you know I'm just like I just can't wait till this 30 days is over so I can leave and and I was like I was like I don't think I want to I was like I at that time I was like I don't think I want to do heroin but I definitely want to like I still want to be able to smoke marijuana I still want to be able to drink and like and I mean to this day I still you know smoke marijuana and drink uh recreationally occasionally um but

Speaker 2 uh

Speaker 2 yeah, I made the decision that I, or, you know, I just wasn't ready to quit yet. And I think what, what,

Speaker 2 it's really, you can go to as many different treatment centers, doctors, AA meetings.

Speaker 2 It has to be, I think, an intrinsic motivation to better yourself. And

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Speaker 2 Okay, so let me just ask you, I've heard and known, I've heard this story and I've known many people who've lived this story where they're addicted to something, whether it's pills or heroin, cocaine, alcohol mostly, and they just go to rehab after rehab after rehab, relapse after relapse after relapse, destroying their sense of themselves.

Speaker 2 And the, you know, they feel like losers, you know, when you keep failing at something, it's not good for you. You know, you fail more.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 So, why do we have, like, what's the point of this? Like, why do we have these centers clearly don't work?

Speaker 2 I mean, do they? I don't know. It doesn't sound like they do.
Yeah, I mean, again, it's, it's, I think that, like, it's, it, it all depends on the person. But again, it has to, you have to want it.

Speaker 2 That's the bottom line. It's like, you have to want it.

Speaker 2 And like, these treatment centers, they can't, they do some good, but they should not be like, you should not say, you know, know, rehab is a cure or AA is a cure.

Speaker 2 Because like, yeah, if you're go, if you go into those places, you can sometimes develop the intrinsic motivation through therapy or through discussion with other people or whatever.

Speaker 2 But I mean, for me, it was so.

Speaker 2 Fast forward a little bit. So, you know, I get basically kicked out of every rehab in California.
So my parents are like, all right, let's send you to Florida. Let's try a new environment.

Speaker 2 And South Florida was like the rehab capital. Of course, Del Rey.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Del Ray, Boynton Beach.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it was just, I mean, I was shocked that like some of the places where the halfway houses were or the

Speaker 2 sober homes were located like down the street from like the known markets where people like were, you know, it's a scam.

Speaker 2 Look, no one's more for sobriety than I am. I am a sober person, totally opposed to drugs and alcohol, period.

Speaker 2 But let's just stop lying about it. This is a, these places are a scam.
Not all of them. Yeah.
But a lot of them are just a money-making scam, profiting off the misery and death of addicts. Yeah.

Speaker 2 They see you as an insurance policy with a heartbeat. Exactly.
That's pretty much it.

Speaker 2 True villains, I think. Yeah.
Yeah. No, no, this most, the most sinister man, probably

Speaker 2 in, if you want to just pick one out, is his name is.

Speaker 2 He was,

Speaker 2 that was the first treatment center I went to in Florida so owned a treatment center and he owned several halfway houses but they were all everything was in his wife's name that's one thing that was like a red flag to me um and so and this guy shows up to the to the rehab center in like a three-piece you know Armani suit with like a Gucci belt and like you know

Speaker 2 like dressed like a pimp you know I mean and and ironically

Speaker 2 He is a pimp. He was, so he had girls in his halfway houses that he was giving heroin, giving giving crack, and pimping them out,

Speaker 2 and then sending them back to treatment where they would ultimately fail their drug test and have to go to detox. And guess who gets a kickback from the detox center?

Speaker 2 No way. Yeah.
And there's the South Florida rehab shuffle. There are many cases of it.
If you, you know, you just Google that, you'll see, you know, a bunch of different stories. But

Speaker 2 I would say, is like the kingpin of just absolute scumbag, like you said villain a villain a true villain so evil that it's so yeah it's it's it's incomprehensible to me as a human it's like a slave trader yeah yeah essentially treating people as objects as animals yeah and so does he does he is he still in this business i never know he's he's he was sentenced to 27 years in prison um wow yeah so the the feds the feds started to crack down on the floor rehab shuffle although i read uh somewhere that it's supposedly coming back um that the you know because it's basically, and, you know, wasn't the, he was probably one of the worst offenders, but a lot of these guys were, you know, they, they would just like, you know, get these cheap homes,

Speaker 2 fill them with as many addicts as they could.

Speaker 2 Sometimes they would charge rent like 75 bucks a week or something like that, plus the money they're getting from, you know, kickbacks from the whichever treatment center they send them to.

Speaker 2 So, you know, they're housed.

Speaker 2 They send them, and then, and then if they go to detox, you know, the kickback, it's a revolving door of chaos and a revolving door of suffering and just pain for the addict.

Speaker 2 But they're making money at every stop. This is disgusting.
It is. Do the addicts in the rehab center understand that they are pawns in a profit-making scheme?

Speaker 2 I think a lot of people were starting to wake up to it.

Speaker 2 And I knew one of the girls who was

Speaker 2 one of his victims, and she would, she was always like, man, I just want to get the hell out of here. And she had this like look in her, like, I could see that there was something.

Speaker 2 And I thought she was just very, like, you know, maybe had some, some issues with her family or whatever, just a very depressed, sad person, even for an addict, even for an addict.

Speaker 2 Like, I could tell that there was something. Like, she was in absolute like misery and terror.
She was afraid of, like, they were afraid. Many people were afraid of him.

Speaker 2 and what he would do if they spoke out.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it was just,

Speaker 2 it was heartbreaking for me to see that. You know, even as someone who's, you know, obviously committed crimes and things like that,

Speaker 2 I can't even imagine having

Speaker 2 the will to carry out such a monstrous act.

Speaker 2 It tells you a lot.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, that many rehabs, you met a lot of people.

Speaker 2 What did you learn about addicts?

Speaker 2 Addicts are some of the most resourceful, intelligent people on the planet. Like you drop an addict in the middle of the

Speaker 2 desert, and they're going to find the nearest tribe with an opium pipe

Speaker 2 within 30 minutes.

Speaker 2 And so if you get them... They're single-minded, aren't they?

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, but if you get them to

Speaker 2 separate them from the drug and separate them from the addiction and turn that into something

Speaker 2 that's good, like an addiction to work or addiction addiction to helping others, you know, that you can get addicted to. Like, I mean, for me,

Speaker 2 the reason I got sober, I think there's several factors that played into it. Obviously, God, you know, and

Speaker 2 the intrinsic motivation, you know, that I talked about.

Speaker 2 And, and having a fantastic support system that was there for me. They were just waiting for me to

Speaker 2 come to them, you know, just like, hey, we're here. Just

Speaker 2 family. Yeah.
My family and

Speaker 2 one of the

Speaker 2 one halfway house owner who was kind of participating in the scam, but he cared. Like he cared.
He genuinely cared about the people who were coming to his house.

Speaker 2 He did not allow any drug use or anything like that. There was, I was at one place that was selling, this guy was selling crack to his clients at the halfway house.
No way. Yes.

Speaker 2 And he was selling crack to just people in general. So we would get knocks on our doors at three o'clock in the morning from total fucking spun out crackheads.

Speaker 2 Come on. Yeah, no, man.
And there was no door on the bathroom.

Speaker 2 It was 100, you know, it was the middle of the summer in South Florida.

Speaker 2 It's like 110 degrees out, no air conditioning, just fans littering the, you know, littered across the living room and down the hallways and stuff. And I mean, just an absolute shit show.

Speaker 2 People are smoking crack in the halfway house? Yeah. His rule was, you know, fine line, no needles.

Speaker 2 Like, yeah, you can smoke cracks, you can smoke whatever you want, just no needles. Like, oh, all right.
Yeah. Did you smoke crack in the halfway house? Yeah, a couple times.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 What do you think of crack? Uh, I'd say it is, it's very destructive, um, obviously. Uh,

Speaker 2 but in terms of like a high, it's it's like you're, it's like 30 minutes of

Speaker 2 like, I can con, you know, kind of that I can conquer the world.

Speaker 2 You want to start doing all these like different tasks that you've been putting off, like, because you feel confident about them now, but then it wears off. and then you're just like so depressed.

Speaker 2 And you think about every bad thing you've ever, it's like, yeah, like, um, I don't know if you've ever had like cocaine withdrawal, like, or, you know, just coming off of cocaine after like a night of bender.

Speaker 2 You, like, my dad would tell me that when he would do Coke, like, he was just like, you think about, like, yeah, in third grade, when I pushed that kid, you know,

Speaker 2 again into the stairwell or whatever, uh, just like every, you know, and just like you just feel like a piece of garbage and you're depressed. Yes.
And you, you pay for every happy moment. Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the crack, it lasts, like the high is so fleeting, too. Like with heroin, at least you get like a few good hours of a solid buzz.
But with crack, it's like,

Speaker 2 you know, it goes away relatively fast.

Speaker 2 How many people in rehab or halfway houses did you meet who were determined to get sober?

Speaker 2 Not very many.

Speaker 2 How every

Speaker 2 person,

Speaker 2 I think without exception I know, who's been addicted to drugs or alcohol who got better has a sense that there's, well, as they say, in AA, a greater, you know, a greater power, that there's God.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. And that, you know, human beings have souls and each one is unique and important and life is important and life is better than death.

Speaker 2 And, you know, sort of like the basic grounding of monotheism. So

Speaker 2 like, how big a role did God play in any of these rehab centers?

Speaker 2 Well, when I was, so I was living in the halfway house. I was selling, the guy was selling crack to to us and um

Speaker 2 i'd i'd just smoked some marijuana for the first time in a long time and it made me like very introspective you know we can do that um

Speaker 2 kind of like psychedelics do too um and and i was like you know i just i and i heard a voice in my head that i can only assume is just you know a spiritual awakening god saying like what are you doing what are you doing why are you here surrounded by these people like looking around i'm just like

Speaker 2 i have so much more to offer the world than what I'm, you know, I mean, I've, I'm just a derelict and I don't have to be. I have people who love me.

Speaker 2 I have people who would, you know, would die for me. You know, my family is, you know,

Speaker 2 are so loyal

Speaker 2 and they love me so much. They just want me to stop being a piece of garbage.
And

Speaker 2 I just, that day, I was like, I am done with this stuff. It's not fun anymore.

Speaker 2 Like, and

Speaker 2 I, and I wanted to better myself. That was, so, you know, I think that was God instilling the motivation.
So,

Speaker 2 yeah, I mean, yeah, I got sober at a crackout. It's kind of funny, you know,

Speaker 2 tried 50 different rehab centers, but ended up, you know, getting sober at a crack house. Um,

Speaker 2 but I think that that's, yeah, it, it was. So you were smoking weed in the halfway house.
Yeah, he didn't care about, yeah. And yeah, you could smoke anything you wanted in there, pretty much.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 yeah, I was just like that day, I knew I was never going to touch an opiate again.

Speaker 2 And I know people say like you, you have to wake up and make a decision every day that you're not going to use, but it's like, I don't even, it doesn't even like register in my mind, like,

Speaker 2 like to say it, like, oh, I'm not going to use heroin today because like, you know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? I do know what you're saying, actually.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's like, because it's like, I look back and I'm like, that's, I'm a different person. I'm truly a different person.
I have like evolved.

Speaker 2 I was like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly or, you know, whatever analogy you want to use. But

Speaker 2 just, and looking back and thinking, how could I have possibly done all this? And, and yeah, I mean, Christ plays a huge role and I think it's really important. And even for people who are,

Speaker 2 excuse me, you know, maybe atheistic or whatever, but just believing in something greater than yourself that can

Speaker 2 that, you know, you can

Speaker 2 strive to be better and strive to, to, you know, just whatever, set goals for yourself and achieve them. And by doing that, you are, you know, I think that's how people

Speaker 2 can, can find a way out of addiction and then, and then you grasp onto something, find things that you really enjoy. So, like, what I was like, okay, what do I enjoy? I like, I love movies.

Speaker 2 I'm a huge movie fanatic, and I like, I'm really interested in politics and journalism. And ironically, what I mean, I was always,

Speaker 2 you know, my, like, Fox News was on my parents' television 24-7. You know, so I grew up conservative.
My grandmother was a door knocker for

Speaker 2 Reagan and for

Speaker 2 someone else. I can't think.
No, he was the first

Speaker 2 Goldwater. The first conservative to run.
He didn't win.

Speaker 2 Goldwater. Oh, yeah, Goldwater.
1964. Yeah, Goldwater.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so,

Speaker 2 yeah, politics kind of is in my DNA, I would say. And I remember watching Fox in the lead up to the presidential election.
It was like the perfect time to be get interested in politics, right?

Speaker 2 You've got Trump and Hillary Clinton. And

Speaker 2 then

Speaker 2 I remember seeing you. And I was like, and I'm not just saying this because I'm on your podcast.
This is

Speaker 2 genuinely the truth. I saw you on your show.
And I was like,

Speaker 2 I love the way this guy does the news. It's different.
It's unique. It's funny.
It's like, I want to do something like that. I want to, that's what I want to do.

Speaker 2 You're like, here's a Southern Californian who had addiction problems and he turned out okay. And you're like, hey.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I didn't, I didn't know all that about you yet.
I didn't know. I was just like, I was just like, wow, this guy is like so much different than the other voices on Fox.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, not to, you know, I mean,

Speaker 2 you know, you just.

Speaker 2 It brings such a unique perspective. You're willing to, you know,

Speaker 2 go against, you know, you're quote unquote, the party and call out the, you know, the rhinos and the neocons and all that stuff. And I was just like, he's, he's awesome.
Like, this is great. And

Speaker 2 Sue, let me ask you like a philosophical question.

Speaker 2 So in between jobs, once and I got fired from another job, I was an unpaid fellow at a libertarian think tank in D.C. And I thought I was a libertarian.

Speaker 2 I sort of am libertarian in a lot of ways still. You know, I really don't want to bother other people.

Speaker 2 But I left after a drug policy conference that I went to that really kind of changed my thinking on the world.

Speaker 2 And at it, they explained the libertarian position on drug policy, which is kind of America's position on drug policy, which is it's the drug addicts' fault.

Speaker 2 Like, people get addicted to drugs, that's their problem, that's their fault, and it's kind of the demand explanation for the drug epidemic.

Speaker 2 It's like we have a lot of drugs because people want a lot of drugs in this country, it's not Mexico or China's fault, or the drug dealers' fault. Yeah, no, the

Speaker 2 desire for it. Like, yeah, and that's what Mexico says.
It's like, if you people didn't want it so badly, maybe, you know, it's

Speaker 2 very true. That makes sense.
I mean, it's kind of like one of those lines you hear. They're like, yeah, that sounds right.
And then you think of your own life.

Speaker 2 And then you think of the people you know who got, you know, tragically fucked up or killed by drugs. And of course, I know a lot of them.

Speaker 2 And you think, no, actually, like

Speaker 2 some of them are like your mom. Super healthy person, obviously a distance runner, the healthiest person like in America, their distance runners.

Speaker 2 And she has an injury, and some doctor gives her a drug and she becomes an addict.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and my dad literally, one time, he went into the office and he grabbed the guy by his, like, threw him up against the wall. He's like, you're poisoning my fucking wife.
Good for your dad. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And, and, um, I should say, your parents, such a beautiful, you told me off-camera are still married, which is so yeah, yeah, married for four, married for uh 40 plus years. And uh, that's incredible.

Speaker 2 And uh, yeah, they've,

Speaker 2 yeah, they're in love. I mean, they're a true genetic.
That is a really lovely story. That's the best part of this whole story.

Speaker 2 And the reason, oh, just really quickly, the reason my dad fell in love with my mom, like, at first sight was because he said she was the only woman in New York he saw that was wearing a crucifix, like that he'd seen in New York.

Speaker 2 So he's like, man, he's like, yeah, she's the one. They sound like great people.

Speaker 2 Oh, you would love, you would love my dad. Oh, I can tell.

Speaker 2 I can tell. I'd like to throw a few doctors against the wall myself.

Speaker 2 But okay, so then there's that. And then there's your story, which is like insecure high school kid.

Speaker 2 Like, how many high school kids are not insecure right zero like the feelings that you described like i don't quite fit in i don't know if i'm cool or not every single kid has that feeling at 15 so you're not unique in that way and someone's like hey try this

Speaker 2 and then you become like a crazed you know needle dependent heroin addict and you're pepper spraying members of the mexican mafia and almost getting killed so like within a year

Speaker 2 So that suggests to me that what we have is a supply problem, not a demand problem. Like you're in it, you know, you probably would have been happy with Bud Light or Coors Light or whatever.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And instead you wind up on heroin because you had access to this drug.

Speaker 2 So if you take 100 people and give them heroin every day for a month, like what percentage become junkies? Like, well, all of them. Yeah.
Yeah. So for sure.

Speaker 2 It was, I was just thinking this at this drug policy conference and I was like, actually, you're all liars. Probably getting paid by Purdue Pharma to lie.

Speaker 2 And it's the Cato Institute and they're definitely liars. I can say that now.
but I didn't understand it until because this is the one topic I knew something about, having lived it. But

Speaker 2 what is the answer to this problem

Speaker 2 that kills over 100,000 people a year? Like, from like a government perspective? Yeah, like, what are we? It seems like we're paying addicts to use drugs. That's kind of my perspective.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think that one thing we should not be doing is what California is doing and trying to do set up like little, basically

Speaker 2 porter potties for addicts to go in and you know use and you know um

Speaker 2 like little centers with clean needles and all that stuff and i get why would you encourage people yeah exactly you don't coddle and uh and um enable drug addicts you that is the worst thing you can do because they're just going to continue using and heroin is not a drug that you can use uh like and and like it's not like a you know because there's a lot of functional alcoholics and functional you know uh people who you know are on like you know valium or whatever you know they are kind of pill pill poppers that that you know you would never know but um

Speaker 2 yeah heroin i just i've never seen anyone who doesn't it doesn't become a lifestyle it's not it's not like a side thing you know or hobby or whatever it is your life

Speaker 2 it is all consuming what destroys you as a human being yeah and same with meth oh yeah yeah it meth the in like inside and out too heroin doesn't quite like do the damage to your like your

Speaker 2 complexion. Yeah, outwardly, but like inwardly, it's it, I think it's worse.
But um, but meth is, yeah, absolutely terrible. Were you around a lot of meth people? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 In so in Northern California, um,

Speaker 2 so because we moved to Northern California after

Speaker 2 when I was when I was 18, uh, I remember my dad came down to San Diego because I was in rehab in San Diego and he picked me up and we drove north to the Bay Area to

Speaker 2 the East Bay. We lived in Concord.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And because my grandmother lived in Lafayette. Yep, I know it.
And she was.

Speaker 2 Those were nice towns. I don't know if they still are, but they were.
Well, Concord has been kind of been taken over by there's a lot of gang activity.

Speaker 2 And like, like, and it borders Clayton too. So they're like, I think they're probably going to do something about it because Clayton's like a really nice area.

Speaker 2 So they're probably going to start cracking down more because, you know, the rich people are being affected. So now it's a problem, you know.

Speaker 2 And so, yeah, so we moved up there. And again, I started associating with the worst of the worst, the just, you know, gangbanging meth heads.
And I'd never tried meth before.

Speaker 2 And I remember I was just at this guy's house and he pulls out a pipe. I'm like,

Speaker 2 all right, yeah, try it, see what the see what the fuss is about.

Speaker 2 And I, I, like, I, so you're an open-minded young man.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, you know, I didn't necessarily love it. It wasn't this like, oh, yeah, I need this.
But my, but, but, like, my,

Speaker 2 who became my best friend was a dealer. So he always had it.
So it's like, I would always just, yeah, take like a puff or two. There was one point where I stayed up for 12 days straight.

Speaker 2 And then slept for eight hours and stayed up for another

Speaker 2 sort of total of 17 days. So yeah, another five days.

Speaker 2 And because doing heroin and meth, it's like

Speaker 2 meth, when you're like, basically, like, you know, you're up for a day or two, you start to get weird seeing shadow people and shit like that.

Speaker 2 Then you do heroin, and it's like, it's like resets you almost.

Speaker 2 It's kind of like, it's like you, it's like almost like you slept a little bit and your brain's like back to

Speaker 2 normal and it's not going into crazy mode. I've seen meth heads.
Like,

Speaker 2 I remember this one story. So I was, we were at this girl's house in her garage, and it was myself,

Speaker 2 our dealer, and this chick.

Speaker 2 And she had, you know, just all over her face, you know, from scratching. She, she looked like

Speaker 2 terrifying.

Speaker 2 But I'd been kicked out of my house. So we were just chilling there.

Speaker 2 You know, we were just going, you know, from place to place, trying to, you know, find a spot to, you know, kick it and rest or whatever. And so we're smoking in there for like three, four hours.

Speaker 2 and uh her and uh my friend go into the bathroom or inside to her house inside her house and um i just kind of like sit back and i end up like falling asleep and i didn't realize i was like i woke up and i was like i had no idea how long i'd been asleep like 30 seconds 30 minutes whatever and there was no one in the garage so i like knock on the garage um and uh knock garage door kind of peek my head in i'm like hey what are you guys doing and uh she comes out she's like close the door.

Speaker 2 I'm like, okay. And then she comes out.
She's like, what the are you doing in my

Speaker 2 house? My kids are in there. And I'm like, oh my God, you have kids?

Speaker 2 And she's like, yeah, what'd you steal? What did you steal? And I'm like, I didn't steal anything. And then she pulls out a handgun.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And like, it's this switch that flips for some people.

Speaker 2 It's never happened to me, but. this

Speaker 2 flip that switches and you they just become in a totally different, irrational, dangerous human being.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 this woman has a gun pointed at me and she's like, I want, she's like, empty your pockets, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 And I went like this and pulled out like, you know, I was like, look, I didn't steal anything from you. What would I steal? I poked my head into your place for two seconds.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, by the way, if you have your kids sleeping in there, you're kind of a shitty mom. You know, I was, because I'm like.
So you insult the lady with the gun pointed at me.

Speaker 2 Because I was thinking. Another, if I can just ask you to pause, Chris, another unwise decision.
Yes, yes. But I was thinking, I was like, this woman isn't going to pull the trigger.

Speaker 2 It was a neighborhood that the houses were like right next to each other. The police station was like down the street.
You're betting that the meth head is rational?

Speaker 2 I don't know what I was thinking. I was just angry and I was high too.
So, you know, I'm not exactly in the best, you know, decision-making frame of mind.

Speaker 2 But anyways, so she's like, she's like, take your fucking clothes off. I want to make sure you didn't steal anything.
I'm like, fuck you. Sorry.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, no, no, please. I'm like, fuck you.
You're out of your fucking mind.

Speaker 2 I was like, I didn't steal a fucking thing from you. You like, I was like, you're not going to shoot me.
So how about you just let us fucking leave? And

Speaker 2 so,

Speaker 2 and I'm like, and I'm, and I'm looking at my friend and I'm like, dude, and he's just standing there. Like, this guy was a piece of work.

Speaker 2 So that night, so, so she's like, all right, get the fuck out of here. And she opens her garage up for us and we leave.
And my friend calls an Uber.

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 the Uber, like the her phone died in the middle of the ride and so like the trip got canceled and so the woman who was driving us was like get out get out of my car right now and we were like

Speaker 2 still like a couple miles from our destination his sister's house and he and I was like oh shit and he's like oh don't worry I have a spot we can go to and I'm like okay and so we walk up the street

Speaker 2 and there's this house. And he's like, yeah,

Speaker 2 I forget who he said owned it, but he's like, yeah, it's cool if we crash here. And he tries to open the front door.
It's not locked. He's like, all right, let me go around the back.
And he's like

Speaker 2 rummaging around. He's rummaging around in the backyard.
And I'm standing in the front, just sitting on the steps because I didn't think there was anything sketchy.

Speaker 2 And this car drives by and it kind of slows down.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 then it keeps going. And I'm like, huh, that was weird.
weird. And then it loops back and then stops.
And I was like, oh, shit. So I had a backpack with me.

Speaker 2 I grabbed my backpack, hopped the fence into the backyard. And I was like, hey, dude, someone's here.
And he takes off.

Speaker 2 And I'm running. And it's like, it's four, it's like four in the morning in Northern California in the winter.
And I'm running and it's pitch black and I fall into a pool.

Speaker 2 This is like one of the the worst nights of my life.

Speaker 2 And I was in a low-key opiate withdrawal too on top of all of that. On top of the meth and the crazy girl pointing the gun at you.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And that's why I was so irritable and probably if I, yeah, if I had been, you know,

Speaker 2 if I was on heroin, it probably would have gone down a lot differently, but I probably wouldn't have been as aggressive. But I was so, you know, ticked off.
And so

Speaker 2 I fall in the pool.

Speaker 2 I see flashlights like coming towards us. And this guy already booked it like over

Speaker 2 a fence, and he's gone. Like, he is gone.

Speaker 2 And so, I like, I um get out of the pool and I try to climb the fence, and I still have my backpack on, and you know, it's like soaking wet and I couldn't climb, it was too heavy, so I had to shed the backpack and just hop the fence.

Speaker 2 And I'm running down this hill, and um, and I run face first into a um chain link fence, and

Speaker 2 it's like a dream sequence.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 my face is like, you know, so now my face is bleeding and my hands are bleeding from climbing the fence. And like, and I don't have any shoes on.
And

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 I am just so cold and so miserable. And so I, there was a, like a hill, and then there was a grocery store, kind of a little strip mall type place.

Speaker 2 And so I go down there and I look for the sketchiest person possible. Like,

Speaker 2 you know, just you can tell. Yeah.
Yeah. They're using my radar.
And I was like, hey, man, can I use your phone to call a tax?

Speaker 2 Because I knew if I asked any normal person, they saw me with blood on my face and no shoes on. They'd be like, get the fuck away from me, sir, please.

Speaker 2 But no,

Speaker 2 they were really nice.

Speaker 2 Let me use their phone and I called a taxi, jumped into the taxi. I was like, please turn the heat up as high as you can.
And I went home. And

Speaker 2 at first, my parents weren't going to let me in. And I was like, listen, I'm probably going to get hypothermia.
If you don't let me in, please. I was like, I will do whatever you want.

Speaker 2 I will go anywhere. I just please.

Speaker 2 And I remember like going into their room and just wrapping myself up in a, in a giant blanket. And

Speaker 2 I was like, I'd never felt so.

Speaker 2 relieved in my life. Did you ever figure out who was chasing you?

Speaker 2 I think it was someone who uh like because the house it turns out the house was for rent and it was it was um there was no one in it and so

Speaker 2 i didn't you know of course i didn't know that he said yeah this is a spot that we can go to i just assumed it was another

Speaker 2 dope fiend's

Speaker 2 another dope fiend's place um

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 yeah, all that. And, you know, one thing that really breaks my heart is like, it's really the, yeah,

Speaker 2 one of the most I'd say difficult things that I had to accept that I did was

Speaker 2 because my dad would from time to time figure out where I was and go to these you know these crack houses and and places like that and beg me to come home. And

Speaker 2 I remember one time specifically he said, Please, please, Chris, please come home. Like your family loves you, please, in tears.
And my dad doesn't cry.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I was just like, no.

Speaker 2 And he's like, okay, well, at least take, and he gave me his

Speaker 2 crucifix and St. Christopher medal.

Speaker 2 I still, I broke the chain, but I still have them

Speaker 2 to this day.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 gosh, even then it tore me up, you know, because I

Speaker 2 just wasn't ready to stop. And I didn't know, like, you know, I didn't want to cause this pain that, you know, and suffering that my parents were feeling.

Speaker 2 And so I drowned it out with just more use and, you know, to try to

Speaker 2 you can see how that happens. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So when you quit

Speaker 2 2016, how long did it take to get back your equilibrium for your brain to start functioning as it had before you started using opioids?

Speaker 2 Honestly, I don't know that it will, it, it, it has has ever gotten back to where it was before, but I think that it took about,

Speaker 2 I would say, like

Speaker 2 nine months to a year to like get like the all, like, to

Speaker 2 get the fog out and like, you know, have, like, because like my memory was shot, just everything was

Speaker 2 like depleted. And so in order to get, you know, to get those receptors and everything firing again and to get my brain back to where it needed to be.
Yeah, I just, um, it was hard. Uh,

Speaker 2 What are the long-term, longer term effects?

Speaker 2 I would say, I'd say memory loss is definitely a thing.

Speaker 2 Equilibrium, like I have a very bad equilibrium. Like people think I'm drunk sometimes because I'll like stumble, but it's just like, no, I'm just,

Speaker 2 yeah, my equilibrium's off. And

Speaker 2 I mean, obviously, you know, long-term, like things like anxiety, you know, you know, it's ironic because a lot of people use heroin to treat their anxiety. And

Speaker 2 but it causes, you know, again, it's the rebound effect.

Speaker 2 And so, yeah, anxiety, depression,

Speaker 2 just, yeah, a myriad of

Speaker 2 bad things. You've known, you know, people addicted to opioids and have heard that it affects your ability to feel happiness once you're off it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I would say that, yeah, I didn't, I always, and I, you know, and, and even to this day, like have this kind of sense sometimes of like imposter syndrome. Like

Speaker 2 I like, you know, you know, for example, like getting a job in Congress working for Matt Gaits and having Matt Gaetz compliment me and tell me and say all these nice things about me. It's like,

Speaker 2 I don't feel like I deserve this praise, you know? I mean, sure, I'm a, like, I'm a decent person.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I, it's like, I, it took me a while to just understand that like, yeah, I am worthy of these. I have achieved a lot.

Speaker 2 I have been, you know, sure i've done a lot of bad things but i've done everything i can to try to you know repair the damage that i caused yes and so like so no i deserve you know it's just it's hard to

Speaker 2 force yourself to you know accept like yeah you're like you're doing well like just be yes you were you were as bad as it could get but you've turned it around

Speaker 2 and like you know i was i was kind of nervous about this interview but then i was like and i was talking to my dad and he's like chris you stopped using heroin. You can do an interview.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 that's true. Yeah.
And I mean, yeah, you know, it was, um,

Speaker 2 and again,

Speaker 2 like, I go back to the intrinsic motivation. It's just so important to want to level up in life.
And I think that like, you know, I kind of compare it to like the whole body positivity movement.

Speaker 2 It's like, yeah, you're 40 pounds. And I'm not talking about people with like medical issues or things, but like you're 40 pounds overweight.
No, you're perfect just the way you are.

Speaker 2 It's like, no, put the donut down, go to the gym. Like, you know, stop, stop coddling people who are, you know, who have a food addiction.

Speaker 2 Encouraging people to destroy themselves is the way I think about it. Yeah.
Right. Only,

Speaker 2 only

Speaker 2 people who are filled with hate would do that. I don't care what they dress it up as.
If you're encouraging someone to hurt himself, you hate that person.

Speaker 2 Right. Yeah.
I mean,

Speaker 2 it seems so.

Speaker 2 Obviously. Yeah.

Speaker 2 If you did that to your kids, here, get type 2 diabetes. Here, become a junkie.
You would be

Speaker 2 a terrible parent, but you would be acting of hate for your kids, obviously. Yeah.
Sinister.

Speaker 2 It is sinister.

Speaker 2 And, you know, that's why, you know, like, you know, you see all these like Victoria's Secret plus size, you know, it's like, and again, you shouldn't, you shouldn't do, you shouldn't want to better yourself, you know, for societal acceptance, but for your own sense of, you know, happiness and well-being and purpose, because you talk to any person who's overweight, you know, and like, again, without medical conditions,

Speaker 2 like, obviously they're going to say, yes, I would prefer to be, prefer to lose a few pounds. I mean,

Speaker 2 I would assume I've never talked to every obese, I haven't talked to every obese person on the planet, but the ones that I have talked to, yeah, I would

Speaker 2 tormented by it, of course.

Speaker 2 They're tormented by it, you don't feel good, and and and and and yeah, and like Victoria's Secret and these other places trying to tell them, Oh, yeah, you're perfectly fine, keep doing what you're doing, don't change anything.

Speaker 2 It's like, no, it's evil, obviously. Let's just call it what it is.

Speaker 2 All these things are they're big pharma, yeah, I think abetting the destruction of human beings, and

Speaker 2 that's the worst thing you can do in this life, in my opinion. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Big pharma is the closest thing to like, you know, like if you just want to talk about pure evil, like getting into the realm of demonically sick. Big pharma is, I think, the prime example.

Speaker 2 what they've done to this country. I couldn't agree more.
Chris, thank you for spending all this time and for being so totally honest about your story.

Speaker 2 And I never say, I hope this helps people because it feels like so banal, but I do hope this helps people. Thank you.
I appreciate it, Tucker. Thank you.

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