Speaker 1: Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of Eating While Broke.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Coleen Wait, and today I have a
Speaker 1: very special guest and this with all parts of me.
Speaker 1: Author CEO Matt Bell is in the building all the
Speaker 1: way from Ohio. Got you to come out here. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: I'm glad to be here. Thank you. It's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is awesome. And before we get into Mad's story,
Speaker 1: I have to ask the ultimate question, what are you
Speaker 1: going to have me eating today?
Speaker 2: We're we are going to eat corn on the cob.
Speaker 2: We're gonna eat corn on the cob. I gave some options.
Speaker 2: You asked what I used to eat when I was broke,
Speaker 2: and gave you a little variety of what it used
Speaker 2: to be like. And here we are. We're going to
Speaker 2: do this and I have a really impactful story on why.
Speaker 1: Just so you guys know the I chose corn on
Speaker 1: the because the other options was like trash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I used to eat out of the trash cans.
Speaker 2: Yeah you're not. We're not gonna do that on the show.
Speaker 2: I used to obviously like a break. I'd make a
Speaker 2: break all the time at home. You know, break is,
Speaker 2: you know what break?
Speaker 1: Is no. Is that one of the options we gave me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like in jail, you mix everything together. They're called
Speaker 2: I think they're called different things everywhere.
Speaker 1: I've had that on the show, by the.
Speaker 2: Way, like I saw it, and it's I should clarify,
Speaker 2: not corn on the cob, but like raw corn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was gonna get into the next guys.
Speaker 1: I love corn on the cob, so you know I
Speaker 1: love out here in LA they call it, I think
Speaker 1: a low tastes like corn on the cob sweet corn.
Speaker 1: They put like mao and cheese and have you had it.
Speaker 2: I've had it.
Speaker 1: It's so amazing. But unfortunately we're not eating that today.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna have corn on the cob, but the
Speaker 1: raw version.
Speaker 2: Raw straight off the rawky out of the field.
Speaker 1: And before we get into this story, Matches celebrated his
Speaker 1: ten years of SOET and I guess backtrack it. I said,
Speaker 1: you're the CEO, a CEO and author. Why don't you
Speaker 1: talk about what you're the CEO of and the books?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the CEO of Team Recovery Addiction treatment center. I started.
Speaker 2: We have two sides of it. We have the limited
Speaker 2: liability side, which actually provides the healthcare services, and then
Speaker 2: we have a foundation side as well, which is more
Speaker 2: so wrap round services of in addiction treatment. You can
Speaker 2: provide all these different levels of care and services, but
Speaker 2: it's all build through insurance. There's a lot of other
Speaker 2: stuff that needs to be done, like conversations with families,
Speaker 2: like prevention in schools. There's just so much and you
Speaker 2: can't bill insurance for that, and so there's no money
Speaker 2: to pay for those sorts of things, and so we
Speaker 2: started a foundation and we raise funds throughout the ear
Speaker 2: in a lot of different ways to still be able
Speaker 2: to do those things to go, like teach kids that
Speaker 2: choices have consequences. Bad choices have bad consequences, and good
Speaker 2: choices have good consequences. But we're so reactive to everything
Speaker 2: in the world, like we need to get proactive with
Speaker 2: addiction treatment and mental illness and things like that. And
Speaker 2: then family support. We know that if somebody is struggling
Speaker 2: with addiction, they've got ten to twenty loved ones around
Speaker 2: them that need support too, and so if those ten
Speaker 2: to twenty people can receive support, the success rate of
Speaker 2: the individual actually goes up. So again that's what the
Speaker 2: foundation does. Started all that stuff about ten years ago
Speaker 2: when I was in detox. Actually, I was going.
Speaker 1: To say ten years and ten years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it lined up perfectly. I was two days clean
Speaker 2: when I started it. It was two days.
Speaker 1: Clean, and you were like, already think about helping somebody else.
Speaker 2: Yes, it wasn't really, So I had no clue what
Speaker 2: it was going to turn into, and I wasn't thinking
Speaker 2: about it the way that it turned into. I just
Speaker 2: knew that the way that it was being offered wasn't perfect.
Speaker 2: I knew that. And because I'd been to treatment twenty
Speaker 2: eight times. I went to treatment twenty eight times all
Speaker 2: over the country, and so I had seen a lot
Speaker 2: of different kinds of treatment, and I never really experienced anything.
Speaker 2: It just felt like a very aniquated delivery service delivery
Speaker 2: of healthcare. So why is like all healthcare is evolving
Speaker 2: and getting significantly better. I've been going to treatment for
Speaker 2: ten years and it feels the same as I did
Speaker 2: ten years ago. The twenty eighth time feels like the
Speaker 2: first time.
Speaker 1: What was this like habitual way they were trying to
Speaker 1: treat you? Because you said twenty eight times, so I'm
Speaker 1: guessing they were all going the same route every time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for the most part. And I'll say this too
Speaker 2: that I think someone can get sober wherever they want to.
Speaker 2: You can get sober in the nicest treatment center in
Speaker 2: the world. You can get sober in a barn if
Speaker 2: you want to. You get sober at home, you can
Speaker 2: get sober in prison. You can get sober wherever you
Speaker 2: want to and want it bad enough. But so I'm
Speaker 2: not like blaming it on the treatment centers. I just
Speaker 2: wasn't ready, is really what it came down to. But
Speaker 2: what I noticed, and what I hear people say all
Speaker 2: the time, is that they felt like a number. They
Speaker 2: just felt like a number and a process. That is
Speaker 2: just it's a medical model, and addiction treatment is very philosophical, right,
Speaker 2: It's just very we need to get to the core
Speaker 2: of what's going on. But it's very okay, come in,
Speaker 2: do your assessment. If your assessment says this, then go
Speaker 2: to this room and then go to that room. It's
Speaker 2: like you go into an er with a broken bone,
Speaker 2: you go into surgery, you get a cast on. It's
Speaker 2: very process driven, and addiction treatment just shouldn't have to
Speaker 2: be that way, but it's that's the way healthcare is
Speaker 2: in our countries. I felt like a number. I felt
Speaker 2: like I was being like herded through a process instead
Speaker 2: of being seen as a human being. The buildings that
Speaker 2: I went to treatment in were run down buildings. It
Speaker 2: was probably all donated furniture and parts of town where
Speaker 2: certain people in other parts of town would say, no,
Speaker 2: we're not allowed, We're not allowed to have treatment centers
Speaker 2: here because we don't have those problems, and so all
Speaker 2: the treatment centers, because these are individuals that make bad choices,
Speaker 2: You're going to go to this part of town in
Speaker 2: these types of buildings with That's how treatment has been.
Speaker 2: It's how treatment has been. It's a marginalized, oppressed population
Speaker 2: that are seene is less than desirables.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then would you say, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: all over the place with this, But would you say
Speaker 1: that from your experience with addiction that a lot of
Speaker 1: it is trauma. I think with your story, your addiction
Speaker 1: came from a different background. We'll get into that. Would
Speaker 1: you say that a lot of addiction starts from like
Speaker 1: unhealed trauma.
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the biggest things. Yes, I
Speaker 2: think that there's some sort of pain there, regardless of
Speaker 2: if it's an actual physical pain. See a lot of
Speaker 2: physical pain turning into the opioid epidemic and pain pills,
Speaker 2: but of emotional pain and whether that's trauma or PTSD
Speaker 2: or some sort of underlying unaddressed mental health issue. People
Speaker 2: don't just decide to use substances to the point where
Speaker 2: they need treatment, whatever the substance is, because their life
Speaker 2: is going well, because life is perfect. People don't do that.
Speaker 2: That's not normal. So if someone's struggling with addiction and
Speaker 2: they've gotten to that point where there's a diagnosable like
Speaker 2: severity there, and sometimes I don't even know it, but
Speaker 2: there's something there. In my case, I didn't know it.
Speaker 1: Oh so there was something there, but yours. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: we got to get into your story. We got to
Speaker 1: get in Okay, Okay, First let's I want to experience this.
Speaker 1: So we're going to go. I wanted to read this,
Speaker 1: but you touched on it. But there was this post
Speaker 1: Matt made this week, and I wanted to read it
Speaker 1: to you. Guys said ten years ago, I was the
Speaker 1: guy in the mugshots, the guy in the hospital bed
Speaker 1: who had people coming to say they're goodbyes. I was
Speaker 1: that guy thirteen arrests, twenty eight rehabs, three overdoses, homelessness,
Speaker 1: no hope left. I called the police on myself that day,
Speaker 1: thinking I'd spend the rest of my life in prison.
Speaker 1: But God had another plan for me. This was ten
Speaker 1: years ago. That's crazy. It's nuts that you called, but
Speaker 1: you even I guess where. I was a little confused too,
Speaker 1: is man, what was going on where he called the
Speaker 1: police on himself? And then why did you think you're
Speaker 1: going to spend the rest of your life in prison?
Speaker 2: You have an answer this, Yeah, I called the police
Speaker 2: on myself because so it gets cold in Ohio. It
Speaker 2: gets very cold in Ohio. Remember the second question, because
Speaker 2: I'm gonna forget it, Okay, I got It gets cold
Speaker 2: in Ohio. This October specifically, it was dropping down below
Speaker 2: freezing and I was homeless. I would sleep wherever I could,
Speaker 2: and I went to my mom's house one night, and
Speaker 2: at this point my mom was not letting me in
Speaker 2: the house anymore, like those days were over. She was
Speaker 2: starting to get some help from like family support groups
Speaker 2: about enabling and things like that. So I asked her,
Speaker 2: I said, Mom, can I just come in the garage tonight?
Speaker 2: She had an unattached garage. I said, can I just
Speaker 2: sleep in the garage so I can find shelter tonight
Speaker 2: with a space heater. I just want to it's gonna
Speaker 2: I don't want to freeze. I want to survive the night.
Speaker 2: And she looked at me. She said, Matt, you will
Speaker 2: always be my son, but you're no longer my child.
Speaker 2: If you don't get off my property, I'm calling the police.
Speaker 1: Holy cow, your mom.
Speaker 2: My mom. Yeah, my mom said that, and then she
Speaker 2: just shut the door slowly, and that I knew that
Speaker 2: I was hurting my family and not making good decisions.
Speaker 2: That was obviously apparent. My life was unmanageable. But to
Speaker 2: hear her say what I heard her say is I
Speaker 2: love you to death and you'll always be my son,
Speaker 2: but whether you live or die tonight is not my problem.
Speaker 2: And the way that I interpreted that hit something inside
Speaker 2: that had like never just it had never been hit,
Speaker 2: and so I was actually I had given up on
Speaker 2: the fact that I could be sober, like sobriety is
Speaker 2: not I see that people do it, but it's not
Speaker 2: for somebody like me. Everything good that I'd done in
Speaker 2: my life, all the sports and the grades and all
Speaker 2: the sort of stuff like that was a thing of
Speaker 2: the past. I didn't I didn't know what to do.
Speaker 2: And I got to this like really scary moment where
Speaker 2: I thought maybe I shouldn't be here anymore. And that
Speaker 2: thought I had never ever thought of that ever in
Speaker 2: my life. I'm talking about ending my life. And I
Speaker 2: love life. I love everything about life. I can like,
Speaker 2: I'll have fun eating this corn today. And the fact
Speaker 2: that I was thinking about that absolutely scared me to death.
Speaker 2: And so I was like, I can't get sober. I
Speaker 2: don't have the courage to end my life. I just
Speaker 2: need to go to prison. And I thought that I
Speaker 2: was going to go to prison because I had a
Speaker 2: fugitive warrant in the state of Michigan. I had a
Speaker 2: felony warrant in the state of Warrants for Michigan was
Speaker 2: for a second degree home invasion. And so I went
Speaker 2: into somebody's house. I didn't know that they were home,
Speaker 2: but I went into somebody's house to steal something to
Speaker 2: feed my addiction, and they were home. And so in
Speaker 2: the state of Michigan, if someone's home when you break
Speaker 2: into to do some sort of theft, they classified it
Speaker 2: as a home invasion in Pennsylvania it was grand theft
Speaker 2: or grand larceny if I don't remember exactly what. It's
Speaker 2: a different state by state. And then I also had
Speaker 2: one in Ohio. It's the same thing, grand larceny in
Speaker 2: the state of Ohio. So I had three felony warrants
Speaker 2: in three different states. If the police caught me. These
Speaker 2: were extrable offenses to where I would went, oh yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: that's real time. Absolutely, they were looking for me, they
Speaker 2: wanted me, and it was just a matter.
Speaker 1: Of were able to charge you, but they were like
Speaker 1: charging you and releasing you or the cat and then
Speaker 1: they release you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I had been charged and bonded.
Speaker 1: Out, okay, And I, like your mom or something.
Speaker 2: Always had somebody to bond me out. And these were
Speaker 2: two or three year old cases that I was just
Speaker 2: hiding every single day on the run, bonded out and
Speaker 2: was supposed to go back for a court date, and
Speaker 2: then just never went back for the court date, and
Speaker 2: so the warrant was out for me, and so I
Speaker 2: was like, you know what, maybe I should just stop running.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call the police on myself and at least
Speaker 2: I'll be safe. At least in prison, I won't be
Speaker 2: able to use drugs. That's what I thought. At least
Speaker 2: my mom will be like semi feel comfortable knowing that
Speaker 2: I'm like not in an alley, completely thrown away after
Speaker 2: an overdose or something. All these thoughts, Prison's the best
Speaker 2: option for me, That's what I thought. I really believe
Speaker 2: that there.
Speaker 1: Was no part of you in that when your mom
Speaker 1: is playing devil's advocate, When your mom is being firm
Speaker 1: in those boundaries and she's that like freezing outside, she
Speaker 1: knows it. I can't imagine what she's feeling to be
Speaker 1: able to say that, But is there a part of
Speaker 1: you that she doesn't love me? That's it. She's done
Speaker 1: with me.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I thought that for sure. I thought that I
Speaker 2: believe that there was no hope. I didn't think that
Speaker 2: we were going to have a relationship or that was
Speaker 2: going to heal or anything like that. I thought that
Speaker 2: she had given up on me completely, and I was
Speaker 2: mad at her, as if it was like her fault,
Speaker 2: as if she was being mean or something along those lines.
Speaker 2: The end of the day, she had to do it
Speaker 2: was best for her. She had gotten to a point
Speaker 2: through my addiction. She'd never touched those drugs, and she
Speaker 2: didn't have drugs to cope. Every time I messed up,
Speaker 2: I could just get high and not out and not
Speaker 2: think about it. She had to deal with it, and
Speaker 2: like her life, she became depressed. She gained a bunch
Speaker 2: of weight, her work performance completely just diminished. She had
Speaker 2: to get put on medications, like she stopped cleaning the house.
Speaker 2: Like her life, she was addicted to my addiction, obsessed
Speaker 2: with it. She was completely codependent, and especially for the
Speaker 2: first I would say seven years, she would do anything
Speaker 2: to save her baby, to help me out, anything, because
Speaker 2: I was an adult, but I was still her baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And she just.
Speaker 2: Whether it was food, if it was a place to stay,
Speaker 2: if it was a ride, if it was pay my rent,
Speaker 2: if it was fond me out, pay for the attorney. Whatever.
Speaker 2: Mom was always there until she wasn't.
Speaker 1: And she eventually saw the pattern in someone she started
Speaker 1: going to like an alanon or exactly is it alan He?
Speaker 1: Is it all the same for? Is that the okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: All right? Yeah, my second question, I guess you answered it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did I think I spent spend the rest of my
Speaker 1: life in prison? You answered that? All right? All right? Man?
Speaker 1: Let's get into this. We're going to go back to
Speaker 1: the corn day. What are we doing and describe you
Speaker 1: were telling us and telling me earlier, like you would
Speaker 1: be ashamed of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So I remember there was a point when
Speaker 2: I guess I was like crashing at this other person's
Speaker 2: house that I would use with. We commit crimes, and
Speaker 2: we were just partners in crime, so to speak. We
Speaker 2: were both addicted to heroin and no electricity in the
Speaker 2: like nothing there was. It was just a place. It
Speaker 2: was just shelter really, but there was a church around
Speaker 2: the corner from his house that was I think it
Speaker 2: was like Tuesdays and Sunday or Saturdays. They would do
Speaker 2: like a I forget what you call it, like a
Speaker 2: place where people could go get food that didn't have food,
Speaker 2: and like a food pantry. And I remember I woke
Speaker 2: up late because I was really high. The food pantries
Speaker 2: from five am to eight am or something like that.
Speaker 2: Woke up at seven fifty so I'm like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: I haven't eaten in four days. I need to like hurry,
Speaker 2: I need to hurry and get to the food pantry
Speaker 2: because I have to get some food today. They would
Speaker 2: give you like a little box. You could take some
Speaker 2: stuff and you'd have enough food for a.
Speaker 1: Week or so, and you knew you had to eat
Speaker 1: and for four days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But like food means nothing when inactive addiction, you're.
Speaker 1: Are you still drinking water and stuff.
Speaker 2: Still drink water? Yeah? And food, shelter, law, love, None
Speaker 2: of those things mean anything when your brain is hijacked
Speaker 2: by a substance like heroin. Like I would if I
Speaker 2: had twenty dollars, I'm spending twenty dollars on heroin. I
Speaker 2: am not saving a dollar for anything gas in a
Speaker 2: like nothing. All the money is going on heroin. So
Speaker 2: I just wouldn't eat. And so I get there, and
Speaker 2: I get there late. They had already shut the doors,
Speaker 2: and there's a couple boxes of canned goods and things
Speaker 2: like that that required cooking. But there's some ears of corn,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I'm so hungry right now. I
Speaker 2: have to eat these. I have to eat. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to take a couple of ears of corn and
Speaker 2: went until an alley because I was embarrassed. I was like,
Speaker 2: I can't eat this corn in front of a shirt.
Speaker 2: I can't let anybody see me eating a raw ear
Speaker 2: of corn, and I'm like ducked in this alley, like
Speaker 2: between a garage and a car, as if I'm doing
Speaker 2: something really bad eating a raw ear of corn, and
Speaker 2: I remember I like almost, I feel like I maybe
Speaker 2: chipped the tooth. I hope, we don't.
Speaker 1: Hope today it's crazy, though, to think that you're eating this,
Speaker 1: that you were ashamed, right, but now you're going to
Speaker 1: eat this, and I'm going to eat this with you,
Speaker 1: and it's an honor to eat this with you. I
Speaker 1: sent you a Lincoln Post. She thought it was hilarious,
Speaker 1: but I was like, I can't wait to eat corn.
Speaker 2: I've never been told that by any.
Speaker 1: Corn with you, and you're really good at that. I
Speaker 1: love corn, By the way, I'm the cop. But how
Speaker 1: does it feel to know ten years ago you were
Speaker 1: ashamed of it? But ten years now later it seems
Speaker 1: like you're crowd that you came from this air to
Speaker 1: now you're successful, family, married, author, CEO helping other people
Speaker 1: treating addiction, saving families because what I have learned about addiction,
Speaker 1: it does affect everybody. How does it feel like to
Speaker 1: know that you're about to eat this but instead of
Speaker 1: it being like a shameful moment. It's like a proud
Speaker 1: moment on camera, on camera, like people are going to
Speaker 1: be watching this now, You're proud, You're proud.
Speaker 2: It feels amazing, it's almost It happens a lot. I'm
Speaker 2: getting goosebumps right now just thinking about it. And it's
Speaker 2: hot in here, You're still getting goosebumps.
Speaker 1: You are literally getting bumps like crazy.
Speaker 2: There's I don't even know how to put it into words, sometimes,
Speaker 2: but it happens probably once a week, right, sometimes more,
Speaker 2: sometimes multiple times a day, that I'm not even supposed
Speaker 2: to be here. I'm not I'm talking about on this earth.
Speaker 2: I'm not supposed to be here anymore. Like the things
Speaker 2: that I went through injecting heroin for ten years straight.
Speaker 2: It was the last couple of years of it. It
Speaker 2: was fetanyl. The amount of people that are dying from this,
Speaker 2: The amount of people that I watched die. People I
Speaker 2: was using the same substances from the same dealer.
Speaker 1: Did your buddy that you were in the house with
Speaker 1: did he make it?
Speaker 2: No? No? Tim, Yeah no, Tim's not here anymore. There's
Speaker 2: I appreciate there's so many though I would say I
Speaker 2: don't even know. Probably five hundred people that I know,
Speaker 2: like relatively close with I don't want to say, like
Speaker 2: really good friends, but cross paths with out there. In
Speaker 2: the ten years that I was out there and then
Speaker 2: and then just working in addiction treatment and being in
Speaker 2: the recovery community, thousands Like every day I wake up
Speaker 2: to somebody that I know is no longer here.
Speaker 1: So it's a very why goes while they were like
Speaker 1: on the recovery, they relapsed.
Speaker 2: You see, it happens quite all. I did it myself
Speaker 2: the first twenty seven times of getting sober, went back
Speaker 2: out there, and that's when people are very prone to
Speaker 2: overdose because your your tolerance goes down.
Speaker 1: Overdose three overdose is pretty hot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is scary. So yeah, very, I'm
Speaker 2: just I'm lucky to be here, grateful.
Speaker 1: And you don't like no shade, But you don't look
Speaker 1: like what I would imagine even someone that survived hair
Speaker 1: when drug addiction for that long would look like.
Speaker 2: I get that all the time. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 2: get that all the time. But what is an addict
Speaker 2: look like?
Speaker 1: I would imagine bad skin, definitely scarring, like bad teeth.
Speaker 1: Your teeth look like not bad at all?
Speaker 2: My teeth, Yeah, they look I don't know how I'm lucky.
Speaker 2: I have no adverse health effects. I'm as healthy as
Speaker 2: can be, and I still have my teeth, So I'm
Speaker 2: very lucky. I did not look like this ten years
Speaker 2: ago when I got sober. I'll tell you that you
Speaker 2: wouldn't let me in.
Speaker 1: I saw some pictures of you, like keeled over in
Speaker 1: a bathroom, and I was like, it's crazy to look
Speaker 1: at you and those that and all you're standing.
Speaker 2: Here, and that was like decent times. Like I'm telling you,
Speaker 2: I was. Those pictures are nothing. When I was on
Speaker 2: the streets, I didn't shower for weeks, I didn't brush
Speaker 2: my teeth, I didn't eat hair just grown out everywhere,
Speaker 2: just wealthy clothes. It was bad. It was bad, Like
Speaker 2: I am a.
Speaker 1: In the first seven years. Your mom would just take
Speaker 1: you back and forgive you and all that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was again, she was just obsessed with it.
Speaker 2: She was just scared. She wanted to protect me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, you ready to ready to get into this.
Speaker 1: This is my first time ever.
Speaker 2: Doing trying to get all these little things off so
Speaker 2: I don't get them in my teeth.
Speaker 1: At first, when you said, hey, we may need toothpicks,
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, well, we need toothpicks, and I'm
Speaker 1: like yes, And let me just tell you, I am
Speaker 1: one of those people that have to floss every day.
Speaker 1: My teeth are like really close together, they're like yours.
Speaker 1: If we don't floss, did you know we would get
Speaker 1: cavities in between teeth?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, so I think I got this. Here we go, cheers, cheers,
Speaker 1: there we go. I've never done this.
Speaker 2: It's not as bad as you think. Yoh.
Speaker 1: This literally tastes like it.
Speaker 2: Tastes like it tastes just like corn.
Speaker 1: It actually doesn't. I thought it was gonna be a
Speaker 1: lot harder. Man, This is not a bad meal.
Speaker 2: I thought this was edible.
Speaker 1: You know what it is? I keep thinking of like
Speaker 1: the Indian corn where it's all hard.
Speaker 2: We're just gonna say that, like the decorative corn that
Speaker 2: you put up during Thanksgiving and stuff.
Speaker 1: Guys, I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 2: It tastes pretty good. It's fresh.
Speaker 1: Why does this taste good? Am I chipping?
Speaker 2: It's corn? It's fresh corn.
Speaker 1: But honestly, is it because I imagine the hard corn?
Speaker 1: Because it's not. It literally tastes like a regular corn.
Speaker 1: It's sweet. Are we can we get sick from eating it?
Speaker 1: Wraw loy do people? Is it supposed to be this soft?
Speaker 1: Going to be hard?
Speaker 2: This is how it's supposed to be, guys. Maybe I
Speaker 2: don't know. I hope.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie, but this cord is actually not
Speaker 1: that bad.
Speaker 2: It's really good.
Speaker 1: Man, you were eating it's really good.
Speaker 2: Hey, it got me through a couple more days at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: Look, I got gonna take one bite and done. It's
Speaker 1: not bad. And I don't know if it's because I
Speaker 1: love corn, but it's not that bad.
Speaker 2: Are we supposed to eat the whole thing?
Speaker 1: No, you can quit. I take one More'm gonna take
Speaker 1: one more way too. I don't even know you can
Speaker 1: eat corn raw like that.
Speaker 2: I'm sure a lot of people don't know that.
Speaker 1: But you want to know something. If you're struggling, like
Speaker 1: out there for real and this is what you gotta
Speaker 1: do to survive, I would say it's actually not that bad.
Speaker 1: If you love corn, find a cornfield, Yeah that's good.
Speaker 1: You know what, though I heard corn has no nutritional value, guys,
Speaker 1: but I will rate this as if in all honestly,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if it's because I like corns.
Speaker 1: I would give this like an eight. It does not
Speaker 1: taste bad.
Speaker 2: Corn on the cop right, boiled butter, salt, all that
Speaker 2: sort of stuff. This literally tastes like that, obviously without
Speaker 2: the butter and the salt, but cold and it's not
Speaker 2: that hard. It's the same texture as corn on the
Speaker 2: cop Yeah.
Speaker 1: Except for like when you boil, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: more like juicier. But honestly, this is fine. I thought
Speaker 1: it was gonna be a lot worse. Who knew.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I feel like I'm made a mess.
Speaker 1: That's what we're here for. Yeah, you're good. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the only reason I'm not killing it because I know
Speaker 1: my teeth. Well, it's a rep I'm.
Speaker 2: Going to have to by the way, you're good.
Speaker 1: So take me back ten all the way back to
Speaker 1: home life, and we're going to gradually get to the
Speaker 1: dish point. So we're going to go backwards to like,
Speaker 1: single mom, married, middle class poor. What was the home
Speaker 1: environment when I.
Speaker 2: Was a kid. I had to thank you. I had
Speaker 2: a great life. I had a great childhood. Mom and
Speaker 2: dad were both there, went to private schools, got straight a's,
Speaker 2: played three sports, went to church twice a week. Yep,
Speaker 2: never saw drugs or alcohol. I would see people have
Speaker 2: drinks at a barbecue or something like that, but like
Speaker 2: addictively never saw it. It never happened in my home.
Speaker 2: No trauma or abuse or anything like that on paper,
Speaker 2: like the perfect upbringing, I broke up with a girl
Speaker 2: in seventh grade for smoking a cigarette. Okay, Like I
Speaker 2: was obsessed with doing things the right way.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you were like a good kid, like.
Speaker 2: The really good, literally perfect, like best athlete, smartest kid
Speaker 2: in the school, straight edges, straight edge gets and then.
Speaker 1: Your master's Now, yeah, I was like, how did he
Speaker 1: go from that? Super smart? I was wondering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went back to school when I got sober,
Speaker 2: but I always enjoyed. I still do. I don't think
Speaker 2: i'll ever stop. I love learning. But I went to
Speaker 2: high school, and when I got to high school, it
Speaker 2: was culture shock for me. It was the first time
Speaker 2: ever in my life that I was uncomfortable ever, because like,
Speaker 2: up until fourteen years old, it was it was just
Speaker 2: the same thing. And I was never like taught that
Speaker 2: at some point you're gonna you're gonna meet the real
Speaker 2: world and it's not just this like really comfortable, yeah
Speaker 2: upbringing that you've had.
Speaker 1: What happened, they did it in private and put you
Speaker 1: in public or something.
Speaker 2: I stayed in private school, but the private school that
Speaker 2: I was in was like twenty kids. It was a
Speaker 2: very small school. So then when I get to high
Speaker 2: school and there's a thousand kids at this school. It
Speaker 2: was an all boys, Catholic college prep, extremely competitive school.
Speaker 2: No longer the smartest kid, no longer the best athlete.
Speaker 2: Just felt uncomfortable for the first time ever in my life.
Speaker 2: My father, who I was like, he's the best. If
Speaker 2: I can be half as good as him, or even
Speaker 2: a quarter, I'll consider my entire life of success. My
Speaker 2: father passed away on Father's Day my freshman year, and
Speaker 2: it was quick. It was diagnosed with cancer. I lived
Speaker 2: with him. My parents separated very close to me going
Speaker 2: to high school, and I wanted to live with my dad,
Speaker 2: and so the last couple of years of his life
Speaker 2: it was just him and I. We got even closer
Speaker 2: than we already were, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: you've got cancer. And then a couple months later he
Speaker 2: was gone. So that coupled with all these feelings of
Speaker 2: insecurity from school, it was just the perfect storm where
Speaker 2: I just wanted I wanted to be accepted. I wasn't
Speaker 2: okay with what was happening inside me, and I wasn't okay.
Speaker 2: I didn't know how to identify all these feelings. I
Speaker 2: certainly didn't know how to address them or cope with
Speaker 2: them in a healthy Well.
Speaker 1: I'm like or assessing that there could be a because
Speaker 1: your mom seems like a very active did she see
Speaker 1: like a possible tornado could potentially happen because of like
Speaker 1: the trauma it was like your parents separating, you now
Speaker 1: being very close to your dad, losing your dad and
Speaker 1: going to a new school. That's a lesson. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think from an outside that does look
Speaker 1: like a lot for your kids.
Speaker 2: I think my mom at the time my mom was
Speaker 2: dealing with me, she was with my dad instead of her,
Speaker 2: and so she was already I think she felt like
Speaker 2: she was behind the relationship and she wanted to like
Speaker 2: she wanted to work to get that back then. And
Speaker 2: then I lose my dad, and so now my mom
Speaker 2: even more is okay, now I'm the parent by default?
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, Yeah, respectfully.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And so I think at that time she
Speaker 2: wanted to be my friend more than my mom Okay,
Speaker 2: if that makes any sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because she's trying to earn that like exactly the
Speaker 1: points that he had, which makes sense.
Speaker 2: Like a lot exactly. And it's not that she was
Speaker 2: doing like I love my mom, She's an amazing mom,
Speaker 2: but like the things that I was doing when she
Speaker 2: did find out about them, drinking, I got a DUI
Speaker 2: other day I turned sixteen, like the very first.
Speaker 1: That was going to be my next question. So when
Speaker 1: did alcohol and outcohol or possibly drugs entered the picture.
Speaker 2: It started with smoking cigarettes. It's funny because I well
Speaker 2: a girl for smoking cigarettes. So like the kids at
Speaker 2: the table at the lunch table that I knew smoked
Speaker 2: before my dad died, I wanted to I didn't even
Speaker 2: want to look at them. I just wanted to avoid them,
Speaker 2: like those are the bad kids. And after he died,
Speaker 2: I found myself like I need to go sit with
Speaker 2: them because I need to be accepted. I was a
Speaker 2: new kid in a huge school and I just needed
Speaker 2: to be accepted. The only thing I had to do
Speaker 2: was inhale.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious now, if you're why did you not
Speaker 1: feel that you would be accepted sitting at a table
Speaker 1: of people that weren't doing drugs versus approach of kids
Speaker 1: that were.
Speaker 2: I played sports in high school too, and so I
Speaker 2: already had that crew. But when my dad died, it
Speaker 2: left a hole in my heart like just a I
Speaker 2: don't know how to explain it other than there was
Speaker 2: just a huge void and a huge vacance, and I
Speaker 2: just needed more. I needed to fill it with something.
Speaker 2: And I tried to fill it with anything that I
Speaker 2: possibly could to take my mind off of it and
Speaker 2: bring on some sort of feel good chemical, anything, any
Speaker 2: short shot of dopamine in my brain. And so I
Speaker 2: just I wanted the rebel. I felt like rebellious for
Speaker 2: the first time in my life.
Speaker 1: So I started with suthing and where you feeling your
Speaker 1: mom like from that perspective, because now at this point,
Speaker 1: you know that they separated right than you lose your dad.
Speaker 1: Your dad probably, i'm guessing, didn't show any animosity towards
Speaker 1: your mom. Did you know why they separated?
Speaker 2: I think no, nothing crazy bad happened. I just like
Speaker 2: grew apart. Yeah, I grew apart. Okay, that's a great
Speaker 2: way to put it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm just wondering where the rebellion. Just trying to curious.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. Okay, I don't know. I really
Speaker 2: don't know. I think I saw. I think I saw
Speaker 2: there was something that was attractive about it, and I
Speaker 2: saw these even though originally I had seen these guys
Speaker 2: and I thought that they were like not cool kids.
Speaker 2: I saw going to a football game. They had the
Speaker 2: girls around them, you know, and like upperclassmen. I would
Speaker 2: see doing certain things, and I was like, that's cool.
Speaker 2: It come if you do it, was copeler. It comes
Speaker 2: with something. Yea. It's not just like socially acceptable, it's expected,
Speaker 2: and so I might as well get into it now
Speaker 2: and be the younger kid that is the cool kid,
Speaker 2: because I saw apperclassmen doing it. So started with cigarettes,
Speaker 2: but you hang out in a barbershop long enough, you'll
Speaker 2: get a haircut, and these kids were. These kids were
Speaker 2: drinking and they were smoked. So it just very quickly
Speaker 2: freshman year, all of it started happening. But I never
Speaker 2: at that age went absolutely crazy with it, like I
Speaker 2: would push it and I would do it more than
Speaker 2: anybody else would do. Like I was the wild guy
Speaker 2: in high school, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: So even amongst that pack, you became like the leader issue.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, of that pack real fast.
Speaker 2: Everything I've ever done in my life always taken to
Speaker 2: an extreme. Everything doesn't matter if it's like good things
Speaker 2: or not good things.
Speaker 1: I guess you could see, like maybe early on that
Speaker 1: maybe you had some kind of like leadership power, but
Speaker 1: maybe at that point you or it was probably hard
Speaker 1: to recognize because even to hear that you jumped into
Speaker 1: a different background and you became the leader, or you
Speaker 1: were like, I'm going to be the if they're drinking two,
Speaker 1: I'm going to drink three, I'm going to be your
Speaker 1: competitive leadership.
Speaker 2: Speor everything in everything.
Speaker 1: Okay, which I guess in that case, I guess a
Speaker 1: leader in the wrong swimming pool could be very dangerous.
Speaker 2: Right it can. Yeah, And I'll tell you what do
Speaker 2: I learned a lot. I learned so many different things
Speaker 2: about people, just about human beings and like what at
Speaker 2: that point to tell you any specific thing, just just
Speaker 2: watching people, just listening to people, seeing how they see,
Speaker 2: watching what other mistakes people made. Truly, that's been one
Speaker 2: of the biggest things in my life in recovery, in
Speaker 2: business and an active addiction is watching other people make mistakes,
Speaker 2: not just my own mistakes, but I learned from other
Speaker 2: people more than I do for myself. Okay, so just
Speaker 2: watching how other people move and I listen, you know,
Speaker 2: and I just I listened to you. I continue to
Speaker 2: this day. Just focus on what everybody else is doing.
Speaker 2: I think about what everybody else is doing, watch, and
Speaker 2: I'm watching the landscape of how everything is happening in
Speaker 2: the world and constantly processing things in my mind. So
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's can't put an exact answer on it,
Speaker 2: but I did learn a lot from people.
Speaker 1: I would imagine there's a lot of vulnerability in that space, really,
Speaker 1: because at that point when people are drinking and doing drugs,
Speaker 1: are they talking about real things? Are they talking about
Speaker 1: just fun times? I don't know, because I've never really
Speaker 1: been in those groups.
Speaker 2: I can't say that it was ever really like deep conversations.
Speaker 2: It was probably mostly just fun times, meaningless conversations.
Speaker 1: So how does your mom respond to your first DUI?
Speaker 2: A slap on the wrist. Flap on the wrist. Man,
Speaker 2: I'm not happy about this, but you're better than this, essentially,
Speaker 2: is you know how the conversation went?
Speaker 1: Did she was it her first time finding out about
Speaker 1: you and alcohol?
Speaker 2: She may have known that I had a few drinks
Speaker 2: here and there, but she didn't know that I was
Speaker 2: drinking every weekend at this point. She didn't know that
Speaker 2: I was smoking weed every day. I started the deal
Speaker 2: with cocaine.
Speaker 1: A little bit too in high school.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, very early. So I remember getting
Speaker 2: picked up from the police station, went to court. She
Speaker 2: paid for the attorney. They gave me a like driving privileges.
Speaker 2: You can go to school and practice and work and
Speaker 2: then you have to come home. And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: that's I get high and drunk before and after school,
Speaker 2: like on property, same with practice.
Speaker 1: So this is property. This is a private school.
Speaker 2: It's an amazing school.
Speaker 1: Too, and it's Catholic. But these kids are doing this
Speaker 1: on property.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely, OK. And it wasn't just that school. It's
Speaker 2: kids nowadays. Yeah, And that was in two thousand and
Speaker 2: two when I was on.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the kids that originally do this
Speaker 1: is it because they grow up in a home where
Speaker 1: they see drugs and alcohol, Because in your case, it
Speaker 1: didn't seem like you saw a lot of it. Did
Speaker 1: you see your parents smoke or drink?
Speaker 2: No? I never saw them smoke.
Speaker 1: Especially if you broke with your girlfriend in seventh grade,
Speaker 1: I'd say the bar was pretty high. But for your
Speaker 1: peers at that time, were they were they do you
Speaker 1: know if they were exposed to like parents that drink
Speaker 1: or smoke or turbulence, because if they're going to private
Speaker 1: school too, I'd imagine they come from decent home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there was. I think again, I think I
Speaker 2: don't think I should say this. I think that there's
Speaker 2: probably some people that had some things going on that
Speaker 2: I had no clue about to this day, still don't
Speaker 2: know about, and maybe that's why they did what they did.
Speaker 2: But I think for the most part, at that age,
Speaker 2: it was because that's just what you do. And I
Speaker 2: and this is like why it's so important for me
Speaker 2: to speak at schools is because I've been there. I've
Speaker 2: felt that, I know the pressure that comes with being
Speaker 2: a young person in our world today, and it's only
Speaker 2: gotten worse since I was in school twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: so much worse than it is today. The first, the
Speaker 2: average age of people using substances is getting younger and
Speaker 2: younger every single year. The average age of people using
Speaker 2: like dangerous illicit substances is younger and younger. The average
Speaker 2: age of people having sex for the first time is
Speaker 2: getting people. People are there's this message that you have
Speaker 2: to look a certain way, act a certain way, have
Speaker 2: a certain hairstyle, close whatever it might be, say certain things,
Speaker 2: listen to certain music and if you don't, then you're
Speaker 2: not going to be part of our crew.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And in a world today where everything is social media,
Speaker 2: so the need for approval is higher than it's ever been.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I love doing the primary prevention in schools to
Speaker 2: tell kids like, you don't need anybody's approval, You're perfect
Speaker 2: exactly because if I would have been okay, everybody goes
Speaker 2: through things in life, right, but I would have been
Speaker 2: okay with that stress, high school, peer pressure, grades, performance
Speaker 2: on the court or on the field, whatever it is,
Speaker 2: losing loved ones. If I would have known how to
Speaker 2: deal with that the right way, I wouldn't have felt
Speaker 2: the need to seek another sub to seek something else
Speaker 2: or other people. It wasn't even substances at first, it
Speaker 2: was just approval. I always say my first addiction was
Speaker 2: your approval had nothing to do with substances. I just
Speaker 2: wanted to be accepted because I couldn't at myself. So
Speaker 2: I always try to tell kids like, you're accept yourself.
Speaker 2: You're fine, and find the friends that accept you for
Speaker 2: who you are.
Speaker 1: When you say accept yourself, I would imagine for a
Speaker 1: kid that's even a tough it's simple as But as
Speaker 1: simple as that sounds like, what would they even look like? Okay,
Speaker 1: I accept myself? What do you mean? I accept that?
Speaker 1: I like corn On the cop is that? But if
Speaker 1: I was a teenager, how would you relay that to me?
Speaker 2: I would talk about a who are you surrounding yourself with?
Speaker 2: Because if your friends around you are trying to tell
Speaker 2: you you need to do certain things to be you,
Speaker 2: to change yourself from the way that you wake up
Speaker 2: in the morning, if you need to do something different
Speaker 2: than that to alter your mood, your mind, or your appearance,
Speaker 2: if your friends are telling you that those are very
Speaker 2: good friends. Like my friends today, they love me for
Speaker 2: exactly who I am, the way that I am, how
Speaker 2: I am, I don't they don't. It doesn't matter if
Speaker 2: I bring a bottle to the party or not bring
Speaker 2: a bottle or wear a certain like. My friends love
Speaker 2: me for me. Yeah, you don't see that very often
Speaker 2: in high school.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In your case though, playing Devil's there's a couple
Speaker 1: of things. My mom used to say this when I
Speaker 1: was younger, all the time, show me your friends and
Speaker 1: I tell you who you are. That was my most
Speaker 1: favorite thing. Let's go see your friends. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: exactly who you are. That's one true. But I think
Speaker 1: acceptance is tricky because when you have people I know
Speaker 1: you just said, oh, my friends right now, they accept you.
Speaker 1: But now, when you have friends that really care about you,
Speaker 1: they're holding you to a certain standard. Absolutely, So if
Speaker 1: you went right now home and you pulled out a
Speaker 1: bottle with your whole cruel friends, what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: They're not going to accept you. Do you get what
Speaker 1: I'm saying?
Speaker 2: I do. I do.
Speaker 1: So that's where it gets tricky when you say that.
Speaker 2: But that was the second thing. I was going to
Speaker 2: say that not only accept me for who I am,
Speaker 2: but hold me accountable. That was going to be. That
Speaker 2: was literally you said it. You said it now, it's
Speaker 2: a one minute but it's the truth because my friend
Speaker 2: my friends do hold me me accountable to a certain standard,
Speaker 2: and I do the same thing for my friends too.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's part of what being a good
Speaker 1: friend is is accept accepting, but with accountability to be
Speaker 1: your high self.
Speaker 2: I think that's a responsibility of a friend. I think
Speaker 2: that's I think that's one of the greatest responsibility of
Speaker 2: a true friend, a good friend. The people that i'm
Speaker 2: and it's not I went from having hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 2: of people in early recovery that I would associate with
Speaker 2: and be around, and I would say, I always say
Speaker 2: four quarters is better than one hundred pennies. I have
Speaker 2: a few, really, some people are in different countries, some
Speaker 2: people are in different states, but really close friends that
Speaker 2: I see and I don't really hang out socially. I
Speaker 2: don't do that a lot. I'm with my family and
Speaker 2: I'm at work, and.
Speaker 1: You go to bed early. I saw his LinkedIn profile. Guys,
Speaker 1: if you want to know even more stuff about Matt,
Speaker 1: go on Matt Bell on LinkedIn. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you have social media, yeah, yeah, all of them. Well
Speaker 1: you can follow us, follow me everywhere Matt Bell. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I do stalk his his LinkedIn. But I'd be learning
Speaker 1: a lot. You talk about also making sure that you're
Speaker 1: in bed by a certain time. Because I saw this,
Speaker 1: you said this, and I told my homeboy this the
Speaker 1: other day. Nothing good happens outside after ten and I
Speaker 1: was like, actually, he's totally right. If you're trying to
Speaker 1: be productive, nothing good is probably going to happen. It's
Speaker 1: just distraction hours.
Speaker 2: Show me something transformational that happens after ten pm. Yeah
Speaker 2: outside outside of ten yeah outside yeah outside yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: outside and find some good things.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's just always, it's just it's chaos my home.
Speaker 1: My I was talking to my friend and he's very productive,
Speaker 1: and he goes, I think I'm going to try Adderall
Speaker 1: and I go to him. I was like Adderall No,
Speaker 1: and he'say, I think I'm going to try Adderall again.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I saw this post by this
Speaker 1: guy that I watch a lot, and he says, you
Speaker 1: should just get more sleep, and nothing good happens after
Speaker 1: ten pm. He's I don't think you get what I'm
Speaker 1: using adderall for. I'm like, no, I totally get it.
Speaker 1: You're trying to be more focused. You could be more
Speaker 1: focused if you get at an adequate amount of sleep.
Speaker 1: If he gets up at four am, I said, you
Speaker 1: should definitely be in bed by eight pm. And that
Speaker 1: was my response, and it was because it's.
Speaker 2: Like he gets up at four he's got to go
Speaker 2: to sleep eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're getting up at four that is why, because
Speaker 1: you cannot get up at four am. And I get it.
Speaker 1: We would push ourselves, but thinking that adderall is the
Speaker 1: solution for something that your body can actually give you.
Speaker 1: And that's what I swear a true story. This was
Speaker 1: like two days ago, very productive. But I was just like,
Speaker 1: but I used your LinkedIn posts.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. I appreciate that makes me. That makes me
Speaker 2: feel really good because that's why I make those posts.
Speaker 2: And I hope that other people see that sort of
Speaker 2: stuff too. I remember a probation office, actually a probation
Speaker 2: officer gave me all these when I was on probation
Speaker 2: got out of jail. All these certain be in the
Speaker 2: house by ten, don't go to bars, don't hang out
Speaker 2: with anybody else that's committing crimes, all these rules. At
Speaker 2: the time, it felt like an absolute punishment. I was like,
Speaker 2: this is terrible. I don't want to do any of
Speaker 2: this stuff. This is absolutely this is if I had
Speaker 2: to live by these rules, this will be the worst
Speaker 2: life ever.
Speaker 1: And did you in your brain say, okay, this is
Speaker 1: what a lame person? Yes for Peray, No, I see
Speaker 1: people do this if you're straight up. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're straight, you're corny, you don't have a life, you're lame.
Speaker 1: But look at what a corny, lame life looks like.
Speaker 1: You're a CEO, you own multiple properties. I'd imagine you
Speaker 1: have a staff, you provide and protect for your family,
Speaker 1: and you're being held accountable and you hold other people accountable.
Speaker 1: And if that's what lame or corny looks like, I
Speaker 1: love it.
Speaker 2: I love it. Call me lamb. I don't care. I
Speaker 2: adhere to all those rules today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, without probabi, no probation.
Speaker 2: I'm still living by And I looked at that. I'm
Speaker 2: like and every other successful person that I know, every
Speaker 2: other successful person or just like happy person that's like
Speaker 2: truly happy their core like at peace and they're serene.
Speaker 2: They adhere to these rules too. Like I didn't really
Speaker 2: think about that, And I'm like, man, that's wild, it's
Speaker 2: really wi. He wasn't giving me a punishment, he was
Speaker 2: giving me a recipe for success.
Speaker 1: But I like that. You can in a non healthy
Speaker 1: state look at that list and go, oh, corny, what
Speaker 1: kind of life is this? And then in a healthy steak,
Speaker 1: oh, oh my god, this is a beautiful. It's all perspective,
Speaker 1: like eating this corn and shame and now eating it
Speaker 1: in this like I've survival and I've what's the word thrived. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: It's nuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nuts. It is okay, going back. So your
Speaker 1: mom gives you the slap on the wrist for you drinking.
Speaker 1: So you're doing the weed, you're doing cocaine. You now
Speaker 1: have your first du wife. But it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: you got your I'm Jamaican. My mom would have been
Speaker 1: like annihilated. I would you would be going to my funeral,
Speaker 1: Like what IMMI? Grandparents are hilarious. If you're a child
Speaker 1: of any type of immigrant, you already know that you're
Speaker 1: just not you're not even returning home police like just
Speaker 1: keep me here, do't let me go back to them.
Speaker 1: But no, okay, so she's she's earning your your cold points.
Speaker 1: It seemed though, like growing up she probably was a
Speaker 1: little stricter. So but maybe there is also a little
Speaker 1: leniency because she knows in the back of her mind
Speaker 1: that you lost your father.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she doesn't want to be too hard.
Speaker 1: Too hard, Okay, So life prevails. You're going through high school,
Speaker 1: where does the harder drugs get in.
Speaker 2: Went to college graduates. So I graduated that that school
Speaker 2: with a four point zero.
Speaker 1: Even as a little ALKI person, I.
Speaker 2: Never had any consequences, That's what I'm.
Speaker 1: But you were also addicted either then.
Speaker 2: No, I wasn't addicted, but I was like the part
Speaker 2: You go talk to anybody I went to school with
Speaker 2: that knew me back then, They'll be like, yeah, Matt
Speaker 2: was wild. He was the part, the partier in the
Speaker 2: school and not just my school, like my whole town.
Speaker 1: But how are you four point zero? And I'm guessing
Speaker 1: this is a small town.
Speaker 2: It's not a it's the fourth biggest town in Ohio.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, but you were the you were the most.
Speaker 2: I don't know, nothing, nothing compared to La to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so it's Ohio. But you were the king
Speaker 1: of the scene. But I'm a little confused. So how
Speaker 1: are you able to maintain a four point Oh? Is
Speaker 1: your mom holding some kind of I'm just really.
Speaker 2: Good at balance, at managing chaos. I always have been.
Speaker 2: I've been really good in my life at managing chaos.
Speaker 2: I think that's why I survived my addiction.
Speaker 1: I think you have natural equalities of a leader. Thank you,
Speaker 1: because I think that to be an entrepreneur, or to
Speaker 1: be a leader, you have to be able to be
Speaker 1: the calm in the storm. You can't show those emotions.
Speaker 1: If you were to panic right now in front of
Speaker 1: your team, the entire team would question everything. Right, So,
Speaker 1: say you found out bank accounts are clai, payrolls do
Speaker 1: on Friday? Right, whatever reasons, cash flow mount everest hits.
Speaker 1: You could never turn to your staff and be like,
Speaker 1: so that's what I mean by there's this throughout your
Speaker 1: whole life. You could see that there's this natural born leader, right?
Speaker 1: Do you see it? Am I just pointing it out? Okay?
Speaker 2: I love the pressure.
Speaker 1: I thrive in pressure, maintain a four point Oh that's geez.
Speaker 1: But you must be really good at school too.
Speaker 2: Are you excelled? Yes? And yes, yes, I've always learned
Speaker 2: very quickly. I enjoy learning.
Speaker 1: Yes, And you're a big reader.
Speaker 2: I don't really know. I like audiobooks more than actually reading.
Speaker 2: I don't enjoy reading. Yeah, I listened to audio more
Speaker 2: than reading.
Speaker 1: I do both now, guys, But I have photographic micro photographic.
Speaker 1: When I read, I'm the opposite.
Speaker 2: Really, Yeah, I can't if I'll read a page because
Speaker 2: my mind is in so many places I think about.
Speaker 2: I'm constantly thinking. So if I read, I'll get done
Speaker 2: with the page and be like, what did I just read?
Speaker 2: I don't even remember what I just read.
Speaker 1: But if I listen, the book is not great yet
Speaker 1: that I'll have. Yeah, there's some people like C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis can be a little bit of a runner on
Speaker 1: a page. All right, No, that that's a book I
Speaker 1: wouldn't recommend for you if you would be in lou
Speaker 1: gotcha gone, Okay.
Speaker 2: See what you're saying. You know what I like about audiobooks?
Speaker 2: So seriously, is I can speed it up? I have
Speaker 2: the control. Like reading, I'm I can only read so fast,
Speaker 2: regardless of how good of a reader I am, I
Speaker 2: can only read so fast. But if I can turn
Speaker 2: an audiobook on two x or three X and get
Speaker 2: a book done in.
Speaker 1: An hour, see my So we're opposites in the sense
Speaker 1: that if I read a book on audio, and like
Speaker 1: I said, it depends how the person writes. Right. There's
Speaker 1: some really great writers and there's some people that like
Speaker 1: some of the psychology books. I feel like sometimes those guys,
Speaker 1: some of the words they use. I'm like, bro, let's
Speaker 1: get through this chapter. Those I would probably have to
Speaker 1: do two x but at this point I've semi checked
Speaker 1: out and I'm scared I'm going to miss miss like
Speaker 1: the meat and potatoes. That makes sense, But I do
Speaker 1: a mix of audio now because it makes sense because
Speaker 1: it's easier. But good to know about Youah, all right,
Speaker 1: So back to you. When do you get to the exlicit?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Exlicit?
Speaker 2: Illicita college happened in college, full ride to the university's
Speaker 2: leado to Division one college in our city playing baseball,
Speaker 2: which was my dream. And I hurt my shoulder in college,
Speaker 2: and so I had a minor surgery, just an outpatient surgery,
Speaker 2: and that was the first time. I left that surgery
Speaker 2: in and out two hours with ninety percocets. Now they
Speaker 2: don't do that anymore. They don't prescribe that many pills
Speaker 2: at once, but at that time they did, and that
Speaker 2: was my first time doing opiates.
Speaker 1: I had taken pills. Are opiates?
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, okay, yep, So I had taken pills.
Speaker 1: They do they tell you that, Yeah, they do. I
Speaker 1: think they say, hey, this is percocets, it is an opiate.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they say those exact words, but
Speaker 2: like on the discharge paperwork, it says all that sort
Speaker 2: of stuff at that time, I certainly don't remember them saying,
Speaker 2: hey be careful with this, this is an addictive substance.
Speaker 2: This is all during the opioid epidemic, when it was
Speaker 2: being marketed as a non addictive description pain killer. So
Speaker 2: I don't think that there was a ton of drug education,
Speaker 2: and truthfully, I think even in our world today, there's
Speaker 2: more that they can do with that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, because they talk about pop songs, I did
Speaker 1: not even opiate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so they give molecularly on a molecular level,
Speaker 2: if we were to break down a percocet and heroin
Speaker 2: are essentially the same thing.
Speaker 1: Are you serious opioids?
Speaker 2: Yes? Wow, yep, Okay, fetanyl carpetanyl heroin, percocets, oxycotton morphine, deluded.
Speaker 2: These are all of the opioid class, and so they
Speaker 2: all attached the same receptors in the brain and cause
Speaker 2: the same reactions. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I was in Upstate New York the senior year
Speaker 1: of my high school, I remember them lacing weed with
Speaker 1: this brown substance and I forgot what they called it,
Speaker 1: but it was a derivative of the opioid, and that
Speaker 1: was like the first time I remember saying something around
Speaker 1: my dad, and my dad was like, opioids is heroin
Speaker 1: if you grow up in New York, but like heroin
Speaker 1: addiction is. My parents used to scare straight. They'd be
Speaker 1: like doing the lean, yeah, be like yo, that person
Speaker 1: was a doctor and they gave they lost their whole
Speaker 1: family and one night, for sure smoked a cigarette and
Speaker 1: then they went on heroin like okay crett, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: never smoked a cigarette. They would love to do that.
Speaker 1: You see someone in the lead, they'd be like that person.
Speaker 1: They was living in a mansion somewhere and they give
Speaker 1: this whole speech.
Speaker 2: And you that was it opium stuff.
Speaker 1: It was probably it was some kind of maybe it
Speaker 1: was opium. I don't remember. I am the polar opposite.
Speaker 1: I'm one of those. If I have a cocktail, I
Speaker 1: take three SIPs and I'm like, eh, that my think.
Speaker 2: Good for you, Yeah, good for you.
Speaker 1: I'm very, very lucky, very I.
Speaker 2: Can't understand that. My wife's the same way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's I was with my dad and this
Speaker 1: lady and they're like, oh, you order drink and I like,
Speaker 1: ordered the fruity one and yeah they knew. And my
Speaker 1: dad was like, I was like, yeah, I didn't feel
Speaker 1: too good. He's oh, your whole drink was still there.
Speaker 1: Would you drink two SIPs? I was like, yeah, still
Speaker 1: didn't feel good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But that's where it started. It started in college
Speaker 2: after the I remember taking the first one and falling
Speaker 2: in love with it. I liked substances, I liked being
Speaker 2: under the influence and having fun socially. But when I
Speaker 2: experienced percocets for the first time, I wanted to feel
Speaker 2: that way every day for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: Did your mom have any idea of the severity of
Speaker 1: what percosetes were at the.
Speaker 2: Time, No, nobody did.
Speaker 1: So you were responsible doling it out to yourself. And
Speaker 1: at this point you're in your twenties, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm playing baseball. I'm nineteen at the time.
Speaker 1: Well, are you in your dorms?
Speaker 2: I'm in I had my own house, I have my
Speaker 2: own college house, I have my own party house.
Speaker 1: Of course you're mad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, I'm doing the thing, same thing. Two
Speaker 2: beers is good, five must be great. If one percoset
Speaker 2: is this good, then I wonder what three or four does,
Speaker 2: and that that prescription was supposed to last for I
Speaker 2: think like forty five days. It was gone in a week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I saw on your LinkedIn. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that. I was like, damn, like one week
Speaker 1: that was it? Yeah, And I think you said like
Speaker 1: the whole bottle was gone. I was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: oh snap. And then at that point did you know
Speaker 1: you had a problem?
Speaker 2: So I woke up the next I actually didn't even
Speaker 2: fall asleep when I took the last one. I started
Speaker 2: to go through withdraws like I was physically dependent, not
Speaker 2: like anything crazy, but I was starting to experience some
Speaker 2: minor withdrawal symptoms, like what sleeplessness like restless, leg tossing
Speaker 2: and turning hot and cold sweats, some nausea. Just laid
Speaker 2: up all night feeling like that, and I was like,
Speaker 2: I've never felt like this before. So I'm looking online.
Speaker 2: What are these symptoms and everything? It's opioid addiction, chemical dependency, substance.
Speaker 2: Like all the results, I'm like, no, let me go
Speaker 2: to page two of Google. How often do you go
Speaker 2: to page two of Google? You find your results right there.
Speaker 1: I'm going to page.
Speaker 2: Three on to page four page five, it's all addiction.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I am not an addict. I'm a d
Speaker 2: one athlete with a full ride. I'm gonna go pro someday.
Speaker 2: I was being watched by pro scouts as a freshman.
Speaker 2: I'm not an addict, not an addict. I don't look
Speaker 2: like an addict.
Speaker 1: And you're not. You're looking up answers, but you're nowhere
Speaker 1: and you're going, hey, can I get another purposet?
Speaker 2: So that's what I did. I called a friend and
Speaker 2: I was like, I feel this way. What do I do?
Speaker 2: Everything's saying addiction, what and I do? I gotta go
Speaker 2: to class, I gotta go to practice. And my friend
Speaker 2: was like, go buy a pill for the first time. Now,
Speaker 2: go buy know somebody who can buy a pill from.
Speaker 2: Take the pill, and if you feel better, then you
Speaker 2: are addicted. And I was like, that's actually really genius.
Speaker 2: Let me go. That's a good idea. Let me go
Speaker 2: buy drugs illegally now. And that was the first time
Speaker 2: I did it. And that was the first time I
Speaker 2: was introduced to like a pill.
Speaker 1: Like a pill, it does sound like a good idea.
Speaker 2: Makes sense, like the process of elimination.
Speaker 1: It does, But then you think if you are an addict,
Speaker 1: then you just literally lit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just kept it going. Yeah, I just kept
Speaker 2: it going.
Speaker 1: But I liked that it was like youth and youth
Speaker 1: trying to solve a problem. I would have totally given
Speaker 1: you like not me now, but I could see someone
Speaker 1: like being like, we'll solve this problem right now. Okay,
Speaker 1: it does make sense. Okay, so I can't even hate
Speaker 1: on the friend there. That was logic. But then it's okay.
Speaker 1: So then you find out, you find out, but even
Speaker 1: just pursuing the illegal route.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, I found out. I was like, because I
Speaker 2: took it and feelings went away right, well better, I
Speaker 2: felt fine again very quickly, and I was like, oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, I am like reliant on these. I wasn't.
Speaker 2: It wasn't addiction yet. I wouldn't call it addiction yet,
Speaker 2: but physically dependent on them to wear it.
Speaker 1: And you were smarter, not smart enough at the time.
Speaker 1: But that's weird that you like knew in that moment.
Speaker 1: You were like, I need this to feel good, that's.
Speaker 2: How So there are certain substances that cause withdrawals, and
Speaker 2: there's certain substances where it's just mental obsession with opioids.
Speaker 2: It's the mental obsession, but it's also physical with draws,
Speaker 2: and if you don't have them every single day, you're
Speaker 2: deathly sick. The withdrawals from opioids are terrible. The same
Speaker 2: thing that I did that day to feel better to
Speaker 2: go to practice and go to school, I had to
Speaker 2: do the next day too, And then I had to
Speaker 2: do it the next day or else I was going
Speaker 2: to be sick feeling those feelings of shaking hot. I
Speaker 2: couldn't go to practice that way. It's like you're throwing up,
Speaker 2: you're vomiting.
Speaker 1: What drugs can you take that don't give you a
Speaker 1: physical withdrawal?
Speaker 2: So every substance, even sugar, I mean like everything, nicotine, alcohol,
Speaker 2: every substance, if you use it enough for long enough,
Speaker 2: it's going to cause it's going you're there's withdrawal scales
Speaker 2: for all substances. Some are obviously more significant than others,
Speaker 2: but I would say the least physical withdrawals are going
Speaker 2: to be like marijuana and cocaine and.
Speaker 1: Sugar, right because now you're gonna be a little paranoid. Sugars.
Speaker 2: I don't know when I eat a lot of sugar,
Speaker 2: if I'm like on a bad, like stretch for three,
Speaker 2: four or five months of just eating sugar all day
Speaker 2: every day, and I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna stop.
Speaker 2: Have you ever done that? Just like cut off sugar.
Speaker 1: No, I've.
Speaker 2: Cut off carbs. Oh my gosh. The next day after that,
Speaker 2: terrible headache, can't sleep. Sugar is wild, Sugar is Sugar
Speaker 2: is crazy. Go down a deep dive of how like
Speaker 2: bad sugar is for our bodies and for our brains.
Speaker 2: It's wild.
Speaker 1: Now now I'm thinking that I give my kid like
Speaker 1: skittles to teach her how to learn how to read.
Speaker 1: So I do this thing like yeah, I do this
Speaker 1: like tutoring every morning, but after they eat breakfast, I'll
Speaker 1: be like, hey you can have skit how much candy
Speaker 1: do you earn? But now I'm thinking like, could I
Speaker 1: be creating an addiction?
Speaker 2: No, in moderation, I think most things.
Speaker 1: Five skitlls every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think she's fine.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, let's go back to your story. Okay, I'm learning. Okay,
Speaker 1: this this has my brain working. Okay, So now you're
Speaker 1: one perpose at a day, you're spending your harder money,
Speaker 1: but you're getting this illegally at what point do you
Speaker 1: start to say this is not good.
Speaker 2: When I really started to notice, like my behavior and
Speaker 2: performance slipping, like I lost like when I was when
Speaker 2: I went to college, I put on so much lean
Speaker 2: muscles in the best shape ever. All my muscles started
Speaker 2: to fall off. I was late to practice, not doing
Speaker 2: the extra work outside of practice. Late my grade started slipping.
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, this is this. And then I
Speaker 2: had to go from percocets to oxy because percocets didn't
Speaker 2: do it for me anymore.
Speaker 1: When you say do it for you, your body withdraws
Speaker 1: or it just didn't feel like a good high.
Speaker 2: It both If I your tolerance goes up, and so
Speaker 2: you either need more or you need something stronger to
Speaker 2: produce the same effect. And so to get high anymore,
Speaker 2: I had to do more, and to do three or
Speaker 2: four percocets. That that's expensive. Let me just get one
Speaker 2: oxy cotton to get that. Because oxyctins, depending on the milligram,
Speaker 2: is stronger than at the time oxyconton was stronger. I'm
Speaker 2: talking about OxyContin not oxy content, which are like a
Speaker 2: completely different like back in the day. And people will
Speaker 2: know if they know five O six the real oxies,
Speaker 2: those things were like the purest form of any sort
Speaker 2: of opioid. You could you could snort it, you could
Speaker 2: swallow it, you could inject it. What I started to do.
Speaker 2: I started to do that with oxycotton and then yeah.
Speaker 1: Because I was going to say at some point I
Speaker 1: would imagine when you get to the needle part, like okay,
Speaker 1: go yeah.
Speaker 2: I watched how to my friends and I because we
Speaker 2: all started doing it together. We started we watched how
Speaker 2: to inject on YouTube at the time. There was a
Speaker 2: video that would show you how to do that.
Speaker 1: What would lead you to guys to want to inject
Speaker 1: versus like just swallowing it.
Speaker 2: We're always trying to to get a better hide because
Speaker 2: the hide after a certain amount of time isn't as good,
Speaker 2: and so it's like, how can we level this up?
Speaker 2: And it sounds so crazy, but when you're once you
Speaker 2: cross that invisible line, it's that's just the way that
Speaker 2: the brain thing just doesn't make sense to for us,
Speaker 2: like talking now, it makes no sense, and for many
Speaker 2: listeners it won't make any sense. But when you're in it,
Speaker 2: it makes nothing but sense. So we watched a video
Speaker 2: and these are.
Speaker 1: Friends that are going to college with you, you.
Speaker 2: Know, some of them probably in college at the time,
Speaker 2: you know, and the rest of them were just like
Speaker 2: friends from high school. A lot of my friends got
Speaker 2: hooked on oxy conton at that time. It was like
Speaker 2: it was a very common thing. We were all parties.
Speaker 2: Weren't like beer pong anymore. Parties were snorting lines of
Speaker 2: oxy conton off.
Speaker 1: It elevated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of us are doing it.
Speaker 1: So this is but you're out there in Ohio.
Speaker 2: I'm in Toledo, Ohio. I'm in my hometown. I'm still
Speaker 2: in my hometown.
Speaker 1: I heard like, when you're dealing with addiction and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, you got to get away from where it is.
Speaker 2: I don't I think that. I think that can help
Speaker 2: for some people. But everywhere you go, you take yourself
Speaker 2: with you, and there are drugs everywhere in the world,
Speaker 2: and so just there's no geographical care to addiction. You
Speaker 2: can't just I'm going to go to Hawaii for six months,
Speaker 2: not do drugs and then return or not return. You
Speaker 2: can stay in Hawaii the whole time. And if you
Speaker 2: don't work on yourself and why you started doing things
Speaker 2: in the first place, you're going to continue to do
Speaker 2: those things in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: But in your case, your stuff was No, it wasn't.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say yours was accidental, but no, it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Not really because had had you the whole situation with
Speaker 1: your not if if you go further back, right, you
Speaker 1: were that whole transition from high school losing your dad
Speaker 1: to switch off to your mom. Like I guess, if
Speaker 1: that whole story kind of didn't unravel, maybe none of
Speaker 1: this would.
Speaker 2: Have Probably not right.
Speaker 1: Probably not because I was going to blame it on
Speaker 1: like that whole surgery, but not because at that point
Speaker 1: you were already used to trying different things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think it goes back to my dad
Speaker 2: for sure. And I didn't realize that. I didn't realize
Speaker 2: that until my twenty eighth treatment center that I went to.
Speaker 1: So how did you discover it?
Speaker 2: I know I'm getting a very good therapist, so pill Mills,
Speaker 2: I'll close the loop there really quick. Oxy cotton took
Speaker 2: off after percocets. I dropped out of college, started getting arrested,
Speaker 2: working like meaningless jobs, went back to mom's house, in
Speaker 2: and out of rehab. Arrests started happening. Just like the
Speaker 2: real chaos of this is no longer dabbling. This is
Speaker 2: no longer just dependency, full blown addiction, and everybody knew it.
Speaker 2: You knew it, Oh yeah, absolutely. I was like you
Speaker 2: not a rehabit and but.
Speaker 1: You knew it after that first pill, right, that little
Speaker 1: pill test. That's when you knew it.
Speaker 2: I knew that I was dependent on it, like addiction
Speaker 2: for me, so physical dependency on something. It doesn't progress
Speaker 2: to like actual diagnosable severe addiction like opioid use dependence
Speaker 2: until you continue to use despite consequences. There was no
Speaker 2: consequences after those seven pills. I was still like, no
Speaker 2: consequences once I started getting in trouble, once I started stealing,
Speaker 2: once I started getting into debt, once I had dropped
Speaker 2: out of school, and I still do those things. Now.
Speaker 2: Now it's addiction. You look at how is my life?
Speaker 2: What are all these factors happening around? That's full blown addiction.
Speaker 1: That's sounds like you do it despite the consequences.
Speaker 2: Correct, And I had every reason in the world to stop.
Speaker 2: Like on paper, Matt, what are you doing? What are
Speaker 2: you doing? It's denial. It's all these sorts of things.
Speaker 2: But that's addiction. It just does not make sense, just
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense. At all.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's interesting. So now where did we were.
Speaker 2: We were got to heroin because oxy cotton they shut
Speaker 2: down all the pill mills. They all got raided at
Speaker 2: the same time. In northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan. They
Speaker 2: all got raided and that's when the cartels brought in.
Speaker 2: It was actually real heroin at the time. Now it's not,
Speaker 2: it's all fentanyl. So then I started shooting harrow and
Speaker 2: that was like, that was actually a relief because I
Speaker 2: was spending three four hundred dollars a day on oxy cotton.
Speaker 1: How are you making how much money?
Speaker 2: You just I inherited money from my dad and I
Speaker 2: spent it all gone, mag I spent it all in
Speaker 2: nine months.
Speaker 1: But wait, your dad left when you were like fifteen
Speaker 1: or sixteen, so I didn't inherit it till later correct
Speaker 1: at what time, like twenty two, fifteen and a half?
Speaker 2: Oh my, And it was gone by nineteen and a half,
Speaker 2: so that it was a wild run while I had
Speaker 2: that money. But once it was gone, then I had
Speaker 2: to start committing crimes and doing all sorts stuff to
Speaker 2: feed my addiction. But four hundred dollars on oxy cotton
Speaker 2: versus thirty dollars forty dollars a day on heroin. It's
Speaker 2: a no brainer. Yeah, and it's the same thing, so yes,
Speaker 2: switch to heroin and then just start Stuff started getting
Speaker 2: really bad when I started using heroin. It was so
Speaker 2: much stronger. The physical withdrawals were worse. So that's when,
Speaker 2: like rehabs really started to happen overdoses, the arrest.
Speaker 1: The rehabs happened because withdraws were really bad.
Speaker 2: No, because I was getting in trouble. Everybody else wanted
Speaker 2: me to go.
Speaker 1: Okay, everybody wanted you to go.
Speaker 2: It was always a judge or a probation officer, or
Speaker 2: my mom or a girlfriend. I never wanted to go.
Speaker 2: Somebody else always wanted me to go.
Speaker 1: At what point, why is it that you wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to go?
Speaker 2: I just wasn't I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready.
Speaker 1: I did like you knew the consequences were bad, but
Speaker 1: you just didn't care. And I guess that there was
Speaker 1: a definition of addiction is right. Yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: vicious cycle.
Speaker 2: It's a cunning, baffling, powerful, insidious brain disease that you'll
Speaker 2: never understand until you have to understand it. Like for
Speaker 2: me to explain it to you or to anybody. If
Speaker 2: I've never tasted chocolate before, tell me what chocolate tastes like.
Speaker 1: It's the greatest thing on earth.
Speaker 2: I think corn on the cob is the greatest thing
Speaker 2: on earth. So if you're telling me it's the greatest
Speaker 2: thing on earth, my mind goes to I love chocolate.
Speaker 1: I should be able to answer this question. But I
Speaker 1: love that you're proposal of this because I honestly other
Speaker 1: than chocolate. Like if I always say, like if someone said,
Speaker 1: go the rest of your life without chocolate.
Speaker 2: I always hear people say it's sweet, it's sweet, it's creamy, creamy.
Speaker 2: Dark chocolate can have a bitter taste to it. So
Speaker 2: I hear these things, I'm like, okay, sweet strawberries, bitter lemons,
Speaker 2: creamy mashed potatoes. Do am I am? I thinking about
Speaker 2: an accurate depiction of chocolate. So if the only way
Speaker 2: that I will ever fully understand is to put these
Speaker 2: chocolate in my mouth and taste it for myself, And
Speaker 2: it's the same thing with addiction, it just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: But the only difference is that say, you and I
Speaker 1: both like chocolate, right, but I'm the one that. Let's
Speaker 1: just say I was addicted to chocolate, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: have the same effect. Say you're a vanilla person, right,
Speaker 1: then would you even still understand it?
Speaker 2: I might understand a little bit more. I think I
Speaker 2: might understand it a little bit more because I would say,
Speaker 2: that's like someone who is addicted to alcohol versus someone
Speaker 2: who's addicted to another substance. The addiction is the same,
Speaker 2: but I'll never really understand. There's a common denominator of
Speaker 2: what it's like to be addicted to something there, I think.
Speaker 1: So, do you think people that aren't addicts have a
Speaker 1: lack of I think from my experience that there is
Speaker 1: a lack of empathy.
Speaker 2: I think some people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, from my experience, I lack empathy because it doesn't
Speaker 1: make logical sense.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: But then I have to go, according to the world,
Speaker 1: it's a disease. And then you hear people that were
Speaker 1: addicts the way they describe it in music. I like
Speaker 1: the way people describe in music or testimonials like yourself,
Speaker 1: because you get an idea if they can explain it
Speaker 1: well enough, like how you describe chocolate, right, Yeah, then
Speaker 1: you get an idea. But there is a little bit
Speaker 1: of a lack of empathy. I don't know, because logically,
Speaker 1: you're like, you're losing everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why would you do that?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Why would you do that?
Speaker 1: And then it goes into you you love this thing
Speaker 1: more than you love this thing. So that's where the
Speaker 1: logic and the lack of empathy.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, if I told you, if I offered you a
Speaker 2: million dollars to not blink for the rest of this show,
Speaker 2: would you be able to do it?
Speaker 1: No, for the rest of the show. Yeah, which I
Speaker 1: really hard.
Speaker 2: You try, right, you try really hard. So that I
Speaker 2: always do this in schools and I'll ask, I'll always
Speaker 2: bring in somebody a couple hundred hours, I'll say in schools,
Speaker 2: i'll say, if you guys don't blink for the whole presentation,
Speaker 2: I'll give you this money. And it's never happened. In
Speaker 2: ten years. I probably spoken to a million students in
Speaker 2: ten years, and obviously it's never happened. I've had some
Speaker 2: kids like try to hold their eyes open. One kid
Speaker 2: taped his eyes open, but nobody's been able to keep
Speaker 2: their eyes open. There's a reason for that is because
Speaker 2: the brain controls it. The brain controls blinking, it controls breathing, swallowing, heartbeat,
Speaker 2: all these things that just automatically happen that we don't
Speaker 2: think about. And to think about addiction as a chronic
Speaker 2: brain disease, that it if you were to look at
Speaker 2: somebody who's struggling with addiction versus your brain right now,
Speaker 2: they're different physiologically. This is science, This is not Matt's opinion.
Speaker 2: The brain changes from substance use, from chemical dependency. The
Speaker 2: brain changes and the ability to make good decisions is
Speaker 2: impacted by that. And so for me to say I'll
Speaker 2: give you a million dollars if you don't blink is
Speaker 2: the same as society to say why can't they just stop?
Speaker 2: It's not that simple. Their brain is telling them they
Speaker 2: have to have more. And so for us to say
Speaker 2: that addicts are like bad people and they just need
Speaker 2: to become good, it has nothing to do with that.
Speaker 2: They've maybe made some bad choices and they've used a substance,
Speaker 2: probably not great choices, but at some point it changes
Speaker 2: and it's no longer these are choices anymore. This is
Speaker 2: a I have to do this to survive, and this
Speaker 2: person is sick now. And to understand addiction in that
Speaker 2: way as the diagnosable condition of the disease concept of it.
Speaker 2: This is a sick person that needs treatment. They're not
Speaker 2: a bad person that needs to become good. But people
Speaker 2: don't understand that.
Speaker 1: No, but I think the way you explained it is
Speaker 1: very helpful. I think it's very easy to understand a
Speaker 1: physical withdrawal from an outside perspective. I'm the devil's advocate,
Speaker 1: met I love it. At what point everyone's pleading with
Speaker 1: you to go and get help. At what point do
Speaker 1: you and I guess you told me this, But at
Speaker 1: what point do you say, I really want to help?
Speaker 1: Shun a debate, should I go for this question or
Speaker 1: do I go for At what point does the therapist
Speaker 1: find the magic button? Which one goes first? The therapist
Speaker 1: finding the magic button, they go.
Speaker 2: Along at the same time. To be honest with you,
Speaker 2: my therapist was able to help me identify that me
Speaker 2: losing my father was that was my trauma. That was
Speaker 2: trauma for me. I viewed as a completely normal occurrence.
Speaker 2: People died. I viewed it as that way. Oh and
Speaker 2: by the way, I got to go back to this
Speaker 2: place where I already feel uncomfortable. I gotta go fit.
Speaker 2: I can't go walk into an all guys college prep
Speaker 2: high school as a freshman and be like, I'm really
Speaker 2: sad that my dad's dead. I have to go take
Speaker 2: an exam tomorrow. I have to go make the team.
Speaker 2: It's try it's tryouts right now. I have to go compete.
Speaker 2: I have to step in. I can't think about this.
Speaker 2: So I never dealt with it. I never even recognized
Speaker 2: that it was trauma. I put on the back burner
Speaker 2: and just never processed it. And for up until that
Speaker 2: twenty eighth time, it just remained unprocessed. It was unprocessed
Speaker 2: grief and trauma.
Speaker 1: Now, when you say unprocessed, does that mean that because
Speaker 1: you didn't find a way to cope through it? Is
Speaker 1: that what that means?
Speaker 2: Yes? And I found ways to cope. They were just
Speaker 2: very unhealthy ways to cope. But what it was She
Speaker 2: asked me a question. She said, if drugs are answer,
Speaker 2: what's your question? I was like, that's very deep. I
Speaker 2: don't really know how to respond to that, but you're right,
Speaker 2: drugs have been my answer. What is my question? I
Speaker 2: wasn't able to answer right that. What I got to,
Speaker 2: through like recurring sessions with her, my question was what
Speaker 2: is it about? Myself that I hate so much that
Speaker 2: I have to alter who I am to have a
Speaker 2: relationship with the world. I can't just wake up and
Speaker 2: be mad. I have to do something. I have to
Speaker 2: change who I am to be a friend, to be
Speaker 2: a partner, to be the funny guy at the part
Speaker 2: I have to I can't just be natural. And she
Speaker 2: helped me realize that from my dad leaving. At that time,
Speaker 2: I viewed that as abandonment, Like my fourteen year old
Speaker 2: brain thought that my best friend abandoned me. And so
Speaker 2: how do I control things to make sure I never
Speaker 2: get abandoned again? How do I settle in relationships for
Speaker 2: rather than shooting for the excellence of my dad? How
Speaker 2: do I maybe settle for something that's less than because
Speaker 2: I can control it and make sure that it or she,
Speaker 2: or a friend or anybody never leaves me. How can
Speaker 2: I always bring something to the table that's not Matt
Speaker 2: that makes me so good that nobody will ever want
Speaker 2: to get rid of me. It was like all these
Speaker 2: like deep, profound things that I had to really get to,
Speaker 2: and it was all abandonment that led to I need
Speaker 2: to control everything. I need to control every and substances
Speaker 2: were my way to do that in relationships, in fun
Speaker 2: and social settings. Substances were my way to do that.
Speaker 1: That's a lot, that's a lot. I still don't understand
Speaker 1: how substance was your way of controlling other things though.
Speaker 2: So if I walk into a party without substances, they
Speaker 2: might not accept me.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 2: If I walk in with a bottle, we're having a
Speaker 2: good time.
Speaker 1: If you walk in as yourself, who.
Speaker 2: Knows if they'll invite me back.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So I mean that's just I was. I had to
Speaker 2: get to a point where I was okay walking into
Speaker 2: that room as myself with nothing else and to be
Speaker 2: able to work on what was it? It was fear,
Speaker 2: it was insecurities, it was just all these basically fear.
Speaker 2: Is what the Twelve Steps helped me realize, is that
Speaker 2: I was afraid of so many different things, hundreds of
Speaker 2: forms of fear. And so the opposite of that is
Speaker 2: building courage and self esteem and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: And that's what that's what stepwork does. It's an ego
Speaker 2: deflating process that helps you be okay with yourself.
Speaker 1: I went to one with a girl.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome, and it was.
Speaker 1: It felt like they I don't want to judge, but
Speaker 1: I was in the room and it felt like everyone
Speaker 1: was like there was a humility and a respect was
Speaker 1: a greater being, like a God or whatever. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it was interesting.
Speaker 2: Twelve step programs are they're spiritual in nature. You don't
Speaker 2: have to believe in God. You don't have to believe
Speaker 2: in a specific God. But the whole goal of the
Speaker 2: twelve steps is help you find something greater than yourself.
Speaker 2: Because my way got me into that program. If my
Speaker 2: way was good enough, I wouldn't need that program. Well,
Speaker 2: I have to find something bigger than me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Then that would also mean that you're not in control.
Speaker 1: So do you think that most addicts think that is
Speaker 1: their way of controlling the environment versus I don't.
Speaker 2: Think everybody's different. Oh, I think everybody's different, A.
Speaker 1: Learned less all right, what I know, we're definitely over
Speaker 1: the time. What advice do you give to families who
Speaker 1: deal with addicts?
Speaker 2: Love? Tough love. I think tough love is the most
Speaker 2: underutil lot because it's tough. I mean it's tough on
Speaker 2: the it's tough on the person receiving it and the
Speaker 2: people giving it. But tough love is my short answer.
Speaker 2: Generalized answer, tough love. Find ways to get to a
Speaker 2: point where you can give tough love boundaries. Families have
Speaker 2: so much control and leverage that they don't realize that
Speaker 2: they have that. If I say, if you do this again,
Speaker 2: if you come back home again drunk, if gamble the
Speaker 2: money away again, if you do this again, these things
Speaker 2: are going to happen. Do that and stick to those
Speaker 2: boundaries because the consequences that people can remember how I
Speaker 2: said in high school, I'd never had any consequences like
Speaker 2: the DUI that this, that cops come to the party, Matt,
Speaker 2: you got to play this Friday, get out of here,
Speaker 2: never any consequence. We have to have consequences to change.
Speaker 2: We have to, and families can implement those consequences for people.
Speaker 2: Rather than allowing people to just go out and dig
Speaker 2: deep down to a rock bottom that they find themselves,
Speaker 2: families can bring that rock bottom to the loved ones.
Speaker 1: I think I can understand, though, where families are in
Speaker 1: a battle with themselves, because if you're from a family's perspective,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, Okay, my boundary doesn't mean anything, because
Speaker 1: guess what, the only thing they care about is that
Speaker 1: drug or that substance or whatever they're hooked to. So
Speaker 1: why my boundary doesn't mean anything? It's easy to say that, right.
Speaker 1: I guess you'd have to be tough love for a
Speaker 1: very strong time, a long time.
Speaker 2: It might be some families that have to do it
Speaker 2: for a long time. Some people can do it for
Speaker 2: the very first time. They hold that conversation and the
Speaker 2: person changes. So addictions is just weird. It's you can
Speaker 2: make a pizza and put it in an oven and
Speaker 2: it comes out how it's supposed to every single time,
Speaker 2: as long as you follow the instructions. There's no one
Speaker 2: size fits all. Why did this happen to this person?
Speaker 2: And what is the right way to deal with this
Speaker 2: individual like you? It's so complex. It's just so Complex's
Speaker 2: why the success rates are so low, the success rates
Speaker 2: of people. That's why I said, I'm not supposed to
Speaker 2: be here after that many times in treatment and as
Speaker 2: long as I was out there, I should not be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could imagine there's like a different array of
Speaker 1: emotions from people looking at your story. For people that
Speaker 1: have lost people to say drugs and see you sit here, man,
Speaker 1: why couldn't my person just couldn't get it? In that
Speaker 1: right amount of time. But I like that you're using
Speaker 1: your shouldn't be here to like impact and change the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it. I love what I love what
Speaker 2: I do today.
Speaker 1: Even though it seems like you're surrounded by trauma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all day people are coming in to the
Speaker 2: treatment center. Then they're not, they're not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but even to hear that you say, you have
Speaker 1: to deal with death on more than regular right, because
Speaker 1: if they leave and they reuse or what have you.
Speaker 1: So it's like you're constantly it's like a firefighter. They're
Speaker 1: constantly around the trauma. But you've been on the dark side.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you stay strong.
Speaker 2: Success is too, people like get their kids back and
Speaker 2: become productive members of society. And it's to know that
Speaker 2: we played a small part in that. That that's the
Speaker 2: stuff that keeps us going. For every very sad story,
Speaker 2: there's five really happy stories too. So that's the And
Speaker 2: then obviously like personal life and whether it's self care
Speaker 2: or travel or fun or golfing or exercise or just
Speaker 2: going home to my kids. Yeah, that's work is hard
Speaker 2: for anybody. Any job first responders, Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: Those particular jobs like the nurses the doctors, the what
Speaker 1: you do firefighters like. Sometimes people say that those can
Speaker 1: be like the tougher people to be like in a
Speaker 1: relationship with, because they're constantly exposed to trauma. You could
Speaker 1: be like, how is your day, honeywoo. Me and Sarah
Speaker 1: got into it and as oh, yeah, I went to
Speaker 1: this guy's house he committed suicide, or this young kid.
Speaker 1: That the trauma is like so much that they're almost
Speaker 1: like numb to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you can interview my wife next. She'll
Speaker 2: tell you all crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: You guys look so good online. Just a day in
Speaker 1: the life of you. Now.
Speaker 2: Wake up at probably five, I'll go to I'll go
Speaker 2: to the gym, come home, get some desk work done
Speaker 2: at the house before I go to the office. Probably
Speaker 2: I don't know, one hundred or something emails, go usk,
Speaker 2: getting everything organized, go to the office. Have one hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty employees. I have one hundred and sixty employees.
Speaker 2: We've got like twenty two locations in northwest Ohio. Now
Speaker 2: two hundred and seventy beds right now, we'll have over
Speaker 2: three hundred here shortly, and I just I run the
Speaker 2: amith of business every single day. That's What I love
Speaker 2: about it is you'll see a lot of CEOs or
Speaker 2: founders in the addiction treatment space that are just investors.
Speaker 2: I don't have partners. I don't have investors that we're
Speaker 2: not managed by some private equity from a different area
Speaker 2: that doesn't know about what my city needs. I'm doing
Speaker 2: it for the city. I'm in recovery ten years sober.
Speaker 2: I own the company myself, I own the real estate myself.
Speaker 1: How did you get the funding to put it all together?
Speaker 1: You don't want me.
Speaker 2: So slowly, but surely. I worked for another agency for
Speaker 2: a little bit too before I started my own, and
Speaker 2: I was a minority partner in that company. The majority
Speaker 2: ownership did sold sell to private equity. And when that happened,
Speaker 2: it just completely changed, and so I sold. It wasn't
Speaker 2: fun anymore. It wasn't the reason that I got into
Speaker 2: it. It wasn't anything like bad. Just wasn't the quality that
Speaker 2: I expect to provide for people. So I left. I
Speaker 2: sold my equity for pennies on the dollar and took
Speaker 2: that and just reinvested it into my own company. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When I left, though, I'll tell you that it
Speaker 2: was very scary so I didn't get paid it. It
Speaker 2: was a long term payout, and I went from being
Speaker 2: paid very well to saying I don't like this and
Speaker 2: I need to leave too. I'm not gonna have a
Speaker 2: paycheck for about a year. Yeah, but I'm making this
Speaker 2: jump because I believe it's the right thing to do,
Speaker 2: and it was. It ended up being the best decision
Speaker 2: I've ever made.
Speaker 1: Now, your first space, when you first started, you started
Speaker 1: with one, right, or did you buy it take over
Speaker 1: like another little company or No.
Speaker 2: Everything I've done I've built from scratch, So.
Speaker 1: It was one. So you get that first one your savings,
Speaker 1: You're like, oh my god, that self doubt a little bit.
Speaker 1: Dealing with cash flow problems I love. I love saying
Speaker 1: cash flow problems because every business has to deal with
Speaker 1: it at some point. So you're dealing with that hiring,
Speaker 1: trying to hire the right people and the wrong going
Speaker 1: through that because I think that's like another whole nother
Speaker 1: skill set.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, So you start to look at HR a
Speaker 1: whole lot different.
Speaker 2: HR is I believe one of the most unappreciated things
Speaker 2: in running business human resources, compliance and in ours revenue cycle.
Speaker 2: If you don't know how to submit claims. You don't
Speaker 2: know how to you can't keep the cash flow coming in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I do. At some point I'll talk about
Speaker 1: it offline. I want to connect you with this lady,
Speaker 1: Nina Linn out here in Orange County. She started a
Speaker 1: program called wunder Seed. I think you guys would do
Speaker 1: dynamite together. She uses AI to do preventative treatment on
Speaker 1: trauma for youth.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Do you guys should connect?
Speaker 1: Connect? I think you guys would do good because you
Speaker 1: have such passion for it.
Speaker 2: Appreciate it, thank you, I love it. I am. I'm
Speaker 2: obsessed with it, absolutely obsessed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, truly, I'm going to I want to connect y'all
Speaker 1: because I could imagine great things. And then when you
Speaker 1: do your touring for teaching the youth, is there what
Speaker 1: do people have to do to get you to get
Speaker 1: to their school?
Speaker 2: Just reach out?
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: Some of me a LinkedIn message and ask what we're
Speaker 2: going to eat on the show.
Speaker 1: I was surprised it worked. And then do they have
Speaker 1: to have certain budgets and stuff or is that all
Speaker 1: back in you guys figure it all out.
Speaker 2: If it's local for the most part, local like very
Speaker 2: close to Ohio within an hour or so. I'll speak
Speaker 2: for free just because because I love doing it. Obviously,
Speaker 2: if I have to travel and take time off work,
Speaker 2: then I want to be compensated.
Speaker 1: For that and or at least not going the whole.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't lose. I can't just want to do
Speaker 2: I love to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm very flexible.
Speaker 1: In your program. Do you think it's way different from
Speaker 1: what Deer was?
Speaker 2: I know Deer, Yeah, absolutely, absolutely so. I don't really
Speaker 2: talk about drugs that much. When I go speak at schools,
Speaker 2: it's out of a forty five minute presentation. I probably
Speaker 2: talk about it for five minutes.
Speaker 1: So then what do you talk about?
Speaker 2: Choices and consequences, about real relevant things that young people
Speaker 2: need to understand. This choice leads to this, and then
Speaker 2: it's a snowball effect, and it's about who you surround
Speaker 2: yourself with, Like your mom used to say that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I literally say that, show me your friends and I'll
Speaker 2: show you your future. I say that, I say that
Speaker 2: in the presentations. But on the other end of that,
Speaker 2: good choices lead to good consequences. So social media, what
Speaker 2: you're posting on social media today is going to stop
Speaker 2: you from getting into your college of choice or your
Speaker 2: dream job or whatever it might be. You bully somebody
Speaker 2: in high school right now, like that person might be
Speaker 2: interviewing your kid in thirty years. Your kid might not
Speaker 2: get their dream now because you are a bully to them,
Speaker 2: and they connect the dots. It's thinking about things that
Speaker 2: I never thought about, going places, get into vehicles that
Speaker 2: have certain things in them, going to a certain party
Speaker 2: that has certain things going on. It's more just broader
Speaker 2: conversations around some things that kids need to hear today.
Speaker 2: And it's not smoking. It's vaping. Everybody's all the kids
Speaker 2: are vaping.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I like that you do that approach versus the dare.
Speaker 2: I was just, yeah, it's a little bit different. I
Speaker 2: like to do things different.
Speaker 1: Matt. Thank you so much for taking time to let
Speaker 1: me just radically pick your brain and your whole life apart.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: You did introduce me to whole corn and it wasn't
Speaker 1: that bad. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought
Speaker 1: it was. And I'm so proud of you, and I'm
Speaker 1: so thankful that you share your story every day. I
Speaker 1: don't care if it's a hundred times a day. It's
Speaker 1: always like a breath of fresh air.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it so much. Thank you for messaging me.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that got the chance to come out here
Speaker 2: spend time with you on a Sunday. I'm going to
Speaker 2: take this to go if you don't mind. It's really good.
Speaker 1: It is right ripping.
Speaker 2: No, it's good.
Speaker 1: It is like floss or something.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Yeah, I definitely need floss. I was like this,
Speaker 2: I hope there's nothing there.
Speaker 1: No. Thank you guys for tuning in. You guys keep
Speaker 1: up with Matt Bell M A T, T, B E
Speaker 1: L L on all social media platforms. What books have you?
Speaker 1: Can you talk about the books?
Speaker 2: I wrote a memoir. Yeah, I wrote it myself. I
Speaker 2: actually recorded it myself on audio audio as well, so
Speaker 2: it's on Audible and it's on Amazon. But it's called
Speaker 2: Addiction Alumni, and it is it's my story. It is
Speaker 2: my story for everything that we just talked about, and
Speaker 2: way more like stories that I've never told to a
Speaker 2: lot of people. So it's it is.
Speaker 1: It is like a deeper, very.
Speaker 2: Very deep and very accurate and a lot of details
Speaker 2: about what addiction looks like, but also what recovery looks.
Speaker 1: Like to Okay, Yeah, I'll definitely check it out.
Speaker 2: And everything goes to charity. By the way, all the proceeds.
Speaker 2: There's something about people selling stories like that, not saying
Speaker 2: anything's wrong with it, but I just didn't want to
Speaker 2: profit off of that, off of my stories. All the
Speaker 2: sale proceeds go to charity.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, and then that charity helps people in
Speaker 1: addiction or do you choose.
Speaker 2: We chose a nonprofit to determine where the funds go,
Speaker 2: so they're constantly doing needs assessments and they'll dole it
Speaker 2: out as the funds come in.
Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. And then Matt Bell Properties,
Speaker 1: that's what is that? Does that somehow tie to Team Recovery?
Speaker 2: Some of it does, but some of it doesn't. I
Speaker 2: just love real estate.
Speaker 1: Do you do flips and stuff?
Speaker 2: I like to buy and hold? I don't like to buy.
Speaker 2: I buy and hold.
Speaker 1: So like residential, like apartment building type.
Speaker 2: Things, apartments, strip malls, commercials.
Speaker 1: Commercial real estate. You don't think that's risky.
Speaker 2: Some of it is, some of it is. You find
Speaker 2: the right building though with some good credit, strong national tenants.
Speaker 2: Since it's a little bit different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hopefully soon we'll have them at Bell Like financial
Speaker 1: literacy book, I feel like you're definitely gonna have some
Speaker 1: good tips in there too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I love it. It's wild and I get
Speaker 2: to do all sorts of cool stuff because of recovery.
Speaker 1: So because of recovery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm able to be in recovery because of
Speaker 2: my addiction. So everything happens for a reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's an honor to say with you, thank
Speaker 1: you guys for tuning in. Peace out,