Speaker 1: Charges. That's created by Portalais and Control Media. It's produced
Speaker 1: by dB Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio. This
Speaker 1: time a former Son's player who you might remember as
Speaker 1: t Rex. More video in just a moment, but this
Speaker 1: is Rex Chapman's mug Shaun, and we are learning a
Speaker 1: lot more about the charge ups and charging. How did
Speaker 1: you handle being in prison and how did your family?
Speaker 1: How did your kids handle it? By my junior year,
Speaker 1: you know, I just basically stopped going to class and
Speaker 1: I started dealing code. My teenage sons dropped me off
Speaker 1: at the front gate of Beckley Federal Correctional Institute. I
Speaker 1: had a decision in that moment, literally between living and dying,
Speaker 1: and I chose running. This is Charges with me. Rex Chapman,
Speaker 1: My guest today is not a household name as an
Speaker 1: athlete like some of our previous guests, but I guarantee
Speaker 1: that he will run right into your hearts during this episode.
Speaker 1: Charlie Angle is known as Running Man. He is the
Speaker 1: closest example I can think of to being a real
Speaker 1: life Forrest Gump. If you threw him feet first into
Speaker 1: a requiem for a dream reality. Ten years of doing
Speaker 1: drugs in the streets around America, thirty plus years sober,
Speaker 1: three thousand miles running across America for mental health advocacy,
Speaker 1: undred miles running across the Sahara Desert. One documentary executive
Speaker 1: produced and narrated by Matt Damon, six million plus dollars
Speaker 1: raised as co founder for water dot Org for clean
Speaker 1: water projects in Africa, and one mistake in judgment that
Speaker 1: led to sixteen months in federal prison. This is charges.
Speaker 1: Welcome to charges. I'm your host, Rex Chapman. I hate running.
Speaker 1: In fact, in basketball, it's punishment. You mess up, you run.
Speaker 1: You have a bad attitude, you run, you didn't run
Speaker 1: fast enough, you run. I'm more of a brisk walker. God,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine it doing it for fun. And yet
Speaker 1: our guest today, well he'll tell you he doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: do it for fun either, But that doesn't stop him
Speaker 1: from doing it a lot of it all on his own,
Speaker 1: no coach forcing him to do it. But Charlie Angele
Speaker 1: doesn't just compete as a runner. He's an ultra marathon runner.
Speaker 1: That means he runs anywhere from thirty five to a
Speaker 1: hundred miles. He also has been using running to help
Speaker 1: keep him sober and away from addiction for almost thirty
Speaker 1: years now. I'd like to think that recovery, just like running,
Speaker 1: is all about putting one foot ahead of the other,
Speaker 1: over and over and over again. Let's find out from
Speaker 1: a man who'd know it best, Charlie. Thanks for being here, buddy, man.
Speaker 1: I that was the best intro I've ever had. And
Speaker 1: and actually you'd be you'd be surprised to learn that
Speaker 1: I don't like running that much either. I definitely am,
Speaker 1: because honestly, you know, basketball is what I grew up playing,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, everything even punishment off the floor,
Speaker 1: like if you got in trouble that didn't go to
Speaker 1: class up. You're up at six am running, which you
Speaker 1: know for a basketball player, I could run sprints all
Speaker 1: day long. You know, stop start stop start. The mindset unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm dying to find out more, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean in short, and I know we'll we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about it. But you know, running for me
Speaker 1: is a running for me is about where running takes me.
Speaker 1: It's about you know, it's a vehicle to not just
Speaker 1: reach certain places within myself and learn more about myself.
Speaker 1: It's it's literally about cultural exploration. You know, I've I've
Speaker 1: run in about fifty countries at this point. And look, man,
Speaker 1: most of the world is on foot. You know. We
Speaker 1: live in a very privileged bubble here in the US,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and I visit a lot of
Speaker 1: places where nobody has a car and everybody's on foot,
Speaker 1: and by being on foot with them, it creates a
Speaker 1: whole different dynamic and one that I seek out all
Speaker 1: the time. So running, as much as anything, is just
Speaker 1: a way for me to see the world in slow
Speaker 1: motion because I am slow. That's amazing and I can't
Speaker 1: wait to get into all of that. Where'd you grow up, Charlie,
Speaker 1: And what was that it like at that time for you?
Speaker 1: I grew up here in North Carolina for the most part,
Speaker 1: and high school here and you know, played six sports
Speaker 1: and made some decent grades. And my my parents were
Speaker 1: nineteen years old so when I was born, and so
Speaker 1: I had a pretty bohemian upbringing in the sixties. What
Speaker 1: were your teenage years like? And looking back, did you
Speaker 1: have any vices that you know, maybe led you down
Speaker 1: the wrong path or could have Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: as a kid, my mom was perpetually in grad school
Speaker 1: so she was a writer and uh, you know, basically
Speaker 1: she wrote plays primarily. Uh there's a chapter in my
Speaker 1: book that I I sort of jokingly called my mother
Speaker 1: the Lesbie and who you know, she was married a
Speaker 1: couple of times, but let's just say those were loose
Speaker 1: arrangements and uh an only child, and you know, and
Speaker 1: there were you know, they were like cast parties and
Speaker 1: whatever in my house all the time every night. You said,
Speaker 1: it was a bohemian upbringing, and you know a lot
Speaker 1: of times there wasn't a lot of food or or
Speaker 1: anything else in the fridge. And I would wander around
Speaker 1: as a nine or ten year old and finish off
Speaker 1: people's beers and a little bit of wine. And I
Speaker 1: actually say, you know, in the book, and I think
Speaker 1: it's so true. It's like alcohol planted a flag in
Speaker 1: my brain when I was a kid and like claimed
Speaker 1: that space for its own, and you know, and it
Speaker 1: took a while before it manifested, but like I knew,
Speaker 1: I sort of knew as a young kid that it
Speaker 1: was gonna be my you know, something I could always
Speaker 1: count on. Like that's how I felt, like this makes
Speaker 1: me feel warm, been safe, and like I'm going to
Speaker 1: use that when I need it. Damn, damn. You know,
Speaker 1: looking back, I had addiction in my family, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't until I went to rehab that I started hearing
Speaker 1: you know, I knew what my issues were, but hearing
Speaker 1: people with alcohol issues and their stories. And you know,
Speaker 1: when you when you started talking, it takes me right
Speaker 1: back there, because you just don't know what people are
Speaker 1: going through. You don't know how a certain drug or
Speaker 1: this this alcohol or that alcohol will affect you particularly well.
Speaker 1: And I'm a fourth generation addict, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I've got plenty of it in my family.
Speaker 1: And genetics are a bit and you know, you just
Speaker 1: like with any other disease, you it's pretty tough to
Speaker 1: escape genetics a lot of times. And and that in
Speaker 1: combination with environment, of course, and and some less than
Speaker 1: good choices on my part. And you know, I I
Speaker 1: moved done with my dad and I sort of went
Speaker 1: the opposite direction, and I became trying to get you know,
Speaker 1: some love and attention from my father, which you know
Speaker 1: took me many years to figure out that was never
Speaker 1: gonna happen. Um, no matter what I achieved, I went
Speaker 1: the opposite direction. I played sports, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: dated a few cheerleaders and made good grades and early
Speaker 1: acceptance to Carolina and I show up. I show up
Speaker 1: at u n C as a seventeen year old freshman
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty you know, I'm going to play football
Speaker 1: and all this, And it took about three days. I
Speaker 1: fully expected there to be a banner on my dorm
Speaker 1: that said, hey, welcome Charlie, like we're so glad you're here.
Speaker 1: We could start our college experience now. And uh, it
Speaker 1: took like three days to figure out that I was
Speaker 1: unbelievably average. And you know, and and I what I
Speaker 1: figured out very quickly is I was an All American.
Speaker 1: Don't forget nineteen eighty. Um, you can still drink as
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old in North Carolina. So I turned
Speaker 1: eighteen about a month after I went to college, and
Speaker 1: I took full advantage. And you know, I figured out
Speaker 1: that I was an All American first team drinker and
Speaker 1: I could just I literally could. I from the very beginning,
Speaker 1: I could just drink more than anybody else. And unfortunately
Speaker 1: that became, you know, kind of, you know, part of
Speaker 1: my identity. And that's the way it works. What were
Speaker 1: your addictions. Uh when did they start? Was it right
Speaker 1: around that time? Yeah? You know, And and look my
Speaker 1: involvement with um first of all, I should say too,
Speaker 1: like I should have run track. There's only a few
Speaker 1: regrets I have in my life, and it probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: have changed things. You know, I think my path was
Speaker 1: genetically set, and I think I probably would have found
Speaker 1: the same problems, if not sooner than later. But you know,
Speaker 1: when I got to college, and I really I was
Speaker 1: very I broke my ankle playing basketball like the first
Speaker 1: week I was there, and um, you know, I started drinking.
Speaker 1: And cocaine was absolutely a ubiquitous drug on campus in
Speaker 1: the eighties. I mean, I I think it probably still
Speaker 1: is to a certain degree, but not like it was
Speaker 1: in the eighties. I mean even while you were there
Speaker 1: in Kentucky. I mean you just and as a young
Speaker 1: person in a college student, you don't actually realize that
Speaker 1: what you're doing is illegal because when everyone around you
Speaker 1: was doing it too, it just doesn't like feel that way.
Speaker 1: Pretty quickly, I went from you know, the first time,
Speaker 1: second time really that I tried coke. It's like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a light went off in my head and
Speaker 1: it said Okay, I finally found the thing that's gonna
Speaker 1: make me, you know, invincible, and I'm gonna you know,
Speaker 1: cure cancer and uh make my dad happy and make
Speaker 1: straight a's and oh, give me another line, and uh
Speaker 1: we'll keep talking about it. And you know, I do
Speaker 1: think that's that's definitely where it started, thanks to quite honestly,
Speaker 1: thanks to JV basketball. You know, I I sort of
Speaker 1: hung on for a couple of years and managed to
Speaker 1: not flunk out. But by my junior year, you know,
Speaker 1: I just basically stopped going to class and I started dealing.
Speaker 1: I was in a fraternity and I started dealing coke
Speaker 1: and not you know, certainly not to make money, just
Speaker 1: simply so that I could. You know, it's an expensive
Speaker 1: drug and and I just wanted to make sure that
Speaker 1: I had enough to do for myself. And you know
Speaker 1: that led me down a certain path. Do you know
Speaker 1: have you heard of Chris Herron? Well, Chris is the
Speaker 1: reason I'm on here. Chris. I know Chris and I
Speaker 1: know his story and what in am I mean? I
Speaker 1: consider him He doesn't even know it, but I consider
Speaker 1: him a mentor from Afar. Same. But it reminded me
Speaker 1: because when I was talking with Chris. I was, and yes,
Speaker 1: cocaine was everywhere in the eighties, um, every party, every everything,
Speaker 1: and I was always so afraid and mainly I felt
Speaker 1: like I would from what my friends said, I would
Speaker 1: either just love it or it would kill me just
Speaker 1: straight away and I'd have a heart attack. But what
Speaker 1: I found interesting with Chris was his description. I said, what,
Speaker 1: what's it like? You know? He said for me? He said,
Speaker 1: you know, I would open up and talk about things
Speaker 1: I wouldn't normally talk about and feel like I had
Speaker 1: the whole world figured out. And then of course I'd
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning and would barely remember or
Speaker 1: just want to forget what I had talked about. So
Speaker 1: I find that fascinating. Charlie, it's it's it's yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean what he said, and and yeah, you know you
Speaker 1: got these big ideas, And I mean, maybe the difference
Speaker 1: between me and Chris is, um, I just never you know,
Speaker 1: I never did wake up from a cocaine binge, because
Speaker 1: is I just never went to sleep. You know, I
Speaker 1: was two or three days at a time, always dictated
Speaker 1: by how much money or drugs I had, And after
Speaker 1: I you know, flunked out and left college. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't uncommon for there to be four or five
Speaker 1: or six day binges um and it went from you know,
Speaker 1: coke to crack, which was much easier to get and
Speaker 1: especially in the in the eighties, and I never wanted
Speaker 1: to do that. I was working in Denver, I'll never
Speaker 1: forget it, and I was, uh, you know several years
Speaker 1: I was probably twenty four and I was working there
Speaker 1: and I went down you know, my thing is I'd
Speaker 1: go into a town and I go to a bar
Speaker 1: and I'd be like, hey, where do you have fun
Speaker 1: around here? And they'd say, oh, you go here, and
Speaker 1: you go here, but be sure you stay away from Colfax,
Speaker 1: you know, don't go to that neighbor. And I'm like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: just so I don't go down there. Where is that,
Speaker 1: you know? And of course I would drive straight there,
Speaker 1: and anybody who knows Denver, you know, there's a certain
Speaker 1: part of Colfax as a pretty rough spot and and um,
Speaker 1: you know that's where I would go. And I had
Speaker 1: this binge there that you know, after about five days,
Speaker 1: I'd run out of money and the dealer I was
Speaker 1: using stole my car um because of course drug dealers
Speaker 1: can be very inconsiderate, and uh, you know, and I
Speaker 1: literally they stole my jacket. And it's snowing, and I
Speaker 1: leave this dumpy ass motel and I'm walking down Coal
Speaker 1: Fax and I literally see my car down the road
Speaker 1: and I it's all it's running. I could see smoke
Speaker 1: coming out the tailpipe. And I run to my car
Speaker 1: and I get in and I'm like, just I'm blown away.
Speaker 1: I'm getting my car. I get in and pull out
Speaker 1: and drive around the block and I hear this sound
Speaker 1: in the back seat, you know. And I turned around
Speaker 1: and there's like a twelve month old baby strapped into
Speaker 1: the back seat of the car. And of course, I
Speaker 1: you know, drove around the block and I come back
Speaker 1: up to the house where the car had been, and
Speaker 1: there's a woman frantically waving her arms out in the street,
Speaker 1: and you know, and I literally I just pulled up.
Speaker 1: She looked at me. I looked at her. She opened
Speaker 1: the back door, she unstrapped her baby and took the
Speaker 1: baby out, and because she knew the deal, and I
Speaker 1: knew the deal, and you know, and I drove away,
Speaker 1: and I mean, but that is the kind of craziness
Speaker 1: that I put myself into almost constantly stealing your own
Speaker 1: car back. Yeah, I mean that's amazing, amazing. Well, and
Speaker 1: the crazy thing is I never got in trouble back then,
Speaker 1: and I you know, that's almost another We could do
Speaker 1: a whole show on the reason for that. But the
Speaker 1: reason is, you know, of course I was a still
Speaker 1: a pretty clean cut white guy driving a Toyota four Runner,
Speaker 1: and nobody ever stopped me, you know, and I mean
Speaker 1: literally in years, no one, despite the fact that I
Speaker 1: deserved all kinds of d U E s and everything
Speaker 1: else back in the day. You know, I didn't get
Speaker 1: stopped back then. And you know, I look back on
Speaker 1: those days and those experiences as probably the most you know,
Speaker 1: formative and of my life, and some negative things, but
Speaker 1: of course, in fact, like all lessons, some really positive
Speaker 1: things came out of it, and some advocacy and some
Speaker 1: understanding of the kind of the real world. Man. What's
Speaker 1: so unique about the timeline of Charlie Engel is that
Speaker 1: he spent his young adult years as a traveling salesman
Speaker 1: before becoming a world class athlete. Not exactly a story
Speaker 1: that we've heard before. Frankly, Charlie and the millions that
Speaker 1: he's helped through his foundation. Are fortunate that he even
Speaker 1: survived his downward spiral that didn't all across America. So
Speaker 1: it's Charlie, what what was your turning point? Uh in
Speaker 1: the early nineties, What were you doing and what happened
Speaker 1: that made you go, oh shit, you know this is
Speaker 1: really bad? Yeah? Yeah, well, you know, and during those years,
Speaker 1: and it's basically a decade of pretty hardcore use, you know,
Speaker 1: I made sure that I was always the top salesman.
Speaker 1: You know, I had a lot of geographics, as we
Speaker 1: call them in recovery, where I would move to a
Speaker 1: new town, Seattle, l A, San Francisco, Atlanta. I mean
Speaker 1: I I made the rounds and for six months i'd
Speaker 1: get a job, I'd be the top salesman. I would
Speaker 1: kick ass and get a girlfriend and then decide, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm doing great. I deserve to have a
Speaker 1: beer or whatever. And even though I've never had one
Speaker 1: beer ever in my life, without having all of them,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, in this path often led me
Speaker 1: to want to quit. Yeah, I always made a joke
Speaker 1: about it. I said, you know, quitting is easy. I've
Speaker 1: done it a hundred times. Just the starting up again.
Speaker 1: I went to rehab, I went to church, I went
Speaker 1: to uh, I saw a shaman. If I could have
Speaker 1: found a witch doctor, I would have done that. Like
Speaker 1: I mean, I I felt like I had tried everything,
Speaker 1: and in when I was twenty nine years old, my
Speaker 1: first son was born, and Brett was gonna be my savior.
Speaker 1: You know, I thought that, finally, Okay, you surely I
Speaker 1: can stay sober for my son, right because, uh this person,
Speaker 1: you know, holding this little baby and feeling the feelings
Speaker 1: I had for him. And I know you have kids,
Speaker 1: so I know you know what I'm talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: and you're you're like, this is as an addict, I
Speaker 1: actually thought I was incredibly broken and completely undeserved being
Speaker 1: of love or incapable of giving love. And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden that all changed with this little boy. And
Speaker 1: you know, for the first time in my adult life,
Speaker 1: I kind of had I had hope and I had strength.
Speaker 1: And two months later, you know, I'm in Wichita, Kansas,
Speaker 1: and inexplicably, I end up in the worst neighborhood in town.
Speaker 1: And I spent six days smoking crack and drinking, and
Speaker 1: that binge ended with me sitting on the ground outside
Speaker 1: a fifteen dollar a night motel room that I couldn't
Speaker 1: pay for anymore. And I'm handcuffed behind my back and
Speaker 1: the police are searching my car and there's three bullet
Speaker 1: holes in the car, and you know, and those were
Speaker 1: meant for me, like they weren't shooting at my car,
Speaker 1: and you know, and I'm watching this cop actually search
Speaker 1: around the driver's seat and like he reaches under the
Speaker 1: driver's seat and he pulls out a pipe, a glass pipe,
Speaker 1: and he turns around, looks at me and like shakes
Speaker 1: his head. And any rational, moderately sane person would have
Speaker 1: been like, oh ship, you know, I'm in some serious trouble,
Speaker 1: Like this is gonna be bad. And instead, all I
Speaker 1: could think was, so that's where that was. Like I've
Speaker 1: been looking for that pipe for two days, you know.
Speaker 1: It's like how did that cop find it in like
Speaker 1: five minutes? You know, And and and then my next
Speaker 1: thoughts like I wonder if there's anything left in there?
Speaker 1: And are you columbo hell? And you know, look, man,
Speaker 1: I know you have the same thought. You can't stay
Speaker 1: in the darkness. You have to make fun of this
Speaker 1: stuff and of ourselves in these situations. But the important
Speaker 1: thing is in that moment, the after six days of
Speaker 1: not sleeping and all the other stuff that goes along
Speaker 1: with it, you know, I had the clearest thought that
Speaker 1: I'd ever had, and it was simply, nobody he's coming
Speaker 1: to save you. Your son can't save you, your dad
Speaker 1: can't save you, your wife can't save your job, can't
Speaker 1: save you. Like until you make the decision that you
Speaker 1: want to be saved, Like, there's just no way it's
Speaker 1: ever gonna happen. And you know, and I realized I
Speaker 1: had a decision in that moment, literally between living and dying,
Speaker 1: and I chose running, you know. And I went to
Speaker 1: an a meeting that night. That's the first one I'd
Speaker 1: ever gone to that I actually like, was that your
Speaker 1: lowest moment the hand, Yeah, lowest and highest right, because
Speaker 1: for a change, I no longer felt the yeah, the
Speaker 1: pressure of it all. And I'm look, man, I'm not
Speaker 1: a religious person. I didn't grow up in a church
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but you know, I mean the
Speaker 1: only church I went to was with my grandparents, and
Speaker 1: it was Southern Baptist. And I was pretty sure at
Speaker 1: the age of like five, that I was going to
Speaker 1: Hell already. So it was it was. It was pointless.
Speaker 1: But but in that moment, I actually said a prayer
Speaker 1: that you know, wasn't a Santa Claus prayer, you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't the typical prayer of like, if
Speaker 1: you'll just get me out of this, then I will
Speaker 1: fill in the blank, you know. It was just simply
Speaker 1: I don't want to feel like this anymore. And you know,
Speaker 1: and I went to a meeting. I went to a
Speaker 1: meeting at night. I got up the next morning and
Speaker 1: I put on my running shoes. And that was almost
Speaker 1: twenty nine years ago, and I haven't stopped since. How
Speaker 1: does one stay sober for thirty days coming from where
Speaker 1: you were, let alone thirty years? Were there any moments
Speaker 1: where you almost caved? Have you ever relapsed? You know?
Speaker 1: From that day? So I went to treatment as a
Speaker 1: twenty six year old and I stayed sober for about
Speaker 1: six months, and I relapsed, you know, for two more years.
Speaker 1: So and that was when I was twenty six, and
Speaker 1: then at nine, you know, when I got sober this time,
Speaker 1: um um, I certainly had close calls, and a couple
Speaker 1: of them, one that you can relate to very much
Speaker 1: was uh and just as a tease because I'm sure
Speaker 1: we're gonna get there. You know, I I spent some
Speaker 1: time on Federal Holiday in sobriety, and just before I
Speaker 1: went to prison, I had surgery on my knee and
Speaker 1: because I needed It's just a menisca surgery. It wasn't
Speaker 1: that big a deal. But you know, my friend picked
Speaker 1: up a big bottle of you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if vicodd or oxy. I don't remember what it was now,
Speaker 1: but you know, and I'm staying at his house and
Speaker 1: there's a six pack in the fridge and I had
Speaker 1: a little bit of time with you know, both of
Speaker 1: those things sitting on the counter in front of me. But, um,
Speaker 1: but to your question, the first thirty days, Um, it's funny.
Speaker 1: You made me think. It's a story I hedn't hold
Speaker 1: in years, and it's a short one. But I got
Speaker 1: a spot. I finally followed some of the suggestions and
Speaker 1: I got a sponsor. Dude was in his seven and
Speaker 1: has been sober over forty years. And in typical fashion,
Speaker 1: I'm like, John, you've been sober forty years? How how like?
Speaker 1: How is it possible? Is there a secret? He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is a secret. Come to the meeting tonight, like
Speaker 1: thirty minutes early, and I'm going to tell you the secret.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Ship, that's fantastic, thank you, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: I show up thirty minutes early. He's like, I said, okay,
Speaker 1: can we talk now. He's like, yeah, you know, do
Speaker 1: me a favorite. See those coffee pots over there, go
Speaker 1: make like five pots of coffee and then we'll talk.
Speaker 1: And of course it took me thirty minutes to make
Speaker 1: the five pots of coffee. There's the meeting. I come
Speaker 1: up to him after the meeting, I'm like, John, can
Speaker 1: we talk now. He's like, I'll tell you what I
Speaker 1: gotta go right now, but show up thirty minutes tomorrow,
Speaker 1: thirty minutes early tomorrow. And you can see where this
Speaker 1: is going. And it took me like three or four
Speaker 1: days to catch on because I'm not all that bright.
Speaker 1: It was the first and greatest lesson that I ever
Speaker 1: had in sobriety, and and it fits for the rest
Speaker 1: of life. And that's that if you want to get
Speaker 1: out of your own problems, serve somebody else, you know,
Speaker 1: be of service in some way small. You know, none
Speaker 1: of the other people in that meeting knew that I
Speaker 1: was making coffee. Nobody thanked me, and it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, the first time in my life that I
Speaker 1: sort of did. I mean, it sounds silly in a way,
Speaker 1: but that I did something small and selfless and didn't
Speaker 1: expect to be congratulated for doing it somehow or thanked
Speaker 1: and it and it felt great and that it turned
Speaker 1: out to be the secret, you know. And I did
Speaker 1: it for thirty days and I loved it, and it
Speaker 1: it taught me, I think, the greatest lesson that I
Speaker 1: still use today. All I think of this an expedition
Speaker 1: so extreme it had never been attempted, that is until now.
Speaker 1: And one of the three to conquer this feat is
Speaker 1: Greensboro's Charlie Be. A very busy weekend for ultra a
Speaker 1: little verified runner, Charlie angels. In fact, the next month
Speaker 1: and a half will be kind of busy. Since he
Speaker 1: glanced to you the time to run from San Francisco
Speaker 1: to New York City, it took more than forty mile
Speaker 1: run through Africa Sahara As a for professional runner Charlie
Speaker 1: Angle to realize that there was money to be made
Speaker 1: in the athletic skincare market. Film star Matt Damon and
Speaker 1: Oscar winner James mull recorded angles track through the Sahara
Speaker 1: to raise awareness about the need for drinkable water in
Speaker 1: Africa in their documentary And Running the Sahara. How do
Speaker 1: you start competing? I mean, come on, you're running? How
Speaker 1: do you start competing in running? I mean because in
Speaker 1: the intro was just pure punishment to me. No way
Speaker 1: I'd sign up to do it as a primary competitive thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, what, Yeah, be careful what you say, Rex,
Speaker 1: because now you're in. You're in. You're in my orbit now,
Speaker 1: so you're we're going to be having an offline conversation
Speaker 1: about exactly how you're gonna challenge yourself next. No, but
Speaker 1: I I did love the few ing of You know
Speaker 1: what I love about still running a marathon? And I've
Speaker 1: probably run more than two hundred marathons, and I I
Speaker 1: like the feeling of standing on a start line. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a hundred people, sometimes it's fifty thou people and
Speaker 1: being surrounded by uh fellowship and community. It's you know,
Speaker 1: not the same with twelve step recovery or whatever type
Speaker 1: of recovery of person does. But you don't know, the
Speaker 1: beautiful thing about running is the guy next to you
Speaker 1: you don't know if he's the CEO of a Fortune
Speaker 1: five company or a janitor at the local high school.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter because either one of them is
Speaker 1: probably gonna kick my ass. And you know, and there's
Speaker 1: a beauty to being having a shared shared suffering is
Speaker 1: actually the best. And that's why twelve step recovery works.
Speaker 1: It's why organized running works, because we we like to
Speaker 1: go out and sweat and suffer with other people. It's
Speaker 1: it's human nature. It makes us feel connected. And you know,
Speaker 1: I spent a few years trying to break three hours
Speaker 1: in a marathon, which which made me like moderately fast,
Speaker 1: but nowhere near like elite level. I mean, were you
Speaker 1: maniacal about it? I mean it was something, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: bet I wasn't. I made myself miserable for a while
Speaker 1: because I I like five races in a row. I
Speaker 1: ran like three oh one, three O two and and
Speaker 1: and perfect fashion. My son, it was a funny story
Speaker 1: my my son, who was about two years old. You know,
Speaker 1: I ran the San Diego Marathon and I ran three
Speaker 1: oh one again, and the race is over, and I've
Speaker 1: got him on my shoulders and I'm I'm complaining to
Speaker 1: my wife about my first wife, about um not breaking three.
Speaker 1: You know, the wind was in my face and some bullshit,
Speaker 1: and my son is like tapping me on the head,
Speaker 1: you know how they do when you know they're sitting
Speaker 1: on your soldiers. And it was like dad, daddy, daddy, daddy,
Speaker 1: And he's like, why didn't you just run a little
Speaker 1: bit faster? Like, yeah, that's a good idea, but but
Speaker 1: what it really did was remind me that I was
Speaker 1: actually ruining my own experience by trying to put, you know,
Speaker 1: a measure of success on it. And look, I mean
Speaker 1: the short version of my running career, just so people
Speaker 1: know if they care, is you know, I I learned
Speaker 1: a lot in those first thirty marathons, and what it
Speaker 1: really taught me was that I wanted to see just
Speaker 1: how far I could go. You know, basically, if I
Speaker 1: learned this lesson from running the marathon, what lesson could
Speaker 1: I learned running a fifty mile or or hundred miler
Speaker 1: or I started running and actually winning races across the
Speaker 1: Gobi Desert in China, across the jungles of Vietnam and Fiji,
Speaker 1: and um I ran across you know, Ecuador, the Mountain
Speaker 1: range is and climbed, you know, Mount McKinley and a
Speaker 1: bunch of volcanoes in Ecuador, and all of that led
Speaker 1: me in this. You know, I was on a weird
Speaker 1: path of uh, both in my business life too at
Speaker 1: that time. I and this is the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: I was now sober about ten years and and I
Speaker 1: became the senior producer for a show called Extreme Makeover
Speaker 1: Home Edition on ABC, you know which most people you know,
Speaker 1: h it was a top show on TV for a while,
Speaker 1: and you know, and I worked started working on the
Speaker 1: pilot on that show and worked for a few years.
Speaker 1: And UM was doing these races all over the world.
Speaker 1: And I did a race in the Amazon Jungle in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, and a guy, just I've never met
Speaker 1: him before, he blurts out this idea. He's like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I wonder if youbody's ever run across the Sahara Desert,
Speaker 1: like the whole Sahara Desert. And I looked at him
Speaker 1: and I said, well, that's a dumb idea, like you'd
Speaker 1: have to be You'd have to be an idiot to
Speaker 1: do that, you know, And of course, being the idiot
Speaker 1: I am, I I couldn't stop thinking about it, and
Speaker 1: I went home and I found out no one Go
Speaker 1: Figure had ever run all the way across the Sahara,
Speaker 1: and first in the adventure world are really hard to
Speaker 1: come by, like there's very few things that somebody hasn't done.
Speaker 1: And I began to tell people I was going to
Speaker 1: be the first person to run across the Sahara, and
Speaker 1: I mean, I owe all this to sobriety and and
Speaker 1: it was audacious, but you know, I finally, I think
Speaker 1: my friend got tired of hearing me talk about it,
Speaker 1: and he introduced me to a big Hollywood director. Um.
Speaker 1: I was sort of you know, on the fringes of
Speaker 1: that world with the TV show and um he had
Speaker 1: won the Academy Award for Best Documentary a few years earlier.
Speaker 1: So I tell him my idea and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. And he calls me a week later
Speaker 1: and he's like, hey, I just hung up with Matt
Speaker 1: Damon and Matt would like to executive produce this project
Speaker 1: and he wants to be the narrator, Like would that
Speaker 1: be okay with you? And I I dead I dead
Speaker 1: pan because I like to think that I'm funny, and
Speaker 1: I like I paused and I said, you know, God,
Speaker 1: I was really hoping for somebody better, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess mad day it will be fine. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: and like a year and a half later, I found
Speaker 1: myself at the coast of Senegal in West Africa, you know,
Speaker 1: right at the Atlantic Ocean and Senegal, and I'm getting
Speaker 1: ready with two teammates. Um. One of them is the
Speaker 1: guy that told, you know, sort of mentioned this bad
Speaker 1: idea to begin with. And I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: words said to us by a stranger can sometimes change
Speaker 1: like the entire course of our lives. And you know,
Speaker 1: and we ended up running. I ran two marathons a
Speaker 1: day for one hundred and eleven consecutive days without taking
Speaker 1: a day off, and um, you know, be we became
Speaker 1: the first people in history, the only up to this point,
Speaker 1: to run all the way across the Sahara, almost five
Speaker 1: thousand miles across the Sahara and you know, a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty degree ground temperatures and you know, mostly deep
Speaker 1: sand and it was it was a crazy, uh life
Speaker 1: changing experience. Yeah, I can't even fathom. I mean the
Speaker 1: endurance part, where did you always have that? Did you
Speaker 1: have the endurance as a kid when you were running,
Speaker 1: you just you could run forever. I did, I really did.
Speaker 1: I mean it was and I have I've worked from
Speaker 1: time to time with I'm not actually even plugging the company,
Speaker 1: but there's a company called inside Tracker, and they they
Speaker 1: do these blood tests which tests certain markers. And I
Speaker 1: did come to find out a couple of years, just
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, though, that I I do
Speaker 1: actually have a genetic marker that is considered like the
Speaker 1: endurance gene um. But I mean, look, dude, I could
Speaker 1: do coke for six days without even taking and without
Speaker 1: even taking a nap. So this is this was child's play.
Speaker 1: How many countries did you run through? What you see
Speaker 1: for better or worse? That still stays with you to
Speaker 1: this day. Yeah, so the I've running more than fifty
Speaker 1: but on the Sahara Run, that was six countries including
Speaker 1: like you know, Synegal, Mauritania, Molly, Niger, Libya, and Egypt.
Speaker 1: And you know, the most beautiful that run was two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, So that's been a little while now. But
Speaker 1: the most amazing thing about that run was it was
Speaker 1: still at a time where not everybody had a cell
Speaker 1: phone and um, so we would run into these little villages,
Speaker 1: you know, in the in the middle of the desert,
Speaker 1: and they don't know where coming. Every kid in the
Speaker 1: village comes out and ah, you know, half of them.
Speaker 1: Of course, I always laugh. They all have a you
Speaker 1: know Chicago Bulls or are of Jordan's T shirt on,
Speaker 1: which just cracks me up because you know, they're it's
Speaker 1: just everywhere, and you know, but they would just run.
Speaker 1: They would, and I'm talking like from five years to
Speaker 1: twelve years old. They'd run sometimes five or ten kilometers
Speaker 1: out into the desert and they're just happy, just the
Speaker 1: joy that they have of this weird thing of three
Speaker 1: white guys running through their village. And then they just
Speaker 1: like then they just kind of wave and turn around
Speaker 1: and leave. And um, I sort of said this at
Speaker 1: the beginning, But one of the things that strikes me
Speaker 1: is that even well meaning tourists very often um sequester
Speaker 1: themselves in their car, you know, so they'll drive into
Speaker 1: that same village maybe, but they're in a car, which
Speaker 1: separates you from the people. And I always tell people like,
Speaker 1: that's fine to have a car. Realized, not everybody wants
Speaker 1: to run across the desert. But before you get into
Speaker 1: the village like in Africa or South America, get out
Speaker 1: of your car, like a half mile before you get
Speaker 1: into the village and just walk in and notice the difference.
Speaker 1: People don't come at you with their hands out. They
Speaker 1: don't like you know, we're the ones that create the
Speaker 1: sort of dynamic of you know, people coming at us
Speaker 1: and like asking for whatever, um, because we put ourselves
Speaker 1: above them. And and that's been the greatest gift of
Speaker 1: my running life is to be able to just be
Speaker 1: a cultural explorer and to see really remote places on
Speaker 1: the planet that no, you know, you just don't get
Speaker 1: to see. And you know, you have to be willing
Speaker 1: to put yourself into Uh. I certainly spent ten years
Speaker 1: putting myself in really dangerous, bad situations. And to think
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't do that as a sober person would
Speaker 1: be crazy. So well, put be curious, right, be curious
Speaker 1: running across the desert. What are the challenge during the
Speaker 1: day and nighttime of being in a desolate desert? Man? Yeah, many, um,
Speaker 1: logistics were We're so complicated. But I mean we started
Speaker 1: the run and it was a hundred forty fifty degree
Speaker 1: ground temperatures, you know, the ambient temperature probably you know,
Speaker 1: one twenty or so, but like, you know, it was
Speaker 1: it was hot, and you can plan all you want
Speaker 1: on the drawing board, you know, it's like drawing a
Speaker 1: game plan. You drop up a game plan in a game, right,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't really take into account the other team,
Speaker 1: like having the best night of their life. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know the desert. I always say that, especially with Africa.
Speaker 1: You know, Africa makes the rules. And within a week
Speaker 1: of starting that expedition, we had run out of food,
Speaker 1: we run out of water. It's a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: degree ground. My two teammates both have I v s
Speaker 1: every day and we've covered about half the distance we
Speaker 1: need to. And this is an expensive project, you know,
Speaker 1: we there's a lot of money invested, and I was
Speaker 1: worried the producers were going to pull the plog quite frankly,
Speaker 1: because we were not doing well at this point. And interestingly,
Speaker 1: what I recognized at that point, I wasn't even thinking
Speaker 1: about this, but um, I was going about it all wrong. Right.
Speaker 1: I was the expedition leader and this was my project,
Speaker 1: but I was so I felt so much pressure to
Speaker 1: be successful, and success meant getting to the other side
Speaker 1: of the desert. I was so focused on that that
Speaker 1: I forgot the lessons I had learned in sobriety. And
Speaker 1: by this time I was fifteen years sober. And that
Speaker 1: lesson is quite simply, you know, the mantra, the one
Speaker 1: day at a time mantra that we all know. But
Speaker 1: the point is, the only miles that I could actually
Speaker 1: run were the ones right in front of me. And
Speaker 1: I needed to stop worrying about the next country, than
Speaker 1: next day, the next week, and focus on what was
Speaker 1: happening right now. And I woke up like on day eight,
Speaker 1: and all I thought about was running a marathon before lunch,
Speaker 1: and I took a little break, and then I got
Speaker 1: up and all I thought about was running a second
Speaker 1: marathon before dinner. And at the end of that second marathon,
Speaker 1: I put my little thin foam matt down on the
Speaker 1: desert and I laid there and I stared up at
Speaker 1: a billion stars because there there wasn't a single electric
Speaker 1: light within five hundred miles, and and I just gave
Speaker 1: thanks to the universe for giving me the opportunity to
Speaker 1: be alive and suffering. And in that one day at
Speaker 1: a time, you know way, we started to make progress
Speaker 1: and we made our way across the desert and it
Speaker 1: you know, and again it was an experience that changed
Speaker 1: my life. But the metaphors are pretty much they're endless
Speaker 1: because the idea of just focusing, the idea of like
Speaker 1: I had a plan every day Rex I was a leader.
Speaker 1: I get up at four o'clock and I would write
Speaker 1: my plan and my little book. We're gonna go to
Speaker 1: this village. We're gonna cover this many miles. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do this. I went back at the end of the expedition.
Speaker 1: Out of a hundred and eleven days, I think like
Speaker 1: on five days it went exactly as I wrote it down.
Speaker 1: On the other hundred and six it went from like
Speaker 1: a little bit wrong to completely go into hell. But
Speaker 1: we made it. And it is that. It's that idea
Speaker 1: of continuous forward motion. If you just keep moving and
Speaker 1: use the experience that you've had in life, people quit marathons.
Speaker 1: I love this example. We always hear about hitting the wall, right, Well,
Speaker 1: the same is true in addiction recovery or in and
Speaker 1: I know you relate to all of this. When we
Speaker 1: hit a real low spot, our mind tells us that
Speaker 1: we're gonna feel this badly for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 1: You know, you have a big argument with your spouse
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, this relationship is gonna feel just
Speaker 1: like this forever, or or we want to have a
Speaker 1: drink or do a dry or whatever like that. In
Speaker 1: that moment, that's what we want. And it's because you know,
Speaker 1: life is at a low point right now and it's
Speaker 1: always going to be this way. But experience tells us
Speaker 1: if we just let that pass by, the next day
Speaker 1: will wake up and and you know, all the problems
Speaker 1: won't be gone, but the perspective will be different. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: trust the process. One man couldn't quite fathom Charlie's success.
Speaker 1: Robert Nordlander is an agent at the I R S
Speaker 1: who has what some folks think is a peculiar way
Speaker 1: of choosing his targets. The New York Times reports that
Speaker 1: Norlander told a grand jury that if he sees someone
Speaker 1: driving a fancy car, he might check into their finances
Speaker 1: to see if they can really afford it, even if
Speaker 1: there's no but it's that they can't. The Times also
Speaker 1: reported that no Orlander testified to the grand jury that
Speaker 1: he just couldn't figure out how a guy like Charlie
Speaker 1: Angel could possibly afford to train for running across continents.
Speaker 1: You know, this is charges. So we need to talk
Speaker 1: about your indiscretions that you did go to prison for.
Speaker 1: Tell me about how you found yourself under investigation and
Speaker 1: then ultimately convicted for mortgage fraud. Yeah, what a crazy
Speaker 1: I mean, I I still am. I still say that
Speaker 1: to you, and I feel I feel bad even asking
Speaker 1: because I know how. You know, I know how when
Speaker 1: people ask me about, you know, the Apple store, immediately
Speaker 1: I go, God, I can't believe that was me. Well
Speaker 1: when I mean, look, I'm lucky enough, even at my
Speaker 1: age almost fifty nine, to still have sponsors for running
Speaker 1: and things like that. And I have these conversations all
Speaker 1: the time, and I I say to them up front,
Speaker 1: I'm like, look, all I gotta say is if you
Speaker 1: don't know everything about my background, google it. It's on
Speaker 1: my website. You to my website to read all about
Speaker 1: what happened to me, like you read my book, because
Speaker 1: I don't want you to come back to me later
Speaker 1: and say, oh, well, we didn't know this part of
Speaker 1: your background and we can't do business with you somehow.
Speaker 1: But you know, first of all, the irony of going
Speaker 1: through ten years of street level addiction and all of
Speaker 1: the inherently legal things that I did. Um. Now, and
Speaker 1: I'm not implying, I mean, this country puts way too
Speaker 1: many people who have a drug problem in prison when
Speaker 1: they should be going to treatment. That's a subject for
Speaker 1: another day. But um, in my case, I escaped pretty
Speaker 1: much all penalties during my ten years of addiction. And
Speaker 1: so the Sahara put kind of put me on the map.
Speaker 1: You know, I told you I got some good media
Speaker 1: and all of that. And there was I'm living in
Speaker 1: small town North Carolina, and there was one single I R.
Speaker 1: S Agent in my down in North Carolina that saw
Speaker 1: the movie Running the Shara and he was not impressed
Speaker 1: with my running, or with my philanthropy or anything else.
Speaker 1: And on that literally Rex from that alone, he just
Speaker 1: decided he wanted to see how a runner could afford
Speaker 1: to go run across the Sahara Desert. I would say,
Speaker 1: it's weird that apparently he'd never heard of Matt Damon
Speaker 1: because like, I didn't pay for it. But this led
Speaker 1: to him opening an investigation into my taxes and I
Speaker 1: ended up going to trial. Um, he ends up like
Speaker 1: sending in a undercover a good looking woman to come
Speaker 1: knock on my door and she's moving I'm using air
Speaker 1: quotes for people just listening, moving into my building. And
Speaker 1: she wants to know if I'm a runner. And I
Speaker 1: fall for all of this, and because I'm a guy,
Speaker 1: and yeah, stupid and you know, and so um, you
Speaker 1: know all there's dumpster diving, they're tapping phones. It's the
Speaker 1: weirdest thing. And just so people have perspective, this is
Speaker 1: two thousand nine and ultimately two thousand and ten when
Speaker 1: I'm arrested. But all right, so I'm out running errands
Speaker 1: one day in Greensboro, North Carolina, and I come back
Speaker 1: to my condo and I get out of the car
Speaker 1: and like six armed federal agents come rushing towards me,
Speaker 1: and they handcuffed me and they put me in a
Speaker 1: you know, in a police car and take me downtown
Speaker 1: and I spend the night there and I don't actually know.
Speaker 1: I'm not told anything at this point, and this is
Speaker 1: this couldn't be anymore out of the blue. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm now like nineteen years clean and sober, and and
Speaker 1: the next morning I'm handed a big stack of papers
Speaker 1: and long story short, I am being charged with overstating
Speaker 1: my income on a home loan application and four from
Speaker 1: two from two thousand and five a stated income. I'm
Speaker 1: a borrower. I'm not like a real estate person or
Speaker 1: anything else. I mean I was I've been making enough
Speaker 1: money that every couple of years I'd buy a property,
Speaker 1: fix it up, hold onto it, sell it, just like
Speaker 1: everybody else, and especially in those days, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: basically the joke was if if you had a pulse,
Speaker 1: you could get a loan. But I become the only
Speaker 1: person in the United States at that point actually being
Speaker 1: charged with overstating my income on a home loan application,
Speaker 1: and for that I can be sentenced to federal prison
Speaker 1: for twenty years. And this isn't like I'm not here
Speaker 1: to like try to bash the Feds or whatever, But
Speaker 1: you know, the fact of the matter is they pretty
Speaker 1: much only charge people that they are certain they can win.
Speaker 1: You know, they have a ninety nine point six percent
Speaker 1: success rate with prosecutions, and about eight percent of people
Speaker 1: take plea deals. And to be honest, I wasn't. I
Speaker 1: just wasn't gonna take one because I sound like a
Speaker 1: weird broken record for guys that go to prison, But
Speaker 1: I didn't do what I was being accused of. I
Speaker 1: end up being found not guilty of providing false information
Speaker 1: on loan application because I didn't do it. The I
Speaker 1: had a mortgage broker who falsified a loan application. He
Speaker 1: admitted it trial, he signed my name to it, right.
Speaker 1: But I, and this is where I do take uh
Speaker 1: full credit. You know, I signed the closing package and
Speaker 1: I put it in the mail, and whether it had
Speaker 1: false information that I knew about or not really didn't
Speaker 1: matter anymore. And I at that point took ownership, if
Speaker 1: you will, of everything within that packet, and that became
Speaker 1: mail fraud. And I was found guilty of mail fraud,
Speaker 1: bank fraud, wire fraud, basically mortgage fraud for that reason,
Speaker 1: and sentenced to twenty one months in federal prison in Beckley,
Speaker 1: West Virginia. And my kids, my teenage sons, dropped me
Speaker 1: off on Valentine's Day two thousand eleven at the front
Speaker 1: gate of Beckley Federal Correctional Institute to start serving a
Speaker 1: twenty one month sentence in federal prison. How did you
Speaker 1: handle being in prison and how did your family? How
Speaker 1: did your kids handle it? It was it was terrible.
Speaker 1: I mean, I you know, and the worst part of
Speaker 1: it was the limbo that I was in because once
Speaker 1: I was charged, you know, and again you you can relate,
Speaker 1: and some of your other guests can relate. You know,
Speaker 1: once your charge, your life is pretty much on hold
Speaker 1: until there's resolution. And you know, so for me, that
Speaker 1: was over a year process where I couldn't really work.
Speaker 1: I couldn't like, you know, I couldn't do anything, it
Speaker 1: felt like. And of course my both my boys are
Speaker 1: struggling at this point, you know, as teenage boys, and
Speaker 1: I'm not married to her mom anymore at that point,
Speaker 1: and and it was hard. But you know, I'll never
Speaker 1: forget walking into that prison. You'll appreciate this, it said
Speaker 1: the book. We have to read the book or listen
Speaker 1: to it. But the first guy that I meet when
Speaker 1: I get in as a guy, everybody's got a nickname
Speaker 1: in prison. And first guy I meet his pick and Roll.
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding you, that's his name. And so Picking
Speaker 1: Roll looks at me and he's like, he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, and he's an inmate obviously, and so've I've
Speaker 1: gone through the processing and so now I'm in the
Speaker 1: prison and and he's like, how long you here? For
Speaker 1: I'm like twenty one months. Man. He's like, shit, that
Speaker 1: ain't even long enough to unpack your clothes, you know,
Speaker 1: because so many of these guys are in there for
Speaker 1: so long. And and look, I was scared. I was scared.
Speaker 1: I was sad, and I was really piste off. And
Speaker 1: you know what, the Rex. It only took a few
Speaker 1: days to realize that I wasn't going to I was
Speaker 1: piste off about, you know. And again I'm using air
Speaker 1: quotes what had been done to me, right, And it
Speaker 1: took a matter of maybe two or three days to
Speaker 1: gain perspective. Number One, I figured out I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to survive this time in prison with that anger and bitterness.
Speaker 1: It was gonna kill me. Number two. The first guy
Speaker 1: after Pick and Roll that I met was a guy
Speaker 1: in the cell next to me, and he's in his
Speaker 1: early sixties, he's black, and he got a twenty five
Speaker 1: year sentence for a single graham of crack cocaine. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, and he's on like year twenty three when
Speaker 1: I meet him. He had had his entire life taken away.
Speaker 1: And I'm focused on you know, I mean, we're selfish
Speaker 1: by nature, all of us, but I'm focused on what
Speaker 1: has happened to me, and I immediately get slapped in
Speaker 1: the face by the reality of real unfairness, and you know,
Speaker 1: and it it allowed me to sort of settle down
Speaker 1: and recognize that, in the weirdest way, I was the
Speaker 1: most well prepared person for prison every No, really, I
Speaker 1: was just thinking the same. Ten years on the street
Speaker 1: and nineteen years clean and sober. I recognized that I
Speaker 1: could do this and that in fact, it was gonna
Speaker 1: be learning and just human experience. And I'm sure this
Speaker 1: will get into it, but how did you become a
Speaker 1: motivational force for other inmates to overcome addiction while you
Speaker 1: were there? Yeah? You know it is. Yeah, it's attraction
Speaker 1: rather than promotion. Again, because I do I do like
Speaker 1: to make the joke that I didn't all of a
Speaker 1: sudden say you know, hey, dude, you look like you
Speaker 1: could lose some weight, why don't you work out with me?
Speaker 1: It's it's not a good strategy for prison, not in prison. Um,
Speaker 1: But you know what I really did, Rex, was I
Speaker 1: just started doing what I always had on and that
Speaker 1: is that I started to run, you know. And and
Speaker 1: they're about five guys in this prison, and it is
Speaker 1: a low security facility in Beckley, West Virginia, and the
Speaker 1: vast majority were non violent drug offenders, you know. And
Speaker 1: and that's the way our country is. In the federal system,
Speaker 1: in particularly, got over eighty percent of people in prison
Speaker 1: for non violent drug offenses. And the irony is, there's
Speaker 1: no in the federal system. There is no A A,
Speaker 1: there's no n A, there's no there's no that's insane.
Speaker 1: There's no kind of recovery program. You can get a
Speaker 1: twenty year sentence for a drug charge and never get
Speaker 1: treated for your drug problem while you're in there. What
Speaker 1: you will get is near the end of your sentence,
Speaker 1: you get what's called drug education, which if you take
Speaker 1: the class, it will give you like six months off
Speaker 1: of your sentence potentially. But the class is basically this,
Speaker 1: you suck your leech on society and your family, don't
Speaker 1: do drugs like That's what the whole course boils down to.
Speaker 1: And it's so insane. And so I actually did. I
Speaker 1: I did start teaching addiction recovery classes while I was
Speaker 1: in prison, but they were actually health classes that I
Speaker 1: changed the curriculum and I started I turned him into
Speaker 1: basically what amounted to informal AA meetings, and you know,
Speaker 1: and I and I started to run every day and
Speaker 1: people made fun of me. And this is this is funny.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was a middle aged white guy still am,
Speaker 1: and you know, people made fun of me. Like the
Speaker 1: most dubious choice I ever made in there as I
Speaker 1: started doing yoga a couple of days a week on
Speaker 1: the softball field by myself. And for any of the
Speaker 1: list there's no for any listeners who are are thinking
Speaker 1: about going to federal prison, I do not recommend doing
Speaker 1: yoga by yourself. But um, but anyway, here's what happened.
Speaker 1: You know, after a couple of months of my running.
Speaker 1: And I'll never forget that the day it happened. But
Speaker 1: this guy, Kenny Squirrel was actually his name. He yells
Speaker 1: out across the wreck yard. He's like, hey, running man,
Speaker 1: you're gonna come in for lunch, and like that is
Speaker 1: where the sort of the Monica running Man came from.
Speaker 1: But slowly, but surely, guys started to come up to
Speaker 1: me in you know, the cafeteria line or whatever and
Speaker 1: asked me if I would teach basically teach them to run.
Speaker 1: And you know, these are guys from all walks of life.
Speaker 1: West Virginia is probably fifty fifty black and white in
Speaker 1: this prison. And you know, all the white guys were
Speaker 1: meth heads and all the black guys were businessman. And
Speaker 1: I say that tongue in cheek, but I actually mean it.
Speaker 1: Most of the black guys were dealers and not users.
Speaker 1: Most of the white guys were actual addicts. Um. But
Speaker 1: guys started to come up to me and just say,
Speaker 1: and you know, when I got to Beckley, there were
Speaker 1: maybe three guys running every day on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: And when I left a year and a half later,
Speaker 1: I had a running group of fifty guys and I
Speaker 1: I run it with me every single day and I
Speaker 1: had um maybe ten or twelve of them lost more
Speaker 1: than a hundred pounds um. By when I left, I
Speaker 1: had twenty five guys doing yoga with me on this
Speaker 1: off fall field three days a week. You know. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't because I ever promoted what I was doing.
Speaker 1: It's just because I did it. And these guys started
Speaker 1: to see, I mean, my life was just I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say it was better. We're all
Speaker 1: in the same place. And I had some haters. I
Speaker 1: had some uh, you know, I was a white collar again.
Speaker 1: Air quotes guy in a in prison, and there is
Speaker 1: a weird stigma that goes along with that. My biggest
Speaker 1: concern was, like, what kind of tattoo am I going
Speaker 1: to get in prison? You know, what is it? What
Speaker 1: do you get for mortgage fraud? Like an like an
Speaker 1: ink pen? I thought about getting a fountain pen on
Speaker 1: my arm. There we go. I could have put M
Speaker 1: M effort, M effort mortgage froud start. Charlie Angle truly
Speaker 1: is an inspiration to me. If he can pull himself
Speaker 1: up from the literal gutter with a bullet ridden car
Speaker 1: and a crack pipe to becoming an advocate for change
Speaker 1: at the top of his profession, then almost anyone can too.
Speaker 1: What strikes me about Charlie is that he owns his
Speaker 1: messy story instead of running from it. I'd imagine that
Speaker 1: trotting mile after mile after mile gives a person plenty
Speaker 1: of time to think about the good, the bad, and
Speaker 1: the ugly transgressions in their life. For those in recovery,
Speaker 1: attacking the road ahead is the best forward momentum some
Speaker 1: one can achieve one day at a time. What would
Speaker 1: you say to someone who knows that running and exercise
Speaker 1: would benefit their lives, but just can't get over the
Speaker 1: mental hurdles. You know, it's such a great question. I
Speaker 1: actually think about it all the time. And I have
Speaker 1: just recently been asked to be depox. Chopra and I
Speaker 1: became friends years ago, and so I am now. It
Speaker 1: hasn't even been announced publicly, so this will be the
Speaker 1: first time I've actually said it out loud. I'm in public,
Speaker 1: but I am now the ambassador for the Chopper Foundation
Speaker 1: for Addiction and Recovery, And thank you. It's a big deal.
Speaker 1: Of it's a big deal for me because it's uh.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason I gave you that answer is
Speaker 1: that my mission in a way is relies on this mantra,
Speaker 1: and that is that if you don't feel good, you
Speaker 1: can't get well. You know, it's about mentally, just getting
Speaker 1: it through your head that if I do this every day,
Speaker 1: you know, it really will get easier. And also the
Speaker 1: you know, look, I have a son who's almost four
Speaker 1: years clean and sober, and you know, again, genetics play
Speaker 1: a role, and I tell him, I tell both my
Speaker 1: sons all the time. You know, never quit at a
Speaker 1: low point, never quit anything at a don't quit a
Speaker 1: relationship or a job or sobriety or anything else, because
Speaker 1: those those low moments aren't real, like they will pass
Speaker 1: if we just let them pass. And I think physical exercise,
Speaker 1: you know, exercises that way people People go for their
Speaker 1: first run in five years and they feel like shit.
Speaker 1: Well no kidding, but you're not gonna feel that way
Speaker 1: all the time. You just have to keep doing it. Terrific,
Speaker 1: terrific advice. Hey, so tell me this, what are you
Speaker 1: up to today, Charlie? Uh, where are you and how
Speaker 1: do you handle the pandemic? Assume you were just out
Speaker 1: running every day? Yeah, you know that. I mean. So,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm back in Durham. I've lived all over the country,
Speaker 1: but I got married again about eight years ago to
Speaker 1: just an amazing woman and and in full disclosure, um,
Speaker 1: she is battling a really serious cancer and has been
Speaker 1: for a while. So we're you know, my world has
Speaker 1: been a little small, even even apart from COVID. We're
Speaker 1: also sorry, but thank you, thank you, But again, you
Speaker 1: know what, I get to show up for this every
Speaker 1: single day and to be um, a supporter, a caretaker,
Speaker 1: all the things that I need to be and would
Speaker 1: be incapable of being if I was still you know,
Speaker 1: using and get to You just said, I get to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a burden, it's a gift. And I would
Speaker 1: take it away from her in a second, you know,
Speaker 1: the cancer. But I you know, I I get to
Speaker 1: be fully present. I don't go high, either in a
Speaker 1: bottle or a pill, and you know, and I'm able
Speaker 1: to just be here and be present. And you know,
Speaker 1: covid is UM. She can't get vaccinated, so it's complicated.
Speaker 1: I'm vaccinated, but I have to be really careful about
Speaker 1: where I go and what I do and UM. I
Speaker 1: am working on another book because you know, I I
Speaker 1: think there's a I sort of touched on it earlier,
Speaker 1: but I think that people in early recovery, when you
Speaker 1: go into addiction recovery, there should be more focus not
Speaker 1: you know, there's a time for talk therapy and it's
Speaker 1: very important in the process, but physical health needs to
Speaker 1: be put first. And I said it earlier. If you
Speaker 1: don't feel good, you can't get well. And so I'm
Speaker 1: really working on a book through my own experience that
Speaker 1: will lay out the case for really focusing on physical health.
Speaker 1: I'm also vegan, have been for more than twenty years.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not a preacher on these things, but
Speaker 1: it is, you know, it's the way I've chosen to
Speaker 1: live and um, and it's made things good. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm I celebrate my sobriety every year by running the
Speaker 1: same number of hours to match the years that I've
Speaker 1: been sober. So this year, later this month will be
Speaker 1: you know, twenty nine hours of running. And you know
Speaker 1: that's my kind of party these days. UM, if you
Speaker 1: just put yourself out there and you tell the truth,
Speaker 1: opportunities the right opportunities present themselves. UM. I'm heading to uh.
Speaker 1: I am actually heading at the end of this month July.
Speaker 1: I'm getting a chance to go down to neck Or
Speaker 1: Island with Richard Branson and a small group and and
Speaker 1: speaking to a bunch of people in the addiction space
Speaker 1: and advocating for some things around the Chopra Foundation. And
Speaker 1: you know, it just is. It's a fun journey. Man.
Speaker 1: I would I wouldn't even take the prison stuff back,
Speaker 1: you know, I got I. I work with the Innocence Project,
Speaker 1: UM from time to time for you. UM, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you know those guys or know who they are, a
Speaker 1: great friend of mine. Jason flam is one of the
Speaker 1: founding board members. He has a great podcast um about
Speaker 1: wrongful incarceration, you know, and getting people out and and
Speaker 1: I think it all comes back down to where we started.
Speaker 1: It's service based. And the thing I say to myself
Speaker 1: and I remind others service makes you sound like you're
Speaker 1: being some generous Uh. You know, I don't know goody
Speaker 1: two shoes almost. I do it because I recognize that
Speaker 1: if I don't keep doing stuff for other people that
Speaker 1: I put myself, it's a really selfish act. I put
Speaker 1: myself at risk if I don't do those things. Man,
Speaker 1: that's beautiful, it really is. And I'm I'm with you it.
Speaker 1: It makes me feel bad when I think back about
Speaker 1: all the years I spent just as a selfish asshole,
Speaker 1: you know, just only thinking of about me. Wasn't until
Speaker 1: I got in trouble that I thought about how it
Speaker 1: was affecting everybody else. I mean, and uh, just that perspective.
Speaker 1: Thanks Charlie, Thanks for being here with me today on
Speaker 1: charges your story and your effort or inspiring and as
Speaker 1: someone else who's in recovery, you know, I want you
Speaker 1: to know my door is always open if you ever
Speaker 1: need anything. You're the man, Charlie. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Same here, brother, And it was I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how excited that was to be here. And it was,
Speaker 1: You're really good at this. You should keep going. It's
Speaker 1: not me, it's the guests. You guys, come on here, dude.
Speaker 1: I've done a lot, I've done a lot of podcasts.
Speaker 1: I can assure you you're being You're I appreciate your
Speaker 1: humility you but it's you know, doing these kind of
Speaker 1: things is uh, it's another gift, you know, of experience
Speaker 1: and being able to just have a conversation and it's it's, uh,
Speaker 1: You've got a really good platform here and I look
Speaker 1: forward to, you know, spreading the word. Thanks buddy, Thanks Pal,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming on My pleasure. Charges Selling No Runnians
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