Speaker 1: Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: All Right, welcome back, everybody. We are here for another
Speaker 2: episode of Comeback Stories. I am always here with my
Speaker 2: guy for life, Darren Waller. How you doing, my man.
Speaker 3: I'm blessed, bro. I'm excited for this episode.
Speaker 2: Man, I'm so excited for this episode. So today's guest.
Speaker 2: He's the co founder of Marley's Mutt's Dog Rescue and
Speaker 2: Positive Change program. This dude has a story that I
Speaker 2: absolutely love and I can relate to so much. And
Speaker 2: when I think about the service work that he's doing,
Speaker 2: it really makes me realize that I need to step
Speaker 2: up my game. The work he's doing is incredible. So
Speaker 2: we're here with Zach scou Zach has a story where
Speaker 2: dogs actually rescued Zach from addiction. Then he took that
Speaker 2: experience to start Marlee's Mutts, taking rescued dogs to help
Speaker 2: rescue people, and from there he started Positive Change program,
Speaker 2: pairing death row dogs with incarcerated people. So, Zach, welcome
Speaker 2: to the show.
Speaker 4: My man. Mo Man, it is great to see my brother,
Speaker 4: you too, Darren, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Hey, We're always getting right into it here on the show.
Speaker 2: And we want to know for you. Tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit what it was like.
Speaker 4: Growing up for you. Let's get vulnerable towny life. Growing
Speaker 4: up for me was was kind of quintessential when I
Speaker 4: think about it, I grew up. I'm actually down here
Speaker 4: in Manhattan Beach right now. I grew up in Hermosa Beach,
Speaker 4: California and what's called the South Bay, Redondo, Manhattan, Hermosa Torrents.
Speaker 4: And it was an incredible place to grow up, you know,
Speaker 4: an absolutely incredible place to grow up. We were baby
Speaker 4: sat by the beach, you know, we were all latch
Speaker 4: key kids. We have this little incubated bubble that is
Speaker 4: the South Bay where pH and the refinery to the
Speaker 4: north and other kind of barricades created this this really
Speaker 4: incredible place to grow up. Just a very unique place
Speaker 4: where we surfed and we skated and we got into trouble.
Speaker 4: It had a very drinking, heavy, drug heavy culture, that's
Speaker 4: to be certain. I grew up in a broken home.
Speaker 4: You know. My parents separated when my twin brother and
Speaker 4: I were very young. They got divorced right when we
Speaker 4: got out of the hospital. Both my brother and I
Speaker 4: were very ill when we were born. So yeah, life
Speaker 4: started out that way in a broken home with a
Speaker 4: lot of different you know, advantages to that as well.
Speaker 4: I don't want to just say there were disadvantages. I
Speaker 4: got to grow up in two beautiful homes. My mom
Speaker 4: was my primary, and we grew up in a house
Speaker 4: with another single family, another female lead family, And that
Speaker 4: was how I kind of eased into two adulthood, which
Speaker 4: was that beach culture. I was inundated with beach culture
Speaker 4: and all that that implies.
Speaker 2: When you look back on your childhood, is there an
Speaker 2: early memory of pain that really stands out to you?
Speaker 4: Yeah? There are. There are some some definite painful moments
Speaker 4: that stand out from my childhood. Some of those would
Speaker 4: manifest and become real issues as I got older. Some
Speaker 4: of us had to do with you know, inappropriate contact,
Speaker 4: that contact and conduct as a child, things that I
Speaker 4: that I received and went through as a kid in
Speaker 4: terms of you know, inappropriate sexual contact and things that
Speaker 4: I didn't know at the time would affect me like
Speaker 4: they would in adulthood. I think I was a lot
Speaker 4: like everybody else man. I really wanted to to fit in,
Speaker 4: I really wanted to be a part of and I
Speaker 4: think some of my earliest memories of in terms of
Speaker 4: painful memories, were not feeling a part of and certainly
Speaker 4: not feeling as connecting to my parents as I wanted to.
Speaker 4: My parents were both working professionals, so they were gone
Speaker 4: all the time, you know, and much of my childhood
Speaker 4: was spent with you know, with sitters and with caretakers,
Speaker 4: So I didn't get to spend much time with my mom,
Speaker 4: didn't get to send as much time with my dad
Speaker 4: as I would have wanted, you because they were hustling,
Speaker 4: you know, trying to make a living to support us kids.
Speaker 4: So that's one of the things that I think about now,
Speaker 4: you know, in adulthood that that kind of pained me
Speaker 4: when I was younger, was just wanting a deeper connection,
Speaker 4: you know, as a child, and.
Speaker 2: A deeper connection with specifically your mom or was it
Speaker 2: just yearning for something deeper?
Speaker 4: Definitely with my mom, for sure. My mom was a
Speaker 4: professional at ABC. She was an executive, one of the
Speaker 4: youngest female executives ever at ABC and Disney. So you
Speaker 4: know that that time, were you looking back on it,
Speaker 4: Where I really craved when I was younger was just
Speaker 4: that feeling safe, feeling supported, and feeling safe within that
Speaker 4: family structure, and I and we were very much children
Speaker 4: of the streets, very much running amock kind of constantly,
Speaker 4: and I didn't and we had Like I said, you know,
Speaker 4: these were wonderful people that helped raise us, you know,
Speaker 4: Isabelle and Juan and Sadie or it were and still
Speaker 4: are family members, but they weren't my parents, and so
Speaker 4: I look about older in life. That's something that I
Speaker 4: that I definitely have tried to make up for in
Speaker 4: adulthood in terms of kind of recreating that narrative, recreating
Speaker 4: the relationship, and kind of also just accepting that my
Speaker 4: parents did their absolute best. We tend to hold our
Speaker 4: parents to this unreachable standard and we tend to not
Speaker 4: view them as just normal people who are doing their best.
Speaker 4: They were single parents too, just like I am now
Speaker 4: and a single dad, and that's a tough life to
Speaker 4: try to figure out. You got two twin babies, you know.
Speaker 4: Like I said, my brother and I were extremely sick.
Speaker 4: My brother was at Cedar Sinai Medical Center for four
Speaker 4: months before he got to come home. So it was
Speaker 4: a tough time to come into the world and have
Speaker 4: our family kind of split apart. But they absolutely did
Speaker 4: their best with what they had, and I'm trying to
Speaker 4: give them credit as opposed to just kind of, you know,
Speaker 4: knock them as I'm in my.
Speaker 5: Forties, Zach, I appreciate your vulnerability first and foremost, something
Speaker 5: that we appreciate and try to hold space for on
Speaker 5: this platform. And the fact that you're leading off with
Speaker 5: it is amazing. And I know you talked about wanting
Speaker 5: to feel safe for me when I was fifteen years old.
Speaker 5: I think I started to feel safe via percocets and
Speaker 5: people pleasing. Where do you feel like you first started
Speaker 5: to turn tours to start to feel safe or feel
Speaker 5: some sort of peace.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people pleasing is my big one. I always grew
Speaker 4: up very quickly, so I was an eighteen year old
Speaker 4: when I was ten. I was always running around with parents.
Speaker 4: I grew up in a household that out of a
Speaker 4: lot of other kids that I sort of had to
Speaker 4: keep an eye out. My twin brother included. He kind
Speaker 4: of just how we were raised. He was sort of
Speaker 4: my little brother. So I was doing a tremendous amount
Speaker 4: of parenting and trying to just keep the vibe tolerable.
Speaker 4: I was trying to put out fires and not create,
Speaker 4: not feed into the chaos that is a single mother
Speaker 4: household with all the comings and goings, and yeah, I
Speaker 4: started to medicate very early on, very early on, like
Speaker 4: ten years old, eleven years old is when I remember
Speaker 4: first getting into my mom's wine. A lot of that
Speaker 4: was just related to wanting to be an adult. Was
Speaker 4: just seeing what all the adults did every single night,
Speaker 4: and wanting to be considered an adult, wanting to be
Speaker 4: a grown up, and wanting to do the things that
Speaker 4: the people I admired did. But that you know, I think,
Speaker 4: throughout my entire life, if I'm being honest, I always
Speaker 4: felt different. I always felt a level of anxiety maybe
Speaker 4: maybe like a simmering level of anxiety might not even
Speaker 4: be the right word, but just uneasiness. I always felt
Speaker 4: a little bit uneasy. And when I found alcohol and drugs,
Speaker 4: I found acceptance of myself. I found being accepted by others,
Speaker 4: you know, I found it gave me a lot of
Speaker 4: the things that I thought you needed to be a
Speaker 4: successful person. Right. I was funnier, I was more affable,
Speaker 4: I could kind of fall I could slide into that
Speaker 4: role and portray myself as older than I was. I
Speaker 4: thought that was one of the ways you grew up
Speaker 4: was by learning how to drink. And I took that
Speaker 4: very seriously. All my heroes were you know, I don't
Speaker 4: want to say functioning alcoholics, they were just alcoholics. I
Speaker 4: set my sights early on to try to, I mean
Speaker 4: literally try to integrate that into my life. I knew
Speaker 4: drinking was I knew drinking was important. I mean it
Speaker 4: was prioritized in terms of my social circles and my culture.
Speaker 4: That was something that it helped if you were really
Speaker 4: good at And I started to bury a whole lot
Speaker 4: of discomfort, uneasiness, anxiety. I also had this you know,
Speaker 4: they called me Golden Boy when I was a kid.
Speaker 4: That was the moniker I had. It was everybody had
Speaker 4: this idea of me that I was this golden child,
Speaker 4: that I was this handsome kid that could do really
Speaker 4: well in school. And I played every sport very well.
Speaker 4: So I was good at everything. And I peaked when
Speaker 4: I was like twelve. So as soon as I started
Speaker 4: to not make those expectations and I started to do
Speaker 4: less good in school, I started to have get into fights,
Speaker 4: I started to do whatever. You know, it really facilitated
Speaker 4: a spiral because I couldn't meet up to those expectations.
Speaker 4: And I think a lot of us fight meeting expectations
Speaker 4: of ourselves at a young age and then never really
Speaker 4: being able to catch up with and accept who we
Speaker 4: atually are and love that person. You know, I've always
Speaker 4: thought people loved the idea of me and the expectation
Speaker 4: of me as opposed to who I actually am. You
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I know I know too much of what
Speaker 3: you're saying.
Speaker 5: I felt that way three years into the NFL, with
Speaker 5: every goal, every dream on my list checked off as
Speaker 5: far as what would be the blueprint to happiness and success,
Speaker 5: and I just like this, this ain't it Because from
Speaker 5: when I was a kid, you know, I wasn't black
Speaker 5: enough around the kids I was growing.
Speaker 3: Up around, and I had no identity in that.
Speaker 5: But I found identity in how many peels I could
Speaker 5: pop or how many how many beers I could drink.
Speaker 3: And it's like that, you know.
Speaker 5: That that identity around alcohol is real because nothing ever
Speaker 5: made me feel good, but we told me I could
Speaker 5: out drink people that made me feel great, and I.
Speaker 4: Started to get Yeah, I started to get that credibility
Speaker 4: as like a social facilitator, right too. You get that
Speaker 4: credibility for how much you can drink, how much you
Speaker 4: can use Do you got the hookups? Do you and
Speaker 4: know all the different kids and how the different prayers
Speaker 4: hook up so that you can facilitate party time? Do
Speaker 4: you know all the different phone numbers to call? And
Speaker 4: I became that party facilitator, that social coordinator early on.
Speaker 4: And that's another way that I got a lot of
Speaker 4: my like worth and my value was like facilitating a
Speaker 4: good time. Yeah, how long did it go on for?
Speaker 2: So you started drinking, your experimenting at ten or eleven?
Speaker 2: Where did that end up?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 2: What was I mean? Walk us through a little bit
Speaker 2: of the path and the progression of the drinking and
Speaker 2: what else it led to and ultimately to your lowest point.
Speaker 4: Well, I think culturally I was always striving towards some
Speaker 4: level of alcoholism. That sounds strange, but where I come from,
Speaker 4: You know, you were kind of your adolescents in your
Speaker 4: early adulthood are spent kind of like honing your social capability,
Speaker 4: which means how you drink, how you use drugs, et cetera.
Speaker 4: So I got into daily drinking, you know, drinking as
Speaker 4: often as I could really when I was fifteen six,
Speaker 4: see always drinking at parties, drinking every weekend. That progressed
Speaker 4: into you know, weed and cocaine and other things nitrous oxide, acid, mushrooms,
Speaker 4: things like that at a at a young age, all
Speaker 4: through high school, and then by the time I went
Speaker 4: up to college at San Diego State University, I was
Speaker 4: a you know, I drank as often as you can
Speaker 4: put it in front of me, So any excuse to
Speaker 4: consume alcohol or drugs, I would gravitate towards and pursue,
Speaker 4: and that quickly I became enslaved to alcohol. By the
Speaker 4: time I was eighteen, I knew I was an alcoholic.
Speaker 4: I used to listen to the alcoholics of the Rat
Speaker 4: group that was like my we we would party to
Speaker 4: the alcoholics, and all they do is sing anthems about
Speaker 4: you know, grotesque consumption of alcohol and just overt alcoholism,
Speaker 4: and those are our those are our theme songs. You know.
Speaker 4: I really pursued that level of oblivion as often as
Speaker 4: I could because I needed it internally, and because it
Speaker 4: was a status symbol, Like that was acceptance where I
Speaker 4: was running, and you know, your access to drugs and
Speaker 4: alcohol and your ability to consume, to do to be
Speaker 4: the life of the party, was how you found acceptance.
Speaker 4: So I felt like I really needed those things in
Speaker 4: order to be participating in society and to gain any acceptance.
Speaker 4: But I made a decision really early on. I knew
Speaker 4: I was an alcoholic, and I knew I was physically
Speaker 4: addicted too, because I went, like one weekend tried out
Speaker 4: to drink when I was in college, and I thought,
Speaker 4: all right, I'm just going to commit myself just like
Speaker 4: my parents do, to drinking every night. That's what everybody
Speaker 4: else does. I can make the adjustment. I'll figure out
Speaker 4: how to drink, you know, even to oblivion on the regular,
Speaker 4: and we'll just figure it out. We'll be okay. And
Speaker 4: that that gave way to sell and weed at first
Speaker 4: to try to, you know, support my habits. I didn't
Speaker 4: have any money, you know, I've not had any money
Speaker 4: up until recently, to be honest, in terms of saving
Speaker 4: because of you, A lot of my wife my life
Speaker 4: has spent giving back.
Speaker 6: But yeah, my, my, my relationship with alcohol and drugs
Speaker 6: completely overtook my life very early on, and it totally
Speaker 6: occupied my transom, my son up to sun down until
Speaker 6: I got somewhere.
Speaker 4: I mean, I was completely enveloped by the devils of
Speaker 4: addiction in every way, shape and form, every place that
Speaker 4: that leads you everything that it just to you physically, emotionally,
Speaker 4: relationship wise. It completely took over my life and took
Speaker 4: it took my body completely failing. In order for me
Speaker 4: to have that the realization I needed to, I tried, man,
Speaker 4: I tried to go to meetings, I tried to link
Speaker 4: up with people. I tried to go cold turkey. I
Speaker 4: tried everything to eliminate alcohol and drugs for my life,
Speaker 4: or to drink like a gentleman, or to do this,
Speaker 4: that and the other, and it just wasn't possible for me.
Speaker 4: I needed that absolute rock bottom in order to facilitate
Speaker 4: any kind of recovery.
Speaker 2: So what were the physical ramifications of that much drinking
Speaker 2: for you?
Speaker 4: Well, it was interesting. You know, I was drinking twenty
Speaker 4: four hours a day. I got in a car accident
Speaker 4: in two thousand and three. I broke my chest and
Speaker 4: my shoulder. I broke my sternum and my shoulder got
Speaker 4: and you know, I got knocked out, and I was
Speaker 4: I was driving intoxicated. I rolled my truck off a cliff,
Speaker 4: like off a cliff and rolled down the cliff and
Speaker 4: got knocked out and hurt myself severely, and that, you know,
Speaker 4: that experience. Just healing from that experience, I had to
Speaker 4: drink to get through that. I had to drink a
Speaker 4: lot to get through that. I'm now I was drinking
Speaker 4: a box of wine a day just to get through
Speaker 4: the physical pain of healing from that injury. And that's
Speaker 4: what initiated twenty four hours a day drinking. That was like,
Speaker 4: there's this there's this fine edge when you get when
Speaker 4: you commit yourself to alcoholic, to alcoholism, and just the
Speaker 4: danger of doing that dance where it can push you
Speaker 4: over into twenty four hours a day to that physical dependency,
Speaker 4: not just emotional, but true physical dependency. And after I
Speaker 4: healed from that injury, I tried to go cold tricky,
Speaker 4: and I my the physical, emotional, every that kind of
Speaker 4: withdraw was brutal, was brutal. And I again, before I
Speaker 4: got really sick, I committed myself to alcoholism. I had
Speaker 4: another conversation with my after that crash, and I said,
Speaker 4: all right, well, I guess I'm addicted to alcohol, and
Speaker 4: I guess we're just going to have to figure out
Speaker 4: how to live addicted to alcohol as opposed to trying
Speaker 4: to pull the ripcord, ask for help figure out away.
Speaker 4: It was just too daunting. Trying to come up against
Speaker 4: society's norms. How well wellbn alcohol and alcoholism is to
Speaker 4: our social fabric was just overwhelming to me. I couldn't
Speaker 4: contemplate fitting into my skin, fitting into society, fitting into
Speaker 4: my family as a sober individual, and underneath at all.
Speaker 4: I think the main part was that I couldn't tolerate myself.
Speaker 4: You know, when those voices would creep in. As soon
Speaker 4: as alcohol drugs would seep out of my system, and
Speaker 4: those voices would start to creep in, is a overwhelming
Speaker 4: panic that would take over my body. If I got
Speaker 4: to run away for myself, I got to run away
Speaker 4: from myself, I can't. I can't tolerate you. I just
Speaker 4: cannot tolerate you, dude. And the only way I could
Speaker 4: get myself out of my head is through alcohol. So
Speaker 4: it just facilitated this brutal, brutal cycle until my liver
Speaker 4: finally failed. You know, I went into full blown alcoholic
Speaker 4: liver failure, and I tried every with all of my
Speaker 4: power to avoid getting that diagnosis. And to the part
Speaker 4: I just wouldn't go to the doctor. I mean, I
Speaker 4: was leaking blood from both ends of my body. And
Speaker 4: by the time I finally went to the doctor and
Speaker 4: got you know, blood tests and checked up on I'll
Speaker 4: never forget she came. The nurse came out and sat
Speaker 4: down next to me. She put her hands on my
Speaker 4: hand and she said, honey, you know these are your
Speaker 4: your blood test results, and you're in liver failure and
Speaker 4: you need to go to a hospital right now. And
Speaker 4: I was at a hospital, but not a very good one,
Speaker 4: and she said, you know, this is very serious, and
Speaker 4: I said okay, and I just completely brushed it off.
Speaker 4: I went home alied to my dad. I started wearing baggy.
Speaker 4: I was turning yellow, so I started to turn bright yellow.
Speaker 4: Had my belly started to fill up with blood and bile.
Speaker 4: So I was like nine months pregnant. I had these
Speaker 4: varicose veins feeding this huge mass inside of my stomach.
Speaker 4: My belly button was her head, and my ankles were
Speaker 4: full of liquid. My feet were full of liquid. And
Speaker 4: I couldn't come to grip with that diagnosis because I
Speaker 4: knew it meant no more alcohol for me forever, so
Speaker 4: I just avoided it. I just lied and avoided it,
Speaker 4: and then finally I started to have ammonia build up
Speaker 4: on my brain, where you really you forget where you are,
Speaker 4: You lose your balance, you don't understand who you are.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you kind of vacillate between coherence and total incoherence.
Speaker 4: And it was at that point that my dad took
Speaker 4: me to the hospital to Bakershield Memorial Hospital for long
Speaker 4: term stay and I stayed there for almost six weeks.
Speaker 4: The first thing the doctor said when after they got
Speaker 4: me stabilized, was, you know, your son needs a liver
Speaker 4: transplant and he's not going to get one. Period. I
Speaker 4: was given, you know, an eighty percent chance of dying
Speaker 4: within ninety days if I didn't have a liver transplant.
Speaker 4: So it was very cutting, you know, cutt and dry.
Speaker 4: It was, you need a liver transplant immediately or you're
Speaker 4: going to die. And they don't give alcoholics liver transplants. Period.
Speaker 4: You needs six months of recovery just to apply, just
Speaker 4: to be considered for the transplant program. I didn't have
Speaker 4: six hours of sobriety, you know. It was it was
Speaker 4: a terribly dire situation, you know.
Speaker 2: So do you end up getting the transplant or what
Speaker 2: happens next.
Speaker 4: So there's only seven hospitals in the state of California
Speaker 4: that do liver transplant, and I was not at one
Speaker 4: of them, and I was not in a transplant program,
Speaker 4: So there was no chance and no hope of me
Speaker 4: getting a liver transplant. The only hope was to get
Speaker 4: into one of those hospitals, and my dad is in there.
Speaker 4: This is so much of my sobriety story. So much
Speaker 4: of my comeback story is really a love story between
Speaker 4: a dad and his son. You know, a dad who
Speaker 4: just refused to give up on his son and refused
Speaker 4: to say, this is our lot in life. You know,
Speaker 4: he's not going to make it, and we just have
Speaker 4: to accept that. He just never entered his mind for
Speaker 4: a second that I wasn't gonna make it, and he
Speaker 4: did everything in his power to get me to a
Speaker 4: hospital that would care for me. And we finally got
Speaker 4: a meeting through a very child, through a nurse who
Speaker 4: worked for our insurance company, and she got us a
Speaker 4: very chance interview with the Cedar Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center.
Speaker 4: So that's the best transplant center in America. It's at
Speaker 4: the hospital I was born at and they said, if
Speaker 4: you can get here within the next two days, we
Speaker 4: will get you a meeting with doctor Tram, trans the
Speaker 4: head of transplant. So my dad said, we're going, you know,
Speaker 4: pull all this shit out of your body. We're going.
Speaker 4: And the doctor said, no, you're not. You can't leave here.
Speaker 4: He'll he'll die if you leave here. I mean, I
Speaker 4: was the sickest the sick person could get. You know,
Speaker 4: I'd gone through alcohol withdrow in the hospital. I got
Speaker 4: addicted to delauded in the hospital. That's a whole other story.
Speaker 4: I got heavily addicted to opiates that six weeks that
Speaker 4: I was in the hospital, So I was I was
Speaker 4: in a very delicate state to be moved period, but
Speaker 4: my dad didn't, and he signed me out against doctor's orders.
Speaker 4: We did a burnout in the parking lot to get
Speaker 4: as far away from that place seemingly possible because I
Speaker 4: was dying there. They were not doing anything to help me.
Speaker 4: I was simply diet and making life a living hell
Speaker 4: for the nurses that were there because I'd even dope,
Speaker 4: you know, every four hours. And we got meeting with
Speaker 4: the Comprehensive transplant Center, doctor Tram tram, sat me down,
Speaker 4: went over all my information and she said, look, if
Speaker 4: we check you into this hospital, you're going to die here.
Speaker 4: And this is very touch and go, but we're going
Speaker 4: to send you home. You've been admitted to the Comprehensive
Speaker 4: transplant program. If you can get sorry it's emotional, If
Speaker 4: you can get six months sober, we will get you
Speaker 4: a liver transplant. But you have to get six We
Speaker 4: have to survive six months. And you know, the numbers
Speaker 4: said I wasn't going to make it ninety days, much
Speaker 4: last six months, so there wasn't a lot of hope,
Speaker 4: you know. And they sent us home and they said, look,
Speaker 4: he's going to have to kick dope, so stay near
Speaker 4: an emergency room. You're going to need it, and you're
Speaker 4: on your own. You're going to have to check in
Speaker 4: with us, you know, every twenty four hours. And they
Speaker 4: sent me home, and my dad's thinking to himself, you know,
Speaker 4: you just released him to the care of our dogs.
Speaker 4: And instead of a you know, a medical facility, you
Speaker 4: want our dogs and me to take care of a
Speaker 4: drug addicted, recovering alcoholic with zero sobriety who needs a
Speaker 4: liver transplant. And that's like you got to be kidding me.
Speaker 4: What am I going to do with this kid? You know?
Speaker 4: And as I'm sure that both of you can imagine,
Speaker 4: I convinced him to take me to the hospital for shock.
Speaker 4: You know. That was how we spent the first two weeks,
Speaker 4: was me trying to go through OPI withdrawal but to
Speaker 4: chicken ship, to kiss the dragon on the nose, and
Speaker 4: struggling through every second of it. You know, I mean,
Speaker 4: you know it is your central preoccupation. You can't help
Speaker 4: but have your central preoccupation be drugs. When you're addicted
Speaker 4: to drugs, nothing else can really enter, nothing else can
Speaker 4: permeate that boundary layer. And that was my focus. And
Speaker 4: to tell so long story short, we finally got through that.
Speaker 4: We got through that OPIE withdrawal. That was the first
Speaker 4: big miracle. My dogs helped me get through. You know.
Speaker 4: I had three rescue dogs that I'd gotten from the
Speaker 4: Mohabby Animals well, that I had gotten through from our community,
Speaker 4: a couple of them from the Mahabi Animal Shelter and
Speaker 4: kicking the lauded going through OPI withdrawal with those dogs
Speaker 4: helped me to a tremendous degree because that was one
Speaker 4: of the scariest things I've ever been through. That was
Speaker 4: like two days of hallucinations and now being able to
Speaker 4: trust what I was hearing seeing, you know, a full
Speaker 4: body fear too, like a full spiritual fear that the
Speaker 4: life of which you can't imagine. I just remember going
Speaker 4: through that and rooting down in my dog, feeling my
Speaker 4: big Rottweiler pitbull, Marley, and just just touching him to
Speaker 4: try to get through it and try to remind me
Speaker 4: what was real and what was not real, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean. That was the first big miracle that
Speaker 4: helped kind of facilitate my life. Was getting offed out. Man.
Speaker 3: This wow.
Speaker 4: And obviously there's a lot more to this story. It
Speaker 4: keeps kicking on as as the recovery happened. So after
Speaker 4: I got home, we were able to kick, you know,
Speaker 4: get through the opiate withdrawal process. And after I got
Speaker 4: through that, you know, I had soiled myself in the bed.
Speaker 4: I couldn't control my bowels. I was on a whole
Speaker 4: lot of very intense medication and how they keep ammonia
Speaker 4: build up off your brain when you're liver failures, This
Speaker 4: medication called angulo. So I had gone to the bathroom
Speaker 4: in bed, which happened regularly, and rather than wake my
Speaker 4: dad up, I went into the mirror into the bathroom
Speaker 4: to clean myself off. And I'll never forget walking past
Speaker 4: the mirror and looking at myself and seeing this, this
Speaker 4: like hollowed out human being that I did not recognize
Speaker 4: at all. I was completely naked, you know, because I
Speaker 4: had to take all my clothes off to clean myself up.
Speaker 4: And I was totally yellow, and every part of my
Speaker 4: body was purple. Was bruised from needles going in and
Speaker 4: from bumping into things. You bruise really easily when you're
Speaker 4: in river failure. I didn't recognize my eyes. I didn't
Speaker 4: recognize who was looking back. I mean quite literally, you know.
Speaker 4: I looked much much older, and I looked like a
Speaker 4: person I didn't recognize. And I just started to cry,
Speaker 4: like just that this is the end to cry, like
Speaker 4: soul crushing, defeated, sob of I can't believe this is
Speaker 4: what I've done to myself, you know, I cannot believe
Speaker 4: I've done this to myself and I and I mean
Speaker 4: the way I looked, and I'll never forget it. The
Speaker 4: veins and my stomach or the most intimidating, and you
Speaker 4: could see them on my throat too. And I look
Speaker 4: over my dogs in this like terrible moment of just
Speaker 4: self loathing and pity, and all my dogs are looking
Speaker 4: at that me next to the toilet, because I'd always
Speaker 4: like sit around the toilet, and they're looking up at
Speaker 4: me like I'm the world's greatest human beings, like like
Speaker 4: they see all of the nuke everything innate to me.
Speaker 4: Oh the love, the compassion and empathy, the potential, like
Speaker 4: all the human potential that was still locked inside of me,
Speaker 4: and all the things that were good about me that
Speaker 4: I did know we're in there. They lashed on too,
Speaker 4: Like they looked at me with all that adoration and
Speaker 4: that love and that and maybe even a little bit
Speaker 4: of sympathy, but like this attitude of we're good, you're good,
Speaker 4: you're good, right now, you're good. And I didn't see
Speaker 4: any of that. Man, I saw it. I saw this
Speaker 4: is time to let it go, like this is time
Speaker 4: to pull the plug. And they saw it. You're good,
Speaker 4: you know, you're all right. And I'll never forget looking
Speaker 4: at them and thinking, first of all, what's going to
Speaker 4: happen to my dogs if something happens to me. And two,
Speaker 4: you know, just feeling what they were giving me, feeling
Speaker 4: the emotions that they were sending me. This ultimate except
Speaker 4: unconditional love, unconditional love for us in recovery. Unconditional love
Speaker 4: is the north star, you know. It's something we're always
Speaker 4: striding towards this, that unconditional love. And our dogs give
Speaker 4: us that medicine in a form that is so digestible
Speaker 4: and so relatable and so warm and so imperturbed by
Speaker 4: other variables or other qualifications. It's just there. It's raw,
Speaker 4: it's real, and if you let it in, it will
Speaker 4: help you rebuild yourself, you know. So just that little
Speaker 4: bit of confidence they gave me in that they they
Speaker 4: knew everything could be okay and that it would be okay,
Speaker 4: and that kind of facilitated the first day of the
Speaker 4: rest of our life. Just that experience with my dogs
Speaker 4: at that really low moment catalyze me to say, all right,
Speaker 4: we're going to give it a shot, man, We're going
Speaker 4: to try to figure this out, and we're going to
Speaker 4: try to put one foot in front of the other literally,
Speaker 4: And that morning I didn't go back to sleep. I
Speaker 4: took a picture of the sunrise. I journaled in my
Speaker 4: journal and I remember thinking to myself on that first
Speaker 4: journal entry, he guys, I love this. I remember thinking
Speaker 4: on that first journal entry, I'm probably still going to die,
Speaker 4: and if they're going to find this journal and they're
Speaker 4: going to be like Jesus Christ, this guy can't spell
Speaker 4: for shit and his handwriting is terrible. Like that's what
Speaker 4: I was thinking, is that when I die, and this
Speaker 4: will be the only record of my last few months
Speaker 4: and people are going to make fun of me instead
Speaker 4: of you know, that's just how sick we are in
Speaker 4: the mind and how self absorbed, and you know we
Speaker 4: can be. But that really did. It kicked off the
Speaker 4: first day of the rest of our life. And every
Speaker 4: day for years after that, several times a day we
Speaker 4: just went for a walk. So every morning was walking
Speaker 4: in the mountains with those dogs, tried to put one
Speaker 4: foot in front of the other towards wellness and whatever
Speaker 4: happened on the road right And through just that simple
Speaker 4: process of focusing on those rescue dogs and that walk,
Speaker 4: it started to give me. One was very important was
Speaker 4: the concept of divinity in a relationship with God. I
Speaker 4: started to recognize my surroundings. I started to see God
Speaker 4: in my dogs and started to feel God in myself.
Speaker 4: I started to see it in the mountains, and then
Speaker 4: the people I interacted with. It was all around me.
Speaker 4: It was all around me. This loving and this unconditional
Speaker 4: loving energy that I always pushed away as atheists was
Speaker 4: around me everywhere. And another really cool thing about recovery
Speaker 4: is that you get you get to create and adapt
Speaker 4: and your own idea of what God means to you.
Speaker 4: I was so uplifting and fulfilling and exciting to me
Speaker 4: and even creative about recovery is that you get to
Speaker 4: come up with and manifest a God of your understanding,
Speaker 4: no one else's, it's mine. It's my understanding. You don't
Speaker 4: have to ascribe to it. But you know, my God
Speaker 4: gets to consist of a whole lot of ideas essences
Speaker 4: that aren't associated with conventional really and dogma, you know.
Speaker 4: And I really really appreciated that about recovery. But just
Speaker 4: that process of working with my dogs led to more
Speaker 4: working with dogs, led to bringing in foster dogs into
Speaker 4: my pack. I've been working with the Humane Society a
Speaker 4: couple of local organizations before I got sick. I started
Speaker 4: to volunteer with them again. I started to totally dedicate
Speaker 4: my life to these animals. So while I'm in recovery,
Speaker 4: it's very interesting. What dogs need in rehabilitation is exactly
Speaker 4: what people need in recovery. Dogs need exercise, discipline, affection, rules, boundaries, limitations. Right,
Speaker 4: those are the prayers we need to set up for
Speaker 4: a dog's rehabilitation. A human being likewise needs all those
Speaker 4: same things in order to re establish and reboot their
Speaker 4: life and refocus it on healthy living and sobriety and
Speaker 4: the principles of the program. And so that it just
Speaker 4: started to naturally happen. As I rehabilitated, the dogs started
Speaker 4: to rehabilitate, and I also got to get create native
Speaker 4: for the first time. This is really neat. I got
Speaker 4: to write their stories, I got to tick their pictures.
Speaker 4: So all of a sudden, I got this purpose. All
Speaker 4: of a sudden, all my purpose has been has been
Speaker 4: hoarding alcohol and drugs and ingesting it as much as possible.
Speaker 4: It's been my central preoccupation for as long as I
Speaker 4: can imagine. Drugs and alcohol were my God. They were
Speaker 4: my everything, right, they were my purpose. They were my
Speaker 4: reason to wake up in the morning. They were central
Speaker 4: to every part of my existence, and that got replaced
Speaker 4: by dogs, that got replaced by rehabilitating dogs and rescue work.
Speaker 4: And holy shit, was that transformative? You know, because you'll
Speaker 4: never recover unless you find a purpose. You can't. Recovery
Speaker 4: is so fickle unless you have something to hang your
Speaker 4: hat on, unless you have a purpose to plug yourself into.
Speaker 4: And then it becomes different. You know, it really becomes
Speaker 4: different once you found service, Darren.
Speaker 2: I got to say, Man, I'm loving how you've really
Speaker 2: made yourself at home in the big city. I'm curious,
Speaker 2: how are you getting around? You a subway guy, cab uber.
Speaker 5: I'm glad you're asked, Donnie Man, I'm a got the
Speaker 5: honor to partner with All American Forward over in New Jersey.
Speaker 5: They've been taking really good care of me since I
Speaker 5: got out here, and that's why I love the most
Speaker 5: about it. Man. They treat me like I'm family, not
Speaker 5: just a customer trying to get a deal or just
Speaker 5: a statistic. You know, they give me great service. You
Speaker 5: could tell they got to commitment to quality. The innovation
Speaker 5: is unmatched, and just so if anybody's you know, like me,
Speaker 5: trying to get around in New Jersey, don't know where
Speaker 5: to go. I'm telling you go check out All American
Speaker 5: Forward here in Jersey. They're gonna take real good care
Speaker 5: of you.
Speaker 2: When we come back, you'll hear more of this inspiring
Speaker 2: comeback story.
Speaker 5: Wow, man, I can't you know, get the image of
Speaker 5: when you were talking about the dogs looking at you
Speaker 5: as you were like in the bathroom and seeing the
Speaker 5: good in you? What was you know, as you started
Speaker 5: to go on the walks and you started to find
Speaker 5: purpose and you started to things started to change, Like,
Speaker 5: what was some of that good that you started to
Speaker 5: see in yourself that was always there that just had
Speaker 5: to kind of be you know, dug up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it was really interesting. So what happened was,
Speaker 4: you know, all along, I'm trying to get six months
Speaker 4: of sobriety just to get this slipper transplant. But I'm
Speaker 4: now out and about in my community. I was very
Speaker 4: terrified to get out into public. I couldn't have done
Speaker 4: it on my own, but I had my dogs with me,
Speaker 4: So I start venturing out into public. I start putting
Speaker 4: up all these adoption posters for advertisement all over town.
Speaker 4: So people start to notice this yellow, sick guy with
Speaker 4: a black pit bull that is schlepping all over town
Speaker 4: talking to everybody, and I looked very significant, I looked
Speaker 4: very ill. So people took a big notice of me,
Speaker 4: and I started to see the positive. You know, I
Speaker 4: started to feel myself moved through the world with a
Speaker 4: positive frequency, with an energy and a vibe that people
Speaker 4: were recepted to. I never had a sober No one
Speaker 4: moved towards me like receptive to my positive energy when
Speaker 4: I was drinking, or maybe they did it. They were
Speaker 4: drinking and I was drinking. You were using drugs together.
Speaker 4: But people on the streets never felt my positivity. People
Speaker 4: on the streets didn't absorb the positive streak I was
Speaker 4: trying to leave back. So what animals did for me
Speaker 4: is help me leave a positive streak wherever I went.
Speaker 4: Wherever I went, I left a positive streak, and the
Speaker 4: people that walked through that streak, they could pick up
Speaker 4: that energy and take it with them wherever they went.
Speaker 4: So I started to notice this concrete, this wonderful interaction
Speaker 4: that we'd have with virtually everybody we came in contact with,
Speaker 4: because I would always have at least one dog with me,
Speaker 4: and that would facilitate and you know, if anything in
Speaker 4: the early days, it was very very concerned being in public.
Speaker 4: It was very hard for me. I had tremendous social anxiety,
Speaker 4: and so to not only get used to that and
Speaker 4: address that social anxiety, but to push through it and
Speaker 4: recognize yourself as an asset, as a societal asset, and
Speaker 4: start thinking of yourself as having this really wonderful frequency
Speaker 4: to share with the wold. I started to get excited
Speaker 4: to leave. I started to get excited to go out
Speaker 4: in public. That was considering how I looked, that would
Speaker 4: have been unthinkable. But I was in my sobriety, in
Speaker 4: this new uh, this new vibe I was able to inherit,
Speaker 4: you know, had the ability to positively affect anybody I
Speaker 4: came in contact with. And that was just critically important.
Speaker 4: And that really gave me this like catalyzed me to
Speaker 4: keep going and to just keep trying to figure out
Speaker 4: who this new person is. Who is this purser of
Speaker 4: service Zach scout, you know, who is this? Who is this?
Speaker 4: Am I a dog rescueer? I got to also pick
Speaker 4: I got to find several things that presented themselves as
Speaker 4: places to put my energy, you know, animal rescue being one,
Speaker 4: and then and then people rescue being another. So by
Speaker 4: the time I finally got six months of sobriety, by
Speaker 4: the time I finally qualified for a liver transplant, I
Speaker 4: no longer needed a liver transplant. All of this walking
Speaker 4: in the in the mountains every single day, all of
Speaker 4: this work. By throwing myself into the work I was doing,
Speaker 4: I was able to really change everything about my life.
Speaker 4: I changed when I put my body, everything I ate,
Speaker 4: everything I put in my body. I changed all of
Speaker 4: my habits before you know it, through this process of
Speaker 4: rehabilitating my dogs, of just walking these dogs in the
Speaker 4: mountains and trying to get them adoptable, trying to teach
Speaker 4: them rules, boundary structure, exercise, all those things I had
Speaker 4: taught myself. And so I'm rehabilitating these rescue dogs while
Speaker 4: rehabilitating myself in my body. The resiliency of the body
Speaker 4: is remarkable. I was twenty eight years old when I
Speaker 4: got sick. I was twenty nine when I got all
Speaker 4: the hospital, and my body bounced back to a degree,
Speaker 4: which is incredibly surprising and really miraculous. So yeah, by
Speaker 4: the time I got my six months sober and qualified
Speaker 4: for that transplant, I no longer needed one. Now I'm
Speaker 4: still enrolled in the comprehensive transplant program. I'm your a
Speaker 4: patients for life. Once you are end to stage and
Speaker 4: when you're in liver failure, it's not even called like
Speaker 4: stage four or five, they call it e n D
Speaker 4: end to stage liver disease because you get a liver
Speaker 4: transplant or you die. That is, those are your outcomes.
Speaker 4: So for my outcome, for my liver to have actually
Speaker 4: healed itself and regressed from stage four sorosis was completely miraculous,
Speaker 4: and I'll never forget that meeting at six months where
Speaker 4: trans said my doctor said that, look, man, I don't
Speaker 4: know what you're doing up there in the mountains, but
Speaker 4: keep doing it. You know, you need to keep doing it.
Speaker 4: Keep doing it because there's a chance your body will
Speaker 4: be resilient enough for you to continue and not need
Speaker 4: a liver transplant. So here we are now, fourteen years later,
Speaker 4: almost fifteen years later, after I got out of the hospital,
Speaker 4: and I still have my same liver, but actually regressed
Speaker 4: to what's called stage three five process, so I don't
Speaker 4: even have sorosis anymore, which is again it's completely miraculous.
Speaker 4: Part of a couple of studies at cedars On a
Speaker 4: medical center for those who have who have come back
Speaker 4: from end stage failure without a liver transplant. So I'm
Speaker 4: involved in trying to help give some insight and some
Speaker 4: guidance to those who are suffering with this disease and
Speaker 4: need some hope, and hopefully some they'll come up with
Speaker 4: some answers within that program. But yeah, it's even just
Speaker 4: talking to you guys about it this far on, it's
Speaker 4: really remarkable to recount. It's really been almost feels like
Speaker 4: it happened to somebody else.
Speaker 2: As I heard you explain, I could hear the and
Speaker 2: feel the emotion come up when you were talking about
Speaker 2: your dad, and I couldn't help but get emotional also
Speaker 2: just thinking about my dad and how he would do
Speaker 2: anything like you know, it's almost like it was part
Speaker 2: of his purpose where he would really felt like he
Speaker 2: was in his purpose trying to help me, you know,
Speaker 2: do anything he could to get me out of this disease.
Speaker 2: And so that was a big piece I wanted to
Speaker 2: circle back to. And then also that you know, I
Speaker 2: remember my rock bottom. I mean the image that I
Speaker 2: have of myself lying on a couch in Cincinnati, Ohio
Speaker 2: completely isolated, not wanting to be around anybody, nobody wanting
Speaker 2: to be around me. And my dog would come up
Speaker 2: with She was a rescue boxer named Roxy, and she
Speaker 2: would come up with a with a ball in her
Speaker 2: mouth and she would I would I couldn't even get
Speaker 2: off my couch and she would sit there and nudge
Speaker 2: me with the ball and then eventually give up. I
Speaker 2: can remember her licking the tears off of my face
Speaker 2: and I couldn't even step foot outside to go throw
Speaker 2: the ball with her. And that unconditional love. And she
Speaker 2: lived till about thirteen. She passed away about five years ago,
Speaker 2: but super emotional for me because she saw both sides
Speaker 2: of me and that unconditional love. Man, I mean, we
Speaker 2: can learn, we can learn a lot from our dogs.
Speaker 2: As you're explaining, I'd like to know now, like, how then,
Speaker 2: how do you get into working with incarcerated people.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So the way we got into the Positive into
Speaker 4: creating the Positive Change program was I had a dog
Speaker 4: that I was fostering that had been shot as a
Speaker 4: pitbull mix, and we paired that with a gentleman who
Speaker 4: had just been released from prison. He had been incarcerated
Speaker 4: since he was thirty since he was seventeen for thirteen years,
Speaker 4: and we paired him with that dog, and it fundamentally
Speaker 4: changed the entire trajectory of his life. He was kind
Speaker 4: of a a lot of people when they get released
Speaker 4: from prison are somewhat feral to the cultural standards that
Speaker 4: we kind of abide by. They have been living in
Speaker 4: a very different system for a very long time, so
Speaker 4: trying to for him to reinterer society was very challenging.
Speaker 4: But once we got him that dog. For the same
Speaker 4: reasons that it is for us in recovery, right, you're
Speaker 4: nervous about getting out of the world, you're nervousing, you
Speaker 4: know you're going to be sizing up a dude or
Speaker 4: feeling like you're being sized up. He's going to not
Speaker 4: understand how to interact potentially with people of the opposite sex.
Speaker 4: So he hasn't really interacted with properly in decades, right,
Speaker 4: So there's all these things that make it different, difficult
Speaker 4: to assimilate. And we adopted him that dog, and it
Speaker 4: just changed everything. He started to give his testimonial with me.
Speaker 4: He started to share at the mission at Kerrent County
Speaker 4: where my mom was getting sober at the time, and
Speaker 4: he became one of our employees. He then got hired
Speaker 4: to work as a shelter manager for another organization at Oklahoma.
Speaker 4: So it's just this simple dog adoption with this individual
Speaker 4: created this positive trajectory that is still beneficial today. He
Speaker 4: has his own dog riscue organization up in Linke, Isabella
Speaker 4: and it's called Strength the Shadow, and it's a big deal,
Speaker 4: you know. So that I saw it, had a kind
Speaker 4: of an Aha moment there, and I started researching dog
Speaker 4: programs and I thought out how incredibly difficult it is
Speaker 4: to get in the prison system. So spent four years
Speaker 4: trying to find a way and just trying to shoehorn
Speaker 4: my way in write emails, and nobody was having it
Speaker 4: until finally, January of twenty sixteen, Warden David Long at
Speaker 4: California City Correctional Facility took a chance on us and
Speaker 4: he piloted our program at their prison, and the rest
Speaker 4: is sort of history. We started off that program somewhat slow,
Speaker 4: and then we quickly went to thirty students, ten dogs
Speaker 4: at a time. So it's a fourteen week long program,
Speaker 4: three months of which the dogs these are dogs straight
Speaker 4: from the shelter, almost all ethan asilist young large dogs.
Speaker 4: So young large dogs are the most youuthanized. They have
Speaker 4: the smallest chance of being adopted because their adoption liabilities.
Speaker 4: They don't have the skills to be adopted, right, So
Speaker 4: we rehabilitate those dogs in that prison setup. They work
Speaker 4: on their canaan Good Citizen certification and with that certification
Speaker 4: graduate and then they can roll again in that program.
Speaker 4: So Positive Change really took the blessing and the acceptance
Speaker 4: of a warden who is down and an administrative staff
Speaker 4: who's down as well. And then truly are our staff
Speaker 4: the trainers that we had running that program. Positive Change
Speaker 4: is all about the trainers, the people that give of
Speaker 4: themselves in the institution and share dog psychology and all
Speaker 4: the things that we've learned over the last fifteen years.
Speaker 4: And the program has just been it's been magical. I
Speaker 4: mean it has been. It has been my life's work,
Speaker 4: to say the least. Like I feel so lucky to
Speaker 4: be involved in Positive Change work, to get to go
Speaker 4: into prisons all over the state of California, juvenile facilities,
Speaker 4: female federal prisons and really do the Lord's work, like
Speaker 4: do God's work. It's we're now in six facilities. We
Speaker 4: have three men's state prison programs, we have a women's
Speaker 4: federal prison program, and we have two juvenile programs, both
Speaker 4: the boys and the girls, one in Los Angeles at
Speaker 4: Camp Kilpatrick, which is actually taught by two of our
Speaker 4: formerly incarcerated trainers. And over in that time, in the
Speaker 4: seven and a half almost eight years we've been going,
Speaker 4: we've rehabilitated, We've graduated more than a thousand students and
Speaker 4: I think it's six hundred plus dogs, so a tremendous
Speaker 4: amount of lives have been saved. And with that program,
Speaker 4: we've been able to facilitate professional careers for twenty six
Speaker 4: formally incarcerated dog trainers. So we have twenty six of
Speaker 4: our former students. Many of them, if not most of them,
Speaker 4: are you know, black and brown, former gang members who
Speaker 4: have now entered the pet industry, which is one hundred
Speaker 4: billion dollar recession proof industry, to have tremendous opportunity as
Speaker 4: kennel technicians, trainers, behaviorists, pet walkers, daycare and facilitators. There
Speaker 4: is so much opportunity within this industry and it just
Speaker 4: fills me up with a tremendous amount of joy and
Speaker 4: pride to be able to showcase the potential that our
Speaker 4: students have to make a difference in the world. And
Speaker 4: to know that several dozen of our dudes are out
Speaker 4: there making it work and making a difference and contributing
Speaker 4: to not only our society and culture, but their own
Speaker 4: more particular societies and cultures where they come from, is
Speaker 4: just the best thing in the world.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 5: I think you're painting an incredible picture of a blueprint
Speaker 5: for purpose for so many people, especially people that are
Speaker 5: listening because you, as young Zach, as you described earlier,
Speaker 5: just trying to feel safe, trying to figure out what
Speaker 5: life was all about through consuming like drugs and alcohol,
Speaker 5: consuming everything, when really all it took was finding something
Speaker 5: to contribute to finding something to give to the world
Speaker 5: is what ultimately filled you up. And just how ass
Speaker 5: backwards our world and our culture has those things as
Speaker 5: far as what life really means men, And I just
Speaker 5: think it's amazing, and I want to know now, like
Speaker 5: now that you have such an incredible purpose in your life, like,
Speaker 5: how do you balance that what's still taking care of
Speaker 5: yourself and not allowing that area of your life to
Speaker 5: maybe slack or drift.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good one, man, it's it's it's very
Speaker 4: The self care element of service is tough, right, because
Speaker 4: that tends to happen. We go from throttled just to
Speaker 4: addiction and alcoholism or whatever else, to them throttling ourself
Speaker 4: in service, right, you know, and before you know it,
Speaker 4: you're you've aged yourself twenty years and three years and
Speaker 4: all the rest of it because you're you know, you're
Speaker 4: you're going at an unsustainable rate. That's a very good question.
Speaker 4: And I don't know that I do the greatest job
Speaker 4: balancing my self care with you know, all that I
Speaker 4: have happening around me. I will tell you that one
Speaker 4: of one of the variables I use for self care
Speaker 4: in my life is literally sitting next to you, connecting
Speaker 4: myself with with people like Dontie and communities like Donnie
Speaker 4: has has created of like minded people that you feel
Speaker 4: accepted by without any effort has done the world for me.
Speaker 4: Just having that group of people that you feel radical
Speaker 4: acceptance with is so so important in terms of my
Speaker 4: spiritual wellness, in terms of feeling okay with me. My
Speaker 4: recovery community, you know, the Donnie's community, and other you know,
Speaker 4: and even my prison graduate community. The thing that works
Speaker 4: best for me in terms of my mental health is
Speaker 4: staying close to those people. Staying close to people no
Speaker 4: love me and appreciate me for the right reasons, so
Speaker 4: I have no alteriar motives and who can always remind
Speaker 4: me of the worth that I have, you know, if
Speaker 4: I need it, because I have that lingering worthlessness that
Speaker 4: is just always like always beneath the surface, just waiting
Speaker 4: to breach, you know, with vengeance. And I think the
Speaker 4: other thing is are kind of the basic, man, the
Speaker 4: things that we all know what we have to do
Speaker 4: to keep ourselves well, we really do. It doesn't take
Speaker 4: reading the Daily Stoic or going through seventeen different you know,
Speaker 4: Instagram posts to understand how to take care of yourself.
Speaker 4: For me, it's about prayer, meditation, and exercise. If I'm
Speaker 4: doing those things, if I'm meditating and praying and exercising daily,
Speaker 4: I'm okay. You know, I'm okay. And then obviously I
Speaker 4: have the whole new component with my kids. That's a
Speaker 4: big for me. Rooting into my kids. Man, the best
Speaker 4: thing I can do for self, the best thing I
Speaker 4: can do for me and the people around me, is
Speaker 4: are root into my kids. Because every every second of
Speaker 4: time I spend with them is money in the bank.
Speaker 4: And because it constantly reminds me to be childlike, It
Speaker 4: constantly reminds me to have wonder and to be on
Speaker 4: inspiring and to be and to be buffoonical, like to
Speaker 4: just be a dipshit sometimes, to just like have a
Speaker 4: care free attitude and to be playful. You know, we
Speaker 4: forget how to be playful man. So I would say
Speaker 4: one of the best things for my spiritual state and
Speaker 4: my spiritual sort of easiness is really rooting into my
Speaker 4: kids and not just taking care of them or setting
Speaker 4: guy or this that idea, but really getting involved in
Speaker 4: how they you know what I mean, no doubt.
Speaker 2: I'll never forget the story you told me about a
Speaker 2: prisoner who hadn't seen a dog in forty two years,
Speaker 2: and I I'm just curious, and you can tell the
Speaker 2: story or maybe just share, like what do you see,
Speaker 2: what are you observing? What are you getting to witness
Speaker 2: in those moments when because you know, I don't, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't even think about that, and to be able to witness,
Speaker 2: you know, a human being that has been locked away
Speaker 2: since they were a teenager for a dumb decision that
Speaker 2: they made when they didn't know better, hasn't seen a dog.
Speaker 3: What do you get to see?
Speaker 4: Wow, it's when I get to see When I bring
Speaker 4: dogs into prison is one of the greatest instantaneous transformations
Speaker 4: you can view. I get to see hardened incarcerated individuals
Speaker 4: who've been locked behind concrete walls for decades. I get
Speaker 4: to see them return to being unconditioned. We loved children.
Speaker 4: And that is so powerful to get to witness because
Speaker 4: you walk in on that yard and oftentimes I come
Speaker 4: to our program on an off day, so I'm just
Speaker 4: coming on with a couple of dogs, my two personal dogs,
Speaker 4: to go check in on everybody. So I'll come in
Speaker 4: on a Friday when we don't have program just to
Speaker 4: be like, what up everybody? You know, surprise them, And
Speaker 4: I'll always walk around the yard. I'll always take my
Speaker 4: time and walk around the yard and go to other
Speaker 4: housing units where they don't have programs, just so that
Speaker 4: guys can come mess with the dogs. And what happens
Speaker 4: when you see an these individual That individual in particular,
Speaker 4: he had just gotten moved. So this gentleman had just
Speaker 4: gotten moved to see yard at the Hatchbee and he'd
Speaker 4: been incarcerated for forty two years or forty five years.
Speaker 4: He hadn't seen a dog in forty two years. And
Speaker 4: to watch this stone cold expression on his face of
Speaker 4: and he had facial tattoos. Everything about him was stay back.
Speaker 4: Everything about him was fear me, stay back, stay away
Speaker 4: from me, and I'm definitely not going to let you in.
Speaker 4: And then as soon as you greet them, I always
Speaker 4: greet them with hugs. And I would always say and hug.
Speaker 4: It's not really with prison policy, but for me, my
Speaker 4: job in there is to love them. My job is
Speaker 4: to go in there with bright energy, with that positive
Speaker 4: streak just trailing behind me, and be as positive as
Speaker 4: I can. When I walk up to an inmate who
Speaker 4: hasn't seen a dog in decades and they get down
Speaker 4: on a knee with Beto or with Cora, they change instantaneously.
Speaker 4: They go from an individual in tremendous, unfathomable pain and
Speaker 4: helplessness to a child who feels unconditionally loved. And you
Speaker 4: see this just ear to ear, grim come on their face.
Speaker 4: And they will oftentimes be guys in different races, you know,
Speaker 4: rival prison gangs who are petting these dogs all together,
Speaker 4: kind of looking at each other noticing one another going whatever,
Speaker 4: let's just keep going. And so it really brings everybody
Speaker 4: together in the most magical ways. And I think it
Speaker 4: helps these guys feel loved, helps them feel accepted, and
Speaker 4: helps them plug into like a hope and a childishness,
Speaker 4: a positive childishness that they haven't felt, you know, a
Speaker 4: kid like way about them that they haven't plugged into
Speaker 4: it a very long time, you know, because everything about
Speaker 4: being a kid is potential. When you're a kid, everything
Speaker 4: is possible. Everything is possible, you know. And the other
Speaker 4: thing that happens when you bring dogs into prison is
Speaker 4: they feel one step closer to home. Nothing in that
Speaker 4: place feels like home. Nothing there feels like home. But
Speaker 4: when you bring dogs in, they all have this idea,
Speaker 4: oh shit, we're a little closer to home. This is
Speaker 4: a really good sign. We're doing good. We're one step
Speaker 4: closer to home. And I think prison is about rehabilitation.
Speaker 4: It shouldn't be about we know, the punitive model doesn't work.
Speaker 4: This is scientifically. We don't need to have long drawn
Speaker 4: out conversations about this. The punitive model of incarceration doesn't work.
Speaker 4: And locking dudes, all locking human beings in inorganic concrete
Speaker 4: cells and incubating them in a culture of negativity for
Speaker 4: decades and then spitting them out the other end and
Speaker 4: just throwing them into society to then reoffend and end
Speaker 4: up back in prison is an absolutely terrible illogical system.
Speaker 4: What we need to be doing is is is infiltrating
Speaker 4: those those prisons with positive energy and that those programs
Speaker 4: that positive energy has to come from without It does
Speaker 4: not come from within the prison system. They don't have
Speaker 4: their own indigenous prison programs. NGOs, nonprofit organizations have to
Speaker 4: develop these mechanisms and then bring them into the usually
Speaker 4: a great cost to themselves, and bring them into the
Speaker 4: prison system. And when we do, you know, because you
Speaker 4: can't rehabilitate until you get a person to a state.
Speaker 4: Rehabilitation doesn't start until they start to love themselves, have
Speaker 4: some sort of acceptance for themselves. It's very hard to
Speaker 4: fight against someone when they're dealing with rampant fear and
Speaker 4: a bunch of things that they're fundamentally hung up on.
Speaker 4: But when you when you inject dogs into the system,
Speaker 4: when you inject canine rehabilitation into their day to day,
Speaker 4: it kind of puts you on this track of wellness
Speaker 4: of improving yourself, you're also of service. So every day
Speaker 4: at six o'clock, when those cells pop, your response, You've
Speaker 4: got to go get your ass up, Go to that crate,
Speaker 4: let that dog out, go evacuate, feedom, get them them
Speaker 4: the CA. I'll get them walked before you go to chow,
Speaker 4: and then you have to work with your teammate on
Speaker 4: how that dog is going to be enriched for fourteen
Speaker 4: hours that day while the hum drum of the prison
Speaker 4: is going on all around you. So there's a you know,
Speaker 4: with programs like positive Change, and by by infusing a
Speaker 4: certain level of acceptance and love and hope into the
Speaker 4: that kind of a system, then real change starts to
Speaker 4: happen because guys start to think there's a way up
Speaker 4: and there's a way out. And I what I One
Speaker 4: of the reasons why I see the prison system fail
Speaker 4: to the degree that it does is because there is
Speaker 4: no hope. And when you have that many dudes, you
Speaker 4: have that many l wops, you know, that many life
Speaker 4: without parole individuals, it brings the entire frequency of that
Speaker 4: place too hopeless, and you have to inject hope in
Speaker 4: order to be successful and facilitate rehabilitation.
Speaker 5: And man, it was you and bn only have you
Speaker 5: helped to inject hope into those environments, but you've definitely
Speaker 5: helped inject hope and the people that are listening, because yeah,
Speaker 5: I feel like you put them eyes everything that comeback
Speaker 5: stories is and that's having an opportunity to rewrite your
Speaker 5: story and starting from wherever it is that you are,
Speaker 5: no matter how low it may be, there is an
Speaker 5: opportunity for you not only to get your life back,
Speaker 5: but to and the makings of giving somebody else theirs
Speaker 5: back to man. So I just want to say thank
Speaker 5: you to spit it hon her.
Speaker 4: Thank you brother. And that's what it is like what
Speaker 4: you guys have done. You've made getting You guys have
Speaker 4: made recovery cool. We got to make recovery cool again.
Speaker 4: Fact you know what I mean? That out that it
Speaker 4: ever wasn't But when you guys get out there and
Speaker 4: lead with your stories and show what's possible. Because man,
Speaker 4: let me think about it. When you guys we were
Speaker 4: back in your addictions, it was unfathomable for me to
Speaker 4: think about getting sober. It was just an impossibility for
Speaker 4: me to merit it on. But then if I see,
Speaker 4: if I see you out there getting after it. Then
Speaker 4: I got some hope, and then I got I have
Speaker 4: a you know, a couple of people I can emulate
Speaker 4: and seek to, you know, seek to take a page
Speaker 4: out of your books. Yeah, one of What a crazy
Speaker 4: right it's been, man, I'm extremely proud of you guys.
Speaker 4: I'm very proud to be on the show with you guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, zach Man, it's been an honor. I mean, I
Speaker 2: hear about your story and there's so many facets of
Speaker 2: coming back, like your own comeback story and the dogs
Speaker 2: and the prisoners, and it's like it's just really calling
Speaker 2: me to step up my game when it comes to service.
Speaker 2: I know I talk about it and have my own
Speaker 2: ways of being of service, but it's like, man, I
Speaker 2: doing shit compared to this guy. So thank you for
Speaker 2: trying me, and thank you for showing up and sharing
Speaker 2: your story. Man, I know a lot of people are
Speaker 2: going to be inspired by your story. So where can
Speaker 2: people find you? Where can they track you down? Where
Speaker 2: can they donate?
Speaker 4: In terms of following the program, you guys can find
Speaker 4: all about our organization at Marlesmonts dot org. You can
Speaker 4: find us on social media at Marley's Mott's at Positive
Speaker 4: Change Program. That's pa w s I t IB and
Speaker 4: you can find me at zach Scout's the Ahskow and yeah,
Speaker 4: Marley's Monscout organ Is that the main place for all
Speaker 4: of our information into darnate and we get involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your your Instagram is you know, it's one of
Speaker 2: the accounts that I enjoy following the most, not just
Speaker 2: because I know you personally, just because of the content
Speaker 2: and what you're putting out there. So man, thank you again.
Speaker 2: We might have to go back for round two of
Speaker 2: this with this went pretty deep and yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: been it's been an honor to chop it up with you.
Speaker 4: My man. Yeah, YouTube brother, and a big shout out
Speaker 4: as we touched on to my dad for helping me
Speaker 4: be here, for having NB the integral variable to my
Speaker 4: comeback story. And here's to dad, so don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, everybody, we're out.
Speaker 1: Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
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