#178 Ben Owen - Inside the Life of an Addict

Ben Owen is an Army Infantry veteran, a father to eight children, graduate of the University of Alabama, and American Patriot. From startups to Fortune 500 companies, Ben has excelled in leadership, strategy, raising brand awareness and sales. He is the President of digital media and data intel company Black Rifle Co, co-founder of We Fight Monsters, and CEO of Flanders Fields, where his mission is to stand up as many Flanders owned clean living facilities as possible to get veterans clean and off the streets through volunteer missions in the United States and around the world. As a previously homeless and addicted veteran, Ben has seen some of the worst the world has to offer. In this episode, he shares his story of rising above the extraordinary hardships he’s faced in order to bring hope and help to as many people as he can. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner https://amac.us/srs https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://americanfinancing.net/srs | 866-781-8900 | NMLS 182334, www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org https://hillsdale.edu/srs https://patriotmobile.com/srs | 972-PATRIOT This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. https://helixsleep.com/srs https://rocketmoney.com/srs https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/SRS https://blackbuffalo.com Ben Owen Links: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/therealbenowen/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/therealbenowen Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/p/Ben-Owen-100077606762984/ Black Rifle Co - https://www.blackrifle.company/ Flanders Fields - https://flandersfields.org/ We Fight Monsters - https://wefightmonsters.org/ Once American - https://onceamerican.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Mr. President? My company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 0:40Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 0:43Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 0:46Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:53Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 0:59Shawn Ryan?

  I know my team's getting ready to go down there and do her that with you.

• 1:04Speaker 06

  Yeah. I'm gonna take them to 1428 Wilwood Street. The house that used to be full of bullet holes. There's a woman and her three children living in that house that just celebrated Christmas. The women that used to sell dope out of that house, I've got them housed in another old trap house around the corner.

• 1:20Speaker 07

  So I was nearing rock bottom and stole a bunch of dope from Christian. Do you remember that? Yeah, and I want to kid you good day. You know, when the doctors told me that I was dying, and I was really relieved because I was sick of living like that. You know, I was, really couldn't be more stoked about it. I mean, I didn't want to die a junkie, but that's kind of where life had brought me.

• 1:41Speaker 08

  This is where we housed the females who were selling their bodies. Those who would not submit, they got dealt with harshly. Very harshly.

• 1:51Speaker 09

  I started using when I was 12 years old. I mean, life just started getting worse after that. Constantly in and out of jail. Getting beat on, the misbalance. So.

• 2:32Shawn Ryan?

  Ben Owen.

• 2:33Speaker 06

  Shawn Ryan.

• 2:34Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome to the show, man.

• 2:35Speaker 06

  Thank you, sir.

• 2:36Shawn Ryan?

  I've been really looking forward to this one.

• 2:38Speaker 06

  I have too. It's an absolute honor to be here.

• 2:41Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, thank you. Well, it's an honor to have you. And I love your hat.

• 2:46Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 2:46Shawn Ryan?

  444 is my number.

• 2:48Speaker 06

  Is it?

• 2:49Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:49Speaker 06

  So, explain that to me. I've heard 444 is an angel number, and I don't know why.

• 2:54Shawn Ryan?

  It is. So...

• 2:58Shawn Ryan?

  Long story. But about, I think it's been about two years now. Uh... Had, basically had God slap me in the face in Sedona. And I won't get into it because we'll be here all day. But, um... Like, no shit. He just, like, showed up three times, back to back to back in my life. And then I came home, and I was telling, I had called this guy Eddie Penny, who's a friend of mine. We worked together in the SEAL Teams very early on. And then we reconnected through the show. And when he came on,

• 3:43Shawn Ryan?

  it's like the whole dynamic of my show kind of changed. His journey to faith and how he found Christ was just, like, astounding. And sent waves, like, throughout the listenership of the show. And after he came on, it was like every person that came on the show talked about...

• 4:10Shawn Ryan?

  Jesus, or their belief in Christ, or you know what I mean, something like that. Every single one for the longest time, I think it was over a year. And, uh, you know, I started putting it together and I was like, man. And I released Eddie's episode on Christmas. And then I have my own experience in Sedona where, um, I had done psychedelics to, to, you know, get over some stuff. We can get into that later, but, but, uh, it kinda like, it didn't, psychedelics didn't like reignite my, uh, my belief in Christ or anything like that, but it made me realize there's something more out there. And so I was searching all kinds of stuff, looking at fucking crystals and you name it,

• 4:55Shawn Ryan?

  man. I was like, I was like trying to figure it out. And, um, and then Sedona happened. Like, long story short, this guy read my mind from front to back. Like read my mind. Every thought in my head, he articulated right to my face. Had never seen him before, nothing. And then two more things happened right after that. And came home, called Eddie to tell him about it. And he was talking about guardian angels and all this other stuff. And then I called, um, this IT guy that used to work for me, also a good friend and kind

• 5:36Shawn Ryan?

  of a spiritual type mentor, uh, you know, in my new journey. And those two had talked about the exact same thing back to back. They don't know each other, also about guardian angels. I thought we were talking about email blasts when I called. His, his name was Adam, is Adam, his name is Adam. And, um, and, uh, came home from lunch after that. This was like a super powerful experience for me, this whole like timeline from Sedona. And I called Eddie because I wanted, because I wanted to talk to him about what had happened. And he, he's also a mentor of mine with this stuff. Got back in my truck to go to work.

• 6:20Shawn Ryan?

  Looked at the clock, 4:44. Looked at the, you know, miles left to empty, 4:44. Four hours and 44 minutes after I had the conversation with Adam, because that call was scheduled at noon. Got to the studio, got with my head of social media, I was like, "Hey, what does 444 mean?" This just happened to me, we looked it up, it said, "Your guardian angel wants you to know that, uh, he's watching over you." And, like I said, the conversation, four hours and 44 minutes before that, was about... That's awesome. Your guardian angel knows that you're, uh, knew you before you were ever even born,

• 7:01Shawn Ryan?

  and, and all this other stuff, and, so, then I started, like, seeing that number everywhere. Like, everywhere. Hell yeah. 444 comments, 444 likes, 4:44 on the clock. It, it was just, it was just everywhere. And, now, like, I've really, through my journey, are you a Christian? Absolutely. Through my journey, um, and, my whole team's, like, really wrapped up in this, every, like, way better versed in this than, than I am. And, you know, some of the guys you met downstairs, like, Darren, I mean, he knows, he grew up

• 7:45Shawn Ryan?

  as a Jehovah's Witness, escaped all of that, but, um, knows the Bible like the back of his hand, so he's been a mentor of mine, um, my old head of production, Elijah, grew up Baptist, so, all these guys, like, who I never really, I can't say I didn't pay attention to them, but not in that aspect of, like, really, like, helped answer a lot of questions that I have, and any, anytime I read something out of the Bible, they're always there to help me. And, um, and through my journey, I've, I've really...

• 8:22Shawn Ryan?

  I've really leaned into gut instinct. And I think that's where it's at.

• 8:28Speaker 06

  That's the Holy Spirit.

• 8:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 8:29Speaker 06

  I'm convinced of that. You cannot change.

• 8:32Shawn Ryan?

  And so.

• 8:33Speaker 06

  Gut instinct is the spirit.

• 8:34Shawn Ryan?

  So now, when I'm making tough decisions, or I want to know if I'm doing the right thing with the show, or whatever it is, man, a lot of it has to do with the show, like, you know, we get, we get some pretty crazy interviews. And like, for example, the last one was, um, the last one that really kind of threw me off. And I was like, am I, like, should I be doing this? Um, I went to Romania and interviewed, uh, Colleen Georgescu about some corruption that's going on there. And I was like, man, I don't know. Like, am I doing the right thing here? My gut tells me yes, but then you get in your head and like, I'll start seeing the

• 9:16Shawn Ryan?

  numbers, man. They'll just start popping up everywhere right in front of me. And I, I don't think I know. For me, when I see that number, or sequence, you know, 222, 444, 777, whatever it is, um, I know that that's like, yeah, Sean.

• 9:37Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 9:39Shawn Ryan?

  Your gut's right.

• 9:40Speaker 06

  God winks.

• 9:40Shawn Ryan?

  I'm giving you, I'm giving you the, the confirmation that you need to press forward with this. And even then, man, I remember I did, on the way to Romania, we had a layover, I think in New York. And, um, and we had just released another super controversial interview with Sam Shoemate. And everybody's calling me, like, oh, you're a CIA asset.

• 10:05Speaker 06

  All the comments on that were hilarious.

• 10:07Shawn Ryan?

  Dude. And, uh, but I was like, man, I really, like, that email was real. We got the email, we checked. And anyways, and it turned out FBI came out and, and said,

• 10:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, the email, they said on the podcast. Uh, not, not the Sean Ryan show, but the email that's going around that was on the podcast was legitimate. And, um, that came out right, uh, right before that layover. And so I tweeted out on X, "The truth is like a lion, set it free and it'll defend itself."

• 10:49Shawn Ryan?

  Right after I sent that tweet, this woman walks around the corner and she's got this huge lion head, like this, like this, uh, sparkly lion head on her shirt. And I was just like, you can't, like, there it is, man. Like, you're on, Sean, just lean into your gut. You're on the right path. Quit with the bullshit noise outside. Get out of your head. Like, just lean into the gut instinct. And, and so anyways, now you come in here and you got a hat, ATF 444. So I know this is going to be a really good interview and, uh, very powerful. And I know it's going to change a lot of lives. So, once again,

• 11:34Shawn Ryan?

  here it is. But what is the ATF 444 to you?

• 11:38Speaker 06

  So ATF 444 was a GCPSU Afghan Special Police Unit, and we evacuated, well, we tried to evacuate some of them and failed, but we did get his brother to America. And he gave me the patch when we resettled him in Houston.

• 11:52Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's awesome.

• 11:55Speaker 06

  Yeah. So they were like the tier one trained version of cops in Afghanistan.

• 11:59Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have any more of those patches?

• 12:00Speaker 06

  The 444?

• 12:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 06

  I don't. I don't. We've been looking for some, because I've lost this hat two or three times now and flipped out about it.

• 12:11Shawn Ryan?

  And you found it?

• 12:12Speaker 06

  Found it, yeah. Uh, but I need to find some backup patches. So if I find one, I got you.

• 12:16Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'll tell you what, I don't know if you looked around in here, but it's like a museum and a lot of guests.

• 12:21Speaker 06

  I'm dumbfounded, honestly, uh... Like I thought I had a collection of some pretty cool shit.

• 12:26Shawn Ryan?

  It's all stuff from guests.

• 12:28Speaker 06

  This is amazing.

• 12:29Shawn Ryan?

  So, uh, you know, if you ever do decide to part from that, I'd be honored to frame that, put it in the studio. And, um, yeah, this is like a museum, but I'm not asking, so. And hey, what is the, we got busy down there with the photos. What's that A-10 barrel you brought?

• 12:49Speaker 06

  So, you know, I've got a nonprofit called We Fight Monsters and, uh, a guy that we did a lot of stuff in the Afghan evac with, General David Hicks. He's got something like thirty-six hundred hours in an A-10 and he gave me that barrel. It's, if I remember correctly, from his can-to-hard deployment. It's shot out, which I think that was the most violent deployment he had, so it's, it's ended some lives.

• 13:13Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 13:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:14Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 13:15Speaker 06

  So that is one of, I think, seven, they got seven barrels, right? The GAU-8?

• 13:19Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know, I'm not an A-10 pilot.

• 13:20Speaker 06

  It's from the big old cannon, so when you call in CAS, that's what is shooting.

• 13:25Shawn Ryan?

  You'll have to connect me with him.

• 13:27Speaker 06

  I will do that.

• 13:27Shawn Ryan?

  I'll interview him.

• 13:28Speaker 06

  You need to.

• 13:29Shawn Ryan?

  And then that's gonna get framed and put over the, uh, put in the new studio. We're building a new studio, so.

• 13:35Speaker 06

  Oh yeah. We brought you a humidor too. We made it.

• 13:38Shawn Ryan?

  Seriously?

• 13:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we've, it's down there in a box next to that barrel. We, we opened up a wood shop in Memphis to teach homeless vets woodworking and gang members and anybody else coming off the streets. And so they made you a humidor, uh, out of black walnut and curly maple that was grown or felled and milled in Memphis.

• 13:55Shawn Ryan?

  Man, thank you.

• 13:56Speaker 06

  It's pretty cool.

• 13:57Shawn Ryan?

  That'll look good in here too.

• 13:58Speaker 06

  Yes, it sure will.

• 13:59Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, well, Ben, we got a lot to talk about today and I'm expecting this, well, I shouldn't say I'm expecting, but I got a feeling that this is gonna be a very heavy, heartfelt interview and, uh, I'm really excited to dive in here.

• 14:15Speaker 06

  I am too.

• 14:17Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody starts with a introduction, so.

• 14:24Shawn Ryan?

  Ben Owen, you're an infantry veteran, a father of eight children, a graduate of the University of Alabama and an American patriot. From Fortune 500 companies to startups, you've excelled in leadership, strategy, raising brand awareness and sales. When you're not working your day job at Black Rifle Co., not coffee, you spend time in the North Georgia mountains with your kids. You're an experienced expert on data intelligence and digital media. You founded Flanders Fields and We Fight Monsters with your wife Jess and are dedicated to combating opiate and fentanyl addiction and sex trafficking in the mid-south.

• 15:04Shawn Ryan?

  You're a recovering addict with a tumultuous past, including drug arrests and homelessness. You've transformed your struggles into a force for good by leveraging experiences from running safe houses during the Afghanistan evacuation to establishing sober living homes in the U.S. by converting dope houses into recovery spaces. You work alongside agencies and street gangs to embody hope and recovery, turning your once perilous path into lifelines for others. You're a busy man, you're doing heavy lifting in some of the most tough neighborhoods in America, and once again, man, it really is truly an honor to have you here.

• 15:47Shawn Ryan?

  I'm really excited about this, been a long time coming, and so, let's get started. Let's do it. But, before we get to in the weeds, a couple things. Here's my gift to you. Vigilance League gummy bears, made here in the USA. They are not healthy, there's all kinds of poison and food guys and sugar and all kinds of shit you shouldn't be eating, but they do taste good. Oh, they're delicious, oh my god. We'll send you, we'll send you some more when we get restocked. And then, secondly, we have a Patreon account.

• 16:29Shawn Ryan?

  Patreon, they're our top supporters. It's a, it's a subscription account that, that um, our viewers and listeners can join. And uh, we've really built quite the community there. And, so a lot of these guys and ladies have been with me since the very beginning. And uh, like, we started this in the attic, moved to this, now we're building a studio that's three and a half times bigger than this. Congratulations. Out in the woods. Hell yeah. And um, like with all the equipment upgrades and everything that we've been able to do, I credit Patreon, cause that's, that's who has been here the whole time. And so one of the things I do is I allow them to uh, I give them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. And so this is from Eric Algar.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 18:03Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You start, you freeze to death, that's what?

• 18:07Speaker 02

  With great power, comes great deniability.

• 18:10Speaker 04

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 18:39Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd, rated R, under 17, not a middle, without parent.

• 18:56Shawn Ryan?

  Ben, your transition from Army veteran to founder of We Fight Monsters is both inspiring and profound. Many veterans struggle to find purpose after service, but you've channeled your warrior spirit into fighting one of society's darkest battles, human and narcotics trafficking. Can you take us back to the moment when you knew this was your mission? What was the turning point that made you and Jessica commit your lives to transform former drug houses into recovery homes and safe havens?

• 19:30Speaker 06

  So I think there were really two pivotal moments, and one of them actually goes back into active addiction, and we'll get into this much deeper later, but my last six months out there, I did not want that life. I had been tired of it, and I had two options. I was gonna get sober, I was gonna die, and I didn't want to die. And Jess and I used to pray a foxhole prayer multiple times a day, and it went something along the lines of, "God, get us out of hell together, and we'll come back for everybody left behind." So in 2019, he did get us out of hell together, eventually. I left first, but later that year, we were a few months sober at the time, and my best friend overdosed and died.

• 20:13Speaker 06

  And we hadn't yet been called back to Memphis to keep our end of that promise, but we did go back to Memphis to bury him. He had no family left, so we raised money, using my social media presence to cremate him and have a service. And we gave the overage, because we raised like four times what it actually cost. We gave the overage to the Shelby County Drug Court, and... Something happened in our brains at that point in time. We realized that, you know, we can use social media to get some cool stuff done. And it felt really good to be able to help people that are still out there struggling with the demon that we had escaped. And then,

• 20:53Speaker 06

  of course, as that progressed, we did get called back to Memphis to save the ones we left behind. And once we started that, dude, he mentioned purpose in the very beginning of that, and that's what it comes down to, is I found my purpose. I found my calling. I found the reason God put me on this earth. And I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that what we're doing today is what God wants me to do for the rest of my life. And so I hope that answers the question.

• 21:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Wow. Wow. Thank you. All right. So now we get into the weeds here. So I want to do a life story on you, talk about childhood all the way up to what you're doing nowadays, all the pitfalls and the dark times. I mean, that's kind of, that's my specialty here, you know, and so where did you grow up?

• 21:49Speaker 06

  Man, that's not really an easy answer that. I've lived in 14 states. I lived in three states in first grade alone. I lived in three states again in ninth grade. So I was born not far from here, actually, in Nashville. My dad was stationed at Fort Campbell. He was, I think, a first lieutenant, first to 506 back then. And I was a real high-risk pregnancy, so when mom went into labor, they rushed her down to Nashville. I was born here. But we left before I was even three months old. I think Virginia next, and then

• 22:29Speaker 06

  Fort Benning. My little brother was born there. And we lived, I think, in Phoenix City, Alabama, just across the Chattahoochee from Fort Benning. We may have lived in Columbus. And then dad left the army not too long after my little brother was born. I went to Pfizer Pharmaceuticals as a sales rep back in like...

• 22:51Shawn Ryan?

  Hold on.

• 22:53Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 22:53Shawn Ryan?

  We're moving too fast. How many brothers and sisters did you have?

• 22:57Speaker 06

  Just one.

• 22:57Shawn Ryan?

  Just one?

• 22:58Speaker 06

  One.

• 22:58Shawn Ryan?

  Are you guys close?

• 23:02Speaker 06

  We're not not close. Um, but you know, Cody has a, an awful lot of very well founded resentment towards me for everything I did and over the years, um, demanding all of my parents' attention because I was such a pain in the ass and I think I probably, and it's in a lot of ways crushed his hopes and dreams for his life. Um, now he does a great job of hiding that resentment, but it's still there, you know? So yeah, me and my brother are close. I love him. He's my little brother. But even though he lives, you know, 20 minutes up the street from me, we don't, we don't see each other like every day or anything like that.

• 23:39Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 23:40Speaker 06

  It's a lot better now that I'm clean, you know, the, the longer I've been clean, the more he believes this time is real.

• 23:46Shawn Ryan?

  How long have you been clean?

• 23:48Speaker 06

  Uh, a little over five years. Um, I've been off the streets for, we're closing on six years now. I had a couple of alcohol relapses that first year. Uh, so my actual sober date's October 4th of 2019.

• 24:03Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 24:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, not a drop alcohol, no dope, nothing.

• 24:06Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 24:09Shawn Ryan?

  I kicked booze. It'll be three years and

• 24:14Shawn Ryan?

  this Valentine's Day.

• 24:14Speaker 06

  No shit. Hell yeah, man. I'm awesome. I didn't know that about you.

• 24:17Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Yeah, I've kicked, I've kicked a lot of addictions too. Cocaine, benzos, opiates.

• 24:24Speaker 06

  I had no idea.

• 24:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:27Speaker 06

  So you get it.

• 24:28Shawn Ryan?

  Oh yeah, I get it. And then booze was the last.

• 24:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was looking, the, the relapse that ended with the rest of my story, I actually started with Dahlmore.

• 24:40Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 24:41Speaker 06

  I was a big Scotch fan. I was just an alcoholic for a long time.

• 24:45Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 24:46Speaker 06

  Until the dope entered the picture.

• 24:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, me too. Then I moved to Columbia and that's when the coke.

• 24:54Speaker 06

  God, I'd be dead.

• 24:56Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I almost did die. Couple of times.

• 24:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, me too.

• 25:00Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh.

• 25:00Speaker 06

  Cocaine was involved.

• 25:02Shawn Ryan?

  So I'm curious, I get a lot of flack about having a bar in here because we talk, we talk a lot about sobriety. You know, if you watched any of the interviews, you see that, you know, a lot of the guys that I bring on struggle with that.

• 25:15Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 25:16Shawn Ryan?

  And then kicked it and, you know, but does that bother you?

• 25:20Speaker 06

  Not in the least, dude.

• 25:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 06

  I mean, it, it, and never has really, uh, you, you, you're exposed to alcohol everywhere you go.

• 25:29Shawn Ryan?

  That's the way I feel.

• 25:30Speaker 06

  It's everywhere. And if you can't be comfortable sitting this close to your favorite single malt scotch in the world, you get a problem.

• 25:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:37Speaker 06

  You know?

• 25:38Shawn Ryan?

  I feel like it's empowering.

• 25:40Speaker 06

  I do too.

• 25:40Shawn Ryan?

  Have it sitting right there.

• 25:42Speaker 06

  Completely.

• 25:42Shawn Ryan?

  And be able to overcome it.

• 25:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 25:44Shawn Ryan?

  And, man, I know this interview isn't about me, but I got, there's just some things I want to share because I think that I'll relate to you a lot. When I kicked cocaine, I kept my last dime bag for years.

• 26:00Shawn Ryan?

  Just.

• 26:01Speaker 06

  That's next level.

• 26:02Shawn Ryan?

  To overpower it. I kept it in a drawer and I even, I mean, I even moved here with it. Like I kicked it.

• 26:10Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 26:10Shawn Ryan?

  I kicked cocaine in Florida finally. And, uh, I had, I had a bunch of bags and, but I, I kept one of them. And, uh, like I just,

• 26:25Shawn Ryan?

  it was just like,

• 26:28Shawn Ryan?

  I would look at it every day for years, like wake up, hold it, look at that dime bag of coke. And it just like, for me, it was like, I'm gonna fucking beat you today again. And when we moved, I brought it up here with me and then I eventually like, you know what I wanted to do is I wanted to frame it. And I'm serious. I wanted to frame it and put it in the studio.

• 26:56Speaker 06

  I get that. Um.

• 26:58Shawn Ryan?

  To show like, there it is. That's the last bag.

• 27:01Speaker 06

  Yeah. And I, I guess I actually can relate to that more than I thought I could when you first said it because I used to do that with heroin. Um, when I was trying to quit, I would. I would keep a little bit, knowing it's there, it's there. If this, if withdrawals get to be too much, if today gets to be too much, it's there, I can do it. The problem, of course, was that I always did it. You know, um, so I, I do get that. Yeah. Well, back to childhood. What kind of stuff were you into as a kid? Dude, I had like the most idyllic childhood ever, uh, from my perspective, uh, and outside looking in. Um, I did Boy Scouts, you know, I tried to play sports to impress my dad, but I sucked at all of them.

• 27:41Speaker 06

  Um, I was, I was really good at, at being an outdoors kid, you know, hunting, fishing, uh, land nav or orienteering, as we call it in Scouts. I did Scouts. My dad was our scout master, um, until we moved to California and Scouts got weird out there, so we stopped. But, uh, I was almost Eagle, whatever it was, Star or Life, right, illegal scout? Um, I loved anything and everything outdoors. Uh, I loved, you know, going on bike rides, mountain biking, catching animals. That was like my obsession for a long time, was, was reptiles, venomous snakes, you know, alligators, literally catching alligators like. Are you serious? Oh, hell yeah. How old were you when you were catching alligators? I think the last one I caught, I was eighteen or nineteen.

• 28:26Speaker 06

  When did it start? How young? Uh, probably eleven or twelve.

• 28:33Speaker 06

  These weren't big alligators. I mean, they're little, you know, we, uh, we lived in, uh, Jackson, Mississippi for seven years. That was the longest stretch in childhood I ever lived in one place. It was Rankin County, Mississippi, outside of Jackson, on this big lake, man-made lake called the Ross Barnett River. And it was full of alligators and water moccasins and like, it was the greatest place ever for a little boy to live, you know? And so we moved there when I was seven. How would you catch them? Net. I'd use a net and babies, you know? Like I went and do a crocodile hunter, jump on the towel. Did you ever have a mom come after you? Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. But the funny thing is, my mom would go to bat for me with the neighborhood moms. Cause I was. I mean, an alligator. Oh, no. So one time I did almost get eaten by a big old female.

• 29:16Speaker 06

  Um, they'll build these mounds of like, uh, I say I almost got eaten. Alligators aren't really that aggressive, but it scared the shit out of me. They'll build a big old mound of vegetation and they use that to incubate their eggs, I guess. Well, we found one and we were stomping through it, trying to find babies, you know? And the whole thing starts vibrating. Like, what the hell is going on? And out shoots this ten, eleven foot long, full grown alligator. Uh, it was, I guess it buried itself in this mound. We thought it was a nest. It was not a nest. It was, there was an actual giant alligator in the middle of it and we fell over, we're in the swamp and yeah, I thought I was gonna die. Holy shit. I don't know if I ever told my mom that story, but I remember my buddy Bo Goodson was with me when it happened and we thought we were dead. We thought we were dead.

• 30:01Speaker 06

  I'll bet. What, so were you, were you tight with your brother back then? Uh, we were very different, uh, as kids, you know, Cody wanted to be an actor and he wanted to play basketball. He was actually decent at sports. And I was just wanting to play outside. So yeah, we hung out all the time. I mean, we fought like big brothers and little brothers do, but nobody else is gonna fuck with my little brother, you know, I always stood up for him. So yeah, we, we were close growing up, um, until we moved to California. That's when things went sideways. How old were you when you went to California? I moved there when I was fourteen and so I was in Jackson, Mississippi from age seven to fourteen. And I mean, I'd already lived in, I don't even know how many states prior to that. So I had no stability.

• 30:41Speaker 06

  I was constantly moving, constantly being the new kid, constantly reinventing myself, you know, learning how to make new friends. And, and so I got real used to that and, and I was actually pretty good at it. Um, I still am. Um, but, uh, that seven year stretch of being in one place, like I, I built a life. And you know, that was half my life at that point I had spent there. And so when we moved from Jackson to Orange County, California, um,

• 31:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, snapped. I just lost it. Um, I've always been a anxious person, especially today.

• 31:25Speaker 06

  Like more so than than usual. I am who I am today. I'm a very anxious, stressed out person. Back then, I think is when it really came to a head. Um, I had discovered that girls are animals too. And so my obsession switched from catching reptiles to females. And I had a girlfriend that I'd been allowed to spend way too much time with, uh, for a 14 year old. Like, I don't know how I convinced my parents to let me do this. Lost my virginity and everything. And, um, when we moved, I just like, that was the end of the world to me. Uh, you know, nothing was ever gonna be the same again. It was all the, you know, listening to Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails and the world's gonna fucking end because I lost my girlfriend and she's in Mississippi and I'm in California. And I just, I went nuts, dude.

• 32:10Speaker 06

  I went completely nuts. How so? You name it. Like, I went from...

• 32:17Speaker 06

  I was a straight A student my entire life until I moved to California. Uh, not just a straight A student. I mean, I was like an absolute nerd. Um, I, uh, was writing letters back and forth with the president of Harvard from like 10 years old on forward. I wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon. Uh, I had led a clinical study at the University of Mississippi at 13 years old that ended up getting published in the Journal of Neurology. Like, I was an absolute nerd, alright? Goody two shoes, never got in trouble, didn't give my parents any problems whatsoever. Within a month of moving to California, I'm still an alcoholic, getting drunk, tried meth, tried coke, shrooms. At 14? 14, yeah.

• 32:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, I actually spent my 15th birthday locked up against my will in California. And that's, I mean, that's when things really started going downhill. So, you know, they, they caught me with weed. I don't remember how it actually happened, but...

• 33:14Speaker 06

  And I never liked weed. But it was just my way of acting out I would have it, you know, and I got caught and so they flipped out like it was, you know, heroin that I was on. Cause my parents are very, what's the word I'm looking for? Strict. Very strict, straight and narrow kind of people, you know, like never done drugs, none of that. And so they flipped the absolute hell out and, and sent me to rehab for weed when I'm 14 years old. Well, I get in there and, and they make me talk to a psychiatrist. And I realized like I can just get dope in here. Cause I wanted to change the way I

• 33:56Speaker 06

  felt. That's, that was the crux of everything. I did not like the way I felt and I wanted to do anything I could to change it. I'd been drinking extremely heavily. I'd been caught stealing alcohol. I was taking open containers of alcohol to school, to high school, ninth grade with me and teachers there wouldn't do shit. They were afraid of the students. Like it was, the students literally ran that school. So I started talking to psychiatrists at this rehab place and remember I was a nerd. I'd read the DSM, it was the DSM four back then, front to back. I don't even know many times. What's that? That's, that's the, I think it stands for diagnostics and statistics manual. It, it tells doctors how to diagnose diseases. Including mental health. Um, or particularly mental health. You read that at what age?

• 34:39Speaker 06

  I think the first time I read it, I was 12. Like whenever the DSM four came out, I was reading it. Because I wanted to impress my dad. My whole life was spent trying to become my dad or to please him or make him happy. And this is not any fault of his. Like he was not an overbearing father. I had perfect parents growing up. This is just, I'd internalized in my mind that my life only had validity if my dad was proud of me, which he always was. But, so I, I started reading the DSM four, cause he was selling to doctors as a, I think he was a regional manager with Pfizer by this point in time. And he had a tremendous level of respect for docs. And so I wanted to become a doctor. And so I'd read this thing front to back, memorized the whole damn thing. Um, I'm gonna caveat this.

• 35:21Speaker 06

  I've, I've killed a lot of brain cells since then. Okay. So like I'm not that smart anymore, but I used to be. I had near photographic memories. So anyway, I, I go to the, uh, remember I told you I got weaponized ADHD. I go, and that's, that is real. I go to the psychiatrist and I'm, I present myself as a textbook case of somebody with bipolar disorder. I'm not bipolar, but they went ahead and diagnosed me. They did diagnose the ADHD, which is real, and they put me on Ritalin. And since I had read this manual and knew the things to say, I went back and kept going back to this doc at the rehab facility. While in a drug rehab, I have gotten a doctor to prescribe me a hundred and twenty milligrams of methylphenidate a day.

• 36:04Speaker 06

  Ritalin, which is like super therapeutic, uh, like way beyond what any kid should ever be on. Needless to say, that created a lot of anxiety and paranoia and other symptoms. And so now they're treating me for those symptoms. So they've got me on Xanax, Valium. Um, I didn't even realize it back then, but I'm dependent on all of this shit. Um. And life at home had become pure hell because, you know, I'm trying to get out of this rehab and every time they let me go home, I do something crazy. Like drink a bottle of rubbing alcohol and wake up in an ER with a catheter and then don't remember shit.

• 36:41Speaker 06

  Like I don't have any idea it happened. Um, and so when I said my little brother has a lot of resentments, like that's, that's why this started and I'm taking all of my parents' attention from him. And it was his dream come true to move to Southern California because he wanted to be an actor. So he's in acting classes. My parents are having to go. Pick me up out of gutters, have the police pick me up because I've run from the rehab facility. Like it was just, uh. And it came out of nowhere. My poor parents, you know, just literally overnight this happened.

• 37:10Shawn Ryan?

  How would you get the booze?

• 37:12Speaker 06

  Stealing.

• 37:13Shawn Ryan?

  You'd steal it?

• 37:13Speaker 06

  I don't give a fuck. I'd, and, and that's like the craziest part about this is I'm not a thief. Even during my addiction, I was making the money. I was blowing on dope. But at fourteen, fifteen, I just did not care. I did not, I wanted to get in trouble. I wanted somebody to catch me.

• 37:27Shawn Ryan?

  Man, we got a lot of parallels already. I.

• 37:32Shawn Ryan?

  Same, same here. I didn't go to rehab and I didn't get into drugs, but I got into alcohol, I think seventh or eighth grade.

• 37:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, same here.

• 37:40Shawn Ryan?

  Moved around all over the place. The longest time I've ever spent somewhere, seven years.

• 37:44Speaker 06

  Oh, wow. So, yeah, you, you get all of it.

• 37:46Shawn Ryan?

  Until now, until now.

• 37:48Speaker 06

  How long you been here?

• 37:49Shawn Ryan?

  Seven years. But, um, yeah, we used to, I used to find bums and, uh, pick them up. And have them go buy the booze for me.

• 38:00Speaker 06

  I've done that.

• 38:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Real smart as a kid without a driver's license. But, um,

• 38:08Shawn Ryan?

  wow, you, you had mentioned, want to retrace a couple of things here. You had mentioned Boy Scouts got weird in California.

• 38:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:18Shawn Ryan?

  What was weird?

• 38:21Speaker 06

  My dad was always our scout master growing up, and so we moved to California. He got us back in scouts, and I've been like through, you know, little bitty tiger cub all the way up, you know, the whole thing. Dad's an Eagle Scout, ordered the arrow, Ranger qualified, you know, he's a super whoa guy. And, uh, so he puts us right back in scouts. And we get out there and we have our, our first, uh, camp out. And when we get to this place where we're camping, they round all of us up. And this is, this was like right before I went nuts. So I haven't gone nuts yet. I'm still doing the anxiety and mental health stuff, but I haven't started doing the drinking and all that. But that was like two weeks later. We get to the first camp out and they, they rounded everybody up and the, the scout master, cause dad's the assistant, cause he's the new guy,

• 39:02Speaker 06

  says something to the effect of, and remember campers, no scout masters in tents with boys and no sharing sleeping bags this time. And my dad looked at me and my brother was like, get in the fucking car. We're going home. That was the end of that.

• 39:13Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 39:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was, it was, it was, uh, very odd, very odd.

• 39:17Shawn Ryan?

  But you didn't have any, nothing happened to you?

• 39:20Speaker 06

  Oh, God, no. No, he got us the hell out of there. We never went back.

• 39:23Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 39:23Speaker 06

  Never went back.

• 39:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I was also diagnosed ADHD, Ritalin, Adderall, in fourth grade.

• 39:31Speaker 06

  Damn.

• 39:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, fourth grade.

• 39:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, Ritalin fucked me up. I really think it did like permanent damage to, that's sort of the anxiety started really bad for me was with the Ritalin. Of course, I, it's my own fault. I manipulated the doctor into giving me like three times what anybody my size should have been on, but I have a repeating pattern of doing that, manipulating circumstances and end up fucking myself in the end.

• 39:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:59Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, so it sounds like you were like a, like a prodigy.

• 40:04Speaker 06

  I was. My parents, I think honestly believed I was gonna go and cure cancer or AIDS someday. You know, um, and like that, that clinical trial that I led, the methods we came up with in that are being used to this day to diagnose things like Parkinson's and stuff.

• 40:18Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 40:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 40:19Shawn Ryan?

  And you, you did this at thirteen?

• 40:22Speaker 06

  Thirteen, fourteen, you know, with a neurologist at a University of Mississippi. I took first place in the Mississippi State Science Fair that year.

• 40:28Shawn Ryan?

  How did you get, let's go through that. How did you get in touch with the doc at Harvard?

• 40:32Speaker 06

  My dad. Oh, at Harvard. I just wrote him a letter, dude. I wrote the president of Harvard a letter when I was ten and said I wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon. He wrote me back and was like, that's awesome. It's too early to decide what kind you want to be, but keep writing me and let's stay in touch, you know? So I had an open line of comments with the president of Harvard at ten. I, I did the Duke tip thing where you take the SAT in eighth grade and scored like a thirteen eighty or fourteen hundred or something. I was, I was, I was a very smart kid.

• 41:00Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 41:01Speaker 06

  And I've definitely spit in God's face with the amount of brain cells I, I killed, but it is what it is, you know? Um, but yeah, so my parents, like I, I feel horrendous for them to this day. If I try to put myself in their shoes now as a parent and I have kids that age, I have kids much older than that already.

• 41:23Speaker 06

  I don't know how my dad kept his job. I really don't. I don't know how he stayed sane because on top of that, he's dealing with my mom's physical health. She's got a slew of autoimmune problems. Like I was just a really selfish little bastard, man. I, I, I don't understand how.

• 41:41Speaker 06

  I don't understand how they kept me. Like if, I'd have been investigating ways to give up custody of this kid to the state somehow, you know, looking back on what I put them through. Because it really did come out of nowhere. There was no lead up to this. It was just bam, Ben's insane.

• 41:55Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 41:56Speaker 06

  So I'm at this rehab place in California and, and I have.

• 42:00Shawn Ryan?

  Hold on, hold on. Let's go back.

• 42:01Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 42:01Shawn Ryan?

  I want to talk about the medical, the, the, the, the paper that you wrote.

• 42:06Speaker 06

  Oh yeah, so. Well, we had this, uh, I was reading, I don't remember, one of my dad's medical journals, uh, like Jammer, whatever it was, and read up on this, uh, phenomenon called the subcutaneous silent period. Now, I remember I've killed a lot of brain cells, and this is thirty years ago, so I don't remember all of it, but basically, it is, uh, a silent period in, in your synapse, in your nerve conduction. When you touch a painful stimuli, your nerves actually go blank for a second. To your, the signals to your muscle, telling your muscles to contract. And what that is, it's a, before your brain can even process, I'm in pain, your, your

• 42:48Speaker 06

  nerves have told your hand to let go. So if you've ever reacted to something quicker than your brain can actually process what's happening, that's basically why it happens. Well, I theorized that if this is true, that in, in instances of diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Parkinson's, or maybe Alzheimer's, anything that affects cognitive function of nerves, there might be a delay in that. And, well, we found out that was true, that there was a delay. And so that, that was, it's been, tons of research have been done since on this, like, it's a whole field, and I doubt I'm the first person that thought of it, but I definitely did my own study, and it definitely made it into the Journal of Neurology. My dad connected me with this neurologist, um, I forget what

• 43:31Speaker 06

  drugs dad was selling for Pfizer at the time, but he knew the neurologist at University of Mississippi, and this is back before the Pharma Act passed, I think, which means Pharma Act is because drug companies were essentially paying doctors to write their drugs, you know? And so this is back when you could still give docs tons of money. And so he, I'm sure there was some grant involved, he's like, help my kid do this idea. So he got me access to all these machines, electroencephalographs, and stimulus, and I don't even know what they're all called. I got to shock my mom, like, she was one of my test subjects. Uh, I had a couple of the, the neuro interns up there that were my test subjects. I mean, it was, it was really cool. Like, I, I had a great life ahead of me, and just for no reason at all, decided to piss away.

• 44:18Shawn Ryan?

  What was your parents' reaction when you got published at thirteen?

• 44:24Speaker 06

  So I didn't actually get published until I was fourteen, maybe fifteen, and I was in custody in Utah when that happened.

• 44:33Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 44:34Speaker 06

  That's how quick it happened.

• 44:36Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you find out that it got published?

• 44:38Speaker 06

  I think they sent it to me. They sent me, so there's a Netflix special out right now about these facilities in Utah. Like, that's how bad they were. Wilderness camps in Provo Mountain. I think Paris Hilton went to one of them. Of course, we didn't know back then how bad they were.

• 44:57Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean?

• 44:58Speaker 06

  They like beat the hell out of kids. The one I was at got shut down for breaking some kid's arm. There were like sexual assaults that happened at some of them.

• 45:06Shawn Ryan?

  What happened to you?

• 45:08Speaker 06

  So actually, at that one, the one in Utah, nothing. The one in California, that's not quite true. I kept running away. I didn't want to be there. I'd run away, I'd go steal some alcohol, and eventually the cops would find me. Or sometimes, one time my mom found me passed out in the middle of an intersection, very busy intersection, and ran to the son margarita. Eventually, they got tired of me running and kind of upped their game on keeping me inside. And, uh, memory's a little fuzzy on this, but somehow I ended up barricaded in a room with three female clients, and they got real pissed about that. And when they got in the room, they got me out and put me in a five-point restraint room, like

• 45:52Speaker 06

  fourteen years old, and three grown-ass men beat the shit out of me. I mean, beat the ever-loving hell out of me. And at the time, I felt like I deserved it, you know?

• 46:03Shawn Ryan?

  What'd they beat you with?

• 46:04Speaker 06

  Just open hands. Slapping the shit out of me. I don't remember any, like, objects or fists, but I mean, they beat the shit out of me. And I'm restrained. I'm in a five-point restraint, you know? I can't even lift my head. So that sucked. And it definitely gave me... So what I'm looking for here. I had some severe trauma associated with rehab, and you can see how that might play into some problems later on in my life, you know my story? The end result of that was that they shipped me off to a residential treatment facility in Utah for eighteen months.

• 46:45Speaker 00

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• 47:29Speaker 00

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• 47:31Speaker 04

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• 47:39Speaker 04

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• 47:40Speaker 00

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• 47:50Speaker 00

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• 48:24Speaker 06

  And I, of course, being the outdoors kid that I was, I still had the love of all those things. They sent me to fucking paradise in my mind if I could just get outside the fence. You know, there's like all sorts of reptiles and critters I want to go catch. It was outside of Ogden, Utah, so near Great Salt Lake. And I was definitely gonna run. I mean, I knew how to survive out in the desert, and that was what I, in my mind, that's what I was gonna do. But the day I got there, I saw a track star that I had known from school in California who was also sent out there to try to run. And keep in mind, I can't run for shit. Like, I'm not a runner.

• 49:06Speaker 06

  And three giant Mormon dudes tackled his ass and they shot him so full of Thorazine, he didn't, he didn't come out of the room and they put him in for like a week. So I was like, I'm not gonna run from this one. And so I got to work manipulating my circumstances again, you know, um, I convinced another doctor that I was very, very bipolar and just needed to be medicated. And then when they did that, I checked all the boxes and did all the stuff and ended up graduating from that place in nine months. Wow. But I was being medicated for a whole bunch of shit that wasn't even wrong with me, which presents all sorts of new problems. Mm-hmm.

• 49:45Speaker 06

  My judgment was fucked. Um, obviously destroyed my brother's dreams of finishing acting school out there. Uh, my dad had to take a demotion with Pfizer to get us out of there, to get us out of California. Um, he moved us back to Alabama. Uh, I think I was, I think I turned sixteen or whatever they got me out. And, uh, so I've, I've been out front of my parents' roof for like a year at this point. My brother didn't really even speak to me. I do remember the day that I, I drank that bottle of rubbing alcohol.

• 50:28Speaker 06

  I guess the plan to send me to Utah was already in place because the last thing I remember before I passed out and then woke up in hospital is my little brother going, hey Ben, you ever been to Utah? So he's always been a little smart ass.

• 50:43Speaker 06

  Geez. Yeah. But. So what happened when you got out of there? Well, we moved to Alabama. Um, and it was weird. Do you remember? How old were you at this point? Sixteen. Right about to turn sixteen. I may have turned sixteen. I don't quite remember. You remember I mentioned the kid that stepped on an alligator with me, Bo Goodson? Yeah. That was in Mississippi. We moved to Hoover, Alabama, and my first day at school, I ran into fucking Bo Goodson. The dude's like, they had moved and we just ended up at the same high school together. Um, which almost fucked me up really bad. He gave me a bunch of Adderall that day. And keep in mind, I haven't touched any dope in a year because I've been locked up. And I ended up throwing it away. Thank God, because when

• 51:26Speaker 06

  I got home from school that day, my mom's like, let me shoot your wallet. And that's where it had it. She just had a feeling, that mom gut instinct. Yeah. Um.

• 51:36Speaker 06

  So for the rest of high school, I was pretty good.

• 51:42Speaker 06

  Dad got offered a promotion back to regional manager that would have required him to move to North Georgia, and he took it. And me being the petulant, little, unappreciative child that I was, reminded him he promised me he wouldn't move me again, and told him I wasn't going.

• 52:00Speaker 06

  Now, if my sixteen-year-old had said that to me, I don't know how I would react, but it wouldn't be the way my dad did. He...

• 52:11Speaker 06

  I don't know how it played out. I ended up moving in with my aunt and uncle. They didn't make me move to Georgia with them.

• 52:18Speaker 06

  If I'm being honest, dude, they were probably just sick of me, my parents. They loved me, but they were probably really tired of me. I couldn't have managed me. So, they let me move in with Aunt Sandy and Uncle Danny.

• 52:33Speaker 06

  And, so that was my junior year.

• 52:38Speaker 06

  The summer between junior and senior year, I went and spent in Georgia at my parents, and then went back, and somehow, at the end of that summer, my mom and my aunt got into a pissing match about something. I think maybe it was about my girlfriend. And the end result was I got my own apartment for my senior year. I don't know. I didn't question it, right?

• 53:03Speaker 06

  But I actually did everything I was supposed to do. I would have graduated with honors, and I mean, I guess on paper I did, but I didn't get to walk at graduation because the month before, I ended up, I got caught with Hal Collet School. But, you know, I graduated with honors. I got a scholarship to Auburn, math scholarship. And, uh, I had no desire to get a math degree, but that's...

• 53:27Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, so through all that, you still graduated with honors and got a full ride scholarship?

• 53:31Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, I hadn't killed all the brain cells yet. That was still to come. Um, so I get to Auburn. And remember, I'd stayed sober. I did get caught with alcohol at school, but that was the only time I drank. Like, I got caught the one time I did it. Um. That may not be true. I feel like it is, but it might not be. I don't remember. But once I got to Auburn, man, the brakes came off. It was over with. Getting drunk as shit every day. Um. I got so bad, I was, I was, this is back in, you know, two thousand. And if you go get apple juice at the store, they weren't plastic bottles. They were still glass bottles.

• 54:14Speaker 06

  I would pour it out and fill them with beer to take to class with me. That's how bad I got. That fast. I was drinking, you know, two cases a day.

• 54:25Speaker 06

  Um.

• 54:27Speaker 06

  I got a job at Auburn that I was trying to work and trying to do classes. I started ROTC.

• 54:35Speaker 06

  Um, again, just trying to be like my dad, you know, he did ROTC at Auburn. Um. And so.

• 54:44Speaker 06

  I sucked at PT, like I hate running. I was in terrible shape because I was drinking constantly. And, um, the drinking just kept escalating. Like I'm. I was getting really close to drinking myself out of college. Uh, my guidance counselors had called me in and. So my mom or my aunt won was like, well, he needs to go meet with the students of disabilities or whatever. Cause I, I was diagnosed bipolar and I'm still being medicated for it. So I did that and they basically greenlit me to misbehave all I fucking wanted. And they have to make reasonable accommodations for me. This is a disaster. I was, I was such a manipulative little shit. Um. Just anything I could get that gave me an excuse to do what I wanted.

• 55:27Speaker 06

  I was gonna grab onto that and not let go, you know?

• 55:33Speaker 06

  Were you drinking for the party? Were you just drinking at home alone? I was just drinking if I was awake. Literally started when I woke up because I'd get sick if I didn't. I didn't realize it back then. I was already physically dependent on alcohol. Wow. And, you know, like, growing up, my parents drank. Neither one of them had a problem. I knew both of my mom's parents died alcoholics. But it was never really beat into my head the way it should have been that I was playing with a loaded gun. Um, and I mean, it definitely got me early. You know, like I was, and I wasn't even old enough to buy alcohol. That was the crazy part. Yeah. You mentioned having homeless people go buy beer for you. I definitely did that.

• 56:19Speaker 06

  I was never without beer and it was just beer back then. You know, I didn't do a whole lot of drugs at Auburn other than recreationally. That was back when ecstasy was still X, whatever it is now is not.

• 56:33Speaker 06

  But making terrible decisions. Um, I ended up getting a girl who was in her mid twenties pregnant. Um,

• 56:46Speaker 06

  and, uh,

• 56:48Speaker 06

  my mom convinced me to get an abortion. Uh, which fucked me up pretty good.

• 56:55Speaker 06

  I don't know that I've ever told that story publicly. You wanted to have it? No, but I didn't want to kill it either.

• 57:05Speaker 06

  But being honest, this girl was on so much dope though, the chances of that baby making it were very slim anyway. You know, she was, she was heavy, heavy into all the drugs.

• 57:15Speaker 06

  I was just drinking. Um. How'd you meet her? I met her at a cigar shop, uh, in downtown Auburn.

• 57:24Speaker 06

  Like a six foot tall redhead. And we liked the same music and it just goes off to the races from there.

• 57:34Speaker 06

  How did your mom convince her, do you know? I don't. I don't know. I was so drunk during that time period.

• 57:42Speaker 06

  And this is like probably middle of 2001.

• 57:47Speaker 06

  But of course, that, since that fucked me up, it just gave me another excuse to drink. Did you go with her?

• 57:56Speaker 06

  I don't remember. You don't remember? Mm-mm. I don't remember. I had a lot of blackouts. When did it dawn on you?

• 58:12Speaker 06

  I guess I did go with her. My mom came too. Cause I remember being at the parking lot. I didn't go inside. My mom went inside with her. My mom went inside with her.

• 58:26Speaker 06

  And I just

• 58:29Speaker 06

  went back and I mean, that was, that was the end of me and her. Um, she was fucking psychopath. Uh, like ruptured one of my eardrums, beating the hell out of me one time. Like she was just nuts. Just nuts. I have a penchant for crazy women, I think. Uh, that was a rough summer though. Um. So it dawned on you in the parking lot? What was happening? I mean, I knew what was happening, but like the totality of it hit me. Went back home and drank myself into oblivion and she packed her shit and left and that was the last time I ever talked to her.

• 59:12Speaker 06

  Does it still bother you? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love children. I love them. You know, I didn't do anything to harm one.

• 59:22Speaker 06

  I drank at that problem for 20 years after that. Damn. Yeah. Damn. That's, I mean, that's kind of guilt I don't, I can't overcome and I've accepted. I've come to terms with what happened. But, you know, not to get into a political conversation like abortion always turns into, but I killed my child, you know? That's, that's how I look at it. And that's, that's hard. That's hard. That's hard to cope with.

• 59:53Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I know you're not, I know you said it still bothers you, but

• 59:59Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, there's a lot of kids, you know, that are doing, there's a lot of women that have done that.

• 1:00:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Shawn Ryan?

  That probably feel a sense of regret.

• 1:00:12Shawn Ryan?

  What would your advice be?

• 1:00:16Speaker 06

  Man, consider adoption. Consider adoption. Somebody out there will love that baby.

• 1:00:23Speaker 06

  Somebody will, I promise you that. I adopted one of mine. You know, I've got eight. Only seven of them are actually biologically mine.

• 1:00:34Speaker 06

  I do understand circumstances and, and you know, I do understand that that's the decision some people feel they don't have a choice but to make.

• 1:00:45Speaker 06

  I would, if I had it to do over again, I don't know that I would have chosen something different, though. Just because of how everything was and how everything is today and I don't know. I don't know, that's a tough one, man. That's a tough one.

• 1:01:00Shawn Ryan?

  How, how fast did that decision happen?

• 1:01:03Speaker 06

  Very quickly. Like, within a week of finding out she was pregnant.

• 1:01:07Shawn Ryan?

  You told your parents?

• 1:01:08Speaker 06

  Yes, yes, I did. I told my mom. That's how that happened.

• 1:01:15Speaker 06

  And I was scared to death because I mean, even though I was in ROTC, like, I was still depending on my parents a lot of money, you know?

• 1:01:22Speaker 06

  I had lost the scholarship because to keep the scholarship, I had to be a math major. And I did not want to major in math. Like, I'm

• 1:01:32Speaker 06

  I'm good at math, I love math, it's fun. I like it because there's a clear answer to something, you know, it's very definitive. But I didn't want to work a job in that. So I didn't have a scholarship. So ROTC was like, that was, you know, I don't have to have my parents pay my bills, they're gonna pay it. But I was actually wavered into ROTC because when I was, right before we left Mississippi, I tore my ACL playing football. And never got it fixed.

• 1:02:00Speaker 06

  So it was, it was just a whole giant shit show and it all went back to me trying to manipulate my circumstances.

• 1:02:06Shawn Ryan?

  How did your, I mean, how did your mom react? When you told her?

• 1:02:11Speaker 06

  Shock and disbelief. Shock and disbelief.

• 1:02:18Speaker 06

  But at the same time, I don't think it surprised her. And if you just listened to the last half hour of my story, I don't think it'd surprise anybody else. It was not exactly known for making good decisions and most of the bad decisions I made revolved around alcohol and women at that point in time. So it was bound to happen sooner or later.

• 1:02:39Shawn Ryan?

  How old were you?

• 1:02:40Speaker 06

  Nineteen.

• 1:02:40Shawn Ryan?

  Nineteen years old. Damn.

• 1:02:46Shawn Ryan?

  So where do we go from here?

• 1:02:52Speaker 09

  How about a latte?

• 1:02:53Speaker 10

  Maybe dark roast?

• 1:02:54Speaker 09

  Vanilla?

• 1:02:54Speaker 10

  Caramel?

• 1:02:55Speaker 09

  Blueberry?

• 1:02:56Speaker 10

  You could get them to agree on one flavor or give everyone what they want. With Keurig, there's over 500 K-Cup pie varieties of fresh, flavorful coffee. No effort, no grind, no settling.

• 1:03:13Speaker 10

  Great coffee without the grind. Keurig.

• 1:03:28Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Ben, we're back from the break.

• 1:03:31Speaker 06

  All right.

• 1:03:31Shawn Ryan?

  Got through some heavy stuff. Sounds like you were right about at, I think you lost your scholarship.

• 1:03:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, I had, I no longer had a scholarship. And I was working, still dependent on my parents. I had this job at a service center. I drove a 67 Camaro back then.

• 1:03:52Speaker 06

  I've always loved old cars and so I got a job at a Keurig service center in Oak Lake, Alabama.

• 1:04:00Speaker 06

  And it was the morning of September 11th, 2001. I woke up puking up blood. I had drank a whole of my esophagus.

• 1:04:12Speaker 06

  I was about to fail out of class a month into the semester and I knew it. I had been in ROTC, this is my second year. And was not good at it. Was not good at getting up early because I was always hungover. I was terrible at PT because I'm not good at running. I don't have any ACL.

• 1:04:35Speaker 06

  And anyway, I'm changing an alternator on a 73 Impala. No, 73 Monte Carlo at Kerry Service Center. And I walk into the break room to get a doctor's paper. Because I cannot stop throwing up blood and I just need something to calm my stomach down. And carbonation has a weird way of doing that. And I look at the TV and I see the second plane hit the tower. My dad's in New York when this happens.

• 1:05:03Speaker 06

  And it's like the world just stopped. Everything stopped.

• 1:05:13Speaker 06

  We found out dad was okay.

• 1:05:16Speaker 06

  And I walked across the street to recruiter. And tell him I just want to go ahead and enlist. This is a terrible idea. I'm in no shape to join the army.

• 1:05:29Speaker 06

  But.

• 1:05:31Shawn Ryan?

  On 9/11?

• 1:05:32Speaker 06

  On 9/11.

• 1:05:34Shawn Ryan?

  You went to enlist?

• 1:05:35Speaker 06

  Well, I went to talk to recruiter because I didn't know legally how that worked. I'm in ROTC in college right now. I'm wavered for a torn ACL. And so I wanted to find out what it would look like if I enlisted. And of course, the place, you know, the next day was. Everybody went to go enlist.

• 1:05:56Speaker 06

  And so they scheduled me for an ASVAB. And I just decided I'm rebranding myself. Ben is no longer a college student. You know, that's I was, I think, a mechanical or maybe chemical engineering major at the time. I changed so many times.

• 1:06:11Speaker 06

  I'm going to get on the list, I'm going to go to the army. And so they scheduled me for ASVAB. I got a 99 on it.

• 1:06:19Speaker 06

  Still had most of my brain cells, thank God. And I was an engineering student, so like all the math and stuff on it was like super familiar to me. They found me a slot.

• 1:06:31Speaker 06

  For NISAM Bravo, counterintelligence, sounded super cool. I was gonna go spend, I think it's seventeen weeks in Fort Wachuk, Arizona. I was gonna get a security clearance. I was gonna get a $20,000 signing bonus. And so, you know, I let my parents know, and the process drags out a little bit. It's a few months that go by. And I go down to Maxwell Air Force Base to do MEPS the first time. And I'm there, and I meet this little brunette from Dustin, Florida, and get fucking trashed, right? And we hook up, and I show up to do MEPS the next day, still drunk, still drunk. And my whole life, my dad, I think, carried

• 1:07:16Speaker 06

  a chip on his shoulder that he was Ranger-qualified, an infantry officer, never deployed, because he served during the Carter years. I wouldn't say a chip on his shoulder, it was a regret he had. He always wanted to go do cool guy stuff. And I didn't want that to happen. And I fully believed that war was gonna be over six weeks. But, you know, hindsight, looking at it now, like, holy god, I was dumb, right? That was America's longest war, and we just walked away from it. But at the time, I was convinced that if I didn't do something fast, I was gonna miss out on everything, and my only shot at impressing my dad after all these fuck-ups that I've got, this is how I could finally redeem myself, in my parents' eyes. And I want to be abundantly clear, this is not something my parents put

• 1:07:58Speaker 06

  on me. They never made me feel like I was a disappointment. You know, they never made me feel like I had anything to prove. I put all of this weight on myself, that I had to please my parents, and the only way I could do that is to become just like my dad. I held this man on a pedestal my whole life. I think a lot of little boys do that, you know, but I maybe took it to an extreme. Well, anyway, I'm telling, you know, we go through the duck walk, the dude looks at your butthole, you go check your feet, you know, all the shit you do at MEPS. And I get to that last little room where I'm picking my MOS, and I'm telling him about my dad, and he's like, well, you know, there's an infantry slot open.

• 1:08:40Speaker 06

  And uh, my dumb ass goes, yeah, do that, do that. And so I listed as an eleven Bravo. Um, and that, that, uh, you know, hindsight, I hate running.

• 1:08:56Speaker 06

  Yet again, I'm doing something that I'm, I'm not gonna be good at or capable of trying to impress my dad. What, you know?

• 1:09:05Shawn Ryan?

  I can relate to you on this too.

• 1:09:08Shawn Ryan?

  The only reason I made it through BUDs and became a seal is because I wanted to impress my dad and he never did anything like that, ever.

• 1:09:16Shawn Ryan?

  But what, what is it? I mean, do you think it's the being the oldest child? Like you feel that, that pressure that you always need to impress your parents?

• 1:09:24Speaker 06

  I've always put an inordinate amount of pressure on myself to perform, always. Uh, to, today, I'm doing that right now, actually. Like the, the lead up to this, you can ask Jess, I was terrified to come in here. I'm always have, uh, just put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself. I think a lot of that, uh, is because I'm the oldest, but it's also because I had so much promise as a kid. I had so much promise and, and my parents were so proud of me and they stopped looking at me like that, you know?

• 1:10:01Shawn Ryan?

  And you wanted it back?

• 1:10:02Speaker 06

  I wanted it back. Um, I didn't want to be a piece of shit drunk, but I knew that's what I was. And, um,

• 1:10:13Speaker 06

  not just a piece of shit drunk, but like one that put his mother in a position to have to kill her own grandchild. And, uh,

• 1:10:21Speaker 06

  that just ate me alive and I would, I would drink at that problem non-stop, you know? Um,

• 1:10:29Speaker 06

  all the way up to the time I swore in, like, so I picked eleven Bravo spot and, uh,

• 1:10:35Shawn Ryan?

  Looking back.

• 1:10:36Speaker 06

  Here's, here's where it gets.

• 1:10:39Speaker 06

  This is how retarded it was. I was on mental health medication then. I had no ACL, so when I got to MEPS, I lied about literally all of it. No, I've never done drugs. No, I've never been in drug rehab. No, I've never broken a bond. Dude, I've broken like nine, literally nine bonds and torn two ligaments at that point in time. I'm raging alcoholic and I'm just at MEPS drunk telling them, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Cause they'd coached me. My recruiter had done his job. Now, he'd done his job to get me that ninety-seven Bravo spot that would've got me a sign bonus. And I probably would've done just fine if I had taken that slot. But me, being me, I had to manipulate everything and, and try to finagle my way in because when we looked at the beginning, he's like,

• 1:11:23Speaker 06

  well, I don't have any infantry spots that's, I forget what the deal was. So

• 1:11:28Speaker 06

  I, I decided to buck the plan again. Sorry, you were asking.

• 1:11:34Shawn Ryan?

  No, I mean, I was gonna say, I've been looking back, do you think that you even wanted to join the army, let alone infantry, going into a combat role? Or was that just to impress your dad? And that, I'm just gonna sure.

• 1:11:50Speaker 06

  I did want it.

• 1:11:51Shawn Ryan?

  You did want it?

• 1:11:51Speaker 06

  I badly wanted it. My whole life.

• 1:11:53Shawn Ryan?

  At the beginning or did that become?

• 1:11:55Speaker 06

  No, I had always wanted that. I never wanted to do anything other than infantry my whole life. And yeah, part of that is because I watched my dad and I looked up to him. But the other part is because of the job itself. I mean, fuck.

• 1:12:07Shawn Ryan?

  Why'd you go to college?

• 1:12:09Speaker 06

  Well, I wanted, I wanted to finish and go in as an officer because that, that was what dad did. And that was definitely, I wanted to do that because that was the example he set.

• 1:12:21Speaker 06

  But I changed my mind because it was, it was peacetime up until that day. And I was like, well, I'll go become a mechanical engineer. I'll do chemical engineering, go to med school. I didn't know what the fuck I wanted, man. I just wanted something, I, I wanted to be something that I could be proud of and that my parents would be proud of. But after September 11th, I think I started channeling a lot of my anger and rage that I felt at myself at outward, like the bad guys, the people that attacked America. And I have to do something about this. It's my duty as an American. I mean, I come from, I don't know how many generations in a row served, but pretty much all of them, like back to the French Indian War in the 1750s or whenever that was.

• 1:13:05Speaker 06

  My family served in every conflict this country's had. And so I definitely felt a duty to do it. But like with so many other things, I get to the finish line and I decide to fuck it up on my own, you know, and buck the plan. So unless there's a 11 Bravo, I get to Fort Benning and there's like a five week wait or something at Reception Battalion. It was ridiculous because of how many people were enlisting right then. Oh, and I'm going through alcohol DTs. I was incredibly physically dependent on alcohol. Oh, and by the way, I DC'd all of my mental health meds, which I may not have needed, but my body is now used to. And so I'm going through withdrawal from these things at the same time.

• 1:13:50Speaker 06

  And I don't have an ACL. So this is why I kind of went, some people say that Ben used to be an infantryman. Ben enlisted in the infantry. All right. I get like, I don't know, 10 or 11 weeks into OSAT at Fort Benning and my knee completely goes out. I can't tell anybody because I lied about it. So I'm acting like this is a new injury. All right. I had vertical fractures on the outside of my tibia. And there's no cool story that goes along with this. We were literally running PT doing the, you know, sideways run and it just, that was it. And so I get to medical, they confirm, yeah, you broke your leg, you're going to get recycled. I'm like, that's super terrible. That's awful. I don't want to do that. And I'm like, well, that's, that's what's about to happen.

• 1:14:34Speaker 06

  And they put me on crutches, I think, and it wasn't getting any better. So finally bring me back in, look at it again. And this time it's an actual doc, not a PA that's looking at it. And she's like, you don't have an ACL and that is not new. And you better tell me, you know, what's going on here? And so I told her, she threatened me with a JAG referral for lying in Meps. So I end up discharged from the army honorably, but no benefits whatsoever.

• 1:15:04Speaker 06

  As yet another example of if I had just stayed with the plan, I would be at Fort Wachukah, becoming a badass counterintelligence guy. But instead Ben wanted to do what Ben thought would impress his parents and ended up fucking everything up.

• 1:15:21Speaker 06

  So I unleashed after nine eleven, before the summer of two thousand two's up, walking off of Fort Benning in my civilian clothes, carrying my bag, no phone, depressed as hell, feeling like an absolute utter failure.

• 1:15:39Speaker 06

  And I remember getting to a gas station just off post. And the first thing I did was buy a beer.

• 1:15:51Speaker 06

  Went right back to it that fast. You know, I hadn't had a drink in however many months that was, and I'm right back on it. And At what point did you call your dad? So I called him, you know, they had payphones in the little barracks courtyard area, company area. And so my parents had a one eight hundred number and they had for a very long time. I don't remember why. So I was able to call my parents pretty frequently, but when they sent me to the, what are the,

• 1:16:25Speaker 06

  return home unit, or maybe, I can't remember what it was called. Usually you linger or languish in that thing for like six weeks because they're pissed at you because either you're a quitter, you lied, you fucked something up, you're getting kicked out. And I wasn't any of those things, but I felt all of those things. And somehow they cranked me out of there in one day. I was, I was in and I was out the next day. So I called my granddaddy, my dad's dad, Korean War Vet, president of a community college.

• 1:16:57Speaker 06

  And um, and tell them what happened. He lived in Phoenix City at the time. Uh, so he came and picked me up and uh, I don't remember how I got back to Auburn, but I just, I just wanted to crawl in a hole and fucking die. I was so ashamed of myself. You know, and I carried that chip on my shoulder for a long time, you know? Looking back now, like dude, I tried. I, I, if I had just not lied about my injury and done what the waiver, because apparently ROTC doesn't talk to active duty. So they had no idea about the ACL. ROTC knew all about it. So, you know, I, I did my best. I raised my right hand and swore in and,

• 1:17:37Speaker 06

  and then went and tried and fucking failed, like I had so many other things up to this point. And it all came back to the same stuff over and over. Me manipulating my circumstances, trying to get the outcome I think I want, rather than seeking, you know, what, maybe what God's will would be in those circumstances. Um, I end up back at Auburn and uh, things escalated pretty quick after that. Real quick. When did your dad find out? A matter of days or hours from, from when it happened and I don't. You tell him? Did your granddad tell him? I told him. Um, I don't remember the phone conversations at all. I was blackout drunk, but.

• 1:18:22Speaker 06

  I mean, dad obviously knew I had no ACL and also knew I was insane for enlisting and saying, oh, it wasn't on new medication and all the other things. So, I think he probably figured that was gonna happen, right? Um,

• 1:18:36Speaker 06

  and so they, you know, when they discharged me because it was due to a pre-existing, uh, uh, what do they call it? EPTS, existing prior to service. They had to wait two years and, and have proof that I fixed it before I could re-enlist.

• 1:18:52Speaker 06

  And so my plan, and obviously this got back to ROTC too, that this had happened. So now that they're pissed at me too. Um.

• 1:19:01Speaker 06

  My plan was to do, do the two years of college that I had left or whatever and then go back in, um, which is ridiculous to think about because none of my actions lined up with that being my plan following this. Um, I went back to the apartment my parents had stopped paying for in Auburn, um, and holed up alone with a ton of alcohol and firearms. Um, you a football fan? No, I'm not. I'm not either. Reason I was asked is there's a Auburn player that lived diagonally above me who was, went to the NFL and was actually a pretty big deal now. I'm not going to name him, but I almost killed him by accident drunk with a pistol in my apartment. Um, so

• 1:19:46Speaker 06

  Auburn Police Department came out and took all of my guns. That was my first interaction with the police, uh, since California. They didn't charge me anything, but they put all my guns in a box and. What were you doing with the gun? So I had a, a party at my apartment. I had a whole bunch of people that were drunk as shit and I had this little Glock 26 that was unloaded, you know, sitting on my, um, the island in my kitchen. And, uh, I went to the bathroom or to get a beer or something. I come back and I look at it and the trigger's out. And you know on a Glock when it's, when it's cocked, the trigger's out. So I thought somebody had just cocked my gun and I went to decock it. Somebody could put a fucking mag in it and chamber it around. So yes, it

• 1:20:29Speaker 06

  was absolutely negligent discharge. I never should have pulled that trigger without checking the chamber. Um, but I wasn't like just drunk playing with a gun. Except I was drunk playing with a gun, you know? It's a miracle I didn't kill anybody. The bullet went through my roof, through his wall and exited right next to his head on the couch. Shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was a.

• 1:20:55Speaker 06

  It's a miracle that nobody died. I mean, I could have gone to prison right then. Um.

• 1:21:04Speaker 06

  I remember doing a lot of LSD, insurance over the next month or two.

• 1:21:11Speaker 06

  Um.

• 1:21:14Speaker 06

  And basically had a psychotic break, I guess. I don't know. Um. Ended up going back home to my parents. That girl Rachel that I'd met at Met. What do you mean a psychotic break? Uh, my, it was like a, a constant state of panic. Like if you've ever had a panic attack, you know, they'll last a few minutes usually. This lasted for four days and no amount of alcohol would make it go away. Um. So psychotic break is probably not the right word, but something happened. It was after I ate ten hits of acid in two days. What, what got you into the acid? Um, oddly enough, it was the kid that, that had the chambered the rear end of that pistol. Um, I just wanted to change the way I felt and I would do anything I could. You know, I had,

• 1:21:59Speaker 06

  I had done acid previously in California. Um. Uh, but never to that extent. Like I just ate a ton of it. And then we went picking shrooms. I mean, I lived right across from the, the Auburn Veterinary College fields where they have their llamas or alpacas or something. We'd go pick shrooms and I've always been fascinated by psychedelics. We could talk more about that. Um.

• 1:22:24Speaker 06

  But, uh.

• 1:22:27Speaker 06

  The, the timing timeframe on all this is a blur just because I was, I was so fucked up, man. Completely out of my mind. Like my apartment looked like a hoarder lived in it. It was like, there was no carpet. You could see nothing but beer cans. Um.

• 1:22:45Speaker 06

  And, um.

• 1:22:47Speaker 06

  Eventually, you know, I got evicted. I don't remember that, but somehow I ended up back in Georgia. And somehow Rachel, that girl from Destin that I'd met a year prior, ended up in Georgia and my parents with me. I don't remember how that happened. Um, I don't remember how, how she got back home.

• 1:23:10Shawn Ryan?

  Do you talk to your parents about any of this stuff and try to fill in the blanks?

• 1:23:15Speaker 06

  Some, yeah, some, definitely. This part right here, I haven't. I probably should. Um, I honestly haven't even thought about this time period of my life, uh, until today in a really long time, you know? I mean, I hate talking about the fact that I failed at being in the infantry. Um, I hate talking about the fact that I failed at, at being a college student, you know? I hate talking, my life is a constant series of failures up to this point. So I haven't really put a whole lot of thought into it, but there was, like, I remember I spent a whole lot of time down in Destin, uh, after I got out, after I got back from Fort Benning. Um, I remember driving that sixty-seven Camaro down to Destin a lot. Uh, I remember drinking

• 1:23:56Speaker 06

  in Destin a lot. Um, so I really don't know how many of those gaps my parents could fill in because I wasn't, we weren't talking during that time period, I don't think.

• 1:24:10Speaker 06

  I think that they knew the wheels were falling off the bus, man, you know? And my mom learned a long time ago, sometimes she's got to love me from a distance to preserve her own mental health, which I can completely understand. Um,

• 1:24:27Speaker 06

  I was having a lot of health problems from my drinking, though. I was throwing up a lot of blood. Um, I lost a whole lot of weight. Uh,

• 1:24:40Speaker 06

  you hear about college kids floating kegs and drinking a lot of beer and like, that's, that's very common, but I was next level. When I say I was drinking two or three cases a day, I really mean that. So like seventy-two beers in a day. Um, yeah. Um,

• 1:25:00Speaker 06

  I, I would hazard a guess, I was probably walking around at a constant point two or point three blood alcohol content. And as you'll hear in a little bit, my frame of reference for that's pretty good. Um, I usually could tell what I was at. Um, it was bad, though. Uh, I wanted to die. I really did. Um,

• 1:25:24Speaker 06

  And I just, I knew if I kept drinking, I would. And so that's what I was doing. That was your plan? That was the plan. I was gonna drink myself to death.

• 1:25:36Speaker 06

  Somehow I ended up back in Georgia.

• 1:25:40Speaker 06

  At my parents' house. My brother was there. Some of his friends from high school were there. And I guess I had just shown up at their house drunk as shit. And I don't remember what happened, but I'm sure I picked a fight because I used to do that. And my brother had had enough, and my dad had had enough. And I don't remember what happened, but I remember waking up in jail the next day with black eyes. Like I'd had the hell beat out of me, and I was the one that went to jail. Because I'm sure I was the instigator, you know? So that's my first time going to jail.

• 1:26:15Speaker 06

  They charged me with, I guess, two counts of domestic battery, because it was my dad and my brother. And then one count of felony terrorist threat, because apparently I said some really dumb shit to the police. They dropped those. I had an order of no contact with my parents. Oh, I had, I don't know if you've wondered this, but I'm drinking a very, like, large amount of alcohol. You probably wondered how I was affording that. Somehow I had gotten credit cards and had paid them just enough to where I had a $30,000 credit limit. And I literally ran up like 20 grand in alcohol. So I bonded myself out of jail with my credit card.

• 1:27:01Speaker 06

  I don't even know if you can do that today. Like, I think they'll only take cash. I don't know. I should know this. Anyway. Bonded myself out of jail, and I, you know, my parents had taken my car because I got pulled over going like 120 miles an hour.

• 1:27:20Speaker 06

  With dope and guns in the car too, never got caught for that. I just remembered that. Had that girl from Florida in the car with me though. Anyway, they'd taken my car and sold it. After I get arrested for that, you know, I'm banned from going to my parents' house. I've got an order of no contact with my parents, my brother and my brother's friend. And I somehow convinced a car dealership to sell me a vehicle and finance it. A truck, it was a G, a ninety-eight GMC four by four. And I convinced an apartment complex to lease me an apartment, a nice one. I had no income at all.

• 1:27:58Shawn Ryan?

  How old are you at this point?

• 1:28:01Speaker 06

  Twenty-one. Twenty-one years old. And of course, I had no way of paying for this apartment, so the clock was ticking. And I'm still drinking like a fish. I end up meeting this guy named Rod, I think was his name, who did gutter cleaning in the apartments. And he offered me a job. Then he tried to pay me in meth, which was weird, but I took it anyway. And so now, now I'm addicted to meth, squatting in an apartment with a vehicle I'm not paying for. You know, a year prior, I had been at Fort Benning, trying to become an infantryman. And a year prior to that, I was in college kicking ass.

• 1:28:46Speaker 06

  And now I'm squatting and addicted to meth and a raging alcoholic. Oh, and I'm out of bond. Like it just, it went south so fast, or it felt like it did. It's gone south much faster as we get more into this, but. Somehow I even had internet in this apartment and I somehow had a computer in this apartment. I don't remember how I got these things, but I had them and I logged into, you remember AOL Instant Messenger?

• 1:29:18Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:18Speaker 06

  Okay, so I'll log into an old AIM account. And my ex-girlfriend from when I was twelve and thirteen, and then again sixteen and seventeen, from Mississippi messages me.

• 1:29:33Shawn Ryan?

  The same one you were pissed off about that you had to leave to go to California?

• 1:29:41Shawn Ryan?

  One of the things we've been wanting to start on Patreon is deep dives into the guests. We found Ben and Jess's story so inspiring that we actually created a mini-doc out of what they're doing right now. It's over on Patreon. You guys can go check it out. I've been wanting to do this for a long time and we finally have the team to be able to go and produce these things, thanks to Patreon. I've talked about this on almost every show. I thank our patrons. Without you guys, none of this would be possible. I'm so excited to bring this to you guys. I think you're gonna love it. I know you're gonna love it. And Ben, his story

• 1:30:22Shawn Ryan?

  is so awesome. Flipping the trap houses into halfway houses. It's an amazing mini-documentary on what they're doing right now. Like I said, we found this story so inspiring. We're gonna start doing this with more and more guests that we have on the Sean Ryan Show. Head over to Patreon right now. You can view the whole documentary.

• 1:30:46Speaker 06

  No, same timeframe, but it was a different girl. Me and this girl, her name's Erin, you know, we've known each other since we were 12. I went to the same church. She actually wrote me letters when I was locked up in rehab in California, in Utah. She'd stayed in touch with my mom and had just been kinda like a constant positive influence over the years. When I moved back to Alabama, 16 and 17, we dated long distance. And anyway, she messages me on AIM. And she's like, "Is this Ben?" And I'm like, "Yeah." And she didn't believe me, because apparently she'd been trying to message me and kept getting one of my crazy girlfriends. And so I'm like, "Well, fuck, call me." So I pick up the phone,

• 1:31:28Speaker 06

  call her. And we talked for five minutes. And she's like, "Well, look, I'm married, but I'm about to get divorced. Why don't you come up to North Carolina?" And I'm sitting there thinking in the back of my head, "This bitch has no idea what she's getting into." Because like, she's a good little church girl, right? And I ended up, my credit cards are all almost maxed out at this point, but the clock's ticking. Like, I'm about to be homeless and my truck's gonna get repo'd. And so I get the truck and I start driving to Charlotte, run out of gas, my credit card's declined. And I convince somebody to fill my truck up with gas. I make it to Charlotte. Long story short, she's pregnant.

• 1:32:10Speaker 06

  And uh, so that- What do you mean, long story short? Go into- I went up there, I went up there, we spent two nights together. I get back down to Atlanta, um, I had, I'd- And what do you look like at this point? Absolute dog shit. Shaved head, it's cut everywhere, cause I tried to shave it with a, you know, a bick razor. I was thin as shit, uh, still a raging alcoholic. Uh, I, I looked like death warmed over, in fact- And meth. Hmm? Meth, yeah. And a meth addiction. And meth. Now, she had no idea about the meth or the alcohol, any of that. Even after you met her? Even after I met her, she just thought I was skinny, you know? You don't think she looked the other way? She could smell it on you? Well, so she did, she knew I was drinking, she was drinking too then, right?

• 1:32:54Speaker 06

  So like, that was acceptable, cause she didn't see what happens when they don't drink. I get sick as shit. She also didn't see me drinking at six o'clock in the morning, so, I was able to hide it for a couple days. Um, now I remember how I had the computer. I had gotten a job selling merchant services, credit card processing, over the phone, to somebody. And so somebody provided me a computer. We had a deal go through, so I had a couple thousand dollars. Um, I went and spent that time up there in Charlotte with her, came back to my apartment, and I'm trying to figure out how to- How to afford everything, how to start rebuilding my life. Hold up, what, what did you guys do up there? Just drink? Yeah. Sex? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just locked yourself in a room? Went to like a Holiday Inn, and, and yeah, that's, that's what we did. And I go back to Atlanta.

• 1:33:39Speaker 06

  And it lasted two days? Two days. That's it? That's it. What ended it? Well, I had to go back to Atlanta. Cause I lived there and so- Okay, so the relationship- What actually ended it was, she said she's getting divorced. Her husband didn't know that part yet.

• 1:33:54Speaker 06

  He's about to, because like, three weeks after I get back to Atlanta, she realizes she's pregnant. And there's no way it's his, because they've been sleeping in different rooms and blah, blah, blah. So, she has to tell him, and then she has to tell me, uh, I may have misrepresented, I'm not actually in the middle of a divorce, but I'm gonna be now.

• 1:34:14Speaker 06

  And I ended up moving to Charlotte. Um, moved in with her and her sister. Uh, I quit drinking cold turkey. I quit meth the day I left Atlanta. I've never liked meth. Ever. You know, I did it because it was there. Well, mostly because God prayed to pay me in meth and I wanted at least something for my labor. Um, so anyway, I, I quit drinking cold turkey and it almost killed me. I got pancreatitis. I lost forty pounds in a month and then keep in mind, I'm already pretty thin. I didn't have that to lose. Um, and I almost died. They didn't know what was wrong with me because I wasn't being truthful with any of the doctors about how much I, I drank. Um, and when I would try to be, they would discount it. Well, you're, you're, you're young. There's no way you could drink that much, you know?

• 1:34:58Speaker 06

  And so of course I took that and banked that, like, see even the doctor says I can't drink that much, you know? Just in case I want to start drinking again. Um, but I got sober and I stayed that way. Um, Jackson, our oldest child was born. Um, Aaron files for divorce and, uh, I get a job in Charlotte. I'm after I heal up and, and I can eat and keep food down and I'm gaining weight again. I get a job at- How long did that take you? I was, I was, I was bedridden for thirty days. It took about thirty days to get through that? Yeah. Um, well, no, it took about sixty to fully recover from it.

• 1:35:42Speaker 06

  All in, but I, I couldn't get out of bed for thirty days. And I didn't realize this then, but- What does the girl think that you can't get out of bed in thirty days? Well, she knew I had pancreatitis and I'd gotten honest with her about the drinking too. Why did you quit drinking? Because I knew I had, I had a son coming. So that cleans you up? That cleaned me up. Yeah. You know, um, I, I didn't want to be a piece of shit and I didn't want to die anymore. I wanted to, to do right. And, um,

• 1:36:08Shawn Ryan?

  And she was supportive?

• 1:36:09Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. She knew when when we got together, you know, because she'd been there through California and Utah. She'd she knew I I had battled addiction and she knew I battled, well, she thought I was bipolar. We all thought I was bipolar still at the time. So she knew what she was getting into.

• 1:36:25Shawn Ryan?

  What what why? When you're saying this is a a good

• 1:36:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:36:30Shawn Ryan?

  church girl.

• 1:36:31Speaker 06

  She

• 1:36:32Shawn Ryan?

  Were you a project? What was this?

• 1:36:34Speaker 06

  She was convinced from the time we met that we were meant to be together.

• 1:36:38Shawn Ryan?

  Why?

• 1:36:38Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 1:36:39Shawn Ryan?

  She never told you?

• 1:36:41Speaker 06

  She just I was her one. I was her one. Um, and

• 1:36:49Speaker 06

  you know, from my perspective, I'd had nothing but crazy psychos all the way up to this point. And she like wants to have a family and cook me dinner and and be sweet to me. And she doesn't, you know, get mad and hit me. And it was great from my perspective, too. You know, it it seemed great. And so I quit drinking and we got through that. I got a job. She had a job. She was in school. Um.

• 1:37:16Shawn Ryan?

  Now, are you talking to your parents at this point?

• 1:37:18Speaker 06

  I didn't talk to them the whole time I was sick. They didn't know where I was. Uh, they just knew that apartment. My mom came and saw me the night before I left and just sobbed because I looked so bad.

• 1:37:28Shawn Ryan?

  When did the restraining order lift?

• 1:37:37Speaker 06

  So that case got adjudicated. They gave me diversion. They dropped the felony terrorist threat. And they gave me diversion, which I completed uh through community service at the Red Cross in North Carolina. They let me move my probation up there. Um, so it got deleted. There's no criminal record associated with it. Like, it's it's like it never happened. As soon as I took that deal, the restraining order was lifted, but my parents and I had already been talking because after I moved to Charlotte, I didn't know this, but Lauren, Aaron's sister, had called my parents to say, you know, hey, just want you to know Ben's here. He's trying to get sober. He's alive.

• 1:38:12Shawn Ryan?

  Aaron's the girl.

• 1:38:13Speaker 06

  Aaron's the girl. Lauren's her sister. So my parents knew where I was. I didn't know they knew that, though. I thought I had just gone no contact and that was my plan. I was I was gonna go no contact until I could come back with something saying, here's what I've done, you know? I'm not a piece of shit, see? And uh so I was looking at getting back into school.

• 1:38:32Speaker 06

  I was working this job with this guy who did electronics recycling.

• 1:38:40Speaker 06

  He was like paying me like seven dollars an hour or something ridiculous. But as I'm watching the way this business operates, I noticed a lot of stuff goes in the dumpster that looks like it's like probably valuable, like computer servers and hard disk drives and all sorts of stuff like this. I started talking to him about it. I came to find out the way their business operates, they do asset recovery. So if you lease, let's say you lease these lights and these microphones from somebody. Well, the person you leased it from is writing that off and then when it's done with, they're supposed to throw it away or give it to a electronics recycler. So the guy's explaining to me, all of this stuff's already paid for. I don't give a shit. It's going in my dumpster. And I was like, well, could I list it on eBay and take a cut of it? And he's like, go ahead. Your idea is dumb, but go ahead.

• 1:39:24Speaker 06

  The idea was not dumb. I started like printing money. It was going really well. And my parents decided that I had been doing good enough to go back to college and they were gonna help. We had a kid now and so I moved from-

• 1:39:39Shawn Ryan?

  How did they feel about the kid?

• 1:39:41Speaker 06

  They were just overjoyed.

• 1:39:43Shawn Ryan?

  They were not happy about it?

• 1:39:45Speaker 06

  But the fact that it was with Erin, and my parents have known Erin, you know, since she was a little girl, they know Erin's mom, you know, like they were, they, they thought this is the turnaround Ben needed. And I did too. I really did. I think we all thought that, that the hopes were high. Let's put it that way. You know, Ben finally has some stability.

• 1:40:03Shawn Ryan?

  Had there, had there ever been any more discussion about the abortion?

• 1:40:06Speaker 06

  No, never came up.

• 1:40:08Shawn Ryan?

  Never since?

• 1:40:09Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:40:13Speaker 06

  I mean, I, I talked to Erin a lot about it because it ate me alive, dude. It ate me alive for a long time.

• 1:40:19Shawn Ryan?

  So you and your mom have not spoken about the abortion since it's happened? Still to this day?

• 1:40:24Speaker 06

  To this day. Probably, probably should. It's one of those things that kind of blocked out until I started telling you my story, you know? It's just, it hurts. I can't go back and change that.

• 1:40:38Shawn Ryan?

  You think you'll talk about it now?

• 1:40:40Speaker 06

  I think I need to. I think I need to. I think I needed to a long fucking time ago, too.

• 1:40:46Shawn Ryan?

  How will you bring it up?

• 1:40:49Speaker 06

  Oh, I got a really good excuse now. Hey, mom, guess what? All that slipped on the Sean Ryan show. We should talk about this before it airs.

• 1:40:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:41:02Speaker 06

  I know, uh, so I guess it wasn't entirely true. We did talk about it once and my mom told me that she went inside with Amber and Amber was much further along than she would have been if it was mine. Now I don't know if my mom told me that to make me feel better or to make herself feel better, or if that's reality. And I doubt very much that Amber's alive for me to track down and find out. So I had forgotten that. We did talk about that.

• 1:41:30Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever tried to track her down?

• 1:41:32Speaker 06

  No. No. Oddly enough, that ex that I went nuts over hit me up on LinkedIn like two months ago, or I guess it was a year ago. She said, hey, I'm getting divorced. What are you doing? And I was like, I am not getting divorced and you can get out of my fucking DMs.

• 1:41:50Speaker 06

  Uh, I've had a few exes pull that and they'll pop up telling me I'm getting divorced. The hell even hearing. Anyway.

• 1:42:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, you could tell that abortion still eats at me. It does, a lot. Um, I used to get drunk about that. A lot. But I think part of me was using it as an excuse. It does bother me.

• 1:42:19Shawn Ryan?

  I can tell.

• 1:42:20Speaker 06

  But, uh, I would take any excuse I could just to not have to be responsible for my behavior. And I think we run into that with a lot of addicts and alcoholics, especially in the veteran community. And that's maybe a controversial topic. But I think in society's efforts to understand, especially what combat vets have gone through, we might have incentivized some of them to adopt a victim mentality.

• 1:42:54Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not going to disagree with that. I've talked about it several times on here.

• 1:42:58Speaker 06

  Well, and I think for most people that would be okay, but when you're dealing with an addict or an alcoholic, victims don't recover. Victims die. And that's the stark truth. And so I don't know what the answer is to that. And it's a rabbit hole I just took us on, but it's a fact, man. You know, we're trying to get... Anyway.

• 1:43:20Shawn Ryan?

  Keep going.

• 1:43:21Speaker 06

  We're trying to get vets who are battling alcoholism and addiction out of the gutter and to take responsibility for their lives. I'm gonna, I'm gonna preface this with, I don't know what the answer is, but I do know what part of the problem is. And we have all of these veteran-specific recovery groups and these veteran-specific rehabs. These are great. Somebody's getting paid out the ass to make that. And the only way they stay open is if they keep convincing vets they're gonna recover different and keep getting vets into their programs. Veterans, especially combat veterans, do need special treatment when it comes to certain things. You know, when you talk about combat trauma, moral injury, yeah, yeah, that is something very niche and you need specific help from veterans with that.

• 1:44:05Speaker 06

  But when we're talking about alcoholism and addiction, bro, you recover just like everybody else does. The same 12 steps that have worked for 90 years are gonna work for you too. You just gotta work them. And not everybody has to go through 12 steps. Plenty of people get sober without that stuff. But it's the ones that think that they're, in the rooms we call it terminally unique. And it is terminal. If you think you're special and different than another addict or alcoholic, the chances of you being able to lean on their experience, strength, and hope to get better, it's cut infinitesimally small because you're, you're nullifying their experience and thinking it can't help you just because they don't have some of the other experiences you have. And I don't know that I'm the right guy to take that conversation with the masses because I'm barely even a veteran. And I'm definitely

• 1:44:47Speaker 06

  not a combat veteran. But I'm just speaking from experience. We've seen this time and again with vets that, that wanna hold on to that, what makes them special. And they are special. They're less than 1% of the population. They're special. But when it comes to getting off dope or putting down a bottle, no. You can't be special in that regard.

• 1:45:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. We just had a conversation about this last night on, on our Patreon, live chat. It was with a firefighter. And, you know, I think, I don't think, I know, I mean...

• 1:45:23Shawn Ryan?

  Being a SEAL is something I did.

• 1:45:28Shawn Ryan?

  Contracted for the agency is something I did. Being a firefighter is something you did. Being a cop is something you did. But, you know, when being a combat vet is something you did. It doesn't define who the fuck you are. That's not you. That's something you did. And so many of us, be included, you know, I did it. You wrap that up into your identity.

• 1:45:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, the line gets blurred. And understandably so, but it's still there, you know? And it's still a massive impediment to vets that are trying to get sober. They've got to shred that or shed the victim mentality, you know? And it's hard. It's hard to tell somebody that. We're into trafficking survivors too. The same mentality and the same incentivization to maintain victimhood gets pushed on them. It gets pushed.

• 1:46:24Shawn Ryan?

  I think they think they can't do anything else. You know, I don't think it's just victim mentality. Now, there is definitely the victim mentality. I see it all the time. You see it all the time. I think there's a lot of commonalities with this stuff, you know, that go into that. But probably with trafficking victims as well, I'm not, I don't have as much insight into that. But, you know, you get, because it's not just a job. You know, it's a lifestyle. It's a culture. It's a 24/7/365 job.

• 1:46:58Speaker 06

  Yep. And your identity becomes wrapped up in that. You lose sight of who you really are.

• 1:47:03Shawn Ryan?

  And then when you, when you wrap your identity up into that and you allow it to become part of you.

• 1:47:11Speaker 06

  When that role is over, you lose your entire sense of who you are.

• 1:47:17Shawn Ryan?

  Exactly. And, you know, people get wrapped up in it. They can't, they can't set that down and go... This is something I did. Now it's time to move on. Yeah. It's. The war's over. You're too old to go back. It's, it's, it's, it's done. And so. You can't keep living like. Like you're living like you're going back. Or going to fight another fire, or going to solve another crime, or going to fight another crime. You gotta treat it just like any other life. I think, I think, you know, I think a lot of, same with, with trafficking victims, you know, that, that is. That's a, that's a lifestyle. Yep.

• 1:48:01Shawn Ryan?

  That is a lifestyle of sex, parties, all that kind of stuff. You know, and, and, and.

• 1:48:11Shawn Ryan?

  You just can't carry that with you and, and people think it's impossible. A lot of people think it's, you know, I, I'll never, I, I don't, you know. How are these skills gonna transfer over? They're not gonna fucking transfer. You mean you don't get to shoot people in the face every day anymore? Yeah. They're not gonna transfer over and. But you have to, you have to find who you are. You have to find who you are. You have to develop, you know. New hobbies. Hundred percent. New interests. And, I mean, look. Me coming out of the SEAL teams or me coming out of contracting for the CIA. I sure as shit didn't think I'd be sitting here podcasting.

• 1:48:51Shawn Ryan?

  But, you know, and I, and that's what I did, you know, I, I, I went into tactics and then. I didn't like teaching tactics. I just. It was the thing I did and then, and then I threw a bunch of, tried a bunch of different things. You know, and I didn't like this, didn't like this. I kind of like this. Let me try it again. Let me try it again. And then.

• 1:49:17Shawn Ryan?

  It changes, man. You, you have to, you have to be willing to like, put that shit behind you and think of it as, "That was a segment of my life. That's not who I am. That's over now. Let's move on to the next thing." And it takes time. You can't just make that decision, you know, immediately and go, "Oh, now I'm gonna be, I wanna do this." It takes time to figure out who the fuck you are and what you like doing and what new interests are. And you have to be open to accept those new interests to develop who you're going to become, rather than living with who you were, or who you thought you were.

• 1:49:57Speaker 06

  Well, that's what it comes down to. It's who you thought you were.

• 1:49:59Shawn Ryan?

  And even, even, even back to the firstborn, you know, impressing the parents thing, I mean, that was, that was a huge burden on me for a long time. And, like, it's just this, this, it's, it's this pressure and, I mean, it wasn't who I was, man.

• 1:50:18Speaker 06

  But we do it to ourselves, though. We do it to ourselves. It's a self-imposed prison.

• 1:50:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:50:24Speaker 06

  And once you realize that, you're free to redefine, you know, to identify, to find that thing that gives you purpose again. You, how do you say his last name? Fettes? Chris Fettes?

• 1:50:35Shawn Ryan?

  Fettes.

• 1:50:36Speaker 06

  Fettes. Chris Fettes. You and him had a great conversation about that, about finding purpose in, in, in life after any of those roles that used to identify who we are, you know? And that's really what it comes down to. And I've noticed that to be especially true for vets. So while I just had a rant about trying to get vets sober, I've got, I've got something positive to add to that. You take a veteran who is struggling with alcoholism or addiction and you find them purpose, bro, they're gonna change the world. I mean, fast, too. You've just gotta help them find that purpose.

• 1:51:10Speaker 06

  Let's move on. All right. So, we're in Charlotte, North Carolina. Aaron has had Jackson, my oldest child. I'm sober. I'm working. I started up this side hustle on eBay that's going pretty good. And my parents decide that, you know, since Ben's a father now and is getting married, Ben needs a college degree. And I was very excited to hear that.

• 1:51:39Speaker 06

  I don't know why my parents decided to show back up for me the way that they did because I never in a million years could have expected this from them, but they put us in a house in Huntsville, Alabama.

• 1:51:51Speaker 06

  And basically made sure all of our basic needs were covered. And I took out student loans and Aaron and I both went to college.

• 1:52:03Speaker 06

  School went really well. I was working during school. I was kicking ass. I think I had like a 3.8 GPA. I'd switched to business because engineering, you know, with everything I had going on just wasn't gonna happen. I needed to graduate quick and get a job. And yet again, I decided to follow my dad's footsteps, surprise, surprise, and set my eyes on a job at Pfizer. Because I loved the life he'd been able to provide for us, you know, even though I didn't appreciate it at the time. So I wanted to go follow in his footsteps at Pfizer.

• 1:52:40Speaker 06

  Kicking ass in business school.

• 1:52:44Speaker 06

  My granddaddy, the one that picked me up from Fort Benning, was oddly enough battling a myotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease, and was nearing the end of his life with that. You know, it's always terminal. And it's very rare for somebody to get it at his age. He was in his 70s.

• 1:53:02Speaker 06

  And my grandmother, his wife of 50 years, had Alzheimer's, and they were both getting close to the end. That was one of the reasons we moved back to Alabama was to be close to them. And I've always been extremely close to both of them, my grandparents. I mean, they were probably my two favorite people ever. And granddaddy died. He did get to meet Jackson.

• 1:53:26Speaker 06

  And I started drinking again.

• 1:53:30Speaker 06

  Um.

• 1:53:33Speaker 06

  And really what I did was kinda fucked up. I, I said I was gonna quit for a year. Let's walk it all the way back. You started drinking again.

• 1:53:45Speaker 06

  Right after your grandpa's death. Yep. Let's just walk through that decision-making process.

• 1:53:54Speaker 06

  Uh, there, there really is not a decision-making process involved in this one. You're sober for a year at this point? I was sober for a year and, uh, and I'd,

• 1:54:07Speaker 06

  I told Aaron and Lauren back in Charlotte that I was gonna quit drinking for a year. This year has passed and now I have an excuse. My, my favorite person on earth just died. A normal person can drink over that. I'm a normal person now. You see, I put the alcohol down for a year voluntarily. That makes me normal. That was the fucked up thinking I was using and I, I knew full well in the back of my mind I was not gonna be able to maintain. Um. Where did you go? It's the gas station right up the street. And, uh, and, uh,

• 1:54:43Speaker 06

  as I started drinking again. And oddly enough, I, I did hold it together. I mean, I was making all my classes. Uh, my kid was well taken care of. My yard was perfectly manicured at the house my parents were paying for. I was making it, you know, I was working two jobs sometimes. Um, over the breaks, I would work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week for 30 days straight in a factory. Um, making good money. Uh, but drinking. And, um,

• 1:55:12Speaker 06

  my parents found out, I guess Aaron had told them, or maybe they found a beer bottle or something, I don't know, and just raised holy hell over the fact that I was drinking again. And I broke it down like, I don't see what the problem is. Um, look at all of what I'm doing. Despite the fact that I'm drinking, like, what's, what's the big deal? Obviously, my parents know what the big deal is. I'm a raging alcoholic. It doesn't matter what I'm able to maintain. I'm only gonna maintain that until I can't. And the day when I can't is going to come. It always does. Um.

• 1:55:46Speaker 06

  Erin ends up getting pregnant again. We're still in college. So Jacob's on the way. And we had a huge blow up about my drinking. And so my petty response to that was like, "Fine, I'll quit for two years this time." And that's what I did. And so I put it back down. And Jacob was born and life was great. I was going to college, you know, I was doing really good.

• 1:56:13Speaker 06

  And then I get sick again. Like the pancreatitis had came back when I quit drinking or something. We couldn't figure it out. The doctors couldn't figure it out. I lose a shitload of weight.

• 1:56:28Speaker 06

  I end up going over to my parents' house in Georgia and they take me to some specialists over there who figures out I have literally pickled my gallbladder. I drank an organ out of my body. So they removed the gallbladder in 2005. And then realized I'd done a lot of other damage to my GI tract with drinking all the times I've been throwing up blood. And so they do another operation called a Nissen procedure, which is supposed to be for reflux, but they were trying to undo damage I'd done. I was supposedly the youngest person in the state of Alabama to ever have that surgery done. But I'd stopped drinking. I'd had two abdominal surgeries, which are extremely painful.

• 1:57:13Speaker 06

  And so they had me on a lot of pain pills. Which I don't know that I was addicted to them, but I sure loved them. And I was taking like as prescribed, you know, I wouldn't take an extra. But I definitely developed a taste for opiates during this time period. I end up graduating college and get hired on Pfizer as a sales rep. They moved us to Memphis. That's how I ended up in Memphis.

• 1:57:45Speaker 06

  The drinking culture at Pfizer, or really anywhere in corporate America, it's not a great place for an incognito alcoholic to be. And I was not doing meetings, I just stopped drinking, right? So, you know, it was just a matter of time. And it started pretty fast. Right back to drinking every day, right back to drinking at six o'clock in the morning. To the point that they figured it out at Pfizer training and put me out on short-term disability for being an alcoholic. I'm like, that seems retarded. The way this works at Pfizer at the time, if you're on short-term disability, you still get paid and you're not allowed to work at all. And I thought that was the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life.

• 1:58:29Speaker 06

  I was excited to be working. I came out of Pfizer training with like one of the highest test scores ever. They hired me to sell pain management meds.

• 1:58:44Speaker 06

  And an inhaled insulin that ended up bombing a couple of years later. But I excelled in the training, like all that medical love had come back. I've got a job explaining to doctors the pharmacokinetics of, you know, different drugs and it was awesome. I wanted to work and they wouldn't let me because I had this drinking problem. And we've just moved to Memphis, we're in a new city, we don't know anybody.

• 1:59:09Speaker 06

  You know, and I did get to work a little bit out in the field and do my actual job before the chips all came falling down on this shit.

• 1:59:17Speaker 06

  And I end up getting,

• 1:59:25Speaker 06

  oh, what's the word? I want to say alcoholic psychosis, but it was worse than that. Wernicke's Corsicoff's. It's supposed to be permanent brain damage from the amount I was drinking. And it was so bad that the neurologist that was telling us about this told Erin that she needed to start taking videos of me and the kids so that I would remember them because pretty soon I'm not. My brain is turning into Swiss cheese from the amount of alcohol I'm consuming. And that if I ever drink again, I'm gonna die. And I refused to accept that. I backed off on my drinking because I was having very bad memory problems. Very bad. Like it was frightening, scared the shit out of me.

• 2:00:09Speaker 06

  Like I didn't believe the doctors that I might have the memory thing. I didn't believe I was gonna die if I drank again. This was in early 2007. I'm not wanting to accept I'm an alcoholic. You know, outside looking in, bro, you were 25 years old or whatever I was, and you drank an organ out of your body. Like, that's a clue, you know? If you're any age and you drink until you're puking up blood, you're not a person that should drink. So, outside looking in, I think the whole world knows Ben's a raging alcoholic. Everybody but Ben accepts this. And I was still obsessed with the fact that, no, I'm just, I'm a real man, I can drink. And we end up at my parents' house, it's Easter Sunday of 2007.

• 2:00:53Speaker 06

  And they tried to do an intervention with me. And I wanted absolutely nothing to do with that. At all. You know, I've got two kids in the house. I'd gotten off disability at this point and been in the field absolutely kicking ass, like overselling quotas left and right, setting sales records, like I'm, I deserve a goddamn drink. Y'all can fuck off. You know, I'm off to a hotter start than my dad was at five, is the way I'm looking at this. And so I left the house real pissed off.

• 2:01:31Speaker 06

  I hit Scottsboro, Alabama, going about a hundred and thirty, and a car flipped. Single car accident. I was buckled, and my seat broke on the second or third flip, and I went out the windshield, going over a hundred miles an hour. And I remember flying, you know, through the air, and, uh, like, I had time to cognitively think, I need to make sure I land on my feet. And right about that time, my face hit the, the grass and the median. I had road burn all over my head. I bounced, uh, flipped end over end several times. Um, I ended up breaking my pelvis in three places, um, which, if you're not

• 2:02:13Speaker 06

  familiar with pelvic fractures, it's extremely dangerous. All your organs sit in your pelvis. Um, my left leg, the one that I screwed up in the army and in football, was completely demolished. Uh, half of my tibia is now bone filler. Um, they had to reconstruct the, the tibial plateau. Plates in there. Um, that's a few other broken bones. That was it for me. I got sober that day. And, uh, and it would have stayed it if I had just done, this is 2007, if I had done in 2007 what they've been telling me to do since 1997,

• 2:02:54Speaker 06

  which is go to fucking meetings. Like, you're not special. This is a problem lots of people have. You go to these meetings, they make you better. If I'd have been willing to do that, I'd have stayed sober from Easter Sunday 2007, and me and you wouldn't be sitting here right now. Um, I, uh, I decided to leave Pfizer. I was gonna do everything other than go to meetings, though. I was not gonna drink. I even quit cigarettes. I quit every mental health medication they had me on. I was drunk on a wrecking car. I was also on thalidomide, which was prescribed to me. I was also on Xanax, which was prescribed. Why I'm on both of those at the same time is beyond me. I'm on like a hundred milligrams of Adderall a day. Like, I'm on all the dope. State trooper saw how fucked up I was, and was like, "Pretty sure you're taking some stuff you're not supposed to, but I'm not

• 2:03:38Speaker 06

  charging you." You know? And I was like, "That's it." That's, you know, God just winked at me. "I'm taking it. I'm taking it, and I'm fixing my life." So I quit smoking cigarettes. I quit all the, the meds. Um, and, uh, and I got sober.

• 2:03:54Speaker 06

  I decided to leave Pfizer because the drinking culture was too bad. And as good as I was doing there, I should be making a lot more money. And so I started looking into getting a job in medical device sales. And that ended up being exactly what I did. I got a job selling medical devices. I interviewed for several. One was in women's health space. One was in trauma, selling the exact plate that was on my leg. And then cardiac is where I found my passion. So not a cardiovascular surgeon, but I'm getting to sell cardiac devices. I'm a cath lab cardiologist and electrophysiologist. I'm getting to nerd out on all this cool stuff. And I was making money hand over fist. I think I made like $230 that year at 25, 20, 26 years old.

• 2:04:36Speaker 06

  Like I was doing really good. And then we had a company-wide meeting in Chicago. And I hadn't, like Pfizer does all these functions. It's impossible to not be around everybody being drunk when you work at pharmaceutical company. Medical device is a little different. Territories are much more spread out. And so I hadn't been exposed to that. We had the meeting in Chicago and I realized I'm in the same fucking environment I was at Pfizer. Except it's even worse. They were like harassing me for not drinking. And I ended up getting into it with our VP of Sales pretty big, pretty bad. And I was like, I can't, I can't stay here.

• 2:05:19Speaker 06

  And that was just as well because they started telling us to commit Medicare fraud. Change billing codes so that they would cover our devices and some other stuff that I knew was extremely illegal. Asked a question and they terminated me, which is fine because I wanted that to happen anyway. Now a few years later, they ended up getting fined, I think $21 million by the Office of Inspector General for exactly what I asked a question about. So whatever.

• 2:05:47Speaker 06

  What was the question? Is it not Medicare fraud to change this diagnosis from palpitations to conduction delay unspecified, knowing full well that yes, they mean the same thing, but Medicare will only pay for conduction delay unspecified, not palpitations? And I sent that in an email with those exact words. They knew I was firing shots at them. Like, I'm telling you, I know you're, you are breaking federal law right now, and I'm not gonna do it. And I want you to reply to this email and tell me in writing that you want me to do it. Um, two of us sent that email. My buddy, actually, was the whistleblower that got a few million dollars on, when they got fined. I went back to that little side hustle I had. Um, cause I wanted to, I wanted to start my own business. I wanted to be self-employed.

• 2:06:29Speaker 06

  Um, this is the only way in my mind I could, I could stay sober, the way Ben had to stay sober, which is, I need to just work for myself and create my own culture at my job. And so I ended up, um, I ended up making a lot of eBay listings of some computer and server gear that I'd had, uh, laying around. But it's dawning on me, like, I just went from making a lot of money to zero income. My wife is a stay-at-home mom. I have two kids, you know, I'm, I'm T-ball coach, I'm Cub Scout leader, like, I got a lot of responsibilities and no money coming in. Um, so I'm going through my garage, like, trying to figure out what can I do, what can I do, what can I do? And there's a broken flat-screen TV in my garage. I was like, I'm gonna find a screen and fix that thing and sell it.

• 2:07:14Speaker 06

  Cause this is back when, like, a 37-inch TV was $2,000, or whatever they were. Now, I get on eBay, and there's literally no screen for these TVs anywhere. Um, I'm like, well, that's weird. Uh, there's no aftermarket parts available. Me being me, always thinking of a hustle, I took the TV apart and listed all the parts on eBay for sale. It was working, cause I knew they worked. The only thing that was wrong with that TV was the screen was broken. Wake up the next day, and there's 400 bucks in my PayPal account. I had sold every part out of that TV that was basically from a dumpster overnight. And so I went to a TV parts place in Memphis, or a TV repair shop in Memphis, and asked them if I could buy a broken-screen TV from them.

• 2:08:00Speaker 06

  And they're like, why would you want to do that? And I told them, they're like, we could, we need a new source for parts. That's a great idea. And so then next thing I know, I'm buying broken TVs from every repair shop in Memphis. I'm running ads on Craigslist and buying broken TVs. I started this business in my garage in 2009. That's when everything fell apart with the medical device companies, oh nine. Um, and by 2011, I had a 7,500 square foot warehouse and a dozen employees.

• 2:08:31Speaker 06

  Wow. It grew quick, man. Um, I had my first website built. I got on Shopify in 2010, maybe 2009. They had like 34 employees and were renting space from somebody else. They didn't have their own office back then. You know, Shopify is massive now. Mm hmm. And so I stayed sober that whole time. I didn't even start smoking cigarettes again. I'm off all the mental health meds and I've realized there's nothing wrong with my brain. I'm just a high stress person that does have ADHD and high anxiety sometimes. But everything was going really good. Um, my dad, well, let me back up. We had Lily, Aaron wanted to try again for a girl.

• 2:09:10Speaker 06

  And so we got her, uh, Lily and Aaron is not great at taking medication on schedule.

• 2:09:19Speaker 06

  So birth control being one of those. Um, a year after Lily was born, we had twin boys. So three kids in a year, but I don't care. I mean, I'm making good money. Like everything is going good. I'm excited. Um, my dad ended up getting cut from Pfizer a couple of years before that. Um, and he'd gone into business as one of his old buddies. And I guess there was, they were having some financial strain. They moved into the house next door to us. Uh, my dad actually worked for me briefly. Um, and, uh, I don't remember exactly when it was in 2011, but some stuff happened between my parents.

• 2:10:03Speaker 06

  Um, and I don't want to get into it, but.

• 2:10:07Speaker 06

  The, the whole holding my parents on a pedestal thing.

• 2:10:12Speaker 06

  Kind of got ripped away. Um.

• 2:10:16Speaker 06

  And, uh. You don't want to go into it? Let's put it this way, they came, they came real close to getting divorced. And I, I saw a different side of a lot of things that fucked me up to my core. And both of them? Yeah. And, um. And I didn't have anybody to talk to about that. I didn't know who to go to. Um, I didn't know how to deal with it. And I ended up drinking. What year is this? Two thousand and eleven. Um. And. The really bad part about that is that it. Nothing bad happened. It went okay.

• 2:10:56Speaker 06

  And so me and Erin decided that, you know, maybe, maybe I wasn't an alcoholic after all, because she'd missed drinking. You know, Erin's not an alcoholic, like she was a social drinker, she missed it. So the next six months, you know, I'm, I'm enjoying my single malt scotch and smoking cigars and making crazy money at this TV parts business. You know, I'm on top of the world, dude.

• 2:11:21Speaker 06

  Um.

• 2:11:23Speaker 06

  And then, I want to say it was like November, December of two thousand and eleven. A leg starts acting up. The one that I got the plate in. And, um.

• 2:11:37Speaker 06

  It swells up and it's like just nasty gnarly looking. Uh, I ended up having a methicillin resistant staph infection that had recurred. Now, this had happened before. It came back. Um, and it was really, really bad, like they were talking about potentially I was going to be an above knee amputee if it moved anymore and I'm freaking the fuck out. They got me on a lot of pain medication.

• 2:12:05Speaker 06

  And I'm drinking again, you know, and that's not a good combination. I wasn't abusing the pain medication, but I have a really high tolerance to opiates. And we've already established I'm bad about manipulating doctors. And so I convinced my doctor that I needed a lot more than I needed. And so I was physically addicted to prescribed pain pills. Which ones? Percocet.

• 2:12:37Speaker 06

  At first, Percocet at first.

• 2:12:41Speaker 06

  Speaking of above knee amputations, I actually had an amputee living on my couch at this point. He had come back from Iraq, lost a leg and ended up addicted to oxycodone prescribed by the VA. We'd given him a job, got him off of our couch and moved him into the house next door to us. My parents had moved out.

• 2:13:02Speaker 06

  And he had been clean, like he went through rehab and he's rebuilding his life. And I'm being an absolute asshole at work. And I realize it's these fucking pain pills. And so I flushed him down the toilet and he saw me do it and he looked at me like I was a crazy person. And I was like, what? You know, I just, I literally just cussed at a guy that spent $90,000 with me in the last 18 months. I can't, I can't do this. He goes, he just laughed. And then it hit me. I am physically addicted to these things and I'm about to find out what it means to be dope sick. And sure as shit, I did. About eight hours later, I could not move. And then comes Sergeant Deaton with a little blue pill that he got from the VA. And that was the first time I ever took one of the 30 milligram oxys.

• 2:13:46Speaker 06

  And I was better like that.

• 2:13:51Speaker 06

  I say better. I was addicted to something much, much stronger. So it started out with a prescribed pain pill habit. And it progressed to somebody else's prescription and then it progressed even worse than that.

• 2:14:05Speaker 06

  To what? So.

• 2:14:08Speaker 06

  I went back and forth with the pain pill addiction for probably all of two thousand and twelve. Um. And it it made me realize this drinking problem is getting worse quickly. And so I went to rehab, detox, anyway, in Georgia.

• 2:14:27Shawn Ryan?

  On your own accord?

• 2:14:28Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, I wanted it, you know, but I still had this air of entitlement about me, you know, I own a business. I've housed a homeless veteran. I give him a job. You know, I only drink a single bottle of scotch. Now, I'm bougie, and so I had to go to this expensive ass place where Steve Rivanna and Burt Reynolds got cleaned. And I wasn't gonna file it on insurance either because I also have started up Black Rifle and Brushfire Tactical and these other tactical e-commerce brands. I don't want my name. I don't want anybody to know and I'm an alcoholic.

• 2:14:58Shawn Ryan?

  You'd you'd already started all these other companies?

• 2:15:00Speaker 06

  Two thousand and twelve, yeah, I started those up on Shopify. This is before Shopify said you can't sell guns on here. So, um.

• 2:15:08Shawn Ryan?

  So what was Black Rifle Co.?

• 2:15:10Speaker 06

  But it was a gun e-commerce, so not actual firearms, just parts, accessories and ammunition.

• 2:15:16Speaker 06

  Um, most of it was drop shipped. We would warehouse some of it, um, and ship it out, just like their damn TV parts.

• 2:15:22Shawn Ryan?

  And what was the other company?

• 2:15:23Speaker 06

  Brushfire Tactical. We had several of them. We had two testicles tactical, which is hilarious. Uh, we had.

• 2:15:30Shawn Ryan?

  What do they sell?

• 2:15:31Speaker 06

  So it was all the same. Every, every, every brand sold the same stuff. I was playing with branding to see which one I can get to go viral.

• 2:15:38Shawn Ryan?

  So basically you just bid it, you created a business model out of the electronics industry. And brought that into firearms?

• 2:15:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, hundred percent. And the progression happened, sorry, I was so stuck on telling you about the, the drugs and alcohol, I forgot that part.

• 2:15:55Speaker 06

  At Retech, that was the name of the, the TV parts company, and it was doing really well, um, but I don't give a shit about TVs. I love firearms. You know, I was trying to figure out how to spin this into firearms or muscle cars or something that I'm passionate about. Um. And so I discovered drop shipping. How many companies were you running? Like five at any given time. But they were all running out of the same thing. And the way I look at it, so even though they're different entities, the business model is very similar for all of them. Now tactical and TV parts are different because the TV parts, you're having to buy truckloads of broken televisions, literal, you know, 53 foot truckloads. A lot of labor goes into testing and stripping. But then after that, it's just pulling parts off of shelves, sticking them in boxes and shipping them to the right person.

• 2:16:37Speaker 06

  That second half is identical for the gun parts. Pull a part off the shelf, stick it in a box, make sure it gets the right person. So I'm able to use the same labor on part, as far as the fulfillment side goes. And we'd learned about drop shipping in the TV parts because you can drop ship electronics. That's where you're selling something you don't even have. You're buying it wholesale from a third-party warehouse who then ships it directly to your customer. It's super convenient and you take the margin, right? And so we'd gotten into that some on the electronics side of things. Um, and then that was what we built. Black Rifle, Brushfire, Triple T, all of those brands around was the drop shipping model. And it was really, I was just wanting to see on the branding side, like, and it was weird. All the products are the same.

• 2:17:22Speaker 06

  All the staff is the same. But there were like diehard customers of Triple T that would get in arguments on social media with customers from Black. Like it was hilarious. Like it's all me.

• 2:17:32Speaker 06

  Anyway, um, and it was weird because like I'd make prices higher on one and then lower on the other and watch it. I don't know. It was fun. It was like a game to me. Um, but it worked really well for a long time. Uh, until like mid 2012, the drinkums getting out of hand. And I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pay cash out of pocket to go to this bougie place in Georgia where Burt Reynolds gets sober. I'm there six days and, uh. Now, how well are you doing? Are you a millionaire? I had gotten a buyout offer that was over 2 million. I did not take it. I should have. I should have. I had over a million in inventory. Um, well over a million in inventory.

• 2:18:11Speaker 06

  I bought a sixty-eight GTO, restored it with the kids. It's, uh, we converted it to electronic fuel injection. Ran like a scalded dog, man. We had it cammed out. It was such a badass car.

• 2:18:24Shawn Ryan?

  How were you of being a dad?

• 2:18:27Speaker 06

  How was I of being a dad?

• 2:18:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:28Speaker 06

  So my kids had never, at this point, never seen me drunk. Not once. Never seen me smoke a cigarette. I'm still coaching T-ball. I'm coaching soccer. I'm leading Cub Scouts. I don't sleep much. Back then, I would be good on four or five hours, you know?

• 2:18:43Speaker 06

  So I was like dad of the damn year. Not just to my kids, but to other kids in the neighborhood too. Like, I was doing great. Outside, like in the, you know, Aaron knew the reality. I was really, really struggling.

• 2:18:54Shawn Ryan?

  So you're running five companies?

• 2:18:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:18:57Shawn Ryan?

  You got how many kids? Four kids?

• 2:18:59Speaker 06

  I had five at this point.

• 2:19:00Shawn Ryan?

  Five kids?

• 2:19:01Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:19:01Shawn Ryan?

  The husband, T-ball coach. Cub Scouts.

• 2:19:06Speaker 06

  Yeah. And going to church every Sunday.

• 2:19:09Shawn Ryan?

  And going to church every Sunday. Had a massive drinking problem.

• 2:19:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:19:14Shawn Ryan?

  So when would you fit in the drinking?

• 2:19:16Speaker 06

  At night, no, all the time.

• 2:19:18Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think your kids never saw you drunk, or they actually never saw you drunk?

• 2:19:22Speaker 06

  They actually never saw me drunk up at, at this point. They never did.

• 2:19:27Shawn Ryan?

  So when would you do it?

• 2:19:28Speaker 06

  All the time. But here's the thing, I, I would. I would converse just like this. Without flurrying or anything legally drunk.

• 2:19:38Speaker 06

  So I, I take that back. They saw me drunk. They never saw me act drunk. Like, I, I was drinking all the time. But they wouldn't necessarily see me like they'd ever seen me with a beer. I was drinking scotch. And I was going through like two bottles of McAllen twelve a day at this point. And it was getting bad fast, so there were like.

• 2:19:55Shawn Ryan?

  How's your wife? Does your wife know this?

• 2:19:57Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And she knows it's getting out of hand again.

• 2:20:01Shawn Ryan?

  What she's saying to you?

• 2:20:03Speaker 06

  Like begging me to go get help, begging me to go to rehab. Can we please tell your parents? Can we please call your parents? Can we please tell your parents?

• 2:20:09Shawn Ryan?

  So, hold on. You're telling me your kids never saw you drunk?

• 2:20:14Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:20:14Shawn Ryan?

  You could converse without slurring. You're basically a high functioning drunk. But at the same token, you're telling me that Aaron is begging you to go to rehab because it's getting bad. So, these are like.

• 2:20:27Speaker 06

  Let me explain, okay. So, after the kids, after the kids go to bed, there is no more speaking without slurring. I'm blacked out, like plastered after the kids go to bed. I also can't get out of my bed in the morning without drinking because if I do, I'm puking up bile. So, I have to have a drink just to get out of bed. But, once I have that first drink, I'm just as normal as I am right now until I have too much, which doesn't usually happen until the kids go, go to bed. I do want to clarify, the only reason the kids never saw me sloppy is because Aaron shielded them from a lot of this. The woman deserves a fucking medal. Like, she hid so much of this, which is a double edged sword because in a couple of years, it's gonna catch them really off guard when I start getting in trouble.

• 2:21:12Speaker 06

  But, she never let them see that. So, they were very sheltered and shielded from it. So, even though it was happening, they never saw it. Um, but, I, I mean, I was pretty.

• 2:21:23Shawn Ryan?

  And you're on opiates.

• 2:21:26Speaker 06

  Those were off and on. It, the infection came back two or three times. Um, two thousand eleven, twelve, and thirteen. And each time that it comes back, it's gonna get worse. The drinking is an immediate problem because I'm puking up blood again. And so, um, we finally did tell my parents. My mom came and got me. And she took me to this place in Georgia. And, uh, I was supposed to stay there for six weeks, the whole thing. I'm gonna do medical detox, um, and stay for rehab, you know? Uh, and I've been to plenty of rehabs already up to this point. Like, I skipped a few in here by accident. Um, before Aaron. This is gonna be the first time I've gone since Aaron, since I had kids. Um.

• 2:22:13Speaker 06

  Six days in, air and calls and the business is falling apart. Nobody is able to run it without me there. Um. Which is a hundred percent my fault. I did not build a business that could exist in my absence. And I knew that. And part of it was fear because I was a control freak and part of it was I was too busy drinking than teaching somebody to run it in my absence. So I leave detox. I completed detox. I leave without going to the rehab, which I knew was a bad idea, but I also didn't have a choice. Um.

• 2:22:50Speaker 06

  Or I guess I had a choice, I just made the wrong one. I left. I went back to work. And three days later. Um. I walked into the ER at Babseast. Puking out blood. Talking. Probably more slurred. Um, but according to them, I set the Tennessee ambulatory state record, Tennessee state record for ambulatory BAC. I blew a point four six. Denying I'd been drinking. Uh, and I almost bled to death. Jeez. Um, they were very afraid I had given myself something called esophageal varices, which is pretty much always fatal. You literally hemorrhage from your esophagus from drinking and die. I lost a lot of blood. Nine days in ICU.

• 2:23:36Speaker 06

  Um.

• 2:23:39Speaker 06

  And, uh.

• 2:23:41Speaker 06

  Uh, I tried my best to get a handle on the drinking after that by not just not drinking. I still wasn't gonna go to meetings. You know, I don't need that shit.

• 2:23:51Speaker 06

  Um.

• 2:23:54Speaker 06

  The infection came back. I mean, my health was absolute trash. You know, my inducible liver enzymes like triple the upper limits and normal. I had some other blood work way off and so the infection came back. Back on the damn pain pills. And Deaton has moved back to Maine, so my connection with the Roxies is gone. Uh.

• 2:24:17Speaker 06

  I had an employee that I had recently hired who was out on bond for drug charges. And, uh, obviously before I hired him, asked what and why and all that. And I decided to give this guy a shot. Then none of my employees knew how bad things were with me.

• 2:24:35Speaker 06

  Or how bad they had gotten with the pain pills. Obviously, they knew the drinking had gotten really bad because I was passed out in my office and shit.

• 2:24:42Speaker 06

  But I'd hid the pain pill thing from them pretty well. So as long as they weren't spilling alcohol, they thought everything was good with Ben. I ended up buying pain pills off this dude.

• 2:24:54Speaker 06

  And it gets like really expensive. Like I can't keep sneaking this much money out without Aaron noticing.

• 2:25:02Speaker 06

  And he's he ended up getting me heroin one day. And, um,

• 2:25:10Speaker 06

  I hate needles, which sounds crazy because I'm covered in tattoos. I've gotten these since being clean.

• 2:25:19Speaker 06

  And, uh, the first time he got it, I snorted it and I did not get the feeling I wanted from it. And he shot me up.

• 2:25:30Speaker 06

  And then later that day, I shot myself up and within a week, I had a $600 a day heroin habit.

• 2:25:37Shawn Ryan?

  He shot you up? How did that conversation go?

• 2:25:40Speaker 06

  I was like, I fucking hate needles. So you gotta show me how to do this. And he got my hand where I don't even have veins anymore. But I used to have huge veins. And he shot me up. Um,

• 2:25:52Speaker 06

  and so that progressed very, very quickly.

• 2:25:55Shawn Ryan?

  What did that feel like?

• 2:25:57Speaker 06

  Uh, you want me to give you an honest answer?

• 2:25:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:59Speaker 06

  I felt like getting a hug from God. Like the most peaceful thing I've ever felt in my entire life.

• 2:26:09Speaker 06

  Instantly, instantly. Um, that void that I always have inside of me that I've been trying to fill since I was thirteen years old, that emptiness, it was gone in an instant. It was gone. It was warm, it just, it was euphoria. And I didn't need anything else after that. I, I had arrived.

• 2:26:37Speaker 06

  And, uh,

• 2:26:40Speaker 06

  the entire journey getting to this point, I had been trying to find ways to change the way I felt. And for the first time in my entire life, I didn't want to change the way I felt after I hit that. I was hooked immediately.

• 2:26:57Speaker 06

  Um, that was, uh,

• 2:27:01Speaker 06

  it's right around Halloween of 2013.

• 2:27:05Speaker 06

  And

• 2:27:09Speaker 06

  Erin knew something was wrong. She knew something was wrong. She didn't know what. Um,

• 2:27:17Speaker 06

  Andrew ended up getting arrested again, and so I had to go meet the dope man to get my own heroin, because I'm obviously, I'm physically addicted, I can't afford to be sick. And that's what took me to South Memphis. Old man Stan, this old seventy some odd year old black dude sells heroin in South Memphis. Um,

• 2:27:38Speaker 06

  and so I'm, I'm making, you know, two, three trips a day out there to buy dope. Um,

• 2:27:45Speaker 06

  but I kept telling myself, like, this is gonna be the last time. How'd you meet him? Andrew took me to meet him right before he'd gotten arrested again. So I'd already met Stan now, now I'm, you know, I'm approved to go to the dope man by myself. What's the neighborhood like? Oh, it's ultra hood. If you've watched any of my videos online, that's, that's South Memphis, man. Um. But this guy's making six hundred bucks a day just off you? Just off me. He was living large, living large. Um, so just to give you some context on South Memphis, uh, the infant mortality rate is higher than most or many third world nations.

• 2:28:25Speaker 06

  It's one of the deadliest zip codes in the state of Tennessee, which is one of the deadliest cities in America. Um, statistically, young men in South Memphis are, and this one breaks my heart. They're more likely to be dead or incarcerated than they are to have a job or be in school. Geez. Now, I didn't know any of this when I first started going out there and I, and actually I hated South Memphis for the longest time because of what it was doing to me. I wasn't looking at what I was doing to it. Um, you just touched on it. I'm pumping that much money a day into the dope economy out there. You know, I, I have, I have harmed that community with the amount of money I spent out there with bad people.

• 2:29:07Speaker 06

  And I kept telling myself like, this is it. I'm gonna stop. It's like two hundred thousand dollars a year. Stan told somebody he made two hundred grand and it didn't last a year. Just off you. Just off me, just off me. It didn't last a year, lasted ten months this time.

• 2:29:25Speaker 06

  I hated myself. I hated everything about myself. I wanted to die. But more than that, I wanted to get sober and be there for my kids. And so I, I punished myself. I had enough money. I could have bought ounces of heroin at a time. You know, I'm, I was going through like two, three grams a day. I could have bought ounces at a time and instead I'm making three trips, getting a gram at a time every day. Like the, I can't believe it took me as long as it did for me to get pulled over. Like a white guy driving, you know, a brand new Tahoe or a brand new F-150 or a brand new, or not brand new, but a 68 GTO. Multiple times a day. Like it's a very clear what I'm going out there to do, you know?

• 2:30:06Speaker 06

  And, um, but I wouldn't buy a bunch at once because I kept telling myself, this is it. I'm gonna quit. This is it. I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna taper off. I'm gonna taper off. This just insanity took over my thinking.

• 2:30:18Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you want to quit?

• 2:30:20Speaker 06

  Why did I want to quit?

• 2:30:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:21Speaker 06

  I never wanted to be on it to begin with. That one time I got that hug from God and I was hooked. Never had that feeling again. Never felt that good again, but I couldn't stop doing it. But it was taking me away from my kids because I'm spending an hour and a half a day or more driving.

• 2:30:37Shawn Ryan?

  So, hold on, hold on. So, the initial, I've never done heroin. The initial high is like the best high you could ever imagine. And then it never happens again.

• 2:30:50Speaker 06

  Never happens again, well.

• 2:30:53Speaker 06

  You constantly have to increase the amount of dope you're doing. You can get pretty close to it again, or you can get it again. But it's taking more and more dope. The more dope you're adding, like the chances you're gonna kill yourself keeps climbing. You know what I mean? And so, I, I got to the point where I was shooting a gram at a time sometimes. I mean, that's like, I don't know how I never OD'd.

• 2:31:15Shawn Ryan?

  You never OD'd?

• 2:31:16Speaker 06

  Never. I've always had a really weirdly high tolerance to things.

• 2:31:22Speaker 06

  So.

• 2:31:24Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I don't know if I'd say that drank your gallbladder out.

• 2:31:29Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, that I did. But I, I wanted to stop because it, it controlled every aspect of my life. I couldn't even sleep without getting dope sick.

• 2:31:40Shawn Ryan?

  Did your wife know?

• 2:31:43Speaker 06

  Well, it started in Halloween, she figured it out.

• 2:31:47Speaker 06

  End of June.

• 2:31:49Shawn Ryan?

  How'd she figure it out?

• 2:31:50Speaker 06

  She found a box of syringes in the garage. I was not very good at hiding things. She'd known something was up. I mean, like, our business is falling apart.

• 2:32:02Speaker 06

  I bounced payroll, that's never happened. Um, I look like, I'm, I, I look like somebody coming out of a concentration camp. I looked like death. I weighed like a hundred and thirty pounds, maybe, you know? Um, and I'm not drinking. So, she knows it's not bad.

• 2:32:21Speaker 06

  She knew something was up. She found that box of rigs that day and lost it on me. Uh, I've never seen her that upset in my whole life and it just broke my heart. I didn't, I didn't ever want it to come to that, you know? But it did. And, uh, the 4th of July, she took the kids and left me. 2014. And I hopped in the GTO and went to where I go for comfort. South Memphis. And, uh, I'd waited just to punish myself until I was good and dope sick. I wanted myself to suffer. I had this sick self hatred. Because of the situation I created. Where did she go?

• 2:33:05Speaker 06

  To her dad's down in Mississippi. And, um, I'm going, I don't know, 70, 80 miles an hour down East Parkway in Memphis and I ran a red light. And I T-boned an F-350. And, uh,

• 2:33:22Speaker 06

  spun. And I hit a light pole. Uh, and the inside of the car burst into flames. Um, I'm pinned underneath the steering wheel. My face hit the steering wheel so hard that my teeth, I had to pull my lip off of my teeth. Like they'd gone all the way through it. I've got bones sticking out of my foot and I'm engulfed in flames. Uh, I had a fire extinguisher in the car for that exact scenario should it ever happen and I deployed it and nothing happened. Um, and I threw it out the window, which I guess alerted somebody that was out there that, hey, there's a alive person still in that vehicle. And, uh, this

• 2:34:02Speaker 06

  panhandler that I'd been giving money to for like the last two, three weeks, every time I drove by, runs over and gets me out of the car.

• 2:34:10Speaker 06

  And, uh, runs over and gets, uh, I had cash in the passenger seat and he brought it to me. Like smoking dog bills. My, uh, my, my pistol permit and my debit, my USA debit cards were in my pocket with my driver's license and all that. They melted.

• 2:34:27Speaker 06

  Like in my wallet, they melted. I did not have a burn on my body. Wow. Uh, and nobody else saw this almost dude, but he definitely was there. Like, yeah, I've always had people like I was an angel and like, I don't, I don't know.

• 2:34:39Speaker 06

  Because he gave me the money, I had it in my hand and I started with bones sticking out of my feet. There's rounds popping off in the backseat of my car because it's in flames and it was full of ammo. And I'm trying to hobble down the street to make it to the dope man's house because I'm like a mile away. The ambulance gets there, they tackle me. Take me to the hospital.

• 2:35:02Shawn Ryan?

  You're trying to get heroin still after that.

• 2:35:04Speaker 06

  I'm still dope sick. That's the thing, if you've never been dope sick, you don't understand it. You will do literally anything you have to do to prevent it. It is the most terrifying experience a human being can go through. Both mentally and physically, but especially mentally. It's bad. It's just, it, when I think about that day, I understand women who sell their bodies to feed their addiction. I'm trying to walk down the street with my car in flames and bones sticking out of my foot to get my fix, you know?

• 2:35:43Speaker 06

  I ended up getting a $35,000 insurance check for the GTO. All the evidence of everything bad had been done burned in the car. So I got no trouble that day. I went home, got another vehicle and I burned that 35 grand in nine days. One of the ways, you know, my business was running into the ground. Aaron and I had a massive firearms collection. Massive. You know, tons of awesome stuff. Some Title II stuff, subguns, suppressors. And I'd started pawning my guns so that I could maintain my habit and try to keep the business from folding. And so when I got that check, I went and got a lot of guns out of Hawk, got them back.

• 2:36:28Speaker 06

  And obviously I bought a lot of drugs too.

• 2:36:33Speaker 06

  Geez. Erin, Erin came back from her dad's.

• 2:36:39Speaker 06

  After I totaled the car, uh, but, but left again, cause I wasn't. Oh, it didn't get any better, you know? Um.

• 2:36:50Speaker 06

  And I was trying everything I could to taper off of, of the heroin. And, uh, and do it on my own. And, um.

• 2:36:59Speaker 06

  You know, going to the firing range is one of the things I used to like to do to try to blow off steam. And so. I think it was July 28th.

• 2:37:10Speaker 06

  I burned out of money. Mostly. Um, then I go to the warehouse with, uh. I had a little firing range behind my warehouse with, or inside the warehouse. It was long. Um. I had a sub gun. Two suppressors, like an AR and an AK maybe, and maybe a handgun. Then I went and blew off some steam. And I waited till I was dope sick again, cause I, I refused to buy heroin until I was sick. Because I'm trying to taper myself off of it. And so I'm trying to, you know, it's. It's insane the way I was, but in my head and my fucked up thinking it made sense. And so I'm on my way home.

• 2:37:50Speaker 06

  Um, I went and got dope.

• 2:37:53Speaker 06

  And I wouldn't let myself use it until I made it home. That was part of the punishment that I was doing to myself. A mile from home.

• 2:38:03Speaker 06

  And I get lit up by the cops.

• 2:38:07Speaker 06

  And I'm in a beat up pickup truck with six grams of dope. A machine gun. And two silencers.

• 2:38:17Speaker 06

  And you would have thought they pulled over Pablo Escobar. Um. The traffic stop. Moves from this gas station to my house because they feel they have cause to search my home. They think I'm selling machine guns. I'm running guns and dope for the cartel. One of the detectives came over and told me they'd talked to Fort Campbell and they know I'm a disgruntled veteran and I stole all of this. What are you fucking talking about? Like the receipts for the shits of my house. I'm sick as hell, handcuffed to the back of the car. Our little cove, I had a house on the golf course, like outside looking in, I was darned great. Our little cove had thirty some odd vehicles in it from five different agencies before this was over. I had the DEA, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Shelby County, Memphis Police.

• 2:39:02Speaker 06

  And the ATF. I had showed the ATF how to read their own paperwork for my form, whatever it was for my tax stamps for the suppressors and the sub gun. And um. This goes on like 12 hours. I mean, it's hot as fuck. I'm in the middle of asphalt coves, sitting in a cop car with no A C handcuffed dope sick. Watching them come out of my house, taking my entire life savings in the form of firearms from me.

• 2:39:31Speaker 06

  One of the guys with organized crime unit that was there told me early on in the day. When this happened, it's like, if you're telling me the truth, then these are your guns. This is your dope.

• 2:39:42Speaker 06

  We're gonna work something out. And 12 hours later, they finally realized I'm not Pablo Escobar. Those are my guns. I legally had every one of them, and I've never been in trouble in my life. So they take me down to this place off of Shelby Drive in Memphis for like, alright, here's the deal, you know, we took all the shit from your house. You're not getting your guns back.

• 2:40:05Speaker 06

  Fifty-three firearms I took from the house. Uh, you're gonna snitch. You're gonna go buy drugs and you're gonna, we're gonna watch everything. You're gonna wear a wire or something. You're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna give us some drug dealers. I was like, sure.

• 2:40:19Speaker 06

  And sure as shit, they took the handcuffs off and gave me my keys to my pickup truck.

• 2:40:27Speaker 06

  So I had no intentions of following through and snitching on anybody. I never wanted to go to South Memphis again. I get in my truck. I crank it. And I shut the door and I feel something and I know immediately what it is. They have left dope in my vehicle. And so my decision to never go to South Memphis getting changed right then and there. I went right back to South Memphis. I bought more dope.

• 2:40:55Speaker 06

  But I'm not gonna use it until I get home.

• 2:40:59Speaker 06

  It's now nine, ten, maybe eleven o'clock at night.

• 2:41:05Speaker 06

  I'm in the exact same spot I was earlier in the day. And blue lights were behind me. I get pulled over twice in the same day with the same amount of dope.

• 2:41:17Speaker 06

  This time, they do take me to jail.

• 2:41:23Speaker 06

  And they hit me with, uh... I don't even remember how many counts. It was absurd, like, just wild. Possession with intent to manufacture, sell, and distribute for crack cocaine, for heroin. Uh, six possession of a firearm during the commission of a dangerous felony. Um, all in all, there were like fourteen felony counts that they had gotten me on. Um, which is ridiculous, like, if I'm actually being honest, because I didn't commit a felony. I wasn't selling drugs. There is no dangerous felony. Well, whatever. I had drugs and guns. I'm not supposed to do that, I know. But I think my life's over at this point. Um...

• 2:42:04Speaker 06

  They, they took me to jail, obviously. Uh, I had to call Erin, obviously. She filed for divorce, I think, on her tenth anniversary while I was in jail. Which I had that coming. I had destroyed that poor woman's life, you know? Um...

• 2:42:24Speaker 06

  They end up, uh, my dealer, old man Stan, comes and bonds me out. Because I had spent so much with him, he's convinced I'm gonna continue to. Somehow, they mixed up paperwork in jail, and they let me out.

• 2:42:43Speaker 06

  When they hadn't brought all the charges on the other case against me.

• 2:42:49Speaker 06

  And so I bonded out of jail and immediately had a felony warrant for the first traffic stop. Apparently they only booked me in on the second one and forgot to add the first one. So they add those on and put out a felony warrant for me. And so I go on the run.

• 2:43:07Speaker 06

  I moved into a trap house with some guys I had literally just met that night in South Memphis. What's a trap house? The trap house is a house where narcotics and women are bought and sold. It's, you know, a trap, just spot. It is the single source of every bit of pain and suffering in any neighborhood they exist in. It's hell. That's what it is. It's hell. I had nowhere else to go. Out of warrant, I couldn't go home. My wife didn't want anything to do with me. I had no idea what my kids knew or didn't know because, like I said, we'd hidden all of this from them.

• 2:43:49Speaker 06

  Daddy getting arrested is gonna... I don't even know how to have that conversation with them.

• 2:43:57Speaker 06

  I'd go into hiding, basically. This dope boy, that obviously all the dope boys in South Memphis knew how much money I'd been spending and they all wanted to know me. So I was welcomed with open arms out there. And the one that ran Melrose Street, I'll actually say his name because he's dead now, Rodney Cotton. He used to go by the name Fat Boy or Hot Rod. He kind of took me in because he was convinced I was gonna teach him how to run businesses.

• 2:44:29Speaker 06

  I don't know what he had in mind, but basically put me to work working security at a trap house out there.

• 2:44:39Speaker 06

  Which was odd because I'm the only white guy in the hood and I'm deciding who can and cannot get into the trap.

• 2:44:49Speaker 06

  This went on for a few weeks. What'd you see inside the trap houses? Everything you could imagine. What does that mean? I've witnessed murder. I've witnessed attempted rapes. I've witnessed overdoses.

• 2:45:09Speaker 06

  I've witnessed people do unimaginable things that even with my background and experience can't wrap my mind around for a head of dope, crack in particular. Like what?

• 2:45:22Speaker 06

  You won't want to hear it if I tell you.

• 2:45:28Speaker 06

  I've seen people do the most deep-based, dehumanizing things you can ever imagine. Because their addiction commanded them to. They had become complete and total slaves to a substance.

• 2:45:42Speaker 06

  And in turn, complete and total slaves to whoever controls that substance.

• 2:45:47Speaker 06

  I didn't know the true depths of human depravity until I was out there. Until I lived in it and saw it.

• 2:45:56Speaker 06

  And all of my hope and faith in humanity died on that street. My hope for having a future died on that street.

• 2:46:05Speaker 06

  I was gonna kill myself out there. I was interrupted.

• 2:46:11Speaker 06

  And then ended up in handcuffs again. How were you gonna do it? With a knife. I was just gonna cut my throat. It was the only way I could do it. Because I refused to touch heroin after I got arrested. I would not go back to it. I was still smoking crack. But I refused to touch heroin. And I was afraid that if I tried to overdose, because that's, once you've shot up heroin, there's no other way to kill yourself. It's an embrace from God. Like, it's a painless way to go. My fear was that because my tolerance was so high, I would try to kill myself and I wouldn't, and I would end up addicted again. And I would rather die than have that happen. And so I was gonna cut my throat with a K-bar.

• 2:46:57Shawn Ryan?

  How long were you in and out of those?

• 2:46:59Speaker 06

  Five years. I get this, this is-

• 2:47:02Shawn Ryan?

  You spent five years in that shit? In trap houses?

• 2:47:05Speaker 06

  In and out, in and out. But there, my, my whole story is punctuated with highs and lows where everything looks great. I wasn't homeless for five years. I wasn't running from that warrant for five years. But all in, I was battling South Memphis for five years. That run stopped when they found me on that warrant.

• 2:47:27Speaker 06

  And you know, we were talking about God winks. I feel like this was a missed God wink on, on my behalf.

• 2:47:34Speaker 06

  But maybe not, because if I, if I'd taken it, I wouldn't be sitting here with you today. Um, Veterans Court refused to take my case. I did serve long enough to be eligible for Veterans Court. So even though I don't get like VA benefits out, I was eligible for that. They wouldn't take my case because of the gun charges. They were convinced the feds are gonna come after me. Now, I knew that wasn't the case because I legally owned the guns and I wasn't actually selling drugs. So I had faith that justice would prevail. But the drug court judge heard about my case and decided to take a chance on me. Uh, and he told me that if I would sign up for his program, he would send me to rehab and he'd pay for it. And I jumped at it.

• 2:48:14Speaker 06

  Um, and so

• 2:48:18Speaker 06

  after spending two months out there on, in the traps, that run, I was actually excited. I thought, you know, things are gonna be better. And he sent me to rehab. Um, I spent fifty-four days in there. And, uh, like I was serious about it. I wanted to be clean. I did not want to go back to that life at all. Um,

• 2:48:43Speaker 06

  I graduated the rehab program and, and got off to a fairly good start on drug court. I think I got released back into the free world

• 2:48:56Speaker 06

  early November.

• 2:48:59Speaker 06

  And I made contact with Erin, you know, I wanted to get back into kids' lives and I mean, because this just hit them completely out of the blue, like they didn't see any of this coming, you know. So from July to November, there had been very minimal interaction with my kids. They didn't know what the fuck was going on. Or I don't know what they knew. Let's put it that way. And Erin had filed for divorce. Her attorney told her it would help her if she got a restraining order against me. And so she did that. And they served me with it in the middle of drug court in front of everybody on my birthday. That was humiliating, mostly because I've never laid a finger on her. I've never threatened

• 2:49:44Speaker 06

  any of them. I've never, you know, made her be afraid of me or the kids or any of that. But she had to attest that I've done all of those things on this piece of paper. So I did what any good addict would do. And I went and got high over that. Now, when they released me from rehab, they court ordered me into Rebo's, which is a halfway house in Memphis, sober spelled backwards. And one of the biggest rules in a sober living house is you can't get high. And I did that. And so I knew I was about to go back to jail. So right back to South Memphis I went. I just went on the run. And then I actually had a conversation with Erin that her attorney did that without her knowledge or something.

• 2:50:28Speaker 06

  I don't remember what it was. And I started realizing like how bad I fucked up by going on the run and getting high again. I went and tear myself in. And sure enough, I mean, obviously, I went to jail, you know. But the drug court judge is, he's gonna give me another chance. Like, he sees this a lot. He expected it, blah, blah, blah. I was banned from that halfway house.

• 2:50:51Speaker 06

  And they were like, we're just gonna leave you in jail until we figure out what to do with you, cuz you can't go home. Uh, you can't go back to the halfway house. You know, we don't know what to do with you. And so I spent my birthday, or not my birthday, I spent Thanksgiving in jail. They kept me, god, they probably kept me a month that time, with no bond, like, there's no hope of getting out. You, you get out when the judge says you can get out. And I pissed the judge off at this point, cuz he took a chance on me. Even though we expected it to happen, he's mad. Um, they, uh, they finally let me out December 17th, and I'll never forget this, that day in court, because the jail backs up to the courthouse, it's literally like underneath the court kinda. Um, so they took me into the courtroom

• 2:51:33Speaker 06

  from jail, uh, and this guy named Brian Owens comes up to me and asks me, he's like, "You tired of living like this, dude?" I was like, "Yeah, I'm, I'm really tired of living like this." And, uh, he, he looked me in the eye for a minute, he's like, "You know you don't have to." And I don't know why that, that simple yet incredibly profound statement hit me like a ton of bricks, dude. Like, I started bawling like in the middle of court, like, it was, it was weird, you know, it would just hit me so, because I could tell by the way he said it, this guy that I'm, I'm just now meeting for the first time, in the way he said that, I could tell he's been where I was. He, he, literally where I was, I come to find out later, he had been standing on the other side of that

• 2:52:15Speaker 06

  wall, one, years ago, as a, a client in drug court, and today he works for that court. But I could tell this guy knew something. He knew a way out of this, you know, and, uh, he told me that I, I was, he was gonna get me out of jail that day, and then he wanted me to meet him at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting that night. Now, I'd been to NA back in California, but I just used it as a place to pick up chicks, like, I didn't pay any attention. But I, I would do whatever I had to do to, to get Brian to get me out of jail. Um, and I would do whatever I had to do to not live that way anymore. And I meant it,

• 2:52:58Speaker 06

  like, with every fiber of my being, I meant that shit, I was dead set on, I'm, I'm gonna do this.

• 2:53:06Speaker 06

  And so he got me out of jail. Um, I found out after I left the jail that day that the judge was dead serious when he said, I can't go home and I can't go to the halfway house. But they forgot to figure out what to do with me, so I had to figure that out. Which I'm sure was 100% intentional, right? They wanted to see what I was gonna do. So now I'm, I'm a free man and it's the middle of December, right before Christmas, and I have nowhere to go. I'm on the streets. Am I gonna fuck up or am I gonna do right? And I think that's what they're trying to figure out. And I did right. I, I got with my dad and went, got into an extended stay motel. I went to an NA meeting. First time I ever saw her.

• 2:53:52Speaker 06

  Um, and, uh, I was, I was serious about doing it. And I decided I wanted to try to fix things with Erin. She's the mother of five of my kids and divorcing her was something I could not wrap my mind around. No matter how bad she wanted to, you know, she spent all those years thinking I was the one for her, knowing the problems that I had. And here we are with the problems front and center. What are we gonna do? I had that conversation with her. We decided to reconcile. And so I think it was Christmas Eve of 2014, I moved back into the house with her and the kids.

• 2:54:31Speaker 06

  In hindsight, it's a terrible idea.

• 2:54:35Shawn Ryan?

  Did you blame her for the restraining order? Were you upset about that?

• 2:54:40Speaker 06

  I, I was upset about it. It was very, I was hurt more than anything. Um, I didn't blame her for the relapse. I, I will never blame anybody else for that. Um, you know, I make my own decisions and when I choose to go get high about something, that's on me, not them. Um, when we went to court for the restraining order, cause the way they do these things, they'll issue it just based on the word of the woman. And, and that's good. I'm glad they do that. Uh, and then you have a hearing about it to decide if it's gonna stand or get tossed out. And when we sat down in the courtroom, they start asking Erin all these questions like, when did Mr. Owen strike you? When did he do this? And she's like, no, no, none of that ever happened. And the judge is basically, well, then you can't have a restraining order. What are we doing?

• 2:55:24Speaker 06

  And so it just got, they're like, what I was afraid of was that Erin was gonna lie and say I had, you know, put my hands on her or something, which nothing like that ever happened in that marriage.

• 2:55:34Shawn Ryan?

  Were you sharing needles?

• 2:55:35Speaker 06

  No, no.

• 2:55:38Speaker 06

  Never not once. In fact, I, this is one of the reasons I was able to hide it so well. I was the worst person I knew. I didn't have friends.

• 2:55:47Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think you put your family in danger?

• 2:55:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, I definitely put them in danger. There's no doubt about that.

• 2:55:52Shawn Ryan?

  So how could you blame her?

• 2:55:54Speaker 06

  I don't, yeah. I don't blame her at all. Um, in fact, hindsight being 2020, I wish she hadn't let me move back in. You know? I, I had no business beating around my kids right then. At all, or her. You know, I, I didn't deserve to be sleeping in that house that we had worked to pay for together.

• 2:56:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, um. A thousand things could have gone wrong.

• 2:56:21Shawn Ryan?

  Something must have went wrong.

• 2:56:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:56:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, I, I don't handle guilt well. Never have. I drink at guilt. I always have. And, uh, I don't think things were meant to work out to me in there. Uh, too much damage had been done. Um.

• 2:56:49Speaker 06

  And it was, it was a terrifying thing to try to accept that. Because you start.

• 2:56:58Speaker 06

  You start trying to think, how, how, how am I going to raise a family with her? You know? With the exception of this 10-month period. All things considered, I've been a pretty stellar dad.

• 2:57:11Speaker 06

  You know, outside looking in. You know, you, you, you know that that's not true because you've heard all the fucked up stuff that I was doing, but. I was still telling myself the lie that I wanted the world to see. And I'm trying to figure out, how am I going to raise these kids? Uh. In a broken home now. Uh, what's going to happen with my cases? I was looking at a lot of prison time if, if I fucked up drug court. Um.

• 2:57:40Speaker 06

  And so much damage had been done to the relationship with Aaron and I. And I just, I don't think there was any fixing it.

• 2:57:51Speaker 06

  I don't think there was.

• 2:57:54Speaker 06

  What happened? I moved out in February.

• 2:57:59Speaker 06

  And I think it was February.

• 2:58:03Speaker 06

  Stayed clean. I was working program, got a sponsor, started working steps. Just taking recovery seriously, like very seriously. So you weren't drinking? No. Well, so drug court, from the day I signed to drug court, they drug test you randomly. And one of the tests they do now is called an ethanol glucuronide test, the test for alcohol metabolites going back 80 hours. And thank God they do, because if they weren't doing that, I'd have been drinking like a motherfucker, thinking I'm gonna cheat the test, you know? So yeah, I stayed sober from November, God, almost until the next November.

• 2:58:40Speaker 06

  A whole lot happened in that gap.

• 2:58:44Shawn Ryan?

  I know everybody out there has to be

• 2:58:48Shawn Ryan?

  just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force-feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth in what's going on in the country and in the world. And so one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign Superbad. She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show.

• 2:59:27Shawn Ryan?

  And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind-blowing. And so I've asked her if she would... Contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. So it's gonna be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not gonna spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two, if we release two shows. The only other thing that's gonna be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that, but

• 3:00:14Shawn Ryan?

  like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up, links in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.

• 3:00:26Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Ben, we're back from the break. So we are at

• 3:00:32Shawn Ryan?

  Aaron?

• 3:00:33Speaker 06

  Aaron, yep.

• 3:00:33Shawn Ryan?

  Aaron left with the kids.

• 3:00:36Speaker 06

  Aaron left with the kids, this is like the end of 2014. Um, we decided to reconcile.

• 3:00:43Shawn Ryan?

  So we, hold on, let me recap, because we had about an hour break there for lunch. So you moved in Christmas time?

• 3:00:50Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 3:00:51Shawn Ryan?

  Now it's February, Aaron takes off, you did not start drinking again. What happened? Why'd she leave?

• 3:00:58Speaker 06

  So actually, I left.

• 3:01:00Shawn Ryan?

  You left?

• 3:01:00Speaker 06

  I left. Um, and I think it was February, March, um, I just realized that well, I've been trying to avoid this because I don't want to put my business out there, but it's unavoidable. So Aaron had an affair, right? And, and I knew this when I moved back in in December and it happened while I was in jail. And if I'm being completely honest, I can't blame her. I mean, I ran her life into the ground. I had not physically touched her in a year, you know? Everything was falling apart and she didn't think there was any chance we were ever gonna work out anyway. So I don't blame her for that, but it is part of what played into my decision to move out.

• 3:01:34Shawn Ryan?

  Did you ever have infidelity with her?

• 3:01:36Speaker 06

  No, no.

• 3:01:38Shawn Ryan?

  Through all that shit?

• 3:01:39Speaker 06

  Through all that shit, I did not.

• 3:01:40Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Would not have expected that.

• 3:01:43Speaker 06

  Well, I don't think she expected it either, but it is the reality.

• 3:01:49Shawn Ryan?

  So you couldn't forgive her for that?

• 3:01:51Speaker 06

  I thought I could, but no, I definitely could not. I definitely could not.

• 3:01:57Speaker 06

  And so

• 3:01:57Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you find out?

• 3:02:00Speaker 06

  I just knew that finally she admitted it. She's part of the new, you know, something, something seemed off.

• 3:02:06Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know him?

• 3:02:07Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:02:09Shawn Ryan?

  Friend?

• 3:02:09Speaker 06

  Employee.

• 3:02:10Shawn Ryan?

  An employee?

• 3:02:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:02:12Shawn Ryan?

  Are they still together?

• 3:02:13Speaker 06

  Oh, God, no. I don't even know if they ever even saw each other again. Yeah, um. So in the middle of all this, um. Let me back up to December.

• 3:02:27Shawn Ryan?

  Well, hold on, how did you handle that?

• 3:02:33Shawn Ryan?

  Cause you're sober.

• 3:02:34Speaker 06

  I'm sober and, uh, well, I'm just gonna own it. Um, I was still a manipulative ass at the time. And the only thing standing in between me and living in my home with my children was the judge telling me she didn't want me there. So the way I handled it was basically to tell her, look, we can work through this. You just gotta let me come home. You know, and part of me-

• 3:02:58Shawn Ryan?

  So you knew before you went home?

• 3:03:00Speaker 06

  I knew before I went home. That that was the ammo I used to get her to tell the judge, let me come back to my house. Now, part of that was necessity. I have to have a place to live. Like this extended stay wasn't gonna work. I missed my kids. I was sober. I wanted to rebuild my life and I wanted to rebuild my business and fix my marriage. I did genuinely want all of those things.

• 3:03:18Shawn Ryan?

  Did you still love her before you moved back in?

• 3:03:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've known this woman since I was 12. She birthed-

• 3:03:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, like a hundred percent? Looked like a little uncertainty there.

• 3:03:32Speaker 06

  It was different. It was a different kind of love, you know? Like I've, I've still got love in my heart for Erin to this day and I always will. But not the kind that is required to be married to somebody. You know what I mean?

• 3:03:45Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 3:03:46Speaker 06

  Um.

• 3:03:49Speaker 06

  And so I moved back in and, and my understanding was that all the bullshit that come out from either of our side had come out. And it was all out in the open, um. And I get a phone call New Year's Eve from my landlord or my landlord's attorney. Now, keep in mind, I haven't paid a rent on my warehouse in six months because I was too busy spending my money on heroin or being in jail or running for warrants to handle things. So my understanding was that my warehouse had been seized and my assets and belongings of that warehouse no longer belonged to me. Uh, and Aaron confirmed that was the case.

• 3:04:29Speaker 06

  Well, I get this phone call New Year's Eve from my landlord's attorney asking me, um, if we had decided not to get my inventory out of the warehouse. Now, keep in mind, I had over a million dollars in inventory in this warehouse. So come to find out, um, he had not seized any of my stuff and just wanted me to move my business out and let him have his warehouse back. Problem was I had until midnight New Year's Eve of 2014. And I didn't find this out until the day of. My parents and my wife had known for months that this was the case and that my business was not done. It was in fact, sitting there waiting on me to pick it up and move it somewhere else and simply turn it back on. I went ballistic.

• 3:05:16Speaker 06

  You know, smashed my phone. Uh, I may have broken my hand punching a brick wall. I mean, I snapped, dude. That was it. Like from that point forward, I, I have accepted this is not, there's too much resentment. Couple that with the fact that I don't even know how I'm going to deal with, with the infidelity. Like it's, I just can't do this. All right. And I didn't know what to do because I still had to have a place to live.

• 3:05:42Speaker 06

  Um, and so I just tried to tough it out, man. I spent a lot of time with my kids.

• 3:05:51Shawn Ryan?

  What did you do with your kids?

• 3:05:54Speaker 06

  When?

• 3:05:55Shawn Ryan?

  When you went back. You said you spent a lot of time with your kids.

• 3:05:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, so there's a part.

• 3:05:59Shawn Ryan?

  What was that like?

• 3:06:00Speaker 06

  Um, I've been rebuilding bonds, dude. Kids are resilient.

• 3:06:03Shawn Ryan?

  How old are your kids at this point?

• 3:06:05Speaker 06

  Oh, they were, I want to say nine, 10.

• 3:06:11Speaker 06

  Let's see, this would have been December 2014. So Jacob would have been nine, Jackson would have been 10. Lily and the twins were 3, 3 and 4, almost 4, 4 and 5.

• 3:06:24Speaker 06

  We just kind of picked up right back where we left off, you know, watching nature shows together, going hiking. There's a IH park.

• 3:06:31Shawn Ryan?

  Was there a lot of relationship you had to rebuild? Trust and the fact that you're going to be there?

• 3:06:38Speaker 06

  It was dicey for a few days.

• 3:06:40Shawn Ryan?

  That's it?

• 3:06:41Speaker 06

  That was it. Because when I was living in that extended stay, Aaron could tell that something had changed in me and that I was trying to stay clean and the kids came and stayed with me some of that extended stay. So we had gotten most of the real rough part out of the way. I've always been very close to my kids. So even though-

• 3:06:56Shawn Ryan?

  What was the rough part?

• 3:06:59Speaker 06

  Just the uncomfortability, like them staying with me and crying at bedtime, wanting to go see mommy, you know?

• 3:07:04Shawn Ryan?

  I bet they had a lot of questions.

• 3:07:07Speaker 06

  They really didn't. They really didn't.

• 3:07:09Shawn Ryan?

  They didn't want to know why you were in there?

• 3:07:12Speaker 06

  In the extended stay?

• 3:07:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:14Speaker 06

  Well, they did. And that was the rough part, was explaining to them, Mom and Dad are getting divorced, you know? And that was like just the hardest thing I've ever had to tell my kids.

• 3:07:23Shawn Ryan?

  Did they have any inclination that, I mean, you were gone for, I think you said, 10 months?

• 3:07:31Speaker 06

  I was addicted to heroin for 10 months before the arrest. I was home for most of that. I would make my runs to the, you know, dope track, get my dope.

• 3:07:42Shawn Ryan?

  But then you were living at the trap houses?

• 3:07:44Speaker 06

  So that wasn't 10 months. That was four months I was out there, this run, in the traps. And so I don't really know how to explain it.

• 3:07:56Speaker 06

  We just kind of picked right up where we left off. It was strange.

• 3:08:00Shawn Ryan?

  How did you tell your kids you're getting divorced?

• 3:08:04Speaker 06

  I didn't. Aaron did.

• 3:08:07Speaker 06

  And then Christmas Eve, we told them, never mind, we're not like Merry Christmas. And, uh, you know, we had a real happy Christmas. Everything was great. Um, but then New Year's Eve came and I found that out about the business and it was just the totality. It was too much. And I also knew that like as far as my part went, like I'm not saying she did all the damage. I'd done tons of damage. This is all my fault to begin with. So I owned that and, and I knew in the back of my head that she might think she can get over all this, but she's never going to trust me again. I have destroyed our lives. Our life savings invested in a firearms collection has been stolen by the police. I'll never get them back. That one, I actually sued the state of Tennessee trying

• 3:08:48Speaker 06

  to get those back. Um, lost because I took too long to file it. But, you know, the business we had poured blood, sweat and tears into that my kids had sacrificed hours and hours of time with me. I ran that into the ground. Like, so I'm not sitting here trying to say it's because of the infidelity. It's because of the warehouse. It was the totality of all of these things. I, we, we destroyed that marriage. Mm hmm. Um, and so I spent a lot of time with the kids, January and February. Um, and part of that was because I wanted to spend time with my kids. Part of this is because I want to get the fuck away from the house. I wanted to be away from her. I was, I was so mad. And, you know, I don't know if you've ever done 12 step recovery, but in the rooms, they

• 3:09:29Speaker 06

  always say resentments are the number one offender. The resentment is the most common thing that sends people back on a relapse. And I was taking my recovery pretty seriously at this point in time. So I was trying to avoid resentments, which meant avoiding her in the house. Um, so we spent a lot of time out in the woods, a lot of time fishing as March rolled around, a lot of time hiking and, um, I started hanging out with, uh, this other guy in drug court named Thomas, who loved fishing too. And we'd, we'd go fishing all the time. We'd go shooting together. His parents lived on a bunch of land and, you know, before long I had opened up to Thomas about what was going on at home. He's like, come stay up here, man. And so I was kicking that idea around about going to stay with

• 3:10:13Speaker 06

  Thomas. Um, cause he lived up in Millington near the Navy base. Um, we were in Lakeland, which is a suburb of Memphis at the time, in the house that I bought when I got the job of Fager. So we hadn't moved. Um,

• 3:10:27Speaker 06

  And my, my other best friend at the time was this little kid named Brandon Kelly. I call him a kid. He had some endocrine problems and literally looked like he was a child, like 14 years old. He was really 25, but I met him in jail. Um, I actually met him and Thomas both in jail. All three of us were on drug court. Um, and so we just started hanging out a bunch and then, you know, getting into early spring, Narcotics Anonymous does a lot of functions or they'll do outings, like events for just people in recovery can go hang out at things that normally happen in Memphis. It's just a group of people that aren't doing drugs, you know, goes to these things. And so I started hanging out with those, uh, with that crowd that's going

• 3:11:08Speaker 06

  to the stuff all around Memphis. And, um, I had found a, an NA home group with Brandon Kelly. It was his home group and that's where I met Jess. Um, I had, I'd actually met her back in January at, uh, that Brian Owens guy, uh, his wife or girlfriend at the time was celebrating her sober birthday and I met Jess at that birthday, but we didn't really talk much. Like we'd played trivia crack back and forth, you know, and texted a little bit, but nothing weird. Um, but like I could tell, like she's somebody I enjoy spending time around. And, uh, so when the events picked back up in spring, you know, I found myself around her more and more. Um,

• 3:11:50Speaker 06

  and then one day she invited me and her boyfriend at the time to go to Quentin Tarantino Movie Fest they were having to drive in. And, uh, I went and he no showed, uh, and we'd watched like four or five Quentin Tarantino movies. And then the next day she invites me to go fishing with her. And I was like, well, hell yeah. You know, you know what I'm thinking? Like out at Shelby Forest in Mississippi River, middle of nowhere. I get out there. Not only does she not have fishing rods, she has brought her 10-year-old daughter with her. I was like, oh God, you know, what the hell's happening? So, as an aside, to this day, I have not gone fishing with Jess. To this day. We're

• 3:12:35Speaker 06

  gonna fix that at some point, but we did a hiking around Shelby Forest and this is weird because I've lived in Memphis for almost-

• 3:12:42Shawn Ryan?

  Jess, what's going on here?

• 3:12:45Speaker 06

  Reeling them in. He was fishing the whole time. Yeah, he was, and it worked. It worked. Um, I never knew Shelby Forest existed. I've been in Memphis 10 years and I never just saw this place. As much as I love the outdoors, it was mind blowing to me. It's this huge, like hundreds of acres of woods and hills and mountains and lakes and it's on the Mississippi. So we, me, Jess and her daughter, who is 10, I'm meeting for the first time, are out there hiking for the entire day, hours, catching, I caught a, a a cottonmouth water moccasin, like blew her mind, you know, catching turtles, like it was just, we had a fucking blast out there and and I didn't want it to stop. I didn't want it to stop. I had not been that happy in the company of another human being in as long as I could remember.

• 3:13:30Speaker 06

  Like I finally felt the connection with somebody and this was just as purely as friends. But from that day forward, and that was, I do remember the date, it was April 20th, uh, of 2015, Jess and I became inseparable. Wherever I went, she went, wherever she went, I went. Um, and like, it just, people were, started calling us the NA Power Cup. We're not even together. I'm still married, you know? But I realized because of the way I felt around her that I, my biggest fear leaving here, will I ever have anybody that I can be comfortable around again? Will anybody put up with me? Because, well, we've been talking for several hours. You know, I'm kind of a lot to deal with, right?

• 3:14:14Speaker 06

  So I had this fear that, that I wouldn't find love again, and I've got a terrifying fear of being alone too. So I wasn't convinced that like Jess is who I'm going to go be in love with. It just convinced me that I am able to be happy in the presence of somebody else. And so when I decided I was going to move out and move in with Thomas and take him up on that offer, Jess went with me. Now, we're still just friends, you know? We're literally sleeping in the same bed and still just friends. Um, which I know sounds crazy. I tried to kiss her one time, she cried. That was interesting. The next day she kissed me and then, you know, from there on, things were physical. This is like, like months went in that gap.

• 3:14:56Speaker 06

  So then, you know, I, I told Erin, like, let's go ahead and do this divorce. Um, I'm moving on. Um, which is what she had told me to do to begin with. And so she was like, okay. Neither of us wanted it, but it's what needs to happen, that kind of thing.

• 3:15:11Speaker 06

  And Jess and I pretty much moved into Thomas's house and started building a life together. Like, we were gonna start brush fire and Black Rifle and re-tech in a garage behind his house. We're gonna start the businesses back over. And we did. We were like, we actually did. And we're running an econ business out of his garage. July, I think, comes around and, you know, Jess had met all the kids at this point. All the kids love her. Her daughter loved me. Now, we haven't told Erin that we're an item. And so that was a big landmine we were waiting on. And it ended about like you can imagine it would.

• 3:15:50Shawn Ryan?

  Actually, I don't know how it would land. I mean, you guys are divorced?

• 3:15:55Speaker 06

  So, um, well, we're not divorced yet. We're not divorced yet.

• 3:16:00Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, there's a lot of history there. So I could, I could see it being a relief.

• 3:16:06Speaker 06

  Well.

• 3:16:07Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, there's gotta be a lot of weight behind your spouse for that time.

• 3:16:12Speaker 06

  And I make terrible decisions around women, okay? All right, so I'm just gonna preface that. All right, we've come a long way since then. I've grown a lot as a human being. I was still sleeping with Erin. And so when she found out I was sleeping with Jess, she sat Jess down and said, hey, just so you're aware, I'm still sleeping with him too. And Jess acted like she didn't care, but in reality, it ripped her guts out.

• 3:16:39Shawn Ryan?

  Um. Time out. Let's switch seats.

• 3:16:49Speaker 00

  Oh, I love this. I love this.

• 3:16:54Speaker 11

  Oh, okay.

• 3:16:56Shawn Ryan?

  Jess, welcome to the show.

• 3:16:58Speaker 11

  Thank you.

• 3:16:59Shawn Ryan?

  So, couple of questions before we get into the, the sleeping debacle here. Why'd you cry when he tried to kiss you?

• 3:17:09Speaker 11

  I honestly have no idea. I think I was, um, I'm not very big on physical affection. I guess, I know that sounds weird. Uh, my family is, like, my dad's part is Japanese, so I wasn't raised with a whole lot of physical affection. And I think it caught me off guard. And I wasn't quite sure if I wanted it or not, because I knew he had a wife. And like, I knew he had five kids. And I was like, I don't know, I don't know if I want five kids. And I, I, I didn't know what I wanted at that point.

• 3:17:44Shawn Ryan?

  You're a former addict too?

• 3:17:46Speaker 11

  Yes.

• 3:17:47Shawn Ryan?

  How long have you been sober?

• 3:17:49Speaker 11

  Uh, a little more than Ben. It's like five and a half years. Uh, my clean date is June 1st, 2019.

• 3:17:59Shawn Ryan?

  What did you see in Ben that made you fall in love with him? Were you aware of his past?

• 3:18:07Speaker 11

  Um, I wasn't aware of all of it. Uh, but, you know, I had my own past, so I wasn't totally worried about that. I think what really attracted me to him was I love nature and I love music. And, and I love smart people, because I've always wanted to be like really smart and I don't really see myself like that. But he was, and like, as you've heard in his story, he's extremely intelligent. And it's very hard to find somebody that is that intelligent and nerd-like, who also listens to metal and, you know, likes nature and hiking. And I found all of that in Ben. And he was funny. He made me laugh. Like, if you can make me laugh, that's, that's a big plus.

• 3:18:52Shawn Ryan?

  Is there a...

• 3:18:56Shawn Ryan?

  How do I say this?

• 3:18:59Shawn Ryan?

  Is there a certain level of comfortability knowing that person that you're falling in love with is, is also an addict?

• 3:19:10Speaker 11

  Wow, that's a, that's a good question. There, there was a little... I was comfortable in knowing that I wouldn't be judged for who I was. And I think there was comfortability there because I was, I was raised by an addict. Like, my mom's a crack addict, was. Um, so, I... But at the same time, I know how, how bad it can get, how much of a train wreck all of that can turn into. So, it was, it was comforting knowing that I, I had somebody that could understand me, but it was, it was also terrifying at the same time.

• 3:19:45Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, the reason I'm asking, I didn't, I mean, my, my addictions weren't like these. But, um, you know, my wife is gonna be sixteen years sober this year.

• 3:19:58Speaker 11

  That's awesome.

• 3:19:58Shawn Ryan?

  And we'd kinda talked about my coke addiction, drinking, benzos, opiates, all that shit. When I met her, I'd found out, you know, that she was sober because she wouldn't have a drink at dinner. And I remember the first... I remember when it hit me. I had asked her, I said, "I hate it when people ask me what my hobbies are, because I don't have any fucking hobbies, other than work, drugs, booze, and women." And I just asked her, "How did she find what her new hobbies were?"

• 3:20:43Shawn Ryan?

  And she kinda went on and told me, you know, like, "Well, that's a tough question and, and, uh, it takes some time." And she was so transparent, I just knew what we had was real and that I didn't, I didn't have to hide anything. I could be fully transparent with somebody and that's probably the first time in my life I could do that. Is that, uh...

• 3:21:10Speaker 11

  That's, yeah.

• 3:21:11Shawn Ryan?

  Kinda how it works?

• 3:21:12Speaker 11

  Yeah. Pretty much, yeah. It's... And, and it was the same thing with Ben. Like, I was able to be completely transparent. And I'm a very open book anyway, but there's certain things that I won't... But with him, I, I, I just, it was like we were just connected instantly. Like, I just knew that's who I was supposed to be with, with, for the rest of my life.

• 3:21:34Shawn Ryan?

  So what happened when he found out he was sleeping with Erin still?

• 3:21:39Speaker 11

  He was actually blackout drunk at that point. And this was like right into the first of our relationships. So I didn't know what to do. I'm newly clean at this time, the first time since I was 13. And I didn't want to mess that up. I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to be doing with him blackout drunk. And I didn't know he had been drinking at this point. I had found like a vodka bottle in the truck. Like I was going to the store and found this, came back home, confronted him about it. And if you know Ben, like if he's drunk, he will never admit it. He'll be slurring and still not admitting that he drank. So I called Erin once it got so bad that he was blackout drunk and he wouldn't wake up.

• 3:22:23Speaker 11

  And I was, I was freaking out. So I called Erin because she had moved into her own place at this point. I was like, please come to the house. I don't know what to do with him because she's been married, you know? She's been with him for so long. She knew how to deal with this. So she came over and we're smoking a cigarette outside and she's like, just so you know. Or she said, are you sleeping with Ben? She's like, I know you're sleeping together in the same bed. I mean, are you sleeping with Ben?

• 3:22:54Speaker 11

  And I just felt this weight because I didn't want to say yes. And but I knew it was better to tell the truth. I was like, yes, we are sleeping together. She's like, oh, because he's sleeping with me too. And dude, I like every, just everything in me got ripped out. Like I felt like I was going to die. And the thing about me, I'll never let anybody know if I'm hurt. Like I got this, this protection wall. And I was like, ah, guys suck. And that's all I said. Like I just, I just totally nonchalant. I did not let her know it bugged me in the least, but inside I was fucking dying.

• 3:23:37Speaker 11

  And you know, we go back into Ben and she checks on him. And I'm living in her house and their house at this point. And you know, she's got the kids in her own little apartment and she leaves. She's like, he's going to be fine. Let him sleep it off.

• 3:23:55Speaker 11

  And that was it, and she left. And it was just... So I'm like sitting there, and I stay up all night. Because I'm afraid he's gonna die on me, I'm afraid something bad's gonna happen. Um, because my, my mom had overdosed and, and we thought she was asleep. And she had, she was actually dead, so I, to this day, I still have a horrible fear.

• 3:24:16Shawn Ryan?

  Your mom overdosed?

• 3:24:18Speaker 11

  Yes.

• 3:24:18Shawn Ryan?

  You found your mom dead?

• 3:24:20Speaker 11

  I, I was two houses down, and my sister came and got me and was like, "Mom's dead." So I ran over the two houses away and saw her, and she, they had had her on the floor at that point. But, but ever since then, I was terrified when I see people sleeping for too long. Um, so I was afraid he was gonna die on me, so I, I literally stayed up all night. Mad as fuck at him, like I wanted to kill him. But at the same time, I loved him so much that I just, I just sat up and watched him all night. Like, I'm, I'm sure I was sobbing half of the night because I couldn't believe that he had been cheating on me. With his wife, I mean, like, how bad does that sound? It was a, it was a bad time.

• 3:25:02Shawn Ryan?

  How did you confront him?

• 3:25:05Speaker 11

  So, um, the next day, when he finally came to, and he drinks so much that even when he comes to, he's still kinda drunk. And I was like, "So, I had a conversation with Aaron, and he wasn't expecting what I said." I was like, "She said y'all are still asleep together." And I think he, he denied it, I think, for a good little bit. Until I was like, "Dude, I mean, come on, she's your wife, it's, I understand." I really didn't understand, because I, I've never, I've never understood infidelity. I don't, I don't, at all. Um, so it really hurt, and it hurt that he was denying it. And I think I finally just came out, "Just fucking say it, just fucking tell me what happened." And he admitted it.

• 3:25:51Speaker 11

  And, um, you know, like, Aaron was texting him just non-stop.

• 3:25:56Shawn Ryan?

  About what?

• 3:25:57Speaker 11

  Uh, about us.

• 3:25:59Shawn Ryan?

  Was there jealousy?

• 3:26:00Speaker 11

  Oh, I'm sure there was. I mean, you know, he's been her person since they were 12. And, and now this, this junky bitch comes in this, the picture and just takes him away. You know, so I'm, I'm, there's a lot of hatred. There's a lot of animosity. And now I'm living in her house even, which that was the wrong thing to do. That was, that was very bad judgment on our part. And, uh, yeah, so she's, I mean, they're still married at this point. They don't get actually legally divorced till like a year later. So maybe even two years later.

• 3:26:39Speaker 11

  So it was, there was a lot of anger. I'm sorry, my mouth is so dry right now.

• 3:26:44Shawn Ryan?

  So how did you, I mean, where did it go from there? How'd you, how did you get over that?

• 3:26:52Speaker 11

  I, it took, well, and this'll go into Ben's story a little bit. There was another woman in the mix. And this one was way fucking worse than Erin. So now, so then all my anger went from Erin to this other girl. So, uh, and Erin, you know, I understood. He was with Erin for for years. They were married, you know, they'd been friends since they were 12. I was just some chick he met in NA. So I, even though I was very angry that he lied about it and that he wasn't forthcoming in our relationship, I, I did understand it. I got it. This other chick though, that was-

• 3:27:34Shawn Ryan?

  Who was the next one?

• 3:27:36Speaker 11

  Um,

• 3:27:38Speaker 11

  I don't, funny enough, it was another girl that he met in NA. Ben, Ben was just jumping for a little while there. Just us three, but there was a point in time-

• 3:27:48Shawn Ryan?

  Just us three?

• 3:27:54Speaker 11

  Hey, man. There, there was a point where it was all three of us at one time. Like, he was seeing her, he was seeing me, he was seeing this other chick and- I actually found out about the other chick. After he goes to jail, I hear a knock at the door. I had found out that I'm pregnant with Ben's kid like six weeks before this. And Ben goes to jail, he had had another relapse. I hear a knock at the door and I open it. There's nobody there, but there's like this manila envelope about this big. And I open it, I'm like, what the fuck is this? I thought someone was trying to sell some shit. So I open it and it's just pages, pages of emails

• 3:28:35Speaker 11

  of him and this other chick. And on the front of the envelope, it says, hi, my name is Jeremy.

• 3:28:43Speaker 11

  Yeah, I believe that you would like to know that your boyfriend is fucking my wife. And that's what it says on the front. So now I'm going through these emails. I'm pregnant with his kid and he's in jail for a relapse. I'm reading all these emails, like some of them are raunchy as fuck. Like this was a nasty bitch. And I just and then all my aggression kind of leaves from the Aaron thing. And now I just want to kill this bitch and kill him. So it was a, it was a bad whirlwind for a minute there.

• 3:29:15Shawn Ryan?

  Why'd you, why did you? Why'd you stay with him?

• 3:29:22Speaker 11

  Well, one, I was pregnant. So I remember he called from jail and this is before he even knew that I knew anything. And I'd threatened to have an abortion. So I was like, well, you're fucking Aaron, you're fucking this chick. Why would I keep this child? Like, why would we start a family together? I thought you loved me. And, you know, clearly I'm just like sobbing on the phone and he's denying it at first. And I read him some of the emails. He can't deny it anymore. And

• 3:29:53Speaker 11

  I just, I loved him. I really had just such a deep amount of love for him that I just, I was like, maybe we can work through it. And I had seen my mom and my dad work through insurmountable type of the things that they have gone through. Like my dad was not an alcoholic, nothing, my mom was. And the things that I had seen them work through and make it through, I guess that was. That was my model that I lived by, that I, that I went by. And I was just like, you know, people can work things out. Of course, right then, I wanted to kill him. I wanted to slit his throat right then. But, you know, later on, I started thinking about it and I was like, we're gonna have a kid together.

• 3:30:38Speaker 11

  And I wanted to, I knew I loved him. I, I, I knew he was the one that God made for me. I knew I was supposed to be with him. And I was like, I'm just gonna make it work. We're gonna make something work.

• 3:30:49Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I'm not saying you made the wrong decision. You guys obviously seem very happy today and you're very successful in what you guys are doing together. But, I mean, weren't you worried about, you know, with his history?

• 3:31:00Speaker 11

  I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified.

• 3:31:03Shawn Ryan?

  Weren't you, weren't you worried about not just being hurt more, but subjecting your daughter to this? How old was your daughter?

• 3:31:15Speaker 11

  Yeah, so she was 10. Um, his oldest was 10, my oldest is 10. So, and the kids got along great too, so I, but I, I was terrified about, you know, I wasn't too worried about Matty. Um, he is so good with kids. So he's, he's really good with, Matty is my oldest. And he was so good to her.

• 3:31:39Speaker 11

  I had never seen a, Matty's father is an addict as well. And he was not a good father. He was not a good man, very, he was a good man, but he, the addiction took over and there's a lot of bad stuff that Matty had to endure. So when Ben came into the picture, there is, uh, there's a happiness there. Like, he was actually a father to her and she loved him. And I wasn't so much worried about Matty. I was worried about getting hurt again. I was worried about the trust issue. Because I knew I would never be able to trust him again. And that, that was actually the problem for, for years. I didn't trust him.

• 3:32:21Speaker 11

  And actually, because that girl was someone that he met in NA. And we knew everybody, like, everybody knew us as the NA power couple, you know? So when everybody found out that he cheated on me with another bitch from NA, like, I was mortified.

• 3:32:36Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know her?

• 3:32:37Speaker 11

  I, I had never met her, luckily.

• 3:32:41Shawn Ryan?

  What about your own addictions? I mean, Sober for less than a year at this point?

• 3:32:46Speaker 11

  Yes, or I had just graduated for, or graduated. I had just gotten a year clean, I believe. Like, probably a month before this happened. So I was one year clean, first year I'd had clean since I was 13 years old.

• 3:33:01Shawn Ryan?

  Were you concerned that this would trigger your own addictions again?

• 3:33:04Speaker 11

  Absolutely, yeah. And...

• 3:33:07Shawn Ryan?

  Did it?

• 3:33:10Speaker 11

  So I didn't go back to heroin. But I remember the night that I found out, I downed a bottle of NyQuil. Knowing I was pregnant, and knowing that it might hurt my child, I just wanted to not be alive at that point.

• 3:33:26Speaker 11

  And addicts are selfish. And even though I had a year clean, I was still very much a selfish addict. And I got a bottle of NyQuil and, and, and half of me didn't want to keep this baby. Like, half of me, I was like, maybe it's just better if I'm just gonna drink this bottle of NyQuil and let nature take its course. And he was in jail anyway, nobody could stop me. And like, when I found out, I called Thomas. Thomas denied it. I called Brian Owens. Brian Owens says he didn't know anything about it. I later find out that, like,

• 3:34:01Speaker 11

  all the guys knew. They, you know, the guy code, you don't say anything. And, and I don't have girlfriends. I don't like women, they don't like me. All my friends were guys. So not only was I betrayed by him, I was betrayed by all of our friends. And that's how I felt, so... Like, I just felt like the whole world had shit on me. And I just, just downed that bottle of NyQuil and fell asleep. But I didn't do anything after that. Like, I woke up and I was like, what the fuck did I just do? And, and that was it. I was good after that. I didn't do any drugs or anything.

• 3:34:33Shawn Ryan?

  What about the manipulation? I mean...

• 3:34:38Shawn Ryan?

  My best friend died of heroin. Worked with him, uh, he was a SEAL, worked with him at CIA, I've talked about him a bunch of times on this show, but, um, he could be very manipulative. He was an extremely intelligent person. And I've been around a lot of addiction, um, you know, injectables, all, all the stuff. And it seems like the worse they get, the more manipulative they get. And so, when you found him drinking, when you found him lying about who he's sleeping

• 3:35:14Shawn Ryan?

  with, there's more than one, I mean, is that, I'm sure you're manipulative too, you know, at least in your past, and so, I mean, do you guys realize how, do you even realize that you're manipulating people? Or is it just come?

• 3:35:35Speaker 11

  Sometimes. Um, of course, I had a great lesson in manipulation because my mom was on crack, and that's what crackheads do. So, I had it very early on, you know, she taught me how to steal, you know, stuff like that. So, I, that's, that's natural for me, and it was normal, um, which actually helped because I could see through his bullshit, a lot, um, because I could just see things that I saw in my mom. And, um, I really, I, I, I tried so hard to not be like my mom, that I tried not to manipulate people. I tried to do the opposite. Even though I was an addict, I would, I would try not to, to do stuff like that, even though,

• 3:36:16Speaker 11

  you know, in the end, I was full-blown crackhead, and it did happen, but, especially with Ben, too, he's so intelligent, it's so easy for him to manipulate people. Um, and I'm, I'm sure there were times when we were manipulating, that we didn't even think of it like that.

• 3:36:33Shawn Ryan?

  Were you concerned that he was manipulating you?

• 3:36:38Speaker 11

  I mean, yeah, there was definitely concern in that. And I knew he was, you know, because he was like, you know, you're gonna have the baby. And, you know, he would bring all these things up that I didn't have a very happy childhood. You know, obviously, from what I just told you, but he did. He did have a perfect childhood. And I think, and he kept throwing out there, you know, we can do this and we can have this baby and we can get married and you see I make money, we can have a big house and I see you work your ass off, we can do this, we can do this together. And I think that was his way of, I guess, manipulating me into staying and working it out. And at the time, I wanted to slit his throat, but I'm very happy that I did stay.

• 3:37:20Speaker 11

  And I'm glad that that little manipulation did stick a little bit.

• 3:37:25Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take for you to get over all this and 100% trust?

• 3:37:31Speaker 11

  100% trust. Probably when we moved to Georgia.

• 3:37:40Speaker 11

  I think, I think I went to Georgia June 1st, 2019, my first day clean. And I think that's when I just let everything go. Up until that point, like, I would still think of the emails and like the thought of some things, I'd want to kill him in his sleep and I would actually think about it sometimes. But once we moved away from Memphis and like literally had to leave everything behind with just the clothes on our backs and a $700 truck with stolen plates, I was like, okay, I really am starting my life over with this man and I can't have to forgive. And, and I've learned this my whole life, you know, God teaches forgiveness.

• 3:38:21Speaker 11

  And I knew that if I was going to continue my life with him, I would have to forgive him before, before God would allow anything good to happen. I was gonna have to forgive him. And so I just, I just decided it's, it's time, it's time to forgive him and that was it.

• 3:38:41Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you guys move to Atlanta?

• 3:38:44Speaker 11

  We moved to, um, well, it's like an hour north of Atlanta. It's a little city called Cumming. And, well, we moved to stay alive. Um, that was at the very, the worst part of our addiction right then. And we knew if we didn't leave Memphis, if we didn't leave right at that minute, we were going to die. He actually left, um, a week before I did. I didn't know if I was ready yet. And if you leave or you say you're gonna stop doing drugs before you're ready, it's not gonna stick.

• 3:39:15Shawn Ryan?

  So wait a minute. So there was more after the night walk?

• 3:39:19Speaker 11

  Hmm?

• 3:39:19Shawn Ryan?

  There was more after the night walk?

• 3:39:22Speaker 11

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. That, I meant until he got back, until we relapsed for the first time, you know, together. Oh, and also, like, I was pregnant when all of this happened. Once I had my child, I always have to have C-sections. So they put me on pain pills. I never got off of them. I just kept taking them. I had so much resentment and hatred for him, um, that I just stayed on pain pills. And like, three weeks after I had James, our first, um, I get a call from Shelby County that he's in jail and he got caught with crack right in front of the trap house, like, three weeks after my C-section.

• 3:40:05Speaker 11

  Like, I could barely move, you know? I was breastfeeding, had this huge ass scar. I was an asthmatic, so I was dealing with an asthma attack at the same time. So all of that, just, I never stopped taking my pills. I was like, fuck it, he's gonna go get high, I'm gonna stay high. And so I just kept taking pain pills.

• 3:40:26Shawn Ryan?

  So you didn't relapse together?

• 3:40:29Speaker 11

  We did later, and it was bad. Um, and we, we tried to keep each other sane and good. There would be periods. I, I tell everybody, it's just like a roller coaster. I would be high, he would be clean. Or he would be drunk and then I would finally be okay. And then...

• 3:40:47Speaker 11

  He started getting, and this is like, you know, years in the making. We get thrown out of him and Aaron's house. They foreclose on it. We end up getting a much bigger house. And I'm a workaholic, just like him. I'm like a machine. I don't talk, I just work. So we were making money, just swimming in money. And the whole time, he's buying my pills, because obviously the doctors cut me off. You know, I don't need C-section pills anymore. And so I'm like, you know, I'm getting sick if I don't have these pills. And I'm getting them from my sister. I'm getting them from anybody I can. And every once in a while, in Memphis, there will be a drought. And you can't find pills. And I was so sick.

• 3:41:32Speaker 11

  And he can't stand to see me sick. So he was like, we both know, because I was on heroin before I even met him. We know if you can't find pills, you go get heroin. And it's a lot cheaper to begin with, anyway. So he went and got me heroin. I think that lasted about a week or two that I was just doing, but no, probably about a week. A week at most. And he was like, you know what? Fuck it, I'm gonna get on heroin, too. So then we were both on heroin. And it's just straight downhill from there.

• 3:42:06Shawn Ryan?

  Were his five kids living with you guys?

• 3:42:08Speaker 11

  So they would be back and forth. They were with Aaron most of the time.

• 3:42:15Speaker 11

  But, you know, they would come visit. Like, we had this big, like, she had a little apartment. And I think because we're workaholics, we made so much money, we were able to afford this big house. And so there was room for all of the kids. You know, all together with my kid and his kid. There were six kids, seven kids, shit, because I had James, seven kids. And there was room for all of them. And so they would come over there a lot. It was a big, nice house. They loved being over there.

• 3:42:45Speaker 11

  And I think at first, nobody really, nobody really understood the totality of how deep in it we were in. Because we made it look good. You know, we kept the businesses going. And for me... You know, lots of people, they think heroin junkies. They think of people, you know, just passing out in their chairs with a needle in their arm. That wasn't me at all. I, I guess from watching my mom all of those years, I have to be in control. I cannot be so out of it that I don't know what's going on. So I would snort heroin and it would give me superpowers. Like, I was like supermom. We would clean, I would bake brownies, we would go feed the ducks. I was organizing everything. I was getting all my work done.

• 3:43:27Speaker 11

  I was doing all the emails, I was dealing with customers. Like, it, nobody would have even thought that I was on drugs. I just looked like superwoman 24/7. Until I got dope sick, until I ran out of dope. And then like, my hair hurt, my skin hurt, everything, I couldn't move. And that's when people started noticing, maybe they're back on drugs. And then, you know, money, money wasn't even an issue. Like, you know, most people, you know, something's going on because they're, they're running out of money. And we just didn't do that, um, yet. We would eventually, and we would eventually get kicked out of that house. Because, um, crack became more important.

• 3:44:11Speaker 11

  And this is, I mean, we're, we're talking about probably a five-year span that I'm kinda going over right now.

• 3:44:18Shawn Ryan?

  So, how does a, how do the pills dry up in a city?

• 3:44:25Speaker 11

  I don't really know. Ben actually probably knows more, but I think they just bring in, you know, so much, they sell so much, and maybe some get seized. You know, you'll see the, the big seizures they have, and sometimes those seizures were drugs that were meant for Memphis. And then, they just, I guess the supply kinda runs out.

• 3:44:45Shawn Ryan?

  How did the crack come into play?

• 3:44:48Speaker 11

  So, Ben was on crack before I even knew him.

• 3:44:54Speaker 11

  And, you know, when we first met, I'm, I'm very transparent about everything. And I, you know, I told him my mom was a crackhead. And, um, I told him I never wanted to do crack. I never wanted to end up like my mom. My mom is also a raging alcoholic, a very violent one. So I stayed away from alcohol. I, to this day, I hate alcohol. I don't want anything to do with it. And, um, so those two things I always stayed away from. And then one day, uh, we couldn't find heroin and I was just so, so sick. I was dog sick. I just, I couldn't move, but we could find crack. And I think Ben had already had some.

• 3:45:37Speaker 11

  There was one day that I, he was sick and I was not sick. So I go down to South Memphis to go try to find more heroin. So I can make him better when he wakes up. Cause he was just rolling around in his sleep and he was sweating and it was just, it was bad. So I was like, let me go down and I can, I can wake him up with some heroin and make him better. Well, I waited there for three hours. There was no heroin. All they had was crack. And I'm like, well, I remember he used to do crack back in the day. Maybe crack will make him feel better. So, um, so I got like a thirty rock of crack, brought it home to him. And he, he was upset that there was no heroin because he knew he would still be sick. But he was happy that I brought him crack. So he was doing crack after that.

• 3:46:21Speaker 11

  And I think probably about two, three weeks after that. You know, the crack had already been established. He had been doing that. So when I couldn't find heroin, about two, three weeks later, he was like, well, I got this crack, but it's a bad idea. And I, I think I remember I was holding the pipe in my hand. I was like, how bad of an idea is this? He was like, that is the worst decision you will ever make. And I was like, fuck it. And I lit it. And that was the end of everything. That, that was all I wanted for the next year and a half.

• 3:46:59Shawn Ryan?

  Year and a half?

• 3:47:00Speaker 11

  Mm-hmm. I feel like it was about a year and a half.

• 3:47:02Shawn Ryan?

  What is crack?

• 3:47:04Speaker 11

  So it's cocaine and baking soda and water. That's, those are essentially the three ingredients and they're cooked together. Which you would think, you know, like cocaine, big deal, it's cocaine. And, and you just add some baking soda and some water. You don't think it would be a, a big difference, but I guess there's, you know, snorting it, shooting it, smoking it. All three different routes, but all three very different feelings that you get from it. And smoking crack, as I found out, was the one thing that, that's like after that first hit, that was it. That destroyed me. Like that is all I wanted. I didn't want my kids. I didn't want my husband.

• 3:47:49Speaker 11

  We had gotten married in between that. There's a lot we skipped, but um, I just wanted crack. That was, that was it. That was everything. It took everything we had.

• 3:47:58Shawn Ryan?

  What did you like so much about it?

• 3:48:02Speaker 11

  I guess the feeling. And, and for somebody that's never smoked crack, you can't even really describe it. Um, there's something called the bell ringer. And when you first hit crack, for the very first time, or at least the very first few times, there's something they call the bell ringer. And it's, it's almost like you hear a bell in your head. And it's, I ca- I can't, in words, I cannot describe it. But that is what you chase every other time you're doing it. You are chasing for that bell ringer. You want that first feeling again. Kind of like how Ben described the heroin. Um, but there's so much worse. Like it's just, it consumes every bit of you. It just, it just takes you.

• 3:48:50Shawn Ryan?

  Where were your kids when you guys were doing this?

• 3:48:54Speaker 11

  Um, I think for the most part, they were at Aaron's house. Um, they would come every once in a while. We would never let them see anything. Um, of course, James lived with us because he was ours. He wasn't Aaron's. So he lived with us during it and he was one and a half, two years old. He had no idea what that was, what we were doing. We did not do it in front of him at first. Uh, when we were living in that house, we wouldn't do it in front of him. Um, until the very end, uh, and I do, I think I've blocked out some parts and things will come back to me sometimes. And I remember

• 3:49:35Speaker 11

  the movie Boss Baby, um, when I hear the theme music for that. And like my, our, our four-year-old plays it now and it still brings me back um, to that big house and we'd be in our room and he was obsessed with Boss Baby and I just remember sitting on the bed with him. He was watching TV and I was just sitting next to him smoking crack. I made sure to blow the smoke in the other direction though. Like, like that did anything good. But I do remember that. I, I did, I did smoke in front of James. I think only because he was one and a half, two years old and he had no idea what it was. But you know, I look at it now

• 3:50:15Speaker 11

  and, and I just think like, what fucking damage I could have done? Like, could he have gotten high? Could that smoke have messed him up? You know, and it just, it, it hurts to know some of this shit that we put him through. And I haven't even got into like the, the really deep shit that we put him through and I'll probably let Ben talk about that, but that's, that boy went through it. He didn't know it because he was only two.

• 3:50:38Shawn Ryan?

  What is some of this shit?

• 3:50:41Speaker 11

  Um, so when we got kicked out of the house, um,

• 3:50:46Speaker 11

  And it was, um, there's a rapper called Young Dolph. He's a Memphis rapper, very famous. He just got murdered a couple, like a year ago, two years ago. His mother was the one that rented the house to us. We didn't know this at the time. So when we get kicked out, they didn't do anything legal. It's like three huge linebackers, boom, boom, boom. Y'all haven't paid your rent. So they come in and throw all our shit out. Like literally everything we own, everything we have acquired through years and years of nothing but work is thrown on the front, on the front porch or on the, on the front lawn. And this is a gated community. So like, like rich people live here. Like it was a nice fucking house. And so we have all these people like, you know, what's going on?

• 3:51:31Speaker 11

  And so they know we have kids, so that looks bad to begin with. But so we, we move out of this nice ass house. And I think that same day, our, our good Tahoe, um, our good Tahoe shits the bed and we have to find a new vehicle. And, um, so we, we had no vehicle. We got kicked out of the house. All we could do is rent a U-Haul, which we didn't even have money to do. My dad had to buy that U-Haul. And, uh, we just shove what we can into the U-Haul. There's only two seats, one for me and one for Ben. James is sitting in a car seat, like right in the middle. He's not strapped in, there's nowhere to put him. And we just drop him off at my dad's house because what are two addicts gonna do when they get

• 3:52:16Speaker 11

  kicked out of their house with nothing? You go back and you go get high. And that's what we did. So, um, I knew my dad's house was a safe place for him. So we took him to my dad's house. Um, my dad, I think is in denial a lot about what was going on. And we're, I'm not terribly close to my dad, you know? We don't just talk and gab on the phone every day. And, um, you know, he had to deal with my mom for so many years. He knew something was going on. He knew I'd been in addiction for most of my life. And I think he just didn't want to ask questions. He was just like, just leave James here. Y'all go do whatever. And we did, and we went and started, we just

• 3:53:00Speaker 11

  lived in the trap house for like weeks at a time. And, uh, when it, when I started, and Madison too. Like Madison's 10 years old, wait 10, I haven't, good lord. Madison's like 14 at this point. I gotta think, thirteen, thirteen, I think. And she goes to my dad's house too, because I don't want them to see any of this because of, you know, the shit I saw when I was little. I don't want them to see any of this.

• 3:53:28Speaker 11

  So Maddie does stay with my dad for the most part. You know, James is two, so I can't leave him with my dad all the time. So we'll, we'll have like little shifts. Well, first five days we got kicked out, we went straight to the dope house and we stayed there for five days straight. We did not leave, we just smoked crack for five days. And they knew us there because we had always had so much money that they're like, yeah, we'll front you that, we'll front you that, we'll front you that. We didn't even have money. I think Ben's up, Ben ends up by, uh, selling the Tahoe that shit the bed like for parts or something, or just as a chunk of junk. And, uh, got a little bit of money that got us some more crack. And before we knew it, we're just going back and forth, going to see James and Maddie

• 3:54:13Speaker 11

  and coming back to the trap house. And, you know, my dad's, he's got a life, he's got a job, so we'll have James with us. And we would, we would never take him into the trap house. Cause I was, they had a lot of drive-bys. Like if you look at this house, there is just riddled with bullet holes, bullet holes everywhere. So I was, I was always afraid if I brought him into the trap that we would have a drive-by and he would get shot. So we would go, we would go get our dope and we'd go drive. We would just drive around in the Tahoe, James would be in the backseat, in his car seat. And, um, and we would just smoke crack. I would be in the front seat, Ben would be driving, and we'd just drive around Memphis smoking crack.

• 3:54:58Speaker 11

  And our friends were all prostitutes. And if we didn't have enough money, they had money because they were turning tricks so they could get more crack. So, you know, they'd hop on in the, the truck and we'd all smoke crack together. And we'd go to different traps together. So it would, me, Ben, James, and like three or four prostitutes hanging out in the Tahoe or whatever it was, I think we, in the U-Haul at first, and then we end up finding the $700 truck that we managed to buy. And, uh, sorry, I'm jumping around all over the place, I think.

• 3:55:37Shawn Ryan?

  How do you know where all the trap houses are?

• 3:55:39Speaker 11

  Just kind of word of mouth. Um, Ben showed me the first one in South Memphis, which is the one he used to frequent before we were even together. And then, you know, we were, we made money. Dope boys like money. So even though we were the only white people out there,

• 3:55:59Speaker 11

  they loved us. They, they brought us in like family. And also, you don't want to be outside a trap house if you're white. One, it's an eyesore. Like, the cops know. If that's a house on that street and there's two white folks outside the window, you know, everybody knows what's going on. So me and Ben had this thing and we would walk up and we'd knock on the window and go, "Back door." And that meant, "We're here. Go open the back door to let the white folks in." And the back door was barricaded. It had a pole or like a two by four on three different levels, or maybe it was two different levels, um, to keep the cops or buy them a little bit of time for when the cops kicked in the door. So we'd say, "Back door," and we'd walk in. And, um, and that was it. And we'd stay in there for a little while

• 3:56:44Speaker 11

  because they don't want white folks going in and out of the place. So we would sit in there for hours. And in those hours, we would see the prostitutes come in, the other dope boys come in. So you would meet, we would network. It was like, it was like drug networking. So we'd meet the other dope boys. We'd meet the other prostitutes who would, you know, introduce us to other dope boys or, you know, other... It was just like a, it's a big drug networking system.

• 3:57:10Shawn Ryan?

  Did you see any of the stuff going on inside the trap house that Ben was talking about earlier?

• 3:57:15Speaker 11

  So Ben was, um, we, we did see a lot of bad stuff together. I did not see a murder happen, luckily. He did. Um, but, you know, we were held at gunpoint together on multiple occasions. We were kidnapped together, um, on one occasion with James. All of those started in the trap house. Uh, you know, we would...

• 3:57:41Shawn Ryan?

  Why were you kidnapped?

• 3:57:42Speaker 11

  So we owed a dope boy a lot of money.

• 3:57:45Shawn Ryan?

  How much?

• 3:57:46Speaker 11

  Uh, God. Couple of grand. I can't remember exactly how much it was. I know it was a couple of grand, though. And everybody knew that we sold firearms parts. We didn't sell the firearm, but we sold parts for the firearms. And, you know, around the gangsters, that's real, you know, that's real cool. Everybody loves that. So, everybody wanted to be friends with us. Everybody was, you know, happy to have Ben and Jess over, you know, oh, they can give you shit for your AR, and they can get you Tannerite. And so, everybody was very free with their fronts, with their letting us borrow drugs to pay them back later. And this one

• 3:58:28Speaker 11

  guy just did it a little too much, and we didn't have the money to pay him back. So, we kind of actually ran from this guy for a little while, because some of those guys were like really nuts about their money. They want their money. And I didn't know what they were gonna do to us, what they were gonna do to my two-year-old. So, we kind of ran for a little while. And there's a lady named Vicky, and we knew Vicky from the streets, and she had just gotten, or she had had, she had like a little apartment on the, another side of town. I knew we wouldn't be around anybody. And they let us move in for a little bit. That didn't last very long. And we called the same doughboy, because

• 3:59:12Speaker 11

  when you want crack, you want crack. Like, you don't care if you're gonna get shot. You want to hit that crack. So, we called him again. And we were like, will you, will you please just front us, just like one more time? And he comes there, and he picks us up. And he gives us some crack. And it's me, our little two-year-old, James, and Ben, and we're in the backseat. He gives us a crack, and we smoke it, and we just drive around for a little bit. And he doesn't take us back to Vicky's house. He, it was a very nice kidnapping, I will say that, because he had kids of his own. So, I know that he didn't want, he didn't want to hurt James or anything like that. He just wanted his fucking money. So, he's like, we're not going back to that house. Y'all are coming with

• 3:59:57Speaker 11

  us. And so, me and Ben are like, what the fuck? Like, we're in the back, we're in the backseat, just like mouthing to each other, "What the fuck is going on?" So, and he does, in fact, take us to his mom's house. I'm guessing maybe that's where he was staying at the, at that point. And he takes us to his mom's house in Raleigh, or, sorry, Raleigh.

• 4:00:24Speaker 11

  And we go, and we have to stay the night. And we, it's just like this little, tiny room with mattresses on the floor. And they're like smoking so much weed, like, there's so much smoke in this room, I can barely see my hand. I, I don't want anything to do with weed at this point, like, all I want is crack. But I'm not trying to ask for anything, I'm just trying to get my kid out of there. But I know that I can't say anything, and I'm afraid that if I do say, "Will you please not smoke so much around my kid?", I'm afraid that, you know, you don't know what these guys are gonna do. So I just had to sit there with my mouth fucking shut, and just act like everything was okay. And I was just like, "James, are you having fun?", you know?

• 4:01:06Speaker 11

  And I just had to keep that smile on, and I had to make it seem like we were just having a sleepover.

• 4:01:12Speaker 11

  And, and, and me and Ben were fucking scared shitless about what the fuck was about to happen next. And, um, we stay the night there, you know, they, they smoke, he makes a couple of serves, and his, his girlfriend stays in the room to make sure we don't leave.

• 4:01:28Speaker 11

  And, um, we, we do fall asleep there, we wake up the next morning, and, and we, they take us out of his mom's house, and we're just driving around again. And the whole time, me and Ben are like just feening for, for crack, we just want crack so bad. But I don't wanna say anything, cuz I don't wanna risk anything happening to my son.

• 4:01:52Speaker 11

  So we just keep our mouths shut. And he's, so, he, he's driving, he turns around, he's like, "So, what about that money?" And so Ben like gets on his phone and um I don't know how he does it. Ben does this all the time. He just gets like he'll fall in a pile of shit and come out with a hundred dollar bill. Like that's the shit Ben does. And he just gets on the phone and starts texting customers or answering emails or something. Ends up selling um bump stocks. Cause we were like the number one distributor or the number two distributor of bump stock slide fires. Um that year. Cause this was right after the casino thing happened. Um so everybody wanted them before they were gonna get banned.

• 4:02:35Speaker 11

  And Ben ends up selling like however many. I don't even remember how many he's told, but we were able to get this guy his money. And he let us go. We were all okay. Nobody got shot or murdered, but for a minute there, I didn't know what the fuck was about to happen to us.

• 4:02:53Shawn Ryan?

  So this went from never happens in front of the kid to watching TV with him smoking crack, to in the trap house, to getting kidnapped.

• 4:03:04Speaker 11

  Mm hmm.

• 4:03:06Shawn Ryan?

  And he's two years old?

• 4:03:07Speaker 11

  Two years old. And it just spiraled.

• 4:03:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:03:11Speaker 11

  Yeah. It was horrible. And it went quick. It just, it was just boom, boom, boom, like worse, worse, worse, worse. And it just kept going.

• 4:03:23Shawn Ryan?

  Is that as bad as it got?

• 4:03:25Speaker 11

  No. I guess for James, um for James, that's as bad as it got. I, I, I think that kinda, that kinda opened my eyes a little bit. And I, I somewhat got kidnapped away from Ben and away from James. Um we had another guy that, you know, had fronted us and I had promised him my wedding ring. And so he ended up taking me and he, he wouldn't let me out of his sight until we were like going to get it appraised. And you know, so after that happened, I was like, okay, I've been technically kidnapped like twice now. Maybe it's time to, to slow it down and um.

• 4:04:05Speaker 11

  But you don't really have that choice. When you're on crack, you don't, you don't get to make that. Like, it consumes every bit of you. It just takes you. And I think the only way to get out of it is to like sufficiently suffer enough to go through so much shit that you're like, you know what? I would just seriously rather die than to live like this anymore. And at one point, I had lost Ben. Like, we were living in a $700 truck with stolen plates at this point. And Brandon Kelly, his best friend that would later overdose, was kind of living in the truck with us. And I don't remember where Ben went.

• 4:04:49Speaker 11

  I think we dropped him off at a hotel to go score some dope for us. He stole my phone, and I couldn't find him. Like, he wasn't at the hotel anymore. I couldn't call him because I realized he had stolen my phone. And we seriously had just lost each other for like three or four days. I had no idea where he was. I just rolled around in the Tahoe looking for him. And I think that was one of the things. Like, we had gone through this much shit together. And now we're in the same area, running around with the same people, doing the same drugs, and we couldn't find each other. And as much as I was angry at him for stealing my phone and doing all the shit that we had done to each other in active addiction,

• 4:05:33Speaker 11

  I knew that I still loved this man, and I needed to find him, and I didn't want to lose him. And I think the thought of losing him or knowing that he could be dead in an alley somewhere, and I had no idea, I think that was part of what got me to my end of being ready to quit. And then you hear Ben's version, and he wakes up just covered in blood, has no idea where it came from. So I think that part and then Ben's part. And we just were like, you know what? We're gonna die if we don't leave. We're gonna die. Our kids are gonna die. We're gonna, it's time to go.

• 4:06:08Shawn Ryan?

  Was there infidelity in here too?

• 4:06:10Speaker 11

  Not, not on my end. I'm, I'm, I've never been unfaithful, ever.

• 4:06:16Shawn Ryan?

  On Ben's end?

• 4:06:18Speaker 11

  On, just with those three that we talked about earlier.

• 4:06:20Shawn Ryan?

  Not during this?

• 4:06:21Speaker 11

  Mm-mm. Well, because all we hung around were prostitutes. And even though he was cheating, Ben treasures his penis, so he wasn't going around prostitutes.

• 4:06:32Shawn Ryan?

  What do we miss him?

• 4:06:36Speaker 11

  I mean, there's a, there's a whole lot.

• 4:06:40Speaker 11

  I didn't know how long I was gonna be sitting here, so I was just kinda jumping around. There's, um, like Ben went in a, in a very, uh, a very nice order and I was just kinda all over the place. There's, I mean, a whole hell of a lot missing.

• 4:06:56Speaker 06

  She stabbed me.

• 4:06:57Speaker 11

  I did, I stabbed him. I mean, there's a lot that's missing.

• 4:07:00Shawn Ryan?

  You stabbed him?

• 4:07:01Speaker 11

  Mm-hmm. It was more of a slash. It was a slash. But he, uh, one of the times that he tried to get sober, um, he, he got really, really bad drinking. This is when we were in our, our big nice house and we had all the, we were swimming in money. And he just started drinking again and got so bad that he would take the upper of his gun. Didn't even have the rest of the gun with it. He would just take the upper, be like, "I'm going to kill some cops." And he would like literally run out the front door, thinking he was gonna go kill cops. Like, that's how out of his mind he was. And it got, it got so bad like that, that I was like, dude, you gotta, we gotta do something. Like, this is gonna get really fucking bad.

• 4:07:42Speaker 11

  And remember, like, I, I grew up with an extremely violent alcoholic for a mother. So that's what, you know, I'm used to getting beat shitless. So like, I'm, he's never been violent with me. But I'm just seeing this progression. And I just know that at some point, he's gonna start beating the shit out of me like my mom used to. So I'm getting really fucking scared. I'm like, dude, you've gotta do something because I can't, once you start hitting me, I've gotta go. And I don't wanna leave him, and I know that. So, um, she's like, cool, all, it's, it's fine. I will take a, a shot. There's a shot called Vivitrol. And it makes it to where like, you don't want alcohol. Or if you do drink alcohol, it's supposed to make you sick or something like that. So,

• 4:08:26Speaker 11

  so he starts doing that shot. And at first he does okay. Um, first maybe a week or two.

• 4:08:36Speaker 11

  Well, then he starts drinking. He starts drinking with it. Turns out that when you drink with VivaTrol, it makes you extremely violent. And he got, um, he got really, really angry. I don't even remember what it was about. And I remember we were arguing over something, and he gets in my face. And I, it's almost like PTSD from when me and my mom used to be. And I just reacted. And I think I just pushed him or something. I was just trying to get him out of my face and away from me because I didn't want to get beat. And he took that as an act of aggression. And he took my head and like, like with his, he's got big hands, dude.

• 4:09:18Speaker 11

  So he took my whole head and bashed it into the wall. And like, I saw black, like for a split second. I think any harder and I would have, like, he would have made me blackout. Luckily, I didn't. Luckily, it was like a half second of blackness. And I, you know, I was like, oh, fuck. He could have just really fucked me up. And I'm always carrying a blade, always. Um, since I was like 14, I've carried knives on me. And so I just pull out my knife and I just slashed the shit out of his arm, like right here. And, uh, that was it. Like gloves were off at this point. He was like, oh, fuck no, bitch. And he just starts, you know, pushes. I, it was such a blur that I can't tell you exactly everything that happened.

• 4:10:02Speaker 11

  But I do know that we were at each other's throats. He was trying to hit me. I was trying to hit him. There was a knife involved. There was blood everywhere. And we make it into the bedroom. And I think at this point, like he's, you know, I'm a girl, he's a guy. He's a lot stronger than me. And I know this. And, um, so I'm trying to get the fuck away from him because he's literally like blackout drunk, out of his mind. He's not Ben anymore. And, uh, so I'm trying to run from him because I just realized, I just slashed this motherfucker. He's gonna kill me. So I run into the bedroom and I try to close the door. Of course, he kicks it open and gets on top of me and starts choking me.

• 4:10:47Speaker 11

  So much so that I'm starting to blackout. Like, I'm starting to lose consciousness. And Thomas and his girlfriend Jackie were like in a truck in the garage or in the driveway this whole time. Like, he was supposed to be coming in to get his belongings or something. Like, Thomas, he decided to move back to Thomas's house for a second, or for a while, because we had gotten into it because he was drunk. So they were sitting outside, waiting on him to come back out. He was supposed to just be coming in to get his items. So I kind of come to, because I was barely even conscious at this point, and Thomas is ripping him away from me and pulling him off me. Because he's, I mean, just hands around my neck.

• 4:11:31Speaker 11

  "I'm gonna fucking kill you, bitch." And just like, it was very bad. It was a very traumatic experience. But I do believe, had Thomas not peeled him off of me, I would not be here right now. I would be, I almost lost consciousness. So it was, there's not a lot of stories like that. That was the most violent one between us. There were a couple of knife fights over heroin, just because I always have a knife and I always pull out a knife. So that's on me. But there's a lot of bad that happened.

• 4:12:10Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 4:12:13Shawn Ryan?

  Let's get Ben back in the seat.

• 4:12:15Speaker 11

  Okay.

• 4:12:15Shawn Ryan?

  I want to pick up, right before the turning point. She had mentioned you woke up in a, with blood everywhere. So what was that?

• 4:12:26Speaker 06

  Well, to this day, we don't know. I woke up in the empty lot next to 1428 Wildbird Street, which is a very significant address. That's the house that she was describing. It's full of bullet holes where, you know, we've had friends die in that house, friends shot in that house.

• 4:12:45Speaker 06

  I had disappeared. I went into a blackout drunk.

• 4:12:53Speaker 06

  I wanted to get out of that life very bad and I knew if I kept going back to her dad's where I had a soft place to land, I was not going to. And so I decided to just go all out and either die or hit rock bottom. But it was gonna happen that week, one or the other. I mean, I got nose to nose with a real young gangster disciple who had a pistol to my gut and told him to pull the trigger. I mean, I was begging somebody to kill me. And that was on Hemlock Street, so two blocks over from Woodward.

• 4:13:31Speaker 06

  And that was the last thing I remember before waking up the 26th of May 2019. In that empty lot, just covered head to toe in blood. When I came to, like, I was coughing up blood and I figured I must have been puking blood because I was, I could still taste vodka. So I knew I'd been drinking a lot. And then as I got up, like, it was all over me. And so I didn't know how badly hurt I was or what had happened and that there wasn't a cut on my body. So to this day, I don't know what happened. As I realized where I was, a window to buy dope from is right there and I looked over

• 4:14:12Speaker 06

  and Daphne or Creacher, whoever's in the window. My body is wanting to go to the window and get dope to wake up and figure out what to do and I just couldn't do it. I could not take another step in that direction. I couldn't remember anything from the preceding several days. Madison's father, Nick, I had been helping, trying to mentor and get him into a better life. He'd recently gotten out of prison and had no idea that we were shot off. He was murdered the 19th of May. I was the last person to talk to him. And he was killed for kicking a roommate out that I told him he needed to kick out

• 4:14:53Speaker 06

  before we would let Matty come spend the summer with him. So I immediately took that upon myself, that it was my fault. And I went and drank at it and it began my progression to rock bottom that week.

• 4:15:10Speaker 06

  I found a phone that day and called my dad and he told me to just come home. And I didn't know how the hell I was gonna get there.

• 4:15:21Speaker 06

  Long story short, I ended up going to Georgia. I got on a Greyhound bus. I didn't get high that day.

• 4:15:27Speaker 06

  I was done. That was it.

• 4:15:29Shawn Ryan?

  By yourself?

• 4:15:30Speaker 06

  By myself. And I told Jess, I was like, you can either come with me, or I'm getting my shit together and I'm coming back for James. Cause this, this is over. We're not doing this anymore. And we'd had similar conversations a couple of times. I would go to detox and tell her, you're coming, or I'm leaving. And she'd come. She'd show up. You know, we'd been through this a few times. And then every time it happened, somebody would die. Somebody would get murdered. There'd be another overdose and we'd relapse. And um, this time I was done. I was getting the fuck out of Memphis. I couldn't stay. And so I went to Georgia.

• 4:16:07Speaker 06

  And I'm a control freak. I always have to, to manage everything, manipulate really everything at this point. You know, I had to be in control of, well, you've heard my story, everything. And, and, and my attempts to exert control over things I shouldn't have any control over has historically fucked my life up in epic proportions. That part of my brain, I think, broke that day.

• 4:16:33Speaker 06

  I didn't know what was about to happen. I had absolutely no control over anything. I had the clothes on my back.

• 4:16:42Speaker 06

  And that was it. And I was okay with it. For the first time in my life, I had no idea what was gonna happen tomorrow and I didn't care. And the feeling of freedom that I had is something I cannot put into words. That I was just, I was okay in that moment. I was okay not knowing what's coming. Uh, and, and that is, that is the peace I have wanted since I was 13 years old. To not be in control and to be okay with it. And I finally found that that day.

• 4:17:16Speaker 06

  It was on the tail end of all of that misery you just heard. Eighteen arrests. I don't even know how many friends dead and gone.

• 4:17:27Speaker 06

  You know, I've been stabbed, I've been shot at, uh, lost everything. But I finally reached a point where I just don't care anymore. I'm okay. I'm okay. And, uh, a week later, she, she hit the same point. I got on a Greyhound bus back to Memphis, got that $700 truck and James, and started the drive back to Atlanta. And, um, I remember I took a picture in the rearview mirror of that truck of Memphis in the rearview. And I went and made some, you know, stupid emo dramatic post on Facebook like, I'm leaving this city in the rearview for good.

• 4:18:08Speaker 06

  And, uh, and we laughed about it, you know, and like, not even 20 minutes later, I looked at it and I was like, dude, we gotta go back. She's like, what are you talking about? Like, I don't know. I don't know. Something's, our work's not done in Memphis. And that was like, just clear as day, not like an audible voice, but it clear as day a message God was sending me is my work was not done in Memphis. And we laughed because what work did I have in Memphis? Like, it was just death and destruction for the last five years, man. Um, but that was kind of foreshadowing of what was to come. You know, we go to my parents, get a job at this, uh, this data company.

• 4:18:49Speaker 06

  Um, just a bullshit job. I haven't worked for anybody other than myself in 10 years. Um, but I was looking at the bigger picture and, you know, even though we, we lost everything on paper, I still retained a lot of data. Um, and a lot of expertise in, in the marketing area, uh, digital marketing in particular. I still had a lot of email lists. I still had a lot of IP. And so I'm looking at like, what am I sitting on right now? What do I have in front of me? What can I rebuild with? Um, and I decided to get a job at this data company and, and see what I could learn about how they're manipulating data and running data intelligence for large corporations.

• 4:19:31Speaker 06

  Um, and I meet this guy named Robert and, uh, he's my boss. Uh, we didn't really get along because he was convinced I'd been hired to replace him. He didn't know about my background. Um, he just knew that I had worked for, you know, Fortune 500 and had a college degree.

• 4:19:51Speaker 06

  I was getting paid next to nothing. I was working crazy hours. I'm driving a truck that I can't register. Like, I don't have a title to it. I bought it from some dope boy who stole it from his mom. Like, but I'm clean, you know, and um.

• 4:20:07Speaker 06

  Things were going really well. Uh, I landed a, a deal to pitch, um.

• 4:20:14Speaker 06

  I'm with a data concept essentially to Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, by the way enough. Um, on how to use data to predict the likelihood of a rare disease to do their digital marketing. And Robert and I kind of.

• 4:20:28Speaker 06

  Had an open conversation about the dislike between the two of us around that. We go to New York and, and we have the conversation over beer. Alright, so.

• 4:20:38Speaker 06

  I've relapsed now. Um, this was like in August, I think, of 2019. And I'm still sticking things out of this data company. I'm still trying to figure out how they're doing. I tell Robert what I've got. Um, as far as my email lists and, and all the, the different strategies I used to get firearms products around Google's stupid rules. Um, and we just started having this ongoing conversation about how we're going to figure out how to do what this company does. Only we're going to do it uniquely to the firearms industry who has so much trouble advertising in the walled gardens of Facebook and Google and all that. And, um.

• 4:21:19Speaker 06

  We continued the conversation. October 3rd of, of 2019, I, I relapsed again. Got totally transparent with Robert about my background, about everything. And we're still living with my parents. Like, it's not comfortable. I'm, I'm sleeping on my couch. Justin James are upstairs, you know, in twin beds. Like, they're nearing retirement age at this point. They weren't planning on having their 37-year-old son and, you know, his new family moving in with him. Um, but they, they opened their doors to us and I was determined to make it work. Um. And Robert told me when I, I opened up to him, he's like, look, I don't, I don't get it. I'm not an alcoholic, but whatever I can do to help you through this, I'm here for it. And, um.

• 4:22:02Speaker 06

  I've really called him task on that promise. Uh, and it, we haven't stopped since. I, I went to AA. Um, I did not want to go to AA because I was still convinced at this point that I was special. And that I wasn't like all these other crackheads and junkies and drunks, um, that I'm going to recover different. I don't have to go to meetings. So reluctantly I went to AA, um, on October 4th of 2019 and I shared in a meeting and this marine pipes up. His name's David Gibson.

• 4:22:35Speaker 06

  Come to find out he's got a background not too dissimilar than mine. And we talked and, uh, he, he shares some words of wisdom with me. And I get a sponsor and I'll start working steps and

• 4:22:51Speaker 06

  you know, Jess and I had it in the back of our heads this whole time that when Brandon died, little Brandon, we were going to relapse. That was our reservation. You know, kind of like you held on to that bag of coke for so long. Like it's there. You're going to beat it, but it's there if you need it. Kind of that, like we had that in the back of our head is I'm going to stay sober, but you know, if I need to get high, I can do it when Brandon dies. Cause we knew it was going to happen. And, um,

• 4:23:17Speaker 06

  December, that, that day came. I realized I hadn't heard from him and, uh, we had gone through this exact same scenario 18 months prior with his mother. We realized we hadn't heard from her and nobody could reach her. And so we went and did a wellness check and found her dead and decomposing. And so 18 months later, I, I see the same thing playing out with Brandon and I sent, um, I called one of my employees from Retech who I'd stayed in contact with over the years. He'd watched my rise and fall over and over again. And I told him what was going on. He said, get me an address and he went and checked and Brandon had been dead a few days. And in that moment,

• 4:24:04Speaker 06

  That one hurt.

• 4:24:11Speaker 06

  It still hurts.

• 4:24:14Speaker 06

  Because

• 4:24:17Speaker 06

  Brandon should have made it out with us. You know, he had nobody.

• 4:24:23Speaker 06

  One of the letters his mom wrote when she killed herself mentioned something to the effect of she knew that he'd be okay because he had us looking out for him now. And I failed to do that. Not only did I fail to do it, I left him there to die. And um

• 4:24:40Speaker 06

  and that one cut me really fucking deep, man.

• 4:24:48Speaker 06

  Just because of the totality of our story, we didn't really have time to get into a lot of Brandon, but

• 4:24:54Speaker 06

  he changed the way I look at a lot of things. And I wouldn't have been able to get off of dope if it wasn't for him, even though he went back out. We all did. But uh the one thing that didn't happen in that moment is we didn't want to get high. Neither one of us did.

• 4:25:12Speaker 06

  I called my sponsor and I called Brian Owens and he talked to Judge Dwyer. Judge Dwyer was the drug court judge who had terminated me from his program. Gave me a $200,000 bond and tried to send me to prison. And Dwyer offered up their nonprofit that we could fundraise for to bury Brandon because he literally had nobody left. And I used my social media presence to raise the money to bury him. And um we went back to Memphis and uh

• 4:25:45Speaker 06

  you know, we had him cremated and held a little memorial for him and gave the money we'd raised to the Drug Court Foundation and uh

• 4:25:56Speaker 06

  And we found some weird healing in that. Not just the act of memorializing him, but the fact that we were able to raise money to care for somebody else that we don't even know. You know, just using a social media page, which at that time was nothing but shit posting. It was. But it lit a spark in our minds. And then, as luck would have it, my sponsor was taking me through the steps very quickly. And I was right, right, getting ready for step 12, right about them, which is to be of service to those still struggling. And something clicked in our heads, man. And we're like, we want to do this.

• 4:26:36Speaker 06

  And we wanted, we want to find ways to raise money to help people who are fighting that battle. And we, I'd actually had the idea, probably high on crack, back in 2017, to start a nonprofit called Flanders Fields. You know, the poem by Lieutenant Colonel John McCray? In Flanders Fields Where Poppies Grow? I don't. Okay, it's a poem about World War I. About a field of opium poppies called Flanders Fields in the Battle of the Frie in Belgium. But it's got lots of imagery in it. There's dead people, you know, there's beauty rising from the ashes. There's opium poppies, which is what heroin comes from.

• 4:27:17Speaker 06

  And I wanted to make a nonprofit called Flanders Fields to help vets battling opiate addiction. You know? Time goes by. I did figure out, with Robert's help, how to replicate my dataset across the entirety of the internet to very accurately predict who's about to spend money on a gun purchase, or a gun accessory purchase. And I took that to market. And Black Rifle, which had originally been an e-commerce company selling parts, is now a company doing advertising for leviathans in the gun space. And it took off pretty quickly. Well enough that after that little data company was acquired by a Fortune 500, and Robert was acquired in the acquisition with Golden Handcuffs, I was able to poach him away to

• 4:28:02Speaker 06

  bring him over to Black Rifle.

• 4:28:06Speaker 06

  In March of 21, we filed to start Flanders. And, and the very first thing we did oddly enough was, uh, fly Sergeant Deaton back to fucking rehab. He had, uh, he had gone out and gotten addicted to crack and heroin, just like I was. He went from pain pills to the same shit I did. And was oddly enough facing a lot of gun charges, too. Um, it's weird how that one played out, but anyway, we did our first good deed as Flanders Fields. And we're still waiting on IRS to approve it at this point. And in July of 2021, um, our Marine Corps Intelligence, um, NCO, hits me up about Black Rifle, about what we're doing.

• 4:28:50Speaker 06

  He finds it intriguing. Um, and, uh, so we start a dialogue and I don't know, maybe on the 15th, he calls me and it's like, you want to do something crazy? Yeah. Hell yeah, I do. I'm bored, you know? Um, we had at this point moved into our own house. Uh, we've got all the kids back. Um, I think two of the kids I shared with Aaron had moved over to Georgia with us at this point. Lily and the twins stayed. And, um, life's good. You know, we've got way more than we need, which is why we started the nonprofit. Because historically, every time Jess and I have more than we need, we start making bad decisions with the excess.

• 4:29:33Speaker 06

  Except this time I'm working in a program of recovery. And anyway, my answer to him was, hell yes, I'll do something crazy. And I, he goes, all right, cool. Well, uh, I'll hit you up the next day or two. We're going to get some people out of Afghanistan. I was like, I'm sorry, you said we're going to do what now? Um, he was like, yeah, uh, Taliban's taking over Afghanistan and we're going to save some, some good guys. I was like, I don't know how I'm going to help that, but, but okay. Um.

• 4:30:00Speaker 06

  I end up getting a call about a week later and thrown into this app called Signal, which I had never heard of. And I'm in chat rooms with all sorts of crazy professions, active duty, you know, three-letter agencies. And I wanted to know if we can use Black Rifle's data sets to do anything in Afghanistan, to vet people, to find missing people, to plot safe ground routes, to spy on what somebody's consuming on their device. And the answers to some of those were yes, the answers to other ones were no, and the answers to the other ones were like, I don't know, but we'll find out.

• 4:30:40Speaker 06

  And he ends up sending over a list of, it came from a lieutenant general, I don't know if I should name, name the guy, but Jack Britton is the Marine NCO that pulled me into this. He owns the cybersamaritan.com, really good dude, just, just a damn good human being. He was volunteering at the time for the National Child Protection Task Force. Sends over this list and it's a list of 13 families that are stuck in Afghanistan being targeted by the Taliban for capture or kill. And he wants to know, can we get them, can we find them, can we make contact, is there anything we can do? And it's like a list of WhatsApp numbers and social media profiles, any other relevant selectors they had.

• 4:31:25Speaker 06

  And so I start combing through breach data because a lot of what we've built out on the Black Rifle side is collations of breached data from, you know, like you hear about it, like Park Mobile had a huge breach and all this information gets out. And so I started cross-referencing like who may have appeared in a breach and the first family I had on there is, their last name is Pardisi. And I started finding a lot of activity between that WhatsApp number, a Facebook account, and then I got down to a Hotmail email, and then that linked back to a number at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Or fatal. Yeah, I didn't know it was Fort Bragg at the time. I called it and the guy answered it spoke English, said his name is Partici. And so I'm like, what the fuck? So I hung up

• 4:32:08Speaker 06

  real fast because I was a little freaked out, you know? And I realized like, I'm not doing anything nefarious. Just call back and tell them what we're doing. And as it turned out, this was the now an American citizen brother of the guy we were looking for. And he had direct comms with him. So not only is this missing person no longer missing, we know they're alive. We know exactly how many kids they have with them. We know where they are. We know they have a tie to the US military. And so they're good to go. Right? So we make contact with people inside the airport. I've been handed lists of phone numbers. It's kind of like Scott did with Pineapple Express. Well, we're running the same lines on a lot of those. And I called the airport. I told these people to go to Addy Gate. You know,

• 4:32:53Speaker 06

  we had them. I think they had a yellow flag they were going to hold up. And this Brit pulls them in. Like, they're saved. We just saved 11 lives. Like, I'm dumbfounded. I have no idea what I'm doing. But it happened. And that really kind of tricked me into doing the rest of Afghanistan because the feeling I got from that initial success that was such a low lift effort. But now they think I'm a hero. You know, the family still shakes them with me to this day. They tell me happy birthday all the time. Like, it's, anyway, I was hooked. I was like, I gotta do this more. And so we, we went, as we tend to do with all things, way overboard into Afghanistan. All right. We're working multiple other angles

• 4:33:33Speaker 06

  through NCPTF. I end up in direct comms with a driver in Kabul. You know, one thing leads to another. And like, have a ground team in Kabul now. Like, we're able to move people all over the place. We were getting people into Blackgate. I ended up in chats with Scott Mann, Oz Geist. That's how I met Sarah Adams. And right at the same time, I started getting, because of Black Rifle's success, and because of the gun industry's general disdain for criminals and druggies, that started getting kind of open about my background. You know what I mean? And I had the exact opposite feedback that I was expecting, especially on LinkedIn. Like, people

• 4:34:19Speaker 06

  Not only appreciated my openness, a lot of people like, oh my, you know, I used to fight that too, especially from the firearms industry itself. I was actually kind of surprised. So I'm in these chats with all these people who like can certainly pull up my background and figure out exactly who I am and what I've done. So it's good that I'm already being open. As we get closer to the 26th of August, things are getting real dicey in Kabul. Like we've had, we've had Afghans get shot on the other end of the phone with us while we're trying to guide them in. I've been given access to this Geocent reporting tool where we're able to see real time gun fire around the airport, where the checkpoints are. We're navigating like from 8,500 miles away, I'm in my basement in Georgia telling people

• 4:35:03Speaker 06

  how to get into the airport. I'm giving them contact with the driver that can get them through the 82nd at Blackgate. Jess is on the phone with Afghan women. They're, you know, screaming and crying and praying and Dari and Jess is praying in English, two totally different religions, but just trying to get the same thing done. It was a very surreal experience. Wow. I'm less than two years clean at this point and like I'm in direct comms with all of these special operators and like dudes that are literally on the ground in Afghanistan, guys that are across the border in Dushan Bay. We had people in Abu Dhabi at the humanitarian city up there.

• 4:35:48Speaker 06

  Like literally within 45 days time, I've gone from running my business and trying to find some purpose in life. We're waiting on the IRS to approve Flanders. So I can't do a lot other than fly my old buddy to treatment. And now I'm in chats with like super duper badasses.

• 4:36:10Speaker 06

  Like, right in the middle of this, somebody finally checks our mail and the IRS had approved Flanders Fields as a nonprofit on the 15th of August, the day Kabul fell. So now, I've got all of this going on, but now I have a mechanism to raise money. Because Flanders was chartered to help house homeless veterans. Did not say anything about American veterans. We've got all these allied members of the Afghan National Army that we're trying to help, we've got former commandos we're trying to help. Jess, by this point in time, has her own little, small entourage of former Afghan female police officers. And then when the bomb goes off at Abbey Gate, you know, we couldn't get anybody else inside the airport. That was it, it was curtains. But we've already moved all of these people from the sticks of Afghanistan to Kabul, trying

• 4:36:54Speaker 06

  to get them into the airport and evacuate them. And so the need became immediately apparent for safe housing. And in these single chat rooms, there was, like, all sorts of people freaking out about the legality of this, the legality of that, you know, can, or do we need to do something with the Foreign Agent Registration Act? What's the Logan Act? All this crap I've never heard of, nor do I give a flying fuck about. Like, I'm barely two years away from being a criminal, so I don't care. At all. I'm gonna find out if I can lease an apartment in Kabul. I'll be back in 10 minutes. So I call my guy back at Fort Bragg, he's like, "Yeah, my cousin's a real estate agent. What do you need?" I was like, "I need safe houses." So, next thing I know, I'm signing a lease in Dari, alright? Or, Farisi or whatever, I don't even know what the fuck it was.

• 4:37:37Speaker 06

  So we're signing leases in Afghanistan, we put, we start putting families in these safe houses because we can't get them out of the airport anymore. And, um, my dream of Flanders Fields and helping homeless and addicted vets is now morphed because my weaponized ADHD went for shiny object syndrome in Kabul, Afghanistan. We ended up...

• 4:38:00Speaker 06

  Like no bullshit, before it was over, we had sixty-eight safe houses in Afghanistan. We had them in Kabul, we had them in Kunduz, we had them in Jalalabad, we had them in Helmand, we had them, uh, close to Torquem, I'm not sure how close, we had Mazar-i-Sharif. Um, at one point, we were housing six-hundred-and-fifty former members of the Afghan military. Yeah, we were burnt, I blew through my kids' college savings, um, but this whole time, like, it's just, we're learning how to get shit done, real fast, real fast, make shit happen, we're making contacts, um, and I had, my life had purpose, and before I know it, I've got two years clean, that's the longest I've had clean since that relapsed in two thousand

• 4:38:42Speaker 06

  and eleven, and like, I'm starting to realize, i-if I maintain a purpose, maybe I actually can stay clean, no matter how much money I make. So, we've, we've dumped, like, all of our personal savings into Afghanistan, I'm making money just to give it to the nonprofit, so that we can continue doing what we're doing over there. Um, we had a lot of very early successes, we had a lot of really crappy things happen, too. Um, uh, I ended up, I think it was November of two thousand and twenty-one, I got invited to Fort Bragg, to USASOC, United States Army Special Operations Command, to come talk to a, a roomful of three-three Green Berets about how we're doing this.

• 4:39:28Speaker 06

  Like, I'm literally a crackhead, and I'm being asked to come to USASOC and talk about what we're doing in Afghanistan. Um, they had their own little NGO set up, I think it was called Team America, I can't remember what it was, but I met a whole bunch of guys up there, Jeff Diardia, do you know him? Mm-mm. Okay, um, and, uh, oh, it's hilarious, when I, when I got there, you know, they do the background check?

• 4:39:54Speaker 06

  At the little welcome center?

• 4:39:58Speaker 06

  So like, I think I'm fine because I'm there with Command Sergeant Major Faisal Wafa, one of the Afghan Commando guys who had headed up a whole bunch of the Commando stuff. I'm there with him and then with two former 33 SF guys. And I think I'm gonna be fine. And I'm watching the MPs across the counter as they're running my shit. I'm like, oh no, I'm not fine. And so, one of the MPs is like this thick white girl covered in tattoos. So I start flirting with her. And then she looks down at her screen, looks back at me and goes, "I know what you're doing outside." And I was like, "Oh, fuck." So I walk out there. She's like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "I'm trying to help with the Afghan evac. What do you mean?" She's like, "Cut the shit. What is up with your background?" I was like, "I don't know what you're talking about."

• 4:40:41Speaker 06

  She's like, "What the fuck are you doing here?" And so, come to find out, the way they had entered all of those charges, which I beat every one of, into the NCIC, it has me showing them with like 14 felonies or some crap. I'm like, "No, I don't have 14 felonies. I beat all of those." And she's like, "Well, do you have proof of that?" And I got smart with her. I'm like, "Yes. I always keep it with me. Come on, let's go to the truck." And she said, "Well, is there anybody you can call?" And so, I called Division 8 Drug Court, who had terminated me, but we had started rebuilding that bridge with. Brian Owens gets on the phone, and I don't know if he pretended to be the judge, or if they got Judge Dwyer on the phone, but they confirmed I do not have any felonies. And so, they ended up letting

• 4:41:23Speaker 06

  me go into the base to do this little class at Yousa SAW, which was fucking cool as shit. Like, I still can't believe that actually happened. Yeah.

• 4:41:38Speaker 06

  But I tell you that story for a reason. The way God works in all of these little details, if I hadn't started getting open about my past with all of the people in the evac community before they worked with me, I'm like, "I want to make sure you know who I am." Most of them already followed me, so they knew who I was. They already know that I talk very openly about all this shit. But if I hadn't been open about that, that would have out of me right there in front of CSM Wafa and all these other guys. If I hadn't gone back and fixed the bridge with Drug Court, I wouldn't have been able to get on post. And all of these things just kept working together. It's kind of like you see in those numbers repeatedly, you know? The little Godwings, they just kept happening. 2021 was a blur. All right.

• 4:42:23Speaker 06

  Jess and I have been working with Randy Searls, another Green Beret who helped Scott with a couple of his books, put all of this into a book. So like, it's actually all written out with all the stories from the Afghan stuff. I don't want to try to get into all that here because I really want to talk about what we're doing in Memphis. What's the name of the book? It's called We Fight Monsters. Yeah, it's called We Fight Monsters, and we're launching a Kickstarter to help get it across the finish line at some point this month, probably before this actually airs. But having been on here and just said that, it's going to help a ton. So I hope people go look up the Kickstarter. And it's going to go into detail about our background, what we did in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Haiti, Mexico. We've done some weird stuff

• 4:43:05Speaker 06

  in several places at this point. But it's a roadmap for how to get good shit done in very weird places and odd circumstances and against all odds, which is really what we pulled off in Afghanistan. Man, that's amazing. And that's how long's over? How long? I hit two years right around the time I went to use the sock. We ended up the next month. Quite the redemption. It gets crazier. It gets crazier. Sure it does. The next month, we get invited to Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress and

• 4:43:45Speaker 06

  a lot of other soft guys, all right? And our childcare canceled the morning of our flight, so we bring Ava. So there's pictures of Ava entertaining former agency case officers, senators, like she was the star of the show up there. In DC, we started tightening up these circles of people that we know and work with, and because we've got a reputation at this point as being folks who can get shit done in unorthodox ways. You know, if we have something that needs to get accomplished, our goal is to find a way to get it done. And I don't want to worry about stupid stuff like legality until after the fact. I hope that never comes back to bite me in the ass. I've gotten lucky so far.

• 4:44:35Speaker 06

  Right before Christmas, Jess gets a message. We started shutting down the safe houses because we couldn't afford them, you know. Or not just shutting them down, we were trying to find work for the guys, or find them a pathway to somewhere else, get them out, get them taken care of. But instead of keeping that house open and moving somebody else in, we just terminated the lease. And we started doing that in December. Jess gets this message the day before, the day after Christmas from this girl. And I started reading it to me, and I'm like, no, we're not taking it anymore. The next thing I hear is screaming and sobbing coming from Jessica's phone. I'm like, what the fuck is that? And so this girl has sent her a voice note in real time of the Taliban beating her father in front of her mother.

• 4:45:19Speaker 06

  And she tells us about herself. She's Shia Hazara. She's in college. She was 19 when the collapse happened, and she wants to finish college. Her dad was commando, served with our green berets. Since the inception of the commando corps, served in the ANA for four years prior to that. Like, this is somebody we gotta help. And Jess basically, she basically told me, I don't give a shit what you say, we're helping them. So she moved them into a safe house. The girl lives with us today, in Memphis. Wow. She started college two weeks ago, in Memphis, Tennessee. She is today probably the single most protected individual in the city of Memphis, hands down, by both sides of the law.

• 4:46:02Speaker 06

  It's been absolutely amazing to watch. It took three years to get her here, but she smuggled herself alone through 14 countries, through the Darien Gap, into Mexico, and then we started helping again in Mexico. I don't even know how. I ended up with contacts in the Mexican government as part of all of this weird stuff we've done. We got sent down to Mexico during the evacuation out of Ukraine. And so I had contacts in the Mexican government that helped us get her from Guatemala through Mexico, and then friends that I've made at CBP helped get her lawfully into America. I made the CBP friends when we responded to the Uvalde massacre.

• 4:46:47Speaker 06

  Wow. Yeah, and I would love to, I do talk about all these in the book. I would love to sit here and talk to you about them, but I don't. What do you mean she's protected by both sides of the law? Bro, everybody loves her. The gang members, the cops, like, both sides of the law. Know her, love her, appreciate her, watch out for her.

• 4:47:05Speaker 06

  Ex-cons, like, everybody in Memphis knows who she is and, and they will not fuck with her. You know, she's just the most cared-for person in the city of Memphis right now. Wow. Yeah. What's her name? Arizo. Her dad and siblings are still stuck in Pakistan and that sucks, you know. We've lost any and all ability to get people moved. But, you know, all told in that effort, I mean, we helped. I mean, I directly got about 250 people into the airport before we were no longer able to get them in. And then after the fact, we worked a lot too.

• 4:47:44Speaker 06

  And I, I want to touch on all these crazy stories just to illustrate the network of people we've got that are helping us do what we're doing in Memphis is staggering. It's not just addicts, and it's not just vets, and it's not just cops, and it's not just federal agents. It is people from literally every walk of life that has come alongside an effort to help people who could never, ever repay them. And this method that I guess you can call it that we're using, it's kind of Scott's idea. We, we did it in Ukraine, uh, we did it in Ecuador, uh, to evacuate some American medical students that were stuck.

• 4:48:27Speaker 06

  We did it a little bit in Haiti to save a guy that was kidnapped by a cannibal gang. We did it twice in Mexico. We've used it in Uvalde. We used it at Q Club. We did it again with Task Force Lahaina. These grassroots movements that you hear Scott talk about all the time, they're real. They're very real. And, and I think the time for...

• 4:48:51Speaker 06

  Americans to stop paying so much attention

• 4:48:56Speaker 06

  to the division that our mainstream media peddles. That that time is now, because it's not real. It's manufactured division. And I can tell you this as a white guy that goes under the blackest streets of South Memphis, where everything revolves around race. And I'm able to get done some amazing things. I'm able to.

• 4:49:18Speaker 06

  I'm out there fighting narcotics trafficking. Not by putting people in jail, not by shooting people, by meeting people where they're at. And I'm able to take food off the table of drug dealers and have them help me do it.

• 4:49:35Speaker 06

  I have I have been able to get convicted human traffickers, help us get women into treatment and out of that life now. You know, and it's not because I'm special. It's not because I'm from those streets. Sure, some of it is because I'm from those streets and they've seen me do very bad things. And then they've seen me recover. But a lot of it is just it just comes down to human connection. You know, it comes down to what you and I are doing right now, having a conversation and and giving a shit about where the other person's coming from.

• 4:50:07Shawn Ryan?

  How how how do you get?

• 4:50:12Shawn Ryan?

  How do you get a dealer?

• 4:50:16Shawn Ryan?

  Who's making money off of that to help you?

• 4:50:20Speaker 06

  You can't always, but I'll tell you what, we've had great success.

• 4:50:26Speaker 06

  Drug dealers are humans, just like CIA case officer, a SEAL is still a human. They've got a particular skill set, but they still have things that are very human about them. And relationships are one of those things. There's somebody that is important to that drug dealer. There are usually multiple somebodies that mean a lot to him. He still has a soul and he still has to earn a living. And if you understand that not all of them are necessarily evil. And if you understand that there's that human aspect to all of them, you have an opportunity to find a way to get through to them. Now, it's not going to surprise anybody listening to this to hear that a lot of drug dealers make good entrepreneurs. All right. Obviously, they're businessmen.

• 4:51:10Speaker 06

  We've been able to take that approach with some of them. You know, demonstrate some of my business success and prowess over the years and say, "Look, if you will consider a different way of life and put this shit down, I'm gonna mentor you, I'm gonna help you." That's worked, sometimes. Sometimes they don't give a shit. You know, they're gonna keep living the life they're living, and you've gotta find a different way to reach them. Well, if you figure out that that dope boy's mom has been out there on the ho track for the last thirty years selling her body, or his sister, or his baby mama, and you go, you go get to them, you get that one some help. Man, you got a friend for life in that dope boy. He may not stop selling dope, but that's the only way he knows how to make a living, or if that's the way he enjoys making a living, but you can reach him, you can make some

• 4:51:54Speaker 06

  level of impact. You could start going after their customer base. And that, that's, we did that successfully on one trap house. Actually, it took multiple methods on this one, the one on Wilbur, the one where I should've died. That's how we shut that house down. You know, we, we put one of the dope boys through CDL school. He went back to selling dope. We helped him open up a car detailing business. Went back to selling dope. We ended up getting help for several people that he was real close to and he loved, like family, even though he was selling them what they were killing themselves with. He loved them. We got them help and that caught his attention.

• 4:52:36Speaker 06

  And so the totality of those opened him up to a conversation, and he agreed to shut the trap down.

• 4:52:41Shawn Ryan?

  How's the approach happen?

• 4:52:44Speaker 06

  So it's gonna depend on whether or not we have history with that dope boy. And if I don't, I've gotta become known to him.

• 4:52:50Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have a lot of, are there a lot of the same people down there that you were dealing with in your?

• 4:52:56Speaker 06

  There, there were in the beginning, when we first went back to Memphis. And we went back in 2022 now.

• 4:53:04Speaker 06

  We found out the first day we went back out there, fourteen of them were dead. Fourteen. Murder, overdose. One natural, but a lot of them died. Uh, but the one, the majority of them is still the same people. It's like we never left. They're still there doing exactly what they're doing the day I hit rock bottom in that empty lot.

• 4:53:21Speaker 06

  And they don't want to be. They don't. They don't know anything else. They were raised there. They were taught if you need something, you get it off the block. You know, you do what you gotta do out there.

• 4:53:30Shawn Ryan?

  What do they think when you come out there and they see you?

• 4:53:34Shawn Ryan?

  Blue and changed.

• 4:53:35Speaker 06

  Depends on who it is. Like today, they love to see us because they know we're there to help people. You know, they know we're out there trying to bring hope, recovery, economic opportunity. We started up a skills training workshop, like a woodworking shop. We're trying to bring opportunity to the hood. To one of the deadliest zip codes in America. Where, as I mentioned earlier, young men have a higher chance of being dead or incarcerated than they do to be in school or have a job, much less being their kids' lives. These are things that have to change. You can't change that being the most violent place in America without addressing that. That is what has to change. And so we change that by bringing hope out there. So when they see us coming, they're happy, man.

• 4:54:16Speaker 06

  Now, maybe we have cheated a little bit because we're doing this where we hit rock bottom. And they do know us. And that is important because they need to know I'm not the police, right?

• 4:54:27Speaker 06

  Otherwise, I should get shot. You walk up to a trap house and say, hey, man, I want to shut this house down? No, you're gonna get shot, you know? You've got, you gotta use a little more tact than that. And you gotta show up like every trap house.

• 4:54:39Shawn Ryan?

  How do you show up?

• 4:54:40Speaker 06

  I should fuckin' walk up.

• 4:54:42Shawn Ryan?

  And say what? What's your opening line?

• 4:54:45Speaker 06

  Well, I wouldn't just walk up to a trap house with an opening line and say, I want to shut this down. It is a very long process.

• 4:54:53Shawn Ryan?

  What's the approach? The initial approach?

• 4:54:56Speaker 06

  The initial approach is going after addicts. Get them help. Because every dope boy has an addict or two or five that are pains in his ass. And when you're selling dope and you have somebody that's shot off real bad, they're a risk to your operation. If they get rolled up, the cops are gonna offer them a deal to flip. And so that person is a threat to your existence. You want them to get off of dope. You don't want to lose them as a customer necessarily, but you want them to go go to rehab and, you know, if they relapse and get back on dope, oh, well. Right? And so we, we, we started by going after the addicts that frequent those houses. And that's not a threat to anybody.

• 4:55:36Speaker 06

  No dope boy in their right mind is ever gonna get upset if you are getting the worrisome prostitute crackhead off the street. They're gonna love it, actually, and you're gonna build some trust with them by doing it.

• 4:55:47Shawn Ryan?

  And they know that.

• 4:55:48Speaker 06

  Hmm?

• 4:55:49Shawn Ryan?

  They know that. How do they figure out it's you helping them?

• 4:55:51Speaker 06

  Oh, because they see us. I mean, that, it's, there's only two white people going out in the hood doing this. Well, it's more than that now. Um, but they know, and then we'll hold events out there. Like, we'll feed the hood. We will buy Christmas presents for all the kids in the hood. Thousands of toys. We've done that two years in a row now. And, and while that may sound like handouts and enabling people to make poor decisions with their money, buying drugs instead of presents, yeah, that, I'm sure, happens. But it wasn't James's fault when Jess and I bought drugs instead of Christmas. You know, it's not those kids' fault. Uh, and so even though there is a little bit of handout involved in the, in the events that we do, it's building trust, man.

• 4:56:33Speaker 06

  These people are seeing and realizing you're there to actually help them. You're not there just to go put somebody in jail, you know, or shoot somebody. You're actually there trying to meet a need, meet these people where they're at, and then show them that they still have worth as human beings. Because I can tell you, when I was out there towards the end, I didn't feel human. I, I wouldn't make eye contact with anybody. I felt, I felt substandard to literally anyone. I felt so insignificant and worthless. And, um, man, I came real close to ending it more than once, on purpose. I tried, more than once.

• 4:57:13Shawn Ryan?

  And uh, do you have conversations with these guys?

• 4:57:17Speaker 06

  Absolutely, absolutely. You, I, I want to talk to them about their hopes and dreams. I want to talk to them about where their life diverged from the one they had always envisioned. And the sad part is that in a lot of these cases, you find out it didn't. They're living the life they envisioned because that's all they're ever taught. It's all they're ever shown. It was all it was ever modeled for them. You, you have like generational legacies of dope dealing in some of these neighborhoods.

• 4:57:44Shawn Ryan?

  I would imagine. So, I mean, how do you um, like, how do you even? We just had a conversation a couple of hours ago about having your identity wrapped up in, in, in, in your occupation.

• 4:57:58Speaker 06

  Man, and that's, that is, I didn't want to like try to make a comparison between soft guys and dope boys. But I was thinking about that when you were saying it because their identity is completely wrapped up in that. Completely. It is, it is, their whole sense of worth and value is wrapped up in the fact that they're a dope boy and they got money and they have control. They have power because the reality is, especially when we're talking on the trafficked women's side of it. If you've got that sack of dope, you have whatever you want. You, you, you can get whatever you want out there. No questions asked. And that is a hard thing for some of you guys to let go.

• 4:58:38Speaker 06

  When they start seeing it happen to somebody they love though, their sister, their child, their baby mama, their cousin, their mom. Their eyes open up a little bit and you've got a window of time to make some impact there. Um, young kids getting shot out there, that happens all the time too, and it breaks everybody's heart, you know? Nobody wants to see that shit. Um, and those are, those are opportunities to go in there and have conversations. Um. They all know and accept that their means of earning income is not sustainable and that it will send them to prison. And so trying to break it down to these guys that prison is not a normal part of life.

• 4:59:23Speaker 06

  That's not, like, don't have that on your five, 10, 20 year plan, you know? Like, don't put prison as something that's going to happen. You can actually control whether or not you ever go to prison. That's like a revelation to some of these guys.

• 4:59:37Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 4:59:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, and how sad is that? How sad is that? In fact, I'll give you an example. I'm not gonna say his name, but years ago, in the trap house on Wilbert, they used to give the biggest dope boy on that block a hard time because I had done more prison time, or more time than he had. I've never even been to prison. All mine was jail time. But they used to give him a hard time because I had done more jail time than he had. When was it ever a badge of honor to do more jail time than somebody else? It's not. It shouldn't be. And so these mentalities that you're having to break down out there, they've been in place for generations, you know? And it's

• 5:00:19Shawn Ryan?

  Do they become vulnerable with you? Do they, do they give you validation for, for, for helping?

• 5:00:25Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. Now, it's good, it's gonna depend on who it is, you know? Everybody's individual and some of them are gonna be way more closely guarded. But I've seen tears shed by a lot of these guys, especially when it comes down to things like fatherhood, being present in your kids' lives. And if you can get them to talk about childhood, that, that usually rips open some wounds, some painful ones. Because I've, I don't know if this is unique to the neighborhoods in Memphis where we operate, or if this isn't across the board thing in inner cities, but sexual abuse is very common in childhood. Even incest, incestual abuse.

• 5:01:08Speaker 06

  It's, and that's, like, that's not something that gets talked about in that community. And if you can create an environment where they will talk through their childhood traumas, you really get another in with these people. You know, and it's, again, it's just that thing, you have to make human connection. And, and that's why I think

• 5:01:29Speaker 06

  Well, I forgot where I was going with that.

• 5:01:32Shawn Ryan?

  You have to make human connection, and that's why. So you're saying you have to establish human connection?

• 5:01:39Speaker 06

  You've got to establish human connection, and in the communities we're working in, that's not necessarily a popular thing to do at scale publicly. So you've got to create an environment where you can have one-on-one conversations with these guys. And I keep saying men, it's women too, but you know from your own experience, you know, most of the calamities we face as humans are driven by bad men actors, right? And so my focus is always on the males out there. And we've got women that will work with the women too, though.

• 5:02:12Speaker 06

  But trying to reach them and just get to the root cause of why things are the way they are. And I think at the end of the day, most of it does come down to lack of economic opportunity and an acceptance at scale of violence, drug addiction,

• 5:02:31Speaker 06

  drugs and human bodies as currency.

• 5:02:35Shawn Ryan?

  I know my team's getting ready to go down there and

• 5:02:40Shawn Ryan?

  tour that with you.

• 5:02:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, we got Wyatt and who?

• 5:02:44Shawn Ryan?

  Wyatt and Justin.

• 5:02:46Speaker 06

  Justin. They're gonna have a blast. They're gonna get to see this in real time. You know, I'm gonna take them, I'm gonna take them to 1420 at Wilford Street, the house that used to be full of bullet holes. There is a woman and her three children who I helped her get custody back of living in that house that just celebrated Christmas in there. She's a year and something sober now, trafficking survivor. The women that used to sell dope out of that house, I've got them housed in another old trap house around the corner. And it's like I'm taking the most, I keep saying I, I mean we, it's, this is not just Ben out there. We have like a literal army that's out there doing this with us, but-

• 5:03:22Shawn Ryan?

  How many of you guys are there?

• 5:03:24Speaker 06

  I don't even know at this point, man. So like at any given point, we're housing around 75. And we're working with roughly 200.

• 5:03:34Speaker 06

  Sometimes more, sometimes less. Now, we've gotten north of 350 people off the streets, through detox into rehab, through sober living and back into the workforce. I don't know that all of them stayed clean. I mean, I know not all of them stayed clean, but a lot of them did. So we've got a pretty sizable team out there. And then we've still got all these people from the evac communities, the Afghanistan and Ukraine that are pouring resources into this, too. Guys like Scott. Scott Mann's on our board.

• 5:04:03Speaker 06

  General Hicks, who's A-10 barrels down there, is on our board. Travis Peterson, retired master sergeant, he was an Air Force guy and an agency contractor, too. He's on our board. We've got a gunny from the Marines. And then all of us have some level of trauma that we've had to deal with, you know? And I think that's kind of the key to building these teams out, is you have to have some that's overcome trauma if you want them capable of doing anything really, really cool for no reason other than to have purpose.

• 5:04:35Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that is a...

• 5:04:38Shawn Ryan?

  That's incredible.

• 5:04:40Speaker 06

  It's gonna get more incredible.

• 5:04:42Shawn Ryan?

  So are you buying these houses?

• 5:04:44Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, we had this real estate developer who had bought up a couple of them at tax sales. And every time she tried to do something out there, they would like steal her car, you know, or cut her catalytic converters off. So she donated those houses because we're actually able to go out there and do whatever we want.

• 5:05:05Speaker 06

  The house on Woodward I bought, I bought it from my friend Drennan, who was shot six times in that house. His wife died in that house. That was one of those relapses right before rock bottoms when she died. I bought that house from him and the drug dealer that made his living in that house is who convinced him to sell it to us.

• 5:05:23Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 5:05:24Speaker 06

  Yeah. Now, he failed to convince his partner. And his partner shot somebody six times, another somebody, no, three times, the day we shut the house down, coming out of my house, after it was legally mine, he shot somebody. He's back in prison now, where he belongs. That was actually the guy that kidnapped her over the wedding room.

• 5:05:47Speaker 06

  Evil, evil, evil person. You know, we deal with the worst that humanity has to offer, but I can count on one hand the number of truly evil individuals I've ever met. And it's, it's low. Even in the child predator space, they're not as evil as you would think they'd have to be. Which I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around that. I really do.

• 5:06:10Shawn Ryan?

  Is there a lot of that going on down there?

• 5:06:13Speaker 06

  There, so we've, we've recovered several dozen women from sex trafficking, prostitution. Two of them are minors.

• 5:06:23Speaker 06

  And I hate to tell you this, but both of them were pissed we recovered them.

• 5:06:27Shawn Ryan?

  No, I mean, I've, we've, we've talked a lot about that subject here and,

• 5:06:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:06:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 5:06:34Speaker 06

  You know, it's, they're slaves to dope, man. And in that age demographic, you heard my story when I was 15, it was no getting me sober that early. I hadn't suffered enough. She just said, you gotta suffer sufficiently to choose something different. And while you and I may hear that, you know, a 15 year old being sold for sex, that sure sounds like suffering to me. It's not enough for them sometimes, you know? Now, I don't give a shit, it's still a crime. I'm still recovering you and anybody that was involved in your trafficking is gonna go to prison. But it doesn't mean the victim's gonna stay sober. You know what I mean?

• 5:07:12Shawn Ryan?

  So how many houses are there?

• 5:07:13Speaker 06

  We've got a total of 10 houses in Memphis and, I'm, I'm really excited to tell you this because I've not announced this publicly. Because we're still waiting on paperwork. There is a 76,000 square foot nursing home behind one of my blocks. Immediately behind it. It's been abandoned for 20 years. And last week, we tracked down the owner and told her we want to turn it into a treatment center. Which will make it, I think, West Tennessee's largest treatment facility. So you guys have Morgan County and DC 4 over here in this area. West Tennessee has nothing. The lady told us that not only is she interested in donating the property to us, she wants to actually assist in raising the money to renovate it and oversee it.

• 5:07:58Speaker 06

  I'm gonna go ahead and say like- Did you say seventy-six thousand square feet? Seventy-six thousand square feet, hundreds of rooms that sits on five acres, massive, massive. And so, I think that's our, our next move, is our own treatment facility. Because right now, I'm having to work with community partners, who I love. I'm so grateful for all of them, like Alliance, Serenity, CAP, all the treatment centers. We don't have anything that can do it all in one house, in that side of Memphis. It's certainly not this size. This is in the middle of the track. I mean, you're, you're sandwiched between the ho track and the dope track right there. It's, it's a perfect location to do this. And, and I'll tell you this, you know, a lot of people might hear this and think, well, that's, that's really cool, that's great.

• 5:08:42Speaker 06

  It doesn't really affect me. That's not accurate, man. This crap affects everybody, and it's happening in everybody's backyard. I'm talking about fentanyl and human trafficking. You might not see it the same way that we see it out in South Memphis, but this is happening everywhere. And violent crime spills out of big cities. There's no way to argue that. I can tell you from experience, when we shut down the trap on Melrose, and when we shut down the trap on Wilbur, violent crime on those two streets ceased that day. Literally, that day on Wilbur, because somebody got shot that day. But, you get what I'm saying? It's, it is the sole source of all the mayhem that happens anywhere near there. We work with certain law enforcement agencies in Tennessee, who have tons of data on this, and are able to back all of this up.

• 5:09:25Speaker 06

  But ninety-plus percent of the violent crime in Tennessee goes back in one shape, form, or fashion to dope. And so if you remove the drugs from the equation, so much of that violent crime goes down. And that's, that's something we all want, it's good for everybody. How many dealers have you turned? Um, we've turned two very big ones, four smaller ones, and that's been through- Well, I hate to use this term with you because you're a SEAL, but direct action. And what I mean by that is not what you mean by DA. And what we're doing, we're going direct. Ben is going directly to this guy to talk to him, and we're going to try to turn this thing around. So, two big ones, four small ones. Now, if we're talking about court referrals, because we do work with the drug court program,

• 5:10:10Speaker 06

  we work with veterans court, we work with the DA's office, they send people to us all the time. And if we're counting those who have already been justice involved, right, they've already been arrested, it's in the dozens. Now, they may not have had a choice, there wasn't an agreement reached, they were court ordered to stop their behavior, but they did succeed in turning their life around. There are dozens of those, dozens. Wow. And so it's easier, obviously, to do it if you have the law backing you up, but my goal out there is to keep these guys from going to jail if they're fixable. And definitely keep the addicts from going to jail. Because if you look at the way we fought the war on drugs for the last 40 years, it's an abject failure by every metric measurable. We've made no progress. In fact, it's worse.

• 5:10:54Speaker 06

  Overdose deaths are higher than they've ever been. Now, I know, and you know, that's in large part because of fentanyl and the issues at the southern border with it just coming right across, but the status quo has to be challenged. We're not prosecuting our way out of the war on drugs. We've tried it for 40 years. We're not prosecuting our way out of the war on human trafficking. It's not working. I'm not saying we stop prosecution. I'm not saying anything in favor of decriminalization or anything like that. What I am saying is we need partnerships like the one I just described, where we do work with courts, we do work with law enforcement, but we also work with the guys on the other side of the law. We work with the junkies, we work with the addicts who are in the gutter actually enduring this shit, and we help them get better.

• 5:11:37Speaker 06

  We help the other guys who are literally sometimes just in it to put food on their table. We help them find a better way out, too. And I think by working that kind of... I like to imagine it like this, this is a vice, you know, you're fighting from the top and the bottom at the same time. We can actually get some big shit done. And if we have more time, we could talk about how we did exactly that in Afghanistan. And we got big shit done, how we did it in Task Force La Haina with the Maui fires, and we got big shit done. It's the same method. We're, we're working from the bottom up and the top down, but that grassroots side is something we have complete and total control over. I don't have to wait on a bureaucracy to make a decision. I can just move right now. I don't have to wait on legal to approve something, you know what I mean?

• 5:12:20Speaker 06

  And honestly, when, when you're dealing with an issue, an issue like, uh, human trafficking, veteran homelessness, anything where addiction touches it. I have seen more times than I can count, a delay of hours result in death. Literally just hours ends up with a dead person.

• 5:12:38Speaker 06

  A month ago, we had two double funerals. Siblings die within hours of each other. Oh, man. Like, this, this has to stop, man. We're losing a generation of American youth, you know? Fent is the number one killer of people, I think, under fifty-five now. And if you want to talk about that from a national security standpoint, recruitment's at an all-time low, and we're losing a generation of warfighters. Like, three hundred a day. That's kind of scary. Damn.

• 5:13:10Speaker 06

  That's fucking amazing, man.

• 5:13:14Speaker 06

  It's keeping me sober. I'll bet it is.

• 5:13:18Speaker 06

  Nothing more, nothing less. That's some big, big impact. We have no plans on slowing down, man. We want to, we want to take what we're doing in Memphis. I want to quantify it and validate it by getting that city off of the top five deadly cities list. And then I'm going to blueprint exactly how I did it. Every relationship we made, every, every agreement we, we went into with the street gang or with law enforcement. And just write every bit of it out and, and see if somebody else can replicate it in their city. Because I'm positive they can. I'm literally just a crackhead, and we've pulled this off in South Memphis. You know? Like, I'm not that special. I think, I think this can be replicated, I think it's scalable, I think it's viable.

• 5:14:02Speaker 06

  And if nothing else, I've seen a lot of families get put back together. I've seen a lot of lives get saved. I've seen a lot of people become productive members of society. And that's enough for me.

• 5:14:19Shawn Ryan?

  And you and Jess are some amazing people, man.

• 5:14:22Speaker 06

  I appreciate that, brother. I do.

• 5:14:24Shawn Ryan?

  That is...

• 5:14:27Shawn Ryan?

  That is astounding, what you guys are doing.

• 5:14:32Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 5:14:33Speaker 06

  It's our duty. You know, you remember, we used to pray to God if he'd get us out of hell together, we'd go back for those who left behind. He got us out. We're together. We gotta go back. I don't have a choice.

• 5:14:49Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Ben.

• 5:14:54Shawn Ryan?

  I'm blown away, man. That is, um...

• 5:15:00Shawn Ryan?

  What you've been through, what you put yourself through with Jess, your kids. I mean, are your kids involved?

• 5:15:07Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Jacob worked seventeen of the twenty-one funerals in Uvalde with us. He, uh, he made a lot of the surviving kids smile for the first time in a long time. Jacob helped renovate the house at eleven eighty-six Melrose.

• 5:15:24Speaker 06

  Jacob had to jump, I hope his mom's not listening to this, Aaron, I'm sorry. Jacob had to jump under floorboards to hide from a drive-by on Webber Street. But, um, yeah, they're involved. James and Ava come everywhere with us. They love it.

• 5:15:39Speaker 06

  Lily has had a great time going out and meeting people in the hood. Madison has come out. They all have. They all love it. You know, the twins, they're fourteen. Eh, it's kind of cool sometimes. I think the only one that hasn't really gotten terribly involved is my oldest son, Jackson. And he's in college, you know, doing his own thing. He's very focused on school. And he's still working full-time, too, so... For all that we put our kids through, they turned out okay, you know? They really did.

• 5:16:07Shawn Ryan?

  That's pretty amazing, too.

• 5:16:08Speaker 06

  We got really...

• 5:16:09Shawn Ryan?

  Pretty amazing.

• 5:16:10Speaker 06

  We got really lucky.

• 5:16:11Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 5:16:12Speaker 06

  You know? And, uh, huge, huge props to Erin for that because she shielded a lot of them from a lot of bad.

• 5:16:21Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I'm proud to know you dude.

• 5:16:23Speaker 06

  Likewise, brother.

• 5:16:24Shawn Ryan?

  That is...

• 5:16:27Shawn Ryan?

  I love it. Is there anything my audience can do?

• 5:16:31Speaker 06

  Ah, definitely look for the Kickstarter, uh, for We Fight Monsters by Ben and Jessica Owen. That would be huge. Um, if y'all want to check out the website, it's wefightmonsters.org. Um, we've got our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash, was it at Monster Fighters? Um, just check us out, or look me up on Facebook, LinkedIn, follow me. I got a Patreon too. Patreon.com slash Ben Owen.

• 5:16:59Shawn Ryan?

  We'll link it all in the description and, um, man, just, God bless you. God bless Jess, your kids, everybody you're working with, all the people you're saving. I mean,

• 5:17:12Shawn Ryan?

  lots of, lots of love, man. Thank you.

• 5:17:16Speaker 06

  Thank you for the opportunity to be here, man. Seriously.

• 5:17:20Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, dude.

• 5:17:23Speaker 06

  Dude, we could have gone another eight hours.

• 5:17:25Shawn Ryan?

  I know, I know, I know.

• 5:17:27Speaker 06

  So you brought up psychedelics. Huge proponent.

• 5:17:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah?

• 5:17:32Speaker 06

  Yeah. Psilocybin saved my life. Yeah, I, I was gonna actually tell this today, but we didn't get the time. She doesn't even know this. I tried to kill myself in our house and then told her somebody broke in and robbed me. I cut myself to fucking pieces. I mean, but I never could have hidden an artery. And I guess it's because of all the dope I shot.

• 5:17:50Shawn Ryan?

  She doesn't know that?

• 5:17:51Speaker 06

  Uh-uh.

• 5:17:52Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's keep it in. Be a little encore.

• 5:17:55Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 5:17:57Shawn Ryan?

  Well, how did psychedelics change your life?

• 5:17:59Speaker 06

  So, microdosing psilocybin.

• 5:18:02Shawn Ryan?

  Microdosing?

• 5:18:03Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Now, see, it's, it's a weird spell. Like, I can't do that now because I'm in recovery, you know? But it got rid of that suicidal ideation. Um, but despite being in recovery, ayahuasca, psilocybin, there's so much research that needs to be done with all of these things that needs to be available.

• 5:18:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:18:23Speaker 06

  Especially, I, I'm, I'm gonna link to demographics that people don't link often, but I think to combat veterans and sex trafficking survivors. I've not come across a sex trafficking survivor to date that has not been a witness of extremely horrific violence.

• 5:18:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:18:41Speaker 06

  And I think there's something to be said for the fact that this is happening in their hometown, like where they live and sleep and eat and have to reassemble into society. So I want to see more psychedelic research done in that demographic. I really do. But it's tricky because not every addict is going to be able to responsibly do psychedelics. We're still talking about drugs, you know?

• 5:19:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:19:03Speaker 06

  But there's a lot of us that can, you know?

• 5:19:06Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 5:19:07Speaker 06

  And in a controlled environment, I think it's, uh, the outcomes from it, if you've read any of the studies, which is well read as you are, I'm sure you have. The, um, I just went brain dead.

• 5:19:19Shawn Ryan?

  Stanford.

• 5:19:19Speaker 06

  Not Mayo, but which one?

• 5:19:20Shawn Ryan?

  Stanford.

• 5:19:21Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. They've, uh, I had a, a Marsoc buddy we worked with during the evac that was part of, uh, I forget which one. And then everybody swears by ayahuasca. Everybody swears by it.

• 5:19:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I haven't done that. I did ibogaine.

• 5:19:39Speaker 06

  I've heard a lot of good things about ibogaine. I, I wanted to do that coming off heroin, but when I was still thinking I was special, you know? I just couldn't, couldn't afford it because I blew all my money. But yeah, huge proponent of ibogaine, psilocybin, ayahuasca, all of them.

• 5:19:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Me too, me too.

• 5:20:01Speaker 06

  Yeah. Have you read up on neuroplasticity?

• 5:20:03Shawn Ryan?

  A little bit.

• 5:20:04Speaker 06

  That shit's fascinating. It is so fascinating. The way your brain literally will rewire itself and form new pathways with psilocybin. If you're doing the, the guided, uh, Johns Hopkins, that's the one I was trying to think of.

• 5:20:16Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 5:20:17Speaker 06

  They've, it's, it's mind blowing, the, the kind of shit that, like, we just, we don't.

• 5:20:21Shawn Ryan?

  Some of that stuff's over my head, Ben. I didn't write a fucking medical.

• 5:20:25Speaker 06

  Well, that's one of the cracks.

• 5:20:26Shawn Ryan?

  A publication.

• 5:20:27Speaker 06

  Sean, they're.

• 5:20:33Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, dude. That's a hell of a story. Wow.

• 5:20:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, Scott wasn't fucking around.

• 5:20:41Speaker 06

  Well, you get to hear a lot more than Scott heard, but there's still so much more. There's so much more.

• 5:20:47Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get you back on.

• 5:20:49Speaker 06

  I would love to be back on, and I love that you put her on a camera, man. That was awesome.

• 5:20:53Shawn Ryan?

  You like that?

• 5:20:53Speaker 06

  I do, because if I'd told her she was gonna do it, she either wouldn't have done it, or she'd have fucked up. But you made her comfortable, and what you've obviously done with me, too. This is my greatest fear. Well, public speaking in front of a crowd is my greatest. This is my second greatest.

• 5:21:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:21:08Speaker 06

  And it's not even, I was telling Darren downstairs, it's not even fearfully speaking. It's, I'm afraid I'm gonna be afraid while I'm speaking.

• 5:21:19Shawn Ryan?

  Well, when I made this,

• 5:21:24Shawn Ryan?

  I wanted it to be like a super comfortable environment.

• 5:21:27Speaker 06

  It very much is, man.

• 5:21:28Shawn Ryan?

  Equipment in the shots, nothing in your face, you know?

• 5:21:33Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, I think, well, I don't think, I know, I, uh, credit to my therapist, man. I did three years, twice a week, and...

• 5:21:44Speaker 06

  Have you ever done, um,

• 5:21:48Speaker 06

  SGB?

• 5:21:49Shawn Ryan?

  What's that?

• 5:21:49Speaker 06

  The Celtic Gangland blocks?

• 5:21:51Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 5:21:51Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 5:21:52Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 5:21:55Speaker 06

  I just wondered, because Travis and Joel on our board both do those, and you're very even-killed and calm, much like, no, not Joel, but Travis. You guys, the way you talk, you're just, you relax people when you talk to them. And Travis has the same trait.

• 5:22:13Shawn Ryan?

  I appreciate that, but, um, I'll take it as a compliment, but, uh, no, I've not, I've not done that. I'm in a good place, man.

• 5:22:22Speaker 06

  I can tell.

• 5:22:23Shawn Ryan?

  I don't need to rock.

• 5:22:23Speaker 06

  You just sound content. I envy you.

• 5:22:27Shawn Ryan?

  I got a great team.

• 5:22:28Speaker 06

  You do.

• 5:22:30Shawn Ryan?

  Great family. I don't, uh, I'm good.

• 5:22:35Speaker 06

  God is good, man.

• 5:22:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yes, he is.

• 5:22:37Speaker 06

  That made, I love it.

• 5:22:39Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. You too.