1376: Sean Hemeon | The Good Little Drug Lord

How does shame curdle into addiction? Ex-dealer and federal informant Sean Hemeon retraces his descent and the long climb back to sober. Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1376 https://jordanharbinger.com/1376 What We Discuss with Sean Hemeon: Sean Hemeon was primed for addiction before he ever tried meth. Abandoned at four, taught by his church that being gay made him diseased, meth gave him the confidence and belonging shame had denied him. It didn't create the void, but filled one that was already there. Moral collapse is gradual, not sudden. A year without a sober breath is how a smart person ends up stuffing meth into a dying stranger's nose, hoping to restart his heart. Boundaries don't break all at once — they give way one rationalization at a time. The system meant to stop the harm made it worse. Agents saved in Sean's phone as 'yes' and 'no' pushed him back into dealing to gather intel. A judge charmed by his school's basketball team let him walk. The outcome had less to do with the crime than with luck. A grieving mother found Sean's number on her dead son's last phone bill and called, begging him not to hang up. He hung up. That choice broke his image of himself as a good person and left a debt he's still trying to pay. You can't undo the worst thing you've done, but you can stop running from it. 21 years sober, Sean tells the truth, stays reachable, and would fly to that mother tomorrow if she called. Accountability isn't feeling guilty, but facing the damage. And much more... And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1344999619?mt=2&ls=1 — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking https://jordanharbinger.com/course — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course https://jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser https://www.jordanharbinger.com/news/ newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanHarbinger/! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors https://www.jordanharbinger.com/deals/: BetterHelp: 10% off first month: betterhelp.com/jordan https://www.betterhelp.com/jordanK12: Learn more at k12.com/jordan https://k12.com/jordanNorthwest Registered Agent: Get more at northwestregisteredagent.com/jordan https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/jordanXero: Learn more: xero.com https://www.xero.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:29Speaker 00

  Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks. From spies to CEOs, athletes to authors, thinkers to performers, even the occasional neuroscientist, Russian chess grandmaster, cold case homicide investigator or arms dealer. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of some of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit JordanHarbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  Today on the show, Sean Hemian, actor, artist, former good little Mormon boy who speed ran a career change into meth dealer, Russian mafia debtor and federal informant before most people figure out dental insurance. Sean grew up believing that being gay made him a beast unworthy of salvation. Then crystal meth gave him what his religion, family and his own mind had failed to provide. Confidence, belonging, sexual freedom and the feeling that he was finally somebody. Within a few years, he had gone from a closeted Mormon theater student to supplying Washington DC's club scene, carrying drugs through airports, working with federal agents and hiding from a supplier who threatened everyone he loved. Today, we'll examine how shame becomes addiction, how an intelligent person watches his moral boundaries collapse one rationalization at a time,

• 2:56Speaker 00

  and whether redemption is possible when you survived, but someone else didn't.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  So actually, I know you're in screenwriting and acting and I'm not. So I'm going to jump right into this weird place potentially, but take me to the moment when you first looked into the backseat of your car and you realize there's this young guy in the back of your car and he's not just sleeping.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  No, he's not just sleeping. I'll throw a little context out to stage it. At that point in the story, I was deep into trafficking crystal meth from Atlanta to Washington DC. Total disclaimer, I'm not proud of any of the decisions that I've made. I felt cornered and backed up against the wall in order to do these things and that will make sense later in the story. At this point though, I found a connect in Atlanta who was working with some cartel people and I would get it back to DC in that way. And on one of these weekend trips, I'm hanging out with him, he's going to go pick it up, the supply for me. I meet one of his friends. I'd never met the guy before, just this young cute college kid.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  I was like, oh, and he was really into me and I was like, okay, this is great. So he and I were just hanging out. He had done drugs before. I gave him drugs. I gave him one of the party favorite gay boy drugs, GHB. They love that one.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  That's kind of dangerous, right? It's like alcohol. It's like alcohol on steroids, right? Like you have one and you're like, great. And then you have two and you're like, I'm going to the ER.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  You go into seizures and do this whole thing. And like the thing with that is everybody knows you do not drink alcohol with that because it like hits the same place and your whole body just shuts down. And I was smoking meth at that point. So we were doing that, we were doing the GHB. This young man left at some point and we think he left to go drink alcohol. We're not sure, but then he came back anyway. So we go out to the clubs at night and he starts acting weird. And when you do too much GHB, you fall out, which means you're just, you look like you're having a seizure, which wouldn't make people panic, but not to drug addicts. We're just like, oh, they're falling out, like.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  Lay him down on his side.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Lay him down and this is really bad, but let's try to stuff more meth up his nose. Maybe it'll jumpstart his heart.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  That sounds so bad.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  That does sound so bad.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  But you have to understand, like I haven't drawn a sober breath a year into this by this point. I am so far gone that these things just seem normal to me.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  How many years ago is this? This must seem like a lifetime ago.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  I have been sober 21 years, so 2003, 2004.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  So it is a lifetime ago in essence here.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I felt for the guy. So we laid him on his side, went into one club. That club wasn't really popping, so we came back out and he was still breathing in the backseat. And we've been in this situation with other people before. Check their breath, we do the whole thing. And then we went into the next club and I came back out early morning hours and to check on him. And this is that moment when I get into the front seat, I turn around and his eyes were still closed, but it just feels off. If anybody's ever been around a body that's nearing death or it's just, there's a feeling. It just doesn't seem right. I check for the heart, you can feel it. So I'm like, okay, but this isn't right. I need my other friend to come out and verify this.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  I go in, I find him, he's with some boys, he's having fun. He won't come out and he's like, you're being paranoid, you're being dramatic.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  Which is also maybe a reasonable take to say to a meth addict.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly right. A thousand percent. So I go into a corner, I do more drugs and in my head, I'll go check on him every 15 minutes or something like that. I don't know how much time passes, probably half an hour. It's a drug time warp. And I'm like, I come to and I'm like, I gotta go check on him. So I go back out. This time I get in the front seat and my friend has one of those. It was a very popular car in the early aughts. It was like that bright yellow Nissan Xterra.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  Okay, so like an SUV?

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was that really, I don't, I don't, you don't see them, they're not that attractive, but I get in the front seat. I turn around and he's staring at me and I fly back up against the windshield. And then I see like frozen snot, I see the face is blue.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  Oh, no.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  See the pee stain. Terrifying. Adrenaline kicks in, I grab him, I sit him up and it was the weight of that.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  That freaked me out. I let him go and then the way he hit the door.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  And bounced off the door was, oh, shit.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Oh, fuck.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Seriously, he's dead.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  I run inside and I'm like a chicken with the head cut off. God, you gotta come outside, you gotta come outside. Cause my brain up to that point was not accepting that this person could be dead or was on his way to being dead, just could not accept it. It just wouldn't go to that place. And so I needed the friend to come out and I had to drag him out because he just thought I was being paranoid and crazy. I literally dragged him out. He got in the front seat, he turned around, had one look and then just started screaming.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  And I was like, okay, great. That verifies that.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  Confirms it.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  He kept screaming and it was like a movie moment because I slapped him because he couldn't calm down. I was like, drive.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  I called 911 and it turned out that the hospital was closer to where we needed to go. And so I got him to drive and this is 5:30 in the morning during morning rush hour and he's going up one-way streets, wheeling past cars.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, sure.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  And we get to the ER and we screech to a halt again, like another movie moment. We run in freaking out, you know, our friend, oh my gosh. And the nurses pull out the gurney, open the passenger door and the way his head flops, the nurses, you heard the nurses go, oh, fuck. And they put him on the gurney, they take him in and the doctor's like, you know, wait, don't leave. And you could see in the window, you could see a nurse on top of him doing CPR, doing the whole thing.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  My friend turned to me, was like, he gave me the keys to the car. He's like, get out of here. And I was like, I didn't question that, I just did. But then he called me like literally a minute later and he ran away too. He's like, come back and get me.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  We went back to his place paranoid as hell, thinking the cops were after us, all this other kind of stuff. And I got on a plane that night, an hour later and got back to DC where most of my story takes place.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Were the cops after you? Cause I would imagine they're like, okay, they just dropped off a guy. Cause spoiler alert, this man passed away.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  He's basically done arrival.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  And the cops, unless they caught this guy, Stephen, my connect, if they only got to him, then they would have gotten to me. But I don't think they got to him at all. There's no way they would have ever found me in any connection to this.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  They didn't have cameras that got his plates or anything?

• 9:21Speaker 02

  However, the premise of my story is gay Mormon, drug dealing narc for the federal government. Pretty dramatic. My entire existence hinged on this moment that happened two weeks after this, related to this incident. Because I grew up a good little Mormon boy, which we can go into. I'm a good boy, I'm a good boy, right? And all these devastating things that happened, a lot by my choices, happened to me. Two weeks after this young man died, I completely forgot I was the last phone number on his phone bill. When he left that one moment, probably to drink alcohol, he called me before he was coming back. And he didn't make sense at that point. I was like, oh boy, this guy's messed up. Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  So two weeks later, after this happened, I get a phone call.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  And it's this deep, southern drawl. She's like an older Christian woman. She's like, please don't hang up. I'm like, I'm like, who is this? I immediately go into thinking it's the cops trying to trick me. She's like, please don't hang up. It's the last number of my son's phone bill. I just want to know what happened.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Oh, man. That's crushing.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Bro, I was so paranoid it was the cops, which is insane to think in a sober mind. Like, what the hell?

• 10:32Speaker 00

  But also, you're probably also not wanting to go to prison for, I don't know, what would that be? Like manslaughter, I suppose?

• 10:37Speaker 02

  On top of the fact that I was already arrested at that point and working with the informant. And no, she was just a grieving mother that had no information, other than probably a phone call from the ER that said, your son OD'd on drugs, and he's here. Like, no information how he got there.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Right. Come pick up his body or something like that.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  I can't even begin to tell you how much this still, a year later, after I got sober, I tried to find her. I tried to look at my phone bill. I've tried to look up the hospital. I've tried to look up obituaries. I tried to find this woman to make amends and to say, this is what happened to your son. I could never find her. I tried, a year later after that happened, I tried 10 years later, I tried recently when I wrote this book. I wrote a book in response, telling her, this is what happened to your son.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  Because on the phone, when she called and said, don't hang up, you hung up.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  I hung up.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, my God.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Begging me, crying. I robbed this woman of grief, of closure, of her son. And I can still feel it. 22 years later, I can still feel that. And it challenged what I thought about myself. I thought I was a good person.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  Of course. Yeah, this would rock the foundation. It's gotta be almost impossible to believe you're a good person after hanging up on a grieving mother to protect your own ass, basically. That's just, you need to process that for the next few decades, right?

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Decades. Write a book about it. Talk about it.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, go on podcasts and talk about it. And I'm not making light of it. We're chuckling because it's such a poignant and crazy event here.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. So to understand how a person becomes capable of making these decisions, we have to go back to a period when you believed that your very existence was dangerous to the people that you loved. Before you ever touched meth, what did you believe was wrong with you?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  There's definitely two major chapters of my life, and I feel like each of those chapters you could cut out and make into a movie. There's up until when I tried meth that first time at 21, 22. And then there's that period of like, age 13 up into 21. Because prior to 13, I come from a family, there's seven of us with my two parents. I grew up in Northern Virginia, DC, which was a lot of the power Mormons. My mother was Mormon, my father was not Mormon.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  What's power Mormon?

• 12:39Speaker 02

  The ones, the lobbyists, the ones that held the money.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  There was a lot of power Mormons.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  So the Walmart Mormons don't live in Utah, they live in Virginia?

• 12:46Speaker 02

  There's Walmart Mormons. One of them might be.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  I thought Walmart was a Mormon thing.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  I know the Marriott's that are...

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Marriott's Mormon?

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's some Marriott's.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  Titanium elite Mormons?

• 12:56Speaker 02

  There's a lot. And because part of prospering is part of being a devout Mormon and that kind of stuff. Anyway, my dad was not Mormon.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Your mom must have taken some shit for that, right? Or?

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, her own story is brutal, too. I mean, my grandfather wouldn't even talk to her at first, because that's how bad it was. But she was escaping an abusive Mormon man prior to that. And because she got a divorce in the late 70s, my grandfather wouldn't talk to her.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  I see.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  So, and then in comes my dad, who was like this charming hippie man's man just swooped in and just was like, hey, baby.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Grabbed a Mormon wife. That's somewhat surprising. I don't know.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  They got married four months later.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  What the heck?

• 13:34Speaker 02

  So I'm the middle child of seven.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  So he might as well be Mormon. He had seven kids.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  He came from a family of seven, Irish Catholic.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  Okay, never mind. Because I was gonna say hippie charming guy with seven kids?

• 13:44Speaker 02

  I know.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  Sheesh.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  He was such a, I don't know, I feel like all men that were kids in the 50s were the same. All white men, kids in the 50s are the same. They just have this weird humor about them and then just entitlement. It's so funny to watch. But kind of like, I had to pick a parent, and I picked my mom. I was her favorite. He was unavailable emotionally. I became her like sponge in a way. I beat out my siblings. I won my mom. And part of that was being a really good Mormon boy. I had experiences early on in my childhood where I was physically abandoned. My parents were just so involved in their own emotional BS stuff that like, they literally forgot me somewhere and I had to walk home.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  I think I talked to you about this. She just forgot to pick you up from something.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  We were moving from the old house to the new house like a mile away.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Yes, this is a great story. Well, for me, not for you.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  It was just, I'm in my Spiderman underwear. I'm four years old. I'm just playing around. And we're moving from one house to the other. And my parents are arguing. My mom, our entire life was harassing our father to not drink, not smoke cigarettes and come to church. It was like, of course.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  Irish Catholic guy, stop drinking.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  He'd be like, quack, Golden Place my ass. Like, he would be like, just bullshit, bullshit. Like, if you were a missionary that came over to our house, I felt bad for you. Anyway. But before we take off, one final time, I'm like, let me run inside to go to the bathroom. Wait for me, wait for me. And, but they were so involved in themselves and stuff like that. When I came back out, they were gone.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  I'm, again, I'm four. So like...

• 15:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, underwear.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  And the memories are just beginning to process. Like, we don't remember things before that age and stuff, but this was probably my first one, because I come back out and you're like, where did they go?

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Where's the car? Yeah. Where's the wood paneled station wagon?

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Exactly right. Just to say what I understood, how I understood my family, I was like, oh, they're playing a practical joke on me. They're gonna come back around the corner and I'm gonna be really mad at them. But they never came back. And then the trees started getting bigger and the clouds scarier. And some neighbor woman tried to help me and it freaked me out. And I just, I started running towards the new house. I don't remember or understand how I got to the new house, or how I even knew the way. But after this treacherous journey, I arrived there. And the most damaging part about this whole story was when I arrived, it wasn't that they left me behind. It was that they didn't even notice I wasn't there.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  And that was the damaging thing. And

• 16:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  God bless my mother, but she has her own stuff prior to that. Lots of depression, that kind of stuff. She has her own journey. We all humans, we have our journeys, our own traumas and stuff like that. I was already getting that from her. This experience validated that core of, you know, I must not be worthy enough. My parents don't even see me. Why is anybody else gonna see me?

• 16:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  And so what happens to a little kid's brain, or anybody's brain, is like, our egos will start validating that. Because that's, oh, that's my personality. I'm somebody who doesn't think they're enough. So let me do everything I can to perform to be enough. And for me, what that looked like was being a good little Mormon boy. And I was like, I have to believe this shit.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. Wow. And then at some point, you realize that you like boys and not girls. And I would imagine that probably strikes you as a potential problem for being a good Mormon boy.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Being a gay boy in the 90s, and then being a gay boy in the Mormon church, do I need to say anything else? Like?

• 16:53Speaker 00

  The diagram on stress is like, pretty...

• 16:56Speaker 02

  And then also on top of that, knowing that my mother had already made comments. My brothers called me faggot.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  To be fair, everybody used that word in the 90s.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  We didn't mean it that way.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  It hurts more when you're actually gay, probably.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  A thousand percent.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  Yikes.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  And so 13, realizing that I might like boys. And they were still preaching in the 90s from the pulpit, what we call the altar, about the cancer that homosexuality is. They were still preaching that, at least in the early 90s. Enough for me to take it on and understand it and stuff. So when I started liking other boys, the message I got that I believed was, what did I do to God that was so bad that he would curse me with this disease of gayness? And I couldn't understand when they were preaching, or you hear everybody else say like, why are you choosing this? And in myself was like, yeah, why am I choosing this? What did I do? I'm a terrible fucked up person, because I'm choosing this. Not even realizing that it's not a choice, yada, yada, that whole stuff. I started to believe

• 17:53Speaker 02

  I lived in a world where even God hated me, where I'm being punished by God. And so that's at 13. And then it's sad, because I'm 13 and I want to die. I want to die to get back at God. I want to die to get back at my mother. And it wasn't like planning suicide, but it was like, I could step in front of this bus.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Oh, so you just thought about it?

• 18:13Speaker 02

  It's ideation, yeah. And what actually saved my life, and this is so cliche, but it's so true. One of my best friends in eighth grade, turned out he was like me. And this love, if you will, started pouring out of me. And I was like, how could this be so wrong if this feels so right? So he and I had this undercover relationship all through high school. I was a total cliche. I mean, I was football captain, homecoming court.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  Really? That's hilarious.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  I was a little bit of a bully, probably.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  And not even realizing.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  Man.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  And then in the closet, or behind the scenes, you know, I had this boyfriend. I was a total walking 90s cliche.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  That really is like an after-school special.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  I had the cherry red Jeep Wrangler. I had the blonde frosty tips. I had the hemp necklace.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  Does that, I don't think that, I think that's what everybody had, except for the boyfriend.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  No, exactly. But could I say, most high schools do superlatives, like most likely to be president. Mine, you should give me the Oscar, because mine was most typical senior, which means I fulfilled that role of being an acceptable high schooler.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  You were a good actor then, and you're a good actor now. Yeah. No wonder they picked you for NCIS.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. So being able to handle a relationship as a teenager, no teenager can do, but then also handling one behind the scenes. The thing that really started holding us together was alcohol, was drugs. My three older brothers drank, even though still trying to be good Mormons. And so by the time I was 18, I was already blacking out. I was the one with the fake ID. I was the one getting the alcohol. I was happy to experiment with all drugs. So I was, and I was already smoking cigarettes. I was heavy into that. Because, obviously, I've already described most of this journey. There's an incredible amount of angst and dissonance and existential daily crisis going on inside of me. So yes, the alcohol felt fucking good. Damn good.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Especially, you're probably worried about getting caught or found out, right? So if you can forget about that for a little bit by drinking, that's probably a load off at any given time.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Exactly right. That, and it also meant I was acceptable by my peers, which means I was winning the game of being straight and accepted. And also my brothers being accepted by them. I couldn't outdrink anybody. I was that party guy.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  Who's the gay boy now, Tim? You're the one who's unconscious on the couch.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, bro. What's up, bro? Exactly right.

• 20:29Speaker 00

  I can imagine it.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  So, okay, so you're watching Star Trek with your mom, and then a news preview shows, I think, a gay rights march?

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's just a perfect example of the messaging I got from my mother, because I'm like 10. I think it was in 93, they were marching, ACT UP was marching against Right for Medication. It was a gay march in DC. And it was on the news. I watched Star Trek: Next Generation with my mom all the time. It was her and I's thing. But on the 10 o'clock news, it was like, gay march in Hollywood, and the show drag queens, leather daddies, lesbians. I just clearly remember.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  This is right before 13. This is right before I knew what was happening. It was just more of a feeling. But just my mom just turning that off and just going, ah, disgusting. And I don't know why. I didn't know why at the time.

• 21:12Speaker 00

  Could have been the leather daddies.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Probably. I was gonna go drag queens, but I just melted into that couch, though.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  That's like Mormon mother kryptonite, I think, some of that stuff.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Or just the drag. Why did the drag queens piss them off so much?

• 21:25Speaker 00

  They still do.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  No, it was just, they just argued at the Smithsonian lady for putting RuPaul in there. And I was just like, what is with you people in drag?

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, there, people are obsessed with drag queens. There's a subreddit called Not a Drag Queen. Subreddits are like little parts of Reddit that are, I guess you'd call it subject matter. It's called Not a Drag Queen. And it's whenever anybody does anything that's perverted or weird and because they always say, oh, drag queens are weird, perverted people. And they'll put, police officer caught with child pornography. And it's like, not a drag queen. They're a pastor caught, and it's like, also not a drag queen. It's pretty funny. Yeah.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  The drag queen thing for like a guy like me is just a straight white male. It's weird, but it doesn't freak me out. It's just strange to watch somebody dress like that, but it's funny.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  It's performance art. It's performance art.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  And I know I'm gonna insult people with this, and I don't mean to. It's kind of like watching a Disney character or a clown at the circus. I know I'm gonna take shit for this, but that's what it looks like. It's perform, like a wrestler.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  A thousand percent. And there are some drag queens that actually do clowning, that make that part of the thing. No. If you think of it as performance art, which is exactly what it is, then that's all it is. Actors that are dressing up in a certain costume and then putting on a show. It's just a culture of it that does it.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  I think people who are, I guess you'd

• 22:38Speaker 02

  They just happen to be gay.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  There's some straights that are on like RuPaul's Drag Race, straight people that come on.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  That I believe. And I also think people confuse trans people with drag queens, and it's not the same thing. And that's kind of an understandable thing to not understand if you're not paying attention. And I think that really freaks people out if you've read the news in the last decade. Turns out an eight ball a day keeps literally everyone away. We'll be right back. Or will we?

• 23:06Speaker 01

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• 24:04Speaker 00

  Here's a little inside scoop you might not be aware of. When you use our promo code, you're not just scoring a discount, you're also giving the show a boost. We don't earn commissions from each sale, but when companies see that listeners engage with the ads that are on the show, it encourages them to keep supporting us. So if you're planning to sign up or buy something, please go to our deals page, jordanharbinger.com/deals. It is a win. You get an awesome deal and you keep the show going strong. Thank you for supporting those who support the show. Now, back to Sean Hemian.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  Anyway, that's Mormon mother kryptonite is my point. She's just like, oh my God. And then you're like, oh no, my mom thinks these people are gross. And I think I might be one of them.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  And I'm disgusting. I'm horrible. What did I do to God to be cursed with?

• 24:43Speaker 00

  Also, you're back to this.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  I fully believe that I lived in a world where the God that ruled it hated me so much, wouldn't even tell me that the horrible thing that I did. Instead, just cursed me with the disease of gayness, which made me not acceptable, not enough and all that. So I just wanted to die. I wanted to die all the time. And when that relationship ended at 19, I went right back to wanting to die. Like, and so I was overloaded with that feeling. And that's when I started heading into the drugs heavily.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  You mentioned that your church leader compared homosexuality to cancer. I found this part funny that you took extra pieces of sacrament bread because you thought you needed more Holy Spirit.

• 25:20Speaker 00

  I feel like if you're a pastor or a preacher and you notice somebody taking extra wafers, like, pull the kid into the office and ask what's going on. Something's going on.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  That's, I thought that was kind of like, all right, if I have three of these, maybe I won't be gay next week.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  It's so funny because they cut up white bread. It's such a white bread religion, but they cut up white bread and that's what's passed around.

• 25:39Speaker 00

  That's the most Mormon thing I've ever heard. The wafers aren't white enough.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  White bread and water.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  No wine. I forgot about that. Yeah, no caffeine, no wine. Jeez. Okay, so it's easy to probably make Mormonism the single villain here, but I mean, plenty of gay people who are raised Mormon don't become drug addicts, drug dealers. So what combination was kind of uniquely yours, you think?

• 26:02Speaker 02

  That's a great question. There are a lot of gay Mormons that are actually still trying to be Mormons, so more power to them.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  Can they, is that allowed or is you have to keep it a secret?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  You, no, no, you're allowed to say you're gay, but you are not allowed to like act.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  Be gay. Okay.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. But you know what? If that's their speed, more power to them. But then there's a lot of us gay Mormons that really messed up as a result of it because of all the repression and everything like that. My special combination just comes from, the disease of addiction definitely comes down both sides, but definitely came down my dad's side. You can see a long line of them. Like, I have an ancestor, an Irish sea captain that passed out on the way home from the pub and froze to death because he was so drunk. Like, just stories like that just trickle down. So I have that. And then that core belief of not enough, depression from my mother's side. So I was ripe. I came into the world believing I was powerless and then suddenly believing I was in this Mormon god world that gave me even less power as well. I was

• 26:57Speaker 02

  perfect. I was the perfect candidate to try crystal meth for the first time and to feel like superhuman because that drug makes you feel powerful. It's not true, but it makes you feel powerful. And I just took to it. I always had the fantasy of like, I loved acting. I used to go to the movies with my dad. That was our thing. We would go to the movies. We wouldn't tell my mom we were seeing a rated R movie, but he'd sneak me in. Yeah, he'd sneak me into Die Hard or like, oh, I loved Young Guns, you know, all the 90s classics.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Loved all of them. And the way my dad looked at that screen, I would marvel at it because he wouldn't look at anything else like that. He would just be swept away in the movie. And I think I fell in love with movies then. I think I fell in love with wanting to be an actor then, but I fell in love with wanting to be a 90s action hero. And I think that comes from that place of, I feel so powerless in this world. I want to be powerful, like that toxic macho dude up there, but whatever. So when I got to meth and also being gay and repressing that, when I got to meth, this sense of powerlessness was overcome by this sense of power that I got from this. I felt invincible. And that's what that drug does to you.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  I mean, you see people do crazy things while on it, so that totally makes sense.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Just to put some context in this, the way it was described to me, you know, we have a normal dopamine drip in the back of our heads. It drips like an IV thing. Let's compare to that.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm getting some every time I take a sip of this.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Correct, correct. And so when you do a drug like meth, it literally opens up that drip and drops it down like an ocean. While creating more dope, some drugs will open that up and just pour it in. I think like cocaine will do that. It would just open it up and pour it in. But meth will open it up, pour it in and create more at the same time. And so

• 28:39Speaker 00

  It sounds so awesome, so I feel like we need to say something about how it's not a good idea.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Just listen to the rest of the story, guys.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  True. It's also cardiotoxic and neurotoxic.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Yes, and also to put a damper on it even more, 20 years ago, the strength of the drugs is 50 to 100% stronger today. And now they really do cut it with all these other things. It's insane how strong meth is today that you [BLEEP] with it once or twice, you're screwed.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  Those are the commercials, right? I'm only gonna do meth once. And then it was meth not even once.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now it's so strong. And if you're primed for it, like with me with addictive tendencies and just this not enoughness and this powerlessness, like when I was introduced to meth, I was also introduced to drug dealers at the same time.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  Oh dang. So it's not like you couldn't get more.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  It's not like I couldn't get more, but it's also like, I saw the drug dealers and I was like, what is that? I was fascinated with the power and the seduction and the glamour that these drug dealers had. And they all loved me because I was in my prime. I was a little twinkie boy in my 21. I was like, they wanted a piece of this guy. And I was like,

• 29:42Speaker 00

  Fresh meat.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Total fresh meat. I should have been like, oh gosh, Johnny Depp's girl in Blow when she had like the fur coat and the high heels. Like, I should have been that. I was that for a minute.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, for gay drug dealers.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  For gay drug dealers, yeah. Give me more meth. You can't keep up with my habit. Like, I'm gonna get us arrested, you know? Look, I was young and like 21, 22, I was young. I thought I was invincible because most people think they're invincible at that age. And I can do a few drugs on the weekends at the DC clubs and I can get out of here. And I was in theater school in Richmond, which was 90 miles south. And so I was just being a young idiot, just messing about.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  I'm a drug user on the weekends, but during the week I got my head down working.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Correct. That's a lot of people.

• 30:20Speaker 00

  I think it is a lot of people.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  It's a lot of people.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Nothing was wrong at that point. Yes, I started getting later to classes. Yes, the weekend crept into Tuesday and I'd get to, you know.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  That's what I was gonna say. Once it's Tuesday, doing a couple lines just to see if you, or however.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  I was dating this one drug dealer from New Orleans. He called me Sherry. And he was living in different hotels. And I would just go around with him. He'd pay for everything. I should have taken it as a sign that one time when he was out of meth, that I had a like an emotional raging reaction to that. Like, I have to go back to class. What do you mean you don't have, like? I should have taken that as the first sign, but of course I didn't. I blamed him for all these things. I'm not paying attention to the addiction signs at this point.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  You're not clocking how much of this you're consuming, probably.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Correct. And then I used that resentment as justification one night because this is where the story really pivots. Because one night, he loved ketamine at that point. And before, now it's everywhere and people are doing it for therapy. But back then, it was a new party drug that people took and went into K holes, this kind of stuff. And so he would do that and like kind of zone out and do K holes. And he, I just was around him enough and realized he was a terrible drug dealer.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Okay, like he just had bad business sense or something?

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and look, I said that with a smile and a laugh, but like I am taking this serious, like I'm laughing at myself because I thought it was so amusing to myself that he was terrible. At drug dealing, that was my reasoning one night when all of his clients were blowing up his phone. And I knew some of them at this point and I'm like, sorry, he's passed out and they were like, can you come deliver it? And I would have never thought of it.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  And you're like, bro, the product sells itself. It's sitting over there. All you have to do is stay awake and you can't even do that?

• 31:59Speaker 02

  I had this rebel energy inside of me because the drug dealers I would see would make you do this song and dance. And we were beholden to them and we have to run around and do this and on their timing, I got so resentful at all the drug dealers that I met at that point. Just give me the fricking party drugs so I can go to the club and dance for a couple of hours and go home.

• 32:15Speaker 00

  Don't make me hang out with you and kiss your ass for three hours.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  All this stuff, I hated every single second of it and I vowed that if I was ever dealing drugs, I would never be like that and that kind of stuff. So I was already set up to like hate all the dealers I dealt with.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  I'm gonna have good customer service.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Thousand percent. I'm gonna be reliable. I'm gonna like, again, I know I'm laughing at this, but it seems innocent at this point.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  It's also funny to be like, I'm gonna be the reliable drug dealer that tells you that.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  I was the good one. Yes, I was the polished Mormon boy. I was gonna like, respect you and do this whole thing. And this was my first try out. I made the choice to take his stuff and I made deliveries that night. I got to cue the fireworks behind me and the rock star music because I felt like a badass.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  You're probably a hero to these people who've been calling for three hours and they can't get a hold of Frank or whoever it is.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  The relief, half of them are already full blown addicts. So the amount of relief you could see, like visible relief was like there. The others were just party years, but like the relief for them. And I made him all of his money and I came back, I was so proud, but like the second I walked in the door, there's like a, the, one of those cheap ass hotel coffee machines flying by my head. Cause he's freaking out. He's thinking I'm trying to steal his business. He's thinking all these crazy paranoid things, like you're just in this for the drugs. You don't love me. You're trying to steal my business. You suck at the, like all these horrible things. And out of resentment, I was like, you don't think I can do this? And I was like, watch me do it.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  Your job's not that hard, Sherry.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  Watch me do it. Yeah. And so terrible last words because I then vowed, I was like, okay, I'm gonna steal all of his clients. And again, I'm 22, I think I'm invincible. I don't think any of this applies to me, but I'm gonna steal all your clients. And I'm gonna prove to you that I can do this and I'm gonna get out of this because now I feel like I'm deep in this. So I spent a few months and I, I have some other drug addict friends who are helping me run drugs and I'm transforming. I sell drugs. I buy myself clothes. You can tell my attire is changing. I'm around my family high. I'm high all the time, but, but.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  How are you around your family high? Like they don't know? They can't tell?

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Uh, they absolutely know. They absolutely can tell, but they have no idea what to do.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  So they just ignore it?

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Correct. Denial is a very powerful thing.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  I came back, like for example, in the middle of this, I went to my grandmother's funeral. A Mormon grandmother out in Oregon. And I had a campaign finance manager client. I had a pop star client. And that pop star had a Gucci suit, loaned it to me for this funeral.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  You showed up to a funeral in a Gucci suit?

• 34:40Speaker 02

  I did. And it's all I talked about. This very Mormon, by the way, they're all wearing floral dresses and the guys are wearing shirts that are too big and ties too big. And I had this sleek Gucci suit. I'm like, you like my suit? And it's like my grandmother's dead body's right there.

• 34:53Speaker 00

  God, people must've been like, what is wrong with this guy?

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Correct. And then at lunch afterwards, I threw down the money to like pay for the lunch of all 15 of us, however many people were there. And they're like, how did you have money? I was like, dealing some party favors. My mom's very naive. She's like, what are you talking about? Party favors? My dad sold, he called it hashish back in his younger years too. He would get weed in Europe and ship it back. So he knew what I was talking about. My brothers knew what I was talking about. And I was like, yeah, you know what? I'm selling drugs. And they all just rolled their eyes at me. They were like, is there like a gay mafia or something? And then they started just making a joke about the whole thing because they were like, do you guys all have matching pink guns? Like, what is this like? That kind of stuff.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  Nice one.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Great. I laughed, but then I was really resentful. I was like, F you guys, watch me do this. But I knew I was so far in, I knew as being a effing idiot, I knew my heart was in acting, a theater school. I knew this was pulling me away from that. I knew there was a problem here. And I was like, listen, I am getting out of this. I'm just proving that asshole ex-boyfriend that I can do this. I'm gonna take his clients. I'm gonna get out. It was the end of February 2003 and um, very successful weekend. I did a good job of finding new people that could bring drugs from New York and other places that, whatever. I'm not bragging about drug dealing, but I figured it out.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  You cracked the code to making this work.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Made the money, that kind of stuff. I even confronted him and been like, look what I did. And I threw money at him just to F with them even more. And I went out to my car. I won. I was so proud of myself. And in the alleyway next to the apartment building that he was staying with a friend or something. I passed out. I totally passed out. Now, I didn't say in this story so far, that two months before, racing down to Richmond from the DC Northern Virginia area, 90 miles down, 95, after partying all weekend and still being awake. I made up a bullshit essay for art history or theater history or something. And I'm racing it down to school so I can at least keep my grades.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Oh, sure.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  And I fell asleep.

• 36:49Speaker 00

  While driving?

• 36:49Speaker 02

  While driving.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  Ooh, shoot.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  And before I fell asleep, there was no Mack truck in front of me. And then my eyes blinked and woke up and I'm going under a Mack truck.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  They have the suicide bars that kind of stop you from doing that, but I think this is at the time, this truck really didn't have it. Cause my car was going under it. And so the back of the truck was coming through the windshield and it was like this far from me.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  So you rear-ended the Mack truck, not head on, okay.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. Oh God, no.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  I was thinking, how are you standing here?

• 37:18Speaker 02

  I'm behind him, but I'm behind him and I'm going right under.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  Gosh, that's also obviously quite terrifying.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  To wake up to that, to wake up to that crunching noise and something hitting my reflexes, braking and la la la. My dad owned a gas station and a service station and sold them and this kind of stuff. So this was his arena. So I just straight up said, I crashed the car. It's on the side of the highway and I was so paranoid of the cops coming. I called another friend to come pick me up. So I just got out of there. As a result of that, I never showed up to court. So my license was suspended and I didn't know it, or failure to appear at court or something like that. So when I fell asleep in the alleyway and I wake up to a tap, tap, tap. And I look up and it's the DC police. They're like licensed and registration. I don't think anything of it as, I opened the window like this much like a crack and I feed the license through and I light a cigarette. I think nothing of it.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Cause I don't know anything about that. Two minutes later, he opens my door and he's pulling me out. I'm like, what the, you know? He's like, you've failed to appear in court. We have the right to search you and this kind of stuff. And I'm just like, it's such a blur. It happened so fast. Other cop cars pulled up, you know, it was cornered and they start searching me and they pull out thousands of dollars, my bounty for the weekend. I still have a lot of drugs on me, a lot of baggies and baggies of meth, scales, empty baggies. And they didn't know GHB as much. There was a gallon of this stuff in my trunk, but it was in a water thing. So I think they just thought it was water. Cause when I got my car from impound.

• 38:45Speaker 00

  The GHB was still in there?

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  Oh my God, dude. But you got caught with a ton of money and a ton of meth and a ton of paraffin and what, intended to distribute?

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And other drugs. I had ecstasy. I had a pharmacy at that point, you know, you wanted Xanax, you wanted Viagra's, you wanted whatever. I had a whole pharmacy.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  Do you need Viagra when you're on meth, asking for a friend?

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Thousand percent.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  Oh, you do? Okay.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  You don't need it, but of course.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  Why not?

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Well, look, meth is broken up into categories. There are those that hyper-focus on like plucking their face and tinkering with their beauty.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Oh, I've seen that. That's so gross.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  There are those that, I've had a few clients that were obsessed with bugs in their arms. So they have scabs on their arms. I had one client, if you will, he had a room like this size, filled to the top with power drills and power tools. And was just obsessed with carpentry and this weird renovating a house that never got renovated.

• 39:34Speaker 00

  At least he was using the tools. I thought you just meant he kept them in boxes.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  No, no, he was, whatever he was doing with those things. And then there's a large majority that's obsessed with sex. It's all about sex.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  I feel like that's the category I would fall into if I used meth.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Well, again.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  Cause it seems like the most interesting thing to do.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Ocean of dopamine where it's just like a piece of chocolate becomes the most orgasmic thing.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  If I have to pick between picking invisible bugs under my skin and plucking out all the hair on my face and getting those pockmarks or banging all the time, like it's an easy choice.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  Correct. Yes. I'm just gonna say this about my community and we're gonna move on from that, but gay men are freed to have sex as often as they want because they don't have this barrier of like feminine intuition of just being like, hey, maybe we should talk more. There are gay men like that. I'm not generalizing. I'm not just saying like, but it's just a free for all.

• 40:20Speaker 00

  Also, what's the reputational damage from a man having too much sex? It's pretty minimal.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Correct. And now because it is to be expected, a lot of people just slip into that kind of personality. That's its own thing as well. But for a lot of men and stuff, this is early 2000s. So it's like a lot of repression. So this is again, the power that comes, you know, you feel wanted. You feel sexy. You feel all these things. So it's very alluring at first. But then it just becomes its whole other thing. Anyway, so those are the categories people fall into. Mine happened to be drug dealing. I was obsessed with bagging and re-bagging and weighing and re-weighing and organizing and I was very organized with my drugs.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, your Google docs are highly included. Google spreadsheets.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  So that was where my obsession manifested itself. I was arrested. I was taken to some DC police station. I remember being put in their cell. I'm already, I'm starting to come down. So I'm just kind of like in this haze. I remember a big book. Big book is a reference to Alcoholics Anonymous. That's, that's what they call the Alcoholics Anonymous. I remember a big book and a Bible. And then Monday morning, they throw me in a white van with some other dudes. I don't know where I'm going. Open me in an underground garage, put me in a big elevator lift and then shuttled up and then it opens onto this floor with a giant cell and there's probably like 50 other men in there. I'm very clear on this now, but then I didn't see it. But when I

• 41:42Speaker 02

  have told my story now, I recognize the amount of white privilege I absolutely had because also famously DC was very racist. The judicial system in DC was very racist at that point. For example, in this cell of 50, I am one of three white dudes. It is a huge African American population in DC as well.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  There's still plenty of white people committing crime that didn't happen to be in that cell that day. Yeah, okay.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  So they brought me in. There was no place to sit or anything and I'm just, I'm huddled in the middle. I just sat down and kind of just passed out because I'm passing out, right? And then an hour later, they may have called my name and got my information. Then an hour later, I'm carted down again to some other room. I'm put in this other waiting room with 10 other men, one at a time are run out. And then I'm brought out finally. And you watch courtrooms on TV. They're very clean and very courtroom like, but a lot of courtrooms are like offices. They don't look like an office, but they're run like an office. There's filing cabinets and printers and people typing and it's just like a, just a conveyor belt. But the courtroom is a courtroom, but like an office. And I come in and the judge is this short white man, balding, and he's just looking at these two young black men, probably my age. I'm, you know, I'm 22 at this point. And he was

• 42:52Speaker 02

  ripping into them and he was saying stuff like, your community this, your community that. And I think they only got caught with like a dime bag of cocaine. I'm behind them. In my head, I'm like, oh.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I got caught. I'm a dealer.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  I'm possession with intent to distribute. I'm F'd, I'm F'd, I'm F'd. This is terrible. Oh, man. I'm terrified. I don't know what to do. I'm like, just don't tell them anything. He puts their bail at like a thousand dollars and you could tell in their faces, they didn't have that money. So they got carted away. I step up. The judge looks at me. They say whatever official stuff. He looks at my file and he looks up at me and goes, son, are you in school? And I'm like, yes, sir. I go to Virginia Commonwealth University. Now, I didn't know this, but my school's men's basketball team was actually like doing the best it ever has, like the VCU Rams. And they could make it to the final four. It was a big year, huge. So I say, yes, sir. I go to VCU in Richmond. And he looks up, he puts the file down. He goes, how about them Rams?

• 43:48Speaker 00

  Oh, man. Jeez.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  I put it together. I didn't even know that was a team name. And I was like, oh, yes, sir. He's like, man, I think they could go all the way. And I'm like, yes, sir.

• 43:57Speaker 00

  Sure. How many years am I going to prison? Cut to the chase, pal.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  And he said some other things, but his demeanor changed. He's like, son, are you still in school? And I'm like, yes, sir. And mind you, it says possession with intent to distribute.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Meth, an ocean of dopamine followed by a desert of teeth. Sponsors. If you liked this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do. Take a moment, support the sponsors. They make the show possible. All those sponsors are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com/deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find a code, email us, [email protected]. We're happy to surface codes for you. Yes, it's that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Sean Hameon. Yeah. And it says methamphetamine. It doesn't say marijuana or some basic ass shit.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  Just to be clear, at the time, I'm like, I'm just, I'm shocked. I'm dumbfounded. I don't know what's happening. Now I can see the privilege. I can see all of that. But at that moment, I'm just, I'm terrified. And I got off because of the privilege, then I'll make up for that. I don't know. I wasn't taking advantage. I didn't know. And so he looks at me and goes, all right, I'll tell you what I'm going to do, son. I'm going to release you on your own recognizance, which means no bail, but you're banned from DC because we're going to keep you in school unless you have some judicial work down here, you know, lawyers and that kind of stuff. So he released me. And then I immediately.

• 45:21Speaker 00

  Realized how lucky you are and stopped dealing drugs forever? No. Oh, cute.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  This is just the beginning of the story.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  I know, I know.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  I do have to shout out to Dennis Braddock. That is his true name, the actual heart of gold court appointed lawyer. Cause I was standing there and the judge asked me if I had a lawyer and this guy appeared out of nowhere. He was like, do you accept him? I was like, sure. And then this guy brought me out. It's like 9:30 AM, Monday morning in the middle of downtown DC, rush hours happening around us. And the guy walks me out and he's saying things. I'm just not really registering what happened. And then there's a hot dog stand. He's like, can I buy you a hot dog? I'm like, sure. He buys me a hot dog. And I'm just eating this thing. He's like telling me all the stuff that I need to do, what he needs from me. And then he looks at me, he's like, do you need money? Do you have travel fare, like metro fare? And I'm like, no. And he gives me 20 bucks. And I'm just like, okay. He's like, okay, well, just be in touch. And then he goes

• 46:11Speaker 02

  back inside and does his next case. I'm just like, who's this man? I called the ex-boyfriend, the drug dealer one. And at that time, it began to grow suspicion that he came out and called the cops on me. I didn't know that. I talked to him since then. He hasn't. But at that time, the suspicion continued to grow that he did. So I began to believe that he did. But at this moment, I needed help and I needed meth too. So I called him, started doing more meth. Quickly, everybody found out that I got arrested. And so suddenly in this scene, if you're arrested, you're like.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  Toxic.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Totally. Don't trust them. Get paranoid, this kind of stuff. And then I was about to get out. So I was like, shit, I'll go back to school. I don't know what I'll do. Like I was getting out. And so I didn't know, okay, possession with intent to distribute truly at that time gets you three to five years, something like that, right? And my lawyer, Dennis, wanted me to plea. Oh, and I called my parents.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Oh yeah. Oh my God. How did they react?

• 47:02Speaker 02

  My mom reacted in a very typical naive way. What do you mean arrested? She freaked out, which I expected her. My dad was very grounded in the reality of it. He's, he got to business right away. And he was like, where's my car? You got impounded, dad? Okay. Well, all right. He was very official about it. And my dad was, imagine trying to support seven kids. My poor dad, dogged, working all the time and as emotionally available as he could be. So there's a lot of things he missed out emotionally, but he showed up. That man showed up and he showed up for me here. And so I remember we started getting files together and my lawyer was going to do a plea. And I was like, oh my God.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  How long am I going to prison?

• 47:39Speaker 02

  I was really facing that. The federal prosecutors entered a plea to us. Hey, you say guilty, we'll do however many years, that kind of stuff. And as we were negotiating it, literally, this is so weird. Half an hour later, they send another fax, cancel that, and then send another fax that said, you have a mandatory debriefing, which means I had to go get interrogated. I remember clearly when I was arrested at the scene, when I was being pulled away in the cop car, black suburban SUVs pulled up and plain clothes dudes got out. I think they were drug and alcohol.

• 48:10Speaker 00

  DEA?

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they looked like band roadies because they were wearing cargo shorts.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  That's either ATF, DEA, or.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  I remember seeing that. I remember seeing that very clearly because when I went to my mandatory debriefing, my dad drove me. It was like, go to work with your dad kind of day. My dad felt like Superman to me that day. But I went to a federal building back downtown, all marble and huge and massive. And I remember waiting in this massive lobby. It wasn't a police station. It wasn't an FBI building. It was a federal building and up walk like two band roadies. One of them looked like Will Ferrell. I swear to God, looked like Will Ferrell with the curly hair. The other one looked like 90s bassist, like he should have been in like Nine Inch Nails or like Rage Against the Machine. Like he should, he had a Fu Manchu and they both had cargo shorts and band roadies. And they came up. I didn't regard them because I was waiting for somebody with a suit or like a uniform.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  Excuse me, I'm here to be interrogated by professionals.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  And then they came up to me and I was like, what's happening right now?

• 49:05Speaker 00

  Are you guys really cops? I don't think so.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Casually walked me out. They said my dad had to leave and then they brought me into this boardroom. It was like a 30 foot boardroom table, the giant US seal on the wall.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  I see. So you're not cuffed in like a weird kind of police situation at all?

• 49:19Speaker 02

  Obviously when I was arrested, that kind of stuff, but they had such a casual kind of demeanor about it. But I think it was all part of the act because when they sat me down, they sat me down across from them, like you and I are right now. And they were like, we're going to ask you some questions. I made up that the backpack was found. I was like, oh, this guy, Brian, left it in my car. I made up some bullshit and they could tell I was making up some bullshit. They started asking me if I knew certain people. They like gave me like 10 names and what blew me away was like, I knew some of those people in that list. Or some of the names of the last names and first names were mixed and not were split up and that kind of stuff. And I started getting paranoid because I was like, oh my God, how many people do they know about? Cause I knew most of these people.

• 49:58Speaker 00

  This is one of those situations where they're like, do you know Reginald Timmons? And you're like, Shaky's name is Reginald?

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. I wanted to say that's the wrong last name. That's the right first. And they said my ex, they said his name too. And then the whole time I'm like, do I say yes? Do I say no? A lot of the answers were like, I heard that guy in the club. I heard of this, didn't know that person, that kind of stuff. And then while they were doing it, one of them was asking me questions. Will Ferrell was asking me.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  Right, okay.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Fu Manchu was sitting here and I remember him leaning back and I remember his hand was gripping the side of the table. And then I would say an answer. I'd say yes. And then I'd hear like a, I'd literally hear a tap. So I did drugs that morning. So I was like, am I hearing the AC? Am I hearing things? What's happening? That kind of stuff. Mind you, I did the drugs so I could have courage to walk into this thing. Not because I was a full on drug addict at that point.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. Whenever I'm going to get interrogated by the DEA, I make sure that I'm super.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Super hot.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Anyway, I heard the tapping. I saw his forearm twitch and then I realized, oh, he's like, human lie detecting me. He's like, watching me. And so I felt so proud of myself because I was like, I figured out their system. Not that it mattered. I don't know if I was gonna beat their system, but they were like, so then it came to the point where they slipped a paper across and on the top it said like informant number, da, da, da, da. They told me 10 plus years. And later I found out that would have never happened. I didn't know anything about how judicial system worked.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  And they know that, so they're gonna scare the shit out of you.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Correct. And I didn't know that they can only suggest to the prosecutors and then suggest to the judge how much time. I thought they said it. I just didn't know anything. So when they said 10 plus years, I was like, 10 plus years. And they were like, listen, help us help you. That kind of stuff. And I, in so many words, looked at them and I said, nobody's dealing with me. If I were to do that, I'd have to do the dealing.

• 51:47Speaker 00

  I have to go back and do crimes again.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's how this works, dumbass.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  And then I said, but everybody's paranoid, so I'd have to do it larger.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  You gotta do what you did in high school where you were the jock masculine extra guy so that they believe that you're straight. You've gotta do the drug dealer version of that.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, that's exactly right. I've never heard anybody put that together, but it's exactly right. They, in so many words, told me that I need to go back in and I need to continue dealing in order to get them the information. And I said, I need to deal in larger amounts to get you the information that you want. And they, in so many words, were like, mhm.

• 52:18Speaker 00

  Great, cool.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  So I signed the agreement. I had the blessing of the federal government. As far as I was concerned, I felt invincible to go deal drugs.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  That actually, God, I shouldn't say this, sounds kind of fun.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  It's awful. It's absolutely-

• 52:34Speaker 00

  You're under pressure because you'll go to prison, but I don't need that part to be motivated. What if you just tell me to go sell drugs? It's totally legal and they're gonna arrest the people that buy them from me? That's awesome.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Okay, yes, but now, coming from a world where I felt incredibly profoundly lonely, right? Being the gay Mormon boy, being closeted, nobody understood me. I was alone in this world. Now I'm an outcast with the drug addicts. I'm even more alone. But now I'm outcast from the outcast. The profound sense of loneliness that I felt was lower than I thought any human could go. So I started smoking the meth because I needed to eclipse any feelings I had in order to continue finding out information. And then it suddenly became like, I already was feeling compassion because every friend I had that was a drug addict, they all have horrible stories. And I started seeing like, oh, we're all drug addicts because we have got horrible stories.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Oh, you were abused by all 10 sets of foster parents. I kind of understand why you're a mess.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  My best running mate, she was brutally raped at American University and then hid out in the gay drug scene because she couldn't face life or the university. She felt safe with us and safe with meth.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  Oh, she went to America. So she was like, doing well in life and then-

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Very well in life. And she became my most trusted person, but I couldn't even tell her that I was like, nobody knows informant, right? So now the question became of who am I narking on? Am I narking? I've seen enough movies, all those movies I saw with my dad in the 90s. We know what happens to rats. Can I live with that shame the rest of my life? I don't know if I can do that. So I'm buying time, I'm buying time. And then I also know that nobody in the city would deal with me. So my plan was to wait for the city to be dry when they needed to deal with me. So that means I needed to go find drugs in other cities.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  So the DEA doesn't give you the meth to deal? You have to go buy it yourself?

• 54:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were in so many words were hinting at it. They could never directly tell me that, go do what I was gonna do. They couldn't, they could never, ever do that. Can you imagine if I'm sitting here and they literally, they gave me the meth to go deal? Can you imagine?

• 54:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, the defense attorney would love this. But also, at that point, you're an agent of the state, right? You're an undercover-

• 54:38Speaker 02

  As far as an informant is, yes. But they're not gonna assist. That's gonna get them in trouble. So in my cell phone, the agents' numbers were just put in as yes and no. And I don't know why, but I think it was like, yes, I should narc and no, I shouldn't. I don't know. It was such a battle back and forth. But I just put their numbers in my phone as yes and no.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  Wow. Yeah, oh, my gosh. So you wait for the city to be dry. You've got your emergency stockpile of meth?

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I started, no, I started traveling to other cities. So like Miami, Fort Lauderdale, New York, New Orleans, looking for other connects, meaning other drug suppliers. And the closer you get to Mexico at that time, the cheaper it would be anyway. And I found the most luck in Atlanta, which now gets us to Steven, the guy who got it from the cartel people. And there's about a six month stretch before, you know, when I'm arrested and before my sentencing, that I have kind of this window to do this thing in. And prior to going to Atlanta, one of my runners, he was a hairstylist and he would do house calls and sell my drugs at the same time.

• 55:44Speaker 00

  So he's going and cutting some lady's hair, some guy's hair?

• 55:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  And he's like, you need meth?

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, correct.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  And they're like, sure, thank you. How weird is that?

• 55:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's perfect for what we were doing. And he would always be doing my hair. And I was ruling the roost at this point. I'd have my hotel suites and just have my little minions running around. And Danny had one client and she had a boyfriend who was getting meth, either he was in the Russian mafia or getting it from the Russian mafia. And so when I'm like, before Atlanta and Steven, I'm like, talking to them, like, how do I do this? What am I doing? This kind of stuff. Danny offered, hey, actually, this client of mine, this girl who we run some drugs, to her boyfriend trying to get in. I'm like, great, hook us up. And Danny's like, but he might, may or may not be affiliated

• 56:34Speaker 02

  with the Russian mafia. And I was like, exactly. I was like, fuck that. No.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  Sounds a little dangerous.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  Terrible.

• 56:39Speaker 00

  Hard pass.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Not gonna happen. And that's when I went to Atlanta and I met Steven. And then the horrible story happened about the young man dying and then me coming back and then me being like, I am not traveling anywhere, F this. And then the mother calling. And then I just went into this terrible pit of depression, even worse, even like, the drugs weren't working. And so when you get arrested, you're first presented to the judge and he releases you on bail or not bail. And then you have the plea hearing where you say guilty, not guilty. And then you have the sentencing. And those could be months apart. And we already had the sentencing hearing and I, I don't even, did I say not guilty? I said not guilty because I was doing the informant thing. And this was after that. And-

• 57:18Speaker 00

  The prosecutor knows you're doing the informant thing? I guess they-

• 57:20Speaker 02

  They might. I don't know, just say it to my face.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  Probably shouldn't do that in court.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Exactly. But after the poor mother, I am just getting drugged where I can just to get by because I'm just in this pit of despair. I don't know what I'm gonna do. One saving grace was like, I loved to go to the club and dance. I would dance for hours and hours. And I very specifically remember this one morning, we're talking like 4:00 AM in the middle of downtown DC with the only 24 hour CVS. This is down by all the federal buildings, so nothing's happening yet. So it's all quiet, just the buzz of the CVS sign. And I'm sitting there drinking a Gatorade and, I don't know, there's a homeless man near me. And a Crown Vic fishtails down the street as I'm crossing the street, fishtails.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  That happening kind of freaks me out. I have my backpack of drugs, whatever drugs I do have. I'm like, I'm gonna toss that. This doesn't seem right. But then it fishtails and stops in the alleyway, blocks me off, out pop the two agents, Will Ferrell-

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Yes and no.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  Yes and no.

• 58:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  Yes and no, pop out. And I hadn't been texting them. I'd made up something at one point, but I hadn't been in contact. How they find me that morning? No idea.

• 58:30Speaker 00

  I'm gonna go ahead and say they're used to drug dealers and addicts being a little unreliable and they have ways of keeping track of you guys.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  I actually thought they tracked my phone. I don't think they went that far. I truly think exactly what you said, could have just been driving. But it was enough to grab, they pinned me, freaked me out, yelled in my face. They were trying to scare me into giving them more information. Do you wanna go to jail? You're gonna go to jail, threatening all these things that'll happen to me in prison. You gotta help this kid, dr, dr, dr. Drop me to the ground, get in the car, speed away. And I'm just like, what is happening? So that happens and then I need to do something. So I tell Danny to contact the Russian mafia guy. So I stupidly decide to go meet this guy. Again, may or may not be affiliated with the Russian mafia. What matters is at that time, I absolutely thought he did. And he did at that time. In later retrospect, he could have just been saying that. But

• 59:21Speaker 02

  here we are, we're with this guy. So I pull up and I meet the girlfriend first. They're staying at some Embassy Suites thing, just meeting me there. And she just is some common college white girl. I just wasn't expecting her to be like that. And then out comes Vadim, that's what we're calling him.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  The maybe Russian mafia.

• 59:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe Russian mafia guy. And the dude is dark hair and very Russian, tank top, tracksuit, is that-

• 59:45Speaker 00

  Gosh, these guys, man. They think they're all different.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Look, and the other thing is, I might have been really high because I was like, oh, I was really struck by how attractive he was. I was like, oh, this is great. I'm attracted to the Russian mafia guy. Anyway, he and I talk some business and he has a lot of drugs. He pulls out a drawer and there's ounces of pink methamphetamine, which is just a stronger variant at that time. So he's got a couple pounds there. And I'm like, I'm salivating. And I'm like, and I know I can sell the ounces very fast. I know where to take that and stuff. But I don't have money to pay for it. And so I'm like, you gotta front me this thing and I'll show you. I can do this really quick. So he's like, one second. He goes in the other room, he comes back and then he- Puts down this very pearl inlaid tacky gun, but it's a gun.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  And I've never had a gun in my face or anything like that, or just very casually puts it down. And I'm looking at it and I'm looking at him and I'm so high that I'm cocky, that I'm just like, I loved the spirit of being a drug dealer, just that lean back like, but I also, I wanted to die most of my life, so whatever.

• 1:00:50Speaker 00

  So if you get shot by a hot Russian mobster, nobody deal.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  My life is over. I might be going to prison here, but I had that energy. So I was just like, okay, man, you know what? Just front me down. So I'll be right back. And I did, I came back an hour later. He was amazed that I could do that because he's been struggling to sell these things. And then he fronted me more and more. And then in trying that, it was extremely good. The best the city's ever had, the best I ever had. So it just shot my addiction through the roof. And what ended up happening, it was so good that I got in this time warp of just using drugs and not selling. The mother's voice was haunting me. I can't rat people out. Okay, maybe I should rat out the Russian mafia guy, right? That seems like the right get. Like, oh, wait, are they gonna go after my family now?

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's kind of the idea, right?

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  Do I rat out the ex-boyfriend? No, he's not big enough and he's being weird and he's sending people to try to beat me up. So I'm fighting them. He's being like threatening, murderous. And it's just this whole like free floating of voices around me. And at this point, I can't even get up from the mattress. I'm doing an eight ball of meth a day. I'm not bragging.

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  How much is that? I don't even know.

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  At that time, like $450 an eight ball.

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  That's an expensive drug habit. Are you paying for the drugs?

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  Well, I'm doing the product now. I'm now I'm doing more product than I'm selling. So now I'm owing him money. And so now I'm having to go to him to re-up and give me more drugs. And now I'm owing him more and more money and then more and more money to the point where now when I go see him, he pulls out that gun and he pins me the wall and he puts the gun in my face and he's like, wants his money.

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  Where's the money? Yeah.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  He's like inches from my face and I am disassociating to the point where I'm like, just make out with me.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  Just kiss me.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  He's like, I scared him a lot. You're like, now I'm aroused.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  It's funny, but I'm sharing that to like the degree of disassociation.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  He's like, do you pay attention to the gun?

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  This murderous guy is in my face.

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  Stop triangle gazing on my lips and eyes and look at the gun that I have pointed at your brain.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he started also like connecting, like he's like, his brother just had a bit, like he started being a human to me. Then suddenly I'm like, I can't.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  He offered the Russian meth dealer installment payments. Nothing says rock bottom like asking the mob if they take Klarna. We'll be right back.

• 1:03:00Speaker 00

  Don't forget about our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. It is something specific, practical, actionable, that'll have an impact on your decisions, psychology and relationships. It's an under two minute read just about every Wednesday. And if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It's a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Now for the rest of my conversation with Sean Hemian.

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  You're not gonna shoot me, Vadim. You kind of want, you want a piece of this.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  And I can't turn you in. I can't turn you in. Like, I can't, ah.

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  This is so funny, but also not because this is your life falling apart in real time?

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  The fact that I can laugh about it now means I'm healing from it. That's the value in laughing now. But again, I've said this a few times, I'm not making light of my awful choices. People have died and it's haunted me. Again, the mother's voice has haunted me. And that's the reason I'm sitting here, even being willing to tell the story is because I'm still trying to reach that mother metaphorically and in reality, I'm trying to reach her. The sentencing was coming up. I haven't reported anything. Again, I made shit up. Like I sent them stuff and it wasn't good enough. And now I just don't know what to do. And it didn't matter how much I was smoking or whatever I was taking. It just seemed like none of it was working. I just, I gave up. I nobly sacrificed myself so that none

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  of these people, these other drug addicts, who were just hurting as well as I was, they shouldn't suffer because of me. So I said that to myself. I was like, I overdeemed money. If I rat him, I'm worried about my family. So that felt like a noble thing to do to not rat on him. So I got nothing. And at this point, it's really obvious that I can't stop using, like really obvious. So I was, I'm going to prison. I'm going to prison. I didn't want my parents to see it, so I lied to them. I said my prison date was, or my sentencing date was moved. So I showed up all alone, August 8th, 2030.

• 1:04:49Speaker 00

  Your lawyer was there, I hope.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  Dad just brought it. Yeah. So I show up and unlike all the other courtroom experiences, this one is empty. There's the judge, there's me, Dennis, federal prosecuting attorney.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  Probably seems way more serious now.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  And it had more of a weight to it.

• 1:05:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  I was expecting to see the two agents, but those dudes were pissed at me. I ran into them during the plea hearing and they were pissed at me. Pissed. I was thinking they were gonna show up and hammer into me, but they weren't there. So I was like, everybody gave up on me. Like, I'm expecting to hear the 10 plus years. And we get up there and the judge, he looks frothing at the mouth to do as much damage as possible. He just does not look like a nice guy. And they start, he starts deliberating. It's a quick thing. But as he starts, the federal prosecuting attorney, who I think was a junior, because I look over and this guy's like my age, 22, 20.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's like 25, fresh out of law school.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  No, like he's a pup. And he cuts off the judge who didn't like it. He says, Your Honor, the United States government is asking for this case to be dismissed.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 1:05:53Speaker 02

  And Dennis is just confused and the judge is confused and he goes, are you sure?

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was looking forward to handing you your ass, I think.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  He was so ready for it, just looking at me. I looked some punk ass kid. And the prosecutor affirmed. And he said, yes, Your Honor, we're asking for this case to be dismissed. And the judge was like, okay, case dismissed, right? Bang. And that gavel just sort of like echoed through the room. I didn't move. Dennis didn't move. Dennis was like grabbing my arm. He's like, don't say.

• 1:06:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is the point in, if it's a movie, it plays that high pitched ear ringing sound when the gavel hits and you're confused and it gets like blurry and you're looking around, your lawyer's like saying something, but he's underwater, right? Don't say anything.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  It's exactly right.

• 1:06:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  So he actually pulled me out of there. I felt like I was on a bank heist. I was like getting away with something that if I looked back or if I said something, he found a side room, pulled me in the side room, sat me down. And this dude, he was like, he looked at me like I just walked on water. Cause he was just like, I have done thousands of these, hundreds. I've never seen that before. What did you do? And I was like,

• 1:07:01Speaker 00

  Literally nothing correctly?

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  You know what? Actually, one of the clients early on was a former federal judge, by the way, like one of the biggest dealers in DC was a former federal judge.

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  And I learned a lot. That was a whole other part of the story that it wasn't for today. But again, I had campaign finance managers. I had other politician people. I had pop stars, like.

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  Do you think somebody was like, hey, that's my dealer?

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  Could be, but not in my story. But I definitely know that's there. I definitely know, a lot of the tweaker dealer boys also hustled a little bit too. And so, meaning sex for money, sex for drugs.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  I see.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  So a lot of them knew people who knew people and I believed that, but not enough to like get my case dismissed. So that was in talks.

• 1:07:41Speaker 00

  Do you have any idea why they dismissed your case?

• 1:07:44Speaker 02

  Well, Dennis was like freaking out asking me and I was like, I have no idea. And he was like, he just looked at me. He's like, you have a second chance here. You are one lucky SOB. And then I ran out of there, but no.

• 1:07:56Speaker 00

  I suspect, just based on what you've told me, those two agents that gave you the informant assignment, they did something incorrectly and that's why they were super upset because an informant not producing for you, okay, that happens all the time. They're literal drug addicts. They did some weird thing where they either said you did something or they were supposed to do something the proper way and it didn't happen. And then when the prosecutor asked them, they were like, and the prosecutor's like, shit.

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  Oh my God, they were covering up their tracks.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  Something like that. Yeah.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Oh my God, they were covering up their shit.

• 1:08:28Speaker 00

  Something like that.

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  I've never thought about it that way. Cause for me, it was like, I just imagined case files this large. We gotta get rid of some of this.

• 1:08:37Speaker 00

  Maybe, but they could have also been like, yo, plead guilty. By the way, we have a ton of evidence that you did this. You were at your sentencing. There wasn't gonna be a trial. That's not the time where they go, we don't have the resources to stand here for eight more minutes while you get sentenced. Come on.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  True. Okay.

• 1:08:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, the case was gonna fall apart. Something bad was gonna happen on appeal or something like that.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  That, I want to believe that because I genuinely either have made myself feel bad or I felt bad because I refer back to the white privilege. And now I'm not gonna disregard that.

• 1:09:08Speaker 00

  That happened with your bail hearing. That's for damn sure.

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  That for sure was there. But I like to think people regardless of privilege or no privilege, like still treat the system. Like I didn't get out of jail because I'm white. Maybe in some counties, but I don't think in the DC, I think they were very serious about the law. So I like what you're saying for that reason.

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  I'm guessing yes and no, we're already in custody for some proof. That's what I think happened.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  I do have that federal prosecutor's name and he's still working. One of these days I want to email him and be like, hey, can you just fill in the gap? Because it would make a lot of people more understandable to my story and me as well, because I've done these podcasts and people in the comments do not like that my case was dismissed.

• 1:09:47Speaker 00

  Oh, because they wanted you to go down or something?

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  Not to lay too much judgment, but I was acting in criminal behavior, but it was almost like people, when they're joining a cult, don't realize they're joining a cult. Like when you're doing criminal behavior, you know you are, but I never thought of myself as a criminal.

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  Sure. Most people probably don't. Yeah.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  Exactly. Thinking of themselves as a bad person. I remember in the courtroom around the sentencing hearing, the way people looked at me. I was like, why are they looking at me like that? And I was like, oh, they think I'm a criminal.

• 1:10:11Speaker 00

  I'm the bad guy. Yeah.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  Not everybody thinks that like people can change. People grow, people like live in the grave, people, all these other kinds of things. And it's like, I broke the law. So many people break the law. Yes, my case got dismissed, but do I feel bad about what I did? Sure. But most of that damage was towards myself. Do I feel like I could have acted sooner for the young man that died? Yes, I do. Is there a lot of context to understand why I didn't act sooner? Yes, there is. It still doesn't disregard that this young man died. I can't take that back. My behavior added to the possibility that this young man died. It's very clearly evident what I did to his mother. I can't take that back. Do I deserve to go to jail for 10 plus years for hanging up on her?

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  No, but I definitely deserve like finding her and listening to her and hugging her and crying with her and telling her like, hey.

• 1:11:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a tough thing to carry. I mean, I hope you're able to find her through this. It seems like a maybe a Southern Christian woman's not listening to the Jordan Harbinger show. But you never know, man. Somebody could hear that and go, hey, didn't your son pass away from drugs in this area this time?

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  Spring of 2004 at an Atlanta area hospital.

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  There's probably a lot, but it's not tens of thousands.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  He was extremely attractive and he looked like an Abercrombie model.

• 1:11:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's very possible when you start hitting the numbers. What made you finally choose to give up the drugs and go to rehab? When they dismissed your case, did you say, oh, good, I was getting clean anyway? Or was it like, let me go do a bunch of drugs and celebrate the fact that I'm never going to prison for this terrible thing?

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  You would think getting your case dismissed would be your wake up call.

• 1:11:47Speaker 00

  Nah, I don't know. I don't know, man.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  I was a damn good drug addict. Let me just tell you that.

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're persistent, disciplined?

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  No, it turns out being an informant for the federal government and going to jail wasn't enough of a bottom for me. That running mate, that girl who was at American, she was living in an abandoned apartment. And so I needed to go live with her in this flooded out abandoned apartment. I needed to do drugs just for myself. I needed to do whatever I could do to get those drugs. And I just couldn't stop. That's all I knew. I just couldn't stop. And I used the excuse like, yeah, I'm celebrating that kind of stuff. But what changed was two weeks before my 23rd birthday, which was the end of September. She came to me and she was like really nervous to tell me. She was like, hey, I think I want to get help and I think I'm gonna go to rehab.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  And listen, again, referring to the 90s movies, I watched Trainspotting. I watched the heroin addicts in the haunted hill or like whatever, or Requiem for a Dream. So in my mind, truly rehab was for heroin addicts, like really down and out. Clearly I wasn't down and out.

• 1:12:54Speaker 00

  I'm fine, living in an abandoned apartment with another drug addict.

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  I'm fine because I'm not shooting up meth yet.

• 1:13:00Speaker 00

  So you can inject meth? I didn't know that.

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  Oh, that's their favorite way. No, everybody does. No, no, no. I was a full blown addict, but I resisted shooting it up because that meant I was a true addict. It's a complete and utter lie. You can be a full blown addict just by snorting it. Like it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how you take it. It's just when you're shooting it straight into your veins.

• 1:13:20Speaker 00

  It's hard to say that you're a casual user at that point?

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Now it's like five oceans. Like it's very obvious at that point. So I thought that was rehab was for heroin addicts or people who actually shot it. But when she said rehab to me, I genuinely looked at her and I was like, you can do that? Did not know. She was like, yeah. And I was like, oh, maybe I'll do that. Hey, two weeks is my birthday. We'll have a going away party.

• 1:13:41Speaker 00

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 1:13:42Speaker 02

  So geez, she lied in the back room depressed and staring at the TV screen for two weeks. I partied for two weeks like a fucking maniac. So part of the clubs, DC had a club called Velvet Nation, not there anymore. The baseball stadium is there. By that point, of course, all the clubs knew me. I was the dealer. I was the guy. So they gave me space to have a going away party and I was like, I'm gonna get sober. Like I didn't know what the hell I was saying. But then it was supposed to be that next day, that Sunday morning, and I was supposed to call. When all the friends left and I was finally alone, I was suddenly staring at the pipe and I was like, this is when I make the call. And then my body picked up the pipe and started smoking. And then watching that happen was the first time truly physically realizing I have no control over my body.

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  My body was doing it. And I started crying because then I was like, okay, I'm an addict and this is a life I have to accept. There's no stopping this. And I went through everything. I grieved the loss of my parents, my family. When I got to being an actor, I was like, oh, my dreams of all that stuff like just shattered me. And it was the weirdest experience because suddenly letting all those things go. It was as if like I got punched in the stomach. I fell backwards. The pipe fell to the ground. It was like sizzling. And then, oh, I remember the little boy that was abandoned when he was four. That's what did it. I remember that little boy walking home when he was four. Felt like nobody was there showing up for him. And he showed up for himself and he walked all the way there and he did that. When I got to him, grieving him that I'd have to give up him, that's when I got the gut punch.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  I fell back. I got up. I don't know how to describe this other than saying it was as if I woke up from a long slumber, a coma. And I came to, I literally touched my body. It was like, and I looked around. I was like, where am I? Realizing the whole story that just transpired and I was like, what the fuck? What the fuck? I was dumbfounded. Like all disillusion shattered. Whatever denial I had shattered. And this tiny window of clarity opened up, like clarity.

• 1:15:40Speaker 00

  Is this the rock bottom thing people are talking about?

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  This is the window of clarity that comes from an absolute shattered rock bottom. Because at that moment, I couldn't connect any thoughts. I couldn't connect thought and I couldn't speak and I thought I actually went crazy. Then I was like, you done it. You done the worst thing. Now you're gonna be a muttering man, a homeless man on the street corner. I thought I had done it. And but in that was this moment of clarity that came from that. And I remember crawling to the bathroom to look at myself and just sobbing. And then I fell down the twisty stairs and I crawled back to her in the back. Her name is Kate. In my book, I call her Lexi, but Kate. I remember she was lying on the blue mattress and she turns over to look at me, literally crawling in there. Girl took one look at me and then just said, oh my God, and just started crying.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  And we just held each other and cried and cried and cried. And we knew what it was all for. And then it was like, what do we do? Cause we could feel this moment, this window like barely holding open. And we're like, what do we do? What do we do? We opened the Yellow Pages and just picked any rehab. We didn't know what to do. And this voice of an angel was like so sweet. And she was like, we have beds tonight. Can you make it to tonight? And I'm like, sure. Okay. We hang up. We're like, yay. And then I go back upstairs and I'm like packing, but then I'm looking at the pipe and I'm like, I'm gonna use all these things. So I called the ex boyfriend. I'm like, I'm getting sober. Come take all the drugs. You need to come over here and take this right now because I want to use these things. And then Kate, she's like, I'm not gonna make it. I need to call my parents. And we're in DC. Boston is eight to 10 hours away.

• 1:17:08Speaker 00

  Where she's from. Okay.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  Where she's from originally. And she called her parents and then hangs up with them and she's sobbing because she's just said, I need help. And her parents were like, run our way. And they got in the car like 20 minutes later. So they're shooting down. They're coming down. So he's coming over to get the drugs. All the other, for some reason, I don't know, it was like zombies. All the other drug addicts and people I used to deal with, they start showing up because I think he started telling people. So it's like these zombies are outside. Yeah. It's just like, what's happening? So I don't know what to do. And so I'm like, I should call my parents.

• 1:17:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. How did that go?

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  Man, I had been struggling with my mother, struggling. But Sunday morning, 8:30, she's rushing for church. The phone rings. She picks it up. I swear to you, all I said was, mom? And she goes, where are you? That's it. It was like the mama bear waiting for that call, told her where I was. They knew exactly what the call was. And my mom and my dad were like on their way. So they're coming and Kate's parents are coming. The ex shows up, grabs the drugs. He's like, why are you leaving me? All dramatic like. Then I realized I owe Vadim money.

• 1:18:14Speaker 00

  Oh, shoot. I forgot about this guy.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  And realized this was a phone call. In my book, I made him actually show up in person. But what we said to each other was exactly the same. Cause he had been harassing me for six months.

• 1:18:27Speaker 00

  For sure. Yeah.

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  Six weeks harassing me, threatening me now. I'm gonna hunt you down. I know where you are and like murderers. He's been ringing this whole time. Finally, I just pick it up. I was like, I got nothing left to be honest. And I pick it up and he's surprised I picked up, but he's breathing heavy. He's pissed off. He's, and I'm like,

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  Vadim, I'm going to rehab. Pause. You can do that?

• 1:18:51Speaker 00

  He said that? This is so funny.

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  My editor for the book, even though it was true, like he truly said that. He's like, you can't have you both say that in the book because it sounds so unbelievable.

• 1:19:01Speaker 00

  It works in a movie.

• 1:19:02Speaker 02

  I swear to God, he said, you can do that. And I said, yeah, man, you can do that. And then a long pause and very wistfully, he goes, I've always wanted to sell real estate in Baltimore.

• 1:19:17Speaker 00

  Okay. Follow your dreams, bro.

• 1:19:19Speaker 02

  I said, you can do that.

• 1:19:20Speaker 00

  You might have to put on a shirt for the first time in 10 years.

• 1:19:23Speaker 02

  And then there's another long pause and then he goes, you know what, man? I owe him thousands, thousands. And he goes, you know what, man? Forget about the money.

• 1:19:31Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  Cause I said, hey, I'm going to go to rehab and then I'll get a job and I can pay you back in installment plans.

• 1:19:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. And he's like, dude, I don't need to be taking checks for 79 cents from a drug addict.

• 1:19:41Speaker 02

  I just think it's so funny. I'm telling this massive drug dealer like, I'm going to pay you in installment plans. Like.

• 1:19:45Speaker 00

  Do you take Klarna?

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48Speaker 00

  One of those things like you.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:19:49Speaker 00

  On Amazon, you pay installments.

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  So he just said, forget about the money. Best of luck. I don't know why he was feeling so inspired, or maybe I gave him the window for his out. I don't know. I've never talked to him ever since then. I have no idea what he's up to and that kind of stuff. And then my parents arrived and then we drive off into the sunset. I slept for two weeks straight in their basement and then I went to rehab for 28 days.

• 1:20:08Speaker 00

  Gosh. Actually, is Kate okay? Do you know her?

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, no. Out of the entire story, some people have died as expected, but Kate's in Vermont. She's doing very well. She's still sober. Even the ex took a while, but he eventually got sober and he's been in a long-term relationship with another dealer from that time period who's also sober. They're over there. I don't know. Sometimes we Facebook, but she's doing well. Yeah.

• 1:20:30Speaker 00

  What about your relationship between you and your mom? Because you're married now to a man, spoiler alert, right?

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:36Speaker 00

  So is she like, okay, I accept this and I love my son? Or is it still God wants you to be marry a woman and have eight kids? How's that going?

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  I will say the Mormon church overall, they have so far to go. They've been a little bit more open now, but early sobriety days, I clung to my mother and just the help that she gave me rehab, moving to LA, this kind of stuff. It was all I had. But then we had a schism around 2008 because in LA, Southern California or all of California, we had the Prop eight, which was the amendment to the gay marriage that is great because it was like, yay, Obama won. Whoa, California just made it so we can't get married. Okay. And the Mormons were behind that campaign. And so it caused a schism with my eldest brother, who's not Mormon anymore, but at that time he was, and with my mother. So at that time, my mother finally left my father. I joke, it took her 28 years, but she did, all for the better. And she came out to California where she had some friends.

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  And she was like, yeah, I think I may vote on it, which to me was just her saying, I don't believe you should ever get married to the person you love. And that drew us apart. I got more recovery, you know, a lot of 12 steps, a lot of therapy, a lot of support. I just healed and stayed sober and healed and stayed sober. I had a lot more clarity about the situation with her and I. And then it came to a head around 2015 and I was like, I'm going to keep some distance from you for a while. And then, which rocked the family, but it was all for the best because we all came back together and in such a new, loving way, to the point where my mother walked me down the aisle at my very gay wedding.

• 1:22:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. Which was allowed because she apparently lost the vote on Prop eight.

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  Exactly. The irony of that.

• 1:22:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. She genuinely was like tearing up and grateful and happy. And however she's reconciled her faith with her favorite son, however deep that goes, I don't know where that is. I do feel the love. I do feel the support. I do feel the compassion from her. I feel all of that. So it's a beautiful journey that she and I have been on.

• 1:22:35Speaker 00

  Speaking of mothers, if that young man's mother contacts you tomorrow and says, look, I want the entire truth, but I want it face to face. What is the first thing that you do? And what is the question you're most afraid she's going to ask you?

• 1:22:48Speaker 02

  I would immediately get on a plane and go to her physically. I would fly to her. I don't know if I'd have the words at first. I do feel like a well of tears. I probably would just hug her and cry with her and then just be open to any and every question that she has for me and any and all resentment, hatred, or any kind of thing that I like, I'm ready and willing to take all of that. Just, I'm open for that. I'm not saying I as a human deserve that, but I'm saying I have the capacity to receive that for my choice of actions, regardless of how paranoid high, probably on day three of being awake, regardless of my choices, I still get to take responsibility for them.

• 1:23:33Speaker 00

  Sean Hemeon, thank you so much.

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  Yes. Thank you very much. This was such a joy.

• 1:23:40Speaker 00

  Big thanks to Sean Hemian. He went from good little Mormon boy to meth dealer to federal informant to owing a Russian supplier thousands, then tried to settle the tab with installment payments because apparently even the drug underworld has semi reasonable payment terms. The easy ending would be case dismissed, rehab, 21 years sober. Mom walks him down the aisle, clean little redemption bow. But the honest ending is messier. Sean still can't undo the young man's death or the call from his mother that he hung up on. He can only tell the truth, stay available and get on the plane if she ever asks to hear it face to face. That's the difference between shame and accountability. Shame says you're a monster forever. Accountability says you did harm. Now become someone capable of facing it without running. All things Sean Hemian will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com.

• 1:24:25Speaker 00

  Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Six Minute Networking also always free and always available at sixminutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tadusidlouskas, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in redemption stories like this, or might even know the person that Sean is searching for, definitely share this episode with them.

• 1:25:07Speaker 00

  In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time.