The Peter Attia Drive - #12 - Corey McCarthy: Overcoming trauma, dealing with shame, finding meaning, changing the self-narrative, redemption, and the importance of gratitude

Episode Date: August 27, 2018

Corey and Peter met when they visited North Kern State Prison in California together as volunteers for Defy Ventures. Peter was moved by Corey’s remarkable story, who is a former inmate himself, and realized he had to have him on the podcast to share his experiences with a wider audience. You’ll almost assuredly take away something very important from listening to this episode. Understanding how your experiences can define you, what forgiveness means of both yourself and others, and how good people can do bad things, are just a few of the takeaways. We discuss: How Corey and Peter met through Defy Ventures [4:00]; How Corey’s prison experience has shaped his life story [13:30]; Corey’s early life, and the traumatic event that changed everything [16:00]; Early adolescence years, beginnings of addiction, and overwhelming shame [23:00]; The 5 ways to classify wounds, and the relationship between trauma and addiction [39:00]; Turbulent high school years, the struggle of parenting a troubled child, and more trauma further shaping the self-narrative [46:00]; Post high school years, spiraling out of control, and giving up on himself [1:02:00]; Navigating prison life, and why a desire to change often isn’t enough to make it happen  [1:19:00]; The turning point and eventual road to recovery [1:48:00]; 12 step programs: Pros and Cons [1:54:00]; Final days in prison, getting released, and routines Corey has kept [1:54:00] Corey’s new perspective on life, takeaways from the visit to Kern prison [2:12:30]; and More. Learn more at www.PeterAttiaMD.com Connect with Peter on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atia. The drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world, and this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics at peteratia-md.com.

In this podcast, I'll be speaking with Corey McCarthy. I haven't known Corey very long. I first met him in April during a trip that Tim Ferris and I took with a number of friends to North Kern State Prison, which is a maximum security prison in California about an hour outside of Baker's Field. We did this as volunteers with DeFi ventures, and if you haven't heard of DeFi or more importantly, Catherine Hoke, you should definitely go back and listen to her interview with Tim

Ferris, which was done probably in January or February of this year. And we'll link to that here. Defy is a program where volunteers like us go into prisons and participate in helping with teaching prisoners certain skills in life. But I got to tell you, after just that one trip there, I've come to realize that the volunteers get more out of that experience than the prisoners do. It's hard to really explain what we experience there and on the drive home, there was about six of us in an SUV that had a five, six hour drive back,

including Corey. It was clear that it was going to be very difficult to articulate what we went through with people who didn't share that experience with us. But in particular, I was really moved by Corey's story. You see, Corey himself was once an inmate. And he was invited on this trip by one of my good friends. And he asked, hey, you know, I know this is kind of a small group of, your body is coming with you and Tim, but could we invite Corey? And of course we said sure and turned out Corey was just one of the most amazing guys. And in many ways, the trip was stolen by him and his experiences.

And on the way home, I realized that I wanted to have a discussion with Corey that I wanted to be able to share with people and I think in part it's so humbling to go through this experience that we went through at Kern. You start to realize that some of the smallest choices can lead you down the wrong path and so often there's a lot of pain that's at the root of bad decisions we make. And I didn't know what Cory and I were going to talk about to be completely honest. I we didn't plan forward at all. I didn't have a script. I didn't have a single question written down. We just talked. And I'm really pleased with how it turned out. And I hope that you'll take

this on a leap of faith and listen to this because I find it impossible that anyone listening to this won't get at least something out of this. Understanding how your experiences can define you, understanding what forgiveness means of both yourself and others, understanding how good people can do bad things. As you know, I'm very interested in longevity, but if you've been following me on social media, you've probably noticed I'm becoming more and more interested in mental health, and that's going to be kind of a recurring theme on this podcast because as I've stated before and I think many people

would sort of intuitively agree what point is there in living longer if your mind is not right, if you're not happy. So I hope that you'll find this discussion half as enjoyable as I did. Corey is an amazing guy and I'm really excited to introduce all of you to him. So without further delay, here's my conversation with Corey McCarthy. Hey man, how you doing? Good, how are you? Pretty excited, actually. Yeah, welcome to the big apple.

Yeah, I like it here. How often do you get down here? Every year, for the past five or six years years I've come with my daughter for Christmas time and I have some friends I might pop in once in a while remind me your daughter's 16 17 17 she graduates from high school next week exciting Wow, yeah, I have a feeling we'll come back to that A little bit. Thank you for making the trip down from Buffalo today. This was something that from the day we met, I was like, man, there's so much I want to talk about with Corey.

And I figured this would be kind of an interesting way to share the experience that brought us together and also talk more about your story. So how did you even hear about this whole thing at the fi, like what brought you out to California that day? So Devon is a friend of mine and that's kind of a story in itself and one that kind of when it kind of ties my whole life story together. It's like everything's kind of always happened for a reason. Because Devon just so you know I'll tell the my back end of the story

is Devon's a friend of mine in San Diego. I had told him about cat hoax and my trip that I was planning to defy, but totally by luck, because I happen to be walking into my body work guy who also works on Devon. And as I'm walking in and Devon's walking out, I just mentioned it in passing and he was like, I wanna come.

And then the next thing I hear like two weeks later, he goes, hey, is it cool if my buddy comes to which I was like, sure. And then. And then the next thing I hear like two weeks later, he goes, hey, is it cool if my body comes to which I was like, sure. And then never knew anything else till you arrived. It's so cool to hear the, because that just adds to the weave of the whole thing, right? So Dev and I only know each other because six years ago, a friend of his who knew me reached out and said, hey, my friends got like a big brother, a little brother situation where he's a volunteer for this kid and the kids in kind of trouble.

And we think you might be able to talk to him because of your background. So me and Dev met through that and Dev. This was Dev's little brother. It's not his biological brother. No, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, and it didn't work out. But Dev and I kind of remained associates because of that.

And then his little brother, who's now in his 20s, was getting out of prison. And I've kind of been his feet on the ground in Buffalo to walk Dev through what to expect, what not to expect. So he emailed me, the email I think that you sent to him. And I immediately told him like, man, like I just did all this research on it. It looks really official. I'd fly out there to do that. And I like, I didn't even expect for him to say that. I was just kind of saying like I'd love to do that. And he was like, well, let me ask. And then 10 minutes later, he was like, yeah, they said, it's cool. That was in

itself was like a challenge. And it's so funny how such like a small challenge that you don't want to tackle, turns into like a great thing. Because I had to go, you had to fill out paperwork, right? And so did I. With the paperwork, I had to fill out was much more, like I had to write a letter to the warden, a personal letter to the warden. And I had to find New York state records for me that I had to write a letter to the ward and a personal letter to the ward and I had to find New York State records for me

that I had to forward to them. And because it's not like who I am, I got rid of that stuff. So I had to go online, thank God. You can find pretty much anything on anybody online. But so that's how I ended up there. So Dev invited me and I was like really excited to go. And on our end, the way this all started was

Kat, who you got to meet, Kat Hoke. I have four friends who have known Kat for various periods of time. And so she's always sort of been someone I knew about, but I didn't actually meet her God probably until earlier this year. And it was only actually after I heard her on Tim's podcast that I had already reached out to her by phone,

but that's when I kind of reached out to her and was like, look, I want to come and join one of the prison visits and Tim had already agreed to do it. So then I just said to Tim, like, let's do it together and we asked Kat, which prison do you think would make the most sense? And she suggested that Kern would be a great prison to visit because of her amazing relationship

with the folks there. And so then it was just going to be me and Tim. And Tim was going to invite a few people. And then I bumped into Devon that one day, I invite him. And then a couple of my friends from New York who flew out. And it's OK, so we get there. Now, I got a, I remember on the way up there,

which was like what, like a five or six hour drive or some crazy. It was worse for you guys, yeah, because you guys came from San Diego. Yeah, yeah. And pick me, I felt like a jerk. Oh, that's right, we picked you up at LA. Yeah, well, no, it was like somewhere outside of LA,

but yeah, that was too. But you probably would be the most skeptical guy going in. I think me and Tim and Dev and Jason, we were a little more, like, not knowing what to expect, but perhaps a bit more thinking, this is gonna be really interesting, and it could only be good. And I got the sense like you felt like,

let me see how real deal this is. Dev and asked me the same thing over the phone before we got there. And I I actually said had cat hoax Not had the history she had that I wouldn't have believed in the program or her and it's funny because that's kind of why we're sitting together And it's kind of why I think you believe in me is because I like I'm not afraid to tell you about who I am or what I've been through And it's funny even more because my daughter just wrote that in her high school apology that pain is how we're all tethered together. And I believe in that. Getting back to it, I was definitely skeptical. I've seen programs

in prisons. I've seen people who work in prisons and I didn't necessarily believe. I did my fair share of research. I listened to the entire podcast with Tim Which was great. I read about the program. I Went through their whole website. I really read about you I wrote you know what I mean, I'm like and I was like all right. Well, let's see It was interesting because I was really hoping I didn't get let down But I was prepared for it and I wasn't let down at all. So that's I was definitely a little skeptical because there's people, there's programs and there's people

that don't work and they're in place all over the place, you know. It's interesting you make the point about how I didn't know that you had said that to Devon that that it was actually Kat's quote unquote baggage that made her appealing and more trustworthy to you. And I feel like in some ways when Kat and I finally met, that was a big part of the connection was, you know, I was going through a really difficult time. She was going through a really difficult time. And as you said, sometimes pain just tethers people. And it's, you don't want to be around people who are going to be very superficial and who

we're just going to tell you how great everything is. And you want to be able to just let your guard down and sort of be yourself. And I agree, I think that that's such a big part of cats efficacy. Now, interestingly, I think she was equally efficacious, even before the PEP scandal in whatever year it was 2009 or something. But if anything, all of the stuff that she's been through has only made her that much more grounded in what she's doing and the importance of second chances and third chances and all these things.

So I want to talk a lot more about what we experienced there because I found it to be one of the most important things I've ever done in my life and yet I've never really been able to talk about it since we left. I've said very little about it to even the people I'm closest to because I don't know what to say. Have you been able to talk about it with anyone? So a lot of people want to talk to me about it the closest people to me tell me that They're so happy that I found where I belong another guy told me put your flag and the ground your people need a leader like And really I mean like I get overwhelmed just thinking about it, but And not overwhelmed in a bad way, but in a really good way. I've been able to

talk about it, but it's also, I feel like I had a unique experience because of my history and I was able to see and watch you guys as well as watch the inmates. And because I was skeptical, so I was watching, I've always been able to watch and see what's going on rather than talk. I feel like it's very helpful, but yeah, so I watched you guys have an experience and I watched the inmates have an experience and I meanwhile had a really powerful experience. But I think it's easier probably to talk to people who have been there and done it. I thought that our drive back, because we dropped Jason off back in Beverly Hills and then drove back to San Diego. So we had like six hours together.

I found that to be one of the most incredible road trips of my life. You know, we listened to like the David Foster Wallace stuff. I mean, good. It was just, it was like? Yeah, this is water. And we just got into all of this stuff that made so much more sense to everyone once they'd been through that experience. I just, I found that six hours went by so quickly,

I was actually sad when we got to San Diego. I was sad that it was over. Yeah, I wasn't like in a rush to get home. It was probably the easiest road trip I've ever taken, for sure. Yeah, comfortable. Yeah road trip I've ever taken for sure. Yeah. Comfortable. Yeah. A lot of huge chocolate too. That didn't hurt. Yeah. So let's talk about your story. I mean, I don't actually know that much. You've told me little bits, but I've been deliberately not asking you too much leading up till today because I wanted to

basically experience this as a listener would but All I basically knew when you showed up was your Devons buddy, you'd serve time in prison. That was it. You had a good haircut Yeah, I'll tell you a little kind of joke. So I spent eight seven years three months and ten days the last time I was in prison I spent eight, seven years, three months, and 10 days, the last time I was in prison. And in prison, they give you single blade razors to shave your face and head with, right? And it's kind of a joke. You end up with more cuts than clean shaves.

But I still use a two blade razor and everybody kind of busts my chops about it because they're like, dude, you know, you got seven blade razors to part. Yeah, and they have batteries in them. And I joke because I'm like, well, you know, you got seven- Blink, that's up to you. Yeah, and they have batteries in them, and I joke because I'm like, well, you know, like it's kind of the way I like to live. I'm gonna work on the two for a couple of years,

and then I'll go to the three. I like, why wear out is welcome? Like it still has value to me. Yeah, so I spent to kind of go back to the, I've recently since we were together, I kind of saw a lot more of the value that I have with what I've been through and kind of again with that tethering us together stuff, right?

The way I see it is we all go about our business kind of one of the things that got me through that prison term was two words and door and overcome. And a lot of times that's kind of just like, okay, put your head down and keep moving your feet forward. And we do that in life. And we do that when we meet each other. And we don't say, hey, like, you know, I've been hurt. And so we're not able to like say that to the other person. So we we don't get to connect unless we do that, right? And I'm able to do that. And I don't know why. And I think there's value in it. So what I've been doing is going back through my own story to try to put something together in honesty to help cat hoax or to help people like cat hoax.

Like the idea was to maybe put a book together and then take those funds to back something like that and also give those books to the guys in jail. Just here, in jail, everybody returns and no, but you never see the guy who doesn't come back. You never see him. Right. And so it's like you just negatively select. And all you ever hear is, oh, I couldn't get a job

and my parole officer sent me back and my girlfriend and all you ever hear is excuses and really just traps. And that's why I think those guys valued me. It's because they were like, hold on. You just came here with these people and you were in here with us. I don't know how that math works. And it's like, well, I'd love to show you.

You know what I mean? So anyway, I have a clear view of my like story. But I grew up in a really nice home with like wonderful parents. Grip in Buffalo. Yeah, in Buffalo, New York. And I have like a lot of really good memories. But my dad's an attorney, my mom's an attorney working family. I have an older brother who's five years older than me. I have an older sister who's three years older than me. And back then, it was, I don't know, like, middle America type life, small city, but we think we're big. I played a ton of sports, really athletic. I think in some ways my dad favored that because I was like so into sports. So me and my brother had like a big rivalry because he was like star wars and I was like so in this sport. So me and my brother had like a big rivalry

because he was like Star Wars and I was like, let's play baseball or the more impactful stuff. I think the stuff that led me down the road I was on was when I was, I think seven years old. And when you think about it, it's like a really young age, right? Like I was seven years old and we were at a public or a minor league baseball game. When we used to go to him, it was a family outing. It was like a cheap family outing fun time. And it was a cold day and the reason I remember it

was cold was because nobody was using the bathroom. Like nobody was getting drunk and so nobody was in the bathroom. And I, me and my brother got up to use, I was going to the bathroom, he was going to get nachos. And he must have been 12 at the time. And I went to the bathroom by myself and some guy attacked me. Like there was nobody in there. I don't want to get into like a ton of details in case I do sell a book,

somebody can look for it, right? But so some guy attacks me and basically steals all of my innocence, all of my trust and like adults, like looking back. And I don't like to blame anything, but now that I am looking back at this stuff, it's like that guy really did a lot of damage to a kid. And the funny thing about psychology is up until I've done some work to kind of clean up my brain.

I didn't realize that the story I've been telling myself was different from the story that my, like in my story, I screamed, he ran, and then I left the bathroom in like a cop came and they brought me to my parents. And it's not, like in the real story, like somebody found me in the bathroom with like blood on my neck and like choke marks and crying and sobbing and like brought me found my family you know and I mean like it still hurts right like I was a

seven-year-old kid and and it affected me in a lot of other ways so then like kind of fast like not even fast forward the next day or two days later, and my mother tells me this now, for like a couple of weeks, I would put like a shirt and tie on every morning to go to school. And I would say, well, like, maybe if I'm good, like things won't happen to me. And it's like, well, like, you didn't do anything, dude, like it's not. But so immediately, I must have felt like it was my fault somehow. And then, I think they put me in therapy pretty quick. They didn't know what to do.

My mother actually just gave me a poem that she wrote about it. And it was about loss. Like I basically lost the little boy. Like that little boy was no longer on the planet. Like we went to a baseball game and we came home different people. And that's, you know, it's crazy. Yeah, so you went from basically being an innocent child

to a wounded child, and then eventually probably what people in that world of psychology would refer to as an adaptive child. And then a lot of times you get sort of stunted there, you don't become a functional adult. So the adaptive child creates a bunch of behavior patterns that are effectively guaranteed to make sure you don't get hurt again.

Yeah, yeah. I never heard the terms, but I, so when I was released from prison, I went, like I hate to jump around too much, but I went and saw somebody and we kind of worked that out. I never heard the terms, so when I was released from prison, I hate to jump around too much, but I went and saw somebody and we kinda worked that out. And I actually went back to that same bathroom, same place, and sat in that same stall. And it was almost goofy because it was nobody can hurt you.

Like you're well equipped, and the fact of the matter is you don't even need to be. Like you're not a little boy, like you don't need to. And in your right, like I lived my life kind of from then on in a way of like avoidance of situations that I didn't feel safe in. Or I mean, I'm not so sure, but I know that when I did the work later, it was like a tack before being attacked. Now when I get into like a playing soccer or something and some guy who's like drinking beers

before the game screams obscenities or something like, oh, and I'll be like, okay, like I'll just kind of laugh and smile and nod and be like, you have no idea. And I hope you go home and like our nice dear family. Have a nice evening. So then what's amazing by the way about your story so far is that your parents were actually thoughtful enough to realize that this was a big deal.

I know that when a lot of people go through these wounding events, which again is how I sort of refer to these things as you know five types of wounding events, which again is how I sort of refer to these things as, you know, five types of wounding events that occur in childhood can basically, if not completely dealt with, alter the course of your life, your parents are actually the exception in that they got it, like right out of the gate. And I don't think it's necessarily because of how educated they were, professionally were. I mean, I guess just they had good instincts. But the tragedy is despite that, it sounds like it might not have been enough at the time. So one of the questions I've been kind of asking myself a lot is like what would have helped. Exactly.

What could I have heard in that exploration? So I've gotten, I don't have a good answer yet. And I'm gonna keep working on it. But I know what I didn't feel, like, and I didn't feel valuable, and I didn't feel, I felt like something was wrong with me.

And I think therapy kind of made it even more so because other kids weren't in therapy. So it didn't make it easier, unfortunately. And I don't blame the therapists. How long were you in therapy for? I'm not really sure. I just remember not liking it. So it might have been a couple of years or less, but by the time you were in Adolescent, you were sort of done with it. Yeah. And so like a lot of people that know me from then will call me, it's not percicious, mischievous, right? Like so I was like dentist to menace. I had literally had like white curly hair,

like wore overalls all the time, which is funny because I like my favorite pair had like paint splatters on them and I paint houses now. So it's like kinda goofy, right? But I don't know how long it was, but it didn't like a lot of good people tried, you know, and I don't know what it would have took. So I was like really mischievous.

So I think they were like, well, he's all right. Like he rides his bike, he does tricks, he gets hurt, he comes home, like he's okay. And I think they probably in some ways wanted to believe that, you know what I mean, I would would I would want to hope that like everything So then when I was 12 I was in Canada. I was in Fort Erie We used to have a I have some really good memories of Crescent Beach. I don't know if you've ever been to Crescent Beach It's in Fort Erie, but

This kid comes from down the street and says like nobody's around the parents are at work and my sister's like watching me but she's sunbathing on the beach. And so my friend comes over and he says, I forget the name of the hardware stores but like home hardware. So yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. This home hardware. Yeah, and they had the slingshots.

They have like wrist rockets. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like serious, yeah. So he was like, listen, I'm not, I think you have to be 12 to get them. And he was like, I'm not old enough, but you are, I'm old, but I don't look old. And none of us had obviously ID.

So he was like, well, you buy it for me. And I said, yeah, like, and so we buy this wrist rocket. And it's, it's kid stuff, but it's stupid kid stuff. So we get like a couple on the train tracks up there. If you like dig underneath the stones, there's like these hard or balls, right? And so we dig them up and we take the stones, there's these hard or balls. And so we dig them up and we take a couple and there's a parking lot like a hundred yards away. Great like target practice. So we start hitting cars. And within, I don't know, an hour, half

an hour, 15 minutes, a guy grabs me out of the window of this cottage and pulls me out of the window of the cottage who ends up being an off-duty RCMP right so he's gonna arrest us he was waiting for his like so we're getting arrested I'm 12 years old I have unlike shirtless and my like swim trunks the pavements burning my feet like I remember remember that, like looking up and being like, oh man, like what's going on? You know, like in my feet, I remember like hopping back and forth with this like man holding me. And so the guy arrests me, they like we get in the car, they handcuffs us behind, they put us bolts in the car, and this guy punches me in the face, right? The officer. Well, not the off duty officer, but the uniformed officer punches me in the face, right? The officer. Well, not the off-duty officer, but the uniformed officer punches me in the face.

And I'm like, I remember falling over, but when you're handcuffed from behind, you don't like fall naturally. So you just kind of like topple. Like a top. I mean, that was impactful. Like, I laugh about a lot of stuff, but it was pretty impactful. And just to kind of shine a better light on the RCMPs, like I recently tried to go to Canada, and I spent three hours at the border,

but it was the most pleasurable experience that I've ever had with law enforcement. And it was because of the RCMPs, so not all RCMPs are bad guys. So that was like the next kind of big, I got punished, you know, I probably couldn't go out of the house for like the summer or something. I mean, my parents were also disciplinarians. They weren't like always

Just let them do whatever he wants, but That was kind of the next thing and I think it was like my introduction my like harmless introduction to law enforcement I'm sort of struck by the random sequence of events that struck by the random sequence of events that generally lead to one person going down one path or going down another. I mean, just hearing you tell your story for the first 12 years of your life, I've already sort of felt so many parallels to my life. And it's really interesting. I remember getting caught, though it was not by law enforcement. It was just a guy on the street when a bunch

of my friends and I, well one friend and my were basically hiding in bushes throwing rocks at cars passing by and pinging them and pinging them and pinging them and then sure enough this one guy gets out of a car and comes and just shakes the shit out of us. And like good for him because what he basically was screaming at is he's like you little shits like you're gonna give someone a heart attack doing this. As an adult, it seems ridiculous. But as a kid, it seems harmless. I was probably 10 or 11.

And what's interesting is like, you know, your experience was probably a lot more traumatic because you just happened to get caught by a guy who was also a cop. Yeah. You know, and then on top of that, you got the bad cop that shows up, up. And it's sort of like, I don't know. I mean, I'm not justifying your actions or my actions, but in the end,

kids do a lot of dumb things. And one of the things going back to Kern that there are 100 things about that day that blew my mind. But the saddest thing there that blew my mind was when we played the game Step to the Line, which I want to talk about in more detail later, and Kat started playing the game at what age did you have your first arrest? And I couldn't believe how young some of these guys were when they were getting arrested. In fact, there was one gentleman there who has been basically incarcerated in one form or another since he was seven years old. Yeah, I have a picture with him when he said that.

Yeah, like I don't know, I went and hugged him and the other guy who had been in solitary confinement for over 12 years. Yep, I know exactly what you're talking about because he was just diagnosed with me and I don't wanna say his name, but. years. Yep, I know exactly what you're talking about because he was just diagnosed to me and I don't wanna say his name, but. Yeah. Seven, I've probably mentioned that

to five or six people since. Even this morning I talked about that guy seven years old. I mean, he didn't put a gun in his hands, right? Like if I recall, he and his friend lit a fire and it killed someone, right? I'm not certain. It was either somebody died. Yeah. It was either a fire arm or lit a fire and it killed someone, right? I'm not certain. It was either somebody died. Yeah. It was either a fire arm or like a fire.

But there were those two kids messing around from one of them or somebody died. Yeah. Yeah, he, I mean, he was an adult. And he actually had a business running. Like he had put together a good on it. It's just, I mean, it's like a sad state of affairs, really. So, after this brush, you're 12, you're now getting ready that you're in middle school, you're getting ready

to enter high school. Yeah, actually good prelude because that's kind of when things, right around then things got funky. I mean, I was a typical teenager in some ways, girls, like 12, 13 years old, like exploring that and exploring school and still playing sports. Yeah, still playing sports competitively too, on like a couple of travel teams and stuff like that.

I was playing soccer and, I mean, it's irrelevant, but yeah, I was playing a good amount of sports, but so the summer before high school, me and one of my closest friends stumbled across like his parents' pot stash. And to this day, two people who his mother actually just passed, but the father I talked to all the time, good man, hard worker, teacher, smoked pot, right? But we found the pot and it was a lot, like it was like a, I don't know, it was a lot of

pot. And so we took a hunk of it. And I think we smoked that pot pretty much every day that summer. And it was great. We didn't have any responsibilities. And I was supposed to, actually, at the time, I was supposed to go to this Catholic Boy School,

or Jesuit, or something, Boy School in Buffalo, and play basketball there. And that was like, it was kind of set out for me And I was somewhat smart and I I said to myself well, I'm gonna stop smoking pot two weeks before school And then I said I'm gonna stop smoking pot one week before school and then I said, you know I'm gonna stop pot the day of the first. Yeah, and then I was smoking pot on the porch of school, right like and of the first year. And then I was smoking pot on the porch of school, right? And the next very impactful thing that happened to me

and again, could happen to anybody and it happened very soon after that was I, and in a weird way, it's like, as a man, it's like, oh yeah, I wanna puff my chest out, but the fact of the matter is, I was a 13 year old child. And so we got all stone for the school dance, right? And like thinking about how much pot we smoked is just like ridiculous.

Like like boogers coming out of your nose from Bong hits, like just crazy, right? So like why would you ever want to do that? But again, I was like, I was a child. So we get to this dance around our way there. I see another friend of mine who I played soccer with, and he's got like a hash or something. So we smoke some hash.

And I pull up to the school or whatever, walk up to the school in my school. And there's some girl crying outside of the school. Of course, right? There's always some girl crying outside, right? And of course, I'm like, what do you need? And she needed quarters to call her house, because payphones.

So I give her these quarters. I remember giving her like a fist full of quarters. I don't know why I had a fist full of quarters. And I don't know if my recollections all that clear either. But before I know we're like making out, then the next thing I know we're having sex outside, right? Now I'm a virgin, but nobody knows that because when you're a 13 year old boy, like you're not a virgin even if you're a virgin.

So everybody, they let the dance out, and we're outside on the lawn across the street behind a four foot picket fence or a three foot picket fence. And like I look up, and at one moment I look up, and I'm like, wow, this is fantastic. Like the stars are out, it's a nice fall of night. And the next moment I look up, and there's literally like 30 people standing there,

like watching me have sex for the first time. She gets up and like runs. I like, I had a girlfriend at the time who was in the dance, so now she's like screaming at she's screaming at me and I don't know what to say. I'm pretty sure I said, oh, should happens. And she tried to hit me and then I left. But what makes it even worse, and it's funny because this is the stuff I would like to keep out of stories, but I think it's the stuff that's important to keep in the story.

So we went out to dinner later, like after that. And I remember being in my own shell, at that point, like what's trying with you and which girl? No, no, so me and my buddies. Oh, we have to have to have the whole thing say, yeah. We all went out to pizza. And I'm sure I was some kind of hero, but I remember feeling alone, like in a like a sad emotional way

But I remember feeling like something happened and I need to figure it out I remember going to the bathroom and realizing that I had blood all over me and then being like really embarrassed But also really confused because I didn't know like did it was that because of Was that because of whatever right and then being like well, that's like awful gross. And like so now, like my whole sexual identities, again, kind of screwy, right? It's like this is unusual. And then straight after that, the principal of the school or the dean of students or something told me that I needed to tell my parents what happened. And if I didn't tell them in three days or something that he was going to tell

them. And I just couldn't. I didn't know how to say, I still envy people who can like, I see them like, mom, my kids found my pot, you know, my friend did that in front of me to his mom and his mom and his mom was like, you're a jerk, like, why? You know, but I remember thinking, and this is only a couple of years ago, like you could tell her that, like, how do you, I don't know how you, I quit a job when I got out of prison and it was like a somewhat good job.

It was like I was driving with the union, driving cement mixers, and I didn't tell my dad for two weeks. And we're close, like we jog together every week. Like, I still have a hard time with that. So anyway, and I think my solution because of my history and feeling different and wondering why a lot of it, I constantly wondered why me.

What's wrong with me that I get caught, that I get punched, that I get attacked, that I, you know what I mean? And not to throw blame at the world, but I just didn't understand. I didn't understand chance, I didn't understand any of it. So I try to commit suicide. And it's interesting to me because when we were in the car

during that three day window, you mean? Right, on the last day, I started drinking. I like, I stole some liquor from my parents' cabinet. I took probably like half a bottle or a whole bottle of Tylenol, which we talked about in the car and is a lethal dose of Tylenol. And I almost died. I was in the hospital. I mean, my recollection's something like five to seven days. But I was in the hospital for a while because they couldn't pump it out of me

because it was already like in my liver and I mean you're a doctor. Yeah, you got lucky. If they couldn't get it out with the activated charcoal or the NAC, it's sort of a watch and wait. And about half the people, I have to know your exact dose, but more than half the people probably would have gone into liver failure. And the only thing that saves them is a liver transplant.

While I remember once taking care of a woman, she was probably 27. I remember that she was absolutely stunning and beautiful. And I guess she had broken up, her boyfriend maybe had broken up with her. And she took a whole bottle of Tylenol. And the time we got her in the ICU, I was in the surgical ICU at the time. And she came to the surgical ICU from the ER because we basically it was clear that her liver was going to bonk and she was going to need a liver transplant. And we sort of had a three-day window to get her a liver transplant. And interestingly, she was certainly cognizant enough of what was going on to realize what was happening.

And fortunately, we were. She was lucky enough to be one of the ones that got a transplant. And God, I remember just being so sad for her as we took care of her after that transplant because you could just sort of sense the pain that she must have been going through to go that far. Even though, yes, you could say, well, maybe that was quite impulsive in the moment, but yeah, it's impulsive, but it's still, I mean, it's a very deliberate thing to do, and a cry for help, presumably, which, I mean, I'm guessing at this point,

your parents have figured out something is going on. Yeah, you know, so you said you're lucky, I know I mean as I sit in here in front of you I have like I've had two brain surgeries. I've had the interesting part of that is It's like what which list do you look at right and it's kind of something I say to people until myself all the time Like which list are you looking at? I think we might have talked about that too Like do you have a car with a catch a check engine light on? Oh, you have a car. That's great. Like, that's that's so much better than. And so now it's I've kind of sitting here. I kind of realized that I have the answer to the question why me today, but I also know that I was very lucky throughout all of it and maybe not luck is the word, right?

Like so maybe it all plays out for a reason and I'm alive and strong today to deliver a message. I don't know, you know, I know that I was lucky then. I remember I drank charcoal for three or four days. I remember one of the things I remember still is my dad carrying me to like it washed up because I was weak. I was like really really weak. I remember having to take um what do you call it uh like blood tests periodically like every couple days when I got out of the hospital because I wanted to check I think liver enzymes and I had to see a psychologist and I had to see the police. And things honestly, and like an old honestly, things really just deteriorated from that point on.

I mean, I was already at the, like probably beginning stages of addiction, addiction, like any type of substance. I don't think I did anything other than smoke pot and drink alcohol, but they take you out of yourself, right? You don't solve problems through drug use. And I found that to be like helpful. And so that's kind of the direction I went after that.

You know, my parents, I think, tried, they put me in countless, they tried a lot of things. I mean, this to me is sort of something I can talk about for hours because it's such an interesting topic as far as the relationship between trauma and addiction. I mean, it is such a strong relationship, which is not to say it's a one-to-one mapping. I'm sure there are some people out there who have addictions, who have never experienced trauma,

and there are certainly people out there who've experienced trauma that do not develop addictions. But I've learned a lot over the last couple of years about this, and one of the things I've learned is the addictions that we tend to think of, which are substance addictions, are one thing. But there are many people who are addicted, but it doesn't involve a substance like alcohol, nicotine, narcotics, sex, gambling. You start to get away from the substances into these more process-related addictions.

One of the things I certainly am familiar with both may be personally, but also professionally is just people who are addicted to work, people who are addicted to perfectionism, people who are addicted to control. There's a great book called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, written by a guy named Gabor Mate, who is a psychiatrist in Vancouver, kind of working on, you know, a part of Vancouver that sort of sees a lot of inner city drug use. And he's talked about this extensively, right, which is even from a neurobiological standpoint, most of us somehow numb pain

with these different things. And what's not entirely clear to me is, you know, why one person might have a genetic predisposition to find alcohol to be sufficiently numbing or a drug of choice to be sufficiently numbing, whereas another person might find stimulation from gambling or sex or something to be the thing that completely bays that part of their brain and dopamine. But I remember when I went into trauma-based treatment, one of the things that just amazed me was, you know, you have a roommate, right? So you've got, I'm roaming with someone who, to this day, is now still one of my very

close friends. And I remember when I showed up, it was like I was so pissed off, I didn't want to be there, I didn't want to be around anybody, I certainly didn't want to have a roommate. I was like, I'll pay extra if I can not have a roommate, right? Yeah. And then you realize, man,

even though he and I had very different paths in life, or at least on the surface, it looked that way, actually we're very similar. Similar injuries, similar responses, it's just, when one person is addicted to work and the other person's addicted to alcohol and cocaine, society will tend to reward one over the other. But it doesn't necessarily mean that that person's healthier.

Yeah. When we were in the car, one of the things that struck me about you was your focus, right, longevity. And that one of the things you had said was geared towards not, not any specific, like, I don't want to pigeonhole what you said, but it was really impactful because it was like, well, you kind of need the whole picture. Like, it's just not health. Like, right, health, or health isn't just exercise and this, you know, it's like you need emotional stability, you need balance, right?

It's almost like a ghost balance today, you know, it's like a, and that's what addiction is. It's like I'm gonna put my head down to solve everything and kind of soldier forward, but everything else kind of gets left in the dust, you know? Did you have any issues with anger when you were growing up? Did that, and the reason I ask is like, going back to the exposures that I've had to this topic, I mean, it's, what we got a lot of ambulance

is going by here today. That's the beauty of doing the recording in New York City here, is you've got, basically you can classify wounds into these five things, which are in the place that I went. Tell me that I never heard of it. Yeah, so it's basically like there's a trauma tree. Okay. So the roots of the tree are the five things that tend to be traumatic.

So the first of them is abuse. Abuse can be physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual. The next one is abandonment. The next one is neglect. And then something called enmeshment, which is when parents kind of treat kids like little adults, so this is an obviously oversimplification or a simple example, but you'll see this a lot with a single parent raising a child and then basically, it's in that child as though they're the partner.

Right. You've seen it. Yeah, you've seven year olds who are having to hear about mommy's sex life or something like that or her problems with her boyfriend or something like that. And then the fifth one is witnessing a tragic event. So something that even if you weren't a part of it, but just witnessing something completely horrific,

like 9-11, to have seen that would have been devastating. So these roots of the tree basically create shame. And then that shame, if not dealt with appropriately, as an adult, manifests itself, typically in about these four branches that we sort of think about, one of them is addiction, which again, very broad definition here. This can be substance addiction, process addiction, et cetera. Co-dependency, attachment disorders, and habituated survival strategies.

And embedded within that is like disregulated emotion. So anger, emotional volatility, all of these other things. And so again, just kind of even listening to your story in my mind, I'm sort of thinking about your tree. Right, okay. Which is obviously you've suffered a abuse. Right? But what I think most people don't realize is I'm sort of thinking about your tree. Right, okay. Which is obviously you've suffered a abuse, right? But what I think most people don't realize is when it comes to children abuse and neglect

or abandonment, always go hand in hand. Right. And you might not think of it that way because you had loving parents, but the reality that is as a seven-year-old child, you are supposed to be protected by your parents at all times. Now, I'm not faulting your parents at all for the fact that they didn't have the foresight, maybe to say we should escort Cory to the bathroom, but the reality of it is,

and because no parent can do that, you can't protect your kids 24-7. But the problem is when a child gets injured, there's an emotional response that says, look, where were mommy and daddy? Like someone's supposed to protect me at this point. I initially had a very hard time accepting some of that stuff on a personal level. And I'll tell you one of the most interesting and powerful things a therapist said to me

was, picture your children at the age that you were at when you had the experiences you had, and now imagine how much you're willing to not minimize the effect when it's not you thinking about yourself. So in other words, you imagine your daughter is a seven-year-old and that having happened to her. And then contrast your reaction to that with your reaction to how you treated it when it was yourself, which was, you know, shit happens. I got a bum-wrap that day, but hey, life moves on. You wouldn't be feeling that way if it was your daughter. What's the difference?

Yeah. The difference is it's a lot easier to minimize when it's you. Yeah, it gets you through it. You know, it gets you through for sure. So what happened after you got out of the hospital? So you're in your first year of high school now? First year of high school.

I never even showed up for the trials for the basketball team and then I wondered why they didn't just come find me I really I really was like that what a bum like what a bum rap like why didn't they come get me like that? I thought I was that good and so they asked me to leave shortly after Leave that high school and I had gotten and I mean I did I did goofy stuff too like there was a bookie in the school But I knew that he was the actual money. And he said, oh, I get the bets from this old Italian guy, I don't mess with him, but I, and these kids had a lot of money, some of these kids.

So some of them owed like $500, $1,000. So I said, well, just give me half, and I'll make sure you don't have to pay. Like I was doing that kind of stuff and selling Pahad. You know, I was pretty popular. I got along well with the girls and stuff. And all that became way more important to me than pleasing my parents or teachers or anybody. Really, I stopped going to practices. I stopped playing sports. How did your parents react to that? I think my father's kind of a soic guy. As I've been writing this book, I mentioned talking about some of this stuff to him,

and he said, well, everything's good now. Like, why don't we... You know, and I don't blame him for that. Like, I wouldn't necessarily want to judge any of that stuff up. And so my dad, I think at the time, didn't know what to do. My dad's kind of the long-term response at the time, the one thing he settled in on was like, if you follow certain rules,

then you'll always have like a space in my home. And you know, you'll always be my son and I'll always love you, but you can't live in my home if you sell drugs and don't go to school. And my mom, my mom took on a tougher love. My mom thought, I think my grandmother had mental illness, so my mom thought I had mental illness.

And I did something I got drunk and I got into a fight and pretty much a blackout, but I came home with my eyes split open, like, you know, and I was screaming and yelling, so there's your anger stuff, right? Like, I mean, I would do that. Yeah, I hate you, you know, like all that kid stuff, which is really terrible, but they brought me to a,

I don't know what it's called, like a child psychiatric unit for like, they talked to a therapist and put in me like getting me in there but for a week maybe or two weeks I think was the amount of time I was supposed to stay there and that was a real eye opener. You're worth 15, 16, 14. Yeah 14 years old. So one of the common terms that you hear from my parents is out of control. And what that's led me to believe like from their perspective that they just didn't have any control and they didn't know what to do. And you know, like I have a steps on who's 11 and he has,

he's a great kid, loves a kid, he's like really cool, but he has some issues with handling emotions he doesn't like. And so I know what like loss of control feels like, and I know what like sitting up late and trying to figure out ways to help guide feel like too. And when I say out of control, I mean like I would one time I said I was punished, couldn't leave the house. And I said I'm going to take the dog for a walk, tied the dog to the porch and left for two weeks at 14

I'm like out of control like out of control My dad still will joke to this day if I threw your brother out of the house He'd sit on the porch until midnight and drag his trunk back in at midnight You know he did go down with this big trunk and and if I threw you out you'd leave with a stick in a sandwich and Down the street you'd march like you know know, like, all right, cool. See you when I get hungry. Your siblings are both older, right? I guess by the time you're 14,

they're almost out of the house. So me and my sister have been talking a lot. I mean, me and my sister have always been close. My sister, I guess, slept in the crib with me when I was a baby. Me and my brother always fought. I don't think me and my brother got along until I was 25. And I think maybe a lot of that may have been

because he wasn't the athletic son in the beginning. Like there was like differences there. And then I think I probably in some ways blamed him or maybe my parents may have blamed him or maybe he felt like he should have been there for me. On that day at the baseball. Right. And we fought like hard. Like we would there was times when my parents were like one of you has to be like you can't

be in the same house together without an adult. So around that time he was really unhappy with me because looking at it like an adult like they lost a lot of attention. Right. My parents had to deal with me so much more because, and they couldn't, you know, make it to all their games because they were getting Cory out of school or taking Cory to therapy or, but my sister and I stayed really close and a lot of shit started to happen when she went away to college. And she still to this day kind of feels like I wanted to come and save you, but. I'm glad you're about 15 when she goes to college, right? I think so, yeah, 14, 15.

I was born in October, she was born in March, so it's like it gets a little goofy. I don't, I mean, yeah. Those last three years of high school, like when now both your siblings are out of the house. Right, so I go from child psychiatric unit, I get out, I talk my way out, and there was like

a wedge between my parents because my mom wanted to medicate my dad didn't shortly after that. I was like stealing my grandfather's car. He was seen aisle, the keys were in our house, so I would take the car. I got arrested in the car, like joy riding. And I was given the option to go to a juvenile rehab as opposed to going to jail. And I had been in detention centers a few times too. So then I go to this child rehab. And it wasn't a bad place. I actually spent a decent amount of time talking to the kids who are in

that same rehab now. And I ran away from it after like two months. And it's one of the interesting things, kind of a time-lapse story is I was sitting at a table with a bunch of these kids one day, and one of them was giving me all these reasons why he wanted to go home. I wanna see my girlfriend, I want good food, I miss my family, and I literally heard myself saying all those exactly like I'm sure it's happened to you

but I heard it play back and me saying that and then I remembered what did I do that day and I couldn't see it I was blind to it then but the first thing I did I had like $10 in my pocket the first thing I did was go to a corner store Get a 40 ounce beer and a pack of cigarettes. And I drank the beer and then I went looking for my friends and the pizza and everything else. And as an adult, sitting with those kids, it was like, geez, like really? It was like addiction back then, even. That was the first thing you went to.

So I ended up going back. My parents talked them into letting me back in and not getting arrested. And I went back to the rehab. I almost finished it and I broke into a teacher's desk to steal the answers for somebody else. That was one of those things I saved. I was just trying to help somebody. I had why I was a good guy.

They asked me to leave and I left. At that point, my parents had split up while I was in the rehab and that was pretty impactful too because the way they did it was kind of terrible and I'll joke with them to the stay like they sat down and I decided me my mother said we have something to tell you my dad cried for like the second time in my life and was like your mother doesn't love me anymore and I was just like what the fuck like part of me and as 16 year old, it's funny because like I laugh about it now, but as a 16 year old, I really went, hold on. So you don't love him, but you've known him longer

than you know me. How do you just do that? So all those times you've told me you love me. So anybody can walk away at any time, right? So there's your abandonment, right? Like, so I got out and I kind of bounced back and forth with parents and lived on the streets. And then, friend of mine's mother took me in.

I love this woman to this day. She has five sons. One of them lives here in New York. Now, he's like massively successful as an interior designer. Big shout out to Sammy. But their mother still says the rosary for me every morning, right? So there's your how am I lucky. I just saw her last week and she said it. But you know, I she had one rule because she had five sons, no girls in my house. Like,

you can pretty much do anything. I mean, this woman went to work every day and she would come home in her uniform, make dinner for five boys, six boys, clean the whole house and fall asleep in her, she delivers a meal in her uniform and get up and go to work, right? Like, but she said she cried and said, like I need you to go, you keep bringing girls in my house. I think we had a girl in the attic for like three days or something, her father came, it was a mess.

And then I ended up in the clutches of a predator, a 15 or 16, something like the right around there. And this happened to be a friend of mine's father. So I mean, he was like the cool dad, like he had been to prison. And he was like, oh, you can stay with me. And my son will stay there, too. And I don't even like to talk about it, right?

But he, I remember I still hadn't done any real drugs, just alcohol and tobacco. And one that we were all playing cards and my friend went to bed and he says, do you ever do cocaine? No, and he's, do you want to? Like, kind of? Yeah, sure. And so he like, within a few weeks, he had me selling cocaine and like a bar. I had dropped out of any schooling I was in. You know, he gave me the keys to the car. He gave me a day job in his deli. I mean, it only lasts so long for an adult to like work a job and sell drugs at night. And I was 16.

So within a short period of time, I was like really worn out and really sick. And then, you know, like he, one night, it was just me and him. And then like I said, it was like a really comfortable situation. He had made it that way and then it wasn't. And it was really, really uncomfortable. But I had nowhere to go at this point

and I had no, none of my own money or anything because it's kind of like, this is an ugly term, but it's kind of like pimping somebody. It's like, here's everything you need in life, but none of it's yours, right? As soon as you walk out the door, you're done. And I think people do that in relationships and whatever else.

So there was nights, there was a lot of nights where I was like 16 and we'd go out drinking and we'd be looking for girls, but I knew what he was like hoping for. And I would just be like, I'm staying out. And so it'd be four, five, six. And I'd be walking around the street until I thought he'd be asleep.

And then I found out that like creepy dudes are on the street too, you know? Like I remember the first time, if you've never like walked the street as a teenager late, like early in the morning type stuff, like you wouldn't know this, but creepy dads and minivans will ask you where the party is. Right? And the first time I was like,

oh, there's a party down. And I didn't know what the need, looking back at the dude was probably like, you fucking idiot. But in those situations, I had the courage to tell somebody, like, get the fuck away from me. But in a closed room, in a house like I didn't. And that affected me beyond measure.

It's just sort of amazing to me, this consistency in this idea that predators have like a sixth sense for wounded kids. They have like wounded child antenna. If you remember any of the sorted details from the Catholic Church scandal, I mean, the one theme that was relatively consistent there, because there was the ubiquity of the priests that were molesting these kids was unprecedented. But it's like, they always managed to pick the kid that did never die or that was living

in a broken home or who... There's always some problem. It's really it makes it that much more infuriating. They've got like this discernment. They can look at a person and realize that this is a person that could be exploited. You give them something, attention typically. Yeah. It could be money.

It could be something like that. You give them something that they are missing and then you can exploit them. And it's it's such a gut-wrench. It's so, so painful to watch. Yeah, you know, the more I've like explored it, and to be honest with you, I've never, I've talked to one other person too, at this point in my life, about that kind of stuff.

But again, I think the more I can show, the more I can help. And so, the reality of the situation is, I think the more I let down the more I can help. And so the reality of the situation is, I think the more I let down any guards I have, the more I can let people in and the more I can let people in, the richer I'll be in people. And that's all I really give a fuck about at this point in my life.

And so that's why I'm doing it. But I've also realized that these people do what they do very intentionally. And they do know what they're doing. Like there's a plan behind it. And I'm still not the person you want to put in a room with a pedophile. I mean, you'll see the worst of me I would imagine. My father prosecuted pedophiles for some time.

And when I was Waiting to go to prison he would tell me like which guy like hey, did you see such and such and I'd be like no but when I do and then I'd be in solitary for like beating them up I just don't have this stomach. I don't know children are such like gifts and so vulnerable and I think like I especially in my with my history. I just can't see like anybody hurting kids. You do so much damage, you know. You break into somebody's house and you steal their sense of self-security, right? But like if you like heard a child like you steal kind of their life, the life they could have had, I suppose, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's what basically happens is you take a kid who's seven and you wound them severely enough. That's when their childhood stops. So whatever comes after that is not a normal childhood. It's like I said, it's this adoptive childhood at best. So this adaptive childhood basically takes over, when in reality you should be able to enter functional adolescents, functional adulthood. There's a lot of sadness there, right? And that was probably one of the last, like, major, it's funny. I sat down with a therapist when I got out of prison to, like, work out some more demons, right? And you do a timeline, right? And he was like Jesus Christ, he was like, dude, your life is like a trauma after trauma,

after trauma. So that wasn't the last thing, but like the real, like the meat of this is like, in a lot of ways like turning it around, right? Like that's why we met, like I mean, the fact that I'm, but how did you end up in prison? So no, I'm not gonna like skip everything.

So at 19, so that was terrible. I got away from that. I like turned the shower on one day. While my friend was there, while his father was there, and I walked out and then never went back. And I hated myself for that too, because again, that was my fault. I didn't stop any of it.

I continued to be there. It wasn't your fault. Well, no, no, no, I know that, but you're sort of telling yourself at the time that's your narrative. So another thing that's kind of important is the only person I was listening to was me, and I created this narrative that was, and one of the reasons I really believe in cat hoax in her programs is because it's about changing the narrative.

And sometimes it's not as simple as that, but that's one of the major things like what list are you reading from, right? And so at 19, this is like another kind of trauma. I was at a, and I'll be frank, like I went to a high school hockey game with a bunch of my friends to fight some people. Some people had jumped to one of my friends, he was in their neighborhood, they were coming to our neighborhood for this hockey game with a bunch of my friends to fight some people. Some people had jumped to one of my friends,

he was in their neighborhood, they were coming to our neighborhood for this hockey game. None of them showed up. So we were there, spectators watching one of our friends play a game. After the game, most likely provoked the opposing team came out in front of the rink and started hitting one of my friends with sticks, with their hockey sticks, right? And I don't remember anything from this point on, and I still don't. But I was actually just with somebody that does, and there's newspaper articles about it, but we all ran back to help. I ended up with seven, I think, fractures in my skull, three in my face, broken orbital

bone, and no bleeding, like external bleeding, right? So my head was swelling like rapidly. Nobody knew what was wrong. I wanted to go home. I didn't know where home was. And here's like the what list are you reading stuff. My flight here, I flew next to the cousin of the doctor who saved my life.

What? She sat with me. So this doctor rushes in to the emergency room and at Buffalo ECMC Hospital, Eerie County Medical Center. And he's like the Maghiver of brain surgery, right? He gets there, he busts me, I don't have idea on me. He says, I don't give a shit. Like the kid's gonna fucking die, drill a hole in his head.

So he gets going, he saves my life. Does two brain surgeries, I walk out 10 days later. He was pretty surprised, right? And on the way here, I'm chatting like the lady next to me, hey, why are you going to New York and like, all right, like I'll give you a minute. Why do you have those huge scars on your head? Yeah, well, I think I had a head on it. Season private practice as a drug counselor.

So we started, like, you know, we hit it off. I was like, I'm going to talk about this experience I had with this guy. And she's like, Oh, wow, you know, like, that's what I do in Buffalo. Like, I work with drug addicts. And I was like, Oh, cool. And I was like, yeah, you know, long story short, that's the story that I look for today, right? That's the stuff that I'm like, Oh, okay, there's my light bulb, right? So she, like I was able to tell her, hey, tell your cousin, I wrote him a letter probably six years ago in Senate to the hospital, like thanking him, but I was like, tell him that like my daughter said to graduate next week, I'm flying to New York, I own a business site, like I have employees

who love me and come over for Christmas, like, And it's because he saved my life that night. That's like my days. My days are filled with this kind of like wow stuff, man. They really are, right? It's no bullshit. And it's like, oh, you should write a story. It is. Like the whole thing is kind of an ongoing crazy fucking story.

So I had this brain surgery. For a while I remembered I was in a coma and I remembered the coma for a while and it was like I was back, I was back in that home with that abuse with that guy at 16 and I couldn't get out of the hospital but like I couldn't get out. And my father took me in after that.

He was like, you're gonna come live with me and you're gonna get your GED in your license before you get any stupider. I remember him saying those words. And I did and I got my GED and that's general, yeah, equivalency. I remember I scored almost perfect and everybody was like, you're such an asshole.

Like why couldn't you have just gone? Like you just had two brain surgeries and you get this like great score. Like what did they do fix you? But I also remember very vividly walking out of the house with all my friends and my dad looking like really sad and upset. Like he was going to lose you again. And he was. We went to a cemetery in Smokepop, right?

And I remember that. And I remember going to a bar. And I still had like a stocking cap from the, for the staples. Yeah. Because I still had staples in my head. So I couldn't have been home more than what, three, what, how long do they take them up a week? Yeah. So I was in a bar in a club with staples and probably because I thought it looked real cool, right? Like the white DMX of the time, right? So, errrr. So I remember some girl like grabbing my head

and being like, oh my god, you're alive, right? And like, what the fuck? Like I still have staples in my head. And now I look at it and I'm like, what an idiot. Like, why not just get a little rest, dude? You didn't even have a job to go to. But shortly after that, I started to get in real legal trouble. I got a couple thousand dollars from a settlement.

I was such a jerk that I like actually went to court and said I didn't like see anybody do it, which I didn't, right? But like I had to be like, you know, like, but this was the sort of street ethic. Yeah. And honestly, up until then, I didn't, right? But I had to be like, you know, but this was the sort of street ethic. Yeah. And honestly, up until then, I didn't have a violent street. Like people used to joke and be like,

yeah, I serve her a quarry, because I really just wanted to smoke pot, have a good time and not think about how I hated myself, right? And after that, it was definitely, if I think you're gonna hurt me, I'm gonna hurt you first. Because the reality is, if you, like, if I think you're gonna hurt me, I'm gonna hurt you first. Because the reality is I literally almost died, and it was by the hands of other people,

and it was intentional, right? And so, I think I got like $10,000, and I bought a couch, a BMW, and some cocaine, and I was like, set, I was ready to take over Buffalo. And I think I got arrested seven times that year. And each arrest has its own sad story and its own kind of just kind of depravity. And like maybe someday we'll talk about all those.

But like, well, at least save that one for the book, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know. I don't know. The saddest part about it was two things. One was, it always smelled like urine and kind of bumps, right? Jails and I would wake up in the morning and I would know where I was because of the feel of the bench on my back before I opened my eyes And I wouldn't know why I was there and that was terrifying and I was like 19 maybe 20

And it was like what's happening? Obviously like it wouldn, we talked about out of control at 14, like this is, I don't control this anymore. And the other thing was, I woke up in my bed one morning and it smelled like the gel and I knew that it wasn't the gel anymore. So it smelled like urine and throw up and I was like old alcohol and I was like, well, it's not your roommate. It's like, this is you.

And those are two impactful things from that time and then kind of jumping forward to 22. I had just turned 22 and I was selling a lot of drugs. I was kind of in my own head, I was like a somewhat of like a big shot. We sold a lot of drugs. I was kind of a, in my own head, I was like a, somewhat of like a big shot. We sold a ton of pot. We had a lot of guns too. And our house got rated, but I wasn't in it.

And my roommate at the time kind of took the fall. He went as far as to say everything in the house is mine. And the stuff like Corey doesn't even live here. He just his name's on the lease because, like, when his girlfriend throws him out and so he was actually I like a lot of Buffalo cops. I'll say that in case anybody ever hears this But some of them screwed up and they put the wrong number Apartment on the warrant so the whole thing fell through and like they let my friend go

But they found 13 guns in the house Like things were now obviously way out of control. But I still had this weird set of ethics and I would only harm people that were in that life. I started robbing drug dealers. So like guys would come over and be like, I got mushrooms and I'd be like, well how much do you have? And they'd be like 10 pounds

and I'd be like, I'll take it all. And then I would just take it, right? And kind of by hooker by crook, right? So I grew up with lawyers and politicians and stuff. So I knew how to be sneaky as shit. So I would do these sneaky things and I would also do it by force. I robbed these guys who happened to be like a weird,

working for a terrorist cell in Buffalo. And my father was like, livid, because he was like like these guys were monitored like you robbed like their weed branch you idiot like they're gonna and they did they tried to kill me they stabbed me with a screwdriver like a 30 guys I had a sneaker mark on my face for a week and a half like I got beat up really bad and then I robbed a guy because he was dating my girlfriend and I robbed him for some cocaine. He was like dating the mother of my daughter.

I didn't even say anything about my daughter because at that time it was like everything else, right? And so I had a daughter when I had the brain surgery, my girlfriend was pregnant with her. There's just so much in there. It's like so much was happening. I mean, I ruptured my stomach at one point and got clean for a while and went to a homeless shelter for kids on my own.

And like, there was a lot of like clean periods in there too. And there was like a lot of trying. And when I got to the end of that like trauma and this kind of shitty story, it was like, if I don't play the game, I can't lose, right? So I stopped. At the point that I ended up going to prison, I had stopped trying.

My daughter's godfather, we sat down on a bar porch and he said, like, what are you doing? Like, this isn't who you are. It's before you went to prison. Right. And he was like, like, why are you behaving like this? And I said, dude, like I'm tired of trying to be good and failing at it.

And I leave a lot of stuff up, and I don't do it intentionally, but I had tried. I'm trying to get to the meteor stuff, right? So yeah, I had a two-year-old daughter who lived with me at that time that I went to jail seven times in one year. And her mother, she would leave. And then I'd talk, I'd get sober and clean. But without any type of help, just kind of on my own.

And I'd stop selling drugs and I'd go to work. And she'd move back in. And then like eventually we'd have some type of fight. And she'd move out. And then I'd get crazy again. And were you still in touch with your parents much? I mean, your dad obviously you mentioned he was at least in the loop when you robbed the weed arm of the tear.

So what about it? And your parents of course are at this point now divorced. Are you closer to your dad than your mom at this point? So I almost don't talk to my mom at all. The only reason from 16 to like 19, I barely speak to my mom at all. She said when I worked at that bus terminal, I was like selling coke that I would call her once in a while. I'd be like, somebody needs legal help. We'd talk to them and like put them on the phone. And I think probably subconsciously, I

just wanted to hear her voice and hope she would be like, are you okay? Can I come get you? But me and my dad, I was definitely a big disappointment and my dad's kind of others. By the way, that's such an interesting point. As you're telling that story, I'm trying to imagine being your mom because listening to everything you're saying, it's like, I think a listener will put themselves

in your shoes, put themselves in your parents' shoes, put them in. And in that moment, I was thinking about your mom, I was thinking about being your mom and how frustrating that would be to get that call. And it's so interesting to hear you say that all you wanted was to hear her voice and hope that she would say, are you okay? Can I come and get you? And as I'm thinking about it from your mom's point of view, I'm thinking, how pissed would

I be in this situation? And I realized, like, oh my God, that's the problem, right? It's like, I wouldn't think at that moment to be vulnerable, to put my guard down, to put my feelings away and say, how can I help you? Even for your own, even for your own good. Yeah, because look, and I'm saying this trying to be empathetic to the pain your parents are going through,

which is what the hell happened here. Because they, with the best of intentions, they probably cannot figure out at this point that this all goes back to what happened to a seven year old boy in a bathroom. Yeah, and I don't, I mean, obviously, I'm not saying that either to say that, but now that I've become highly obsessed with this topic

and these stories, and this is kind of like all I read these days, like I mean, I read scientific papers in the day, but the evenings are basically reading about trauma and addiction and all of this stuff. And your story is such a poignant example of that. I mean, it's an extreme example. Let's be honest. I mean, most people fortunately will not go through one-tenth

of the trauma you have experienced to date in their entire lifetimes. But that doesn't mean that the trauma that they're going through doesn't also dramatically alter the way they interact with the world as adults. And I don't know, I mean, there was this movie once with, um, God, what was it called? Jeez. Somehow, like, the movie was basically about doing history over and over again. You could redo life, but you could see how one small change would lead to a dramatic change.

When I hear these horrible stories and I think back to the stories of the people that I know when I was going through these sort of recovery pads, you always had those moments where like almost everybody had this inflection point where something really, really bad happened. And it doesn't have to be bad or you know, as we used to try, but you got capital T trauma and small T trauma. You have a lot of big T traumas. But sometimes it's just an accumulation of little T traumas that sort of Ben somebody out, but these big T traumas they they are the ones that sometimes have these profound effects in a relatively short period of time and

I don't know. It's just it's really I Think it's just sad. I get sad for you, but I get sad not that that's you know the purpose of the exercise But but I got sad for your parents too because I can't imagine how helpless they'd feel watching someone who they love unconditionally self-destruct. Yeah, as a parent, myself now, and then like as a step parent, you know, I think about that stuff a lot. And I like deal with a lot of people who are addicted and like, one guy I was trying to help like hung himself. And it was because he didn't want to quit his job to go to rehab. And my son lives with me And I got to pay the rent and

I said like we'll figure that out, but you're gonna die, you know, and he's like not any hung himself It's like But like for your child, you know like I'm so So lucky so blessed that my daughter is On her own a very amazing young woman like on her enemy and I say on her own like she she was the driving force of any success she's had in her life. How old was she when you went to prison for that? So long-standing. Yeah so she she was three and so I was up until then I was like a dad, but I wasn't a good dad in any you know like I would

Her mother worked in the mornings and so I would take I was with her every morning Which was great and like I have some really cool meant like we had tea time You know so I wasn't like I think about a lot of this stuff And I wondered why people would still like come see me and jail and write me and like all this stuff. And it was because I wasn't a terrible person, right? And as we learned in Kern, a maximum security prison, I didn't meet too many terrible people there either. No.

No, right? Yeah, correct. So she was three when I went to prison, impactful things about that were like, I spent a lot of time with her before that. It wasn't, it was obviously not caring about myself, but she told me, I robbed this guy, he was a drug dealer, he told me he was going to kill me, he actually, like it sounds stupid, but he like set me up, he paid somebody to put me in a car and bring me to a place and like unbeknownst to me. He called me a bunch of times told me he was gonna kill me. I told him like really frankly a number of times like please leave me alone like I have a gun in my pocket I'll shoot you and you'll go to the hospital and I'll go to jail and like I this is a terrible way to end the day

And that's what happened like he pulled up he jumped out I jumped out and I shot him in the chest. He ran away, I ran away. Later that night, I called a friend of mine, he told me to turn myself in, I did. And it was December 21, 2003. On Christmas, I called my father's house, my daughter was there, and I remember very vividly him saying, Mackenzie, do you want to talk to your father? And her saying, no, he'll be here. And thinking, no, right? Meanwhile, she just wrote her acceptance letter to college based on that experience, starts with that experience.

She knew how to grab people, I think. Then the next one was, I called one day, and she said, I thought you were never gonna leave. And she was four maybe, right? And it was true. Like I had told her that and I had meant it, you know? Thankfully. So I got sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.

For shooting a guy for assault. I pled guilty to assault. When you shot him, did you, I mean, you think he was gonna die maybe? What were you thinking? Like, I wanna make sure he does not die, but he gets the message.

I mean, was there any, no. The reason I asked this, by the way, is that when I was at Hopkins, I mean, it was a very busy trauma center. And so, I don't, I think the numbers back then were more. Probably 16 penetrating traumas a day on average. Maybe 16 gunshot or knife wound a day on average. It's probably less today, but probably not much less.

Call it 10 a day even. But what you realize is 95% of it is drug related. But what I couldn't believe was the ubiquity of death. I mean, I just couldn't believe how many people could kill each other. And of course, it's quite random. I see guys that came in that were shot 16 times that would live. Clearly, that guy wasn't intended to live. And then you see guys that get like this one random shot that happens to cross their pelvis, and that's the one that kills them, because it hits like their iliac vein, and that's an almost lethal injury.

And yeah yeah yeah like we'd get guys with single gunshot wounds to the chest that got so lucky you know like they'd be out of the hospital in three days. This guy again medical like medical miracle they said I think I don't know because it wasn't any of my business to know but I think it bounced off his sternum and deflected down, but like right in front of his heart. Never reached terminal velocity. So there's another example of if you had been two inches to the left of the sternum, if a bullet going through the heart is a lethal injury, non-negotiable. There are lots of other ways to kill somebody shooting them in the chest, but there's another example of like you could you could add up the ledger of all the things

that went against you and then all the times the wind was at your back. Yeah, and a lot of times in the same instance. Exactly. You know, that gets even crazier too, like how that played out, but that continues to happen, right? Did you know you had hit effectively your rock bottom at that point? Like, when did the gravity of that situation? I wish I had. Believe it or not.

So I didn't screw my head on straight the next day. No, no, I get it. But did you, I guess what I'm asking you is, because it doesn't mean that you hit it. I was relieved. You were relieved to go to prison? Yeah. I knew that this was gonna end.

Like what was happening was gonna end. A major change was gonna happen. Think about how sad that is. It's terrible. Like about how sad it is. I didn't realize that. The idea that you could finally go someplace where there's structure,

you're probably safer inside than you were outside. A lot less choices. Yeah. I wasn't gonna, like, you can't. You can't continually disappoint people if you're already like a, I joke today, but I'm like, people have such low expectations of me because I'm an ex-fellon that like, I say, please,

and thank you and they're like, what a fucking gentleman he is. Yeah, yeah, you got it. He lifts the toilet seat up when he pees. That puts him amazing. This is in the sink, right? Yeah. So, yeah, sentenced to eight and a half years. And it wasn't the end.

Like, I slept for two weeks when I first got there. I spent, were your parents with you when you were sentenced? Yes. So, here's a real kind of funny one. My parents were with me the whole time. This first one's not funny. My mother came to see me and like the amazing mother, she said, this is what she says to me. and like the amazing mother she is, she said,

this is what she says to me. I think the first time she visits me in jail after I shot somebody. Okay, honey, you need to start thinking about what you're going to do when you get out of here and how you're going to put the pieces together. And to her credit, she didn't slap me because I said, Mom, the sooner you realize that this is who I am, that I'm going to get out and I'm going to rob people and I'm going to go back to jail and I'm going to do drugs realize that this is who I am, that I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna rob people and I'm gonna go back to jail and I'm gonna do drugs. And this is my life, the sooner you'll feel better about this. And I'm sure, I think she probably just said,

oh, okay honey, basically you're not there yet, but we'll work on it. And came back with a good attitude the next time. And that's what I believed and that's that self-talk and that's that bullshit, it. And that's that bullshit. Like, you know, like it's my fault. I stayed. I, you know, and that's what cat hoax in that program. That's what Kern. That's a big part of their curriculum is like, now let's turn that around. Like, maybe there was some things you did. But like, what are we going to do now?

Right? And so they were both there with me, both of them are attorneys. My father's a prosecutor for 30, 40 years. My mom was a defense attorney, right? My mom's like a hippie. My dad's like a, just kind of straight shooter. He's not a politician. He's not a, he's just kind of a good guy, right? They get this fantastic lawyer. Obviously, he does it for free. Like one of Buffalo's best lawyers is like, no, I'm going to do it for you guys because you're, you're good people or whatever and He gets me the steel for eight and a half years So they pull me in and I have to agree to it and I'm like okay

But it's like agree to this on the spot, right? Like trials. What was the alternative? So you pled to Assault a pledge to assault play guilty to assault. I was charged. I see you're gonna be charged with attempted murder. Attemptive murder, assault, and possession of a weapon. And there was a 50-50 chance that I could have won because I had brain damage, because he came after me, because there was a call record, because there was witnesses. However, I still had a gun in my pocket. Like I got up that morning and put a gun in my pocket. So even if I did win a trial, I'm going to still be found guilty of having a firearm and intending to use it. And that carries a minimum of like seven years or something

like that. It was like, if even if I win and I get the best possible, I'll come at seven years, right? So it was like, okay, or possibly more. So they, they work out a deal, you know, like backroom deal, like eight and a half years And like it is and keep in mind another thing that we saw it current Which is how many of those guys would have never had the opportunity you even had there right right? Yeah, you know like a good lawyer They wouldn't have a good lawyer. They wouldn't have had the parents there They wouldn't have had somebody looking out for their best interest and That's how those guys are going to like those guys end up on a path to life in prison. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's They need like an advocate, right?

So my mom my mom says take the deal my dad says no, and that's kind of the funny story It's like so here is like the two people I probably respect the most on the planet. They're split Yeah, and they're split that like come on on. Like, can you just, can you just, can you agree? For what? Go in the back room and argue and come out with a unified answer. Yeah, like, and the funny thing is,

like, as far as advice and intelligence and stuff, like, not that my, I don't think my mom's smart, but I feel like my mom's emotional, and I feel like my dad can separate himself from that better and make more informed decisions. I went against him. I was like, nah, because in this instance, and this is kind of indicative of my father

and my relationship, he was like, no, like you're special. Like you're not supposed to get eight and a half years. Like somebody's supposed to come in at this point and say, he's a good kid, give him five or something. You know, and I could see it in his eyes and I was like, I'm taking this deal. So I did. And I went downhill in there for a couple of years.

Like I still had something. What happened your first night in there? The first night, or like first night in prison, or first night in jail? Don't first night in jail. First night in prison, first night in prison. When it's all, like the worst day I think I had, it was repeatedly was like the first day because they they have a thing in New York

state prisons called the draft and they they pack you up they tell you they say Mr. ITA you're on the draft pack all your stuff up you'll be going on a bus tomorrow and you have no idea where and every time I mean like prisons like a new high school right and so new cool kids new cool kids. New cool kids, new bad kids, new good kids, new teachers to impress, new, you know what I mean? Like the whole thing, but with like knives. And, you know what I mean? In heroin instead of like pot.

So it's like, okay, this is serious business. Like, there's a bunch of first nights, because you go through a real dehumanizing process of the whole shapes ahead thing, the whole naked shower thing. Like that's real, like it's not bullshit. And then you have like one pair of pants, one pair of underwear, and you have no idea where you're going.

And you go to another jail, and you stay there for like two months until you end up at the place you're gonna go. And at the place I was gonna go was a super max correction Facility in New York. And it was, it looks like a spaceship from the inside. It actually looked a lot like, not like current because there's only, there's one hallway

that connects everything. But it looked like a spaceship in some way. It's man, that's like this huge bubble. And this one big, really big like a Aryan type look and dude, like you could like could see it and he was like yeah, you fucked up like cuz I was just like kind of like wide-eyed Like what what's like what's happening? You know dragging like a potato sack of my clothes and he's like yeah, you fucked up, dude And I was just like I mean I don't know if I was like terrified, but I was just like, what's around the corner? Like, gotta be aware. Yeah.

Do you remember the first night there at your ultimate destination? No. You have a roommate? Yeah, so I'm a, yeah, so I'm a coach. Coach was a piece of shit. That's healthy, here's that. Coach was a piece of shit. Healthy, here's that.

Yeah, and he was actually a good guy to me then, but he was like a pedophile that was hiding and like told this great story about how he had like smashed some guy with an asterisk because he tried to rob a restaurant but he ended up in jail for it because he heard him so bad. And he was the next military guy and he was the coach of football. And and it really he was like a coach because he had no kids and he was a creep, right? But how do guys tell their story in there? Cause if you're a pedophile, I'm guessing you don't want to advertise that at all. No. So they typically hide and they hide in different things. They hide and religion. All right. Like the Catholic church kind of thing,

or like a black pedophile would most likely be in a religion, like a black or a religion, like a Muslim, right? Like in jail, that's how things are kind of segregated, unfortunately. But, and then like the chaplains, like assistant, is most likely a pedophile who spends all this time with like the chaplain trying to reform his soul or whatever. But they tell a story, you know, they come up with a story, everybody's got their story,

right? And in jail, it's kind of like Facebook. Nobody knows you from home, you know, like what's the chance that you're going to see your buddy from like Ontario Street, you know, like really, I mean, like, so like everybody's got their own, like, no, I didn't steal purses. I was like, I was like a carstee for the Albanian mob, like, no, okay, but you don't have any cigarettes. Like, all right, like, sir, you need to borrow a stamp.

Like, it's kind of a common joke. Like, oh, yeah, you need to borrow a stamp, but you were a kingpin status in the, you know, it's bullshit. So how did you navigate those seven years? I mean, I know that it would take us another seven hours to get through probably everything you went through emotionally and probably physically and spiritually for that matter.

But what's the general arc? Sounds like it went down before it went up. It did. I was reading a journal on the flight here of when I got clean in jail. Like I kept a journal off and on for the whole time and I have them all and they're kind of interesting. Sometimes frightening to read.

But first, you know, continued drug use. This is my sound like a naive question because I remember being surprised to see how much drug use there was in prison, but given how much can be controlled in prison, I was sort of surprised at how easy it was to get drugs in there. A lot of it comes in through visits. A lot of states, I guess, don't have contact visits, what they call contact visits, where you can kiss and hug and stuff. But a lot of stuff comes in from guards too,

like one of my buddies who's successfully released from parole a couple weeks ago in Rochester, New York. I still talk to all the time. He had a kitchen worker, a civilian they call him, bringing him in drugs for money. Because it's, I mean, What's the best currency in prison? Because cash, does cash have a lot of value? None. Cash has no value really because you can't do it. I mean, what's the best currency in prison? Because cash, does cash have a lot of value?

Not. Cash has no value really because you can't do it. I mean, you gotta get it out. That's like a job. Yeah. Cigarettes, cartons of cigarettes, they call them crates, stamps, and like books of stamps, like a hundred stamps.

There's a lot of gambling in prison, like football gambling and stuff like that, and they use stamps. And then you can send money to somebody's family loved one whatever. So that's that's the real currency beyond like inside. There's people that are selling like a good amount of heroin or now it's probably suboxygen and stuff like that in prison and that's what they do You know send your girlfriend's gonna send my girlfriend a hundred fifty dollars ten times right? Oh, yeah

That's the drugs. Yeah, so it went down like I was in and out of solitary a bunch of times for like I you know I didn't have a lot of problems in jail a lot of I think the scars on my head and like I Don't know what it was but a lot of guys didn't give me a lot of trouble and that was I think the scars on my head and like, I don't know what it was, but a lot of guys didn't give me a lot of trouble. And that was, I'm grateful for that. I'm really grateful for that. Did you have to, or did you feel pressured to become affiliated with any of the gangs? Presumably, they would have loved you in the area in Brotherhood.

Yeah. I hated those guys. So, it's kind of a goofy, so I'm in this jail called El Maira Correctional Facility. It's one of the New York State Correctional. So it's real old, Shawshank Redemptiony. It's like the big kind of corridor, 44 cells long. I could paint you the picture, but you, unless you've seen like a movie,

like you can't so. So they have a porter that like delivers food and brings you water to like wash your body with and stuff like that. And the one of them was a guy named Lee Roy Brown. I remember because of it, right? And so on. And he was big and he was black,

but he was cool as a fan too. But he, and then the other one was like this Arian dude, right? And he was like big and bald and white. And so the Arian dude sells me three cigarettes for three stamps, but he never brings me to cigarettes, but I gave him the stamps. So I'm thinking I got eight years to do. Like I can't allow this to happen, right?

And this was my attitude. So this is kind of how I got through the first four years. And so they open the doors for a shower, whatever, and we're all supposed to come out and that line and line up. And I go running to where he is and just jump on him, like a rabbit. I was probably like 150 pounds still right like I have stretch marks from pull-ups because

I was so skinny when I got to jail and I'm not a big guy right so I like jump on this guy and like started attacking him and the cops come and they pull me off and like Lee Roy comes to my cell later he's like do what the like what the fuck is it? Like, why would you do that? And I was like, oh, he played me for three stamps. Like, and Lee where I was like, I like, I gotta give you the cigarettes too. Like, you didn't have to do all that crazy shit. And I remember telling him like, no, man, I got eight years to do. Like, I can't.

And so ever since then, I really didn't like a lot of those. I don't like gangs. I really and ugly, ugly. It's it's more pimps. It's more pimps. It's more pimps of hurt people. And the other thing that's really impactful is a lot of the people that were in those detention centers with me when I was a kid and stuff are all in jail, right?

They're just hurt kids, man. And gang leaders are pimps. They sign kids up who are scared and afraid and don't have anything, and they tell you, we'll give you stuff, we'll give you somebody to talk to will be your friends will walk around with you And then honestly what most of them do is they get drugs from somebody else like the leader will get the drugs And then they'll tell the kid you got to go cut that guy he's a snitch And if you don't cut them we're gonna cut you. Yeah, it's like what the fuck like why are you?

I was amazed at how often I heard that story all the time Right we were together when we got to current remember how they said the day before we got there Oh my god You'd you attack on the guards? Complete lockdown was a couple of guys that were a day away from getting out. Yeah, like they were working in the front of like insecure probably they could have walked out and they probably to got hurt but like and I remember talking to the warden and saying you know Like a sort of naive idiot. I'm like I don't understand how a guy who's been in jail for 15 years Who's three days away from getting out would attack the guards?

Which it just it doesn't you know the only explanation is the guy doesn't want to leave prison. And he's like, yeah, where the other explanation is he was basically told he had to do this, or he was going to die, or yeah, exactly, or someone he cared about was going to die. And it's like, they just didn't want to let their gang member go. You know what just hit me as you were saying that, it's like if, if, because it didn't make sense to my mom either, right? And it didn't make sense to my dad and it doesn't make sense to people like, so if it doesn't make sense, like instead of getting mad, something's wrong.

You know, so like one of the things that like may help is like, what's wrong? Or, you know, and that's set a lot, but like, what can I do? I know something's wrong. You know, because if it doesn't make sense, it's obviously something is wrong here. Like, you don't, that's a so unnatural of an act to hurt yourself in that way, right? To stay in the environment, to hurt somebody that's gonna give you more time.

And it's just, I don't know. So during the first four years, your daughter basically is going from the ages of three to seven. Yeah. And how often did you get to see her? Again, thankful to my parents, I got to see her every month. And I think one of the major reasons that I started to turn things around or one of the things that was most impactful to me is I was calling her every Wednesday.

And she would go to my father's house every Wednesday night and I would call home and I would talk to her every Wednesday. And every time this kid... How long were you allowed to talk? 30 minutes about. I mean, I could call back again and thankful today now and today's prison system, it's so overrun with gangs that a non-affiliated guy has a hard time even using a phone ever, like just you can't.

Like unless you're, you know, back at the prison where you spent the majority of your time, what percentage of guys would be unaffiliated? A lot. Here's a funny thing. So since 14 to 25, 25 is after the first four years of my incarceration, I didn't live in one place for more than six months, right? Including prison. Like they moved me from prison to prison because I was acting up. Every six months or eight months maybe, you know. I didn't stay in any place for a long and my daughter, what was impactful to me was that somebody would hand me drugs on a Wednesday afternoon and I would forget to call her. And the thing is with me, I don't know about anybody else,

but I wanted to be a good dad, right? And I't know about anybody else, but I wanted to be a good dad, right? And I wanted to be a good son and I wanted to be a good brother. But when it came time to choose those things, it didn't become a choice between one and the other. It just became like, well, I had, I've come up with a list of reasons why I should and why it was okay. And a lot of times it was momentarily.

It was like somebody say, hey, here's 25 of these, right? And I'd say, okay, give them to me. And I'd eat them all. And then I'd be coming back from the yard at 10 o'clock at night and I'd pass the phones and I'd realize I hadn't called. And then I went to solitary and I wrote my father and said, can you tell her the phones are broken? And he said, nah, I'm done lying to her for you.

Like, if you want to lie to her, you can lie to her. And I couldn't, you know. How long were you in solitary the first time? Every time, other than one, 30 days. And I think it was probably like six times. One time was 48 days or something. We met these guys who had been in solitary for years at a time, including one guy who I think had spent 12 or 13 years in solitary and he was only 30 years old.

He was only 30, huh? Yeah. What solitary like? I mean, first of all, what are the dimensions? I mean, what are the rules of engagement? And all honesty, I think the worst part about solitary for me was getting there. So you're kind of like marched through a compound or through a prison handcuffed and you're not treated like kindly or softly in any way, right? You're a threat at this point. Your handcuff being on your back and your arms are up and probably rightfully so, right? But when you get there, the odd thing to me is it's like reminiscent of the abuses that I've suffered over my life because it's a very, very tight rope to walk.

Like you're in a room with probably five guards. They're all gassed up and you have to take your clothes off like piece by piece while you're facing a wall and its directions like take your left sock off with your right hand, which in that instance become very charged, right? And it's like Jesus Christ, I hope I don't do this with the wrong hand. And if you do, like your head goes off a wall and then you're like and then you're on the ground and then you're back up and then you're trying to do it again and like it's like somebody slapping you in the head telling you answer a question answer the question like and so for me that was like really difficult. I just like I said I think it brought me back to like abuse when I was

a kid but um being in the cell wasn't the worst thing for me. How big is the cell? She's maybe eight by ten six by ten something like that. It wasn't I don't know. It was big enough that you could be on a bunk, which had to be at least six feet, because I'm six feet, right? So probably seven feet long, maybe five feet wide. You couldn't put your arms out in the width of the cell. In one or two, I had been in one where I couldn't, and that was in Buffalo.

That was like an extra special solitary room, really. And you're in there 23 hours a day? Yeah, most of the time. So I mean, like if it's in New York, your wreck is outside, so maybe a damn fool to go out there. The funny thing is, if you ask to go to wreck in the winter, they get mad and they leave you out there for two hours. And like literally you're jumping jacks,

like you're doing jump a jacks just to stay warm, but like you don't have enough calories and you should be doing jump a jacks. Like you're doing jump attacks just to stay warm, but you don't have enough calories and you should be doing jump attacks to stay warm either. The food was an issue, but I read a lot. I probably read a thousand books or more when I was in prison. I don't know, I'd say more. I just read and read and read.

And the thing is when I read these journals too, even in those first couple of years, I was trying to be better, but I wasn't deducting that to be better. Maybe you need to subtract the drugs and alcohol. That just can't be an option anymore. Maybe you've abused that. Right.

So interesting that you say that my brother is also a prosecutor, and he has a couple of boys. He's always toyed with writing an article called Everything I Learned About, And he has a couple of boys. He's always toyed with writing an article called Everything I Learned About. The criminals I prosecute I learned from my sons. Because he's like basically like, we're all kind of born as criminals.

We're born rebels. Yeah, yeah, like we're, you know, we have to learn, you know, once we develop a prefrontal cortex, we have to learn the boundaries and the rules and things like that. And so I was telling him this story about my older son who's like almost four. And he's, you know, if he were an adult, he'd be a sociopath.

But, you know, he's just a, He's a four-year-old. He's a cute little four-year-old who's problematic. I was talking to the grocery store the other day, just to get him out of the house. And I mean, he's, ah, he's just, he's like such a little dick sometimes, you know, I mean, like, I know he goes and bites apples and he takes one bite of an apple

and throws it, takes one bite of an apple and throws it. And it's like, I'm like, Reese. And you know, and he, like, and he takes this shopping cart and rams it into other people. And he's just like, it ended the day. Like, you can't even take the kid grocery show. So I'm, the part that I told my brother that made me think of what you just said, as I said, you know, the funniest thing that Reese says is, sometimes I'll sit him down and I'm like, buddy, why are you being so bad? And he's like, I want to.

And then other times I'll say, Reese, why don't you just try to be good, man? And he's like, I don't want to. So simple. But then there are other times like when I'm putting him to bed and he's in a better space, then I'll be like, Reesi, man, it was a tough day today, buddy. It's a tough day, man.

You really created a lot of problems. Do you think tomorrow could be a better day? And he's like, and he'll cry, and it just breaks your heart, and he goes, he goes, daddy, I wanna be good, I just don't know how to. And I thought of you, a second ago with what you said, it's like you wanted to be good.

I mean, you didn't want this, you didn't want to be sitting in solitary confinement. I didn't wanna not be able to call my, like let this girl down, like you gotta be able to do better than that. But I didn't know. Yeah, I mean that to me, is like part of this mystery of this cycle of shame.

Because all that trauma is long behind you, but now what you're dealing with is just the complete morass of shame that has engulfed you. And I had owned it at that point. It wasn't even, it was like, you're just a... I had these to say, like, I feel like I'm born bad, and that's all there is to it. Like, it wasn't a feeling anymore, it was like you're just a, I used to say like I feel like I'm born bad and that's all there is to it. Like it wasn't a feeling anymore, it was a truth. Yeah, and I'm sure that biologists will debate it forever and sociologists and criminologists and whatever. I'm not sure I buy that people are born bad. Maybe, but I, I think

Occam's razor, well I don't know what Occam's razor would say here. Maybe it would say that there's enough random permutations that some people are just born bad, but I I have a hard time believing that I think that there are lots of bad people out there There's no doubt about it or people who Something bad happens and they just go down a path and they're unrecoverable errors But I think that more quote unquote bad people more of those guys that we were meeting Yeah, I mean, I didn't get the sense any of them wanted to be bad. I got the sense that a lot of them wanted what you wanted. None of those guys until DeFi was in there had the playbook, right?

Or the belief. Like so my parole officer came to my house when I had been released from prison and we we got a good rapport and And he said, Corey, why do you think nobody makes it? And I said because there's a fear of failure and a lack of hope. And those aren't factual things and they fluctuate. There's more to it, obviously, than that. But when you are in that position and you don't, I don't wanna be a failure either.

All right, I'm a loser, fine. But like let me be a good loser. Like where people, like I got my own TV time in jail. Like all right, well, and I got cigarettes and nobody fucks with me. Yeah, I'm at least, and so these guys, they go there and like one of the guys we were with, he was, the warden had talked to us about him.

And he was like a mastermind in jail, selling drugs, right? And so in here, he's like, I think it's hard to even understand the risk he's taking by taking himself out of what he's like a master at, right? And saying like, okay, I'm gonna try this other thing even though I don't believe it, right? And like every day telling himself,

there's a possibility that this could be real for me. There's a possibility. Yeah, I think as you said, I like the way you described it, which is Defi gives these guys a playbook. I was going to say it much less eloquently, which is, the guys know what the objective is. I don't want to be here, and I want to live a better life, but they don't have the strategy or the tactics to do it. Because why would you? I mean, if you had the strategy and the tactics, the probability that you'd be there in the first place is probably quite low. And so, I mean, I do take some comfort in knowing that perhaps one

of the most, well, it might be one of the only major bipartisan things that seems to be relatively uniformly agreed to when the right and the left is criminal justice reform. Yeah. Whether you come at it from the standpoint of social justice or fiscal responsibility, nobody wins. You can't make a case for anybody winning in this situation. That makes sense. So what turns you around four years into this?

So it'd be silly to say that one thing did, right? No. Just like one thing didn't get you in there. No, and you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about this too. And it was a combination of a bunch of things. There was this one guy from Queens, this crazy guy. He was like a biker from Queens,

and he always just said, you don't have to live like this, right? But he'd be like, come to the AA meetings, and I believe this fucking nut. Like, leave me alone, you weirdo have to live like this, right? But he'd be like, come to the AA meetings. And I'd be like, this fucking nut. Like, leave me alone, you weirdo. And he was a cool guy. But then there was this other kid who could have been me, another white kid who had just finished doing eight years

and was back to do five. And he was telling me how happy he was with his life. And he would walk by the mirror when he was home, right? And he'd feel good and look good. And then he went out and he had a drink. And then he had two drinks. And then he did some coke coke and then he knew he was going to go back to jail and all he had to do was stop and he couldn't stop and he committed a crime and he ended up back for five years. And then there was this girl who I had given Malta Malt to when I was like 15 or 16 who had like

overdosed from coke. She came to visit me out of the blue. And she had brought me like an AA book. And she was like here, and I'd like used it as like to prop my bed up, you know? And she came like continuously, like every six months, eight months, she would be like, hey, how are you? How are you doing? And her life was like, she was like selling insurance

in Maine and had like her picture on the side of buses. And she's like pretty, right? She's like a really pretty girl. I was like, how the fuck did you end up in Maine selling insurance and I ended up in here and she's like well I stopped doing drugs dude. And she came to see you. Yeah and that's the amazing thing. It's huge right like I made it a habit to when I wasn't listening even more right like if you're listening it's like oh I'm selling something and they're buying, but like selling green piece on the street in New York is like a hard sale. And she was doing that. And you know, and I wasn't, I wasn't able to call when I should be

calling and I could see it. And my life wasn't getting any better. And I could see that like, I was putting this thing or these things in front of the growth that I really wanted, right? I'm reading all the right books. I was reading like Carlos Castaneda and the four agreements and all this stuff and it wasn't sticking. Why isn't it sticking? Like because you're still hurting yourself and you don't believe that like you can be different. So those two girls came on like here, here you go with like the stories. They came on the same day that some guys were coming to bring me some drugs. The girl who was coming to give me this message of hope and stuff. And she comes with another girl who I grew up with and who I'm still friends with to this

day. And they didn't like, you got to get clean, you got to get sober, you got to go to like AA and you got to pray. And they didn't do any of this. They just loved me and they were like, yeah, we're not selling ourselves, isn't that great? And I was like, wow, good for you. And they were like, dude, you look like you're kind of like torn. And I was like, wow, good for you. And they were like, dude, you look like you're kind of like torn. And I was like, yeah, I'm afraid.

And they were like, what are you afraid of? And I was like, I'm afraid that this is the rest of my life. That in and out of here, the sad, I just kind of want to not go to visits anymore. I just want to hide in here and never. And they were like, dude, if you don't drink, and do drugs, you won't come back here. You're a good guy. you're just buried and shit. And I think I bought it for a minute. And it happened to be Father's Day,

and it happened to be 11 years ago. And I haven't since then had a drink or a drug. And that, I think, has, in a lot of ways, allowed me to save my life and allow me to receive a lot of help from other people. And so I started doing like real work. Like I was reading the journals on the way here, but I like started reading, rereading

some of those books and like thinking how can I apply these to my life. And like in those journals, there's stuff like okay, like I had like an outburst today. And how can I see that outburst coming? Like not in the moment, but days ahead, right? Like how does my attitude shift before I punch somebody in the face or challenge a guard to a fight like and it was real it was like okay Like you start complaining about your circumstances instead of appreciating your your circumstances, right? And then very soon like it's okay to do these things, right?

Whereas if you appreciate your life, it's not. And obviously, I had bad days and I had a ton of support, right? I went to a halfway house upon release. I worked with counselors in jail. I went to solitary, like, clean and sober, too. I still, I thought it was okay to like, steal from the commissary. I think I told you guys about that earlier. We're like embezzling

funds while we're in jail. Yeah, I had lessons to learn. I still think that like, I had I not been in there for the like first four years of my change. That change may or may not have happened. Like we talked about like one thing can kind of switch the course of the life. And I needed to get like really grounded in who I thought I was. And I think one of the biggest things Peter and I was talking to this guy this morning about it in Queens was that I had to stop caring about what other people thought so much. I would I learned to do like some yoga and some stretches and some meditation stuff from books, right? And I would get up at 5 a.m. to do it because nobody else was up.

And this guy I knew got up one morning and he like made a noise as he went by like a shame. And I jumped in my bed like I was seven. Like I jumped in the bed and like put the covers. And I was like, what the fuck? Why am I afraid to be good? Right? Like why am I afraid to like take care of myself? Right? Like, I have to be tough. Like, fuck them. Like, and the funny thing is that the less

tough I am, like, today dealing with these guys in jail. Like, I told one of the guys in jail about like, some of these abuses, right? And, and he was like, the minute I told him he was like, dude, thank you. Like, me too. Right? But like, I can't tell anybody that because like we're bad, we're supposed to be bad and tough and defensive. And but anyway, I had to like learn to love,

to like fight for myself. When I was going through some stuff, I was in a place where we had to, you know, go to a 12-step meeting every single night. So even if you weren't, you know, they were all open meetings. So you would go even if single night. So even if you weren't, you know, they were all open meetings. So you would go even if you weren't to, if you weren't in alcoholic,

you'd still go to the AA meeting or the NA meeting or the SA meeting or all those things. But, you know, the part of the country we were in, which is super rural, I mean, I saw things I just couldn't imagine. And I got to tell you, I never said a single word at any of these meetings, you know, but I took

something so powerful from it. I was so moved by some of the things that people admitted to in terms of like awful things that had happened to them and awful things that they had done. And that, you know, I know that people are quite critical of 12-step programs. And I don't, I mean, again, I think part of it comes down to assuming that one solution works for everybody. And that's just, you know, obviously, intorrect in any walk of life. Addiction shouldn't be an exception to that. But there actually is something quite powerful about that process. And I have many patients who, maybe some of one of the most successful people I've ever met.

They'll still spend four days a week going to their meeting, you know, whether it's NA, Alonon, AA, a lot of them, they'll go and they'll say, you know, I haven't spoken in four years, but that's, you know, for me, it's not about being the smartest guy in the room. It's about being grounded in the struggle. I have like mixed emotions about 12 sub programs, but I generally in the struggle. I have mixed emotions about 12 set programs, but I generally like the steps. And so the old school, minnowedown or whatever steps are, like admit fault, clean house and help others.

That's like the old school, like, one, two, three. And it's funny because in defies, like in the podcast with Tim Ferris and Cat Hulk, they got through some of the actual curriculum. And a lot of that curriculum is stuff that's in different 12 step programs, right? It's like taking, like saying, hey, I can't handle this first, right?

And then saying, I need some help. And then saying, like, I believe that I can receive that help and change this. And then saying, okay, what's my fault? And then saying, here's the things I've done. Am I really that bad? And then saying, how can I fix those things? And then saying, okay, I need to take an inventory.

And then, how can I help other people? And that's fantastic. But I think once you put a name on anything, it gets a little complicated. Yeah, I think once people become so anchored to maybe every single rule, every single religion about it, once it becomes a religion, it becomes problematic. Really? But the interesting, but it's sort of like my view on these things is you've got to take a Bruce Lee approach. So, you know, if you if you understood how well how Bruce Lee created jute kundo

He said look every martial art boxing wrestling all these fighting forms each of them has something to offer and each of them has things that are Utterly useless and we'll get you killed in a street fight I want to absorb what is useful discard what is useless and create this perfect thing jute kundo And in many ways, what you might extract from AA might be different than what I would extract from it, but I do think that there is value in these steps, and you just articulate it really well. Yeah, it's kind of the interesting thing, and like I said, I've kind of got mixed emotions about it because I still go to an unfairly regular basis.

But the interesting thing is I'll ask myself because I don't want to ever get stuck in one thing, right? And I always want to stay open-minded. And like I said, I think it allowed me this time and space to extract one thing from the mixture and then learn how to handle life again. It gave me a curriculum whereas I didn't have a curriculum like the guys at the Phi do. It gave me a playbook for getting morals back, right? Like you shouldn't lie.

You know, it's like, okay, well, that could give me in trouble. Well, then don't do the things that'll make you feel uncomfortable or to lie, you know, and like get you in trouble. And again, like, there's once it becomes a religionist, like there's a lot of interesting, just, you know, to say it plainly, like weird and kind of creepy motherfuckers in A-A-N-A-S-A-A, right? There's people in those places that are looking to sell drugs. So I ask myself, why am I here? And there's, there's like one group I go to that's like a straight up tribe of really cool men, right? Like good men. And I love going to see these guys. It's like 7, 15. And the funny thing is it's like in a temple, like a Jewish temple. And it's like this group of guys in the morning. And we all kind of joke. And it's good. You know,

there's like good people there. We all help each other in life around the community everything. But then I go because I like the humility of the situation, right? I like to realize that I've been there and I can go there. Some really important things for me in life are like gratitude, right? Like gratitude and humility. And then like there's a really good group of people that I can help. And I have the capabilities of trying to help. And for me, again, the values there, like the value in my life is there. Like money is good, but I've been really,

really broken eight, like noodles, like college kids for years and years. And like, I don't really give a shit as long as I can, I don't look at prices of food thankfully these days but like I don't have to worry about a lot of stuff. So if I can help people with my spare time other than my own family, like all right cool, I'll go find some guys that like have the same issues as me and that's a great place for it.

But again, I'm not an allegiance kind of guy. Like I don't pledge allegiance to anything, you know? So how long before you were released, did you find out you were gonna be released? Because it's not like you got a lot, got out a little earlier than you were. I did, I got seven years. My guy, did you impress me with your intelligence

in your memory? But, no, I just, what's funny, you know, I was a math major, so I was able to go eight and a half minus seven and a quarter and know that that was like a number bigger than one. That's all. Yeah, here's my guy. Yeah, that's that's all. But you've remembered it from an hour or so ago, but so you get determinant and indeterminate sentences, right? And like an indeterminate is sentences, right? And like an indeterminate is a three to six, right? Or one to three. And then a determinant is a set sentence. But in New York State, you can do 85% of

your time unless you don't satisfy certain requirements and get into trouble. And I happen to satisfy those requirements and all the trouble I got into wasn't Serious enough to take any of that time But I think they were still possibly gonna take some of that time which was kind of nerve-wracking I remember I had to go like see somebody to Make sure that they were gonna give me that time and that was nerve-wracking because like I didn't want to tell my daughter Yeah, so are expectations a little bit or no. Yeah I didn't want to tell my daughter. Yeah, set her expectations a little underdown. Yeah.

When you have that hearing where they said, yep, we're going to commute your sentence to 85%. How long from that moment until you are out the door? Probably three months, three months, six months, the longest, probably three months, 90 days. So was there any period of time in there when you were actually afraid to get out? Terrified.

Yeah, like I almost sabotaged. I got, I was playing soccer and it was a perfect storm. Like some guy was picking on some kid and like slammed him into the bleachers and like heard him pretty bad. Right, so you can win on both counts because you can still honor your code of being good but still get what you want, which is, you know, a longer sentence. It's like still, it's crazy because it's like my girlfriend jokes, like it's my fantasy to like catch the bad guy, like that's beating up like some kid or girl.

And it's so obvious based on what happened to you, right? Like when you look back, it makes a total sense, right? It's like you want to go back and catch that guy. You want to catch that fucker before he does it. You want to be there to protect the seven-year-old you. I joke around about wanting to be being somebody up, but that's why. When I was growing up, there was a really, really famous case guy called the Scarborough rapist.

His name was Paul Bernardo, eventually caught. He ended up living about three streets over from me. I went to the same grade school and everything like that. He was several years old, and obviously didn't know him. But he really terrorized Scarborough, which was the borough of Toronto I grew up in. Eventually, he and his wife got caught after they'd killed three girls, including his wife's sister being one of them. I mean, it was a the most ridiculous fucked up situation in the world. And, you know, certainly one of the most infamous cases in Canadian legal history. For reasons I won't get into actually, but during the sort of four years when he

was at large as the Scarborough rapist, you know, a lot of these assaults took place really near where I lived. And I actually only admitted what I'm about to say now for the first time about six months ago in a sort of group setting because it didn't make sense before. And now it kind of made sense. But on Friday nights, after I'd come home

from boxing or martial arts, like I would dress up as a girl and go running in this park, hoping that he would attack me so I could like, you know, get the bad guy. Yeah. So you could, yeah. And I remember telling the story to like my roommate

and he was like, he couldn't believe it. And I was sort of telling it like, it's not a normal thing to do. Wouldn't anybody do that? Like on a Friday night? And he was like, it makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're looking over there going, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it're looking over there going, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's looking at me like that doesn't make any sense, but I, but I get it. I mean, I understand what you're saying. And so how did you fight the urge on that day to not go and correct the long. Well, unfortunately, I really didn't, like I yelled at him. I knocked him over, right?

So he knocked him to get the other guy over. I knocked him over and then I yelled at him, like, what are you gonna do? Like you're not gonna do anything. And he didn't. And then the next day I was like worried because this is prison and like, you know, hurt egos hurt people. So I was like, oh shit, like, so I had some people I know, talk to them and tell them like, just don't go near them. Like don't even go near Corey. And thankfully, I like he didn't and I didn't have to them and tell them, like just don't go near them. Like don't even go near Corey. And thankfully, like he didn't, and I didn't have to worry about it. But really, it was like preparation is what eased the fear.

You know, like getting busy, kind of like you said earlier about addictions or whatever, but like getting busy doing the work to secure yourself, I think helped a lot. But there's, I just picked up a guy the other day, that's little brother, right? And one of the things that connected us, like he has this huge smile on his face, right?

Sweet kid named Edgar, nice guy, 24 years old, big guy. But he's got this smile on his face and this kind of like glow, like a father that just had a baby coming out of a hospital. But if you look deep enough in his eyes, he's scared. And I set it to him and he was like, oh yeah, that's right, you know. That's another example, just by admitting it to him,

it's now he can talk about it. Yeah, so I was afraid, and there's not a lot you can do. I was afraid when I, after I got out, I went to a halfway house for six months. And I didn't want to go there either. I had a laundry list of reasons why I should go get laid and stay with some girls or whatever. And that was just stupid.

And so, and it was like, well, you don't know how to live, really, dude. So you need somebody, you know what I mean? And it was that simple admission. And so I went there and I stayed there. But I was terrified. I remember being terrified that when when's

core you're going to come home. And the other thing that I got to mention is when I first started like going to these meetings or doing this yoga or doing all these kind of like explorative new me type stuff, whatever you want to call it, right? There would always be talk, self-talk, that followed. Like what are you fucking doing? Like, dude, stop. Like you're feeling like you're an imposter or... Yeah, and like, you're wasting time. Why are you doing this?

Yeah, exactly. You can't change. You're like, you're a fuck-up, just admit it. Like, all you're gonna do is hurt everybody again. Don't line it up like this. Just fucking get high. The narrative, right? Oh my god, dude it like I it's why I like cradle like new guys to this because it's like dude like I know you're your biggest enemy right now like all this shit that like and they'll be they'll look at me again and they'll be like how the fuck do you know that you know like how do you know that

I just told myself why are you talking to this fucking weirdo because you want to succeed that's why I so like, because you'd want a better life. So, you know what I mean? But like, it was terrible. And it was terrible then. And I got out and I was terrified. And it was like, when's Corey coming home? I kept looking for me.

So what about that day you went to the, this is one of the first stories that I remember you telling that day is your first day out, out, out. You know, you got a report to the parole. I have the next morning at 8 o'clock in the morning. What happens? So really, again, with the, this is that kind of duality situation,

the wind at my back in the crazy situations, right? So my mother picks me up and kind of show you the time. She had a bunch of CDs like brought CDs. Like, what do you want to listen to, right? So she brings me to Buffalo and the first thing I have to do is check in with parole, like I'm here, I'm in Buffalo. So Google dolls. Yeah, Buffalo.

Yeah, yeah. At a place. That's the first CD I want to listen to. I listen to the Google dolls on a 4th of July in front of the jail. They did a big concert in front of the jail. 4th of July. No way. Yeah. And I'd like watch the fireworks and listen. in front of the jail. They did a big concert in front of the jail, forfeited your life, down to... No way. Yeah, and I'd like watch the fireworks and listen to it.

2004, maybe, or three. So we go to parole and I walk in and I have to check in and the way parole works is your parole officer works on a specific day, whether that's the day you got out or not, you still have to go there, right? You may not see your parole officer, but you're gonna see a parole officer. And they're gonna give you stipulations, they going to give you a day and time to come.

So I check in with this parole officer and he's like a large athletic built black guy, right? And I'm looking at him and not the situation you want to stare anybody in the face, right? And I'm staring him right in the face. And he's like, he gives me this look. And he's like, and I'm staring, I'm right in the face. And he's like, like, he gives me this look. And he's like, like, what's up, dude? And I'm like, I'm sorry, man, like, I don't know. You just look familiar. Not the thing you want to say to your parole officer too, right? Like, yeah, I know you.

Yeah, I visited your daughter before. Like, just not where you want to be. But I don't know why I'm like stepping on my tongue either, right? And because something else was pushing me forward, right? That wind at my back. And he, he looks at me and he's like, well, would you play sports? And I was like, yeah, but I've been in jail for eight years. So like, I like, I don't know how I would know you from sports. And he was like, hold on. Like, Cory McCarthy. And I'm like, yeah, like, oh, shit, Kelly, like

Thunderbird. So it's he worked in that childhood rehab, right? He brought us to A and N meetings. He like, this dude actually taught me a lot about hygiene as a 16 year old kid, right? Like our 15 or 14 year old kid, right? I remember that. He's like, because there were some dirty kids and he brought us all in a room and he like taught us all about hygiene and how to be like hygienic and he's still bringing kids to meetings from that childhood rehab But he he looked me in the face and he was like oh man, and it was funny because he says all right So I guess you relapsed on and I was like well a little bit, you know And he said he said dude as long as you as long as you stay clean this should be a breeze like you won't have any problem

And and not everybody like going back not everybody gets that day, right? Like, that's nobody's day, really. Like that doesn't happen to everybody where it's a familiar face and he's kind and he says like, you can do this, right? I mean, then I went to breakfast with my mother and then I picked my daughter from school for the first time ever and then we went to.

She was 10 years old. She was 11. Yeah, she was 11 years old. And you know, school for the first time ever and then we went to the 11th. Yeah, she was 11 years old. And you know, were you able to keep it together when you put it on? No, I mean, no, I wrote her school a lot too for copies of her report cards and to see how she was doing and to see what I could do if anything.

And it was really embarrassing, but at the same time, it was like, well, like you got to try anything, right? So like I knew some of the people that were teachers there and like one of her favorite teachers was that woman who says the Rosary Fermi sister and like, I mean that's Buffalo too, right? But small town stuff, but yeah, I couldn't keep it together. Dude, I wanted to take her to school fucking you know six years ago And I'd never couldn't so no I wasn't able to keep it together

But she was happy, you know, and she wasn't afraid or nervous. She may have been nervous. That's her story to tell Yeah, but that was that was I mean, that was pretty much my first day and I checked in at the halfway house And I remember I couldn't sleep on a bed. I couldn't sleep on a bed for a couple of months because it was too soft. Like a mattress was too soft. I felt like I was falling on that every time I turned. So I slept on the floor.

How long? Probably three months. It was just more comfortable. Are there any other habits that have kind of stayed with you or anything? Absolutely. So that fear, when I got arrested when I was 12, I continuously cracked every bone in my body in the cell.

Like my wrist, my knuckles, my neck, my knees, my ankles, and I still cracked my neck kind of repetitively. And I think that's from that. And I also, how I battled that fear was I talked to some people about it. They told me it was normal. They told me it'd be more abnormal if I didn't have that fear. But then they also told me, well, you've been home a couple months and you were in jail and everything was going well, like, why don't you just keep doing those things.

And so today, I still do pull-up steps and push-ups on a regular basis. I still run on a regular basis. I still get up in the morning and take time to like take time, right? Like whether it's stretching or yoga or meditation. I still try to read instead of watch TV. I still try to help people and to listen to people.

Like those things got me through those last three and a half years and have gotten me through the past seven years. And I mean, to like, you know, like I have employees. And you know what I mean? Like so, I mean, when we arrived at Kern, it was kind of an interesting situation because you meet him, Devon, Jason, like we kind of went up on our own and we got there a few hours ahead of the whole bus of volunteers and in many ways, that was kind of amazing because they had to improvise, you know, they up and just really briefly telling guys a little bit about yourself and it was amazing to watch the faces of everybody as you said.

Hey look, today I run a small company, I've got this many employees, we're busier than I could ever dream of being, we're turning away people. I mean it was just these guys were looking at you like, really? How is that possible, man? Like, it seems so far from where they were in that moment, but yet you being able to explain what you did and how you got there is infinitely more interesting and relevant than, you know, me standing up there saying, whatever the hell, you know, cat was like, yeah, just tell them what to eat or some shit like that. And I'm like, cat, I'm not gonna fucking stand up there

and just talk about nutrition with these guys. Like it strikes me as like the, like the least interesting thing to talk about, right? But I mean, was there a point when you stopped feeling like an imposter and stopped feeling like a bad person and realized that all the good stuff in your life today, your daughter, the relationship you have with your parents, your girlfriend, your employees, like the people you're helping, like all of this stuff, you're not going to wake up tomorrow and it's going

to be gone, you know? There's not someone around the corner waiting to fuck you over. Yeah, I'm not worried about anybody else. I don't even mean like literally as a person. No, there's no dark force that's going to like... No, I think so, so bringing it right back to current. One of the last exercises we did not even step to the line, right? But the one where we kind of gave a blessing and that's forgiveness, right?

You know, I feel bad for a lot of things I've done in life, but the most is like my daughter, like leaving my daughter, right? And there's days I cry about that today, you know? Like if I start thinking about it and like how beautiful she is, and like I, like she deserved fucking better, right? Like that's what there's, no matter how good today is, like I, like she deserved fucking better, right? Like that's what there's no matter how good today is, like that kid deserved a father when she was three to when she was 11.

But it's more like there's moments. There's a lot of moments where I'm like, like I do deserve this, I've worked for this, this is nice, this is good, and I deserve it, right? And I deserve, there Right? And I deserve. There was a moment where I realized like I deserve somebody that will support me as in a relationship and like as opposed to like somebody else is a gift to me. No, no, no, like I'm I bring shit to the table today, right? In all areas of my life and I see that, but it's more moments than it is all the time and

there's still moments where I'm like, I don't deserve this. And like moments where I, where like, you know, I still doubt myself. You know, it's kind of like the sliding scale, right? Like, so those moments have gotten smaller. The ones where I doubt myself and all that self talk. I barely ever hear that shit anymore.

And now what I hear is, no, you deserve it. You've worked hard. You've gotten a lot of fucking gifts. And you've had a lot of support that other people don't have. So maybe you should try to support some other people. Maybe you should try to get some people there to pay a forward. But yeah, now I feel like that voice has really gone away.

What was the hardest thing for you when we were at Kern? Oh, man, my girlfriend and I, we lost a baby. Like, she was pregnant, you know, it's funny. You minimize, right? Like it wasn't like a baby that I had, but I had it in my head, right? And once I believed it, I like, you know, I was in California, Dev's house, like,

on a surfing trip and like looking at, like clothes and shit and I knew it was gonna be a girl. And I, as a man or as me or whatever, I pushed it to the back of my head. I tried to be strong for her and I just kind of went to work. And they asked if you had lost a child and it like, it fucking shook my socks. You know, it was like Jesus Christ, like I lost it, like I did. Like I lost what I thought I had, you know, and that hurt and that was hard.

And then the forgiving myself for my daughter, those were the two, I think, hardest things for me there. Yeah, that was, I know Kat was sort of looking out for me that day. She really deliberately paired me with somebody there who she knew that what he and I would sort of share in that moment of what we, what in that moment of what is our biggest regret, what is the thing we are most ashamed of and what is the thing that we want forgiveness for the most, that he and I would have such a strong overlap there. I couldn't believe that experience.

I don't want to use his name, I guess, just to protect his privacy, but I think about him every day. And I think about, you know, I even called Kat a while ago and I was like, can I just send him money? Like, I want him to be able to buy stuff easily and not have to fucking trade cigarettes and shit. And she's like, no, volunteers aren't allowed to send money. And, you know, I just, and it's like he's the one, so of course, is he the only guy in that room that was that special? No, he's just the guy that I got paired with

because Kat knew there would be this connection. And, I don't know, I just, I, even now sitting here, it's hard to talk about it. It's hard to put in words what that experience is like. I mean, I certainly came away thinking, I can't imagine the world not being a better place if every single person would go and spend one day doing that. All the people on the outside, you know,

just go and spend one day. Just, you wanna talk about empathy, you wanna talk about compassion, you wanna talk about understanding that we're all not that far from each other, which is an easy thing to do. It's such a gift. It was such a gift for you and the guys I went with.

I mean, like I can see it on your face now, right? And it was such a gift for both, like the one and the most unique things about it, I think it. I don't know if she created it or if what what created it, but it's it's it's you're selling things to Everybody in the room that cannot be bought right like no matter how successful you are you can't buy that Experience right you can't send the money. Yeah, right like you can't buy that like a no matter like they can't buy that, like, in no matter, like, they can't get enough cigarettes to get that either, and they can't even believe it, right? So you're giving them a gift of, of, like, possibility, which is an amazing fucking gift, right? Like, it's, like, I can create a future. I can create anything. And then, like, what we got, it was, I feel like what we got is more than what we gave. But you've never been, I've never, I was just about to say, I can't,

I can only say that as an outsider. So you're probably the only person who could, not that it matters, of course, like who got gave whatever but, like I remember thinking when it was all said and done, I was like, you know, I've never been around another person who's been so grateful for my existence as I was with some of those men that day. Yeah, but did you you, and I felt like I got way more like I left with something that was, I mean, what, you know, like I didn't give enough. Sorry, I apologize because you, that's what you were saying. Like that was saying didn't you feel like you left with something?

Because whoever's devised the way that this works, the whole thing gives, right? It doesn't take, and it takes a time. It takes time. That's all it takes as a day or whatever, right? But like, that experience gave you what you just, I mean, like you're like for lack of a better way of saying it or cuter way of saying it, like you're a fairly successful or wildly successful person and everything that you've done, right?

And you could probably get, you know, some things that you could create in your mind, like, oh, I like that, I could go get that. But you can't get to that. You can't get what you left there that day with. You can't get that form of appreciation for your life. Like what I saw you guys get, and what I got to, right? Like in all honesty, like what I was able to leave there with, I may even be more powerful than what you got because in its own way, it was

like, I found for me like why I fucking suffered for so long, right? Like I mean, it makes me more like this is why I fucking this so that I could be where I am so I could be here talking to you. Like I'm fired, you can hear it, right? Like so that I could be where I am so I could be here talking to you like I'm fired you can hear it right like so that I could help these guys so that they could have somebody that they could believe in right and like that lady gave me a gift you know that girl gave me a gift that jail gave me a gift that I've never never been lucky enough to have and now I have it I ain't giving it fucking back I was your book coming? It's good. I mean, I'm not a, I'm a writer, but I'm not a writer. So it's, it's coming. My sister was an editor for a while.

Yeah, but my guess is those journals are gold. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are. I mean, they're golden. They're also kind of scary because I was fucking crazy. And it's funny too, because stuff's in code. Like I realized it while I was reading it, and like certain stuff's in code, because you can't write it, you know? But it's gonna work out. It's gonna come together. I mean, it doesn't happen by chance. You don't get on a plane and sit next to the lady,

like the guy who did your brain surgery on your way to go do a podcast on like, on accident. Like, it's just, it's not a fucking accident. Like I didn't help Dev with his brother six years ago on accident, right? I don't, I don't, that's bullshit. I don't believe in accidents. I didn't, you didn't send that to Dev and like you said, like to hear the other side of this, or you bumped into him seeing his body work guy, and said, hey, like, oh, you know,

this is on my brain right now. Yeah, and it's one of those things, like, you know, you can say that to a million people when they sort of forget about about the time they get to their car, but like, Devin's not that guy, like, when Devin's in, he's all in. Yeah, he's like, yeah, let's do it.

Yeah. And then he thinks of me, and then it's like, yeah, man, let's do it, like, but Kern, man, Kern, and DeFi, and I want to talk to you more about, like, the, I'm in, let's do it. But Kern, man, Kern and Defy, and I want to talk to you more about the directions that's going in everything. But yeah, I think it's a profound experience that we should all have in a lot of different,

I think it should be happening at youth facilities. I think it should be happening. And in other places too, probably in the corporate world, somehow, some way we've got to find a way to connect to each other as humans, or else we're kind of fucked, or we just kind of keep enduring and overcoming, which isn't bad, but I'd rather be connected.

One of my best friends is a psychiatrist, and I emailed him recently. And I said, Paul, I want to do a podcast where we talk about suicide, and I want to talk about it in great detail, and I want to understand how much of suicide could be evolutionary versus sort of an environmental disease, environmental meaning, you know, a disease of civilization, if you will. Okay. And I do wonder, again, I say this knowing nothing

and looking forward to talking to someone who has more experience around this than I will ever have, but I wonder how much of what you just said factors into that. I've heard people say that you can be in the most crowded place and yet be the most alone. So what you're basically saying is, look, it's that connectiveness that sort of undoes that.

And that's not necessarily about who you're around or not around. Part of it, I guess, comes down to a lot of what we saw at Kern, which is that vulnerability. And I'm amazed at what they can do. And I think probably by the time this podcast is out, I don't even know if there will be a defy anymore. But the good news is defy was just a name,

sort of irrelevant, right? There will be a cat hoax, and there will be a defy anymore, but the good news is, you know, defy was just a name, sort of irrelevant, right? There will be a cat hoag, and there will be all the things that she continues to do, and it'll be even better than what defy was, which was already amazing. Yeah, it's nice. I need it, like, it's gotta happen. Yeah, it'll happen.

You hungry? I am, I am, I need to use a bag. Yeah. Alright, well, let's go get some Greek food. Nice. Hey, thank you so much. It's a happy and amazing to be able to hear your story. Thank you so much for sharing. Thanks for asking. You can find all of this information and more at peteratiamd.com forward slash podcast. There you'll find the show notes, readings, and links related to this episode. You can also find my blog and the Nerd Safari at peteratiamd.com. What's a Nerd Safari you ask? Just click on the link at the top of the site to learn more.

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