Life After 5 DWIs, 35 Convictions, Getting Arrested in Walmart With a Louis Vuitton Bag Full of Dope

Curtiss (00:00)
I was conceived on the banks of the Guadalupe River in a tent.

Matt (00:05)
And they weren't just camping,

Curtiss (00:06)
Yeah,

they were partying. ⁓ And ⁓ my mother, she was just kind of getting started. She had been partying, but she hadn't gotten to all the heavy stuff yet. My dad was a meth cook for the Banditos.

Matt (00:20)
boy.

I'm Matt Handy and you're listening to My Last Relapse Okay so Curtiss how are you? How are you? I'm good. Thank you for coming. I appreciate it. ⁓ So Nikki's your wife, okay, and you are, you and her like intimately involved with Story of Self. ⁓ Aaron is coming on soon. Yeah.

Curtiss (00:30)
Good. Good.

Nikki's my wife.

Matt (00:48)
Tell me about Story of Self, like all that stuff, and then after all that's done, we'll go back to like you and your childhood and we'll go forward again.

Curtiss (00:56)
So story of self was ⁓ a thing that Aaron, you mentioned him, developed in a high school setting, right? And when I ended up going to treatment, he was over the extended care. And story of self, wasn't what it is now, it was lessons. It wasn't the whole curriculum. He might have had it, but we weren't doing that then. But it was the lessons that were with it. man, ⁓

I remember this is like a really pivotal moment in my recovery in general was Aaron who's not a, he's not a drug addict, he's not an alcoholic. ⁓ And we sit there and one thing he does is you'll sit and tell him your life story, he'll give you an hour. And I did that and he's like, okay, and he gets up and he puts me on the board and he tells me like how I respond to situations, how I... ⁓

the fear that I walk. I mean, very specific things that I think no one knows about me, right? That I think make me different than everyone else. And when he does this, I have this, this aha moment of maybe, maybe I'm not unique, right? This guy who hasn't been through what I've been through, who hasn't done the things I've done, who doesn't struggle the way I struggle is showing me exactly like who I am ⁓ and how I'm moving. ⁓ So that was like a chink in the armor there.

you know, for me and like taking an honest look at myself and instead of running around running away from it and You know, we were in we were in treatment for about three months ⁓ Somewhere in there. I left it 27 days and and Nikki was she came in after me and got got my bed ⁓

Matt (02:36)
You left for her,

Curtiss (02:38)
I'd like to package it up like that. You know, it sounds good. And I used to do that. Like, you know, even when I went in there and talked to the owners, I'm like, look, I'm gonna give her my bed. She's gonna die. You know, really like, I don't know that if I wanted to get high, but I didn't want to do any of that, any of the shit they were doing, right? I didn't want to do any of the groups. I didn't want to do any of that. I was like, look, like I'm gonna be good. I got these consequences looming over my head right now. That'll keep me sober for a while, but my wife is out there. She's gonna die. She's with my son.

Matt (03:07)
Thank

Curtiss (03:07)
So. ⁓

Matt (03:09)
That's how she packages it. Is that you left for her too.

Curtiss (03:13)
I

know, I know. I, like, there's, of course I did, right? She told me that she felt like she was going to die that night when she went home. Of course I did. But this selfish alcoholic in me wanted to go home and see if I had any drugs in the closet. You know what I mean? So anyways, we're in treatment for a while. We kind of got recruited a little bit to become counselors. And I had, at the time, had a Delta 8 business. And I had some vape stores and we had a cabinet company.

And we ended up shutting down the Delta A company ⁓ and going back to school to be counselors, me and her both. And when I hired on as an intern, that's what we hired in as to do the extended care. And ⁓ I started coaching it. I'd never done it, like done the actual writing part of it. And I would start coaching it with my clients. And I saw really the first time it was done, I saw this guy, this really good friend of mine that did it. He was one of the first people that did it. ⁓

really reserved, quiet guy and he got up there and the things that he was saying and the presentation that he did, it blew my mind. And I saw a pivot in him from that day, he's still one of my best friends, just with him last week. And he's just so much different now. And I saw that change in him. ⁓ And it really made me a believer in what Aaron was doing. And my wife was alongside of him and they're both brilliant. When they get to meeting, I just bounce. I'm like, we talking about business stuff, I'll hang out. We're talking about

curriculum and all that I'm out of here. But yeah, so I coached it for a while and then I went to, ⁓ at the orchard they made me director of operations so they kind of split me away from them. ⁓ But I was still, whatever they needed, if I needed to be out there in extended care, ⁓ we tried to do it outside of the orchard a couple times with success. We did it for free with some friends and friends of friends. ⁓

Matt (05:08)
Is that where Andy did it?

Curtiss (05:11)
Andy did it, she did it this year at one of the workshops. I don't remember which one. We've done so many this year. ⁓ But yeah, she did it this year at one of the workshops. So the first one we did at my father-in-law's ranch, we had like six people and we took people that weren't, ⁓ some of them had addiction issues, but the majority didn't. We took a veteran. We're trying to see how this was gonna hit others. And it hit.

We did it in 48 hours, the first time we'd ever done that. And the veteran guy that was there was like, man, ⁓ I have some friends that killed themselves. They would probably still be alive if they had the opportunity to do this. And it opened up that door to us. We're like, ⁓ we didn't even think about that. We didn't wanna have the addiction jacket right off. This is an addiction program. It is, but it's also...

Matt (05:55)
Yeah.

Curtiss (06:06)
mental health program, it's also for PTSD, it's also for all these other things as well. We didn't want to be jammed in that box.

Matt (06:13)
It also sounds like ⁓ this is the kind of thing where ⁓ somebody who doesn't have addiction problems but has life problems in general, a lot of people have sexual trauma, a lot of people have stuff that they are not willing to talk about, and this sounds like breakthrough type stuff for people that are typically not. So a lot of people in recovery already are geared for introspective work and a lot of.

You know the most people in the world are not in recovery and most people in the world They're not taught how to be healthy taught how to like work through things emotionally and a healthy especially men men are completely boxed into this like Yeah What a lot of people say is like you got to be stoic, but it has nothing to do with stoicism It's just shut the fuck up. Yeah, right ⁓ and so this sounds like one of those things were like the average person could participate in this and like

kind of reach down and grab the things that are fucking them up.

Curtiss (07:10)
Yeah, and it's cool because like the sexual traumas and stuff like that, we're not really looking at those big traumas. We can. We can go in there and we can look at that stuff. But what I've noticed is it's events around. And not only like mine, my whole childhood is a lot of big trauma, right? From the time I was born to the time I was old enough to not experience childhood trauma, I guess. ⁓

Matt (07:23)
Yeah.

Curtiss (07:38)
And every time I would sit in front of a therapist, we want to talk about the sexual abuse. We want to talk about that kind of stuff, the big stuff. And we just, we talk about it we talk about it. And then oftentimes they're like, well, you know, what should that kid have felt or something like that? You know, and it's, where's the, I never really got closure. It was, and it was easy for me to, ⁓ I'd work you with that information, right? I'm a professional victim. So I know how to tell you how bad my childhood is. So you're like, yeah, of course you're going to prison again.

Matt (08:08)
Yeah. Let me ask you something. You know who Dr. Shah is, right? Dr. Shah and I have like a running dialogue. We do a lot of conversations like off the camera. Like we sit and record our conversations, you know? One of the things that we've kind of ran into is like the separation between big and small trauma and...

Curtiss (08:09)
course you're doing this again.

Matt (08:29)
The reality is the hardest thing you've ever gone through, the hardest thing you've ever gone through is the hardest thing you've ever gone through, the hardest thing this person's ever gone through, it's the hardest thing they've ever gone through. And you and I can experience the same exact circumstance. We could be at the same exact situation and you could walk away with a completely different trauma, having experienced the same exact thing. And so...

what we are thinking moving forward is like not making the separation between big and little trauma, but just accepting trauma, like whatever the baseline trauma is, is that's the baseline trauma. What do think about that?

Curtiss (09:08)
Yeah, I mean...

I'm ⁓ not a doctor. I'm into all the... So, mine, I'll just tell you about mine. I'm trying to explain this in a way where it's easy to understand. So, my defining moment ⁓ is what we call, that's like the trauma that we're looking at, right? In story of self. And mine, wasn't sexual abuse, it wasn't neglect, wasn't... Yes, all of that, right? ⁓

Matt (09:25)
We got time.

Do you have all that beaten?

Curtiss (09:41)
It was when I was 12 years old, I was the captain of the B team. Everybody laughs when I say that, but I was proud of that, man. I was a little guy, but I loved to play football. And ⁓ I was in all the advanced classes, right? And it was a pep rally day. I put on my jersey. We're going with typical, intermediate, seventh grade. We're going to get on stage. It's going to be a pep rally. And I'm standing in the hallway with the captain of the A team and the head cheerleader. And this girl comes down the hallway and makes fun of my teeth. She's like, I'm laughing. And she goes, what are you looking at, Bucky?

And I remember in that, can tell you the color of the lockers, the lights, I can tell you everything about this moment, right? Because this is the moment that really changed my life, right? It wasn't being sexually abused, it wasn't being neglected, it was this. That might have shaped me in a way, but this is where you can really see the, because school was taken from me then, right? And I was safe at school, I excelled at school, I did good at school, right? But I would also, like, when she did that, it's like, ⁓ they see me now, I'm a fraud.

Right? And I'm trying to fit in with these kids and I know I belong with that girl that was making fun of me. You know, like I shouldn't be in this crowd. Anyway, so we end up, we get on stage that night or that afternoon and what do

Matt (10:52)
mean by that? That you know that you belong with the girl that made fun of you.

Curtiss (10:55)
So the girl that made fun of me, ⁓ she had really bad teeth. Like the kind that you couldn't hide. Mine you could hide when I was a kid. You could hide them. And hers you couldn't hide. So when she said that, and I knew that I belonged in that group, right? Because I would see myself in the mirror and I was really self-conscious about it. And when she called it out, it was like, I mean, my world broke right then. And then fast forward like two hours, we had the pep rally, right? So was me and this dude, Brandon.

and we have to get on the stage and they have these two buckets of ice water in front of us. And you put your feet in and whoever lasts the longest will be the coolest football player. ⁓ man, I put my feet in and look, I woke up that day knowing I was gonna kick Brandon's ass. Hit this right? And I sit down on this stage, I put my feet in and I look over Brandon, I look out there and everybody's laughing and cheering and all I'm trying to do is hide my teeth. I'm sitting there on stage in front of all these kids trying to hide my teeth thinking when they laugh, they're laughing at me. ⁓

So I quit. Right there in that moment, I quit everything. I got up from that stage, I walked out, and Aaron actually, I never thought about this. And when I initially wrote my story, and he's like, how'd that kid feel on the way home? Dude, I walked like five miles home by myself. I dropped my jersey in the street. I was done, I quit everything. In my mind, on the way home was fuck everybody. And within two years, ⁓ I was being brought home as a runaway.

I was on drugs every day, you know, I end up going to the alternative of the alternative school where you get, you know, tickets if you do, if you turn left in the hallway, you get a ticket. And, and I ended up dropping out like, I don't know when I was 16 or something. I graduated from home school. So, but yeah, that so like take all that big trauma, all that stuff. Yeah, it made me who I am. But this really is the

where my whole world split in two, you know, and we want to dissect that moment. Yeah. And the belief that I had is a standard, the belief that I ended up with is a standard alcoholic belief, which is I don't belong, right? That's pretty standard across all alcoholics. ⁓ But we get them all different, you know, I'm not good enough, they're all kind of different beliefs and we dissect those and we disprove them. But ⁓ yeah, so we're...

We won't not look at the big trauma, but we want to look at it from a different angle. We want to look at it at like, if there is sexual abuse, something like that, just throwing something out. Maybe they went and told somebody and they brushed them off. Let's look at that moment. Right? Let's look at, you tell somebody that's supposed to be your protector, somebody say, and then they just like, that didn't happen. Whatever. Like, let's take a look at that moment, right? Because something happened here, but something really happened here, you know?

Matt (13:35)
Yeah, yeah.

Curtiss (13:47)
⁓ So we just look at it from a different angle and we dissect it a little bit different.

Matt (13:52)
That's super interesting, right? So I was sexually abused. I talk about it all the time. And one of the things that after doing like a lot of the work and like really doing like intensive work with the therapist, at the end of all that, my therapist was like, you're not using over sexual trauma, Like you're using over other shit, but you're not using over that. And in my, like inside of my body, I was like, yes. You know, like, okay.

Like, cause I had already always thought that. I had always like in my head thought, it happened. I remember it, it definitely happened. But it never seemed to be like the issue. The issue was, I mean, I could point to a bunch of other shit. were bigger issues to me that make that look crazy, right? Cause it's like, okay, the neglect or like the, ⁓ I'm the oldest of 10 kids.

That was more traumatic, ultimately, in my story because I never had the connection with my parents that I probably should have. ⁓ And when I tell people that, like, what? Like, what are you talking about? Like, you got sexually abused. Like, yeah, but it really wasn't that big of a deal to me. And they're like, you don't know what you're talking about. I'm like, yeah, I do. You know, like, I used, not over being sexually abused, I used over my complete disconnect from my family.

Like all of my childhood by the time I was 13 we had eight kids in the family there was never like connection right and so it's interesting that you say that because It just really rings true at least for what I discovered about myself. Yeah

Curtiss (15:32)
For sure, me too. I mean, that's what everybody wants to look at. The big payday, right? Where do you touch it? Like, come on, let's try something different. That was one of the big eye-openers I had in doing this and going through it. And I talk about it, it's like, man, after EMDR, after doing all these things that I've been doing for years, I mean, probably spent $100,000 on counselors, you know, over 20 years. And them sitting there and me just working them, and it's the same conversation over and over again. They're all using the same playbook.

Matt (16:01)
Yeah.

Curtiss (16:02)
The playbook is the same. Their location is different, but they are all using the same playbook. And I don't know the numbers. I don't know the exact numbers, but from the time all of this stuff was brought about, like the CBT and all that in the 50s, I think it was, to now, everything has gotten worse. Way... You know? ⁓

Matt (16:18)
⁓ yeah.

You're talking about like efficacy and outcomes. Dude, yeah. I look at that often, right? Because ⁓ what I always point to is there's been a hundred years since Bill and Bob, we're coming up on a hundred years since that was really like developed and put forth to the world. They had like a hundred percent success rate for years. Like if you interacted with this program, you were gonna get sober.

How did we get to a point where it's completely opposite now, where it's like, you have to go to treatment seven times before you stay clean for a year. How did that happen?

Curtiss (16:53)
Yeah, have one theory about that is that back then, like they were going to like the psych wards and they were going to these hospitals and these guys that they were working with were on their, they were at the last house on the block. Whereas now you get a first DWI treatment, you get a PI, mom sends you the treatment, you must have a problem. So I think it's diluted.

Very diluted with people that maybe aren't alcoholics and drug addicts. ⁓ So the success rate doesn't matter, right? Because you can get out and you can control and enjoy it like I've often tried to do, but I can't. So, and if you can do that, is that a failure or is that, you know, it's...

Matt (17:36)
No, you and I are 100 % in alignment about this, where not only is it diluted, because it's a preventative measure, where you get any kind of interaction with a negative consequence around any kind of substance, and you're immediately sent to rehab. You'll get that. Yep. And so there's a lot of muddying the waters right there, but then also I 100 % agree. It's like, psych wards, jails, or you're gonna die.

Curtiss (17:54)
paper so

Matt (18:06)
And these were people who historically had just already fucked up their entire life, fucked up their marriages, like they were older, they were already like, had been suffering for decades around this stuff. So when they finally interacted with this answer or the solution, they all grabbed onto it and held on for dear life. Whereas now it's like, people are having it shoved down their throat. And two things like you already said was, maybe they don't even belong.

right, because they aren't like a traditional garden variety, alcoholic or addict. ⁓ It's a preventative measure. But then also, when you really look at like some the something that I've seen is that that 19 year old that got the DUI with weed gets put in the same box as like the alcoholic who's fucked up his life after 30 years of drinking. And this kid has these consequences over his head and he goes out there and

relapses and then comes back and then goes back out there and relapses and comes back and he looks like he's in a full-blown addictive relapse cycle and really he's just he just wants to smoke weed so yeah right and it's like those two things are being correlated together yeah and now we're labeling people with it's it's like a big deal to be like labeled an alcoholic and an addict for an alcoholic or an addict but

It's really not for the rest of the world to look at somebody and be like, you've had consequences around substances, so you must be an addict.

Curtiss (19:32)
They don't understand. Well, that's a misinterpretation of most people that aren't familiar with AA. Consequences make me an alcoholic and that's not the case. Because take me and my wife. I've been to prison twice. I have a lot of convictions. ⁓ My wife never had one. You know, never had one. But we can't keep it, we can't put it down and keep it down and when I put it in my body, I need more. know, and that's what makes me different from the hard drinker. ⁓

Matt (19:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Curtiss (20:00)
And it took like, it took 20 years for me to understand that. It took a long time for me to understand.

Matt (20:03)
Yeah.

I think it should. I've known a couple of people who had one negative experience and they completely shifted their trajectory based on that. I don't know if... Yeah, for sure. I don't know if they would have kept going on, if there would have been some kind of corrective measure and then they could have drank like a normal person. Whatever. Look, I'm happy that they're living a good life. Right? But that's not normal. And basically, this is what I'm looking for.

Curtiss (20:17)
God bless.

Matt (20:33)
Really the solution to that situation, which ultimately is one of the ⁓ It's a situation that's Gonna result in a very tragic situation Probably anyway is you got to the family work. nobody says that nobody's like yeah, and I and I know why it's because you can't chart There is no medical billing code for like family therapy. There is no But yeah, yeah, I mean and so my whole question around this framework is

Curtiss (20:56)
I never even thought about that.

Matt (21:04)
If we are not fulfilling our obligation to the family, because ultimately it might not be their $30,000, but it's their insurance, it's their investment, whatever, if we're not fulfilling that obligation to the family, are we failing in our obligation to the client? And if we are failing our obligation to the client, are we intentionally doing this to make money? And she was like, you know what, I gotta go. I'm like, dude, I'm just asking questions.

that when you like think logically down a certain path, like these are the conclusions that you have to logically come up with is if you're not willing to sell somebody, you cannot participate in our program because we don't want, like here's the thing, 19 year old on fentanyl, you lower his ⁓ tolerance for 30 days and then he goes out there and relapses, he's gonna die. And so when you look at it honestly, like from ⁓ like an intake perspective,

There's multiple things going on with a single intake. There's the admissions people that want the admission. There's the BD people that want that admission. And so there's like all of these things that kind of really point to like, we're gonna get him in no matter what. Even if it's detrimental to his life, we're gonna get him in no matter what because the clinical, they've got things like we're gonna hook him with the vision. But guess what? It doesn't matter if you, like how many times have I been hooked? I've had spiritual experiences at a Metallica concert.

Dude, like, you can say whatever you want. Like, the reality is, when using becomes a viable option, all that shit's out the window. I'm not thinking about coping mechanisms, I'm not thinking about like, box breathing or calling my sponsor. My thought process has already gotten so extreme that it's a viable option. All that stuff's out the window. And so, when you send a healing person into a sick situation,

What do you think's gonna happen? You think it's logical to think that that person's gonna continue to heal? It doesn't even make sense. Like when you say it like that, it's like, you know, so it's like, well, if you're not willing to turn people away based on what you, you can, and it's an assumption.

Curtiss (23:17)
Nobody's

turning that kid away. No, I mean

Matt (23:21)
Nobody that I know is gonna. Yeah, we will. Yeah. Yeah, it's like everybody for sure

Curtiss (23:25)
he's taking that insurance.

so what happens to the kid? What do do with the kid? Right, so then it comes in the conversations I've had with families about like, and I'll start off like this, I'm gonna tell you things that I don't know if I could do with my own son. And these are the things that you gotta cut him off. The only time that you need to be answering the phone is when he has set up or she has set up a treatment thing already and they need you to give them a ride.

you know not for you to go do it or something like that

Matt (23:57)
hard truth around those conversations with the family is ⁓ a lot of them are not geared to think introspectively and accept the fact that they've contributed to the demise of their child. And so when you have to put that in front of a family and say, just like this person has a part in this, the decision making, the terrible decision making, the neglect of their responsibilities as a son or a brother or whatever, all of that is true.

but additionally, you have enabled them to kill themselves slowly. For sure. They're all gonna be like, everybody's first response to constructive critiques is to be defensive. And then if they can overcome that, then there's more room to work with around doing what needs to get done. But if you can't get over that first hurdle of like, I'm not attacking you, we're just looking at this objectively, then the likelihood is they're not gonna participate.

Curtiss (24:55)
Well, me and Nikki actually had this conversation last night. We were talking about a friend of ours going through a similar deal with their kid. I couldn't do it, man. If my son is 19 years old and he's on fentanyl, I'm going to do anything I can to rip fentanyl out of his hand. Because it's just one use he's going to And I know that's the wrong answer. I know it is. I know that we have to let him fall.

But the stuff that's out there today, and my dad used to say this when I was a kid, man, the stuff you're messing with today ain't like what we had, but it's serious now.

Matt (25:30)
Yeah,

what your dad was talking about was like 2 % THC verse 37. Yeah, we're talking about I know crack heads that have smoked crack for 40 years. They'll can they'll probably outlive me Yeah, I know heroin addicts that had slammed heroin for 60 years and they lived forever You you put fentanyl in somebody's hand. I Think what I saw was that the average person who starts using fentanyl has a three-month life expectancy Yeah, months

Curtiss (25:56)
That's crazy.

Yeah, that's why

Matt (25:59)
And that's like, we're talking about like, people are picking up fentanyl and within months they're using grams a day. And all it takes is like one batch that isn't cut as much or whatever. It doesn't matter how big your tolerance is, you get exposed to the right amount. It's gonna take your life.

Curtiss (26:20)
Yeah, and they're just you don't know who's mixing it where they're mixing it how they're mixing it

Matt (26:23)
No, and the sad part is my experience with fentanyl so fentanyl kind of hit the streets and I that was like right about the time when I was like clocking out of being in the streets anymore, right and ⁓ The whole thing about it was like when somebody would overdose and die everybody would start going to that dealer Because they wanted the better shit. Mm-hmm, right and it was like the logic behind that. Yeah, and so I knew dealers. So do I

Curtiss (26:51)
understand it.

It's crazy.

Matt (26:53)
But the logic behind it was like, ⁓ got good shit. Like, it's crazy. Like, it's terrifying.

Curtiss (26:56)
Yeah.

So

that's what, know, those conversations with the family and I love working with families. But those conversations are always the hardest, know, especially with the young guys. And then, you know, you have, I have those examples of those 19 year olds. I got one right now that said, he's in college, he's a chaplain in his fraternity and all the, he's in a fraternity and all the kids are getting drunk and they're coming up to him like, hey bro, like how are you not getting in all this stuff?

And their parents are coming up to his parents and be like, man, thank you so much for your son. And this kid was in high school when I started messing with him, hopeless, right? And in my mind, he was actually getting kicked out. And I'm like, no, let me have him. Like, those are the ones I want. I want the ones that no one else wants. And it's kind of like, it's a little manipulation on my part, because a lot of times those ones that no one else wants are the easiest to

Matt (27:45)
Yeah, for sure.

Curtiss (27:55)
You know, everybody looks at him as a problem, but man, I see right through him. I am that person. know,

Matt (28:01)
I am that person too.

Curtiss (28:03)
Yeah, the ones that, and it is, I guess when you can meet them eye level and just see them, man, a lot of times, man, they just wanna be seen, you know, and you get them in front of you and I'm never the guy that tells you what to do. I'm not doing any of that. I'm gonna give you some options, right? And you can make a decision because if I'm the, if I'm telling you, hey dude, you do this and you're gonna be okay, I'm gonna say you could do this or you could do this. You can do whatever you want.

It's just like my brother's going to prison right now and I just talked to him. I said, hey man, you know when you get out here, like I haven't seen him since I got sober. And I'm like, man, I have resources. So I can get you in anywhere in the country, like anywhere you want to go if you want something different for your life. But if you don't, that's fine too, right? That's cool too. Find that bottom and I'll be standing right there. But until you get there, like don't use me.

Matt (28:54)
Dude, it's such a scary thing, right? Cause like, I don't know what he's using or what his deal is. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a scary thing, but we just dealt with a kid. He's 25. ⁓ And ⁓ parents are well off, right? And willing to pay for whatever historically has like just dumped money into treatment. And you see this all the time. We're like, parents are taking second and third mortgages out to send their kids to treatment. Cause it's

Curtiss (28:59)
Bang and dope.

Matt (29:23)
Treatment isn't cheap. If you don't got the right insurance or whatever, it's like, your options are, you can go to, which my opinion, is send them to the state-funded place where they have a year-long program. That's the best treatment that I ever got. The best treatment episodes that I ever participated in were long-term state-funded work therapy Bible camps, where it wasn't what they were doing, it was the amount of exposure and the amount of time that I could put together in there.

28 days isn't scratching the surface.

Curtiss (29:56)
No, I left in 27 days. I was looking for dope. I FaceTimed a guy and I was going through my closet and there was stuff all in my closet and I'm like trying to hide acid outside of the deal. No one can see if I take that and he's like, hey, bro, I saw that. Yeah, 28 days, man. And I would tell people I could get, man, I can get recovery in a dumpster, you know, because I had felonies that were over my head, you know, which thank God I did. You know, if I didn't have those felonies, I would have got high in that closet.

Matt (30:24)
Dude, I think one of the most effective deterrents is time. For sure. I know plenty of people that they owe their recovery to a judge. Yeah, for sure. Right? I'm one of them.

Curtiss (30:37)
100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I was driving from Katy to Conroe three times a week to take a drug test. Three times for a year, three times a week. ⁓ man, I hated that drive, dude. But yeah, and I got, you know, somehow they let me off of probation two years early too, you know? Like, and a guy that shouldn't have been on probation. I had one year I wrote the judge and I'm like, hey man, you know, I'm, I'm LCDC.

Matt (30:47)
I don't keep you clean.

Curtiss (31:05)
I'm doing all this. He calls me into his chambers. It was like a weekday. And I go in there he said, look. He said, you look around that drug court, he's like, you don't belong. Like you should be in prison. He's like, let's give it another year. Like you're doing great. I'm really proud of you. He's like, like I put my neck on the line for you and we're going to see how this plays out. he sent me his friend's kids since then. you know, we have a good, we had a good relationship before. I knew this judge before I went in front of him.

So, know, he sent his kids, or his friend's kids since then, so yeah, man, thank God. If it wasn't for him standing in the gap for me there, like at court, because he recused himself from the case because I knew him, and then he picked it back up because they were fixing to like throw me away. I don't know what happened behind the scenes there, but I know that God was looking out for me because I'm not looking at my kid through glass right now, you know, and I'm.

Matt (31:58)
Yeah, for sure.

Curtiss (32:00)
very grateful and it hasn't, don't, there's not a day that goes by I don't think that I'm one decision away from never seeing my kid again.

Matt (32:08)
That's the fragility of the situation that we're in. It is one bad decision.

Curtiss (32:14)
It doesn't matter how good I've been doing for the last five years. None of that matters. One bad decision and I lose, I'm not a father anymore. And that's not okay with me. know, it was always okay. For me, think a weird shift in me was it was okay when I was paying the consequences. I didn't care. Like I figured that I would die in prison, period. Like this is where I'm gonna end up. And that was okay with me. I didn't have to worry about nothing. It was fine. Just play some cards, get high whenever you want to. Just chill, you know? But it wasn't me paying those consequences. It's not just me paying those consequences.

And Nikki paying those consequences was one thing, but she was making decisions. But this kid that we had, we fought to have. mean, and because in the back of my mind, the whole time, the whole five years, six years, we're trying to have this kid is like, this is gonna fix me. This is my next big plan.

Matt (32:59)
I think she said like the same type of thing. Yeah

Curtiss (33:02)
It was like, okay, I can't put it to you. I don't have a good reason to, right? I don't have a sufficient reason to quit. Give me a son. And I got that son, man. And I had everything. All these reasons that I had when I was younger. I had the money, I had the businesses, had the wife, had the house, had the toys. Now I had the son. I had it all now, right? And it wasn't enough, man. dude, I just remember coming home and...

I got sober probably my son was maybe a little over a year old but like coming in and and It's like he knew you know and I'm like and he's just a baby dude and he's like the way he would look at me and I just go off to the garage you know I would ⁓ Man, dude, I remember ⁓ I remember one night. I was I was trying to watch him. I was supposed to watch my son and ⁓ And I'm in the living room and he's in living room. We got like cocoa melon on or something

And I'm like, man, I just go to that garage for a second. I'm gonna come right back. I'm gonna be in here. It's good. So I take off to the garage. I convince myself I'm gonna be a better father, right? I'm gonna be present when I get back in here. And I went to the garage and like, I don't know, two hours later, my wife comes home and she's like, hey dude, Coop's got shit all over him in the living room. What's going on? And I'm like, bro. And it's just like, you know, I don't ever want, I don't wanna do that.

That's like the lowest moment of my using, right there. Lower than anything else, that moment. And ⁓ it wasn't enough then, right? It was like, man, I better do some more, because I feel terrible about it. ⁓ So I think that was like the final piece was understanding like, man, this kid didn't ask for me to be his father.

Matt (34:47)
Yeah, yeah, you got what you wanted and now you're just gonna yeah shit on him. Yeah Okay, let's go all the way back now. Okay, like tell me about Just your childhood and start from there. Okay

Curtiss (35:01)
Okay.

Well, I was conceived on the banks of the Guadalupe River in a tent. then, yeah, they were partying. And my mother, she was just kind of getting started. She had been partying, but she hadn't gotten to all the heavy stuff yet. My dad was a meth cook for the Banditos. So,

Matt (35:11)
And they weren't just camping, Okay.

boy. ⁓

Curtiss (35:30)
They got married while she was pregnant. They were divorced ⁓ I don't even know if I think I might have just been born. They didn't even they didn't make it very long. Mm-hmm I lived with my grandparents mostly in the beginning ⁓ My mom she was getting started off on crack. She was ⁓ I she might have already been doing about things She was cocaine and partying and that kind of thing and then it got darker And she was never really around I ended up going to live with my dad when I was like six

And it was just me and my dad and, you know, the bandito lifestyle. So, ⁓ and you know, he was a dope cook, so there'd always be dope in house. he would always tell me like, he's like, you know, we don't do drugs, man, we're not racist. Like he was putting good values in me, right? And I remember one day finding this dope and it all came tumbling down. I'm like, man, dude.

Matt (36:03)
is wild.

down.

Curtiss (36:29)
Like, and that didn't really get me started, but it started with like, man, I don't trust anything these people were telling me, you know? So, yeah, and I told you a little bit earlier about like defining moments. So in school, I did really good, man. was in the advanced classes and... ⁓

I would like take up for those kids. ⁓ I always had that, don't pick on anybody weaker. I would always take up for those kids. ⁓ And then that stuff happens in seventh grade, man. And I had already smoked weed a couple times. I found it, my dad's stuff and I'd smoke it. But yeah, when that happened, was just like, before school, I'm hitting up that store. Every school's got that store right across the street and we're smoking weed.

you know, ⁓ and it spiraled out pretty fast, as fast as it could with my budget, right? But even at like 13, 14, I had jobs, multiple jobs. We started a lawn mowing business and I'm just like paying for my dope, right? I'm the kid that's paying for the drugs, because none of the other kids have money, right? So I'm out there hustling and doing that. Pasadena and Houston. But yeah, so.

Matt (37:37)
Where'd you grow up? ⁓ okay. Yeah.

Curtiss (37:45)
Yeah, I get kicked out of school a whole bunch. get kicked out for gang activity. We had a little group we called the 420 crew. And we were getting fights with all the local gangsters around. It was just kind of for protection in our neighborhood. You know what I mean? So yeah, I get kicked out of school. I think when I was 16, our graduate was 17 from like a Parkview Baptist Home School. There's lawsuits to this day.

against that school because the diplomas don't hold up. I tried to go to the military like maybe I was 17 or 18 and they didn't take that diploma so I had to go get a GED too. But yeah, and I was repo and I was out of the house. I was out of the house when I was probably 15, know, like almost full time. Every now and then I come and fill up with some food or something, but I'm gone.

Matt (38:37)
Yeah, crash for a couple days.

Curtiss (38:39)
Crash

for a couple days, get yelled at, what are you doing with your life? You know, that kind of stuff. My dad was in recovery. He got a... I don't remember how old I was, but he got a assault case. It was a pretty bad one. He beat this guy up with steel-toed boots and he had to get sober. So during this time, was AA sober and he's like, you know, taking me to meetings and all this. And I'm getting high with the kids in AA. I mean, I'll never take my son to an AA meeting.

Because I partied more at AA meetings than anywhere when I was a kid. But yeah, so I started getting in a lot of trouble. ⁓ The cases started coming pretty fast. When I asked Nicky's dad to marry her, they looked me up and I had like 35 convictions. And he still gave me his blessing, so that was cool. But yeah, it was like one thing after another. When I'm using, ⁓ I'm not functional.

I'm like Nikki would be very functional right she can get high and maintain as soon as I get high everybody knows Everybody's sounding the alarm I got people showing up at the house because they know like I'm gonna go to jail Like that's where I end up. I'm not gonna die. I might die. I'm not gonna kill anybody, but I'm going to jail for sure so started getting DWI's ⁓ God went to safe P. You know what that is

SafeP is a behavior modification program. Yeah, it's, ⁓ there's pull ups. Yeah, pull up on your traffic and trading, that kind of thing.

Matt (40:08)
program.

Those ⁓ yeah

So I went to one of the original therapeutic communities that was like synon on but like synon on came around in my the 60s and The place that I went was like the early 70s So and it was all modeled off that and so like the original I was part of like the original pull-up culture ⁓

Well, they did. They did. Dude, the program that I... I actually talk about it in the Scott episode. Scott, ⁓ he's like the first episode, I think. ⁓ Scott went to a different one where somebody went to the program that I was at and he basically ripped their entire playbook and started one in Colorado. really? Yeah, and he went to like that one. And so the language is the same, like the... there's like some original shit. Like, did you guys have barbers and like haircuts and like... Okay, so yeah.

Curtiss (41:10)
It's confrontation circles.

Matt (41:12)
All that yeah games. Yeah, you games

Curtiss (41:15)
I don't know, we did reflection circles, squares, did. ⁓

Matt (41:18)
Games were where everybody sits in a room. You're not allowed to get up. There's no violence You could say whatever like people were making shit up about people and they would like Get a reaction out of somebody and then the whole room would like turn against them and people lying like making shit up Yeah, like accusing them of just some crazy shit just to get like a rise out of them and then after the games were done people are like taking notes of like what's going on and what's being said and Then after the game is done you get pulled into the bench

And now you're going and getting grilled about like all these lies that everybody. Yeah.

Curtiss (41:52)
So they did something like that. They would come in and fish. So when I tell you I manipulated this thing, it was crazy. my counselor said that I reminded her of her son who passed away from an overdose. So I was in the kitchen. I was working in the kitchen and I got into it with like the sergeant in the kitchen. And I like wrote a, I forget what they call, ⁓

Matt (42:05)
⁓ man, kick that door wide open. ⁓

Curtiss (42:21)
You write up the staff there and I sent, ⁓ God, I can't think of the name. Anyway, I shot it off and ⁓ I bypassed the, I sent it like home. I didn't send it so it'd be handled internally. I sent it home so they would send it to the state. And it got back, lady come in there and she laid me in as the accountant for the pod. So all the write-ups I got. So I mean, everything that went through there I got. So at nighttime, we have our meetings, I say, look,

They're gonna come in here and circle this up and they're gonna go fishing. If you tell them that you're negative contracting, we will go on tight house.

Matt (42:56)
wow, you guys got like the whole, contracting up and like doing the whole, where everybody's like cosigning bullshit.

Curtiss (43:02)
Negative contracting. when they come in here, even if we have to sit for 12 hours, nobody say anything because we have enough tickets. I'm the accountant. If we don't have enough, I'm writing them, right? And I'll confront it too, even though it never happened. I tell them, look, even if this didn't happen, you're getting confronted, just take it. So, you know, whatever. And we made it through the whole thing without being on Tite House at all. And ⁓ what good did that do me, right? But really it was a...

I don't know, man. I don't see the good in... I can't think of the good in that program. It was crazy, man. I mean, I don't know.

Matt (43:40)
One of the things that Mimi, who is like the lady, everybody calls her like the lady, ⁓ her and her husband started it, her husband passed away, but ⁓ she's still running it to this day. She's been running it for like 50 or 60 years or something like that. They named a day after her in California. It's like this big deal.

Curtiss (44:00)
I mean it must have a lot of success.

Matt (44:02)
So what what they do They're they're like real thing is like people who are facing life sentences or people who are coming out of life sentences They sent them there. Okay, like that's how I got I I was facing 33 years That was the deal the mass exposure. The max exposure was like 86 years. The deal was 33. Yeah, and I like got to go to this program, yeah, and Dude it was like but I was walking on it because you can get in trouble. Yeah for anything

Curtiss (44:25)
you love that program.

Matt (44:31)
Yeah, and like things that you don't you're not even supposed to be looking. Oh, if you get kicked out of there like oh Yeah, you're out of my whole thing was like if you the judge told me he was like look I've said I don't know how many people have over there and none of them made it and If you f this up, I will lock you up for the rest of your life. I was like, okay Yeah, whatever challenge accepted. That was what I thought like in my head because really the deal that I signed for was I was gonna take

Curtiss (44:34)
Show me.

Have a good

Matt (44:59)
Two strikes they were gonna hang a strike and they take strike series in California So there were two separate different strikes So those counted and they were gonna hang they hung a strike over my head. That was completely different and They were like you're gonna take this ten on the chin But we're gonna try to strike you out and give you 25 to life if you fuck this up You're going to prison forever. Yeah, so I was like, okay Yeah, I'm just gonna do what I got to do, you know

Curtiss (45:24)
gets you to walk straight for a little

Matt (45:26)
Yeah, hang those kind of consequences over anybody's head and they'll do the right thing.

Curtiss (45:30)
⁓

So I've looked up because my like secret desire is to overtake SafeP. I want like story to be where SafeP is. I hate that program. I don't hate anything, but I think that the program is insane. So the stats on it, I looked it up. The recidivism rate for if you go to SafeP is 47%. If you go to regular prison, it's lower. The recidivism is lower. This is their transformational units, right? This is where you send your people.

⁓ the your bad actors and they're gonna they're gonna get out of there and be right 46 % 47 % they get 50 million dollars a year from the state of Texas now and ⁓ And you might as well just send them to prison. I was what are we doing? Well, actually it might be better because it is kind of like a slap on the wrist You know, you got to go through big boy prisons to get there, but you don't get in like general population or anything like that, you know

You're in there and you hear them scream and messing with you and it puts a little fear in your old 19 year old self. But you know, maybe they need to go there and fight a little bit or do something. I don't know.

Matt (46:38)
I grew up the most in prison. Like that's where I like really started to like kind of put shit together around like being a man. I mean I've done three separate, I've done nine years. Nine years. So I mean it's more than like the average person that's walking down the street but I know people. Yeah. You know it's like yeah it's a bit of time. ⁓ But.

Curtiss (46:47)
a lot of time.

Matt (47:05)
Those are like some of the most important lessons that I ever had.

Curtiss (47:08)
But

like inside of the prisons, the stuff that they're like the groups and stuff, the things that they're taking you to, they're all, in Texas, they were either, you can't understand them, because their accent, you couldn't understand the teachers, whoever it was, ⁓ or they were just so old you couldn't hear them. It's either like you got 80 year old ladies in there, God bless them, like they're coming in there, they wanna do good and help, but you can't hear nothing. you know, everybody's going, in prison, you go to those classes so you can trade stuff.

Matt (47:36)
⁓ yeah, yeah, so

you got to get something to the next yard and that's the only place to do it. Yeah California the CDC became the CDC are they tacked on rehabilitation? So the California Department of Corrections became the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and what it did was expanded their ⁓ their their annual budget Yeah, the prison system got worse now probably it like amplified a lot of problems. Yeah

Curtiss (48:04)
That's wild. Because no one really, I don't know man, no one really wants change. Especially when you get way up there. it's all working. Everybody's getting their pockets padded. You know, especially like the private prison stuff. The private prison stuff is pretty insane.

Matt (48:18)
yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Have you ever heard that rumor that Michael Jordan owns the prison that houses the people that killed his dad? It's a rumor. It's not actually true. But he did own prisons. You know, like you're talking about like this guy is.

first of all like an A-list celebrity but also like one of the best that ever did it and what did he do with his money? He bought into the prison, private prison.

Curtiss (48:44)
You're making good money. Yeah, the returns are there. Heck yeah. Yeah, and it's it's wild so the in Texas I Don't know so there's TDC and then you have like your CCA's or whatever their private prisons and the the quality the drop in quality like going to these other units is crazy Well, I haven't been apparently there's probably some nice ones, but I went to mineral wells. It was absolutely terrible It wasn't just like the facility

Matt (49:02)
Really?

Curtiss (49:11)
It was the food that you were eating was way worse than actual TDC food. And the people that they hire, it was like they don't make any money, right? You gotta be there like $10 an hour, you're out there guarding. At Mineral Wells, we would lock the guards in the picket. So they would be in the picket and we would jam stuff between the hallway wall and the door, lock them in there and people would come throw stuff over the fence.

Matt (49:37)
So the California prison system, way that they ended up doing the, they would contract prisons, but everybody wanted to go to those prisons because they were so much nicer. The food was better. You can get TVs, like real TV, like real size TVs, Xboxes, PlayStations, like.

Curtiss (49:53)
That's crazy. Everybody gets iPads now, guess. They get tablets and...

Matt (49:57)
Yeah,

I don't know how that works. I don't know if they like us they they issue them or whatever, but I'm like everybody gets them. Yeah, I'd be a fucking name

Curtiss (50:04)
Everybody would have to otherwise you'd be they'd

saying so everybody would have to I know they they have them my my buddy Lewis they do ⁓ They broadcast on the app so they they go through all the all the prisons they have I don't know who I think eyes on me has the app and they put like teachings on the app and They okay through the prison. It's pretty cool. That's pretty cool

Matt (50:26)
Yeah, so in the California system, were like, when they first implemented the whole ⁓ tablet thing, they put a bunch of safety measures in place on the actual devices so that you couldn't access the internet, you couldn't do all that stuff, and it was very selective about the kind of things that you had access to. But talking about people in high-level prisons, they're gonna figure out how to get around that.

Curtiss (50:51)
Smartest

people, mean, subwoofers built out of cracker boxes, so come on. You know, they could do anything in there. All they got is time. They take that thing all the way apart, you figure it out.

Matt (50:55)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, enemy and they get them access to like literature then I know people are like getting schematics for ⁓ Just the randomest shit and it was like, what are you doing? He's like, yeah Building a time machine. Yeah, like what he's like, no, I just don't want to talk about it ⁓

Curtiss (51:19)
Yeah, it's crazy in there man. I'm glad we were I I was going to see my little brother in jail and just out of Habit look to see if I had a warrant and it said I had some weird stuff on the toll road This is like a week ago. I'm like dude in the past. I'm like, yeah, I'll just go in there and take a nap for a couple days It's fine, dude. I don't mind it at all. Now. I'm like dude. I just no way I'm

Matt (51:41)
Wait

a minute, The toll road?

Curtiss (51:45)
Yeah, I don't think it is anything. I should have already called them. ⁓ yeah, was a toll, the Forbidden toll road. And it just said, judgment open. It was in August. I'm like, well, I don't even know what that is. So I no idea.

Matt (52:01)
Dude, my wife is the fucking worst. just, like, it isn't like, it's like, dude, just tell me when you run out of, like, your money and I'll put more on there. She doesn't even tell me. I just get these, I get letter after letter after letter where it's like, you ran this, you did this, and like, you owe this amount of money, and I keep reading, at first I'm like, all right, whatever, like, and then it got up to like hundreds of dollars, and I was like, I wonder what the consequence is, and like, right there on the letter it says like,

First step, you'll take your license. Second step is we'll tow your car. Third step, you're going to jail. I'm like, dude, why do you keep doing this? She's like, they're not gonna lock me up over non-paid tickets. I'm like, yeah, I think they will.

Curtiss (52:42)
I know. I think it's different. don't know. I know Fort Bend County is like owned by Fort Bend. I don't think all these other roads are owned by. I don't know. I don't know how it all works out, but yeah.

Matt (52:53)
I

kinda like started looking into it and like the big belt way right now. Yeah, 99. Yeah, okay, so the 99, they made it a toll road to pay for it, but that's been paid for for like 15 years.

Curtiss (53:07)
They did that with it in when I was a kid they built Beltway 8 the smaller one and they were like on the news They're like, hey, you know, we're gonna pay for this thing and we're gonna get rid of these tow booths and they've just gone up since They were fighting over a seven hundred and fifty million dollar surplus in Houston and there's just extra money that they they're fighting for like who's gonna get at the city the county the Whatever they're fighting for down there

Matt (53:29)
It's so crazy. you seen this thing they're doing? ⁓ The city of Houston just... They're distributing a bunch of money around a center off Enterprise where they're going to build like a homeless center, basically. Dude, it's actually really cool. And right now they're looking for... Where's that at? Off Enterprise. Okay. No, Emancipation. Okay. Enterprise. ⁓ Is there an Enterprise?

Curtiss (53:58)
I have no idea. I don't even know where emancipation is.

Matt (54:00)
Downtown, ⁓ downtown. It's like, you know where the stadiums are? Okay, you know where the freeway is right next to it? It's like south of the freeway. ⁓ But they're looking for ⁓ people to run it. They're looking for like, who's going to run the mental health, who's going to run the SUD, who's going to run like all the different auxiliaries of it. And so it's pretty cool, like what they're doing with it. I mean, if that's part of the 750 million, that's cool. Yeah, that would be cool.

I mean, it's like a $120 million project. ⁓ The thing that I'm like, I'm from San Diego, there's a homeless problem there. And they're not, have you seen this $24 billion scandal that's going on over there?

Curtiss (54:32)
wow.

⁓ I might have heard a little bit they they approved a big budget nothing's happened now the money's gone or

Matt (54:49)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah Fucking crazy and and there was like 32,000 homeless people in California at the beginning of it. There's a hundred and sixty eight thousand now They dumped 24 billion dollars into a problem and they quadrupled the problem

Curtiss (55:04)
I think as soon as you become a politician at that level, they just tell you how to make money. Like, look, this is what we're going to do, make this and that. I think that's all it

Matt (55:10)
Yeah. Yeah. I

mean, like, yeah, that's so much money. I just saw this thing the other day where it like it showed a million dollars compared to a billion dollars. Yeah. Like on palettes. Yeah, I saw that. Dude, I was like, that's crazy. It's a big difference.

Curtiss (55:16)
It's a lot of money.

You could you could definitely put a dent in that homeless population with 24 billion

Matt (55:34)
Dude, well they they they did a bet like upfront before they put the package together They asked like a bunch of questions like as like a premise for doing this and one of them was like how much money would it actually cost to like Give every single homeless person a home for a year and and like X amount of dollars and it was like 1.6 billion dollars to like completely take every homeless person off the streets and give them money where's the and So one of the stories was like this company so they created they created the package

immediately NGOs started popping up. So they got awarded the money and now they're distributing it. And then people are like creating companies and like 501 C3s. This one contract was awarded for $20 million. They were gonna get 20 million over the span of four years. They got five upfront and then five every year after that. And then they had to like do like a bunch of assessments or whatever at the end. They give them all the money and now they're like looking at the assessments. They never even broke ground on the.

on the project and they got all the money. No, because they created an entity. know, it's like you have complete protection. Yeah, the entity might get in, so they're gonna shut it down, but where'd all the money go? That's crazy. That's not a lot. That's not like billions of dollars. $20 million is a shitload of money. That's a lot of money. Yeah.

Curtiss (56:35)
No one's going to jail.

But it happens so much, know, like with all the the misspending of the government. That drives me insane. I hate paying taxes because I know they're gonna mismanage money, period. It doesn't matter what money you give them, they're gonna mismanage it. They're gonna send it for some shit that we don't care about. The everyday American, like from my point of view, is hurting right now, right? And we're sending all this money to other places. It's like, look, why don't we focus on home for a little bit?

Matt (57:16)
You

what's crazy about like sending money to other places? You know like when we get paid even it's like numbers in a computer screen go to a different account that's just numbers on a computer screen. Yeah. When they send money like overseas they're sending pallets of cash. Yeah. It isn't like fake money like what we kind of operate with. This is like they're sending hard paper cash over there. It's wild. Billions of it. Yeah. Like annually. Billions of it. That's crazy. And yeah doesn't matter who's in charge.

Doesn't matter what side of the aisle it is, they're all f-

Curtiss (57:48)
They're all, I think they've all been to Epstein's Island,

Matt (57:51)
We're about to find out, I think. Yeah, about to find out.

Curtiss (57:53)
Every one of them has. There

might be like two of them in that whole Congress that hadn't been. They're new.

Matt (58:01)
Yeah, they weren't even there yet. Yeah, but wild. Okay, let's go back. Let's go back ⁓ Let's go before that where did where did where did the sexual abuse happen?

Curtiss (58:07)
Save P.

⁓ A stepbrother when I was younger. Okay

Matt (58:15)
How old were you?

Curtiss (58:16)
Four, five, ⁓ five, probably from then to about nine.

Matt (58:22)
Okay, so it was an ongoing thing. Yeah.

Curtiss (58:25)
Yeah,

⁓ females, very weirdly, but like my babysitters ⁓ when I was a kid, they were teenage girls and I was probably like seven, but I was always like, all that stuff messed me up in a sense that like, it's hard for me to have like a friendly relationship with a woman. Not because I'm trying to hit it, it's because I'm always like, man dude, there's like some ulterior motives here or whatever.

It's weird man, so I just don't do it, right?

Matt (58:57)
don't think it's that weird. don't think that men are biologically geared to have like girl friends. Friends that are girls. I always think it's funny when I hear somebody be like, oh yeah, I got all these friends that are girls. You're a sneaky motherfucker.

Curtiss (59:15)
Yeah, dude, because you're waiting for that opportunity. You're not going to say no. You know, and that's a and it's really important to me to like, man to respect my wife too. You know what I mean? That's a whole different deal. but really like I've even going through all of my bullshit. Like that's always been really important to me. Yeah, because I want that from her. You know, I'll break I'll do everything except that. Right. I'm not going to cross that line. Like I made this commitment.

Matt (59:28)
It's a whole, yeah.

Curtiss (59:45)
⁓ So yeah, anyways, ⁓ yeah, so I was young ⁓ when all that happened. ⁓ Yeah, probably up to about 10 or 11, somewhere in there.

Matt (59:56)
Okay, so this was ongoing multiple people. Multiple people. Okay, um, and 12 is where that incident happened with the teeth. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay, so from there, like, how long was it between the tooth thing and going to your first, getting arrested?

Curtiss (59:59)
people.

Five years 17 was my first arrest. Yeah. Well, I mean I get brought home by like as a runaway that wasn't Yeah going to jail. I remember at 16. I tried to turn myself in because we We all went car hopping one night and two of my friends were 17 and they got arrested So I went down to passing the city jail. I'm like, hey man, I want to admit to a crime I did and they're like go home. Yeah, okay

Matt (1:00:38)
What was the thought process behind that?

Curtiss (1:00:40)
I don't know, man. My buddies were in there and I didn't get arrested. I didn't get in trouble. And they did. And I was like, man, dude.

Matt (1:00:45)
Were you like at the scene when they got arrested and let go? okay

Curtiss (1:00:50)
No, just, came, ⁓ I made it home. I just kept running, you know, I made it home. So they didn't. But yeah, I went to turn myself in the next day, they just sent me home. ⁓ Yeah, and it just, was so like, I would get pulled over.

Matt (1:01:05)
for watching.

Curtiss (1:01:06)
Like the dumbest thing like my brights were on and I had a beer, you know, like that My first DWI was really like that I had like two beers and like they always say in cops and get arrested and I mean that was it I filled my ⁓ my build sobriety. I was my first DWI and I was so young that I'm just like ⁓ Yeah, you take the charge. Well, whatever dude. Let me you're gonna let me out right now. Yeah time sir Let's go and that's how I did all my little charges. Mm-hmm all of them. I did I mean

Matt (1:01:21)
Brady.

Curtiss (1:01:36)
Just to be, I'm guilty of every charge that I've ever had. But I try to negotiate and get out of there, you know, as fast as possible. Most of the time I didn't have any money. I didn't really have any money until this last time. And then it was like, break the bank, whatever I got to spend to stay out of prison. The attorney was like 50 grand, you know? And he didn't even do anything. Like really, he didn't do shit. I mean, I was pretty disappointed. I wish I had that money back.

Matt (1:01:58)
Yeah.

Curtiss (1:02:06)
⁓ But yeah, so there's a lot of that and then my MO was like ⁓ I would work, I'd be out of town working and I'd always get a responsible woman that could maintain the house and make sure like she had a job and like look, your money goes to the bills and mine goes to everything else that we do. So I could live that party lifestyle. ⁓ And it went on until eventually I went to SafeP and I was in a relationship at a time.

I was like telling the story because when I got out I was a shoe guy. mean I Jordans I love Jordans ⁓ I had big old Rubbermaid tubs full of them and I get out of prison and there's safe pee I don't we won't call that prison ⁓ And I get to my uncle's house and there's two big old bins full of shoes I started pulling them out and there's one of each each pair so she she burned the left or the right of every shoe dude so yeah needless to say we were done she ⁓

I think we moved on while I was in prison. yeah, so, and that was a cycle. So I would get arrested ⁓ and then that would sober me up for a couple days. And then I'd get out of there and I'd be like, look, man, I gotta be good for this. I gotta get past this case now. Let me do this. And then I can get back to it, right? Then I can get back to it. ⁓ And I would try to do that. So there's a lot of white knuckling, a lot of barely passing piss tests, a lot of.

drinking water and Clorox and whatever else you, whatever else would tell me I could clean my system out, you know, for 20 years of that, you know, and the occasional, did ⁓ a,

Matt (1:03:45)
the dangerous shit we would do to try to get around it.

Curtiss (1:03:48)
Drink whatever you had dude. So you're telling me it's gonna be clean. I'll drink it We'll try it one time and then I tell I'm like I never drink that and I go home and drink it Try it. But yeah, it was ⁓ and yeah, it was just chaos constant turmoil and I think I that that turmoil that That feeling that constant like unease. I think I was addicted to that I think more than anything the K it's like that feeling of shit ain't right, you know

Matt (1:04:17)
I tell people all the time, the hardest thing to kick, drugs and alcohol are easy to stop doing. That's one of the easy parts of recovery. The real hard parts is when you have to start to dissect your lifestyle and cut people off and stop doing things. I feel like ⁓ getting clean is the easy part, staying clean is hard part.

Curtiss (1:04:40)
Yeah,

for sure. For sure. was a, the saying in my house was day one. So Nikki, she would never really try to detox, but I would every week, every other week, I'm like, look, day one. And I'd suffer for maybe 48 hours and I'd get high again, ⁓ But yeah, I would always, I would know and I would try and I would fail. I would know like, okay, I couldn't see anybody. I couldn't go out into the public because if people saw me,

I mean, when I got sober this time, was walking around at 145 pounds. I was nothing. 5'10"? Oh, was. Yeah, I was, and right now I'm like 185. So, yeah, I mean, I came in with a mullet too. Oh, busted mullet. It got arrested. I look like I came straight out of a meth trailer, man. And yeah, yeah, I do actually. I keep this thing on me. It's my, it's that first probation picture.

Matt (1:05:14)
Hot toy!

You got the picture?

Curtiss (1:05:38)
They give you an ID card? ⁓ my gosh. Looking good. That mullet fanned it out.

Matt (1:05:45)
yeah, they gotta see this. yeah, show them.

That's serious party in the back.

Curtiss (1:05:56)
Yeah,

yeah, we, there's a famous, I say famous, but ⁓ all of our friends have seen it. We, in the middle of this relapse, we went to ⁓ Alamarada, Florida, and we had, Nikki wanted to have pictures taken. We had our son with us and she took too long and I eat probably five Xanax while she's getting ready and I'm drinking Crown.

So we get out there to take this picture and I look like that emoji that has his face all messed up and I look exactly like that emoji and I'm sitting, it's his family photo, it's terrible. It's got the mullet, it's so bad. We didn't know what that picture looked like and the guy sent it, we had a professional photographer and he sends us his stuff and Nicky's pissed of course.

Matt (1:06:33)
So funny.

But yeah, it's funny as fuck now though. Yeah, that's funny. Okay. Anyway, let's go back so teenager it was just a bunch of like getting arrested and like

Curtiss (1:06:53)
⁓ Yeah I'm trying to think yeah pretty much. I mean I was I was on the pipeline a lot so was doing x-ray so I'd be out ⁓ out of town every week ⁓ Living that lifestyle, which is a wild lifestyle the pipeline lifestyle is pretty wild And I come home and and I'm like it's really 20 years of me trying to hold it together Knowing that I shouldn't be doing this stuff and not being able to do so right and it's always with

Matt (1:07:09)
yeah.

Curtiss (1:07:22)
the threat of prison over my head or violating probation or whatever it is. I try to walk the line and I can't and I'm manipulating to where like, ⁓ okay, I got to take two drug tests a month. Well, if you hit me both in the beginning of the month and I could get high for the end of the month. And then what that would always end up doing is me almost fell on a drug test that next month because I'm drinking whatever I can to try to, and this is like 20 years worth of this. So this isn't like, yeah. And in it, I'm like,

Matt (1:07:48)
stressful.

Curtiss (1:07:52)
Every time I'm doing it. I'm like, I'm not doing this again, man. I'm not this sucks. I'm not drinking this much water I'm not peeing this much again. I'm not doing this shit again. And then sure enough I wouldn't even think about it until you hit me with those two drug tests right the beginning of the month and I'm like, ⁓ there comes the idea right and I would do it every time right it wasn't like Sometimes I would say I didn't but I was still doing you know ⁓ and and I barely so

All of that kind of ends up where with my last relapse man ⁓ and that would be I got somehow I got five years probation for my fifth DWI. I'd already been to prison behind DWI's so somehow I got a five years probation for my fifth DWI. ⁓

Matt (1:08:40)
I heard in Texas they have misdemeanor DUIs.

Curtiss (1:08:43)
Yeah, you get two. So your first two are misdemeanors and your third one's a felony. So yeah, with my 50WI, so I ended up doing eight years probation on the five, they extended me. I had the breathalyzer on my truck for eight years, but look, I can take or leave alcohol. I need some Xanax, I need to smoke some weed, so I can do any of that and use the breathalyzer. So I hit...

Matt (1:08:54)
Please.

Curtiss (1:09:12)
One of my little runs and it probably about four days long and at the end of it, I'm like going to cop some dope and I'd been up and I just fell asleep and I get in this wreck and like I pull over, the lady pulls over and I'm like, well I can't pull over, I bounce. And then I go up ⁓ north of Conradle Willis and I get in another wreck ⁓ on the bridge and I hit this lady and I had $2,000 in my pocket. I was going to buy...

cocaine and ⁓ and I like a dude comes up to my window. He's like I saw you swerving on the road wait here for the police and I like pick up I remember picking up my breathalyzer like pick up sober. What are you talking about? So I got out of the truck and I went up to that lady and I was like hey man I got two grand cash right now you just drive away and she's like all right I give her the two grand I get back in my truck. I fuck off through this neighborhood go back to the bank pull cash go get coke right ⁓ and just just keep going. So

I ran like for maybe like a year. didn't think anything of that whole day. then a friend of mine's wife's a paralegal and she said, hey man, like you have a warrant. And I'm like, for what? And she said it was for hit and run. So they ended up arresting me, no bonding me, like four times. I keep trying to get a bond, they're no bonding me. They're gonna send me to prison behind it. And this same judge kind of looked out for me then too. And then the judge that no bonded me, his son was actually

I've worked with them. So it came full circle. was great, right? ⁓ anyways, yeah, so they ended up extending me three years. So I ended up doing eight years in that last few months, man. I barely made it up.

Matt (1:10:56)
Like buy the seed of your pants.

Curtiss (1:10:58)
Well,

when I went in, she goes, hey, we're going to unsuccessfully discharge you from probation. And I was like, what does that mean? I was like, what does that mean? Does that mean I have to do more probation? She's like, no, you're off. But it's just there's a note that says unsuccessful. I'm like, OK. Oh, unsuccessful it is.

Matt (1:11:14)
⁓ Wait, I don't gotta check in no more? Yeah, cool. Yeah, whatever.

Curtiss (1:11:18)
care what you make that thing say. ⁓ So, we had had our son, so just the timeframe of where we're at in my life. So we had had our son probably six months before, eight months before. Nikki went in postpartum real bad and it was like, I'm trying to hold it together. She's, my brother like introduces her to heroin during this all this time. So I'm like trying to hold everything together, white knuckling it, right? On probation, trying to get through this thing. ⁓

And it just, it doesn't end well, right? So I get off probation and I remember, man, I tell this story all the time, I had accumulated all the best weed that I knew that I could get my hands on. The moon rocks, all this new stuff that I hadn't seen before and I had in my garage room when I got off probation. And I went home and I mean, packed a blunt, I mean, just as much as I could get in one, right? This is my freedom blunt. And I remember, like I invited people over, like, hey bro, I'm getting on probation. They're like,

It's Wednesday dude like we got a family and jobs so like well fuck you I guess I'm partying by myself mm-hmm So I'm in the garage, and I like this thing and I'm smoking it and not dude It wasn't ten minutes into it where I'm like this thing can be enough. I knew it right then I was like this thing can be enough and Then sure enough you know I smoke as heavy as possible like you can't smoke more than what it's impossible like everywhere I went I was smoking. I was eating it I was

We had a business, so I'd eat the wax that we were using to vape. I'm just spoon feeding it, right? I mean, as much as you could possibly do. And then I go pick up one time and the dude's like, hey man, I got Xanax. And I'm like, over with, right? So I buy him out of them, right? And then once I'm on that, then I play this game of finding the center, right? So I get real low on the Xanax and I do a bunch of math or crack or coke or something to bring me back up just so I can get brought right back down. And I love that.

Matt (1:13:16)
trying to find the balance

you pass it on the way back down you pass it on the way back up but yeah it's like

Curtiss (1:13:28)
And and that's how it was and I hated I don't like uppers I don't like I Love them when I'm out there, but like if I if it's I'll take Xanax like I'm not gonna tweak I can't do that But I'll stay up for days if we're like having sex or something. You're like that's what meth is right so Yeah, it was It got really dark really fast and when I say that like we had an unlimited amount of money we had ⁓

Anything we had people at our house of watching our kid we had all the the makings of disaster right the enabling the money the all of it and ⁓ And we end up going to we took a vacation to Florida for my birthday and then we missed two flights Yes, this is this is where the picture happened. This was towards the end of it ⁓ And I mean at the time I have a I have a cabinet company We have the Delta eight company and we have the vape store, right?

Matt (1:14:13)
you the picture?

Curtiss (1:14:24)
I don't know how it's like, Nicky's getting high at the vape store, I'm managing the cabinet company and like I'm missing it. I'm like, I put myself in a paint booth so I can isolate.

Matt (1:14:36)
Right?

Curtiss (1:14:38)
So we go to Florida and Florida got really bad. Those pictures, my aunt came down to hang out for a couple days. ⁓ We ended up, my cousin's come down and it was a big fiasco. My cousin came down from Tampa to bring me dough. I'm like, just bring me everything you got, as much as you got, bring it down here. They show up, him and his friends get into a fight. So the cops come, as soon as they show up to this house, it's Nicky's dad's house, the neighbors call Nicky's dad. ⁓

And Nikki says, and I'm like in the middle, I've been up for a couple days, I'm in the middle of it, right? Over here on vacation, right? And Nikki's like, hey, my dad just got on a plane. He's on his way here. And I'm like, pack your shit, we're outta here, dude. So ⁓ we kick everybody out of the house. We pack up and go to Miami. And we're in Miami for probably three weeks. We got in some suite somewhere, and I detox twice in this hotel room. Nikki would go out and they're like,

And we had our son, Like, we had our son. dude, I mean, it's a miracle that he made it through it all. So we end up, Nikki fills up a, ⁓ we had this SUV, we rented, was like an XL Yukon. She filled up, the whole thing from the, the, behind the driver's seat, all the way to the back is stuff. Clothes, I bought speakers, we were buying all kind of weird shit. So we couldn't get on a plane. I had so much stuff.

So Nikki passes out one time, we're in the car, and I just start driving to Texas. And she wakes up and she's like, where are we at? And I'm like, we're on our way home. And she starts freaking out, ⁓ so we have to stop and get her shit, had to go meet my cousin and get shit, just to get home, right? And ⁓ we get home, ⁓ man, we get home and.

A couple weeks later, you know, we didn't stop, of course. We get home and Nikki's trying to go to treatment. I mean, her family is involved. Like there's this picture. It's Nikki and my son and her dad and they're on a golf cart and Nikki's like holding it out like this. and she takes the picture and you see like a side profile. She's looking at the phone with Cooper and you see a side profile of her dad and she's like 90 pounds and she's got stores on her and stuff.

And and cooper's smiling and her dad's just somber driving that golf cart man And you know her family was all on us. So we were trying to get her into treatment she was fine trying to find a place that she could take our son and And there's not many of those in the country that you could take a baby to and She had to she went to one in cali and ended up leaving after

Matt (1:17:18)
Yep. You find one in California? Yeah.

That's right. She talked about this. Yeah, my wife went to one in California. Yeah

Curtiss (1:17:28)
So yeah, I don't know, she wasn't ready at the time anyway, but she left after a couple of days. anyways, before she even goes to treatment, we're in this, like I'm trying to get her to treatment. And we keep, she keeps putting it off, putting it off, and I'm trying to get her to treatment. So one night my dealer calls and he goes, hey man, I got some uncut kilos. And he's like, why don't you, he said for 27,000, never been cut. And I'm like, well, okay, that's crazy that you called me for that amount of drugs.

I don't buy that so I get off phone. I'm like this dude's trying to set me up and niggies like yeah for sure dude Don't fuck with them anymore, and I'm like yeah cool, so the next day I take some Xanax and in my mind. I'm like this dude said he got some uncut shit Let me call him so I called him end up going over there and buy like I Buy everything everything that he had I got because when I got busted it was it was like five felonies ⁓ but it was a

I go in there and I buy everything you have I the Xanax I buy meth I buy coke I buy all of it right and then I leave and I go where Nikki was Nikki and my son they were at this girl's house and I'm there and I'm like look I'm fixing to go home I got this bad. I'm fixing to get high I've already been up for a couple days, but I'm fixing to send it and a Crazy thing that would happen so I leave I leave Nikki didn't come home with me I'm like well I'm going home so I bounce and when I'm when I've been up for a long time This is very weird. I always want to go to Walmart

Right? I don't steal. shop. I'll go in Walmart and spend like thousand bucks. I'll buy the... Hammocks is something really weird when I've been up, because I don't know. I had a big collection of hammocks. And ⁓ the sad one is first aid kits. Because I remember like seeing first aid kits in Walmart or Kroger and being like, yeah, I'm a dad. yeah, what do dads do? What do fathers do? They probably need a first aid kit. You know, I don't know.

Right? So I don't I get those first aid kits anyways I end up going to Walmart and I have this Louis Vuitton backpack and I remember getting out of my truck and looking at that backpack and being like I'm not leaving that in here like somebody's gonna steal my shit. It had full of dope if to the brim so I put it on and and I go shopping through Walmart and the Conroe Police Department surrounds me in there. ⁓ And they arrest me they go through my truck. They do all that. ⁓ Possession right they.

Matt (1:19:47)
Why they arrest you?

Why did they approach you?

Curtiss (1:19:52)
I was so out of it. I have no I don't remember. Okay, like I don't remember I was like I remember they grabbed me and I'm like I had this basket and I'm like, hey man I've been shopping. Let me get the basket. Like what do y'all doing? Like I want this basket ⁓ And they took me in the the little law prevention room or whatever and the dude immediately opens my backpack, right? I didn't give him any consent or anything. I do remember that and then they go in my truck and there wasn't really shit in my truck But it was all in my backpack. I had it on me ⁓ So

They they end up going to that house too. So that I stopped at the house where Nikki was in between So the dude set me up they followed me over here and then they got me a Walmart So, uh, of course they they like call me in as soon as I get there and they're like how much you own that truck I had this big Dooley and I was like, don't know like 14 000 on there something like we're gonna impound it. I'm like, we'll keep it dude I'm gonna go to sleep put me back in there. I want to go back to sleep So they were trying to get me to to snitch on somebody and I'm like look

Matt (1:20:32)
Wow. Yeah.

Curtiss (1:20:54)
Obviously, y'all know who I bought this stuff from, because y'all came to this other house. Y'all don't think I know that? Anyway, so Nikki bonds me out. I was probably in there like 12 hours, maybe. And the first thing I said when I get in the car is like, what dope do you have? I need some drugs right now. End up going back to this dude's house. It's crazy. So I call him and I text him and he's like, da da da da. So he's like, I'm not home right now. So I go by his house and there's white SUVs in his driveway.

So mean, but that's how wild, I mean, I didn't have a whole lot of connections with him. I was just buying them all from this dude. anyways, I start, I went to treatment probably like a week later. I had a friend of mine come in my store, vape store, and he was like, hey man, if you don't go to treatment, you're fucked. You're gonna be going forever. And I'm like, oh yeah, dude, I know that.

go to treatment to manipulate the court, right? ⁓ So that's what I did. And we ended up, ⁓ I found ⁓ the orchard last minute. That was a God thing. ⁓ Because they let you have your phones, they let you do this. And I'm real important, you know, if 148 pounds strung out on meth and I really need that phone because I got these businesses I need to take care of. Everything was kind of more important than the task at hand. I need to make sure that I can have my creature comforts I can, you know, all this typical shit, right?

Matt (1:22:15)
you

Curtiss (1:22:21)
⁓ But it worked out man ⁓ and we go there and and ⁓ I went there and it wasn't like Man my whole life From when I was everybody's telling me what I need to do, right? But if you do this man, your life will really change if you if you did this if you follow these steps if you did if you could just do this everything to be and they always have these pointers where they didn't do that here, right? It wasn't it was like hey, just like I told you earlier how I handle people

Like, you can do that, yeah bro, but there's also this, right? It's a decision, right? It was like, yeah, yeah, you know what that, but look, this is what life really looks like without it, right? It was that example that kind of pulling me with a vision, but not really, because I'm seeing the fruits in their life, right?

Matt (1:23:07)
Yeah, but you're also giving they're also giving you the option to make a decision Yes is like, you know a lot of people end up in these situations and they are told if you don't do it like this You're doing it wrong and it's not gonna work. Yeah versus like ⁓ you can so I Met dr. dr. Shah and he started telling me why and I immediately was like we could sell people on why all day Yeah, it is nearly impossible to sell somebody like me on should

Because I know I should have never done drugs. I probably should have gone to college. I should have done this I should have done that I shouldn't have done that but That's I mean shit

Curtiss (1:23:43)
If you understand the why behind what you're doing.

Matt (1:23:46)
Yeah,

for sure. But why is like a really good motivator? For sure. Versus should.

Curtiss (1:23:51)
Yeah, yeah, it's a big, I mean, the story of self and a lot of the stuff that you're talking about with Doug Schell, you're talking about a value shift rather than a behavior shift.

Matt (1:24:01)
Yeah, the way that we talk about it is like we are reframing everything. Yes. Like the lens that you are looking through at all of these problems, we're gonna give you a different one to look through and see what you think. Yeah. Right? And like, and this kind of started for me years ago.

Curtiss (1:24:18)
That's exactly what the story is. We give them a different pair of glasses, right? It's like, ⁓ yes, that's true, but it's not only true, right?

Matt (1:24:27)
Yeah,

so that's the other part right is like multiple things can be true at once ⁓ And if that is a fact that multiple things can be true at the same time even if they're kind of conflicting then the way that I and and I always tell people this is like I started looking at words that I was using and understanding like the effect that if I use this word so what it came down to is I wrote down definitions and words and like started looking at like addicts

recovery, ⁓ coping, like everything that applies to the direction that I was about to go, and I had to define it for myself. Because if I had gone by their definitions, I would have been fucked. Right? when everybody thinks of like addict, there's like all this negative connotation. Right? If I have to be an addict for the rest of my life, I need to think about it differently. Or if like triggers and ⁓ triggers and so I don't use triggers.

at all anymore. Cravings, like these are all just really good reasons to use. Right? The reality is this is a hundred percent my choice. And so for my personal recovery, I just don't use trigger or craving anymore. Because when I crave pizza, I know I'm craving pizza. I know like what I can almost taste it. Like I can feel it in my body. When I crave drugs, really all it is is like me obsessing. And so they kind of correlate, but they're not the same thing.

And so if I had to go by like that definition of craving I would have just been fucked triggers I had to completely leave that behind too because there was no trigger that Like traditional trigger that could really justify the actions that I was taking like the reality was I wanted to use and that's what I did for sure

Curtiss (1:26:13)
Yeah, I don't I've never liked the word trigger and before I was a counselor I didn't like that word jr And I and I try not to use it as a counselor But I did have a counselor one time I was taught I have the same stance on that word as you do and he he like broke down some chemical thing that happens in your brain He's like it's real and it happens and I'm like cool, man. I just don't like the

Matt (1:26:35)
Yeah, well it also it might happen for some people that way it doesn't happen like that for me Yeah, and so that's why I had to cut it out for me for sure Now we're professionals in the space and when you look at like the criteria that they're using they're actually saying they're they're Asking you to ask them like what are their trigger levels? What are their craving levels? So you have to like use this terminology if you're getting if you're if you're getting reimbursements you have to use it Yeah, but for me walking around today

I have to not lean on those words anymore.

Curtiss (1:27:06)
Yeah, on that paper, on the paperwork when you're filling out stuff for those clients, it's the level of craving, know, between a one and a

Matt (1:27:12)
Yeah, and so like how do you scale that I mean legitimately I got I got a hold of my chart after I left treatment the last time and I was reporting zeros Yeah, no triggers to zero, know, and it's like I got a hold of it and it was like six Seven and it was like in my head. was like, that is fucked up They like framed it to look weird. Yeah, and then I got into the to the industry and I was like, ⁓ these are like ethical decisions that people moral decisions that people have to make because

Curtiss (1:27:24)
everybody always

Matt (1:27:41)
If it's just zeros across the board, I didn't realize in my head, I didn't realize like, they have to justify this next week to the insurance company. So zeros across the board, we're not paying for it. ⁓ And so is it ethical or moral? They might be in conflict, right? It might not be ethical, but it's definitely moral if this person needs the help to kind of like misreport what's going on, or at least misreport what they're self-reporting.

Curtiss (1:28:06)
Meet the criteria needed to get you another week or two. Yeah, and that's what LCDC is. And LCDC is that, for the most part, all you're doing is trying to get more down. Like you meet with them and you do that, but like the paperwork, that's where everyone's leaning on that, because we want you to get more PHP or more. And it sucks, man. I gave an insurance lady a tour of the O one time and she's like, look, we're not saying they don't need the treatment. We're just saying we're not paying for it.

Matt (1:28:17)
Yeah

Golly, it's dirty. That's who's setting the pace for what treatment is. Yeah, for sure. That's who's, you know, and they will. They will cut you at 21 days.

Curtiss (1:28:44)
I've been to facilities ⁓ and they have their schedule posted on the wall and there's 30 minutes, two 15 minute slots in a day for hand washing and that schedule is approved by insurance. You send that schedule to insurance and it says there's 30 minutes of hand washing a day. There's like an hour of cleaning your room a day or something like that and all this stuff is insurance approved. the actual, there was like,

It was a couple recovery groups, like peer-led, and then like one counselor group a day. And you know, who knows what they're doing. I mean, I got a ballpark, but...

Matt (1:29:21)
The crazy part is like, you know, different insurance companies have different criteria for what they are billing for hourly, right? And it's like, on average, it's three, three billable hours a a day. That's 21 hours that you have to figure out what to do with. And so like, you're making all of your money in three hours. The rest of it is kind of on you to figure out what's advantageous. How do we spend this time? What are we actually going to do? And a lot of it is filled with the cheapest possible option.

Right? Oh, we're going to play basketball for an hour and then we're going to do, you guys are going to, you guys are going to lead groups. The reality is the margins in this, in this industry are astronaut. This is a high risk industry with great margins. And so people look at like proformas and like business plans and they're like, Oh yeah, I want to get into this. The reality is, uh, and this is where all those questions come into play where it's like, are we fulfilling our obligation to our clients? Right?

It's we're walking a thin line between just checking off boxes and like fulfilling obligations Because people are sending their kids to us to save their lives and we can't save their life that people that think they're gonna go to treatment and The the wherever they're sending them to that place is gonna save their life. You got treatment fucked up Yeah, that person has to save their own life. Mm-hmm We're only the only thing we're trying to do is facilitate some kind of mind shift Yeah, and a lot of people aren't trying to facilitate the mind shift. They're trying to check off boxes

so that they can get that reimbursement.

Curtiss (1:30:54)
Yeah, for sure. It happens with burnout too. mean, you get burnout. And the counselor, look, shout out to all the counselors, man. That is a, it sucks. I mean, some people are built for it, but man, it's just the same thing. mean, I get people confused. Sometimes their stories, I mean, like, cause that's so many. Right? And, I don't know, man. It's a tough job. And you know, in the beginning it was a lot of, ⁓

Matt (1:31:13)
Yeah

Curtiss (1:31:22)
Max effort from me and little effort from them. You know, and I had to learn that. I can't want it more than them. And that's where I kind of built my style of like, look, I'm gonna lay this out for you. young guys, I'll explain to them like, look, when I was a kid selling dope, there was an old man that sat me down and told me how to do it. And that's what I'm doing for you right now, right? Same thing, I'm giving you the game, right? And this is what it looks like with decision A, this is what it looks like with decision B. You're a grown up, man.

Like, you know, you can look at my life. you know, I'm serious when I tell you all the shit that I've been through and done, right? So, I just give them to them like that, man. And I don't, like, one thing that people might disagree on me on, if someone calls me and tells me they're gonna get high, I tell them to get high. That's the first thing I tell them. I'm well, go get high. Because, why are you calling me? Your son, and it's in the other room there, you don't give a shit about him. You're calling me, your wife.

How am I gonna stop you from getting high? If you wanna get high, go get high. I can't stand in the middle of that. When you're done, I'll be there. Just call me when you're done. And most of time, they're like, ugh. They're looking for response. And I understand that I have no power to help anybody. I can give you my experience and that's it. I can lead you, but I can't make you drink. Isn't that how it goes?

Matt (1:32:25)
Yeah.

Yeah

Lead a horse to water, can't make him drink.

Curtiss (1:32:43)
led me like that. I don't know if they led me like that, but people did it my whole and I just wasn't ready. You know, I wasn't ready. And maybe, you know, I don't know why. I don't know why it took me until I was 36 with countless consequences. And I have seen a 19 year old, 20 year old, you know, first time in treatment, boom, nails it. Right? Maybe he's not. But I've seen like real fentanyl addicts nail it. Right? That are one of them. Yeah.

Matt (1:32:49)
Yeah.

Curtiss (1:33:14)
I'm don't want to break hip, but But yeah, these are my good friends, right? That are super young, successful now. We're fentanyl addicts, right? We're heroin addicts and they're doing good now. That's why when, and what I wanted to discuss about that question was just that. It's like, what if we don't, right? What if we do turn them all the way and we did have a shot with one? Is it worth, is it worth ⁓ maybe taking this money when

We know he's probably not, if there's a chance.

Matt (1:33:44)
Right? Yeah, okay, so around that part, Like, everybody talks about planting seeds. Yeah. Right? Planting seeds, in theory, is, ⁓ you know, my executive director tells me all the time, he's like, look, we're in an IOP situation right now. ⁓ The reality is, a lot of these people are going to go back to treatment at some point. Like, the statistics are enough for us to say, like, a lot of people are going to end up back in treatment. ⁓

Now, planting seeds is our job. Like, we have to be able to get across to them, like, break down barriers and like, really kind of like offer that opportunity for them to make decisions for themselves and see the fruit of that decision. ⁓ But the planting seeds process also has a presupposition that they'll make it back. The reality is, less and less people are making it back because of the situation that we're in. And I get all conspiratorial about this shit too, because it's like,

why is this shit here? Like why was COVID and the introduction of fentanyl basically happening at the same time? Like how did this end up, how did we end up in a situation where the leading cause of death of people under 40 in two years, it hits the market two years later, leading cause of death. How did that happen? Because heroin has been around for hundreds of years. I mean, it was literally on the shelf a hundred years ago.

Curtiss (1:34:58)
15 to 45 is fentanyl.

Matt (1:35:12)
Like sold by Bayer the same people that sell aspirin it was on the shelf that shit's been around for forever That was never the leading cause of death for people under 45. You know fentanyl hits the market immediately kills everybody like There's got to be something else behind this other than just people making terrible decisions. Yeah, probably you know and so I I So we have enough history behind us to kind of be like

Curtiss (1:35:32)
always think there is usually.

Matt (1:35:37)
You know the crack epidemic the feel like all of this shit like we kind of know like there's bigger Pieces at play here than you and I will ever be able to fuck with right? And so the whole planting seeds process that pre-supposition that they'll make it back that is Putting a lot on that pre-supposition for sure you know and so Yeah, I think I'm damn

Curtiss (1:35:59)
If

you do or damned if you don't not situation, okay, it's a tough call because you do never know and Like of course man treatment overall in my opinion is it's grimy and I'm not talking about like specific places I'm just we're talking about cash for lives it in like fundamentally that's grimy I understand that there's there you got that it's a necessary evil, right? We got to have facilities. We got to have stuff, but it just gets so messy man ⁓

I don't know. I think that

Matt (1:36:31)
In the nonprofit sector, they don't call it the treatment industry. Do you know that? They call it the field of recovery. That in and of itself. You move into a cash-pay situation and it changes definitionally. Industry, that word means something. I'm sure you've seen it. People are stacking and packing people. These are normalized terminologies in this industry. Stack and pack and turn and burn. I've seen people...

Leave stream and go right back.

Curtiss (1:37:02)
You that detox money, recycling. Yeah, I mean there's places you got caught all over Florida, California doing that stuff. I sponsored a guy that was, he said that he would go to treatment for 15 days, they'd give him five grand and he'd relapse and come back and they'd just keep hitting out insurance, bang.

Matt (1:37:18)
You know, there's that famous Kenny Chapman, right? Like, he was selling them the drugs, too. He would break them off for their stay, send them right back over to his dope house. They would buy the drugs from him, like from his person that's selling drugs. And ⁓ two days later, he'd call them, you ready? Yep, alright, let's go. Pick them up, bring them back to treatment. 15 days later, five grand, over to the dope house, stay there for two days, you ready? And it was just this whole mess.

Curtiss (1:37:46)
That's why.

Matt (1:37:47)
Dude it was a mess ⁓ he's getting prison for the rest of his life Florida Florida Florida yeah Wow and and thankfully like Thankfully, we're aware of that kind of stuff where And there's much more safeguards because of that whole situation there's safeguards that have been put in place, but You you allow people to make decisions for themselves without putting any kind of safeguard around trading money for lives

Curtiss (1:37:49)
Godly he got busted. I'm busy. Yeah, was that uncali

Matt (1:38:17)
and they will run with it. And so my whole question around like, we intentionally sacrificing lives to save, to make money? I'm not saying that anybody that I know is doing that intentionally. I'm not saying that anybody's even doing that. It's a question. And it's a question that I have to ask myself because can I look myself in the mirror at night and ask myself, like, are you fulfilling your obligation to your clients to justify the home and the car and the like?

the lifestyle that I live today, can I justify that with what I'm delivering in my product? Right, and so when I got into this, I said, I just want to move the needle a little bit. I don't know what that means, I don't know how it's gonna happen, and then I met Dr. Sean, I was like, all right, this is how I'm gonna do it. Right, because nobody has ever said that relapse prediction is possible, but what they have always said is, you've relapsed way before you picked up, so it's gotta be possible. Right? For sure. ⁓

Curtiss (1:38:49)
the quality of product.

Matt (1:39:14)
⁓ if we can prove this model around relapse prediction and Introduce the biological component to the relapse cycle now. We're talking about a whole different ballgame Yeah, we're saying like look there is no moral failing There is no like this isn't this is obviously a pattern of bad decision-making, but there's a physical reason for it Yeah, and we have the answer for you, right the the the the disheartening part about it is ⁓

we have to still answer to the standards of the people in charge. So we're looking at success rates. What is a success rate? Like how do they define that? What are the metrics that they're using? Like the actual metric that they're using for success rate is can you keep them clean for a year? Okay, well, how do you define a year? Right, and I told you it's like the way that they're defining that year is totally dishonest. Because you don't have to measure anybody else, just measure everybody that came in in December. They stayed clean for a year.

You know, if you got a hundred clients and thirteen of them stayed clean for a year, you've met that threshold of a highly successful treatment center. So it's like very crazy.

Curtiss (1:40:21)
It's

wild. so the super successful is 13%. Yeah, but I mean that that falls in line with kind of what we were talking about earlier with like the slap on the wrist treatment, you know, your first offense going to treatment, all that kind of stuff. So that plays in that those statistics as well, you know, the people just damn sure ain't ready. They're just trying to evade consequences.

Matt (1:40:28)
13.

That's a, it's a hard thing to, so when we came, there was a shift obviously somewhere where it became like ⁓ solution, it was like solution oriented to preventative and like wherever that shift happened, a lot of shit got fucked up. And there's a, do you know who William White is? When you look at like addiction statistics and like all of the metadata studies that they're doing and stuff, it's him.

You ever see studies that are done around outcomes and shit like that? It's him. He's a piece of that. William White. Bill White. ⁓ And there's a group of them. There's a big government-funded powerhouse that all they do is they just look at outcomes. And all of them hate treatment. They're like, when it became privatized, outcomes suffered by almost 100%.

It changed from like trying to save lives to trying to make money. Yeah, so You know and it's like do I think that? ⁓ Do I think that I can like systemically change a system that was it do you know who the biggest? ⁓ owner of treatment centers are hmm Blackrock Do you know who crazy? Yeah, so you know who owns that true? Yeah

Yeah, the biggest private equity firms that own treatment centers, they're owned by BlackRock. Now, you know who owns like a good percentage of the insurance agencies and companies? BlackRock. BlackRock. So the insurance rates, they're arguing with themselves. Like they're setting the pace of what the reimbursement rates are by negotiating with themselves. And now everybody else's pace gets set by that too.

Curtiss (1:42:13)
That's crazy. Of course, everything's owned by BlackRock.

Matt (1:42:37)
And so they don't care how much it is or how low it is because they're paying themselves. So now when you like look at big picture of like what's going on, it's like we are powerless over what's going on.

Curtiss (1:42:49)
You

can't get around insurance. You can, but...

Matt (1:42:52)
There are models out there, right? But now you have ⁓ taken the spectrum of people that you can work with down to like the smallest possible rung of people. You're talking about the .01 % of people that can afford 60 grand a month for treatment. And that's when you really get access to like, because as long as you can pay, you can stay. And this is where you see kids like, yeah, I went to treatment for nine months and it was 60 grand a month and it was really successful and it really helped.

The thing that I found out was, you know, like the people nowadays, the saying is that exposure to treatment dictates outcomes. Well, that saying got mutated. What it used to say was length of exposure to treatment dictated outcomes. Right? And so now it's just exposure to treatment. So what a lot of people will interpret that as is if you go to treatment, you have better outcomes.

when the statistics say you gotta go to treatment seven times to stay clean for a year. So it isn't treatment, but now you add in factors like extent, like length of treatment exposure, this is where outcomes change.

Curtiss (1:44:06)
Well, and you take most treatment facilities, you take somebody and you take everything away from them. So it's just them in that facility for however long. The bubble. In their bubble, right? And then that was one cool thing about where I went. You know, it was, I had access to all that. I'm arguing with my wife real time, right? You know, I'm going through this and I'm talking to a counselor.

but you take everything away from somebody, yeah, they're gonna thrive, they're gonna do good, because they have to do certain things to get certain things, most places, right? If I do this, this, I get the phone, if I do this and this, I don't have to sweep, or whatever, right? So it's incentivized, all of it. And then when you get out, it's like, well, I'm good, bro, like, what, I mean, it's not the same, right? Or all of life comes and hits you at the same time.

Matt (1:44:50)
And you know that's like so a lot of people think like because they're sold this idea like all you got to do is stop using and life gets better Yeah, the reality is you go to treatment the banks coming after you now the IRS coming after you real bad You losing the job now you're getting divorced CPS is getting involved like shit hits the fan after you get out of treatment and dr Shaw says the likelihood is you get reactivated in the first 90 days for sure when you look at relapse rates What is it people aren't relapsing at 11 months? They are but the the

Good contingency of them. It's in the first 90 days. Yeah, like it's really really hard to put that first 90 days together There's got to be a reason right? Why is it that everybody that's relapsing is relapsing that fast? ⁓ A lot of it is like what you said they are put in a bubble and now they're expected to deal with real world shit without a commitment to lower levels of treatment or ⁓ A lot of people get that pink the pink cloud effect right where everything will be good

The second that dissipates and you have to really face shit, like stuff, you know, one thing that happens a lot is people, even people with great jobs, they'll enter recovery. Typically, they enter recovery because shit hit the fan. And so they don't have this job or whatever and they gotta go out there and try to find a way to support the lifestyle that they were living before. And it's hard. It's hard to do that without that kind of history, right? But now you gotta do that. And a lot of people get it.

a job that doesn't sufficiently support the lifestyle that they were living. And that in and of itself, Dr. Shaw talks about all the time, financial insecurity is a huge reason why people relapse. ⁓ There's relationship drama, there's financial insecurities, there's being re-traumatized in treatment that thinks that they're going to try to scratch at the surface of this thing and then send you out there. There's like all of these things that come into play when you're sending somebody into treatment that really have to be ironed out.

not by the people sending them, not by the person that's going in treatment, but by the treatment facility. And a lot of people aren't answering to those questions. ⁓

Curtiss (1:46:58)
Yeah, the be careful what you open in treatment. That's ⁓ like the clinician, sometimes you see him getting in some really big traumas and you know this person is be there 20 days. You're like, bro. Yeah, yeah, that's a no-no. But.

Matt (1:47:10)
Bad idea.

Curtiss (1:47:20)
I don't know.

Matt (1:47:21)
I mean, it's a whole situation. It's like we don't, like I said, we can't systemically change. The only thing I have power over is what happens here. And so ultimately the reason why I ask these questions and have these conversations is to inform me on how I'm gonna move forward. It isn't to criticize people. It definitely isn't to point fingers. I'm really just trying to figure out how are we going to be a part of the business that saved lives and really do that.

Curtiss (1:47:48)
Well, I think you're asking all the right questions. I think we're at a place now in treatment in general that these questions need to be asked. ⁓ Because it's kind of out of hand. You see it everywhere. I know that every place starts out with great intentions. Well, most places start out with great intentions, right? You mean well. It usually starts out with a spark in you. Like, the eyes open, you see, and you want to show someone else, you want to bring them to that, right?

and the intentions are all good and then it turns into that machine. Right? You get that money, you get the, and you gotta bill that insurance. How much did we make this month? And then you start pinging on the dopamine off all that. You know what I mean? And it gets lost, right? The originally intended, ⁓ whatever, it gets lost, right? And it gets drowned by finances and...

Matt (1:48:40)
Yeah, I always say that it's like the Italian restaurant industry, right? Like you'll have this Italian family, they want to start a restaurant, right? And they've got a great product. They're flying their grandma in from Italy and like the cousins are coming in. They're like making the pasta in the back and the cheese and whatever. They're like making sauces for days. And then like a couple of years later, and they've got a great product, best food. Everybody loves it. They're like getting recognized. They got these little wards and shit like that. And then a couple of years later,

They got that cousin in the back or whoever in the back that goes, you know what, we could save money right here. Or we could do this. We could change this and save a little money here. We could just stop making the cheese here. We could buy it. It's authentic. We could buy it from over here. And they start making fiscal decisions that overall hurt the product. And so then five years down the line, you can see it in the Yelp reviews where people are like, this used to be the best Italian food and I don't know what happened. Now the difference is treatment industry, you can coast off of a good reputation.

And so the Harmony Grove of 10 years ago, well guess what? The captain changes because the Matthew Handy over there, like he made some money and he wanted to go sit. And so he hired somebody. Vision changes, captain of the guard changes. They sell to private equity. Now it's just totally different, right? But guess what?

When Matt Handy started Harmony Grove, they had this vision and they talked and all these podcasts and like asked all the right questions. But five years later, they're like, you know what? We can cut this corner. Right. And so that's why I ask these questions is because this is informing me on the direction that I have to go. These are the things that I have to look out for myself in order to not fall victim to those same pitfalls because it's on its way. It's coming. There is no question about it. Like if this is successful.

I'm going have to make these decisions. And when that person says, we could save money here, I have to be able to put my foot down and be like, no. What ultimately suffers is the outcome.

Curtiss (1:50:44)
Best for the client.

Matt (1:50:46)
And it's like, yeah, I might be able to buy that Ferrari if I save that money or whatever. it's like, yeah, but am I fulfilling my obligation? It comes back to those original questions of like looking myself in the mirror and being like, am I okay with what I'm doing?

Curtiss (1:51:01)
And you think you want that Ferrari until you get it. And then when you get it, you're just like.

Matt (1:51:05)
So

I'm I'm fortunate because I'm kind of like Nikki. Yeah, right. We're like ⁓ I'm not coming from nothing. Yeah, right. And so it would it be nice to have a Ferrari? Yeah, but it's gonna sit in my garage. Yeah, that's it. You know, I'm like ultimately like as a status symbol the way that I see it is like all the rich people that I know they buy their clothes from Costco. Yeah

They don't give a fuck about that shit. They're not wearing Louis. They're not wearing that shit. They're not spending thousands of dollars on their wardrobe. Fucking Steve Jobs drove a Corolla. ⁓ They don't give a fuck about that shit. And ultimately, if I'm willing to have these conversations and speak out the way that I am and then five years from now I sell out, I will never show my face again.

Curtiss (1:51:44)
Yeah.

I don't care.

Well, Nikki used to tell me when we were dating, because I had my vape stores and all that, and I'm like, look, if we get another store, if we can get this, I'm get this and wipe this. And Nikki's like, do money, it's going to make you happy, man. And I'm like, shut up. You've always had it. You don't know. And sure enough, man, and I never had Ferrari money, but I had enough. And it was empty. It was a pursuit.

that ended in a pursuit, right? You hit that number and you're like, well, you know, if I had this much, I could do this. And then if I had this much, I could do this. And it's never ending, you know? It's the, ⁓ like what I found in recovery is just falling in love with the journey, as cliche as that sounds. like that day-to-day stuff with my kid, you know, the baseball practice that I don't wanna go to, the coach that I'm like, I gotta listen to this coach, tell Cooper some stuff that contradicts what I've been telling him, whatever. It's like that stuff, man, I live for that.

Right? Rather than... And it used to always be like, like, man, hurry up, kid. Get a little bit older so we can play catch. Man, do this. And now it's like, slow down.

Matt (1:53:04)
Slow down. yeah, because then they guess what they start growing up. Yeah, and that shit happens faster than you want it to.

Curtiss (1:53:09)
way faster man and I like I pick up my son now and he's heavy dude and I think every time is this gonna be the last one? This is gonna be the last time I pick him up like this you know? It's coming man you know and and we only have one son so it's stuff like that but used to it was always the when I get this I'm gonna be okay when I have this I'm gonna be okay when I get this when I get that and the bar just keeps moving and Curtis is never okay right I'm never okay I'm devouring I want more and more and more

Matt (1:53:39)
Yeah, yeah, yeah the the reality about you make more money you spend more money for sure right and There's always a bigger boat always a nicer car. There's always that shit right and it's like dude. I don't have like I'm not fucking rich I'm not right, but I Understand enough to know but dude. I was living under a bridge five years ago. I'm doing fucking really good

Curtiss (1:54:05)
Compared to that picture you do

Matt (1:54:06)
Yeah, it's like dude I am I'm okay. Yeah, right like dude. This is I go home I watch my little baddies and like I watch fucking 90-day fiance with my wife and like we argue over who's dumber I Recently I started watching seeking sister wives have you ever watched this? ⁓ dude It is the craziest. I mean, it's like so in in the United States polygamy is illegal

Yeah, and so you see like all these people like trying to circumvent these laws and it's like they're divorcing their actual wife to like marry this other girl to like and They're like manipulating the females like they are sister wives So like their relationship is the most important but really the guys back there like okay I'm gonna how am I gonna split my week up like I'm gonna sleep with her tonight and then her the next night and then and then it's me time it's and I'm like this guy's fucking

I can't ⁓ Yeah, no dude, it's and then we're always like making those jokes. It's like yeah, she'll be like you want a sister wife Okay, I get a brother husband. Yeah, you know like

Curtiss (1:55:03)
I barely handle one.

No chance I want to do

Yeah, yeah, we joke about it, but we're in a

Matt (1:55:18)
Yeah,

no, we ain't yeah, we're doing it. Yeah

Curtiss (1:55:21)
Yeah,

and that's the important stuff, man. None of other stuff, like, look, I love Story of Self, I love our cabinet company, I love the stuff that we do, but I'd stop everything right now for time with Cooper. Nothing is more important than that, you know, if he's got games or something. Because, you know, that's most valuable stuff we have is that time, man, and I wasted so much of it, man, and good time.

good moments that I'll never get back. I missed a lot of his first, you know, cause I was high. So, and that's a beautiful thing about recovery today that I really, I appreciate. It's just a little shit, the shit that used to drive me crazy, you know, being able to enjoy that. But yeah.

Matt (1:56:08)
Yeah, that evolution of a personal recovery. It's... I don't know where this switch happens. It's different for everybody, I think everybody's... At least for me. Like, there came a time where I was like... All those things that I used to talk about... I would be like... Dude, I was that idiot that would be like, I'm homeless. And we're like selling drugs to get by, like Megan's... Whatever, we're like doing whatever we can for like enough money. It's never enough, but like...

Curtiss (1:56:38)
never enough.

Matt (1:56:38)
We always like found a way to like have more than a lot of other people, right? And I would always be that idiot where I'm like, my goal is like, have a like, it's so I don't even want to say it. ⁓ No, no, no, no, my goal was so embarrassing. I wanted to have a two kilo gold chain. That was like my goal. I'm like,

Curtiss (1:56:51)
⁓ nicer box

Matt (1:57:05)
In my head I'm like, I'm so gonna do this, like a homeless dude with like... Yeah, for sure. in my head I'm like, let him. I don't give a fuck. Then they won't steal it. Yeah, for sure. But that was like the goal.

Curtiss (1:57:09)
too, Keeley. Everybody think it was fake.

Like

on the streets. ⁓ if I had that chain everything would be okay

Matt (1:57:24)
Yeah,

right, right, right. And now it's like, you know, I would never fucking buy a gold. I would never buy a gold chain today. Yeah, no, it was like like Because I saw it so in San Diego they have like this ⁓ You know, have you ever seen like ⁓ All the jewelry stores in New York They're like attached to building. Yeah, they're attached buildings like upstairs. There's like all this there's a lot of exchange going on They have a jewelry exchange in San Diego. It's like just this one

Vault of a building where like you've got a going to one door to another door and like unlocking and like talking to cameras and like And we were in there one day and I saw one and it wasn't like a one of those stupid gay ones that everybody wears now It's like a choker chain with like huge. Yeah, it was like a long just heavy Yeah, and I was like that is it I made it I made it as a homeless

So stupid.

Curtiss (1:58:25)
That's crazy, but it's the best idea you could ever come up with in the moment. You know if I have that chain man. I'll be doing well

Matt (1:58:29)
Yeah.

And now dude, I don't like I would watch or whatever but it's like I would never buy a I would never I don't care what I would never buy a gold chain now. It sounds just so stupid to me. Anyway, the whole point of all that was like I found contentment. Like I found comfortability and like peace in the weirdest shit. Like the most simple shit is like I gotta go get my oil changed. Right. And in my head I was like

Curtiss (1:58:59)
How to do that, yes.

Matt (1:59:03)
That's so weird like I gotta go my oil changed and I'm gonna pay full price for it like yeah, I like you know, it's like

Curtiss (1:59:11)
Maybe get it inspected too. You never know.

Matt (1:59:14)
Yeah, that extra 20 bucks like hey top off all the all the all the fluids you

Curtiss (1:59:20)
irresponsible

yeah yeah yeah anyway where did ⁓ i stopped off at

Matt (1:59:30)
You went through teenage years and like you kind of like

Curtiss (1:59:33)
about like the orchard. We got to the orchard, I bounced. ⁓ Yeah, man, and after that, dude, we just, we became counselors full time. We were counselors at the orchard running the aftercare stuff. And that's where we were kind of really introduced to what the story is and watching it. We experienced the lessons and stuff. yeah, we there for a few years and then we decided to take it on the road.

Matt (1:59:35)
Yeah.

You know who was here yesterday? Who? Kim Brook. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Curtiss (2:00:01)
I her. She's a

fan. I hope she is. We love Kim.

Matt (2:00:06)
No, no, she's total fan. Yeah, cool man. Cool. She actually she the way that she described like what happened with you guys and story and and that organization she was like I Kind of feel like God put me there to like help run them off so that they could end up doing What they're doing and then she ended up leaving it like right after you left like all that shit at the fan or whatever and like she ended up Because of all of that situation they dissolved her position. Yeah, and then she was gone

Curtiss (2:00:35)
was messy, Yeah, was messy. But it was what needed to happen. Definitely. And no love lost there, man. I really do. I believe there wasn't a place in the country that me and Nikki could have got sober at. And they did stuff for us that no one in the country would do. And I'll forever be grateful to the owners of that place.

Matt (2:00:36)
Yeah.

You said the country, literally, probably. You know how many registered residentials there are in the country? There's like 4,360 or something like that. Literally, probably none of them.

Curtiss (2:01:06)
There's gotta be a lot.

not gonna let that happen. And they did, and they like, dude, when they really did work with me and her individually, us together, I mean, they threw everything they had at us, you know? ⁓ And we needed it. I definitely needed it. Going through treatment together was very weird. Like, I'd pull up, because I left, right? So I was now commuting. I wasn't staying on site anymore. So I was driving in an hour and a half, twice a day. So six days a week. So three hours a day I'm driving there and back.

And I'd be driving up there and we're fighting, we're arguing, right? And I'd get there and I'd walk in and people would look at me and I'd be like, dude, she's talking shit about me. Like I think that I'm losing all my friends that were there, right? So I'm just like, one time I walk into a room, it was in the middle of group and two guys looked back at me and laughed. And I'm like, okay, so I stepped back, I stepped outside the group and waited till group was over when they got on, I'm what the fuck were y'all laughing at? And they're like, what dude? They weren't even laughing at me, right? They were something else.

Matt (2:02:11)
But I... Delusions of early recovery. Yeah, but...

Curtiss (2:02:14)
But I

think that like, ⁓ Nikki's telling them that I'm being mean or I'm being a jerk, she's lying or whatever it was, you know what I mean? So was tough. ⁓ they had a, the people that were in residential took a vote on who would relapse. And everyone, 100 % of everybody there, including my wife, said me. And Nikki told me about that. And of course I brushed that off.

Matt (2:02:38)
That is a weird ⁓ practice. Yeah. That is like a strange one.

Curtiss (2:02:44)
It's

a weird one, but it did something to me. Yeah, because Nikki had always, she'd always believed in me. Like she'd always had, and for her to not in that moment, I was like, damn, like I'm, I must be real bad, you know? And then we had another instance where the family therapist guy, he calls us in and I was like quitting. I was calling him, was quitting and the owner called me and she'd like, she'd be like, motherfucker, we are here because you asked us to be here. Everything.

Matt (2:02:47)
It is good.

Curtiss (2:03:12)
that's happening right now, you asked us for, and you got it. So bring your ass up here. She kept me on the hooks like that. But this family guy said, hey look, we talked, and we decided that ⁓ we're not gonna do this for anybody else. It's been too difficult. And at the time, and I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, man, fuck you. So I completely did a 180. I'm at every group, I'm nailing, if I have to manipulate, I'm manipulating, but I'm all in. Because.

Matt (2:03:25)
Yeah

Curtiss (2:03:40)
Back to what I told you about my son as long as I'm paying the consequences I'm good with it But now you're telling me that I'm gonna affect maybe someone else that maybe this is the last chance that they'll get and maybe they're only gonna get sober together and this is the only place that'll do it my mind works weird like that, but it's like I can't be that reason so if I'm a fuck up I'll fuck up after this

Matt (2:03:57)
Yeah. ⁓

Dude, like I said, they're not making money on it. There is no billing code for family therapy. There is no, like, you get extra brownie points for going above and beyond. So most people are like, fuck that. We were cash paid. Well, okay. ⁓

Curtiss (2:04:15)
They're

like, they went ahead, of course, they're underlying, okay, let's get these people in. They actually, and I didn't pay anything. ⁓ was my, don't want to act like I'm rich and open the deal. My father-in-law paid for all of it. ⁓ But they came down, I had the money, and they came down to ask me, they're like, hey man, we don't accept your insurance. And I'm like, 145 pounds mullet. And I'm like, what do you take, Bitcoin? And they're like, And I'm like, okay.

Matt (2:04:18)
Yeah

Curtiss (2:04:43)
And turns out, Nicky's dad pays for everything. Take Bitcoin, they're like, well, yeah, sure. Sure, we'll take it. But they didn't think, they thought I was going to be like, there's no chance that I look like I could have.

Matt (2:04:45)
Will you take Bitcoin?

afforded this place.

Curtiss (2:04:57)
They

were like, guy's gonna go. ⁓ it worked out good, man. It worked out good. It was the ⁓ right amount of push for me. It wasn't people telling me what I had to do, it people showing me that there was something different.

Matt (2:05:11)
You know what, I was gonna say it earlier, when you were like, it took 20 years of consequences, like the, yeah, it does. Like in my head, and this is where I was going before, was there are all those one-chip wonders, but that's not normal. It took me two decades of really fucking up to put me in that position where I tell people now my addiction ran to its logical course. This is exactly where I was gonna end up because of what I was doing.

It wasn't gonna go on for much longer. I guess just the way it was I was either gonna go do the rest of my life in prison or die Well, I'm almost positive. I would have never died. ⁓

Curtiss (2:05:49)
I'm there too. I don't think I'm not a dire. I'm a go to prison

Matt (2:05:52)
Yeah, well and my addiction affects so many other people negatively that's really what is Like if addiction is an entity it's trying to kill certain people, but it would rather keep everybody alive miserable. ⁓ wants everybody right and so my Addiction it is it has tentacles dude needs affecting. Yeah, every fucking person that I come into contact with it's affecting them

I am robbing, stealing, cheating, getting you hooked, giving you drugs, whatever it is. I'm affecting you negatively. And that was my addiction's goal, is not trying to kill me, it's trying to make everybody else's life even worse. And so I'm almost positive it would have never killed me. ⁓ But I was either gonna go spend the rest of my life in prison or have a long fucking miserable life. And that just wasn't in the cards. I wasn't gonna continue to do that forever. But it took.

All of those painful moments, all of those cold nights, all of those extreme situations of like, am I gonna die right now? Like all of those situations, took every single one of them. I tell people now, like I've had people ask like, do you regret anything? And I tell them, I was, there were times in my life where I lived in regret, but from where I sit today, I don't regret a single thing and I wouldn't change a thing because I needed every single one of those moments.

Because I'm not a smart person and I'm not a wise person smart people learn from their their mistakes wise people learn from others and I wasn't either of them So I needed every single one of them. Yeah, I mean it's just how it was and so I tell people all the time family work, right? It's like you are robbing somebody from the full benefit of their suffering. We're all forged in the flames of our own suffering Yeah, right. So every time you take the heat off

You've just robbed them from a situation that maybe they would have came inside for the rest of their life. Every time they call and say, I'm just hungry. Can you cash out me 20 bucks? They're not hungry. want, It's like this whole manipulation cycle. And something that I've seen is that, ⁓ yeah, people might be using over trauma, but you get far enough away from your trauma. I've seen the crux of people's problems become the codependency, become the enabling.

And now they're just using because it's the cycle. It's the cycle to manipulate and use, manipulate and use, cheat and use, lie and use. And it's just this whole vicious cycle of like, at one time they were using because ⁓ daddy issues or mommy issues or sexual abuse or physical abuse or abandonment. That was what got the ball rolling. But now it's the cycle of you are enabling them to continue down this path. And that becomes like,

the crux of what's going on here. The second you stop, like the second somebody has to make these hard decisions by themselves, they are much more likely to stop the bullshit. How many times have you seen it where it's like people are manipulating the system and it's like they're mentally ill and they're this and trust me, I'm not saying mental illness is not real. I know it is, but there is a contingency of people out there that are playing the game and when you pull the carpet out from under them, next thing you know they're like.

Curtiss (2:08:51)
for sure.

Matt (2:09:09)
no longer hearing voices and like, you know, it's like, clean up real quick.

Curtiss (2:09:13)
Yeah, we cleaned out drugs.

Matt (2:09:19)
Thanks for listening to My Last Relapse. I'm Matt Handy, the founder of Harmony Grove Behavioral Health, Houston, Texas, where our mission is to provide compassionate, evidence-based care for anyone facing addiction, mental health challenges, and co-occurring disorders. Find out more at HarmonyGroveBH.com. Follow and subscribe to My Last Relapse on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you like to stream podcasts.

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