Life After Pawning My Wife’s Wedding Ring To Buy Coke and Running My Multimillion Dollar Company Into the Ground

Matt Handy (00:00:03):
I am Matt Handy and you're listening to My Last Relapse. Okay. How's it going?

 

Jordan Hase (00:00:08):
What's up?

 

Matt Handy (00:00:09):
Glad you finally made it.

 

Jordan Hase (00:00:11):
Dude. It's been nice. I've watched you roll through the list of all the other people you've invited before me and I kept asking you, can I come on the podcast? You're like, we're getting the good guests out of the way first.

 

Matt Handy (00:00:23):
And they, we'll let you know the high value people out firsts. So how's it going?

 

Jordan Hase (00:00:28):
Good, man.

 

Matt Handy (00:00:29):
Good, good. You're being inducted into your high school hall of Fame.

 

Jordan Hase (00:00:33):
The Wall of Fame.

 

Matt Handy (00:00:34):
The Wall of Fame.

 

Jordan Hase (00:00:35):
I'm being put on the wall of fame.

 

Matt Handy (00:00:36):
Okay. For what?

 

Jordan Hase (00:00:37):
Tonight? Football. I was actually good at football a long time ago. Because

 

Matt Handy (00:00:42):
You're a small guy.

 

Jordan Hase (00:00:43):
I'm a little guy. Yeah. What'd you do? I played cornerback.

 

Matt Handy (00:00:47):
Cornerback,

 

Jordan Hase (00:00:48):
Defensive back, played running back.

 

Matt Handy (00:00:50):
Oh, you're a fast guy.

 

Jordan Hase (00:00:52):
I'm a fast guy.

 

Matt Handy (00:00:52):
Okay. Not even more really?

 

Jordan Hase (00:00:54):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:00:55):
What was your, was your 40?

 

Jordan Hase (00:00:57):
I was like a four. Four guy. I went to the Nike Scouting combine in high school.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:00):
Really?

 

Jordan Hase (00:01:00):
Ran a 4 4 1. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:03):
That's impressive.

 

Jordan Hase (00:01:04):
Yeah, I was fast. That's

 

Matt Handy (00:01:06):
Impressive.

 

Jordan Hase (00:01:06):
How old are you? I'm 45. I'm an old man.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:09):
You don't look 45.

 

Jordan Hase (00:01:11):
Thank you.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:11):
Tell you that.

 

Jordan Hase (00:01:11):
Wait, do I look 55?

 

Matt Handy (00:01:13):
No, you look younger than that, for sure.

 

Jordan Hase (00:01:14):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:15):
45. How does 45 feel in comparison to 35?

 

Jordan Hase (00:01:22):
35? 35 was tough. I got married that year. That was the beginning of the downfall for me.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:31):
Really.

 

Jordan Hase (00:01:32):
Not getting married, but 35. So I stayed away from hard substances for about a 10 year stretch and something happened. I met a buddy out one night in December of probably when I was 34. And then I went on a six year run all day, every day.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:52):
So you are at addiction, that's when it really took off? Or were you addicted before that too?

 

Jordan Hase (00:02:00):
So I'll start at the beginning. I didn't touch a drug or alcohol all through high school,

 

Matt Handy (00:02:06):
Of course, athlete.

 

Jordan Hase (00:02:06):
Never once. Athlete grew up a pretty strict household, was in church all the time. I just never had the desire. I wanted to be good at football. I wanted to be good at baseball. I hung out with a bunch of kids that weren't interested in that. I came from a great family,

 

Matt Handy (00:02:24):
What is it? North Houston.

 

Jordan Hase (00:02:25):
North Houston, yeah. Yeah. Spring Texas. Really? I went to the Klein High School cause there's like five Klein high schools.

 

Matt Handy (00:02:33):
You went to the

 

Jordan Hase (00:02:35):
Klein

 

Matt Handy (00:02:35):
High School?

 

Jordan Hase (00:02:36):
Yeah. Let's see. Lyle Lovett, famous alumni.

 

Matt Handy (00:02:41):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (00:02:41):
Lyle Lovett. And Jordan Hase. Two famous alumni.

 

Matt Handy (00:02:44):
Yeah. Yeah. Most famous.

 

Jordan Hase (00:02:46):
Most famous. No.

 

Matt Handy (00:02:47):
Highly achieved.

 

Jordan Hase (00:02:48):
Highly achieved. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:02:50):
No shit, though. You are highly achieved. It's interesting to have these conversations with you. You're not a typical story.

 

Jordan Hase (00:02:57):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (00:02:58):
Yeah. Let's get into that story.

 

Jordan Hase (00:03:00):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (00:03:02):
So something that I haven't talked about in a while or maybe ever as far as what's been posted, but you're a good person to talk about this with because your story really starts later. A lot of people have a fucked up story from the beginning, and that is the majority of their story. So you have a lot of success before you fucked your life up. And so this podcast, I don't tell war stories. We don't get stuck in the weeds of bullshit. Right. The reality is everybody knows those stories. Everybody's experienced it. Everybody's got those experiences. And one of the reasons why I started the podcast is do you ever listen to other Recovery podcast?

 

Jordan Hase (00:03:54):
Yeah. Yeah. I've been on a couple. Which one? My sponsor has one Relevant Recovery. Cool. I used to listen to Sober, I think it's called Sober Nation with Jonathan Sylvester. He's a good buddy of mine. But yeah,

 

Matt Handy (00:04:10):
So a lot of,

 

Jordan Hase (00:04:11):
And then My Last Relapse, I listened to that all the time. Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (00:04:15):
It's a great podcast.

 

Jordan Hase (00:04:15):
It's my favorite.

 

Matt Handy (00:04:16):
Yesterday, one video alone got a thousand views.

 

Jordan Hase (00:04:19):
Nice. That's awesome. On what platform?

 

Matt Handy (00:04:23):
On YouTube. I really only track YouTube. Like everybody else on the background tracks the rest of the, but I only have YouTube. I don't,

 

Jordan Hase (00:04:33):
It's only on YouTube.

 

Matt Handy (00:04:34):
No, no, no. It's on YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, apple Podcasts, all the things. All of them.

 

Jordan Hase (00:04:41):
Yeah. Do you monetize it?

 

Matt Handy (00:04:44):
We've only been posting for 14 days.

 

Jordan Hase (00:04:47):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (00:04:48):
So you have to hit certain metrics in order to be a viable candidate for monetization. We definitely haven't hit that yet, but I think we'll hit it pretty quick.

 

Jordan Hase (00:04:56):
Yeah, you will after this one.

 

Matt Handy (00:04:58):
Yeah. It's like having the rock up.

 

Jordan Hase (00:05:01):
Might the end of the podcast today.

 

Matt Handy (00:05:02):
Yeah,

 

Jordan Hase (00:05:03):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:05:04):
No, no. So you listen to a lot of other podcasts. A lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them, if it's a three hour show, two and a half hours of it is war stories. And that's what gets the clicks. That's what keeps attention. I'm not really interested in the attention. What I'm worried about is people out there dying. And when I was out there, I wasn't necessarily listening to recovery podcasts because it was like, I'm actively participating in a lot of thisl

 

Jordan Hase (00:05:40):
You don't want to hear that.

 

Matt Handy (00:05:41):
But what would catch my attention is like JRE Joe Rogan guests that would talk about stuff that applied to a clean lifestyle. And so what I'm hoping is that people hear messages on this podcast that usher them in. Right. And so the last thing that we want to do is tell war stories.

 

Jordan Hase (00:06:04):
The war stories are funny to us that have been through it, but I'll tell you, they're not funny to my wife. And I'm almost six years sober and she still doesn't find them funny. And I'm like, whatcha talking about? That's funny. And she's like, it's not funny. Alright.

 

Matt Handy (00:06:20):
I mean, yeah, because it's a very, first of all, with your wife specifically, she almost lost her husband. Right. And I think for a lot of other people in addiction, I mean, it says it right? Find things lightheartedly when the reality is we're talking about life or death. People are actually out there dying for the funny stories that were

 

Jordan Hase (00:06:44):
Yeah, I mean they were almost not funny.

 

Matt Handy (00:06:47):
They were almost not funny.

 

Jordan Hase (00:06:48):
Almost not funny.

 

Matt Handy (00:06:49):
Yeah. I mean, so weren't just an alcoholic, right? You did drugs.

 

Jordan Hase (00:06:52):
Yeah. I love drugs. I mean, that's probably the problem is I still love them and I'll always love them. So I can't partake. But yeah, I started, when I went to college, I went to college in upstate New York, Cornell

 

Matt Handy (00:07:05):
Start in high school. I know you have you getting inducted into the wall of fame?

 

Jordan Hase (00:07:10):
Well, funny is, I was talking about this yesterday is high school was tough for me. So I was a great athlete. I was good at all the sports. I was a great student. It was easy for me. I didn't have to study or anything. And I think looking back on it, I was probably, probably, I knew I was good at everything. And so the people around me knew that I thought I was good at everything. So I, I mean, I had a group of friends, but I was kind of like the outsider a little bit. If they did 10 things, I probably got it invited to five of the things. I was a little bit older, so I played up a year a lot of times on sports growing up. So I played with an older group of guys, but man, I had two or three really good buddies, and that was about it. I didn't, there was a lot of seeking validation, trying to people please and lying about stuff that didn't matter, to make myself look better to these guys, so they would like me.

 

Matt Handy (00:08:16):
So imposter syndrome didn't just happen when you got sober? No,

 

Jordan Hase (00:08:19):
I've been breeding the imposter syndrome my whole life.

 

Matt Handy (00:08:22):
That's funny.

 

Jordan Hase (00:08:24):
And so when I got to college, man, so I grew up in, like I said, I grew up in Spring, went to Klein High School. I grew up in a country club playing golf. My sponsor always famously says this, but it's true for me. I grew up behind bars and it was the gate to my gated community. Those were the bars I grew up in. I had a great childhood. My parents loved us. My parents are still married. They've been married 50 something years. The older brother who I loved, and we were close. I had a great group of friends. I grew up in the church. I loved going to the church. Youth group champion Forest Baptist Church. Okay, cool. Shout out Eric Hill, my youth pastor, still one of my closest friends.

 

Matt Handy (00:09:08):
Awesome.

 

Jordan Hase (00:09:10):
So yeah, my childhood doesn't involve trauma. It doesn't involve a broken home. It doesn't involve, there's no alcoholism or addiction in my family that I know of. So none of those things were there, which is not what makes me an alcoholic or addict.

 

Matt Handy (00:09:28):
Correct. Yeah. Well, this is just a testament to it. It is blind to who we are. It is blind to our situation. It is blind to the level of advantages that we have or access to whatever. It doesn't give a fuck. Totally non discriminant. It wants everybody. And so for people like you, so when I hear stories, I was raised in a Mormon situation and I am the black sheep of the culture. But the reality is I had a lot of stuff that pointed to this was going to happen. A lot of trauma, a lot of instability. But I grew up in a situation very similar to that. The only thing that was different was the decisions I was making. But I did have both my parents in my home, highly successful people, really the oldest of 10 kids. All the rest of the kids did great. But there were things that happened to me in my youth that definitely geared me for the decisions that I made later on. But I have a lot of friends growing up that exact same story as you. Trauma free, amazing home, amazing parents, every opportunity, smart kids, and still made decisions that pointed them in the direction of addiction of a friend that ended up, I mean, you would never guess that he would've gone down this road, but great parents, successful parents, maybe not successful on the level, maybe our parents, but never struggled to pay bills. Had a nice house up in the mountains, but is dead today. One of my best friends. And it was like when you look at what his family prepared for him, it was like, how did this happen to you? And then the parents always have this guilt thing where it's like, what did I do wrong? And so it's like, yeah, it doesn't care.

 

Jordan Hase (00:11:43):
No. And I remember I got asked to tell my story one time at a club, and I remember the guy that asked me, we can talk about later, but the guy that asked me, he asked me, I was like, dude, I don't have a good story. I was given everything. I was probably the definition of a privileged white kid, was at the top of the world, had everything given to me, was highly successful, and then I completely burned my life to the ground. And he was like, dude, that's the perfect story

 

Matt Handy (00:12:14):
For sure.

 

Jordan Hase (00:12:14):
It's the same story as everybody else that comes in here. We all came in at the same spot, different varying degrees or the details are different, but we all came into recovery in the same spot.

 

Matt Handy (00:12:25):
Yeah, I mean, there is a baseline for all of our stories. Typically the way that it goes is we grew up, we made fucked up decisions at some point, we destroyed our lives over those decisions. We became desperate and we got clean. That's the details. You can plug anything into that now, but that's how it goes.

 

Jordan Hase (00:12:43):
Yeah. So I grew up, so I had great childhood. The only thing I would say is maybe I was a little sheltered and my parents were super strict and my dad knew that I had potential to be great at things and he was tough on me. So when it was time to go to college, I got some football offers here in the state of Texas. I had got some at Arkansas and Auburn, but I knew I got a scholarship at Rice and I was like, dude, that is way too close. I need to get away. I'm trying to get out of here. So I had a bunch of Ivy League schools recruiting me, and it's kind of embarrassing, but I remember when, so I went to Cornell and they recruited me. I was like, I have no idea what Cornell is. I've never heard of it. I knew of Harvard and Yale and Princeton, but it's like, what's Cornell? So Cornell and Colgate also recruited me, and in my mind, those are the same schools for sure. My dad was like, they're not the same as friends. So I went to Cornell and man, I got a big part of my

 

Matt Handy (00:13:52):
So you were courted?

 

Jordan Hase (00:13:53):
I was courted,

 

Matt Handy (00:13:54):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (00:13:56):
One reason was my grades. I had great grades, graduated near the top of my class, and so that made it easier. I had a lot of schools in Texas talking to me. I had a buddy that we both got recruited by Arkansas. He was a stud. He ended up playing in the NFL for a little bit. He's a football coach, offensive coordinator at TCU. And we both got recruited by Arkansas. We went out there on a trip and they offered him a full ride and they offered me something. They offered me a scholarship, and he decided to go to Missouri. And literally the day he decided to go to Missouri, they called me and they're like, Hey, we don't have a scholarship for you anymore. I was like, okay. I think I was a package deal. I tried to talk him into coming with me. But yeah, it was fun, man. I played football, I played baseball, I played golf. And so I went to Cornell. I took a trip to a lot of the Ivy League schools. I really wanted to go to Columbia. It was in New York City. I was like, this is wild. I could have fun here. The thing was, I still didn't know what that meant. I just knew I wanted to get away and not have the pressure. And my parents just sheltering me, I guess. I don't think I knew that's what it was at the time. And when I say I didn't do drugs or alcohol in high school, I just didn't even realize that that's what was going on. Those weren't the kids I hung out with. I didn't see it in my household. I mean, I knew there was kids that went to parties and I went to some of those parties, but it just wasn't, I don't know, it just wasn't something I was exposed to really.

 

Matt Handy (00:15:36):
There wasn't like a pull to party.

 

Jordan Hase (00:15:37):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:15:38):
Yeah. So it's funny because Spring is in Houston, one of the biggest cities in the world. Ultimately one of the biggest cities In the world. Fourth biggest city in the United States. So I come from San Diego. When you think of San Diego, you think of San Diego, but there is small towns everywhere too. But in Texas there's actually small towns attached to big cities. And so Spring is one of those actually small towns. It's 15, 20 minutes north of downtown, but it's still a small town. It's in a bubble. And so I live in Friendswood. It's a fucking bubble

 

Jordan Hase (00:16:17):
For sure.

 

Matt Handy (00:16:18):
And it's like outside of Texas, this isn't how everything else has ran.

 

Jordan Hase (00:16:22):
Right.

 

Matt Handy (00:16:23):
Houston has multiple counties in it, multiple. That is not a thing in California. There's San Diego County has hundreds of cities. There is no Houston County.

 

Jordan Hase (00:16:36):
We have five or six counties attached to the Greater Houston area. In

 

Matt Handy (00:16:39):
Greater Houston area.

 

Jordan Hase (00:16:40):
And

 

Matt Handy (00:16:41):
So yeah, there is siloed off cities within Houston. It is crazy to me to see how this works,

 

Jordan Hase (00:16:48):
Especially back then. I grew up, I was born in 1980, so in the early nineties it was still kind of far out there. It was part of the Houston area, but it was kind of going on a trip to get up to spring, especially with traffic and everything. So, so I decided to go to Cornell. It wasn't like I want to go party, it was just, I want to get away. I want some freedom. I want some room to just do whatever I want to do.

 

Matt Handy (00:17:17):
Nature was calling,

 

Jordan Hase (00:17:18):
Which I didn't know what that meant. And then it was the perfect storm when I got up there. Cool. I met some great guys. God put this guy, my buddy, he was at my wedding. He's one of my best friends. He was my host on my recruiting trip, and he likes to party. He definitely partied in high school. We played the same position. He was my host. And so he showed me around. So my freshman year I got hurt. So I, I played every game freshman year until I got hurt. I tore my bicep off the bone and in half In a game or practice in a game.

 

Matt Handy (00:17:56):
Oh my God.

 

Jordan Hase (00:17:57):
Tackling a guy. That guy from Harvard was blocking me. I was pushing him down, my finger got caught in his face mask, tore the ligaments of my finger, tore my bicep. It was bad. It was painful Then so I missed a few games and I kind of got exposed to what was going on in college. I didn't have practice all day and meetings all night. And then second semester was probably what did it, I got mono. Mono the first week of second semester. And when I had mono, I was exhausted for a week or two, and then I was fine. But I think you're contagious with mono for a long time, I think

 

Matt Handy (00:18:32):
For a long time.

 

Jordan Hase (00:18:34):
Yeah, a long time. So they were like, you can't come to practice or off-season workouts. And so I felt fine and I had just free time to do whatever I wanted. And so that was when it started, man. I started going to the bars, started smoking pot, and then I remember the first time ever, I was in the back of a white, what's a Passat? A Volkswagen Passat with my buddy Tony Ambrose, who just passed away six months ago

 

Matt Handy (00:19:04):
From addiction?

 

Jordan Hase (00:19:05):
No, no, from brain cancer. He was like two years older than me. He is an amazing guy. But we did cocaine for the first time, and it was like, dude, this is what I've been missing. Everything felt okay. I didn't have to worry about if people liked me. I fit in with these guys. I spent so long in high school trying to fit in and trying to please everybody and just constantly seeking validation from people. And this one time I did it with them, it was like I was everybody's buddy.

 

Matt Handy (00:19:39):
Yeah, people like you that have your mentality and your personality and stuff. First of all, you remind me of a high level banker, and I always imagine that when people like you do coke for the first time, you become a fucking razor and you're just the sharpest you've ever fucking did.

 

Jordan Hase (00:19:58):
Yeah, absolutely. And man, it was great. I have a lot of energy anyway. I have a hard time sitting still. And dude, you put some cocaine in me. And it was like, I didn't sit still for 21 years after that, literally. But it was, I don't know. I always think because I started so late, it took a long time to catch up with me. I mean, I was still highly, I graduated in four years.

 

Matt Handy (00:20:29):
Yeah, I mean also, so get into how you did in college.

 

Jordan Hase (00:20:34):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (00:20:35):
Because impressive.

 

Jordan Hase (00:20:36):
I did great, man. I was like, so this is not something, I used to brag about it, but I don't know if it's something I'm supposed to brag about.

 

Matt Handy (00:20:44):
Well, I think it's impressive, so I want to hear it. The actual details of it.

 

Jordan Hase (00:20:47):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I never went to class ever. I mean, if I was there four year, I graduated in four years, and I probably went to, I'd say eight classes total ever. My first semester I was in biology or pre-med major. So my first semester when I got hurt, I was playing football. I was away from home, and I literally got 3D minuses and two C's, and the coaches called me in and my advisor called me and they're like, yeah, I don't think biology is your thing, man. We got to get you in something else. And so I switched to communications and it was just a's from there on

 

Matt Handy (00:21:30):
Out. Oh, I bet

 

Jordan Hase (00:21:31):
It was all writing papers. A lot of writing papers.

 

Matt Handy (00:21:34):
Okay. This is what directed you to law school.

 

Jordan Hase (00:21:37):
Yeah. Yeah. And I kind of knew, so my goal going into college is I wanted to be a sports agent. Jerry McGuire was big at the time, and I was, show me the money. Yeah, I was going to be Jerry McGuire. That was the plan I grew up with.

 

Matt Handy (00:21:48):
I could see that. Yeah. Yeah, I could definitely see that.

 

Jordan Hase (00:21:50):
I grew up with a lot of guys that ended up playing pro baseball and pro football. And so I had those connections and I knew that just that's what I wanted to do. So law school was kind of like on the back of my mind from the beginning, it was always weird. I wanted to go to law school to be a sports agent, not to be a lawyer. And everyone was like, you have to be a lawyer. I was like, I don't want to be a lawyer. So college was fun, man. If I had a 20 page paper due, I would write it two hours before it was due.

 

Matt Handy (00:22:21):
Amazing.

 

Jordan Hase (00:22:22):
And I'd hang out a 20 page paper. And

 

Matt Handy (00:22:24):
That is a skill. That's not just a skill. There's talent involved in that because writing papers isn't something that everybody can do.

 

Jordan Hase (00:22:31):
Yeah, I was good at it. I was good at it. And so luckily communications was probably 90% papers, and I did a lot of that.

 

Matt Handy (00:22:39):
So you read at a high level too?

 

Jordan Hase (00:22:42):
I do. I don't read as much as I should, but I'm a good speed reader. I can retain knowledge really well. I used to read a ton. I've gotten lazy probably. I listen to a lot of audio books now. But yeah, I love reading. And that was why I was successful in law school. That's all it is, is reading, retaining knowledge,

 

Matt Handy (00:23:01):
Reading and writing. Reading and writing, reading and writing. I remember watching dad go through law school. This guy had, but they haven't graduated. I think he had eight kids.

 

Jordan Hase (00:23:10):
Yeah. That's insane.

 

Matt Handy (00:23:12):
He was three jobs all the time. Law school, church, eight kids, and still top of his class at Cal West.

 

Jordan Hase (00:23:23):
That's crazy.

 

Matt Handy (00:23:23):
And he was in that garage just reading and writing and reading and writing and reading and writing. It was crazy.

 

Jordan Hase (00:23:31):
So I mean, I never went to class. I remember showing up for classes at the end of the semester and being like, they don't know who I am. The professor literally has no clue who I am and just kind of showing up. I had one class that you had to be there for, and it was called Human Sexuality, and I did not know you had to be there for it. And I showed up at the end of the semester to take the test, and she's like, you've already failed.

 

Matt Handy (00:24:02):
Yeah, because attendance was like 50% of it or something.

 

Jordan Hase (00:24:05):
And I was like, let me just take the test. She's like, you don't understand, you can't pass. And so I failed that class. Luckily it was a pass fail class. It wasn't a graded class, but it's kind of funny that that's the one class I failed. Human sexuality. Yeah, human sexuality. But yeah, it was easy, man. It was Wait at

 

Matt Handy (00:24:23):
A very liberal school.

 

Jordan Hase (00:24:25):
Very liberal school.

 

Matt Handy (00:24:27):
I can't imagine

 

Jordan Hase (00:24:28):
The curriculum. Curriculum. It was less liberal in 1999 and 2000. But I mean, it's definitely a liberal school for sure. The dude from Texas that showed up at the end of the semester, they were like, no, bro.

 

Matt Handy (00:24:42):
Yeah, the conservative, you

 

Jordan Hase (00:24:44):
Failed

 

Matt Handy (00:24:45):
Small town

 

Jordan Hase (00:24:45):
Trying to talk my way into it.

 

Matt Handy (00:24:47):
That's funny.

 

Jordan Hase (00:24:48):
And she's like, you're not understanding. It's not like you can pass the final and graduate class. Yeah, this

 

Matt Handy (00:24:56):
Ist a normal class. You have to actually come.

 

Jordan Hase (00:24:59):
Yeah. I think that was one of the benefits of an Ivy League school is they just assumed everyone was going to go. So attendance was not a thing normally. And I think probably everybody did go.

 

Matt Handy (00:25:09):
Probably.

 

Jordan Hase (00:25:10):
Yeah. But I did not. I did

 

Matt Handy (00:25:12):
Actually, college is one of those things where everybody understands you don't actually have to go to class. So maybe you weren't the only one. I

 

Jordan Hase (00:25:20):
Might not have been the only one. I remember I was in a class, what was it called? It was a psychology class. Psych 1 0 1. I forgot the guy's name. He was famous. He wrote a book about sleep. The one he also wrote The one minute. Ken Blanchard. Yeah, that was his name. Wrote the One Minute manager. And there was like 2000 people in that class, and we had two prelims in a final, and I showed up three times and got an A in it somehow. I don't know. I don't know. I can really good at, if I had the study materials, I could memorize it in a night.

 

Matt Handy (00:25:58):
So the way the brains work, it's either you can take tests or you can't. And there are some really smart people that fail courses. They just suck at taking tests. But in college, in universities specifically, especially if you can get somebody to give you the study material or if they're just giving the study material, you can go and pick up all the material or whatever, Or buy the book and fucking just study it. But there are people that never have to go to class. You're one of 'em.

 

Jordan Hase (00:26:27):
You get the notes. Get the notes, find a good

 

Matt Handy (00:26:30):
Friend there. Pay somebody to give you the notes.

 

Jordan Hase (00:26:32):
I don't think I ever paid anybody, but I got

 

Matt Handy (00:26:33):
The notes. Were people recording back then?

 

Jordan Hase (00:26:36):
No. I don't know. Maybe cell phones weren't a thing. It was 2000,

 

Matt Handy (00:26:41):
2003.

 

Jordan Hase (00:26:42):
They

 

Matt Handy (00:26:42):
Would've brought a

 

Jordan Hase (00:26:43):
Blackberry maybe at that point. Yeah, no

 

Matt Handy (00:26:46):
Voice recorders.

 

Jordan Hase (00:26:47):
Yeah, exactly. I don't think people were doing that. Maybe. I don't know. I wasn't there. I couldn't tell you. I wasn't in class. And so the other thing was is Cornell's a huge fraternity. A huge Greek school. I mean, it's like either the first or second biggest in the country, like 49 fraternities, 45 sororities, and that's all there was to do there. It's a small town in the middle of nowhere and it snows nonstop.

 

Matt Handy (00:27:13):
What is their normal census? Annually?

 

Jordan Hase (00:27:18):
It's a big school.

 

Matt Handy (00:27:19):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (00:27:19):
Yeah. So undergrad was like 10 or 12,000.

 

Matt Handy (00:27:23):
Okay. So

 

Jordan Hase (00:27:25):
It's the biggest Ivy League school by a long shot.

 

Matt Handy (00:27:27):
Really?

 

Jordan Hase (00:27:28):
Yeah. Most of 'em are like four to 5,000.

 

Matt Handy (00:27:30):
So that's a good percentage of the people that are actually in a fraternity

 

Jordan Hase (00:27:35):
Though. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing else to do. There's a tiny little college town with four or five bars, and then everything else was fraternity parties.

 

Matt Handy (00:27:42):
Wow.

 

Jordan Hase (00:27:43):
And the fraternity houses were awesome. They were mansions, huge mansions with 30, 40 bedrooms in 'em. And yeah, it was a good time. Did you pledge? I did not. Okay. What? I did not, you know what I did actually. So yeah. So this is part I hadn't thought about in a long time. So my freshman year, man, I was homesick. I had never seen snow in my life. And I go to the A place where it snows all the time,

 

Matt Handy (00:28:10):
Cold and dry, right?

 

Jordan Hase (00:28:11):
I mean, the beginning of January, it doesn't get above 10 degrees ever.

 

Matt Handy (00:28:15):
Oh my gosh.

 

Jordan Hase (00:28:16):
And I had not seen snow before.

 

Matt Handy (00:28:18):
I mean, you'd never seen a January below 70 either.

 

Jordan Hase (00:28:20):
Right? Right. I mean, maybe a dusty of snow or something. But we're talking about blizzards

 

Matt Handy (00:28:27):
36 inches in a night. It's on

 

Jordan Hase (00:28:28):
Finger Lakes up there. And the thing that blew my mind is it would snow all night, snow and snow and snow, and you wake up and the streets are fine. It's like, who are these people getting up, cleaning the streets? I don't want to go to class today. I don't want to go to football practice this morning. And the streets were perfect all the time. So I remember my freshman year, I got hurt. I didn't know anybody really at that point. I hadn't pleasured for fraternity. So the second semester I did, I pledged Sigma new, then I got mono, and I couldn't do it. And so I quit the pledging thing, and then I was ready to leave. I was ready to leave.

 

(00:29:06):
I was lonely. I didn't know anybody. I couldn't be with the football guys. And I remember I had done everything I could do to transfer to ut. I was going to transfer to Texas and walk on at that point. And my dad, man, I'll forever be grateful for it. He talked me. He was like, we don't quit things. We just don't quit things in our family. And so he said, if you want to, we'll talk about it at the end of the year, but we're not going to make that decision right now. And luckily, I found my crew of dudes. So they were at a fraternity called Kaisi. It was the party fraternity. There was a lot of party fraternities. It was the drug fraternity. Oh, no. Yeah, it was great. That was where my, not my sponsor, my buddy, my host, in our recruiting trip. He was in there in that fraternity.

 

Matt Handy (00:29:55):
What state is this? In

 

Jordan Hase (00:29:56):
New York. Ithaca, New York. Upstate New York, kind of by Syracuse in the dead center of the state. And so I started hanging out with those guys and like I said, I had all that free time. So let's see, the nineties? Yeah. What year? 99 to oh three.

 

Matt Handy (00:30:16):
Oh. This was the height of Taliban heroin. It was also the height of ketamine and oxys. It was the beginning of Oxy.

 

Jordan Hase (00:30:26):
The ketamine we did was insane.

 

Matt Handy (00:30:28):
Really?

 

Jordan Hase (00:30:28):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:30:29):
It's such an interesting drug.

 

Jordan Hase (00:30:31):
It was awesome.

 

Matt Handy (00:30:32):
Yeah,

 

Jordan Hase (00:30:32):
It was. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:30:35):
There's a massive movement of pharmaceutical grade ketamine now, but back then it was veterinary

 

Jordan Hase (00:30:44):
Dude. It was a guy that we knew that worked at a vet would get us a case of licks. We call 'em licks, like the liquid thing. And it was a

 

Matt Handy (00:30:51):
Hundred in the microwave.

 

Jordan Hase (00:30:52):
You put it in the microwave for around a minute and 17 seconds, give or take. And it crystallized right up. Yeah. We did everything. We didn't have microphage sometimes, so we put two shoes upside down and put an iron between the shoes. Put the plate on the iron.

 

Matt Handy (00:31:07):
Yeah. Or a stove. Double bubble. The stove.

 

Jordan Hase (00:31:10):
Yes. So I mean, that's why I got into electronic music then.

 

Matt Handy (00:31:16):
Oh my gosh.

 

Jordan Hase (00:31:17):
Ended up buying turntables.

 

Matt Handy (00:31:18):
Really?

 

Jordan Hase (00:31:19):
Yeah. Yeah. With DJ at this bar called bbs with my buddies on Monday nights. Wait,

 

Matt Handy (00:31:24):
You can actually spin.

 

Jordan Hase (00:31:25):
Yeah. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I still have a lot of records, a lot of

 

Matt Handy (00:31:27):
Vinyl. Really? Really?

 

Jordan Hase (00:31:28):
All vinyl.

 

Matt Handy (00:31:29):
Oh, dude, that is an art.

 

Jordan Hase (00:31:31):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (00:31:31):
That I'm not

 

Jordan Hase (00:31:32):
That good at it. The guys that I was with were real good at it. So that's still what we do, man. Every March we go to Miami for the winter music conference, which is all DJs. I went to New York a couple weekends ago to see Sasha and dig weed. Two DJs. What? Yeah. Played in Brooklyn. That is

 

Matt Handy (00:31:49):
Crazy. So I've always been really interested in electronic music because of spinning, not because of the music. The fucking music almost always sucks, but I love music. But it's watching them live, build a song is so

 

Jordan Hase (00:32:05):
Cool. Crazy. And to be able to read the dance floor and figure out where to go from there. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:32:10):
So crazy.

 

Jordan Hase (00:32:11):
But memorizing records, my brain had a hard time with that part. I don't know how creative I am. Math, but yeah, terrible at math.

 

Matt Handy (00:32:21):
Yeah, that's what it is.

 

Jordan Hase (00:32:21):
Terrible at math.

 

Matt Handy (00:32:22):
Yeah, for sure. That's like a direct correlation is musical abilities. And not just music, but specifically producing engineering and DJing. It's like if you can do high level math, you're really good at spinning for some reason.

 

Jordan Hase (00:32:39):
I got a buddy, he's an amazing musician. He's in a band. He's an incredible dj. He's also architect architect, high level architect. Graduated number one in his class from Columbia Architecture School. That's amazing. He also, I remember his name is Garth. I met Garth my freshman year at Cornell, and he did not play football. And I was like, it blew my mind. I was like, I don't understand though. How did you get in here? He was like, just with my grades, bro. I was like, yeah, it doesn't make sense to me. I think I had to have football to get in here. And he was like the first genius that I met. Really? Yeah. Crazy. Smart

 

Matt Handy (00:33:18):
Geniuses are always interesting to me.All the geniuses that I've met, well, my dad, and then they're all in prison. And it's like talking to these people, they're like different kind of humor.

 

Jordan Hase (00:33:29):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:33:30):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (00:33:30):
You could tell his brain was operating a little different than mine. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:33:34):
So college is your introduction to drugs, which is a funny, so you live this really straight lifestyle intentionally on accident. Right. And then, which just

 

Jordan Hase (00:33:47):
Didn't know any better. I didn't know any different.

 

Matt Handy (00:33:49):
But it was intentional. You're like, yeah, I'm not going to go do that. I'm going to do this. And then of course you pop the top off. No, parentals. Next thing you know, you're snorting ketamine with the buddies.

 

Jordan Hase (00:34:03):
Yes, man. We went through two and a half cases of licks in one year. That's 144 vials are in one case.

 

Matt Handy (00:34:11):
Okay. And they're 10 mil vials, right? Yeah. That's a lot of ketamine.

 

Jordan Hase (00:34:19):
We had turntables in the room and it was a good time. Yeah, yeah. But it was all the things. So I did cocaine for the first time. I drank for the first time, smoked pot for the first time.

 

Matt Handy (00:34:29):
Wait, how old were you when you drank for the first time?

 

Jordan Hase (00:34:31):
18.

 

Matt Handy (00:34:32):
Okay. Yeah. Was it still 18 back then? No, I'm not that old. It was right around there though. Was it? Oh, wait, wait. It was right around when you were born. Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (00:34:42):
Okay. But you could go to Montreal and drink when you were 19, right? Yeah, we would do that a lot. I wasn't,

 

Matt Handy (00:34:48):
It was a couple hours away, right?

 

Jordan Hase (00:34:49):
Yeah. Three hours maybe.

 

Matt Handy (00:34:51):
Cool.

 

Jordan Hase (00:34:52):
Yeah. Mushrooms. I did mushrooms. We would go spelunking, right

 

Matt Handy (00:35:03):
Count.

 

Jordan Hase (00:35:03):
Yeah, yeah. No, we'd go, so we'd eat mushrooms, we'd go spelunking. This is

 

Matt Handy (00:35:07):
Oh, spelunk, like

 

Jordan Hase (00:35:09):
Mountains

 

Matt Handy (00:35:09):
Kind of caving.

 

Jordan Hase (00:35:10):
We did our own thing. So we would go to West Campus and there was this huge manhole, like a sewer type grate. This is why we were tripping, man. And this is the first time I had ever eaten mushrooms. And we went down this manhole and it was pitch black. It was like 20 of us. And there was a bar that ran, it was this little tunnel and this bar that ran between it. So you had to shuffle your feet between there. Oh

 

Matt Handy (00:35:33):
My gosh. Or fall off

 

Jordan Hase (00:35:34):
Hold, or No, there was just the were on each side. But that was how it directed you. And you'd have to hold onto the dude's shoulders in front of you,

 

Matt Handy (00:35:42):
Because you can't see.

 

Jordan Hase (00:35:42):
And it was probably 30, 45 minutes. And there would be random bars that you'd have to shuffle your feet so you could step over. And then you got to the end to this door, you opened this door and it went into this 17 hundreds chapel that was on church.

 

Matt Handy (00:35:58):
Wow.

 

Jordan Hase (00:35:58):
Dude. It was wild. Yeah. The reason I bring that up is I remember the first time I did it, I was like, I don't understand what's going on. This is opened a new portal to my brain, but I think I'm going to keep doing it. And man, college, there's no consequences.

 

Matt Handy (00:36:16):
No

 

Jordan Hase (00:36:17):
Grades were fine. Football was fine. I started all four years. I started every game in college. I probably could have been so much better had I, but I knew I wasn't going to play football after college, and I was there to have fun.

 

Matt Handy (00:36:31):
Yeah. Did you wrap up your identity in football?

 

Jordan Hase (00:36:38):
I definitely did. Growing up, when I got to college, I was the outsider. Everybody on the team was hardcore. They lived together, they trained nonstop. They were watching film nonstop. And I was parting, I was showing up. You die down. I was doing K before workouts. Okay. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:37:04):
No, I dunno how that works.

 

Jordan Hase (00:37:05):
But yeah, it was horrible.

 

Matt Handy (00:37:06):
You're like spaced out.

 

Jordan Hase (00:37:07):
Oh, man. Just confused and no idea what's going on, bro. Yeah. Oh

 

Matt Handy (00:37:14):
My God, that's so funny.

 

Jordan Hase (00:37:15):
But I was still good. I was playing all the time.

 

Matt Handy (00:37:18):
Did you ever get high before games? Cocaine, probably, right? I stayed high.

 

Jordan Hase (00:37:23):
Okay. No weed. Oh yeah. I would have my buddies does that. Not counting. We're not counting weed, is it?

 

Matt Handy (00:37:29):
No. No. So I don't know. I just don't even,

 

Jordan Hase (00:37:32):
I would've my buddies, so we would practice in the stadium. They would meet me in the parking lot. I would say, Hey, coach, I got to go to the bathroom. I'd run up into the parking lot of the stadium, take a six foot bong hit out of the Jeep and then run back down. And one of my teammates, every time his name was Vince, he'd be like, dude, you smell like weed right now. He said, well, you didn't smell like weed like 10 minutes ago. I dunno, man. Must be a skunk. There was a skunk out here somewhere,

 

Matt Handy (00:38:00):
Dude. That was when, oh man. I remember driving up and down the freeways, and when we would smell skunks, we'd turn around and drive back.

 

Jordan Hase (00:38:10):
Maybe it's not a skunk.

 

Matt Handy (00:38:11):
Yeah,

 

Jordan Hase (00:38:12):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:38:13):
I love the smell.

 

Jordan Hase (00:38:14):
Yeah. Yeah. It's a great smell.

 

Matt Handy (00:38:16):
Okay. So intentionally, unintentionally stayed clean.

 

Jordan Hase (00:38:22):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:38:23):
Got away from the parents,

 

Jordan Hase (00:38:24):
Got away from parents,

 

Matt Handy (00:38:25):
Started making your own decisions. And you're right, it's like a lot of people's college experience is consequence free. Not, I know my cousin was at UCSB when that kid killed all those people. Actually, he has stories about him, about that kid. And you do, it's more common nowadays than ever. But back in the early nineties, those were more innocent times. Anyway, when I think of the nineties, I am nine years younger than you, but I still look at the nineties as like a magical time.

 

Jordan Hase (00:39:01):
Yeah, it's great. This Was before cell phones, and

 

Matt Handy (00:39:05):
I'm actually, I did a podcast last night with Robert Braun.

 

Jordan Hase (00:39:09):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (00:39:10):
He's 33.

 

Jordan Hase (00:39:11):
How do I know Robert Braun?

 

Matt Handy (00:39:12):
He works at Mag City.

 

Jordan Hase (00:39:14):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (00:39:16):
Yes. He's an LCDC. He

 

Jordan Hase (00:39:17):
Is sober living.

 

Matt Handy (00:39:18):
Sober living. Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (00:39:19):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:39:20):
But he's 33. So right behind me. But I was literally the last generation age, grew grade of people that didn't have cell phones all through high school. And so this was when in order to call a girl at home, had to, there was gatekeepers.

 

Jordan Hase (00:39:38):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:39:40):
Pray that their dad or mom didn't answer. Right. And it's like kids don't go through that anymore. That is not a thing.

 

Jordan Hase (00:39:45):
I remember we got a second line. My dad had a line upstairs. I thought that was the greatest thing ever.

 

Matt Handy (00:39:51):
Most houses still didn't have that up until cell phones.

 

Jordan Hase (00:39:54):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:39:54):
It was very rare where it was like Call waiting.

 

Jordan Hase (00:39:57):
Call waiting. That's right. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:39:59):
Or the internet. Yeah, you'd call,

 

Jordan Hase (00:40:01):
I think that's what we had it for, was for the dialup.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:04):
Yeah. Yeah. A-O-L-A-O-L.

 

Jordan Hase (00:40:07):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:07):
Getting some chat rooms. Aim.

 

Jordan Hase (00:40:10):
Yes. Yes.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:12):
I wonder if that still, do you know if it's still around?

 

Jordan Hase (00:40:13):
I don't think so. Yeah, I don't

 

Matt Handy (00:40:14):
Think so either. I

 

Jordan Hase (00:40:15):
Think we just text now.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:16):
Aim was like the spot.

 

Jordan Hase (00:40:18):
Aol instant messenger.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:19):
You can get into a lot of, did you ever get on party

 

Jordan Hase (00:40:21):
Lines? No.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:23):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (00:40:23):
I did lines at parties.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:25):
Yeah. No party. Do you know what party lines are?

 

Jordan Hase (00:40:27):
No.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:27):
So there was a phone number where this is the way it worked. You would record a voicemail basically, and it'd be like the cornes shit. And you'd be like here to party, dah, dah, got a big one, whatever. And then hang up. And then you could call and see if people left you messages and then you could call 'em

 

Jordan Hase (00:40:48):
Back. Oh, dude, I did not know that.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:49):
Is it still around? No.

 

Jordan Hase (00:40:51):
Oh, we got to

 

Matt Handy (00:40:51):
Bring it back. This is like a pre-chat room thing. And then there was the party line where you could get on there and there'd be hundreds of people talking. Yes.

 

Jordan Hase (00:41:02):
We should bring that back,

 

Matt Handy (00:41:03):
Dude.

 

Jordan Hase (00:41:04):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (00:41:04):
Like

 

Jordan Hase (00:41:05):
A FaceTime party lines.

 

Matt Handy (00:41:07):
So they have those, right. They've got those apps now where you cycle through people, and then there's the group chats where everybody's chatting with each other. So that's basically what it was, but on a phone. I like that. So in the nineties, this was how people would set up parties and

 

Jordan Hase (00:41:27):
Right. Okay.

 

Matt Handy (00:41:29):
Interesting. Yeah, it looks like I did that. Yeah. Fun times a little weird. No, no. So that's where the drug culture took that over and it ended up becoming a tweaker pad.

 

Jordan Hase (00:41:41):
Right,

 

Matt Handy (00:41:42):
I

 

Jordan Hase (00:41:42):
See that.

 

Matt Handy (00:41:42):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. For

 

Jordan Hase (00:41:44):
Sure.

 

Matt Handy (00:41:45):
So ketamine college. So how'd you finish college? What happened? Man,

 

Jordan Hase (00:41:51):
It was great. Finished college grade.

 

Matt Handy (00:41:54):
Still didn't tell me. What was your actual ranking in your school when you graduated

 

Jordan Hase (00:42:00):
At Klein High School?

 

Matt Handy (00:42:01):
No, no, no. In college.

 

Jordan Hase (00:42:02):
I don't know. I graduated near the top of my class. I had good grades

 

Matt Handy (00:42:07):
In Ivy League school.

 

Jordan Hase (00:42:08):
At Ivy League School.

 

Matt Handy (00:42:09):
My sister got into Harvard. She was the first freshman to play on a starter position for females water polo at Harvard.

 

Jordan Hase (00:42:19):
Nice.

 

Matt Handy (00:42:20):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (00:42:21):
Water polo's big up there.

 

Matt Handy (00:42:22):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (00:42:22):
It's also big work in California.

 

Matt Handy (00:42:24):
It is. That's massive in California. But yeah, Ivy League schools, it's a big thing.

 

Jordan Hase (00:42:28):
They have the weird sports up there. My buddy was the captain of the polo team.

 

Matt Handy (00:42:32):
Oh my God. Not

 

Jordan Hase (00:42:33):
Water. Polo

 

Matt Handy (00:42:34):
Horses.

 

Jordan Hase (00:42:34):
Horse polo. Right. He's from Greenwich, Connecticut, for sure. Yeah, that

 

Matt Handy (00:42:39):
Makes sense. That's like that upper class British, British descendants living in a castle still. Yes, exactly.

 

Jordan Hase (00:42:48):
And crew rowing was huge up

 

Matt Handy (00:42:51):
So she ended up, she played water polo her freshman year and then joined the crew and then did high level crew for the rest of her college career. And then she transferred to Brown, and that's where she really, really did that. And then she met her husband,

 

Jordan Hase (00:43:06):
Brown. We like to call Brown the safety school. If you can't get into the other seven Ivy League League schools, you go to Brown.

 

Matt Handy (00:43:12):
She met her husband there. They got married. So she has an Ivy League degree. Never used it. Met her husband.

 

Jordan Hase (00:43:20):
I think I gave either.

 

Matt Handy (00:43:21):
Went on her honeymoon for three years.

 

Jordan Hase (00:43:24):
Nice. For three years and traveled the world. That's

 

Matt Handy (00:43:27):
Great.

 

Jordan Hase (00:43:29):
It sounds like an Ivy League thing. Something they all do. I always bring this up statistically, every school that you go to, doesn't matter where you are, but statistically, there is someone there that's the richest person, and there's someone there that's the poorest person. Yes. I was probably the poorest person really when I was at Cornell. And then we weren't poor, but I hung out with guys from Greenwich and a guy that his family owned 50% of a Greek island, and another guy whose dad is the maestro, a Carnegie Hall. So it was just the people I hung out with. Those

 

Matt Handy (00:44:04):
Were some interesting stories, I imagine.

 

Jordan Hase (00:44:06):
And so being around them and money wasn't an object to them, so they just kind of brought me along with it the whole time because I couldn't afford what we were doing for sure. Drugs are expensive. They were free in college for the most part. For me. For me. So yeah. So I graduated, man, I loved Cornell. It opened up some worlds to me that I never would've experienced anywhere else. Some of the relationships I made, the coaches I had in football, I went to Cornell. I chose Cornell because of the football team.

 

(00:44:44):
We had some NFL coaches there, and the team was good, and they recruited me heavily. And so that was why I chose Cornell over the other Ivy League schools. But those guys left after my sophomore year, they left after my sophomore year. They hired this terrible coach. So the guys that came in, they were there for three years. We were good. We could have won an Ivy League championship my first two years there. We played an Ivy League championship game my sophomore year and got blown out by Penn. But those guys were good. And then they stayed there three years and they left. They went back to the NFL, and I think the school athletic director was like, don't want to do that again. So we get some shitty coach from a crappy school that we know will stay here. And it's like anytime there's that turnover in coaching staff, I wasn't the guy they recruited. We weren't their guys. So it was like a lot of friction there. And so it led to my junior and senior years weren't that great. I shattered my thumb one game, had to have surgery and a bunch of pins put in my thumb.

 

(00:45:54):
So junior and senior year of football weren't that great. It was kind of a get to it. So then that's when the partying took off. I just kind removed myself from the football crew. I mean, I still showed up, did everything, played every game that I could, but it wasn't a focus at all for me. You

 

Matt Handy (00:46:12):
Plugged into a different

 

Jordan Hase (00:46:13):
Culture to Kaisi, the dread fraternity.

 

Matt Handy (00:46:17):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (00:46:17):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:46:18):
So is that their reputation nationally?

 

Jordan Hase (00:46:20):
No.

 

Matt Handy (00:46:21):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (00:46:21):
It was just there. It's more a, I don't think they're at most colleges. It's a smaller fraternity.

 

Matt Handy (00:46:29):
So there's academic fraternities and then sports fraternities, right?

 

Jordan Hase (00:46:33):
Yeah. So at Cornell, there was so many, there was a football fraternity, there was a, lacrosse is huge. There was a lacrosse fraternity. I imagine hockey is huge. There was a hockey fraternity. And then so they stuck together and it all cycles through. I wasn't ever in Kaifi, but I was definitely an honorary member. I was there every single day. Literally every day.

 

Matt Handy (00:46:58):
You were the hang around.

 

Jordan Hase (00:46:59):
I was the hang around guy and I did all their events with them. I mean, probably 75% of the guys, they did not know that I was not a brother. I was there when they started and I was there when until, exactly. So we spent, man, it was a good time. Those guys took care of me. We did all the wild things together. They were all loaded. And so there was never any barriers to what we wanted to do.

 

Matt Handy (00:47:33):
Loaded as in money, not drugs. Well, both. Both.

 

Jordan Hase (00:47:35):
But mainly money. Mainly money.

 

Matt Handy (00:47:37):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (00:47:40):
The crazy thing was, even though that was the drug fraternity, I was still one of the wild ones. I was at the top of the crazy people of that crew, of guys that hung out.

 

Matt Handy (00:47:56):
Why do you think that is?

 

Jordan Hase (00:47:57):
I think I'm an alcoholic.

 

Matt Handy (00:47:59):
Oh, that is a really good point.

 

Jordan Hase (00:48:01):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:48:01):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (00:48:02):
And those guys weren't, they weren't in college and they were partying. My buddies that I still hang out with that I go to Miami with, they party every now and then. And they stop. They stop when they want to.

 

Matt Handy (00:48:13):
That's so weird.

 

Jordan Hase (00:48:15):
And they can control it when they want to.

 

Matt Handy (00:48:19):
That is so weird. That is such a weird thing to me, where it's like, the way that I picture this is, do you know who Carl Hart is?

 

Jordan Hase (00:48:27):
Maybe?

 

Matt Handy (00:48:28):
No. He's a black neuroscientist that works at Columbia, but he wrote doing drugs for grownups.

 

Jordan Hase (00:48:36):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (00:48:37):
I like it. And he has five books, and it's all about doing drugs responsibly. He does heroin recreationally with his wife and shit. That term doesn't compute for me

 

Jordan Hase (00:48:51):
Recreationally. By recreationally you mean all day, every day?

 

Matt Handy (00:48:56):
No, no, no, no. When he is feeling down, it's so weird to hear him talk about it because he uses it in the way that I think we all wish we could.

 

Jordan Hase (00:49:08):
Right. It's like the way we see other people do it that aren't like us.

 

Matt Handy (00:49:13):
Well, even drinking.

 

Jordan Hase (00:49:17):
Drinking is a weird one too. So I'll give you a funny little story. Okay. A month ago, we were at home. We were having a long day. The girls were being out of control. I had an 8-year-old and 4-year-old daughters, and they were a handful, man. It was a Saturday. We had a hard time getting 'em to bed. We were exhausted. My wife, before we put 'em to bed, she was drinking a glass of wine. And she's not an alcoholic. She doesn't drink much at all. And we finally got the girls to bed at like 9, 9 30, and she came downstairs and she had a half a glass of wine and maybe a little less. And she got the bottle out. And I was like, yeah, I am always encouraging it. I'm like, get drunk. Good for you. And she looked at me and she poured the glass back into the bottle and I was like, bro, I was baffled. I was like, I don't understand. What are you doing? And she looked at me, I don't understand. It's nine 30, I'm going to bed. And I remember this was a month, month or two ago, and I was like, whoa. That is the difference between us.

 

(00:50:19):
I don't pour glasses back into the bottle.

 

Matt Handy (00:50:21):
I've never honestly ever heard that before. Ever.

 

Jordan Hase (00:50:24):
Yeah. It's like, first of all, how do you even do physically? But second of all, I am six years sober. I know how this thing for five and a half years, I know how this thing works, and it still blew my mind that someone could do that.

 

Matt Handy (00:50:39):
Yeah. Alcohol is, so I'm Vietnamese. Okay. I have an actual genetic, biological allergy to alcohol. I can't process a lot of the chemicals, So I get puffy and red and uncomfortable and sweaty drinking. Is this a normal Vietnamese? It's a lot of Southeast Asians.

 

Jordan Hase (00:51:00):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (00:51:01):
Yeah. We can't produce an enzyme that processes the metabolites of alcohol. So it just fills us to toxic levels. I can get drunk off a 24 can of beer, and I go from sober to passed out immediately.

 

Jordan Hase (00:51:22):
I would go from sober to blacked out immediately.

 

Matt Handy (00:51:25):
Well, I don't ever get to blacked out on alcohol because I go from sober to drunk to passed out so fast. The volume of alcohol is not enough to get blackout now. Benzos.

 

Jordan Hase (00:51:41):
Yeah. Yeah. The Xanax

 

Matt Handy (00:51:42):
Dude, immediate, it doesn't matter how much it is. Benzos and muscle relaxers, I'll black out immediately. Immediately.

 

Jordan Hase (00:51:50):
Which is the weirdest thing, man. I would like time travel all the time. Me too. Start drinking Thursday and then it's Tuesday.

 

Matt Handy (00:51:58):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (00:51:59):
It's like, what?

 

Matt Handy (00:52:00):
Yeah. I woke up one time, so I was 19, 18, I was 18. I woke up, I don't know how many days later, 800 miles from San Diego to Salt Lake is a thousand miles. Basically. I was 800 miles into that drive with a car full of people driving. I convinced everybody to take a week off from work and go snowboarding. And I was like, where are we? What are we doing? They're like, what are you talking about? I was like, I don't know what's going on right now. That's

 

Jordan Hase (00:52:38):
Terrifying. Right.

 

Matt Handy (00:52:38):
I pulled over and had this whole conversation around what happened, and yeah, I was like, I did, what day is it?

 

Jordan Hase (00:52:46):
Right?

 

Matt Handy (00:52:47):
What time is it? It's like 10 30 at night. It's like, you guys are, it's snowing,

 

Jordan Hase (00:52:52):
Right?

 

Matt Handy (00:52:53):
I am blacked out. And when it snows in Utah, it's like, well, the freeways, there's actively people driving with plows on the freeways

 

Jordan Hase (00:53:03):
You can't see the lane. You don't know

 

Matt Handy (00:53:05):
If you lane or not. And I'm like, you guys, I thought it was three days earlier. It was like blackout immediately.

 

Jordan Hase (00:53:15):
That was my thirties dude. That was my thirties.

 

Matt Handy (00:53:18):
Yeah. Dude. Another time I went with a few thousand dollars. I was supposed to go to Mexico, pick stuff up and come back. I blacked out before I got to Mexico. Came back three days later and my girlfriend now, my wife at the time was like, where have you been? I come back with no money, no supplies, one shoe, and I'm like, I have no clue what? Hell, I don't know.

 

Jordan Hase (00:53:46):
They told me I went to Mexico.

 

Matt Handy (00:53:48):
I don't know. I don't think I ever made it to Mexico, because she called the lily pads of where I had been and people lost track of

 

Jordan Hase (00:53:57):
Lily pads. I love that.

 

Matt Handy (00:53:58):
Yeah. It was like, call here, call here, call here, call here, call here. Nobody knew where I was for two days.

 

Jordan Hase (00:54:03):
Nice. Including you.

 

Matt Handy (00:54:04):
Including me.

 

Jordan Hase (00:54:05):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:54:05):
Including me. And I'll never get that back,

 

Jordan Hase (00:54:07):
Dude. But that's terrifying, right? Thinking back on those kind of things. And the fact that I've never got in trouble. I've never got in trouble.

 

Matt Handy (00:54:16):
That's amazing.

 

Jordan Hase (00:54:17):
Yeah. Yeah. Never got arrested, never been in jail, never got in trouble. I've been fired from a few jobs, some important jobs.

 

Matt Handy (00:54:31):
But you know what? Lawyers, they're always the, I tell people because I was raised with around lawyers. I have a long family history of lawyers and I've done a lot of prison time. And I always tell people it's like, because everybody in prison complains about lawyers. And I'm like, dude, the only difference between us and them is they didn't get caught. That is it.

 

Jordan Hase (00:54:50):
If you're a lawyer that got caught, you've done something real bad.

 

Matt Handy (00:54:53):
Yeah, for sure.

 

Jordan Hase (00:54:54):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (00:54:55):
For sure. I don't know. So people in addiction, people in recovery and people in prison are really bad at being bad. Just terrible at being bad people. So we end up in really fucked up situations. There's people that are good at being bad. You never hear from them. I was bad. I was scared. That's crazy. Yeah. Alright, so college talk about law school.

 

Jordan Hase (00:55:23):
I'm always interested. I took a little time off. So I graduated in May of 2003 and I don't know why, but I wanted to wait. I wanted to wait until January of 2004 to start law school

 

Matt Handy (00:55:40):
Fall semester. Oh wait, they do trimesters?

 

Jordan Hase (00:55:42):
No, they do fall and spring. So I started in the spring semester.

 

Matt Handy (00:55:47):
What school did you go to?

 

Jordan Hase (00:55:48):
I went to St. Thomas University in Miami. So there was two programs that had a joint degree. So I did my master's in sports administration and my law degree at the same time. So still on the NFL, still on the sports agent thing. And they had a program at Marquette. Did you ever get your license? No. No? No. Because I knew immediately. I mean, I studied for the bar exam and I took the bar exam in Florida and before it even became, before I passed the bar exam, I had gotten a job back in Texas and I was out of there.

 

Matt Handy (00:56:23):
Okay. Did you take the bar here too?

 

Jordan Hase (00:56:24):
Yes.

 

Matt Handy (00:56:25):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (00:56:25):
Kind of. It depends what you mean by taking

 

Matt Handy (00:56:27):
It. Well, I mean, did you get a license here?

 

Jordan Hase (00:56:29):
No.

 

Matt Handy (00:56:30):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (00:56:30):
So I took the bar exam one time, but I literally sat in a hotel room for three months, partying, smoking weed, studying, studying, walked in, rolled my name on the test and left. Really? Yeah. Why? Because I told people I was lying to everybody. What I was doing, I was lying to my parents. I was lying to people that in my life, I clerked at a law firm here in Houston, a bankruptcy firm, and so I was just lying to everybody. I was like, so at that point, okay, so let's go back to Miami. Miami was, that was what escalated

 

Matt Handy (00:57:11):
Every, that's a black hole.

 

Jordan Hase (00:57:13):
So I was in law school Monday through Friday. I was in grad school Monday through Thursday from six to 10 at night, and I lived on South Beach and I was 24 years old. Wow.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:26):
So was that the median age for your law school?

 

Jordan Hase (00:57:30):
Yeah, we usually go right after

 

Matt Handy (00:57:31):
College. Yeah. So your law school experience, was it as uneventful as everybody else's? That I know?

 

Jordan Hase (00:57:41):
No, it was insane.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:42):
Really?

 

Jordan Hase (00:57:43):
Probably. I partied all day, every day.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:44):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (00:57:45):
I did cocaine all day every day,

 

Matt Handy (00:57:47):
But everybody else's law school experience was really boring. Right?

 

Jordan Hase (00:57:51):
Yeah. They just studied and went to class and I kind of went to class. I think I had to go a little bit more.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:58):
Yeah, that attendance is a big, because lectures are

 

Jordan Hase (00:58:02):
Actually, but it was the same thing, man. I just got notes from people, studied them, crammed the week of finals and got a's, wow. Yeah. My favorite story is I had this federal income tax class where it was the hardest class there, and it was a class I had to take for part of this joint degree program, and I wish I could remember the professor's name, but I took it. I had to take it. So I took it the last semester of my last year, and it was federal income tax. It was really hard. If you missed more than two classes, you couldn't take the final. And I probably missed 20 classes, and it came time for the final. And I put my best lawyer skills on, and I talked to this guy. I'm like, listen, bro, what does it matter if you let me take it? If I'm going to fail it, I'm going to fail it. Just let me take it. And I got an A. And at graduation, he mentioned me that he's never seen this before, and how impressed he was. He told my parents this, and yeah, it was crazy.

 

Matt Handy (00:59:05):
And really, you missed school to fucking party.

 

Jordan Hase (00:59:08):
Yeah. Yeah. Every day. I was very blessed and lucky that my next door neighbor had just gotten out of prison for flying planes for Pablo Escobar. He was my neighbor. What was his name? His name was Ignacio.

 

Matt Handy (00:59:26):
Okay, so it wasn't like the American major?

 

Jordan Hase (00:59:28):
No, no, no. The guy, there's a movie about him, right? Tom Cruise or Tom Cruise. Not that guy. Just a random

 

Matt Handy (00:59:35):
Dude. Yeah. I mean, that dude had fleets of planes. Yeah, exactly.

 

Jordan Hase (00:59:38):
And how long did he do? 30 years. Jesus. Yeah. And he was my next door neighbor. And I remember telling everybody, this is the greatest news ever. And they're like, eh, maybe you shouldn't hang out with him. Maybe people are watching him. He's Miami still. Yeah, he's a dude. He's a great guy. I'm sure he was. I still talk to him all the time. Really? When I go to Miami, I talk to him. A funny story about him is the day I got out of treatment, I met with my sponsor and we met down in, this was COVID 2020 April of 2020, and his wife was pregnant, so he wanted to meet outside. So we met outside, and while we're there, this guy calls me Nacho. Ignacio calls me and he's like, Hey, I haven't talked to this guy in 10 years. He calls me, he's like, Hey, man, where are you? I just bought a weed farm in California. Send me your address. I'm going to send you 10 pounds. My sponsor's like, hang up the phone. Hang up the phone. So I was literally getting tested the day I got out of treatment.

 

Matt Handy (01:00:42):
Wow.

 

Jordan Hase (01:00:43):
But he was a great dude. So I lived next to this guy. I got it from him, and I just went hard, man. I went hard every single day, and it kind of caught up on me. So I did great. I graduated top of my class in law school. I graduated with a 4.0 in my grad school stuff.

 

Matt Handy (01:00:59):
Was it Cuma CU level or

 

Jordan Hase (01:01:02):
Just No, there's something. Yeah, I forgot. I don't know what all those

 

Matt Handy (01:01:05):
Names. So there's Sumo and Sum Cum.

 

Jordan Hase (01:01:08):
I was like the second one.

 

Matt Handy (01:01:09):
And then, yeah. So there's Sumo and just Cum la, right?

 

Jordan Hase (01:01:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:01:16):
So really top of your class. That is fucking crazy.

 

Jordan Hase (01:01:19):
Yeah. And I still done nothing with it to this day.

 

Matt Handy (01:01:24):
With your law degree?

 

Jordan Hase (01:01:25):
With my law degree. Like I said, I clerked at a bankruptcy firm. I do. I did a lot of document review projects, which you can get paid a ton of money for. So I've used it. I haven't used my degree, but I used all those connections.

 

Matt Handy (01:01:44):
Yeah. Yeah,

 

Jordan Hase (01:01:47):
Man, that was one of the greatest three years of my life

 

Matt Handy (01:01:50):
Law school.

 

Jordan Hase (01:01:50):
Miami Law School was a part of

 

Matt Handy (01:01:53):
It. Yeah, it was law school, but Miami,

 

Jordan Hase (01:01:55):
Miami was awesome, man. I loved it.

 

Matt Handy (01:01:58):
The weather. And this was again, early two thousands.

 

Jordan Hase (01:02:00):
Yeah. Okay. So things started to oh

 

Matt Handy (01:02:01):
6, 0 4 to oh six.

 

Jordan Hase (01:02:04):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:02:04):
Oh wait, this was the peak of the Florida Oxycontin run.

 

Jordan Hase (01:02:10):
Yeah. Yeah. It was wild, man. To this day, there are very little laws in Miami. The rules kind of don't exist.

 

Matt Handy (01:02:19):
Really?

 

Jordan Hase (01:02:19):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:02:20):
Like the last wild West, huh?

 

Jordan Hase (01:02:22):
Yeah, it's pretty wild. And most of the places on the beach have 24 hour liquor license. So there's just something going on constantly all the time. And yeah, I took advantage of it, man. I went wild. I went wild. I came back in 2006 or 2007 and started studying for the bar exam here, and I was just like, I was addicted. I was an addict at this point, and I

 

Matt Handy (01:02:54):
Couldn't stop. I know that if you have, okay, California is the hardest bar in the United States.

 

Jordan Hase (01:03:04):
Texas is a hard one too. Texas is a three day bar exam. Most places are two days. Two

 

Matt Handy (01:03:09):
Day. Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (01:03:10):
Texas is three days. And so there's two parts of it. There's the federal part, and there's a state part. Almost every state, if you pass one part and fail the other part, you only have to take the part you failed. Texas is all or nothing really?

 

Matt Handy (01:03:23):
Yeah. And do you get three tries here too? I think you get

 

Jordan Hase (01:03:25):
Five.

 

Matt Handy (01:03:26):
Oh, I think you get five. Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (01:03:27):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:03:28):
So I know that if you have a California law license, you can come to Texas and not have to take the bar.

 

Jordan Hase (01:03:36):
Yeah, yeah. You can wave in. It's almost for every state. If you've practiced law for a certain

 

Matt Handy (01:03:42):
Period of time, if you've practiced law. So you wouldn't have qualified for

 

Jordan Hase (01:03:44):
That? No, I would've had to pass the bar exam.

 

Matt Handy (01:03:46):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (01:03:47):
Yeah. Which

 

Matt Handy (01:03:48):
You didn't.

 

Jordan Hase (01:03:49):
I

 

Matt Handy (01:03:49):
You. You literally wrote your name on it and left.

 

Jordan Hase (01:03:52):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:03:52):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (01:03:53):
And so dude, I wrote my name on it, and I remember coming back. I remember questioning the lady thoroughly, will this count, knew it was going to count as one of my five, but I just wanted to make sure it counted. And some people knew I took the bar exam and I was pleading with her, I don't need to come back tomorrow. And she's like, well, you should come back tomorrow. I'm like, but does it matter if I don't come back tomorrow? Does this still count as the one I've taken? She's like, oh, yeah. I was like, perfect. Okay. So yeah, thought processes, right? Which my poor parents, man, my parents, my friends, family, friends, we're all

 

Matt Handy (01:04:31):
So excited for

 

Jordan Hase (01:04:32):
You. And man, talk about one of the most miserable feelings. So you take the bar exam in February and July.

 

Matt Handy (01:04:40):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (01:04:40):
So you take it in February.

 

Matt Handy (01:04:42):
So everybody, the whole time is no,

 

Jordan Hase (01:04:45):
First week of May. And there's a website. You go to the website and if you pass, pass, fail. No. If you pass, they just list your name. Oh, no. If your name's not on there, you failed. And the whole time, oh man, talk about resentment. That was a resentment I had to work through was the bar exam.

 

Matt Handy (01:04:58):
Really?

 

Jordan Hase (01:04:58):
Because then when I didn't pass it, everyone was like, you could take it in, take it again. I'm like, I don't don't want to take it in, because I knew the life I was living. I was just getting high every day, drinking nonstop. Have you thought about taking it again? I have. I've thought about it. It's a huge undertaking. It is. Especially 15 years out of law school

 

Matt Handy (01:05:19):
Or 20 years out of law school also. Everything has changed.

 

Jordan Hase (01:05:22):
Yeah. Yeah. And I was at a slight disadvantage. I don't know if this is a disadvantage. I went to law school in Florida, and I was taking the Texas bargain,

 

Matt Handy (01:05:32):
Right? Totally different lawsuits.

 

Jordan Hase (01:05:34):
So state property, law, all that stuff. Family law is all different, but you take classes for 'em. So you go to law school for three years, and then you take a study, a review course. A review course that my parents paid $20,000 for me to take with It was like a guarantee. If you did the class you were going to pass. What? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that was another, I mean, yeah. And so that whole buildup of waiting to check the website and me checking it, that's how fucking delusional I was, is I checked the website. I

 

Matt Handy (01:06:10):
Don't know, maybe my is on there by yourself,

 

Jordan Hase (01:06:12):
Right? Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:06:13):
With no one around you. You still checked it.

 

Jordan Hase (01:06:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Maybe something happened and I did pass it.

 

Matt Handy (01:06:25):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (01:06:26):
So during this time period, I still, I'm doing all these document reviews. I'm in contact with my coaches from Cornell. So one of my strength coaches at Cornell is now the assistant strength coach for the Houston Texans.

 

Matt Handy (01:06:39):
This is your connection.

 

Jordan Hase (01:06:40):
This is my connection. And so I was struggling. I was in the grips of my addiction and drinking. People around me didn't know I had this job that I was working.

 

Matt Handy (01:06:53):
Did they actually not know, or you thought they didn't know?

 

Jordan Hase (01:06:55):
I don't think they knew.

 

Matt Handy (01:06:56):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (01:06:57):
So at one point they did. So bro, there's certain things you think about and you're like, how stupid was I? How could I have done so well on Ivy League school and law school and grad school and be so stupid? So for this short time period, I was living at my parents' house, and I would go out every single night. We'd go to the bar till two or three in the morning and do blow every night. And I was terrified to throw my bags of blow away. I thought the cops were going to find it. So I would take my empty bags and put 'em in a Ziploc bag and then keep 'em under my bed.

 

Matt Handy (01:07:38):
So now you have just a bag of empty bags

 

Jordan Hase (01:07:40):
Under your bed, hundreds of empty

 

Matt Handy (01:07:42):
Bags at your parents' house, at my parents' house.

 

Jordan Hase (01:07:44):
And my dad found it one time, and this was my first real, it wasn't a consequence. I was 27 years old, but it was him finding out and being, they were so sad and scared and disappointed. And my dad, he's not like, I love my dad. He is an amazing human being, but he's not maybe the most compassionate person in the world. He's tough. He was tough on me. And so he was actually disappointed. Disappointed. But it worked, man. I quit for a while. I probably quit for doing blow for six or seven years. It scared me getting caught. That kept getting wasted. I went on a hard Xanax run. That's better. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was in my mind was they can't find it. I don't have any leftover baggies of Xanax

 

Matt Handy (01:08:45):
With residue.

 

Jordan Hase (01:08:46):
Right. And they couldn't smell it. I was smelling a lot of pot. They couldn't smell it. And so I did that for a year, man, doing these document reviews. And I finally, my coach from Cornell called me and he's like, Hey, listen, we have this internship with the Texans. It's usually for 18 to 22 year olds. And at this point, I'm 28, and he's like, it pays nothing like minimum wage at the most. And I was like, I'm in. Sign me up. That was my dream man. The Houston Texan. I'm a Houston guy. I got Houston tatted on my arm. Texas tatted across my back. Sorry. It's a S Slim dog song. I think it's the other way though. But I love Houston, man. I was a season ticket holder. My family was of the Houston Oilers. When the Texans came, my dad got Houston Texans season tickets. So I got this job and I worked, my internship was in the equipment room, and then my full-time job was in the player personnel department, which was a dream man. It was a dream. It was a dream that I very quickly ruined. Really? Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:09:55):
So what was your responsibilities?

 

Jordan Hase (01:09:57):
So in the equipment room, it was amazing. I literally washed the uniforms, washed Jockstraps and clear. It was amazing. It was a great, because connected to the players, you're in the locker room all day every day. You are their guy they go to for things.

 

Matt Handy (01:10:14):
So I always thought that they got new jerseys every time they played.

 

Jordan Hase (01:10:18):
No, I mean, it depends if something happened. No, we dry clean them, send 'em to the dry cleaners. If one gets torn or something, they would, where they have tons of multiple jerseys for each player, but we would dry clean them, and that was part of my job. I'd take 'em to the dry cleaner.

 

. (01:10:33):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (01:10:36):
And I mean, I had access to all of the clothes. So it was the perfect year. I started too, because the NFL switched their logo. They had a logo, it had a football with the NFL Shield with, I think it had 30 stars on it for the 30 teams. And it was the year they went to 32 teams, or they changed the 32 teams. So there were eight divisions. So they changed the logo, right. Eight

 

Matt Handy (01:11:03):
Stars to

 

Jordan Hase (01:11:03):
Eight stars. And so all of the 30 star logo stuff was no good. And there was a warehouse of it. So I got all this free clothes. Really? Do you still have that stuff? I have a lot of it. Okay. Yeah, man, I was there 20 hours a day. I lived down there, lived in a hotel right by the stadium. They put us up in,

 

Matt Handy (01:11:28):
And this is just for the season,

 

Jordan Hase (01:11:30):
So it was a two year contract. The beginning, I was in the equipment room, and then I moved into player personnel. So I was an advanced scout, so I would scout the teams we were going to play. That's right. So three levels of scouts. There's pro scouts where you're scouting free agents, other players on other teams, if you're looking to make a trade. There were college scouts that weren't even really a part of the team. They traveled nonstop. They had regions of the country, and there was advanced scouting where we scouted the teams we were going to play. So back in those days, they didn't have the tablets on the sideline, like the iPads or the surfaces. They had had

 

Matt Handy (01:12:07):
Books,

 

Jordan Hase (01:12:08):
Had books, and we had a camera set up with all these computers on the sideline where you could print pictures out immediately. So you'd have a live camera shot on the field, you'd print a picture out right before the snap of the ball, right after the snap of the ball, and at the end of the play. And then we'd print them out, put 'em in the notebooks and hand 'em to the coaches.

 

Matt Handy (01:12:27):
And they were building how they were going to train and stuff off that. Right.

 

Jordan Hase (01:12:32):
So this was live during the game. So if the defense is in a certain formation of a certain front, and we have 12 personnel and one running back, two tight ends, they're in a four, three defense. We come out with a certain formation. How are they lining up? And then when we snap the ball, what were they doing? And so they would look at that

 

Matt Handy (01:12:52):
Stuff

 

Jordan Hase (01:12:52):
And look at it on the sidelines.

 

Matt Handy (01:12:53):
So this is the hours and hours of watching film and strategizing

 

Jordan Hase (01:12:57):
20 hours a day, man.

 

Matt Handy (01:12:58):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (01:12:59):
All day. That's

 

Matt Handy (01:12:59):
Amazing.

 

Jordan Hase (01:13:00):
And it was the greatest thing ever.

 

Matt Handy (01:13:01):
That actually sounds really fun.

 

Jordan Hase (01:13:02):
It was awesome.

 

Matt Handy (01:13:04):
And so it's actually a really important thing that you were doing.

 

Jordan Hase (01:13:08):
And so I came in there. So my coach obviously knew me. There was another guy on the team that my dad was a banker, so my dad was doing some investment stuff with this guy. So I knew him really well too. So when I went into the team, I knew a couple guys and I was kind of accepted. And lawman was my nickname, lawman. That's what everybody called

 

Matt Handy (01:13:29):
Me. That's so cool.

 

Jordan Hase (01:13:30):
That's what the players called me. I had a guy that I worked for there that did not, this young lawyer guy came in and tried to, they was getting all the attention. He'd been there forever. His name was, I don't want to say his name was what? They called him. Can I say his? No, I'm not going to say it.

 

Matt Handy (01:13:48):
Don't say his name. Because I got a text message from somebody yesterday, and this person was like, somebody texted me from all the way across the state and said, Hey, you should listen to this podcast. And this person was like, oh, I know this guy. I've actually been on this podcast yesterday. One video, I think I told you this already. One video got a thousand views yesterday, and we've been posting for two weeks. Right?

 

Jordan Hase (01:14:12):
Yeah. I was thinking about, I'm probably saying I have it yet, but there's some stuff I'm going to say that my wife doesn't even know about how bad it got

 

Matt Handy (01:14:19):
That

 

Jordan Hase (01:14:20):
Sometimes I worry about,

 

Matt Handy (01:14:21):
Oh yeah, we haven't gotten there yet. We're definitely going.

 

Jordan Hase (01:14:24):
So I worked for this guy. I, here's the thing, man. I think I was arrogant, right? I was selfish. I was self-centered. I was in the middle of all of this stuff.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:35):
There's a difference between arrogance and confidence, though. If you can back it up, it becomes

 

Jordan Hase (01:14:39):
Confidential.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:41):
So I don't see you as an arrogant person.

 

Jordan Hase (01:14:43):
I'm not Now

 

Matt Handy (01:14:44):
I totally see how people could think you were arrogant

 

Jordan Hase (01:14:48):
When I was not a recovered person.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:52):
Oh, I imagine.

 

Jordan Hase (01:14:53):
I probably was arrogant, and I don't think I ever meant it maliciously. I think one thing is I was just always lauded and praised growing up by my family and by sports teams and stuff. So I'm sure it got to my head and I didn't hold back on it.

 

Matt Handy (01:15:12):
Yeah, it's like a rare type of person that doesn't have any ego from that kind of

 

Jordan Hase (01:15:15):
Thing, right? Yeah. And so, man, this guy and I, we did not see eye to eye. I, I felt like I was working my ass off and trying to be humble and everything, but I probably wasn't. I don't know, I probably wasn't. And then there came a time, man, where I was showing up late. I was drinking and smoking pot nonstop.

 

Matt Handy (01:15:35):
Were you partying with the players?

 

Jordan Hase (01:15:36):
No.

 

Matt Handy (01:15:37):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (01:15:37):
No. With the coaches sometimes and the other guys that I worked with. But even then, man, it was like You

 

Matt Handy (01:15:47):
Partied different.

 

Jordan Hase (01:15:48):
Yeah, I could tell. They were looking at me like, what's wrong with this guy? He is insane. Was still, so this is after my parents found, my dad found that stuff, and then before I restarted again. So it was just pot and alcohol. And man, this is the NFL dude. There's no room for it. They don't care. I was a new guy. I made no money. And so at the same time, and I won't mention his name, it's a very famous story and guy, but, so the coaching staff we had was incredible. There's five or six guys that are NFL head coaches now that were just starting out on that staff. And one of the guys got fired that year. He was an alcoholic, and he was out of the league for two or three years,

 

Matt Handy (01:16:32):
The NFL. And you know this because of the industry that we're a part of, but there are certain industries and the NFL actually professional sports, but airline pilots and then law enforcement where it's like, but it's so easy to get those people sober because you say, Jordan, you're going to lose everything, $50 million, everything, your lifestyle, all the money, your retirement, fucking, every accolade that you've ever got is going to be fucking pointless. All you got to do is stop drinking. And they're like, I'm going to treatment for a year.

 

Jordan Hase (01:17:15):
Right? Yeah. There's some famous NFL guys that are in recovery. Darren Waller, and I think Max Crosby too.

 

Matt Handy (01:17:22):
And historically, so they're celebrities. And when celebrities enter recovery, they always become, think about Robert Downey Jr. They always become massive faces of recovery. And they typically have a really good story, which I

 

Jordan Hase (01:17:40):
Also

 

Matt Handy (01:17:40):
Don't know how those guys do

 

Jordan Hase (01:17:41):
That.

 

Matt Handy (01:17:42):
What be public about it?

 

Jordan Hase (01:17:44):
Be public. So I always think about them going to 12 step meetings, how hard that must be. We went to the Council in Recovery, has a luncheon spring and a fall luncheon. And last year was Hank's area. Were you there for that?

 

Matt Handy (01:17:59):
No, I wasn't even involved. He was

 

Jordan Hase (01:18:01):
In October. Hank's area. He's got a lot of sobriety, and he's a 12 step guy. And I remember him saying that he went to, he would go to meetings with, I guess he said it so it's not secret. He went to meetings with Matthew Perry, and then the next day, his entire share in a meeting, Matthew Perry's was in the newspaper. Someone was in the meeting with him and contacted TMZ or somebody and told him everything that he was saying in the meeting. Wow.

 

Matt Handy (01:18:31):
Yeah. Yeah. Matthew Perry actually was one of the speakers for that. His plaques on

 

Jordan Hase (01:18:38):
The wall. Yeah. Yeah. A long time ago.

 

Matt Handy (01:18:40):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (01:18:42):
So

 

Matt Handy (01:18:43):
That is really fucked up.

 

Jordan Hase (01:18:44):
Yeah. Yeah. So you think about that. There's a really, I dunno if he's real famous, a famous dude that I've become connected with that lives in LA that is in recovery. And we talk almost every day. And I think about it all the time. How does he go to meetings and not get

 

Matt Handy (01:19:01):
Meetings, lend themselves to this? I mean, from my experience, it's like everybody's equal. And if you have a home group, I'm sure they just treat 'em like a normal guy.

 

Jordan Hase (01:19:11):
Right?

 

Matt Handy (01:19:12):
Exactly. But if you go to, so from being from Southern California and the culture that I was a part of, Danny Trejo is like a God.

 

Jordan Hase (01:19:23):
He spoke at one of the luncheons,

 

Matt Handy (01:19:24):
He, he's got a plaque on there too. He has a following though. He goes to meetings every day, but he speaks at the meetings and he's got posses of people that following these meetings. So the first time I went and saw him talk, dude, it was like a basement, a massive basement, and it was nuts to butts, people standing everywhere. And I was like, this is a God of recovery. He's had a long time too. He does. He has a really crazy recovery story too, because I don't know how accurate, I'm

 

Jordan Hase (01:19:57):
Sure they embellish a little bit.

 

Matt Handy (01:19:58):
Yeah, yeah. I'm sure it's that too. But he's connected to heavy hitter organization, criminal organization, and is still connected to them. That's all I'm going to say. And so from what I understand from prison culture and all that stuff is they still back him, and they send people to protect him. And so it's a crazy, he's that level of connection in the underground. And then you mix that with AA and it's like, how do you do this?

 

Jordan Hase (01:20:37):
Yeah. Yeah. The anonymous part goes away.

 

Matt Handy (01:20:39):
Totally goes away. That's funny. The anonymous part, the crux of all of their principles is anonymous, but it's like nobody's actually anonymous. Everybody talks about it

 

Jordan Hase (01:20:52):
Openly.

 

Matt Handy (01:20:53):
It's funny.

 

Jordan Hase (01:20:55):
So this was like 2009 at this point, and they were just like, this is funny. I've finally come to grips with this in the last year, but my contract didn't get renewed.

 

Matt Handy (01:21:08):
Big surprise.

 

Jordan Hase (01:21:10):
And I was like, my contract didn't get renewed. And then I started telling the story recently, probably last year, and I'm like, I got fired. Yeah, I definitely got escorted out by the director of security for the Texans to my hotel room. We need all your stuff back, bro. You're fired. Fired. And I think I might even, I don't know if I did, but I was like, I'm going to write a letter to HR about the way this guy treated me. He was rude to me the whole time. Its that's how delusional and entitled I was. So funny. I'm not showing up for meetings. They don't know if my reports are right and I'm going to write a letter to

 

Matt Handy (01:21:50):
Hr. They fucked me over.

 

Jordan Hase (01:21:52):
I'm going to make sure that I never work in the NFL again. That is basically what I was thinking. Wow. Not thinking, but that's what I would've been doing, man. And maybe everything that I was doing kind of built up to this, but man, I was drinking, blackout drinking every single night. I was smoking pot all day every day. I was in a terrible relationship. I was in a terrible relationship with a girl that I got pregnant and got engaged to and lived with. And it was not good. Not good for her. It's not good for me. And this was 2000, end of 2009. So I was not working with the Texans anymore. I met a Cornell alumni at a football event, and he was a home builder, and he is like, can you do some contract work for us? So I started doing that, revising contracts, reading contracts for him. He's like, we're thinking about starting a home building division. They were from El Paso. We're going to start one here in the Woodlands. This is 2008, 2009. Terrible. The economy time.

 

Matt Handy (01:22:56):
But it boomed after that, right?

 

Jordan Hase (01:22:57):
It did boom. After that, probably four or five years though. It took a while.

 

(01:23:02):
He's like, do you want to learn how to build or you want to be a part this, if we're going to stay in the Woodlands? It's like, sure, man, I didn't really care at this point. I was like, I just ruined my dream job. I was with this girl that, I don't know. I don't know what was going on with that situation. But I came home one day and I caught her with someone else, and then she disappeared. Was it your kid? It was my kid for sure. And I guess, I don't know, but it was my kid. But she disappeared right after this happened. We were in our apartment. She was gone and a week later came back and she had gotten an abortion. She left and didn't tell me or anything. And man, I just kind of lost it then. So I went to, and within a week, this guy, this home builder guy was like, Hey, we're not going to do anything in Houston. The market's just terrible right now. We're not going to do it. I'm going back to El Paso. Do you want to go? I was like, yes, let's go to El Paso. I didn't care. I didn't care where it was.

 

Matt Handy (01:24:03):
El Paso is crazy.

 

Jordan Hase (01:24:04):
El Paso was real crazy, especially in 2009, 2010.

 

Matt Handy (01:24:07):
Oh, that's like, there was a drug wars starting again.

 

Jordan Hase (01:24:10):
The pikas, it was considered the most dangerous city in the world, more than

 

Matt Handy (01:24:16):
Iraq.

 

Jordan Hase (01:24:17):
Warez, which is right across the

 

Matt Handy (01:24:19):
River. It touches El Paso,

 

Jordan Hase (01:24:21):
Bro. It's like they say the river, but it's like two feet wide

 

Matt Handy (01:24:25):
Right there. Yeah, it's a trickle

 

Jordan Hase (01:24:27):
In some parts. There's not even any water. And I mean, it was utep, university of Texas, El Paso. The campus was getting hit by bullets from gunfire across the border. Heads were showing up in the back of pickup trucks from cartel stuff that was going on. And everyone was like, you can't go to Juarez, you just can't go over there. So I went there every single night and literally walked across the border every single night to go get drugs. I was working. I was building houses. They were teaching me how to build a house. I was there by myself. And man, you want to talk about how white I am? Lemme tell you how white I am. I would walk across the border, buy drugs, put it in my pocket and walk back. And every time they're like, you're good, man. Keep going. Just keep going.

 

Matt Handy (01:25:24):
So my wife and I, San Diego and TJ are the same thing. And we spent years going back and forth, sometimes daily for months. And her big charge, she got caught with a quarter pound heroin in her pocket. I was like, what? She's like, I did it all the time. I thought you were packing it up right in her pocket. No, and the thing was, the people that we were working with paid people that were on the job to look the other way. So she was like, why keep doing that when they just walk us through every time? So she got caught with it in her pocket. I was like, what are you doing? And my wife is like you. She's a red-haired, blue eyed white girl, pasty white. I was like, and so now that's on a record.

 

Jordan Hase (01:26:24):
Yeah. I never got caught. I was only there for eight months. They decided to start a division in Austin, and that was kind of the plan for me. The plan was like, let's bring you out here. We'll teach you every aspect of the business, like the purchasing part, the estimating. And I had no direction in my life at this point. I had unquote failed the bar exam. I'd been fired from this NFL job. I was not going to take the bar exam again. And this gave me a little bit of purpose. I think I told you this the other day. I loved the aspect of building a house,

 

Matt Handy (01:27:02):
Problem solving.

 

Jordan Hase (01:27:03):
It was just every single day, and it was a different problem, and you had to figure it out. And every problem had a solution. You just had to figure out what it was. And I loved that. So we moved back to Austin, or we moved out to Austin, started a division here, and I did. Well, man, I really thrived for a while. I stayed with them for probably two years. I started working with another home builder on their custom home division. Build on your lot division. And this is when, so I met my wife at my future wife in Austin. We were at a, oh, she's going to kill me for telling the story, but I'm going to tell it because it's great. We met at a wedding. So my cousin married her childhood friend.

 

(01:27:46):
So we were in Dallas. She's from the Dallas Fort Worth area. We were up there for the wedding. It was a New Year's Eve wedding. I met her, she was in line in front of me. I was like, you want a tequila shot? And she purposely looked to see what tequila they didn't have. She's like, oh yeah, I only take Patron. I was like, oh, they don't have that. So then I got wasted, and it was my mission that night. I was like, I got to find Patron. So I remember I went through the hotels at a resort past four of the hotel bars out the front door, across the street to another bar. Got two shots of Patron and carried 'em back in my pockets, found her. And I was like, here. And I still remember we talk about it. Her mom was like, she was like, no, I'm good.

 

(01:28:32):
I think there's literally a pocket lint in the shot. She's like, I'm good, man. And I was probably wasted. I've never met this girl, ever talked to her 10 seconds. And her mom was like, be a lady and take the shot. No. Yes. So I was like, all right. And that was it. That was my mission, man. It was to give her the shot. So I was like, all right, sweet. See, you didn't talk to her again, my didn't talk to the rest of the night. I remember a few months later seeing my cousin's pictures on Facebook from the wedding, and I was like, oh, that's the shot girl. And so reach out to her through Facebook. We message back and forth or whatever and realized we both lived in Austin and we didn't know that. And so I'm like, let's go out. So we go out.

 

(01:29:15):
The first time we ever go out, she doesn't drink one thing. She gets food poisoning. And bro, she's vomiting all over my car, my house. I had to take her home. We had to stop three times on the way home so she could vomit off the way. What'd you guys eat? We didn't eat. I don't even remember. We went to a concert. My buddy was in a band. We went to the concert. I don't remember what we ate. I just remember driving her home. And this is on video, but it was literally Get out. Yeah. I was like, see ya.

 

Matt Handy (01:29:45):
Wait, you said you got it on video?

 

Jordan Hase (01:29:48):
No, no, no, no. I was like, this is on video. This is on

 

Matt Handy (01:29:50):
Video. No, definitely. This is on

 

Jordan Hase (01:29:51):
Video. I was booting her out of the car.

 

Matt Handy (01:29:53):
That's so funny.

 

Jordan Hase (01:29:55):
Didn't talk to her for another year. Oh my gosh. So that was like, yeah, we went a whole year. I did not talk to this girl. Did

 

Matt Handy (01:30:02):
You think about her and stuff?

 

Jordan Hase (01:30:04):
No.

 

Matt Handy (01:30:04):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (01:30:05):
No vomit. I talked about her. She was vomit girl for a long time. Girl.

 

Matt Handy (01:30:09):
She went from shot girl to vomit girl.

 

Jordan Hase (01:30:11):
Yeah. Yeah. And the funny part is the next year, it's New year's day, and I'm so hungover, vomiting, and I'm like, I wonder what vomit girl's up to. So I texted her. This is probably 2012 at this point. Yeah, It's probably 20, 20 12. I texted her and then we started hanging out. Yeah. I remember thinking

 

Matt Handy (01:30:37):
The rest is history.

 

Jordan Hase (01:30:38):
Yeah. I loved this girl. She was everything I was looking for to wife. She came from a great family. But I also remember thinking this might be the one that can slow me down. I needed to slow down. I was out of control.

 

Matt Handy (01:30:51):
How old are you at the time?

 

Jordan Hase (01:30:52):
32.

 

Matt Handy (01:30:53):
Yeah, 32.

 

Jordan Hase (01:30:54):
32. I was making good money. My career was starting to get a little more successful in the home building stuff.

 

Matt Handy (01:31:01):
How's your addiction?

 

Jordan Hase (01:31:03):
It was all just smoking pot all day, every day. Made sure I had the bong by my bedside loaded up. So if I randomly woke up at 2:00 AM I'd take a bong hit and then drink in a bottle of whiskey every day.

 

Matt Handy (01:31:16):
That's terrible.

 

Jordan Hase (01:31:17):
Yeah. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:31:19):
That's fucking terrible.

 

Jordan Hase (01:31:19):
Yeah. And going out, I mean, we talk about this stuff now, but a lot of this stuff is her fault because she saw the signs, man, this girl should have been gone a long time.

 

Matt Handy (01:31:30):
Oh, it's her fault.

 

Jordan Hase (01:31:32):
It's her fault that she stayed through it all. But man, there were definite signs. But I was good. I was good at hiding it. I was making good money. And I think that hit a lot too.

 

Matt Handy (01:31:42):
That is definitely a max that people can hide behind for a really long time.

 

Jordan Hase (01:31:48):
After we got married and I had my own home building company, it was a huge, huge mask. And it definitely escalated the problem.

 

Matt Handy (01:31:56):
So we are now, here we are at the gates of your downfall.

 

Jordan Hase (01:32:02):
So here I'll say this. So we moved in together. I was building houses in Austin. My dad reached out to me, so my dad did construction lending for builders forever. He reached out to me, he's like, listen, I got a partner here. His partner is an architect. They want to start a home building company here in Houston. You'd be perfect for it. Kimberly and I had been together for probably a year now. We both lived in Austin still. And I came to Houston to meet with this guy. It was perfect. It was a perfect opportunity. He did all the architecture stuff. I could do everything building wise. And so I moved here in 20 13, 20 13, probably 2013. And so she did what women do, man, she woman, me. So when we were together, she was like, Hey, I smoke pot every day. She was like, whatever, it's fun. Then we moved in together and she's like, maybe if you did it a little bit less, maybe only if we go to movies or sporting events. I was like, all right, that's fun. And then we got engaged and she's like, yeah, definitely don't do it every day. I need to slow down. And then probably that day we got married. She's like, yeah, you can't smoke pot anymore.

 

Matt Handy (01:33:19):
So a good wife trains their husband.

 

Jordan Hase (01:33:22):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (01:33:22):
For sure.

 

Jordan Hase (01:33:22):
Yeah. Yeah. And she did great. She trained me, but at the same time, it was like, who is this person to tell me what to do?

 

Matt Handy (01:33:30):
Oh, you're building resentments.

 

Jordan Hase (01:33:31):
Yeah. Yeah. I had a hard time with it, man. I struggled with the trying to put husband, putting two lives together. I was selfish and I wanted to do what I wanted to do, and I had a good career and I was going to make a lot of money. So who is she to tell me what I can or can't do? And

 

Matt Handy (01:33:47):
Pot's highly illegal here. Prison for nothing,

 

Jordan Hase (01:33:53):
Which is insane.

 

Matt Handy (01:33:54):
It's insane. Totally

 

Jordan Hase (01:33:55):
Insane. I work in the drug and alcohol treatment field, and I think it's insane.

 

Matt Handy (01:33:59):
I mean, I have been caught with meth, and it was under an ounce. So they're like, take it from you and tell you to go home. And it's like you get caught with a couple grams here and you're going to jail for sure. You might not go to jail forever, but you're going to jail. It's Crazy.

 

Jordan Hase (01:34:21):
So I remember, I can still remember that whole progression. It was like, why smoke pot every day? I've been smoking pot every day, all day for 10 years. What am I going to do? So I was like, I got to find something that she can't smell. Xanax, Vicodin. Oh, no. Yeah. And man, that got bad. That was like 70, 80 a day, every day.

 

Matt Handy (01:34:47):
Have you ever gotten your liver checked? No. So Vicodin is 95% acetametphin.

 

Jordan Hase (01:34:53):
Right, right, right. Dude, I would get rashes all over my body.

 

Matt Handy (01:34:59):
That's your liver? Yeah, Yeah,

 

Jordan Hase (01:35:00):
Yeah. And not knowing what it was, freaking out. Something's wrong with me. I wouldn't take Vicodin for two days and it would go away, and then I'd start taking again. It would come back. I'm like, I still don't know what it is. It must be something. I must have eaten something. And man, I went hard. So the crazy part about that is I was going to take one Vicodin and I'd have to have a full stomach. I'd have to lay down, and then I could take a Vicodin. And within a month it was like 10 at a time, chewing 'em 10 at a time all day, every day. And so

 

Matt Handy (01:35:33):
Gross.

 

Jordan Hase (01:35:34):
So gross, man.

 

Matt Handy (01:35:35):
So gross.

 

Jordan Hase (01:35:36):
And I remember at some point my stomach was a disaster. I had headaches nonstop. And I was like, I got to quit. And so I quit. I did quit cold Turkey. I quit. It was a miserable. How

 

Matt Handy (01:35:48):
Did that go?

 

Jordan Hase (01:35:49):
It was terrible. Yeah. You know how it went. My buddies from New York started mailing me ketamine in the mail. And that helped.

 

Matt Handy (01:35:59):
Yeah, that's a solution

 

Jordan Hase (01:36:00):
That helped. And then that got weird too. So I started slurring. My wife was a nurse, so I started slurring my words and stuff when we'd be having conversations. And I was like, point blank a couple times. She would ask me, are you having a stroke right now? Yeah. I was like, I got to stop talking. Okay, I got to stop. I'm just going to go to bed or something. So that didn't last very long. And man, it was, so we get married in 2015,

 

Matt Handy (01:36:25):
And this is all off the ripple effects of an addict having to stop smoking pot.

 

Jordan Hase (01:36:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know what else to do. I knew I was uncomfortable with who I was at this point. There was a physical addiction to the stuff I was doing, but I just remember being, I bored. A lot of my stuff all came from the need for validation from people, man. And if I wasn't getting it and I wasn't going to get it, doesn't matter. You can insert person here. I wasn't going to get the needed validation I needed.

 

Matt Handy (01:37:02):
Yeah, you weren't comfortable with yourself. Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (01:37:06):
Yeah. I didn't. And so that went on for a little while. I quit that. So we got married in 2015. We Lived here

 

Matt Handy (01:37:16):
Three years together?

 

Jordan Hase (01:37:18):
Three years together. We dated for a year, got engaged for a year. So it was probably 2012 that we met. Dated for a year, got engaged for a year, got married in 2015. And at this point, the home building company was good, man. We were building houses in the heights. We were building $2 million houses. They were beautiful. We had a property down in Seabrook, two houses we built there, and then a 50 lot community. We developed luxury homes. Luxury homes. I mean, they were nice. And then we had some property in League City that we were developing and building houses on. So 2015, my dad and I were both a part of the company, so we were like partners. Another partner too, 2015 to 2018. Highly successful, making tons of money. I had a daughter that was born in 2017, and I remember that was the beginning of the, okay, so first it was Kimberly, she'll get me sober, she'll help me out. And I didn't work. It kind of went the other way. And I was like, okay, my daughter will be born. I hear about people having kids all the time, and that makes 'em

 

Matt Handy (01:38:26):
Grow up.

 

Jordan Hase (01:38:26):
Grow up. And man, there was a lot of grow up. You need to be a man. But talked about the money part earlier, man, we were making so much money that I didn't think no one just cared to figure things out.

 

Matt Handy (01:38:39):
A lot of people see the exterior and they're like, we're not changing anything. This is working. And even people who are aware of maybe there's a problem that people understand that getting sober derails everything. So They're just stay doing what you're doing, and then when it really becomes a problem, they're all fucking pissed at you.

 

Jordan Hase (01:39:01):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there was so many signs too. Just the early signs. I destroyed a bar in Austin one time, was like, I'm going to tell this story. This is a great story. This is a huge recovery story of important in my life. And I might've told you this already. So I had a partner, we had a partner here that he was a defense contractor in Iraq.

 

Matt Handy (01:39:28):
You've told me about this guy.

 

Jordan Hase (01:39:29):
Yeah. Right after 2001. And we built shipping container houses together. He was in,

 

Matt Handy (01:39:36):
Oh, those things are dope.

 

Jordan Hase (01:39:37):
He lived in Iraq, he worked for Halliburton. He, he lived in a shipping container there, started a fiber optic cable doing fiber optic cables in Iraq and Afghanistan, made a boatload of money, came back here, started an internet company, was like, he still is to this day. Everything, he starts turns to gold. Just a great guy. And so he wanted to build shipping container houses here. He knew the architect I was working with. We all partnered up. We built some badass places in Fifth Ward, actually over in a tough part of town.

 

(01:40:12):
He's a charitable guy, always helping people own an orphanage at one point. So he like a awesome human being. And he wanted to build it over there, like build something affordable that people could afford. And the bad thing that happened is that you couldn't get financing for any of these houses. There was no comps. There's no way to appraise them because there was nothing around there. So some of them, he ended up giving away to families that needed them. Some of them, he would just have to find the right guy to buy 'em. But we built some amazing things. And this is before Kimberly and I were married, but we were in Austin and we went to the shipping container bar on Rainy Street. It's a bar in Austin on Rainy Street that's just made out of shipping containers.

 

(01:40:56):
It's awesome. It's a really cool place. And I called this guy, I was like, dude, you got to come out here. We could do this. This is our next thing. Fuck these houses. We're going to build just commercial bars. Yeah, bars, exactly. And so he comes out there, I meet him at the W Hotel, and this was a big Xanax stage for me. And so I'm like four bars deep, blacked out, blacked out. And I get out. It is me and my fiance or my girlfriend at the Point, Kimberly. And then him and his girlfriend, they drive out there to meet us. They stay at the W Hotel, we meet him at the W Hotel for drinks. I'm eating Xanax and drinking whiskey. And I stood up to go to the restroom and face planted on this table, a glass table that in turn dominoes knocked over every other glass table in this bar that shattered everywhere, bro. So much glass chairs were broken, probably 25 tabletops shattered all over the W hotel bar. And so I go to the bathroom and I come out and I remember coming out of the bathroom being like, I think a bomb must have gone off. Something bad happened.

 

Matt Handy (01:42:04):
You don't remember what happened 30 seconds before.

 

Jordan Hase (01:42:07):
Yeah. And so I was like, should we leave? What's going on? So I noticed they had moved. They're in a different area of the bar now. And I go sit down with them and I'm like, guys, what happened out here? And Kimberly's like, you did this. And I was, I was in the bathroom, whatcha talking about I didn't do this. I literally just got out of the bathroom right now. And she was like, oh my God, you did this. You fell over and knocked all these tables over. You did this. So I remember. So I go to sit down and she's like, you are not sitting down, please. We're leaving. So we leave the bar. On Monday, this guy calls me up. He's like, please come by my office. I don't ever want to see you again. I owe you money. He gave me money.

 

(01:42:52):
I was like, do you mind if I call? Can I call your girlfriend? Apologize to her? He's like, bro, if you even see her on the street, turn and go the other way. Don't acknowledge her. And so the best part of that story is fast forward like 10 years, there's another part of the story, but his old office building is in the heights, and he owned this building. I used to go there all the time for meetings, not sober. I would do cocaine on the table in there. I would drink in there. I did other things in the bathroom there that I shouldn't have done. And his office is in the heights. So we go, now I work in this field. I work in the treatment industry, and I go to an open house in the Heights, and it's his old office building.

 

Matt Handy (01:43:39):
Wait a minute, the black horse.

 

Jordan Hase (01:43:41):
Black horse building.

 

Matt Handy (01:43:41):
No.

 

Jordan Hase (01:43:42):
Yes. So I go to the black horse open house, and I'm walking around. This is Sniper Hill, this is his old office. So I'm freaking out at this point. I'm telling everybody, and hon and Courtney are like, Hey, maybe we don't need to tell everybody this story, not during the open house. And so I tell everybody, so that night I go home and I'm like, I got to reach out to this guy. I got to find him somehow. I need to make an amends to him. And I remember talking to my sponsor at some point about it. I need to make an amends. And he's like, well, let's see if we can find him. I couldn't find him anywhere. We went by the old yard where he owned the shipping containers and he had sold that property. So I was like, I'm never going to find this guy. So that night after this open house, I Google him, and it's the first fucking name that pops up, the very first name. Obviously this is not looking very hard, and it's for a place for, he was the owner of a five star drug and alcohol treatment center in South Africa.

 

Matt Handy (01:44:41):
Wow.

 

Jordan Hase (01:44:42):
Yeah. So you reach out. So I reach out, I go on the contact thing. It's through WhatsApp. I'm like, Hey, I'm Jordan. I work in the US and this and this. I'm trying to get ahold of so-and-so. We used to do business together. I'm trying to see if I can get in touch with him. The next day I get a text message from this guy, and his name's still in my phone. His contact seems to my phone. So I wasn't looking very hard to find. Right?

 

Matt Handy (01:45:04):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (01:45:05):
So we meet up, we go, we had coffee the next day. We talked for four or five hours. We've been in constant contact since then. That's cool. He's building a new place in Cape Town, a psych hospital. So he's literally inviting me out there for the open house to fly out there with him and check this whole thing out.

 

(01:45:25):
Man, that's awesome.

 

(01:45:25):
But yeah, it was an amazing full circle story.

 

Matt Handy (01:45:28):
Yeah, for sure.

 

Jordan Hase (01:45:30):
So again, my wife probably should have known something.

 

Matt Handy (01:45:34):
Yeah. Did she put two and two together at that point that you were taking pharmaceuticals?

 

Jordan Hase (01:45:39):
It took a while, man. And I don't know her and I haven't really talked about it, but at some point she had to have known, but I don't want to speak for her. I'm assuming she kind of willfully ignored it, or there's nothing in her family? Nothing in her family, no history of it.

 

Matt Handy (01:45:54):
Okay. So maybe slight unaware.

 

Jordan Hase (01:45:56):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (01:45:57):
Slightly unaware.

 

Jordan Hase (01:45:57):
Yeah, definitely unaware. She did one time pull out a huge bag of white powder out of my wallet. One time I was like, what is this? And I remember saying, laundry detergent. No, I wish I would've said that. I was like, that's for my razors. She was like, your razors was like, yeah, yeah. I poured all my razors. Keep 'em fresh. She was like, oh, alright. Really? Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:46:22):
Gee, I wish that worked.

 

Jordan Hase (01:46:23):
Again, dude. The money, man. We were making good money. So we lived in the heights at this point. We had a 2-year-old. So our daughter was born in 2017. We're living in the heights, making a ton of money. But then it gets to the point where we're making, I don't know the exact numbers. Say we're making 30 or $40,000 a month and can't pay the house note, can't pay the car. Note the electricity getting shut off. I guess I was probably spending a thousand dollars a day on Coke. On Coke. Wow. Coke and pills and alcohol. Just every day. And It was terrible, man. I woke up every day praying to God, please let me stop. Please. Lemme stop. I can't do it today, but

 

Matt Handy (01:47:10):
Tomorrow. That's the day.

 

Jordan Hase (01:47:12):
Well, the thing was is I wake up, I'd be begging, and I didn't wake up that often. I didn't go to sleep that often, but the days that I did wake up, I would beg God to please help me stop. Because at this point, I don't know anything about addiction. I just know if I can stop, then I can choose to stay stopped.

 

Matt Handy (01:47:30):
So did you realize that you were addicted to those things?

 

Jordan Hase (01:47:33):
Yeah. Yeah, for

 

Matt Handy (01:47:33):
Sure.

 

Jordan Hase (01:47:34):
I knew I couldn't stop because every single day it was like, I'm not doing it today. And every single day I did it today, and maybe there was a day or two that I wouldn't do it. I was like passed out the whole day. But it was bad, man. I had a 2-year-old at the time my daughter was born. I wasn't there for that. And man, this is when the money started running out. My dad, we'd slowed down building stuff. My dad was like, I want out. And he knew something was going on for sure. He wasn't as blind to it as I was. So my daughter was born. Things had gotten out of control at this point. I remember Kimberly at one point, just, she had threatened to leave a couple times. She was like, I'm going to take our daughter and leave and go back to Dallas. And then I started cycling through jobs. I bought my dad out and then just completely ran the company into the ground within a year. Went from a multimillion dollar company to $0 and less than a year.

 

Matt Handy (01:48:41):
Okay. And what happened with the partners

 

Jordan Hase (01:48:43):
Man? One partner was he left, him and my dad both left

 

Matt Handy (01:48:46):
Just split based on what was going on with you?

 

Jordan Hase (01:48:49):
So they didn't know how to build a house. I knew how to build a house and I wasn't building houses. And the construction loan interest was just piling up on us. We had done some hard money financing too. So the interest was super high when we wanted to get started on a couple projects, and it's probably the circumstances around it were probably not home builders circumstances, but it was normal home builder problems. Couldn't build a house fast enough, couldn't sell it fast enough. The market was a little weird probably by 20 18, 20 19. So they got out. I wanted to keep it going. I could not get these loans on my own at this point. And It was just like, if it wasn't for my dad, I would have a bankruptcy on my name. But he was able to, he just took over everything. He's get out of here. And I was like, okay, yeah, fine. And so I got another job. I cycled through some good jobs, man. I got a great job with a home builder that I made it a week. He fired me for a week. I got another job with another home builder that I made it a month that was only, I had to ride around with a dude for three weeks.

 

Matt Handy (01:50:01):
And he was like, what the fuck?

 

Jordan Hase (01:50:02):
Fuck. And then he left town. He had to go out of town for a funeral. And I was like, I got this man. And I just didn't show up for a week. And they're like, yeah, I remember, dude. I was like, this was crying to people. My bosses just crying to them, you can't fire me. You don't understand. I have no money. My life's in shambles. And they were like, can you please get out of here? Yeah. What do you mean I can't? Bye. You haven't shown. Yeah. Then I got a job with Amazon as a delivery driver. I made it one day. I only made it one day. Yeah, that was a tough one, man. That was, so I lived in the Woodlands warehouses in Sugarland. My delivery area was League City. So I drove to Sugarland, picked up my truck and 400 packages. And then I couldn't deliver the packages without cocaine. So I had to go back to the Woodlands to get that. Oh man. And they called me, they're like, where are you right now? I'm like, what you talking about? I'm out of here. Slinging packages. I'm doing my thing. They're like, no, you're not. You're in the Woodlands.

 

Matt Handy (01:51:04):
You're like,

 

Jordan Hase (01:51:05):
Fuck. I was like, oh, they got a tracker on this thing. Yeah. Hell yeah. And I remember being, they were like, you got to come back. Please bring the truck back right now. I'm like, no, I'm delivering these packages. So I delivered 'em all. It was like they were supposed to be there by 2:00 PM I think I got 'em there by midnight. Oh. Showed back up. And they're like, we'll let you know when you're back on the schedule. Thanks. And so that was that

 

Matt Handy (01:51:28):
One day.

 

Jordan Hase (01:51:29):
One day, man. And it was during prime day, so it was in July. So it was like 700 degrees outside. And I'm doing cocaine and trying to deliver packages,

 

Matt Handy (01:51:40):
Just like pouring sweat, bringing people, you're throwing packages.

 

Jordan Hase (01:51:44):
But I got 'em all delivered, man. I got 'em all delivered. But this was, dude, this was a really dark time for me. I bet this was 2019, July of 2019. So a year after the home building company went down 10 years after I had my NFL job. I've got a law degree. I can't keep a job. My wife knows something's going on,

 

Matt Handy (01:52:06):
But not sure what.

 

Jordan Hase (01:52:07):
Not sure what. I'm not there for our daughter.

 

Matt Handy (01:52:11):
Why weren't you there?

 

Jordan Hase (01:52:13):
I'm just like, I mean, I may been there physically, but just out of it sleeping all day. I would leave the house for days at a time.

 

Matt Handy (01:52:25):
Were you doing the, so in a lot of Coke, the culture, it's like a lot of hanging out in hotels.

 

Jordan Hase (01:52:35):
Dude, I would do it by myself all day every day. Never with anybody else. There'd be times when I'd have to go pick it up at a bar from,

 

Matt Handy (01:52:42):
That's like a misconception. Most people think that you're with people, you're by yourself in a hotel.

 

Jordan Hase (01:52:46):
Yeah. And I couldn't talk. I was so whacked out on my mind, I couldn't talk.

 

Matt Handy (01:52:53):
And don't let anybody, don't let the housekeeping knock on that door because you're like, Oh shit.

 

Jordan Hase (01:52:59):
Yeah, they're going to find me.

 

Matt Handy (01:53:00):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (01:53:02):
Open the blinds a thousand times.

 

Matt Handy (01:53:05):
My wife tells this story. So this was the first house that we moved into together, and we moved an hour out of San Diego because I had to get away from the city. We still drove to San Diego every day, but we lived way out in Temecula. And I would sit, we rented these two rooms. It was like the front room and the back room. They were right next door to each other, and our bedroom was the back room and the front room faced the street. And I sat facing the window all night long, this all night, every night, just at the window.

 

(01:53:45):
And she would be like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I know the next car that comes down this fucking road is the cops. I know. They know that we're Here. And she'd be like, dude, go the Fuck to sleep.

 

Jordan Hase (01:53:57):
And then you ever think about what would've happened if it was the cops? Dude,

 

Matt Handy (01:54:01):
Okay. So the crazy part is the end of that street, the street that we were living on, there is a big white supremacist gang that lived in a compound at the end of the street. So there were cops that would go down the street and I would be like, oh, it's them, dude. And they would pass by and it'd be like, that's the worst bro living. That is just so miserable. The amount of anxiety, the amount of mental stress that goes into, and then the lack of sleep. But the amount of stress is like, no wonder we're 110 pounds a week. Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (01:54:37):
Yeah, man. So end of 2019 was dark. It was the worst that it ever gotten. I wasn't working. I was trying to do some of these document reviews, which I actually was killing it at, because they would let you work unlimited overtime, and I would just get blow and go into these offices and you could work any hours.

 

Matt Handy (01:54:56):
That is typically when a lot of that goes down is through the night for document reviews,

 

Jordan Hase (01:55:02):
Because a lot of attorneys do it after hours after they're done with their stuff. But man, I started doing all the bad things, pawning everything, pawning my parents', Rolexes, pawning all of this, stealing them and pawning them, and then lying about it.

 

Matt Handy (01:55:20):
Of Course,

 

Jordan Hase (01:55:21):
I don't know what you're talking about. Stealing credit cards from people and running that up. Pawning my wife's wedding ring and never got it back. Wow. All of the things. Use our company credit card to, bro. There's a pawn shop on six 10, and Ella, shout out to the Sunbelt that's got like 700 DeWalt in there. I would just buy a $400 DeWalt drill on a credit card and then pawn it for 80 bucks over and over and over, which I'm surprised these guys kept taking the drills from me at some point. You got an overabundance of your stock here, but they didn't care.

 

Matt Handy (01:56:01):
That shit sells.

 

Jordan Hase (01:56:01):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And

 

Matt Handy (01:56:03):
80 bucks. They're like,

 

Jordan Hase (01:56:05):
We'll take these all day, a $400 drill.

 

(01:56:08):
So at some point they were like, do you have receipts for these? And I was like, yeah, I got, here's the receipt right here. So it got really dark, man. The stress of them finding out, and I am just lying to my wife about what happened to the ring. So it was the day our daughter was born. I went home and took the ring out of the safe and pawned it class addict. Yeah, dude, that's class. Terrible, man. And then just lied about, oh yeah, I sent it in to get cleaned. And you know what? There's certain times where I thought God was on my side, but it might've been the devil on my side. I sent it in to this guy. Well, the jewelry we got it from, it's like, yeah, he's going to clean it for us. I was like, I don't know what that'll buy me A week or two,

 

Matt Handy (01:56:51):
Three day turnaround on cleaning

 

Jordan Hase (01:56:53):
While this ring was there getting cleaned. The guy died. And so bro, I milked that. You're like, God, yes. We're never going to get it back. I'm

 

Matt Handy (01:57:02):
Supposed to be doing

 

Jordan Hase (01:57:03):
This. Yes. So man, that was tough. And I would pawn it, get it out, pawn it, get it out. Eventually I couldn't get it out. And I remember that being devastating. That was a threshold that I crossed at that point,

 

Matt Handy (01:57:18):
Yo. And the whole time she thinks dead, dude just still hasn't given it back. And you're like, you're playing money games with it for pennies on the dollar.

 

Jordan Hase (01:57:26):
Yeah. It was like a 10,000 ring that I got 1200 bucks for. That's crazy. Yeah. So end of 2019, man, beginning of 2020, there's a part in there that she definitely doesn't know. I don't know if she's going to listen to this or not, but I owed, at one point I got Narcan back to life. I was gone

 

Matt Handy (01:57:45):
Contaminated or intentionally doing fentanyl?

 

Jordan Hase (01:57:47):
No, it was cocaine. And I'm assuming there was fentanyl in it. This was 2019.

 

Matt Handy (01:57:52):
That is beginning is when fentanyl really started to hit the

 

Jordan Hase (01:57:54):
Market.

 

Matt Handy (01:57:56):
It

 

Jordan Hase (01:57:56):
Wasn't talked about really at that point. No, and I wasn't think about that all the time. Would I have tested it? No. No.

 

Matt Handy (01:58:04):
It's actually illegal in Texas to have fentanyl test strip, which

 

Jordan Hase (01:58:06):
Makes

 

Matt Handy (01:58:07):
Perfect sense.

 

Jordan Hase (01:58:07):
Zero

 

Matt Handy (01:58:08):
Sense at all. Fucking crazy.

 

Jordan Hase (01:58:10):
And so that happened, and it didn't matter. I was sure I was upset about it for or scared, but it was just keep doing more. Keep doing more.

 

Matt Handy (01:58:22):
Like, okay, I can't go to that guy anymore.

 

Jordan Hase (01:58:24):
Yeah, my guy was in jail. I bought it from the same guy every day for six years. This dude would show up in a Honda Accord and then an Audi, and then a Mercedes earn money. But he was great. He would drive by my house and just throw it out the window over my fence and I'd go get it.

 

Matt Handy (01:58:44):
And so the relationships that form between drug addicts and drug dealers are so funny. They become best friends all the time.

 

Jordan Hase (01:58:53):
So this guy, and actually when I got sober, when I got out of treatment and probably the first week or tried treatment, I was calling him and begging him. But at this point I was like, I'll just do a little bit. I can control it. Of course. And he was like, bro, no, I'll never sell you drugs again. So at least he had Somewhat Of a conscience.

 

Matt Handy (01:59:13):
Dude, drug dealers, they have a bad rap and they do bad things. They sell drugs to kids a lot of the time. But when somebody gets sober, they draw hard lines on that across the board. A lot of drug dealers will do. And then you got the idiots that are like, oh, you're sober here.

 

Jordan Hase (01:59:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They try. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:59:33):
To rehook you.

 

Jordan Hase (01:59:34):
Those people, a lot of those people work for treatment centers.

 

Matt Handy (01:59:38):
Kenny Chapman.

 

Jordan Hase (01:59:40):
Exactly. So I remember the beginning of 2020, things had gotten bad. Man. My wife was leaving. She was going to leave. We're talking about divorce, I'm sure.

 

Matt Handy (01:59:52):
Was it still unaware of the actual problem?

 

Jordan Hase (01:59:55):
No. No. So what had happened at this point? We had moved. So I had a plan, man. I had a great plan. The plan was I was going to go as long as I could, and then that always works. And then I was going to tell 'em, right? I was just going to tell 'em.

 

Matt Handy (02:00:07):
Of course. Because now they understand.

 

Jordan Hase (02:00:09):
Well, and I've been lying for so long, they're going to appreciate me telling the truth. For

 

Matt Handy (02:00:12):
Sure.

 

Jordan Hase (02:00:13):
So we were out of our house. We couldn't pay for our house anymore. We had no money. My wife was working. She's a nurse. And so we moved back up north to be by my parents. She needed help with our daughter, and I was not helping. We moved in with my parents for six weeks and it was terrible. My dad hated me at this point. Kimberly hated me at this point. They hated each other at this point just because it was just so bad.

 

Matt Handy (02:00:41):
Massive friction on all

 

Jordan Hase (02:00:43):
Fronts. And we were living up there. And that was when I told him, I was like, guys, I'm on drugs.

 

Matt Handy (02:00:50):
Did you sit them down and do the whole

 

Jordan Hase (02:00:52):
Yeah. And I remember my dad was like, no fucking shit. Not, are you kidding me? He was upset that I told him because I was telling him it was a revelation, But that bought me time. So I was like, I'm going to go to a therapist. So I agreed to go to a therapist, which she was a great therapist. She had an amazing bathroom that I did cocaine in every single time. I went to see her and went there for six months, and she saved my life, actually. She kept putting it in my head. She was like, you need to go, go to rehab, but if you won't go to rehab, you should go to a 12 step meeting. And I remember thinking, I'm not going to a 12 step meeting because there's homeless people and drunk people there,

 

(02:01:38):
And I'm better than that. I'm way better than that. So then my wife, so then I kept going. I kept going. So when she told me about 12 step meetings and rehab, I was like, oh, that buys me more time. I thought the therapist was the end, and then I'd have to quit. I was like, oh, then I'll just keep going. And when they find out again, then I'll just say, Hey, by the way, this lady told me I should to rehab. So this is the beginning of 2020. It was really bad. COVID had started, and my wife was a nurse, so she was in it, and she kicked me out, man. She kicked me out. The funny thing is, I'm going to make her listen to this. Actually, she still denies this. She's like, I would never do that to you. I was like, what are you talking about?

 

(02:02:22):
It's the biggest part of my story. She kicked me out, man. I had nowhere to go. So I was like, I'm going to go to one of these 12 step meetings. So I go, and it was, bro, it was the last place that someone should go to their first meeting at. You could still smoke in the meeting. And I didn't smoke. And they had this tray of sandwiches in there that was engulfed in cigarette smoke. I was like, what am I doing here, man? And this guy was sharing, talking about how he was homeless at one point, living in lifeguard stands. And I remember sitting there, it was like, this guy's talking about being a meth and heroin addict and lived in a lifeguard stand. And my brain says to myself, that's fucking brilliant. That's genius. That's where I'm going. So I drove down to Galveston and I had nowhere to go, man. I'm going from lifeguard stand to life. I was terrible at it, so bad at it. I was exhausted at this point.

 

Matt Handy (02:03:20):
Let me ask you, did you stay at Lifeguard Stand 33 ever?

 

Jordan Hase (02:03:24):
Oh, I don't know, man. I don't know. Actually. It was right down by the Galvez.

 

Matt Handy (02:03:29):
Okay, I'm going to show you a picture. Okay. Eric has a picture of a lifeguards standi ion Galveston on this wall on the other side

 

Jordan Hase (02:03:36):
Of it. I'll look where it is today. And it didn't last long, man. It got cold. This was February, March of 2020. It got real cold, and I was exhausted from years of just not slowing down. And I would get caught every morning, every day they would ask me to leave the lifeguard stand. So after, I don't know how long it was, it could have been two years, it could have been three nights. I don't know how long it was.

 

(02:04:05):
I remember calling my dad, and this is still a huge, it was like for me, it didn't bother me at all. He was right. What he said to me for him, I know he says a lot of regret around it, but I was lying, dude. I was lying every day. So I called him, I was like, Hey, it's freezing out here. Can I come home? And he was like, are you kidding me? He's like, I got an idea. This is what we're going to do, and you got to be on board with this. I was like, perfect. Let's do it. He's like, you disappear. We're going to tell Kimberly and your daughter that you got an wreck and died and you just disappear and they'll be better off and you'll be better off. And I remember thinking, that's actually a great idea. We should do that. I was like, how are we going to do it logistically? She's not going to want to see my body or anything. My dad was like, just leave, bro. Just disappear.

 

Matt Handy (02:04:56):
It's like, dude, the concept concept here, come on.

 

Jordan Hase (02:04:59):
And so I was like, that's probably a good idea. So I waited a couple more days and I called, and this is why I say it was the right idea. I call her, and I'll tell you the days, man, I call on Monday, March 9th. I was like, can I come home? She's like, no, you can't come home. I was like, it's freezing out here. Can I please come home? She says, you can come home, but when I leave for work, you have to leave. You can't be in the house by yourself. You don't get any money.

 

(02:05:27):
And I was like, all right. That was Monday, March 9th, and I told myself, I'm not going home until Thursday, March 12th when she gets paid. And I went home on Thursday, and I wiped the bank account out, Jesus. And she was like, dude, you got to go. You got to leave. I'm calling the cops. You got to go. And that's when I was like, wait, hold on. They told me I should go to rehab. And she's like, I don't care where you go, dude. Go to rehab. That's fine. And to her credit, she helped me find a place. We looked around and it's weird the way, it's not weird. It's amazing the way God does things for you. And where I was going to go, I looked at a lot of places. I looked at some nice places, but the only thing that mattered to me is I didn't want to have a roommate.

 

(02:06:13):
And there was only one place that we looked at that I didn't have to have a roommate. And so God put that in my right. Now, if I had to go to rehab right now, I'd love to have a roommate. And I love to talk to people. I'm like, I love the interaction. But at that time, I didn't want to go. And God put that in my head, and he sent me to the place that was the only place with no roommates, and I met the guy there that changed my life. That saved my life. So I remember. But I'll tell you one thing, man. The day I checked in March 12th, 2020 should be my sobriety date, but it was not. I checked in. It was COVID time, and people were terrified of COVID and didn't know what was going on and clueless about what was happening. And so they were not checking things very well. And I got to my room and I had found two grams of blow in my pocket and one of my old pant pockets, and I did. I threw it away, obviously, for sure. So I did the good old Hoovers. Sucked it up. Yeah, I did a three foot line on my dresser in rehab. And man, that was life changing because

 

Matt Handy (02:07:15):
That line.

 

Jordan Hase (02:07:15):
That line,

 

Matt Handy (02:07:16):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (02:07:16):
Because in my mind, addiction was just, I need to stop doing it, and then I, I'll be good. So here I was

 

Matt Handy (02:07:25):
In rehab

 

Jordan Hase (02:07:26):
In the place to stop doing it, and I had no control over if I was going to do it.

 

Matt Handy (02:07:31):
Eyeopening.

 

Jordan Hase (02:07:32):
Eyeopening, man. It was terrifying. I was devastated. I was like, this is the place where I quit and I couldn't quit. And I did the thing, man. I opened my door 4,000 times that night. I was looking underneath the crack on the door and looking back on, they're going to find me. They're going to find out and they're going to kick me out. And I don't know if they would've or not.

 

Matt Handy (02:07:55):
They probably, you were doing drugs on the campus.

 

Jordan Hase (02:07:57):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (02:07:57):
Yeah. They would've had you.

 

Jordan Hase (02:07:59):
It's their fault though.

 

Matt Handy (02:08:00):
Yeah. They didn't check.

 

Jordan Hase (02:08:01):
They didn't check. So that was March 12th, March 13th, 2020 is my sobriety date.

 

Matt Handy (02:08:09):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (02:08:11):
I did 29 days there.

 

Matt Handy (02:08:13):
Of course,

 

Jordan Hase (02:08:14):
I was healed on day 29. I didn't need 30 days. I came out April. I came out on Easter and still as an addict and an alcoholic, I made it all about me. I was like, yeah, Easter's like the resurrection of Jordan. Jordan. And everyone's like the resurrection of Christ. I'm like, no, but it's like my rebirth for sure, man. I got some tools in there. It was weird. Started, you could only have 10 people in a room at a time. There was COVID rules. And so they started separating. We were 60 people there, so they would separate us into six different rooms and make us zoom together, small groups, and we would all our 60 person process relapse prevention group had to be broken up into six groups. We had to eat prison style, man, six feet apart,

 

Matt Handy (02:09:06):
Get up get out kind

 

Jordan Hase (02:09:07):
Of thing. And you couldn't sit next to anybody. The best part, my favorite part about that is you had to sit six feet apart in the cafeteria, but we stood shoulder to shoulder in the hallway waiting to get into the cafeteria, which made no sense.

 

Matt Handy (02:09:19):
Yeah. It's like you got to wear a mask until you're eating. Now you can take it off

 

Jordan Hase (02:09:22):
When your mouth is literally open constantly. So yeah, I spent 29 days there, man. The first week, it was weird because everyone wanted cigarettes and no one could get cigarettes. People couldn't leave. People couldn't come and go, and I didn't smoke. And so I was like, this is pointless. I'm leaving. I'm not going to stay here. We had process groups in the morning, which was how do we get more cigarettes? We had relapse prevention in the afternoon, which was how do we get more cigarettes? We had AA and and ca meetings that were, how do we get more cigarettes? And they were led by us because outsiders couldn't come in and leave the meeting. So it was like an AA meeting led by a guy that's been there for three days

 

(02:10:09):
That's relapsed like 15 times. And so I remember going to this guy, he worked there. He was the compliance director there. And I went to him. I was like, listen, man, I'm going to leave. This isn't working for me. It's literally pointless. And he told me, and I've been trying to only mention 12 step stuff on video here, and I'm just trying not to say the actual word, but he told me, he's like, listen, dude, come to my office every single day. We have this book. And he read the book to me every single day for two hours a day, cover to cover. And it saved my life.

 

Matt Handy (02:10:50):
That's amazing.

 

Jordan Hase (02:10:51):
He works in the treatment industry now. He asked me at Tap, the Tap conference to be the best man in his wedding next year. Yeah, he's one of my best friends now. But it was like, it saved my life. I was going to leave. I was going to leave, and honestly, I was going to leave for a good reason,

 

Matt Handy (02:11:11):
But to do bad shit.

 

Jordan Hase (02:11:13):
To do bad shit. But because it wasn't in my head, it was a good reason. It wasn't serving the purpose that I was there for. I was to quit, but I wasn't getting any tools or exposed to anything at all.

 

Matt Handy (02:11:28):
So COVID obviously was a weird time, but the reality of the treatment industry, and this is where people are already starting to talk like mad bad mouth to everybody, but the reality is this, is that there's a disconnect between what we deliver to our clients when we tell 'em it's going to happen. And a lot of people are sold on treatment because they have this complete misconception about what happens at treatment. They think you're going to do Coke for five years, you're going to go to treatment for 28 days and come out of a better person. And that's just not what the fuck happens. And you, first of all, you cannot repair the damage that has been done over these years in 28 days without trying to repair anything. And then what happens to a lot of people is historically, the people who just want to love on their family member, they want their son back. They want their daughter back, they want their dad back. They want their husband back, or whatever. Now you come out of treatment and they're just fucking mad at you.

 

Jordan Hase (02:12:25):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (02:12:26):
Right?

 

Jordan Hase (02:12:26):
Yeah, dude. So I became the alumni director at the place. I went to treatment, and I would tell 'em all the time, like, listen, you've put your wife through hell every single day of the last whatever, five years. And that's all she could focus on is how to survive that. Hell. Now you just gave her 30 days to think about the hell you put her through. So when you go home, she's not going to be happy, man. She's

 

Matt Handy (02:12:51):
Not going to be happy at all. And so then without doing the family dynamic work, which you can't bill for, It's All free at that point. Doing family work is optional because there is no billing code for family therapy. And so a lot of treatment centers can, so this is what I always ask everybody. It's a hypothetical. You have a 19-year-old addicted to fentanyl, injecting fentanyl. He's being forced to go to treatment by his family. They're pissed off at him. He's robbed them, he's stolen from them. He's cheated them, the whole nine. Now they're forcing him to go to treatment. And everybody at the treatment center, all the professionals, everybody doing his pre-assessment, all that, we all know he's going to go out there and relapse, but he's going to lower his tolerance for the next 28 days. Fentanyl is the leading cause of death for people under 40. So if we all know that he's going to go out there and relapse, what is our moral obligation to the person? How do we prevent this? Because

 

(02:13:51):
They're not coming here. Ultimately. We understand what's going on here. They're really only coming here for stabilization. There's no magic that happens. You'll find that unicorn where it's like they'll go to treatment for 28 days, completely change everything, but that is the exception to the rule. So how do we mitigate these chances of this person leaving relapsing and overdosing? What is the key to that? What is the answer to that? What do you think the answer is to that?

 

Jordan Hase (02:14:18):
I think family involvement has a ton of it, man, because especially for younger people, they're enabled a lot, man. I think about it all the time. When I work with a family, I'll tell 'em, you got to set a boundary and hold to the boundary. But I also have two daughters that when it comes time, if I have to set a boundary and hold to the boundary, I don't know if I can do it. Getting them involved in some kind of a community is another one of the most important things. And then for me, it was finding a purpose. What was my purpose?

 

Matt Handy (02:14:56):
And that's a very individual thing. And that's never going to happen in treatment.

 

Jordan Hase (02:14:59):
No,

 

Matt Handy (02:15:00):
Actually, I think that the people who do get clean from treatment, they discover treatment and they find their purpose in working with others, and those are the unicorns that immediately can get it. And they just take off with

 

Jordan Hase (02:15:13):
That. Yeah, that's become my purpose, man. And I've had opportunities. I have real estate people calling me all the time about the home building stuff. I'm fortunate. Someone asked me the other day, what do you do? I was like, I don't know what I do. I know who I am. I'm a husband and a father and someone that's dedicated themselves to helping other men get sober. And also, I work for a treatment facility and do business development stuff. But it's like, what do I do is not, what do I do? Who am I? And being able to help other dudes get sober when, especially a guy that was like me that doesn't even know that it's something that this exists, man, that's given my purpose and going to treatment. And those 30 days or 29 days I was there, introduced me to that purpose. I didn't know that was my purpose while I was there. But what this guy did for me and taking the time out that he showed me, and then the fellowship that I got into after that, man, it gave me a purpose.

 

Matt Handy (02:16:21):
Yeah. Okay, so let's continue with this story.

 

Jordan Hase (02:16:24):
Okay. Where are we?

 

Matt Handy (02:16:27):
He read

 

Jordan Hase (02:16:28):
Your book. You read me the book. I got out of treatment. I have some great treatment stories.

 

Matt Handy (02:16:34):
I love treatment stories. I got a great, let's talk about treatment story.

 

Jordan Hase (02:16:36):
Story, okay.

 

Matt Handy (02:16:38):
And this is all in the framework of, it was during COVID. What month were you in treatment?

 

Jordan Hase (02:16:43):
March. March of 2020.

 

Matt Handy (02:16:45):
Right after.

 

Jordan Hase (02:16:46):
So March 13th was when I went in, and March 16th was the lockdowns, which I don't know what that means. In Texas, there wasn't really a lockdown, really. It was a little bit, it was like a month. It was like a month.

 

Matt Handy (02:16:58):
I was in California. There was lockdown. It was two years. It was like a fucking communist country.

 

Jordan Hase (02:17:03):
Still is.

 

Matt Handy (02:17:03):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (02:17:05):
I remember I had not eaten. I gained 50 pounds in 30 days.

 

Matt Handy (02:17:10):
I was just talking to somebody last night about this, about the food that we give to people in treatment is terrible.

 

Jordan Hase (02:17:17):
Plus, I hadn't eaten for seven years before I got there. No joke. How much did you weigh? I went in at 180, and then I came out at 2 50, 2 40.

 

Matt Handy (02:17:27):
So you didn't look like super unhealthy?

 

Jordan Hase (02:17:29):
No, I looked pretty good. So I survived off of triple decker peanut butter and jellies. This is while I was getting high, triple decker, peanut butter and jellies, cold pizza and Skittles. That was the only thing I ate for seven years. And that would be in between. Mine was Ben and Jerry's

 

Matt Handy (02:17:44):
And Dutch apple pies.

 

Jordan Hase (02:17:46):
Okay. Those are delicious.

 

Matt Handy (02:17:48):
And you could buy a whole pie. Me and my wife would buy a pie in the morning and we'd be able to eat it all day, and it was like seven bucks. So we didn't have to spend drug money on it.

 

Jordan Hase (02:17:59):
Yeah, exactly. So I gained a lot of weight. So what happened is after a week, I called my wife. I was like, Hey, I need more clothes. These clothes I have do not fit. And it was COVID. So it was like she couldn't see me. She didn't want to see me of all. So she brought some new clothes and brought me a five pound bag of Skittles, which is amazing. So I wore these new clothes. I ate my bag of Skittles. We're like 10 days in now, and my new clothes don't fit anymore. So I call her, I'm like, Hey, you got to bring me some more clothes. These clothes don't fit. So she brings me more clothes. She brings me another five pound bag of Skittles. And the first time she brought it, one of the nurses got it, checked it gave it to me. Second time, this lady, Rita, director of admissions, she got it. And she's like, oh, you can't have the skills. It's outside food or drinks. I'll put it in your locker and you can get it when you leave. And I was like, no, you're not going to do that. I was furious, bro. So I'm 12, 14 days sober. They've already taken away my drugs. Now they're taking away my Skittles.

 

(02:19:04):
So I did what I thought was normal so she wouldn't give 'em to me. So that night when a new shift of the text was on, I was like, Hey, Rita said I could have him tonight. And they were like, no, we will check with her. And so they sent out an email and they're like, you're not allowed to have him. So then the next day I went to my counselor. I was like, Hey, man, this is bullshit. I need my skills running the

 

Matt Handy (02:19:27):
Chain.

 

Jordan Hase (02:19:27):
Yeah, yeah. I need my Skittles. And he was like, what are you talking about, dude? No. He was like, this is the heart of COVID. So he's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. We're not doing the Skittle thing right now. And so then I went to the clinical director, try to bargain her from the Skittles, wouldn't do it. Then I wrote a letter to the executive director, like CEO lady, about my Skittles. She wouldn't let me have it. So then I finally went back to the clinical director. I'm like, I'm going to leave if I don't get my Skittles. So we're like 15, 16 days in. At this point. It was over a week period. I'm doing all this. And so she's like, listen, dude, here's what we're going to do. We're going to have a group meeting tomorrow. We're going to get bowls.

 

(02:20:08):
You're going to open this bag of Skittles and you're going to share them with everybody, and you're not going to ask for Skittles anymore. I was like, okay, fine. So she gets, puts this bowl of Skittles out. I pick up two handfuls. I walk into Rita's office and I fucking throw 'em on her. No. And I said, I got my Skittles bitch. Nightmare client, dude. Throw 'em on her desk. I walk out of the office, bro. I walk out of the office. This is part of the story I don't tell. And I immediately went back in. I was like, I'll pick up all these Skittles. I apologize. And so the next day they called me and they're like, you're going to have to leave. And they called Kimberly, and she's like,

 

Matt Handy (02:20:47):
I mean, that's like assault.

 

Jordan Hase (02:20:48):
Yeah. I remember Rita telling me, literally two years later, she was still finding random Skittles in Ross. I believe it. So they called Kimberly and they're like, he needs to, she's begging him. Please let him stay. Please let him stay. He's like, I'll never bring him another bag of steal ever. She's like, Jordan, you will behave right? I'm like, yeah, I'll behave. I'm sorry. This was on a Friday. They let you stay. They let me stay, man, only because of COVID. They're like, oh, you don't

 

Matt Handy (02:21:16):
Make sense.

 

Jordan Hase (02:21:16):
We're not going to kick him out there. We don't know what's going on out there. So this is on a Friday. Well, then on Sunday, they give us our phones. We could FaceTime on Sundays because family wasn't allowed up there. And so obviously I didn't get my phone back. I kept my phone. I kept it in my room for two days. I was listening to podcasts. And this poor little girl, man, this brand new nurse probably just got her first job ever as a nurse. She's a night nurse there. And she comes in and she sees my phone. She's like, you can't have your phone. Who said you can't have your phone? I'm like, oh, my counselor said, I got it. It's cool. So she's like, all right. She leaves. The next morning, my counselor's pounded on my door. He's like, dude, you got me in trouble. Who said you could have your phone? You can't have your phone. I didn't say that, bro. I don't remember this girl's name. And I apologized to her. But that night I sat outside the nurse's station, and every person that walked by, I was like, she's a rat. She's a fucking snitch. This girl's a fucking snitch. And she would pass out medicine. I'd like, I check your medicine. She'd probably give me the wrong stuff, man. And I didn't know that. You don't screw up people's medicine, for sure. Treatment.

 

Matt Handy (02:22:21):
That's like a big fucking no-no.

 

Jordan Hase (02:22:23):
Yeah. And so the next day they called me back in there and they're like, dude, you got to leave. So we called my wife again, and she's like, he did what? And they tell her, and she's like, he fucking needs to leave. Please kick him out. By the way, he's not coming home. He's not allowed to come home. But I give you full permission to kick him out. And bro, I don't know how, but I talked my way. I stayed. They let me stay. I was a good patient after that. They hired me two years later. They're the same people, the same executive director, the same clinical director. They hired me and I became the alumni director after

 

Matt Handy (02:22:59):
That. Dude, I've got a story similar to that. So I got three years sober. I moved to Texas and I relapsed. That's what my whole relapse is about, right? Most pivotal moment of my life. And I'm talking about after robbing a bank, after being homeless for years, prison terms, all this crazy shit. The most pivotal moment of my life was my last relapse. I go to River Oaks for detox, and that's where I meet Dr. Shah, who is now my medical director.

 

Jordan Hase (02:23:30):
Yeah, he's awesome.

 

Matt Handy (02:23:32):
But the way that it worked was I got ahold of Chuck. Do you know Chuck? Fun?

 

Jordan Hase (02:23:37):
Yeah. So this morning.

 

Matt Handy (02:23:38):
Really?

 

Jordan Hase (02:23:39):
Yeah, him

 

Matt Handy (02:23:39):
And Amy. Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (02:23:40):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:23:41):
I love them.

 

Jordan Hase (02:23:41):
Yeah. Amazing.

 

Matt Handy (02:23:42):
I get ahold of Chuck. I don't even remember how I ended up with his phone number. And I'm desperately looking for detox. I just need detox. And I really just needed detox at the time. I had enough clean time under my belt that when this relapse happened, I immediately was like, fuck, I don't want to do this. I just needed detox, but I was doing fentanyl. So I go to detox, and the way that it worked was I got a hold of Chuck, and I'm living in Friendswood, and I got to drive to River Oaks, and the deal was, you've got 40 minutes to get here. Do not make any stops. My dad puts me on the, we have iPhones, so you can show where you're at, find my friends. So it was like, you're going straight there. You can drive yourself. Go straight there. So I'm like, okay, I can't go to my drug dealer. I need Xanax. I know this is going to be shit. So I'm like, okay, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to get there. I'm going to figure out the visits. I'm going to have my drug dealer come to my detox and bring me drugs.

 

Jordan Hase (02:24:43):
Love It.

 

Matt Handy (02:24:43):
Well, the deal was if you were in detox there, you can have visitors up until 10:00 PM or something Like that Every day. So I was like, okay, perfect.

 

Jordan Hase (02:24:52):
And you can have your phone.

 

Matt Handy (02:24:53):
Yes, yes. So seven. So I called the guy. I'm like, dude, you got to come up here. I'm going to tell him you're my brother. He's black. I'm going to tell him you're my brother. And just do the whole prison thing, cheek it, drop it in the bathroom. I'm going to pick it up in there and cheek it. And then you leave. And then we're Good. Right? So Chuck's daughter? Yeah, she's like a coordinator there, and she's there at the Time.

 

(02:25:21):
So she sees this guy walk in, doesn't check in, doesn't nothing, doesn't follow the visiting protocol. I love it. I love it. They follow him in there and they realize he's in the, he walks straight to the Bathroom. So they walk to the bathroom, the door doesn't shut or anything, and he's like got his hand down his pants.

 

Jordan Hase (02:25:39):
That's amazing.

 

Matt Handy (02:25:40):
And they're like, what are you doing? Right? He just walks straight out. But he puts the thing on the toilet paper thing, and it's just a wrap of toilet paper. What is that? I was like, I don't know. They're like, who is that? I don't,

 

Jordan Hase (02:25:56):
I've never seen him for my life.

 

Matt Handy (02:25:57):
Yeah. They were like, we're calling the cops and they're following him out. Oh, no. And I'm like, oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. The nurse takes the fuck. They find the drugs. They're like, you've got to leave. My dad fucking pissed. He has to drive up to River Oaks. Pick me up, take me back. Right. And Dr. Shah's not there. Amy's not there. So this is now, it's 10 o'clock at night. It's the middle. My dad gets back home. It's mid past midnight now

 

Jordan Hase (02:26:24):
Oh gosh.

 

Matt Handy (02:26:25):
They call him at five in the morning, and they're like, he can come back, but we have to talk to him first.

 

Jordan Hase (02:26:30):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:26:30):
So now it's six in the morning. My dad's driving me back up to River Oaks. Dr.

 

Jordan Hase (02:26:35):
When was this?

 

Matt Handy (02:26:36):
Huh?

 

Jordan Hase (02:26:36):
When was

 

Matt Handy (02:26:37):
It? This was last March.

 

Jordan Hase (02:26:39):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (02:26:40):
Yeah, eight 19 months ago now.

 

Jordan Hase (02:26:42):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (02:26:43):
Yeah. This

 

Jordan Hase (02:26:45):
Is recent.

 

Matt Handy (02:26:46):
Yeah. Dr. Shah gets there. I don't talk to him yet. Right. But they sit me down and they're like, no more problems. Right? Right. No. Okay. Nobody coming. You're not allowed to have visitors. Okay. Nobody visiting. And they're like, and you can't go smoke by yourself anymore. You are being escorted anytime you want to smoke and you cannot vape in here. Do not vape in here.

 

Jordan Hase (02:27:10):
Okay. Were you okay with that? Or you're like, I'm still going to find a way around it.

 

Matt Handy (02:27:15):
No, no, no. I was like, you know what? That was a fucking terrible idea. And I broke it down and I'm like, look, I have major anxiety around withdrawal. They're Like, look, you're going to be on Suboxone. We're going to make sure that you're comfortable. You're going to be okay. And I was like, it wasn't even a bargaining thing. I was like, this is just my concern. This is why that happened. And they're like, okay, we got you, but no more bullshit. No more bs. So I'm talking to Dr. Shah three weeks ago, and I was like, wait, you don't remember? You don't remember me from detox? He was like, no. And I was like, I told him the story. He was like, that was you. I was like, yeah, for sure. That was me.

 

Jordan Hase (02:27:53):
That's amazing.

 

Matt Handy (02:27:53):
And now he's my medical director.

 

Jordan Hase (02:27:54):
He's the medical director.

 

Matt Handy (02:27:55):
And Amy and I fucking love each other, and I love Amy. It's awesome. I love

 

Jordan Hase (02:27:59):
Amy. Amy and I just did a sober living, a recovery house cohort together.

 

Matt Handy (02:28:03):
Really? Yeah. What is that?

 

Jordan Hase (02:28:06):
So Sharpen Recovery did it. It's for people that are interested in open and sober living, which I'm interested in trying to do. And so Sharpened Recovery put on this eight week long. It was a class man. They taught us everything that they knew about starting as sober, living from data to the NAR standards, to all the different aspects that they look at when they're starting a house. And Amy's starting one.

 

Matt Handy (02:28:36):
Yeah,

 

Jordan Hase (02:28:36):
She's starting a very specific

 

Matt Handy (02:28:39):
Kind of house right around what she does.

 

Jordan Hase (02:28:42):
Yeah. And then me and my friend Heather, also, we were going to start one together here, but she moved, she bailed on me like the loser. She is. She left me high and dry, and she moved to Kerrville. And so we're thinking, well, I don't know. Kind of put a hitch in the plans.

 

Matt Handy (02:28:59):
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So when was this?

 

Jordan Hase (02:29:04):
It just ended, so it was June, July, and August.

 

Matt Handy (02:29:08):
Yeah. Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (02:29:11):
Do you know Sharpen Recovery?

 

Matt Handy (02:29:12):
Yeah. Yeah. Nick. And

 

Jordan Hase (02:29:14):
So Nick did it, man, it was amazing. He gave up a lot of time. They put a whole book together for us. And we would send you in the book

 

Matt Handy (02:29:20):
Still. I do. Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (02:29:21):
Yeah. And they're starting a new one in November. This is the first one they've ever done.

 

Matt Handy (02:29:26):
We got

 

Jordan Hase (02:29:26):
A trophy for it

 

Matt Handy (02:29:27):
Up.

 

Jordan Hase (02:29:28):
I got a picture, a great picture by this lady, Ariel, who's the photographer of me holding a microphone where I look good. Dude, I look real good. Alright. Yeah. I look good with the microphone. I love microphones. You, I love microphones.

 

Matt Handy (02:29:40):
Are you actually into the gear, or are you just having

 

Jordan Hase (02:29:43):
One? I like having one.

 

Matt Handy (02:29:44):
Okay,

 

Jordan Hase (02:29:44):
Cool. Yeah. You're talking into it for sure. Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (02:29:47):
Dude, that could be a cool thing for us. Well, we'll get into it.

 

Jordan Hase (02:29:52):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:29:53):
But okay. So why do you want to start a sober living?

 

Jordan Hase (02:29:59):
You know what? So where I live, I live up in the Woodlands, spring Tomball area. There's not a lot of good sober living. So when I was the alumni director at the right step, that was a big hole for us everywhere,

 

Matt Handy (02:30:17):
Because in Texas, insurance doesn't pay for sober living.

 

Jordan Hase (02:30:20):
Yeah. And so Houston is very void. And PHP with housing, Which is a way to get into a sober living with your insurance, even though it's not sober living. And then outside of Sharpened Recovery, and then the few of the random single houses, I know Ted's house, I dunno if I'm supposed to be names.

 

Matt Handy (02:30:40):
You're fine.

 

Jordan Hase (02:30:40):
Those guys, the Azula house up there in Conroe, basically, there's just not a lot of options. So me and my friend Heather, so it's interesting.

 

Matt Handy (02:30:50):
There is a lot of Sober living in this, specifically

 

Jordan Hase (02:30:53):
Inside the loop.

 

Matt Handy (02:30:54):
Around right here. But there's two good options where it's like you're going to get some good recovery out of it. My brother and I, when we were looking at getting into this, we went and I called and I was like, we got a brother that's getting out of treatment and we're looking for sober living. So we wanted to see what was going on. And six out of the seven, they were flop houses. They're like, no oversight. They just the money. So yeah, it's a big gap in this market is supportive

 

Jordan Hase (02:31:24):
Housing. Yeah. And so I love Nick and I went to the same high school. Really? Yeah. Are you guys definitely not the same age? I always tell people that, and they're like, you did? I'm like, yeah, just not at the same time. It was like 15 years apart. Yeah. I graduated in 99. I think he graduated in 2012 or 2013. He's still really young dude. He's got a baby face too. Nick is one of the greatest human beings ever. Nick and his wife, Madison. And so I've always loved them and what they do and how they help people, and they're affordable, and they'll work with people and they're really supportive. And I would tell people are at the right step. If you're okay with accountability and you want to stay sober, this would be a good place for you to go. I'm not saying there's not other places, but they have 19 houses, man. They're all over the city of Houston.

 

Matt Handy (02:32:13):
And it is more accessible than a lot of other

 

Jordan Hase (02:32:15):
Places. And sometimes I think what's normal is a house at that cost is maybe not the most accountable.

 

Matt Handy (02:32:27):
It's lackluster for sure. And you're seeing a lot of democratic houses that

 

Jordan Hase (02:32:32):
which is terrible idea.

 

Matt Handy (02:32:33):
Fucking terrible idea. You're going to put that kind of power in our hands. Terrible.

 

Jordan Hase (02:32:38):
So it works. If you're in a house full of dudes that want to stay sober, it works. But you get the one guy in there that doesn't want to stay sober and it could flip the entire house,

 

Matt Handy (02:32:46):
The entire house.

 

Jordan Hase (02:32:47):
Yeah. Quick terrible idea.

 

Matt Handy (02:32:49):
Yeah. I

 

Jordan Hase (02:32:50):
Mean, I shouldn't be living in a house by myself. I do remember, this is funny. When I was in treatment, one of the big democratically run organizations came in and presented to us. And bro, sobriety was a foreign thing to me. I didn't know what it meant. And these guys came in and talked about their sober living. I was like, this is awesome. This Is Going to be great. So I remember calling my wife and like, Hey, I think I'm going to go a sober living. She's like, what is that talking about? Yeah, you're going to be sober for sure. And I was like, no, it's these houses. You live together. And she was like, you're married, you have a child. You're fucking coming home. What are you talking about? I'm like, all right. All right. Sounded cool though. Sober living sounded awesome.

 

Matt Handy (02:33:31):
Yeah. So early in recovery. So this is a big disconnect that happens in the industry where it's like, and it is a trickle down effect of what's paid for and what's not. But sober living is so important for a lot of people because the stability and accountability, you don't get that unless you seek it out. And we thrive in structure. So Imagine sending that 19-year-old back out there, back to his family. It's like a fucking nightmare waiting

 

Jordan Hase (02:34:00):
To happen. If I was a single dude that had no support, I say this all the time, and I don't know what perfect scenario means, but I came out to the perfect scenario. I came out for me. My parents still loved me and supported me, and were going to give me every tool they could. My wife took me back in. It was COVID man. So I was locked up at home. They were still going out. There was nothing to do.

 

Matt Handy (02:34:24):
Yeah. That is a really good point.

 

Jordan Hase (02:34:26):
And a lot of people, it's funny because a lot of people will ask me, how did you do that? How did you get sober during COVID? I relapsed during COVID. I drank more during COVID. And so for me, it didn't matter what the external scenario was going to be, I knew I was going to stay sober. But I'll tell you, well, just because I was, I don't know if I knew I was going to stay sober, but I was going to do what I had to do. I was going to do what these people told me to do. But I will say this, it saved my marriage. And here's why is because when I got out, I was going to go to these meetings and I was going to go all day. I had no job. I had nothing to do. And I was going to leave the house at 7:00 AM and go to meetings all day long and come home at 9:00 PM And my wife would not have believed that. She would not have believed me,

 

Matt Handy (02:35:10):
For sure.

 

Jordan Hase (02:35:11):
So instead, not out of choice, but because it was the only thing I could do, I sat at home on a computer on Zoom while she sat at home working too, and watched me doing it every day for six months. And man, it rebuilt the trust. It literally saved our marriage.

 

Matt Handy (02:35:29):
Yeah, that's amazing.

 

Jordan Hase (02:35:30):
And I was on a meeting all day, every day.

 

Matt Handy (02:35:34):
So she actively got to watch you heal.

 

Jordan Hase (02:35:36):
Yeah. She chose not to do any of the support stuff, which early on I was resentful at because I was like, she's not going to understand it. But whatever she did, what she needed to do and the way she needed to do it, and

 

Matt Handy (02:35:53):
That doesn't work for everybody anyway.

 

Jordan Hase (02:35:55):
Here's the thing. I wasn't going to get sober if someone told me to go get sober. Just like she's not going to go to a support meeting if I tell her to go to support meeting. I'm 45 years old and I've never, ever once in my life ever done something because someone told me to do it. So the same goes with most human beings. Man. If you tell them to do something, especially when it revolves around sobriety, it doesn't work. It

 

Matt Handy (02:36:22):
Will never work. And upfront. So part of the nature of the beast is we are just deceptive. And so we will take expectations and manipulate the expectation. It's as long as I satisfy this upfront, then I can do whatever the fuck I want over here. And we end up using, it always ends up backfiring really bad.

 

Jordan Hase (02:36:50):
And that was another thing I had to learn early on in sobriety, dude, is that I couldn't lie. I would just lie about

 

Matt Handy (02:36:57):
Nothing. Dumb shit.

 

Jordan Hase (02:36:58):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:36:58):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (02:37:00):
I don't even know why. And I had train myself intention, not lie about things.

 

Matt Handy (02:37:07):
So people in recovery, we have the highest level of self-awareness that you'll find in a human anywhere. And we have to live on such a tightrope. We are playing a very, very within tight margins. The balancing act, it becomes a lot easier because it becomes your lifestyle. Right?

 

Jordan Hase (02:37:31):
Well, I have an integrity check too, and it's something that my sponsor told me about, and it was, dude, when you drop the piece of ice, if I kick it under the refrigerator, that's when I know my integrity is starting to slip a little bit. You throw a piece of trash to the trash can and miss pick up, do't pick it up.

 

Matt Handy (02:37:49):
Yes.

 

Jordan Hase (02:37:49):
That's when I know. So it's like those two little checks. And then I am the fucking shopping cart Nazi. If you're leaving shopping cart out, man, I might not say something to you, but I'm going to go put it up.

 

Matt Handy (02:38:04):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (02:38:04):
I'm going to get all the stragglers that are just in spaces right next to the shopping cart rack, the parking,

 

Matt Handy (02:38:11):
Do you watch Cart Narks? No. Do you know what that is?

 

Jordan Hase (02:38:13):
Yeah. Yeah. Seen on Instagram or something?

 

Matt Handy (02:38:16):
I don't know.

 

Jordan Hase (02:38:16):
There's a guy that does it on Instagram.

 

Matt Handy (02:38:18):
Oh, you know what? It's probably a massive thing

 

Jordan Hase (02:38:20):
Now,

 

Matt Handy (02:38:20):
But it's like back in the day, the cart nark, he would go with a bullhorn and throw stickers at people's magnets at people's cars and then put the cart in front of their car and be like, put it back. He would follow people around, harass them about it

 

Jordan Hase (02:38:38):
As he should.

 

Matt Handy (02:38:39):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (02:38:39):
Yeah. Those are terrible. People

 

Matt Handy (02:38:41):
Will never go grocery shopping with me.

 

Jordan Hase (02:38:43):
Do you leave your cart out?

 

Matt Handy (02:38:44):
I leave it not in the corral.

 

Jordan Hase (02:38:49):
Why would you do that?

 

Matt Handy (02:38:50):
Well, I have no good excuse.

 

Jordan Hase (02:38:54):
Alright, well, we're done here, Man. The ice cube thing has always been a big one for me.

 

Matt Handy (02:39:03):
I get it.

 

Jordan Hase (02:39:03):
You know how many times I drop ice cubes now I think God is testing me. It's like every single day an ice cube will drop and shattered a thousand pieces. It's like, how am I going to do this? Am I overdoing now? Am I picking up every single piece? Do I need to eat the vacuum

 

Matt Handy (02:39:17):
Out Now I'm going to think about this cart every fucking time.

 

Jordan Hase (02:39:20):
Good.

 

Matt Handy (02:39:20):
And you know what? So I do a lot of, I probably shouldn't even admit this. I do a lot of shopping with Instacart now, and one of the things that I hate is putting the cart back and it's like, I don't got to deal with the fucking cart if I do this.

 

Jordan Hase (02:39:32):
Yeah. Hey, that's better than leaving the cart out in a space.

 

Matt Handy (02:39:37):
No, I don't do that. I'll make sure I put it where a car's not going to be.

 

Jordan Hase (02:39:41):
Okay. That's a little better.

 

Matt Handy (02:39:42):
So that's my justification, and that's what I was going to say is I make sure that it's out of the way, but I don't put it back in the think. You're just it though. I know. I'm just,

 

Jordan Hase (02:39:51):
I love it.

 

Matt Handy (02:39:53):
So do you have any more good treatment stories?

 

Jordan Hase (02:39:56):
Oh, I don't think so. Man.

 

Matt Handy (02:39:58):
That's probably the best one I've heard, though.

 

Jordan Hase (02:40:00):
The Skittle one is actually famous in our community. Really? Yeah. Yeah. It's talked about a lot.

 

Matt Handy (02:40:06):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (02:40:06):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:40:07):
I've never heard somebody do. I've heard of some other off the wall shit.

 

Jordan Hase (02:40:11):
The snitch thing was bad too, man. I remember just standing up there just yelling. She's a fucking snitch. This girl's a snitch,

 

Matt Handy (02:40:19):
And you're like a full grown adult that's never participated in the

 

Jordan Hase (02:40:22):
World. I'm 39. I'm 39. This girl's 25, I think she had just passed her nursing exam or something. That's the first job ever. She's working overnight at a treatment center, and

 

Matt Handy (02:40:33):
You're a lawyer. You've never gone to jail. You don't participate in snitch culture. So you're like totally misappropriating the fucking

 

Jordan Hase (02:40:44):
Yes. And she literally just doing her job. She was asked to, she saw my phone, and no one's allowed to have a phone, and I had a phone, and I lied about it. Yeah. God. Yeah, man. I think it's all my good treatment stories. I'm sure there was other good ones.

 

Matt Handy (02:41:01):
Okay. Well, let's talk about post-treatment.

 

Jordan Hase (02:41:03):
Okay. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:41:05):
What happened?

 

Jordan Hase (02:41:06):
So I got out and in April of 2020, I did a lot of the online stuff, man. I went to meetings online every day. I was fortunate that the guy that saved my life in treatment also decided out of the goodness of his heart that he was going to host an alumni meeting seven days a week.

 

Matt Handy (02:41:28):
Oh, wow.

 

Jordan Hase (02:41:28):
Yeah. A Zoom alumni meeting seven days a week.

 

Matt Handy (02:41:32):
Okay. You went to treatment locally?

 

Jordan Hase (02:41:34):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:41:35):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (02:41:35):
Yeah. Can I say it? I'm not going to

 

Matt Handy (02:41:37):
Say it. It's up to you.

 

Jordan Hase (02:41:38):
No, I don't want to say it. I don't want to give them any publicity at all.

 

Matt Handy (02:41:41):
Really.

 

Jordan Hase (02:41:41):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:41:42):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (02:41:42):
They saved my life.

 

Matt Handy (02:41:44):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (02:41:44):
They saved my life.

 

Matt Handy (02:41:45):
Yeah. I've got a love hate with one of my treatments.

 

Jordan Hase (02:41:47):
No, I went to the right step. So it's a promises facility. It's here. It's not the old right step. So the right step's. Been here for 25 years.

 

Matt Handy (02:41:56):
Yeah. So this was pre post sale?

 

Jordan Hase (02:41:59):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:41:59):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (02:42:00):
Yeah. But yeah, I went to the right step. Then I went back to work there for two years at the right step, and we worked at the right step here and at Promises Bras Valley and College Station. So our leadership team did both. We went back and forth between locations. So I did that for two years, man. And then some weird stuff started happening. So I didn't do that until two years in sobriety. That was their rule.

 

Matt Handy (02:42:24):
It's a law.

 

Jordan Hase (02:42:26):
It's not a law

 

Matt Handy (02:42:27):
You can't hire. So when the state came in for the walkthrough for my license,

 

Jordan Hase (02:42:33):
They're like, I would challenge the law.

 

Matt Handy (02:42:36):
Really?

 

Jordan Hase (02:42:36):
Yeah, because discrimination.

 

Matt Handy (02:42:38):
Well, he just said you cannot hire alumni until they've been

 

Jordan Hase (02:42:43):
Maybe alumni. Okay. Yeah, that's probably right.

 

Matt Handy (02:42:45):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (02:42:45):
You can't have certain interactions with alumni. So the law they had is you had to be two years sober, which they changed it because that is discrimination.

 

Matt Handy (02:42:55):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (02:42:56):
Oh,

 

Matt Handy (02:42:57):
For sure.

 

Jordan Hase (02:42:58):
And they changed that company policy. But right when I got sober and I got sober in April, 2020. Wait, that is discrimination, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because a protected class, it's part of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Wow. So if you can internally say, I'm not hiring someone unless they have two years sober, but it cannot be part of your company Policies, Which it was at the time. So they to do, they became a recovery ready workforce, which means if you relapsed, they'll help you find treatment and then bring you back on under certain situations. But August of 2020, I got a job, which is, I don't know, man. I don't think it was a good idea at the time, but I was just desperate for anything. So I got a job teaching and coaching at a private high school in Tomball football, football and baseball. And man, I don't know if I had the tools at that point to be around high school kids and working nonstop and high stress situations. It was during COVID too.

 

Matt Handy (02:44:02):
Oh yeah. I mean, were you guys winning?

 

Jordan Hase (02:44:05):
We were okay. We were okay.

 

Matt Handy (02:44:08):
I still thoroughly believe that a high school team is a hundred percent, their success is dictated by their coach.

 

Jordan Hase (02:44:15):
Yeah. Yeah. We had a great coach. I'll tell you, this is a great story too. So I'm there. My first day there, I just get hired. I'm hired as a substitute teacher, but one of the teachers couldn't come in because of COVID. So I was made the full-time English teacher, because I do have a minor in English literature. So that got me that job.

 

(02:44:33):
So the first, damn, there was a player on the team whose sister had OD'ed and died the week before. I don't know this. I don't know this at all. And I don't know anybody. I don't know any of the players. I don't know any of the coaches. But I do know that four months into sobriety, I'm not telling anybody, especially in a high school with parents for sure. I'm not telling these people. I'm in recovery. So I'm there. The very first practice, I have one really close friend that's another coach. He's the one that got me the job. He knows, but nobody else knows. So the very first day they're talking about this girl's funeral, and the head coach was talking to everybody. He's like, Hey guys, I want to listen to you. I want you all to listen up. Yesterday we were at so-and-so's sister's funeral, it said in the eulogy that she was in recovery. So guys, listen, I want you guys to listen to me if any of you guys are out there doing cocaine. And I was like, what? Oh shit, this guy knows, bro. I was freaking out. I'm like, how do they know? Why is he talking about this? Why is he bringing it up on my first day of practice here? So I'm looking at Jay. I'm like,

 

Matt Handy (02:45:37):
What they fucking telling?

 

Jordan Hase (02:45:39):
I'm freaking out. And Jay's like, no, no, he's talking about something else. And so we finished this meeting and I'm like, I got to tell him. I got to tell him. So I go, I'm like, coach, can I talk to you separately? So I pull him aside and he's an amazing human being. And it was a Lutheran school. So he is a religious guy. And I open up to him and tell him everything. And he's like, man, I appreciate that. It's amazing. He's like, please don't tell anybody else this. Do not tell another person this thing. And what happened? I did, because I was four months sober and I was stupid. And I opened my mouth and I told another coach that didn't like me, that wanted my job

 

Matt Handy (02:46:17):
Busted.

 

Jordan Hase (02:46:17):
And he told the principal, and I was quickly asked to not be a substitute anymore and not coach the spring semester for baseball.

 

Matt Handy (02:46:26):
That sucks.

 

Jordan Hase (02:46:28):
And that was my first trial in sobriety. It was like, it's getting let go from that job and loving it. I love football, man. That is one of my biggest loves and passions in life, getting fired from that. But at that point I'm like, I'm going to get my teaching certification. So I got my teaching certification and I got a job at Santa Fe High School, which do you know where Santa Fe is?

 

Matt Handy (02:46:55):
South, right? Yeah. I

 

Jordan Hase (02:46:56):
Lived in the Woodlands

 

Matt Handy (02:46:57):
Really south.

 

Jordan Hase (02:46:58):
It was like an hour gal, 40 minute drive each way.

 

Matt Handy (02:47:01):
Jesus,

 

Jordan Hase (02:47:02):
Morning and night.

 

Matt Handy (02:47:03):
And you're hitting traffic both ways through.

 

Jordan Hase (02:47:04):
Well, I was leaving. I had to be there at 6:30 AM So I left at 5:00 AM

 

Matt Handy (02:47:07):
Okay. No traffic on the way there.

 

Jordan Hase (02:47:08):
I left at 5:00 AM We practiced and had meetings and watched film after practice. So I left at 10:00 PM

 

Matt Handy (02:47:14):
So no traffic there.

 

Jordan Hase (02:47:15):
I was getting home at midnight.

 

Matt Handy (02:47:16):
Houston. Traffic is fucking crazy.

 

Jordan Hase (02:47:18):
it is crazy. And what's crazy is how much traffic there would be at fucking midnight, really? Sometimes driving home and then after games, not blacked out, but I fell asleep driving home one time and hit the center thing. And I remember calling my wife, I got to start staying in the hotel on game nights. So that was a terrible idea. That didn't last long either. The thing I hated was teaching, hated it. I'm not built for the classroom. I'm not built for kids with their cell phones. I'm not built for kids that say no or don't listen to you. I was raised by coaches that when they told you to do something, you did it Cause You feared the coach. And this is not the case anymore. So in the classroom, they didn't listen to me. I hated it. And I quit. So I quit after that first year, got the job at the right step. And you know what? There's a part in our book that talks about we're unable to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the humiliation of a week or a month ago. And I'm six months into this job, I'm like, I think I want to coach again. I want to coach and teach again.

 

(02:48:25):
This is when it started, man, I heard you say this the other day, and it's the most true thing ever. When I got sober, my fucking life got terrible. It got bad mainly because all I did was pray for God every day, please don't let me drink anymore. And I negotiated with him because I didn't know any better. I was like, I promise I'll take care of my finances. I promise I'll take care of my relationships. I promise I'll work harder. I'll be a better father. Just you don't let me drink anymore and I'll handle everything else. And so he didn't let me drink anymore and everything else went to shit. Yeah, yeah. I was like, I'll do it on my own. And so those first two years of sobriety were just tough, man. I struggled through it. I went to meetings all the time, and probably the meetings and working with other dudes is what kept me sober for sure. Because I was not spiritually fit. I was doing shit I shouldn't have been doing. I was more miserable than I had ever been two years sober. I wanted to blow my brains up. That was the reality.

 

(02:49:26):
And it wasn't my first sponsor's fault. He did what he knew how to do, man. He kept me from drinking and doing drugs, and that was all he knew. But I remember I had some issues early on in sobriety that just my life was, my behaviors were terrible.

 

Matt Handy (02:49:46):
So it's funny, right? Because behaviors hardly ever match the intention. And I do say this all the time. Typically what actually happens because the promises of recovery are not the promises of quitting, the promises of recovery,

 

Jordan Hase (02:50:03):
Of being a recovered person.

 

Matt Handy (02:50:05):
And a lot of people assume that recovery is quitting. And so this is what happens. They think they're going to go to treatment. They're going to go to treatment for 28 days. All of the wreckage is just going to be swept under the rug. And now they just get a start with a clean slate. But now your family hates. You have no coping skills, consequences. The consequences

 

Jordan Hase (02:50:26):
Catch up. Legal stuff.

 

Matt Handy (02:50:27):
Yeah. This is where you lose your car. The courts come after you, the divorce has happen, you lose your job. The IRS is knocking, you're losing your, this is where this shit really all happens, right? And in early recovery, you have no skills, no coping skills, no communication skills, no healing. There's the easiest part of recovery is quitting. The hardest part is staying quit. And staying quit is not contingent on how hard you want to stay quit. It's how hard you work on staying Quit. And most people, the work is elusive. There's nothing logical about recovery. A lot of it is, it goes against your better instincts. It goes against anything that it doesn't linearly connect. Because some of the stuff that you do, you're like, why the fuck am I doing this? But it makes sense way down the line. And so

 

Jordan Hase (02:51:22):
Why am I showing up early to make coffee?

 

Matt Handy (02:51:24):
Why am I picking up cigarette butts? Why am I doing this? Why am I telling this guy my deepest darkest secrets? Why do I have to go to these meetings? What is the point of calling this guy every day? My first sponsor, this guy changed my mindset on recovery. He told me, he was like, my decision-making skills were so fucked up. He was like, in the morning when you put your shoes on, call me and ask which one to tie first. It's like that level of your decision making is so fucked up. And dude, this guy moved me into his house, gave me a job, step work all day, made me mow lawns for free for him. And I was like his workhorse, but he let me stay for free. He fed me. He hid me from the cops a lot. Both of us knew that there would come a time where I had to turn myself in, but he was like, you're just not there yet. You cannot turn yourself in right now because you're just going to go back out there and use. So he prepared me for a lot of things. And that really is what screwed my head on to be like, I know what recovery is,

 

(02:52:34):
Which also, this was in 2012. I knew I wasn't ready. So I literally, I was like, I'm going to go back out until I'm ready. And it was 10 years, but all of that prepared me for I understand what recovery actually is. I'm just not ready for

 

Jordan Hase (02:52:48):
It. And that's like the whole purpose behind planting the seed.

 

Matt Handy (02:52:52):
For sure.

 

Jordan Hase (02:52:52):
You never want to kill a future opportunity with a guy. And there's a lot of times where I've got guys that I work with and I want just shake him and be like, dude, no, you can't do that. You can't go out there and do that. You got to stop gambling. You got to stop lying about this. And my sponsor always told me like, dude, who are you to stand in the way of God's plan for this guy? Who do you think you are to stand in his plan, stand in the way of his plan for what he's supposed to go through to get to where he needs to be?

 

Matt Handy (02:53:23):
Dr. Shaw always says, he was like, if you want better sponsees, be a better sponsor. It's like, oh God, That's Such a fucking, but it's like growing into that role of a sponsor is an art. It's

 

Jordan Hase (02:53:36):
Taken me a long time,

 

Matt Handy (02:53:37):
Man. Yeah, yeah. There's good sponsors and then there's great sponsors,

 

Jordan Hase (02:53:42):
And the great sponsors are sponsored by great sponsors

 

Matt Handy (02:53:46):
For sure. And there's a lineage, there's a chain and there's pedigrees of sponsorship where people are trying to get on these

 

Jordan Hase (02:53:54):
People among one.

 

Matt Handy (02:53:56):
Really?

 

Jordan Hase (02:53:57):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:53:58):
So those are amazing situations. And then there's the people out there that are floundering, literally white knuckling their entire existence because they have a terrible spot, and it is what it is you have. It's like what he said. How are you going to try to interfere with God's plan? So the other day, I am a sober coach and one of the people that I am coaching called me and he was like, I got this situation and it was about a job. And he was like, I don't know how to handle this. Should I just lie to Him

 

(02:54:31):
And tell him that I got to do something else? He didn't want to tell him that he was in an iop. And he was like, should I just lie to him and tell him I got to do family shit? And I was like, bottom line, never tell a lie if you have the option. And was like, he never texted, he still has never texted me back.

 

Jordan Hase (02:54:50):
He didn't want to hear it.

 

Matt Handy (02:54:51):
And it's like there are clear cut things in recovery that there are lines you cannot intentionally cross. And if you intentionally cross them, they're major red flags about where you're heading.

 

Jordan Hase (02:55:04):
Yeah. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:55:05):
It is often said, it was like your relapse happened way before you picked up a lot of people. That whole concept is foreign because they don't understand the process of recovery. It's like the process of recovery is the mirror of the process of addiction. It's Just the complete Opposite. And so you start telling lies, especially for people in recovery who now relapses a choice. There is an entire process that you're going to go through before you pick that drug up,

 

Jordan Hase (02:55:35):
Which is wild. It is. That was a crazy thing to think About When I found out that the whole powerlessness thing was like I could understand the loss of control. I had loss of control. Okay, yeah, that means I'm powerless. But I also had a loss of choice in certain aspects. I was like, that didn't make any sense to me.

 

(02:55:57):
And I remember going into a meeting here and talking to this lady. I love her. She was very instrumental in me in my early recovery, and it was when I was going through all this shit, I was doing terrible things. I was just not living the right way. And I was baffled because I was like, I wasn't drinking. I'm two years sober. And I remember sitting with her and she was like, what's wrong? What's going on? I was like, man, I think I just realized that I'm powerless over alcohol, but I'm also powerless over my relationships. She's like, dude, wait until you realize you're powerless over everything.

 

Matt Handy (02:56:30):
For sure.

 

Jordan Hase (02:56:30):
And I was like, devastated, man. I was like, no, I can't give up everything.

 

Matt Handy (02:56:36):
Yeah. Well, and then the space that I'm in right now around powerlessness is just because you're powerless over everything outside of you. I had to realize that I had power over my choices. Now that I'm sober, the only thing that I really do have power over is my choices. So I had to take a piece of paper and write down words when I really was like, I have to get sober. I'm going to stay sober. As part of this last relapse was like I had to sit down with a piece of a pen and piece of paper and redefine words. And two words that I cannot use anymore in my own recovery is triggers and cravings. Because

 

Jordan Hase (02:57:21):
Triggers aren't real.

 

Matt Handy (02:57:23):
No,

 

Jordan Hase (02:57:23):
They're excuses.

 

Matt Handy (02:57:24):
No. Yeah. And so every time I just had to realize I give my power of choice to these words if I ever depend on them. So I had to get rid of

 

Jordan Hase (02:57:33):
'em. I would delete a lot of groups when I worked at the Ride step, and one of my groups was, triggers aren't real. And man, so I will say this, there are some real triggers in terms of trauma and PTSD and those kinds of things. I get that, but I drove by the liquor store, or I heard a song. I'm like, bro, that's definitely an excuse

 

Matt Handy (02:57:56):
For sure,

 

Jordan Hase (02:57:57):
For sure. And I can say it easier. I haven't relapsed yet. Yeah. So two years into sobriety, there was a guy I knew in recovery, and he had talked a lot about some of the same issues that I was facing at this point, and I was like, man, my sponsor had moved at this point. And I was like, I'm going to ask this guy a full sponsor me. I remember going to him and asking him, and he said, do you smoke cigars? I was like, no. And he goes, can't do it. Can't sponsor you. I was like, I'll fucking smoke cigars. I don't care. Whatever I got to do. So I did start smoking cigars to the point where I smoke like five a day now. Nice. Every day

 

(02:58:41):
He told me, you never smell like cigars. Yeah. I'm pretty good about it. How do you do that? I smoke one in the morning. You just smoke one at lunch, and then two or three at night. I've cut back though. I'm on the, we have a great friend of ours here who's become my mentor, George J, and he self-proclaimed him himself, my cigar sponsor. He's trying to get me to quit. I don't know why. Kind took offense to it. And we went to Vegas together and he tried to talk me into quitting, and so I've been happy to tell him that I've cut it down big time. What I haven't told him is that I'm hitting the zis real hard.

 

Matt Handy (02:59:21):
Oh no.

 

Jordan Hase (02:59:22):
Like I some velos. I got the Velos pop one in right now, actually. Do you like the zis? I

 

Matt Handy (02:59:27):
Don't.

 

Jordan Hase (02:59:28):
No, I'm not.

 

Matt Handy (02:59:29):
I don't.

 

Jordan Hase (02:59:29):
So you get the vape?

 

Matt Handy (02:59:31):
I mostly do this for flavor.

 

Jordan Hase (02:59:32):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (02:59:33):
And I always say that, but I can't quit.

 

Jordan Hase (02:59:35):
You're addicted to the flavor.

 

Matt Handy (02:59:37):
Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I mean, I smoked meth for years, smoked heroin for years. I smoked anything that you could put on a foil. I smoked it. You

 

Jordan Hase (02:59:48):
Put a lot of things on foil too.

 

Matt Handy (02:59:49):
You can

 

Jordan Hase (02:59:50):
Crack.

 

Matt Handy (02:59:51):
Yeah. Not Xanax though. I tried that.

 

Jordan Hase (02:59:52):
You cancel smoke Xanax. You can chop it up and snort it though.

 

Matt Handy (02:59:55):
It actually, so the bioavailability through a mucus membrane is only like 15%.

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:01):
Same with Vicodin and stuff, but I still love it.

 

Matt Handy (03:00:04):
It

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:04):
Was still my favorite thing

 

Matt Handy (03:00:05):
Today. Terrible. You snorted Vicodin.

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:07):
Everything

 

Matt Handy (03:00:07):
That is disgusting.

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:08):
I snorted and ibuprofen if I could.

 

Matt Handy (03:00:09):
That is really gross.

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:10):
Yeah, yeah. Oh, it tastes terrible. It kills you too.

 

Matt Handy (03:00:13):
I mean, headaches. It clogs you up.

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:15):
Oh god. It kills the, my nose is a disaster.

 

Matt Handy (03:00:19):
Really?

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:19):
Yeah, still. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:00:21):
There's long lasting.

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:22):
You ever seen people that do the dental floss or a

 

Matt Handy (03:00:25):
Noodle? Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:26):
Yeah. I could probably do a hot dog.

 

Matt Handy (03:00:27):
So is it deviated?

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:29):
I don't know what it is. It's empty.

 

Matt Handy (03:00:31):
There's nothing in there. Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:33):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:00:33):
Really?

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:34):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:00:35):
Yeah. You should get that checked out.

 

Jordan Hase (03:00:36):
Yeah. I can breathe though. I had, yeah, there's nothing in there. I had staph infection in my face at one point. Jesus, because of all the cocaine and I had surgery, they had to go in and scrape it out and then scrape out my nasal passages and stuff and carve out new nasal passages, and they did the surgery and packed me with this gauze and these splints or something, bro. I went in and just pulled him out the night of the surgery, pulled him out so I could keep doing cocaine.

 

Matt Handy (03:01:06):
Oh my gosh.

 

Jordan Hase (03:01:07):
Yeah. Yeah. That was bad too. I had to go back to the hospital.

 

Matt Handy (03:01:11):
I know a chick when we were homeless, it was like she got an infection in her arm, went to the hospital and they were like, if you don't stay here, you're going to lose your arm. Two days after they told her that she left, she came back to the streets, did drugs for a little while, disappeared for a month. She came back with one arm. Your arm. She came back with one arm. They

 

Jordan Hase (03:01:32):
Told her

 

Matt Handy (03:01:33):
And she learned how to shoot up with her feet, and she was like, I just don't care.

 

Jordan Hase (03:01:37):
Oh God. Yeah, dude. That's the thing is you don't care. I've been there. I started working with this new guy, man, and we went through, the funny thing is we went through the steps again. We went through the book again, and we didn't talk about alcohol one time ever, because that wasn't the problem anymore. It was all my other behaviors and other things in my life.

 

Matt Handy (03:01:59):
The way that those steps can apply to anything is amazing. Those dudes are geniuses. They got a couple things fucking perfect. The way that they structured the book and then the sponsor sponsoree relationship, those things are like bulletproof in theory. In

 

Jordan Hase (03:02:15):
Concept. Are you talking about or 85 years on the book?

 

Matt Handy (03:02:18):
Almost a hundred years now, right? Like 90 years. Yeah, 89 years.

 

Jordan Hase (03:02:22):
Yeah. It's crazy. And it's still just as true and applicable today.

 

(03:02:28):
So we started working together, and Manny changed my life. I started going to specific meetings that are literature based meetings, and that's when I really hardcore got into sponsoring guys. I still sponsor. I got two or three guys that I'm sponsoring consistently every week. I have two to three meetings. That's awesome. It's guys that I meet with. It took a while, man. It still, things didn't change overnight. I went through, I had some crazy shit happen at Santa Fe High School that was like borderline, almost went to jail. Really? Yeah. I got falsely accused of something

 

(03:03:04):
And was on paid leave for a long time and had my name submitted for a police report and then to the district attorney's office, and then brought to be presented to the grand jury. And the school had given me a letter saying they know it wasn't true, but they were still going to go through with the investigation. And then they were like, can we have the letter back? I was like, no, you can't have the letter back. And I had an attorney and we had all this evidence that literally proved innocence. Not even not guilty innocence, but innocence. Innocence.

 

Matt Handy (03:03:38):
Like the false hack accuses.

 

Jordan Hase (03:03:39):
Yeah. Yeah. The day before the grand jury met, the person came out and said it was all made up and the person had lied about this the year before with someone else, and she had gotten kicked out of school, brought back in the following year, after a year at alternative school.

 

Matt Handy (03:03:56):
That is so scary. Is such a scary,

 

Jordan Hase (03:03:58):
Especially you're talking about it in 2022. As a male teacher, it was like the wrong time for this to happen. The good thing was though, I got a lot of money. I got a huge settlement.

 

Matt Handy (03:04:09):
Oh, I bet.

 

Jordan Hase (03:04:09):
And paid off a lot of my student loans

 

Matt Handy (03:04:12):
And shoot. Student loans are crazy. Yeah. What's up with Houston? It seems like every week there's another female teacher sleeping with a student.

 

Jordan Hase (03:04:19):
Yeah. Which is wild. I did not have those teachers.

 

Matt Handy (03:04:21):
Me neither. Actually, there were those teachers in San Diego. There was this one teacher, I shouldn't be telling this. And then there was male teachers too. It was, you

 

Jordan Hase (03:04:34):
Don't see the male teachers that often.

 

Matt Handy (03:04:36):
It's always women. They're not getting caught. At least, I

 

Jordan Hase (03:04:38):
Guess

 

Matt Handy (03:04:43):
Teenage boys are stupid though.

 

Jordan Hase (03:04:45):
Very stupid. I brag

 

Matt Handy (03:04:46):
And just

 

Jordan Hase (03:04:46):
Bragging on stuff. But yeah, that was a traumatic thing. And I remember I was with a guy and I was, bro, this is a six month process, and we had a baby at the time, and so God did not build me to stay at home with a child. That's not what I was made for. I was made to be out there working and coaching football, and I couldn't do that. And I was at home and I was trying to go to meetings as much as I could. And we have a third step prayer. I remember saying it over and over and over, and I was going to Miami to visit my buddies the day after the grand jury met. And I was like, I got to go before in case. Well, I don't know what I thought was going to happen. The grand jury's going to meet, and the FBI was going to be waiting kicked down nowhere from me, but I was like, I got to go before, if I get in trouble, I'm going to Miami first. And so I was at the airport when my attorney called me with both district attorneys and the school board, and they were apologizing and begging me not to file lawsuits and everything. I'm like, file a lawsuit. I'm just glad I'm not going to jail. Innocent people get fucked all the time and go to jail,

 

(03:05:50):
And that's all. That's the only thing I cared about.

 

Matt Handy (03:05:53):
So the way that I feel about that, and it does suck, and to say this in front of you is going to suck. Right? But I would almost rather some innocent people get fucked over than some guilty people get away, right?

 

Jordan Hase (03:06:07):
Yeah, for sure.

 

Matt Handy (03:06:08):
But yeah, now sitting in front of you, it's like, fuck. Do I still feel like that? Yeah, probably because we're talking about innocence ultimately. Obviously that girl is fucked up, but for people that do victimize kids, I was sexually molested as a kid. And it's like I understand the downstream effect of this isn't one person that you're fucking Over. This is generations of people possibly that you're fucking over. And I have a prison mentality. I've done a lot of prison time, and so it's like,

 

Jordan Hase (03:06:38):
How much prison time have you done?

 

Matt Handy (03:06:38):
Nine years total.

 

Jordan Hase (03:06:40):
Nine years. What was the longest stint?

 

Matt Handy (03:06:41):
38 months.

 

Jordan Hase (03:06:43):
That's a long time.

 

Matt Handy (03:06:44):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (03:06:44):
I've never been to jail

 

Matt Handy (03:06:45):
38 months.

 

Jordan Hase (03:06:47):
I went to jail one time when we were in preschool. We took a trip to the jail where they fought.

 

Matt Handy (03:06:53):
Was it the jail, the prison museum?

 

Jordan Hase (03:06:56):
No, no, no, no. It was like the little, it was bullshit. Dude. They fucking scammed us. They took us to the jail in my little in spring.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:03):
Oh, no.

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:03):
And they fucking fingerprinted all of us like, oh, well, this is cool. We'll do your fingerprints. And then I realized 30 years later, damn, God got all our fingerprints now. Yeah. Bullshit.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:14):
I wonder if they kept them.

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:15):
I don't know. They probably put 'em in the system. Yeah. Maybe it was in the eighties though.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:19):
Oh, actually, that was the pinnacle of law enforcement was fingerprinting back then.

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:24):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:24):
Now I got DNA.

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:25):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:27):
Well, okay. This is going to have to happen again. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So there's been a few conversations where it's like, God damn, if we didn't have to stop, this would go forever.

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:38):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:39):
But we'll

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:39):
Do this one.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:41):
Candy was definitely one.

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:42):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:42):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:43):
She's awesome.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:45):
So the deal

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:45):
Is we come from the same lineage,

 

Matt Handy (03:07:47):
Really. Recovery

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:49):
Lineage.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:49):
Yeah. Yeah. So the deal is I'm going to do her husband next.

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:52):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:53):
Friend. And then I'm going to do them both at the same time and talk about homelessness.

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:57):
Dude, they got a crazy story.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:58):
Yeah. I'm excited for

 

Jordan Hase (03:07:59):
That. Matthew and I have Houston, Texas season tickets together.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:02):
That's awesome.

 

Jordan Hase (03:08:02):
Another Matt h. Matt h. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:05):
That was the first thing he said was like, dude, dope.

 

Jordan Hase (03:08:07):
Another Matt H. Yeah. He's the man. He also works still always in a bar.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:13):
Yeah, that's what she was saying.

 

Jordan Hase (03:08:15):
Which is wild.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:15):
Well, it's wild, but it's super common. It's really common to have sober bartenders, which makes actually a lot of sense.

 

Jordan Hase (03:08:23):
Yeah, dude. If you're recovered and you don't have the obsession anymore, it doesn't matter where you are. It's the whole point of recovery.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:30):
It's incentivized for the bars to have sober people behind the bar

 

Jordan Hase (03:08:33):
Too. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:34):
That probably keeps a lot of shit clean.

 

Jordan Hase (03:08:35):
Yeah, for sure. For sure.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:37):
Can you imagine an alcoholic bartender is just fucking, I

 

Jordan Hase (03:08:40):
Think he was an alcoholic bartender at time. Yeah. Yeah. That's so funny. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:44):
Okay, we're back. We're back. Because we're going to break the record.

 

Jordan Hase (03:08:47):
Yeah. Yeah. There's zero chance I'm going to let Candace have a longer episode than me.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:52):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (03:08:52):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:53):
And the cool thing is the editing that goes into this is very minimal because the conversations flow really well. There's no dead time. Now that I'm on this side of a podcast, I know that when I'm watching podcasts now, I can see where they're cutting stuff. And the question is, is there just a lack of ability to continue the conversation, or does it have to reset and restart with topics? I think it'll have to pee. Well, peeing, that's a different thing I

 

Jordan Hase (03:09:24):
Thought about asking you if I'd

 

Matt Handy (03:09:25):
Do okay. You could totally do it. They'll cut that out.

 

Jordan Hase (03:09:27):
I'm not going to do it though.

 

Matt Handy (03:09:28):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (03:09:29):
We've made it this far. I can make another two minutes to be beat Candice.

 

Matt Handy (03:09:33):
So the wall of fame, how did this happen?

 

Jordan Hase (03:09:38):
So I brought this up at the very beginning. I'm a little nervous about it, man. I didn't have a lot of friends in high school. I mean, is

 

Matt Handy (03:09:48):
It people that you went to high School with that are going to be there?

 

Jordan Hase (03:09:50):
Yeah. So 30 years ago, 95 was our semi-finalist state championship team.

 

Matt Handy (03:09:58):
30 years ago.

 

Jordan Hase (03:09:58):
Yeah. We played Odessa Permian in the semifinals. Our team was amazing. We had a lot of dudes that played college football. So they're honoring that team. And as a part of it, they're doing the wall of fame thing for a couple, two of us. I think I was the only freshman that played varsity football

 

Matt Handy (03:10:13):
At the time. That's amazing.

 

Jordan Hase (03:10:16):
But I also remember that I wasn't liked. I don't think people liked

 

Matt Handy (03:10:21):
Me. Yeah. That's the thing though. It could just be something because you do have this major imposter syndrome that is totally invalid.

 

Jordan Hase (03:10:28):
Right?

 

Matt Handy (03:10:29):
Totally. Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (03:10:30):
I told you about it the other day. I went to,

 

Matt Handy (03:10:34):
They're going to find out.

 

Jordan Hase (03:10:35):
Yeah, they're going to figure me out at some point. Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (03:10:37):
I know. Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (03:10:38):
Which I don't know what's going to happen when they do.

 

Matt Handy (03:10:41):
And I guarantee you, high school, that was lifetimes ago.

 

Jordan Hase (03:10:45):
That's what my wife's like. She's like, dude, they don't

 

Matt Handy (03:10:47):
Remember if they just

 

Jordan Hase (03:10:47):
So arrogant. She's like, now you're being arrogant for sure they don't remember you, or they don't remember you were a jerk. I'm like, yeah, but I'm a good person now. Actively looking out for people and trying to be kind and nice to people. And I was like, they're, they're just going to remember what a dick I was, and they're not going to let me be kind to going to be judging me ahead of time. Have

 

Matt Handy (03:11:11):
You been to any high school reunions?

 

Jordan Hase (03:11:13):
No, absolutely not. And I've already got my exit plan. I'm like, I'm going for the dinner and the celebration, the pre-game thing, and I'll probably just leave when the game starts. My wife's like, what are you talking about? They was like, I went up there, they invited me up for practice the other day and I speak to the team and stuff, and it was like talk about unable to bring into my consciousness. I got out there and I was texting. My wife was like, I think I'm going back into coaching my, she's like, no, you're not. She's like, whatcha talking about? I was like, I don't know. I feel pretty good out here. This is where I'm supposed to be. She was like, you're not going back into coaching. First of all, you take a 70% pay cut dude, first

 

Matt Handy (03:11:51):
Of all, from me to you never working in high school

 

Jordan Hase (03:11:55):
Again. Yeah. Never,

 

Matt Handy (03:11:55):
Never, never.

 

Jordan Hase (03:11:56):
Yeah. That's the deal that I made with my attorney and my, I'll tell you a crazy story.

 

Matt Handy (03:12:01):
Okay.

 

Jordan Hase (03:12:01):
I went back to work in high school after that.

 

Matt Handy (03:12:03):
No way.

 

Jordan Hase (03:12:04):
Yeah. I went back to Alde Davis High School and I started, luckily God took me out of that spot. So I started and I came in and they were like, I'm certified in social studies, US history, world history, economics, sociology, geography. And I got there and they're like, coach, you're going to teach algebra two. I was like, what?

 

Matt Handy (03:12:27):
You're like, I don't even know. Basic rhythm. I

 

Jordan Hase (03:12:29):
Was like, I don't know Algebra one. How can I do algebra two? And they're like, dude, it doesn't matter. We'll give you all this shit you need and you'll be fine. The only thing I care about coach is that none of your kids have to come to the principal's office. And I was like, hold on. That's not going to work. I don't work like that now, especially now.

 

Matt Handy (03:12:45):
Cannot Do that.

 

Jordan Hase (03:12:47):
Dude this a hundred percent. And so luckily they hired me before school started. I didn't start until after school started. I put in my two weeks and there's a rule, if you get hired before whatever, some deadline, you have to teach what you're certified in. And they couldn't put me in whatever. So at this point, I had a union rep. I was in the teacher's union at this point, and he got me out of it. He was like, you can quit right now and you can get out of your contract and it's fine. So I finished the football season and I

 

Matt Handy (03:13:16):
Was

 

Jordan Hase (03:13:16):
Out. It's like, get out of here.

 

Matt Handy (03:13:18):
Yeah.

 

Jordan Hase (03:13:18):
Never do

 

Matt Handy (03:13:18):
That again.

 

Jordan Hase (03:13:19):
Here I am. Two years later, I'm telling my wife like, this is it. I'm going back. Crazy. Alright, we beat her. We're five minutes. Alright, let's do it. Alright. Thank you

 

Matt Handy (03:13:28):
Again.

 

Jordan Hase (03:13:29):
Yeah, man.

 

(03:13:29):
See you.

 

Matt Handy (03:13:33):
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 Podcast, Spotify, and wherever you like to stream podcasts. Got a question for us? Leave a message or voicemail at mylastrelapse.com. If you're feeling overwhelmed or struggling, you don't have to face it alone. Reaching out for support is a sign of strength and help is always available. If you or anyone needs help, give us a call 24 hours a day at 8 8 8 - 6 9 1 - 8 2 9 5.