Life After Planning My Own Death, Sleeping in a Stolen Car, and Withdrawing in Jail

Matt Handy (00:00:03):
I am Matt Handy, and you're listening to My Last Relapse.

 

Scott (00:00:07):
So where do we start?

 

Matt Handy (00:00:08):
Let's start with your last relapse.

 

Scott (00:00:12):
Oh, my last relapse, I've been thinking about this where, because really it was about September of 2011, so it was like two, three months before I actually committed to the process of recovery where, because leading up to that, it was this house of cards that I'd built, these dual lives where I was doing advertising and graphic design. And then I dramatically lost my job earlier in the year, and then July of 2011, and I was paycheck to paycheck. So it was like I had zero options. So I basically went from a mishmash of independence where I was like, all right, I wasn't homeless, but I mean, I was struggling to be a functioning member of society to just like, all right, flop down basement room at my dad's house with the mattress. No sheets even Mickey's forties. You remember Mickey's?

 

Matt Handy (00:01:28):
Absolutely.

 

Scott (00:01:28):
Is that still a thing?

 

Matt Handy (00:01:29):
The big mouth?

 

Scott (00:01:30):
Those big green.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:31):
Yeah, the forties.

 

Scott (00:01:32):
Oh my God. My stomach turns just thinking about that shit.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:35):
Yeah,

 

Scott (00:01:37):
We were freezing forties of four 11.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:40):
You would freeze them?

 

Scott (00:01:41):
So you only had to drink this much of it.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:43):
Oh, alright.

 

Scott (00:01:45):
And we would just slam that back and

 

(00:01:46):
God. Well, and then that was the interesting part about it. So my dad passed away last year and it was my job to, I was in charge of the estate and so I was cleaning out the house and I literally found old Mickey's forties, half full with cigarette butts still floating in them from 20 years ago.

 

Matt Handy (00:02:06):
Moldy?

 

Scott (00:02:06):
In this basement. I don't know. I don't think they were moldy. It was a little tiny, it was a little ecosystem. But yeah, I mean, I basically had this massive drug and alcohol daily habit. And I go from making good money to no income with the same habit. And so that's where things just really went downhill fast. And it was that September when the signs of that of, alright, my family knows what's going on. It got to the point because my mom was kind of a hoarder, and in the final years of her life, she really started leaning into the home shopping network, like early two thousands, QVC shit. And so there would be these rooms just full of random shit because it's basically a five bedroom house. My dad only used one room of

 

Matt Handy (00:03:08):
Was it stacked to the roof though?

 

Scott (00:03:10):
It was pretty stacked.

 

Matt Handy (00:03:11):
Okay.

 

Scott (00:03:12):
And then it turns out those same stacks are the things that I had to clean up after my dad passed.

 

Matt Handy (00:03:16):
Okay.

 

Scott (00:03:17):
So it was very cyclical. I had that thought as I was going through it. There would be these drawers in this random room and I'd have a clear memory of being desperate, just dope sick and looking for something that I could sell for $20 to where I could feel like a regular human. That's where it had progressed to over that period of time, using stopped being fun years before, but it was just like, alright, I need this in order to bring me up to par to where I could function. And that was the reality of it when it's just so physically dependent on it. But it was also what I told myself that would keep the show going.

 

Matt Handy (00:04:03):
That's a very typical thing that you hear in addiction, that in order to feel normal, you got to get high. And there is a mental component to that, but people fail to realize the reality of what that means.

 

Scott (00:04:16):
Oh yeah. And that was the hardest part with it. That's why I ended up losing that job. It was a prerequisite for functioning, and I would just get so violently ill if I didn't use, and it's not like something I could push through. Oh, I tried. It is just not possible.

 

Matt Handy (00:04:41):
No, there is a biological component of you being sick. It's not going to go away.

 

Scott (00:04:46):
No, exactly. Well, and I, and that's where the biological and the mental kind of mix together because it's like, alright, I feel like I've been hit by a truck, but I know the solution to this in the immediate.

 

Matt Handy (00:04:58):
Yeah.

 

Scott (00:04:59):
It's one small dose of that, and then you feel like a human again. And it's like, oh. And so basically that's where it started was she had all these QVC purchases all over the place and just stacks of boxes that I know my dad hadn't looked at in years. And so he was digging through some of that and finding something that I could sell at a pawn shop or with that idea of like, okay, I do this and then I'll feel normal today.

 

Matt Handy (00:05:24):
Is this where you found the Luger?

 

Scott (00:05:26):
Yes, yes. That was when I found the Luger. Yeah. Which that's a big story altogether.

 

Matt Handy (00:05:31):
Yeah.

 

Scott (00:05:34):
But then that's also where I found my dad's checkbook and then

 

Matt Handy (00:05:38):
Oh wow.

 

Scott (00:05:38):
Yeah. So that's where it really, and that was because as I'm foraging, I guess that's a polite way of putting it.

 

Matt Handy (00:05:47):
Sure.

 

Scott (00:05:48):
As I'm foraging through this house looking for stuff, it started with what I could justify easy at the beginning was like, all right things he's never going to notice. Stuff that's like my mom purchased 10 years prior that are literally in the same package. They came in because she died in 2005, and this is 2011, so six years. But then I would stumble upon things of like, oh yeah, that's worth something. But he would definitely know. So it would be a radio on a shelf in the living room. It would be a checkbook, it would be the Luger, it'd be these family heirlooms. It's like, alright, he's going to know about that. Okay. I can't grab those. And it was basically my ability to justify just eroded and eroded and eroded as I got more and more desperate and more and more hopeless.

 

(00:06:41):
And really that's where I took the Luger, that's where I took the checkbook, was when I got to this point where I a hundred percent believed in my bones that I was going to die. Where it was like, okay, well what does a felony matter for somebody who's dead? It's like, and that gave me permission and license inside my mind to, alright.

 

Matt Handy (00:07:06):
Yeah. Were those actually the words? What does this matter if I'm dead?

 

Scott (00:07:10):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:07:11):
Wow.

 

Scott (00:07:11):
I was convinced it was like the sky is blue. It was a fact. The sky is blue. I am going to die.

 

Matt Handy (00:07:18):
And was it more than just heroin?

 

Scott (00:07:23):
And that's really where it got bad. It was the combination of heroin, cocaine with alcohol underneath all of it. And it started with, because it's that progression, it started with just weekend warrior doing a pill of Oxycontin with a group of friends as we're out going to parties and stuff like that. And then it slowly ramped up from there to where it became a daily ritual and a thing that I needed in order to function and make it to work. If I didn't have it that morning when I woke up, then I was calling into work for some bullshit reason.

 

Matt Handy (00:08:04):
Yeah, of course.

 

Scott (00:08:05):
And the elaborate reasons.

 

Matt Handy (00:08:07):
Yeah. Oh yeah.

 

Scott (00:08:08):
Oh my God. Absolutely. The horrible luck that befall me in this dream world.

 

Matt Handy (00:08:16):
The absolute unrealistic-ness of it.

 

Scott (00:08:18):
It's like you just got out of the hospital for pneumonia and now you have sepsis. Oh my God. And then I would like,

 

Matt Handy (00:08:26):
The popped tire? Can only work so many times.

 

Scott (00:08:28):
Yeah, I know.

 

Matt Handy (00:08:29):
So now it's like my transmission is on the floor

 

Scott (00:08:31):
And it's like, how many grandmas do you have? How have they all died?

 

Matt Handy (00:08:37):
I do the same thing. Right. But I would do that, well, I put that on my dead grandma. It's like, I don't have a dead grandma.

 

Scott (00:08:45):
Well, I mean, there was the two most ridiculous. So one was I faked a kitchen fire, and then I found a picture online. And in 2010, this was pretty novel, I found a picture online of a burnt up kitchen, and then texted that to my boss.

 

Matt Handy (00:09:02):
People aren't looking up metadata.

 

Scott (00:09:04):
This is what I'm dealing with over here. And that bought me a day off to be miserable and sick and detoxing. And then another one was, I faked a spill. I faked eating it down the stairs or something. And then I'm in the hospital, getting my ankle checked out. And then for a month after that, I had a wrapped ankle and walked on crutches at work to back up the line.

 

Matt Handy (00:09:35):
For one day.

 

Scott (00:09:37):
For one day. One day of detoxing at home. It was either detoxing or because the other reason was, or well, just being high because I was like, oh, I've got plenty and I just don't want to go to work day. I'd rather just sit here and play video games.

 

Matt Handy (00:09:51):
That's interesting.

 

Scott (00:09:52):
So that was the other part of it.

 

Matt Handy (00:09:53):
That's interesting.

 

Scott (00:09:54):
But I did it for a whole month, and I remember there was times where I'd walk across the office and then forget for a half a second, like, oh shit. And then it was like, did anybody see? Or I'd walk normal for two steps and then catch myself with the crutches. And it's just like, that's the crazy illusion that I would tell myself. And then others do as well, is that this is what makes life easier when in reality the drugs made life immeasurably more difficult than it needed to be.

 

Matt Handy (00:10:26):
Yeah.

 

Scott (00:10:27):
The effort. That's daily hours of daily effort to hold up a lie for one day of missing work.

 

Matt Handy (00:10:36):
So funny.

 

Scott (00:10:36):
Because that was when I was a senior in high school, they have the senior quote that you put underneath your name and everything in the yearbook.

 

Matt Handy (00:10:45):
I didn't make it.

 

Scott (00:10:45):
You didn't make it. That's something people do where they have a little quote, they put under their name and mine, it is so corny looking back at it now, but mine was play the game with codes was mine. And that was my cheat code for life was drugs and alcohol. And that was the thing. They're like, why doesn't everybody do this? It makes things so much easier. And it's like, no. Now looking back on it, it's like, good God. The amount of effort put into it.

 

Matt Handy (00:11:12):
Yeah. It's funny too, I think a lot of people do do that. They just don't get stuck in it.

 

Scott (00:11:17):
Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. I mean, I don't know how many people could recreationally use heroin and not get stuck in it. Heroin might be the different thing.

 

Matt Handy (00:11:30):
So what I should say is a lot of people have a social lubricant. Everybody in my high school was partying together on the weekends.

 

Scott (00:11:38):
Right, right.

 

Matt Handy (00:11:40):
The party never stopped to us.

 

Scott (00:11:42):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

 

Matt Handy (00:11:46):
And then it's not a party after a while.

 

Scott (00:11:48):
No. And then it's just like, it's a crutch.

 

Matt Handy (00:11:54):
Yeah.

 

Scott (00:11:55):
It's like you're a donkey pulling a cart up a hill and the cart keeps getting heavier and heavier and it's like what? Sisyphus?

 

Matt Handy (00:12:05):
Yeah. Just constantly rolling back down.

 

Scott (00:12:07):
Just rolling that boulder up the hill, down the hill, up the hill, down the hill.

 

Matt Handy (00:12:11):
Yeah. I never really saw it as a crutch. I literally just saw it as a part of who I was.

 

Scott (00:12:18):
Yeah. This is my identity. This is who I'm, I mean, that was like Hunter S Thompson was a huge influence on me when I was interesting. A teenager.

 

Matt Handy (00:12:26):
Did you ever read, who's the guy that writes about him all the time? He has a Slavic name. He wrote the Cat in the Cradle. It's about Hunter S Thompson.

 

Scott (00:12:36):
I'm not sure.

 

Matt Handy (00:12:37):
Yeah, let's look it up.

 

Scott (00:12:38):
Yeah. I got so into, I read every book that he ever wrote, and there's three things that I still have from my addiction possession wise. I lost absolutely everything. And one of them being three or 4 Hunter Thompson books that are still on my shelf.

 

Matt Handy (00:12:56):
Kurt Vonnegut.

 

Scott (00:12:57):
Oh, Kurt Vonnegut.

 

Matt Handy (00:12:58):
Yeah.

 

Scott (00:12:59):
Oh yeah, Kurt Vonnegut, like he's in that same class.

 

Matt Handy (00:13:02):
Yeah, he actually wrote about him a lot.

 

Scott (00:13:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's a whole nother thing. Breakfast of Champions, was that him or is that John?

 

Matt Handy (00:13:10):
I don't think that was him. He did Siren of Titans, Slaughterhouse Five, Ice Nine Kills.

 

Scott (00:13:18):
Same type of thing though. Cut from the same cloth. But there's that opening scene of Fear in Loathing Las Vegas, that opening line half a mile outside of Barstow when the started to take hold. And he has just this case of every drug that you could possibly think of. And I remember reading that when I was 16 and being like, oh, that's what I want to be.

 

Matt Handy (00:13:40):
Dude, that's funny. We were talking about childhood aspirations.

 

Scott (00:13:44):
People were like, I want to be an astronaut. It's like, no, I want to have a briefcase full of every drug known to man. That's what I wanted.

 

Matt Handy (00:13:51):
It's like these indicators early on that if we're actually being honest, that we can look back on and say there was definitely, definitely a fucking problem.

 

Scott (00:14:00):
Oh yeah. And I can see it now with just crystal clear clarity that my relationship with dopamine is different than your average person. It's wired different.

 

Matt Handy (00:14:13):
Why do you think that is? What was your, we'll call it trauma for.

 

Scott (00:14:17):
Well, yeah, it's a bunch of different things. So it's like one part genetics. All four of my grandparents were alcoholics. Not as much on my mom's side, but great grandparents on that side. So it's like it runs in all the family. My mom now looking back on it, struggled with addiction in her own way.

 

Matt Handy (00:14:36):
Not necessarily substances?

 

Scott (00:14:38):
Well, substances, but prescribed medications. And this was in the early 2000, late nineties where it's like you stub your toe and you get a massive bottle of oxycon. Yeah. Well, and there's so many documentaries and things around it where pain became the fifth vital sign or sixth or whatever. And so that was one part of it where that, and then food was her thing. So I think there's a genetic component, but I think a lot of it was childhood stuff. A lot of it was just abuse and neglect. And it became a way to cope with just feeling deeply uncomfortable in my own skin. And a lot of it was the echoing voices of people, of places or things that, it's like the baton was passed to me by the trauma, but then my subconscious, my mind picked up and ran with it. And it became this undertone and how my brain was constructed and that I'm still kind of picking the pieces apart now.

 

Matt Handy (00:15:47):
Isn't that interesting? We have, if you add all the time together, that contributed to the trauma. It's like a couple hours, maybe. A couple hours of time.

 

Scott (00:15:58):
But it just echoes. It echoes and reverberates. I, you look at it from an evolutionary perspective, that's really where it makes so much sense, where it's like, how did humans survive past the caveman days? And it's by having a mind that is charged,

 

Matt Handy (00:16:16):
Geared for protection.

 

Scott (00:16:17):
Well, it's geared towards, alright, what could go wrong? What are the things that could hurt me? Where am I not safe? And it's the same reason somebody gets into a car accident and there's a mass and they're not anywhere near the road. Massive traffic jam for miles. The rubber necking people looking at it like, Ooh. And that's even why social media and online news. I mean, how often, what's the ratio of bad news to good that they report on the news? It's like 10 to one. And that's because that's what we're inherently interested in.

 

Matt Handy (00:16:51):
Definitely drawn to it.

 

Scott (00:16:52):
What could go wrong? And I think that was part of the deconstruction of the lies that I told myself for so long, was that realization that for every person that hurt me, there was a hundred that did right by me. But in my mind, all I remember is the one.

 

(00:17:11):
And then it continues to guide decisions and fear and apprehension, whatever going forward. But really, so going back to my dad's house, I mean, it was September of 2011 and the house of cards starts falling where he's noticing where it's like a prized possession on the shelf is just gone. And really it came down to he goes to deposit a check his bank account, and it's negative, just fucking crazy. Negative 8,000 or something like that. Basically. I mean, these checks were, some were bigger than others, but a lot of 'em were like $40, where I would justify it for that one day where I'd be like,

 

Matt Handy (00:18:07):
Yeah, it's just $40. It's just $40 today.

 

Scott (00:18:09):
That's just $40. And then with this, I can go apply for that job. I can go hit the gym. This is just this bullshit that I would tell myself and then I would do I get $40 worth of drugs, I would feel normal, and then I would just play video games or do jack shit.

 

Matt Handy (00:18:31):
False flag.

 

Scott (00:18:32):
Yeah, exactly. Well, and that was the cycle. And so I am in this basement room and my dad comes up to me, doesn't say a word, just hands me the phone. It's a detective from the Jefferson County Sheriff's or whatnot. He was just basically laying out there, it's like, we know what you did. We know, it was not the crime of the century. I wasn't even trying to hide it because again, I was at this place of hopelessness where it's like, I'm not going to be here for more than another couple of weeks. So yeah, fuck it. Not even going to hide it. And I think it was also another part of me just wanting to get caught. And so he hands me the phone and the detective is like, because at that point I never even had a parking ticket. I'd never gotten in any kind of trouble at all. I'm 25 at the time, 26.

 

Matt Handy (00:19:32):
With an education.

 

Scott (00:19:33):
With education.

 

Matt Handy (00:19:33):
With a good job.

 

Scott (00:19:34):
Well, yeah, had a good job. With an education with a good job. And that up until that point, I was a ramshackled contributor to society. I wasn't homeless or anything. Well, that part will come, so they give me a chance to turn myself in. So it's like, okay, we want you to turn yourself in, let's get this taken care of. Let's get you some help. So I go and I turn myself in, which is probably one of the scariest days of my life.

 

(00:20:08):
Just walking in because I had no idea what to expect. I'm like a suburban kid turning myself into these detectives for what I know is multiple felonies. And so I'm there for overnight, they release me the next day PR bond, I have no record. They go off of what I had before. And with the suggestion of, all right, we think you should get some help. You think about turning, go into a treatment program. And I had no idea what a treatment program was at all. At that point, I'd gone to maybe a handful of AA meetings, but even still, I was nudged there by family.

 

Matt Handy (00:20:49):
So just completely out of your depth as far as what you need to do at this point?

 

Scott (00:20:53):
Well, exactly. And then resistance. And so the early meetings that I went to way back then, it was girlfriends or family of knowing that there's something wrong here. And so then they would just drop me off at a meeting and be like, all right, we'll be back in an hour. And then I'd just sit in the back with my arms crossed like, oh, this is bullshit. These people don't know what the fuck they're talking about. And I'd just sit in the back and judge and try and have the meeting fit the narrative that I had in my mind so that I could keep going out there and keep using because it's not that bad. Oh, it's not that bad. You guys are crazy. You're the problem. I'm not the problem. It's like obvious horse shit.

 

Matt Handy (00:21:32):
Dude. The level of delusion and justification that we are capable of. So amazing.

 

Scott (00:21:39):
Well, a lot of it speaks to just how my brain, and this is just not just for me, but for others that are going through the same thing where it's like our brains get completely rewired to where sobriety equals death. Where like it's the removal of this drug and the fear of detox is so prevalent that it's on par with dying. So it's like, alright, what do I have to do to survive? And then that's the twisted motivation that's like, okay, maybe stealing a checkbook and writing a check to myself isn't that bad. Because in my mind, it was equal to death.

 

Matt Handy (00:22:20):
Yeah. The fear of the detox. I tell people all the time that it's like, drugs stopped working for me years before. And they're like, well, why'd you keep doing it then?

 

Scott (00:22:30):
Because tethered to it, it's

 

Matt Handy (00:22:31):
Because I'm really, really scared to come off of it. And then there's my head, I'm like, okay, well, I come off of it. Well now what? I'm living under a bridge. It's like,

 

Scott (00:22:44):
Yeah. And then it's like,

 

Matt Handy (00:22:45):
What am I going to do?

 

Scott (00:22:46):
Well, then the pressure of being an actual adult kind of comes in.

 

Matt Handy (00:22:52):
That too.

 

Scott (00:22:53):
And it's like if you're not fitted with, because now after continuing to peel back the layers here, I recognize that one of my core things that fed so much of this and why I dove so hard into drugs and alcohol in the beginning was fear. It was fear of failure. Fear of, such a deep fear of failure to where I wouldn't even put myself out there to where it translates to not even taking basic risks.

 

Matt Handy (00:23:32):
If you don't walk outside, you never have to fail.

 

Scott (00:23:34):
Yeah, exactly. So it's like I'm just going to hide. I'm going to get as high as possible and hide from the world because I went to that place of isolation pretty quickly. And it started off, it started off teenage years up to college and then early twenties and everything. It was very intertwined with social. I was working and that's what I would do in the evenings. That's what I do on the weekends. It was like a hobby, a fucked up hobby, but a hobby.

 

(00:24:04):
But then it transformed over to like, oh, wait, if I do it by myself, it means I don't have to share. I can get higher. Okay. And so then it transformed over to like, yeah, I do it in the evenings and the weekends, but I do it by myself in a dark room. And then especially once you remove the job, then that became my full-time job was getting as high as possible and hiding as much as possible because the mounting shame and guilt of this cycle. You know I would see people that I went to school with have families. It's like, so-and-so just got their masters and they're married and they have two kids. And I compare myself to them and then just the shame and the guilt would come in. And I had such a lack of coping skills at that time. The only way I knew how to deal with that was numbing through drugs and alcohol.

 

Matt Handy (00:24:59):
But you know what? Drugs and alcohol are really good at what they do.

 

Scott (00:25:04):
They're effective. It's just not sustainable. And then even still, it's just the anxiety and the fear and the pain and the anger and so much that narrative, that narrative in my mind, because it was, and this was so much of the pattern, was like I had set a goal, unrealistic goal, thinking it's realistic to, all right, can not even take a shower or put on a nice pressed shirt. And as long as I just do heroin, then I can go and apply for this job and turn all this stuff around. All it's going to take is $40 and then I'm there. And then it's like, it's delusional.

 

Matt Handy (00:25:48):
And it all happened today too.

 

Scott (00:25:49):
But that was also a way of setting myself up where it was. So I would have this delusional idea of what I could do if only I had $40 and it was a way to get $40 feel somewhat normal, knowing that I would fall short of this goal and then it would be a vehicle for me to continue this negative self talk of like see you piece of shit. There it is. Again, more evidence. I was like an archivist. I was a librarian of reasons for why I was a piece of shit.

 

(00:26:28):
I was like, ah, more evidence throw it on. And it was all bullshit it. And I think that's where my relationship with hopelessness has changed so much over the years is recognizing that so much of addiction and then so much of just what things that people deal with, your everyday person deals with this internal battle of impulsivity versus investment in what's going to feel good now versus what's going to feel good later. And it's this, do I eat the candy bar or do I go to the gym and it's that blown up on a macro scale. And yeah, I would invest in letting that impulsive monster in the back of my mind have as much strength as possible. And so much of that investment, the currency for that investment was the illusion that I was a piece of shit was negative self talk. That was money in the bank for that guy to get behind the steering wheel, and it means I don't have to go through detox today. That was close. Fuck. I mean, okay, I don't need to face down these difficult things. Okay, good. Because I'm a piece of shit and it's so weird to think about that now. But anyway, so turn myself in and then start looking at rehabs and then it's just the most cursory bullshit Google search. I'd say about three minutes of effort.

 

Matt Handy (00:28:04):
So what were you searching?

 

Scott (00:28:05):
I was searching for, I think it was just rehab.

 

Matt Handy (00:28:08):
Yeah. Where were you living at the time?

 

Scott (00:28:11):
I was in Denver.

 

Matt Handy (00:28:12):
So Denver.

 

Scott (00:28:12):
Denver Rehab. And the place that came up was a place called Denver Cares, which is now since I know so much more about it, but it's like a social detox at best.

 

Matt Handy (00:28:25):
Oh, wow.

 

Scott (00:28:26):
Not even a rehab.

 

Matt Handy (00:28:27):
Are they still around?

 

Scott (00:28:28):
I think, yeah, they're still around. They have the nickname of Denver Scares up there. Yeah, because it's like a big barracks style, dorm style bunk beds, flickering, fluorescent lights. They don't even give you any, at least back then. Now, this is a while ago, so I'm betting they do a lot more now, and especially because so much has progressed with Suboxone and MAT.

 

Matt Handy (00:28:52):
Yeah.

 

Scott (00:28:53):
Back then it was just methadone. It was methadone and suboxone was around, but it was pretty new. It wasn't widespread. And so really all they would do, they'd do an intake and then you watch Judge Judy and you take the occasional Imodium so you don't shit your pants. That was detox.

 

Matt Handy (00:29:09):
Sweat it out.

 

Scott (00:29:12):
Sweat it out, those keebler cheesy crackers like that, it was that. And then you're just in a blanket with a room full of other people huddled around a shitty TV. And so I'm there for two days. And then, yeah, the justification in my mind, it's like, all right, if I'm going to sweat this out, I would much rather do this where I'm home, where I'm comfortable. They're not giving me the medications that I want. And this would be so much better if I had a bottle of whiskey, where it's like, and it's all bullshit so that I could go out and use again. And so really that was, because up until, so my recovery date is 11/4/11, so the last time I used anything was in the late hours of 11/3/11. So this last relapse was a couple of months before that where I made it two days. And really prior to that, and this was something I examined while I was sitting in jail eventually, was I had never made it past five days at that point. And I started using when I was 13. So from 13 until 26, the longest batch I had was five days. And that was pure white, hot white knuckling. That was like no support whatsoever, sweating it out on a couch.

 

Matt Handy (00:30:35):
And was it just because you didn't have a choice?

 

Scott (00:30:37):
Yeah, and I think that time was, yeah, that was pressure of a girl I was dating at that point. And it was also because I was still in that pre-contemplative phase of just like, no, it's not that big of a deal. I can stop if I want to. And then she'd be like, okay, we'll prove it. Stop.

 

Matt Handy (00:30:57):
When did you realize that you were an addict?

 

Scott (00:31:01):
Well, so back then it was also the internal narrative versus the external. What was going on up here versus what am I actually willing to talk about? And up there, I mean, I realized that when I was a kid, when I was a little kid, I realized that my brain is wired a little bit different. Where one of the first real times of it was I'm in my early twenties, and then there was a few other times, I'm 17 and I wake up on the bathroom floor, just basically time travel from hanging out with friends to being on the bathroom floor in a puddle of vomit. And it's the next day and it's like, how in the fuck did I get here? And just complete blackout, not having any memory of what happened the night before. That was where it's like, okay, this isn't healthy. But at that point, it was all internal. It's like I wasn't going to talk about it to anybody because of the shame and the guilt and misunderstanding and everything.

 

(00:32:00):
One of the big marquee moments of it was, so my sister and I are very close, very close to this day, and we were going to a comedy show in downtown Denver, and we go out to get dinner right before that, and then we're in midst the conversation, then realize, oh shit, the door's just opened. We're running late. And so we go to pay the bill, throw her jackets on, head out the door, and she has a half finished glass of wine sitting on the table. And that was my question to her. It was like, well, wait, do you want to chug that before we leave? She's like, no, why would I chug wine? It's like, oh. Cause that was my thought. It was like,

 

Matt Handy (00:32:41):
Yeah, dude, you're going to waste that.

 

Scott (00:32:42):
You're going to waste that. And then my next thought was like, well, can I chug it? I didn't ask that, but that was the thought. And I was one of the first mounting pieces of evidence that it like, okay, my brain is wired a little bit different. So that was basically the start of it was I left that program after two days, immediately got high again. And then immediately went right back to my dad's basement and kept doing the same stuff I was doing before.

 

(00:33:12):
And that's where it got worse and worse and worse and worse, except at that point I was on a colors line, which is

 

Matt Handy (00:33:20):
So now you're testing.

 

Scott (00:33:20):
Now I'm getting tested, but I just knew that I couldn't do it. And so it's basically, and I just don't remember, my color was blue raspberry, and I was like, isn't that more of a flavor than a color? But apparently that was my color. It was blue raspberry. And I call just for people who dunno that, and I think they still do colored lines now.

 

Matt Handy (00:33:45):
Oh yeah.

 

Scott (00:33:45):
So you have a phone number you call it every day.

 

Matt Handy (00:33:49):
It's typically a county connected thing, whether it's probation or non county testing or whatever.

 

Scott (00:33:54):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:33:54):
The do colors.

 

Scott (00:33:55):
And they have a list of 10 colors that they'll call, and then if your color gets called, that means all you got to come and pee into a cup like that day.

 

Matt Handy (00:34:03):
Before four o'clock.

 

Scott (00:34:05):
And so that's where I was telling myself, it's like, okay, now it's like I was batting down the hatches for the apocalypse here.

 

Matt Handy (00:34:13):
Yeah.

 

Scott (00:34:14):
It's like when that caller calls, then it's like all bets are fucking off.

 

Matt Handy (00:34:18):
Yeah, it's Russian roulette until then. And then when that happens, it's like circle the wagon cuz they're coming.

 

Scott (00:34:25):
Yeah. Where it's like, and I knew it's like, alright, odds are it's going to be in the next week now they're not going to let me go more than a week, 10 days without testing. And so I keep doing what I'm doing while in the back of my mind it's like, alright, there's those family heirlooms that I told myself I wouldn't take. that I can still have access to that checkbook. I know they're looking for me. And So

 

Matt Handy (00:34:52):
You're doing the math?

 

Scott (00:34:53):
I'm doing the math. Yeah. I'm doing the math and just kind of picking up, I hold my breath, pick up the phone and call every day. And then there's that day that blue raspberry's called.

 

Matt Handy (00:35:04):
How long was it?

 

Scott (00:35:07):
It was about 10 days. So it was about 10 days in. So at this point, it's like, I just turned 26. This is late September-ish, something like that. And

 

Matt Handy (00:35:17):
Wait, you have a birthday coming up?

 

Scott (00:35:18):
I do. I do indeed. Yeah. I'm going to be fucking 40. God damn.

 

Matt Handy (00:35:24):
Wow.

 

Scott (00:35:24):
I know. I'm an old man.

 

Matt Handy (00:35:25):
Dude, you are over the hill.

 

Scott (00:35:26):
I know. And I'm okay with it. Well, and that's something, a side note with it, and it kind of plays into this. It's like, I should have been dead 15 years ago, so all right. Aches and pains, middle age, it's all relative now.

 

Matt Handy (00:35:44):
It's like something to be grateful for once you're on the other side of it.

 

Scott (00:35:49):
Again, I was convinced that I was going to die. It was fact. So it's like I'll run into this pedestrian bullshit now, or my 6-year-old will tell me that she hates me. And it's like, whatever.

 

Matt Handy (00:36:02):
Okay.

 

Scott (00:36:03):
I'm like, okay, I'm not going to take that personally. Or even just disappointment, lost jobs, lost relationships, personal injury. I got this plantar's fasciitis. My knees are buckling and shit. Maybe not buckling, but I'm starting to feel it. But the first thought is like, oh, that sucks. But then the next one is like, well, I should have been dead 20 years ago. Anyway, so it's like, all right, it's okay. I can deal with a little bit of achy feet.

 

(00:36:35):
But anyway, so I had this ruck sack that I had packed up where it was,

 

Matt Handy (00:36:42):
It was your bug out bag.

 

Scott (00:36:43):
It was my bug out bag.

 

Matt Handy (00:36:44):
That's funny.

 

Scott (00:36:44):
Oh, yeah. And it was like, this is bullshit because it's like, all right, I know when I'm using, I don't need food. But it's like, all right, I got some canned goods in there, and bottles of water and

 

Matt Handy (00:36:56):
Clean underwear and socks.

 

Scott (00:36:57):
I didn't even worry about that. Oh, we'll get to that. I mean, it got pretty rugged there. So it was basically the idea that the things I hadn't taken was the Luger handgun that my grandfather picked off of a German officer in World War II,.

 

Matt Handy (00:37:19):
A Nazi.

 

Scott (00:37:19):
Off of a Nazi. And then there was a standup double base that I had gotten from my grandfather, and he was a rugged alcoholic. You turn over the side of it, you see a patch on the bottom side of it. And that was because

 

Matt Handy (00:37:39):
Spilled?

 

Scott (00:37:39):
No, he was trying to learn a baseline on it, and he was hammered, and he got upset, and he threw it down on the ground and stomped a hole in it.

 

Matt Handy (00:37:46):
Oh, nice. So it was like a foot shaped.

 

Scott (00:37:48):
A foot shaped hole that he got patched up, and I still have that base today. But it wasn't practical for me to take this massive base.

 

Matt Handy (00:37:59):
So you didn't sell the base?

 

Scott (00:38:00):
Didn't sell the base. I left the base behind, because I was hitting the road. I needed to be quick on my feet.

 

Matt Handy (00:38:06):
But I could definitely see with the delusional mind that you've got it strapped to your back.

 

Scott (00:38:09):
Oh, I hadn't thought about it.

 

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

 

Scott (00:38:12):
I thought about it. But yeah, it was basically this bug out bag, including a garden hose. So the idea was, I'm going to take this Luger, write this last check to myself, steal my dad's 1999 midnight blue Saturn station wagon.

 

Matt Handy (00:38:31):
Oh, here we go.

 

Scott (00:38:32):
Oh yeah. And then run for the hills, sell all this stuff, get as high as humanly possible, and then hook this garden hose up to the exhaust of the car gas.

 

Matt Handy (00:38:42):
Good old.

 

Scott (00:38:43):
Yeah, that was my plan. So I did just that. I hit the road, stole the Luger, sold it, went to the Driftwood Motel in East Colfax.

 

Matt Handy (00:38:57):
Amazing.

 

Scott (00:38:59):
To this day, I think it's still there. It's like the sketchiest little motel in the worst part of Denver. And I just batten down the hatches. I think I went through $3,000 worth of drugs in two days. Some ridiculous amount.

 

Matt Handy (00:39:16):
How much did you get for the Luger?

 

Scott (00:39:19):
I think it was like $2,000 or something like that. I ended up paying way more for it later on to get back, but, and so I ended up selling that, going and using, and then basically kept chickening out on pulling the trigger on the garden hose plan. And just basically kept struggling, leaning on friends, sleeping on couches, sleeping in this car. There would be times like, oh God, where this is a few weeks after, I'm not picking up, my sister's sending me these emails. I'm like, where in the fuck are you? What is going on? We want to help. Just ignoring, ignoring, ignoring. And so eventually it gets to that night of November 3rd, 2011. And what I would do is, because I knew that this car was marked for being stolen.

 

(00:40:17):
And so it's like, all right, where can I find an unassuming spot to park, to sleep in the car, get high and not have the police called on me? So I'd find these sleepy suburban neighborhoods, and I'd look for a spot where it's a long stretch of fence, where it's not right outside of somebody's house. And I'd park there, and then I'd put these towels up in the window. So I'd just make this little smelly cocoon of drug use. And then I would just get high and listen to Harry Potter audio books, or I would spend all the money that I'd scraped together, hustling on drugs, and then I would steal a rotisserie chicken from the local grocery store. And I remember a few times just sitting in there, just super high, Harry Potter going on in the background.

 

Matt Handy (00:41:04):
Greasy fingers.

 

Scott (00:41:04):
Greasy fingers crying, just eating, stolen rotisserie bird. And so I'm crashed out in this car. And honestly, so that was late September. This is early November. My last shower was late September at that point. And so it's rough. It was real rough. And I wake up to a tap on the window and I pull down the towel and there's a police officer gun drawn like, alright. And at this point, so they throw me in the back of the car, and I'm in Westminster, which is like 30, good 30 minute drive to the jail in Jefferson County, which is right outside of Denver. And it was so bad, this is early November, and it's cold. It was unseasonably extra cold early November, late at night, like twenties out. And we drove that whole 30 minutes with all four windows down because the smell was so bad.

 

(00:42:13):
Oh, god. And so they checked me in.

 

Matt Handy (00:42:15):
Checked you in, they booked you.

 

Scott (00:42:18):
They checked me in, and they do the intake thing. And that was one of the first times, because even still, for whatever reason, when I went to that detox, I still downplayed it. I was using this amount, but I told 'em this amount. And honestly, that was probably part of me setting myself up for leaving, because then they dosed. They helped me accordingly,

 

Matt Handy (00:42:45):
Accordingly.

 

Scott (00:42:45):
With that. And it wasn't nearly enough. I mean then even still social detox. So they couldn't do a lot at that time. But that was the first time where I was like, I laid it bare. It's like, this is what I've been doing. This is the actual amount that I've been using. And I've been doing Xanax and a bunch of benzos at the same time too, and a bunch of cocaine, bunch of heroin, bunch of alcohol. And I laid it bare to him thinking, okay, maybe they're going to actually help me and help me go through detox. And that's where that intake guy is like, all right, awesome. Well, next week is going to really suck for you. Next. And he passes on the paperwork. I'm like, okay. And so I sweated it out and the jailhouse cot, and it was a big open pod?

 

Matt Handy (00:43:34):
Oh no.

 

Scott (00:43:34):
With the caves. So it's like four bunk beds kind of in these little nooks,

 

Matt Handy (00:43:41):
The hot holes.

 

Scott (00:43:42):
And Jefferson County is a federal holding spot. So people that are facing federal cases are mixed in with us, little county guys. And I was put in minimum because still I had this open bond and everything that I shit the bid on, but even still, it was an open case, innocent until proven guilty. So they put me in with the minimums. And so it was rough. It was full sweating out, detox on this cot.

 

Matt Handy (00:44:15):
Was it the full spectrum of symptoms, like the shitty puking.

 

Scott (00:44:18):
Everything, shaking. It was everything, but it was also easier than I thought it would've been. Where when you're in jail and there's nothing you can, there's nobody I could call. There wasn't a great aunt Susan or somebody that any person that could have possibly bailed me out were all people that I had lied to and stolen from, or passed bullshit on before to scrape together another $40 for another day, another day. So there's nobody I could call. I mean, I tried my sister, I tried my dad, and they were just having none of it, which I'm grateful for now. And so it's like, okay. And it sucked, but it's also, it was immeasurably easier than doing it on my own with the idea of, alright, all I need to do is sell that, and then I could feel better because I didn't have that option. So the mental part of it was almost removed, and it was just boiled down to purely the physical part of detox, which sucked.

 

(00:45:32):
And really now in hindsight, it was dangerous because the amount of drugs that I was using, especially the benzo.

 

Matt Handy (00:45:38):
And alcohol.

 

Scott (00:45:40):
The benzos and the alcohol, that's the dangerous part. You feel like you're going to die off opiates, but you can actually die from detoxing off benzos and alcohol. And so I remember, and I still save it, I still have jailhouse notepad. I have this trunk at my house in my garage now that has all of the stuff from early recovery. So being in treatment, being in jail, all that stuff is in there. And it's a little jailhouse notepad where I was ticking off the hours that I was sober.

 

Matt Handy (00:46:10):
Hours, the hours.

 

Scott (00:46:12):
Counting. It was a minute by minute thing going through it when I hit that point of five days. And it being, it's still, it's circled. It's like exclamation point, underline, underline, underline. Because that was the longest sober I'd ever been in my entire life, sitting there in that jail cell five days.

 

Matt Handy (00:46:32):
And by this time, you're feeling a little better.

 

Scott (00:46:36):
I'm feeling a little bit better. And it's starting to like, okay, I thought I was fucked, and I pretty much was. But it was just being able to stare down that monster of detox was a David and Goliath battle, where it's like, okay, I got past that.

 

Matt Handy (00:46:57):
Awesome. Did you have to go to arraignment while you were sick?

 

Scott (00:46:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to go through the whole process, meeting with attorneys, channeled up all that shit.

 

Matt Handy (00:47:06):
Still stinking?

 

Scott (00:47:07):
Well, by then I'd been nudged towards taking a shower.

 

Matt Handy (00:47:13):
Okay.

 

Scott (00:47:14):
Okay. Nudged. Sorry. I was in the bunk and I'm just like, oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. And a dude comes up, takes off his sandal and starts banging on the metal, the frame of this bunk. And it was something like, hell man, we can't be bunkies. If you smell a goat. Get in there and fucking shower. We're going to have a problem. Okay. So that was the first shower in six weeks was that.

 

Matt Handy (00:47:43):
That's so funny.

 

Scott (00:47:46):
So after a couple of weeks, I still think, all right, I'm fucked. I'm going to prison for the rest of my life. I'm fucked. Yeah. I had no idea, no idea what the whole legal system was filed,

 

Matt Handy (00:47:56):
Which you got pretty close.

 

Scott (00:47:57):
I got pretty close. Yeah, it got really close. It was a long it 87 felony counts. It was two felonies for every one of those checks that I written. And it ended up being 40 of them, and then seven felonies for the car stuff, for the stolen stuff that was in the car. They scraped the residue out of all the paraphernalia to make a felony.

 

Matt Handy (00:48:14):
A gram.

 

Scott (00:48:15):
A felony possession charge, all of that stuff. And so at that point, I thought it was fucked. And then they basically played it out like that. When you're initially talking with the prosecutors, they play the game where they talk about, and it was the reality of it that district attorney had gotten elected on being harsh on identity theft. 2011, identity theft was the thing. That was the thing. And it's like, oh, fuck. And so it was that combined with everything else. They're like, no, we could send you to prison for 80 years. The prosecutor looks me dead in the eye and says that. I'm like, all right, well, my life's over.

 

Matt Handy (00:48:53):
So you guys meet with the prosecutor?

 

Scott (00:48:54):
It was basically, it was myself, my public defender and the

 

Matt Handy (00:48:59):
Prosecutor at a table?

 

Scott (00:49:00):
At a table.

 

Matt Handy (00:49:01):
So behind out of the courtroom? And you're shackled.

 

Scott (00:49:04):
Chained to the table.

 

Matt Handy (00:49:06):
And they're in suits.

 

Scott (00:49:10):
They're in suits.

 

Matt Handy (00:49:11):
And your dump truck of a public defenders going, I mean, I don't know what we can do.

 

Scott (00:49:16):
And there I'm in my ill fitting orange scrubs basically with its plunging neckline. It's one size fits all. And so really, it was after a couple of weeks

 

Matt Handy (00:49:31):
With no shoes.

 

Scott (00:49:32):
Yeah. Well, this is even before Crocs. Now they got the Crocs. Which I would've taken, these shit sliders. The Bob Barker sliders.

 

Matt Handy (00:49:41):
Yeah. Yeah. The clear plastic.

 

Scott (00:49:44):
Yeah. Yeah. And so after a couple of weeks when the fog starts to lift, I started becoming just the unofficial ambassador to all of the people that were coming in and going through withdraw. So I started using connections I made in there because I had no money, no money on the books at all, but I would trade things for, or I would gamble with people and then win candy bars and soups and shit like that. So I'm scraping up from nothing. And I would save a couple of these candy bars for people that were detoxing, and I would be the person that I'd bring them an extra blanket, give them a candy bar, sit and talk with them, spend time with them while they were going through that detox.

 

Matt Handy (00:50:29):
So you're doing the original Synanon theory?

 

Scott (00:50:35):
Pretty much, yeah. I just became, and it was like I stumbled upon service work while I was in there and helping another person that was going through the same thing that I had gone through.

 

Matt Handy (00:50:48):
And what were you getting out of it?

 

Scott (00:50:50):
Well, a lot of it was a way of dissociating, of not thinking about where I was and how screwed I was. And the other part of it, it was, that's what I originally went to school for. That was like when I was a teenager or late teens before drugs and alcohol really took a hold of me. Health and human services is what I always wanted to do. This was the path. And I'd noticed that from when I was a little kid. Listening to other people, helping other people is something I always wanted to do. And so it was basically, I was kind of subconsciously drifting back to my roots of what I wanted to do. And then cut to a couple of months later, the public defender starts bringing up the possibility of a deal of, okay, they're going to probably give you one chance here to go to a long-term treatment program and do that instead of going to prison. And then they educate me on what a deferred sentence is and everything, where it's basically, I got this hammer hanging over me of these felony counts, and they give me this laundry list of things that you can do. And then if you fuck up on any of these, the hammer comes smashing down, you get the felonies to go to prison. And so it's five years of probation, $37,000 of restitution, and then successfully completing this two year long therapeutic community.

 

(00:52:24):
At that point, I was like, all right, sign me up. Yeah, I'll do all this stuff. I'm like, please get me the fuck out of here. In talking with my public defender, I'm like, all right, I need a week. I need a week between here and going to jail or going to Stout Street so I can get my affairs in order. I have so much stuff going on here. I just got to prepare for this two year program. In reality, I didn't have shit going on.

 

Matt Handy (00:52:52):
Yeah. What was the, what do you think you were trying to do?

 

Scott (00:52:55):
I was trying to get high. I was trying to have that one that sweet, that fond farewell.

 

Matt Handy (00:53:00):
Yeah, the Bon Voyage.

 

Scott (00:53:01):
Yeah, Bon Voyage heroin. It's been great, but I'm just very grateful they did not let me do that.

 

Matt Handy (00:53:10):
They did the whole warm hand off. Oh, they're not so warm.

 

Scott (00:53:13):
Yeah, they did door to door. I mean, it was like I came into jail with the stinky clothes on my back, and it was put you back in them stinky clothes and ship you off to treatment, and it was just door to door. And so I get there and my hair is all long and I smell like a goat again.

 

Matt Handy (00:53:37):
Yeah. Do they shave your head when you get to Stout Street?

 

Scott (00:53:39):
Yeah, that was the first thing. So they had me do all the paperwork.

 

Matt Handy (00:53:44):
Wait, do you guys have barbers there too?

 

Scott (00:53:46):
No, I mean, it's just basically dude with clippers.

 

Matt Handy (00:53:49):
Okay. No, so in Delancey Street, which was in also the original Synanon called the Barber, they cut your hair. They actually cut your hair, but then that's also the guy that's in charge you, and you call him your barber through the whole program.

 

Scott (00:54:07):
That's interesting.

 

Matt Handy (00:54:09):
When they have to, there's a whole lingo behind it where it's like when they scold you, it's called Giving you a Shave. And there's the whole lingo around the barber.

 

Scott (00:54:17):
There's all these metaphors around being a barber. Well, there it would be like, it's just someone who's somewhat decent at cutting hair of like, Hey, there's a rented out pair of clippers. Can you try? They would have all kinds of crazy rules around it. And that was one of the rules that you had to be there a year to not have a haircut that was uniformly all the same length, so you could get a buzz cut, any kind of a fade. It was one of those just weird things, any kind of facial hair. So you had to be eight months in order to grow a mustache. And so everybody, it was like a rite of passage when you're there.

 

Matt Handy (00:54:53):
Did they measure the sideburns and all that

 

Scott (00:54:55):
And measure all that shit. And so they pair me up. So they had me go in and get my first decent meal in a while, and I was like, I'd stumbled upon Shangri-La. I was so grateful to not be in jail and have an actual real meal of food. It was crazy. And then I go get my head shaved and then dive in. Their orientation is 30 days.

 

Matt Handy (00:55:22):
That's it?

 

Scott (00:55:23):
Yeah, it's 30 days.

 

Matt Handy (00:55:25):
Okay. Well, because at Delany Street it's up to six months and it's literally scrubbing walls.

 

Scott (00:55:35):
Oh yeah. And you're like a second class citizen.

 

Matt Handy (00:55:37):
Very much so, they're not allowed, you're not allowed to talk to them. They could talk to you if they grace you with acknowledging you.

 

Scott (00:55:45):
It was that. It was, yeah. No, because Stout Street was based off of Delancey. Delancey influenced Stout Street.

 

Matt Handy (00:55:53):
He actually went to Delancey Street, and then cop, basically ripped the whole book.

 

Scott (00:55:58):
Ripped the whole book off, and then did it in Colorado. And so it was basically, its orientation is set to be 30 days, and you have to be able to memorize and take a test on this president handbook and recite back a bunch of shit on it in order to finish orientation.

 

Matt Handy (00:56:16):
And until then, it's the first step of the brainwashing.

 

Scott (00:56:18):
Oh, yeah. Well, until then, you can't touch a door knob, that was another one of 'em. Oh, if you touch that doorknob

 

Matt Handy (00:56:27):
And is that the whole, you got to have a buddy with you. That's why.

 

Scott (00:56:29):
Yeah, and you have to, well, because even still, if you're in orientation, you can't touch a doorknob and they're trying to program it of not walking out the door. So you have to be with somebody that's an actual resident.

 

Matt Handy (00:56:42):
It works so well too.

 

Scott (00:56:43):
It's like, fuck, I saw plenty of people touch that doorknob. Oh, dude, get out. Get the fuck out of there.

 

Matt Handy (00:56:50):
So at Delancey Street, it was like we were all there facing life, or I was 33 years, and we were all so scared that we were going to get kicked out. We all knew they kick people out here. They do not mess around.

 

Scott (00:57:04):
Oh, yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:05):
So we did not, it wasn't, don't touch doorknobs, but it was basically that level of we are so scared to get kicked out. We would not talk to anybody. When people would walk down the hall, we would avert our eyes and shit like that. It's crazy.

 

Scott (00:57:20):
Well, and those were, honestly, the smart ones were the ones that did that because the majority of the people there were facing prison, were facing these big consequences. But then you'd have 30, 40% of people that just walked in. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:35):
Really? Yeah. Just not knowing what it was.

 

Scott (00:57:37):
Well, it's like last resort. And especially back then, insurance didn't really cover treatment and there wasn't really an option. And then even still the big change today is that Medicaid, you have options nowadays. Now it's probably going to be changing here as things progress.

 

Matt Handy (00:58:01):
But they've been kind of saying that for a couple of years. Right?

 

Scott (00:58:05):
Well, yeah. If you don't have Medicaid even, and say you're disqualified for that because you're not doing the paperwork or you're not doing the checking the boxes, then your other option is buying a policy off the exchange. But if you're completely flat broke and you have no family, that are going to help you pay for that, then you're just completely uninsured. And that's where a program Delancey, like Stout Street, that was their bread and butter. So those people at 40% or whatever were all people that had just no insurance whatsoever, no options. And it's like, okay, I guess I'll do this. But yeah, it was the same kind of thing where it was just, you memorize this book, you stay in threes, you have to go with someone everywhere, and there's just a shit load of extra rules. And then this book was like 700 and some odd written rules.

 

Matt Handy (00:59:00):
Plus, then there's

 

Scott (00:59:02):
The unwritten rules, the ones that you just have to figure out by breaking. And then how, it was basically like a tab, this is the analogy I've used before, where it's like, alright, you're working six days a week or whatever, and you're building up a tab of consequences over the course of that six days, and they're stacking up. And then you have one day a week where you're not working, you have to pay that task by doing the consequences. Anything that's left over gets doubled for the next week. So it's like, and the most popular one, they had sayings where you walk through a door and then you say a motto type of a thing, and it's often embarrassing. I had one saying the whole time I was there, and it always started with, "Excuse me family". And then it ended with, "please help me" at the end. And then the middle part was just like fucking random weird shit.

 

(00:59:58):
That it was your peers that are holding you accountable. So when they would come up with something and write it on there as a suggestion for that, because a saying is a big old painting every time you walk through a doorframe and you don't even realize how many doorframes you walk through, and a huge ass building every day. So you'd be saying that thing 200 times a day, and I had him one time and it was, "excuse me, family, my program's stale. I'm in a rut, but I'm going to change. I'll tell you what, please help me". And I did that for a month.

 

Matt Handy (01:00:35):
So do you guys get hours?

 

Scott (01:00:37):
Yeah. So hours on the bench was the most common one.

 

Matt Handy (01:00:40):
Okay.

 

Scott (01:00:40):
And that's the one thing I still remember from that resident handbook of the memorize. So they would've you memorize each of the different, each of the

 

Matt Handy (01:00:48):
Descriptions?

 

Scott (01:00:49):
Yeah, each of the different therapeutic tools, they called them. And so the bench, a bench is a therapeutic tool used to help one reflect on past, present, and future behaviors. I don't remember any of the other ones, but that's the one that I still remember. And it was basically a church pew.

 

Matt Handy (01:01:06):
Yeah, hard.

 

Scott (01:01:08):
Hard wood church pew. Yes. That you would, and so it's like you walk down the hall with your shoe untied, that's three hours. You say a curse word is five hours.

 

Matt Handy (01:01:18):
Oh my gosh.

 

Scott (01:01:19):
It's like, God damn. Or there's so many different rules. And so it's aimed for even the most well behaved, motivated person is going to have 10 hours by the end of each week. And if you're fucking off and just rebelling against it, then it's like, you can get 30 hours on that thing.

 

Matt Handy (01:01:43):
So at what point do you get a contract?

 

Scott (01:01:45):
So it was anytime over 10 hours. So over 10 hours. And then at the work contract,

 

Matt Handy (01:01:52):
Is there a minimum contract?

 

Scott (01:01:56):
I think the minimum of it was a week.

 

Matt Handy (01:01:59):
Dude, it was, we had 30 days.

 

Scott (01:02:01):
Good God.

 

Matt Handy (01:02:01):
It was a 30 day contract, and you wore a sign around your neck and you stayed in the kitchen. You did the whole facility's dishes for all day. And then at night you had to scrub walls.

 

Scott (01:02:17):
That was basically, it was similar. They call it accumulation. So you had an accumulated badge. So that's what they would call it, a badge. There you get this red badge that has your name on it. And so if you have over 10 hours, then you go over to a badge until you can pay that tab off, which is oftentimes the next week. Or if you break a bigger rule, then they call it like a five and two. So it's five hours on the bench, two weeks of a work contract, or they had five and two, and I don't remember, 10 and four and all these other,

 

Matt Handy (01:02:54):
I think I've asked you this, but did they have scandals?

 

Scott (01:02:57):
Scandals?

 

Matt Handy (01:02:58):
Yeah.

 

Scott (01:02:59):
What?

 

Matt Handy (01:03:00):
Okay. So my first week, the night I got there, a scandal broke out and it was the front desk guy.

 

Scott (01:03:08):
So it was like drama, and then it just reverberates out?

 

Matt Handy (01:03:12):
And it always ends up where it's like when I got there, there was 64 people there. And it always ends up where it's like the scandal has an epicenter and everybody's contracted up. So when this person basically gets busted, they start telling on everybody.

 

Scott (01:03:30):
They would call those break offs.

 

Matt Handy (01:03:31):
Oh okay.

 

Scott (01:03:31):
And they would have that as a specific special thing that they would do where if you really fucked up, they would have you sit in a room and give you a blank piece of paper and you got to write down every person that you broke a rule with.

 

Matt Handy (01:03:46):
Yeah, it was debriefing.

 

Scott (01:03:48):
And then it would cascade out from there. So somebody was named on that, then they come in and then they write their list and they come in.

 

Matt Handy (01:03:55):
The council that did that to you, did that have a name?

 

Scott (01:03:58):
I don't even remember that.

 

Matt Handy (01:04:00):
I think it was staff that would initiate that. Yeah, so ours, there was a council that was in charge of doing that, and they were called the Vatican.

 

Scott (01:04:08):
The Vatican. It was a similar thing. And then that would be a cascading, like a cluster fuck, because the first six months I was there, I worked at a sawmill, so it was hard fucking work. And I did 10 hour days at least, not counting an hour, driving there, hour driving back, and I'd come back just to fucking sweaty and disgusting. And I'd see 10 people sitting on the bench there in the lobby, all writing a list and like, oh shit, it's going down. And that would happen regularly. You wouldn't even know. You break rules all the time without even thinking about it. And so then it would just be this reverberating, dominoes would go flying, and then all of a sudden half the house is on a work contract and on that work contract. Because basically what you would do is you'd still have your nine to five job, but then you'd have to be down on the floor at 5:00 AM and then you're scrubbing the floors. They do the whole floor. I think they got rid of this now where you do the floor with the toothbrush, because a lot of times people would just fuck off. I would do that too. I'd just pick a real prime spot where I could people watch. And then just slowly scrub.

 

Matt Handy (01:05:18):
Wow. Yeah. So we, it was, you're on the floor at four 30 if you're on a contract, but you lose your job too.

 

Scott (01:05:27):
Oh, really?

 

Matt Handy (01:05:28):
Yeah. And it was like people jockey for jobs

 

Scott (01:05:31):
And they wouldn't have you lose your job, so you'd just, you'd do it from five in the morning until you leave for your job, and then you act like a normal human over the course of the day.

 

Matt Handy (01:05:39):
Yeah, no.

 

Scott (01:05:39):
Then you come back, dive right back into it. Do that until bedtime.

 

Matt Handy (01:05:42):
If you're on a contract at Delancey Street, you cannot talk to anybody, so you can't go to your job. And so if it's a month contract, if you get, and everybody's, it's called passing. Was there passing, passing?

 

Scott (01:05:56):
I don't think so.

 

Matt Handy (01:05:56):
There was the four Ps, right? It was like you pull 'em up, you pass on 'em, you play the game in the room, and then you eat pizza together. It was like this whole thing.

 

Scott (01:06:07):
Is this where your love of pizza comes from?

 

Matt Handy (01:06:09):
No, that actually, no. I dunno. I actually didn't eat any of that pizza.

 

Scott (01:06:13):
Did it almost ruin pizza for you?

 

Matt Handy (01:06:15):
I didn't have to. So it was all donated.

 

Scott (01:06:18):
Oh yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:06:19):
So it was like, shit, pizza. And they would put it in the fridge for days. And then they would pull off the oldest one.

 

Scott (01:06:26):
Oh man. That donated food. Dude, that was so rough. I remember one time, so I was, because they would have you move pallets. Those big ass construction site ones that are like blue, that are just heavy as shit, they're like a hundred pounds each. And there would be a mountain of 'em in one corner of the parking lot. And it's like you're in the July sun and you got to move this mountain of pallets from this side of the parking lot to that part.

 

Matt Handy (01:06:53):
Totally arbitrary.

 

Scott (01:06:53):
Totally, totally. No fucking reason whatsoever. And it's just work for work's sake. And so I'm out there. I do that in the hot sun for six hours or something, and I'm just like fucking sweating bullets. And so I come into the kitchen, all they have in the fridge is milk. I'm like, all right, fuck it. So I grab a little,

 

Matt Handy (01:07:11):
Is it donated?

 

Scott (01:07:12):
Donated milk? Yeah. The little true moon.

 

Matt Handy (01:07:14):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And how often were they bad?

 

Scott (01:07:18):
Often. Often. And so I get to it, I'm just so thirsty. I just went out there sweating in the sun. I crack one open, just start pounding it, and then realized that it's sour halfway through it. And I remember I pulled it away from my mouth and there was a slime trail.

 

Matt Handy (01:07:34):
Ugh.

 

Scott (01:07:34):
It was that bad from my mouth to the carton.That scarred me for a while.

 

Matt Handy (01:07:42):
When we had milk donations, which was once a week, it would be somebody's job to smell it.

 

Scott (01:07:49):
It was still job. I wish we'd had that.

 

Matt Handy (01:07:53):
It was still days past the expiration date. And it would be like, okay, well this is probably, and they would try to arrange it so that you're pulling the ones that are going to go bad first. And it was like, oh yeah, this. And sometimes we get it. It was like the person who's running the donations, it's not a refrigerated truck. And they're driving all over LA County, which is massive. And they get the milk first, and it's underneath everything.

 

Scott (01:08:20):
It's baking in the sun, dude. So yeah, it was the same kind of thing. So it's like you have the work contracts. You'd have the hour. The longest I ever did was 17 hours in one sitting. So it's from five 30 in the morning till 10 30 at night, just sitting there on that church pew.

 

Matt Handy (01:08:39):
That is so funny. For our hours, you scrubbed it. There was no downtime. And if you had hours, you had an obligation to be on the floor before everybody else. So there was this whole, so I got a total, and I got my first hours. This was during Christmas mode. Everybody's out of the facility. They're all at Christmas tree lots and doing random stuff. And it's like me, my best friend at the time who's now passed away because he overdosed and I think one guy, one additional guy that was there at the front desk. And I'm like, okay, everybody's gone for hours. This is great. We had a full movie theater in it, a full screen set.

 

Scott (01:09:29):
Full screen movie theater.

 

Matt Handy (01:09:30):
And I'm like, I'm going to go down there and I'm going to watch Inception and everybody,

 

Scott (01:09:36):
It's a good movie. Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (01:09:37):
Yeah. No, it was Shutter Island.

 

Scott (01:09:41):
Oh, shutter Island.

 

Matt Handy (01:09:41):
It was Shutter Island.

 

Scott (01:09:42):
It's good movie too.

 

Matt Handy (01:09:44):
And Ryan goes, dude, don't do it. They're going to come back

 

Scott (01:09:48):
And then you'll be fucked

 

Matt Handy (01:09:49):
And you're going to get caught. And I was like, you know what? I ended up leaving January 7th. This was December 20th, somewhere right before Christmas. And I'm already like, you know what? I'm okay with that. I'm okay with getting in trouble at this point.

 

Scott (01:10:07):
You want to see that movie so bad.

 

Matt Handy (01:10:09):
I mean, dude, it was like I was working 16 hour days for, I worked 16 to, it was like 16, 17, 18 hour days for 67 days straight, straight, no weekends. And I was like, I would much rather do this than do what the fuck they're doing up there. So I was like, I just don't care at this point. I went down there and of course, the guy comes down and you've got to to go, to the ballroom, it is so far out of the way. So in my head I'm like, he's not going to come down here. Nobody's going to come down here. Nobody does come down here.

 

Scott (01:10:44):
I'm sure they did. Right?

 

Matt Handy (01:10:46):
And he comes down there and he flips the light on and he is like, huh, okay, okay. And I was like, oh fuck. Okay,

 

Scott (01:10:56):
Just the fear washes over you.

 

Matt Handy (01:10:57):
What do I do now? And then immediately it's like, dude, I have all this time over my head. Are they going to kick me out? And I'm like, do I finish watching the movie or not? And I'm like

 

Scott (01:11:07):
I'm sure it ruined the movie. It's like, how do you

 

Matt Handy (01:11:09):
Yeah, I was like, okay, I'm going to go back to work, so I won't go back to work. And everybody comes back, it's like eight o'clock at night. Christmas mode is they made 10 million dollars in 30 days just doing just much Christmas, Christmas trees and lights, Christmas trees, lights, decorating. They did the city's decoration for LA County. So we went into every skyscraper downtown and decorated it. But everybody comes back and immediately, Matt, to the bench, they send a gofer to find you, and it's like, Hey, you got to go to the bench.

 

Scott (01:11:48):
It's this whole protocol. I remember they would follow behind you.

 

Matt Handy (01:11:53):
With a radio.

 

Scott (01:11:53):
It was like, Scott is on the bench, all bench rules are in effect. Scott is on. And then you're just walking there, just like everybody's just staring at you.

 

Matt Handy (01:12:02):
It's like in the Green Mile dead man walking.

 

Scott (01:12:04):
Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Pretty much.

 

Matt Handy (01:12:07):
And so I got four hours. That was my only real violation, but I got four hours of everybody gets dishes, but you're really scrubbing walls and you are literally scrubbing walls. And if you take your eyes off the wall, you can get in trouble.

 

Scott (01:12:21):
Really?

 

Matt Handy (01:12:22):
And if you talk to anybody while you are on dishes, you get in trouble.

 

Scott (01:12:27):
Oh yeah. They have the same thing with the work contract. I mean, it almost feels like, because in ways, Stout Street was just a baby version of that in a lot of ways. I mean, it had its own weird, cuz now it's also, it's like, alright, I've been working in treatment for 15 years, over 10 years now on this. And it's like knowing what actual treatment is versus that I could sit here and riff with you on it and it'd be like, oh yeah, that's normal. Any other person listening to this be like, what in the fuck? So that's going to rehab? And it's like, all right, no, that's not going to rehab.

 

Matt Handy (01:13:03):
Right? Yeah. This is a specific thing.

 

Scott (01:13:06):
Such a weird little niche of treatment that's out there that a lot of people don't even know is a thing. And I mean, it's still, Stout Street is still there. And they've changed a bit since then. They've softened in certain areas, they've removed certain parts of this. I had heard they don't let you do more than 12 hours sitting on the bench and one sitting now

 

Matt Handy (01:13:29):
They got with the science.

 

Scott (01:13:30):
Yeah. Well, that place is, those types of programs are all about that loyalty that, all right, I'm sober today. It worked for me, so I have a duty to do this same shit for other people. And it's like, no, it doesn't really fucking work that way. And then especially now that understand trauma and understand that the person that has been beaten or neglected or yelled at, are they actually going to respond to being yelled at by someone?

 

Matt Handy (01:14:07):
In a good way?

 

Scott (01:14:08):
In a good way? No, they'll disassociate.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:10):
Yeah.

 

Scott (01:14:11):
And they're great at that. They don't get shit from getting yelled at. If anything, it just makes things worse.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:16):
You guys had games, right?

 

Scott (01:14:18):
Yeah, we had games.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:19):
So yeah, those situations are terrible for people like that.

 

Scott (01:14:21):
Oh yeah. And it's the same kind of shit. It's just like, it's just sitting in a room and having a group of people yell at you.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:27):
And make shit up about you.

 

Scott (01:14:28):
Oh yeah. Make shit up. Just saying the most horrible things that they can imagine. Oftentimes laughing, like their buddies. They're sitting there and just trying to think of the most, what's the most horrible things I could say to this person?

 

Matt Handy (01:14:38):
Yeah. And we called it something. Oh, it was playing the game.

 

Scott (01:14:42):
Yeah, it was playing the game.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:44):
People had strategies for playing the game, and it was like, I'm literally going to make shit up. And then of course, after the games are over, the Vatican will pull you in to talk to you about what was said.

 

Scott (01:14:56):
Wow.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:57):
As if you did it. And it's like, no, no, no, no. And then they pit people against each other. It turns into crazy, dude. It was insane.

 

Scott (01:15:06):
It is so crazy because now thinking back on it, first off, I'm grateful that I was given an opportunity.

 

Matt Handy (01:15:14):
For sure.

 

Scott (01:15:16):
Like alright, because the judge, so the judge when he was sentencing, so he's like, and this is just burned into my head. So Stout Street had been around since 1976, and he's like, I've been sitting on this bench for over 30 years and

 

Matt Handy (01:15:34):
They said the same thing to me.

 

Scott (01:15:34):
I've sent hundreds of people to the Stout Street Foundation program before. Not one of them have ever successfully completed.

 

Matt Handy (01:15:41):
They told me the same shit.

 

Scott (01:15:42):
Yeah, good luck to you, sir. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:15:44):
When I told my public defender, so this is what happened, I had a friend who had killed two people and went to Delancey Street and got out of a life sentence and I ended up locked up with him. He was locked up again. And he always told me, if your back's ever up against the wall really in a serious way, you can go to Delancey Street. And I never had a court ordered program because my first time going to jail, I got work furlough. It was a year of work, furlough.

 

Scott (01:16:20):
Work release.

 

Matt Handy (01:16:21):
Well, you live at a facility and you work, and then there's a bunch of oversight and stuff. I get to the, my dad drives me an hour to the facility, and I remember giving him a hug and telling him I'll talk to him on the weekend or something. I get there, I'm filling out the paperwork and I'm looking at what's going on. It's like people are just free to go. There's somebody that I used to buy drugs from that lives three blocks away. I'm watching all this and I'm going, I literally was like, you know what? I can do a year of this, or I can do three years, three months in jail.

 

Scott (01:16:57):
Might as welI just do three months.

 

Matt Handy (01:16:58):
I'm just going to go do three months in jail. And I told the lady at the front desk, Hey, can you have the cops come pick me up? And they direct line to the sheriff's office. Yeah. She was like, okay, just go sit over there. And it's like this cop walks in and he's like, are you the one that's going? I was like, yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm going.

 

Scott (01:17:19):
Just do three months of that. What was the thought behind that? Was it, I'm going to get myself in trouble here.

 

Matt Handy (01:17:24):
Yeah. Oh, I was fully aware. So at the time, I'm 18 years old and I was still in that place where it's like I still wanted the appearance of not being a total fuckup to my dad.

 

Scott (01:17:43):
So still just a lot of fear.

 

Matt Handy (01:17:44):
Yeah. Yeah. And I thought that also hadn't accepted that I was an addict. Also wanted to hide a lot of things from my parents still. And so I figured that this would be the path of least resistance. And so

 

Scott (01:18:02):
Get it out of the way.

 

Matt Handy (01:18:03):
Get it out of the way, and then just go back. It's like the going into treatment. I'm going to go to treatment for 28 days and come out a different person.

 

Scott (01:18:10):
Come out a different man. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, all right,

 

Matt Handy (01:18:13):
Little did I know I would go to jail in San Diego County and come out with 10 times more connects, way more of a habit. And it was like,

 

Scott (01:18:25):
It's amazing that community in jail, because I felt that I was in there for four months when I was going to treatment. And you go out there with all these numbers and connects and friendships and it's like, yeah, we're going to keep in touch, man. And I didn't talk to, thankfully, I didn't talk to any one of 'em ever again.

 

Matt Handy (01:18:43):
I can't say that.

 

Scott (01:18:45):
Well, I think if I had then I wouldn't be where I'm today.

 

Matt Handy (01:18:47):
Maybe. Maybe. But I'm here. Right.

 

Scott (01:18:50):
It's true.

 

Matt Handy (01:18:50):
So maybe you would be.

 

Scott (01:18:51):
It's true. Well, it's also, it's like maybe I'd be where I am today, but it would be 10 years from now. That temptation was strong. It's not a lockdown facility. It's not like the doors are open at

 

Matt Handy (01:19:06):
Stout Street?

 

Scott (01:19:07):
The doors are open the whole fucking time. And then what complicated it, so I was sentenced there, but they had a mix up in the paperwork where they said 30 days. So they said successfully complete 30 days of the Stout Street Foundation program instead of successfully complete the Stout Street Foundation program, which was an administrative fuck up on their end. And so I'm in there a couple of months and my probation officer tells me that it's like, according to this, you only have to be there for 30 days. So if you don't want to be there, don't be there. And it's like,

 

Matt Handy (01:19:41):
So I actually have a story about this.

 

Scott (01:19:43):
Well, that was the hard part. And that's where I first started playing the tape of, alright, if I do leave, what will that mean?

 

Matt Handy (01:19:54):
You decided to stay?

 

Scott (01:19:55):
I decided to stay and finish the whole thing. It was like, what am I going to do? Alright? The only person that would take me in would be my dad. And it's like, I've been there, the Mickey forties, flopped down mattress in the unfinished basement. I could go back to that. And my fear of going back to the place outweighed the discomfort of staying.

 

Matt Handy (01:20:17):
Wow.

 

Scott (01:20:18):
And so I stayed.

 

Matt Handy (01:20:19):
It's actually saying a lot, knowing what goes on there. That's a lot. Yeah. It's crazy. I found out, well, I didn't find out, but when this was a big case, bank robbery, all this stuff going on, and they were like, so I made sure that I was reading what the language of the deal was. And the deal actually said three years at a long-term residential. It didn't say three years at Delancey Street.

 

Scott (01:20:44):
At a specific one. So it was like, all right, do I actually got to stay here?

 

Matt Handy (01:20:48):
Well, this is what happened. My daughter was born on July 4th. I got there June, I got there June 12th. My daughter was born July 4th. And they didn't even tell me. And then I was getting letters from my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife. And she was sending me pictures of my daughter, and they would not give, they wouldn't even tell me I was getting them.

 

Scott (01:21:12):
This is at Delancey?

 

Matt Handy (01:21:13):
Because I didn't qualify to have mail. You can't get mail until you're there for 18 months. And my buddy at the front desk who I still talk to,

 

Scott (01:21:22):
Even for your kid being born?

 

Matt Handy (01:21:24):
Nothing.

 

Scott (01:21:24):
That's nuts.

 

Matt Handy (01:21:25):
Nothing. And I mean, think about it, like we don't want him leave.

 

Scott (01:21:30):
You don't want to leave. But it's also, it's like you got to know your kid was born soon. What's going on here?

 

Matt Handy (01:21:36):
And so my buddy was giving me the mail, risking his program. He had 12 years over his head or something.

 

Scott (01:21:42):
He was

 

Matt Handy (01:21:42):
Risking his program to give me the letters.

 

Scott (01:21:45):
That's the right thing to do. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:21:46):
Yeah. I mean, at that point it's like you're evaluating, am I still a human or am I like,

 

Scott (01:21:52):
Well, it's also, it's like, all right, because I understand, all right, you don't want the letter, they don't want you to have the letters because it'll make you homesick and make you want to leave. But it's also, it's like, you know, got a daughter coming and the lack of updates is motivation.

 

Matt Handy (01:22:06):
For sure.

 

Scott (01:22:07):
For sure.

 

Matt Handy (01:22:07):
So my buddy's giving me these. He gives me this card with, it was a Christmas card with the pictures. And when I got caught in the movie theater, I was down there thinking really weighing the options. I was like, okay, it doesn't actually say Delancey Street.

 

Scott (01:22:29):
You could go get transferred to another spot.

 

Matt Handy (01:22:31):
Go find somewhere else to go. And it was just like a culmination of things. But I made that decision because at Delancey Street, if you go outside of the front door without permission, it's a walkout. Even if you're not leaving, you walk out, you just go outside. If you go outside, you walked out and you have to restart.

 

Scott (01:22:52):
They do the same thing. They do the same thing where they call it a split T.

 

Matt Handy (01:22:56):
A split T, yeah. And Ryan was there with me, and I just had this long conversation with him where it's like, I'm weighing my options right now. Delancey Street was so bad. I was like, I'd rather take my chances and maybe end up in prison than stay here. But I had it in my head, I'm like, I'm going to do this right, but I'm going to go back to San Diego and find somewhere to finish this. I mean, because I was there for I think seven months total, because I got there in June. I got there the middle of June, and I left January 7th. So yeah, seven months. And I had already progressed out of the first stage and into the second stage. So I was allowed to talk to people now. But I remember making these decisions, I was so brainwashed by then making these decisions, I felt so crazy leaving.

 

Scott (01:23:56):
Yeah, it's hard. Yeah. It becomes almost like a place of safety.

 

Matt Handy (01:24:01):
It does. It does.

 

Scott (01:24:02):
It's familiar. It's like Brooks from Shawshank Redemption.

 

Matt Handy (01:24:06):
Yeah. He fucking hung himself.

 

Scott (01:24:10):
And it's like, that's comfort. Because the program had 120, 140 people there at any given time.

 

Matt Handy (01:24:16):
Okay. It was big.

 

Scott (01:24:17):
And they had this roster where it was basically, whoever's been there the longest is number one. Of course, brand spanking new is number 140. And you'd watch yourself slowly move up this ranking. And it was impossible not to equate my worth as a human being is where I am on this list. And you're slowly over the course of a freaking a year and a, because 18 months there in residential, and then six months of doing their step down sober living.

 

Matt Handy (01:24:44):
Man, that's so crazy.

 

Scott (01:24:46):
And so then it's like 18 months, you're slowly watching your number go up, then go up, and you finally make it to that place where you're at the top of the list and you move on to sober living.

 

Matt Handy (01:24:58):
Wait, you made it to number one at one point.

 

Scott (01:25:00):
Yeah. You make it to number one.

 

Matt Handy (01:25:01):
That is so crazy.

 

Scott (01:25:01):
And then it's like, alright, that's usually within a week of like, alright, you're moving on to sober living. Look at the next phase.

 

Matt Handy (01:25:08):
Oh wow.

 

Scott (01:25:09):
And then you complete that. You go out into the workforce, into the real life. You're actually getting to keep the money that you get from your job at that point. You still got to do all kinds of shit, but it's different. And that was like re-acclimating to society. After that, you become the king of this weird little island, and then all of a sudden you're riding a public bus and nobody gives a shit that you just finished a long-term treatment program. And so you'd see that so often with people where it's like they keep coming back to volunteer and spend time

 

Matt Handy (01:25:50):
That's funny.

 

Scott (01:25:51):
At the program because their ego is like, alright, I'm a big deal here. I'm not shit when I'm riding that public bus. But here I'm a big deal.

 

Matt Handy (01:25:58):
I went to the Winter symposium and I met three people that were graduates and working at Stout Street, and it was so funny hearing them talk. And I was like, okay, I remember this.

 

Scott (01:26:11):
And that was the realization I had. They offered me a job at the end, and it's like, I got to get the fuck out of here and start living a different life. And I saw that pattern with other people where they'd be five years sober and they're still coming there to yell at people.

 

Matt Handy (01:26:30):
You know what's crazy?

 

Scott (01:26:30):
And it's like, okay.

 

Matt Handy (01:26:31):
At Delancey Street it's a minimum. There is no maximum.

 

(01:26:35):
So you never hit the top because the guy that was running the facility had been there for 11 years.

 

Scott (01:26:41):
That's crazy.

 

Matt Handy (01:26:42):
And then he actually, they were doing, there was an exchange program where you could go to other, because there's nine facilities in the United States, and they have exchange programs where you can go to other facilities. And at headquarters in San Francisco, the people who are actually running the program have been in the program for 40 plus years.

 

Scott (01:27:01):
That's nuts.

 

Matt Handy (01:27:02):
So there is no, yeah, if you come in in 2021, you're never going to be number one. And there is a leaderboard where everybody is fully aware of.

 

Scott (01:27:16):
Yeah, that's your ranking.

 

Matt Handy (01:27:17):
Yeah, everybody's fully aware of, but it's also, they do it across the organization too. So you see that it's like

 

Scott (01:27:24):
All nine locations, where am I sitting?

 

Matt Handy (01:27:27):
And it's like, you see the first 200 names on there. It's like they've all been there for 10 plus years.

 

Scott (01:27:35):
Yeah, that's nuts. No, because there, it's like you finish, you finish after, so it's two years minimum. So if you really fuck up at sober living, or they used to have it as a thing where even if you didn't check these certain boxes, you couldn't go on to the sober living part of it. I can't remember what they call it. Aftercare. And so they used to say, and they would always say two to three year program, but in reality for 95% it's two years, you really got to fuck up bad.

 

Matt Handy (01:28:08):
So they don't have a recommitment process?

 

Scott (01:28:11):
They do. So it's like if you relapse, if you use again.

 

Matt Handy (01:28:15):
Oh, that's it.

 

Scott (01:28:17):
Well, it's that. And then I don't even remember. I think if somebody was really struggling or they get fired from their job in sober living and they're not able to make rent or something, then they can bring 'em back.

 

Matt Handy (01:28:30):
Do they own the place that you guys go to?

 

Scott (01:28:32):
Yeah. Yeah. So they own this. It was this big house. It's off of Vine. Vine and Colfax in east Denver. So it's like you're lumped into the shit. I remember my first day there

 

Matt Handy (01:28:44):
Vine and Colfax.

 

Scott (01:28:46):
Vine and Colfax. It's right by the Lion's Lair, East High School Congress Park.

 

Matt Handy (01:28:52):
That's not the greatest area, right?

 

Scott (01:28:54):
No. Yeah. I mean it's not horrible. The farther east you go, the shitier, it gets, but it's not. And my first night there, I get there and then just walking down the street, you feel like

 

Matt Handy (01:29:11):
By yourself?

 

Scott (01:29:11):
By yourself. You're like, fuck, I'm going to get tackled here. Anyway, it is so ingrained into you, to be out and about in society is a massive breaking of the rules. And it took a while to shake that. So I'm walking, there's a Walgreens two blocks down the street, and I was going to go get a soda for my first free soda. And I come around the corner and there's a homeless dude just peeing onto Colfax, not onto the corner, behind a dumpster, just straight out

 

Matt Handy (01:29:39):
Straight onto the street.

 

Scott (01:29:40):
Into traffic. And that was like, okay, here I am. That was my welcome to the sober living, the aftercare house.

 

Matt Handy (01:29:49):
Dude. When I left the Delancey Street, there was a three day period where I was trying desperate, the first thing I did called my PO and my PO at the time., this is where everybody from Compton goes to probation. So I was like this,

 

Scott (01:30:08):
It's pretty hardcore

 

Matt Handy (01:30:09):
Anomaly for this person. It's like you're at Delancey Street?

 

Scott (01:30:12):
Yeah. You were his favorite person though.

 

Matt Handy (01:30:14):
It was a woman. And she was, through our conversation, she was like, wow. And I'm going every month and this is the only person outside of Delancey Street that I can talk to. That's it.

 

Scott (01:30:31):
And then did she say, what in the fuck?

 

Matt Handy (01:30:34):
Yeah. And I'm trying to explain to her, I'm like, dude, I don't know what's going on here.

 

Scott (01:30:37):
It becomes a society. It's like, it's its own little ecosystem

 

Matt Handy (01:30:41):
For sure.

 

Scott (01:30:42):
It's its own higher

 

Matt Handy (01:30:43):
And self and self-sustaining,

 

Scott (01:30:44):
You have these different positions of structure

 

Matt Handy (01:30:48):
Yeah. And there are positions of power, and that power is attainable by anybody. And so there's currency involved and

 

Scott (01:30:58):
It's its own little society.

 

Matt Handy (01:30:59):
It is, it is. And look, when you're in the shit, it's hard to see the forest through the trees. When you're out of it. You're like, what did I just experience? So when I left, there was three days where I was trying to, I was making calls down to San Diego, trying to get into programs. Nobody offered the amount of time I needed 26 more months in a program. So nobody could do that long. No. And so there are other really long-term programs in LA County, so I'm floating around. So I ended up sleeping in one of the moving trucks at Delancey Street because there's moving blankets in there. And it's January, it's cold, and people don't realize it. In southern California, it gets cold. It's semi desert and desert in some places. t's cold. So I'm sleeping in the back of the Delancey Street moving truck, hoping I don't get caught. And then one of the people there had a cell phone. So I would call him and he would sneak me in because he had night duty at the front desk. He would sneak me down into the ballroom and let me sleep in there. And finally I got the call that a program in San Diego was willing to make an exception and do this special thing for me.

 

Scott (01:32:19):
And that you stay longer than they would've usually?

 

Matt Handy (01:32:20):
Yes. But there was stipulations and things had to be done. And then I ended up, this is how I got into working in treatment was, I ended up becoming staff there. And it was this whole process and it was a faith-based program and you know, me and my relationship with the religion. And it's like I

 

Scott (01:32:42):
Was it as nutty of a community?

 

Matt Handy (01:32:46):
No. No, no, no.

 

Scott (01:32:48):
So it was a good move.

 

Matt Handy (01:32:49):
It was a great move. I then got to spend the weekends with my family, with my daughter and my girlfriend.

 

Scott (01:32:55):
That's beautiful.

 

Matt Handy (01:32:56):
And I was put in charge of one of the only moneymaking machines at the program. So we were cutting fire line and doing fire mitigation.

 

Scott (01:33:05):
Cool.

 

Matt Handy (01:33:06):
And so I was like, I loved it. I was super successful at that.

 

Scott (01:33:10):
So that was a seminal moment for you?

 

Matt Handy (01:33:12):
Very, very pivotal. And not just the direction that I was going to go for the rest of my life, but pivotal in that I finally could see a light at the end of the tunnel of this very, because at the time, my first day at Delancey Street, it's like I have to do three years of this and then in an additional three years of probation, and I still have all this time. And for my deal, I took two strikes. Two strikes were mine, and they were holding a strike in 10 years over my head. And they said, the judge said, we're going to give you this chance to straighten your life up. You've never had a court mandated program. We're going to give you this chance to save your life, but if you don't,

 

Scott (01:33:55):
Yeah, you're fucked.

 

Matt Handy (01:33:57):
We're going to give you this 10, you're taking that on the chin, but we're going to give you your third strike and we're going to try to give you 25 to life.

 

Scott (01:34:03):
Oh my God.

 

Matt Handy (01:34:04):
And I was like,

 

Scott (01:34:05):
Wow,

 

Matt Handy (01:34:05):
Dude. So when I was at Delancey Street, I was walking on eggshell.

 

Scott (01:34:09):
You had high stakes,

 

Matt Handy (01:34:10):
Dude,

 

Scott (01:34:10):
Your life was depending.

 

Matt Handy (01:34:11):
So when I took that chance with leaving, I made sure, and I told my probation officer, I already had all this time to do at Delancey Street anyway, I was like, I've only been here for six months, seven months, six and a half months, something like that. I was like, listen, I will go back right now. I'm literally at the corner. I'll go back right now if you tell me to go back or I will find another program to satisfy the obligations. And she was like, after these months of talking with her and really getting to realize, oh, this isn't the best place for this kid probably, and I'm not a kid, but this probably isn't the best place. She was like, if you are not in a program in the next X amount of time, go back to Delancey Street.

 

Scott (01:34:57):
She was able to work with you

 

Matt Handy (01:34:58):
Yeah. And so when I get to San Diego, I still have to check into probation though. So I had to work all this out with the program and it all ended up working out for the best.

 

Scott (01:35:10):
That sounds like good. That sounds like it.

 

Matt Handy (01:35:10):
Took a big chance leaving that place.

 

Scott (01:35:12):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, because even still Delancey sounds like I'll talk with people, I don't talk about Stout Street very often.

 

Matt Handy (01:35:23):
Really?

 

Scott (01:35:23):
Not that often. And I talk about it with my girlfriend and she's a psychologist and she's like, what in the fuck is this with? And she gets pissed off on my behalf because I went through that. For me, I'm fully accepting of it and I'm grateful for it because it ended up leading to so much good in my life. But then that's been the other part of realizing of like, oh yeah, it's kind of fucked up.

 

Matt Handy (01:35:49):
Yeah. My wife and I'll talk about it still. And she's like, that is because they're making handover fists, tons of money that's tax free and they're plugged in politically. Yeah.

 

Scott (01:36:01):
I mean Stout is not like that. They're hand to mouth.

 

Matt Handy (01:36:05):
Oh no, dude, this place has got money.

 

Scott (01:36:06):
I know the place is scraping by. And I mean, I ended up being a part of the president of the Alumni association afterwards and then being on their board of directors for a period of time. So I got involved to try and help precipitate change and stuff there. But then ultimately life took me in another direction. And everything else was, being on a board can be a big pain in the ass sometimes.

 

Matt Handy (01:36:33):
It sounds like it.

 

Scott (01:36:34):
It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. But

 

Matt Handy (01:36:37):
So you go to Stout Street and you make all these changes in your life and there's a level of, you understand that you have to get involved in service way early on, but then where does that actually,

 

Scott (01:36:51):
Yeah. A lot of that change happened there. And basically it's breaking my leg in treatment saved my life.

 

Matt Handy (01:37:03):
Really?

 

Scott (01:37:03):
So I'll put it that way. Put that little hook out there. And so how it worked out, looks, it's like breaking my leg in treatment led me directly to where I'm today.

 

Matt Handy (01:37:16):
Okay.

 

(01:37:17):
Where, so I am.

 

Matt Handy (01:37:19):
How'd you break your leg?

 

Scott (01:37:21):
So basically, well, I'll do a little bit before that. So I'm working at this sawmill and I fucking hated it. It was 12 hour days in the hot sun in this tin sheet metal factory that is freezing in the winter and 115 in the summer. And I'm working this radial arm saw. And so sweating bullets while being in a cloud of sawdust, you just get this wood paste that sticks. I'd blow my nose at the end of the day and it's just all wood that would come out. And it was just miserable, miserable work, really physically demanding. And so all the while they have, they're basically like Ritz, I can't remember what the name, Memos, I think is what they called 'em there, but it's like this piece of paper that you write on and you make requests to the staff. And I was doing it, and you could do one a week, and I would do it every single week for that six months of, like I want a job transfer, I want a job transfer. I still had a valid driver's license as college educated.

 

Matt Handy (01:38:28):
So you could change jobs in any time?

 

Scott (01:38:29):
You could change jobs,

 

Matt Handy (01:38:30):
Dude at Delancey Street, you get call offs and they only happen quarterly and you're stuck with the job for sure for that quarter. But it is a rare thing when you get to change your job at the end of that quarter too.

 

Scott (01:38:45):
There they would like every now and then listen to you. And oftentimes it was just where were you needed. And they didn't listen to me for six months. And eventually it ends up coming through that, all right, we're going to make you a driver. Nice. I was like, fuck yeah. Then at least I'm out on the road. I got the radio and I'm just taking people to and from job sites and ended up having its own hard time. Those were long days. I would do these 18 hour days,

 

Matt Handy (01:39:14):
Were you doing deliveries and donations and stuff like that.

 

Scott (01:39:16):
So you're picking up donations and stuff. You're driving people to medical appointments, you're taking 'em to job sites and stuff. And so I make this shift over to that role. And then four days after that, so they have Argus, which was concert security. It's still around. I'll see, I go to concerts all the time now. I'll still see Argus there. But it was the concert cleanup part. It's like I remember even thinking it, because at that point I'm, I think that was three, four months before I got in there, plus six months, something like 10 months. And even still, it's like this feels sketchy. It was basically at Fiddler's Green, which is a big outdoor amphitheater in Denver. And it was doing concert cleanup for a Snoop Dogg concert. And it was like that year that he was Snoop Lyon, you remember that?

 

Matt Handy (01:40:07):
Oh no. Yeah.

 

Scott (01:40:07):
Where he was all reggae and everything. And it's basically, you go through, you have a group of people you go through and you rake up all the garbage, throw all that shit away, and then you leaf blow everything. And then you hose everything down with a big ass fire hose and you start at midnight. So it's when everybody is cleared out, then you get in there and you're doing cleanup. And so I threw away just pounds of weed. And I was, at that point, I was committed to recovery, so it didn't fuck with me too bad. But there was people I was with and it was really triggering. They ended up getting rid of that contract later on.

 

Matt Handy (01:40:41):
Makes sense.

 

Scott (01:40:44):
So Fiddler's Green, they call it that because it's got these green lawns for general admission that are throughout the whole venue, not just in the front, but in the middle and the back. And so I'm hosing everything down with it, and then I go up and shut off this fire hose and I'm walking back down and I start slipping. And instead of just eating it onto my ass, which I should have done, I tried to ride it out, so skater style, left forward, left foot forward, and I make it about 10 feet. And then there's an overgrowth with a divot in there, and my foot gets stuck and then the rest of my body keeps going and it breaks my leg in two places. Well, two places, like both bones just clean right across. And so the only job they could give me at that point was overnight. They called it night monitor there. And so it's just glorified overnight security. You're just making sure shit doesn't go down. And so, here I am wanting this driving job for six months, and then four days later I'm doing night monitor with a broken leg laid up. I was in a wheelchair for a while it was a bad break, they had to reset it and everything.

 

Matt Handy (01:41:58):
Did they give you medication?

 

Scott (01:42:00):
They offered it, but I said no.

 

Matt Handy (01:42:01):
Good.

 

Scott (01:42:02):
Yeah. I mean that was, I was even offered opiates in jail. There was a guy there with football injuries and they gave him stuff for pain and he offered to sell me some of his pills and it fucked with me. My instinct was like, no, no, no, no. Because at that point, my relationship with substances, I was so afraid of opiates of ever going back to that place again. But I still had this idea rumbling in my head of, okay, alcohol.

 

Matt Handy (01:42:36):
Dude.

 

Scott (01:42:36):
I can control that. I control weed. And so it was basically this misconception around what a substance use disorder actually is.

 

Matt Handy (01:42:47):
Yeah, well, at that point you had no idea.

 

Scott (01:42:48):
I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I hadn't gotten any counseling or therapy or anything at all. But at that point I was motivated for no opiates ever. And so break my leg. I'm working as night monitor and two stories with it, so for one, I'm doing the security thing with it. I'm going through the back of this big ass, they have this big open field kind of that's behind it. And that was part of Night Monitor's job you go through with a flashlight, make sure there aren't any raccoons breaking into anything or anything, or homeless people that jump the fence or something like that.

 

(01:43:27):
And I'm rolling through and it's a summer night and this cool breeze kind of comes through and I look up and I see the stars and I just feel this warmth that's calm kind of wash over me. And then the next thought after that was like, well, on paper, my life sucks. None of my family want anything to do with me. I'm thousands of dollars in debt. I have these felonies hanging over me. I'm in a two year long treatment program, but how am I happy? And then it's like, well, maybe it has something to do with this whole sobriety thing. Maybe it has something to do with this recovery thing. Where at that point, five days was as long as I ever made it. And so every day, which continues to this day, every single day I wake up and I work a program and I do what I need to do. It's a personal record every single day for my recovery. And at that point, again, it was like nine months, 10 months, something like that. And it's by far the longest I'd ever been sober for. And it was that thought of maybe it's not just sobriety, it's setting a goal and following through with it.

 

(01:44:34):
It's committing to a process. So then I started asking myself, it's like, what do I have to gain versus what do I have to lose?

 

Matt Handy (01:44:43):
Oh yeah.

 

Scott (01:44:43):
If I use again. And it's like I don't have very much to gain, like disassociating feeling high for a minute? It's like, okay, what do I have to lose my life? Everything. And so then that's really where motivation started to come in. And I started questioning, should I drink again? Should I smoke weed again? And that's really where I started wanting sobriety and recovery instead of being forced, where up until that point, fear was my big motivator. So fear of going back to opiates, but then also fear of felonies, fear of prison, shame, guilt. That was my motivator. That was the coal in the engine room up until that point. And then it started changing over to recovery. So anyway, it's like I'm working as night monitor, like I was saying, I mean, breaking my leg led to where I'm today where working as night monitor, that means they pulled me off being a driver. And then wouldn't you know it, so they have the head orientation coordinator where it's the person that oversees that first 30 days. And they ended up giving that job to me because I was already on site. I wasn't in an offsite thing and I was laid up with my leg broken.

 

Matt Handy (01:46:03):
They couldn't utilize you outside of the field.

 

Scott (01:46:05):
They couldn't utilize me outside, but it was a better use for me to do that than to be overnight security. And so they have me change over to be in the head OT coordinator, and I just fucking excelled at it. I ran with that and it was basically a blown up version of what I was doing with that guy in the jail cell. Where I was helping the people that were brand new in the program and helping them stabilize. And then the next thing, I did that for probably another six, eight months, something like that. And then a position to open up in their admissions and outreach department, wgere the people that are answering the phone and they approach me with like, Hey, do you want to do admissions? And like, fuck yeah, let's do it. And so dove into that. And then the people and the connections that I made there doing admissions, by the time you're finishing the program, you're figuring out, all right, what kind of a nine to 5:00 AM I going to do? You have to have a job. You have to be able to save up X amount of money to complete the program. And a guy I was working with in there was Austin Eubanks and, and it probably sounds familiar, because I think you show a video in your training course. He was the

 

Matt Handy (01:47:17):
Oh, yeah.

 

Scott (01:47:17):
Yeah. So he's the injured survivor of Columbine. So he was shot three times in the library in Columbine. And then that kind of led to his journey of recovery. And so I was working with him in the outreach and admissions department. We knew each other. He ended up getting yanked out of it by the courts. He had his own legal stuff and he got yanked out by the courts and ended up getting put into halfway house instead. But while he was working at a halfway house, he got a job working at a sober living IOP program in downtown Denver.

 

(01:47:47):
And so I'm there trying to figure out what I'm going to do next, reach out to him and he's like, oh, hey, their overnight tech just ended up getting fired. If you want, you can apply for it. And I'm the main hiring manager. I'll hire you in a minute. I'm like, alright. So I ended up reaching out to him and then taking on that job. I mean, because it was basically, it was this fork in the road where it's like, alright, I either go back into advertising and layout and make great money right now, or I start doing what I've always wanted to do and make way less money, but have something that I feel good about. And I am grateful every day that I ended up going the right way, going this path because I ended up coming on as an overnight tech there and then ended up advancing to the case manager and then facility manager. And then the owner of the program ended up deciding, I don't want to do this work. She was not suited for it. She was super whimsical Canadian hippie. And she's like, I want to start an anti-aging clinic in Puerto Rico. So she left her Colorado life behind to go start a mud bath and Botox clinic.

 

Matt Handy (01:48:58):
Did that ever take off?

 

Scott (01:48:59):
I don't think so. I mean, well, at least I think she was just fucking around on the beach. That's really what it was. But she basically gifts this program to us, like me and Austin and our little group where it's like, you guys can do whatever you want with this. And so we ended up rebranding it and tweaking the name a little bit, adding a new website, changing the curriculum.

 

Matt Handy (01:49:18):
Wait she gave you the house and everything?

 

Scott (01:49:20):
She basically said, pay me X amount of money per month for rent, and then you guys do whatever you want with the business. So she basically just had us as unofficial operator or an operating agreement on this treatment program. And I'm like technically still in treatment myself. I'm in the sober living and then managing a sober living that's like a separate company.

 

Matt Handy (01:49:43):
That's so funny.

 

Scott (01:49:44):
And so we ended up changing the curriculum, hiring on staff and changing the whole business model of it. And it turned around and then she ended up coming back and selling it a number of years later, a year or so later. But at that point it was just this major opportunity. And so that got my foot in the door in the industry to start doing this type of work. And so the people that I met there, that's where I met Cody, that's where I met a bunch of different connections.

 

Matt Handy (01:50:11):
Wait, you met Cody at the sober living?

 

Scott (01:50:13):
Yeah. So at that time he was running a treatment program in Boulder. And so you'd collaborate, our programs would collaborate together.

 

Matt Handy (01:50:20):
Wow.

 

Scott (01:50:21):
And so that's when I first met him. And so after that was bought and sold, I ended up doing case management, early peer coaching intervention work for a little while, figuring out what the heck I wanted to do. And then a job opportunity came up for another transitional spot outside of Aspen, which I applied for being their director of operations. Ended up getting that moving up there for a couple of years. And then after that moved back down to the Denver area and reconnected with Austin again. And then he ended up being the first person that he hired for this inpatient treatment program in Steamboat Springs. And the rest kind of led from there where I was there for eight years and then started doing consulting work. And now the rest is kind of history here, but it's like these dominoes started clicking into place directly from me breaking my leg into treatment program.

 

Matt Handy (01:51:17):
Isn't that interesting?

 

Scott (01:51:17):
Yeah. Yeah. Where it all started there, where it was, I couldn't have designed it if I wanted to. And then ended up completing the program, paying back all the restitution. They ended up terminating my probation early. And so I think it was after three, four years altogether. It's funny. So I don't have anything on my record nowadays.

 

Matt Handy (01:51:45):
That is amazing.

 

Scott (01:51:47):
I don't even have, so they ended up throwing away the deferred and then I was able to get it sealed even after that. So the charges don't even show up.

 

Matt Handy (01:51:53):
That is amazing. Those programs, therapeutic communities, yes, we talk about 'em like that and all that, but they have such an amazing relationship and reputation with the court systems.

 

Scott (01:52:06):
Right. That's where it's like I'll have my girlfriend say like Jesus Christ, and he is, she's acting like I survived Abu Ghraib or something like that.

 

Matt Handy (01:52:16):
Oh dude.

 

Scott (01:52:17):
And it's like, well, I look at it, I was fucked. In my mind, I was dead. I was going to go to prison for the rest of my life. And before that I was convinced that I was going to die. And now I look at my life and I got two beautiful kids. I got a house, I got an amazing job. And most of all, because that's just all stuff, aside from kids, that's relationships. But how I feel, it's still a reflection of what you feel. It's a reflection of it. But I think a lot of it's just how I feel where it's like I do not take things nearly as seriously as I did before where it's like

 

Matt Handy (01:52:57):
In a negative way,

 

Scott (01:52:58):
Yeah, where it's like what's permanent? What matters in what doesn't?

 

Matt Handy (01:53:03):
I think there's a real sense of what means things.

 

Scott (01:53:10):
Well, what actually matters. It is so easy and so tempting, and again, it's human biology. It's how we're wired to get revved up over stupid shit.

 

Matt Handy (01:53:20):
For real.

 

Scott (01:53:21):
And it's tempting. I'll be driving a lot, I'll still get pissed off in traffic sometime, look at this motherfucker. But the thought immediately after that is compassion is like, isn't any of this worth getting worked up over? No. And a lot of that comes that's like, I've got a No Mud, No Lotus tattooed on my arm.

 

Matt Handy (01:53:42):
Oh really? Yeah. That is so funny.

 

Scott (01:53:45):
And it's like my favorite book and it's just that piece of philosophy.

 

Matt Handy (01:53:49):
I never knew that you had that.

 

Scott (01:53:50):
Oh yeah, yeah. Where it's just like Thich Nhat Hanh. Right? It's one of his most famous books and it really talks about the benefits that come from suffering. So you have the beautiful lotus flower that grows only out of the muck.

 

Matt Handy (01:54:10):
Yeah.

 

Scott (01:54:11):
So it's like you have the deep smelly mud that produces this beautiful multipolar and colorful flower. And it's almost the same as, did you ever see Inside Out the cartoon?

 

Matt Handy (01:54:23):
I haven't.

 

Scott (01:54:24):
You should check it out. I mean, I know I got kids I've checked out, but I've even they used to show it in the treatment program that I was working on because it's the same idea where

 

Matt Handy (01:54:35):
Is that the one with the emotions?

 

Scott (01:54:37):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:54:38):
Yeah. I haven't seen it.

 

Scott (01:54:39):
You should check it out, man. It's worth a watch. It's definitely worth a watch. But it's basically that same idea that oftentimes we convince ourselves that happiness and sadness are mutually exclusive. I'm either all the way happy or I'm fucking miserable. But same as the philosophy with No Mud No Lotus is that there are flip sides of the same coin. Where you can't have one without the other.

 

Matt Handy (01:55:03):
Yeah. That's why I have my coin collection.

 

Scott (01:55:05):
There you go. I see it.

 

Matt Handy (01:55:07):
We have to take the good with the bad.

 

Scott (01:55:08):
Right, right. Whereas it's like we learned from the bad. If I hadn't gone through all that bad shit, then I wouldn't have the good today.

 

Matt Handy (01:55:18):
Yeah. That's what I always say, right? Is the best parts of me are a direct result of my suffering.

 

Scott (01:55:25):
Yeah, no, exactly. And so it's that misconception of I'm either a hundred percent sad, I'm a hundred percent happy. When in reality life is, we're riding the waves, man. And it's an intertwined thing with my higher power also. Is that alright, if the times when I don't get my way or the times that I'm disappointed or the times that I'm challenged are also the times that I learn and grow the most, then why do I experience fear or anxiety in those times when I'm not getting my way or I'm being challenged?

 

Matt Handy (01:56:01):
And well, why do you think it is?

 

Scott (01:56:03):
Well, yeah, so it's just that undertone of everything's going to be okay and it's the trust in the process. It's faith even in a sense of, as long as I keep working every day to be the best version of myself, tomorrow's going to take care of itself. And it's like, is it worth worrying about what might happen? No, it's wasted energy and effort. If I focus on, all right, today I'm going to journal, today, I'm going to go to a meeting today, I'm going to call a friend and see how they're doing, today, I'm going to play with my kids. I'm just going to act like a fucking, I get weird. I get really kid-like with them and just disconnect. Just throw that shit to the side and I'll do dolls with my daughter. And it's like, those are the things that matter.

 

(01:57:00):
And honestly, that realization is a direct gift from all the suffering and the shit that I went through in the past. So wrapping it all together, it's like where I will hear from people just how crazy this treatment program. Yeah, it was crazy. It was absolutely crazy going through that program and living it when I did. But it is a thousand times better than the meeking out, the squashing out of the light that would've been me dying, those 14 years ago. And that's the thing that's ever present in my mind. No matter what I'm going through this time today feels like a gift. I was going to die. So it makes everything relative.

 

Matt Handy (01:57:55):
Yeah, I feel for people that are out there still going through it, right? Because it's not pleasant.

 

Scott (01:58:03):
It's not. It's almost like, they're going through their process. Right?

 

Matt Handy (01:58:11):
Yeah. That's the

 

Scott (01:58:12):
They have to suffer.

 

Matt Handy (01:58:13):
If they are allowed, the full benefit of their suffering. So if the people around them can allow them to do what they need to do, there is a lot of love that is misdirected towards people that are suffering, that are actively using or going through it, whatever. And people pay, people love with their wallet or with their time. It gets to that point where it's like, we can't do anything for you. So they always draw this line where it's like, well, I'll help you out, but you can't come into house or I'm not going to give you money, but I'll spend some time with you. So it always basically comes down to this and it's like as long as they aren't taking the responsibility for them anymore, it allows them to be responsible for their own decisions still.

 

Scott (01:58:55):
Right? Well, yeah. And it's natural. I mean, the human condition is we don't want the people that we'd love to suffer or to be in pain. We want to alleviate that pain. I think about it with my kids, and there's little microcosms of it all the time where sometimes one of the best things that I can do as a parent is let natural consequences run their course. Where it's like, I'll try and guide and be like, all right, you got this presentation tomorrow that you're doing in front of your class. Let's set aside some time to study and get ready for it. And he fucks off and doesn't really do it. Then it's like, okay dude.

 

Matt Handy (01:59:28):
Have you seen The Passion Of the Christ?

 

Scott (01:59:31):
Not in many years.

 

Matt Handy (01:59:32):
So there's that scene where Jesus is walking to his crucifixion and he falls and Mary has that flashback of him falling when he is a kid. And then there's flashing back and forth between what's going on actively and her having these memories. And that always, I think about that pretty often. This woman couldn't do anything about it. She tried to carry his cross at one point and stuff that's like, that is a very, very real thing that people do constantly for their kids, is they try to carry their cross.

 

Scott (02:00:10):
Well, I think, and it's understanding that from a place of compassion too. That's a thing that I'll explain to families is this is engineering, this is how our brains are set, is to protect our child, is to help our child. But oftentimes that's one of the most counterintuitive parts of addiction is natural consequences is I am going to be here to love and support you, but here are my boundaries around doing that. And just drawing a line in the sand. I'm not going to sacrifice myself in order to save you. And that's nothing to judge. It's like I completely understand that being a parent myself.

 

Matt Handy (02:00:49):
Yeah, I talk to people, well, you probably talk about, people talk about this with people all the time too. But I say it all the time where it's like that one time that you allowed them to come inside out of the rain could have been the time that they learned that lesson.

 

Scott (02:01:05):
Well then that's the gratitude I have for my dad is that he picked up the phone and he called the police. And my dad is, he was one of the most kind people pleasing, non-confrontational humans ever. Just genuinely kind. That was the counterbalance of the relationship with him and my mom. My mom was the all fucking watch out, a bull in a China shop. No bullshit.

 

Matt Handy (02:01:35):
I identify with this.

 

Scott (02:01:36):
And he was the peacekeeper. He is going, right, everyone. And how counterintuitive was that to his comfort zone to be like, Hey, here's a detective.

 

Matt Handy (02:01:46):
Or the conversation that he had to have that led up to him that.

 

Scott (02:01:50):
And if he hadn't done that, then I would've been dead. And at that time it felt like a betrayal for sure. There was so in jail for that four months. He came to visit me a couple of times, but the first time he came to visit me, it'd been two months. I hadn't heard from him. Not a phone call, not a visit, nothing.

 

Matt Handy (02:02:19):
Did you try calling him?

 

Scott (02:02:20):
I tried calling him, yeah. And he wouldn't pick up and everything. And then it's like all of a sudden I have a visit and it's like an unexpected visit. I go, oh shit. This is gonna be really good or really bad? Come around the corner and there he is behind the plexiglass. And I thought was like, okay, cool. Maybe he's starting, because at that point I thought I, I'm two months, I'm past detox. Look at me. Hot shit over here.

 

Matt Handy (02:02:48):
It wasn't like more bad news?

 

Scott (02:02:50):
So I get to the window and I sit down and he basically just came in to tell me that he had compiled a whole list of everything that I had stolen and given it to the police. And they were going to be adding 20 extra charges. And I'm like, oh fuck. And that was a low, low point. It was the disappointment. It was the knock me back down to earth. That little flick on the back of the ear from the universe of like, no, you still got a lot of work to do.

 

Matt Handy (02:03:24):
You know what? That's a good point. That's something that I do talk about all the time, right, is that people don't understand that when you get sober oftentimes it sucks even worse for a while.

 

Scott (02:03:35):
Oh yeah. Well then it's understanding that it's not just your journey, it's your family's journey also. Where it's like, just because I feel better doesn't mean that they feel better. And it takes time for forgiveness to come in. I mean, that was the thing, my family eventually started coming around and talking to me again, but I had to show them through action that I had changed instead of just my meaningless words.

 

(02:04:03):
So there was a good chunk of 'em there. There that was celebrating when I hit a year in the program. And when I completed the program, they were there. And then you cut to, so my dad had liver cancer and ended up passing away last year. And in the year prior to that, I've got a brother and a sister and we've got cousins and family all over the place. There was one other person that had another key to his house and that was there with him throughout that process. And it was me. And there was also, I ended up being the executor of his estate. It went from him changing the locks on his front door because he was afraid I was going to break back in and steal something. To me, being the only person having a key to that front door. And that was all a gift of recovery and that was the, what is it? Don't see the forest for the trees?

 

Matt Handy (02:05:04):
Yeah. You can't see the forest through the trees.

 

Scott (02:05:05):
Right. So it's like the understanding that he has his right to process his anger and his fear and everything around my using as well. And then it was just going to take time. I mean, it was the epitome of that living amends where it's like, alright, I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure that this person does not have to lose sleep over me anymore. And then the forgiveness and everything came and because after he was diagnosed, I was trying to scramble and think of, all right, what conversations have we not had? What are the things that have gone unsaid? And I had done formal amends and stuff. I ended up getting that Luger back, which is a whole nother long story. But it was the one final conversation of is there any resentment that's still out there from you? And I'm sorry for those things I've done. And he is like, honestly, you have nothing to apologize for. I'm just glad that you're alive. Yeah. I'm just glad you're okay, that I can go not worrying about you. And that's what happened.

 

Matt Handy (02:06:11):
Alright, man. I appreciate your time.

 

Scott (02:06:13):
Yeah. And excited to keep digging into these. I mean, hell, I think we'll probably have to do a multi-part conversation on this one. I ended up ranting this whole fucking time.

 

Matt Handy (02:06:23):
That was kind of the point, right?

 

Scott (02:06:25):
You got more to rant about than I do on the next one.

 

Matt Handy (02:06:27):
Alright.

 

(02:06:31):
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.