Life After Putting a Pistol To My Head 3 Times & Being a Recovery Speaker While Quietly Addicted to Opioids

Bubba (00:00:00):
If you were driving down my street right then and saw me in my driveway, in my Mickey Mouse boxer shorts with blood pouring out of my face and a coat hanger, you'd looked at me and go, man, that dude's had a tough night. I said to myself, or if something said to me, you said, you ain't going to kill yourself, dude, if you were, you'd be dead. You can't take a drink. You can't take a drug. You're tired of hurting. You ain't got the balls to kill yourself. What are you going to do?

Matt (00:00:33):
I'm Matt Handy, and you're listening to My Last Relapse. Thank you for coming, Bubba. I really appreciate it.

Bubba (00:00:39):
Man. It's like I told you whenever I met you at Palm Creek. This is surreal.

Matt (00:00:44):
It is.

Bubba (00:00:45):
Because when you called me a couple years ago and you said, well, I'm about to do this, this, and this, I was like, aren't you just in jail for armed robbery? Look at you, dude. It's impressive.

Matt (00:00:57):
Yeah,

Bubba (00:00:58):
But you know, it's not surprising because you can tell when someone has that bug to help people. And I saw that in you and you got your own vision on how to do that, and it's inspiring to watch.

Matt (00:01:15):
Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Bubba (00:01:16):
Yeah, it really is. Just enjoying it from the peanut galleries. Trust me. You've been a Blessing.

Matt (00:01:22):
Thank you.

Bubba (00:01:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt (00:01:24):
Okay, so tell me about you.

Bubba (00:01:26):
Alright. Recovering alcoholic drug addict. Okay. I'll give you the short, long story. Come from a family alcoholics, definitely genetic opponent. Watched my mother die from it in 82. My father did the most courageous thing ever, which was unheard of to me. I had a hard time believing that we, the Norton household had alcoholics. Although I watched my mom, I just was in denial and uninformed. Her behavior wasn't right. And then she died from it. And then my dad goes to treatment and my father, he's well-educated, PhD. We lived in the best parts in North Carolina and there weren't alcoholics in my family. That was somebody else. Then next thing you know, my dad's in treatment and I flew down the treatment centers, did something different. I wish they did more of today. They had a whole week of family programming, and I learned so much sitting there. I mean, for instance, I was sitting there and every time my little brother would do something, I would just look at him and he'd sit down and the psychiatrist pointed out says, you realize you've been controlling that kid your whole life because your parents weren't able to. And I never imagined I had that much influence over anybody. I just look at him. Yeah. How old were you? I was 20, he was 14. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so anyway, we go through the treatment with the family plan week, and I learned so much. And to this day, I remember sitting on that plane in the airport and thinking to myself, I said, you're an alcoholic,

(00:03:15):
But I was fixing to fly back to the mountains of North Carolina and Myrtle Beach. I wasn't thinking about not drinking anymore. I knew it, but I wasn't ready to stop. So there's just more denial. Well, hope that works out for my dad. Right. Fly back to North Carolina and move to Texas. Five years passed five years and three DWIs later, September 19th, 1987, I'm sitting in jail and I had what they call an epiphany and I said, you know, bubble, you've never been in jail sober. I did the math. Now I tell people, this is where I had such a huge advantage on everybody, and I was lucky because for five years my dad would take me to a meeting. He'd always bribe me with a meal afterwards. And that's the only reason I went and I would go for five years. It wasn't that he stopped drinking. He was a different guy. And growing up, we were two opposites. We fought my little brother's just like him. He's an attorney. And my dad had a PhD, and like I said, I couldn't spell PhD. I was an athlete. I loved pla plate, everything. And he didn't know which end of a golf club to hold or which end of football to throw. We were just opposites. But five years I'm sitting in that jail and I said, when I get out tomorrow, I'm going to a meeting,

(00:05:04):
Then I'm going to call my dad. Because all of a sudden I wanted to be like my father. Crazy. It wasn't sober. It was, I want to be that type of guy because now he wasn't harming on me, he wasn't helping me, but he was just always present. He was always honest.

Matt (00:05:30):
I mean, you say he wasn't helping you, right.

Bubba (00:05:33):
By enabling,

Matt (00:05:35):
Yeah. Okay, okay, okay. Okay.

Bubba (00:05:37):
As a matter of fact, about two years before my DW shit, I was 23 years old, still living off mom and dad's money, nowhere near getting out of school. And I called him one time, said, Hey, I'm out of money, man. He goes, I don't know what you're going to do since you won't get a job. And the next thing you know, I'm cooking French fries, boy, and ended up running a restaurant. But anyway, get out of jail that night, go to my first AA meeting, get a desired chip, call my dad the next day.

(00:06:08):
He had mixed emotions. He wasn't like, hell yeah, my son made it to aa, but he was happy I was there because he knew I needed to be there. This is when I knew the things had sort of shifted between my dad and me. He lived in New Jersey at the time, and I'm sitting upstairs. I mean, I go to a meeting in San Marcus, go up the stairs to where the meeting is, and I go in there to my second meeting and my dad was sitting in there. He flowed down from New Jersey without telling me to be in that meeting. And at first I was pissed. He was there. I said, did you not believe me? And he said, no, I believed you. He said, I just love you, son. I wanted to come see you.

Matt (00:06:51):
That's right.

Bubba (00:06:51):
And that's the first time I'd ever really felt like he loved me. So I went to work, 90 meetings, 90 days. And here's my fourth story, four step story, 90 meetings, 90 days. Got a crush on this girl. I'm running this restaurant, that restaurant where I was the fry boy. Well, typical alcoholic fashion, A year and a half. I'm the general manager. Oh yeah. I'm running that thing. And so got a crush on this girl, and we go to Cancun, Mexico together for a week.

Matt (00:07:25):
Alright.

Bubba (00:07:26):
And I spend a week in Cancun, no drinks, no drugs, had a good time, flew back, cured.

Matt (00:07:35):
Oh yeah.

Bubba (00:07:36):
I don't need that stuff. That's for real alcoholics, right?

Matt (00:07:41):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:07:41):
So I quit going to meetings and the real reason I quit going to meetings.

Matt (00:07:46):
You wanted to spend time with her?

Bubba (00:07:47):
No, I've dumped her about a week after we got back was that fourth step dude. Oh, of course. It was looming. And I was just like, no, I ain't doing that. I don't have to. That's stupid. So I left, didn't drink, didn't drug for two and a half years. And I cannot begin to describe the insanity of that, but to me, regardless of my behavior, I could rest on the laurels that I wasn't drinking or drugging. I could be the biggest asshole in the world long as I was sober and ended up with a new girlfriend. This is funny.

Matt (00:08:28):
Probably a few.

Bubba (00:08:29):
Yeah. Well, this next one, dude, Ms. Coppertone, Texas.

Matt (00:08:33):
What?

Bubba (00:08:34):
Yeah. And she's living with me. She shacked up with me. Right. Okay. And I'm thinking, man, dude, you have arrived. Because now I'm out of school at the gym every day, martial art, career training like a mother. And I'm running a restaurant making 50 grand a year in 89 or 90. Wow. Yeah.

Matt (00:09:02):
Killing it.

Bubba (00:09:03):
Killing it.

Matt (00:09:04):
Yeah. And you got the girl.

Bubba (00:09:05):
And I got Ms. Coppertone and I got a CJ seven Jeep, my dream vehicle. She goes to Bastrop for the weekend to see her parents. And she came back to San Marcus that night, and she was so giddy. And I said, what happened? She goes, I've been blessed with speaking in tongues. Yeah. Okay. That's what I said. I said, you got to go. There ain't going to be no speaking in tongues right here. And you know what she did? She left and I didn't really want her to. Yeah. Next thing you know, I had this broken heart, man. I didn't know what to do. I never heard like that. Yeah.

Matt (00:09:45):
How long are you guys together?

Bubba (00:09:47):
Two years.

Matt (00:09:47):
Oh yeah. That'll do it.

Bubba (00:09:49):
Yeah. And I told her, I said, you're not even supposed to be religious. Your job is to wear that bathing suit in the back of my Jeep. So everybody stares at me. But anyway, she left. I called my dad, I go, I don't know what to do. I'm hurt. And he goes, why don't you go to a meeting? The thought never entered my mind. So I go to this meeting and topic is a third step. I don't understand it, but he gives me an ounce of peace. Just trust something. Not yourself. Maybe this is the way things supposed to be working out. And there was this guy sitting beside me and he had this big head afros, I don't think he had a haircut in five years that, or a beard. And he had these little round Jerry Garcia glasses on and he rocked the whole meeting and he said, doing this, staring at me for an hour. Yeah. Uncomfortable. Oh dude, I'm looking at this guy and I'm going, this is the reason I quit going to meetings in the first place. Look at this guy. Right. So when the meeting was over, I wasn't the guy to linger. I was making a beeline for the door. He cut me off.

(00:11:01):
He goes, Hey man, are you a newcomer? And I went, no, I'm three. You're sober. He goes, you a visitor? I go, no, it's my home group. He goes, I ain't seen you. And I started telling the sad, sad story of Ms. Coppertone and he was shaking his head rocking. And then he asked me, he goes, Hey, did you go to college? I said, I did. I graduated. He said, good. You know how to write. And he knew, he said, you college boys always stop before that four step. And he got real serious. He said, you're lucky to be alive or saint. And he showed me where that four step was in the big book. And he goes, I would strongly encourage you to go do it now. That's been the story of my recovery. I will kick a can down the road until the pains unbearable. And the pain then was unbearable. If you'd have told me to stand on my head in downtown Austin, I'd have done it. Right. So I did it and I called him two days later. I didn't know who to do a fifth step with. I didn't have a sponsor.

Matt (00:12:06):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:12:08):
He said, I'm happy to do it with you, or you can, I'll help you find somebody. I go, no, come on. And we did it. And then he looked at me when I was done. So typical. He goes, that's it. Right? And then we went to work on some resentment And he ended up being my sponsor. And that dude saved my life. I never loved anyone initially the way I did Charlie. Right. And three years later, no, two years later, he calls me. He was living in ble. I'm in San Marco. He says, Hey, come get me. I'm going to a speaker. I want to go to a speaker meeting tomorrow night. He lived by himself, didn't have any family. I drove from San Marcus to Wimbley to pick him up. And I'm pull up in the driveway and there's two ambulances, two EMTs. No way. He just had a heart attack and passed.

Matt (00:13:02):
Wow.

Bubba (00:13:03):
And I'm sitting in the driveway staring, looking, all his commotion, and it's just emergency technicians, whatever, go in and out and finally go, I better go ask what's going on. And I go in and literally, one second, you're going to pick up your hero and go to a meet, Next second you're identifying a body because they didn't know who he was. That's Charlie Watkins. Okay, thank you. He called and we didn't get here in time.

Matt (00:13:33):
Wow.

Bubba (00:13:34):
And so when I left, I didn't relapse, but I still count that night as my last relapse. I got my Jeep and I said, I'll never get another sponsor. And I still went to meetings for about six months and didn't get a sponsor. Eventually drifted. I was running that restaurant. Got tired of doing that. You know what was funny? This was going to come full circle. I got my degree to go coach. I wanted to coach. I wanted to be a football coach. I'm make 50 grand a year, and my first teaching offer was 13 five.

Matt (00:14:12):
Oh yeah. Do the math.

Bubba (00:14:15):
Do the math.

Matt (00:14:15):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:14:16):
It's like coaching's out. So I'm just living in San Marcus, living my best life. There's a young lady that I've had my eye on for three or four years, and I tell my best friend, that's the girl I'm going to marry. She was married to a real or the daughter of a real prominent family in town. Beautiful. And my best friend said, that ain't going to happen. Married her six months later.

Matt (00:14:40):
That's right.

Bubba (00:14:41):
Had two kids left there, went into car business, was a finance guy making more money. Miserable. Fast to That's around 91, 92, let's say 98. I got my first daughter's born. Wow. And I'm opening up my first MMA, my first martial arts school. I'm writing commercial insurance. I'm making good money and I'm on top of the world training. Judo didn't land. Right. Cracked three discs in my neck. 98, keep that year in the

Matt (00:15:21):
Math. Okay. Are they fusing Shit back then?

Bubba (00:15:24):
They asked me if I wanted, they were going to fuse three vertebrae and I went, Nope. It'll run my martial arts. He said, we've got this new thing called pain management, and there's some pills you can take that, manage the pain. We can get you epidural shots every three months and you'll be a live a normal life.

Matt (00:15:42):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:15:44):
I go, I want that. And they gave me a prescription for percocet. And at the time I didn't want to get high. I was hurting. But having drifted from that program, I had no respect for it because 98, I was 11 years clean and sober and bulletproof. Brother, they give me a script. Are you ready? Six Percocet a day. The moon. Yeah. And it took me nine years to get a PE degree, but in two months I turned into a doctor and decided I needed seven Percocet a day. Oh yeah. And then it is off. It led to an opiate addiction where I'm eating 60, 70 pills a day.

Matt (00:16:30):
Wow. Did you ever have liver complications around it?

Bubba (00:16:33):
Never. One. It's the grace of God.

Matt (00:16:35):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:16:36):
Don't know how

Matt (00:16:36):
Kidney stuff. Nothing.

Bubba (00:16:38):
Nothing.

Matt (00:16:38):
Lucky.

Bubba (00:16:39):
Yeah.

Matt (00:16:40):
Very lucky. That's a lot of Tylenol.

Bubba (00:16:42):
It was alt norcos, Percocet, every opiate pill form you could take. I don't know if I get my hands on some big oxygen snorted on my wood, but at the time it was real easy to get 'em. I had four or five doctors within 50 miles. I had four doctors in Florida. All I had to do was fax some copy of my MRI reports. All four of 'em mailed me like 200 a month.

Matt (00:17:11):
So now you're talking about early two thousands?

Bubba (00:17:13):
Yeah, right up to early two thousands. And my cleaning lady who cleans the house, she's got six relatives on Medicaid to get 150 Norcos a month, I'm making good money. So I'm like, Hey, I'll give you $500 a bottle every month. I got pills coming in everywhere, man. Right. And no one knows, because you can hide that.

Matt (00:17:35):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:17:35):
Now my wife at the time, bless her heart, she knows

Matt (00:17:39):
For sure it's hard to hide a lot of pills.

Bubba (00:17:42):
Oh dude. And plus as you go, you're just taking more and more, more and more. And there's times I'd be no out from her

Matt (00:17:52):
Falling asleep in the driveway in the car, she'd

Bubba (00:17:55):
Just start crying and bless her heart. She blamed herself, which a lot of people do. I never look on it until then. She was like, am I not good enough? Why are you doing?

Matt (00:18:05):
Oh yeah.

Bubba (00:18:06):
And my first inclination was, you're crazy. I got to have these drugs. But the real truth of the matter is, the lesson I talk with people about is that anonymity. Because prior to that, her father who was my hero, and I don't blame him from this. I make the decision. He's always taken me and put me up in front of churches. You're a good speaker, boy. You need to be up there talking about how God saved you. Then I get hooked on pain pills and I'm like, I can't tell no one. I'll let the whole world down because I had broke my anonymity and that kept me sick. Sick. I was too afraid to, I'll just fix this myself one day. And the one day never came.

Matt (00:18:53):
Yeah,

Bubba (00:18:53):
Right. Fast forward to 2009 at the time of 2009, check this out. I had wife two kids, commercial insurance license, two MMA gyms. We trained Filipino martial arts, but we were training fighters, was training soldiers out of Fort Hood, Working with pro and college football players, teach 'em how to use their hands for pass rushing. One of my training partners was a guy named Randy White who played for the Cowboys for, he's in the Hall of Fame. So anyway, and then I get arrested and because I wasn't driving too well, cop pulled me over. I do stupid human tricks. Pass him. This is what's crazy, because then he asked me, he said, Hey, do you mind if I search your truck? And I knew I didn't have to let him, but for some reason I went, no, go ahead. I think I was just out of it. Done. Yeah. Right. Oh

Matt (00:19:55):
Yeah,

Bubba (00:19:56):
I really did. I think, man, you can't keep this up.

Matt (00:19:59):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:20:00):
And sure enough, I get thrown in jail. No, doctor said, take 60 and call me in the morning. I had a sack bigger in his desk and I go to jail, small town San Marcus, my father-in-law's, a prominent man sheriff drives to his office and says, Hey, Bubba's locked up for possession of pain pills. He was floored. That dude was my hero. Came bailed me out. I signed one piece of paper. He got me out on his name. I'm living in New Braunfels at the time of my wife, and we drive the 45 minutes, didn't say one word. I get there and I go inside my wife's done and decided it'd probably best if we separate. So I'm going back to aa.

Matt (00:20:53):
Dude, your shit hit a wall,

Bubba (00:20:55):
Dude. And it just started right here. Right. Because whenever I went back to those rooms, I had had success before. I always knew if I get back in there, I got a chance. But we were talking earlier, no one shows up on a winning street. For me it was that arrest. So I'm going to go back and stay sober, but the real and get sober and clean. But the real reason I went back to stay clean and sober was I didn't want to lose my wife. I didn't want to lose my kids. Didn't want to lose my insurance license.

Matt (00:21:30):
Oh yeah.

Bubba (00:21:31):
I had two gyms. I was working with the seventh cab at Fort Hood. I got to keep that. And you talking about a strong self will in my mind, I'm like, I picked that girl to marry her. I ain't going to lose her. I went and got those contracts. I went and got that insurance license. I'm going to keep it. It was me against the world. And I put a year together, clean and sober. Now I was on Suboxone. I don't regret that personal choice. Everything else was going on. I don't think I'd have made it. But I was going to three meetings a day, taking it as suggested and a year clean and sober in one week. My divorce is final. Wow. Lose my insurance license. I'm hanging on to a prayer. The colonel from the seventh calve is trying to make a deal where I can go to Iraq with him and train these policemen personally instead of a train to trainer thing at Fort Hood that was going to pay a big chunk of money. And I didn't have a pot to piss in. I mean, before that I had all kinds stepped over a thousand dollars. Now I don't have 50 bucks in the bank.

(00:22:49):
And it was frightening to me. I didn't know. I didn't know how to live. I had nothing. And I'm hanging onto that Hail Mary boom, that falls through. So I'd have said, well, you're two months late on rent on that one gym. Let's go clean that place out. So I go to clean it out, get my truck the next morning to go clean it out just in time to watch a wrecker hook up to my truck. Oh yeah. One week all that happened. Wow. And then the kicker was this, as busy as I was, I had two beautiful daughters. And everything in my life was always about me. Well, I ain't got time for that. I got to be here. I got to train in this cowboy. I got to be a four hood. I got this class to run. I got this insurance deal. I just wasn't around. But now all of a sudden, I'm not living at home and I miss those kids and I got a felony arrest. I don't get to see 'em as much as I want. Finally, it's my weekend and I go to pick up my kids. And my oldest daughter said, I don't want to go. I'm going to stay here with mom. And I'm never hurt like that in my life. And at first, my first inclination was to be upset at the ex.

(00:24:12):
What she saying? And then I had one of my first real moments of clarity, and I don't know if it was a God, but sometimes I think you just get quiet enough to where the bullshit in your brain stops. And her voice said, what is she telling her? Nothing but the truth. Everything she's saying, you did it. And so why don't you change and be type of guy that she wants to go home with. So I left next week, up and down, up and down. I had a pistol in my mouth three times, dude.

(00:24:54):
And couldn't pull the trigger. And this is the weirdest part of the story. Everyone has moments like these, I don't downplay. And they're not, they're only significant to the person, experienced them. But I love Steve Earl. He's a singer songwriter on that. He's my favorite songwriter. He wrote a song called God is God. It wasn't even published yet. I think Joan Byas had recorded it. But I heard him sing it on YouTube. And there was this line in there that said, I received a blessing every day on Earth is another chance to get it right. I don't know what it was about that, but something grabbed me by the throat and goes, dude, if you pull the trigger, this is how the story ends. And then another moment of clarity, and this one was scary because I said to myself, or if something said to me, it said, you ain't going to kill yourself. Dude, if you were, you'd be dead. You ain't doing it. You can't take a drink. You can't take a drug. You're tired of hurting. You ain't got the balls to kill yourself. Whatcha are you going to do? So now, whenever I go talk with people about AA or the 12 steps, I go, I get it, dude. I didn't try it until I had no more options.

(00:26:13):
Only reason I went because I didn't have the policy to kill myself. But that night I said, all right, tomorrow I'm going to go. I'm going to start doing the work. And I was a year clean and sober. It wasn't the drugs that sent me in there then it wasn't the drugs that put a pistol in my mouth. It was my way of living. Right. And the big book says somewhere, I don't know the page number. It says, when we double our efforts at a life run of self wheel and fail, the pain becomes acute and constant. And that was me and my life itself will had just blew up in my face. I had nothing and my own kids didn't want to be around me. So I go back to, I keep going to the meetings. I didn't have a sponsor since Charlie. Wow. Not even the first year. And I had this guy picked out. He was a big gruff, dude. I wasn't going to let, if I was going to have a sponsor, you were going to be somebody I would let poke me on the chest and I would shut up and listen. Right? Very few people are in that category.

(00:27:23):
And he was a big gruff, loud mouth, deep voice dude. And when he went to treatment in 98, he had a $10 million construction company, wife and a son had this big ass house in New Braunfels on Lake McQueeny, right on the lake. And in 98 we had this historic flood. He comes home from treatment, he's got $500 to his name, his company's bankrupt wife, son missing. He don't know where they're house is. Two foot full of mud from a record flood. And most people would've drank, right?

Matt (00:28:01):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:28:02):
And I go, what'd you do? He goes, I grabbed a shovel. I started shoving fucking mud one day at a time. And I went, I got to learn how to shuffle mud.

Matt (00:28:11):
Right?

Bubba (00:28:11):
Because it was something so beautiful and humble about that. I'm going to shovel mud. He had a $10 million construction business. I bet he had people knew he hired to operate shovels. That's a good point. You know what I mean? But now he didn't do that. And he didn't say, well, I'm too good for a shovel because he said, I'll be right back. I'm going to get a shovel. Yeah. He said, I know what to do. And he did it. And I said, at that point in my life, that was all that was left in front of me is all I could do was humble myself enough to be willing to shovel mud. Because when we really go to work with this stuff, it's not easy.

(00:29:00):
And it takes a lot of humility. Shove a mud. Ain't rocket signs, but it's nobody's favorite thing. That's simple. Not easy. There you go. Simple. Shove a mud. I don't want to shove them out. Tough shit. There's shovel. Let's go. And at that point, I compare it to this. This is why people, so many people, I think this is where a person has to get now, I'm sorry. All my stories are stories. That's what I relate to. That's fine. Whenever I was training the martial arts probably, right? I got my neck hurt. There was this instructor in Austin that I really wanted to train under. He was one of Dan n Asano students, and his name was Ray Par. And I really wanted to train under him. And it was a waiting list. Everybody wanted to train with him. He only trained people in his garage.

(00:29:58):
So I had to wait my turn, my turn came, I showed up. I was so excited. And he said, Hey man, first day we always spar. That way I can see where I can help you. And I was arrogant. I was with, let's do that. We threw the gear on. You beat the shit out of me. Right? I didn't touch this dude. And I was humiliated. He goes, yeah, show up next week. Definitely use some help. Now I'm really mad. So I go home and instead of being happy that I can train under, I spend a whole week sparring, scheming and playing because next week I'm going to whip his ass.

Matt (00:30:32):
Right. You out chess him.

Bubba (00:30:33):
Yeah. I saw what he did. Show up a week later. He goes, you ready to train? And I said, I think I'd like to spar again. I'll never forget. He said, it's your money. We threw the gear on. What do you think happened? Kicked your ass. Didn't touch him. Went home that night. Had an epiphany in a moment of clarity. Right. And I said to myself, I said, you can't beat him. It's the most peaceful feeling in the world. It is. The first time I ever experienced that, ever. I said, you can't beat him. Quit trying. Every one of your plans is leading to another ass whipping.

Matt (00:31:12):
Of course.

Bubba (00:31:15):
And there's so many parallels there.

Matt (00:31:16):
Oh yeah.

Bubba (00:31:18):
But the only way to get there is what?

Matt (00:31:21):
Yeah. You got to be in that position.

Bubba (00:31:23):
You got to get your ass whipped. And you have to understand and accept it.

Matt (00:31:29):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:31:29):
So the next time I go see him, he goes, gave me the signal. What are we going to do, man? And I told him, I said, man, I can't beat you. And then I said, these words teach me how to do what you're doing. I'll do whatever you freaking tell me. Right. And after that, if we went to what burger, if you ordered a number two, no tomato, extra pickles, I say, make that two. I copied them.

(00:31:55):
And when we can get in the rooms and find somebody that's like that, and we can go, okay, I'm going to do whatever you tell me to do because you're doing something that I can't. And we can drop all our preconceived notions, contempt prior to the investigation and say, you're doing it. I'm not. Show me what to do. And that's the way I looked at John Coates that day. I decided I was going to show him. And that's when the journey started. And he was such a powerful sponsor. I remember, I'll share a couple of lessons that changed my life. One, I think it was about a year, about two years clean and sober. My ex remarried someone else, and I was, dude, he was worth millions of dollars. Oh no. Had fucking hair. Good looking dude. My kids are living with him. Oh no.

(00:32:57):
And I'm living this little, how old are your kids at the time? Junior high. Oh no. Yeah, daughters. Daughters. Two daughters. And it's killing me. And every night or every day, I'm with John Coates. I'm whining about it, right? And I'm going, well, I don't know, man. I don't know about this guy. And he goes, oh, I know him. He's a good guy. He feels like fucker. And then he was like, man, I sure hope my kids are safe. He goes, I know what neighborhood they live in. They're doing all right. He just finally just kept would give it to me. And then one day he got sick of me whining. And he said this, he asked me, he said, Hey, do you think God's taking care of your kids? And I had to answer yes. He goes, he is. He just ain't doing it the way you like it. And then he said the words, and I'd heard that third step prayer so many times, but I'd never heard it like this. He said, relieve me of the bondage yourself. He goes, why does everything have to be your way? We're deep down inside. You have every reason to be grateful. And I want to throat punch him.

(00:34:16):
But he was right. And it was the first time where I started to really open my mind to, okay, everything doesn't have to work out exactly the way I want it for my world to be. Okay. And for a lot of people, that wasn't that big of a notion for me. It was revolutionary. I was so simple minded. For sure. It was like, wow, he's right. And I just kept moving forward one day at a time, one day at a time. And then I was asked to speak at this IOP that I'd been in as a client. And next thing you know, I'm asked every once a month to come do it. And then another one and another one. Now check this out. The real reason I was doing it, because I was going into jails when I came, I wasn't doing it so much, 12 step work. But I was married into this prominent family, and everybody in San Marcus knew who I was.

(00:35:24):
And everybody in San Marcus, there was a lot of people that were happy with my downfall. Oh yeah. And so now I'm making sure everybody knows, oh no, that's the old bubble. New bubbles going in these jails, right? I'm trying to save the world. Oh yeah. I'm a different guy. Don't look at that old bba. Look at this new one. Right. People weren't buying it. And I remember complaining to John about it. I said, it's taking too much time. I think I'm going to stop it. And he goes, no. Yeah. He said, you're going to go do it. He said, listen. He says, when you can walk in that door for no other reason than the person that's in there waiting on you. He goes, you got a chance of becoming this guy. You're trying to convince everybody you already are. He called you on your shit. Called me on my shit. And so I kept doing it and I kept doing it, and I kept doing it. And next thing you know, I'm remarried. I got a little daughter named Molly Down Syndrome. She's my best friend.

Matt (00:36:37):
Yeah. How old is she now?

Bubba (00:36:38):
She's 20. Yeah. And we're trying to get a M has a program called Aggie Achieve where she can go to school there and live. Oh, that's so cool. Four years independent. And I checked this out whenever I was dating her mama. Every time I go to the house, I would knock on the door and they knew I was coming up. One time, they were waiting for me at my house. And I even knocked on the door at my house and Wendy, what the hell are you doing? But I didn't tell anybody. I said, you know why I'm doing that? They said, why? I said, I'm going to knock on that door. Because Molly, kids with Down syndrome, they're not any different. They just don't have a filter. If you're doing good, they're going to tell you you're screwing up. They're going to tell you. So my test was, if I knock on this door, is Molly going to be happy I'm here? She sees how I treat her mom. She sees how I treat her brother. She sees how I treat everybody in this world. And so if I was doing those things, I had to be doing something right.

(00:37:44):
And that wasn't about not taking a drink, but this point, this is about I want to be a different type of person. I want to be something different because of that day where the pain had become acute and constant. And the big book says, the step 12 says, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. I talk about that with a lot of people. I go, what's an awakening? What's an experience? I think they're two separate things. What do you think?

Matt (00:38:27):
What do I think the awakening is? So I had a spiritual awakening and it was literally waking up from dream. And my spiritual awakening happened way after I got sober. And it was like I came to really, everything kind of snapped into perspective. And I was like, what it was was I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. And when I realized that, it was like everything else fell away

Bubba (00:38:58):
For me. John Coates, again, I really struggled with that third step that I went through a period of time where I just said, I ain't going to believe in it. God, I just couldn't. And I struggled with it. John Coates told me a story. He says, man, I went through that too. He goes, when I was in treatment, Mississippi, he goes, I was sitting underneath this tree cussing a God I didn't even believe in. Think about that. Right? He goes, and the next thing I know, he says, I felt something thumped me on the chest three times. And it said, here's the deal, fucker. And I started laughing, right? I go, John Coates. God ever pokes me on the chest three times. I said, here's the deal, fucker. I won't believe in God. And we laughed about it. And I think it was about a year and a half after that. It dawned on me that every time I asked him a question, you know what he did thumped me on the chest until to say He's the deal fucker. And for me, that awakening started when I go, holy shit, maybe God's been talking to me all along and I just wasn't capable.

Matt (00:40:03):
You know what? I had a spiritual experience and then a spiritual awakening years later, my spiritual, you want to hear it?

Bubba (00:40:10):
Yeah. Hell yeah.

Matt (00:40:11):
My spiritual experience was this. I was in treatment for three years and the treatment center that I was at made a deal with me. They're like, we don't do that, but if I don't find a place to go, I'm going to prison for the rest of my life. So they made a deal with me. They said, we will take you in, but you're going to have to figure some shit out with us. You're going to have to help us.

(00:40:31):
Okay? So I'm not a Christian, but I was raised in a Christian home. I was raised Mormon. And so I was the supervisor of a fire mitigation team. So we'd go out and cut fire line all day and then come back and do bible study. And I had to lead the Bible study. And I'm telling these dudes, I'm up there leading Bible teaching out of the Bible. But the important part was all these, I mean, there was 50 something dudes up at this camp. It was like a Jesus camp, beans and rice and Jesus Christ.

(00:41:05):
And they're rotating, right? You go up there for 45 days. Everybody rotates out after 45 days or whatever, but it's staggered. So people are in and out, in and out. Two people come up, two people leave, five people come up, one person leaves, seven people come up, nobody leaves. It's like just this constant circus. It's a circus too. And there's this one group and these three dudes are in this group. And I tell the lesson or whatever, and people are talking, and this guy goes, this is what happened. This is what happened. This is what I did. This was the outcome, and this is how God worked in my life. And everything that he said was exactly the same as this story that I had. The only difference was he said, this is how God worked in my life. And I never thought about it. And I said, maybe there is a God that knows me and has, that's all it was, was maybe. And everything changed. Boom, right there. Everything changed.

Bubba (00:42:03):
The contempt was gone. No, our stories are the same. Whenever he poked me on a chest and did that, I went, holy shit. Maybe God's been talking to you all along.

Matt (00:42:14):
And that's all it takes is maybe, maybe. And the mind shift. It's crazy.

Bubba (00:42:20):
Now, my spiritual experience, experience is something that happened like right there with you. My experience was that voice telling me, what are you going to do? That was so real to me. The awakening was a lot more gradual where all of a sudden I go, holy shit.

Matt (00:42:35):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:42:35):
Now the real one came. This is the crazy, this is my favorite story ever. This is when I knew I changed because I spent a lot of time in a lot of gr high testosterone environments. And my relationship with my kids were still pretty strange, sadly. But at the time, I lived in the same town with my oldest for three years. I didn't see her. And my youngest one came to me and said, Hey, Carolina wants to have dinner with us. I ain't seen her in three years, man. I go, let's do it. Where are we going to go? She says, I don't know. Come get us tomorrow. We'll figure it out. So I was there five minutes early, man, sure enough, I didn't think she was going to come. And sure enough, she gets in the car and my kids go, I said, where are we going to go? I was going to take 'em anywhere. And they're like, we want to go to Cracker Barrel. So I said, well, let's go. So we go to Cracker Barrel. My kids order pancakes. I say, bring me some pancakes right now. I just got through telling you the whole time I had kids, I wasn't home. I missed it. And then the waitress brings us our pancakes. And to this day, I don't know why my daughter did it. She goes, Hey dad, will you cut my pancakes? And there I was a Cracker Barrel crying like a little Of course, cutting pancakes. Right? Think about that.

Matt (00:44:05):
Oh, for sure.

Bubba (00:44:06):
And that's when it's dawned on me. You changed.

Matt (00:44:11):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:44:12):
You have a different set of priorities. It was like, God said here tonight, I'm going to let you cut this little girl's pancakes. Might not happen tomorrow, but this is what matters. And see, before that, I always had to be the biggest dude in the room with the biggest truck, had to be the biggest shot. And now all that shit fell away, fell away. And for me, that was the start of a spiritual awakening. And ever since then, every waking moment is about becoming better spiritually. It really is. And I fail a lot, but I don't fail every morning starting with a promise. When I review my day at the end of the day, I think it was Marcus. I love the STOs.

Matt (00:45:09):
Yeah,

Bubba (00:45:10):
I love them.

Matt (00:45:11):
Yeah. I'm into Seneca right now.

Bubba (00:45:13):
Yeah. I read meditations once a day. Just read it, read it, read it. Seneca Letters is good. I mean, I read all of them, but I think it was Marcus Aelius, he said, or Seneca wrote about this too.

Matt (00:45:27):
Yeah, they ran about stoicism.

Bubba (00:45:30):
Yeah. But they said, okay, so whenever I go to bed at night, instead of reviewing my day like it does on 86, I close my eyes and I act like tonight's the night I'm going to die. Once these eyes shut tomorrow, I ain't waking up. This is it. Last day, right? Then I go through my day, how did you spend your last day on Earth? That's rough. Are you pissed off at the wife? Were you honking at somebody in traffic? Yeah. Because think about that. Nobody knows when that last day's coming brother. Right? Yeah. And you literally review your day and go, and today ended up being that day and I wasted it. Doing what?

Matt (00:46:19):
Yeah, you put that lens on it. It puts it in a whole different level of perspective

Bubba (00:46:24):
If you can be honest with you. And then the next morning I wake up, I got goals, right?

Matt (00:46:29):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:46:29):
Okay, I'm going to do this. And then yesterday I wasted. Not to say I still don't get caught up in it. I'm an emotional creature. Sometimes things happen and I act before I think. But every day is another chance to what? Get it right and be a little bit better. And every day, that's how my day ends and how my day starts. One motivating factor. Charlie, the one that died, I didn't know it, but he had a terminal heart condition. He was going to die.

Matt (00:47:05):
And he just didn't tell you?

Bubba (00:47:06):
No. But he used to always say, and it didn't make sense until years later, he goes, most precious gift you can give somebody is your time.

Matt (00:47:17):
Oh yeah.

Bubba (00:47:18):
And I go, yeah, Charlie cool. No know. And then John Coates, he passed away two years ago, prostate cancer.

Matt (00:47:27):
Wow.

Bubba (00:47:28):
He knew he was terminal. Now both of these men knew when we're all terminal,

Matt (00:47:36):
We all got expiration dates.

Bubba (00:47:37):
We all got it. But these two dudes knew it. Right? They're like, okay, I got this much time left.

Matt (00:47:44):
It's like that song live like you were dying.

Bubba (00:47:46):
Yeah. But you know what they chose to do at their time?

Matt (00:47:49):
Spend with giving to other people.

Bubba (00:47:51):
Yeah. They say, okay, I got four days left. I'm going to give Bubba one.

Matt (00:47:56):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:47:56):
I don't take that shit lightly.

Matt (00:47:58):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:48:00):
Because one day I hope I see 'em again and I want to be able to ask them, how do I do? Right?

Matt (00:48:07):
Yeah.

Bubba (00:48:08):
Now, when we work with people, I think we were talking about this earlier, I think I can't speak for women, but I imagine it's the same. But I know it's men, the type of men.

Matt (00:48:18):
I do the same thing. I can't speak from a woman's experience, but

Bubba (00:48:23):
Here's one thing we're all missing. And you have found it. I have found it. And we help people find it. They got a chance. And that's an ounce of purpose. We're all lost aimless. And once we can find ounce of purpose and an ounce of direction off, and my purpose and direction stems from the time those two people gave me,

Matt (00:48:57):
Damn. That's fucking powerful.

Bubba (00:48:58):
I don't want to waste it. Every reason that I tell myself to get out of bed and go to work today ain't got shit to do with me. Matt, every morning I wake up, ask me, when's the last time I woke up outside?

Matt (00:49:20):
When

Bubba (00:49:20):
Never look at me. Have I missed a meal? No. All my needs are being met. There was a time it had to be met in a 6,000 square foot house. New truck. Now, man, I wake up every morning, I go, shit, you got everything God's provided, man. Now let's go make Charlie and John proud. And when I hit that door and I'm not worried about me no more in my life, it's magical. It ain't perfect. I don't think about drinking, drugging. And it's nothing that I resist. I don't have to. And the stuff that I do is just, I really believe in my heart. It's what my creator wants me to do. And as long as I'm doing that, I'm good. And I love what I do, man. This is another reason why I know God might be working. I say that sarcastically working in my life. In 2020, I was selling RVs, miserable, sold my MMA gym, got tired of getting hit in a mouth for living.

Matt (00:50:42):
I ain going to understand that.

Bubba (00:50:43):
Yeah. I'm like, you ain't getting no younger. And I started to sell RVs, not, I didn't really care about RVs. It's just a paycheck. And I got to be decent at it. I could pay my bills, but it also gave me time way the schedule was to continue my ministry at night, going to the jails. That was important to me in the iops. Whatever I go do when I work for myself, I get carved around schedule. Here's a job. These are the hours. I can still go do that. So I'm still doing it. I'm remarried. And here's a story I'm going to tell you. I've only told two other people when I was dating my current wife, we both love songwriters. And I sent her Steve Earl singing that song, God Is God. And she called me an hour later and she said, why am I crying? And I said, I don't know, but you're about to get married because she's the only other person that hit.

Matt (00:51:45):
That's funny,

Bubba (00:51:46):
Right? I said, there's something deep there. And we've been married since 18 seven, coming up on eight years. Happily. Well, this amazing woman sees me going into jails and she sees people coming up to me who have gotten out of jail or whatever, and she sees me spending time with people. She goes, why aren't you doing this full time? I said, we starve. I don't even know where to start. She goes, we'll be all right. Try it. So I, I always knew I'd be a good interventionist because I can get someone's face and what's an interventions other than a salesperson? I'm going to sell you a better life. And then deep down inside, I've always wanted to coach teach, which is what we do. We work with families. And so I get the training open up January of 2020. March of 2020.

Matt (00:52:49):
Damn, I met you really soon after that.

Bubba (00:52:51):
It was COVID hit dude. And so I didn't do, I was pissed. I go back to selling RVs, right? Meanwhile, this lady, Andrea Rodriguez, who was a coach at Windmill Wellness Ranch in Spring Branch, she asked me to come speak at Windmill. I go speak at Windmill. And as soon as I'm done, three people asked me to sponsor.

(00:53:21):
So I go back and start sponsoring people. And then that led to me running a group. And then eventually, here's what was funny was one time big book, Brian Fus, who was a guy I wants you to meet. He's a character. He helps a lot of people. Had me sponsoring seven dudes out there. And it was too much. Here's what we're going to do, man. You're going to get me a room. I'm going to put all seven of 'em in a room at one time and it's going to be like a meeting with a lot of crosstalk. So we started doing that, and then other people started showing up, Hey, can we sit in? Can we sit in? And it just grew. And then one day I get called on the carpet at Windmill because people are putting on their exit survey. What was your most impactful part? He goes, Bubba and Bubba's meeting. And they were going, who's Bubba? And what's this meeting? But here's when you talk about how God works. Because then I was able to tell 'em, Hey, I'm also interventionist and I do this, this, and this. And I wasn't selling anything. Whereas if that had I gone cold calling, it would've never worked. It would've never worked. But now I'm not selling anything. They're like, oh yeah, we could use you.

(00:54:38):
And then boom, next thing you know, I'm helping a guy run a transport business. And I'm out there at Plum Creek and I go, Hey, I can help you start an h and I program three months later, they go, why don't you start meetings out here? And then one day, little Matt handy is sitting in there, boom. And that's just been the story for me because it take meetings to several treatment centers and I get to meet amazing people because we got a common bond, which is love of service. And we're trying to figure out, okay, how are we going to have a biggest impact? And our impacts are going to be different,

(00:55:23):
But we share that. And when you're doing that, as you know, meet different people all the time where it's common, where I come from two totally different backgrounds.

Matt (00:55:37):
Oh yeah.

Bubba (00:55:38):
But how much alike are we really?

Matt (00:55:40):
I mean, yeah. You know what I tell people all the time about addiction is that you can plug in whatever variables you want. We all got the same story. You grew up, maybe something fucked up happened or it didn't, but you fucked your life up until it got bad enough to fix it, and you fixed it and shit got better. And then after that, you either help people or you don't. And if you don't help people just continue to use. And if you help people continue on,

Bubba (00:56:07):
Boom, boom. And then at first helping people becomes, oh, it's something I got to go do. But then when you watch somebody change my right hand, man, right before I met you, Eddie, the first guy Windmill asked me to sponsor. About a year later, I left the RV business again and I was trying to get my feet wet starving. But I had learned there was, well, as long as I'm trying to help people, if I'm any help, people will hear about me

Matt (00:56:47):
For sure.

Bubba (00:56:49):
So my motivation was just helping people. And after that, the third step for me is basically trust the process. These are things I'm going to do on a daily basis. And at the end of the day, I'm cool, right? I'm cool. And Eddie had relapsed. He was living in New Orleans and he called and a day later I drove my ass to New Orleans, threw him in the truck. He weighed a hundred sixty five, a hundred seventy pounds, then drinking a bottle of ram a day. He was a tugboat captain driver. That sounds so cool. Bear knuckle fighter. Oh wow. Did underground bear knuckle fights Downtown New Orleans. Think about this.

Matt (00:57:41):
That is such a crazy city.

Bubba (00:57:43):
Yeah, I thought I was Mr. Tough guy. In his professional life, he's pushing barges up and down the Mississippi River. Sounds like a rough guy. He's just fit in perfect. Everybody in our group just like that. That's amazing. We're all bunch of, my biggest hero in my group is a guy named Billy Bur something. Billy, you remember Billy? Yeah. Hell yeah. He's come to windmill with it. Yeah. Tall redhead, Billy. He did like nine years, right? For ag assault. And when he got out, I'm not sure if you were there to witness this or not, but when he got out, but before he went in, he was trained professional. He installed underground cable

(00:58:29):
For cable companies, modem splicing wires running it. And he made a good living. When he gets out of prison, he's looking for a job spectrum. Wasn't going to hire him, they wouldn't give him a look. And he kept applying and he kept applying. In the meanwhile, the only job he could get was in Martindale, Texas at this place that distributed eggs. And for eight hours a day, he'd put eggs on a carton and put those cartons on a truck. It was the only job he could get. Now, here was the catch. When someone asked him what he did, he never apologized for it. Oh, I work here. I would've done that. Said, well, right now I'd have made up a good story. Well, I'm really an author, but right now I'm stacking eggs. And Billy wasn't. He was like, no, right now I'm stacking eggs. And then I was sponsoring them and then a job opportunity would come up and go apply. And every time he never could get past the interview process, never could get interviewed of that conviction. And so when it was all said and done, I go, what are you going to do, Billy? After he couldn't get a job, and he said this, he goes, I'm going to keep stacking the eggs. I'm going to keep trusting God.

(00:59:59):
And for the last two years, he's been working for Google. What? Yep. Finally came true. But here's the message of the story for everybody. We want it right now. And sometimes the people I work with, Hey man, you might get on a Whataburger that's beneath me. And Billy's like, no, you know him. He is a man of integrity. And then if you'd have knew him prior to going to prison for ag assault with a firearm, think about that. And now that same guy's going to open, I'm going to keep stacking eggs and trusting God. Now he's working at Google. He is 10 years sober. It's crazy. No one can tell me it doesn't work. He's one of us. So when we bring people in these communities, I'm going, you are in a room full of brothers who know what it is to struggle

Matt (01:00:57):
For sure.

Bubba (01:00:59):
Because life ain't easy. We all want easy, but it's not. Now here's the kicker. Not only do you have a brotherhood that doesn't have to say a word other than you can look at them and go, man, I know those dudes are right there where I am right now. And they're living proof. Their life ain't perfect, but they're sober and they're happy. And so you keep being living proof and you go, Hey, and meanwhile, here's this book. Yeah, let's follow this book. Yeah, don't

Matt (01:01:35):
Just read this,

Bubba (01:01:36):
Do the work and drag 'em through the steps. And we were just talking about this earlier. I run into people all the time. Well, two things. I have people all the time say, I try to, it didn't work. And I ask 'em, what's the third step? Say insanity. It's two. And they can't tell you. And I said, okay, can we agree on this? If you can't tell me what the step says, you probably didn't try it. And then I asked them the million dollar question, how many people you sponsor? Well, I never got that far. Wait a second. How could you have tried it and then not get that far?

Matt (01:02:18):
I mean, yeah. And then you run into this all the time. My bet. And I think most people run into this, right? It didn't work. Okay. How do you know it didn't work? People who know it didn't work. Know it didn't work. But if you didn't participate in everything, that's why right here, it's a multiple pathway approach. Absolutely. We hear it all day. Like, oh, I don't do that. It didn't work. Yeah, it didn't work. You're here. We know, right? It didn't work, but you didn't work it either. Yeah. This isn't the book's fault. You know? It's drugs, right? Everybody calls it drug abuse. And I realized recently I wasn't abusing drugs. I was abusing myself. Can you abuse a hammer?

Bubba (01:03:10):
I guess you be real hard,

Matt (01:03:13):
Right?

Bubba (01:03:13):
Not really.

Matt (01:03:14):
No.

Bubba (01:03:15):
Yeah. You

Matt (01:03:16):
Can't abuse a hammer.

Bubba (01:03:17):
No. Because that's what this is designed to do,

Matt (01:03:19):
Dude. Yeah. You can't abuse drugs. I'm pretty convinced of this. You can't abuse drugs and it is up to the operator to dictate the outcomes. You can build a house with a hammer. You can beat somebody's head in with it. Right? So it's

Bubba (01:03:35):
The tool what you want.

Matt (01:03:38):
That's why it's like, oh, AA didn't work for you. No, no, no. AA in and of itself, it's neutral.

Bubba (01:03:46):
It's neutral. Everything in my life I tell people is neutral stuff ain't good. Stuff ain't bad. It's just the way Boba likes it or not. Right? Same thing. And hey, the 12 steps aren't for everybody, but it's amazing to me. They're so similar to the stuff that people

Matt (01:04:02):
End up doing.

Bubba (01:04:03):
Yeah,

Matt (01:04:04):
Dude, I just tell people, especially with Dr. Sean, we'll get into that off whatever, but this is the well-worn path. And you want the most effective thing. Well, it takes this, and if you don't want to do this, that's fine. But that means you've got to go out there and do this by yourself. And if you do this by yourself, you're probably going to fail. There is no Dr. Shaw with the neurology and all that, you don't get a sufficient oxytocin dose. It's impossible. Actually. Dopamine comes from me and oxytocin comes from we. And the only way to rebuild the prefrontal cortex is to be in a safe place where you have relationships that there aren't walls up. You got to be honest. And most people, that's where it comes in. It is like that fourth step. They lie or it's a lie of omission more than anything. They don't want to talk about that one thing. Nope. For a lot of men, a lot of that's like sexual trauma.

Bubba (01:05:04):
I'm going to tell you what, you nailed it. Because whenever I started working so much with so many people at windmill, and now all of a sudden I'm working with five different men a month, and I was blown away. I'm not telling you anything when I say 30% of those men were sexually abused as a child, and they have it, they're just now you're hoping. They're just now willing to be honest about it. Yeah. I was blown away. A guy that railroad is a big union specific uses windmill for their guys. And there was this big gruff railroad dude that I was working with, and he'd go, windmill leave. Get three months relapse. And he called me before he came back to windmill and said, Hey, will you work with me again? I go, absolutely. I said, tonight, I'll pick you up. So Windmill knew I was going to go pick him up the airport and bring him, and I pick him up and he's drunk, and he gets in my truck and he starts crying uncontrollably, right? This is his fourth trip to windmill. And finally he tells me what happened to him when he was five. And I was the first person for him to tell.

(01:06:32):
Now, the next day he's on suicide watch, he's sobered up and he is like, oh my gosh,

Matt (01:06:37):
I can't believe I told him that.

Bubba (01:06:40):
Yeah, now he's a year and a half sober. But that's there. We all have that there. The biggest thing for me, I mean, I grew up so blessed I didn't have that type of trauma, but that four step for me started at night. Whenever I said, what's my wife telling my kids? Nothing. Everything you did. And so the truth. The truth. So let's take a look at this fourth step. I've got a resentment against my ex. Why you tell all my kids things about me? What was your part in it? Well, I did everything. Fucking one of 'em. You know what? And if we can get beat down to that point where we can go, okay, drugs and alcohol aren't my problem. Here's the problem. And when I do this, people respond like this, or people hurt and then I get hurt. And if we're going to change, that's what has to change. And until I look at the steps like this, 1, 2, 3, I have to find something or somebody I trust more than myself. I have to say I trust this way more than I do my way. Right? Yeah. I trust it. I'm just starting four through nine. We take a look because I'm a believer. I was raised Christian, I believe in God, but I'm more open. I believe a lot of these religions are the same. Just my thought.

Matt (01:08:18):
Yeah. Boil it down far enough.

Bubba (01:08:20):
Yeah. I studied everything and I steal. I borrow this. I like that. I call it spiritual g kudo. But anyway, steps four through nine our whole life. Trauma, anger, selfishness, fear, whatever. We have done nothing but place obstacles between us and grace.

Matt (01:08:44):
Okay?

Bubba (01:08:46):
I can't talk to God because this happened, or I don't want to talk to God because he made me mad, didn't give me what I want or whatever it is. Or resentment towards somebody else blocks us.

Matt (01:08:57):
Oh, yeah.

Bubba (01:08:58):
Right.

Matt (01:08:59):
Dude, that is the,

Bubba (01:09:00):
I

Matt (01:09:00):
Mean, the book says it, right?

Bubba (01:09:01):
Yeah. But steps four through nine. What do we do? We remove those obstacles. Four, we write 'em down. Five, we tell somebody six or seven, we become willing to have 'em removed, right? Eight, nine. We go out and try to make an amends. And an amends is nothing more than a promise to be better. Toughest amends I ever made was with my father-in-law. And I tell you why, because I called him up right after all that happened. I called him up, said some things I want to talk with you about. And he said, not today, boy. He goes, that's my daughter. He says, I love you, son. He goes, but that's my daughter. It shattered me. And then he died two months later. Damn. And John Coates, my sponsor, about a year after that, he made me go where he was buried.

Matt (01:10:03):
Have that conversation.

Bubba (01:10:05):
And here's what I said, and this is an example of an amends to me, because I told him, I said, you know what? When I asked you if I could marry your daughter, I made a lot of promises and I didn't keep on, but for the rest of my life, I'm going to try and be that man. Right? And to me, that's an amen.

Matt (01:10:28):
Yeah. Yeah. It's like people like to flower this stuff up, but that's just the core of it,

Bubba (01:10:34):
Right? That's it. I'm going to be better. I might fall short, but my overall goal every day is to be a better man. And I don't want to go back. I didn't say, I don't want to go back to eating pills. I don't want to go back to being that guy. So every day I'm going to work a little bit harder, which is way different. It's way

Matt (01:10:51):
Different.

Bubba (01:10:52):
And once we start, bill W says somewhere, and as Bill sees it, he goes, once we make a commitment to change and become willing to unremittingly, do whatever it takes to change, miracles happen, something along those. And it's the truth, because nothing has caused me to change more than trying to keep that promise to papapa, try to be grateful for the sacrifice. My sponsors gave me this different motivation, right? And so it forces me to change, and it forces me to acknowledge when I fall short, because sometimes I do, but four through nine, we just remove those obstacles. And in 10, 11, and 12, that's just keeping the pipeline clear for me. I already told you I do my 10 step a little different. I look at it different every night.

Matt (01:12:04):
Yeah.

Bubba (01:12:04):
12. And I still struggle with this. I don't pray for anything other than knowledge of God's will. That's what it says.

Matt (01:12:14):
Hey,

Bubba (01:12:15):
I don't ask for nothing,

Matt (01:12:16):
Dude. I just had this conversation before you came in with somebody and it was like, yeah. I mean, anytime you pray for yourself, God ain't hearing it.

Bubba (01:12:26):
No.

Matt (01:12:27):
Yeah. God is not hearing that.

Bubba (01:12:28):
It's like saying for me, it's sort of like saying, Hey, what I have ain't good enough here. I'm going to give you a to-do list today.

Matt (01:12:34):
Yeah. Hey, God, I got a better idea.

Bubba (01:12:36):
Yeah. Right? How does that work? Right? Whereas if you could really come, we talk about step 12, you come from a, you talk about borrowing from all these spiritual practices of religion. I mean, it dawned on me as something as simple as the Sabbath. What is that? But a day to stop and be grateful or more importantly, be content and go, you know what? Today I ain't chasing nothing. Yeah. This is cool. I'm going to trust God 100% today. Because nine times out of 10, that one day a week we're going, oh no, if I don't do this, this ain't going to happen. Right? So

Matt (01:13:22):
Oh yeah. Multiple days.

Bubba (01:13:24):
Yeah. But if we can go one day, you know what, man, today I'm going to circle up with my family, the things that matter. I'm going to say thank you. I ain't chasing shit, just going to rest. And so 10, 11, and 12 is just different things that I practice on a daily basis, trying to keep that pipeline clear. Yeah, you

Matt (01:13:50):
Just had practice,

Bubba (01:13:51):
Right?

Matt (01:13:52):
I think people forget that. Yeah. All do all too many times I think people assume that it's a destination, even though we hear it, it's like, but they forget to practice.

Bubba (01:14:07):
I have to practice because I ain't got it. But more importantly, my motto, that third step is plan the action, not the outcome. I am not trying to control outcomes anymore. It used to be everything for me. This has to happen. And I can't say that I've worked at Third Step if I'm trying to make shit happen. So if I focus on what I'm doing instead of the results, my life's easier. And that takes practice because it's easy for me to stick my paws in.

Matt (01:14:45):
I mean, dude, we're, it's the nature of our undertone. If we are addicts and alcoholics, we need to control it. And it's like, dude,

Bubba (01:14:57):
No even doing this,

Matt (01:14:59):
And I fuck shit up.

Bubba (01:15:00):
Oh God.

Matt (01:15:00):
Oh man, dude. It's like,

Bubba (01:15:02):
Oh God.

Matt (01:15:03):
And then after it's fucked up, I go, God damn it. But isn't that the gift? And you know where it's manifesting the most. I have a two month old.

Bubba (01:15:14):
Wow, I saw that picture. I saw it on Facebook.

Matt (01:15:17):
Yeah. I got a two month old, a 4-year-old, and I got a wife. So I got three girls. And I always told, I always pictured living with three girls. I didn't realize it was going to be like that though. But where it's manifesting the most right now is my relationship with my wife trying to control that. And it's, dude, it's ain't happening. No, it just ain't happening. And a couple nights ago, I was sitting there and I was like, dude, you can't force this square into this circle. It's not going to go your way. It's

Bubba (01:15:54):
Not going to happen,

Matt (01:15:55):
Dude. No.

Bubba (01:15:56):
But we got short memories,

Matt (01:15:57):
Dude.

Bubba (01:15:58):
But the gift of it now is every once in a while we can catch yourself hammering that square. What whatcha you doing? Stop. It ain't going to fit, dude. And we get to decide how long that takes, right?

Matt (01:16:10):
Man, you had two girls. Do you remember your 4-year-old telling you what to do?

Bubba (01:16:15):
Oh gosh,

Matt (01:16:17):
I'm at my house going, can I get some respect in my own house? It

Bubba (01:16:24):
Ain't happening. I remember getting in an argument with my ex, then she's like, you two are just on a power trip. And I was like, I ain't no power trip her damn dad. But if you take a look back now, how well that worked out, me demanding to have everything my way. That's a losing proposition. It is. It really is. Where sometimes if we can just take a step back, I learned a story about that running a restaurant. I had 130 college kids working for me, right? Geez. And I hired them because they had to work. Because at the time, at San Marks, there weren't many restaurants in town. If you wanted to wait tables, you are going to come see me. And you came and see me, I go, Hey, Matt, why are you here? Why do you need a job? If Matt said, mom told me to get a job when I got to school, I'd go get the fuck out of here. No, I'm paying my tuition. Alright, come on.

(01:17:23):
So as a manager, every decision I made affected their back pocket. What night they were, what tables They waited, everything. And so they're pretty opinionated. And one night I was having an employee meeting, and I was up there at these rules, and I remember this guy in the back said, I think rule number four sucks. Or something along those lines, dude, I was irate. And the whole time I'm thinking, well, I ain't going to do this now, but tomorrow morning I'm going to wake up. I'm going to whip his ass, then I'm going to fire him. I'm going to whip his ass again. Right? So I go home that night and I can't sleep. Oh yeah. Thinking about this guy. And finally, it's time to get ready to go to work, and I go in there to shave, get ready for work, and I damn near cut my lip off.

(01:18:20):
I'm thinking about that guy just pressed too hard. Oh my gosh. Blood's going everywhere. And I started looking for my Copenhagen. I couldn't find it. I don't know why it was so important. I had a dip at that time, but who knows? So I go, well, I think I left it in the Jeep. So I go out to get in the Jeep, and while I got home that night, all I was thinking about that guy, I locked my keys and my snuffing at you, and you hear that term dry, drunk, almost drunk. If you were driving down my street right then and saw me in my driveway, in my Mickey Mouse boxer shorts with blood pouring out of my face and a coat hanger. Jesus, you looked at me and go, man, that dude's had a tough night, right? Three years sober. And Charlie, my sponsor at the time, had never come to my house.

(01:19:12):
And I look down the street and I see a white Dodge Ram truck coming, right? Then Matt, and I'm going, that was 91, 92. Those trucks just came out. You could see 'em a mile away, right? I go, no way. And sure enough, he comes pulling up, he gets out of the truck and we stare at each other, right? He goes, what's going on? I told him, I said, you won't believe what happened to me. He goes, let's go inside and talk about it. So I'm in there and I'm telling him the story. He's rocking like he did, and he's acting like he gives a shit, right? And he goes, after I told him the story, he goes, you want my suggestion what you ought to do? I go, yeah, hell yeah, I do. He goes, all right, does he work today? Yep, 10 o'clock. He goes, good.

(01:20:01):
When he comes in the office, slam the door. Show him you mean business. I was like, yeah. He goes, then he comes in, pull him up a chair, tell him to have a seat, and as soon as he sit down, take his shoes off and kiss his feet. Yeah, that's what I said. I was like, why would I kiss his feet, Charlie? He said, why wouldn't you? You've been worshiping this son, bitch for 24. That's funny. It's the truth. And to this day, I have hung on to that lesson. He goes, he's your God. He says, I found you. You're in the driveway with blood pouring down your face. Think about that dude. Geez. And then he says something that was funny. It wasn't funny at the time, not bad. He said, besides rule number four sucked. Charlie's even gang and all. But then the message of the story is this. We were just talking about this. How much easier would it have been for me whenever he said, rule number four sucks. If I'd have had just the knowledge going, oh, really? Let's take a look at that and have an open mind.

Matt (01:21:13):
Yeah. Do you remember what the rule was?

Bubba (01:21:15):
No. It was something stupid. I mean, it really was. It was something ridiculous. I had no management skills at that time.

Matt (01:21:25):
You were trying to babysit your employees?

Bubba (01:21:27):
No, it was worse than that. Dude. I scared people.

Matt (01:21:30):
Okay.

Bubba (01:21:31):
Once a month, if somebody, I had a stack of applications like this, there was no jobs in that town.

(01:21:38):
And someone once a month was five minutes late for work fired, and then for the next month, everybody was 30 minutes early. That was my management skill. That's funny. It was all I knew. And I ran a tight ship. And then that was still right at, I was really starting to really, Charlie was starting to have an effect on me that time, and that's when I started to change. But driven by a thousand forms of fear. It's what spurs our attitude. Take a look at that four step. What was I mad at? I wasn't mad at that guy. I was scared. He might be right. Maybe number four did suck. And if I'd had an ounce of less ego, let's say, I could have turned around and said, well, let's take a look at that. How do you think it'd be better? And then I don't cut my lip off and I'm not kissing his feet all night. And it probably would've stayed the same. It probably would've.

Matt (01:22:35):
All right. What's your idea?

Bubba (01:22:36):
Yeah, what's your idea? Yeah. But you know me asking somebody else their thoughts. It wasn't in the equation, dude, but with a little time in the program, or I hate mean a little time of getting wiser. We'll say program or not.

Matt (01:22:56):
You know what I think it is, is you start removing yourself from the equation. Then it's in my experience, I got all this shit going on and we did that thing today. You know how many words I said in that whole thing? And in my head, I'm like, this was all my idea, and now everybody else is talking. And then I thought that and I was like, fuck. At least if they fuck up, it's not my fault.

Bubba (01:23:27):
There you go. I removed myself from the equation. Right?

Matt (01:23:31):
But it's less of me and more, it's the dissolving of self into the we.

Bubba (01:23:37):
Right? That's it. And that's why I'm going to get you on this coin. That coin says we first word, first step, what's it say? Yeah. And that's the name. That's just the community we're trying to build. I mean, everybody out there is a part of that and not one part is more important than the other. And it's the first real lesson in humility for us. I think whenever we choose to become a part of that, because we immediately have to become right sized. We have to say, I need these people. And then immediately turn around, understand they need me. It's 50 50. And once we understand that I'm needed, wait

Matt (01:24:26):
A minute, watch this. I've been divorced and somebody gave me the best advice. First of all, we're sitting in a cell anyway, and you know how those conversations go. These are the most, we're solving the world's problems. 10 at a time. But he goes, look, I was like, I'm never getting married again. He's like, just listen. And he's like this older black dude. He was like, look, you know why that failed. I was like, I'm sure you're going to tell me. He is like, and we just talked about like, oh, 50 50 and all this stuff. He's like, you think it's a 50 50 thing, but it's a hundred and a hundred. You got to give it a hundred. She's got to give it a hundred. There is no give and take. It's you give a hundred. And whether she does or not, you got to do your part.

Bubba (01:25:13):
Love that.

Matt (01:25:14):
Yeah.

Bubba (01:25:15):
It's all you can control.

Matt (01:25:16):
And I was 19 when he told me this.

Bubba (01:25:18):
Wow.

Matt (01:25:19):
And dude, I think about it all the time. You got to give it a hundred. She's got to give it a hundred, and this is never going to work and

Bubba (01:25:28):
Stay out of her. You control your 100. Right?

Matt (01:25:31):
That's like, is your wife in recovery?

Bubba (01:25:34):
No,

Matt (01:25:34):
Mine is right. And it's like one of the lessons that we had to learn how to navigate, that's hard. We didn't get told this, but we came to this conclusion was, I got to stay out of your recovery. You got to do you. And I got to do me.

Bubba (01:25:48):
Wow. That would be difficult. I'm blessed because my wife knows me well, now where she sees me, she'll know. She'll ask me, when was the last time you were at a meeting? And she's not talking about one of the meetings I run. She goes, no, when did you go sit down? Not raise your hand. I get that way. She knows me that well. I don't know that I could have found a more supportive, perfect partner. I mean, I cannot doubt that there is something more powerful than me going on in my life just for the things. If I take a step back and I go, look at the woman you're living with, that's not by accident because she had more faith in me than I did.

Matt (01:26:46):
That's where, and we know we got proof that when we are in control of shit, we fuck shit up.

Bubba (01:26:54):
Yeah. Go look at my first one. And that was me trying to control everything. And this one right here is like, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I wouldn't. And yeah, and then more importantly, someone whose opinion matters.

Matt (01:27:14):
Dude, my wife and I were living under that bridge together. Wow.

Bubba (01:27:19):
Yeah. That's a cool story.

Matt (01:27:22):
Yeah. We're coming up on nine years together and yeah, it's been a fucking wild ride. But I tell her all the time, it's like, I don't know why I'm trying to win your opinion. I know you, I can't impress this woman to save my fucking life. Your hardest fucking thing. She'll be like, yeah, you were supposed to do that.

Bubba (01:27:53):
Yeah. Fuck. What do you mean? No, my wife just sitting here. I had to stop and think about that, man. If it wouldn't have been, I don't know. I think that's the key. She has more belief in me than I believe in myself.

Matt (01:28:10):
Yeah. My wife says that that's how it's supposed to be. We're supposed to love them more than they love us, and they're supposed to believe in us more than we believe in ourselves.

Bubba (01:28:18):
Well, somehow I ended up with that, and then Molly was just a big ass bonus man because she keeps me honest.

Matt (01:28:29):
Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of misconceptions around that. When I was growing up, this was the nineties, and I had a lot of, I don't know what it was. I ended up having a disabled daughter though. But you can ask my parents. I would make friends with kids that were disabled all the time. I had learned sign language to talk to this kid one time. We all got, I think people, and they call 'em disabled. It's like, shoot,

Bubba (01:28:57):
No, no. Molly ain't disabled, dude. She's smarter than me. I mean, it's so many different ways. I'm jealous of her.

Matt (01:29:05):
What my wife says is that they were blessed with that because they were good up there before they came here.

Bubba (01:29:12):
There's something to that, because at my roughest day, I always wish, man, I wish I could have an attitude like Molly, she wakes up happy no matter what, dude, when I get up in the morning, I go to the kitchen. Now my doctor's going to scream, but I drink like a double shot of pre-workout right off the bat. Oh, man. Because I do that, because after I drink it, I ain't going back to bed for

Matt (01:29:42):
Sure.

Bubba (01:29:43):
And then I'm going to go do some prayer meditation before it really

Matt (01:29:47):
Gets, how are you? Yeah, I was going to say,

Bubba (01:29:49):
It takes about 10 minutes, dude. And then I'm at the gym, and then I'll come back and journal and do some meditation. But if I don't drink that, then it's got to stop. Okay. Yeah. It's got to

Matt (01:30:02):
Stop. I can't do it.

Bubba (01:30:03):
Oh, dude,

Matt (01:30:04):
I can't. I'm so sensitive to caffeine. If I do it, it fucks

Bubba (01:30:09):
My day up. Oh, dude. I wish there's going to have to be some changes. But I tell that story every morning. I walk right by Molly's door and she's like, good morning. Guess what happened? She's wanting to have a conversation. And you're like, hold on, hold on. I'm trying to make it downstairs. But she just gets up and she's got that attitude. She's excited about the day she's cheerful. And then guess what? Six o'clock she comes home. Same old, same old. Yeah. I want to see her. I want to see her get in the a m, do that Aggie achieve, have some independence, lived by herself for four years. And then my wife's done such an amazing job with her. I mean, she didn't put her in all the special needs classes and weren't really, she had her in regular classes and as many as possible. But right now she's a teacher's assistant. That's cool. She's going to work. She's going to have just drug addicts need purpose.

Matt (01:31:23):
Yeah. Everybody needs purpose. Yes. I mean, because I know people that aren't drug addicts that I interviewed a lady, it was a five hour interview. She sent her son to a boarding school for device addiction. Right. But yeah, that's a tough one, dude. Dude. I mean, he's been there for, but you know what? He wrote me a letter that she read to me before we really got into it. This kid sounded like he's 13 and he's quoting classical literature to me and telling me about honest decisions in life based around the things that you're interfacing with. I was like, how old is this kid? You know what I mean? But I don't even remember where I was going, but Oh, that's right. Most people take the dumbest shit for granted. I really don't remember

Bubba (01:32:18):
Where I was going. I thought I did. But the truth is, it made me think whenever you're saying that is that so many younger kids, they're exposed to so much more than what we were dude at the palm of their hands.

Matt (01:32:33):
Yeah. We've deteriorated our ability to communicate with each other. You know what she said? She said this, she was in a day and age where she was like, would you just let a foreigner knock on your door, come sit on your couch, eat your food, look over your shoulder and watch everything that you're doing? No. Well, in a day and age, when we're shutting out our neighbors more and more every day, that's exactly what we're doing. Absolutely. Letting everybody else into our house.

Bubba (01:33:02):
Everybody else knows everything. That's crazy. But it's just the wealth of information.

Matt (01:33:08):
That's another part of it is like, oh, that's where I was going with this, is that there's this generation of kids that's coming up, the alpha generation. They are making decisions. First of all, my generation is their parents. And so I know my generation. We're fucked up. I'm scared we're about to take over this country, take control of the country. And next, I think we're going to have a blue haired president next

Bubba (01:33:37):
Probably.

Matt (01:33:37):
Yeah. But this generation of kids, they're three to 12, three years old to 12 years old, and they're making decisions and commitments to sobriety and celibacy, and it's like 12 and 13. I'm like, I didn't even know what that was. No. But they are gaining the information. They're accessing the information, and they're looking at us going, these people are fucked up.

Bubba (01:34:06):
I'm going to do something different.

Matt (01:34:07):
I'm doing something different.

Bubba (01:34:08):
Well, then maybe the other generation will make up for us.

Matt (01:34:12):
Yeah. It's like that critical mass that's hitting right now, where it's like my generation, let's see, I'm a millennial, and then it's like the Gen Zs, and maybe there's one in between there.

Bubba (01:34:21):
I take a look at all that and I go, well, my dad probably thought that we were crazy.

Matt (01:34:28):
They did.

Bubba (01:34:29):
Yeah. Because we were so much more loose. They were more conservative than us. They thought we were

Matt (01:34:35):
Crazy.

Bubba (01:34:36):
And now we're looking at this generation behind us going, no, they're crazy,

Matt (01:34:40):
But we are.

Bubba (01:34:40):
Yeah,

Matt (01:34:41):
The

Bubba (01:34:41):
Generation right after you was fucked up. Oh, dude, I take a look at it and I said this, I used to get mad, and I'm like, you know what? In five years, I ain't going to be here anyway. It's their country. I'm going to sit down and shut up. I'm worried I am too. But at the end of the day, I go, it's their country coming up. But when I see what's going on, I have to turn that out because that nothing will wreck my day worse than that.

Matt (01:35:13):
Yeah. Trust me, I know

Bubba (01:35:15):
Wreck many days over this. And you're talking about your morning routines. One of these days I got to get the courage to do it because Billy, you know what he does first thing every morning? No ice. Oh, yeah. And the other day, I'll show you a picture Monday. It was nine degrees outside. Oh my God. Guess where he

Matt (01:35:36):
Was in the ice bath

Bubba (01:35:38):
Outside? Yeah. He don't need No.

Matt (01:35:42):
Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're looking at that. When you go from one to the other neurofeedback that you get, it's better than caffeine.

Bubba (01:35:55):
Oh, he's got it down to the science. He told me, he's like, when you smoke crack, your body releases this much into dopamine. He goes, ice bath is four times the amount going still ain't enough for me to walk outside getting eyes, get butt naked and jump in that ice naked. Jump in the ice. I am so bad. But you take a look at the benefits of it.

Matt (01:36:24):
Yeah. Maybe one day. You know what, my grandpa, he's 82 and he just got a sauna, and it's the going back and forth from ice to sauna where you get the most benefit. I believe it. But I'm sure if he could get into an ice bath, he would've. I think

Bubba (01:36:44):
If I could convince myself to do this,

Matt (01:36:47):
They got those cheap ice baths.

Bubba (01:36:49):
Now I'm going to look into it because my body, rugby, football, martial arts, I'm feeling it, bro.

Matt (01:36:59):
Oh yeah.

Bubba (01:36:59):
And it takes a little longer to get moving in the morning.

Matt (01:37:03):
You're close to Austin, right? You plugged into that MMA community.

Bubba (01:37:08):
I was years ago here late when I sold my gym.

Matt (01:37:10):
Boom. Okay, well now it's exploded up there. It's like a

Bubba (01:37:14):
Hole. It's everywhere. When I first started training, it wasn't as much a sport. My teacher was a guy named Dan and Asano. Bruce Lee had three black belts and he gave Dan one. Really? And I used to fly out to California and train with him, and he was the first one to introduce, well, you can't say mixed martial arts because the Greeks were doing Patreon years ago. But Bruce Lee was the first one to say in the seventies and sixties that a single system sufficient wasn't sufficient. And you go watch that movie, enter the dragon. The movie starts with what he walks out there. He's training with Sam Ho, and he punches him, kicks him, does a judo flip, and arm bars him 1969. And that was sacrilege back then. And so he created his art, which was a philosophy, which was kudo, which meant this, absorb what's useful, reject what's useless, and keep what is specifically your own.

Matt (01:38:31):
Yeah.

Bubba (01:38:32):
So number one, from a spiritual standpoint, that's what I try to do every day. I find something that works for me. Martial art world, at the time when I was really training, it was pretty common to go train with different schools. Hey, go see what this guy's doing. And they were open to it, and you traded information. And then whenever I owned our training facility, and I had a hell of a coach, he's an asshole, but he could coach and he could fight, but he was like, everything's top secret. Yeah. Shut it down. It was just, you got to earn this. Yeah. It was so foreign to me. Whereas we were like, no, go train with this guy. See what he's doing. Go see with this guy. See what he's doing.

Matt (01:39:17):
Yeah. And now you got these dude, well-rounded fighters that understand fundamentals and then go into these great, these high levels of achievement

Bubba (01:39:28):
In this world. People don't understand unless they're in that world, just how good a good fighter is and how much they put themselves through to go do that.

Matt (01:39:41):
Yeah. The demand on the body, what blows me away. I was like, oh, I'm going to get into this. And then this was in San Diego. I was at Victory.

Bubba (01:39:50):
Oh really? With Jocko school,

Matt (01:39:51):
Dude, for three weeks. Wow. I was like, fuck this. Yeah. I was like, fuck this. But just the mental toughness of after you get past the fundamentals and understanding it, it's the chess game that you're

Bubba (01:40:08):
Playing

Matt (01:40:09):
Is insane.

Bubba (01:40:10):
Yeah. No, that's the reason. Jiujitsu never was my favorite. I don't care what someone always had one more movie. And then at practical age, when I first started, I really wanted to learn John Fa or JKD, and then the only way they would teach it to me was if I trained the Filipino martial arts, which was stick and knife fighting. I didn't want to learn it, but I had to.

Matt (01:40:37):
Yeah, you didn't want to learn it. You didn't want to

Bubba (01:40:39):
Go through all that. But then I fell in love with it.

Matt (01:40:42):
Stick fighting.

Bubba (01:40:43):
Yes. Look up the dog brother sometimes. Alright. And it's full contact stick fighting. It's real base reality training. The only reason I was able to provide any training to the DPS border patrol

Matt (01:40:59):
Makes sense.

Bubba (01:40:59):
Cal was because I was forced to learn that.

Matt (01:41:02):
Yeah. A lot of defense.

Bubba (01:41:04):
Oh dude. And plus, whenever I would train strikers, I was like, look, if someone's got a knife in their hand, your angles better be pretty frigging sharp. And if you can learn how to stay out of range from a knife or a stick man, staying out of a range of a hand is pretty boring. And you really learn some footwork and you learn what distancing is, and you learn what angling is and you become pretty dangerous. But the other thing is, when people train, now you can even MMA to a sport. But when you're training with knives, how do you make that real? You can't be out there training with a Emerson clip. Were they training with knives? Yeah, we trained with handheld tasers. That's so funny. But think about it. If you train with a rubber knife, dude, you're going to get that 80 times. You never know. And you think I'm pretty good. So you can TAs this shit load. Oh dude. Them little handhold. Tasers. But you know what's cool is the tasing sucks. But you know what? It provides fear

Matt (01:42:15):
And awareness.

Bubba (01:42:16):
Yeah. Now I'm scared. Nobody wants to get hit with that thing. Like a little handheld pay. People don't realize how bad those things are. Oh dude. That's the dumbest thing I ever did. I paid the cop to TAs me one time. I bet him he was a student of mine. And I said, no, I can get to you with my knife before you tase me. He goes, Nope, ain't happening. And then I told him, yeah, I could. He goes, all right, we'll do it. He goes, but I got to recharge my taser, and that cost 20 bucks. So after we do it, you got to pay me 20 bucks. And I started thinking about it when it was done. The next day I go, I paid to son, bitch 2020 bucks to tase me. That's so funny. And I've done a lot of stupid stuff, but I remember laying on the ground while he was zapping me.

(01:42:57):
He was going, Nope, not a good idea. Yeah. Do those things not stop you? They will. In your tracks. In your tracks. And then someone just holding one in their hand, dude, when it goes off. Oh, yeah. Huh. So with knives, we would use those little handheld tasers to make it real. But with stick, it was a 32 inch stick. Inch and a half. Yeah. You ain't getting away from it. No. And you learn. I mean, because there it's more, they say every fight goes to the ground to a point's. True. But then guess what? You start with a stick in your hand. Eventually stick's gone. Now we're kicking and punching. Now someone's good at going to the ground. That's where you're going. It's real life stuff. And then when we get to the ground, we always had a clip in our pocket, and you want to wrestle somebody, try to wrestle and try to someone from pulling a knife out and your wrestling will really change. And then not to get political, but whenever I watch stuff on TV and you see law enforcement involved and someone's got a big thing right now and someone's got a gun and everyone's complaining saying what they should have, could or would've done, I'm going, you don't know.

Matt (01:44:17):
Did you see this the most recent thing?

Bubba (01:44:19):
Yeah.

Matt (01:44:20):
Dude. The craziest part. You want to talk about it?

Bubba (01:44:24):
Yeah. Hell yeah.

Matt (01:44:24):
The craziest part, it was a Walter P two 30. Oh, oh yeah. And it's got a striker fire that is known for mis firing.

Bubba (01:44:33):
Negligible discharge.

Matt (01:44:34):
Negligible discharge. And this is the thing that blows my mind. All of the footage that you see, this is January, 2026. We've got the best cameras that have ever been made ever. At every angle, every footage that you see, it's all grainy and shitty footage. You can't tell. You can't tell shit, you

Bubba (01:44:55):
Can't tell. But at the end of the day, I'm not going to say what other people should have done, but I know this, I got a pistol. I carry, the last place I'm going to take a pistol is in the middle of five cops and try to keep them from arresting somebody.

Matt (01:45:10):
That's a whole other thing. Right. If you got a concealed carry, you are trained to avoid this at all

Bubba (01:45:19):
Costs. I got to concealed carry so I can interrupt these five cops during the administration of their duties. No, you don't leave 'em alone. Yeah. We are living through some really strange times. Weird. And I've had, because I used to train DPS, and so there's a game we would do for people who don't understand that I would do this. I said, okay, here's my wallet. Here's my knife. I'm going to put both of these in my back pocket. You're going to be Mr. Law enforcement. You're going to come up and ask me for my id. And you get to pick which one I'm pulling out. It's crazy. In half a second. Yeah. Get it wrong one. Everyone has a bad day. Go be a law enforcement. Go be a police officer and get that wrong once, dude. So

Matt (01:46:21):
One of the, first of all, this is 2026. And with wars and a lot of police officers, they're vets

(01:46:34):
And so whatever, that's a whole part of this. But for some reason, we fail our heroes time and time again, whether it's what we promised them and then deliver to them when they come back, or by the way that we socially stigmatize them. But then you add in the mental health component and expect them to go to the VA and fix whatever they got going on. And then you expect them to keep us safe while we're asleep. And then with the internet, it's like, dude, everybody hates cops now. That's ridiculous. And it's crazy. Until they need 'em. Until you need one, until you

Bubba (01:47:13):
Need one, you need one. And I don't know how many times, whenever Austin was going to defund the police, and I said, I wish so crazy. I said, I wish every one of 'em would go on strike right now.

Matt (01:47:23):
I

Bubba (01:47:24):
Go, okay, we quit.

Matt (01:47:26):
No cops. See what happens, dude, we know what happens. You can look at Portland, you can look at San Francisco, Seattle. Like, dude, this is what you want. It's a dystopian wasteland. Yeah. There's talks about this stuff and it's like, is Portland, can we save it? At this point? It's like the

Bubba (01:47:44):
Pictures I've seen. It's crazy videos. And I used to go up there and train in the late eighties. I had a martial arts instructor up there, and I used to go up there and man, what is it? Mount St. Helen's is right there. You can see it. Bruce Lee's buried there. Parts were cool. Or Bruce is in Seattle. But anyway, just going there. It was, it's beautiful up there, but now you see it and you go, that's the last place I'm frigging

Matt (01:48:11):
Going. Yeah. It's not even just a dump. The place is overrun with zombies too. Yeah.

Bubba (01:48:16):
I mean, fentanyl. Fentanyl. If that would've been around in my addiction, it'd have been over. I'd have been dead. Dude, if you're in this line of work, which you are, you're going to lose one or two a month. Oh, yeah. And it's happening. I mean, they're not names in the paper. I remember when they left treatment, I remember when they got the treatment, whatever, I remember them. And then boom. I mean there was a guy, explain it to me. He said, the fentanyl, when they press those pills or however they're doing it, he goes, when they mix it, it's like mixing a big bowl of chocolate chip cookies.

Matt (01:48:55):
Exactly. It's called the chocolate chip cookies.

Bubba (01:48:57):
Is that right? Yeah. That's the first time I heard it. And it made it so much sense to me, says every batch is going to have some overdoses. Now think about this. At the height of my addiction, never once did I say I better carry around some Narcan in case I overdose.

Matt (01:49:15):
Dude, somebody said this to me yesterday, literally, she was like, he goes, do you know how much EpiPens are now 600 bucks?

Bubba (01:49:25):
Good God.

Matt (01:49:25):
And so this is a life saving measure for his son. And he goes, do you think it's fair when people, because fentanyl, I mean narcan's free, if it's free, somebody's paying for it somewhere, and that shit is not cheap. And so it's like who's actually paying for it? If the federal government's the one that's distributing it, taxpayers. But is it fair for people who have to struggle to afford their son's EpiPen to look around and see all these people

Bubba (01:49:52):
Narcan, just taking advantage of it,

Matt (01:49:54):
Taking

Bubba (01:49:54):
Advantage of it? Man, it's a million dollar question.

Matt (01:49:56):
And he was like, dude,

Bubba (01:49:57):
Yeah, it would infuriate me.

Matt (01:49:59):
Yeah, it would infuriate me too.

Bubba (01:50:01):
What are your thoughts about harm reduction?

Matt (01:50:04):
Yeah, so pure support, the way that it was hijacked by the government because now people think of harm reduction, and it's like they're giving clean needles and pipes to people harm reduction from a practical standpoint in addiction treatment, that's something totally different. And what you're talking about is the guy that was living under a bridge five years ago that was sliming heroin, maybe fucking around fentanyl or whatever, but now he's smoking weed. What was the path that he took to get himself there and was it a harm reduction model? Did he start to decrease exposure to dangerous situations? So when you talk about what is recovery and how is that measured, it's like, well, how do you know when somebody's in recovery? And through the peer support model, when I heard it the first time, it opened a door for me and it said, you are in recovery when and if you say you are. And so from a harm reduction model, if you apply it to the peer support model and the harm reduction model, what it's saying is you don't need to be completely abstinent or even planning on being abstinent in order to start working your way there.

Bubba (01:51:19):
No, my persons, I don't want to out 'em that I love more than anything in this world. Right. Horrible alcoholic and hadn't had a drink in nine or 10 years, still smokes weed. And I told 'em, I said, I don't care what you're doing,

(01:51:37):
Don't change. It is working. Yeah. It's his business. Now, the harm reduction side, like what you said, people get a bad name, I think because of San Francisco. Okay, we're going open up a hotel in every room, free drugs, free needles, but there's a group in San Antonio, elk cor on a friend of mine, Scott Dion, used to work there and there's a lady named Brittany, I think it's Brittany Ackerson runs it now. And what they do is they take clean needles out to the homeless and bandages, which is a measure of harm reduction and go, when they go out there, they go, Hey, let's switch out your dirty needles for some clean ones.

(01:52:21):
Hey, I got a bed available for you. Would you be interested in going to treatment? No. Okay. Well, here's some needles. They show up a month later with new needles. Inevitably, some of those people come up to 'em and go, yeah, I'm ready for treatment, ready to go. Who could argue with a model like that?

Matt (01:52:44):
A lot of people are with this model paying for It, And I think that that's valid. I get it. But at the same time, the government has a way, the government, whatever that means, right? The powers that be have a way of hijacking a really good concept and fucking it up.

Bubba (01:53:05):
I'm so glad they stayed out of aa.

Matt (01:53:08):
Yeah. Well, I mean, have they though?

Bubba (01:53:10):
I think for the most part they have

Matt (01:53:12):
Because you've got probation officer, and I'm not saying this is bad, right? What I'm saying though is sending people there, they're muddying the water.

Bubba (01:53:19):
Yeah. But whenever I get into, you haven't had that classic case of discrimination or something. I mean, AA has done a good job of shielding itself for most of it.

Matt (01:53:35):
I mean, it is part of their core tenants. They stay out of outside all outside

Bubba (01:53:42):
Affairs.

Matt (01:53:43):
Affairs,

Bubba (01:53:45):
And that's made it work. But when people tell me that they have no opinion of outside, no, they got no opinion. They don't want it. We're about being sober.

Matt (01:53:54):
So I mean, if there was a door open for them to hijack it, they probably would've. But there I pray it

Bubba (01:54:01):
Stays that way.

Matt (01:54:02):
I think it will.

Bubba (01:54:03):
Yeah.

Matt (01:54:04):
Because at the core of it, what it ultimately is, is people saving their own life,

Bubba (01:54:09):
And it ought to be eye opening that people can do that all without the government's help.

Matt (01:54:20):
Okay, so have you heard about this 24 billion scandal that's going on in California? Check this out.

Bubba (01:54:38):
Not surprising that it's California.

Matt (01:54:40):
Yeah. So what they did was in 2019, they started putting this package together. Anyway, I'll fast forward 24 billion. They get together, they get this bright idea, they're going to solve the homeless issue, and how are they going to do it? They're going to throw a bunch of 24 billion at it. And they did a huge census. They did a bunch of feasibility studies, and they're like, how are we going to fix this? What are we going to do? California spent 24 billion to tackle the homeless over the past five years, but didn't consistently track whether the huge outlay of public money actually improved the situation. According to the state audit released on Tuesday, which this was a little while ago, what they found was they doubled the homeless population. And not only did they double it, somehow Fentanyl and COVID came from the same place at the exact same time, right? It's like you put all these things together and what they're trying to do is socially fiction, individual problem.

(01:55:43):
It doesn't even make sense. It doesn't make sense. And so you got this situation in California where what they did was it's still a lot of money, and they got to distribute it, and they got to figure out where it's going to go and why it's going to go there. So what did they do that created NGOs and those people got rich. Those people got filthy rich. There was one, my favorite one, this dude won a $20 million contract. He was supposed to build 132 bed facility. You're supposed to get 5 million upfront to start the project, and then 5 million a year after that. And then after the year of not receiving money is when the reports were due. He never broke ground, got all $20 million. But guess who didn't get in trouble? Because he created the business. It was the business that got, he shut the business down. But that was it. That was it. Another dude, he got 24 million, bought himself a $6 million home. This is what happens. This is how we think of addiction, and this is crazy to me, is that we've dumped billions of dollars into research. And a hundred years ago, two fuckups got together and created this thing where they said that everybody that interacted with it got clean unanimously,

(01:57:00):
Unless there were psychopaths, or couldn't be honest, couldn't be fundamentally incapable of being honest. And so now you fast forward a hundred years, social acceptance, social awareness, a ton of scientific advances. You got all these maintenance drugs and all this other stuff, billions of dollars of research, and nobody can get clean the first time anymore. So we're all just psychopaths or just fundamentally no, stop doing what we're supposed to do, dude. And I don't want to point to any specific, well, I've already done it. Right? It's like there's a lot of, you can watch it systematically become less than what it used to be because people got involved.

Bubba (01:57:43):
Well, they watered it down. I mean, to that point, we were talking about that back to basics. And for me personally, I got to see stuff myself. The verdict's still out because I take a look at 20-year-old Bubba sitting on that plane going, the realization that I was an alcoholic. I wasn't ready to stop, but I knew that I was. So someone goes to treatment, 20 years old doesn't stick, but for the rest, for foreseeable future, in the back of his mind, what can he not deny?

Matt (01:58:26):
Yeah,

Bubba (01:58:27):
Right.

Matt (01:58:27):
Did I ever tell you my story, how I realized I was an addict? And keep in mind, my brother got sober, so my brother gets kicked out at 16. He comes and lives with me, becomes a heroin addict. Go figure, right?

(01:58:40):
And I go to prison and I find out my brother gets sober and I'm in prison doing drugs in prison, and I'm making fun of my brother for going to aa. So then I get out, I overdose three days after I get out and four months later, four months down the line, I'm messing with this girl who I piss her off and she's like, I'm telling your parents you're using heroin. And in my head I'm like, I got to get in front of this. So I call my dad, it's like three in the morning. I'm like, dad, I got to tell you something. He's like, and I'm like, and mom can't hear this. I hear him get out of bed and walk probably to his closet. He's like, what's up? And I'm like, I relapsed. I use that term even like I relapsed. And he was like, what? I'm like, dude, what happened, dude, you're doing? So he didn't know the whole time. I had been using these the whole time. And he's like, dude, what you're doing so great. What happened, dude? Are you just some kind of addict? And I'm like, what are you calling me? I was like, oh my gosh. I'm a drug addict and this is after prison,

(01:59:52):
After years already of slamming heroin. And that's when I realized it

Bubba (01:59:57):
Just the possibility, am I addict? Wait a minute. Oh my gosh, I'm a drug addict. What do you know that I don't? The lens of denial, right? Yeah. It refuses us to let us see what we really are.

Matt (02:00:14):
And it says it's cunning, baffling, powerful, right? It is such a slow trickle into the problem. The party lasts for a long time for a lot of people, but what they don't realize is that the lens that they're looking at through is the party shit's destroyed around them, and they're just like, I'm going to go out this weekend.

Bubba (02:00:33):
Well, it's the only disease that tells you you're doing good. Keep killing yourself. You Got this. But I was talking about that with a guy who was on a 12 step call last night. That guy, and you know this, that guy underneath the bridge, his brain's telling him, as long as you got this, Your world's good.

Matt (02:00:53):
I put this out on the podcast for the first time the other day, it was, I knew that I wasn't going to be okay. I knew it. There was no doubt about it, but as long as I had something that told me that I was going to be okay and made me feel like I was going to be okay, then knowing it didn't mean shit, didn't mean nothing, didn't mean anything.

Bubba (02:01:13):
Doesn't have to, because that disease, I mean, what someone I wrote, someone told me, or I wrote, the ego is the voice of your addiction. And that egos tell you, you got this the whole time. I'm eating 60 pain pills a day. That's so crazy. Right? I'm going deep down inside, there's a voice going, this ain't going to end well. And there's a louder voice that's going, listen, you got this all under control until it wasn't.

Matt (02:01:43):
Yeah. What's the funny one? Is the tweakers that they look in the mirror and they're like, oh yeah, I look good. And that was me too, right? I slammed.

Bubba (02:01:54):
That was me too, man.

Matt (02:01:55):
Dude, dude. I remember looking at myself in the mirror sometimes and be like, alright, you got this.

Bubba (02:02:01):
You got this. Yeah,

Matt (02:02:01):
You got this. And it's like, dude, yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're in a mirror. You're looking in a mirror in a hotel that you got after two weeks of not showering,

Bubba (02:02:12):
But as long as we got that drug, we're good,

Matt (02:02:15):
Dude. Yeah. And then you go right back to it.

Bubba (02:02:17):
Right back to it. Every

Matt (02:02:18):
Time. It's insane.

Bubba (02:02:19):
It's the definition of the sandy, but we have been given away out, brother. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I mean for me. That's the reason I get out of bed. Yeah. I didn't think twice. I mean, I was so grateful for opportunity to come down here and do this, but then whenever I was coming down here and the lady called me about her brother, I was like, well, yeah, let's go. And I don't know. It's my hope. It's powerful,

Matt (02:02:49):
Dude. It's a different way. If you'd have told me if you'd have, when I met you that I'd be doing this, I'd be like, you're Fucking crazy.

Bubba (02:02:56):
If you would've told me when I met you that you'd be doing this, I would've said that dude's lost his mind. I still remember the first time you called me, I'm going to do this, this, this, and this. I was like, didn't you do time for armed robbery? I was thinking that. Then you kept showing up and then boom, look at you.

Matt (02:03:13):
Yeah.

Bubba (02:03:13):
I mean, it's just phenomenal,

Matt (02:03:15):
Dude. But can you imagine if you told me this five years and two months ago when I was about to rob that bank?

Bubba (02:03:21):
No.

Matt (02:03:22):
And I was homeless and I didn't know what the fuck was going on. And that my girlfriend now, my wife at the time told me, Hey, I'm pregnant, but I'm leaving because you're going to get yourself killed, robbing, connects, and stealing from people in Mexico. And dude, if you'd have told that guy that, Hey, five years and two months from now you're going to be taking possession of that, doing this. And I'm like, dude, what are you on? And where can I get it? Yes.

Bubba (02:03:51):
It's the same thing here. If somebody would've told me 10 years ago that I'd be doing interventions working with the Hayes County,

Matt (02:04:01):
Hey, you know what? Where'd you get the name from?

Bubba (02:04:03):
What's that? A

Matt (02:04:04):
Better boat.

Bubba (02:04:05):
Okay, great. Kenny Chesney, or a guy named Travis Meadows, wrote a song called A Better Boat, and it sings about, basically we're building a vessel that can withstand any storm. And while the storm is raging outside, deep inside that boat, guess what? It's Calm. Calm. And so that's what I tell people. We're trying to build a better boat. That's funny. And I heard that song and I was like, Ooh, I like that. And then I didn't think about it. And then when I started up the company, what are you going to call it? And I went Better Boat.

Matt (02:04:44):
I use a boat analogy with people that I work with. They'll be like, no, I'm fine. Especially young, young guys, they can't disconnect fun from alcohol. And that's a big struggle for a lot of young men. And I tell 'em, you're going to spend all this time plugging the holes in your boat, and you think you're going to take one of 'em out and not sink. You think you're going to go back out there and drink and not sink.

Bubba (02:05:09):
Yeah, it's a good analogy. You got to keep them all full.

Matt (02:05:13):
You got to plug those holes and keep 'em plugged.

Bubba (02:05:16):
Keep 'em plugged. One day at a time, man. No. Even my logo, I mean, it has a guy in the middle of his mind that shows a guy with a sail and he's just sailing. Right. And then if you look at it, right, the start way, he's holding a white flag because it starts got to give up. You got to give up. Then after that, once you get up, the big book says what? Cease fighting everything and everything

Matt (02:05:42):
In it. Yeah, everything in anybody. Then

Bubba (02:05:44):
The sailing gets a whole lot smoother. And yeah, it was just a perfect name for me. I could teach from it. And it's worked. It's worked. Okay, so what do you do now? I'm doing interventions, which we talked about, which that's my gift. We do sober transports. I have arrangements with four or five treatment companies. Soon as someone says, okay, I'll come to treatment, they call, we got a text thread and they go, Bubba, go get this guy. And I got 15 drivers. I was one of them. And we go get 'em before a lot of people, oh, you got too expensive and it ain't cheap as Uber, but whenever you call, I don't care if it's Midland, Dallas, Houston, we got somebody on the road 20 minutes.

Matt (02:06:36):
And one of the core components of it is it is we're not stomping. There is no, if you're going to jump out, you're jumping out at the red light.

Bubba (02:06:47):
That's it. And we don't stop and we're going to get you there and before you change your mind. But a lot of treatment centers are seeing that it's helping their census. Because if you tell somebody, okay, we'll send someone tomorrow or Here, let me book you a plan ain't happening. They ain't getting there. Or another treatment senator might call 'em and steal. I've seen that happen many times. Soon as Plum Creek, ripple Ranch, Starlight, soon as they call, you're there. Boom. We're on the road. And our drivers, this has been the neatest part because I sponsor or know the sponsor of about 90% of our drivers. And a lot of people would not take a chance on them.

Matt (02:07:36):
And so really what you're talking, speaking to again is your community. Yeah.

Bubba (02:07:41):
I'm like, okay, because a lot of these kids, you need to get out of treatment. Guess what? They don't have a child and they got to go to sober living. I'm like, okay, I'll let you run a couple transport.

Matt (02:07:52):
I mean, if they're lucky, they're going to sober living.

Bubba (02:07:53):
Yes. Okay. I'm going to let you run a couple transports. You can get some money in your pocket. Maybe you can make your first month's rent. Let's see what happens. Right. And I'm taking a chance. Yeah,

Matt (02:08:06):
Dude. Yeah, because first 90 days. First 90 days. Can imagine. Have you had that happen yet? They run off with the client.

Bubba (02:08:15):
No, I haven't had that happen. I haven't had any crazy relapses. Now, the one way that I've been able to combat that is that I take so many meetings to so many treatment centers. I know the individual and I'm like, okay, no one bats a thousand, but I have sat here and listened to this guy for five weeks.

Matt (02:08:38):
Yeah, there's a screening other than just, I need a job. Here's my application.

Bubba (02:08:43):
You got somebody who's like, he's looking for an opportunity and they're showing some effort, and you're like, okay. Because at that time there, the biggest thing any one of us could get is a simple break, dude. A chance. A chance. Yeah. Right.

Matt (02:09:01):
That makes you feel human again too.

Bubba (02:09:03):
It does. Someone's taken a shot on me.

Matt (02:09:05):
Yeah,

Bubba (02:09:05):
Right.

Matt (02:09:06):
And I've been in your h and I don't care what anybody says after Bubba left, it was always like, oh man, I want that guy to sponsor me. Every single person. Really? I did it. Yeah. Yeah. Every single person. I was at Plump Creek, and that was like, we had to walk up that hill. We've got people rolling up there on their, it's like, yeah, everybody made it to that meeting. I could

Bubba (02:09:32):
Not wait to get there because I think I was just, for whatever reason, was just given a gift to run my mouth and enough life experience to have somewhat of an attraction and then be willing to share it. And that is what I feel like God wants me to do.

Matt (02:09:55):
We live in a day and age. I mean, you're in stoic philosophies, right? Oh yeah.

Bubba (02:09:58):
I love them.

Matt (02:09:59):
Okay. Well, I mean, you look at historically, there's always been the coming of age ritual. We don't have that anymore. And so I think we're failing raising well-adjusted men because there is no transition out of boyhood to manhood. And you don't teach them like, okay, now you're a man based on your accomplishment. Not just you're 18, here's your vote. You can go vote.

Bubba (02:10:24):
You can go fight in a war.

Matt (02:10:25):
You can go fight in a war, but you can't drink, but you can fight in all these weird, arbitrary things. And it's like, but they never earned their manhood. No,

Bubba (02:10:33):
They didn't have to. I mean, think about this. When kids were 13 or 14, they had to go get a job. I mean, we're making things better for people, but a lot of times it's making them worse.

Matt (02:10:46):
Oh no. It's that cycle that they've talked about this for thousands of years. It's like hard men make soft times. Soft time makes hard times. Hard times makes hard men, hard men make soft times. And it's the

Bubba (02:10:58):
Truth. That's what in our community, the one that we're working on and building is just a lot of hard men. And that's it. And that's the attraction,

Matt (02:11:10):
Especially dude, this is a talking point across a lot of places that you see a lot of young men are getting attracted to really hardcore religions. Again, like hardcore Catholicism, like monastic lifestyles. Even I think the priesthood in the Catholic church and in the Orthodox church has exploded in the last couple of years. Men are looking for examples, and that's one of the last bastions of hope for young men to go find people that are dedicated and follow their word. That's what we're trying to, but recovery is another place

Bubba (02:11:51):
Then that's what we try to take to the, I mean, people say our meetings are different. And you know what we started doing? And I had to tone it down. It was funny. Excuse my language. One day we were in a meeting at Windmill and there was like 30 guys in there, and this guy started crying and he was trying to stop. And I looked at him, I said, Hey, quit being a little pussy cry. Everyone laughed. And he started crying. And so we had to end our meeting with Don't be a bussy, because we were trying to tell people, this is the place where you come here and you're real like that. You got nothing to hide. We don't want you putting on airs. If you're upset, come here and be upset.

Matt (02:12:40):
That's why I talk about my sexual trauma. I talk about it very publicly because I think we live in a time where men are shamed for something that somebody else did to them.

Bubba (02:12:51):
That's ridiculous.

Matt (02:12:52):
And it's crazy. It's like most of us are children, first of all. But second of all, we are not taught how to be emotionally educated. There is no emotional education for a lot of men. And so, have you heard of this, the epidemic of silent suffering? Yeah. It's like what it's speaking to is it makes sense. Yeah. That's what's going on. The average male out there is they don't got, and the sad part is they don't got strong men around them to bounce the shit off of and talk

Bubba (02:13:24):
To. I agree. That a thousand percent, because that's the attraction to our group. I tell people, if you walk into one of our meetings, if you were to walk into one and it was a bar, you'd turn around and leave. You'd see Billy Viking, Eddie, you'd see all those guys going, I don't know if I want to be here or not. Wait, is this a biker bar? And everybody in there would fight and die for you because Eddie, the one I get in New Orleans, every once in a while I'll get a call from a mom and their son's at this meth house

(02:14:03):
And he doesn't want to be there anymore, but he can't leave. And guess who gets to go get 'em? Go kick that door, Eddie. Go get it. And I'll go and I call 'em. But I've learned not to go by myself. But that's the type of guys that, it's the type of guys I want to be around, and nothing's more important to them than go and get 'em. And then secondly, nothing's more important to him than providing them an alternative to going back. And when you look at a Eddie, you look at a Billy and Billy tells you about the nine years he did, you realize I can't bullshit this guy, Eddie, and B, if he can do it, I can too. Right? And man, that's the best example in the world is what you've done. And we got rooms full of 'em, brother.

Matt (02:14:57):
That's the only credibility too.

Bubba (02:14:58):
Yeah. Yeah. We got rooms of him. So I'm doing that, doing interventions. Just started an agreement with the Hayes County drug court coaching their guys, there's three different courts there. There's the mental health court people there for primary mental health, but some of them have SUVs charges. And so they let us work with them

(02:15:22):
And they, all I'm doing is providing a community once again. Alright, man. You're going to talk with us once a week. We're going to find out how many meetings you're at, and more importantly, if you can't find one, I'm going to pick you up and take you to our, cause we started our own meeting and you're going to sit in here and here's a temporary sponsor. If you don't like 'em, find your own. Go find one. Yeah. I'm not going to ask you every week what step you're on. I'm not going to bug you, but I'm going to ask your sponsor, have you seen them? Yep. Okay. And if I'm breaking rules, I'm breaking rules.

Matt (02:15:59):
Yeah,

Bubba (02:16:00):
But you know what? It's working.

Matt (02:16:03):
Yeah. I've interviewed four judges around here, and they're all either mental health or juvenile drug court. Right. And all the court systems are adopting peer support. It needed, I mean, why would you actually today? Yeah. Judge Griffith dropped today, I think. Oh yeah. Katerina Griffith from Harris County CPS court.

Bubba (02:16:40):
What about it?

Matt (02:16:41):
Her interview on the podcast, It got Released today.

Bubba (02:16:44):
Cool.

Matt (02:16:44):
Yeah.

Bubba (02:16:45):
Well, for me, you talk about definition of powerlessness, right? What's the powerless? I'm doing something I don't want to do

Matt (02:16:54):
Without, against my own will,

Bubba (02:16:55):
Against my own will. I don't want to be doing this. I asked the guy one time, I was taking people into jail through the steps and this guy in an orange suit. I asked him, I said, what's powerless mean to you? The dude started crying. He said, Bubba, I didn't want to go to jail for the shit I didn't want to be doing in the first place. You understand that? I understand that. A lot of people don't. But my point being is that how are you going to punish somebody who's doing something they don't want to do? It ain't going to work. My John Coates taught me, it was a silly little analogy, but it made sense. He said, you ever train a puppy? Yeah. He goes, you can't teach a puppy what not to do. You can't tell the puppy those shit on the floor. It's only got half the information. You teach it to go outside. He goes, people ain't no different. You can't say, don't do those drugs.

Matt (02:17:55):
Yeah, dude. It's much easier to learn something new than it is to unlearn something.

Bubba (02:18:00):
Yeah. It's so true. And it's the same thing you tell people, Hey, why don't we try this instead that instead of that, and have an open mind and just try and then don't tell me it don't work because there's 40 ugly sons of bitches in here is working for it right now. Come on. All you got to do is sit down and we're providing those opportunities. So my role, and of course we've only been doing that for two or three months. It's evolutionary process, but my ideas are the same. I mean, we're using certified peer recovery support specialists. There's some lines I'm concerned about blur, but I'm working with the courts on that because I don't want my people to go get certified, cross that line and cross their certification.

Matt (02:18:49):
So it's a tricky thing to navigate because you can do the work without the certification, but if you get the certification now you have to color in the lines.

Bubba (02:19:00):
Yes.

Matt (02:19:00):
Right.

Bubba (02:19:01):
That's what we're finding out. And That's so a lot of that. And then the courts, I mean, we don't make money off that. Anyway. I'm able pay my coaches and I'm able a little bit off top, hopefully to be able to pay for this room we're having meetings in.

Matt (02:19:16):
Yeah,

Bubba (02:19:16):
That's it. Right? It is. It's not a money maker, but number one, we're

Matt (02:19:21):
Definitely thinkless. But also keep in mind that the evolution of what's going on in college, there are people, her name's Raquel Garcia, I'll put you in touch with her, but she has a multimillion dollar peer support company,

Bubba (02:19:38):
Right? Yeah. No, for me, for me, it's a test tube. My goal is to learn how to help people. Here's some people that need help. You have a way to help people. Let's figure out how to do it, and you've got good people underneath you or with you, and so let's go do it, and let's find out what works and what doesn't.

Matt (02:20:03):
The beauty of peer support, my vision of what peer support is for the person that says AA didn't work is a springboard into aa. Right? Like peer support will get you far enough, but it won't get you all the way there. But that's on the back end. On the front end. What it does is it allows the person that's living under the bridge to be in recovery today.

Bubba (02:20:29):
Yeah. Well, the people tell me, like we were talking about earlier, when it doesn't work, it gives me a chance go, well, let's throw the steps away. Let's take a look at, let's study these sto Dude.

Matt (02:20:41):
Dude. Right? Dude, Seneca and Marcus Aelius both talk about the alcoholic man.

Bubba (02:20:48):
Yeah. But you can take someone through 12 steps without numbering them. Right. From Marcus' book. I mean, what did epic tus teach? Nothing. Nothing. That, Hey, man, you are powerless over everything. You're not controlling anything. You're only controlling your thoughts and your actions. That's it.

Matt (02:21:08):
Yeah. It's like Sisyphus, right? Like addiction. You were really rolling that rock up that mountain every day just to watch it. Roll that, roll that

Bubba (02:21:15):
Down. Chasing it. Where do you think you're going?

Matt (02:21:21):
Yeah,

Bubba (02:21:22):
I got you, man.

Matt (02:21:23):
It's crazy. Well, dude, I appreciate this time, man.

Bubba (02:21:27):
I'm grateful for the opportunity to come beyond it means a lot more importantly, it's just great to see you.

Matt (02:21:32):
Yeah, for sure.

Bubba (02:21:33):
My heart's full. Yeah, thanks.

Matt (02:21:38):
Thanks for listening to My Last Relapse. I'm Matt Handy, the founder of Harmony Grove Behavioral Health, Houston, Texas, where our mission is to provide compassionate evidence-based care for anyone facing addiction, mental health challenges, and co-occurring disorders. Find out more at harmonygrovebh.com. Follow and subscribe to My Last Relapse on YouTube, apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you like to stream podcasts. 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.