Life After Splitting a Cop’s Head Open and Getting Dumped in a Desert Wilderness Camp at 15

Matt Handy (00:00:03):
I'm Matt Handy and you're listening to My Last Relapse. All right. Austin York. How's it going?

 

Austin (00:00:11):
Good. Long time no see.

 

Matt Handy (00:00:13):
For real. Yeah, it's been like 10 years, right? Probably longer than that. Oh, it's been like 15 years?

 

Austin (00:00:20):
No, it can't be 15. So I've been sober for 14 years. I don't know, probably 2012, 13. So 12 years. Yeah. I was living in Carlsbad working in Peach Place. And

 

Matt Handy (00:00:38):
Were you touring yet?

 

Austin (00:00:39):
No, I don't think so.

 

Matt Handy (00:00:42):
I think that was about to be a thing.

 

Austin (00:00:44):
Yeah, I think that was right before I started working in events. What events did you end up working in? Over the years, it's been everything. I've been doing Coachella since 2014.This festival called Lightning in a Bottle I've been heavily involved with since 2014. And I mean, I've done Warp Tour and ... Rockstar. Did you do Rockstar? You did, right? No. A couple of my buddies were. Okay. Yeah. They were kind of touring around with Rockstar. I don't do a lot of touring stuff like that. I mean, the only actual tour I did was Warp Tour. I do a lot of festival site management where I go live there for a month or something and build out the site.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:35):
Do you know who a better beverage company is? They're the ones that supply all of the alcohol for Coachella.

 

Austin (00:01:43):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Duh.

 

Matt Handy (00:01:44):
So I know them. I have known them for a while. And my buddy is their main bar manager.

 

Austin (00:01:53):
Nephew?

 

Matt Handy (00:01:55):
No, it's like his friend. It's his best friend. They live right next to it. At the polo field, basically.

 

Austin (00:02:00):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:02:01):
Yeah. So-

 

Austin (00:02:03):
No, not your ... No, the guy ... No, no, no. The guy's nephew is what you're talking about? No, there's a guy that goes by nephew. He's one of the main guys.

 

Matt Handy (00:02:12):
It's one of his friends. They all, I don't know, grew up together or something.

 

Austin (00:02:17):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:02:19):
But I met him at ... Do you know what Delancy Street is?

 

Austin (00:02:23):
No. Oh, dude. So I went to this treatment center for ... I was sentenced there for three years. And do you know what Synanon is? Oh, man. There's a documentary called The Synanon Fix. It was the first therapeutic community. It started in LA. It started in Santa Monica and they turned into a murderous cult and it was crazy. But thousands, I mean, probably tens of thousands of people got and stayed sober through them. Pretty crazy.

 

Matt Handy (00:02:56):
Through this cult?

 

Austin (00:02:57):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because they take you in. Back in the day when it first started, it was purely heroin addicts. And they had this storefront basically that they turned into a living place right on the boardwalk. And then they had this couch basically where it was like one person at a time would come in and kick, and then they would just live there for the rest of their life. And then they ended up buying a different place right on the beach. And then it got so massive that it was like ... When you actually look at the people who were involved in early Synanon, it was a ton of Hollywood actors, directors and stuff. And the people who weren't addicts, that's where the ... Oh, it's not normie. They called them something. Anyway, there's a common term that they came up with for people who aren't actually addicts, but they hung out all the time.

 

(00:03:57):
And it's part of normal parlance now, but people don't realize where it came from. Wild. Yeah. I'll remember the term later. But yeah. So I talk about your story kind of often, about how you got sober actually really often because it's a really good example of an extreme example of when people get sober young.

 

(00:04:23):
How old were you? 18. Okay. Yeah. I was 18 and then ... I mean, I was 16 the first time I got sober and I was only relapsed for two months when I was 18.

 

Matt Handy (00:04:33):
Yeah. And it was like a one ... Okay. Tell the actual story of what happened that night, because I think I always fuck it up.

 

Austin (00:04:45):
Of what happened what

 

Matt Handy (00:04:46):
The first time you got sober.

 

Austin (00:04:47):
Well, it wasn't just a one night thing.

 

Matt Handy (00:04:50):
Okay.

 

Austin (00:04:52):
I mean, I was in and out of a bunch of rehabs and kept getting arrested. And it was like when I was pretty young, I was getting in trouble and fighting at school and getting high. And my mom would send me to go live with my other family members in Colorado or Utah. And then I went to a bunch of rehabs. And when I was 16, I was in a Phoenix house in San Diego? Yeah. Yeah. I was out there in Discanzo and-

 

Matt Handy (00:05:19):
It's shut down now, right?

 

Austin (00:05:21):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:05:21):
Yeah.

 

Austin (00:05:23):
It's shut down now. Yeah. So I was out there. I was there for 10 months or something. And while I was there, I was 16 years old. I didn't really understand addiction or what was going on with me or anything, but I just kind of had a realization of I was like, maybe I need to do something different. Maybe I need to not be partying or my life isn't going to come together. Because I had just kind of had the first experiences before going in there of being like, "All right, this isn't really that fun." I kept getting kicked out and I was homeless and just sleeping outside and just like, I don't know, is this where my life's going to go?

 

(00:06:16):
And I'd already been to eight high schools or something and just kind of stopped going to school and I just kind of started to be like, "All right, maybe I need to do something different." And then so when I got out, I really didn't think I was going to stay sober. Didn't even have that much of an intention of staying sober. And I went to go hang out with some buddies and everyone's getting high and I'm like, kind of just had an intuitive gut feeling of just, I don't know, just kind of overwhelming of just like, "This is not great." And I left and I found a young people's AA meeting in Oceanside that night and went there and met some other kids that were sober and just kind of kept going back to meetings. And then after a few weeks of that, someone convinced me to start reading the AA book and I started reading it and I was like, "Oh." I was like, "This book is explaining things about me that I didn't even know how to put into words that I'm like, okay, other people feel this way."

 

Matt Handy (00:07:33):
Pulling into you?

 

Austin (00:07:34):
Yeah. And that was really all that it took for me to accept that I ... Sorry, am I not coming through good?

 

Matt Handy (00:07:40):
No, you're good.

 

Austin (00:07:41):
Yeah, that was all it really took for me to accept that I must be an alcoholic. It's like the actions and what would happen around when I was drinking was always pretty wild. It wasn't tame. I was always blacking out, always took stuff too far. I was definitely just always that guy that just did too much. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, so I got really plugged into young people's AA and built a whole community there and that was kind of my life. And then for another year and a half or so, I was coming up on two years sober and I was having issues with my mom. She kicked me out again. And then I just had this moment of being like, I don't know, maybe I'm not an alcoholic. I never really tried to have my shit together before.

 

(00:08:49):
I never tried to mellow out my drinking. I never tried to do anything the right way. I was always just like, "Fuck it. I don't care." And I just convinced myself to have a drink with some friends. And then immediately there was not even any effort of trying to maintain my using. It was just instantly just blacked out every day. It was a short period. It was only two months, but it was like I had a job, never showed back up. I was back in school, about to graduate, never showed back up. I was two weeks away from graduating high school. Literally, after all that and all the years of getting no credits, I got sober, caught myself all the way back up, was two weeks away from graduating on time, and then just never showed back up. And I was immediately just homeless again.

 

(00:09:54):
I was 18. I had just gotten my first credit card. I maxed it out. Of course. Yeah. And yeah, I got jumped by a bunch of gang bangers in Oceanside, a bunch of Simone gang bangers in Oceanside. I was dating this girl, that relationship just imploded. And I mean, fortunately there wasn't that much bad going on in my life, but I already just had nobody to turn to. There was nobody in my family that was codependently taking care of me. So I had no option and I was miserable. Throughout that short stint of being relapsed, I was like ... I had started to live this better fulfilling life. I missed my sober friends. I missed my sober community. I was like, "I don't even enjoy this. I'm putting myself around people I don't want to be around. I don't feel safe." I didn't even like the feeling of getting that intoxicated anymore, getting so drunk and high that I couldn't move. I was like, "This is scary." I was like, "I don't even like this. " Just waking up random places and pissing myself and I'm just like, "This is ... I hate this.

 

(00:11:31):
And every once in a while I'd kind of stumble my way back into a meeting, didn't have anywhere to go. So I'd go back to one of my friend's houses that we were partying at and just keep drinking. And then one night it was just pretty much the same thing happened. I honestly don't even really remember getting there, but I must have just ... I had a friend drop me off at a meeting in Oceanside and I kind of came to where I was just with two of my old sober buddies and I was just like, "I don't want to fucking do this. I don't know where I'm going to go. I don't know what's going to go on, but I don't want to do this. " I didn't even go to the meeting. We just hung out, talked to them, went to a Starbucks and I'm just drinking coffee, trying to sober up, found a place to stay for the night with a couple sober guys.

 

(00:12:35):
And I don't know, for some reason when I woke up that next day, it wasn't ... Because I had done that a few times in that little relapse, but for some reason I woke up the next day and instead of just waking up and forgetting about how I felt the night before, I just woke up and I just had a different conviction. I was just like, instead of getting high, I was like, "Well, I guess I'll go to a meeting." And I pretty much just jumped right back in. And throughout all of my early sobriety, the sobriety part wasn't that hard. I kind of just looked at it as my only option. I was like, "I've shown myself that there's no opportunity in my life otherwise." And I'm like, "This is just if I want to have anything going for myself, this is it.

 

Matt Handy (00:13:42):
Yeah. The story of people's ... So my podcast is called My Last Relapse, and I had a very similar experience with my last relapse. I had three and a half years of clean time, but I also had 10 years over my head, a third strike, which ultimately they told me, they were like, "You're going to take these two strikes, you're going to eat those, those are yours, happy birthday and we're going to suspend this strike and we're going to suspend 10 years, you're going to get that off the top, but we're going to suspend this other strike and if you fuck this up, we're going to give you your third strike and we're going to try to strike you out. " And I was like, "Okay, for sure." So I'm for sure going to prison for 10 years, but they're going to try to give me 25.

 

(00:14:30):
That's just what was on the table. And so it was very easy for me to not fuck that up. But then as soon as I understood that I was okay, I get off probation in a couple months, they're not drug testing me, all this stuff. And I had that thought in my head that it was like, okay, I know I'm an addict, first of all, that is a very obvious thing. I know that my life gets ... I was living under a bridge five years ago. So back then it was like two years ago I was living under a bridge or three years ago I was living under a bridge at this time. And it was very easy for me to not want the consequences of that lifestyle because I also, after the last time I saw you, I went right back to jail immediately.

 

(00:15:24):
And then so did another prison term, ended up back on the streets. And then since then it was like, I'm going to do this to its logical end and then when I'm ready to go, if I make it back and I'm ready to go, then I'll clean up whenever that is. And a couple years before I got sober, it was like to that point where ... I tell people it was an abusive marriage. I had this extremely long honeymoon phase of my addiction where right before I had met you the first time was the first time I realized I was an addict. And this is after a prison term, losing a marriage, losing a kid, making fun of my brother while I'm in prison for participating in aid, not being able to see how fucking ridiculous that sounds, that I'm making fun of this kid who got sober and I'm in prison doing drugs, not seeing the force through the trees on that.

 

(00:16:20):
And it was like ... So there was the long, long honeymoon and including even all the negative shit that happened around my family and still couldn't see it for what it was, all the fucked up shit that I had done to people. And at the time, it was like I still hadn't accepted or come to terms with my trauma, like sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect, all this other shit. And it was like, didn't even realize those were a thing. I understood some of that stuff was real, but it was so fucking pushed down. I was like, it's not a problem. And so went through this honeymoon phase, then there was this long abuse and use phase of just falling into hate with this substance. And then the divorce phase lasted a few years where it was like, I'm fucking over this shit. I don't want to do this anymore, but I don't know how to stop.

 

(00:17:16):
And I'm surrounded by the gang culture, the homeless culture, and found a lot of solace in what I was doing in that I could always find this answer where it's like, I can stick this needle in my arm and I'll get immediate relief from all of this other bullshit that's going on, but then that stopped working. And it was like, okay, now this is really fucked up. And dude, I had to go to the hospital one time because I had these abscesses and I didn't realize that I was in a really bad health spot. And we were on our way to the hospital and I just kept passing out and I was like, "What is going on? " So I ended up at the hospital and they had to drain a bunch of abscesses and they're like, "Dude, you could have died." I was like, "What?

 

(00:18:12):
How is that even possible?" Still hadn't put it together, how dangerous that is. And they were like, "If you leave, something bad's going to happen." And I was like, "Okay, well, the only way I'm staying is if you make sure that I don't kick in the hospital." So they were trying to give me opiiates in the hospital. It wasn't working. And so I left and it was just this whole cascading effect of slowly being like, "If I'm ever going to get out of here, I probably got to go back to prison." And having all these crazy realizations in the last year of my use was like, "I'm never going to make it out of here if I have to do it by myself." And then got arrested for that bank robbery and I was like, "Okay, I found my way out. " But then they were like, "You're going to prison for 33 years." I was like, "Fuck, what?

 

(00:19:03):
And so dude, in fighting that ... So I had all of these very clear things that I really wanted to avoid. And then it was like, I moved here, a bunch of shit didn't go right where it was like I wanted to ... Well, I was doing underground wet work in California and digging trenches to do wet utilities, to install wet utilities. They don't do that here because the water table's so high, it's like we're digging 20 foot trenches in California. You dig three feet underground here, you hit water.

 

(00:19:39):
Anyway, and then I tried to get on an oil rig. It's like a secret society. You got to know the fucking Grand Wizard or something to get in there. And it was all the way coming back to the family, it was always like, I have to make sure that I don't just go back and sit around. I have to do something. And then that's what it turned into. I was like, "Fuck, I'm just not doing shit." And shit spiraled and I ended up using. But in that use, I call it my last relapse because it was the most pivotal moment of my life, shortest relapse historically. And also, I'd never really relapsed before because I never really stopped and never had the desire to stop. It was just I had to do it. I had to stop to satisfy things, the courts, my family, circumstances I just couldn't use for a little while, but it was never like, "Okay, I'm just going to quit forever." I was like, "I just need to do this for as long as I need to get these people off my back and then I can continue." And so I always say it was my shortest relapse.

 

(00:20:44):
I actually honestly think it was my only relapse where it was a legitimate relapse. I wanted to stay sober and then couldn't. So when that moment happened, I was like, once the relapse happened, it was immediately like, "Oh my God, I fucking hate this. " Also, the drugs are different. Shit is so dangerous now. It's like the fentanyl shit and I'm like, my best friend just died a couple years before this on fentanyl. He followed me into treatment and then I had to do three years. And so a year and a half into it, somewhere around there, he was like, "I don't got to do this for three years. This is crazy." So he left and then relapsed probably immediately, but overdosed two weeks later and died immediately. And it was like, "Okay, this could be really fucking bad." And just a bunch of cascading realizations around, first of all, I don't even enjoy the way that I feel right now.

 

(00:21:50):
The amount of guilt that I actually feel is unbearable and then a bunch of shit hit the fan and it was like, okay, for sure. But it all pointed me in this direction. And so I feel like if I didn't relapse, I would've never ended up here today. I would've ended up ... I don't know. I don't know what I would've done, but I probably wouldn't be opening treatment centers and I wouldn't be doing this podcast for sure. I'd be like, who knows what I'd be doing, like some desk job somewhere and probably miserable. But yeah, so what I really want to talk about with you is community and how pivotal that was in your story. And I watched ... So we knew each other for a short amount of time, but I was very aware of what was going on with you guys because of my brother, right?

 

Austin (00:22:41):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:22:41):
And just watching how that played out for you guys and what happened and why things were happening for you guys was very obvious to me that without that community, it probably would've looked very different.

 

Austin (00:22:54):
Yeah. It was absolutely pivotal. I mean, especially just being so young.

 

Matt Handy (00:23:01):
I mean, all of you guys were really young. There was a couple of you that were maybe my age, right? A couple of you that were maybe a little bit older than me too. But all of you guys were turning 18, 18, 19, 20.

 

Austin (00:23:15):
Yeah. Yeah. And just having that, because it's like before going to A, before getting sober, the thought would be like, what would I do with myself? And then so coming into the rooms and immediately finding a bunch of other kids that still like, it's like, all right, we're not getting high, we're not committing crime for a rush. What are we going to do and find ways to go out and have fun with your friends and no way could I have done it without it. I mean, even still as an adult, I still struggle with being a thrill seeker, especially as an 18-year-old kid.

 

Matt Handy (00:24:10):
How old are you now?

 

Austin (00:24:11):
32. Okay. And yeah, so just kind of running around, figuring out life with each other and having each other as a support system too, because it's definitely not a normal thing in society for young men to talk about their feelings with each other. For sure. And having that kind of growth experience in our young adult lives was super important. It's like the saying where it's like, you're like the five people you spend the most time with. I really believe in that. Yeah. You're the average of the people you hang out with. Yeah. And so when that's just what we're doing, that's what we're doing. And even though most people didn't stay sober, there's still a solid crew of us. It was just a couple weeks ago, me and Mike went out to our buddy's wedding and there's five of us that all maybe didn't get sober right at the exact same time because me and Mike got sober within a week of each other, two weeks of each other or something.

 

(00:25:29):
But within a few years and that stuck around, that are like seeing what everybody has done with their lives from where we were all at is incredible.

 

Matt Handy (00:25:38):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so the stories around sobriety, at least from my point of view, it's pretty much all the same, right? We're born, we grow up a little bit, we make fucked up decisions, we all ended up on substances, whatever that was, like the spectrum of substances, we fucked our life up even worse and then had these come to Jesus moments where it was like, okay, something needs to change and then we got sober and shit got better. But being able to benefit from other people's suffering and benefiting from your own suffering, right? Those benefits, but then having this core group of people around you where ... I remember when I came into your guys' group, it's like I got out of prison, relapsed and was like sent to treatment, no, was sent to hang out with you guys first and then got sent to treatment later. Yeah. And it was like, I think the week that I started hanging out with you guys, somebody overdosed in a target bathroom. Do you remember this? The target on El Camino Real.

 

Austin (00:26:53):
I do remember that. That was Brian. He's doing life, I think, or I don't know if he's doing life, but he's doing a long time right now.

 

Matt Handy (00:27:02):
Really? Yeah. And it's like, so watching, but there's like a core group of you guys that's like stayed sober, did the deal, ran shit. And I was like, "You guys are like pillars in the YPAW scene in California and then across the nation doing shit and setting shit up and running shit." And I was like, "Damn, that's fucking crazy." So after I left, I cut all ties, got rid of all ... I think I would look online to see what people were doing and it was like, "God, they're still sober." It was like, "Okay, they're definitely doing this thing." And it was like conversations, especially around that time that I was with you guys always pointed me back in the direction of like, "This is not sustainable." Obviously what I was doing is not sustainable. It got really crazy and really intense for a really long time, whereas I was intentionally making the decision to be homeless, to do more drugs.

 

(00:28:11):
And so all through that time, there was no contact with anybody that was doing anything good, but would check in every now and then, see what you guys are doing or whatever. I was like, "God damn, they're still doing the same shit." It would constantly blow my mind. It's like they've been doing this shit for a decade. It was like basically by the time I got this all out of the way, it was like a decade of being clean. And it was like, now your entire adult life, you spent it clean and I spent my entire adult life under a bridge. So that was a really ... Watching that happen and understanding the dichotomy of like, this is what this benefits you and this is what this gets you. Because ultimately my life benefited me after I got clean. But during all that, all of the experiences and life choices that I was making, it was like the only benefit that I got from it was the stories that I have to tell today, but there was nothing like good coming of it at the time. So yeah. Well, tell me about your travels and your experiences because you've got some crazy fucking stories.

 

Austin (00:29:30):
Yeah. I mean, definitely a lot of life has happened since we last saw each other. Yeah. So in 2014, I started working music festivals. I had a couple buddies that were kind of doing some entry level work in the festival world and I didn't have a lot going on. I was just working at a pizza place and they were like, "Hey, you want to come try this out? " Peter Pizza, right? Pizza Port. Pizza Port. Yeah, Pizza Port in Carlsbad Village. So I went out to Lightning in a bottle one year and got offered a job as just a van driver picking up DJs from the airport and driving them to the venue. And I got another job at Coachella just as a stagehand laborer. And at the time that was just really good money for me. It was 150 bucks a day or something compared to what I was making at the pizza place. I was like, "Oh, sick. Yeah, let's do it. " And then just from there, just kind of got really plugged in and just started building a network of people there and just getting hired on more shows and traveling all over doing that. I mean, I don't know about, it's hard to say just throw out crazy story.

 

Matt Handy (00:31:00):
You don't have to tell crazy stories, but it's interesting to hear the different ... So that's a whole world unto its own. The whole touring and festivals and that whole thing because when I was a kid ... Did you know this? I lived at a studio when I got kicked out and ended up becoming friends with a bunch of crazy bands. And when I was 17, I had this offer from a friend of mine and he was like, "If you can stop slimming heroin, we'll pay for you to be our roadie in Europe." And I couldn't stop. But just watching ... When I got to the studio, Scary Kids Scaring Kids was practicing there. And then they got their first major label deal and then moved to Tennessee. And then watching all of that, all the evolution of how people were playing ... Originally, it was like people would go do bars and then they were doing venues and then they were support bands on other people's tours. And then they were doing their own tours and watching that whole evolution was crazy. But it isn't so secretive the fucking oil rigs, but it's still a very ... You got to know certain people to get into that kind of thing.

 

Austin (00:32:24):
Yeah. It's definitely a lot more about your network than any kind of resume.

 

Matt Handy (00:32:29):
Yeah.

 

Austin (00:32:29):
For sure. I've never shown a resume to get a job or filled out an application to get a job in that industry. And it's definitely an interesting path that I ended up on, being the sober guy that throws parties for a living. And a lot of the circles that I run in, there's not anybody who's sober and everyone ... It's like they're drinking, doing blow, like Adderall to keep going to get themselves through. And that's just how they function. And it's funny to me because people are always like, "I don't know how you do it. " They're like, "I don't know how you stay sober." People I work with.

 

Matt Handy (00:33:12):
Yeah.

 

Austin (00:33:13):
And I'm like, "I don't know how you guys do it. " Yeah, for sure. I'm like, "I don't know how you do that. " And then you show up and do a good job. Because for me, it's like if I am doing this, I just stop existing. So yeah, it's funny, I've never really been phased by as far as it comes to my addiction stuff of what other people are doing. Yeah, for sure. I'm not phased by being around people getting high or whatever. So yeah, I mean, that's pretty much been my life for the last 11 years until your little brother called me up and asked if I wanted to come run a fishing charter with him.

 

Matt Handy (00:34:04):
Yeah. That's an interesting story. When I left, there was little kids. I came back and he's literally three times my size.

 

Austin (00:34:16):
Yeah. I know. It's funny to see the man he is now compared because it's like when I met him, he was like- A little kid. He was a shithead little kid. I remember the time when I met Moron and I, he was, I don't know, had to be eight or nine years old and he was like, "We were at your parents' house and he was like-

 

Matt Handy (00:34:37):
He's 13 years younger than me to the day. To the day.

 

Austin (00:34:40):
To the day. Do you guys have the same birthday?

 

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

 

Austin (00:34:43):
I don't know how I didn't know that.

 

Matt Handy (00:34:44):
So if you met him around the same time that I met you, did you or before that?

 

Austin (00:34:52):
Around the same time. Before that, but around the same time.

 

Matt Handy (00:34:54):
Okay. So he was, yeah, like seven.

 

Austin (00:34:58):
Yeah. And he was trying to convince me to let him light a basketball on fire and throw it into the canyon behind your parents' house. Oh my God. But it's funny. I think about that now when I'm like, that little kid is now my business partner.

 

Matt Handy (00:35:16):
That is so funny. If you weren't there, he probably would've done it and burned that canyon down. That's so funny. Yeah. So yeah. Well, so that's all you're doing today? Or are you still doing shows and-

 

Austin (00:35:36):
I'm going to keep doing event work. I've always been a freelancer in the event world, but for the last few months, I've taken the time to focus just on the fishing stuff, just to make sure that gets off on a good foot. But I'll ease my way back into doing some shows here and there.

 

Matt Handy (00:35:57):
You guys go out every day?

 

Austin (00:36:01):
Usually two or three days a week.

 

Matt Handy (00:36:03):
Okay.

 

Austin (00:36:04):
When I first came out, we were going out every day just to get me into the groove. But right now we're new and we get booked pretty much every Saturday and then one or two other days a week.

 

Matt Handy (00:36:15):
Okay. You guys, those pictures that I see, it's like where ... How do you guys know where to go? Or does just they know where to go?

 

Austin (00:36:27):
I mean, there's a lot of spots that all the charters know. And then you learn more spots over time. You get spots from other captains, you know, figure it out. But most of the spots where we go with clients, all the charters down there are doing a lot of the same thing.

 

Matt Handy (00:36:49):
Okay.

 

Austin (00:36:51):
And then it's like the more times we go out, then we find out little more niche things about the different areas and where to go. And you should come out sometime.

 

Matt Handy (00:37:02):
Yeah. We're planning on taking a bunch of people out there. There's other owners and shit around here that ... So there's a treatment center that just opened a couple miles from here, and it's this really renowned doctor who's been working in the addiction space for a long time. And so the facility used to ... A bunch of lawyers used to live there and their pool table weighs 10,000 pounds. It's like pure granite. Everything is granite. So they had to crane it in, then build the walls around it. And so they just left it there when they sold it. But this doctor, our medical director, he's a neuroscientist who then entered recovery and then started doing addiction work. And so he knows all these crazy doctors. So we're trying to get some doctors and some other owners to go out with us. Nice. I don't have the patience for fishing.

 

Austin (00:38:09):
I thought you were into fishing.

 

Matt Handy (00:38:10):
No. Michael, Jacob. So I was into fishing, when I met you guys, it was more of like I would go smoke weed and fish. It wasn't like a-

 

Austin (00:38:22):
Well, I saw that picture of that giant mako you caught a few years ago.

 

Matt Handy (00:38:26):
So I was in treatment and it doesn't matter what they were going to do. I was down to do it because I was in treatment. So yeah, that was a big fucking fish. It was like 1300 pound mako. That thing was beast. Yeah. And when we cut it up, we brought it back and cut it up and they were like, yeah, it was a mess. It was a mess. It was such a mess. And it was like we had to get it out of the boat. So it was like 15 dudes trying to pull this giant shark out of this boat and flopped down and broke a bunch of its teeth and stuff. It was funny. Yeah.

 

Austin (00:39:06):
Yeah. Would you fight that for like eight hours or something?

 

Matt Handy (00:39:08):
It was six hours. And then it pulled us 20 miles from where we hooked it.

 

Austin (00:39:14):
Dang. What were you on? What kind of boat were you like?

 

Matt Handy (00:39:18):
How big was it? It was probably 25 to 30 feet long. There was like four people on it. And the guy whose boat it was, this is what he does. He owns the treatment center that I was in and he goes and fishes every weekend. And so he goes to these spots and all the stickers on his truck is like Mako fishing stuff.

 

Austin (00:39:42):
You weren't in Tommy's treatment center, were you?

 

Matt Handy (00:39:44):
No.

 

Austin (00:39:44):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (00:39:45):
No. So I was out in Hamul. Okay.

 

Austin (00:39:49):
Yeah. I got another buddy in San Diego that he owns a treatment center in a sober living and he's got a boat that he's on it anytime you get can.

 

Matt Handy (00:39:59):
Yeah. Is that someone recent, not recently, but like Jericho recently got put in touch with one of your

 

Austin (00:40:08):
Friends. Oh, John.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:09):
Okay.

 

Austin (00:40:09):
Yeah. John's starting up a treatment center right now. Do you remember John when I saw it?

 

Matt Handy (00:40:14):
Yeah.

 

Austin (00:40:14):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:17):
In San Diego. Yeah. So the cool thing about Houston is there's no treatment here. There's like nine treatment centers in the fourth biggest city in the country, whereas San Diego, there's like hundreds of treatment centers.

 

Austin (00:40:32):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:32):
It's crazy. But yeah, starting a treatment center in California would be a nightmare, I would assume. Having to compete and like ...

 

Austin (00:40:44):
He knows. I mean, he's been working in that industry. He was COO for another big treatment center in San Diego for a long time.

 

Matt Handy (00:40:57):
Yeah. Especially learning about the marketing around this, it's like we're not competing with anybody here basically, but there's treatment centers here that have been here for decades and it's like you'll never outmarket them at this point. When you type in Houston treatment, they're like the first three people. It doesn't matter how you phrase it. They're always the first three.

 

Austin (00:41:23):
Yeah. I'm sure the red tape here is a lot easier, but San Diego or Southern California, you just have the appeal that everybody wants to go there.

 

Matt Handy (00:41:30):
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a friend, she got sober. I guess she relapsed and then went to treatment in Southern California. And that's like a big thing. Everybody leaves Houston to go to treatment. They go to Austin or they go to California. Actually, one of the ... Have you ever heard of Jaywalker Ranch? Sounds familiar, but- They're in Colorado, but 75% of their census comes from Texas and they're like a cash pay high end and they're all coming from here. And then it was like a good chunk of them are coming from Houston. But it's like a thing. Everybody leaves Houston to go to treatment. Yeah,

 

Austin (00:42:12):
That's definitely another thing that I was really lucky for is just the fact that I, lucky enough, grew up in Southern California where there was so many sober people and getting sober and where there is sober young people, because there's got to be tons of places all over the country where it's just not a thing.

 

Matt Handy (00:42:30):
Not a thing. Yeah. I don't even know. I'm sure they have WIPOC groups here, but I haven't heard of one or seen one. They did the ... So WYPOD just had their national convention in Austin. Austin's a lot, at least the sober scene is a lot like what's going on in Southern California. There's a lot of sober young people in Austin, but it's like Dallas, it's not the same. So it's interesting to see the way that this treatment center is evolving and what's actually going on. The way that we started is way different. We've only been open for three months. It's completely gone a different direction as far as marketing and development. And then we ... So our medical director, he's a neurologist, had to do all of his medical training in neurology. And his model and theory that we're developing right now is all around treatment prediction.

 

(00:43:33):
I mean, relapse prediction instead of relapse prevention. And so he has this entire model that's built on your biological component to relapse versus the spiritual and emotional. So instead of treating what everybody ... And it's like the statistics around the treatment industry are heartbreaking. They fail 100% of the time almost. It's like you send people to treatment and a successful treatment center has five out of a hundred that stay sober for a year, for one year. Not even stay sober forever. It's for one year.

 

Austin (00:44:11):
Yeah. Must priced.

 

Matt Handy (00:44:13):
Yeah. I mean, it's hard to stay sober. Getting sober is the easy part. For a lot of people, it's staying sober that's the hard part. Yeah.

 

Austin (00:44:21):
It's a tricky thing too. I can't imagine trying to pinpoint ... It's like, I mean, I've been sober for a long time. I can't pinpoint why. I couldn't tell you why it clicked for me and it didn't click for you when I was young or why so many of my friends that I grew up with that we're kind of all in the same mix and something clicked for me and they're dead. They're like, I don't know.

 

Matt Handy (00:44:49):
Or just still not sober. Yeah. I interviewed a One Chip Wonder a couple days ago and she was like, she works in the treatment industry now and she's constantly asked, "Can we bottle what happened with you? Is it possible to really pinpoint what happened with you? " And it's like, no. And the reality is, it's much easier to tell people why they can't stay clean than it is to say why they did stay clean. Way easier. You can point to all kinds of external factors for why people keep relapsing, but the internal work of how you stayed sober is so subjective and individual. And what actually gets it to click is so different every time. There's no telling what is going to get somebody sober. No, not at all.

 

Austin (00:45:36):
Well, because it's also being what sober means and what that relationship is tied to and everything is just so unique to everybody. I don't know. And it's like people's traumas and what drives them and what they need out of life is just so different to everybody that you can't pinpoint it, but solid community is definitely a good place to start.

 

Matt Handy (00:46:17):
Yeah. The community aspect of sobriety. So part of the model that we're developing says that there's a hyperactivity in the amygdala. The fear center of your brain is hyperactive based on a bunch of trauma. In order to quiet the amygdala, biologically, you have to get oxytocin. In order to do that, you have to ... And so he's writing a book right now called Why It Works to kind of counter how it works. And really what he's saying is in order to get into this place of healing, you have to do your fourth step. You have to do your fourth step correctly, and then you have to do the fifth step correctly. And it's strictly just coming down to how honest are you? Because if you have any kind of walls built around the relationships that you have, there is absolutely no way to rebuild your frontal cortex, your prefrontal cortex.

 

(00:47:10):
And so you quiet the amygdala, you create a safe space, you quiet the amygdala. And then the back end of all of this is if you are not part of a community that helps that feedback loop around your moral compass, your honesty, your intention around staying sober, you're not going to stay sober. If you have to do this on your own, you're not staying sober. I'm sure there are people out there that went out into the mountains and never interacted with society again and stayed sober, but that's a extreme ... And if that's the length that you have to go to, then fine. But if you can surround yourself with a community of people ... And our whole thing is this is a multiple pathway approach that we offer as part of the curriculum we're building out. So you don't have to go to AA.

 

(00:48:03):
You can go to refuge or celebrate recovery or do Dharma or whatever it is. You just got to do something because you can get in a place of safety anywhere. You can go to church and get in a place of safety. A lot of people, you probably heard this too, but a lot of people would be like, "I just want to go home.That's my safe place." It's like, dude, that is the scene of the crime.That's the place that everything happened. So Texas, it is illegal to ... Insurance won't pay for sober living here, whereas the Florida model's based on sober living. They pay for everything out there.

 

(00:48:45):
Here, you got to really be determined to find that place and find those people in order for it to ... In order for you to fit into a place where you can get what you need to stay sober, you have to be determined to do it. It isn't a bunch of other places. The Meccas for recovery, it's because you have a lot of stuff set up for you to stay sober. Whereas here, from my opinion and my point of view, it's like everybody has left Houston for so long to get sober that it's not really what they're worried about here. They're worried about what are you going to do when you come back from that journey of getting sober instead of like, how are you going to get sober here? And it's like there is ... So Houston's an interesting place. Have you driven around?

 

Austin (00:49:35):
Not much.

 

Matt Handy (00:49:36):
Dude, you should drive around. It's crazy. So it's like one of the oldest cities in the country and it's definitely its own world too, where when you drive around Houston, it's like pockets. It wasn't like San Diego where it was an epicenter and then it grew out. It was built in places. And so obviously the natural progression of a city is like, you'll build a nice place and then it gets shitty and then they move out. And so if there's an epicenter like San Diego, they just expanded it out and it got nicer and nicer as it went out. Here it's like 20 square miles of ghetto with one pocket of extreme wealth and that's just all over the place. So there's like extreme poverty, like tons of ghettos with pockets of billionaires living all over the place because there's like the oil and gas industry, the medical industry.

 

(00:50:33):
We went to this event over the last weekend and it was like a black tie event. It was for the Meninger Clinic and they started doing the auction and it was increments of like $5,000. For every time that somebody bid, it was like $10,000, $15,000, 20,000. I was like, I'm out of here. I'm gone. It was funny. But yeah, Houston's an interesting place to drive around because on top of ... We're from San Diego. There's no oil anything looking at these, it's like square miles, like 10, 15 square miles of refineries and smoke stacks and crazy shit going. I'm like, God damn, this is like an industrial city.

 

(00:51:24):
And then when you look at the demographics of people that are really represented here, there is that dichotomy of poverty and wealth. And then when I look at like ... Do you watch the news here?

 

Austin (00:51:38):
No.

 

Matt Handy (00:51:38):
Dude, it's so crazy. It's like every week another female teacher is getting caught for sleeping with a student, but then also there's multiple murders a day. So there is a lot of people who need help, but then the access to care is not there because when you're knee deep and that kind of shit, you're not worried about insurance. So it's like, what are your options for treatment? When you got sober and when I originally got sober, so Parody came around in 2008. You know what that is?

 

Austin (00:52:15):
No.

 

Matt Handy (00:52:17):
So the Kennedys, like JFK, Bobby Kennedy, RFK, their family is full of addicts. Bobby Kennedy killed somebody, got a DUI, or was drinking, killed somebody, and then they got him out of a DUI or whatever. So they have a long history of family addiction and mental illness. Patrick Kennedy is one of the younger ones. He's still active on the East Coast as a politician and stuff. But in 2008, they realized this is fucked up. People don't have access to care, at least on the mental health and addiction side. And so they made a series of laws around access to care that said, if you are an insurance company, you have to offer services. You have to offer the access to care at the same level or better to mental health and addiction services. And so that was 2008. And so it's much easier today than it's probably ever been, but it's still so complicated to try to get into treatment if you don't have resources. If you got resources or you got money, you can go to the best places and it's not that hard. And I was in treatment.

 

(00:53:32):
After I left you guys, I went to treatment with a guy that was on Dr. Phil for going to treatment 150 times, 1150 times. And he was like, yeah- Rough, man. He was like, yeah. And his parents were just filthy rich. And he was like, " Yeah, I've been to treatment. I've been on Dr. Phil and all this stuff. "He went to the Scientology rehabs. He had tried everything, including their little rehab thing, right? But he was like, " Yeah, I've been 150 times. He's going to make 151 and it's going to fail. "And I was like, " Yeah, that makes sense. Listen to you. "So he would go to treatment, he'd relapse for a couple days and then go back to treatment. So instead of doing the prison thing, this guy just ... I should look him up actually and see what ended up happening with him. If he's still doing that now, it's probably been thousands of treatment centers.

 

Austin (00:54:28):
Rough way to live.

 

Matt Handy (00:54:29):
Dude, treatment is not ... Did you go to teatment?

 

Austin (00:54:31):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:54:31):
I mean, as an adult, no,

 

Austin (00:54:33):
You got sober. No, not as an adult, but I went to a bunch of treatment centers as a kid.

 

Matt Handy (00:54:37):
Dude, tell me about the adventure, the youth adventure camps.

 

Austin (00:54:42):
The wilderness camp? Yeah. Dude, that was one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life. Tell me about it. So I got arrested when I was 15 for ... It was actually kind of bullshit looking back on it now, but I got arrested for battery on a peace officer, but it was an off-duty cop that pretty much attacked me at the beach. And I was a wrestler when I was a kid and I- Like jumpsuit, the whole thing? Yeah. Okay. I mean, I wrestled a little bit. I wasn't deep into wrestling, but I wrestled a little bit. I mean,

 

Matt Handy (00:55:18):
You have to go to school to continue, right?

 

Austin (00:55:21):
Yeah. But I was a freshman in high school, but so when this dude starts, he runs at me. I don't know. That part doesn't really matter. But basically when I flipped him over into the sand and he split his head open on a rock.

 

Matt Handy (00:55:39):
The only rock on the beach?

 

Austin (00:55:40):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (00:55:41):
Geez.

 

Austin (00:55:44):
But yeah, looking back on it now, I don't know, I was a kid, I just didn't know what was going on, but my mom ends up making a deal with my probation officer somehow that if I go to this wilderness camp, I won't have to go to court and get charged and this whole thing.

 

Matt Handy (00:55:58):
Really? So you were already on probation?

 

Austin (00:56:04):
I don't remember what happened because I had been- So for juveniles, like pre-court services? When I was in seventh grade, I did the ... I forget what it's called, diversion.

 

Matt Handy (00:56:15):
Diversion

 

Austin (00:56:16):
Diversion. Yeah. And then in eighth grade I did ... It wasn't diversion, but it was something similar because I got arrested again.

 

Matt Handy (00:56:28):
So there's diversion and then it gets deferred. There's a deferred sentence.

 

Austin (00:56:35):
Yeah. So maybe it was something like that.

 

Matt Handy (00:56:39):
Or you don't got to go to jail, but you have to-

 

Austin (00:56:41):
I didn't have to go to jail and I didn't have to have a record. I think the cop who arrested me was able to decide that he didn't want ...

 

Matt Handy (00:56:54):
Yeah.

 

Austin (00:56:58):
And yeah, so then that happened. So I wasn't on ... I don't think I was on probation at the time, but it was like, I don't know, whoever with the courts that she had to meet with.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:14):
Yeah. I think for juveniles, if I remember correctly, what happens is pre-court services, you get a probation officer.

 

Austin (00:57:21):
Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (00:57:22):
Something like that. So they're your case manager while you're going through your courts, whatever. You get arrested, you go through this orientation thing where you get a probation officer and then they guide you through all

 

Austin (00:57:34):
Yeah. So yeah, I hadn't even been to court yet, but I didn't even know. It was one of those things where I didn't know I was going to the wilderness camp. You get woken up at three in the morning and fucking dragged down the airport.

 

Matt Handy (00:57:51):
With the white van, the whole nine?

 

Austin (00:57:52):
Yeah. And yeah, I mean, at first it was a whirlwind of I'm like, "What the fuck is going on? " Because I went from-

 

Matt Handy (00:58:01):
Did they cuff you and all that?

 

Austin (00:58:04):
I don't think I got cuffed. No, I didn't get cuffed. But yeah, just went straight to there to literally woke up in my bed in San Diego and going to sleep in a sleeping bag, wrapped in a tarp in the middle of the desert in Idaho. I'm just like, "What the ... " That's so funny. It was definitely the first week I'm like, "What the fuck is going on? " And really all you do there is just survive. So it's like you wake up, you use your same tarp that you use just a plastic tarp to make your tent, You use that same tarp to make a backpack. And the same rope that you use to tie up your tent to trees and bushes and stuff, you use to tie up- Wash your backpack. ... tie up this fake backpack thing and they give you these flat ... You don't have a real backpacking pack. It's just these flat straps that you feed through the rope around your wrap up and you put all your food and water and everything, you just carry on you.

 

Matt Handy (00:59:13):
Okay. Is this the ones where you actually go out on your own and then have checkpoints?

 

Austin (00:59:19):
No. Well, we were with a group. There was one point where you have to be on your own for two days.

 

Matt Handy (00:59:25):
And make fire. Is that

 

Austin (00:59:26):
Well, we had to make fire to cook our food every day. Yeah, making fire with stick, bow drilling, making fire with sticks. So yeah, it's literally, if you don't get a fire, then we're not cooking our food. And it was the same meal every day. It was same meals every day. It was oatmeal for breakfast. And most of the days we weren't even actually cooking the oatmeal because it would just take-

 

Matt Handy (00:59:55):
Forever to get a fire.

 

Austin (00:59:55):
So we would just do cold water and oats in cold water And just drink that for a breakfast. And then a peat of bread with peanut butter for lunch and rice and lentils for dinner, unflavored, which was also weird to get you. I was so used to eating unflavored food that I could- Coming back. I couldn't eat it at first, but they make sure that you have to eat a certain portion of food. You have to eat 6,000 calories a day or something because you're working so hard with the hiking and everything. The first couple days I had to bury my food because I was like, I can't eat this shit. No way.

 

(01:00:31):
Yeah. But after a little while, when you started getting a groove of it, I didn't know I was even into outdoorsy stuff before that. And after a while I was like, this is awesome. Just out here in nature and wilderness, just hiking, feeling good. You're getting great exercise. It's probably beautiful. Dude, it's beautiful. You're away from the world. You become very just in tune with nature because there's no ... We're so accustomed. We're constantly around so much stimulation that we don't even realize. Just cars going by, traffic lights, this, noises everywhere where there's just nothing. It's like you and four other kids and two counselors and that's it. Yeah. So actually, I loved it there. A lot of the other kids were sad and want to go home. I was like, I don't want to go home.This is way better than what I have going on at home.

 

(01:01:26):
My miserable back there. Yeah. So you get up, you pack up your camp, you eat, you hike. And then there was groups here and there. I don't really remember what the groups or counseling stuff was.

 

Matt Handy (01:01:44):
Yeah, because you weren't focused on that anyway. No. You're like, "When are we going to the waterfall?"

 

Austin (01:01:49):
Yeah. Dude, funny enough, I don't know. Did I tell you that story? No. There was actually a funny thing, but there was this whole thing with a waterfall. There was this whole area of the desert where there was, because where there was this waterfall that we were trying to get to, but it was a super far. It was 60 or 70 miles from where we were. So it took us a while to hike out there.

 

Matt Handy (01:02:12):
Yeah. Were you guys doing a minimum amount of miles a day or something?

 

Austin (01:02:19):
No, not really. And it was kind of cool because as the kids got to pick out where we were going. It was

 

Matt Handy (01:02:31):
On a map?

 

Austin (01:02:32):
Yeah. So it was at the end of every week, we had to end up at these certain points that there was fire roads where they could drop us off more food. But other than that, it was like you kind of just hike around and they give you these topographical maps and compass. And based off the maps, we would figure out, all right, this area looks flat, or it's close to water, because we had a pump where we go pump our water out of the stream. With a filter and stuff? Yeah. And so it's like, all right, this looks like a good place to go and we'll kind of go there. And it's like when we're like, all right, we want you to the waterfall, we'd be like, all right, we'll do five miles this day, this many miles this day, this many miles this day so we can get back to here. Yeah. So that was actually really awesome. But yeah, getting out of there, I mean, I had no intention of doing anything any different. I was like, "This is cool." I did good there. I was like, I don't know. I mean, you can't get high. But I had a good attitude about it because I was like, this is flash.

 

Matt Handy (01:03:38):
Having a blast. Yeah. I have a friend, he did it as well and it was the same thing. He fucking loved it. And it was like, the one that he went to was like, he actually got in some real trouble and the one that he went to was much more structured. And then it turned out the story that he told me was that the actual people who ran that camp ended up getting sued and arrested because they were doing a bunch of crazy shit to these kids.

 

Austin (01:04:06):
Was it one of the Utah ones?

 

Matt Handy (01:04:07):
Yeah.

 

Austin (01:04:08):
Dude, yeah, Utah has some crazy stuff. I went to a different treatment center in Utah, one of the Utah lockdown facility things.

 

Matt Handy (01:04:18):
Oh yeah.

 

Austin (01:04:19):
But yeah, Utah had some crazy ... I think they're kind of getting it sorted out now, but has some crazy stuff going on with their treatment centers. They're not regulated or monitored by people.

 

Matt Handy (01:04:30):
Oh yeah. So I have a friend ... Okay, how do I say this without breaking information? So I have a friend who worked at a treatment center in St. George and it wasn't an LDS treatment center, but it was only LDS people that went there and worked there. And so there was a bunch of religious material baked into the curriculum. And some of the stuff that he tells me, that is not ... Anywhere else in California or Texas, it'd be totally illegal. You cannot be doing this kind of stuff with people.

 

Austin (01:05:07):
Dude, the one that I went to in Utah was like, it was pretty messed up. Dude, I saw staff members beating the crap out of kids.

 

Matt Handy (01:05:14):
Oh, I saw a documentary on this.

 

Austin (01:05:16):
And dude, it was pretty gnarly. And it was all these big giant ... There's a lot of Smoans in Utah. Yeah,

 

Matt Handy (01:05:24):
There is.

 

Austin (01:05:25):
And it was big giant Smoan dudes. And it's a bunch of messed up kids and bad attitudes or whatever, and they'll try to fight people or whatever. And dude, they would beat the crap out of them. Dude, I literally watched this six foot five black dude choke slam this scrawny little 15-year-old kid. Choke slammed him, he's holding him down by his neck, punching him in the face. Yeah. Or this other kid was talking back to the teacher in class. So then the guards came in and the kid was giving him attitude and wouldn't get up and leave class. So they literally ... You know those desks in school that you were like- Desk chairs? Yeah. It's like you're kind of attached to the desk partially. You have to get out only on one side. So he's in this thing. They flip over the whole desk and one of the guys grabs the back of his head and he's dragging this kid's face across the carpet.

 

(01:06:19):
Sorry, I think I got stepped away from the mic. To where he had carpet burn, ripped up carpet burn across his face. Yeah, the place was weird. So that kind of stuff was going on. And then really all they were doing was drugging these kids up. I got in there and I mean, I had issues, but they were trying to put me on these six different medications, like antipsychotics and all this stuff. And what is it? Seroquel, sleeping medications, all this stuff. I didn't have a problem sleeping. I didn't have psychosis issues.

 

Matt Handy (01:06:53):
No, your problem is you stay awake.

 

Austin (01:06:57):
And I would watch a kid, you would see a kid come in and be just a normal kid, and two weeks later they're a zombie.

 

Matt Handy (01:07:03):
Yeah. Doing the Thorazine shuffle.

 

Austin (01:07:05):
They can start talking like that. They just drug these kids and turn them into zombies because I think they're getting some kind of insurance money for the drugs, plus the court and insurance money that they're getting for keeping the kids there. It was just a racket. And it was some messed up stuff. I got put in solitary confinement for two weeks as a 16-year-old kid because I broke out.

 

Matt Handy (01:07:30):
Solitary confinement in treatment?

 

Austin (01:07:33):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:07:33):
Is an interesting ...

 

Austin (01:07:34):
Yeah, right. So it was just a white concrete room with a mattress on the floor for just entirely a lot. I was allowed to read books.

 

Matt Handy (01:07:49):
Were they feeding you through the door and shit like that?

 

Austin (01:07:52):
Yeah, they would just bring you your food and then you would go, they would take ... There wasn't a bathroom in there, so when you had to go to the ... They wouldn't even talk to you. You weren't allowed to communicate with people during that time. Or that was another punishment too for kids. Even if they weren't in solitary confinement, there was a punishment where they weren't allowed to interact with anyone for you have 28 hours or something that you have to sit and look at the wall and not interact with anybody. And then you go to bed and wake up and continue your hours. And every time you mess it up, it starts over. But yeah, and then the soda confinement thing. So they would escort you to the bathroom.

 

Matt Handy (01:08:30):
Yeah. You

 

Austin (01:08:30):
Weren't allowed to look or talk to anyone or your time was- Started again. Started over.

 

Matt Handy (01:08:36):
Have a card or something. How do you tell them that you have to go to the bathroom?

 

Austin (01:08:42):
There was guards nearby. So it was like this unit, it was broken up. This facility was broken up into six different units. And this unit was like, it was one big room pretty much. And then there was a room in the back that had two cells, and then there was two rooms that had everybody's bunks in them. And there was the investment unit where you go when you're in trouble, which I was in there the whole time I was there.

 

Matt Handy (01:09:11):
How long were you there?

 

Austin (01:09:13):
Not that long. I was only there for three months because my insurance stopped paying after they found out I broke out, luckily, because there was other kids that were there for a year. There was this kid that was there. He was 15. He had been there since he was 12 and he was going to be there until he was 18.

 

Matt Handy (01:09:32):
Wow. Why? Like court order or

 

Austin (01:09:36):
Like ... Some people were court ordered. He wasn't. I feel like he was ... It's pretty sad. I think he was just a twisted up kid and his parents just didn't want to deal with it or something. Yeah. That is crazy. It was kind of this place where a lot of people were just kind of abandoned to-

 

Matt Handy (01:10:00):
It's just a black hole in sucked into.

 

Austin (01:10:03):
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, luckily I ended up getting ... I guess I didn't get kicked out of there, but they don't kick people out. Dude, they wouldn't send kids to jail. Kids would do gnarly stuff, stab people on gnarly stuff, and they don't send them away because they're just making money on them.

 

Matt Handy (01:10:24):
Yeah. God, that's so crazy.

 

Austin (01:10:27):
Yeah, because there was kids that would be in there. They'd be like, "I would way rather be in jail. Fuck this, " because they were stuck there forever.

 

Matt Handy (01:10:33):
So I saw a documentary on this and it was like that place that they went to had gotten shut down, but when it got shut down, they just abandoned it. So all the documents were still there and the classrooms were still set up. There were still pictures on the walls and these kids went back into the facility and they were going through all these file cabinets and found letters that they had written and that were supposed to be sent to their family and it was still there.

 

Austin (01:11:02):
I think it was on Netflix, right?

 

Matt Handy (01:11:04):
Yeah.

 

Austin (01:11:04):
I saw that. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:11:05):
Was it something like that?

 

Austin (01:11:08):
Kind of, yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:11:09):
Yeah. And one of the crazy parts was the guy who was their spiritual ... He was a chaplain there, and he has his own church now outside of the program that went to his church and tried to talk to him and tricked him into talking about certain things and they had a recorder in their pocket. You remember that? I don't, no. Okay. Yeah. And just people realizing that fucked up shit was going on, but they couldn't do anything about it. So they just continued the systems like, "Well, I can't fix it. What do you want me to do? I'm paying my bills." Yeah, it's crazy.

 

Austin (01:11:50):
But yeah, compared to the treatment center I went to in San Diego when I went to Phoenix House, that experience was night and day.

 

Matt Handy (01:11:58):
Yeah.

 

Austin (01:11:59):
Phoenix House was a great program. Yeah. We were outside every day. Literally, I didn't go outside other than the time I broke out the whole time I was there. Was

 

Matt Handy (01:12:10):
It a full-blown escape plan?

 

Austin (01:12:13):
Kind of. So when you get there, they search all your clothes of everything you have on you. And I had been there for a couple days and I asked them, I was like, "Hey, are my clothes done being searched?" And they went into this room and they were like, "Oh, are you York?" Give me the bag. And the bag was just in there, but they hadn't actually searched it. And I had my wallet in there with a little bit of money. I had a Utah State bus pass and a bunch of Adderall. How old were you, 15? I was 15. I was a couple days from turning 16. Okay. Actually, my first day in solitary confinement was my 16th birthday. And then when me and this other new kid, they were taking us to ... We were in the orientation unit and they were taking us to the unit that we were going to be in long-term.

 

Matt Handy (01:13:08):
It sounds like jail.

 

Austin (01:13:09):
Yeah. So they were taking us to the unit that we were going to be in long-term and both of us, we had just gotten there and were fucking freaking out. And then one of the kids told us that during staff change that the lock on that unit didn't work. So we were like, "Let's just get the fuck out of here." So it's like we get out of there. And once you get out of there, because from the outside of the buildings, they would make it look like a-

 

Matt Handy (01:13:34):
Like a nice- Like a nice

 

Austin (01:13:35):
Place. It's not like these parents were like, "Fuck this. I'm sending my kid to this. " They were literally tricking them because I think my aunt and uncle who I was living with before I went there, they had gone and met with them and seen them and they showed them this whole big grass field and looks like a nice school. It looks like a nice boarding school almost, but then the inside is-

 

Matt Handy (01:13:59):
A jail.

 

Austin (01:14:00):
It's a jail. Yeah. Yeah. So once we get out of the locked unit, it's just a normal, nice double class circle.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:10):
What's this place called?

 

Austin (01:14:12):
Provo Canyon.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:16):
I think I saw a documentary about this company.

 

Austin (01:14:20):
Maybe. I don't know.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:21):
Yeah.

 

Austin (01:14:23):
Yeah. So then we got outside and then we don't know where to go and we just hopped over a wall and then we're just in a neighborhood in Provo, Utah.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:36):
I was born in Provo.

 

Austin (01:14:37):
I was too, actually, weirdly.

 

Matt Handy (01:14:39):
Really?

 

Austin (01:14:40):
Yeah. It was super random that I ended up there because my mom got pregnant when she was 17. Her and her friend, not ran away, but just my mom didn't want to tell her parents she was pregnant and her and her friend just moved to Salt Lake and my mom put me up for adoption so then she wasn't going to tell her parents. But then farther down the pregnancy, it was harder or something. And she moved in with her aunt and uncle that lived in Provo. And then I was born there and then she decided not to do the adoption thing.

 

Matt Handy (01:15:15):
Yeah. So do you know where you were born in Provo?

 

Austin (01:15:19):
Provo Hospital? I don't know.

 

Matt Handy (01:15:20):
Okay.

 

Austin (01:15:21):
I could probably look at my birth certificate, but that's a trip. We were both born in Provo.

 

Matt Handy (01:15:27):
Yeah. My parents were at BYU and the place that I was born at is now at Taco Bell. It used to be the birthing center at BYU. So Mormons famously have a shitload of kids fast. And so at BYU, they had a birthing center for their students.

 

Austin (01:15:47):
That's pretty funny.

 

Matt Handy (01:15:48):
I was born there.

 

Austin (01:15:50):
Yeah. Yeah. And then weirdly too, I ended up living in Provo. I was living in Provo for the last six years, also totally separate from any of that, or that part of her family or whatever. I had a different uncle that ended up, he was living there for work and I wanted to move to Utah to go snowboard in the winters. And he had an apartment there that when I was figuring out moving to Utah, he's like, "Come live here." So I just lived there for the last six years.

 

Matt Handy (01:16:21):
That's amazing. We should go snow ... I can't this winter. I spent months last winter in Colorado.

 

Austin (01:16:30):
Really?

 

Matt Handy (01:16:30):
Yeah. Yeah, months.

 

Austin (01:16:33):
You can't go at all this winter?

 

Matt Handy (01:16:34):
Oh, I got a baby being born in six weeks. Oh,

 

Austin (01:16:37):
Shit.

 

Matt Handy (01:16:38):
And my wife was like, "You can go before." I mean, I guess.

 

Austin (01:16:43):
I saw I was just dumping it, man, man. There's no way they're open yet.

 

Matt Handy (01:16:46):
Yeah. And I got an icon pass and it was like every place that's on the pass is closed for another, until the baby's born basically. So I'll probably get a couple days in the spring or late winter. But yeah, I was looking at buying a treatment center in Colorado and I have a bunch of friends that live there. My executive director lives in Denver basically, actually Boulder. But yeah, we should go probably next winter.

 

Austin (01:17:17):
Yeah, I'm down.

 

Matt Handy (01:17:18):
For sure. I

 

Austin (01:17:19):
Love snowboarding.

 

Matt Handy (01:17:20):
Me too. Dude, between ... Okay, so Southern California, it's like skating and surfing. And I got really good at surfing at one point. I was never good at skating, but of all the boarding sports that I've done, snowboarding is by far my favorite, by far. Yeah, same.

 

Austin (01:17:40):
And yeah, I definitely miss the mountains being here in Texas.

 

Matt Handy (01:17:43):
Yeah. You know what the highest elevation in Houston is? 100 feet. 79 feet. 79 feet.

 

Austin (01:17:54):
It was pretty close.

 

Matt Handy (01:17:54):
Yeah, because I want all trails and I was looking for trail ... There's no hiking here. There's nothing ... People say they're going hiking here, like mountain biking, and it's like, where are you going? Where is this place that you guys all go? So I got on all trails and it was like half of it's road that goes to a dirt path that goes

 

Austin (01:18:15):
To- It's just like a path around a swamp

 

Matt Handy (01:18:16):
Somewhere. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

 

Austin (01:18:18):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:18:19):
There's alligators here too.

 

Austin (01:18:20):
Yeah. Have

 

Matt Handy (01:18:21):
You seen any?

 

Austin (01:18:21):
I saw one a few years ago when I was out here visiting, me and Mike saw a baby one. It was down on Tiki Island by your parents'

 

Matt Handy (01:18:31):
House. Oh, for sure. That makes sense.

 

Austin (01:18:32):
There was a baby one running across the street. But yeah, I think there's a lot of them in Dickinson and stuff.

 

Matt Handy (01:18:37):
Yeah. So there's an alligator park close to us.

 

Austin (01:18:42):
Oh, sick.

 

Matt Handy (01:18:43):
Yeah. I've gone a few times. It's interesting. It is depressing. First of all, people spend all day feeding these things. So I've never seen a fat alligator before. These things are severely overweight, not moving. They just sit there and open their mouth and you throw shit in their mouth. That's

 

Austin (01:19:03):
Funny. Dude, I tried to do that one time. So I was working this festival in Florida and it was on this crazy swamp nature reserve in Florida. And dude, there's gators everywhere. They had a lion tiger preserve thing there too. So there's lions, tigers, gators, snapping turtles, all this. I mean, it's cool when you're coming from living in San Diego. What is this? There's gators. They're literally walking into our shop or next to it. That's crazy. They wouldn't actually come up to us. But me and my buddy were like, "Oh, there's gators." And we're trying to throw ham and stuff at it and they just wouldn't even react. And I was like, "Oh, alligators are boring."

 

Matt Handy (01:19:46):
Yeah, they got to be trained.

 

Austin (01:19:48):
Ham would land on its head and it would just sit there. We get too close and it would just jump in the water. We're like, "What the hell?"

 

Matt Handy (01:19:54):
Have you been to New Orleans yet? I haven't. Oh man, we got to go. Dude.

 

Austin (01:20:00):
I want to go check it out. I know it's pretty close to here.

 

Matt Handy (01:20:02):
Yeah. It took us five hours to drive there, but dude, it's the coolest ... I've been to every major city in the United States, all the major ones. I've been to 37 states and seen a lot of places, right? New Orleans is easily the coolest city I've ever been to.

 

Austin (01:20:21):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:20:21):
I mean, other than it's a fucking swamp and it's ... Have you gotten used to the weather here yet? Yeah.

 

Austin (01:20:28):
I got used to it pretty quick, actually.

 

Matt Handy (01:20:30):
This summer, I didn't leave my house for three weeks, didn't leave my front door.

 

Austin (01:20:36):
Yeah. It's definitely, it's not as bad out on the boat too.

 

Matt Handy (01:20:39):
That makes sense.

 

Austin (01:20:41):
Out on the water, you got a little wind on you. It gets rough sometimes. When there's no wind, it's like, oh, it's rough. But there's a little breeze and it's definitely a little bit cooler on the water.

 

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

 

Austin (01:20:51):
I got used to it pretty quick. But I also, I mean, I'm in hot desert a lot for most of the festivals I do.

 

Matt Handy (01:20:58):
I would rather do dry

 

Austin (01:20:59):
All day. Dry heat is definitely easier to deal with, but I'm like coming from ... I live on Indio for a month out of the year doing Coachella. It's pretty hot, dry desert. And then I'm out and I do another show in Bakersfield that I'm in for six weeks where it's 105 degrees every day. So it wasn't too much of an adjustment to go straight from that to like, all right, it's humid here.

 

Matt Handy (01:21:23):
Yeah. It's like really bad here though.

 

Austin (01:21:24):
Yeah. It's definitely rougher than a dry heat. And the thing with a dry heat is you can kind of escape it in the shade whereas the humidity, you can't really escape it that much. It's just-

 

Matt Handy (01:21:36):
Yeah, dude. I walk out. My front door to my truck is legitimately 15 feet. And it's like I leave my front door and get in my truck and I'm already sweating. It's like, "What the fuck?" And so yeah, New Orleans is an amazing city. When we were there, it wasn't like a holiday or anything. It was just normal business as usual a day in the French quarter and it was a fucking party. There were a bunch of housewives and just older women walking around naked with butt plug tails in and just naked walking down the street. I was like, "This is amazing." My wife is like, "You're never coming back here alone." I was like, "Yeah, don't send me here alone for

 

Austin (01:22:25):
Sure." You should come to Bernie Man.

 

Matt Handy (01:22:26):
I've been to Bernie Man. Oh, you have? Yeah. Dude, so my buddy and I owned a moving company and in between moves we would do freelance driving work. And so these Arabian princes would fly to San Bernardino. We would pick them up in these RVs and then we'd drive them up to Reno, and then we'd fly home from Reno and then come back and pick them up. And we did this three years in a row. Well, one of the years, one of the drivers, they take certain drivers in with them and buy them tickets and they just pay their way through the whole thing so that they don't have to deal with the driving part. And one of the drivers flipped out on the drive from San Bernardino to Reno and it was like, "We don't know what to do. " And I was like, "Well, I'll stay." They were like, "Okay." They gave me the ticket and paid for it and shit.

 

(01:23:24):
And it was one of the wildest experiences I've ever had. And I was not sober. So I did wait ... I was at our camp, my eyes were just peeled back for days and I was just scared basically like, "What is going on? "

 

Austin (01:23:42):
Well, you got to try it sober.

 

Matt Handy (01:23:44):
Yeah, probably.

 

Austin (01:23:45):
Yeah. Probably. Yeah, it's one of my favorite things in the world. It's one of those funny things where everyone just, they think of it as that crazy drug fueled ... I mean, there's a lot of drugs there. There's a lot of stuff where they think about it. It's just like, "Oh, it's crazy orgies and drugs." But if that's what you're looking for, yeah. But I don't know, there's so much just amazing

 

Matt Handy (01:24:04):
Art. I used to be ignorant. I didn't know what it was. I had known the history of how it started and how it ended up being what it is, but I didn't realize what it was until I got in there and it was day two. And I'm like, this is really ... And then the people that I was with ... So one of the RVs that they got was just costumes that was filled with just leather and just crazy stuff. And these dudes were really gross. They were just gross people, just filthy rich and came here for a very specific experience. And dude, it was all the way up they're getting high and all the way up. They're just getting loaded so that they can get there just out of their minds. And so that was the experience that I had was we were just out of our minds.

 

Austin (01:24:56):
Yeah. You could see it with a new set of eyes.

 

Matt Handy (01:24:59):
Yeah, definitely. No, so I have other friends that have definitely gone sober and it was a magical experience. And I was like, "I don't ever want to go again." So where we were at, where we were at were in one of the inside rings of parking and it was like we didn't have to go far to go onto the Playa. And it was like the amount of drugs, the amount of people that they brought through and just the experiences that were ... The things that were going on in those trailers, I was just like, "This is disgusting. This is really scary to me. " And I was on so much LSD, I did not know what was going on. So it was one of those things, I guess. But I ended up seeing them again the year after that and then never doing that again with them. It was crazy. But yeah, I imagine it'd be a fun experience under the right circumstances. But also, are you working?

 

Austin (01:26:04):
Kind of. Yeah. I mean, the thing with Bernieman is everyone's supposed to be kind of working, right?That's the difference in a normal festival that you go to is produced by producers and whatever, whereas Bernie Mann is like the whole idea of it is that everybody who goes is contributing-

 

Matt Handy (01:26:21):
Contributing.

 

Austin (01:26:21):
Contributing. Every camp offers something. But yeah, I've gone on a few times working with some camps and the last few years that I've gone out, I was going out managing art cars, so that was pretty fun.

 

Matt Handy (01:26:37):
Yeah. So I go to concerts on shows all the time still. My buddies will come through and so I still have a few friends that are in pretty big bands. And so they'll come through and be like, "Hey, you want to come?" Or like next summer I'm going to run the merch. I'm talking about it with him, but I want to run the merch, all of his merch for three of the shows for As LA Dying's next tour. So that'll be fun. But I go to shows pretty often here. There's a lot of really good shows here actually because they do the triangle here. Most people do. When they're on tour, they'll go to Dallas, Austin, and Houston. But last winter, no, last August, last August, my friends came through. Oh, you haven't done any ... I got to take you to this place. You ever seen Barbershop with Queen Latifah?

 

Austin (01:27:41):
I'm familiar with the movie, but I haven't

 

Matt Handy (01:27:43):
Seen it. Okay. So in those movies, their barbershops is like a club and there's restaurants all around Houston where it's like the same thing. It's like black owned, all of their clientele are like everybody that goes there is black. I took these rock stars. It was after the show and it was like they wanted to go eat chicken and waffles. So I found this place that was open till four in the morning and we went there and it was like a club with like, it was a restaurant that everybody's dancing, like having fun.

 

Austin (01:28:16):
What a trip.

 

Matt Handy (01:28:17):
Yeah. I was like, "This is my first experience with an after hours restaurant in Houston and it's like, oh yeah, this is normal." What? This is pretty cool. So yeah, you're just doing the boat thing now?

 

Austin (01:28:35):
Yeah. So I came out kind of near the end of June to meet with your brother and go over just kind of like ... So Moroni and I started talking a year ago. He was like, "Hey, I want to get a fishing charter going. " He's like, "Would you want to come help me do it? " Because originally Michael was going to help him do it.

 

Matt Handy (01:28:58):
Yeah. And now he's got other shit going on, right?

 

Austin (01:29:02):
Yeah. Now- Like the pickleball court or something? Yeah, now he's doing the pickleball thing. So we've been kind of tentatively talking about it and I was kind of just like, I've been in this place recently. I'm in an interesting transitionary period in my life right now of just kind of like after all these years on the road- Settling down. Settling down, I've been kind of like, the older I get, the more and more wearing it is to just be constantly traveling, kind of chipping away at myself here and there. Also just a lot of just internal realizations. It's like-

 

Matt Handy (01:29:47):
What am I going to do?

 

Austin (01:29:48):
Yeah, what am I going to do? And then just another level of just reflection and growth that needed to happen of realizing how I've set up my life, I've been sober, but my entire sobriety, I've been still just living my life for a fix, even in sobriety. Even some of the things aren't negative, but whether it's working out or playing dodgeball like me and your brother used to do or this fun, exciting work stuff that I do or going to hang out with my friends. Those are all positive things compared to getting high. But I just realized how much I used those things to escape a feeling that I didn't even really realize was there in a similar way. And not to mention I've been sober, but my addictions can still come out in all kinds of other ways with sex, with video games, with all kinds of stuff.

 

(01:31:02):
And I got to this point, I had really kind of stopped working on myself very much because it was like- I'm fucking sober. Life got good, I'm sober, don't really have any problems, whatever. And then started over indulging in all these other fixes that were just not getting high.

 

(01:31:23):
And then definitely created some problems in my life too, and that started to manifest. And over the last year, really had to start to take a look at, what am I doing?

 

Matt Handy (01:31:37):
Yeah, for sure.

 

Austin (01:31:39):
And you really need to check myself where it really got as bad too as a feeling of a relapse almost.

 

Matt Handy (01:31:51):
The unmanageability around addict behavior is problematic regardless of whether you're using it or not. So I tell people all the time, I was manifesting addict behavior when I was a kid.

 

(01:32:05):
There was problematic behavior. And then yeah, my medical director talks about, he's a doctor, he's very aware of the manifestation of the problematic behaviors. And it's like still, unless you're constantly putting yourself under a microscope around the outcomes of your behavior, it's very likely that you fall into problematic behavior, especially patterns of problematic behavior where it evolves into ... It could start off very simple and innocent and then evolve into something problematic. And it could be ... Around sex is a big thing. A lot of people in early recovery will have problematic sex or destructive sex patterns because it's like, well, not using. And then it's your problematic behavior is bleeding into somebody else's life. And then there's the video game thing, right? Video games is a black hole. Some people, it's not a problem. And some people ... I tell people I could turn a candy bar into a fucking problem.

 

(01:33:18):
I'm not normal. The way that I extrapolate and the way that I evolve into what I'm doing turns problematic pretty quick.

 

Austin (01:33:28):
Yeah. And lucky, I can navigate those things better than I can drugs,

 

Matt Handy (01:33:33):
But

 

Austin (01:33:33):
I will still use them the same way and create some problems for myself. And it was a difference when I was 18 and I'm first getting sober and having these unhealthy sex relationships or whatever, it doesn't really matter. Well, it doesn't matter. It didn't- The consequences are not great. The consequences are nothing. And the older I get, and then I'm like, wait a minute, I'm like, these consequences are real and this is really not just me, but it's affecting me and it really affected other people and hurt other people.

 

Matt Handy (01:34:06):
Yeah.

 

Austin (01:34:08):
Yeah. And really a year ago, I had kind of gotten myself to this point that I was as broken, if not more, than my last relapse.

 

Matt Handy (01:34:20):
Yeah. In recovery.

 

Austin (01:34:21):
In recovery. Yeah. I was 13 years sober and entirely ... And it was like everything on the outside should seem fine. I've got great friends and I've done pretty well in my career. I've got more money than I've ever had. Not like I make great money, but I've been smart enough that I can do whatever I want. And I was fucking miserable, wanted to die. And I'm like, all right, something needs to change in my lifestyle overall. And I love what I do for work, but it chips away from me too much. What can I find that's more sustainable to where I can continue to look at myself and continue to not be putting myself on the back burner and continue doing this. So yeah, Moroni and I had been back and forth on just a little bit. And then I was wrapping up a show in June and I didn't have any work booked and I was like, "Fuck it, I'm just going to go out there and check it out and we'll see what's going on. And then I started getting out there with him. I'm like, "This is awesome." He's like, "Yeah, let's do this.

 

Matt Handy (01:35:35):
Yeah. When I look at ... So I haven't been sober for that long, right?

 

Austin (01:35:40):
How long have you been sober this time?

 

Matt Handy (01:35:42):
18, 19 months or something like that. So when you look at the ... On December 28th, it'll be five years since I got arrested. So I robbed that bank the day after Christmas in 2020, but of the last five years, I think I've spent less than three weeks high. And so there's a decent amount of sobriety in there, but I'm also 36 and it's like I have this long history of just fucking nothing, basically. A long history of my addiction, my entire adult life I used problematically, like going to prison, fucking being homeless, involved in gangs, like really problematic use, right? It wasn't like, "Well, I fucked up my life a little bit and got a DUI or something." It was like, no, individually, all the consequences that I've suffered, one of them is normally enough for people to straighten their life up. And it was like multiple overdoses, multiple prison terms, lost marriage, lost kid, oldest 10 kids completely cut off from them.

 

(01:36:56):
Being homeless for years by choice, making the decision where it's like, I no longer want to have to deal with trying to find a home. This is a problem. It's getting in the way of my use. So just going to be homeless now and fuck it. I already spend all my time with homeless people anyway. So being homeless, health complications around ... And then, so health complications, overdoses, waking up in hospitals, that time where I was like, I don't know actually what was going on because I didn't stay long enough for the doctors to say, "This is what happened, this was the outcome, this is what was contributing to whatever was fucking going on with you. " I left the hospital. So the only assumption that I have is that the infection had gotten into my blood somewhere and that was having a mental effect on me because it was like I couldn't think straight.

 

(01:37:51):
And normally I'm like a pretty sharp thinker. I'm falling asleep walking, not like nodding out, cannot stay awake. So point to any one of those consequences and most people would be like, "Something's got to change." It's like, "Nope, this is absolutely the route that I'm going and I'm totally okay with it as long as I can still stick this needle in my arm." That was actually a big contributor to when it stopped working, I had no more veins. To this day, I work out pretty intensely. When I work out, I have a couple veins on my arm that will pop out, but my feet, nothing. And I got to that point and was tired of spending eight hours a day fishing for a vein. My necks had gone, all of them. So I just started shooting up into my muscles and that was when the health complications really started because it was like I'm injecting dirty drugs into my body, not into a vein, into my muscles.

 

(01:38:56):
And I would get these abscesses that they would turn into a softball and then I would finally be able to stick a razor in there and drain it myself. And I was not realizing the danger that I was actually putting my body in and my health in. And now since I got sober, I've kind of researched what was going on and it was like, this kills a ton of people every year. Those infections kill people every year. I was like, geez, it's really crazy. And so it's like through all of the problematic, all of the destructive behavior and all that stuff, it was like ... I don't even remember where I was going with this, but I guess the bottom line is like, oh, my sobriety now, right?

 

(01:39:49):
Where I'm at today, I really don't remember where I was going. It's okay. Whatever. But yeah, so life looks super different and it's like I would've never guessed that this would've been the outcome. If you would've told me five years ago, let's see, it's October. Okay. Five years ago today, I was living under a bridge doing crazy shit. And if you had told me, Matt, you're going to be clean, you're going to have two daughters, you're going to be opening treatment centers and you're going to be sober, I'd have been like, "You're fucking crazy." I didn't think this was in the cars at all. I honestly didn't think I would ever see any of you guys again. And that was the reality of it.

 

Austin (01:40:35):
I'm proud of you, man.

 

Matt Handy (01:40:36):
Yeah. I mean, it was interesting. And it hasn't been hard to make the right decision. All of that really has made it so that it's like, okay, this is a lot easier than what I was doing for sure.

 

Austin (01:40:50):
Yeah. Yeah. Gets to the point where it's like, what else are you going to do?

 

Matt Handy (01:40:55):
Oh, that's where we were going. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, the reflections around what are we going to do? Am I growing up or am I just staying stagnant? And then what you're talking about, I have a lot of young people in my treatment center right now and it's like you could tell them all day what's around the corner. If you relapse, this is probably going to happen. Or if you don't stay clean, this is what's going to happen. It

 

Austin (01:41:22):
Doesn't matter.

 

Matt Handy (01:41:23):
It doesn't matter. It's like those decisions around getting sober ... I tell people all the time, the easiest part about getting sober is quitting doing the drugs. Quitting drinking, quitting doing whatever you were doing is probably going to be the easiest part around you becoming sober. How many times did you quit? I quit hundreds of times probably.

 

Austin (01:41:47):
I guess just twice.

 

Matt Handy (01:41:49):
Yeah.

 

Austin (01:41:49):
But it's like the cliche thing where they say that the drugs are the solution, not the problem. I believe in that because I'll use all different kinds of things as a solution. It's just what sobriety offers me is a foundation that I can use for sorting my life out and being a functional person and finding peace and doing this stuff, but sobriety doesn't- Solve the problem. Yeah. It doesn't give you any of that.

 

Matt Handy (01:42:25):
Yeah.

 

Austin (01:42:25):
It gives me the ability to make right wrongs, or it gives me the ability to have a life or the ability to do that, but you still have to go do it.

 

Matt Handy (01:42:38):
Yeah. So what were ... You're not married, right? No. And are you dating anybody?

 

Austin (01:42:48):
No, not really right now.

 

Matt Handy (01:42:49):
Do you want to have kids? Yeah. Okay. So yeah, that was like a ... So I have a big family and that was always a big thing that I wanted to have kids. And it was like, how am I going to do that doing this? Raise a kid under this bridge or something? It's fucking possible to ... And the crazy part is I was homeless for long enough whereas I had friends that had kids that were homeless while they were homeless, had kids. That's rough. Rough. And they always lose them. They always lose them. But then that turns into this whole, I'm going to get my ... Dude, I knew this girl for years. Every time you talk to her, it'd be like, "Oh yeah, I'm just working on getting my kids back." And it's like, "No, you're not, dude. You're right under this bridge with us." Yeah, the crux of our problems, especially in addiction, is never a stagnant thing.

 

(01:43:42):
It's ever evolving. It's like this you might be using originally because of trauma. What I saw a lot of was codependency and enabling becomes the crux of everybody's problem. If you have that enabling family or that codependency with a family member, that becomes the fucking problem more than anything else. So yeah. So what are you going to do?

 

Austin (01:44:08):
With my life?

 

Matt Handy (01:44:09):
Yeah.

 

Austin (01:44:11):
Figuring it out.

 

Matt Handy (01:44:12):
Yeah.

 

Austin (01:44:12):
Yeah. I mean, for now, yeah, trying to get this business going with your brother and we're working on that. I'll keep doing shows here and there.

 

Matt Handy (01:44:28):
So as far as education, you graduated high school, you didn't graduate? I didn't graduate. And then you didn't do any college? Uh-uh. So I did some college and it was like I went there for the girls, really is what it ended up being. It was like I failed every class except for I was in an advanced ballroom and I think I got my only actual grade and it was still like a B. So yeah, I didn't do the education thing, obviously you know what I did. And then in prison, I found out you could get time off if you got your GED. You could get six weeks off every year that you were sentenced if you got your GED in there, which is a lot of time. It's like five months almost. So I ended up getting a GED in there too, but I already had my high school diploma.

 

(01:45:20):
And so now when you look ... This is what I was told. The prison system found out that I did that and they told me, "Because you did this on your record, you will no longer have a high school diploma. It's going to be a GED." I'm like, "Well, good thing I'll never need it. " It doesn't really matter today. That's true too, right? Dude, have you seen this whole thing that's going on with Generation Alpha?

 

Austin (01:45:46):
No.

 

Matt Handy (01:45:46):
So are you a millennial? Yeah. Okay. So there's three. The millennials, Gen Z, and then Gen Alpha, right? So we're talking about probably 12 and under. Well, we're raising that generation. We're their parents. Millennials are those people's parents and these kids are 10, 11, 12 years old and younger, but the 10, 11, 12 year olds are making commitments to sobriety, making commitments to celibacy and shit like that. It's like, yeah, very, very young people making these commitments to this stuff. And I know it isn't influenced by their parents because we're their parents. Our generation is so fucked up. We got crazy shit going on. This is the most confusing time I think anybody's ever been alive. In recent history, think about it, you got a bunch of men walking around legitimately accepted as women today. It's okay, which it's okay, but it's like that's what's going on. That's what's okay today. It's like, geez, dude. So now we have this whole generation of kids where it's like they are making these commitments. Have you seen the sober high schools around here?

 

Austin (01:47:03):
No. Never heard of that.

 

Matt Handy (01:47:05):
Dude, they have entire high schools where they're called sober high schools and nobody parties. Nobody drinks. Nobody does drugs and they're all highly accountable to each other. And

 

Austin (01:47:18):
Yeah, it's like a thing around here. I mean, is that going to last or are those kids just going to go to college and go crazy?

 

Matt Handy (01:47:24):
I don't know. But if you think about it, it's

 

Austin (01:47:27):
Like the stereotypical Mormon kid that explodes you when they're later on.

 

Matt Handy (01:47:33):
Maybe. Maybe. But they have cougars on campus now. You know what that is? No. Cougars on campus is the sobriety movement at universities and it's massive. And so they're going out of this, they're integrating into these sober programs onto campuses and these kids are going their entire formative years with commitments to sobriety.

 

Austin (01:47:58):
Yeah. I mean, that's awesome because I definitely think a lot of our generation, even people that aren't addicts, I see a lot of my friends and coworkers and community struggle with still just the social pressure of drugs and alcohol that they're not addicts like us, but they still feel like they need to have a drink in their hand at the party. Yeah, for sure. And I'm always trying to tell them, I'm like, "You don't." I'm like, "What's the

 

Matt Handy (01:48:34):
Difference?" Yeah. So Jericho will go out and it's like me, my medical director, my clinical director, my executive director, we're all sober. We'll go to dinner and Jericho will order a drink and drink three sips out of it and then leave it. And we're all looking at him like, "This guy's fucking crazy. How does he do that? " Yeah, there's just not ... You can tell the difference between people who suffer from the disease and people who don't, but then what you're talking about around the social pressures around drinking, drinking is so normal in today's society where it's like, if you don't drink, you're weird or you're not normal. And so I imagine that ... I've never had to deal with that because I've always been a very problematic user where I was probably the people pressuring normal people to drink more. I couldn't imagine what that would be like. I don't even like drinking. It's like I got to drink. I don't like drinking anyway, but I'm Asian, very Asian genetics as far as that goes. When I drink, I turn bright red and get puffy and itchy, and it's very uncomfortable. So that was why I was sliming heroin in high school. There's also heroin dealers at my high school, so ...

 

Austin (01:50:01):
Yeah. Yeah. Growing up in San Diego, there's definitely a lot of that close to the border.

 

Matt Handy (01:50:07):
Yeah. So you grew up in Oceanside, right?

 

Austin (01:50:11):
Yeah. Carlsbad Encinitas Oceanside.

 

Matt Handy (01:50:13):
Okay. So my best friend, his name is Ryan Mayer. You ever met this dude? Name maybe sounds familiar. I don't know. So he has Oceanside all over. He did, but he's the one that passed away. And hearing the difference between being raised where I was raised and what I was doing and hearing the difference between what was going on in Oceanside and down in San Diego, Oceanside's a really gritty ... Especially I think 20 years ago, it was very different than it is now. I haven't been at Oceanside in a long time.

 

Austin (01:50:46):
I was more in Carlsbad growing up, but even the difference in Carlsbad and Encinitas was a funny difference. Because They're right next to each other. They're both these- Nice. ... well off suburban beach towns. And Carlsbad, there was definitely a lot of just drinking, partying, pills, stuff. And then maybe later in high school, it was heroin, opiate stuff was creeping in. But my friends in Encinitas, it was a big thing or as kids going into ninth grade, it was already heroin was a huge deal there.

 

Matt Handy (01:51:29):
Yeah. So knowing those two ... So I've done time with both people from Carlsbad and Encinitas and it's like the gang in Carlsbad, they think of them as a joke, and then the gang in Encinitas has some really reputable people come out of it. And so I think that, in my opinion, it's like the bleed from the underworld into the kids, because that's who they're recruiting into gangs is freshmen and

 

Austin (01:52:00):
I mean, there was straight up, not even gang affiliated stuff, but dude, there was these kids and these really well off upper middle class situations that are going across the border smuggling heroin in high school.

 

Matt Handy (01:52:14):
That's crazy. Right? Yeah. I was like- So my first heroin dealer was 15 and it's like ... Yeah.

 

Austin (01:52:27):
And dude, a lot of these kids in Encinitas were like, they were rich kids.

 

Matt Handy (01:52:30):
Yeah. It's definitely a rich kid drug, for sure. When I think about the two types of people that I've ran in those circles with, it was the extreme of really poor gang bangers and really rich white kids on both sides of it. So it's also one of those drugs that's very specific. Uppers does something ... They all do something very specific to you, but it's a very comforting drug where it's like, yeah, these kids have a great life. Of course, they're going to do the one that makes you feel even better. Whereas stimulants, it's like a hit or miss where depending on your genetics and your chemical makeup, you can end up super hating life on stimulants. Versus with that, it's like, I don't know anybody that got high and hated their life. They hated it after.

 

Austin (01:53:25):
Yeah. I know a lot of people hate it after.

 

Matt Handy (01:53:27):
Yeah. But yeah, that's an interesting thing. So where do you live?

 

Austin (01:53:35):
I'm in Friendswood.

 

Matt Handy (01:53:37):
You're like ... Oh, okay.

 

Austin (01:53:39):
Yeah. I guess I'm in the townhouses where Ron used to live, I guess.

 

Matt Handy (01:53:48):
I wasn't. You weren't around? No. Yeah. I've only been here since last January.

 

Austin (01:53:53):
Okay.

 

Matt Handy (01:53:54):
Yeah. So I just barely beat you out

 

Austin (01:53:58):
Here. But yeah, right on the border or I don't know.

 

Matt Handy (01:54:00):
Yeah, whatever. I'm in Friendsville. Oh, and you're on Friendswood-

 

Austin (01:54:05):
Off of Friendswood Boulevard.

 

Matt Handy (01:54:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I kind of know where you're at. You're over by that McDonald's is over there? It's like down the street? Maybe. You know where ... Probably not. Perry's and Son is? Okay. Have you ever been there? Oh, dude, it's so good. We got to go. Yeah.

 

Austin (01:54:30):
I don't do much. I go out on the boat and keep to myself.

 

Matt Handy (01:54:34):
Yeah. I spend a lot of time here now. I'm here basically every day and I teach our education groups, but other than that, dude, I'm at my house. I don't really do anything. But I'm like, what am I going to do? I hate fishing. I hate fishing. I am not patient. I love fishing. You know how I drive.That's how I fish. It's like no time for that. Yeah. It's like I don't have anything to do. I just am not patient. And then I just found out that the fishing charter thing, it's like you guys catch the fish and then people reel it in.

 

Austin (01:55:17):
Yeah, it's a lot of the time. But I mean, we still go out ourselves sometimes too.

 

Matt Handy (01:55:22):
Yeah. Yeah. Some of those pictures are insane. The hall that you guys get.

 

Austin (01:55:28):
Yeah. But I have a lot of fun. I feel like I have more fun making the rig, finding the fish, the whole process of it more than just being the guy doing this. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:55:47):
So you're like ... Okay, let me ask you this. The realizations that you had around where am I going, did it have to do with wanting to get married and have kids?

 

Austin (01:55:59):
That's definitely a big part of it. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (01:56:00):
Yeah.

 

Austin (01:56:01):
Yeah. I mean, I think for a while I've looked around at a lot of people in my industry and nothing against them, but just people who are older and have been there a long time or whatever and just kind of looking at like, that's not the life that I want to have. I love what I do in the festival world. I love my job, but just the ... I'm like, that's not ... And I would just be like, "That's just not where I want to end up though." And I had started to notice that for a long time and then more recently had just realized how much of myself I had sacrificed because with being on the road that much and how demanding the work is to your attention and how many of my relationships, not just romantic relationships, but relationships with friends and people and everything that you put on the back burner And you chip away at over time. How much of myself? Because the one thing that's so enticing about it, it's like you go live in this bubble of a community that you're working with. And when I go to work, I don't have to think about anything but my job.

 

Matt Handy (01:57:12):
Like twenty four seven.

 

Austin (01:57:14):
I don't have to think about anything else though. And it's like I can fully lock into that and do a really good job and be so focused and be in that moment such a fulfilled version of myself, but I don't have to think about anything else. I don't have time to think about anything else. Your food's taken care of. Your accommodations are taken care of. Everything's taken care of. It's just like you make sure this show happens and everything else we got covered.

 

Matt Handy (01:57:39):
What is your actual duties? What do you do?

 

Austin (01:57:42):
I do all different kinds of stuff. Like I said, I freelance, but most of what I do is site management. So I'm essentially just a project manager. It's very similar to what a project manager would do for construction.

 

Matt Handy (01:57:59):
Like a build site? Yeah. So just making sure that the other contractors are where they're supposed to be and where they're doing what places are getting set up and like- Yeah,

 

Austin (01:58:08):
Essentially everything's scheduled and it's happening as it's supposed to be and whatever, but it's like doing all that, all the pre-production planning and meetings and spreadsheets and stuff and then on site. But I do get to be a bit more hands-on than a construction project manager would be though.

 

Matt Handy (01:58:28):
And did you start at the bottom of this and then work your way up?

 

Austin (01:58:31):
Yeah, I started as a stagehand, which is just like a- Like a group? Yeah. And then worked my way up and I've done all different kinds of stuff. I was like a stage technician for a while. I was like a truck driver. I was just a normal, just site ops laborer, heavy equipment operator. I've done all different kinds of stuff. And I'll still take different kinds of jobs here and there. I had spent a couple years managing this art car. What is an art car? You've been a Burning Man, right? Yeah, yeah. All the big parade.

 

Matt Handy (01:59:07):
Tell them what it is.

 

Austin (01:59:07):
Oh, tell them what did it ... It is tricky. It's like a parade float kind of, but some of them are just a high end build. It was like a $1.5 million build of this alien spaceship aimed art car.

 

Matt Handy (01:59:24):
Yeah. It's like a full-blown production show on a single float..

 

Austin (01:59:28):
It's got full sound and lighting and everything. And an art car can be anything. I mean, an art car could be a golf cart that looks like a chariot or an art car could be a semi-truck that's built into a 70-foot stage.

 

Matt Handy (01:59:43):
Yeah. Yeah. So around your decisions to settle down, was there goals that you'd set or ...

 

Austin (01:59:59):
Not anything concrete, but it's just I guess a direction that I've been wanting to head. I've been wanting to figure out for a while of just like, all right, because I know when I have kids, I don't want to be on the road nine months a year. For sure. I want to be there. I see the struggle that some of my coworkers have being away from their family so much and the extra stress and just how rough that is. And it was like, when I have kids, I don't want to do that.

 

Matt Handy (02:00:27):
Yeah. You're not able to fully focus

 

Austin (02:00:31):
That way either. And I never wanted to entirely step away from that world, but I kind of knew, I'm like, I need to find a way to make money doing something more sustainable for the life that I want to have. I need to find a way to make money and be able to go home every night.

 

Matt Handy (02:00:53):
Yeah. It's a hard world. Adulting is not easy when ... So I was never taught how to adult properly. If I would've stayed and done what I was supposed to, I would've, but I was like, no, I went out. I was kicked out at 16. Very early on it was like, you're going to rob, steal and kill for your food. It's like, that is not normal. It wasn't the go to school, get a degree, find a career.

 

Austin (02:01:27):
Some of us are wired different and have to just go figure it out. For sure. No matter what your circumstances are.

 

Matt Handy (02:01:33):
No, I tell people all the time, the path that I went down was dictated by ... So really what it all comes down to is I had to do certain things in order to become the person that I was supposed to. And it was like, if I would've done what my parents wanted me to do and gone to school and gone to law school and done all that, I would've been 35 years old having a true midlife crisis and probably would've fucked everything up, ended up homeless still. There were certain experiences that I had that I'm thoroughly convinced I was going to have them no matter what. No matter what path I went down, I was going to end up under that bridge at some point in my life.

 

Austin (02:02:13):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:02:15):
Thoroughly convinced of that because ultimately I really feel like this is what I'm supposed to do. And there's a lot of things that can point me. Look, I just realized this. My name on here is Hat Mandy. That's so funny. Anyway, when I really think about the path that I went down and how I ended up here and the way that I feel about everything that's going on, and it's like, this is for sure what I was supposed to do. And it's like building a treatment center should be hard. Any other business is hard to get things off the ground or hard to put it together, hard to figure out what you need to do. And it's like, I tell people all the time that I'm in the backseat of this. All this shit just happens to me one piece at a time. And so it's like, I'm fully aware of how fortunate I've been around how the development phase of this is going.

 

(02:03:25):
And it's like, man, life, especially now that I've decided, made the decisions to do the things that I'm supposed to do, not really because I'm supposed to do them, because I want to do them. Life has gotten immensely is easier. I can't even tell you. I go to sleep at night and I'll wake up and be like, "I can't believe I'm fucking here. I can't believe I'm in a bed. Can't believe I have a home. Can't believe I have a wife and kids and can't believe any of this shit's happening." It's amazing.

 

Austin (02:03:59):
Oh yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I've always slightly envied your brother Michael on, for some reason, how easily he seems to, it is for him to just do what he's supposed to do.

 

Matt Handy (02:04:15):
Yeah.

 

Austin (02:04:17):
It's just like the way he looks at his responsibilities or whatever. He's just like, "I'm just going to do what I'm supposed to do and be content."

 

Matt Handy (02:04:26):
Yeah. I mean-

 

Austin (02:04:28):
Everyone's wired a little different. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:04:30):
Everybody is wired a little different. And I don't know how he does it either. We haven't really had ... Since I've been back, we haven't really connected. Connected much. No.

 

Austin (02:04:42):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:04:43):
But I do think about what was the difference. We're biologically this ... And then I look at Michael and Jacob even, and it's like, they are the same fucking person. And

 

Austin (02:04:58):
They're completely different.

 

Matt Handy (02:05:00):
Completely different.

 

Austin (02:05:01):
Entirely different.

 

Matt Handy (02:05:02):
Entirely. They are not the same people at all.

 

Austin (02:05:05):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:05:07):
And yeah, I have another six or seven siblings depending on how you make that distinction.

 

Austin (02:05:14):
Every single one of them is entirely different.

 

Matt Handy (02:05:17):
Totally different. Yeah. And there's like Moroni. Moroni, for example, is like, he was the badass little kid, just did a bunch of ... He tried to light a basketball on fire, throw in

 

Austin (02:05:29):
Him. Yeah, he's just ADD little idiot, but he's also just become such a ...

 

Matt Handy (02:05:36):
Man.

 

Austin (02:05:36):
Just a solid man. Yeah. Just solid dude.

 

Matt Handy (02:05:40):
Yeah. And then it's funny too where it's like, you look at my family, you look at how the family was created and it was like all of Russ's sons went on missions and all of Mark's sons did not. And it was like ... So there's got to be genetic things that pointed towards that. But then you also look at like-

 

Austin (02:06:00):
You guys also had a different experience.

 

Matt Handy (02:06:02):
Very different experience.

 

Austin (02:06:03):
Yeah, it was definitely genetic, but you guys had a little bit of a different experience in what the upbringing was. And I mean, you guys even saw your dad coming up more than the younger ... The younger siblings have, for the most part, lived this one way forever where you guys were there doing mail routes with him or whatever.

 

Matt Handy (02:06:24):
Yeah. Paper routes.

 

Austin (02:06:26):
Paper routes with him.

 

Matt Handy (02:06:27):
Yeah. Those are funny memories. I was younger than five, I think when that started and it was like the whole family going and folding newspapers and putting them in it. Yeah, that's a good point, dude.

 

(02:06:42):
Very, very different experiences. Also, very different outcomes. When you look at ... They're all living very similar lives, but the outcomes around their mentalities and ... Jericho specifically impresses me because it's like, you don't have to do any of the shit that you're doing. You don't have to be doing the things that you're doing and you're still choosing to do them. So that's always impressive. He's the sibling that I've, since I came back, we talk multiple times a day on the phone and we see each other almost every day. And we're building this, but we're also doing other shit. And it's like, Jerco's not in recovery. He doesn't know what a treatment center really is. He doesn't understand what goes on or how to frame it or build it or develop curriculum or-

 

Austin (02:07:37):
He's a pretty driven guy though.

 

Matt Handy (02:07:39):
But very driven kid. Yeah. And he is the dead center. He's a true middle child where it's like ... It's funny when you talk to him about his upbringing, a lot of his stories are around hanging out with his older brothers and seeing crazy shit and just experiencing that stuff. But he was always like a, "You have to take Jericho with you. " I was like, "Okay, that's fine. We'll take him with us." And we'd just kind of break it down to him like, "You're going to come hang out with us and if you're telling us, you're never hanging out with us again." So it was very easy for him to be like, "Okay, I just won't tell you.

 

(02:08:21):
" And then it was like Jericho was like, "Oh, maybe I shouldn't say that. " I don't think his wife will ever listen to this, but all the girls loved him, bringing him around all of our girlfriends and shit, he was always that cute chubby kid that was super into money, super into money. And so I had this girlfriend, she wasn't ever an actual girlfriend, but she was there all the time. And her name was Jessica. And this one year, she got him a six pack of orange crush and then wrote him this birthday card that was like, "I have an orange crush on you. " And I'm sure he kept those forever, but yeah, it was always fun to ... Now it's fun to talk about his experience around what happened when I was a kid or when I was a young teenager and his point of view of what was going on.

 

(02:09:21):
Totally different than what I experienced, but to be able to hear ... It'd be interesting to also talk to Michael and Jacob about ... They probably don't want to talk about it, but I would love to hear sometime their perspective around what was going on- Growing up? Growing up. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Austin (02:09:41):
Michael doesn't talk about it much.

 

Matt Handy (02:09:43):
Yeah. I doubt they would. It wasn't an easy childhood, right? It was like some of the things that I openly talk about, I had to build up to that. And so now it's like between the podcast and doing what I do and sober coaching people and doing all that, I have become very comfortable with talking about a lot of those experiences, but they aren't normal things to ... Like you said earlier, people aren't taught to talk about their problems. Yeah.

 

Austin (02:10:16):
And you were also definitely, as the oldest child, the most cognizant of whatever was going on.

 

Matt Handy (02:10:23):
Yeah. Did they ever tell you the story about how they found out they were adopted?

 

Austin (02:10:26):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:10:27):
Yeah. So yeah, I have memories of my biological parents together, all of us laying in bed together, and they didn't even know they were adopted until they were eight years old. So yeah, definitely a difference in ... Also, I don't know when the rest of my siblings found out that that was my biological dad, but he's been around their entire

 

Austin (02:10:52):
Life. It's most bizarre. It's always been the most bizarre thing to me, especially being around Michael so much and just how there's just no relationship there. And it's just like ...

 

Matt Handy (02:11:03):
Yeah. I mean, so I got in trouble when I was a teenager. Do you remember this? Did I ever tell you about this? Maybe. I don't know. And I got sent to live with him. Really? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. I was in that much trouble where my parents sent me to live with him. And so I got to talk to him about certain things or bring up shit. The other thing is I remember. I remember a lot of stuff, whereas Michael and Jacob probably don't remember a lot of that stuff.

 

Austin (02:11:37):
Yeah. I mean, Michael seems pretty unfaced by it.

 

Matt Handy (02:11:40):
Yeah. I mean, it isn't like it ... So I've done a lot of trauma work and I've done a lot of ...

 

Austin (02:11:47):
Yeah, maybe not even to where there'd be a trauma, but it's a disconnected ...

 

Matt Handy (02:11:54):
It's just not a thing. Yeah,

 

Austin (02:11:55):
It's just not a thing.

 

Matt Handy (02:11:56):
Yeah. It's definitely not. And Russ, dude, through all of my bullshit, obviously those 10 years of me not talking to him, he wasn't there, but he's always, since I was a kid, been my greatest advocate. And so he's never treated us differently. He's always looked at us like his sons.

 

Austin (02:12:17):
He's got to be one of the most impressive people I've ever met.

 

Matt Handy (02:12:19):
For sure.

 

Austin (02:12:20):
I'm always so intrigued by his motivation and not motivation for success, but motivation to give to other people. It's crazy. Because I was recently working for another very wealthy person that owned that art car. He's got hundreds of millions, right? Great guy, but just his whole life and motivation is just like, he's the complete opposite of your dad. Hoarding money. Not hoarding money. I mean, he didn't even ever set out to make a lot of money. It's like he developed a video game and sold it for a couple hundred million dollars and it just kind of happened. It just kind of fell into his lap. That's dope. Right? But he doesn't have kids, doesn't have a lot of people. He's supporting financially. It's not like he's selfish, but he just is like ...

 

Matt Handy (02:13:29):
Different

 

Austin (02:13:29):
Mindset. He's got a couple very nice houses. He's got a very nice yacht and he just kind of goes around and travels with his fiance and they just ... Maybe they're married. No, they're engaged, but just kind of is running around, having fun, doing what he wants. And he retired. He got that money and he retired, whereas your dad has had success and just continues to ... He could live like that if he wanted to, but instead he gives it all away and just works harder and harder and harder to support so many people. And then it's like, I don't know. I'm like, where does that come from?

 

Matt Handy (02:14:19):
From my perspective, which is like his oldest child, from my perspective, it's the struggle. His struggle coming up to where he's at really geared him towards, he never wants anybody else to have to go through that, is what I think. And he does a really good job of giving without expectation, which is not normal. If he's connected to you and you need something, you no longer need it. Yeah.

 

Austin (02:14:48):
Well, yeah, and he essentially is allowing or having everybody in his life live the same quality of life

 

Matt Handy (02:14:57):
That she is. Which is crazy. Is

 

Austin (02:14:58):
Crazy. All the kids, all the grandkids, everybody, he's just like, instead of me being Uber, Uber, whatever, having everything I want, everybody ... Everybody's going to live. Everybody's going to live comfortably.

 

Matt Handy (02:15:12):
Yeah. So the situation that I was raised up in, and then I ... So my first prison term, there was some tumultuous shit going on when I went to prison. And then when I got out of prison, it had kind of stabilized. And then I pretty quickly again went out and then didn't have any contact with anybody for 10 years. And one of the things that I thought about all the time was like, "I wonder how they're doing. I wonder if they're okay." And that office building disappeared one day and I was like, "Oh shit, I wonder if they're all right." In my mind, it was never like, "I'm going to come back and they're going to be fucking rocking, doing what they're doing now." And then I came-

 

Austin (02:15:57):
Oh, because at that point you had no communication and you-

 

Matt Handy (02:16:00):
Zero.

 

Austin (02:16:01):
And you just saw the putter handy go away.

 

Matt Handy (02:16:03):
Disappear. Yeah.

 

Austin (02:16:05):
Whoa.

 

Matt Handy (02:16:06):
So when I came back, it was like I didn't know what I was coming back to. And then I came

 

Austin (02:16:10):
Back and I was like- You came back and it's like insane.

 

Matt Handy (02:16:13):
Insane.

 

Austin (02:16:15):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:16:15):
Yeah. And I was like, dude, this isn't-

 

Austin (02:16:17):
So what's it been like reintegrating- It's rough. ... after stepping away?

 

Matt Handy (02:16:23):
Yeah, it's rough. You know my mom and it's the wreckage of my past. And the reality is the person that I am and the people that they are, I don't really fit in with them. They're all very family centered and really social with each other and I've just never been that person. And then my recovery and my journey is very specific to what I'm doing with my life. And so it's been like they've made it very easy for me to come back and be comfortable. I'm not a part of them.

 

Austin (02:17:07):
But you've rebuilt a solid relationship with Jericho at this point.

 

Matt Handy (02:17:10):
Yeah. Yeah. And the way that I think it'll end up working is like-

 

Austin (02:17:16):
And Jayden's working with you guys too, right?

 

Matt Handy (02:17:18):
Yeah. Yeah. So Jayden's over operations of our other business, which is way less complicated as far as the build out goes. It's pretty cut and dry. You get the house, you get the people in it, and then you just make sure that the boxes are checked. We're serving a whole different demographic of people over there versus this. It's like the moving target of building a treatment center is really complicated around the clientele, the expectations around what are your obligations to your clients? Our obligations to our clients over there is like, you have a house over here it's like around the testing and the outcomes of the clients. And it's like, we take all that really personally where it's like if we have a negative outcome for a client, we failed the client. And the reality is we're talking about sobriety and it's like very ... We're going to have clients that OD. We're going to have clients that probably die. We're going to have clients that make it. We're going to have clients that struggle through their recovery and finally get it someday or the ones that just never do. So it's like we are developing curriculums based on outcomes for the clients and it's like ... So in this business specifically, in order to get a 5X valuation on a treatment center, you got to have a 5% success rate.

 

(02:18:43):
So five out of 100 have to stay clean to get a 5X valuation on your annual revenue. And in order to get a 10X valuation, how much do you think you need? What success rate do you need to get a 10X valuation? Seven. 13. I mean, and so it's like failing across the board.

 

Austin (02:19:01):
What's considered a success?

 

Matt Handy (02:19:03):
So anything after 5% is

 

Austin (02:19:06):
Like- No, what is considered a six-

 

Matt Handy (02:19:08):
One year of sobriety. Yeah, that's what they're basing it all off of. The success rate, the metric that they use is can you keep people sober for a year? Because the insurance agencies and companies, that's what they're looking at. When they're looking at outcomes for clients who receive services, they just track the first year of sobriety.

 

Austin (02:19:27):
Yeah. I mean, I guess they have to try to track it in some way, but I mean, really tracking what it is is so much ... Actual success is so much more complicated than that. I mean that. Because a relapse could or couldn't ... Involve substances? Yeah. Or even if somebody does relapse, like what you offered them, maybe you gave them a foundation and then they come back to it and it's like ... I don't know. I'm not super ... I mean, I am fully sober, but I'm also like, I have seen people that are not entirely sober and do other holistic things and whatever, and maybe they're not entirely sober, but they're recovered. I think there's a lot of avenues to recovery and it's like ... And yeah, I don't know.

 

Matt Handy (02:20:29):
I mean, so part of what we're doing around the development of this curriculum is we're going through the dictionary of recovery and having to redefine a lot of things, right? Because in a multiple pathway approach, we're not tracking how many meetings have you gone to? What step are you on? Do you have a sponsor and shit like that? Because within a multiple pathway approach, that immediately, that framework says you're not expected to go to 12-step meetings. You're just expected to develop a sober community or at least a sober social group that you can, A, calibrate your moral compass and B, self cannot critique self. So you have to have somebody that you answer to. And so it's like there's all of that. But then what you're talking about around outcomes, right? And when you look at sobriety as a definition, a lot of people say it's 100% abstinence, right? But the reality is, what about the guy that was living under a bridge five years ago, slamming heroin and getting hospitalized every month because of what he was doing, and now he just smokes weed? Is that guy in recovery?

 

Austin (02:21:39):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:21:40):
Yeah.

 

Austin (02:21:40):
Well, it's like you can't even pin it on ... I mean, obviously certain substances you could. There's probably no world that if that guy's still doing heroin, he's happy or fulfilled or anything. Yeah. But it's like somebody could be smoking a little bit of weed here and there and be absolutely miserable. It's like somebody could be doing it and be all right or it's like, I don't know. I mean, definitely the last few years, I've seen a lot of people in the sober communities start to microdose psilocybin and that kind of stuff. And it's like, I haven't messed around with any of it, but I have seen these people who I know that they ... Hardcore heroin addicts and stuff and I see the life that they're living now and they're fulfilled and they're happy and they're not living that addict life. I mean, that's really what it is. It's like if something is not serving you as an addict, we're going to bring that fucking right to the surface real quick and fucking blow shit up. There's no fucking hiding it.

 

Matt Handy (02:22:58):
Yeah. They've got all these massive ... Do you know what MAPS is? You've probably heard of it. It's the multiple disciplinary application of psychedelic studies and they're doing massive studies around the therapeutic and clinical value of a lot of different things, ketamine, psilocybin, MDMA, DMT. So right now there's a study going on in San Diego at USD. They are intravenously giving people DMT and hooking them up for eight hour drips. And these people are having these experiences, especially people with PTSD and major depression, they'll have this one medication session or episode and they completely ... The way that their brain realters its pathways from just one experience is they're having massive success. Or you know what TMS is? It's transcranial magnetic systems. Put this helmet on your head. It's like this medical machine. They put this helmet on your head, goes on your head and there's magnets that spin in it and the magnetic fields causes your brain matter to readjust itself.

 

(02:24:18):
And so the thing that they're finding is that major depression ... As a diagnosis, people with major depression or bipolar, they'll go through 15 years of changing medication and suffering and going through all of these changes in their life constantly, or something will work temporarily and then it causes bigger problems on the backend. And so as a last resort, they will give you this TMS treatment and there's a 50% success rate of people never experiencing depression again.

 

Austin (02:24:52):
That's pretty impressive rate.

 

Matt Handy (02:24:54):
Dude, so the thing that blows my mind is we've known about TMS for some amount of years now. We've known about the success rates, and it's on a sliding scale right now where it's like the success rates as you use it more get greater. So it's like 50% today, three years from now, it hypothetically could be up to 75%. But the thing is, this is the last thing that you're trying. Why is it the last thing that you're trying if you understand that it works?

 

Austin (02:25:26):
Well, also because it's an actual solution instead of bandaid.

 

Matt Handy (02:25:30):
For sure.

 

Austin (02:25:32):
Whereas the other things, I would imagine somebody with actual chronic depression, not somebody who's dealing with a spurt of it, antidepressants probably have a 0% success rate.

 

Matt Handy (02:25:43):
For sure. And that's the thing, so a lot of this industry is based ... So the outcomes are based on broken data sets. It's a broken system that's using broken data sets.

 

(02:25:57):
And so the amount of success or at least the amount of relief that a single patient will have from these SSRIs is upfront really successful. There's a massive success rate for people that get on it for the first time, and then it just steeply drops off. And it's like, why do we continue to do these things that we understand long-term do not work? And it's like the drugs, when you actually look at pharmacologically, what they were developed for and the amount of time that they're developed for, it's like, you're not supposed to be on SSRIs for life. You're supposed to be on it for six months, taper down, use

 

Austin (02:26:40):
Therapy- Yeah, to get some momentum.

 

Matt Handy (02:26:42):
Yeah.

 

Austin (02:26:42):
Yeah. It's supposed to be like a push start.

 

Matt Handy (02:26:44):
Yeah. And then they end up on it for 20 years. And it's like the downstream effect of these drugs ... Have you seen the statistics of mass shooters that are on SSRIs? No. So the statistics are crazy. It's like 100% of them are either on SSRIs long-term or are somehow connected to a trans movement. It's like there's no differentiation. It's those two things across the board.

 

Austin (02:27:17):
Are they?

 

Matt Handy (02:27:18):
Yeah. And so some of the outcomes of these people ... And it's like when you really think about chronic depression or major depression- Do

 

Austin (02:27:28):
You have depression?

 

Matt Handy (02:27:29):
No. No. So I always wondered, why do I not feel anxiety or depression the same way that all these other people do? I've gone through depression. I mean, yeah, through hard

 

Austin (02:27:46):
Stuff.

 

Matt Handy (02:27:46):
Yeah. I mean, so here's the thing is the depression that I feel is still ... I know people with major depression and the physical manifestation of that mental illness is extremely painful and debilitating.

 

Austin (02:28:03):
Yeah. I have depression. I mean, I still deal with it throughout all of my sobriety. I've had a lot of spurts of depression. Dealing with depression, yeah. Are you on medication for it? Mm-mm. No, I haven't wanted to. And it's almost like the more times I've gone through it and gotten out of it, it's like even though I kind of still get back in it, I know I can get out of it. Even if I can't immediately just get up and do it in that moment, even though I know everything I need to do, I know it's temporary.

 

Matt Handy (02:28:41):
How long does it last?

 

Austin (02:28:43):
It varies.

 

Matt Handy (02:28:45):
What's the longest episode?

 

Austin (02:28:51):
I don't know. It's hard to say because it's not like a ... Maybe in severity, like a few months.

 

Matt Handy (02:28:58):
Okay. Okay. Yeah. So when I think of you and hearing this now, it's like you've been sober for long enough to actually restructure a lot of the neurological pathways where it's like you fully understand you're going to be okay, whereas a lot of other people never even get there. They suffer, get on medications, which completely blocks a lot of the rebuilding process and it's like, that's just where they get stuck. Whereas you've built cognizant and you're cognizant enough to understand that it isn't a permanent thing.

 

Austin (02:29:36):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (02:29:36):
There are some people that think that this is permanent, that I'm just stuck this way.

 

Austin (02:29:39):
Yeah. I mean, luckily I've been able to be aware of it even when I'm in it. I'm like, yeah, I know if I could fucking drag myself out and go to the gym and fucking eat good, then I would feel good. I I'm not capable of it in this moment, but I know if I did and I know I can do that.

 

Matt Handy (02:30:07):
There was a quick solution immediately for a little while. So even in your depression, when you pull yourself out of bed and you do the things that make you feel good, you feel good temporarily through it.

 

Austin (02:30:21):
Sometimes.

 

Matt Handy (02:30:22):
Okay.

 

Austin (02:30:23):
Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's like, all right, yeah, that was a small win. Or sometimes it-

 

Matt Handy (02:30:28):
Doesn't move the needle?

 

Austin (02:30:30):
Yeah, sometimes it doesn't move the needle.

 

Matt Handy (02:30:32):
Yeah. So I always wondered why don't I get depressed the same way that other people do? And then I got sober and did a bunch of trauma work and really went ... So I was doing therapy twice a week for months and then went down to once a week for nine months and then twice a month for a long time. And then now it's like whenever I need it or at least once a month, I go see my therapist. And it was like through that process of working with her office and getting diagnosed with actually what was going on, when I got that diagnosis, I was like, okay, this makes total fucking sense. Why? And I answered a lot of questions about why I don't react the same way a lot of other people do. And I got diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. And it's like really all it points to is that I feel emotions, but my spectrum of emotions is like this versus everybody else's is like this.

 

(02:31:35):
And so my ability to be depressed is probably there, but the probability of me getting depressed is nonexistent. So I've always wondered though, why is it that I don't experience these things? I've watched plenty of people suffer through depression and it was like, I've gone through very similar things and I know I'm not just a happy person. I'm not just predisposed to just being happy, but I've never felt the same way that they describe when they talk about their depression. And I've gone through, really when I was a teenager more than anything is when I felt depressed. And I think a lot of that had to do with a biological component around hormones and puberty.

 

Austin (02:32:18):
Yeah. I feel like that's probably semi-common for a lot of teenage. Even teenagers that aren't struggling with a lot of other stuff, I feel like. For sure. Just the ...

 

Matt Handy (02:32:27):
For sure. And I remember what that felt like. And as an adult, never felt anything like that. So yeah, when I got that diagnosis, I was like ... And then I started reading on it and really figuring out what that meant. Because I didn't understand the differentiation between a BPS or antisocial disorder or anything like that. I just thought it was all categorically the same thing, which it kind of is. But yeah, I started reading on it. I was like, okay, this absolutely makes sense for why I have been able to cope with things. So dealing with all my trauma and stuff, she was like, "Dude, Matt, you're not using because of sexual trauma. You're using because you fucking like it more than anything." And so even that realization, I'd always kind of known I wasn't using because of trauma. I was using because of my decisions, but even hearing that, it was a very freeing moment to be able to be like, "Okay, this is my choices.

 

(02:33:28):
These are my decisions." And in that, I do feel fortunate because a lot of other people are out there doing things as a downstream reaction to what they're going through biologically. A lot of people are out there using because of their depression. A lot of people are out there using because of their sexual trauma or their other types of trauma. And so I was able to be like, okay, I need to stop putting the accountability off on something outside of myself and was able to really take ownership of a lot of the decisions that I made. So that was really cool. Nice. Yeah. But yeah, it's like looking at the outcomes for clients here and really deciding the direction that we're going to go because this whole company was built from a client's perspective. The chairs that we use, the curriculum we're developing, the interactions from the time they answer the phone with us to the day they get into the chair, all the way through the programming, it's really geared for what is going to make you comfortable and what is going to get you to make the decisions to get sober.

 

(02:34:35):
Instead of me telling you this is how you have to do it, I'm going to ... So the speech that I give to everybody, and so I certify sober coaches. I'm part of a company that certifies peer support specialists, and I'm the main facilitator of this company. And what I tell people all the time is that these people are experts in their own life. They understand intimately a lot of the time what they need. They might not understand why they're doing what they're doing, but inherently as humans, we all know what we need. We all know what we should be doing. And so we set up a situation where, first of all, they're safe and second of all, they're comfortable enough to talk with us. And we want you to tell us what your goals are. We want you to tell us where you want to be.

 

(02:35:24):
We want you to tell us what it is that, what are your hurdles? What is it that you need? And then we establish a treatment plan that'll help you get there. Instead of being like, "Go to these meetings, get this court card, do this, do that. " It's like, no, you tell me what you need and if that doesn't work, we'll go down a different route. We will figure out what it is that you need for sustained recovery. Instead of trying to fit a circle into a square, we'll try to get you into what it is that you need individually. And so that whole build out ... So I've done a lot of treatment. I did a three-year program, a nine-month program, a seven-month program, and a bunch of one-month programs. And all through that, one of the most important things that I learned was that I'm never going to do this if you keep trying to tell me what to do.

 

(02:36:13):
And then extrapolated that out and had a lot of conversations around, what is it actually that got you clean? And it was always like this certain thing happened in my life and it pointed me in this direction. It was never like, oh, I had this sponsor that forced me to get sober. It was like never that. It was always like I had this experience that directed me towards wanting to be a better person or a lot of fathers. It'll be like, fathers are the easiest sale. Just simply ask them, do you want to be a better father? Do you want to be a better person for your kids to raise them properly? Do you want to be a better husband? And every father does, everybody who has kids wants to be a better father. And so you can start from there and be like, if you want to be a better father and you're looking at the outcomes for your children, then try this.

 

(02:37:14):
Try not getting drunk and beating your kids. Try not cheating on your wife. Try not doing this stuff. And we work with a couple people right now where it's like they're going through things that are directly related to their alcoholilism, but ultimately the alcoholilism isn't what they're trying to escape. It's the negative consequences around their family. So it's like the simple question and then the ultimate answer is if you want to be a better father, get sober bottom line. Because if you continue to think that your alcoholism isn't a problem, then you're never going to be a better father or you're never going to be a better son or you're never going to be a better husband or whatever. So we're not asking you, do you want to be sober? Everybody wants the negative consequences to go away. And so in that, it's very easy to be like, "I don't want to do this anymore." But it's really like when you get them to that point of like, "I don't want to affect other people negatively, specifically my kids," it's really easy to be like, "Then get sober." So yeah, it's like everybody's an expert in their own life.

 

(02:38:28):
We weren't there through their suffering. They were there. We weren't there through all the negative and all the terrible decision making. We don't actually know what the individual needs, but the treatment industry at large has these buzzwords around this stuff where they're like, "It's individualized treatment plans and evidence-based care and it doesn't actually mean anything."

 

(02:38:53):
And so it's like, if we decide to go with those buzzwords, what we're actually saying is you as a person, like Austin York comes in, we're not going to give you the same treatment plan that this guy got. We're going to build it around you, your goals and your needs. And it makes sense when you say it like that, but it's like wholesale, that's not what happens. It's like the treatment industry at large, it over promises and under delivers in every aspect, every individual case and the way ... You can look at like ... I have other people's information booklets around here somewhere and it's like when you compare them, it's like exactly the same thing in a different order. And it's like, we know what the outcomes are. We've seen the statistics. The statistic that's craziest to me is the people that relapse the day they get out, it's like if you relapse the day that you get out, you're relapsing within an hour of getting out of treatment.

 

(02:39:56):
It's like huge percentages of people that are relapsing are relapsing. They're going straight to

 

Austin (02:40:02):
The dope, man. Isn't that added compulsion is such a crazy thing, Isn't It?

 

Matt Handy (02:40:06):
It is. I mean, and then there's the opposite side of that where it's like the people who don't want to leave treatment, right? They've found this safe place where they're not doing that anymore, but then it's like you've reactivated their trauma, right? They're going to go out there if they're not committing to a step down program or some kind of lower level of care, you've reactivated their trauma, they're going to go out there and just spiral. So what we're promising these people versus what we're delivering, totally different. And then the disconnection and outcomes really comes down to like ... So I ask everybody this question that's involved in the treatment community. It's like, you've got a 19-year-old kid, he's being forced to go to treatment by his parents. He doesn't want to be sober. He is literally doing ... And he's telling everybody, "I'm only doing this because my parents sent me here." We all know he's going to relapse. What are the things that we can do to try to mitigate those chances?

 

Austin (02:41:09):
I mean, I think the best route would be to just try to show them the other side. If you could find a way to show them the fun and fulfillment that you can have being a sober person, because especially it's like we talked about in the beginning of this conversation of me getting sober so young. I mean, I definitely didn't think I was going to stay sober.

 

Matt Handy (02:41:42):
For sure.

 

Austin (02:41:43):
I kind of maybe wanted to, but I actually didn't even have that much of an intention of- Staying sober. ... staying sober the first time when I was like 16. But then once I had experienced that really fuller life, I was drawn back to it quickly. I qas just like, that was so much better. That life that I had with Michael and our other friends and that community and the fun we were having compared to fucking the floor of this fucking sketchy house around these people that none of us give a fuck about each other and I don't fucking trust anybody like that. Just the feeling of that just realness of a fuller life and the fun to be had that like life can be really fun.

 

Matt Handy (02:42:37):
Yeah. No, so if they were in treatment for a year, that'd be possible, but they typically are in treatment for 28 days and there's three billable hours in a day at a residential. You've got to do relapse prevention, education and something else. And those are like the only billable hours. And so the rest of the time, this was from my experience, if they can't bill for it, they're not doing it. So the big answer that I look for in this typically is doing the family work, but you can't bill for family therapy, you can't bill for having the parents come out and sit down with the therapist and work through shit with their kid. You can't bill for any of that. So the treatment center ultimately has to pay for that. So a lot of them aren't. And then what you're saying, that would be an amazing thing to be able to do.

 

Austin (02:43:30):
Yeah. Well, obviously you can't do it in that way. And I mean, I would say that, I guess I don't know what approach people are taking. I know when I was a kid in treatment, a lot of their approaches were like, even though they were true, sitting there and trying to tell some young kid that your friends are dirt bags and they'll give a fuck about you and fucking, that doesn't matter, whatever. They're going to put up walls all over that. For sure. You can't come at them about whatever stupid kid ideals they have. Even someone who's an adult, someone who's 30 is going to probably understand that even if you're talking to them about like, look, the decisions you're making, who you're surrounding yourself with, they're going to understand that that's

 

Matt Handy (02:44:19):
Wrong. Probably. Yeah.

 

Austin (02:44:20):
That they're

 

Matt Handy (02:44:21):
Making bad decisions.

 

Austin (02:44:22):
Yeah. Whereas this kid, you can't really do much other than you can't really challenge what they are doing. I feel like you can just show them something else or offer maybe your own experience or someone else's experience or whatever without being like what you're doing is fucking stupid.

 

Matt Handy (02:44:47):
Yeah. And it's like, the book says it when it talks about frothy emotional appeal. It's like, for this kid especially, it's like you're only here because your parents are forcing you and it's like you're fully vocal about this. I had an experience in treatment one time where I was like, that's what was going on. This is pre-fentanyl. So it wasn't like he was going to go out there and just die immediately, but he fully was talking about like, "I don't want to be sober. The only reason why I'm here is because I made a deal with my parents that they would continue to support me as long as I tried to get sober." And I was like, "Okay, he's going to check off all the boxes. He's going to do exactly what he said he would do so that his parents would still pay for his apartment and his car."

 

Austin (02:45:31):
Yeah. At the same time, I mean, I wasn't being offered anything by my parents. My mom didn't have any money. And you said something very similar earlier that was funny because I say the same exact thing all the time about like, "Oh, I just want to get everybody off my back." When I went into Phoenix House, that was my sole intention. I was like, "Oh, I'm just going to fucking get everybody off my back. I'm fucking getting arrested a bunch, whatever. And I just want everybody off my back and then I'm going to go back to doing what I'm doing." That was my entire intention going in there.

 

Matt Handy (02:46:04):
I think that's a lot of people's intention, going in where they taste what it's like to be sober. Another part of a lot of people's journey and sobriety is meeting the right people. You meet the right person and it completely changes your point of view around what sobriety is. A

 

Austin (02:46:25):
Thousand percent. Yeah. It's like if you meet someone that you can actually connect with or whatever, because I remember when I was a year sober, I lived in Hemet for a little bit. Jesus. And I tried to go to-

 

Matt Handy (02:46:41):
Why?

 

Austin (02:46:42):
It's a super long story, but it was like I was supposed to go work this job for my friend's company and it was this whole thing. That's a place to end up. Yeah. And I happened to have a cousin that lived there. So I went and I moved in with her and Hemet and it was a shit show. But I was trying to go to meetings out there and I was like, I never would've gotten sober out here.

 

Matt Handy (02:47:08):
Never.

 

Austin (02:47:10):
I was like an 18 or 19 year old kid, young face, healthy looking me.

 

Matt Handy (02:47:16):
Southern California.

 

Austin (02:47:17):
And it was like compared to just some shot out older. I was just like, I could have never connected with these people. Even though we're struggling with it, we'd have a similar thing, but I know I would've never connected with them.

 

Matt Handy (02:47:31):
Yeah. I mean, that connection is pivotal in a lot of people's story, pivotal. And it's like you got to stay around long enough to make that connection. A lot of people nowadays, at least from what I've seen and what I've kind of gotten out of other people is like ... So we live in 2025. 2025, people are rejecting religious structures more and more. And it's like, if you are not sold on the program, most people are rejecting it nowadays. You rarely find people who are getting into sobriety and then will willingly choose to go to AA.That is the last thing that they want to do. They want to find something else to do. And then it's like around the program in and of itself, I'm not a 12-step person, but I think everybody, whether you're in recovery or not, would benefit from a 12-step program.

 

(02:48:31):
Everybody should go through that work. And it's like the rest of the world doesn't have to ... The level of accountability and honesty that a recovering person has to live in is totally different than the rest of the world. The rest of the world could lie and cheat and steal and not fuck their life up drinking.

 

Austin (02:48:48):
Yeah. I mean, yeah, 12 step definitely works. It worked for me, but I've seen people get sober all different kinds of ways. And definitely earlier on, I was fucking sold into like, "This is what you have to do. You have to do this. " But I mean, I was a kid and that's all I had ever seen and whatever, but I've seen people get sober and live fulfilling lives all different kinds of ways.

 

Matt Handy (02:49:12):
Yeah. I love looking at the history of the program because it's like the first couple years of Bill and Bob being around, it was like a hundred percent of everybody that interacted with eventually got sober and stayed sober.

 

Austin (02:49:25):
Yeah, it's crazy.

 

Matt Handy (02:49:26):
100%.

 

Austin (02:49:27):
I do think that a lot of people in that community, individuals kind of misinterpret and misrepresent what's actually said in the book because I definitely know it's like 100% of the time, anybody that I've ever seen actually do it, it works. For sure. It's not like, "Oh, it will probably work. It has a good chance of working."

 

Matt Handy (02:49:58):
Or it could work.

 

Austin (02:49:59):
It's like it does work.

 

Matt Handy (02:50:00):
Yes.

 

Austin (02:50:01):
If you read the book and you do everything that it says in that order, it will work, but it's not the only way to do it.

 

Matt Handy (02:50:09):
Yeah. So my executive director, he got sober and then didn't go to a single meeting for nine years and eventually his recovery stopped evolving and it got him to go to meetings. And now he does the deal and it's like his sobriety led him straight into the rooms. So the idea and the hope isn't that you don't need it. The hope is that you end up in there. It isn't that we hope you get sober and then just flounder out there and just live a life. We want you to evolve in your recovery. And if that means ending up in those rooms, fucking go. And it's like for the people who get sober in the rooms and stay sober in those rooms, fucking keep doing it.

 

(02:50:58):
And what I've experienced is that you let your successes and your relationships kind of guide the direction of your life where it's like, I know of a group of people who, dude, they were like hardcore 12 step kids and then eventually they all kind of looked around and they stopped engaging at the same level that they once were. And it was like now they're all just living their lives and being productive, successful members of society in a real way. And it's like, yeah, they needed that though in order to get there. And it's like, yeah, the monopoly on God and the monopoly on recovery isn't locked into any single place. And I've seen people get sober, like California sober and I've seen people get sober. And I'm talking about hardcore. So I knew this dude that I met him in prison and was, I mean, convinced he would just never use again and then got out, got California sober and then just stayed that way forever.

 

(02:52:14):
And now he owns a weed chop and just lives his life and does his thing. And it was like, compared to where he was at and what he was doing, and it was like an El Cajon white boy.

 

Austin (02:52:25):
That's one of those things where I'm talking about. It's like, what do you consider a success?

 

Matt Handy (02:52:28):
Right.

 

Austin (02:52:29):
And that's coming from someone who is 100% abstinent, but it's like, I would say that guy's a success. Me

 

Matt Handy (02:52:36):
Too.

 

Austin (02:52:37):
On the surface level, obviously, I don't know the ins and outs. I don't know if he's whatever. But in general, yeah, it's like if someone can ... It's like the success is to each individual.

 

Matt Handy (02:52:52):
Yeah. Yeah. So when you're talking about how do they measure success, they have to give metrics that are measurable. So it's like, what is the easiest way to measure success in sobriety? It's like your first year. Can you get clean past your first year? Yeah. And so they have to have it be able to mathematically fit into equations. And so that was just what they go through. But the crazy part is that it's like, this is a failing business in any other ... 5% success rate, 13% success rate. It's like any other business that's trying to sell with a 5% success rate is like, just shut it down and call it quits.

 

Austin (02:53:31):
I mean, maybe, maybe not. It's probably like going to the gym is probably the same thing. It's like how many people that walk through the doors of a jam and go work out keep going.

 

Matt Handy (02:53:42):
So of the ones that keep going, 100% of them have success, right? And it's like, I don't know anybody that continuously goes to the gym and makes no progress.

 

Austin (02:53:53):
Yeah. But what percentage of people do you think walk through the doors of a gym and become someone who works out consistently? Fucking ... Probably less than 5%.

 

Matt Handy (02:54:03):
Probably less, yeah.

 

Austin (02:54:05):
So there's other businesses you could relate it to.

 

Matt Handy (02:54:07):
Yeah, but their success rate is like how many memberships you can get. And it's like as long as you sign up for the year membership at Lifetime, it's like you're locked into that.

 

Austin (02:54:18):
That's their financial success rate, which you could say the same thing about a treatment center, right? Even if they're maybe not getting the funding success rate, but if you're just turning beds nonstop, yeah, you're financially successful as the gym, but an actual success of someone who is using the gym to improve their life is probably a super low percentage.

 

Matt Handy (02:54:43):
So some of the most successful rehabs pay their bills with relapses. I know of one place that I know of for sure that they have a policy that says if our census reaches 65%, we're calling all of our alumni and seeing who relapsed and bringing them back. So it's like the monetary success of these places is ... If they tied it to that, every treatment center is successful.This

 

(02:55:12):
Isn't like every other business where it's like the more your outcomes suck, the better you could do financially. So there's incentivization around ... So this is a thing that I talk about constantly around what is over promised and underdelivered is like, there are treatment centers out there that are gearing people for their relapse to come back and I think that's fucked up that the fact of the matter is that you are paying your bills today because of how many people are just constantly coming back through. I don't think that should be a thing and there's no way to stop that.

 

Austin (02:55:46):
Yeah. It's a pretty hard thing to combat because it's just kind of what it is.

 

Matt Handy (02:55:50):
Well, I mean, if you shift the focus on the revolving door and onto the outcomes, then you can create situations that have greater outcomes. I thoroughly believe this. And that's what we're doing. Everything that we are doing should point to greater outcomes for clients. And it's like with Dr. Shaw and everything that we've got developing, we are saying that if in five years we don't have a 30% success rate, we did something wrong. So it's like- 30%

 

Austin (02:56:22):
Would be pretty

 

Matt Handy (02:56:23):
Impressive. Yeah, but we think it's very doable because of the patients that he's seen over the last five years, 33% are manifesting in the specific way that we are looking out for.

 

Austin (02:56:37):
Wow.

 

Matt Handy (02:56:38):
So if we can prevent their relapses, if we can predict their relapses based on this escalation scale and a bunch of other stuff, then there is no reason why we can't. And the reality is 33% is the low end of what we think we can do. We really think we can get up to way better than that. We really do. Especially for the clients that do the full continuum of care, like that they come in from detox all the way to aftercare, those people, we should have at least a 50% success rate with them, at least because we're not treating relapse prevent ... So relapse prevention is one of the boxes that you have to check off. You have to teach relapse prevention. Our relapse prevention model is way different than anything you'll ever see anywhere else because we're not just teaching you ... So coping skills is like a big part of relapse prevention, but when you're in full flight from reality and you're getting ready, if using becomes a viable option, you don't care about anything that you want

 

Austin (02:57:46):
To treat. Yeah. Everything goes out the window.

 

Matt Handy (02:57:48):
So what we're teaching you is watch out for the signs that ... So everybody always says, you've relapsed way before you relapse, right? But what does that actually mean? What is the process that you go through? Is that a restable? Are we able to catch it in the very first stages of your relapse? And then we're calling it, instead of intervention, we're calling it something totally different. And so we're not trying to mix people's definitions up. We're calling it interrupting. We're going to interrupt your process. And so the way that we're doing that and the way that we're catching ... So we're developing a patent around a wearable that shows us one of the things that happens when you get in this escalated state, it's also conscious, right? But one of the things that happens is you end up driving faster, you end up walking faster, you end up doing things that you'll never realize that you do unless you're tracking ... On the daily average, I walk 2.4 miles an hour, but when you're in this escalation, you're actually walking 2.6.

 

(02:58:59):
And so if we can see that it's gone up from three days ago and now it's three days later and you've been consistently walking faster, we'll pull you in and we'll give you a bunch of scales to do. And typically, there'll be a baseline number that you get all the time, but our theory and model says that if you can catch any of these triggers and then you do these scales around it, we can probably see that you're in an escalation. And then we interrupt it with medication and this stuff. And it's like, now there's a different situation that you're in. And so 33% of his clientele has presented this way where it's like, " We can interrupt it because you're presenting this way really. And really what it is is a lot of addicts and alcoholics, they go into treatment or they go through therapy or they do all this stuff and they get these depression and anxiety diagnosis so that they can get these medications.

 

(02:59:57):
And the assumption is that there's been a This diagnosis and that you really have a cycling mood disorder called cyclothymia. Psychothymia, historically, it takes 14 years for you to get diagnosed with it is the average because you'll present in clinic, you'll be diagnosed with depression or anxiety, and then you'll go through this long process of trying to figure out what's actually wrong. And the idea is the theory is you actually have this cycling mood disorder that you've been trying to treat that has a biological component that answers to why you're chronically relapsing. So if you're chronically relapsing and you come in and we can catch this escalation, we can interrupt it and now we change your diagnosis. Now you have cyclothymia and we put you on a mood stabilizer versus you go to treatment for the first time, most people leave with six medications is the average.

 

(03:00:53):
They'll go home with an antidepressant and anti-anxiety. They'll get a sleep aid. They'll get all this stuff. It's fucked. Yeah. And so what we're doing is completely different than any other thing that anybody's ever done. And what we're really trying to base this on is we live in a dangerous time for drug addicts especially where it's like if you relapse, there's a high likelihood you're going to die. And if we can prevent that, the downstream effect of this, let's say five years from now, we've gotten up to 33%. This translates into thousands of people that are no longer in the threat of dying.

 

Austin (03:01:30):
Yeah. It's fucking crazy nowadays because even not that long ago, it's like, yeah, fucking addicts die more than other people. But now with the fentanyl shit, because it's not just ending up in ...

 

Matt Handy (03:01:43):
No.

 

Austin (03:01:44):
Dude, I've heard so many stories of fucking it ending up in someone's coke or it fucking ending up ... Because it's like when someone's shooting heroin- Pretty good chance. You kind of know you're already playing that game a bit. But there was a festival I was working some years back that five kids died from fentanyl-laced Molly, just some kids going to a rave. Those kids weren't even playing that game. They weren't even in that.

 

Matt Handy (03:02:13):
Yeah. So I kind of stay up on it because of what I'm doing, but monthly there are stories about people smoking weed and overdosing on fentanyl. Having no clue in weed. Weed that they got off the street or maybe it's even ...

 

Austin (03:02:29):
It's insane.

 

Matt Handy (03:02:30):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so fentanyl is the leading cause of death for people under 40 now. That many people are dying from fentanyl poisoning.

 

Austin (03:02:42):
Believe it. I've definitely known a lot of people in the last few years.

 

Matt Handy (03:02:45):
Yeah.

 

Austin (03:02:46):
I mean, most of them were already pretty mixed up in some shit, but some of them weren't.

 

Matt Handy (03:02:52):
Yeah. I mean, dude, the accidental deaths around ... Have you seen that video of the guy, the San Diego sheriff that opened a bag in a car that he was searching and overdosed on fentanyl? No. Dude, it's one of the scariest videos I've ever seen because it's a cop. It was in Vista. It was a Vista sheriff. And he is searching this car. He opens a bag and then his partner shows up and the guy is just frozen. And he's like, "Dude, are you okay?" And he falls back and has a full blown overdose. And all he did was it opened up into the air and he inhaled some of it and fucking almost died. And it's like the dangers that people are exposed to that are out there recreationally using drugs, we're living in a time where it's more dangerous than ever to do drugs.

 

(03:03:47):
And addiction is exploding. The addiction rates are exploding, the overdose rates are exploding. When you look at the ages of people who are getting a substance abuse diagnosis, it's getting younger, and people are staying addicted for longer. We live in this time where addiction has a greater grip on us than ever. And what it's really pointing to is my talking point that I always tell people is if we're in the business of saving lives and we are having this failure rate for outcomes and the relapse rate is crazier than ever. And if this is all what we're supposed to be doing and we're failing worse than ever, why aren't we changing the system? Why are we just doing the same thing that we were doing 20 years ago?

 

Austin (03:04:41):
Yeah. I mean, I think it really probably comes from a lot deeper than just the treatment programs though. No, it does. It's the fucking world. It's like we're living in such an unnatural way. True. And it's like, I really think that the biggest thing comes from that people are lonely and they don't know their place. It's like at one time we were a people that lived in community and now-

 

Matt Handy (03:05:11):
Tribal. We're tribal. We're tribal. We're animals.

 

Austin (03:05:13):
We're community. It's like people are meant to be social communal beings. It's like the natural way. The way that your family lives as crazy as it is, is probably one of the most natural ways that that's how people should be living. And a lot of people find their communities in other ways and they find that fulfillment, but it's so easy to be disassociated from that in today's society and to just be alone and fucking be at your desk on your computer and fucking live in virtual world and be away from people. Dude.

 

Matt Handy (03:05:53):
And order your

 

Austin (03:05:53):
Groceries. And even in the relationships that people have with people just aren't to that depth of actual support to each other, so they just don't know. Personally, I think that that's probably one of the biggest causes of addiction and just most people's issues in their lives. Most people's personal issues in their lives is that they're lonely.

 

Matt Handy (03:06:18):
Yeah, you're totally right. I'm not saying that the answer ... I mean, I'm not saying that the guilt of this falls in the treatment industry. What I'm saying is that we are not delivering on our obligations. That's what I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. And then, yeah, but when you look at the communication factor in who we are as humans has completely gone out the window. The dating scene, the way that people date, how old are you? 32?

 

Austin (03:06:46):
Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:06:46):
So we are some of the last generations of people for sure I was. I had to call the girl's house and just pray to God her dad didn't answer. And then it would be this game of trying to figure out when her dad wasn't going to be home so that she could answer the phone. And I had to get through gates in order to talk to this girl on the phone, whereas now it's like there is no courtship. There is no dating. There is no communication around, who am I? Who are you? I'm into you, you're into me. It's like you're swiping left or right or whatever it is. And it's like, do you want to fuck? And that's it. And then you meet, you do the deal and that's it. But there is no actual bond. There is no actual-

 

Austin (03:07:29):
Well, not to mention you didn't meet that girl over the phone.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:32):
Yeah. You

 

Austin (03:07:33):
Met her in person.

 

Matt Handy (03:07:34):
Yeah. True. Yeah. Yeah. I remember back in the day being 16 and we would go to the mall and the goal was whoever got the most numbers wins. It's like kids don't do that anymore.

 

Austin (03:07:47):
Well, even like when I was a kid or social media was kind of just starting to be a thing. I don't know, you might've been already getting out of high school, but MySpace and AIM and whatever. Oh

 

Matt Handy (03:08:03):
Yeah.

 

Austin (03:08:03):
But that stuff was starting to exist, but we didn't have it-

 

Matt Handy (03:08:07):
Connected to our body.

 

Austin (03:08:09):
We didn't have it on our phone. I think Instagram came out when I was 18. So I was already out of high school, but that was something we went and did at the end of the day. It's not like we were entangled in that all day. It's like we had it, but it was the end of the day and then you go talk to your friends online.

 

Matt Handy (03:08:32):
Yeah. And then go to sleep. Yeah. And then the last part of it would be like, see you in the morning. And then it'd be like, you guys see each other. And dude, I remember summers, summer of 07 was the longest summer of my life. And it was so much fun and there was no social media. There was MySpace, but you're right, it was not on our phones. And we would take pictures of each other, not to post it. It was like we would take pictures of each other, go get them developed and print them out and keep them. It wasn't for a public facing thing. No,

 

Austin (03:09:09):
Not at all. Dude, I remember when I was a kid, I saved up all my money at one point and bought this one of the VHS camera and just filmed all the stupid crap me and my friends would do and whatever. But it was just to have it, not like, "This is going to get so many likes."

 

Matt Handy (03:09:28):
Yeah, for sure. It

 

Austin (03:09:30):
Was just

 

Matt Handy (03:09:30):
Like ... Yeah. The motivation around socialization today is so different. A lot of people are like, "Oh, I want to take a picture with that guy and post it. "

 

Austin (03:09:39):
Yeah, it's like, this is going to give me social credit.

 

Matt Handy (03:09:41):
Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing is the currency today has changed so drastically. Whereas when I was a kid, it was like the currency was like how many real friends you had. What were you going to go do this weekend? What are you guys talking about? The shows or all that stuff. But none of it was for cliques. None of it was for likes. It was literally for like, I'm going to go actually spend time with these people that I love that we've got this bond and it's like, we're real friends. I don't know. I see this meme or I've seen this meme where it's like kids in 1995, it's like a picture and a picture and it's like kids on the playground in 1995 and they're like on the swings and playing and going down the slide and it's like kids in 2025 and it's like everybody's just on their phone.

 

(03:10:33):
Nobody's talking. It's like that is the reality of what's going on today. The communication has just broken down. And you can see it on every level. When you turn on TV, you can see the breakdown of communication. Scrolling, it's like people arguing and debating and it's like, there is no cohesive human interaction anymore. And when you find those pockets of friendship or meaningful relationships, it's like very fragile because it's like, "Oh, I can't talk about politics with this guy because we don't agree on it and it can fuck up our friendship." Whereas back in the day it'd be like, "Fuck it, you're going to vote for this guy, I'm going to vote for that guy." And we're still going to fucking be friends. Now it's like, nope, we've divided ourselves so many times. It's crazy. Yeah. Crazy times. It is. It's crazy times. We live in a very chaotic time and it manifests in many ways.

 

(03:11:32):
And addiction is one of the easy symptoms that you can point to. And they're like, "Yeah, there's something wrong." Definitely. And it's been around. It'll be here forever. Addiction is a part of who we are and it doesn't even have to be substances. There was a time where there was no alcohol, there was no drugs, there was nothing, and people were still having destructive behavior around something. Believe that. And so the destructive behavior part around addiction is what we're actually looking at. You put that under the microscope and it's like, you've already talked about it where it's like destructive behavior exists in recovery.

 

Austin (03:12:10):
Dude, I am still far too capable of destructive behavior. Yeah.

 

Matt Handy (03:12:15):
Yeah. And it's like that awareness around it, the education around it. And then we live in a time ... Have you heard of the epidemic of silent suffering? No. So there's this term that's been developed around the way that men are treated and the expectations around masculinity and stuff. And they call it the epidemic of silent suffering where men are just expected to do what they are told and suffer in silence. And it's like, yeah, we are seeing the downstream effect of the way that men are completely neglected, but then still everything is on our backs. All of the bad shit that happens, everybody points at men. All the good stuff that happens, people point at men. And we have this situation where it's like, if you admit that you are in need of help or depressed or anything, then you are less than. And it's like, that is not the real truth of what actually manhood is.

 

(03:13:18):
It's like we're just engineered and geared and educated in this way. And it's like, there's nothing more dangerous than an emotionally unstable or untrained man. Those are the kinds of people that hurt people many different ways, physically, emotionally, sexually. And we're raising generations of men that way. It's like super crazy to think our generation is about to be running the country really soon. And it's like, dude, we are fucked up. Our generation is so fucked. Really think about it.

 

Austin (03:13:56):
I mean, what generation isn't?

 

Matt Handy (03:13:59):
Yeah, but I mean, historically, when you look at the boomers, it's like, yeah, they were fucked up, but they were still had family morals and had decent morals systemically. And now it's like when I look at what's going on, it's like there's a real possibility that in 20 years, the America of today is totally gone. Things look that different where it's just unrecognizable. It's already unrecognizable from like 200 years ago.

 

Austin (03:14:27):
Yeah. I mean, it's borderline unrecognizable from when we were kids.

 

Matt Handy (03:14:30):
No, for sure.

 

Austin (03:14:32):
I mean, if you walked around in the world, it's going to look similar, but it functions entirely different.

 

Matt Handy (03:14:38):
Totally. Totally. What I'm scared of is that we continue down the path that we're on and it pushes us into a situation where we've given up so much of our freedoms that we are now bordering on, for lack of a better term, some kind of communist dictatorship, but it's like we've given up so much of our individual liberty and freedom for the safety that it affords us that we are now in a situation where we're getting taxed 90% and we're like just crazy shit and we're heading towards that direction. People don't really ... I'm a conspiracy enthusiast. I've graduated. Yeah. I was a conspiracy theorist and now-

 

Austin (03:15:27):
Enthusiast? No, I'm just enthusiastic. That's a good way to put it.

 

Matt Handy (03:15:29):
Yeah. But I really see it. If things don't change ... And all this really comes back to my point of view of addiction, right? It's like if things don't change, shit it's just going to get worse. And that's just the bottom line of it. If things don't radically change, and I don't know how that happens, I don't. I don't know what the solution is. Nobody knows what the solution is.

 

Austin (03:15:52):
I'll be chilling, catching fish.

 

Matt Handy (03:15:54):
Yeah.

 

Austin (03:15:55):
Worrying about myself.

 

Matt Handy (03:15:57):
Yeah. I mean, maybe, maybe not. Who knows? Who knows? That's the thing is things change. So we weren't created to change this fast. We weren't created to have every ounce of knowledge that has ever been thought of or created at the tips of our fingertips.

 

Austin (03:16:15):
Fucking

 

Matt Handy (03:16:15):
Wild. Yeah. And now with AI, people are losing their job. They're going to lose it. We'll live in a situation where people don't have to work. And now what are we doing?

 

Austin (03:16:29):
Yeah. Society's going to end up in a weird place. Very weird place. 20 years from now, who knows?

 

Matt Handy (03:16:34):
Yeah. The world might end up in a really weird place where it's almost like a utopia where everybody has everything paid for, but at the same time, just the fucking hellscape where nobody cares about anybody.

 

Austin (03:16:53):
Yeah. I mean, hopefully it just ends up in a place of where people are actually ... It motivates people to do what they want instead of what they feel like they have to do.

 

Matt Handy (03:17:04):
That is a big problem right now anyway.

 

Austin (03:17:07):
I've always been wired in a way of like ... I can't make myself do something I don't want to do. I can't fucking do it, which it's like a blessing and a curse. For sure. But it's a blessing in that I go after what I want, but I'm only capable of that. I can't go do a job that I don't like.

 

Matt Handy (03:17:30):
Yeah,

 

(03:17:31):
For sure.

 

Austin (03:17:31):
I'll be fucking broke.

 

Matt Handy (03:17:33):
Dude, how many men though, or how many people in general are just suffering through their job to pay their bills? And it's like, yeah, you're a unique person. Everybody's unique. But I remember conversations with you in that truck where it was like, dude, around sobriety and just doing ... We were doing just crazy shit and it was like, "Yeah, man, this is the life. This is it. " And it was like, since then, I've thought about a lot of those conversations and it was like a lot of it was purpose driven, but at the same time, very fun, but didn't really get us anywhere. And it was like, for me, at least it didn't get me anywhere. I'm sure those were building blocks and experiences that contributed to you, but for me it was like, when I think about all of the good experiences that I've had, they meant way less than the negative experiences because the negative traumatic experiences pointed me in directions, whereas I never benefited for multiple reasons.

 

(03:18:41):
It wasn't the right time for me to be having these experiences that I could benefit from them. I wasn't benefiting from any good decision that I was making because most of the time it was good decision for the sake of getting somebody off my back. And that was a lot of our interactions was me just not trying to hear my fucking parents talk about the shit that I was in.

 

Austin (03:19:04):
But on another hand, it's like you had to have those good experiences or else you have to have both. You have to have the

 

Matt Handy (03:19:12):
Good- The comparison and

 

Austin (03:19:13):
Contraction. You have to have the bad to motivate you and you have to have the good to know which direction to go.

 

Matt Handy (03:19:21):
Yeah.

 

Austin (03:19:22):
Yeah. The good. So- Otherwise, you would've just been like-

 

Matt Handy (03:19:26):
What's the purpose?

 

Austin (03:19:27):
Yeah. If you don't have the good, then what's the point?

 

Matt Handy (03:19:29):
Yeah.

 

Austin (03:19:30):
But at the same time, you don't have the bad, especially with addicts, we need the extreme bad. Unfortunately, we have to fucking make everything harder

 

Matt Handy (03:19:42):
Than

 

Austin (03:19:42):
Other people, but that's what we do.

 

Matt Handy (03:19:45):
Yeah. Making mountains out of ant hills and shit. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. There's a lot of things that are happening today. When you really think about where I'm at today in the world, all of us are in the same position where it's like, we've got to make these decisions that the ripple effect of the decisions that we're making today can mean something five years from now. Or if it doesn't mean anything, then it's like, what is the purpose or what is the point? And with being so early in recovery and not really understanding where this whole thing is going, because I'll tell you this, when this idea started, I didn't realize what it could turn into because originally it was just going to be a sober living. I just wanted to run a sober living and then it turned into this and then it's turning into some other shit.

 

(03:20:45):
And it's like the ripple effect of one person getting sober will forever blow my mind the amount of things that can happen around just one person getting sober. But then also it's like the outcomes for families and clients and additionally the people around me, this isn't like a thing where it's like consequence free. Go to our bad. All the good consequences that come from it is like, my executive director told me, he was like, "There will come a time in the very near future where we're deciding if we can help somebody or not, and it's going to have negative effects on this person. You're going to have to be okay with them continuing to make their decisions and possibly dying around us, not being able to help them." And it's like, that isn't on us, that's circumstantially and it's like we just can't help everybody.

 

(03:21:43):
That is a hard pill to swallow around when you're client-centered care and when you're really looking at the individual, he was like, "Yeah, there'll be a ... " He told me he had this weekend where it was like he had three mothers crying to him on the phone all weekend, desperately trying to get their sons or kids into treatment and it was like there was no way for them to receive help. They didn't have insurance. They couldn't pay for it. They couldn't do this. Their access to care made it so that it was like, there's nothing you can do for this person. It's like that is a shitty position to be in. Especially when you claim to be in the business of saving lives, that doesn't sound fair. It doesn't sound fair to them, but it's like, "Well, I don't know. I don't know what to do.

 

(03:22:32):
" So it's crazy. Well, anyway, is there anything else that you want to talk about? You broke the record by four minutes so far.

 

Austin (03:22:46):
What? The longest one?

 

Matt Handy (03:22:47):
Yeah.

 

Austin (03:22:49):
How long was that?

 

Matt Handy (03:22:50):
Three hours and 23 minutes.

 

Austin (03:22:52):
Wow, that flew by.

 

Matt Handy (03:22:53):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, dude, thank you for coming. I appreciate you coming

 

Austin (03:22:59):
For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me, man.

 

Matt Handy (03:23:01):
Yeah.

 

Austin (03:23:01):
Good to catch up.

 

Matt Handy (03:23:02):
Yeah, for sure. 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 you know needs help, give us a call 24 hours a day at 888-691-8295.