May 2, 2025 - The Tucker Carlson Show
01:41:22
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| You pepper sprayed a member of the Mexican Mafia and stole his heroin. | ||
| I sprayed him in the face with pepper spray and put something to his throat and said, don't move. | ||
| Making me tense, man, just telling me this story. | ||
| And he had girls in his halfway houses that he was giving heroin, giving crack, and pimping them out, and then sending them back to treatment where they would ultimately fail their drug test and have to go to detox. | ||
| And guess who gets a kickback? | ||
| From the Detox Center. | ||
| No way. | ||
| It's a revolving door of suffering and just pain for the addict. | ||
| But they're making money at every stop. | ||
| This is disgusting. | ||
| And then she pulls out a handgun. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| She's like, what the are you doing in my house? | ||
| My kids are in there. | ||
| And I'm like, oh my god, you have kids? | ||
| If you have your kids sleeping in there, you're kind of a shitty mom. | ||
| So you insult the lady with the gun pointed at you. | ||
| You got balls, I'll say that. | ||
| Thanks for doing this, Chris. | ||
| How long were you addicted to opioids? | ||
| So I was addicted to opioids from the age of 15 to 23, kind of on and off, you know, in and out of rehab for those eight years, but yeah. | ||
| 15 to 23. How did you grow up? | ||
| So I grew up in, I was born in Dallas, grew up in South Orange County, moved there when I was five, kind of bounced around, but all in kind of relatively the same area. | ||
| Southern California. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Southern California, Orange County. | ||
| And my sister, or my family, you know, addiction kind of just runs in my family. | ||
| As it does many. | ||
| Yeah, right? | ||
| You know, I do believe it is. | ||
| There's a genetic component to, you know, kind of the addictive personality. | ||
| You know, absolutely. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| You think? | ||
| How much alcoholism is there in Israel? | ||
| How much alcoholism is there in Sweden? | ||
| You know, it's a big difference! | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Growing up, my dad was a general counsel at an oil company in Texas. | ||
| He was traveling a lot and he was also a heavy drinker. | ||
| He's not the type of person who needed to wake up and drink in the morning to function, but he would go on benders for days, weeks at a time. | ||
| Then my mom... | ||
| She was a long-distance runner and she had a diving accident that left her. | ||
| Basically, she was a victim of Big Pharma's push in the early to mid-90s for Oxycontin and then eventually fentanyl. | ||
| And, you know, this little pathetic pill-pushing quack is, you know, giving her just massive amounts of Oxycontin. | ||
| And she didn't like the way – she hated the way it felt. | ||
| And she's like, I don't like this. | ||
| You know, it's making me, like, comatose. | ||
| And the doctor's like, well, you need to keep taking it. | ||
| And so she decided to flush him down the toilet once. | ||
| And she went into excruciating withdrawal. | ||
| And, you know, I'll touch more on withdrawal later. | ||
| But it's, yeah, she... | ||
| Were your parents married? | ||
| Yes, yes, yes. | ||
| They were married. | ||
| So your dad's the general counsel of a big company. | ||
| Your mom's a distance runner. | ||
| So these are, like, competent people who got their act together. | ||
| These are not... | ||
| This is not the junkie profile. | ||
| My father, he graduated college at 19, and he went to Columbia Law School. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| I'm sorry, because I think it's important to set this in a socioeconomic frame. | ||
| Yeah, because addiction doesn't matter whether you're rich, poor, black, white, whatever. | ||
| It's indiscriminatory. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| So, yeah, my... | ||
| So, this doctor keeps pushing opioids on your mom. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| By the way, to be a distance runner, I admire that, but it suggests, like, true self-discipline, a high level of awareness of your body. | ||
| I mean, who's a distance runner? | ||
| You know, only people who are very, very into fitness and very, very kind of, like, battened down people. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Correct? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| No, my mom was... | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| You know, one of the most disciplined people that I've ever met. | ||
| Well, you kind of have to be, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And I mean, a lot of long-running to me is absolutely, sounds like torture. | ||
| Well, it's torture. | ||
| It is torture. | ||
| But it's highly impressive. | ||
| Yeah, no, it is absolutely. | ||
| And so... | ||
| She had these multiple surgeries that only exacerbated the issue. | ||
| A neck injury? | ||
| Yeah, a neck injury that she got from... | ||
| It wasn't related to her long-distance running, but it was a diving incident. | ||
| She hit her neck on the diving board. | ||
| And so, yeah, this guy's... | ||
| First, she's pushing OxyContin on her, and then he says, okay, well, let's try something different. | ||
| It might be less addictive, possibly, because fentanyl was brand new. | ||
| Might make you feel a little bit better to where you can function throughout the day. | ||
| So he puts her on fentanyl. | ||
| And fentanyl is so powerful. | ||
| I'm starting to laugh. | ||
| I mean, yeah, you have to laugh. | ||
| Otherwise, you'll cry. | ||
| Because it's like fentanyl is the most so powerful that it has to be administered in micrograms. | ||
| Like the 25 micrograms, whereas most drugs are administered in milligrams. | ||
| So that just shows you how potent fentanyl is. | ||
| How many kids does your mom have? | ||
| Three. | ||
| So she's got three kids. | ||
| She's married to a general counsel of a company. | ||
| She lives in Southern California. | ||
| She's a distance runner. | ||
| All of a sudden, she's on fentanyl. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| She was living in Dallas when she became addicted to the fentanyl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my gosh. | |
| Or addicted to the Oxy, at least. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then when we moved to Southern California. | ||
| We moved to Southern California. | ||
| My dad started his own practice with his brother. | ||
| They were both lawyers. | ||
| And then my sister, she had a serious issue with bulimia and anorexia from the age of 10 to 28. Like so serious that her potassium levels were so low that ambulances at our home were like a regular occurrence. | ||
| And there was multiple times when they said, your daughter might not make it to my father. | ||
| Witnessing all of this at a very young age, and again, I'm not trying, again, I just want to, like, preface, this is not an excuse for my actions. | ||
| Like, I own everything that I did, all the terrible things that I did. | ||
| But I think that the chaos that I, you know, basically, I didn't have this. | ||
| The necessary things like structure and discipline that I think are so important for everyone, but especially for people with addictive personalities to have that rigid kind of, I'm going to wake up, I'm going to make my bed, I'm going to do this, | ||
| I'm going to do that. | ||
| I knew my parents loved me. | ||
| I was never short on that, but they were so busy trying to deal with my sister. | ||
| And their own issue. | ||
| My father, he's been off, he stopped drinking, he just cold turkey stopped drinking for, it's been 25 years now. | ||
| Good man. | ||
| Yeah, and he never went to AA or anything like that. | ||
| So again, it's addiction or treatment can be as simple as going to therapy. | ||
| It doesn't have to include rehab and all these different things. | ||
| And then your mom? | ||
| So, she eventually switched over to Suboxone from fentanyl, and then she weaned herself off of that. | ||
| So, now she's totally... | ||
| And Suboxone is a miracle drug. | ||
| I mean, compared to the alternative, which is methadone, which is so addictive. | ||
| It gets into your bone marrow. | ||
| I mean, the withdrawals from that, I've heard, are much worse than your average opiate or even heroin. | ||
| Just because it's more drawn out. | ||
| What a nightmare. | ||
| So she got better. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And your dad got better. | ||
| But you grew up in an environment where there was a lot of this going on. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And lacking that structure, it made me... | ||
| I think it led to a sense of low self-esteem. | ||
| The constant need for the approval of others. | ||
| Like, I look back now and I'm like, you know, why the fuck did I care so much about what other people thought? | ||
| And it's, I guess, you know, I can't, you know, but after years of therapy, they've kind of pinpointed us to like, you know, your quote-unquote inner child didn't get enough emotional nourishment, so to speak. | ||
| And so, yeah, you know, I was so constantly trying desperately to fit in. | ||
| So, you know, when I... | ||
| Got into middle school, high school. | ||
| And, you know, I was, you know, an honor roll student. | ||
| Very, very, you know, I was very, you know, I have a high IQ. | ||
| I was blessed with that. | ||
| But once I got into, like, college where you actually have to start kind of trying a little bit, like Algebra 2 and whatnot, I was like, you know, because I started hanging out with kids who were smoking weed, drinking and smoking cigarettes. | ||
| So, not that I necessarily wanted to smoke weed. | ||
| Drink and smoke cigarettes, but that's what they were doing. | ||
| So I wanted their approval. | ||
| I wanted to fit in. | ||
| I wanted to be a part of the cool crowd. | ||
| And so I started drinking, smoking cigarettes and smoking weed. | ||
| And so that went on for... | ||
| I quit the wrestling team. | ||
| I pretty much abandoned everything that was positive. | ||
| All the positive things that I was doing for my life and just kind of became a stoner. | ||
| I know a lot of kids who were potheads in high school, you know, that I'm friends with that are more successful than I today, so I'm not, you know, trashing them at all, but I mean, then what happened was it progressed to the, because I was in, you know, advanced placement classes, | ||
| so I was in like Algebra 2 as a sophomore where, you know, I was, it was mostly juniors and seniors in the class, and so I started hanging out with the juniors and seniors, and they were doing, It's called oxymorphone or opana. | ||
| They were snorting that, taking Xanax, pills, stuff like that. | ||
| And my stoner buddies... | ||
| Where were they getting the pills? | ||
| So they were getting them. | ||
| There was pretty much we had like one source and he was a guy that just lived down the street in an apartment complex. | ||
| It's always a guy in an apartment complex, isn't it? | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| I've been to those apartment complexes. | ||
| And his grandmother was getting these prescription drugs and just had a boatload of them. | ||
| So he would sell them for $60 a pop and we would buy them. | ||
| But eventually, it becomes too expensive. | ||
| The pill habit becomes too expensive and that's why so many people... | ||
| I'm going to take your heaping loads of moral condemnation, stoner. | ||
| But in reality, it's like, when the potheads are telling you to stay away from these kids, you know they're bad. | ||
| No, no, that's right. | ||
| Like, yeah. | ||
| And so, you know, of course, you know, my, again, that low self-esteem, that desire to fit in started using. | ||
| Using pills and opiates in particular, they took away that feeling of that low self-worth. | ||
| I felt I was confident. | ||
| I felt great at the beginning, in the beginning, in the very early stages of my addiction. | ||
| So like the first two, three months. | ||
| And I had a job. | ||
| I was a telemarketer at a golf club selling quote-unquote. | ||
| Custom-made clubs. | ||
| They're literally made in a warehouse underneath the call center by illegals, and it was either graphite or steel, and they might give you extra grips on the clubs. | ||
| That's the extent of the quote-unquote customization. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The customization. | |
| Yeah, but comparable to the tailor-made R11, yeah. | ||
| Okay, yeah, right. | ||
| So you're selling faux custom-made golf clubs from a call center. | ||
| Yeah, and go in the car, do a line of Opana. | ||
| And come back in and it's just like, oh my gosh, you know, I have more confidence and I'm pushing harder on the sales and things like that. | ||
| And my sales numbers are going up. | ||
| So I'm like, why would I stop when this is like, I feel great about myself, I'm performing better at work. | ||
| So, you know, I saw it as like, there's no downside until... | ||
| Totally fair question. | ||
| And by the way, there have been a lot of, as you know, artists, jazz musicians, you know, who used opioids because they thought it increased their, you know, ability. | ||
| Yeah, and I think, you know, to an extent it can, but that is short-lived. | ||
| It is not, you know, it's temporary. | ||
| Because, especially with opiates, they, again, what they do, they literally, they erode your soul. | ||
| You're eventually going to run out of money, and you're going to have to get desperate. | ||
| So what happened in your case? | ||
| You started by doing a line in your car during work. | ||
| Yeah, and it kind of just progressed. | ||
| I was doing one pill, one 40-milligram pill every couple days to two every couple days, and just going up and up, and the cost was getting too expensive. | ||
| Why did you use more? | ||
| You developed a tolerance for it? | ||
| Yeah, you quickly develop a tolerance and you just need more and more to get to that because you're always chasing that first high. | ||
| You're never going to get it again, but that's like chasing the dragon. | ||
| You're always trying to get to that level, but you're never going to get there again. | ||
| I think every childhood weed smoker Yeah, | ||
| no. | ||
| And you're so desperate to try to get back there. | ||
| And that kind of, you know, the whole, like, you know, addiction makes you insane. | ||
| It's like, you know, you're never really going to get back there, but you're still trying. | ||
| Addiction makes you insane, that is true. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, you know, like the definition of insanity, trying things over and over again, expecting the different result, especially when you get into the point where you're like, you're trying to get sober. | ||
| And like, okay, yeah, this hasn't worked 15 times. | ||
| Maybe it'll work the 16th. | ||
| Why? | ||
| And so, but yeah, so I was, yeah, so it progressed very quickly. | ||
| So you're in like 10th grade at this point? | ||
| Yeah, 10th grade, yeah. | ||
| And progressed within... | ||
| I don't know, maybe like two, three months to buying heroin up in, you know, South Los Angeles. | ||
| What was that like? | ||
| Wild, dude. | ||
| So, you know, basically what happened was we met this guy. | ||
| I think he was at like the continuation school down the street from our high school. | ||
| What's continuation school? | ||
| It's like basically if you get like booted out of... | ||
| You know, a regular high school. | ||
| It's kind of like a way to get a diploma without having to get a GED, but it's kind of like a bootleg diploma. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| So some of the kids who've had a bumpy road are in the continuation school. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| For sure. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, even though there was mostly kids under the age of 18, they had a little smoking section at the school. | ||
| It was hilarious. | ||
| I grew up with that. | ||
| Yeah, and I, yeah, I mean, I'm still a nicotine fiend. | ||
| I vape, but I quit smoking cigarettes. | ||
| I was like, you know, I, and I was honestly, I was pretty impressed with myself that I was able to do that because that was almost, I don't want to say almost as hard, but very difficult and, you know, trying to get rid of that addiction, you know, compared to my opiate addiction, but, you know, just. | ||
| I quit drinking and drugs at 33. And I quit cigarette smoking at 45. So, that tells you. | ||
| Yeah, it's really a hard addiction to break. | ||
| And I'm still addicted to nicotine. | ||
| Yeah, me too. | ||
| But I'm enjoying it, I will say, Chris. | ||
| Yeah, me too. | ||
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| Okay, so 10th grade, all of a sudden you go from doing bumps of some ground-up oxy-derivative pill at the golf. | ||
| I mean, just some guy that, | ||
| you know, we were only, the only reason we associated with him was because he had that connection. | ||
| Yeah, not exactly. | ||
| He's the type of guy who would steal your wallet and help you look for it. | ||
| But again, that's what most junkies are. | ||
| Was he using heroin too? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| He was a big user. | ||
| I found out he was ripping us off when I got a direct connection and he was basically saying it was double the price for the amount because you get a little package with 12 balloons in it. | ||
| And it was $45 and he was saying it was $90. | ||
| So he's able to like get to pocket one and give one to us. | ||
| So did you have to go with him to South LA? | ||
| Yeah, we would drive him. | ||
| He didn't have a car. | ||
| So, you know, I would drive him in my 1998 Jeep and we'd all just pile in there. | ||
| And this, the feds were watching like these, like they literally, there was an article in the OC Register. | ||
| I think it came out while I was in rehab, but basically just kind of giving an overview of the whole thing. | ||
| The number you'd call, the guy's name was Boss, so you call his phone number, and this guy goes, alright, what do you want? | ||
| And you tell him how many packs you want, and then he's like, alright, meet, and it would be like one of three freeway exits right in that area, and always a fast food parking lot, something like that. | ||
| What town? | ||
| Southgate. | ||
| Depressing, that area. | ||
| So, so, yeah. | ||
| So you're meeting in like In-N-Out Burger or Wendy's or something? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Just, yeah. | ||
| Some, yeah, we can just pull in real quick. | ||
| And then they'd, you'd meet the, they would always send a runner and usually it was a different person. | ||
| But I started, you know, so yeah, they'd meet you. | ||
| They'd say, all right, you know, come into the car. | ||
| You get into the passenger seat. | ||
| They reach into the air vent, pull it out. | ||
| Give you the dope. | ||
| Give them the money. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| You have to get into their car. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What were the guys like who were selling it? | ||
| You know, this is kind of one of the crazier things about this whole experience. | ||
| So the runner that I had the most contact with, he was, you know, he's a cool guy. | ||
| Just this little Hispanic guy, you know. | ||
| I mean, obviously a gangbanger who would, you know, shoot you as soon as look at you. | ||
| But he was very, you know, very nice to me. | ||
| And, you know, he would give me discounts occasionally. | ||
| And he actually, finally, he was like, hey, you know what? | ||
| You no longer have to call boss. | ||
| You can just, here, I'll give you my personal line. | ||
| And you can just call me and then, you know, have to save you the hassle of going through the whole process. | ||
| I was like, oh, cool, man. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| And so, you know, we developed a kind of, you know, friendship, I guess. | ||
| And it's probably the wildest story that I have. | ||
| So my friends from South Orange County, again, very affluent. | ||
| I don't know if you've heard of Nellie Gale in South Orange County. | ||
| It's like one of the ritziest neighborhoods in the country. | ||
| It's got horse trails running through it, and the houses are at a minimum $5 million. | ||
| So yeah, it's a very nice area, very affluent area, and that's where pretty much all my friends lived. | ||
| But this girl we knew, her uncle... | ||
| He owned the house. | ||
| Have you seen the show Entourage? | ||
| Have you heard of it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He owned the house that at least two seasons of the show were filmed in. | ||
| She's like, yeah, we can go up there for the weekend. | ||
| I was like, awesome. | ||
| It's funny. | ||
| We drive all the way to Beverly Hills, a two-and-a-half-hour drive up this private road to this beautiful mansion. | ||
| The door's locked. | ||
| She kind of lied or misled us about... | ||
| Having permission to go to the house. | ||
| And so I'm like, are you fucking kidding? | ||
| And anyways, excuse me. | ||
| So I ended up finding, I saw like a door sized window, like on the side of the house. | ||
| And so I maneuvered my way up there, pushed on the door and it just popped open. | ||
| And I was like waiting for an alarm to go off. | ||
| Like, okay. | ||
| And so I walk in, open the front door and we're in. | ||
| And then I was like, oh man, I really need some heroin. | ||
| I don't want to drive down to Southgate. | ||
| And so I called the guy and I was like, hey man, we've got a huge mansion. | ||
| There's only like seven of us. | ||
| This is why you don't let your niece bust into your house with her junkie buddies. | ||
| We'll just wait. | ||
| And I was like, yeah, if you want to, if you can, I know you don't typically do deliveries, but if you could bring me an order. | ||
| You're welcome to stay. | ||
| I mean, bring whomever you want. | ||
| So, he brings, like, two big Mexican dudes and, like, ten big booty Latina beautiful chicks. | ||
| Like, yeah. | ||
| And a candy dish with all these different pills, Valium, Xanax, you know, Oxys, just all that. | ||
| At least an eight ball of coke, a giant bag of coke. | ||
| And that was, those were just party favors. | ||
| And he brought me my order, obviously. | ||
| But, and so we spent the night partying, you know, hanging out in the indoor pool, you know, doing lines off of, you know, girls' stomachs. | ||
| And it was a wild, crazy time. | ||
| I mean, it was like literally like the show Entourage, but like... | ||
| Junkie version. | ||
| Just going on. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| Did the uncle ever come back? | ||
| Well, so, the next morning, and thank God. | ||
| Were you in high school at this point? | ||
| Yeah, I was 16, I think. | ||
| It's so, like, because I was going back and trying to, like, remember things, and it's like... | ||
| Some of it is so blurry that it's hard to like, wait, when? | ||
| How old was I? | ||
| I grew up in that area, so I know what you're talking about. | ||
| And so, yeah, the next morning, myself and a few other people leave. | ||
| Did you sleep at all or just play through? | ||
| No, I didn't sleep for a second. | ||
| And yeah, I left the next morning with a few of my buddies and the gangbangers departed. | ||
| And the big booty Latina girls too. | ||
| Yes, yes, they left as well. | ||
| And so, you know, I go back to Orange County and the next day, a police officer comes to our house. | ||
| And it's like a female investigator and she's like asking me questions like, were you at this house and blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And I was like, I was there on, she's like, were you there Saturday? | ||
| I was like, no, I was there Friday. | ||
| I was like, I was there Friday. | ||
| I was told we were allowed to be there because I thought it was breaking and entering. | ||
| That's what I assumed. | ||
| And so I was like, I was told we were supposed to be there, allowed to be there. | ||
| And, you know, so, and she's like, well, you're not aware that that portion of the house was burned down? | ||
| And I'm like, no, what are you talking about? | ||
| And so she proceeds to tell me the story. | ||
| Apparently, Some of the other people that the girl invited out for the next night, one person got really high, fell asleep with a frozen pizza in the oven or something like that and started a fire. | ||
| And instead of trying to put it out, they just left. | ||
| Drug addicts are all the same, aren't they? | ||
| And so there's literally smoke billowing from this. | ||
| And it's on a hill, too. | ||
| So you can see it from... | ||
| Like, very far away. | ||
| It is called Beverly Hills. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And so, like, they're driving down the hill as the fire, you know, the ambulance and the cops are coming up the hill. | ||
| And the cop flips at you and he's like, because it's a private road and it only leads to that house. | ||
| And so they're like, are you leaving that house? | ||
| They're like, no. | ||
| You know, idiots, no, of course not. | ||
| We weren't there. | ||
| You know, lying, lying, lying. | ||
| And then the cops are like... | ||
| Come on. | ||
| So, you know, and I think one of them ended up getting charged with, like, fleeing the scene of a crime or something like that, but nothing serious came out of it. | ||
| But, yeah, it was wild. | ||
| And, like, when she told me that, I was like... | ||
| How did they know you were there? | ||
| Because the house owner basically gave her a list of everyone who was there. | ||
| Like, the girl who took us out there basically gave the investment. | ||
| But it was her uncle's house. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, he owned it. | ||
| So, as you're doing lines off the navels of Big Booty Latinas with your gangbanger heroin dealer buddy in some girl's uncle's house where Entourage was filmed, what are your parents thinking at this point of, | ||
| like, what you're doing? | ||
| Well, my parents, you know, God bless them. | ||
| They're so naive. | ||
| And like, my dad, you know, had this consistent belief that, you know, our kids will do the right thing because it's the right thing to do, not because of the consequence that could come from it. | ||
| And, you know, as noble as that is, it's just, it doesn't work. | ||
| You know, you have to have consequences. | ||
| Otherwise, you will... | ||
| Run rampant and think you can do whatever you want. | ||
| And that's how it is. | ||
| I don't judge him. | ||
| I mean, they sound like Southern Californians in their attitudes that way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, yeah, my dad was just, you know, had a very strong moral conviction that, you know, he believed just was passed on to us. | ||
| And so my parents were, again, you know, had no idea what was going on until... | ||
| Another story, basically, long story short, I had a friend who was put into a coma. | ||
| We were at a party and this guy came out really angry and just punched my friend in the face. | ||
| He fell, hit his head, put into a coma. | ||
| He wakes up three weeks later and my mom is there. | ||
| I wasn't there, my mom was there. | ||
| He says, Patty, you need to get Chris away from him. | ||
| She named some of the kids that I was associating with. | ||
| And she said, why? | ||
| You know, because, you know, they were at my house. | ||
| That was the first thing he said when he came out of a coma? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| God exists. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| God bless him. | ||
| Really, it was... | ||
| And then, of course, you know, at the time, I was like, that, you know, snitch. | ||
| You know, that kind of mentality. | ||
| It's like, why are you trying to rain on my parade? | ||
| You know, I'm just having a good time. | ||
| But yeah, you know, I mean, my friends tried several, like, you know, my quote-unquote stoner friends tried several interventions. | ||
| And I was just like, you know, extremely defensive and like, who are you people to tell me anything, you know? | ||
| And, you know, but again, they had my best interest at heart. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| And, you know, many of those people I'm still in contact with today and I'm so grateful that they, you know, It took the time and the effort to try to save me from myself. | ||
| Incredible. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you still in high school at this point? | |
| Are you going to class? | ||
| Yeah, going to class, leaving early, stuff like that, ditching fifth period, fourth period to go hang out. | ||
| How often are you doing heroin at this point? | ||
| Every day. | ||
| Every day. | ||
| At what time of day? | ||
| Like, what's the schedule for heroin addiction? | ||
| So, wake up. | ||
| So, I wasn't shooting it up yet. | ||
| I was smoking it at first. | ||
| How did you smoke it? | ||
| So, in California, heroin is mostly black tar heroin. | ||
| And so, basically... | ||
| From Asia, correct? | ||
| Not sure. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But, yeah, it's like this little black square. | ||
| And so, you put it on a piece of tinfoil. | ||
| You put a lighter underneath it and you get a straw. | ||
| And it makes like, it'll like trail down the tinfoil and the smoke's coming up and you suck it through the straw with the lighter. | ||
| And yeah, that was the... | ||
| What's the highlight from it? | ||
| I mean, just total euphoria. | ||
| Again, you feel like you're on top of the world. | ||
| You can, it doesn't matter if you're literally, your life is falling down around you. | ||
| You don't care. | ||
| It's like, you're fine. | ||
| Everything is fine. | ||
| Everything is great. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Again, the insanity. | ||
| How long does it last? | ||
| Smoking it, and again, it all depends on your tolerance level and things like that. | ||
| But I'd say probably three, four hours, five hours. | ||
| So while you're in high school, when are you smoking heroin? | ||
| So I would do it before school, you know, at home. | ||
| In your bedroom? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And your parents had no idea. | ||
| Or in my shower, yeah. | ||
| And, yeah, no, they didn't, yeah, they didn't. | ||
| So when my friend got out of the coma, they, you know, started to kind of try to keep a closer eye on me. | ||
| But I was still, you know, I was... | ||
| Incredibly deceptive and very manipulative. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Very manipulative and deceptive with my parents making them think that, oh, these kids are great. | ||
| No, they're actually the good kids. | ||
| And when I think about the torment that I put my parents through, it's just... | ||
| Where were you getting the money to buy all this heroin? | ||
| So I was... | ||
| I still had that job at the... | ||
| Uh, golf, or selling golf clubs, and, um, and then I, you know, I would occasionally take money from my parents, um, whatever I needed to do. | ||
| Um, and then things I'm, you know, not proud of. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I bet. | |
| Uh, but, yeah, that's the nature of the disease, is you will do anything to get that next fix. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Um, and, uh... | ||
| So, from smoking, it quickly deteriorated to shooting up because, you know, I'd say within, like, a month of smoking it, I started shooting up because, you know, a couple of my buddies started doing it, and they're like, | ||
| oh my gosh, dude, you only have to use, like, one-fifth of the amount, and you get, like, a high that's, like, ten times better. | ||
| I'm like, oh, great, save money. | ||
| And, yeah, I remember the first time, like, I remember the first time my buddy and I did it, we looked it up, how to inject, you know, great Google search, how to inject heroin into your body. | ||
| You Google searched it? | ||
| Yeah, and, like, they have, like, images of, like, because you're supposed to go, like, diagonally, like, with the, like, just go straight down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Because you want to go into the vein. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And then you basically draw back the syringe, and once you see blood, because you know that it's in the vein, then you inject it. | ||
| If you miss, it's really painful. | ||
| Basically what happens is you don't get that immediate euphoric rush that comes with shooting up. | ||
| Smoking it, yes, you get euphoria, but shooting up, it's instantaneous and it hits so much harder. | ||
| It's like crack versus cocaine. | ||
| And yeah, it was just a very... | ||
| Can I just ask you for perspective? | ||
| So how long between the moment you first crushed a pill and snorted it and the moment you first shot heroin? | ||
| How long did that progression take? | ||
| I would say less than a year, probably about nine months. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| That's a pretty speedy... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Progressive illness, man. | |
| So what was it like the first time you shot heroin? | ||
| Where'd you do it? | ||
| It was at my buddy's house in Laguna Hills, in that neighborhood that I mentioned, Nellie Gale. | ||
| The $5 million house neighborhood. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And so, yeah, we were in his room and I did it. | ||
| And again, it's just this overwhelming sense of euphoria. | ||
| Yeah, everything is wonderful, even if your life sucks. | ||
| And again, I understand why a lot of homeless people do drugs. | ||
| It's because their life is literally just in shambles. | ||
| Yeah, they're so broken, there's no way to fix it. | ||
| This is their thinking, so this is the escape. | ||
| Yeah, so what's the point? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Why not just live in almost like a metaverse? | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| Nicely put. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, so I went to like, probably I would say, not exaggerating, over 10 rehab centers in California. | ||
| Wait, so how did you get, okay, so you start shooting heroin. | ||
| How did you get busted? | ||
| How did you wind up going to rehab? | ||
| Oh yeah, so I was shooting up on a daily basis and I actually started going to a continuation school because... | ||
| I was just, I stopped going to class. | ||
| My grades were too low. | ||
| And, you know, I basically got kicked out of school. | ||
| And so I was at a continuation school. | ||
| So you wind up in like... | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| The place I would ridicule and mock. | ||
| And then now I'm one of them. | ||
| Was your junkie friend still there? | ||
| The guy who first turned you on to the dealer? | ||
| No, because he was like... | ||
| Much older. | ||
| Yeah, he was a senior when I was a sophomore, and he barely attended. | ||
| I saw him a few times on campus, but he barely went to school even when he was at continuation school. | ||
| So yeah, we really didn't associate with that guy other than just to go buy drugs, because he was not exactly a fun person to be around. | ||
| And so I was doing drugs, shooting up heroin before school, and for some reason that day, I decided to take all my drugs with me. | ||
| I had a little, like, Ziploc packet with my syringe, my, you know, what I used to tie off, you know, all my equipment. | ||
| Where'd you get the syringes, by the way? | ||
| So, there are certain pharmacies that will, you know, if you say, you know, my grandmother's a diabetic or whatever, and I think nowadays they just give them to you in a lot of places, especially like Northern California. | ||
| Anything they can do to encourage a drug-addicted population, therefore. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| It's disgusting. | ||
| Gavin Newsom makes me sick. | ||
| He talks about this multifaceted plan to attack the opioid epidemic. | ||
| It's like, yeah, you've spent billions of dollars and it's only gotten worse. | ||
| Right, encouraging people to be addicts. | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| And so I decided for some dumb reason to bring my drugs to school with me that day. | ||
| And I also did something that I would never normally do. | ||
| I told some random person that I'd never met that I was high on heroin. | ||
| Like, in class. | ||
| Like, someone I'd sat next to the first time seemed like a cool person, cool guy. | ||
| Like, yeah, I'm on heroin. | ||
| And he's like, oh, really? | ||
| And, like, didn't seem like he was going to tell on me. | ||
| And so, I'm in, I remember, like, two periods later, I'm in class and... | ||
| Some administrator comes into the room and says, Chris Chella, can you come to the office? | ||
| And I saw a cop behind her, and I was like, oh, fuck. | ||
| And so I go down to the office, and she's like, yeah, we heard a rumor that you were doing drugs. | ||
| And I'm like, who said that? | ||
| She's like, well, I can't tell you. | ||
| And I was like, well, it's not true. | ||
| Deny, deny, deny, deny. | ||
| And she's like, okay, well, we're going to search you. | ||
| And I was like, I don't think you guys have the legal right to search me. | ||
| And she's like, if we have probable cause. | ||
| Basically, I allowed it. | ||
| I wasn't sure if it was legal or not, but I was hoping that. | ||
| And so they searched me in pants, belts, all that stuff. | ||
| And she was about to turn away. | ||
| And then she says, wait, let me check your socks. | ||
| Literally, like, the last thing she did. | ||
| And I was like, oh, fuck. | ||
| And so, of course, got caught, got arrested. | ||
| So you had the kid in your socks? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's just like, you know, high socks with it just like right here. | ||
| And so I get, you know, arrested or detained and my, you know, the cop releases me into my mom's custody. | ||
| And my mom drives me home. | ||
| She says, you're going to rehab, like, you know. | ||
| I don't want to hear anything about it. | ||
| You're going to rehab. | ||
| And I was like, okay. | ||
| And your mom is like someone who knows opioids, like how bad it is. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| And that's why she would, you know, at times, you know, when I was like, I was in terrible withdrawal. | ||
| And I was like, mom, I'm dying. | ||
| Like, I need, like, please just give me like, you know, and, you know, she would occasionally give me a little bit of money just to. | ||
| Because she knew, and God bless her, you know, she just, I put so, you know, I rained down so much terror and chaos upon my parents. | ||
| They were just trying everything they could think of, and, you know, some things they did really well, some things obviously, you know, again, being a parent is hard. | ||
| Especially a parent of a wild, psychotic drug addict. | ||
| And dealing with, you know, obviously, my sister's issues as well. | ||
| You know, just, goodness. | ||
| But as soon as my mom turned her back, I stole the $80 she had in cash out of her wallet and drove to L.A. And obviously, oh, so the gangbanger that I left this out, the gangbanger that I was partying with, | ||
| I really regret doing this because, you know, I consider him a friend. | ||
| But I was desperate at the time. | ||
| And so I was like, alright, I'm going to rob him. | ||
| So you're going to rob the gangbanger? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That doesn't seem like a good decision. | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| Again, but, you know, so desperate in agony and like, what else can I do? | ||
| So I got this like 225 pound Scottish kid and this big kid from the football team. | ||
| And I'm like, yeah, we're just going to rob this little skinny Mexican guy. | ||
| It's like, no problem. | ||
| And they're like, alright, cool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| As we were getting up there... | ||
| Wait, wait, wait. | ||
| Like, super dumb people then? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| One of them became a meth head. | ||
| He mocked me for being a heroin addict and shunned me, but then he became a hardcore meth head. | ||
| But you just go to them cold, hey, we're going to rob some Mexican kid. | ||
| Yeah, and I... | ||
| I failed to mention that he was a gangbanger and had associations with the Mexican Mafia. | ||
| And so I accidentally let that slip on the ride up there. | ||
| And they're like, we don't want to do this anymore. | ||
| No. | ||
| And so we get there and I'm like, you fucking pussies. | ||
| Sorry, cursing. | ||
| So I just... | ||
| Get into the car myself and commit it. | ||
| Commit the robbery. | ||
| How do you rob him? | ||
| So I sprayed him in the face with pepper spray and put something to his throat. | ||
| Don't move. | ||
| I just reached into it because I knew where he kept it and just reached and grabbed it. | ||
| And then jumped out. | ||
| My friend was in the driver's seat and I was like, go. | ||
| And he's driving like a maniac. | ||
| And I'm like, dude, calm down. | ||
| Slow down. | ||
| Because it's very narrow streets in that area. | ||
| Things like that. | ||
| And so we're driving. | ||
| You're making me tense, man, just telling me this story. | ||
| Where were you? | ||
| What town was this? | ||
| This was in Southgate, the same area that I was going to pick up the stuff before. | ||
| You pepper sprayed a member of the Mexican Mafia and stole his heroin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| You got balls, I'll say that. | ||
| Have you apologized to him, by the way, years later? | ||
| I haven't had the opportunity. | ||
| You haven't been back to Southgate? | ||
| No, yeah. | ||
| If you're watching, I apologize, man. | ||
| Would you like to say sorry? | ||
| Yeah, no, I do regret it. | ||
| So, my friend's driving down the street, and I see him driving down the perpendicular street behind us, and I'm like, how the fuck is he driving? | ||
| Like, unloaded a bunch of pepper spray in his face. | ||
| He's armed, too. | ||
| What? | ||
| He's armed. | ||
| Yeah, probably. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so we're, like, my, so I'm like, all right, just keep driving. | ||
| And he, for some reason, he, like, just does, like, a wild turn onto a very narrow residential street, crashes into an oncoming car. | ||
| Oh, come on! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I'm just like, you fucking idiot. | ||
| Do you go to church? | ||
| Yes, I've gone to confession so many times. | ||
| But just to say thank you, too, for being here, for being alive. | ||
| Yeah, no, I should have died so many times. | ||
| You think? | ||
| Not just the stupid things that I was doing outside of my use, but if I was an addict in the age of fentanyl, where fentanyl is laced in it, I probably would have died. | ||
| Just because I stopped in 2016 when that was like when it started to really get – like when they started to put heroin into – or fentanyl into heroin and other drugs because – When Trump got elected and the Chinese decided to just like kill a huge part of our population. | ||
| Yeah, flood our country with poison basically. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, I remember that. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm stepping on your story again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| You're fine. | ||
| Dude, you're fine. | ||
| You're fine. | ||
| And by the way – Can I just make one other editorial comment? | ||
| As a product of Southern California, it's really a decadent society. | ||
| I'm like, for real decadent. | ||
| And I grew up there in the early 80s. | ||
| It was when I was the age you describe. | ||
| And it was so decadent that I almost never think about it. | ||
| But you were a product of that society. | ||
| I mean, I'm just telling you that. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, absolutely. | ||
| 100%. | ||
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| That's 10% off at tecovas, T-E-C-O-V-A-S dot com slash Tucker. | ||
| Anyway, okay, so your friend, you see the guy from the Mexican Mafia. | ||
| He's somehow recovered from getting shot in the face with pepper spray. | ||
| Of course he has a gun in the vehicle and he's looking to kill you. | ||
| And you see him... | ||
| Perpendicular. | ||
| Your friend swerves down a narrow road and... | ||
| Head on, yeah, with some, you know, driver by. | ||
| And so I jump out of the car, stash my drugs. | ||
| Have you used the heroin yet? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| So you're still like jumpy withdrawal guy at this point. | ||
| Yeah, but I stashed it and this one... | ||
| Because there was a bunch of people, they immediately started to... | ||
| And my two friends take off, by the way. | ||
| They just start running down the street. | ||
| I'm like, why? | ||
| Running down the street? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And this is not an Anglo neighborhood, so, like, they stick out. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Like, sore thumbs. | ||
| Like, a big... | ||
| Yeah, I mean, well, one of them was Hispanic, so maybe not so much, but the Scottish guy. | ||
| Yeah, like... | ||
| And so we... | ||
| So I jump out of the car, I stash my drugs, sit down on the curb. | ||
| And wait for the police. | ||
| You know, because there's so many people there, so many witnesses. | ||
| But again, no one knew that what had just transpired, all this, again, like, it was just a car accident, as far as they were concerned, and as far as the police were concerned. | ||
| And so, yeah, my friends run, and the cops come, they show up, they're like... | ||
| You know, hey, what are you doing out here? | ||
| I was like, we were trying to find a friend's house. | ||
| We got turned around. | ||
| In Southgate. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Made up some bullshit. | ||
| Just trying to find a friend's house. | ||
| And he's like, well, do you need to go to the hospital? | ||
| And I'm like, no, no, I'm good. | ||
| I'm good. | ||
| I'm fine. | ||
| And he's like, okay, well, do you have a ride? | ||
| I was like, yeah, I'm going to call somebody to pick me up. | ||
| And he's like, okay. | ||
| And so, you know, I wait for them to depart. | ||
| Go back into the little bush. | ||
| Of course, grab my drugs. | ||
| Can't forget that. | ||
| And then I ended up getting a ride from a buddy, another user, and I was like, hey, I'll give you some dope. | ||
| Pick me up. | ||
| Because I was very concerned that they were going to, like, I was like, I need to get out of Southgate. | ||
| Fast! | ||
| Yeah, like, right away. | ||
| Yeah, and so I was like, dude, just please come pick me up. | ||
| I will... | ||
| Make it worth your while. | ||
| And so I get picked up. | ||
| So you had to wait on the sidewalk? | ||
| Well, I was actually this nice lady. | ||
| Her house was right next to where the accident took place. | ||
| And so I was like, do you mind if I just post up on your front step? | ||
| I was like, I just want to wait for my ride. | ||
| I'm kind of scared. | ||
| I'm in a dangerous neighborhood. | ||
| Played like the little... | ||
| And she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Very kind. | ||
| And so I just sit there and wait, and I have the drugs in my fist ready to toss them at a moment's notice if I need to or whatever. | ||
| And then I get picked up, and that's that. | ||
| But what transpired after, because thankfully, they only knew me by CJ, like Chris Jr., my initials, that's what I went by, my nickname from kindergarten through high school. | ||
| And they knew I lived in South Orange County, but they didn't know anything else. | ||
| And so they switched up the way they did the process of selling the dope, where now you had to meet up, then follow them down this empty street or an alley or something like that, | ||
| then stand up against a chain-link fence and get searched, and then you could get into the car and get your stuff. | ||
| And they would ask every single person, do you know CJ? | ||
| Do you know CJ from South Orange County? | ||
| Do you know where he lives? | ||
| And yeah, so for a very long while, and I was so grateful when I saw that OC Register article, the fact that they had, and I saw his picture in the, you know, his mugshot in the article, Wild, and his name listed. | ||
| I'm not going to say it. | ||
| I'm just not going to say it. | ||
| But yeah, I mean, crazy stuff. | ||
| Let me just pause to ask you. | ||
| The guys who you were with on that caper where you assaulted the member of the Mexican Mafia, did they turn out okay? | ||
| Well, one of them became a meth head. | ||
| Yes, as you said. | ||
| And it's ironic because when they got caught, they got caught at a Starbucks. | ||
| Cops picked him up and they immediately just spilled everything. | ||
| They told the whole story for no reason. | ||
| And I know for a fact because my father represented him in the hit and run. | ||
| And it took the DA until almost the end of the trial to figure out that I was also associated. | ||
| And he's like, wait, your son was involved in this. | ||
| And my dad was like... | ||
| Trying so hard to thread the needle to not expose me to any potential criminality and also defend my friend. | ||
| So one became a drug addict. | ||
| And the other one I kind of lost contact with. | ||
| How many of the guys that you partied with in high school are sober now? | ||
| How many are dead? | ||
| Do you keep track? | ||
| From high school, yeah, one friend passed away, opiate user, good guy, but he wasn't like a particularly heinous junkie. | ||
| I mean, he just was a junkie, but he was a good, I like, you know, good-hearted. | ||
| But he passed away. | ||
| Of an OD. | ||
| Yeah, overdose. | ||
| And, you know, I met a few friends in rehab. | ||
| One, whom I was very close to, lived in New York. | ||
| And, you know, we stayed in contact. | ||
| Met in Florida, stayed in contact. | ||
| And for, you know, like four years. | ||
| And then, you know, I got a call from his mom saying that he had OD'd, you know, relapsed. | ||
| And, you know, it was just heartbreaking. | ||
| But, yeah, most of my friends, like the stoners from high school, are... | ||
| Very successful individuals, college graduates, working in finance, working in different sectors, and having a great life. | ||
| What about the opioid users? | ||
| The opioid users, kind of, like, they have the advantage of, like, many of them that I hang out with, or hung out with, excuse me, were already, you know, their family was just... | ||
| Super wealthy. | ||
| One of their fathers was the CEO of a company called AmeriQuest. | ||
| He was worth like $80 million. | ||
| They had a lot of money to fall back on, so they tried opening up a clothing line, different things, but ultimately... | ||
| Music label? | ||
| What? | ||
| Music label? | ||
| No, not yet. | ||
| That's kind of the classic one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, there were other kids in Orange County that did do that, that tried to start a rap group, and I'm just like... | ||
| Of course, yeah. | ||
| I could write this story. | ||
| Orange County is so weird. | ||
| Anyway, so yeah. | ||
| But most of my friends from high school are very successful. | ||
| The stoners are, yeah. | ||
| But unfortunately, yeah, I've lost multiple friends, people that I actually genuinely cared about, not just acquaintances. | ||
| Too many acquaintances to count, but real friends, it's been like five. | ||
| Do you have any idea what happened to the guy you pepper sprayed? | ||
| No. | ||
| And, oh, this is nuts. | ||
| When I was in rehab... | ||
| So the guy boss, right, he had different runners, like, you know, multiple guys who would run into cars. | ||
| And one time I had this guy, and so I was in rehab, and it was like a, it was in San Diego, and I think it's Chula Vista. | ||
| Great place to put a rehab. | ||
| Well, your rehab was in Chula Vista? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, yeah, it's like, you're setting yourself up to fail. | ||
| They had, like, it was a mansion, and then kind of like a bungalow. | ||
| They had little, like, bungalows, like, type things, and so it could house about, like, 30, 40 people. | ||
| And so they had me there, and this guy comes in, and I'm like, he looks familiar. | ||
| And I didn't, like, I couldn't put my finger on where I'd seen him before. | ||
| And he goes... | ||
| He goes, hey man, he said, I used to run for boss, and he's like, I think I delivered to you once. | ||
| And I'm like, oh my god. | ||
| And he's like, you're friends with hobby, right? | ||
| And the guy that I robbed. | ||
| And I was like, yeah, yeah, great friends. | ||
| And I was like, I heard he was locked up though. | ||
| He's like, yeah, no, he's out now. | ||
| And I was like, oh, okay. | ||
| And he's like, I'll tell him you said hi because you get a seven-day blackout and you can't use the phone when you first go. | ||
| A lot of treatment centers have that rule. | ||
| This place did. | ||
| And so he's like, yeah, I'll tell you said what up when I talk to him. | ||
| I'm like, oh, my God. | ||
| This guy's going to knife me in my sleep. | ||
| And I was seriously, I was concerned. | ||
| I was going to tell. | ||
| Like, my therapist and see, you know, what could potentially be done because I was genuinely – because you could easily, in that place, sneak out of your bedroom and go into someone else's bedroom if you wanted to. | ||
| It's not like it's locked down. | ||
| You know, they have, you know, quote-unquote people that are watching at night, but the place is so big. | ||
| It's, you know, you could do it if you wanted to. | ||
| And, of course, there are no locks on the doors. | ||
| No. | ||
| No, of course not because – Right. | ||
| Yeah, it's junkies. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| People were buying air duster and anything to get a buzz. | ||
| And I was just like, wow. | ||
| That was kind of eye-opening for me, but not eye-opening enough to stop. | ||
| But it's like, wow. | ||
| So how many times did you go to rehab? | ||
| Total between California and Florida, probably somewhere between 15 and 20. 15 and 20? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because I got kicked out of a bunch of places for stupid, for reasons that were not related to drugs necessarily. | ||
| Fraternization. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| Hooking up with girls. | ||
| Grabbing the girls, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, not, again, consensually. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I meant that in a consensual. | ||
| Just let me clarify that. | ||
| In a pre-Harvey Weinstein sense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| I mean, I was like 17, 18 years old. | ||
| Does heroin affect your sex drive? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It lowers it. | ||
| A lot. | ||
| And then when you come off of it, horny 24-7. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Cocaine is like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's interesting because one of my therapists described withdrawal as your body basically being in shock because you've been numbing all your senses for so long. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then when you stop, your body is like, everything is just like... | ||
| Taking in light. | ||
| Chewing food. | ||
| Everything hurt. | ||
| My eyes hurt. | ||
| My teeth hurt. | ||
| Every muscle and bone in my body ached. | ||
| If you could find a way to inject that feeling for interrogation purposes, let that guy sweat it out for a day. | ||
| He'll tell you where all the bombs are. | ||
| I assure you. | ||
| It is like... | ||
| Truly, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, it is so bad. | ||
| Did you have to detox, I guess, every single time, 15 or 20 times you went to rehab? | ||
| Pretty much. | ||
| There were a few times when I was kind of just on and off using, and so the withdrawal was... | ||
| Yeah, I kind of felt it, but there were probably about 10 times when I went through hardcore withdrawal. | ||
| Yeah, every single time I was like, I never want to feel this feeling again. | ||
| But I still wasn't committing to myself that I wanted to stop. | ||
| How long does it last, the withdrawal, agony? | ||
| I mean, they say up to seven days typically, but in reality, my last withdrawal... | ||
| Lasted about like three, it was like three weeks before I remember, I remember like the day I was like laying in bed and I was like, wow, I actually feel comfortable. | ||
| Like my body doesn't ache. | ||
| Like I can, I'm like, I feel, I feel kind of normal. | ||
| Three weeks? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, and it's like the first week is just like. | ||
| Absolute hell. | ||
| You're sweating bullets. | ||
| You're cold. | ||
| The sweat on your body makes you cold. | ||
| It's terrible. | ||
| And again, all the other things I described. | ||
| And that just slowly... | ||
| And then the discomfort. | ||
| It's like the epitome of discomfort. | ||
| Gastrointestinal too? | ||
| Some people got diarrhea, things like that. | ||
| I didn't. | ||
| Some people would vomit and stuff, but that never really happened to me. | ||
| I guess it's just... | ||
| You know, it depends on the person. | ||
| But, yeah, it's just an overwhelming, like, sense of just, yeah, shock, I guess, is the best way to put it. | ||
| And, yeah, again, just terrible. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| So, rehab, I mean, you're making a pretty strong case it doesn't work very well. | ||
| I mean, if you went to 50, I mean, God knows what that cost, by the way. | ||
| Someone paid for it. | ||
| I don't know if it was your family or some insurance program, the state, taxpayers, whatever, but someone's paying a lot of money for that. | ||
| The first rehab I ever went to was called the Phoenix House. | ||
| It was in northern Orange County. | ||
| It was a state-run facility. | ||
| It was kind of like a boot camp style. | ||
| You had to fold your bed with the military corner crease and everything like that. | ||
| All your shirts had to be lined up. | ||
| You know, your toiletries had to be perfectly in a row, all that stuff. | ||
| And, you know, I did that and I was like, I hate this. | ||
| This sucks. | ||
| And all I want to do is get out and, you know, I'm just like, I just can't wait till this 30 days is over so I can leave. | ||
| And I was like, I don't think I want to do... | ||
| At that time, I was like... | ||
| I don't think I want to do heroin, but I definitely want to, like, I still want to be able to smoke marijuana. | ||
| I still want to be able to drink. | ||
| And, like, I mean, to this day, I still, you know, smoke marijuana and drink recreationally, occasionally. | ||
| But, yeah, I made the decision that I, you know, I just wasn't ready to quit yet. | ||
| And I think what, it's really, you can go to as many different treatment centers, doctors, AA meetings. | ||
| It has to be, I think, an intrinsic motivation to better yourself. | ||
| And you have to want that. | ||
| You can't do it for somebody else. | ||
| If you're doing it for your child, if you're doing it for your wife, if you're doing it for your parents... | ||
| You're going to fail. | ||
| Hey, it's Tucker Carlson. | ||
| Not to be a moralizer, but some things, and you know this as well as we do, some things are just wrong. | ||
| They may not be illegal, but you'd never do them for reasons of self-respect, if no other. | ||
| And teabagging, sorry to say it, teabagging is one of those. | ||
| You shouldn't be doing that, and you know you shouldn't be doing that. | ||
| And yet, the big nicotine pouch companies encourage you to teabag. | ||
| They call them nicotine pouches, but they're basically teabags. | ||
| They're dry, desiccated, tasteless, they're disgusting, and they're degrading to you. | ||
| Don't put one in your mouth. | ||
| Now you have an option. | ||
| It's called ALP. | ||
| It's not dry like a teabag. | ||
| You're not teabagging when you use it, and you should be proud of that. | ||
| You've got self-respect. | ||
| Now you can show that self-respect with our no-teabagging t-shirt. | ||
| It's wrong, but you're better than that. | ||
| Okay, so let me just ask you. | ||
| I've heard and known, I've heard this story, and I've known many people who've lived this story. | ||
| Where they're addicted to something, whether it's pills or heroin, cocaine, alcohol, mostly. | ||
| And they just go to rehab after rehab after rehab, relapse after relapse after relapse, destroying their sense of themselves. | ||
| And they feel like losers. | ||
| When you keep failing at something, it's not good for you. | ||
| You fail more. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| So what's the point of this? | ||
| These centers clearly don't work. | ||
| Do they? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It doesn't sound like they do. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, again, I think that it all depends on the person. | ||
| But again, you have to want it. | ||
| That's the bottom line. | ||
| You have to want it. | ||
| And these treatment centers, they do some good, but you should not say rehab is a cure or AA is a cure. | ||
| Yeah, if you go into those places, you can sometimes develop the intrinsic motivation through therapy or through discussion with other people or whatever. | ||
| But I mean, for me, it was so fast forward a little bit. | ||
| So, you know, I get basically kicked out of every rehab in California. | ||
| So my parents are like, all right, let's send you to Florida. | ||
| Let's try a new environment. | ||
| And South Florida was like the rehab capital. | ||
| Of course, Delray. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, Delray, Boynton Beach. | ||
| And it was just, I mean, I was shocked that, like, some of the places where the halfway houses were, or the sober homes were located, like, down the street from, like, the known markets where people, like, were, | ||
| you know... | ||
| It's a scam. | ||
| Look, no one's more for sobriety than I am a sober person. | ||
| Totally opposed to drugs and alcohol. | ||
| Period. | ||
| But let's just stop lying about it. | ||
| These places are a scam. | ||
| Not all of them, but a lot of them are just a money-making scam profiting off the misery and death of addicts. | ||
| Yeah, they see you as an insurance policy with a heartbeat. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That's pretty much it. | ||
| True villains, I think. | ||
| Yeah, no, the most sinister man probably, if you want to just pick one out, is... | ||
| His name is ******. | ||
| That was the first treatment center I went to in Florida. | ||
| So ****** owned a treatment center and he owned several halfway houses. | ||
| But everything was in his wife's name. | ||
| That's one thing that was like a red flag to me. | ||
| And this guy shows up to the rehab center in a three-piece Armani suit with a Gucci belt and dressed like a pimp. | ||
| And ironically, he is a pimp. | ||
| So he had girls in his halfway houses that he was giving heroin, giving crack, and pimping them out, and then sending them back to treatment where they would ultimately fail their drug test and have to go to detox. | ||
| And guess who gets a kickback from the detox center? | ||
| No way! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it was the South Florida Rehab Shuffle. | ||
| There are many cases of it. | ||
| If you just Google that, you'll see a bunch of different stories. | ||
| But ****** I would say is like the kingpin of just absolute scumbag, like you said, villain, a villain, a true villain. | ||
| That's so evil that it's hard. | ||
| Yeah, it's incomprehensible to me as a human being. | ||
| It's like a slave trader. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, essentially. | ||
| Treating people as objects, as animals. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So is he still in this business? | ||
| No, he was sentenced to 27 years in prison. | ||
| Wow, good. | ||
| Yeah, so the feds started to crack down on the Florida Rehab Shuffle, although I read somewhere that it's supposedly coming back. | ||
| Basically, he was probably one of the worst offenders, but a lot of these guys would just get these cheap homes, fill them with as many attics as they could. | ||
| Sometimes they would charge rent like $75 a week or something like that, plus the money they're getting from kickbacks from whichever treatment center they send them to. | ||
| So they're housed, they send them, and then if they go to detox, the kickback, it's a revolving door of chaos and a revolving door of suffering and just pain for the addict. | ||
| But they're making money at every stop. | ||
| This is disgusting. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Do the addicts in the rehab center understand that they are pawns in a profit-making scheme? | ||
| I think a lot of people were starting to wake up to it, and I knew one of the girls who was one of his victims, and she was always like, man, I just want to get the hell out of here. | ||
| And she had this look, and I could see that there was something. | ||
| And I thought she was just very, like, you know, maybe had some issues with her family or whatever. | ||
| Just a very depressed, sad person. | ||
| Even for an addict. | ||
| Even for an addict. | ||
| Like, I could tell that there was something. | ||
| Like, she was in absolute, like, misery and terror. | ||
| She was afraid. | ||
| They were afraid. | ||
| Many people were afraid of him. | ||
| And what he would do if they spoke out. | ||
| And it was just, it was heartbreaking for me to see that. | ||
| You know, even as someone who's... | ||
| Obviously committed crimes and things like that. | ||
| I can't even imagine having the will to carry out such a monstrous act. | ||
| It tells you a lot. | ||
| So, I mean, that many rehabs, you met a lot of people. | ||
| What did you learn about addicts? | ||
| Addicts are some of the most resourceful, intelligent... | ||
| People on the planet. | ||
| Like, you drop an addict in the middle of the desert and they're going to find the nearest tribe with an opium pipe, you know, within 30 minutes. | ||
| And so, if you get... | ||
| They're single-minded, aren't they? | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
| But if you get them to... | ||
| If you can, you know, separate them from the drug and separate them from the addiction and turn that into something that's... | ||
| I mean, for me, the reason I got sober, I think there's several factors that played into it. | ||
| Obviously, God, you know, and the intrinsic motivation, you know, that I talked about, and having a fantastic support system that was there for me. | ||
| They were just waiting for me to... | ||
| Come to them, you know, just like, hey, we're here. | ||
| Your family? | ||
| Yeah, my family and one of the, one halfway house owner who was kind of participating in this game, but he cared. | ||
| Like, he cared. | ||
| He genuinely cared about the people who were coming to his house. | ||
| He did not allow any drug use or anything like that. | ||
| There was, I was at one place that was selling, this guy was selling crack to his clients at the halfway house. | ||
| No way! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes! | |
| And he was selling crack to just people in general, so we would get knocks on our doors at 3 o 'clock in the morning from total fucking spun-out crackheads. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Come on! | |
| Yeah, no, man. | ||
| And there was no door on the bathroom. | ||
| It was the middle of the summer in South Florida. | ||
| It's like 110 degrees out, no air conditioning, just fans littered across the living room and down the hallways and stuff. | ||
| I mean, just an absolute shit show. | ||
| And people are smoking crack in the halfway house? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| His rule was, you know, a fine line, no needles. | ||
| Like, yeah, you can smoke crack, you can smoke whatever you want, just no needles. | ||
| Like, ugh, alright. | ||
| Did you smoke crack in the halfway house? | ||
| Yeah, a couple times. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you think of crack? | ||
| I'd say it's very destructive, obviously. | ||
| But in terms of, like, a high, it's like 30 minutes of, like... | ||
| I can conquer the world. | ||
| You want to start doing all these different tasks that you've been putting off because you feel confident about them now. | ||
| But then it wears off. | ||
| And then you're just so depressed. | ||
| And you think about every bad thing you've ever done. | ||
| I don't know if you've ever had cocaine withdrawal. | ||
| Coming off of cocaine after, like, a night of Bender, like, my dad would tell me that when he would do coke, like, he was just, like, you think about, like, yeah, in third grade when I pushed that kid, you know, into the stairwell or whatever, just, like, every, you know, and just, like, you just feel like a piece of garbage and you're depressed. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You pay for every happy moment. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| And the crack, it lasts, it's, like, the high is so fleeting, too. | ||
| Like, with heroin, at least you get, like, a few good hours of, you know, a solid. | ||
| Buzz, but with crack, it's like, you know, it goes away relatively fast. | ||
| How many people in rehab or halfway houses did you meet who were determined to get sober? | ||
| Not very many. | ||
| How, every person, I think without exception, I know, who's been addicted to drugs or alcohol, who got better, has a sense that there's, what does he say in AA, you know, a greater power? | ||
| That there's God? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And that, you know, human beings have souls, and each one is unique and important, and life is important, and life is better than death, and, you know, it's sort of like the basic grounding of monotheism. | ||
| So, like, how big a role did God play in any of these rehab centers? | ||
| Well, when I was, so I was living in the halfway house, the guy was selling crack to us, and... | ||
| I just smoked some marijuana for the first time in a long time, and it made me, like, very introspective. | ||
| You know, we can do that. | ||
| Kind of like psychedelics, too, too. | ||
| And I was like, you know, and I heard a voice in my head that I can only assume is just, you know, a spiritual awakening God saying, like, what are you doing? | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Why are you here, surrounded by these people, like, looking around? | ||
| I'm just like... | ||
| I have so much more to offer the world than what I'm, you know, I mean, I'm just a derelict and I don't have to be. | ||
| I have people who love me. | ||
| I have people who would, you know, would die for me. | ||
| You know, my family is, you know, are so loyal and they love me so much. | ||
| They just want me to stop being a piece of garbage. | ||
| And I just, that day, I was like, I am done with this stuff. | ||
| It's not fun anymore. | ||
| Like, and I wanted to better myself. | ||
| That was, so, you know, I think that was God instilling the motivation. | ||
| So, yeah, I mean, yeah, I got sober at a crack house. | ||
| It's kind of funny, you know, tried 50 different rehab centers, but ended up, you know, getting sober at a crack house. | ||
| But I think that that's, yeah, it was... | ||
| So you were smoking weed in the halfway house? | ||
| Yeah, he didn't care about it, yeah. | ||
| You could smoke anything you wanted in there, pretty much. | ||
| And, yeah, I was just like, that day, I knew I was never going to touch an opiate again. | ||
| And I know people say, like, you have to wake up and make a decision every day that you're not going to use, but it's like, I don't even... | ||
| It doesn't even, like, register in my mind, like, to say it, like, oh, I'm not going to use heroin today, because, like... | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I know what you're saying, actually. | ||
| Yeah, it's like, because it's like, I look back and I'm like, that's, I'm a different person. | ||
| I'm truly a different person. | ||
| I have like evolved. | ||
| It's like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly or, you know, whatever analogy you want to use. | ||
| But just, and looking back and thinking, how could I have possibly done all this? | ||
| And, and yeah, I mean, Christ, yeah. | ||
| It plays a huge role, and I think it's really important. | ||
| And even for people who are, excuse me, you know, maybe atheistic or whatever, but just believing in something greater than yourself that can, that, you know, you can strive to be better and strive to, | ||
| you know, just whatever, set goals for yourself and achieve them. | ||
| By doing that, I think that's how people can find a way out of addiction, and then you grasp onto something, find things that you really enjoy. | ||
| I was like, okay, what do I enjoy? | ||
| I love movies, I'm a huge movie fanatic, and I'm really interested in politics and journalism. | ||
| Ironically, I was always... | ||
| Fox News was on my parents' television 24-7. | ||
| So I grew up conservative. | ||
| My grandmother was a door knocker for Reagan and for... | ||
| Bush? | ||
| Someone else. | ||
| I can't think. | ||
| Ford, Nixon, Goldwater? | ||
| The first conservative to run. | ||
| He didn't win. | ||
| Goldwater. | ||
| Oh yeah, Goldwater. | ||
| 1964. | ||
| Yeah, Goldwater. | ||
| And so... | ||
| Yeah, politics kind of is in my DNA, I would say. | ||
| And I remember watching Fox in the lead-up to the presidential election. | ||
| It was like the perfect time to be – get interested in politics, right? | ||
| You've got Trump and Hillary Clinton. | ||
| And then I remember seeing you and I was like – and I'm not just saying this because I'm on your podcast. | ||
| This is genuinely the truth. | ||
| I saw you on your show and I was like – I love the way this guy does the news. | ||
| It's different. | ||
| It's unique. | ||
| It's funny. | ||
| It's like, I want to do something like that. | ||
| That's what I want to do. | ||
| You're like, here's a Southern Californian who had addiction problems and he turned out okay. | ||
| And you're like, hey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I didn't know all that about you. | ||
| No, I was just like, wow, this guy is so much different than the other voices on Fox. | ||
| I mean, not to... | ||
| I mean, you just... | ||
| It brings such a unique perspective. | ||
| You're willing to go against the party and call out the rhinos and neocons and all that stuff. | ||
| I was just like, he's awesome. | ||
| This is great. | ||
| Let me ask you a philosophical question. | ||
| In between jobs once and I got fired from another job, I was an unpaid fellow at a libertarian think tank in D.C. I thought I was a libertarian. | ||
| I sort of am libertarian in a lot of ways still, you know, I really don't want to bother other people. | ||
| But I left after a drug policy conference that I went to that really kind of changed my thinking on the world. | ||
| And at it, they explained the libertarian position on drug policy, which is kind of America's position on drug policy, which is, it's the drug addict's fault. | ||
| People get addicted to drugs. | ||
| That's their problem. | ||
| That's their fault. | ||
| And it's kind of the demand explanation for the drug epidemic. | ||
| It's like we have a lot of drugs because people want a lot of drugs in this country. | ||
| It's not Mexico or China's fault or the drug dealer's fault. | ||
| Yeah, the desire for it. | ||
| And that's what Mexico says. | ||
| It's like, if you people didn't want it so badly, maybe it's very true. | ||
| And I thought, you know, that makes sense. | ||
| I mean, it's kind of like one of those lines you hear. | ||
| They're like, yeah, that sounds right. | ||
| And then you think of your own life. | ||
| And then you think of the people you know who got, you know, tragically fucked up or killed by drugs. | ||
| Of course, I know a lot of them. | ||
| And you think, no, actually, like, some of them are like your mom, super healthy person, obviously a distance runner, the healthiest person, like, in America. | ||
| You know, they're distance runners. | ||
| She has an injury and some doctor gives her a drug and she becomes an addict. | ||
| Yeah, and my dad literally one time he went into the office and he grabbed the guy by it, like threw him up against the wall. | ||
| He's like, you're poisoning my fucking wife. | ||
| Good for your dad. | ||
| I should say your parents, such a beautiful, you told me off camera are still married, which is so beautiful. | ||
| Yeah, married for 40 plus years. | ||
| That's incredible. | ||
| Yeah, they're in love. | ||
| I mean, they're a true, genuine love story. | ||
| That's the best part of this whole story. | ||
| Just really quick, the reason my dad fell in love with my mom at first sight was because he said she was the only woman in New York he saw that was wearing a crucifix that he'd seen in New York. | ||
| So he's like, yeah, she's the one. | ||
| They sound like great people. | ||
| Oh, you would love my dad. | ||
| Oh, I can tell. | ||
| I'd like to throw a few doctors against the wall myself. | ||
| But, okay, so then there's that, and then there's your story, which is like insecure high school kid, like how many high school kids are not insecure? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Zero. | ||
| Like the feelings that you described, like, I don't quite fit in, I don't know if I'm cool or not. | ||
| Every single kid has that feeling at 15, so you're not unique in that way. | ||
| And someone's like, hey, try this. | ||
| And then you become like a crazed... | ||
| You know, needle-dependent heroin addict and you're pepper-spraying members of the Mexican Mafia and almost getting killed. | ||
| So, like, within a year. | ||
| So, that suggests to me that what we have is a supply problem, not a demand problem. | ||
| Like, you know, you probably would have been happy with Bud Light or Coors Light or whatever. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And instead, you wind up on heroin because you had access. | ||
| To this drug. | ||
| So if you take a hundred people and give them heroin every day for a month, like what percentage become junkies? | ||
| Like, well, all of them. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So I was just thinking this at this drug policy conference and I was like, actually, you're all liars. | ||
| Probably getting paid by Purdue Pharma to lie. | ||
| And it's the Cato Institute and they're definitely liars. | ||
| I can say that now. | ||
| But I didn't understand it because this is the one topic I knew something about, having lived it. | ||
| What is the answer to this problem that kills over 100,000 people a year? | ||
| From a government perspective? | ||
| It seems like we're paying addicts to use drugs. | ||
| That's kind of my perspective. | ||
| I think that one thing we should not be doing is what California is doing and trying to set up little port-a-potties for addicts to go in and use. | ||
| Like, little centers with clean needles and all that stuff. | ||
| Why would you encourage people to shoot heroin? | ||
| You don't coddle and enable drug addicts. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| That is the worst thing you can do. | ||
| Because they're just going to continue using. | ||
| And heroin is not a drug that you can use. | ||
| Because there's a lot of functional alcoholics and functional people who are... | ||
| On like, you know, Valium or whatever, you know, kind of pill poppers. | ||
| That, you know, you would never know. | ||
| But, yeah, heroin, I just, I've never seen anyone who doesn't, it doesn't become a lifestyle. | ||
| It's not like a side thing, you know, or a hobby or whatever. | ||
| It is your life. | ||
| It is all-consuming. | ||
| What destroys you as a human being? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And same with meth. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, meth, like, inside and out, too. | ||
| Heroin. | ||
| Doesn't quite, like, do the damage to your, like, your complexion. | ||
| Yeah, outwardly, but, like, inwardly, I think it's worse. | ||
| But meth is, yeah, absolutely terrible. | ||
| Were you around a lot of meth people? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| So, in Northern California, because we moved to Northern California after, when I was 18, I remember my dad came down to San Diego, because I was in rehab in San Diego, and he picked me up and we drove. | ||
| North. | ||
| To where? | ||
| To the Bay Area. | ||
| To the East Bay. | ||
| We lived in Concord. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And because my grandmother lived in Lafayette. | ||
| Yep, I know it. | ||
| And she was... | ||
| Those were nice towns. | ||
| I don't know if they still are, but they were. | ||
| Well, Concord has kind of been taken over by... | ||
| There's a lot of gang activity. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, God! | |
| And it borders Clayton, too. | ||
| So I think they're probably going to do something about it because Clayton's a really nice area. | ||
| So they're probably going to start cracking down more because the rich people are being affected. | ||
| So now it's a problem. | ||
| And so we moved up there. | ||
| And again, I started associating with... | ||
| The worst of the worst. | ||
| Gangbanging meth heads. | ||
| I'd never tried meth before. | ||
| I remember I was just at this guy's house and he pulls out a pipe. | ||
| I'm like, alright, yeah. | ||
| Try it. | ||
| See what the fuss is about. | ||
| So you're an open-minded young man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, you know, I didn't necessarily love it. | ||
| It wasn't this like, oh, yeah, I need this. | ||
| But like my – became my best friend was a dealer. | ||
| So he always had it. | ||
| So it's like I would always just, yeah, take like a puff or two. | ||
| There was one point where I stayed up for 12 days straight and then slept for eight hours and stayed up for another sort of total of 17 days. | ||
| So, yeah, another five days. | ||
| And because doing heroin and meth, it's like, like meth when you're like, basically like, you know, you're up for a day or two, you start to get weird seeing shadow people and shit like that. | ||
| Then you do heroin and it's like, it's like resets you, almost. | ||
| It's kind of like, it's like you, it's like almost like you slept a little bit and your brain's like back to normal and it's not going into crazy mode. | ||
| I have seen meth heads, like... | ||
| I remember this one story. | ||
| So we were at this girl's house in her garage, and it was myself, our dealer, and this chick, and she had just all over her face, scratching it from scratching. | ||
| She looked terrifying. | ||
| But I'd been kicked out of my house, so we were just chilling there. | ||
| We were just going from place to place, trying to... | ||
| Find a spot to, you know, kick it and rest or whatever. | ||
| And so we're smoking in there for like three, four hours. | ||
| And her and my friend go into the bathroom or inside her house. | ||
| And I just kind of like sit back and I end up like falling asleep. | ||
| And I didn't realize, I was like, I woke up and I was like, I had no idea how long I'd been asleep. | ||
| Like 30 seconds, 30 minutes, whatever. | ||
| And there was no one in the garage. | ||
| So I like knock on the garage. | ||
| And I got a garage door, kind of peeked my head in. | ||
| I'm like, hey, what are you guys doing? | ||
| And she comes out. | ||
| She's like, close the door. | ||
| I'm like, okay. | ||
| And then she comes out. | ||
| She's like, what the what are you doing in my in my house? | ||
| My kids are in there. | ||
| And I'm like, oh, my God, you have kids. | ||
| And she's like, yeah, what did you steal? | ||
| What did you steal? | ||
| And I'm like, I didn't steal anything. | ||
| And then she pulls out a handgun. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And like, it's this switch that flips for some people. | ||
| It's never happened to me, but this flip that switches and they just become a totally different, irrational, dangerous human being. | ||
| And so this woman has a gun pointed at me and she's like, empty your pockets, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And I went like this and pulled out, I was like, look, I didn't steal anything from you. | ||
| What would I steal? | ||
| I poked my head into your place for two seconds. | ||
| And I'm like, by the way... | ||
| If you have your kids sleeping in there, you're kind of a shitty mom. | ||
| So you insult the lady with the gun pointed at you. | ||
| If I can just ask you to pause, Chris, another unwise decision. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| But I was thinking, I was like, this woman isn't going to pull the trigger. | ||
| It was a neighborhood that the houses were like right next to each other. | ||
| The police station was like down the street. | ||
| So you're betting that the meth head is rational? | ||
| I don't know what I was thinking. | ||
| I was just angry and I was high too. | ||
| So, you know, I'm not exactly in the best, you know, decision-making frame of mind. | ||
| But anyways, so she's like, she's like, take your fucking clothes off. | ||
| I want to make sure you didn't steal anything. | ||
| I'm like, fuck you. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Yeah, no, no, please. | ||
| I'm like, fuck you. | ||
| You're out of your fucking mind. | ||
| I was like, I didn't steal a fucking thing from you. | ||
| I was like, you're not going to shoot me. | ||
| So how about you just let us fucking leave? | ||
| And so, And I'm looking at my friend, and I'm like, dude, and he's just standing there. | ||
| Like, this guy was a piece of work. | ||
| So that night, so she's like, alright, get the fuck out of here, and she opens her garage up for us, and we leave, and my friend calls an Uber, and the Uber, like, her phone died in the middle of the ride, and so, | ||
| like, the trip got cancelled, and so the woman who was driving us was like, Uh, get out, get out of my car right now. | ||
| And, uh, we were like, uh, still like a couple miles from our destination, uh, his sister's house. | ||
| And, uh, he, and I was like, oh shit. | ||
| And he's like, oh, don't worry. | ||
| I have a spot we can go to. | ||
| And I'm like, okay. | ||
| And so we walk up the street, um, and there's this house and, uh, he's like, yeah, um, I forget who he said owned it, but, um, he's like, yeah, it's cool if we crash here. | ||
| And he tries to open the front door. | ||
| It's not locked. | ||
| He's like, alright, let me go around the back. | ||
| And he's like, he's rummaging around in the backyard. | ||
| And I'm standing in the front, just sitting on the steps, because I didn't think there was anything sketchy. | ||
| And this car drives by, and it kind of slows down. | ||
| And then it keeps going, and I'm like, huh, that was weird. | ||
| And then it loops back, and then stops, and I was like, oh shit. | ||
| So I had a backpack with me. | ||
| Grabbed my backpack, hopped the fence into the backyard, and I was like, hey dude, someone's here. | ||
| And he takes off, and I'm running, and it's like four in the morning in Northern California in the winter, and I'm running, and it's pitch black, and I fall into a pool. | ||
| This was like one of the worst nights of my life. | ||
| And I was in low-key opiate withdrawal, too, on top of all of that. | ||
| On top of the meth and the crazy girl pointing the gun at you. | ||
| Yeah, and that's why I was so irritable. | ||
| If I was on heroin, it probably would have gone down a lot differently, but I probably wouldn't have been as aggressive, but I was so ticked off. | ||
| And so I fall in the pool. | ||
| I see flashlights, like, coming towards us, and this guy has already booked it, like, over a fence, and he's gone. | ||
| Like, he is gone. | ||
| And so I, like, I get out of the pool, and I try to climb the fence, and I still have my backpack on, and, you know, like, soaking wet, and I couldn't climb. | ||
| It was too heavy, so I just shed the backpack and just hopped the fence, and I'm running down this hill. | ||
| And I run face first into a chain link fence. | ||
| It's like a dream sequence. | ||
| And my face is like, you know, so now my face is bleeding and my hands are bleeding from climbing the fence and I don't have any shoes on. | ||
| And so I am just so cold and so miserable. | ||
| And so there was like a hill. | ||
| And then there was a grocery store, kind of a little strip mall type place. | ||
| And so I go down there and I look for the sketchiest person possible. | ||
| Like, you know, just... | ||
| You can tell. | ||
| Yeah, using my radar. | ||
| And I was like, hey man, can I use your phone to call a tat? | ||
| Because I knew if I asked any normal person, they saw me with blood on my face and no shoes on. | ||
| They'd be like, get the fuck away from me, sir, please. | ||
| But no, they were... | ||
| They were really nice. | ||
| They let me use their phone and I called a taxi, jumped into the taxi. | ||
| I was like, please turn the heat up as high as you can. | ||
| And I went home and at first my parents weren't going to let me in. | ||
| And I was like, listen, I'm probably going to get hypothermia if you don't let me in, please. | ||
| I was like, I will do whatever you want. | ||
| I will go anywhere. | ||
| Just please. | ||
| And I remember going into their room and just wrapping myself up in a... | ||
| In a giant blanket. | ||
| And I was like, I'd never felt so relieved in my life. | ||
| Did you ever figure out who was chasing you? | ||
| I think it was someone who, like, because the house, it turns out the house was for rent. | ||
| And it was, it was, there was no one in it. | ||
| And so, I didn't, you know, of course, I didn't know that. | ||
| He said, yeah, this is a spot that we can go to. | ||
| I just assumed it was another dope fiends. | ||
| Another dope fiends place. | ||
| And, yeah, all that. | ||
| And, you know, one thing that really breaks my heart is, like, it's really the, yeah, one of the most, I'd say, difficult things that I had to accept that I did was, because my dad would, from time to time, figure out where I was and go to these, | ||
| you know, these crack houses and places like that and beg me to come home. | ||
| I remember one time specifically, he said, please, please, Chris, please come home. | ||
| Like, your family loves you, please, in tears, and my dad doesn't cry. | ||
| And I was just like, no. | ||
| And he's like, okay, well, at least take, and he gave me his crucifix and St. Christopher medal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I broke the chain, but I still have them to this day. | |
| And, gosh, even then it tore me up. | ||
| You know, because I just wasn't ready to stop. | ||
| And I didn't know, like, you know, I didn't want to cause this pain and suffering that my parents were feeling. | ||
| And so I drowned it out with just more use. | ||
| And, you know, to try to... | ||
| You can see how that happens. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So when you quit 2016... | ||
| How long did it take to get back your equilibrium for your brain to start functioning as it had before you started using opioids? | ||
| Honestly, I don't know that it has ever gotten back to where it was before, but I think that it took about, I would say, nine months to a year to get the... | ||
| Get the fog out and like, you know, have like, because like my memory was shot, just everything was like depleted. | ||
| And so in order to get, you know, to get those receptors and everything firing again to get my brain back to where it needed to be. | ||
| Yeah, I just, it was hard. | ||
| What are the long term, longer term effects? | ||
| I would say, I'd say memory loss is definitely a thing. | ||
| Equilibrium. | ||
| Like, I have a very bad equilibrium. | ||
| Like, people think I'm drunk sometimes because I'll, like, stumble. | ||
| But it's just like, no. | ||
| I'm just, yeah, my equilibrium's off. | ||
| And, I mean, obviously, you know, long-term, like, things like anxiety, you know, it's ironic because a lot of people use heroin to treat their anxiety. | ||
| But it causes, you know, again, it's the rebound effect. | ||
| And so, yeah, anxiety, depression. | ||
| Just, yeah, a myriad of bad things. | ||
| I have known people addicted to opioids and have heard that it affects your ability to feel happiness once you're off it. | ||
| Yeah, I would say that, yeah, I didn't, I always, and I, you know, and even to this day, like, have this kind of sense sometimes of, like, imposter syndrome. | ||
| Like, I, like, you know... | ||
| For example, getting a job in Congress working for Matt Gaetz and having Matt Gaetz compliment me and tell me and say all these nice things about me. | ||
| It's like, I don't feel like I deserve this praise. | ||
| I mean, sure, I'm a decent person. | ||
| But yeah, it took me a while to just understand that, yeah, I am worthy of these. | ||
| I have... | ||
| but I've done everything I can to try to, you know, repair the damage that I caused. | ||
| And so, like, so no, I deserve, you know, it's just, it's hard to force | ||
| to, you know, accept. | ||
| Yes, you were as bad as it could get, but you've turned it around. | ||
| And like, you know, I was... | ||
| I was kind of nervous about this interview, but then I was like, and I was talking to my dad, and he's like, Chris, you stopped using heroin. | ||
| You can do an interview. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Yeah, and I mean, you know, it was, and again, like, I go back to the intrinsic motivation. | ||
| It's just so important to want to level up in life. | ||
| And I think that like, you know, I kind of compare it to like the whole body positivity movement. | ||
| It's like, yeah, you're 40 pounds. | ||
| And I'm not talking about people with like medical issues. | ||
| But like you're 40 pounds overweight. | ||
| No, you're perfect just the way you are. | ||
| It's like, no, put the donut down. | ||
| Go to the gym. | ||
| Like, you know, stop coddling people who are, you know, who have a food. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| People who are filled with hate would do that. | ||
| I don't care what they dress it up as. | ||
| If you're encouraging someone to hurt himself, you hate that person. | ||
| Right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, it seems so. | ||
| Well, obviously. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you did that to your kids, here, get type 2 diabetes, here, become a junkie, you would be a terrible parent, but you would be acting of hate for your kids, obviously. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Sinister. | ||
| It is sinister. | ||
| And, you know, that's why, you know, like, you know, you see all these like Victoria's Secret plus size, you know, it's like, and again, you shouldn't, you shouldn't do, you shouldn't want to better yourself, you know, for societal acceptance, but for your own sense of, you know, happiness and well-being and purpose, | ||
| because you talk to any person who's overweight, you know, and like, again, without medical conditions, like, obviously, they're going to say, yes, I would prefer to be, prefer to lose a few pounds. | ||
| I mean, I would assume. | ||
| I've never talked to every obese person. | ||
| I haven't talked to every obese person on the planet, but the ones that I have talked to, yeah, I would like. | ||
| Well, they're tormented by it, of course. | ||
| They're tormented by it. | ||
| You don't feel good. | ||
| And, yeah, and like Victoria's Secret and these other places trying to tell them, oh, yeah, you're perfectly fine. | ||
| Keep doing what you're doing. | ||
| Don't change anything. | ||
| No, it's evil, obviously. | ||
| Let's just call it what it is. | ||
| All these things are. | ||
| They're abetting the destruction of human beings, and that's... | ||
| That's the worst thing you can do in this life, in my opinion. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Big Pharma is the closest thing to, like, you know, if you just want to talk about pure evil, like getting into the realm of demonically stick, Big Pharma is, I think, the prime example of what they've done to this country. | ||
| I couldn't agree more. | ||
| Chris, thank you for spending all this time and for being so totally honest about your story. | ||
| I never say I hope this helps people because it feels like so banal, but I do hope this helps people. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I appreciate it, Tucker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
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