The Peter Attia Drive - #12 - Corey McCarthy： Overcoming trauma, dealing with shame, finding meaning, changing the self-narrative, redemption, and the importance of gratitude

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atiyah Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah.

00:00:10.160 The Drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking,

00:00:15.600 along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with

00:00:19.840 some of the most successful, top-performing individuals in the world, and this podcast

00:00:23.620 is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality,

00:00:28.360 more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode

00:00:33.000 and other topics at peteratiyahmd.com.

00:00:41.300 In this podcast, I'll be speaking with Corey McCarthy. I haven't known Corey very long. I

00:00:46.300 first met him in April during a trip that Tim Ferriss and I took with a number of friends to

00:00:52.440 North Kern State Prison, which is a maximum security prison in California, about an hour

00:00:57.260 outside of Bakersfield. We did this as volunteers with Defy Ventures, and if you haven't heard of

00:01:03.240 Defy, or more importantly, Catherine Hoke, you should definitely go back and listen to her interview

00:01:08.900 with Tim Ferriss, which was done probably in January or February of this year, and we'll link to that

00:01:14.140 here. Defy is a program where volunteers like us go into prisons and participate in helping with

00:01:22.640 teaching prisoners certain skills in life. But I got to tell you, after just that one trip there,

00:01:29.740 I've come to realize that the volunteers get more out of that experience than the prisoners do. It's

00:01:36.620 hard to really explain what we experienced there. And on the drive home, there was about six of us in

00:01:42.640 an SUV that had a five, six hour drive back, including Corey. It was clear that it was going to be very

00:01:48.360 difficult to articulate what we went through with people who didn't share that experience with us.

00:01:53.160 But in particular, I was really moved by Corey's story. You see, Corey himself was once an inmate,

00:01:58.920 and he was invited on this trip by one of my good friends. And he asked, hey, you know, I know this

00:02:05.680 is kind of a small group of your buddies coming with you and Tim, but could we invite Corey? And of

00:02:10.600 course we said, sure. And it turned out Corey was just one of the most amazing guys. And in many ways,

00:02:15.980 the trip was stolen by him and his experiences. And on the way home, I realized that I wanted to

00:02:21.980 have a discussion with Corey that I wanted to be able to share with people. And I think in part,

00:02:26.260 it's so humbling to go through this experience that we went through at Kern. You start to realize that

00:02:31.760 some of the smallest choices can lead you down the wrong path. And so often there's a lot of pain

00:02:38.240 that's at the root of bad decisions we make. And I didn't know what Corey and I were going to talk

00:02:44.000 about, to be completely honest. We didn't plan for it at all. I didn't have a script. I didn't

00:02:48.680 have a single question written down. We just talked. And I'm really pleased with how it turned

00:02:54.000 out. And I hope that you'll take this on a leap of faith and listen to this because I find it

00:03:00.760 impossible that anyone listening to this won't get at least something out of this. Understanding how

00:03:06.020 your experiences can define you, understanding what forgiveness means of both yourself and others,

00:03:11.320 understanding how good people can do bad things. As you know, I'm very interested in longevity,

00:03:16.820 but if you've been following me on social media, you've probably noticed I'm becoming more and more

00:03:22.260 interested in mental health. And that's going to be kind of a recurring theme on this podcast,

00:03:26.980 because as I've stated before, and I think many people would sort of intuitively agree,

00:03:32.520 what point is there in living longer if your mind is not right, if you're not happy? So I hope that

00:03:38.300 you'll find this discussion half as enjoyable as I did. Corey is an amazing guy, and I'm really

00:03:45.480 excited to introduce all of you to him. So without further delay, here's my conversation with Corey

00:03:50.640 McCarthy. Hey, man. How you doing? Good. How are you? Pretty excited, actually. Yeah. Welcome to the

00:03:59.460 Big Apple. Yeah, I like it here. How often do you get down here? Every year for the past five or six

00:04:05.760 years, I've come with my daughter for Christmas time, and I have some friends I might pop in once

00:04:11.800 in a while. Remind me, your daughter's 16? 17. She graduates from high school next week. Exciting.

00:04:18.860 Wow. Yeah. I have a feeling we'll come back to that in a little bit. Thank you for making the trip

00:04:24.740 down from Buffalo today. This was something that from the day we met, I was like, man, there's so much I

00:04:31.160 want to talk about with Corey, and I figured this would be kind of an interesting way to share

00:04:36.160 the experience that brought us together and also talk more about your story. So how did you even hear

00:04:42.720 about this whole thing at Defy? Like what brought you out to California that day? So Devin is a friend

00:04:48.320 of mine, and that's kind of a story in itself and one that kind of ties my whole life story together.

00:04:56.020 It's like everything's kind of always happened for a reason. Because Devin, just so I'll tell my

00:05:01.220 back end of the story, Devin's a friend of mine in San Diego. I had told him about Cat Hoke and my

00:05:07.840 trip that I was planning to Defy, but totally by luck, because I happen to be walking into my body

00:05:12.520 work guy who also works on Devin. And as I'm walking in and Devin's walking out, I just mentioned it in

00:05:18.940 passing, and he was like, I want to come. And then the next thing I hear like two weeks later, he goes,

00:05:23.440 hey, is it cool if my buddy comes? To which I was like, sure. And then never knew anything else

00:05:27.700 till you arrived. It's so cool to hear like the, because that just adds to the weave of the whole

00:05:33.040 thing, right? So Devin and I only know each other because six years ago, a friend of his who knew me

00:05:40.940 reached out and said, hey, my friend's got like a big brother, little brother situation where he's a

00:05:46.400 volunteer for this kid, and the kid's in kind of trouble. And we think you might be able to talk to

00:05:51.360 him because of your background. So me and Dev met through that. And Dev, this was Dev's little

00:05:56.120 brother. It's not his biological. No, no, right. Yeah. And so and it didn't work out. But Dev and

00:06:02.140 I kind of remained associates because of that. And then his little brother, who's now in his 20s,

00:06:09.580 was getting out of prison. And I've kind of been his feet on the ground in Buffalo to walk Dev through

00:06:19.600 what to expect, what not to expect. So he emailed me the email, I think that you sent to him. And I

00:06:26.440 immediately told him like, man, like, I just did all this research on it. It looks really official.

00:06:31.240 I'd fly out there to do that. And I like, I didn't even expect for him to say that I was just kind of

00:06:36.780 saying, like, I'd love to do that. And he was like, well, let me ask. And then 10 minutes later,

00:06:41.300 he was like, yeah, they said, it's cool. That was in itself was like a challenge. And it's so funny

00:06:47.800 how such like a small challenge that you don't want to tackle turns into like a great thing. Because I had

00:06:53.400 to go, you had to fill out paperwork, right? And so did I. But the paperwork I had to fill out was much

00:06:59.740 more like I had to write a letter to the warden, a personal letter to the warden. And I had to find

00:07:04.660 New York State records for me that I had to forward to them. And because it's not like who I am, I got

00:07:12.100 rid of that stuff. So I had to go online. Thank God, you can find pretty much anything on anybody online.

00:07:18.240 But so that's how I ended up there. So Dev invited me. And I was like, really excited to go.

00:07:24.480 And on our end, the way this all started was Kat, who you got to meet Kat Hoke.

00:07:29.740 I have four friends who have known Kat for various periods of time. And so she's always

00:07:35.660 sort of been someone I knew about, but I didn't actually meet her. God, probably until earlier

00:07:41.200 this year. And it was only actually after I heard her on Tim's podcast that I had already reached out

00:07:48.580 to her by phone. But that's when I kind of reached out to her and was like, look, I want to come and

00:07:52.060 join one of the prison visits. And Tim had already agreed to do it. So then I just said to Tim,

00:07:58.900 I'm like, let's do it together. And we asked Kat, which prison do you think would make the most

00:08:02.700 sense? And she suggested that Kern would be a great prison to visit because of her amazing

00:08:07.660 relationship with the folks there. And so then it was just going to be me and Tim. And Tim was going

00:08:12.540 to invite a few people. And then that's, you know, I bump into Devin that one day and invite him. And

00:08:16.380 then a couple of my friends from New York who flew out. And so, okay, so we get there. Now,

00:08:21.780 I got to, I remember on the way up there, which was like, what, like a five or six hour drive or

00:08:28.380 some crazy. It was worse for you guys. Yeah. Cause you guys came from San Diego and picked me. I felt

00:08:33.440 like a jerk. Oh, that's right. We picked you up at LA. Yeah. Well, no, it was like somewhere outside of

00:08:38.740 LA, but yeah, that was terrible. But you probably would be the most skeptical guy going in. I think

00:08:43.640 me and Tim and Devin Jason, like we'd, we were a little more like not knowing what to expect,

00:08:49.500 but perhaps a bit more thinking, this is going to be really interesting and it could only be good.

00:08:55.340 And I, I got the sense like you felt like, let me see how real deal this is.

00:09:00.460 Devin asked me the same thing over the phone before we got there. And I actually said,

00:09:06.640 had Cat Hoke not had the history she had that I wouldn't have believed in the program or her.

00:09:13.640 And it's funny because that's kind of why we're sitting together. And it's kind of

00:09:16.940 why I think you believe in me is because I like, I'm not afraid to tell you about who I am or what

00:09:21.920 I've been through. And it's funny even more because my daughter just wrote that in her high school

00:09:27.540 apologia, that pain is how we're all tethered together. And I believe in that. Getting back to

00:09:33.600 it. I was definitely skeptical. I've seen programs in prisons. I've seen people who work in prisons and

00:09:39.720 I didn't necessarily believe I did my fair share of research. I listened to the entire podcast with

00:09:45.940 Tim, which was great. I read about the program. I went through their whole website. I really read

00:09:52.580 about you. I read, you know what I mean? And like, and I was like, all right, well, let's see.

00:09:58.020 It was interesting because I was really hoping I didn't get let down, but I was prepared for it

00:10:03.940 and I wasn't let down at all. So that's, I was definitely a little skeptical because there's

00:10:10.460 people, there's programs and there's people that don't work and they're in place all over the place.

00:10:16.240 You know, it's interesting. You make the point about how I didn't know that you had said that to

00:10:21.120 Devin, that it was actually Kat's quote unquote baggage that made her appealing and more trustworthy

00:10:28.060 to you. And I feel like in some ways when Kat and I finally met, that was a big part of the

00:10:36.560 connection was, you know, I was going through a really difficult time. She was going through a

00:10:41.300 really difficult time. And as you said, sometimes pain just tethers people and it's, you don't want

00:10:49.180 to be around people who are going to be very superficial and who are just going to tell you how

00:10:53.500 great everything is. And you, you want to be able to just let your guard down and sort of be

00:10:59.000 yourself. And I agree. I think that that's such a big part of Kat's efficacy. Now, interestingly,

00:11:04.120 I think she was equally efficacious even before the PEP scandal in whatever year it was, 2009 or

00:11:09.800 something. But if anything, all of the stuff that she's been through has only made her that much more

00:11:15.320 grounded in what she's doing and the importance of second chances and third chances and all these

00:11:20.180 things. So I want to talk a lot more about what we experienced there because I found it to be one

00:11:28.100 of the most important things I've ever done in my life. And yet I've never really been able to talk

00:11:32.020 about it since we left. I've said very little about it to even the people I'm closest to because I don't

00:11:38.180 know what to say. Have you been able to talk about it with anyone? So a lot of people want to talk to

00:11:44.820 me about it. The closest people to me tell me that they're so happy that I found where I belong.

00:11:52.400 Another guy told me, put your flag in the ground. Your people need a leader. Like, and really, I mean,

00:11:58.680 like I get overwhelmed just thinking about it, but, um, and not overwhelmed in a bad way, but in a really

00:12:04.000 good way. I've been able to talk about it, but it's also, I feel like I had a unique experience

00:12:10.640 because of my history and I was able to see and watch you guys as well as watch the inmates and

00:12:18.520 because I was skeptical. So I was watching, I've always been able to like watch and see what's

00:12:24.900 going on rather than talk. I feel like it's very helpful, but yeah. So I watched you guys have an

00:12:32.300 experience and I watched the inmates have an experience and I meanwhile had a really powerful

00:12:37.220 experience. But I think it's easier probably to talk to people who have been there and done it.

00:12:43.420 I thought that our drive back, cause we dropped Jason off back in Beverly Hills and then drove back

00:12:50.740 to San Diego. So we had like six hours together. I found that to be one of the most incredible road

00:12:57.580 trips of my life. You know, we listened to like the David Foster Wallace stuff. That was good.

00:13:02.920 It was just, it was like, yeah, this is water. And we just got into all of this stuff that

00:13:08.160 made so much more sense to everyone once they'd been through that experience. I just, I found that

00:13:14.220 six hours went by so quickly. I was actually sad when we got to San Diego. I was sad that it was over.

00:13:19.120 Yeah. I wasn't like in a rush to get home. It was probably the easiest road trip I've ever taken for

00:13:24.760 sure. Yeah. Comfortable. Yeah. A lot of huge chocolate too. That didn't hurt. So let's talk

00:13:33.740 about your story. I mean, I don't actually know that much. You've told me little bits, but I've

00:13:39.380 been deliberately not asking you too much leading up till today. Cause I wanted to basically experience

00:13:44.060 this as a listener would, but all I basically knew when you showed up was you're Devin's buddy.

00:13:50.740 you'd serve time in prison. That was it. You had a good haircut.

00:13:55.280 Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you a little kind of joke. So I spent eight, uh, seven years, three months and

00:14:01.920 10 days. The last time I was in prison and in prison, they give you single blade razors to shave

00:14:08.140 your face and head with. Right. And it's kind of a joke. You end up with more cuts than clean shaves,

00:14:13.840 but I still use a two blade razor and everybody kind of bust my chops about it because they're like,

00:14:20.240 dude, that, you know, you got seven blade razors and they have batteries in them. And, and I joke

00:14:26.200 because I'm like, well, you know, like I, it's kind of the way I like to live. I'm going to work

00:14:31.480 on the two for a couple of years and then I'll go to the three. I like, why, why wear out his welcome?

00:14:35.820 Like it still has value to me. Yeah. So I spent to kind of go back to the, I've recently, since we were

00:14:42.980 together, I kind of saw a lot more of the value that I have with what I've been through and kind

00:14:50.180 of, again, with that tethering us together stuff, right? The way I see it is we all go about our

00:14:55.800 business. Kind of, uh, one of the things that got me through that prison term was two words, endure

00:15:01.200 and overcome. And a lot of times that's kind of just like, okay, put your head down and keep moving

00:15:06.260 your feet forward. And we do that in life. And we do that when we meet each other and we don't say,

00:15:11.960 Hey, like, you know, I've been hurt. And so we're not able to like say that to the other person. So we,

00:15:17.360 we don't get to connect unless we do that. Right. And I'm able to do that. And I don't know why. And I

00:15:23.080 think there's value in it. So what I've been doing is going back through my own story to try to put

00:15:27.900 something together in honesty to help Kat Hoke or to help people like Kat Hoke. Like the idea was to

00:15:37.300 maybe put a book together and then take those funds to back something like that. And also give those

00:15:44.280 books to the guys in jail, like just here, like in jail, everybody returns and nobody, you never see the

00:15:50.020 guy who doesn't come back. You never see him. Right. And so it's like, you just negatively select.

00:15:56.160 And all you ever hear is, Oh, you know, I couldn't get a job and my parole officer sent me back. And I,

00:16:02.440 you know, my girlfriend and all you ever hear is excuses and really just traps. And that's why I

00:16:08.820 think those guys valued me is because they were like, hold on, you, you just came here with these

00:16:14.520 people and you were in here with us. Like, I don't know how that math works. And it's like, well,

00:16:19.820 I'd love to show you, you know what I mean? So anyway, I have a clear view of my life.

00:16:26.160 Like story. Um, but I grew up in a really nice home with like wonderful parents.

00:16:32.480 You grew up in Buffalo.

00:16:33.260 Yeah. In Buffalo, New York. And I have like a lot of really good memories, but my dad's an attorney.

00:16:40.080 My mom's an attorney working family. I have an older brother who's five years older than me.

00:16:44.600 I have an older sister who's three years older than me. And back then it was, I don't know, like

00:16:51.060 middle America type life, a small city, but we think we're big. I played a ton of sports,

00:16:57.080 really athletic. I think in some ways my dad favored that because I was like so into sports.

00:17:03.680 So me and my brother had like a big rivalry because he was like star Wars. And I was like,

00:17:08.440 let's play baseball or the more impactful stuff. I think the stuff that led me down the road I was on

00:17:14.120 was when I was, I think seven years old. And when you think about it, it's like a really young age,

00:17:20.480 right? Like, uh, I was seven years old and we were at a public or a minor league baseball game. And we

00:17:25.480 used to go to them. It was a family outing. It was like a cheap family outing, fun time.

00:17:29.880 And it was a cold day. And the reason I remember it was cold was because nobody was using the bathroom.

00:17:35.220 Like nobody was getting drunk. And so nobody was in the bathroom. And I, me and my brother

00:17:39.360 got up to use, I was going to the bathroom. He was going to get nachos and, um, he must've been 12

00:17:46.300 at the time. And I went to the bathroom by myself and some guy attacked me. Like there was nobody in

00:17:52.760 there. I don't want to get into like a ton of details. Um, in case I do sell a book, somebody can

00:17:57.920 look for it. Right. But so some guy attacks me and basically steals all of my innocence,

00:18:04.860 all of my trust and like adults, like looking back and I don't like to blame anything. But now

00:18:11.620 that I am looking back at this stuff, it's like that guy really did a lot of damage to a kid.

00:18:16.540 And, and the funny thing about like psychology is up until I've done some work to kind of

00:18:23.740 clean up my brain, I didn't realize like the story I've been telling myself was different from

00:18:31.000 the story that my, like, like in my story, I screamed, he ran. And then I left the bathroom

00:18:37.560 and like a cop came and they brought me to my parents. And it's not how, like in the real story,

00:18:43.940 like somebody found me in the bathroom with like blood on my neck and like choke marks and crying

00:18:49.820 and sobbing and like brought and found my family, you know? And I mean, like it still hurts, right?

00:18:56.340 Like I was a seven year old kid and, and it affected me in a lot of other ways. So then like

00:19:01.060 kind of fast, like not even fast forward the next day or two days later. And my mother tells me this

00:19:06.980 now for like a couple of weeks, I would put like a shirt and tie on every morning to go to school.

00:19:12.560 And I would say, well, like maybe if I'm good, like things won't happen to me. And it's like,

00:19:19.060 well, like you didn't do anything, dude. Like it's not, but so immediately, like I, I, I must've felt

00:19:25.300 like it was my fault somehow. And then, you know, I think they put me in therapy, um, pretty quick.

00:19:33.160 They didn't know what to do. My mother actually just like gave me a poem that she wrote about it.

00:19:38.200 And it's like, uh, it was about loss. Like, like I basically lost the little boy,

00:19:44.200 like that little boy was no longer on the planet. Like we went to a baseball game and we came home

00:19:48.380 different people. And that's, you know, that's crazy. Yeah. So you went from basically being an

00:19:54.500 innocent child to a wounded child. And then eventually probably what people in that, you know,

00:20:00.520 world of psychology would refer to as an adaptive child. And then a lot of times you get sort of

00:20:05.960 stunted there, you don't become a functional adult. So the adaptive child creates a bunch of

00:20:10.500 behavior patterns that are effectively guaranteed to make sure you don't get hurt again.

00:20:17.240 Yeah. Yeah. Um, I never heard the terms, but I, um, so when I was released from prison, I went,

00:20:25.100 I like, I hate to jump around too much, but I went and saw somebody and we kind of worked that out.

00:20:29.560 And he was like, and I actually went back to that same bathroom, same place and sat in that same

00:20:35.180 stall and was like, like, it was, it was almost goofy because it was like, nobody can hurt you.

00:20:40.280 Like you're, you're well equipped. And, and the fact of the matter is like, you don't even need to

00:20:46.180 be like, you're not a little boy. Like you don't need to. And, and I, and you're right. Like I lived

00:20:51.380 my life kind of from then on in a way of like avoidance of situations that I didn't feel safe

00:20:57.760 in, or, I mean, I'm not so sure, but I know that when I did the work later, it was like attack before

00:21:06.840 being attacked. Now, when I get in like a playing soccer or something, and some guy who's like

00:21:11.780 drinking beers before the game screams obscenities or something like, ah, and I'll be, I'll be like,

00:21:17.020 like, I'll just kind of laugh and smile and nod and be like, you have, you have no idea. And,

00:21:22.780 and I hope you go home and like are nice to your family, have a nice, you know what I mean?

00:21:27.220 So then what's amazing by the way about your story so far is that your parents were actually

00:21:34.620 thoughtful enough to realize that this was a big deal. I know that when a lot of people go through

00:21:40.400 these, these wounding events, which again is how I sort of refer to these things as, you know,

00:21:45.360 five types of wounding events that occur in childhood can basically, if not completely

00:21:50.800 dealt with, alter the course of your life. Your parents are actually the exception in that they

00:21:56.220 got it like right out of the gate. And I don't think it's necessarily because of how educated

00:21:59.720 they were or professional they were. I mean, I guess just they had good instincts, but the

00:22:04.620 tragedy is despite that, it sounds like it, it might not have been enough at the time.

00:22:08.200 So one of the questions I've been kind of asking myself a lot is like, what, what would

00:22:16.880 have helped, right? What could I have heard? And, and in that exploration, so I've, I've,

00:22:23.300 I've gotten, I don't have a good answer yet. Um, and I'm going to keep working on it, but,

00:22:29.640 um, I know what I didn't feel like, and I didn't feel valuable and I didn't feel, um,

00:22:38.920 I felt like something was wrong with me. And, and, and I think therapy kind of made it even more so

00:22:45.100 because other kids weren't in therapy. So it didn't make it easier, unfortunately. And I don't

00:22:50.580 blame the therapists. How long were you in therapy for? I'm not really sure. I just remember not liking

00:22:56.940 it. So it might've been a couple of years or less, but it, by the time you were an adolescent,

00:23:00.900 you were sort of done with it. Yeah. And, and so like a lot of people that know me from then

00:23:05.920 will call me, it's not precocious, uh, mischievous, right? Like, so I was like Dennis the menace. I

00:23:11.900 had literally had like white curly hair, like wore overalls all the time, which is funny. Cause I,

00:23:18.160 like my favorite pair had like paint splatters on them and I paint houses now. So it's like kind of

00:23:23.340 goofy. Right. But I don't know how long it was, but it didn't like a lot of good people tried,

00:23:28.800 you know, and I don't know what it would have took. So I was like really mischievous. So I think

00:23:33.200 they were like, well, he's all right. Like he rides his bike, he does tricks, he gets hurt. He comes

00:23:37.520 home. Like he's like, he's okay. And I think they probably in some ways wanted to believe that,

00:23:44.100 you know what I mean? I would, I would want to hope that like everything. So then when I was 12,

00:23:49.440 I was in Canada, I was in Fort Erie. Uh, we used to have a, I have some really good memories of

00:23:54.060 Crescent beach. I don't know if you've ever been to Crescent beaches in Fort Erie, but this kid

00:23:59.440 comes from down the street and says, uh, like nobody's around. The parents are at work and my

00:24:04.680 sister's like watching me, but she's sunbathing on the beach. And so my friend comes over and he

00:24:08.440 says, uh, I forget the name of the hardware stores, but like home hardware or something. Yeah. Yeah.

00:24:12.800 Yeah. Exactly. It is home hardware. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And they had the slingshots,

00:24:15.940 they had like wrist rockets. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like serious. Yeah. So he was like, listen,

00:24:20.120 I'm not, I think you have to be 12 to get them. And he was like, I'm not old enough, but you,

00:24:24.080 or I'm old, but I don't look old. And none of us had obviously ID. So he was like, will you buy it

00:24:30.200 for me? And I said, yeah. Like, and so we buy this wrist rocket and it's, it's kid stuff, but it's stupid

00:24:36.660 kid stuff. So we get like a couple on the train tracks up there. If you like dig underneath the stones,

00:24:42.060 there's like these hard or balls. Right. And so we dig them up and we take a couple of them and

00:24:47.880 there's a parking lot, like a hundred yards away. Great. Like target practice. Right. So we start

00:24:53.780 hitting like cars and within, I don't know, an hour, half an hour, 15 minutes of like a guy grabs me out

00:25:02.040 of the window of this cottage and pulls me out of the window of the cottage who ends up being an off

00:25:08.200 duty RCMP. Right. So he's going to arrest us. He was waiting for his, like, so we're getting

00:25:16.460 arrested. I'm 12 years old. I have, I'm like shirtless and my like swim trunks, the pavements

00:25:21.740 burning my feet. Like, I remember that, like looking up and being like, Oh man, like what's going on?

00:25:27.080 You know, like in my feet, I remember like hopping back and forth with this like man holding me.

00:25:32.140 And so the guy arrests me. They like, we get in the car, they handcuff us behind. They put us both

00:25:38.980 in the car and this guy punches me in the face. Right. The officer. Well, not the off duty officer,

00:25:46.140 but the uniformed officer punches me in the face. And I'm like, I remember falling over,

00:25:51.500 but when you're handcuffed from behind, you don't like fall naturally. So you just kind of like topple

00:25:55.500 like a top. I mean, that was impactful. Like I laugh about a lot of stuff, but it was pretty impactful.

00:26:00.940 And, uh, just to kind of shine a better light on the RCMPs. Like I recently tried to go to Canada

00:26:06.480 and I spent three hours at the border, but it was the most pleasurable experience I've ever had with

00:26:11.580 law enforcement. And it was because of the RCMPs. So not all RCMPs are bad guys. So that was like

00:26:19.020 the next kind of big, I got punished. You know, I probably couldn't go out of the house for the,

00:26:23.400 like the summer or something. I mean, my parents were also disciplinarians. They weren't

00:26:27.760 like, Oh, he's a, just let him do whatever he wants. But that was kind of the next thing.

00:26:33.040 And I think it was like my introduction, my like harmless introduction to law enforcement.

00:26:38.720 I'm sort of, um, struck by the random sequence of events that generally lead to one person going

00:26:47.580 down one path or going down another. I mean, just hearing you tell your story for the first 12

00:26:52.980 years of your life. I I've already sort of felt so many parallels to my life. And it's really

00:26:57.500 interesting. I remember getting caught though. It was not by law enforcement. It was just a guy

00:27:03.020 on the street when a bunch of my friends and I, well, one friend in my were, uh, basically hiding

00:27:09.220 in bushes, throwing rocks at cars, passing by and pinging them and pinging them and pinging them.

00:27:13.860 And then sure enough, this one guy gets out of a car and comes and just shakes the shit out of us.

00:27:17.440 And like, good for him. Cause what he basically was screaming at us, he's like, you little shits,

00:27:22.940 like you're going to give someone a heart attack doing this. As an adult, it seems ridiculous.

00:27:28.220 Yeah. As a kid, it seemed like I was probably 10 or 11. And what's interesting is like, you know,

00:27:35.700 your experience was probably a lot more traumatic because you just happened to get caught by a guy

00:27:39.560 who was also a cop, you know? And then on top of that, you got the bad cop that shows up. Right.

00:27:45.520 And it's sort of like, I don't know. I mean, again, I'm not justifying your actions or my actions,

00:27:50.900 but in the end kids do a lot of dumb things. And one of the things going back to Kern that

00:27:57.160 there are a hundred things about that day that blew my mind. But the saddest thing there that

00:28:03.520 blew my mind was when we played the game step to the line, which I want to talk about in more detail

00:28:08.440 later and Kat started playing the game of at what age did you have your first arrest? And I couldn't

00:28:17.860 believe how young some of these guys were when they were getting arrested. In fact, there was one

00:28:22.940 gentleman there who has been basically incarcerated in one form or another since he was seven years old.

00:28:29.640 Yeah. I have a picture with him when he said that. Yeah. Like I, I don't know. I was,

00:28:35.220 I went and hugged him, him and the other guy who had been, uh, in solitary confinement for over 12

00:28:41.680 years. Yep. I know exactly what you're talking about. Cause he was just diagonal to me and I

00:28:45.580 don't want to say his name, but, um, seven, I've probably mentioned that to five or six people since

00:28:51.580 even this morning. I talked about that guy, seven years old. I mean, he didn't put a gun in his hands,

00:28:57.720 right? Like if I recall, he and his friend lit a fire and it killed someone, right?

00:29:03.800 I'm not certain. It was either, somebody died and it was either a firearm or like a fire,

00:29:09.560 but there were, it was two kids messing around and one of them or somebody died and he, yeah, he,

00:29:15.900 I mean, he was an adult. He, and he, he actually had a business running. Like he had put together a

00:29:21.800 good, I don't know. It's just, uh, I mean, it's like a sad state of affairs really.

00:29:27.260 Okay. So after this brush, you're 12, you're now getting ready that you're in middle school,

00:29:32.940 you're getting ready to enter high school. Yeah, actually good prelude because that's kind

00:29:37.880 of when things right around then things got funky. I mean, I was a typical teenager in some ways,

00:29:43.540 girls like 12, 13 years old, like exploring that and exploring school and, um, still playing sports.

00:29:50.600 Yeah. Still playing sports competitively too, on like a couple of travel teams and stuff like that.

00:29:55.540 I was playing soccer and I mean, it's irrelevant, but yeah, I was playing a good amount of sports.

00:30:01.420 But so the summer before high school, me and one of my closest friends stumble across like his

00:30:07.560 parents pot stash. And to this day, two people who his mother actually just passed, but the father

00:30:13.080 I talked to all the time, good man, hard worker, teacher, smoked pot, right? But we found the pot

00:30:19.280 and it was a lot. Like it was like a, I don't know. It was a lot of pot. And so we took a hunk of it.

00:30:25.600 And, um, I think we smoked that pot pretty much every day that summer and it was great. You know,

00:30:31.960 we didn't have any responsibilities and, and I was supposed to actually, at the time I was supposed

00:30:37.140 to go to this Catholic boys school or Jesuit or something boys school in Buffalo and play basketball

00:30:44.100 there. And that was like, it was kind of set out for me and I was somewhat smart. And I said to

00:30:50.260 myself, well, I'm going to stop smoking pot two weeks before school. And then I said, I'm going to

00:30:55.760 stop smoking pot one week before school. And then I said, you know, I'm going to stop pot the day

00:30:59.780 of the first day of school. Yeah. And then I was smoking pot on the porch of school, right? Like,

00:31:04.220 the next very impactful thing that happened to me, and again, could happen to anybody. And it

00:31:10.860 happened very soon after that was I, um, and this is in a weird way. It's like, as a man, it's like,

00:31:18.780 oh yeah, like I want to puff my chest out. But like the fact of the matter is like, I was a 13 year old

00:31:23.820 child. And so we got, we got all stoned for the school dance. Right. And, um, like thinking about

00:31:31.320 how much pot we smoked is just like ridiculous, like, like boogers coming out of your nose from

00:31:36.740 bong hits, like just crazy. Right. So like, why would you ever want to do that? But, um, again,

00:31:43.960 I wasn't like, I was a child. So we get to this dance or on our way there, I see a front, another

00:31:49.040 friend of mine who I played soccer with. And he's like, he's got like a hash or something. So we smoke

00:31:53.760 some hash and I pull up to the school or whatever, walk up to the school and my school. And there's

00:32:01.100 some girl crying outside of the school. Of course. Right. There's always some girl crying

00:32:05.020 outside. Right. And of course, like, I'm like, what do you need? And she needed quarters to call

00:32:09.180 her house cause pay phones. So I give her these quarters. I remember giving her like a fistful

00:32:14.540 of quarters. I don't know why I had a fistful of quarters. And I don't know if my recollection

00:32:18.080 is all that clear either, but before I know it, we're like making out. And then the next thing

00:32:23.060 I know we're having sex outside right now I'm a virgin, but nobody knows that because when

00:32:27.800 you're a 13 year old boy, like you're not a virgin, even if you're a virgin. So everybody,

00:32:33.820 they let the dance out and we're outside on the lawn across the street behind a four foot

00:32:39.540 picket fence or a three foot picket fence. And like, I look up and, uh, at one moment I look

00:32:46.500 up and I'm like, wow, this is fantastic. Like the stars are out. It's a nice fall night.

00:32:50.440 And the next moment I like look up and there's literally like 30 people standing there, like

00:32:55.940 watching me have sex for the first time. She gets up and like runs. I like, I had a girlfriend at

00:33:01.860 the time who was in the dance. So then now she's like screaming at me and like, and I, you know,

00:33:06.780 I don't know what to say. I'm pretty sure I said like, oh, well shit happens. And like,

00:33:14.260 she like tried to hit me and then I left, but like what makes it even worse. And this is, it's funny

00:33:20.000 cause this is the stuff I would like to keep out of stories, but I think it's the stuff that's

00:33:24.140 important to keep in the story. So like we went out to dinner later, like after that. And I was,

00:33:29.100 I remember being like kind of in my own shell at that point. Like what, like what's like trying

00:33:34.780 with you and which girl? No, no, no. So me and like my buddies went to like pizza. Yeah. We went

00:33:40.960 out, we all went out to pizza and I'm sure I was like some kind of hero, but like, I remember feeling

00:33:46.180 alone, not like in a, like a sad emotional way, but I remember feeling like something happened and I

00:33:51.740 need to figure it out. I remember going to the bathroom and realizing that I had blood all over

00:33:57.200 me and then being like really embarrassed, but also really confused. Cause I didn't know like

00:34:01.380 was that because of, was that because of whatever. Right. And then being like, well, that's like

00:34:07.260 awful gross. And like, so now like my whole sexual identities, again, kind of screwy, right? It's

00:34:12.820 like, this is unusual. And then straight after that, the principal of the school or the Dean

00:34:20.880 of students or something told me that I needed to tell my parents what happened. And if I didn't

00:34:25.720 tell them in three days or something that he was going to tell them and I just couldn't,

00:34:32.000 I didn't know how to say, I still envy people who can like, I see them like mom, my kids found

00:34:38.960 my pot. You know, my friend did that in front of me to his mom and his mom was like, you're

00:34:43.560 a jerk. Like why? You know, but I remember thinking, and this is only a couple of years

00:34:47.780 ago, like, like you could tell her that, like, like how do you, I don't understand how you,

00:34:52.740 I quit a job when I got out of prison and it was like a somewhat good job. It was like

00:34:56.620 I was driving with the union driving cement mixers and I didn't tell my dad for two weeks

00:35:01.100 and we're close. Like we, we jog together every week. Like I still have a hard time with

00:35:06.260 it. So anyway, and I think my solution because of my history and feeling different and wondering

00:35:11.880 why, like a lot of, like, I constantly wondered why me, like what, what's, what's wrong with

00:35:17.280 me that this is like, that I get caught, that I get punched, that I get attacked, that I,

00:35:22.580 you know what I mean? And not to like throw blame at the world, but I just didn't understand.

00:35:27.280 I didn't understand chance. I didn't understand any of it. So I try to commit suicide and it's,

00:35:33.460 it's interesting to me because when we were in the car. During that three-day window, you mean?

00:35:37.280 Right. On the last day, I started drinking. I like, I stole some liquor from my parents'

00:35:43.420 cabinet. I took probably like half a bottle or a whole bottle of Tylenol, which we talked about

00:35:49.720 in the car and is a lethal dose of Tylenol. And I almost died. I was in the hospital. I mean,

00:35:55.680 my recollection is something like five to seven days, but I was in the hospital for a while because

00:36:00.600 they couldn't pump it out of me because it was already like in my liver. And I mean, you're a

00:36:06.860 doctor. Yeah, you got lucky. If they couldn't get it out with the activated charcoal or the NAC,

00:36:12.340 then it's sort of a watch and wait. And, um, about half the people, I get it. I'd have to know your

00:36:18.580 exact dose, but more than half the people probably would have gone into liver failure. And the only

00:36:23.480 thing that saves them is a liver transplant. Wow. I remember once taking care of a, a woman,

00:36:29.860 she was probably 27. And I remember this, she was absolutely stunning and beautiful. And I guess

00:36:35.200 she had broken up, her boyfriend maybe had broken up with her and she took a whole bottle of Tylenol.

00:36:40.060 And, um, by the time we got her in the ICU, I was in the surgical ICU at the time. And, uh, she came to

00:36:47.160 the surgical ICU from the ER because we, basically it was clear that her liver was going to bonk and she was

00:36:52.860 going to need a liver transplant. And we sort of had a three day window to get her a liver transplant.

00:36:58.280 And interestingly, she was certainly cognizant enough of what was going on to realize what was

00:37:05.660 happening. And fortunately we were, she was lucky enough to be one of the ones that got a transplant.

00:37:12.840 And God, I remember just being so sad for her as we took care of her after that transplant, because

00:37:19.140 you could just sort of sense the pain that she must've been going through to go that far.

00:37:24.540 Even though, yes, you could say, well, maybe that was quite impulsive in the moment, but

00:37:28.200 yeah, it's impulsive, but it's still, I mean, it's a very deliberate thing to do and a cry for help,

00:37:34.780 presumably, which, I mean, I'm guessing at this point, your parents have figured out something

00:37:39.900 is going on.

00:37:41.160 Yeah. You know, so you said you're lucky. And, and I know, I mean, as I sit in here in

00:37:47.500 front of you, I have like, I've had two brain surgeries I've had. The interesting part of

00:37:52.260 that is, is it's like, what, which list do you look at? Right. And it's kind of something

00:37:56.900 I say to people and to myself all the time, like, which list are you looking at? I think

00:38:01.400 we might've talked about that too. Like, do you have a car with a catch a check engine light

00:38:05.800 on? Oh, you have a car. That's great. Like that's, that's so much better than, and so

00:38:10.920 now it's, I've, I've kind of sitting here. I kind of realized that I have the answer to

00:38:18.160 the question, why me today? But I also know that I was very lucky throughout all of it.

00:38:23.860 And maybe not luck is the word, right? Like, so maybe it all plays out for a reason and I'm

00:38:29.760 alive and strong today to deliver a message. I don't know. You know, I know that I was

00:38:36.580 lucky then. I remember I drank charcoal for three or four days. I remember one of the things

00:38:42.340 I remember still is my dad carrying me to like get washed up. Cause I was weak. I was

00:38:49.240 like really, really weak. I remember having to take, um, what do you call it? Uh, like blood

00:38:55.340 tests periodically, like every couple of days when I got out of the hospital because they wanted to

00:39:00.820 check, I think liver enzymes. And I had to see a psychologist and I had to see the police and

00:39:06.460 things honestly, and like in all honesty, things really just deteriorated from that point on. I mean,

00:39:11.940 I was already at the like probably beginning stages of addiction, addiction, like any type of

00:39:17.280 substance. I don't think I did anything other than smoke pot and drink alcohol, but they take you

00:39:23.260 out of yourself, right? You don't solve problems through drug use. And, uh, and I found that to be

00:39:30.540 like helpful. And so that's kind of the direction I went after that. You know, my parents, I think

00:39:35.660 tried, they put me in countless, uh, they tried a lot of things. I mean, this to me is, you know,

00:39:43.380 sort of something I can talk about for hours because it's such an interesting topic as far as

00:39:48.280 the relationship between trauma and addiction. I mean, it is such a strong relationship,

00:39:55.320 which is not to say it's a one-to-one mapping. I'm sure there are some people out there who have

00:39:59.700 addictions who have never experienced trauma. And there are certainly people out there who've

00:40:02.920 experienced trauma that do not develop addictions, but I've learned a lot over the last couple of

00:40:09.360 years about this. And one of the things I've learned is the addictions that we tend to think

00:40:15.220 of, which are substance addictions are one thing, but there are many people who are addicted,

00:40:20.700 but it doesn't involve a substance like alcohol, nicotine, you know, narcotics, sex,

00:40:27.800 gambling. You, you start to get away from the substances into these more process rated

00:40:31.380 related addictions. And one of the things I certainly am familiar with both maybe personally,

00:40:36.240 but also professionally is just, you know, people who are addicted to work,

00:40:39.140 people who are addicted to perfectionism, people who are addicted to control.

00:40:42.320 And there's a great book called in the realm of hungry ghosts written by a guy named Gabor Mate,

00:40:49.380 who is a psychiatrist in Vancouver, kind of working on, you know, a part of Vancouver that,

00:40:54.640 that sort of sees a lot of inner city drug use. And, um, he's talked about this extensively,

00:40:59.940 right? Which is even from a neurobiological standpoint, most of us somehow numb pain with these

00:41:06.920 different things. And what's not entirely clear to me is, you know, why one person might have a

00:41:13.540 genetic predisposition to find alcohol, to be sufficiently numbing or a drug of choice to be

00:41:19.660 sufficiently numbing. Whereas another person might find stimulation from, you know, gambling or sex or

00:41:24.740 something to be the thing that completely bathes that part of their brain and dopamine.

00:41:28.780 But I remember when I went into trauma-based treatment, one of the things that just amazed

00:41:36.080 me was, you know, you have a roommate, right? So you've got, I'm rooming with someone who to this

00:41:40.180 day is now still one of my very close friends. And I remember when I showed up, it was like,

00:41:45.480 I was so pissed off. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be around anybody. I certainly

00:41:48.860 didn't want to have a roommate. I was like, I'll pay extra if I can not have a roommate. Right.

00:41:54.760 Yeah. And then you realize, man, you know, even though he and I had very different paths in life,

00:42:00.220 or at least on the surface, it looked that way. Actually, we're very similar, similar injuries,

00:42:07.200 similar responses. It's just when one person is addicted to work and the other person's addicted

00:42:12.820 to alcohol and cocaine, society will tend to reward one over the other, but it doesn't necessarily

00:42:19.440 mean that that person's healthier. Yeah. When we were in the car, one of the things that struck me

00:42:24.200 about you was your focus, right? Longevity. And that one of the things you had said was

00:42:30.500 geared towards not, uh, not any specific, like, I don't want to pigeonhole what you said, but it was

00:42:39.000 really impactful because it was like, well, you kind of need the whole picture. Like, it's just not

00:42:43.480 health, like, right. Health or health isn't just exercise and this and, you know, it's like you need

00:42:50.060 emotional stability. You need balance, right? It's almost like a ghost balance today. You know,

00:42:57.840 it's like, uh, and that's what addiction is. It's like, I'm going to put my head down to solve

00:43:01.440 everything and kind of soldier forward, but everything else kind of gets lost in the dust,

00:43:07.860 you know? Did you have any issues with anger when you were growing up? Did that, and the reason I ask

00:43:12.860 is like going back to the, the exposures that I've had to this topic, I mean, it's, um, but we got a

00:43:20.160 lot of ambulances going by here today. Yeah. That's, that's the, that's the beauty of doing the, uh,

00:43:23.980 the recording in New York city here is you've got, uh, basically you can classify wounds into these five

00:43:30.240 things, which are in the place that I went. Yeah. So it's basically like there's a trauma tree.

00:43:34.980 Okay. Okay. So the, the roots of the tree are the five things that are tend to be traumatic. So the

00:43:40.280 first of them is abuse. Abuse can be physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual. The next one is

00:43:45.720 abandonment. The next one is neglect. And then something called enmeshment, which is when parents

00:43:52.240 kind of treat kids like little adults. So this is a, an obviously oversimplification or a simple

00:43:58.040 example, but you'll see this a lot with a single parent raising a child and then basically confides

00:44:02.980 in that child as though they're the partner. Right. I've seen it. Yeah. You have seven year olds who

00:44:07.200 are having to hear about mommy's sex life or something like that, or her problems with her

00:44:11.120 boyfriend or something like that. And then the, uh, the, the fifth one is witnessing a tragic event.

00:44:16.500 So something that even if you weren't a part of it, but just witnessing something completely horrific,

00:44:20.360 like nine 11 to have seen that would have been devastating. So these roots of the tree basically

00:44:27.060 create shame. And then that shame, if not dealt with appropriately as an adult manifests itself

00:44:32.560 typically in about these four branches that we sort of think about, one of them is addiction,

00:44:36.580 which again, very broad definition here. This can be substance addiction, process addiction,

00:44:40.980 et cetera, codependency, attachment disorders, and habituated survival strategies. And embedded

00:44:49.320 within that is like dysregulated emotion. Right. So anger, emotional volatility, you know,

00:44:54.960 all of these other things. And so, you know, again, just kind of even listening to your story

00:44:59.400 in my mind, I'm sort of thinking about your tree, right? Okay. Which is obviously you've suffered

00:45:03.980 abuse, right? But what I think most people don't realize is when it comes to children, abuse and

00:45:10.240 neglect or abandonment always go hand in hand. And you might not think of it that way because you

00:45:15.440 had loving parents, but the reality of it is as a seven year old child, you are supposed to be

00:45:20.220 protected by your parents at all times. Now I'm not faulting your parents at all for the fact that they

00:45:25.320 didn't have the foresight maybe to say we should escort Corey to the bathroom. But the reality of

00:45:30.540 it is, and cause no parent can do that. You can't protect your kids 24 seven. But the problem is when

00:45:35.500 a child gets injured, there's an emotional response that says, look, where were mommy and daddy? Like

00:45:40.920 someone's supposed to protect me at this point. I initially had a very hard time accepting some of

00:45:45.880 that stuff on a personal level. And I'll tell you one of the most interesting and powerful things a

00:45:50.100 therapist said to me was picture your children at the age that you were at when you had the

00:45:55.940 experiences you had. And now imagine how much you're willing to not minimize the effect when it's not

00:46:02.580 you thinking about yourself. So in other words, you imagine your daughter is a seven year old

00:46:07.360 and that having happened to her and then contrast your reaction to that with your reaction to how you

00:46:15.940 treated it when it was yourself, which was, ah, you know, shit happens. You know, I got a bum rap

00:46:20.920 that day, but hey, life moves on. You wouldn't be feeling that way if it was your daughter. What's

00:46:25.640 the difference? Yeah. The difference is it's, it's a lot easier to minimize when it's you. Yeah. It gets

00:46:30.820 you through it. You know, it gets you through for sure. So what happened after you got out of the

00:46:37.900 hospital? So you're, you're in your first year of high school now. First year of high school. I never

00:46:43.400 even showed up for the tryouts for the basketball team. And then I wondered why they didn't just come

00:46:48.420 find me. I really, I really was like, what a bum, like what a bum rap. Like, why didn't they come

00:46:53.080 get me? Like that? I thought I was that good. And so they asked me to leave shortly after, leave that

00:46:58.740 high school. And I had gotten in, I mean, I did, I did goofy stuff too. Like there was a bookie in the

00:47:03.880 school, but I knew that he was the actual money. And you know, he said, oh, you know, I, I get the

00:47:10.220 bets from this old Italian guy. Don't mess with him. But I, and he, like these kids had a lot of

00:47:15.240 money, some of these kids. So some of them owed like 500, a thousand dollars. And so I said, well,

00:47:19.720 just give me half and I'll make sure you don't have to pay. Like I was doing that kind of stuff and

00:47:24.260 selling pod and, you know, I was like pretty popular. I got along well with the girls and stuff.

00:47:30.960 And that, all that became way more important to me than like pleasing my parents or teachers or

00:47:38.920 anybody. Really. I stopped going to practices. I stopped playing sports. How did your parents

00:47:44.780 react to that? I think my, my father's kind of a stoic guy. As I've been writing this book, I, I

00:47:50.800 mentioned talking about some of this stuff to him and he said, well, everything's good now.

00:47:55.220 Like, why don't we, he, you know, and I don't blame him for that. Like I wouldn't necessarily

00:48:00.580 want to dredge any of that stuff up. And so my dad, I think at the time didn't know what to do.

00:48:05.480 My dad's kind of the longterm response at the time, the one thing he settled in on was like,

00:48:10.900 if you follow certain rules, then you'll always have like a space in my home. And then, you know,

00:48:15.880 you'll always be my son and I'll always love you, but you can't live in my home if you sell

00:48:21.220 drugs and don't go to school. And my mom, my mom was, my mom took on like a tougher,

00:48:26.800 tougher love. My mom thought, uh, I think my grandmother had mental illness. So my mom

00:48:31.740 thought I had mental illness and I did something. I got drunk and I got into a fight and pretty much

00:48:38.860 a blackout, but I came home with my eyes split open, like, you know, and I was screaming and yelling.

00:48:45.920 So there's your anger stuff, right? Like, I mean, I would do that. Yeah. I hate you. You know,

00:48:50.920 like, uh, all that kid stuff, which is really terrible. But, um, they brought me to a, I don't

00:48:58.540 know what it's called. Um, like a child psychiatric unit for like, they talked to a therapist into

00:49:05.500 putting me, like getting me in there, but for a week maybe, or two weeks, I think was the amount

00:49:11.940 of time I was supposed to stay there. And that was a real eye opener. And you're what? 15, 16,

00:49:17.440 14. Yeah. 14 years old. So one of the common terms that you hear from my parents is, um,

00:49:25.260 out of control and what that's led me to believe, like from their perspective, that they just didn't

00:49:30.800 have any control and they didn't know what to do. And, you know, like I have a stepson who's 11

00:49:35.920 and, and he has, um, he's a great kid, loves the kid. He's like really cool, but he has some issues

00:49:41.880 with handling emotions he doesn't like. And so I know what like loss of control feels like. And I

00:49:47.700 know what like sitting up late and trying to figure out ways to help guide feel like too. And

00:49:54.200 when I say out of control, I mean like I would, one time I said I was punished, couldn't leave the

00:49:59.500 house. And, uh, I said, I'm going to take the dog for a walk, tied the dog to the porch and left for

00:50:04.380 two weeks at 14 and like out of control, like out of control. My dad still will joke to this day.

00:50:12.400 If I threw your brother out of the house, he'd sit on the porch until midnight and drag his trunk back

00:50:16.380 in at midnight. You know, he'd go down with this big trunk. And, and if I threw you out, you'd leave

00:50:21.000 with a stick and a sandwich and out down the street, you'd march like, you know, like, all right, cool.

00:50:26.080 See you when I get hungry. Your siblings are both older, right? I guess by the time you're 14,

00:50:30.380 they're almost out of the house. So me and my sister have been talking a lot. I mean, we,

00:50:35.280 me and my sister have always been close. My sister, I guess, slept in the crib with me when I was a

00:50:39.340 baby. Me and my brother always fought. I don't think me and my brother got along until I was 25.

00:50:47.060 And I think maybe a lot of that may have been because he wasn't the athletic son in the beginning.

00:50:53.160 Like there was like differences there. And then I think I probably in some ways blamed him or maybe my

00:50:59.640 parents may have blamed him, or maybe he felt like he should have been there for me on that day at the

00:51:05.340 baseball. Right. And then we fought like hard. Like we would, there was times when my parents were

00:51:10.340 like, one of you has to be like, you can't be in the same house together without an adult.

00:51:15.380 So around that time, he was really unhappy with me because looking at it like an adult,

00:51:20.780 like they lost a lot of attention. Right. My parents had to deal with me so much more because,

00:51:26.740 and they couldn't, you know, make it to all their games because they were getting Corey out of

00:51:30.800 school or taking Corey to therapy or, but my sister and I stayed really close and a lot of shit

00:51:38.320 started to happen when she went away to college. And she still to this day kind of feels like I

00:51:43.800 wanted to come and save you, but I'm glad. So you're, you're about 15 when she goes to college,

00:51:48.900 right? I think so. Yeah. 14, 15. I was born in October. She was born in March. So it's like,

00:51:53.200 it gets a little goofy. I don't, I mean, yeah. What were those last three years of high school?

00:51:58.100 Like when now both your siblings are out of the house? Right. So I go from child psychiatric unit,

00:52:03.200 I get out, I talk my way out and there was like a wedge between my parents cause my mom wanted to

00:52:08.840 medicate. My dad didn't. Shortly after that, I was like stealing my grandfather's car. He was senile.

00:52:16.300 The keys were in our house. So I would take the car. I got arrested in the car, like joyriding.

00:52:21.940 And I was, I was given the option to go to a juvenile rehab as opposed to going to jail. And I

00:52:27.540 had been, I had been in detention centers a few times too. So then I go to this child rehab and it

00:52:35.300 wasn't a bad place. Like I actually spend a decent amount of time talking to the kids who are in that

00:52:41.380 same rehab now. And, uh, I ran away from it after like two months. And it's one of the interesting

00:52:48.980 things, kind of a time-lapse story is I was sitting at a table with a bunch of these kids one

00:52:55.200 day. And one of them was giving me all these reasons why he wanted to go home. I want to see

00:52:59.420 my girlfriend. I want good food. I miss my family. And I literally heard myself saying all those exact,

00:53:06.820 like, I'm sure it's happened to you, but I heard it playback and me saying that. And then I remembered,

00:53:13.120 what did I do that day? And I couldn't see it. I was blind to it then. But the first thing I did,

00:53:18.540 I had like $10 in my pocket. The first thing I did was go to a corner store, get a 40 ounce

00:53:22.720 beer and a pack of cigarettes. And I drank the beer. And then I went looking for my friends and

00:53:27.360 the pizza and everything else. And as an adult sitting with those kids, it was like, geez, like really?

00:53:33.160 It was like addiction back then, even? That was the first thing you went to? So I ended up going

00:53:40.420 back. My parents talked them into letting me back in and not getting arrested. And I went back to the

00:53:45.980 rehab and I almost finished it. And I broke into a teacher's desk to steal the answers for somebody

00:53:52.420 else. Right. So that was like one of those things I saved. I was just trying to help somebody,

00:53:56.520 you know, in my head, like why I was a good guy. So they asked me to leave and I left. And

00:54:01.940 at that point, my parents had split up while I was in the rehab. And that was pretty impactful

00:54:06.380 too, because the way they did it was kind of terrible. And I'll joke with them to this day.

00:54:11.840 Like they sat down on either side of me. My mother said, we have something to tell you. My dad cried

00:54:16.620 for like the second time in my life and was like, your mother doesn't love me anymore. And I was just

00:54:20.900 like, what the fuck? Like, pardon me? And as a 16 year old, it's funny because like, I laugh about it

00:54:26.080 now, but as a 16 year old, I really went, hold on. So you don't love him, but you've known him

00:54:31.700 longer than, you know, me. How do you just do that? So, so all those times you've told me you

00:54:37.280 love me. So anybody can walk away at any time. Right. So there's your abandonment, right? Like,

00:54:43.980 uh, um, so I got out and I kind of bounced back and forth with parents and lived on the streets.

00:54:50.080 And then, uh, friend of mine's mother took me in. I love this woman to this day. Uh, she has five

00:54:57.100 sons. One of them lives here in New York. Now he's like massively successful as an interior designer.

00:55:02.340 Big shout out to Sammy, but their mother still says the rosary for me every morning. Right. So

00:55:08.100 there's your, how am I lucky? I just saw her last week and she said it, but she, you know, I, she had

00:55:13.480 one rule cause she had five sons, no girls in my house. Like you can pretty much do anything. I mean,

00:55:18.780 this woman went to work every day and she would come home in her uniform, make dinner for five boys,

00:55:23.040 six boys clean the whole house and fall asleep in her. She delivers the mail in her uniform and get

00:55:29.160 up and go to work. Right. Like, but she, she said, she cried and said, like, I need you to go. You,

00:55:34.940 you keep bringing girls in my house. I think we had a girl in the attic for like three days or

00:55:39.040 something. Her father came. It was a mess. And then I ended up in the clutches of like a predator,

00:55:45.640 a 15 or 16, something like the right around there. And this happened to be a friend of mine's father.

00:55:51.680 Right. So I, I mean, and he was like the cool dad, you know, like he was like, he had been to prison

00:55:57.080 and he was like, Oh, you can stay with me. And like, my son will stay there too. And, uh,

00:56:03.940 it's, I don't even like to talk about it. Right. But he, I remember I still hadn't done any real

00:56:08.660 drugs, just alcohol and tobacco. And one night we were all playing cards and my friend went to bed

00:56:13.760 and he says, do you ever do cocaine? And no. And he's, do you want to? And like, kind of,

00:56:18.880 yeah, sure. And so he like, within a few weeks he had me selling cocaine and like a bar I had

00:56:24.840 dropped out of any schooling I was in. You know, he gave me the keys to the car. He gave me a day

00:56:30.520 job in his deli. I mean, it only lasts so long for an adult to like work a job and sell drugs at night

00:56:37.480 and, you know, and I was 16. So within a short period of time, I was like really worn out and

00:56:42.800 really sick. And then, you know, like he, one night it was just me and him. And then, like I said,

00:56:49.400 it was like a really comfortable situation. He had made it that way and then it wasn't. And it was

00:56:54.380 really, really uncomfortable, but I had nowhere to go at this point. And I had no, none of my own

00:56:59.060 money or anything. Cause it's kind of like, this is an ugly term, but it's kind of like pimping

00:57:04.080 somebody. It's like, here's everything you need in life, but none of it's yours. Right. As soon as you

00:57:08.740 walk out the door, you're done. And I think people do that in relationships and whatever else.

00:57:14.640 So there was nights, there was a lot of nights where I was like 16 and we'd go out drinking and

00:57:19.700 we'd be looking for girls, but I knew what he was like hoping for. And I would just be like, I'm

00:57:24.420 staying out. And so it'd be four or five, six. And I'd be walking around the street until I thought

00:57:30.340 he'd be asleep. And then I found out that like creepy dudes are on the street too. You know, like I

00:57:35.380 remember the first time if you've never like walked the street as a teenager late, like early

00:57:40.840 in the morning type stuff, like, uh, you wouldn't know this, but creepy dads and minivans will

00:57:46.000 ask you where the party is. Right. And like the first time I was like, Oh, there's like a party

00:57:50.220 down, you know? And I didn't know like what, like looking back at the dude was probably like,

00:57:55.280 you fucking idiot. Like, but in those situations I had the courage to tell somebody like, get the

00:58:01.540 fuck away from me. But in a closed room in a house, like I didn't. And I, and that affected

00:58:07.900 me beyond measure. Like, it's just sort of amazing to me, this, the consistency in this

00:58:14.080 idea that predators have like a sixth sense for wounded kids. They have like wounded child

00:58:21.540 antenna. Uh, if you remember any of the sordid details from the, the Catholic church scandal,

00:58:27.880 I mean, the one theme that was relatively consistent there, cause there was the ubiquity

00:58:32.480 of the priests that were molesting these kids was unprecedented, but it's like, they always

00:58:37.420 managed to pick the kid that didn't have a dad or that was living in a broken home or

00:58:41.080 who there was always some problem. And it's, um, it's really, it makes it that much more

00:58:47.160 infuriating. They've got like this discernment. They can look at a person and realize that this

00:58:52.120 is a person that could be exploited. You give them something, attention typically, it could

00:58:56.640 be money. It could be something like that. You give them something that they are missing

00:59:00.240 and then you can exploit them. And it's, uh, it's such a, it's so, so painful to watch.

00:59:09.540 Yeah. You know, the more I've like explored it and, and to be honest with you, I've never,

00:59:13.820 I've, I've talked to one other person too, at this point in my life about that kind of stuff.

00:59:18.380 But I, again, I think the more I can show, the more I can help. And so that's like,

00:59:23.720 and the reality of the situation is I think the more I let down any guards I have, the more I can

00:59:30.720 let people in and the more I can let people in, the richer I'll be in people. And that's all I

00:59:35.780 really give a fuck about at this point in my life. And so that's why I'm doing that. But

00:59:40.000 I've also realized that these people do what they do very intentionally, you know? Um, and they,

00:59:46.860 they do know what they're doing. Like there's a plan behind it and it's, I'm still like, not the

00:59:54.020 person you want to put in a room with a pedophile. I mean, like, uh, you'll see the worst of me. I

00:59:59.200 would imagine my father prosecuted pedophiles for some time. And when I was waiting to go to prison,

01:00:07.220 he would tell me like, which guy, like, Hey, did you see such and such? And I'd be like, no,

01:00:11.880 but when I do, and then I'd be in solitary for like beating them up. I just don't have the stomach.

01:00:18.780 I don't know. Children are such like gifts and so vulnerable. And I think like, especially in my,

01:00:24.680 with my history, I, uh, I just can't see like anybody hurting kids. It's you do so much damage,

01:00:33.780 you know, you break into somebody's house and you steal their sense of self-security. Right. But like,

01:00:38.360 if you, if you like hurt a child, like you steal kind of their life, the life they could have had,

01:00:45.140 I suppose. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that's what basically happens is you, you take a kid who's

01:00:49.860 seven and you, you wound them severely enough. That's when their childhood stops. So whatever

01:00:54.800 comes after that is not a normal childhood. It's like I said, it's this adoptive childhood at best.

01:01:00.700 So this adaptive childhood basically takes over when in reality you should be able to enter

01:01:07.020 functional adolescence, functional adulthood. There's a lot of sadness there. Right. And that

01:01:12.520 was probably one of the last like major, it's funny, but I sat down with a therapist when I got

01:01:17.640 out of prison to like work out some more demons. Right. And you do a timeline. Right. And he was

01:01:23.260 like, Jesus Christ. He was like, dude, your life is like a trauma after trauma after trauma. So that

01:01:29.900 wasn't the last thing, but like the real, like the meat of this is like, in a lot of ways,

01:01:35.080 like turning it around. Right. Like, and that's why we met. Like, I mean, the fact that I'm,

01:01:39.480 but how did you end up in prison? So no, I'm not going to like skip everything. So at 19,

01:01:43.900 so that was terrible. I got away from that. I like turned the shower on one day, uh, while my friend

01:01:49.220 was there, while his father was there and I walked out and I never went back. And I, like, I hated

01:01:53.140 myself for that too, because again, that was my fault. Right. Like I didn't stop any of it. I like,

01:01:59.280 I continued to be there. It wasn't your fault. Well, no, no, no. I know that, but in,

01:02:04.140 but you're, you're, you're sort of telling yourself at the time that's your narrative.

01:02:07.560 So another thing that's kind of important is the only person I was listening to was me. Right. And

01:02:12.520 I created this narrative that was, and one of the reasons I really believe in Cat Hoke and her

01:02:18.780 programs is because it's about changing the narrative. And sometimes it's not as simple as that,

01:02:25.640 but that's one of the major things. Like what list are you reading from? Right. And so at 19,

01:02:33.340 this is like another kind of trauma. I was at a, um, and I'll, I'll be frank. Like I went to a high

01:02:39.840 school hockey game with a bunch of my friends to fight some people. Some people had jumped to one

01:02:44.500 of my friends. He was in their neighborhood. They were coming to our neighborhood for this hockey game.

01:02:48.920 None of them showed up. So we were there spectators watching one of our friends play a game

01:02:53.740 after the game, most likely provoked the opposing team came out in front of the rink and started

01:03:01.780 hitting one of my friends with sticks with their hockey sticks. Right. And I don't remember anything

01:03:07.680 from this point on, and I still don't, but I was actually just with somebody that does. And there's

01:03:12.920 newspaper articles about it, but we all ran back to help. I ended up with seven, I think, fractures in

01:03:18.880 my skull, three in my face, broken orbital bone and no bleeding, like external bleeding. Right. So

01:03:26.540 my head was swelling like rapidly. Nobody knew what was wrong. I wanted to go home. I didn't know where

01:03:32.740 home was. And here's like the, what list are you reading stuff? My flight here, I flew next to the

01:03:40.180 cousin of the doctor who saved my life. What? She sat with me. So this doctor rushes in to the

01:03:46.560 emergency room and at Buffalo ECMC hospital, Erie County Medical Center. And he's like the MacGyver

01:03:52.640 of brain surgery. Right. He gets there. He busts me. I don't have ID on me. He says, I don't give a

01:03:57.320 shit. Like the kid's going to fucking die. Drill a hole in his head. So he gets going. He saves my life,

01:04:02.520 does two brain surgeries. I walk out 10 days later. He was pretty surprised. Right. And on the way here,

01:04:09.940 I'm chatting like the lady next to me, Hey, why are you going to New York? And like, all right,

01:04:14.100 like I'll give you. Why do you have those huge scars on your head? Yeah. Well, I think I had a,

01:04:17.740 I think I had a hat on at the time. She's in private practice as a drug counselor. So we started like,

01:04:23.260 you know, we hit it off. I was like, I'm going to talk about this experience I had with this guy.

01:04:27.720 And, and she's like, Oh wow. You know, like that's what I do in Buffalo. Like I work with drug addicts

01:04:32.440 and this and, and I was like, Oh cool. And I was like, yeah, you know what? Long story short,

01:04:37.000 that's the story that I look for today. Right. That's the stuff that I'm like, Oh, okay.

01:04:43.580 There's my light bulb. Right. So she, like, I was able to tell her, Hey, tell your cousin. I wrote

01:04:49.540 him a letter probably six years ago and sent it to the hospital, like thanking him. But I was like,

01:04:54.660 tell him that like my daughter's set to graduate next week. I'm flying to New York. I own a business

01:04:59.500 site. Like I have employees who love me and come over for Christmas. Like, and it's because he saved

01:05:04.600 my life that night. You know, that's like my days. My days are filled with this kind of like, wow

01:05:10.580 stuff, man. They really are. Right. It's no bullshit. And, um, it's, it's like, Oh, you should

01:05:16.740 write a story. Like it is like the whole thing is kind of an ongoing crazy fucking story. So I had

01:05:24.720 this brain surgery. Um, for a while I remembered, I was in a coma and I remembered the coma for a while.

01:05:32.060 And it was like, I was back, I was back in that home with that abuse, with that guy at 16 and I

01:05:38.960 couldn't get out of the hospital bed. Like I couldn't get out. And, uh, my father took me in

01:05:45.320 after that and he was like, you're going to come live with me and you're going to get your GED and

01:05:49.180 your license before you get any stupider. I remember him saying like those words and I did. And I got my

01:05:54.800 GED and that's generally equivalency. I remember I scored like almost perfect and everybody was

01:06:01.640 like, you're such an asshole. Like why, like, why couldn't you have just gone? Like you just had

01:06:06.200 two brain surgeries and you get this like great score. Like what did they do? Fix you. Uh, but I

01:06:12.420 also remember very vividly walking out of the house with all my friends and my dad looking like

01:06:17.480 really sad and upset. Like he was going to lose you again. And I, he was, we went to a cemetery and

01:06:25.220 smoke pot. Right. And I remember that. And I remember going to a bar and I still had like a

01:06:30.000 stocking cap from the, uh, for the staples. Cause I still had staples in my head. So I couldn't have

01:06:36.260 been home more than what, three, what, how long do they take them out? A week. Yeah. So I, I was in a

01:06:41.020 bar and a club with staples and probably cause I thought it looked real cool. Right. Like a,

01:06:46.200 like the white DMX of the time. Right. So, so, so I remember some girl like grabbing my head and

01:06:54.160 being like, Oh my God, you're alive. Right. And like, what the fuck? Like I still have staples in

01:06:59.760 my head. And now I look at it. I'm like, what an idiot. Like, what were you like? Why not just get a

01:07:05.700 little rest, dude? You didn't even have a job to go to. But shortly after that, I started to get in

01:07:10.680 real legal trouble. I got a couple thousand dollars from a settlement. I was such a jerk

01:07:15.600 that I like actually went to court and said, I didn't like see anybody do it, which I didn't.

01:07:20.460 Right. But like, I had to be like, you know, but this was the sort of street ethic. Yeah. And

01:07:26.060 honestly, up until then I didn't have a violent street. Like people used to joke and be like,

01:07:30.440 yeah, surfer Corey. Cause I like really just wanted to like smoke pot, have a good time and not think

01:07:34.700 about how I hated myself. Right. And, um, after that, it was definitely if you like, if I think

01:07:43.480 you're going to hurt me, I'm going to hurt you first. Because the reality is I literally almost

01:07:48.500 died and it was by the hands of other people and it was intentional. Right. And so I think I got like

01:07:54.780 $10,000 and I bought a couch, a BMW and some cocaine. And I was like set. I was ready to take over

01:08:00.900 Buffalo. And, uh, I think I got arrested seven times that year and each arrest has its own sad

01:08:08.100 story and its own kind of just kind of depravity. And like, maybe someday we'll, we'll talk about

01:08:14.820 all those, but like, we'll at least save that one for the book. Right. Yeah. Well, I don't know.

01:08:20.020 The saddest part about it was two things. One was it always smelled like urine and kind of bums,

01:08:25.340 right. Jails. And I would wake up in the morning and, uh, I would know where I was because of the

01:08:30.880 feel of the bench on my back before I opened my eyes and I wouldn't know why I was there.

01:08:36.040 And that was terrifying. And I was like 19, maybe 20. And it was like, what's happening?

01:08:42.680 Obviously. Like when we talked about out of control at 14, like this is like, I don't control this

01:08:48.320 anymore. And the other thing was I woke up in my bed one morning and it smelled like the jail. And I

01:08:54.700 knew that it wasn't the jail anymore. Right. So it smelled like urine and, you know, throw up. And I

01:09:02.140 was like, well, like old alcohol. And I was like, well, it's not your roommate. You know, it's like,

01:09:07.040 this is you. And those are two kind of impactful things from that time. And then kind of jumping

01:09:14.040 forward to 22. I had just turned 22 and, uh, I was selling a lot of drugs. I was kind of, uh,

01:09:23.540 in my own head, I was like a somewhat of like a big shot. We sold a ton of pot.

01:09:28.460 We had a lot of guns too. Um, and our house got raided, but I wasn't in it. And my roommate at the

01:09:34.920 time kind of took the fall. He went as far as to say everything in the house is mine and the stuff

01:09:40.080 like Corey doesn't even live here. He just, his name's on the lease because like when his

01:09:44.160 girlfriend throws them out. And so he was actually, I like a lot of Buffalo cops. I'll say that in case

01:09:51.560 anybody ever hears this, but some of them screwed up and they put the wrong number apartment on the

01:09:56.880 warrant. So the whole thing fell through and like, they let my friend go, but they found 13 guns in

01:10:02.260 the house. Like things were now obviously way out of control, but I still had this weird set of

01:10:08.680 ethics and I would only, I would only harm people that were in that life. I started robbing drug

01:10:14.760 dealers. So like guys would come over and be like, I got mushrooms and I'd be like, well, how much do

01:10:18.720 you have? And they'd be like 10 pounds. And I'd be like, I'll take it all. And then I would just take

01:10:22.140 it. Right. And kind of by hook or by crook. Right. So I grew up with lawyers and politicians and stuff.

01:10:28.680 So I like knew how to be sneaky as shit. So I would do these sneaky things and I would also do it by like

01:10:33.320 force. I robbed these guys who happened to be like a weird working for a terrorist cell in Buffalo.

01:10:41.300 And my father was like livid. Cause he was like, these guys were monitored. Like you robbed like

01:10:47.400 their weed branch, you idiot. Like they're going to, and they did, they tried to kill me. They

01:10:51.620 stabbed me with a screwdriver, like a 30 guys. I had a sneaker mark on my face for a week and a half.

01:10:57.860 Like I got beat up really bad. And then I robbed the guy because he was dating my girlfriend and I

01:11:06.300 robbed him for some cocaine. He was like dating my, my, the mother of my daughter. And I didn't even

01:11:10.860 say anything about my daughter because at that time it was like everything else. Right. And so I had a

01:11:17.860 daughter when I had the brain surgery, my girlfriend was pregnant with her. There's just so much in

01:11:23.160 there. It's like, so much was happening. I mean, I ruptured my stomach at one point and got clean for

01:11:30.460 a while and went to a homeless shelter for kids on my own. And like, there was a lot of like clean

01:11:35.220 periods in there too. And there was like a lot of trying. And when I got to the end of that, like

01:11:41.660 trauma and this kind of shitty story, it was like, if I don't play the game, I can't lose. Right. So I

01:11:47.860 stopped at the point that I ended up going to prison, I had stopped trying. My daughter's

01:11:53.160 godfather, we sat down on a bar porch and he said like, what are you doing? Like, this isn't who

01:11:58.240 you are before you went to prison. Right. And he was like, like, why are you behaving like this? And

01:12:03.620 I said, dude, like, I'm tired of trying to be good and failing at it. And, and I leave a lot of that

01:12:09.960 stuff up and I don't do it intentionally, but like I had tried, I'm trying to like get to like the,

01:12:15.180 the meatier stuff. Right. So yeah, I had a, I had a two-year-old daughter who lived with me at that

01:12:21.420 time that I went to jail seven times in one year and her mother, you know, she would leave and then

01:12:26.980 I'd talk, I'd get sober and clean and, but without any type of help, just kind of on my own. And I'd

01:12:32.260 stop selling drugs and I'd go to work and she'd move back in. And then like, eventually we'd have

01:12:37.200 some type of fight and, uh, she'd move out and then I'd get crazy again. And were you still in

01:12:44.320 touch with your parents much? I mean, your dad, obviously you mentioned he was at least in the

01:12:48.620 loop when you robbed the weed arm of the terrorist. So what about, and your parents of course are at

01:12:54.120 this point now divorced. Are you closer to your dad than your mom at this point? So I almost don't

01:12:59.200 talk to my mom at all. The only reason from 16 to like 19, I barely speak to my mom at all.

01:13:07.180 She said when I worked at that bus terminal, it was like selling Coke that I would call her once in a

01:13:11.140 while. I'd be like, somebody needs legal help. Will you talk to them and like put them on the

01:13:14.240 phone? And I think probably subconsciously, I just wanted to like hear her voice and hope she would

01:13:19.080 be like, are you okay? Can I come get you? But me and my dad, I was definitely a big disappointment.

01:13:25.080 And my dad's kind of always. By the way, that's such an interesting point. As you're telling that

01:13:28.000 story, I'm trying to imagine being your mom because listening to everything you're saying, it's like,

01:13:33.940 I think a listener will put themselves in your shoes, put themselves in your parents' shoes,

01:13:39.220 you know, whatever. And in that moment, I was thinking about your mom. I was thinking about

01:13:44.220 being your mom and how frustrating that would be to get that call. And it's so interesting to hear

01:13:49.060 you say that all you wanted was to hear her voice and hope that she would say, are you okay? Can I

01:13:53.940 come and get you? And as I'm thinking about it from your mom's point of view, I'm thinking how pissed

01:13:57.500 would I be in this situation? Like, and I realized like, oh my God, that's, that's the problem,

01:14:03.000 right? It's like, I wouldn't think at that moment to be vulnerable, to put my guard down,

01:14:08.080 to put my feelings away and say, how can I help you? Even for your own, even for your child. Yeah.

01:14:14.140 Because look, it's, and I'm saying this, trying to be empathetic to the pain your parents are going

01:14:19.040 through, which is what the hell happened here? You know, cause they, with the best of intentions,

01:14:25.020 they probably cannot figure out at this point that this all goes back to what happened to a seven

01:14:29.380 year old boy in a bathroom. Yeah. And I don't, I mean, obviously I'm not saying that either to say

01:14:34.240 that that, but now that I've become highly obsessed with this topic and these stories,

01:14:40.840 and this is kind of like all I read these days. Like, I don't, I mean, I mean, I read scientific

01:14:45.020 papers in the day, but the evenings are basically reading about trauma and addiction and all of this

01:14:50.220 stuff. And your story is such a poignant example of that. I mean, it's an extreme example. Let's be

01:14:57.160 honest. I mean, most people fortunately will not go through one 10th of the trauma you have experienced

01:15:03.480 to date in their entire lifetimes. But that doesn't mean that the trauma that they're going

01:15:09.040 through doesn't also dramatically alter the way they interact with the world as adults. And

01:15:13.280 I don't know. I mean, there was this movie once with, um, God, what was it called? Jeez.

01:15:21.780 Somehow like the movie was basically about doing history over and over again. Like

01:15:25.620 you could redo life, but you could see like how one small change would lead to a dramatic change.

01:15:32.560 Right. And it's like, when I hear these horrible stories and you know, I think back to the stories

01:15:38.700 of the people that I know when I was going through these sort of recovery paths, you always had those

01:15:44.460 moments where like almost everybody had this inflection point where something really, really

01:15:50.440 bad happened and it doesn't have to be bad or, you know, as we used to try, but you got capital T

01:15:55.980 trauma and small T trauma. Okay. You have a lot of big T traumas, but sometimes it's just an

01:16:01.680 accumulation of little T traumas that sort of bend somebody up. But these big T traumas,

01:16:07.740 they, they are the ones that sometimes have these profound effects in a relatively short

01:16:10.840 period of time. And I don't know, it's just, it's really, I think it's just sad. I get sad

01:16:16.780 for you, but I get sad, not that that's, you know, the purpose of the exercise, but, but I

01:16:21.100 get sad for your parents too. Cause I can't imagine how helpless they'd feel watching someone

01:16:26.140 who they love unconditionally self-destruct. Yeah. As a parent myself now, and then like

01:16:32.920 as a step parent, you know, I think about that stuff a lot and I like deal with a lot

01:16:36.580 of people who are addicted and like who one guy I was trying to help like hung himself

01:16:41.960 and it was because he didn't want to quit his job to go to rehab. And my son lives with

01:16:46.100 me and I got to pay the rent. And I said, look, we'll figure that out, but you're going to

01:16:51.140 die, you know? And he's like, and he hung himself. It's like, but like for your child,

01:16:57.280 you know, like I'm so, so lucky, so blessed that my daughter is, um, on her own, a very

01:17:05.380 amazing young woman, like on her. And then when I say on her own, like she, she was the

01:17:11.540 driving force of any success she's had in her life. How old was she when you went to

01:17:17.000 prison for that long stint? Yeah. So she, she was three. And so I was up until then

01:17:23.620 I was like a dad, but I wasn't, uh, a good dad in any, you know, like I, I would, her

01:17:29.920 mother worked in the mornings. And so I would take, I was with her every morning, which was

01:17:34.320 great. And like, I have some really cool men, like we had tea time, you know? So I wasn't

01:17:38.840 like, I think of a lot of this stuff and I, and I wondered why people would still like

01:17:43.000 come see me in jail and write me and like all this stuff. And it was because I wasn't

01:17:46.500 a terrible person. Right. And as we learned in Kern, a maximum security prison, I didn't

01:17:52.880 meet too many terrible people there either. No, no. Right. Yeah. Current. So she was three

01:18:00.080 when I went to prison. Impactful things about that were like, I spent a lot of time with her

01:18:06.000 before that. It wasn't, it was obviously not caring about myself, but, um, she told me

01:18:12.780 I robbed this guy. He was a drug dealer. He told me he was going to kill me. He actually

01:18:17.560 like, it sounds stupid, but he like set me up. He paid somebody to put me in a car and

01:18:22.860 bring me to a place. And like, unbeknownst to me, he called me a bunch of times, told me

01:18:27.380 he was going to kill me. I told him like really frankly, a number of times, like, please leave

01:18:32.600 me alone. Like I have a gun in my pocket. I'll shoot you and you'll go to the hospital

01:18:36.800 and I'll go to jail. And like, I, this is a terrible way to end the day. And that's

01:18:41.680 what happened. Like he pulled up, he jumped out. I jumped out and I shot him in the chest.

01:18:46.840 He ran away. I ran away. Later that night, I called a friend of mine. He told me to turn

01:18:52.400 myself in. I did. And that was December 21st, 2003. On Christmas, I called my father's

01:18:58.420 house. My daughter was there. And I remember very vividly him saying, Mackenzie, do you want

01:19:03.540 to talk to your father? And her saying, no, he'll be here. And thinking, no. Right.

01:19:11.420 Meanwhile, she just wrote her like acceptance letter to college based on that, like experience,

01:19:17.180 like starts with that experience. She knew how to grab people, I think. Then the next one

01:19:22.380 was, I called one day and she said, I thought you were never going to leave. And she was

01:19:27.100 four maybe. Right. And it was true. Like I had told her that and I had meant it, you know,

01:19:33.340 thankfully. So I got sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for shooting a guy for

01:19:40.820 assault, like pled guilty to assault. When you shot him, did you, I mean, do you think he

01:19:46.100 was going to die? Maybe what were you, were you thinking? Like, I want to make sure he does

01:19:49.500 not die, but he gets the message. I mean, was there any, no, the reason I asked this

01:19:54.240 by the way, is when I was at Hopkins, I mean, it was a very busy trauma center. And so I

01:20:01.380 don't, I think the numbers back then were more, probably 16 penetrating traumas a day

01:20:05.280 on average, 16 gunshot or knife wound a day on average. It's probably less today, but probably

01:20:10.140 not much less. Call it 10 a day even. But what you realize is 95% of it is drug related.

01:20:17.480 But what I couldn't believe was the ubiquity of death. I mean, I just couldn't believe how many

01:20:25.660 people could kill each other. And of course it's quite random. Like, you know, the bullet, you know,

01:20:30.280 I see guys that came in that were shot 16 times that would live. Clearly that guy wasn't intended

01:20:34.900 to live. No. And then you see guys that get like this one random shot that like happens to cross

01:20:40.420 their pelvis and that's the one that kills them because it hits like their iliac vein. And you know,

01:20:44.700 that's a almost lethal injury. And yeah, like we'd get guys with single gunshot wounds to the chest

01:20:50.120 that got so lucky, you know, like they'd be out of the hospital in three days. This guy, um, again,

01:20:55.700 medical, like medical miracle. They said, uh, I think, I don't know because it wasn't any of my

01:21:02.140 business to know, but I think it bounced off his sternum and deflected down, but like right in front

01:21:07.720 of his heart never reached terminal velocity. So there's another example of if you had been

01:21:13.700 two inches to the left of the sternum, if you know, a bullet going through the heart is a lethal

01:21:19.180 injury, non-negotiable. Um, there are lots of other ways to kill somebody shooting him in the chest,

01:21:25.000 but there's another example of like, you could, you could add up the ledger of all the things that

01:21:29.620 went against you. And then all the times the wind was at your back. Yeah. And a lot of times in the

01:21:34.900 same instance. Yeah. Right. Exactly. You know, that gets even crazier too, like how that played

01:21:40.620 out. But, um, that continues to happen. Did you know you had hit effectively your rock bottom at

01:21:48.320 that point? Like when did the gravity of that situation? I wish I had, believe it or not. So

01:21:52.920 I didn't screw my head on straight the next day. No, no, I get it. But did you, I guess what I'm

01:21:57.820 asking is, cause it doesn't mean that you, I was relieved. You were relieved to go to prison. Yeah.

01:22:02.220 I, I knew that this was going to end. Like what was happening was going to end. A major

01:22:07.960 change was going to like happen. Think about how sad that is. It's terrible. Think about how sad it

01:22:13.160 is. I didn't realize that, that the idea that you could finally go someplace where there's structure,

01:22:18.180 you're probably safer inside than you were outside. A lot less choices. Yeah. I wasn't going to like,

01:22:25.020 you can't, you can't continually disappoint people if you're already like a, I joke today,

01:22:29.760 but I'm like, people have such low expectations of me cause I'm an ex-felon that like I say,

01:22:34.080 please and thank you. And they're like, what a fucking gentleman he is. And they're like,

01:22:37.340 yeah, yeah, you got it. He lifts the toilet seat up when he pees. I'll put the dishes in

01:22:42.180 the sink. Right. Yeah. So yeah. Sentenced to eight and a half years. Um, and it wasn't the end. Like

01:22:48.120 I slept for two weeks when I first got there. I spent, were your parents with you when you were

01:22:51.820 sentenced? Yes. So here's a real kind of a funny one. Um, my parents were with me the whole time.

01:22:59.500 This first one's not funny. My mother came to see me and like, like the amazing mother she is,

01:23:05.180 she said, this is what she says to me. I think the first time she visits me in jail after I shot

01:23:09.860 somebody. Okay, honey, you need to start thinking about what you're going to do when you get out of

01:23:13.480 here and how you're going to put the pieces together. And to her credit, she didn't slap me

01:23:19.420 because I said, mom, the sooner you realize that this is who I am, that I'm going to get out and

01:23:23.720 I'm going to rob people and I'm going to go back to jail and I'm going to do drugs. And

01:23:27.020 this is my life. The sooner you'll feel better about this. And I'm sure I think she probably just

01:23:32.660 said, Oh, okay, honey. Like basically you're not there yet, but we'll work on it, you know? And

01:23:38.120 like came back with a good attitude the next time. And that's what I believed. And that's that self

01:23:43.120 talk. And that's that bullshit. Like, you know, like it's my fault. I stayed. I, you know,

01:23:48.040 and that's what Cat Hoke and that program, that's what Kern, that's a big part of their curriculum

01:23:53.140 is like, no, let's turn that around. Like maybe there was some things you did, but like,

01:23:59.360 what are we going to do now? Right. And, uh, so they were both there with me. Both of them are

01:24:04.920 attorneys. My father is a prosecutor for 30, 40 years. My mom was a defense attorney, right? My mom's

01:24:10.460 like a hippie. My dad's like a just kind of straight shooter. He's not a politician. He's not a,

01:24:15.760 he's just kind of a good guy. Right. They get this fantastic lawyer. Obviously he does

01:24:20.940 it for free. Like one of Buffalo's best lawyers is like, no, I'm going to do it for you guys

01:24:24.740 because you're, you're good people or whatever. And he gets me this deal for eight and a half

01:24:30.020 years. So they pull me in and I have to agree to it. And I'm like, okay, but it's like,

01:24:34.680 agree to this on the spot. Right. Like trial. What was the alternative? So you pled to assault,

01:24:40.800 I pled to assault, pled guilty to assault. I was charged. I see you're going to be charged

01:24:44.280 with attempted murder, attempted murder, assault, and possession of a weapon. And there was a 50,

01:24:49.660 50 chance that I could have won because I had brain damage because he came after me because

01:24:53.760 there was a call record because there was witnesses. However, I still had a gun in my pocket. Like I got

01:24:58.920 up that morning and put a gun in my pocket. So even if I did win at trial, I'm going to still be found

01:25:04.560 guilty of having a firearm and intending to use it. And that carries a minimum of like seven years

01:25:10.480 or something like that. It was like, if, even if I win and I get the best possible outcome at seven

01:25:15.900 years. Right. So it was like, okay. Um, or possibly more. So they, they work out a deal,

01:25:21.860 you know, like back room deal, like eight and a half years in the, like it is. And keep in mind,

01:25:27.480 another thing that we saw at Kern, which is how many of those guys would have never had the

01:25:30.840 opportunity you even had there. Right. Right. Yeah. You know, like a good lawyer. They wouldn't have

01:25:35.160 had the good lawyer. They wouldn't have had the parents there. They wouldn't have had somebody

01:25:38.320 looking out for their best interest. And that's how those guys are going to like,

01:25:43.160 those guys end up on a path to life in prison. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's,

01:25:48.160 they need like an advocate. Right. So my mom, my mom says, take the deal. My dad says no.

01:25:55.840 And that's kind of the funny story is like, so here is like the two people I probably respect the

01:26:00.280 most on the planet. They're split. Yeah. And they're split debt. Like, come on. Like,

01:26:04.700 could you just fucking agree? Go in the back room and argue and come out with a unified answer.

01:26:10.580 Yeah. Like, ah, and the funny thing is like, as far as advice and intelligence and stuff,

01:26:15.680 like not that my, I don't think my mom's smart, but I feel like my mom's emotional and I feel like

01:26:20.660 my dad can separate himself from that better and make more informed decisions. I went against them.

01:26:27.440 I was like, nah, cause in this instance, and this is kind of indicative of my father and mine's

01:26:31.980 relationship. He was like, no, like you're special. Like you're not supposed to get eight and a half

01:26:37.400 years. Like you're somebody supposed to come in at this point and say, he's a good kid. Give him five

01:26:42.160 or something, you know? And I could see it in his eyes. And I was like, I'm taking this deal.

01:26:47.040 So I did. And, um, you know, I, I went downhill in there for a couple of years. Like I still had

01:26:52.860 something to prove. What happened your first night in there? The first night or like first night in

01:26:57.400 prison or first night in jail? No, first night in jail. First night in prison. First night when you,

01:27:00.920 when you, when it's all like the worst day I think I had that was repeatedly was like the first day

01:27:06.580 because they, they have a thing in New York state prisons called the draft and they, they pack you

01:27:10.900 up. They tell you, they say, Mr. Atiyah, you're on the draft, pack all your stuff up. You'll be going

01:27:15.780 on a bus tomorrow. And you have no idea where. And every time, I mean like prison's like a new high

01:27:21.440 school. Right. And so new cool kids, new cool kids, new bad kids, new good kids, new, you know,

01:27:28.220 teachers to impress new, you know what I mean? Like the whole thing, but with like knives and

01:27:33.520 you know what I mean? And heroin instead of like pot. So it's like, okay, this is serious business.

01:27:38.860 Like there's like, there's a bunch of first nights. Cause you, you go through a real dehumanizing

01:27:44.120 process of the whole shave the head thing, the whole naked shower thing. Like that's real.

01:27:49.860 Like it's not bullshit. Um, and then you don't, you have like one pair of pants, one pair of

01:27:55.260 underwear and you have no idea where you're going. Then you go to another jail and you stay there for

01:27:58.920 like two months until you end up at the place you're going to go. And I, the place I was going

01:28:03.540 to go was a super max correctional facility in New York. And it was, it looks like a spaceship from

01:28:10.020 the inside. It actually looked a lot like, not like current cause it's only, there's one hallway

01:28:14.380 that connects everything. But it looked like a, like a spaceship in some ways, man. There's

01:28:19.020 like this huge bubble and this one big, really big, like, uh, Arian type looking dude, like

01:28:25.780 could see it. And he was like, yeah, you fucked up. Like, cause I was just like, kind of like

01:28:30.000 wide eyed. Like what, what's like, what's happening? You know, dragging like a potato sack

01:28:35.000 of my clothes. And he was like, yeah, you fucked up, dude. And I was just like, I mean, I don't

01:28:41.720 know if I was like terrified, but I was just like, what's around the corner. Like gotta

01:28:46.420 be aware. Yeah.

01:28:50.160 Do you remember the first night there at your ultimate destination?

01:28:54.940 No.

01:28:55.540 You have a roommate?

01:28:56.520 Yeah.

01:28:57.040 Cellmate?

01:28:57.640 Yeah. Cellmate. Coach. Coach was a piece of shit. I hope he hears that. Uh, um, yeah.

01:29:09.420 And he, he, he was actually a good guy to me then, but he was high. He was like a pedophile

01:29:13.380 that was hiding and like told this great story about how he had like smashed some guy with

01:29:17.920 an ashtray because he tried to rob a restaurant, but he ended up in jail for it because he hurt

01:29:23.080 him so bad. And he was the next military guy and he was the coach of football and, and it

01:29:28.500 really, he was like a coach because he had no kids and he was a creep. Right. But, um,

01:29:32.780 How do guys tell their story in there? Cause if you're a pedophile, I'm guessing you don't

01:29:37.700 want to advertise that at all. No. So they typically hide and they, they hide in different

01:29:42.200 things. They hide, they hide in religion. All right. Like the Catholic church kind of

01:29:46.580 thing or, um, like a black pedophile would most likely be a, like in a religion, like

01:29:52.160 a black or a religion, like a Muslim, right? Like in jail, that's how things are kind of

01:29:56.160 segregated, unfortunately. But, and then like the, the chaplain's like assistant is most

01:30:02.120 likely a pedophile who spends all his time with like the chaplain trying to reform his

01:30:07.340 soul or whatever. Um, but they tell a story, you know, they come up with a story. Everybody's

01:30:12.420 got their story. Right. And in jail, it's kind of like Facebook. Nobody knows you from

01:30:17.340 home, you know, like what's the chance that you're going to see your buddy from like Ontario

01:30:21.600 street, you know, like really? I mean like, so like everybody's got their own, like, no,

01:30:26.080 I didn't steal purses. I was like a, I was like a car thief for the Albanian mob. Like

01:30:31.160 no, okay. But you don't have any cigarettes. Like, all right. Like, sure. You need to

01:30:35.400 borrow a stamp. Like, it's kind of a common joke. Like, oh yeah, you need to borrow a

01:30:38.700 stamp, but you were a kingpin status in this, you know, it's bullshit.

01:30:44.360 So how did you navigate those seven years? I mean, I know that it would take us another

01:30:48.120 seven hours to get through probably everything you went through emotionally and probably

01:30:55.280 physically and spiritually for that matter. But what's the general arc? Sounds like it

01:31:01.600 went down before it went up. It did. I was reading a journal on the flight here of when

01:31:07.680 I got clean in jail. Like I kept a journal off and on for the whole time and I have them

01:31:14.560 all and they're kind of interesting, sometimes frightening to read. But first, you know,

01:31:21.180 continued drug use. This might sound like a naive question because I remember being surprised to see

01:31:26.900 how much drug use there was in prison. But given how much can be controlled in prison, I was sort of

01:31:32.100 surprised at how easy it was to get drugs in there. A lot of it comes in through like visits. A lot of

01:31:37.700 states, I guess, don't have like contact visits, what they call contact visits where you can kiss and

01:31:42.340 hug and stuff. But a lot of stuff comes in from guards too. Like one of my buddies who's successfully

01:31:47.560 released from parole a couple weeks ago in Rochester, New York, I still talk to all the time.

01:31:53.340 He had a kitchen worker, a civilian, they call him, bringing him in drugs for money. Because it's,

01:32:00.820 it's, I mean, what's the best currency in prison? Because cash, does cash have a lot of value?

01:32:05.420 None. Cash has no value really, because you can't do it. I mean, you got to get it out. It's like a job.

01:32:10.320 Yeah. Cigarettes, cartons of cigarettes, they call them crates, stamps, and like books of stamps,

01:32:17.480 like a hundred stamps. There's a lot of gambling in prison, like football gambling and stuff like

01:32:22.220 that. And they use stamps. And then you can send money to somebody's family, loved one, whatever.

01:32:30.940 So that's, that's the real currency beyond like inside. There's people that are selling like a

01:32:37.540 good amount of heroin or now it's probably suboxone and stuff like that in prison. And that's what they

01:32:43.920 do. You know, send your girlfriend's going to send my girlfriend $150, 10 times, right? Or whatever.

01:32:51.340 Yeah. That's the drugs. Yeah. So it went down. Like I was in and out of solitary a bunch of times for

01:32:57.760 like, I, you know, I didn't have a lot of problems in jail. Uh, a lot of, I think the scars on my head

01:33:02.920 and like, I don't know what it was, but a lot of guys didn't give me a lot of trouble. And that was,

01:33:08.180 I'm grateful for that. I'm really grateful for that. Did you have to, uh, or did you feel pressured

01:33:11.900 to become affiliated with any of the gangs? Presumably they would have loved you in the

01:33:16.100 Aryan brotherhood. Yeah. Um, I hated those guys. So here's a, it gets kind of a goofy. So I'm in this

01:33:22.100 jail called Elmira Correctional Facility. It's one of the New York state correctional facilities,

01:33:27.220 real old Shawshank Redemption-y, right? It's like the big kind of corridor, 44 cells

01:33:32.660 long. I could paint you the picture, but you, unless you've seen like a movie, you can't

01:33:37.000 so, so they have a porter that like delivers food and brings you water to like wash your

01:33:42.580 body with and stuff like that. And the, one of them was a guy named Leroy Brown. I remember

01:33:47.880 cause of it, right? Yeah. And he was big and he was black and he was, but he was cool as

01:33:51.940 a fan too. But, uh, he said, and then the other one was like this Aryan dude. Right. And, uh,

01:33:57.480 and he was like big and bald and white. And so the Aryan dude sells me three cigarettes

01:34:01.780 for three stamps, but he never brings me the cigarettes, but I gave him the stamps.

01:34:06.380 So I'm thinking I got eight years to do. I like, I can't allow this to happen. Right.

01:34:12.520 And this was my attitude. So this is kind of how I got through the first four years.

01:34:16.800 And so they opened the doors for Chow or whatever. And we're all supposed to come out in that line

01:34:20.840 and line up. And I go running to where he is and just jump on him like a rabid. I was probably

01:34:26.180 like 150 pounds too. Right. Like I have stretch marks from pull-ups because I was so skinny when

01:34:30.900 I got to jail and I'm not a big guy. Right. So I like jump on this guy and like start attacking

01:34:37.880 him and the cops come and they pull me off. And like Leroy comes to my cell later. He's

01:34:42.060 like, dude, what the, like, what the fuck is it? Like, why would you do that? And I was

01:34:45.360 like, Oh, he, he played me for three stamps. Like he, and Leroy was like, I like, I'd have

01:34:50.040 gave you the cigarettes too. Like you didn't have to do all that crazy shit. And I remember

01:34:53.580 telling him like, nah, man, I got eight years to do. Like I can't. And so ever since then,

01:34:58.640 I really didn't like a lot of those. I don't like, um, gangs are really an ugly, ugly, it's,

01:35:04.380 it's more pimps. It's more pimps of hurt people. And the other thing that's really impactful

01:35:09.380 is a lot of the people that were in those detention centers with me when I was a kid

01:35:12.900 and stuff are all in jail, right? They're just hurt kids, man. And gang leaders are pimps.

01:35:19.620 They sign kids up who are scared and afraid and don't have anything. And they tell you, we'll

01:35:23.940 give you stuff. We'll give you somebody to talk to. We'll be your friends. We'll walk around

01:35:27.560 with you. And then honestly, what most of them do is they get drugs from somebody else.

01:35:31.540 Like the leader will get the drugs and then they'll tell the kid, you got to go cut that

01:35:35.880 guy. He's a snitch. And if you don't cut him, we're going to cut you. It's like, what

01:35:41.420 the fuck? Like, why are you? I was amazed at how often I heard that story. All the time,

01:35:46.720 right? We were together when we got to Kern. Remember how they said the day before we got

01:35:50.500 there, there was a huge attack on the guards, complete lockdown. It was a couple of guys

01:35:57.320 that were a day away from getting out. Yeah. Like they were working in the front of like

01:36:01.800 non-secure part of the building. They could have walked out and they probably got hurt.

01:36:05.860 But like, and I remember talking to the warden and saying, you know, like a sort of naive

01:36:10.620 idiot. I'm like, I don't understand how a guy who's been in jail for 15 years, who's three

01:36:15.600 days away from getting out would attack the guards, which it just, it doesn't, you know,

01:36:23.360 the only explanation is the guy doesn't want to leave prison. And he's like, yeah. Or the

01:36:27.560 other explanation is he was basically told he had to do this or he was going to die or

01:36:33.360 yeah, exactly. Or someone he cared about was going to die. And it's like, they just didn't

01:36:37.120 want to let their gang member go. You know, what just hit me as you were saying that it's

01:36:40.520 like if, if, if, because it didn't make sense to my mom either. Right. And it didn't make

01:36:45.820 sense to my dad and it doesn't make sense to people. Like, so if it doesn't make some

01:36:49.460 sense, like instead of getting mad, something's wrong, you know? So like one of the things

01:36:54.640 that like may help is like, what's wrong or, you know, and that's said a lot, but like,

01:37:00.200 what can I do? I know something's wrong, you know, because, because if it doesn't make

01:37:04.500 sense, it's obvious like something is wrong here. Like you don't, that's so unnatural

01:37:09.580 of an act to hurt yourself in that way. Right. To stay in the environment, to hurt somebody

01:37:14.880 that's going to give you more time. And it's just, I don't know.

01:37:18.740 So during the first four years, your daughter basically is going from the ages of three to

01:37:23.000 seven. Yeah. And how often did you get to see her?

01:37:25.700 Again, thankful to my parents, I got to see her every month. And I think one of the major

01:37:30.980 reasons that I started to turn things around or one of the things that was most impactful

01:37:35.120 to me is I was, I was calling her every Wednesday and my, she would go to my father's house every

01:37:41.260 Wednesday night and I would call home and I would talk to her every Wednesday. And every

01:37:45.000 time this kid, how long were you allowed to talk?

01:37:47.420 30 minutes about, I mean, I could call back again and thankful today now in today's prison

01:37:53.320 system, it's so overrun with gangs that a non-affiliated guy has a hard time even using

01:37:59.340 a phone ever. Like just, you can't like, unless you're, you know.

01:38:04.740 Back at the prison where you spent the majority of your time, what percentage of guys would

01:38:08.340 be unaffiliated?

01:38:09.080 A lot. Here's a funny thing. So since 14 to 25, 25 is after the first four years of my

01:38:16.200 incarceration, I didn't live in one place for more than six months, right? Including

01:38:20.500 prison. Like they moved me from prison to prison because I was acting up every six months or eight

01:38:26.540 months maybe, you know. I didn't stay in any place for long and my daughter, what was impactful

01:38:32.820 to me was that somebody would hand me drugs on a Wednesday afternoon and I would forget

01:38:40.180 to call her. And the thing is with me, I don't know about anybody else, but I wanted to be

01:38:45.640 a good dad, right? And I wanted to be a good son and I wanted to be a good brother. But when

01:38:51.300 it came time to choose those things, it didn't become a choice between one or the other. It

01:38:57.460 just became like, well, I had, I've come up with a list of reasons why I should and why

01:39:03.840 it was okay. And a lot of times it would, it was momentarily, it was like somebody say,

01:39:08.900 hey, here's 25 of these, right? And I'd say, okay, give them to me and I'd eat them all.

01:39:14.260 And then I'd be coming back from the yard at 10 o'clock at night and I'd pass the phones

01:39:18.580 and I'd realize I hadn't called. And then I went to solitary and I wrote my father and

01:39:23.560 said, can you tell her the phones are broken? And he said, nah, I'm done lying to her for

01:39:27.380 you. Like if you want to lie to her, you can lie to her. And I couldn't.

01:39:31.520 How long were you in solitary the first time?

01:39:33.600 Every time, other than one, 30 days. And I think it was probably like six times. One

01:39:39.120 time was 48 days or something.

01:39:42.220 We met these guys who had been in solitary for years at a time, including one guy who I think

01:39:47.360 had spent 12 or 13 years in solitary and he was only 30 years old.

01:39:51.120 He was only 30, huh?

01:39:52.260 Yeah. What's solitary like? I mean, first of all, what are the dimensions? I mean,

01:39:56.960 what are the rules of engagement?

01:39:58.980 In all honesty, I think the worst part about solitary for me was getting there. So you're,

01:40:05.700 you're kind of like marched through a compound or through a prison handcuffed and you're not

01:40:10.460 treated like kindly or softly in any way, right? Like you're a threat at this point. You're,

01:40:16.180 you know, you're handcuffed behind your back and your arms are up and probably rightfully so.

01:40:20.020 Right. But when you get there, the odd thing to me is it's like reminiscent of the abuses that I've

01:40:26.760 suffered over my life because it's a very, very tight rope to walk. Like you're in a room with

01:40:33.560 probably five guards. They're all gassed up and you have to take your clothes off like piece by piece

01:40:39.980 while you're facing a wall and it's directions. Like take your left sock off with your right hand,

01:40:45.320 which in that instance become very charged. Right. And it's like, Jesus Christ, I hope I don't

01:40:53.340 do this with the wrong hand. And if you do, like your head goes off a wall and then you're like,

01:40:58.500 and then you're on the ground and then you're back up and then you're trying to do it again.

01:41:01.660 And like, it's like somebody slapping you in the head, telling you, answer a question,

01:41:05.520 answer the question. Like, and so for me, that was like really difficult. I just, like I said,

01:41:10.940 I think it brought me back to like abuse when I was a kid, but, um, being in the cell wasn't the

01:41:16.760 worst thing for me. How big is the cell? Oh, geez. Maybe eight by 10, six by 10, something like that.

01:41:23.900 It wasn't, I don't know. It was big enough that you could be on a bunk, which had to be at least six

01:41:28.040 feet. Cause I'm six feet. Right. So probably seven feet long, maybe five feet wide. So you

01:41:34.960 couldn't put your arms out in the width of the cell in one or two. I had been in one where I

01:41:39.860 couldn't. And that was in Buffalo. That was like a, an extra special solitary room really. And you're

01:41:46.560 in there 23 hours a day. Yeah. Most of the time. I mean, like if it's in New York, your wreck is

01:41:51.480 outside. So you'd be a damn fool to go out to it. The funny thing is if you go out, if you ask to go to

01:41:56.360 wreck in the winter, they get mad and they leave you out there for two hours. And like, literally

01:42:00.740 you're jumping jacks, like you're doing jumping jacks just to, just to stay warm. But like, you

01:42:06.260 don't have enough calories in you to be doing jumping jacks to stay warm either. The food was

01:42:12.120 an issue, but like I read a lot. I probably read a thousand books or more when I was in prison. I

01:42:18.940 don't know. I'd say more. I just read and read and read. And the thing is when I read these

01:42:24.180 journals too, like even in those first couple of years, I was trying to be better, but I wasn't

01:42:28.560 deducting that like, okay, to be better, maybe you need to subtract the drugs and alcohol. Like

01:42:32.740 that just can't be an option anymore. Like maybe you've abused that. Right. It's so interesting that

01:42:37.580 you say that my brother is also a prosecutor and, uh, he has a couple of boys. He's always toyed with

01:42:43.900 writing an article called everything I learned about the criminals I prosecute. I learned from my sons

01:42:49.260 because he's like, basically like we're all kind of born as criminals. We're born like, yeah,

01:42:55.580 yeah. Like we're, you know, we have to learn, you know, once we develop a prefrontal cortex,

01:43:00.940 we have to learn the boundaries and the rules and things like that. And so I was telling him this

01:43:05.460 story about my older son, who's like almost four and he's, uh, you know, if he were an adult,

01:43:11.280 he'd be a sociopath, but you know, he's just a, he's a four year old. He's a cute little four

01:43:15.280 year old. Who's problematic. I was talking to the grocery store the other day just to

01:43:19.760 get him out of the house. And I mean, he's, uh, it's just, he's like such a little dick

01:43:25.160 sometimes, you know? I mean like, I know he, he goes and bites apples and he takes one bite

01:43:29.640 of an apple and throws it, takes one bite of an apple and throws it. And it's like, I'm like

01:43:32.660 Reese, you know, and you get like, and he takes his shopping cart and rams it into other people.

01:43:37.920 And he's just like, it ended the day. Like you can't even take the kid grocery shop. So I'm

01:43:42.060 that the part that I told my brother that made me think of what you just said is I said, you know,

01:43:46.100 the funniest thing that Reese says is sometimes I'll sit him down and I'm like, buddy,

01:43:49.380 why are you being so bad? And he's like, I want to. And then other times I'll say Reese,

01:43:57.840 why don't you just try to be good, man? And he's like, I don't want to. Yeah. So simple.

01:44:03.500 But then there are other times like when I'm putting him to bed and he's in a better space

01:44:06.820 and I'll be like, Reesey, man, it was a tough day today, buddy. It's a tough day, man. You really

01:44:13.580 created a lot of problems. Do you think tomorrow could be a better day? And he's like, and he'll

01:44:19.120 cry and it just breaks your heart. And he goes, he goes, daddy, I want to be good. I just don't know

01:44:23.960 how to. And I, like I thought of you a second ago with what you said, it's like you wanted to be

01:44:31.520 good. I mean, you didn't want this. You didn't want to be sitting in solitary confinement.

01:44:36.060 I didn't want to not be able to call my, like, let this girl down. Like, like you got to be able

01:44:41.620 to do better than that. But I didn't know. Yeah. I mean, that to me is like part of this mystery of

01:44:47.540 this cycle of shame because all that trauma is long behind you. But now what you're dealing with is

01:44:53.520 just the complete morass of shame that has engulfed you. And I had owned it at that point. It wasn't

01:45:00.880 even, it was like, you're just a, I used to say, like, I feel like I'm born bad and that's all

01:45:05.840 there is to like, it wasn't a feeling anymore. It was the truth. Yeah. And I'm sure that biologists

01:45:10.160 will debate it forever and sociologists and criminologists and whatever. I'm not sure I buy

01:45:14.700 that people are born bad. Maybe, but I, I think Occam's razor. Well, I don't know what Occam's razor

01:45:21.400 would say here. Maybe it would say that there's enough random permutations that some people are

01:45:24.960 just born bad. But I, I have a hard time believing that. I think that there are lots of bad people out

01:45:30.020 there. There's no doubt about it. There are people who something bad happens and they just go down a path

01:45:34.820 and they're unrecoverable errors. But I think that more quote unquote bad people, more of those guys

01:45:41.500 that we were meeting. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I didn't get the sense any of them wanted to be bad.

01:45:45.820 I got the sense that a lot of them wanted what you wanted. None of those guys until Defy was in there

01:45:52.900 had the playbook, right? Or the beliefs. Like, so my parole officer came to my house when I had been

01:45:58.300 released from prison and we, we got a good rapport. And, uh, and he said, Corey, why do you think

01:46:06.320 like nobody makes it? And I said, because there's like a fear of failure and a lack of hope. And

01:46:12.220 then those aren't, aren't like factual things and they fluctuate. There's more to it obviously than

01:46:16.900 that. But like, when you are in that position and you don't like, I don't, I don't want to be a,

01:46:21.640 like a failure either. Like, all right, I'm a loser. Fine. But like, let me be a good loser.

01:46:27.300 Like where people, like I got my own TV time in jail. Like, all right, well, and I got cigarettes

01:46:31.820 and nobody fucks with me. Yeah. I'm at least. And so these guys, they go there and like the,

01:46:36.060 one of the guys we were with, he, he was the warden had talked to us about him and he was like,

01:46:41.260 like a mastermind in jail selling drugs. Right. And so in here he's like, I think it's,

01:46:46.180 it's hard to even understand the risk he's taking by taking himself out of what he's like

01:46:52.200 a master at. Right. And saying like, okay, I'm going to try this other thing, even though I don't

01:46:59.000 believe it. Right. And like every day telling himself that there's a possibility that this

01:47:04.000 could be real for me. There's a possibility. Yeah. I think as you said, I like the way you

01:47:09.160 described it, which is defy gives these guys a playbook. I was going to say it much less eloquently,

01:47:13.660 which is the guys know what the objective is. I don't want to be here and I want to live a better

01:47:19.000 life, but they don't have the strategy or the tactics to do it because why would you, I mean,

01:47:24.160 if you had the strategy and the tactics, the probability that you'd be there in the first

01:47:27.460 place is probably quite low. And so, I mean, I do take some comfort in knowing that perhaps one of the

01:47:36.260 most, well, it might be one of the only major bipartisan things that seems to be relatively

01:47:41.780 uniformly agreed to on the right and the left is criminal justice reform. Yeah. Whether you come

01:47:46.760 at it from the standpoint of social justice or fiscal responsibility, nobody wins. You can't

01:47:54.460 make the case for anybody winning in this situation. That makes sense. So what turned you around four

01:48:00.480 years into this? So, um, it'd be silly to say that one thing did, right? No. Just like one thing

01:48:07.400 didn't get you in there. No. And you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about this too. And, um, it was

01:48:12.960 a culmination of a bunch of things. There was this one guy from Queens, this crazy guy. He was like a,

01:48:17.760 a biker from Queens. And he always used to say, you don't have to live like this. Right. But,

01:48:22.800 and he'd be like, come to the AA meetings. And I'd be like, this fucking nut, like, leave me alone,

01:48:27.300 you weirdo. And he was a cool guy. But then there was this other kid who, who was, could have been

01:48:32.000 me, another white kid who had just finished doing eight years and was back to do five. And he was

01:48:36.000 telling me how happy he was with his life. And he would walk by the mirror and when he was home,

01:48:40.340 right. And he'd feel good and look good. And then he went out and he had a drink and then he had two

01:48:45.300 drinks and then he did some Coke. And then he knew he was going to go back to jail and all he had to do

01:48:49.680 was stop and he couldn't stop. And he committed a crime and he ended up back for five years.

01:48:53.380 And then there was this girl who I had given mouth to mouth to when I was like 15 or 16,

01:48:59.480 who had like overdosed from Coke. She, she came to visit me out of the blue and she had brought me

01:49:04.340 like an, an AA book. And she was like here. And I'd like used it as like to prop my bed up, you know?

01:49:09.700 And she, she came like continuously, like every six months, eight months, she would be like, Hey,

01:49:15.240 how are you? How are you doing? And her life was like, she was like selling insurance in Maine and had

01:49:19.720 like her picture on the side of buses and she's like pretty, right? She's like a really pretty

01:49:23.260 girl. And I was like, how the fuck did you end up in Maine selling insurance? And I ended up in

01:49:27.240 here and she was like, well, I stopped doing drugs, dude. And she came to see you. Yeah. And that's

01:49:31.760 the amazing thing. It's huge, right? Like, um, and made it a habit to when I wasn't listening

01:49:36.840 even more, right? Like if you're listening, it's like, Oh, I'm selling something and they're buying it.

01:49:41.180 But like selling Greenpeace on the street in New York is like a hard sale. And she was doing that.

01:49:47.660 And, um, you know, and I wasn't, I wasn't able to call when I should be calling and I could see it

01:49:54.240 and my life wasn't getting any better. And I could see that like, I was putting this thing or these

01:49:59.180 things in front of the growth that I really wanted, right? I'm reading all the right books. I was

01:50:03.080 reading like Carlos Castaneda and the four agreements and all this stuff. And it wasn't sticking. Why isn't it

01:50:08.160 sticking? Like, because you're still hurting yourself and you don't believe that like you

01:50:12.540 can be different. So those two girls came on like, here, here you go with like the stories.

01:50:18.800 They came on the same day that some guys were coming to bring me some drugs. The girl who was

01:50:22.980 coming to give me like this message of like hope and stuff. And she comes with another girl who I

01:50:28.620 grew up with and who I'm still friends with to this day. Uh, and they didn't like, like, you got to get

01:50:33.340 clean. You got to get sober. You got to go to like AA and you got to pray. And like, they didn't do any of

01:50:37.520 that. They just loved me. And they were like, yeah, like we're not selling ourselves. Isn't

01:50:40.540 that great? Like, and I was like, wow, like good for you. You know, like, and they were

01:50:44.220 like, dude, you look like you're kind of like torn. And I was like, yeah, I'm afraid. And

01:50:48.560 they were like, what are you afraid of? And I was like, I'm afraid that this is the rest

01:50:51.540 of my life. That in and out of here, the sad, I just kind of want to not go to visits

01:50:57.300 anymore. I just want to hide in here and never. And they were like, dude, if you don't drink

01:51:01.540 like and do drugs, like you won't come back here. Like you're a good guy. You're just buried

01:51:06.160 in shit. And like, I think I bought it for like a minute and it happened to be Father's

01:51:11.060 Day and it happened to be 11 years ago. And I haven't since then had a drink or a drug.

01:51:17.320 And that I think has like, in a lot of ways allowed me to save my life and allow me to

01:51:23.920 receive a lot of help from other people. And so I started doing like real work. Like I

01:51:28.960 have, I was reading the journals on the way here, but I like started reading, rereading

01:51:32.620 some of those books and like thinking, how can I apply these to my life? And like in

01:51:36.860 those journals, there's stuff like, okay, like I had like an outburst today and how can I

01:51:42.160 see that outburst coming? Like not in the moment, but days ahead, right? Like how does

01:51:46.860 my attitude shift before I punch somebody in the face or challenge a guard to a fight?

01:51:53.300 Like, and it was real. It was like, okay, like you start complaining about your circumstances

01:51:58.300 instead of appreciating your, your circumstances. Right. Like, and, and then very soon, like

01:52:03.900 it's okay to do these things. Right. Whereas if you appreciate your life, it's not. And, um,

01:52:09.960 and obviously I had bad days and I had a ton of support, right? Like I went to a halfway house

01:52:15.220 upon release. I, I worked with counselors in jail. I went to solitary, like clean and sober

01:52:21.620 too. Like I still, I thought it was like, okay to like steal from the commissary. I think I had

01:52:26.200 told you guys about that. Yeah. Like we were like embezzling funds while we were in jail.

01:52:30.160 Yeah. I had lessons to learn. I still think that like, had I not been in there for the

01:52:34.260 like first four years of my change that I, that change may or may not have happened.

01:52:39.880 Like we talked about, like one thing can kind of switch the course of a life and I needed

01:52:45.320 to get like really grounded in who I thought I was. And I think one of the biggest things,

01:52:51.340 Peter, and I was talking to this guy this morning about it in Queens was that I had to

01:52:55.600 stop caring about what other people thought so much. I would, I learned to do like some

01:53:01.760 yoga and some stretches and some meditation stuff from books. Right. And I would get up

01:53:07.740 at 5am to do it cause nobody else was up. And this guy I knew got up one morning and he like

01:53:12.460 made a noise as he went by like of shame. And I jumped in my bed. Like I was seven. Like

01:53:17.460 I jumped in the bed and like put the covers and I was like, what the fuck? Why am I afraid

01:53:21.780 to be good? Right. Like, why am I afraid to like take care of myself? Right. Like I have

01:53:27.640 to be tough. Like, fuck them. Like, and the funny thing is that the less tough I am like

01:53:32.980 today dealing with these guys in jail. Like I told one of the guys in jail about like some

01:53:37.780 of these abuses. Right. And, and he was like, the minute I told him, he was like, dude, thank

01:53:41.700 you. Like me too. Right. But like, I can't tell anybody that because like, we're bad.

01:53:46.640 We're supposed to be bad and tough and defensive. And, but anyway, I had to like learn to love

01:53:53.900 to like fight for myself. When I was going through some stuff, I was in a place where we had to,

01:53:59.960 you know, go to a 12 step meeting every single night. So even if you weren't, you know, they

01:54:05.040 were all open meetings. So you would go, even if you weren't a, if you weren't an alcoholic,

01:54:09.300 you would still go to the AA meeting or the NA meeting or the SA meeting or all those things.

01:54:12.860 But, you know, the part of the country we were in, which is super rural, I mean, I saw

01:54:17.840 things I just couldn't imagine. And I got to tell you, I never said a single word at any

01:54:23.680 of these meetings, you know, but I, I took something so powerful from it. I was so moved

01:54:30.720 by some of the, the things that people admitted to in terms of like awful things that had happened

01:54:37.860 to them and awful things that they had done. And that, you know, I know that people are

01:54:42.580 quite critical of 12 step programs. And I don't, I mean, again, I think part of it comes down to

01:54:46.640 like, assuming that one solution works for everybody. And that's just, you know, obviously

01:54:50.540 patently incorrect in any walk of life. Addiction shouldn't be an exception to that. But there

01:54:57.360 actually is something quite powerful about that process. And, um, I have many patients who,

01:55:04.080 maybe that's some of the most successful people I've ever met. They'll still spend four days a week

01:55:07.100 going to their meeting, you know, whether it's NA, Al-Anon, AA, a lot of them, they'll go and

01:55:12.620 they'll say, you know, I haven't spoken in four years, but that's, you know, for me, it's, it's not

01:55:16.960 about being the smartest guy in the room. It's, it's about being grounded in the struggle.

01:55:23.160 I have like mixed emotions about 12 step programs, but I generally like the steps. And so like the old

01:55:30.440 school minnow down or whatever, uh, steps are like admit fault, clean house and help others.

01:55:38.540 Right. That's like the, the old school, like one, two, three. And, and it's funny because in defies,

01:55:45.360 like in the podcast where they, with Tim Ferriss and, and Cat Hulk, they got through some of the

01:55:50.280 actual, um, curriculum. And a lot of that curriculum is stuff that's in different 12 step programs,

01:55:57.760 right. It's like taking, like saying, Hey, I can't handle this first. Right. And then saying,

01:56:02.840 I need some help. And then saying, like, I believe that I can receive that help and change this.

01:56:08.520 And then saying, okay, what's my fault. And then saying, here's the things I've done. Am I really

01:56:15.660 that bad? And then saying, how can I fix those things? And then saying, okay, I need to take an

01:56:20.620 inventory. And then how can I help other people? And that's fantastic. But I think once you put a name

01:56:26.540 on anything, it, it gets a little convoluted. Yeah. I think, I guess, I think once people become

01:56:31.180 so anchored to maybe every single rule, every single religion about it, once it becomes a

01:56:38.580 religion, it becomes problematic. Really? But the interesting, but, but it's sort of like,

01:56:42.180 I, my, my view on these things is you've got to take a Bruce Lee approach. So, you know, if you

01:56:45.820 know, if you understood how, well, how Bruce Lee created Jeet Kune Do, he said, look, every martial art,

01:56:51.240 boxing, wrestling, all these fighting forms, each of them has something to offer. And each of them has

01:56:55.680 things that are utterly useless and will get you killed in a street fight. I want to absorb what

01:56:59.900 is useful, discard what is useless and create this perfect thing, Jeet Kune Do. And in many ways,

01:57:06.520 what you might extract from AA might be different than what I would extract from it. But I do think

01:57:11.480 that there is value in these steps and you just articulated it, you know, really well.

01:57:16.120 Yeah. It's, it's kind of the, the interesting thing. And then, like I said, I've kind of got mixed

01:57:20.880 emotions about it because I, I still go to AA on a fairly regular basis. But the interesting thing

01:57:27.620 is I, I'll ask myself, cause I don't want to ever get stuck in one thing. Right. Um, and I always want

01:57:33.840 to stay open-minded. And like I said, I think it allowed me this time and space to extract one thing

01:57:40.880 from the mixture and then learn how to handle life again. It gave me a curriculum, whereas I didn't have

01:57:48.040 a curriculum like the guys at Defy do. It gave me a playbook for, um, getting morals back. Right.

01:57:55.180 Like you shouldn't lie, you know, it's like, okay, well that could get me in trouble. Well,

01:57:59.400 then don't do the things that'll make you feel uncomfortable or to lie, you know, and like get

01:58:03.860 you in trouble. And again, like there's, once it becomes a religion, it's like, there's a lot of

01:58:09.360 interesting or just, you know, to say it plainly, like weird and kind of creepy motherfuckers

01:58:15.360 in AA, NA, SA, right. There's people in those places that are looking to sell drugs or,

01:58:21.300 so I asked myself, why am I here? And there's, there's like one group I go to that's like,

01:58:26.840 like a straight up tribe of really cool men, right? Like good men. And I love going to see

01:58:32.280 these guys. It's like seven 15. And the funny thing is it's like in a, um, it's in a temple,

01:58:38.300 like a Jewish temple. And it's like this group of guys in the morning and we all kind of joke and

01:58:43.340 it's good. You know, there's like good people there. We all help each other in life around

01:58:47.700 the community, everything. But then I go because I like, I like the humility of the situation,

01:58:52.780 right? I like to realize that I've been there and I can go there. Some really important things

01:58:59.020 for me in life are like gratitude, right? Like gratitude and humility. And then like,

01:59:04.280 there's a really good group of people that I can help. And I have the capabilities of trying to help.

01:59:10.160 And for me again, like the values there, like the value in my life is there. Like money is good,

01:59:18.480 but I've been really, really broken, ate like noodles, like college kids for years and years.

01:59:23.120 And like, I don't really give a shit as long as I can. I don't look at prices of food, thankfully

01:59:27.740 these days, but like, I don't have to worry about a lot of stuff. So if I can help people with my spare

01:59:33.600 time other than my own family, like, all right, cool. I'll go find some guys that like have the same

01:59:38.920 issues as me. And that's a great place for it. But again, it, it, I'm not an allegiance kind of

01:59:45.400 guy. Like I don't pledge allegiance to anything, you know? So how long before you were released,

01:59:50.780 did you find out you were going to be released? Cause it sounds like you got a lot, got out a

01:59:54.100 little earlier than you were. I did. I got seven years, smart guy, dude. You impressed me with

01:59:58.620 your intelligence and your like memory. But, um, I just, I, I, what's funny, you know, I was a math

02:00:03.700 major. So I was able to go eight and a half minus seven and a quarter and know that that was like

02:00:08.880 a number bigger than one. That's all. Yeah. You're a smart guy. Yeah. That's, that's all.

02:00:13.760 But you remembered it from an hour or so ago, but, um, so you get determinant and indeterminate

02:00:19.940 sentences, right? And like an indeterminate is a three to six, right? Um, or one to three. And then

02:00:29.060 the determinant is a set sentence. But, uh, in New York state, you can do 85% of your time unless

02:00:35.180 you don't satisfy certain requirements and get into trouble. And I happened to satisfy those

02:00:42.460 requirements and all the trouble I got into wasn't serious enough to take any of that time. But I

02:00:48.240 think they were still possibly going to take some of that time, which was kind of nerve wracking.

02:00:52.200 I remember I had to go like see somebody to make sure that they were going to give me that time.

02:00:58.320 And that was nerve wracking because like, I didn't want to tell my daughter.

02:01:01.520 Yeah. Set her expectations and then let her down. Yeah. When you have that hearing where

02:01:07.000 they said, yep, we're going to commute your sentence to 85%. How long from that moment until

02:01:11.340 you are out the door? Probably three months, three months, six months at the longest, probably

02:01:16.360 three months though, 90 days. So was there any period of time in there when you were actually

02:01:21.140 afraid to get out? Terrified. Yeah. Like I almost sabotaged. I got, I was playing soccer and it

02:01:27.320 was a perfect storm. Like some guy was picking on some kid and like slammed him into the bleachers

02:01:32.880 and like hurt him pretty bad. So you can win on both counts because you can still honor

02:01:37.100 your code of being good, but still get what you want, which is a longer sentence. It's

02:01:41.460 like still, it's crazy. Cause it's like my girlfriend jokes. Like it's my fantasy to like catch the

02:01:47.520 bad guy. Like that's beating up like some kid or girl. And it's so, it's so obvious based

02:01:52.720 on what happened to you. Right? Like when you look back now, it makes total sense, right? It's

02:01:57.400 like you want to go back and catch that guy. You want to catch that fucker before he does

02:02:04.080 it. Yeah. You want to be there to protect the seven year old you. Yeah. I joke around about

02:02:09.340 like wanting to like beating somebody up, but like, that's why. When I was growing up, there

02:02:14.240 was a really, really famous case, a guy called the Scarborough rapist. His name was Paul Bernardo,

02:02:21.520 eventually caught. He ended up living about three streets over from me. I went to the same grade

02:02:28.660 school and everything like that. He was several years older. I obviously didn't know him. Um,

02:02:33.400 but he really terrorized Scarborough, which was the borough of Toronto I grew up in. And

02:02:39.520 eventually, you know, he and his wife got caught after they'd killed three girls, including his

02:02:45.140 wife's sister being one of them. I mean, it was a, the most ridiculous fucked up situation in the

02:02:49.360 world. And, you know, uh, certainly one of the most infamous cases in Canadian legal history

02:02:54.560 for reasons I won't get into actually. But during the sort of four years when he was at large as the

02:03:01.260 Scarborough rapist, you know, a lot of these assaults took place really near where I lived. And

02:03:06.060 I actually only admitted what I'm about to say now for the first time about six months ago

02:03:11.000 in a sort of group setting because it didn't make sense before. And now it kind of made sense. But

02:03:16.040 on Friday nights, after I'd come home from boxing or martial arts, like I would dress up as a girl

02:03:22.340 and go running in this park, hoping that he would attack me so I could like, you know, get the bad.

02:03:29.020 Yeah. So you could, yeah. And I remember telling the story to like my roommate and, and he was like,

02:03:35.020 he couldn't believe it. And I was sort of telling it like, isn't that a normal thing to do? Wouldn't

02:03:39.380 anybody do that? Like on a Friday night? It makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You're,

02:03:43.260 you're looking over there going, yeah, yeah. That's a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's looking

02:03:47.620 at me like that, that doesn't make any sense, but I, but I get it. I mean, I, I understand what

02:03:52.620 you're saying. And so how did you fight the urge on that day to not go and correct the, uh,

02:03:58.600 the loan? I didn't. I, unfortunately I really didn't. Um, like I yelled at him, I knocked him

02:04:03.560 over. Right. So he knocked him, the other guy over, I knocked him over. And then I yelled at him

02:04:08.180 like, what are you going to do? Like, you're not going to do anything. And he didn't. And then the

02:04:12.460 next day I was like worried cause this is prison and like, you know, hurt egos, hurt people. So I

02:04:17.340 was like, oh shit. Like, so I had some people I know talk to him and tell him like, just don't go

02:04:22.280 near him. Like, don't even go near Corey. And thankfully it, I like, uh, he didn't and I didn't

02:04:28.500 have to worry about it, but really it was like preparation is what eased the fear, you know,

02:04:34.120 like getting busy kind of like you said earlier about addictions or whatever, but like getting

02:04:38.640 busy doing the work to secure yourself, I think helped a lot, but there's, I just picked up a guy

02:04:45.040 the other day, Dev's little brother. Right. And, uh, and one of the things that connected us,

02:04:50.240 like he has this huge smile on his face, right? Sweet kid named Edgar, nice guy, 24 years old,

02:04:55.580 big guy, but he's got this smile on his face and this kind of like glow, like, like a father that

02:05:00.380 just had a, like a baby coming out of a hospital. But if you look deep enough in his eyes, he's like

02:05:06.360 scared. Sure. And I said it to him and he was like, oh yeah, that's right. You know,

02:05:11.400 that's another example just by admitting it to him. It's now he can talk about it. Yeah. So I was afraid

02:05:16.000 and there's not a lot you can do. I was afraid when I, after I got out, I went to a, I went to a

02:05:20.140 halfway house for six months. Like, um, and I, I didn't want to go there either. I had a laundry

02:05:26.360 list of reasons why I should go get laid and stay with some girls or whatever. And that was just

02:05:31.600 stupid. And so, and it was like, well, you don't know how to live really, dude. So you need somebody,

02:05:35.580 you know what I mean? And it was that like simple admission. And so I went there and I stayed there,

02:05:41.340 but I was terrified. I remember like being terrified that when, when's Corey going to come home?

02:05:46.140 And the other thing that I got to mention is when I first started like going to these meetings or

02:05:52.220 doing this yoga or doing all these kinds of like explorative new me type stuff, whatever you want

02:05:58.760 to call it. Right. There would always be talk, self-talk that followed. Like, what are you fucking

02:06:04.460 doing? Like, dude, stop. Like you're, you're a little like feeling, feeling like you're an imposter

02:06:09.860 or? Yeah. And like, like you're wasting time. Why are you doing this? You can't change. Yeah,

02:06:15.300 exactly. You can't change. You're like, you're a fuck up. Just admit it. Like all you're going to

02:06:19.720 do is hurt everybody again. Don't line it up like this. Just fucking get high. The narrative,

02:06:24.740 right? Oh my God, dude. Like I, it's why I like cradle like new guys to this because it's like,

02:06:31.100 dude, like I know you're your biggest enemy right now. Like all this shit that like, and they'll be,

02:06:36.200 they'll look at me again and they'll be like, how the fuck do you know that? You know? Like,

02:06:39.300 how do you know that? I just told myself, why are you talking to this fucking weirdo?

02:06:42.880 Because you want to succeed. That's why I asshole like you, because you'd want a better life.

02:06:47.280 You know what I mean? But like, it was terrible and it was terrible then. And I got out and I was

02:06:52.540 terrified and it was like, you're like, when's Corey coming home? I kept looking for me.

02:06:56.600 So what about that day you went to the, this is one of the first stories that I remember you telling

02:07:00.440 that day is your first day out, out, out. You know, you got to report to the parole officer the next

02:07:05.920 morning at eight o'clock in the morning. What happens? So really, uh, again, with the,

02:07:11.160 this is that kind of duality situation, the wind at my back and the, and the crazy situations. Right.

02:07:15.680 So I, uh, my mother picks me up and, and, uh, kind of show you the time she had a bunch of CDs,

02:07:22.940 like brought CDs, like, what do you want to listen to? Right. So she brings me to Buffalo. And the first

02:07:28.260 thing I have to do is check in with parole. Like I'm here, I'm in Buffalo. So goo goo dolls.

02:07:33.400 Yeah. Buffalo. Yeah. That's the first CD I would want to listen to. I listened to the

02:07:38.440 goo goo dolls on a 4th of July in front of the jail. They did a big concert in front of

02:07:43.760 the jail, 4th of July downtown. No way. Yeah. And I like watched the fireworks and listened

02:07:47.680 to them. Yeah. 2004 maybe or three. So we go to parole and I walk in and I have to check

02:07:53.760 in and then the way parole works is your parole officer works on a specific day, whether that's

02:07:57.980 the day you got out or not, you still have to go there. Right. You may not see your parole

02:08:02.160 officer, but you're going to see a parole officer and they're going to give you stipulations.

02:08:05.940 They're going to give you a day and time to come. So I check in with this parole officer

02:08:11.840 and he's like a, he's a, a large athletic built black guy. Right. And I'm looking at

02:08:16.580 him and, and not the situation you want to stare anybody in the face. Right. Like, and

02:08:21.220 I'm staring him right in the face. And he's like, like, he gives me this look and he's

02:08:25.660 like, like, what's up dude. And I'm like, ah, I'm sorry, man. Like, I don't know. You

02:08:29.920 just look familiar. Not the thing you want to say to your parole officer too. Right.

02:08:33.560 Like, yeah, I know you. Yeah. I visited your daughter before. Like just not where you want

02:08:37.360 to be, but I don't know why I'm like stepping on my tongue either. Right. And, uh, because

02:08:41.840 something else was pushing me forward. Right. That wind at my back. And he, he looks at me

02:08:46.280 and he's like, well, would you play sports? And I was like, yeah, but I've been in jail for

02:08:49.640 eight years. So like, I, like, I don't know how I would know you from sports. And he was

02:08:53.380 like, hold on. Like Corey McCarthy. And I'm like, yeah, like, oh shit, Kelly, like

02:09:00.240 Funderburg. So it's, he worked in that childhood rehab. Right. He brought us to

02:09:05.520 AA and N meetings. He like, he, this dude actually taught me a lot about hygiene as a

02:09:10.600 16 year old kid. Right. Like, or a 15 or 14 year old kid. Right. I remember that he'd

02:09:15.360 like, cause there was some dirty kids and he brought us all in a room and he like taught

02:09:19.380 us all about hygiene and how to be like hygienic. And he's still bringing kids to

02:09:24.580 meetings from that childhood rehab. But he, he looked me in the face and he was

02:09:29.340 like, oh man. And it was funny. Cause he says, all right. So I guess you're relapsed.

02:09:33.340 Huh? And I was like, well, a little bit, you know? And he said, he said, dude, as long as

02:09:38.000 you, uh, as long as you stay clean, this shit will be a breeze. Like you won't have any

02:09:41.740 problem. And, and not everybody like going back, not everybody gets that day. Right.

02:09:46.960 Like that's nobody's day really. Like that doesn't happen to everybody where it's a familiar

02:09:51.800 face and he's kind. And he says like, you can do this. Right. I mean, then I went to breakfast

02:09:56.920 with my mother and then I picked my daughter from school for the first time ever. And then

02:10:01.960 we went to 10 years old, 11. Yeah. She was 11 years old. And you know, um, were you able

02:10:10.060 to keep it together? No, I mean, no, I wrote her school a lot too for copies of her report.

02:10:17.140 And to see how she was doing and to see what I could do, if anything. And it was really

02:10:21.940 embarrassing, but at the same time it was like, well, like you got to try anything. Right.

02:10:25.740 So like, I knew some of the people that were teachers there. And like one of her favorite

02:10:30.480 teachers was that woman who says the rosary for me sister. And like, I mean, that's Buffalo

02:10:35.760 too. Right. But, um, small town stuff, but, uh, yeah, I couldn't keep it together, dude.

02:10:41.800 I wanted to take her to school fucking, you know, six years ago and I never could. So

02:10:47.480 no, I wasn't able to keep it together, but she was happy, you know, and she wasn't afraid

02:10:52.220 or nervous. She may have been nervous. That's her story to tell. Yeah. But that was, that

02:11:00.540 was, I mean, that was pretty much my first day and I checked in at the halfway house and

02:11:04.360 I remember I couldn't sleep on a bed. I couldn't sleep on a bed for a couple of months because

02:11:08.800 it was too soft. Like a mattress was too soft. Felt like I was falling all night every time

02:11:15.060 I turned. So I slept on the floor. How long? Probably three months. It was just more comfortable.

02:11:22.360 Are there any other habits that have kind of stayed with you or anything? Absolutely.

02:11:25.940 So that fear, um, when I got arrested, when I was 12, I continuously cracked every bone

02:11:33.220 in my body and the cell, like my wrist, my, my knuckles, my neck, my knees, my ankles,

02:11:38.240 and I still crack my neck kind of repetitively. Uh, and I think that's from that. And I also,

02:11:44.720 um, how I battled that fear was I talked to some people about it. They told me it was normal.

02:11:51.420 They told me it'd be more abnormal if I didn't have that fear. But then they also told me, well,

02:11:56.980 like you've been home a couple of months and you were in jail and everything was going well. Like

02:12:01.240 why don't you just keep doing those things? And so today I still do pull-ups, dips and push-ups

02:12:07.020 on a regular basis. I still run on a regular basis. I still get up in the morning and take time to like

02:12:13.340 take time, right? Like whether it's stretching or yoga or meditation. Um, I still try to read instead

02:12:20.960 of watch TV. I still try to help people and to listen to people. Like those things got me through

02:12:26.900 those last three and a half years and have gotten me through the past seven years. And I mean, to like,

02:12:34.540 you know, like I have employees and you know what I mean? Like, so, I mean, when we arrived at

02:12:39.680 Kern, it was kind of an interesting situation because you, me, Tim, Devin, Jason, like we kind of went up

02:12:46.800 on our own and we got there a few hours ahead of the whole bus of volunteers. And in many ways that

02:12:52.880 was kind of amazing because they had to improvise, you know, they weren't going to start the program

02:12:57.520 until everybody showed up. And so it was like, we did a bunch of stuff, but one of them was you kind

02:13:02.840 of getting up and just really briefly telling guys a little bit about yourself. And it was, it was

02:13:09.740 amazing to watch the faces of everybody as you said, Hey, look today I run small company. I've

02:13:16.860 got this many employees. We're busier than I could ever dream of being. We're turning away people.

02:13:21.980 I mean, it was just, these guys were looking at you like, really, how is that possible, man? Like

02:13:28.060 it seems so far from where they were in that moment, but yet you being able to explain what you did and

02:13:35.600 how you got there is infinitely more interesting and relevant than, you know, me standing up there

02:13:42.440 saying whatever the hell, you know, Kat was like, yeah, just tell them what to eat or some shit like

02:13:47.540 that. And I'm like, Kat, I'm not going to fucking stand up there and talk about nutrition with these

02:13:52.860 guys. Like it just strikes me as like the fucking least interesting thing to talk about. Right.

02:13:57.780 But I mean, was there a point when you stopped feeling like an imposter and stopped feeling like

02:14:06.660 a bad person and realized that all the good stuff in your life today, your daughter, the relationship

02:14:12.320 you have with your parents, your girlfriend, your employees, like the people you're helping, like

02:14:18.720 all of this stuff, you're not going to wake up tomorrow and it's going to be gone. You know,

02:14:22.840 there's not someone around the corner waiting to fuck you over. Yeah. I'm not worried about

02:14:30.660 anybody else. I don't even mean like literally as a person, but there's no, there's no dark

02:14:35.160 force that's going to like, no, I think so. So bringing it right back to Kern, one of the

02:14:41.040 last exercises we did not even step to the line. Right. But the one where we kind of gave

02:14:45.240 a blessing and ask and like forgiveness. Yeah. Right. You know, I feel bad for a lot of things

02:14:50.300 I've done in life, but the most is like my daughter, like leaving my daughter. Right.

02:14:54.900 And there's days I cry about that today. You know, like if I start thinking about it and

02:14:59.360 like how beautiful she is and like, I like she deserved fucking better. Right. Like that's

02:15:04.880 what there's no matter how good today's is, like that kid deserved a father when she was

02:15:10.180 three to when she was 11. But, um, it's more like there's moments. There's a lot of moments

02:15:17.940 where I'm like that, like I do deserve this. I've worked for this. This is nice. This is

02:15:22.620 good. And I deserve it. Right. And I deserve, there was a moment where I realized like I deserve

02:15:27.880 somebody that will support me as in a relationship and like, as opposed to like somebody else is a

02:15:33.720 gift to me. No, no, no. Like I'm, I bring shit to the table today. Right. Like in all areas

02:15:39.440 of my life. And I see that, but it's more moments than it is all the time. And there's still

02:15:45.160 moments where I'm like, I don't deserve this. And like moments where I, where like, you know,

02:15:53.700 I still doubt myself, you know, it's, it's kind of like the sliding scale, right? Like, so those

02:16:00.240 moments have gotten smaller, the ones where I doubt myself and like all that self-talk, like

02:16:05.260 I barely ever hear that shit anymore. And now what I hear is like, no, like you deserve it. You've

02:16:10.920 worked hard. Um, you've gotten a lot of fucking gifts and you've had a lot of support that other

02:16:16.160 people don't have. So maybe you should try to support some other people, you know, maybe

02:16:20.160 you should try to get some people there to, you know, pay it forward. But yeah, like I,

02:16:25.700 now I feel like that voice has really gone away. What was the hardest thing for you when we were at

02:16:31.060 Kern? Oh man, I, um, my girlfriend, uh, and I, we, uh, we lost a baby. Like she was pregnant,

02:16:42.420 you know, uh, it's funny, uh, minimize, right? Like, um, it wasn't like a baby that I, uh, like

02:16:48.280 I had, but I had it in my head. Right. And then once I believed it, I like, you know, I was

02:16:52.680 in California at Dev's house, like on a surfing trip and like looking at like clothes and shit.

02:16:58.340 And I knew it was going to be a girl. And, and I, I, as a man or as me or whatever, I, I,

02:17:04.480 I pushed it to the back of my head. I tried to be strong for her and I just kind of went

02:17:08.640 to work. And, uh, and they asked if he had lost a child and it like, it fucking shook

02:17:15.180 my, my socks, you know, I was like, Jesus Christ. Like I lost it. Like I did, like I, I lost

02:17:20.160 what I thought I had, you know, uh, and that hurt and that was hard. And then the forgiving

02:17:25.360 myself for my daughter, those were the two, I think, hardest things for me there.

02:17:30.420 Yeah, that was, um, I know Kat was sort of looking out for me that day. She really deliberately

02:17:36.560 paired me with somebody there who, um, she knew that what he and I would sort of share

02:17:42.840 in that moment of what we, what was our biggest, what is our biggest regret? What is the thing

02:17:48.840 we are most ashamed of? And what is the thing that we want forgiveness for the most that he

02:17:53.100 and I would have such a strong overlap there? I couldn't believe that experience. Um, I,

02:18:00.940 I don't want to use his name, I guess, just to protect his privacy, but I think about him

02:18:05.660 every day and I think about, you know, like, you know, I even called Kat a while ago and

02:18:11.140 I was like, can I just send him money? Like I want him to be able to buy stuff easily and

02:18:14.580 not have to fricking trade cigarettes and shit. And she's like, no, volunteers aren't allowed

02:18:18.840 to send money. And, uh, you know, I just, uh, and it's like, he's the one. So, so of course,

02:18:25.860 is he the only guy in that room that was that special? No, he's just the guy that I got paired

02:18:29.880 with because Kat knew there would be this connection. And, um, I don't know. I just, I,

02:18:36.840 even now sitting here, it's hard to talk about it. It's hard to put in words what that experience

02:18:41.300 is like. I mean, I certainly came away thinking, I can't imagine the world not being a better place.

02:18:48.220 If every single person would go and spend one day doing that, all the people on the

02:18:52.960 outside, you know, just go and spend one day. Just, you want to talk about empathy. You want

02:18:58.640 to talk about compassion. You want to talk about understanding that we're all not that

02:19:04.840 far from each other. Um, which is an easy thing to do. It's such a gift. It was such a gift

02:19:11.780 for, for you and the guys I went with. I mean, like I can see it on your like face now. Right.

02:19:17.020 Right. And it was, uh, it was such a gift for both. Like the, one of the most unique things

02:19:23.860 about it, I think, and I don't know if she created it or if what, what created it, but

02:19:28.660 it's, it's, you're selling things to everybody in the room that cannot be bought. Right.

02:19:34.440 Like no matter how successful you are, you can't buy that experience. Right. You can't send

02:19:38.340 them money. Yeah. Right. Like you can't buy that. Like, and no matter, like they can't get

02:19:42.900 enough cigarettes to get that either. And they, they can't even believe it. Right. So

02:19:46.640 you're giving them a gift of, of like a possibility, which is an amazing fucking gift. Right. Like

02:19:52.680 it's like, I can create a future. I can create anything. And then like what we got, it was,

02:19:58.740 I feel like what we got is more than what we gave, but you've never been. I've never, I

02:20:02.860 know. I was just about to say, I can't, I can only say that as an outsider. So you're, you're

02:20:06.980 probably the only person who could, not that it matters, of course, like who got, gave,

02:20:11.240 whatever. But like, I remember thinking when, when, when it was all said and done, I was

02:20:16.060 like, you know, I've never been around another person who's been so grateful for my existence

02:20:21.960 as I was with some of those men that day. Yeah. But didn't you, and I felt like I got

02:20:27.320 way more, like I left with something that was, I mean, what, you know, like I didn't give

02:20:33.940 enough. Sorry. I apologize. Cause you, that's what you were saying. Like I was saying, didn't

02:20:39.820 you feel like you left with something because whoever's devised the way that this works,

02:20:45.800 it's the whole thing gives. Yeah. Right. It doesn't take, and it takes a time. It takes

02:20:50.600 time. That's all it takes is a day or whatever. Right. But like, like that experience gave you

02:20:56.140 what you just, I mean, like you're like for lack of a better way of saying it or cuter way

02:21:00.720 of saying it, like you're a fairly successful or wildly successful person in everything that

02:21:05.080 you've done. Right. And you could probably get, you know, some things that you could

02:21:09.780 create in your mind. Like, Oh, I would like that. I could go get that, but you can't get

02:21:13.600 that. Like you can't get what you left there that day with. You can't get that form of appreciation

02:21:18.420 for your life. Like what I saw you guys get and what I got too. Right. Like in all honesty,

02:21:24.000 like what I was able to leave there with, I may even be more powerful than what you got because

02:21:29.880 in its own way, it was like, I found for me, like why I fucking suffered for so long. Right.

02:21:37.040 Like, I mean, it makes me a more like, this is why I fucking this so that I could be where I am.

02:21:41.780 So I could be here talking to you. Like I'm fired. You could hear it. Right. Like so that I could

02:21:46.740 help these guys so that they could have somebody that they could believe in. Right. And like that

02:21:53.580 lady gave me a gift. You know, that girl gave me a gift that jail gave me a gift that I've never

02:21:59.040 never been lucky enough to have. And now I have it. I ain't giving it fucking back.

02:22:04.320 How's your book coming? It's good. I mean, I, I'm not, I'm a writer, but I'm not a writer. So it's,

02:22:10.020 it's coming. My sister was an editor for a while. Yeah. But my guess is those journals are

02:22:14.440 gold. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They are. I mean, they're gold and they're also kind of scary because I was

02:22:20.580 fucking crazy. And it's funny too, cause stuff's in code. Like I realized it while I was reading it,

02:22:26.500 like certain stuff's in code cause you can't write it, you know? But, um, it's going to work

02:22:33.080 out. It's going to come together. I mean, you don't, it doesn't happen by chance. You don't

02:22:38.940 get on a plane and sit next to the lady, like the guy who did your brain surgery on your way to go do

02:22:43.700 a podcast on, like on accident. Like it just, it's not a fucking accident. Like I didn't help Dev with

02:22:49.420 his brother six years ago on accident. Right. I don't, I don't, that's bullshit. I don't believe

02:22:56.060 in accidents. I didn't, you didn't send that to Dev. And like you said, like to hear the other

02:23:00.560 side of the story, you bumped into him seeing his body work guy and said, Hey, like, Oh, you know,

02:23:05.660 this is on my brain right now. Yeah. And it's one of those things like, you know, you can say that to

02:23:10.180 a million people and they sort of forget about it by the time they get to their car. But like

02:23:13.900 Devin's not that guy. Like when Devin's in, he's all in. Yeah. He's like, yeah, let's do it. Yeah.

02:23:19.160 And then he thinks of me and then it's like, yeah, I'm in, let's do it. Like, but Kern man,

02:23:23.420 Kern and defy. And I want to talk to you more about like the directions that's going and everything,

02:23:28.980 but yeah, I think, um, I think it's a profound experience that we should all have in a lot of

02:23:36.160 different, you know, I think it should be happening at youth facilities. I think it should be happening

02:23:40.960 and in other places too, probably in the corporate like world or, you know, like somehow, some way

02:23:45.700 we've got to find a way to connect to each other as humans or else we're kind of fucked or we just

02:23:50.720 kind of keep enduring and overcoming, which isn't bad, but like, I'd rather be connected.

02:23:55.600 One of my best friends is a psychiatrist and I emailed him, uh, recently. And, um, I said, Paul,

02:24:03.960 let's, uh, I want to do a podcast where we talk about suicide and I want to talk about it in great

02:24:08.820 detail and I want to understand how much of suicide could be, you know, evolutionary versus

02:24:16.580 sort of an environmental disease, environmental meaning, you know, a disease of civilization,

02:24:21.860 if you will. Okay. And I do wonder, again, I say this knowing nothing and looking forward to

02:24:27.160 talking to someone who has more experience around this than I will ever have. But I wonder how much of

02:24:32.820 what you just said factors into that. You know, I've heard people say that, you know, you can be in the

02:24:37.280 most crowded place and yet be the most alone. So I, what you're basically saying is, look,

02:24:43.260 it's that connectiveness that sort of undoes that. And that's not necessarily about who you're around

02:24:47.900 or not around. Part of it, I guess, comes down to a lot of what we saw at Kern, which is that

02:24:52.800 vulnerability. And, uh, I'm amazed at what they can do. And, you know, I think probably by the time

02:24:59.040 this podcast is out, I don't even know if there will be a defy anymore, but the good news is, you know,

02:25:03.460 defy was just a name sort of irrelevant, right? There will be a cat hoek and there will be all

02:25:08.020 the things that she continues to do. Um, and it'll be even better than what defy was, which was

02:25:12.760 already amazing. Yeah. It's nice. I need it. Like we, it's gotta happen. Yeah. It'll, it'll,

02:25:19.580 it'll happen. You hungry? I am. I am. And I need to use a bag. Yeah. All right. Well, uh,

02:25:27.920 let's go get some Greek food. Nice. Hey, thank you so much. This was, uh, this was amazing to be

02:25:35.040 able to hear your story. Thank you so much for sharing it. Thanks for asking. All right, man.

02:25:41.020 You can find all of this information and more at peteratiamd.com forward slash podcast. There you'll

02:25:46.860 find the show notes, readings, and links related to this episode. You can also find my blog and the

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The Peter Attia Drive - August 27, 2018

#12 - Corey McCarthy： Overcoming trauma, dealing with shame, finding meaning, changing the self-narrative, redemption, and the importance of gratitude

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