Derrick Broze Discusses His Struggles with Addiction and His New Memoir on The Way Forward

What I want to get into next is your memoir that you're writing right now. Are you finished with.

I just finished it a few years ago.

Okay, yeah, share about that a little bit, because I think a lot of people know you as Derek Bros, the activist, the journalist, the guy who creates incredible events and puts out a lot of incredible information. That's paradigm shifting for people. But you also have a journey that's led you here that I think adds a lot more depth to who you are now. And I think it'd be really cool for people to hear that.

Thank you, man. I appreciate that. Yeah. So, I mean, I've shared my story here and there when I've done public speaking, but it's not the focus of my talk. So I might mention in passing, like, hey, you know, I got addicted to drugs when I was younger. I got locked up at 20 years old. But this book, which is called A Man of My Word, How I Overcame Addiction, Depression, and Mental and Physical Prisons, is the first time I'm telling this story in full. And actually, November 16, 2025, is 20 years the day that I got arrested at 20 years old. And. And I, you know, I had a. I. I basically got addicted to drugs right after. After high school, I went into community college and started doing all that. Just instantly started drinking and. And burying all my problems in booze and drugs. And at first it was just fun, partying with friends, you know, taking some ecstasy, doing some pills here and there. But very quickly I got pulled into coke and then eventually crystal meth. And within a few months, I was homeless with that, you know, I was pulled into this whole criminal underworld and then ended up living in a crack and meth house and was able to get myself, so was still kind of in that world. And I ended up getting arrested while I was dealing drugs. And that was really like the first awakening that this is before I was ever really paying attention to politics. I mean, after high school, I was in a band. I was anti Bush. I voted one time in my life, and I voted for Carrie because, well, he's the opposite of Bush. Right. But beyond that, I wasn't really political or awake in any other kind of ways. But this was my first real awakening. It was getting locked up. It was finding myself in prison, turning 21 after being angry my entire life for my father being in and out of prison my whole life for his drug addiction. And that was a real kick in the nuts. It was like, okay, I've been pissed off at this dude my whole life, and here I am doing the same thing, you know, and I. And my family, the bros side of my family and my mom's family, the Sanchez family, there's gener. Intergenerational drug and alcohol trauma. You know, some of it, I think, goes back to the native heritage and drugs and alcohol. Some of it is just, you know, life was harder in the past. And my grandparents, my granny and my. My grandpa, they had my father when they were 14, 15 years old without a lot of family support. And my dad started selling drugs for his dad at the age of 10 and 12 years old. And, you know, there's just a cycle, this cyclical stuff. I've heard stories about my great grandfather hung himself in prison. You know, just lot of this trauma that was there before I ever came along, you know. And so when I'm born, my earliest memories are going to visit my dad in, in prison. And I remember little things like we'd get there to the prison, giant walls, razor wire, all this stuff. And one of the guards is telling my mom or my. My aunt her shorts are too short, so we got to go back to the car and change. And I'm a little kid, I'm five, six, seven years old, trying to understand, like, what the hell's going on, trying to navigate this and, you know, not to fault anybody, but the adults definitely didn't too much trying to communicate this to us kids. It was just kind of taking us along for the journey. And I. And I go see my dad and why does he have a black eye? Why, you know, why do I only get to see him for an hour? And we're calling all over him, hanging on him, and then it visits up and we're crying our eyes out and promises of being there for birthdays and Christmas. And his drug addiction was very strong. And, you know, he would come in and out, come home, maybe buy us some gifts, and then a week later, mom would be like, dad's. Dad's got sent back to prison already. And you know, it was just constant, like breaking and breaking us over and over. And I'm the middle child, so my older brother, he handled it differently. My younger sister, she was, you know, we all saw him as our father, but my sister was way too young to really kind of have any connection to him. And so our stepdad was very much her father, but I don't know, I was kind of, I guess, in that middle space where I was old enough to know him and sort of feel him, but also just. Just enough to. To feel the trauma, I guess. You could say, right? Because I remember being 6 and 7 years old and starting to think that I hate myself. That like starting to blame myself for him not being there and wondering if there was something wrong with me because maybe that's why he chose drugs over his family, you know, and then starting to experiment with like self harm. I wasn't like cutting myself yet, but I was definitely, and it sounds crazy to say it, but it is what it is. Like playing with knives, like pressing knives into my chest and just, and I don't know where that came from. I think ultimately it was like I wanted to feel something. I was feeling a lac, I was, I was recognizing that this guy who's my stepdad was not my dad and I didn't really want him in the picture. I definitely had this like young vision of like dad's going to come home someday and beat him up and our family's going to be back together. And now as an adult I'm very grateful for my stepdad. We're no, you know, him and my mom are no longer together but without him, I don't know what my 21 year old mother with three kids would have done because she didn't have family support on her side. She ran away from an abusive home as well. So like I say, this intergenerational trauma was very present by the time we were born. And my sadness as a young boy turned to anger by the time I turned 14. You know, I have very vivid memories at they tend to happen in chapters of seven, seven years old. I have this clear memory of sitting in the driveway, I'm in my blue and yellow baseball uniform and mom's coming in and out of the garage like, we gotta go soon, we gotta go soon. I'm like, just wait a couple more minutes. And he was supposed to be showing up, he got out recently, he didn't show up. We had to go. I, I, that memory is burned in my mind. You know, then at 14, after spending set that, that young part of my life, very depressed, you know, a very sad and depressed little kid also, I could see very quickly how I was starting to look for love with women or young girls at the time I was a young kid and seeking that validation in those relationships. And then by the time I turned 14, my dad was released and he was supposed to be coming to grandma and grandpa's for Christmas where we go every year for Christmas Eve. And this is his parents and it was a big, my grandfather had pretty much swore him off because apparently back in the day My dad stole an engagement ring, and they had never healed. But this time he said, all right, he can come home. He can come home. We'll all be here together. And so it was a big deal in the family. And I remember walking, showing up at grandma's. We knocked on the door, and as soon as the door opened, I just knew something didn't feel right. For one, I didn't see him there. And so I'm kind of walking in the house, looking around, not seeing him. I remember going to the bathroom, and I overhear my grandma telling my mom, and they already caught him. He's already locked back up. I mean, this guy had such a knack for getting locked up. And. And part of it, I think he became institutionalized because he spent so much of his life, from 17 till his death, eventually in and out of these institutions. And I. When I heard that, I remember going to the bathroom, slamming the door, just crying my eyes out. And then it was at that moment, like, clear as day, 14 years old, I said this. I'm never going to let anybody hurt me again. And I put that shell over me as. As strong as I could. And that's when I started getting fights at school, and that's when I started getting arrested, started throwing chairs at teachers, all this, all the things. I never got into drugs. I mean, I smoked weed here and there, but that all came later. It was just this rage. It was angry. Exactly. And that I thought that was keeping me safe and keeping me strong and. And I was like, you know, I don't want to have anything to do with him. I swore him off. So I graduated High School 8. I graduated early, going to college. And like I said, I started drinking, started using drugs. And I wasn't necessarily conscious at the time thinking, oh, I'm doing this to, you know, deal with this deeper trauma I have that would come with later reflection. But it's clear that that's what. That. What I was doing, that it was like, oh, my God. Taking X makes me feel happy in a way I've never felt. This must be what I've been looking for the whole time, right? And as I said, it didn't take long before that transferred into doing coke all the time and doing crystal just grabbed me and. And, you know, just destroyed my life and my health. And I'm already a pretty thin guy. But I was 105 when I got arrested. Oh, my gosh, man, I was 6 foot 105 and, you know, not looking good and not in place. And so that's what I say. Seven years old. Remember that memory of the baseball uniform, waiting for him to come home. 14. Turning to the dark side, so to speak. And then I got arrested a week before I turned 21. And I remember turning 21 there and then just realizing that I had to figure this out because I, I basically got sentenced to a. A felony. I had two year felony sentence and they told me I would get out on probation. They gave me a year instead, plus probation. It was a whole nother story. It's in the book. But when I realized I wasn't going home, you know that I'm looking at the cal and it's going to be at least at earliest 11 months before I get out of these four walls. You know, that's a powerful experience and I think it's one that as, as, as weird as it might sound, I think it's a useful one for some of us because this, what we call. When you're inside the free world out here, it allows for distractions, especially in the age we're in now. This is, you know, pre social media, so there's plenty of distractions. But now it's even more easy to distract yourself. But sometimes you need to be stuck in a place, you need to feel powerless. And in that place where I was in these four walls surrounded by all these other criminals to varying degrees and other people who were just locked up for reasons. And I'm realizing I'm not leaving this place, I can, I can get on the phone and call my girlfriend. I can call my lawyer, I can cry to my mom. There's not a damn thing anybody can do. Like I'm stuck here until they say, until they call my name and I can walk out here, I'm stuck.

Yeah.

So my body is physically in here. And in that, that place of feeling powerless is where I started to really find my real power. Because thankfully my grandmother that I mentioned, who since passed away, she has always been a huge spiritual influence to me. When I would come visit her in Austin, you know, she would always just. She opened me up to so many different things. Things that a lot of people might call New age, but at least kind of opened my mind in a lot of ways. And so she started sending me books on. She, she considered herself kind of like a Christian mystic. So she was into a lot of different things, you know, Steiner, other things. So she was sending me. One of the books she sent me was by Father Thomas Keating, who's Christian. I don't think he's around anymore, but he focused on what he called centering prayer, which was kind of like a form of Christian meditation. So she sent me books on that. She also knew that I had an interest or a developing interest at the time in meditation. So she started sending me books on, like, Zen Buddhism and was just. That was like my first experience of like, okay, I'm here. I can't go anywhere. I need to start doing something. So I started journaling every day. That's probably what saved my life, is just writing my thoughts down and getting it. After being on drugs and going through all this stuff for a couple of years, I was finally getting sober, but it was also, like, slowing down because, again, as perverse as it sounds, like in that place, everything slows down and. And you don't have the distractions out here, right? So I was able to kind of start centering myself, start journaling. Every day I'm reading these books about prayer. And for the first time in my life, I'm starting to open up to the idea of spirituality because. Because of everything I'd gone on before at age 14 and others, I was very anti religion, and in many ways still am. I have a lot of problem with religion, but in that sense, I kind of close myself off to anything related to God or spirituality or anything like that. And this the first time when I was finally like, okay, maybe there is something. And. And I will say some of my experiences prior to that, even when I was on a lot of drugs, taking acid and taking psychedelics, kind of helped me see that there's something else, you know? And in fact, I will credit cannabis for helping me get sober from crystal meth, because I. When I decided I wanted to quit and I was in this meth house, at least everybody left me alone when I told them, like, I really don't want to do this anymore. Please don't ask me, because I'll say yes and I don't want to. And I just sat in the corner of the room in a chair like this, smoking my bong every day for about eight days until I was capable of just getting up and walking out and getting my car and leaving because I just didn't have the willpower. So those experiences had kind of piqued my interest of, like, there's something beyond just the five senses. But then now I'm in this place and I'm starting to meditate and starting to just go on this journey. That was my real awakening. That. And. And it didn't happen like the first time I did my 11 months. I got out. I lasted five months before I got sent back, did that game for a couple of years. By time October 2008 came out, came about the month before Obama got elected. I was being released for the final time. When it was all said and done. I did 19 months in Texas institutions and I'm a felon according to them. And, and yeah, and that was like a weird place to be getting out. But it was also eventually led to the activism because when I got out, now as a felon, I'm having to apply for jobs all over the place. I didn't have a car, I didn't have many resources. This is also why I have first hand experience with the criminal justice system and how it screws people over, whether probation or parole. So I was going to the library all the time applying jobs. I was also having the new experience of being judged for being a felon. Like, oh, how people. I mean, I basically can't get rented nearly anywhere in Houston. And if I was to go try to find a normie job right now, even though this is 20 years old, it would still be a factor and whether people would hire me, yeah, for a non violent, you know, drug crime. And so those were all new experiences to me. And while I was at the library just applying for jobs, I found this book called Cannabis A History is a really interesting book that's all about the cannabis plant, but it's not about glorifying it and it's also not about demonizing it. It was a really well done study on like the history of the cannabis plant, the sociological impact of it, the legal impact and all these different facets. And a lot of it was about the drug war and how the beginning of the US drug laws, like the 1914 Harrison act and a lot of the drug laws that came later were largely based on trying to drive out the hemp industry and about racism against Chinese migrant workers or Mexican migrant workers or black jazz musicians. And this was all like new to me. I was like, holy shit. I'd never heard of any of this. This is not what I was being taught. And as somebody who was getting out for a drug, you know, drug charge, it was, it just piqued my interest of like, what else have I not been taught? And then about a year later, I find Ron Paul, I watch all the documentaries and my activism begins. The book ends basically when that starts. It doesn't tell anything about my active. It's just like the beginning of where that starts. And so this book is detailing my all of that, that struggle, the Details of everything I went through, the ups and the downs, the ways I almost made it out. And then I fall back and. And then eventually when I had a chance to. To tell my dad that I forgave him for everything that. For everything that he. He had done, you know, because at some point, you have to take personal responsibility for yourself. When I was first locked up, I did write him an angry letter and was like, this is your fault. You know, you did all these things. And part of it was true.

There was actually go through that phase though, too.

And there was things he did that did impact me.

Yeah.

And I wasn't satisfied with his response, which was later on, I realized, accurate to some degree. But I think he was also kind of absolving him of self responsibility, where he was just like, you're a man, you need to take responsibility for the things you do. And there was truth in that too as well. And I came to that place and the last one of the last times I saw him, he's. He was from Austin, so he. He never lived in Houston, but he chose to get released because this whole time, when I got locked up, the same week I got locked up, he was getting released. And so that was another like, oh, my God, I'm doing the same as this guy. Then eventually he's locked up while I'm locked up. We're locked up at the same time. And my grandma's sending letters to. Because you can't mail directly to institution, so I'd send my grandma a letter for him and she'd send it to him and vice versa. And by time, he got released in 2013, so fast forward a few years, I'm off probation, parole, everything. I'm starting to get into activism. My whole life is shifting and changing. And he decided he asked specifically to be released to Houston, to a halfway house in Houston, because he was trying to be closer to my brother and my sister and I, and they weren't ready to talk to him. But I was at the point where I was like, you know, my life is. I was on the beginning of this activism journey. Didn't know where I was doing, but I knew that this was what I was gonna do. And I, you know, he said he would be there, and I made an appointment with him. I went biked across downtown Houston, went to go meet with him, and, you know, it's like talking to a stranger, basically. It's like, you know, this is who I am today. This is everything that I care about. This is what I'm doing. And this is a guy that, like, has been locked up in and out since the 80s, doesn't. Didn't really understand even the Internet, much less computers. Like, so some of the things I'm saying are going beyond his understanding. But he's still just, like, I can tell you're passionate about this. You know, I appreciate, you know, what you're doing. But what's most important was for me to tell him that, like, I forgive you. Like, I don't want you to hold on to anything anymore because everything happened for a reason. All that had to happen. I don't know why. I don't know why that was my soul's path, but I'm grateful for it. And I have no shame in sharing this story, but I needed him to know that more than anything. I wanted him to know, like, I know you because he had his own trauma from his dad, things he was carrying, and then, of course, the compounding trauma of not being there for his children and then his grandchildren after that. And so I just needed him to know that everything happened for a reason. And I forgive you. And I don't want you to have any guilt for whatever happened. From me, at least for me, you need to talk to my brother and sister separately, but from me. Let that go. I'm okay. My life is going good now. And you, because of you, I'm in this place now where I can share this story. And he ended up staying. That was the longest he'd been free for my entire life. And unfortunately, in. In July 20, 2018, he died of a drug overdose in a hotel in Houston. And he. He stayed sober for a good long time, but he kind of went back to some of his old habits. And, you know, ultimately, people have to make their own choices. You know, I had to make my choice to do this. There's nothing anybody else could have said to me. And plenty of people tried to help me. And I. Unfortunately, I've had five to ten other friends who've died from drug overdoses, family members and friends. And I've been on both sides of that equation. And I know that ultimately a person has to make that choice. There's. You can give them all the money in the world, all the hugs, all the crying, all the whatever. If they don't want to make the choice, they're not going to. And I've realized over the years as I give my talks about exit and build, when I share that little bit of my story, somebody will always come up to me and say, oh, my son's dealing with drug addiction right now, or I had my own drug addiction, or I've never tucked drugs and touched drugs a day in my life. But this is the way that I'm struggling. And thank you for sharing that. And so I've known that I was going to write this story, and I've had it planned to write it on the 20th anniversary. Anniversary. And I, as I actually went in and started writing it, and it. It turned into 30 chapters of just describing my arrest and reflection on this and also reflecting on. On the criminal justice system and. And how my first. Some of my first experiences with racism were in there and my own questions about my own, you know, ethnicity and where I fit in and all just. There's so much connected to this. And another big piece was, like, the mental health aspect that there were times when I was younger because of the ways I was acting, because of the example I'd been shown by my dad, which is people lie, and it's just normal people will say whatever they want and then do what the exact opposite, so you should do the same. So for a long time, I adopted that strategy, and maybe not in a conscious way, but I just figured I can do whatever I want. I was a. I was a cheater. I was a liar. And probably nearly every relationship I've ever had up until my early 30s, until the current one I'm in right now. And that's not his fault, but I learned some of these traits of, like, you can just do whatever. And. And there was periods of time, as I discuss in the book in depth, that I started to question whether I was a sociopath, whether I. Because I learned about that concept, this idea of people who either have little or no empathy or, you know, incapable of experiencing compassion, et cetera, as I remember. And this is in the book, when I first looked that up and. And started like, wow, is this, like, is this me? Like. And then over time, I. I don't believe that that was true.

I think the fact that you're questioning whether you were. That indicates that it's not true. Well, so that's what they say about, like, narcissists. If you're, like, questioning like, holy, could I be narcissistic?

I've since come to believe. I recently actually read a memoir by another woman while I was writing my memoir. It was kind of inspiration. That's just called Sociopath. And it's a very interesting book. I encourage people to check it out. And she believes there's a spectrum. And I think that's probably true.

I think that's how it is with most of these things.

Spectrum of. Yeah. Narcissists and sociopaths who would be fully, fully incapable. And in others who might have some level of awareness of, like, they're doing things and. Or at the very least in a practical level, when I do this, it causes harm and that creates trouble for me. So don't do it. Not necessarily because they care about the people.

Yeah. Not because the empathy, but.

So I went on that journey, though, of asking myself those questions and in the book. And I won't ruin some of the things I share at the end, but I started to kind of now as an adult and reflection, like, looking back, I mean, I was cutting myself quite a bit. I learned it from other places. I have two giant scars that are covered up by this tattoo that I just covered up this year as a way to kind of let go of. And like, you know, I've worn them for a long time without shame, but now it's like, I'm ready to move that on. And even as weird as it sounds, I'm writing this memoir. But part of writing this memoir and putting it out is also I'm ready to let go of this story. Like, this isn't going to be who I am forever. That, like. Yeah, exactly. It's a great story and I love to share it, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life telling people, oh, I'm a former addict, this and that. It's a piece of who I was and it's helped me get to this point. But now that it's in, it's going to be in print soon, and I'm sharing it with the world. I want it to help other people. And then I want to kind of let go of it as well. And the other thing I see is that. But as my activism, like I was saying earlier, with it shifting towards permaculture, in a lot of ways, I want to make addiction part of my activism and my journalism, too, because there's so many people who are addicted in our movements, whether they're addicted to porn, drugs, alcohol, and we can all come together and have a good time at the freedom thing. And I've had friends who I've known, who I knew from different freedom events and I've known for years who then turn around and their liver collapses because I never thought about it. But every time I saw them, they did have a drink in hand. And, you know, there's these struggles that we're even in our awakened conscious circles that there Might be fear and shame to talk about. And I see it. It's funny because I see it when I tell somebody, like, oh, yeah, I used to be addicted to crystal meth. I'll see on their face like, they're embarrassed for me or something. I'm like, it's okay. I'm fine. Like, I don't have anything about. But you can kind of see, like, that we're not supposed to talk about.

Those things out loud.

It's like, oh, that's. It's not like. Because that's a pretty bad drug, right? That's not like, okay, I smoke too much weed or something. It's like, no, I was hooked on crystal meth. I was living in a crack house. Like, it is what it is. I had to go through that. And so I want to make this more part of the things I speak about. In fact, this year at the People's Reset, my talk is going to be focused on how do we create alternatives to AA and recovery systems that just reinforce the same government garbage, like, how do we as a community take care of each other? Because it is a problem there. And so I'm going to share some of my experience. But also part of it is because, like, I've had this vision to create some kind of organization. It would. It wouldn't be, you know, it would be more in the private than some kind of nonprofit, but that general kind of thing. The Troy Bros. Foundation or something. This is my father's name because I don't want his memory to just be that of a drug addict who failed to overcome his trauma from his parents. And unfortunately, once he passed, like, you know, my grandma died of a broken heart not too long after that, and his father's still alive. And my hope had been that when they. If my dad had stayed sober, that I would be part of the process of bringing them together. Because I can see clear as day that this is intergenerational trauma that every Bros man that is live today, except for my young nephew, who's the. The youngest one in our family right now, has been to prison, has been struggled with drug addiction, has struggled with probably mental health issues. I was told I was bipolar when I was younger. And I don't really buy into any of these diagnoses. And this is what I talk about in the book too, that, like, that works for some people. But when I. When I. Just an example, when I did these big cuts and I had to go to the hospital and they kind of pressured me to admit that I had cut myself Then they were like, okay, well, now that you've admitted to harming yourself, we have to give you a psychological evaluation before we release you. I was 8, 17, 18 at the time. 18 or 19. And I lied my way through that evaluation because I knew for when I was smart enough to know. Like, I'm not going to tell these people how crazy I really feel inside. Like, I'm just going to. No, I'm fine. No, I don't have any of those kind of thoughts. No this and that. But it was also because I rejected any of that thing. I see a lot of people use those things as crutch crutches. And I remember not to go take us in a whole different direction. But I've seen you post about this, too, about the prevalence of people who claim they're autistic now. And, like, everybody's autistic, or everybody's got Asperger's, everybody's got this. And not to say it isn't prevalent, because we know it is, but I think there's a lot of people using these things as a crutch. And so I never wanted to accept that, okay, I'm bipolar, or I have antisocial personality disorder, or I have borderline personality disorder. These are things I've heard or any of that. And in fact, in the book, I share a story about, like, after all my drug use, I. I did some pretty. Pretty bad damage to my. My intestines and my stomach from just all the drugs I did. And some of it I still deal with today. And when I finally wanted to go get help, I tried to go to a doctor. This was shortly after I'd got out, and I was like, all right, I need to figure out what's going on inside here because I can't use the bathroom. Everything's messed up. And I saw these doctors, and within minutes of meeting me, I thought I was going to see my childhood doctor, and he wasn't there. And there's these young guys that, I swear to God, there must have been a freaking big pharma salesman in the next room next door, because after five minutes of talking to me, they came back with boxes and boxes of Lexapro, which was the popular antidepressant at the time. And they're like, you know, what's going on with you? You're just stressed out. Blah, blah, this. And I'm like, I have something going on in my stomach. And they handed me all this stuff, and I literally just walked out and threw it away. And that prevented me from Getting real help for a couple more years. Because I was like, forget it, Fine. If that's what they want to offer me, then I don't want help at all. My point with that is that I've. I'm not somebody that embraces these kind of, you know, diagnoses, but I knew that there was something going on with me. I don't think giving myself a label like that would be very helpful. I know that taking a bunch of drugs wasn't going to help me. I was already on a bunch of other drugs, right? So eventually I had to come to a place of realizing that there were deeper root causes that were causing me to be violent and to, you know, lie to other people and to treat people in ways that I knew weren't right and that I didn't want to be treated myself. And then of course, to just try to seek happiness and stuffing as many drugs up my nose or be body as possible. And yeah, of course, with time and reflection now I can look back and see this so clearly. And so this book is dedicated to my nieces and nephews who are 15 and under. And they're just at that point where they're starting to have their challenges, you know, and they've had some challenging things in their life. It's dedicated to my father who lost his life to drug overdose and to anybody else who's like, really dealing with that. So when this book comes out, it'll be out by Christmas if everything goes well. I'm working potentially with some publishers, but if not, I'm going to self publish and do it the way I normally do and just put it out there. And I hope that anybody who reads it, you know, finds value in it and that if they know people who are struggling, that they can give it to them and at least show them like, that there is another side, you know, there is hope on the other side. And. And I will also just in closing on this, say that, like, the people who know who I am and are coming to this book, be prepared to see a different person because this is not the person that you know today. Because that's not who I was at the time. And I didn't shy away from being real about the worst parts of, of me and the worst things that I've done and the ways I've treated people and criminal activity, things like that. Like, this is a raw, gritty, real journey of everything I went through and then how I started on the journey that I'm on today.

I appreciate that, man, because like I said, the beginning, it gives you depth. It shows, it's validating for other people. Like, that you have been through the depths of darkness and you can come out and be one of the best people I know. Like, that's incredible, man. I appreciate it really is like the hero's journey, dude. It's super cool.

Yeah. I mean, it was. It was such an interesting feeling as I'm like, writing it and going through and it was definitely there's, you know, I'm. I'm tearing up as I'm writing it and like, because I'm reliving some of these things and just like, I went through that or thinking about the ways I was treating certain people and like I said, I mean that. That I definitely built a bad reputation up for myself in some parts of Houston from that time of my life. And I recognize that there are things that I've done in the past, but I also refuse to let other people hold me in the past too, because I know I'm not the person that I was 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago, and that I had to go through those things to be able to share this with other people. And yeah, it is what it is. You know, I. I don't feel any shame in anything. And it's just. I'm excited, though. I'm really excited to share this part of my work because it's. It's different. And that's why I appreciate you giving me the chance to talk about it, because I know that I've been thinking about this. As I'm getting ready to release it, I'm like, how am I going to market this when most of the people who know me want to talk about Palantir or these other things which I care about, obviously. And talking about my personal story might not be the thing they care about or they want to hear about, but I appreciate you giving me space to share about it.

Yeah, man. I mean, I have my own journey and I still need to make an episode like sharing my whole experience, but I'm excited to share my whole experience too. And mine wasn't like drug related, but I went through a lot of crazy ass when I was younger too. And I think it's. I. I look at back on all that and I'm incredibly grateful for it because it's made me who I am today and I can relate to other people and it can be medicine for other people too.

I see that. I just, from the few posts that I've seen you here and there talk about you know, some of your. Your own journeys with sports and other things, like, I. And I think that's. Even our journeys are different. I think that there's a kindred connection there because of those journeys, and that's what makes us stronger.

Amen, man.