Gilded Trash
Ride shotgun with Comedian Scott Reed and Creator AlannaB as they travel the country in search of ...what? When they figure it out, you'll be the first to know!
Gilded Trash
That Path is For; Yinz' Steps Alone
What if the substances that have shaped human history, from opium to cannabis, weren't merely vices but intricate threads in our cultural tapestry? Join us as we embark on a fascinating exploration of drugs through the ages, where we unravel the multifaceted roles these substances have played in society, from ancient Roman festivities to modern-day debates surrounding their use. We'll journey through the artistic and cultural landscapes shaped by drugs, examining the role of iconic films and music in shaping public perception. Hear personal musings and factual insights, all while maintaining a balanced perspective on the benefits and potential harms of these substances.
Our conversation takes a deep dive into the transformative powers of psychedelics, inspired by works like Hamilton's Pharmacopoeia and personal stories of healing and joy. We discuss the delicate dance between addiction and recovery, with candid reflections on the challenges faced by those struggling with substance abuse and the limitations of traditional rehab approaches. Through a mix of humor and resilience, we share amusing anecdotes from the path to recovery, shedding light on the unique and often amusing personalities encountered along the way. This episode offers a heartfelt look at the human experience of addiction, emphasizing the need for individualized paths to sobriety and the ongoing battle for personal growth.
As we explore the intersection of drugs, entertainment, and pop culture, we reminisce about the impact of legendary films like "Scarface" and beloved shows like "Weeds." We ponder the connection between drugs and music, celebrating how substances have fueled creativity across generations. The episode wraps up with a nod to the evolving cannabis culture, imagining a world where customer service in weed shops combines with the efficiency of a Chick-fil-A drive-thru. Stay tuned for our next episode, where we shift gears to cover the festive themes of Thanksgiving and the ensuing Holiday madness.
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Do you just want to walk us into episode eight? Because by the time this releases it's going to be after the election.
Speaker 2:Oh, right, right, right, right. So here we are, episode eight, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Episode eight we will have. We don't know it right now, but we will have known by the time this comes out, hopefully anyhow who the next president of the United States will be, because and that's why we covered the election in our last thing We'll probably have some little clips and stuff of us watching election coverage. I'm getting ready for it, like it's the Super Bowl.
Speaker 1:I know, like I'm ready to party, I want to go on TikTok Live, right, I mean again, that's all. This is going to air after the fact, so we'll see what happens. So this week's episode is all about drugs. Throw Gus, and I just want to throw this disclaimer out there we are in no way, shape or form, condoning the use, the illegal use, of any drugs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're not advocating for that, we're just suggesting it. No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and if you're underage click out here right now.
Speaker 2:I'm going to age restrict this episode. There's lots of things that I mean we, I mean I mean, a lot of this is educational.
Speaker 1:for whatever reason, Scott is a it is, we're just a host of facts and figures.
Speaker 2:I've always loved drugs.
Speaker 1:He knows a lot about it. He's watched a lot of documentaries.
Speaker 2:I've always been fascinated by drugs. Interested in drugs, I mean you learn about the things you like. I mean that's just all there is to it. No, but I mean I've always, because we grew up in the golden age of, uh, drug information yeah, you know what I mean, like no generation before us had the access to the information that, like most people, had never even heard of half the drugs that were out there. You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean right, right you didn't?
Speaker 2:you had very select few people, a lot of the pioneers of modern drugs, especially like your psychedelics and stuff a lot of that stuff was just pioneered, you know, in the last 70 to 80 years right you know what I mean. Like this is all a new frontier really in the course of human history, as far as like where we're at now with drugs. Drugs have always been a part of human history as long as there's been humans, so there's.
Speaker 2:So marcus aurelius, we know, was a opium addict right that was what like a long long freaking time, thousands and thousands of years ago, the roman empire right and like, but I mean people had long used. The two biggest ones are because they're just the most natural the plants in terms of just in their straight form of being, weed and opium right because, like they're just, they're ready to use. You don't have to do nothing to them.
Speaker 1:You don't have to you know what I mean the table farm, the table baby, and so people have been using them.
Speaker 2:Well, they actually estimate there's. So we know that people were ingesting like poppies, like through archaeological evidence and stuff okay, but we even, we even guess that even the use of opium poppies go predates humanity and that some of our, the early human ancestors, were eaten opium long before you know what I mean we're talking a hundred. Who? Knows like neanderthals, like stuff like that. We have evidence when was?
Speaker 1:was the Wizard of Oz written Well? The 1940s Right but even in the 1940s they wrote it into Frank Baum. In the 30s something Frank L Baum, or whatever his name is, wrote it into this storyline.
Speaker 2:Opium is probably the most, like I said that, and cannabis are the two biggest and actually because, like the Romans, like we found a lot of evidence, they love weed but they actually the reason that they loved it the most is they love to fry and eat its seeds, the seeds Fried weed seeds Fried weed seeds. The Romans loved it. It was like a big thing with them. They loved it ate it up. It was like a delic thing with him. They loved it, ate it up.
Speaker 1:It was like a delicate anybody doing this in the legal use states? Let me know.
Speaker 2:But I'm just saying like you might be able to. If you owned an italian restaurant, I'd give it a go fried weed seeds I do like seeds, I like they say something real fancy in italian and like oh, we're breaking a dish, we're breaking a dish out with a fried, a weed to see how is it that we're talking about drogas right now and you lead right into food?
Speaker 2:well if they're eating wheat seed, because that's just what I do. It's a crossover of the two things that I love the most. No, I'm kidding, but um, I mean two of my top ten probably.
Speaker 1:And if you guys are wondering why I'm saying it that way, I'm not trying to hide the word. I mean it is what it is. If this episode gets banned off of any suit, Right, I mean, it is what it is.
Speaker 2:You'll be able to find it somewhere. I mean you can talk about it on the podcast. No, but I say that Our podcast won't talk about it If it would get banned on a specific platform, meaning like one in particular.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Just because of the talk of drugs, it's whatever. Who cares? You know where else to find it.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly. But regardless of that, the reason why I say it that way is because I just have a weird way of saying certain words and once I do it like once or twice, like ever since ever. I said that a couple episodes ago and ever since I said it like I can't say you can't unsay it. I can't unsay it. You can't say it any other way. Right Drogas.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like saying I don't know, I can't think of anything.
Speaker 1:But but yeah. But so drugs have always been a part of humanity, like a part of human history, and and just like everything else, once it makes its way to America, it becomes puritinely inhumane to do have a long history with drugs, but there was no real drug regulations until, at least in the US, until, like in the 1920s, the Harrison Tax Act. Right.
Speaker 2:Is the first time that there's any kind of thing on the books about making drugs illegal. I mean, drugs were here but it's, and I mean, but then, and then you saw other you know legislation come into play. And then, of course, with the advent of like the drug enforcement agency and stuff like that, throughout the Another money laundering firm in the US. Yeah, it's all it is. That's exactly right. It's just a way to fight in another endless war.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And pump money into police departments and schools and everything else. It's just a total money racket. That's the whole. Things are money, right, they're making money. Coming and going, the drug people are making money. They're probably involved in that. They would have to be. To run a transnational criminal organization you have to have some kind of government connections at some link in the chain. You know what I mean. Like there has to be somebody turning a blind eye.
Speaker 1:We've watched enough movies, documentaries and TV shows to know that if they say it enough, it's really happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it was somebody that said that if you took like the drug economy and it was a legal like enterprise, it would be as big as oil. Right, you know, it's the biggest industry in the world. It crosses, touches every continent, every country, every household really, and I don't mean that every single household uses drugs, but everybody knows somebody that has some kind of connection to drugs right whether that be a family member that died of an overdose or their brother that smokes weed right, and that's the thing, is there's I mean what?
Speaker 1:or alcohol, exactly everybody I mean if we're not talking about addiction per se wholly in this episode, like it's not all about addiction, but I mean food, sugar laden foods and processed foods could technically be considered a drug because they they impact your receptors in some of the same ways.
Speaker 2:I mean sure, yeah, if you even want to expand it that far, for sure.
Speaker 1:I don't, but I'm just saying Right, no, no, I have a food addiction.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, addiction is a whole different thing aside from drugs, you could spend another episode talking about addiction of drugs and then another episode of addiction of other things.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like that's such a heavy beat, like there's so much that goes with that right and I like to keep the episodes on the light-hearted side.
Speaker 1:So while there will be some like heavier discussions in this episode, I like to have a whole episode just on addiction itself. That we could make it funny. I mean, I'm sure we could.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm saying we could do an episode on that, but it's not this one, because yeah we're just covering we're just covering drugs, stuff about drugs I mean because of the age we live in right now, though, and how it just in our lifetime, the I don't even know what it's called the shift of attitude, yeah.
Speaker 2:Towards drugs and drug like, especially like what now with the legalization of marijuana in a lot of states, hopefully the whole country here soon, just to clear things up. But then you have other places that are going like even further than that and saying you can mushrooms, other psychedelics you know what I mean that you could do, um, that they're legalized and I mean they're using drugs now for a lot of therapeutic reasons that they have another you know they talk about, like the ketamine and mdma being used to treat ptsd.
Speaker 2:Um, there's a lot of you research being done around the world that sort of points in that direction. Then you look at it from the therapeutic standpoint as well. You look at things like ayahuasca or people that go in these like spiritual retreats or do the 5-MAO-DMT, the frogs, the bufo frogs or whatever they're called Right.
Speaker 2:That's like a whole one and that's just like it's all related. All that stuff's related to DMT. But they can synthetically make that thing on the frogs. They don't want you getting the frogs because the frogs are endangered. It's only like the Northern Colorado River Frog frog or something that does you can do it and there's a whole. Go watch it. Hamilton's pharmacopoeia he's he was really up to date on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that show is fascinating well see, to me that was a great. That's like one of my favorite shows of all time, because it's literally what like how? If you have a curiosity about learning about drugs, how they work, where they come from it's very educational.
Speaker 1:It removes a lot of the emotion out of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's really no bias, in the sense of he's not coming at it like drugs are bad, drugs are good right it's just what it is right. It's just the science he goes to find the people that like first made meth and ecstasy and like these people were real chemical pioneers, that were, like, persecuted by the government then. And I support him because yeah, I mean well. And I've talked about it, that research is important.
Speaker 1:I think we've talked about it in other episodes and I also did a TikTok on it when I was a baby TikToker. So it's a really bad video, poor lighting, a little baby TikToker. But regardless of that, when my son died I used mushrooms. I mean we did a trip together and that basically it didn't cure me. That's a weird word to say.
Speaker 1:No, it just helped you, it kind of like it snapped me out of a fog and gave me like a renewed hope for life that I don't think I would have had, just trying to do it with chemicals from the farm.
Speaker 2:What psychedelics allow you to do is take a step back from the situation and view it from a perspective that you're previously unable to see it from right and then, once you've made that realization you know what I mean or seen that from a different, that new perspective, then you can process it from a different way, and then it's like that's what allows you to like you know not, you know, move on, or whatever you want to say.
Speaker 1:Right, and that was one of the more therapeutic ones. But I mean, we've I've done so many fun trips too, um, I I might've had one bad one, um, when I was a lot younger and I couldn't even tell you like how. I mean part of taking a mushroom trip is experiencing all the emotions, so you want to kind of feel everything.
Speaker 2:I mean for sure, like here's. My thing is, though sometimes you don't want to always do that, so you like eat a little bit less right you don't always want to go talk to Jesus. You know what I mean, like you don't always want to Only when you need to.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You don't always need to contemplate and understand your place in the universe and everything in all existence. You don't have to do that every time. Sometimes you just want to laugh a lot and watch a scenario rerun.
Speaker 1:But you bring up a good point about laughing. I mean, obviously I live with you and you're a comedian and we both say funny shit all day, every day. So like we do laugh a lot. But I think I'm not sure what it is about me, whether it's part of my bipolar or my ADHD or being on the spectrum, but I have a very hard time experiencing happiness per se. And it's not that I'm never happy, it's just that I don't know if I've ever really understood it. But the few times that I've felt it like joy, like pure joy, burst through, other than like when my babies were like very, very, very little was microdosing on the chocolate, the mushroom chocolate, because it was just enough to where I knew I wasn't going to have to. I knew I wasn't going to take a trip, so I didn't have that like build up anxiety of where that trip was going to go. I knew.
Speaker 1:But it was just enough that like you get that wash over feeling of like, just where you feel peace and feeling good and like and then and so like, once you, once it sets in, then you just have that like, um, that's the closest thing to like joy that I in my adult life, I think, can experience, and that's not sad. I don't have a sad existence.
Speaker 2:I know I mean, I choose not reality hold on.
Speaker 1:Sorry. I choose not to take chemical pharmaceutical drugs for any of my mental health issues. That's a choice, so I handle it through self-awareness, marijuana and, every once in a while, some good shrooms.
Speaker 2:Anyway, sorry um, yeah, I have no clue what I was gonna say um, but uh, but yeah, no, but again, I mean that's really putting a positive spin on things. Um, those are some of the like good drugs. I mean, one could argue that all drugs are good and so it's. That's the weird thing it's about. It's like a dichotomy drugs areugs are good and drugs are bad simultaneously.
Speaker 2:Like anything that's that beneficial can also be harmful. I mean, that's just all there is to it, because even like I mean now we're obviously not talking about like even opiates and stuff that causes wreaks havoc on society still have a place in society. Right, it's not like there's no other painkillers that, like I mean, there is, but we've simulated based on what we know from opiates. They are opiates. They act on the opioid system, even though they may not technically classified as such.
Speaker 2:They're just not derived from the good right plant, the one that right, that's the other side of the two is we obviously are sort of we co-evolved with these plants, so our brains, our bodies have receptors to be able to right receive these plants and what they have to offer. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like if we didn't have those things, we wouldn't be able to those plans exist for a reason and I think, bringing around to that story the other day. So I was thinking about the word balance and right as I was thinking the word balance, I slid across the bathroom floor and almost busted my head open, but I didn't and it. And I was thinking about it for this very episode, because I think that's the key takeaway is, you know, all of life has a balance, all of it, all of it.
Speaker 2:Without darkness, there's no light Right, blah, blah, blah, and I don't want to get down a really philosophical trail today. Right.
Speaker 1:But I mean to your point those things come from nature, they're derived from nature, they exist for a reason and without the balance and using them properly, you're going to have what we have today, which are epidemics.
Speaker 2:Right, well, then too, but then there's also a variety of other factors that come into play too. But then there's also a variety of other factors that come into play very various socio-economic factors, pharma companies, money, capitalism all comes into play, like there's so many factors that cause, like what we are experiencing now, what you would say an epidemic, but there's always been epidemic. The only thing that changes is what epidemic you're dealing with in terms of drug use, that you're always dealing with one thing that's causing a problem. Exactly, it doesn't matter what it's, just there's various other factors that determine what that thing will be that will cause problems.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like you know what I mean, and right now it happens to be fentanyl.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Because, well, we all know the story between about. You know, we all know how opioids got spread across. Opiates got spread across the US. You know what I mean. It started with pain pills, this whole big epidemic. People got hooked and they went to heroin. Well, then they quit making heroin. A lot of people don't know this, but there's actually a few countries where it's not like penetrated, especially a lot of europe. They still get actual heroin from, like turkey and afghanistan and stuff, or the golden triangle in asia, and it's still over there. But, like the us, fentanyl has taken hold because we're all about cheap and they they don't even make they, they. You couldn't, you couldn't. You know what you would have to do to find heroin right now. Actual heroin, you wouldn't even know there's no, but you would have to be some rich celebrity that happens to know somebody that brings it in from europe right you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like you wouldn't be able to go out.
Speaker 1:Even then, I wouldn't trust it.
Speaker 2:No, no but I'm just saying, that's not my point right.
Speaker 1:My point is fentanyl replaced heroin heroin in the united states and canada and mexico.
Speaker 2:So what you had then was for, I mean, heroin had been around forever. People weren't really dying at all. That high eclipse up until the like mid 2000s is when people started dropping like flies, because prior to that you had like a I forget what I'm just going to say. We'll say 8% of heroin addicts that would die of an overdose from 1930 to 19 to 2000,. We'll say Right. After that it's like 40 to 60%.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like astronomical because they replaced the drug. Absolutely, and so it's like, and now you have all these other power players because, like China, which is where almost all those chemicals and stuff come from this is what I mean by there's all these like super drugs are played at an extremely high level. You know what I mean the utmost of the drug game. This is the highest things of government, the leaders of the countries that make up that right and it's not a conspiracy.
Speaker 1:This is well documented. You can get out rabbit holes like the cia's. Yeah, you can go, do?
Speaker 2:I'm not here to argue your case about how the cia has been involved in drug trafficking since the 1960s right we have plenty of times where they're like, oh no, we not doing that.
Speaker 2:Then you find out 40 years later oh yeah, they were doing that. So like there's no and it's not like the CIA is dealing drugs. In some cases I believe that they were directly involved, but most of the time it's international politics. It's this country is pitted against this country. We want to's. This country is pitted against this country. We want to support this country, so we're going to shut down this country's drug trade over here so that this country can get more money right and you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So it's all orchestrated by the government, but their hands aren't as dirty as everybody else and all that stuff back in the 80s with cocaine and all that jazz.
Speaker 2:There's plenty of tv shows about it go and all that stuff back in the 80s with cocaine and all that jazz. There's plenty of TV shows about it. Go watch. But that brings me to my next thing TV shows, movies.
Speaker 1:All of it, holy shit About drugs.
Speaker 2:Let's keep TV and shows separate from music, though, because that's a different category.
Speaker 1:Okay. So what do you want to hit first? Well, you said cocaine. So we got to talk about blow Scarface, right.
Speaker 2:Well, let's just start at the beginning, though, like when they first start making drug movies. You know what I mean. They've been making movies about drug use. You've seen it like whether they just mention it as a reference or whatever. But then, like when you get to the one I said earlier about the golden age, you hit the nail on the head right there. I think that really starts with scarface yeah, oh my gosh, it's.
Speaker 1:I've probably seen that movie a thousand times. No lie, love that movie, and I mean it's all about the aeo right.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's the movie that really starts it off as far as like. Well, I don't know, though. When did the French Connection come out? I think later.
Speaker 1:No, the French Connection. I feel like it was in the 70s.
Speaker 2:Because Scarface is like 76,.
Speaker 1:Right, you got your iPad right there. Yeah, Scarface is like 76.
Speaker 2:French Connection. That's a good drug movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like French Connection was 72. I mean, we could sit here and name a hundred great drug movies.
Speaker 2:Think of every movie you love that's about drugs or TV show.
Speaker 1:Oh, half baked oh my pot.
Speaker 2:Movies alone are a separate category from pot movies cocaine movies Like grandma's boy.
Speaker 1:I feel like I have Tourette's of drug movies right now.
Speaker 2:No, I know it's like Grandma's Boy Half-Paked Fear and Living in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, Don't take me down that Hunter S Thompson path, holy crapple.
Speaker 2:The French Connection was out before, but that's not really, was it 72? 71. Okay, but yeah, no, but I'm just saying it was before Scarface. But Scarface was the first movie where it glorified a drug dealer.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:The other movies aren't there. It's about they're trying to bust the bad guys bringing in the dirty dopers from Montana. No, but they you know what I mean. They're very much trying to catch the dirty dopers, or these kids are all whacked out on marijuana. They're in an LSD trip.
Speaker 1:So what's that one, oh, pineapple Express.
Speaker 2:Great movie.
Speaker 1:See you like that movie, me not so much. I didn't think it was that good, like I just didn't love it. I mean there are parts that I laugh at and I do love Pineapple Express, the Strain. It is really, really good.
Speaker 2:But as far as the movie goes like, I would prefer the Night Before.
Speaker 1:That's a great drug movie. It combines two of the greatest genres.
Speaker 2:That's a drug movie that people aren't going to think of Because it's the great First off. It's the greatest drug Christmas movie. Yes, it's a drug Christmas hybrid. Yeah, it's a drug Christmas hybrid.
Speaker 1:Hell yes, but you can't talk about movies around drugs without talking about what was that? One movie that came out in the 50s that Reefer Madness. Reefer Madness.
Speaker 2:Well, I was going to say you can't talk about drug movies also without mentioning Cheech and Chong.
Speaker 1:Oh sure. Who were the they?
Speaker 2:were the first people to purposely set out a movie to be like. We're going to show you how fun it is to do drugs. Yeah, yeah, I like, yeah, yeah, I like, yeah, hunter, but the fear and loathing and people are going to be like well, he's not a drug, yeah, it is, it's just a good one.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, they're all drugs. I mean because of their, the way that you use them.
Speaker 2:If you're hemp's not a drug, you were saying about Hunter S Thompson.
Speaker 1:Oh God, no, I just love that movie. Scares the shit out of me Some of the stuff that he talks about with the adrenochrome and the, but I do love that movie, like I just love it. I'm obsessed with Hunter Thompson.
Speaker 2:Well, I love movies, like I love the psychedelic stuff because it's like it gets so wild, like then you start to. So, when you start to get into the psychedelic world we talked a little bit about it earlier dmt. So then you have people that like so with, like you can do dmt in multiple number of ways, but ayahuasca, of course, is the one way to do DMT. And the crazy thing is is people like all report seeing the same things.
Speaker 1:Like these machine elves. Yes.
Speaker 2:And like stuff that like and you start to wonder, like that's weird dude, that they're all seeing the same stuff. It's like you're seeing behind the curtain, and then you well then you start to think back to, like when people are writing religious texts and stuff, what's to say, they didn't eat like one of these things. Exactly, and that's how it's all spawned Like is from the use of various psychedelic Pearl jam Peyote Things.
Speaker 1:Pearl jam. Yeah, that's some type of peyote things Pearl Jam yeah, that's some type of peyote. That's what Pearl Jam is.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that yeah, see you learn something new every day man, it's peyote jam.
Speaker 2:That's why I'm saying drugs are everywhere you don't even realize too, like how they infiltrate, like the language things that we say I can't think of. I should have got some specific examples from America's secret slang. But like prohibition and drugs and alcohol and stuff have given us so much of the slang that we say like in day to day life, like drugs are. You think about how much drugs are a part of our life? If you include alcohol, it's like. It's like I said, it's everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's wild how much it's a part of our life, unless you're.
Speaker 2:Amish it's. Even they do it.
Speaker 1:Robin Springer.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm saying nicotine, coffee, all those things are drugs.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So they're chemicals that do a certain thing to the brain, and that's what I'm saying. It touches every single person, every single person.
Speaker 1:I was thinking about something. Now I can't remember what it was it is the drugs that bind us oh, I, just so we can wrap out on the wrap up on the movie piece. Just because there is a, I mean we could just go on and on.
Speaker 2:We could sit here and talk about drug movies all day long drug movies I might do a whole episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah comment, your favorite drug movie yeah comment, your drop us a drop us a line and tell us your favorite drug movie but um what's your? Favorite drug movie my favorite drug movie favorite drug movie.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying, like I'd really have to sit here and think about this. I'm gonna say my favorite drug movie. It's so tough, there's so many because, like I mean, you're talking about the heavy hitters here.
Speaker 1:It was Scarface until I saw Blow. I know Scarface is up there.
Speaker 2:I like Blow, but upon re-watching I still think I like Scarface better. Scarface definitely probably my favorite cocaine movie, for sure. There's a lot of good cocaine documentaries, though. Shout out Cocaine Cowboys. What's the one that I really like? Salmout malguda those guys down in miami yeah, I love all of it.
Speaker 1:I know what you're talking about, but all of it's good.
Speaker 2:The documentaries are good, but I'm gonna say I'm gonna stick with. Scarface is my favorite drug blow. Blow is good, I do like Blow.
Speaker 1:It's on the fence for me, but just because I like, actually I lie. What Screw.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 1:Let's back that record up Because we forgot about. It's not really a drug movie, but it has a serious drug overtone to it.
Speaker 2:Pulp Fiction.
Speaker 1:Good fellas oh for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what I was going to say. Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily classify that as a drug movie, but like it's hard to take it's hard. Show me 10 movies that don't have drugs in them.
Speaker 1:Like that are like popular that aren't a disney movie, let's yeah, like not for kids or whatever right like um, so much so, and I said so when we got married yeah, so the the song that I introduced her to that was our first dance song was Do you Feel Me?
Speaker 2:by Anthony Hamilton, which he wrote for the movie American Gangster with Denzel Washington, russell Crowe, because they wanted to write it in the 70s, because they play it when he's at the club in the 70s.
Speaker 1:Anthony talks about that in the 70s and they wanted about that and they wanted it to.
Speaker 2:They used equipment from the 70s, all of it, to make it sound like it was a song of the air, and it's a great song. I love that song.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a well, every time as soon as it goes in I mean, obviously, because it was our first dance like I get a little emotional every time I hear. But it is an amazing song and Scott actually introduced me to it. And what's really funny and cute and so true about that story is when I listened to it I was like, oh, if we ever get married, this will be our wedding song. We'd only known each other two days at that point.
Speaker 2:No, I lie, we knew it was like three.
Speaker 1:No, we knew each other for a while, but we were only dating for like three, four days when I said that.
Speaker 2:So um, and we did, dreams do come true.
Speaker 1:That was in our wedding.
Speaker 2:American gangster.
Speaker 1:American gangsta.
Speaker 2:Shout out Denzel Washington. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, no, anthony Hamilton, anthony Hamilton too, but they couldn't have made the movie without Denzel.
Speaker 2:Anthony Hamilton would have just been out there singing songs, like he always does.
Speaker 1:He's good though.
Speaker 2:But that's what I'm saying. There's so many movies that you bring into it, because I was thinking like Pulp Fiction I brought up. Yeah, that's a good one too, that's not a drug movie per se, but it's got lots of drugs.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's one of the craziest drug scenes ever of all time.
Speaker 2:That is a that's iconic, yeah if you're talking top 10 like drug scenes yeah, it's iconic them stabbing him a thermon in the heart trying to bring her back from an overdose. Yeah is wild yeah that's and that's the first time they ever showed anything like that, like in a movie. You were like what the fuck am I watching?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was insane.
Speaker 2:You're like what is this?
Speaker 1:And Pulp Fiction is an iconic movie.
Speaker 2:I mean, it was nominated for countless Oscars. What about shows? That's what I'm saying. You have shows like Narcos with all its various iterations.
Speaker 1:My favorite drug TV show of all time never is Weeds.
Speaker 2:Oh, weeds, I forgot all about that, that is definitely probably hands down the best show. Nancy.
Speaker 1:Pants, nancy Pants, I love her so much, she's.
Speaker 2:I was sad when that show ended, though no.
Speaker 1:I know, I know.
Speaker 2:I was really sad. Yeah, it really was such a good show. It felt like they were my family. Yeah, it really did, uncle Andy. Andy, I could rewatch that. I love Andy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a great show.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:I think that there is one of my top favorite shows of all time.
Speaker 1:All time and I've probably watched the whole series back like end to end at least five times.
Speaker 2:And it's not really about drugs, it's about the inner workings of a family, but drugs just are the backdrop.
Speaker 1:But you know what I'm saying? I mean, it's all about herself and me, but I'm saying that that's not the driving force of the story. No, it's about being a single mom, like a widow.
Speaker 2:The driving force of the story is the relationships that she has to build and the world that she has to navigate and the balance that she has to have to find her way through all that mess Right.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's a really cool narrative on becoming a widow and having to figure out shit to make ends meet, right, regardless?
Speaker 2:And she's just also yeah. Eventually it gets like she's just a badass.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:She figures it out and she's a badass.
Speaker 1:She is a badass, I Nancy Botwin, she is my idol, no, she's not my idol, and I laugh.
Speaker 2:And then there's been some of the I don't know what's the word I'm looking for there's been some pretty bad attempts at shows. Also Disjointed comes to mind. Yeah that was it's like when you're doing weed comedy, it can it either comes across as super hacky and not funny right, it's so like corny, like it's corny or you have to take a sort of different approach, like I don't even know what the thing is, but it's like a difficult thing to now it's a fine line to walk right between being like stupid and corny about it what was that duo though that was funny on there Dank and Dabby or something.
Speaker 2:Dank and Dabby. Hell yeah, that was funny.
Speaker 1:Well, dank's on SNL now right, he was on SNL. Oh yeah, for like a minute he's not anymore, chris, what was his name? Chris Redd or something. Yeah, chris Redd, I think.
Speaker 2:And I don't know what Dabby's up to. But See, that's the thing is. There was things I liked about that show.
Speaker 1:Oh, Debbie's on that show Ghost Remember? Oh yeah, she's one of the basement dwellers. But yeah, it was a good show, but it was a very half-baked pardon the pun attempt at doing service to, because Weeds was more of a drama, it was a soap opera basically Right.
Speaker 2:There was funny parts in it.
Speaker 1:It was a dramedy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a dramedy Very much what you would think of in the lines of a lot of other sort of Showtime HBO shows.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like that are the hour-long dramedies where they're not necessarily. Well, I think too, with this jointed they tried to push the whole woke agenda by having her son be half black, and then he was like right, there's a lot of things that are just like.
Speaker 1:Can I just be honest for a second? He wasn't black enough to pull it off. He was like way too white and nerdy to for being half black and I don't care if people think I'm racist for saying that. Like it didn't give the credit to the character that I think he could have been, Right, right For sure.
Speaker 2:There was another show I was just thinking about.
Speaker 1:I don't know any other shows that tried to do like the whole drug thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, my yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm sure there is, but I mean we, if you want to talk about shows like that, like Action Bronson.
Speaker 2:Watches Ancient Aliens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fun.
Speaker 2:That's a great drug show. That is a great drug show, and they just sit around and smoke weed and watch Ancient Aliens, I mean it's fantastic television.
Speaker 1:I mean, raise your hand, if you've done that before, guilty.
Speaker 2:That's why everybody that likes that show is like I'm going to watch Ancient Aliens anyway.
Speaker 1:However, let's talk, because we're going to go down a whole diatribe on this. Let's talk about drugs and music.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to start by saying that I was one of the atypical 90s college kids that had the poster on my dorm room of was it the Cypress Hill or the? It was the Cypress Hill.
Speaker 2:It was.
Speaker 1:Cypress Hill album cover was on my wall with the whole, or on my front door at my dorm room with the whole diatribe about the history of marijuana or whatever that was yeah, it gives you the whole breakdown.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I never thought when we were in school that like weed was ever going to be legal, like they talked about it, like it might one day be medically available. Right, but I never thought that we would be hitting the drive through like we're going to fucking McDonald's picking up our order of eight vape pens and two ounces of weed which I love.
Speaker 1:I love that we've moved that far into society like of doing what's right with the plants that god gave us. However, um, do they have to read our whole order back to us, because then I feel a little fucking like they don't do that at every place, so I feel like a fiend but um yeah, they just want to make sure that you know. You know what you're getting speaking of which, shout out to betty eddies.
Speaker 2:They won an award last month they are probably the best edible that I like the best edible I've ever tried. They're delicious. They're very, very tasty.
Speaker 1:And if anybody from my work is listening, I didn't do any of this, it's all made up. I'm just trying to do a podcast. This is all fiction.
Speaker 2:But yeah, let's go back to drugs and music.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's do that.
Speaker 2:Because not only do they talk about. I think all music might be about drugs and written on drugs I'm pretty sure that's like just the way music works yeah like even the bad drug they get, like strung out on heroin, writing great tunes great, great tunes yeah not everybody no but some and uh, some of the best songs of all time are about drugs, were written on drugs, are sung on drugs like drugs and music go.
Speaker 1:That's like peas and carrots right, I mean you don't have the blues without heroin.
Speaker 2:Sorry, yeah, I think you do, because they were playing it before. That came later. But um, weed you don't have. Probably jazz, which then leads to the blues. Weed, I'd say, is a bigger contributor to that.
Speaker 2:Heroin enters the scene a little later, in the late 30s reefer but yeah, I mean um, but just so many songs talk about weed. I mean drugs in general. I said weed, but yeah, I mean marijuana music that's the most common drug that people obviously, because it's the most common drug that people talk about, but because it's the most common drug that people talk about. But then, like so not only do you have music about drugs written on drugs, and this all occurs like in the 60s, 70s, because they're experimenting with all these drugs, they start to write about them. They're becoming addicted to some of these drugs, so they start to then write about these addictions. They're becoming addicted to some of these drugs, so they start to then write about these addictions. But then you enter in the 1980s, you're introduced to a new form of music and rap where they're talking about selling drugs.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So, like then, you're even seeing it from a different perspective.
Speaker 1:Well before that you had the Narco Caritas.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, narco, caritas, which are songs about you know, mexican drug bandits have been around since basically the turn of the last century and were popular. But that's not like what we're talking about. We're talking popular music in America. So the biggest thing about selling drugs was when rap came out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what I mean, right.
Speaker 2:I mean, you did have songs about people selling drugs, but they were limited to like one song, you know, like here and there. I just said that because Waiting for the man comes to mind by one, mr Lou Reed, which isn't really about the drug dealer, it's about him waiting on the drug dealer.
Speaker 1:Right Well, whose song is Needle and Spoon.
Speaker 2:That's Neil Young. Yeah, that's about somebody doing drugs though, right, I like that song though, yeah, it's about so many of his friends he saw, because I mean heroin claimed a lot of lives throughout music history I mean 27 club so it's cocaine that don't get it twisted a lot of times. What gets them is actually not one or the other it's the breakdown of the body from buildup of no it's the speedball that's what got so?
Speaker 2:many of them because that's like playing with the. They say that's like, you know, tempting. I've never done a speedball but I was curious about it, so I asked people. I know because I'm not a big upper guy, never was, but I asked people when I was. I asked the guy one time. I said what's it like to do a speedball? He's like ask Jason. So I asked this guy, jason, this was in prison. Um, uh, I asked this guy. He's like imagine being shot to the moon at a thousand miles an hour and then right when you get there you land in a soft bed of pillows and I was like that's pretty intense. But cause? I guess the cocaine hits you first, but now they do. So the new 20th, 21st century speed balls is meth and fentanyl.
Speaker 1:So thank you because that sounds like a lot of opportunities for bad chemistry.
Speaker 2:Like if it was pure coca and pure heroina, then fine even then you're playing as such a dangerous game because you're, you're, just it's don't because you know.
Speaker 1:No, I mean obviously I'm not. I like I'm just getting anxiety thinking about that. But right I do love a good upper. I mean, if we're being going full-on on confessional here, I tried crack in like the mid-90s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hate crack.
Speaker 1:I mean, I tried it a couple times, but I didn't really care for it. I tried Coke before and I like the up feeling. I don't like the down feeling.
Speaker 2:I also don't like all the stuff that they use in it. You know what I mean that. Well, nowadays you don't know, which is basically why I got out of the drug game right it's not the only reason I said that like that's it, that's what got me.
Speaker 2:No, but I have a joke about this that none of our drugs like that's where I'm an old timer, like can't we just go back to the good old drugs coke, coke, crack, smack and whatever Right, because it's like these new drugs, these like where it's like they're just playing games with governments, where they're like oh, it's not, it's just one chemical off of this, one chemical off of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's like you have all these things that are made. There's too many opportunities, like you said, for things to go wrong. If I am just smoking a plant or you know something like that, there's very little things being done to this thing to use it, but all these processes, you're trusting somebody to be a chemist right right you're trusting some mexican in the middle of the Mexican, in the middle of the mountains, in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:With 55-gallon drums, one-gallon gas, can a couple chemicals Right? You're trusting him to make your drug that you're going to put in your body.
Speaker 1:Yeah and fuck that, because I barely trust the people that make my food at the company.
Speaker 2:I don't trust the people that make drugs in a lab Right, Let alone a lab in the food at the company. I barely. I don't trust the people that make drugs in a lab Right. Let alone a lab in the middle of the woods.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:All there is to it.
Speaker 1:Okay, now I mean are there people who make drugs from scratch that are brilliant?
Speaker 2:And trustworthy.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:There are, there are, yeah, for sure, that's some of the people that like Hamilton talks to in his show. Yeah, for sure, that's some of the people that Hamilton talks to in his show. Yeah, is these people that are legit chemists that wanted to push the human mind experience forward, true psychonauts, and experiment with these sort of different, you know, 2cb or stuff like that?
Speaker 1:That fascinates me, though, I mean so.
Speaker 2:we watched a documentary one time on how the pharmaceutical drug Ambien was actually helpful to people off label Remember it was waking people up from like comas, year long comas. This was real and legit. Like these people were like immobile, for and they don't even here's the kicker they had no clue why it worked.
Speaker 1:They don't know why they had no idea. Well, the one gentleman had had a stroke and he had aphasia and his tongue didn't work and his jaw didn't work and after he took the Ambien um within like, and after he took the Ambien within like what was it like? Five to 10 minutes he was able to speak perfectly.
Speaker 2:He hadn't spoken in forever.
Speaker 1:And it's just there's something Couldn't speak, and that's what. So that's why, like, I'm a huge proponent of going down the rabbit hole and doing the research of what the drugs can do, but again, once they start to synthesize them for commercial gain, I'm fucking tapped out, like I don't want any parts of that. I mean not that I'm a chemist, but I do enough research in all the healthcare stuff to know where there might be like studies or whatever. And off-label studies are fascinating. But can we just scale it back to the original ingredients? Maybe that's why we can't cure cancer because we've added so many chemical additives to whatever the plant was that was originally meant to help with the cure or whatever. I don't know. I'm just speculating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what this episode's for. This episode is a free form thought experiment and funny enough.
Speaker 1:We are on no drugs today well I mean maybe a little weed, but not anything like that would. No hallucinogenics, no eddies, none of that. Just plain old-fashioned ditch psych. I don't even know what ditch looks like anymore. I haven't known what, I don't even. No Eddies, none of that. Just plain old-fashioned ditch Psych. I don't even know what ditch looks like anymore.
Speaker 2:I haven't known what ditch looks like I don't even think that's the thing about. Let's talk about, since the legalization of weed, the quality. Like you'd have to go looking for bad weed. You know what I mean. You buy it at the store Like it's not, like you even need your. In a lot of places you don't even need any kind of cart, you just gotta be like 18 or whatever.
Speaker 1:21 or whatever it is yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it's like it's. That issue of like weight, like weed used to be the worst thing in the world to try to like. You could buy crack on every corner, but when you're trying to get a dime bag on a friday night, it was like me I'll meet you at the big lots in an hour and a half and then we're going to drive up to the guy's house together. What?
Speaker 1:like how much of my life before the state surround me legalized and before the state I live in got medical, how I mean it would be a whole four hour long process just to get a half ounce, to get us through like a week or two. Like it was insane the level of waiting, driving people around, stopping going, picking up the person and going to another place.
Speaker 2:Ah, drug adventures.
Speaker 1:And then fucking wondering if they're ever going to come back out with your stuff which is another, or giving it to some teenager who you thought you trusted, and then they don't come back for two days with your weed. Like it was insane, like my life was just full of anxiety whenever I couldn't buy weed at the store Because that's, and that's a part of their argument for legalization.
Speaker 2:Is you introduce all these other criminal elements when you involve all this other escapades to try to get something? You know what I mean? No, but also talking about drugs and music, here's a whole other aspect up to it Music that you listen to when you're on drugs.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like I mean music and drugs. It's a symbiotic relationship.
Speaker 1:Well, there's two that come to mind. One of them is my favorite thing to do, which I've done like three or four times, which is to sync up the Pink Floyd. What is it, the Dark Side of the?
Speaker 2:Moon. Dark Side of Oz.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Dark Side of Oz, which is starting Pink Floyd with the Wizard of Oz on mute.
Speaker 2:A lot of people, gen X, have heard this but there's a lot of people, tony Rogan, tony Rogan was talking about this Joe. Rogan and Tony Hinchcliffe were talking about it the one time Nice.
Speaker 1:Tony.
Speaker 2:Hinchcliffe said that he thinks he does it once a year or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's terrifying how it actually syncs up. I mean, obviously you can watch it not under the influence and it's still equally cool, but if you watch it under the influence, it's just uh, it's it's trippy. It's real trippy, real trippy real trippy.
Speaker 2:It can be scary even.
Speaker 1:But I mean when I think about music that I want to listen to, when I'm like really, really, really high the Grateful Dead.
Speaker 2:Ooh yeah, I mean again talk about a band like that fully embraced their drug.
Speaker 1:Culture, their drug love. Yeah Like Right.
Speaker 2:That fully embraced it and like wasn't ashamed or didn't hide it.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I mean they had their problems with it. I mean Jerry, obviously. I mean you know he had a problem with heroin and cocaine and it killed him.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean that's the dark side of it, but I mean I think that's a good time. We wanted to talk a little bit about my own personal battle with addiction, which so I was addicted to heroin for like a lot of years, on and off for a significant period of time, and I mean we went through it. I mean that's all there is to it. I mean it's.
Speaker 1:And it's not like I didn't, it's not like I didn't know, coming into the relationship, that you had had history with drugs.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Literally the very first night that we ever talked ever face to face. I mean, I say face to face. It's not like we talked before that, but the first night that we talked we were at a party. We were at a party and I just kind of went to sit away from people, because I'm not a crowd person and a lot of people were already drunk when I got there, because I got off work late and I showed up after the party was started, so I needed to catch up and I was just sitting kind of away from everyone and you sit down next to me. What's the first thing you said to me?
Speaker 2:You tell it better.
Speaker 1:So he's like. So a little about me. I'm a recovering heroin addict, Literally the first thing out of his mouth. I'm Scott and I'm a recovering heroin addict, like we're sitting in an NA meeting, which you know, which I should be.
Speaker 2:Truth be told, I haven't done any opiates in how long, I don't even know it's been a long time so. The better part of.
Speaker 1:July of 20, or sorry, July of 2017 was the end.
Speaker 2:Right right, I went to rehab the last time. That's another fun experience. Those rehab, that's a whole thing in and of itself. Just the funny things that you see in there. I mean just the craziness. I often say that you go into rehab. You either think one of two things. You either think, holy crap, like I'm nowhere near as bad as these people. Or you're like, oh my God, I need to get my life together. I'm the worst one here. That's when you know you need to change. When you're the worst one at rehab, you got all the worst stories, You've done all the worst things.
Speaker 1:Then you're like, okay, this is probably, probably the time yeah um and um, and I I mean so I actually we were married for about a year, I think, when you relapsed. So we have been together for about two years, married for about a year when you relapsed, and I didn have been together for about two years, married for about a year when you relapsed and I didn't cop on at first and that's one of the things.
Speaker 1:Obviously, when you're close to it, you don't see it as easily, right? So I didn't cop on at first, and that made me really irritated with myself, because I like to think that I can figure shit out easily and that I'm not easily duped and then I was, so that was really frustrating for me, but there was a lot of wild shit that happened through that too.
Speaker 2:Like a lot of wild shit, because it's like, well, because. And then the other side of it too is like with an addiction to opiates. It's such a physical addiction that it's very hard to break. It's has such a hold on you in terms of the physical addiction that even if you want to stop a lot of times, you can't. You're just bound by it. You're like a slave to it. Right Like you can't escape it. Right, I mean you can, but it's like it's not cut and dry, it's not just okay, this is it.
Speaker 1:Right and and growing up and and even into my thirties, I had known a lot of people who I understood were addicted to drugs. But I'd never, like, really experienced a drug addiction until you relapsed.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And um, so it was new to me and I didn't know what to expect. Or, and the further along it went, the more I understood, right, that you would have to hit rock bottom, and that meant me taking my support away, which was a struggle for me because, like the person that I fell in love with I knew had to still be there during that addiction but, I, couldn't find him and it was really weird because I couldn't reconcile in my brain that there were two different beings living in the same body.
Speaker 2:Right, which is so weird now because even like talking about it, it feels so it's so distant. At this point it feels like a lifetime ago. A lifetime ago. Yeah, Because it's just so weird, Like once you get out of that fog. Now I like to say that I'm Pennsylvania sober, so it's just icy light and fentanyl for me.
Speaker 1:He loves None of the hard stuff. No he does not do that. That's a joke.
Speaker 2:That's a joke that I do because people say California sober and they're like I smoke weed and drink and I'm like, well, fuck it, I'm Pennsylvania sober.
Speaker 1:I see light in fentanyl which actually kills when he does it at comedy shows.
Speaker 2:But no, it's just funny because it's like you know, I'm a big proponent because, like, obviously I still drink, I still do smoke in this made up character that I'm doing right now. But the thing about it is it's like everybody has to find what works for them, like some people have to go the route of like nothing.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like some people have to do whatever, but like this, like talking about rehab. Rehab, this one shot, cut and dry way of doing things, doesn't work. This, our treatment like system, is so broke down in this country like I argue that rehab is almost pointless because it is pointless in the sense of right, but there has to be a place that people can turn to for help. Because sometimes you need to be able to deal with the physical aspect of it and they're able to manage that through like Suboxone and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Agree.
Speaker 2:That, I think, is the vital, necessary part. Medical what do they call it? Medically assisted detox, detox that I believe in wholeheartedly. However, the rehab part. Now I'm saying some people do need that counseling, some people need that talking.
Speaker 1:No, not some people, every single person who has an addiction of any kind, and I've said this a million times over Even if you break the addiction, you are not recovered without figuring out the reason why you became addicted to begin with. And not everybody like especially with opiates. A lot of people just happen to slip into it through like an injury, like I get that. But most people become addicts because they're seeking something that they can't fit.
Speaker 2:Right. But my point, though, is to break the cycle of addiction. You don't necessarily need counseling, and I'm going to tell you why, because whenever you're meeting all these people, anytime you meet somebody that like quit for good, they all have the same story. I knew this was the last time I knew this happened, this happened, this happened, and I never did it again. I knew in my heart that this was I was never going to do it. I was going to do whatever it takes. You hear this time and time again. So, if your mind's made up and you're going to do it, you're going to do it regardless of the circumstances, regardless of whether or not you go to rehab, regardless of whether or not you get treatment, you're going to do it. If you have made up your mind to do that and that's the story that I've heard a thousand times over. And then, for the people that aren't ready, if you try to do it when you're not going to do it, you're not going to do it Like you're not no amount.
Speaker 2:If you're not ready, no amount of rehab is ever going to get you to the point where you're ready. So it's like so that again it goes down to this so we need a new form of treatment. You know what I mean, like a new way of approaching it.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I should say because, like, none of that stuff is inherently bad, but because it's become a for-profit system, people make money off of it. They want you to be involved in it every step of the way.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But there comes a certain point where most people you just have to move on. You can't keep dwelling on it or you're only going to keep reliving it right, that's exactly it, right.
Speaker 1:Some people need, like the ongoing, have to go to na, and I don't knock that at all like do what you got to do, if that's right whether it's church based or whether it's, you know um, sciencebased, where you're going to psychology only, or whatever the case may be. Do what you need to do to get better. I'm all for that, right. Do what works for you, what I'm not for are these fucking broken systems of blowing smoke up people's ass, knowing that the recidivism rate is so high and still?
Speaker 2:Right, it's great If it works for you. Great, it does work for some people. But the problem is it doesn't work for everybody and there's other we need. We don't need a one size fits all approach. We need to incorporate all the different things that work for different people, because it's just kind of like the education system you can't educate people the same way. Exactly, and it just, it's a different form of education. You can't get these people better, all this.
Speaker 1:Because, again, not everybody is an addict for the same reason.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right.
Speaker 1:And once you become addicted until you know that you've absolutely hit rock bottom. Or maybe you don't ever want to get there, but to your point you have to kind of know in your brain that you're done and how do? You get to that point.
Speaker 2:Not everybody gets there the same way or at the same time and everybody that I've talked to like experience the same thing that I experience, and they experience it in different ways, but they all refer back to one moment where it's like a light, a switch gets flipped, and you know that you at that moment decide that the consequences of you doing whatever are not what. You don't want to deal with, that any longer.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like you're tired of dealing with that and so you know at that moment that you're never going to do that again. You know what I mean. Like you're tired of dealing with that and so you know at that moment that you're never going to do that again. You know what I mean. Like your mind is made up. It's like a switch flips and it's done. And everybody that I've talked to talks about that day when they knew and could it be a battle still after that? Sure. I'm not saying that.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying that just instantly. Everybody that stopped just stopped one day and that's that For many people it's a many years battle, but it's many years battle to get to that moment.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Do you know what I mean? That moment happens in an instant and it's isolated. But everybody that I talk to has that moment. So how do you get people to? That moment is the question.
Speaker 1:I mean, how do you get people to that moment, right? I mean, how do you and I used to become? I was frustrated with literally every person in our circle because when you were an addict, there were so many people that only wanted to see the good in you, but that good wasn't present. The good in you, but that good wasn't present, right, a lot of the times in the moment. But so, like I would cut you off. But then you would find other means, through other people, of money and you know, whatever you were doing to get the money for the drugs at the time, it didn't matter what I did or didn't do.
Speaker 2:Like that, that's kind of the other thing. Right, a drug addict is going to find a way, whether or not you like it.
Speaker 1:And that was really hard for me because it felt like, no matter how normal I tried to make the home, no matter how stable I tried to make the home, that whatever, no matter how much I thought that you loved me, that was really, really hard for me was to come to grips with the fact that it didn't matter whether you love me or not Right.
Speaker 2:That all goes out the window. Plenty of people in you know that go through that like that. Stuff all goes out the window because you're playing with a different. You're not talking to a normal, sane person at that point. No, you're not. You're normal, sane person at that point.
Speaker 1:No, you're not.
Speaker 2:You're talking to a brain that's chemically altered, so it's not reacting, it's not processing information the same, it's not receiving information the same way, it's not outputting information the same way, so it's a total breakdown.
Speaker 1:You're dealing with a separate thing that you're not used to right and you can't reason with something like that no, you can't, and it took me a long time, through trial and error, to discover that. And, um, a lot of people ask me and I think a lot of my friends and family who are close to the situation expect us me, like this podcast, to not this specific episode, but expect us to tell that story of. You know all the deep and dirty details. I, I wrote a whole book about it. It's already. It's sitting in my basement in a tote. Um, I'm very superstitious and so I never wrote the last chapter, because I feel like the last chapter just really isn't written yet. It's there, but the final chapter of the story has to be like the happy ending and we're there, but I'm afraid to jinx it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Right but that's where the dirty details live. But all I'll say about it is that when I was writing the book, I wrote it as if Scott had two different. They were two different people and you almost not to throw away the whole plot twist, but you kind of don't know they're two different. You don't know they're the same person through up until the middle of the book, when you realize it's a very good like I don't know what the word portrayal yeah, the book.
Speaker 2:When you realize it's a very good like I don't know what the word portrayal yeah, very interesting portrayal of a way to display the split of two different people two different people.
Speaker 1:I mean it really was. And um, I mean people witnessed me on social media spiral too. So, like everybody knew through whispers because you didn't really have social media at the time Um, everybody knew through whispers that well, through loudness on my side of the family and whispers on your side of the family, that Scott was going through an addiction, but, um, but what people were really seeing was me viral on social media into a nut job, like a pure nut job.
Speaker 2:How it ripples out through families and all that stuff, right?
Speaker 1:But let's, because I don't want to make this a really sad and sad thing.
Speaker 2:No, I know Like.
Speaker 1:I said the whole story is out there. One day I'm going to publish it. But I love your story about when you finally were done, that whole little adventure that you took. But I want to preface that by saying that probably two weeks before you were done done, we were driving up a mountain two lane highway route 40 in Maryland, coming from back from Frederick, and I was so done that I tried to steer our vehicle into an oncoming semi coming down a too late. The semi was coming down the mountain and I was going to kill us both because I had just had the shits of the whole thing Right and I think that was kind of like the catalyst.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that led into Right. We like it that it blew up and then it went into the thing and then I had my moment, which was Jerry Garcia saved my life. Jerry Garcia, my grandma and heaven, and they saved my life and that's all there is to. I was out in the woods. It was a spiritual experience by yourself, yeah, by myself crazy, delirious, going through withdrawal. Very weird, but and like I said, that's, that's what happened what do you have with you?
Speaker 1:like a pack of cigarettes a bottle of water and a bud. I have no idea.
Speaker 2:I don't know what I had with me um, it was like nothing, but yeah, no I was just in the woods, um, but uh, but yeah, and then I just like had some like I don't know if you call them hallucinations or whatever Some like visions and like it would just. But like I knew from that moment on that I was good, like I wasn't going to fuck around and touch wood, he's been good. Yeah, no, it's not even a part of my. I don't even consider it a thing.
Speaker 2:That's like it's completely broken that part of whatever Like, because it's just like, it's just not some place that I would allow myself to go again.
Speaker 1:It's just right and like so. I mean, the healing process afterwards was like speedy too. I'm not gonna say like. Obviously over the years I've definitely had singular meltdowns here and there, but the minute that I saw your personality like back, like I just knew, like I wasn't worried anymore because I knew at that point we're like four or five years into an addiction is different inside of you.
Speaker 2:You can't. You've shown these people for the last however long that you're a piece of shit.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That you're not going to follow through on anything that you say or whatever, and then when you know that you're going to, you really don't get. But like you want to get, you want to live because you haven't been living for so long. So like you want to get, like try to get all this stuff like fixed, because it's like you've done, fucked your life up so much that like you want to scramble to try to put the pieces back together right, because it's like you've been out of this, you've been in this fog for so long that, like then, when you come back to it, you're like gee.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. You got this huge messy house that you got to clean up Like where do I start?
Speaker 1:Where's?
Speaker 2:the broom, because this is a mess.
Speaker 1:That's exactly it, but I mean, but we did it and that's it. Took me a little longer to come around than you would have liked, but I do things on my own time always.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, that's all understandable.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I mean, and it wasn't the trust. There was a broken trust, but it wasn't like it took forever for us to get the trust back, because most of the trust was my gut feeling about who you were. And again, once I saw that that side of your personality was gone, like it was easy for me to trust you. But what I didn't want to do is let you know how easy it was.
Speaker 2:Right Because.
Speaker 1:I didn't want you to think that it would be easy to do me again, which was like that's the balance that I had to find is, you know, fool me once. What did George Bush say?
Speaker 2:Right, but all right, enough of that crap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, enough of that crap, yeah enough of that crap, so now you guys know that yeah, you know about that. Yeah, so I mean it's a powerful story, though, babe, I don't want you to. It is a very you are one, I mean. Your story is lucky because no, I consider myself very lucky, I do not everybody comes out of it, and you came out of it right before a fentanyl hit, so thankfully we didn't lose you to that.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to end all that, I want to get to the funny stuff. So no, we were talking about like rehab and like funny things.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:And just some of the funny stories that like happened to me, like in rehab, some of the various things. I went to new jersey rehab once and came back with an italian accent which isn't hard, because I got down there eating hoagies and some pizzas and I went down and got a couple of pies and you know hanging out smoking cigarettes I will give you guido motherfuckers one thing though he came back with a better style about him.
Speaker 1:He cared more about his appearance no, but I love that.
Speaker 2:So but no, it's just funny. So then you meet like the people that like. You meet the guy that like gets a haircut before he goes to rehab. He's like, and that's a real loser, that's. You spot him immediately, like this fucking guy had his life together so much that he got his hair cut before he went to rehab. You roll into rehab. I learned this after my first time. The first time that I went to rehab I was like, not high at all, like I went in I was already withdrawn, whatever. That's not how you go to rehab. You go to rehab in the middle of a bender. You get dropped off in the middle of the night. You like, you're loaded, you don't even know where you are. That's how you go to rehab. You don't get a fucking haircut. That guy was probably in there for weed or something.
Speaker 1:And fresh kicks. Speaking about going to rehab for weed, let's just talk about this, because you did know somebody that was in rehab for weed, oh my. God, there was plenty of people that were in there for weed and we all laughed at them and made fun of them, yeah, and told them to move on with their lives.
Speaker 2:But the funniest thing, though, is the people.
Speaker 1:That's the start of the whole victimization movement. Right there, Right oh. God, I want to punch you in the face if you're right, oh god, I want to punch you in the face. If you're in fucking rehab for weed, yeah, stop, stop it.
Speaker 2:You're getting weed a bad name, yeah you're giving the people that are in there for real issues, like the people that, like I met, people that were like hooked on pcp oh I once knew a guy that was hooked so bad on crack. When he found out they didn't have caffeine at rehab he broke out of the rehab and walked to town for two, two liters of mountain Dew and come walking back chugging he was just fucking.
Speaker 2:He needed a jolt so bad that he just like couldn't take it and he just had to go get some Mountain Dew Because we're out in the middle of. That's the thing about Pennsylvania rehabs A lot of these are out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And you're like in a cabin in the woods and there's bears and rivers and like there's no drugs around, and so if people like leave, I mean if you want crack, you're not getting crack. You got to get mountain dew and not moonshine either just regular old yellow mountain um make you piss green the next day.
Speaker 1:Mountain Dew yeah, um.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just like it's. It's um.
Speaker 1:You meet some crazy characters at rehab, that's for sure but you also meet like and I've never been to rehab, but I've been to the psych ward, which is essentially yeah, yeah jail, let's be rehabs.
Speaker 2:These are all things where you meet characters that you wouldn't otherwise mean but, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like it also gives you a deep appreciation for humanity and what people go through because, um, I used to have a hard time like being around people who I believed were less smart than me until I realized that there's different levels of smart.
Speaker 1:That's when I really became like a fan of the human experience is like meeting people in jail, meeting people in the psych ward, where you're like shit Again to your point, like I need to get my shit together because I'm not that bad off, I'm just out here pulling off stupid stunts. These people have real deal issues and still are going back at life.
Speaker 2:Not only that, but then there's plenty of people that I met. I'm like that's a good dude, yeah, Like something fucked up happened that you know they're in wherever you met them jail rehab, whatever. Something happened that, whatever. But like you're like that's a good dude jail rehab, whatever, something happened that, whatever.
Speaker 1:But like you're, like that's a good dude just got a bad break or whatever.
Speaker 2:For sure, like you meet people, like you get a, you get perspective.
Speaker 1:Life is about perspective and the more perspective you have, the better you adjusted you become what we're saying is do a week in jail or a week in rehab, or go to a week in rehab a week.
Speaker 2:If you want our life advice, do some rehab, do some jail time. No, it just gives you that, that life experience 48 hours in the 5150 cell 60 days in whatever you want to do whatever you want to do 60 days in.
Speaker 1:That's a fun show that's where gilded trash comes from. Is that's exactly so?
Speaker 2:many people, some of the best people I've met ever, where I generally so and I say this all the time because of my grandma we were the type of people that rooted for the bad guys in the movies, just like they say in goodfellas. We truly were that bandit mentality of always working against the system, whether that doesn't necessarily have to be drugs or anything like that right, but where you're always trying to get one over on the man right like that sort of thing, and I don't mean the man like necessarily like the government right like you're just trying to.
Speaker 2:You operate in a part of society that's not forgotten about, but sort of you know what I mean like the underbelly and being able to navigate. There's a lot of good fun. People in that world that are some of the best people you'll ever meet. The realest I say this all the time the realest people, the realest people you'll ever meet are people like that, I mean you're going to meet some shysters too, and you're 100 but how are you going to know the difference between a shyster and somebody who's real and has experience, without experience in both of them?
Speaker 1:Exactly, that's exactly right. That's exactly right, and what it is is.
Speaker 2:It's a crash course If you don't know, and then you go to jail or something like that. You find out real quick. You learn very quickly. It's a very fast education process in the under world of society yeah because they're hard lessons.
Speaker 1:They're not these little right, you know it's not a six-week course on getting to learn your inner self, right, it's fucking. Yeah. You're not talking about your feelings, no, you're fucking going through. It's a street education, yeah it's a street education. It's real quick and um I feel lucky to have a balance of that.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think that part of you know, growing up poor um enabled me to have that street education on top of my, you know, having a book, education and all that like I feel like it gives me insight into people that a lot of people wouldn't otherwise. Yeah, exactly, you just don't have that perspective yeah, you just don't have that perspective, unless and I'm still learning. I learned today that fire existed before forested. I didn't know that. Yeah, of course it did. I thought I thought humans invented fire.
Speaker 2:I didn't realize that it could we discovered and harnessed the power of.
Speaker 1:We didn't invent meanwhile, I'm over here challenging people on social media to uh fucking iq tests, and I didn't even know that fire was around since the beginning of time. Like I didn't, right, you just thought that I thought, we, I thought that one day took two rocks and that was the first fire that ever was I really did right, no well that tells you how broken the education system is right.
Speaker 2:I mean you think you would learn, when fiery comets were bombarding the earth for four and a half million years, that there was fires everywhere sometimes I just I don't know in. In high school I was fascinated with english I wish I was fascinated by anything in high school, like if I could go back now, I'd be.
Speaker 1:I'd want to be a brainiac well, I was a drama kid and a band nerd, a band geek. So yeah, I mean, let's talk about our very first experiences ever. I think I smoked pot, maybe for the very first time in my entire life when I was around 17-ish in high school. I wasn't a pothead in high school, but I did smoke pot in high school, like my senior year. Not in the high school, miss d, if you're listening. I didn't smoke in the high school. Oh wait, maybe I did. Did any of us smoke in the auditorium up in the second?
Speaker 2:I remember when chad came to um school high as a kite on marijuana or no lsd and sat behind me in class and was tripping balls like I remember one time that I took a bunch of ambien and drank wine and was rolling around the floor with the neighbor kid because we thought we were a bowl of spaghetti oh my god, I love it um, I love it.
Speaker 2:I mean I. There's so many. I don't even so many ridiculous ones, I mean. None really come to mind, though, but like I mean the first time I smoked, I remember where I was. I was working on a farm and I was about 14, and we were eating watermelon and smoking weed on a hot summer day.
Speaker 1:You were in the Mexicans.
Speaker 2:No, not a Mexican. Another kid my age.
Speaker 1:I'm not being a smartass. He did work on a farm with Mexicans. He's a couple years old.
Speaker 2:No, no, I did work with a lot of Mexicans. They were always fascinated by drugs. They'd be like, ah, they didn't speak any English, but they'd be like, ah, cocaine, ah, cocaine, ah. I'd be like I'm 15 years old and they'd be like how much porpoise in chain buttersburg I'm like I don't know.
Speaker 1:I never bought it, so I can't tell you bub um, what about, uh, the first time I ever did lsd. I think I was 19, yeah that's probably somewhere in that scene. It was right after it was the summer after I had Anthony.
Speaker 2:I watched a bunch of Scooby-Doo, made a bunch of food that I didn't eat, but yeah, the main thing I remember was being really fast. I watched the movie Flubber. That sounds fun, but I just watched a bunch of movies because like and it was just what was on vhs, like um at my friend's house and um he had like younger brothers and sisters and stuff. There was a bunch mostly like cartoon stuff and whatnot. But I remember I watched scooby-doo and flubber. Not scooby-doo the like live action, but Scooby-Doo like cartoons, right, you know.
Speaker 1:The first time I ever did it, me and my best friend went puddle jumping and I can't say her name because she has a good job and I don't want to get her in trouble, but we went puddle jumping in the rain and ran around Sierra Foss.
Speaker 2:And the first time that I did mushrooms. I don't even know when. The first time I ate mushrooms was.
Speaker 1:I know I've done mushrooms so many times, I couldn't even tell you.
Speaker 2:Probably in my early 20s. I did acid before I did mushrooms.
Speaker 1:One of my most favorite mushroom trips in the last couple years was when we watched Super Mario Brothers.
Speaker 2:Super Mario Brothers was great on mushrooms.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, because the visuals in that movie are already fantastic yeah.
Speaker 2:Mushrooms. You want a good visual.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:A good visual representation, also the time that we sat there and watched. Saturday night library runs. Remember when we ate the chocolate bar just laughing hysterically on old SNLs all those old SNLs with not old SNLs, snls, all those old SNLs with not old SNLs but SNLs from like 2007 to like 2013.
Speaker 1:When they had.
Speaker 2:Jason Sudeikis, Andy Samberg, Kristen Wiig, all the Kenan.
Speaker 1:The best cast ever, arguably the best of like.
Speaker 2:I can make the case to anybody that that was the best cast, yeah agree, bill Hader Agree oh. God I love that was the best cast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, agree. Bill Hader Agree.
Speaker 2:Oh God, I love him, will Forte.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That other guy that did MacGruber.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:There was just so many. That's what I'm saying. Even the bad ones were good.
Speaker 1:Right, like it wasn't like that, and they've all been in stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that about wraps it up, though, don't you think?
Speaker 1:Normally we do a on the outro. Scott always does a little quote. Yeah, I'm going to, but I think this time we should do a professional recording of Should have Been a Pothead oh, my Toby Keith song.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll leave that on there, so we'll give you a little preview. There's a dispensary in Cumberland, maryland, that we go to. It's called Grow West, that's a very good dispensary.
Speaker 1:It's the best dispensary. It's absolutely the best dispensary. I've never seen a dispensary better. No, um, oh. Before you get into that, can we just say that while we were in the drive-thru the other week, we were talking about how, if you took the customer service, oh yeah, the customer service.
Speaker 2:How happy the people are that work at weed shops. They're the friendliest people. If you took the customer service of weed shops mixed with the efficiency of a Chick-fil-A drive-thru system, you could conquer whatever business you're trying to be in, absolutely, if you copy that model. You want your employees as happy as the people at the weed shop and as efficient as Chick-fil-A Done.
Speaker 1:Boom.
Speaker 2:You're going to be successful.
Speaker 1:That is the template for the best business.
Speaker 2:Whatever you're doing.
Speaker 1:Yes, anyways, so back to your song.
Speaker 2:So, Grow West? Yeah, Grow West is a dispensary in Cumberland, Maryland, and the first time that I heard it Toby Keith's song should have been a cowboy. He says go west, young man, and I thought of Grow West, young man and I wrote this song about it.
Speaker 1:All right guys. That's a wrap on Episode 8. And on Episode 9, we are going to be bringing you all things Thanksgiving in our crazy-ass families.
Speaker 2:Stuffing families. Turkeys hunting traditions, sleeping traditions, football traditions, pie traditions.
Speaker 1:You can't talk about Thanksgiving without the Macy's Day Thanksgiving parade you can't talk about Thanksgiving without talking about Black Friday. Oh that's a good one. I don't go to that. I don't participate in that ritual.
Speaker 2:We don't either, but we'll still talk about it, because when I was a child, I was frightened of Black Friday. It sounds like a very scary holiday. It does.
Speaker 2:We'll get to that anyway. Peace out, peace. I should have been a pothead. I should have learned to smoke and drive, packing my one hitter, getting real stoned on a mountain ride, taking those big bone rips Just like Cheech and Chong, singing those Willie Nelson songs. Oh, I should have been a pothead. I should have had my own string With a funny name Running wild through the town selling Mary Jane, and it ended up in a bit of danger, got my door kicked in by the Texas Rangers. Grow west, young man. Haven't you been told our dispensary's filled with Acapulco gold?
