How My Xanax Addiction Led to a 7-Year Prison Sentence in Arizona | Anthony Williams
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The NBA playoffs are here, and I'm getting my bets in on FanDuel. Talk to me, Chuck GPT. What do you know? All sorts of interesting stuff. Even Charles Barkley's greatest fear. Hey, nobody needs to know that. New customers bet $5 to get 200 in bonus bets if you win FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook.

21 plus and present in Illinois. Must be first online real money wager. $5 deposit required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable bonus pass that expires seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at fanduel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Anthony, welcome to Locked In all the way from Arizona. Thank you. Left the warm to come to the freezing cold right now. Yeah, I picked a great time to come out here. I hope you packed a jacket. Yeah, I brought my snowboarding jacket. That's the first time I've broke it out this winter, but...

we've had no winter back home. I called my fiance last night and I said, yeah, it's 18 degrees. And it says the feels like temperature is three degrees.

And she pulls up her weather app and she said, yeah, it's 75 here, but the feels like is 77. I'm jealous. You know, I was in Arizona like last year and like November or beginning of December. And I came from L.A. and L.A. was freezing. Like it was really, really cold. And it's like, what's going on here? Normally California warm. And then I went to Arizona and they were still hot over there. Yeah. Like I had to take off the hoodies, the sweatshirts and still, you know, you're hot.

Yeah, we've had almost no winter at all. I mean, we get down into the high 50s, and that's a rough day. You see everyone breaking out the jackets in the high 50s, but this is a different animal out here. Well, you just missed a big ice storm. We actually lost power on Sunday. Wow. Yeah, bad ice storm, really icy, cold, rainy. It was bad snow. The

Yeah.

And so Baghdad, Arizona, the town site is owned by the mining company. So the only way you live in that town is if you or a family member works for the mine. They provide the housing there. That's where my dad and his family are from. My dad's going to be the third generation to retire from Baghdad mine there.

Uh, but we ended up moving up to Kingman, Arizona, uh, to the big city of Kingman, Arizona, which had like 25,000 people. So went from 1700 to 25,000 when I was about five, I grew up there. Um, not a, not a great place, not, not a lot of opportunity played sports and stuff, but there was, uh,

Yeah, just not much else to do besides playing sports and getting in trouble, which I discovered in high school. Was your mom in the picture? Yeah. So that's the thing, right? Most people that you talk to have been through difficult circumstances like we've gone through. They have some pretty rough upbringings, right? I met a lot of guys in prison who were like, yeah, my mom handed me the meth pipe when I was 11. Yeah.

You know, and that was a shock to me. I had good parents. They're still married. They're business owners and work hard. And, you know, they've taken care of all of us to the best of their ability. But, you know, I guess addiction doesn't discriminate. Yeah. Do you have a lot of siblings? I got three. Yeah. I have a lot of siblings.

Where do you fit in? I'm the oldest. You're the oldest. And girls or boys? So I got two younger brothers and a younger sister. Were you guys close growing up? Yeah, and we're still pretty close. But I'm guessing you were the only one that went to prison out of that group. I'm the only one out of my entire family that's ever seen the inside of a jail cell, let alone prison. Oh, wow. No one...

indirectly was affected by the criminal justice system? Nope. Interesting. It's always so interesting to hear those stories where there's a lot of siblings and only one out of that family goes down that path, and especially even more so when out of the entire family, you know, had never been affected by it. Yeah, because like I said, most of the time you see it, it's pretty cultural. There's a lot of guys that I was locked up with that were like, yeah, my dad was in prison, my uncles were in prison, this is all I know, right? And they just kind of live that cycle of

selling drugs, whatever it is that they might do to provide for themselves and their families. And then they go to prison and then they get out and they just kind of start to cycle over again. It's all they knew. And I think that's one of the reasons I've been able to be successful after that experience is because I had that foundation to go back to, right? It wasn't all I knew. It was something that, you know, naively when I was young thought looked cool. And I myself was, you know, having struggles with identity and who I wanted to be and,

So I tried this thing. It didn't work out so well. I had some serious consequences as a result. And, you know, but I had I had those foundations to go back to. Yeah, I can imagine, you know, going through my position, getting out and not having a foundation. I feel like that's almost an added step forward.

in the wrong direction. You know, it's another battle, another hill to climb if you don't have that foundation when you get out, because then you have to worry about housing, a phone, all of those things that, you know, my family, my dad was able to take care of for me when I got home. Yeah. Even a ride from the halfway or to the halfway house, you know, all those things that seem sort of simple because you come from a good family, but in reality can be very burdensome to some people. Yeah. And the, the cultural pressure too, like I had a

I had a buddy that I was locked up with that I'm still good friends with. And he had started doing the correspondence associates course through Rio Salado College. And he was talking to his mom and his mom had been incarcerated before. And their whole family was kind of in the gang life and all this stuff. And she tells him, she's like, oh, I did all that when I was in prison. You'll go right back to the life whenever you get out.

It's like that's your support system, right? Your mother is trying to steer you back into the same way of life, likely because she can't accept if you do it right, then that means she did it wrong, right? But...

there's so many factors that these guys are up against. So, you know, my story's cool, but I really have a lot of respect for the guys that truly came from that lifestyle and make a change. How would people describe you? I know you said you got into a little bit of trouble in high school, but just like as a kid, what would they say you were like? I was a pretty normal kid. I was in advanced classes from second grade on. I was AP classes in high school. I was an athlete. I played baseball year round. That was kind of my whole identity. But

Around 14, 15, I just kind of went completely off the rails. I had a surgery on my wrist and they gave me 30 Vicodin and I ate those in about a week and discovered that I liked Vicodin.

And then I started buying them from one of my friends whose father had some health issues and he just had all kinds of pills in the house. And it just kind of escalated from there. So, you know, by my sophomore year, I went from straight A student, you know, always in the top of my class academically, always one of the best athletes in my class to the athletic directors coming on the bus to pull me off and tell me I'm not on the baseball team anymore because I haven't gotten my fourth period in about three weeks because I'm skipping my fourth period to go hang out with my buddies at their fourth period.

And just kind of slid downhill from there. Now, wasn't like the school calling your parents? Were your parents hands on at that point in time? You know, you're young. Are they saying, hey, what's going on? Like, I know when I was in high school, if you miss a couple of classes, you're getting a call home right away. Was it like that? So.

The phone number that they had on file was the landline in the house. Both my parents were working at the time, so it would leave a message on the landline, and most of the time I could get there and clear the message before they got home. So I had my little tricks, you know. Now, when you were trying the Vicodin and you started to like it, was that specifically as a tool just to get the pain to go away, or was it beyond that where it was like, okay, this feels good? It quickly turned into this feels good. Right. Yeah.

I started smoking weed occasionally, like seventh to eighth grade summer. And then I found the pills my freshman year after the surgery. And I just liked anything that made me feel different. Right. And the opiates really worked well for me. So I was...

I also dealt with, I was a small kid growing up. I was always the littlest dude on my baseball teams and I had a lot of insecurity around that. I had a little man syndrome to a degree. Right. And whenever I took something, I didn't feel that I felt unstoppable. I felt like I could connect to people better. I felt more comfortable. I felt more confident and I liked that. And I mean, who are we kidding? Opioids feel good. Right. So, um,

I quickly, you know, made that the focus of my life. Like, it was very hedonistic. It was like the point of life is just to feel as good as you can possibly feel in every moment. And I chased that, and that took me to feeling as terrible as you can possibly feel in a lot of moments. Before your injury, what were your plans in life? Did you see yourself playing professional baseball or getting up there? Did you have another career path in mind? That was the dream growing up.

obviously a naive one, right? Because the percentage of people that even make it to play at a collegiate level is very small, right? But that was the dream growing up was that, you know, I was going to go play baseball in college. I had a few different ideas of things I wanted to do. I grew up hunting. So I thought about, you know, maybe going for a biology degree and becoming a game and fish warden. I thought about getting into psychology because that's one other thing that's been

consistent throughout my life is I want to understand what makes people tick. I want to understand behavior. I want to understand motives. And I've always been kind of a people watcher. I have a hard time not analyzing people in every interaction with them. And so I thought psychology would be a good path. But, you know, once I got into the drugs, it

All of that was gone. There was, there was no other focus. So does, do you start spiraling like very quickly, like to the point where you're out of school or what does that look like?

And, you know, I told my parents, uh, I'm going to drop out and I'm going to do online school. And I did online school, which I just didn't do online school for a semester. I decided to go back the next year. So now I'm starting my junior year as a sophomore, right? So more things to be insecure about. I'm sitting in all these classes with all these sophomores. Keep in mind, I was an AP kid before this, and now I'm sitting as a junior with all these sophomores. And, uh,

That's when I found Xanax and I started taking Xanax before school every morning. And I remember one time I was sitting in this history class and my teacher goes, it's time to pass up your reports. And I'm like, what report? And I raised my hand like, hey, what report? I don't think I was here. He's like, no, you were here. Your head was down, but you were here. So I was just blacking out on the Xanax. I had no clue what was going on in school.

So that fell apart. I decided, okay, I'm just going to drop out and get my GED. And I did. And I left school. I got my GED. I signed up for community college. Went to about three classes. Stopped going to those. Didn't tell anybody. Everyone thought I was still going to school. And it was just, I was always trying to hang out with people that were older than me because it made me feel cooler. I was always trying to hang out with people that could, you know, support me getting as fucked up as I could. Right? So my friend groups progressively got worse and worse.

Right. And my friend groups weren't necessarily bad in the beginning. I hung out with normal kids who were partying and stuff, but they're 19 and I'm 15 and they're doing what 19 year olds do. And I'm 15 trying to act like I'm, I'm 19, 20 years old. So that wasn't good for me. And then, you know, the friend groups got progressively worse and worse and worse to where I was just hanging out with people that were selling dope and doing all the things that you shouldn't be doing. And

kind of tied my identity to that. You know, I lost my identity with the baseball. I lost my identity with being the smart buttoned up kid. And so my identity was just about kind of being in that lifestyle and being the wild card at house parties, being the one who's showing up at the Coke, being the one who's, you know, going to make something exciting happen tonight. And that led me to a lot of dark places, of course. So I kind of floundered around for a while. So my dad owns

an industrial electrical contracting business. And so at 17, I could work in certain plants. So I started going to work for him.

And now I'm making decent money as an apprentice electrician and spending it all on partying. And so I'd go through these spurts where I do well for about three months. And when I say do well, it's like I'm only partying on weekends, you know, and then things would get bad and I'd be popping Adderall or doing, you know, speed or whatever. And I'd be up all weekend and then sleep through my alarm till 10 a.m. when I'm supposed to be two hours away at a job at 6 a.m.

And I got away with it because my dad owned the company and I would keep the job and then eventually I'd just stop going. And then I'd get back on track and start doing well again and then

three months later fall off again and just kind of rode that cycle until I did the thing that sent me to prison. Are you still using nicotine the old school way? It's time for an upgrade. Lucy Breakers deliver 100% pure nicotine, completely tobacco free with a flavor experience that puts you in control.

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And here comes the fine print. Lucy products are only for adults of legal age and every order is age verified. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Now let's get back into today's episode. Do you think your parents were kind of in denial about your addiction issues and struggles or even, you know, giving you too much slack because they've never dealt with that before? Like this is their first child that's had this issue, first person in their

family? You know, you come from a hardworking family, a mining family. What do you think their mindset was while you were dealing with this? I think there was a split in mindset between my dad and my mom. So my dad and my mom came from two very different backgrounds. You know, my dad

His parents are still married to this day. All hardworking people partied back in the day, but always kept their shit straight. Right. My mom, her father walked out when she was six. She was born in Detroit, lived in Detroit. And then she was moved out here with her mom and her two brothers. And, uh,

Not much of a father figure around. My grandmother, bless her heart, was just doing the best that she could, you know, to to raise her family. But they grew up in poverty for the most part. Her brothers got into drugs. So she'd kind of been around the drugs a little bit. But she's a mom, you know, so I got dad who's a hard ass, you know, just get your shit straight. Just do what you need to do.

Right. And then I've got mom who's, you know, kind of coddling and being a mom. And I took advantage of that. Right. Any any mother doesn't want to see her kid suffer. And someone who's an active addiction is going to manipulate that. Right. So I was able to kind of play mom and they I didn't give him a chance to control. I was I was an absolute maniac. Right. Like we get into it. You get on me about something. You try to hold me accountable for something. I'm just going to have a blow up fight with you and then you're not going to see me for a week. So, I mean, they've

They exhausted every effort. They sent me to rehab. They, you know, reached out to people for support. They did everything they possibly could, but it was at that point it was out of their hands. And that's, I think that's the case for anybody in active addiction. There comes a point where you get so far gone that you're not going to fix the problem within the family system. You're going to have to find support elsewhere. And that's kind of the point we hit.

Share with us what exactly happened, you know, from the day of, the events leading up to it, all of that, that led you to prison. Yeah, so at the time, I'm hanging out with these guys who are, you know, in the drug selling business. Some of them were gang members from California that were hiding out in Arizona. And, you know, I've taken on this identity like I'm one of them and I'm this suburban white kid who plays baseball and took AP classes, right? And all of a sudden, I'm all gangster. Right.

And, uh, I was using drugs a lot at the time I was in. The thing was, is I had a foot in each side. You know, I had one foot in the world of I'm working for my dad. And at this time I was paying rent and live with my cousin. And then on the other end, I'm doing all this other stuff. Right. So I have a situation where I get pulled over. Okay. I looked nervous because I was nervous because I had some wax, right? This is when wax first came out. So it was like that terrible brown soupy stuff, but

And so I hide it up under my dash and I'm terrified. Right. And I'm like, they can see I'm nervous. I'm 19 year old kid. So they call over a detective and he comes over and he says, I'm going to bring a dog to hit on your car or you can just let me search it. If the dog hits, I'm going to tear the car apart. If you let me search it, I'm just going to look around. So go ahead. Right. So.

He's searching the car. He finds in a little Crown Royal bag a couple joint roaches. Right. And at this time, I'm on unsupervised probation for marijuana possession. We got busted in Lake Havasu on spring break. So he takes my ID and he says, I need you to follow me to the station. So I'm like, OK. So I follow him down there. He takes me in like a little interrogation room.

What had happened is he had seen me at a friend's house and this friend was moving a lot of heroin in town at the time. So he had recognized my car there. So he knows that I know this guy and he tells me, I'm tired of picking up 19 year old kids off the ground and calling their parents to identify their bodies. This heroin has to stop. You're going to go to jail if you don't help me. So I want you to get me two ounces of heroin and you'll walk.

I said, give me 24 hours to think about it. He said, okay. So I drive to my house at this time. I'm staying at my parents' house. I start packing up my bag. I'm like freaking out. My dad walks in and says, what the hell are you doing? I said, I'm going to Phoenix. This cop just asked me to narc like this is not going to work out. Like I got to get out of here. I'm going to dip for a little while.

He says, hold on. So my dad had coached baseball for years with this defense attorney in town. And he calls him and tells him the situation. And the attorney tells my dad, he said, tell Anthony to tell that cop to fuck off. He said, I got this. Okay. So I call him. I said, hey, talk to my attorney. He said to tell you, no, this is a terrible idea. He says, okay, I'm going to come take you to jail. I said, all right, here's my address. Started throwing on warm clothes because I've heard it's cold in there.

And he calls me like 10 minutes later. He's like, I'm actually really busy. I'm going to have somebody come give you a citation. So somebody comes over, gives me a little citation for the weed roaches. And that's the end of that. I go to tell my buddies about the situation. Right now, these guys are real gangsters. One of them was locked up from 13 to 21 for attempted murder, blasted a dude with a shotgun. The dude lived. Right.

They start looking at me different, obviously, right? They're like, why did you even tell him, give me 24 hours? And now they're concerned, like, you know, am I working with him? I didn't like that, right? I didn't like that I'd lost the trust of these guys. So I live in a small town. I happen to know where that detective lives. In this time, I had kind of come to terms with that my addiction was out of control and

I go to my mom. I tell her I need to go to rehab. Well, they're in the middle of changing insurances at the time. It's going to be like a three-week wait. In that three-week wait, I determined that I just need Xanax. If I just take Xanax, life is good. I just have an anxiety disorder. So that means eat six bars a day.

So I've got all this Xanax and in that time I also decided I need a geographical change, right? So I'm gonna move to Prescott. I'm gonna live with my aunt and uncle He's gonna get me a job at this golf course that he works at and I get a whole fresh start So it's the night before I'm gonna move and I'm calling all my friends, right? I want to hang out. I want to party before I leave nobody's answering I'm sitting there. God knows how much Xanax I've taken I'm blacked out and I'm like I know where that cop lives. I'm gonna go send him a message and so

It's literally like half a mile from where I live. I drive there. I drive a circle around the block to make sure no one's outside. It's about 11 o'clock at night. Make sure nobody's outside. I come back around, turn my lights off, roll the window down, point the gun out the window, fire two rounds into the car, speed off. All right, mission accomplished. It's insane to tell this story sitting where I sit now because I cannot fathom how I could get in a mindset where that's a good idea.

So anyways, I go the next day I'm moving. So I go to see my buddies and I tell them there's five people there, five of my closest friends. I tell them all what happened and say my goodbyes, hugs, whatever. I drive up to Prescott. I'm completely zannied out. I go for a job interview and

And while I'm there, I'm standing in the shop and I see this guy's electrical meter sitting there after the interview. Nobody's there. I steal it and go try to pawn it. This guy just gave me a job. I steal his shit. Then I go to a Kohl's and I steal a pair of Jordans. And as I'm walking out in the Jordans, I get gaffed up by a cop. I go to jail, in jail. I'm withdrawing from Xanax. I have this like come to Jesus moment where I'm like,

I either have to fully commit to just basically being a piece of shit and just be okay with that, or I got to fully commit to getting sober and living a good life. Well, the second one seemed better. So I get out. I check myself into rehab. Twelve days later, they come to grab me from my session with my counselor. They say, hey, we need you to come down to the office. They take me down to the office, sit me down in a room. There's two detectives there. So you got arrested for the shoplifting. That's why you got out.

Yeah, it was like four days. They gave me probation and they didn't know anything about what you had done. No Okay, so then I check into rehab. I get called down in the office. I'm 12 days into rehab I'm like all for it. I got a sponsor. I'm like, I'm gonna get clean My life's gonna get better. They come sit me in that room with the detectives Well, it turned out one of those five guys called in to silent witness for the reward. Oh, they put a reward out $2,500

Yeah. So because they probably thought that like the detective had like a gang or something after that him or something really violent. They didn't realize it. Yeah. Well, I mean, small town, you mess with the cops, they're going to take it pretty seriously. Yeah. Right. So I'm sitting there. We're going through the interview and have this thought like, OK, I can lie. If I get out of this interview, I'm going to leave rehab. I'm going to go to Phoenix. I'm going to live on the run. And either it's going to catch up with me or I'm going to be looking over my shoulder my whole life.

Or I can cop to it. I thought, you know, I'm a young kid. I'm in rehab. Maybe they'll give me a year of county and some probation and it'll be over with. And then I can move on with my life. So I admit to it. Right. And there's going to be tons of comments about, you know, that's the thing, like.

I'm not gangster and I'm never going to pretend to be. I'm no tough guy. Like I'm what a lot of guys would call in jail a lame. And I kind of aspire to be that because those are people who tend to be successful. Right. But so I copped to it. I end up going and yeah, I end up getting sentenced to seven years prison and five years of probation. What was the actual charges you pled out to? I pled out to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Um, I also, even though no one was hurt. Correct. So the statute reads intentionally placing someone in, in harm's way. Right. And so the car was parked in front of the house where they were sleeping. You could say I was placing someone in harm's way and I may have beat that charge in trial, but I would have lost drive by shooting and got like 25 years. So the plea was the better option. Um, and so the original charges were drive by shooting, um,

aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, discharging a firearm at an occupied structure and criminal damage. And they enhanced them all to dangerous so that moved the sentencing range up. And then about three months into county, somebody brings some weed into the jail. My celly buys a joint, smokes half of it, leaves the other half in a book that I'd had sent into me. Okay, so it's got my name on it.

They do a search. They find the joint. They pull both of us out. They interview me. I said, I don't know where the fuck it came from. We're walking back into the pod. He's sitting there with the CO. And, or actually, I think it was a detective with the sheriff's department. And I'm looking at him like, motherfucker, you better own this, right? He looks at me. He looks right at the guy. And he says, that was my joint. Okay, so I witnessed this. I get charged with it. He doesn't.

Wait, even though he admitted to it? They wanted a – I believe they wanted another bargaining chip for my case. Oh, this is before you took the plea deal. This is before I took the plea deal. So they ended up adding that on there. The plea was for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The sentence for that was seven years prison.

And then discharging a firearm at an occupied structure, five years probation, promoting prison contraband, three years probation. Which they rarely ever charge people for. Right. Especially at weed. It's mostly for like weapons or a cell phone here and there. Yeah. Wow. So when your parents found out that you were arrested or admitted to this, what was their reaction? I mean, they were shocked.

they were devastated, right? Like they, they never thought they would have to deal with something like this, especially, you know, first 13, 14 years of my life. I was a good, normal kid. Um, this was just, yeah, it was devastating for everybody. I think at times this experience was much harder for them than it was for me even, you know, um,

Yeah, it was rough, man. Got in some fights in county jail. So I'm going on the video visit with a black eye and my mom's crying right there. And it was, you know, she's just looking at her baby. And my dad, you know, just wants to break in there and fight these dudes with me, you know. And it was hard for him, you know. I grew up, I have family friends in the police department, right? And so when this happened, one of them asked to be the person to talk to

My parents about it. Excuse me. I'm sorry. We're on do not disturb now. So one of them asked to be the person to come talk to my parents about it. You know, I did it with my dad's gun. So they had to take his gun and stuff. And, you know, I'm grateful for that man that, you know, he stood up and he was one of my baseball coaches. My dad coached me in baseball all the way up till high school. So, you know, we were we were really close.

entrenched in the community. Like I was in newspaper for all-star tournaments and stuff like that. And then I was in the newspaper for what I did. So it was, um, it was pretty shocking, you know, but, uh, yeah, they, uh, they often said it felt like their son died, right? Cause a seven-year sentence is, is there's a lot of people doing a lot of time, but that's, that's not a short amount of time. You know, that was at my age, that was more than a quarter of my life.

Were your parents affected by the community? Like, did the community change up on them? For example, I know when I was arrested and put through that, my people would make snarky comments to my parents and look at them in a different way. And we're a much bigger city than your community. So what was it? Do you know what that experience was like for your parents, for your siblings, for that matter? I think more so my siblings, yeah.

Um, I know that my brother stood up for me a few times, people, you know, making shitty comments on Facebook and stuff like that. I don't think my parents were really had to deal with, with much from the community in that way. They, uh, they got a lot of support really. And people steered clear of talking about it if they could, you know, I'm sure there were people talking, but, uh,

for the most part, people were pretty supportive because like I said, you know, everybody knew my family. We were heavily ingrained in the sports community in a small town. So, you know, my dad was a part of one of the first coaches of the first ever travel baseball team that existed in Kingman, which, you know, now we're seeing some great athletes come out of that. Tarek Skubal, the Cy Young winner in Detroit. He's from my hometown. Came up in that system. So, yeah,

You know, we were respected in the community, and so I think my parents got more support than they did criticism. Now, do you think that if you never told those five friends about it, you would have never been caught? Or do you think eventually it would have traced back to your dad's gun, which would have traced back to you? Now what I know about forensics and how they—

I probably never would have. I think even if I didn't admit to it with the silent witness reward, the silent witness tip, that wouldn't have been enough to convict me. So looking back on it now, I think, yeah, I probably could have got away with it. I'm grateful that I didn't. I'm surprised they weren't able to just figure out who the bullet came from right away because aren't all firearms registered? Yes, but they don't just have a database of—

You know, they take the rifling off of the bullet to identify it. They have to actually fire the weapon to match it to be able to do that. So if they never have the weapon, they can't really tie that weapon to the round. Now, was prison, county jail, we'll start with what you expected it to be. I'm sure you grew up hearing prison stories or maybe watching prison TV shows or anything like that or just like jokes around the classroom. Yeah.

It's nothing like that. County jail was so, you know, I'm in Arizona in a small town. It was probably about 90% white guys, 8% Mexicans, 2% other races, white.

Arizona prison, I'm not sure. I want to say federal is segregated by race, right? It's actually surprisingly it's by your car. Maybe it's different on the West Coast, but on the East Coast, this is what I was surprised about in prison. It's segregated by what state you're from, the car, the people you ride with. It's less gangs. It's less race because you've got to remember a lot of the white guys are—

are sex offenders or whatnot. So they're not going to put the white guys together. It's by your state and your paperwork and all of that. It's very much more political. Yeah. So Arizona is, I think the system stemmed from California, right? With you've got the Aryan Brotherhood, you've got the Mexican mafia, and then you've got the Paisas, the Mexican nationals, and then you've got the blacks and what they call others, which would be, you know, any other nationality.

And so, you know, there's pretty strict rules around. So I was in what was called a prison pod. So in county jail. So if you were in this pod, you were likely going to prison. So it was definitely stricter on the politics there because they're trying to prep people for what it's going to be like whenever you get to prison. So like we had, you know, there was a head for the whites. There was a head for the Mexicans. There was a head for the blacks, even though at most there was two blacks in my pod at any given time. And that was one of the first big culture shocks. So I'm in county jail.

And, uh, this guy comes in, right? And everyone's screaming fish, new guy, right? And, uh, he's an African-American dude and he's missing his leg. So he's got a prosthetic leg and you could tell he was just, you know, terrified. He walks into this pod. It's all white guys. He doesn't know what, what to expect.

And I'm working out one day and he asks if he can work out with me. And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. So we start doing pushups together. And then all of a sudden the head of the pod comes over to me and he goes, that's a no-go. He goes, that will get you smashed off the yard as soon as you get to prison. You cannot work out with the blacks. You cannot eat with the blacks. You cannot do anything with a black guy. And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? Right? Like I was never exposed to racism growing up. There's...

largely because it was predominantly white, but like there, there were a handful of black families in my town and we all hung out. People had sleepovers at each other's houses. We played sports together. There was, so I'm like, I didn't know racism still existed. And you're telling me that I can't even do pushups with this guy. And so that was, uh,

That was quite a shock for me. And the crazy thing is the prison system allows this to go on. Yeah. Like they support it. They stand behind it. That to me was the most surprising thing. Yeah. Well, it helps them to some degree, I think, right? You're more likely to listen to the guy who could have you jumped than you are the CO who might just give you a ticket.

Right. So they kind of put some of the policing on the inmates. I think I think it makes their job easier to a degree. But here's my argument against that. So I've seen both sides. The first yard I went to is called Stickum Steiner, and it's one top two most violent medium custody yards in the state. OK, so I'm 20 years old. I've never been in this type of environment. I'm a suburban white kid and I walk into this place.

And it is insane, right? I'm looking around like this is the next five and a half years of my life. Like you got to be kidding me. And the first thing they do, so they have like a gang task force unit called SSU, the special security unit. The first thing they do is SSU pulls me into their office before they put me on the yard. That's a big no-no. If you're seen talking to SSU, you're getting smashed. I don't know who these guys are. I have no clue. They pulled me in. I haven't even stepped onto a prison yard yet. I come out.

And the skinhead comes up to me. It was, what the hell were you talking to SSU about? I'm like, who's SSU? And they look at my ID and they see my prison number and like, oh, okay, he's new. So they take me to talk to the head of my building. And he's like, what did they talk to you about? I said, they told me not to get any tattoos. They told me not to, you know, get caught up in the politics. They told me stay away from drugs. And they said, if I want to get a good job, come talk to him. And he goes, never talk to them.

And he got pissed and he went up there and talked to them because, you know, the heads communicate with, they're the only ones who can communicate with them. And he said, you just almost got this kid killed. You can't be pulling these kids off the bus into SSU in front of everybody. And so, you know, I'm terrified right off the bat.

And so I'm on that yard, super violent, super political, right? The politics are strong. You don't sit on another race's bed. You don't eat with another race. You don't work out with another race. There's, there were a few standoffs for riots where, you know, it was going to be us and the Mexicans against the blacks in a riot. And then I end up on this other yard called Florence East Unit. And this is referred to as the life or paradise yard. There's no politics there.

Very much a lame yard. If you're doing anything that you're not supposed to, somebody's going to drop a kite on you quickly and you're going to be off that yard very fast. And the lifers liked it that way. These were the lifers that wanted to have the best experience that they could for the rest of their life behind bars. I didn't witness a fight in a year and a half there. No violence. Yard ran much smoother than

So, you know, these people make an argument that the politics keep people in line and make things smoother. But the yards where it wasn't political tended to be much more peaceful and ran much smoother. Yeah, it's like at the prison camps. There's no fights. Right. Like at the federal prison camps because they don't allow sex offenders. They don't allow –

There's no politics. There's no violent offenders. It's just a bunch of mostly old guys that are just doing their time or have worked their way down from a higher security prison. They're just chilling. You can do whatever. You can honestly probably slap someone in the face and the other person is not going to do anything because they don't want to get kicked out of there. That's how they all should be. The fact that they make it this way, it's crazy. Maybe put all the violent offenders –

somewhere, you know, keep them separate, the ones that are known for violence. But the other guys like you, you ever see the movie Shot Caller? I haven't. Everyone tells me to watch it, but I haven't seen it yet. Because that like that does happen where you have that normal person. The guy went into prison for a DUI, killed someone, got a couple of years and it turned into a life sentence. Yep. Because he was recruited to that prison politics. Yeah.

The only murders that happened while I was in prison were on that political yard, and they were people that were made men within their gang. So there was a Mexican mafia guy who was killed because when he had got out, he misappropriated some funds. And when he came back on the yard, they acted like everything was cool, and then they stabbed him to death. That was a shock because the guy who slept four feet from me is one of the people that stabbed him to death. So that was –

That was a pretty interesting experience. So were you able to stay pretty much neutral the whole time? I'll give them that. As soon as I came in, they asked me, they said, do you want to make a name for yourself or are you just trying to do your time? I said, I just want to do my time. And they left me alone for the most part. Yeah, I think that's like a very big misconception because you have so many guys out there saying you got to do this, you got to do that. You know, you got to run with these people. Yeah. And I've never been –

Now, there are a few exceptions, right? If there's a riot, you don't have a choice, right? You're going to participate or it's going to be bad for you, right? But, you know, chin-checking people, being what they call a torpedo, right? Like, you don't have to do that shit. There's plenty of idiots willing to raise their hand trying to make a name for themselves. They're not going to make just any kid do that stuff.

I think a lot of that stems from like the California prison system where one-on-one interracial fights don't happen. So if it does, everyone jumps in. You have to. And my understanding is now I've never been in a California prison, but the people I've talked to who have say it is more like you don't have a choice out there. They tell you to do something. You have to do it or it's going to be bad for you. But Arizona wasn't.

Wasn't like that. What was your mindset about visits? Did you want your family to come visit you or did you take it as a sign of weakness? Like you didn't want other people to see you visiting your family or even get a look at them? I wanted the visits. There were times where it was difficult, right? Because doing that long of a sentence, you know, you kind of create a life in there.

And then you have to step back into that other version of yourself with your family for four or eight hours. And then you got to go right back. And it was really difficult to, you know, watch them walk away from a visit and me go back to my little cubicle and lay on my bunk and watch my 13 inch TV, you know. But I had a lot of a lot of visits and a lot of support. And I'm really grateful for that. I didn't really worry much about what other people thought.

you know, thought about it. How are the staff? Like were the staff about rehabilitation? Did they care for your future? Were they helping you set up like a career path or what was that like? Really minimal resources. There was a few like mandatory classes, like cognitive restructuring, cultural diversity, anger management that were like, you had a CO3, which is like the counselor level corrections officer would run it. And they're pretty basic classes.

Yeah, not a ton of – now they're getting better in Arizona about rehabilitation, but there wasn't a ton of resources at the time that I was in. If you wanted it, you had to go find it yourself, you know.

How would you spend your days? Like walk us through like an average day. Once you got into a good routine, you're there, you're in a good spot. Yeah, so I spent a good portion of my time working in this program called Moderate Treatment. And it's a six-month drug rehabilitation program.

And it's just group therapy during the day. And they work out of this workbook called the Men in Recovery Workbook. And I got to work under this licensed substance abuse counselor, Suzanne Frond. She was just the most incredible woman that I've ever met in recovery. She cared so deeply for everybody. But-

You know, I got to facilitate groups in there. I got to learn a lot about a counselor role from her. So, you know, normal day fitness was huge. So I'd get up, I would hit my workout. You know, we had a few, few pieces of workout equipment aside from the pull-up bars and the, and the pushup blocks, we had some kettlebells and stuff like that. So, you know, I'd try to race over there, get the, get the equipment I needed. I'd do my workout and,

I would head to work. I would facilitate some groups. And then I was lucky enough to be on yards most of my time that had band programs. And in these band programs, you had to go through a music theory class. And that's another interesting story. The guy who taught the music theory class at the time that I was there was an inmate who used to be the keyboard player for Devo.

And he was also Red Fox's musical director for his residency in Vegas. So this dude was a trip. But anyway, so you go through the music theory class and that's kind of how they vet who's serious about it so that you don't have just anybody in there messing with the instruments and screwing things up. And then you could apply for band slots and you would get, you know, the yards open about three to four hours at a time between counts and you could get these band slots.

And so you'd find some people to play in a band with. And so, you know, I had a few band slots each week. I play guitar and I sing. I learned bass. I played bass in a few different bands. I had an all original band where I wrote all of the music. We got to play concerts every time we had a fundraiser. I probably played 10 or 11 concerts for inmates. So that was pretty interesting. And were you paid by like the prison system or no? No. Okay. No. Yeah.

I was just grateful to get my hands on a guitar, you know. That probably kept you out of trouble too. Yeah, completely. Did you still follow music even when you got out or? Yeah, I still play. I did some live stuff in Prescott. There's a good little, there's a good music scene downtown in Prescott on Whiskey Row. So I would go and play down there sometimes. I got in a studio. I recorded one song.

I still write, I still, you know, do around my guitar, but you know, my focus is pretty tied up with,

With work and my two kids and everything I got going on there. That's so cool. I don't know if you listened to the episode, but we had Stephen Wesley. He would later have a song with like T-Pain and Slash. He was in the prison program, the music program in prison, which was really cool. And that's how he got through his seven-year sentence. Yeah. Learned that. And they would actually leave the prison and play like –

community type things that's cool which was really cool yeah more prisons should have those types of programs yeah absolutely um the yards i were i was on that had more things like that had much higher success rates based on what i saw now did you stay clean your whole prison sentence ever since that last time you you know you first got sober so i got i used my first year right so going back to stepping on the yard and being terrified and i turned 20 before i hit the yard um

There was more heroin on that prison yard than there ever was in my hometown. You know, and I had kind of dabbled with it before. I'd mostly done like Percocet and stuff. So that was the first time I ever became physically dependent on a drug. And I used for about 10 months until I got caught and sent to the hole. And by the grace of God, you know, got clean and got sent to the life or paradise yard somehow.

And I've been clean since then. So August 17th, 2016. But yeah, my addiction peaked in prison. But the last four some change years, I was clean. It's so crazy that there's more drugs in prison and the accessibility compared to like your hometown in the free world. Right. And I'm sure even like when you're – it's even probably harder in there to –

Well, it's easier to relapse when you're around those drugs and then it's harder to go through the withdrawals and whatnot, especially in the shoe when you're forced to do that. But it also is a blessing. If I hadn't gone to the hole, I don't know that I could have done it. So, you know, I went through my withdrawals in the hole in Buckeye, Arizona in July. And then so I'd had one more relapse after that in the hole. I ended up getting a cellmate who came in with some dope. And that was the last one. That one ended badly. But so...

I'm in the hole in July in Buckeye, Arizona. It's about 113 degrees outside. It's cooled with swamp coolers. It's monsoon season, so it's humid. They're not working. It's about 90 degrees in my cell. I didn't sleep for six nights.

I was like having panic attacks, involuntary, like just like twitching and just the anxiety was crippling. I had nothing, right? I'm just in this empty room, just me, my thoughts and God. It was miserable. And yeah, I would never want to go through that again. But it's, I'm grateful for that experience because that pain is what kind of gave me the desperation to

get my shit together. Now, how do you feel that you lost like some of those like really pivotal years to being in prison? Like, you know, your 21st birthday while all your friends are at college or finishing up college and you're in prison. Like those are some, you know, important years you missed of your life that you can never really get back. Yeah. There, there's definitely some mourning over that. Right. Like I,

I basically was a 25-year-old, 19-year-old whenever I got out in street experience, right? Because I went in at 19. I got out. I was 25, almost 26 years old. All of my experience in the real world, I was 19 years old. And yeah, I missed a lot of that. There was definitely some mourning. There was – like we had a –

We had a prison channel on our TV and we had inmates that would put content on it. And it was amazing because they would put so many good podcasts. Like I was watching School of Greatness with Lewis Howes and all of the great people that he has on, Tim Ferriss show, all these different things, a lot of educational stuff. But on the weekends, they would play music videos.

And once in a while they would show the, uh, the footage of like the Jack U festival or like EDC and all this stuff. And, you know, I'm 23, 24 years old watching this. And it's like, God, I can feel like I'm on MDMA just watching this right now. And, uh, that was difficult, you know, just realizing I was missing those experiences. And then, you know, I, uh,

Got into a relationship within about a month of getting out and we were pregnant within two and a half. Oh, that's the girl that you're about to marry. Yes. How did you guys meet? So we kind of knew each other in high school. We're from the same town. And when I got out,

Her ex who were both still friends with her ex from high school. He was a good friend of mine. He found recovery at 17 years old. He was an absolute maniac back then. And then he's been sober ever since. And he saw on Facebook that I posted, you know, and

He texted her and he's like, hey, did you see Anthony Williams got out? And she's like, got out of where? Like she didn't even know what was going on, you know. And she looked me up and, you know, I went in this 130-pound scrawny kid. Now I'm 185 and the beard and look like an adult and this dramatic change. She's like, oh. And they were down in Phoenix. I was in Prescott. So I stayed the first couple months at my parents' cabin in Prescott whenever I got out. So they came up to visit me like yesterday.

two weeks after I got out and we hung out we went and got pizza the first night and hung out a little bit it was all three of us then the next day I borrowed my dad's kayaks we went to a local lake we went kayaking and stuff and hung out and then we just started texting after that and

Rest is history. That's awesome. Yeah. Tell us about that rebuilding phase. You know, you're out of prison. You're at your dad's cabin, your parents' cabin. What did that look like job-wise, you know, mental, capacity-wise, everything, mindset? So a lot of people talk about a difficult adjustment to real world after, you know, a prolonged period of incarceration. But I think I adjusted fairly quickly, I think, yeah.

The biggest thing was the addiction to that little dopamine box we call a cell phone. So, you know, I got kind of got wrapped up in that. That was difficult to kind of attenuate. But so when I got out, I went straight to work for my dad's company. He still has the contracting business. So I've got a good job. I'm making good money. I've got a I've got a free truck through the company. I've got a gas card. Everything's good. I do that for a bit.

Few months, then I have some buddies that start making ridiculous money doing the roofing sales, right? So they just chase storms and they get people's roofs covered by insurance and they're making insane commissions on this stuff. So I decide I'm going to do that. Well, you don't get paid for about two to three months doing that. So I'm kind of running out of money as I'm starting to do this.

And we get pregnant. And I'm like, yeah, this isn't going to work. I need money now. I need a guaranteed paycheck. Like this was still all kind of new. I didn't know if this was legit. I didn't know if the bottom was going to fall out of this in a year or whatever. I knew I had skills as an electrician. So I went and went back to doing electrical. I worked for my dad for about a year and a half. And, you know, I had a good time. So the crew I worked on was my dad's best friend who I call my uncle, right?

my brother and another family friend who's about my age. And, you know, we had some good times, but I just didn't find any purpose in it. You know, I didn't really care at Baghdad. Mine was getting better fiber optic cable. I didn't care that Nestle Purina dog food plant could produce more efficiently. And I was a part of that. I just, there was no, I didn't find any meaning in what I was doing. And so I,

I decided to step away from it and I took a pretty big leap. I had some buddies who worked in the treatment space and one of them is my business partner now. And they had a successful treatment program in Prescott and I could come in entry level and I just kind of trusted in myself that I would work my way up quickly. And so I left a pretty comfortable salary with my dad, handed back the work truck, handed back the gas card, handed back all the perks and

And I went and worked for $17 an hour as a BHT house manager for this program and was broke, stressed, but felt free, if that makes sense. And within four months, I had become the housing director for 120 beds between a 50-bed residential program and about a 60-bed IOP sober living program and then the gambling program, which had about 10 beds.

And so I worked my way up quickly. I was making a little bit better money. And then we decided to, a few different things happened there where ownership changed and we decided to start this company together down the valley, move the gambling program down there. And it's just been rolling since then. But yeah, I kind of took it a little bit further than your question there. But yeah, adjusting was, I just kind of jumped right into life. Like I said, I had that foundation of being a normal person, right? Like I meet a lot of guys who

You know, putting in a job application is terrifying for some of these guys. Some of these guys are getting out at 25, 30, 35 years old. They've never had a real job. So the insecurity that comes with that when you're going to sit in front of somebody and try to present well and apply for a job, it's terrifying. I didn't really have those kind of fears. You know, I had a lot of belief in myself. I had...

I had some real-world experiences before prison in normal life. So, you know, that adjustment period wasn't as dramatic for me. Did you feel like you were able to pick right back off with your family and your siblings like you never left? Or was it complicated? Yeah, so, you know, I had to have a hard conversation with my sister. Well, she had to have a hard conversation with me. So she was...

I'm nine years older than her and I was kind of like a second father figure for her, you know, and she was 10 years old when I went away. She was 16 when I came home and, you know, she had some, some hurt and some resentment and, you know, we had tough conversation and cried together. And, you know, I, I kind of had to make amends in that area where I kind of abandoned her, you know, not intentionally, but that's what happened. Um, but yeah, I've,

I'm, I'm so blessed, man. I've got such a great family. We had like a, it was like I had a college graduation party whenever I got out. We had, there had to be 50 people packed into my family members, packed into my parents' cabin for this coming home party. And it was, you know, I'm a musician. My grandfather's a musician. My uncle's a musician. We all had guitars. We're sitting around playing, having a good time. I got to see, you know, people I hadn't seen or talked to in six plus years. Yeah.

So, yeah, I think we just kind of picked up where we left off. Did you ever get to make amends to the family you affected that, you know, you ended up going to prison for? So it's in my probation terms, which I'm still on probation until October, that I'm not allowed to make contact with them. So, you know, I plan to, through the people that I know within that department, see if they'd be willing to have a conversation. You know, it's something that's still...

weighs heavy on my mind, but I definitely want to respect how they feel about it and do it the right way and the legal way. Now, tell everyone about what you've been able to build the company to that you were just mentioning and what you do now on a daily basis and what that looks like and what kind of the future holds for that too and your vision for that. Yeah. So this program, again, when you're doing the right things, you get handed some amazing opportunities. Yeah.

This program has been around for 32 years. So it was founded by a man by the name of Rick Benson, who was a compulsive gambler himself. He's been in recovery for over 35 years, I believe. He founded this treatment program. So it's the oldest private gambling specific treatment program in the country. I got to start working with them three years ago. That program worked under the licenses of another company called

that company was sold the new ownership and the founder didn't really see eye to eye. So my partner who sold that last company got together with me and a few others. And we created another behavioral health company until Rick come with us. We'll run Algamist completely standalone. It's going to be our main focus. You know, we're going to make this the best possible program that we can. And I think we've done a good job of improving it since we moved. Um,

And so we moved it from Prescott in June 1st of 2023 was the first day that we opened in Goodyear, Arizona. And yeah, I've just, you know, in order to earn my equity, I've had to be a workhorse and, you know, I've worked my ass off at it.

Um, I've done everything from house managing to overseeing operations to admissions lines to clinical work, you know, sit doing, uh, supportive counseling with clients. Currently I'm facilitating two groups a week. I handle the admissions line. I oversee compliance and operations. Um,

And I do some family outreach. I do some, you know, just in this trip, I've met with two counselors already in the area to see how we might be able to work together to serve this population better, how to improve the program. Like I was saying earlier, I think this is the next addiction epidemic, especially for young men, sports betting being so accessible and so cultural.

Every time I tell somebody what I do, they go, oh, you got to talk to my brother. Oh, you got to talk to my boyfriend. Oh, you got to talk to my uncle. Oh, you got to talk to – right? So everybody knows somebody who's probably gambling a little bit too much. There's – the last statistic was there was an estimated 2 million people that would meet the criteria for gambling disorder in America. There's 400 ICGC counselors, which is the gold standard certification for compulsive gambling counseling. Right?

in the country and not all of them are practicing. So, you know, let's say maybe there's 250 to 300 counselors trying to serve 2 million people and 2 million people who are not really aware that the help is out there. You know, so my vision is to grow awareness of the fact that there is help for this, you know, to illustrate people's ignorance about this. I'll use myself as a

Until I came across Algamist through working for that other substance abuse treatment facility, I didn't know gambling treatment existed, right? I was like, there's a rehab for gambling? And that's most people's reaction, right? And, you know, the deeper I dig into it, the more I see how pervasive it is in our society right now, especially –

You can't watch a sporting event for five minutes without hearing somebody say something about gambling or a FanDuel ad or something flashing across the TV that has to do with gambling. It's all tied to gambling now and it's because there's tons of money in it, right? And so we're seeing I think this generation as well.

so wired for quick dopamine through the phone, through social media, through video games, through easy access to high dopamine producing foods, to whatever, right? They're already kind of predisposed. So when they come across gambling, you know, they get, you can get a dopamine rush similar to that of cocaine if you're somebody that's predisposed to a gambling disorder. So, you know, we're seeing people getting caught up in this and, and

really ruining their lives or hindering them from beginning their lives in the case of a lot of these young people. So I really just want people to know that there is help out there. It exists, right? You can call the gambling helpline, 1-800-GAMBLER. They'll direct you to services in your area. You know, we run a five-week residential program in Arizona and

Um, we have some of the best people. Ken Litwack is our, uh, is our lead therapist. He, we kind of poached him from New Jersey. He worked with the New Jersey council and, uh, with the facility out there. And, uh,

He's just – he's incredible, man. Nobody knows gambling better than this guy in my opinion. Now, does it work similar to like a sober facility? Like when the course as if you're coming off an alcohol or a drug addiction, is it kind of similar in that or –

abuse should be applied to treating gambling addiction. So it's a lot of group therapy, some individual therapy, some case management, a lot of CBT, DBT modalities. So it's similar, but there's a lot of nuances to gambling, right? Like gambling is the only addiction where you believe that the addiction can solve the problem of the addiction. There's never been a heroin addict that said, if I just do a big enough shot of heroin, then I won't have to do heroin anymore. Right.

But a gambler believes if I can just hit big enough, I can pay off all my debt. I can have a nest egg and I can walk away from this. And the reality is that never happens, right? So they're trapped in the cycle. And something else we see, a lot of people who suffer with gambling disorder tend to be high achievers. And they've overcome a lot of challenges in their life or they've been successful in areas of their life. And now this one thing is getting them. There's no way. I figured everything else out in my life. I can beat this.

So they get stuck in that loop of chasing and believing that they can – I was having a conversation with somebody recently and he said he's been in this space for a long time. He's in gambling recovery himself and he said the one thing I've noticed that's a difference between gambling addicts and substance abuse addicts is that gamblers are optimistic. Yeah.

Right? Because you have to be. You got to believe that you can win, right? If you don't believe that you can win, why the hell would you be gambling? That's why I never liked gambling. I never believed that I could win. Yeah, I'm like so optimistic that that's why I always used to gamble, you know, so much. I don't gamble now really like if I'm at a casino. Sure. Yeah, but not like –

I saw the apps, how they could drain you very quickly. You can win a lot quickly, but they could drain you more. You know, when you go to the casino, you have to get out of the car, you get the cash. It's more controllable. Here, you could just keep adding debit cards, bank accounts on your phone and poof, everything's gone. Yeah.

So I'm going to steal something from I saw on a Joe Rogan episode. And I feel bad because I can't remember the name of the guy. But this was it was so interesting because the conversation wasn't about anything like this. And then he mentioned gambling and my ears perked up and I heard this. And so this guy was trying to figure out why slots are so addictive. Right. And so he starts talking to people.

about, you know, counselors or anti-gambling activists, essentially, right? Like people that don't want you to gamble. And they're telling them all the classic stuff that you hear, right? Like casinos don't have right angles. There's no clocks in the casino. The machine's only playing the key of C and the key of C is soothing. And so he's like, he starts looking deeper into that. And he's like, yeah, you know who else doesn't have a clock? My doctor's office. He's like, most businesses don't have a clock. So that one's out.

He said, I walked into a casino. There's right angles everywhere. The screen is right angles. He said he called a composer for slot machine music. The guy said, where the hell do you hear that? I use every key. So he's like, OK, I'm asking the wrong people. I need to ask people who want you to gamble. And so in that search, that led him to this facility outside of Vegas, which is a full casino.

It's not open to the public. It's funded by 72 or 73 Fortune 500 companies, some gambling companies, mostly major tech companies. And it's all for research on human behavior. And what he found there was they hack into something that he called the scarcity loop. And this is this plays on our primal wiring. Right. So there's three parts. There's opportunity. There's variable reward.

And there is easy repeatability, right? So the opportunity is I could win some money. The variable reward is I don't know how much money I'm going to win, right? Especially in a slot machine, you could win 50 cents on your dollar back or you could win $10,000. And then easier repeatability, you can play a slot machine about 16, 17 times a minute. Well, they use this process to

for sports betting, which is why we see live play advertised so much. And most of my clients who have reached a severe level of gambling disorder are doing live betting. That's where we do a group where Ken, our lead therapist, does this group where we go over the nine criteria for problem gambling in the DSM-5. And then we ask our clients, what's some other criteria you would add? Almost all of them, especially the younger males, throw out betting on tennis. Yeah.

And that's because you can bet each point and it's happening 24-7. And so it's quick live play. So what's happening is they're getting caught in that primal scarcity loop of here's an opportunity. I don't know if I'm going to win or not. Oh, it's over, but I can repeat it quickly.

Right. And this is an addictive loop for anybody. And this is, you know, evolutionarily wired into us to find, you know, easy resources. All right. What's the most easy, efficient way to get the water? What's the most easy, efficient way to get the food? But now we live in this world of complete abundance where even people in poverty live better than, you know, the richest people did 100 years ago. I mean, 100 years ago, warm shower wasn't really a thing for most people.

Now it's like you run out of hot water and your day's over. You're pissed off. Life is really, really easy. And so what we've done is we've hacked these systems that kept us alive. And now we just use them for pleasure. Right. And so.

These apps take advantage of it. They do it with dating apps. They do it with social media apps. You know, there's... You got to give dating apps credit though because they... I'll tell you, to get people to sign up for free when they do the, you know, sign up to see who liked you. Yeah.

I fall for it every time. Yeah, absolutely. Even though I know most of the time it's some random person. Right. But then once you actually buy it, it does help in some cases. But it's like you want to know. It's like who's behind door number one. So what's happening there, right? There's an opportunity.

Right? The opportunity is I might connect with the love of my life. Right? But it's also a variable reward. It could be some chick that I have absolutely no interest in or it could be the hottest chick I've ever seen in my entire life. I have no idea. But you want to know. You have to figure it out. Yeah, just like you want to hit that next slot because that could be the one that you win. And they could charge whatever they want for it too, which is crazy. These sites now, I think it's like $30 a month now for Tinder, $60 for, you know, it's crazy. Yeah.

Not only that, it's like there's no pain of – whenever you click that button, you double-click that button on your phone to confirm the purchase, you're not watching the money go out of your bank account. You're not watching a bill come out of your hand. So you're not experiencing the fear or the pain associated with losing some resources over it. So it makes it so easy. That's why you'll see – I had a client who had a problem with gambling in the past.

Was clean for a lot of years and then ended up finding this, like, slots game on his phone. And you couldn't win actual money, right? He spent $300,000 buying more plays on this game. On a game that you could never win any money. Just winning fake money. That's like, what's that jewel game everyone plays that the Candy Crush people would pay for? I was dating a girl that spent $100, $200 a week on fucking Candy Crush. Yeah. Why? Why?

It's hacking that system, right? And so if you think – I forget who I heard say this. I think it was Tim Ferriss I heard years ago say like if you think you're going to beat the guys out of MIT who designed the Dorito and just eat one Dorito, you are sadly mistaken, right? If you think you're going to beat these extremely intelligent guys who have spent all of their time researching how to make things as addictive as possible –

Good luck. Right? There's people much smarter than us designing these systems, and that's why they're $100 billion industries now. That's crazy. Is that a Zyn? They're called Ons. What is that? So it's just a cheaper version of Zyn. Oh, we'll give you a Lucy. Okay.

Have you ever tried Lucy? I haven't. They're one of the sponsors for the show. They have like the breakers and then they have the pouches. Okay. We'll give you whatever flavor you want. We'll show you them after. That'd be great. And you can take a pack, see if you like it. And then definitely buy more if you like it. But they're good.

I'll give you that after, but I saw that. So I was like, okay. I feel like a lot of people in recovery and stuff do those, like Zins. Yeah, it's my last little vice, right? That and caffeine. Does it give you energy, those? It's a habit at this point. Okay. You know, it's... Does it mess up your teeth or anything or no? No, they're pretty easy on the gums. It's not really like, you know, long cut or those kind of chew. They're putting fiberglass and stuff in it that tears you up. It's not like dip back in the day and stuff. Okay. Interesting. Interesting.

Um, so what do you think is like the biggest learning lesson you want people to take away from your story today? So I would say, well, let me put it this way. This is, this is the biggest thing that I try to drive home to my clients and that I try to remember in my own life is that, and I believe this to be a fact of life is you're going to act in accordance with your beliefs. So, you know, all of the stuff that sent me to prison and put me through all the hardship, um,

came from a deeper rooted insecurity and belief that I was not good enough, that I wouldn't amount to anything, and that I needed to prove something. And so, you know, I talk about this concept of self-confidence, and I steal this from Ed Milet, but he defines self-confidence as self-trust, as keeping your word to you. And so if you have these, you know,

beliefs about yourself that are negative and then you keep breaking your word to yourself and you keep creating more data to support that I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not buttoned up enough. I'm not good looking enough. I'm not fit enough, whatever it might be. We find data to support these narratives. So

As you do that, it becomes so deeply rooted that you don't even realize you're running on this subconscious script that is setting you up for failure. So if you don't trust yourself, what does every good thing in life come with? Everything that you strive for in your life, whether it's a promotion, a family, owning a home, a nicer car, whatever it might be, all of those things come with responsibility. If you're going to hand yourself responsibility, you have to trust yourself.

So if you don't trust yourself, you're never going to achieve those things because you will sabotage it. You'll believe that you don't deserve it, right? And this idea of self-confidence doesn't come from how many likes I get on my social media. It doesn't come from what other people say about me. It doesn't come from what I see in the mirror. What it comes from is to me is my alignment with my values and principles, right?

So everything in life for me comes down to are my actions in alignment with my core values and principles. Right. And whenever I am in alignment, I'm self-confident. I can trust myself. Right. Because what are our core values most of the time? Honesty, integrity, hard work, compassion, kindness. Whenever I act out of alignment with those things, life tends to get a little bit rocky. Right.

Right. My my mental state is my emotional state is tied to my alignment with those things. And I start to distrust myself and I'm going to sabotage whatever's coming. So start small, start building confidence on promises that you can keep to yourself consistently. But if that belief doesn't change, I don't care how many books you read. I don't care how many cold plunges you do. I don't care how many burpees you do. I don't care how many podcasts you watch. I don't care how many

positive affirmations you tell yourself or gratitude journals or any of that stuff, if it's not rooted in a belief, you're not going to align with it. It's just not going to happen. Belief has to come first. And that's a big tenet of recovery. That's the second step, right? The second step of the 12 steps is came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. It's entertaining the idea that a better version of me can't exist.

And a lot of people, whenever they're stuck in dark times, they don't believe that that's possible. You know, I remember a lot of times in my life where I thought, like, just give up, man. All you're ever going to do is cause pain to the people around you. All you're ever going to do is just live this miserable life. Just leave everybody alone. And because I held that belief, I continued acting in accordance with that. Once I believed that there was a better version of myself waiting for me and accepted it was going to take a lot of hard work and a lot of humility, things got better.

But again, at the foundation of that has to be the belief. Without the belief, there's no action. There's no moving forward. Anthony, I appreciate you coming on the show today, man. Thanks for making the trip out here and sharing your story with us. And I wish you the best for everything you got going on. We'll have the links to everything you want to promote in the description of this episode for people to check out. Sure. Yeah, I appreciate it, man. This is a real pleasure. The studio is awesome. Really cool. Thank you. I see it on your social media and stuff. So to see it in person was...

Pretty cool. Yeah, if you ever need anything at all, you know, you have my number. Feel free to reach out. Content, anything. You know, we have a second studio over here. If you ever start your own thing, need to use it, I always offer it up to my guests. I appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate you, brother. Safe travels back. Thank you.