Award-Winning Lawyer's Secret Double Life: Meth Dens, Private Planes & Total Collapse

you had, you must have had a hard reset when you were in your early teens or your mid-teens to allow you to even get to law school and, and to, uh, to be able to, you know, turn it around. So I'm, I'm really interested to know, like, like what were the influences that you found that ended up getting you, uh, on the path to a very successful, uh, and celebrated law career?

Well, you know, the, the, the truth is that my healing only began about 5 years ago in 2020. Um, I had many sort of resets, but what my reset did was it only sort of said, this is not where I want to be. Um, I'm down in a hole. Uh, I, I'm, I'm, I'm not reaching goals and things of that nature. And so I sort of reset, and those resets usually moved me from one addiction to another. Mm-hmm. Because what happened was I never actually healed the inner child. I never healed the wounded part of me that required external validation, that required achievement and celebration and acknowledgement and, and these things. And so, uh, or, or even required escape. From, from pain. And so what happened was, um, I, I come outta law school and I, I, I get married and I married this woman who was incredibly wealthy. I married her for money and I felt that if she had a lot of money, then that would give me access to even more lovability.

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, we had 3 children together. And now I'm going to work and success is my drive. I am now flying on a, you know, private plane to my country club in Key Largo, Florida, which is gated behind my gated house to get onto my crewed yacht. And I say that because what happened was the more successful I got, the more lonely I got, the more disconnected I got. I didn't even need to fly at an airport with other people. And so my world became actually really small and very lonely. And, and in that, even though my name had been on billboards all across New Jersey, what ultimately happened was all of this success, as I mentioned earlier, all of this, people were now applauding the veneer. They were applauding a version of me that wasn't really me. They were, you know, applauding this success that really came from a wounded place. That needed that to feel loved. And so ultimately it was June 2020, a summer, early summer morning in New Jersey. Uh, it was still humid out and I'm driving to my office when police lights flash in my rearview mirror and those blue lights are, are, are, are, are right there in my face. I pull over. Police officer said that there's a warrant out for my arrest. Turned out that my wife had made a false allegation, um, encouraged by her lawyer and her father who wanted them to divorce me. She later acknowledged that to the judge who expunged it, but the damage was already done. I was brought to jail for a day. I came outta jail to a big empty home and I'm surrounded by these exotic cars and I lay on my garage floor, Jeff. And I curl up in a fetal position, like I'm back in the safety of my, my mother's womb. And I just cried this uncontrollable shaking kind of cry because I had just realized that after all of these decades of building this very successful company and having all the external things that everybody told me would bring me happiness, and it didn't. And I felt broken. I actually told myself that you're broken. How can this not, how can this not satisfy you? How can you not feel joy in your life? And I was 50/50 on whether I wanted to move on with my life at all until I did something that I had never done before. And this goes back into the most important work that men can do with each other. I picked up the phone and I asked for help. I called a buddy of mine and I said, you don't know what's going on. This is what's behind the scenes every night. At, after work, I go and I drive into the sketchiest neighborhoods and I go into a methamphetamine den and I spend all night there in the toxic haze and the fumes with a bunch of strangers doing meth. And then I come home at some point and I shower and I see the family and my ex, uh, now was enabling it then. Because she just didn't want her life to change. And so nobody was stopping it. And there I was in this horrible cycle for a while until I was on that garage floor, picked up the phone, asked for help, and my buddy got me into a rehab for 3 months out into California. And this was just 5 years ago. And what I did on the other side of that when I came out is I said, I have to understand the root of my problem. I have to find out where this is coming from, that I had all this and I still couldn't find happiness, joy, and satisfaction. And so I went on this real healing journey to understand and to find that joy. And that search led me to understanding that the answer was connection, authentic, real, raw human connection.

Were you able to make these changes without dismantling and losing everything that you had worked for?

No. Great question. Absolutely. 1000%. No. Because also what hap happened as my success grew, my ego and my pride grew, and my, my, my inner critic grew too. And so those things had to be broken down in order for me to start to go on a healing journey because I wouldn't have been so open to healing. I wouldn't have been accepting to healing. I wouldn't have thought maybe I even needed healing. Uh, and so all of those things had to be torn down. I wore a shirt last night. I went to a recovery sober living facility and spoke to a bunch of men. Just last night, and my shirt said, "Rock bottom built me." And I believe that to be true.

Are all successful people addicts of one flavor or another?

I'll tell you this, I can't tell you in generality whether that's across the board, but I do know a lot of successful people, and in that success, the answer would be yes, that drive is coming from somewhere. It's either coming from an overcompensation, a wounded place, and, and, and, and it's, it's a strong drive, or it's still coming oftentimes from a place that, um, requires a purpose and passion that's different than just living life.

I've come to believe that everybody's an addict. I was doing a talk down in Clearwater, Florida last week to a leadership group, and I challenged them. I said, you know, you're an addict even if it's just to the Home Shopping Network, or if it's Candy Crush on your phone, or if it's processed foods or whatever it is. I mean, we, we have things that we do that makes us feel good. Jordan Peterson had this great line. About alcohol. And he said, you know, alcohol's great. I loved it. It's very exciting. You have a good time. You, you think your, you know, your inhibitions go away, but you're, you actually, your decision, your decisions remain intact. You just make the same decisions. You just don't care about the consequences as much. He goes, your go, your goal in life is to find something that's more exciting. And that's, you, you have to find things that are more exciting. And I, I, I know that I'm going to need to maintain some business aspect for the rest of my life. I don't think I'll be able to completely retire because if, if I go to fishing and golfing or things that are not that exciting, then I will fill my life with something that is exciting and it probably won't be good for me. So, you know, I'm, I have to focus on exercise or body hacks or, you know, reading or writing a book or building a small bit, whatever it is. But Like I know that I have an addictive personality and now, but it's my choice and my power what I choose to be addicted to.

You know, some, some of us have a very difficult time doing nothing, but yes, nothing is important. And, and I don't know about everybody across the board and I can't tell you about all the different kinds of addictions or there are out there. I, I certainly suffered from many of them, but I can tell you when it comes to drugs and alcohol, particular drugs that I know very well, Dr. Gabor Maté says very, uh, I think poignantly, it's not why the addiction, it's why, what's the pain? And so I think that when it comes to that particular addiction, at least for me, that's usually a numbing, an escape, a, a running from it. It's, it's a pain that's too difficult to bear, too difficult to feel with, as opposed to, you know, sitting on the couch and numbing out with Candy Crush. But yes, I think many of us are disconnected from ourselves and from our others. And so we find these ways to numb that.

There's power in reframing, but is that a band-aid or is that real work?

I think reframing is a, is a start. Uh, and it's important depending on how you're flipping the script. Is your perspective coming from a narrative and belief, uh, that's not healthy? So for instance, I can say I'm, I'm gonna reframe my life, but it's only because as a result of what my ex-wife did. That's not going to be a healthy narrative. It's what's my part in it? What was my role in it? And when you can see that and start to see the truth to, to how you show up to the problem you're trying to deal with, to the way you want to reframe how you want to approach the next chapter of your life. All of these things are important to come from a very healthy narrative and belief, which really underneath that is the truth about what your part was in it. But yeah, I think once you can start to take honesty, uh, and, and accountability to, uh, to the choices you've made, reframing them can be a helpful start.

In June 2020, was that your rock bottom?

That was my most recent rock bottom. That's a great question, Jeff, because I think a lot of people think of rock bottom as the lowest you can go, but I, I think about it as a whole. And that you're in. And I was in that hole before, you know, I fell in the hole in my early 20s with meth. I went to Arizona State University. I dropped out of college. I started to learn how to traffic drugs from the Hells Angels who controlled the meth trade out in Arizona before the cartel came in. And, uh, I, I, um, bought a motorcycle. I'm driving down to Nogales, you know. So I, I, that, that first hole I fell into was a deep hole because I got really deep in, in, in drug trafficking and, and drugs. And that was my first hole, you know. I then reached a certain level of success and I, I hid behind everything in a successful mask and that disconnected me from myself. And so I fell into another hole. And so, yeah, June 2020 was my most recent rock bottom. But for anybody out there, I want you to know, like, you can fall in the hole again and it's okay because you're going to climb out. But, you know, those who say I had a rock bottom and you have another one and you don't give yourself the grace and compassion to understand that that can happen a few times in our lives, it makes it more difficult to climb out.

Hmm. If you were gonna make a list of the things that you took out of your life and you subtracted, and the things that you added back in, uh, in June, July, August, however long it took in 2020, what would be on that list?

Hmm.

What did you take away?

That's such a great question. You know, Arthur Brooks writes a great statement in his book, Strength to Strength. When he says your satisfaction equals your wants, your haves minus your wants. So take your haves minus your wants, and that's your equal of your level of satisfaction. In other words, instead of making a bucket list, make an unbucket list.

Mm.

Because the more things you want, the less obvious, grateful of the things you have are present.

Ugh.

And so for me, uh, what I did was I, there were a lot of things I had. What I wanted to take away was the wants. So I took away the bucket list. It took away the 7 ideas that I had that I was gonna go and travel the world. I took away the need to be on more billboards. What I did was I stripped myself instead of change them for something else. And I thought about it like, wow, that was a great statement. If I can reduce my wants, I can step into gratitude, which is the highest frequency we can come from, you know, putting it out, that positive energy in the universe and focus on the haves. And that's what the, I think that's the first thing I, and primary thing I did.

Oh, I got goosebumps right now because I, so I've, I booked off my entire Friday to recast myself and that will be a big part of it. Re, re, if the more wants you take away, the closer you're gonna be to satisfaction and fulfillment.

Right.

That is a, that's a mic drop. We're done now. We're not done. I'm not gonna, there might be more. I'm gonna keep you on, Jud. So, um, There was a book that I read and it was a Holocaust survivor. It was a young lady and she only had one doll. That was the only thing that survived with her during, uh, surviving the Holocaust. And her comment was that because it was a single thing that, you know, you, you can't love a thousand things. You can't love a hundred toys, but she had this one thing And it was because that's all that she had. She loved it so deeply. And I think there's a, that always, that always resonated with me in the fact is, I mean, I, you know, you know, I've had financial success similar to you and, you know, you end up with the houses and you end up with the cars and you end up with, you know, people can order things on Amazon and it doesn't even matter. And you just become numb. You just become numbed. It's just an, there's another thing that showed up in my foyer to replace the thing that was there before. And none of these things matter. And I, for me, I just get, it just depresses me. It's like this thing doesn't matter more than this thing. It's just a different color. What's, what was the absolute point of all of it is, and I can't tell you how many times I've thought about just moving to, you know, out into the woods in Maine somewhere and having the minimal viable life and probably would be so much happier and more fulfilled. But then you have obligations. You've got people that you've, that you're responsible for and things that you've started and, and all of these types of things. And, um, but man, that's, um, uh, that, that will, that will stick with me. Uh, and I will definitely get that book by Arthur Brooks, you said?

Arthur Brooks, Strength to Strength. It's an amazing book. I recommend it highly. And you know, the second book I would also, since we're just mentioning it on exactly what you're talking about, Jeff, another Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl.

Oh yeah.

Wrote Man's Search for Meaning.

Yeah, I've read it. That's great. Yep. Well, we took a dark turn here.

You know, I, I think, I think here, here's something that came up as you said that. And it's, it's the power of vulnerability. To me, it's not a weakness. It's a strength. And what happens is, is allows for, for us to share these things in a way that you just expressed. It's a way that I can own my story, step out from shame. Tell it without concern of judgment. I believe that vulnerability is today's man's superpower. You know, we had a, we used to have that medieval code of conduct on how men would show up. And you just mentioned this, and I think this is an important point. You'd like to go out and live this certain life, but there you have responsibilities. And that's where the balance, I think, us men need to focus our attention on is making sure that we're still connecting with ourselves and connecting with another man. And that's because what happens is we feel we have to provide, we have to do this, and then we have responsibilities and And that's, that's go— can walk us into a man trap, which believed that society taught us that these are how we're supposed to show up. We make money, we provide, we get the house, we take care of the kids, we do this. But what happens is a lot of times we're not thinking or connecting with ourselves and we're not connecting with another man. And when that happens, we could be providing, we could be meeting all the responsibilities that we think we need to do as a man, but really disconnected from ourselves. And that's what led to the loneliness that I felt, uh, the isolation that I felt, and quite frankly, the unhappiness. I, I, I couldn't share with another man what was I, I was going through. I had to show up and still, you know, get to work the next day and provide. And all of these things I think are leading to why we have such high suicide rates for young men in today's world. And I think that if we can have these conversations, share tips, um, and, and get real and raw, men will begin to move from survival to thriver.