Dan Martell grew up with an addicted mother and absent father, was diagnosed with ADHD at 11, and placed in foster care at 13. By 17 he'd been jailed twice and attempted suicide in a high-speed car chase that ended when his gun jammed after he crashed into a house.
Chapters
Before all this, what was your childhood like? And I know it wasn't the easiest of childhoods, I guess you could say.
I grew up in a really challenging environment. I'm the second oldest of four. My mom's struggle with addiction and alcoholism. My dad was in sales, so just traveling a lot to try to make ends meet with four kids. And I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 11. Honestly, from that age onward, I always felt like there was something wrong with me. I was broke. When I was 13, I got taken out of my home just because of some of the anger issues I had in the environment I was in. Got put into the foster care system. When I was 13, my parents got divorced. I got introduced to drugs, and then my life just spiraled out of control to a point where I had been in a prison twice by the time I was 17, and tried to take my life in a high-speed chase where I had a handgun sitting next to me and told myself when I stole the car that I was going to pull the gun and let the police do their job, and ended up crashing the side of a house. And when I went for the gun, for whatever reason, it got stuck.